"A Parenthesis in Eternity" by Joel S. Goldsmith

"A Parenthesis in Eternity" pdf file

Chapter 12 - The Discovery of the Self

And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward:
For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever.
--Genesis 13: 14-15

Was God speaking only to Abraham? Does God speak only to a certain person, in a certain place, at a certain time? Or when the voice of God speaks, does it not speak to His son, wherever that Son is? Are not you and I that Son? Is not the Father saying to us, "Look out there. As far as you can see, I give this land to you, because all that I have is thine"?

Our astronauts have seen half the world at one time. They have encompassed this whole world, and for a few fleeting moments it was theirs. They had conquered it, and yet not by themselves, but by the I of all the scientists that made possible this feat—by the I that is you and the I that is I. We possess all this world—all the way to the moon. True, nobody has a guaranteed title to it: it is ours in joint-owernership, as joint-heirs in God:

I have access to all the heavenly riches; I have access to all of the creative Principle of this world. I can look into infinity, claim it all, and enjoy as much of it as I need for my daily use.

In the materialistic way of life, it is a natural thing, humanly, for us to be proud of being American, Canadian, English, German, or whatever our nationality may be. But what happens to that swashbuckling materialism when we discover our Self, when we discover that we all are brothers and sisters, regardless of the flag that flies over us, the color of our skin, or the church to which we belong, and realize:

Never am I limited to a country, to a nation, or to a state. I am limited only to the kingdom of God, and there I am of the household of God, heir of God, and joint-heir with every spiritual being in this great wide world of ours, of one great family, one great spiritual brotherhood.

To rise above the limitations of personal sense does not make us any less good citizens; in fact, it makes us better citizens, but better citizens because we respect the citizenship of other persons. Real citizenship is to live in fellowship, but this cannot be experienced until the nature of our true identity is understood, and then, whether we are Jew or Greek, bond or free, we are all of one spiritual household.

Nothing can establish permanent peace in the heart of an individual except the entrance into that heart of the Christ, the Spirit of God. As peace is established in the heart of the individual, ultimately it will be established in the world, a peace that comes, not by the knowledge of man, nor by the wisdom or power of man, but by the Spirit of God functioning as the consciousness of man.

This Spirit which God has planted in the midst of each one of us seems to be absent because of our ignorance of Its presence, but when we become aware of this invisible, transcendental Presence as our Self, in that moment does It begin to function in our experience. We then become something more than creatures sentenced to earn our living by the sweat of our brow or to bring forth children in pain and suffering. No more are we separate and apart from God.

How could the son of God have any power other than to be the son of God? Is it possible for God to lose His son, or so to lose His power that He would allow one of His sons to wander from His household? God has never lost His dominion over the spiritual kingdom, and spiritual man has never left his Father's house. Just as there is no fallen man in the sense of God's man falling into a state of mortality, so it would be equally impossible for mortality ever to rise into immortality and become a child of God.

To know our true identity destroys the mortal sense of existence which has kept us earthbound. Earthbound! Some of us can remember how our cities and towns looked before there were automobiles on the streets and airplanes buzzing overhead. How earthbound we were! How limited we were to the little plot of ground where we lived! Even our work had to be close by because of the limitations of early forms of transportation.

The first release from that limitation came with the automobile which made it possible to travel as far as twenty, thirty, or forty miles in a single day. With that, our vision increased, and our knowledge grew because we could take in greater territory, meet more people, and come into contact with broader areas of life. How different life is now when we travel easily and comfortably four, five, or six hundred miles a day in an automobile! Almost simultaneously with the increased mobility made possible by the automobile came the day of the airplane which took us completely above the earth, and made our travels and our experience almost limitless. We were no longer earthbound. We had entered a new dimension of life.

But those who have experienced the limitlessness and boundlessness of the Spirit have gone far beyond the new dimension of the automobile and the airplane into still another dimension of life — unbelievably higher and wider.

Just as men were limited in the early days by the existing means of transportation, so are we earthbound by the belief in a limited being, a limited life, and a limited mind. The process of dropping this belief is exactly the same as the process of dropping our sense of limitation in regard to travel at sea, by automobile, or by airplane. It requires rising to a higher altitude of understanding, recognizing the laws of Spirit, and letting the sense of mortality drop away.

The kingdom of God is, and always has been, perfect. What is called mortal existence not only is no part of God's kingdom, but cannot even evolve into God's kingdom. Mortal sense and mortal creation have no part in God, never have had, and cannot be returned to God. Mystical wisdom does not teach that a mortal is to become immortal, but that he must "die daily" and be reborn of the Spirit, that is, he must awaken to the awareness of his true identity, and just as he would drop any illusion, so he must drop once and for all time the belief that he is fallen man.

