You’ll find tonight a very practical night and yet profoundly spiritual. “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. God rested on the seventh day from his work which he had made”. Now we are told this seventh day is the day for man to observe. It’s part of the creative act of God. The unknown author of that verse that I just quoted connects the sabbath with a creative act of God. It’s a [...] and without it there is no creation. And the seventh day was the sabbath of the Lord your God and in it you shall not do any work. Here is a creative act. If one Commandment is treated imaginally, then all Commandments must be treated in the same manner. The Old Testament is a prophecy of all that must take place in the individual, fulfilled in what we have as the New Testament. The New Testament interprets the Old, not the other way around. You can’t understand the Old without the New. When the time was fulfilled it unfolded in the individual and we have what is known as the New Testament. In the New Testament we have one of the Ten Commandments analyzed for us. “Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say any man who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart”. He’s committed the act by looking lustfully; that is, to imagine the act and to desire it is to have performed the act, whether you did it physically or not. Well, that is one commandment. Why take all ten? This is given to us in the Sermon on the Mount.780 ¶1

Well, here we are called upon to keep the sabbath. In it you shall not do any work. Then what is the sabbath? First of all he creates…and God is invisible…“God calls a thing that is not seen as though it were, then he keeps the Sabbath, and the unseen becomes seen”. That which was subjective becomes objective only by the keeping of the Sabbath. It’s part of the [...]. So I imagine the scene just as I would like it to be, perfect, to me perfect. Wouldn’t it be wonderful were it true! Now, can I keep the sabbath? We all break it morning, noon and night. This coming Sunday millions of Christians and, well, today at sundown the orthodox Jew is keeping the sabbath. Beginning on Sunday, millions, hundreds of millions of Christians will, so-called, keep the sabbath. They’re not keeping the sabbath.780 ¶2

Listen to the words, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings who by nature are no gods; but now that you know God, or rather that you have come to be known by God, how can you turn back? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain”. So we think we keep the sabbath.780 ¶3

I went to my barber yesterday and this shoeshine fellow, an awfully nice lad, he’s a deacon in his church, and so we always have a good joke together and he certainly knows a lot of jokes. I said, “Hal, how are things going?” Oh, he said, “I spent the whole day Sunday in church. I went to church and after service we went home and we had coffee and cake, oh, the most wonderful cake they had made”…and he’s telling me all these things…“and from there we went to another service. I didn’t get home for dinner until 6:30…the whole day given over to God.” He spent it in church. He thought he kept the sabbath. Well, I would not argue with Henry. He doesn’t know what I do. I’ve been going to the same barber for the longest while, for years and years, but Henry is not the first shoeshine boy that he’s had. But here is Henry and he’s a deacon in the church, and he thinks he keeps the sabbath by going to church. But he’s not alone. My sister thinks she keeps the sabbath by going to church on Sunday, and everything must be done.780 ¶4

For when I was a boy, certain things you couldn’t do on the sabbath. When I entered the theatre as a dancer, I loved to play Boston because we couldn’t dance on Sunday. So we would go out there on a weekend or for a week, we only worked six days; got paid for seven for that was part of the contract. You were paid for seven, but the law would not allow you to dance on Sunday, so being a dancer we got off on Sunday. All the singers and the comedians, they just hated us on Saturday night because we got paid for Sunday. The same thing was true of Philadelphia, you couldn’t dance in Philadelphia on Sunday. And you go back, now they’ve modified it. I recall in New York State where, well, they started talking about Sunday games. Well, here is baseball…you can’t play baseball in New York City on Sunday save you start after two in the afternoon, to get the people in church. Bars can’t be opened until after one. You can drink, alright, but not until after one in a pub, because then you wouldn’t go to church. So who is kidding whom? Is that the sabbath? You can’t open the bar until after…you can open it on Sunday, but not until after you get them in church. And so, that is keeping the sabbath. It hasn’t a thing to do with the sabbath. The Bible is the most practical book in the world, if you only understood what it is talking about. So, the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God. These are the words, it’s not just “the” Lord, but the Lord your God. In it you must not do any work.780 ¶5

Now I tell you this and now to illustrate. A friend of mine writes me a letter, and here is her letter. “I sell homes. I have an empty home for sale and the need for the sale of this home is great. Well, I imagine. I find it easy now, because I have proven that imagining creates reality. I’ve done it time and time again, so it becomes easier and easier for me to go to the end of an imaginal act, which implies the fulfillment of my desire, and then rest. It’s easy. Yet in this case I found myself going back, wondering which one will be the buyer. I thought of this one, that one, and when I caught myself thinking of a buyer, well then, I am not resting in the end. If I had gone to the end and it’s sold and the people are in the house and it’s a marvelous, happy relationship, well then, what am I doing thinking of a buyer? So I would catch myself in the course of a day thinking of which one would be interested, this buyer, that buyer, or the other buyer. That was a confession I was not actually dwelling in the end and resting in that state.” So said she, “Oh, that seventh day…is that a difficult thing to keep!780 ¶6

“Now, she said, on the 22nd of February, that’s only a matter of a week ago, a little more than a week ago, I had these three dreams in the same night. I didn’t realize their relationship until the next morning when I wrote them out. Here is my first dream. I dreamt I drove up to the house and as I got to the house a voice said to me, ‘What are you doing here? The house has been sold and it is sold because you desired it to be sold.’ I felt in the dream a little bit uneasy…the house has been sold and here I am driving up to the house, undoubtedly because of my concern. But the house has been sold, therefore, what are you doing here, and it has been sold because you desired it to be sold.780 ¶7

“Now the scene changes and I have another dream and I am boiling rice. I am eager to get the rice done instantly, so instead of soaking the rice until it’s prepared, I put it into a pan of water and start to boil it, and I’m demanding that the rice be boiled and be done right away. Well, it is. Before my eyes it’s done, it’s instantly done. So I taste a kernel of it. It’s hard and tasteless. It is a mess,” she said. These are her words, “It really is a mess. Then I find myself preparing lima beans. I feel that I have all the time in the world, so I take the beans and I soak them. They reach the point of being blown to the very extreme; they’re now big and full and bursting, and then I put them on and boil them in a very slow little flame. I seem to have all the time and they come out and they are luscious. When I taste them they could not be more tasty, they were beautiful. Then I saw the two dishes together—the lima beans that were perfect in taste and appearance and then the rice that was tasteless. Before I woke I entertained this thought, isn’t it strange that they both seemed to take the same length of time…this that I was so eager to get done, the rice, and the other, which I seemed to relax and have such time, and both seemed to take the same amount of time. Then I woke and I wrote out the three and I didn’t realize the relationship of the dream until I had written them out.”780 ¶8

So I tell you again, in the Bible, God, your God, your wonderful I-am-ness, the Father in you, speaks to you through the medium of dream. He instructs you…he tells you what you are doing. He shows you what you are doing and allows you to see and learn how to correct it. Here you have a house to sell. You’ve gone to the end and you see the people occupying it and they’re happy in it, therefore, the sale is over. You have made the sale. You find yourself in the course of a day breaking the sabbath. And what promises are made in scripture to those who keep the sabbath, fantastic promises to all, because it’s part of the creative [...]. So you take any…all of these are possible to God. I mean the God in you. I’m not speaking of a God in space, a God in time; I’m speaking of the only God, the God that became you that you may become God. I’m speaking of that God, which is the only God. He is in you as your own wonderful human Imagination. But here is a creative act and these Ten Commandments must be taken imaginally.780 ¶9

You have committed adultery? What adultery? I’m not married, I haven’t gone astray. You haven’t? Haven’t you passed any person in this world and not desired to “know” her and strip her? Well, being a man undoubtedly I did. And not to have any arguments about it, instead of saying undoubtedly I did, without any doubt I did. But I speak for humanity. I speak for every man born of woman if he has any blood in him. But I speak also for any woman born of woman, that she’s done the same thing. So we’ve all broken the law. Well, we have broken the sabbath, and we break it every moment of time. I don’t break the other commandment of adultery. At my age you don’t break it. When you are young and it’s all bursting in you, you break it morning, noon and night. But, today, at my age I break the sabbath more often, far more often, than I break the act, the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But the commandment is to everyone, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”780 ¶10

Now, if the thought occupies the mind and it’s not really pressing, like the selling of a house, I may keep the sabbath beautifully. In this case, and he’s here tonight, he said, “When our first son, our oldest son, when he was about two years, his mother and I discussed the possibility of sending him to a prep school back East, and it was Phillips Exeter.” Well, I know Phillips Exeter. I never went there, but it is a marvelous prep school. But they wondered at the time, “I wonder how we would do it?” Speaking and thinking purely in terms of finances, “How would we do it?” However, that was approximately eleven years ago. “In the interval,” he said, “I swear I have not once thought of that. I haven’t given it a thought. The boy is going to public school here in California. He is brilliant. He is completely adjusted to life. He’s everything that we desired, a brilliant, brilliant lad in public school here. So we didn’t talk of it in the interval, but I did think then, back eleven years ago. My wife is a Lowell of Massachusetts,” he said, “you may know of the name.” Well, I certainly do know the Lowells of Massachusetts, and you’ve read Amy Lowell’s works, haven’t you? You’ve all heard of the great educators, the Lowells of Massachusetts. Well here, he thought, “My wife is a Lowell, her mother a Lowell and the child’s grandmother’s cousin was the headmaster of Exeter. He thought at the time it was Phillips Exeter. It turned out it was not Phillips Exeter but Andover Exeter that this relative was headmaster.780 ¶11

“Well, we thought that maybe because of this contact he could get a scholarship. Now, that’s eleven years ago and not one thought passed my mind since. We didn’t discuss it. I never thought about it, I swear I didn’t. Yesterday…now I got this letter since I spoke to you last Tuesday or Monday, whenever it was. Since then I got this letter. Only yesterday we received this offer for our son from Andover, Phillips Andover, a scholarship.” He discussed it eleven years ago and kept the sabbath. It wasn’t a pressing thing; they didn’t care. You don’t send a child to Andover at the age of two. He has to reach the age before he could go there, so in the interval it wasn’t pressing, it wasn’t their concern. So they could discuss it when he was two and keep the sabbath. And then suddenly it appears in the world, and what seemed to be such a sudden thing is only the emergence of a hidden continuity. It was implanted beautifully, without pressure, for there was no reason then to be concerned. It would take at least eleven years before he could possibly reach the ripeness to appear in one of these two great prep schools. Well, it has appeared, and now he has been offered a scholarship to Andover, to the finest prep school for boys in this country, and I would dare say in the world. So here, he kept the sabbath unwittingly.780 ¶12

The lady who writes me this story concerning the three, she broke it, but she caught it; and then the depth of her own being spoke to her and told her how she was breaking it and showed her how to correct it. Here were two dishes…take time, no concern. One, she must do it now. Let it be. The purchaser is coming. He has to come. And not any problems will arise after the purchase. It will be so tasty, it’ll be so perfect. But after you bring it to pass by forcing the sale, then you’re going to have multiple reasons—they can’t make the payments, they can’t do this, they can’t do that and unnumbered things will happen—it’s all the tasty hard rice. And the other, the purchaser will so love it, they’ll wonder how could God be so kind and wonderful to them, represented by the lima beans that she…and the same time interval. So you do it and you judge it as perfect.780 ¶13

So no matter what it is in this world that you want, you simply create it in the same way that the God in you created the whole vast universe. I’m not speaking of two gods. When I speak of the God in you, I’m speaking of the same God that created and sustains the whole vast universe. There’s only one God: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord”. Only one, there aren’t two. Therefore, the very thing was brought forth out of the nowhere…he calls a thing that is not seen as though it were, and the unseen becomes seen. So the God in man does the same thing. I want to be successful, and I will name it, by toying with the idea, what would it be like? Suppose it were true? And then you create a scene implying that it is true, and you accept the reality of that imaginal state. Well now, let me keep the sabbath. Here is a creative act, but it is not completed until the sabbath is kept.780 ¶14

So I drop an egg. Outside of my window right now little doves are nesting. Here they are…they fly away, they come back, they kiss each other all the time that they’re together. They’re always making love. And there is something there. But there are moments when they must go off to feed, moments when something else takes them away. So they leave it in confidence the nest is there. The little egg is being warmed when they are there, and warm enough to still maintain a certain energy within. One day the shell is going to break and out will come a little dove. And so, you and I, in confidence, we simply imagine a state, I don’t care what the state is.780 ¶15

Now may I tell you, you may say, “Well, suppose now he dies tonight and he hasn’t realized it?” There is no death. You wonder, why does this one and that one and the other one have such different beginnings in the world? Because this is not beginning at all; you didn’t begin in your mother’s womb and you don’t end in the grave. This whole vast world…“I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years.” And so in that interval…when I’m given that interval of time in which to create…I have brought forth horrible things and lovely things. And so, if I make the exit, as the world calls it death, I didn’t die. As you’re told, “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the depths nor the high point, nothing can separate me from the love of God”. But nothing in eternity could separate me from the love of God. So here I am, I’m brought in by love. “Never would you have made anything had you not loved it.” That’s what we are told in the Book of Wisdom, “Not one thing would you have made had you not loved it. And nothing can separate me from the love of God.” Here, I’m put into a world to create as my Father creates, and finally I awaken as my Father himself. And so, I may tonight make my exit with an unfulfilled desire, which I think I’m keeping the sabbath relative to it. Doesn’t matter, I will realize it, for I am still in the same world, a world just as real as this. It’s just as solidly real as this. And I’ll realize it…all my dreams will come to me, come to pass in the world to which I go. So if I dropped now, no matter what happens, I will still realize all that I keep the sabbath relative to.780 ¶16

So here, the Commandments are to be understood not as things that you formerly did when you did not know God? And do not turn back, as some do. Some have been coming here for the longest while, then a blow strikes the family, and they turn back and find comfort in the most orthodox concept, and go back, and there they sing their lovely hymns on Sunday and think they’re keeping the sabbath. Yet they have proven this principle that imagining creates reality. But a blow hits the family just to shake the tree and a few little things fall, and they haven’t root enough in themselves to sustain it and they turn back. So listen to the words—these are the words from the 4th chapter of Galatians—“Formerly, when you did not know God”—there was a time when I didn’t know God—“you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods”. Like the stars, like teacup leaves, like monkey bones, like anything outside of God, but anything outside of God. When I turn to it for my comfort, I am turning from God. When I didn’t know him, I turned to everything in the world that offered me some comfort. But now that you have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God, how can you turn back?780 ¶17

So we turn back. Now he names how we turn back, “You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years!” Well, we know we observe days. We know we observe months…this is now the season of Lent, it’s a season, we observe it. Many will not eat this, would not eat that, and they have a little phase and they’ll give up something for the season. Those who hated…like my brother in law, he didn’t like pickles, he gave up pickles…gave up something. When you’re called upon to give up something that you like, well, you can give up nothing. But they all do it. Well, last year or year before last they had a year, the ecumenical year and we worshipped it. We called it a year. So we have months, seasons, days, all kinds of things that we worship. So that in itself tells you, no matter who they are, they do not know God. If he calls himself a pope, the arch-bishop, or the little one who scrubs the floor, if they do that, they do not know God…anyone who observes a day, a month, a season, or a year. It’s told so clearly in scripture in the 4th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. So if you do it, well, then you don’t know.780 ¶18

Now, if I do it, then even if I break it, I can still know it and then go back to it. She broke it…but God is a merciful God. If I were pure, never would I have known that there is such a thing as a merciful God. I know I will be pure as my Father in heaven is pure, for it’s a must. You’re told in Leviticus, “You must be holy, for your Father…for I your God, am holy.” You must be holy. It’s a must, you can’t escape it, because “I the Lord your God am holy.” Now, you’re told to equate it in the Sermon on the Mount, “You shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” I have no doubt that such perfection must come, such holiness must come, because, by this statement, I have the potentiality. I possess the potentiality of becoming as God, becoming just one with him, or he could not say “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” He confesses I am not yet when he makes the statement, but he also tells me I possess the potentiality of becoming as perfect, and, therefore, as God. So when I am told in Leviticus “You must be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy”, here is a promise. I know I will do it. So I break the sabbath. I come back, having broken it, and then he is merciful, so he tells me on the inside…and he shows me rice and he shows me lima beans. He speaks to me, “What are you doing here? The house is sold.” Now he tells me why it is sold, “Because you desired it.”780 ¶19

The spring of action is desire. I desire. I desire success…well, that’s the spring of action. Who desired? Well, I desired. Well, what’s his name? I AM, that’s his name, I AM. So I want to be successful. It is God in me asking me to create that state. And so I create it and then I judge it perfect, “Oh, it’s perfect.” I create a beautiful home where it would be marvelous to live in that home. And so, I see it in my mind’s eye. But I have no money, I have no means of building it, but I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Wouldn’t it be wonderful were it true? Now keep the sabbath, and don’t concern yourself with money. It doesn’t matter what it takes or how it comes about, just keep the sabbath relative to it. It will come to pass. But may I tell you, it will come to pass, you’ll live in it, and then you’ll tire of it. And then you’ll drop it like a leaf, just like a leaf.780 ¶20

A friend of mine, speaking of a leaf…this wonderful statement that her father told her when she was a child and she in turn told me that I may tell my daughter. “If you had but a dollar and it was necessary to spend it, do it as though it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests.” Live that way, just as though it were true. Spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests. And you’ll find that the supply will come like the forest dropping its leaf for you to spend, if it’s necessary. So holding on to it is lack of confidence in the abundance of God and his ability to constantly produce.780 ¶21

God is a creator. He didn’t make the world and then go sound asleep and rest. Every time I imagine, God is acting. If I’m afraid, it’s God’s action, for God is my imaginal activity. So my Imagination is God. So every time I imagine, God is in action. So where is he resting? He who watches over Israel, you are told, neither slumbers nor sleeps. Yet, there must be that moment of rest relative to that that I have judged perfect. And so, God created it and behold, it was good, and very good. Then God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.780 ¶22

Now that seventh day could come at this moment—when someone asks something of me and I wonder what would it be like if you could tell me, instead of asking it of me, to tell me that you have it. What would it be like? And then completely forget it, completely forget it. And so when you tell me tomorrow or next month or next year or whenever you tell me you for that matter, and I completely forget that I kept the sabbath. But nothing comes unto me save I call it, so whenever I need it, whether I need it now or in unnumbered years to come, I can only meet what I have kept the sabbath relative to. For the sabbath is part of the creative act of God. So when it happens I may not relate it to anything I have done, but it could not possibly come unless I’ve kept the sabbath relative to it.780 ¶23

So when wars come…what ages ago I imagined it? My secretary, who is now gone for quite a few years, in fact, he died in ’46, Jack Butler. He was born in the Northwest in Seattle. He used to have nightmares based upon William Randolph Hearst’s Yellow Terror. He’d read it, believed it, and he would see the Japanese swimming across the Bay. He’d actually see them in his…and wake in hysterics, wake in this nightmare. Well, we have had a war with Japan, they did attack first. But in his mind’s eye, he was so confident that Wm. Randolph Hearst was telling the truth. He was selling papers. If he could just take a man like Jack Butler and put a headline out, and stories out, and make him buy toothpaste and therefore get the toothpaste manufacturers to use his medium. Scare people first and then sell them another scare item…and that’s the entire press. And so, you keep the sabbath, we keep the sabbath, relative to something.780 ¶24

I would suggest to you that you keep the sabbath relative to God’s Promise. His Promise is that you will be born again, because you must be born again. In the 3rd chapter of John, “Unless you be born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven”. It’s the new age. You’ll continue…you won’t die, even though men call you dead, you will not die. So keep the sabbath relative to God’s eternal Promise that you must be born again. How? Well, God is keeping that Promise in the depth of my soul. But you accept it, even though you are in prison, even though you do this, that or the other, and it seems a horrible thing judged by human standards, still keep the sabbath relative to the Promise. You must be born again; therefore, I will be born again, and go blindly on in the assumption that I’ll be born again.780 ¶25

Now, there are millions in the world who think that they’re born again, because they’ve had a little change, seemingly, a change of some little outward action. I saw in today’s Sunday Times, the New York Sunday Times—it comes every week, well, it was one day late, it came today—and this man, a member of the Baptist church, some part of Virginia, I think it was called Bristol, Virginia, he was just arrested for breaking into the church and given seven years for breaking into the church. The elders of the church said he was only baptized that very day. He was baptized in the church. The very day after the baptism he saw a great opportunity for self-gain and broke into the church. And people think baptism means something. It hasn’t a thing to do with reality!780 ¶26

There’s only one baptism: the baptism of the Holy Spirit, when you stand in the presence of the risen Christ, and he embraces you, and you are incorporated into his body, and you are one with the body of Christ. No one with mortal eyes sees you [...]. They see the same garment they saw before. But you sleep in that body, you wake in that body, and you walk in that body. Though you are ill, though you are this, that for the other, the body that you really are is the body of the risen Christ, and no mortal eye sees it. But you feel it and see it and know the being that you are. That’s baptism, baptism of the Holy Spirit. Then you go through the entire series of events of the risen Christ: the birth, the resurrection, the discovery of the fatherhood, and everything concerning Jesus Christ. Now keep the sabbath relative to it, and you will find that it will come just as suddenly upon you as this author, this scholarship, came upon this father and mother for their son, who is now eligible to enter Andover.780 ¶27

So, nothing happens by chance in this world. There is a law behind everything in the world; there’s nothing by chance. And so, if you are this, that or the other, it all started somewhere and someone kept the sabbath relative to that act. Because the most fertilized egg in the world, if I looked at it and I broke it and didn’t let it rest until its normal interval of time, it couldn’t break the shell and come out. So give me the most perfect idea, clearly fertilized, now break it by not resting, and so it’s an addled egg. So I say to everyone, dream nobly, glorious noble dreams, and then rest relative to the state that you can judge perfect. Listen to the words, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”. “And God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done”. Now, the word sabbath, which is the seventh day, which is divine perfection, is seven in scripture, divine perfection. The sabbath means “to cease, to desist from, to be at an end”… always the end, to be at an end. I always start at the end. I see the whole vast thing just as though it were true, and then I rest in the end, and the end determines the means by which the end will be fulfilled. But I must rest in the end and keep the sabbath.780 ¶28

The 1st Psalm begins with a blessing, a beatitude pronounced upon the one who keeps the law of God. This is part of the law, “Blessed is he who delights in the law of the Lord…for in all that he does, he prospers”. It begins with this wonderful beatitude pronounced upon man who could keep the sabbath. It’s part of the creative act. That you can do no more, you’ve done it. And the whole thing is one of complete relief. Of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. So, you perform a creative act and you reach the point of climax and then there is relief. And there’s no pleasure comparable to that moment of climax, of relief. You can’t continue with the act, it’s done. Well now, can you keep the sabbath after you have reached climax? You’ve seen it clearly in your mind’s eye; you’ve constructed a scene which would imply the fulfillment of a dream; and you bring yourself to the point of complete climax in your love of what has happened; well then, you drop it. You fertilized it and that whole thing is done. You go about your Father’s business, creating other things. Not waiting anxiously, like the rice dish, but going about like the lima bean dish with all the time in the world to wait for it. It comes out and does a far more marvelous job than the anxious moment of the rice dish.780 ¶29

What a wonderful letter. I can’t thank her enough. If you take it to heart, what a lesson you have tonight in her letter and the story of the sabbath. I’ll take it to New York and tell that to those who will come. I’ll tell it wherever I go to show them the true meaning of the sabbath. For God spoke in her and to her, and revealed through her the true meaning of the sabbath. That’s why I ask you to share with me all of your dreams and your visions, because we are encouraged by each other’s communion with God. It’s not some person on the outside speaking, it’s from the depths of her soul, telling her what she had done and what she ought to do. It’s instruction. It’s a merciful God…doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t kill you, just shows you what you’re doing. And the other one, remembered, and tells me in his letter, “I swear in the interval I never once brought it up to my wife. The boy was doing well in school, now gone through the local public school, and unusually bright, and here comes the scholarship, an offer to enter Phillips Andover, an excellent prep school.” So I ask you to do it, because tonight, tomorrow night, who knows? We make our exits based upon the call and one could go tonight.780 ¶30

Here is Henry Luce…I read the obituary in Murray, in the news, of all the things, in the Sports column of the Times, Jim Murray…and speaking of marvelous writers. Well, I didn’t realize that Jim Murray wrote for him. For fourteen years he worked with Henry Luce. He said, “Henry Luce taught me journalism.” He said, “A month ago I met him. I’m going to Houston to see these two primates bash each other’s brains out and Luce was going elsewhere.” He said, “Luce never concerned himself with anyone who was cut apart…he said that wasn’t news. If I came in and said I just saw a woman cut in two, that wasn’t news to Luce at all. If a war went on and millions were killed, that isn’t news, that’s part of the structure of the world. But to find an ancient vase that someone created, [...], or to find a ancient picture that was restored, the artist that could restore the ancient masterpiece, that excited his mind. Now he said, “Here is a man who took a borrowed 85,000 dollars and turned it in to 400 million. His magazine today, Time magazine, five million a week; here is Life, eight and a half million a week; he has Sports Illustrated; he has Fortune; and he started with started with borrowing $85,000. He came here at the age of fourteen from China. He was born in China of Presbyterian ministers who were, well, they were missionaries. Never left China until he was fourteen, came here, and then went through Yale—was judged the most brilliant boy in his class. And his partner who started with him, he was judged the most likely to succeed. He died in ’29. And then Luce went on. And here was this thing. Well then, he went to the bathroom, had a massive heart attack, and made his exit from this world, leaving this fantastic thing behind him for others to carry on. But if that was his life, as Murray said it was, he has gone forward into a world—he hasn’t been born from above; he can’t enter the kingdom of heaven—so he will be in a world just like this. But what noble dreams he has planted, if that really is true of the man, that a vase, an ancient vase, proving that someone was creative unnumbered ages ago, if that was his mind, that he was fired by it, and if someone could restore a great masterpiece and bring it back to its almost original state, and these things fired that mind, well then, what would he be doing now?—creating in this manner. That’s the man, learning to create.780 ¶31

We’re all here only to be like our Father and our Father is a creator. That’s all he is, he’s a creator. He creates out of nothing: Calls a thing that is not as though it were, and that which was unseen becomes seen, as he keeps the sabbath. So learn this night to keep the sabbath relative to your children, even though they’re going through hell, or think they are, and going through this and making a mess of themselves, alright, so learn to keep the sabbath. Because we are the children of the Most High God…and haven’t we gone through a mess? But he in the depth of our soul is keeping the sabbath relative to that which he promised: You must be born again…for we aren’t earning it by our creativity. He is keeping that sabbath relative to us, and no power in the world could separate us from the love of God. Read it in the last three verses of the 8th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Neither death, nor life—and he mentions all the powers that man could ever think of—can separate us from the love of God.780 ¶32

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * [...] the solid foundation which is the highway of God [...]. I’ll share it with you on Monday as it was shared with me only yesterday morning. From now on it will be Monday, Friday, with the exception of the 17th of March, when we have no lecture hall. So every Monday and Friday, with that one night out we’ll be here ’til the end of April, and then we close until some time in September. Now are there any questions, please?780 ¶33

Paul in his letter to the Colossians said, “I strive for you to have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery…of Christ” . Now, you wouldn’t think there’s any mystery to it. You ask any Christian if they know who Christ is and they instantly reply, yes, Jesus the Son of God. Paul doesn’t state that. He is striving with man to change these fixed ideas of the past, that they may have this assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ. I find most of us are very careless when we read it, so we come to it with fabricated misconceptions, and these fixed ideas that we bring to what we read will color what we receive from the written Word.778 ¶1

Now here, in scripture we find the expression “Christ” used of the human race viewed ideally, and the one man of that race who attained to that ideal. So here, we find the human race referred to as Christ, “Christ our life,” we are told in the same Colossians . Then we find “the Lord Jesus Christ.” But Christ is our life and that is of humanity. If you took all humanity, all the generations of men, and their experiences, and condensed them into a single being and personified it, you’ll find David. David is the personification of humanity, the eternal youth. All men in whom this ideal flowers is represented by the being called Jesus. We’re told that David contains within himself the Christ-seed and he was anointed by the Lord. We’re told, he will bring forth a son, and the son will be the Lord’s son; and the Lord’s son and the Lord are one. Therefore, he’s going to bring forth a being that instead of being his son, he’s going to be his father. Now that’s a mystery. How can I give birth to my father? So in David is the Christ-seed. The Christ-seed is the Son of God that is Christ. When man brings forth the Christ-seed so that it buds and flowers and it comes into fruitage, that one is Jesus. Now every being in this world will flower and every being in this world because they’re bringing it into fulfillment will be Jesus the Lord. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” . We can all say that Christ is this, that or the other, but we cannot say that Jesus is the Lord save by the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit is one who brings to one’s remembrance all that was told him in the beginning.778 ¶2

