Natural Effects Have Spiritual Causes

Every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems; it is a delusion of the perishing vegetable memory. We do not remember these moments in time when we imagined certain states. So when that imaginal state takes form so we can see it with the outer eye we do not recognize our own harvest and deny that we had anything to do with these natural effects that are taking place in our world. Because our memory is faulty, we do not remember them. “There is a moment in every day,” said Blake, “that Satan cannot find, nor can his watch fiends find it, but the industrious find this moment and it multiply. And when it once is found, it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed.” Now, by the word Satan he simply means doubt. Doubt cannot find it. I desire a certain state in this world. Reason tells me it’s difficult, my friends tell me it’s impossible, and so if I doubt that I could ever realize it— that’s the voice of Satan speaking to me. He’s always challenging God. God is my own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. So the protagonists are God and Satan…simply faith and doubt. Can I imagine that I am the one that I would like to be, and remain faithful to that assumption as though it were true? If I can, and remember that assumption and when I did it, then I can see when it happens in my world the relationship between the natural effect and its spiritual cause. The spiritual cause is that moment of assumption.867 ¶1

Now let me share with you what was given to me this past week in the form of a letter (he’s here tonight). His father was a low man on the totem pole when he first encountered him. There were four in the shop and he was the fourth man. If you’re familiar with the barber shop—maybe you ladies don’t know—the boss always has the first chair, so if it’s a slow day, he gets the man. By the time he is through if the second one comes in, he gets the second one…he doesn’t share him. If three should come in, they go to the different chairs. But four chairs…the fourth one waits for his customer. Well, this friend of mine, one day he happened to sit in his chair and he liked the way he cut his hair, and gathered from what he said he liked cutting hair. He was proud of the profession as a barber, proud of it…not making excuses as so many barbers do. He was proud to be a barber and wanted to be the very best barber and win competitions. So having heard this man express this desire, he imagined that he was tops. Well, in a little while he bought out his father and then dismissed him, and rearranged his setup, and from then on began to proceed to the top.867 ¶2

Well, three weeks ago, while sitting in his chair—which is not the boss-father is his father, for he was the low man and now he’s top man—he said to him in a very excited way that there was a contest to be held in San Francisco and he would like to enter this contest for hair styling and cutting of hair. “Well, when I discovered that he really wanted it, and no one goes to a contest unless he wants to win, I saw on the wall the trophy that would be his and I heard him tell me how he won. Well, there were four men in the shop, one committed for that weekend, and so this past weekend he took two with him…so there were three from that shop of four men. There were only nine trophies given in the state in this competition, and that one little shop won four. The boss-father won first prize and the second prize, and his two men who went with him each won a second prize. So they came back from San Francisco bearing four out of the nine.”867 ¶3

Now he said to me, “You’ve often said from the platform, ‘I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you may believe.’ Well, now I’m going to tell, Neville, before it takes place, there’s going to be a contest in Southern California and I have seen his trophy as the first one on that wall. So I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you will know that I’m putting this into practice.” I know he lives by it. “Then there will be another contest,” said he, “in Miami, and one must win in Miami to be eligible for that which is to be held in Brussels, which will be the international. I’m putting him there in Brussels as first among all contestants.” Well, I know that he will win, for every natural effect has a spiritual cause, and not a natural. A natural cause only seems…it’s a delusion of man’s perishing vegetable memory, he doesn’t remember. But now he will remember what he did. I have his record at home in his letter.867 ¶4

Now, he said to me in this letter, “I had a dream, I repeated the dream, and then I had a third dream all on the same night.” So the first and the second were simply the same dream repeating. “I do not bring back the details,” said he, “of the dream, but it was all about in detail, strangely enough, about my birthday. I cannot recall all the things that happened, I only know here stood a man in a white robe with a book in his hand open in the middle. It was gilt edged and he had a quill in his hand, or it could have been a scythe. He looked almost like a cartoonist’s concept of Father Time, and he was insistent that my birthday was a certain day. I was equally forceful in stating it was not, because I knew my birthday to be the 19th of September, 1927, and he was insisting over my protest pointing all the things out in the book. Then I woke, in spite of his insistence and my protest, for I knew my birthday. At least that was my physical birthday.”867 ¶5

