1955 Kailua Study Group

Joel S. Goldsmith

122B – Melchizedek – The Babe – Act of Devotion

Good Morning. With so many here, I guess you felt that you might be in at the birth of the Babe.

We have been speaking about the transcendental consciousness, that mind that was also in Christ Jesus, spiritual consciousness, spiritual awareness. We have been quoting, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

In the incident of the birth of Jesus Christ as described in scripture, if you read through the eyes of the world, you will miss the great point. Here is a very insignificant baby born to a very insignificant family couple, a carpenter, a Jewish carpenter and his little Jewish wife, nobodies, traveling on the road to Jerusalem for that annual celebration at the temple, bringing the tithes. Just two ordinary people in a multitude and unto them a child is born and instantly something unusual takes place: Wise men come to pay homage to that Babe and they come bringing gifts. Many people come from many directions of the land, all of them bringing gifts and all of them coming with recognition.

Now just see this: there is no personal effort on the part of Mary or of Joseph to attract attention to themselves, and the Babe could probably do nothing but lie there and cry a little bit and sleep a whole lot, and yet, without a single effort, these people come from near and far, bring their offerings, bring their worship, their adoration.

Something like that takes place when a crown prince or a crown princess is born, and later when they become King or Queen, and you might, if you were looking through the eyes of the world, you might actually believe that all of the people doing honor to this new King or Queen were actually interested in that person, yet they have no interest in them whatsoever. Their interest is in the King and the Queen. It wouldn’t make any difference whose body the King or Queen were occupying, because the very moment that that King or Queen lays down his or her human sense of life, it is, “Long live the next King or Queen,” and the past one is forgotten. It never was the person that anyone cared about; it was the office of King or Queen. Right now we happen to have a most beautiful Queen of England and a most gracious Queen, a sweet woman; but it would be a tremendous mistake to believe that anyone has any interest in that woman whatsoever except the fact that she symbolizes the head of the government; she symbolizes Queen.

So it is, as we go back to the basis at the birth of the Babe, you will find that no one cared about that infant; that the infant was of no importance. The infant couldn’t draw a single soul unto itself except its parents or grandparents or brothers and sisters. But what was it that drew unto this Babe the wise men, the visitors, the worshipers? Something that the Babe represented, something that was present in the Babe, and we call that the Christ. It wasn’t the Babe itself, it was the Christ which the Babe embodied, represented.

No baby in and of itself draws unto itself anything like that. There must be a presence and a power that humans could never explain, that humans could never see because it takes what is called the wise men, it takes the illumined state of consciousness to perceive that that Babe embodies this spiritual entity. Only those gifted with wisdom, spiritual wisdom, would know or be drawn. You see, those in high authority knew nothing of it. When they heard of it, they feared. Had they understood the nature of the Christ, they would never have feared; because the Christ is not a temporal power. The Christ never aspired to place or position. The Christ never aspires to lead an army or a navy against anyone. The Christ never aspires even to destroy. That is where the church throughout all time, in every age including this present one, has no understanding of the nature of the Christ because every time a Christ appears on earth or a teaching approximating the Christ, the church fears it as if the Christ were going to destroy anything or anybody. The Christ isn’t of a destructive nature; the Christ is of a constructive nature. No one need ever fear the Christ and yet wherever the Christ even claims to appear, those in authority tremble and fear and try to do away with it.

Now, the Christ isn’t a man, or a woman; the Christ is a divine state of consciousness, which appears on earth as a man or a woman but not necessarily one man or one woman because it appears in some degree as every man on earth and every woman on earth. There is no one on the face of the globe, and never has been, so lowly in any way that they have not in some measure shown forth the Christ—everyone, everyone. There is no one, there has never been a soul on the face of the globe who has not in some measure, in some degree, at some time, shown forth the nature of the Christ in some experience.

But Christhood itself is the fullness of that transcendental quality, character, nature, and those who, like the Master, attain it in its fullness, are, of course, recognized as Messiahs or Saviors or spiritual revelators, but that which makes them a Messiah or revelator is the fact that they wholly and fully perceive that Christhood is the reality of individual you and me. Only in the degree that they perceive the universal nature of Christhood would they represent the full embodiment of the Christ.

