Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon”

in The Infinite Way by Joel S. Goldsmith

In Chapter 10 of The Contemplative Life, Joel identified eight chapters in The Infinite Way
writings that he said Infinite Way students should know “as well as they know their own names.”
Since then, these have often been referred to as the “most important chapters.” The first one on
Joel’s list is “The New Horizon,” in The Infinite Way. Joel often spoke about this chapter and its
importance, and this document presents several of those quotations from Joel.

Also, Lorraine Sinkler prepared a list of class recordings in which Joel addresses some aspect
of the lesson of “The New Horizon,” at least in a part of the class. That list is provided at the
end of this document.

How the Chapter Came About

“The chapter ‘The New Horizon’ in The Infinite Way was never written. It was not written as
the other writings are written. It came through in an entirely different way. It came through in a
dream, word for word as it appears in that chapter. It came through in a dream written in gold
old English lettering on a red silk banner that was suspended from my ceiling to my bed. I
awakened out of the sleep to find that banner still there, and I took the pencil and paper from my
night table and copied down that message word for word. Afterwards I saw this banner fold
itself up and disappear, and it has never reappeared, and that is the chapter ‘The New
Horizon.’”1

********

“Personally, I’m not one who dreams too much, but in my lifetime, I suppose I have dreamed at
least a hundred times. But I’ve never yet known one of those dreams that had any significance.
At least I’ve never seen anything of it that would indicate that it did. They all seemed to be
something nonsensical that more or less arose from eating too late before going to bed, or
something else. I’ve never had a dream in my life but one that had significance, and that one
was the dream that gave me the chapter ‘The New Horizon’ in the book The Infinite Way. I was
asleep when that came. But I knew I was asleep, and I knew it was there hanging over my bed,
and I forced myself awake, and when I awakened it was still there, and I wrote it down. And
that’s the chapter ‘New Horizon,’ which is the most important chapter in all of our
writings.”2

The Importance of the Chapter

“For the serious student, the most important chapter in The Infinite Way is ‘The New
Horizon,’ because in it can be found the explanation of the reinterpretation of what you behold.
In other words, this chapter explains clearly that the entire human picture is mesmeric
suggestion, and it is this suggestion of a selfhood apart from God that you are called upon to
reinterpret.
1
Tape 112, Side 1, 1955 Kailua Study Group, “Cosmic Law and Realized Christ.”
2
Tape 236, Side 2, 1958 Manchester Closed Class, “Healing.”
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 2 of 8

“After you have practiced this for a while, it becomes automatic for you, as you see people and
events, to translate or reinterpret them, and then you really see them as they are without any
mental gyrations.”1

********

“For those who seek to understand clearly the spiritual sense of life, the chapter ‘The New
Horizon’ in The Infinite Way, sometimes called ‘The Practitioner’s Chapter,’ is the most
important writing in the entire message. Most people are not so much interested in the
spiritual sense of life as they are in enjoying a harmonious physical sense of life. A harmonious
physical sense of life is very pleasant and, of course, it is much more comfortable than an
inharmonious sense of physical life. But we, as students of The Infinite Way, should not be
satisfied merely with a physical sense of health because regardless of what degree of harmony
we may be experiencing today, it all can be changed by tomorrow. We are making the
transition, as rapidly as possible, from the physical sense of health to the spiritual sense of
health. And with the spiritual sense of health comes the discovery that health is not dependent
upon the organs and functions of the body…it is a quality and an activity of God!”2

********

“Study well the chapter ‘The New Horizon’ in The Infinite Way. Never let this chapter get
stale. Never neglect this chapter. It is for you who are advanced enough to understand a
principle of life—not have mere blind faith in an unknown God.”3

********

“I will also call your attention to the October Letter in The Infinite Way Letters of 1958 and ask
you to study those for many months, and for the same reason. This shows you how to free
yourself of the mesmeric suggestion of two powers, and of course, the most important writing
on this entire subject is the chapter, ‘New Horizon’ in The Infinite Way.4

********

“Now, here’s what happens if, in your experience, The Infinite Way proves to be your message.
The very first citation here [on the list of most important chapters] is the chapter “The New
Horizon” in The Infinite Way. In this chapter you will find the basic principles that led to this
becoming a teaching of its own. You will understand why other methods of healing will not mix
with this one. You will quickly see that in our work, it is not necessary to know the name of the
patient. It is not necessary to know the name of the disease. It isn’t even necessary to know
whether it’s a disease or a business problem, although there are times when it is helpful to know
some particular problem that is disturbing the individual, as for instance, if it is just a physical or
mental claim. You will find that all of the necessary principles for the development of
consciousness in healing these conditions are to be found in this chapter “The New Horizon”
in The Infinite Way.5

