Andrew

Let us move on to Andrew. We ask the question, “Where are you staying?” So that question was asked by Andrew, and the answer was given by Jesus, and He said, “Come and see.” As we told you last Monday, these characters of Scripture are states of consciousness that you and I have personified as persons, and we have mistaken the persons — for there is a state for the person. Tonight I will play the part of Andrew and show you what Andrew means in Scripture, and who is always playing the same part. All the characters play the same part over and over again, and who is always leading others to Christ, forever and forever, that character is always leading others to Christ. So when he asked the question “Where are you staying?” and Jesus replied “Come and see,” he first found his brother Peter, and then he brought Peter to Jesus. They claimed there were five thousand to be fed and there was no food. And who found the lad with the five barley loaves and the two fish? And he brought him to Jesus. When the Greeks wanted to see Jesus, they went first to Philip, but Philip thought that was the job of Andrew, and Philip went to Andrew, and Andrew then took the Greeks to Jesus. So he is always taking others to Jesus, the true Jesus.1063 ¶1

Tonight I play the part of Andrew, bringing you to the true Jesus. If, when you hear the word Jesus, or Jesus Christ, or the word God, or the word Lord, if in any way whatsoever it conveys to you the sense of something existing outside of you, you have the wrong concept of God, of Jesus, of Jesus Christ, of the Lord. I don’t care what the world will tell you — if in any way it wants you up, when you hear the word it conveys the sense of something that is really existent outside of yourself, you have the wrong concept of Jesus Christ. So I’ll bring you now to the true Jesus Christ. Through Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Now we speak of God. He said, “With God all things are possible.” Now we identify God with man. All things are possible to him who believes. I now tell you that God is man and exists in us, and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the human imagination; that is God Himself. Do I not say that you’re going to accept it? I am bringing you to the true God, to the true Lord Jesus Christ.1063 ¶2

Now I ask you to examine yourself, to see whether you have this God. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” and the prophet answers — Joshua answered, “We choose the Lord,” and then the people said, “We choose the Lord.” He said, “You are now witnesses against your own selves.” Now keep on examining yourselves to see whether you’re holding to the faith you say — you choose the Lord. I’m telling you who the Lord is. The Lord is your own wonderful human imagination; that is God, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. If you really accept Him, then all things should be possible to you, because with God all things are possible, providing you really, truly serve the one Lord.1063 ¶3

If the name conveys in any way something externally called Jesus Christ, you do not have the true Jesus Christ. This is what Andrew is saying, that he brings everyone to the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean they’re going to accept Him, for we are told most of them left, never to walk with Him again, and He turned to the few who remained, and He said, “Wouldst thou go also?” And Peter answered, “To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Who will we go to if you really have the words of eternal life? Then where would we go? It’s difficult to accept what you tell us — it’s difficult.1063 ¶4

Now this is not another being speaking; it’s all within you. I bring you to your own imagination. You can imagine anything in the world, and all things are possible to Christ, and Christ is your imagination. Do you mean that is really true? I tell you, if you really accept it as true and do not waver in your assumption — I dare to assume that I am the man that I want to be. Demand it at the moment of my assumption; reason denies it, my senses deny it — if I persist in that assumption, it will harden into fact, both tested and seen.1063 ¶5

We are told, examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to the faith. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test? If He is in you, then where is He? If through Him all things are made, would you not agree with me that there isn’t one thing made in this world that was not first imagined? The flowers you’re wearing had to be imagined before it became the thing you call now a dress, or the soup, the chair on which you’re seated, the house, the outhouse — everything was once only imagined. Now we call it a reality, but it began as an imaginal act. I’m bringing you to the only true Jesus, that is the Lord.1063 ¶6

Now you don’t have to accept it, and the Scripture tells us that the majority refused to accept it. Today there are one billion people who call themselves Christians, and when they hear the word Jesus Christ, they think of something outside of themselves, and to that being their turn, and they worship that being — some little thing on the wall, a picture, maybe some little statue. They do all kinds of things to something outside themselves, and I am telling you, if at any time you hear the word and it conveys the sense of something external to your own being, you have the wrong Jesus, you have the wrong Lord.1063 ¶7

