Our presentation of the gospel must clearly show that it has specific relevance to life now as well as hereafter, for secularized man is far more concerned with the present than the future. So if you would interest anyone in this work, first appeal to what they can do here and now. For the Promise is so fantastic that they may turn from you in disgust. Show them what can be done right here in this world now and then you’ll get their interest. Then you might find them becoming more and more interested in the Promise.859 ¶1

Now here let me share with you a couple of stories that came to me this week. You’ll see why I tell you this. He’s not here tonight but he’s here quite often, and he wrote these two stories. He said, “About ten days a go my wife told me of this little girl, fourteen months old. My wife is a very dear friend of the grandmother of this little girl. And the little girl had cancer. She developed certain lumps in her neck; took her to the hospital, and a little biopsy was made of the tissues and they brought back the verdict, cancer. Another doctor looked at it and he questioned it, he wasn’t quite sure, not convinced, so there was a difference of opinion there. Then they brought in three specialists separately; each brought in the verdict, cancer. So here were four and one not quite convinced. But they kept the child in the hospital for further examination.”859 ¶2

Now this night ten days ago his wife told him the story. He said, “I sat there and I listened to much of the story and then I tuned her out to the point where I couldn’t even hear what she was saying. I reconstructed the entire story in my mind’s eye and redid it along the lines that I wanted to hear and I actually heard my wife’s voice telling me an entirely different story. As she was telling me the story, I completely revised it at a certain point. Then that night when I was completely alone and not distracted, I redid the whole thing to make myself convinced and to be sure I actually heard my wife’s voice telling me the revised story.”859 ¶3

The child was kept in the hospital and then they made another test from another lump in the neck and a unanimous vote was brought in: the child does not have cancer, and therefore because they had no remedial treatment done in the hospital she never had cancer. They couldn’t conceive of any other treatment…they did not give her any radium, gave her nothing, no injections. Therefore, they were 100 percent wrong, they confessed, the first time, because without treatment the child could never have overcome the condition. So, when the wife heard the new verdict of a complete change in the little fourteen-month old child, she told the mother and the grandmother what her husband had done. Meanwhile, the neighborhood has been told this and they are agog, but they can’t for one moment credit an imaginal act as causation. That imagining creates reality is the height of insanity.859 ¶4

Nevertheless, this is his story…that as every mystic knows that every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural one. A natural cause only seems and it is a delusion of this world. And man has a very, very poor memory. He can’t relate what’s taking place to any imaginal act in his past, because he’s looking for physical causation. And he cannot believe that he did anything that would have produced this, not knowing that the doing was imaginal, not physical. He sat alone and he imagined, and he set in motion a cause and when the cause came into the world and he saw the effects, he did not go back into the psychic state of his being; he went back into the physical state. And he can’t remember where he ever did physically anything worthy of this thing that he is now reaping. So, his Imagination is setting the whole thing in motion, but his memory is faulty, and that is the vegetating memory that simply disintegrates because it isn’t, really. So, he looks upon the man who claims that it is all Imagination as a fool. As Blake said, “The idiot reasoner laughs at the man of Imagination.”859 ¶5

So I tell you, everything in your world is caused by an imaginal act.859 ¶6

Now, he said, ‘I was driving home and suddenly I thought here comes April the 15th and I could use a little more cash. Uncle Sam is making demands upon my income, so I could use a little more. Then, in my Imagination I simply imagined that lovely, green, crisp currency was raining upon me, gently raining upon me. And then for about a minute I simply lost myself in this little shower of green currency. Then the traffic demanded my complete attention so I dropped it instantly and came back to this world. It only took about a minute, if a minute. And then I continued home in my normal alert state. I never thought about it again. On the morning of the 15th my boss came into the office and he said to me, “You will receive a ten percent raise in salary retroactive to April the 1st” and then gave me a check retroactive with a ten percent increase in salary.’859 ¶7

Now he said, “I simply took this green currency falling gently upon me. But let me warn you tonight…wait ‘til you get home to do it if you’re driving the highway. Be alert while you’re driving. You can do it just as well while you’re reclining in your bed preparing yourself for sleep. Or do it when you are sitting down in a chair. But it works! This actually works.”859 ¶8

Everything is an imaginal act. There is no such thing as a physical causation, it’s imaginal. But the world will not accept it. We are looked upon as simply idiots and they laugh at the man of Imagination when he tells you that everything in this world is caused by some mental act.859 ¶9

Well, try to disprove it. You can say that man struck so-and-so, and therefore that was a physical cause, and the blow that he received that was the effect, and therefore the whole thing was simply constructed physically. It wasn’t so! What preceded the impulse to strike him? You go back to an unseen cause and it was an imaginal act. The whole vast world is brought into being by Imagination, sustained in being by Imagination, and when Imagination no longer sustains it, it dissolves and leaves not a trace behind, not a trace.859 ¶10

So here, one must approach this gospel on this level first and you get their interest on this level so that they prove it in the testing…as my friend proved it. He received a ten percent raise retroactive to the first of the month. And then the little girl, fourteen months old, instead of having cancer as five doctors agreed and then they changed their opinion. But to justify their false judgment they had to admit it wasn’t so in the beginning, because nothing was given to her. There was no treatment and unless treatment was given, it could not have ever been cancer, therefore it never was. Well, that’s all right with him…it’s perfectly all right. The child has not received any verdict by the doctors of cancer.859 ¶11

Now you’ll say how can a little girl fourteen months old, why should she suffer? To you she is fourteen months old, to you. She isn’t any fourteen months old. The garment she wears judged by human standards is fourteen months old, but not the little girl that is there. She’s old as God himself and God has no beginning, no end. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Not when she came out of her mother’s womb, but before the foundation of the world. Before physical creation, you and I were chosen in him for a purpose.859 ¶12

Now without that purpose, without that meaning, what would it matter if you this night owned the entire world and there was no meaning to it, and death closed the book and that was final? Well, many a tyrant believes that. You can’t blame him for being a tyrant. If he really believes it, well then, how can you blame him? Who wouldn’t do just what he did if you really believe that death ends it all? Shakespeare in his Macbeth is perfectly right: “A tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” That’s what it would have to be if there were no Promise, no purpose, no meaning behind the entire thing.859 ¶13

So the Promise comes in then after you get their interest and they can test it and prove it in performance. When you can prove it in performance, then you can give them the most incredible story in the world, and hope that they will believe you or begin to believe you. Nothing that is said of Jesus, not a thing about Jesus is proven outwardly, but nothing. Only the visionaries know him…he who this dark body, this mask…they see what a friend who walks the earth with them clothed in flesh tells them that he had experienced.859 ¶14

So a man or a woman suddenly has this entire drama rapidly unfold within him or within her, and takes friends into his or her confidence, and tells them that these things happened to me. “Now, you know I am not dead and yet do you know I know what it is to be crucified”—and they listen attentively—“and then to be buried, and then to be resurrected? Now believe me and in time I’ll prove it to you.” And then, in your heavenly wanderings you choose one to whom you give your immortal eyes that are turned inward, not outward. And then you reveal the drama and she sees you buried, on a cross burned to the ground, and the golden liquid light that is just a residue of the entire thing…just as you told her it has happened to you.859 ¶15

Now you could not in eternity persuade her that she did not have that experience, any more than you could persuade the man who told her the story that he did not have the experience.859 ¶16

So she knows who Jesus is…seeing behind and beyond the mask of her friend, who is fragile, who has all the weaknesses of the flesh, all the limitations of the flesh. She goes beyond the mask through vision and sees who Jesus really is.859 ¶17

Well then, who is Jesus? “He has made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, that he may unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”859 ¶18

Therefore, who is Jesus?—he is the plan. The plan is in man. That plan suddenly erupted in a man and he happened to be a friend of a few who would listen to him; and they believed him, in a way…and hoped he was telling the truth. Well, he told them of another aspect of this principle that they could verify on this level. They tried it and it worked. Then in the fullness of time he gave his eyes and still kept them; for in the heavenly sphere you keep what you give, therefore you only share it, you don’t really lose possession of it. So she has the immortal eyes that she may see inward into the world of thought, into eternity. And then she sees her friend on a cross set aflame and reduced to molten gold, as he told her that it happened to him.859 ¶19

Now she knows because she received the eyes that could look inward.859 ¶20

Now, only the visionaries know, actually know who Jesus is. For not in eternity no matter how you search will you have any proof externally of Jesus…for he is not of this world. He’s entirely different. We are from below, we are told, and he is from above. “You are of this world, I am not of this world.” So why look for him in this world?859 ¶21

And yet throughout the history of man they have been looking for him in the Near East, and then those who do not know, who have not the vision, say this is the spot where he was crucified and that’s the spot where he was buried and this is the robe that he wore and that is a piece of wood that came from the cross on which he was nailed. They build up this fantastic tradition. As we are told in the 15th chapter of Matthew: “The traditions of our fathers have voided the word of God.” The word of God has completely gone from you because of the traditions of your fathers. You have kept these traditions alive believing in a physical Jesus and it’s not a physical Jesus at all.859 ¶22

Jesus is the pattern buried in every man, and it suddenly erupts in the fullness of time. The one in whom it erupts is just as surprised as anyone could be. And he simply tells it, still remaining in his little weak garment, the garment that is very weak, and still subject to all the temptations of the world. But he can’t deny what has happened to him. So he tells it. Then he gives to one, who in turn gives it to another, who will in turn give it to another, and they all become in scripture eye witnesses.859 ¶23

So when Luke begins his story, he said, “In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us”—not the hope, that have been accomplished among us—“just as they were presented to us by those who were from the beginning eyewitnesses”—and then he adds the thought—“and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also to write a narrative concerning these things of which we have been informed.” So he is now going to tell the one who loves God, he is called “Theophilus, O dear or blessed Theophilus.” He’s now going to tell him the truth of these things because of the eyewitnesses.859 ¶24

Now in time the eyewitnesses depart this world and then the ministers of the word multiply. They haven’t seen…they haven’t seen what the eyewitnesses saw. So they depart this world leaving only the ministers of the word and they never knew the eyewitnesses’ friend when he walked in flesh whose story they witnessed because he gave them his eyes to see what had happened to him. And so they witnessed the drama as it unfolded within him. But then comes the inevitable departure from this world. So they all vanish, including the one who had the experience, leaving only now the ministers of the word. And they build an organization…which is so completely unlike what actually happened. Then they make a little god out of a being who was like all the other beings in the world only it erupted in him. They speak nothing of the eruption; they speak of an external man, and there is no such thing as an external being, there never was. He is the inner man, the new man.859 ¶25

You can look from now ‘til the ends of time and you will never find any convincing evidence of the historicity of one called Jesus. Yet he is the most real, the most true being in the world, for he is in every being in the world. “Christ in you is the hope of glory” and “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.”859 ¶26

So you begin to test on this level with his power called the law, so that you can actually bring all things to pass. Like my friend who simply allowed crisp, crisp bills, not debt but currency to fall upon him. And having received it like a gentle shower then in a matter of days the boss comes in and tells him a ten percent raise has been voted for him and it’s retroactive. So, his so-called immediate problem has been solved. But now it continues, it wasn’t just for the month, this now continues as long as he is employed by this company. From what I have been told they certainly do want him in their employment.859 ¶27

So you start…if you’re going to tell this story, you start by telling it on this level and show that it has a specific relevance to life now, and do not start in the hereafter. You can bring them into that afterwards, but bring them first into the working of the law. Do not allow anything in this world to confront you with something impossible. Nothing is impossible to Imagination and the whole thing is done in Imagination. So you are not responsible as a reasoning being to make it so; you simply imagine that it is so.859 ¶28

My friend who told me the story, what did he know about cancer? If he saw the cancer under the microscope, what is called cancer, he wouldn’t recognize it. He doesn’t know a thing about the human body, any more than I do, but he would know what his wife would tell him if the verdict were reversed.859 ¶29

And so now she goes out trying to convert the grandmother and the mother of the child to the belief that imagining does create reality. Well, she has a task. They are going to believe the wise doctors that she never had it anyway, that they were wrong in their diagnosis. She could not have shown it under the microscope and then in a matter of days, say within two or three weeks, to show no evidence that it was ever present. That was impossible, therefore she never had it. Not that she had it and an imaginal act dissipated it, oh no, because they can’t believe in causation as mental. Causation must be under that microscope as a little physical thing. Though you can’t see it with a normal eye, you can see it with the extended eye of the microscope, and therefore it is still physical. So the entire structure has to be physical for them. They take it now, put the little biopsy, the little tissue, and go right down with their aid, the microscope, and they see what is called a cancer cell. Then ten days or three weeks later they don’t see the cancer cell, therefore, they could not have seen accurately the first time. They know nothing of my friend’s attitude toward life, that the whole thing is imaginal.859 ¶30

Since he started coming here he has gone up and up and up by simply imagining. He doesn’t burst a blood vessel. He simply tuned out his wife’s voice as it was coming through going beyond the point he wanted to hear. He heard enough, that the little child fourteen months old had cancer confirmed by all the doctors and there were five. Only one questioned; he didn’t deny, only questioned. But three experts, all coming in singly, not together, each went out on the limb and said it was cancer. So there were four against one for cancer. But he tuned her out and simply reconstructed the entire drama in his mind’s eye and listened to his wife’s voice that he knows well, completely changing the entire picture and tells him what he wanted her to say. He heard it distinctly…that was all that he did. And that word of his could not return unto him void, it had to accomplish that which he purposed and bring it into fulfillment. He determined that. Well, then he did not a thing. He knows nothing of the human body. He did nothing but remain faithful to that imaginal act, and the verdict came in.859 ¶31

So I ask you to try it. Try it and then turn to your neighbor, in a quiet way and ask if they ever thought that their imaginal acts are causative. You might get a little wedge in that way. “Did it ever occur to you that the things that are happening to you in your world are caused not by the obvious but caused by some unseen imaginal act?” Well, you know, you may interest them that way, and then having received their interest for a moment then you can ask them to try it. You can construct a scene for them and have that scene come to pass in their world. If it is duplicated and repeated again and it works, well then, you’ve got them.859 ¶32

Now you may present them with the Promise, the most incredible thing in the world, that here this little weak garment and can be so completely transformed that it can rise from the dead. Completely rising from the dead, not restored to life as the world is always restored, but a completely transformed being…something entirely different. Yes, the face is human, the hands human, the voice human, but don’t go beyond that because you don’t know the form. Face human, yes, that I tell you, the hands human, the voice human, but don’t try in any way to describe the form. We’ll come only to the point of light…how can you have a body that’s of light? Well, don’t go beyond it. I’m giving you my own experience: the head, yes, beautiful beyond measure and human, and the hands yes.859 ¶33

The one thing that separates man from the entire creation is the hand. Look at the entire world. If it doesn’t have a hand…the monkey doesn’t have a hand, and it can’t fashion, it can’t make. Without a hand if I were the wisest being in the world, without a hand I couldn’t execute my contract. Give me a hand I become a builder. So the first word is a hand: Yod He Vau He. Yod is a hand, the hand of the creator, the hand of the director, that hand that can fashion. If I couldn’t fashion then I would go around nude; I couldn’t fashion a suit of clothes. I couldn’t fashion anything. But give me a hand and you turn me into my Father’s image. I have a human face, I have hands, and I have a voice and it’s human.859 ¶34

Now the being that you’re destined to be is that.859 ¶35

But now don’t go beyond it in trying to in any way conceive of what the form is like. That’s the being, that’s the fiery being that you really are, and you are destined to be, and you’ll awaken as that being. But you tell this to someone who would rather be the same little thing restored… something that they must carry to the bathroom several times a day and perform all the normal functions themselves, and perpetuate that forever, can you imagine such hell? No, that’s not the body that you’re going to wear. You’re going to wear the body that is the body of God himself, for you’re destined to awaken as that form.859 ¶36

But while you’re in the world of Caesar, don’t neglect the law, don’t treat it lightly. Use it every moment of time and there’s not a thing in this world beyond your ability to imagine. It’s not your responsibility in this world to make it so. You simply imagine that it is so and let it be so and then, in a way that no one knows, it is crystallizing itself into this world and becoming a fact. That is the world in which we live.859 ¶37

Now before you judge it, I ask you to try it. It would be stupid to pass judgment on something that you haven’t tested…and so many people do that. They will say “I don’t like that.” “Have you ever had it?” “No, but I know I won’t like it.” Well, you can acquire a taste for anything.859 ¶38

I know the first time I had an oyster…it was on the little island of St. Croix. In those days we spoke of it as Santa Cruz. It was owned by the Danes. Mother told me, when I left Barbados to go to Santa Cruz, to watch what other people did, because they were a different people and therefore they ate differently and they ate different foods that I didn’t know. I was only eleven years old. She said, “You watch.”859 ¶39

In those days there were no hotels, only rooming houses, and so you sat down at the same common table. If there were twenty roomers, well then, there were twenty roomers and the man and the wife who ran the place sat with us and they conducted the whole thing.859 ¶40

Well, in Santa Cruz, where I am, it’s 1916, they’re all speaking Danska, they’re all Danish, and I couldn’t understand one word. But I could observe what they were doing. And so, the dinner started off and they were all around the table and here before me were these six little things on shells. Never saw one before. Mother said to watch what the host did.859 ¶41

So she took this little fork, something I never saw before either, little tiny fork. She first put all these little condiments on the thing. Then she took the fork and stuck it into the…and then that face was like heaven…what she anticipated. When she got it into her mouth it satisfied her and it was simply consummation of that glory.859 ¶42

Well, I expected the same thing. I did the same thing and stuck it into my mouth…it wouldn’t go down and I couldn’t bring it up…it just couldn’t…can’t expectorate it. Mother said that after all you couldn’t spit it out…no matter what happens, if I die I have to swallow it. And it wouldn’t go down.859 ¶43

Finally, when I swallowed then I looked down and I must have turned green…there were five more to go and I couldn’t say no. I had to actually put these things together and swallow it and then down they would go.859 ¶44

Well, today I love oysters, love them. When I go to New York, we get these lovely oysters. Every dinner I precede my meal with either oysters or the little clams, the Little Neck, not the Cherry Stone, not my favorite, but the Little Neck. They’re limited in supply and that’s what I order or the oysters. And here, today I thoroughly enjoy them. I can enjoy an oyster in any form. I prefer it in its raw state, but give it to me fried, give it to me Oysters Rockefeller, any way. I had my first experience at the age of eleven. So you can acquire a taste for anything in this world.859 ¶45

So you can acquire a taste for the Word of God. But introduce them first with the law and tell them how it works and then show them how it works. Ask them to repeat it. No matter how difficult the problem, let them confront it with this principle.859 ¶46

Then slowly get over “Do you know who Jesus really is?” Well, naturally, he’s going to say yes because he’s a Christian. So he believes he knows exactly who Jesus is, this unique son of Mary who had no father, but the father was God; he was physical and he came out of Mary’s womb. That’s what they’re going to tell you—one billion Christians will tell you that story. That’s what I was told.859 ¶47

Then you will say, “You know, I know a friend of mine and he’s a normal person, not formally educated, no, doesn’t have any of these qualifications, completely unknown, just a normal person, married…in fact, he was once divorced, so he has a family, a son from the first and a daughter from the second.” Right away they’ll close the book, if you’re going to tell me anything about him and associate it in any way with spirituality. But, nevertheless, you go on and you say, “You know what? Everything said of Jesus Christ in the gospels he experienced.” “And you know what? A friend of mine, just as normal as he is, she too has been married twice and she has two children from two different men; and one night in vision he gave to her his immortal eyes that she may see. And then she saw the same one, as he told her he had experienced it, hanging on a cross, and the cross set aflame, and reduced to molten, golden, liquid light. And they were digging a hole to put the body, and she saw the body on a litter, on a pallet. She has seen him on other occasions manifesting the power he tells you he now exercises when the body sleeps upon the bed. So she knows who Jesus really is.”859 ¶48

No, he is not that little garment. Jesus is a pattern, an eternal pattern of redemption which sleeps in every garment; but in that particular garment he awoke. And now he knows who he is, because when he awakes, the one in whom he awakes is the one who awakes. And so, he became humanity that humanity may become God. So God sleeps in everyone and in everyone he will awake; and as he awakes, the identical drama has to be experienced by the one in whom he awakes. So that is Jesus…and there never was another Jesus. There is no other Jesus.859 ¶49

Now, if they are very ardent they may turn from you even though they become enriched by the law that you taught them. Perfectly all right, it takes quite a while to break down these traditions.859 ¶50

But you go back and you read it in the 15th chapter of the Book of Matthew, how for the sake of your traditions you have made void the word of God. So they’ll keep alive all of these things, and wear all these silly little garments on the outside, with their purple robes and their red robes and all these thing and hats so heavy they can’t even hold them up. Here they are, they think that makes them very, very important. And the unthinking millions will think themselves blessed if they can but touch the garment as he walks by, or if he will smile on them, of if they can even attend service where he, the great one, is conducting the Mass. They firmly believe this nonsense and they go blindly on doing it morning, noon and night. But I’m telling you what I know from experience.859 ¶51

You take it seriously, because at my age, even if I lived on for a few years, it can’t be that long and I must depart. And those of you who would have seen as I have told you that you will see will depart too. And when the eyewitnesses depart they only leave behind them the ministers of the Word, and they invariably turn it into some institutional concept, and therefore void the Word of God, completely void it. But you take me seriously and start tonight—of course, you’ve already done it—with the law and prove it. And you’ll prove it—you’ll become exactly the man, the woman that you want to be.859 ¶52

But don’t forget the Promise in the proving of the law, for without the Promise what would it mater if you owned the earth? What would it matter?859 ¶53

I read Stalin’s daughter’s book. You might have read it, and you recall the passage. She was present when her father died. She said she has never seen such an expression of hate in her life. He was paralyzed on one side, and on the un-paralyzed side he raised the hand in an expression of anger. He couldn’t have seen, because the brain was gone, but he saw something not with the physical eye. He saw something and the response came out in a physical manner. “Whatever he saw,” she said, “I’ve never seen such hate in my life as expressed on my father’s face, as though the devil himself stood before him and he was simply defiant.” He could have seen the composite picture of the twenty million that he slaughtered personified as one face facing him…and the hand, this little hand, raised in defiance. And then he collapsed and was gone.859 ¶54

He didn’t believe in the hereafter and he didn’t believe that he would ever be restored. This was it, therefore, do what you want. He looked upon the entire crowd standing on the podium with him and under his breath when hundreds of thousands were cheering him he would say ‘Fools!’ He looked upon them just as a cast of nothing. And yet today we find all these silly people ballooning him up as an important person in this world, and he didn’t care anything about anyone…slaughtered as he felt like it.859 ¶55

But he has to face himself now and he’s not playing the part of Stalin. He’s playing, yes, the same being, but a young man, healthy and strong, strong enough to shine the shoes or clean the latrines or do something that’s consistent with his life that is best needed to work upon him to bring out that something that is hidden in him which he denied while he was here.859 ¶56

So I ask you to simply try it. Take the law…for those who are here for the first time, it’s simple. This is what you do. Do you know what you want? Well, construct a scene in your Imagination which would imply that you have realized it. Try to enter into the spirit of the scene and participate as an actor in the scene, giving as much of the tones of reality as you possibly can to the scene, giving it all of the sensory vividness that you are capable of giving it. Enter into the spirit of it and feel the reality of it. But go to the end. Don’t consider the means! Go to the end…the whole thing is already done and you are now reveling in the accomplishment…and then break it.859 ¶57

Now faith is simply loyalty to this unseen reality. That’s what faith is, to remain loyal to this unseen reality; for when you did it, that was God in action. Who did it? If I ask you, you say, “I did it.” Well, that’s his name…who’s doing it now?—“I am,” well, that’s God’s name forever and forever. So you do it in your Imagination and then drop it… just as he dropped the little, gentle rain of crisp bills that fell upon him. And the boss comes in and tells him you’ve been voted a ten percent increase in salary retroactive to the first of the month. So his little problem was solved.859 ¶58

