Imagining Creates

Our premise is that imagining creates reality. If this is true, then imagining fulfills itself in what our life becomes. Although I have changed the words, what I have said is not new. You’ll find it in the Bible: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will.” That goes back 2,000 years. I could take you back another 600 years into Jeremiah to show you the same theme, the same principle. So tonight, we’ll try to not prove it to you but to explain it.448 ¶1

Until these words become part of your normal, natural currency of thought, then you will not act upon it. They must become so much a part of you it’s like breathing. So you can’t turn to the left or the right; you can’t praise or blame anyone. If you start in life behind the eight-ball, it doesn’t really matter whether you start there or start in a palace, whether you start as a poor little child or a very rich child, your life must actually externalize what you are imagining. If you don’t know this principle, you can reproduce your environment, and if that’s an unpleasant environment, reproduce it forever and forever, for you will feed your Imagination upon what the senses dictate. But if you know the principle, you can ignore the present, and if the principle is true, well then, you can go all out and simply not accept the “facts of life” as the things on which you should feed in this world.448 ¶2

Now, we do not observe imagining as we do objects. We are the reality which is named imagining…if you simply dwell upon it. No, I don’t observe it until I become one who is awake. Then I will go along with Fawcett and Fawcett said, “God”—that’s the name he gives to the causal power of the universe—“God, the Creator, is like pure imagining in ourselves. He works in the depths of our soul, underlying all of our faculties, including perception, but he streams into our surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy.”448 ¶3

So here, I can then observe him. If I sit quietly, and then suddenly I catch myself and say to myself as I have said to others, “A penny for your thoughts. What are you now imagining?” Well then, if I am honest with myself, it may be unpleasant. But if I am honest I know if that imaginal act caused in me some motor state…because an idea that is only an idea that is not felt produces nothing. It must be felt, it must produce motor elements. So if I catch myself and I’m combative, that’s a motor element. If I am now being congratulated or I am congratulating, that’s a motor element. If I catch myself in these moments, I know what’s going to happen in my world; unless, of course, I arrest it and revise that moment. But most of us aren’t even aware of what we are doing, and so I can almost say that we do not observe the Creator. We can catch him as he streams into the surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy. So, if I know what I am doing while I ride the bus, drive the car, sit at home, stand at a bar, and someone is actually, well, talking to a friend and I overhear what they’re saying, and I instantly react; but if as I react it’s not just an idea but I’m reacting and I’m moving on the inside, then wait. It has to then fulfill itself in what my life must become. This is our principle.448 ¶4

It sets every man free if he is willing to assume the responsibility, because whether he assumes it or not, it’s working anyway. And so in the end, you don’t sympathize, you simply tell the story. So that in the very end you don’t condemn them, you know that it’s an unpleasant thing they’re going through, but you can tell them of a principle and let this principle work out in their lives if they accept it.448 ¶5

Now, we’re living in a Christian world, a Christian-Jewish world. The average person you will encounter in America is either a Christian or a Jew. There would be no Christians unless there were Jews; for Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, it’s the climax. And so, you ask anyone in this world what I’ve asked you now, “Do you believe that imagining creates reality?” the chances are that you would get a negative response. They couldn’t believe for a moment, and yet they will tell you, “I am a Christian.” Well, if I am a Christian, then I should accept the premise that imagining does create reality. But it’s new to them. It hasn’t as yet been repeated often enough for them to actually make it a part of their thinking. But if you take them back into scripture and you read it for them in their words…but even if you read it for them in their words, they don’t really see it. They will accept it on the surface, but they don’t really believe it.448 ¶6

Last night, for instance, I have never heard Billy Graham. I have read what he has said in little magazines and I have read it in newspapers. And so I thought, well now, he’s speaking on the second coming of Christ, I’ll turn him on. It’s such a reasonable hour, 7:30; it’s prime time, it’s a local station, channel five, it’s a good, clear picture, so I will turn him on. When I turned this on, I’m amazed. Here were thousands and thousands of people listening…a thousand members in the choir…and one song where he invited all the audience to stand and sing, and the title of it was, and they repeated the words over and over, “Oh, How I Love Jesus.” Then came Billy Graham speaking on the second coming. I don’t want to be critical, but he hasn’t the slightest concept of Jesus, far less the second coming. Here are thousands of people and they’re talking about how they love Jesus…you can’t love something that you don’t know. They must first discover Jesus before they could love him. They don’t know Jesus.448 ¶7

