Is Causation Imaginal

Tonight’s subject is: Is Causation Imaginal? I say that it is. I firmly believe that imagining creates reality, and it is my hope that before the class on the 26th of May, everyone here will be able to share with me some perfectly wonderful case history — all can testify to the creative power of imagining, and all will be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. I know it can be done, but let us now tonight lay the foundation for our claims. The claims are extravagant, but I assure you they are true. They’re not original with the speaker — they were always; I found them in the greatest book in the world, in the Bible: that the ultimate source of phenomena of all sorts is one — that which is active in you and me, that imagination, that is, is the primary source of everything that comes into our life. There are not two, there are not two selves, there aren’t two Gods. So when you speak of the Lord in the Scripture, the other person thinks in terms of some external being — can quite visualize, but something external to himself. Let us turn now to the book.775 ¶1

He says he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Here the Evangelist John declares that all things without exception were made by him who, from all eternity, was with God — for who is God? Said, God is the first. And we speak now of a person in the third person: by him — what is this presence, who is he? If I tell you that God is your own wonderful human imagination, and God in action is simply imagining — in the Scripture it is called Christ. If you study it, firstly Christ is defined for us in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians as the power and the wisdom of God. So God in action is called Christ; imagination in action is imagining — that is Christ, if you want to use the word.775 ¶2

But now we will go back to the great book of Isaiah. It is said, in the 53rd chapter, which is called by all scholars the great Messianic chapter, for one suffers for another, and we are told that the Lord placed upon him the iniquities of us all — the Lord placed upon him. But it seems to be another. All iniquity — would you stop there? You think in terms of what the church tells you: that some being two thousand years ago took upon himself our sins, our iniquities, our mischief, our wickedness, and there he expiates them in his body. But now you mustn’t stop there. Let us read the book carefully. We are told that he has no form that we should look upon him, no form that we should look upon him, and no beauty that we should desire him.775 ¶3

Now let us turn over from the 53rd chapter to the 64th chapter, and you listen to it carefully: there is none, there is no one that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast delivered us into the hand of our iniquities. Now we are told, in the same book, thou hast delivered us into thy hand, all our iniquities delivered upon us. Now listen to this carefully: yet, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our Potter; we are all the work of thy hand.775 ¶4

Now, the word translated “Lord” is I AM. Yes — Lord, thou art our Father — the word is I AM: Father is my — my Creator. The word translated “Potter” — thou art our Potter — the word translated “potter” means imagination. So all form is — first, to assume that it is man to have form, but I AM, in itself, has no form. So the poet would say: If thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me; thou too dwellest in eternity. Thou art a man, God is no more; thine own humanity learn to adore, for that is my Spirit of Life. Thou art a man, God is no more. That is man. So the Lord is I AM, but he becomes personified, and the personification of I AM is man.775 ¶5

If I say “I am rich,” “I am poor,” I mean I am a rich man or I am a poor man. I mean I am a rich man or I am a poor man. Let me now leave off, for one moment, imagining myself to be poor — and where do you suppose all the poor man would be? Where do you suppose I would be — a poor man — if I left off for one moment imagining that I am poor? It would vanish and leave no trace behind it. If I dare to leave off imagining that I am limited, then the thing that is assumed by imagining, by dreaming itself limited, will simply cease to be. I AM can cease to be, and I AM man can cease to be. But every claim that I make for myself as man will cease to be if I stop imagining it. And so here, yet — thou art our Father, O Lord, thou art our Potter, and Potter, thou art my imagination. So I am saying that I AM is the Father, and these are my imaginations — that’s what that chapter is telling me. It’s the 64th chapter, the seventh and eighth verses of the book of Isaiah.775 ¶6

He said, I am the Lord, this is the Lord: I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things. Is there a power in the world to do anything? But — what an indictment — there is no one that calleth upon thy name, no one stirreth himself to take hold of thee. What an indictment! And now we are told why he hides his face, and he tells us, in the 31st chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, why he hides his face — from our wickedness, and he does it because we have turned to other gods. The only reason in the world that he hides his face from man is because man turns to other gods. If man will not turn to another god — I mean, if he holds only to the one God, which is I AM — there is nothing impossible to it, nothing. The minute he turns to another god and rationalizes anything but the one God, he is turned from the only God, and he brings upon himself strange things and all the wickedness of the world.775 ¶7

