The Rock

The New Testament tells what happened in the soul of man, in the inner man, the imaginative man, in Christ in you. These experiences were seen and heard by none except the one in whom they occurred. Through these experiences, that one gained the certainty that he is the one of whom Moses and the Lord and the prophets wrote. They wrote of God, and he became completely convinced that it was of himself that they wrote. For he took the writings of the Old Testament, the sketches, for all adumbration, and when he explained them, they became alive. What was formerly only a sketch became in him a cubic reality. He gave life to the sketch. For the letter kill but the spirit makes the lie, and so he was convinced that it was all about him. This is true of every being in the world. Everyone is going to have the identical experience and will be equally convinced that it was of him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote. In the end, he will see the unity.1165 ¶1

Now let us turn to a passage in the 68th Psalm. You’ll find it in the 20th verse: “Our God is a God of salvation, and to God the Lord belongs escape from death.” Now when you heard the word God, did your mind jump outside to something other than yourself? Then you do not have the same concept of God that I speak of here. If the word God or the word Jesus Christ or the word Lord conveys the sense of some existing something outside of yourself, you have a false God and a false Lord and a false Jesus Christ. For God dwells in you, and his name forever and forever is I am. “Be still and know that I am God.” That’s what you are told in the 46th Psalm. Just be still and try to persuade yourself that your own wonderful human imagination is the creative power of the universe. That is God. So when we speak of “our God is a God of salvation, and our God, the Lord, and from him and through him we find escape from death,” can’t we see we ourselves are bringing about our own salvation? It is in the depth of our own being that we will find that which will release us from this adventure into death. For here we are.1165 ¶2

Let us turn now to show you how altogether wonderful Scripture is. That man must himself experience Scripture before he can begin to understand how altogether wonderful it is.1165 ¶3

Now let us turn to the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy. “You have forgotten the rock that begets you, and you are unmindful of the God who gave you birth.” He equates the rock with God. Now take the word rock as used in this passage, and also use in other passages of the Old Testament, also in the New Testament, when we speak of the rock: “And the rock was Christ.” They drank from the spiritual water, and the rock was Christ. It flowed from that rock. Now the word rock is defined as the limit of contraction: to cram, to confine. Here is God in the limit of contraction called man, where he completely forgets that he is God. He has to completely forget. He cannot pretend that he is man, knowing all along that he is the creator of the universe. So he comes down and assumes the limit of contraction, of cramping, of confinement. But the word is also defined as the adversary. It’s defined as to assault, to beset, to besiege, and also to fashion. So your own adversary is your own being. So when you read in Scripture, “a man’s enemies are those of his own household,” it does not mean that my wife and my children and my servants and my friends who visit my home are my enemies. The household is my own wonderful human imagination. That’s my household. That’s where I live. I live in my imagination. And my enemies are all within me.1165 ¶4

So that rock that begot me, I am unmindful of it. And yet that is the God that gave me birth.1165 ¶5

This emanation now call Neville a man of dust. For he turns to dust. Yet within it is the God of God, called in Scripture the second man, the Lord from heaven.1165 ¶6

The outer man is called the man of earth, a man of dust. It does turn to dust. Give it a little time or you can hasten the process by putting it in an oven and you cremate it and in just a little, in a matter of moments, it turns into dust. Or put it into earth and let time do it for you. It will still turn into dust.1165 ¶7

So the outer man is the man of earth, is the man of God. But there is the immortal man housed within this contraction, within this complete confinement. And that man is the man of whom I speak now. That’s your immortal self. So that is the God. And we are told, “our God is a God of salvation, and our God, the Lord.” It is from him that man escapes death. This is the world of death.1165 ¶8

So when I use the word God, bear in mind I’m speaking of your own wonderful human imagination. That’s the one that I speak of. This is the rock.1165 ¶9

