[...]is The Potter’s House. In the book of Isaiah you read, O Lord, thou art our father, and we are the clay, and thou art our potter, and all the works of thy hand. Here we see that the Lord, the father, and the potter are one.1223 ¶1

Now the word potter was defined in scripture as imagination. Here we are told it is to form a resolution, to determine — such as in the beginning, “let us make man in our image, after our likeness” — that is to form a resolution. Now we are told that that is the potter, and it is the father, and it is the Lord. Now in Jeremiah we are told, you went down to the potter’s house. First of all he said, “arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my word. So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel, and the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, but he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.”1223 ¶2

For the justice covered at the potter, who is our father, who is the Lord, is our own wonderful human imagination. Now he is working with clay, and we are told that we are the clay. So I stand for a moment and I wonder, what am I imagining concerning myself, for that is the clay. Imagining is God in action, it’s the potter in action, it is the Lord himself, the father in action. Is my concept of myself what I would like it to be, or is it spoiled? I don’t discard it, I simply rework it into another vessel, as it seemed good to me, the potter, to do.1223 ¶3

Am I living as I would like to live? Do I have an income equal to my need? Do I have an income equal to the things I’d like to do, or am I limiting myself based upon what I think that I could do? There is no limit placed upon the potter’s ability to reshape that image. So will I now actually take the challenge and reshape the vessel? For the vessel is made of clay, and we are the clay. Will I, this very moment, change my concept of myself, my concept for those that are in my world? I’ll see them as I would like to see them in my world.1223 ¶4

Will it work? Well now, let us take a look now at the definition of imagination as given to us by man. Scripture defines it as God — scripture defined it as God the father, the potter who fashions everything in the world. But now we use it so loosely in this world. We are told that the simple apprehension of corporeal objects is present, is sense — that is, sense-perceived. This is, thou sayest, perceived: I can see you, and that you should speak, now I hear you — that is sense-perceived, and you are present, therefore that is real, they’re saying. What is absent is imagination. In other words, it isn’t real, it isn’t sense-perceived.1223 ¶5

Now we’ll take one of the senses, we’ll take the sense of smell. Since smell is a chemical sense, a contact is necessary for perception — you have to actually have a chemical contact to smell in this world. Now I ask you to join with me. Maybe you do not like flowers as I do. Can you smell a rose, and it’s not present — there aren’t any roses here, or in your presence — but can you now imagine a rose and smell it? I can. It’s so distinct. Well, if the rose is not here, when I smell it, why is its fragrance in the air, when it depends upon a chemical contact? You cannot smell anything in this world without a chemical contact. I go into the kitchen, I smell gas, and it’s not lit, but I notice I smell gas — it’s a chemical contact. Then I notice that the wind, leaving the window open, blew out the little pilot light. I turn it on and nothing happens — therefore I know the pilot is gone, and I light it. But I could smell that — that was a chemical contact. If I could not detect it, I could just simply become asphyxiated, if I’d lost that olfactory nerve and could not reach that chemical contact. But now, here, there’s no rose, and I can actually smell a rose.1223 ¶6

No, you say, well, what does that mean? It means so much to me.1223 ¶7

You can smell money — it has an odor unlike anything in this world, entirely different. You can actually take it and smell it. A money bag is more fragrant to the miser than all the flowers of the world — it’s a pleasant odor for him. Not to me — I need money, I have to have money to pay all the normal expenses in this world, but it’s not to me a fragrant odor. But I use this principle towards getting money, towards meeting all the obligations of life, for I am obligated, as you are.1223 ¶8

So I go down to the potter’s house, but I can sit in the chair, I can stand at a bar, I can do it wherever I am — I am right there in the potter’s house, for I found the potter. The potter is my imagination, and the potter is the father, the Lord God Almighty, and I found him. So I don’t have to go any place outside of where I stand to be in the potter’s house. And now I will see what he’s doing — so I see what I’m doing, what am I imagining, for that’s what he’s working on. So I went down to the potter’s house, and I simply saw what he was doing. What am I imagining? Is it a good image that I am forming of myself and my friends and things that I love in this world, or am I critical? Am I simply making a mess of the talent?1223 ¶9

I find quite often I am not using it wisely. I tell you that the worship of God is to use his gifts — that is the only way you really worship God. He gave you a talent — well, the talent is himself. It comes through, naturally, the five senses. I may be denied four of them, as many are born minus one, two, three, or maybe four. Most would have the sense of touch, but some are born blind, or they go blind, some go deaf, some lost a sense of sound, I mean speech — all these things. But nevertheless I can use, in my imagination, all these talents. Physically they may be denied me, but I still have an open door from within, and I can use it from within. I need not actually have them all open on the outside — if I’m born restricted, I can still call upon them from within, as I do now, to smell the rose.1223 ¶10

A friend of mine — she’s gone from this world now — in New York City, many, many years ago, I told a story similar to this tonight, and sitting in my audience, she said, well, now I’m going to test this, and in the silence she embraced a huge bouquet of roses. She lived in the towers, the Waldorf Astoria. So when she went home that night, as she went down the hallway towards her room, she detected a strong odor of roses, and she stopped at one door, thinking it might be there — it was permeating the entire hallway. She kept on going, and it got stronger and stronger, and when she opened her door, there were three dozen long Beauties on her bureau. The window was open just a little bit, and it came, bringing the odor through into the hallway. There was no note on it, but here were these lovely roses. The next day she was informed how it happened. That night, the English-Speaking Union gave a party for the present Queen’s mother, who was Queen Elizabeth, but not queen in the true sense of the word — she was George’s wife, she was queen while he reigned. And they had these enormous flowers arranged for the occasion, and at the end of the banquet — a thousand of them sat at this dinner — they wondered what to do with the roses, and their head waiter said, well, Mrs. Niemeyer loves flowers, especially roses, send three dozen up to her room, you either throw them away or find some way to use them wisely. And so Mrs. Niemeyer was given three dozen of these Beauties, which she certainly did not expect. But she thought she would try it, and she embraced it, in her mind’s eye, and she could smell the roses, and then came three dozen Beauties into her room.1223 ¶11

I have known people who will take money in the mind’s eye and actually feel it, and it’s not present, and smell it, and count it off — and then it happens just like that. Man is not completely confined to the little garment and the five senses to which contact is made with the world — he has imagination. Imagination is God, that’s the potter, that is the Lord, that is our father, and he gave us himself. And the only way to truly worship God is to use his gifts, and he actually gave me himself, because I can say “I am,” and that’s his name. Now I discover he is my imagination.1223 ¶12

So Blake said, “I know of no other Christianity, I know of no other gospel, than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination.” And then he adds, “the apostles knew of no other gospel.”1223 ¶13

We are living in a world of imagination. If I say to the average person who believes in God, the whole vast world was created by God, we are living in a world of God, they would bow and admit to that. But let me say the world in which we live is the world of imagination, and they hold their hand up — wait a minute, this is real, what you imagine is unreal. And yet everything that we now call real was once only imagined. The clothes you wear had to be first imagined, the chairs in which you are seated, the building in which we are now housed — everything first had to be imagined before it was objectified and executed in this world. So what is now real to us, and seemingly an objective fact, was once only imagined. We had to imagine going to the moon before we did it. And everything here — involved in the potter’s hand — and that potter is your own wonderful human imagination.1223 ¶14

Everything, well, that we call natural has an imaginal cause and not a natural cause — and not for cause, only seems — it is a delusion of the perishing memory. That’s the one thing that suffers when God became man — he had to completely forget that he was God when he became man, and so memory faded completely, but the reality remained, for he is man’s own wonderful human imagination.1223 ¶15

Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exist in us and we in him. The Eternal Body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself. We speak of it in the New Testament as Jesus — that is the Divine body, the Lord Jesus, your own wonderful human imagination. He is not on the outside — he is within, your own wonderful human imagination.1223 ¶16

So if I should use the word God, the word Lord, the word Jesus, and in any sense whatsoever it causes you to think of some external existing presence, you have not found the true God, the true Lord, the true Jesus. If for one moment you hear the word, and out flies the mind towards some external object, either in time or space or both, you haven’t found the right Jesus, the right Lord.1223 ¶17

So you are told, “do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Then comes the challenge — “examine yourselves and see whether you are holding to the faith.” Well, now, the minute you hear the word Jesus and you think of something other than your own wonderful human imagination, you’ve failed the test — then you failed it, at that very moment, when you hear the word and something on the outside.1223 ¶18

I turned on the TV the other day, just out of curiosity — I was feeling around for the ball game, the football — and I stopped on one of these stations, and here is this man talking to undoubtedly enormous crowds, and he’s praying to the outside Lord Jesus. Huge ads in the paper, he’s calling on some being on the outside, and all this nonsense.1223 ¶19

There is no outside Lord Jesus. When he rises in you, he rises as you; when he awakes in your news, and when he awakes in you, he is the father, and you will know he is the father, for you are the father. And confirmation that comes before you, in the form of David — and David stands before you, and you know exactly who he is and who you are. There is your son, bearing witness to the fact that you are the Lord Jesus, that you are the father. This is the story of scripture.1223 ¶20

Now I ask you to use your imagination wisely and lovingly, on behalf first of yourself, and then everyone you contact in this world. I don’t care who he is, just don’t discard him — he can be refashioned. Read the story carefully, in the eighteenth chapter of Jeremiah. And the word Jeremiah means Jehovah will rise — he’s buried in man, he’s man’s imagination — and these are the first four verses: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words. So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel, and the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, but he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do.”1223 ¶21

