Tonight’s subject is “The New Man.” Christ is really the reality that is man, the God that is in man. Now, is it all being done on the other side of the veil or is there something that you and I can do on this side of that dividing wall? For we are told the wall is broken down to make of the two one new man. Now, let me share with you a story told me recently by a very dear friend of mine, one who has had most of my experiences. He wrote me this letter just a few weeks ago. You listen to it carefully because God speaks to man through the medium of dream, and he reveals, he unveils himself through the medium of revelation. That’s how he unveils himself. Well, here is his letter.921 ¶1

He said, “I awoke at six in the morning. It was too early to get up, so I thought I would simply remain in bed and do some purposeful imagining. As I started, this thunderous voice came from within me declaring ‘I am God. I am self-contained. I am self-sufficient’ and it kept it over and over and over. And finally I said to it, I know, I know, and I’m trying to do something about it, but you’re speaking so loudly I cannot imagine. But it persisted; it kept on repeating ‘I am God. I am self-sufficient. I am self-contained’ over and over and over. So I said, it seemed to me like [...], and so I thought, if you can’t prevent it, relax and enjoy it. So I simply lay there in bed and listened and enjoyed it, and fell sound asleep…this proclamation from within that ‘I am God. I am self-contained. I am self-sufficient.’”921 ¶2

Now listen to this other dream of his as he calls it. These are real revelations. He said, “I found myself in a desert, a vast desert of nothingness. Not a blade of grass, not a shrub, not a cactus, not a tree, but nothing…just an infinite desert, and here I am in this vast nothingness. But in my hand it seemed that I held some golf balls, and I took one and I threw it. Where a moment before there was nothing, in five seconds, not more than five seconds, boom, a beautiful home and lawn appeared in Technicolor. I threw another, and another lovely home and yard appear in Technicolor with people around it. Then I took another ball and I threw it across the way, and here this wonderful putting green appeared adjacent to this wonderful golf course. A man that I discovered to be at my side said, ‘Isn’t that terrific! You put the ball right next to the cup.’ And he answered, ‘Oh, no, no, I don’t do it that way, I put the ball down and then I put the hole next to the ball, that’s how I play the game.’921 ¶3

“Then I created a huge, great gate, and this friend of mine and I walked through the gate that I had created. As I went through the gate, I came upon the most miserable scene you can imagine. The most dilapidated house, completely gone, but what dilapidation! And next to it, this horrible streetcar in the last very last stages of decay. So I took a ball and I started to throw it and it wouldn’t leave my hand. I couldn’t get the ball to depart from my hand. I threw it and threw it and it just wouldn’t go. But I said to myself, well, maybe I’m not ready for it, maybe it is beyond me. I threw it and threw it…and I said no, I can’t, it’s beyond me, beyond my power to do it. Then, after a long wait, this that was the dilapidated house suddenly turned into the most modern hotel and what was a dilapidated streetcar into a streamlined bus, which quickly drove off.921 ¶4

“Here, I could not,” said he, “change or let go of the past. I couldn’t let go. I came upon the past. It was so easy to create out of nothing. Yes, out of nothing I could create anything. But when it comes to something I know to be a fact, I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t let go of the past. But I persisted and persisted and persisted, and persistency was rewarded. Eventually it turned into this glorious new, very modern hotel and a new streamlined bus, which drove off.”921 ¶5

Then he said, “I came upon a scene that resembled the Miracle Mile on Wilshire, with an island up the middle. But it was a strange setting. Here were all these kids, boys and girls…the boys in horrible messy pants and the girls in bikinis. It was so unlike what you should see on the Miracle Mile. So I thought, well, I’ll throw another ball there. So I threw another ball and suddenly they were completely transformed into the most beautifully dressed ladies and gentlemen, dining al fresco, under umbrellas, waited on by the most elegantly dressed waiters. I turned to my friend and said, ‘You know, maybe I should have left them as they were.’”921 ¶6

He’s a very humorous man, may I tell you, because his profession is really writing humorous things. So he always ends his letters to me in a very humorous vein. So he had to add that note, “Maybe I should have left them…and I awoke maybe not a moment too soon.”921 ¶7

Well, do you know that God speaks to man through the medium of dream? Although there were no golf courses 2,000 years ago, or, say, 4,000 years ago when the great Book of Numbers was written. The word ball appears only once in scripture. Only once would you find it in scripture. It appears in the chapter I quoted, unknowingly, last week, it’s the 22nd chapter of Isaiah. And when you read it you’ll think that God rejected a man. All of these are states of consciousness, and here is the occupant of the state. He rejects that state, not the occupant. And then he turns him into the one that he will accept, the one whose shoulder is going to be hammered in the not distant future with that peg. On him will rest the burden, the responsibility of the house of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. He doesn’t reject anyone in this world, because he’s playing all the parts anyway. But we’re in states. He rejects the state, not the occupant of the state.921 ¶8

As we are told in the 10th chapter of 1st Samuel, when the prophet Samuel speaks to Saul, and he said, “The spirit of the Lord shall come upon you… and you shall be turned into another man” . He rejects Saul and chose David, and you think, well, a man could not fit the bill. No, the occupant of that state is God. He rejects the state, not the occupant, and turns him into another man; in other words, occupying an entirely different state.921 ¶9

So in this 22nd of Isaiah, the only place where the word ball appears in scripture, he is experiencing that. Here came the moment of the rejection of a state, because he did succeed in transforming the past. So what can I do on this side of the veil to break down that wall between the two? For he breaks down the wall of partition between the two, and makes of two, one new man.921 ¶10

Let us listen carefully to what I can do, what you can do. And Jesus came into the world preaching the gospel of God, saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel” . Believe my testimony, for I have experienced, “For all the promises of God have found their fulfillment in me,” all of them. So believe the news that I bring you, but repent. Repent is what? The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness, and forgiveness tests man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. So here, I see you dilapidated…it could be a house, it could be a streetcar, it could be anything in this world, but I see you in that form. Well, that’s the past state. That’s an old, an ancient and a fixed state. And I throw the ball. The word “throwing the ball” is simply “turning in the same circle” in scripture. It’s like a circle…you can’t seem to move out of it. It’s the past, it seems fixed forever. And so I throw it and I throw it and I can’t let it go. I’m still faced with the obvious fact before me. And finally, I do let it go, through what?—my persistency. “How long, Lord? How often must I forgive the brother who sins against me? Seventy times seven” . Do it and do it and do it until you succeed in letting it go. Let go of the past completely and see in its place that which you want to see. Do it until you can actually let go. Persist and persist and persist.921 ¶11

Then he tells the parables. The woman comes to the magistrate, and he doesn’t fear God and he doesn’t respect man, but he says, because of her persistency she bothers me, so I will rise and I will simply vindicate her. He didn’t want to, because he didn’t fear God and he didn’t respect man, but her annoyance by the constant coming forced him to act as she wanted.921 ¶12

Then the man came at the wee hours of the night, at midnight, and he wanted something to feed a stranger who came suddenly. The man said from above, “It is late; my children are in bed; and I cannot come down and open the door.” But the man was insistent, and because he persisted and persisted, he came down and gave him what he wanted .921 ¶13

And so you say, well, I can’t get out of this turmoil. I don’t care what the turmoil is, how fixed that seeming past is, you simply persist and persist and persist, and he’s got to come down and grant your request. So you break down the wall that divides the two by your practice of repentance. Repentance is simply practicing our part on this side of the veil while the work is going on in a hidden manner on the other side of the veil. Finally the wall is made thinner and thinner, and finally we break the shell, and Christ is born. Who is he? I am he. It’s not Christ and you after you break the shell, there is only Christ. “And in that day the Lord shall be one and his name one” . Not two, only one.921 ¶14

So he’s breaking and making it thinner and thinner and thinner. But we on this side of the veil must do our part and we practice repentance, which is changing the past. It was so easy for him to create out of nothing. Oh, a vast desert…throws the ball, poof, a wonderful beautiful Technicolor home and a lawn; another ball, another beautiful Technicolor home and a yard with people all around it. Then, another ball, and here comes this wonderful putting green adjacent to this fabulous wonderful golf course. Then he creates a gate, a huge gate, and he and his friend go through. The friend tells him of this fantastic play of his. And he corrects the friend, “I don’t do it that way. I don’t try to put it into the hole, as you thought, I actually came next to the cup. I put the ball down first and I bring the hole next to it. That’s what I do.” Then he saw, as he went through the gate, this dilapidated, horrible pictures of the past…a home in absolute decay, beyond repair, and a streetcar, one of the ancient kind. And he thought, I’ll change it…but he couldn’t let go of the past. He tried and he tried and he tried. But he persisted, because eventually it did go out of his hand. But he waited…the strangest thing in his letter to me…he waited so long. In creating out of nothing, five seconds; in creating, now, and changing the past, revising it completely, he waited and waited. Because nothing happened, he said, well, maybe I’m not equal to it. It’s too much for me. The ball did go, but because he waited so long, he thought, well, now it isn’t going to work. And while he despaired, suddenly, the home that was so dilapidated becomes this marvelous modern hotel, and the streetcar becomes a streamlined bus, which simply took off.921 ¶15

And then comes Wilshire Boulevard, the Miracle Mile, and instantly he transforms it. Now, the power in his hand…it didn’t wait now. This thing should not be on Wilshire Blvd., not on the Miracle Mile, bikinis and dirty trousers? And instantly a transformation into beautiful ladies and gentlemen dining al fresco under umbrellas waited on by elegant, wonderful waiters. The whole transforming was easy then, because he had succeeded in taking the most ancient things and transformed it by his persistence.921 ¶16

That’s what you and I are called upon to do as we read the words of the earliest gospel, which is Mark. Chronologically, it’s placed second, but the first book written of the gospels is Mark. And here we find, that after John was arrested—meaning this conscious, reasoning mind of man—after that is arrested, Jesus comes into Galilee preaching the gospel of God; saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” . Believe my testimony, for all that I tell you is but the fulfillment of scripture, all of his promises are fulfilled in me, that’s what he’s saying.921 ¶17

And standing before you tonight, I can say, his promises have been fulfilled in me. This normal natural man—unschooled, unlettered, unknown, un-everything by human standards that we call prominent—and everything fulfilled in me. What? Scripture, the only reality in the world, for everything else will pass away; but these words of God will never pass away. They are being fulfilled in everyone, for he’s not condemning any man. They’re only in states and we must learn to distinguish between the man, the occupant of the state, and the state that he occupies. So when he rejects man it’s not man, he rejects the state. That state cannot serve, so he rejects the state. And then, he puts him into another state, and that state is now the next one, for he has fulfilled it by his practice.921 ¶18

And I have known how he’s practiced repentance. Since he heard this message years ago, he has been daily practicing revision, and revision is repentance. And revision results in repeal. So I have something that is fixed and I revise it, I’ve repealed it. He repealed that picture that he saw, the dilapidated home and streetcar. Here, in him is the new annum. I know from his own story to me it’s already been born, but it goes through these stages…stage after stage after stage. And this was written to me only this past month.921 ¶19

So here he is on that day, the 22nd chapter of Isaiah, the only place in scripture where the word ball appears. So although golf balls were not known, ball was there, turning upon itself, and seeing the same thing over and over and over…and therefore you cannot change it. It’s nothing new, you can’t change it. Then he persisted by throwing the ball, and he did change it; but he waited a long, long interval between the departure from his hand, for he threw it with his hand. The power and the wisdom of God is symbolized in the hand. You are told in this chapter it is the power of God, so he exercised that power.921 ¶20

You have that power. Bring before your mind’s eye any being in this world whose case at the moment seems hopeless, and revise it. Revise it and revise it and revise it until you can let go of that ball and feel satisfied in the revision. When you can feel the breath of relief because it’s done, I tell you it is done. If tomorrow will not bring the news or next week will not bring the news, wait. Wait. It is done! And then, in a way that no one on earth could devise, the way by which it will be done, it will be done. It will come, and you will see the results of what you did. This is what he did.921 ¶21

So I ask everyone here to practice revision. Revise the past. I don’t care what it is, revise it, and the past will conform to your dream of what it ought to have been, and suddenly it will appear before you. Then the new man stands within you: Not two, you and Christ, only Christ.921 ¶22

So we are told, he goes through the city—this is now in Ezekiel, the 9th chapter—and he said, “Everyone follow the man who is now clothed in linen, follow him carefully. He will go through the city and he will leave a mark on the forehead of men, women and children.” Then he turned to others and said, “Now, you follow him, and everyone who does not bear the mark, whether it be an old man, old woman, a maiden, a young boy, a child, slaughter them; and your eye must have no pity, no pity. Slaughter everyone who doesn’t bear the mark on his forehead.”921 ¶23

Now, in the 22nd chapter, the last chapter of Revelation, and he turns and he fulfills it. Those who have the mark come before him, and the mark upon their forehead is his own name, and the name is Jesus. Jesus means Jehovah. He only redeems himself. Well, let no one think by this strange, peculiar imagery that one is lost. Everyone, at a certain moment in time, is slaughtered because of the state he is in, whether it be old, young or infant. He played other parts, other parts, until finally he’s playing the part that is the selective part. And then the final part that he plays, the mark is on his forehead, and the name is his own name, and the name is Jesus. So in the end there is only Jesus, nothing but Jesus. There is only Jesus. All have been redeemed in the body of Jesus. There’s only one being. Infinite mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus. There’s only one body, only one God, only one being. And so, when you are redeemed, you are he. There aren’t two little Christs running around, only the risen God who is Jesus Christ. And everyone is redeemed in that one body.921 ¶24

So I can’t thank my friend enough for this letter that he gave me a few weeks ago. I got it in the mail two or three weeks ago and I read it and I was thrilled beyond measure. I wondered, how could I use it and what night would this thing fit? It’s so all together marvelous. But it fits this night, the new man. This is the night that it really fits, where the part that you and I must play is redemption; redemption in the sense that we redeem a thing by practicing repentance.921 ¶25

Repentance is not to feel remorseful, not to feel regretful. I don’t care what someone has done! You don’t feel remorseful because you did something; the state in which you were caused you to do it. That is not repentance. Repentance is simply practicing the art of moving into the opposite state as though it were not. That’s repentance. So I don’t wallow in feeling sorry for myself. I don’t wallow at some weeping wall that I repent. I simply move right into a state where the thing never really happened. Because “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” it doesn’t matter what a man has ever done in this world. The most murderous fiend is only a state. In that state he had to murder. In that state he had to steal. In that state he had to do all these things. Don’t condemn the occupant of the state, it’s the state. We condemn the occupant as though he did it. He is in a state and he entered that state unwittingly. Most of us do. So Blake said, “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them in the states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it leaves paradise following the serpent” .921 ¶26

The two sins that man has done which God finds, as we’re told in scripture, impossible to forgive: the eating of the tree of good and evil; but the first thing is our failure to believe that I AM he. Man’s unwillingness to believe that I am he is the fundamental sin. God became man that man might become God, and his name is I AM. My unwillingness to believe that I am he who causes me to breathe, to think, to move, is the fundamental sin. Then I go forward condemning the good and the evil as I see good and evil through life. But then comes this wonderful revelation: I know from the Lord Jesus Christ that there is nothing unclean in itself, but any man who sees anything to be unclean to him it is unclean. Not a thing is unclean in itself. But if any man sees it as unclean, well, to him who sees it it is unclean. And he lives with it in a state that allows it to be seen as unclean. And that’s life.921 ¶27

So let us practice on this side of the veil the one part we’re called upon to practice. He only gives us one: repent. And repentance is simply to transform completely the past, whatever that past is, unless it is lovely. Let the mind store a past worthy of recall, for eventually everything that is unlovely is going to be destroyed anyway. So if the mind does not store a past worthy of recall, then that mind seemingly vanishes, if the contents vanish.921 ¶28

But man will not vanish, for man is God. God became man that man might become God. There is really no death in this world, not in the real sense of the word. Nothing dies, not here. We leave the stage and the actor seems to be gone, but he isn’t dead. For the supreme actor is God, playing all the parts. There’s only God playing all the parts in the world, all parts. As told us so beautifully in Job, the deceiver and the deceived are his. Oh, I deceive and I am deceived, I’m both. I play all these states.921 ¶29

So in the end, all I’m called upon to do is to believe the testimony of one who has experienced scripture, and then to practice constantly this wonderful art of repentance. Repent and repent and repent. As I walk the earth I see someone in need, I will not feel remorseful for him, sad for him, I’ll change it. That’s repentance. I don’t argue with him and say, “That serves you right. If you hadn’t done this you wouldn’t have had this.” I don’t condemn the man for the state into which he’s fallen unwittingly. Even if he fell into it knowingly I wouldn’t condemn him. He has to reap the results of the state into which he has gone. And so he’s only in a state, but the occupant is immortal. You can’t rub him out; that’s God. So I don’t care what he does in the world, you can’t stop him from being; he is this immortal being.921 ¶30

And one day he will hear the same words my friend heard, “I am God. I am self-contained. I am self-sufficient.” And the words kept repeating over and over and over. He said, “I know, I know, I’m trying to do something about it, but I can’t now imagine while I hear your words, they are so loud.” And then when he said, “It seemed to me like rape,” what a lovely expression. If you can’t prevent it, relax and enjoy it. “So I simply lay there on the bed and listened. As I listened to the same repetition, I enjoyed it and fell sound asleep listening to it.” Isn’t that a marvelous way to go to sleep, to hear the voice coming to the very surface so you can hear it? That same voice is screaming in the depth of everyone’s soul. It hasn’t stopped from the beginning of time, but the wall is too thick for man to hear it. When it gets very, very thin and just about to break through, man hears it. He heard it as the wall was breaking, making of the two one new man in the place of two, thus bringing peace. That’s what you’re told in the 2nd chapter of Ephesians: I bring peace by bringing down the wall that separates the two. So when the wall gets very, very thin…like a house in this wonderful world of ours. Have you lived in apartments where they are so thin that if you whisper they hear you next door without being bugged? Well, suddenly, the wall gets so thin by your practice of repentance you hear God’s voice. And God is the eternal I AM in man who is proclaiming what he is. He is the everlasting, he is the eternal, he is self-sufficient, he is self-contained. “I am God,” he heard, and could not do a thing about it, because the voice wouldn’t sleep. The thing was too thin.921 ¶31

Now he goes out to test the power that is God. And the power is in the hand: he had to take the hand to throw a ball. And the power is called “the hand of God” in that same chapter. He’s just about to experience that which I told you about this past week, where he throws and nothing comes quickly; and then he creates a new city; a marvelous city is rising before him. And then he steps through a gate, which he created, and steps into an ancient past, and tries to change it; and thought he didn’t have the power, he wasn’t ready for it, but his persistency proved that he could change it. Eventually the ball did leave his hand and he waited and waited and waited. Even then, because he waited so long, he despaired, it’s too long…it couldn’t work. And then, suddenly, it worked. So he did not fail.921 ¶32

After the ball leaves the hand, it has to work, when you drop that past and hold on to the vision of what you want in place of what appears to be. It doesn’t come today, next week, next month, or even this year…but it will come. And then when it appears, he sees that he has the power to completely redeem the past. We’re told in scripture God requires the past. The whole past will be redeemed as though it were not: “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” .921 ¶33

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *921 ¶34

Now are there any questions, please? By the way, we only have this lecture this week. There’s no other lecture this week. Next week we start on Monday, and we’ll have two, Monday and Friday. But this is the only lecture this week, as you’ll see from your little announcement. If you don’t have one, please take one when you leave. There are many of them at the desk. Now are there any questions, please?921 ¶35

[End of tape.]921 ¶50

Tonight’s subject is “Signs and Wonders.” As we are told in the 6th and 20th chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy, “The Lord brought his people out of Egypt with signs and wonders.” Now, the Bible from beginning to the end is divine history. But this history is not history as you and I understand it. In other words, you could never by historical research either prove or disprove it; and any religion in this world that depends upon historical and scientific confirmation really is not a fixed act.920 ¶1

Let us now take the book, this divine history. It’s your history, a history that you and every child born of woman will experience. Every child is Adam, and Adam is compelled to be disobedient. As we are told in the 11th chapter of the Book of Romans, that “God has consigned every man to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all” . So Adam is the garment that God wears. And that disobedience is for one outstanding purpose: He eats of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that conscience may be born. And so conscience is born by the seeming disobedience. Then he passes through the furnaces of affliction. But at least he does have conscience and he does know right and he knows wrong. He violates it time after time. And so from Adam to Noah it is sheer hell in scripture, because everything is for self-gain; and so, he simply buries his conscience which tells him it is wrong, and simply, well, for the purpose of self-gain.920 ¶2

Then we’re told this is all wiped out, and then we start with Noah. Remember, these are all states…every character in the Bible is a state of consciousness. They’re simply personifications of the eternal states of the soul through which the individual passes like a pilgrim. So he moves first through Adam to Noah. We find now the character called Noah, for here is Noah the first tiller of the land, the first beginning of civilization . Then he drinks successfully of the fruit of the vine, and he got drunk, and found himself completely exposed, but completely drunk, flattened out and uncovered. Then we are told, his son Ham came in and saw him in his nakedness, and then he told his brothers Shem and Japeth. They brought a sheet and walking backwards, without turning around, they covered the nakedness of their father that they would not see his nudity. When he arose from his drunkenness and once more returned to normalcy and discovered that his son Ham had seen his nudeness, he cursed Canaan…didn’t curse Ham. He cursed Canaan and said, “Cursed be Canaan; you shall be a slave of slaves to all your brothers” . So that is now a new beginning.920 ¶3

Well, who is this Noah and the state of consciousness, when you and I start a certain attempt to create a civilization, to really move forward? Who is this Ham that saw my nudity? For the word Ham in Hebrew means “life.” It’s Cheth Mem—it is life itself. He curses Canaan and Canaan is the world that is cursed. You can’t understand Canaan until we jump now to the next character where you and I really begin in this world. The next character is Abraham. It’s really Abram in the beginning of it all which is faith. So all this is a turmoil.920 ¶4

Then Abram is put into a deep sleep and then a dread and frightful darkness descends upon Abram. While he is in sleep, the Lord speaks to him and tells him to leave Haran and migrate into Canaan. There he and his descendants will be enslaved as sojourners in this strange land, and they will be slaves of slaves for 400 years; then he will deliver them with signs and wonders. So every descendant of Abraham will go into this land and be completely enslaved. He must leave Haran. Well, Haran means “sanctuary, it’s the haven of rest, a comfort.” He must leave this innocence and move into a world of experience; and in the world of experience he goes through all the fires of hell. For every conceivable situation that man could ever think of, man, the individual, must pass through as he goes into Canaan. And there he remains for 400 years.920 ¶5

Well, he doesn’t mean 400 years as you and I would measure years by the clock. Four hundred is the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which has a symbolical value of a cross—it’s Tau. And so, the twenty-second letter is a cross. And so I wear this cross for that interval of time called 400 only for its symbolical meaning, its numerical meaning; but not 400 as you and I would measure 400 years. How long it is, well, some claim 6,000 years, others 8,000 years…but, really, who knows? I don’t know, I really do not know. I only know there are signs and wonders that tell me the end of the picture. How long I went through this thing as years, I haven’t the slightest concept. But reading the Bible carefully, I know by the signs as they begin to appear within me I am at the end, the very end of the journey only by reason of the signs.920 ¶6

Now the story Jesus, Jesus Christ, from his conception by the Holy Spirit to his ascension into heaven is a sign vouchsafed by God to those who will receive it. It’s a sign. The words are put into the mouth of the prophet Simeon, “And the child is a sign for the fall and the rise of many in Israel” . But it is a sign…and people look upon the child as a fact. The child is a sign, as told us in the 2nd chapter of the Book of Luke, when the angel of the nativity told the shepherds she would give them a sign; and this is the sign of the event just before it, “You shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.” They hastened to Bethlehem to find the child, just as foretold, to fulfill prophecy of Micah. In the 5th chapter of the Book of Micah, there you will read, Bethlehem…and then Bethlehem becomes personified as the woman who conceived by the Holy Spirit; and she was so little among the clans of Judah; and how should Bethlehem have this great honor bestowed upon her? We then are told in this 5th chapter that I will deliver you into all things and forget you until she who is in labor brings forth . What she brings forth will be the ruler in Israel, but it will be a sign…these are all signs from beginning to end.920 ¶7

So it is not history that any archeologist in this world, by his search, could ever find to support the claim that these things ever took place on earth. Because not one character of scripture walked this earth as an individual, as you walk it, as I walk it. They are the eternal states, which one day everyone will see, see in their Imagination—-as I have seen them all, seen them just where they really belong, in my Imagination. I’ve seen Abraham; not as the world thinks it, to see Joseph, to see every one of them, all in my Imagination. And to see them at a certain focus, when all together they form one man, and that man is Jesus. When you look at him closely, you’re looking at yourself. You know who he is, the Lord of Lords, and when you look at him closely with all in him, it’s only one. But when it’s fragmented, they become unnumbered characters and all these are the states, the states that are eternal states through which every soul must pass.920 ¶8