And then the problem which was a serious problem for the mother and grandmother of the little girl that was solved.859 ¶59

The doctors are still looking under their microscopes to see why they misinterpreted the first, and as they see the first, they will still come to the same conclusion. How did it happen? Well, it could not have happened, therefore it didn’t. They’ll be confronted with it and still it didn’t happen that way. It never was cancer because it isn’t cancer; for if it was cancer there should have been some treatment and there was no treatment, therefore, it could not have been cancer. And they’ll go over this over and over like a squirrel in a cage, because it’s only in our Imagination. That’s all that he did and this man lives this way morning, noon and night.859 ¶60

As he told me in his letter, “When I first came to you I thought you were the maddest person out of the insane asylum. I thought, really, you should be put away for the good of society…that you were stark mad. I really believed you were. But I was forced to try it and so I tried it and it worked.”859 ¶61

It didn’t make sense…not any more than the Promise makes sense. There’s nothing more fantastic than the Promise and it doesn’t make sense…from a worldly point of view it is completely incredible.859 ¶62

But I tell you it’s true that buried in man is a plan, a plan of redemption in every man, and in the fullness of time that plan erupts and all that is said of that man in the gospels you experience. Then you know that man and that he wasn’t here as an individual being. He simply was the plan who awoke in one being…whose name was who knows? But the name of the plan is Jesus. Jesus is Jehovah, that’s what the word means. It is I AM, and so that is the being that is in every man, and every man is going to have the experience of Jesus Christ.859 ¶63

There is not a bunch of little Jesuses running around; there is only one. So we are all gathered together one by one into the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all. So that’s what he said that he would take us all together into the one…gather all into one being.859 ¶64

Now, that expression that is used in Ephesians, the first chapter, the root of that Greek word is “head.” So where do you gather it? In the head, for that’s where it begins. You are buried there, you are crucified there, and you resurrect there. When you return, you return there from this external world. That’s where you return. So you’re gathered altogether into this one state, and this gathering is the head.859 ¶65

As though it’s what Sir James Jean said, “the more he studies this infinite universe the more he has come to the conclusion that whoever the Creator is resembles an infinite brain and we brain cells in the mind of the Dreamer.” So the brain cell is expanding forever and forever within the one brain.859 ¶66

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *859 ¶67

Tonight is like every night, really, the same story told over and over and over. The title is taken from the 18th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. “And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ‘Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. The vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and so he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.” Now the word potter by definition is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s the potter. So, if I go down to the potter’s house, I simply turn my interest within and wonder what am I imagining? So I hold myself or I hold you or some situation in my mind’s eye and it’s not as I would like it to be, so I am making something that seemingly at the moment is spoiled. But I don’t discard it. I reshape it into another state, as it seemed good to me to do. So I am called upon to practice this wonderful art of reshaping images that are not as they ought to be based upon my desire for them. So I hear something of a friend and it’s not good, alright, I’m holding it if I heard it in my mind’s eye. I am told not to accept it because reason dictates it, my senses allow it, but to reshape it into another vessel as it seems good to me to do.855 ¶1

Now the entire chapter, the 18th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah is devoted to repentance. If I say that I will give evil to this nation and they repent, then I will repent of the evil that I intended. If, on the other hand, I say I will do good and they turn from their way into the evil way, I will repent of the good that I said I would do for them. So the whole thing is based upon change of mind and the whole thing is based upon God. There is only God in this world, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. So, I go down to the potter’s house and the potter is Imagination. It shapes, it fashions. One of the definitions is “To determine, to make a resolution.” So you resolve to do this, that or the other. So at the moment when you resolve to do it, to be successful in this world or to be something in this world other than what you are—-at the moment of your resolution reason denies it, your senses deny it, but you resolve to do it— you are told to remain faithful to that resolution. If you remain faithful to it, trusting in your imaginal act as though it were fact, then it will externalize itself within your world…if you remain faithful to the imaginal act. That’s what the story is telling us.855 ¶2

Now, let us turn to the 8th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. It shows you what man does in this world. And so we are told, the voice came to Ezekiel—-the word means “God strengthens”—and here he calls him “Son of man,” the one title used of Jesus Christ. He always referred to himself only by the name “Son of man.” So in the Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel is called “the Son of man.” “Son of man” and he takes him in Spirit, for he never left physically. Ezekiel, if you read the story carefully, he never left Telabib, which means “the top of the mount of the flood.” He never left that area physically, but he’s always transported in Spirit, and transported in Spirit into these areas that the Lord would show him.855 ¶3

So he brought him to the court. As he brought him to the court, he said, ‘Son of man, look,’ and there as I looked I saw a hole in the wall. Then said he to him, ‘Son of man, dig’; and so he dug, and as he dug he saw a door; then said he to him, ‘Son of man, go in and see the vile abominations that they are doing here.’ As he went in, on all the walls all around he saw all the creeping (or portrayed upon the walls) all the creeping things of the world, these violent abominations all around. And then he said to him, ‘Son of man, do you see what frightful abominations the elders of Israel are doing in the dark, every one in his own room of pictures? And they say to themselves, ‘The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.’”855 ¶4

Around on the walls…well, where is this wall? He saw a hole and the hole he dug, and the hole became a door that he could enter and see the elders of the house of Israel performing these abominations out of the things engraved upon the wall. They were all creeping things and horrible monstrous things, all brute force. What does it mean to us? Well, it means this much: If there is one thing that man worships in this world it is power, it is force. We speak of brute as force, and force as brute force. Any man who falls victim to it falls below the level of man; he enters the brute world—-whether you be a politician, a religious leader, a social leader, anyone who thinks of power, sheer brute force. It can be financial power, social power, political power…and they all are in their room. Well, what is this room? It’s all here, right in your own wonderful skull. “Everything 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” . So, from this combination of these brutes, these creeping strange things engraved upon the mind, man makes patterns and externalizes these things in his world.855 ¶5

Then what is this little hole spoken of? If I read a simple little statement in scripture, “‘Son of man, look!’ and behold I looked and I saw a hole in the wall.” Now you would think a hole in the wall it would be like I take a little hole through that wall there. But don’t take anything in scripture for granted. Look it up in your Concordance, because you and I are living in a different age. Go back 2,000 years to find out what the inspired prophet meant when he wrote a word which is now translated as hole, h-o-l-e. Well, to us a hole could be a hole in the sock, it could be a hole in the piano, but does it really mean that? So go back and take a sentence and look it up, and what does the word “hole” mean in the Concordance? “The crevice of a serpent; the cell of a prison,” that’s what it means. It means the crevice of a serpent, just imagine, the crevice of a serpent, and the cell of a prison, that’s what it means.855 ¶6

Now the 42nd chapter of Isaiah: “And they were all trapped in holes and hidden in prisons” . The 14th chapter of the 1st Book of Samuel: “Behold, Hebrews are coming out of holes in which they have hid themselves” . And you ask all these strange questions, what is this thing, Hebrews are coming out of holes in which they hid themselves and all of us have been trapped in holes and hidden in cells? Well, I know from my own personal experience what this fantastic mystery is all about, and I share it with you: Here in man’s own wonderful skull the whole drama is taking place. This is the rock out of which something was taken. And then God himself, this is the sepulcher in which God was buried, the rock-hewn stone in which he was buried, and with him all things are there.855 ¶7

Now why is it the crevice of a serpent? Why, you mean, out of here? This is a hole somewhere and he digs it, and he can enter it, and he’s called Son of man, and it’s called a door? Well, who made the statement, “I am the door”? He said, “I am the door. Anyone who attempts to come in by any other way is a thief and a robber. I am the door” . So he is the Son of man who could enter and see what is taking place in this fabulous world within man.855 ¶8

You and I not knowing, because we say “The Lord does not see us, he has forsaken the land,” so I think that if I stand here and I don’t talk, I’m just thinking, that no one knows what’s going on because it’s all alone, I haven’t articulated it, I haven’t expressed it. So I sit in the Silence and I think no one sees it—-certainly God doesn’t see it—-because I do not know who God is. So I think I’m all alone and I can take from this imagery these vile horrible things and I can take all the creeping things and these abominable beasts, and from these horrible concepts I hold of man I can fashion what I want, and delight myself, and no one sees it, so I think. So he said, “Son of man, do you see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark?” Well, who are the elders of the house of Israel? We are! We are the fathers, all of us, we are the fathers who fell asleep, fell asleep in this tomb, this sepulcher called the skull of man. And in this we are creating the most horrible monstrous things that we externalize in the world of shadows, and we think the reality is there. And the origin of it all is here, all within us, what we are doing.855 ¶9

Now you can test it. I ask you to test it. Take someone you think is out there…a friend who lives 3,000 miles away. Maybe he’s in New York City and you’ve heard from him and things are not going well, and you will think he is 3,000 miles away. Alright, I ask you now to test the actual origin of all phenomena. In your mind’s eye you bring him and hear him tell you the most fantastic story about his good fortune, his success—and believe in the reality of that imaginal act. Trust God…for God is doing it. Begin to prove who you really are, and wait for confirmation seemingly coming from there. The origin is here, all within your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s where God is. And so you take your friend seemingly out there, you bring him into your mind’s eye, represent him to yourself as the man that you would like him to be, hear him tell you all the lovely things that you want to hear, and believe in the reality of what you imagined, that you have heard, and wait for confirmation seemingly coming from without the garment.855 ¶10

Because, a seed falls into the ground and it has an interval of time between being sown in the earth and reaping in this world. So every little thing has its own appointed hour. As we are told: “The vision”—-your vision now—-“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.” That’s from the 2nd chapter of Habakkuk . Every vision in this world, if you don’t disturb it, it has its own appointed hour. So, that’s your vision of one who seemingly can’t make the grade in this world—-he’s unemployed, he can’t make any money, he can’t get beyond the eight-ball as it were—-and you simply represent him to yourself as you want to see him. See him clearly in your mind’s eye.855 ¶11

And then one day this fabulous mystery will unfold within you: “And I looked and behold, the Hebrews were coming out of the holes, where they had hidden themselves.” Oh, what a fantastic story that is! All of a sudden one day, unexpectedly—and a surprise beyond your wildest dreams—you are torn in two. Suddenly you find yourself looking at molten gold, and you know it is yourself, and you fuse with it, and like a serpent you go up right into that hole. The Son of man must be lifted up: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up” . And you find yourself just like a serpent moving through that hole right into heaven, a redeemed being, completely redeemed.855 ¶12

The word is “redeem or deliver.” In scripture when I read the word “deliver”—look it up in your Concordance—-what does it mean? A flux of blood. A flux of blood: “Saved by the blood of God.” You are severed in two from the top of your head to the base of your spine, and there you stop and stare at the parted body, like a cleft tree. At the base of the spine is molten gold; it’s the blood of God, but you know it is yourself. Knowing it’s yourself, you fuse with it. The word “flux of blood” also has the definition “fusing.” Look it up in your Concordance. So you fuse with it as your very being, and then like this slippery being up you go, right through that hole. And that hole is nothing more than you are told in your Concordance, “a cleft, the cleft of the serpent.” Can you imagine that, the cleft of the serpent, the cell of a prison? Man is imprisoned in his skull. Everyone in this world is imprisoned in this rock. And the word rock in scripture, if you look it up in your Concordance, is “to encase, to confine.” So man is completely confined within himself in his skull. And the moment will come when suddenly these things will happen to you and you will simply find yourself as this wonderful being, glimmering being, moving up into an entirely different new world.855 ¶13

Then you go back and you ask, well, who is this serpent of the 3rd chapter of Genesis, who was he? What is this serpent who said to me I would not die? You were told that you would die, yes, but really in the end you would not really die. And you ask, what is this serpent? Then you read it, “to cause to fall”…and the word Yod He Vau He its primitive meaning was “to cause to fall, or to cause to blow, or to cause the wind to blow.” So who made us fall? Then you go into the Book of Romans, “And God consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all” . Well, if the serpent caused me to disobey and God caused all men to disobey that he may have mercy upon all, who is the serpent? And therefore who is that serpent that now goes up through the hole, for the hole is the crevice of a serpent. And you go up just like a serpent in a fiery manner right through that hole into your skull. So you think about it and you dwell upon it.855 ¶14

Until it happens to you, may I tell you, come let us go down to the potter’s house. So I will go down to the potter’s house and there I see him working at his wheel. “And the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, but he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.” So before this thing happens to you, as it has happened to me, then let us go to the potter’s house and prove this law. Is this really true? Alright, I will take someone now in my world and imagine that he is exactly as I want him to be. So if he is not as he should be now, then it’s spoiled in my mind’s eye. I’m not going to throw him away, I will not discard him as a friend—-no one ought to be discarded—-bring him back into my mind’s eye and then simply reshape him and see him as I would like him to be; and then believe in the reality of what I’ve seen for I have imagined. And wait, for all things have their own appointed hour, wait for it and see it externalize within my world.855 ¶15

Now we are told in the Book of Numbers that “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision and I will speak with him in a dream” . Well, this morning’s mail brought a letter Special Delivery from a lady who is here tonight. These are revelations…and you listen to them carefully. She gave two.855 ¶16

She said, “I found myself in a very small room, very sparsely furnished. I was greatly disappointed for I was looking for a man and he wasn’t there. Suddenly the room began to fill with pearls—-the vase, the table, all things began to fill with pearls, luscious, lovely, shimmering pearls. Then a voice said to me, ‘You formerly had false pearls, and then you had cultured pearls, man-made pearls, and now you have the real pearl. He will find you.’” You don’t have to search anymore. You’ve been looking for him and you had your false pearls and cultured pearls. Now he will find you, because you have found the real pearl, the true pearl.855 ¶17

On the heels of this comes a second vision. The second is this, she found herself in another world, an enormous crowd that she’s addressing, and she’s telling them that imagining creates reality. No one believes it. It’s a luscious crowd—-the costumes and the gowns of the ladies and their jewels, and the attitude of mind of the men simply bespeak opulence. They’re all successful. And, of course, they laughed and ridiculed the thought that imagining creates reality…when they have all these things, and these are not at all the cause or the result of imagining, these are something entirely different. And so they asked her to give up this stupid concept of hers, this nonsense they called it. She said, “I will not part with my knowledge that imagining creates reality for one million dollars.” At that moment a cart is wheeled towards her and on the cart stacked in neat piles, beautifully piled, is one million dollars which they offered to her. She said, “Not for ten times this amount would I part with this thought, this knowledge that I know: imagining creates reality.” So they whispered among themselves before this cart came in. Then, she said, when the cart came in to her, she rejected it, she simply waved her hand and whisked it away. Then her oldest daughter appeared and the oldest daughter said to her, “Well, mother, why didn’t you take it if you didn’t want it and give it to me?”855 ¶18

Now said the lady in her after-thought—-that was the end of the vision—-“Every time this daughter, which is very seldom she does, but every time she appears in my dream she represents reason.” She said, “Neville, she’s a very nice, devoted, sincere, ardent Catholic. Her church teaches, and she has accepted it one hundred percent, that Catholicism appeals to the reasonable man, and so that would be reasonable (she represents reason) to take it.” Alright, she ought to take it…that’s the reasonable man…in other words, play the game, the world of politics. That’s what she really believed that is what it represents. She said, “She never speaks of you by name, would never call the word ‘Neville,’ she always refers to you as ‘him.’ So when I come home from your lectures on Tuesdays and Fridays and I go and get my Bible and my Concordance and Blake, and look up the references that you’ve used, she knows, well, if it does this to you, that you go to the Bible, she said, well, what can you do with a mother who quotes the Bible? But as far as you are concerned, you are the anti-Christ.”855 ¶19

So these were the visions and these comments are all after the visions. The vision was, she was offered a million dollars to deny the reality that imagining creates reality, deny the truth, which she rejected. Then comes her daughter who personifies to her reason. Reason would have told anyone, well, take it anyway, what does it matter? Take the million dollars. You don’t have to really give it up, take it. But she rejected the million dollars. And then came the after-thoughts analyzing these things for the speaker.855 ¶20

So I say to you, let us all go down to the potter’s house tonight. The potter’s house is not out there—it’s just where we’re seated, where I’m standing, where you’re seated—and see what he’s doing in this chamber of imagery. For within the chamber of imagery are engraved all kinds of creeping things and abominable beasts. When you think of someone, you think he’s no good and you represent him as simply a glutton, a pig, a lion, a tiger, and you represent him in our own words, you represent him by reason of these things that are engraved upon the mind. It could be the most horrible thing in the world that you’re thinking of him. You’re called upon to recognize the fact that you’re not really alone. You say that no one sees us, the Lord does not see us, and the Lord has forgotten the land. I tell you, he hasn’t forgotten the land, for the simple reason he entered death’s door when you entered it. When man entered death’s door, God entered it with him. And he entered it—-and it seems crazy to tell you—-in the form of a serpent. He caused you to disobey, and came down, and entered with you. And so, the hole through which you entered is the crevice of a serpent, also the cell of a prison. So you are imprisoned in that. In fact, you’re dead. You are so still and so profound in your sleep you are, to all appearances, as though you are dead. But you are not dead! You are dreaming…and dreaming these horrible dreams all over the world. Now knowing this you can start to change it and prove you can change and modify the most horrible dream in the world, and bring it into a lovely dream; and externalize the lovely part, as we have done through the ages the unlovely dreams. Everyone can do it.855 ¶21

Here, tonight, just before I came on the platform, a lady who imagined herself in the picture with Elvis Presley…well, the first one didn’t come to pass, alright, she still didn’t give up because it didn’t work. She just completed the last picture with him finished only a few weeks ago. Not one thought in the world would have allowed her to believe she could have made it with him. She did. She simply didn’t take no for an answer and simply imagined it. Now what you think of Presley has no point, hasn’t a thing to do with the outside values. It’s what you can make come to pass in this world that’s important! Can you imagine something and in spite of all things to the contrary produce it and make it come to pass? That’s all that matters.855 ¶22

I tell you that God became you, just as you are, assuming all the limitations; and he’s buried in a sepulcher; and the sepulcher is that rock-hewn state I call your skull. That’s where he’s buried and there he dreams. And he dreams, he dreams all kinds of things, the most horrible dreams, until one day he awakes. When he awakes he comes out. That whole thing is split right down the middle. And then you will understand all these strange words of scripture: “Behold the Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have been hidden,” the 14th chapter of the Book of 1st Samuel. Then go back and read the 42nd chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and there they were all hidden in these holes, in these prisons. So we were imprisoned and hidden behind these holes. Then comes the splitting of the entire temple of God, and here you see your “deliverer” and the word deliver in scripture is defined as “flux of blood.” You look at it and it is golden, radiant energy, it’s liquid, molten gold. You look at it and you know it is yourself. As you know it, you fuse with it. Another definition of the word deliverance is fusion. And you fuse with it. Up like a serpent you go through that hole. That’s how the New Jerusalem is being established, every one redeemed—“not one will be lost, not one in all my holy mountain.” No one can be discarded, for it would be God discarding himself. That’s unthinkable. So no matter what a man has done, no matter what a man is doing, it’s only a nightmare if it isn’t along the lines of love. Alright, he’ll come back to it.855 ¶23

But you, knowing this, believe. Like the lady who remembered, even in vision she remembered the statement from the platform “Imagining creates reality.” To remember that while in vision, and deny one million dollars and say “Take it away”; then to have the personification of reason come into her world, her own child, and say, “If you didn’t want it yourself, why didn’t you take it and give it to me?” She recognized what the child represented. The child only represented reason; for she believes that her own Catholicism is the reasonable man’s philosophy of life. It modifies and changes itself from day to day based upon the tacking of the wind. Just as the wind goes it goes. Today if it is not, well, productive or financially beneficial to go along a certain archaic line, so they will patch it. I saw in today’s Time magazine this present council has now signed into law, at the moment, that Protestants…at first they said, “Protestants have found him in scripture”…no they mustn’t…took out the word, not “found him”, “they seek him in the scriptures.” Well, [...] you could put that [...]. You can’t find him there; scripture only confirms what you find in yourself. So, in a way, you can almost say they’re right. You first find him in yourself. All the symbolism unfolds in yourself; then you go back in scripture and you read from the Holy Word of God confirmation of what has happened in you. That’s perfectly alright.855 ¶24

So you read about the hole in the wall. And then you know what happened to you, how you went up, just like a slippery serpent in a fiery manner, just as you’re told in scripture. Well then, you go back into scripture and you have confirmation of what happened to you. Then you are told that only the Son can reveal the Father . It happens to you and then you realize that these so-called ancient stories aren’t ancient at all; they are all contemporary. That these are symbolic persons, and that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Moses, all of them are eternally true, and you know them more intimately than you know anyone in this world. For everyone in this world is wearing a mask. Well, you don’t know him, he’s wearing a mask. Everyone in the world is hidden; you don’t know them really. I think I know my wife, I know my children, my father and mother, my friends, and they’re all hidden by a mask. But these characters, eternal characters of scripture are not. You know them more intimately…no one has to introduce you to David when you meet David. You’ve always known that relationship of yourself to David, and he always has been your Son. No one has to introduce you to Moses when you meet Moses. When you meet any character in scripture you’ve known them forever. Before the world was, all these were. We knew them all. They’re parts of the great play, the great drama. And so when you encounter these characters in the depths of your soul in vision, no one tells you who they are, you know it more surely than you know anything here on earth. And then the whole thing unfolds within you and the whole tree begins to blossom. This is the great story of our scripture.855 ¶25

So here tonight, you and I can go down to the potter’s house and take any person—-I don’t care what it is, no matter how far gone he seemingly is in the world of, well, our social world—-and bring him back as you would have him. Be a good potter and mold him and fashion him into your own image of what he ought to be, and believe in the reality of that. Listen to the words carefully: “I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, but he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do.” Didn’t discard it! “How often Lord? Seventy times seven.” So you have a child or you have a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, a father-in-law, someone who is not as you think he or she ought to be, don’t discard them. Just bring them back seventy times seven into that image and be the good potter, be the good artist, and fashion him as you would like him to be. And then know that this thing is going to harden, and then externalize itself upon the screen of space, and you will see it in your world. Everyone could do it. So I challenge you to try it. You can be the man you want to be. I don’t care what you are now; you can be what you want to be.855 ¶26

What you’re ultimately going to be that is in God’s hands, and no one is going to thwart it: “He who began the good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ” . Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God, so when the image is complete, based upon his determined effort, well, then he unveils it. No one is going to stop that image because it’s his image; he’s doing it. But within the framework of his purpose you and I are invited to be imitators of God as dear children. He’s the great potter and he’s molding me. So today’s pain, don’t condemn yourself because of it; tomorrow’s hurt, don’t condemn yourself. It takes all these things to produce that image. But while we’re being put through the works as it were we can be what we want to be within the framework of man. He has his own purpose and no one’s going to stop it: “As I have planned it, so shall it be. As I have purposed it, so shall it stand” . And no one’s going to thwart it. Every child born of woman is destined to bear the image of Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. So he who started the good work in you brings it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. So everyone is destined to actually be shaped as Jesus Christ. Then comes the unveiling, and you are unveiled in four mighty acts; and when the four mighty acts are completed, you are the image of the invisible God, with life in yourself. Not now worked upon but a being who has life in himself.855 ¶27

But while that is being done on you and in you, you are invited to imitate him, and bring others into our world’s eye and simply mold them in lovely patterns, and see them become these lovely ladies and lovely gentlemen in our world. We can do it, everyone can do it. So we’re invited to do it. Now let us go into the Silence…and go down to the potter’s house.855 ¶28

[...] on this level it’s only a symbolic representation of the dying, being buried, and being raised with Christ. The action itself, although it represents all of this, is not really important. In the mystical sense it’s all important, for it comes just before the realization of being God the Father. As Paul describes it in his letter to the Ephesians, and he puts it sixth in the great unit, and he said, “There’s but one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all”. So he puts it just before the realization of being God the Father.853 ¶1

