I Say You Are Gods

And I think you’ll find this a very interesting series. As usual, it’s all about you — but I mean the true you, your immortal self, your true identity, not the little garment that you wear, for which you are so identified that you think it to be yourself. No, I’m not speaking of that — I’m speaking of the truth, being — it has no beginning and will have no end. That’s the Bible. So our textbook is really the Bible.1090 ¶1

Biblical language evokes rather than describes. It is all about another world, and all about the sons of God who purposely, deliberately, came down into this plane — an outburst into humanity — and the plan, the promise, before ever the world was, for their return. That’s the experience, the feasting of death, for this is the world of death. So the plan is contained within you, the true you, and you are it in the mind — you think you are the man, and you without that — the man at all — it’s only a garment, like a suit of clothes that you wear.1090 ¶2

Now tonight my subject is “I Say You Are Gods.” This is taken from the 82nd Psalm. In 1888, Thomas Cheyne, who was the editor of what the dispensers considered the most scholarly of all the higher criticisms of the Bible, called the Encyclopedia Biblica, and he wrote: no poem makes severer demands than this upon the historic imagination of the interpreter — the ideas may be perennial, but their outward forms are no longer understood. Now let me quote the passage that he could not understand, and to this day, if you take the historic imagination of man, preaching the Bible as secular history, they all will blunder over what it is. “And God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he judgeth.” And now he passes the judgment: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” But if you read it, this implies that those addressed were not men — otherwise the forecast that they would die like men would be meaningless.1090 ¶3

The New Testament tells us we are the ones addressed. To return to the tenth chapter of the Book of John, the central figure makes the claim, “I and my Father are one.” And they took up stones to stone him, and he said to them, “For which of my good works do you stone me?” And they answered, “For no good work, but for blasphemy, for you being a man make yourself God.” And then he said to this: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, say ye of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘Thou blasphemest,’ because I say I am the Son of God?” There is one in whom the pattern awoke, and he gained the presence that he was God — only as a person awoke within him — and he tries to tell his brothers that we are the ones addressed in that 82nd Psalm, but they would not believe it.1090 ¶4

If you’ve ever seen anyone suffering from amnesia, and I have, it’s almost impossible to describe it. You’ll feel like crying. You’re looking at the face of a friend that you know well, and he cannot remember. You bring his closest kin, his parents — maybe he has a wife, his children — and he cannot recognize him. He does not know them at all, and he is not fooling — he cannot remember them. Complete amnesia. That’s what has happened to us. We have completely forgotten who we are.1090 ¶5

And I am here to tell you that you are the Lord Jesus Christ. He is buried in you, and until the story of Christ repeats itself in you, he remains buried in you. That’s the story. Now, how do I know? I know from my own personal experience. That’s how I know — I am not theorizing, I am not speculating. When it happens in you, you can pick out a circle that will experience your unfolding. I know you to be the Lord. You will know it, he will know it, they will know it, and you do not have to pick out the day — they’ll know it, they will all know it. But everyone will know it, or this is going to happen to every being in the world. Everyone.1090 ¶6

Now we are told: though he was in the form of God, he did not think it a thing to grasp, but emptied himself and became man — took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death upon a cross. Well, the only cross on which Christ was ever crucified is the human form — this is his cross, and that I do know from experience. Every child born of woman is the cross on which Jesus Christ is crucified, in which he is dead, and from which he will rise.1090 ¶7

Understand — where he was before his descent into this world — but the language used in Scripture, it doesn’t describe it, it is an attempt to describe it. The third chapter of John: he is now discussing with one of the Sanhedrin — well, a member of the Sanhedrin, the most learned council, the wisest of Israel, the great teacher, Nicodemus. He explains to Nicodemus that a man must be born again. Now this is not reincarnation — it has nothing to do with reincarnation. You are now individualized, and you remain so forever and forever, until whatever greater individualization comes — there’s no such thing as reincarnation, though it’s held by a very large section of the world and believed in by a number of millions. That’s not what he’s teaching. You must be born again, but the word is anothen, which means “from above.” We’re all born from below, from the womb of a woman. Everyone must be born from above — from the buried man, where God is buried, is the birth of God. That’s the birth from above.1090 ¶8

