Live the Answer Now

If I title tonight, it will be an invitation to live in the answer. If I can invite everyone who has a dream to live in it as though it were true, I am convinced from experience that gradually and unnoticed it would suddenly erupt into some objective fact. The fact would be the dream made visible. This is based upon not only one’s personal experience and those of others with whom they have spoken; it’s based upon an eternal vision: That the spiritual states of the soul are eternal; distinguish between man and his present state; that man passes through states, he passes on but states remain forever. Man passes through states like a traveler who may well suppose that the places through which he has passed exist no more…as a man may suppose that the states through which he has passed exist no more. The states remain permanent, they are forever. I could this very moment put myself into the state of being extremely poor and I will not need the help of anyone or government in the world to lose everything that I have and become dependent on society. Or I could, without asking the help of anyone, assume that I am wealthy and without doing anything consciously about it—oh, I’ll be forced and compelled into action, I’m not denying that, or maybe I need not—but the state has its own way of externalizing itself if I the occupant remain faithful to that state. If I get into a state and remain faithful to it, it has its own power and wisdom to externalize itself because I give it by occupancy. So I ask, what would the feeling be like? What would I do if it were true? Just how would I see the world if it were true? Well then, in my Imagination begin to do all these things. In my Imagination just do it.92 ¶1

Here is a letter given me this past week. She said, “A friend of mine who is a Mormon has said to me time and again, ‘You’re always reading the Bible, but you never go to church.’” And she explained to her friend that she doesn’t feel the need for a church. She likes reading the Bible and coming to her own conclusions or looking for parallels in scripture that would parallel her own experiences. Well, one day the doorbell rang and here is her friend with a group of missionaries from the Mormon Church. They’ve come to convert her. So she said, “For a moment I wanted to say I’m busy, but I couldn’t do that to my friend. The others were total strangers, they were missionaries. So I said to myself, let them in. No matter how long they remain, they must have a moment when they have to depart and so I would tolerate it. So they came in and started to convert her. Every time she interrupted them by saying, trying to express an opinion of her own, they silenced her. Her friend said, ‘You know, I’m worried about you, terribly worried.’ Well, there came that inevitable moment when they had to say goodbye, leaving the one unconverted. She said, ‘That night as I retired, I was thinking of the day, the events of the day, and I wondered how someone could give so much love, such devotion, such sincerity, such time, energy and money to what I would call “reverent baloney.” Here, all this devotion to such a false god. So that night, dwelling upon it, I fell asleep and this was my dream.’”92 ¶2

Now if you’re not familiar with our concept of dreams, let me quote the 12th of Numbers: “God speaks to man through the medium of dream and makes himself known unto man in vision” . So she fell into this dream. She found herself in a very strange land. She said, “It could have been the moon…just a barren, barren state, all craters all over the place. It could have been the moon from the pictures we’re now receiving back from the moon. There was an enormous long roadway and on it hundreds and hundreds of people were walking, all in the same direction. I enquired where they were going. They weren’t going any place, they were departing from…they were leaving ‘the girl.’ So she inquired, ‘What’s the girl? Who is the girl?’ and they said, ‘the haunting girl.’ Then she asked the question, ‘Haunting with what? What’s all this haunting about?’ Each told her when she asked, they all gave the same answer and they said to her, ‘The voice…there is a voice within her that is screaming and screaming all the time.’ So she said, ‘I’m very curious here on earth and I was equally curious there in my dream, so in spite of their one-way direction I continued in the opposite towards the girl. I came to this very pathetic creature, the girl yes, and here is a voice screaming from her body. I felt sorry, I felt sympathetic; and suddenly the voice is screaming from me, and she gets up and she walks away cured, and then I woke.’”92 ¶3