Now to understand this we go back to a parable. For the story of Jesus Christ is really an acted parable, that’s what it is. So we go back now to a parable, the parable of the prodigal son. If you’re familiar with it and I think you are, the one who was left at home complained when the one who went into the prodigal state returned and they killed the fatted calf and they brought the robe and the ring and put shoes on his feet, and made much over the one who wasted all things. He complained, and then was told, “Son, all that is mine is yours. It is right that we should make merry and be glad, for this your bother was dead and he’s alive; he was lost and he’s found.” So now that he’s returned, remember he came back from death and he was lost .778 ¶3

Well, we enter into this world of tribulation and death. Before we entered this world of death we were, but we did not know that we were. We were dead to what we had; for all that the Father has is mine, and mine is his, but I didn’t know it. I had to come into this experience of tribulation and death to know it is all mine, and the only way it can be all mine is if I become the Father, for it is all the Father’s. So I did not know it was all mine, and I could have this whole earth today and die of starvation not knowing it is mine for the taking. I may not have a dollar on me and I may think I must have a dollar to buy the loaf of bread, not knowing it is mine. So before I came into the world of tribulation and death I was, but I did not know that I was. So I was dead to all that I owned. I came in here and became lost. What loss? My consciousness wandered even from that state, and that was being lost in this world. At the very end of it I’ll return; and the Father will embrace me and place upon me the robe of authority which is his and the ring of authority which is his. I’ll be completely covered, and the fatted calf, a symbol of abundance, will be mine. I’ll be set free by the shoes, for only slaves went without shoes, so they will shod me and therefore I’ll be one that is free. Everyone is going to have this experience.778 ¶4

At the end of the journey, that which is personified as humanity is David, just as I’m standing before you. No one is going to change it. It’s not spelled out in the scriptures, but as Blake said—and he was quite the student of the scriptures—“That which can be made explicit to the idiot is not worth my care.” They wanted to rouse the faculties to act so that it was not completely spelled out that man would dig and digging find it within himself, for this seed is within man. Every child born of woman contains the Christ-seed, this incorruptible seed, and you cannot lose it. It contains within itself the power of not only self-expression but self-development. The whole thing will unfold within a man, every man, and in the end man will mature. For maturity is when man becomes his own father’s father. For, if I came out of humanity, humanity is my father. If the symbol of humanity is David, and I’m told in Samuel that I come out of David, as I come out of David then David is my father. But I begin to mature and discover that I did not really come out of David in the sense that he is forever my father. I use humanity to take this seed and bring it to fruition that it could bud and flower and attain, well, the fullness of all that was contained within it. So when it completely does its job I look back and here what I came out of—as it were who fathered me—stands before me and I am his father. So man matures when he becomes his own father’s father…and that is the mystery of Christ.778 ¶5

So you’re told, “When you are gathered together and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body”—and this is the Lord speaking through his prophet Samuel—but “I will be his father, and he shall be my son” . He comes out of your body and seemingly is your son, but “I will be his father.” And then this one is made to say, “I and my Father (meaning God) are one” . So everyone here will discover one day he is God the Father and his son is humanity. But humanity brought into focus as one single being is David. So everyone is going to have the experience of being God the Father; and because he is God the Father there must be a son bearing witness of his fatherhood; and that son is David.778 ¶6

I can’t spell it out any clearer than that, and I think it is clearer than you will find in scripture, and yet I am only giving you my experience of scripture. I am not manufacturing it, I’m not adding to it, and I’m not speculating; I am taking it right out of scripture. They were right in not spelling it out possibly, but the time has come, as far as I’m concerned, to spell it out just as clearly as I possibly can, and not leave any doubts in your mind.778 ¶7

And then he said, “I strive for you that you may have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.” Well here, God’s mystery of Christ…and we find that the term is used to express both the human race and that member of the human race who actually attained the ideal that David represented. So that, the human race certainly is not an ideal when you see it scattered, when it’s always at war; but when we see it brought together into one single point at the end, it is a beautiful being. We can’t see the beauty in war when the whole thing is being shattered. But in the end of the journey, all this horror that…we only see the horror…when it’s brought together and personified, it is the most glorious youth you could ever conceive, and that youth is David the Son of God.778 ¶8

And what comes out of this horrible experience called humanity is God himself. It was God who buried himself in man, and in the very end he comes out of man. Because he comes out of man, you would naturally say he is the son of man. So the scripture will go along with that and say “I will bring forth from you your son.” But when the son comes out he is not humanity’s son, he is God who is humanity’s Father. Humanity is gathered together into a single being, not multiple beings, and personified. The individual man in whom that Christ-seed blossoms and fruits looks out and sees the fruit of his labor. And now he shares that labor, that bread and that wine—which is simply the personification that stands before him—with everyone who will listen to him. He shares the fruit of his labor and tells them of the mystery of Christ.778 ¶9

Go back and see now in this prodigal son story it was the second one that came out. We go back now to the first second-son, and that was Abel. He was killed: “And Cain killed Abel.” We go now to the second second-son and we find that it is Isaac. We are told that Ishmael, the first, tried to destroy Isaac, and he had to be sacrificed, or was offered in sacrifice to the Lord. We come now to the third second-son and we find that it is Jacob. We are told the Lord loved Jacob but he hated Esau. We come now to the fourth and we find now the twins of Tamar, whose father was Judah. We find when the first one comes out, the midwife puts a little red string around the finger to identify him as the first who came through, but he pulled the hand back. And then comes Perez and Perez comes out and says, “What a breach you have made” and so they called him Perez which means “breach” . And then he comes out. Now read the genealogy of Jesus and you’ll find these second-sons all in it . So the second-son is simply the—not a second son of the womb of a woman, not a thing to do with any second son in this world—but the choice of God. They were chosen by him in the beginning of time; before the foundation of the world we were chosen in him, and we came out that we may know our inheritance, and that we know we are one with God. There’s nothing but God. But he left unnumbered for a future age. No matter how many we are in this world, billions, and there will be billions and billions, more numerous than the stars of the heaven, more numerous than the sands of the sea. And yet, there are many who did not come out. They are not going to come out at this period of time. They will come out eventually, but we will all be back as God the Father before we decide on another venture into this world. So here, you are blessed because you’re out; and because you are in this world you are the second son, and the second son is beloved by God. And in the end he tells Jacob, “I am your inheritance…you inherit me, you inherit God” . And how would I know I actually inherit God?—when his Son calls me Father. There is no other way I’ll ever know that I am God the Father save through his only begotten son David who calls me Father. This is the story of the scripture.778 ¶10

But this is the most fantastic, incredible story that man could ever accept. How can he believe that a man becomes his own father’s father? And that’s exactly how the Book of Matthew begins: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then he turns the entire thing around, because the whole Bible is based upon a peculiar reversal of order: the second becomes the first all through the Bible, down to the very end. So here, I find myself coming out of humanity. Humanity congeals and forms itself into a single being and stands before me and calls me Father. And yet, I came out of humanity…something came out of this body…and coming out of this garment of death, I didn’t know it then. I knew I was born from above, but I didn’t know, not yet, waiting. Then five months later, 139 days later, humanity stands before me, collected into one single being and calls me Father. Then I knew that I only experienced that state to join the heavenly being called Jesus the Lord. For Jesus is the personification of all those in whom the Christ-seed erupted into flower and fruitage…as David is the personification of the sum total of all of humanity and the experiences of humanity.778 ¶11

So when you dwell upon it, you’ll see the most fantastic things waiting for you. For he is anointed, and what was the anointment? He was anointed with the destiny of Lordship… that was his anointment. And so, then you’re told “Rise and anoint him for this is he” and Samuel took the holy oil and anointed David in the midst of his brothers. David never lost a battle, as recorded in scripture…not one battle did he ever lose. And yet everything that man is accused of doing David did, and the Lord said it was good and very good. Even when he took the other’s man’s wife the Lord did not condemn him, not really, because he did the Lord’s will. He said, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my own heart, who will do all my will” . So everything is just the will of the Lord: “As I have willed it, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand” . “And my will will not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly” .778 ¶12

Who can understand what we read in the papers of the horrors of the world? I saw in today’s paper that here back east this vast A & P store, I had no idea what an arsonist or arson had caused them last year, or in the last two or three years over fifty-odd million dollars. That a certain crowd, they call it the Mafia, whoever they are, wanted to sell A & P a certain detergent, and they made a test of it and found that it was not good, it was no earthly good. It would simply destroy rather than help any housewife, and they refused to carry it in their enormous chain. They were threatened and two managers were shot by the gang. Then they started putting on the pressure and they burned down so many warehouses and it ran over fifty-two million dollars. They just caught one young lad, twenty years old, who was just used as a front to do it, while the big ones with their [...] billions remained hidden, they didn’t do it. This is what is known as a proximate cause. He is now judged and will be judged as the one who did it. And he did…and possibly they paid him a hundred dollars for the job and he was proud at the age of twenty to serve these mighty fellows that he thinks in his mind’s eye are mighty fellows. Now when you read that, you wonder what good could there ever be in God’s world? Time will prove that it’s good. Time will prove everything in this world is good, that “All things work for good for those who love the Lord” . There isn’t a thing in this world he cannot resolve, because he is the master artist, and the most horrible discord in this world that you and I judge as discord he will resolve into an accord, something that the human ear can appreciate. In the end, everything is going to stand before us collected into a single being; and he is so beautiful you can’t believe that he came out of humanity and that he is the sum total of all that is human. That every being in the world with all the horrors, all the things he’s gone through and what he might have done, in the end it all goes to make that beauty that is called David. He is the complete personification of the human race, and you cannot describe his beauty. Well, you can’t say that of man, can you? And yet I saw David. In my mind’s eye the impression is so great that when I think of David I can see him as vividly as I see my mother or my father or anyone that I know intimately and that I love. His face is just as vivid in my mind’s eye right now as theirs. When you see him, you can’t describe the beauty of David.778 ¶13

And who is his father?—God. Well, I am his father…that experience I have had…and so in scripture, “What think ye of the Christ?” Now here comes another use of it, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” and they answered, “The son of David.” And then he answered, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” . When you speak of the Lord, you speak of the Father, for the Lord is the Father; and even in ancient days a child always referred to his father as “my lord.” So David stands in the presence of the one called “the Lord,” called “Jesus,” and he calls him “my Father,” and calls him “my lord.” So he’s telling who he is and they still did not understand it. For in the very end he says to them, “Now I’m going to my Father and your Father, my God and your God. But I and my Father are one.” Remain until it comes to you, he told them: “Remain until you are clothed with power from above” . The power of what? The power of understanding; the power to really grasp the things that Paul has been trying to say. He said, “I strive for you that you may have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ.” So I have given it to you this night…that is, God’s mystery of Christ.778 ¶14

For the word Christ is used both as the human race when completely personified in the ideal form and that ideal viewed properly is David; and also of the one of that race who actually realized the ideal. So everyone in whom that ideal is realized joins Jesus as the same Jesus, not another, because there aren’t two Jesuses, only one. So the minute it’s realized in you, you are the Lord Jesus. You still bear your present identity, you still bear your present name among those who know you by that name, but you, when you take off the garment for the last time, you are the Lord Jesus. While you are here and you put the garment down in what the world would call sleep, you are then the Lord Jesus doing your work. And what is the work? The work you do…not building homes…simply stirring into a quickening state those who you’ve drawn unto yourself. Night after night you’re trying to awaken them, trying to lighten the eyes so they would not continue in the sleep of death. Everyone that comes to you that’s the work you do night after night. Come back to this world and pick up the little thing because you have chores to do in the world of Caesar. You will do it, and yet the minute you put your body down, you’re off doing the work because you are already one with the Lord Jesus…you aren’t going to be. But that wonderful inheritance cannot be actual or at least become real in the normal sense of the word, until you finally take off the garment for the last time. When you take it off for the last time, instantly you are one with the Lord Jesus and you aren’t two, yet without loss of identity.778 ¶15

So you come into this world for the purpose of knowing what you possess. It was given to you, but you did not know it: “Son, all that is mine is yours. It was fitting that we should make merry and be glad. For, this your brother was dead and now he’s alive; he was lost and is found” …only because he came out. But you didn’t come out, you remained in, and you served me in your only wonderful unconscious way just like the functions of my body serve this body in its own unconscious way. Right now what I had for dinner is being digested, assimilated, built into my body as bone, tissue, blood, and what I can not assimilate the body will unconsciously expel from my system. So it’s all part of me, but these are playing their unconscious roles. But you and I came out to play conscious roles in the body of God, and that conscious role is being God himself. For there is only God awakening, and the awakening will go on forever and forever and forever. For there is a limit to how many he will take at any one time to bring them into this world of tribulation and death, and they are measured by the number of the sons of God which he chose in himself before that the world was. So everyone here is destined to have the identical experience of the discovery within himself of the fatherhood of God. How does he know it? When God’s son, which is humanity, calls him Father. So every part in the world that one could ever play when summarized is David, and I came out of him. I came out of one being and he summarizes all of the parts in the world. He gave me birth, I came out of the body, so he gave me birth; and yet I matured, and as I matured I realized that he is my son and I am not his son. So how can you say he is David’s son when David in the Spirit calls him “my lord?”778 ¶16

I hope this is becoming clearer and clearer, for it’s so important that you get this distinction between the two aspects or uses of the word “Christ” as they appear in scripture. When you see the word, don’t do what the whole vast world does: think only in terms of the one in whom the ideal was attained. Think of humanity that contains that ideal in the form of that precious, incorruptible seed that is called the Christ-seed; and every child born of woman contains that Christ-seed. It cannot be corrupted. It contains within itself the power of its own self-expression, its own self-development, and it is going to unfold in every being in the world. Every being will one day stand as the Lord; and confirmation that he is a father, the son, the sum total of humanity, will stand before him in that heavenly beauty and call him Father.778 ¶17

So these parables are to instruct us and the whole story of Jesus is an acted parable that’s to instruct us. So when Paul thought he had it, he came back to the Galatians and he said, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Now are you going to leave this and start worshipping some little flesh? He asked them, how did you get it? “Did you get it by works of the law, or by hearing this story with faith?” “Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” . Well, the whole vast Christian world has ended with the flesh. They see a fleshly being, a body, called Jesus, a man of flesh and blood who raised up a body of flesh and blood. When he tells us in the gospel of John “I and my Father are one and my Father is Spirit,” if I and my Father are one and my Father is Spirit, what am I? Am I not Spirit? So he asks you, are you going to finish with the flesh when you began with the Spirit? Today the entire Christian community worships a man of flesh and blood.778 ¶18

So when he said, “No longer will I regard anyone after the flesh. Even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” . Well, who is he regarding? Now he’s talking to people and if you were present he would say that you are flesh and blood. You speak to me, you’re flesh and blood. Then who is he talking about? He’s talking about the characters of scripture. These are the ones he would no longer regard as flesh and blood. He now sees that the whole thing is an allegory. Then he tells the story of Abraham, and tells quite clearly “and that is an allegory.” So, “I no longer regard anyone from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” He’s referring to the characters of scripture; because as a devout Jew he thought Abraham lived as a man and Isaac lived as a man and Jacob lived as a man. Now he sees none of them after the flesh. And so he cannot now see these are the background, the spiritual eternal states that culminate in the one in whom the ideal is in bloom. He cannot see the blooming ideal as flesh when he goes back in time and sees all the others are Spirit; eternal states of the Spirit through which the immortal soul passes, and comes to fruition in that one state called Jesus, which is simply the fulfillment, the fruition of that seed that was planted in the beginning in man. That’s the seed called Isaac. So you’ll find that the second was always sacrificed: Abel was sacrificed, Isaac sacrificed, Jacob, Perez, one after the other, and culminates in the one grand being who is God himself.778 ¶19

I hope it is clearer tonight, because I gave much time to it this week. I have but two weeks left, that’s four lectures, and it is my real desire…I can say with Paul, “I strive for you that you may have all the riches of an assured understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, of Christ.” That you will not when you hear the word suddenly jump in your mind’s eye to some being in history of 2,000 years ago, but see that great distinction between the two uses of the word Christ: one representing humanity in its ideal form, and one representing the man from that human race in whom the ideal was attained. Everyone in whom that ideal is attained is Jesus Christ. There’s only one Jesus Christ and yet without loss of identity we are all Jesus Christ. That’s the great mystery.778 ¶20

So when you read it in the future, try to keep this great important division, this dual state concerning the use of the word Christ. So he speaks at one moment in the name of the Father, the next moment he’s speaking in the name of the Son, and you’ve got to discriminate between the two. All in the same chapter he is speaking. One moment he is the Father, one moment he is the Son, and you’ve got to actually discriminate it as you read it and see how he’s playing the part. And so, you’re playing God’s part, you’re doing God’s will, and he planned it just as it has come out and as it will be consummated. So in spite of the horrors of the world, the end result will be so beautiful, so beautiful! You can’t describe the beauty of the summary of it all when he calls you Father; and he is the sum total of all humanity and all of the experiences of humanity. How could such beauty come out of it? It does…and that was the plan before the beginning of time.778 ¶21

So he gave us all in that state a preview of what we would experience. But we did not know that at the end of the experience that wonderful promise that we would become God himself. How could man actually believe it? For the son is still complaining that he never once received a kiss. He said, “I have been with you always and you did not give me even one kiss. And here this wastrel goes and he wastes everything, finds himself at the end eating the husk that belongs to the swine, and he returns and you kill the fatted calf. I never had a kiss. You give him the robe, the best robe, you give him the ring, and you put shoes on his feet, and you make merry and you are glad. Why?” He tells him, but the boy cannot understand it.778 ¶22

Many years ago I had this vision to illustrate this point. I came upon an enormous sea of sunflowers, beautiful sunflowers, and each flower was a human face, beautiful faces, each flower rooted in the earth. When one swayed, all swayed, if one smiled, all smiled. They moved in unison. I was standing there alone, certainly not as beautiful by the wildest stretch of the Imagination as these individual beautiful flowers…for every face was beautiful, angelic…and yet I knew at that moment I was freer in my ugliness, in my limitation than all of them put together. For, they moved together, and not one could detach itself and leave that crowd. Not one could frown if the other smiled; not one could stop bending over if all bent over. So all moved in unison, they all bent together and they all smiled together, and they all did everything together. They were the sons who never came out. I came out and having gone through hell up to that vision, then I showed the marks on me of my experiences. Compared to the beauty of these, well, you couldn’t compare them. Yet I knew that I enjoyed a measure of freedom that they could not dream of. All of them put together couldn’t conceive of the freedom that I now enjoyed because I could walk among them. I could smile and I could laugh and I could cry, and I could do all kinds of things. They couldn’t do it unless all did it. So they did not know that they owned all that the Father owned.778 ¶23

So he said, all that is mine is yours, but you wouldn’t take it…and if you don’t take it it’s because you don’t know you have it. You would hesitate to take it, because you’ll think in terms of the consequences were it not yours. If you took what is not yours, you could be arrested and imprisoned. So the feeling that, well, it isn’t mine then you don’t take it. So you go back to the Father as the Father and everything is yours. Then you understand that 50th Psalm, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is mine and all within it. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine, and were I hungry I would slay and eat.” Why tell anyone if it’s all mine. Why ask any man’s permission for something if it’s mine. You don’t say, “May I use it?”…you use it. So this is the whole story.778 ¶24

But man is not aware of his inheritance until he has the experience of the birth from above. When he is born from above, then he will not be concerned with raising $5,000 towards a house or payment on a house. The minute he or she is born from above it will come. In the meanwhile, we make efforts to bring it to pass, and that’s all right, it comes to pass. But apply the law towards that amount of money, and assume that you have it, and sleep as though you did, and in that manner it will be drawn to you. You keep on applying the law towards this end, and these many ends, lovely ends, until it happens. When it actually happens within you and the body comes off for the last time, you are the Lord Jesus.778 ¶25

But no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit: “The Holy Spirit when he comes brings you into all remembrance of the things that I’ve told you.” That is what we are told in the 14th of John , when he comes he’ll bring to your remembrance all that I have told you. Now, all that he’s told me he enacted in the drama and, therefore, I will have to re-enact that within me. Then it’s the Holy Spirit in me guiding me into the action of which I was told. I saw the preview of the play, down to the end, and the end has come: I am he.778 ¶26

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Now are there any questions, please?778 ¶27

Good night.778 ¶36

Tonight’s subject is “Speaking from Experience.” There’s a conversation that takes place in the Book of John between Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, and Jesus. It’s the 3rd chapter, and he said to Nicodemus, “We speak of what we know and bear witness to what we see, but you do not accept our testimony. If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”776 ¶1

So here is one who is a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest order in the Jewish faith, and he came at night asking certain questions. Now he did not really ask…he called him “rabbi”…and Jesus admitted the fact that he was a teacher (that’s what a rabbi is); and then proceeded to instruct him concerning a great mystery and said to him, “You must be born from above.” “For unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God” . And he replied, “Can a man who is old enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” And this was answered in a strange way, he said: “That which is born from the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” . But unless you be born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit” .776 ¶2

Then he goes on after the next interruption. This turns into a discourse, really, began as a dialogue and finally the whole thing is moving into a discourse, like an argument. Then he said, “How can this be? You, a master, a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? I tell you, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; no one has ever ascended into heaven but he who descended” . All this is compact in a few verses, which you will find in the first few verses of the 3rd chapter of John.776 ¶3

He takes it literally, on a physical level. The Greek word translated “anew” or “again” or “from above” is Anothin. Scholars claim that you can give no other meaning to the word, especially when you read the context, than “from above, begotten of God, begotten from above.” That birth can be considered either from the father’s side in which case the verb is “to beget” or from the mother’s side in which case the verb is “to bear.” The word here is from the father’s side: “to beget”; it’s “begotten from above, begotten of God.”776 ¶4

Now I tell you from experience this is literally true. He thought you couldn’t take it on the physical level, it could not be literal; but he explained that which is begotten; that which is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Nicodemus didn’t understand it, he just didn’t understand it. Because, what man in this world could understand it unless he had the experience or he believed the one who had the experience?776 ¶5

So here, the story is literally true. He’s speaking of an entirely different age, an age that is not this age at all; where one must have a body equal to that age to exercise a power completely unknown to any man or by any man in this world; an entirely different thing where he’s exercising a creative power that is the power of God. So he has to have a body to exercise that power, to use that power, and this body comes from his birth from above.776 ¶6

Now he makes the statement: “I came out from the Father and I came into the world; again, I am leaving the world and ascending to the Father” . In these four little phrases he admits of a pre-existence: “I came out from the Father…” Well, to come out from the Father is to die. Like a prodigal son he departed from his Father and the Father thought him dead, thought him lost, and said, “My son who was lost is found; he was dead and now he is alive again” . So he admits in that departure, “I came out from the Father,” that he died. “I have come into the world,” that’s incarnation. “Again, I am leaving the world and ascending to the Father” and this is also literally true. Man finds it difficult to understand, but in the course of the evening we will explain it from actual experience.776 ¶7

Well now, let us get down to this level, from experience. I have asked you to join with me and share with me your use of the law, that I in turn may encourage everyone who is here to use the law lovingly to expand their world and make it a wonderful world. Because you can be anything in this world that you really want to be if you’re willing to be vigilant, to be faithful to the assumption that you are already such a person…if you’re willing.776 ¶8

Well, a gentleman wrote me this past week and he said, “On Sunday when we discussed, you reminded me of something that in the interval I had forgotten, that when I discussed possible stories with my producer…and he gave me all these stories…I went home boiling I was so mad. Because I knew I could conceive of many more wonderful stories than the stories that he suggested. I was so mad when I got home, I just simply raged. And I said to myself, audibly, screaming it out—-my wife didn’t hear me—-but I went upstairs and to the mountains I spoke, ‘I don’t have to write for TV, I can write for Broadway shows, write for Broadway plays, I can write books, I can write for pictures. I don’t have to write TV scripts!’ And then I thought, well now, I’ll take his most stupid story, but the most stupid of all the ideas that he gave me, and then I’ll work on it.” So he said, “I gave him the challenge. And so, that story that I worked on was nominated for an award that year. Of all the stories that I’ve ever done, it was the one story nominated for an award as the best story of the year. It was his most stupid story but it was a challenge. So you reminded me on Sunday that a challenge is necessary in this world. So on Monday morning I felt calm and passive, and I was walking on my usual walk, and I was in a mood of “thanking Father” when suddenly I remembered what you had said the day before, on Sunday, about a challenge when I took the most stupid story and developed it into what was nominated for an award. And suddenly I heard the loudest, the most authoritative voice I have ever heard before. Never heard anything as loud as this, with such authority, and I heard it from the depths of my soul; and it is saying to me, and this is what it said, ‘Feed me with challenges! How else can I grow?’”776 ¶9

You think it over: “Feed me with challenges! How else can I grow?” As I’ve told you, God actually became man. Man is the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity; there is no limit to translucence, no limit to expansion. But he took upon himself the limit of contraction, which is man, called Adam, and now Adam has to feed him with challenges that he may create, that he may expand his creative power. For the purpose of the whole thing is simply to create and to develop one’s creative talent, one’s creative power. So, “Feed me with challenges! How else can I grow?” You wouldn’t think that God is growing. God grows, God grows forever and forever. God is truth and truth is a limitless expansion, forever and forever and forever. So it simply comes down to the limit of contraction, assumes the challenge that it can give, and then creates.776 ¶10

He said, “I came out…and the day before I had a story which my producer accepted and liked, and instantly I threw it into the ash can. I want a bigger and a better story, more alive, something more vital, and in one hour I had it. I took the challenge!” And then, in a very sweet way thanked me for reminding him of what he had told me about this stupid story that he developed to the point of receiving at least the nomination for an award. But, in the interval he had forgotten what he did with that challenge.776 ¶11

And now he said to me in the letter that a challenge changes man’s consciousness from the passive state into the active state. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world to lift man’s consciousness to higher and higher levels, a challenge in this world. So I ask you to take what he has given to me, which I am now sharing with you, and use it, and then grow. In growing, God grows. It’s all God; God is playing all the parts. So he very generously gave me in letter form his reaction to our conversation on Sunday, which tonight then I can share with you.776 ¶12

Now, he knows this now from experience, for he got his story in one hour. And a truth that man knows from experience he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or than he can know that same truth in any other way. For instance, I tell you the story and you believe me. Alright, so you believe me, but you don’t know it as you will know it after you’ve tested it and you’ve proved it in the testing. So what you know from experience you know more thoroughly than you know anything else in this world.776 ¶13

So today he knows that a challenge took his consciousness and turned it from the passive state into the active state; that he had the courage to take a story that was already accepted and liked by his producer and discard it, and in one hour come up with a story infinitely better than the one he had discarded. He had the courage to discard one already accepted. Well, that was already money in the bank when you’re getting that sort of money for a half-hour script; but he discarded that and took the challenge, and then rose to a higher level. So I share it with you. You take the challenge.776 ¶14

Now, another lady (she is here this night) and she said this past week to me, “I was talking to some friends and I said, ‘You know, I remember when…’ and as I said ‘I remember when’ it dawned upon me, these are Neville’s words, the words he used to describe a vision of his. And then I said to myself but I am not using it. Here the man shared with us his vision and I haven’t used what he gave me. He gave it to me! I’m now talking to my friends telling them ‘I remember when’ and I myself have not done it.”776 ¶15

She said, “I’ve just written a letter to my landlord to explain to the landlord that I would be unable this month to meet the rent on time. I’ll pay, I’ve always paid, and I will pay, but this month things are difficult. I cannot pay this month, that is, not on time.” Then suddenly ‘I remember when’…then she began to remember when she cleaned a motel room, a hotel room, a private home fourteen dollars a day. Then she lost herself in the mood ‘I remember when’, therefore, that implies she’s not doing it now. The phone rings and a former employer who formerly employed her at ten dollars a day employed her that day at fifty dollars a day. He said, “You put in your bill as long as it will take you to organize a certain something (which she did not explain in her letter) and it’s fifty dollars a day for the work you’re going to do to set this thing in motion.” I remember when…776 ¶16

As I’ve told you, that vision was so clear to me, just as clear as this room here, when I slipped. I’m on my bed here in this city, and suddenly I am in this huge mansion on Fifth Avenue, one of these enormous sixty and seventy-room mansions. And there were three families present, one was grandfather, one was the next generation, and then the third generation. Grandfather was invisible, but the other two generations they were present and always discussing grandfather. And they would say…I heard them, I came in, in Spirit…and I heard them discussing grandfather, who made the fortune that they now enjoyed, the mansion and the income from this entrenched wealth they were now enjoying; but they themselves did not make it. They told the story of grandfather and grandfather said while standing on an empty lot, “I remember when this was an empty lot” and then grandfather would paint a word picture of his desire for that lot, and paint it so vividly that everyone saw it as grandfather saw it. That’s how he made his fortune: He lived from that moment on in his wish fulfilled. “I remember when.”776 ¶17