Tonight I hope I can bring you to the true Lord, and that Lord is your own wonderful human 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. The divine body, Jesus, that is the divine Lord, buried in this cross called the human form. He is crucified on this; he will rise in this. Not coming from without — he rises within, and the whole being begins to awaken. And may I tell you, it’s a slow awakening process. When he actually awakens within you, you awaken. It’s not another; you are actually awakening from a profound sleep. You have no idea how sound a sleep it is. It is out of the grave that man truly rises, and the grave is his own wonderful skull — that’s where God is buried. So here I bring you tonight and introduce you to yourself, and that self is Jesus Christ.1063 ¶8

Now try it tonight, try it, and see if it will not prove itself in performance in the not-distant future. There is no limit attached to it. Now let me give you one most encouraging thought from John’s first letter. We know that whatever we ask — no matter what it is, whatever we ask of Him, it will be accomplished — but who is the one of whom I ask? We know that no matter what it is in this world that we ask of Him, it will be accomplished. You want it — the fifth chapter, the fifteenth verse, of John’s first letter, “We know it.” Do you really — but how do I ask?1063 ¶9

Well, I ask of Him, or He is my imagination. I bring before my mind’s eye a scene which would imply that I am the one that I want to be, or that my friend or others are as I would like them to be. I try to confine it within the framework of the golden rule — there is doing unto others what I would love them to do unto me, and not to go outside of that rule. It’s an easy thing to practice: what I like — the good that I ask of them, yes, like it for myself, or I don’t ask it for them. Bring them before your mind’s eye and dare to assume that what you are seeing in your mind’s eye is true.1063 ¶10

Now there is a definite technique to it, a simple, simple technique, if I can share with you what I do, and it works. I bring them into my mind’s eye and I work myself up into an emotional state. It’s like a peculiar rhythm — I breathe in and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out, and suddenly I reach a certain point, and then one deep inhalation, as though I am setting it up in a time exposure before my own mind. I set it up, and all of a sudden I have a deep, deep inhalation, and every pore of my being explodes, and then I do nothing beyond that. It’s taking that scene and setting it up in a time exposure before the eternal event, and then I explode it, and then life develops it, and life develops it, and then I get the call, or I get the wire, or I get a letter confirming that which I did, and I do nothing to make it so.1063 ¶11

I simply believe implicitly in Jesus Christ, but I have found Him — I have Him as my own wonderful human imagination. I believe that all things are possible to Him — He has reasons that the mortal mind knows not of. So I do not care if I do not see clearly how it could possibly be; it makes no difference to me. I simply bring it to my mind’s eye what I want to see, see it clearly, explode it, and then let it be. Now it could be tomorrow, it could be a month, it could be even years — I am not concerned. I have done it, and that’s all that matters as far as I am concerned.1063 ¶12

Everything has its own appointed hour. “See the vision that was my vision — vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens as a little flower; if it be long, wait, it is sure, and it will not be late.” A little chicken, twenty-one days; a man, nine months; a horse, twelve months; a little lamb, five months. And there is a time interval between that impregnation and the actual embodiment of that state, and I do not know the time intervals. I only know that all I do, I do it — unless that time interval is a day, well, it’s a day; if it’s going to be a month, let it be a month. I do not know the time intervals between my vision of you — be the one that you want to be, and you’ll be coming there — which I have assumed that you are. I do not know the time interval, but there are time intervals between the impregnation and the birth of that impregnation. But I tell you, it works.1063 ¶13

As it says in the thirteenth chapter of Second Corinthians, examine yourself to see whether you are holding to the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test? Now when you test yourself and put it to performance, you will have found Him — you’ll have found Him, that which you formerly worshipped as someone from without. You find Him not only within — you find Him — you can’t even say He is within. Scripture puts it that He said “within,” but I can’t even use the word “within,” because “within” in some strange way implies separation. I can’t even say that Jesus Christ is close to me, because that would imply nearness, and nearness implies separation. It is not enough — He is my very being.1063 ¶14

