Book summary “The art of spiritual healing”: summary

Introduction

You may feel a deep inner unrest that worldly success and physical health cannot cure. Material remedies offer only temporary relief while the root cause of discord remains untouched.

Permanent harmony and freedom are attained not by fixing human conditions with mental will, but by resting in the silent realization of God as the only power and presence.

Joel S. Goldsmith presents these teachings through The Infinite Way to guide your spiritual awakening. The book explains the true nature of healing, the language of inner communion, and the development of a healing consciousness. You will also discover how to transcend material views of the body and experience divine supply.

Consider these questions as you read:

• How do you move beyond mental suggestion?
• What constitutes true prayer?
• How does divine grace govern your daily life?

1. What is spiritual healing

Beyond physical cures

Physical healing alone cannot satisfy man's deep inner unrest or reveal his Soul. Even if medicine successfully cured every physical disease and all economic problems were solved, you would still experience an inner restlessness and discontent. Permanent harmony and peace of mind are achieved only through inner communion with God, which satisfies the Soul's longing to go home.

Physical healing alone cannot satisfy man's inner unrest, which requires inner communion with God as the Creative Principle.

Joel Goldsmith discovered his healing ministry spontaneously after realizing that man is not a healer. Beginning with a cold and a quest to find God rather than to heal, Goldsmith was unexpectedly asked by acquaintances to pray for their physical healing. Upon asking God for instruction, he clearly heard that man is not a healer. A female customer and a traveling salesman successively asked Goldsmith to pray for them, resulting in their immediate physical healing. His business associate reported twenty-two telephone calls asking for prayer in a single morning. This led him to rent an office for spiritual healing eighteen months later in 1928 after receiving twenty-two calls in one morning. The first customer was healed within thirty-six hours after Goldsmith prayed.

The Copernican analogy

People frequently dismiss spiritual healing because it contradicts human reason, much like untrained individuals discussing advanced scientific theories. People often feel qualified to dismiss spiritual healing as impossible despite knowing nothing about it. Goldsmith compared this to a family member who claimed a dying woman could not be healed while simultaneously admitting he knew nothing about the Copernican theory.

A man whose relative was dying in a hotel dismissed metaphysical treatment as impossible, yet when Goldsmith asked him to discuss the Copernican theory first, the man admitted he had no idea what it was about.

A single successful experience of transcendental presence sets the seal on spiritual realization for all time. Just as the Wright brothers keeping a plane aloft for a brief moment or an early automobile traveling a block proved the validity of new modes of transportation, a single conscious realization of God sets a permanent seal in the mind and points toward ultimate spiritual mastery.

The Wright brothers keeping a plane aloft for a mere fifty-seven seconds set the seal on transportation for all time. This proved inevitable future travel speeds of three hundred, four hundred, or one thousand miles an hour. These experiences followed thirteen preceding years that Goldsmith spent reading the Bible and metaphysical books before his life-changing two-hour meditation in late 1928.

2. The language of spiritual healing

Spiritual healing relies on recognizing God as individual being and maintaining a listening vacuum in absolute humility.

Joel S. Goldsmith explains that in The Infinite Way, the first critical word in spiritual healing is "as." God manifests as individual being, so there is not God and a human being, meaning a practitioner does not look to a distant God to patch someone up, but witnesses God appearing as that individual.

The author notes that during his active healing years, when patients came to him, he trained himself not to see them as human beings in need of repair, but recognized everyone as God appearing as individual being.

• Look out at every man, woman, child, animal, vegetable, and mineral in the world.
• Realize that what you see is not what it seems to be.
• Recognize that this is God appearing as, ignoring human appearances and bearing witness to Christ-identity.

Since God is your being, harmony is; since all that the Father has is yours, you are in the fullness and completeness of God. True prayer or treatment never tries to heal, reform, or change anyone, but lives exclusively in the realization of Is, ignoring outer sensory evidence of illness, poverty, or sin.