But I did not lose the lesson—how discriminating one must be! If I give my attention to anything and contemplate it, I will become that which I behold. And here I am now in sympathy with this state, and so I become the very thing I entertained. I entertained it and entered that state. So my Father taught me a great lesson in this experience of a dream: that no matter how I think I am awakened in this world, I’m not exempt from falling into any unlovely state in the world.”92 ¶4

And from this we realize that “We then do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep that the Soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it left paradise following the serpent” .92 ¶5

So here, the wisest of God’s creation is personified as a serpent . And the wisdom of God and the power of God is defined for us in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians as Jesus Christ . So we will see one personification of this power in the form of the serpent who told man, told woman, “You will not surely die. You’ll become as the gods knowing good and evil.” You’ll go right into a world of death, but yet not surely die. You will seem to those who see your departure and they cannot follow you, as one who died. But to you, you have not had the experience of death, because you cannot feel yourself die. You’re restored in a body same as before—new, nothing missing, young, unbelievably and unaccountably young, because you departed when things were falling apart. You were losing all your senses, losing all your functions, and here suddenly you’re restored and you’re new. So I say, you will not surely die. And he proved himself correct to those who can see, whose vision is open, and see those who have departed this life not gone at all but restored and new and young.92 ¶6

So here, you fall into a state either deliberately or unknowingly. But what you contemplate you’re going to become. So we think that the world…so you’re taught, and all the wise men of the world they’re making their plots and their plans and they really believe that history is an inevitable progress towards a climax of good in this world. Well, it isn’t. The climax has already occurred: Jesus’ words on the cross “It is finished” marks the end of one age and the beginning of a new age, an entirely different age; and all are moving into that new age.92 ¶7

How true this statement of Blake’s is. I have no experience to confirm it or to support it, but Blake treated every thing as a man…this house to him would be a man… because everything is barren where Man is not. He treated Space as a person, he called it woman. He treated Time as a person and he called it “the eternal youth, male, man.” So everything to him was Man and Man is God. There’s nothing but God and God is Man. So here, he makes this statement—and he speaks of the play of 6,000 years—“And every 200 years a door opens to Eden.” Every 200 years a door opens to Eden, but the whole play is taking place now. We think it’s moving in one direction. And the whole thing is taking place and there are intervals of 200 years where an individual could enter the new age.92 ¶8

Now let me give you a vision of this lady. She said, “I went to bed and I was simply going over the events of the day. I wasn’t asleep, my eyes were shut, and suddenly there appears to my inner eye a very long table. At one end of the table here is a judge dressed in black robes and white wig and holding a gavel. I wondered, ‘Why am I here or why is he here?’ But he was looking at me, his whole attention glued on me. Then a voice from within me proclaimed, ‘The incurrent eyewitness, the incurrent eyewitness.’” She said, “I had never heard the word before, it was completely new to me, new as the judge was new. So I simply opened my eyes and got out of bed and sought a definition of this word. So I went to the dictionary and looked up the word.” Well, evidently it’s not an exhaustive dictionary and she came back with the meaning, which concerned her, from the root “incur, to incur a debt or to incur displeasure.” So when I got her letter, I too went to mine, but it happens to be the 3rd edition of the Webster’s International Dictionary, it’s unabridged. This is how the word “incurrent” is defined in my dictionary: “giving passage to a current that flows inward.” Then they give you how they use the word, “in an incurrent pore on a sponge, it flows inward.”92 ¶9

Here is a basin of water and you put the sponge there, and it flows inward, absorbed right inward not outward. So the current is moving inward. She is now the incurrent eyewitness. She now by this vision of hers proved to me at least that she has been actually conditioned by divine providence for spiritual communion. Not a thing anyone in this world can do to stop it. And whether she wants to do it or not, she can’t help it, she’ll be compelled to do it. Because inwardly she is already awake and this young lady—she’s young, mother of two small children—she will bring forward vision after vision to parallel the revelation of scripture.92 ¶10