And then at the very end comes the usual appeal. “I’m going to give you this book, just this book, you haven’t asked for it, and this is an interpretation of this book of the Bible and that book of the Bible” as he interprets it. “Just this book…and all you have to do is send in to Billy Graham, Minneapolis and then Minnesota, that’s a simple address, that’s all you do. But, said he, this program that we’re putting on here in Pittsburg is costing us $500,000 and we don’t have that sort of money. So if you are listening and you’re alone, please send in a contribution. If you’re listening and you’re not alone, then take up a collection among all who are listening and send it in.” And here comes the pitch, and this goes on night after night in a city like this for one solid week.448 ¶8

And he didn’t say one word about any second coming. He said, “If he should come now, just imagine, there would be no more cancer, there’d be no more heart failures, and none of you could die. His heaven is made up of flesh and blood…bodies in excrementitious states…yes, we’d have to have bathrooms in heaven. Can you imagine that! We’d have to. Of course, he’d make them of gold and make them of something that doesn’t corrode, but you’d have to have bathrooms if you’re still in a body that’s excrementitious. So you’d have to take in food even if it was given to you…don’t earn it…it’s given to you, so you have to assimilate it and what you can’t assimilate you have to expel, and to expel it unless you lose all sense of shame you’d have to have a bathroom. Well, on the other hand, if you don’t have any sense of shame, well then, you revert to the animal world. We all become healthy, wonderful animals…no heart failure, no cancer. And here he’s talking…I wondered is this 1968, is this the man who when he goes to the Vatican the pope receives him? On the other hand, he is equally silly concerning the mystery of Christ, so what does it matter if I call it a pope? Then he goes to the White House and he’s entertained for lunch or dinner and he is a grand, wonderful being…with not one concept of the mystery of Christ.448 ¶9

Now, tonight we will pull this right down to the earth and show you what I really mean when I tell you that you can be exactly what you want to be in this world. If you’re feeling like the devil…and I have felt like the devil, I mean physically, in the last couple of months. Now I am over it, but I couldn’t get over the fact that when I felt like hell I still was responsible for the hell in which I found myself. It wasn’t in my thyroid, it wasn’t in my heart, it wasn’t in this. If it was and they pinpointed it, I was the cause of whatever they discovered in the heart, I don’t care what it is. They put me through every test known in the book, so I had to go back and get his report. And yesterday, he said to me, “Neville, you are a dilemma.” Know what a dilemma is? A dilemma is simply that I have an argument with you and I give you two or more alternatives, I give them all to you. You choose any one you want and whatever you choose and you start on that assumption, your conclusion will be wrong no matter what it is. That’s a dilemma. And so I said, “Have you stopped beating your wife? Take either one you want.” So you can choose anything…that’s a dilemma.448 ¶10

So I went back to him after all these tests and he said, “You are a dilemma. Your blood shows one thing and the actual test on the electrical (whatever it is) shows the exact opposite, exact opposite.” What he was confirming was what in my heart I know, that if I don’t find in the depths of my soul the cause of the phenomena of my life, it is still there. I’m not going to find it in any thyroid or any heart or any liver or any kidney or anything out side of myself. That I know! Well, are we big enough to face the ultimate rather than admit it can be a secondary cause? For a secondary cause would be the thyroid, the secondary cause would be the kidney, or any organ of my body when I am wearing a body. So I put myself into this body that limits me, but I am the operant power of this body, and it cannot become causal. I am the cause, and it only reflects that which I am entertaining in my Imagination. I must not justify it. I must not excuse myself in any way…on the other hand not condemn myself. So there it is. You don’t feel well. Well now, you better get out of it. Don’t start looking in any part of your body for it; you aren’t going to find it. So you love someone and they force you through love to make all these tests. And so to please the one you love, you make all the tests. Then you come home and she says, “Now what’s wrong?” and you say, “I’m a dilemma.” And so, I’m a dilemma.448 ¶11