He didn’t discard it. So — someone seems beyond repair? Don’t discard it. Test this power, this creative power — there is nothing more wonderful in this world, nothing more creative in man, than to believe a thing into existence. I can’t conceive of anything more wonderful than that, to believe a thing into existence.1223 ¶22

The late Robert Frost, the great poet, he said, “Our founding fathers did not believe in the future, they believed it in.” They didn’t think that time would bring about democracy, that time would bring about the country that you and I love and enjoy in this world — they believed it in. They had an idea, and it was not anything that Europe had — Europe did not conceive this thing, it died with ancient Greece. The most difficult form of government in the world we have here, because we have freedom, we have all the freedom in the world, and we indulge ourselves beyond wealth — well, we misused it, really. But here, our founding fathers did not believe in the future, they believed it in — and there’s nothing more creative in man than to believe something into existence.1223 ¶23

So do you know what you want? More? Then begin to believe it in, as you believe now that you can smell roses — believe it in. What would you see if it were true? What would you hear if it were true? Go to the end and dwell in the end as if it were true, and that’s what you’re doing when you do it that way — then actually believe in the power of the potter to make itself.1223 ¶24

All you and I are called upon here is to believe it, to believe in the power of the imaginal act.1223 ¶25

But to try to change circumstances before we change our imaginal activity is to struggle against the very nature of things — can’t do it — because the imaginal activity is producing things, and it will continue to produce the things that are related to that activity, unless I change the imaginal activity. I can change the things, for they only bear witness of my imaginal activity, and you do it regardless of your present circumstances. While you sleep, it is working; while you walk the street thinking of other things, it is working — you set it in motion. Believe in the imaginal act, believe it to be a fact, and in a way that no one knows, it will objectify itself in this world — it’ll become a reality.1223 ¶26

I am telling you from my own personal experience — we have just celebrated, our whole family, our fiftieth anniversary as a family in business. We started behind the eight ball, a way behind the eight ball, on borrowed money. But, as we are told in the hundred and thirty-third psalm, “behold, how blessed it is when brothers dwell in unity” — and I’m one of nine brothers and a sister, and we dwelt in unity. I left home at the age of seventeen to come to America, and returned only for contacts with the family, but it’s been now forty-nine years since I left my home. Those who left came only for educational purposes, and after they were educated they returned to Barbados, and the close-knit family of brothers just celebrated the fiftieth anniversary, and it really is the most fantastic, successful story.1223 ¶27

He’s a little tiny place, like the West Indies — I will not mention money, I mean the quantities of it, but when you have a business, and you double your stock, and then double your stock, and double your stock, and still pay on all the doubling of stock twenty percent at the end of the year to the stockholders, you are in business. We are satisfied here if we get six percent — any company here who is offering eight percent, you’ll find it gobbled up tomorrow morning — and it is all owned by our family, we have not gone public, and we pay our individual members — and I happen to be one of them, drawing the same amount as those who are actually there, but I am one with them, and they know it. I am one in spirit — that’s the only reality — so I get my twenty percent too, of the stock my father gave me, and he gave me everything that he gave them.1223 ¶28

We all shared equally when he departed this world — in fact he gave it in 1939 and lived until 1959. He was so confident that if he ever needed it, we would give it all back to him, but he gave it because, by law in the Indies, a man must outlive his gift by five years to avoid taxation. And so, in ’39, when the war broke in Europe, not knowing the outcome, he gave to his nine sons and his one daughter equal shares of everything he had, and then outlived it by twenty years. But he knew he would never want, because every one of us would put the whole thing right back into his hand if he wanted — but he didn’t need it, he didn’t want it — and it has been split, and split, and split, and still paying its twenty percent, because we think alike.1223 ¶29

And my brother Victor — at the age, but he was only nineteen — when he had this vision that imagining creates reality, and he saw a building on Main Street, and the building actually had over its marquee “F. N. Roach and Company.” Our name is Goddard, and my father’s initials are J.N. — Joseph Nathaniel Goddard — and he saw “J.N. Goddard and Sons,” and he never moved, on the morning when he went to work, until he re-read that sign and made it read “J.N. Goddard and Sons.” And on his way back home at night, “J.N. Goddard and Son.”1223 ¶30

And two years later that building was for sale, and a stranger — he had no money — a stranger came in, the day of the sale, and asked him if he wanted to bid for it. “But, I have no money and no collateral,” he said. “I will bid for it, I’ll get my lawyer to bid for it — if they know I am bidding for it, it’ll push it up, but I will have my lawyer, and he represents many people, so they will not know who is bidding for it.” And that day we owned the building. We had no collateral, trading back his money in ten years at six percent, and then, turned around, eight years ago, nine years ago, and sold that piece of property, which we bought — then, back in 1921, bought it for fifty thousand dollars — and sold it to the Bank of Nova Scotia nine years ago for eight hundred and forty thousand dollars, and there is no capital gain in Barbados.1223 ¶31

So that’s what he did. That’s how he thinks — he never waits for one moment, he knows what he wants — so he has the vessel in his hand, the hand is his own mind, and here he simply works on it, does exactly what he wants. And so he doesn’t care about rumors — what rumor doesn’t interest him — but so-and-so is doing it doesn’t interest him, he knows exactly what he wants and he goes blindly on.1223 ¶32

I’ll give you one little story. He could sense that war was coming — in the second world war, he sensed it coming. We’re a little island, and we needed all the help we could get, because only ships were coming in, and no planes flying in those days, there was no commercial flights, only ships, and the Germans, he knew, would do exactly what they did on a bigger scale, in the second attempt to conquer, and that is sinking all the ships that they could find. So what would we do for merchandise?1223 ¶33

So he went out and he borrowed enormous sums of money from the bank, until it was overflowing all of our warehouses — he rented warehouses and filled it.1223 ¶34

But he brought it in, not for human consumption — on the surface, he brought it in as merchandise for ships, because if you do not understand the law of the sea, you can bring in all kinds of things and put it in storage, and when ships need those supplies you simply empty your storehouses, and you pay no duty on it — it is duty-free merchandise, if it goes from the warehouse to the ship. If you bring it in for local consumption, then you pay the usual thirty or thirty-three percent on merchandise of that nature. But he knew the island needed it — if ships would not be coming, and they would need it.1223 ¶35

So after the war broke, and he had the merchandise there, and no ships are coming in, and there have been some, and he was filled to overflowing — well, you can carry the debt almost — stocked far in excess of a million dollars in stock, and paying the bank maybe seven or eight percent, unless you move the merchandise.1223 ¶36

So he went to the governor and asked the governor for permission to sell the merchandise to the local people, because they needed it badly. And he said, now I must first of all call a conference — so he called all the great leaders in business and said that Victor wants to unload the merchandise to you fellas, and they said, no, you’ve got him exactly where we want him — he brought it in to be sold only to ships, and he will sell it only to ships and to no one else, we’ve got it exactly where we want him — so you’ll be paying, honestly, maybe two million dollars, will be paying eight percent a year on merchandise that you can’t move. So he reminded the governor that his salary was paid by the local merchants, and that he was one of the biggest payers of taxes in the island — that is the family of the Goddards. And then he got the little light, to be reminded of these normal things.1223 ¶37

So he said, “Governor, you’re speaking to the government.” He said, “I know I am.” And then he said to the governor, “Have I had your last word?” He said, “Yes.” “Governor, good day.”1223 ¶38

And so my brother went out, and he called in his lawyers. He said, give me the legal — the legal definition of a ship — what is a ship, and I want the legal definition of it. So the lawyers say, brother, a ship is that which is seaworthy, that can take off the sea — and what you want is, can it take off to an island a hundred miles away? Well, if the captain has courage, it could go — it’s a ship, it’s seaworthy, and they can carry merchandise. So that’s the legal definition of a ship. That’s all I want to know, said my brother.1223 ¶39

So he took an ad, a huge big ad, the following day, and he itemized all the merchandise: “To anyone who has a thing that floats, and he is confident he can make an island, can come and buy this merchandise tax-free. Bring it only in cash, no checks, bring your cash.”1223 ¶40

We emptied all our houses in twenty-four hours. They came with their little boats — they couldn’t go a hundred — well, they couldn’t go three hundred yards to sea — but the legal name was, can it go, have you the courage to make Saint Lucia, St. Vincent, Trinidad — if you have the courage, you have a ship, come, you can buy it. They simply bought the merchandise, went out to sea, went back into the island, and sold it to the merchants, and the government was robbed of their thirty-three percent in taxes, and they all made all these little profits — they brought their cash out of their shoes, out of their trunks, out of all kinds of things.1223 ¶41

And he unloaded everything he had in twenty-four hours, and the merchants went wild — they called the governor, the government tried to get my brother Victor. He said to his secretaries, “I am busy, and you cannot contact me. I am not to be contacted, no matter where I am, you do not know where I am.” So the governor could not find the one who could give any explanation, while they unloaded all these things based upon that.1223 ¶42

So from that day on, they never tried to do anything with my brother Victor.1223 ¶43

He uses only the potter’s mind — he knows who the potter is, he knows who the Lord is, he knows who God the father is, and he knows he’s his own wonderful human imagination — that’s God.1223 ¶44

There is no other God — God actually became what we are, that we may be as he is. So God is your own wonderful human imagination. Let no one rob you of that and give you a false god — they’re always trying to give you a false god. And so, when you see anyone praying to something on the outside, he has a false god. When he has to go to a certain church to pray, he has a false place — that’s not the temple, you are the temple of the living God, and the spirit of God dwells in you, and that spirit is your own wonderful human imagination.1223 ¶45