But I say, I AM, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I say I AM — I can’t say I AM and point elsewhere. That is the core of my being, and that is the name of God, forever and forever and forever. So I cannot say I AM and in any way have the feeling of nearness, for nearness implies separation, and He isn’t near me — He is my very being. He actually became as I am, that I may be as He is, and He is God Himself.1063 ¶15

So I say to everyone here, I bring you this night and introduce you to Jesus Christ. I cannot point outside of you if I introduce you to Jesus Christ. So I will find a Peter in the room, and I’ll bring Peter and introduce Peter to Jesus. I will find Thomas, our doubting Thomas, and I’ll bring him and introduce him to Jesus. I bring everyone and introduce them to Jesus. Not everyone is going to accept it. The majority will simply turn their backs upon Him and ignore Him and go their way, thinking now they must have an external something to whom they pray. Well, if you must have it, have it — I can only tell you this night I play the part of Andrew, and who is the first one who heard the words “Behold the Lamb of God” — Andrew heard, “Behold the Lamb of God,” to see — in Greek it is the same as to know — and so he saw the Lamb of God, he knew the Lamb of God, I thought. Now you know what I am talking about, but I hope you know the being that I’ve talked about, and that being is your own wonderful human imagination.1063 ¶16

So if you see me, you see Him who sent me; if you know me, you know Him who sent me, for He and I are one. “I and my Father are one. I and my Father are one, although my Father is greater than I.” He is not greater in this act, to my eyes, to my essential being — He is greater only as to the office that I have expressed, as the one that is sent, for I have sent myself. The Father contains Himself — there’s no one else, and He is only God in the world. So in the office of the sent, I seem inferior to myself, the sender — but I am not inferior in my essential being; only as to the office of the sent. And so I wear the cross of flesh, but while I wear the cross of flesh, I must know who I really am, and I am the one who sent me, and I redeem — all things are possible — and who is He? He is my own wonderful human imagination.1063 ¶17

So I do not need to ask anyone or turn to anyone. Not that I am saying to you, turn to me — if you have confidence that you can use it alone, then good; but if you are not yet aware of it, or feel that you cannot quite master it, I invite you to turn to me. It costs you nothing. I charge not one nickel for it — to me it’s a simple technique, a simple process, and I look upon it just as this: if this hand is itching, and the back of the hand — this hand is easier for me to use to scratch it and relieve the itch than to take this one and try to reach it with my fingers. I could reach it, I could get it with this one too — it’s the same body. So I call upon myself.1063 ¶18

If you cannot reach yourself, you would want to alleviate the itch — it’s maybe for money, it’s maybe for recognition, they do it for something — well then, ask the one in whom we have confidence, if you have confidence in the speaker, ask me. I tell you, I don’t charge — I do not charge one penny, neither do I accept any money. I don’t use — simply, if you feel like it, ask me, and I will, to the best of my ability, simply appropriate within myself that things are as you decide them to be, providing it comes within the code of what I call my ethical code — that it is not at the expense of another aspect of my being.1063 ¶19

Don’t ask me to hurt anyone in this world, because I could not, I would not, ask anyone to be hurt. But if you want recognition in this world, you want money in this world, you want comfort in this world, I see nothing wrong in that, because these are things I would want for myself, so I put them within the frame of the Golden Rule and ask for them. It’s a simple, simple technique.1063 ¶20

So here — “Where are you staying?” “Come and see.” But let me go first and get my brother, and I go, I get my brother, and my brother is Peter, and I bring Peter to Jesus, and then we go and we stay all day with Him, because it was the tenth hour. Now the new translation has it “four o’clock in the afternoon” — 4:00 p.m. has nothing to do with any 4:00 p.m.; when the Evangelist wrote “ten hours,” it was the tenth hour. He made it the tenth hour — every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value and a symbolic value, and that tenth letter is yod, the beginning of the name of Jehovah — God. Yod has a numerical value of ten; the symbolic value is a hand, the hand of the Creator. So we are not going to discuss how things are created — no, here it was the tenth hour, and there they stayed within that day because it was the tenth hour.1063 ¶21