So here, these signs and wonders as told from the very beginning to the end is the only thing I can tell you that I know: When they begin to happen in you, you are at the end. Because I know of no other way of measuring the time between entering the state…for the real thing begins with Abraham. So if he promises him a child and “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad” . Well, how could you possibly know Abraham, he preceded me by a thousand years? “Before Abraham was, I AM.” Well, I am, as you are, of the Ancient of Days. We were before the whole thing was brought into being, and this was brought for a purpose: to create and to extend our creative power. The only reason for this play is to develop the creative power of God which power is Jesus Christ. As we are told: “Jesus Christ, the power and the wisdom of God” . But man thinks that Jesus Christ is an individual on the outside. Isn’t so at all! Always think of Jesus Christ as the little child…always think of him as the little child. And everyone must bring forth Jesus Christ, as told us in the 3rd chapter of the Book of Galatians. And everyone beginning with Abraham, which is only a state, but we all enter that state of faith and only by faith are we led and simply move forward, bringing at the very end, we bring forth the child. So he saw me and rejoiced that he was to see my day. Saw what? He saw the child, the laughing infant, called Isaac, which really is the prototype of Jesus Christ .920 ¶9

So these are the signs and they are signs from beginning to end in scripture. So I will tell you of the signs, and when they begin to happen, don’t look back to ask how long have you been journeying. You’ve been journeying 400 years, symbolically. The 400 years may be as we measure time 8,000 years. It may be 6,000 years. I do not know, I haven’t the slightest idea this night. If I ever get it I’ll tell you before I leave. But until then I can only tell you that the signs are the measure of the end.920 ¶10

And the first sign which is God’s most majestic act in the world is resurrection. That’s his greatest sign and all the other signs are understood within the framework of that…that’s resurrection. And then you will know who you are, that you were God before you became man. You have never been less than God, but you did it for one purpose and one purpose only that God the one—-“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Hear, O Israel: The I AM our I AMs is one I AM —but for creative powers and for creative reasons it fragments itself into the Elohim. The Elohim is a plural—-the gods. And so every being in this world is one of the Elohim, and scattered beyond the wildest dream. On a frightful journey, a terrifying journey, where in the very end, when he has prepared the way to redeem all, everyone will be redeemed—-not one will be lost—-and come back into the unity that is I AM. And that I AM, as we told you recently, is called the Father—-that’s his wonderful name.920 ¶11

So the first sign, the real first sign of the awakening is the resurrection, where you awake to find yourself entombed within your skull. And then things begin to happen. Entombed within your skull…A seed must fall into the ground and die before it is made alive. If it doesn’t fall into the ground and die, it remains alone and brings forth nothing. If it falls into the ground and it dies, then it brings forth a hundredfold. So the seed, called the Elohim, it falls into the ground which is your skull and there it dies. And then after a frightening dream of creating in this world of death, it still creates, creates all kinds of things, and then it awakens. As it awakens it resurrects, for it was dead, and then it comes out, proving that what was a skull has been turned into a womb. It was a tomb and the tomb became a womb. Then it comes out of the womb, and as it comes out of the womb, the first sign is that of the child, Emmanuel—-“God is with us”—-the Christ child wrapped in swaddling clothes. So I tell you, go into Bethlehem and you will find this as a sign. And so they went quickly and they found the sign. They could not see the event but they trusted the angel’s words that it was a sign, and they found the sign.920 ¶12

Following that, now we know another sign is told us in Deuteronomy and told us first of all in Exodus. This is a nature sign, for it always happens and only happens when Israel departs from Egypt; and you are the Israel, the pure in heart. So only the Israelite can see God and the Israelite is one who is pure in heart. So here we are told that this sign always occurs with the departure of Israel from Egypt, and the sign is that of the serpent. So here is the other sign. And so, suddenly you will find that sign, whether you see it in the world as some little thing or whether you actually experience it.920 ¶13

But sometimes, as it happened this last week…the lady is not here tonight but she lives in the Palisades and she’s right on the beach and sees the ocean all the time. Walking down the beach this past week she saw a little object and said to herself, “No, why stop and pick it up? It may be some stupid little glittery little thing.” But she said, “Don’t be lazy, pick it up.” So she picked it up. It was a little ring, almost the size of a child’s ring. It was a serpent swallowing itself, with a little tiny, I presume almost valueless, jewel for a head. But nonetheless, there it was. I saw the thing last week. She walked on a few yards and something else caught her eye—-the next symbol was a cross, a little silver cross that at one time hung on someone’s necklace because it had a loop for the chain. Then she kept on walking, and then a little wooden chalice…here is the cup of wood. She brought the three that she found on the beach. They are only external symbols of the internal signs that she one day will experience. So everything in this world, this outer world, is a shadow of the inner world. So I saw them last week, right here in the little room behind…that right on our Pacific beach, one after the other, she encountered the three grand signs.920 ¶14

First, the serpent was the tempter who said, “You will not really die. He said, ‘You will die, but not really.’” So you were made to disobey and so by disobeying conscience is born. How could you ever start the journey unless conscience is born? What conscience?—-good and evil. Man must know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. But he will suppress it for personal gain until he reaches a certain point where then he reaches the point called Abraham. And Abraham believed the most impossible thing in the world, and to him it was accounted righteousness. So he starts the journey, and he leaves the haven, the sanctuary of Haran, and moves into Canaan that is cursed. Canaan is cursed by one whose secret was exposed; for the father was seen in his nudity and he who saw him saw the secret of creation. Seeing the secret of creation he cursed Canaan as a land and sent every descendant of himself into this world that he would learn how to create and to expand his power to create in this world.920 ¶15

Before we started the journey, he sets up a series of signs. They are called in the Book of John. They’re called miracles in the synoptics, and they’re called, by any other name, portents in the Old Testament. So the child will be a sign and a portent. And the serpent will be a sign and a portent. So when they begin to happen, know the end is at hand.920 ¶16

And so, when will they come? Well, I will come like Jonah. And they’re all trying to find out, what does it mean to come like Jonah? When I come, it will be just like the sign of Jonah. Matthew adds, Jonah was three days in the whale; therefore, he was three days in the earth before he rose . They are all confused as to it. The word Jonah is the Hebrew word for dove; dove in Hebrew is Jonah. I will only give you one sign and that sign is the sign of Jonah. It comes. Wait for it. He will descend upon you, and when the vision comes to an end, that descent of the dove will not have departed. He’s still on you when the vision comes to an end, smothering you with kisses. While the whole thing begins to come to an end, the dove is still upon you, so Jonah is still upon you. That is the descent of the Holy Spirit and it is forever and forever. So, you’ll know. When will the end come, O Lord? The end? This generation seeks the sign. There shall be no sign but the sign of the prophet Jonah. The prophet is telling you this is the end and Jonah, which means dove, is the symbol of the Holy Spirit, and he descends upon you as promised in scripture.920 ¶17

I will depart…for we all heard this story before we set forth, we heard everything that could ever happen to us…then he departed. Departed where?—he entered us; for we are the very being who conceived the play, who is playing the play. So, unless I go away then the Spirit cannot come; but if I go away, there is a Comforter, the Comforter will come . And so, I will depart and you will be sad, but I will come again. These are the signs by which I will awaken, and you will know that I never really left you. I am closer than ever before as we are told. So he departs from the visible world by actually becoming invisible, and never was he nearer than when he was invisible.920 ¶18

So in man is God, this Holy Spirit, who is taking us through from the beginning of it, whenever that time was, to the end, and the end we know by observing the signs. So by signs and wonders he brings his people out of Egypt. You read it carefully; only by signs and wonders would you ever know. Don’t ask, “How long, O Lord, how long?” Wait for the signs. May I tell you, not one in this world will fail, no one will fail.920 ¶19

It’s all ours! You and I conceived it; we are playing it; and in the end, when these masks are taken off, you and I will know each other more intimately than you and I have ever known anyone in this world. I’ve been a father of two children and love my wife, love her dearly. I have never known her in this world, though she bore our daughter, as I will know her, and know you, when these masks are off. There’s an intimacy when the masks are off which you can’t compare to anything here, not a thing here is like it. Here the most intimate relationship is like living at arm’s length…just like arm’s length. When these are off, we are the Elohim, and the Elohim is a compound unity. It is a unity, a oneness made up of others: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” And that’s who we are.920 ¶20

So, one by one by one the mask comes off, and you know when the mask is coming off only by the signs and wonders. And they simply…then you are told, the first shall be the last of these signs and the last shall be first. People think in this world where we live in terror and are afraid of each other by the masks that we wear, that it means that someone who is now prominent will be demoted by some tyrannical god. No, it means only the signs. The first sign recorded is the dove, in the earliest scripture and that is Mark. So the first event or sign is the dove and the last one recorded is resurrection. Well, reverse them. It’s going to happen exactly like that: The resurrection is going to come first and the dove is going to come last. So when the dove appears, which is the very last, although recorded first, it really is the last sign.920 ¶21

Then, at any moment in time, but not one second before the appointed hour, you will depart from this world. You may be the healthiest being physically, but you’re only wearing a garment. Your departure is already cut and dried; not one can add one hour to his span of life, not one being in this world. You can have all the great doctors in the world, you could have all the finest food in the world, all the medicines in the world, and they think they can put you some place where there isn’t a germ, it is so completely clean; but at your moment in time you make your departure, and you do not add one hour to your span of life. Our entrances and our exits are all predetermined.920 ¶22

But within the framework of God’s play, our play, for we are the being who conceived it, we can change all kinds of things to our amusement, really. You can be rich or you can be poor; you can be strong or you can be weak; you can be known or you can be unknown. You are encouraged to use a certain power, a certain talent, to change anything to make your life more desirable. But you aren’t going to extend it. “Who by being anxious can add a cubit to his stature?” “Who by being concerned can add a cubit to his span of life?” And the latest translation, “Who by worry can add an hour to his span of life?” So they’ve finally come down to the real meaning of the word which is stature, which is cubit. So first they gave it a spatial dimension—twenty-two inches would be the cubit—and then they turned it into time and gave the word translated cubit a time measurement of an hour. Then they took the word stature, which would be spatial and then turned it into a time measure of a span of time, span of life. So today, the perfect translation is what Goodspeed has given us: “Who by worry can add one hour to his span of life?” So your entrance is perfect, your exit is going to be perfect.920 ¶23

But within the framework of the play use your talent. Your talent can be used by a simple process: Whatever you desire, no condition attached to it, whatever you desire, believe that you’ve received it and you will. But bear in mind, we began because God imposed upon us disobedience to bring about the birth of conscience. But when conscience is born, don’t bury it! So use it! So you are free to imagine anything in this world, but remain aware of the birth of conscience, and conscience is the knowledge of right and wrong, of good and evil.920 ¶24

I need not tell you what you know to be right and what is wrong. You can always ask yourself this question if you are in any doubt whatsoever, “Would I like it done unto me?” Ask that simple question, for do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So if you are in doubt when you have a longing, an intense desire, would you like it, were things reversed, to have it done unto you? For that is conscience, the knowledge of good and evil. So you begin there. That’s how the whole vast world begins as far as God expanding his talent. So you could bury it, you could bury your conscience, and accept the evil because it seems a temporary gain, a little moment of joy, a little moment of a thrill, where you could take from someone else what you know in your heart belongs to them, but you would bury your conscience. Well, do it if you will, but then you are only putting upon yourself the most horrible tomorrows. And so use it.920 ¶25

But the real journey begins with faith, and faith is nothing more than Abraham. Abraham is not a member of a certain racial group; Abraham is the eternal state where everyone really begins the journey in faith. And so you hear the story, the whole story was told you, and then you reacted. You either believed it or you didn’t believe it. If you believed it, you start the journey. So as Paul brings out, only the sons of faith are the sons or descendants of Abraham; that no one can claim that because he is a Levite or that he belongs to the tribe of Benjamin or the tribe of someone else that he is a Jew. The true Jew is the one who is the descendant of Abraham in faith. As Bishop Pike brought out so beautifully when he was asked, being an Episcopalian and a bishop concerning the Jew, he said, “I am a Jew because I am a Christian. I could be a Jew and not be a Christian, but I can’t be a Christian and not be a Jew.” You dwell upon it. Because that’s where you start, you start in the faith of Abraham, and unless you have that faith you are still moving between Noah and Abraham.920 ¶26

We all start with Adam where conscience is born and consciousness is there; but conscience becomes the child, the first one. And then we go through the most horrible experiences; and then all the signs are set up when you enter the state called Abraham.920 ¶27

I wish I could take everyone with me this night, all together, and show you what you’ve forgotten, because you have forgotten it. Because things that I see today and see constantly now, they’re only memories, things I have known forever as you know them. Every one of them you see. I saw the whole thing before I set forth and have been up until now trying to remember them. Then comes the last and the last is simply the signs and the wonders. As they begin to unfold then night after night the vision comes back, and all that you and I shared together before we started the journey is there, all in you.920 ¶28

May I tell you, don’t ask how long between now and then: “How long, Lord, how long?” As you are warned, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But wait for the promise from the Father.” What is the promise? As told us in 2nd Corinthians, the 1st chapter, “All of the promises of God find their Yes in him” . Then you know who you are. So every promise is being realized in you by the signs and every promise of God finds its Yes in him. Of whom are they speaking? God’s creative power personified as one called Jesus Christ—-that’s you. So every promise of God will find its Yes in you.920 ¶29

So when you come…suddenly it happens. At first you are so bewildered your response is nothing more than awe and wonder. You can’t talk or think of anything but when the first thing happens. And then when the second one happens, it adds to your confusion and your bewilderment. And you go back and you read the scriptures for intimations and for foreshadowings of what is taking place in you, and you see it had to take place because it was all foretold. The third one happens and then the fourth one happens. Here when the fourth one happens…for the first I would call a double one like two sides of a coin, resurrection and birth come the same moment, just one moment after the other. And so the minute you are awake, you come out of the womb which is the tomb of your skull. So they’re are two events but they’re really one, one follows on the other at the same moment or the same night, I [...]. Then comes the second grand event, the discovery of the fatherhood of God; the discovery of yourself as God the Father who conceived it and then fragmented himself into all these things. Then comes the third, your real departure from this realm—the serpent. And then comes the fourth one and that is the end. As you’re told, it all started…and he named the fourth one Judah. He is the one, the gate, the Daleth, through which all things pass.920 ¶30

Now, don’t for one moment think that because you aren’t the fourth child physically you aren’t the fourth. May I tell you, you are. There are numberless ways of arriving at the fourth, at the Daleth. You could be the fourth in your class and not the brightest and yet that’s the one chosen. You could be the fourth to come through the door one day. You can be then fourth in a million different ways, but in some peculiar way the mystery is so set up that through the door you go, and the door is the fourth. The fourth letter is Daleth and that is the fourth. In my own case, I am the fourth physically of the children of my mother, but it doesn’t mean that I would have to be physically the fourth. My daughter is my wife’s first child, she happens to be my second, but she could be the fourth in her class or she could be the fourth in marks, she could be the fourth in many ways, as you can be.920 ¶31

Don’t try to analyze it, it’s all been done. But within the framework of what has already been arranged for us you play it beautifully.920 ¶32

You just take God’s law, assume that you are now this night the man, the woman that you want to be. Live it fully in your Imagination and sleep in it just as though it were true, and fall asleep in that assumption. And be as faithful to that as the state called Abraham is faithful to the vision when he rejoiced that he was to see my day, he saw it and he was glad; and then started the journey leaving the haven of Haran. He left the sanctuary, the comfort of that wonderful home, and moved into a land where he knew by prophecy he would be a slave of slaves to all his brothers. So he moves right into the cursed land, the land of Canaan. And the land is cursed; he takes upon himself the curse of the world and becomes obedient unto slavery; then hoped for, because the memory remained with him, that he would be redeemed by signs and wonders.920 ¶33

Then came that moment in time when the first sign appeared. In his case, it was the child, it was Isaac. So Isaac is not some little thing that is born of generation, it’s something that was promised. It’s only a sign. Some will call it (I will go along with them) it’s simply the generation of God…and he brings forth his child. But the child is brought forth that’s seen by others; the shepherds saw it, but they didn’t see the being who awoke; for that being awoke in an entirely different dimension, and that being could not be seen by the eye that would see the sign. So let us go quickly and see the sign this day. So Simeon saw the sign and knew the sign was for the fall and rising of many in Israel. He knew it, but he couldn’t see that which the sign represented. He was only told, as the prophet, that it represented the birth of God this day in Bethlehem. And so in this city of Bethlehem he was born, and go and see the sign.920 ¶34

When you see the sign, well, certainly you’ll see the sign…that is not an unnatural thing…every child is wrapped in swaddling clothes. But you don’t see it in the flesh, you see it in Spirit. And so it is supernatural in the sense that you only encounter the child, this heavenly child in the Spirit, as you encounter all the states. David, you encounter him in the Spirit: “Did not David in the Spirit call me Father?” . Not in the flesh! We are separated by, well, 3,000 years, but in the Spirit we aren’t separated…he calls me Father. So everyone will experience these things in Spirit…all these signs are yours.920 ¶35

So by signs and wonders he brings us, his people, out of Egypt. And when we are all brought out, once more we form the unity that is ours before, for creative purposes, we fragmented ourselves and became a divided, conflicting, fiery state.920 ¶36

So when you read the scripture in the future, bear in mind it is simply an infinite play. It’s divine history, not ever to be known by any historical research. There is no archeologist who will ever find anything in this world to either prove or disprove the claims of scripture. It was never intended to be understood as secular history, never! And every character in it from beginning to end is a state of consciousness that’s eternal. And these states, one day you will see them, actually see them. You will see them sometimes coalesced into one man; and then you will see them scattered into nations, and places, infinite numbers of people, and one day, all together. And as you look, it is really the Lord of Lords, but he has your face, and you know it. You’re looking right into your own being when the time comes for your return and your departure from this wheel of recurrence. Now let us go into the Silence.920 ¶37

Tonight’s subject is “Repent and Believe in the Gospel.” When you read the words, you wonder, what is it all about? These are the first words put into the mouth of the central figure of the entire Bible, Jesus Christ. This is the earliest gospel, the gospel of Mark. You read it in the very first chapter, the 15th verse, “Repent.” Then he tells us, “The time is fulfilled; repent, and believe in the gospel.” What is this time being fulfilled? “The time is fulfilled” simply means the time foreseen by the prophets, the time fixed in God’s own foreknowledge. For he said, “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late.” So the time is fulfilled: the time for the hatching has come. It does not say that if you and I repent that we would in any way aid this passage. But as man repents, he does not in any way cooperate with God in bringing him in. Then you are God. Then you are [...] whether we repent or not. And so the door is open for everyone to enter; not because of their repentance. The door is open and when the time is fulfilled for the individual, then he enters, whether in the interval he repented or not. Yet we are invited to repent. Why?919 ¶1

Because divine history is culminated; human history is cyclic. And so, you may wait without repentance for the entire cycle, then move and move and move, and suffer beyond the wildest dream of man. At the end, when it’s all culminated, then you enter. But why suffer that much? And so, he calls upon us to repent. To repent means “to turn from and to turn to.” It’s like praying. It’s an art. I turn from what I don’t want in this world and turn to what I want in this world. Turning to, I am repenting. To repent means “a radical change of attitude toward life.” But not only to turn from it, but to turn to what I want in place of what I am presenting in this world. So here we find these four statements. The time is fulfilled; it’s already happened, and the first [...] is broken, and all are moving through the open door, leading to a new order called the kingdom of God. So, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” Believe in the gospel—believe in the good news of salvation—that’s what it really means. Hear the story of salvation and believe in it, for every word of it is true.919 ¶2

Tonight, we’re going to stress repentance, but I cannot leave the platform without telling you that it has come and every word is true. We are told, “There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the kingdom of God.” And many scholars have scoffed at that word. There is no record that they saw the kingdom of God, and yet they were told they would not taste of death before they saw the kingdom of God. I stand here as a witness to the truth of that statement. We are told in the 14th chapter of the Book of Luke that, here, he is giving a banquet, it’s a messianic banquet: Go out into the highways, the byways, and bring in first the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind. When he made that statement the servant said, what you have commanded is already done, and still there is room. Go out into the ways now and command all to come in. But only these four followed him, the blind, the poor, the maimed, and the lame. Bring them in. And they are all seated waiting for the coming of host, who was Messiah. Suddenly he appeared and restored to wholeness. That’s the banquet.919 ¶3

They don’t gorge themselves, as we would on this level; they’re completely restored. The blind began to see. Well, if you think you haven’t played these parts, may I tell you, you are not going to play them, you are playing them. Until the time is fulfilled in your individual cases you will continue to play them. Well then, what are these parts? I may this night be a billionaire and I cannot buy health, am I not poor? I may buy yes-men, but I can’t buy real respect. I can’t buy anything with my billions. Look into the world. There are people who are multi-millionaires and they cannot buy health. They can buy all the services of the medical world, but they can’t buy health. They can buy all the pills in the world, but they can’t buy health. Are they not poor? They do not see God’s purpose, God’s plan, for as we are told, “He put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man could not find out what he has done from the beginning to the end”. Are they not blind? Sure they’re blind. They can’t see what God has done from the beginning to the end. Are they not maimed? They may not be physically handicapped, but there are men living in this world who, unless they can express themselves physically, feel themselves impotent, when time takes its toll and outlaws that so-called urge in man, and they can’t buy it. All the transforming of monkey glands in the world cannot produce in them what time, called Nature, has outlawed. So they’re maimed, they’re lame.919 ¶4

Now let me share with you my experience. It happened in 1946, when suddenly I found myself lifted up, and a heavenly chorus is singing that I am risen. They called me by name and proclaimed my identity, saying that I’m risen. And here I found myself like a being of fire, clothed in a garment of air. There was no sun, no moon, no stars, no need of light; I was the light. I radiated light. Not like a noonday sun, just a twilight, a soft lovely light. And here as far as my eye could see were seated the poor, the blind, the maimed, the lame. And then I came by. And as I came by, gliding—I didn’t walk, I simply glided by—everyone was restored to wholeness. Not one was left untouched as I walked by, glided by. And when the very last was restored to complete perfection, complete wholeness, then the chorus exulted, “It is finished.” Then I left that banquet and found myself crystallizing once more into this garment of flesh, for unfinished business here.919 ¶5

So I have experienced the 14th chapter of Luke. So when he said, “Let them call everyone in the world,” they all made excuses. He said, “I did not come to save the righteous but the sinners. For there’s a greater rejoicing in heaven when one sinner repents than ninety and nine righteous who have no need of repentance.” So you invite this one and he doesn’t think he needs anything in this world. He knows that he sees perfectly, and he’s as blind as a bat. He doesn’t know God’s purpose, but he thinks he sees perfectly. Then you invite this one, he doesn’t feel any limitations in his world, so he’s not maimed, he’s not lame. So he makes an excuse. Then comes another and he makes excuses. He isn’t poor. He can buy a home, buy three if he wants it. He has no sense of poverty, and he doesn’t know how poor he is. He said to the servant, “Go out into the highways and the hedges, and you bring in all the blind, and all the maimed, and all the lame, and all the poor”; and the servant said, “It’s already done, what you’ve commanded.”919 ¶6

Just exactly like that, for it was already done when I rose within myself, rose as David rose into Zion. For we are told that no one could take Zion; the lame, the blind, the halt, would ward them off. That’s all that you needed in Zion, the lame and the blind, they could ward them off. And David began to build in a circle. And he built not only a circle but he built inward at the same time, performing the most fantastic architectural feat, which is to build in a circle and inward at the same time, is to build in a spiral. That’s exactly what takes place in you, when you’re lifted up to give the grand banquet. You find yourself moving up in a spiral. You’re pulled out of yourself just as though you’re a whirlwind, in a spiral. And suddenly you’re clothed in your prenatal wholeness, in your primal form, clothed in this being of fire, as you are fire, and clothed in air. And then you walk by and they’re all seated on the ground as far as the eye can see, an infinite sea of human imperfection. And this is your banquet, the banquet of Messiah. Messiah is giving this banquet: “Feed upon me.”919 ¶7

And so they behold the one passing by, yes, even those without organs in their skulls. And as you walk by they become what they behold. And so because you felt yourself one with perfection, everyone beholding you as you walk by feeds upon you, and man invariably becomes what he beholds. And so, here, that story is true, every word of it is true.919 ¶8

