Freedom!

If I succeed tonight in convincing you to accept this as your foundation of life, I think I can safely say you will find in that a freedom you have never known before. And it is this, it’s quite simple. When asked what is the greatest of all the Commandments, he answered “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one” . Now on the surface you say, so what? Yet if you understand it, accept it and live by it, you will discover there is only one cause. Listen to it carefully, “There is one God and Father of us all, who is above all, and through all and in all” . Here we see a universally diffused individuality.1079 ¶1

So I find out that he has a name and it’s his name forever and forever. What is the name? He said, “I AM” . Everyone here knows that he is or she is, and whether you know who you are and what you are and where you are, you do know that you are; and knowing that you are you are saying “I am.” You could suffer from total amnesia, but you can’t forget that you are. Who, I need not know, where, I need not know, but I know that I am. So everyone knows that I am, and if God is one, then it is diffused universality…one individual completely diffused can’t be another. And if he is the sole cause of all that is, then “all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made” .1079 ¶2

So when I read the miracles of scripture, I see them as acted parables. And so, “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” “Then he arose and rebuked the wind and the sea and there was a great calm” . If there is only one cause, he who quelled the wind and the sea is he who caused it…there can’t be another. When I see the world and it seems confused to me and if I resolve it, well then, I who resolved it and that which was resolved was caused by the same being. It can’t be another; there is no other.1079 ¶3

So, if there is only one God and Father of us all who is above all and through all and in all, well then, if he is in all, I know he is in me for I say “I am.” I also know he is in every being in this world. But although he is in every being and there are billions, he is in me and there is only one God, therefore I can’t say that he did it. His name is not “he is” or “she is”; his name forever is I AM. So I can’t pass the buck. No matter what it appears on the outside, I am the cause of the phenomena of life. No matter what it appears to be, it can’t be another. If I will accept that fully, assume full responsibility for all the things that I observe…what I do not like, know I am causing it and that I have the power to resolve it and change it, and exercise that power and see it change in my world…if I am willing to assume that responsibility, I am set free.1079 ¶4

Now, if this universally diffused individuality, as scripture teaches, is in all, well then, I must have a different concept of the incarnation. They teach and talk about the incarnation as though it were some individual, some unique being, 2,000 years ago, who was the incarnate God, he and he alone. Not as I read scripture: Humanity is the incarnation. And if I read scripture correctly, the central figure personified as Jesus Christ only represents this perfect archetypal figure that all must express. So when we are told that he is the first witness, the true witness, the firstborn of the dead, well, here we are the dead in the sense that we have forgotten who we are.1079 ¶5

For if God is the creator of all things and yet he is in me and his name is I AM, but I don’t see myself creating anything in the world that I am observing. I read the morning paper and she did it and he did it and all these things and I can’t relate myself to any of this that I see, it’s all on the outside—and yet there is only one cause. There’s only one God and that one God is resident in me: He’s my own wonderful human Imagination. Well, what have I to do with that? I couldn’t be aware of it. It’s the storm…here is the storm.1079 ¶6

But when he was awakened, he entered the ship and as he entered the ship he fell asleep and then the storm arose and as the storm arose they were afraid, and they disturbed him, and the said, “Lord, we perish, save us.” And then he awoke and as he awoke he said, “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” Then he rebuked the wind and the storm and there was a great calm. He, the sleeping one, in his dream is causing the storm. Well, where is the boat? I am the boat: This is the ark of God, and in the ark of God all things are contained. Everything went into the ark. So “man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the sea and the earth.” Well, he is not a phantom; he is the boat and he who slumbers in that boat is God the Father.1079 ¶7

If I completely accept only God can create and he is my own wonderful human Imagination, even though I don’t know the people that I am reading about, if I read and I am disturbed by what I read, I am the cause of that storm. But I am dreaming…I am dreaming it all, and I don’t realize that I am causing everything that I am dreaming…because I don’t know them. Well, when you awake in the morning after you’ve slept through the night and you recall the dream, do you always know the figures of the dream? Do you know the children that were yours in the dream or the people who scared you? You didn’t know them, never saw them before. Yet how could they be other than what you yourself caused, but you don’t recognize them? Yet all these that scared you almost to death were caused by you the dreamer. Well, the same thing is true here. So I read about them in the papers, I don’t know them, but I am the cause of the storm because I slumber, because I sleep. When I awake then there will be a very marvelous, wonderful calm and the whole thing will be quiet.1079 ¶8

