God as Consciousness Appears as Form



“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” – Philippians 2:5

“We have the mind of Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 2:16

“Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” – Romans 12:2

There is no such thing as God and. There is no God and man, there is no God and abundance, health, or love. God is infinite, so nothing but God can be. God fills all space, so no room exists for God and someone or God and something. God is the Someone, the something. In other words, God appears individually as you. It is not a case of God and you, but God manifested as individual you.

The life of God is your life. There is no Mind of God and your mind. There is no Spirit of God and your spirit. Scripture says that your body is the Temple of God, so it is not even God and your body, but God as your body.

If you perceive God’s infinite nature, you perceive that God appears as His Son. Therefore, God is the Father and God is the Son. There is not God and the Son, but God the Infinite Invisible appearing as the Son of God. This is the only reason the Master could say, “He who hath seen me hath seen the Father.” – John 14:9.

Unless you understand this identity with God as a universal relationship, the life of the Master is meaningless. If oneness with the Father were the truth about the Master but not about you, then you could not attain oneness, you could not achieve it. Jesus is the way-shower, and the way he lived is the way he is showing you to live, as one with God. Therefore, there is only God expressing as His Creation, as man.

When Scripture says to have that mind in you that was in Christ Jesus, it is telling you that this is possible. Do not think that the mind in Christ Jesus is a different mind that you cannot attain. You may think, “I have a mind. He has a mind. She has a mind.” This is not true. Everyone has the one Mind, and it is the same Mind, no matter who is expressing it or to what degree.

A child’s mind has an innate, an inborn capacity for intelligence, which he later fills with knowledge of specific things. If he had no capacity for intelligence, a child could not learn. You have the capacity to learn however much you desire. Your intelligence is infinite because God is your intelligence. You can have whatever degree of awareness or knowledge you wish by using that intelligence.

Centuries of separation from spiritual reality have focused your intelligence primarily on material and mental subjects. Therefore, your intelligence lacks spiritual illumination. Your intelligence has the same potential for illumination as a child has the capacity for infinite learning.

Some use the one Mind more than others and outwardly appear smarter, but this is not really true. God has not graded intelligence by degree. Everyone is infinitely intelligent, but not everyone uses his intelligence in full measure. Each has the same infinite potential for spiritual enlightenment as he does for intelligence. You may say that the mind of the human race is spiritually unillumined.

Humanity may be humanly intelligent, humanly creative, humanly brilliant, but it lacks spiritual illumination. You may be led to spiritual teaching, and from the moment you open your first book or have your first interview with an enlightened person, your illumination begins. Further enlightenment or spiritual illumination comes in proportion to your seeking.

In other words, you must make the overture, you must originally reach out, you must pursue the search for God. If you seek God 1 percent, God seeks you 99 percent. No matter how much effort you make, it is only a grain of effort because that is all you know. The rest is up to the grace of God. In other words, as you keep moving toward God, you are drawn toward God ever more rapidly, until spiritual illumination dawns.

When this Light dawns in your consciousness, you behold God as infinite and instantly realize that God and anything else cannot be, or God would be that much less than infinite. Therefore, God must exist as the substance of all that is. Then you see that God constitutes all that is.

You no longer look to God for your health because, as the Psalms say, God is the health of your countenance. A power of resurrection does not exist separate from God. God is resurrection. You cannot get health, but you can get God. When you have God, you have health.

In the same way, you cannot get God to give or send you abundance because God is abundance. You cannot have infinite abundance and then some besides that. God is abundance. I am the bread. I am the wine. I am the water. I am the resurrection. I am the life eternal. There is not God and a power of resurrection. God is the resurrection and the life eternal.

God cannot give you a bomb-proof shelter. God already is your fortress, your high tower, and the only bomb-proof shelter that is. When you are hidden with Christ in God, in the spiritual realization of God as your being, then nothing can reach you — not a bomb, a bullet or a poison.

As you see God as the secret place of the Most High, the high tower, the fortress, the rock, the cave — as you see God as bread, meat, wine and water — as you see God as health, harmony, wholeness, companionship or home — only then can all these things come into manifestation.

People may ask you to pray for a home, companionship or marriage for them. Tell them, “I’m sorry. I do not know how to work for those things. Should you find yourself interested in learning about God, I shall be very happy to share what I know, what I have learned, and how I believe you may find God. I would not be surprised that if you find God, you also would find those things you are seeking.”