Now use it wisely, and to use it wisely you use it lovingly. Anytime you use your imagination lovingly, on behalf of another, you’re actually meeting God at that altar. Always use it lovingly — can’t go wrong, and things will simply flow and flow in your direction, all for the good.1223 ¶46

So, while I sleep here, thousands of miles away, my brothers, living in unity, are expanding my holdings. And so, behold what a blessed thing it is when brothers dwell in unity — that’s the one thing that my father instilled in all of us.1223 ¶47

He had no money, and so, we were nine boys, he gave us a football — we played soccer in Barbados — and so he couldn’t afford to give us each a Christmas present, he gave us something we could share together — a cricket set, two bats and the wicket, and a ball, or a football, a soccer ball — and so it was always ours, not mine.1223 ¶48

And he could not bear anyone to say, he is wearing my tie — my father would remind you, it’s not your tie or his tie, it’s all mine, I bought it all, it’s all mine. So in our home you always used to say, “the first one dressed is the best dressed” — because — take out — the first one — because you could never complain to your father that he’s wearing your tie — no, it was never your tie or his tie, it was always our tie.1223 ¶49

And so that was the way we were raised — so we were raised that way in unity, and that unity still prevails today.1223 ¶50

So if you have a family, try to instill that in them — to be unified. In that hundred and thirty-third psalm, it begins that way — behold, what pleasant a thing it is when brothers dwell in unity.1223 ¶51

So here scripture teaches who the Lord really is, but man doesn’t read carefully. “O father, thou art — O Lord, thou art our father, and we are the clay, and thou art our potter, and all the works of thy hand.” And now, “rise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I let you hear my words” — and then we see exactly how it’s done. He didn’t say, because he was the Lord, that he wouldn’t have a vessel that was spoiled — but your concept of a man may not be perfect, but that being conceiving is the Lord. So your concept of yourself is not the most perfect concept that it could be, but that being conceiving, which is yourself, is the Lord, that is God, that is the father.1223 ¶52

And if your concept of yourself is not what you would like it to be, don’t discard it — change it. Actually change it, and actually feel yourself to be — to be — to be. What would it be like if it were true — just what would it be like?1223 ¶53

I speak here so often about states of consciousness. Do you know what a state of consciousness is? It’s a mood, just a mood — what, with the feeling, would the mood be like if it were true? If I were the man that I would like to be, what would the feeling be like? I lived it through — how would I see the world, and how would the world see me? Well, that’s a mood, that’s a state — you enter that state and abide in it, dwell in it, and live in it.1223 ¶54

It may not come tonight or tomorrow morning, but if you remain faithful to that state, to that mood, it will actually externalize itself in your world, and you will move from wherever you are — if you don’t like what you are — to where you want to be.1223 ¶55

It works that way, because you know who the potter is, and you know where the house is, and wherever you are in this world, that is the potter’s house, for you are the temple of the living God, and the living God is the potter, and the potter is your own wonderful human imagination — so now you know who he is.1223 ¶56

So let no one lead you astray to a false god, to some other being — it doesn’t really exist. So when you hear the word God, the word Jesus, which is a marvelous word, don’t let your mind jump outside to something other than your own wonderful human imagination.1223 ¶57

And see what you are doing to Jesus by imagining — or, simply, for one moment, stop, to observe what you are imagining.1223 ¶58

You say, you can’t see Jesus — no one has ever seen him, there’s no physical description of him in scripture. Why? We do not observe imagination as we do objects in space — we are the reality which is called imagination, so you can’t observe it, you observe the fruits of its activities. You see what is happening in your world, and when you see what is happening in your world, then you observe the fruit of the imaginal activity — but the activity itself you don’t.1223 ¶59

So — God the father, who is the Lord, who is the father, is like pure imagining in myself; you actually — it dwells and works in the very depths of my own being, underlying all of my faculties, including perception, but he streams into my surface life, least disguised, in the form of productive fancy.1223 ¶60

I catch him in the act, when I am daydreaming — I sit there, and I think of a friend, and I wonder what is he or she doing, and then I catch him in the act — that’s how you catch him.1223 ¶61

But you cannot see him, and you will never see him, and know him — really know him — until his son reveals him to you. And when his son stands before you — and his son is David — and when David stands before you, and there is no uncertainty as to the relationship, then you know who you are, and it’s all your own wonderful human imagination.1223 ¶62

Now I hope you know tonight who the potter is, and where his house is, and what the vessel is, and what the clay is, and I hope you’ll take it seriously, and try to become the perfect potter, who will not discard vessels that are spoiled, but rework them into the more perfect image, as it seemed good to the father to do. Now let us go into the silence.1223 ¶63

Christianity has to be continually redeemed from secular history, for Jesus Christ is the human imagination. As Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed upon us by God.1194 ¶1

Now tonight we will show you one of these gifts. If you really understand who Jesus Christ is, I tell you he is your own wonderful human imagination. Death is Christ.1194 ¶2

It comes as a shock when you first hear it if you are raised in the tradition, sir, as the speaker was. I was raised in a Christian home, and naturally, like the Hundreds of millions of Christians, we were taught it as secular history. A little boy who was born, a woman who knew not a man. And that his father was God. He was the son of God. And that was the story as I was taught it.1194 ¶3

But I was searching and seeking from the time I think I can remember. I believed the story as Mother taught it to him. I did believe it. And I can’t tell anyone the shock that was mine. And sometimes maybe I wondered if it would not have been better to return back like Israel in the desert and go back into slavery. But I couldn’t any more than they could. They had to keep moving towards the promised land. For when you are disillusioned, having been taught the story as we all have been taught it, to discover that he is not something in history. He is nearer than your reason.1194 ¶4

In fact, he can’t even be there. He is your very self. He is your own wonderful human imagination. It comes as quite a shock.1194 ¶5

Well, I can tell it best by telling you a story.1194 ¶6

The year was 1933. Roosevelt was elected. I had been in this country for 11 years. I never really wanted to go back to Barbados. My parents came up in that year, and they pleaded with me to come to Barbados and join the family, become a member of the family. And I declined. I said no. I saw them off at the boat, and strangely enough, as they sailed, and they were on the deck, and I waved goodbye to them, a peculiar feeling came over me. And I had a desire that I never had in 11 years, to go to Barbados. I had just said goodbye to them. And said no to their request. They would have paid all expenses and brought me back, and everything would have been perfect.1194 ¶7

Then from the boat, I went to my old friend Abdullah. He was born, so I am told, in Ethiopia. He was a black man, raised in the Jewish faith, but really understood Christianity as few men that I ever met understood it. He understood the law, not the promise. He understood the law.1194 ¶8

So I went to him and I told him the feeling that came over me, that I wanted to go to Barbados. I just waved at my parents and a peculiar feeling possessed me. And he said to me, “You are in Barbados.”1194 ¶9

Well, that did not make sense to me. I’m standing in this place on 72nd Street or Central Park West. That’s where he lived. He lived at 30 West 72nd Street. And there I am in this place. And he’s telling me that I am in Barbados. He didn’t explain what he meant.1194 ¶10

As the days went by, I said to him, “Ab, I am no nearer to Barbados than I was when I spoke to you.” And he said to me, “If you are in Barbados, you cannot discuss the means of getting to Barbados. You must actually live in Barbados, in your imagination, as though you were there, just as this, and view the world from Barbados. If you sleep in Barbados and view the world from Barbados, the means will occur and you will go to Barbados. But as far as I am concerned, you are already in Barbados because you desired it very intensely. All you had to do was simply to enter it. And you enter it now in New York City, even though that’s 2,000 miles across water, and you don’t want to walk across water. But you enter Barbados and view the world from it. If you see the world from Barbados, then you have to be in Barbados.”1194 ¶11

He did not explain to me then, but I learned later that, man being all imagination, man is wherever he is in imagination. And imagination is the God in man. That is the eternal body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all things are possible to him. And by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. That what is now proven was once only imagined. These things I did not know then. He simply talked in the overall picture.1194 ¶12

But I did my best, and I stepped mentally in Barbados, in my mother’s home. I looked at the world and saw it from Barbados. I saw New York City 2,000 miles to the north of it, the northwest. For we are on a certain latitude, 13 north. New York is 42 north. We are the 59th longitude. New York is the 74th. So I saw it north. As I could imagine it.1194 ¶13

I heard the tropical noises. We call this land tropical. It really isn’t tropical in the true sense of the word. When you go into the tropics, it’s something entirely different. I was born in the tropics, almost on the equator. It’s an entirely different odor. Sun starts to go like this. You look at the sun, and the sun disappears suddenly. A ball of red light becomes green. You’re looking at the sun, and suddenly, in a matter of a split second, you’re seeing a green sun. You’re seeing the complement of red. So we have no twilight in Barbados. The sun goes down rapidly from a red ball to a green ball, and you’re seeing a green ball. So the whole atmosphere differs.1194 ¶14

Well, I put myself into that and felt that my mother and father were in their room. And that my brothers, those who were not yet married, were in the house of a huge, big, old home of ours. And there I slept.1194 ¶15

This was now late October. When it came to the end of November, I said to Ed, I said, “Ed, I am no nearer Barbados.” He said, “You are in Barbados.” Then he turned his back on me, walked towards his bedroom, and slammed the door, which was not an invitation to follow him.1194 ¶16

If you understood that, you were teaching me a lesson, the lesson of faith. If I am actually sleeping in Barbados, no power in the world could interfere with my journey to Barbados.1194 ¶17