I woke, it was about three in the morning, and I wrote the entire vision out. Then I went back to bed and re-dreamed the dream, but this time as I re-dreamed it I was grandfather. I had so completely absorbed the message that I found myself in the same mansion with the same people and I told them that I remember when I’m standing on an empty lot, “I remember when this was an empty lot.” Then I would paint the word picture of my desire for that lot and paint it so vividly, so graphically they all saw it. And then I woke.776 ¶18

Well, the 41st chapter of the Book of Genesis tells us that if the vision is double, the doubling of the vision means this, said Joseph to Pharaoh, that God has fixed it and it will shortly come to pass. God has fixed it. This is fixed now if the vision is doubled. God has fixed it and it will shortly come to pass. So I shared it with you.776 ¶19

And now, this lady has been coming faithfully over the years, but like all of us, we hear it, it’s a thrill at the moment, but we don’t carry it into action. She didn’t apply it. But the very day she applied it the phone rings and she is offered fifty dollars a day, not ten dollars a day. So it was a challenge. She took the challenge that “I remember when I only earned ten dollars a day.” Now you can take that same thing, “I remember when my income was only”…any kind of income, a thousand dollars a week, you can make that. You think it’s crazy? Nothing is impossible to God. Feed me with challenges, how else can I grow? That’s the story of God to a friend who is here this night. Feed me with challenges, how else can I grow? And so, if your challenge is that you want…and you name it.776 ¶20

I know in my own case, when I was opposed by my teacher in elocution it was her opposition to my voice and her statement that I could never in eternity earn a dollar using my voice; and she used me as the guinea pig, one of a class of forty, and she made me step forward, and then pointed her finger at Neville and said, “You see Neville? Listen to him. He will never be able to use his voice to earn a dollar, so just watch all that he does, listen to him, and avoid it.” I am the only one of the class of forty using a voice and thoughts behind it to earn a living, and the other thirty-nine are elsewhere. What they are doing, I don’t know, but not one of them ever entered the theater, not one. Not one entered any other part of life where the voice would be used, and she was the great teacher of elocution. But she challenged me…and that was my challenge. I would not allow myself to waste my father’s 600 dollars. He could ill-afford to give me 600 dollars to go to a dramatic school for six months and then come out and be a failure. I knew in my heart I couldn’t do that to him, and so I just would not allow it.776 ¶21

So I say to everyone, everything in this world is possible if you will now accept the challenge. Because, who is accepting it? God is accepting it, because God is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s God. God actually became man that man may become God.776 ¶22

Now, we’ll take you through the book from now to the end of the series (the 26th of this month) and show you how the book is so true, every word of it is true and literally true on deeper levels of the soul. Here is a friend tonight (he’s in the audience) and this happened last week. You’ve heard this story time and again of the crucifixion and the voice that said, “Behold, I say unto you today, you will be with me in paradise” . Well, this lad (he’s just a lad) he found himself in vision in a theater, and here was this huge big screen. To the left of the screen is a cross almost his height or a little bit more than his height. Then a man suddenly appeared out of nowhere, walked to the cross, turned around and faced the audience, and then stretched his hands out, and fused with the cross. Then a voice said, “I say unto you today, you will be with me in Paradise…for a little while.” I can’t throw any light on it…but at least he’s honest and he’s telling me exactly what he heard.776 ¶23

And when a vision breaks into words then deity is present. The very presence of deity is confirmed as the vision breaks into words, as told us in the 3rd of Exodus . Here from the bush…and suddenly the vision breaks into words and the very moment it breaks into words, the revelation begins: “Say I AM has sent you” . And the presence of deity is always confirmed whenever the vision breaks into words. So in this case the vision broke into words.776 ¶24

Now what that tag-line is, which is not recorded in scripture, “for a little while,” I do not know. He wrote me this letter just a few days ago and I do not know. It has not been revealed to me why the tag-line. But it’s obvious what the first part of it is, “Behold, I say unto you today, you will be with me in Paradise.” But why “for a little while”? Yet it does tell us that because of the instant, or rather, forever expansion of God, all things are only for a season. It’s always a growth and a growth and a growth, forever and forever. So he has shared that with me and I have shared it with you.776 ¶25

But I tell you from my own experience everything in scripture is true. I have had almost every experience that is recorded in the gospels concerning Jesus Christ, from the birth through to the very end…every one. I have not had the story of Lazarus, no, I haven’t had that one. But I’ve had the dove. I’ve had all the stories of scripture as recorded. They take place in the soul of man; they don’t take place on the outside at all. For it is said of him, We know where this man came from, we know his origin, and when the Christ comes no one will know where he comes from. So they rejected him because they knew his origin. But when Christ comes, so they thought, he will emerge in some strange mysterious way. And he does, but he comes in a mysterious way in man that man himself did not know.776 ¶26

Now listen to the words that we started off with the meeting. He tells us he’s only talking of things that he knows: I tell you what I know and bear witness to what I’ve seen, and you will not accept my testimony. He’s only testifying to what he’s actually experienced, what he’s seen, and they will not accept his testimony. “Now if I tell you of earthly things and you will not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?”776 ¶27

So he tells them earthly things—all the signs of earthly things; all the signs of health; transforming a man who’s poor into a man who is rich; a man who could not sell a material into one who sells all that he can write; a man who was unwell into a man who never felt better in his life. So he transforms all this, and they will not believe what he tells them of how he did it. He only did it in his Imagination, for he said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you’ve received and you will”; that’s all that you do . Well, if he could convince himself of the reality of what he’s now imagining, then it should externalize itself if that principle is true. Well, it did. But he told them how he did it. They couldn’t believe that; they wanted some other kind of a trick. And he’s telling them that this is all that you do: When you know what you want, believe that you have it and you will have it. And if one can get to that point of belief, then everything would come into this world based upon the great law of Israel.776 ¶28

So he recited the entire story for them. In the 78th Psalm the whole history of Israel is recorded. He said, “Lend me your ears”—or let me have your ears, your understanding, your attention—-“and I will open my mouth in a parable and speak in dark sayings as of old” . And then he tells them he will tell them all the things that the fathers said that everyone should hear, and then carry it on to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation, and all the unborn generations, all the wonders that God wrought.776 ¶29

And the very end it comes to David, in the very end of this very long chapter the 78th, which is a chapter by Asaph and Asaph means “the gatherer.” He gathers all these things together. We have twelve psalms by Asaph, the 73rd through the 83rd. And then the 50th, and that 50th is the one where: “If I were hungry I wouldn’t tell you; for the earth is mine and all that is in it. The cattle on a thousand hills they’re mine” . And were I hungry I would slay and eat, why should I tell you when it’s all mine? That’s the first psalm that he gave us, the 50th. Then he gave us the other eleven, the 73rd through the 83rd, and the name simply means “to gather together.” He gathers all the traditions, all the stories of the fathers, and he tells them to the next generation, and tells them to tell it to the next generation and keep on telling it until one day they experience it.776 ¶30

And so, we tell you, and then one after the other has an experience. The one this day was the cross; he’s experienced it. He knows how true that story is. But what are we told in scripture? “Oh you foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Isn’t it a drama vicariously done? “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the working of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” . It takes place in Spirit, not in the flesh. No one was crucified physically. Yes, undoubtedly in this barbarous world of ours tens of thousands of men undoubtedly by some tyrant, some sadist, were crucified. But that’s not the story.776 ¶31

The crucifixion is in Spirit, and I know from my own personal experience it is in Spirit, for I was; and it’s the most glorious sensation in the world. You can’t conceive of the thrill, the joy when the vortices nail you to this garment; when each hand, each foot, side and the head become a vortex, and these vortices, six of them, nail you to this body. And the thrill! It’s sheer ecstasy when you have it done, and you hear the words which means God’s presence is here. And then God speaks from the depths of your soul: “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, yes, I dreamed that I’m you.” He’s dreaming that he’s you.776 ¶32

Now to come back to our friend: “Feed me with challenges.” I’m dreaming that I’m you; I’m your very being, your own wonderful I-am-ness is God. Now, God can do anything, all things are possible to God, so feed me with challenges, how else can I grow? And so be bold enough to take something that you have written, that you have presented, that was accepted and liked, and you know that’s money in the bank, and throw it in the ashcan, not good enough. And then take a challenge, something more vital, something more wonderful, something more thrilling and write it, and in one hour get it. Get something far better than what you’re quite willing, just for money’s sake to accept, because there’s money for you. So you take it this night and take a large sum.776 ¶33

If anyone had told me when I worked at Macy’s for, what, eighteen dollars a week and did everything in the place for eighteen bucks, if anyone told me then that I would in the not too far future be making five hundred dollars a week, why, I would have laughed at them. But I did. One day I quit Macy’s. I don’t mean fired. I was fired from Penney, J. C. Penney. So I worked for J. C. Penney and they gave me twenty-two dollars a week, and one day they fired me. I asked them why, what have I done that’s wrong? They said, “Nothing wrong, but we have an economy in this country that when things are slow we let people off. You’ve been working here for a year and a half, and so we just simply have to economize, and so you have to go.” I said, “Where I come from you fire a person because he’s done something that is wrong…that if I’ve stolen or if I’ve done something that is wrong causing the company loss, fire me, but don’t fire me because of certain strange trends in this world.” “But that’s how we operate,” they said to me. Well, they thought, well, this man, he’s a boy and he’s stupid and he’s foolish, we’ll give him a letter, and send him over to Macy’s. So they did. He wrote me a little letter and sent me to his friend who was the employment agency at Macy’s, so I moved to Macy’s and gave my little letter. They said, “We can’t start you at any twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a week, we’ll start you at eighteen.” So alright, I have to pay rent, so they started me at eighteen. So I worked there for a year, and one day I said to myself, “You’re getting nowhere fast, still making eighteen dollars a week, and doing everything that they ask you to do because you don’t want to be fired.” So I had the courage to quit without a nickel in my pocket, and six months later I was making five hundred dollars a week as a dancer. Went off to England; five hundred bucks a week. I never danced in my life before, save ballroom dancing. I told my dancing partner when she said “Can you dance?” “Certainly I can dance!” She said, “Alright, let me see.” Well, I said, “I danced with someone else, I’ll dance with you.” And so, that’s how it started. So off to England; we got a hundred pounds. In those days, a pound was worth four dollars and eighty-four cents, not today’s two, eighty; and I got a hundred pounds a week dancing in London for three months…from Macy’s eighteen dollars a week. So I say, you take a challenge, you simply throw yourself out completely and walk on the water, and either go down and drown, or simply live better.776 ¶34

So here, I am speaking from experience—I am not theorizing—when I tell you I’ve done it. I have taken God’s word just as he told me, and then stepped right out and did it. When no power in this world could have taken me out of our Armed Forces, God took me out, with an honorable discharge. No power in the world could have taken me out, but God took me out. I simply assumed that I was out and slept night after night in the assumption that I am home as an honorably discharged civilian. In nine days, the very man who refused it called me in and then discharged me. Then I was on my train back to New York City. So again, I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing when I tell you that God can do anything in this world if you’ll trust him. Hold him responsible, hold him trustworthy.776 ¶35

And so in your wonderful field this night, dream the most noble dream in the world for yourself and for others. Take a challenge, a real challenge, and then fall asleep in the assumption that you are already such a person, and then let it work. It’ll work, work like a charm. Not one person in this world need you call or write to ask to help in any way. If a thousand are necessary, a thousand will respond; and you don’t have to seek the thousand, they’ll come. Whatever it takes will come.776 ¶36

So here, in this speaking from experience, he said his brothers did not believe him because they knew him. He said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here” . Now there’s a profound statement and who will believe it: “If I tell you earthly things and you won’t believe it, how would you believe it if I told you heavenly things?” Your time is always here, he said, but my time is not yet come. You know what it means?776 ¶37

This whole vast world of ours is forever, just as it is now at this moment in time. What took place last year, in the month of November, on the day of the 22nd of November, is always taking place, forever and forever in time. It is always taking place…everything in the world is taking place on this level. So your time is always here, but my time is not yet come. He’s telling you of an entirely different world, with a different use of power, different creativity, where man is lifted off this world of recurrence and he enters that world that is creative, one with God. But who understands it? If you did not slip in time and see that it hasn’t passed away, that the present is not receding into the past, this present is advancing into the future…the future has already passed? It’s a wheel. You’re only coming upon phenomena that’s already old, and therefore “your time” is always here but “my time” has not yet come.776 ¶38

Then he repeats it and he uses it a little bit differently, and he said, “Not yet fully come.” He knows he is moving into an entirely different world because he’s had the experiences foretold in scripture. And so, all these were foretold: the birth; the awakening; the descent; the discovery of the Fatherhood; the ascent; the dove—all of these are the signs of one’s departure from this time.776 ¶39

So when Paul made the statement that “The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight and I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,” he knew from the experiences in himself . For he said in his confession in the Book of Galatians, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood” . It pleased God! What a statement! What pleases God? If you read the Bible carefully, only one thing in this world displeases him—-you read this in the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews—-without faith it is impossible to please him . So you can’t please God by any act of yours if it is not an act of faith. So, challenge me, bring me challenges, how else can I grow? Have confidence in me, in my ability to create, and bring me a challenge, something big, something terrific! How else can I create? So without faith it is impossible to please God. So when he said, “And when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood,” he confesses that the Son was unveiled in him and he saw the mystery. Then he asked all those who listened to him to look upon him as a steward of the mysteries of God, for they all awoke within him.776 ¶40

So tonight, please God. How would you please God? Take the most fantastic dream that is not yet realized, that seems impossible, and then hold God trustworthy. Assume that you’ve realized it and hold him trustworthy. Challenge God to use his creative talent to create that dream in your world so that you have experienced it. That’s how you please God. So, when it pleased God…and so through faith one day he will take the veil and tear it apart; and then unveil within you the series of mystical experiences which series will reveal to you who you really are. For when it’s unveiled he’s only unveiling himself. He’s reached the end of his creative power, what he intended when he contracted himself and became you. So he uses you, puts you through all the furnaces in the world, because you and he are one, you are his contraction. So when this comes to the end you awake as God. Everyone eventually will awake as God.776 ¶41

So here, let us take what others have given us and in their generosity use it. My friend was wise enough and generous enough and modest enough with herself to say while she was telling the story it dawned upon her that she had never really tried it, “I remember when”; and yet the very moment she tried it, the phone calls, and she’s getting fifty dollars rather than ten. And so don’t just hear it, put it to the test. This chap who wrote, and got all that he wanted, a nice acceptance and a feeling that the man liked it, and then threw it in the ashcan, “that wasn’t good enough.” And then he took a challenge and in an hour the whole thing inflamed his mind and so he was raised from the passive state into the active state, and the whole thing came through in one hour.776 ¶42

I know in my own case, I brought back a manuscript that thick from Barbados, 1946, and while at sea this vision happened. Here I was lifted up and I saw this fantastic sea of humanity, and when I walked by they were all transformed from their unlovely states into the most perfect, most beautiful states imaginable. I took my manuscript and tore it up and threw it away. Didn’t even bring it back with me, and I labored on it for months. I spent five months in Barbados. And so, I labored on this manuscript and I brought it back, thinking I’d have a nice manuscript for my publisher. After this experience I took that manuscript and threw it overboard, didn’t redeem one page of it. And then, in one hour—of course, it isn’t a long thing, it’s a little tiny pamphlet—but in one hour the whole thing poured through me. I sat down and wrote the whole thing in an hour and then sent it off and it was published. It just came that fast. I couldn’t possibly have gone to press with what I’d brought back after five months of labor. This whole thing just came like fire, and that had to be it. Just a little tiny thing called The Search, but it poured out. And if you ask my wife what she thinks of all my books, the first one she would pick is The Search because it came that way.776 ¶43

The same thing is true of Your Faith is Your Fortune. I took care of a doctor; he was a dope fiend, a brilliant surgeon and told me that when he was under the dope he did his best surgery. For seven years he had this most fantastic private hospital with about a dozen doctors under him. Then he took the needle and became a victim of his own practice. And I took him. Because he was a very prominent doctor they allowed me to do what I could with him. So with the consent of New York City’s head of the dope ring, that is, the Police Department, they allowed me to take him to a hotel. So I did, and took him there for two weeks. He was stark raving mad. If you left him for one second, he’s in the nude, down the hallway, on the street…and we’re on the twentieth floor. So this day, watching him, I was completely [...] just watching him, because he was on the bed. I didn’t know what he would do the next second. Here I am with my yellow papers and pencils and I wrote Your Faith is Your Fortune. It came out in a matter, I would say, forty-eight hours, the whole thing, talking on the inside. The voice is talking and dictating, and everything is being dictated, and came out that way. So Your Faith is Your Fortune is simply from the depth, I only put it down. I wasn’t concocting it, it simply poured out, the whole thing poured out. When I took the manuscript and turned it in to my chap to correct it, there was practically nothing, not a thing he had to do with it…simply poured out…all because I took the challenge to take care of a friend who was a dope fiend. And Scotty was a wonderful man, grand fella, but he simply became the victim of his own practice. So I watched him, and while I’m watching him and getting more and more sleepy—-because day in and day out you just can’t get any sleep—-and so, suddenly this thing began to pour out of me. And I could hear the words in the depths of my soul, dictating, something on the inside talking. I simply wrote down what they were telling me. And Your Faith is Your Fortune came that way and The Search came, after five months of labor on a large manuscript, which I discarded.776 ¶44

So my friend is sharing this with us this night: “Feed me challenges! How else can I grow?” So tonight you take a challenge as we go into the Silence. Take the most wonderful challenge, and then hold God trustworthy. Now let us go.776 ¶45

Now are there any questions, please?776 ¶46

Now, we think we’re going to change poverty in this land. You can’t change states, can’t do it. If you took all the money in the world, divided it up equally, in twenty-four hours Rockefeller would still be rich and the other fellow would still be poor, go right down again. There used to be a lecturer and he had a system, he had a huge big glass bowl and he’d fill it with all kinds of nuts. He had walnuts and other kinds of nuts, all kinds of nuts. And then he would take the bowl and he would say, “Life is like this: it’s a constant rhythm, you can’t stop it.” And he would take the biggest nut, the big walnut, and put it at the very bottom. He would show it to you in his hand and take it and put it right at the very bottom. But he said, “You can’t stop life” and he started shaking this bowl and in no time up came the walnut, the big walnut, to the very top again. And all the little fellas…of course, he had a wonderful line, he would say, “I hear someone squeaking down below” and he would say, “The little one down below is saying, ‘You started me there in life. If you’d only start me at the top I would be alright. Well, so you started me at the bottom; start me at the top.’” So he goes all the way down to the bottom of the bowl, brings a little nut up, puts it obviously before all eyes at the very top. But you can’t stop life; life is a rhythm, it’s a shaking, and the little fella will go all the way down to the bottom. So why pick out the little one? Pick out something noble in this world, something grand in this world, and remain faithful to it. Goodnight.776 ¶55

Tonight’s subject is: Is Causation Imaginal? I say that it is. I firmly believe that imagining creates reality, and it is my hope that before the class on the 26th of May, everyone here will be able to share with me some perfectly wonderful case history — all can testify to the creative power of imagining, and all will be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. I know it can be done, but let us now tonight lay the foundation for our claims. The claims are extravagant, but I assure you they are true. They’re not original with the speaker — they were always; I found them in the greatest book in the world, in the Bible: that the ultimate source of phenomena of all sorts is one — that which is active in you and me, that imagination, that is, is the primary source of everything that comes into our life. There are not two, there are not two selves, there aren’t two Gods. So when you speak of the Lord in the Scripture, the other person thinks in terms of some external being — can quite visualize, but something external to himself. Let us turn now to the book.775 ¶1

He says he was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. Here the Evangelist John declares that all things without exception were made by him who, from all eternity, was with God — for who is God? Said, God is the first. And we speak now of a person in the third person: by him — what is this presence, who is he? If I tell you that God is your own wonderful human imagination, and God in action is simply imagining — in the Scripture it is called Christ. If you study it, firstly Christ is defined for us in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians as the power and the wisdom of God. So God in action is called Christ; imagination in action is imagining — that is Christ, if you want to use the word.775 ¶2

But now we will go back to the great book of Isaiah. It is said, in the 53rd chapter, which is called by all scholars the great Messianic chapter, for one suffers for another, and we are told that the Lord placed upon him the iniquities of us all — the Lord placed upon him. But it seems to be another. All iniquity — would you stop there? You think in terms of what the church tells you: that some being two thousand years ago took upon himself our sins, our iniquities, our mischief, our wickedness, and there he expiates them in his body. But now you mustn’t stop there. Let us read the book carefully. We are told that he has no form that we should look upon him, no form that we should look upon him, and no beauty that we should desire him.775 ¶3

Now let us turn over from the 53rd chapter to the 64th chapter, and you listen to it carefully: there is none, there is no one that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast delivered us into the hand of our iniquities. Now we are told, in the same book, thou hast delivered us into thy hand, all our iniquities delivered upon us. Now listen to this carefully: yet, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our Potter; we are all the work of thy hand.775 ¶4

Now, the word translated “Lord” is I AM. Yes — Lord, thou art our Father — the word is I AM: Father is my — my Creator. The word translated “Potter” — thou art our Potter — the word translated “potter” means imagination. So all form is — first, to assume that it is man to have form, but I AM, in itself, has no form. So the poet would say: If thou humblest thyself, thou humblest me; thou too dwellest in eternity. Thou art a man, God is no more; thine own humanity learn to adore, for that is my Spirit of Life. Thou art a man, God is no more. That is man. So the Lord is I AM, but he becomes personified, and the personification of I AM is man.775 ¶5

If I say “I am rich,” “I am poor,” I mean I am a rich man or I am a poor man. I mean I am a rich man or I am a poor man. Let me now leave off, for one moment, imagining myself to be poor — and where do you suppose all the poor man would be? Where do you suppose I would be — a poor man — if I left off for one moment imagining that I am poor? It would vanish and leave no trace behind it. If I dare to leave off imagining that I am limited, then the thing that is assumed by imagining, by dreaming itself limited, will simply cease to be. I AM can cease to be, and I AM man can cease to be. But every claim that I make for myself as man will cease to be if I stop imagining it. And so here, yet — thou art our Father, O Lord, thou art our Potter, and Potter, thou art my imagination. So I am saying that I AM is the Father, and these are my imaginations — that’s what that chapter is telling me. It’s the 64th chapter, the seventh and eighth verses of the book of Isaiah.775 ¶6

He said, I am the Lord, this is the Lord: I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I the Lord do all these things. Is there a power in the world to do anything? But — what an indictment — there is no one that calleth upon thy name, no one stirreth himself to take hold of thee. What an indictment! And now we are told why he hides his face, and he tells us, in the 31st chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, why he hides his face — from our wickedness, and he does it because we have turned to other gods. The only reason in the world that he hides his face from man is because man turns to other gods. If man will not turn to another god — I mean, if he holds only to the one God, which is I AM — there is nothing impossible to it, nothing. The minute he turns to another god and rationalizes anything but the one God, he is turned from the only God, and he brings upon himself strange things and all the wickedness of the world.775 ¶7

If I dare to assume that this building is mine — it’s owned now by the club; the club has hundreds and hundreds of members, and so it belongs to the members, this club — but without consulting the members, without trying to scheme together on it, if I so desired this building, and I dare to assume that it is mine, just as I say the title is mine — I do not raise a finger to make it so, or to rationalize it, or in any way influence anyone in the club to become a spokesman for me. Just — it is mine — and I sleep in the assumption that it is so, in a way I do not know, without hurt to anyone. All will want to get rid of the club and buy some other place, and it will not be a hurt to any member — no one will be hurt, and all will be mutually benefited, and I will get it — if I so desire. God forbid — but nevertheless, that’s how the law works.775 ¶8

Now let me tell you a story, and I want you all to really take it seriously, and that you can write like it this week if you really will apply it. You first must accept the fact that there is only one God, and that one God is not outside — he is your own wonderful human imagination. When you say “I am” — no form; and I am man — he has form; that’s God. God, a man; God is no more; I AM, that’s God. You start right there.775 ¶9

Now, a gentleman wrote me a letter which I received last Thursday night. He’s here tonight, he and his wife and a friend. He did not tell me I could tell it from the platform, but I’m going to tell it — it’s a very lovely thing. No one but the gentleman, his wife, and his friend know who they are, but it’s a wonderful story, and you should hear it.775 ¶10

He writes: I, here above Sunset Strip, twenty feet behind my place, my property is cleared, and then a straight clip of thirty feet of decomposed granite — it was cut when my home was built. And behind that, rising, say, two hundred feet, is a sheer cliff, covered in brush, far above my home, and behind and above, another home — that home was built after, two years ago. My insurance broker — my fire insurance — notified me that because of a disastrous fire in the area, no company would cover my property, and so those who held it would not renew it. One company said, if you would clear seventy-five feet beyond your property of old brush and then plant ice plant, then we might consider it. Well, first of all, the seventy-five feet beyond my property was not my property, so I couldn’t clear it, and certainly I’m quite sure the owner will not allow it to be cleared — for the first rain the whole thing would come tumbling down, and certainly you would not allow it to be — and I ignored it. So my policy lapsed.775 ¶11

It was then that I came across your book, The Law and the Promise. I did not know then that you lived in the city and that you gave lectures, but I imagined what it would be like if I heard you lecture, and, strangely enough, I saw this place here just as it is today, with this exception: there was no stage, and the chairs were more comfortable — and that’s something I can do nothing about, but the chairs were more comfortable. Then he said, I saw you enter stage right, and then we entered into the question period. This is just an introduction into the book, The Law and the Promise. Having read it, I thought: now here’s my problem, I’m not covered. So I took, in my imaginary hand, a policy, and just felt it. And so I felt the policy in my hand, and when I began, through the day, to think in terms of the problem, and to talk mentally with anyone, I came back to the end — the policy in my hand — and every time that I was diverted, trying to rationalize it, I came back to the end, the policy in my hand.775 ¶12

Well, the next day, a woman called me who takes care of my account — she’s in the office of my business manager — she called on an entirely different matter, and while I had her on the line, I told her my difficulty, and she said that her office takes care of the tax returns of another broker, that she would talk to him that day and call me back — which she did, and said that he agreed to take half the policy, he would send his investigators around to examine the property. Then I found myself talking with these investigators mentally, trying to persuade them that brush was essential, that you had to have brush or the very first rain all the decomposed granite would come down — which I knew, when this man built his home two hundred feet behind and above me, that on the first rain my yard was filled with this decomposed material, and it took the man himself over a week to clear the way. So I knew the brush was essential. But then again I said, I am not doing the right thing here, I’m talking to these people mentally, then I must go back to the policy. So he goes back to the policy in his hand — why bother with these men at all, let them come and see the property, but I will simply go to the end and hold the policy in my hand — which he did.775 ¶13

The woman called back the next day and said that the new broker had turned to another insurance company that was willing to take the other half of the policy without investigation, without any clearing of brush, but there would be a $300 search charge, an increase in the taxes. But the man who arranged the whole thing said that he could juggle the policy and then take it off at some other place in the policy — therefore, really, in the end, he would not be paying any more — the $300 would be taken from elsewhere in the policy, by a certain juggling of — I don’t know what it is, but he juggled the policy — so really they only paid the same amount of money that they intended to pay.775 ¶14

Then he said: we had an enormous rain a month later. I had my policy completely covered now, and there was a huge rain, and — brush or no brush — an enormous amount of that hill came right down into my yard. I looked at it and I said, at least two full truckloads — too much for a little trucking company and not enough for a big trucking company. I looked at it — where would I turn, to whom would I go? And so I looked at the whole thing and I said, to hell with it, I will not see nothing but green, just as I did before — I will see green, I will even see this decomposed stuff in my yard as green.775 ¶15

So it is my custom that I go for a two or three mile walk every morning. I take my car down to the foot of the hill and walk on a plot of ground which is Sunset Strip. And so I take my walk on Sunset, and as I came back and got into my car, there was a man signaling his way, asking for a lift up the hill. So I gave him a lift, and he told me that he washes cars for a living, but the rain had washed all the cars, and he had no job today. So when I explained to him my difficulty with all this in my yard, he asked me if I would allow him to carry it away for me, that he charged a dollar and a quarter an hour. I told him that wasn’t enough. He said, that’s my price, and I don’t want to disturb it — a dollar and a quarter an hour. So that day he cleared the entire amount along the adjoining property and covered up all the dry brush, and thereby removed the hazard, for all this was very, very dry and tangled — and by covering the entire area with this green material, his yard is simply — listen — the fire hazard is gone.775 ¶16

