Tonight’s subject is “His Own Credentials.” When anyone aspires to hold public confidence, they must begin with their own credentials, that is, they must speak from experience. Then it will be said of you what was said of the central figure of the gospels. They were astonished at his teaching and they said, “He speaks as one having authority and not as the scribe.”765 ¶1

Now this is a gradual transition from a God of tradition to a God of experience. Tonight I can tell you what I have discovered, but I can’t persuade you to accept it one hundred percent. It will come. You’ll try it, it will prove itself in the testing, but it takes time for a man to give up his belief in an external God. And so, from this platform we identify God with the human Imagination and in doing that we close the gap between God and man. And so, tonight you may allow the gap to close and then test it. If you do, you’ll get the result. But I’m not promising that tomorrow you will not depart from this God that you find tonight. You will simply…it’s too much, it sounds so great, so overwhelming you can’t believe that this thing really is true. So you try it again, and gradually, as you try it and try it, then God himself will unveil himself within you. It’s called in scripture revelation.765 ¶2

But Paul said, “The gospel that I preach is not man’s gospel. Nor was I taught it, but it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ”. And revelation to Paul was an act of God in self-revealing.765 ¶3

So here, we turn back to the ancient scriptures, the Psalms. You and I will read the words and you might think they are said of someone else. For by the word of the Lord the heavens were made…this is the 33rd Psalm: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the populations of the world,” every man and woman in the world, “let them stand in awe of him”.765 ¶4

And now he asks why, like you would ask why, why should I fear the Lord? Is he not a God of love as the psalmist told me? And here is the psalmist writing again, so why should I stand in awe of him? Why should I fear him? And he tells me why, “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth”. Well, I certainly should respect that power. For the word translated fear means “reverence,” means “to revere, to respect.” And so, I must respect a power that is so creative. It only speaks, and it comes to be; it commands, and it stands forth.765 ¶5

Well, here is a simple story. This will amuse you…I got it in the morning’s mail. He isn’t here tonight…he comes on Tuesday…but he said, several months ago the wedding of his nephew was announced for the 23rd of March; that was the day of the wedding.765 ¶6

His sister-in-law, his brother’s wife, came over to explain the family into which her son was going. She said, “You know, the mother of the bride-to-be is quite a snob. She doesn’t think they’re good enough for her, and really quite a snob in every sense of the word, that this boy should not come into their family.” But, nevertheless, it was all done and they were getting married the 23rd.765 ¶7

When the sister-in-law left, this chap who wrote me the story said to himself, “Wouldn’t it be fun just to put her nose out of joint”—meaning the mother of the bride-to-be. So he said this is what I did, I said, “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if my sister-in-law wore a Don Loper dress.” Well, now you ladies would know what the Don Loper dress is. I had to ask my wife, so she put me wise concerning a Don Loper dress. And so, he said himself, “I’m going to see her in a Don Loper dress.”765 ¶8

Well, “Came the day of the wedding and she wore a very pretty blue dress,” and he said, “she looked very pretty in it; but I thought to myself it certainly wasn’t wedding-ish for a member of the wedding party.” “So the next Saturday, after the wedding, she called to say hello to Mother, that is, she and my brother. She said, ‘You know, I felt myself a little bit underdressed but I said to myself, “I’ll be damned if I cannot wear a Don Loper dress to my son’s wedding.” Now, she thought she initiated it. She thought she had originated the entire thought.765 ¶9

Then my friend added a little after-line, “Undoubtedly it was the least expensive model, but, nevertheless, it was a Don Loper.” Then he said, “Now I see why you stress it constantly that all of us should be so very, very careful to invest our thoughts rather than spend them, because everything that you do you’re going to reap.”765 ¶10

So he reaped it and it was fun. I wouldn’t blame anyone for having that little something in them to get even if “your child isn’t good enough.” You wouldn’t be human if in some strange little way you didn’t do something just like that. It didn’t offend her, didn’t hurt anyone, but he proved a point.765 ¶11

Now, who did it? My friend did it. Well, did he fulfill scripture? For it said God did it, he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth. Could that be the same presence spoken of? Certainly, there’s only one God, only one creative power, and he found it in himself as his own wonderful human Imagination.765 ¶12

But I am not going to swear that he tonight will not go back through habit to the God of tradition. It takes a little while to move, to grow up, and spiritual growth is a gradual transition from the God of tradition to the God of experience. When you experience it over and over, then you too will speak with the authority that he speaks of in scripture.765 ¶13

Then another one came in the morning’s mail. This chap said that he works at the airport. And so he felt quite inspired, and he was reciting to himself the 2nd verse of the 2nd chapter of Habakkuk.765 ¶14

He said, whenever I go over there, I go down to the very end of the runway, a place where I usually go to meditate. There’s an old gate there, and it’s almost like a friend of mine. I lean against it and dream; I lean against it and think all kinds of things.765 ¶15

Well, two fellows had asked me to aid them in getting promoted and getting more money. Well, he said, my position in the company does not warrant making this decision. I have no power to promote them or to raise their salary, but I could do it in my Imagination.765 ¶16

And so, in my Imagination I saw the two fellows being congratulated by the entire staff on being promoted and receiving more money. Well, a few months later, the first one was called in to be interviewed, and strangely enough when he entered the office to be interviewed who was the interviewer but an old friend of his. And so, the old friend instantly raised his present salary on that same job, that when he accepted the promotion it would automatically carry with it a bigger salary than that promoted job would carry. By taking the present job and raising the salary for it, when he now accepts the promoted job, it would carry an automatic bigger salary. And, one month later, the other one was promoted with an increase in salary.765 ¶17

Now he said, “Neville, all I did was simply put into practice what you teach. I imagined that my two friends had what I was powerless to give them. I have no position in the company that would allow me to promote them or in any way raise their salary. But I could do it in my Imagination and that I did with the result that here today they are working. They’re all being congratulated. I called them up to ask them if they liked the job and they are ecstatically happy on the job.”765 ¶18

Now that is simply identifying God with your own wonderful human Imagination, closing the gap between God and man, and trying to keep it closed. Because it’s not the easiest thing in the world, for you and I have been conditioned from the cradle to believe in some external power. We can’t bring ourselves to believe that by the word of the Lord the heavens were made and that Lord is the same presence in us when we say “I am”…when I can’t even make a nail. How could I bring myself to believe that by a word uttered in faith the heavens came into being and that being that brought them in to being is one with my own wonderful human Imagination? That’s difficult to accept over night but it gradually comes.765 ¶19

When it becomes now a vision, an actual experience, that’s when the thrill begins. All that is said of him in scripture you will experience. Everything said of him you’re going to experience. At first to you with the experience it’s a mere presentiment, a mere strange foreboding, is it really true? But then when they become rapid and you can come through one after the other, it’s an absolute certainty. At first, a mere presentiment; because you can’t believe that you, this little you, born of a woman, who will die in this world in a few short years, and that this you, that you don’t even know the thing that has been happening to you, that how could it be you when you are taught to believe that it applies to someone 2,000 years ago?765 ¶20

Listen to these words of the 40th chapter of the Book of Psalms, “And I said, ‘Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me; O my God, I delight to do thy will; thy law is within my heart”.765 ¶21

Here is an inspired man, because no prophecy ever came by the compulsion of a man. He didn’t sit down to compose it, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So they didn’t understand what they were writing; they were writing under inspiration. But the time of the fulfillment of it was not yet.765 ¶22

So here in the 40th Psalm, suddenly it dawns upon him that in the book itself it is written of me. And I thought all that I received in dictation was of another being, a being I always referred to as “the Lord” or as “my God” or by some other name. It could not for one moment be me. And then it dawns upon him: in the book it is written of me. And now he sees the whole law spoken of is in his own heart, and now he delights to do the will of the Lord.765 ¶23

And now he tells us, “I have not restrained my lips. I have not kept it a secret in my heart. I have told it to all the congregation.” Let them hear it and let them now respond either negatively or positively. But I told it to everyone who would listen, because I have found him.765 ¶24

And so, you find him as your own Imagination and then you tell it; and while you are still struggling with yourself to convince yourself this thing is so good, so marvelous, it’s really true…because it doesn’t come over night.765 ¶25

When a man finds himself making only a mental adjustment, and by that change in mental attitude he changes his inner conversation, because the change commands it and compels it; and then an outer world appears to conform to that inner change within him. Well, he tries it again and it still proves itself. He tries it again. Now he tries it with others, without their knowledge, without their consent and it works again.765 ¶26

He wonders, “What is this strange power?” Well, I was taught to get down on my knees and say the Lord’s Prayer, and make some mental image of a being in space that would be listening and would hear. And so, at the age of seventeen I didn’t have the courage, regardless of how tired I was and how late I came home, to go to bed without first getting down on the floor on my knees and saying the Lord’s Prayer. I just recited it quickly because I wanted to get to bed. But I didn’t have the courage to break that habit. I didn’t understand it. “Our Father which art in heaven,” we all would say, but it didn’t mean anything to me. I had my own earthly father. I did believe…always believed in a God, but until I found him he was always an external God. But I couldn’t conceive that he could ever see in me anything.765 ¶27

So all the arguments in scripture take place in us. When you read that they say to him, “Well, we know your parents, we know your brothers and sisters,” that part of it is not taking place on the outside. That’s taking place in the mind of the one who has had the experience. He knows he does better than anyone else does, as you do. “What man knoweth the Spirit of a man but the Spirit of that man? What man knows the things of a man but the Spirit of the man?”765 ¶28

So then, this thing happened in him, and he was born differently. Yet he knew the physical birth took place, for he saw himself clothed in flesh and blood. And then a new birth took place within him and he knew that was foretold, that was prophesied. So he goes back into the ancient scriptures and finds the parallel passage.765 ¶29