This is what the Master meant when he said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” – Matthew 6:33. Seek not material things — seek only God and He will add everything else. Thinking of God as a servant to do your bidding, to supply you with whatever you believe to be your need is sacrilegious.

Your mind, from infancy, is already completely intelligent, potentially spiritual. When you attain even a small measure of spiritual illumination, you perceive that God is your consciousness and your consciousness is the substance of all form. God is your consciousness, which appears outwardly as form.

You cannot transfer your consciousness to another, nor can he transfer his consciousness to you. Once you perceive this truth, it forever lifts you above competition. Never again, whether you are in business, the arts, science, the healing ministry or the spiritual ministry at any level, will competition disturb you. You will be free because you don’t have customers, clients, patients or students. You have your consciousness, which externalizes itself as whatever form is necessary to you.

Once you understand that there is no God and, you know that there is no consciousness and. Therefore, you do not have your consciousness and your business. Your business is your consciousness in a specific personalized form. Your customers, clients or students, whom you have gathered through your integrity, represent your consciousness in form. No one can ever take them from you unless you lose your integrity; then, of course, they find their rightful home.

The bread you cast upon the waters is yours; it cannot return to another. The bread you cast forth must return to you because no separation exists between your consciousness, the bread, or the waters. All is consciousness appearing as form, and so it is.

God is the primal Consciousness, the Creative Impulse, the First Cause, which is your consciousness and which appears as safety, security or whatever form is necessary to you. No one can take your externalized consciousness from you because its reality is not a form.

No one can take your money because your money is not money. Your money is your consciousness of God’s infinite supply, externalized. People lose money for just one reason: They have not learned that money is not money, that money is not something separate from God, that money is not something separate from infinity.

If God is infinite, money must be a part of infinity. If God is your consciousness, then your money is part of your consciousness, as is your home, your family, all that pertains to you. Neither time nor space can take them from you, for no material forms exist separate or apart from consciousness. The material reality is consciousness itself appearing as individual forms.

If you have one iota of illumined consciousness, then you have all the health, supply, companionship and home you ever need. If you decide to seek these things, you lose them. When you realize that God and does not exist, you will realize that God is your consciousness.

God is. God appears as your consciousness and your consciousness is the substance of all form associated with you. As you know this, you will never again seek bread, wine, water or life eternal. You will never seek companionship, students, patients or customers. You realize that your consciousness is all this. Your consciousness appears as and forms all these things. Then you see that no separation exists in consciousness.

“Before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” – Isaiah 65:24. The idea of separation can never enter again. Nothing can separate you from God. This is literally true. All the Father has is yours. You don’t experience this because you have a sense of separation born of the materialistic concept that there is a God somewhere, a God and a man, that God is pure and man is a sinner.

How does a sinner get something good from God? The world tells you to be good by attending religious services every week. What is good? How do you conform to some type of good to deserve God? The answer is, you can find no way to get good enough to deserve God. However, you can find a way to realize God as your being. You find that because God is pure, your being is pure, and that truth has washed away all impurity. You forget to be good, and just remember God is your consciousness.

Live with the realization that God is your being, your life, your mind and the only law operating in you. God’s presence is purification, and negative experiences disappear. This happens not because you are good, but because God is good. God is infinite, God is omnipresent and He leaves no room for negativity.

God constitutes your being. God is your consciousness. Because God is infinite, your consciousness is infinite. Therefore, your consciousness appears as form infinitely: Your business, your art, your profession, your science is infinite. If you are a healer, your practice is infinite. If you are a teacher, your student body is infinite. No limit exists at all, unless you embroider yourself in limitation.

To keep yourself free from human rules and regulations, live above time, space, and place. Live in and as God-consciousness. Live, move and have your being in the truth that God is all that concerns you.

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” – Acts 17:24-28.

God is the measure of your being, safety, security, and protection. God is the measure of your life, your intelligence and wisdom. Never limit yourself. Then, you manifest a greater measure of infinity than you ever dreamed possible, for there is no God and. There is only God. God is the life and mind, the intelligence and wisdom of the individual being. God is the substance and law in which you live, move and have your being.