The whole thing will come back because God fell asleep in us…this universally diffused individuality. And so, his transcendent revelation is personified in scripture as a being called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is only the personification of his plan. That plan is in himself in you, and that plan awakens in you; as it awakens, the memory returns as to who he is, for you are told he is God the Father.1079 ¶9

Well now, you say that I’m not a father; you have forgotten. I’m the father of two, but they aren’t mentioned in scripture. Victoria is not mentioned and Joseph is mentioned, but his name is Joseph Neville and that is not mentioned. But if I am a father, I have to be that Father, for he is diffused in all and he is in me…the fullness, his whole being, not a little piece of him. He didn’t break up the I AM and scatter it. He is diffused, the universal individuality diffused in all. So I can’t divide I AM. So what is he? He’s a father. Well, I haven’t yet discovered him, therefore, I’m still dreaming. I haven’t yet discovered…well, if I discover, I have to be the Father of the Son that he foretold that he is.1079 ¶10

One day I must find him and when I find him I not only find the Son but I also discover the Son’s Father. “Whose son are you, young man? I am the son of Jesse” . He’s the son of Jesse and Jesse is simply “I AM.” He could easily have said, “I am the Son of the one whose name is I AM.” And so, I see the Son and I know he is mine; well, I’m saying I AM, so am I then Jesse? And he is the son of God and God’s name is I AM, therefore now I know who he is and I also now know who I am. It took him to reveal me to myself…I didn’t know it. Yet I was that before I fell asleep and in the sleep I had the storm, the horrible storm of life.1079 ¶11

And I fought against seeming others, devils. I called them devils, I called them Satan. I called them by every name under the sun, and endowed my shadow world with causation, and therefore became a split and divided being when God is not divided. There is no devil, there is no Satan. There is no being outside of God.1079 ¶12

Now listen to these words: “I, even I, am he. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal and none can deliver out of my hand.” You who are not familiar with scripture or do not have a concordance will find these words in the 32nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy . Now we go to the 45th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “I am the Lord and there is no other God. I make the light and I create darkness, I make the weal and I create woe, and there is no other God besides me. I know not any” . He who creates the evil creates the good, the weal and the woe, the light and the darkness. He who kills is he who makes alive, and he who wounds is he who heals, and there is no other God.1079 ¶13

How can man really believe this, discovering that God to be himself, and not be set free? He may from then on struggle how to use the power that is his and how to resolve it; and that is his task. He can’t see another…there is no other. The storm is self-created and the peace and the calm are self-created. So I can’t say he did it, she did it, they did it…there is no such thing as he did it, she did it and they did it. They are only reflecting either the peace and the calm within me or the storm within me. And so when I awake and know who I am, and the whole thing returns, then there will be the calm, and then there will be the peace. Until I am completely awake I am lost in the storm.1079 ¶14

So, he entered the boat and now this is the boat, this is the ark; and he remains in the ark until the flood subsides. And when the flood is subsiding, he has a special bird that brings him word that the flood is over: It is the dove. He puts out his hand and receives the dove and he takes the dove into the ark with him, for the dove remains upon him. But he does put out his hand and the dove lights upon his hand and then he takes the dove into the ark with him; beautiful imagery and true. You do stick up your hand and the dove descends through seemingly crystal water, for when you see him he seems to be floating. Well, if you are floating then you are in water. Even though you don’t see water, it’s crystal clear that’s why. You have only one sign that it is water. It’s because of the motion of the bird: He is not using his wings. He is not doing anything other than what you see a bird that does swim, like the duck or the swan. And when you see it, it is motionless, yet it moves or it can be still, but it is on water, and the dove does the same thing. You stick up your hand, the dove holds it, and you take him in. While you are being smothered with kisses, the whole thing comes to an end. So here, the drama is perfect.1079 ¶15

