THE ART OF SPIRITUAL HEALING

THE ART OF SPIRITUAL HEALING is the title of a book based on the personal experience of its author, Joel Solomon Goldsmith (1892-1964) is a modern North American mystic, teacher, author of spiritual texts, and many years of spiritual healing practice. Along with other books on the subject, Goldsmith reveals the spiritual principles which are the foundation for spiritual healing. He alternates instructions with meditations to demonstrate his conviction that since physical health is a manifestation of consciousness, physical well-being is the normal result when the conscious union with God is attained. This book, complete in purpose and unique in approach, provides a straightforward explanation of a mysterious and complex subject to many.

Goldsmith believes that the world needs people who, by devotion to God, are so filled with the Spirit that they can be instruments through which healings occur. He says: “Whoever reads this book will be ready to accept the responsibility to begin healing. It is not your spirituality or mine, nor is it your understanding or mine that will heal anyone. It is our comprehension of God in silence that makes us receptive.”

This book is a challenge to all that involves the behaviour of the tyrannical human ego and an invitation to the greatness of the divine Self in man. It is a true revolution - in the service of great evolution.

The book's orientation is in line with the greatest achievements of Western psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy, as well as Eastern philosophy and yoga, although it does not directly address these issues.

In summary, the author states two basic premises:

1)- That all evils of any kind originate in the negative source of the human ego;

2)- That the liberation of these evils comes only from the positive action of the divine Self.

This distinction between ego and Self is one of Freud's most glorious achievements of modern Western psychology today - a distinction that has been known for millennia by Eastern philosophy, revealed above all by the cosmic poem of the Bhagavad Gita.

Lack of knowledge of the polarity of human nature, ego-Self, is responsible for almost all misinterpretations in the spirituality sector. Man, identified with his negative ego was considered essentially evil, sinful; the idea of self-redemption was considered blasphemy because self-redemption was identical with ego-redemption. For the same reason, according to Jung, in the preface to the Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, the practice of higher yoga, which revolves around the idea of self-redemption, was labelled antichristian. Today, in the face of a better comprehension of human nature, self-redemption is Christ-redemption, Theo-redemption, since our true Self is the “Father in us”, the “Christ within”, the “light of the world”, the “kingdom of God within man”, the “spirit of God that dwells in us”.

Among the great modern psychologists and psychoanalysts, Dr Victor Frankl (1905-1997), while director of the Neurological Polyclinic at the University of Vienna, most clearly distinguished between ego and Self functions. Most of his books coincide very closely with the idea and Joel S. Goldsmith's experiences. Frankl applies in the field of medicine and therapy the same principle, which he calls “Logotherapy”, that is, healing by the Logos, by the individualized God in man.

Logos is the Greek word for the Cosmic Spirit, the Godhead when it reveals itself as the Individual Immanent God.

Divinity, or Universal Reality is present as Individual God in all finite beings; Infinite Essence is present in all Finite Existences, just as Universal Life is present in all living beings in the form of Individual Life.

Victor Frankl, especially in his book on Logotherapy, plays with the binominal Reality and Facticity. Reality is the Infinite Essence, which appears as Facticity in all Finite Existences; UNIVERSAL BEING appears as INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE in countless finite forms.

The most influential modern philosophers and psychologists have come to the logical conclusion that Reality is present in all facticities. But at the level of imperfect free will (ego, persona (mask)), facticities can take on the negative character (evils), the only radical cure of these negative facticities is through the encounter with the Universal Reality, which is always good and beneficial, for evil consists in the illusion of a separate existence from God; and as long as this separatist illusion persists, evil persists, though its external symptoms may be camouflaged by any kind of quackery, material or mental. Suppression of symptoms does not cure the root of evil. Evil at its root can only be cured by an ultra-personal power, by a Reality in man which is beyond facticities, for the action of facticity, as the word itself implies, is always illusory. But no illusion can cure another illusion; the ego does not cure ego, the persona does not cure persona, the fact does not cure fact - only Reality can cure facticities. “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. Truth is the awareness of Reality; when intensely conscious by man, reality releases

all the evils produced by the separatist ego.

This is the fundamental thesis of Goldsmith and all Logotherapy practitioners. It is not about calling on a God external to man, it is about calling on God within man. If it is true that “The Father and I are one, that the Father is in me and I am in the Father”, if it is true that “it is not I (ego) that do the works, but it is the Father in me (Self) who does the works”, then it is evident that no one can heal me but “the Father in me” who is my divine Self.

The presence of the Infinite (Father) in all finite is mathematically certain and undeniable reality. But it is not this objective presence itself that produces the cure of evils; within this divine presence, one can face disease, be sinful and criminal, unhappy and desperate; one can be Judas and Satan because it is not this objective presence that gives health or holiness. But the moment one become conscious of this presence, the moment it truly and deeply lives the truth “the Father is in me, and I am in the Father”, at that moment, it cannot be sick or sinful, because the light of that consciousness dispels any darkness - “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not extinguished it.” In the light of the consciousness of God's presence, disease and sin cease to exist, for the omnipotence of this divine light nullifies all the powers of darkness.

It is enough to create an intense consciousness of the Reality to rectify the falsified Facticities, which are the evils.

Joel S. Goldsmith had no philosophical culture or college degrees; he was a simple dealer; however, his spiritual intuition led him straight to the truth.

If a man achieves 100% of spiritual consciousness, he nullifies any evil, whether in him or in any person who, at that moment, finds himself in the dynamic focus of the healer's consciousness. In his Logotherapy sessions, patients tended to provide their names, addresses, and diseases, but Goldsmith was not interested in these particulars, and during treatment, he erases from his consciousness the illusory facticity of the patient and the disease and only concentrate on the true reality of God. To think of the sick or sickness would be counterproductive - Being aware of the Reality of God’s Presence is the only necessary and sufficient thing to replace the illusion of evil with the truth of Goodness – the only necessary thing to lighten the darkness is to turn on a light!

Goldsmith does not claim that evil does not exist; he admits the existence of evil, but denies that they are part of the Reality of God's world, even though they are part of the man's ego world. Evils are not Theo-created; they are just ego-created; and they exist while ego-consciousness keeps them in existence. The moment ego-consciousness ceases to exist, evils lose their existential basis. Consequently, the evils cannot themselves be overcome. They must be abolished at their source, which is ego-consciousness; if man changes his consciousness, overcoming the self-delusional by the true Self, the evils are overcome.

He insists that it is impossible to create a high degree of spiritual consciousness, to charge the battery of the divine Self, while the man keeps his earth wires connected in the profanities of the world. The experience of silence and loneliness and attunement to the creative forces of the Universe - are indispensable factors for accumulating spiritual energy and utilizing this energy for the healing of evils. But under no circumstances should the healer consider himself a source of healing; the source is only God, the Infinite Reality within all finite. This is how Jesus healed! “Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do”.

Logotherapy and Self-Realization go hand in hand, and whoever finds in itself the God of holiness also discovers the God of sanity and health, and the secret is just this: in raising the consciousness of God's real presence in man!