"A Parenthesis in Eternity" by Joel S. Goldsmith

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Chapter 27 - Living Above the Pairs of Opposites

From the time of the second-chapter-of-Genesis creation, man has lived in a world of two powers, fluctuating between good and evil, and often experiencing more of evil than of good. As he gains the concept of one power, and one alone, and perceives that there is neither a good power nor an evil power, he is no longer fascinated by either the good or the evil of human experience, and he becomes less identified with sensations that arise from one or the other.

Man gradually learns to look upon evil without emotion, without attaching it to anyone, one might say almost without sympathy. He recognizes the nature of the appearance, and instead of accepting it as real, he accepts it as an appearance or as an illusory experience. This is not always easy to do, and it is far easier to see the illusory nature of an appearance of evil than it is to see the illusory nature of an appearance of good; but, easy or hard, the attitude must be attained and maintained that if the good is not of God, it will not be permanent, and therefore there is no use in rejoicing over it.

It is obvious that this attitude takes a great deal of pleasure out of the human aspects of life, just as it takes a great deal of misery out of it, but it does replace those human emotions with an inner conviction that behind this visible scene there is a spiritual reality, and at any moment it can come into full view.

When a call for help comes, our first and natural human reaction is the desire to change the evil appearance to a good one. If we are to succeed in spiritual living, however, we must very quickly bring to conscious awareness the truth that the object of a spiritual ministry is not to change disease into health, for health is only one of those temporary conditions that become disease tomorrow, next week, or next year, and not to decry the evil and try to bring about the good; but rather to tum away from the appearance and keep our gaze on the Middle Path, realizing that right where there is an appearance of either good or evil, there is spiritual reality.

An evil appearance of today can change into a good appearance tomorrow, and, as we so well know, every good appearance can soon be turned into an evil one: the peace on earth one day is only a momentary pause before another war; perfect health today is only a temporary condition which germs or the calendar can change. In the human picture we are on a merry-go-round that goes round and round and round; in the human picture we sway like a pendulum between sickness and health, between lack and abundance, between war and peace, going back and forth, but never getting anywhere.

But the pairs of opposites do not operate in My kingdom: My kingdom is a spiritual kingdom in which everything is intact; My kingdom is under the direction, protection, maintenance, and sustenance of its divine Principle, God. In My kingdom there is no darkness. That statement would seem to imply that darkness is evil, but by the time we reach the Third Degree, we have risen to the spiritual stature of the Psalmist who said that "the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."

Darkness and light are the same. In the eyes of God there is no difference between them. In the spiritual kingdom there is neither light nor darkness in any physical sense: there is only Spirit, a Light which has no similarity whatsoever to what we know as light.

Light in the spiritual sense is the illumined consciousness, not illumined by a light but illumined by wisdom. "Whereas I was blind, now I see" does not refer to blindness or to an absence of sight. It is the figurative way of stating that whereas before we were in ignorance now we have attained wisdom. Ignorance is frequently referred to as darkness, and wisdom as light, but there is no actual darkness or light about them.

It requires months, sometimes years, of spiritual experience before we can realize that in My kingdom light and darkness are the same, and that we are not trying to change darkness into light, or to get rid of darkness in order to get light. Darkness and light are one. Grasping that concept is a big leap for anyone, but for the person ignorant of spiritual wisdom and untrained in metaphysics and mysticism, it is an even greater leap—almost an impossible one — to grasp the idea that disease and health are one. They are really just opposite ends of the same stick. When we can state with conviction, "As far as I am concerned, darkness and light are one. I am not seeking to get rid of one to get the other: I am seeking only to realize spiritual wisdom, spiritual truth, and the divine Presence," then we shall begin to perceive the spiritual nature of this universe.

It is when we are trying to get rid of something, or to get something, that we have left the spiritual universe for the universe of human concepts. Neither disease nor health has any part in the spiritual life: all that exists in the spiritual life is God, Spirit infinitely and eternally manifested as individual incorporeal being.