The next day he called again and he said, the cars are still clean, I wonder if you could give me a job today. Well, I wanted for the longest while to plant some roses near a certain fence of mine, but the hazard prevented it, and so I said to him, you could move the brush up against the hill. Well, Eddie — for that’s exactly what I’ve seen — green all over the place. So I went out and got to work with the job, and when I came back the whole place was green, as I had, in my imagination, seen it.775 ¶17

Now, he said, I must tell you something about this man — his name is Eddie, that’s all I call him, he introduced himself as Eddie. He said, I think he’s my bad dream, because I can’t seem to do anything for Ed — I can’t. I try to bring into my mind, I try to see a different state, and I failed — I can’t even bring it into my mind now. But this is he — he is fifty-four years old, and in the ’30s his mother died, and he tried to commit suicide, but he failed, and he was put into an asylum for the mildly insane. He felt himself an outcast, a social outcast, and unwanted. And so the friend who wrote the letter said, of course I can see that he has a point there, if he’s unwanted — but nevertheless he feels unwanted, and — he ran away from this asylum, the police got him and brought him back, the asylum didn’t want him, now the police wanted him — so he was set free, and he makes about $100 a month from a $20,000 trust fund, plus what he can make from washing cars and odd jobs.775 ¶18

But Eddie, when he saves a few dollars, he goes to the desert to hunt for gold, or he goes to the mountain — he calls it “my prospecting act.” Well, this day, a few months ago, he went off on his great act, and as he was approaching the hill in the distance he heard a voice say, “I AM.” He was startled — he looked around, not a soul in sight for miles around. The voice repeated itself, this time louder: “I AM.” This time he thought it must be coming from some helicopter, maybe some person with a PA system, simply speaking from above. So he looked up — not a thing in the skies. And so the fourth time the voice came back: “Do not come up here, I AM.” But he was curious, so he started towards the top of the hill, where he thought this time it came from. When he got to the hill, there he came across a four-foot rattler — it wasn’t coiled, just stretched out, staring at him — but he said it didn’t have a human face, he didn’t take it out and put it in his purse as the lady did — he simply ran.775 ¶19

Now, that is Eddie’s story, he said, just as it happened, and so I will share it with you and tell it to you as it was told to me. Now, maybe I shouldn’t apply my imagination any more to Eddie — maybe Eddie is on a higher level of consciousness than I am. Eddie heard, as everyone will one day hear, as coming from without, what actually is whispered from within. When you read it in the third chapter of Exodus, “and the Lord God said unto Moses, go say, I AM THAT I AM, and when they ask you who sent you, just say, I AM hath sent you” — it’s written so that when you read it you will think a man heard a voice actually coming tumbling out from some bush, and underneath that bush a voice is speaking to a man. No — he heard, as coming from without, what really was whispered from the depths of his soul.775 ¶20

I am telling about the burning bush. If you’ve never witnessed it, I can tell you, your whole being becomes a flame, and you see it. I have seen it in subways, I’ve seen it on the stage. I have seen — I AM — suddenly the whole is, though you were fire, and you wonder why you are burning. So — as with this bush, it burned and yet it did not consume, it burned and the tree was not consumed. I have been in the subway, and the whole area is ablaze — it’s burning, but the burning is something like spirit-burning. If I took alcohol and burned it, the whole thing is alive — it’s not like a gas jet where the burning flame is constant, it’s not that kind of flame, it is a moving flame, like spirit. If I pour brandy over a plum pudding and light it, the whole thing becomes alive, and it moves all over — it burns just like that, and you are the center of the entire burning. It’s from the depths of your own soul that you hear it — it hears you, you hear, and you think it’s coming from without. It’s not coming from without, it’s coming from the very depths of your soul. I AM.775 ¶21

So Eddie, living in a tent up in the hills — that’s his home, a tent — with a trust fund of $20,000 paying him $100 a month, and what he can pick up washing cars and doing odd jobs, like cleaning off the yard of this gentleman and things of that sort. But he wants not a thing beyond that — he doesn’t want to disturb even his dollar-and-a-quarter rate — the gentleman was quite willing, quite ready, to give two dollars an hour for the whole thing. No, he didn’t want that — he wanted a dollar and a quarter an hour. And so I will say to him — he’s in the audience — just let Eddie go. The voice is calling out, and to Eddie it seems to come from way out in space, even so far up into the sky he thinks some helicopter is passing by with a PA system — it must be from there, because it seems so much on the outside — it is on the outside — but that voice calls and calls and calls.775 ¶22

So we hear these words: there is no one that calleth upon thy name, no one stirreth himself to take hold of thy name. They all look on the outside. And we are told the one great thing that causes him to hide his face is that they have turned to other gods. Today, not only one billion Christians, but maybe six hundred million Muhammadans — they turn to Mecca several times in the course of the day, prostrate themselves wherever they are, and point towards Mecca — some external god. And you go to the synagogue, and they have a holy book and a tallit, and as they start reading the great word — YHVH — if you’ve ever gone to shul, gone to the synagogue, when they come upon the word, whoever is the reader covers it with cloth, that he may not look upon the holy name — because everything is on the outside. And so this indictment — there is not one — that seems a tremendous, bold accusation — not one who calleth upon thy name, not one stirreth himself to take hold of thy name. And because of this, thou hast turned thy face from us — and what have you done? Now not only have you turned your face from us, but you now deliver us into the hand of our own iniquities, and we are lost in our own creations, and we don’t realize it, we don’t realize what we’re doing.775 ¶23

So all the wickedness that belongs to us is self-begotten, for there is only God — my Father, as we’re told: the Lord, which is I AM, is my Father, and my Father is my own imagination — so I am self-begotten. Do I make the statement that you come out, and you alone come out — that things you can’t be must be outside of being? No, it isn’t — you yourself come out of your own self-imposed state; God comes out, there is no other, there’s nothing but God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination.775 ¶24

If you will take what this gentleman did — he read that book, The Law and the Promise, and he held on to the feeling. He took the end — the end is where we start from, in my end is my beginning — so I go to the end. What was the end of this case? He had the policy, and the policy was in his hand, signed by both parties — here’s a contract — must he now argue with those who come to investigate? The policy can’t be signed and in his hand while they’re still examining his property and bringing in reasons why it must be behind him — those must be behind him if he holds the policy. So every time he, through reason, through habit, would turn to analyze the picture and try to persuade them that this brush must be cleared or else the first rain is going to bring the whole hill down — as he began to analyze it and to rationalize it, he remembered, that’s not what he teaches, he teaches that you go to the end. So he took the thing once more in his hand, and he held it, and stayed with it — the policy — for the policy would not be in his hand, signed by both parties, until something had been done about it — it’s a contract. So the whole thing is done, if you know exactly what you hold in your hand after the event. Hold it in your hand, then let some woman call you — in his case a woman called on a different matter, and at that very moment he remembered his difficulty. Then she knew someone whose tax return her office took care of, and she would see him that day and call back — which the man did, without seeing it, he took it, and — yes — and the second party, the next day, they didn’t even come to see the property, they made no request to remove the brush, and took the other half of the policy, and the $300 search charge was adjusted so that it wasn’t really $300 more anyway.775 ¶25

But I say to you, believe me, not a thing comes into your world that you did not draw by some imaginal act. Now, a thing does not happen to man, no matter how wicked it is, that he himself does not bring into the world by his own imaginal act. Imagining creates reality — believe it, because imagining is God in action. Imagination is God; imagining is God in action. If you differ over the words “God” and “Christ” — well, then God is your imagination, and Christ is your imagining — that is the activity of imagination. I say, man’s imagination is manifested in the imaginations of men — like the one who took the other half without even investigating; he had to, for the policy was in the man’s hands, and so there was a mutual benefit to the entire picture.775 ¶26

So I know — from the big fire we saw here one night — my dentist, he was right in the midst of all the flames, and they were all falling all around. I went through this door here into my little room in the back and saw these things burst up in flame, one after the other. Jim’s house didn’t lose one shingle, and I can see the tree now — the eucalyptus tree that was completely scorched on one side, outside of his property, and yet not on the inside — of all trees, eucalyptus, full of oil, that goes up entirely, burnt on one side and not the other. And the only thing that he could have lost — someone, not thinking that Jim was in the city, that he and his wife might have been away, with the fire sweeping up the hills in spite of all the fire departments — went into the home, and he heard a door slam, and then he thought he heard footsteps, and when he rushed into the dining room — someone, like so many people, they’re like you, they live off others, they think that way — someone, seeing this enormous flame, knowing that no one would be in the house, rushed in, took Jim’s lovely rug, one of his choice orientals, and put all of Jim’s silver into it, and he was just about ready to escape when, hearing the footsteps he heard, a friend of Jim’s came uninvited and saved all the silver. So Jim did not lose one shoe, not a scrap, he lost nothing — and that’s Jim, living this way. He isn’t here tonight.775 ¶27

But when I went to see the home, and the brush all over the place burned, that was the night that Aldous Huxley’s house went right down to the very ground. Aldous Huxley himself, in one of his books, said that he had reasons for not wanting the world to have meaning — consciously he assumed that it had none, and without any difficulty found all the reasons in the world to support his assumption. So he wrote in his book that the world had no meaning — he didn’t want it to have meaning. So he had this most valuable library — first editions, not only his own, but publishers had given him first editions of his own lovely works, all kinds of lovely things and art objects, which he intended someday to give to maybe UCLA or some great college — and not one thing was saved, only a suit on his back and the last manuscript — because he really believed, seeing the whole confused world, that it had no meaning. He could not believe in a God — not really, as we believe in God — he couldn’t believe in his own I AM. He believed only in that which science could in some way bring out.775 ¶28

And his own grandfather, Thomas Huxley — when Thomas Huxley one day was asked, in the presence of another scientist, “if you saw a great big object rise from the earth and float through space, unsupported by any known power to man, what would you say that you just saw?” — the other scientist answered first, and he said, “well, I would say I just witnessed the suspension of the laws of gravity.” While Thomas Huxley — he had been, I would say, more profound in his thinking than the other scientist — he said, “I wouldn’t say that. I would say, I have just witnessed the operation of a law of which I am totally ignorant. If gravity is absolute, it can’t be suspended, so if I saw what you just described, I would say I just witnessed the operation of a law of which I am totally ignorant. There may be a law where gravity, as we understand it, doesn’t function” — while his grandson couldn’t conceive of any law that could account for what we considered gravity to be. Yet he didn’t take that page from his ancestor’s book, because he really believed it had no meaning whatsoever, and so he lived life full of all the excitement he could, if the body and time allowed it, but aside from that he couldn’t quite see the meaning behind it all. I try to find meaning for every little thing that happens in this world — another thing could happen, but nothing could happen unless it were supported by an imaginal act.775 ¶29

Now, the imaginal act may be delayed in coming, as far as your vision goes — it’s not delayed in its own motion, but you may be anxious, and you may think it’s delayed, it’s taking too long. It isn’t taking too long for itself. Every vision has its own appointed hour — it runs, and it will come, if it belongs to the individual, then it is sure, and it will not be late. Just wait — you plant the now, and don’t waver; as you find yourself moving into some other level, come back to the end, for you always plant the end. He saw the green, and a stranger was making his way up the hill, and he is the one to make it green. He moves the brush away and puts it on the dry brush, and — say — he brings back this revelation, for a simple person, living in a tent, unkempt, with little to his name in this world, and yet in the stillness of the desert he could hear, “I AM, don’t come up here, I AM” — didn’t say “I am this,” “I am that” — the other, simply, “I AM,” from the depth of his soul.775 ¶30

It is stirring — who is stirring? He is trying to come to the surface, and he thinks he’s on the outside — it sounds so loud when you hear it. If anyone stood in his presence, do you know, no one else would have heard it. If he had a thousand people around him, he, and he alone, would have heard it — that’s scripture. Only the one who has the experience hears it. Read it carefully, and when the god descended, only he on whom he descended — if you read it in the first chapter of the book of Mark, it is recorded by the evangelist as though — not that he witnessed it — that he had been told by the one who experienced it — but no one but the one who experiences these things really hears it or sees it. So Eddie could be in the presence of a thousand people, and Eddie, and Eddie alone, would have heard the voice. He heard it three times, and three times it is trying to bring him into himself, but to him it seemed so loud, he thought it was coming from without — but just like Moses — he heard just what Moses heard, and that which seemed to have come from without was really coming from the depths of the soul.775 ¶31

So, to everyone here, when you read your Bible and you come across, “I am the Lord thy God, and beside me there is no God, I am thy Savior” — and the reason of the Savior — you read that in the 43rd chapter of Isaiah. And listen to these words — these are supposed to be the greatest of all the commandments. When he was asked, what’s the greatest commandment, this is what he answered: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.”775 ¶32

Now listen to the words here — really, the Lord, that’s I AM — our God, our I AM, is one — I AM. There’s only one God. Don’t be concerned about his little “I am” or that little “I am” — there’s only one I AM, in all of you individually. And thou shalt love the Lord — that is the I AM which I AM — thy I AM — with all thy might, with all thy heart, with all thy soul. How could I love my own I AM? That’s what I’m accused of not doing. I think I love God, and I bend my knee before some wooden object in the world, or some carved thing out of marble, or maybe some precious thing with diamonds, or some image of a man, and hang it around my neck, and these other little things — I put the god up on the stone, or maybe praise the artist who did the carving — and I completely turn to other gods, and that’s when God, the real God, hides his face.775 ¶33

If I would turn to the only God — and the only God is your own wonderful I AM — has no form, and yet you say I AM, but he will have form, you say “I am man” — it takes long, and when you see it, it’s just like you. That’s why I tell you over and over, when you see him, whatever you see him as, you’re going to see yourself, only lifted up to the nth degree of beauty and dignity and majesty and a strength of character in your face that you wouldn’t dream you could ever attain, but it’s just like you. So if anyone should ever come and say, “look, there is Christ,” or “look, here it is,” don’t believe them — why? Because although it does not yet appear what we shall be, we know when he appears we shall be like him.775 ¶34

And so, one day, you’re going to see him, just as you read in my little book — others sought the same experience — only mine preceded his by many years — his happened in 1944 and mine happened in 1934. But here you come upon a meditative being, and you look closer, and you discover you’re looking at yourself. And he said that he saw this wonderful being — himself, only raised to the nth degree of beauty — his primal form, sitting in deep meditation — and he knew that the way — he, the one looking at it — would know no more will be, because there can’t be two of you, you are he. So when he awakes, this vanishes, because you are he — that deathless human being that never ceases to be. So you cannot die, for the simple reason you are all imagination. Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us, and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself.775 ¶35

So read it carefully: the Lord is our Father, thou art our Potter, we are all the work of thy hand. Anything that is happening to me is the work of thy hand — and it does not mean a second person, but I AM, which means my imagination. The Lord is my own wonderful human imagination — if I don’t believe it, and turn to another god, he hides his face from me, for he is not the one to whom I will turn — he is only within me, as my own wonderful human imagination. I must trust him inwardly, more than anyone trusts the outside god, because the outside god is a false god. Read it carefully — the only reason he hides his face is because they turn to other gods. In that 31st chapter, the 18th verse, of Deuteronomy, there is no other reason for his turning and hiding his face — he hideth because of the many wickedness of man, and because man has turned to another god. Any time you turn to another god, he’ll hide himself, hide his face.775 ¶36

But tonight, try and do with me — or do for me — what that gentleman did unsolicited. I’m going to solicit your letters, your case histories, that may come from this platform, and talk about them, to encourage everyone who comes here to believe in the only God — the God that cannot die, the God of the living — that you may know you cannot die, you cannot even pass away. This is a being that is awakening in the depth of your soul, and when he awakens he is God, all wild God. But because of this wonderful experience, and there is no limit to his expansion — it expands all the more — there is only a limit to contraction, only a limit to opacity, but no limit to expansion and to translucency. So, as this experience happens, your self within you grows all the more translucent, all the more expansive.775 ¶37

So now, go into the silence, and in this silence, take something — if you can find something to hold in your hand, a contract, a sum of money, an agreement, I don’t care what it is, but something which implies the end has been realized. Don’t argue about it, go to the end, and just — if you have realizing the end and feeling the end, then all the means necessary to fulfill that end will fall into place, and you don’t have to devise any means. And let us stop there — are there any questions?775 ¶38

Please —775 ¶39

For Eddie heard, in the desert, with no one in sight, not for miles around, and it came so loudly he looked up to the skies, thinking that an airplane, a helicopter, must be passing over with a PA system — that was his reasoning mind, because what came to him came through, well, the conceptual mind, and therefore modified itself. But nevertheless, he did climb — even that is symbolical — he climbed a hill to see the symbol. So the whole thing was symbolical. Really, everything has meaning in this world. Now, I could not tell you the exact and precise meaning of “don’t come up” — in fact, it’s a challenge, which is a very good challenge, because every time man is told not to do something, he does it. And so it could be taken in that sense — every commandment is broken because it’s negatively stated: “thou shalt not.” I can offer you any sum of money in this world — if I tell you I’ll give it to you provided you do not think of a monkey, and you try not to think of the monkey, but you’ll never get the sum of money — the more you try not to think of it, the more you multiply — you have nothing but monkeys in the world, because you see the goal as against what you must not do.775 ¶42

So, “thou shalt not” — and if you know the story of scripture, he broke every commandment — he broke the Sabbath day, therefore he simply turned against the Sabbath god, and so “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” The woman taken in adultery — the Lord did not condemn her to death, he forgave her. “Honor your father and mother” — “you who are my mother and brothers and sisters, those who do the will of him that sent me.” So he denied — first he confessed, “I am,” about my Father — this other Father altogether, his only Father is I AM, my Father, the one — but he denied earth altogether. And every commandment he broke, because they were all written negatively, “thou shalt not,” but in the Sermon on the Mount the whole thing is positively stated — everything is on the positive side, nothing is stated negatively.775 ¶43

Yes, ma’am —775 ¶44

Tonight’s subject is “Jesus: God’s Plan of Salvation.” God’s plan of salvation appears so different in prospect from what it really is in retrospect. If you haven’t experienced it and you trust the one who has, do not at any time forget or ignore the out and out supernatural character of this plan of salvation and never try to interpret it in some naturalistic way. That’s what the whole vast world tries to do with the plan of salvation. It’s supernatural from beginning to end. The whole drama takes place in the inner man: The inner man is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory, so it hasn’t a thing to do with something on the outside. The whole drama is taking place on the inside. And so, I have experienced it, and let me share with you what I have experienced.774 ¶1

But first of all, let me thank you for what you’ve done over the last few months in sharing with me your letters, your experiences in the use of God’s law, and in your visions, your wonderful mystical experiences. This morning’s mail brought three perfectly wonderful letters, all visions. Let me give you the highlights of two of them. One I will take at some future date, it’s too long.774 ¶2

But, I’ve told you in the past that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out and you and I only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively. You and I did not choose it. We were made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected us in hope; and that hope was that you and I would be set free from this bondage to corruption, and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God . We find ourselves here, and we must admit we were born of the action of powers not our own, and this is the physical birth. Let us now admit that we are also born spiritually by the actions of powers beyond ourselves. We certainly didn’t do it physically; we found ourselves here. Don’t let anyone tell you that by some effort on your part that you’re going to be born spiritually into some wonderful world. It’s all being done by the one who subjected us to this wheel of futility.774 ¶3

Now this morning’s letter brought…this mail brought this letter. She said, “My mother died in ’53. She was, I would say, seventy years old—-she might have been seventy-one, two, but she was in her late sixties or early seventies. I met her in my vision and mother was radiantly beautiful. She looked about thirty, and the joy, I can’t describe the joy of my mother. She told me that when she left here she moved into the age or the year 3,804 at the age of twenty-one. She found herself twenty-one years old, living in the year 3,804. Then I asked her many questions. There were many interruptions by people and circumstances, but I tried to get as many questions across as I could. She seemed to be quite familiar with your teaching, although in this world where she left eleven years ago she never heard of you in any way whatsoever. But your name was not a strange thing to her in that circle where she now lives. I got the impression that she’s married. And I tried to find my father and my brother Art to share with them my experience that I met mother. She told me she is living in a part of Pennsylvania. I asked her if death to her in that world of 3,804 is like death to us in this world, and she said it was the same thing. They feared it as we fear it, and they know it is the inevitable as we know it is the inevitable. Then she said, ‘Our moral code, our ethical code is just like your code, same thing.’ But she also said, ‘We have no choice in that time sequence into which we are placed. I found myself twenty-one years old. At death being seventy, I was twenty-one in a time sequence that is the 3804th year A.D.’”774 ¶4

Now, in the Bible we’re taught that there is nothing new under the sun: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? I tell you it has been already, in ages past. But there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after, among those who will come later; for there is nothing new under the sun” . That’s difficult for man to understand. And then he reads the Book of Ezekiel, where there are wheels within wheels within wheels, all turning. Then he reads the Book of Romans where you and I, not willingly, but subjected to the will of God for a divine purpose, that we would, being subjected, one day be freed from this futility and obtain, having gone through it, the glorious liberty of the children of God.774 ¶5

And that liberty comes; and it is inaugurated by a divine event and we call that event resurrection. But resurrection seen from a certain angle comes seemingly at the last, and it doesn’t. The great mystery: It comes not at the end of history, it comes within history. This very night it could come to all of you, or to one of you. I do not know, no one knows. So when they asked the question, “When, O Lord?” he said, “It is not for you to know the times and the seasons that’s fixed by the authority of God” , by his own authority. But wait for the promise of the Father, just wait—he has promised to redeem you. Redeeming you is redeeming himself, he’s not redeeming another. It is God who fell asleep in the great creation called “the wheels and wheels within wheels” for educative and creative purposes. That by putting himself into the state likened unto death—-it’s not really death but it’s so still, so altogether a sound sleep that it seems like death.774 ¶6

But the ancient scripture, the Old Testament, does not use the word “resurrection,” it implies it. But I would rather go back and use the term that is used in the Old Testament. The New uses the word “resurrection” throughout, and I love it, it’s a marvelous term, and I use it here night after night. But in the old scripture, they only speak of “waking from sleep.” The 78th Psalm, which is a maschil, meaning special instruction, it is a recapitulation of the entire history of Israel, which is divine history. We come to almost the end, the 65th and 66th verses, it’s a very long chapter, and then suddenly we’re told that God or “the Lord God awoke as from sleep” . He awoke as from sleep and then he chose Judah and chose David. Then we come to the end of the glorious awakening of the being who was asleep, as the whole story was being told. You start in the beginning of that chapter, the 78th chapter, and he simply tells the traditions of the fathers: “I will open my mouth in a parable, and I will utter dark sayings from of old.” And he tells all the stories of Israel, the horrors of the world, and the conquering of Jehovah—how he conquers, and he overcomes and he overcomes and he overcomes. Man still falls back, but God overcomes…and then the Lord God awakes. He awakes as from sleep. When he wakes from sleep, then the whole thing comes to an end.774 ¶7

Now we are all told to please tell it just as it happened. Don’t embellish it, don’t add to the word of God; don’t take from the word of God. Well, the word translated word—in the New Testament the word logos—-has as a root meaning “that which is behind the thing.” That is, the sense or the meaning of the thing. So when we are told, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God” that word logos, translated “word,” means “that something that is the sense or the meaning behind the event, whatever that event is.” So when you tell it, tell it clearly. So at the end of Luke we are told, “They related their own experience”; they told what had happened, not embellished, don’t add to it. And that’s why I don’t quarrel with the use of the word resurrection, for it is part of the event. But I would go back to the 78th Psalm and rather use that terminology.774 ¶8

For in my own case, when I was taken off the wheel of recurrence but left on it to tell the story, for I must tell it until this garment comes off; and when it comes off now it comes off for the last time. I do not find myself—like my friend Larry’s mother who found herself in the year 3,804—I am through with the wheels within wheels within wheels. But I must remain on the present wheel, the year 1964, and tell it until that time when the garment is taken off, and this time for the last time; for I am not going through death any more. But I must tell you, the night it happened to me, that force, I can’t describe it save it was the most intense force. We call it an electrical force or charge. But, every morning I wake and I feel myself coming-to into this world and I wake. But that day, four years ago, I felt myself coming-to, and I thought it would be like the normal waking here. But it wasn’t! The most intense vibration I’ve ever felt, and I’m waking alright, but I’m waking to find myself in a tomb, and the tomb, the sepulcher is my skull, an entirely different form of awakening. So they say in the 78th Psalm, “And the Lord God awoke as from sleep.” I awoke from sleep, but it was a different waking from any waking I’ve ever had, that I have any memory of. I awoke to find myself entombed. So I can see the use of the word resurrection, for how could you possibly come out of a tomb, therefore resurrected, unless you were dead? But I had no sense of being dead; I felt I was waking from sleep. That’s what the Old Testament teaches. So I was waking from sleep and I awoke to find myself in a tomb. So I could only then conclude if I am now in a tomb I must have been dead or someone thought me dead, because you don’t put anyone in a tomb and seal it, as I was sealed in that tomb, unless you were dead. And so, the only sensation of being dead was that I am now in an actual sepulcher, a tomb.774 ¶9

And then you come out, and you come out and you are born from above. For this is the area of the tomb; it’s your skull. So when you come out of your skull, as you’re told in the Book of 1st Peter, “We are born anew by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” .774 ¶10

Only Jesus Christ is ever awakened, ever resurrected; so everyone who resurrects or who is awakened to find himself entombed, he is Jesus Christ. He is now telling the story to the world, and they can accept it or reject it, it’s entirely up to them. But he must tell the story, and it is so important that the story of Jesus and the salvation of God be told, and then let man respond to it. He will accept it, sometimes modified. Let him just reject it completely or let him in some way just toy with the idea. But all the minds who hear the story from the one who has experienced it are like certain soils in the world, and he, the one who tells the story, is the sower who goes forth to plant, and he spreads the seed of truth. It falls sometimes on the highway. It falls on the highway and then the birds devour it . The birds are simply all the great rumors: “After all, that man is just a normal person like yourself, he’s been married twice, he has children, he knows what it is to know a person intimately, he is a meat eater, he drinks, he does all these things, so forget it.” And so, quickly the idea is gobbled up. Another one hears it with eagerness, but the cares of the day are more than his attention can cope with, and so the seed, the idea, is choked. And then you go from one to the other and all different soils of the world. You may find in a gathering…but we’re told in scripture you will always find a remnant. The remnant is considered ten percent, told in many ways in the Bible. There is always ten percent of any gathering who would listen to you, who will be the soil on which it can fall. It falls on that soil and brings forth a hundredfold, meaning that it will come forth. When it comes forth then he will have the identical experience—while you have been detached from the wheels of recurrence.774 ¶11

Now let me share with you another story that comes into this, this morning. This gentleman writes, he said, “I felt myself sitting on a nest. Of course it might have been prompted, said he, by the story you told of the dove that is now in your tree outside of your window, but I felt myself sitting on a nest as a dove would sit. Then I felt something move under me, like something alive, and I raised myself slightly, and then I looked and observed an egg. As I observed the egg, I felt the egg breaking. Suddenly the egg began to break and it broke, and out came you. You were about two inches tall but you were fully proportioned, everything was perfect in proportion. As you came out you said, ‘Bill’— that’s his name. And then he said to me, ‘But Neville you are so little!’ and I said to him, ‘In God’s creation everything begins small and then it expands and expands and expands’ and at that, before my eyes you grew to immensity before my eyes. Then, relative to you I was the little one and you were this immense being standing before me. Then you went over to another nest, and there you took from this nest our mutual friend Jan Johnson and you brought her. And with your hand on Jan and your hand on me, you still remained this immensity, and Jan was my size relative to you. We are both the same little ones and you are this immense being, and you took us both, each in a hand, and together we walked up into the sky.”774 ¶12

Now you have a vision, don’t discard it. Go back into scripture and search diligently for something that would throw light on it. Now, let me give you, if you’re in the audience tonight, the passage: it’s the 7th chapter of Amos, the 2nd verse. So you go back and you read the ancient scripture for some foreboding, some shadow, some intimation of what you had in the depths. For are we not told, “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” . And so, you had it. Only God speaks to you in dream. There’s only one source of dream in scripture and that source is God. So he’s telling you something— go back into his word, his ancient scripture, and search. Well, in the 7th chapter you’ll find it and these are the words: “O Lord God, forgive! How can Jacob…how can Jacob stand? He is so small!” . How can Jacob stand? He is so small! And then we are told in that same chapter the Lord forgives and said, “It shall not be” and then he allowed Jacob to stand. Now, the word Jacob means, by the concordance, our biblical concordance, “to enlarge, to expand.” And there is no limit to the expansion, that’s the word Jacob. It’s called “the supplanter” on the surface, but in definition, it is “the capacity to enlarge and to expand.” So, here is the little one, “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!” and then God repented, changed an attitude towards this that is coming out, and allowed it to expand to the limit. And there is no limit to expansion, there’s only a limit to contraction; there’s no limit to translucency, there’s only a limit to opacity. So if my friend would go back into scripture and read it and search, he would find the secret of his vision, for I came out from that little egg.774 ¶13

