Circle of Christhood | The Study of Joel Goldsmith's Infinite Way

The Activity of Error

"Now, since God is omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, what do you need a God to do for you? There is no other presence for it to do anything to. There is no other power for it to destroy. This is the letter of truth.

"As you accept it, you find that the first thing that happens is that all your troubles multiply, because it is determined now that you shall not accept this truth. The devil does not want to be destroyed any more than the human mind wants to be destroyed. The human mind, which is really the only devil.

"So it is that this contrary nature that is within us rises up to say five minutes from now you are going to catch a cold or trip over the doorstep. Just to prove that evil is a power.

"Then you are going to have to say, ah, temptation. This is the temptation to make me believe in the reality, in the real power of sin or disease. Because you have been alerted, you hold fast to omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience."

Joel

Tape 482 Side 1

Fabric of Nothingness

"I would like you to understand how this universal mesmerism operates so that even though you do not know how you got this way, you will after this. And you'll understand why it is that everybody that is the victim of sin or disease or lack or limitation or death, you'll understand how they got that way.

"You've been reading in the press these last few months about this new subliminal perception and of how it operates. You are sitting before your television or you're sitting in a moving picture theater and you're watching an ordinary picture. Now, you do not know that someone has inserted something in there that you can neither see nor hear. It came on so fast that before your eye or ear could catch it, it was gone. And so you do not know at all that anything unusual has happened.

"But in one case of the experiment, people, while watching the moving picture screen in a theater, decided to get up and go downstairs and buy some Coca-cola and some popcorn. Now they didn't want it. They had never done anything like this before, right in the middle of a picture, to get up and walk out on it. But they did.

"In another instance this was tried on a television program, directed into the home, and people sitting watching a moving picture just got up and walked away and went in to answer the telephone, rather to go to the telephone. Now, of course, they had no reason for it. The bell hadn't rung. They didn't want to call anybody. When they got there they couldn't reason out why they had gone to their telephone. They thought, well, it's a mistake and then they went back to their seat to watch the show, and the next day found they had been directed to do that. Just as the other people in the theater had been directed to buy popcorn and Coca-cola.

"Now, here you see how people respond to suggestions that they are not even aware of. They respond to suggestions that they do not even know they received. And they find themselves acting out something for which they, themselves, have no knowledge.

"Now, of course, it is claimed that if these suggestions were made to you to your face, with your knowledge, that you could use your judgment or discrimination, and if you didn't feel like Coca-cola or popcorn, you just wouldn't have any. Or if you didn't want to go to the telephone, you wouldn't go. Well, here is a way of taking advantage of you to make you do what somebody else wants you to do and depriving you of the privilege of exercising your judgment.

"In other words, if they suggest that you buy a Cadillac, even though you can't afford it, you'll find yourself going out and going into debt and buying it and not knowing why. That may be an extreme case, but it will work that way in some cases.

"Now, this is the entire secret of how we become sick, how we become sinful, how we have false appetites and desires, how we are foolish enough to get drunk or be reckless in our driving. It isn't that we, ourselves, want to be that way. It is that a force is projecting itself at us, causing things within us that are really no part of our true being, for our true being is God. Our true being is intelligence and love.

"This has been called a universal hypnotism, a universal mesmerism, a universal belief in good and evil, and it strikes us, unbeknownst to ourselves, and acts upon us. And the first thing you know the world says it's raining out and 8,000 people will catch cold. Then 8,000 wake up and find they have colds.

"Now, let us understand this. When this was revealed to me, and this is back in 1934, I saw how impossible it is to blame anybody for any of the sins or diseases from which they are suffering, or even the lack or limitation or unemployment. And it was then that I began to show to those who came to me that instead of concerning yourselves with the individual who calls himself or herself a patient, get busy and handle this universal claim, and see it, see it, understand it to be really without God ordination, without God presence, without God law. And you will nullify it.

"That was the basis of the healing practice that was successful that brought forth this message of The Infinite Way. From that day to this we have not concerned ourselves with why anyone is sick, so far as their individual selfhood, what their particular wrong thinking might consist of, or what superstition or ignorance may lie behind them, or what hereditary beliefs or environmental beliefs. But we have treated every case that has come to us in just one way - ignoring the person involved and handling the claim of a selfhood apart from God or a law, a life apart from God, an intelligence apart from God and seeing this whole thing as the fabric of nothingness, the arm of flesh. And then resting in that word."

Joel

From Tape 220 Side 1

1958 New York Closed Class

Fabric of Nothingness

From:

The Infinite Way Letters 1959

October 1959

Removing the Burden

In the very earliest books of The Infinite Way it has been made clear that, in our human ignorance, we are not responsible for the error that is touching our life, not even responsible for the sin, lack, hate, envy, or jealousy which may be the dominating motif. All of that is part of a universal activity which Paul called the carnal mind and which centuries later was referred to as "mortal mind." In The Infinite Way, the terms "universal belief," "universal hypnotism," and "universal mesmerism" are used to describe this vast universal ignorance which is the sum and substance of all the sin, disease, lack, limitation, and old age which hold the world in bondage. This universal or carnal mind of man is pumping its thought, beliefs, and theories into you and into me night and day, year in and year out.

Every carnal or material thought, whether of a physical, mental, moral, or financial nature, every thought of false ambition, greed, lust, hate, injustice, and every human being is subject to it. Each person becomes subject to some particular phase of it at whatever happens to be his most vulnerable spot.

All of this is brought about unconsciously, that is, without conscious thought on our part, and in most cases unconsciously on the part of anyone else. There is not a devil doing this to us in a personalized sense of devil, nor is there anybody wicked enough to be capable of doing it to humanity. It is an aggregation of the sum total of everything of a selfish or personal nature that has happened since the days of Adam, formed out of the original belief in two powers, good and evil. This sum total of evil is now floating about in this very room in which you are sitting. Some of it is in the room by virtue of nearby radios or television sets that may be carrying it. You are not aware of it because these sets are not plugged in or turned on, but nevertheless it is here; it is going through this room, and under its influence, you are responding to current medical and theological beliefs.

I have never yet met a person who could rightly be termed a sinner, if judged from the standpoint of whether or not he really and truly wanted to sin. Every sinner I have ever met has admitted sooner or later that he does not want any part of it, but that he does not know how to free himself of it, just as a person suffering from poverty might feel, "Certainly, I do not want any part of this. This is not part of me, or of my will or desire."

Then, where does it come from? It is being whispered into your subconscious below the level of conscious perception. You know nothing about it, but nevertheless you respond to it. It comes out of that same area of consciousness that may be likened to the activity of subliminal perception.

As far back as the early 1930's, I began to see that evil is never personal and that it can be separated from any individual once he, himself, has realized that the time has come to be free of this suggestion. When anyone comes to us for help, he can be set free the moment we recognize, "This is not your fault; this is not your doing; you are not responsible for this: This is the carnal mind, a nothingness." Such a recognition makes it impossible for us to hold our patients or students in any form of condemnation, criticism, or judgment, and enables us to free most of those who come to us. It lifts such a load from our patients or students that their shoulders are thrust back quickly, and, although they may not know why, they feel a sense of freedom. The burden of guilt and responsibility has been lifted from their shoulders by realizing, "Why, this is not you. This is not a part of you: This is the carnal mind."