I’ll call his attention to the 87th Psalm: “And the Lord records as he registers the peoples,” and he said, “This one was born there.” It’s all about birth. There are only seven verses in it…it’s a small short psalm. But this is the birth, not of a physical birth, this is a spiritual birth: “And this one was born there.” I can say to him, you did the perfect job that I knew you would in challenging the Lord’s angel, the recording one, for to sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of us all. No coward can be used in his stable of studs. I can say from the way you worded your letter that you have been born, but the perishing vegetable memory has not brought it back; you have been born from above. You have had other experiences that would imply an adumbration, but from this letter I would say you have been, but memory has not brought it back. I’m convinced of it, from your letter, for it’s all in the past, it’s not present and certainly it’s not future the way you worded the letter. For you know your birth date which is physical and it’s September 19th, 1927, and he denied that was the day of your birth. To deny that was the day of your birth would imply you were born in the spirit world, because he represents not the physical world but the spiritual world. So I would say of you, you have been born from above.867 ¶6

So here, take these moments…every moment in time is a special moment, a precious moment, a moment where you actually use it to plant what you want planted in this world, and remembering that moment, well then, it has to come. For every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. Well, that spiritual cause is that moment when you dare to assume that you are the man or the woman that you would like to be. Or that another man, in this case a barber, that he is the top as he desires to be. So you can do it not only for yourself, do it for another or do it for many as he did.867 ¶7

These are these in this wonderful world of ours, but our memory fails and we do not remember, so that when the whole thing rises in our world, we do not relate it to our own harvest. We can’t remember when we ever did it. But not a thing could happen in my world that comes by accident…it wouldn’t…all things come because I planted it, either wittingly or unwittingly. I either did it knowing what I’m doing, or I did it not knowing because I was lost in some emotional state. I felt intensely about a state, it might have been a lovely or unlovely state, but the seed was planted and I will reap it; and the whole thing will come into my world whether I recognize my harvest or not. So if I know this to be the law of life, it’s entirely up to me now to select and plant only what I want to reap in my world.867 ¶8

So everyone in this world is here for a purpose and the purpose is to fulfill scripture…there is no other purpose. The fulfillment of scripture brings me out of this world where I must remain until I awaken, but I can’t awaken until I fulfill scripture. Well, scripture is the plan.867 ¶9

Now, another lady wrote this one. She said, “I found myself in this glorious mansion, high, high up and with the most beautiful gardens and perfectly kept. A man and a woman left in a white car and someone said to me, ‘Give me two names’ and they were the names of two relatives of mine. But I knew that it was you who had left; I also knew that you would return. Now I have no memory whatsoever of what transpired between knowing it was you who left and that you would return, but I woke saying, ‘Now I know that I have experienced what Neville said that I would.’ Then my throat was parched as though aflame and I went and got myself a nice cold drink of water. I went back to bed and had this dream. I’m in a department store and here I am with all of these Bibles for brides, Bibles given out for weddings. In a strange way, all the brides were dressed in their bridal white gowns; and the department store supplied the grooms. They are all being married by proxy. The department store supplied all the grooms so that they may have a wedding picture taken with the groom supplied by the department store. Then I turned to one and speaking to her she said that she’s going to Paris. Then I said to her, ‘I’m getting married next month.’”867 ¶10

Well, this vision that you had, my dear, is a beautiful vision, because as we’re told in scripture in the Book of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name” . So you saw the perfect symbol of what the depth of your own being revealed to you, that you will have union with the Lord. Union with the Lord means that that which is in you like an egg is to be fertilized; and that it will erupt within you, and the whole thing said of Jesus Christ will unfold within you, and you will be he. So I can say you had the perfect vision.867 ¶11

Another lady wrote, she said, “I took my son into the back yard and here was a fish pond [...]. It wasn’t yet stocked with fish but clear water about twelve inches deep. In it was a little shaggy white dog lying in the water, but its little black nose was right above the water. I took the dog out, I dried it off and took it into the house, and it romped and played all over the place. Then I missed it and searching for it I went back into the yard and here is the dog in the pool again. This time when I walked by it wagged its tail as though ‘leave me here, I like being here.’ It was quite satisfied to be submerged in the water minus the nose above. But its tail wagged as though it was happy to be in that water.”867 ¶12

May I tell you, in the Bible we speak of the stone, the water and the wine. The stone is the literal story, the allegory, and man must discover the fictitious nature and character of the story. When he discovers the fictitious character of the story in scripture and then learns its meaning, he has found water. He has struck that rock, like a Moses, and water flowed out.867 ¶13