And so, the time is fulfilled. Not because of anything I did as a man as to repentance. Whether I repent or not the time is fulfilled. God’s period for hatching out has come and they’re all being hatched out. It is my hope, but I can’t prophesy, that everyone here will be hatched out this night. For the joy of being hatched out, where the circle is over. For human history is cyclic; divine history is culminated. And so, you go over and over on this wheel and finally comes that moment in time when up you go, like David taking Zion, in that spiral motion. And here, you give a banquet. And you only give it, read it carefully, everyone refuses the invitation but the blind, the maimed, the lame, and the poor. And so, I’ve played every part in this world. Yes, physical poverty, physical blindness, physical maimedness, physical lameness, I’ve played those parts. But no matter what part I’ve ever played, I still incorporated in the part all of these qualities. I have a memory of being fabulously wealthy. And yet, I was, in that state, poor. I could not buy help. I could not buy the respect of people. I could buy yes-people, but I couldn’t buy the real respect of people. So I have the memory of that state. Never once did I lose the sense of I-ness. You are individualized and you will continue to be more and more individualized forever and forever. You will never lose the sense of I-ness that you have now, never, not in eternity. You’re individualized. And so all these characters you have played, and you are playing, and will continue to play until that moment in time when you break the surface. You break it by an act of God. It is he who breaks it, and out you come, just like…919 ¶9

Well, tonight’s story is repentance. Because you’re on the wheel anyway, and you can’t get off the wheel; and you must continue on that wheel until that moment of hatching. “At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.” So why repentance? Well, to ease the blow, to cushion it. For it is a play, a horrible play, may I tell you, it’s a horrible play, something that is sheer fantasy if you saw it in its inception, sheer fantasy. But while it’s being played, now comes an awakening. Man can, while he is playing it, repent. And repentance hasn’t a thing to do with remorse, not a thing to do with regret, all to do with a radical change of attitude toward life. A radical change of inner attitude toward life results in an external change corresponding to the inner change. It’s all an inner thing, told us in the Sermon on the Mount. He said, “Do you think I have come to abolish the law and the prophets? I have not come to abolish them; I have come to fulfill them. For I tell you, should heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, shall pass from the law; it will all be fulfilled”. And then he explains the law, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you anyone who looks lustfully on a woman has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart”. That to restrain the impulse is not good enough. Man thought if the act was not performed he didn’t perform it. And here I am told that was not it at all: the impulse was in itself the act. Well, that means an imaginal act is fact.919 ¶10

For I am [...] mentally and performed the act, and that was the act, even though, physically, for one reason or another, I didn’t do it. I might have contemplated the act along with its consequences to myself or my family or society and then I was afraid. But my fear, which restrained me from performing it physically, wasn’t good enough. I am told, to contemplate it is the act. Now, if causation is mental to that extent, now repent. I need not be a slave of the things as they pass before me. I can interfere with the otherwise mechanical structure of the brain. I don’t have to simply watch the screen as it passes before me and observe a panorama; I can dislike it and interfere with it. So something is happening in my world, something appears on my body and I don’t like it. It’s something that disfigures my face or my form, and I don’t like it. So why must I tolerate it? I can repent. I can revise it. If I actually see myself as I would like to be seen by the world and remain faithful to that feeling, just as though it were true, I will change it in my world. It doesn’t mean I am ripening any better and any faster because of that, but until that moment of fulfillment of time, as far as I the individual goes, do it anyway. And cushion the blows as I move from where I start to where I must go for this ripeness to complete itself that I may burst the shell and come out as God.919 ¶11

For everyone is coming out as God. There’s only God begetting himself, that’s all there is in this world. There’s nothing but God. And whether you believe it or want to believe it or not, the most horrible beast in the world is God being hatched out. And in the end, it is just as though he never did anything that the cyclic motion tells us that he did. Yes, a Hitler, a Stalin, or others that are not yet recorded in the world—all will be hatched out. And they were never Stalin, they were never Hitler, these are only garments that they wore in the cyclic motion of human history. So when we come out we are never these garments that we wore. As Blake said, “Oh, Satan, thou art but a dunce. Thou canst not tell the garment from the man.” We see the garment and we think it’s the man.919 ¶12

May I tell you, if I could but share with you an experience when you get to the apex and he’s almost enticing you to discover himself. He’s bringing you up to the very point where he’s enticing you and encouraging you to discover, who?—himself. And he’s you. And you see you were never this thing at all. These things that you judge so harshly, the same being is playing all the parts, but every part in the world. So while we are playing it, repent, for the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel, believe in the good news of salvation. And the good news of salvation: at that very moment when the shell breaks you pass through a series of events that leaves no trace within you of any [...], and you know who you are. So, Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened, in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. And I tell you from experience they have happened and they will happen in the life of every being in this world. Not one will fail, because you can’t fail. Because you aren’t doing it, the being in the depth of yourself who is God, the only God, he’s doing it. We all will come out in spite of what we have done as you play the part here.919 ¶13

So when it comes to repentance, put it in this light. It’s simple. Start with a simple process. Imagining is spiritual sensation. And take a simple little thing now that isn’t here [...]. It is not present that you and I can see it. I love to use a flower, any flower, but I like a rose. So I will imagine a rose. Well, I can’t physically see it, but I can see it in my mind’s eye, it’s very vivid. And I can smell it. And I can feel it. So Imagination is spiritual sensation. So I can see the reality of what is not physical to the world. To me it’s real.919 ¶14

The same sensation I apply now toward repentance, no matter how I repent. If tonight there is a lady present or a man present, who is single and who would like a companion in this world, in the right sense of the word, where they feel wanted. When they come home and he or she is not present, you will say, “Where is everybody?” If there are a dozen people present and the mate isn’t present, you say, “Where is everybody?” The house is empty. No matter how many people are present, it’s empty if she or he, the loved one, isn’t present. That’s a perfect relationship, a perfect mate, in this world. So, if this night you retired and she or he, the mate, naturally would be in the house, could you feel their presence as you felt the rose? Could you detect their presence? All right, you could feel it. You can sense it. Extend your imaginary hand and touch the individual. If you would, if it is your habit to kiss people goodnight, all right, kiss him or kiss her goodnight. And live in that state just as though it were true. That’s repentance.919 ¶15

To repent is simply a radical change, not a little change, a radical change of attitude toward life. So life is barren? Repent. If you don’t repent, you’re on the wheel and you’re going to play it over and over. But it does not mean you will not, when it’s right, come out as God. No, it doesn’t mean that you will not. So if a man does not repent he still is born of God. If he repents, he does not in any way cooperate with God in bringing about the new order. So repentance is given to man that while he’s in this world that is a horrible play he can cushion the blows and simply make it easier for him in this world. But no matter how great you are in this world you’re still poor, you’re still lame, you’re still maimed, and you’re still blind. So if you don’t know what God hid in your mind from the beginning of time to the very end, and so hid it that you do not know what he’s done from the beginning to the end, then you must be blind as to his purpose. That’s told us so clearly in the 3rd chapter of Ecclesiastes, the 15th verse, “he hid it.”919 ¶16

I’ll tell you one night before we close what he hid, for I have found it. I found exactly what he hid in the minds of man, and hid it from the beginning to the end, and so hid it that man couldn’t find out what he did from the beginning to the end. But the end has come, as far as I’m concerned, and so it was revealed to me what he hid. He hid the secret of his fatherhood: that no power in the world could show me that I’m a father but my son. So the very last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, “A son honors his father:”—the very first chapter—“if then I am a father, where is my honor?” In other words, where is my son? And that’s what he hid. In the beginning he hid it until the very end of the days. He brings him out by an explosion. He stands before you and calls you Father. That’s what he hid. Calling you Father and knowing who he is—he’s God’s only begotten son—then you know who you are. So it’s God coming out, and only God exploding and revealing himself, and it takes his Son to show you who you really are.919 ¶17

As to repentance, learn the art of repentance. It’s the greatest secret in the world as to cushioning the blows and making life easier in this world. Therefore, no one in this world really need despair. They can always repent. I don’t care where you were inserted into the wheel, how you start life, you can always repent. And so, learn the art of repentance. As you learn it, then no matter where you start you can go where you want to in this world. You can start unknown, unwanted, unloved, and then if you desire to be wanted, desire to be loved, then completely ignore the evidence of the senses and rearrange your mind so that you are really wanted, really loved. Fall asleep night after night in the assumption that it is true, I am wanted, I am loved, and the world will reflect it, you’ll be wanted and you’ll be loved.919 ¶18

In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake said he dined with Ezekiel and Isaiah, and he said to Isaiah, “Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so make it so?” And Isaiah replied, “All poets believe that it does, and in ages of Imagination a firm persuasion removed mountains. But many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything today.” That I can persuade myself that I am the man that at the moment reason denies, my senses deny?—yes. It’s a simple, simple technique and this is how I work it. There are many here this night who have done it and you will go along with me. This is how I do it and I know that some of you do it.919 ¶19

You simply, wherever you are you imagine that you are where you would like to be or you imagine that you are what you want to be. Well, that’s a mental motion, isn’t it? It’s not a physical motion. If I want to be in, say, San Francisco and I’m here in Los Angeles, and I assume I am in San Francisco, well then, that’s a mental motion, for physically I am here. Well, how will I know that I have made the journey? Well, motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to another object. There is no other way of knowing that something moved unless there is some frame of reference against which the object moved. So, I will assume I am in San Francisco. If I really am in San Francisco I should know it only by observing my world. I am looking at my world, so I will think now of Los Angeles. I should see it five hundred miles to the south of me, a way to the south of me, five hundred miles. I would think of other areas and they must be related to my assumption. If I see them as I would see them were this now a physical fact, I made the journey, I moved. I made my mental adjustment. I have repented.919 ¶20

Now, fall asleep. Though physically here, I put on the mental state and fall asleep in it. For man being all Imagination, man must be wherever he is in Imagination. And so, in Imagination I am in San Francisco. Time will not allow the journey, then my finances will not allow the journey, maybe all kinds of things will not allow the journey, my commitments here, but I am going to journey. Do you know that all of my commitments will reshuffle themselves, and my finances will reshuffle itself, and my time commitments all will reshuffle themselves to permit that journey? And I will be compelled to make it, whether I afterwards desire it or not. So I’ve gone and made the journey. Having done it inwardly then everything moves to compel that physical journey.919 ¶21

You do the same thing with finances. Say, you have no money. All right, if you had it how would you see your present circle of friends? Instead of talking negatively to them and asking them what you should do or maybe they could help you, all of a sudden they know of your good fortune. They knew of it. And so let the same frame of reference reflect the change in you. If your present friends know of the good fortune in your life, they’ll know it. You will see it on their faces, you’ll hear it in their voices, and you will simply be aware of it. Well now, make the mental journey from not having to having, and use this frame of reference to prove that you’ve made a motion.919 ¶22

The whole thing is a motion in mind. I am telling you when this whole dream is over you have never left home. You’ve never journeyed. You’ve never really made any trip whatsoever, in spite of all these trips in the world. You’ve been sound asleep in heaven, but sound asleep, and compelled to dream the dream of this life. And here, we have the experience of motion, all these experiences, but we never left heaven. Not in eternity have we ever left. So the expulsion was seeming, in a dream, and the whole thing is an adjustment in mind. Every adjustment in mind, if you desire the adjustment, is real repentance.919 ¶23

So repent and believe in the gospel. The gospel, I tell you, is literally true, word for word. I had no idea until 1959, in the month of July, that it was literally true. I taught it as law and got wonderful results from coast to coast in all the major cities. But I didn’t know the story, that I must believe in the gospels and believing in it that it was literally true, but no idea that everyone in this world would experience, when that fullness of time had come relative to him, everything said of Jesus Christ. He gives the banquet. He is Messiah. And unnumbered thousands wait for him to come by to feed them, not with bread and wine, but to feed them by beholding him, and he being whole they become what they behold. And all are transformed into the wholeness that they had lost as they play these parts in this world. The blind that’s restored to perfect sight, the maimed, the lame, the poor, all restored to fullness, to the wholeness that was there. And so, man clothed in his pre-natal wholeness, in his primal form, walks by and sees unnumbered thousands waiting for him. But no righteous is present, no complacent; only these four qualities are present, multiplied to the nth degree. I can’t tell you how vast that sea of human imperfection was as you walk by it. And without effort it is all done, and that heavenly chorus, as told us in Revelation, the 144,000 formed the chorus, the redeemed singing your praise as you walk by, and then exult at the very end, and say it is all finished. The very last words on the cross, “It’s finished.” And every one made whole.919 ¶24

Then you return here to practice and to teach repentance. Because you can’t change that interval of time: For a “vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.” It’s like pregnancy, wait, it’s coming… and then the joy of the breaking of the shell when you come out as he who begot you. There’s only God. So in this 1st chapter, the 15th verse of the Book of Mark, the earliest of the gospels, where man is called upon to listen and the time is fulfilled, all that they foresaw is now upon us. The kingdom of God is really at hand. Now repent and believe the good news of salvation.919 ¶25

And so, whether you believe it or not, you will be saved. But if you believe it and practice it, it doesn’t in any way hasten the moment of breaking the shell, but you do make life for yourself on this horrible wheel of recurrence, you make it easier. And that’s why I can say to everyone live so that your mind can store a past worthy of recall, because you are on the wheel of recurrence. If you don’t change it now, it will confront you tomorrow.919 ¶26

The main events in human life, like the thing that happened two weeks ago, they seem beyond human control, completely beyond, seemingly. The lady who saw it before it happened, and saw it so clearly ten days before, she forgot. Within a matter of seconds she completely forgot that she’d seen it, saw the headlines, complete headlines, “Kennedy Shot.” And in three seconds it all vanished, only to be recalled ten days later when the paper, un[...] page, on the green sheet, was placed before her. But she didn’t see it, didn’t remember it. So memory failed. As you are told, “There’s no memory of former things.” She saw it perfectly. That was a crisis in the history, which is a type of history, secular history of the world. And so she was made to forget. Another lady who saw it and even warned the authorities, they wouldn’t even listen to her warning, because they couldn’t.919 ¶27

But in the minor things of life, like getting more money, getting health, getting companionship, these are minor, you get all these things in the world. This present week, telephone calls and a letter, a lovely letter from this friend of mine, who is now living down the coast, a complete change in a job and everything he did prior to the second job fitted him for the job. He is thrilled beyond measure for what he has today. He couldn’t dream that he could ever get it. And everything added up to what he has by the application of this principle by his own confession in the letter. A telephone call today—a similar job from this friend about the same age, and he despaired of this other job. Now this is far bigger, more responsibilities, more money, more everything, right where he wanted, in this city—by repentance.919 ¶28

You don’t call it repentance, because I have changed the word in my book, and I call it “revision.” Because repentance has become almost outdated in the misuse of the word, for we think it means to feel regretful, to feel remorseful. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. It’s simply a radical change of attitude toward the effects of life. Instead of reacting and recording them and reflecting them, affect them. To repent is to affect life rather than to reflect life, and unless you repent you’re only reflecting life. The whole thing is before you and you simply come upon scene after scene after scene and reflect it. So outside of these major crises in the world, the turning points in history, secular history, man must interfere with every little thing in this world. And we’re invited to try it, to interfere.919 ¶29

So, the story is, you will be saved whether you repent or not. And you’re not going to delay the time of your birth by not repenting and you’re not going to hasten your birth by repenting, for the vision has its own appointed hour. But, he who first broke the shell, the first to be raised from the dead, told us to repent and invites us all to bring about a complete change of attitude toward life, even though God’s fixed vision for us remains fixed and he will not change it whether we change our views or not. And in the end we come out, we all come out as God. No loss of identity, none whatsoever, only a greater being: We encompass God. You and I are the immortal parts of the immortal God, who is one, but one in a strange way, one made up of others. And we are the others… the immortal parts that make the one being that is God. So you could not in eternity cease to be. You can’t vanish from the scene. And one day, at the appointed hour, you awaken. You aren’t any better than the other, because God is one, and his name is one… completely perfected and made whole.919 ¶30

So, all of the stories of perfection as told in scripture are true. And so, as I stand before you I can confess I have given the banquet. I call all that I have played in this world, all the blind, all the lame, the poor, and the maimed, and they’re all waiting for me, seated on the ground waiting for me to come. Then came that wonderful final motion, as David took Zion, and so, I found myself clothed in my primal form, a being of fire in a body of air, and walked by and fed them by letting them behold me. As they beheld me they were completely restored to their wholeness and everyone was restored. At the very end when the last was completely restored, the exultation of this choral group! And then, back here to tell you about it.919 ¶31

Now let us go into the Silence.919 ¶32

As I told you when I opened last Monday, this will be the most practical course you ever heard. It will be the most profoundly spiritual, but whatever is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most directly practical. And the promise I made you on Monday I’ll keep tonight. It seems the most extravagant claim in the world. The man who stands before you, who must make the inevitable exit from this world and this little garment be turned into dust, and that I dare to tell you I will this night bring you to the Lord Jesus Christ. I will bring you to him this night. You may not believe him, you may not accept it, that’s entirely up to you, but I will bring you to him.918 ¶1

As told in scripture, “And Philip found Nathaniel, and he said to Nathaniel, ‘I have found him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’” Now, in this same first chapter of John, John makes the statement, “Among you stands one whom you do not know. I myself did not know him; but he who sent me to baptize with water, he said to me, ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, he baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I saw the Holy Spirit descend as a dove and it remained upon him. Through him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Now, you listen to it carefully, for I’ll bring you to him this night, as we’re told in scripture Philip brought Nathaniel. Listen carefully as I unfold these words, because they are so important to you to really follow what I’m going to talk about. I have titled this “Behold This Dreamer.”918 ¶2

If you are familiar with scripture, it’s the 37th chapter of Genesis, and the one spoken of is Joseph. “Behold this dreamer cometh.” So he came, his brothers sold him into slavery in the land of Egypt; and Joseph saves the entire civilization from starvation by interpreting the dreams of Pharaoh. Then be bought the entire land of Egypt for Pharaoh, including those who stole the land and made all of them slaves of Pharaoh; and then he was the great power next to Pharaoh. The Bible begins, the Book of Genesis, “In the beginning God…” and it ends “…in a coffin in Egypt.” The one placed in a coffin is Joseph: “In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt.” And yet, this one placed in the coffin in Egypt, before he’s placed there, he extracts from his brothers the promise they would not let him remain there; they would take his bones up and take him back to where his fathers were. That’s on the surface.918 ¶3

Here, in scripture you cannot take the characters Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and eliminate them and still have the Bible. They are found in the two genealogies of Jesus Christ, both in Matthew and in Luke. In fact, Matthew begins it with Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and so on. So here we find these three, the inner core of the patriarchs of scripture. Yet, they have not turned up in any ancient Near East manuscript or record, either as individuals or as tribes. If these are the core, the entire background of that which is now brought to complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ, and that is part of his genealogy, and they are not discovered outside of scripture in any ancient contemporary world, either as individuals or as tribes, why? This whole drama unfolds within you. These are the eternal states through which man, the immortal you, must pass. And you begin in the state called Abraham, and you end in the state called Jesus Christ. When you end there you awaken and you are the creator of it all, God himself.918 ¶4

So here, listen carefully as I take these passages, and just try to recall them, try to keep them in mind as I unfold them; for I’m bringing to you this night the great dreamer who dreams everything into being, but everything, good, bad and indifferent. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me” . Galatians [...]. “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Note the difference in tense. “If we have been united with him in a death like his”—that’s past; we have all been crucified with him—“we shall be”—now come to the future—“we shall be united with him in a resurrection like his” . The identical resurrection! “In him the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily” —not figuratively, but genuinely in a body. In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. “This is the mystery hid for ages and generations…Christ in you, the hope of glory” . Therefore, “I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in me” . In me! What glory? The whole Godhead dwells bodily in me, and when it’s unveiled, I am he.918 ¶5

Now you listen carefully as I bring you now to meet him dwelling bodily in me—not a portion of him, the whole Godhead dwells bodily in me. And I use myself as an example, but I say he dwells in you, the whole, not a portion of him. Can I prove it? Now I’m called upon to test myself, “Test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, ask that of anyone who calls himself a Christian and if they are honest, they would say, “No, I don’t realize that at all.” And here is Paul in his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, the 13th chapter, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourselves.”918 ¶6

Now you must make the most daring test in the world of Jesus Christ. Brood upon him, learn to know him better, and then as I am doing this night pass on to our successors what we have found in him. If he dwells in me bodily and I’m called upon to test myself to find him, well, I cannot be indolent about this. I must make every attempt in this world to find him. He dwells in me bodily and the whole, not a little part, the whole Godhead dwells in him bodily, and he dwells in me in his fullness, then I’ve got to find him. Only the indolent mind would fail to respond to this challenge. Well, I was not [...] about him. My whole life has been devoted to finding him; and finding him I have done. I found him.918 ¶7

Let us go back now and get a few words and define them for you. He dwells in me bodily; therefore, like myself he must have organs, he must. On the outward self I have organs—I see, I hear, I smell, I taste. Well, the eye is the organ of vision, the ear the organ of hearing, the nostril the organ of smell, and so on. An organ is any part of an organism that performs some definite function…that is an organ. An organism is an organized or living being, that’s an organism. I see here and I can touch this, and I can do all the things here now. But I am looking for something far greater, something in me through whom the entire world was made: “…through which all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made.” I’ve got to find him. He has a body; it must have organs just as I have organs here. Now I put him to the test.918 ¶8

Think of your living room right now, just think of it. You see it with your mind’s eye, don’t you? If someone changed a piece of furniture or changed a picture, on returning home tonight you’d know it. You’d recognize that someone came in my absence and there’s a change, because this is not the way I left it. But right now you remember it as you left it and you can see it in your mind’s eye, see it with the eye of Imagination.918 ¶9

Alright, can you hear the sound of a voice that is not even in this world? My father made his exit in ’59, my mother in ’41, I can hear their voices as distinctly as though they were here in the flesh. So I don’t have to go back for now some voice that is still being echoed in this world, I go to voices that are gone from this sphere. I can hear my brother now, who recently departed this world on the 4th of August. We were born and raised like fingers on a hand. No one could feel important in the family, because we all were just simply like one. We all would be pulled right down, all one.918 ¶10

And this past summer in Barbados he was making his departure from this world—we all knew it, and they all thought I was, too—but this was his greeting to me in the morning. Called me up one morning and he said—my sister answered the phone—he said, “Is the Lord there? Put him on the wire.” He knew exactly who he was calling. And so when I got on he said, “Are you my kid brother?” “Yes, I’m your kid brother, but I’m your Lord.” I knew exactly what, because Daphne said, “He wants the Lord.” So here I am talking to him and then he said, “Do you feel alright?” I said, “I feel fine, why?” “Well, you sound sober.” I can hear him say it now, “Why, you sound sober…you can’t be alright.” And that was my brother Lawrence to me. But I can hear that voice as distinctly as though he were here.918 ¶11

So I can hear with an organ that is not this ear. I can see with an eye that is not this eye. I can taste with a tongue that is not this tongue. And I can feel with a hand that is not this hand. Try it. Can you feel a baseball? Can you feel a tennis ball? Can you feel a piece of mohair like this? Well, can you feel numberless different objects? Well, who is doing the feeling? You have imagined the object, but the being that is performing the act of the touch and the taste and the sight, do you know who he is? That is Christ Jesus. That is the immortal you who cannot die. No man can die because this presence is not tied to this. It cannot die. But it must completely awaken, and when it awakens it is God the Father.918 ¶12

This is the immortal dreamer in man, dreaming dreams that could save the entire world, as the prototype called Joseph saved the whole vast civilized world from starvation. He could dream and interpret the universal language of dream, and make earthly preparations based upon the dream. He rose to the very heights; and in the very end he could forgive all; forgive those, his brothers, who sold him into slavery. All go into slavery.918 ¶13

Now listen to the words carefully, “And the Lord spoke unto Moses and said, ‘The time has come for you to sleep with your fathers; and this people will rise up and play the part of the harlot, with strange gods of the land, where they will be going to be alive. And I will in that day hide my face from them because of the evil which they have done, having gone and worshipped strange gods” . That’s in Deuteronomy, just before he gathers himself together and sleeps with his fathers. Here we find idolatry equated with playing the harlot.918 ¶14

Now, you say, “I believe in God.” It’s an external God? Well then, you are playing the part of a harlot. I don’t care what god you worship that is external to this one that I’ve just introduced you to. When you put your hand upon the tennis ball and I asked you at the moment, “Who is feeling it?” you would have replied “I am.” Well, that’s his name. If I say, “What are you hearing?” and then you tell me that you are hearing something, and I say, “Who is hearing?” you would have replied, “I am.” Well, that’s his name. “That is my name forever…and by this name I shall be known throughout all generations” . So, you would have replied “Yes,” correctly, “I am.” But it’s not the God you worship.918 ¶15

You go to church and you see these strange, monstrous things that men have created. Images fashioned out of their own hands and they worship them, and think that is God. So I speak to the orthodox of any denomination, whether it be Christian, Jew, Mohammedan, and they have an external god to whom they turn. And they do not know they are playing the part of the harlot, for “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name” . If my Maker is my husband and I turn to another other than my Maker, well then, I am playing the part of a harlot. I am serving a strange and false god, and I am now not faithful to my husband who is my Maker. Well, who is my Maker? “My name is I AM.” You will never find God in eternity, not the real one, save in a first-person, singular, present-tense experience. That’s when you’ll find him. He reveals himself in the first-person, present-tense experience; not plural, singular. And it takes his one only begotten Son to reveal him to yourself. He stands before you and calls you Father. And there is no uncertainty in this moment; you know exactly who he is and exactly who you are. You are the Elohim. You are the God spoken of in the very first verse of scripture, “In the beginning God…”—where?—“in a coffin in Egypt.”918 ¶16