1
Conscious Union with God (1962 edition), Chapter 4, “The Nature of Error,” page 89.
2
The Heart of Mysticism, May 1956 Letter, “A Beholder,” pages 337-338.
3
Tape 12, Side 1, 1952 Honolulu Class Series One, “The Thunder of Silence.”
4
Tape 413, Side 1, 1961 Manchester Special Class, “Foundation of Spiritual Healing and Living.”
5
Tape 453, Side 1, 1962 Mission Inn Class, “Special References for Study and Practice.”
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 3 of 8

The Meaning of the Chapter

“This is without any question of doubt not only the deepest lesson of the message of The Infinite
Way; it is the one I seldom give. Probably not more than four times in eight years have I given
this lesson, and then not in just this way. … Actually, it forms the chapter ‘The New Horizon,’
which I still find very few students making a serious effort to understand or to demonstrate. But
this is the lesson of the chapter ‘New Horizon.’ This is the lesson on healing, because if you
are able to heal spiritually without knowing this lesson, you will be very apt to lose your healing
gift eventually because it engenders a blind faith or a faith in a personal gift, whereas spiritual
healing has nothing to do with either blind faith or with a personal gift.

“Spiritual healing has to do with the understanding of the spiritual principle of life, and that is
this: God is the principle of life, and God maintains and sustains this universe, including
everyone in it, in absolute spiritual integrity. Whereas on the other hand, you have an
appearance world, a dream world, a mesmeric world, which has no law to support it, no
substance to sustain it, no continuity except that which we, in our ignorance, give it by not
recognizing that it is constituted of nothingness, a dream fabric. Once you perceive this, you will
have a healing principle which will stand by you regardless of the nature of the problems that
1
are brought to you.”

********

“Reinterpret everything you see, hear, taste, touch and smell. Reinterpret it back to its original
state, which is Godhood. Be sure that you practice right identification, knowing that all that
appears to you is God appearing as the individual man, woman or child; God appearing as the
plant, the animal, the crops; and then knowing what the human eye sees is the misconception of
that divine idea. What the human eye sees, what the human ear hears, is the false picture
presented by this thing I call ‘hypnotism’ or ‘suggestion.’ It is the same thing that presents the
two tracks coming together in the distance, or presents the sky sitting on the mountain, or
presents the imaginary white poodle. I really do not care what name or term you find for it. Just
be sure you are willing not to get so absolute that you won’t reinterpret what is appearing to you
in the scene.

“In the book The Infinite Way, the most important chapter for the metaphysician is ‘The
New Horizon.’ This chapter is the explanation of what I have just said: the reinterpretation of
what you behold. In other words, it tells you clearly that the entire human picture is mesmeric
suggestion. It is a suggestion coming to you of a selfhood apart from God. You are called on to
reinterpret it. What happens after you have done that for a while? You don’t have to try to do it
anymore. It becomes automatic. As you see people and events, you translate them, or
reinterpret them. You really see them as they are, without any mental protest.

“That is one reason why we need so little treatment in this work. Because the very moment a
person, place or thing presents itself to us, we immediately say, ‘I know you – God appearing!’
Then the second thing: ‘Oh, but how sick or sinful!’ That we can reinterpret. We say, ‘That is but
the false sense of God appearing. That is the suggestion, the human sense of things, and is
purely illusory.’ As you learn not to fight it or battle it, you come into oneness with the Reality
and that’s all there is to it.”2

1
Tape 113, Side 2, 1955 Kailua Study Group, “The Secret of the Healing Principle.”
2
Consciousness in Transition, Chapter 5, “The Nature of Error,” pages 79-80.
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 4 of 8

********

“In the early days of Infinite Way work, or rather I should say the earliest days, students were
shocked by that chapter ‘New Horizon,’ in which it says that God does not enter the human
scene, and there is no God in the human scene. And there isn’t! If there were a God in the
human scene, the human scene would be divine, spiritual, perfect, eternal, and harmonious,
instead of being a universe of temporalities—temporary good, temporary evil, mortality, sin,
disease, and death. There can’t be a God in that scene. There is no God in that scene.”1

********

“No, we don’t want physical health. I don’t mean that we un-want it. I mean that is not the object
of our work. Just because a patient says, “I have no fever” and “My body seems all right,” that
isn’t our work. Our work is to realize that even the appearance of physical health is only a
misinterpretation of the divine health which is life eternal. That goes back to ‘New Horizon’ in
the book The Infinite Way. Every human picture is mesmeric suggestion. Every human
picture is a finite presentation of the infinite—even the good ones! Even the good ones! Ask
some of your millionaires whether they think it so good to be a millionaire. Ask some of the
healthy people whether they are happy or contented. No, every human picture!”2

********

This will lead you to see eventually why the chapter, ‘New Horizon,’ emphasizes that the
entire human experience is illusory in that there is no substance in it, no life, no continuity. It
exists only while we perpetuate it in thought. When we’ve dropped it from thought, it’s as dead
as yesterday’s newspaper and some of today’s, too.3

********

“Now, you know that in our advanced work such as The Thunder of Silence, or our
practitioners’ chapter, The New Horizon, and in any of the teachings that I have given to
practitioners, you will find that I have brought forcibly to your attention that behind all of the
discords of the world is hypnotism, a mass hypnotism, not a hypnotism from one individual to
another so much as a mass mesmeric sense that binds us, and it is not a subject that is easily
understood.