Now, he tells in his letter to the Romans that “We were buried with Christ by a baptism into death, so as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life”. Baptism implies complete immersion. As we are told, “As Jesus rose up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove”. He rose up out of the water…did it ever occur to you that the bodies that we wear are almost 100 percent water? In these bodies we are buried: this is the great water in which we are buried and remain buried until that moment in time when we rise up out of the water and see the Spirit—not only the heavens completely transparent—but then we see the Spirit in bodily form as the dove descending upon us. This descent upon us is the gift of a new form; that is to say, a new manner of existence, a new unification, so that each while conserving his individuality actually becomes God the Father.853 ¶2

So Paul places it as sixth in the great unit. He mentions seven, but the last would have to be the source of it all, God the Father who is above all, who is in all, and who is through all. But he places baptism as the sixth. So he starts off with the body…there is in the end only one body. This is unification, one body. One Spirit he places second, then the one hope, the one Lord, one faith. Now he comes to baptism, the sixth, one baptism, one God and Father of us all. So just before we become aware of being God the Father of all—not just God the Father but of all—this baptism takes place.853 ¶3

Now, the clarity spoken of in scripture…the heavens were rent and then he saw not only this complete translucency but he heard a voice and then he saw the Spirit in bodily form as a dove. All of these took place in the soul of the individual who experienced them. They were not seen or heard by the crowd. Jesus is the personification of redeemed humanity, so I can use the word Jesus representing all who have had the experience. So all that is said concerning this story took place in the soul of Jesus, that is, the individual who has had the experience. It was not shared by another, not on this level.853 ¶4

So he said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” Well, all scholars interpret this to mean the crucifixion; but it is not, for the crucifixion began the whole thing; that was the death…buried in these bodies of mortals. It reminds us of that 2nd verse of Genesis, the 1st chapter, “And the Spirit of God hovered upon the water.” It’s a creative act. The word means “incubate, to hatch out.” It’s all buried there, for “We were all united with Christ in a death like his and we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”. So we’re all hatched out after incubation, one by one, from these bodies of water. We come out of this; this is the great flood in which all of us are inundated in a world of illusion. Then the Spirit is hovering, incubating, and then one day we are lifted up out of this body.853 ¶5

So we are told, “And when Jesus came up out of the water, immediately the heavens opened and then he saw the Spirit just like a dove descending upon him”. Well, that was not seen. If you read the Book of Mark and the Book of Matthew it wasn’t seen by anyone but Jesus. So bear in mind Jesus only represents redeemed humanity. It’s the one body into which every being who has that experience is incorporated…incorporated into that one body, that one Spirit. It’s the only hope of man, the one hope; it’s the only Lord, not a bunch of little lords running around; the only faith by which we should live, faith in this; and it’s the one baptism culminating in the one God and Father of all. You become the God and Father of all. So here, this is baptism in the true sense of the word.853 ¶6

I know in 1926 when my mother came to see me in New York City she hadn’t seen my son, who was then two years old. One of the first questions she asked, “Is he baptized?” I said, “No, he’s not.” “Oh, how could you do this? Suppose he dies tonight?” I said, “What would that matter? I would lose a lovely boy, but what would it matter?” Well, she said, “He wouldn’t go to heaven. If he isn’t baptized he couldn’t go to heaven.” I said, “For your sake, Mother, next Sunday we will have him baptized.” So I arranged with this minister in the Episcopal Church to take him in and name him and he’d baptize him by sprinkling a little water on him in the name of the Father and of the Son and Holy Spirit. She was satisfied that should something happen to him and he died right then or right after, he is saved in the sense that he could get into heaven.853 ¶7

We are told in scripture, “Unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven”. This is the water; you actually come out of this body. Your whole head opens up and it’s transparent. You’ve never seen such translucency. You don’t realize that you’re still inundated until you see the dove. The dove is not moving its wings, it’s not in any way making any effort. It’s floating. If it’s floating, then it’s on water. And you’re coming up towards that which is above you, which is floating. It simply is the fulfillment of the story of Genesis, for man is the ark of God; he’s not a phantom of the earth and the water. He is the true ark containing everything within him. There isn’t a thing good or evil that is not contained within him. So he is the ark and the dove is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. We’re told that Noah stretched forth his hand and received the dove and brought her in unto himself. There she remained within the ark. So on his hand the dove descended.853 ¶8

I know in my own case when the whole thing became completely translucent, I only knew that I am inundated by reason of the hovering of the dove…it was simply floating. Well, a dove doesn’t float. It was simply floating, seemed to be floating, and then I ascended and came out of the body of water. So when he came up out of the water, then the heavens opened, and there he saw the Spirit like a dove descending upon him and smothering him with love. Well, I know in my own case, when this voice of God personified as a woman spoke and said, “He loves you” when it was so obvious this bird did love me, it’s smothering me with love. But she added, “They avoid man because man gives off such an offensive odor. And so, because of the offense, they avoid man, but his love was so great for you that he penetrated the ring of offense to demonstrate his love for you.”853 ¶9

Well, I was reading recently a work called The Dialogues of Buddha. Now these are the alleged works, for how would anyone know what Buddha said? These are called The Dialogues of The Buddha, not just a Buddha, translated from the Sanskrit by Rhys Davids. Now, these words—and I’ve never seen them before, they came long after my own experience—he said, “In the eyes of the gods, human beings are stinking, disgusting, revolting, and are counted as such.” Well, I know in my own case, this voice of God spoke similar words, but not in that manner. She did say that “Man gives off the most offensive odor, but his love was so great he came through and penetrated the ring of offense to demonstrate his love for you.” Well, I mean, on this level you wouldn’t think that Buddha was wrong or that she was wrong if you think of TV and all the others and the deodorants. We must really be stinking, because one of the biggest things is simply deodorants…that everyone in this world must have a guard, this guard against this, this guard against that. We really must be in the eyes of someone the most offensive. But he wasn’t speaking [...]. We are in a world of death.853 ¶10

We are actually put into a world of death, and came down deliberately, not because of anything we did that was wrong. For, when the whole drama is over and the incubation is over and we once more rise from the world of death, we are infinitely greater than we were prior to the descent into death. It was for a deliberate purpose. If you can call it a fault to overcome any limitations [...] prior to the descent, for we’re ever expanding, forever and forever. There is no limit to expansion; there is a limit to contraction, a limit to this opacity that is this water-body called man.853 ¶11

So here, we are all in these bodies. Have you ever seen the result after cremation of one who weighed 200, 300 pounds?—just a little bit of ash. You could put it in a small, little can, no bigger than a little Campbell Soup can. Well, where did those 300 pounds go? It was all water, all water. So here we are inundated, not in some general flood, but general humanity. And individually we are put into these garments of water. So as Paul said quite wisely in the 6th chapter of Romans, that “We have actually been buried with Christ by a baptism into death, and just as he rose by the glory of the Father, we too in newness of life”.853 ¶12

When this happens in a man’s world, no one here sees the results, because they didn’t even see the events that he encountered. No one saw the dove descend upon him; no one saw the transparency that he saw; no one heard the voice that he heard of the love and affection of the one who descended upon him. It was all something transpiring in the soul of the one who had the experiences. You tell it; some believe it and some do not. The majority do not believe it, for they have been conditioned to believe in Jesus as a little individual unit who lived and died 2,000 years ago. They can’t see Jesus as the personification of humanity, the redeemed humanity. They can’t see Christ as a cosmic presence buried in all; they see him only as some tiny little thing. And that is not the story at all.853 ¶13

So, if I cannot enter into the kingdom of God unless I am born of the water and the Spirit, well, this is the birth of the water: you finally emerge. Having been immersed in the water, your exit from that state is your birth. And then the descent of the Spirit upon you is your birth in Spirit. This then qualifies you for the new form, the new manner of existence, the new unification with Christ on an entirely different level. For God is now raised to an entirely different level by his descent into this world. So it started out one person at a time, and then the second, the third…but all form into “one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and then comes the final, “one God and Father of us all, who is above all, through all and in all”. So whether you were baptized or not hasn’t a thing to do with it. That is only a symbolic representation of this great mystery, and it is the final mystery, and it’s the last in the great series.853 ¶14

So when one experiences the baptism as I’m trying to explain it tonight, at that moment you are an entirely different being. No one sees it unless they have incurrent eyes. But no one in the outer world looking at you can see it. You are one with God the Father. You are God the Father, without loss of identity. That is the great mystery. There is no absorption into that—yes, one body, one Spirit, one God—but no loss of that individuality. That is the great mystery. That was the purpose of it all.853 ¶15

We were individualized before. We aren’t going to lose that individualization; by coming down we simply increase it. We tend forever and forever toward greater and greater individualization…that is the descent into this world of death. But the bodies were bodies of water. And he hovers for that interval of time over the water, because something precious is buried there. It is himself that is buried there, and he simply hovers over it, he incubates it until it hatches. When it hatches, it breaks the water. It comes up out of the water, and immediately the heavens open and the Spirit, in bodily form of a dove, descends upon him. Then the voice of God, Bath qol, the woman who speaks, or she speaks the words of God, and then you hear of the tremendous love that God holds for you in bringing you out…to raise you up by his glory. Therefore, you now receive the glory that is God and become one with God the Father, remaining in the world for a short interval to tell it to those who are on the verge. But tell it to all in the written form, because what you leave behind you and they may, tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow, pick it up and read it. It might spark something because everyone eventually must be seeking God more than anything else in this world. On a certain level they seek money, they seek security, they seek love and affection in the world of Caesar. Well, that’s all right, but there will come a day when he will seek God more than anything else in this world. Nothing will satisfy him but an experience of God.853 ¶16

So this is the baptism of which I speak. If you have not been baptized, take my advice, don’t become [...]. I did it for my mother’s sake. But if you are not baptized in the Christian faith, it doesn’t make any difference whatsoever. That is only a symbolic representation of this great dying, being buried, and being raised again with Christ. But you don’t have to go through the shadow world in order to actually fulfill the story. Hope one hope, that you may fulfill the real baptism tonight or tomorrow, whenever it is. For this is what I speak of when it comes to the mysteries of scripture.853 ¶17

So here, if you know of anyone who is not baptized and they are desirous…like a friend of mine one day came to me and said, “You spoke of baptizing your son…well, I have five children and I haven’t baptized them, and I would like to baptize them, and would you be the godfather? Would you arrange the baptismal for me?” Well, I arranged it and he and his wife came over with their five children and they were all baptized. It was the most dried and cut thing ever, but he wanted it, he felt it should be done. Well, it satisfied him and I was the godfather, the proxy. Now he has his five and they’re all baptized. Well, it’s all right. I was, without my consent, at the age of three or four. Mother had me baptized, and we’re all baptized, but certainly I had no knowledge of what was taking place.853 ¶18

But the real baptism, you are the sole actor; there’s no one but you. The crowds do announce it.853 ¶19

Now, Luke implies in his story that others saw it, and if you read Luke carefully and take the first four verses, you will see that Luke is not telling anyone that he is going to be exact either chronologically or in any other way. He starts off in the most marvelous way: “That in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word”. Now that phrase “from the beginning” is a translation of the Greek word Anothin. Anothin means “from above.” We find it in his argument with the great Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, when he said to him, “Unless you are born from above you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven”. Well, that word Anothin is translated here “from the beginning.” He tells us that there were eyewitnesses and ministers of the Word. Now he goes on to say, “Well, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things accurately for sometime past”—that phrase “for sometime past” is a translation of the same word Anothin. In other words, he’s telling you that he too has had the experience, for he’s not listening to people. He has had it, for here “from above” he knows exactly what he’s doing.853 ¶20

But he does not claim that the story that he’s going to write is going to be an exact chronological story. He rearranges it…because he ends with the crucifixion, and he knows from his own experience it comes first. But, he’s going to tell a story. As Tennyson said, “Truth told,” or “embodied, in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors,” so you tell it on a certain level where people can accept it. So, truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors. You tell it as though it took place here in the outer world for the whole world to observe. And the story is not true…it’s not true on this level. But the whole vast world has accepted it on that level…which has kept the story alive.853 ¶21

So Luke cannot be condemned for telling it the way that he did, because he addresses now the one for whom he wrote it, “That you, O excellent Theophilus”—that means “one who loves God” as you do—“that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” Alright, so you have been told these stories and you’ve been informed that you may know the truth. Well, he knows in his heart that the truth one day will come to the surface, but he will keep it alive by some eternal form, and you will hear it as though it took place on the outside and you will worship an exterior Christ. You will worship some outside God and live by it and go to church and do all the things that the church demands of you until one day it erupts within you and you know the truth of the story. So there is no judgment concerning what the Evangelist did.853 ¶22

But Mark doesn’t do it that way. When Mark tells the story he just tells it. You cannot read that first chapter of Mark and find anyone present who saw the descent of the dove, who saw the clarity of the heavens other than the one who is having the experience. The same thing is true of Matthew. But Luke, for reasons which undoubtedly are very good, told it as though the crowd watched and so did John. At least John the Baptist witnessed it…he had at least one outside. But, there is no one who witnesses this story.853 ¶23

And that’s why when you tell it, because you still are in the eyes of those that you address the little one that they know, and you don’t make an impression. They know all your weaknesses, all your limitations, all you frustrations, everything…“And so how can you tell me that the story written of our dear Lord has unfolded in you?” because they are looking for something entirely different. They don’t know that re-enactment is constantly coming. So when he said, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and now, just now, I simply wait for its fulfillment. Now I am simply constrained until it is accomplished.”853 ¶24

Well, you take the one body waiting for all to come…that is the constraint. The one Spirit waiting for everyone to awaken…that is the constraint. The one being waiting for all to that hope—“Set your hope fully upon this grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Jesus Christ” …to have that one faith. Well, he is constrained until everyone was once more brought into the one body, the one Spirit, the one God and Father of all. So, baptism comes at the very end, just prior to the taking off of the garment for the last time, when at that moment you are one with actually God the Father, who is above all, through all and in all.853 ¶25

And so where would you go after the last? You’re in all, actually in all, and once more hovering, waiting for those that you’re incubating to rise from the dead, for they are all buried in these garments of water. So, then you read it carefully…and don’t be misled by what you’ve been conditioned to believe.853 ¶26

For I know in my own case I was trained as my mother was trained concerning baptism. Yet because of my divorce…not my divorce, I was separated…and it was one of those peculiar feelings between my first wife and myself. She had the little boy for a while, then I got him for a while, then she got him for a while. He went back and forth like a swinging door. So when my mother came, naturally, she was concerned was he baptized? When I said no then she went through the ritual and we baptized him. She was so concerned for his Christian future that she persuaded my wife to allow her to take him to Barbados. So off she went, thrilled, and she took him down for a couple of years. Then my wife, unannounced, uninvited, appeared and demanded him. So she brought him back…again swinging doors, back and forth, until finally when the divorce was granted he was given to me. At the age of twelve, I got him outright. And that was his background. But her concern was for his Christian future, because that was how she was trained and that’s how she trained us.853 ¶27

So, whether you were baptized on this level or not, it doesn’t really matter. Set your hope fully on the real baptism: when suddenly the heavens open and you’re coming up out of the water and hovering above you is the Spirit of God, looking at you with the most loving expression…but floating and you are coming out. As you come out you do exactly what Noah did, for you’re only fulfilling scripture, and Noah put forth his hand and the dove lit upon him, then he brought the dove in to himself. And then the dove, from my own experience, smothers you with love, smothers you with affection; and the voice of God will speak and it does need a person as its agent. It doesn’t come in some strange way, it comes as a person. And so the voice comes as a person. Here is the woman who tells you of his great love for you…that’s why he penetrated the ring of offense.853 ¶28

Then, you never thought yourself offensive prior to that, you never thought anyone offensive, but it is to those who contemplate the world of death a horrible disgusting place. But nevertheless, whether you were horrible to those or not, it happens this way, and this is the great mystery of baptism. Everyone will have this baptism even though they did not have the other baptism. For the other is only a symbolic representation of this great mystery of the death of God, the burial of God, and the rising of God. He was buried in a body of water as told us in that 6th of Romans —also in the 12th chapter of 1st Corinthians. You’ll find it all through the letters of Paul, so much is said of his baptism.853 ¶29

Well, one thing this baptism does for us, we lose completely all human divisions as told us in the 3rd chapter of Galatians. After the baptism we are “in Christ,” and when we are also “in Christ,” there is neither Greek nor Jew, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female. In other words, there is no division whether that division be of race, whether it be of class, or of sex, because in this resurrection of which I speak we are beyond the organization of class, of race or of sex. For, we are one with the risen Lord who is all. He is everything in the world. So if it’s black, he’s black; if it’s pink, he’s pink; if it’s white, he’s white; if it’s male, he’s male; if it’s female, he’s female. No matter what it is! So he’s above all divisions in this world. It’s put an end to all human divisions and you don’t see people as you formerly saw them. You do not in your dreams meet them as you formerly did…everything changes. And the only thing that hasn’t is your little body which is still limited with all the frailties, all the weaknesses of man, until that moment in time that you are relieved of it.853 ¶30

The moment will come to depart this world, but it will come after this. For after this, you have finished the race and you’ve fought the good fight and you’ve kept the faith, and now there’s laid up for you the crown of righteousness . The crown is the laurel leaf…not some little [...] in your head…it’s the laurel, the leaf of the victor who really ran the race and came out. He fought the battle, because this certainly is a battle, a horrible battle, when all day long man fights in this world. He doesn’t know the law of God, so he doesn’t know how to apply it. He wars against the shadows of his own creation.853 ¶31

But here, set your hope tonight upon this: it’s the final of the seven unities. We start with the great unity in the confession of Israel, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord, our God, the Lord is one”. Now in the language of the Christian, this great creed, this great shema of Israel, is that which we find in the 4th chapter of Ephesians, “the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord.” And here it is emphasized right through, so it parallels this. But the sixth is this wonderful one concerning baptism.853 ¶32

I can’t tell anyone the thrill when it happened to me on the first day of January 1963. It was the 1,260th day from the first to the last. The last day was the first of January 1963, that’s when the whole thing was fulfilled, the whole thing was done. Well then, now here it is six years later and I am still, like Paul, telling the story. He spends his day from morning ‘til night telling the story of the fulfillment of God’s promises to the fathers. Many believed, many did not…but he kept on telling it. And no one knows how he departed this world, for not a thing is said in the Book of Acts—which is the story from the 9th chapter on to the end—how he left the world. The churches tell you he was martyred; not a thing in scripture tells you that at all. The word martyr means “witness”—he witnessed to the truth of the Word of God. And they call it a martyr. I call nothing in my life a martyrdom. Even if I was shot this very moment, I wouldn’t call it a martyrdom. My martyrdom is witnessing to the truth of the Word of God. Man has completely misunderstood the word martyr and they call it someone who is violently destroyed from this world. It isn’t that at all. Are you a witness to the Word of God? Everyone must be in the end.853 ¶33

And the very end is the baptism. That’s when you’re incorporated into the body of the risen Lord as the risen Lord, without loss of identity. So you’re given a new form, a new manner of existence, a new unification. Because you are unified with Christ in death, now you’re unified with Christ in the resurrection, a complete new unification. In this unification there is no loss of identity, none whatsoever, and yet you are the risen Lord. You are God the Father, Father of all. And I will know you more intimately than I could ever know you in this world. No one in this world could ever know another as he will know that other after the resurrection. Because he knew him before the descent, he will know him after the ascent. There will be no loss of individuality, just simply a greater and greater individuality; and all back into the one body, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all.853 ¶34

So you set your hope this night fully upon this grace that is coming to you. And may it come now! On the other hand, I must confess from my own experience that it does take 1,260 days from the first to the baptism of which I speak. But what is that to wait? It’s only three and a half years from the first. So may the first take place tonight, because no one knows when it happens.853 ¶35

Do not for one moment dwell upon what you have done in this world as any restraining power, because no one can tell me that he is innocent of unnumbered things of which he is ashamed. In my own case, I have a perfect example of one who could never have judged myself so kindly. I could never in eternity judge Neville that I know as kindly, as gently, as compassionately, as mercifully as I was judged to be what I became.853 ¶36

So how on earth could I say to anyone that you aren’t qualified! I didn’t come to judge. I do not know what you did and, may I tell you, I don’t care. But don’t you put up a barrier because you did certain things of which you may be ashamed…that that is a delaying motion in your world. Forget it! Because when he shines his mercy upon you then all the past is wiped out. “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow”. So it doesn’t really matter. I’m not encouraging you to go out and violate your codes, no.853 ¶37

But I’ll tell you, you have a burden that you’re carrying, that you shouldn’t carry it. You’re carrying a burden of things you have done or things you should have done that you did not do. And that burden…in your own mind’s eye you think “I’ve got to unload it first, overcome it first, before I’m qualified.” Not a thing could be further from the truth because you cannot earn the kingdom of heaven. You cannot acquire any merit towards it. So if you’re carrying such a burden, just forget it if you can, and hope…set your hope fully upon this regardless of what you’ve done. The Father, maybe this night, hovering over you…and you don’t see him because you’re immersed in water and don’t see him, but he is incubating you and warming you into this that could actually break through the surface of the water. And so one day…and I hope it is in the immediate present…that he will come.853 ¶38

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *853 ¶39

Tonight’s subject, the title may seem strange, I call it “The Art of Dying.” If it seems to you at the moment too spiritual, may I tell you, whatever is most profoundly spiritual you will find in the end to be most directly practical. There’s nothing more practical in this world than that which is most profoundly spiritual, and tonight this is the art of dying. The art of dying…in the Book of John we’re told, “Greater love has no man than this that man lay down his life for his friends”. Many people have taken this passage and interpreted it as a man going into battle and offering his body to protect his friends. It’s a noble gesture, and certainly marvelous, but that hasn’t a thing to do with this passage, not a thing to do with it. When I lay down my life for my friends, I do not step before the knife or the gun and give my body in place of theirs. This is something entirely different.850 ¶1

Tonight we will show you the inwardness of this law. Paul said, “Every day I die!”. Well, if every day I die and if today I gave this body, I couldn’t tomorrow die; but every day while I wear this body I die. Well, how do I do it? Let us turn now to Blake, one who had a clear, clear perfect vision. In his 96th Plate of Jerusalem he made the statement: “Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image, nor can man exist without brotherhood.” Can’t exist but by brotherhood.850 ¶2

Well, how do I do it? Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image. Man is only the sum of all of his beliefs, all of his impressions, that’s what I am, that’s what you are. If you want to know a man you’ve got to get behind his words, even his thoughts, to the beliefs from which they spring. So I am the sum total of all of my beliefs. So I meet you on the street or I hear of you, so I meet you and you don’t look well, or someone writes me and they tell me that you are not well, that’s an impression. So thereafter if I think of you that impression comes into my mind’s eye. I must learn the art of dying to that impression. I must bring you into my mind’s eye and put you into an entirely different light and see you as I ought to see you were you the one that I would love you to be. When I am self-persuaded that you are that new impression, I have died to the other impression. So every kindness on my part, every little kindness, is a little death in the Divine Image.850 ¶3

That Divine Image is death…it must die and die all through love. For what is the Divine Image? Listen to it carefully as Blake defines it: “Mercy, pity, peace and love is God, our Father dear; and mercy, pity, peace and love is man his child and care.” So was it a merciful thing to do? Yes, it was merciful. Prompted by pity? Yes. Was it done lovingly? Yes. And now am I at peace because of it? Yes. Then I fulfill the Divine Image—mercy, pity, peace and love. So, I took all these aspects of the Divine Image. It was merciful to do it; why leave him distressed when I could exercise this power? And so every time that man exercises this creative power of his lovingly, he is simply performing this little act of death. Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image.850 ¶4

This is called in scripture repentance. Repentance means “to become another person.” Didn’t I become another person? Because if I am made up of all of my impressions, all of my beliefs, and I believe you to be injured; and that injury need not be physical, in the sense that you are physically hurt, it could be that you are financially hurt. It could be that you are now being disgraced. It could be in a thousand ways. So if I believe this because here are the facts, I’m confronted with facts, I’m called upon to exercise my talent and put something in its place. Therefore, if I put something in its place, I’ve got to give up that impression that I hold of you. Giving it up, if I am the sum total of all of my beliefs, in giving up any belief I die. I die by giving up any belief that I now entertain. And so, every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image…nor can man exist but by brotherhood.850 ¶5

