The Word Of God

The Testament tells what happened in the soul of man. These experiences were heard and seen by none save by him in whom they occurred. Through these experiences that man gains a certainty that he is God. As it happens to a man, that man is then called the Word of God, as we are told in the name by which he is called — is the Word of God. We are told that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So he is called the Word of God, to show what intimate relation exists between the written oracles in which God declared his will to man, and that personal word which abides forever in us. For he saith his word, as he sayeth, and the word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. And the sender and the sent are one, for if in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God, then God and his word are one. So he sends his word, and his word abides in us. In time that word will erupt like a flower, like a tree at the season of the year, and then he will interpret those written articles which seemed so altogether concealed and blind to us. Man cannot quite break the seal and interpret that which is already written, but when the word unfolds in us, then the whole thing seems so simple, and we wonder why we hadn’t seen it before.1187 ¶1

Now the Bible is simply the biography of God. So you read it, and then you don’t understand it before the word erupts, but you read it, and you have a very good memory, you know exactly what you read, and one day, suddenly, unexpectedly, the time has come — the word which went forth from the mouth of God the Father and abides in you as your own wonderful human imagination begins to unfold, and unfolds, and the biography you thought belonged to another is all about you, because everything said in that story concerning someone else, you are now beginning to experience. As you experience it in detail, you must gain the certainty that you are God — for if this is the biography of God and it becomes your biography, because you can’t deny the experiences — you could no more deny the experiences that you have had, though they are mystical, than you could deny the experience of being here now. I know I am here, I know you are here, I know where I am at the moment — so this is a simple, simple occurrence. I could no more deny this as something that I’ve actually experienced at this moment in time, and I can now gain these experiences that are part of the story of God.1187 ¶2

Now we are told this is what you’re going to share on Christmas morning, what you will hear from now on, on Sunday morning: that I bring you good news, not a nice sad thing — I bring you good news, when all these who are bringing the good news are all dressed up like undertakers. Here, the story is the story of good news. I bring you good news: what is the good news? That this day is born in the City of David a Savior; this day is born in the City of David a Savior — that’s the good news.1187 ¶3

Then the sign that has happened is this: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Well, the word “Scripture” in the Bible is the Old Testament. There is no portion of the New that when it uses the word Scripture — as “Scripture said” and “Scripture cannot be broken” — is only referring to the Old Testament. And the Old Testament only acknowledges one Savior, as you read it in the 43rd and 45th chapters of Isaiah: “I am the Lord your God, your Savior, and besides me there is no Savior. The Lord is the only Savior. I, even I, am the Lord your God, your Savior, and besides me there is no Savior.” Therefore, if a Savior is born, there should be this definite article — just, “the Savior is born” — for there are not many saviors, only one Savior, the Lord our God. That Lord is one, and if he is the Savior and he is born this day in the City of David — and David is born: David took the stronghold of Jebus and renamed it the City of David. But he went up into Zion, to the water shaft — he went up in a way that no one could ever suspect, as we’re told in the Book of Samuel. He built from the outside in and up at the same time; the only way you could do that is by building a spiral. So he built a spiral, and that’s the true motion that you make from generation into regeneration — you go up like a screw, right up into Zion. This Zion is not on the north shoulder of Africa; Zion is right here in your own wonderful skull. That’s the City of David, that is the stronghold that he took, and in that area a child is born — a child only symbolizing the birth of the Savior, and the Savior is the Lord God Jehovah.1187 ¶4

Now I read the story of the Lord God Jehovah, and then suddenly, in me, that story begins to unfold. I cannot come to any other conclusion than the fact that I am he. So then I need not be told thereafter that, unless I believe I am he, I will continue in my sin, for I know I am. So if this is true of him, and only of him, and then it became true of me — well, then I must be the very one spoken of in Scripture as the Lord God Jehovah, even though I am now a simple little man that every day gets older and older, the body gets weaker and weaker, and eventually it’ll burn up, they’ll take it from me, or I will simply depart from it and they’ll discard it. But in spite of death, that in me that has the experience — that being in me, call it by any name, called by any name — it is the Lord God Jehovah. That is a story true of every being in the world; everyone is going to experience it, not some little being born of a woman who knew not a man — that has nothing to do with the story now.1187 ¶5