“I know it is not easily understood how there can exist a mesmerism that binds us when we’re
not even aware of it. When you are free of that hypnotism, you can see the world as it is and
when you’re not free of it, you can only see it from the hypnotized standpoint. For instance,
from the hypnotized standpoint, you have a fear of your body; you have a fear of lack. That’s
the most natural thing in the world because that’s what the hypnosis does to one. It makes one
think that you live as a body, and so you want nothing to happen to that body for fear it’s
happening to your life.

“Now here is what happens when that hypnotism lifts. If you were to look out of this door onto
that garden you would notice those trees, and at some stage or other some of those palm
fronds would be brown, dead, about to fall off. You’ve all witnessed the palm fronds falling

1
Tape 148, Side 2, 1956 Second Steinway Hall Practitioner Class, “Christ Attained.”
2
Consciousness in Transition, Chapter 17, “Opening Consciousness to Truth,” pages 217-218.
3
Tape 114, Side 2, 1955 Kailua Study Group, “How to Pray.”
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 5 of 8

when they’ve reached a certain stage of their development. And you say, ‘Well, it’s a dead leaf
or a dead frond, a dead branch, and it falls off.’

“Now, in the hypnotized state, we would say, ‘You see, everything dies and so I will die.’ And all
around you as you see flowers dying, animals dying, people dying, you become impressed with
that sense of the inevitability of death and you think, ‘So will I die.’ That’s all based on the fact
that we believe that we have a relationship like that frond; in other words, that we are a branch,
or that our body is ‘us.’ And you see, the minute that hypnosis is lifted, you’ll find out that none
of that is true. If every branch falls off, the life of the tree is still there. It will be there forever, for
the life isn’t in the tree. The life is God Itself. If you remove the whole tree, the life will still be
there and will appear as another tree in its due time.

“So with this, once the hypnotism begins to lessen. You will see that this body isn’t me. This is
my body, but I am invisible. The minute you perceive that, you will understand that this body
changes. In my younger days, doctors told us that we get a new body about seven years. Then
they told us every three years, and now they begin to tell us it’s every year that the whole
bloodstream changes; that the molecules of the skin and the pores change; and that the whole
structure of our body changes once a year, so that at the end of that period, none of the current
body is left any more. We’re a whole new creation.

“Well, you see, literally we have died. That is, our bodies have died, but that which constitutes
us has raised up a new one. As a matter of fact, It is doing that all the time. This hair grows out
and is cut off, and more grows. These fingernails are cut off, and more grow. The skin sloughs
off, and more skin forms. And so it is that the body is continually sloughing off, dying, and being
reborn, but you and I go on forever. We have come from infancy to our present stage, and with
this hypnotic influence of the world removed, you’re going to learn that you go on forever, even
if the whole body were buried or cremated. It would make no difference. You will already have
formed a new body long before they’ve moved you down to the mortuary. You will have formed
a whole new body, and so your whole fear of death is overcome. You no longer are concerned
what they do to this temple because in three days, I will raise up a new one. And three days can
really mean three seconds. Instantly we are renewed.”1

********

“And so it is that I’ve heard people say, ‘I’ve read these books for years, and I can’t do anything
with them.’ I don’t doubt that. I think it was in either Metaphysical Notes or Consciousness
Unfolding, that I said to the class that the whole secret of The Infinite Way was in one chapter—
‘The New Horizon’ in the book The Infinite Way—and that if that chapter were known,
nobody would ever need to know anything else.

”A lady came to me a few weeks later and said that she’s memorized it and nothing happened.
And I don’t doubt that. Because you see, the mental level isn’t the level of demonstration; the
intellectual level isn’t the level of demonstration.”2

********

1
Tape 181, Side 2, 1957 Kailua Advanced Class, “Third Degree—Surrendering Human Sense of Health,
Supply, Peace.”
2
Tape 195, Side 1, 1957 Second Halekou Closed Class, “The New Dimension.”
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 6 of 8

“Remember the import of tonight’s lesson – it is covered, too, in ‘New Horizon’ of The Infinite
Way. It is covered now in another way, another angle, another sense, so that you can see that
we are not to be satisfied even with good human pictures. We are immediately to translate
them. We are not to be satisfied by human physical health. We are not to be satisfied with
physical wealth. Don’t be satisfied, either, with the mere fact that you have a loyal wife, a loyal
husband, or a loyal friend. Sometimes when your dependence is in the human, you find
humans turn on you. They do that very often. But if we are always reversing that picture and
saying, ‘I know that every bit of good here is the infinite good of God individualizing itself in my
experience; I know that all of this good coming to me is God’s good,’ then we have nothing to
fear. We don’t have to rest there and hope that this good human is going to keep on being good
or friendly or honest. Do you follow that?