So here, I ask you to take the same full responsibility upon your shoulders and not pass the buck to the left or the right, not to anyone, not to an organ, not to anything in this world. You can be the being that you want to be if you will take this premise that imagining creates reality. If imagining creates reality, then I must be all Imagination just at the poet said. And if the cause of all phenomena is God, well then, God is all Imagination. And because I can imagine, then God the great Creator must be like pure imagining in myself. I can see that. But now I must test it, I must put it to the test. It’s all well and good to say it in words, but this is all new. You mean I have that responsibility? That I can by actually imagining myself what at the moment reason denies, my senses deny, everything denies actually fulfill it and bring it to pass? Well, if the premise is right yes, I will say to that yes.448 ¶12

Now, let me share with you a few wonderful letters that came this week. A lady writes, “My car needed repairs, so I stopped in, they examined it, and they said it will cost you sixty-two dollars.” When I signed the credit slip, I imagined I signed a check, no credit, I signed the check. And I never sign a check unless there is money in the bank to cover that check. This was in July. August went by, September went by, and no bill from the repair…yet I have my car. In September, a man stopped by and asked me to list his house. He wanted to sell it and was very eager to sell it. I told him that I’m not in the business anymore, but I recommended my former employer and told him to go and see him. So he went over…undoubtedly he did, I didn’t follow through, he went over. In October I received a call from my former employer saying I had a referral commission waiting for me, a check. So I went over and I got a check for sixty-eight dollars, six dollars more than the amount of my car repair.” Here it came, pressed down, shaken together and running over…in keeping with the story in the 6th of Luke, that is, like the granary when you buy grain and he shakes it all together and then he presses it down, and then it runs over. This is part of the ancient world where you had a big pocket and when you bought it, you shook it down and you pressed it down until it ran over and that’s how full…like the baker’s dozen. They always give you an extra bun when you buy twelve, and call it a baker’s dozen. Well here, she got six dollars more.448 ¶13

And then she said, “Here, in the beginning of September our neighbor came down with a heart attack and he was taken to the hospital and his wife had to be there constantly. They have a little boy, John, who lives in our house all day long anyway. He and our son were playmates and they were inseparable. So we thought, well, now we’ll take him in and all he’d do that he didn’t do before would be to have breakfast and dinner and sleep. So at the end of five weeks the father came out and then the mother came over to see me and she said, ‘Now what do I owe you?’ I said, ‘Owe? Why nothing…a haircut, maybe a dollar here, ten cents there, maybe a quarter there…it wouldn’t come to five dollars, so forget it.’” Then kiddingly she said to this lady, “Of course, if at any time in the future you have an old hundred dollar bill tucked in your purse and you don’t know what to do with it and you have no need to spend because you don’t need anything, well then, you could willingly pass it over.” She said, “That’s exactly what my husband and I agreed on to give you” and from her purse she took a hundred dollar bill and gave it. “Now,” she said, “the story is this. Before this happened, my husband and I decided that we would have a certain chair reupholstered. We called the upholsterer, he came on in and brought his materials, and we both agreed on the same pattern. He took the chair out and brought it back, it’s beautiful; and we love sitting in the chair and enjoy every moment of time that we look at it. But it was eighty-seven dollars. This $100 bill paid off the eighty-seven dollars and gave us again another thirteen dollars…pressed down, shaken together, and running over.”448 ¶14