Now he said, “No one ascends into heaven but he who descended.” Now he names the Son of Man — that which comes out of man, that is now buried in man; it cannot ascend unless it first descended. It descended into man. When the little child is conceived, it brings the breath of God, which is God himself, in that child — for the word “breath” and the word “spirit” are one in the Hebrew — and he breathed into them, and they became living beings. But we are destined to be not only living beings, like automatons — we are destined to be life-giving spirit, “for as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself.” By this act of the crucifixion — crucified on this cross — I will then rise, and you will rise to exaltation, to the Father, not to see him as something other than yourself, but to be the Father. And you too will be able to say, “I and the Father are one.”1090 ¶9

Our descent into division, and our resurrection into unity; our descent into the generation of decaying death, and gain our regeneration by our resurrection from the dead. That is the statement of the 82nd Psalm in the most beautiful way. “To those in great eternity, met in the council of God as one man; for by contracting, the exalted senses behold multitude, as you and I do; for expanding, we behold one — one man, all the universal family contained in one” — and that one man we call, in Scripture, we call him Jesus the Christ, and they in him, and he and them, live in perfect harmony, in Eden, the land of light.1090 ¶10

You are indwelling in everyone in the world — or you couldn’t even perceive them — and they all dwell in you. You are being spoken of in Scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ, but until the story repeats itself in you — not as an observer observing it, but you, the actor, playing the central part — not observing it as you would observe a theater unfolding before you, but actually the actor, the actor called Jesus Christ, without loss of your identity. You still maintain your own identity and get cast in the central role of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the energy of Scripture unfolds within you, and only then do you really know who you are. So I tell you tonight, you are the ones addressed in that 82nd Psalm, that is still considered the most difficult of the 150 psalms, for the historic imagination of the interpreter to grasp. Yes, the ideas are perennial, they’re forever and forever.1090 ¶11

And we read the word of Paul. Paul was determined not to know any Jesus Christ after the flesh, as he himself confessed in his second letter to the Corinthians: “Henceforth I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” He was determined not to conceive of this cosmic being from some little single man in this world. He bursts into humanity, and yet he is not divided — he is a total, he is one. And because he’s the whole, you’re not divided, you are one. And when you awaken, you’ll see the whole vast world as yourself pushed out; every being in your world lives within you, and all that you behold, though it appears without, is within — in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. And that human imagination is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is your own true identity.1090 ¶12

So when they say, “We crucify you” — no, we do not crucify you for blasphemy, no, not for good works — he’s telling you, from his experience, it’s going to happen to you. And you dare to tell your vision, even to your most intimate friends, they will think you insane. If they should hear the news that you have actually experienced within yourself the entire story of Jesus as described in Scripture, they will begin to think that man is insane, and they will say, “Why listen to him? He has a devil and is mad” — read it in the Gospel of John — “why listen to him?” Any man who has gained the certainty from the experience within himself which parallels the story in Scripture, if he tells it, they think he’s insane. For man has been taught to believe in some little tiny physical flesh-and-blood man that is called Jesus, and the word Jesus means Jehovah — the same word is Jehovah, it is the Lord God, the Savior of the world. But he is buried — a man in every man, not a chosen little crowd, but every man.1090 ¶13

You want to know his name? His name is I Am. You can’t go anyplace and not know that you are. You may forget this very moment and suffer total amnesia concerning your present physical state, and not know who you are, where you are, or even what you are, but you can’t forget that you are. No man can be unaware that he is. He can be unaware of who he is and what he is and where he is, but he can’t be unaware of being. And that is the name of God, forever and forever. So my name is I Am. And because of that, you are immortal.1090 ¶14

So we are the sons who came down, not because we did anything that was wrong — it is not a fault, as taught by some prophet of the world — this was a deliberate descent into this world of death and decay, to prove our own creative power, that we could die — literally die, not pretend. If you are a god pretending that you’re a man, you would know who you are, and it could not do anything for you. You have to completely empty yourself of all that you are, your wonderful divine form, your heavenly state, and actually come down and suffer, and believe that you’re a man, to experience death, for all men die. So I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of them; nevertheless you will die, you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes — one man, God’s, containing all. He came down, and now, through this act of the crucifixion, we are now transformed, and from the crucifixion we are exalted to the Father.1090 ¶15