This is now late November. The last ship out of New York City sailing for Barbados was the 6th of December. I wanted to get there by Christmas, and so I could not raise the question anymore. But on the morning of the 4th or the 3rd of December, I got a letter from my brother Victor. I did not ask him or any member of my family to bring me to Barbados.1194 ¶18

He wrote a letter, and he justified the content in this manner. He said, “We are, you know, a large family, nine brothers and a sister. We have never been united around our Christmas table at Christmas, since we were a family.”1194 ¶19

For there was an interval between my sister Daphne and the last two boys of eight years. By that time, my oldest brother had left for Demerara in British Vienna. And by then, when he came back, my brother Lawrence went off to McGill to study medicine. And we were always moving around.1194 ¶20

But this time, everyone was present but yours truly. And he said, “I’m imposing a small little draft, $50, but in 1933, when there were 17 and a half million unemployed, and we didn’t have 204 million citizens—we only had 120-odd million—it was an enormous thing. If you’re not old enough to know it, may I tell you it was really a horror.”1194 ¶21

For I was numbered among the unemployed. And so he knew that I could come if the terms were there, that I had my passage paid. So he imposed a $50 draft to buy a suit. Well, you could buy a suit in those days for twelve dollars. Ten dollars, you could buy her shoes mccann shoes for three dollars. And so I went down to the team ship company because in the letter he said, “I’ve notified the company to issue a ticket, and then the little fifty dollars—you buy what you need for the trip, and then sign the chips, and when i the ship comes in, I’ll meet the ship and pay all the things that you have incurred, all the debt.”1194 ¶22

So I went down to the ship. They say to me, “I’m sorry, Mr. Goddard, but we do not have a first-class passage for you. We can accommodate you third class. You have the first-class accommodation for meals, and you can have all the other areas of the first class. But for sleeping, you have to go to the third class.”1194 ¶23

I said, “Sir, if you’re all right with me, I’ll take it.” I went back to Abdullah, and I told him. You know what he did? When I said, “I am going third class to Barbados, but I have the accommodation with the first for the daylight hours,” he said, “Who told you you’re going third class? You are already in Barbados, and you went first class.” Again, he closed the door on me.1194 ¶24

I went down to the ship the morning it sailed on the 6th of December, and the ticket agent said to me, “Mr. Goddard, I have good news for you. We have a cancellation. And now you can go first class, but you’ll share it with two others. There are three in the cabin.” They’re pretty all right with me. And so I went down first class.1194 ¶25

Abdullah said to me, “You know, Neville, when you return from Barbados, you will have died.” Never explain a statement of that nature. “You will have died.” I’m coming back from Barbados, but I will have died. He spoke with the cryptic man.1194 ¶26

Well, I did. I went down to Barbados. I was a strict vegetarian. I had not eaten one piece of meat or fish or fowl in seven years. No smoking, no alcohol, no sex. This illusion in my first marriage and the whole thing was simply I became a celibate.1194 ¶27

I came back from Barbados and in Barbados I was the same being that I was when I arrived to the annoyance of my family for they made all their money in grocery, selling meat, fish, alcohol, everything. And I am enjoying a trip based upon their effort, and here I am not taking what they’re offering.1194 ¶28

On my way north, I did everything I had not done in seven years. He was right. I died. That state of consciousness died. That’s what died.1194 ¶29

Never is the immortal being, that is, the inner man, is immortal. I was locked in a state, state I departed from, so as far as I am concerned, I died to that state.1194 ¶30

You see, life is nothing more than a hunger. This whole vast world is a hunger, and there are a number of states of consciousness.1194 ¶31

We are applying tonight — very practical, and yet profoundly spiritual — but the emphasis tonight is on the practical side of this wonderful, wonderful law of ours. I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit he takes away; every branch of mine that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. These are the words put into the mouth of the character called Jesus Christ. In the same gospel, the Gospel of John, he makes the statement, “I and my Father are one.” So if the Father does the pruning, it’s self-pruning, for he is the human imagination.1189 ¶1

I can’t tell anyone the shock that comes to man when he who was taught to believe in an external Jesus Christ, being an external Father, discovers that his own wonderful human imagination is Jesus Christ, and that Jesus Christ and his Father are one. When you find Jesus Christ, may I tell you, you will find him a wild, wild tree. As the boy said, “Behold this vine — I found it a wild tree, whose want of strength had fallen into irregular twigs, but I pruned the plant, and it grew temperate, in an expense of uselessness, and knotted, as you see, into these clean, full clusters, to repay the hand that wisely wounded it.” When you find that your own wonderful human imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ, and you discover what you’ve been doing with the Lord Jesus Christ all through your life, you stand — you are shocked beyond measure. I can’t tell anyone the shock, until they themselves experience it.1189 ¶2

Have I been doing this to him? Yes. Here he waits, only like a slave, and he waits on me as indifferently and as swiftly when the will in me is evil as when it is good, and he does it all for purposes of his own. He’s actually lifting me to the consciousness of himself. For this Lord Jesus Christ, the only Lord Jesus Christ, is crucified on man and is buried in man. He is not a man; he is the man, the universal man, buried in humanity. Humanity is God incarnate. Then he rises in the individual man, and the man in whom he rises becomes the man, the universal man; for in the end there is Jesus, Amen.1189 ¶3

Now, because my own wonderful human imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ, and by him all things were made, and without him was not one thing made that was made, I now have to take myself in hand. I, upon the vine — I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser, and I and my Father are one. Why start now? The pruning process — it is not that I want something big in life that I operate this law. Every second of time I do it. It is not once a week, on Sunday, when I go to church; not once a day, when I retire at night. I am constantly observing what I am imagining. For all the things that I’m imagining, I would have come to pass — they’re not receding into the past, they are advancing into the future to confront them.1189 ¶4

I may not recognize my harvest when I see it, but nothing comes into my world but what was first imagined. Everything in my world — the little insignificant thing, reading the paper, and you react; you meet a friend, and you react — all these little things are imaginal acts, and they’re coming into our world.1189 ¶5

Now let me share with you a story someone told me this week — she’s here tonight. He said, “We got a call last Sunday, my mother and I, from my brother in Toronto.” He’s a young man, just nineteen, and he went off to Toronto to avoid the draft. And she said, “I know I didn’t do it, I told him that was your decision.” We talked for about twenty minutes over the phone, my mother and I. After we hung up, my mother said, “I did it. I know the very second I did that, for I said to myself, your brother will do this because it’s exactly what his father would have done — but the father isn’t here anymore, and Paul has departed this world.” Do you see? She felt it, and she knew it, and she dropped it — there you go. But in her letter to me, he reconsidered. He only externalized my mother’s imaginal act — he did it. Then he reconsidered and returned, and tonight he goes into the army.1189 ¶6

He had to do exactly what was done, because we are one. All things, by a law divine, in one another’s being lingered, said the poet Yeats, having seen these things happen in his life: “Did — I will never be certain — that it was not some woman treading in the wine-press that started that subtle change in men’s minds, or that it was not some shepherd boy lighting up his eyes for a moment before it brought upon its way — who is treading in the wine-press?” But the mother discovered she did it. She recalled the very moment she did it, but then she dropped it. Now, there is your secret — she let it go.1189 ¶7

A seed — must be that girl, I can hold it in my hands — a seed must fall into the ground and die before it is made alive. You want something big in this world, you’re holding on to it when you haven’t dropped it. It’s the little things that you take care about, all the little insignificant things, so you feel them intensely and you drop them, because the other things are so big and so important — the other things you’re holding on to, you haven’t dropped them at all.1189 ¶8

You haven’t dropped all the little things, your little annoyances in life. So you read the morning’s paper, and someone you do not know, and you react. Then you go on to another scene, and another scene, and some are pleasant, some are horrible, but you are reacting. But the day comes, and what you consider more important — so you take the big things, the important things of the day, but you don’t let them go. You want to be happily married, you want more money, you want a home of your own, you want it completely free of all debts — but you hold on to them, you don’t let them go as you do the little things. And the little things, because you drop them like seeds into the ground, they’re popping up all day long in front of you, but you don’t recognize your own harvest.1189 ¶9

May I tell you a story? When I was a boy, in the life in the little island of Barbados, we were a very large family — nine boys and a girl, my father, my mother, and my grandmother on my mother’s side. And we had the usual things you have in the islands — it’s a tropical island — we had ducks, we had chickens, we had sheep and goats and cows for the milk, because there was no dairy. When I was a boy you either had a cow or you had nothing, or you had a goat or you had none, unless a neighbor had more than they could use, and then they gave it to you. But we got a few cows, and we had the usual things that come from that.1189 ¶10

When my mother decided that, say, two weeks from today, we were going to have ducks for dinner, she’d tell one of the boys — any one of them — “you will take a few ducks and put them away.” But I knew exactly what she meant. You would take three ducks for our sizeable family, maybe four, because they are not so much on top. But you’ll take the ducks and you put them into a pen by themselves, away from the other ducks, because the normal run of them fed on fish — fish was plentiful and cheap. In fact, when I was a boy, you bought fish for a penny. There was no refrigeration, so the boats came in late, around sundown; what they didn’t sell on the beach, they brought back. We had no refrigeration, so you could take a bucket and buy all the fish you wanted for a penny, or they’d use it the next day for bait. So we fed the ducks the fish and the entrails of fish, anything off the fish — well, that’s right, good and bad, but they tasted just like fish. They ate all fish, and they became fish.1189 ¶11

Mother said, “we want ducks,” all right, so you took four ducks and you put them away, and then for the next two weeks, or in ten days, they were completely changed — the odor of that flesh — if you were consistent in the change of feed. And you put them on sour milk, corn, wheat, anything you had, but not fish. You couldn’t just give them fish during the day and, because fish was cheap, give them a little fish at night — you couldn’t mix up the diet.1189 ¶12