And everyone—because everyone is the whole God, not just a little part of God, the whole God—everyone must have the experience personified as the perfect archetypal specimen, which is called in scripture Jesus Christ. We tell the story of this archetypal specimen as a unique individual and speak of the incarnation, not knowing that humanity is the incarnation. We speak of him as the incarnate God and the three and a half billion of others as not. So there they are lost in confusion.1079 ¶16

So I say, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” . The word translated “the Lord” is I AM—it’s Yod He Vau He. Now let me translate it for you. “Hear, O Israel”—the word Israel means “the man who will rule as God”; not like a god, rule as God because he is God. Now, “Hear, O Israel: The I AM, our I AMs, is the one I AM”…not a bunch of I AMs. The I AM, which is our I AM is the one I AM; and that one I AM is God the Father, who is yes above all, through all, and in all. If he is in all and he can’t be divided, then the whole of him is standing right here and the whole is seated right there [pointing to the audience]. No one can say, “Well, she is the cause of it, he is the cause of it, they are the cause of it. There is no she or they in I AM.”1079 ¶17

If one will completely accept that, life becomes easy. I may not at the moment see the immediate effects of what I have done within my Imagination as I have resolved it. I may not see the complete outpouring to confirm what I have now done, but it has to come because there is no other God to stop it. There is no devil, no Satan to stop it; no one can stop it because there is no other Creator. “All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made” ; therefore, the storm must have been made by him and the calm made by him. As he proclaimed, “I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, I form the light and create darkness. I form the evil and I make good, the weal and the woe…and there is no other.”1079 ¶18

So when you hear people speak of Satan and devils and all these demons then they don’t know the greatest Commandment in the world. Why did he not mention one of the ten? They are all based upon the negative, all but one. The only one that is not is “Love thy father and thy mother.” That’s the only positive Commandment in the ten; all the others are based upon the negative “Thou shalt not.” But here is something that is not one of the ten, yet there are ten words in it. It contains all in an entirely different presentation of the ten: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one.” Read them. There are ten words in the statement “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Take it, the 6th chapter, the 4th verse—and you check me and just take them, one after the other—of the Book of Deuteronomy.1079 ¶19

So here tonight…if you accept! Maybe you feel easier if you can blame another. It’s so much easier to find some scapegoat and blame another. That is caused by this or caused by that, or what I ate…I ate something that disagrees. Then you ask why did you eat it? What was it, what was the cause behind it? A disturbance in you, that’s why you do exactly what you did; and so this thing is out of kilter and that gland is out of kilter, why?—because of the storm in you. The gland cannot be the cause of your distress; your dream is the cause of your distress. If you take this ark and shake the timbers of it all, one who does not know the single cause of the world which is your own wonderful human Imagination, will try to find something on the outside as a secondary cause…and there is no secondary cause.1079 ¶20

I received a letter this week from a lady (who is here). Now this is her own wonderful being revealing to herself a wonderful picture. It is all self-revealed. “I am in a place,” she said, “barely furnished, no rugs, no carpets, and here are my children. The boys are in clean overalls seated in high-backed chairs and the girls in starched long cotton dresses. They looked like what we think the Quakers must look like as they sit straight. They seemed to be without emotion. There they were, they are my children, and we were waiting for father. Then came news which I knew from the father that he is not returning. He’s not dead, but the work that he has done in the children is over. He has finished it and it is perfect and now he is not returning. Then the scene changes and we are in a farmhouse. We look through and here is this most marvelous harvest, bursting! You’ve never seen such a beautiful abundant harvest. The oldest one comes back and he is radiantly happy; for the first time he is now creating for himself. Then the girls and the boys who are there begin to create as they never have before. Before, they only obeyed the father, like an automaton, and they executed his will, but now that he has withdrawn himself because his work is finished they become creators in themselves.” What a beautiful experience! She saw in miniature form the world.1079 ¶21

His withdrawal in scripture would say that he died: “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me” . And so, a little while and you will see me no more and then in a little while you will see me; but when the little while passes and you see me, you will see me as yourself. For now I withdraw, where?—within you. You are no longer automatons moved from without; you are now going to be moving from within, and all that I the Father am you will know that you are. So if he is a father, well then, you are a father. If he is a creator, then you are a creator…whatever he is.1079 ¶22