In other words, what do these Saviors come to earth to reveal? They do not come to reveal their nature or their qualities, because usually their message is accompanied with such words as, “I can of my own self do nothing; My doctrine is not mine; If I speak of myself, I speak a lie. So their message is, that Christhood is a spiritual entity and identity which is the reality of our being. There would be no Christhood if they came to earth to tell of their Christhood;  they would have none. Christhood is recognized in an individual who comes to earth to reveal your Christhood, and to enable you and me to bring forth more of that than we are at any moment doing.

You see, any quality of good that we are bringing through, any quality that any of us brings through is a measure of Christhood, since we have no such qualities of ourselves. But the mere fact that we have it within us, in any case, to be just or wise or benevolent or forgiving or loving or cooperative, indicates the fact that Christhood is where we are, within us and that we have the ability to bring it through in greater measure than any of us have yet attained or even believed was a possibility. And that is the function of the Savior. The Savior isn’t a man now; the Savior is that state of consciousness, which appeared even at birth in Jesus Christ, and was recognized by wise men, by all of spiritual vision or intuition. They recognized that quality as being present in that Babe and that quality in its full development in that Babe says, “You can go and do likewise because this that I am showing forth is the Father within but it is your Father and my Father.”

Now, you notice that the wise men brought gifts. Oh, and it is said that the birds sang and the angels flew about and the stars sang in the skies and all manner of spiritual phenomena took place at this birth of the Christ, so it ever has been, so it always will be that at the moment of the Christ appearing as your individual consciousness, at the moment that you transcend your ordinary human sense of I and realize the nature of the Christ as your being and relax your personal efforts, that wise men will come bringing you gifts, and songs will be sung and praises be given.

In other words, the world brings to the Christ its gifts. One doesn’t have to go out and earn them or deserve them or do something to get them. The whole world unites in offering its wealth, its homage, its adoration to that Christhood. It would make no difference to the world whether the Christ appeared as an insignificant babe of an insignificant couple, or if it appeared as the son of Caesar or the Queen of England. It makes no difference to the world. It will offer itself wherever Christhood appears. 

Now, Christhood, or spiritual illumination, that mind that was in Christ Jesus, comes as the grace of God and no one can receive it by his own efforts, by his own labor; yet no one can receive it without effort and without labor, because either in our past experience…and let no one doubt that life is eternal and that therefore we have existed individually as long as God has… somewhere along the line, grace touches each soul and that individual who has been brutish; who has been dictatorial; who has been evil; begins, for some unknown reason to have his or her thoughts turned to good, and probably in some one lifetime, passes out of this picture a much finer individual than when he or she came in through birth. Then you may know that that individual has been touched by divine grace and that their ascent has been begun.

This is true individually and collectively. That is why the world today is spiritually on a higher level than any previous age that has existed before now, for the simple reason that this evolutionary process, this touch of the Christ, has come to more individuals with the passage of time and therefore is appearing more collectively on earth as a better society.

Oh, there are many signs that society is not in any wise perfect either humanly or spiritually, but the point that the wise look at is not an individual experience or year, but the development over a period of time. For instance, you cannot see spiritual evolution in the throwing of an atom bomb, but you can witness it in the amount of horror that is expressed by the citizens of the nation when they learn of it. When you find that a nation as a whole is not and never was in favor of such a thing, even for the purpose of self-preservation, then you know that spiritual presence and power is more evident in human consciousness.

Oh, there are so many signs throughout the globe in the freeing of slave peoples, in the conviction that slavery is not a correct thing, a right thing, a moral thing, even where what seems to be the necessities of human experience make it still evident in places; the very fact that all human nature has turned against every form of slavery, every form of limitation…Ah, yes! Yes, this may sound like an extreme case of it, but in one of the large magazines yesterday, there was a whole page whiskey ad dedicated to Father’s Day and instructing fathers how they must teach their children moderation even in the use of whiskey. Even the whiskey owners would like to liberate us from their enslavement. Well, that couldn’t have been a generation ago, you know.