This is the coffin, this is the sepulcher, the tomb of God. And what was originally only the tomb of God becomes transformed into the womb from which God is born. So the tomb becomes a womb, and out you come, born from above, the being that is God. By the act of self-limitation he achieves his purpose of expansion: the story of the little seed that falls into the ground—“Unless it falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it falls into the ground and dies, it brings forth much.” It expands beyond the wildest dream of man. So he falls into the ground, like this, and dies, complete and utter amnesia. And I don’t know who he is, so I play the part of the harlot. And they ask me to worship this god, to worship that god, and I bow down before so-called more important than me.918 ¶17

You hear people say, “Who do you think I saw today? I had lunch at a certain place…who do you think was there?” All ears…and they mention some little [...], and they’re so impressed, so impressed with this peculiar little thing that took place at a lunch. He didn’t pick up their check for them. Paid his own check and he couldn’t care less if people were there or not. But you’re so impressed by his own press agent who is building an image for him to his own satisfaction. And you’re impressed…when “Among you stands one whom you do not know.” While you were eating whatever you ate, there was one present whom you did not know, and he was Christ Jesus, the hope of glory. “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” This is the one of whom I speak.918 ¶18

And when you touch these imaginary objects…the word imaginary in the dictionary is defined as “existing only in the Imagination; unreal,” that’s what they say. Let me tell you, Imagination is the divine body in every man. “Man is all Imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of God”—and therefore man—“is the Imagination” . “God the Creator is like pure imagining in myself. He works in the very depths of my soul, underlying all of my faculties, including perception, but he streams into my surface life least disguised in the form of productive fancy” . So I sit alone and I perform a certain imaginary act; and I trust this presence implicitly who is performing the act, for all things are possible to him. [...] man? Yes, to man it’s not possible, but with God all things are possible. And I have found him. He’s in me.918 ¶19

So I would say to you this night who are embarrassed financially, or embarrassed in some other way, you could conceive a scene if true would imply the fulfillment of your dream, couldn’t you? But, I’m speaking now of the great dreamer, “Behold this dreamer.” For can’t you conceive a scene and actually take, now, the hand of God and hold it? In him is life, and his life is the light of men. No child could cross the threshold that admits to conscious life were it not that he is in that child, but no child. So God in man is the light of man, and in him there is life, and that life is the light of men.918 ¶20

So trust him. Put your hand out on any object that if true would imply you have what you want in this world, just put your hand on it. Now trust the hand of God. See it and trust the eye of God. Hear a conversation with some friend that would imply the fulfillment of that dream, and trust the ear of God, this inner you which you say is all Imagination. I tell you, Imagination is the divine body in every man. It is the eternal vine on which all things grow.918 ¶21

Now, tonight, take it, take the challenge. Test yourself and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? And through him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made? Well, now I’ll make my world according to my noble dream. If through him all things are made and I’ve just been introduced to him, and he’s not on the outside, I don’t have to get up and run to church tomorrow morning early to meet him, I don’t have to go tomorrow night to meet him, wherever I am—while standing at a bar having a beer, or a nice good dry Martini which I prefer—wherever I am, there he stands. “Among you stands one whom you do not know.” But I’ve just shown you who he is, and that is Christ Jesus.918 ¶22

The day will come, he will stand seemingly on the outside, described in the Book of Daniel, the Ancient of Days. You actually look into the face of this ancient being of infinite love. He embraces you and you are one forever with the Spirit of God…forever one with the Spirit of God. And then you will know what it means, “He baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” “I came to baptize with water,” said John, “but he who sent me said to me ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, he baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” When you are embraced and fuse with the body of the living Christ, the risen Christ, you have been baptized with the Holy Spirit, and you are it. You know it beyond all doubt: I am he.918 ¶23

But the work must be done, not yet completed, and you are sent back into this world of death to tell the story of the risen Christ, and to tell them how to find him. You know that you actually saw him as something objective to yourself, and fused with him, and now he’s not objective any more. He was your very being…no objective being, your very being. No mortal eye can see it. You now wear forever and forever the human form divine, which is love, nothing but love. But the outer mortal eye cannot see it and the outer senses cannot touch it and hear it and commune with it. But you who wear it know it, and you’re communing all day with self, the one being that you are.918 ¶24

So I introduce you this night to Jesus Christ, the only savior in the world. In scripture, when we speak of Jehovah, that’s Jesus Christ. The name Jesus is the same as Joshua, and Joshua the same as Jehovah, the same root, the same being. And we are told, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and beside me there is no savior. I know not any” . And that is your Savior. I hope I have succeeded in introducing you this night to him of whom Moses, and the law, and the prophets wrote. That you will put your hand upon him, as you’re told in the epistle of John: We have seen him with our eyes and handled him with our hands, the very word of life. “I bring you our own information concerning him of whom we have seen with our very eyes and handled with our very hands, the word of life” .918 ¶25

Well, you this night felt him, because you exercised his organs. You exercised his limbs when you spread out your hand to touch a tennis ball, and there was no tennis ball, when you stretched it out to touch a baseball and there is no baseball. So when you actually called upon self to test it, and you could bring in to play organs not known by the scientific world, and they called them imaginary, existing only in the Imagination, and, therefore, unreal. Why he is the only reality, because through him all things were made. There isn’t a thing that is now made in this world that it wasn’t preceded by an imaginal act. What is any picture in the world that you now see and you call it fact but what it first began in the Imagination of the artist? He caught the thing on canvas…and you call that the reality. It existed first in his Imagination. We are living in a world of Imagination, and that being that is the Lord of it all is housed in you. And the world, they know him not. He comes unto his own and his own receive him not. They can’t believe it.918 ¶26

But if someone can take in their imaginary hand, called by the world the unreal hand, and pour out the contents of an imaginary bag and count the contents, and they’re bringing out the very pay that they would receive at the end of the week were they now earning a certain sum of money…which was more than twice what they had ever earned before…and doing it over and over until it took on the tones of reality. When it seemed to them to have all the sensory vividness of reality, they dropped it. And then in a matter of two days, that lady was employed by one she had never heard of before and had never seen, paying her that sum of money to the penny. She was a combination seamstress and designer in the city of New York. She took in my word, as I hope tonight you will, and she went home either to prove what I said or disprove it. And so she accepted the challenge.918 ¶27

So let me repeat, we must make daring experiments with Jesus Christ. Brood over him. Learn to know him better. And when we have proved his existence as the creative power in ourselves, then share it with others. Pass it on to all the others and tell them what we have found in Jesus…and you will find a living God. For I tell you nothing dies. You cannot die, for I have seen the immortal man that cannot die, and he is housed in everyone. When the man is called dead, it’s only the departure of the one in whom there is life. The man of Imagination departs a moment from the little garment of flesh. Everything here dies. So, “Awake, O sleepers, and rise from the dead.”918 ¶28

So try now to exercise him, become familiar with him. And one day when you least expect it, he arrives with such dramatic suddenness that you have no time to observe him. You can’t observe his coming. He comes so suddenly within you. The wind, just a strange peculiar unearthly wind, and you feel yourself waking, waking, waking. You wake in this grave that was the coffin that was placed in Egypt: “In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt.” You wake within this tomb and you do not [...] know how you got there, who put you there, or when you were put there. Now all of a sudden you awake, and then you come out, and you’re born from above, just as told you in scripture.918 ¶29

Until that day comes, believe me, that the one that I’ve just introduced you to is the only true Jesus Christ, the only God of the world. There is no other God. “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” . Now let us go into the Silence.918 ¶30

* * * Next week we’re speaking on Tuesday rather than Monday, and you’ll notice a few weeks where we only have one lecture. The club is not available that week for a Friday night. So the nights we cannot get the Friday we have no substitute, we simply do not speak more than the one lecture in that week; and it may either be a Monday or a Tuesday. I have no knowledge of the days until I look at the program myself. I happen to know that next week it’s going to be Tuesday and Friday. The following week I haven’t the slightest idea. Maybe there is no Friday that week, I don’t know. So I do not wish you to take a long trip and come here to be disappointed. So please look at the program if you’re inclined before you start to attend.918 ¶31

Again, let me repeat it’s going to be the most profoundly spiritual and at the same time most directly practical. You can transform your earthly life when you know who Christ is. When you find him within you and challenge him to transform your world, knowing you are doing it. You and he are one. Trust in him and do it. I tell you, it cannot fail you, it will not fail you; but remember you are the operant power, it doesn’t operate itself. I may know it from now to the ends of time, but knowledge of it is not enough, I must apply it. So we are told, the world heard it, the same Word that we heard, but the message that they heard did not benefit them because it was not mixed with faith in the hearers. They didn’t believe it. So I’ve asked you now to touch this, but maybe you’ll say, “That’s stupid. I can tell you that’s still my Imagination; that isn’t real.” And so, maybe you will go out and not put it to the test at all. I am powerless to make you do it. I can’t compel you, I can only instruct you, and then tell you what I have found concerning Jesus Christ. Now are there any questions, please?918 ¶32

Any questions? Now when you get the results that you will, may I ask you to do me a personal favor and share the results with me, that I, in turn, may tell it to those who are here? It increases their faith if I can tell your story…how you heard it, applied it, and then the results that you got.918 ¶35

The whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have made of God’s gift. Receiving a gift does not mean that we are going to use it wisely, but we have the gift. Everyone has the gift; and the world simply reflects the use of that gift. In “The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare puts these words into the mouth of Portia: “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces. It is a good divine who follows his own instructions. I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.”917 ¶1

So you and I have been given a gift. To what use have we put it? In a book written in the First Century, written at the time of our Gospel, — it’s called the Hermetica, and this is a translation by Walter Scott. It is a wonderful series of four volumes; and in this he says: “There are two gifts that God has given to man alone, and to no other mortal creature, and these two gifts are Mind and Speech. And the gifts of Mind and Speech are essential and identical with Immortality. If they are used rightly, man will not differ in any respect from the immortals; and when he quits the body, these two will be his guides and they will lead him into the troop of the gods and to the souls that have attained to bliss.”917 ¶2

Now he is not speaking of any outer speech, for you and I have had this experience, — I know I have many times. You have gone to a party, and many people you do not know, you meet them and the usual greetings: “Nice to know you,” “What a joy to know you,” “Pleased to meet you,” and the usual clichés; and then you have drinks and your little hors d’oeuvre, and then the party breaks up and they all separate. And you hear someone say, “What a creep,” “What a bore”; yet they were so pleased to meet them: “What a joy to know you.” The outer words did not conform whatsoever with what they were really thinking on the inside. And God sees, not the outer man; He sees the inner Man. It’s the inner speech that is frozen in the world round about us. This whole vast world is but “frozen” inner speech.917 ¶3

What are we saying on the inside? We may think that someone really understands us. You go along believing that they understand you, and some simple little thing happens and you realize they never really heard you. Not for one moment had they really heard you. Some little disruption, and then the whole thing is over; and then they turn against you as though you were the devil, when they formerly thought you were one who was “sent.” That is all in Scripture. Read the 7th chapter of the Book of John and the 8th chapter of John: “And some said, he is a good man; and others said, no, he is leading people astray. Others said, why, he is mad, and he has a devil.” When he fed them with the loaves and the fish, — oh, they loved it, — getting things in the world. As long as they could have things and things and things, it was marvelous; and then he tells them of something entirely different: that they would go through “furnaces”, but the end would justify all the “furnaces” through which they would pass. The end would be God; they would awaken in the end, and they would awaken as God the Father. He didn’t tell them of the nature of the “furnaces.” He told them only of the end and that they would pass through “furnaces”; and passing through, they faltered. They could tell exactly what they were really doing on the inside.917 ¶4

As we are told in the 50th Psalms: “If a man orders his conversations aright, I will show him the salvation of God.” If one could only control these inner conversations morning, noon and night, and carry them right into the dream world, he would know what world he is creating. Stop for one moment and ask yourself, what am I thinking now? You are carrying on a little tiny inner speech at every moment of time. You may be in the presence of someone that the world thinks important, but you don’t, and inwardly you are saying, “But only God hears it.” That’s what you are actually saying. Outwardly you are pleased to meet him, and you are flattered with the contact; but inwardly, what are you saying? This is what I ask everyone to observe. Observe what you are actually doing on the inside, for that is what God sees; and what you are doing on the inside, you are doing in little tiny speech movements, and they are crystallizing in the manifested world round about you.917 ¶5

So, “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,” — well, we all would be kings. We all would be everything we want to be in this world. But we find it more difficult to do it than to know what to do. So I could tell you from now until the ends of time, but only practice will do it — just practice.917 ¶6

When a man looks and sees a building that seems beyond his wildest dream of ever acquiring it, and he has reasons that he does not share with anyone but his mother, — she is the only one he takes into his confidence; and she despairs because she knows that he could never achieve ownership of that building, — it’s too big, too far beyond her dreams, or even ambition; but he loves her and he shares only with her what he is doing, and he sees a sign implying that he does own it, — well, as he looks at it he could not read the sign and not inwardly repeat it. So inwardly he is saying, “It is my building,” as he reads his own name on that building. And day after day, as he goes by, he “reads” his own name on the building, which implies that he has it. And then, out of the “blue,” two years later they fail, and a stranger comes in and offers to put the money up to buy it. He has no collateral, but that day he was owner of the building. He then conducted the most fantastically marvelous, successful business in that firm for many, many years; and then an offer came that offered him many, many times more than he paid for it. He paid $50,000 for it of another person’s money and sold it without any capital gain for $840,000. There was no capital gain.917 ¶7

It was all done by inner speech, for you could not read something without using your lips. No one sees it, but I read something, and inwardly I am repeating what I am reading. I saw that here on the bus a few months ago, going to Beverly Hills, and here is a man reading a paper, and every word he read he was forming with his lips. I could watch him. Could I have actually interpreted the motion of his lips, I could have told you exactly what he was reading, for he formed every word. Well, everyone is doing that, but not as obviously as he did it. So you read something, and actually inwardly you are repeating the words.917 ¶8

Well now, the whole thing is in your imagination. That is all it was in him, only his imagination. That was God’s gift. It is translated in the Hermetica as “Mind.” “And God has given to man, and to man alone, two gifts, and to no other mortal creature. The gifts are Mind and Speech; and these are like the gifts of Immortality, and by these gifts he does not differ in any respect from the Immortals. If he uses them wisely,” — the whole world is his.917 ¶9

Are we not told that: “The world was created by the Word of God;” and “things that are seen were made out of things that are not seen?” So here, out of the nowhere, we create by inner speech through the use of what? Call it “mind” if you will. I like the word “imagination.” To me, it inflames me. When I imagine a state — any state, if I can only persuade myself of the reality of the state imagined, that’s the important thing; to believe in the reality of the state imagined. But to know what to do is not the same as doing it. So, “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,” — well then, — “chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.” And how many teachers in the world follow their own instruction?917 ¶10

And then he goes on to confess: “I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.” So I tell you, I am telling you exactly what I know from experience, whether it be the Law or the Promise. But I am not telling you that everyone will apply it wisely.917 ¶11

I am not telling you that in the end there will not be a shake-down of those who only pretended to believe it. There are many who came out of a traditional background. They will return to it, and they will genuflect before a hand-made cross or a hand-made figure that hangs on the wall, and cross themselves for good luck, and think that the speaker who taught them in the beginning has turned into a devil. They will; but rejoice, because these signs must come. It’s part of Scripture. And when they come into my world, I rejoice because the end is upon me. Just when they come, — and they will come, — and they get thinner and thinner as they separate moving back, because they cannot go forward into the top — unto the high places of the mountain. And then you know exactly who understood you and who did not understand you.917 ¶12

Let me now make it quite clear: You have the gift. You can speak. Even if you were dumb, you still speak — inwardly you speak, and you form these little speech movements within yourself. Make them conform to your wish fulfilled. Do what Robert Millikan did when he was a poor boy, and had nothing but a brilliant mind; a great, great understanding of literature; but he had no money, and he was tired of his poverty. And knowing how the mind works, he constructed a sentence that if true would imply he was no longer poor. And his sentence is a beautiful sentence; “I have,” — not “am going to have”; “I have a lavish, steady, dependable income, consistent with integrity and mutual benefit.” That was the great Robert Millikan, who was the head of Cal-Tech, who gave us his discovery of cosmic rays, who when he died could leave a fortune behind to these charities. I know that the YMCA was one of them; they got a fortune from him. He already settled on his sons and made them financially independent, but he had enough left over to give to his favorite charities, and lived a full, wonderful, marvelous life, where everyone who met him benefited by the actual meeting with that great man. And he started off from “scratch,” using this simple technique — using the simple technique — using the gift of God that He gave to every person in this world: Mind and Speech.917 ¶13

Whether you be a Frenchman or an American or any other nationality, you have speech and you have a mind. Instead of accepting what you have already done with that gift, you simply ignore it. You brought it into being. All this is solidified speech — the whole vast manifested world. And you turn from it, and then reconstruct the sentence. Change it, as this one of whom I spoke changed the entire pattern. He was a poor boy, — the whole family poor, behind the 8-ball financially — socially and in every sense of the word, behind that 8-ball; and he constructed a scene. As he read the so-called letters that implied that the family owned the building, he was repeating within himself as he read it. And it took two years. He persisted, and at the end of two years the family owned it; and from then on, you couldn’t stop them. And they are still growing and expanding and expanding and expanding, because he never forgot how to apply the principle.917 ¶14

So, he was among those who didn’t come within it. He found it just as easy to do it as to know what to do. And others can find it easy to know what to do but difficult to do it. I’ve seen it time and time again. I would say to them, “Do you not know what you are doing to yourself?” “Yes, but just give me one little moment because I am so enjoying the feeling of getting even with them.” You “get even” with no one. There is no one else in the world. As you are told: “I am the Lord, and beside Me there is no god.” Read it in the 45th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “I am the Lord, and beside Me there is no god.”917 ¶15

“Now you want the Word?” He said, “The Word is very near unto you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, that you can do it. See, I set before you this day life and good, blessings and curses, death and evil. Choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” The whole thing is before you. You can choose death if you want it, because the Word is on your tongue, it is in your mouth, it is in your heart. And you can do it now. You don’t have to ask who will go up to Heaven and bring it down for me, or go into the depths and bring it up for me. It is now nearer than you know; in your mouth and in your heart, that you can do it now. Well, what would you do now? What sentence would imply that you are now what you would like to be? You know what to do. And I say, it’s not knowing what to do; it is the doing it.917 ¶16

Someone got the most marvelous revelation. I was there the morning that it happened. “Stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money. Everything in life must be an investment.” And I so loved it, I incorporated that thought in the chapter, “The Coin of Heaven,” in my book, “Awakened Imagination.” She would be the first to confess, although it came through her, and it was her revelation from God to her, — shared with me, and I shared it through the written form with those who read it in the book, — but she is the first to confess she never applied it. There it is, but she never applied it. She was thrilled beyond measure that she was the medium through which the Voice could come, and I can see her now rushing to the library and taking out the dictionary to get the true definition of the two words: “spending” and “investing.” To “spend” is to put off without hope of return; to waste. To “invest” is expecting a return on your equity. There must be a return on equity when you invest. Well, we are told: “Stop spending your thought, your time and your money.” Time must produce some return. It is precious. Your thought is speech; it must be actually invested, not wasted. And your money. Everything must be invested, and not wasted.917 ¶17

And she’s the first to confess, “I knew I never really applied it. I thought, well, now it came through, and I can go on this normal, normal way”; but it doesn’t work that way. “If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do,” — what a marvelous sentence. You’ll find it if you have the works of Shakespeare in the first act, and second scene, put on the lips of Portia. And how difficult for a man who teaches to follow his own instruction. And he himself confessed: “I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done than to be one of the twenty to follow my own teaching.”917 ¶18

So I ask you to really apply it. Don’t think for one second that knowing what to do is going to do anything for you. It’s the doing it that matters. So, if every moment of time you know what to do, then do it. If you find yourself carrying on any negative conversation, break it, even though it gives you pleasure, as it does many people; they find such fun in being critical. They think they are alone and no one sees them; so it doesn’t matter. No one sees you? The only One that matters sees you every moment of time, and that’s your Father. He sees into the very depths of your Being, and He knows exactly what you are doing. And your world is built out of these inner conversations.917 ¶19

So, today if you are not satisfied with the world in which you live, blame no one, but turn within to these two gifts and use them wisely, for here we are told to order our life according to our conversations. Then in Ephesians we are told, — it’s the 4th chapter: “Put off the old nature which belongs to the former conversations, and put on the new nature.” The “new nature” is sometimes translated “the new man,” and the “old nature” the “old man.” Well, if I equate the “old nature” with the “former conversations,” I must equate the “new man” with the “new conversations.” So, He identifies the inner speech with man’s nature.917 ¶20

So now, what am I actually doing on the inside of myself? And I am doing it morning, noon and night; I can’t stop it. If I stop for one moment, it isn’t. You can’t stop it. You take it into your dreams, and you are still talking. You are really talking at all moments of time. So what are you saying at every moment of time? Watch it; be careful what you are saying, because your whole vast world is this inner conversation “pushed out.” And you can change it only by changing the conversation, because the conversation is equated with your nature.917 ¶21

So if you walk the street or you ride the bus, or you sit alone, you are still talking; at every moment of time you are talking. And all you need to do to find out what you have been saying is to look at your world. Your world reflects this inner speech. I have seen it every moment of time. I am not going to tell you I have not faltered. I would not for one moment tell you that I am always in control of the inner conversations. The phone rings. This happens, and you’ve told them over and over, and your reaction may not be quite the right one, but you reacted anyway. No one heard it, but you heard it, and your Father heard it; and you are going to build your world based on exactly what you’ve done.917 ¶22

So you watch it morning, noon and night, because you are going to “play” this part. The end of everyone’s world is Christ. Everyone is moving towards the fulfillment of being God Himself — every one. And therefore the story of Christ as told in the Gospels, you are going to play it. And when He awakes within you and unfolds within you and you are Christ, and you know you are, you are going to find those who will eagerly take all that you have to say when you give them the loaves and the fish; and then this is going to happen in your life: “Do not think for one moment I came to bring peace upon earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword to set a man against his father and the daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” This will happen.917 ¶23

And then comes the conflict in the world, and he is accused of being the devil. They say, “He has a devil. Why do you listen to him? He is mad.” But then when you who have awakened from the dream of life hear these things, you rejoice, because you know your end is near. Oh, it has to take place to “separate the sheep from the goats,” and let them go back into their world and genuflect and cross themselves for luck. And then, those who can actually follow, they will follow, for “My own must come to me.”917 ¶24

So I hope that everyone here, not only listens, but believes what I have said, for I’ve told you what I know from experience. God Himself came, and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ — in you, in me, in everyone. But when He comes in you, He awakens as you. Read the story then. All that is told in that story concerning Jesus Christ, you are going to experience. So when you tell the story to those who will readily believe it when you “feed” them with the loaves and the fish, based upon the Law, — how to get the building, how to get money, how to become famous: and all that, — they love it. Then you turn and you emphasize the end, the Promise and the Promise is: “Ye will be as God.” You don’t need buildings, because the whole world is yours and all within it. But they can’t see that. They want more loaves and more fish; and then something will happen because you didn’t come to bring peace upon earth, — you came to bring a sword to separate the old from the new, and the conflict is on. And then suddenly eruptions will take place within families, and they will turn — completely turn against you; but you, knowing that you are the central figure of the Gospel, you rejoice. You have nothing but pity for those who couldn’t follow beyond a certain point. That’s all that you have. No criticism. No condemnation. Only pity that they couldn’t go a little bit further. But it’s all part of the “play.”917 ¶25

So I tell you, you watch carefully what you are saying morning, noon and night. When you go to bed at night, just watch your inner conversations, and see that the sun is not descending upon your anger. Resolve it at that very moment, and make it conform to your wish fulfilled, and make that “wish fulfilled” a thing of love. What would it be like if it were true? Just what would it be like? Then carry on a conversation from the premise of the wish fulfilled, all clothed in love, for anyone that you think of; and watch how things happen in your world. Your night, — may I tell you — if that is your last thought, it will dominate the dream of the night. You are completely dominated, and your Father is speaking to you constantly through the medium of dreams and through the medium of vision, and you will see the whole thing unfolding within you; and you will know that you are the Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t go out and scream it from the housetops. You know it, and you walk in the comfort of being the Awakened Man, who is God.917 ¶26