Now, to show you how altogether wonderful the imagery is, in 1936, I was seated, not thinking of anything in particular, I was seated in my living room. And there, with my eyes shut, I didn’t sleep, but I was not asleep. Suddenly, before my eyes, there appeared a quartz about that big. Just a solid rock. No shape to it. As I looked at it, it became fragmented. It broke into many, many pieces and scattered. Then, as though some invisible hand, but certainly no hand that I saw, but some force drew all the pieces together and reformed them, but not into a rock. It reformed them into a man. And the man was seated in the lotus posture. I looked at him, I was curious. And as I looked at this seated figure, seated in the lotus posture, I observed that he had my face. I am looking at myself. I became so completely entranced with what I’m seeing, because it had my face. But my face raised to the nth degree of perfection. I could not, honestly, looking into the mirror when I shaved in the morning, ever think that eternity would be long enough to transform this face of mine into that face. And yet it was my face. There was the nth degree of perfection. There was a strength of character, a strength of majesty. You name it, that is altogether wonderful, and that face had it. And yet I knew I was looking at myself. Then it began to glow. And it began to glow like the sun. And when it reached the limit of, I would say, not translucency, but intensity, it exploded. And then I simply broke into tears because I wasn’t asleep. I opened my eyes and pondered this strange, peculiar thing.1165 ¶10

So the rock that he got me, I am unmindful of it. Here I am actually getting something by coming down into this world and assuming the limit of contraction, penetrating these bodies and annexing these brains and wearing these garments that are so weak and all decay. They appear, they wax, they wane, and they vanish. Everyone, no matter how long he seems to live, he goes through the same process. So he hits a hundred, so what? In the end, he turns to dust. But that something that animated that body is immortal. It is in that body for a purpose. In that body to reach a certain understanding of the unity of being and the oneness of being.1165 ¶11

Now we are told he fell. And the whole world talks about the fall of man. As though man had done something wrong.1165 ¶12

So let me quote from Blake in his first night. It’s called Valor. And Valor is simply the experience that Blake had over the period of nine nights. These are nine nights. He calls them Valor or the Four Zones. He speaks of the fall into fragmentation and the resurrection into unity. The fall into generation of decay and death and the regeneration by the resurrection from the dead. Now we speak of the great tungsten. Then those in great eternity met in the tungsten of God, and they met as one man. For by contracting their exalted senses, they behold multiply, spending, they behold as one. As one man, all the universal family. And that one man they call Jesus. And they in him and he in them live in perfect harmony in Eden, the land of life.1165 ¶13

That’s vision, true vision.1165 ¶14

When you behold man, the real man, it contains the whole vast world of humanity. And yet it’s only man. How to describe it? I can only tell you what I saw. To the famous Blake. Now, Blake and I appeared in time, separated by, well, 150 years. He appeared in time in 57, I appeared, that is, 1857, and I appeared in time in 1905. So here we are, separated in time, but we are closely woven together in the tapestry of thought. We are just as close as one. And this night, Blake said to me, I’ll show you. Fall backwards. And here we are in space. I am not on Earth. We are in space. Like some carabiner. And he said, simply throw yourself backwards. Have no care whatsoever. And I threw myself backwards like a huge, big guy, but only backwards. And when I began to come to a point where the blow or the fall was quieting down, then I looked into space. And there is a man. This glorified being. His heart was like a ruby, a flaming ruby. The man contained all the races and all the nations and all of humanity. When I contracted my senses, all these things were. And when I expanded my sense, there was only one man. One man containing the whole of humanity.1165 ¶15

I know how true the symbolism is of Scripture. Who would have thought for one moment a rock? This man did not sit down to write. Whoever wrote the book of Deuteronomy is attributed to Moses. But who is Moses? No one knows Moses. No one knows actually what the man called Moses is. It’s simply a name. The word actually means to be born. There is something to be born. That’s what Moses means. There’s a play on words to draw out. Moses, to draw out as he was drawn out of the bulrushes. But the word in its root, it means to be born. There is something yet to come out. Here, this one being before my eyes. And who would have thought someone couldn’t come to write and use the word rock, which is capitalized, and you read it and you think it’s a rock? Well, literally and figuratively it is a rock, but it’s telling you something. That rock was fragmented before my eyes. The whole thing is fragmented into many, many pieces. And then before my eyes, reassembled, but now into the form of man.1165 ¶16

So here’s God. Your own wonderful human imagination is now fragmented in this world. And the purpose of the whole thing is that the whole is buried in the part. And the part will actually experience being the whole. You are not just a little member of God. You are God. And God contains the whole.1165 ¶17