So if I don’t consider the whole vast world, this fragmented world as myself, everyone my brother, and gradually all being gathered together, reassembled into one being that is God the Father, and then I am he. For I am a fragmented being, you are, we all are. While we are fragmented in this state, we are brothers, and by practicing this art we prepare the way to be called back into the unity that is God.850 ¶6

In the oldest of our gospels, which is Mark, the first words put into the mouth of that central figure, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe the gospel”. Repent! We are called upon to repent, and to repent means “a radical change of attitude towards life”; a radical change towards anything in this world, but radical right down to the root. So I meet someone in this world and they tell me their story. Having heard their story, they’ve left their impression on me because I trust them, I believe them. Having heard exactly what is taking place in their life, if it isn’t pleasant they’ve left me with some other aspect of my own being, for they’ve given me another impression. Every impression adds to my being. Every belief is my being. I am the sum total of all that I believe. Well now as I leave them and they go their way and I go my way, it is entirely up to me, not to them, to me, to change my being and bring it back into another state.850 ¶7

For we are told in the 51st Psalm, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, O Lord”…I can’t sin against anyone but myself. Who took that impression? I did. Well, what is his name?—I AM—well, I am believing that. “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, O Lord; therefore thy judgment was just.” Everything you do to me thereafter is just. I can’t complain, for I’ve only sinned against God, and God is I AM…because I took the impression. I saw it and seeing it, I believed it, and believing it, it’s part of my world now. I must live with it. So from thereon I either live with it and bear the fruit of that impression, or I change it.850 ¶8

I change it by becoming another person. So repentance in a lovely way means “to become another person.” Because that was my being that’s the being that I am. Become another person: I don’t see him that way, I don’t see her that way, I change it in my mind’s eye; and changing it, I persuade myself of the reality of that imaginal act. I represent the individual to myself as what I would like him to be, and seeing him in that light I believe in the reality of that imaginal act. Then time proves that it’s true…she or he conformed to this imaginal act of mine.850 ¶9

If that is true, I keep my body balanced as it were. And I am being called by my Father back into that fall from the fragmented state. So we are told, go into the world and tell the story. Tell it to every being in the world…how they’re really living in a world made up only of their beliefs; that “All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” The whole vast world is myself pushed out, myself objectified. What self? The self made up of all of my beliefs—I believe I was this, that and the other.850 ¶10

So today, may I tell you, take everyone in this world that you know, costs you nothing and, may I tell you, you don’t need to be graduated from any institution in this world to practice this art. You don’t need a degree. You don’t need any permission of anyone to say you are this, that or the other. You can do it just as you are here. You need no one’s consent to do it, because you’re doing it anyway. You’re walking the earth just a compulsive being made up of all the things that you believe, and then you out picture them in this world.850 ¶11

Here we have tonight a preparation for the most fantastic funeral possibly that our generation has ever seen. We saw one which was really sheer fantasy back in ’63 when our President was assassinated, and it was solemn and majestic, really marvelous if you want drama…no question about it. But this thing you’re going to see beginning on Saturday will be the most fantastic thing that this generation has seen. He wrote it back in ’43, when he came down with double pneumonia and he was in Cairo, he wrote the kind of funeral that he wanted. He revised it ten years later. He wanted bands, he wanted a state funeral, he wanted all these things. Alright, he will get it: He imagined it.850 ¶12

He’s a commoner. He actually imagined this entire thing. So he out lived them all…he is the last of the big three. So they called them the Big Three. Roosevelt went first, and Stalin followed, and all were younger; then he, the oldest of them all, and he makes his at the age of ninety. He wrote it in detail what he wanted, and he’s going to get it. He wanted to go as Wellington, as [...], as Nelson…everything that they did in that day today will be far, far bigger. They now estimate that 400 million will view this pageant. He conceived it. Well, I have words for the great man—-a truly great man—-but God played that part as he plays your part. The one who came and cleaned my house yesterday, the one who played that part was God, same God that is going to play this part. And these words that ring out from scripture, “Of those born of women none is greater than John; yet I tell you that the least in the kingdom is greater than John”. No greatness in this world means anything whatsoever, nothing!850 ¶13

That vision of Blake in The Vision of the Last Judgment when he saw this character, Araunah, mentioned in 2nd Samuel, the 24th chapter, and he had this threshing floor and David bought it. When the plague struck Israel it came right up to that area and stopped. So he bought it and there he built his altar. The word Araunah means “chief or ruler.” Who could be the chief or ruler but God. And he saw Araunah with a basket pouring out all the vanities of riches and all worldly honors, all worldly honors, all the medals that are pinned upon you, like this pageantry that will begin on Saturday. He wrote it…a great man…but he was only playing a part. He doesn’t realize that the least in the kingdom is greater than John, but the very least, and the least in the kingdom could walk this earth completely unknown. Well, who would be the one who would be the least in the kingdom unknown? 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 every act was known only to the one in whom it happened. It could not be seen or heard by another. That one in whom it took place could be believed or disbelieved, makes no difference. But he walks the earth and if these events happen in him, or in her, he is in the kingdom. “No one born of woman is greater than John; yet I tell you, the least in the kingdom is greater than John.” So the one in whom it happens has entered the kingdom. And it need not even be known where he places the little body. I am told today that no one really knows where Blake was buried. They know where he was born, because his father was a milliner, and so he knew the house where the children were born. But where Blake seventy years later was buried no one knows, possibly in some unknown, unmarked grave of poverty. But he saw in this perfect vision the casting out of all the vanities and riches and all worldly honors.850 ¶14

So what would concern you about a great, great funeral? But if you are given that way, it’s perfectly alright. And I’m quite sure you will look at it, I will, and so on Saturday undoubtedly I’ll turn the whole thing on as though I’m in a theater and watch the whole grand pageant. You can’t take anything from him, perfectly marvelous, wonderful character that was played by God.850 ¶15

God played that part, wonderful part. But he’s also playing your part. Don’t forget for one second that God is one, God isn’t two. So the God that played that part is not a less God than the God that plays your part. So, all that you can hope for is to pray that this series of events marking your entrance into heaven will take place in you. Because no matter how great you are in the eyes of man, it doesn’t compare to the least in the kingdom of heaven. So let everyone seek only the kingdom.850 ¶16

And you’re told in the beginning it starts by practicing revision. The word is not revision; it’s called repentance, and repentance simply means “to become another person,” another person. As I stand here, if I have any impression that’s unlovely and I change it and put in its place a lovely impression, at that very moment I am another person, for I am the sum total of all of my beliefs, all of my impressions. So any one change in my life, no matter how small it is, concerning another, and I see him as I would like to see him or I see them as I would like to see them, or I hear other than what I heard and make it something lovelier, if I persuade myself of the reality of this change of attitude, I am another person. And in that other person, alright, I became a new being.850 ¶17

After much multiple changing within my own world as I exercise this talent, then I am called. I can’t tell you what moment in time we’re called, because no one knows how far back we really go. You and I didn’t begin a few years ago in the mother’s womb and we don’t end in the grave. No one ends in the grave. But we began a way back; and then when we began, everything was perfect, a fragmented being, but everything was perfect. But we’re no earthly good as powers beyond this world unless we have freedom of expression. And so, as that was granted to man he makes mistakes and he tries to overcome the other on the outside. He does all things against his fragmented self until he hears the story.850 ¶18

That’s why it’s so very important that everyone should hear the story: The story of God becoming man that man may become God. So we all hear it, and we’re told the beginning of it, the change is repentance. Then you’re told repentance means “a change of attitude” and the change of attitude should be radical. May I tell you, you can start now, this moment, and start doing it.850 ¶19

It takes itself into your dream world. Your dreams are not the normal dream thereafter. You find yourself in dream not allowing yourself to be carried with the wind, not allowed in any way to be simply a thing moving across the world. You are in control of everything that you do. The opening up of a book in dream…you know exactly what you’re doing. You know the title and you read it and you know everything is taking place in dream. It becomes that controlled by you. You’re not a victim of your wandering attention; you are in control, you are master and director of that attention. It goes right into that state. And when you depart from this world after these experiences take place in you, you leave it forever.850 ¶20

Yet everyone left is your fragmented self and everyone has to be redeemed. You can’t let one be lost—-“Nothing can be lost in all my holy mountain.” So when you depart having had these experiences, don’t think for one second that you have been detached from your world. It’s your world…you are the God that fragmented himself in this world, so everyone has to be redeemed. But then you will be in that controlling world as it were.850 ¶21

As we are told, and this is the new translation in what is known today as the New English Bible: “You’ve heard the words, ‘And the first man Adam became a living soul; the second Adam became a life-giving spirit’”. But that’s not the translation today: “The first man Adam became an animate being”—-mark the words “an animate being”; “the second Adam has become a life-giving spirit.” The first an animate being…how true that translation is. This whole vast world is animated and therefore not to be condemned. Any condemnation is to the being animating it, not to the thing animated. So the first man Adam became an animate being; the second Adam has become a life-giving spirit.850 ¶22

After the series of events you become the life-giving spirit. So you will be above, and you’ll understand the words: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world”. He’s telling you by the series of events within him that he becomes part of the controlling, life-giving spirit; and therefore he could cry, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do”. Forgive every being in this world for whatever he’s done and whatever he is doing. And knowing this, change it. Forgive everyone and then in your own mind’s eye change him. He can’t help it, he just can’t help it. For if there is any condemnation, said he, “You have no power over me unless it were given to you from above; so he who delivered me into your hands, he has the greater sin”. So no one can condemn me were it not given to him from above. And he takes the whole vast world and forgives it.850 ¶23

Now look upon the cross in this sense tonight, for this is the art of dying. Don’t see a man on a wooden cross, 2,000 years ago, hanging for three hours, and then rising three days later from a grave. See yourself in this manner—and I’m quoting now from the 6th chapter of the Book of Romans—“If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”. See the change in tense? “If we have been united with him in a death like his”—-that’s past, that’s all over, our crucifixion is over; now comes the future—-“we shall be united with him in a resurrection like his.” The resurrection is taking place. As he said in his letter to Timothy, “Those who teach that the resurrection is over and past are misleading and turning people from the true faith”. It isn’t over; it has started and is taking place.850 ¶24

Well, we’re all united with him in a death like his; all were crucified with God. Now God has risen. The first took place; and in all God is rising, in all. Everyone is rising as God…not another little being…only God is rising. So here, everyone has gone through the act of being crucified with God, and everyone shall rise, as he has already risen. He rose in one. He’s rising in all but one after one after one, and all gathered into one being.850 ¶25

So this is the story of death: The art of dying. So he’s now on the cross, your cross, and the three days or the three hours…and mark it well in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, “On the third day, the earth rose up out of the deep”. Three is a symbol of resurrection. You’re rising by practicing the art of revision. You are rising…every moment in time that you die…every little kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image. So every time that you see someone in distress, and you revise it, and persuade yourself of the reality of the revision, you die. This is death. And so everyone is on the cross, and he’s crying out, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” And every time that you actually revise any being in this world and believe in the reality of your revision, you die. So, “Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image; nor can man exist but by brotherhood.”850 ¶26

So it’s one grand fragmented being and these are the brothers; when all are put together again and brought back into one, we are the fathers. We are The Father when united; we are the brothers in conflict when we don’t understand it. When we begin to see the vision, we are brothers in love, and take care of everyone and lift him up in us. As we are lifted up in ourselves by revising it, we are gradually being called back into that unity that is our unity, and that unity is God the Father. So everyone is called upon to practice it.850 ¶27

Tonight, I invite you to start it. Because no matter how great you are in this world—-you could be the richest of the rich, the most honored of the honored—-and yet if you have not had the experiences as described in scripture concerning Jesus Christ, you’re not in the kingdom. And as we are told, “No one born of woman is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom is greater than John,” because all the honors of the world are poured out, all the riches of the world are poured out, no matter what they are they are completely poured out. Men today, not knowing this, they will plan to survive the grave by building monuments to themselves, libraries to themselves, and all kinds of indulgences to themselves to perpetuate that memory in the minds of men…and all this is poured out, it means nothing.850 ¶28

Only those who enter the kingdom of God…for that means life, to become a part of the life-giving power of the world.850 ¶29

So this new translation is true. You can read it in the New English Bible: “The first man Adam became animate.” I stepped into a room just like this and saw animate beings, and I thought they had life in themselves. I thought so. At that moment I knew that their life was in me, they didn’t have it in themselves at all. Looking at them, I arrested in me that which I felt, and they were not animate…all the animation was in me. They were completely still and I examined these clay forms. Everything known to man in this world was not so at all, even the law of gravity. Things didn’t fall that should fall. Birds in flight remained still and not one thing could bring them down, just simply still. And when I released in me that which I had arrested, they moved on and continued a seeming life in themselves…and it wasn’t there at all. So I tasted in that moment the power of the age to come.850 ¶30

So he speaks of the two ages, this age and that age. This age is the animate age, the first Adam; and we’re all moving toward that age where we are the operant power. And we taste it from time to time. That was a great tasting that night.850 ¶31

But before you get to that point and taste it that way, you can experiment this way and prove you can operate it by changing within yourself attitudes. A complete change of attitude results in corresponding changes in the outer world. And when you prove it, then you are on the way, and eventually you reach that point where you will be called one night to taste of the power. Here you do it without really knowing it, but that night you will taste it.850 ¶32

When you see some man stand before you who was walking and he intended to walk outside of the house and you arrested him—-not by putting your hand on him, you didn’t shoot him, you didn’t command him to stand still—you simply stopped something in yourself. As you stopped it, he stopped and he couldn’t move. Then you examine him and he isn’t alive at all, he’s dead. He was only, at that moment, an animate being, and you didn’t realize until that moment you were the cause of his animation.850 ¶33

Today, you are the cause of your whole vast world round about you. You’re animating everything in your world.850 ¶34

And so you can try it. Take someone who is distressed, in your mind’s eye bring that one into your mind and represent him to yourself as you would like him to be, and see him, in time, conform to that representation. Well, didn’t you do it? If this is the lowest level, and you do it with another, then you do it with another. Every time you do it with someone for the better of the other you died. Because, before you did it you lived to that limitation; it’s all in you. If someone is unemployed and you know of it, well then, in you that’s an image, that’s a belief, and man is the sum total of all of his beliefs. So you die to that belief: Now you represent him to yourself as gainfully employed, he’s never had more, he’s never been better. And then he becomes gainfully employed and he’s never had more. At that moment you gave up one thing; as you gave it up, you died. And so, “Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image; nor can man exist but by brotherhood.”850 ¶35

So this is brotherhood—-taking everyone and transforming everyone within yourself. For, “All that you behold, though it seems to be on the outside,” it isn’t really, “it’s all within, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”850 ¶36

And then will come that moment in time that you’ll be called to taste of the power, real power. And then you will see why the cry on the cross is so true: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” They don’t know it. They are living in a world of impressions, a world of beliefs. They are the sum total of all their beliefs. And they don’t know how to overcome it, because they have not heard the story…or having heard it they do not believe it.850 ¶37

And the story begins on the statement: “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent and believe the gospel.” That’s how it begins, “Repent!” Repent means “to become someone else, become another person”; and you always become another person at any moment in time that you change your opinion about anything in this world. If the change of opinion sticks, if it sticks, then you died to what you formerly believed, and you don’t believe what you don’t want to believe. Believing it, you externalize it. Externalizing it, you live in an entirely different world.850 ¶38

Experiencing this change of beliefs, one day you are called, and being called, you go through all of the experiences as described in scripture about Jesus Christ. If you read the story carefully there isn’t one thing said of Jesus Christ that was heard or seen by another…all within himself the drama unfolds. Then he goes back into scripture and he finds confirmation for that which is taking place in him, and he tells it to the world.850 ¶39

But he doesn’t look the type…he’s not the majestic being that they thought one should look like when he comes into the world. They are looking for him in this world…and they can’t understand the words, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”.850 ¶40

Hasn’t a thing to do with flesh and blood. What I look like physically hasn’t a thing to do with the being that is wearing this garment. You don’t see the being wearing this garment. No one can see the being wearing this garment. You may see flashes, you may see a moment, but you don’t see the unmasked being wearing the garment. So if you judge by appearances then you aren’t going to see…not the real being.850 ¶41

So when he comes into the world, he’s a normal person as we are, nothing really to rave about, nothing to write home about, no background. He doesn’t leave a monument. Today they can’t find any sepulcher where he was really buried. They’re looking in the wrong place. No matter what they build in the little area called the Near East, they haven’t found any spot where “he” walked. So he walks in this world, clothed in garments that would disguise him.850 ¶42

And when that moment in time is right, these experiences happen in him. As they happen in him, he knows exactly who he is; and he waits and marks his time until that moment in time when he departs, and departs for the last time, no returning.850 ¶43

But he can’t leave his fragmented self. He joins the world of controlling the power; and not one will be missed, not one will be lost, and everyone will be brought back and redeemed into the one form which is God the Father.850 ¶44

So tonight, this little art of dying is a true art, and everyone must practice it. If tonight you took any one person in your world and actually changed him in your mind’s eye, and believed in the reality of this imaginal change, and then tomorrow or next week or next month he conforms to it, not only he has changed in your world, he changed because you changed; for there’s nothing on the outside. So when he becomes the man you want him to be, it’s only because you changed first. Then you understand the words, “We love him, because he first loved us”. So we start the act of doing it within ourselves, and they only respond, they reflect, they can’t help it, and all reflect the changes in us. Every time that change takes place in us it takes place on the outside and all these are the deaths. So we get back to that wonderful statement of Blake in the 96th Plate, “Every kindness to another is a little death in the Divine Image.”850 ¶45

Now let us go into the Silence and bring about a little death.850 ¶46

* * * Before we have the questions, that book that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago finally arrived, The Future of Man. The author is considered not only a great theologian—-he was a great Jesuit, he’s gone from this world now—-but a great physicist. I read the book and I thoroughly enjoyed it. You may not agree with everything in the book, but it stimulates, it fires the mind. That’s all that a book should be good for anyway. It does jolt you from moment to moment. And so, this has just arrived, and Grace and Jack they have it tonight on the table, The Future of Man. I have found it a very fascinating book.850 ¶47

He was a great Jesuit…died in New York City on, I think, Easter Day, two years ago. He was silenced by the Vatican, shipped off to China, not allowed to print anything that he wrote while he lived, because it was controversial and in conflict with the policies of the Vatican. But he remained faithful to his Catholic belief and never wavered for one moment. And so he allowed the voice of the Vatican to silence him, went silently on to China, and did his duty there, brought back to France, and he came to America. While visiting a friend in New York City on Easter Day had a heart attack and made his exit. He was seventy, just about seventy.850 ¶48

He writes…of course it was written in French and so it’s a translation…but whoever translated did a marvelous job, beautifully done. So I can’t recommend it any higher than that. I personally was fired by the book. Now are there any questions?850 ¶49

Well, do practice the art of dying…and you won’t really die. You will die and not really die. You will die to what you now believe and live to what you want to believe, and become the greater for the dying. Thank you. Goodnight.850 ¶52

Tonight we will discuss states. When we open the Bible and read the story as it’s given to us, we may think we are talking about people that lived, individuals, persons that are as we are, but it’s not. So the characters depicted in the Bible are not the individuals named. They are simply states signified by those names. For instance, the name Moses, or the name Abraham, or the name — well, any name that you find in scripture — they are not individuals as you and I are; they are simply a state of consciousness through which the individual, you and I, the immortal being, we pass through these states. The word Moses means to be born. It’s the old perfective of the Egyptian verb to be born. Abraham, the father of multitudes. We start there, moving through states, and you and I pass through these states towards our own redemption. We come to the end, and that state is personified in scripture, and men take the personification and worship it as a person, stick it on the wall, and then cross themselves before it and genuflect, not knowing that these are states.849 ¶1

So we must learn to distinguish between states and the individuals who pass through these states. These states are eternal. They are forever. You are an immortal being, and you move through states. The states remain permanent forever. You pass on. We change states; the states do not change. We change states, but we, the individual, we are forever. It’s like moving through a city — the city remains, but we pass on. To think that because we have left the city, the city has ceased to exist would be stupid. The city remains and we go on. We pass from one state to another state, and finally we come to the end. That end is described in scripture as Jesus. But that’s a state. You are the immortal being passing through states, and when we come to the very end, you are in that state.849 ¶2

It was predetermined. It was shown to all of us before we started — shown us in the state called Abraham. We saw it all in detail. And if we entered it reluctantly or not, who knows? Paul tells us that we were made subject unto futility, not willingly, but by the will of him who subjected us in hope. And the hope was that we would obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God. So we were told that it was not altogether a willing subjection on our part, but we kept the divine vision, as Paul said, in time of trouble. And so we continue on the journey.849 ¶3

In this world, you and I can create states, but the spiritual states are eternal. We create a state here — it’s not eternal. We create a state to deliver individuals forevermore. I create a state. Somebody asked me: will you, in their name, hear what they would like to be? All right. So that I must create the state, knowing that he is now in a state that he dislikes. I must distinguish between the being and the state that he is in. So I see him unemployed. All right, so he’s unemployed and he wants to be gainfully employed. There’s nothing wrong in that. So I represent him to myself as one who is gainfully employed, who has more than he’s ever had before. To the degree that I am self-persuaded that he is what I have now imagined him to be, to that degree he will actually become it. I move him out of one state into another. But that state into which he fell remains for anyone to fall into it, and all can fall into it at the same time for that matter. He’s not the only occupant of the state of being unemployed. There could be millions being unemployed, and there could be millions who desire to be out of it. Many who are unemployed have no desire to be out of it — they prefer to be on welfare. That’s their desire, perfectly all right. But if someone desires to be gainfully employed and to leave the state of being unemployed, you and I can create that state. Well, how do I create the state? By using my imagination.849 ¶4

Imagination is not a state; it’s the human existence himself. You are all imagination, and God is all imagination. You are God, and God is actually within you as your own wonderful human imagination. Now these permanent states of the soul, these spiritual states, they remain. You and I pass through them towards our own redemption. But in the interval, we meet a friend, and the friend is in need of help, and the help is to move him out of the state. I can give you money, but as Peter said, “silver and gold have I not for thee, but such as I have give I unto thee.” And he creates a state and takes the man from being a beggar who’s always begging on the corner and puts him into a state where he jumps up in joy. He’s now employed, not begging for money. So he didn’t give him coins — he simply gave him a new state of consciousness.849 ¶5

So I take you as an individual. I represent you to myself as the one that you would like to be — the one that I, if I were in your state, would like to be. I make it fit within what is known as the golden rule: “I do unto others as I would have them do unto me.” If I were in that state, would I like to be in some better state? Certainly. Well, then do it to another. And so if he asks it of you, you simply represent him to yourself as being gainfully employed. Or if he’s unwell, as being well; or if he wants to be married and he can’t find the proper mate, then, in your mind’s eye, you assume that he has found the proper mate. Whatever it is, if it is a normal, natural request that is not in conflict with your own moral, ethical code, you create a state — and then you lift your individual into that state.849 ¶6

Well, how do I do it? I carry on a conversation mentally with that friend, from the basis that he is in that state. He tells me how happy he is with his new job and how much he is making. I see him in my mind’s eye, radiant. Well, then am I self-persuaded that this imaginal act is a fact? Do I really believe in the reality of what I’ve done? Do I believe that imagining creates reality? I do. Well, then to the degree that I am self-persuaded, he becomes the embodiment of what I’ve imagined him to be. These are states. So man must distinguish between the individual and the state that he is in.849 ¶7

So Blake said, “I do not consider the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep into which the soul may fall in its deadly dreams of good and evil, when it left paradise following the serpent, the serpent of generation.” So we came down to experience death, for this is a world of death, where everything appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it disappears. So everything dies in this world; no matter how long it seems to live, it dies eventually. So we come down into the world of death, and the last enemy to be destroyed, or to be overcome, is death. I enter death and then conquer death to prove that I cannot die. I am an immortal being, for I am all imagination, and I cannot go to eternal death in that which cannot die, which is my own wonderful human imagination, and that is God himself.849 ¶8

