I Am Reality Called Imagination

We’ll be here every Monday and Friday through April, same place, same time. I think you will find tonight a very practical message, but to understand it we must go back and see if we really believe the same thing. I make the claim that the eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself, the One we speak of in Scripture as Jesus Christ. Now we are told in Scripture to examine ourselves, to see whether we are holding to the faith. Test yourselves, said Paul. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test? Now, you’ve just had the test, and you and you alone can judge whether you failed or not. For you heard the word Jesus Christ, you heard the word God. Now, if it conveyed the sense that I would exist in something outside of men, you fail the test. If, when you hear the word God, or the word Jesus, or the word Christ, the word Lord, and the mind jumps at something of size, of you outside of man, you fail the test.1186 ¶1

No, we are told, “By him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made,” and that, I tell you, is your own wonderful human imagination. What is now proved in the world was once only imagined. But this is the greatest of all secrets, the secret of imagining - something that you and I, and every one of the world, should strive to understand. For the secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems, to the solution of which everyone should aspire, for supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lies in the solution of this mystery. When you actually discover it, you discover God. You are finding the creative power of the universe, and when you find Him, He is your own wonderful human imagination. We can only rarely scratch the surface of this mystery.1186 ¶2

Imagination, it seems, will do little for our wish until we have imagined the wish fulfilled, as Shakespeare said: “it has been taught us from the primal state, the dust which is was wished until it were.” So you and I want something, and we define our objective - know how to realize it. If this power is within us, then we are the operant power; we do not seek anyone on the outside, it’s simply within us. Well, how do I operate it? If I could put it in this simple little frame: the subjective appropriation of the objective hope is the way to success. It’s imagining “as if” - what would the feeling be like if it were true? So I start from the feeling of the wish fulfilled. I must begin by feeling that I’ve already arrived, I have already achieved my goal, and catch the mood that would be mine if it were true, and then wear that mood - if I wear that mood as if it were true, I realize it in my world.1186 ¶3

A friend of mine, who was here tonight, she thought that she had failed. This past November, in her visit to Poughkeepsie - not Poughkeepsie, Pittsburgh - friends of hers that she knew well, and they were a little bit down because of the same seeming recession. One friend had worked for 27 years for Jones & Laughlin, the great big steel firm of our country. In the months of September and October they let out 4,000 workers. He had to put in three more years - three years and two months - to complete a 30-year service with the firm. After 30 years he could retire, a very good, I would say, retirement fund. But he also had six more years to go for his Social Security, and then about 4,000 more, and then it was rumored in the plant that they’re going to close that plant. She reminded him of the use of imagination, which he had used successfully in her previous visit to Pittsburgh, where he laughed - all those things would have happened anyway. She reminded him of six distinct requests on his part that he thought he could not realize; everyone came to pass, she reminded him.1186 ¶4

And then she told him a vision of mine and explained it to him. She said, “What I told you the last time” - I never had a vision, well, the Bible tells us that the depths of our own being speaks to us through the medium of dreams and vision. So here, in this dream of mine - called the dream, if you will - it was just as real as this. I was taken in spirit into an enormous mansion, and here three generations were present, but one was invisible, and that was the grandfather. The father was explaining to his children the secret of his own father’s success. So there was the grandfather - no doubt departed from the world - leaving behind him an enormous fortune for the benefit of his son and then his grandchildren, until the father said to the children, “Grandfather used to say, while standing on an empty lot, I remember when this was an empty lot.” Then he would paint a word picture so vividly of what he intended to do with that empty lot that it ceased to be an empty lot, and you saw the structure that he intended to build. But he acted as though it was already a completed act; he began with the feeling of having arrived at his ideal for that empty lot. Then I woke in my bed, and I recall the dream, and I knew that the depths of my own being had constructed that scene to instruct me - there is one passage of the great use of this power called imagination, which is God.1186 ¶5

It was too early to rise, so I went back to sleep, and I re-dreamed the dream. This time I am the grandfather. I am not the father telling the story, I am not an eavesdropper listening to the story as it was told in the original dream - I am now the grandfather. Then I would say to everyone, by standing on an empty lot, “I remember when this was an empty lot.” So she reminded him of this technique.1186 ¶6