Let everyone say exactly what he wants to say about you, and pay no attention to it, because they have to do it. When you come down to the end, they have to do it. The separation must take place. And you don’t justify it. Self-justification is the voice of hell. So you don’t justify anything, and you don’t try to always be right. Another almost incurable disease of man is the necessity of always being right. So you don’t make any effort to prove that you are right. You know what you have experienced, and you can’t deny the experience; so you go your way, telling it just as it comes to you. And it comes to you in the most glorious manner. It’s all in Scripture; so when you come to the end, you aren’t disappointed and you aren’t surprised that those that you sent off alive and free will now take up arms against you and call you insane, call you a devil, and would disrupt their family life. You know exactly what you’ve done. You have only told the truth. And when the Truth comes into the world, it comes not to bring peace but a sword. He is going to separate you from that traditional background that enslaved you in the past, because real progress in this world, — religious progress, — is a gradual transition from a god of tradition to a God of experience.917 ¶27

You experience God: and the whole thing reflects it. His Son calls you Father; and there is no uncertainty as to who he is and Who-You-Are. And your whole memory returns. And here you stand before your everlasting Son, and he knows it and you know it: and no person in the world could in any way dissuade you from knowing this. You have experienced it. You can’t deny it. So I am telling you what is in store for you. Use the gift wisely. Start now to use it. For if you use it, you are told: “I will show you the salvation of God.” Read it in the very last verse of the 50th Psalm.917 ¶28

They translate the word “conversations” as “manner of life,” and some the “way of life”; but in the King James version it’s always translated “conversations.” Thirteen times that phrase is used, and it is always “conversations.” “Put off the former conversation, and then be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” If you put it off — it’s equated with the “old man.” Now, as I put it off, I have to replace it with something — a “new conversation”; so you are told in the Book of Joel: “Let the weak say, I am strong.” You read that in the 3rd chapter, the 10th verse. “Let the weak say, I am strong,” for there is no other God. “I am the Lord, and beside Me there is no god.” So, “I set before you,” — and you make the choice. You can choose life or you can choose death. You can choose the good or choose the evil, a blessing or a curse. It’s entirely up to man to choose anything.917 ¶29

And look into this manifested world, and you’ll see what we have chosen. But every morning you see headlines — nothing but disaster. You see what man has chosen. He seems either to want it or he is “fed” it, — one or the other. Look at the editorials. “We need that in order to sell papers.” Or else, we ourselves are demanding it from Him, but you “feed” upon it. Morning, noon and night we feast upon all this unloveliness and carry on these little internal mental conversations with ourselves; but they don’t remain there. They balloon and objectify themselves and become solidified as our manifested world. So this whole manifested world goes to show us what use or misuse we have made of God’s gift. And God’s gift is your Mind and your Speech; and it’s not your outer speech, for we know how deceptive that is. You see it morning, noon and night. A salesman goes in, and he is trained to deceive the buyer. The advertiser is trained to deceive the buyer. And everything is on the outside. God sees only the inside.917 ¶30

Man sees the outer appearance and God sees the Inner Man. So when you watch your inner conversation, you are actually watching the new nature. That is your nature. And if you don’t like it, change it. You “put off the old man,” and then “put on the new man”; and “He will show you the salvation of God.” Then the whole thing will unfold within you.917 ¶31

I tell you from my own experience, before the Promise was realized in me, seemingly I had this conversation with my brother. Formerly I would argue mentally, — we were five thousand miles apart, — and I needed money at that time; and when I found myself arguing with him, I broke it — tore that entire record up. And whether he sent me a nickel or not, I loved him and praised him and thanked him, and went about my business, not knowing where the next was coming from, for I had spent a fortune by taking off one solid year and living at the same level that I had lived in previous years, and spent money like water. Then came that moment I needed money. And inwardly I carried on a conversation with him, and I thought that’s a stupid thing to do; so I broke that record, and then I carried on the most glorious conversation with him, like two lovers, because I do love him and he loves me. And I changed that “old man” into the “new man,” by changing my conversation with him. Do you know, in no time flat, — unasked, a very large wonderful check came to me? And no request; I didn’t appeal at all. I was “taking it out” on the one I loved because I myself had spent the money like a drunken sailor. And then here inwardly I am arguing with my brother; and when I broke it and actually carried on the most loving conversation with him — all about the family life and all these marvelous things, suddenly out of the nowhere came a very large, wonderful check. And I didn’t appeal for it.917 ¶32

So I am telling you from experience, I know it works this way. Yet, if you are in the mood to argue, you so love the argument, — it costs you nothing; so you are having the time of your life. But it doesn’t stop there; it’s going to balloon and crystallize and manifest itself in your world. So, watch it. And do you know, it becomes a pleasant thing after a while to actually carry on lovely conversations? It becomes very pleasant. But if you are honest with yourself, you would say just what this darling of mine said to me, “I never practice it. It came through, and I recorded it, and you used it, but I personally never practiced it. Still inwardly I carried on the same old conversations that I always did.”917 ¶33

So I say to you now, as we are going up towards the end, believe me, I would not deceive you. I have told you exactly what happened to me as to the Promise. I have told you exactly what I have proven as to the Law; it will not fail you. You can take the Law and put it into practice now. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Do it now, and know that if you carry on these conversations, the promise of the 50th Psalm will take form. “He will show you the salvation of God.” And the “salvation of God” is simply: You awaken as God. That’s how He shows it to you. He came, and He comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ; and there is only one Jesus Christ. So when it happens, you are Jesus Christ. You don’t change your name. You are still Mary. You are still Stan. You are still John. But when it happens, you know Who-You-Are. You don’t go and ask the judge to change your name to Jesus. You walk the streets still as Stanley, still as Mary, still as Neville; but you know Who-You-Are.917 ¶34

And then when things do happen, because you know Who-You-Are, these things have to happen. They must accuse you of being insane. They must accuse you of being deceitful and leading people astray. It’s all part of Scripture. But you are not amazed; you only have pity and mercy for those who could not go further than they are, and then they fall by the wayside. These are the four on which the seed falls; the highway, among the thorns, among the rocks, and then on good soil. And you can’t help it. You can only scatter the seed and let it fall where it will. And it will fall on those four kinds of soil. It always falls on four; and as it falls on the good, it will simply rise within them, and they will have the identical experience that you have had. When it falls on the highway, quickly other ideas devour it. When it falls among the thorns, the cares of the world encroach upon it and choke it. If it falls on the rock and the rock is not prepared to let the root go too deep, the sun scorches it, and suddenly something comes up and it’s all gone. But when the soil has been prepared, it goes deep, and it bears a hundredfold.917 ¶35

So, I tell you, the whole story is all about you. And one day you will know — actually know — you are the Lord Jesus Christ. And you cannot avoid the story. It will happen to you too. Don’t think for one moment that you are going to awaken knowing you are the Lord Jesus Christ and not have those to whom you poured out your soul, who took the loaves and the fish, turn upon you and accuse you of being mad, and therefore an evil one, and not anything should be done with you, — turn from you completely. You’ll find it. But then, being conscious of the fact that you have experienced the entire story, you can only go back to the written Word of God and know it had to happen. It just had to happen. And when these signs come, the end is not far. Now let us go into the silence.917 ¶36

“When truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” For that is the story of scripture. The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint of the story of Jesus. A prophet’s vision is foreshortened, and they see as present what really is the future. So, we open a book of the Old Testament, and here you’re looking at a prophecy. It’s not history, not secular history. It’s a prophecy. Man is not aware of it. There’s a rabbinical principle which states that what is not written in scripture is nonexistent. The story of Jesus follows this principle. But as the poet said, it’s embodied in a tale that it may enter in at lowly doors. So, you and I hear the story like a little tale.916 ¶1

Now, listen to these words. They are from the end of Luke, the 24th chapter – the last chapter of Luke. He had just explained scripture, beginning with the law of Moses and all the prophets and the psalms. He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And then they said to each other: “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he opened to us the scriptures?” And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished out of their sight.916 ¶2

Now, you would think a man appeared to those walking along the highway, and they didn’t recognize him at first. And then he explained the scripture, and their hearts began to burn within them as he opened to them the scriptures and then their eyes were opened. They recognized him, and he vanished out of sight. This one is called the truth. “I am the truth. I am the way. I am the life.” If I succeed in opening up the scriptures to you, then whatever you hold now as an image called Jesus Christ will vanish out of sight.916 ¶3

The only enemy of Israel is a false god. There is no other enemy for any man in this world. A false God. If I could now take scripture and so interpret it that I could show you who God really is, well then, anything you hold down in your mind’s eye concerning an external God would vanish out of sight. Can I take the scripture and do it? I think I can. But it’s one of those difficult things in the world to change a fixed idea. It comes back time and time again. So, you simply repeat the story from different angles until finally you get through, and the man discovers who he is.916 ¶4

It is in us, as persons, that God the Father reveals himself. He comes to us as one unknown, yet one who, in the most ineffable mystery, lets man experience who he is. When we experience who he is, all false gods vanish, for in that experience we discover we are the Lord. And there is a definite way for the discovery – a definite plan. The whole thing was planned before that the world was, but we are children in this world of darkness. We came out from the world of light and purposely came into this world of darkness, and took upon ourselves the form of this thing called man. The restriction, the contraction that is man.916 ¶5

And, one day, in the fullness of time, it unfolds. The mystery unfolds in a man. And that man in whom it unfolds tells it to as many as will listen. Some will agree, and some will disagree. Those that agree and really see it clearly, their eyes are open. They recognize not the man talking to them; they recognize the truth. For he said, “I am the truth.” So they recognize the truth of scripture. And then, an external being that they turn to and worship vanishes out of their sight. There is no more external God in their world. They find him within themselves. That is the story.916 ¶6

Everything said in scripture concerning Jesus is taken from the Old Testament, and most of it you will find in the words of David. Now, let us take a look in the 10th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. You will find verse after verse taken from the 40th Psalm, which is credited to David – a Psalm of David: “In the volume of the book it is all about me.” That’s what David is saying. “I delight to do thy will, oh my God.” These same words are used in the 10th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning Jesus. He said, “I have come to do the will of him who sent me. That’s my food. Just to do the will and to accomplish the work he gave me to do.” These are the words of David: “In the volume of the book, it is written of me.” That’s the unknown author speaking of Jesus. Yet in the 40th Psalm, these are the words of David. These are prophetic. It’s fulfilled in a man.916 ¶7

Who is the man? They give a name. They called it Jesus. They say he was a carpenter. You think of a carpenter as one with a hammer and a saw and a chisel, and things of that nature, working in wood. That’s not the definition of a carpenter in the Bible. The word “carpenter” in the Bible means to produce from seed, as a mother. As a plant, like the earth. That’s the word carpenter: to bring forth, to be born, to be in travail, to be delivered. The time has come for this thing to be born, that seed that was the seed of God. And now it unfolds within a man.916 ¶8

That man in whom it unfolds tells what happened to him. He relates his own experience, but he’s up against a wall. For man being a child, he was told the story that it may enter in at lowly doors. “When Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors.” So they heard it as I heard it, as you heard it, as my mother taught me. And then I went to school, and they confirmed what mother had said. Then I grew into manhood still believing the story that I heard as a child – until one day, in the fullness of time, the story erupted in me, and then I knew who Jesus is. Then, and only then, did I really know who God is. And I am telling you, it will erupt in you. And then the God you now hold – if you still hold him as external to yourself -will vanish out of sight. You can no longer turn to an external God and pray to an external God when that which is in you unfolds like a flower, and it’s you.916 ¶9

1 Samuel and you note it carefully as I quote these passages. I am quoting the last four verses of the 17th chapter of 1 Samuel. Now let us take these passages from the book of Samuel – 1 Samuel and you note it carefully as I quote these passages. I am quoting the last four verses of the 17th chapter of 1 Samuel. Prior to that, to make it clear for you, is a battle about to take place – is now the battle between the giant Philistine, Goliath – a man of war from the cradle -and a youth who has no armament, for he cannot wear the armor that King Saul gives him. He takes it off. And said, “I’ll go in the name of the Lord of Israel.” I will have not a thing to do with the armorament of man. I will go in the name of the Lord of Israel. And this day he will deliver the Philistine into my hand. He takes five stones. Well, that’s not five little stones. It means grace. It’s a gift. Five is the number of grace in scripture. That’s the only armor that he takes. Well, I think you’re familiar with the story. He brings down the giant with the first blow into the forest. Having no sword, he takes the sword of the giant and severs his head. And then he comes back with the severed head of the giant.916 ¶10

King Saul turns to his lieutenant, Abner, and says: “Abner, whose son is that youth?” Abner answered, “As thy soul liveth, oh King, I cannot tell.” Saul said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is.” And then comes David with the head of the giant, holding it in his hand. And Abnner brings him before Saul and presents him before Saul. And Saul turns to David and he said, “Whose son are you, young man?” David answered, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite.” You will note in all of these passages that Saul is inquiring not about David, but about David’s father. Whose son are you, young man? Inquire whose son the youth is. Inquire whose son the scripting is.916 ¶11

Now the word youth, young man, strippling lad are all from the same word in Hebrew. Alum, that’s the word. But it also means to conceal, to hide from view, to veil a secret. The words are right. It’s a youth. It’s a lad. It is a young man. But it’s something veiled, something concealed. It’s a secret that is hidden, something out of sight. He placed it in man that in the fullness of time, it is that that is hidden in man that will reveal man to himself as God. For no one knows the Father but the Son, and no one knows who the Son is but the Father. So without the son you will never know that you are the father.916 ¶12

So then you start reading scripture. So he takes the book and he begins with the law of Moses. Then he comes through the prophets. Then he comes into the psalm and he interprets to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself and he shows them exactly what was said in scripture. That this is the great rebrinical principle that what is not written in scripture is non-existent. He is not interested in what Caesar’s world does. He makes no attempt to change the pattern. If there were slaves in the day in which a man walks when it happens in him, he leaves it just as it is. He is not concerned with changing governments and changing things. As he finds them, he leaves them. But he tells the eternal story for the Old Testament which is that prophetic blueprint of the story as told in the New Testament is simply a shadowy intimation or I would say intimations for the many shadowy intimations of this eternal reality is something that is timeless. It is taking place forever and forever and forever. It didn’t take place once and forever 2,000 years ago. It is taking place in the unexpected breast of man or woman.916 ¶13

And when it happened, he’s a stunned. He goes back and he searches the scripture and he finds it. It’s there. It was always there, but he didn’t see it. It was always in scripture but man saw it differently because he was told it as a story that it may enter in at the lowly door because of his consciousness a way down on this level. So, as the poet said, all was foretold, not could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be. Yes, the whole was foretold. Well, if the Bible is as it claimed thousands of years old and I read it after the event and having experienced the wind, the unearly wind that accompanied the series of events, then I go back and I but it’s all in scripture. But I didn’t see it.916 ¶14

I have had one severe beating in my life, and it was over scripture in Barbados, where I was born and raised. We were allowed to be beaten by the schoolmaster. In his eyes, I misquoted scripture – which I did not. I said, “Take up thy bed and walk,” which is quoted in the gospel when he said to the cripple, take up thy bed and walk. And he who was crippled from his mother’s womb took up the bed and walked. The schoolmaster said to me, “Bring your Bible.” Well, I could not produce the Bible. I am one of 10 children. You don’t have 10 Bibles. And I simply said that I didn’t have the Bible with me this day. My other brother Cecil, he had it. He had another class in another school and he said, “I don’t care if your brother goes down the gap with a dunce cap on his head. You aren’t leaving here with a dunce cap on your head.” Well, he was allowed to beat students because his translation said, “Take up thy couch and walk.” And I said, “Take up thy bed and walk.” All depends what Bible you have. It means the same thing. Take up the litter on which you were placed when someone brought you here. Take it up and then you don’t need it anymore. Get off of that. You’re not crippled anymore.916 ¶15

Well, you went in and got a cane that long and knocked on the desk on the bench for me to get over. I had to sit and kneel on the bench and bent it this way to see that it wasn’t uh injured because we knowing what was in store for us. When he was out of sight, we would go in with our little penknives and screw these little things and simply got them all so that the first blow would spatter the whole thing all over the place. He beat me unmercifully. I was bleeding from my buttocks to my knees. When my father saw it that night, my brother Victor said, “Daddy, come and see what Neville looks like.” And Daddy came in and asked how it happened. And I tell him. It took the next-door neighbors, my mother, and all my brothers to restrain my father from going up there. Had he gone up, he really would have killed him. That was the temper of my father. But they restrained him. Next day, I was taken out of that school never to go back. And a year later, the man was a sadist, a complete sadist. He blew his brains out. He just simply couldn’t live with himself. He beat the boys unmercifully. Well, that was my one beating in this world, and that was for seemingly misquing scripture.916 ¶16

So I read my book from beginning to end over and over and over, but I didn’t see it until it happened in me when the whole thing erupted in me. Then I went back and I could see the whole pattern was there all along just as the poet said. All was foretold me. Not could I foresee but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be. And there they were. Everything was there.916 ¶17

David and his father were set free. For the promise was made: The man who destroys the enemy of Israel, I will set his father’s house free in Israel. And the father’s name was Jesse. And Jesse simply means Jehovah exists. That’s the literal translation of the word Jesse. any form of the verb to be. In other words, I AM God’s eternal name. So you discover you yourself are the father of the youth who destroyed the enemy of Israel. And the only enemy of Israel is a false god. As long as you worship a false god, you have an enemy. And that enemy must be brought low. And it takes David to bring him low.916 ¶18

So in the New Testament his name is called Jesus Christ and he brings the true God and he said I am the truth. What truth? He reinterpret scripture in the light of his own experience. He experienced scripture and it ceased to be a dead code and became a living, living book. And he was the book. He was the word. So as he explained it, they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us?” When he opened to us the scriptures and their eyes were open and they recognized him and then he vanished out of their sight. Recognized what? A man? No. They recognized the truth of what one was talking about. The one who had experienced the truth. So they recognize the truth. For he said, “I am the truth.” They recognize the truth, not a man. And therefore, a man vanished out of their sight.916 ¶19

No longer can you worship a man. This thing speaking to you now has experienced it. But don’t turn to me for any worship. It would be the most horrible thing in the world. But take the truth that I’m telling you, for I have experienced scripture. And the day will come you will experience scripture and you and I will be one in eternity. Just one. One body, one spirit, one God, one father of all. And we are that one.916 ¶20

So here he comes to me as he did to me as one unknown. I hadn’t the slightest idea of The Promise until it happened. I never read it with understanding. I never heard it. No one ever spoke one word about The Promise to me. I read it in the Bible, but I didn’t recognize it. I did not see it there. Only after it happened. Well the, I have been commissioned: Go and tell them.916 ¶21

When I was told, 30 years before the event, that I must go into the world, standing in the presence of the Ancient of Days, embraced by him who was infinite love, and then sent… I didn’t know what I was sent for. Have the slightest idea: what on earth am I going to do? Uneducated, no background, social background, intellectual background, financial background, but nothing. And what on earth would I talk about, or what would I say to anyone? If I open my mouth, I say, well, what has he to say? Then I went back into scripture to study. It was also said of this one, who is the character of scripture, “How does this man have such learning, seeing that he has never studied?” And then he makes a confession: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me.” “Go, I will put words in your mouth. Go, I will give you everything that you need to tell the story.” And so he did. I didn’t go back to school to learn anymore. It just simply happened within me.916 ¶22

My interest was aroused in things beautiful, like poetry, and above all things, the Bible. I read it daily by the hour. And every day it seems fresher and fresher and fresher. It’s a constant eruption of the great revelation. There is no limit to it. “The things that I do, you will do. And even greater than these, because I am going to my father. I came out from the father and I came into the world. Again, I am leaving the world and I’m going to the father.” Therefore, you will follow, but you will do all that I have done and even greater while you still remain here. The Holy Spirit will outpour himself all from within you in one revelation after the other. And it’s all there in scripture. But you will find it after the event. The poet said, “I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” The words are perfect. The word wind and spirit are one and the same, both in Hebrew and in Greek. And so, we are told you must be born of the spirit – born of the wind. Same thing. So, when one is born from above, he is born of the spirit, he is born of the wind – it comes in the form of an unearthly wind. And that’s the story.916 ¶23

So here you and I have been told the story and it’s a glorious story. Until man can actually accept the truth of that story, let him continue in the belief of an external God to whom he turns. But it is his enemy, and that enemy one day must be destroyed when truth rises within him and there is no external one to whom he can turn. To whom will I turn? Thou hast the word of eternal life.916 ¶24

So when they said, “These are hard things to say.” This the sixth chapter of the book of John. And he tells them the strangest things possible. And in the end many left him, never to walk with him again. And then he turned to the few who remained. And then he said, “Would thou go also?” And Peter became the spokesman for the 12 who remained. And he said, “To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” But where would I go? If what you’ve said is true, then where would I turn?916 ¶25

I’m telling you what I’ve told you is true, for it’s based not on speculation. I’m not speculating trying to set up some workable philosophy of life. I have no interest in setting up any school of philosophy, no interest in founding a church. That’s the one thing that the boys said to me when I was sent. “Down with the blue bloods. Down with all church protocol, all external ritual and ceremony. Down with the blue bloods. Don’t go destroy it. Leave it as it is on the outside, but don’t you set up one.” Therefore, I resisted every attempt at ordination. I’ve been offered it time and time again to join this church and that church or the other church, and within 24 hours they’ll give me my degree that I may do all the things that any priest could do. I said, “No, I want no part of it. I will go alone, and he who sent me, is with me, and what is necessary he will provide. I am one with the one who sent me. Only in the office of the one that is sent, I seem inferior to myself, the sender. But I’m not inferior to my essential being, the sender. Only in the present office as the sent. And to him the sender, I will return when I take off this garment. So in the meanwhile, while I must still wear it until the end, I share with you what I have experienced, and that is scripture. But the whole thing unfolds within us.916 ¶26

Therefore, in the New Testament because the words are now put into the mouth of Jesus, when you read the chapter, you wonder why on earth did he bring this up? They brought up a certain argument concerning marriage. And the Sadducees said to him, “Master,” which they did not believe he was a master or anything great because they represented what we call today the agnostic or the atheist. They were the scientific mind, the intellectual mind. So we speak of the Sadducees and then the Pharisee. But the Sadducee was the intellectual mind, the agnostic of the day. If they remain within the synagogue, they did it only for business reasons, not because they approved or believed it. So they thought they’d trip him up.916 ¶27

And they said to him, “Master, Moses in the law said, “If a man marries and dies, leaving no offspring, that his brother should marry the widow, and raise up seed for his brother.” Now there were seven brothers, and the first one married and died leaving no offspring. And then the second one took her and he died leaving no offspring. And the third took her, and finally the seven married her and yet she had no offspring. Then she died. Now in the resurrection – which they did not believe in, as it stated quite clearly they did not believe in the resurrection -so in the resurrection, whose wife will be that woman?916 ¶28

And he answered, “In this age, the sons of God marry, and they are given in marriage. But those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage. For they are sons of the resurrection and cannot die anymore.” Implying, therefore, until this resurrection takes place in man, he is only restored to life to die again. But those who have the experience of the resurrection while they are here, they can die no more. For they are sons of the resurrection, being now sons of God, not belonging anymore to the world of flesh and blood.916 ¶29

Now, there was no reason to follow that wonderful expression of his with what follows. And then he turns to the people round about him. He said, “Whose son is David?” Now, it doesn’t fit. And yet he asked the question, “Whose son is David?” And they replied, “The son…” “Whose son is Christ?” And they said, “The son of David.” “So why then did David in the spirit call him my Lord? If David in the spirit called him my Lord, how can he be his son?” Yet the New Testament begins on those words: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.” So here we are in the midst of a mystery now. How can he be the son of David? When David calls him my Lord, my Lord is an expression of a son about his father. He calls him my father.916 ¶30

He’s trying to get man to go back into the only scripture known in the day, which is the Old Testament, and dig. And you’ll find in the 89th Psalm, that David does call the Lord my father. Read it carefully. “And I have found David, and he has cried unto me, thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” In fulfillment of the earlier psalm, the second psalm: “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” These are the words of David. All attributed in the New Testament to Christ. Therefore, who then is David? And who is Christ?916 ¶31

Jesus is the Lord. The word Jesus means Jehovah. Same word. God here above begins as the root of both words. And then we are told in Revelation the 11th chapter, “And the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.” They do not put the two words together and call it Jesus Christ, but our Lord and of his Christ. The father and his son.916 ¶32

Now you, I tell you as you are seated here, you are the Lord and you have a son, and you will not in eternity know you are the Lord until that son and only that son appears and calls you my father. And when he appears, there’ll be no uncertainty in you concerning the relationship between the two of you. And then you’ll know you are the Lord. And if Jesus is the Lord, then you know who you are. If Jesus is Jehovah, then you know who you are. And then you will see how altogether marvelous the Bible is.916 ¶33

