194A - Incorporeal Existence

1957 Second Halekou Closed Class

Joel S. Goldsmith

Good Evening.

First of all, I’m asked to repeat the story of lost baggage in South
Africa. And for those of you who do not know this story, there may be
something in it that will show you why we often fail.

In telling you this story, I’ll tell you in advance that, there would be no
such story if I, myself, had not failed, at this particular time.

When I was going to South Africa, I stopped off in the Belgium Congo,
and then went down to the plane at midnight for Johannesburg. And the
man in charge of the booking, the man who took care of the tickets, and
so forth, and a woman assistant, took care of all of my tickets and
examinations and everything that was necessary, and weighed my
baggage—there were three pieces—and then called a little native boy to
carry them out to the plane.

And I stood there and saw this boy pick up the two large pieces, one in
each hand, and put the small piece under his arm. And I watched him as
he walked out the gate to the field.

Now it’s a small station and a small field, so I could see him go right out
to the field, and then I turned away and a few minutes later he came
back without any baggage, and I said: “Okay?” And he said “okay
Well, when I got to Johannesburg in the morning there was only my tiny
little piece of baggage awaiting me, and the other two pieces were not
there. And, of course, we got everybody at this tremendously big air
station in Johannesburg, modern plant, searching.

There was no baggage there in the enclosure, and there was no baggage
over with the crew’s baggage, so they sent someone on board to search
the plane and there was no baggage aboard the plane. And so the person
in charge of the airline said that they would immediately check up above
in the Belgium Congo and get an answer for me.

Well, I went to my hotel and our students there had arranged for me to
go up to the National Park, the wild animal park for three days, and so
they took me out and bought me some necessary clothing, and we started
out on our three day journey, expecting my baggage to be back when we
got back.

But when we came back it wasn’t there and the answer from the airline
was that somebody must have stolen it, and it must have been that boy
and a confederate, because it was true that he picked up the bags and
carded them out that door, but they were never seen again. The
ridiculousness of that is this—a colored native boy couldn’t any more get
by South African police than a Hebrew could get past Hitler. They are
really watched out there.

And certainly no body could lift those two heavy pieces of baggage out
of the airfield without being noticed. But nevertheless they had all of
the native quarters in this town up In the Belgium Congo searched, and
heaven knows what they must have done to that youngster. They turned
the place upside down convinced of a theft, but no baggage showed up.

Well, I was in South Africa for three weeks, without baggage and
without money—without purse and without script Well, I survived, ate
regularly, hotel bill paid, and more clothing bought, but only the absolute
necessities because I was convinced that it would show up, which was a
very wrong conviction.

But, two nights before I was to leave for Australia—no for India, I
thought this represents a failure on my part. What is that failure?

It is an impossibility to be living the life the way we’re living it and have
experiences of that kind, there’s no reason for them. There’s no
punishment for anything. What is it? What has gone wrong here?

And I sat in my room thinking, thinking, thinking, meditating, and finally,

this is what came. I’m waiting for baggage. There isn’t any baggage. This
is a spiritual universe.

Why, all of that is part of the belief of time and space. Space that
occupies baggage, time in which it could be lost, space in which it could
be lost, and all we’re doing out here is trying to find baggage, which, if
it was found, would only be improving the dream, would only be
manipulating the human scene.

It isn’t truth. There’s no truth to this whole picture, because we’re living
in a spiritual universe where nobody has any need of any baggage.

Whatever there is of reality is incorporeal and spiritual and

omnipresent, and whatever there is that appears as finite baggage, or
time and space, must be an image in thought, and can have no reality to
it, and so I have been fooled into waiting for baggage to turn up. With
that I retired.
This is the way the story goes after that the assistant manager of the
airline, at that station, was sitting at his desk at eight o’clock the next
morning, and out of the clear blue the thought came to him: “Now you
know baggage can’t dissolve into thin air? It just couldn’t disappear
between there and here. It has to be somewhere. Just where is it?”

And, all of a sudden, another idea struck him, and he went over to the
hotel where the crew stops, and there were the two pieces of baggage
sitting on the floor waiting for three weeks. Nobody thought of that.
Nobody thought of anything until we stopped thinking of baggage, and
so forth.