So the purpose of the fragmentation. And the experience of this horror. Where the rock is our adversary. And I am my own adversary. I have put myself through the faces. Not another did it. In the very end I will discover who I am. And discover that he was the one who so loved me. His emanation. That he put himself through the faces. That he may awaken to discover the unity of being, the oneness of being. That all things are contained within him.1165 ¶18

All things exist in the human imagination. Not a few things. As some will teach you that only the lovely things, only the good things. No. The eight of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And all contain within them that entire fruit of the tree of good and evil. They also contain the fruit of the tree of life. And the purpose is having eaten it all. And experienced it all. That’s what it means to eat. To experience the whole.1165 ¶19

Then we come to the point where we awaken from the dream of life. To discover that we ourselves are the father. That some being on the outside who calls me son. No one calls me son. I am the father. The sum total of all the experiences of man, all put together and brought into one single whole and personified is the son, the reward of the journey to death. And that is a son, and his name forever and forever is David. And not just a David, the David, the David of biblical faith. And when he stands before you, you know him. Intimately you know him. And you know who you are? And then you are the Father.1165 ¶20

So what does he call the Father? The Father makes the claim in the 89th Psalm. I have found David. With my holy oil I have anointed him. He shall cry unto me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.1165 ¶21

So he equates the Father with God and with the rock. And who is it? It is David, who could speak to one who sees him as his son, and he knows that the one who is looking at him is his father, and knows that is the rock out of which I came. But he himself went through hell to produce me. He was the father who all along was my adversary. He was God. He was the rock that assaulted me, that beset me, that besiege me, and still fashion me.1165 ¶22

And how did he fashion me? He fashioned me into the very likeness of himself. For the Son is the image of the Father. For we are told in the first chapter of Hebrews that he is the express image of the invisible God. He radiates and reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person.1165 ¶23

So I am passionate and I have completed him. He is beautiful. Beautiful beyond measure when you look into his face. But he comes only at the end. At the end of time.1165 ¶24

Not what the world thinks today. The world is coming to an end. No world is coming to an end. If tomorrow you have a nuclear war, it will be hell on earth. It will be hell on earth anyway. Without a nuclear war. A man who can’t afford to pay his rent. A man who cannot afford to feed his children, well, he’d rather have a nuclear war. He’d rather have the whole thing come to an end. For that’s a painful, painful existence when he has to go home and face his wife, who originally admired him because he could bring home the bacon, as it were. And now there’s no work, and he comes home empty-handed, and the children are hungry, and they don’t know why. Well, multiply, not in our fabulous land, but multiply that the world over, really is on earth. This is the adversary.1165 ¶25

And yet it is done in love. The being who is doing it is love, all love. But he puts you through the furnaces for his own sake he does it. For my own sake, for how should my name be proclaimed, my glory I will not give to another. And the glory of God is God himself. So he cannot give himself to another, he must make the other himself. And it takes all the pain of the world to produce it.1165 ¶26

So here, our God is a God of salvation. And to God the Lord belongs escape from death. But he will not let me escape. Because he and I are one. And you see me, you see my father. So he will not let himself escape from the task that he gave himself to do. Until he completes it. Not until the very end.1165 ¶27

Then he can say, I have finished the race. I have fought the good fight. I have kept the faith. Faith with whom? Faith with himself. He pledged himself. He would not break the dream until he completed the dream. For this is the dream. This whole vast world is a dream. And he is dreaming the dream. And in the end, he will awake from the dream. And when he awakes, he is God the Father.1165 ¶28

So here, when you hear God or Christ or Lord, try your best to arrest your mind from jumping on the outside to a being external to yourself. For God dwells in you, and his name forever and forever is I am. So bear in mind that the Christ of Scripture and the Christ that people mention morning, noon and night is their own wonderful human imagination.1165 ¶29

And he who loves you beyond measure is still your own adversary. He assaults you for a purpose. He defects you. He deceives you. But in the end, he will embrace you. In the end, he will embrace you and you will fuse. You were his emanation, yet his wife, till the sleep of death is passed. In the end, the two cease to be two and they become one.1165 ¶30