So for the next two weeks you gave them that changed diet. May I tell you, if you didn’t, what happened? We couldn’t have ducks for dinner. If I made the mistake — my mother said to me, “I want ducks in two weeks,” and I didn’t obey her order. When I finally discovered my mistake and did it, say, a week later — but a week was not enough. I didn’t want to confess my mistake, but the oven contested it, and so the heads were chopped off, and the ducks were all practically ready, and then, all of a sudden, all over the neighborhood, the callers are having fish for Sunday, because you couldn’t eat it. The thing — it was a duck, it looked like a duck, it is a duck, but it tasted like fish, for its fate upon fish for the two weeks — or rather, at least one week. It took ten days to convert the flesh from the fish they were normally fed, because it was cheap, into the wheat or the corn or the milk.1189 ¶13

That was a lesson I learned. If I am going to be the vine of eternity, and I am the eternal vine, I can only grow what I feed myself mentally. What am I feeding myself morning, noon, and night? I cannot change it during the day and say, “a little fish because it’s cheap, what’s going to happen here, this is nothing,” and all of a sudden I read some stupid little thing and I react — that’s my fish, and I want a bird that really is milk-fed. I have got to actually put myself on a diet, a mental diet, and stick to it, and then I will bear the fruit of that changed diet. It’s entirely up to us.1189 ¶14

All these little things happen in our life to teach us a lesson. Who would have thought, when I was a boy, my mother said to me, “you’ll have ducks in two weeks,” and you put the ducks away — I would have learned the most fantastic lesson. I didn’t learn it then; many a time I made the mistake, and so we had to settle for something else we had in the house. But no matter what it was, if it couldn’t be ducks, you couldn’t eat it — you looked at it, and there’s nothing pleasing in that: to look at a duck and eat fish. And I love fish, but let it look like a fish, don’t let it look like a duck and taste like fish.1189 ¶15

Well, that is man’s being. I am the vine of eternity, and you say within yourself, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit, he takes away; every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes it, that it may bear more.” Now, if I am that vine, and my imagination is the eternal vine of the world, then I should do something about it — morning, noon, and night, every moment of time, even in my dream, I prune it. Even in the dream you get to the point where you start pruning, and you prune and prune — “this is not bearing properly,” or, “this is dead wood,” and you take it away, I want no part of it. But you don’t wait until the end of the week, or the end of the month, when something is pressing, and say, “now I’m going to do it” — it doesn’t work that way. You do it morning, noon, and night — that’s what I’m talking about.1189 ¶16

All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. All things exist in the human imagination, for the human imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ and God are one — I and my Father are one. So God is Jesus, and Jesus is your own wonderful human imagination. He is actually buried in you, and when he rises in you, which he will one day, you are the man — not a man, you are the universal man. But in the end there is Jesus, Amen.1189 ¶17

When the Transfiguration takes place, they disappear, leaving Jesus, Amen. Where is Moses? Where is Elijah? Were they rubbed out? No, they were fulfilled. “I came not to abolish the law and the prophets; I came to fulfill them.” Having fulfilled — for he who interprets the law here interprets the prophecies based upon his own experience of scripture. Therefore, having fulfilled the law, Moses disappears; having fulfilled the prophecy, Elijah disappears; and when their eyes are open, it is Jesus, Amen. That’s your destiny — you will be the Jesus of scripture, and the Jesus of scripture is the Lord God Jehovah. In the end there will be Jesus, Amen.1189 ¶18

So we start now, this very moment, watching, divinely, and we are the vine, my own wonderful human imagination, that is the vine, the eternal vine. And these things that happen to us, seemingly by accident — when your children are not observant, and all of a sudden the mind goes back, and you relate it to something that is happening now — I didn’t know this, what I was doing. I got a spanking for it, because the family of thirteen couldn’t eat. The next time, no one got his spanking — he forgot it too. How many? I know, I learned it. I am still learning.1189 ¶19

Because every day I read the paper — I usually get the morning paper — and some things are funny, most are not. One little funny thing is worth the entire paper. Like, yes, the morning I read the story told of Blair House in Washington, how we came to buy it and make it a guest house for the guests of our presidents. Well, to me, that was worth the morning paper. It happened: Mr. Churchill, visiting the White House — there was no Blair House then — he was the cause of Blair House, because he slept in the White House, and then, at 7:30 the next morning, Gary comes with his nightgown, a big cigar in one hand and a huge tumbler of cognac in the other, going towards President Roosevelt’s bedroom. And he went back to bed. And then she said to her husband, “you’ve got to buy, or get the country to buy, Blair House, and make it a guest house, so they cannot come here in the White House.” In this, this man kept you up to 3:30 in the morning, and here, at 7:30, he’s out with the cigar and a bottle of, uh, cognac, coming into your bedroom. That’s why we have that house as a guest house.1189 ¶20

Well, to me, that was so funny, because it struck me — well, they all say, “you must stop smoking, you must stop drinking,” and the man died at ninety. All this nonsense — one man has a little thought here, and he wants to superimpose it on everyone in the world. Like Mr. Nader today — he wants to stop smoking in all public places; a person gets on a plane and they’re nervous, a cigarette is going to relax them, but he wants to stop it all, and make her a nervous wreck, and call it an accident, so she can’t smoke, because he thinks we should not smoke. Well, we had that, years ago, with Carrie Nation, breaking up all the mirrors, these things, and what a mess we had for something like twenty years with Prohibition — we simply filled the country with a bunch of bootleggers.1189 ¶21

But he thought he was doing God’s work — you always think you’re doing God’s work. Well, I’m telling you what God’s work is: believe in him whom he has sent. And I am telling you, he sent me, and your own wonderful human imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ — there is no other Lord Jesus Christ.1189 ¶22

But when I say “imagine,” you may think, well, now, is that some impersonal force? No, that is man — you’re a man, aren’t you? Your real being is all imagination, as Blake tells us so clearly in his Songs of Innocence, concerning man. He said, man appeared, or God appears, and God is light to those poor souls who dwell in night, but the human form displays to those who dwell in realms of death, it’s man.1189 ¶23

When I stood in the presence of infinite love, it was man. How old is man? Trying to be more than man, you become less. It’s stupid, it’s all man — God is man, and you’re a man. So I tell you, don’t try to think you’re going to find anything outside of man — that is God. God is man. And so, when you actually hear the word “imagination,” that is God — think of man. And when you say, “well, my imagination” — that’s the being that you really are — you are a man, aren’t you? Well, that’s man. It’s a person, and he actually dwells in you, buried with you.1189 ¶24

And one day, he who’s your slave now will rise in you, and when he rises in you, you are the one in whom he rose — you are the very one who rose within you. And he is not then a man, he is the man, the universal man, and you are the universal man, containing all the names within you. And then one after one will rise, and one after one will become the man, and in the end is only God, and you are God.1189 ¶25

So tonight, take it seriously, don’t think, “once we did it” — the Christian world and the Jewish world celebrate a few times a year — Easter, Christmas, and so on. You can count them. The churches are bulging on Good Friday, they’re full on Easter, full on Christmas, and then they’re empty all the way through. And then the same happens with the Jewish faith — Passover — sorry — and all the great events, only a few in the course of the year.1189 ¶26

This calls for one, every second of time, observing what you imagine, for that is God in action. God imagining is creating, and God is your own wonderful human imagination, so as you are imagining, you are creating. All the little things are going to confront you, the big things will follow. You get into the habit of thinking only that which is of value. You simply prune the tree: “this is a value to me,” no, “this doesn’t serve the tree, it isn’t worth my time, it doesn’t take my energy,” so I keep on pruning the tree morning, noon, and night, as I live, and then it becomes a habit. And once it becomes a habit, it is easy to keep that tree, instead of working on it in some hard manner a few times a year to bring that huge bush down. I keep it going morning, noon, and night, and then it keeps on going — lovely things in my world, lovely friends, security, all the necessary income, everything in the world — that’s how it works.1189 ¶27

And then there will come that glorious moment: all that I’m telling you now will prove itself in performance. You will have the experience, as recorded in scripture, as the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will know who you are — that actually everything said of him in scripture, you are going to experience in the first person, in your own present, as your own experience, and you’ll know you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there never was another. He is buried in you, and he has to rise in you — this is his only sepulcher, there is no other.1189 ¶28

So you’re reading the paper, and just now comes news of the original salvation, something built in 480 — not B.C., or not in the first century, 480 — and do you know that thousands will go to look at it, “so this is where he was buried”? And they do not know he is buried in the one who is observing him, and not in anything observed — he never was buried there. There was no such thing as the Lord Jesus Christ buried on any part of this earth, but he is buried in every child that is born of woman — that’s very, very true — and that’s where he’s going to rise. And when he rises in the individual, that individual will know he is the man, that great being who is God himself.1189 ¶29

And I’ll tell you what I know: if the whole world rose in opposition, it would make no difference to me whatsoever, none whatsoever — I am telling you what I know from experience. He’s buried right here, in everyone who is seated here, and in everyone who was here — he cannot fail, he cannot fail, right, yes, right. When he rises, no change of identity — but you know, from the imagery that surrounds you, who you are, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ.1189 ¶30

When you take off this garment for the last time, after this series of events, you come into your infinite glory, the glory that was yours before the world was, because you are an individual, and the idea of you — you are uncreated. You were never created, you are God. No such thing as being created — you actually are God himself, without father, without mother, you are that God, and you and I are one, and there’s nothing in this world but God.1189 ¶31