And now the argument starts in him because he is making a claim that is fantastic. It’s opposed by what he knows to be true concerning the outer garment. And so, he is saying, I know my father, my mother, my brothers, he names his brothers, I know my sisters. And so, it is he carrying on the argument within himself.765 ¶30

And so when we are told the father against a son, and a mother against the daughter, a mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, this is not an argument taking place on the outside. It’s the ancient against the present. He has made the discovery now. And so, it’s always the father against the son, the mother against the daughter, the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and not any relationship on the outside: It’s all in man.765 ¶31

And so, the father represents the ancient traditional concept of life. And suddenly, I’ve found that everything in that book is about me; it’s not about something on the outside at all. And the battle is on, and it’s yours until I overcome the war within me. So I can then face the whole vast world and it makes no difference if they listen or not because it’s overcoming you.765 ¶32

So then you will speak with an authority that you could not speak with before, because now you speak not only from a conviction, you speak from experience. You aren’t theorizing anymore. This is no theory; this is something that you know because you’ve experienced it.765 ¶33

And so, this is the story of speaking with your own credentials. As Paul said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, then I conferred not with flesh and blood”.765 ¶34

To whom would I turn? What person in this world that has not had the experience or heard of the experience in the way that you’ve heard it here could throw any light upon the experience when someone is dumbfounded? How could they? They will tell you as they told me, many a doctor has told me, “Why, Neville, it’s a strange hallucination.” I said, “Would you define it for me?” Well, they just use words without any meaning, they can’t define it…just a vivid dream. Well, a man can refer to this as a dream because he’s never had a vision.765 ¶35

A vision is truth unmodified by the conceptual mind. You’re raised above the limits of this world altogether; but it’s just as real as this, only more so, and things unfold one after the other.765 ¶36

So when you return, it’s not a dream. I dream nightly, but visions come at long intervals, especially the visions as recorded in the gospels, beginning with the resurrection, then the birth, then the discovery of the fatherhood of God, then the ascent into the Holy of Holies, and then the descent of the dove. They come at intervals, stated intervals, the first great four: two the first night, one on the heels of the other; and then five months later the second, the discovery of the fatherhood of God; and then four months later, comes the ascent into the Holy of Holies; and then three years later, the Holy Spirit descends in bodily form as a dove…the identical experience.765 ¶37

So when these happen, you have no more doubts in your mind. If in the beginning you thought that this could only be a peculiar self-induced state, you have no doubt after the other, one on top of the other.765 ¶38

So here, believe me. Take this thought this night: Identify God with your own wonderful human Imagination. Close the gap between the two—not God and you, just say just God or just you. Go on now.765 ¶39

And having found what this presence did (your Imagination) you go out determined to put it to the test. As you’re told, “Come test me and see…if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out gifts so great you haven’t room on earth to receive them”. What, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!”.765 ¶40

So here, we are speaking of a test of faith, really. So when we are told, “Stand in awe,” it doesn’t mean…well, the word awe, as far as I am concerned, is an emotion that comes when you contemplate the sublime. How would I contemplate God having discovered him to be my own Imagination? You can. You’re told, “Worship God…for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”765 ¶41

Well, how do I worship God? Worship means “to count worthy,” that is, worthy of observation.765 ¶42

So you sit down quietly and you turn your attention inward and you become attentive to what is happening now. You notice a miracle taking place because you can think of someone and you see them. And that’s crazy. You can think of something else and you see it. You can listen and you hear what you want to hear. Well, who is doing it?765 ¶43

So here, all of a sudden you realize who is doing it. Well, if this presence in you is doing it, haven’t you found him? So that’s worship. You’re counting worthy of observation this presence within you.765 ¶44

At first you see no one. You see only the people that you think of. You see the scenes you think of. But the day will come that the presence that’s doing it all will take on human form and stand before you, and then you will know God is man. You will see God and you will know he’s infinite love. God is man.765 ¶45

People don’t believe it. I hope you do. As Blake said, “Thou art a man, God is no more. Thy own humanity learn to adore”.765 ¶46

And then you know the most beautiful little verse, only one verse, On the Virginity of the Virgin: “What ere is done to her she cannot know, and if you ask her she’ll swear it so. Whether it is good or evil, none to blame; no one to take the pride, no one the shame.”765 ¶47

I’ll give you a vision of mine. To see the universal man, just one man, and to see that you and I that seem so solidly real, all these garments, they are only the outer skin of that heavenly man, all these; and you are the heavenly man. You have the experience of being the skin made up of all the generations of man, constantly changing through the event called death, like the serpent shedding skin, all being shed; yet the It itself remains being re-clothed, the new generations; and yet it is both; and you are that heavenly man.765 ¶48

A sensitivity in that man, you can’t describe it at all; because as the man you can get below the skin and see the being that you really are, that living being.765 ¶49

But I tell you whatever is done to this virgin is spoken of as “that heavenly man.” And then I saw the sign come before me in big block letters “virgin pure,” and I looked so closely to be sure I was reading it correctly, “virgin pure.”765 ¶50

And then comes the vision and the actual experience: I was that man, with all the sensitivity, and clothed as skin by every being that walked the face of the earth. And then you know the oneness of all, the unity of all.765 ¶51

So I ask you, take it seriously. Try it. Try it this night for a friend. Maybe you have no urge to change your world. But someone in your world could be changed for advantage and you try it for him, try it for her, try it for them. Because it is God in you that can speak and it comes to pass. Just as you’re told, he spoke. Fear him because he spoke, and it came to be; fear him standing [...], why?—because he just only commanded, and it stood forth.765 ¶52

And so Tom only commanded, “I’ll put her nose out of joint. I will see my sister-in-law wearing a Don Loper.” And then seven months go by. He mentioned something to his sister-in-law. He doesn’t suggest it that she could act upon the suggestion. She thinks she did the entire thing and justified it, when they met the summer after the wedding, by saying, “I said to myself, well, I’ll be damned if I cannot wear a Don Loper dress for my son’s wedding” and that’s how she justified it. She felt that she was a little bit under-dressed, but that’s all right, it was a Don Loper. That’s all there was to it. That’s all that he asked.765 ¶53

Undoubtedly, she’s not a lady of means and maybe she never wore one before, and may never wear one again, but Tom, knowing the law, he can always keep her clothed in Don Loper dresses. Doesn’t take any couturier in the world, they could all be used. That’s what they’re there for, to sell dresses. And if you want to clothe your sister-in-law better than she has been clothed, you can do it, without her knowledge, without her consent.765 ¶54

I’ve seen people doing all kinds of things, but after they do it they still don’t believe it worked that way and they will say, “It’s just my luck,” or “That was simply luck.” Well, you know what the word luck means? Luck is a name given by those who have no faith to the works of faith, that’s what luck is. There is no such thing. It’s all the outpouring of these imaginal acts of men. So you act with faith and no power in the world can stop you.765 ¶55

The man had no power to change the position of two men. He couldn’t increase their salary. But no power in the world could stop him from doing it for them and he did it with results.765 ¶56

Now today, if he’s here tonight, I hope with his eyes and ears wide open he will close the gap even more, and keep on closing that gap to find there aren’t two of you. You can say “I am he.”765 ¶57

In all the scripture it’s simply “I am he.” “But who are you?” “I told you, ‘I am he.’” “But you haven’t told me this day.” “Oh, yes I have.” “Well, who is your father?” “Well, my Father is he whom you call God; but I know my Father and ye know not your God.”765 ¶58

And after that comes the argument and the argument is taking place within you. For I’m speaking from experience.765 ¶59

It wasn’t easy to discover this and overnight to fuse to it. It wasn’t, because the very next day you had an unpaid bill and no sums to meet it. Yet, you found that your Imagination is God, can’t go back on that discovery, and yet your anxiety now postpones the day of the harvest. You can’t quite bring yourself to actually imagine the end, because the need is now, urgently, now. And so, you postpone the closing of the gap until finally you’d rather die, be cut in pieces, than go back on the discovery of the one and only God. The one who is your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God.765 ¶60

And don’t think I’m robbing you or taking anything from you. In fact, if I took anything it would only be the idol that you’ve kept alive in the place of the living God.765 ¶61

So when you go to bed this night, just worship God. Close your eyes, just turn on the inside. You might see [...] glorious light, golden liquid light, moving around your head and moving off into space, like a man blowing a smoked cigar. Only this is living light, something that comes out of your head this way, it forms circles, and goes off in puffs from your forehead. You simply become entranced with it all. And then you could turn away from it to something else.765 ¶62

But think of any friend this night, and in confidence, and hold God, which is your Imagination, hold him trustworthy. Trust him implicitly to bring it to pass; because this is your word, you spoke, and it comes to pass. You’re speaking the word when you imagine something in faith. You must imagine it in faith.765 ¶63

As we are told, many heard it, but it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it, therefore they did not get the results. They heard the same word in the Book of Hebrews, but only those who heard it and received it with faith got the results . And the others were called “the children of the wilderness,” because they kept on moving through the wilderness. They wouldn’t stop for one moment to turn in and worship God, and prove his existence, and his nearness, and the oneness with God.765 ¶64

The day will come to every one of us, because not one can fail. Now, we are called upon to set our hope fully upon the grace that is coming to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ.765 ¶65

Set your hope fully upon this grace, and grace is God’s gift of himself to man, directly, no intermediary, none whatsoever. There’s no intermediary between you and God.765 ¶66

When you read the story carefully you will see that no one ordained [...], no bishop, no elder, no president; he has no intermediary. In fact, he repudiates all institutions, all customs, all laws that interfere with the direct access of the individual to his God. No one in this world can be between yourself and God.765 ¶67