If I dare to assume that this building is mine — it’s owned now by the club; the club has hundreds and hundreds of members, and so it belongs to the members, this club — but without consulting the members, without trying to scheme together on it, if I so desired this building, and I dare to assume that it is mine, just as I say the title is mine — I do not raise a finger to make it so, or to rationalize it, or in any way influence anyone in the club to become a spokesman for me. Just — it is mine — and I sleep in the assumption that it is so, in a way I do not know, without hurt to anyone. All will want to get rid of the club and buy some other place, and it will not be a hurt to any member — no one will be hurt, and all will be mutually benefited, and I will get it — if I so desire. God forbid — but nevertheless, that’s how the law works.775 ¶8

Now let me tell you a story, and I want you all to really take it seriously, and that you can write like it this week if you really will apply it. You first must accept the fact that there is only one God, and that one God is not outside — he is your own wonderful human imagination. When you say “I am” — no form; and I am man — he has form; that’s God. God, a man; God is no more; I AM, that’s God. You start right there.775 ¶9

Now, a gentleman wrote me a letter which I received last Thursday night. He’s here tonight, he and his wife and a friend. He did not tell me I could tell it from the platform, but I’m going to tell it — it’s a very lovely thing. No one but the gentleman, his wife, and his friend know who they are, but it’s a wonderful story, and you should hear it.775 ¶10

He writes: I, here above Sunset Strip, twenty feet behind my place, my property is cleared, and then a straight clip of thirty feet of decomposed granite — it was cut when my home was built. And behind that, rising, say, two hundred feet, is a sheer cliff, covered in brush, far above my home, and behind and above, another home — that home was built after, two years ago. My insurance broker — my fire insurance — notified me that because of a disastrous fire in the area, no company would cover my property, and so those who held it would not renew it. One company said, if you would clear seventy-five feet beyond your property of old brush and then plant ice plant, then we might consider it. Well, first of all, the seventy-five feet beyond my property was not my property, so I couldn’t clear it, and certainly I’m quite sure the owner will not allow it to be cleared — for the first rain the whole thing would come tumbling down, and certainly you would not allow it to be — and I ignored it. So my policy lapsed.775 ¶11

It was then that I came across your book, The Law and the Promise. I did not know then that you lived in the city and that you gave lectures, but I imagined what it would be like if I heard you lecture, and, strangely enough, I saw this place here just as it is today, with this exception: there was no stage, and the chairs were more comfortable — and that’s something I can do nothing about, but the chairs were more comfortable. Then he said, I saw you enter stage right, and then we entered into the question period. This is just an introduction into the book, The Law and the Promise. Having read it, I thought: now here’s my problem, I’m not covered. So I took, in my imaginary hand, a policy, and just felt it. And so I felt the policy in my hand, and when I began, through the day, to think in terms of the problem, and to talk mentally with anyone, I came back to the end — the policy in my hand — and every time that I was diverted, trying to rationalize it, I came back to the end, the policy in my hand.775 ¶12

Well, the next day, a woman called me who takes care of my account — she’s in the office of my business manager — she called on an entirely different matter, and while I had her on the line, I told her my difficulty, and she said that her office takes care of the tax returns of another broker, that she would talk to him that day and call me back — which she did, and said that he agreed to take half the policy, he would send his investigators around to examine the property. Then I found myself talking with these investigators mentally, trying to persuade them that brush was essential, that you had to have brush or the very first rain all the decomposed granite would come down — which I knew, when this man built his home two hundred feet behind and above me, that on the first rain my yard was filled with this decomposed material, and it took the man himself over a week to clear the way. So I knew the brush was essential. But then again I said, I am not doing the right thing here, I’m talking to these people mentally, then I must go back to the policy. So he goes back to the policy in his hand — why bother with these men at all, let them come and see the property, but I will simply go to the end and hold the policy in my hand — which he did.775 ¶13