For scripture only recalls finished history, that’s all that it is. The whole thing is done. People think it was done in the past then came a break, then came something else. Blake describes it as the written, “the divine written law of Horub and Sinai.” That’s the Old Testament. “And such,” said he, “is the holy gospel of Mt. Olivet and Calvary…and it’s done!” One marks one age which is this age, and if you know of one condition in this world that Man could experience that isn’t openly described in the Old Testament, you tell me one. Every conceivable horror in the world is in that Old Testament. Every…well, genocide…we speak of it now with Hitler trying to rub out the Jews. It’s all in the Bible. We speak of this, that and the other as something new. The Old Testament records openly every crime, every horror, every violence in the most detailed manner. You will think, “Are there any decent people in the world?” These are only states. They are not talking of individuals; they’re speaking of states, and describing these states in the most minute detail.92 ¶11

And the New Testament is the entrance of the new age. Where the individual—it’s all the individual, it’s not collective, it’s all the unit— the one moving into an entirely different age. The whole thing was plotted. You read the New Testament, read it as though it happened to one person, read it in that manner as a biography.92 ¶12

But know that he’s only recording states and that the whole thing is going to unfold in you. But everything said there you’re going to experience; and then, and only then, will you know who the Lord Jesus Christ is, who God the Father is.92 ¶13

As we told you last Monday night…last Friday night, pardon me…where he made this wonderful statement and he couched it in a little poem and called it A Little Boy Lost. Well, as you read it, it’s a beautiful poem only six little verses, but what a revelation! For those who were not here, this is what he said, “Naught loves another as itself, nor venerates another so, nor is it possible for thought a greater than itself to know. And Father, how can I love you or any of my brothers more?” Well, when the priest heard this he took the little boy by the hair and then screamed with the trembling zeal of the priest, “What fiend have we here?” and then he burns the little boy as he had burned others before.92 ¶14

Well, the little boy is everyone in this world. You come to these conclusions based upon inward experience when you come to the conclusion that you cannot transcend the thinking being. It’s impossible for me to actually know a greater than myself. Well, if God the creator who created the whole vast universe wants me to love him and wants me to know him, he has to become me; for I can’t discover other than myself. So God becomes as I am that I may be as he is. If he does not become as I am, I am left on the outside because I could never know God. I could not in eternity know a greater than myself, for I am a thinking being; as a thinking being, and if it’s impossible for thought a greater than itself to know, well then, let him become me. Well, he did. God became Man that Man may become God. Before he became man, he was God the Father; therefore, if he becomes me I must one day discover that I am God the Father. If he is a father, then there is a child somewhere. And so, you make the discovery of who you are. Until that moment you didn’t know him. Suddenly you meet him and he calls you Father and there is no uncertainty as to this relationship. So only the Son can reveal the Father . By no other way in the world could man ever know he’s God the Father unless God’s only begotten Son calls him Father. That Son is personified in scripture as “eternity” and contains within himself everything.92 ¶15

Now this is the Son who will do all of the Father’s will: “I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart who will do all my will” . He will not rebel; he’ll do the will of the Father…the son of Jesse. Well, Jesse means “I am.” That is God’s name forever and forever. His name is I AM throughout all generations forever , and that’s the father of David. I have found in David, the son of I AM, myself, a man after my heart who will do all my will.92 ¶16

So here, we put it into this play that’s finished and he plays all the parts. You read the story of David and you will think, if this is the honored David, the great King of Israel, what a rascal! He sends the husband into battle knowing he’s going to be killed so that he could get his wife; then he simply dances in the nude before the ark; then he does everything you think man wouldn’t do of that noble stature. But here is David, a man who will do every state, play every state, and still remain faithful to his Father whom he knows to be God. In the end, he’ll reveal every one in this world as God the Father. That same David, not another David, there’s only one Son. And he’s going to take every person in this world.92 ¶17