For two is division, two is conflict. But in the end, they will not be two. He will leave all and please to his wife, and they become one. That’s a beautifully stated statement in that second chapter of Genesis, right in the beginning. It comes out of man, and God is man, and man is God. Their own wonderful human imagination, that’s God. And God dwells in us, and we in him. And the eternal body of man is the imagination. And that is God himself.1165 ¶31

So you’re told in Adam, something came out. Out of man. And now man has to leave everything and cleave to that which came out of him. Until they become one. For this is the emanation of my father. Yet my father till the feet of death is dead.1165 ¶32

So he is dreaming the dream of life in this world. And we call it a living state. And yet it is in the world of death. You name one thing in this world that isn’t going to vanish. Name it. Even the so-called inanimate objects slowly decay. We are told that all the heavens are simply radiated. And in time, although they’re perfect now, or seem to be perfect, they will become dead bodies because they will give out all their energy. And they are radiating at enormous degrees. And yet eventually, they all die.1165 ¶33

This is the world of death where God, the living God, enters. To overcome it, there was a danger. And in doing so, he expands himself. By reaching the limit of contraction and breaking the shell, he then begins to expand. And there is no limit to expansion. No limit to translucency. But he set a limit to contraction. And that is called in the Bible, the rock. And it was the rock of which we were mindful. That very God that gave us this.1165 ¶34

So here, you are the immortal being. You’re all together wonderful. And in the end, the speaker and all around you and the whole vast world will be within you and you will know it. But you also will be within me and I’ll know it. And we will be one. And in the end, all will have the same son because all have gone through similar experiences from the beginning to the end.1165 ¶35

And so the fall was into fragmentation, and then resurrection to unity. For resurrection begins the unifying process. And then the fall also entails fall into generation and the decay and death of this world, but regeneration by resurrection from the dead. So one is raised within himself.1165 ¶36

So I told you in the beginning, the New Testament simply tells what happens in the soul. That soul is your own wonderful human imagination. The activities of your imagination is the activity of the soul. And that is God. That’s called in Scripture, the Lord. It’s called the Lord God Jehovah. It is called Jesus Christ. And in the end, all will be one. For we will dwell in him, and he dwells in us.1165 ¶37

And so because he dwells in us, and all dwell in him, think as he unfolds in me. And in you, the whole unfolds. And you’ll know every being in this world is but a pushed out aspect of yourself. And they all play their part beautifully. And they were at one moment your adversaries. They were deceiving you. They were besetting you. They were assaulting you. And every one of them came out of you. You all yourself objectified the whole basketball.1165 ¶38

I received a letter this week from a friend of mine who was here tonight. He said this happened to him 12 years ago. That he found himself in a dream, strapped on the back of a bull. But unlike what you see in pictures, when they bring the man in, either injured or maybe shot, and they put him across the back of the bull, he was trapped lengthwise from the head to the tail, with his feet resting on the head of the bull and the body stretched out down to the tail and looking up at the sky. And he wondered through these years if it had any significance. It has tremendous significance if you are familiar with symbolism.1165 ¶39

The bull, long before the Christian era, was the symbol of the creator. All right, he is trapped to the back of the creator.1165 ¶40

But in reverse order, I know from my own experience that that which goes down into generation through the loins of man, by man I mean generic man, male, female, created within, and called their name, man. So, generation is from below. When man is awakened from the dream of life, within a matter of months, nine months, he has the experience of the ascent, where the whole thing is reversed. The energy that went down into generation is turned up into regeneration.1165 ¶41

Now, in Bailey’s book called The Lost Language of Symbolism, you will find many things said about the world. But there are two pages of pictures of the ancient world back before our era, way back in D.C. And they’re not nicely drawn, but they did not draw as well in those days. They’re all flat. They had no depth to the picture. But here is the face of a bull, and coming out of its head is the cross. And one around the cross is the serpent. And here below the chin of the bull are the initials of Christ Jesus. It is something preceding the Christian era, and yet there they are, the initials. And here, many of them.1165 ¶42