Incorporeal being cannot be known through the senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell: it can be experienced only in our consciousness, but once that experience comes to us we shall really understand that darkness and light are one. And what is that one? Mortal illusion, maya, appearance. Whatever we are aware of through the senses — sickness and poverty today, or health and wealth tomorrow — is an illusion. We are not beholding reality until, through our spiritual awareness, we behold incorporeal spiritual being.

When we can look out upon this human world and ask, "What has it profited the world all its wars?" and receive the answer, "Nothing," we are beginning to reach the goal. Hand in hand with this question must come a second one, "What has it profited the world all the days in which there has been no war?" and this, too, must receive the answer, "Nothing." Spiritually, it is not war or peace we are seeking: it is the government of God, spiritual government, divine government. And where does this take place? In our consciousness. That is where it must be realized.

No matter how many solutions are offered today to the problems of the world, tomorrow they will break out in new and more serious forms. The end of all this shifting back and forth will come only when we perceive the nature of spiritual power, and realize that spiritual power has nothing to do with good conditions today or evil conditions tomorrow. Rather does it have to do with our understanding that we are not seeking to change the conditions of matter but to realize the omnipresence of Spirit, that we are not seeking to tum sickness into health or war into peace: we are seeking the government of God, the revelation and the realization of God as our consciousness.

This changes our whole mode of life. Under our old way of living, the best that we could hope for was to turn some evil condition into a good one or some negative condition into a positive one, and even though there was the ever-present fear that it would not be permanent, we were always striving for those temporary moments of health, of peace, or of harmony.

The revelation and understanding of one power helps us to arrive at the consciousness where we do not seek to change the negative to the positive. In the realization of one power, we not only stop seeking some material power with which to meet our need, but we stop seeking a spiritual power.

Since there is but one power, then, there is nothing on, against, or for which to use this power. What in essence does this really mean? What does it mean to reach a point in consciousness where we relinquish all thought of using God as a power? Have we not thus really released God from responsibility? And is not that exactly what we all must learn to do?

God is forever about His business. God is the creative, maintaining, and sustaining influence of the spiritual universe. God governs His universe by Grace, and this not tomorrow or next week. The divine Grace that has been in operation from everlasting to everlasting will continue from everlasting to everlasting without our bribing or trying to influence God, without our praying, pleading, or doing anything else to persuade God to do His own work. God is, and this includes the truth that God is forever about the business of being God.

Our function in prayer and meditation is to "know the truth," and the truth will make us free: know the truth that there is but one power; know the truth that "thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above"; know the truth that in the kingdom of God, light and darkness are the same. This constant, consistent, and dedicated knowing of the truth will develop a state of consciousness that does not shift back and forth between the evil and the good: it holds itself at least with some measure of stability to the spiritual path and to spiritual realization.

God is, but in order to realize that God is we have to rise above time and space because in Is or Is-ness there is no time and no space. God's is-ness is from everlasting to everlasting; therefore, nothing is ever outside the jurisdiction of the is-ness of God; nothing in the spiritual kingdom has ever gone wrong. Our whole state of consciousness has to change from a material base, from its functioning in two powers, to a resting in the is-ness of God.

In the entire kingdom of God there is nothing of a changeable nature, nothing of a discordant or inharmonious nature, nothing that needs healing or improving. In that state of consciousness we are no longer hypnotized by appearances, nor are we compelled to try instantly to change the evil to the good, or to try to hold on to whatever good appearance there may be. This does not in any way affect our outer life. As this spiritual realization comes to us and our life becomes more harmonious, we are no longer dealing with a good appearance that was once evil: we are now dealing with the spiritual reality that has come into view.

Sometimes students are not happy with the detachment that must come to them as they continue on the spiritual path. Often they feel as if they were losing something worthwhile in life. Their treasured art objects, their pets, and their lifelong friendships are not quite so important to them as heretofore. The world is becoming more objective to them — their body and even their life. In looking out at this world as a beholder, much of what constitutes a great part of human life, that is, emotion, is lost.