So let us discuss how things are brought into being. Well, how are they brought into being? By your own wonderful and magical act, that out of nothing means, because your imagination alone — you’re imagining that is God in action. I do not observe imagining as I do objects in space, because I myself am the imagining — I can’t observe it. I can observe the effects of my imagining, but not actually the thing itself that is imagining. So I do not observe imagining; I observe only, as its external eyes, the activity of imagining, and then I know what I’ve been doing when I see things happening in my world.1063 ¶22

So I take you to meet Jesus, and I don’t take you outside of this room. I take you back into your own self, right into your own being, and you yourself are the Lord Jesus Christ, but He sleeps within you, His sound sleep, dreaming. And I know this from my own experience — I was told it so vividly one night when I fulfilled the forty-second Psalm.1063 ¶23

Here I am, walking — this enormous procession, this enormous crowd, and I’m leading them up to the house of God, and suddenly a voice rings out, and God walks with them, and then a woman at my side — she asked the voice, who showed no face, just the voice — and he said, “If God is at our side, where is Him?” The voice answered, “At your side, God walked with them.” She turned to her left, looked into my face, and she became hysterical. She said, “What? Neville — Neville is done!” And the voice answered, “Yes, in the act of waking.”1063 ¶24

And then the voice spoke within me — no one else heard it — and here was a sea of humanity, and then the voice, from the very depths of my own being, is saying, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed the dream I dreamed, and I know also that when he wakes, I...” — and so he divorced — “and to me, yes, in the act of waking” — he is God in the act of waking, and then that moment he was not awake, but he was in the process of waking.1063 ¶25

Well, that same God is in you. They aren’t a bunch of little gods running around — there’s only one God, His name is I AM, and He’s buried in you. God Himself entered death’s door, the human tomb, and laid down at the grave of man to share with man His visions of eternity until he awakes, and when he awakes, man will see that garment out of which He emerges, and it’s this garment, this garland, these are the tombs in which He sleeps. And so God is sleeping within every being in the world and dreaming the dream of life, and all that He dreams becomes experience, and then one day He awakes, and the story as told us in the gospel of love, the four Gospels, you will experience, and you will know who you are.1063 ¶26

So I introduced you to Jesus Christ, and you don’t have to go to any church, come here, go anyplace called holy — wherever you are, you could be standing at a bar, wherever you stand, that’s where He is. He is your own wonderful human imagination, that is Jesus Christ. Now this night, test — come, test me and see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing so great you have no room on earth to receive it. Test me.1063 ¶27

Well now, I will take — I will name it — a lady wrote me today a series of lovely things that have happened to her family, first to herself, and her dear family, and their memory returned, and she figured, you know, it’s been four years now — “I didn’t have a nickel, and my family were so kind to me, I thought the world of them, and I know they were, and at that moment when I didn’t have anything, I thought, well, now I would love to give them something.” What did I give them? Save to give it in imagination, and so in my imagination I gave them each five hundred dollars — there was a lot of money because I had nothing — and now recently things have happened, in a series of events that I didn’t anticipate, and now I’m coming into that money, and I’m touching myself — each is going to receive from me a check for five hundred dollars. It’s not a fortune, but when you have nothing and you give five hundred dollars each, to three people, that’s fifteen hundred dollars, and you have nothing, and now four years later you can do it. And let it start — you start yourself to do it.1063 ¶28

We do not know how long it takes between the planting of the seed and the harvest. Unfortunately, most of us have a faulty memory, and we cannot relate the harvest to the planting, and we deny the harvest because it can’t be ours. “I have once did a thing like this” — no, you did it all in imagination — that’s how God creates, for God is your own wonderful human imagination, and whatever you imagine is good and comes to pass. As a man imagines, so shall he reap in this world.1063 ¶29