We get to question that in the Catholic Church — I saw here recently that this American priest begins to question seriously the story of the virgin birth. It’s something entirely different: you were born of mortal parents; you are destined to be reborn of immortal parents, and when you’re all alone, you yourself are the parents, for you are the one that is born, that is called God. For unto you is born this day, in the City of David, a Savior, and this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. But that’s the sign — that’s not the little child that was born; the child is solid and real when you hold that child in your arms — but it’s only a sign that you were born, you who became flesh and blood. For the word that went forth from the mouth of God became flesh and dwelt within us — that’s what we are told in the Book of John — and he abides within us forever. But now he comes to interpret the written oracle, and as he unfolds, he’ll speak up: I am the Living Word that makes real the written word, for it was a closed book until it unfolded within me. And everything said in this story — that will be repeated from pulpit to pulpit in the next month — I personally have experienced, and I am not unlike any child born of a woman. I was born in the same way you were born: that my father loved my mother, and in that passion I was conceived — they didn’t plan me, I just came into the world as you came into the world. [Passage garbled in the source recording and left unreconstructed — concerns how a child comes to be loved and raised.] And that child, like every child in the world, contains the Word of God, and the Word of God and God are one, the same. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” so his name shall be called the Word of God, and that word abides forever in us. The word became flesh and dwelt within us — “among us” is the translation, but it’s not — the word is within us, he dwells within us.1187 ¶6

And who is this one dwelling within me? My own wonderful human imagination — that is the Word of God, and that is God. And one day, to prove that it is, the events recorded in Scripture — these wonderful oracles — the Scripture unfolds within me, casting me in the first person, in the central role of the story.1187 ¶7

The individual must actually experience Christ for himself, to understand how altogether wonderful it is — his biography, because it’s God’s biography — and when the Word of God, which is God, unfolds in the individual, that is his story. And so it’s all written about him, as we are told in Scripture, in the fortieth Psalm: “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” He could not restrain himself from telling it to all the congregation. If I now hold it back, there is within me, like a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot — you can no longer restrain the impulse to tell it.1187 ¶8

Ninety-nine percent simply turned their back upon him, as you’re told in Scripture: his own rejected him, because they knew him — they knew his brothers, his sisters, his father, his mother, all mortal beings — and they were wrong about him, and he dares to claim this extravagant claim for himself. That’s blasphemy — he has taken the name of God in vain, because man dares to claim that he is what, in form, he worshipped as something on the outside. And it’s not on the outside at all, it’s all within us. And so it only tells the story: all the things that have happened in the individual soul, and these things were not seen and were not heard by anyone other than the one in whom they occurred. And because of the occurrence of these experiences, he gained the certainty: well, I am — because these things happen only to God. Well, if they happen only to God, and they happen to me, then I must be God.1187 ¶9

Now you can’t be restrained — go and tell the world, at least go tell it to anyone who will listen, and have them tell it to others, and although they have not yet had the experience, if they accept it and believe it, they’re qualified to tell it. Let them be going out to trade the word. But who is this word? He says — this one — he tells a story, a parable, of the sower who sowed the seed. But he tells us, as he interprets the parable, the seed was the Word of God. He is telling the Gospel story, because the evangelists were not reciting or recording something that happened to another, as you’re led to believe — they related their own experience, that’s what they’re telling — but they told it so that men would accept it, so they told it in the third person, and spoke of him when they should have spoken of Christ, or rather spoken of themselves, for they were only relating their own experience. So, in the very end, in the Book of Luke, when the whole thing is coming to a close, they told what had happened, but a fairer translation of that Greek phrase is: they related their own experience.1187 ¶10