And so that night I was lecturing up at the capitol of South Africa, of

the Union of South Africa, and lo and behold one of our students came
and said they’d just received a telephone message that my baggage was
waiting for me at the air station.

Now, the reason for this story, you can see. Ordinarily in metaphysics,
we would think: “Oh, well, it has to turn up, or it can’t get lost” In other
words we would be dealing with an “it”—an “it” called baggage.

Now, you see the wrongness of that, because to be consistent, if you

were ill, you would have to have a treatment that dealt with heart, liver,
or lungs, stomach, digestion, elimination, head, foot, and see how
completely we would be outside the realm of spiritual being. Now, we do
know enough not to treat names of people. We do know enough not to
treat hearts and livers and lungs, but just see how we can get fooled into
looking for baggage.
And so it is that this story has already helped a great deal to serve as a
reminder that very often a lack of demonstration is our own fault We
get very sure of ourselves, and believe that we’re going along on the right
track, and then all of a sudden find that the hypnotism of human sense
can make us think about baggage or the lack of baggage.

Now, I don’t mean that I was concerned. My mistake was that I was sure
it would turn up. That would be like being sure that a person’s sick heart
was going to get well, or their sick foot was going to get better.

When the actual principle upon which all our work is based is that the
real creation is the first chapter of Genesis in which God made all that
was made, and all that He made is good. Now baggage couldn’t come under
that heading, could it? And neither could hearts and livers and lungs,
because not only are they never good, but they’re often very bad.

The spiritual creation is an incorporeal creation and the proof of that is

that crops are in the ground before the seeds are planted. There’s light
before there’s a sun in the sky, so forth.

You remember our lesson of last week; those of you who were here, on
Isaiah 58, when we also discovered that Isaiah knew that secret that
this is an incorporeal universe in which you can have light without having
sun. And, of course, we can have everything we need without having
baggage.
Let us occasionally, as we face problems, for ourselves or others, let us
remember that it is not the statements of truth that we know, and have
in the back of our mind, but that the secret of our work is in realization.
It’s all in one word, “realization.”

But the realization has to be that the first chapter of Genesis is where
we live, and move, and have our being, and that the sense world—that
which we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is the second chapter of
Genesis, or an unreal creation, a mental image in mind.

Then, if we quickly remember that, we will not try to manipulate this

scene or handle the dream, handle the mental image that exists only as
a shadow within our thought.

Now, I know this—that when you’re traveling that baggage seems real,
and I also know that most of the time our bodies seem real, because one
thing or another brings them into our awareness. And, because of that
there is the temptation to think of it as real.

The body is real, just as real as the light in the first chapter of Genesis,
or the crops that are in the ground before the seed is planted, but what
we see as body, feel, touch, smell, that isn’t body. That is a mental
concept within our own thought.

Actually, it’s a universal creation, but it’s individualized within us.

To be able to heal, and really in order to be able to be healed, it should

be clear to each one of us that we are never dealing with bodies, or
persons, any more than we’re dealing with lost baggage.
What we’re dealing with is the acceptance of this second chapter
universe as if it were real.

In other words we’re dealing with mental images in thought, which we

look upon as real.

Spiritual baggage is just as omnipresent as a spiritual body, and you can

no more be separated from your body than you can be separated from
your integrity.

Your integrity is a constituted part of your being, and it would make no

difference if you mounted up to heaven, your integrity would be with
you.

On the other hand, if you went down to hell, your integrity would be with
you, and if you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, your
integrity would be with you, and the body is just as spiritual as your
integrity.

Now, there are no such things as material bodies, there are material
concepts of bodies. There is no such thing as a material universe. There
are material concepts of universe.

Now, as long as we have that material concept of universe we are under

the laws of matter.

As soon as we begin to understand, I live and move and have my being in

the first chapter of Genesis where man is made in the image and likeness
of God, of Spirit.
And the soul of God is the soul of man; the life of God is the life of man.
The mind of God is the mind of man. The body of God is the body of man,
because know ye not your body is the temple of the living God.

Not as you see it in the mirror, but as it actually is.

Now, to remember that in times of problems, is to arrive at something

that would bring the solution. Just as my realization that we were no
longer dealing with material baggage, but omnipresence, immediately
awakened the one man who was necessary to the demonstration,
awakened him to the Idea of omnipresence and right where he was—was
where he found the baggage.

