What is it that has substance? What is it that endures forever? Laws of like begetting like. Deeds of love. The life that's renewed year by year. A tree becomes barren in winter, renewed in spring, fulfilled in summer. The life hasn't died just because some of its forms have changed expression. The life is there to renew itself forever and forever. The only things that are immortal and eternal are the invisible things of Spirit although each one of these is made tangible or evident in our experience in some form. But the form is never immortal as form. But the substance of it is always immortal. You see what confuses is really this -- I think this is what has more metaphysicians fooled than anything else --

[Joel reads question from student] Have you any special reason for never saying in class that all there is to matter is an illusion of the senses?

Well, yes, I do have a very special reason. This isn't a fact. Matter is an indestructible substance. Matter is as indestructable as God and that's what has confused metaphysicians. They have been taught that matter is unreal. Matter can't be unreal because you can't destroy it. You can make it change forms but you cannot destroy matter. If you reduce it to molecules you'll still get it down below that into atoms and when you get it into atoms you'll break it up and then what'll you have? Energy. You haven't destroyed matter you've made it change form. There is no way to destroy matter for matter is indestructible. And the substance of matter is mind. Matter is mind appearing. Mind made visible is matter. And to believe otherwise is to believe that which never could be true.

How did this belief come about that matter was an illusion? Only due to the fact, the same fact that wrecked India when it was discovered that the objects of sense are illusion the Indians began to hate their bodies...they refused to save money...they refused to build businesses. What's the use? It's unreal and when we die it'll all disappear. Well you see none of it died and none of it disappeared. They did but not it. The land still is there, the water power still is there, the electricity still is there, the sunshine is there. Every single thing is there that they thought death was going to dissolve.

Gautama the Buddha had the original revelation that is recorded as to the illusory nature of that which we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. And on the basis of that he did miracle healing works and so did his early disciples. Later on his students or their students misunderstood this word maya or illusion and they thought that the illusion was out here and that this is illusion. No. The concept that we entertain of this is illusion. This isn't. This is so immortal that you can never destroy it. The water can change to steam or it can change to ice but it can't be destroyed and it weighs just as much in any form. This glass, this tumbler can be reduced to splinters. It can be dissolved from our human sight but it cannot be destroyed. You can take it right back into the laboratory and prove that it has existence and that the existence has weight.

So it is that when metaphysics was first given to the world in the last century the revelation was given that our senses testify erroneously. And instead of staying with that we said, "Oh, no, it isn't our senses it's this that's the illusion." How can an illusion be externalized? How can you get a ghost in your mind to walk this room? How can you get 2 x 2 = 5 to be externalized? How can you get sin, death, and disease to externalize themselves when they exist only in a disordered thought? And all healing is based on that -- that sin, disease, and death have no externalized reality. They exist only as externalized illusory beliefs -- concepts.

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