So when you rise, you’re not rising as the Son of God — you’re rising as God the Father. And what is the Son then? If we all think God the Father, and if he’s a father, then where is his son? Humanity is transformed, and the whole of humanity is symbolized in the single youth called David. And David is the son of the Father. You are the father of David — you do not know it yet, but you will know it. When you see him, there is no uncertainty as to this relationship between you, God the Father, and your son David. You might think the whole thing is a legend — well, it is. Man can fall in love with a legend — he fell in love with David, I mean David the son of Jesse. And Jesse means “Jehovah exists,” is the son of Jehovah, who is, or any form of the verb “to be,” which is I Am. And the day will come when you’ve completed the journey, you will stand before him and call him Father, and you will know you are his father, and you will know he is your son. There’ll be no uncertainty as to this relationship between you, God the Father, and your son David — who is the essence of humanity.1090 ¶16

If you took all the generations of men and all of their experiences, and simply condensed them into one single being, and personify that being, he will come out as David. So having gone through the gamut of all that man could ever conceive of, and having played all the parts, then you come out. Now, when you come out, you’re God the Father, and your son is David, the essence of all that you went through as man. And that is the story of the Bible. It cannot spell it out, because how can you find words to describe it?1090 ¶17

I started to tell you earlier how he tried to tell it in the third chapter of John, and when Nicodemus could not understand — these are the words that are used, it’s all beautiful imagery, but true. You’ll find, if you can, a more beautiful image for one to use to express this expression. He said, as the Son of Man — thinking first of all, he said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” And you will wonder, what on earth is he talking about? What can that do for me? Here he’s trying to explain how men are saved. But I tell you, having died, I know how it’s done. You cannot do it by taking thought — it just happens, in the fullness of time it happens, and this is how it’s done.1090 ¶18

First of all, you are told you are the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. If I am the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in me, and the curtain of that temple must be torn in two from top to bottom, it can only be a part of my body that is torn — it can’t be a piece of cloth like that. Many think that some little curtain in the synagogue was meant — it has nothing to do with any curtain in the synagogue. If I am the temple, and the curtain’s in the temple, there must be something in me that is torn in two, from top to bottom, to reveal the holy of holies.1090 ¶19

Well, it is — without any thought whatsoever, not knowing the moment it’s going to happen, not even knowing though he wants it to happen — the day will come that you will be torn into from top to bottom, from the top of your head to the base of your spine, and it will separate. And at the base of the spine you will see golden, pulsing, liquid light — “I am the light of the world” — you’ll see it, and, as an observer, you will know you are what you are, that you’re actually beholding yourself. It has no face, it’s simply golden, golden discs of light, and as you contemplate it, you fuse on it, and as you fuse with it to become one with it, like a fiery serpent, up you go, through that same body of yours, into heaven. And heaven is not up there with the stars — heaven is within you. You go up into your skull, and it reverberates like thunder. He ascends into heaven, and you’re told the kingdom of God is within you. So if I’m to go into the kingdom of God, where can I go but into myself, right into my own skull? So “no one ascends” — but he who first descended. And then I see what I am — that is the thing that came down in the generation, at the base of my spine, but I fell into generation, and therefore decay and death; and now I behold it, and I fuse with it, and up I rise, like a fiery serpent.1090 ¶20

The imagery is perfect — how else could you describe it? So in the third chapter of John, he makes every attempt to explain what he means when he calls himself the Son of God who is the Son of Man. It comes out of man, but he redeems himself out of man. So man is not your true identity — God is your true identity. You are the Lord Jesus Christ.1090 ¶21

Tonight you may want to throw something at me if you were trained differently, and think I am blaspheming. I am not blaspheming, I’m speaking the same word — the one he used in the gospel — he said of himself, “You say I blaspheme because you, being a man, make yourself God.” He knew he was not a man, for I cannot address things and say to them, “You are the sons of God, sons of the Most High, all of them, nevertheless you will die like men” — for if I’m going to die like a man, I cannot be a man when I was addressed. I’m something other than man. But he tells you what I was — he was the Son of God. If I am the Son of God, then I must be like whatever God is, and God isn’t man — he comes down and he redeems man.1090 ¶22