So I’ve been sent to tell you one thing away of Christ — the story of Christ is your own plan of the redemption of self. For you came down into this world of death, you came down into this world of generation and death, and you planned the way of your own return, through your own resurrection, and you were resurrected, and I’ll be waiting for you, greeting you eagerly, for we are love itself.1189 ¶32

Let me speak of — God is love, I’m not kidding, God is love, and God is man, and get it in full of love, not some impersonal love, you can’t do that, it must be personal — God is a person, and God is love.1189 ¶33

Now tonight I ask you to start, if you haven’t started, to start watching every moment of time what you are imagining. And then, if you’re not imagining what you ought to imagine, just block it. But some people are in the habit — but give me one more, about five minutes, to just feel the thrill of it, and we’ll do that.1189 ¶34

I know that from experience: a man in New York City, in the Second World War, hated President Roosevelt. I said to him, “why do you hate the man?” He said, “no, there’s no reason for the hate.” He happened to be born of German parents — they were born in Germany. What did that have to do with it? We have millions of Germans in our country who are a hundred percent American. I was born in Barbados, of British stock, but I’m an American — anything that hurts this country hurts me. I am not on the outside; I am here, in America, and anything that hurts this country is hurting me. And here he’s telling me, because his parents were from Germany, he hated Roosevelt, because dollars went into the war against Germany. I said, “Germany attacked us, they declared war.” He couldn’t see that: every morning he would get before the mirror, and he would shave himself, and he would have a little conversation with Mr. Roosevelt in the mirror, and he told him off — he told him everything under the sun that was unpleasant. I said, “you’re bringing it on yourself. Mr. Roosevelt is not going to be hurt by you” — because I, too, know this principle, I’m teaching it to you — “he won’t be hurt by you, because whatever you could do, I’ll modify, and you’re only going to hurt yourself.” Well, he did — everything collapsed in his world, everything. And here was a man, a single fellow — his parents were, well, there was no reasoning in the world for it, but curiously, it was because his parents came from Germany.1189 ¶35

Oh, my Lord, we all came from parts of the world to this happy land — we are a salad bowl. Ethnic groups, all of us, ethnic groups — we are not really what the world thinks we are, that we are a melting pot — no melting pot here.1189 ¶36

There’s a Japanese gardener by a Japanese garden at the bay. He said, “did you see Sunday’s paper?” I said, “yes.” “Did you see the picture?” My son said, “no — I don’t even know your name.” I know — your name is Henry. Well, he brought the paper — he was in the western section, in the Brentwood-Westwood area — and here’s a picture of his son, who is at UCLA, taking care of all these handicapped children and handicapped people, putting arms on them so they can use an artificial arm — some are born without the arm, and some lost the arm — and he is doing all this work. And here is a Japanese man, and he was so proud — in the past, when I would say to him, “you know, Henry, I like your garden,” he would always act as though he couldn’t understand English. Does he understand English? The day when he’s talking about his son, I could have been speaking to Churchill; and yet, in the past, he never understood English.1189 ¶37

Well, that’s an ethnic group — why bring it up, and mix the whole thing up?1189 ¶38

We are all like a salad bowl. When you have a salad, you put in this, you put in that, you put in the other, each contributes to the salad, and it’s the most glorious thing. I don’t want to put it into a blender and blend the whole thing up — that’s not a salad. Let everyone contribute to this wonderful salad bowl that is America. We are not what the world has been taught to believe, a melting pot — there’s no melting pot, it’s simply a salad bowl. And you’ll be proud of your background, but don’t take it from the land that is now your home — you come into this land, and you make it your home, bring with you all that you have, and give it into that salad.1189 ¶39

But I tell you, this wonderful being that you are is Jesus Christ. Your true identity is Jesus Christ — that is your human imagination. However your skin be as black as the ace of spades, or as white as snow, it’s the same. It has nothing to do with the outside of you, it’s all to do with the inner you, and the inner you is your own wonderful human imagination, and there is only one Jesus Christ, so that Jesus Christ in you is the same Jesus Christ in me, completely awake, waiting only for the last little moment to take off this garment for the last time. And where can I go but within you? I go within you, on high, for I was within you, in the deep. I now will return, but on high, waiting eagerly for everyone to come back, for we all want it, for we are love itself.1189 ¶40

Let me speak of — God is love, I’m not kidding, God is love, and God is man, and get it in full of love, not some impersonal love, you can’t do that, it must be personal — God is a person, and God is love.1189 ¶41

If I came — I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit, he takes it away, and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes it, that it may bear more. And because I and my Father are one, I am the vinedresser, so I have to be observant as to what is not bearing, and what is barren, and what is bearing — I must prune it, it must bear more. So my energy is going to pruning, more and more, and so my way of life is given to pruning — they become greater, and keep on proving it. I don’t judge these things as to the nature of the tree, but you prove it, as you have the desire to believe. And because the whole vast world is yourself — or, as he said, “you have no life unless you are rooted in me” — when you hear the distress, I’ll be explaining to you, then you prove that balance inwardly, and in your own mind’s eye you feel that they are as they ought to be, and then drop it.1189 ¶42

The secret is dropping. “Let me go” — the last statement, or the wonderful statement, in the gospel: do not hold, let me go. If you hold on to it, then you haven’t dropped it, and the seed must fall into the ground and die before it is made alive. If I hold on to it, I keep on holding on to it, I haven’t dropped it, and it has to be dropped and left alone too — you can’t pick it up every morning, or the seed has taken root. I must drop it, leave it alone, and then confront the harvest — and then, like my friend’s mother, who recognized the harvest when the son called him to run: “I am avoiding the draft.”1189 ¶43

He hadn’t gone AWOL — had he not returned, he was, but he returned, went into the army, to face the normal time of being an American.1189 ¶44

But we’re all part of it. I was drafted in nineteen forty-two — I didn’t volunteer. My son volunteered, at the age of seventeen, in the Marine Corps, right after Pearl Harbor, and he was in Guadalcanal. And I had a little girl who was only a matter of months — she was born in June, and they drafted me in November — this is the China child — but I didn’t oppose it, all right, that’s part of the country, and we are at war. I didn’t know what the devil I could give, because I’m not built that way, but maybe they could use me to set prayers going, or something. And so I allowed myself to be drafted, I didn’t oppose it.1189 ¶45

I didn’t know where they’d put me, and I have never been able to drive a car in my life, never. I had no occasion to do it, living in New York City — I took taxis, or subways, or buses. And since I’ve been out here, I take buses, or I drive with friends.1189 ¶46

At the division, when the whole crowd — the whole bunch, thousands of us — I asked, “anyone who could not drive a car, raise their hands” — two hands went up, one was mine. And here I am, in the Armored Division, the 11th Armored Division, with all these tanks and all these trucks and all these things — I’ve never driven anything in my life. So they put me right in our division — that’s what we do, it’s not food, but really, it makes sense when it comes to the Army.1189 ¶47

And then, when I said, “so what do you do for a living?” I said, “I lecture” — “on what?” “I lecture on the word of God.” They all started to laugh — “put him in the medics” — and began teaching me about driving a car.1189 ¶48

Well, they couldn’t qualify me on the car. One sergeant gave me two lessons, and he said he’ll give me no more, because I’ll kill him. And so they gave me this little tiny thing, and I went around that place — he said what to do, and I couldn’t get my foot off the clutch, and we’re going around on two wheels, and they said, “I’ve done — I’ve done all I can do, I’ll give him no more lessons.” So they gave me no more lessons.1189 ¶49

And then they finally resolved the whole thing: I was to talk to the boys on first aid. I know nothing about it — a person, at least I could speak to. “Here is a book, take the book, memorize it, and then we’ll bring a company in, one after the other, and you teach them, the men, on first aid.” Well, I could memorize the book quickly. So they were coming, and I talked to them — on the first day, do nothing at first, but at least, if the book was correct, I would tell them what the book said.1189 ¶50

And I’m telling you what this book says: that I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser, and I and my Father are one. And the eternal vine is the human imagination, and all things come out of the human imagination. There is nothing in this world that is created but it’s created by the human imagination. Everything in the world — you may say, “well, the earth may come out of it”? Yes, indeed, everything comes out of the human imagination. These are only pressures, built up by man’s own wonderful human imagination, and there must be released — to build a pressure, and it’s released — but not a thing is creating anything in this world but God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination.1189 ¶51

But do not feed it as something you observe once — once a day, or once a year — it’s every moment of time, observing what you are imagining, morning, noon, and night. And prune your tree all through the day, and it’ll become a habit, and you’ll prune it all through the night.1189 ¶52

And then, in the not-distant future, he who is the eternal vine will awaken, and you are him, and you’ll know he is God the Father, because God’s only begotten Son will stand before you and call you Father, and you will know he is your Son, and he will know you are his Father, and there’ll be no uncertainty as to this relationship, and everything said in scripture concerning him, you are going to be free. Now let us go into the silence.1189 ¶53

Do you not believe in the historicity of Jesus Christ? A letter came this week, and the gentleman is here tonight. I’m glad he is, because it would take too long a letter to answer his letter. But he said: I was there last Friday, and during the question period a lady asked the question concerning the historical Jesus, and from your answer I gather that you said no — you do not accept the historical Jesus. I would go along with that. But do you not believe in the historical aspects in this, say, of — well, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or even, say, Neville — relative to your two omnipresent deeds? But tonight I’ll try to show you what I mean, based upon my own experience concerning the story of Jesus Christ. For as I am concerned, it’s the only reality. The only reality. And what you and I call the reality here, to me are shadows. All these are shadows.1188 ¶1