So, he is simply so beautifully strapped to the back of the Creator by that energy that he, in this world of decay and death, used in generations, will one day, in the twinkle of a second, be reversed and turned up. Then he will not be strapped that way. He will be the bull, the symbol. For the bull is only the symbol. He will be the Creator.1165 ¶43

But now, he simply expresses it in the creative or physically in the world should be always until that moment in time which comes just about nine months after the birth from about. For the birth from about and the resurrection coincide. They happen the same night. The resurrection comes first, and a matter of seconds comes the birth from about. So you break the shell, and out of your own skull you come.1165 ¶44

And then the imagery of crypto-corruptors, infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and the three witnesses to the event, but they do not see you, because you are spirits. You see them, you read their thoughts, you know what, everything is going on, but they do not see you. Yet they know whose birth took place, because they call your name, and say the child is yours. And you seem to fear that it is, when you speak to it endearingly.1165 ¶45

Well then comes another 139 days when the fatherhood is discovered. The father-son relationship. Then 123 days later comes the ascent. Now the serpent, the fiery serpent into the star. So he saw perfectly. For he saw the symbol of the creator.1165 ¶46

Now he certainly did not go to sleep thinking of a bull. He didn’t go to sleep thinking of anything of that nature. But these symbols are universal. Whether you’ll be in China, or in Africa, or in Europe, or America, the same symbol. There he is, an American, and in this country, he had it. The same night, the same moment, someone not knowing anything of America could have had the identical thing because in the depths of the soul, the symbolism, the imagery is universal and understood in the universal language. But today, man has forgotten that language. And he doesn’t know that he has the dream. So he may find it difficult to interpret the dream.1165 ¶47

But it was a marvelous foreshadowing of that creative power which one day, and I know in the not distant future, he will find the birth, or the dream he told me a few months ago, when suddenly he found himself on the deck of the ship and heading towards the mainland. Well now that was indicative to me, going towards the mainland. For all the things happened in the interior of the ship, even with his falling in love with the Negus. and really felt inclined, sexy, so was his nature. And yet, in this world, he’s happily married to one of his own Caucasian race. But here, in the depth of his soul, he finds himself falling in love. Well, that’s simply the beautiful imagery. Here, he’s moving out of that world. He only symbolized the darkness. And now he comes up to the deck, and he moves forward, and he looks, and here is the mainland. He didn’t even realize that he was not on the mainland until now the ship has lifted its anchor and set sail for the mainland, going home now.1165 ¶48

So the going home was prefigured in the story of the bull, because you don’t go home until the creative energies are reversed and turned from regeneration into regeneration, and regeneration by the resurrection from the dead.1165 ¶49

So when you read scripture, bear in mind that the God spoken of is not something the churches talk about; that the Jesus Christ spoken of is not something that they talk about. It is all within you. The whole drama takes place within the individual. And in the end, the whole vast world you will discover to be contained within yourself; that all things exist in the human imagination. And that is God.1165 ¶50

And those who will now deny it, all right. I would raise a cinder to persuade them, because I know give them time, and they will have the identical experience. And having the experience, you can’t deny the experience. For even though you fought against it in the beginning, after you’ve experienced it, for then, all arguments speak. You can’t deny the experience. So I say, and repeat, that until man himself experiences Scripture, he cannot begin to understand. How altogether wonderful it really is.1165 ¶51

All the imagery circles. Who would have thought in writing that story of the rock, they thought a man sat down to form some workable philosophy of life. And why did he use the symbol of a rock? And equate it with God. How could God be a rock? God became the rock. And you are the rock.1165 ¶52

So when you’re told he took a rock, a stone, and used it as a pillow, and put his head upon the rock, and then he had a dream, and it was a ladder stretching up into heaven, and above the ladder, standing above it all, was the Lord, and how he wrestled with the Lord that night and prevailed, and the Lord changed his name from Jacob to Israel. And here is this letter, a winding letter in Blake’s beautiful picture of it. It’s a circular stairway. That was the letter that he saw, and you see this: The angels descending and ascending. Descending with a child in the arm and ascending with it. The whole vast wonderful panorama. Which is your own wonderful human spine. That’s the ladder of Jacob. And his rock was at the base.1165 ¶53