So here plainly we’re told, he took others and brought them to Jesus. He simply brought you, as I am bringing you tonight, introduced you to Him. But if you read the sixth chapter of the book of John, you wonder what small proportion will really accept Him — they all left Him but a handful. I’m bringing tonight, I’ve invited a handful to go — you, the voice said — “To whom would we go?” — you have the words of eternal life, so to whom will we go? It’s difficult to accept it, that full responsibility, but to me my own wonderful human imagination has gone, and I can’t turn to something else and pray to it. I can’t go to church and pray to something on the wall and go to a minister and pray and ask him to pray to God for me, that all would need mediation to take place — yes, but that’s difficult, and so only a few remain.1063 ¶30

And then they said, “We believe, and we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” It starts first with believing what I’ve told you — we’ve believed, and we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. This is the natural, inevitable series — you start first with believing it, I tell you — accept it or don’t; if you accept it, that’s how you start. It begins with faith, a faith that fancies that this is a possibility, that it may be true. But you can’t just say it’s possible that it may be true — you’ve got to apply it, you’ve got to accept it, you do it, and then something more sure than faith takes place — a knowing, based upon your own knowledge, it’s your own experience, you have experienced it now. And something far, far greater than faith comes up out of your own experience — you know what Andrew tells you is true. He brought you to Jesus, and the Jesus was not on the outside — the whole drama is unfolding on the inside, and I find that my own wonderful human imagination is the Jesus of Scripture that formerly I thought lived two thousand years ago, and now I have found is all within me.1063 ¶31

I can go to bed and commune with myself, and then I know what it means in that wonderful fourth Psalm, “Be still and commune with your own heart upon your bed” — and your communion with God, so I will commune with you, and I will appropriate what I want in this world. I appropriate it all in consciousness, then I discover faith is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of my objective hope. What did I hope for in this world? Well, my subjective appropriation of the objective hope was my prayer — that is empathy, not sympathy, that’s empathy, for if I really want it, if I’m hoping for it, I will rejoice in what I am doing — I rejoice in my appropriation. I simply appropriate the state and fall asleep in that communion with self, and that’s God. You try it before you judge it — try it, and after having tried it, you’re going to test it, and you’re going to prove it, and then you will have found the Living Christ.1063 ¶32

Today, one billion who claim they believe in God, the Christian God, and yet you mention the word “God” and they think of something on the outside. You could take fifteen million Jews — they’ve believed in God, you mention the word Jehovah, or the Lord — I don’t know whatever would conjure their minds, a sense of this Supreme — if they feel it to be something external to themselves, they worship a false god. If you take the hundreds of millions of Mohammedans, and you use the word Muhammad, and they think of a being, a prophet who lived centuries ago, something external to themselves, they have a false prophet. If the Buddhists believe that Buddha was something that lived six hundred years B.C., that was something different, they have a false prophet. Any prophet outside of the being in you, any God outside living within you, is false. If there be any Christ other than He who was crucified upon you, and who is very real, and who rose and continues to rise within humanity — He is a false Christ, and false teachers teach Him as coming from without. Any time they’re waiting for Him to come from without, He is false — simple.1063 ¶33

I’ll show you the very last words of the book of Matthew, the very last words: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” How on earth can I return when I am with you always? They expect Him to return — how can He return? The very final words, as He’s departing from a visible state into an invisible state, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” and they tell me He is going to return, when He never departed. How can He return when He is never left me? “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” — how can He return? Can’t you see it — He dwells in us, He is through us; if He’s through us, He cannot possibly return.1063 ¶34

And the word “He” — not in me — I couldn’t read — He is my breath, and survives this very moment. God comes into this world and I’m thought physically — you don’t see me, I still am not away; if I know the being that I am, I am in you. I have awakened from this dream of life; there’s no place for me to go but to be one in Him, and I’m one of those who are watching, those in great eternity who contemplate on death, this world, and those who contemplate on death say, “This what seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most grateful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torment, despair, and eternal death, but divine mercy steps beyond and redeems men.”1063 ¶35

We are the body of Jesus; there’s only one body in the world, I tell you, from my own experience — you and I are one, there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all. Accept it, and you will accept the Jesus that I introduce you to tonight, if you want to test Him first — He invites you to test it. Don’t test the speaker, no — test Jesus, and Jesus is within you when you say “I AM,” that’s He, that is the Lord Jesus Christ.1063 ¶36

