"A Parenthesis in Eternity" by Joel S. Goldsmith

"A Parenthesis in Eternity" pdf file

Chapter 1 - The Two Worlds

There are two worlds. There is "this world," and there is "My kingdom." There is the world that we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell, the world that we live in, in our business and in our home with our family; and there is the world within, where we live when the Christ has been raised up in us, the world inside our consciousness where we are alone with God and where we tabernacle with the son of God in us. On one hand, there is the mortal man, and on the other, the spiritual son of God.

Paul, who was spiritually and inwardly taught by the Master, described mortal man as the "creature," the "natural man" who "receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned"; and explained that "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."

Until we learn about the man who has his being in Christ--the man we must become--we are that "natural man," that "creature," that mortal who must put off mortality, that man who must "die daily."

Progress on the spiritual path will be much more rapid once it is understood that this human or mortal man, this "creature," the "natural man," is entirely cut off from God, is never under the law or protection of God, and is never governed or sustained by God. If he were, could there be murder, rape, arson, or war? Could there be death if man were God-governed? Could there be disease? Could an airplane go hurtling out of the sky to kill all the people in it? If man were God-governed, would not disease have diminished? But has it not rather increased? For every disease that has been brought under control, have not two new ones, more deadly than the old, made their appearance? Yet every day millions upon millions of prayers go up to God; and then when a solution to the problems of the ills of the flesh comes, does it come from God or from a bottle of medicine, an antibiotic, or a new surgical discovery? Do not human beings die of the most horrible diseases and tragic accidents? Does God interfere?

Human beings suffer terrible injustices at the hands of others: they are governed by tyrants; wars are fought, and the righteous do not always win those wars. In every age there are those in slavery, there are those in bondage. We have only to look at history to know how many thousands of years this world has suffered from war, even though every generation has felt, as we do, that war is wrong, that it does not solve anything, and that no lasting good comes from it. Has not every generation prayed to God to end war, and in all these thousands of years, has there ever been ,an answer to such prayers? Are not nations whose history goes back thousands and thousands of years and whose people have been praying to God all those years still in slavery, ignorance, and poverty?

God never has been known to do anything for a human being as long as he is immersed in "the things of the flesh." A lack of understanding of this point causes many aspirants on the Way to miss the mark, because they are forever trying to get God to do something to, or for, a human being, but this He does not do. Regardless of how much humankind suffers or enjoys, regardless of whether men are sick or well, poor or rich, they are not under the law of God; they are not fed, sustained, or protected by God; and for that reason the tragic things that happen to the human race keep right on happening generation after generation. with only a few escaping the common fate.

This need not be, for both Christ Jesus and Paul, as well as others before them, taught that these experiences of the human race can be avoided, and they also taught how it is possible to "come out from among them, and be ... separate," and bear fruit richly. That was the whole purpose of the ministry of the Master-to reveal to the world how to come out from among the masses and avoid the strife the lack, the sins, and the diseases that beset mankind.'

Human beings think they can add spirituality to their humanhood and thereby attain God's grace. This cannot be: there has to be a "dying daily"; there has to be a putting off of "the old man": there has to be a putting off of mortality and a clothing with immortality; there has to be a transition from the man of earth to that man who has his being in Christ; there has to be repentance. God has no pleasure in "the death of him that dieth ... wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye." There must be a turning before we can live again.

Most of us think that we can turn to God and persuade Him to add somethmg good to us, without our losing, giving up, or changing anythmg. We expect to add immortality and divine Grace to our human self. But it is only as the old man in us "dies" that the new man can be "born"; it is only as we change our outlook that spiritual harmony can begin to function in us and as us.

It is not that God, Spirit, is going to do something for mortal, material man: it is that mortal, material man is to put off his materiality that his spiritual identity may be revealed. It is nonsense to believe that human beings are under the law of God when all the prayers that the human race has ever invented have never brought God into human experience: they hive never brought peace on earth eliminated disease, nor have they overcome the sin or the poverty of the world. Have the prayers of the Christians, the Jews, the Hindus, or he Buddhists been answered? Why not? What is wrong? Is God a respecter of persons? Is God a respecter of races or religions?

For thousands of years there have been human beings who have observed every kind of ritual without ever approaching the kingdom of God. Jesus made that clear when he cautioned his disciples that their righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees Who of all men were the most scrupulous in their rigid following of the Mosaic law. And yet Jesus said 'that the righteousness of those who seek the kingdom of God must be greater than theirs. They must enter into the silent sanctuary of their own being and pray where men cannot see them. They must not merely support the temple or the church: they must do benevolences without letting anyone know about them.

It is easy to be a human being full of trouble-that seems to be the easiest thing in th e world to be. But it is not easy to be the child of God, spiritually free of troubles. Anyone who tries to live the Sermon on the Mount or to give up this eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth business, anyone who seriously tries to "resist not evil," anyone who earnestly attempts to resist the temptation to return evil for evil, finds such a way difficult at first. This is because, as human beings, we are not children of God, nor are we under the law of God. If we would be children of God, there is a price to pay, and the price is to "resist not evil"; the price is to learn to pray for our enemies, to forgive seventy times seven; the price is to dwell in the realization that we of our own selves are nothing.

Gaining the kingdom of God has to be accomplished inside of our own being. Something must take place within us; there must be a conscious remembrance that the Christ abides in us. Through this conscious remembrance of our oneness with God, the grace of God becomes active, a Grace that brings things and experiences to us that humanly would be improbable, if not impossible. There is a lessening of dependence on our mind, our education, or our pocketbook, and a greater reliance on the Infinite Invisible. Consciousness is being opened to receive the invisible things of God, of which all things that are visible are made.