Now the first miracle or sign in the Book of John is the turning of water into wine . And so you’re told to fill the stone jars with water, and when they drew it out of the stone jars that water within the stone jars was wine, perfect wine, lovely wine. So first we have a story, and man takes the story and accepts the story literally, and so he goes through life with the literal or the stone. When he discovers the fictitious character of the story and then it reveals itself to him, the true meaning, he has that psychological water.867 ¶14

Now, the little dog is the symbol of faith. Your faith is now in the psychological meaning of these great truths. If you apply what you know, you will convert it into wine…if you apply it. If you will take what you now know, that imagining creates reality, and dare to imagine that you are now what you would like to be, then you are turning this water, truth, into wine.867 ¶15

As told us in the Book of Genesis: When Jacob brought the flock into the field the well was covered with a stone, and he rolled the stone away and watered his flock; and then he put the stone back again. He didn’t turn it into wine, but he did withdraw water. But the stone covered it and hid the view of the water.867 ¶16

So the story as told to man is a parable; the whole thing is a parable, the whole thing is an allegory. If you take it as factual and not as what it really is, the most wonderful parable in the world, well then, you’ll never use your Imagination to extract from that stone the water, therefore, you cannot feed the flock. But if you can actually get from any story in scripture its psychological meaning, tell it to the world.867 ¶17

When Isaac brings his son, and he’s blind, can’t see, and so two sons—one is called Esau, one is called Jacob. Jacob covers himself in the skins of a goat to give himself the feeling of hair, for the first one was Esau and Esau was hairy all over. So when Jacob deceived the father into believing that he was Esau, he gave him his blessing.867 ¶18

So you take the story…and I stand here now and reason tells me that I am not where I would like to be, that I’m not the man that I really desire to be, so I shut out what reason is suggesting. I deny everything that reason dictates. I close my eyes to the facts of life, the obvious things, and I clothe myself mentally in all that I would like to be. I imagine that people see me as they would see me if I were the man that I would like to be. I imagine that I am actually standing where I would stand if I were, and that I am actually doing all the things that I would do normally and naturally if what I am assuming were really true, that it’s a fact. Well now, when I do this I’m clothing myself in the outer garment of natural, of the facts.867 ¶19

Now when I open my eyes on the facts of life, it denies everything that I have done but I remember what I did. I caught that precious moment…for there is that moment in each day that doubt cannot find, and his helpmates cannot find it, but the industrious find this moment.867 ¶20

So become the industrious. You find this moment and you clothe yourself in all the lovely things that you want to be in this world. Having done it, then you can break the spell. Open your eyes upon the facts of the world and the facts will deny everything that you did. But you’re told in scripture that Isaac having done it, having given the blessing to that moment, he couldn’t take it back. He could not retract it. So when Esau comes into the world and tells his father, “But you’re deceived…he first of all took from me my birthright, now he’s taken from me my blessing. He’s rightly named, you named him Jacob—meaning he supplants, he is a supplanter.” But the father, Isaac, said: “Even though he’s taken through deceit and deceived me into believing that he was Esau, I’ve given him your blessing and I cannot take it back” .867 ¶21

So that moment cannot be called back, it’s on its way. And it will move towards what?—the fulfillment of itself. When it appears in this world suddenly, it’s only the emergence of that hidden continuity. So it was moving unseen by the world and suddenly it erupts in the world.867 ¶22

But having remembered what I did, I can relate now that spiritual cause, the thing I did unseen by others, to the thing seen now that the whole vast world will share with me.867 ¶23

So in your case, my dear, having seen the little dog, it’s the symbol of Caleb or the hound of faith. The one that takes…goes with him…goes with whom?—goes with Joshua across the river into the Promised Land. No one else could go. So you walk in faith in this. And the day will come you will turn it all into wine. In other words, you will find yourself fulfilling scripture and the whole thing will unfold within you.867 ¶24

Now we told you last Monday the story of Moses and that he did not cross into the Promised Land but Joshua went over. You may not be familiar with scripture, but Joshua’s original name was Hoshea, as told us in the Book of Numbers. You’ll find that in the 13th chapter, the 16th verse of Numbers: “Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.” So when you take the prefix “Je” and put it before Hoshea, you turn Hoshea which means “savior or salvation” into “he by whom Jehovah will save.” So it becomes that creative power that actually, I would say, fertilizes what Moses represented. Moses represented the pattern man: “See that you make everything according to the pattern as it’s being shown to you on the mount.”867 ¶25