A friend of mine said to me recently, when I was explaining to his brother this wonderful thing that happened within me, and he said, “Oh, that was all hallucination.” I said, “Well, first of all, you’re a mechanic, you deal with automobiles all day long — would you let me tamper with your engine?” [A passage recounting Neville’s anecdote about owning only one car — bought for his daughter, kept in his own name, expenses paid by him — is heavily garbled in the source and left close to the original wording; its exact detail (an infection, a summons) could not be confidently reconstructed.] I said, “Then you dare to tell me — you want to tamper with the book of God, and you know nothing about it, when it is already unfolded within me — and you’re going to tell me about the Word of God, and tell me it is hallucination, when you wouldn’t let me put one little screw into your engine, because you know it and I don’t. But you’re going to tell me, one who has been given to actually explain the Word of God through personal experience, that that is hallucination?” It didn’t persuade him at all — he still wants to be the author of his own car, and I can’t touch it, but he also wants to be the author of the Book of God, and he has never experienced one word of it. When I said to him, “Do you consider yourself a Christian?” he said, “No, I am nothing.” “But you’re going to tell me all about the Christian mystery?” Well, he’s not alone — I tell you, you can multiply him by numberless people in the world, they always have opinions on things that they know nothing about. But that’s true of all of us, really.1187 ¶11

However, the story that is being told, and will be told, and repeated over and over until Christmas comes and it closes the book for another year, is the eternal story. It is all about man, and it’s all in the Old Testament, so I’ll go back to the Old Testament, for only in the old — I have come to fulfill Scripture, he says; Scripture must be fulfilled in me, beginning with Moses, in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms — he interpreted them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning himself. So I go, I read Scripture: is God, in the Old Testament, a father? Yes, it states quite clearly, a father — the psalmist proclaimed him as father, and then the father acknowledged the son. And who was that son? He said unto him, “My son, today I have begotten thee.” Well, who was the one mentioned in the Old Testament? It is David, and David said, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord, who said unto me, Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,” in the 89th Psalm — that was our second stop, in the 89th Psalm. The Lord now speaks of his son, David, “and he shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” So here I find that he is a father, and he has a son, and the son’s name is David.1187 ¶12

But I never thought, for one moment, living in the 20th century — a man who was not yet so — in 1959 I was... I was born in 1905, so here I am fifty-four years old in the 20th century — it never occurred to me that I had any relationship to David. I read it as history, I was taught it as history, and suddenly the whole thing is unfolding within me, like a tree bearing fruit, and here is David, and I know instantly that I am his father, and he knows instantly that he is my son. Well, here is a story unfolding within me, and here we are separated in time by at least 3,000 years, if you take it as a chronological story based upon secular history — the difference of 3,000 years separating the two, and yet I am a father, therefore I am older than he. I have a father, and I know it more easily than I know that I am the father of my two earthly children, my son and my daughter — it’s the most intimate relationship, I want to be full of joy, so beautiful — when you look at him you can’t describe the beauty of it.1187 ¶13

Now, does it say anything about the child? Yes, in Isaiah, the seventh chapter of Isaiah and the ninth chapter of Isaiah: “And unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, and of his government and peace there shall be no end.” Here is a child that is born; in the seventh chapter of Isaiah we read of a woman that shall bring forth a child, and the child’s name is Emmanuel, which is God with us — that’s what the word means. So the child bears witness to the fact that God is with us.1187 ¶14

Well then, you know, the child is the sign that God is born — his word is born free, for his word cannot come back to him void, it must accomplish that which he purposed and prosper in the thing for which he sent it. Now the word is returning to the father, and the father — for lo, it is the story of God the Father. Now the whole is returning to himself: his diversified being is being gathered together, one by one, into that original whole, but augmented by reason of the experience of the adventure — God himself is within the adventure. God became as we are, by reason of the Word of God which is God abiding in us, so he became as we are, that we may be as he is — so, verily, God became man. That was the incarnation at Bethlehem: man becomes God, that’s the birth of God — not from any womb of a woman, but out of the great Temple from above, called the City of David, called Bethlehem. This is the Zion of Scripture, as we are told in the 87th Psalm, and it comes now to the story, and he said this one was born here, and that one was born there, all in Zion — for Zion is God’s chosen place, a dwelling place — and now he numbers all of them, this one born here, that one born there, all born within, like the cells of the brain, each becoming a cell, as God — one brain, infinite brain — takes all those brain cells, becoming one after the other, all being born, and they’re all gone — there’s nothing but God. So that’s the story of Christmas.1187 ¶15