Now he comes out of the desert with signs and wonders, and the most outstanding sign was that of the fiery serpent. So he comes out in this manner: The temple curtain is torn from top to bottom and all the rocks are split…that’s one of the signs when he starts departing from the desert. So everything that is said in scripture man experiences, and he knows from his own personal experience he is God the Father. He remains in his little garment of flesh and blood just long enough to tell how true and wonderful the story is and that there is only one, but only one way of salvation. There aren’t two ways; there is no other way. There are unnumbered volumes written giving you ways and ways of redemption, but there is only one way of redemption. The whole thing is laid out for us in scripture, only one way, and the individual goes that way, right straight through it. He is the way and there is no other way .1079 ¶23

So first of all, when the storm…it’s the wind in this story. Read it in the 8th chapter of Matthew: “And the wind began to blow” and it is a wind, a most unearthly wind. It is then that he is about to awake, and it is told in dramatic form: “They awoke him and said, ‘Lord, we perish. Save us.’” And so the wind awakens him and he is the wind: He is the cause of the wind and he is the wind. As he awakens within the boat you awaken within yourself, for you are the ark. Then you come out and you are born from above. An entirely different world now you, God the Father, will enter. You purposely imposed upon yourself the restriction of death, knowing that you had the power and wisdom to be victorious and overcome death. So you died knowing that in spite of that you could overcome death. And you do…by a birth out of it from above. First you awake and as you awaken within the ark then you come out and you are born. All of the symbolism of your birth you find present.1079 ¶24

Now comes the 89th Psalm where you must find David. Well, all of a sudden you find him…memory returns. Not something different, all of a sudden your memory is coming back because he always was your son. Not something as of now; he always was your son. And the head is there…the head of the giant. You see it. The whole symbolism is present in this wonderful discovery. And now you discover something even greater; you discover his Father, for that’s the one you’re going to set free as told us in the Book of Samuel. He’s asking “Whose son are you, young man?”—because he promised the Father of this young man to set him free. Anyone who could bring down the giant who opposes Israel, he would set the Father, not the one who brought him down, he would set the Father free . So he is going to set himself free now. He has discovered the Father of the Son. The Son is God’s Son, and he tells him who his Father is. His Father is God because his Father’s name is I AM…his Father’s name is Jesse. So now he can’t do a thing other than keep his promise and sets the Father free. So the Father is set free in the discovery of the Father of God’s Son; and he knows he is the Father of that Son, and that Son is God’s Son…so he knows who he is. Although he answers to an earthly name when they call him, and he will sign a letter and a check with an earthly name, he knows who he is. And he doesn’t have to explain it to anyone in the world. He can only tell everybody (but he is addressing himself): I am in you and you in me and we are one.1079 ¶25

So everyone will have the identical experience and in the end he returns and there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, and that one God and Father of all. And returning from the victorious march through death, he is now the same God the Father, but expanded beyond the wildest dreams by this wonderful venture, this excursion of the mind into a world of death…which seemed fatal, which seemed final.1079 ¶26

Now, if I could get you this night to really accept it 100 percent, I’m not promising you that you might not have a headache tomorrow, that you will not have poisoning tomorrow, that the boss may not fire you. I’m not making any promise whatsoever. But I’ll tell you, if you accept it, you will know he had no choice in the matter: You caused the storm. And maybe your dream transcends your present little position in that business and only as you are fired can you be transcending.1079 ¶27

