What Is the Infinite Way understanding of the Christ?

And what is the Christ? Is it a man? Is it a person who lived two thousand years ago? I struggled with that a long time, until I realized that the Christ is the spirit of God in man. And you may call it the spirit within, you may call it the Christ, you may call it the Messiah, you may call it Melchizedek. It is that which has no human birth and therefore will never know death.

The Christ is that I that is with us throughout all time and eternity. And the Christ is the realization of a consciousness that knows that there is only one power. That all the powers out here in this world are as naught in the presence of that one power, and that is the Christ. And it was Jesus who embodied that Christ in such full measure that he was called Jesus the Christ. But Jesus was a man as you and I are, who attained the heights of spiritual consciousness. So did Moses, for Moses had the full revelation when he realized I am that I am. Buddha had that realization.

All the great spiritual lights have had it, sometimes only for short periods of time. I’m sure that Jesus lost it when he faced the crucifixion and the garden of Gethsemane and said “Couldn’t you watch with me?” He wanted some help. That was human consciousness still cropping up. And there are times when we reach those heights of consciousness, real heights of spiritual awareness, which is the Christ, for that is our real being. And then we get caught up in the mesmerism of the world and we fall back into it.

Well, now our goal in the Infinite Way is to dissolve human consciousness and to bring about the reign of the Christ on earth, the establishment of that Christ consciousness of one power and one presence. How? How do we do that? In the first place, every time we have a contemplative meditation for the purpose of helping somebody — well, every time we have a contemplative meditation, period — we are dissolving human consciousness. A meditation for the purpose of helping someone never deals with the person but is always dealing with the presence and recognizing the unreal nature of material sense or human consciousness. So every meditation is helping to dissolve human consciousness.

But we as serious Infinite Way students should take time every day to realize the non-power of the carnal mind with its belief of good and evil, and the allness of that spirit God, the allness of the presence of God omnipresent everywhere, barring no place. And that the only person there is in all this universe is God appearing as individual being. And we have to know that about all the insane people in the world that claim to be dictators and have power. We’ve got one now, but there’s always somebody. One time it’s Idi Amin and another time it’s Hitler and another time it’s Khrushchev and another time it’s somebody else.

There’ll always be those people, just as in your experience there will always be these thorns in the flesh, piercing the flesh until we come to impersonalize by seeing that it isn’t a person but it’s a universal mesmeric sense of a selfhood apart from God, never a person. And therefore, because it is impersonal, it has no avenue through which to operate or on whom to operate. Now you see we do exactly the same thing in our world work that we do when we work for individuals. We realize the spiritual identity and we realize the non-power and impersonal nature of this belief of good or evil and it’s nothingness because it has no person. So it doesn’t matter what the problem is, we work with it from the standpoint of those principles.

Does that mean that we’re giving somebody, like Idi Amin, power to continue in that stupidity and ignorance? No. We are helping to strip aside the mask and behold that that is not a person and there isn’t any person that can function that way. Because the only person is God, the divine consciousness expressing love, intelligence, understanding. Sometimes you know the worst form the carnal mind can take is stupidity, it really is guilty of an awful lot of mistakes in the world, the stupidity of the carnal mind. And sometimes it takes the form of good. Being a do-gooder. When you see a do-gooder you can be sure it’s the carnal mind operating and you just eliminate it that way. Not the person, we don’t ever eliminate the person, we don’t ever harm the person, but we see through that carnal mind. And in doing that, if our realization is sufficiently clear, what often happens or what can happen is that there is a change, the person is removed from a position of authority in some way or he has a change of heart. Which sometimes seems very unlikely but the spirit can work miracles, it can do wonders, it can perform things that we could not do. And we don’t do it by the words. I’ve just given you the principles, which you will find in a great many books.

It’s in Beyond Words and Thoughts, the chapter on “World Work for Infinite Way Students”. There’s a wonderful chapter in Realization of Oneness, the last chapter, “Infinite Way Principles and World Affairs”. In Our Spiritual Resources, “The Government Is on His Shoulders”. In The Mystical I — “Do Not Pass by on the Other Side”. And it is beautifully brought out in the 1959 Infinite Way Letters, where it gives you the steps in beginning this world work, and if you haven’t done that, it’s on page 141. Take it and work with that. Another job. You say “there’s no time” but there’s never a dull moment on this spiritual path. There really isn’t, not outwardly and not inwardly. As it becomes blissful inwardly it becomes very active outwardly, until you wonder sometimes and you say “please, God, not quite so fast” but it keeps coming and somehow it gets done.

Joel says here, and this is especially important: “Are you willing to count yourself among those dedicated and consecrated people who have risen above self seeking and who think in terms of universality rather than personality?” Do you see how magnificent the Infinite Way is? I don’t know what can touch it when you stop and you think that here we are, not engaged in healing a few people or lifting them up, but in bringing about the reign of God’s government on earth. Are you willing to give periods of meditation every day to the dissolving of the material sense which holds the world in bondage.

The Christ is hidden inside of you, but you must release that Christ into the world. Be willing to sit in the silence until you have a conscious feeling that God is on the field. And you can divide this into three meditations. Then the Christ is functioning. After you have achieved the awareness of the Christ, realize that this Christ is dissolving the errors of this world, dissolving material sense, and that that realization of the Christ is opening human consciousness to a receptivity to truth. Just to make the statement that human consciousness is being opened to truth is a waste of time. But to have realized the Christ, and then to know that the realization of the Christ is operating in human consciousness, is to make it receptive to truth, and that will be effective.

And I remember when I first went to Hawaii in 1957, at lunch before I left Joel said to me “You are going to be busier” — he had no idea then and neither did I — “than any human being has a right to be.” But he said “Don’t let anything get in the way of that first realization in the morning. No matter how many people are dying on your hands, you forget them and you realize the presence, you realize this Christ is active in your consciousness and operating as your experience.” And all of us must do that. And so it says “Let your first meditation period be only for the purpose a feeling of consciousness of God’s presence. Just feel the warmth of the presence, just feel that Christ presence, that love. You know, that’s what the Christ really means to me, is love.

It was when I was in Hawaii one time, too, and hearing a great deal about some students who believed in the Zen stick, shocking students. Turning inwardly I walked along the Pali Kauai and I thought — the man Jesus for the first time really came alive in my consciousness and I thought — Jesus is love, that’s what the Christ is, it’s love, a wonderful, tender, all embracing, healing love. And that’s what we’re talking about when we realize the presence, the presence of love that would never do injury to anyone. Now when you have felt the consciousness of God’s presence, that is the end of that period of meditation for the world. That’s your first period, just sitting there and feeling the presence. In your second meditation dedicated to world freedom, again achieve a conscious awareness of God’s presence and realize that this realization of the Christ is dispelling material sense in human consciousness. And then begin your third meditation once again with the realization of the Christ, that is the realization of the one power and the one presence, and then recognize that the realization of the Christ is dispelling material sense and opening human consciousness to a receptivity to truth.

Do you see the steps? The first one is realizing the presence, that’s it. The second one is realizing the presence of Christ and that it is dissolving human consciousness. And the third one is realizing the Christ presence, and that it is dissolving human consciousness and making it receptive to truth. So that all of human consciousness will be opened up to the presence of God and there will no longer be then any human consciousness. And people generations from now will say “Human consciousness, what is that that you’re talking about? I never heard of that.” because it will be unknown to the world.