But as long as man teaches it as you thought it was, then he’s not going to see it. On the other hand, it is the best way to tell it, because we are still children, and truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors. So you tell it in the form of a tale, that the mind can readily grasp it. If you told it as it really is, it is too abstract, and he can’t really fathom it, you can’t follow it. So you tell it so that the child mind could grasp it and digest it for a while, then comes the great shock, when it isn’t so at all — it is something far greater. But the destruction of that altar that he set up only makes room for a still greater altar; as you destroy it, you become something far greater and greater, for truth is an ever-expanding illumination.1187 ¶16

So God became as we are, with all the weaknesses, all the infirmities, all the limitations that you and I express in this world, and he took upon himself all the tears. Now you move forward towards the goal, and the goal is that God in us, called by the word, should unfold within us. So this is Christmas — this is the story that is the eternal story, told first in the Old Testament. But you’re told, in the Book of Daniel, seal the book until that day when he comes who is worthy to break the seal. Well, the only one worthy to break the seal is when it happens — so it happens in man, and that same presence that is God is in every man. So in man the seal breaks, and that man tells his own experience, that which took place in his own soul.1187 ¶17

And if you read Scripture carefully, take the oldest of the Gospels, Mark — when you read that first chapter, you cannot come to any conclusion other than the fact that no one but he on whom the dove descended witnessed it, yet it’s told as though another saw it — only the one on whom it descended. So read the first chapter when you go home, and you cannot come to any conclusion that he had a witness to that event — the heavens opened and it descended on him; he is self-fulfilling. If you take the story of the temptation — actually, if he is alone in the desert, how would I know what the so-called devil said to him? And his answer, all from the Old Testament — every answer he made to the devil was taken from Deuteronomy, one after the other, all these answers to doubt. Well, if I’m going to record what he said, he would have to have told me what he said, because he’s alone, himself, forty days and forty nights, he is in the desert alone, and now someone is recording what he said to the devil, when the devil appeared, quoting only the Book of Deuteronomy. Well, if I’m going to be the evangelist to record that, either he told me, or I’m making it up.1187 ¶18

So the one who has had the experience — and so the whole book is based upon the personal experience of the individual. All theologies and all ecclesiasticisms are secondary, gross, superimposed upon the mystical experience of the individual — everyone, I don’t care what journey — they’re superimposed, and then they’ll fight wars to protect that superimposition. But the one, the one who has had the experience, he doesn’t have to go beyond Scripture for confirmation.1187 ¶19

Now we come with other witness — we are told, if two different ones agree in testimony, it is conclusive. Well, you have the written word of God — that is the written oracle — and then you have your own experience of the written word: you are the Living Word, who now takes the written word and makes it alive. Now, two entirely different beings, as it were: there is a written word, seemingly predating you by a number of centuries, and you, the Living Word — and all that, though it seems you predated — is for here: David is mentioned in the written word, and the Living Word now unfolds within you, and you predate him, because you are his father. So who are you, but the one dictating to your servants, the prophets, what you’re going to come into the world and do — and you’re going to actually prove to yourself that you are a father. And the only way you could ever prove that you are a father is if the son you named in your written article calls you father — and then David calls you father. And here he is, a symbol of humanity: the whole a swirl with all the experiences of man pressed into one, and the whole, that concentrated time into which all the generations of man and their experiences are now compressed and fused, personified, comes out as a baby. So you’ve gone through the gamut, and you play the entire part — all that man could ever be, you’ve done it.1187 ¶20

Does God play all our parts? God only acts, and is in existing beings; or maybe he is the actor in man — your own wonderful human imagination, that is God, and he is the actor. Now you could act this night any part you want, and it will come to pass, but the great act is coming out, bringing forth in a living way — for the oracle may seem to be dead when written on paper, a man can’t seem to understand, but this intimate relationship between the Living Word and that written oracle, all of a sudden, shows itself in the one in whom the little word unfolds. So the word became flesh and dwelt not among us, but within us, and in this garment of flesh and blood it abides, and abides forever and forever, and one day it’s going to erupt.1187 ¶21