The whole of the spiritual life has to do with an activity of consciousness, an activity of your individual consciousness and of mine. To live as the son of God and not as a human being means to dwell consciously in the realization of an invisible Presence; it means to live consciously in the awareness th at God is the guiding and sustaining principle of our life. There must be a change of base; there must be a change of consciousness. It is not God who comes to the human experience: it is the human being who has to give up the human experience, exchanging it for his spiritual identity.

Whether a person is good or bad is not the determining factor in the descent of Grace upon him. There have been, and are; millions of good people who have never attained their spiritual estate because human goodness does not bring it about. What really counts is the degree of devotion there is to the search for God. How much hungering and thirsting after truth is there? How much longing is there for an understanding of God, for coming face to face with God?

It is not what our outer life is. We do not prepare for the acceptance of our spiritual identity merely by trying to change ourselves into good human beings. Being good humanly has no relationship whatsoever to "dying daily." "Dying daily" is a realization that we are dissatisfied with our present mode of life, dissatisfied even if we have economic sufficiency, good health, or a happy family. Still there is that dissatisfaction, that sense of something missing in us. There is an inner unrest, a lack of peace, an inner discontent.

Without this hunger and this inner drive, there is no "dying." But as soon as we make the decision that we are going to walk the way that leads to spiritual fulfillment, we have begun the necessary transformation of mind; we have begun our spiritual journey. First must come the clear-cut realization that we cannot go on being just human beings, and attempt to add God's grace to our humanhood. There must be a turning; there must be an inner transformation. This has nothing to do with our outer life. The change takes place within us. The whole experience is an inner experience; it is one of consciousness, but when it takes place, it affects our entire outer experience.

No one of himself has the power to receive God's grace. Grace comes through an evolutionary progressive unfoldment of consciousness. To illustrate th at, let us go back in memory to our own life experience, and as we recall our childhood, youth, young adulthood, and our thirties or forties, we may be able to pinpoint a time--possibly even a specific date--at which a change of consciousness took place within us which caused us to turn and look in another direction. It may have been a disease that compelled us to reach out and up to a new and higher dimension of life; it may have been a sin or a false appetite; it may have been lack, limitation, or unhappiness; or it may have been just a natural unfoldment that led us to the place where We were dissatisfied with life as it was being lived and wondered if there were not something better, something higher. It was then that our consciousness began to change, and even though we could not observe any noticeable progress, progress nevertheless was being made gradually from day to day and month to month.

Anyone far enough along on the spiritual path to be seriously pursuing a study of this nature was undoubtedly on the Path before he was born into this experience. Whatever his former state of existence may have been, had he not been on the Path in some previous lifeexperience, he would not now be ready for a mystical teaching, nor would he have been led to the reading of this book. Once a person touches a mystical teaching, he is drawing closer and closer to the ultim ate realization of the name and nature of God and of his true identity. Throughout all time, it has been true that when an individual realized the name and nature of God, that individual was free; and furthermore, in proportion as that individual could impart this realization or revelation, those who could accept and receive it were made free.

In every age, when there has been a great religious teacher, there have been those able to receive the imparted word of wisdom, to respond to it, and to demonstrate divine sonship, but in that very same age and very same country, there were also those who rejected the Word, who were unwilling to accept the principles. Living side by side were the saved and the unsaved, those who were able to rise above th e discords of the flesh, and those who could not receive the spiritual word in their bosom.

No one who believes he is man or woman has even begun to suspect spiritual truth. No one who believes that there is a power somewhere that can operate on him for good and a power that can operate for evil has come even close to touching the hem of the Robe, for there are no such powers. There is no power of good; there is no power of evil.

No one can be prepared to receive this knowledge in one lifetime, nor is anyone capable of assimilating thi s wisdom in one lifetime. It takes many lifetimes of living and of spiritual unfoldment to prepare an individual for the final revelation of his true identity. Only those who have been prepared have the capacity to receive such truth.

Do we have eyes and do not see? Do we have ears and do not hear? We cannot see spiritual identity with physical eyes or hear the still small voice and its impartations with physical ears. Every individual has a Soul-faculty which has no relationship to the physical senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, nor even to the intuitive sense which is the seventh sense. It is this spiritual faculty which becomes our power of discernment, the power to discern the nature of the two worlds in which we live.

With such discernment this outer world becomes only a symbol, a shell, almost a "suffer it to be so now." The real world is the world of Consciousness and Its forms, not the forms created by nature; not the forms created by the imagination of man or the forms we see with the eyes, but the forms that Consciousness assumes, the forms that we behold in the kingdom of God within us.

The lessons that we learn in the interior world become the basis of our conduct in the outer world. The spiritual grace we learn within becomes our life without. Without the impetus of this spiritual grace, the life as lived on the outer plane is an animal life. It has its periods of good and its periods of bad, its periods of health and its periods of disease. It never knows the peace that passes understanding; it never knows the life that God gave us, the life that is God. This life is discerned only through inner grace. Through this power of discernment we glimpse the Spirit of God and then behold It* in others; we witness that Spirit living in what we call human form, and just as the Spirit of God lived as the human form of Jesus, so It lives as individual you and me when we are animated by It.

Ah, yes, there are two worlds--the outer world of the senses and the inner world of the Spirit, and once we have been touched by this inner world of the Spirit, the "natural man" becomes less and less that the son of God may be more and more.

* - In the spiritual literature of the world the varying concepts of God are indi~ ted by the use of such words as "Father," "Mother," "Soul," "Spirit," "Principle," "Love," and "Life." Therefore, in this book the author has used the pronouns "He" and "It," or "Himself" and "Itself," interchangeably in referring to God.

Return to the "A Parenthesis in Eternity" homepage