Call upon a friend if you feel that the thing is too pressing [...], call a friend if you trust him to believe that his imaginal act relative to you is true, then call him, call her…because we’re all one anyway. But don’t believe for one moment that intermediaries are essential to your access to God. It’s all God. And God became man that man may become God.765 ¶68

If I took this night some other form of God from you, I don’t regret it. Because only as we die to these gods can we find the true God, the living God, the real God.765 ¶69

And I can’t tell anyone the thrill that’s in store, the actual thrill. It’s morning, noon and night thereafter. You sit no matter where you are and you dwell upon this loving kindness that has been shown you by the very being that you really are. You dwell upon it…just can’t think of anything but. And it goes on for years.765 ¶70

This thing started with me before I found the principle. I found the law; well, the law thrilled me when I got results, marvelous. But when God began to unveil himself within me on that morning of the 20th day of July, 1959, from then on I could think of nothing but. Yes, I had to fix certain things, but it doesn’t really hold my interest very long. I go back and ponder this greatest of all things, best of things, and then try to tell it to as many as will listen that it’s going to happen to everybody.765 ¶71

And no one differs in the eyes of this being that I saw, and was when I saw it, this universal man that is one man, living being, allowing everything to be done to him by man’s misuse of him.765 ¶72

For he’s all Imagination and my misuse of my Imagination hurts this very sensitive part of me. Wish I could share with you the sensitivity of that part. It responds quickly and allows everything that you do to it. “So what ere is done to her she cannot tell, and if you ask her she’ll swear it so. Whether it’s good or evil, no one to blame, no one to take the pride and no one the shame.”765 ¶73

For in the end though what we have done be like scarlet, it’ll all be washed just as white as snow. Doesn’t really matter, in the end all things will be washed white as snow. And you will be the God that in your darkness you worshipped as another than yourself.765 ¶74

So when you read the Bible in the future—I hope you do it daily—try to get the mood that the book is written about you: “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” He didn’t know it. And then his heart jumped for joy, he said, “I delight to do thy will.” But he couldn’t believe that this whole thing could really center in him, centered in you as an individual.765 ¶75

There’s another letter I got this morning, but it’s too long because there are so many dreams in it. It’s perfectly wonderful. I want to thank you, if you’re here. You tell me you come quite often. That letter came…I read it with great, great interest. I have it on file, but it’s too long to take up from the platform tonight.765 ¶76

Again, let me appeal to all to test it and then share with me by giving me your letters that I, in turn, may tell those who come to encourage them. Your faith, my faith, together will encourage all, if I can just share one, two or three stories a night based upon actual experiences.765 ¶77

I don’t want anyone manufacturing these stories. Please don’t manufacture a story, tell me exactly what you did, what was the objective, how you applied it, and how it worked, that I may have your letter on file that I can turn to it. I don’t imagine you’ll ever question my honesty, but I would like your letter on file so that if someone should question that I can bring the letter out. So you write and take me into your confidence and share with me this use of this greatest of all laws; for there is no other law.765 ¶78

So tonight, you can start with the man you are, with the woman you are, and change yourself completely by the use of Imagination.765 ¶79

You have no one to whom you can turn for promotion? Alright, you don’t need him. No one can give you a raise? You don’t need him. No one who can dress you properly? You don’t need him. All you have to do is use your Imagination to dress yourself properly, and you give yourself promotion, and do all the things that you really want to do. Except do it first in Imagination and then you’ll do it externally.765 ¶80

A chap came to me in New York City and he said, “Neville, I want to make”…and he mentioned a sum of money. He was an engineer, but he never really made big money, but always held responsible jobs. I said, “Where do you want to work?” Well, he said, “There’s a firm on Madison Avenue,” and he named the floor where they operate. I said, “Would you go there if you got the job?” He said, “Yes, until they send me overseas. They always do things all over the world, but until I receive my appointment I would go there every day.”765 ¶81

I said, “Now in your Imagination get on that elevator and go up, feel the thing ascend, get off at the floor, go in the door, hang up your hat, and sit at your desk. That’s all. That would imply if your hat is hung up now and you’re at the desk you’re working there.”765 ¶82

In one week he got that job, with a salary he had never dreamed of before. Unfortunately…and yet not unfortunately because we all have our exits from this world at appointed hours, he was on the job and simply died. He was only there four years and one day, heart attack…young man, fifty-six years old.765 ¶83

But that’s alright. He lived fully, and before he made his exit here he discovered a creative power within himself.765 ¶84

So he and his wife and daughter always came to the meetings, and before he made his exit the three of them found God. If the blow was so great that it turned them aside to another god, I don’t know. Some people, you know, turn aside and think they should not have done that; it displeased God and then God took me, or took my husband from me. They think of a God of retribution and I have found the God of love, infinite love, no retribution whatsoever.765 ¶85

And so, he was simply called at the appointed hour.765 ¶86

But I could take these and multiply them by the dozens, the hundreds, yes, I’ll go into the thousands, of these stories. And one seems more fantastic than the other. But we are told, in spite of the number of the signs that he gave them and the character of the signs, they still did not believe him. They still did not believe him.765 ¶87

I can talk to many…this night before I came out I got a call from New York City. This lady got off the plane last night and called to ask me to help a certain very dear [...]. Now, at a distance she wouldn’t mind if I was called.765 ¶88

But when I meet her in the flesh, in the month of July, in Barbados, she couldn’t possibly credit me with the power to change a condition in her life that someone else that she trusts implicitly as a doctor would feel it’s going to take time, and this can’t work this way, it may never work. And so, to turn to something you can’t put your hand upon.765 ¶89

You’re trying to touch God, but you can’t touch him. He’s just like quicksilver and he hides himself in his own creativity. He creates something and hides himself in it…just like quicksilver.765 ¶90

So here, this night, just go into the Silence and imagine the loveliest thing you can imagine of someone [...], and when you break the Silence believe in the reality of what you have done. And don’t expect a long interval of time between what you’ve done and the fruition of it, believe that it’s done, just believe it’s something now, and it will come out.765 ¶91

Now, let us go.765 ¶92

* * *765 ¶93

I would like to make this series as productive and as helpful as the fall series, for I feel in the fall series that we really reached a very high water mark, not only in what people have accomplished in this world of Caesar, but in their spiritual lives. Everything is geared toward a center and that center is God. And where are we in relationship to God? And so we accomplish not only the changes that we desire in this outer world, but the real change between the surface mind of ours and the deep of self which is God. And so, to accomplish that, I must ask you to do what we did last fall…to share with me your dreams and your visions and your experiences as you apply this law toward changes in this outer world. That makes it far more real, more wonderful. If you will share with me, then we will all be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. If you have the faith enough to apply it when you are up against it, and then tell me what happened so I can then from the platform tell others, I will encourage those who are present, and I will encourage them to apply it and, therefore, increase their faith.764 ¶1

So do share with me your dreams, for God is speaking to man through the medium of a dream. When I use the word God, here let me go right out tonight and state it quite clearly. When I use the words Lord, God, Jehovah, Jesus, Christ, I AM, Imagination, to me they are synonymous and interchangeable. I do not have a God stuck off in space that differs from that which I speak of as I AM . When I speak of Imagination, I speak of God, I speak of Jehovah, I speak of Jesus, I speak of Christ. So these terms, to me, are synonymous and interchangeable. When I say that Jesus Christ is my deeper self, I could say Imagination is my deeper self…and yet my slave for purposes of his own. I personify Imagination, for I am a person, and my real being is all Imagination, therefore, Imagination to me is a person, but the deeper self. And for purposes of his own, he is my slave.764 ¶2

So I say, he waits upon me, he waits upon you, he waits upon all of us, swiftly, impersonally, without any effort whatsoever, when our will is evil or when it is good, makes no difference to the deep of myself. I am in a state and I’m thinking unlovely thoughts, he waits upon me just as swiftly, just as quickly, and he will conjure for me images of evil out of the nowhere. Let me change a state and feel myself in a sense of love, a sense of good, and the same presence will conjure for me instantly images of love. So he waits upon me so quickly, so swiftly, no matter what I am on the surface of his being, and radiates through me onto the screen of space all that I am imagining.764 ¶3

So I say that the entire outer world is solely produced through imagining. If my outer world is produced through imagining, then I cannot change the outer world without changing the imagining. How long will it take? As long it takes me to change the state that I have imagined. So I imagine that I am this, that or the other. I don’t like what I’m seeing and I hate to admit that it’s caused by what I am imagining. If it is caused by what I am imagining, it would take no longer to change than it takes me to change what I am imagining.764 ¶4

Is it true? Well, I ask you to test it. I ask you to come with me and simply test it. See if it works. If it doesn’t work, discard it. But if there is evidence for it, does it really matter what the world thinks? If tonight you test it and it proves itself in performance, does it really matter what anyone in the world thinks about this concept? It doesn’t, not if it proves itself in performance. So I ask you to test it.764 ¶5

Now let me share with you…because in my absence a dozen of you wrote me these heavenly stories…and tonight I will take one man’s series, he gave me three. He’s here tonight. This is his as I have it at home in his own typewritten four pages. Listen to it carefully that you may see little points that he found that maybe you haven’t heard from the platform, or if you heard them, they didn’t register.764 ¶6

Now, he said, “One of my many responsibilities on my present job is publishing a magazine. It’s a very high quality, in content and in workmanship; it’s brought out in four colors. Before the last issue should be prepared, I got bored and tired of the whole thing, and did nothing about content, editorial content, articles, stories, or anything about it. Two weeks from the date of publication here I am without anything.”764 ¶7