I tell you when I was first fired…I was never fired before, and one day I was fired at J. C. Penny, making the big sum of twenty-two dollars a week and paying five dollars for my room rent. And then I had to live. And one day, after a year and a half of working for them—running an elevator when they wanted it, putting hats in bins when they wanted it, doing all that a busboy would do—and when they fired me, I wondered why? I went to the boss and he said, “Well, we have a different system here than where you came from.” I know where I came from. Nobody is fired unless they steal or they are not on the job, but if they do a decent work on what they were employed to do, then they aren’t fired, they are kept on indefinitely. He said, “Well, that’s not our system. When things go this way economically, we let off all the people we can, and when we start rising again we take them on again.” I said, “What must I use for money in the meanwhile?” He said, “That’s your problem.” So he had pity on me and gave me a letter to R. H. Macy saying this boy is a greenhorn, he came from Barbados, and he doesn’t know the system, so if you have a little job for him, give him a job. So they gave me a job but they cut down from my twenty-two dollars a week to eighteen dollars from Macy. So I determined right there and then that I wouldn’t work for anyone in this world again. First chance I got I was going to quit…no one is going to fire me. I just simply quit after working there for a little less than a year. One day I quit and I told them I am quitting as of next week. “Well, why?” Well, I guess I’m quitting. And I started on my own, never worked for another man since…this I did not do. The first one was enough when I got fired! What a feeling that someone could fire me, and I did nothing that I considered wrong and yet I could be fired because the economic trend was downward at the moment.1079 ¶28

So I say to all, you are the cause of all the phenomena of your life. I don’t care what it is, good, bad or indifferent. Even what you don’t understand and it seems remote and foreign to you and strange, you are the cause of it if you are aware of it. Even to the newspaper…if you are aware of it and to you it is distasteful, you are still the dreamer of that distasteful storm. The day will come and you will awake, and when you wake that whole thing will be calm. There is no other…that possibly is the most difficult thing for one to accept, for it’s so much easier to give advice and tell the other fellow where he’s wrong when he is only reflecting. Whatever is wrong in him, he is only reflecting that which is in you. It isn’t there at all. The whole vast world bears witness of what I am doing…good, bad or indifferent. So if I don’t like this or don’t like that, well then, don’t look there for it, that’s the reflector. Look at the one who is causing the image and the whole thing that is caused is caused in me; for there is only one God.1079 ¶29

So there is only one God and Father of us all, who is not only above all and through all but in all. Let it stick right there: He is in all. So this universally diffused individuality is in all in his fullness. Not a little piece here and a little piece there, but the whole. He dwells in the individual bodily, the whole. And so, if he sleeps, all right, he sleeps until the storm is over. When the storm has done its work then he wakes. He rebukes the storm that he himself created, and then there is a great peace and a great calm. If one will accept that as their philosophy of life and not turn to the left or to the right, that I am solely responsible for the phenomena of my life, but solely, you will find it so much easier, so much easier.1079 ¶30

But if at moments it’s too much to bear and I want to find a secondary cause, at the very moment that you want a secondary cause you are going to build a devil. Devils and Satans and all these things come out of man’s unwillingness to assume what scripture teaches. The minute you find another God, you build a golden image. Whether you call it a priest through whom you must go for forgiveness and you call him Father and call him another; and you are told to call no man on earth father. If I call him father, I see in him an authority other than myself, and bigger. So no matter what name I will give it, how I justify it, it is still false. Those who teach it and encourage it are false teachers. I don’t care if you call them by any name. People get offended when from a public platform you become personal and speak using even these titles and say that they are false, and that they do not know the mystery of Christ. They say, “Why should you say that?”1079 ¶31

One chap, here oh, maybe five weeks ago…he comes maybe twice or three times a year…well, he is of the old school of Europe. His father, his parents and all the background were ardent Catholics of the military school, and that is his training. He has never once been here but what at the end of the meeting he would always come forward, always had some little unlovely thing to say, with a smile on his face. Perfectly all right…it is myself reflected. The last time he was here he came forward and, again, the usual smile and greeting, but to him what I said that night, which was not as forceful as what I am saying tonight, it hurt, it went the wrong way, and he could not accept causation as solely himself. So he said to me, “How is the great deceiver tonight?” Perfectly all right, you can say anything you want. If I know who I am, you can call me anything in the world. It doesn’t make any difference to me at all.1079 ¶32

As my wife said to me last Friday night…three ladies came in and when they heard that there was a charge, one said, “How much?” and my wife said three dollars. One became the spokesman for the three and she said, “Three dollars! Well, I wouldn’t pay anything for such kinds of lectures because they are all tripe anyway.” So she came out to have a feast on tripe, but there was a price to the tripe and she didn’t want to pay for it. So why come and spend one hour of your own precious time knowing it’s going to be tripe anyway? She said, “I wouldn’t pay for such kinds of meetings because it’s all tripe.” Well, go and spend your three dollars or your ten dollars elsewhere.1079 ¶33