Discard yesterday and tomorrow to live in the ever present and eternal now. Then you will perceive that you project all desire into the future. All regret is a return to the past, both of which are dead, without substance or life. Now is the only life, now is the only reality, now is the only time. The future is only an extension of now.

The tree’s sap must flow from its roots to its branches to form buds, flowers and leaves. If tree-consciousness worried about whether it would get enough rain or sun, it would interfere with the normal, natural flow of life. You interfere with life’s free-flowing by injecting I-ness into the already completed picture. I-ness manifests as fear about the past or concern, anxiety or desire about the future.

You may entertain no personal desire, not even the desire to give, for that, too, feeds the sense of I-ness and may bloat the ego. You must be completely nonresistant, as a leaf rests upon water, letting the water propel it wherever and whenever it will.

You overcome time and space by practicing nonresistance. You triumph over time by living only in the now, steadfastly relinquishing the past and the future. You conquer space by relinquishing the desire to be anywhere else, by resting satisfied in this very place, which is holy ground.

This I-ness, this sense of an “I” apart from God, is the very devil causing discord. For, in reality, “I” is God, as God is I. God constitutes all that you are. Therefore, since you are one with the Father, you say not, “I need bread,” but “I am bread. I am supply. I have supply of which you know not.”

If God is infinite, if God constitutes your being, then your very being contains everything you shall ever need from now unto eternity. You need not try to acquire or attain, but to let what is already embodied within you appear outwardly as form. It is your consciousness, because God is your consciousness. Your consciousness contains all you need — tomorrow, next week, next year and unto eternity.

To know this absolutely, you must develop the practice of entering the golden silence where you can behold and watch as these things appear in your life. If you wanted to compose music, you would not copy what another had written. You would sit in the golden silence and wait until God released within you the melodies that you are to receive. If you were to write poetry, a novel, or a book of truth — it makes no difference what you wish to draw forth — it is already there.

Yet you must develop that inner beholding, that listening attitude of soul that creates an inner silence. To the Voice that calls your name, you shall say, “Speak, Lord; Thy servant heareth.” – 1 Samuel 3:9.

Let this mind that was in Christ Jesus flow through you as pure knowing, and what you need moves into expression, whether it is business, whether you need employees, more capital in your business or new ideas for advertising. What you need does not exist in time and space. It exists within your consciousness. Your consciousness is the substance of all form and activity necessary to your life.

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God as Consciousness in Prayer

You must develop a mode of prayer that becomes a listening ear, an attitude of listening so that God’s grace may flow to, through and from you. Be assured, it will if you live, move and have your being in the realization that God is your consciousness.

You must pray the moment that an appearance of discord presents itself to you. The moment for prayer is when you become aware of discord, when someone asks for help, not five minutes later.

You are never justified in saying, “I’ll pray for you in five minutes,” or “I’ll pray for you in an hour,” or “I’ll pray for you later.” Such an attitude toward healing or prayer work is never justified.

When treating several individuals in prayer, you cannot think of them as one, then enter the golden silence and, by so doing, include them all. You must think of and treat each individual case by itself.

In reality, your prayer treatment does not do something to someone. Your prayer does not do something to something. Always remember this: You do not aim your prayer treatment at doing anything to anyone or anything.

Real prayer treatment is knowing the truth. It takes place within you, and you do not project it onto anyone else. You never give a treatment to a person. You simply know the truth.

When someone asks for help and tells you the nature of his problem, you may remember and share certain truths regarding such situations, and that would be a treatment. Yet whether you know the nature of the problem, or the person, is really not important.

If you understand the principles of healing, then you know the conflict being presented has its source in the subconscious, which is not a mind but a belief in two powers, God and self.

This appearance, this discord has no law of God, no life of God, no substance of God. Therefore, the appearance has no real power to sustain or maintain itself.

If you know the truth in the instant the conflict comes to your attention, you are in no danger of first taking it into your consciousness, then later having to lift it out and up into the Light. You lift instantly by knowing the truth under the principle of nonresistance.

This does not mean that a result always will be instantaneous. You may hear later that the person or situation is better, worse or just the same. You may have to treat again, but you always offer the prayer treatment the moment someone brings the claim to your attention.

If that person returns to your thoughts in an hour, you must immediately pray again. In other words, you cannot rest in peace until you have a sense of freedom within yourself about the case. If you recall it six, eight or ten times in the next twenty-four hours, you treat six, eight or ten times.