“But,” he said, “you have had some experience with publications, with printers, and to take and start from scratch a four-color magazine to be brought out in two weeks, you know it’s practically impossible. Sitting there in my office I said to myself, although it means nothing to me whether the publication comes out or not, it means so much to so many people, especially my boss. And I thought to myself, you’re extremely selfish…just selfish. And then something happened in me. I became alert. I became, well, completely fired with bringing this thing out. Neville, they came through the walls, not literally, but it seemed that stories, articles, everything came through the walls. I wrote three short pieces myself with such enthusiasm, I so loved what I was doing. I brought out three. Then I edited all the articles. I edited the stories. I edited all the things. And then men who had never worked on this publication before were assigned to me to get the whole thing out. Three photographers were stopping what they were doing and turned to this, and sent off on assignments. My printers, my [...], my mailers, all these were brought and they worked three shifts for the two weeks. And we brought it out.”764 ¶8

Now, how did it start? “Before I started, this is what I did. I can’t bring out a magazine in four colors in two weeks, with no stories, no articles, no editorial content, nothing, so what did I do? I saw my boss holding the issue, I saw the dateline on it, I saw him holding the issue in his hand with an expression on his face which implied to me complete satisfaction in what he was seeing. Then I heard him tell me it was the best issue that we have ever published. In that interval when all this thing was simply wild, and my mind, naturally, would possibly falter, I went back to that one picture—my boss holding the issue. I saw the date on it, it’s the issue. I saw the expression on his face, and I heard him praise me for the work that I had done. So every time it happened, that’s what I did. I held to the end.”764 ¶9

The end is where we begin. In my end is my beginning. We’re always imagining ahead of our efforts. I go to the end. I don’t care what I want, I go to the end, in the end, and it pulls everything to fulfill itself into this world.764 ¶10

“Came the day and the magazine is now out, my boss praised me as he has never praised me before. He said, ‘It was the best issue that we have ever brought out.’ Just as I had seen him in my Imagination, that’s what happened in the outer world as fact. When the magazine was out now, and mailed, I went by and here I saw my boss. He was happy, but there was a certain mood that he expressed. I talked to him and he said, ‘You know, I feel that we brought it out and mailed it a few days too early.’ Two weeks to bring out a four-color magazine without having selected the articles, the stories, the editorial content, all the things, and he claims that it was mailed a few days too early.”764 ¶11

Now, all these stories are related. He said, “My dry cleaner’s work I like. He’s handled my needs for quite a while, and this day in question he has lost the trousers to my most expensive and my best suit.” Well, he said, “He was beside himself; my wife was enraged and she called him every day for ten days. He searched his plant completely three times. No pants. He said to me, ‘Make out a claim.’ I said, I don’t want money, I want my pants. I don’t want any money, I just want my pants. After he had made three complete searches of the plant, he said, ‘Now do me a favor and sign this form. It’s all insured, simply sign the form.’ Well, because he was adamant that I sign the form, I signed the claim. The next day on the way to and from the office, as I drove the freeway, I felt that fabric of my pants on my legs. I also felt it between my fingers…all in my Imagination.” He isn’t wearing the pants, so he could not have felt it with his physical hands. He had to have felt it with his imaginary hands and his imaginary legs. He said, “I felt it and then I dropped it. The next day he calls my wife and tells my wife that he found the pants [...] pinned to another pair of pants ready for delivery to another person. He had searched that plant all over three times and here he finds it, just as he’s about to send it off to another person he finds the pants. So I had my pants.”764 ¶12

Now here is the picture, and you listen to it carefully and apply it towards what you’ll hear this night. He said, “It was the Christmas season and I felt affluent and I felt so generous and so expansive I went and I bought dozens of presents and I sent dozens of checks. One day, a merchant with whom my wife does business calls and tells her that there are no funds. The check she issued has bounced. Well, I was simply beside myself. I knew I had hundreds of dollars more in that account than I had drawn checks against, in spite of the fact that I drew dozens of checks, I felt so expansive, and I knew I had the money there. There must be a mistake, and certainly not on my part, on the computer’s part at the bank.764 ¶13

Now, I had not been with this bank very long. It’s a new bank that I opened up an account with. So I went and I rushed to my statement that came in a few days before. I hadn’t yet checked it. So I went to my statement…and then my face turned red and I was humiliated. I had made the most enormous error in subtraction, and there were no funds. I had drawn oodles and oodles of checks. There was no place to turn, and my next paycheck was weeks off. I would get a good paycheck but weeks off. What to do? Where would I turn to get this sum of money to make good these checks? Well, at way beyond my bedtime I wrestled with this problem, and I thought, well now, tomorrow I’ll go to the bank, explain the facts, my job, my income; and they can simply do what they want to do, make a suggestion, because they are my bankers now. But they don’t know me. And so, as I thought of that, well, it didn’t seem that was something that I could simply feel secure in. So I thought, well, now I must have some imaginary image that I can believe in.”764 ¶14

Now, take this to your heart—I must have an imaginal act I can believe in; not any imaginal act is going to work. It’s like taking the most wonderful things in the world…I take wood, I make a fire, I have everything in order, the paper, the kindling, the logs, everything, but it needs a flame to start it…and belief is the flame. I have the whole thing set up in my Imagination, but do I believe in it? Can I kindle it? Only belief can set it ablaze.764 ¶15

So, he said, “I had to have something I could believe in. I could believe that imagining, that God was doing it”…and he used the word God, didn’t use the word imagining, he used the word God. He said, “I could believe that God was bringing it to pass in the best way for everyone involved. Those that I had unwittingly deceived, those that I had planned to send presents to that I now could not, and for everyone involved everything would be alright. So I went to sleep in the assumption that God was bringing out the best solution for everyone involved. Next morning when I got up and I started towards the bank, I wasn’t altogether sure, but I went back to that assumption that God is bringing out the best solution for everyone involved. So I went to the bank. As I went to the bank, I saw the cashier and the cashier turned me over to a vice president. He listened to my story and he said, ‘You should see the assistant manager,’ so he took me to the assistant manager, and he condensed my story for the assistant manager. The assistant manager asked me nothing; he just simply looked me over and said, ‘When do you think you can right this situation?’ So I told him the day of my paycheck. He said, ‘Alright, forget it. All things will be taken care of.’ He didn’t ask me how many checks I had drawn, I had drawn so many. He only knew what came in that were not paid. He didn’t know how many…and he’s giving me unlimited credit. So he turned and went back to his desk and said, ‘Forget it. That’s the day on which you can settle it.’764 ¶16

“So I drove back feeling a little bit comfortable with what had happened. Two days later I received an unexpected special bonus from my boss for almost ten times the amount that I had drawn in checks. Ten times the amount! One of the reasons given me for this special bonus was the outstanding work I had done on the magazine. When I received the check, I was wearing the suit, pants and all. Here I was wearing my suit, I received the check, and the next day when I went to the bank to make the deposit I thought it only a decent thing to do to stop in and thank the assistant manager for his kindness. I recognized on his face a certain sadness. He was saddened because, as he said to me, ‘I’m sorry there was nothing I could do for you.’ It appeared that in that interval of that forty-eight hours no check came through…only the checks that came through prior to my seeing the manager. But in that interval no check came through, so he had not a thing to do. He did pay those that were prior to this visit to him. So I went out…so I must tell you, imagining does create reality.”764 ¶17

Now he ends his letter on this note, he said, “You know, as I write you, there is nothing that I can do for you or say to you but thanks, and it seems so inadequate.”764 ¶18

May I tell him and tell you, there is nothing you can do for me more than to share with me such experiences. If he gave me a fortune, may I tell you, it could not compensate for the letter that he gave me. I don’t care how big the check he ever sent me, I would spend it. I spend everything that I get. The only thing I haven’t spent is what my father gave me from the family estate, and because it was the family estate I haven’t touched it. Were it not family estate, it would have been gone long ago. I have spent every nickel I have ever earned and were ever given. So had he given me anything it would be gone by now. I can’t seem to keep any money that I earn. It started when, I think, I was inside my mother’s womb. I’m quite sure when I came out I gave everything away.764 ¶19

There was one…I was a little boy. My father allowed me to go every week with the brothers to see the old pictures…you know, where they tied them on the rails and the train is coming. All of a sudden the lights would go out and all things obliterated and then another reel would be put on, [...], and all these things.764 ¶20

Well, my father had a butcher shop and this tall big strapping fellow, we called him [Mashmouth?]. His feet were so big he could never wear shoes. First of all, he couldn’t afford shoes anyway, so…but he had such feet, and we called him Mashmouth. My father would give me one and six, that’s thirty-six cents in the old days, to go to the picture. He always gave me an extra six cents, thruppence. I would say, “I want to buy some candy, give me thruppence.” I didn’t buy candy; I gave it to Mashmouth to come in. We had what was known as the pit, just downstairs, and then the mezzanine, and that’s upstairs, where the one and six fellas went, and the six cents went downstairs. I gave him six cents every Saturday night to laugh at the wrong time. If he didn’t laugh at the wrong time, he paid his own way. He would sit and when they were making love or when someone is dying or something awful, _[...], if he didn’t laugh he isn’t going to get my thruppence. He never failed. But he learned not to laugh too early because they always evicted him. They knew exactly who he was and they came on down with their little light and they said, “Come on, Mashmouth, come on.” Mash very quietly got up and out he would go. And so, he learned how to see most of the picture to get my thruppence. So he would go all the way through. There’s always a moment when you shouldn’t laugh at all, laugh or cry. At some moment he had to so laugh. He had the most ungodly laugh. He got my thruppence every time.764 ¶21

Well, I could tell you numberless similar stories where money would burn me and took it away…always in some fun, always for fun…some humorous vein in my veins right from the beginning. But he could give me a big check. And who would refuse money, no one, but I’d spend it.764 ¶22