Now, this story in the 6th of Luke comes after he tells you, “Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” In other words, if you apply this principle towards the seeming other—for there is no other in the world—and so as you begin to really use it towards the good of another, like Job when he forgot himself in his love of friends and prayed for his friends, his own captivity was lifted. All that he seemingly had lost was returned a hundred-fold. Everything that he had lost came back but multiplied a hundred-fold. So as you spend one minute thinking of another and representing the other to yourself as you would like them to be and persuading yourself of the reality of this imaginal act, you are actually forgiving the other for what he seemed to have been to himself and to his friends. You are putting him now in an entirely different state, so you’re substituting your concept of him, which is a noble concept, for the concept that he held of himself. That’s forgiveness. Forgiveness tests the individual’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. If I said to you, as a priest will say to someone, “I forgive you, my dear, go and sin no more,” but when he passes you on the street and he remembers what you confessed, he hasn’t forgiven. You have to completely rub it out, completely, by putting something in its place so you don’t see the other. If the present Mrs. Onassis is always seen as Mrs. Kennedy, then in the eyes of the one who sees her as Mrs. Kennedy and not Mrs. Onassis he hasn’t forgotten. It’s still the old pattern. She has to completely lose herself in the new affection, the new love, whatever it is, call it by any name. So you have to completely see it, so much that when you see it thereafter that’s all that you see and not the former state. If you always see the former state, you are tending to pull him back or pull her back into that former state. There are only states in the world.448 ¶15

Now here is another one. My friend went to Pittsburgh this summer and visited her usual friends, and her friend, Betty (she grew up as a child with Betty) they discussed this, and Betty loves all that Jan told her. Last summer, she expressed a desire to have a new organ. She wanted a Baldwin. The one she’d been playing for six years she was tired of. In fact, it was an economy model when she got it and regretted purchasing it since the day she bought it. Jan told her what to do…“As you sit down to play this that you don’t like imagine it is the one you like, it’s a Baldwin, the best you can buy and you can afford it, even though you don’t have a nickel in the bank. You have nothing in the bank but you have the new organ.” And so, she began to apply what Jan told her, which is only reminding her of what she knew, for she knew it, because Jan had told her in previous years and wrote her and called her. So it was all exposure in the past, but now a reminder. She began to apply what Jan told her…she sat at the organ and began to play.448 ¶16

Now, her father departed this world last January and she received $4,500. But her home needed repairs, so she spent the $4,500 in repairing the house. Then came a torrential rain and revealed that the roof really should have been replaced, for there were leaks in it. But, that rain that came, when she called in the roofer and asked, the roofer did not give the estimate for a while. He held up the estimate which was $1,700. In the meanwhile, she got a check for $3,500 from her father’s estate…an unexpected $3,500. She said, “Now I’ll go right down immediately to the Baldwin people and pick out my Baldwin.” She went down and she picked out a $5,000 organ. The man said to her, “Let me show you the ad that we’re now getting out, it will soon break and it’ll all be displayed pretty soon, and the one you’ve picked out for $5,000 when it goes on sale will be $4,000. $1,000 we will give you on the present old organ, therefore, it will be $3,000.” So she sat down and wrote the check for $3,000. On the day that it was installed, then comes the estimate from the roofer, $1,700, and she said, “Oh, why didn’t he give me that estimate before I bought the Baldwin because it’s important that I have a new roof.” So then she thumbed through my book The Law and The Promise, in which there are forty case histories, but she found not one that would in any way aid her. So she called Jan and Jan said to her, “There’s only one principle. There are forty there but it doesn’t matter if there are sixty or 1,000 or one, it would make no difference. It’s a principle.”448 ¶17