Now, in understanding the nature of the Christ in individual experience, it is first necessary to realize that a release must come in our experience. This would not be as true of the little child as it would be of us. A little child, being taught the nature of the Christ, would be more receptive because it had less of that sense of I to overcome. It knows nothing yet of having to battle the world for a livelihood. It knows nothing yet of protecting itself from evil people. It knows nothing of the world’s belief…Well, it was something like watching this dog, yesterday, last evening and noting that it had nothing in its consciousness but the idea of play. There was not a single thought of having to prepare for today’s manna or anything else. There was not a single trace of anything in that nature but play. Evidently there was an innate awareness, without conscious reasoning, that everything was functioning in an orderly manner and probably that if hunger came tomorrow that it would be satisfied. But it probably had no awareness that hunger would even come tomorrow. It was satisfied now.

So we are told that we must come as little children. That is very much like as little children come;  not with any thought of tomorrow, but with the realization of ‘nowness.’ Now all is well and the child never believes it is well because of its efforts. There is that lack of I-ness. It knows that everything is all right but probably it is unconscious in the child to realize that it is because of mamma or papa, that everything is all right, but certainly it is not because of I or me or mine. As we can approach that state of consciousness in the realization that it is not a conscious effort of our own that brings wise men to us bringing gifts, or brings the world to us with its offerings, but rather by this innate, this inherent entity or identity or spiritual nature which is forever drawing unto itself its own.

There is the point: There is that within each of us that is forever drawing unto itself its own. We may call that the Father within; we may call it the Father-Mother God; we may call it the Christ. It is whatever it is; but it is of a nature, character; the purpose of which is to draw unto itself its own and it can do that best in our relaxing from I-ness, from personal effort. Of course it won’t come without personal effort, only that personal effort now is not aimed at drawing the good to us, but in drawing out of us the realization of its presence. There is where the effort comes. Effort has been directed towards earning a living, toward gaining fame or fortune, toward accumulation, accretion, toward the getting, whereas effort rightly directed is toward the realization of this Infinite Invisible, that which we call the Father within or the Christ. There lies the effort.

It is like in the meeting of a problem whether for ourselves or another. The meeting of a problem is accomplished by the amount of effort that we can bring to relaxing from effort. In other words, it is very much like waiting out a storm instead of going into it and bucking it. It is very much like— I don’t know who it was who said, “This too shall pass.” It is very much like that attitude of mind; this too shall pass, and then sitting quietly or moving about one’s affairs quietly in the realization that whatever the name or nature of this “this” is, that it shall pass, not by any directed efforts of mine, not by any will or supernatural powers, but by virtue of the nothingness of this “it” which we have been respecting by fighting. The battle is not yours, but God’s; Stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord. It is very much the effort of effortlessness, the effort of being quiet in the face of storms; in the face of the discords of human experience so that this too, might pass. It won’t pass while we are fighting it. It won’t pass because we are making a reality of it, and we are perpetuating it in our consciousness because this “it” has no externalized existence. It exists only as a mental image in our own thought and as we retire to this inner sanctuary and wait, the storm passes. We learn afterwards that it never was a storm outside of us; it was a storm within our own being; that outside all was peaceful and serene because the neighbors down the street knew nothing about this storm that we were battling. It just didn’t exist to them because they weren’t inside of us. That’s where this storm, this sin, this disease, this lack and limitation;  that’s the only place it has existence,  within us, and if we get still enough, quiet enough; acquire some of David’s assurance of God’s grace, then this this will also pass. Christhood is a  recognition of this truth. The degree of our Christhood can be measured by the degree of quiet, of peace, that we can find while waiting for this to pass.

In Burroughs’s poem, “Waiting,” you have that entire secret of Christhood. He must have known that what he was saying was not true of human beings; that waiting will bring your good to you, because too many human beings have been waiting for too long and they haven’t found it to be so. He must have known that it was a spirit of tranquility within himself; and it was a spirit of peace within himself and that with the attainment of this he would say, “Wait and my own shall come to me.”