But I can’t spend his experience. I can share it, I can take it from here to New York. For when I came back from San Francisco it was waiting for me. I came back two weeks ago. Now I have it to share with you tonight, and to share when I go to New York, and to tell my friends when I go to Barbados, and when I go back to San Francisco.764 ¶23

That story is like the stories of the Bible. This is simply taking the principle that is God’s principle and proving it. For his Imagination, I tell you, is God, your Imagination is God. Let me repeat it, Jehovah, Jesus Christ, the Lord God, I AM, Imagination, are synonymous terms and interchangeable. So then I say that imagining is like the creative power in me, that “the great creative power of the universe is like pure imagining in me, and underlies all of my faculties, including my perceptions, but it streams into my surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy.”764 ¶24

So when he sat there and there is no magazine, no articles, no stories, not a thing, and now he feels embarrassed, he feels ashamed, he feels that “I am selfish, I’m letting down all of these people who depend upon me,” and then he takes the end, that is productive fancy. I see a man who is my boss reading the issue, I see the dateline, I see the expression on his face; and then having seen that, I hear him tell me, “It’s the best that we have ever done.” From that moment on an interest is aroused in him. Until that end was established and within himself, imagined and believed, there was no interest. Then they came out of the wall and everything moved toward the fulfillment of that state.764 ¶25

So I tell you, imagining does create reality. If you would find God, stop thinking of a little term. If you were in France, they wouldn’t use the word God, they’d use some other word. In Germany, in Russia, you say God and they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. But you don’t have to know these little words. You know who he is: He’s your own wonderful human Imagination. And he’s speaking to you moment after moment through desire. He’s speaking in the depths of your soul through dream, through vision. And you can tell by the vision, by the dream, if you know how to interpret these things, what level you’re on relative to him. Everything is relative to God. It isn’t relative to anything in the outside world, for all of that’s a shadow, meaning nothing. It’s all relative to God. So where do I stand relative to him? Every dream, the most insignificant dream to the outer world, has profound significance to you to whom it is spoken and to God who speaks it to you, and the God in you is your own self.764 ¶26

So let me repeat, Jesus Christ is my deeper self, actually my deeper self…and yet my slave. He is the one enslaved in me for purposes of his own. And he waits upon me as impartially and as swiftly when my ideas and my thoughts and my desires are evil as when they are good. He doesn’t discriminate at all. He will conjure for me, in the twinkle of an eye, ideas of good and evil by the call of my desire. All of a sudden let me wish something and instantly these ideas are conjured. Where do they come from? Well, they’ll say they came out of your wonderful Imagination. Certainly, and who did it? I tell you that is Jehovah, if the name pleases you. I tell you it’s Jesus Christ, if you prefer it. I tell you it is the Lord God. I tell you it is your own wonderful human Imagination…that is God. When you learn to fall in love with him…because he has enslaved himself for himself, really, because you aren’t really two, you are but an extension of himself being called back, level by level by level, until finally you are one, and you aren’t two. So we’re being called back from an expulsion. It was a self-expulsion, and now called back through these infinite levels of awareness. And he reveals to us through the medium of dream the level on which we stand.764 ¶27

Do you want to find out where it is in scripture? Take scripture and find out where I stand by a simple dream. No, it’s not going to be recorded just as you have it, but study scripture. As Paul said, “Learn from us to live by scripture.” Is it there? Does it parallel it in any way? Not the same name, not the same thing, but you’ll find it there. He’s always talking to you and calling you back to himself, through layer after layer, until finally when you reach home you and he are one.764 ¶28

So I tell you tonight, listen to that theme. He had to have something that not only could he imagine but that he could believe. I could imagine anything, you could imagine anything. Is there something you can’t imagine? Don’t tell me. I can tell the most fantastic story in the world, if you understand the words that I use as I use them. You will listen carefully, and I’ll paint a word picture of the most fantastic thing, and you’ll hear me with understanding if I speak within the framework of your understanding. So you understand me, but you may not believe me, therefore, it means nothing. I build the most wonderful fire for you, put the kindling and everything, but it takes your belief to set it aflame. So he said, “I must find something that I not only can imagine, I could imagine it, but can I believe it? Well, you will come to the bank…can that manager trust me? He can call my boss and say that he worked, but would he want to do that and embarrass me? Would the boss want to know this? Would I want the boss to know that I drew checks against an account that isn’t liquid? All these things would go through the assistant manager’s mind. He wants a customer, he doesn’t want to throw me out of his bank. So he had to think of all these things before he would put that call in. And so, that didn’t seem something he could believe.”764 ¶29

Now, he could believe in God. He could believe that God is now bringing to pass— now—“it’s all coming to pass now in the best possible way for everyone involved. Everyone that I had unwittingly robbed and those who would not get the presents that I promised myself I would send. I didn’t owe them anything, but I was going to send them a present. And all these things passed through my mind…that God could do it in the best way possible. So in my mind the next day, a little bit concerned, I came back, ‘God is doing it.’ I went to that bank in the state that God is doing it. So I don’t know what he’s going to do…the best thing possible…and the assistant manager, the lad that I saw, ‘Alright, go your way, it’s all taken care of.’ And then comes the specific reason for this very large check, ten times the amount.”764 ¶30

He said, “Neville, I drew not a few checks, I drew many, many, many checks, and all of them would have bounced, there’s no money. And I got ten times the amount necessary to liquidate all problems concerning what I did.”764 ¶31

So I say go to the end. The end is where we begin. If tonight…I don’t care what it is you want. I have someone—she’s here tonight, I see her in the audience—and she will call me, well, if I would allow it, it would be not an hour, it would be a whole day on the phone, if you allow it. You’ve got to stop it right in the beginning because it could go on forever. No matter what I will say to her—and she’s here and I’m talking to her right now—what I say to her “but” and all shadows. I cannot change a shadow ’til I change the object casting the shadow. No matter what argument I give on the surface…well, I can argue…well now, he said so and so, and she said so and so, and they said so and so, and what am I going to say? I’m not saying what she said, he said, they said or whatever: What do you want? Well, I want so and so. Alright, now we’ll cast the shadow. You have now told me that it has worked. That is an object. You’re now carrying on a conversation with me and you’re telling me, “You know, Neville, the most marvelous thing happened. I have exactly what I told you that I wanted as a solution to my problem. That’s it!” Before I can hang up, “But, Neville, suppose somebody says so and so?”…we go back to the shadow world.764 ¶32

But I’m speaking to you directly. You can go on testing shadows and trying to change others. You will try it forever and forever and you will never change that which is casting the shadow. But, certainly, you can move out of the object, which is a state of consciousness that is casting the shadow into another desired by you; remain in that and cast the shadow. The shadow will not take long.764 ¶33

You are the light of the world. He said, “I am the light of the world.” You think another one is speaking? God is speaking. When I say God, I mean your Imagination. Your Imagination is the light of the world. It takes the light to illumine the state, the object; and then the world outside is only a reflector, it’s an echo, bearing witness of the state into which I have moved. So I move into a state, I remain in that state, and cast my shadow upon the screen of space.764 ¶34

So you can argue from now until the end of time and tell me, “But this…but suppose he does so and so,” and you are giving all the power that rightly belongs to you to the shadow world where it does not belong.764 ¶35

So it’s entirely up to you. If you test it this night, it will prove itself in the testing. And I ask you again, share with me your experiences that I in turn may share from this platform with those who come here, so we all may benefit from them. As Paul said in his first letter…well, he only wrote one to the Romans that we know of…so in his very first chapter of his letter to the Romans, he asked those who heard it, those who received the letter, to share with him that all of us may be encouraged by each others’ faith.764 ¶36

If a man has faith enough to try it though tomorrow morning is the deadline based upon Caesar’s world, so he’s going to try it tonight, he gets into an entirely different state. And the one who tomorrow morning is waiting for me in his office, and therefore if I don’t, because either this or else, he doesn’t feel well and he can’t come to the office, so there’s a postponement. Or maybe he’s called out of town. Or maybe he’s forgotten the appointment and when I come there at nine by appointment, he’s forgotten it. I can tell you a thousand and one things that could happen, but everything must happen based upon what you are doing. You are the causative power.764 ¶37

But bear in mind, because we are the causative power it doesn’t work itself. It works and operates only because I am the operant power. Am I willing to operate it?764 ¶38

So I want every night to be able to tell you as exciting stories. Friday night I have a story. It’s a fantastic story! I can’t find a word to describe it more wonderfully than that. A friend of mine came home for dinner not more than a week ago, and he gave me a letter one night that I entertained, and his wife very kindly having told his story, that night mailed me, by my request, a letter that she had told the night before. And so, I have the two, to be told separately because they differ on the levels of awareness. But all of these are such revealing things as to where we stand relative to God. So his I will tell on Friday.764 ¶39

And when I didn’t get my proof from the Times, I wondered if they thought I was insane, because I put the caption for my second lecture “Remembrance of Things Future.” Now you have read the book “Remembrance of Things Past.” It’s today a classic and you go into any library, you’ll find these two volumes. And here “Remembrance of Things Past” has become a classic. I don’t mean “Remembrance of Things Past”; I mean “Remembrance of Things Future,” just what I sent in. But I didn’t get a proof and I wondered is he really going to believe what I was talking about? But, luckily, when I saw the paper, he did, he printed it “Remembrance of Things Future.”764 ¶40

My friend’s letter to me fits it beautifully, if you want to have a picture of scripture compared…to parallel with it, then read Ecclesiastes before you come. For this is Ecclesiastes one hundred percent as few in this world will accept it. But I am now speaking from his experience, which I will on Friday share with you, “Remembrance of Things Future,” to show you who you really are.764 ¶41