I personally am very fond of tripe, only my wife doesn’t cook it. I was raised on all the internal organs of the animal. Every week we had everything that you can name that came from within the animal; we had it from the brains down, because first of all it was cheap and there were ten children, father, mother and my grandmother plus the servants, and we all had to eat. Although things were very, very inexpensive in those days, when you have fifteen, sixteen to feed you go to the still more inexpensive cuts, and that meant brains, sweetbreads, kidneys, livers, hearts and tripe. So we had it. Every week there wasn’t a day it wasn’t some internal organ of the body, the vital organs that we ate. So I am very familiar with the word tripe…and to her this was tripe, so she went elsewhere. Chances are she went to a nice eating place and spent her three dollars. Then the little body assimilated what it could and expelled what it couldn’t, and so that was her little meal of three bucks.1079 ¶34

So I say to you, you take this tonight and if you multiply what you paid when you came in by any figure in the world, it couldn’t pay for it…if you believe it. If you accept it and decide to live by it, you have bought yourself freedom, real freedom. And so, what is the price of freedom? You tell me what it is worth. If you can stop short of the ultimate, well then, you don’t really want freedom. So you can’t put any price on freedom. What have you this night that you would not give in its entirety if you were enslaved, and by the giving of it you would be set free, well now, your all?1079 ¶35

Well, I say if you tonight really believe that there’s only one God and that one God is in you in his entirety and his name is I AM; and although you may not know who you are, you’ve forgotten it, or even where you are, you’ve forgotten it, and that your relationship, yes, you even had a son and you don’t even know his name, you’ve forgotten it…and one day the storm will be over and they will awaken you. In fact, they will awaken you first in the storm, because the storm awakens you and you awake. The storm is the wind, and that wind, you can’t stand it. It’s so terrific, so completely different, and then you awaken. As you awaken you come out, you are born from above. Soon thereafter memory returns and here stands before you the one who was always your Son, and now you know you are his Father, and you know that his Father is God.1079 ¶36

So you need not ask him, “Whose son are you, young man?” The answer has returned now. In scripture you ask the question and he tells you, but Saul didn’t understand because Saul was mad…he was still in the dream world. And he asked him, “Whose son are you, young man?” and he said, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite” . But Saul was mad and did not know. Now when he comes to you, you know. You don’t have to ask him, “Who is your father?” because you know you are the Father of the one you are looking at, and he knows you are the Father. And so, the whole thing unfolds within you, and then you tell the eternal story. It’s all there but a sealed book until that moment in time when it breaks forth within you and the whole thing unfolds…and you simply tell it.1079 ¶37

So, let the world still remain in the storm if they want to; but know that you are causing the storm and you are causing the peace. If the thing is the most difficult to grasp, dwell upon it anyway. It is not the other…the minute you see another as causation you’re building a devil and you are going to build him into the most monstrous thing in the world. Then the day will come and you’ve got to take all these devils away. There are volumes after volumes written on demonology, do you know that? Go to the library and you see unnumbered volumes written by seemingly intelligent people. The churches speak of and teach demonology; they speak of devils, they speak of all these discarnate beings who are obsessing others. I get calls on the phone and when I tell them over the phone there is no devil, well then, “I’ll go elsewhere, because you don’t know.” So they are going to find someone who believes in devils and who for a little price will cure them, and so they’ll take their devils from them. I tell you, there aren’t any devils outside of what you create within yourself. All the monsters of the world are created by the one who beholds the monster. Everything in the world is yourself pushed out, but everything. And there is no “other”…there is only God. There is but one God and Father of all, who is in all. Because he only is one; there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord.1079 ¶38

What I tell you now was told you and every creature under heaven before that the world was. I am not quoting accurately but I will give you the passage, the 1st chapter, the 23rd verse of Colossians: “The gospel that you have just heard was preached to every creature under heaven.” Can you imagine that? Then came the forgetfulness for a purpose. But it was preached to every creature under heaven, the gospel that you have just heard, this good news of salvation.1079 ¶39