It’s completely concealed just as told in scripture. Here, something hidden – the youth. Something concealed, something veiled, a great secret. And yet a youth. And that’s the one that is hidden. He is the stripling. He is the lad. He is the young man. And here is completely concealed, buried in man. So, I tell you that a thing in this world could happen to you comparable to the eruption of the story in you. For then all false gods vanish and you will never again lose your way in this tangled, tangled confusion that passes for religious truth.916 ¶34

You pick up the Saturday morning paper. I am embarrassed to look at it when I look at the religious paper. One is coming through the air flying through because it’s Halloween. A huge big ad she took in the paper. “Come and see Miss So-and-so how she’s going to come flying through the air to her million or two-million dollar super substantial something…” Well, I get so embarrassed because after all, occasionally I do put an ad on that page or they wouldn’t see my ad on any other page, so I’ve got to confine myself to that page. And when you read the nonsense that goes in the name of religion, and people do it. They fall for it. Hook, line, and sinker. But when this happens to you, you will simply lose all false gods. And the only enemy you will ever have is a false god. You have no other enemy.916 ¶35

But may I tell you, your own wonderful human imagination is God. It’s the eternal you, and by that all things were made, and without that was not anything made that is made. You are the immortal God, and one day you will awaken. And I can’t tell you the thrill. I think in the morning when I get up, I’m awake. I look at my familiar objects on the wall in the room. I know I am awake. But the awakening of which I speak, you can’t compare that to any awakening you’ve ever had in this world. It’s something entirely different. Memory returns. The great Holy Spirit brings back memory. He is the remembrancer. And we are sealed with the Holy Spirit. And then he releases himself within us – it’s memory, and our memory returns.916 ¶36

And I, in the 20th century, have lost my memory so far back that someone who supposedly lived 1,000 BC stands before me. And there is a complete collapse of time. There is no such thing as 3,000 years difference. I am his father, and he preceded me by 3,000 years. Isn’t that a complete lapse of memory? Isn’t that complete amnesia? Well, that’s the whole vast world. It suffers from amnesia. And when it happens, you wonder how on earth this could have lasted so long. And yet at that moment, it seemed like this: Just a short sleep, and then waking to eternity, and the experience you had called death. Death is no more. And the only thing that dies then, is death itself. As Paul tells us in the 15th chapter of First Corinthians, the last thing to be conquered is death. And death dies because you are the living God. And you’ve seemed to die. And you will seem to die, but you can’t die. And in the end, you will completely awaken.916 ¶37

And you and I are one. One in the sense we are the same father, and we have the same son, and therefore there’s only God and his son, and that’s the story of scripture. So it is in us as persons that God the father reveals himself, and when he reveals himself he reveals himself as the one in whom he awakes. But not a thing can be seen of him until the son appears. Then the son appears and reveals that one in whom he awoke 139 days prior to this moment as God the father. He still didn’t know it between his awakening and the birth of the child, which was a sign of his awakening and his birth from above, for 139 days. Then comes David, and then he tells you who you are, and then you know it, and then all false gods vanish.916 ¶38

You may fail in application, but you cannot go back. You can’t get back into that small little thing that contained you prior to that awakening. Can’t go back. Can’t turn to any god. Nothing on the outside. Yet you’re living in the world of Caesar. And you will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Render it completely. Taxes. Pay the taxes. The money will come. You’ll do everything that Caesar demands. But you’re not of this world. An entirely different being has awakened within you, which is your true being.916 ¶39

But when you read scripture, take the Old Testament as a prophetic blueprint, just a rough sketch, vague intimations of eternal reality. Then comes a moment in time when these things erupt within you, and you experience these things. And then having experienced it, you can’t deny it. You then tell it to as many as will listen. Doesn’t matter how many, as many as will listen, you are sent to do it, and to accomplish his work. So then you are the carpenter. You brought forth from seed. You didn’t build anything on the outside. You simply found who he is. And then you vanish. Who vanishes? All outside objects vanish because now you found the truth, and your hearts will burn as you’re told.916 ¶40

And as we are told in the 20th chapter of the book of Jeremiah, “If I say I will not mention him or speak anymore in his name, then there is as it were a fire in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” You’ve got to talk about it. No matter where you go, you talk about it and you tell it to anyone who has an ear to hear. Not everyone has the ear to hear because you’ve got to go through fixed ideas and their eyes are not open. Ears have not yet been dug for them. So you’re up against the wall that has been planted in them because they heard it as a child would hear it. “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” And that’s how it comes through… until one day it happens within you.916 ¶41

Now let us go into the silence.916 ¶42

Tho’ truths in manhood darkly join, Deep-seated in our mystic frame, We yield all blessing to the name Of Him that made them current coin; For Wisdom dealt with mortal powers, Where Truth in closest words shall fail, When Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors. And so the Word had breath, and wrought With human hands the creed of creeds In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought;916 ¶43

[...]in three days: today, the death of God, and then the burial of God, and then the Resurrection of God. And when you read it, you may think it is referring to someone outside of yourself. If I use the word God or the word Christ, the word Jesus, the word Lord, and in any way it conveys the sense of an existent someone or something outside of yourself, you have the wrong concept of God or Christ. We are told, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Do you not realize that you are the temple of the Living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Well, if the word conveys this something outside of yourself, you’ve got the wrong god. So, the one spoken of who was crucified is crucified on you, and the only cross that he ever bore is the cross you wear – the form that you wear, that garment of flesh and blood. That is the one spoken of when you are told, “If you would follow after me, take up your cross daily and come after me.” Don’t you take it up daily? Don’t you, every morning, after oblivion, return to this cross, and don’t you take it up and go through all the sorrows of the world? Are you not told, “Should Christ suffer all these things, and then enter into his glory?” So the Christ or the cross is stated right here, and he is buried, not in the Near East, as they are looking day after day in some little sepulcher. He is buried in the skull of man! That’s where he is buried! And he will rise out of that tomb where he is buried, and the tomb is the skull of man! He will rise there. He will awaken in the skull, and when he awakens, he will come out of that tomb, and all the imagery of Scripture concerning his birth will surround the one who awakens in his own skull, and comes out of his own skull. And that is the concentrated drama that is taking place in memory, I would say, today, for this is the memorial – what took place today, what will take place tomorrow, and on Sunday. This is the great mystery.915 ¶1

Now, tonight I will share with you what I know from experience. Let us go back to a portion of the Lord’s Prayer. First of all, let us take it in its original form. There is a translation by Ferrar Fenton. His father asked him – he being the outstanding Greek scholar – the father asked him to translate the Lord’s Prayer in the most literal manner possible, and this is the letter of the son to the father, and he says to his father – this is the literal translation of the original Greek: “Our Father in the heavens, Thy name must be Being Hallowed; Thy kingdom must be Being Restored; Thy will must be Being done, as in Heaven, so in earth.”915 ¶2

He tells his father that all other translations were taken from a translation of the Latin, and the Latin has no aorist of the imperative passive mood that was used in the original Greek, and therefore it could not convey the sense that the Saviour intended, as Matthew and Luke expressed it in the original Greek. So, we’ll take, now, the statement, “Thy kingdom must be Being Restored.” As he said, “This imperative passive mood is, to me, a standing order – something that is to be done absolutely and continuously. Conceive a play, an eternal drama, which is God’s plan of Redemption, and conceive of it as an occurrence – a simple occurrence without reference to completeness or incompleteness, without reference to duration or repetition, without reference to its position in time, although sometimes with reference to past time.”915 ¶3

Just imagine an eternal play, and you and I as sons of God – we see the play, but we see it as something external to ourselves, as we see a play. This play will lift us, if we experience the play cast in the central role. It will lift us to a level far beyond where we are as the spectator. We together, the sons of God, form God, for the word God is Elohim, a plural word: one made up of others. All the sons together form the Father. We, the sons, observing the play, are now going to be cast in the central role of that play. We are not going to be spectators; we are going to be the actor, the central actor in the drama. You can’t do it in heaven; you do it on earth. But here, this bliss spoken of in Scripture – we cannot actually consummate bliss without being generated on earth in these bodies of flesh and blood.915 ¶4

So, we come down, penetrate and annex the brain of bodies on earth. We are the sons of God. In doing that, we die. This is our Crucifixion, when we penetrate and annex the brain of the bodies that we wear. This is our Calvary.915 ¶5

As we are told in Scripture, “And when he reached the place called the Skull, there they crucified him” – the skull, not a little place that resembles the skull, but literally the skull. It’s called Calvary. Well, Calvary is a translation of the Greek word cranium, which means skull. Mark uses the Hebrew word or the Aramaic word, which is Golgotha. Golgotha means skull. No matter what word they use, it is still skull, Calvary, Golgotha, skull or cranium – all these words are used in different translations, but each word used means skull. It is not as our scholars would tell us; they call it the skull because it resembles the human skull – the area where he was crucified. It’s literally the skull of man. That is where he is crucified. That is where he is buried. He is buried in the skull of man. Because he is in the skull of man, that skull is his tomb. When he is resurrected, he is resurrected there. He awakens in that tomb. He comes out of that tomb unassisted by any mid-wife – by anyone, and he rolls away that stone, which is the base of his skull, and he comes out of that hole, which is an opening, and he comes out in the same manner that a child comes out of the womb of woman. He squeezes himself out as a child squeezes out of the womb of woman. And when he completely comes out, he looks back at that out of which he came, and it’s the body – that very body that formerly he wore. He didn’t realize that he was buried in the skull. For un-numbered centuries he walked and took up his cross every day, and walked in the dream world.915 ¶6

This world is a dream. And he walked in this world, believing himself to be something completely independent of everything else, and he’s not a dreamer – no, he’s a reality – this is not a dream. But the day that he begins to awake within him, when he begins to rise within himself, he realizes he has been dreaming all along! “He hath awakened from the dream of life – ‘Tis we, who lost in these stormy visions, keep With phantoms the unprofitable strife…” And we think that we are completely awake. We are doing all things here fully conscious, not knowing that we are dreaming, and the dream is projected, as it is when you dream at night. It’s a dream within a dream, and this is the dream.915 ¶7

So, as we are told in Scripture, He was crucified on Golgotha, that is the skull – “buried on Golgotha” – that’s the skull, and then he rose out of the same tomb in which he was placed.915 ¶8

Now, see the drama – a wonderful play that takes place forever and forever. No one knows when it will come to an end. When it comes to an end, the drama is over. We are now reproducing in ourselves what we saw. Now, you are told in the 3rd chapter of the book of Galatians: “And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” Now, if you read the story carefully, Abraham – in the 25th chapter of Genesis, the very beginning of the 66 books – he is dead. He died, and he is buried. By the 25th chapter of Genesis, Abraham ceases to be. We are told in the book of Galatians, which is the first book, chronologically speaking, in the New Testament – not canonically, but chronologically, it was the first book written by Paul, which came before the Gospels. There we are told that the Scripture – well, it could only be the Old Testament, because there was no New Testament – and it could only be the first 25 verses of the book of Genesis – “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles” – which means the heathen, for the same word is goyes, the goyes is the heathen – that which is other than the Hebrew. That being justified, then He foreshowed – that is, he gave a preview of the Gospel to Abraham.915 ¶9

Now, we are told in the Gospel, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day.” He saw it, and he was glad. He saw the fulfillment of a play, which was that the sons of God would actually become God – that all would be raised to the level of God the Father, but they could be raised to that level only by passing through the horrors of this world! And you couldn’t pass through the horrors of the world until you actually became embodied in a garment of flesh and blood. So, the sons of God fell in love with the daughters of men, and came down and penetrated and annexed the brains of these garments of flesh, and their penetration and annexation of the brain animated the bodies. Then we became subject to everything subject to man – everything that man is capable of doing, the sons of God had to experience.915 ¶10

So, as Blake said, “I do not consider either the wicked or the just to be in a supreme state, but to be, everyone of them, states of the sleep into which the soul may fall when it leaves Paradise following the serpent” – the symbol of wisdom, the symbol of knowledge. What knowledge? The knowledge of good and evil. So, we come into this world, and experience all the things that man can experience. Having gone through all, we come to the climax, and the climax is Resurrection. And may I tell you – it’s an actual, literal fact. I have experienced it. I have reached the end of the drama. It came to me in 1959. I am now approaching my twelfth birthday after my birth from above.915 ¶11

And we are told we will not return to the Kingdom of God raised to the level of God the Father until we are born from above. And birth from above and Resurrection coincide. Man awakens within his skull, and he comes out of that skull to find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, “and the witnesses” – the three witnesses present at the event. He is unseen by the witnesses because he is spirit – He is God! It is God being born – born this time, “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” So, God is giving birth to Himself – raising Himself to higher levels of His own Being. So, all the sons come down into this world, and they go back after they have completed the journey, and they can’t get back until they are born from above, as told us in the 3rd chapter of John: “You, a master of Israel, and you do not know, unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God? And do you not know that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up?” – and that is a literal fact – in the same serpentine manner, you are lifted up.915 ¶12

And when you take off the garment after these experiences – and they are four mighty, peculiar, supernatural experiences, after the four, you will remain, and you will tell it until that moment in time when you depart – not restored any more to life, not restored. You are now in the Kingdom clothed in your garment of Glory. You are sheer Power, sheer Wisdom, and yet all guided and motivated by Love, for God is Love. You do not exercise that Power in any manner, save motivated by Love. You do not exercise your divine Wisdom in any way, save by Love, for Love embraced you before the whole thing started.915 ¶13

There is no transforming power in death, as we call death here – none. About 15 or 20 years ago in Barbados my wife and I – that is, the little family of three, my little girl – we were there for maybe four or five months. There was a couple from Trinidad. He was a Major in the British Army serving – not serving, but working in Trinidad on some commercial venture, and he came to Barbados with his wife on a vacation, and he was all enthused about my thoughts concerning the Law of God. At the same time, in the hotel there was an elderly gentleman who had retired. He was a professor of chemistry at one of the great universities of England, and he came out to set up some kind of a factory with local money but with his knowledge, making soap, for we thought if we could simply produce local soap, we could save the currency we needed so badly, which was foreign currency, especially American currency and Canadian currency. If we could only produce soap out of the materials we had locally, then that was perfect. So, he came out to set the thing going.915 ¶14

One day, over a few cocktails, this man – Major Morrison – said to him, “You know, Neville has a concept concerning the spirit world” – that is how he described it, and he began to discuss certain things out of one of my books which I gave him, and he was reading the book. Well, the old gentleman said, “I am not interested. I call myself an agnostic. In fact, I think I am really an atheist. But to soften the blow, I say I am an agnostic. Everything in my life must be proven. I am a chemist, my whole life has been devoted to chemistry – to this physical world, and I can see nothing but this physical world. I can take your brain, your body, everything, and reduce it to simple chemicals, and so I am not interested,” said the old gentleman to Major Morrison. I am present. “No offense taken,” I said; “No, forget it. You are here to do a job, and undoubtedly you will do a wonderful job and give us a local factory where we can make our own soap and save foreign currency.”915 ¶15

Well, last Wednesday morning on my return from my usual visit, night after night, as I am teaching what I am teaching you – we are not confined to this, for the world does not end where our senses cease to register it. When a man dies, as we call him – dies, he doesn’t cease to be. He is solidly real – restored in a body just like this, but he is young. He’s about 20. If he drops off at 90, he finds himself 20, restored to life, but he hasn’t changed one iota. His ideas that were present before he died are his ideas after – whatever they were. If he was stupid here, he is just as stupid there. If he was a thief here, he is a thief there. Whatever he is here, he is it there.915 ¶16

Well, here, on my way back Wednesday morning, I encounter these two, Sir Archibald Duke, who was the other gentleman and the professor, and Archie is saying to this man, the professor, “There is going to be a demonstration tonight on television,” and he called it “tely,” for in England they always speak of it as the “tely.” “There is going to be a demonstration tonight on the tely – a scientific demonstration.” Well, that would interest the old man – scientific, but then the old gentleman discovered that what he meant by scientific was a psychical demonstration to demonstrate the reality of psychism, like extra-sensory perception and all kinds of things concerning the psychic world. Well, the old man turned – as he would – sour. It meant nothing to him. But here is Archie, the same Archie – he is all completely – I would say – moved emotionally because it’s coming on tonight, exactly what he always wanted. While he was here, though a very able accountant, he had a big business in Barbados talking care of all the big businesses and closing their books for them and advising them, but he was vitally interested in psychism. He was a very devout Methodist, in spite of the fact that he smoked. He was a chain smoker, which the Methodists abhor, and he could drink anyone under the table. Still he called himself a devout Christian and a good Methodist. The other one was the atheist or the agnostic. And they had not changed one bit! One is still interested in these things and the other is not. One is still the scientist. And they don’t even know that they have departed this section of time! They do not know, because no one dies. God is the God of the living, because nothing dies.915 ¶17

Because it doesn’t die, how can you tell a man, when you are looking at him and you are talking to him, “Don’t you know I went to your funeral?” He’d laugh at you. “What funeral?” “I went to your funeral. I saw them put you down into the little grave.” Well, he starts to laugh at you as though you were insane, because he knows he is not dead. But he doesn’t know that he went through the so-called gates that we on this side of the veil call death.915 ¶18

That happened to me years ago – back in 1946 it was. I came out here in ’45. No, it was ’47. I came out here in ’45, returned in 1946 in the summer. I got a cable from New York City that my secretary had dropped dead. It was a hot August day, and they had found the body on the floor, where he had died of a heart attack. I went back and took care of his funeral. He was a Catholic, and I gave him a good Catholic funeral in Haverstraw, New York. Six months later, I find myself in the world where he is. I am fully aware and fully conscious. I know that Jack died six months ago. I meet my sister-in-law, who always said to me, “I like you as a brother-in-law because you are very kind to my sister and to your child, which is my niece, but I don’t believe one word of what you talk about. I don’t believe you at all.” At that moment, here is my former and now departed secretary, Jack Butler, and I said to my sister-in-law, “Al” – her name is Alice, I said, “Al, so you don’t believe what I teach, you don’t believe in survival because you always said, I am a good Christian, but you survive only through the loins of your parents, and you perpetuate yourself in that manner. I said, ‘How can you be a good Christian and tell that? Christianity is based upon the foundation stone of the fatherhood of God – the brotherhood of man, and you tell me now that there is no such thing as survival? Life everlasting is the third stone of the great foundation stone of Christianity: the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and Life Everlasting.’” She said, “I still don’t believe what you teach.” I said to her, “Then, look at Jack.” She said to me, “What has that to do with it?” I said, “Don’t you know that Jack died?” and her face blanched. She knew Jack had died. I said, “All right, there he is. He’s alive, isn’t he?” And Jack said to me, “Who died?” I said, “Jack, you died. I went to your funeral. I buried you. I got a good Catholic funeral for you in Haverstraw, New York, and put you all the way down and covered you up with a lot of sand,” and that’s where that body was, and still is decaying now. He said, “Who is dead?” I said, “You aren’t dead, Jack, but you died.” He said, “How stupid! I’m not dead, but I died?” Jack had been gone six months and did not realize he had gone.915 ¶19

People do not change, I’m telling you. They haven’t any concept, because they are still dreaming. You are dreaming this world, and you are dreaming that world, too. You only awaken when, within your own skull, you become awake, and you are born from above. When you are born from above, you come out and all that is said in Scripture concerning the birth of Christ, you experience. Then you realize who Christ is. Until then, you thought he was another, some thing in history, two thousand years ago. He is not another. “It is Christ-in-you that is the hope of Glory. And do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, and that you are the temple of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you?”915 ¶20

Well, people do not realize this. Today in the Christian churches there will be hundreds of millions attending some portion of the 3-hour service. On Sunday morning they will be crowded to capacity, all the churches of Christendom. You know why? To show their new hats or their new dresses. On Sunday on Fifth Avenue, in New York City, they will be coming out of St. Pat’s and St. Thomas and all the churches, and cameramen will be there to photograph them. And do you know why? Two months ago that was arranged. These socially prominent women went to the editors of the New York Times and the other papers, and they made appointments. They told them exactly what they were going to wear, what their hat is like, what church they will attend, what door they will make an exit from, and so the New York Times will send their cameraman there. And when this thing comes out dressed as he knows she is supposed to be dressed, he is going to photograph it, and put it in the paper on Monday morning. So, on Monday – this coming Monday, maybe fifty thousand more papers than normally are sold will be sold, because each will buy a hundred, and throw all the paper away, and keep just the one page, and send it off to all their friends, and keep a few for themselves for posterity. And then the New York Times can claim that they had so many more sales, and all the advertisers advertising in that paper for Monday just simply had a blank, because they aren’t reading anything but their own little section, and it was all prearranged by the editor.915 ¶21

That I know from experience, because the same Jack Butler, when they made a mistake in one of my ads once, went down to investigate it, so he went to the editor of the religious section, and she said – she had to do something to pacify him, and she said, “How would you like to see the editorial staff of the social section of our paper?” Well, Jack was always one for fun, so he said, “I would love it.” This was just about two months before Easter, and all these ladies and their daughters were all around the place, dozens and dozens of them, waiting to be interviewed. Each was going to say exactly what they were going to wear, they had ordered them, the dresses had already been ordered and they were delivered. They knew what kind of a hat, and what church they would attend, where they were going to come out, and the cameras will be there to photograph them, and the morning papers will carry it as spontaneous – all spontaneous. And that is the “dream world.”915 ¶22

A man just retired after a very successful thirty years in the show business. His name is Sinatra. I recall this vividly when he was a young boy. I came out of my theater on 48th Street, which was between Fifth and Madison Avenues, and walking towards Fifth, when I got to Fifth, there were three dozen young girls, oh 16 or 17, and here is a cab right in the middle of Fifth Avenue with this young man. Well, he’s ten years my junior, so he was then – well, whatever I was then, when he got started. His foot on the runway, the cab is stalled, traffic backed up, all the horns are honking, the cop is inquiring, and he is signing autographs for these thirty or more. All that was prearranged. They will block the traffic. For what? They will give him a ticket – they will give the cabby a ticket, but he’ll pay. He will pay fifty dollars, a hundred dollars. It’s the publicity. All that is a part of the motion. He has kept that going until now, and people think, “What a big, wonderful man!” He has been promoted from the time that he began to breathe as a young lad as a singer, and he goes all through our entire dream world. How are you going to – you can’t stop it. You can’t stop it; it’s part of the dream world.915 ¶23

I am not telling you of the dream world. I am telling you of the world wherein you will awake, and when you awake, you will be clothed in your Immortal Body, and that is Heaven. Heaven is not a realm; it’s not an area. Wherever you are, clothed in your glorified Body, is Heaven, because nothing remains imperfect in your presence. If you walk through the Petrified Forest, it would all burst into foliage. If you walk in the desert, the desert would blossom. Everything would become beautiful, and things long dead, or not even visible, will suddenly appear because you walk by. So, wherever you go, clothed in your glorified Body, which comes with your resurrection, makes every place that you go perfect, for wherever you are, things must be perfect.915 ¶24

That’s what we are celebrating this week, but they aren’t telling it that way. They are telling of a little man who died a horrible death two thousand years ago, and then they took him down from the tree, and then put him in a tomb, but God raised him from the dead. You are the one spoken of, and you are still hanging on that tree in a way, for you are nailed upon this body. And the nails are vortices: six vortices, a vortex, a vortex, a vortex, a vortex, and both feet, and they are whirling vortices that nail you here. And may I tell you from my own experience, it was sheer ecstasy; it was not painful. There was no pain whatsoever – such ecstasy, and then oblivion. And that oblivion was a complete forgetfulness of the Being that you are, and you are buried in your skull, and in that skull you dreamed the dream of life, as we are dreaming it now.915 ¶25

And because it is a dream, if you know it’s a dream, you can dream anything into being, if you know it’s a dream. You can control the dream. So, what would the feeling be like if it were true? Well, you name what it is you would like to be feeling, and naming it; you dream it just as though it were true. Remain faithful to your assumption, and that assumption of yours, though at the moment it appears to be false and denied by your senses – if you persist in it, it will harden into fact. This is the story, and I am telling you what I know, that I have experienced it. I have experienced the Law of bringing things into being that I dared to assume because I wanted them to be brought into being.915 ¶26

And the other, which is the fulfillment of God’s Promise – for I was that Abraham, and so are you, and we were shown the Gospel beforehand. We were given a preview of it, and we were told, “You will go into a world that is not yours, and there you will be enslaved, and there you will be injured, and there you will be maltreated, but after four hundred years, you will come out.”915 ¶27

Now, the “four hundred” is not four hundred as we measure time. “Four hundred” is simply a symbolical number of a cross. It is the numerical number of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is the taw; and taw has the symbol of a cross; and this is the cross. So, as long as I wear this, I am in the world of the furnaces; but I will come out of it. I will awaken within it and come out of it, and one day soon after I awaken within it and come out of it, I will shed it. And shedding it, I will go back to the glory that “was mine before that the world was” – but enhanced by reason of wearing the cross in this world, because no one – but no one – can consummate this bliss that he saw before the world was unless he is generated here, in this world, in flesh and blood.915 ¶28