I tell you that you’re God. I’m not here to flatter you. You and I are one. God is one, and here fragmented on the surface of his being, and then called back to the core. And the end, all called back, and we are one. But we come back one by one by one.764 ¶42

So here, the entire outer world is solely produced by Imagining. “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” If it is a shadow, then let me find that which is causing the shadow…and the cause of the shadow is your imaginal activities. What are we imagining that is the cause of the shadows which we think so objectively real and so completely independent of our perception of them? All these things seem so completely independent of our perception of them and they’re all cast by our own imaginal activities.764 ¶43

So you get into a state of wealth, alright, the state of wealth—you don’t have to find out how it’s going to happen—a state of health, a state of being known, a state of being wanted, a state of being contributing to the world, any state…these are all states. And while you remain in the state, they can do their best to rub out what you’re casting. Let them rub out shadows by blocking this, but they can’t rub out the cause of it all, and it always reproduces itself. The whole vast world is reproducing itself based upon the state that you occupy. So they can’t rub anything out that you are doing by rubbing out things that you do. Cut off the head of a chicken and you are in a state, and you could use all the chickens in the world, because no matter what they do in the outer world it’s what you are doing within yourself.764 ¶44

So “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; the divine body, Jesus. And we, on the surface, are his members.” All are the members of this one divine body…and only this one body. All are gathered into a unity in the one body which is God.764 ¶45

Now you can call it God, call it Jehovah, if that satisfies you, call it Jesus Christ. I like that name, I’ll tell you, Jesus Christ. You say I am the Lord who sent you. You say Imagination, and you’re here in a group like this that you may understand and get behind names and surfaces; but in the outer world I wouldn’t use it, because they wouldn’t understand. And so you would use the word Jehovah, instantly the mind goes there. Use the word Jesus, jumps out there. Not only in space, it jumps out there in time, away out there, well, unnumbered centuries ago. It jumps if you use the word Jehovah or Jesus. If you use the word I AM, it can’t jump. There’s no place you can go; you can’t go outside of the present moment. And if you actually show people what you mean by it, that I AM is a creative power, and it creates by imagining, well then, it must be here. You just can’t get outside of the present moment in time when you use these terms, but you can only use them in a group like this when they come as you come for instruction.764 ¶46

So I tell you I am completely awake and know I have been sent to tell you what I’m telling you. For I’m not talking to another, really, I’m only talking to myself, all wonderful aspects of myself, all being withdrawn now, all coming back through infinite levels of awareness to the one being that I am.764 ¶47

Now let us go into the Silence for a moment. …..764 ¶48

What is most practical in this world is in reality most profoundly spiritual. You can tie them together, if one knows it. And you can reverse it, for what is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most practical.764 ¶49

So, he is a practical person and yet the world would call him a dreamer, sitting there doing nothing, a four-color magazine. If you have had any business at all with publishing, you know what to bring it out in two colors. Two-colors is simply black on white, that’s two colors. Black is called a color in printing. And so, that simple thing black on white is a problem. But to put a magazine out in four colors and two weeks before the deadline and no editorial content, no articles, no stories, nothing ready. And then everything is thrown in his face, and they’re working three shifts, the photographers taken off their present jobs, new assignments, everything at his fingertips…and it’s out and mailed a few days too early. Well then, just imagine that terrific intensity on his part.764 ¶50

So he gets a bonus check for ten times the amount that he had drawn the checks against.764 ¶51

So, again, let me thank you for telling me the story, and what I say to you I say to all of you, I don’t expect one penny from you, not a nickel. No money, that’s not any compensation to me. You come here, you pay at the door. But monies…I do not wish any money from you. I’ve never solicited money. I’m not doing it now. And I will not, may I tell you, no money.764 ¶52

But I do ask you to share with me your experiences. That to me is beyond the wildest dream. When I get a letter in the morning of that nature, like the two letters that I told you from my friends, one brought it to dinner and one mailed it afterwards. One came…and I spoke to her yesterday on the telephone…and she is in the immediate present to be treated from the platform. It’s fantastic. She didn’t begin to believe how deep it was…and still she doesn’t…I didn’t tell her all in that letter. So give me…I tell you I can read them. I know from experience where you are on the levels.764 ¶53

Yes, ma’am?764 ¶54

Goodnight.764 ¶57

Tonight’s subject is “Advent.” Advent begins on Sunday. It’s the first Sunday nearest to the 30th day of November, which is called Andrew’s Day. And then for four Sundays men are watching—this is all traditional—and they’re watching for the coming of a great event, the second coming of the Christ at the end of this age. So that’s what man watches for, for the second coming which will end this age. But they look to find someone coming from without, and he never comes from without. He comes from within. For the first has taken place: God limits himself in the incarnation. God became us that we may become God—that’s already accomplished. But while he is in us, then he awakens in us at the end of this age as far as we’re concerned. God limits himself. Actually, to achieve his purposes in this world he imposes upon himself this self-limitation by a certain specialization, a certain selection, a certain contraction, in order to expand. For the only purpose of it all is for God to expand.762 ¶1

Now Andrew is the one who is called upon to start the watch. He is the first one of the apostles who found him, and having found him he went and called his brother Peter. So Andrew is the first to discover the one of whom the prophets wrote, the one of whom Moses in the law wrote; and having found him he called his brother Peter to tell he had found him, found the Messiah. Andrew was among the four who always accompanied him. We speak of Peter, Andrew, James and John. And so, in the 13th chapter of the Book of Mark, he takes the four up into the mount, the Mount of Olives. [...] It isn’t said who asked him the question or who made the statement, but one made the statement, “Look at the buildings, these glorious buildings”; and he replied, “Not one stone will be left standing upon another. It will all be cast down. And they wondered, when, when will it happen? Not one stone will be left upon another.” What is he talking about, buildings in our city here? No. Not one concept that man would have of life based upon his own reasoning will stand the test of time, not one—his theory of evolution, his theory of man, every concept that man holds so dear. And there are libraries the world over about all that man knows—not one stone will be left standing, all will be cast down. It’s so completely unlike what man believes it to be, for the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God.762 ¶2

Now, in the 40th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, we read the words: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Have you not been told from the beginning and have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth…calling them by name…his mighty power…and by his great power not one is missing,” not one. He calls everyone by name and not one is missing by his mighty power. He is the one who sits above the circle of the earth. And when you sit above the circle of the earth and see it, it’s so completely unlike what man believes it to be. It’s dead; the whole vast world seen from above is dead. Then God by self-limitation to achieve his purposes comes down by selection and assumes your body, my body, all these bodies, and every body is related. The minute you enter it you animate it and then everything starts.762 ¶3

But everything in this world is completely finished, everything is finished. You can’t conceive of a situation in the world that isn’t already worked out. Blake saw it so clearly and told it in his 13th Plate of Jerusalem, where everything in the most minute detail is worked out, all the relationships of men, everything. And any man who dares to come down—I said man, I mean God comes down—and assumes a state. The minute he animates that state the whole vast world related to it comes into animation and the whole thing starts to move. It’s so completely unlike what the wise man of the world believes it to be. So Blake made the statement in his dictated poem called Jerusalem and he gave us the theme of: “The Sleep of Ulro and of the passage through eternal death and of the awakening to eternal life.” Then, said he at the very beginning, “Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine.”762 ¶4

Now who is this that actually came down? We’re now waiting, beginning on Sunday in the traditional concept, waiting for the Second Coming. Tonight I’ll tell you he’s come. It’s the second coming they’re waiting for. How did he come? Well, he’s spoken of in scripture as Christ Jesus, defined in scripture as the power of God and the wisdom of God. The power of God and the wisdom of God is buried in man. That power and wisdom is called Christ Jesus. It’s personified as a being called Christ Jesus. He’s spoken of as the Son of God, but he makes the claim, “I and my Father are one.” So God himself comes into man, buries himself in man, and is the reality of man. And that God in man, which is Christ Jesus, has to come the second time; this time not from without, he comes from within.762 ¶5

He awakens in man…something that may not be easy to grasp. But may I tell you, if you reject it…I will quote the 12th chapter of John, for when you reject a man’s words you reject him. “He who rejects me has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.” He won’t be heard because the same being…but on the last day when it happens to you, you will know how true the word was. So “He who rejects me has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.”762 ¶6

That last day could come tonight. For when it comes it comes suddenly, comes like a thief in the night. You don’t really expect it, it suddenly happens to you; suddenly you awake and you realize that the being you thought to be Jesus Christ and looked because of the misunderstanding of Jesus Christ, you thought him to be another. And you look eagerly for a second coming, some being who would come out of space and save you and your nation and your race and all these things, and it doesn’t come that way at all. It’s all specialization: God actually achieves his purpose by self-limitation by selection. He selected you in this fabulous state and limits himself to you, and took upon himself that contraction that is you that he may expand. For the whole thing is based upon his contraction. As he contracts himself and takes on this limitation, then something happens in you. He breaks it, like a seed becoming alive, and it begins to grow. So he takes upon himself the limitation called Neville. I think I was born of my mother, I think I have a certain background, of a certain family background, and all this thing man taught me. I was told that I evolved from some strange thing out of the mud, and all of a sudden here came man and then another man and another man, and finally I find myself this man.762 ¶7

Don’t believe it. Every stone that man has simply piled up on this glorious building of his, called the wisdom of man, the whole structure is going to fall, and not one stone is going to be left standing upon the other. The day will come you will actually have the experience of the 40th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the very foundations of the earth it is he who sits above the circle of the earth…calling them by name? Every one called by name.” We are afraid of billions? Multiply billions by billions, more than the sands of the sea, and every one is named. He calls every one—he specializes—all by name. And as he calls them by his mighty power, not one is missing. “Not one can be lost in all my holy mountain.”762 ¶8

