The Art Of Spiritual Healing

Presenting the results of thirty years of experience in practicing spiritual healing, this is one of the three books world-renowned teacher and mystic Joel S. Goldsmith felt epitomized the essence of his teachings. In a decided departure from other books on this controversial subject, Goldsmith alternates instruction with meditation to demonstrate that physical well-being results naturally from attaining a consciousness of oneness with God.

Chapter OneWhat Is Spiritual Healing?

The world is not in need of a new religion, nor is the world in need of a new philosophy: What the world needs is healing and regeneration. The world needs people who, through devotion to God, are so filled with the Spirit that they can be the instruments through which healings take place, because healing is important to everybody.

Until the last century, healing had been considered largely the prerogative of the medical profession; but in recent years, so many churches have turned their attention to this subject that today the healing of mind, body, and personal relationships is beginning to be considered as much the function of the church as of the doctor's office. Churches are opening their doors to discussions of the possibility of healing through prayer and other means. Other organizations are being formed for the purpose of engaging in research and in promoting the study and practice of various forms of healing, ranging all the way from spiritual healing to psychological and psychic healing. More and more, spiritual healing is being discussed and practiced.

It looks as if within the next half century or so, materia medica will have found a remedy for almost every physical disease now known, and there will then be little need of metaphysical practitioners as far as the healing of physical disease is concerned. That, however, will not solve life's problems; it will not solve the problems of the world because the world's problem is not really a problem of disease. Disease is only one of the many facets of inharmony and discord in life. Advances in medicine will not eliminate the need for spiritual healing because, even with 100 per centsuccess in physical healing, I do not believe that such healing will ever succeed in revealing man's Soul to him. That will be the function of the practitioner of spiritual healing. Man will find that even when all physical, mental, moral, or financial discords have been eliminated there will still be an inner unrest. Man will still not be at peace with himself.

No one will ever be completely whole until he finds himself at home in God. No one is going to be wholly satisfied even with good economic conditions until he finds his inner communion with God. Watching television will not satisfy man's Soul. Watching baseball games and football games is not the way to find peace of mind or peace of Soul, nor yet a satisfactory method of bringing peace on earth and good will to men. There is nothing wrong, nothing evil, about these things-they are all good in their place; they all have their function-but no one has ever found permanent harmony in a football game or a baseball game, in a television set, or in dancing.

The harmony of man's being is achieved only when be finds God, when he arrives at an inner communion with that which is greater than himself. That is the real healing and the lasting healing. That is the healing which the world seeks. And so it is that even were you healed of every physical or mental ill at this moment, even if your economic situation or personal relationships were entirely to your satisfaction, there would still be an unrest within, and a discontent. Regardless of how much happiness you might find in your family, you would retire at night and be alone, because there is a Something within each of us that longs to go home, that longs to live with hisFather-Mother.

Spiritual healing is sought by different people for different reasons. Some seek it because of physical illness, or because of mental, moral, or financial problems; others because of an internal unrest that gives them no peace regardless of 'how much outer satisfaction and success they may have found. But sooner or later the realization dawns that until one establishes conscious contact with the Source of his existence, there will be unhappiness, dissatisfaction, incompleteness, regardless of how much health or wealth is his lot.

Spiritual healing is much more than a purely physical experience or even a mental experience: Healing is finding an inner communion with something greater, far greater, than anything in the world; it is finding ourselves in God, finding ourselves in a spiritual peace, an inner peace, an inner glow, all of which comes to us with the realization of God with us, the presence and power of God felt. Resting in that peace, the body resumes its normal functions, and those functions are carried on by a power not our own. The body, then, begins to show forth perfect, complete health, youth, vitality, and strength, all the gift from the Lord.

Spiritual healing is the touch of the Spirit of God in man's Soul; and when that touches him, it awakens him to a new dimension of life, a spiritual dimension: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" -- not that the Spirit of the Lord acts as a medicine, not that the Spirit of the Lord acts as an electrical application or as surgery, but because the Spirit of the Lord lifts the seeker into a new consciousness of life, the state of consciousness which the Master described as "My kingdom" which is notof "this world." When man attains that state of consciousness, he lives in a dimension of life other than the three-dimensional one, and he has experiences totally unknown on the human level of life. That is the goal which the world is seeking, even though it does not realize quite what that goal is or how to attain it.

Jesus gave us a glimpse of this higher dimension of life when he said to the impotent man, "Wilt thou be made whole? . . . Rise, take up thy bed, and walk," clearly indicating that God was not going to cure a physical disease,