Now, she said, “You are afraid that you might be let out, after 27 years and two months, with Jones & Laughlin. I will now remember when you were afraid, I will remember when you thought it all came to an end.” That’s one, he said. Two years ago I was interviewed, and I thought it a very good interview, but after two years it has never appeared in the trade paper, and I wondered, what have they done with it, have they simply forgotten it, mislaid it, or deliberately not used it? She said, “I will leave that magazine, already be lifted up by it” - it’s humorously written, as you tell me, but I will take that book, right now, in my hand, that magazine, and I will read it all about you. She went on to two or three others, then she returns - now she’s here tonight - she said, in December I received the magazine, it’s very well-written and very, very humorous, all about this man. Then she said, I heard on the radio that Jones & Laughlin had decided not to close the plant, but instead to spend 13 million dollars on the plant in modernizing it, and then, beginning January 1st, to call and recall over 4,000 workers that they had let out.1186 ¶7

Now he is working, all right, but like all these dollars, he will still forget it - he still turns to a god outside of himself; this, to him, would have happened anyway. There were aspects: the 13 million got back the 4,000, that thing that was found after two years unprinted, hope that would have happened, and man goes on blindly worshipping a false god because he does not know God.1186 ¶8

The only God is your own wonderful human imagination. The only name forever and forever, that is His name, is I AM. So that is My name forever. So when you come to the people of Israel, and they ask you what is My name, just simply say, “I AM THAT I AM, and by this name I shall be known throughout all generations.” There is no other name. You cannot separate I AM from yourself, that’s your essential being. And when you say I AM, your own imagination - you cannot stick imagination on the outside and point to it, so you do not observe it as you observe the fruit of imagining. You do not observe imagination as you do an object in space, because you are the reality that is called imagination. This is what we teach here, night after night.1186 ¶9

Now you can test it. What would the feeling be like if it were true, that I am now the man that I would like to be? Note the feeling, be like - catch the mood, for the mood determines the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes determine the mood. Manford suggests the opposite - yes, if I had a million, you say, “Oh, I will feel so good.” Now, be assured, if you had it, catch the mood, and the mood will create that objective hope. If that is your hope, what would the feeling be like if you were now the person you want to be? And catch that mood, and wear that mood - as though you’d bought a suit of clothes on that mood, it will actually create an objective state that reflects that mood. That’s what she did, she put herself into a mood; that’s the feeling. She was reading a story as a friend, and here it came, in a complete spread of four pages, all about this man, and then a little news bulletin on the radio, and then confirmation - a telephone call from his wife, confirming the news bulletin that they’re all back on the job.1186 ¶10

And here, now, as he said: “Four years after 27 years I walked through that plant, I thought I’d go crazy, I wanted to climb the wall because of the noise, when I heard the hammers and the bellows and the furnaces and all these thousands of workmen - that constant, constant din, I wanted to climb the wall. Now, after four thousand were let out, my footsteps echoed through the entire area; I would like to run and scream, running towards my office” - what he does in the plant I do not know, but he goes towards his office, and out - he has an executive position there, that place, and is done working at the furnaces. But so you can’t imagine, when four thousand were let out, how empty the place was, and everything simply echoed, and my footsteps seemed like some wondrous thing as I walked through that plant towards my office, and many a moment I wanted to simply jump up and start running, it seemed so empty. She said, “All right, that’s something I will remember,” and she applied that technique - when your footsteps scare you and you wanted to run towards the office, now it’s the clatter all over again.1186 ¶11

So, I tell you, I know from my own experience, these moods - you catch a mood. I could tell from the mood that possessed me through the day that I would meet a certain character, and I met that character; it may be someone I knew, or some total stranger, but I could tell from the very mood that possessed me, I’m drawing into my world an affinity with that mood. You will catch a mood and create the world that is in harmony with the mood. Anyone can do it, in fact you’re doing it, morning, noon, and night anyway.1186 ¶12

So when you turn to some external God, you are turning to a false god, there is no external God. Examine yourselves, see for yourselves whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves: do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless indeed you fail to meet the test? You’ve just had the test. So if you think of something on the outside when I use the word Jesus Christ, you have the wrong Jesus Christ. For we are told, “By him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Look into the room - all this was once only imagined: the suit you wear, the dresses you wear, ask you where - everything here, the building, was once only conceived in the human imagination and then executed. And if all things were made by him, or their life must come down to find out who he is - well, I can’t go beyond my own imagination. All right, exactly what I imagined, I see the results. So I go back: all things made by him, yes, good, bad, and indifferent. He waits on the just as quickly, and unjust as indifferently, when the willing is evil as when it is good. He states it in Scripture, you’ll find it in Scripture - read it in the Book of Deuteronomy: “I kill, I make alive, I wound, I heal, none can deliver out of my hand, I, I am the Lord.” Read it, it’s in the 32nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: “There is no other God, I am the Lord your God, and besides me there is no other God.” I AM, that is God, as you’re told in the 46th Psalm: “Be still, and know that I am God.”1186 ¶13