The day will come you will have the vision of the mystics, the vision of Blake. I have seen it. One night he showed me how to look and I saw it. I’m not alone in this, others have had the experience of actually being above the circle of the earth and seeing everything here as dead, and how they could not animate it from there. They had to come down. They must leave that high, exalted level and come down and assume the state. So Blake tells us, when you enter into the state, everything else seems shadowy and unreal, but the state seems to be the only substance. Before you enter the state you see it as something dead. But if you dare to enter the state and take upon yourself the restrictions, the contraction of that state, and move it, animate it, everything related to that state becomes alive and everything else is shadowy and unreal. So, said Blake, “If one could only enter into these states in his Imagination, approaching them on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought…if he could make a friend and a companion of one of these states in his Imagination…then he would rise from the grave…then he would meet the Lord in the air and then he would be happy.”762 ¶9

Well, that’s what God did. God sent himself called Jesus Christ—Jesus Christ being the power and the wisdom of God—for that’s what God desires to expand. He took upon himself the limit of contraction that is man, the limit of opacity that is the darkness, called in scripture the devil or called Satan. He took that upon himself. And then, wearing it for awhile—Blake calls it 6,000 years—the seed breaks and suddenly it’s the second coming. The first coming was the contraction and assuming the limitation of that contracted state; and the second coming is when he, as you, rises in your skull, and you awake in your skull…not another. Then you realize who Jesus Christ really is. So when you read the word “he’s the power and the wisdom of God”…and this is how he actually came the second time: He was born from above. For, we are told in the Book of Peter, 1st Peter, the 3rd verse, “We are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Man is born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and all of a sudden you are born anew. But no other being came into your world. Then you realize who Jesus Christ really is—you are resurrected from the dead. You awoke within yourself, and having awakened within yourself you come out and now are born anew.762 ¶10

Then you realize the story as told in scripture as they record it. They’re not recorded according to the position that they occupy in chronological sequence, but they are recorded according to their content. And events that coincide in content are simultaneous. So the resurrection that should come, say, fifty years later or 6,000 years later—for if the journey is 6,000 years, and we have been crucified with him in a death like his and we shall be resurrected with him in a resurrection like his, well, this is a 6,000-year span—they should be so recorded. But they’re not so recorded. Because events that have mingling in content are really, though separated in time, they are really simultaneous, they are together. I can tell you from experience these two really are together.762 ¶11

Now there are signs that precede it, no question about it. One of the signs is the sign I’m speaking of this very night. You will have the experience of being seated above the circle of the earth looking down on a world that is dead, I mean dead, just dead. You have the experience of coming down from that circle and entering what you see as your own body. You will animate it once more. As you animate it, your world becomes alive. If you didn’t come down and re-animate it, the world remains dead as far as you are concerned. For, none of these here really are what they appear to be. Every stone is going to topple. Not one stone will stand above the other when he comes. And when he comes he precedes his coming by these experiences. You have the experience of sitting on the circle above the earth and watching it all as something that is inanimate. You’ll have the experience of returning and animating a body that seemingly was dead. You have the experience of stopping and starting the machine and realize that they aren’t there at all. The whole thing is taking place within you, for the purpose of it all is to have life in ourselves: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.”762 ¶12

And you realize what life really is. You won’t find it in any laboratory in the world. I am told today that fortunes are being spent, something, a very hush-hush process, to find out the secret of life. I’m told that great foundations are giving fortunes right here in our land. They think they’re on the very verge of it. And I have news for them you will never find it in a test-tube. You will never find it in anything that man thinks that is the origin of life: it’s all in you. Life is an activity of your own wonderful human Imagination. One day you will so control it you will stop it and start it at will, and the whole vast world will stop and start at will. But, before you have that control, you will sit on the circle above the earth and watch it as something that is completely dead, and make your selection, make your specialization, and come down and take that contracted form, and bury yourself in it, and assume the complete limitation of that contraction for one purpose: for expansion. But to do it means you must dream the dream of life and you will dream the dream of life. At the very end of the dream something will break within you. As it breaks, you awake, and you awake to find yourself in your own wonderful skull, the sepulcher wherein you were placed when you made your decision.762 ¶13

It is all God. And then you realize the words of the 11th chapter of Romans, all things were made by him, and through him, and for him. Then the 15th chapter of 1st Corinthians, and ultimately it will be revealed that he himself is everything. There is nothing but God and you are he. Nothing in this world but God and you are God. It’s God who actually took upon himself this restriction for the purpose of expansion. And this restriction is called by Blake, the great dream, the great sleep, where he passes through death. When you read these words—and he claims they were dictated by the spirit of love—well, how could you actually have a passage through death? He said, “The sleep of Ulro and the passage through eternal death and the awakening to eternal life.” Well, how could you have a passage through eternal death? When you see it, you realize that’s the death, and you go right down and actually take possession. You select it.762 ¶14

Then, at the very end, you come out, called by name, and yet you are Jesus Christ. In the end there’s only one name, really, it’s Jesus Christ. But you are called by the name—it’s not Jesus Christ—by your own wonderful name. He calls them by name and not one is missing, we’re told. You read it carefully in the 40th chapter of the Book of Isaiah. Start from the 20th through the 26th verses…just that short six verses. And he asks us as though, why have we forgotten? “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not been told this from the very foundations of the earth?” Then he tells us what we were told but we forgot. And may I tell you, when you come here you have to drink the drink of forgetfulness. God completely empties himself and completely forgets that he’s God when he becomes man, completely forgets. So you do not know anything but the relationships of birth; and you’re proud of your background, of your race, of your nation, of all these things; and none of these things are you, in the true sense of the word. You brought them all into being and there they are part of the eternal structure of the universe. But you took upon yourself this structure—which was the limit of contraction— for the purpose of expansion. For there is no limit to expansion, only to contraction; there is no limit to translucency, only to opacity . So you took upon yourself the most opaque state in the world and felt yourself completely shut out, and all dark. Then you move from darkness to light, from this contraction to expansion.762 ¶15

Now, while we are in this world of ours, having completely contracted ourselves, we can still test this principle on this level. While a man called John Brown—and John Brown may be poor, or he may be unemployed, or he may be this, that or the other, and he desires to be other than what he is at the moment—he could dare to assume that he is the man that at the moment of his assumption reason denies and his senses deny. And if he dares to assume that he is, he’s doing the same thing that he did from a higher level when he came down and assumed the fact he was John Brown. So he came down and took upon himself the restriction of John Brown. As John Brown, he need not go on forever in that one place. He could change from state to state to state. And when he enters a state, all the other states seem so unreal; but the state he enters seems to be the only reality, the only substance, as he enters that state.762 ¶16

So you could this night assume that you are this very night the lady or the gentleman that you want to be and although everything denies it, just dare to assume that you are it. Then remain loyal to that assumption, as you in the beginning swore to yourself you’ll remain loyal to being man until you woke in man as an individualized being, completely individualized. That was your pledge—not to another, for there was no other—it was your pledge to yourself.762 ¶17

Now, as that pledge is being kept while you are here and completely shut out and everything is forgotten, you could now assume that you are and you name what you want to be, and see it actually unfold before your eyes, the whole thing has become a fact . If you know what you want to be or if you know what you would like someone you love to be, then dare to assume that they are it or you are it or others are it. And then, try to remain as faithful as you can to that assumption as you are now remaining, and you will remain, to this present and most unique assumption when you specialized in becoming man.762 ¶18

For, you’re not going to break it. If you die this very moment, you don’t really die. You restore yourself to life, really, and insert yourself in the same circle that is here, where you were above it before you came down. No loss of identity, but none whatsoever. With the same identity you’re re-inserted into a time sequence best suited for your awakening.762 ¶19

And so, the moment will come in time, at the very end, when you will awaken; and you will understand this great mystery being celebrated this coming Sunday by the Christian churches of the world, the Day of Andrew.762 ¶20

Behold the man…they are waiting for him. But the whole vast world is waiting for him to come from without. Many of them sell their possessions and go off to some mount waiting for him to come. And you’re told he does not come by watching; he comes suddenly when you least expect it…and that I know from experience. No expectation, no even looking for him, suddenly, a very normal day, a normal night, and suddenly you begin to awake. You think, at the beginning of the awakening, that this is a normal waking, but it doesn’t feel like it, it’s more intense. Your head becomes so intense and then you awake to find yourself in a sepulcher, and the sepulcher is your skull. Then you know, and you push a certain hole at the base of the skull, and out you come and you are born from above.762 ¶21

Here, these two events that should be separated in time between birth and resurrection, and if you are, say, sixty-years old, birth should be separated from resurrection at least by sixty years, but it isn’t…the same night. Because the contents of the two events coincide, and so in their mystical language they coexist, they’re simultaneous. And then the other event follows quite closely on it, a few months later, and altogether all part of the same complex, all within a matter of three-and-a-half years. And what should really be a long spell of time, but in the last days they rush upon you, and all are culminated in three-and-a-half years, after the end of a long dream. A horrible dream in many respects, yet not altogether horrible; many parts of it were lovely. But as Blake said, “Joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.” It’s not all woe and it’s not all joy, but they are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine. And then you weave your garment through 6,000 years of this dream, and then when you come out, you’re clothed as he is clothed, clothed with the Spirit. And you had the experience of the dream of life while wearing the restrictions of the garment called man.762 ¶22