I’ll give you the story of a very humble poet, painter, mystic, essayist. We know him best as A.E. — the initials A.E. He was George Butler, the Irishman. And in his work called The Candle of Vision, he tells this experience. He said: Where it happened I will not tell you, but I will tell you what I painted. I entered an enormous hall, vaster than any cathedral, and these columns were made of living, trembling opal — all opalescence, and they were trembling and alive. Between the columns were thrones, and on each throne sat a fire-crested king. They differed: one wore a crest made of fiery feathers; another, the dragon. And he painted the word picture of the different ones. On the floor was this figure — a dark figure. And two kings passed their hands over the dark figure. As they passed their hands over it, their hands became fire, and fire came from their hands over this figure. And out of that dark figure rose a body — as tall, as huge, as majestic, as glorious as any of the others seated on their throne. And when he rose, he became aware of the hall and his kin, and raised his hand in greeting them. And they in turn raised theirs in greeting to him. He had returned from his long journey through darkness into the hall once more from which he departed. And all together moved towards the end of the hall like a burst of light — like the sun itself — and all vanished into the sun. Beings of light.1188 ¶2

I tell you: you did not begin in your mother’s womb. You came down from heaven to experience death — to experience what you could not experience in any other way. You have a premortal existence. You are, and always have been, a son of God. The word God in Hebrew is a compound unity. The word is Elohim. The Bible begins with the word: In the beginning, God — and that word is Elohim. It’s a plural word, a compound unity, one made up of our Father. We are the fragmented God in this world. Now, the call has gone out: bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth. And we are called, and being called, one by one, and we are awakened after these dark garments, and we are the King, the Son of God. We were, prior to the dream that we are having here.1188 ¶3

So do I not believe in Jesus Christ? But tonight I’ll show you who he is. I think — I can — God Himself came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ, but whenever he comes, he is invisible to mortal eyes, completely invisible. He is the hidden Christ, who will manifest himself only to a few mystics. The reason for it, so we are told, in the 14th chapter of John, when he said, “I will manifest myself to you” — Judas, not Iscariot, the one that is called Thaddaeus (well, here it is, Judah, the same word meaning “praise”) — and he said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and are you not to the world?” And then he answered, “Those who love me are loved by my Father, and they keep my word. They received the word” — or, the word is not mine, but the word of him who sent me. What word? Our discussion — they know the word is simply fulfilling Scripture. We are here to fulfill Scripture, as a man fulfills Scripture. He tells it; not everyone will receive it. The majority will deny it, and to them the man is insane.1188 ¶4

Those who believe in the historicity of Jesus Christ as a man born in some unnatural manner two thousand years ago will not accept the true story of Jesus Christ. They will not accept the fact that Christ is now buried in every child born of woman. It is the only doctrine — previously, the little form that he wears is the only cross that he ever wore. This is the cross that he wears, where he is buried in the human scar, and from the human scar he rises. And when he rises from that grave, everything said of him in Scripture, that individual in whom he rose, is experiencing it now. He tells it; very few will receive it. Very few, he will make himself manifest to — these few receivers, and they will see him, and there will be no uncertainty as to what they say they know to be Jesus’ life.1188 ¶5

So do I believe in him? Certainly, as he individualized, certainly you were going to be Jesus Christ, and yet your identity has not changed. You are completely individualized. We are the sons of God, and it rested in the same manner. That’s what I saw; that’s what I see. I do not see one being where it is all gathered together, and all of that identity. No, repeat: it is Jesus Christ, the same one, yet playing a different part in the body of God. All one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. So if I believe even the historicity — I certainly do, in this sense — but only in this: that it is taking place now in the world. He is being awakened in men, awakened in women, and as he arises in them, he is the same Jesus Christ spoken of in Scripture, and while he walks the earth he will have witnesses to it. They will see him and know him to be Jesus Christ.1188 ¶6

And when he departs this world — before the last time he will appear — then to many. He refers to the one called Peter, who is not a man; Peter is a state of consciousness. Then he appears to the disciples; they are not men, they are states of consciousness. Then he appears to over five hundred. Then he appeared to James. Then he appears to the apostles. Then he appeared last of all to Paul. These are all states of consciousness; they all must bear witness of who he is. He knows, because he has the experience of it. He talked about where he rose from his body, and his brother who preceded him in the rising — we did it, and he raises his hands in greeting to his brother. He hadn’t seen him since the journey began, and now the darkness is over, and he’s returned to the right, and they all meet him, and then together we all move into the right, at the heights of the great place where first he was — he lay there, dreaming the entire dream of life.1188 ¶7

So it took six thousand years. So what is six thousand years? He was told, in the beginning, you were taking six thousand years — but what would be six thousand years, when a thousand years is as a day in the eyes of God? They take you six days in the world of tourists, six thousand, and the horrors and things that you will do — and everything man has ever done, you will do. No one tell you that you’re so holy, so good, you’re going to avoid doing everything that man has ever done. It is discussed openly in the Bible.1188 ¶8

We take the most glorious character of the Old Testament, David. Reading carefully, you’ll find him in the Book of Samuel — two books — the Book of Kings — two books — the Book of Chronicles — two books. Read it; if you don’t think he’s a rascal, then I do not know what a rascal is. And yet he is God’s chosen one. There was an extortionist who goes to Nabal, the rich one, and he carries Nabal — the giving of money, a large sum of money, for protection. Well, that happens today: protection money — what protection? It came at the time of the sharing of the sheep, and Harris enabled this travesty, wealthy person, and now is the time to share the sheep, and he sends his messengers — David — asking for extortion money to protect him. Like someone come into you selling your little vegetables on the side, and you want protection money, and you say, “What? My people are nice people. They come, they pay in cash. If he doesn’t have cash tonight, I give him credit, because I’m more impressed by a penny.” And you say, “No, you need protection.” “I don’t need protection.” And then, within the week, you will know you need protection — they force kerosene oil all over your vegetables. Protection from whom? From the rascal. And he was the extortioner. Everything he said — Uriah into battle, knowing he would be killed, then he could get Bathsheba — then after, he simply foiled — you adopt Uriah — but Nabal, Nabal dropped dead from fright, and that he took Nabal’s wife before his neighbor’s eyes, each of his neighbor’s money — he married Abigail, did he not?1188 ¶9

So you take the character, and yet he always personifies humanity. Everything that men could ever conceive of doing, David did. Now you take all the generations of men, and all of their experiences, and actually congested into a single being, and projected — and that being is David. He is the son of God, who is playing all the thoughts of God. For God is made up of his son, and all the sons together, all the generations of men and all of their experiences, fused into a single being and personified, comes out as David. And David stands before you and calls you Father — then you know who you are. No one has ever seen God but his only son, who is dearest and nearest to his heart. He has made him known. For who is his son? Who is the one dearest to his heart? Are we not told in the Book of Acts, “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart, who will do all my will.” And here is David, a man after my own heart who will do all my will, and he is the son of God. So when David stands and calls you Father, you know who you are — you were God.1188 ¶10

So the purpose of the whole thing is for God to give himself to his son, and raise his son to the level of the Father. That’s the purpose of the whole vast scheme. So God actually has a purpose, and he will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will know it clearly, and that purpose is to give himself to you as though there was no one else in the world — just you, and you are God the Father. If God is our Father, then there was a child somewhere, and that child is David. So you have played, or are playing, or you’re going to play, all the parts in the world, so in the end you will say, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”1188 ¶11

So, as far as this little garment — this is the garment in which I was born, from which I roam, from which, in the not-distant future, I will take off for the last time and move with my resurrected brothers into the fullness of light. This is the dark garment that all wear, whether the pigment be this color, black, yellow, pink, white. This is the dark garment in which we are dreaming, and we are buried in our scar — I mean, our scurvy remains — until one day we are called from the grave. Then who awakes? You, but how do you know who you are? Wait, it won’t take long — you’re awake, and in a matter of three and a half years you completely play within yourself the entire drama of Jesus Christ, and so you will know who Jesus Christ really is. No man looking at you can see Jesus Christ. You have to reveal yourself, make yourself manifest, to the one that you would unveil yourself to, and he sees you in spirit — he does not see you with the mortal eye.1188 ¶12

So when you are seen — a little innocent child of eight saw me; a lady who is now gone from this world, Martha, she saw me; there are two here tonight who saw me — one only recently saw me in the role of the part called Jesus Christ. I tell you, I’ve awakened from the dream. I know who I am. Yet this little garment still holds me, and will hold me until I take it off in the not-distant future. And I promise you, I will make myself manifest to you, and you will know it, or no one comes unto me save my Father calls him — but no one may be called in; he calls him for a purpose, and in that day I’ll make myself known. But while here, only to a few — well, so far I know of six to whom I’ve shown myself.1188 ¶13

A little one of eight, the innocent little one, and others grow in this world, and frankly, now they’re all women, as we’re told in Scripture. The one whose part was played by the male — but that is a state of consciousness. I’m not necessarily male, for Peter is simply a state of consciousness, and that was played by the little one, the innocent one, who was then only eight when she saw me in the road, and saw me as the King, as told in Scripture, and “I will wear the crown of righteousness, the crown of faith, I’ve kept the faith” — for all this was portion. Before I set sail I could not foresee what I learned, how the wind would sound after these things should be. I could not tell anyone while the journey was still in progress, until the end. Then I learned how that’s, for example — it’s a wind, a moan first, and then all of a sudden the whole thing unfolds within you, and you are the one spoken of in Scripture as Jesus Christ.1188 ¶14