Well, a few months ago, last year really, when the voice said to me, “The whole vast world is only for hatching,” that’s all that it is. The whole vast world is for hatching. And so, worlds within worlds, all turning, and so you slip from this age 1964 into 3804— and the purpose is only for hatching. At some moment in time man thinks now that this world is moving from moment to moment to moment in some linear progression. It isn’t, it’s a cycle. And so 1964 and 3804 are taking place at one and the same time. Columbus is now discovering this country for the first time on that wheel as it turns. Everything is turning at the same time…and we are inserted. But she also said this to her son, “We have no choice in that time sequence into which we are placed, none whatsoever.” Then you go back and read the scripture. “What is that in scripture?” she said that to him. And you go back and read the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans, that “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 corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” . So we are subjected, but who subjected it? God, subjecting himself; it’s only God. It is God who awakes from this fantastic creation and when he wakes, he has by this strange subjection increased his capacity to create. For the only purpose of it all is to develop one’s creative power. And God is not absolute, as the world would call it, God is forever expanding. If God were absolute, the whole thing would be dead. God is potentially absolute and can create and create forever and forever. And God is man.774 ¶14

So to come back to this plan of salvation, the plan is in scripture. It begins…the whole thing is inaugurated with an event we call his resurrection from the dead; the first-fruits of those who slept; the first-born from the dead . But the first-born, not the only born. So a great judgment is passed upon those who teach that the resurrection is past already. Read it in Paul’s letter, the 2nd letter to Timothy, he said: There are those who are teaching that the resurrection is past and over. They are misleading the people, and in misleading them they’re turning them from the faith . And he pronounces on them an uncompromising condemnation, for the resurrection has started. It is taking place. And moment after moment after moment you and I are being detached from this wonderful wheel where we were born out of it as it were. But being in it…if we were not in it, we could never develop beyond what we were prior to coming into it.774 ¶15

So we are told in scripture, the 20th of Luke: And the Sadducees—-the Sadducees are the wise people, they are the scientists of the day—-and they asked a question: Master, Moses in the law said that if a man marries leaving no offspring and has brothers, the brothers should marry the widow and raise up issue. Well, there were seven brothers; and the first one who’s married, he died leaving no offspring; and the second took her to wife and he left no offspring when he died, then the third, and finally all of them married her, and then they all died, and then she died. Whose wife is she in the resurrection ? They did not believe in the resurrection, for they thought it just couldn’t be. They saw people die and that was the end of them, like all scientists of the world, or most of the scientists. And he said to this wise scientist, “You do not know the scripture. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, to the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they can die no more; they are now sons of God and sons of the resurrection” . Well, by that very statement he implies that they do, in dying, still die. So he tells you they die no more. Well, here he talks to someone who is awake, who must actually go through the experience of death, physical death, but he’s telling you he dies no more. But these who seemingly die will continue to die, like my friend Larry’s mother. She knows that they fear death as we here fear death; they experience death as we experience death. And she will slip from the year 3804, however long she lives there—it may be 3890 before she makes her exit from that wheel—-to find herself in a wheel that is behind it in so-called time. For all are moving together.774 ¶16

So what is up and what is down if the wheel is moving? This is now the apex and this is the nadir; but if the wheel is moving, this that is now the apex becomes the nadir, and this is apex. So what is up and what is down when the wheels are moving within wheels within wheels? And it’s all for the bringing out of this turning nest. It’s a nest…for the voice said, “The whole vast universe is for hatching, only hatching.” This morning’s mail can bring two letters from two entirely different friends of mine. They meet here socially, but only in the last few months they met each other in this room. Prior to that, my friend Larry has been coming here for years, and my friend Bill, who wrote the other letter, only came here last November. So they only met here in the last few months…and they dovetail, one bringing out the hatching story that was told me, and the other bringing out the wheels within wheels. So here, 3804 she told him as he understood it. She knows that she never heard of me here in the year 1964. When she died in ’53, she never heard of me, I was completely unknown. But my works are known to her in the year 3804 and my name is not a stranger to her.774 ¶17

So it was always so. That’s part of the game, that’s part of the great play. And we come out of it in the most wonderful manner. But it begins…the whole thing is inaugurated by that event that we call resurrection—his resurrection from the dead. After the resurrection comes the birth, and after the birth comes that end of the book of the 78th chapter of Psalms. For as he awakes as one from sleep and becomes one who shouts as a man filled with wine, and he puts all of his enemies to rout, all adversaries are routed and they are everlastingly put to shame. The whole vast wheel is now put to shame as far as he who has awakened from it. For it subjected him to the most horrible things in the world. Then he awakens from it. Then he calls Judah, and then he calls David, and takes David from the flocks where he was taking care of the ewes, those that were “in lamb.” And David is then the third one. You find him, and you discover him, and discovering him you know who you are. In the same chapter of Luke that we quoted earlier, when the Sadducees asked about resurrection, on the heels of his answer he then brings up the question and asks the question concerning David. And then he answers the question and tells you who David is. But no one sees it. That’s why I said at the beginning of this message tonight that this mystery of salvation, it appears in prospect so different from what it really is in retrospect.774 ¶18

Who by reading the story would see it in prospect as it really is? It isn’t as the world will tell you. Seeing it in prospect, it took place two thousand years ago and he is something unique on the outside, and you worship him on the outside. And that isn’t so at all. It takes place in the new man. The new man is in every man being formed. When he’s completed, when he’s formed, then it unfolds like a flower in that new man who is in every man; for every man contains Jesus Christ. Well, “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is within you?” “Test him and see” . Long before he unfolds these petals—-which is simply the resurrection; and the birth; and the discovery of the fatherhood of God; and the ascent into heaven in the form of a serpent; and the descent of the dove upon him, where he’s blessed and smothered with the affection of the Holy Spirit—-long before that, test him and see if he’s not within you. For by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that is made . So test him and see.774 ¶19

So the Jesus Christ of scripture is the Jesus Christ in you, the only Jesus Christ; and he is your own wonderful loving human Imagination. There never was another Jesus Christ. God and God alone became man. In becoming man he’s Jesus Christ. He now has to awaken. As he awakens, it’s nothing but God. There’s no intermediary between yourself and God, none whatsoever, as you’re told in the 43rd and the 45th chapters of Isaiah: “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior” . No savior besides me and I am the Lord your God. He became man that man may become God. But in becoming man he and he alone goes through all the furnaces of affliction as he turns the wheels and wheel after wheel.774 ¶20

What determines the jump in time between 1953 when she made her exit and 3804? Strangely enough, she said, I awoke there; I was twenty-one. When he saw her he estimated her age at thirty, within the range of thirty…that would be the growth. So they still grow. They do exactly what you do, what I do, they have all the conflicts, but the year differs and all things differ. They make their exit through a grave to find themselves awake at a certain age in a different time-slot as it were. But this world here is the very limit of contraction. I have slipped into these worlds unnumbered times. When I speak of this world, not other worlds, [...], when I speak of this world, they are scared to death. This world to them is hell. They can’t conceive of anyone recovering from this world, they can’t. I stepped into a world and here was Heine, and Heine, the brilliant German poet, essayist, artist, and Heine was instructing them. Heine said to me, “You know, they don’t call this world of yours where you just came from, they don’t call it Earth, they call it Woodland. They can’t conceive that anyone could ever recover from that descent to Woodland.” Well, now search the scriptures for it. Is it called Woodland? It is, in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark . You go back into Mark and the eye was opened. When the blind man, born blind, had his eyes opened he was asked, “What do you see?” and he said, “I see men; like trees walking.” So they call this…if a man would ever come here, he’d become like a tree, a tree walking. So he would lose all identity, he would lose his humanity, he would lose what he is by coming here. This is the limit of contraction. No one wants to come here. And when I decided to return to this world, and had to go, for my time was come to depart from that world, and I began to say goodbye, they all rushed because they didn’t believe my story. They said, “What an imaginative being! What stories he’s talking about!” But I was telling them only the things of Earth but they wouldn’t believe me. And they came…when I began to descend and a voice said “All down for Woodland” you should have seen the fear, sheer ghastly fear on their faces when I began to descend. Only one came with me and she was the old dowager, one who belonged to a certain group who had usurped my estate in my absence when I came here.774 ¶21

These are fantastic stories but they’re all true. So we’re living in a world…you think, well now, this is the most real world, and tomorrow we develop the present energy into something else, to something else, and it’ll go on forever in one direction. Don’t believe it! We’re going to turn the wheel, the wheel is turning, but the wheel is so large, we can’t see around the corner. Like you can’t see…the ship goes off to sea and it disappears; it hasn’t dropped off the Earth, it’s the curvature of space. Well, time is curved just as space is curved, and so things disappear in time. We see them disappear in space by the curvature of space. Well, they disappear in time but it’s only curved, and they’re turning. But the wheels are wheels within wheels. So you see a large wheel, when will it be turned? And man has no memory. “So is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See this is new’? It has been already, in ages past. But there’s no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after among those who come later.” For there is nothing new under the sun, and how difficult that is to tell to anyone who knows in his own short little span of time that he’s never seen this before. I say, with anyone living in this world today, born when I was born, where we had candle light, and then we had oil lamps, and we had gas lamps, these little gas mantles, and then came the day we had electricity. So I go back in my short space of time of fifty-nine years back to my grandmother’s day or your great-grandmother’s day. For your great-grandmother can’t go back beyond the time that I go back in my fifty-nine years, for I was put into a different space down the wheel. The space on which I was placed on this wheel of the same age, the 20th century, was so limited that my background would take you back, in your more marvelous way, back into the 19th century. I wasn’t born then. I was born in 1905. Well, 1905 is the space where I was placed on the wheel, goes back in the comforts of life back into, well, say 1850. Can I not see them now cleaning the chimneys and cleaning all these things and all outdoor plumbing. That was Barbados, where the kitchen was on the floor, I mean the floor, the earth; I don’t mean wood. And so, that is the space of the same wheel. So there are wheels within wheels within wheels. And then man is lifted off the wheel.774 ¶22

So when you have the experience, go back into the ancient scripture and seek and seek and seek. A great help is the Concordance, Strong’s Concordance, and take Strong’s Concordance, take a word and look it up. Don’t take anything for granted, just look it up and see what it means. Take the word resurrection, for instance, and you think in terms of resurrection as someone resurrected physically. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. The word, as defined in the Bible, in the Concordance, means “to rise up; to stand upright; to awake from sleep.” Read it—-to awake from sleep. Well, I know in my own case exactly what happened: I awoke from sleep. But the awakening was something entirely different: It was the inauguration of the grand unfolding of God’s plan of salvation. For, that was the first event, and on the heels of it came the child, and the men who saw the symbol called the child, and I took the child. And then, after that, came the others, one after the other. So, resurrection as defined is “to awake from sleep.” But I didn’t know I was asleep until that moment in time. I always thought I went to bed at night and woke in the morning, so when I woke in the morning I was awake. I didn’t know that until that moment in time back in 1959 I had been sound asleep, and sound asleep in a tomb where someone placed me there because to them I must have been dead. For, you’re placed in a tomb only because you’re dead. So everyone in this world who is walking through the world, who will make their exit from this world, are just as sound asleep; and they are to those who behold this death, dead.774 ¶23

So Blake tells us of the great eternal ones who contemplate death and say, “What seems to be to them, 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 despair and eternal death; but divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus” . Well, there’s only the body of Jesus, and that body of Jesus is in man. So he awakens that body, and as it awakens, then these things begin to unfold within him, and the very first act is the resurrection. That inaugurates the entire process: His resurrection from the dead; then comes his birth from above; then comes his discovery of the fatherhood of God through the son called David; then his ascent into heaven in serpentine form; and then the descent of the dove who smothers him with affection, which is he never in eternity will leave him, it smothers him and remains upon him. And everyone goes through the identical experience. So this is God’s plan of salvation. Everyone will be saved, for the simple reason everyone is now being occupied by God. God is only redeeming himself. And before he entered into the wheels that turn, he had planned his own pathway of return and his return is simply the development of his own creative power. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *774 ¶24

Goodnight.774 ¶35

Tonight’s subject is “All Are Human.” In Blake’s great Jerusalem he said, “All are men in eternity, rivers, mountains, cities, villages, all are human. And when we enter into their bosoms we walk in earth and in heaven, and when we enter into our bosoms we walk in earth and heaven; and all that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow”.773 ¶1

That’s difficult to conceive, difficult to follow, but I think I can throw a little light on it from my own personal experience. It seems so difficult to tell a man that the whole vast world is himself made visible, that man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth and the sea. He either contains the whole of eternity within him, and truly is the ark of God; or he simply appears out of the nowhere, and he waxes, and he wanes, and he vanishes and leaves not a trace behind him, just like a phantom. So the choice is man’s. But man thinks he is simply a little phantom. I tell you, you are the ark of God. You contain the whole of eternity within you, and what your destiny is, it’s God. You are actually destined to become as he is, and it takes this whole vast wonderful world of ours to unfold it for us.773 ¶2

As we are told, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” Then he said, “Do not marvel at this; for I tell you that the day is coming that all in the tomb will hear his voice and come forth”. All in the tomb will hear his voice and come forth. Well, Blake made something similar in a little comment in his book, the first book of Europe. He said, “The dead heard the voice of the child and began to awake from sleep. All things heard the voice of the child and began to awake to life.” That this Christ child—and you always think of Christ as a little child, always as the child—and you hear the voice of the child, and all in the tomb begin to awake from sleep. Yet in a tomb they were called “the dead.” They will come forth from the tomb; they will awake in the tomb and come forth.773 ¶3

Now here is this new concept that came with the first one who awoke from the tomb, awoke from the dead, to find himself entombed and came forth, and then he brought an entirely different concept of what man really is. Man was under restraint in the past. So we are told, Why do you live under restraints, under regulations? Why do you live as though you were still a part of this world, and why do you submit to regulations? That we read in Colossians, Paul’s letter, the 2nd chapter of Colossians…because in the ancient world man had so many restraints if you read the 11th chapter of Leviticus, even as to diets.773 ¶4

If a beast chews its cud and at the same time it has a parted hoof and the cloven foot, well, then you could eat it. But if it chewed the cud, like the camel, but did not have the parted hoof, then it was unclean. The pig did not chew the cud but it had the parted hoof. It was unclean; you must have both. And so, the hare, the rabbit, the badger, they chewed the cud. The hare does not chew its cud, but the ancients thought it did by the motion of the jaw. But it had the cloven hoof as it were, it was not a parted foot, and therefore unclean. And the unnumbered things in the ocean, if they had fins and scales, they were clean, you could eat them. But if they did not have fins and scales, you could not eat them, they were unclean. So the eel that today the French devour and love—I’ve had them and they are delicious—all the shellfish were unclean. They didn’t have scales, they didn’t have fins, so oysters, clams, our lovely lobsters, the shrimp, all that would be the unclean if you took the 11th chapter of Leviticus.773 ¶5

He comes and he tells us what goes into the mouth does not defile us. Not a thing that goes into the mouth defiles a man, only what comes out of the heart defiles him. And so, whether I eat or do not eat it means nothing in the eye of God. He tells us that there’s not a thing gained by not eating it and nothing by eating it, it’s all equal to the eye of God. Because man will one day discover he never really ate another…that seems crazy…he never really ate another. He never killed another. He never wounded another. There was only himself, the ark, containing all, and all were self-wounds and self-destruction, and he only ate himself.773 ¶6

Now let me share with you an experience of mine. One day I found myself at the top of a ladder, a very tall ladder, and I was alone as a man. At the base of this ladder was the jungle and all the animals of the jungle, the lions, tigers, everything that you would think of as a vicious animal, an angry animal, and they were really violent. You could see the river…these living growling beasts that they were. And I was afraid. I looked around and not a soul in sight, I’m all alone.773 ¶7

Then, something in the depth of my soul told me—I didn’t hear a voice but I knew—I knew that everything that I saw, the entire animal world, only reflected my emotional disturbance. The anger there was a reflection of the fear here, and my fears were mirrored in this moving, moving beast that was at the bottom of me. Then when I knew that, I lost the fear. As I lost the fear they became domesticated, like house cats, just domesticated cats, not angry lions and tigers and panthers and all that they were.773 ¶8

And then I went further, because I remembered what I once did by arresting in me an activity, which in turn arrested the moving panorama that moved before me. Not a thing could move when I arrested that energy in me, and I saw it stand still as though made of marble, made of clay. So I repeated it here, and I arrested in me that life promised: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And do not marvel; for you will one day hear the voice and those that are dead will come forth from their tombs.” And so, I arrested in me this activity, and everything I saw one moment before moving stood still. Then I went down the ladder, and they were made as inanimate as this thing is here. They were dead; made of some substance, it could have been clay, or it could have been marble. But there wasn’t one breath in the beasts that I saw, everything was dead.773 ¶9

Well, where was the life? Had I eaten one of them, what life would I have eaten? Had I slain one and taken from it a nice piece of meat, and I consumed that meat, what would I have eaten? So I can only get from anything the life within it. Where was the life in it? Because I can’t eat the dead thing, no one takes the dead or that with feet of clay anyway. You can only eat that which has life in it to get substance from it. Even if it’s an apple, if it’s a peach, anything in the world, it must first be alive. It can’t be dead and decayed, and it can’t turn to stone and you consume it and get anything from it. You can’t assimilate that. You can only assimilate that which is alive. And so had I killed one of these and devoured it, what life would I have been eating? I saw that I gave it life. I could not have extracted from it anything other than I first gave it.773 ¶10

So the whole vast world that lives and moves in my world moves because I animate it. But I do it unknowingly. You are doing it unknowingly. You are making everything alive in your world, but you don’t know it, for you haven’t yet had the experience of stopping it to see it is something that is dead unless you animate it; that nothing is truly and really independent of your perception of it. That it moves, but you don’t know it moves because you are animating it.773 ¶11

And one day you are told of a certain law, that you could, without the consent of another, change the attitude of that being towards life, towards himself; and in changing his attitude, you could change the circumstances of his life. So you try it. You don’t ask his consent. You simply represent him to yourself as the man, or the woman, that you would like him to be, and you’re quite sure he would like to be it. And so, you don’t confide, you don’t take him into your confidence and tell him anything, you simply try it. Then when you meet him in the not distant future, he has changed his attitude towards life, and in that change of attitude he has changed the aspects of life. He has a change of environment, change of circumstances.773 ¶12

And so, you don’t brag; you’re just learning a lesson. Where was the activity to begin with? You are the ark of God, and the ark contains everything, nothing is missing from the ark. So you are either the ark of God or you’re simply a phantom from the earth and the sea. By this, you know you’re the ark, because he lives, seemingly, on the outside and he moves independently of your perception of him. Were he truly independent of your perception of him, a change of attitude in you relative to him could not produce in him a change at all, it couldn’t. But it does! It produces a change; therefore, he must be truly in you. And we go back to Blake: “All that you behold though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”773 ¶13

So when Blake uses the word “bosom” he means Imagination, which he reveals in that wonderful statement, another passage in Jerusalem, that “we are ever expanding in the bosom of God, the Human Imagination”. So he calls the bosom of God “Divine Imagination,” and we are expanding in Divine Imagination. What’s expanding?—the human Imagination. And they do not differ save in degree of intensity, but not in substance, not in character. They operate in the same way, one is keyed low and one is keyed high. Keyed high, an imaginal act is an immediate objective fact; keyed low as we are, it’s then realized in a time process. It takes time between the imaginal act and its externalization in the world. But it’s still one, operating the entire world.773 ¶14

So you are doing it, I am doing it; everyone contains all in himself. And all that we behold, though it appears without and seems so completely independent of us, it really isn’t. For I know that the night that I saw this thing it frightened me. I was scared by my own being, because it was simply myself made visible. That’s part of the eternal structure of the universe. But I animated it. He said, “Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy”.773 ¶15

That act of mercy was the animation of that which exists. The whole thing exists, but it’s dead, it’s frozen, and then you, God, awaken it. You begin to animate it, and as you animate it you don’t know you’re animating it and it scares you. You are afraid of your own life, because you give it life; it has no life in itself. Only the Father has life in himself, and as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. So you are that Son, but the Father and the Son are one; though the Father, at this level where we are called Son, is greater than the Son. So, “I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I.”773 ¶16

But I am moving towards that expansion where I and my Father are truly one. But while I am learning and experiencing this wonderful thing I must go through, then at moments I am scared to death of my own creation. Didn’t create the lion, I didn’t create the tiger. They are part of the eternal structure of the universe. I didn’t create this garment of hair called John Brown or Mary Smith; I didn’t do that but I animate them. I animate everything in my world. But Mary Brown and John Smith are eternal parts of the eternal structure of the universe, and you simply animate them.773 ¶17

And to prove you do do it you simply see them not as they now appear to you but as you would like them to appear to you and to themselves. You don’t consult them, you don’t take them into your confidence, you ask nothing of them, you simply do it; and persuade yourself of the reality of what you imagine relative to them, and wait in confidence. You wait in confidence, and then in this interval of time—because you’re functioning on a lower frequency, you’re down here, and this is the lower degree of intensity than were you raised to the height of the Father—so down here, you must wait in faith, confident that what you have done will come to pass. And then it comes to pass. As it comes to pass, you’ve discovered life in yourself.773 ¶18

And the day will come when you take it off…you never know it completely while you are still wearing this garment, for this garment is also part of the eternal structure of the universe. You had to assume it and move above it, but trusting from within the being that you really are. Now, what then endures? This is part of the eternal structure of the universe. What then passes away and what endures outside of the eternal structure that God has set up to bring forth himself as you?—-love, love never ends. As for prophecy, it will pass away, as for knowledge, it will pass away; for our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect. But when that which is perfect comes, that which is imperfect will pass away.773 ¶19

And so, when we are perfected in his own mind’s eye…when the lowly being that we started as, just trying to make something move and it moved…but we didn’t know we did it. We saw it move, and we didn’t see any contact between the thing and ourselves. We didn’t have a string, like a kite, but we know when we’re flying a kite with the wind we can do certain things and we do know we are guiding the motion, or we feel we are. But we have no sensation of contact between the beam, say, a beam of thought, and we don’t realize we’re just as contacted with it as we are with the string and the kite. We don’t know it.773 ¶20

And so, it moves and seems to run from us and sometimes frightens us because of our attitude towards it. And it scares us to death…when it has no power in itself. All the power is in the mind of the one who is looking at it, and imagining whatever he is imagining when he looks at it. And the whole vast world is simply the animated structure of the world, animated by the percipient, and you are the percipient. So the only thing that really remains is love, because God is love. There is nothing but God and God is love.773 ¶21

Last night I spoke at one of these salons. That’s one of those things that you get into occasionally, and you don’t know why or how, but we all do it. And so, not a [...], so you got into it. And this nice couple, they asked me to tell them some stories concerning my mystical experiences. Alright, nothing pleases me more than to tell these experiences. And so, this chap said to me, “You mean to tell me that you actually saw God?” I said, “Yes, I saw God.” Then he smiled a little sneer, snigger. Well, said he, “What is God?” I said, “Man…God is man. You may not believe it, you may think he’s light and power and all these things, but I tell you God is man. And one day you will have the privilege of meeting God. When you see him, you’ll be absorbed by him, because to see him is to become him. And so you’ll be incorporated into the body of love, and you will know, regardless of the arguments of man, that God is all love, infinite love, and nothing but love. All things pass away, all the wisdom of this world passes away, everything passes away but love. Love never ends, never comes to an end, because God is love.”773 ¶22

Then his wife said to me, “Are you Isaiah?” I said, “What has that to do about it…am I Isaiah?” I said, “No, I’m Neville.” “Isaiah saw God.” Must I be Isaiah to see God? The pure in heart sees God, only the pure in heart sees God. So, if you’re pure in heart—not in your eyes, for all of us in our own eyes feel that our ways are pure, all the ways of men are pure in their own eyes, but God sees the heart—and when in his eyes the heart is pure you are called. You have no choice. Because you don’t know that moment in eternity when you were selected, and that little secret of God’s elective love remains his secret. And you are called for incorporation, that’s all. You’ll be asked a question, you’ll answer correctly; at the moment of the answer you are incorporated into the body of love, which is God. And let me repeat, God is man. That didn’t sit with them at all.773 ¶23

And then, this lady asked a question, “Why if Jesus Christ is God, why did he cry out on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” And then she quoted it as though it came from the Book of Luke. I said, no, it didn’t come from Luke. It came either from Matthew or Mark or both, but certainly not from Luke, and not from John.773 ¶24

Because they do not use that 22nd Psalm, they use…that is, Luke uses the 31st Psalm, and only the 31st is quoted in this last cry on the cross. It wasn’t a cry. It was a complete surrender in faith; for the words are, ‘Father, into thy hand I commit my spirit’ not ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ That is Matthew. That’s when the great presence is presented as king. In Mark, he is presented as a servant. In Luke, he is presented as the perfect man. He would not cry, because a perfect man is made in the image of God, the pure in heart, so he doesn’t. He knows God as infinite love. So, at the very last he knows the work is finished, and so, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” When it comes to John, John is God himself in the story as presented, and so, he presents Jesus as Jehovah. And so the last cry there is, “It is finished.” To fulfill scripture, just prior to that, he said, “I thirst”…to fulfill the 69th Psalm. And so he thirsted and they gave him vinegar for his thirst. So he cried out, “I thirst.” Then the very last words, knowing that it was finished, he said, “It is finished” and then gave up the spirit. So he didn’t cry it.773 ¶25

But the lady was insistent it came from Luke, because that very day she was reading Luke and she read it in Luke. Well, not to have the other guests be disturbed, I did what normally I really should not have done. But I thought for the benefit of all…because if I did not correct it, they would have gone out thinking, well, you see, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and one lady corrected him, and so she knew. So I asked the hostess of the place if perchance she had a Bible, and she brought out a lovely big red Bible. I said, Turn to Luke and turn to the 23rd chapter, for that would be on the cross. The 24th is after the resurrection. So she turned…I didn’t have my glasses with me, and when you’re pushing sixty, you know, you need glasses, so I didn’t have my glasses. So I said, I can’t see this fine print…and some gentleman very graciously offered me his glasses, but I couldn’t use them. He gave me the glasses, but I couldn’t see anything then. Another gentleman, judging from appearances I would say many years my senior, and his fitted me perfectly. They were just magnifying, and so I could see, and I read it for her. She was, still I’m quite convinced, unconvinced. I said, I’m reading from the 46th verse, the 23rd chapter of the Book of Luke. When you go home, take the same Book of Luke and read it and you will see he never did quote the 22nd Psalm; he was only quoting the 31st Psalm, a complete confidence in his surrender to God.773 ¶26

So we think we know this great book, and we really don’t know the book. The book is telling you what I’ve told you earlier: You are the ark of God. All things in eternity are contained in you; there’s nothing but God; and you and God are one. That shocks people, as it shocked those last night…not all of them but the majority was disturbed. As the meeting…as it followed when the gathering after the meeting, from conversations that I had with so many of them following that, they were greatly disturbed. Because they can’t bring themselves to believe that man is that great in the eyes of God.773 ¶27

He’s bringing out a Son. What do you expect him to bring out, a Son and not be like his Father? Suppose I’m bringing out a son and my wife says, “Oh, we had a child this morning,” and I’m delighted, and I go into the room and she shows me a roach. She gives me a bug, a great big bug, and says, “I gave birth to this, this morning. You’re the father.” Now, wouldn’t I be proud! That’s exactly what man is doing with God.773 ¶28

He said, “I will bring forth from you”—from man, and he calls man this wonderful David—and he said, “I will raise up after you” (after you’re dead), and so, “When you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up from your body a son, that will come forth from your body. And I will be his father and he shall be my son”. Then all of a sudden he brings out of David (which is humanity) what he’s waiting eagerly for, his Son, the image of himself, and David gives birth to a roach? Can you imagine that? What would God do? Step on it. He’d step on it right away and call it, well, some miscreation and start all over again. Because if all that God could bring out of man, waiting eagerly for something like himself to come out of man, and it doesn’t come out the embodiment of love but it comes out like a monstrous thing, step on it. And then you have eternity at your command, therefore, make it all over again. This time do a little better.773 ¶29