So here you’re seeing everything clearly that is the pattern. Don’t alter one little thing, make it just as it’s shown you on the mountain. But I can’t go in. That’s the egg, the perfect egg, that’s the ovum, but an egg remains just an egg until fertilized. It must be fertilized by the sperm, so that sperm must penetrate the surface of the egg. It leaves no hole either before or after penetration, and no one understands how it happens, because no one knows it’s all Imagination. I do not need to go through any door to put myself in a closed room. Seal the room and I could imagine that I’m in it and I didn’t open the door to go through. I didn’t break down the wall to get through; and when I depart I didn’t go through the open door, and I didn’t go through by breaking down the wall. I entered without leaving any hole and I departed without leaving any record of entrance and departure.867 ¶26

So a little sperm penetrates the surface of an egg and it leaves no hole either before or after penetration. But unless it penetrates, that egg remains just a perfect pattern of what ought to be or could be, but could never by itself ever unfold. It takes the sperm to penetrate it to make it unfold.867 ¶27

So Joshua, which is the Hebraic name of Jesus, the word Jesus and the word Joshua are the same thing…“he by whom Jehovah will save.” So man awakened from the dream of life. If he is a powerful man, a man like the one I spoke of earlier tonight, one who would defy the angel of the Lord, and over his protest he still is insisting that it’s not the right thing. Here he’s pointing to the Book of God and showing him that it is, but in spite of that…and so he didn’t sin by silence.867 ¶28

Because he didn’t sin by silence he’ll be used perfectly in the stable of the Lord to actually impregnate those who accepted the Word of God and have it within them as the pattern, the perfect pattern that must one day, having been impregnated, erupt within that one and unfold within him. So I congratulate him on his accomplishment.867 ¶29

For everyone who is awake if they are that spirit, they are members of the stable of the Lord, used for impregnation to inseminate the brides of God…for he is God. Everyone in this world is God.867 ¶30

But as a lady wrote, she said, “I wrote this letter. I don’t quite understand it, but I woke and I was repeating it, ‘The thing is we are bifurcated, divided beings.’” Well, who is the divided being but the Lord himself…the Lord and his emanation…a divided being. Out of Adam comes Eve, a divided being, and that emanation of the first. Well, here we are emanations. Well now, these contain the pattern of God’s plan of salvation, and it has to be, I would say, fructified, fertilized.867 ¶31

And may I tell you, it seems strange in this world to make these statements, but I know from experience they are true. I know how we play these parts after we are awakened from the dream of life. Then man is twice born, born from above, if he’s of that school, that spirit, and then we re-enter like a serpent. If you go up in a small little way like this, that’s not it. But when you go up as though you were a bolt of spiral lightning and you vibrate the entire skull and you’re still vibrating it, trying to get out and finally you subside, that’s the power that he can use. That’s the one that he uses in the fertilization of his bride.867 ¶32

But tonight you test it on this level and come down to this level and try it. There is a moment in each day…not just a moment, every moment of time is such a moment if you have a desire…that you can actually isolate that moment and then clothe yourself with the feeling of the wish fulfilled, whatever that wish is, until you can actually feel all the tones of reality, all the things that you would normally feel were it true. Now don’t forget that moment. That moment is productive and in its own good time that moment will appear in this world properly clothed as an objective fact. If it takes the whole vast world to aid its birth, it will take the whole vast world. If it takes an army of men to bring it to pass, an army of men, it doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to guide it. All you have to do is simply do it, and then let it alone, as you would put a seed into the ground, confident that it will grow.867 ¶33

Well, so you simply drop this, knowing what you did, so that you aren’t surprised when it happens in your world. So you want to be a man of wealth; all right, assume that you are a man of wealth. Not to have anything in this world other than that you desire it, because the man of wealth and that poor man are the same being. The poor state, the wealthy state, they’re only states. The man who occupies the poor state is an individual that never ceases to be that individual, but if he falls into the state of poverty, well then, we call him a poor man. But he doesn’t differ from the man who falls into the state of wealth. For the man in the state of wealth isn’t any better, he has money, lots of money if he’s a fabulously wealthy person; but that doesn’t put him in spiritual sense beyond the man who is poor. The man that is poor doesn’t know how he can get out of the state of poverty. All these are states, infinite states, and man blindly falls into states.867 ¶34

If he knows they are only states and he dislikes the state he is in, he’ll get out of that state by now planting one of these moments, these heavenly moments by assuming that “I am now secure.”867 ¶35