So, I came down, and I find myself wearing a garment, “woven in the womb of a woman,” and I put on that garment, and I’m nailed on it. And then, I’m buried in that garment – buried in the skull, and because I am buried in the skull, I come out of the skull. And when I come out of that skull, I am still wearing the garment for a little interval of time to tell and share it with my brothers. So, encourage them to continue – no matter what happens, to continue. Dream nobly, and realize the dreams. But dream nobly, because in the not-distant future you are going to awaken, and when you awaken, you are going to take off the little garment. And that is the cross that you wore for your journey, which is called in Scripture the “four hundred years.” Really, it’s thousands of years! You have been wearing it for thousands of years, for there is no death, really, only restoration. Transformation in one sense: you go through the gate and don’t even know you’ve gone.915 ¶29

I got a call from New York today at 3:00 o’clock this afternoon, and there was the voice – a very sad voice. I said, “Hello.” She said, “Neville? This is Louise. I have sad news for you.” I said, “What happened?” She said, “Joseph died today. He died in my arms.” I said, “Was he sick?” “No, just a great – well, a rupture of the aorta, right in my arms and Neville’s arms.” Neville is my little namesake – one that I met before he came into this world. He is now 17. She continued, “Together we held him. He suffered seemingly for a little while – not too long, maybe a half an hour he seemed to be in great pain, and then that was it.” But he was 77 – lived a full, wonderful life, and will leave her a considerable fortune: factories here, factories in Paris, factories in Puerto Rico, and so, financially speaking, there is no problem, but a great tear.915 ¶30

And what could I say to her? – I couldn’t even get her off the wire – but tell her certain stories that Joseph – he lived a full, wonderful life up to the very end – up to the end. To him, the spirit world – “Let it come later,” he said. Always, “Let it come later” – tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But now he was, after all – he was a couturier, making fashions for the beautiful ladies, and everything concerning the beauty of the physical form, and he loved it, and he “played the field” perfectly. He went to the end, and he was 77, so Joseph will still be the Joseph that I knew. He will not be interested in the birth from above. He will not be interested in the Word of God. He made a fortune, and he’s left a fortune – all to Louise and his one child, Neville. So, they will have this enormous estate, and it really is enormous, but he is still the same Joseph. And when he finds himself as he will now – not 77, but 20, and what a joy for him! He’ll be twenty – without any interest in spirituality – just an interest in the human form.915 ¶31

But there will come at the very end of the journey, as you are told in the 8th chapter of Amos, “I will send a famine upon the world. It will not be a hunger for bread, nor will it be a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the Word of God.” It will come to all, but it only comes at the end. It is in the 8th chapter of Amos, the 8th verse. A hunger, and you cannot resist the hunger. Not a thing in the world can divert you. They can give you millions; it doesn’t interest you. They can make you all kinds of offers, and it doesn’t interest you – only the Word of God and the understanding of that Word.915 ¶32

Now, speaking of the Word of God, the 8th chapter, also the 8th verse, of Nehemiah, and you will read from the book of the Book of God, and you will read it with understanding, so it will have meaning when you read it. The whole book unfolds within you, because in the end you are only going to fulfill the Word of God. You have been the son of God, who is the Word of God. You are alive and you were sent into the world, the Living Word, to realize within yourself the written word. Now let us go into the silence.915 ¶33

Tonight’s subject is “An Apostle.” I really should have said The Apostle, but we let it go. In the epistle to the Hebrews we have this statement…and here Hebrews is completely anonymous, no one knows who wrote it. Scholars have speculated and thought it was Paul, and yet Paul is just as anonymous as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John…the whole Bible is anonymous. But in the epistle to the Hebrews, the 3rd chapter, he said, “Holy brethren, who share in a heavenly call, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession” . In this epistle the word apostle is applied only to Jesus, as if there were no other apostles. May I tell you, he’s right…whoever wrote it, he’s right. The word apostle means “one who is sent, not as a mere envoy but as one who is authorized to speak in the name of him who has sent him.” So throughout the gospel of John you read, “He who sees me sees him who has sent me” . Here we find the apostle. Without explaining why, we say just Paul, as though he were a person. Paul is a state as much as Abraham is a state. Well, we say Paul, and he lays it down as an indispensable qualification for apostleship, that is, to have seen the risen Christ. He said, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” . That is the indispensable prerequisite for apostleship, to have seen the risen Christ.914 ¶1

So we read in the 52nd of Isaiah, “How beautiful are the mountains…how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns,’” because he speaks with authority. He stood in the presence of the risen Christ, and he was embraced and incorporated into the body of the risen Christ, who is Jehovah, and sent to tell the story of the risen Christ, called the gospel. The gospel is the Word of the risen Christ.914 ¶2

Here, this is the perspective in which the whole of life is understood. That you become a king, a financial giant, a brilliant person, a great scientist? These things mean nothing compared to standing in the presence of the risen Christ and having him embrace you and incorporate you. And although you come to earth clothed in a garment of flesh, no one sees you, but no one. There is no human eye that can see the thing that your really are. Because when you are once incorporated into his body let no man put us asunder. He who is joined to the Lord no man can put asunder. We are called, one by one, to be incorporated into this glorious body, and our lowly bodies are changed to be of one form with that wonderful, glorious body . You can talk about it and say all kinds of things, but who can see it?914 ¶3

So here, the apostle is simply the one man; and so in Hebrews it is only given to Jesus. It’s so difficult for man to believe that all could fit into one man, that we’re gathered one by one to be incorporated into one man, and that one man is Christ the Lord, and one man, Jesus. This is a strange, peculiar thing, but I’m telling you what I know from experience. I’m not speculating, I’m not theorizing…I tell you exactly what happened to me.914 ¶4

Thirty years before the birth from above, it was 1929, and we are told, two were in the field and one is taken, one is left. Two women in the mill and one is taken and one is left . Do not return to ask why. No one knows the secret of God’s elective love. All will be called, but the order in which they are called remains his secret. No one knows why we are called as we are called, in the order in which we are called. And so here it was in the summer of 1929, I was called, taken in Spirit into the presence of the risen Christ, answering a very simple question—because the answer was before you, you couldn’t fail—and having answered his simple question he embraced me. As he embraced me we fused. I was no longer this body; I am this body, this human form divine, the body of love. From it I can’t be sundered. There is no power in the world…I wouldn’t limit it to the earth…there’s no power in eternity that can sunder me from the body of Christ, for I have been incorporated into this body. Then he sent me into this world with the words, “Time to act!” It took thirty years and then the whole drama began to unfold within me.914 ¶5

So we are told in the end of the 3rd chapter of Luke, “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” …after the baptism with the Holy Spirit. For you are told, “I baptize with water, but there will come one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. He is the one on whom the dove will descend, that is, the Holy Spirit will descend. And I saw the Spirit descend upon him as a dove, and it remained upon him. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit” . In other words, he will baptize you with himself. Just as you are baptized in water, but you come out of the water, you’re not part of it. But when you are baptized with the Holy Spirit, you are actually absorbed into the body of the risen Christ. You don’t come out of it. So he who sees me sees him who sent me. But you don’t see me you see the mask I wear. So that moment on…but I wasn’t yet born from above. Yet I was baptized into it.914 ¶6

And so it takes thirty years between the baptismal by the Holy Spirit and the beginning. It takes three and a half years for the unfolding of the drama. It begins with the resurrection. So we are told, “I, Paul, an apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised me from the dead.” That’s the first book. Not chronologically speaking, but by all judgment, all scholars agree this is the first book written in the New Testament: It is Paul’s letter to the Galatians. He begins it, “Paul an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” . So he raises every one of us, because Jesus Christ is in man. If he were not in us, we couldn’t breathe, you’d have no life, for in him is life. Are you alive? Well, then you couldn’t possibly be alive were he not in you. So he raises you into the presence of the risen Christ and embraces, really, himself, for there is nothing but Jesus Christ buried in all these garments of flesh.914 ¶7

Now here this past week I received a lovely letter. She isn’t here tonight, but you can tell her. No, she is here, pardon me. She had this experience. This is all in a dream but remember, God speaks to man through the medium of dream. She’s in her home, the house is lit, and someone announces, “Come.” And she wonders, “Why should I come?” and he gave some vague explanation why she should come. So she went out into the street and the whole street is dark, not a light in sight, all the houses were dark. There’s not a street light.914 ¶8

So she goes to the intersection. All the houses now begin to be empty of people, and they all look like puppets. Their eyes are closed, and she could see behind and here was the emptiness behind the closed eyes. It was a cold night, she had no hat or coat and she felt comfortably warm. They came out completely bundled up, hats, scarves, coats, everything, and all in gray, and they themselves seemed gray. They looked just like puppets. And so at the intersection where she remained they all began to move up what she called a hill, really a steep street, from what she described in her letter. At the top of the hill, she began to separate herself from them, and she felt sorry for them, these strange, peculiar dead-like people. At the top was a man that she remembered in a previous dream. There was a light over his head and he spoke with tremendous authority. He had a head of hair that resembled a mane of a lion, only the top was cropped, very shortly cropped across the top. But it was cut in something like a lion’s mane. He said to all these people, “I will call each person’s name three times. If you cannot answer when I ask you for your name, you must remain with the group.” Well, it seemed like the height of nonsense. So he called the name of each and no one could answer. They were bewildered.914 ¶9

And she tried her best to tell them; she couldn’t voice it and she tried her very best. She said, “It’ so simple, only two little words.” But she couldn’t in any way convey to them what they should say, she couldn’t, and she knew she couldn’t. But she felt so sorry for all these puppets. They could not give voice to their name, and he called it three times to each one. And then, as the scene faded, feeling sorry for the entire bunch, she went up the street to the first house, and she entered it…and here was a receptionist, she was busy about something. And she was terribly concerned about these people and she wondered, “Where are they?” The receptionist, in the most cold, indifferent manner said, “Oh, they’re in that house up the street asleep.” She asked, “If they are asleep, why did you call them out? Why were they called out?” and the receptionist said, “It’s not their house. They are only in it, but it’s not their house”…a complete cold indifference about this. She knew that they were sound asleep in this place, and not a thing she could do about it. So she came out of this house, returned to her own home, and here was the light lit in her house. It was the only house lit in the entire street…and not a street light.914 ¶10

What a wonderful experience! It’s so difficult to tell man in whom the light is not yet lit; but everyone here, Christ is sleeping in us, everyone. So you are not quite the puppet that she saw. Well, that is life. But in everyone here he’s waking, waking, waking…on the verge of waking where the light is lit. One will come out and see the entire world round about and it’s dead. It’s a strange thing to say, but it really is. “Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of Creation, which was an act of mercy.” No reason in the world why this thing here should be awakened as God, none. Only an act of mercy could do it.914 ¶11

And to do it, God buried himself within me and took upon himself this form, the form of a slave. He slept and shared with me then as he made me alive horrible dreams, nightmares, horrors, the wars, the conflicts of the world. Then one day he awakes and calls me into his risen state, and embraces me, and sends me back to experience thirty years later the drama as foretold in the gospel: The resurrection, the birth; the discovery of the fatherhood of God through his son calling me Father; then the tearing of the curtain of the temple, which is my body, and lifting me up into Zion; and then the descent of the dove upon me. But in the meanwhile, surrounding me with all kinds of signs and wonders, all kinds of heavenly visions, wonderful visions, and all related to scripture. Not necessarily part of these great four…these great four stand out of them all…but there are others not recoded in scripture that will come to you, and you’ll experience them.914 ¶12

So when you are sent, you are in the eyes of the world if they will accept it, an apostle. And yet, there is only the apostle. God only sends himself, he can’t send another. After you are incorporated into his body and sent, how could he send another when you cannot be sundered from that body of love? You can’t be separated from the body of the risen Christ after you have been called and embraced and incorporated into the body of Christ. So, “How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of him who brings good news, good tidings, publishes salvation, and says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” So I can say to Zion, the whole vast world: Your God reigns, he is raised, he’s resurrected, and he is gathering us all, one by one, into his body. So in the end, “There is only one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” .914 ¶13

So in the end, there is only one God, one name, one king, all gathered, and you are he. Not some little thing down on the lower level, but one. There is no one who is outcast…but we are gathered. The secret remains the secret of the risen Christ. When this little garment is taken off for the last time, which is the next time I take it off, I will know the secret of the call, because I am one then, not veiled, but unveiled with the risen Christ. But that secret remains his secret. No one here while he still remains veiled though he’s been called and incorporated, he does not know the secret of the order in which we are called. So I can’t tell anyone that you’re going to be called next or you are next. I can only tell you from your visions and your experiences.914 ¶14

Now another friend of mine who is here tonight, he said that many, many years ago, approximately ten years ago, he was driving a car and suddenly there was nothing but light. He said, “I can’t say there was light and myself, no, just light…and infinity falling in little, little kinds of light, all light falling. What I saw falling…the other night when you spoke of the serpent, of these diamond-headed serpents and trailing the little vertebrae, I didn’t see that. To me the head was a grain and then a tadpole like tail. But everything was light, nothing but light. I heard and knew within me, ‘All is one.’ Then I became aware that, after all, I am driving a car…and there’s going to be a ditch…and how will I turn off? By some reflex action I simply stopped the car, and the light subsided. As the cars went by, angry looks on the people as they passed me. Then I said to them, whether I shouted it audibly or not, I did say to them, everything’s all right! and I knew everything was all right, in spite of their angry looks as they looked at me. By some reflex action I stopped it, stopped the car. But everything was light.”914 ¶15

May I tell him, he’s here tonight, you can, you can do it now, but it’s better during the day. I can do it any time, day or night. But tomorrow go to the window and don’t look at the building across, don’t look at the sky, just look into space. Not an object in space but something in space and you’ll see infinity falling, these little, as you called them, tadpoles. They do look like tadpoles until you arrest one. You can arrest it. You arrest one and you’ll see exactly what I’ve told you, a diamond head trailing a perfect vertebra. You can hold him as long as you want. And you say they were not liquid. No, they are not liquid but they’re moving, or they appear to move in a fluid. They appear to be in a fluid, just like little tiny fish in a bowl, and you see their motion. They move in the same way. You say tadpole? It is just like a tadpole moving. But you can arrest one or you can arrest a dozen. So pick one…follow him quickly. Because he makes a peculiar dart, you think you can’t follow him but you can. He goes in all directions. Well, pick one and hold him. Leave all the other millions alone. There are millions. You can’t count them. Take one and follow him. He seems to go out of sight for a moment, don’t let him go. Hold him in your mind’s eye. He’ll stop, as you arrest him he’ll stop, and you’ll see exactly what I tell you, a little diamond head, brilliant diamond, and he’s actually trailing a vertebrae.914 ¶16

So I say to you, you said you were partly illumined, you feel you were, I tell you you were. That happened to me and it came through light back in 1926 in the city of Larchmont in New York. I retired early. It was Prohibition days…I wasn’t drinking in those days…I went to bed quite early. I was reading a book, The Life of Buddha, and as I read The Life of Buddha I must have fallen asleep, and the book fell on my chest. A thing I rarely do is read in bed. When I go to bed, I go to bed for the purpose of sleeping. But this night I was told by my host, who was the manager of the club, that he didn’t think it wise for me, his guest, to join the members and the children of the members of the club; that they did not like it because after all he was employed by the club, and I was his guest, and I should not mingle with the members of the club. And so I did not go down. I remained upstairs in my room and took this book and I was reading it. In 1926 I was twenty-one years of age. I had the bed light on, and the whole thing fell upon my chest, because when I woke the next morning it was nine. I was in a trance from possible nine at night to nine in the morning. I hadn’t moved. Usually when I sleep I turn side to side as we all do in the course of the night. But this night, the bed was completely, I would say, unwrinkled twelve hours later. I hadn’t moved. I was reading…at some moment it fell upon my chest, and as it fell there I went into a trance.914 ¶17

In this trance there was nothing but light, infinite light—no stars, no moon, nothing but light, and I am light. I am all there is in the entire universe, and I am light. So when you read in John, “I am the light of the world” , that is not conjured through reasoning, it is not the result of some philosophic contemplation, it’s revelation. It happened. So I can say to him, you were at that moment illumined…driving down, and suddenly everything is light. And when you told the passersby, “Everything is alright…all is light…and all is one” you’re right. All is one. So don’t be concerned, you actually saw it.914 ¶18

Now he asked me, “Please,” said he, “I used to be called one of the most responsible men imaginable. I was brought up to do things and to hold my own, and to do and be responsible. I think I am a doer and I am responsible, but recently I think I’ve become a little bit irresponsible, because all of my values with which I was raised have crumbled. You said in one of your books that when all of the things you held so precious and so dear collapse around you…then you led them to the scriptures.” Which you can, you can find it, the 13th chapter, I think it’s the 13th of Mark, which shows you the whole thing crumbled about you . And he said, “Here, I feel myself irresponsible, because today I don’t think I have to do anything to achieve my objective. Now that is not something I was raised to do. I had to work, I had to do, I had to actually do things. Now here all of a sudden having proved this law I feel that I don’t have to do as I was raised to do. I don’t feel that I have to work as I was raised to work. I feel I can actually bring these things to pass, and it’s the most cleansing feeling, so free,” he tells me in this letter. “Please explain some night when it suits you, what is man’s duty, what is his responsibility; and is this something more than you’ve said in the past, that whenever you use your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another you are mediating God to man, and that is what we should do? And please, if it is something other than that explain it, and if there isn’t, well, then let it go.”914 ¶19

May I tell you, you know the law. I’m speaking to him; I’m speaking to all of you. What must I do to be doing the will of God? That question is asked and the answer is, “Believe in him whom he has sent” . Believe in him. Believe in Neville? No, believe in him whom he has sent. You read it in the gospel. What do I read in the gospel? “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will” . That’s doing the will of God if you believe it and apply it. You mean I do nothing? Well, just try it. That’s doing the will of God.914 ¶20

If today someone gets a fortune and it comes out of the nowhere, not one person knowing the source of the fortune because he had the fortune says, “Oh, you know who we saw today? [...] very rich person, and so and so.” So they go through the world looking upon all these people who have things and they don’t trace it as to where they got it. Our present governor of…is it Arkansas?…Winthrop Rockefeller, and someone said in the campaign against him he was born rich and he does not understand the poor, doesn’t know anything about the poor. He said in rebuttal, “I have had nothing to do with either of them. I was born rich. I didn’t know a thing about it. I’ve never known poverty. I’ve had nothing to do with that either. So are you going to condemn me because I was born rich and because I have never really known poverty?” So they elected him to the governorship. He never knew it…so he is born rich.914 ¶21

But may I tell you, that pales into insignificance compared to what you inherit: You inherit the creative power of God! Not a billion dollars or the city of Los Angeles, that’s nothing! Or the earth itself, that’s nothing. You inherit the creative power and the wisdom of God. That’s your inheritance. Well now, God speaks to me objectively through his written Word. And no one knows the authors, really, it is all God. Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will. Now must I go about the old training, saying I’ve got to do something and work for it?914 ¶22

The money that I have today, did I really work for it? I earn, the little that I do earn, and it’s barely expenses compared to my expenses. Every night I come here that it rains and just a few people come, the club doesn’t tell me, “You know, only a few came last night, therefore, we’re going to give you a refund.” I pay my rent in advance, and, may I tell you, it’s a considerable rent. It’s all paid in advance. I put it out. The L. A. Times when they send me the bill they give me an ad, but they send me a bill and I must pay it. I send out notices, 1500 notices. I go to the post office and buy the envelopes and the stamps. That’s all paid for whether you come or not. But the money that I have, may I tell you, I didn’t do anything to earn, didn’t raise a finger. My father gave it to me, and it grows and grows like a lovely, wonderful fortune. My only satisfaction is that I have a little family to whom I would willingly tomorrow give it. If I go this night, I go relieved that they don’t have any pressure, none whatsoever. It’s adequate, more than adequate to take care of all of their earthly needs that money can supply.914 ¶23

Money can’t supply everything in this world. It can’t buy friendship, can’t buy understanding. It can’t buy all the real things in this world…it can’t buy them at all. How can it buy artistry? How can it buy all the lovely things in the world? If all the Rockefellers in the world came together, and put them in the forts, and put them in all the wealth of the world, and put them into a composite picture, and you stand in here, they could not together buy what I have received standing in the presence of the risen Christ. What money in this world would you need to buy the embrace of Christ and to be incorporated into his body, forever and forever, never again to be sundered from it? Is there any wealth in this world that could actually come near? You can’t buy that. So you see there’s so much that money cannot buy. Now, they would not be interested in what I’m telling you tonight. They would be so far removed from what I tell you concerning this night, the real realm.914 ¶24

And yet on the earthly realm I didn’t raise one finger to get it. I had it. I did not work another hour in my life to live and live graciously, with any home I want, in any part of the Sterling area, with a full complement of servants. I can afford it and not in any way reduce my way of living, in fact, augmenting it. But I don’t touch it. I live normally in this world from here.914 ¶25

So I say to this gentleman, what is one’s duty? What is one’s responsibility? “Believe in him whom he has sent”…that is your duty. To go out in one grand manner and dare to assume that you are the man that you want to be…just let it happen. Just let it happen. It will happen if you dare to live in the assumption that things are as you desire them to be. So that is my advice to all. If it seems insane, may I tell you it isn’t.914 ¶26

The greatest…or one of the great visionaries of the world, William Blake, they thought him insane, too. He wasn’t insane. The other day I was reading one of his…some little comment on him, and they thought the man insane because of his pictures. I have a lovely collection of his pictures at home, so I was going through these pictures what they called the insane ones and, oh, if they only knew how true they are! I told you the other day that we’re all rooted in hell, the region of fear, and we aspire to heaven, the realm of hope, and when these two are synchronized it results in vision. Well, Blake in his Gates of Paradise, the 13th plate, here is obviously someone that’s dead. You don’t see the face. You see the feet and you see what, undoubtedly, is the body on the bed and there are two figures at the head, concealing the face, you can’t see the face. One is fear and one is just full of hope on the two sides next to the head. Then at the foot of the bed but rising is the Ancient of Days. He calls it, Fear and Hope Equals Vision. But in the actual words that he uses to describe this particular plate, he uses just two little lines of twelve words: “But when once I did descry the Immortal Man that cannot die.”914 ¶27

The same man rises out of that, so he hid the face, because you will think your father died, your mother died, your child died, you’re going to see that image. No, you’re going to see Christ rise…there’s only Christ. There’s nothing but Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is God. So you think you’re going to find some little thing there rising out just like him? No. So he conceals the face of the dead little garment. But who is the one? He comes nearer than anything that I have seen, for when I stood in the presence of the risen Christ, it’s not like that…it’s more glorious. Because you can’t paint it and you can’t draw it but he comes very close. But it’s not like that. And here rising from this dead garment is the Ancient of Days. When anyone dies, who rises?—the Ancient of Days. It was God who became man that man may become God, and his name is I AM. So you say, “Well, I am” and you drop all the other little garments because I AM is rising. Nothing dies, but nothing in eternity dies. But it has to be awakened. He’s sound asleep in all, and wakes one after the other, in this one, that one, the other one, and he awakens in all.914 ¶28

So the apostle is the one who has been embraced by him, incorporated into his body and sent. To be called implies to be sent. And you’re called one by one. I hadn’t the slightest idea in 1929, unschooled, unknown, uneducated, and sleeping in that little tiny room, not knowing where the next week’s rent would come from, not knowing anything…and to be called. Called out of the nowhere and there are billions in the world and I am called. So no one knows the actual secret of his elective love, it remains his secret. Read the 15th chapter of Corinthians—the order no one knows. But we are called in our own order.914 ¶29

So here, I thank the gentleman for his wonderful letter; and the lady for hers, a wonderful dream, it’s a true dream, and the experience is true. I can’t tell you what my thrill is to get your letters, for they’re all, really, coming to the surface of the awakening God. I can’t conceive of anyone coming here and coming over the months who is not on the verge of waking. I was not sent by some man. I wasn’t sent by some organization.914 ¶30

When you read in the papers that these people call themselves apostles…an apostle, as someone said in a certain …I would not call the name of the church, it’s a large church, almost three million members, and they have their twelve appointed by men. If you want to become president to that large group, all you have to do is live long enough to outlive the others. They call that apostles. And they actually claim that no one else but that very small little group of less than three million are eligible for the kingdom, and all converts are simply to much lower strata. What nonsense! And here they aspire to the highest secular office in our world…the strangest, peculiar thing. But what peculiar visions they seem to have…so unlike the gospel.914 ¶31

May I tell you, when he’s sent, you will know it. He will come for one purpose: An apostle is sent to witness to the Word of God. He can only witness if he experiences the Word of God. So he is sent, and he is bewildered. As you’re told in scripture, Paul was bewildered because he thought himself so unworthy…he persecuted. So he and everyone in the world you go berserk, you don’t believe in him, and then you turn completely around. You’re an atheist, you’re agnostic, you’re everything, and finally you’re called. Then everything you tried to rub out you will now protect with your life, and willingly sacrifice your life to not only protect what formerly you would have destroyed but to promote it. His whole life was devoted to the promotion of the very faith that he would have destroyed. Having gone through all the states of the world you reach that point…all of a sudden you’re called.914 ¶32