It is true that there is a reorientation of human values as students go forward in the spiritual life: they are not quite so hurt by the negative aspects of human life, but neither can they rejoice so much over the good things as they once did. Feelings and emotion do not enter into daily life to the extent they formerly did. As these things drop away, however, there are gains that far outweigh the losses.

When we become beholders of life, we do not look out at life and wonder what is going to happen. We behold what God is doing. The beholder on the spiritual path awakens in the morning and realizes, "This is God's day; 'this is the day which the Lord hath made.' What is God going to do with this day in its relationship to me? What experience will the activity of God bring to me this day?"

In that objective and detached way we go through the day with the expectancy of something just around he corner, the feeling that whatever God brings to pass in this hour, the next hour, and the hour after that is the product of God, and the effect of the activity of God. We now come into the experience of an unchanging harmony. We are at that point where we are no longer as concerned with outer effects as we once were; we have come to that place of looking at the appearance whether good or bad, and realizing its illusory nature.

Concerning ourselves with the nature of the appearance indulges and perpetuates the hypnotism. Morning, noon, and night, we must maintain within ourselves a spiritual balance in the realization that in the kingdom of God there is neither good nor evil: there is only Spirit; and in the kingdom of this world the appearance of evil and the appearance of good are equally illusory. If we wish to bring about a spiritual demonstration of Christhood, we cannot concern ourselves with the momentary appearances, but must hold fast to the spiritual truth within ourselves.

Although the kingdom of God is invisible and incorporeal to human sight, it is tangible and real to those who have the spiritual vision to behold it. Only through spiritual awareness, through spiritual consciousness, through the fourth-dimensional consciousness, Christ-consciousness, can we behold spiritual identity. We cannot see spiritual identity with our eyes, but just as God can look through light and darkness and behold them as one, so can the spiritually illumined look through the appearance of good or bad humanhood and behold Christhood.

In a mystical teaching we have no right to look at a human being with the idea of changing evil into good, disease into health, or lack into abundance. What we must do—and it is imperative that we do it—is to look through the appearance and realize:

Unseen to my human eyes, this is the Christ, the son of God. I do not seek to change him, improve, reform, or enrich him. I look through the appearance, and remember that even though I cannot see it, here is spiritual identity.

For those who have been trained to see the unreality of erroneous appearances, this may not seem to be too difficult to do, but the reason most of us do not have greater success in looking through the appearance is that we do not apply this principle when we see good human appearances. Why should there be rejoicing over a healthy, wealthy, successful, or happy appearance when the whole picture can be reversed in less than an hour?

It is not easy for anyone, not even for the spiritual student, to be able to look at himself, his friends, or his relatives when they are the healthiest, the wealthiest, and the purest, and realize that this is only an appearancc, but that invisible to human sight is the Christ, the spiritual son of God, the Reality. If a person is able to do that, however, he will always be tabernacling with the spiritual identity of his friends, relatives, and students. It is the very love of God flowing through him that is closing his eyes to appearances and showing him the Soul of even- person, of those who are good as well as those who are bad—the same pure Soul which is God.

In proportion as we can be in this world, but not of it — in it, and yet not be fascinated by the human identity of persons, but realize that even- person is really the Soul of God made evident on this earth—we shall be living in "My kingdom." This takes a developed inner vision which sees the presence of God in every person. It is amazing what miracles take place when we give up all attempts to make bad people good or sick people well, and begin to dwell in this realization:

God, reveal to me Thy spiritual Selfhood; reveal Thy spiritual Son; show forth the son of God in every individual.