Then Jan told her the story that I have told you time and again (it’s not in my books) of a lady in New York City. This lady, Ann, lived up at the Ansonia at 73rd and Broadway and she’s a member of the oldest profession in the world, a lady of the evening. She came to my meetings when time allowed. So this day in question, I met her at Broadway and 73rd, and she said to me, “Neville, I want to ask you something.” “All right, Ann what is it?” She said, “I walked by a hat store and I saw this perfectly wonderful hat advertised for seventeen-fifty. Well, I so fell in love with it I applied your principle, so I took the hat in my Imagination and put it on. I walked up Broadway feeling that I was wearing the hat. On my way back, I wouldn’t look into the window to be disillusioned, so I kept the hat on my head in my Imagination. When I went home, still not to be disillusioned I took it off without looking into the mirror and put it up on top of the shelf, and then I retired. Well, the next morning the old hat is still there, but at least I had the pleasure of maybe an hour and a half of wakefulness wearing the hat. Now, ten days later I still haven’t the hat. A friend of mine called me up and said, ‘Ann, are you busy?’ I said no. ‘Well, I’d like to see you.’ And so, Ann went up to see this friend and the friend said, “I have something to give you. I do not know what possessed me, but I bought a hat and when I came home and tried it on, I wondered, you must have been insane! I wouldn’t wear that hat to a dog fight.” So she brought out the hat…not a hat, the hat…and she said, “Ann, I think it would look lovely on you!” and gave Ann the hat.” So Ann said to me, “Why didn’t God give me the money to buy the hat instead of giving it to me in the way that he gave it to me, through this friend?” I said, “Do you feel obligated?” She said no. I said, “Now look, I know exactly your work and we are adults, we can talk friend to friend. What price hat do you usually buy?” Now this is before the 2nd World War and if you can’t go back that far, may I tell you hats sold for two dollars, two-fifty, two-seventy-five and three dollars, and there were millions of hats at three dollars. She said, “Well, I would go sometimes as high as five.” I said, “Did you ever buy a seventeen dollar hat?” She said no. I said, “All right, do you owe any rent?” She said, “You’re too nosy.” I said, “I’m just curious, do you owe any rent?” She said, “Yes I owe two weeks rent.” I said, “Then you owe just about thirty-five dollars, don’t you?” She said, “Exactly thirty-five dollars.” I said, “Now if you looked down and you found hundred dollar bill while you’re admiring the hat, not having ever bought a hat that expensive, would you have bought the hat?” I said, I’ll answer for you, no! You would not have bought the hat. You would have gone back to the Ansonia, paid down thirty-five dollars, and possibly you would have paid a week or two weeks in advance to feel free. That’s what you would have done…and you would not have the hat. Now tell me, Ann, how much money must God give you to get you to buy a seventeen dollar hat? If he gave you a thousand, you’re not in the habit of buying seventeen-dollar hats, so you’d have kept the thousand. So God knows best how to give you that hat. So he gave it to you, what are you quarreling about?448 ¶18

And my friend Jan said to her, “Now that’s the story…how much money must he give you to get you to buy the organ? You regret now having spent $3,000 for the organ, because now you have the need of a new roof, and that’s $1,700. Apply the same principle toward the new roof that you did towards the organ, and it will not fail you.” So that was that story. Here is a principle. She taught her how to do it and then within a matter of moments she forgot the source of the phenomena of life. Within a moment she is confronted with the need of a new roof and forgot the principle that gave her the organ. Then reason comes in and says, “After all, it came from your father’s estate and that may be the last from the estate; that may be the closing of the book.” Reason will do it every moment of time, and then take from you this divine gift: That whatever you imagined that you possess, you will possess if you are faithful to the thing assumed. That’s the law.448 ¶19

Now a lady writes me—and this is a different one—after having told what she saw here in this room of ours after the meditation of about a week ago. It is perfectly heavenly…I won’t go into it. But she said, “That night I had a dream. I was in a huge, big what seemed to be a department store, and I found myself in the company of a very close, dear friend. The friend said to me, ‘I will watch your purse for you while you go and pick out the dress that you want.’ Well, I went through all kinds of dresses and I came upon a little rack of four dresses. They were cheap wool skirts, but lovely velvet blouses, and I wondered what designer would take such wonderful material and put it with such horrible skirts.” Well, that is all irrelevant; that is not the single jet of truth in the dream. This is it: “After shopping around, a woman came and pushed me away and she was very rude. I then went back and my friend is gone and the purse is gone. A paper bag is there, but I never thought for one moment the purse is there. So I went to the saleslady and I told the saleslady of the loss of my purse. The lady said, ‘Go back to where you left it…it may be wrapped in paper.’” So she went back and there in the brown bag was her purse. She said, “I do not care if the money is missing, and I had thirty dollars in it, but I don’t want to lose my personal papers because that’s my identity. I wouldn’t know who I am without these papers. So I went back and I found the purse and I took it to the saleslady and I opened it up in her presence. Well, the thirty dollars is gone. All my identification was there minus one little card, and I wondered what on earth did they find in taking that card, for they can’t use it, my name is on it, and that card mentions the fact that I am an ordained Unity minister.”448 ¶20