So it is when people say, “Oh, I just trust God to do it,” you notice very often that God has a way of not doing it, because as human beings, they have no God to do it for them and that which they are expecting to do it for them, has no existence. What they are calling God has no existence, so they keep waiting for a non-existent God to do a very concrete thing and it doesn’t come off that way. But, in the realization of this inner divine selfhood, in the finding one’s self at peace in it, is the attainment of that which does draw unto itself everything necessary for its unfoldment, for its development, for its nature, for its freedom.

Try to go back again to that Babe in Jerusalem and see that without saying, “God will do it,” without any knowledge of God, the world was bringing itself to its feet, then you will see that it is in the tranquility of the soul that this spiritual awareness develops. Spiritual awareness is another term for a realization of the nothingness of storms, problems. Spiritual awareness is another term for a state of being or a state of consciousness, which knows that the creative principle of this universe is also the maintaining and sustaining influence. You see, we say, “Oh, spiritual consciousness heals,” or  “Spiritual consciousness is the multiplier of loaves and fishes,” “Spiritual consciousness is a redeeming power,” and then we ask, “What is spiritual consciousness?” So if you do ask yourself in meditation, “What is spiritual consciousness?” the answer will come: “Spiritual consciousness is your awareness that I Am that I exist; that there is a presence at the center of your being which lives your life for you.” Spiritual consciousness is your awareness of My presence. Spiritual consciousness is your awareness of the nothingness of the thoughts and things of the world. Spiritual consciousness is your awareness of My peace at the center of your being. Spiritual consciousness is your awareness that My grace is your sufficiency. So the very moment we attain the very first glimpse that God’s grace is our sufficiency in all things, we are then in spiritual consciousness or we have attained a measure of spiritual consciousness.

The more we achieve David’s assurance of God’s grace, that’s that statement given at the heading of the 23rd Psalm: David’s assurance of God’s Grace; the more we attain that assurance of God’s grace, and the more spiritual consciousness has developed and evolved in us, the less personal effort there is in living human life, the less effort and personal strength there is needed to overcome the problems of life until finally that day comes when, in perfect tranquility, there are not only no problems of life, but then the world is coming to us bearing its gifts, showering its glories upon us and then all of a sudden you say, “I don’t deserve this” and how true that is because it isn’t brought to you or to me any more than these gifts are being brought to the Queen of England. They are not being brought to Elizabeth; they are being brought to the Queen.

So it is. This world’s peace and this world’s grace and this world’s good which is brought to us, which is laid at our feet, is not because of me or of you. No! It is because of Christhood; it is because of this sense of tranquility that has come through the realization of a divine presence and a divine power at the heart and the center, not only of our being, but more particularly at the heart and center of individual being. Christhood is Christhood only in proportion as it recognizes Christhood as a universal state of being. As long as it sets itself up as Christhood, it is not Christhood. Christhood is the recognition of God as the central theme of man’s being. The very moment that you realize God to be the activity of animal, vegetable, mineral, you are in that degree showing forth Christhood, but it is necessary to recognize it as universal being. In recognizing it as universal being, do you see what happens in the nature of loving the enemies? The enemies disappear. Do you see what happens in the nature of loving the neighbor as thyself? Even thy neighbors disappear and it all becomes thyself. They are no longer friends and they are no longer enemies; it is the one Self. It is the God-Self appearing as infinite individuality, as an infinity of people and things.

Even Abraham who was the father of the Hebrew race, which places him in the same category of the Hebrew race, perhaps, as Jesus of the Christian. Even Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. In other words, it makes no difference who you are; what your name or station in life as a human, always pay tithes, always lay your all at the feet of that which was never born. Melchizedek was never born and has never died. Melchizedek is the Spirit of God appearing as a human being, and who is that human being? You and me and he and she. The Spirit of God is that to which every human must bow, must bend, must tithe, must share, must give, in other words, must acknowledge. Every one of us must acknowledge the spiritual identity of each other and that is our tithe to Melchizedek, just as it was the wise men’s gifts to the Babe. You see, the tithe of Abraham to Melchizedek is exactly the same story as the wise men bringing gifts to the Babe. It is the recognition of spiritual identity. It is the recognition of Christhood. It is the recognition of divine Sonship and every time that you give inner recognition to Christhood anywhere on earth, you are bringing your gifts to the Babe or tithing with Melchizedek. You are recognizing that no matter how great or noble or wonderful you are in your humanhood, you are still less than that spiritual Selfhood of yourself and of others. Jesus bore witness to this in denying himself: I can of my own self do nothing;  This doctrine is not mine but His that sent me. That was his tithing and bringing gifts to spiritual identity. No one on the face of the globe can miss the experience of bringing their gifts to the Christ, of tithing with Melchizedek; not one of us can be spared or saved the experience of bending the knee to the Godhood of each other, to the Godhood of this world.