• Observe outer appearances of illness, poverty, or sinfulness without becoming disturbed.
• Allow Spirit to tell you that this is the incarnation of God.
• Declare mentally that harmony is true regardless of sensory evidence.

Eliminating duality with as and is

Early metaphysical healing taught that the body is subject to the mind, leading people to use their minds to control their bodies. However, this leaves out the thinker behind thought, which is God or the Soul. Trying to control the mind by will power or changing thoughts creates nervous wrecks, because the mind must be governed and controlled by the higher Center within, which is your true Self.

Thomas A. Edison is cited as an example of proper mind usage; photographs always show him with his hand up to his ear listening for direction rather than attempting to create through raw intellect.

• Stop attempting to use the mind as a creative faculty or trying to force outcomes through sheer will power.
• Recognize the mind as an instrument of awareness governed by your true Self.
• Form the habit of listening with your mind and letting God fill it as a witness to Spirit.

Just as a swimmer who is completely relaxed and rests on the surface of the water stays afloat longer than one who struggles exhaustively, healing work must become as natural as breathing or floating. Trying to manipulate infinite truth with a finite mind creates exhaustion, whereas relaxing in the Spirit allows Truth to set the patient free.

• Relax completely in God and let the Spirit flow during a treatment.
• Let the water carry your body when swimming, and let the Truth carry the treatment.
• Refuse to manipulate infinite Truth to fit into the pattern of the finite mind.

The listening vacuum

Instead of closing eyes and repeating affirmations to make a body well, a spiritual healer takes no thought for what someone shall eat or drink or health status. By maintaining a wakeful, alert, receptive attitude to the Soul rather than drawing on human wisdom, the healer allows the still small voice to utter itself and melt the error.

• Close your eyes when someone asks for help and think no thoughts.
• Maintain a listening attitude, remaining a receptive vacuum that is never sleepy or tired.
• Wait for the visitation of the Christ from the depths of the Soul until a voice, feeling, release, or assurance dissolves the error.

Science proves matter cannot be destroyed, only changed in form and reduced to atoms and energy, indicating its substance is mind. While early metaphysical teachings mistakenly labeled matter and the body as illusions to be discarded, the actual illusion lies in the human concepts we entertain about the world, not in the world itself, which is beautiful and eternal.

Water can change to steam or ice without being destroyed and weighs the same in any form, and a glass tumbler reduced to splinters still retains its existence and weight in a laboratory.

• Discard the belief that the material body or the physical world is unreal and must be thrown out.
• Recognize that spiritual healing relies on changing your concepts of body and matter rather than destroying them.
• Understand real as pertaining only to that which is spiritual and eternal, and unreal as anything impermanent.

3. Developing a healing consciousness

Effective treatment is a spontaneous rising in consciousness to establish conscious contact with God rather than fixing problems.

Treatment is necessary only because a human sense of self has become ingrained. It is not an attempt to shift from bad humanhood to good humanhood, which is merely human evolution. Instead, treatment penetrates beyond appearances, disease, and limitations to realize the spiritual identity and Christhood of man.

• Drop the name or identity of the person asking for help.
• Recognize the nature of the claim as belonging to the carnal mind.
• Stop thinking about the patient, body, or condition.
• Turn immediately to God and keep the mind stayed on God.

Spontaneous inspiration

Effective meditation during treatment systematically uses synonyms for God to establish that God is life, substance, and the only law. The practitioner affirms that God is eternal life, infinite substance, and the sole law of harmony. By affirming these truths about God, the practitioner realizes that no cause or effect of disease, pain, or inharmony can exist in the allness of God.

• Meditate on God as eternal life, recognizing that nothing can lessen or interfere with that eternality.
• Meditate on God as the substance of all being and the universe, ensuring no cause or effect of pain exists.
• Meditate on God as the only law, ruling out laws of disease, separation, infection, or contagion.
• Meditate on God as infinite Love that cares for its own and maintains creation harmoniously.

Treatments must be completely spontaneous and fresh every time, avoiding formulas or reusing yesterday's inspiration. Just as manna fell fresh daily, true spiritual inspiration flows directly from God at the exact moment of need. Reusing a ready-made treatment or relying on yesterday's insights is as useless as trying to read yesterday's newspaper.