But God has done exactly what he planned. He is bringing forth from humanity his Son. He is bringing out of David, that’s humanity, one glorious Son; it’s you. When he brings you out, you’re just like him. And, may I tell you, he’s all love, nothing but love. There is no hate in God, no retribution. The cry on the cross, the very first words, “Father, forgive them”—if you read Luke—“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” And then the second cry on the cross, he turns to the thief, he said, “Behold, I say unto you today…”773 ¶30

You see, in Greek and in Hebrew there is no punctuation mark, in fact, no paragraph, no chapter, just one letter after the other, so our scholars had to break it and punctuate it. So if you take the comma and put it after “I say unto you,” and that’s the break, and then, “today you will be with me in Paradise” that changes the entire sentence. And yet they all do that. But if I take that sentence and change the comma, and say, “I say unto you today,”—I’m telling you today—“you will be with me in Paradise.”773 ¶31

I don’t say you are going to be with me today. I’m telling you I have experienced it. I have experienced the Promise, complete, fulfilled, and I know my inheritance is the kingdom of heaven. I inherit not only the kingdom, I inherit a presence, and the presence is God. Because he gave me himself through the revelation of his Son, who called me what he calls him. He calls me “Father”; he calls him “Father.” But he can’t call both; we’re one. And so, I know I inherit a presence. I know when the time comes to take it off, automatically he has already changed my lowly body to be of one form with his glorious body, and the body that I will wear tomorrow is one with that of the exalted Christ. That I know.773 ¶32

And so, when this happens, I will say to anyone, if a thief, alright, even though you are a thief, you’re a cutthroat, you’re a murderer, but I tell you, “You will be with me in Paradise.” So his second cry on the cross, “Behold, I say unto you today,”—you put the comma there—“you will be with me in Paradise.” I’m not committing myself that now, this very day, you’re going to be with me; because, if you read the story carefully, he said, “Touch me not yet; I have not yet ascended unto my Father”, and that was forty days later. So either one is misunderstood or the whole thing is a lie, it’s a contradiction. But if you take the comma—and the scholar had the right to place it where he felt the meaning would be—and so he thought after “you” if you placed the comma that would give the sense intended by the writer. It didn’t give the sense. “Behold, I say unto you today,”—I’m talking today—“you will be with me in Paradise.” So that’s the story.773 ¶33

And then the third cry is a complete surrender in absolute confidence into the hands of his Father. “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” in confidence that this was intended, that we become one; for the spirit, everyone’s spirit becomes one, and he’s one with the Father. So when he goes to the Father, he is the Father. But, while he’s here, clothed as we are clothed in flesh and blood, then, seemingly, he is not, and restricted to the limit of this region, this level of awareness.773 ¶34

So I say, all of you the whole vast world pushed out—everything is man made visible. Man has never killed another, he has never eaten another, he has never wounded another, because he only could hurt himself. I wouldn’t say I wound a piece of clay. If I went in and I took a knife, I could disfigure a lovely painting, but I wouldn’t say I wounded it. I could be some awful character and then take a knife and cut the lovely canvas, but I wouldn’t really say I hurt it. But, if I gave it life and the thing became animated, it became alive, and then I put the knife to it, I would say I hurt it. But the thing that would make it alive would be myself, the perceiver; therefore, I’m really putting the knife into myself, but not yet that sensitive to feeling.773 ¶35

But the day will come, may I tell you, when what I just told you is true. I saw the entire world right before me and it was all dead when I arrested in me an activity that made it alive. I suddenly looked at it and it was simply dead. But before that, I was afraid, I was scared to death. I looked at it and it was all living, moving beasts, and I’m alone, no one to protect me, no one to comfort me, I’m completely alone. And then, something in the depths of the soul, I knew it, that if perchance I could only lose my fear of them, they would not be angry. When I lost my fear of them…these lovely kittens, that’s what they were. Huge monstrous things…but kittens, domesticated. And then I went further and I arrested in me the activity that made them alive. Then I came down the ladder, walked right down to them and they were frozen, dead; not asleep, they were dead. They were only made of clay.773 ¶36

Their life was in me, but I didn’t know it until that moment before I started down. Because, at the very first moment of seeing them, because I saw them through my conceptual mind and my conceptual mind tells me that tiger is a very dangerous animal, and so is the lion, and so is the panther; and so, my conceptual mind modified that divine vision that I could have had were I not wearing the conceptual mind. So when I took it off as it were by remembering the being that I am, the whole thing changed and they were all dead. So, had I eaten any part of them, or any part of the fish, I’m only eating myself. Because I’m only extracting, really, from that body, which is dead anyway, and it was only made alive by the life of me, so what am I taking back when I eat it? I’m only eating my own being as it were.773 ¶37

So you’re told in that wonderful second chapter of Colossians speaking of diets, it doesn’t matter what you eat. Only do not use it as a stumbling block to others who are not yet awake. So don’t brag about it. If they want to be vegetarians, let them be vegetarians. Don’t brag about being able to eat all the things in the world without distress, don’t brag about it. But do not submit any more to regulations. You’re told, do not submit to regulations—all the regulations of the churches, all the regulations of the outside things of this world—don’t. Why do you once more think of yourself, he said, as a part of this world? You’re not a part of this world. You’re wearing a part of the world’s garment, and you’re wearing it, but you’re not the garment that you wear.773 ¶38

You will have something that is coming out that is one with God; and your body is God’s body, and the body is all love. So we are told love never ends. Knowledge passes away. Prophecy, it passes away, for both are imperfect. But when perfection comes, when that which is perfect comes, that which is imperfect will pass away. And so, all that man knows today about gravity, all that he knows about the so-called structure of the atom, all that he knows about everything in this world will be as nothing; it’ll pass away, because it isn’t true. It is partially true and we get results with a partial truth. But when perfection comes all these partial truths will vanish, and they will not be so at all.773 ¶39

And I saw that so clearly when I saw a bird in flight. If I arrested the motion of a man, which I did, and the lady walking through to serve food, and then she couldn’t move one second beyond one nth part beyond. And I saw that so clearly when I saw a bird in flight. If I arrested the motion of a man, which I did, and the lady walking through to serve food, and then she couldn’t move one second beyond one nth where I arrested her.773 ¶40

And a man eating couldn’t complete the action. He was drinking soup, so he took the soup up this way, and as I stopped him, he stopped, frozen, he was dead. And the waitress walking, she was dead. And the bird flying, it stopped in space but it didn’t fall. And the leaves falling didn’t fall any further when I arrested them. And everything was just as it was at that moment of perception. The leaves falling fell not, and the bird flying flew not, and the waitress walking walked not; everything that was in motion when I stopped it remained stationary. Then I went forward and examined it, and everything was made as though it were made of clay.773 ¶41

Then when I released that activity in me, what happened? They all continued to complete their intentions. The bird continued in its flight towards where he intended to go. The waitress came forward towards the table of four to serve as she intended when she came through that little door. The man drinking his soup, the hand that was stopped here completed the action and the soup went into his mouth. Everything continued as it was intended. But I stopped the intention, not there, in me. At that moment in time it had to be just where it was and I stopped it, and then allowed it to continue by an action in me.773 ¶42

Well, if gravity is true, I mean absolutely true, not partially true, not relatively true, that bird should have fallen to the ground when I stopped it. For a bird in flight if arrested would fall. But, the bird in flight arrested, not supported by anything and still remained suspended in space, where is gravity? Where is the gravity of the leaf? Why did the leaf not come on down to the ground where it should have if gravity is truly an absolute universal law?773 ¶43

So I say, the time will come when all that man now knows…and you read it carefully in the 13th chapter of the Book of Corinthians, 1st Corinthians, 13th chapter. It’s a hymn in praise of love. It simply states that love and love only is the everlasting of the world. Everything passes away. If I give my body to be burned and have not love, it is as nothing. If I have all wisdom and have not love, it is as nothing. No matter what I do in this world if I haven’t love, I did nothing. Because, everything is going to pass away that man knows here; but it’s love that he has here that will not pass away. Your love for your wife, your love for your husband, your love for a child, your love for a friend, your love for an animal, every expression of love is forever. So these loves never pass away…but what you now know is going to pass away.773 ¶44

You look into the mirror and you see your face, and you even catch it on a photograph, and you think, “I’ve got him now.” Then look at yourself again next year, where is he? It all passed away, and you can’t bring it back. You can go to the surgeon, have him cut you here, pull up a little place, but it doesn’t look like what it did last year. And they go every year. I just saw where some very famous person in the East, she’s an international lady—but like all of us we push the inevitable grave, and so, she’s not far from it—but she’s just gone to a surgeon for the nth time in London to once more have another little lift. A few more seconds, she can’t smile. There’s no more to lift. You look at it like this…you can’t take any more.773 ¶45

I have played in the theatre with one of those. She had millions, and she was always taking a little lift, not only here but also here. Also making everything as she was when she was eighteen. It didn’t work. Finally, the face couldn’t move. It was simply completely filled. So, you see, all things will pass away, but love will not pass away. So, whatever you do in love, know you are doing something that is permanent, something that’s forever.773 ¶46

So fall in love with anything, with a bird, a bird at home. If you have a cat at home, if you have a dog at home, if you can’t find humanity to love, love something, because love is the only living permanent thing in the world because God is love. And everything else passes away.773 ¶47

Infinite power…you can call God’s power almightiness, but that’s not God, that’s an attribute of God. When you see it, you see man, because all the attributes of God are men. When you stand in the presence, almightiness, it’s man, no question about it, but it’s not God. God is love. When you stand in the presence of God, infinite love, you don’t have to ask anything, who are you? You ask no question. You stand in the presence of the Ancient of Days and he’s all love. Yet you look here and here is infinite might and it’s man; it’s an attribute of God. Wisdom, an attribute of God…all this is an attribute of God. But love is forever, the only permanent reality in the world.773 ¶48

So every time you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you know what you’re doing? You’re actually using the only reality in the world, the only reality. Gradually you awaken, and one day you’ll hear the voice of the child. You will hear him, and you will awaken him from a profound sleep. Where will you awaken him? He’ll come forth from the tomb. And where is the tomb?—your own skull. One day you will hear the voice of the child in the depths of your soul, and then you who were dead will awaken from sleep. You will feel yourself waking from sleep, may I tell you. You had no idea you were dead, because you feel yourself waking and you can only wake if you were asleep. And when you are fully awake, you know now you must have been dead because you are in a tomb. It’s the only way you know that you’re dead, because where you are you are alone in a sealed tomb, a sepulcher.773 ¶49

So are we not told in Luke—and they called the word by its real name, they call it “skull”—“And when they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified him”. When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified him. And just the very next verse, he said, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” And then a few verses later on, “I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.” A few verses later and he commits himself into the hands of the Father, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Then he gives up the breath, gives up the Spirit into the hands of God, for the journey is over.773 ¶50

And that will be played by every child born of woman; everyone is going to play that part. You can’t avoid it, because that’s your destiny. God has predetermined your end, regardless of what you do in between. I hope you play a lovely part, a beautiful part, but whether you do or not the end is predetermined; and the end is that God gives himself to you, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you. And so, the end is assured for all of us—even if you have murdered—but you’ve never murdered love.773 ¶51

And so, the millions that Hitler murdered he really murdered himself, but he doesn’t know it, hasn’t the slightest idea. Stalin murdered millions; he murdered himself. I know that you and I who have friends or relatives who were part of that awful story, we do not conceal that. We did not know that a friend was murdered. That friend was really never touched, for in him he too had life in himself. He animated his world. He was afraid of the rumors. He was afraid, as I was afraid of the animals. And before he was brought into that picture of the slaughterhouse, he didn’t quite discover that his own emotions caused the disturbance that he saw. And so he couldn’t quite arrest it, because he didn’t know that he was animating the world and giving it reality, giving it life, by his own fears. And, as Job said, “My fears have come upon me.” So, while he was afraid, he became all the more animated on the inside and all the more things became more stormy. Then it was too late, because he did not realize any relationship between himself and the thing that he perceived.773 ¶52

And so, when you one day have this experience, and may you have it tonight, you will see this wonderful world stand still. You’ll know it stands still because in you, you made it stand still. You arrested an activity that you felt, and you didn’t feel it out there, you felt it here, right in your own head. As you arrested it, everything froze, and you looked at it, and then you had no fear. Then you released it in you and they all became once more animated. You could keep them on the level of domesticated cats, or you could once more go back to your former state where you forgot, and once more they become violent as you become more fearful.773 ¶53

So I say, all men, all the whole vast world is man made visible; there is nothing but man because God and man are one. “Man is all Imagination. God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself”.773 ¶54

And when you go home this night, you try it, without the consent of another. Do it lovingly, though. Just bring someone into your mind’s eye, represent him to yourself as you would like him to be, regardless of what he’s done—I don’t care what he has done or what he’s doing—just simply be faithful to your vision of him. And to the degree that you are self-persuaded of the reality of what you’ve done, to that degree he will conform to it.773 ¶55

But, bear this in mind and be comforted by it, were you functioning at higher intensities it would happen immediately. But we are not—we are wearing garments of flesh and blood, and we are insulated. Because we are, it’s going to take an interval of time between your imaginal act and the fulfillment of that act.773 ¶56

Now let us go into the Silence.773 ¶57

Goodnight.773 ¶60

This Bible of ours has nothing to do with history. Some of you may yet be inclined tonight to believe that, although we can give it a psychological interpretation, it still could be left in its present form and be interpreted literally. You cannot do it. The Bible has no reference at all to people or to events as you have been taught to believe. The sooner you begin to rub out that picture the better. We are going to take a few stories tonight, and again I am going to remind you that you must re-enact all of these stories within your own mind. Bear in mind that although they seem to be stories of people fully awake, the drama is really between you, the sleeping one, the deeper you, and the conscious waking you. They are personified as people, but when you come to the point of application you must remember the importance of the drowsy state. All creation, as we told you last night, takes place in the state of sleep, or that state which is akin to sleep -- the, sleepy drowsy state. We told you last night the first man is not yet awakened. You are Adam, the first man, still in the profound sleep. The creative you is the fourth-dimensional you whose home is simply the state you enter when men call you asleep. **************771 ¶1

Our first story for tonight is found in the Gospel of John. As you hear it unfold before you, I want you to compare it in your mind’s eye to the story you heard last night from the book of Genesis. The first book of the Bible, the bock of Genesis, historians claim is the record of events which occurred on earth some 3,000 years before the events recorded in the book of John. I ask you to be rational about it and see if you do not think the same writer could have written both stories. You be the judge as to whether the same inspired man could not have told the same story and told it differently.771 ¶2

This is a very familiar story, the story of the trial of Jesus. In this Gospel of John it is recorded that Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, and the crowd clamored for his life. They wanted Jesus. Pilate turned to them and said: “But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the Passover; will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.”771 ¶3

You are told that Pilate had no choice in the matter, he was only a judge interpreting law, and this was the law. The people had to be given that which they requested. Pilate could not release Jesus against the wishes of the crowd, and so he released Barabbas and gave unto them Jesus to be crucified.771 ¶4

Now bear in mind that your consciousness is God. There is no other God. And you are told that God has a son whose name is Jesus. If you will take the trouble to look up the word Barabbas in your concordance, you will see that it is a contraction of two Hebraic words: BAR, which means a daughter or son- or child, and ABBA, which means father. Barabbas is the son of the great father. And Jesus in the story is called the Saviour, the Son of the Father. We have two sons in this story. And we have two sons in the story of Esau and Jacob. Bear in mind that Isaac was blind, and justice to be true must be blind folded. Although in this case Pilate is not physically blind, the part given to Pilate implies that he is blind because he is a judge. On all the great law buildings of the world we see the lady or the man who represents justice as being blindfolded. “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” Here we find Pilate is playing the same part as Isaac. There are two sons.771 ¶5

All the characters as they appear in this story can apply to your own life. You have a son that is robbing you this very moment of that which you could be. If you came to this meeting tonight conscious of wanting something, desiring something, you walked in the company of Barabbas. For to desire is to confess that you do not now possess what you desire, and because all things are yours, you rob yourself by living in the state of desire.771 ¶6

My saviour is my desire. As I want something I am looking into the eyes of my saviour. But if I continue wanting it, I deny my Jesus, my saviour, for as I want I confess I am not and “except ye believe that I AM He ye die in your sins.” I cannot have and still continue to desire what I have. I may enjoy it, but I cannot continue wanting it.771 ¶7

Here is the story. This is the feast of the Passover. Something is going to change right now. Something is going to passover. Man is incapable of passing over from one state of consciousness into another unless he releases from consciousness that which he now entertains, for it anchors him where he is. You and I may go to physical feasts year after year as the sun enters the great sign of Aries, but it means nothing to the true mystical Passover.771 ¶8

To keep the feast of the Passover, the psychological feast, I pass from one state of consciousness into another. I do it by releasing Barabbas, the thief and robber that robs me of that state which I could embody within my world. The state I seek to embody is personified in the story as Jesus the Saviour. If I become what I want to be then I am saved from what I was. If I do not become it, I continue to keep locked within me a thief who robs me of being that which I could be.771 ¶9

These stories have no reference to any persons who lived nor to any event that ever occurred upon earth. These characters are everlasting characters in the mind of every man in the world. You and I perpetually keep alive either Barabbas or Jesus. You know at every moment of time who you are entertaining.771 ¶10

Do not condemn a crowd for clamoring that they should release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. It is not a crowd of people called Jews. They had nothing to do with it. If we are wise, we too should clamor for the release of that state of mind that limits us from being what we want to be, that restricts us, that does not permit us to become the ideal that we seek and strive to attain in this world.771 ¶11

I am not saying that you are not tonight embodying Jesus. I only remind you, that if at this very moment you have an unfulfilled ambition, then you are entertaining that which denies the fulfillment of the ambition, and that which denies it is Barabbas.771 ¶12

To explain the mystical, psychological transformation known as the Passover, or the crossing over, you must now become identified with the ideal that you would serve, and you must remain faithful to the ideal. If you remain faithful to it, you not only crucify it by your faithfulness, but you resurrect it unaided by a man. As the story goes, no man could rise early enough to roll away the stone. Unaided by a man the stone was removed, and what seemingly was dead and buried was resurrected unassisted by a man.771 ¶13

You walk in the consciousness of being that which you want to be. No one sees it as yet, but you do not need a man to roll away the problems and the obstacles of life in order to express that which you are conscious of being. That state has its own unique way of becoming embodied in this world, of becoming flesh that the whole world may touch it.771 ¶14

Now you can see the relationship between the story of Jesus and the story of Isaac and his two sons, where one transplanted the other, where one was called the Supplanter of the other. Why do you think those who compiled the sixty odd books of our Bible made Jacob the forefather of Jesus? They took Jacob, who was called the Supplanter, and made him father of twelve, then they took Judah or praise, the fifth son and made him the forefather of Joseph, who is supposed to have fathered in some strange way this one called Jesus. Jesus must supplant Barabbas as Jacob must supplant and take the place of Esau.771 ¶15

Tonight you can sit right here and conduct the trial of your two sons, one of whom you want released. You can become the crowd who clamors for the release of the thief, and the judge who willingly releases Barabbas, and sentences Jesus to fill his place. He was crucified on Golgotha, the place of the skull, the seat of the imagination. To experience the Passover or passage from the old to the new concept of self, you must release Barabbas, your present concept of self, which robs you of being that which you could be, and you must assume the new concept which you desire to express.771 ¶16

The best way to do this is to concentrate your attention upon the idea of identifying yourself with your ideal. Assume you are already that which you seek and your assumption, though false, if sustained, will harden into fact.771 ¶17

You will know when you have succeeded in releasing Barabbas, your old concept of self, and when you have successfully crucified Jesus, or fixed the new concept of self, by simply looking MENTALLY at the people you know. If you see them as you formerly saw them, you have not changed your concept of self, for all changes of concepts of self result in a changed relationship to your world.771 ¶18

We always seem to others an embodiment of the ideal we inspire. Therefore, in meditation, we must imagine that others see us as they would see us were we what we desire to be.771 ¶19

You can release Barabbas and crucify and resurrect Jesus if you will first define your ideal. Then relax in a comfortable arm chair, induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep and experience in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already that which you desire to be. By this simple method of experiencing in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you the embodiment of the ideal you serve, you release Barabbas who robbed you of your greatness, and you crucify and resurrect your saviour, or the ideal you desired to express.771 ¶20

Now let us turn to the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Bear in mind that a garden is a properly prepared plot of ground, it is not a wasteland. You are preparing this ground called Gethsemane by coming here and studying and doing something about your mind. Spend some time daily in preparing your mind by reading good literature, listening to good music and entering into conversations that ennoble. We are told in the Epistles, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”771 ¶21

Continuing with our story, as told in the 18th chapter of John, Jesus is in the garden and suddenly a crowd begins to seek him. He is standing there in the dark and he says, “Whom seek ye?” The spokesman called Judas answers and says, “We seek Jesus of Nazareth.” A voice answers, “I am He.” At this instant they all fall to the ground, thousands of them tumbled.771 ¶22

That in itself should stop you right there and let you know it could not be a physical drama, because no one could be so bold in his claim that he is the one sought, that he could cause thousands who seek him to fall to the ground. But the story tells us they all fell to the ground. Then when they regained their composure they asked the same question. “Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.”771 ¶23

“Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.” Judas, who has to do it quickly, goes out and commits suicide.771 ¶24

Now to the drama. You are in your garden of Gethsemane or prepared mind if you can, while you are in a state akin to sleep, control your attention and not let it wander away from its purpose. If you can do that you are definitely in the garden. Very few people can sit quietly and not enter a reverie or a state of uncontrolled thinking. When you can restrict the mental action and remain faithful to your watch, not permitting your attention to wander all over the place, but hold it without effort within a limited field of presentation to the state you are contemplating, then you are definitely this disciplined presence in the garden of Gethsemane.771 ¶25

The suicide of Judas is nothing more than changing your concept of yourself. When you know what you want to be you have found your Jesus or saviour. When you assume that you are what you want to be you have died to your former concept of self (Judas committed suicide) and are now living as Jesus. You can become at will detached from the world round about you, and attached to that which you want to embody within your world.771 ¶26

Now that you have found me, now that you have found that which would save you from what you are, let go of that which you are and all that it represents in the world. Become completely detached from it. In other words, go out and commit suicide. You completely die to what you formerly expressed in this world, and you now completely live to that which no one saw as true of you before. You are as though you had died by your own hand, as though you had committed suicide. You took your own life by becoming detached in consciousness from what you formerly kept alive, and you begin to live to that which you have discovered in your garden. You have found your saviour.771 ¶27

It is not men falling, not a man betraying another, but you detaching your attention, and refocusing your attention in an entirely new direction. From this moment on you walk as though you were that which you formerly wanted to be. Remaining faithful to your new concept of yourself, you die or commit suicide. No one took your life, you laid it down yourself.771 ¶28

You must be able to see the relation of this to the death of Moses, where he so completely died that no one could find where he was buried. You must see the relationship of the death of Judas. He is not a man who betrayed a man called Jesus. The word Judas is praise; it is Judah, to praise, to give thanks, to explode with joy. You do not explode with joy unless you are identified with the ideal you seek and want to embody in this world. When you become identified with the state you contemplate you cannot suppress your joy. It rises like the fragrant odor described as Jericho in the Old Testament.771 ¶29

I am trying to show you that the ancients told the same story in all the stories of the Bible. All that they are trying to tell us is how to become that which we want to be. And they imply in every story that we do not need the assistance of another. You do not need another to become now what you really want to be. **************771 ¶30

Now we turn to a strange story in the Old Testament; one that very few priests and rabbis will be bold enough to mention from their pulpits. Here is one who is going to receive the promise as you now receive it. His name is Jesus, only the ancients called him Joshua, Jehoshua Ben Nun, or saviour, son of the fish, the Saviour of the great deep. Nun means fish, and fish is the element of the deep, the profound ocean. Jehoshua means Jehovah saves, and Ben means the offspring or son of. So he was called the one who brought the fish age.771 ¶31

This story is in the 6th book of the Bible, the book of Joshua. A promise is made to Joshua as it is made to Jesus in the Anglicized form in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “All things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.” “And all mine are thine, and thine are mine.” In the Old Testament in the book of Joshua it is said in these words: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.”771 ¶32

It does not matter where it is; analyze the promise and see if you can accept it literally. It is not physically true but it is psychologically true. Wherever you can stand in this world mentally that you can realize. Joshua is haunted by this promise that wherever he can place his foot (the foot is understanding), wherever the sole of his foot shall tread, that will be given unto him. He wants the most desirable state in the world, the fragrant city, the delightful state called Jericho. He finds himself barred by the impassable walls of Jericho. He is on the outside, as you are now on the outside.771 ¶33

You are functioning three-dimensionally and you cannot seem to reach the fourth-dimensional world where your present desire is already a concrete objective reality. You cannot seem to reach it because your senses bar you from it. Reason tells you it is impossible, all things round about you tell you it is not true.771 ¶34

Now you employ the services of a harlot and a spy, and her name is Rahab. The word Rahab simply means the spirit of the father. RACE means the breath or spirit, and AB the father. Hence we find that this harlot is the spirit of the father and the father is man’s awareness of being aware, man’s I AMness, man’s consciousness. Your capacity to feel is the great spirit of the father, and that capacity is Rahab in this story.771 ¶35

She has two professions that of a spy and that of a harlot. The profession of a spy is this: to travel secretly, to travel so quietly that you may not be detected. There is not a single physical spy in this world who can travel so quietly that he will be altogether unseen by others. He may be very wise in concealing his ways, and he may never be truly apprehended, but at every moment of time he runs the risk of being detected.771 ¶36

When you are sitting quietly with your thoughts, there is no man in the world so wise that he can look at you and tell you where you are mentally dwelling. I can stand here and place myself in London. Knowing London quite well, I can close my eyes and assume that I am actually standing in London. If I remain within this state long enough, I will be able to surround myself with the environment of London as though it were a solid concrete objective fact. Physically I am still here, but mentally I am thousands of miles away and I have made elsewhere here. I do not go there as a spy, I mentally make elsewhere here, and then now. You cannot see me dwelling there, so you think I have just gone to sleep and that I an still here in this world, this three-dimensional world that is now San Francisco. As far as I am physically concerned, I am here but no one can tell me where I am when I enter the moment of meditation.771 ¶37

Rahab’s next profession was that of a harlot, which is to grant unto men what they ask of her without asking man’s right to ask. If she be an absolute harlot, as her name implies, then she possesses all and can grant all that man asks of her. She is there to serve, and not to question man’s right to seek what he seeks of her.771 ¶38

You have within you the capacity to appropriate a state without knowing the means that will be employed to realize that end and you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled without having any of the talents that men claim you must possess in order to do so. When you appropriate it in consciousness you have employed the spy, and because you can embody that state within yourself by actually giving it to yourself, you are the harlot, for the harlot satisfies the man who seeks her. You can satisfy self by appropriating the feeling that you are what you want to be. And this assumption though false, that is, although reason and the senses deny it, if persisted in will harden into fact. By actually embodying that which you have assumed you are, you have the capacity to become completely satisfied. Unless it becomes a tangible, concrete reality you will not be satisfied; you will be frustrated.771 ¶39

You are told in this story that when Rahab went into the city to conquer it, the command given to her was to enter the heart of the city, the heart of the matter, the very center of it, and there remain until I come. Do not go from house to house, do not leave the upper room of the house into which you enter. If you leave the house and there be blood upon your head, it is upon your head. But if you do not leave the house and there be blood, it shall be upon my head. Rahab goes into the house, rises to the upper floor, and there she remains while the walls crumble. That is, we must keep a high mood if we would walk with the highest.771 ¶40

In a very veiled manner, the story tells you that when the walls crumbled and Joshua entered, the only one who was saved in the city was the spy and the harlot whose name was Rahab. This story tells what you can do in this world. You will never lose the capacity to place yourself elsewhere and make it here. You will never lose the ability to give unto yourself what you are bold enough to appropriate as true of self. It has nothing to do with the woman who played that part.771 ¶41

The explanation of the crumbling of the walls is simple. You are told that he blew upon the trumpet seven times and at the seventh blast the walls crumbled and he entered victoriously into the state that he sought.771 ¶42

Seven is a stillness, a rest, the Sabbath. It is the state when man is completely unmoved in his conviction that the thing is. When I can assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled and go to sleep, unconcerned, undisturbed, I am at rest mentally, and am keeping the Sabbath or am blowing the trumpet seven times. And when I reach that point the walls crumble. Circumstances alter, then remold themselves in harmony with my assumption. As they crumble I resurrect that which I have appropriated within. The walls, the obstacles, the problems, crumble of their own weight if I can reach the point of stillness within me.771 ¶43

The man Who can fix within his own mind’s eye an idea, even though the world would deny it, if he remains faithful to that idea he will see it manifested.771 ¶44