And now he has to turn around. And when he turns around and goes up, he is Israel now. And Israel means the man who rules as God. For you will actually find yourself God. You will have the deep assurances you are from the experiences that you’re going to have. It is still the experiences that the individual who has had the experience is convinced that he is the one of whom the prophets wrote and whom knows his love. He knows because these are the experiences of God, and if he has had the experiences of God, then he has to be God, for it was of God that the prophets wrote.1165 ¶54

Then they said, “I have found David, and with my holy oil I have anointed him, and he shall cry unto me, Thou art my father.” It is God speaking in the words of the prophet, the 89th Psalm. And when you read the second Psalm, and these are the words of David, and David said, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, Thou art my father. He said unto me, Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee.”1165 ¶55

So here are the words. And when you have these experiences, and they’re all related to God, well, then you must be God. You cannot avoid the conclusion. If everything is said of God, the individual experiences in the first person, singular, and a present tense experience, he has to be the one spoken of in Scripture.1165 ¶56

But he still wears the rock. He still wears the garment. He still has it as an adversary, as he grows older and older. And so the faculty stays. Another thing you can do about it, there they are, they’ll stay. And he’ll go to the mortal grave, as the outer garment has to go, and he’ll return to dust as all garments turn to dust. But he knows the one who had the experience, and it wasn’t the one who was laying on the bed when he had the experience. He returned to that garment, but the experience was not in that garment. The experience was in the inner man.1165 ¶57

The Lord from heaven, who still had to come back and complete the unfinished business. In his case, the unfinished business was to tell the experience and relate his own experience. So he goes into his world and faces an audience that formerly heard only the working of the law. And now he can’t think of anything but the promise and its fulfillment. And he starts to tell about the promise.1165 ¶58

And then as he tells about the promise, he’s rising up into the mountain, the rarefied air, and the clouds remain at the base. They cannot follow to the top. And so he tells it and tells it, and they get fewer and fewer. As he rises up and tells of the fabulous promise that God made to himself when he became man and how he fulfilled it in man. And as he tells it, it is not what they expected. They wanted more of the feet and the load. And he is tired of the feet and the load, for he’s on his way home.1165 ¶59

I would like to tell everyone to encourage them, because no matter how stupid a person is in this world, if he stops for one second, he would have to know that eventually he’s got to die. And yet with both feet in the grave, he is still struggling for an extra dollar or to be payment. It is only mentioned in some He got the column. Oh, he would love that. Even though he knows he’s got to go.1165 ¶60

I saw that with a friend of mine in New York City. Winchell would mention him, seen in the store club. And he would cut it out and show me. I would say, Gene, how stupid can you be? And then, of course, with his nightly visits to the store club, he became an alcoholic. He was making lots of money. He worked at the music hall. And finally they took him to the hospital, the road club. And he hid. They can hide the strangest things. And he hid two or three bottles of alcohol in his clothes. The nurses didn’t find it. And so he had it with him in the house. He could only leave the house a week after that. But he was so thrilled with the mention of his name in the column.1165 ¶61

Now the salt couch is gone. For debt. Can’t pay debt. Leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of debt. And he is gone. And all those who patronize the salt couch. Many of them have gone through the little gate called death. And others have gone down in the social world, financial world. And what does it matter? And people do not see it at the moment. There’s still one death.1165 ¶62

And I ask you to dwell upon what I’ve told you tonight. And dwell upon the word and try to identify it with your own wonderful human imagination. Dwell upon Christ and then identify it with your own wonderful human imagination. For you are told, do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? For the average person does not realize it at all. He is still looking for him to come from without. And he will look in vain.1165 ¶63

He cannot come from without because he is within. That’s where he is confined. That’s where he is in the rock. Is not your skull a rock? If your skull is not a rock, well then tell me what it is. A solid rock. And that’s where Christ is, is buried, and that’s where he is going to rise, and that’s where he will simply awaken. And out of that rock, which is a tomb, you will come out. And when he comes out, you—for everything is going to happen to you after that—is recorded in scripture as having been experienced by the lord. So if they are your experiences and they are the lord’s experiences, well then you are the lord. Now let us go into the silence.1165 ¶64