• Do not try to use the same treatment tomorrow that was used today.
• Rely on fresh inspiration to flow spontaneously with every individual demand.

When addressing specific human problems such as marital issues or physical ailments, you never come down to the human level to fix them. Spiritual work does not involve patching up human quarrels, giving human advice, or treating specific organs like the heart or lungs. Instead, you recognize the problem as an illusion of a selfhood apart from God and establish the reality of divine activity.

• Remember that as a practitioner you have no human advice to offer and nothing to do with human aspects.
• Instantly recognize any physical activity issue as a mental image and realize God as omni-action and the only activity of being.

Seeking God for any purpose other than God Himself constitutes acknowledging two powers and turns God into a means to an end. True peace comes only when you seek God solely for the realization of God, rather than trying to direct God to provide health, homes, or companionship. Treating God as a tool to defeat a nasty little evil power invalidates prayer.

• Go to God for but one purpose: for God and God alone.
• Sit quietly in the realization that harmony already is, asking only that God's word bursts the bubble and pierces the veil.

Transparency for God

The human practitioner does not heal. Consciousness imbued with truth becomes a transparent instrument through which the word of God does the actual healing. Your treatment merely prepares your own consciousness for receptivity. Once your thought is cleared of superstitions and false theories, the actual word of God pours through, acting as the true healer.

• Maintain an awareness of truth and love so that anyone touching your consciousness finds peace and wholeness.
• Relegate error to its rightful place as nothingness—nothing to be feared, hated, or loved.

Entering the spiritual healing ministry requires complete dedication, immense courage, and separation from worldly and social distractions. A spiritual practitioner must give precedence to the needs of patients and students above all family, social, and political obligations. You must stand ready twenty-four hours a day, maintaining strict spiritual integrity and avoiding personal judgments.

• Limit telephone calls to about three minutes to keep lines open and avoid cluttering consciousness.
• Stop condemning, criticizing, and judging appearances, releasing individuals seventy times seven.

Treatment works across any distance because there is only one universal divine Consciousness, and patients receive help when they mentally reach out to a God-conscious practitioner. Patients receive healing not because you list names or diagnose diseases, but because the patient aligns with your realization of oneness. The moment a call or thought of a patient arrives, you must instantly reinterpret the appearance as an illusion.

A young woman on a bus in Honolulu heard a boisterous, obscene man and immediately began realizing God as individual being without treating the man directly, after which the man came over and thanked her for praying for him. Joel S. Goldsmith handled 135 calls a day, seven days a week during a busy winter in his practice.

• Give treatment the exact second a patient comes to thought rather than waiting.
• Drop cases from thought after achieving a sense of inner release, assuming the burden is on God.

4. The body, birth, and oneness

Your body possesses no power to be good, bad, sick, or healthy. It is simply the concept held in human thought that appears as a sick or well body. When you realize that the body is God-governed, health governs the physical form rather than physical organs governing health.

True being knows no physical birth, death, or material body, operating entirely as the temple of God.

You must never focus on the patient or the physical condition during a treatment. A practitioner treating John Jones for influenza ignores the patient and the flu symptoms entirely, establishing mentally that God is infinite being and the only law.

• My body has neither qualities nor quantities of good or of evil.
• My body is the temple of God, God-substance expressed as form.
• My body has neither youth nor age: It is as ancient as God and as young as each new day.
• My body is not governed by laws of matter or of mind, but by the grace of God.

The temple of God

Physical discord and material forms such as poison ivy or tumors are not powers to be fought. They are misinterpretations of indestructible divine substance.

• Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.
• Acknowledge God as the substance of all form whether appearing as a rosebush or poison ivy.
• Recognize any discordant problem as material sense or hypnotism and bring the word God into consciousness.

In true spiritual identity there is no process of human birth, death, or aging. Melchizedek is cited as having neither father nor mother, exemplifying a life without physical process.