So when you go to bed tonight, put Him to the extreme test. Do you know what you were loved for, for yourself and for your loved ones in this world? Assume that you have it, and that assumption, though at the moment it is denied by your senses, denied by reason, if you persist in it because you believe in Him, it will harden into fact, and no power in the world can stop it — no power in the world can stop it. But I can’t tell you the interval of time between your assumption and its hardening into fact, but I promise you from experience, it will harden. In the interval, do it in love, and I tell you, whatever you are in doubt, do the loving thing, and you’ve done the right thing. If ever in doubt, ask a very simple question: “Would I like it done to me?” If you can answer in the affirmative, then do it, and you cannot go wrong if you use that as your guide.1063 ¶37

So, “Where do you live? Where are you staying?” “Come and see.” “But let me get my brother first, and let me bring my brother and introduce him to you,” and so throughout the story he’s always bringing others to Jesus, and that’s the story of Andrew. You can’t change that state — that state is forever. You can fill in this state tonight and take a friend, something that you know concerning Jesus Christ, and tell him — you are playing the part of Andrew — if you give him the Bible and interpret Scripture to him as you know it now, then you are actually taking him, and you are now Andrew.1063 ¶38

If you want to be filled with the joy, as this lady’s letter to me today, that she could be so praiseful for the little that was done to her by her children, that these three children she felt did so much for her, that she wants to show her appreciation — she did it — then she is playing the part of Asher. Asher is one of the most neglected characters in Scripture, for it means praise, it means thanksgiving. And so few people will stop to say thanks. Were they not ten cleansed of leprosy, and only one returned to say thank You — their work in who were instantly cured, and only one came back to say thank You — Asher. And so if you actually express joy, express thanksgiving for the slightest little thing done to you, you are actually exercising that talent that is known in Scripture as Asher. It’s personified as a disciple, or as the tenth one, and so neglected within us — so few people are grateful. First of all, they reflect upon what happened, and then they give all praise to the means employed rather than the actual cause of the phenomena.1063 ¶39

For here tonight we are simply presenting Andrew. So I brought you tonight to meet Jesus. I do not point to any being outside of you, do not look for Him in any face, do not look for Him in any place in the world. My point would be to introduce you to the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is your own wonderful human imagination. Man is God and exists in us, and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself.1063 ¶40

Now, before we go into the silence, let me once more try to explain this simple, simple technique. You will have to practice it and use your own rhythm. You don’t have to be in church to do it. You can be sitting here tonight, you can be at home listening to nice music, you can be simply relaxing with a drink — it doesn’t matter what you’re doing and where you are. But you want to get into a lovely, quiet, relaxed frame — no so-called holy attitude, forget that. You are holy when you’re in doubt — God is love. So you would love it for someone else — that is all that you need. How wouldn’t it be wonderful if she actually had it, if he had it, if they had it?1063 ¶41

Also, you know exactly what you want, and then you imagine you’re seeing them — you can see them in your mind’s eye and see them vividly, and then work yourself into a rhythm, they’re telling you that they have it, and you’re getting yourself worked up emotionally because they’re telling you that they have exactly what you know they would want in this world, and then you reach a certain point and you explode — something actually goes out of you, its power, and you’ll read the words, “Who touched me? For I perceive virtue has gone out of me” — at that moment she was healed. “Who touched me?” And they say, “What, with the crowd — how could you tell who touched you? It was an enormous crowd.” You know you did it yourself. You work yourself up into a certain emotional state, and then suddenly explode, and you feel everything go out, and you cannot repeat it — there’s no desire to repeat it.1063 ¶42

It was an actual psychic-sexual act, but there’s no physical act — there is no evidence of any physical act, but it’s the same thrill that you would derive from a physical act. Work yourself right up into that state and then let it go, and do not raise one finger to make it so, any more than you would after impregnation — what could you do after pregnancy is taking place? Nothing — leave it alone, and let it take place in its own good time. Now that is going into the silence.1063 ¶43