When we are unclothed of mortality and clothed with immortality, there is no fallen man: there is only the original, perfect man, the spiritual identity which is now, and always has been, intact, just as a child taken from a family of wealth and culture and brought up in poverty, possibly in sin, disease, and ignorance, is still the child with the same identity and potentiality with which he was originally born. He has merely been clothed upon with an illusory identity, but his name, identity, wealth, and all the other things that belonged to him at birth could be restored in any moment. This child did not fall: he is the same child he was at birth. All the experiences that he has gone through have merely been imposed upon him, but his original heritage and identity are what they were in the beginning.

Ultimately, we shall all discover that our true identity is Christ, and although we may have been brought up as Jones, Brown, or Smith, our real name — our identity and our potentiality — is Christ, the spiritual offspring of God. In the moment that this truth is revealed to us, all that has been imposed upon us by human belief will drop away, and as soon as we begin to perceive our true nature and identity, it will not take long to become accustomed to the atmosphere of Spirit which is our original abiding place.

Bit by bit, as we pursue the spiritual path, as we realize that our real heritage and identity are in God and that we are of the household of God, living in fellowship with the children of God, we begin to lose pride in our family name and heritage, and, inwardly, we may take on a new name, indicating that we have come to a place where we identify ourselves with our Source. Now when we say I, we understand that we are not speaking about five-foot-five or six-footone of flesh, about a white skin or a black one, or about Occidental or Oriental features. Now we are identifying ourselves with our Source, which is God, the creative Principle of our being.

While we were living the materialistic life, we depended on relatives, friends, parents, husband, wife, children, employer, business, investments, and, in the end, on social security. How sad that the God-created, God-maintained, and God-sustained man should have to look forward to living on some pittance handed out to him near the end of his days—especially in the light of the truth that he is an heir of God. An heir of God, and thinking in terms of pittances! We have to make a transition from the materialistic concept that believes that we must earn our living by the sweat of our brow, or be dependent on someone else who is doing it for us. We have to come out and become separate from the atheistic belief that we do not have contact with Infinity, with our Source.

Let us in this moment do away with the belief of being that fallen man who in some way or other has to struggle back to the kingdom of God, and let us realize here and now:

I and the Father are one. The Father is Spirit, and I am the offspring of that Spirit, therefore I am spiritual. I am of the household of God, under the dominion of God, "joint-heir to all the heavenly riches" by virtue of the Spirit of God that dwells in me.

God has never removed His Spirit from me, and certainly no man has the power to undo the work of God. The Spirit of God that dwelt in me in the beginning must be the Spirit of God that dwells in me now, awaiting first, recognition, then, acknowledgment, and finally, realization.

Something must sing within us that this is true, or else we are in the untenable position of having to acknowledge that God is not omnipotent, that God permitted His son to fall, that God made possible the failure of man to live, move, and have his being in God, or that God instigated the Fall. How can we ascribe sueh things to God? How can we believe that there is a God capable of losing a Son — even one Son out of all the billions of Sons that have been manifested as form? How eould we trust such a God or have faith in the infinite capacity of God, if we also believed that a son of God could be lost out of the kingdom or that one single child of God could go astray with or without the knowledge of God? If God all-knowing—and God is—then nobody wanders out of the kingdom of heaven without God's knowing it, not even a sparrow.

We have never left the kingdom of God: we have never left the jurisdiction and government of God; we have never come under any law but the law of God, and have never lived any life but the life of God. God-life is the life of all being, and there never has been any other.

Whether man accepted the belief of limitation in the form of being confined to the earth and not able to travel on water, or in the air, or of being able to travel only a few miles in a day, let us understand that all these limitations are not, and never were, actual limitations: they were but due to man's ignorance of the laws govening these activities. These laws have always been available to man, and at any time a knowledge and application of them would have enabled him to rise above his bondage to the earth. They became practical in his experience, however, only when he was able to open himself to receive the wisdom that is beyond the visible.

So we enter the Fourth Dimension of life in the same way, by realizing that we need not be earthbound. Being earthbound or limited to the three-dimensional world is only a sense of limitation that has been imposed upon us because of our ignorance of that transcendental consciousness which is our heritage. It was our birth-right, and it is ours now because the kingdom of God cannot be restricted or limited, nor remain forever hidden. We do not have to fight our way back to God; we do not have to find God: we have only to open our consciousness in the assurance that God could never lose us. How could God lose His Self? His Self is our Self, for there is but one Self.

Your Selfhood is the unconditioned Self. So is my Selfhood. It is wholly spiritual: It is, in fact, Spirit Itself, which has no race, nationality, or religion. This Selfhood of you and of me co-exists with God, has co-existed with God in the Is-ness which God is — without beginning and without ending — and this Selfhood has known individual expression throughout all time.

You are this Selfhood, and I am this Selfhood, living as one of God's incarnations; and that Selfhood remains eternal in the heavens, untouched and unaffected by the surroundings in which we find ourselves. With birth, however, there has sprung up around the one Self a sense of human identity, and from the moment of conception this begins to be identified with its surroundings.