Now, this can take us right into our meditation for healing work. Let’s
close the eyes for a moment:

I and my Father are one. I live and move and have my being in God. I
must be of the nature of God. There cannot be a material creation inside
of a spiritual being, and I am in my Father, and my Father is in me.

Can I be finite, limited? How can I be finite or limited if an infinite

Father is within me? The Father within me he doeth the works. How can
a finite, limited being have an infinite God, infinite Father within
himself?

Therefore, I must be as spiritual as the Father that created me. All

being must be spiritual. All he, she, it, all must be spiritual. The Father
and me—I and the Father. You in me and I in you and the Father in both
of us—a wholly, completely spiritual creation.

Into this creation nothing finite can enter that defileth or maketh a lie.
The only suffering that can be in this world is due to our looking around
for a piece of material baggage—even expecting it to be in its right
place. That is an error.

There is no place for you or for me or for any he, she, or it, except in
the only place in which it’s to be found, and that is Omnipresence. Where
the Spirit of the Lord is I Am. Where God is, I Am. Where I Am, God is
for we are one. The Father in me and I in the Father.

Omnipresence, the presence even of that which to human sense seems

absent like seeing the cloudy sky and believing the sun is absent—and it’s
merely hidden, but it’s there. omnipresent. So with us.

The clouds of human belief, the density of human thought can hide from
us that which is omnipresent—that which is present where I Am.
What is it that is present where I am?

All that the Father hath is mine—right where I am: integrity, loyalty,
fidelity, eternality, immortality, justice, freedom, joy, harmony of any
name or nature.

All of this comes under the heading of omnipresence unless I finitize it

and see it as a piece of baggage, something that occupies time and space.
Just think, nothing occupies time and space but our mental images, and
the only reason they do is because we accept yesterday, today, and
tomorrow. You know the minute you rise above the mental realm of life
you will perceive that there is no such thing as time.

Anyone who has ever made God contact, while they were in that
experience had no awareness of time, and the very strange thing is this—
that sometimes that contact only lasts half a minute, but enough takes
place in it so when you come out and look at your watch you’re convinced
that several hours have gone by.

And there are other times when that contact is made when it would
appear as though something like a minute must have gone by, and when
you look at your watch, you’ll find that two or three hours have gone by.

In other words, there is no such thing as an awareness of either time or

space in that consciousness. Now, we are in the mental consciousness,
when we are thinking, when we are reasoning, when we are beholding
anything as being thing or person.

We are only in the spiritual realm when we transcend mind. Always people
have sought for a way to transcend mind—it’s usually called stilling the
mind and they find that it is an utter impossibility.

The only ones that have achieved any measure of success in stilling the
mind are certain yogis who have accomplished it by exercises but the
only thing they’ve discovered is that when they stilled the mind, they
were a blank. They had not achieved spiritual consciousness. They had
just achieved unconsciousness.
Now, there is a way in which you can rise above the mental level of life,
and I don’t mean remain there permanently, because that requires years
and years of devotion to this and nothing else.

But you can accomplish rising above mind to such a degree, that at least
when you are in the world, it will no longer disturb you to any great
degree.

And the way you can accomplish it is this. First, follow me carefully now.
Do not attempt to stop your thinking processes. If your mind wants to
think—you let it, and if necessary sit right there and watch it as it works.

It makes no difference what thoughts come in; let them. Remember,

they can do you no harm; they are only shadows that are flitting across
your screen. Those thoughts have no power. Do not fear them. If you
fear them or hate them, you will try to stop them. If you love them you
will try to hold on to them.

So I ask you, please, do not hate or fear any thought that comes to your
mind. And certainly, regardless of how good it may seem, do not love it
and do not try to hold on to it. Let these thoughts come. Let them go.
You just sit there and watch. Be a beholder.

Shadows—that’s all you’re looking at. Shadows that fly free across the
screen—flitter across the screen. No power in them—no substance.
There’s no law in them, no cause, no power—just shadows.
If you like you can call it the “arm of flesh”—nothingness. Learn to be
willing to face these thoughts. Now some of them might be mighty sweet
and you might want to hold on to them. Don’t do it Sit back there and let
them come and go. Some may disturb you. They might be frightening. Let
it. Let it.