That is the central jet of truth in your dream, my dear. You have transcended…the thirty pieces of silver are very significant: the price paid for Truth. Thirty pieces and you don’t keep for what you buy…if I buy something I then give something for it. Thirty pieces were given, so thirty pieces were taken. You found the truth and transcended any ordination in this world, as nice as Unity is. All these groups are lovely groups playing their parts on certain levels of consciousness. But you are so far beyond anything that man has made. For Unity, Christian Science, Catholicism, Episcopalism and all these isms are man-made doctrine; they’re not based upon vision. Unity certainly is not based upon vision, neither is Christian Science, nor are any of these little isms. They play their parts on the level where they’re found. You, in the dream, you are told you have paid the price for Truth; for Christ is what one buys for Truth for thirty pieces of silver, and that was taken from you. The mere fact that it was taken from the purse is what you paid for it; and, therefore, the little card giving you your past, I would say, level of consciousness has been taken, too. You’re no longer an ordained minister; you have transcended this level all together and this is your level. When you’ve found him you pay for him…you bought him. So your dream is perfectly marvelous, and that which preceded it with this wonderful lake of crystal water, and then these unnumbered white birds taking flight, and you could feel the coolness of the morning air caused by the wings of the birds…all in this room. I think it’s perfectly marvelous! So thank you.448 ¶21

So here, may I tell you, you have within yourself the power to create anything in this world. Let things be as they are. Let people be what they want to be. And you have your goals. It doesn’t matter what has happened in your world, it doesn’t matter what the world tells you where you started; start from where you are. In you is the power of the universe; his name is I AM, and that is the Lord Christ Jesus. But you’ll never know it unless you test it.448 ¶22

So we are told in the 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, “Come test yourself and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” Well, if that challenge is given to any man, if he has any red blood in him he will take the challenge…I mean, if anyone challenged me with don’t I realize that Christ is in me? I wasn’t taught he was in me. My mother didn’t teach me that and Sunday school didn’t teach me that, and when I went to church as a young man, a young boy in Barbados, they didn’t teach me that. He was always on the outside, always some place in space other than myself.448 ¶23

And so I had to find him and when I found him I found that he is creative, that he creates in me, and my life is simply the fulfillment of my own imaginal acts. I haven’t always been wise in my choice of what I would imagine. I have imagined the most unlovely things in this world and I have reaped them. I became the fulfillment of what I was imagining, for imagining is always fulfilling its imaginal state, always. Then I began to be more alert to catch him in the process. I discovered that I could catch him: He would stream into my mind least disguised—but he’s disguised, but least disguised—in the form of my dream, my daydream, and then I’d catch him. Then when I could remember what dreams I entertained when I caught him and they were motive dreams, motive in the sense of motion, were these things making me move, well then, I knew what to expect, unless I revised it. If they were not unpleasant I didn’t revise them, and when I least expected it they came into being in my world.448 ¶24

So don’t envy anyone in this world. If this man tonight has his $500 million and a girl that possibly the whole vast social world would like to have married if they could afford that marriage, so he has her. And when you read all this nonsense in the papers that he’s a little man, only five-five, so what? All that’s envy! So he’s only five-five and he’s swarthy and he’s this and he’s that, so that’s his dream…a dream realized in his own case and it’s her dream too. I’ve always said it, I will continue to say it, Blake is perfectly right. He has a wonderful picture and he said, “More, more is the cry of the fool. Less than all is not enough.” And so in scripture we have these words, “All thine are mine and mine are thine,” not some of yours. You inherit God! God is your possession, so whatever God is if I inherit him then it’s all mine…so less than all is not enough and more, more is the cry of the fool. They are asking for more and more, and may I tell you, as long as one wants more, he never has enough.448 ¶25

So her income is estimated at some fabulous thing from a trust fund or trust funds of twenty-million dollars, so one paper said. Well, if you had twenty million dollars, you would think certainly that’s enough, but you can adjust yourself to a way of life where it isn’t enough, it just isn’t enough. Let the demands made upon you from charities, for this and the other plus the fact that you’re a fashion plate and you like being a fashion plate, you like being named as the best dressed of the ten best dressed in the world. If you like that, it’s going to cost you a fortune. But if you like it, it takes money to gratify that. Well, what’s wrong with it? I personally have no desire to be numbered among any externally well dressed. I hope I’m internally well dressed and I hope the light is blinding. I hope that garment is so powerful that they can’t stand in its presence unless they are qualified to stand there. Well, if I modify it to suit the level on which they stand, that they may see the being that I represent that I am…but certainly not on the outside.448 ¶26