When a call for help comes, you instantly realize that only the grace of God can operate as law. There is no law of disease, infection, contagion or heredity. The only law is the law of God.

All conflict arises from the subconscious belief in two powers, God and self. Do not turn from a person or case until you know you are not accepting the illusion, but do understand the impersonal nature of the call.

No one is ever called to handle prayer rapidly until he is prepared for it. In other words, at first you may have as few as three or four calls in a day, then six to ten, or twenty to thirty. By then, you are so in the spirit of realization that you see the illusion as rapidly as calls come, and instantly are able to turn to the next.

The proportion of effectiveness is the same, whether you receive six or thirty calls for prayer a day. The number of calls has nothing to do with healing or prayer work, but with the developed state of your consciousness.

You need not concern yourself with how your healing and prayer work will develop. If you begin with one call, handle that call completely, no matter how long it takes.

You have only one guide: If you were ill and calling for help, how would you like that person to treat your call? That is the way you must handle the calls you receive.

Be satisfied that you have given your utmost understanding and prayer treatment, so help you God. You can do no more. Then, whatever the outcome, you have a clear conscience that you have fulfilled your responsibility at your highest level that moment.

Some make lists and offer prayer treatment every morning or night. If you handle a call when it comes, and as often as you remember it or as the individual calls for help, then you fulfill your responsibility.

The finest results come from dealing with a situation in the moment it touches your consciousness, lifting it into Light, filling yourself and being ready for the next call. So, you never delay praying, or “wait until later.”

Meet the need at its point of contact with your consciousness. Eventually, this is so simple that you can do it in the space of a two-minute phone call. This takes practice and development, and you can do it only by thoroughly handling one case at a time.

At first, you may have to devote an hour to one person. Later, it will boil down to two minutes, but only because you have attuned your consciousness and accepted the principle of nonresistance.

Nonresistance is the principle of healing because you never use Power to heal anyone of anything. You learn in this work that you cannot use spiritual Power. You can use physical power, you can use mental power, but you cannot use spiritual Power.

When you enter the realm of Spirit, Power uses you; you cannot use Power. Power is omnipotence, and you are its servant. Therefore, when you work according to the principle of nonresistance, you do not use Power to cure disease, to provide supply for anyone, or to overcome sin. You just know the truth that every appearance of evil is simply a form of mental malpractice. It is nothing more than the subconscious, which has no law, no cause, no life, no substance and no activity other than what you give it.

Healing is not something you do. Light as Power does the healing by using your consciousness as its servant. When you know truth, you become still and let God speak the Word. Then you hear the “still, small voice” that Elijah heard. This Voice thunders regarding error.

God is reality. God is the goal of life. To live without harmony, health, abundance and companionship is living a very barren life, a life lacking God.

Ascension of consciousness recognizes only God as a goal, only the search for God as a goal, only the attainment of God as a goal. Then you discover the greatest mystery of all — that in attaining God, you have attained health, harmony, wholeness, completeness, companionship, home and abundance with twelve baskets-full left over to share.

“My creed is love. My path is service. My goal is God.” Once you accept God as the goal, only your mode of attainment remains in question. You are not seeking things, but seeking that Mind, which is God, that consciousness, which is God.

Then watch how the consciousness, which is God, becomes your individual consciousness, becomes the substance of the harmonies of life. When you ask, beg, plead, and attempt to get from God only, all harmony becomes automatic.

God as consciousness appears as form, and that consciousness and form are you.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 – 1971
The original Christian Pioneering Mystic,
Platonist philosopher, American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother.


Edna Lister


Edna Lister presented her unique message on the nature of Christed consciousness, “the mind of Christ,” before a Tacoma, Washington audience in January 1933. We owe the existence of this lecture in transcript form to the enthusiastic and determined efforts of Clarissa A. Watkins, who transcribed her shorthand notes into a typed document, found among similar manuscripts in Edna Lister’s personal papers. In an attached note, Clarissa wrote, “To our Most Glorious Leader, Edna Lister: Here are my typed up notes, and please do forgive the delay. We all believe that we should publish as many of your lectures as you will permit. No one has ever brought such a message to earth. Please accept this humble offering of service, C.A.W.”


Related Topics

See Consciousness

See Mind

See Prayer