But who came down? The sons of God, and always are the sons of God. And all of us together — not one must be missing — make up God the Father. And each, as he returns, will be that God the Father, the totality. He will be the one God and Father of all, and he will have the one son, and that son will be the sum total of all of the experiences of humanity, fused into a single whole and personified. And his state, as he stands before us, he is just as he’s described in the book — an eternal youth, for eternity is not an old man, eternity is personified as a youth.1090 ¶23

Eternal Youth is my son, and he wears the form — yes, I can tell you, the face is human, the voice is human, the hands are human, but do not ask me about the body. I could not describe the body, I have no image on earth to tell it. How someone could embrace you whose face is human, whose hands are human, whose voice is human, but don’t ask me the question. And yet, when he embraced me, our bodies became one. In this world, you see, one plus one equals two; in Divine mathematics, one plus one equals one — he became one. So in the end there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all — they will not be two of us, you and I are one, because if you have the same son that I have, and you become fully conscious of it, then you and I must be one. And if we are the same son, then we are the same father, yet without loss of individuality, without loss of our identity. I will know you in eternity — I’ll know you as God the Father, I know you as the one whose son is my son, and if your son is my son, then we are one.1090 ¶24

And this is the story of the Bible. Its language evokes, does not describe — or, it does not describe things of this world. And all of our evangelists are trying to prove that they know, from the Bible, the world is coming to an end, and all this nonsense — the little world is not coming to any end. The age comes to an end to the individual, when the individual has completed the journey, and he finds himself unfolding within himself the entire story of the Gospel of Jesus, and his world has come to an end.1090 ¶25

So when people call him dead, he is not restored to life in a world like this, where all people are — no, he is in a new age altogether, an entirely different age, called the Kingdom of Heaven, which is a body — it’s not a realm. Wherever he is now, clothed in that heavenly body, is heaven, for nothing can remain imperfect in his presence, because he is perfect. Nothing can remain dead — you walk through the desert and it blossoms like the rose, he walks through a petrified forest that bursts into blossom, because he is life, he is the one true living being. Nothing remains dead in his presence, because he is the Living God.1090 ¶26

And those who die without the experience are instantly restored to life in a body that is human, just like this — young, in a world terrestrial just like this — to continue the journey until the story of Jesus is reenacted within him. He has come to the end of the age, which is what the world is speaking of today, of the world coming to an end — no, the world is not coming to an end.1090 ¶27

And here you find all these things — it’s almost embarrassing. I gave a small ad in last Saturday’s paper, and I saw these fantastic claims on the same page where my little ad was — I almost blushed — “come and see this,” multimillion, oatmeal of gold, and all the nonsense and all the silliness that you read, all in the name of the Bible. And the Bible has nothing to do with this — it’s talking about you, the true you, not the little god that you shave in the morning — that is simply something that hides you, it hides the being that you really are. It’s talking of your true, essential being, that the Deity came down and emptied himself of his divine right, and took upon himself the form of a slave — now listen to the word — took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of men.1090 ¶28

He entered slavery with men, and being found in human form — the three of them he equates, he identifies the three as the same. But a man may be rich, living in a fabulous world — he has homes all over the world, and maybe he can sign a check tonight, and it will be honored tomorrow morning for ten million dollars without batting an eye — but he’s a slave of the body that he wears.1090 ¶29

Possessing all the money in the world, and if he has millions under his control, like any dictator of a fabulous land which has people under his control, to put them into slavery with impunity — yes, the dictator who could give the order to execute this one or that one, he cannot command one of his slaves to perform the natural functions of his body — he has to do it all for himself. He has to eat and drink, he has to assimilate what the body can assimilate, and he has to expel from that body what it cannot assimilate, and he has to do it all by himself — he’s not free. This body enslaves us all, no matter who we are in this world. We drive through with our wonderful chariots, and all the police leading us and following us, and everyone waving to the crowd, and maybe she is dying, or he is dying, to get beyond it, because no one can do for her or for him what she has to do for herself, and the time has come — isn’t that slavery?1090 ¶30