A man will not believe it, and yet he has evidence, morning, noon, and night, that his own wonderful creative power, which is his own wonderful human imagination, is producing the phenomena of life. He sees it all around him, but he shunts it away; it’s easier for him to genuflect before some little thing made by human hands. So he puts him on the wall and crosses himself for luck, I think, “Oh, that’s it, that’s good, now I’ve done my duty today.” So he goes to church, he sings hymns with all the others, and if he’s not done his duty and given generously to the church - roughly, all right, if you get any pleasure out of it, do it, but that’s not serving the true God. If you want a social gathering, certainly go to church, go to the coffee breaks following the service, and ask one percent of those who come out of service what was the text today, and he will look at you with some vacant look: “What - what was the text? What did he say? What was the theme of his subject today?” They don’t know, but it’s a place to go on certain days of the year, especially on Christmas, on Easter, on days of that nature. Others make it a point to go once a week; they think they’re doing God a favor.1186 ¶14

You’re walking with God, morning, noon, and night; you take Him to bed with you, because your essential being is God, and there is no other God - is not glory within you? You couldn’t even breathe; your breath is God. Every child born of woman is God incarnate. If men only knew that, there could be no war in the world - killing another is killing God, for every child born of woman is the incarnation of God, whether you be black, yellow, pink, white, or any other color, there is no other being in this world but God. So the incarnation takes place every time a little child is born, and it breathes, and you spank it to get it to cry - that moment was the incarnation of God. How can you kill him, how could you hurt him? Just teach him, I’m showing him what power is latent within him.1186 ¶15

For the whole vast world aches for the awakening of the imagination in men, and the story as told us in Scripture is the true story, but not as it’s told; the day will come you actually find yourself reenacting the entire drama as told us in the Gospel, and you will know it in the first person, singular, present-tense experience, and then you’ll know who He is. He comes to us as one unknown, yet one who, in the most wonderful, mysterious manner, lets man experience who He is, and when you experience who He is, it’s all about you, it’s not about another; the whole vast drama is all about the individual that you see as a little child right in this wonderful world of ours.1186 ¶16

But here tonight, let us keep it on this level, and on this level tonight: when you dream of some wonderful objective in this world that is not yet realized, realize who the dreamer is, and the dreamer is God, and by dreaming your own wonderful imagination, now, a daydream, that’s God in action. Now, do not let your reason and your senses dictate what is possible; all things are possible to God. Self-sustained, for a moment, your reason explain the senses that are dictating what you must accept, for there the mending of you accept the facts of life - all right, if you could accept the facts of life and let reason dictate, you’ll never go beyond where you are. So sustain them just for a moment and try this technique: not with a feeling - be like, how would I feel if it were true, if I am already the man that I would like to be, and if I am, how would I see my friends, and how would they see me? It’s all over than us, so let my wonderful human imagination see them as they would have to see me if it were true. Bring into my mind’s eye, and let them see me, unless then talk to me, and let them congratulate me on my good fortune, and don’t duck, accept the congratulations of your friends if they really mean it. Actually play the part, all within yourself, and then believe it 100 percent, as we are told in John’s letter, the fifth chapter of his First Epistle: “If we believe that he hears us in all that we ask of him, then we know that we have obtained the request made of him.”1186 ¶17

Well, if you get the right God, you have no doubts in your mind as to whether he heard you or not, for you know you heard it, and that’s God. But if you’re not quite sure that he heard it, because there are three billion talking to him, begging - well, then you may not be quite sure that he heard you. But we don’t think of God that way - but you can’t deny that you hear your own line, you hear your own inner conversation, you hear your own inner speech. Well, if you know that one is God, well then you are sure he heard you. Now, you are told, in that fifth chapter, the fifteenth verse of the First Epistle of John: “if we know that he hears us in all that we ask of him, then we know that we have already obtained the request made of him.”1186 ¶18

Well, all right, there’s an interval between that imaginal act and its fulfillment, as there is between the creative act of a man and the birth of that child. Every little thing has an interval of time between the act and its fulfillment. A horse will take twelve months, a woman takes nine months, the little sheep will take five months, a chicken will take 21 days - there are intervals of time. So the Bible teaches, every vision has its own appointed hour: it ripens, it will flower; if it be late, then wait, so it is sure, and it will not be late - different intervals of time. So it may take me a longer time, in this case with this man, two months, to bring back 4,000 of the unemployed, to put his mind at rest, that he doesn’t have now to feel that he’s going to be fired - he can manage putting out the extra time, only a little trial, three years and two months, will complete his 30 years with Jones & Laughlin, and then, what’s a man of his age, six more years and then Social Security. So had it happened now, he wouldn’t have had it, he would be cut on Social Security and he would be let out without a good retirement fund.1186 ¶19