There is no other God. He actually became as I am, that I may be as he is. So God became man. He’s not pretending that he’s a man — you can’t pretend and influence anything here. You’ve got to completely become man and forget you are God. And that’s what you have done. You are the God who became humanity, that humanity may become God. So these are states.849 ¶9

If man knows it, well, then he can forgive every being in this world for what he has done, because he only expressed the state into which he unwittingly fell. He could fall into the state of being a thief and enjoy that state. He thinks he’s doing fine, much better than if he went to work every morning and pushed a little button — he’s making more. So he thinks he’s fine. Then comes the inevitable consequences of that state. Is he willing to pay the price of going into that state? Well, usually he is unwilling. He doesn’t regret the state. He wonders, what did I do wrong to be caught? There isn’t a thief in this world who is regretful of the fact that he was a thief. No — what did I do wrong? So when I do it again, I must be more aware of what I did formerly that Paul took me into the arms of the law. They’re only regretting what they did wrong, and they’re trying to find out what they did wrong. It’s a state.849 ¶10

So everyone in this world is in a state. If I know that, I can lift him out of the state if he requests it. I don’t go around looking for people to lift them out — if anyone requests it, it’s a very simple technique. You ask of me something that I would ask of you, were I in your state. And so you ask it of me: what does it cost? Nothing. You’re told, “Come, eat; buy wine, buy milk, without money, without price.” It costs nothing — you simply create the state. And the state that you create, you put your brain into it. What would it be like if it were true? What would the feeling be like if he really could tell me now that he is the man, or she is the woman, that they would like to be? Well, then, persuade myself that they’re telling it to me. Listen as though I’m hearing their voice. See them as though I’m actually seeing them in the flesh, and then go about my business — go about my way, confident that that thing that I did will work.849 ¶11

So Blake said, “I had dinner last night with Isaiah, and dinner with Ezekiel. And I asked them, ‘Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so make it so?’ And they said, ‘Yes — in ages of imagination.’” But today you are capable of imagination of anything. If you can actually believe in the reality of your own imaginal act, then these things will become facts in your world. But they are states.849 ¶12

Now, we said — I know that many people have painted, say, the Furies as three women. We have it in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the three witches. He said, I have painted them, as you know — I’ve painted these as men, three men, the Furies, and not as three women. But you must remember that mine is vision and not fable. So you can sit down to write something, and it’s fable — it may have a bit of truth in it. The three are there, yes, but they’re not women. In vision you see them as men. Men can fall into that state of fury; a woman can fall into the state of fury. But when you see it in imagination, they are men. When you see these characters just as they’re painted in scripture from beginning to end — all these are states. When you encounter the state, it looks like a person.849 ¶13

When I stood in the presence of Abraham, it’s a man — a majestic man, about 6'4", 6'6", this handsome, wonderful man looking into the distance. But the distance was not in space, it was in time. He was looking into the end of what he saw. He saw the end, and therefore that end justified all the means, for when he comes out at the end, he comes out as the author of the script. He comes out as God himself. And everyone is going to come out as God. So we pass through in this little state called man, and we think, how miserable — we begin and then we end and that’s it. But it’s not so. Everyone comes out in the end as I am. But I am completely awake, and that is God.849 ¶14

So when you meet all these characters of the scripture, they look — they’re persons. But you will know, if you see it all in your mind’s eye, they’re all states. States personify, and we have taken the personification for persons. We have taken the gross perent for the ultimate sense intended, and the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself. And so man has taken scripture as secular history, and it’s not secular history — it’s divine history, and these are the eternal states through which all of us pass. And when we come to the end, we are Jesus.849 ¶15

Now, in the end, what seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, and eternal death. But divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus. In the end there is only that final state, Jesus only. You fulfilled the law, you fulfilled the prophets. Having fulfilled all the prophecy and all the law, for you saw it now differently, and you fulfilled it. In the end there is Jesus only. Well, who is Jesus? The Lord God Jehovah. And you are actually redeemed in that one body, and you are the Lord God Jehovah.849 ¶16

It seems so stupid to tell you, who have but what — threescore and ten years in this little earth of ours — that you are one with the creator of the universe. It doesn’t make sense. And they’ll go out and say, “Now, that man is mad.” But may I tell you, from the beginning of time, all men — visionary men — were accounted madmen. For I see these things — I can’t deny them in my mind. Where do you see them? I see them in my imagination. That’s where I see them. Where did I see David? Where? But in my imagination. Where did I see the Christ child, the symbol of my birth from above? It had to be in my imagination. Where do I see these worlds into which I step and talk with people who the world called dead? And I can’t persuade them that they died, because they’re not dead. And so I say, you know, you died. And they say, who’s dead? I said, I didn’t say you’re dead, I said you died. Well, that doesn’t make sense to them, and they aren’t aware that they’ve died, because they’re not dead — they haven’t died. Well, I can’t deny that they’re not dead; I’m talking to them, they’re talking to me, and they’re flesh and blood and they’re real, as we are real.849 ¶17

And yet I can’t persuade them that they went through an experience that we, left behind in this section of time, would call death — that we buried them, went to their funerals, and they can’t believe it, because they are not dead. And you’re telling them that they died. If a thing died, if it’s dead, how can you talk to it? How can it be actually an animate body, responding intelligently to all that you’re saying, when it hasn’t died? Not to itself, but to you — with memory alert. You know it died, and you’re trying to persuade it that it has actually moved into another time slot, and it’s not here. It is an entirely different time slot, and that time slot need not be consecutive with this — say 1973, when you meet him, he died in ’72. No, it could be the year 3000. 3000 is now existing. The year one is existing. All these are still existing, and you can step here and find yourself in the year 1000 when that is necessary for your unfoldment.849 ¶18

Don’t think for one moment that you’ve outgrown the year 1000. Take the writers of today — have they outgrown the year where Shakespeare lived? Then why aren’t they writing like Shakespeare? Have they outgrown the beauty of that age, when we translated our ancient scripts into English and now we have the King James Version, that majestic monument to English literature? Well, who is doing it today? Who is writing Shakespeare today? Are the Beatles writing Beethoven? They begin with a B, all right, but it’s not Beethoven, it’s not Bach, it’s not Brahms. So have they outgrown these great giants? No, that age could be upon greater age for what they need when they slip from here to find themselves exposed to real music, real, wonderful, creative things.849 ¶19

So it is not a progression one way. All this thing is a close, is a theater, and it’s all flows. You step off the garment here and you find yourself awake. It could be in the same time, start beyond this moment, but the chances are it will not be until that very end.849 ¶20

And when you come to the end, you will only know you’re at the end when the son of God calls you father. And as you read these stories, the son of God is David. “I said unto him, you are my son” — and there it is. So when David stands before you and calls you father, and you know he is your son and he knows you are his father, then you’ve reached the end.849 ¶21

The end is the complete awakening of your own wonderful human imagination. That’s what the whole vast world aches for — the awakening of God within him. And God within man is man’s own wonderful human imagination. That’s God.849 ¶22

So we have the permanent spiritual states of the soul through which the individual passes to his redemption, and then we have states that you and I create to deliver men from their present state into which they’ve fallen. So we fall into a state of being not wanted, and feeling sorry for ourselves — that’s only a state. The individual in that state is one with the individual who sits on a throne. There’s only one God, so that “I” is the same.849 ¶23

Now, may I tell you, there is no loss of identity. You will never lose your identity — it will never cease to be, and it will never change. You aren’t absorbed. You are an eye, and that eye is that sense of awareness, and forever and forever you are individualized, and you tend forever towards ever greater and greater individualization. There’s no absorption in this, yet you are that one, and you are passing through these states towards the awakening of that one, and you are that one. But these states, told as persons in scripture, you pass through them.849 ¶24

Now, when you come to the end, you come right into David. David is the resultant state of your journey from Abraham to Jesus — he is the resultant state. So when you reach the end, you awake as the Lord, and he has a son, and the son is David, and David is the symbol of humanity. You’ve gone through the entire gamut of man.849 ¶25

And may I tell you, if you know your scripture, everything — every crime in the world possible to man — is described in the Bible openly. There isn’t a crime, you name it, that is not described in the Bible openly. Man goes through them. He doesn’t have to — he can discriminate and not fall into one if he knows their states. But you sit down and you listen to a certain story — a man who is prejudiced, and he poisons your mind, and you fall into that state and accept his prejudiced mind, and then you’re going to pay the price of that prejudice. Eventually you will. You don’t have to accept it. You go into a restaurant, you don’t say, “Bring me what the chef wants to get rid of tonight.” Bring me a menu, and then you order. Maybe he only has that one order that you want — no one else wants it, but you want it.849 ¶26

I went into a restaurant back in New York City a few years ago. It was early, I grant you — it was only 11:00 in the morning, but I had no breakfast, it was brunch. And I took some friends into the Hilton Hotel, and I went to this Borbin Room. Well, it was Sunday, and I don’t dress up on Sunday — I went in with an open shirt. Well, New York hasn’t quite caught on to California when it comes to wear, and I saw the head waiter, all stuffy, and he said, “What up?” in this very, very heavy accent. Well, I have an accent too, so I couldn’t criticize him. But here he is, with this very, very heavy accent, and he’s criticizing my appearance because — I had on a jacket, yes, but my shirt was open at the neck, and I’m taking five people in to brunch. So — all right, so I buttoned up the collar, and he gave me a table off the wing, not to be seen by those who were coming with ties and shirts. And then I said, “All right, I want clams.” The waiter, when the waiter took my order — clams. I said, “Yes, I want clams. I don’t want bacon and eggs, and I don’t want the usual breakfast that you think you’re going to serve everyone. I want clams for breakfast — bring me clams.” So he delayed and delayed, and finally he brought the clams. And I said, “Come back here, please — this isn’t charity, I’m paying for it. Bring me — I want some horseradish, and I want a little Tabasco sauce.” Reluctantly he goes and gets that. But that’s what I wanted — I’m paying for it.849 ¶27

Well, in life, do the same thing. You just don’t go in and say, “Throw me a tie.” You select one — maybe out of a hundred, a silly little thing that you put around your neck — but you still want one tie, and you want to pick it.849 ¶28

The same thing is true of these states. Don’t let anyone poison you and throw you into a state, because you’re going to pay the price of that state. We’re only moving through states, but they are a permanent, fixed number of states, and the Bible records them. Every character in that Bible is a state. And you start with Abraham and you come out at the end, and the end, as you’re told, is Jesus.849 ¶29

Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad. “And you know our father Abraham?” Well, you’re not yet fifty years old — how could you know Abraham? Or how could Abraham know you? He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.”849 ¶30

I am precedes anything that I have ever been. I must precede whatever I claim that I am. I can say “I am” before, and I must, before I say “I’m rich” — riches did not precede me, I am; then I can say that I am wealthy. I create wealth, because I am is the only reality, and I create that which I assume that I am. So if I assume that I am this, that, or the other, I create it in my world.849 ¶31

Well, I can assume it not only for myself, I assume it for another, if it comes within the framework of the golden rule — I will do it. If you ask me to say that he is definitely in his will, and it’s a very, very big estate — will you, for me, hear that he’s dead? But don’t ask it of me — go to someone else and ask him, but don’t ask it of me. I could not assume that he’s died because you are in his will. No, go to someone else. And someone said, “You know, thrift is a marvelous virtue, especially in an ancestor.” And so it’s right — well, I’ll go along with that, especially in an ancestor. Well, I still would not wish him to die, because I am a descendant ordained in his will. I use this technique, this law, and it works beautifully.849 ¶32

May I tell you, imagining creates reality. Imagining created these eternal states. And then we go through the states from Abraham to Jesus. When we come to Jesus, you awake — that is God awake in you as you. And God is the father of humanity; humanity is the son of God. But the son, personified as a single being, is David, and he comes out as David.849 ¶33

Now, the ancients have painted eternity as an old man. It’s not an old man, it’s David — eternity is the eternal youth. I wouldn’t care what artists will tell me, I have seen it, and I tell you, eternal youth is the personification of eternity. Eternity — it’s not an old man at all. The Ancient of Days, yes — the image of his son, and the son the image of the Ancient of Days. You are the Ancient of Days, that the son and the father are one. “I and my Father are one.”849 ¶34

So tonight you can set yourself free, and set your friends free, if you really believe what you have heard. If you believe — you can’t see the state, but it is personified if you saw it in your imagination. Everything in this world is a state, and if you saw it in imagination, you’ll see a person. You may call this one Moses, call that one Abraham, call that one Jacob, call this one Peter — all these are states. Pilate, Pontius Pilate, that’s the state. All these are states, from beginning to end. It’s not secular history. And when you come out, you are beyond it all. But you went through the gamut, and you bore the flesh the allotted time. You took that burden upon you.849 ¶35

And, as Paul said, in the end, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” “Therefore let no one bother me, for I now wear on my body the marks of Jesus.” Everything is on him now, because that’s the very end of the journey. When you awake, he said, “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me.” When the son is revealed in you, then you are God, because the son reveals you as the father, and God is the father, but it takes the son — no one but the son can reveal the father.849 ¶36

And until David comes, you will never know God — you’ll not really know him. You’ll worship him with something on the outside, like an oversoul or some impersonal force or something of that nature. No, God is a father, and he has a son — humanity is his son. But humanity, collectively fused into one single being and personified, comes out as the eternal youth, David. I mean David of biblical fame, the great psalmist, whose father in scripture is called Jesse. And Jesse means “Jehovah exists.” That’s what the word actually means.849 ¶37

So Jehovah exists. You exist, don’t you? You know that you are. If, this very moment, you suffer from amnesia, you will still know that you are — you may not know who you are, and where you are, and what you are, but you know that you are.849 ¶38

So Jehovah exists. And then comes the awakening of this being who fell asleep in the beginning, for this whole thing is the dream of God. God himself entered death’s door, the human skull — that’s the holy sepulchre — and lay down in the grave, and he’s dreamt this dream, and in the end he will awake, and you are God, completely individualized, and yet you’re God. And the same thing will happen to everyone — everyone is going to see David, and therefore that will show the unity of humanity, for all will be the father of David. But you can’t be the father of my son and not be the very being himself that is the father of that son. If you’re the father of my son, then you and I are one.849 ¶39

So this is the story of scripture. But man takes the platform, and he has no vision — he’s never had a vision. And when you tell him of your visions, he laughs at you, because to him this is secular history, and he’s waiting for his little Jesus to come on the outside, and he hopes that he will come soon, that he’ll be here to meet him and greet him, put his hand into his and shake it. But he’ll wait forever if he wants that kind of a Jesus, because there is no such Jesus — he’ll wait forever to find these characters on the outside; they’re all within. And when he finds Jesus, when Jesus comes, he comes from within, and he awakens within as the one in whom he awakens. That’s the coming of Jesus — that’s the parousia spoken of in scripture. It’s not the end of a world, it’s the end of the individual’s journey. That’s when he comes.849 ¶40

So God himself came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus, in you, in me, in everyone. So he’s continually coming.849 ¶41

So if I see it now, as it really must be seen, I see a play in eternity, and the play is without reference to its position in time, without reference to its duration, without reference to its repetition. It’s like a standing order, something to be done absolutely and continuously. And that play is going on in eternity, and it’s actually unfolding itself within man, who is in time.849 ¶42

So here in time, while we are in time, the play erupts, and then I know exactly who I am. I was taught to believe the whole thing took place 2,000 years ago. Then to discover it isn’t so at all — it has no reference to position in time, and no reference as to duration. It’s a standing order, something to be done absolutely and continuously, and it’s always been done within us. And then we have moved out of the time slot into eternity, enhanced beyond the wildest dream of man by reason of the experience in this world of death.849 ¶43

For these are the states, and you can forgive every being in this world if you can only discriminate between the individual and the state he occupies. Take him out of a state and put him into another state — as he puts him into another state, he expresses the contents of that state and will completely forget he was ever the other.849 ¶44

The great writers have seen it, but if they haven’t had vision, they’re writing fable, and they will simply mix it up. But when you write from experience, from actual vision that you’ve experienced, you may not have the talent of a Shakespeare, but you’re telling exactly what happened to you, and that’s vision.849 ¶45

When I speak of vision, I do not mean to stand here and think of my home — I see it in my mind’s eye, that’s not vision. Vision is just like this — this is vision. When these things happen to me, it’s just like this: I’m in a world just as real as I am here now. It is not anything that is bare thinking of something — I’m thinking from it. The whole thing is right before me. The child, solid and real. David, solid and real. The splitting of the body from top to bottom. The dove is descending upon my head, upon my hand, and coming to my face to kiss me. All these things are real, just like this. That’s vision — has nothing to do with what the world calls, uh, hallucination. And those who can’t even spell the name will tell you you’re hallucinating. You ask him to define it for you — tell me exactly what you mean — and he’s all silent, but he would mumble and mumble and mumble, “That was a marvelous hallucination.” And they tell me they don’t even dream.849 ¶46

Well, I am telling you what I have experienced. I have reached the end. The whole thing is now an accomplished fact within me. He, in the depth of my own being, who revealed himself as myself, has wrought it. The very end of the 22nd Psalm: unborn tomorrow will know that God has wrought it in him. No praise to me as a man called Neville, or what — but the drama unfolded itself completely within me, and I speak from experience when I speak of these characters of scripture. And so I cannot now get down on my knees and bow before anyone named in that book — they’re all eternal states of consciousness. And you are the important one. You, as you sit here, when you say “I am,” that is the God of the universe. That is the God passing through these states, and eventually he will come out in the end as the Lord, the father of humanity, who is David, that is the son.849 ¶47

So when you meet someone, as you go through life, and they need help, it doesn’t cost you anything other than one little moment in the exercise of your talent, which is the gift of God to you, which is himself, which is your own wonderful human imagination. And you simply create him in your mind’s eye, whether he be 10,000 miles away. You bring him into your mind’s eye and see him as he would like to be seen by the world, and you see him as you would like to see him, and you carry on a mental conversation with him from the premise that he is now already the one he wants to be. And to the degree that you are self-persuaded that he is, that he becomes — you don’t have to raise one finger to make it so.849 ¶48

You plant the seed — what do you do after you plant the seed? You leave it. You don’t dig it up every morning to see if it has a root, you leave it. A seed must fall into the ground and die before it is made alive, and if it dies, it bears much fruit. And so you put the seed into the ground of your own wonderful human imagination.849 ¶49

Now, bear in mind, “the vision has its own appointed hour it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late.” Not for that seed. One seed may take 24 hours, another may take, like a hen’s egg, 21 days. A little lamb takes 5 months, a horse takes a year, a human being 9 months. So each seed has its own appointed hour — so don’t be concerned.849 ¶50

You did the work; all you need to do is simply leave it alone, and don’t raise one finger to make it so, and don’t discuss it with anyone else, or with the one who asked of you. If they keep on bothering you by saying, “Well, when—” don’t answer them. You planted it, you did what they asked you to do, and that’s all that you can do. If they’re anxious about it, then let them bring about their own mental miscarriage.849 ¶51

What do you do after pregnancy? There is no such thing as a little pregnancy — pregnancy, and then in the fullness of time the child is born. So in the fullness of time, what you did in your imagination will be born. So leave it alone — every imaginal act grows into a fact.849 ¶52

So go about knowing that there are only states in this world, and you, the immortal you, cannot die. I am telling you from my own personal experience, you cannot die. Cut off your head now — you will find yourself restored to life in a terrestrial world just like this, and have no knowledge that you died, to those here, because you’re not dead. Because a man is not dead, he knows he didn’t die. And it’s the most difficult thing to persuade anyone that they died.849 ¶53

Oh, I’ve tried it several times — stepping out of this garment into this world, a world just like this, meeting friends I know intimately, friends whose funeral I went to, others I saw a month before they died. They knew it was terminal, that they’re going to die. I meet them and they are 40 years younger. And you can’t persuade them that something happened in their world and that they died, because — “you’re crazy, how can you say I died when I’m alive? I’m not dead.” You say, “You’re not dead, but you died.” Well, that’s an insane statement to the average mind.849 ¶54

So what can you do? Leave them alone until they pass through the states, and in the end they will awake. But you’re not going to crow — you told them, in the end, if what you told them is true, they will know it’s true, because not one word of scripture will be broken, not one bone is broken. This is the revealed truth, and revealed truth is the body of God, and not one of his bones can be broken. All will be fulfilled.849 ¶55

But it will do you a great deal of good if you will bear in mind, when you meet anyone, he is only in a state. If he’s in a state of arrogance, all right, let him be — you don’t have to actually play his little part for him. If he wants to feel that he’s important because of the accident of birth, or the money that he acquired, let him be. You go about your own wonderful way.849 ¶56

So here tonight, if I have taken from you the historicity of scripture, I haven’t robbed you, because it isn’t historically true.849 ¶57

Anyway, you can search from now to the ends of time and you’ll find no evidence to support the historicity of the Bible. Swipes have been made, a tremendous effort — Albert Schweitzer, and he came to, uh, the conclusion that there is no historicity of Christ, and he named his book In Search of the Historical Christ. He was an honest man, a humble, simple, wonderful scholar, Albert Schweitzer. But it’s not because of what he said — I am telling you what I’ve experienced. And you never find any so-called burial place of David, or Abraham, or Jacob, in the Near East. No matter what archaeologists bring in, they are eternal states within the consciousness of the individual.849 ¶58

Tonight, we will show you how to interpret scripture. In the 10th chapter of the Book of Hebrews, the unknown author tells us that when Christ came into the world he said, “I have come to do thy will, O Lord, for in the roll of the book it is written of me.”844 ¶1

Now, this passage which is taken from the 40th chapter of the Book of Psalms is not found on the lips of Jesus Christ in the four gospels. But that doesn’t matter. He claims that “the entire book is all about him, and beginning with Moses and the law and the prophets and the psalms, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.”844 ¶2

Now, you will find this method of interpretation the key that unlocks the most inmost of revelation. I take any story and then put myself right in the center: It’s all about me. So I find the central figure, then I am that figure whether it be a female or a male.844 ¶3

Here we turn to the 25th chapter of the Book of Genesis: “And the Lord said to her (meaning Rebecca), ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger.” And we hear in the last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, these words: “Esau I have hated but Jacob I love.” Now, here is the voice of God who is called Love stating that there is one that he hates and that is Esau, and one that he loves which is Jacob.844 ¶4

You put yourself into the center and try to find out who are these that I have brought forth; for I am told that I bring them forth from my womb; they are housed within me. And one to heaven doth aspire and one to earth doth cling; and the one that clings to earth I hate and the one that aspires to heaven I love. Who are they?—two beings that lived thousands of years ago?—no. The entire Bible is divine history, it is not secular history. To try to find anyone in the world that resembles this one or that one, or that he was born here or that he lived there, it’s all silly. Scholars still insist on trying to find the birthplace or the burial place of these characters of scripture, and they are all housed within man, every one.844 ¶5

But God speaks to man through the medium of vision. Now every dream is both egocentric and protean. Protean means that the dreamer plays all the parts, whether it be female, male or the animal. If he plays the part…if he sees in his dream a dog, a lion, a monster, he plays all the parts.844 ¶6

Well then, let me share with you an experience of many years ago. It’s almost…well, back in the early thirties. I suddenly found myself confronted with these two characters, one the most glorious, divine woman that eyes could ever set upon, she was above, a beautiful angelic being; and here below is this monstrous thing covered in hair. It looked like an orangutan, but it could speak in a guttural manner. And so, I looked at it and this, in a guttural voice, looked up to this heavenly creature and said, “She is my mommy.” Well, I knew that she did not give birth to this monster, and so I struck it, and it gloated. It loved violence, in fact, it fed on violence. So I pummeled it, and as I beat it, it simply grew in strength. It loved and simply thrived on violence.844 ¶7