Then we are told in the 4th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, “Always bearing in my body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in my body.” Can you imagine that you are Christopher “the Christ bearer”? That’s what it means. If I am Christopher, then I am the Christ bearer and I am the ark in which he sleeps. He is sound asleep. And all the animals are there…every conceivable living thing under heaven is in the ark. But the Lord is asleep. Just imagine what confusion when he who is master of it all, the Lord of it all sleeps. But one day, the flood will subside, he will awake and open the window, and the Holy Spirit in bodily form as a dove will come and say the flood is over…the great flood where man was drowned in illusions and he fought against all the phantoms that were only self-created.1079 ¶40

So tonight, you take it to heart. Make it your philosophy of life; make it the foundation stone of your life. Start tomorrow as a new person in your office or wherever you go and the boss is not a boss. You are the only boss. He is reflecting all the things you are doing within yourself. Whatever he does is because you allow it. If you think that he likes or dislikes you, his behavior has to reflect it. If you feel that you want a promotion in that office, if you like it, well then, give it to yourself. When you do receive it in the not distant future—and it may come through him—he thinks he initiates it and you don’t disillusion him. You just let the shadows play their parts and you don’t argue with them. You simply let it all be perfectly normal and you get your promotion.1079 ¶41

When my mother wanted to go to America, she always allowed my father to initiate it. She would have everything ready, her dresses all made, because at home we didn’t have readymade dresses, so she had the seamstress in and she’s having all the things done. But he was at work and these were done during the day. My father isn’t that curious about what ladies are doing, therefore he didn’t know. If a seamstress was there, it would be an order because of all the children, so something is being made for the children. Mother was having her dresses made and all the things made for America, and then she would sleep in America and she was there. Then he would come home one day and say, “You now, Wilsey, I’ve been watching you and I think you need a vacation. You know what I’ve done? I’ve booked you to sail on SS so-and-so and you’re sailing in two or three weeks”…exactly how she planned it. But she thanked him profusely, “Oh, Joseph, you’re so kind and so generous! You really shouldn’t do this it’s so expensive.” She did the whole thing anyway. So he would take her aboard, we all saw mother off, and mother went only to fulfill what she had already done in her Imagination. And my father was never disillusioned by my mother; he always believed that he initiated it.1079 ¶42

She said, “After all, that’s your father’s approach to life. He is the man of the house, he has to initiate everything. I don’t even know what we are going to have for breakfast.” Our breakfast is what we call a big lunch here. “But your father the first thing that he does when he goes to the store, he sends home all the meat that he wants for the breakfast and for dinner. So he will call the porter over and say ‘Take this, that and the other and go right away.’” When mother would receive it, she would know whether she was going to have hearts, kidneys, livers or what. And so that was my father. He did all these things and she allowed it, when inwardly she was doing it anyway. But he played his part beautifully and she played her quiet, simple, marvelous part beautifully, and that was it.1079 ¶43

So, in your office let the boss give you the raise…just let him give it. Thank him before he does it physically…that is, if you like the office and if you don’t put yourself elsewhere. Maybe tomorrow you will be shocked and you will be fired and you will be terribly upset, but know that it could not happen because of a second cause. It happened because your ambition has to put you out of that place in order to fulfill your ambition. If I was never fired from J. C. Penney, I might be today the starter of the elevators, who knows? If I was still there at my age, well, they might have retired me or something else, but if I kept on the job what else could they do? And so, they fired me because I was dreaming. I was dreaming noble dreams and bigger dreams to transcend the limitation of that little job and the way I lived in a single little room. Well, I was having dreams…and oh, what storms interceded. But all the storms added up, all the storms that I was dreaming in my slumber. I was dreaming all kinds of things and getting into all kinds of confusion, and, therefore, it was myself pushed out anyway. But even the storm did its work and when the storm had done its work, then I awoke; and then the calm, the great calm became a reality.1079 ¶44

Now let us go into the Silence.1079 ¶45

Now are there any questions, please?1079 ¶46