Remember its just thoughts—just thought, nothing else. There isn’t a

revolver in a carload of them. There isn’t an ounce of poison in them, and
there are no bombs in them—so don’t fear them. They may testify to
disease.

They may testily to sin. They may testily to accident. They can get very
frightening. Sit there and watch them come and go.

And as you do, now take the next step with me. Realize to yourself, just
think, there is neither good nor evil in what I’m beholding. They are just
pictures without power.

They can’t do anything. They can’t testify to anything. Neither good nor
evil—and even if they seem to be good they are not good, because they
are only pictures.

You know, from this little experiment that we are doing here in this
meditation, you can see why we have suffered. These pictures or
thoughts have flooded into us, and we have become frightened of them,
and begun to run away from them, or hide our head under the pillow, or
try to block them out. And, here they are inoffensive nothingness—just
shadows.

Sometimes they represent theories—manmade theories. Somebody says

if you eat meat on Fridays you’re going to get awfully sick, you’re going
to be punished, and after that the very taste of meat of Fridays is
enough to send you into a spasm.

Somebody else says that this is a holiday, a day of atonement; you can’t
eat anything.

And oh how you long for just a little bite, and there’s your first guilt
complex, and then if you should yield and eat a slice of bread and butter,
there comes the conviction you’re under God’s punishment and
condemnation.

And who made up these rules? They’re manmade rules. They never had
authority.

They never had anything to do with man. Almost everything we fear is a

manmade rule, manmade theory, and a manmade punishment is attached
to it.

So, let’s look at them, for this one testifies to infection and contagion;
and this one testifies to false appetite; and this next one is a prophesy
of disaster; and this one is a fear of lack; and all they are images in
thought.

Ah yes, but here comes one. Somebody says it’s cancer. That makes it
terrible. Yes, it’s a terrible name, because it has awful connotations, but
it’s only a name. It’s only a name. A name that Adam gave to something
that he didn’t understand.

It’s an image in thought. Let’s stop being afraid of these names.

 Let’s stop being afraid of these diagnoses. Even if it’s a picture on an x-
ray machine, don’t be afraid of it—it’s still a picture, and it’s a picture
of mind’s image, and when you haven’t got it in mind anymore, you can’t
get a picture of it. You only get a picture of what’s being held in mind.

Let it come. Let it go. If you can see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or
smell it, it’s an activity of mind—a mental image, the arm of flesh,
nothingness.

Remember, that all the time that we are saying this, and thinking this,
we’re still in the mental realm. We’re still in the realm of “knowing the
truth.”

But, as we continue this, and this is perhaps the same process that you
may go through in giving a treatment, as you keep on this way, looking
right at the picture, realizing it is a picture, no substance, no cause.

If you can see it, hear it, or taste it, touch it, or smell it, it’s a mental
image of mind—a nothingness, a second chapter of creation that which
God never made. We’re not to fear what we can see, hear, taste, touch,
or smell.

Remember that regardless of how material the condition appears to be,

it isn’t any more material than my lost baggage. You see, it wasn’t
material, it was a mental image, and the realization of that revealed
Omnipresence.

Sometimes in these experiences, such as we are having now, some people

get a very beautiful response, in the sense that they’re apt to see
pictures or visions, and then the make the mistake, first of all, of trying
to hold on to them, and then they make a second mistake of wanting to
bring them back at some future time.

Never do that. Never hold on—even to a beautiful image. Let it go. It’s
only an image and if it’s of God, God can give you as many more as you
need. And if it’s a bad picture, learn not to be afraid of it. It has no
existence as externalized reality, a mental image, the arm of flesh,
nothingness.

And then you come to the place where we are, where there seems like
there’s nothing more to be said, and so we sit, and we give one last word
to it. Regardless of what you seem to be you are neither good nor evil.

No matter what you claim to be you are neither good nor evil. There are
no properties in you.

All properties are in the consciousness that made this universe in its own
image and likeness. Neither good nor evil in either form nor effect And
then wait.

(Pause)

When you achieve complete quietness, peace—mind isn’t functioning, and

that is when you have gone through the realm of mind and are in the
atmosphere of spirit, of the soul, and this is where you are receptive and
responsive to whatever God imparts.