Then from the depths of my own being I realized that these were my creations; here is my monstrous being, the embodiment and personification. I say personification because it spoke with a human voice, but it looked like an animal completely covered in hair, like an Esau. Here, as I looked at it I realized that this was the embodiment of all of my misspent energies, everything I ever did that was unlovely simply went into it. When it took on form and a voice, it could whisper, and unseen by me it could be one that influenced my decisions in order to feed it. And so it thrived only on violence, and so any violent act was simply feeding it, and it grew that way.844 ¶8

Then, without turning to anyone, for I was simply alone, the center, and I realized that these two were my offspring. This woman should live forever, the noble embodiment of every ideal that I have ever entertained, every good that I have ever done, everything that was lovely it embodied. And everything that was unlovely this embodied and I realized it had no right to existence, but none whatsoever. It was claiming existence by claiming that it was the offspring of the heavenly being. So if it is the offspring of the heavenly being, it in itself exists. I knew it should not exist, and yet it had no power of its own and that I gave it existence.844 ¶9

But now I pledged myself that if it took me eternity I would redeem him. If it took me eternity I would redeem this monstrous thing, for, really, it had no right to existence and it wasn’t its fault. I was the cause of this seeming independent existence, for it seemed detached and completely free of my perception of it. As I pledged myself to redeem it, before my eyes the whole thing melted. It just simply reduced in size and the energy that went into it and sustained it came back to me who gave it. Not a thing was lost, the whole thing returned to me, and everything came back to me that I had put there. The whole thing not only dissolved but it left no trace of ever having been present. The only trace of that monstrous thing was my memory of it. As today I can bring it back in memory, but it has no existence outside of myself as it was simply embodied energy.844 ¶10

Therefore, who was it? Is not Christ the creative power of God? And is not Christ the bearer of all the sins of the world…allowing man to use and misuse Christ? Well then, who was the one that misused? It is my own creative power, and Christ is the creative power of God. It was revealing in its own way who created it; and only God could have created it, and only God could have redeemed it.844 ¶11

Now listen to these words, the last words on the cross as given to us in the Book of Luke, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Now that’s the 31st Psalm . And the whole thing is this as he tells us, “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” These are the last words on the lips of the crucified Christ, as recorded in the 23rd chapter of the Book of Luke. Well here, if I complete the thought (for that’s only a portion of the verse), “Father, into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” So here we find God the user of the power redeeming what was misused that the power shall not be lost, not in eternity. When confronted and he sees it never should have existence, independent existence, he then simply redeems it. And redemption was simply a pledge by itself, for it couldn’t pledge with another…there is no other, simply itself. It simply returned all that power to itself. I have never felt so strong in my life when at that moment that infinite power that was embodied in this misshapen, monstrous creature returned to me who gave it for a moment in time independent existence. Then the glorious one simply glowed like the sun.844 ¶12

Now here, we are told in the 13th chapter of the Book of Revelation: “And the beast was given a voice to utter blasphemies against God, against God’s name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven”. Here he speaks to this heavenly creature and now takes her name in vain. He blasphemes the name by declaring himself to exist independently of all when he does not. So a voice was given to him that he could utter blasphemy. Well, the blasphemy is to claim divine right, for we are told in the 10th of John that he was accused of blasphemy because he dared to claim himself the Son of God. So here, the heavenly being, as we are told in the 13th chapter, that the dwelling place of God happens to be those who dwell in heaven, so that the entire redeemed society forms the body of God. She personified that redeemed society; therefore, it was the dwelling place of God which is God. And so, he was taking the name in vain.844 ¶13

No here, we’ll take…to show you how dreams are interpreted. One came yesterday, or was it today, I think it was today, he said, “In my dream I am standing on the sidewalk and a man comes by and he’s happy, he’s laughing, he’s singing, and he’s dancing and swinging a white stick. As he passes by I turn to watch him, for a voice said to me prior to his appearance, ‘We will get him this time. He has been gone too long.’ Then the man appears and these words are ringing in my ears ‘We’ll get him this time…he’s been gone too long.’ So I turned to watch this one, and as I watched him he walked up three or four flights onto a brilliantly lit stage. Then as he is there on the stage, suddenly the scenery and the props begin to move, and I heard what sounded like the shutting, just a terrific shutting of an iron gate. And then a voice screamed within me (it was the same voice speaking), ‘Your deception is at an end! Your deception is at an end!’” Now, said he in an afterthought, “On reflection, Neville, the one that walked by who was singing and who was laughing and seemed so happy seemed like you. I don’t want to add anything to it, but he who was clanged behind a cell door, with the door shut against him, it seemed as though he resembled you.” And he wondered what to make of it.844 ¶14

Well, on the surface, in the world of Caesar you would think that I am the deceiver, and now that I am behind bars his deception is over. That’s what a normal, natural interpretation anyone would give it if you give it in the world of Caesar.844 ¶15

Well now, let me quote scripture, “The creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by reason of the will of him who subjected him in hope; that the creature would be set free from this bondage to decay, and obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God.” So you do not believe…or man looking around this world will say I’m not deceived. But every child born of woman is deceived. Here we are in a world of deception…everything here deceives you. Now if I in your vision—bear in mind the dream is egocentric, you played all the parts—if in the dream the part that you saw, the gay, happy, laughing, singing one, resembled the one who was instrumental in telling the story to you to get you to the point of acceptance of the story of redemption, well then, you are on your way to leaving behind you the world of deception. No longer will it deceive you if you accept it. As we are told, “The good news preached to us was preached to them” (it was the same news) “but it did not benefit them because it was not received in faith when they heard it.” So the same thing is heard and many hear it and a few will accept it. If perchance you by your much coming have accepted it as a way of life and you will take it regardless of what you hear to the contrary and decide to live by it, then you will find yourself being freed from the world of deception. Not the deceiver called Neville, because many if I say something in conflict with the traditions of men, then they will call that deceiving, and they don’t want any part of it. Well, you can take it on that level if you want to, but I say you have been set free from this dream, from the world of deception…no longer accepting the things that the whole vast world has accepted and still does accept and they live by it. They live by, well, the power of money. They think that’s the most important thing in the world, and if it’s proper to be socially prominent in order to get by to be it, and they play the game of deception and they live in the world of deception.844 ¶16

So if a gay, happy spirit moves by having told you good news, for good news is a gay state. He tells you the story of redemption, the story of salvation that does not depend upon trying to be good, trying to acquire merit, not trying to be something in the eyes of others but simply to accept the story. That is all you are called upon to do…to accept it. Do you believe it? Well, if you believe it, live by it and go your way. Don’t try to acquire merit in order to enter heaven, for the acceptance of the story will take you right in. When the time has fully come, you will go right in, for the whole thing will unfold within you and you will leave this world of deception.844 ¶17

Here, another one came and this one is concerning a little lamb. He said, “I found myself in what seemed to be an ancient world…it seemed like an ancient, ancient world. There were throngs of people, but it seemed three men in particular were at my side. Then I looked down and here is this little lamb. Then I looked at it, I picked it up, and I said, ‘It is my baby.’ They looked at me with a frown on their faces, and then they smiled, and that was it. I simply awoke.”844 ¶18

Well, here is an adumbration, a foreshadowing, for the lamb is the symbol of God. It begins in the very beginning of Genesis: “Father, I see the wood, I see the fire, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham answered, “God will provide himself the lamb, my son.” God is the lamb. It’s only a symbol of this great sacrifice. Now, we are told in the same 13th of Revelation that everyone whose name is not written in that Book of Life of the lamb which was slain and his name written before the foundation of the world—he has to be written there before the foundation of the world—or he can’t get in. Well, everyone is written there before the foundation of the world. But you are a dual being. The one that can’t get in is the outer you because flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, so that is not written; but the inner you, that’s written. It was there before the foundation of the world. This is not the result of some emergency thinking on the part of God: The plan of salvation came before creation. The whole thing was a plot, a plan to expand his own being. So here, the little lamb was simply an adumbration of the little child, for it is the same thing. So his vision puts him very, very close to the experience.844 ¶19

Now, another one came today. He said, “I did my home work as it were. I sat in my living room and went through an imaginal scene that was personal, something that I want to achieve in this world of Caesar. When I satisfied myself with the feeling that it was accomplished, I simply basked in the feeling for awhile, just simply bathed in it. Then, while I was in it I retained the feeling and suddenly I find myself now a ball of light, a small ball of light, at the top of my head. But below stretching into infinity is an abyss. And this ball of light can go in any direction all over this infinite abyss. I am not only the ball that can move in the abyss. I am the abyss…I am both. Then suddenly I as the ball and I as this enormous infinite abyss begin to contract, and we are contracting and contracting, and finally we are all contracted in my skull. Now I am concerned…I feel I am going to burst which seems the opposite of what we think of here, because expansion would be bursting, not contracting. But here, I’m contracting, and I’m entertaining the thought, well, I’ll burst! So to stop it, I opened my eyes in this world and broke it.”844 ¶20

Well then, he also saw that no matter what he sees in the outer world, though it appears without, it is within. And the whole thing originates where?—in heaven and heaven is right within your skull . That’s where the drama unfolds, that’s where he’s buried, and that’s where he dreams the whole vast world round about him. So he had the most marvelous experience…knowing the truth of Blake’s vision that “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”844 ¶21

Then he said, “I wonder if the ladies and gentlemen who come to the meetings have taught their children and grandchildren this art of revision. I taught it to my son who is now seven, but I told it to him when he was five. He had quite a serious accident and he bled profusely. Naturally I was concerned. I called the doctor and explained to him exactly what was happening, how he was bleeding. But first I told my son to go over the entire scene but not to bring in the scene where he was injured or hurt, for he was crying. And so, ‘If you omit that, well then, you have not a thing to cry about.’ So he went over the scene and he stopped crying. The doctor said to just wash it, put bandages on it but make them loose, and send him right back out to play again. So, he said, “I did and there was no crying and it quickly stopped bleeding. From then on…after all, boys are boys and they play and as they play they get hurt. Well, since that day he simply stops no matter what happens to him and he revises the scene omitting the injured part.” “Now,” he said, “my wife plays tennis and she really smashed that ankle of hers; it was a severe break. And so she revised it, I revised it, and when the doctor took it, he only put a rubber, not a cast, just a rubber over it, and she could continue her housework. She didn’t play tennis for awhile, but she did all the normal things. The doctor was amazed that she could stand on it, that the thing healed so rapidly and so perfectly by a complete revision.”844 ¶22

So he asked me to say to you, “If you have children, no matter how early you start them, you start them to practice the art of revision. It will become a habit and so if they injure themselves, instead of begging for your sympathy, they will simply go over the whole scene, omitting the injured part, and not seeing that as part of the thing that happened, and their tears will suddenly stop flowing.” He said, “In my household it works!” So I give it to you as he gave it to me.844 ¶23

Well here, in the interpretation of scripture you simply take any passage at all, but always put yourself as the individual right in the center. You are the center of scripture: “In the volume of the book it is written about me.” Now don’t think of some Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago: “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” So that’s the Christ of whom the scriptures speak, and that Christ…everything in the Bible is written of that Christ. When you come to any passage—a man, a woman or a crowd—find the central figure and you are it. And now go all about it. So you’re the Abraham when it comes to Abraham as the center; you are Sarah when it comes to Sarah as the center; you are Rebecca if she is the center, and the whole thing is all about you. You will find this provides the key that will unlock the most difficult passage of scripture. Don’t give up…just dwell upon it…and you’ll find it working this way.844 ¶24

And then your visions will come and throw great light upon it, like my vision of these two figures. Now one was female and one was male. One was this monstrous thing that should not really have any existence. And now how do I put him out? I loved him. I pledged myself to redeem him, and, may I tell you, I never felt before or since a compassion comparable to that, because it should not exist. It had no right to be brought into being and I was the cause of it; therefore, I pledged myself if it took me eternity that I would redeem it. At that very moment of my pledge—it didn’t take time at all—the whole thing dissolved. It got smaller and smaller and it didn’t leave one little mark even to suggest it once existed. It left no mark whatsoever as though it was ever present, but all the energies came back to me. I misspent them and they returned to me to be used now wisely and not to be misspent anymore.844 ¶25

So everyone one day will confront the two…and you will know who Rebecca really is. You won’t change your sex, but you will know you gave birth to these two. These are the two nations that are in your womb and these two peoples that are born of you one is stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.844 ¶26

Well, the first act of man recorded in scripture is a violent act: “And Cain killed Abel.” So he came first, the violence came first; it’s the outer man. So Esau comes into the world first and Jacob comes second. The word Jacob means “the supplanter, he takes the place of.” Esau disappears because he must be redeemed. There’s no reason to redeem Jacob because you love him and you, being love, keep alive the thing that you love.844 ¶27

So this radiation or this emanation of you which is your dwelling place—for we are told, “He not only opened his mouth to utter blasphemies against the name of God, but against his dwelling,” and then it states, “…that is, those who dwell in heaven.” So heaven is simply made up of the redeemed. The redeemed form one body and that one body is the dwelling place of God. So everyone lifted up and redeemed will be incorporated into that one body…a body of beauty, a body of glory. And he would dare to claim that it gave birth to him, therefore, claiming by that self-existence he is taking the name in vain. He does not have any existence outside of the one who caused him to come into being through his misuse of the creative power of God, which creative power is called in scripture, Jesus. So “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”844 ¶28

Well, if it’s misused and it can’t be lost, then it must take on form. It takes form and it’s that monstrous hairy beast that one day will confront you and you will see him, and you will know now in the depths of your soul you are the cause of his misfortune. He has no right to live, no right to existence; but you can’t kill him. So you are told in that same 13th, “Who can prevail against the beast?” Because again we are warned in the gospels, “Do not resist anyone who is evil.” Well now, if you take that in the world of Caesar that wouldn’t make any sense at all. But the one who is evil in the world of Caesar is evil because in you is that evil one that you created. And he whispers in your ear all that is necessary to feed him, and only violence can feed him. So you’re told, do not resist him. If I beat him, he thrives on it. When I pummeled him, he gloated, he just loved it. He grew before my face in stature because of the beating; I was feeding him by violence. So don’t resist the evil one. Then what will I do with it? Redeem him!844 ¶29

Well, then I pledged myself to redeem him. And I meant it…these were not idle words, because I was not saying it for the benefit of another, I was saying it to myself and myself alone. As I pledged myself to redeem him, he melted, just got smaller and smaller before my face, and all the energies came back to me, they didn’t pass through, they came back to me. I felt like a giant from sheer redeemed power, the power of my misused moments in time.844 ¶30

So you can take any part of scripture and simply put yourself in the center of it, for you are the center of scripture. There is no other being; there’s only God and you are he. God is one, he isn’t two. So as you read it, no matter what the word…if it says the Lord, well you are the Lord, God, you are the God. No matter what character it is, the center one, you are that one. And you go through your entire book and the whole thing begins to unfold within you.844 ¶31

Then will come that moment in time when the entire drama as recorded in the gospels concerning Jesus Christ erupts within you, and everything said of him you experience. You don’t hear words telling you that you are; you experience it in the first-person, present-tense experience. You are Jesus Christ in the most literal sense in the world.844 ¶32

But if you haven’t had the experience, you will hesitate. But do not turn…and I say to my friend who wrote me the letter, do not turn back now. It’s your privilege to turn back. You could meet someone tomorrow and he would say, “You fell for that nonsense, and so if you fell for that nonsense then you are not redeemed.” And they can scare you into going back into the traditions of men. Like this thing that is taking place in the world today, this attempt to scare someone into a return to what? To an empty, empty shell; for the life has long gone out of it. They haven’t the slightest concept of the mystery of Christ. Yet they can dress themselves in all the robes of the world…that will not endow them with understanding, for they are men without vision. So don’t be afraid. When you have received the vision as you did, your deceiving days are over. This is the end of your days of deception.844 ¶33

So, the world is a world of deception. “The creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly, but by reason of the will of him who subjected the creature.” But he did it in hope that “The creature would obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God; but in doing this, he would free himself from this bondage to decay.” Well, doesn’t everything here decay? So man piles up a billion dollars and he has three score and ten years to enjoy it, and to simply strut with all his power. To find tomorrow his little soul is called, and he passes through the gate men call death to find himself restored to life in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in him. So he doesn’t really die; he passes through. Those who can’t follow him, to them he died, but to himself he hasn’t died. He’s only restored to life, to find himself in a young garment, oh, twenty, in a world…it may not be the year 1968 if he drops now. He could find himself in the year 3,000, in the year 1,000.844 ¶34

For it’s a closed book; the whole thing is over, the thing is finished, and the climax has already been reached. That the real purpose of life is to have that climax which is called the awakening of God’s image in us. That has already been brought to its fullness, but it has to be brought in everyone, so everyone eventually will awaken in the image of the one.844 ¶35

Now here, you take anything tonight, I don’t care what portion of scripture, just open it up at any part, and as you read it, find that central figure and you are it. Now, what are they saying about you when you bore the name called Abraham? What are they saying when you bore the name so-and-so? Well then, read it carefully and you will find the whole thing unfolding within you, and after the real drama unfolds within you and you put your head on the pillow, you slip from this age into an entirely different age, a really different age. You do not enter that borderland, the land of dreams; you go beyond the land of dreams. You’re in an entirely different world, still tied here and you know it and you’ve got to come back day after day.844 ¶36

Now, many of you have had visions recently of my departure. Well, they are symbolical because all of these dreams can be interpreted on different levels. On this level, I would have long been gone by your dreams, but it still is in this.844 ¶37

For instance, here’s one that came this week. Now she said, “You do with it as you will, because you told me not to interpret the dream, just give it to you just as it came. Well, here is one, I am listening to you, you’re on the stage and you’re talking on the law, and suddenly you leave your garment on the stage. It’s perfectly still and it’s lifeless. There is no life in it and there is a quietness and a silence that you could cut it’s so silent…and you leave. Then you return and you found it so difficult to re-enter that garment, but you did succeed in getting back into it. Then you rushed through what you had to say. It was the most profound things that you said concerning the law. But you also said, or rather, I interpreted your thoughts as you were speaking, that you could not leave certain people who were listening to you now and before their eyes depart, so you had to finish what you were going to say. But you knew this was the very last lecture that you were going to give. For these were the signs you were waiting for, and the signs have come, and now that the signs have come you will depart. But you can’t depart before their eyes because they couldn’t take it. So then you rushed through what you had to say. You said it all but you simply rushed through. And as you did so, then you left. But you knew you would never return again.”844 ¶38

Well, on this level, may I tell you, without any stupidness behind it—for I have so many things here that I love, my wife, my children, my family, my circle of friends, all—yet may I tell you I wish it were true that your vision could be on this level. But you saw, based upon the interpretation I gave the gentleman behind you, what yours is. It has come to the end, because you conjured me in your vision, and I am the one in the outer world who introduced you to this law of God that works. Well, you’ve heard it, and as far as you are concerned, there is little if anything I can tell you concerning the law.844 ¶39

So the book is practically, you may say, closed upon it; and he has departed from that aspect in teaching you. What can he tell you concerning the law? You know how to operate it. What can he add to it that he hasn’t already said? So that book concerning the law—and you stressed in your letter it was a lecture on the law, it wasn’t on the Promise but on the law.844 ¶40

So all I can now say to you would be aspects of the Promise. Certainly I have told the Promise in four major scenes, and even written it out in a little chapter that I call Resurrection. Going over that today, I noticed that the book was copyrighted in 1966. It was in 1966 on the 10th of October that I had the experience of talking to twelve men and one rose, departed quickly, and told the authorities what he had just heard. And he was the one who nailed me with his wooden peg to hang upon me the responsibility, what responsibility?—to tell it. That was what was nailed upon me, to tell it as it has never been told before (that we have any written record of it), but to so completely tell it that when I depart there is a record of how God unfolds himself in man. I have told it as clearly and as simply as I am capable of telling it in that chapter on resurrection. So the work is finished. Therefore, he came in and stripped off my tunic and severed the sleeve and exposed the arm of God, which is in the 22nd chapter of Isaiah, also in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: “And who would believe our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” For the right arm is simply the power of God. And so he gave me the power, having unfolded within me the entire drama of Christ, then the power to record it and tell it in my way.844 ¶41

So that tomorrow, the unborn tomorrow, can read it, and then wean themselves from these traditions of men that try to force upon man the belief that unless he makes a tremendous effort to acquire merit he can’t get into the kingdom of heaven…when the kingdom is entered simply by hearing the story of salvation, believing it, and going your way, playing a perfectly normal, natural part in the world of Caesar.844 ¶42

You are married, well then, you have an obligation. You have a wife to support and if you have children, children to support. That’s your obligation to life in this world of Caesar, so you play it normally. And if you are in business, you become as good a business man as you are capable of becoming. That’s the normal thing. You need never see the inside of a church. You’re just simply a normal man or a normal woman, and you live it normally.844 ¶43

But you have heard the story and without turning to others to ask them anything about it, you have locked it within your own heart, and you live by it. You ponder it…when you go to bed at night you dwell upon it. If you have a moment in the course of a day, you dwell upon the mystery of redemption. You firmly believe it, and one day when you least expect it the whole thing erupts within you and you know it’s true because you have experienced it. Then you speak from experience thereafter and not from hearsay. Until you actually know it from experience, you can still believe it, but it’s hearsay. Then comes that moment in time when you know it because you have experienced it.844 ¶44

So you take tonight’s theme and turn to any passage in scripture, put yourself as the individual right in the center, and then wait. It will come. The whole thing will come to you and the whole thing will unfold as to its meaning.844 ¶45

When it comes to a dream, bear in mind that a dream is egocentric and protean. Protean is simply from the word Proteus, that legendary god of the sea in the service of Neptune, and he could assume any shape in the world in the service of his lord. He could assume the shape of a fish or the shape of a female or a male or both. So he did anything if it served his lord.844 ¶46

So the dreamer is God and in that dream God can assume any part. He is the author of the dream and he plays all the parts; he is the actor in all the dreams. So if you dream of me, well, I could mean something to you by reason of the fact that I am a teacher of the Word of God…you could see me in that light. But bear in mind you are playing it, you are conjuring it, and the whole thing is yourself made visible to you, and it’s teaching you a lesson. So put yourself in the center. Yes, you are the dreamer and the whole thing unfolds within you.844 ¶47

Now, one day…I am quite sure that this meeting of the monster on the threshold of consciousness was not a unique experience. It’s going to be shared with everyone…for unseen by mortal eye he follows you morning, noon and night. In fact, he is attached to you, but you can’t quite see it. Because, when you dissolve him by your compassion, by your love, then he returns to you, he doesn’t evaporate into space. The whole thing came out of you; the whole thing returns to you. I can’t tell you the thrill when you have redeemed that being.844 ¶48

And so, the words are put upon his mouth too in the last cry at the end of the journey. For it comes at the end of the journey, and remember, all eschatology is symbolic…eschatology is simply “the doctrine of the last things.” So at the very end of the journey you will find these symbols coming into your world…when he declares, “Into thy hands I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.”844 ¶49

He said he would, and so God in his dream, in his slumber, misused his own power; and therefore God is the only redeemer, and so God redeems him. He can’t leave him as that monstrous thing in the world; he has to redeem him, and he redeems him. That is the last cry on the cross.844 ¶50

Now let us go into the Silence.844 ¶51

* * * Now are there any questions? We have time.844 ¶52

Well, if there are no questions, see you the next time. Thank you.844 ¶53

In the first chapter of the Book of Luke, it is stated that the disciples on their way back…the whole drama is over…and they encountered the risen Christ. And in one little segment they told what had happened. Moffatt translates this phrase, “they related their own experience.” The whole secret of the Bible from cover to cover is wrapped up in these five words if you know what they told. For here, they spoke in a different tongue. It’s recorded in Luke in Greek, but do we have the proper translation? There are many translations, and do we have the accurate one? Well, let us go first to the opening of Luke, its preface, the first four verses: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, as they were delivered by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things accurately for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed” . Now, it seems a simple statement, this preface to the story he’s about to tell. He’s compiling a narrative of the things that have been accomplished. For, Christianity rests upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. So he’s taken the events as they happened and he’s simply treating them as a narrative. That’s what he’s thinking.843 ¶1