Now there’s a lady—who isn’t here tonight, and she hasn’t been here since our closing night on the 15th of December—but on that night, I went back to wish a few Merry Christmas and said we would meet in the year. I wished her a Merry Christmas and she said to me, “Neville, I want to tell you, I have had the first three experiences.” I said, “You’ve had the first three experiences and this is the first time that I have learned of it? And you haven’t even told me the best?” Well, she said, “I’m embarrassed.” I said, “Why should you be embarrassed? You should be screaming from the rooftops this glorious thing that has happened to you.” She said, “I’m now waiting eagerly for the fourth, which is the descent of the dove.” So I asked her if she would write and tell me. Well, so far she hasn’t written, but it has been now a month. She tells me she has had the three as described from this platform: the resurrection and birth from above; the discovery of the fatherhood of herself and she’s a lady; and then the severance of the curtain of her own body from top to bottom and the ascent in a serpentine form into heaven; waiting now only for the descent of the dove. And I haven’t the letter. But I can tell you, because she told me here the night we closed on the 15th of December. So, I don’t want to ride her, but I do wish she would simply put it into the written form so I would have some record from her; because I’m only repeating now what she told me in words. But my friend Bob and my friend Benny, they did write it (I have those at home) and they are recorded in their own handwriting. I wish she would. And she is a teacher, by the way, a school teacher, ex, but nevertheless she can’t say that she can’t write.92 ¶18

I tell you tonight, you dream nobly, the most glorious dream in the world. It may seem an impossible dream but you invite it. How do you invite it? By feeling yourself right into the situation of the wish fulfilled. What would the feeling be like were it true? As you feel yourself right into it, go right into it, and wear it as you would a suit of clothes so that it feels normal, it feels natural. When it takes on all the tones of reality, all the sensory vividness, you have it, you’re wearing it. Then in a way that no one knows, it will suddenly appear in your world. This suddenness is only, I would say, the eruption of a continuous thing, for it was started in motion when you wore it; and then the suddenness is simply a hidden continuity coming to the surface.92 ¶19

If you take this in mind and you dwell upon it, you will see that someone is given credit for this, that and the other, for everything has happened before. The most original thought in the world is divine plagiarism…it’s all done. And so, you get into a certain mood and you’d be amazed the ideas that will come to you while you’re in that mood. If you want to be known in this world, feel that you are known. You’ll be amazed how things will re-shuffle themselves in your world, and then if you really want the silly publicity of the world, you’ll get it. It may not be very flattering, but you’ll get it if you want to be known.92 ¶20

But, whatever you want, assume that you have it. As you’re told in scripture, “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will” . Let no one divert you. Go about your Father’s business and do his will by simply living in the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Now you try it. May I tell you, it will not fail you…it can’t fail you. It’s simply a principle, but we are the operant power. It does not operate itself; we have to do it. I can tell you from now to the ends of time, and you may go to bed night after night still in the old state and never change the state.92 ¶21

Now states are permanent; you have to get out of the state.92 ¶22

And do you know, I’ve had moments where just discussing some third matter as it were…a lady came home to discuss one problem and we got off on something entirely different on a higher level. She had this problem with her stomach…she couldn’t eat certain foods as they disagreed with her, and she’d gone to doctor after doctor after doctor. I took her off that state and we were discussing something entirely different, and then I said, “Let’s go into the silence.” So we did, went into the silence on an entirely different matter. She lived—if you’re not familiar with New York City, Staten Island is across the river, and there’s a Staten Island boat, a ferry that would take, oh, a good part of a half an hour to get there—she went over to Staten Island. There’s a very large Germanic element in Staten Island. So when she got off she was hungry and without thinking of her stomach and what she could not eat, she went to a German restaurant and ate all the cabbage and all the sausages and all the things in the world. It didn’t dawn on her that she had done this until hours later when she had no distress.92 ¶23