As soon as you are unattached, as soon as you are detached from

thought, from the hate, fear, or love of objects so that they can float
before your eyes with utmost indifference to you that is when you are
no longer in the realm of mind.

You are now reaching, touching, or being touched by your own soul, which
is God. God is the very soul of you. Speak Lord, thy servant heareth. And
when He utters His voice the earth melts—all problems dissolve, and
you’re now in an atmosphere where when God speaks, you can hear it.

Now remember, someone has called you and presented a claim to you.
They’ve just become ill, and so here you are in meditation, and your first
thought is, “Whatever its name or its nature, if it exists in time or space,
it is a mental image—a nothingness.”

I do not have to fear it or the person whose claiming it. It has no

existence in their being, and as a mind existence, it is without form and
void. I shall not fear what mortal conditions or mortal beliefs can do to
me or anyone else.

Yes, I’m looking right at you who phoned me, I’m looking right at the
condition you mentioned, and I see it as a mental image, a shadow, a
nothingness. You have no more good or evil in you than the picture on the
moving picture screen—substanceless shadow. (Pause) Relax. Relax.

I told some of our classes, years ago, about this story of a call that I
received of a young married woman having her first child, and they had
taken her to the delivery room at the hospital and there found that it
was a breach case—that the child was turned wrong end-to, and they
tried all they knew to turn that child around and get delivery, and they
couldn’t.

Eventually, the nurse, one of the nurses, said that the pulse was dropping
rapidly, and at that stage the doctor asked one of the nurses in the room
to step out and phone to me for help.

And when that call came, very fortunately, I was in a high enough state
of consciousness so that I did not deal with a mother or a baby. I was
right there were I could realize that God is the only parent and it is not
corporeal, physical, material, and God’s creation can’t be or have anything
wrong about it, and by the time that nurse got back to the delivery room
the baby had turned itself around, without help from any human hand,
and delivered itself.

The next day as witness to it, I had calls from the doctor, and the head
of the hospital, the head nurse in the hospital, and one of the nurses in
the delivery room.

Now, there is nothing strange about the experience except that it

testifies to what we have just been having in the way of treatment. That
if we were dealing, as I was dealing in South Africa, with baggage that
was going to return to me, it just wouldn’t.

And so, in this case, if I’d been dealing with a human mother and a human
babe, and human doctors, there would have been trouble, but fortunately
in that case, I was alert enough to the realization that we are not dealing
with men or women in this life, we are dealing with God revealing Itself
as individual being. God declaring Itself.

And anything then that we can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell becomes
merely a mental image in thought, and with that recognition we can drop
it, and then behold the reality.

I’ve also told these experiences of cases in those years, when on several
different occasions I had women come who had been told that they could
not have families for medical reasons or physical reasons why they
couldn’t, and in just a few years there I had three mothers, and one is
still one of our students, with three children, after having definitely
been told that there was no possibility of family.

Now, all of this is in the same category. If we looked on men or women

as creators, or if we looked on children as human beings occupying time
and space, such healings, such experiences could not come about.

There is only one way in which these things can come about and that is
through the realization of our true Identity. We live and move and have
our being in God.

Now in God there is no such thing as birth or death. In God there is

infinity, eternality, immortality, and any picture that we see, hear, taste,
touch, or smell is the arm of flesh, nothingness, a mind creation, and so
to be handled.
There are a couple of questions here, which I don’t think I can answer,
because they also go back to theological things. One is this Luke—this is
my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

This cup is the New Testament and my blood which is shed for you. I
don’t know the meaning of those things because they have theological
meanings of which I know nothing.

And this … now wait a minute, take heed that ye be not deceived for
many shall come in my name saying, I am Christ, going ye therefore not
after him.

Well, that seems more simple, that the Master was merely warning about
false teachings. Well, it is well to warn about false teachings, but it
wouldn’t be necessary to warn about them if we were just as eager to
read about other passages of Jesus, as we are that one. He says very
definitely by their fruits ye shall know them, and so why worry about
false teachings.