So don’t condemn anyone who tonight might think they are agnostic or they are atheist or they are this, forget it. They may be called tomorrow. After you’re called, what can you do? You’re bewildered. You never once believed that the risen Christ was a fact; that Christ is God, and God is man. You stand in the presence of the risen Christ and it’s man. It’s not some impersonal force, it’s man, and it’s nothing but love. He embraces you, then sends you. And you know that you cannot in eternity be sundered from that body of the risen Christ; it’s your body now. At that moment of the embrace your lowly body was changed to be one form with his glorious body.914 ¶33

No mortal eye can see him, so the longing is always, as Paul said, I long to depart and be with Christ—that wonderful form into which he was incorporated—but for your sakes, said he, the need is far greater that I stay on in the body. And when you stay on in the body, you only talk about the risen Christ and the gospel.914 ¶34

Now let us go into the Silence.914 ¶35

* * * [...] on Friday. I think we have four left before we close on the 16th of December. We’ll be closed until the 13th of February, and then we go through to the end, or the last week, I would say, of April; and then we are off until September. So we have four lectures left. Friday is the next, then we have two the following week, and then one our last week. So I hope I’ll be able to send out cards when I come back during the Christmas holiday, but remember the date if you are going to come between now and closing. We are reopening on the 13th of February; we’re closing here on the 16 of December. Good night. Thank you.914 ¶36

It may seem insane, but I tell you it is true! I’m speaking this night, as always, from experience. I’m not speculating. So in the beginning it is stated the truest return of Jesus is when the story of Jesus is recreated in you. Everything said of Jesus in the gospels you experience. We are told in Acts, “Men of Galilee, why stand gazing into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as he went up into heaven” . This is a bold statement, and the world will think they are looking into heaven for him to come. If I left the platform now and walked through the door and I told you will return in the same manner I departed, wouldn’t you expect me to come from that door back into here? I didn’t go that way. I didn’t come from that door into here when I left the room. When I left the room, I left it from here.910 ¶1

Well now, let me show you a story and I know it from experience. The characters of scripture are the eternal states of the soul; they are not persons as you and I are. When I think of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, these are the eternal states through which the immortal soul passes; from a state of innocence to the state of being God and the passage is through experience. This world is the world of experience, a world of educative darkness. And we leave a state called Eden, of complete innocence, and we enter the state of experience, move through it, and awake a completely awakened Imagination where all things are subject to our creative power. There we are God himself.910 ¶2

In the beginning, we are told, when man in the state of innocence was addressed by a serpent, and the serpent said to the woman, “Did God say you should not eat of the fruit of the garden?” and she answered and said, “No. God said we may eat of the fruit of the garden, but not the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. We should neither eat it nor touch it lest we die.” The serpent said, “God said you would die?” She replied yes. Then the serpent said, “God knows that you will not surely die, but your eyes will be opened and you will become as the gods knowing good and evil” . And it seemed good to her to taste of that that would make her wise…it seemed so good to become wise and so she ate and shared it with the man. Then we are told they were expelled, and told to bring forth everything in pain.910 ¶3

Now, this seems like a myth, doesn’t it? The world treats it as such. But now let me give you my visions of this beginning. I said they were eternal states, and man starts in the state called Abraham “the friend of God.” When you meet Abraham you see faith, just infinite faith. This is a state as I came upon it.910 ¶4

There was an oak tree, the trunk was about seven feet, and the branches, not a leaf on them, that resembled the human brain, all gnarled and curled, just like the convolutions of the human brain. Standing against the trunk of the tree was a giant of a man, six foot six. I didn’t have to ask, “Who are you?” It is so obvious to you when you come upon these states who they represent. They are only representations of states, but they are all personified because God is man; and every attribute of God is personified, so you see man. I knew exactly who he was. He is looking into the distance, for there is distance in his eyes, not just of space but of time. He is seeing the distance in time…that’s all that concerns him. Coiled around the trunk of the tree is a serpent with a human face. When you see that face, you have never seen anything before so wise. You see in that face not only the wisdom of the moment, of the past, of the future…it knows everything. It doesn’t look at Abraham; it has just whispered into the ear of Abraham. Abraham is hearing what is said and he is seeing its fulfillment in time. But the serpent looks at you who entered that state. In my case it was the return to the beginning, for I have returned now to the state that I entered in my innocence. So, at the end of the road you return and see where you really started the journey. He is looking at me, not a word is said, but, oh, what an expression! You can’t describe wisdom…that there is nothing unknown to this face, and yet it is a serpent coiled around the tree trunk with a human head, resting on the trunk but looking over the head of Abraham.910 ¶5

Alright, how do you think the word serpent is defined in Hebrew and Greek? The word is “to whisper; to prognosticate, i.e., to tell future events by indication, signs, by omens; to learn by experience”…Hebraic. Greek, “to gaze with wide open eyes as at something remarkable in contrast to the ordinary, mechanical, passive observation of facts.”910 ¶6

You are looking in innocence at the complete transformation of man into God. The story is being told you. What story? Told in the 3rd chapter of Galatians, “And God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham” . Beforehand the entire gospel was told you…that’s the distance in his eyes. Here, he’s looking in the distance and seeing the complete transformation of man into God. Who is the one who told him? We’re told God told him. I saw the serpent…well, Christ is called in scripture “the wisdom and power of God” . So, is not the serpent called God’s wisest God himself?910 ¶7

Now we go to the Book of Proverbs, chapter 8: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way, the very first, before the creation was.” Here is God and God’s wisdom personified. The Revised Standard Version says, “God created me” but that’s not the word; it’s not “bara.” The first verse of Genesis is “bara,” which is “created”—“In the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” It is not that word at all. It is “to own, to possess”…“qanah.” There never was a time that I as wisdom was not. Here, God possessed me in the beginning before he brought forth the universe. Now we’re told, “I stood beside him like a little child.” Before he brought forth anything, I was just like a little child beside him, delighting before him always, rejoicing in the affairs of men. Now he invites all to listen to him, “Listen to me, my sons, learn from me: he who finds me, finds life; he who misses me, injures himself; he who hates me, loves death” …all who are in love with the world…this is the world of death. They want to leave their name behind them, want to pile up fortunes, be better known…everything is such a struggle and everything dies…they are in love with death. So when you bring this message, they want no part of it. If in your search you miss me, you injure yourself. If you find me, you find life and receive favor from God. Then life begins to stir within you, and you are not an animated being anymore, you are a life-giving Spirit.910 ¶8

Here, we have the return of Jesus. How will he? First of all, he is called the great serpent and he whispers into my ear “disobedience.” He caused me to disobey the command of God and to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that I may have my eyes opened and become as God…one with God . The same word Elohim, the same word used in the very first verse: “In the beginning God…before the heavens and earth”—that word is Elohim. Well, “Did God tell you…”—that’s Elohim. “God knows you will not surely die”—that’s Elohim. “And God knows you will become as the gods”—that’s Elohim. You become as he is; that is the story. Who told me? Wisdom told me and wisdom was one with God before he created the universe, so God told me.910 ¶9

Do I have any statement in scripture to support this? Yes, the 11th chapter of Romans: “And God consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” . So who then is God? He consigned me to disobedience by whispering in my ear to disobey his order. I would have my eyes opened and become as he, knowing good and evil.910 ¶10

Any other passage to support it? Yes, when he comes to the world, he calls himself—and the words are only found upon his lips—calls himself by the title “Son of man.” Others call him by other names, but no one calls him Son of man. He refers to himself constantly as Son of man. He identifies himself as the serpent: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness so must the Son of man be lifted up” . That’s exactly how it’s done—lifted as a serpent…no other way for me to enter heaven. Who then fell? He says “No one ascends but he who first descended” . Well, if the Son of man ascends as a serpent, then the serpent must have descended.910 ¶11

Have you ever seen the spermatozoa under a microscope? If you have ever seen a serpent…look upon it. I don’t need a microscope, I can see it right now. They are unnumbered…as you are told in scripture, “More numerous than the stars of heaven, than the sands of the sea.” You can see them all the time. When the eye is open, you can always see them…this wonderful, brilliant diamond-head, just like a diamond, and a long spinal column trailing behind them. You see them actually in motion—a long spinal column, every little segment, bone, and the top is a luminous, brilliant diamond in triangular shape.910 ¶12

So God himself in the form of the tempter betrayed me into taking what he told me not to take, that I would actually eat of it so that my eyes would become opened; and through the world of experience—and it is a horrible experience—I would then awaken as God. So who descended?—God, in the form of a serpent. When he ascends, he ascends just like a serpent, and yet it is your own wonderful human identity, no change in your own wonderful I-am-ness. Same being, same identity…only you include a far greater self and that self is God the Father.910 ¶13

So the return of Jesus in the truest sense is when the return of Jesus Christ is recreated in you, and everything said of him you will experience. You are the star in the entire drama and everyone has it.910 ¶14

You begin with resurrection—it comes suddenly out of nowhere—and you find yourself waking and waking. Where you entered in the beginning, there you find yourself waking, and you wake from this profound sleep, something you’ve never experienced before. It’s been a long dream. As you are told, “In the beginning…having heard it…a profound sleep fell upon Abram, a dread sleep, a horrible dream possessed him.” He was told, “All of your descendants will go into a land that is not theirs and they will be enslaved for 400 years. Then they will come out with signs and wonders and great possessions” .910 ¶15

Possessions beyond the wildest dreams of man will be theirs. Things?—no, but the power, the creative power to create things, to create anything in the world. I don’t need a thing if I have the creative power to create what I want. What then do I need with things? Give me the creative power to create what I want and you have given me the greatest gift in the world. You will come out with signs and wonders into an inheritance that transcends anything known to man. If you give me the earth and then it could be rubbed out, but you give me not the earth, rather the power to create the earth, and never took from me that power, then you can rub it out as often as you like and I will recreate it. Give me the power to create and make things! For I have the power to create things.910 ¶16

So here, who is actually the Christ returning? He can’t return; he is in you. So he is telling you in the story, when I come again I will come as I left you…in the same way that I was lifted up from you; in that same way I will come again. Well, he is lifted up this way [gestures an upward spiral motion]…that’s how he comes. He doesn’t come down this way [gestures a downward motion]…he’s already down…I’m already crucified with Christ. But now, I am ready for the resurrection with Christ. Everyone has been crucified with Christ or you wouldn’t be here. “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless Christ lives in me”—so we’re told in Paul’s letter to the Galatians—“Henceforth I see no one from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” . This is something entirely different, a purely supernatural experience. When you move up, you move right into heaven, and you move up in the same manner that Christ was lifted up. So why look into the so-called heavens? “O men of Galilee, why stand gazing into the heavens? Jesus who was lifted up from you will come in the same way that he was taken up”…the same manner. That’s how he went up as told in the 3rd of John: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness on the rod, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” So when Jesus comes again, he comes in you. And like the story in the Bible, no one will believe it…I say no one, I mean others will not believe it. You will tell your story and it will seem like an idle tale, and they will not believe it.910 ¶17

But may I tell you from experience, every word recorded in scripture that is said that Jesus says you are going to say, even those that are repeated by seeming others. You will live long enough to hear them come back as echoes by others.910 ¶18

Let me give you this story. My friend and publisher, Grace, two years ago she wasn’t feeling well—this is after he had returned in me, it couldn’t have happened before, for these are the words of the risen Christ—she sat at home looking at a travelogue on TV and dozed for a few moments. As she returned to this level she said audibly, “I must remember what Neville said.” Her husband Jack asked, “What did Neville say?” “I am with you always to the end of the age.”910 ¶19

Well, these are the words of the risen Christ. Anyone in whom he rises will repeat these words, and in scripture they are said to those who believe. He first appears to women, as he appears in this world. It is the women first…three of them who will come forward bearing witness, using the words of scripture and putting them into your mouth as he rises in you.910 ¶20

Now another letter came this week: “A year ago last October, I found myself in a crowd at the base of an enormous mountain. There was no pathway up the mountain, yet we all desired to climb it. I knew that if I climbed that mountain I would find the Father. I began to dig a little pathway, started making steps to climb on a very difficult road, not a straight road. It was winding peculiarly up the mountain. When I got to the top I thought I should find the Father. Surely the Father should be here waiting for me, but there was no one. I was on the very top of what I had built. I thought I could rest here awhile or wait awhile, for I knew the Father would come. Suddenly the entire mountain disappeared, and all the people down below who could not find the pathway disappeared. Only my crooked pathway winding up to the top remained and myself. I realized I had been building blocks, one square and one a triangle, a square and a triangle up to the top, and the top on which I rested was a triangle. Then the voice said to me, ‘Be.’ All I heard was just ‘Be.’ And I woke crying and couldn’t restrain the tears, yet there was no emotion concerning the climb, just tears. “Many months later, in March of 1966, I heard the same voice. I went to bed saying, “I and the Father are one.” I fell asleep and the voice said, “I am the Father.” Again I awoke crying, tears poured out like a flood, and again no emotion to prompt the tears. Then, months later, I heard the voice, last September, say: ‘Do you not know that you are a priestess after the order of Melchizadek? Act like it!’ Then I woke and I don’t understand it.”910 ¶21

Well, scripture only mentions the name in the 14th of Genesis, the 110th Psalm and Hebrews. Melchizedek, as told in scripture, is the only one to whom Abraham submitted himself, the one to whom Abraham gave tithes. You are told, “Tithe with the Lord.” Well, he tithed only with Melchizedek; that is the Lord, the king of righteousness and king of peace. That’s what Melchizedek means. Jesus is called a priest after the order of Melchizedek, a priest forever. Abraham, in coming into the presence of Melchizedek, it is stated Melchizedek has no origin, no father, or mother, no beginning of days, no end of days, no genealogy, he is forever. Who could he be but God! Here is a prototype of the priest spoken of when Christ comes into the world, unfolding himself in man.910 ¶22

I tell her, if she’s here tonight, whether it be priest or priestess it is the same thing. As you very sweetly said, in searching the scriptures there is only the 28th verse of 3rd Galatians that throws any light on it for her. That’s right. But go back and read the 27th verse: “And you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ…and there is no bond or free, no Greek or Jew, no male or female in Christ.” All are one in that body. When you are incorporated in that body, whether you are male or female, you are the priest—call it priestess if you want—after the order of Melchizedek.910 ¶23

You have your beginning there because he has no beginning. He was in the beginning with God, God’s possession—didn’t create him as the Revised Standard Version mistranslates the word. It is not “created.” Here, I am one with God in the beginning: I am his creative power. He buries his creative power in the limitation called man, and then lifts it up, transcending what it was before. It is an ever-expanding creative power that is Christ, the wisdom of God and the power of God.910 ¶24

So I say to you, you are it. But the voice told you, “Act like it!” If you act like it, you start to create. How do you create? Out of nothing…you ask self what you want and then assume that you have it. The world denies that you have it. Alright, assume that you have it thereby creating out of nothing. Don’t get little pieces around and try to remold them; create out of nothing.910 ¶25

What is it that you really desire in the world? You say to find the Father and to know you are the Father? You will never know you are the Father unless his Son reveals him to you. The Son David tells you who you are when he calls you Father; and you know exactly who he is for he is the only begotten Son of God. If he calls you Father, well then, you are the Father. So you are seeking the Father and you are now being told you are the Father…priestess of the order of Melchizedek. And then the voice says, “Act like it.” Well, act like it. Assume that you have found the only being in the world who can reveal you as the Father; for if you are the order of Melchizedek, you are the Father. But you aren’t acting like it, because it hasn’t actually happened, that the Son came into your world. Begin now to act like it.910 ¶26

Then she said, “In July, I was fully awake, not a dream. I sat down to rest after dinner and thought of you. I knew when you left here in March on the way to Barbados, and that you said you wouldn’t return ‘til the fall of the year. So I took it for granted you were still in Barbados and wondered how you were. Suddenly you are standing before me. You seemed in excellent health, dressed in a grey business suit. You stood for a moment and then said to me, ‘There is no time’ and vanished.”910 ¶27

Well, there is no time save in the secular world. Time has a stop when resurrection takes place. It does…it belongs only in the secular world where things appear, they wax, wane and vanish, to reappear, wax, wane and vanish, and the cycle goes on and on in the secular world. But there is no time. In the Lord and with the Lord, a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day. Really, there is no time after the resurrection.910 ¶28

But you are told you will enter this state and be enslaved for 400 years. 400 years is not as we would measure time; 400 is the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet which is Tau, whose symbol is that of a cross. As long as I wear this cross, I am now in the journey of 400 years.910 ¶29

I am a slave while I wear this cross, a slave to the passions of this body—whether it be for a cigarette where I will do anything to get one if I smoke. If it is for a drink and I’d give anything to buy one, steal to buy one. I have ambition to be great, to be known, and I’d do anything…sell my mother toward that ambition. And I’m a slave to all the passions of this cross, the passions of the flesh. So, as long as I wear this cross I am a slave, with all the weaknesses of the human flesh, all the limitations of the flesh.910 ¶30

But when I take off the cross and all that he foretold me has come to pass in me—for he whispered the future into my ear, like Abraham—because I am now one with him. We all saw exactly what was going to happen, for everyone is a descendant of Abraham, not after the flesh…for he is not a being of flesh but after the Spirit, and all men of faith are children of Abraham. So I saw exactly what he spoke into my ear, “I heard of thee with the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees thee,” and now I experience everything that was foretold . He foretold everything and gave me the sign by which I would know when they are accomplished.910 ¶31

The first is that I should be raised from the dead. That seems a crazy thing, and the world thinks you come out of little graveyards. No graveyards. You weren’t put in a graveyard. No person in this world ever went into a graveyard. That’s big business. If you bought the stock when it first started, you’d be a millionaire today. But not one person was ever taken to that place…just the little skin it wore.910 ¶32

Well now, who is the one that said, “You will not surely die?”—the serpent. How does the serpent grow? It grows and out grows by shedding its skin. Does it die? No, simply sheds its skin and finds itself clothed in a new skin. It grows and outgrows. You can’t grow and not outgrow. So man goes through the gate called death, and he has merely outgrown that part. He is re-clothed instantly, like the serpent, in an entirely different skin but the same serpent. And he keeps on growing and outgrowing ‘til the very end when he ascends vertically. Instead of moving horizontally as a serpent does on the land, he moves up the tree of life. Then man completely awakes from the dream of life.910 ¶33

So the return of Jesus is when the story of Jesus is recreated in us and then we know who we are and can truly say, “I and my Father are one”; for he said, “I am the Father.” Well, then I and my Father are one, for I became the Father. You know exactly who you are and everything said of him, the words recorded of him will be in your mouth and someone will hear it.910 ¶34

Whether they write you or tell you about it, know that when the whole thing starts, beginning with the resurrection, somewhere in this world you have appeared to someone who is distressed and you have said, “Be not afraid. I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”910 ¶35

Where else could you go? If “all that you behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within,” then where could anyone you know including the speaker go? Where could he go?910 ¶36

So the whole of you begins to resurrect. But, you the central being, you must resurrect. And when you do, you find all of these, the brothers, called the Elohim—a plural word, translated both in singular and plural, a compound unity of one made up of others. So it takes all of these to form the one called in scripture the Lord. We are called the Elohim. The Elohim rises in man and then becomes one with the risen body…there’s only one.910 ¶37

So when I said in He Breaks the Shell I meant every word of it from experience, that we are gathered one by one to unite into a single body who is God. I meant that literally! God is man—not just an impersonal force, an over- or under-soul, the unconscious or subjective, forget it. When you see the risen Christ, you see man, infinite love, that’s what you see…nothing but love.910 ¶38

But every attribute of God is personified. When you see faith personified, you see Abraham, a state. You enter the state called Abraham and start your journey through darkness, but it is from darkness to light, for he “is the light of the world” . Well, you pass through the darkness of sin and death. Everyone does.910 ¶39

I am convinced from your dreams and visions and letters that those who are here are on the verge of waking…of that I am convinced. I wouldn’t fool you. There is no reason to fool anyone.910 ¶40

It is so easy to go out and feed the huge multitude with the law and show them how to get more and more shadows of the same thing as wealth, so easy. No problem, no gimmicks to it at all. Don’t try to know the better people, don’t try to know the rich people, just apply the law. If that’s what you want, well, you can go across the country and have enormous crowds by appealing to that, but that’s not what I was sent to tell. I was sent to tell you of the last things, all eschatology—the doctrine of the last things.910 ¶41

These things you will see, and when these things begin to appear, know that the kingdom of God is at hand. When you see now…the resurrection appears and someone describes it, remember he is describing it in your presence, and you would not be in his presence to hear the description of it, you couldn’t be, were it not brushing off onto you.910 ¶42

And all are beginning to awaken, for we are all one, and not one person can be lost, not one in eternity, for then the body of God would lack something. So everyone is being gathered into the one body, and that body is God.910 ¶43

So we are told, “He who is united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him” .910 ¶44

And you who are now baptized into Christ have put on Christ, and therefore there is no Greek among you, no Jew. The word Greek translated from the Hebrew is the same as gentile or heathen or nations, so all the nations are brought into it. The same word goy…you hear me speak of the goyim, “something strange, foreign, of another world,” as against the Hebraic concept of “the chosen.” All are brought in; therefore, there is no Greek, no Jew, no bond nor free, no male nor female, for in the resurrection we are above the organization of sex. It only belongs in this dream world of a divided image of male and female. In the resurrection there is none.910 ¶45

Yet the creative power transcends the wildest sex thrill on earth when you are united. If you think on this level that that is a fantastic, exciting experience, and undoubtedly it is when you see three and a half billion people in this world, and everything in advertising is catering to sex—if you don’t use this or you lose your teeth then you won’t be loved by someone else—everything is catering to sex. So it is a terrific power, but it fades into nothing compared to the creative power when you are one with the body of God. Speak of an emotion! Well, you can’t describe it in any terms known to man when you create from on high.910 ¶46

So I must say, you must not bottle up this sphere; while you are in this world, live it fully.910 ¶47

The day will come when the energy will be reversed within you, and the serpent instead of crawling on his belly will turn up as he was in the beginning when he whispered in your ear. The word serpent means Jesus Christ. He is called the great serpent, for he is the wisdom of God. The wisest of all of God’s creations is called the serpent. It was he who betrayed man into coming into the world of experience that man may awake as God. And it was God, as we are told in Romans, who consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all .910 ¶48

So, to come back to that statement concerning the lady…well, in the 4th of Zechariah the shouts of joy went up when the last stone, called the headstone, was placed in place. Amidst shouts of “grace, grace” they placed the stone there. So you built it up in a serpentine form, a crooked way you call it. Well, that’s the way. As the poet said, “Does the road wind uphill all the way? Yes, to the very end! Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.”910 ¶49

You went all the way up to the very last, and it was the triangular stone. You are right…on that you stand. For when you see that, you see that it is the most brilliant diamond-head trailing the stones you left below, that’s the spinal chord. The whole drama took place within you. All the mountains disappeared and the crowd below disappeared, for they couldn’t find the pathway. “Only one way, only one truth: I am the truth, I am the way” .910 ¶50

If I say Jesus departed…truth never departs. It is man who forsakes the truth, therefore it is man who comes back to the truth. Truth can’t depart, so “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” . How can he go any place?910 ¶51

It is man who forsakes, man who plays the harlot and goes in search of other gods. They will hear this from morning to night and then call you up and ask you about some medium who has just arrived in town and knows all the answers reading cards, tea leaves, etc. And they go in search of other gods.910 ¶52

The serpent is the only prophesier. He prophesies events to be, but tells you they will come after you see these signs which appear in you. He is the great prognosticator…the word means “to whisper; to prognosticate; to learn by experience.” And when he whispers into your ear, your eyes open wide as though you are looking at something remarkable.910 ¶53

Well, can you imagine looking at a worm—what man would look like if you saw the semen of a man, nothing more than a small serpent—and see it transformed into God? Suppose you would look off into the distance and see that transformation taking place.910 ¶54

That which groveled through the 400 years, groveling on its belly, feeling like a slave, for that’s what a slave does, gets down on its belly and spreads itself out before anything it thinks more important than itself. Everything is more important than itself.910 ¶55

We don’t get down and do it, but some say, “Who do you think I saw today lunching at the Brown Derby?” and they mention some nut, a “star.” They are so impressed they saw something special. Well, that’s how a slave acts. So you go home and play the part of a slave in the presence of your wife, or wife to husband, and they don’t know they are flat on their belly and eating dust.910 ¶56

The day will come and you will turn up and Christ will be lifted up in you. Then you will know who you are. Your eyes will be opened and you will be as the gods, one with God. That’s what Abraham saw with his eyes wide open: a state of utter awe and complete wonder in his eye as he saw the transformation of the worm into God.910 ¶57