So she goes back, and she reminds him that it happened before - he couldn’t afford the roof on the house, and she said, “I will see the roof on the house, I remember when it needed a roof,” and so she still remembers, she told him, “I recall telling you, I remember, you needed it,” but soon after, something happened in his work, he got the money, and the roof is on. The wife wanted an organ, couldn’t afford the organ, so she said, “I remember when you didn’t have one,” she has the oven, and she took one after the other of all these things.1186 ¶20

He still, with all the evidence in the world, still working on some outside god, he thinks he’s doing the wrong thing, he feels that perchance this man is simply a devil incarnate, and he’s taken me from my real God - which means something external to himself, that he fashions out of his own mind and patches with his hand, because all these little nonsenses that we buy and stick up as holy objects - first of all, no artist really ever designed them, they said a face to speak of an artist, when you see these horrible, monstrous monstrosities that we buy and stick around the place and call them religious objects. So find who is the Living God, or is it our dead god you want? Find, read the 115th Psalm, about the kind of gods that men worship - the whole psalm is devoted to the false god that the whole vast world worships: eyes have they, but they see not, they are not, feet have they, but walk not, neither speak nor touch, not just a dead thing made by human hands - when the Living God is, was in man, has his own wonderful human imagination.1186 ¶21

So I tell you, all that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. All things exist in the human imagination, and everything you see as an objective reality was produced by imagining. Think of one thing, just think of one thing that would simply deny it - you can’t think of one thing. So you go to the moon - you first had to imagine it, had to imagine everything concerning the machine that took you to the moon; everything in the world first has to be imagined and then executed. All right. The intelligence to do it will come, but you take the blueprint first, and conceive it, and dwell in it as though it were true, and no power on earth can stop it from becoming so.1186 ¶22

Your visions will clarify themselves at night - it’s a different kind of night, your days are different, you see people differently. You can’t walk by a mere man and not see God incarnate - can’t do it, even if he has the most horrible background, and he said, simply, well, a murderer, and it’s proven that - you still see God incarnate. But he’s sound asleep, the poor thing doesn’t know it - the only way to get to it and show him that he really is God incarnate, and the one he thought he killed, he will restore to life - not the senses of man, but he is restored in a world just like this - and he goes just like this about his business, he continues his work, until he too awakens from this dream of life, which all will awaken eventually, but why not start now? Start now to tell men who they really are: God in man is all imagination, and God is that, and exists in us, and we in him.1186 ¶23

The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself; nothing but God in the universe, all God, and eventually you and I will awake, because God is one. Not - you and I are one, without loss of identity, that’s one of the strangest mysteries of the world, without loss of identity we are one - I know that from my own personal experience, we are one, and yet I’m individualized, and you were individualized, and retain forever and forever, so whatever, greater and greater individualization, and yet we are one, and I will bring that out to the best of my ability as we proceed with these series of lectures, you will hear it.1186 ¶24

But tonight, if you’re here for the first time and you want something practical, you apply what I’ve chosen: first, have an objective, you must have an objective. You can say, well, I don’t know what I want - well, all right, come back the next time, ask yourself what would I like of life, don’t be ashamed to name it, what would I like of life? Well then, try to get some objectives. Now, prayer, as far as I’m concerned, is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of the objective hope - that is the way to success. I appropriate it subjectively - how do I appropriate a state subjectively?1186 ¶25

Well, suppose, now, this very moment, I wanted an ordinary baseball, but there isn’t a baseball in the room - all right, but I want one, I would actually assume that I am holding a baseball in my hand until I could feel it. You think you can’t feel it? Well, now, try it, try to feel what it would be like if you held a baseball, now, to prove that you have held it, see what it feels like, the difference. Now, a tennis ball - silly difference, all right, a golf ball, see any difference, a piece of silk, you feel any difference? If you can distinguish between these many objects, though they are subjective, then there must exist, somewhere - if you could actually separate them in your mind’s eye and distinguish between these objects, I can begin to feel, begin to sense, begin to smell a rose. Well, a rose doesn’t smell, or doesn’t actually have the odor of another flower - I can detect the rose. Now, a lily, an Easter lily, I can detect that. Well, what does it do? Well, I’m going to get them - someone will see Neville and send him a flower, let’s say be the flower that I’m going to actually feel and touch and smell - it works that way.1186 ¶26

