“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 instruments through which healings take place, because healing is important to everybody.” — JOEL S. GOLDSMITH
JOEL S. GOLDSMITH (1892-1964), a monumental teacher of practical mysticism, devoted most of his life to the discovery and teaching of spiritual principles which he founded and called The Infinite Way.
Joel Goldsmith was born in New York City on March 10, 1892. His parents were also born in New York City, his father on March 10, 1872, and his mother on October 10, 1872. Joel was the first child; he had a brother two years and four months younger than he and a sister two years younger than the brother.
His early life was probably like that of most youngsters of that age and time, even though, young as he was, he later confessed to feeling a certain sense of detachment and even sadness about the world into which he had been thrust by birth, a feeling not usually found in children.
While Joel’s mother and father were God-fearing people of Hebrew ancestry, they were not practicing Jews, and Joel was never taught any of the precepts of the Judaic faith except that all the children were given instruction in the Ten Commandents.
For this family the two principal holidays in the year were Christmas and Easter, not for any religious reason, but because they all liked to give and receive gifts, and these holidays gave them a good excuse for gift-giving. So for the first few years of Joel’s life there was no formal religious training whatever with the exception of “the advice from my mother that obeying the Ten Commandments would keep me out of trouble, make me a decent citizen, and if I had an interest then in religious subjects, I could follow out my search in any way that opened to me, without being handicapped by anyone religious teaching.”
When Joel was a little past twelve, his mother told him that someday he might want to know more about the different churches and religions in the world and especially about God. If he wanted to begin, he could have the opportunity to gain some of that knowledge in the Jewish temple because, traditionally, at thirteen a boy in the Jewish faith takes on the responsibilites of manhood, and then is supposed to begin deciding his future. At about twelve and a half years, therefore, he was sent to a Reform Jewish temple and given some instruction so that he could be confirmed at thirteen.
Joel completed the eighth grade, but his formal schooling terminated after a few months in high school, due to an argument he had with the principal. Even those first eight years were frequently interrupted when he played hooky to steal away to matinee performances of Shakespeare at a nearby theater. Then as always the theater had a tremendous fascination for him. Years later, in fact, when he was conducting an Infinite Way class in Los Angeles, he found himself quoting Shakespeare accurately on the subject of defamation of character, adding proudly, “Not bad after fifty-four years!”
The very day Joel quit school, his father began to teach him all that he knew about the importing business. A few years after that, when he was sixteen and a half, Joel was taken to Europe on a buying expedition as an assistant to his father, who was a buyer of European laces and allied lines of merchandise. To this work Joel brought an innate intuitive faculty that knew exactly the right laces to buy at the right time. So his travels began, at first in connection with the business world that was to occupy him for the early part of his life. There was always a lot of illness in the Goldsmith family when he was a child, and at one time Joel wanted to become a doctor and began reading medical books.
In 1915, whilst on a business trip in England, his father became very ill and was rushed to hospital. He was hospitalized for over two month and apparently near to death’s door when Joel got talking to the father of a girl friend who happened to be a Christian Science practitioner. The Christian Scientist said he would pray for Joel’s father, and shortly after this, to everyone’s amazement, his father was up, dressed, and ready to go home, and for twenty-five years after that knew very little of illness, even surviving his wife by a number of years.
The miraculous recovery of his father led Joel to begin a study of Christian Science, in which he sought answers to the questions that naturally arose in the mind of a person who had traveled the world as he had, questions that kept plaguing him with an urgency that drove him on.
When the United States entered World War I, Joel, in his enthusiasm to “lick the Kaiser,” volunteered in the Marines. He was Stationed at Parris Island and there underwent the rigorous training to which Marines are subjected.
During this time he served as Second Reader in a Christian Science Society organized for a little group of Marines. There were many long hours of pondering on how it was possible to follow the teaching of the Master, Christ Jesus, and go out and kill. It was then that the Bible, which was at his bedside, dropped on the floor and opened to the passage, “Neither pray I for these alone.”
In that moment the passage was illumined for him, and he saw the mistaken zeal in the practice of the churches that opened their doors to pray for victory while none of them was praying for the enemy. Suddenly he knew that the only righteous or effectual prayer anyone could pray is the prayer for the enemy, a form of prayer which from that moment on he began to practice diligently.
After the war was over Joel found that it marked the end of an era for the world as well as for his father’s importing business. By this time handmade dresses had become almost obsolete and mass production of clothing had taken over. Handmade imported lace was no longer in demand, and Joel was called upon to try to hold together the family business. In this effort he failed, and the business collapsed.
In addition to business difficulties Joel became critically ill with tuberculosis and was given three months to live. Since there was no medical hope, he decided that he would seek help from a Christian Science practitioner, which he did, and in three months he made a complete recovery. When Joel was telling of this experience a few years later, a skeptic insisted that a wrong diagnosis had been made and that Joel had never had such a thing, because if he had, it could not have been cured. Joel agreed to submit to an X-ray examination, which showed that he had only one lung, but where the other lung should have been, there was, as he described it to me, a wall of muscle.