Well, let us take just a few of the thoughts in this preface: “Things which have been accomplished among us.” Now you would think, well, in a way yes, in this room these things have been accomplished among a few in this room. That I do know. But the word translated “among” is the preposition “within”—things which have been accomplished within us…and yet among us because he uses the plural “us”…things which have been accomplished within us. Now you tell me what happened to you, and someone else will tell me, and I will tell you, and then we get together and see how they relate. We find they all are really related, these things. They differ somewhat based upon one’s temperament, but they are identical really. Although as you would express it, like playing a piece, no two would interpret it in the same manner but it’s the same piece. So these things have been accomplished within us.843 ¶2

Now, he tells us that “…as they were delivered by those who from the beginning.” Now here is the phrase “from the beginning” which simply translates two Greek words meaning “from the birth of God.” The drama starts from that birth, from the birth of God, that’s all he’s going to talk about. What happens to the individual from his physical birth to the end when he dies in this world means nothing…that has not a thing to do with it. What happens from the birth of God.843 ¶3

Then another phrase: “it seemed good to me also, having observed all things accurately for some time past.” Now, that phrase translates another Greek word, and you wouldn’t think it, to use that phrase “for some time past,” it translates the Greek word “anothin,” which means “from above.” He is telling you he did not get it from another. He didn’t get it from anyone in this world, from a book, from a man or anything; he got it from above. This word “anothin” is translated in the end of Matthew and Mark as “top.” When we are told “And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom,” that word “top” is “anothin.” And these are two opposites, top and bottom. When John tells Nicodemus, or rather, in the Gospel of John, and Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, “You must be born from above,” that word is “anothin”—translated in all Bibles as “born again.” But the word literally means “from above, from the top.” It’s entirely different, the opposite birth from the bottom, that which is beneath, that which is inferior. All bodies in this world born of woman are born from beneath. They are born from the inferior part of man. Here, one must be born from the superior part, the opposite, from the top. So he said, “Having observed all things accurately for some time past,” well, that phrase “some time past” is simply a translation of the Greek word “anothin.”843 ¶4

Then, he addresses it, now, to “most excellent Theophilus,” for Theophilus simply means “one who loves God.” That fits anyone in this world. The word only appears twice in the Bible, in the beginning of Acts and the beginning of Luke. So they are really one book. In the ancient world, when you wrote a preface and the physical volume, the physical roll on which you wrote it couldn’t contain all you had to say, the preface was recapitulated in subsequent volumes, and so you carried it forward into another volume. To read Acts to understand it, read the first four verses of Luke so you will see what he’s talking about.843 ¶5

He’s not writing secular history. He didn’t get it from any man in this world. What happened to Neville in whom this whole drama has unfolded, what happened to Bob in whom it is unfolding, what happened to Christine in whom it has almost completely unfolded, that doesn’t really matter. If I lecture, and he writes, and she taught, that doesn’t matter. If we were injured or hurt or imprisoned or set free in this world, that doesn’t matter. He’s not telling anything about a man in this world. He is telling a drama, the story of salvation. He is taking a series of events as they unfolded themselves within many, (among us, within us). And then he takes the events and he simply makes a narrative, he dramatizes it in the form of a story. So if I know what actually he heard, well then, we have read the story to find out what he actually heard, what they experienced. For in these five words is summarized the entire story: “They related their own experiences.” They told what had happened.843 ¶6

Now, the next one, “they told what had happened on the road.” What road? Here now is a letter from a friend. She said, “I had this experience. I was beastly tired, aching all over. I went to bed and I couldn’t meditate, I couldn’t imagine, because my body was aching so. So I said to myself, ‘Come, let us go elsewhere and leave the body here, and let it ache.’ So I fell asleep in that mood to move elsewhere.” Now the first part of the dream is not really relevant to the story, because it did not break forth into voice. When vision breaks forth into speech, the presence of deity is affirmed. So a dream in itself, yes, it does convey something, but only when it breaks forth into speech does it really confirm the presence of deity in a strong manner. So we’ll skip the first two because they were all related. Now she comes to the third part of the dream, all on the same night. She woke and wrote down, woke and wrote down, and then the third one.843 ¶7

She’s on a train, it’s an old train, and there are many people but she’s not interested in the others. She’s interested in the beautiful scenery as she looks out. Then comes the end of the journey. She gets off and walks to the end of the train. All the others get off. It’s the top of a mountain and they all start down the side of the mountain, and she is at the very end. She looks up and here is the conductor. The man is in uniform. He has this lovely benign expression on his face. He seems to ooze kindness and patience, and he is an old gentleman. She said to him, “Well, how did we get here?” and he said, “We went around and around and around the mountain, and climbed here.” Then she said, “Well, where are they going?” and he said, “They’re going back to continue the journey.” But she said, “I don’t want to go back. I want to remain here. I don’t want to go back to my aching body”—in her dream she remembers the body she left was aching—“and back to heartaches and confusion.” He said, “But you must go back, because scripture must be fulfilled.” Here only one purpose: To fulfill scripture. “Seven times must pass over you, the journey, seven times, and then you will know the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will” . So he told her in the dream, “You must go back, because scripture must be fulfilled.”843 ¶8

Now the word translated “on the road” means also “a conductor, a guide.” But the word “conductor” is given in the concordance for that simple little statement “on the road.” So here, she is fulfilling scripture. But how often she goes back? You can’t go beyond the seven…but how many times more, I do not know. But she did reach a point…then she has to return and continue the journey to fulfill scripture. It is my hope she has made six journeys. But who knows but the Father? Only the Father knows.843 ¶9

Another lady wrote—this is something aside, and yet it’s part of the whole great drama—she said, “I was sitting at the table with my family.” She has five children. She and her husband and her oldest child, Leslie, began to talk and began to explain something. As she looked at him, she suddenly became aware that she’s looking from within herself. She is looking through her eyes, not with her eyes. And she was so fully conscious of the fact that she was within her skull, as something apart, and looking through and not with the eye. She wondered if they noticed anything strange about her when she came to once more, and once more saw with the eye? But from their behavior, there was no reaction to prove that they were aware that anything was strange with her. So she asked, “Is this in any way mentioned in scripture or in Blake?”843 ¶10

Well, may I tell you, the last two verses or rather the last two lines of Blake’s wonderful vision called A Vision of the Last Judgment, it’s clearly stated: “I question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than I would question a window through which I looked at a sight. I look through it, not with it.” Here, you find it in A Vision of the Last Judgment. He would not question his eye anymore than he would a window concerning a sight, for he looks through it, not with it. So you will know you were not alone in that experience, for he ends his wonderful Vision of the Last Judgment on these two lines.843 ¶11

Then comes a third. She found herself in this enormous home. It seemed the whole world was a home. And there were unnumbered rooms, some doors were closed and others were open. She never once opened a door, but there were doors open and doors were closed, and the whole world seemed to be a home. A perfectly beautiful woman came to her. She was young, dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin, and she said to her, “I want you to speak to them. I want you to tell them.” She opened a door and in they went in what appeared to be a perfectly wonderful church. There were pews and a crowd; all the pews filled, all the seats filled. She was shocked because she knew them all, and they were dead. They were all friends of her father who is dead and they had died. They were long gone from this world, and there they were seated in their pews. A man was on the pulpit speaking to them. And then she said, right in the front pew there was one who was her Aunt Margaret. Now she said, “I didn’t know that Aunt Margaret was dead, but in my dream, in this experience, I am saying to myself, Aunt Margaret must be dead too, for all the others are dead. But two years ago, when I went to Pittsburgh, Aunt Margaret had a stroke. She was eighty years old and I haven’t heard since that she has died, but maybe she has. She sat in the front row. Then I said, I have a wonderful story to tell you. I began on the 2nd Book of Samuel, the 7th chapter, and began on the 14th verse; then I went to the 12th and at that point, Aunt Margaret said to me, ‘You’re talking about David.’ I said yes. Then I explained the relationship between David and Jesus Christ….that Jesus Christ is Father and David is Son. Then I went to the 2nd Psalm and I began, ‘I will tell of the decree of the Lord…’ and began to explain this promise of God to David that ‘thou art my son.’ Then I…suddenly I looked at these people. I came to an end, the man said to me, ‘May I continue to talk?’ the one who was speaking, and she said, ‘Yes, you may continue.’ And then I looked at these faces and they were just as though they’d never heard me. They couldn’t see. Their eyes were open, as though he’d put some veil between the outer world and their eyes. They couldn’t see, just as though they were blind and yet the eyes were open. They had eyes and saw not; they had ears and they heard not. So I looked at the young woman who had asked me to speak, and she nodded her approval and gave me great assurance from her smile that I had done exactly what she wanted. And then I woke.”843 ¶12

Now, dreams are ego-centric. She is teaching and teaching and teaching. She will continue the teaching, and her thrill will come when one responds, when in the deep one shows understanding—when one shows it really sees what she is talking about, when one actually hears with understanding. And so, the whole vast world is yourself pushed out. And we awaken by using this barometer. This is our world, and we, to the degree that we awaken in others, are we awake. For, “we love him because he first loved us” ; the world only responds to God’s action. And God in her is awakening, and as he awakens her world must respond. They could not precede her, for nothing can precede God. So we love him because he first loved us, and we couldn’t possibly begin to love God until God loves us—the eternal story of Pygmalion and Galatia. Where he makes the perfect image of his love and forms her beautifully, but she’s dead, she’s made of marble. He falls in love with his own creation, but she can’t respond, she’s dead. Suddenly, as he falls in love with her, he prays to the God of Love to animate her, to make her alive, make her flesh and blood that she can love him. The first word that she cries out is simply his name, and she cries from that pedestal, “Pygmalion.” So Galatia becomes alive, because he appeals to the God of Love. And he first loved her before she could love him. And the dead awake and respond, because you fall in love with your own creation. So the whole vast world is yourself pushed out and it cannot respond other than a response, in the true sense of the word, as you have acted. You act, and then it responds.843 ¶13

And so, the whole vast world…her world as she saw it, pew after pew after pew, and I can tell her it’s a most marvelous experience, a wonderful vision. And here, God was present because it broke forth into speech. The woman spoke to her, Aunt Margaret, spoke to her and voiced, “That is the story of David.” The very vision breaks forth into speech, therefore, God is present. And here, the most marvelous thing is being revealed to her: She has to so fall in love with others, not herself, others awakening. As she forgets self in awakening others, then she will awake; and they will awake…that’s the response.843 ¶14

So here, in these five little words, “They related their own experience,” they told what had happened on the road. Now, when I take the whole Bible and I try to find out what did he see, what did he hear, let me take nothing for granted, for these are written in Hebrew and written in Greek. And not being the scholar of either, I must turn to an exhaustive concordance, like Strong’s, that will give me the original meanings of the words used. Then, take no scholar’s interpretation for granted, go back and see exactly what it’s all about.843 ¶15

Take, for instance, this simple little statement: “Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world…for I told you there’s one who comes after me who ranks before me, because he was before me.” And here is the lamb of the world. All through Revelation we speak of the lamb on the throne of God that sheds his blood for the sin of the world. You wonder, “What is it all about?” A little lamb shedding itself, destroying itself, and its blood saves me? And you wonder, “Well, it can’t be.” So we start looking up, and we start searching, finding out what this is all about. We go to another who speaks of the lamb.843 ¶16

Now listen to these words carefully, because Blake was one with complete open eyes. He writes this for little children, seemingly. He’s not writing for any little child. What little child could understand this? Oh yes, you can read it to a child and the child will say, “Daddy, read it again” or “Mother, read it again”…it’s so beautifully told. And he tells it in his volume called The Songs of Innocence: “Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little lamb, I’ll tell thee.” I’m going to condense it. “Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee: For he is called by thy name, for he calls himself a Lamb. Thou a lamb, I a child.” Now he says, “He is meek, and he is mild; he became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, we are called by his name. Little Lamb, God bless thee!” He equates the two, the lamb and the child.843 ¶17

Now, this little lamb in scripture, you look it up, it’s called “a lambkin.” It’s a young lamb that is slaughtered. It first appears in Genesis, when here a father and a son, and the son said to the father, this is Abraham and Isaac, Isaac said to the father: “I see the fire and I see the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham replied, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” You know the story. He was called upon to sacrifice his son and here the lamb is the substitute; for here the substitute is the child, they’re one, they’re the same.843 ¶18

Now we are told in the 9th chapter and the 10th chapter of Hebrews that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.” And so, “he opened up a new way through the curtain, a new and living way through the curtain, that is, his flesh.” Now you read it and you wonder, what is this new and living way? Well, the adjective “new” in this sentence, the new and living way, means literally “newly slain.” Now, “going through the curtain” is when the body is rent in two from top to bottom. You ask yourself the question, is that when the lamb was slain? For he doesn’t take the blood of another; he takes his own blood. Now, he is called the “perfect witness, the true and faithful witness, the first born from the dead.” I tell you, the only blood that saves you is your own blood. The day that you are split from top to bottom and see your own blood at the base of your own body, you fuse with it, and know it to be the blood of God, and you are he. And then up you go right into heaven in your own wonderful serpentine manner. So, no other blood saves you; that moment in time when you are split from top to bottom and the pool of blood is revealed, that living golden light. But it comes nine months after your spiritual birth. Is that not a lamb? Isn’t that a child? You’re born on a certain day and nine months later comes that terrific blow that splits you in two from top to bottom. So, I am speaking only of the spiritual birth.843 ¶19

To go back to Luke: “From the beginning, from the birth of the Lord…” and that birth from above when you are truly born and nine months later you are split right down the middle, from top to bottom. And then you fuse with your own blood, and up you go into heaven. You will see the Bible differently…something entirely different.843 ¶20

So our translators, marvelous as they are, brilliant scholars, but they do not see the Spirit because they have not experienced it. They cannot relate their own experience. They are interpreting the experiences of others, who wrote in a marvelous tongue, the Hebrew tongue and the Greek tongue. These brilliant scholars understanding these tongues bring to these translations their own pre-conceived notions of what ought to be. They are still ending by their concept that it is secular history and it’s not. It isn’t secular history at all. The entire drama begins with the birth of the Lord. And he cannot be born from below, for that which is born from below is of the earth earthy and that which is born from above is of heaven. So he said, “I am from above and ye are from below …and flesh and blood, which is from below, cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” So you must be born from the top, from above. And so, he begins the story with the Lord who is born from above. And then tells the story of nine months after his birth he was sacrificed. Well, who sacrificed him?—the Father. And who is the Father? “I and my Father are one.” So it was a self-sacrifice, because only by the shedding of blood can I redeem myself. So I split the entire thing, and sever the two ages from top to bottom; and then ascend by this living light which I found at the base that I used to generate. It was done at the very bottom in the world of generation, the world of sin and death. And I redeemed it by fusing with my own blood, and arising into heaven. So here, you see it entirely differently.843 ¶21

The book is the Book of Books, and these five simple little words, “They related their own experience”…you see the whole book contained within it. If I could only find out what they related! Well, if I don’t know Greek, get the aid of a good concordance. If I don’t know Hebrew…and even if I do know it…get the good concordance. Because, if I could speak Hebrew fluently from beginning to end but I’m still prejudiced because I haven’t had this experience, I would still bring my prejudiced mind to the interpretations of the Hebraic text. So don’t bring it. Go and see what those who had the vision meant when they wrote it down.843 ¶22

Now in the Old Testament we have the foreshadowing, for the prophets visions are foreshortened and they see as present what is really future…because it’s happening. They all thought the whole thing was immediate. But then, the New Testament interprets the Old by the actual experience of those, and they saw what was foreshadowed had suddenly become a personal experience in them. And then they understood the prophecy of the Old. So the Old was simply a foreshortened vision, and all prophets, they see it so clearly, it’s taking place here now, therefore, it must be imminent, it’s now…but it isn’t. They see as present what really is future. And so, they waited for the fullness of time and when the fullness of time had come in the many, and they then began to tell it.843 ¶23

So, he does not claim for one moment that he is telling it chronologically exact, because he took your opinion as you had the experience, and mine. If I took Bob’s and if I took Benny’s, if I took Christine’s, and took my own, they differ. Yet they all are certainly moving parallels, all of them…but they differ. So I would take all. So he said, “In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us.” Now that very statement “have been accomplished” in the Revised Standard Version is not in the King James. In the King James, “which are surely believed among us.” It’s not what they believe among us because we hear it; these have been accomplished within us. Not something that we have been taught and we believe it; we have actually experienced it. I could take Christine’s, I’ll take Bob’s, I’ll take Benny’s, and then I’m going to compile a narrative, and then tell it as these have experienced it, including my own. So he does not for one moment claim that his narrative is a greater chronological exactitude. What he is claiming, it is a better arrangement of the source material, because many made the attempt. Now, we do not know how many made the attempt, but many made the attempt to tell it in narrative form. Luke felt himself best qualified to use that source material and to tell it in narrative form, so he told it.843 ¶24

But I know from my own experience it is not chronologically exact. He begins with the birth and ends with the crucifixion. That’s just the opposite. Acts begins with the resurrection; he ends with the resurrection. The resurrection comes first. That’s when the whole drama takes place. I am first awakened within myself, and as I am awakened to find I’m actually entombed, and then I come out. That’s when the drama begins. And then I’ll take all the other events, one after the other. Now he took them, but he wove the most glorious story around these events.843 ¶25

So to repeat, our religion called Christianity is actually resting upon the affirmation that a certain series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. That series of events I know to be true, but they are not chronologically exact as told in the gospels, but they’re all present. You’ve got to ferret them out. The dove comes in the beginning and it doesn’t come in the beginning, it comes at the end. And the resurrection comes at the end in the story, and it doesn’t…that comes in the beginning. So he makes no claim that they are chronologically exact. But he does claim that he has the capacity and the ability to take the source material and make a better use of it. He told it in his most wonderful manner.843 ¶26

So that is our story, so that you will not run all over the world trying to find some other way. There is no other way! This is The Way. If I know exactly what they experienced on The Way, well, I know exactly what they experienced, because I have experienced it in detail. Every little detail of that entire story I have experienced. And so, I know that I am not unique. Everyone will experience it, but everyone.843 ¶27

So I tell you, be patient. Just as my friend went to the top of the mountain and the conductor, which means “on the road,” and here he is, the authority, he’s in a uniform. His face is one of kindness, one of patience. He will wait forever. What are they doing? They have gone back to start and continue the journey; not to start it, but they continue the journey, so they go down again. So we come back to Daniel: Seven times passes over. “But I don’t want to go back.” Nobody wants to go back. The body pains, the body is aching, and there are heartaches waiting for me when I go back, and there are problems. But you must go back, because scripture must be fulfilled. There is not a thing in this world for anyone to do but to fulfill scripture.843 ¶28

To sit in the highest office in the world of Caesar, that may satisfy you and your family for a moment but it will sour, it will tire. You will maybe out last the job and become dotty. So I am told that our President Wilson the last two years of his life wasn’t here at all. People knew it, but they could not let you and me know that our President was not mentally capable of running the country. And for two years, he wasn’t here at all, mentally. I know that in England Churchill wasn’t. For the last two years of his life, he wasn’t here at all. They always propped him up to make him look out, like a dummy. Well, he outlived his time. But people still thought it was the great man, and he was completely gone. The body couldn’t stand the strain any longer. So no matter what you have, there comes that moment in time when the body wears out. So no accomplishment on earth really means anything in the end. It all will vanish and leave not a trace behind it.843 ¶29

But the everlasting story of God, which is the story of salvation, is contained in man, and at the proper moment it erupts. And that which was long buried within us suddenly and dramatically erupts within us. And then, we are he, the very being who buried himself in us. And who is it?—God. There’s nothing but God. There’s only God. And so, he actually buries himself in man, and then passes through the furnaces.843 ¶30

So we come to that story again of the lamb. You’ll find it in the seventh chapter of Revelation: He asked, “Who are these who are all dressed in their robes of white?” And he said, “These are those who came out from the great tribulation and they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, washed them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Then read the next three, four verses, all in poetry, what is their eternal world, around the throne serving the risen Lord. No tears, no sadness, no need of anything, all washed in the blood of the Lamb. And you wonder, “What was their own blood?” They’re called martyrs. Well, the word “martyr” really means “witness.” Look it up. We speak of a martyr and we think someone was killed innocently. No, he only witnessed his blood. He volunteered. He himself took his own life: “No one takes my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. And this I have received from my Father” . So when I’m split from top to bottom, who did it?—my Father, well, he and I are one . That’s how I redeem myself by my own blood. How could you shed your blood and redeem me? No matter what the churches will tell you, it hasn’t a thing to do with that. At that moment in time, you’re going to be split right down from top to bottom, and then generation is over. Now it’s all regeneration, and you find yourself in a world that differs entirely from this. So set your hope fully upon this grace that is coming to you at the unveiling in you of the Lord.843 ¶31

So when you read it, take nothing for granted. Just get…I have it, it’s my daily companion…Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. Every word that’s used in both Old and New Testament is given there, and its original definitions. So, you can simply look at it. If you haven’t had the experience, try to ferret out what you feel it ought to be. When you’ve had the experience, you will know exactly what they intended it to be. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *843 ¶32

I think most of you know that I firmly believe that imagining creates reality. I personally have proved it and I think the majority of you have. If someone now complains, having confessed that they believe it, that what they originally imagined is not as good and as wonderful as they are now experiencing, then ask them, “Why are you now remembering and not imagining?” If I can say I remember when, then I am not now imagining that. So am I really putting this into practice? I can say, well alright, I believe it, but I once imagined something and it’s not as I am now experiencing in my life. Just simply say, “You really believe that imagining creates reality and your original imagining state was?” They’ll say yes. “Then what on earth are you doing when you say ‘I once imagined it?’” Then they are not now imagining. God’s name is I AM. Man finds it so difficult to keep this in the present tense. It’s always outside of self.842 ¶1

Now, when you imagine, may I tell you, you may, and chances are you will, influence others. But do not think in terms of influence. Think only in terms of clarity of form. For instance, someone will say to you, I want a better position, I want more money, I want greater responsibility. Alright, now you conceive a scene and give all your effort to clarifying form, just form, like drawing a picture. So you’ve conceived a scene. It could be that you’re giving the party or they are giving the party, and then you will raise your glass or they will raise it, and toast the occasion…a better job, more money. Don’t think in terms of influencing some superior on the job like the one you will call, say, a boss. Forget him. He could drop dead tonight; he could be discharged tonight. Don’t think in terms of anyone outside of the clarity of form. What would imply that you have it? Well, if I gave a party tonight for you who got it, or you gave the party and invited me and I am your guest, and then we sat around the table and came that occasion to raise a glass in toast…so you will toast the event…and I will raise mine and drink with you. Well now, that is not influencing or thinking of influencing anyone in this world; we’re going to the end. So if you’re going to apply this law, it’s only dealing with form—you go to the end. Then what form, what structure would imply that you have it? And forget anyone in this world that you may influence.842 ¶2

So I’m not going to deny that every imaginal act influences, but you don’t have to put any interest on influencing anyone in this world. Leave them alone…leave everyone alone. They are not really cause; you are cause, your imaginal at is the cause. So what do you want in this world? Forget everyone else. You may have someone employing you that may have one billion dollars, a private fund, like Hughes, like the Rockefellers, like that crowd. They have it, but they are not causing anything in your world. They could all drop dead tonight, did you know, and vanish from this world and leave not a trace behind. The present generation of the Rockefellers know nothing of their great-grandfather who made it. They must be told by the present, who are simply grandsons of that fortune, and they will tell them, and they wisely modify it and others will modify it. But who knows of the original one who really went out and checked everything, the figures? And so he is gone.842 ¶3