With this vision we begin to see and to feel spiritual sonship all around us. People act differently toward us and we toward them bccause we are no longer treating them as we think they deserve to be treated. We hold no one in condemnation because we know that it is only his ignorance of what he is doing, his ignorance of his divine sonship, that makes him act as he does. Crimes against society and individuals—lying, stealing, cheating, defrauding — can be committed only as long as we think that you are you, and I am I. All that stops the minute we discover that we are brothers with the same Father, and that we belong to the same family and live in the same household. At once this makes the world less real and My kingdom more real, revealing the universe as a spiritual kingdom where nothing has to be attained by force.

This is the mystical life: we look not at the good human appearance and rejoice in it, but look through the good, as well as through the evil, human appearance, and behold Christhood. We can do it. We all can do it. True, it requires some discipline and some training because what we are trying to do is to overcome the effects of hundreds of generations of those who have left us as a heritage the belief in two powers. We are casting aside both the good and the evil to behold the spiritual, casting aside both good health and bad health in order to attain the realization of that Christhood which is our permanent identity in God. Only our spiritual identity as the child of God enables us to eat of that meat the world knows not of.

It is not by virtue of being a good human being that any of us can claim that we are "joint-heirs with Christ" because good humanhood is as far from heaven as bad humanhood. The scribes and the Pharisees were the very best of the Hebrews: the most religious, the greatest worshipers of the one God, the greatest supporters of the temple. Being good was an obsession with them, and yet the Master told his followers that their goodness must transcend that of the scribes and the Pharisees. Humanly that would have been well-nigh impossible because they had already practically attained perfection.

Real goodness lies in the ability to realize that the kingdom of God is ours, not by virtue of our goodness, but by virtue of our spiritual identity. This means being courageous enough to throw aside all thought of our badness past or present, and in the same breath to throw aside our goodness as well — throw them both out and take no credit unto ourselves for the good and no condemnation for the evil, but claim for ourselves only our spiritual identity in God. In this relationship with God we shall find that we are one with God, we are joint-heirs with God to all the heavenly riches, but as long as we think that our evil ways are keeping us from those riches or that our good is bringing us closer to them, we are missing the way.

The one who believes that some error, some temporary evil, or some mistake of omission or commission is separating him from God is just as far off the beam as the person who believes that his goodness is earning him God's grace. No one attains God's grace by goodness alone: God's grace is attained by the realization of spiritual identity; and in the recognition of our spiritual identity, we will be good in every spiritual way. How that good measures up with human goodness there is no way of knowing, but spiritual integrity can come only through our relationship to God, and not by virtue of any good qualities or because of any personal sacrifices or efforts.

Our human experience of the past and the present with its good and evil is the mortal dream, but within our Soul we are God-being in our inner light, we are children of God; in the depths of our inner being, we are one with God; and we have "meat," which we may not even have earned or deserved, but we have it nevertheless by virtue of divine inheritance.

Many of us have received, or will receive, much that we know in our heart and soul we do not deserve. Far more will this be true in our spiritual experience when we find God's goodness pouring itself upon us faster than we can accept it and realize that nothing in our human life entitles us to this. It comes to us as the grace of God from which neither life nor death can separate us.

There is no place where we can go and be separate from God's care, God's jurisdiction. God's life, and God's law. Whether we live on one side of the veil or on the other is of no importance except to those few people who temporarily will miss our physical presence. But very soon, when that sense of absence is healed, nothing is changed, no one has lost anything, no one has been hurt, for in God, life and death are the same. They are mortal appearances, human illusions. To understand that both are of the same substance, the fabric of nothingness, and that there is no difference between life and death brings about an understanding of the meaning of immortality.

Immortality has nothing to do with life or death, for life and death are but illusory pictures, whereas immortality is the spiritually real, etemality is the spiritually real, incorporeality is the spiritually real. Life and death are two phases of human illusion just as are disease and health, poverty and wealth, sin and purity.

On the spiritual path we have to overcome both the evil and the good, and while it is true that in our first stage we do try to change ill health into good health, as we advance on this Path we realize that we have to rise above good health just as we rise above poor health into the realm and the realization and the consciousness of God's presence as Spirit. To the illumined consciousness, darkness and light are one.

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