David’s assurance, then, comes from the same state of mind as the Master facing Pilate and saying, ”Thou couldst have no power over me unless it came from the Father in heaven.” So as we would know the Christhood of each other, we also would have a calm, clear assurance that no one in this room was going to do anything destructive or dishonest and so we, too, would settle back with each other in a state of tranquility and calm assurance that we were in safe and good company. Ah! but that isn’t enough. That isn’t enough. It is in proportion as we would recognize Christhood as the true nature of individual being that we would have that same calmness, that same assurance even when we went out against Goliath, feeling with all of its seeming strength, a little pebble would be enough and in our case the pebble wouldn’t be a material one. The pebble would be that one tiny little word, “I am; thou art. We are one in Christ. The Spirit of God is your life, your soul, your being.” That would be our pebble. That would be the only stone we would need against Goliath would be the word and the word is: “I am and thou art. We are one.”

The Master told Peter that only spiritual consciousness, the Father within, enabled Peter to recognize Jesus as the Christ. So it is that only spiritual consciousness in you will enable you to perceive the Christ in your neighbor as the living witness in all men in the world. It isn’t enough to make an affirmation or statement of truth that Christ is the center of all being or that every man is a child of God. That affirmation may be enough to start a person thinking, but it isn’t enough to make one’s demonstration. There must eventually come an actual state of consciousness within you in which you, yourself, perceive Christhood as man’s real being.

Do not make the mistake ever of being satisfied with a statement of truth regardless of how true it may be or how noble or divine the individual was who said it. Don’t be satisfied with that because the mere fact that Jesus said it won’t make your demonstration or that you are willing to acknowledge it. There must come to our hearts an actual conviction. There must come to our consciousness, to our soul, an actual awakening to these truths, before these truths can be made evident in our experience. You remember the Master warned us that not all who said, “Christ, Christ” will not enter in. So it is that all who make these affirmations of truth regardless of how truthful they are, -- they are not the ones who will enter spiritual consciousness, because spiritual consciousness is only attained as it becomes a state of conviction down in the region of the heart, not up in the region of the head. It may well be that it enters our consciousness through the head. We first learn it with the mind. We read it with our intellect, but it has not yet become the Christhood of our being until the feel takes place, the awareness, the actual consciousness in which the recognition that Peter gave to Jesus takes place. When the same recognition that Abraham had for Melchizedek, the same recognition that the wise men had for Jesus, the same recognition that Peter had of the Christ  when that consciousness comes to our soul, to our life, when we perceive actually within our own being, “Yes; thou art the Christ. Christ is the truth of being. Christ is the real nature. Christ is that center of my being which draws unto itself its own.” Then in that point of recognition is the transition made. Always remember that there is for each one of us a point, a time or place, of a transition, when these intellectually known truths become spiritually discerned consciousness, spiritually discerned; being, spiritually discerned truth.

Now, to attain it, this spiritual discernment, it is far more necessary that we abide in stillness at the center of our being to let these other convictions pass from us, these judgments of the world or judgments of each other. In other words, resting back and letting the storm pass, letting these arguments of material sense, letting these material estimates of God, man and the universe drop away from us than fighting them or battling them or trying to change them or exchange them, It is far better to sit back quietly and let them pass from us in the same way that we sit back and let problems pass.

This might not have been true as young students. As young students it might have been very necessary for us to wrestle with the problem, wrestle with error and voice an awful lot of truth. But that time has passed for us. The younger students coming up will never have to go through all the years that we went through of wrestling with error and wrestling with truth and fighting intellectually with it. They may have a month or two of it but not any longer than that because they are saved from that in the same way that Jesus’ crucifixion is supposed to save us from the results of our sins; or in the same way that our children can start riding in jet planes and we started, some of us, with horses and buggies.