The woman called back the next day and said that the new broker had turned to another insurance company that was willing to take the other half of the policy without investigation, without any clearing of brush, but there would be a $300 search charge, an increase in the taxes. But the man who arranged the whole thing said that he could juggle the policy and then take it off at some other place in the policy — therefore, really, in the end, he would not be paying any more — the $300 would be taken from elsewhere in the policy, by a certain juggling of — I don’t know what it is, but he juggled the policy — so really they only paid the same amount of money that they intended to pay.775 ¶14

Then he said: we had an enormous rain a month later. I had my policy completely covered now, and there was a huge rain, and — brush or no brush — an enormous amount of that hill came right down into my yard. I looked at it and I said, at least two full truckloads — too much for a little trucking company and not enough for a big trucking company. I looked at it — where would I turn, to whom would I go? And so I looked at the whole thing and I said, to hell with it, I will not see nothing but green, just as I did before — I will see green, I will even see this decomposed stuff in my yard as green.775 ¶15

So it is my custom that I go for a two or three mile walk every morning. I take my car down to the foot of the hill and walk on a plot of ground which is Sunset Strip. And so I take my walk on Sunset, and as I came back and got into my car, there was a man signaling his way, asking for a lift up the hill. So I gave him a lift, and he told me that he washes cars for a living, but the rain had washed all the cars, and he had no job today. So when I explained to him my difficulty with all this in my yard, he asked me if I would allow him to carry it away for me, that he charged a dollar and a quarter an hour. I told him that wasn’t enough. He said, that’s my price, and I don’t want to disturb it — a dollar and a quarter an hour. So that day he cleared the entire amount along the adjoining property and covered up all the dry brush, and thereby removed the hazard, for all this was very, very dry and tangled — and by covering the entire area with this green material, his yard is simply — listen — the fire hazard is gone.775 ¶16

The next day he called again and he said, the cars are still clean, I wonder if you could give me a job today. Well, I wanted for the longest while to plant some roses near a certain fence of mine, but the hazard prevented it, and so I said to him, you could move the brush up against the hill. Well, Eddie — for that’s exactly what I’ve seen — green all over the place. So I went out and got to work with the job, and when I came back the whole place was green, as I had, in my imagination, seen it.775 ¶17

Now, he said, I must tell you something about this man — his name is Eddie, that’s all I call him, he introduced himself as Eddie. He said, I think he’s my bad dream, because I can’t seem to do anything for Ed — I can’t. I try to bring into my mind, I try to see a different state, and I failed — I can’t even bring it into my mind now. But this is he — he is fifty-four years old, and in the ’30s his mother died, and he tried to commit suicide, but he failed, and he was put into an asylum for the mildly insane. He felt himself an outcast, a social outcast, and unwanted. And so the friend who wrote the letter said, of course I can see that he has a point there, if he’s unwanted — but nevertheless he feels unwanted, and — he ran away from this asylum, the police got him and brought him back, the asylum didn’t want him, now the police wanted him — so he was set free, and he makes about $100 a month from a $20,000 trust fund, plus what he can make from washing cars and odd jobs.775 ¶18

But Eddie, when he saves a few dollars, he goes to the desert to hunt for gold, or he goes to the mountain — he calls it “my prospecting act.” Well, this day, a few months ago, he went off on his great act, and as he was approaching the hill in the distance he heard a voice say, “I AM.” He was startled — he looked around, not a soul in sight for miles around. The voice repeated itself, this time louder: “I AM.” This time he thought it must be coming from some helicopter, maybe some person with a PA system, simply speaking from above. So he looked up — not a thing in the skies. And so the fourth time the voice came back: “Do not come up here, I AM.” But he was curious, so he started towards the top of the hill, where he thought this time it came from. When he got to the hill, there he came across a four-foot rattler — it wasn’t coiled, just stretched out, staring at him — but he said it didn’t have a human face, he didn’t take it out and put it in his purse as the lady did — he simply ran.775 ¶19