So Jesus Christ is always invisible. He is the Christ, always the hidden Christ, and if you were to see him coming from without, you’re looking for the false one. You’ll never see him coming from without, by your mortal eyes. Today there are those great evangelists speaking to millions of people on TV, telling you the end of the world is coming, and they’re waiting for him to come on the outside — they’re looking in the wrong direction. He always comes from within. He rises from within the man in whom he is born, and he is buried in every child born of woman. That child couldn’t breathe, were it not that Christ is buried within him. Christ within him is his own wonderful human imagination. When he says “I am,” that flight — that’s God, but he’s asleep, and he’s dreaming the dream of life, and man is playing all these parts, even the extortioner. And who is doing it? God. Who is doing the murdering? God.1188 ¶15

Listen to the words in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “I, even I, am he; I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal; and none can deliver out of my hand. I raise my hand to heaven, and cry, I live forever.” That is the Lord God Jehovah — he’s speaking in you. So anyone who kills with his eye, anyone who is made alive, I make him alive; anyone who wounds, I wound; anyone who heals, I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. There is only God in the world; there’s only one creative power in the world, and that creative power is your own wonderful human imagination. There is no other power; there is no other God.1188 ¶16

So the historicity — I say, God Himself came and comes, and don’t forget, turns into human history in the person of Jesus Christ, but whenever he comes — one of your awakens in a man — by “man” I mean generic man, male or female — as he awakens in that individual, he is invisible to mortal eyes. He is known to the one in whom he awakens as the one himself. It is he who tells his friends about it. But 99% will not believe it, because they know his origin, his physical origin, and so they will say, “Is this man Joseph’s son? Do we not know his parents? Do we not know his brothers and his sisters? What is he talking about, that he came down from heaven? How can he come down from heaven, when we know him? We know where he was born; we know everything about him.”1188 ¶17

So, to come back to the answer, my friend who wrote the letter, that his terrific — our historical Jesus — was not a name, I mean — the word Jesus means “Jehovah saved,” or “the Lord saving.” It could be John Brown, in whom he awakes. John Brown is known, the origin John is known, but he knows — that John Brown knows he isn’t John Brown, he knows who he is. When you awake, and your brothers meet you, are you going to identify yourself with that little garment on the floor from which you came? Yesterday you went through your door, and suddenly suffered from amnesia, and completely forgot who you are — your wife, your children, everything about you. No matter what the world does, it can’t bring you back to the memory of having a wife and having children. They can bring them before you, and you can’t recognize them; show you your own books, and you can’t recognize them; take you to the bank, you don’t recognize it, and you’re starving, and you have no money, and they can’t persuade you that you could sign a check — not with the name John Brown that you’ll now assume. You were, when you went into this state, you are Mr. Smith, but you do not know Mr. Smith; you only know John Brown, and here, under the name of Smith, you have a million dollars in the bank — you won’t believe it, and they can’t do a thing to bring you back to that memory. So then that memory returns — were you ever John Brown? When the memory returns, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ, will you ever — Neville — ?1188 ¶18

When the memory returns, and you are the father of David, and David’s father is Jesse, will you ever be anything other than Jesse? You know what Jesse means — the word Jesse means “Jehovah exists.” It is a form of the verb “to be” — in other words, “he who bears the name I AM.” That’s the Father of David, God’s name forever and forever is “I AM,” and there Jesse simply means, by actual definition, “Jehovah exists.” And so, when the veiling and memory returns, and here I’m looking right into my son’s face, and he’s David, and my memory returns down that: I am the Lord God Jehovah, and I believed that I was a little man who found it difficult to pay rent and to buy food and to do the normal things in Caesar’s world, and I, the father of David, and the father of David is Jehovah, the self-existing one, the eternal one, who owns all the cattle — a thousand hills are mine — and where I am hungry I wouldn’t tell you, I would slay nothing, for all are mine. And yet there were moments when I didn’t know where the next penny was coming from, because I suffered from amnesia. That’s why I went into that little garment, to pass through the world of darkness.1188 ¶19

And then comes that moment in time when you’re called from the grave, and you’ve awakened in the grave and come out of the grave, and you are the same tall, glorious, everlasting being that you were before you broke down and contracted yourself into that little body. All these things that you see, I tell you, they are giants; they are majestic in every sense of the word. The Egyptians built these things to their gods — huge, big images of God — they are dwarfed compared to those who wait for them, when you come out. And how could you come out of a thing that small and be so majestic, and be so fire-cresting, and so luminous — self-luminous was life in yourself — and they’re all waiting for you. And when you open your eyes, you recognize not only the place, but you recognize your kin. I’d raise your hands in salutation, and they raise their hands, and all together you move quickly, rapidly, into the waiting sun — that you — this is who you are. That’s your future; every one of you will awaken.1188 ¶20

So the call has gone out: bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth — reading in the 43rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah: go and call them. The call has gone out, and not one will be long — not one can be held back. So when I awaken from this — that is called the historical thing — I will take it off, as a thing in which I lost my memory, and in wearing this, I forgot the being that I am. When I remembered who I am, must I still carry the memory of the thing that caused me to lose the memory of the being that I really am? So whatever historical claims made about this, this whole thing will vanish. This whole vast world will vanish like a dream, for it is a dream you are dreaming. This dream of life, for a purpose, you came into the limit of contraction called man, and then you will reach the end of the journey — as yours, it will be a horrible journey.1188 ¶21

Read it in the Book of Genesis: you will go into a land that is not yours, and in that land you will be enslaved, will be hurt, for four hundred years. It doesn’t mean four hundred years as you and I measure time. Four hundred is the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet — the letter is Tav. It has a symbol; the symbol of the four — that the last letter, whose numerical value is 400 — the symbol is a cross. This is the cross that I will wear for 400 years, in the sense that as long as I wear this, I am still within the journey. In the end, when I take it off for the last time, I return to the being I was before I started the journey.1188 ¶22

Am I not told in the 82nd Psalm: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” And now he speaks the same word — the word translated “God” singular is Eloah; the word translated “God” in the plural is Elohim. So God, Elohim, has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods, and now he holds the judgment: “I say, ye are gods, sons of the Most High” — Olaf — “nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall as one man.” Only, when you rise, your rise is as a king. You’re going through the entire journey as a horrible journey, but when you come out, the purpose of it all is to awaken as the one who is God the Father.1188 ¶23

So all of us reach the limit of contraction — that little thing sleeping on the floor, even though it seems to be animated, and walks around the street. It is thought asleep in that wonderful place. Naturally, you are dreaming — you’re really in America, and fly into Europe, and fly into India, flying all over the world — you are dreaming it, but you are stationary in that little contracted body, and your brothers are eagerly waiting for your return, and you’ll come back on time. Now I tell you, right on the button, you’re coming back, and they will simply pass their hands above you, and sparks will fly from that hand towards life within themselves, and you begin to stir within, and you’ll awaken, and you’ll come out, and you’ll be just as majestic as you were before — which is equal to anyone present. You are the King, and you arise from that state into what you really are, and that all, in unison together, as you go quickly and vanish into the light — that’s the being that you are.1188 ¶24

So I cannot tell anyone that I believe anymore in anything other than the being that we really are. That being is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the reality of man, but he is not some little thing that you put off in space, and that he came 2,000 years ago — that’s not Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is your own true identity; this is your false identity. You will awaken one day as Jesus Christ. Did not David call him “my Lord”? He is not David’s son, as we’re told in the second Psalm, and David said, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord; he said unto me, Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” So then Christ asked the question: “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” And they answered, “David.” And he said, “Why then did David in the spirit call him my Lord?” Then he quoted the hundred and tenth Psalm: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool.” And if David has called him Lord, how can he be David’s son? No — he’s David’s father, and David’s father is nothing more than the sum total of all humanity. David himself is that being which summarizes all of the experiences of man, and the father of it all is Jesus Christ.1188 ¶25

Now you argue — describe your God the Father. You wait on, tell me what I know. I thought speculations are not theorizing — Jesus Christ is God the Father. One day you will awake, and when you depart, for the last time, at that moment of departure you are Jehovah himself, who is Jesus Christ, and the sum total of all the experiences stands before you as the one who did all your will — so you forgive it all. It was all a part of the plan to send man through the horrors of darkness, to bring him out as God the Father. So the sons go through, to come out expanding — there is no limit to expansion, there is only limit to contraction. And so that body that the mystics see lying there, that body is the limit of contraction; that which comes out is expanded by reason of its journey, and there is no limit to that expansion, to that translucency, only the limit to the opacity, to the contraction in which it placed itself.1188 ¶26

So, to answer one letter tonight, because I really would need to know how to take a lot of time to answer it, and it takes too long — four years here. And so the letter is answered, and I don’t have a secretary to match it, and to dictate that to my wife would be too tedious and too long, so I’m answering it here, and your answer to the best of my ability. So the historical Christ — right here he is, hidden behind everyone who is here, and so, behind your face — you say, “I am Bud,” and you say, “I am Mary” — you’re taught by this name — for behind that mask which causes you to forget who you are, is the being that you really are, and that being is Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ and Jehovah are one, and they are the father and the son, and the son is called David, and David is simply the sum total of all the experiences of humanity, viewed into a single being and personified, and that’s the sanctification. What comes out is that infinite, beautiful, eternal youth that is all David. So you paid it all, and you forgive it all. Now let us go into the silence, good.1188 ¶27

Now, are there any questions, please? Yes, do you have any questions?1188 ¶28

And you said,1188 ¶30

Yes, ma’am,1188 ¶33

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

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