So, being found in human form, and he calls it a slave, he became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross — this is the only cross. And may I tell you, it’s not a painful cross. When I experienced the crucifixion, it was the most ecstatic, the most wonderful feeling — they were vortices that held me here, not nails as seen in pictures. How they arrived at those pictures, I do not know, because there is no description, no personal description of Jesus in the Bible. You cannot go through the sixty-six books and find one simple little personal description of Jesus, yet we have all these paintings and all these things with nails made of wood or made of iron.1090 ¶31

There is a vortex — that’s the vortex, the vortex, a vortex, and by my two feet. And when they actually enter, it’s sheer ecstasy, for you made the decision to give up your divine right and take upon yourself this garment. And the act of taking it was not a painful act at all — you deliberately did it, and took upon yourself the form of a slave. And being found in human form, you became obedient unto death — yes, the death on this cross.1090 ¶32

There is no other God. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, that they have a little piece of wood from the cross here, a little piece of wood there — if you put all the little pieces of wood together, it would build this house. And one man carried that cross. One church has a little piece of cloth — this came from his robe — another church has a piece of cloth, another church has a piece of cloth — take all that cloth together that he wore as a robe, it would clothe an army. It has nothing to do with it.1090 ¶33

As you are seated here tonight, no one is more holy than you are, because the Lord Jesus Christ is buried within you, and you do not have to bow before anyone in this world — no one is more holy than you are. He may be richer, he may be stronger, maybe wiser, he may have all these qualities and you do not possess them, but he is not any holier than you are. And in the end, when you awake, he cannot be any wiser, because when you complete the awakening, you are the wisdom and the power of God, as defined in Scripture.1090 ¶34

So don’t think anyone on earth, regardless of his accomplishment, will transcend you, or that’s the being of whom I speak, and will continue to speak throughout the series, or we will interlace it — is what many would like to hear, concerning the use of the law while we are waiting for redemption, how to use it wisely in this world, and achieve certain objectives, certain goals in this world — that can be done, no question about it.1090 ¶35

Here in this audience — I said to the gentleman, the involvement of the law that he said to me: “I go home, I sit in my garden, in my patio, and I dream, but a controlled dream.” He worked in the city, Culver City. He did not have the educational qualifications for the job that was vacant — he had to have a college education to qualify, he did not have one — went to high school, and that was the last of his education. I saw the gift that came down from the powers that be — he is now, in spite of the so-called qualifications by law he has to fulfill — didn’t fulfill it at all, did it all in his imagination, and now he is the purchasing agent of the city of Culver City, and that money is funneled through his hands every year. I asked him, and he brought me down the other day — he took me down. I said, “How much do you have to spend in the course of the year?” He said, “My budget runs about eight hundred thousand dollars a year.” It all comes through his fingers, everything must come through his hands, that the city needs, he orders.1090 ¶36

So here is a complete violation — thousands of dollars of purchases — they’ll all violate the rule, if you apply the divine principle of imagination. If you know who you are — if you don’t know who you are, you’re going to abide by all the little rules and regulations of the world.1090 ¶37

I had a friend of mine, and he always used to say — well, I would remind you of a sign, and say — no, so-and-so, he said, he didn’t say it positively. Okay, and so he went through life that way. Didn’t I say — the sign said “only those who are boarding the plane can go down,” not passengers — didn’t say it positively. He flew with me — I’m flying out of New York City, and here he came out, bringing a friend with him too. I said, “No smoking” — it said “no smoking” — didn’t say it positively — and he comes aboard smoking a cigarette, and bringing a friend aboard the plane to see me off — not once, several times, but that was his favorite remark: it didn’t say it positively.1090 ¶38

Well, in the law, as we will teach it to you through the weeks to come, for I’ll be here every Monday and Friday until the tenth of December — if you know exactly what you want, and you dare to assume that you are what you want to be, and that you have what you want, and walk faithful to that assumption — though at the moment of your assumption your senses deny it and reason denies it — if you are faithful to it, it will harden into fact, because the being that is doing it is within you. You assume this — that seemed an impossible thing for God to assume, this little thing, but nothing is impossible to God, and he gave up his divine rank and assumed the human form. While in it, he is still God — he’s forgotten that he’s done so, he can’t pretend he is and play the part — well, he has to actually believe that he is man, but he’s not man. You are the being of whom the gospel speaks, you are that central character, Jesus Christ. Now let’s go into this.1090 ¶39