There is all the difference in the world between holding the idea, and being held by the idea. Become so dominated by an idea that it haunts the mind as though you were it. Then, regardless of what others may say, you are walking in the direction of your fixed attitude of mind. You are walking in the direction of the idea that dominates the mind.771 ¶45

As we told you last night, you have but one gift that is truly yours to give, and that is yourself. There is no other gift; you must press it out of yourself by an appropriation. It is there within you now for creation is finished. There is nothing to be that is not now. There is nothing to be created for all things are already yours, they are all finished. Although man may not be able to stand physically upon a state, he can always stand mentally upon any desired state.771 ¶46

By standing mentally I mean that you can now, this very moment, close your eyes and visualize a place other than your present one, and assume that you are actually there. You can FEEL this to be so real that upon opening your eyes you are amazed to find that you are not physically there. This mental journey into the desired state, with its subsequent feeling of reality, is all that is necessary to bring about its fulfillment.771 ¶47

Your dimensionally greater Self has ways that the lesser, or three-dimensional you, know not of. Furthermore, to the greater you, all means are good which promote the fulfillment of your assumption. Remain in the mental state defined as your objective until it has the feeling of reality, and all the forces of heaven and earth will rush to aid its embodiment. Your greater Self will influence the actions and words of all who can be used to aid the production of your fixed mental attitude. *************771 ¶48

Now we turn to the book of Numbers and here we find a strange story. I trust that some of you have had this experience as described in the bock of Numbers. They speak of the building of a tabernacle at the command of God; that God commanded Israel to build him a place of worship. He gave them all the specifications of the tabernacle. It had to be an elongated, movable place of worship, and it had to be covered with skin. Need you be told anything more? Isn’t that man? “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” There is no other temple. Not a temple made with hands, but a temple eternal in the heavens.771 ¶49

This temple is elongated, and it is covered with skin, and it moves across the desert. “And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.”771 ¶50

The command given to Israel was to tarry until the cloud ascended by day and the fire by night. “Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed.”771 ¶51

You know that you are the tabernacle, but you may wonder, what is the cloud. In meditation many of you must have seen it. In meditation, this cloud, like the sub-soil waters of an artesian well, springs spontaneously to your head and forms itself into pulsating, golden rings. Then, like a gentle river, they flow from your head in a stream of living rings of gold.771 ¶52

In a meditative mood bordering on sleep the cloud ascends. It is in this drowsy state that you should assume that you are that which you desire to be, and that you have that which you seek, for the cloud will assume the form of your assumption and fashion a world in harmony with itself. The cloud is simply the garment of your consciousness, and where your consciousness is placed, there you will be in the flesh also.771 ¶53

This golden cloud comes in meditation. There is a certain point when you are approaching sleep that it is very, very thick, very liquid, and very much alive and pulsing. It begins to ascend as you reach the drowsy, meditative state, bordering on sleep.771 ¶54

You do not strike the tabernacle; neither do you move it until the cloud begins to ascend. The cloud always ascends when man approaches the drowsiness of sleep. For when a man goes to sleep, whether he knows it or not, he slips from a three-dimensional world into a fourth-dimensional world and that which is ascending is the consciousness of that man in a greater focus; it is a fourth-dimensional focus.771 ¶55

What you now see ascending is your greater self. When that begins to ascend, you enter into the actual state of feeling you are what you want to be. That is the time you lull yourself into the mood of being what you want to be, by either experiencing in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already that which you want to be, or by repeating over and over again the phrase that implies you have already done what you want to do. A phrase such as, “Isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it wonderful,” as though some wonderful thing had happened to you.771 ¶56

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed. Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.”771 ¶57

Use wisely the interval preceding sleep. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and go to sleep in this mood. At night, in a dimensionally larger world, when deep sleep falleth upon men, they see and play the parts that they will later on play on earth. And the drama is always in harmony with that which their dimensionally greater selves read and play through them. Our illusion of free will is but ignorance of the causes which make us act. The sensation which dominates the mind of man as he falls asleep, though false, will harden into fact.771 ¶58

Assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled as we fall asleep is the command to this embodying process, saying to our mood, “Be thou actual.” In this way we become through a natural process what we desire to be.771 ¶59

I can tell you dozens of personal experiences where it seemed impossible to go elsewhere, but by placing myself elsewhere mentally as I was about to go to sleep, circumstances changed quickly which compelled me to make the journey. I have done it across water by placing myself at night on my bed as though I slept where I wanted to be. As the days unfolded things began to mold themselves in harmony with that assumption and all things that must happen to compel my journey did happen. And I, in spite of myself, must make ready to go toward that place which I assumed I was in when I approached the deep of sleep.771 ¶60

As my cloud ascends, I assume that I am now the man I want to be, or that I am already in the place where I want to visit. I sleep in that place now. Then life strikes the tabernacle, strikes my environment and reassembles my environment across seas or over land and reassembles it in the likeness of my assumption.771 ¶61

It has nothing to do with men walking across a physical desert. The whole vast world round about you is a desert. From the cradle to the grave you and I walk as though we walk the desert. But we have a living tabernacle wherein God dwells, and it is covered with a cloud which can and does ascend when we go to sleep or are in a state akin to sleep.771 ¶62

Not necessarily in two days. It can ascend in two minutes. Why did they give you two days? If I now become the man I want to be, I may become dissatisfied tomorrow. I should at least give it a day before I decide to move on.771 ¶63

The Bible says in two days, a month, or a year: whenever you decide to move on with this tabernacle let the cloud ascend. As it ascends you start moving where the cloud is. The cloud is simply the garment of your consciousness, your assumption. Where the consciousness is placed you do not have to take the physical body; it gravitates there in spite of you. Things happen to compel you to move in the direction where you are consciously dwelling.771 ¶64

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”771 ¶65

The many mansions are the unnumbered states within your mind, for you are the house of God. In my Father’s house are unnumbered concepts of self. You could not in eternity exhaust what you are capable of being. If I sit quietly here and assume that I am elsewhere, I have gone and prepared a place. But if I open my eyes, the bilocation which I created vanishes and I am back here in the physical form that I left behind me as I went to prepare a place. But I prepared the place nevertheless and will in time dwell there physically.771 ¶66

You do not have to concern yourself with the ways and the means that will be employed to move you across space into that place where you have gone and mentally prepared it. Simply sit quietly, no matter where you are, and mentally actualize it.771 ¶67

But I give you warning, do not treat it lightly, for I am conscious of what it will do to people who treat it lightly.771 ¶68

I treated it lightly once because I just wanted to get away, based only upon the temperature of the day. It was in the deep of winter in New York, and I so desired to be in the warm climate of the Indies, that I slept that night as though I slept under palm trees.771 ¶69

Next morning when I awoke it was still very much winter. I had no intentions of going to the Indies that year, but distressing news came which compelled me to make the journey. It was in the midst of war when ships were being sunk right and left, but I sailed out of New York on a ship 48 hours after I received this news. It was the only way I could get to Barbados, and I arrived just in time to see my mother and say a three-dimensional “Good-bye” to her.771 ¶70

In spite of the fact that I had no intentions of going, the deeper Self watched where the great cloud descended. I placed it in Barbados and this tabernacle (my body) had to go and make the journey to fulfill the command, “Wherever the sole of your foot shall tread that have I given unto you.” Wherever the cloud descends in the desert, there you reassemble that tabernacle. I sailed from New York at midnight on a ship without taking thought of submarines or anything else. I had to go. Things happened in a way that I could not have devised.771 ¶71

I warn you, do not treat it lightly. Do not say, “I will experiment and put myself in Labrador, just to see if it will work.” You will go to your Labrador and then you will wonder why you ever came to this class. It will work if you dare assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled as you go to sleep.771 ¶72

Control your moods as you go to sleep. I cannot find any better way to describe this technique than to call it a “controlled waking dream.” In a dream you lose control, but try preceding your sleep with a complete controlled waking dream, entering into it as you do in dream, for in a dream you are always very dominant, you always play the part. You are always an actor in a dream, and never the audience. When you have a controlled waking dream you are an actor and you enter into the act of the controlled dream. But do not do it lightly, for you must then reenact it physically in a three-dimensional world.771 ¶73

Now before we go into our moment of silence there is something I must make very clear, and that is this effort we discussed last night. If there is one reason in this whole vast world why people fail, it is because they are unaware of a law known to psychologists today as the law of reverse effort. When you assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled it is with a minimum of effort. You must control the direction of the movements of your attention. But you must do it with the least effort. If there is effort in the control, and you are compelling it in a certain way you are not going to get the results. You will get the opposite results, what ever they might be.771 ¶74

That is why we insist on establishing the basis of the Bible as Adam slept. That is the first creative act, and there is no record where he was ever awakened from this profound sleep. While he sleeps creation stops. You change your future best when you are in control of your thoughts while in a state akin to sleep, for then effort is reduced to its minimum.771 ¶75

Your attention seems to completely relax, and then you must practice holding your attention within that feeling, without using force, and without using effort. Do not think for a moment that it is will power that does it. When you release Barabbas and become identified with Jesus, you do not will yourself to be it, you imagine that you are it. That is all you do.771 ¶76

Now as we come to the vital part of the evening, the interval devoted to prayer, let me again clarify the technique. Know what you want. Then construct a single event, an event which implies fulfillment of your wish. Restrict the event to a single act. For instance, if I single out as an event, shaking a man’s hand, then that is the only thing I do. I do not shake it, then light a cigarette and do a thousand other things. I simply imagine that I am actually shaking hands and keep the act going over and over and over again until the imaginary act has all the feeling of reality.771 ¶77

The event must always imply fulfillment of the wish. Always construct an event which you believe you would naturally encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. You are the judge of what event you really want to realize.771 ¶78

There is another technique I gave you last night. If you cannot concentrate on an act, if you cannot snuggle into your chair and believe the chair is elsewhere, just as though elsewhere were here, then do this: Reduce the idea, condense it to a single, simple phrase like, “Isn’t it wonderful.” or, “Thank you.” or, “It’s done.” or, “It’s finished.” There should not be more than three words. Something that implies the desire is already realized. “Isn’t it wonderful”, or “Thank you,” certainly imply that. These are not all the phrases you could use. Make up out of your own vocabulary the phrase which best suits you. But make it very, very short and always use a phrase that implies fulfillment of the idea.771 ¶79

When you have your phrase in mind, lift the cloud. Let the cloud ascend by simply inducing the state that borders on sleep. Simply begin to imagine and feel you are sleepy, and in this state assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Then repeat the phrase over and over like a lullaby. Whatever the phrase is, let it imply that the assumption is true, that it is concrete, that it is already a fact and you know it.771 ¶80

Just relax and enter into the feeling of actually being what you want to be. As you do it you are entering Jericho with your spy who has the power to give it. You are releasing Barabbas and sentencing Jesus to be crucified and resurrected. All these stories you are re-enacting if now you begin to let go and enter into the feeling of actually being what you want to be.771 ¶81

Now we can go..... SILENCE PERIOD ........ **************771 ¶82

If your hands are dry, and if your mouth is dry at the end of this meditation, that is positive proof that you did succeed in lifting the cloud. What you were doing when the cloud was lifted is entirely your business. But you did lift the cloud if your hands are dry.771 ¶83

I will give you another phenomena which is very strange and one I cannot analyze. It happens if you really go into the deep. You will find on waking that you have the most active pair of kidneys in the world. I have discussed it with doctors and they cannot explain it.771 ¶84

Another thing you may observe in meditation is a lovely liquid blue light. The nearest thing on earth to which I can compare it is burning alcohol. You know when you put alcohol on the plum pudding at Christmas time and set it a flame, the lovely liquid blue flame that envelopes the pudding until you blow it out. That flame is the nearest thing to the blue light which comes on the forehead of a man in meditation. Do not be distressed. You will know it when you see it. It is like two shades of blue, a darker and a lighter blue in constant motion, just like burning alcohol, which is unlike the constant flame of a gas jet. This flame is alive, just as spirit would be alive.771 ¶85

Another thing that may come to you as it did to me. You will see spots before your eyes. They are not liver spots as some people will tell you who know nothing about it. These are little things that float in space like a mesh, little circles all tied together. They start with a single cell and come in groups in different geometrical patterns, like worms, like trailers, and they float all over your face. When you close your eyes you still see them, proving that they are not from without, they are from within.771 ¶86

When you begin to expand in consciousness all these things come. They may be your blood stream objectified by some strange trick of man that man does not quite understand. I am not denying that it is your blood stream made visible, but do not be distressed by thinking it is liver spots or some other silly thing that people will tell you. If these various phenomena come to you, do not think you are doing something wrong. It is the normal, natural expansion that comes to all men who take themselves in tow and try to develop the garden of Gethsemane.771 ¶87

The minute you begin to discipline your mind by observing your thoughts and watching your thoughts throughout the day, you become the policeman of your thoughts. Refuse to enter into conversations that are unlovely, refuse to listen attentively to anything that tears down. Begin to build within your own mind’s eye the vision of the perfect virgin rather than the vision of the foolish virgin. Listen only to the things that bring joy when you hear them. Do not give a willing ear to that which is unlovely, which when you heard it you wish you had not. That is listening and seeing things Without oil in your lamp, or joy in your mind.771 ¶88

There are two kinds of virgins in the Bible: five foolish and five wise virgins. The minute you become the wise virgin, or try to make an attempt to do it, you will find all these things happen. You will see these things, and they interest you so that you have not time to develop the foolish sight, as many people do. I hope that no one here does because no one should be identified with this great work who can still find great joy in a discussion of another that is unlovely.771 ¶89

Tonight’s subject is “Foreknowledge.” We’re told in scripture that “Thus said the Lord of hosts, ‘As I have planned, so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand. And the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind’” . Now the structure of God’s plan is given us in the Book of Romans. Here we have it in five terms: “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” .769 ¶1

Now here, in these five terms we have a very strong case for predestination, and there is no way that you can interpret these terms and avoid that conclusion. But does it rob us on this level of our freedom?—no. “He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” . He will bring it to completion. But on the surface of his being, where we are, while that work is taking place in us, we are not robbed of our freedom. On the contrary, the certainty that our salvation is in the hand of God frees us from worldly anxieties; and then we can say with Paul, “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” .769 ¶2

For, never would you have made anything if you had not loved it. Well, he so loved you that he is molding himself within you, and when he completes his job that is Jesus Christ. So when Christ is formed in us, then we are born from above in the same manner that when this physical garment was formed in our mothers it was born from below. So when the image of God is formed within us from above, we are born from above; and that image radiates the glory of God and is the express image of his person. So anyone seeing a being who is born from above would see God. It’s the express image of his person, and they would have no other feeling on meeting that being who is born from above other than that they are now in the presence of God; for he radiates the glory of God and is the express image of his person.769 ¶3

But, although that is taking place in us unknown to the surface mind, that predestined will of God that he will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind, in the latter days you will know it clearly. But in the meanwhile, on the surface we are as free as anyone could ever wish to be to exercise a power, which is God, whether we do it wisely or unwisely. I state over and over that imagining creates reality…your wonderful Imagination is God. He’s enslaved himself on the surface of our being, allowing us to misuse him for any purpose in the world. But in everything God works for good, so he takes the most horrible thing in the world and still can convert it to good. But God which is our Imagination will not respond to compulsion. You can’t compel him. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men,” but he acts only if we have imagined the wish fulfilled. He will not act under any other circumstances. Persuasion is the sugar that best sweetens his medicine…you persuade.769 ¶4

Well, how would I persuade? Well, what would the feeling be like if it were true? What would it be like were it true, and I toy with that thought until I get the mood, the feeling that would be mine if what I desire in this world were true. When I can actually feel that, well then, I can expect the results projected upon the screen of space, and I will encounter confirmation of this act.769 ¶5

Listen to the words as given us in the 11th chapter of the Book of Mark, “Whoever believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and you will” . Now there is no limitation placed upon man, whether you be a good man or a bad man, whether what you ask is considered good in the world or evil in the world. There is no restriction other than the one condition: Can you believe it? Can you imagine that it really is done? If you can, the promise is there: it will be done. You don’t have to think of the ways and means by which it will be done, it will be done. “Whoever believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.” It didn’t say you had to think out the means by which it will be done; it will be done for you.769 ¶6

Over a hundred years ago, a Frenchman by the name of Jules Verne wrote a book and called it From Earth to Moon. The book was published in 1865. He actually conceived the drama that you and I have just witnessed and rejoiced that it happened here: The capsule that took three, launched from America, and took them around the moon and brought them back safely. He said in his book that this capsule is launched in Florida and he had it not where we have Cape Canaveral (now we call it Cape Kennedy) but Tampa, which is about a hundred miles away. He had three men and he said it would travel approximately 25,000 miles an hour. Well, that’s exactly what it did. He gave the dimensions. If you remove the Saturn booster and just take the capsule, the dimensions of the capsule are exactly what he wrote a hundred and three years ago. He said it would be launched in December and ours was launched in December; and it would splash down in the Pacific, well, ours was splashed down in the Pacific. He made it a very successful voyage that the Yankee engineers would have the knowhow to do it. Well, they did it to the rejoicing of the whole vast world, save the few who are envious of the accomplishment of those in our land who can imagine, who can dream. For we are a nation of dreamers…that’s what we did with the world.769 ¶7

Here, someone said, in fact, it was Webster, Daniel Webster, that he would not vote one penny of our treasury to bring any part west of the Mississippi into the Union. It was a wild, wild land, wild people, deserts, and mountains that towered into the heavens, and you never saw them because they were always filled and covered with snow. He would not vote one penny of our treasury to bring anything west of the Mississippi an inch nearer to Massachusetts. To him that was the heart. But he couldn’t stop us dreaming. He couldn’t stop us dreaming of extending the borders right straight to the Pacific, because someone had to entertain the dream in spite of him. He was an able man, a very able man. So for everyone who would stop us, we go beyond it and simply bring our dreams to pass in this world.769 ¶8

If you can dream and not just wish but assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, then I can prophesy for you. If you can honestly tell me what you have imagined and convince yourself of it, I’ll prophesy, because no power in the world can stop it. There is no power in the world that can stop your dream that you have imagined fulfilled from coming to pass. You don’t need any technique, you don’t need any wise concepts of how to bring it to pass—it will be done for you. Here Jules Verne departed this world, but his dream in 1865 came to pass in the very land where he said it would come to pass. It came to pass just as he had predicted a hundred and three years ago.769 ¶9

Now you may say, “But I want to see my dreams.” You’ll see them. Don’t think that man ends where he vanishes from this world. This world does not terminate at the point where my senses cease to register it. Don’t think that Jules Verne is not aware of his prophecy fulfilled…not for one moment. So don’t think for one moment that because you depart the world and the world will say, well, she left unsatisfied or he left unsatisfied…don’t for a moment. Your dreams will all be realized. Just in this case it took a hundred years, 103 years, to bring it to pass. But just imagine, he predicted this before we had an airplane. Airplanes were not invented in the year 1865. He told of going around the moon; and told of the land where it would be launched, and the area where it would come down, and how many men would be aboard it, and everything about it. He told it in detail…even to the speed that it would take, even to the dimensions of the capsule. That book I presume is still available, From the Earth to the Moon, published in 1865.769 ¶10

So God cannot be compelled. God is your own wonderful human Imagination and he can be persuaded. Then you master the art of persuasion—what would the feeling be like if it were true?—and you toy with the idea until that mood possesses you. Then you wear the mood as you would a coat, put it on as you would a garment, and then as you wear that garment it will project itself on the screen of space.769 ¶11

When?—I do not know. How?—that is not my concern, I do not know. I can only tell you if I could get into the Imagination of any man and know what he believes, I don’t care how he comes to believe it, if he believes it I can predict for him. If you took an astrology chart and used that to persuade yourself, if you are actually self-persuaded…it isn’t there, but your self-persuasion is the cause of what’s going to happen. To the degree you are self-persuaded it will happen. Now you may give all credit to the chart…it wasn’t there at all. Anymore than it was in teacup leaves or coffee grounds or anything on the outside, but you could use these things to persuade yourself. I would say, why use anything? Take nothing on the outside and become self-persuaded. For, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men” and this being who acts is your own wonderful human Imagination. But you can’t compel him. He will do little that we wish until we have imagined the wish fulfilled.769 ¶12

So, on the surface of our being we are free, free to exercise our talent. In the depth of our being, that being that we speak of as God the Father is molding us, shaping us. It’s the shaping of the unbegotten, for that is Isaac. Isaac is simply the molding of the unbegotten, and when he’s completely formed and reflecting the invisible God, well then, he’s born. When he’s born, he radiates the glory of that God and is the express image of his person. So anyone seeing one who is born from above automatically knows he’s in the presence of God, for he is the express image of God and he’s radiating the glory of God.769 ¶13

So what is taking place in the depths should assure us. Leave it alone. We should not then be concerned if I know that my end is already predetermined: he foreknew me, and he predestined me, and he called me, and he justified me, and he glorified me . If I know that that is the pattern on which God is working, well then, I’m completely free of all worldly anxieties. Why should I be concerned of what is taking place?769 ¶14

So not a thing in this world has happened or ever will happen but what some man or woman imagined it. What is now proved was once only imagined. So foreknowledge is nothing more than what men and women are imagining. If I could only get into the minds of men and see what they are imagining, I can tell you what’s going to happen. If I could take the sum of this room, if I could only get a true confession—not what you would like me to believe of you but what you really are imagining. Because when we’re called upon to make a confession, we don’t really confess, we can’t stand it. We simply tell what we would like to tell, but we don’t really tell what we have imagined. So in the depth of our soul we are imagining all kinds of things, unlovely things, lovely things, all kinds of things, but they all operate if we have imagined it with conviction.769 ¶15

So there isn’t a thing…my father, who certainly was no prophet, he had his ten children, and one day I can hear him vividly, the year was 1919. The boys from Barbados who went overseas during the First World War were returning in 1919. The war came to an end in November 1918, but they couldn’t get them back because of a lack of ships until quite late in 1919. In the meanwhile, he entertained, being a ship chandler, he entertained the captains, stewards and the officers for business reasons, and they all told the same old story: there will be another war in twenty years. Germany will still be the main enemy, but this time she will have Japan and she will have Italy. Now that’s what they said. Well, he didn’t know. He was a wonderful man, but you wouldn’t call him an intellectual giant…just a perfectly wonderful father and husband. I can hear him now at table and he said to my mother, “There will be another war in twenty years.” Mother said to him, “Oh, Joseph, why do you say that? Look, we have all our boys. They all will be of age in twenty years from now.” He said, “There’ll be a war in twenty years!” That was 1919. Well, add it up. War broke September the first, 1939. That’s when England declared war on Germany when Germany moved into Poland, twenty years. But he was no prophet, he was simply repeating with conviction what he heard from the men of the ships, the captains and the stewards and the officers as he drank with them and did business with them. So they were convinced of this. Well, the very ones who formed the triumvirate—Italy, Germany, Japan—were the ones he named back in 1919.769 ¶16

He’s done it in business. When looking out to sea and looking over our land, he said, “This is a perfect spot for a hotel.” Then in his mind’s eye he saw the hotel, saw everything about it and then turned to the little ladies who owned it and said, “If you ever want to sell, think of me.” Well, two died years later and then the third one thought it was too much to keep up—thirty-five acres, the gardeners and the servants and all these things—so she would move into a hotel and spend the last days living in a hotel where everything was done for her, and she wouldn’t have the problem of taking care of people. Well, he bought it. Years and years before when he made this statement, he had no money, but when the sale took place he could raise the money and buy the thirty-five acres. A hotel does stand on it plus many other things, because thirty-five acres would be too many acres for a hotel. But a lovely hotel, a very successful hotel stands on the premises plus dozens of homes, beautiful homes. He saw the entire thing in his mind’s eye, believed it and voiced it.769 ¶17

So whoever will believe what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. For when that sale was made, there was one man who had all the cash in the world but at that moment he was in Brazil. When he realized that the thing is about to be sold and when he cabled his lawyer to bid, it was twenty-four hours too late. The sale was over by twenty-four hours. So it will be done for you. He firmly believed it and it worked.769 ¶18

So I say to every one of you here, don’t be ashamed or afraid of noble dreams. I don’t care how big the dream is…I don’t care how big it is! If you can actually believe it and say to yourself, “It will come to pass,” to the degree you are persuaded that it will come to pass it will be done for you. You don’t have to know what are called the “right” people or have the necessary means at this moment, but whatever it will take, you will find will happen in your world, but everything!769 ¶19

So, you should always dwell upon that glorious thing that is taking place within you. Just imagine that God himself entered death’s door, your own wonderful skull, with you when you entered, and he laid down in the grave with you in visions of eternity ‘til you awake. When you awake you see Jesus and the linen cloths that the females had woven for you . Well, this body, not this suit, the body is the linen cloth of scripture and my mother wove it for me…it came from below. Now he said, “And you will see Jesus”…but you’re told in 1st John, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears,” meaning Jesus. “we shall be like him, and see him as he is” . So when he appears, he appears as you. You don’t see someone that you resemble; he appears because he awakes within you.769 ¶20

The Lord himself entered death’s door with you when you entered this skull, and he laid down in the grave with you. You didn’t realize that you were in that grave and it was properly sealed. And there you remain in visions of eternity, all these are visions of eternity, until you awake and see Jesus. When you “see” Jesus, the word “to see” and “to know” in Greek are the same. So you will awake and know who Jesus really is, and when you do, you are he. Then you find the gate of your Father’s house and come out of it…that’s when you are born from above. You see the linen cloths, the garment out of which you emerged. When you come out, you are the one who entered with you. But in that interval while he was forming you, he was actually forming you into himself…so you are he. Then you come out and from then on you radiate the glory of God the Father and you are the express image of his person. So from then on, who sees you sees God .769 ¶21

“Show you the Father, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show me the Father?’ Have I been so long with you and you do not know the Father?” So anyone whose eye is open after one is born from above if they encounter that being, they see God. It’s the only God; there aren’t multiple gods. Unnumbered faces he will wear, but if you meet him he wears the body of God and he reflects and radiates the glory of God.769 ¶22

So when we are told by Paul, “He has made known unto us, in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will”—made known to us the mystery of his will—“which he set forth as a plan in Christ for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and on earth” . Well, here is the most marvelous, exciting passage. Here it is, he sets it forth to unite all things in him, but he has made known his plan. Well, if he made known the plan, that’s foreknowledge. That’s not something that’s taking place as he moves forward. Here is a plan and the plan is contained in what is called the image, Jesus Christ, waiting for the fullness of time to unite all things in him. Now this is the most exciting thing! The Greek word which we translate into the phrase “to unite all things” that’s the Revised Standard Version. The King James Version is “to gather together in one all things.” But regardless of which phrase you prefer, that phrase, the Greek word that is used to translate that phrase if translated literally means “head. That’s all that it means—“to head up or to sum up.” But “head”…that’s the word, same word.769 ¶23

Well, strangely enough the whole thing takes place in your head. You enter the head and there you sleep in visions of eternity. How long you are asleep I do not know. Mystics have said 6,000 years, 8,000 years; no one seems to make it less than 6,000 years. And you didn’t realize you were in a head, sealed, completely sealed, and dreaming these visions of eternity until one day you awoke. When you woke, you woke in your head and when you came out, you came out of the head. But strangely enough, in all the major events that followed it, all lead to the head. When the head exploded, you discovered the fatherhood of God: here comes the Son standing before you, but it all was in your head. When you were split from top to bottom, it was your head to the base of the spine. When you ascended, it was back into the head. When the heavens opened and became translucent without circumference, it was the head. So here, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and thing on earth, but it’s all united in the head. So here, it’s like this one grand brain and we but brain cells in the mind of the dreamer; and each cell is awakening in the head, for that’s where the brain is. And finally, it is only being the head. He will head up everything, sum it up so each in turn will become the one that radiates the glory of God and bears the express image of his person.769 ¶24

So foreknowledge…don’t go to any person who calls himself a fortune teller, they do not know. But do tell in confidence tell yourself, what am I really imagining? What have I imagined today? Have I been persuaded by the press, by radio, by TV, is that what I’ve imagined? Or have I this day imagined what I really want to imagine? I have a family, I have children, I have rent to pay, food to buy, clothes to buy. There is everything in my world…I have obligations to life, well, have I imagined something that would take care of all these things? For if I could imagine all of these things done, as we are told, “Whoever can believe that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.” Well, can I really now imagine that they’re done, that whatever income I need, double it, treble it, make it bigger and bigger and bigger in your own mind’s eye. Don’t ask how! Your present job may not be the one that can do it. You may be fired. You may be fired tomorrow if you imagine tonight your income three times what it is. Maybe the present job cannot pay it, and you will do something that will simply displease the one above you and he’ll fire you. You will find it was the great turning point in your fortunes.769 ¶25