• Accept that the divine child of God never knew, now knows, or can know limitation.
• Look upon the experience of passing not with horror, but as the beginning of a broader field of activity.
• Affirm that life has within itself the law of continuity, immortality, and eternality.

The relationship of oneness

True human relationships and harmony are established by making contact with the inner Spirit. You look through external personalities to God as the sole principle of all people.

The author recounts a personal struggle where he realized he could not humanly love his enemies, leading him to ask God to love them through him as an instrument, resulting in immediate peace and healing.

• Accept divine sonship and the status of being an heir of God to all heavenly riches.
• Hold steadfastly to the conviction that the divine child of God cannot know limitation in any form.
• Use the statements I now am and I am about my Father's business when facing any problem.
• Consciously remember that the divine I is present through any trial, desert, or shadow of death.
• Look over or through every person in a room to God as their animating principle and mind.
• Stand guard at the door of consciousness to ensure no unrighteous beliefs enter the home.
• Willingly loose loved ones into God and let divine law govern them rather than practicing anxious human overprotection.
• Affirm that good is in no way dependent on relatives, friends, or associates.
• Rely entirely on the truth that all the Father has is yours.

5. Supply, grace, and divine destiny

Supply is an infinite outgo of giving from within consciousness, and true safety comes from dwelling in God.

Supply as outgo

Supply is not something to be acquired or gathered in from the outside world. All supply exists invisibly within individual consciousness. Trying to demonstrate supply by getting results in failure. Instead, supply is released by initiating a flow of giving and circulating what you have.

• Find something you can give to someone who is not a member of your family or even to an enemy.
• Search your clothes closet or pantry to find something you can spare to start the flow of giving.
• Give up resentment, jealousy, hate, and the desire to get recognition or gratitude.
• Give patience, cooperation, love, and forgiveness.

Tithing is the practice of giving first fruits to impersonal purposes. If giving ten percent is initially too difficult, you can start with a smaller percentage and gradually increase it.

• Set aside a specific sum or percentage that has priority over all other expenditures.
• Give this amount to an impersonal purpose rather than to family or personal benefit.
• Give these first fruits secretly where possible so only the giver knows.

A woman approached the author at a metaphysical center with a list of nine personal things she wanted and asked him to pray for them. This illustrates the mistaken belief that God is to be used for personal acquisition. The author stopped working for a living in 1928 and began working solely for the joy of the work.

Under the shadow of the Almighty

True safety comes from living continuously in the secret place of the Most High, acknowledging God in all ways, and recognizing that your true life is invisible and hid with Christ in God.

• Acknowledge God upon waking in the morning as the governor and ruler of the day.
• Keep the mind stayed on God in reliance, confidence, and expectancy.
• Make the secret place of the Most High a constant habitation morning, noon, and night.

A successful businessman spent an hour in protective prayer against bad drivers on a holiday weekend. He still experienced a severe automobile accident because his prayer was focused on fighting an external power rather than realizing universal divine intelligence.

10 Key Ideas

1. Permanent harmony and freedom are attained not by fixing human conditions with mental will, but by resting in the silent realization of God as the only power and presence.
2. Physical healing alone cannot satisfy man's inner unrest, which requires inner communion with God as the Creative Principle.
3. Spiritual healing relies on recognizing God as individual being and maintaining a listening vacuum in absolute humility.
4. Effective treatment is a spontaneous rising in consciousness to establish conscious contact with God rather than fixing problems.
5. Seeking God for any purpose other than God Himself constitutes acknowledging two powers and turns God into a means to an end.
6. Consciousness imbued with truth becomes a transparent instrument through which the word of God does the actual healing.
7. True being knows no physical birth, death, or material body, operating entirely as the temple of God.
8. True human relationships and harmony are established by making contact with the inner Spirit and looking through external personalities to God as the sole principle.
9. Supply is an infinite outgo of giving from within consciousness, and true safety comes from dwelling in God.
10. Tithing is the practice of giving first fruits to impersonal purposes, releasing supply by initiating a flow of giving and circulating what you have.