joelgoldsmith.wwwhubs.comBiography of Joel S. Goldsmith - Founder of The Infinite Way

. Self-Improvement-eBooks.com Choose from over 700 personal development ebooks and audios! Learn how you can become a member of Cornerstone Book Club. Claim your free prosperity ebook and email course . . . Click Here for full details. Joel S. Goldsmith (1892-1964) Founder of "The Infinite Way" "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...