After the family business collapsed, Joel once more became a traveling man, selling different kinds of articles, most of them in some way connected with women’s apparel. Even then, before he had been touched by any kind of spiritual experience, his attitude toward selling was quite different from that of the average salesman, which is perhaps why he was so successful.
Even in those early days Joel was intuitively aware of certain spiritual principles, and so he recognized that when a salesman goes into a business house to sell, normally the buyer immediately puts up a defense, and then the salesman is supposed to break down that defense. If a salesman, however, were to go into a business house in the realization that he had a good product and that if the buyer needed it today, it was available to him, and if he didn’t need it that was all right too, the buyer would feel that the salesman was not coming there to make a sale, but coming to be of service.
Although Joel was a master salesman and very successful for a number of years, a time came when his business became less and less, diminishing to the point of no return, even with all the spiritual help that he sought. Still at this time he had no thought of anything other than a business career. It was during that period that he contracted a very bad cold. What happened he tells in his own words:
“I was taken sick in the city of Detroit, went to a building that was filled with Christian Science practitioners, found the name of a practitioner on the board, went up to this man’s office, and asked him to help me. He told me that it was Saturday and that he didn’t take patients on Saturday. That day he always spent in meditation and prayer.
“To this I said, ‘Of course you wouldn’t turn me out looking the way I do,’ and I really was looking bad.
‘No, come on in.’
“And I went in, and he permitted me to stay there two hours with him. He talked to me of the Bible; he talked to me of Truth. Long before the two hours were up, I was healed of that cold, and when I went out on the street I found I couldn’t smoke any more. When eating my dinner I found I couldn’t drink any more. The following week I found I couldn’t play cards any more, and I also found that I couldn’t go to the horse races any more. And the businessman had died.
“Within thirty-six hours after my first spiritual experience, a woman buyer who was a customer of mine said that if I would pray for her she would be healed. The only prayer I knew at that moment was ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ and I didn’t see that that was going to do much healing.
“But she insisted that if I would pray for her she would be healed and there was nothing for me to do but pray. So I closed my eyes, and I am happy to say that I have always been honest with God. I said, ‘Father, You know that I don’t know how to pray, and I certainly know nothing about healing. So if there is anything I should do, tell me.’
“And very, very clearly, as much so as if I were hearing a voice, I realized that man is not a healer. That satisfied me. That was the extent of my praying, but the woman had her healing, a healing of alcoholism.
“The next day a traveling salesman came in and said, ‘Joel, I don’t know what your religion is, but I do know that if you pray for me, I could get well.’
“What are you going to do about that? Argue? No. ‘Let’s close our eyes and pray.’ And so I closed my eyes and said, ‘Father, here’s another customer!’ But while my eyes were closed and nothing was happening, the salesman touched me and said, ‘Wonderful, the pain is gone.’
“That was a daily experience. The only problem was that I had too few customers and too many patients. A transformation had taken place. Where had it taken place? It had taken place in my consciousness, not anywhere else, not outside. It was the same individual whose whole thought had been on business and pleasure. All of a sudden his whole thought was on God and healing, the same individual, only with a transformation such as took place in the experience of Moses, a realization of true identity, an experience that must have taken place in the minds of many others before and since.
“From this moment on there were two men. There was Joel, an individual always hovering around somewhere in the background, but showing tendencies which continuously led to many human mistakes, many human errors of judgment, many human discords, but fortunately only apparent to himself at intervals. On the other hand, there was the individual who on that day of revelation or regeneration was ordained within as a spiritual healer.
“From that day to this I have paid respect to the practitioner for having been responsible for the entire change in my life and for all that has happened to me in a spiritual way since then. . . . It is true that my thirteen years of work prepared me for such an experience, but his was the touch that brought about the transformation. It was he who changed my life, he who was accustomed to spend one whole day every week without taking a patient, without attempting to earn a dollar, without attempting to use spiritual power, one whole day a week in every week just to renew and fulfill himself with the Spirit. And look what that practice of spending a day like that did for me!
This marked the beginning of Joel’s career as an independent practitioner of spiritual healing noted for his remarkable work in transforming people’s lives. After the publication of his seminal book, The Infinite Way, in 1947, Joel traveled throughout the world as a teacher and a healer. Although Goldsmith’s message was neither organized nor advertised, students of The Infinite Way increased in numbers. Today, a worldwide student body exists which continues to practice and preserve his work.
More than thirty books have been compiled from his tape-recorded lectures and classwork including “The Infinite Way,” “Practicing the Presence” and “The Art of Meditation.”
His many books are the result of thirty years of experience in practicing spiritual healing. The above 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 the controversial subject of meditation, Goldsmith alternates instruction with meditation to demonstrate that physical well-being results naturally from attaining a consciousness of oneness with God.
Covering all aspects of spirituality, Goldsmith’s straightforward, non-denominational teachings have helped countless thousands to look inside themselves and find The Infinite Way.
With so many people searching for inner peace, Joel S. Goldsmith’s profound message is being re-discovered and attracting an entirely new audience.