Now, I’m not a doctor, I didn’t give her a pill, I did nothing concerning her stomach. What do I know? I couldn’t tell you what it looks like. But here, by taking her mind away from one state and dwelling in another state, she departed the state that had the bad stomach.92 ¶24

You can depart any state, the state that has the poverty, the state that has anything, and move from state to state. When you get into a state, may I tell you, it will seem to be the only substance, the only reality. This room is more real now than your home. Your home is shadowy when you think of it. It hasn’t the substance that this has now, because you’re in this state. So if I’m not in a state, if I’m not dwelling in it, it seems a mere possibility; but when I enter into the state, it’s the only reality.92 ¶25

So Blake said, “If the Spectator could only enter into these images in his Imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his own wonderful Imagination, if he could make a friend and companion of one of these images, then he would rise from the grave, then he would meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy.” You’d rise from this grave. I’m buried in the state now. I get out of one state into another state and another state.92 ¶26

And so, if I can be the man I want to be, then I am stupid not to do it. But some people would rather sit in a state that they dislike and argue and try to convince you why it is stupid to believe what you teach. Well, if they’ll try it and it proves itself in performance, what does it matter what reason tells me? But after they’ve done it they may go back. We’re told that story in the Bible—he returns to his vomit like the dog. Or Lot’s wife, she looks back and goes back to a former state.92 ¶27

These are only states, not persons, not individuals. Everything in the Bible is a state. When we speak of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, these are states, and the individual simply is a representative of that eternal state.92 ¶28

So you move into a state, but you, the individual, you are immortal, you are forever. You descended into this world of death and you have the experience of passing through states. No one dies, not one person in this world dies, really. As he brought it out so beautifully in his own wonderful way of expressing it, he said, “The oak is cut down by the ax and the lamb is slain by the knife, but their form eternal remains forever and renews itself by this fiery contemplation.”92 ¶29

And so, you drop now this very moment and you are restored to life. You know nothing of the passage. Ninety-nine percent who go through are totally unaware of what has happened. Those who observe their passage think they died. They are not dead and they’re so overjoyed with what they find themselves to be: Same as before only new and young and nothing missing. No need of any aid in this world. And they don’t even recognize the change, any more than you do when you sleep. If you ever became aware that you are dreaming, you would wake up. So man doesn’t wake because he doesn’t know he’s dreaming. So he passes through the gate and we call it death. He doesn’t know that the dream continues, and he takes it for granted just as we take for granted in dream. The minute that you become aware in a dream that you are dreaming, you tend to wake.92 ¶30

The only way you will not wake…may I tell you, it’s a very interesting experience. If you find yourself dreaming, prolong it, and try to find a solid, permanent object. Don’t hold an animal no matter how tame he is, but take something that is fixed. I wouldn’t take a chair like that, I’d take a post, a stairway, something that is fixed, and hold it. In your dream you can hold it. Now wake up. Wake up without letting go and you’ll awake in your dream. The world is just as real as this, just as real as this. But hold an object that is fixed and then make yourself awake, but do not let go of the object, then you’ll awake right in your dream.92 ¶31

May I tell you, it’s the most interesting experience…don’t get panicky…you’ll come back. I have been shut out, oh, many times, and returned to this body that is cataleptic. I’ve been so completely shutout in these worlds that this which I left on a bed or on a chair or on a couch is cataleptic when I return. Can’t move it for a while, maybe twenty, twenty-five seconds, and then suddenly I can animate it again. If I didn’t get back, they’d cut it up to see why I died, and they’ll come to some conclusion. But if they were honest with themselves, they’ll see no physical reason, I just didn’t come back.92 ¶32

But if you know what you’re doing, you won’t be panicky. You’ll simply find a world just like this, and if you have, I would say, any red blood in you, you’ll investigate. It’s really a world just like this. The people are just as stupid and they’re just as ambitious as they are here, and they have all the passions of the world there as they have here. They want to be known, too, in their press as the best dressed and better than Mrs. Jones and better than Mrs. So-and-so. They too have the left side and the right side of the street. It’s just like this and they’re just as sound asleep there as they are here.92 ¶33