So I tell you that imagining creates reality. Believe it! It is true! So again when Fawcett said that “The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the mystic aspires; for supreme power, supreme wisdom, and supreme delight lie in the far off solution of this mystery,” he knew what he was talking about. Actually the old boy knew what he was talking about. A friend of mine sent him my book and called his attention to the chapter on revision. He also sent another copy to one who was a physicist in one of the great universities of the world. The physicist wrote back the most scathing report on the book: “It’s not scientifically provable and therefore this whole thing is just trash, not worthy of any part of his library.” But, the old gentleman who was a philosopher by profession, who taught at the Oxford University, he was then in his 90s, wrote back the sweetest letter. He said, “I can only say that Neville, whoever he is I don’t know, but I read the chapter and this chapter on revision he could only have received from the Brothers, no one but the divine society could have dictated this chapter.” Now here was the old boy filled with praise for a chapter, while the scientist ridiculed it beyond measure because it is something beyond his ken, he can’t grasp it. You go into the laboratory and you put it together and so that’s that. One day he, too, will sit in this place where the doctor that I saw yesterday and he, too, will say, “You’re a dilemma.”448 ¶27

And then you’ll say to him, “Spell it for me”…chances are he may not even be able to spell it…“Well then, define it for me.” I give you all these assumptions. The blood says one thing, the thyroid man said another, that one said another. And if you take any premise, take it, you have a choice, all your conclusions are going to be wrong, because this is opposed to that. So this as an assumption will come to a different conclusion; that as an assumption will come to a different conclusion. And who is the riddle…the one who is the dilemma. But he knows, whether he finds it or not, all I can say to him is I feel a hundred percent better, much better, and you’ve done nothing. No medication change whatsoever…done nothing…and I feel so much better. So I can only say, it all is within me, whatever it is. Whether I pinpointed it or not, what does it matter? I feel better and will go blindly on until that moment in time when he says, “Now look, let’s go” and let them put it back in the dust, feed a plant with it.448 ¶28

So I ask you to take it seriously, and don’t limit yourself by anything that is happening in your world now, no matter what it is. You want to be this…well, it’s what you want not what the other thinks you should want…what do you want in this world? Well now, conceive a scene that would imply that you have it, persuade yourself that you have it, and then walk blindly on in that assumption as though it were true. May I tell you, it will come to pass; it will not fail you if you dare to assume that you are the man, the woman that you want to be, and persist in that assumption. That assumption will harden into fact.448 ¶29

Now you may say, “But, I knew someone who had that assumption and she died or he died and it wasn’t realized.” Death does not terminate life; the world does not cease to be at that moment in time when my senses cease to register it. I am restored, the world is restored, and I continue my journey. My dreams unrealized here will be realized there, because I can’t stop it. Imagining is creating reality.448 ¶30

As my sister-in-law said to me when I said there is marriage in the next world too. So you find yourself dead here, but you’re not dead, you’re alive and young and beautiful and altogether wonderful. Lawrence, my brother, was dying; he was making his exit from this world, and she in a very light vein said “I don’t want to go now, but do you think that Lawrence will be waiting for me and we’ll get married again?” Well, I was off in a light vein, too, and I said, “God is merciful, infinitely merciful!” So, let it go at that and you give any interpretation you want to what I have said. But just imagine, two people fighting through life like cats and dogs all on the show in one sense, and they want to perpetuate it? No, God is merciful, really is, and so you’ve had it. You’d have to be a stupid idiot to repeat it, to continue the nonsense until that moment in time when you’re resurrected. After resurrection there is no giving or taking in marriage; you’re above the organization of sex…a way beyond it.”448 ¶31

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Are there any questions, please? Well, if there aren’t any, until Monday. Thank you.448 ¶32