I was fired from J. C. Penney, making twenty-two dollars a week, and I wondered, what am I going to use for money? He said to me, “That’s not my problem. When we have a recession, we let people out.” “I have been working there for a year, doing everything you asked me to do. I’ve never once been late; I haven’t missed one day, and here I’m fired.” Well, he said, “That’s not our problem.” But he realized that I was a greenhorn and a kid eighteen years old, so he gave me a letter to his friend at Macy’s saying “He doesn’t understand our system in America. If you have an opening, give him a job.” So they gave me an opening, a reduction of four dollars a week, down to eighteen, working just as hard doing the same stupid things. One day I figured, now he isn’t going to fire me, I’m going to quit. So I quit…had no money, but I quit and started for myself.769 ¶26

I wasn’t a dancer and I persuaded myself that I could dance. Oh, I did social dancing, but I persuaded myself I can dance as well as anyone can. Well, in no time flat I was making five-hundred dollars a week dancing. They sent me off to England. What dancer! I was not a trained dancer, but I was self-persuaded that I could do it! Well, I did it. Then I came back and I had six Broadway shows. I was no actor, but I played the parts, played second-leads in many a show…because I was self-persuaded. You call that arrogance, well, call it what you want, but I did it. From then on I started just working for myself. Oh, I worked for producers, but I never called it that they employed me. I was giving them a talent that they needed, and so it was simply a mutual exchange. They were not doing what Macy’s did to me or J. C. Penney did. I was through with that.769 ¶27

Well, I say to everyone, dream nobly, I don’t care what it is. And you can start as I did behind the eight-ball, completely behind the eight-ball. Then go as far as you can dream. You have no limit outside of your own ability to dream and occupy the dream…and that is foreknowledge. If I know exactly what I’m dwelling in, I can foretell. If I don’t realize what I’m imagining, I can’t foretell. There is no astrology, no teacup leaves, nothing on the outside that can tell me. Oh, they will confirm it if I am persuaded. Because I read unnumbered charts and to the degree that I was absolutely convinced of the truth of what I said, it came to pass. Yet it wasn’t there; it was my own conviction. So I say to everyone, dream nobly, imagine the wish fulfilled, for he will do little if anything that we wish until we have imagined the wish fulfilled. And after we have done it, no power in the world can stop it from coming to pass.769 ¶28

Now, you may say, I don’t want to be like Jules Verne and wait a hundred years for my dream. Alright, dream nobly anyway, even if such dreams take a hundred years or a thousand years. For tonight I’m telling you that you are destined to be God! Well now, what could stop you tonight from losing all worldly anxiety in the knowledge that he is doing it and that in the immediate present he’ll finish it? When he finishes it I will know by the series of events which he will unfold within me—beginning with waking me in the tomb of my skull and bringing me out. I will have that intuitive knowledge how to get out: I will know the gate of my Father at the base of that skull and I will come out. Then in a little interval I will know the next and the next and the next, and whenever that happens I will know exactly what to do. So, I’ll be gathering all things both in heaven and on earth all within me in my head.769 ¶29

How interesting it is when you think the word “beginning” means “head”; the same word in the Book of John, “In the beginning was the Logos,” the word “beginning” is “head.” So “In the head is the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God” . “In the head God created the heavens and the earth.” It’s all in the head. It will begin there and end there, for “I am the beginning and the end” . You’ll find the whole head then becoming translucent, and you’ll discover the meaning that Blake meant to convey when he said “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” …and that “within” is ever expanding in the bosom of God.769 ¶30

So, seek no one on the outside to tell you your fortune. But do look into your own wonderful Imagination and ask yourself, “What am I imagining? For myself, for my husband, for my wife, for my friends, what am I imagining? Am I taking them at face value and seeing them in want? Well, that’s their future. Or will I now reform them in my own mind’s eye and see them as I would like them to be so that when we get together there’s no down-in-the-mouth conversation? They come home to dinner and it’s a lovely, wonderful atmosphere…it’s all marvelous. Well, I want that for my friends. Now, am I seeing that in my friend? If I’m seeing that in my friend, well then, he has to conform to it, for if I can say something and believe it, it will be done for him. I don’t have to give him some advice, no good advice, just good news.769 ¶31

The word gospel is “good news.” It’s not advice. You don’t give any advice, it’s simply, it will be done for you if you are self-persuaded that it is already done. So when you meet him and he doesn’t confirm it, perfectly alright—you know it’s done and you are faithful to what you have done, and that will then project itself in the world.769 ¶32

So foreknowledge is not to tell anyone that you are now destined because of your birth to be this, that and the other. You’re not…no matter what the world will tell you. You are destined to fulfill what you have imagined. So whatever you have imagined and accepted as factual, as fact, you are going to encounter. So, there is no fiction in this world, none whatsoever. Today’s fact was yesterday’s fiction. Just as in Jules Verne, he was a fiction writer, science fiction. How in that day before an airplane was conceived, or rather, before it was built (we had no airplanes in 1865) he could write a novel and call it From the Earth to the Moon and put in detail what Apollo the 8th has already accomplished. Same month it launched, same month it came down. Launched from this land and came down in the Pacific, just as he foresaw, and he had three men aboard. Now, being a Frenchman, he wanted a Frenchman aboard, too, and so one of the men he called Andon. Well, one of our men was Anders. In his day the French would be mostly Catholic. But that one was called Andon while our man was Anders. He got so much within that fictional picture. So when I tell you there is no fiction, I mean it!769 ¶33

You and I sit down together and you tell me your dreams and all of a sudden you get excited about the dream, and I’m moving you into the feeling that it’s done. When you get up, you walk as though it’s done. Well, I can prophesy for you: it’s done! At that moment it’s done. But when will be the birth? Well, there’s always an interval in pregnancy, between that conception and birth…always an interval. No two animals in the world have the same interval: One bird twenty-one days; another bird longer, into the months; a sheep five months; the horse twelve; man nine. All have different intervals between the moment of conception and the moment of birth.769 ¶34

So you conceive it. Alright, know that you conceived it and say within yourself, “I’ve imagined it so to be, I’m still imagining it so to be, and I will continue to imagine it so to be until what I have imagined is perfectly expressed.” Then you will know what foreknowledge is. You don’t have to be concerned with divine foreknowledge, for that is fixed, and “He will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind” .769 ¶35

Now, that sentence begins on a peculiar phrase, “The anger of the Lord will not turn back,” but the word “anger” means literally “to breathe heavily.” Well, the word “breath” in Hebrew and in Greek means “Spirit,” so a better translation would have been “the Spirit of the Lord will not turn back.” But whoever said, “the anger,” alright, so they have the anger; for it was a forceful breathing, a heavy, heavy breathing, which meant a kind of passion. But that doesn’t mean passion as man would interpret it if I used the word passion…and it certainly doesn’t mean anger as we today use the word anger. It simply means the Spirit, but the Spirit with passion, it’s determined, “it has purpose, and it will not turn back until it has executed and accomplished the intents of its mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.”769 ¶36

And so, that which I have planned will be, and what I have purposed will stand, and no one is going to change it. All the plots and plans of man on the surface, let them be; it will all be used for good. But what he planned, which is what? To mold you into his image and endow you with himself, with all the power that is his so that you can radiate the glory of God. Not only radiate it, but when you are met, you are the express image of his being, of his person. And so that no one with the eye open, on meeting you, will not know you as God; for there’s only God in the end, nothing but God. So all are being awakened towards that end and that’s predetermined, that’s foreknowledge.769 ¶37

But here in the world of Caesar let no one tell you that you’re fated. You aren’t fated one bit save what you yourself do. You aren’t fated, so you can forget karma, forget all these things in the world. You’re here and you will play your part, so what are you imagining? Tell it to yourself, persuade yourself that it’s noble and lovely, and to the degree that you are self-persuaded, you will encounter that in the world and you are it. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *769 ¶38

We are told in Ephesians that “He is our peace, who has made us both one that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so bringing peace; and that this one broke down the wall of hostility between the two.” Now, this bond of peace is not a doctrine or philosophy or any kind of abstraction; it is a person, an actual person. The being that will break down that wall of hostility between you as you are seated here and the being that you really are is a person. That person is God. It’s the Son of God, and the Son of God and God are one and the same person.768 ¶1

Now here, a lady writes a letter and she said, “I saw myself radiantly perfect, but I mean perfect. And yet I knew that we were two, two persons. I knew at one time as I remembered I was not perfect, I knew it, and I remembered when I heard the words ‘Be ye perfect.’ And now I know that as I looked at this perfection it was myself as I am now. So I woke having seen this radiant being that I am, and she was perfect. Yet as I woke I stumbled into the door and then lost my temper and bawled out my children for pouring soap on my nice clean carpet. So it must have happened in some other dimension of my being—for certainly it was not here where I lost my temper—when I saw my own perfection.”768 ¶2

She’s right. While we are still wearing these garments of flesh and blood, let no one tell you that you will not lose your temper, that you will not do all the things that people do in this world. Are we not told that the perfect one, who was the pattern man, when he said, “Go tell that viper, Herod.” Are we not told in scripture of all these unlovely things that the perfect one said, “You whited sepulchers,” and all the other words that go with it? While we are encased in a body of flesh and blood certainly we will lose our temper. We react just…maybe not as we formerly did…but then we were not ashamed of what we did…but now we pick ourselves up, as she did, instantly. She lost her temper with her children for pouring—well, who wouldn’t?—soap on her nice clean carpet after this perfectly wonderful vision. So he is our peace who broke down the wall of partition and made of the two of us, made one.768 ¶3

Now how is this brought about? We are told the primal wish of God was “Let us make man in our image, after his likeness.” We are told that “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ”. We are told that Jesus Christ is the image of God, the perfect image, who reflects and radiates the image of God, the glory of God; that he is the express image of God. Well now, that is the good work that is being done in us and when that image can be superimposed upon the one who is doing it and they are one, well then, you are God. There is only God in the world…there is nothing but God. So God actually took himself the limitations of man, just as you are, and he is working from within and working you into his image. And when the image is superimposed upon the one who is making it, it’s not you and the image, you are the Maker. You are God himself. Then he rises, enhanced by reason of the experience of making an image of himself that radiates his being and reflects his glory. So her vision was perfect, perfectly marvelous, all based upon scripture.768 ¶4

Now, here is another beautiful one. She said, “I found myself in a beautiful forest and here I am sitting on the ground leaning against a tree. Then I heard a voice calling, ‘Father, Father’ and I did not answer because I did not want to be discovered. Suddenly a youth appeared dressed as a shepherd boy, and it was you. You said to me, ‘Why did you not answer me? I’ve been searching and searching for you.’ Then she said to me, “You’re always searching for me, but you always seem to find me in spite of the fact that the Good Book tells us that after my labor I should rest on the seventh day. But you never let me…you’re always calling and you always find me…so you never let me rest.” Then she said, “I looked at you and I smiled the smile of an indulgent father, and then strangely enough, I, a woman—and I consider myself very much a female—felt that I was the Father. It didn’t seem strange to me to be a father. I was not a mother, and I was not a female, I was Father.”768 ¶5

Now here is scripture, the 4th chapter of Galatians, “When the time had fully come, he sent forth the Spirit of his son into our hearts crying, ‘Father! Father!’” . But the Father doesn’t want to respond. As we are told in the 44th Psalm, “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake!” . The Father is sound asleep in man. And when one awakens who is called the son of God—and all are the sons of God—that son awake is sent into the world to call the Father. And those in whom the time has fully come still do not want to respond. They always want to postpone the day of wakening, still holding on to these little garments of flesh and blood, but he always finds them. He always finds them and does not let them rest. He keeps on crying “Father!” So we are told in the 5th of John, “Truly, truly, I say unto you, the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear him will live” . Well, she heard him so she is not far from the awakening. She heard him and recognized him. He was the shepherd boy, the one who was sent to do God’s will, for he was the Son of God, and the Son comes only to do the Father’s will, calling the Father in man to awaken: “Awake, you sleeper, and rise from the dead” .768 ¶6

So here in this world of ours, God became as we are for the sole purpose of making us, his image, as he is. And when the image is completed in us, so it superimposes itself upon the Maker of that image and they are one, then it’s perfect. As she said, “I knew I was perfect and I recall having heard the words ‘Be ye perfect.’” Well, the completed sentence is “as your Father in heaven is perfect.” “So I heard the words ‘Be ye perfect.’” When you are perfect the image is perfect, well then, you become one with your Maker, and you begin to awake from this dream of life, and the awakening is the resurrection. Without the resurrection this would be infinite circles, a repetition over and over and over again. Having moved around the circle unnumbered times, then comes the image and the image then turns into a spiral and moves up as the being who created it.768 ¶7

So here in this world, you can write all the documents in the world concerning peace…you’ll never have peace. You can write every contract in the world between nations, between people, between everything. You will not have peace until he, in you, has so made you that you are as perfect as he is perfect and the two become one. So “He is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility.” He breaks it down between the two so they aren’t two any more, they’re only one. And you walk without telling it to others, knowing who you really are. You tell it to the world and they only mock you, they laugh at you…because while in this world, as she is in this world, you will bump into a door and lose your temper, and someone else will ask in a way you think they should not and you’ll lose your temper…just as she did even though she has seen her own perfection.768 ¶8

So everyone in this world is here for a definite purpose and when purpose is revealed—and it’s only revealed through revelation—then it gives meaning to the whole of life. Without purpose, what has the world to offer? If tonight you owned everything that you could possibly buy with money and you had all that it takes, and tonight your soul is called? No, you will not die, I assure you. I’m speaking from experience, you will not die. The world will call you dead and they’ll cremate you, scatter your dust, but you cannot die. But you’re in a world just like this, going over the same things, over and over and over again. Oh, maybe not in the same situation, but just as solidly real as you are now; returned to a lovely beautiful form, twenty years old, to continue aging as we do here, to marry, and to lose your temper, to bump yourself into doors once more, until finally the image is perfect. When it is perfect and superimposed upon the maker of that image, then up you go into this one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all…and you are that one. That is the great temple, the living, growing temple, as we are told in scripture. It grows, for it’s added to every moment of time as one comes up and is incorporated into the living body of the living God.768 ¶9

You will eventually know that you are that body; you are that Spirit, you are that ultimate being that is God the Father of all. It seems incredible as you sit here a little person, as I stand here a very weak, little person, and that is my destiny? To know myself to be the Creator of it all, the whole vast world, to share with all in a unity, that one body, that one Spirit, that one Lord, that one God and Father of all? Yes all. And I am telling you what I have experienced and having experienced it, sent back to tell it, to record it, for just a short while in the hope that those who are on the verge of moving up in the same direction into the same body, and the same Spirit, may hear it and be encouraged to know that one did do it.768 ¶10

So when Paul makes the statement, “I stand before you on trial for the hope in that promise that God made to our fathers. O King Agrippa, why should it seem incredible to any of you that God raises the dead?” Why? Is it not the promise to our fathers? You can search the scriptures, where is the promise made?—right in the seed plot of scripture which is Genesis. And we are told in Genesis, “And the Lord said unto Israel in visions of the night”—read it in the 46th chapter of Genesis—“in the visions of the night.” And he said, “Jacob”—as you know, Israel was the name given to Jacob and Israel means “the man who shall rule as God,” not like God, as God, he is God. “Jacob?” and then Jacob answers, “Here am I.” Then the Lord speaks to him, “I am God, the God of your fathers. Fear not to go down into Egypt, for there I will make of you a great nation. I will go with you down into Egypt and I also will bring you up out of Egypt” . That was the promise. You mean he only came down into this world? Well, this world is Egypt. Egypt is not a little place in North Africa; the world is Egypt and Egypt is the world of death where everything seems to disappear. It appears, it waxes, it wanes and it vanishes. So everything in the world comes in, grows, wanes and disappears…that’s Egypt. “I will go down into Egypt with you, but I will also bring you up again.” “I stand before you on trial in these chains for believing in that hope that God promised to our fathers. And why do you think it incredible that God raises the dead?” .768 ¶11

We have no answer in scripture from the king, King Agrippa, he was the last of the great [...]. That world was coming to its end, like our present British Empire. Well, it is coming to its end. Anyone born now who calls himself a prince is almost ridiculous in this fabulous world in which we now live. So they come in to inherit what, a fading empire…not a fading, one that is gone, all its glory is gone. So he comes in still a prince, Prince of Wales now in a matter of moments. And so here he stands in chains before the prince of that day whose kingdom was fading, but he still had to hold onto it. We are in this world, the same world here. It goes over and over and over.768 ¶12

So I tell you, God actually, literally became you, just as you are, with all the weaknesses, all the limitations of the flesh. And there is no peace in the world for you until the image that is being formed in you by the Maker of you is perfect as he is perfect. When they are superimposed one upon the other, well then, you awake, awake from the dream of life and you ascend into your true, true being, the being that is called the kingdom of heaven. That’s your true home…our commonwealth is in heaven. We are sojourners in this land that is strange to us, and we are enslaved while we are here and maltreated. All are beaten in this world. But have faith and set your hope fully upon that moment in time when the image is perfect, and it is unveiled within you, and you are the being who made it. Though you are the made, you are the Maker, for the Maker and the made become one as he breaks down the wall of partition, of hostility, between them. Then they aren’t two any more, only one. So you’ll return to your heavenly state as the God who came down and you are enhanced by reason of the descent into Egypt.768 ¶13

So, it is as though you are speaking to another, but, really, in the end it’s not another. I purposely imposed upon myself this limitation. I have no sense of another now, yet formerly there were actually feelings within me of two. Now I have no feeling whatsoever of another. It’s simply the one who formed me into his own likeness and I awoke as he is. He and I are not two, we are one. And so, this lady could see me coming in the garb of the shepherd boy doing my work, because I sent myself. The Father and the Son are one and the one that is sent is always called the Son. So he sends the Spirit of the Son into the world, into the heart of man crying, “Father, Father.” Read it in the 4th chapter of Galatians . And here the man who hears it—in her case she heard it—yet in the very end of her vision it didn’t seem strange to her that she was a man and the man was a father. Here in this world she is not married. She is very much a lady but she is not married, but very much a feminine person. And in her own words to me she said, “I have always shied from marriage. The very thought of marriage to me was offensive and the very thought of sex was always offensive.” And here she is very much that retiring being and still it didn’t seem strange to her that she was not only man but a father. The father who was hearing the word “Father” being called and he did not respond. He didn’t want to be disturbed. For, as she said in her letter, “Haven’t you heard? Do you not know it is said in the great book that after my labor I, on the seventh day, should rest…and you never let me rest?” No, the Son of God never lets the Father rest. He is calling forever, “Awake, you sleeper! Awake. Why sleepest thou, O Lord?”768 ¶14

And so, the Father in man really cannot fully awake until he completes his work. “For he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” . And Jesus Christ is the image that he is forming in you, for that is the image of God himself, the express image of God who radiates and reflects the glory of God. So when it is completed, well then, you will awake. So I am crying and crying through the night in the forest …and she is seated on the ground…she’s not alone, others are hearing the same voice. “For, I tell you truly,” said he, “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live” . They will awake from the dream of life and awake and return to what they were, only more glorious, more wonderful than they were when they descended from that exalted state.768 ¶15

So everyone here is destined to fulfill that state, everyone. Now tonight, we have quite a few friends—I haven’t seen a few of them in years—they haven’t heard anything like this, because they haven’t been with me in all the years. And so you will tolerate me for a moment to go back and pick them up where we left them off. I left them off with the law, not with the Promise. They heard nothing from me about the Promise unless they read my book that came out since I met them. They haven’t been to my meetings. They told me tonight, not since the Ebell. Well, that’s a long time and so The Law and The Promise was not brought out then. So for their sake, it is the same thing only raised to a higher level.768 ¶16

But for those who only knew the law, let me now pick it up for you, just the law. The law is very simple. There are infinite numbers of states, infinite numbers—the state of health, the state of sickness; the state of wealth, the state of poverty; the state of being known, the state of being unknown. They are only states. You’re always in a state. Every moment of time you are only in a state. The state to which you most often return constitutes your dwelling place. So we all have one state that we feel more at home in that state, and so we return to it moment after moment. That constitutes our dwelling place. But if it is not a pleasant state in which to live, we can always get out of it. But we remain in the state and try to get out of it through external means…and that is not what we teach. You don’t get out of it by trying to pull wires from the outside, manipulating things on the outside. You get out of these states simply by a mental adjustment within yourself. As you fell into the present state either deliberately or unwittingly—chances are you did it unwittingly—so you are in a state and you are the life of that state and the state becomes alive and grows like a tree and bears the fruit of that tree. But you don’t like the fruit that you are bearing—it may be the fruit of poverty, may be the fruit of distress, the fruit of all kinds of unlovely things.768 ¶17

Well now, how do I detach myself from this unlovely harvest that I’m harvesting all the time? I do it by simply an adjustment in my own wonderful human Imagination. I ask myself what do I want instead of what I seem to have. When I name it, I ask myself, how would I see the world if things were as I desired them to be? How would I see them…what would the feeling be like if it were true? When I know exactly what the feeling would be like were it true, I try to catch that feeling. And to aid the feeling I imagine that I’m seeing people that I know well and I allow them to see me as they would see me if what I am feeling were true. I let them see me in my Imagination and when the whole thing is adjusted in my mind’s eye so that they see me as I would see them and it now produces in me the feeling I desire, then I sleep. I fall asleep in that assumption. That assumption is a state, that’s all that it is, it’s a state.768 ¶18

Now, let me make that state as natural as I made the former state that I did not like. If I find myself returning to this new state constantly, all of a sudden it becomes natural. As going home tonight, it will seem natural to me to go home and undress and sleep in my familiar bed. If tonight I went to some other place, no matter how glorious it is, beautifully furnished and everything at my command, it wouldn’t seem natural. When I leave here to go to San Francisco or New York and go into those lovely hotels, certainly, I pay much more money in these hotels than I pay in rent where I live, but it’s not as comfortable and not as natural. So you go to a hotel and you pay twenty-two, twenty-three dollars a day. Well, I don’t pay that sort of money in my rent, but it doesn’t compare to my natural state where I am. I feel so natural when I go home tonight and just get into my bed, get into my place. Well now, you must make this state just as natural. At first it seems unnatural like buying a new suit or buying a hat…it doesn’t seem natural. So you walk down the street and no one knows you, but you have a new hat, and you really believe that every one who passes by is looking at your hat, that they can see a new hat, and they don’t care whether you are living or not. But you are aware of the fact that it is new and until it becomes an old hat in your mind’s eye you are conscious of the fact that you are wearing a new hat. Well, you’re conscious of the fact that you are wearing a new state until you make it natural. So the state to which you most constantly return constitutes your place of home. I call it your home.768 ¶19

Now, most of us have this great weakness. We know what we want or we think we know what we want, and we construct it in our mind’s eye, but we never occupy it. We never move into it and make it natural. I call that perpetual construction, deferred occupancy. We don’t occupy it. I can have a lovely place where I think one day I am going to go, but I keep on postponing the day, postponing the day, and I don’t occupy it. I wish so-and-so were…and I name it. But if I wish so-and-so were as I would like them to be, that’s the state from which I view them. Well, I’ve had the state, I’ve built it, I’ve constructed it, but I don’t occupy it. Perpetual construction, all day long I have the state. If she were only and I name it, but I don’t go into the state and view her from that state…I don’t occupy the state. So she remains in my mind’s eye in the unlovely state in which I see her.768 ¶20

Now that’s the world in which we live. There are only states, an infinite number of states. You can’t think of a thing that you could not reduce to a state, but the life of the state is the individual when he occupies it, because his Imagination gives life to the state. You can’t give life to it from without, because God’s name is I AM. God’s name is not “you are” or “they are”; his eternal name is I AM…that’s the light of the world, that’s the life of the world. So, if I would make a state alive, I must be in it. So I can say I am here. If you are here, what are you seeing? Well, I am seeing her and she is lovely. Things are just as I’ve always desired them to be for her. So that’s how I’m seeing her right now…I’m in the state. Now make that state natural. Sleep in that state for her sake and then you’ll make that state and incorporate it into your own lovely state so that whenever you think of her you’re thinking of her from that state.768 ¶21

You can take everyone, one after the other, and make it a natural thing for them until finally when you discuss them or refer to them or think of them, it is always from that state. Others may not see them in that light. It doesn’t really matter what they think. I’m quite sure if I took some survey concerning what people think of me in my small world, no two would agree. Some would say, well, he’s a charlatan, why, he’s a deceiver; others would say I think he’s the nearest thing to God that I’ve ever seen. You have all kinds. What a range, from the devil to God, and all about the same person based upon the state in which you are when you’re called upon to define me. And so, you define me based upon your state.768 ¶22

So, everyone in this world could be what he would like to be if he knows this principle and applies it. We are the operant power; it doesn’t operate itself. I may know it from A to Z, but knowing it is one thing and doing it is another. Can I really do it? Well, I can do it…then do it. Don’t say knowledge is enough. Knowing it will not do it. I am the operant power.768 ¶23

So, for you who are here for the first time in many years then pick it up from there, because we’ve had a long interval between the law and the Promise. Because I fell heir to the Promise in its completeness back in 1959 and if you haven’t heard me since, then what I have been teaching since this revelation from within me would be something entirely new as far as you’re concerned…like a new world, a new language. Yet I cannot deny the law, for I came not to destroy the law and the prophets who prophesied of the law and prophesied of the Promise. I came not to deny or in any way to obliterate them but to fulfill them. As I stand here before you tonight I have fulfilled them; I have fulfilled the Promise in its entirety. And all I ask is that you share with me your fulfillment of that wonderful Promise.768 ¶24

Now, I’ve told you that in the resurrection man is above the organization of sex, and in the resurrection man can change his sex at will. I’ve been waiting for someone to bring forward an actual vision to testify to the truth of that statement. Well, one came forward in a letter that I got today. He is here tonight. He is married and he has a lovely girl and he is every bit a man. His attitude toward sex is always the opposite, that is, the man. Yet in his experience, he said, “I found myself lying in a bed and I’m a woman and reveling in the feeling of being a woman and wanting not men but one man. I knew exactly the man that I wanted…he was Oriental in caste, of olive skin. And I knew exactly what I wanted, and here I assumed that I found him and he appeared. It was exactly as I had assumed: here is a man, olive skin and he was Asian. I felt so thrilled.” He didn’t carry it through to any act whatsoever. It was simply that at that moment he woke and said, “Does it have any significance?”768 ¶25

All in the world! You only verify the truth of what I’ve told you from experience. I’ve told you that in the resurrection man changes his sexual garments at will and in the resurrection he is above the organization of sex. He creates without the divided image of male-female. And so you’ve had it, you’ve had the proof of what I’ve told you and you now know from experience that it’s true. Well, he trusts me implicitly concerning all the other things I’ve told him. But I will say to him, you, too, are on the verge, for this is really moving toward resurrection. So what you had is proof of what takes place only in the resurrection… and you had it. So I think your vision was perfectly marvelous, perfectly wonderful. Here he is now in this room and he came back to this world surprised that it could have happened to him because he’s such a man.768 ¶26

But in the end, you are every being in the world. Like this one who is unmarried but so feminine and she finds herself responding to my call as the shepherd boy calling “Father, Father” and she responded, but she hid. She wouldn’t answer my call, but she said, “You always seem to find me.” I always will in eternity, for when you are sent you cannot return void. For the one sent is the Word of God and he is the Son of God, and he comes back bearing the fruit of his efforts. I shall not return unto my Father void. When I come back I will bring back that for which he sent me, that purpose for which he sent me. And so, I stirred in her the feelings of the fatherhood of God.768 ¶27

So, you who are going along with me on the Promise and those who are here for the first time in a long interval, pick it up, and still apply the law. Don’t for one second fail to do it, because while we are in the world of Caesar, we must master this principle and live knowing there are only states. There is no such thing as a good man or a bad man. He’s in a good state as he conceives it and the other one is in a bad state as he conceives it, but the occupant of the state is really God. And so as Blake said in his Visions of the Last Judgment: “From this you will perceive I do not consider anyone either good or evil, just or unjust, but simply to be those who unknowingly fell into states.” They fell into states, identified themselves with the state, and then they were pronounced by others to be good or to be evil. They are only in states.768 ¶28

So tonight, if you are unemployed or you find it difficult to get promotion in your present employment, or you are in need, remember all the solutions of your present state are still states. I hope I have made clear how you move into a state. You move into a state by knowing how you would see the world if things were as you desire them to be, and then you begin to see them in your mind’s eye as though it were true. And then you sleep in that assumption just as though it is true. That assumption, though at the moment is denied by your reason and your senses, if you persist in it and make it natural, will harden into fact.768 ¶29

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *768 ¶30

Now are there any questions, please?768 ¶31

Thank you.768 ¶36