Now, that is Eddie’s story, he said, just as it happened, and so I will share it with you and tell it to you as it was told to me. Now, maybe I shouldn’t apply my imagination any more to Eddie — maybe Eddie is on a higher level of consciousness than I am. Eddie heard, as everyone will one day hear, as coming from without, what actually is whispered from within. When you read it in the third chapter of Exodus, “and the Lord God said unto Moses, go say, I AM THAT I AM, and when they ask you who sent you, just say, I AM hath sent you” — it’s written so that when you read it you will think a man heard a voice actually coming tumbling out from some bush, and underneath that bush a voice is speaking to a man. No — he heard, as coming from without, what really was whispered from the depths of his soul.775 ¶20

I am telling about the burning bush. If you’ve never witnessed it, I can tell you, your whole being becomes a flame, and you see it. I have seen it in subways, I’ve seen it on the stage. I have seen — I AM — suddenly the whole is, though you were fire, and you wonder why you are burning. So — as with this bush, it burned and yet it did not consume, it burned and the tree was not consumed. I have been in the subway, and the whole area is ablaze — it’s burning, but the burning is something like spirit-burning. If I took alcohol and burned it, the whole thing is alive — it’s not like a gas jet where the burning flame is constant, it’s not that kind of flame, it is a moving flame, like spirit. If I pour brandy over a plum pudding and light it, the whole thing becomes alive, and it moves all over — it burns just like that, and you are the center of the entire burning. It’s from the depths of your own soul that you hear it — it hears you, you hear, and you think it’s coming from without. It’s not coming from without, it’s coming from the very depths of your soul. I AM.775 ¶21

So Eddie, living in a tent up in the hills — that’s his home, a tent — with a trust fund of $20,000 paying him $100 a month, and what he can pick up washing cars and doing odd jobs, like cleaning off the yard of this gentleman and things of that sort. But he wants not a thing beyond that — he doesn’t want to disturb even his dollar-and-a-quarter rate — the gentleman was quite willing, quite ready, to give two dollars an hour for the whole thing. No, he didn’t want that — he wanted a dollar and a quarter an hour. And so I will say to him — he’s in the audience — just let Eddie go. The voice is calling out, and to Eddie it seems to come from way out in space, even so far up into the sky he thinks some helicopter is passing by with a PA system — it must be from there, because it seems so much on the outside — it is on the outside — but that voice calls and calls and calls.775 ¶22

So we hear these words: there is no one that calleth upon thy name, no one stirreth himself to take hold of thy name. They all look on the outside. And we are told the one great thing that causes him to hide his face is that they have turned to other gods. Today, not only one billion Christians, but maybe six hundred million Muhammadans — they turn to Mecca several times in the course of the day, prostrate themselves wherever they are, and point towards Mecca — some external god. And you go to the synagogue, and they have a holy book and a tallit, and as they start reading the great word — YHVH — if you’ve ever gone to shul, gone to the synagogue, when they come upon the word, whoever is the reader covers it with cloth, that he may not look upon the holy name — because everything is on the outside. And so this indictment — there is not one — that seems a tremendous, bold accusation — not one who calleth upon thy name, not one stirreth himself to take hold of thy name. And because of this, thou hast turned thy face from us — and what have you done? Now not only have you turned your face from us, but you now deliver us into the hand of our own iniquities, and we are lost in our own creations, and we don’t realize it, we don’t realize what we’re doing.775 ¶23

So all the wickedness that belongs to us is self-begotten, for there is only God — my Father, as we’re told: the Lord, which is I AM, is my Father, and my Father is my own imagination — so I am self-begotten. Do I make the statement that you come out, and you alone come out — that things you can’t be must be outside of being? No, it isn’t — you yourself come out of your own self-imposed state; God comes out, there is no other, there’s nothing but God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination.775 ¶24