So, you will influence people, no question about it. Because why? Everything in this world is yourself pushed out; you’re only influencing yourself. But don’t think in terms of anyone on the outside of self. What do you want? When you know exactly what you want, then put all your attention on clarity of form. So I would have a little dinner party and I’d have the whole thing set up just right. Then what after that am I imagining? So to confess or to complain that I once imagined, and my original imaginal act was far greater than this, is to confess that I am not now imagining. If imagining creates reality then forget the memory picture. What am I imagining? So this is a part of this fantastic mystery that we are trying to get over here.842 ¶4

Now, let me share with you a few that came this week. Here is a series. This one, she finds herself—it’s all in one week, this series of dreams all in one week—and “Here I am in my dream with a bunch of children and they have lost something. I am trying to find it for them. I’m looking…then as I’m looking for something they have lost, I find a little bag with a draw string. I pick it up. I open the bag to find a watch and the children tell me that is a treasure, you have found a treasure. And that’s the end of that.842 ¶5

Then I find myself the next night in this state: all the things I want and they are all on wheels—people, places and things all on wheels. And I’m on a wheel. It’s all moving. I’m saying to my self and complaining, ‘This is not what I want!’ All these things are moving on wheels and I am still with a sense of longing. And then I wake.” Remember, this is the sequence, all in a week—first a watch, then everything, and she’s dissatisfied. She’s not satisfied with all these things. They’re all on wheels, all my desires. And with that feeling in her throat, it’s still a longing.842 ¶6

Then comes a third, she said, “Now in this dream I find myself following an enormous crowd, I’m walking up pathways, walking down stairways, walking up stairways because you are giving lectures in all these places. I am thrilled as I stop to hear, and I hear it over and over, and every time I hear it I’m thrilled with the revelation of what you’re giving me. But one thing impressed me. We came to a place, it was a beautiful campus…lovely kept grounds, all the lawns, the roadways, and all the buildings, ivy climbing up and covering all the buildings. I came into this building and here you are giving the most marvelous things. I was thrilled one after the other as you said what you did; and I said to myself, ‘I must remember this’ and I made a mental effort to remember what you were saying…because one explosion after the other of the great truths. And I woke and I could not recall one…could not bring one back to memory.842 ¶7

“Then the next night, again I am in a dream and I am following you. I go to a place, it’s a huge, enormous expansive white house, and I know that you are lecturing there, so I go in. All the rooms are empty save where you are and then the adjacent room where my father is. I know that my father built this house, he built this house.” Don’t forget that aspect of the dream—the father is unseen, he’s in the adjacent room. This time I am addressing all my remarks to the dreamer, and as I speak to her I’m telling her things that cause her to explode with joy, but she can’t remember them, save one. I turn to her and I say with a profound authority, “My name is Friday.” She knows it has tremendous significance. Then she said to me, “Yes, and that means ‘O my darling.’” Then I smiled and nodded affirmatively. Then she said, “I woke. But the things that preceded that I do not recall. I do know what you said when you said ‘My name is Friday’ had tremendous significance. Now, Neville, this seems to me the most insane nonsense, and yet as I write it I know in the depth of my soul that this has a profound significance. I heard something of tremendous importance, and yet on the surface it seems just simply the essence of nonsense.”842 ¶8

Well, may I tell you, you heard and saw correctly. I told you when I told you that my name is Friday I told you that I am the god of love…that’s what I told you. When you write mythology it’s not altogether vision, it’s part vision, so they call it the goddess of love. But when you stand in the presence of God, who is love, it’s man. So I told you my name is Friday. “He who is united with the Lord becomes one Spirit with him,” as we are told in the 6th chapter of 1st Corinthians . I stood in the presence of the risen Lord, who is the embodiment of love, he incorporated me into his body, and I am forever one with that body. “There’s only one body, only one Spirit, only one Lord, only one God and Father of us all” . Whoever is incorporated into that one body is one with it.842 ¶9

So when you said to me and I nodded, “It means ‘O my darling,’ well, may I tell you, that word is used only ten or twelve times in scripture…never translated as darling but defined as darling. It’s Yachiyd. If you do not know Hebrew and can look it up in Hebrew in your concordance (if you have Strong’s Concordance, it is 3173), you will find it defined as “my darling.” You’ll find it defined a “my only one, my son, my only son.” That’s how you’ll find the word defined. Well, anyone who is incorporated into that body is that word translated “O my darling.” So you knew it in the depths of your soul when you heard me say Friday, for Friday is simply the God of love, that’s what it means. So when you’re incorporated into that body that’s what you are. So may I tell you, you heard it perfectly, and what you did not bring back to this world in your conscious, rational mind you still have in the depths of your soul. So all the instruction that you heard in that past week, where you heard it and you were thrilled and your heart burst with excitement because you heard it, every word was true.842 ¶10

This word Yachiyd first appears in the 22nd chapter of Genesis . The Lord said to Abraham, “Because you did not withhold your son, your only son from me”—the word son and only son is Yachiyd. He’s speaking now of Isaac, the promised child. In the gospel of John, the 19th chapter, he quotes from the 12th chapter of Zechariah, and this is the quote—this is after the crucifixion, after everything has taken place, the resurrection has taken place—and these are the words. Having first told them, “Not one bone shall be broken from his body” then quotes his passage from Zechariah, “They shall look upon him whom they have pierced” . But he doesn’t complete it. If you read the 12th chapter, the 10th verse, of Zechariah and complete the verse, then you’ll read the words, “And they shall mourn for him as one who mourns for an only child.” The word “only child” is Yachiyd, the same word which means “O my darling.”842 ¶11

So everyone is going to experience it, and when he experiences it he is going to tell it and tell everyone who will listen to him. Some will believe it and some will not believe it. Those who believe it will in the depths of their soul encounter him teaching, teaching, teaching, night after night in multiple places. You’ll go from place to place teaching and you will hear it. If you don’t bring it through to the conscious reasoning mind, it doesn’t really matter. You’ve heard it…what you brought through…at least the name I told you, and you brought through he told me his name was Friday. And Friday simply means the God of love, that’s all that it means. Because the word Yachiyd means “unity”—that’s the first definition given the word—it means sole. Not s-o-u-l but s-o-l-e, in the sense unique, the only one. Because everyone incorporated into that one body is “the only one.” There’s only one body, one Spirit, only one Lord, only one God and Father of all. But it takes all of us as eternal brothers to form that body. So when you get into that body you are one with that body forever and forever and you are Friday. You are the God of love.842 ¶12

On this level no one sees it…they can’t see it. But she saw it in Spirit and had the experience and brought it back. She could not bring back the instruction, all that she heard. That’s alright. She has it anyway, because she heard it and she was fired night after night with the instruction, all that she heard. She saw this man rushing towards me, eagerly rushing towards me, and then he sat, and I began to instruct him, and she eavesdropped, she listened. In her letter to me, “I listened in and I knew he loved you beyond measure. I could tell from his expression, all that he acted, how he loved you. What you said to him was so explosive and so thrilling as I listened to all the instructions you gave to him. But in the white house of my father you directed all of your instruction to me.” See the symbolism? The father was unseen. And in this enormous, expansive white house, they were all unoccupied save the two rooms…one the father occupied it. He was standing in the one room and only one door led into the two rooms. So in the other room where I was instructing, I directed all of my attention to her and told her of this profound mystery of being. Everything was directed to her. But she knew her father had built this house, it was his house.842 ¶13

Well, a dream is ego-centric. The whole thing is taking place in her. The whole vast dream unfolds in a man, but all of us are contained in each other, so I at that moment represented her father instructing on the outside. For the whole thing is in man. Every dream is ego-centric. So here, the father is unseen; he projects himself into the seen being teaching and instructing. All of these thoughts are directed towards her. In that moment I only revealed my name. Well, the name was enough. I am telling her who her father really is: her father is the God of love, that’s what I’m telling her. I was only used form the depths of her own soul to explain what she heard. For, believe it, all dreams are ego-centric. So, the source of all dream is God and God is in man, and God is man. God is her own wonderful Father. But he’s out of sight, presented now in the form of the one that she trusts as a teacher, and I am used to explain to her what happened. But it happened all in one week. Night after night these things are coming.842 ¶14

But to come back to his level…may I tell you, imagining creates reality. You can start on this level. The first words given to us by the one who reveals it, who comes to reveal is simply “Repent and believe in the story, believe in the gospel”—the story of salvation . For only repentance, which is a radical change of attitude, could simply take this powerful Imagination and burst it through this world of death. This is the world of death! So I ask everyone to simply take it literally, and day after day after day simply test it. Test it!842 ¶15

Another one came from a gentleman who was only here for the past few weeks, being transferred from San Francisco, and the one…well, he gave me two, he gave me four. The first two prior to coming here, they are something almost preparatory…they prepared him for the coming…the snakes and so on. But in the coming here, he found himself right after he heard me taking his hand from the top of his head and peeling his entire head, and bringing all of the skin down to his neck. Here he is peeling the entire head. After he’s peeled the entire head, then he puts it back up again like a bag over his head. He knows that he should not see anything from the outside, yet in some strange way, from the inside he is generating light so he can see the outside. But he knows the outside is completely dark…but now he’s generating light from within.842 ¶16

May I tell you, “All that you behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” So when you came here you came here on time. Nothing happens but on time. You took off, being prepared, all the outer beliefs, or you are taking them off but putting them back in a different manner. And then light comes from within and you will see from within, and then begin to govern your world from within…that nothing is from without. What is coming from without is being drawn from the activity taking place from within you.842 ¶17

Then he said, “I’ve only heard you twice,” in his letter, “and I went to my friend, having missed you on a Monday night. I was tired and she put on your tape for me. I thought, well, I’ll close my eyes and simply listen, so I listened to what you were saying. I must have fallen into a light sleep and in the light sleep I felt the most terrific blow on the right side of my head…two blows…and I either had the impression or I saw the index finger extended and pointing. Now it’s two days later and, may I tell you, I’m still feeling the pain of the blow on my head.”842 ¶18

May I tell you, good for you! It comes this way. Don’t let any doctor tell you that you had a migraine or this, that or the other, forget it! This is how it happens. You peeled your entire head and took off the outer skin, the Esau, and you put it back on because in this world you’ve got to wear it. But now you are going to see it differently and you will see the world from within. May I tell you now, though you’ve only been here just a little while, forget the little while, those who come at the 11th hour get the same thing as those who came at the first hour . “Is it not mine to give?” said he. So you are complaining he comes at the 11th hour and you give him just as much as you give those who came in at the first hour? So everyone gets the same thing.842 ¶19

These blows are essential…they are actually essential. Doctors will not understand it, no one will understand it, but they are essential to the awakening from within us; for there is one who is sleeping within us. That wonderful hymn of Isaac Watts when he speaks of “wrapped within the silence of the tomb the Great Redeemer sleeps.” Then he tells us how hail and death combine their force to hold our Lord in this manner, but the Great Conqueror arose and burst the little fragile chain. He sleeps within us, and he is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God. When he awakes you are God! There is nothing but God in this world. And you can put him to the test right here.842 ¶20

So my friend who wrote this wonderful letter giving a series of these visions really saw it perfectly. I will tell her mother, who is here tonight, you tell her when you go home, she hasn’t lost a thing, not a thing. It was all told her when she came from place to place. For I was only used by her…the dream is ego-centric. Her father that she thinks of as her earthly father who built the white house is only a symbol of the Eternal Father that she is seeking. And I, the present teacher in this world, again it’s only a symbol of the instruction. So I was used from the depths of her own soul to reveal to herself all that she already knows. Well, she knows it. She didn’t encounter this called Neville, she simply is awakening to her own being. All this is herself.842 ¶21

For in the end we are one. There’s only a brotherhood, an eternal brotherhood, and a fatherhood because each is the father of the same child. How else could I know that you and I are one were it not that this symbol is set up in eternity: that when you become the father of the child that I know I am the father of then you and I are one. There is no other way of proving the unity, this eternal brotherhood, without the common fatherhood of all of us. If you had one son and I had another, then we could complain…I want more for my son than you want for yours. But no, there’s one son and we so love that one son we all want to give that one son everything. That is the story. So that we are all one…but it can only be as we come, one by one, and we are gathered one by one into one body, into one Spirit, into one Lord, into one God and Father of all. That’s the story.842 ¶22

So tonight, do not think of influencing your boss. Do not think of influencing anyone in this world. Think only of clarity of form, that’s all you do. The creative Imagination is concerned only in perfecting form. Now, when I perfect form I am going to influence others, no question about it. Every time that I have done something that is marvelous, others worked to bring it to pass…so I influenced them. But I didn’t think in terms of others, I thought only in clarity of form.842 ¶23

When I wanted to get out of Barbados when there were no ships…only two little ships and thousands trying to get out…I didn’t think of influencing anyone. I asked my brother who apparently had an influence. He had none, no one had influence. I simply walked up the gangplank. Clarity of form! If this is true, if I am walking up this gangplank, then it implies that I am sailing. Well, if it implies that I am sailing, someone is influenced. Do you know that 2,000 miles away in New York City someone cancels their passage? They were afraid because war was still a little bit in the air. And we came out on a ship where someone 2,000 miles away was afraid to take, so they cancelled it. So I did influence her choice, her decision, and others present who had the advantage of getting it before me, because it was an enormous list waiting and it wasn’t given to them. So I influenced the decision of the one who had the power to distribute whatever the ticket was. He justified it by saying, well after all, there are only two beds in the stateroom, but the child is so small she could sleep with her mother, and therefore, we could get three in instead of simply two. So that’s how they justified it. And so we came back, with thousands waiting who preceded us in applying for that passage.842 ¶24

So don’t think in terms of influencing anyone in this world. Leave them alone. Don’t influence your boss…forget him! He could die tonight, do you know that? He could drop dead right now. So what?—doesn’t matter. Don’t influence anyone. Don’t think of it. Think only in terms of clarity of form. The minute you draw a line you are encompassing energy. Anything in this world without an outline means nothing. Well now, you just draw your outline and get all in it, as much as you can. But get a clear, clear picture.842 ¶25

I’m giving a party tonight, I am sitting at my table, my friends are present, one has been promoted and this is in his honor. As we sit down I raise my glass to toast him and tell all of my friends he is now promoted to a certain point. That would imply greater responsibility, more money, and I am toasting it. Stick to that and don’t really care who is influenced to bring it to pass. Forget all influence.842 ¶26

The minute you think in terms of influence, you’re taking this most fantastic miracle in the world and perverting it, bringing it down to so-called magic. Working against this, working against that, and I’m going to work against this one because she’s working black magic, and doing this because he doesn’t want me. All that is nonsense! Forget all the people in the world. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out, so forget everyone in this world. Not one person in this world has any power to hold you back or to promote you. You are self-promoted or self-held back. Just simply think in terms of clarity of form.842 ¶27

Now listen to these words of Blake, “If the Spectator could enter into these images.” Now listen to these words carefully, “enter into,” not observe them. “If the Spectator could enter into these images in his Imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could make a friend and a companion of any one of these images of wonder, then he would rise from the grave, then he would meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy” .842 ¶28

If he could only enter into one of these images in his Imagination…alright, so I want to be, and let’s say in New York. Well now, I can see one of a dozen hotels that I lived in and entered. Now, could I enter into one of these images in my Imagination? How would I do it? Approach it on the fiery chariot of my contemplative thought. So I contemplate it. I contemplate it and then I enter it. Well, how will I know that I’m in it? Because physically I’m here. I think…when I think I am in it, I think of this place. Well, if I see it as I now see it, I am not in New York City. I must see it as I would see it were I in New York City. Where would it be? 3,000 miles to the west of me, that’s where it would be. If I enter into that image in my contemplative thought, I will see every part of the world related to that place that I have entered.842 ¶29

So if the Spectator could enter into these images in his contemplative thought…so I enter the image…then I will arise from the grave. What grave? This is my grave; I’m always here in a grave. When man enters the world of flesh, it’s eternal death. So I rise from it, leave it behind me for a moment, and go into that place, and then view the world from it as though it were true. Then I will not only rise from the grave, I will meet my Lord in the air. Who’s my Lord?—I AM. I’ll meet my Lord in the air and I’ll be happy. Am I not happy in what I am doing? Well, that’s what he’s telling us and that is his Vision of the Last Judgment, how man actually does these things.842 ¶30

So you and I can actually enter into the state desired, dwell in that state as though it were true, and, may I tell you, no power in this world can stop it! It can’t stop it from becoming a fact in the world. You don’t influence anyone deliberately, but you influence everyone. As Sir James Jeans said, “A man on this planet cannot raise a hand without influencing the farthest star in the world.” It is this unified form. And so, you practice it and you prove it, and you can go from wherever you are to wherever you want to be if you stop trying to influence people to help you. Forget them! They’ll have to…they’ll have to aid. Not aid in the sense that they’re doing you a favor; they’ve got to do what they do because you’ve done what you did. You dare to assume that you are…and you name it…and then everyone must play the part, but everyone. Why?—because it’s yourself pushed out.842 ¶31

I played the part in my friend’s dream. Now in this dream of hers she mentioned another, she said, “I was on my way to my friend Marge. I went with Sharon and Jan and others”—others she did mention by name. She said, “Sharon, Jan and others, we’re all on the way to Marge. Marge had a gold necklace and a gold disk, and on it was carved a golden man. On the way to Marge’s house, suddenly Sharon said, ‘I’ve lost my necklace.’ She hadn’t lost the necklace; she lost the disk on which was carved the golden man. She held the chain in her hand.” Then my friend, who wrote the letter, said, “I started to dig to find where she had lost it.”842 ¶32

Now bear in mind what I told you earlier when she first had the first dream: children said to her when she found a watch, “You have found a treasure.” Now she is finding as she digs she finds a watch, she finds two watches, she finds three, and there are multiple watches that she is finding. A watch was told her in the beginning by the children—for whenever vision breaks forth into speech, the presence of Deity has been established. So the child is the voice of God telling her that is the symbol of a treasure, you’ve found a treasure. Now she is finding treasure after treasure after treasure…that’s what she’s finding. What is the treasure? She’s finding Christ. It was a gold chain, a gold disk on which was actually engraved a golden man. God is the wisdom of God and Christ is defined in scripture as the wisdom of God . She is finding the wisdom of God.842 ¶33

So all the revelations that came to her—although she could not bring it back through her conscious reasoning mind when I to her was the teacher revealing it—was simply all within herself. She heard it all. She heard it all, she knows it in the depths of herself, and it’s slowly coming to the surface. She knows when I told her, which she conjured, well, she conjured me, it’s ego-centric, that’s what a dream is. And so when she conjured me and I am telling her that my name is Friday, the God of love, I am telling, “All that I’m telling you now is true, for the God of love cannot lie”…that’s what I’m telling her. So all that she is hearing though she hasn’t brought it to the surface of her being, it is coming. And she isn’t far from the ultimate revelation of the birth from above. She is not. All of this is happening to all who are coming here.842 ¶34

So really, what does it matter? The world goes on and it plays its numberless parts, and it wants more and more of things that vanish. Tonight they’re fighting for the presidency. He hasn’t yet gone, he isn’t dead, haven’t buried him yet, but they’re all trying to bury him for the next election…fighting like mad for something that passes away…means nothing. “Do not lay up treasures on earth,” you are told, “where thieves will take it and the moth will corrupt, but lay it up in heaven where no one can take it from you” . The treasures of earth are really loans, loans that at any moment can be withdrawn, but the treasures of heaven are forever. And she has found these treasures in the instruction that she feels I gave her, for really I am in her. She conjured me and by revealing my name to her, she knew that teacher could only give her truth for he is the God of love, having been incorporated into the body of love. But it’s not Neville the man she knows here…it’s the Neville in herself that she conjured and lifted up and revealed to her…for, believe it, every dream is ego-centric.842 ¶35

So if what I tell you is true, when you conjure me I must be presented to you in the form of revealed truth. And if God is love—and I know it from my personal experience—to confirm scripture which says God is love in the 1st Epistle of John , well then, when I told her “Friday,” I’m telling her…then when she confirms it, “Oh, yes, that means, ‘O my darling,’” the one who was pierced. And when they look upon the one that they pierced, they will weep as one who weeps for an only child; for I am that one who was pierced, and you, too, but you don’t know it yet. Only one being was pierced, and that one being is Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus Christ is the true identity of everyone; the true identity of every being in the world is Jesus Christ. Well, if he was pierced and he’s the true identity of everyone and he’s within me, well the, I’m pierced. So, as Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me” . And so, the crucifixion is over, for I have been crucified with Christ; but the resurrection is taking place, and each in his own wonderful time.842 ¶36

When Benny came home the other night and told me again the story of the child, I can’t tell you Bill’s reaction and thrill and mine as we sat there. He said, “Oh, Neville, when I saw those rosy cheeks.” Well, you know how dark Benny is…well, he saw these rosy cheeks when he lifted that infant wrapped in swaddling clothes…“and those rosy cheeks.” Then he used not only one by many expressions of endearment. He also used “O my darling.” It is that that takes place in the heart of man when he brings out of himself the sign of his own birth.842 ¶37

So pigment on earth means nothing. The eternal stories are true. I could paint you a word picture of the Father. He’s best described in Daniel, but never described in pictures. Not even Blake has painted him. And I so love Blake for all that he’s done. That is not the Ancient of Days—it is something entirely different. And David, yes, the great artists have tried to paint David and sculpt David—that’s not David. No human could actually form David, he’s so beautiful. And he is going to see David! So when Benny sees him, Benny with that dark, dark pigment is going to look right into the eyes of the bluest eyes and the blondest hair and the fairest skin he has ever seen. And that is David. When you look into the face of the Father, he is going to see, if he hasn’t already seen, that face. And these skins mean nothing. In my own case, I change every year like a lizard. I go into the sun and get darker and darker and darker, and then winter comes and all of a sudden I am pale and look miserable. So the same thing…these are only pigments meaning nothing.842 ¶38

But when he sat in that chair and as we had a couple of Martinis—this was before his second, so it was not any influence—and when Benny said, “Oh, Neville, when I looked upon those rosy cheeks, and I held that babe in my arms, and I embraced it!” And he used the words, “my son, my sweetheart, O my darling.” Then it vanished, leaving only a portrait of itself in his hand.842 ¶39

You see, you are so unique. The drama, although it’s the same drama, it comes differently…like an artist playing the part of Hamlet. No two actors play Hamlet alike. I have seen it a dozen times on Broadway, at least a dozen times, by different artists, and no two played it alike, but it’s the same Hamlet. And so we bring forth the child in different manners. His was like an explosion out of his head, like a star. My friend Bob, it came popping out of his head too but right into his hand as he held the child. So these things happen uniquely because we are unique, no two are alike. So it has to be something different in the same story.842 ¶40

And that’s how Benny got…I can only say to Benny, the 6th of March, and I’m all ears waiting. Approximately within the area of the 6th of March when David stands before him, that beautiful David, and calls him Father. He will know it…there’s no doubt in his mind as to the relationship. Therefore, he and I are brothers. If he and I walked down this street today, they would think we could not be from the same father; but they wouldn’t know that we are the Father. If we walked through certain areas of prejudice today, they’d say, “What are we doing together?” He could take me to Harlem and if they would rush him to hurt me, he would protect me. If I take him into other areas, certain restricted areas, they’d rush me to kill me because I brought him in. Yet here the same being came in. There aren’t two; we are the Father…brought forth the same child, and in five months he’s going to bring forth my son; therefore he can’t bring forth my son unless he is my very being. And this is this fabulous world in which we live.842 ¶41

So I ask you tonight to just simply take this wonderful premise “Imagining creates reality,” go out and believe it. Don’t try to influence anyone in this world. The world reflects what we are doing. Put all of your energies upon clarity of form. Alright, if I occupied a certain desk, would that mean that I am now filling a certain position? Occupy that desk! Get it clear in my mind’s eye and as Blake said, “If the Spectator could enter into this image in his Imagination”…well, enter it! How do I know I’m in it? Just think of the world, and I’ll think of the world and see it as I would see it were I in this state. If I am in this state, I would have to see the world in a certain manner. Well then, do it! Now don’t complain after you’ve done it that “originally I imagined it.” I will tell you if you say it to me then what are you doing now remembering and not still imagining! Now let us go into the Silence.842 ¶42