But, while we’re here, well, why not play it wisely? I think all will agree it is easier living to have wealth than to be poor, it’s easier. You aren’t any wiser for it, may I tell you, but I find it easier to have something than to have nothing. I have no desire for oodles of things, but it is easier. Well, if it’s easier then take it. If it’s yours for the taking by simply assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled, well then, what’s wrong with assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled? No power on earth can stop you from doing it.92 ¶34

We record in the morning’s paper all the things that happen, but they do not record what caused them to happen. Who knows who is dreaming what happened today? Who knows?92 ¶35

Here is a simple story. You must have heard this or seen it on TV. I saw the race…it was the Kentucky Derby two years ago and Willy Shoemaker was riding the horse. I don’t recall the name of the horse. I thought it was Swaps, but I’m told it wasn’t. Whatever it was, I know I don’t recall the actual name, but I do recall the jockey. And this is the story. The owner of the horse had a dream the night before the race. Now this is the Kentucky Derby, the first of the triple crown. He had this dream that Shoemaker misjudged the finishing line and rose in the saddle to ease the horse up. If you pass the finishing line, you always rise in the saddle and ease him up to bring him to a halt, just before you turn him around. He misjudged the finishing line and stood up. Well, then he couldn’t get enough energy going in the horse after he realized his mistake and, naturally, he lost the race…but he was leading by lengths. And he was the favorite horse, the best horse. Naturally, the steward set him down for a few weeks or a month, because it was a horrible blow to all the people who bet on the horse plus the millions who were watching on TV on that day. I was one of the millions watching it. I could hardly believe my eyes, because here is Shoemaker, a truly great jockey, always ahead of the pack at the end of the year.92 ¶36

And now who controlled that behavior? The man told him before the race what he had dreamed the night before. He told him, and Shoemaker listened attentively, but in the actual state he could do nothing about it. He could do nothing about it, therefore, who did it? We took the brunt and he lost income for the next two weeks or a few weeks…I forget how many days they gave him off.92 ¶37

Now the owner, Ralph Lowe, had the dream. Did he get out of a state or was he so concerned about that state and in it? But that’s an actual recorded fact. So we record the fact and the man who was playing the part was condemned and received his sentence, which was a financial loss to him. But who is the cause of the act? Shoemaker didn’t have the dream; the owner of the horse had the dream.92 ¶38

Well, I do not have to have a dream at night. I can dream in the day, a daydream, and influence the behavior of others, because all are contained in me anyway. “All that I behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” .92 ¶39

So if all are contained within me, I don’t need their permission to dream and use them to externalize the dream. He used the horse, he used the jockey, he used every one to externalize the dream. So he fell into that certainly unknowingly. But he recalled the state and didn’t get out of it. And all of his telling and explaining to the jockey did not help; he still lost it in the same manner in which he saw it.92 ¶40

Well, you can sit down and day dream the most glorious daydream and put yourself into the dream; because it’s very shadowy if you’re not dwelling in it. But it becomes the only reality, the only substance, if you enter into it.92 ¶41

So he makes a very strong point of this—“If the Spectator would Enter Into”—he puts it in capital letters. When Blake wants to call your attention to the importance of a word in a sentence, he capitalizes the word. You wouldn’t normally put a capital when writing a sentence of that nature, but he capitalized “Enter Into” in this statement in Visions of the Last Judgment, calling upon who would change a state to “Enter Into” the state which you desire. But if you don’t dwell in it, it seems a mere possibility and it’s not actual because you’re not in it.92 ¶42