If you will take what this gentleman did — he read that book, The Law and the Promise, and he held on to the feeling. He took the end — the end is where we start from, in my end is my beginning — so I go to the end. What was the end of this case? He had the policy, and the policy was in his hand, signed by both parties — here’s a contract — must he now argue with those who come to investigate? The policy can’t be signed and in his hand while they’re still examining his property and bringing in reasons why it must be behind him — those must be behind him if he holds the policy. So every time he, through reason, through habit, would turn to analyze the picture and try to persuade them that this brush must be cleared or else the first rain is going to bring the whole hill down — as he began to analyze it and to rationalize it, he remembered, that’s not what he teaches, he teaches that you go to the end. So he took the thing once more in his hand, and he held it, and stayed with it — the policy — for the policy would not be in his hand, signed by both parties, until something had been done about it — it’s a contract. So the whole thing is done, if you know exactly what you hold in your hand after the event. Hold it in your hand, then let some woman call you — in his case a woman called on a different matter, and at that very moment he remembered his difficulty. Then she knew someone whose tax return her office took care of, and she would see him that day and call back — which the man did, without seeing it, he took it, and — yes — and the second party, the next day, they didn’t even come to see the property, they made no request to remove the brush, and took the other half of the policy, and the $300 search charge was adjusted so that it wasn’t really $300 more anyway.775 ¶25

But I say to you, believe me, not a thing comes into your world that you did not draw by some imaginal act. Now, a thing does not happen to man, no matter how wicked it is, that he himself does not bring into the world by his own imaginal act. Imagining creates reality — believe it, because imagining is God in action. Imagination is God; imagining is God in action. If you differ over the words “God” and “Christ” — well, then God is your imagination, and Christ is your imagining — that is the activity of imagination. I say, man’s imagination is manifested in the imaginations of men — like the one who took the other half without even investigating; he had to, for the policy was in the man’s hands, and so there was a mutual benefit to the entire picture.775 ¶26

So I know — from the big fire we saw here one night — my dentist, he was right in the midst of all the flames, and they were all falling all around. I went through this door here into my little room in the back and saw these things burst up in flame, one after the other. Jim’s house didn’t lose one shingle, and I can see the tree now — the eucalyptus tree that was completely scorched on one side, outside of his property, and yet not on the inside — of all trees, eucalyptus, full of oil, that goes up entirely, burnt on one side and not the other. And the only thing that he could have lost — someone, not thinking that Jim was in the city, that he and his wife might have been away, with the fire sweeping up the hills in spite of all the fire departments — went into the home, and he heard a door slam, and then he thought he heard footsteps, and when he rushed into the dining room — someone, like so many people, they’re like you, they live off others, they think that way — someone, seeing this enormous flame, knowing that no one would be in the house, rushed in, took Jim’s lovely rug, one of his choice orientals, and put all of Jim’s silver into it, and he was just about ready to escape when, hearing the footsteps he heard, a friend of Jim’s came uninvited and saved all the silver. So Jim did not lose one shoe, not a scrap, he lost nothing — and that’s Jim, living this way. He isn’t here tonight.775 ¶27

But when I went to see the home, and the brush all over the place burned, that was the night that Aldous Huxley’s house went right down to the very ground. Aldous Huxley himself, in one of his books, said that he had reasons for not wanting the world to have meaning — consciously he assumed that it had none, and without any difficulty found all the reasons in the world to support his assumption. So he wrote in his book that the world had no meaning — he didn’t want it to have meaning. So he had this most valuable library — first editions, not only his own, but publishers had given him first editions of his own lovely works, all kinds of lovely things and art objects, which he intended someday to give to maybe UCLA or some great college — and not one thing was saved, only a suit on his back and the last manuscript — because he really believed, seeing the whole confused world, that it had no meaning. He could not believe in a God — not really, as we believe in God — he couldn’t believe in his own I AM. He believed only in that which science could in some way bring out.775 ¶28