Money has an odor unlike any other in the world; it’s most fragrant to the miser, more than the most marvelous perfume in the world - he can tell it, you put a money bag to his face, I just like putting roses to mine, he loves it, he can smell money, conceal it - money has a distinct feel about it. Put a $20 bill in your hand and ask you to feel it, and then put another piece of paper in your hand, and you can tell the difference, there’s a difference, there’s an odor to it. All this is part of the inner man, that all things are possible to him.1186 ¶27

Try it before you condemn it, try it, unless you have the evidence to support my claim - well, it doesn’t matter what the world will tell you, if you’re laughed at, so what? So it’s lasted for everyone who had an idea that seemed a little bit off-center, always laughed at them - they laughed at the idea of going to the moon; well now it’s an accomplished fact, there’s still those who won’t believe it happened, you know, because they don’t want to believe that it ever happened. Those who said you couldn’t go down and actually live underwater, now we have a submarine, there’s still those who won’t believe it, you can present it with all the facts in the world and they won’t believe it. So I tell you, you try it first, and it proves itself in performance, it doesn’t really matter what the whole world will take - go about your father’s business, which is yourself, and then live a full and wonderful life in this world of Caesar, and the day will come you’ll actually depart this world - I mean this age.1186 ¶28

So those who are departing it now, unless they are awakened, they still find themselves in a world just like this. But those who have awakened, who’ve experienced the second birth, the birth from above, find themselves in an entirely different age, where they’re all imagination, and they are perfect, and wherever they go, everything is perfect, they don’t have to raise a finger to make anything perfect, because they are perfect, all things must conform to them, for their family - that’s heaven. So heaven is not an area, it’s not a realm, it’s a body. When that body is awakened within you, which is the wonderful human imagination, completely awake, then wherever you go, closed in that body that is completely awake, everything is perfect. If you found yourself in a forest of dead trees, they would all burst into foliage; in the desert, they would all bloom like the rose, because you are there. No blind man, deaf man, no handicapped man could stand in your presence, he will be instantly transformed into a perfect man, because you’re perfect - that’s heaven, it’s harmony. So it’s not a place where you go, to go to pearly streets and all that nonsense, no, it’s simply you, in a world that is perfect because you are perfect, and the day will come you will awaken that body - Christ in you.1186 ¶29

Now that body is asleep, but it’s under sleep; one day you will experience the resurrection, and you’ll know the mystery of the Resurrection, when you rise, and you rise within yourself, for the grave in which Christ, verily, the Lord, is buried, is your own skull - that’s where he’s buried. And in that tomb where he is buried, one day he will awake, and he will come out of that tomb, and few know who comes out the door, and you’ll know who you are. He is buried in every child in the world, this universal being, and yet one - billions of us, and yet only one Lord, and that one Lord in his fullness is buried in you individually, and when you awaken, you are you.1186 ¶30

So tonight, take a go, make it a lovely go, either for yourself or for another, for any time that you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you’re mediating God to that other. So bring a friend before your mind’s eye, represent him to yourself as the man or the woman that you would like them to be, and don’t tell them, ask for no praise, just assume that they’re talking to you and telling you the most marvelous news about themselves, and you congratulate them on that good news, and go your own way, believe in the reality of that imagined act. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen a day after, or a week later, or a month later - it has its own appointed hour, and it is ripening, and it’s going to flower, so don’t be concerned, leave it alone, and it will come to pass.1186 ¶31

So this is what I mean by feeling is the secret: I catch the mood, the feeling that will be mine if I were what I want to be - I don’t touch something, I can if I want to, but it’s the mood I’m speaking of. What would the feeling be like if it were - well, if it were this - and then you catch it, just as though it is true. You always go to the end, and the end is where you begin - we are always imagining ahead of our evidence, so go to the end, until the end, and then rest at that end, even though reason denies it.1186 ¶32

And tonight, you’ve turned your back upon the doubters, that is, your senses and what reason dictates - that’s the hell, or the devil, or Satan in the world, that’s the doubter - so you turn your back upon it, and then you walk as though things were as you want them to be, and living in that assumption, it slowly hardens into fact, even though at the moment of the assumption it was denied by reason. And assumptions are false, if persisted in will harden into fact. So you learn to assume, and learn to persist in the assumption, and it will come to pass.1186 ¶33

Now let us go into the silence, after which we’ll have questions. Well, I hope you caught a good mood, it’ll work.1186 ¶34

Now, are there any questions? Any questions? Yes, sir.1186 ¶35