So here, I would call upon everyone to live the answer now, in confidence that in a way unknown by you and unnoticed by you it is moving unseen and suddenly it will erupt and become an objective fact to confirm the truth of what you’ve done. That you dared to take the challenge of scripture: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will.” Well, that’s a challenge! I think that we are all brave enough to accept that challenge. So if I dare to believe that I have what reason denies, what my senses deny, and persist in my assumption, that it will harden into fact? Yes! Well then, try it. Try it and see.92 ¶43

In the meanwhile keep your dream, for your Father in the depth of your own soul is speaking to you every night through the medium of dream, every night, and revealing himself in vision. So share with me your dreams and your visions that I, in turn, may share them with those who attend here and encourage the faith of all…just as this lady gave me these two experiences of hers.92 ¶44

I think it’s a marvelous thing and so I ask her mother to please tell her tonight that incurrent is not necessarily indebtedness. She did not incur a debt there or the displeasure of anyone; but she has now arrived by divine providence at this giving of a passage. She can now become the medium through which…she is that passage through which this current will now flow inwardly…and that is God himself. She’ll bring forward…oh, will she bring forward vision!92 ¶45

She said in one of these, “I got up early in the morning, put my little boy into the crib, cleaned him up, put him there, and I was so alive, alive and alert, and it was early in the day. Suddenly I’m beginning to feel, ‘Why, it’s late, it must be night, well into the night.’ It’s not yet eleven, and suddenly I’m feeling the darkness, and I threw myself on the bed, believing that it was really night. Suddenly I heard this little shaking and shaking; it was my daughter, ‘Wake up, mommy, wake up, mommy.’ It wasn’t yet eleven and I thought that it was dark and way into the night. The room seemed dark, and then when I had this experience, there was nothing but light. I could feel something moving”—she used these words—“I felt something moving in my skull right behind my forehead, like a thought that had taken form. Just like a thought moving as though it had form, I could actually feel the motion in my head right behind my forehead.”92 ¶46

Well, she has started alright and I expect great things from her. So, she may frighten others. She may frighten her husband and may frighten her mother…but so did Blake.92 ¶47

Mrs. Blake said of him, she always called him Mr. Blake, and when this one interviewed him, she said, “Mr. Blake, you know the first time you saw God you was four years old.” You see, she never read or wrote until she met Blake and he taught her to read and write. “You was four years old when God put his face to the window and you screamed.” Then she said to this man, “Well, I don’t see very much of Mr. Blake, he spends so much time in paradise.”92 ¶48

And so, the man was [...]…and they thought he was mad! But he wasn’t mad. How could you write those poems and be mad? How could you draw his paintings and be mad? But it pleased some, because it did not coincide with their concepts of what one ought to think, that he was mad. It was in conflict with the rational mind.92 ¶49

And you pick up the beauty of Blake and try to duplicate it. When someone criticizes the gospel or criticizes the Old Testament and you ask the one who is the critic, “Try to write one verse like it, just try it.” You think you’re educated and you know how to clothe thought in words? Well, try to write the 23rd Psalm. Spend a whole year at it. Try to write any one of the 150 psalms if you think you’re so smart. Write the gospel of John, just a first four verses…and tell me…come back with it after a whole year.92 ¶50

So I tell you, here is a splendid monument to this eternal picture of God as a play…the whole thing is a play. But all will come out of the play, and when he comes out, know who he is? He’s God who conceived it, he’s God the Father. And all return to the one God, all; for we are the gods who came down. The word in Hebrew is a plural word Elohim. So it takes all the gods to form the Lord: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” . So it takes all the gods, every child born of woman throughout the ages to form the Lord. And you are the Lord, without loss of the identity of being a god, because you share the whole.92 ¶51

Now tonight, take the challenge of scripture and assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, not only for yourself, you can do it for another. In doing it for another, you are doing it for yourself, because, really, there is no other—the whole vast world is yourself pushed out. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *92 ¶52

Good. Now are there any questions, please? Yes, Ina.92 ¶53

Any other questions, please? Well, if there aren’t any, until the next one and that is on Friday. Thank you.92 ¶56