Now, it isn’t necessary that every generation go through the errors of the past generation. It is part of the idea of salvation that the crucifixion of one shall be the salvation of the many, and so it is that the struggles of the Wright Brothers become the blessings for us; so it is that the crucifixion of a Jesus becomes a way of salvation for us so that the only crucifixion that comes to us is the crucifixion of personal sense within ourselves. We don’t have to go through an outer crucifixion for the world. We merely go through an inner one for ourselves, but children brought up with this, won’t even have to do that because they won’t have the personal sense to crucify. We have a personal sense that took 30, 40, 50 years to develop and now we are trying to crucify it and live a universal sense; but the child brought up right from the start in the realization that there is a love at the center of man’s being, that the powers of evil are not a reality, that child will never go through what we have, because it isn’t a part of the spiritual picture for there to be a struggle or a war.

Remember that the degree of our struggle is only the degree of our humanhood opposing our spiritual natures, and for some of us, that’s tough. We have an awful lot of humanhood to overcome, and it isn’t all evil humanhood either. You watch the struggle of some of our very fine human beings to overcome good humanhood or sense of good humanhood and you see they may have a harder struggle than we have because it is so nice to hold on to one’s goodness. At least we who are evil know enough to know that it would be well to get rid of it but the good people believe that theirs is good and like to hold on to it, so as between the two, let’s be evil and …

Christhood comes to our individual consciousness as we see less and less of the need for struggle in the world. As we see less and less need for battling in the world, that is the evidence of the degree of Christhood that is unfolding.

Well, we see Abraham tithing with Melchizedek; we see the wise men bringing their gifts to the Babe; we see Peter recognizing the Christhood of Jesus. So we watch a great symbology in going into temples or holy places and removing the shoes or going into the orthodox Hebrew synagogue and keeping on the hat; or going into a Christian church and taking off the hat. It makes no difference what form of symbology is used, whether it is taking off a hat or putting it on, taking off shoes or putting them on, as long as there is an act of humility, as long as there is an act of recognition. What that act is, whether it is kneeling in church in a communion and drinking the symbolic wine and eating the symbolic bread, none of this makes any difference, but all of it…no…something of that nature in each of us must be performed, whether or not we accept the kneeling in church in a symbolic recognition of Christ, or whether we enter any holy place removing our hat or putting on a skull cap, or kneeling, or lighting a candle, or placing a flower beneath a picture, regardless of what form of symbology is used, to each one must come an occasion of using some form of symbology, but it must come as a dictate of the heart, not as a ceremonial demanded by some outer rule or regulation.

In other words, when it comes to an individual as a free state of his own consciousness to place a flower on an altar, or to light a candle or a piece of incense; when it comes to some individual to remove their hat or to tip it or place it on, or take off their shoes,  some such ceremony must eventually come to an individual as a recognition of that to which they are acknowledging Christhood, otherwise Christ has not yet come to the heart.

Until some moment comes when this tithe is given as a conscious thing, or the gift to the Babe, or Thou art the Christ until such time comes as the heart of itself says and compels one to perform an act of purification or an act of sacrifice or an act of devotion, the Christ has not come, and the letter of truth is dead and it killeth. The letter of truth is of no avail until the heart has yielded, until the soul has paid homage to Christ somewhere, somehow, in some one, or in some thing. To each one it comes in a different way. To each one it comes in a different form. To each one the recognition and the symbology may appear in an original and distinctive way but at some time in every individual’s experience, the Christ is born and is recognized by an act of devotion. Let us not forget this. The birth of the Christ is recognized by a voluntary act of devotion and until that act of devotion has come, the Christ is still the expected

Messiah. 

We are either awaiting the Messiah or we are waiting the second coming of the Messiah but we have not attained the Christ in heart until an act of devotion, an act of homage, or an act of sacrifice -- an act of love takes place within our being. By that sign you may know that Christ is born in you.

Thank You