After the eruption, you are compelled to telling; then, at that moment in time, you’ll take off the garment, for no one can attain to bliss unless he is generated on earth. So here you are on earth — that is a glorious blessing, because only the seeds planted in earth can actually unfold and interpret the oracle, and this is the earth, this is the atom. So every child generated on earth becomes now the seed that is sown in the field — although I would say the soil on which, and in which, the seed of God, which is himself, is planted, and that seed is called the Word of God.1187 ¶22

Now death will not stop it, because things do not terminate at that point where my senses cease to register. If you drop the body now, it doesn’t matter, you’re in a world just as solidly real as this, and you will continue, and the word abides in you, and you’re just as solidly real as you are now. In time it is going to unfold within you, and all that I have told you, you know it’s going to be true, and you and I will meet in eternity, the brothers returned. But now we are God the Father, without loss of identity — we haven’t lost our identity. [A short passage here is badly garbled in the source and left largely as transcribed: it concerns the father giving himself, becoming us.]1187 ¶23

So he has told us in the parable of the son who went into the vineyard, and they killed him, thinking, by killing him, we will now get the vineyard. And then came the father, and came the Lord himself: what would he do to those servants who killed his son, his only son? Well, that is the wonderful story: that son is David, and David, you’re told in Scripture, died, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. And the father comes to resurrect his son, but the father resurrects first — he has to raise up himself — then he raises up his son, and his son comes a hundred and thirty-nine days after the father resurrects, awakens within the tomb, which is really the holy womb, and that is the skull of man, and he comes out, and all the imagery of Scripture surrounds him, and then, a hundred and thirty-nine days later, an explosion takes place within the immortal head, and here comes the son. So he keeps his promise — he is a faithful God, and he resurrects his son, and the son reveals him as the father — he had to find the son, or he would never know he was the father, for he has promised David not to leave him in the pit, not to leave him there.1187 ¶24

So he raises up David, and this is the truest story ever told, and the greatest story ever told — that no one need boast, because everyone enters the heaven, and no one will be better than another, and the last will be equal to the first. But let no one think, for one moment, because we preceded this one in the actual unfolding of the word within you, that you are better than another — I could not honestly feel wanting to be better than my father, my thirsty father, and my firstly mother — I would hardly relish that feeling, and I know they foresaw this, and they did not experience it. I know they are aware of what has happened within their son, called Neville, but I look forward to the day when they have the identical experience, and we are one — but certainly not because I preceded them in the experience, to be better than — that emotion I could not stomach. They were too loving, too altogether wonderful in my world, for me to want, at any moment, to be better than my parents. But we are moving towards the grandparents — who is God ever moved, we are started.1187 ¶25

So you read the story, and your father did have a son, and the son is David.1187 ¶26

Now in the New Testament they say Jesus, but Jesus means Jehovah — the same thing as Joshua — and both mean “Jehovah is salvation,” and we only have one Savior, which is the Lord our God, your Savior, and besides me there is no Savior. Therefore they call him Jesus, but it means Jehovah — it’s Jehovah that is born in man, because the word that unfolds in man, and there’s the fruit that it contains, and the truth is the fatherhood, the sun, the ascent like a fiery serpent, the restraint of the dove which seals the agreement — that this is it, or that comes last. Now, in the New Testament, it’s the first event recorded in the Book of Mark — but you’re told the first shall be last and the last shall be first, so that what you think is the first recorded is the least that you experience. The first that you do experience is the resurrection — that on a secular basis would be the last, for resurrection would follow — I mean crucifixion would be the very last you’d paint of a man. No — that is the very first: crucifixion is over, we are all crucified, that’s Calvary — but now, a death which seems to be the first, that is the last — that’s when man becomes God. So at Calvary God becomes man — that’s the incarnation; at Bethlehem man becomes God — and the whole theme unfolds in that manner, the first advanced at the last.1187 ¶27