The very moment a teaching is presented to you investigate it and see

what its fruitage is. Now, he also told you what fruitage to look for. The
sick are healed, the dead are raised, the blind have their eyes opened,
the deaf have their ears unstopped, to the poor the gospel is preached.

All right, you’ve witnessed the whole ministry of Jesus Christ You know
what he did through the Christ: he healed the sick; he gave comfort; he
fed the hungry; he preached forgiveness; he preached praying for the
enemies.

All of these things are what we call truth teachings, because they are
Christ teachings; they are revealed to us by the Master Christian.
So, when a teaching is presented to you, you should need no help from
anybody to determine whether it’s a truth teaching or not. Does it heal?
Does it reform sinners? Does it improve one’s lot in life? Does it bring
harmony? Does it bring peace within? Does it change one’s whole outlook
on life to a more spiritual aspect? Does it turn one more and more away
from materiality? That’s all. That’s all embodied in the Master’s
teaching.

And if it does those things, it comes somewhere in the neighborhood of

being a Christly teaching or spiritual teaching or correct teaching.

If, however, it increases one’s materiality, and makes one seek for
physical demonstration, material demonstration, if it doesn’t lead to a
higher, more elevated consciousness, if it doesn’t lead to a greater inner
purity, a greater abstention for the things of the world—then that’s the
answer. By their fruits ye shall know them.

Yes, that leaves us with one note that I made myself. Students believe
our work will banish their discords and replace them with physical or
material harmony—and that is not the truth.

The truth is that this teaching will banish almost as many physical and
mental harmonies as it will discords, because the object of this teaching
isn’t to change evil into human good, but to reveal the true Identity, or
Omnipresence, or Son of God—Christ.
Now, throughout the Master’s teaching you’ll find that principle there
that, My Kingdom is not of “this world. Seek ye not what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed.

The Christ message is: Seek ye the Kingdom of God. Oh, it’s natural then
that when you find the kingdom of God that it will translate itself on
this level as what we call harmonious living conditions, but that will only
be incidental.

That will be “added thing.” What we will have gained is not merely the
improved material things. We will have gained the consciousness and out
of that will come the added things.

I have explained that this way. If it were possible for anyone to come
into this room and give you instantaneously perfect health tonight, what
do you think would happen tomorrow? You’d start right out developing
some ill, because whatever state of consciousness that originally brought
the ill is going to bring it back again.

Isn’t that what he said to the woman? I forgive you, There’s no

condemnation for you, but sin no more lest a worst thing come upon you.
So it is.

If we were freed of all of our physical ailments, and were left in the
same state of consciousness we are at this moment, either the same
ailments, or even worse, could return to us.
But, if our state of consciousness were changed, then not only the ills
that were now a part of us would begin to disappear, but far less would
ever return to us.

I’ve explained it also with money. If each one of us, at any given moment,
could receive the sum of money that to him or her would represent
abundance, what particular good would it be since almost instantly you
would start depreciating it, spending it, and then where do you end up—
without it?

What are you going to do now? Start all over making the demonstration
brand new; whereas let’s forget the object, money. If we can attain the
realization that our only need is God, the realization of the kingdom of
God, by the time we attain it, we will find that the kingdom of God
appears tangibly as our daily supply, and then it makes no difference how
you spend it, give it away, throw it away. Each day it will renew itself.

Why? Because God is infinite. You’ll never come to the end of God, so
you’ll never come to the end of supply, but when you have money as
something separate from God, then you have lost baggage, and you can
find it one minute, lose it the next minute.

Have a lot of it one minute and none of it the next minute. But when you
have it as Omnipresence, when you have it as the realization, the only
baggage I can ever own is God, it’s the only baggage I ever want. I want
to be clothed in God, fed in God, by God, with God.

I want to realize that God is bread, and wine, and water. God is the
substance of life, therefore all that I need is God, and then, when I
attain even a measure of that, then you can be assured that God can be
appearing day by day in whatever form of human experience is necessary.

So it is for this reason that we say, Thy grace is my sufficiency in all

things.

Well, we must mean it. We mustn’t say that Thy grace is sufficient to
give me money, or my grace is sufficient to give me health. No, no, no.

Thy grace itself is the sufficiency.

Then you’ll find that when you have the grace, you have all things that
come into our human awareness.

And now we will have a nice little rest