And his own grandfather, Thomas Huxley — when Thomas Huxley one day was asked, in the presence of another scientist, “if you saw a great big object rise from the earth and float through space, unsupported by any known power to man, what would you say that you just saw?” — the other scientist answered first, and he said, “well, I would say I just witnessed the suspension of the laws of gravity.” While Thomas Huxley — he had been, I would say, more profound in his thinking than the other scientist — he said, “I wouldn’t say that. I would say, I have just witnessed the operation of a law of which I am totally ignorant. If gravity is absolute, it can’t be suspended, so if I saw what you just described, I would say I just witnessed the operation of a law of which I am totally ignorant. There may be a law where gravity, as we understand it, doesn’t function” — while his grandson couldn’t conceive of any law that could account for what we considered gravity to be. Yet he didn’t take that page from his ancestor’s book, because he really believed it had no meaning whatsoever, and so he lived life full of all the excitement he could, if the body and time allowed it, but aside from that he couldn’t quite see the meaning behind it all. I try to find meaning for every little thing that happens in this world — another thing could happen, but nothing could happen unless it were supported by an imaginal act.775 ¶29

Now, the imaginal act may be delayed in coming, as far as your vision goes — it’s not delayed in its own motion, but you may be anxious, and you may think it’s delayed, it’s taking too long. It isn’t taking too long for itself. Every vision has its own appointed hour — it runs, and it will come, if it belongs to the individual, then it is sure, and it will not be late. Just wait — you plant the now, and don’t waver; as you find yourself moving into some other level, come back to the end, for you always plant the end. He saw the green, and a stranger was making his way up the hill, and he is the one to make it green. He moves the brush away and puts it on the dry brush, and — say — he brings back this revelation, for a simple person, living in a tent, unkempt, with little to his name in this world, and yet in the stillness of the desert he could hear, “I AM, don’t come up here, I AM” — didn’t say “I am this,” “I am that” — the other, simply, “I AM,” from the depth of his soul.775 ¶30

It is stirring — who is stirring? He is trying to come to the surface, and he thinks he’s on the outside — it sounds so loud when you hear it. If anyone stood in his presence, do you know, no one else would have heard it. If he had a thousand people around him, he, and he alone, would have heard it — that’s scripture. Only the one who has the experience hears it. Read it carefully, and when the god descended, only he on whom he descended — if you read it in the first chapter of the book of Mark, it is recorded by the evangelist as though — not that he witnessed it — that he had been told by the one who experienced it — but no one but the one who experiences these things really hears it or sees it. So Eddie could be in the presence of a thousand people, and Eddie, and Eddie alone, would have heard the voice. He heard it three times, and three times it is trying to bring him into himself, but to him it seemed so loud, he thought it was coming from without — but just like Moses — he heard just what Moses heard, and that which seemed to have come from without was really coming from the depths of the soul.775 ¶31

So, to everyone here, when you read your Bible and you come across, “I am the Lord thy God, and beside me there is no God, I am thy Savior” — and the reason of the Savior — you read that in the 43rd chapter of Isaiah. And listen to these words — these are supposed to be the greatest of all the commandments. When he was asked, what’s the greatest commandment, this is what he answered: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”775 ¶32

Now listen to the words here — really, the Lord, that’s I AM — our God, our I AM, is one — I AM. There’s only one God. Don’t be concerned about his little “I am” or that little “I am” — there’s only one I AM, in all of you individually. And thou shalt love the Lord — that is the I AM which I AM — thy I AM — with all thy might, with all thy heart, with all thy soul. How could I love my own I AM? That’s what I’m accused of not doing. I think I love God, and I bend my knee before some wooden object in the world, or some carved thing out of marble, or maybe some precious thing with diamonds, or some image of a man, and hang it around my neck, and these other little things — I put the god up on the stone, or maybe praise the artist who did the carving — and I completely turn to other gods, and that’s when God, the real God, hides his face.775 ¶33

If I would turn to the only God — and the only God is your own wonderful I AM — has no form, and yet you say I AM, but he will have form, you say “I am man” — it takes long, and when you see it, it’s just like you. That’s why I tell you over and over, when you see him, whatever you see him as, you’re going to see yourself, only lifted up to the nth degree of beauty and dignity and majesty and a strength of character in your face that you wouldn’t dream you could ever attain, but it’s just like you. So if anyone should ever come and say, “look, there is Christ,” or “look, here it is,” don’t believe them — why? Because although it does not yet appear what we shall be, we know when he appears we shall be like him.775 ¶34