Security’s a relative term. It may be that someone is insecure with a $100,000 a year income. I am quite sure that if you take any of the fabulously wealthy men of our world and said, “Your income as of now will be only $100,000 a year,” they would instantly have to sell their yachts, their homes, all these things, and give up membership in certain clubs, because they couldn’t even pay their servants. If they have a full complement of servants in their many homes and you said, “$100,000 a year,” well, they would be poor. The average person, if you said, “You have $100,000,” he would be fabulously wealthy.867 ¶36

So wealth is a relative term. It hasn’t a thing to do with the spiritual growth of a being, nothing, because all of these are states. So I can put myself into a state of wealth, put myself into a state of poverty, put myself into any kind of state in this world. So if I don’t enjoy poverty, well then, don’t get into the state.867 ¶37

I, on the other hand, have no desire for fabulous wealth, because I do not wish the responsibility of fabulous wealth and thinking about it. I can’t see how anyone who is fabulously wealthy has any time whatsoever for things of a spiritual matter. He’s so concerned about his wealth, his portfolio, and watches it morning, noon and night. The first thing he does in the morning when he gets the morning paper, he turns to that section and he reads it, as some ladies turn to the social section and they read it, as though it really matters, but they do it.867 ¶38

There are some who only read the obituaries and then they get a living out of reading that and notifying all the people who are recorded as dead that he knew them. I know when my father-in-law died he got unnumbered letters from people who claimed that they knew him and he had promised them so much, and that he died before he could execute his desire. Some people even went so far as to print up all kinds of things, saying he ordered these before he died, Mr. [...], and printers would send him all kinds of personal cards saying that Mr. [...] ordered these before he died, and when we saw them the name was misspelled. So her lawyers said to just ignore it, just forget it…because people make a living reading obituary columns. You’d be surprised how many people fall for it, because in that emotional moment they are carried away with, well, if my husband did this I wouldn’t want not to make good, and so they send off the check for what he had ordered which he didn’t tell me. So they send off a nice $100 or $200 check for these stupid cards. The lawyer said to just simply forget them, because this happens every moment of time.867 ¶39

Well, you can hardly believe people live that way but they do. You can’t conceive of something in this world that someone isn’t doing it, and all these things are done in our world.867 ¶40

So I ask you to try it on this basis, that imagining creates reality…that is my premise. And don’t think for one moment you can imagine idly, because the record is here. So as a man plants, so is he going to reap. There isn’t a thing in this world that comes into your world that comes by accident. But you don’t remember the moment in time when you actually did it, and so you can’t relate it to the natural effect. But the natural effect always has a spiritual cause and not a natural; a natural cause only seems and it is a delusion. So don’t let anyone tell you that you can trace it to any physical cause. The physical cause, which is the natural cause, is not a cause, it’s only an effect. All causes are spiritual and by spiritual I mean imaginal. For, “Man is all Imagination. God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination, that is, God himself” . God is the only source; there is no other source.867 ¶41

In the 87th Psalm that I quoted tonight, “When this one was born there” it ends on a very lovely note, “and the singers and the dancers alike say, ‘You are our springs.’” There is no other spring, no other source, no other cause. Whether you be the dancer or the singer of the world, you are our spring, we have no other source. So the only source of all causation is found in man as man’s own wonderful human Imagination.867 ¶42

So you take it to heart and then you can never pass the buck. You can’t blame anyone in this world for anything that happens to you. There’s no one in the world that you can turn to and say, “Well now, you are the cause of it.” Don’t let anyone turn to you and say that. If they do just ignore them, because they are bringing it into their own world by what they imagine morning, noon and night. So they want this done…imagine unlovely things of another, unlovely things of a group, well then, they’re going to simply produce it…not in the group but in themselves.867 ¶43

So you go home and live by it, live it as that lady by her vision tells me she’s living it, because the little shaggy dog was in the water. Her faith is in the psychological knowledge of these stories. I only ask you not to just continue drinking water, as you’re told in the Book of Timothy, “Drink no longer water but use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your many infirmities” .867 ¶44

So it’s good to know what to do, but we’re the operant power and therefore we must do it. Not just know what to do, but we must do it. So when I do it, I stop drinking the water and I drink the wine. If I know what to do but I don’t do it, well, I have the water but I’m not turning it into wine. So let everyone here practice it and put it into a daily practice. May I tell you, it cannot fail you, it cannot!867 ¶45

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *867 ¶46