Now I know it’s not the easiest thing to grasp, especially after being told over the years what we have been told — it only confuses the matter. One should never, for one moment, think that the old can be separated from the new — these two Testaments — you would have no New without the Old, and the Old would be incomplete without the New, for, as Disraeli said, the new is the fulfillment of the old — Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, says Benjamin Disraeli, and he never hid his background. His very name — you know the name Disraeli is “of Israel”; “Benjamin” is the last son of Jacob, Benjamin of Israel — that is the name Benjamin Disraeli. And so he was very proud of the fact that he was a Jew, and told the whole House of Commons, and they all knew, and even accepted him, just as you are, and he became the Prime Minister, the highest office in England, and he actually was Prime Minister when England was at the height of power in this world. He was the one that got the Suez Canal shares; he was the one that brought India into the crown of Victoria, and that was Benjamin Disraeli.1187 ¶28

But he never once denied he was a Jew of Jews, yet he saw that the New Testament, or rather Christianity, if understood, was only the fulfillment of Judaism, and he had also seen — as he said — man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of men, and he proved it in his own life. We are not the creatures of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of him — we create them, how? By our own wonderful human imagination. So he was a great statesman, and he could see — maybe he had experiences, and maybe it was not wise to tell it in the form that I tell it, because he saw it clearly. I doubt you can see it clearly without the experience — the experience gives meaning to the things that your intellect may suspect, but you can’t quite put your finger on it through the intellect — you’ve got to experience it, and then, when you experience it, the whole thing unfolds and you see it so clearly.1187 ¶29

So you and I are now very God. God walks the earth as you walk the earth, and whatever you do, whether it be nice or unlovely, it is still God, and he waits on you quite indifferently and quite swiftly when that something in you called the will is evil, as when it is good. So let others say, if they will — but so-called others will eventually come to the conclusion that I have told you tonight — when they say, as you’re told in the Psalm 14, and I think it’s also the 53rd Psalm, “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God” — anyone who will tell you, and brave as he is, that there is no God — well, he may be very wise in the eyes of man, but Scripture defines him as a fool: the fool says in his heart there is no God.1187 ¶30

So, taking that theme from the 53rd Psalm and the 14th Psalm, he calls the fool Babel, for Babel symbolizes the confusion of tongues and the misunderstanding of mind, because you can’t quite understand the terms of the other, and so, complete misunderstanding. So he says Babel mocks, saying there is no God — no sun of thought, that dove of human imagination, divine body, are all a delusion — but I know thee, O human imagination, O divine body — God the Son and the Lord as one being, God the Son and Lord, and he puts them together with the human imagination. They say it is all delusion, but I know thee, O human imagination, O divine body.1187 ¶31

Then he said, when you arise upon my weary eyes every morning — I seem to arise upon my weary eyes, when he builds that bridge of incident to bring me back from the deep being to the surface being — in the twinkle of an eye he creates a bridge of incident, across which I go to find myself on the surface, mind awake, in this world.1187 ¶32

And then the voice answered him; when he tells the voice, he said, “but now you suffer with me, but I behold thee not” — you cannot see imagination as you see an object, but you see only the imaginal activity in objects — imagination itself is not seen, you see objects in the world that it creates, but we are the reality that is named imagination — that is God.1187 ¶33

And then the voice answers, and the voice says, “Fear not, I am with you always, only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death thy brother who sleeps” — in all of you, being a symbol of the best man, that is asleep — humanity. Believe in me, who is Jehovah, who is the human imagination — and all of a sudden, one day, you’re going to awake, and, as you awake, you are the Lord God Jehovah, and the whole drama, because he’s the father, his son is precious, and his son, his humanity, personified as a single youth, and you are the father, individualized completely, and the father of a God-son, therefore God. So when these things happen in you, and it’s all the biography of God, then you must gain the certainty that you are God.1187 ¶34

Now this is the story of Christmas, but it will not be told in this light on Christmas morning — they will have all kinds of little things that just didn’t exist, but it’s for the child mind, and the child need not be a little infant — the child should be a man ninety years old.1187 ¶35

And do you know that the people who are the most bigoted are the ones who really do not know Scripture, though they read it all day? I have an aunt like that — she’s ninety, and she one day said to me that I would go to the devil because I believe what I believe, and I said to her, quite casually — well, I should not have said it anyway — but I think you know that.1187 ¶36