Selfhood Itself, the Selfhood of you and of me, is unconditioned, and therefore, in the actual realization of our previous life-experience, it becomes possible to know the unconditioned freedom of the Self, to be wholly and completely free of national, racial, and religious theories and doctrines, and all inhibitions or conditionings.

To accept intellectually the truth that we are that unconditioned Self is one thing, but to experience It in a measure is another thing, and to experience It in Its completeness is quite another. A step leading to the realization of the absolute, unconditioned Self is to experience the Self as It lived in Its previous incarnations, or at least in some of these, so that it becomes possible to live free of one's immediate surroundings, or free of the surroundings of this present incarnation.

When I have been able to see myself as an American, as a Hebrew of two thousand years ago, as an Arabian, or as a Chinese, it is a simple matter to see the trappings that have attached themselves to me in each of these incarnations, and to see that the I never came down to the level of these trappings or conditionings, but remained, as It always is, the Self. Then, and then only, did 1 have the ultimate experience of realizing the unconditioned, absolute Self. In this, of coursc, 1 see it is possible to have been either male or female, white or black, Occidental or Oriental, and although the Self that I am has never been any of these, yet It has drawn unto Itself all of these as the need was established for the particular experience at specific times.

This realization of our Self enables us either to surrender this present incarnation, or to remain in it, and yet not be of it or conditioned by it, but to live always as the Self. In this realization, we become the universal Self, or the Self of all others, more especially of those with whom we come in close contact.

Separate and apart from our fellow man, there is no God to worship, no God to love, and no God to serve. We are loving God only as we love our fellow man; we are worshiping God only when we are serving our fellow man.

When Jesus taught, "He that seeth me seeth him that sent me," when he referred to your Father and my Father, was he claiming to be God's only child, or was he not rather speaking about a universal relationship? Is there any God separate and apart from man? Has not God manifested and revealed Himself on earth as man, and when we look upon one another, are we not seeing the Father that created you and me and sent us forth into expression? And since you and your Father are one, in serving you, I am serving my Father; in loving you, I am loving my Father.

There is no God up in the sky, or down below in the earth or the sea. "The kingdom of God is within you." If we are to find that Kingdom, therefore, we shall have to seek inside to find it, for that is where it is; and if we wish to show our love for God, we shall have to express love to one another because that is where we will find the God to love. If we want to serve God, we had better leam to serve one another, because only in that way can we serve the Father that sent you and me into expression.

Every bit of love that we express is a love that is expressed to us. When we are expressing love impersonally to the downtrodden and abandoned people of the world, we are really expressing love to ourselves because the Self of those others is the Self of us. This is the Way: there is but one Self. I am that Self; and I am that Self even if I am appearing as you. I am that Self, even when I am appearing as the beggar or the thief. Is it not easy, then, to forgive, knowing that I am forgiving myself, that I am forgiving my own ignorance, forgiving my ignorance even when it appears as someone else?

"Love is the fulfilling of the law." Therefore, love is the Way, and this means the love that I express, for I am the Way. I must express love, forgiveness, and patience; I must pray that the light of the world be revealed even in the darkest consciousness. I must do unto others as I would have others do unto me, because the I of me is the I of the other: we are one. The Self of me is the Self of you, because there is only one Self, and this is God's Self. This is oneness; this is divine sonship. The spiritual way of life is a recognition of oneness, sonship.

The Way brings the recognition that the I of me and the I of you are one and the same I. The I AM that I am is the I AM that you are, because this is the I AM that God is, and God is the I AM which is the I AM of you and the I AM of me. Therefore, the recognition of I AM-ness is the Way.

It is some measure of this realization that enables us to live as if I am you and you are the I that I am, and therefore we are one; and since all that the Father has belongs to me, all that I have also is yours. This is a state of consciousness which is a step beyond doing unto others as we would have others do unto us, because it recognizes that the Self of us in the Self of the other, and therefore, all that we are doing is always done unto the Self that we are.

There are no boundaries in the spiritual relationship, for there is only one I AM, and that I AM is universal, individually manifested and expressed as every individual, past, present, and future. I AM is the Way, and the more we dwell in the remembrance of our true identity, the closer we are living to the Way.

I AM-ness is oneness, divine sonship, and because of this sonship, we have a spiritual relationship of brotherhood based on the understanding of our oneness with our Source. The Way is oneness; the Way is love; the Way is the recognition of our true identity as the son of God; the Way is the recognition of the nature of God and the nature of the Son.

The goal of mysticism is the attainment of the realization of one's self as Self, so that life is a continuing experience of the Self, with a coming down to the personal sense of self only for the purpose of the immediate work to be done. The attainment of the mystical estate is, of course, the ascension out of the personal sense of life into the experience of life lived as the Universal and the Divine.

I AM is the Way. I AM is the life of me and the life of you. I AM is the immortality of me and the immortality of you. I AM is the divine Grace by which we live. And this is the basis of all mysticism.

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