“The whole essence tonight is: Do not let us either be good humans or be satisfied with good
humanness! Let us not be engaged in a ministry of making sick people well or poor people rich,
when actually our work is that of spiritual unfoldment.”1

The books and recordings from which these quotations are excerpted are currently under copy
protection. This document was prepared for educational purposes under the Fair Use clause of
the U.S. Copyright Act, exclusively for participants in the Goldsmith Global Online Tape Group.
Please respect the copyright on this material.

1
Consciousness in Transition, Chapter 17, “Opening Consciousness to Truth,” p. 223.
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 7 of 8

“New Horizon Tapes”

Because this chapter came to Joel in a dream, there are no class tapes that are source material
for the chapter. Joel said that he seldom gave the lesson that is in “The New Horizon.” Lorraine
Sinkler prepared the following list of recordings in which Joel addresses some aspect of the
lesson of “The New Horizon,” at least in some part of the class. This list was presented in A
Compendium of Joel S. Goldsmith’s Infinite Way Writings and Tape Recordings, published by
Mystics of the World.1

Note: For the online tape group session for the chapter, “The New Horizon,” we selected Tape
113, Side B, “The Secret of the Healing Principle.”

#12: 1952 Honolulu Class Series One

Side A: “The Thunder of Silence”
Side B: “Side One, continued”

#46: 1953 First New York Practitioner Class

Side A: “Treatment and the Middle Path”
Side B: “Treatment with the IS”

#60: 1954 Chicago Practitioner Class

Side A: “Nature of Error”
Side B: “Contemplation, Meditation”

#94: 1954 Portland Practitioner Class

Side B: “Flesh and Flesh”

#95: 1954 Portland Practitioner Class

Side A: “Flesh and Flesh, continued”
Side B: “The Word and Words”

#113: 1955 Kailua Study Group

Side B: “The Secret of the Healing Principle”

#128: 1955 Kailua Study Group

Side B: “Bear Witness to the Universal Nature of Illusory Error”

#149: 1956 Second Steinway Hall Practitioner Class

Side B: “Summary of the Class on The Infinite Way”

#152: 1956 Second Steinway Hall Closed Class

Side B: “God Realization Dissolves Material Sense”

#169: 1956 Portland Open Class

Side B: “The Supreme Demonstration”

#177: 1956 New York Laurelton Hotel Closed Class

Side A: “The Revelations”
Side B: “Meditations”

1
www.mysticsoftheworld.com/
Notes about the Chapter “The New Horizon” in The Infinite Way Page 8 of 8

#195: 1957 Second Halekou Closed Class

Side A: “The New Dimension”
Side B: “The Inner Universe”

#211: 1958 Second Chicago Closed Class

Side A: “The World or My Kingdom, Law or Grace”

#220: 1958 New York Closed Class

Side A: “Fabric of Nothingness”

#233: 1958 London Advanced Class

Side A: “Freeing Ourselves from Universal Claims”

#289: 1959 New York Closed Class

Side A: “The Infinite Way Principles of God—The Fabric of Being—Impersonalization
and Nothingization”
Side B: “Side One, continued”

#349: 1960 Second London Closed Class

Side A: “’This World’ and ‘My Kingdom’”
Side B: “The Middle Path”

#418: 1961 London Open Class

Side A: “Rejecting Appearances and Concepts”

#421: 1961 London Closed Class

Side A: “First Steps in Spiritual Healing”
Side B: “Second Steps in Spiritual Healing”

#428: 1961 October Los Angeles Special Class

Side A: “Laying the Axe at the Root”

#521: 1963 Kailua Private Class

Side A: “Incorporeal God, Man and Universe”

#546: 1964 Oahu / Maui Series

Side A: “Between Two Worlds”
Side B: “Between Two Worlds—Material Sense, Spiritual Discernment”

#547: 1964 Oahu / Maui Series

Side A: “Between Two Worlds—Personal Sense, Spiritual Being”
Side B: “Between Two Worlds—Material Sense, Spiritual Consciousness”

#549: 1964 Oahu / Maui Series

Side B: “Between Two Worlds—Mystical Power”

#551: 1963 Instructions for Teaching The Infinite Way

Side A: “The Simplicity of the Healing Truth”
Side B: “’My Kingdom’ and ‘This World’”