And so, one day, you’re going to see him, just as you read in my little book — others sought the same experience — only mine preceded his by many years — his happened in 1944 and mine happened in 1934. But here you come upon a meditative being, and you look closer, and you discover you’re looking at yourself. And he said that he saw this wonderful being — himself, only raised to the nth degree of beauty — his primal form, sitting in deep meditation — and he knew that the way — he, the one looking at it — would know no more will be, because there can’t be two of you, you are he. So when he awakes, this vanishes, because you are he — that deathless human being that never ceases to be. So you cannot die, for the simple reason you are all imagination. Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us, and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself.775 ¶35

So read it carefully: the Lord is our Father, thou art our Potter, we are all the work of thy hand. Anything that is happening to me is the work of thy hand — and it does not mean a second person, but I AM, which means my imagination. The Lord is my own wonderful human imagination — if I don’t believe it, and turn to another god, he hides his face from me, for he is not the one to whom I will turn — he is only within me, as my own wonderful human imagination. I must trust him inwardly, more than anyone trusts the outside god, because the outside god is a false god. Read it carefully — the only reason he hides his face is because they turn to other gods. In that 31st chapter, the 18th verse, of Deuteronomy, there is no other reason for his turning and hiding his face — he hideth because of the many wickedness of man, and because man has turned to another god. Any time you turn to another god, he’ll hide himself, hide his face.775 ¶36

But tonight, try and do with me — or do for me — what that gentleman did unsolicited. I’m going to solicit your letters, your case histories, that may come from this platform, and talk about them, to encourage everyone who comes here to believe in the only God — the God that cannot die, the God of the living — that you may know you cannot die, you cannot even pass away. This is a being that is awakening in the depth of your soul, and when he awakens he is God, all wild God. But because of this wonderful experience, and there is no limit to his expansion — it expands all the more — there is only a limit to contraction, only a limit to opacity, but no limit to expansion and to translucency. So, as this experience happens, your self within you grows all the more translucent, all the more expansive.775 ¶37

So now, go into the silence, and in this silence, take something — if you can find something to hold in your hand, a contract, a sum of money, an agreement, I don’t care what it is, but something which implies the end has been realized. Don’t argue about it, go to the end, and just — if you have realizing the end and feeling the end, then all the means necessary to fulfill that end will fall into place, and you don’t have to devise any means. And let us stop there — are there any questions?775 ¶38

Please —775 ¶39

For Eddie heard, in the desert, with no one in sight, not for miles around, and it came so loudly he looked up to the skies, thinking that an airplane, a helicopter, must be passing over with a PA system — that was his reasoning mind, because what came to him came through, well, the conceptual mind, and therefore modified itself. But nevertheless, he did climb — even that is symbolical — he climbed a hill to see the symbol. So the whole thing was symbolical. Really, everything has meaning in this world. Now, I could not tell you the exact and precise meaning of “don’t come up” — in fact, it’s a challenge, which is a very good challenge, because every time man is told not to do something, he does it. And so it could be taken in that sense — every commandment is broken because it’s negatively stated: “thou shalt not.” I can offer you any sum of money in this world — if I tell you I’ll give it to you provided you do not think of a monkey, and you try not to think of the monkey, but you’ll never get the sum of money — the more you try not to think of it, the more you multiply — you have nothing but monkeys in the world, because you see the goal as against what you must not do.775 ¶42

So, “thou shalt not” — and if you know the story of scripture, he broke every commandment — he broke the Sabbath day, therefore he simply turned against the Sabbath god, and so “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The woman taken in adultery — the Lord did not condemn her to death, he forgave her. “Honor your father and mother” — “you who are my mother and brothers and sisters, those who do the will of him that sent me.” So he denied — first he confessed, “I am,” about my Father — this other Father altogether, his only Father is I AM, my Father, the one — but he denied earth altogether. And every commandment he broke, because they were all written negatively, “thou shalt not,” but in the Sermon on the Mount the whole thing is positively stated — everything is on the positive side, nothing is stated negatively.775 ¶43

Yes, ma’am —775 ¶44