So, this is Advent. Advent, the coming of a great event: The second coming of Christ at the end of the age, this age. For when it comes at the end of this age, you have broken the thing called death. You can die no more, as told you in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke. You are now a son of the resurrection, a son of God, returned, enhancing the glory of God. For when a son comes back he brings back by his breaking through death, he brings back an increase of power, an increase of wisdom to God. For bear in mind the son is defined in the 1st chapter of Paul’s 1st letter to the Corinthians as “the power of God and the wisdom of God”. So when that son returns, having gone into death and destroyed death—for that’s the last enemy to be destroyed; he destroys death as far as he is concerned—and returns with an increased power and an increased wisdom.762 ¶23

And that’s the only purpose for this creation. Hasn’t a thing to do with the natural order at all; simply to extract his sons from the natural order. And the whole vast creation groans waiting for the revealing or the unveiling of the sons of God. And they are unnumbered, more than the stars of the heavens, more than the sands of the sea, and yet everyone is unique, everyone is known by name, and not one is missing. Not one can be missing when they return, and altogether to unite into a single man who is God…a single man and that one man is God.762 ¶24

The fragmented being taking upon himself—having seen exactly what it’s going to be—but that was for a purpose and God achieves his purposes by self-limitation, by specialization, by selection, by contraction in order to expand. And so, you were chosen and no one in the world could have entered that expansion of God for you, no one. God’s only begotten Son actually became that one particular thing that you call you; and it’s in-woven in you, and sleeps in you dreaming the dream of life. And then he wakes and you are he. And that’s the glory of it all!762 ¶25

Then that whole wonderful story as you’ve been told it for centuries now begins to return, memory returns. It was never another that he sent; he sent himself. He who sends me came with me, and, therefore, he who sees me sees him who sent me. If you will not receive my word, then you reject me; if you reject me, you have a judge. I will not judge you and no one else will judge you, but you have a judge; the word that I have spoken will be your judge on the last day. For on that last day you will experience it and having experienced it you are self-judged; and you will know the truth of the word you heard and you rejected.762 ¶26

So everyone, everyone will be saved, but no one is lost. No one is unredeemed at the end of the dream, for God is calling everyone by name. And he actually sits above the circle of the earth, that’s his home, but he comes down and assumes the restrictions and the limitations of man. And when you see it from above, believe me, it’s dead. It seems so alive here—three and a half billion animated bodies moving all over—but when you see it from above they’re dead, everything is dead. And then you’ll see even wearing a garment that you yourself wear and you will come down and animate it. Only as it is animated does the world related to it become animated. And then it becomes animated because you animated the body that you specialized, that you actually selected, and wove yourself into that limited state…and then this becomes animated.762 ¶27

Then one day you’ll have other experiences of turning it off and turning it on. All these precede…he said, what are the signs of the destruction of the temple? He doesn’t analyze any of the signs, but he implies, he intimates some of the signs. You read it in the 13th chapter of the Book of Mark. He doesn’t actually spell it out but these are the signs that I’m telling you from experience. These signs you shall have, the signs of moving into a world within a world, returning to this world to find a dead body that you left behind. And then you restore it to life; then you know the mystery of Lazarus. It was not another: it was Jesus Christ in you, who is your very being, who restored that body, because Jesus Christ restored that one, and “Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory.” As we are told, “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.” Well, the test is to animate the body; for only Jesus Christ can animate it; for he is the resurrection and the life. For if you come into a body that is dead, cataleptic, and it won’t move, and then suddenly after, well, how long I do not know, maybe a minute, maybe minutes, maybe longer, then the thing becomes once more animated, reactivated, then you know who Jesus Christ is.762 ¶28

And then, [...] comes that final state at the end of the play, before you depart from this world, because your time has come at the end when you’re going to depart from the world. “For the time for my departure has come,” said he. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” What faith? That faith in the beginning when I came down and limited myself for the purpose of expansion—I’ve kept the faith and “Henceforth there’s laid up for me a crown of righteousness.” So here, everyone goes through the same thing; so in the end, everyone is that one being, without loss of identity. That’s the amazing part, no loss of identity, and yet all the Son of God. And the Son of God is one with God the Father: “He who sees me sees the Father. How can you say, Show me the Father? If you see me you see the Father.” For he who sent me hasn’t left me, he’s one with me; so whoever sees me sees him who sent me. And so it was a self-decision when man as God comes down and takes on the limitation of man.762 ¶29

Now to put it to the test…tonight, you put it to the test…you take some noble dream for yourself. Make it a noble dream and dare to assume now that you are the man, the woman that you would like to be, and then look mentally into your world for confirmation. They’re all dead; just look at them, and then animate them, let them see you as you are seeing yourself. Let every one of them see you as they would have to see you were it true. Then see them become alive in your mind’s eye and hear their conversations implying that they see in you what you want the whole vast world to see, just let them see it.762 ¶30

Now that’s another state you’ve animated while still waiting for the end, for the second coming or the awakening of Christ within you. Before he awakes within you, you can put him to the test, because he is dreaming. He’s dreaming this whole vast world and you can modify the dream and change it to suit your heart’s desire. So tonight, you take yourself, take a friend, take anyone, and just simply try it. May I tell you, if you try it, it won’t fail you. You don’t need any intermediary between yourself and God because you are he. God became you that you may awaken to find yourself God. So you don’t need anyone between yourself and God. So try it.762 ¶31

Do you know of someone in need? Well, alright, represent him to yourself as the man, or the woman that you would like him to be, or like her to be, and just believe in the reality of that imaginal act, just believe in it. And be as faithful to that as you are now faithful—and may I tell you, you will remain faithful—to your initial decision to restrict yourself for the purpose of expansion.762 ¶32

When you see it in this light and you go back and you read Blake, the whole thing becomes awake, for he sees it so clearly. That first line of his, after he gives us the theme, he said: “This theme calls me in sleep night after night and wakes me every morn”—and he tells us of this wonderful being called the Spirit of Love—“spreads his beams of love over me and dictates the words of this mild song.” But the first dictated words are “Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! Expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine”…the first dictated words of this glorious poem, which he claims God himself dictated and did this night after night. As he was waking he could feel the words and hear the words coming through twelve, twenty lines at a time. So, the whole thing is simply to awake after having imposed this profound sleep upon self. So we’re the ones spoken of in the 2nd chapter of Genesis, where he caused a profound sleep to fall upon man and he slept.762 ¶33

Now, the waking is the second coming of Christ. And all through scripture the words are “Awake! Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord?” It’s always a call to awake. But may I tell you, you will awake at the end—that end which is called Andrew’s Day, the second coming of Christ, you’ll awake. And the words that I’ve told you from this platform and I’ve told you in my latest book, The Law and The Promise, that last chapter, are true.762 ¶34

There are some who will reject it because of their traditional concept of the second coming. They expect him to come from without and not to awaken from within, and so they will reject it. But I will repeat, from the 12th chapter of John, “He who rejects me has a judge; the word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.” Not going to condemn him; he will see how true it was when he heard it a year, a century, or centuries ago. It will all come back to him that he heard it and he rejected the word of God; and now he fulfills the word of God. And so now he tells it to find himself rejected…and so the old, old story. So now he goes out and tells it expecting acceptance from him, when he rejected it when he first heard it. That’s the old, eternal story.762 ¶35

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *762 ¶36

Any other questions, please?762 ¶39

Any other questions, please?762 ¶42

Goodnight.762 ¶45

Tonight’s subject is “Have You Found Him?” This is the question I would like to ask of everyone in the world, really. But asking it here, it is my hope that everyone could reply, “Yes, I have, I have found him.” This is a strange presence of whom we speak here. Naturally, we speak of Christ, but when I speak of Christ, I do not make a mental picture of a man that walked the earth 2,000 years ago. Like Paul, “I do not regard Christ from a human point of view; even though I once regarded him from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” . Something entirely different takes place in us.761 ¶1

We are told in the Book of Matthew, in the 16th chapter, that the Pharisees and the Sadducees came to him and to test him they asked him for a sign . Well, that was customary if someone said he was sent from God. If a prophet appeared in the world, and he claimed he was a prophet and said he was sent from God, then it was necessary to ask him for the sign. He said to them, “There would be no sign for this adulterous generation except the sign of Jonah”…that’s the only sign . What does it mean “the sign of Jonah”? Well, the only message that Jonah brought to the world was repentance. He said to Nineveh, repent and be saved; if you do not repent, you will be destroyed . They believed him. He had no credentials, none whatsoever, yet they believed him and were saved. Repentance is not regret, not remorse, but a radical change of attitude towards life, towards everything in the world, a radical change. If I change the inner attitude of my mind, I will bring about corresponding change in the outer aspects of my life. That is law. It is entirely up to me to change the inner attitude of my mind. If I succeed in doing it, no power in the world can stop the corresponding change in the outer part of my world. So, they believed and it happened.761 ¶2

But Jonah means more than one who taught repentance. Jonah is the Hebrew word for dove, and dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. As we are told, “We are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” This you read in Paul’s one letter to the Ephesians, the very first chapter : Sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. Now, that, too, is a sign. He’s only asking for a sign. So tonight, I want to tell you that everything is a sign. There are two kinds of signs; but all signs follow, they do not precede. So when I use the law of repentance, signs will follow. If what I tell you is true, they must follow. But there is another series of signs, the signs of salvation. Man should think in terms of the supernatural character of this series of signs that come at the end of his journey.761 ¶3

Now, let us take now the first aspect of the word Jonah: “There will be no sign except the sign of Jonah.” Well, about a year ago this lady and her daughter came to the meeting. I know them well, I know the mother very well; she’s here all the time. The daughter, naturally, could come only at rare intervals. That night we were speaking of the creative power of God, that Imagination creates reality, and if Imagination creates reality, and it is said of Christ Jesus that all things were made through him, and without him were not anything made that was made, well then, Christ Jesus must be our own wonderful human Imagination . We took that theme and developed it through the evening, asking everyone to test it. To conceive a scene implying the fulfillment of a dream, and then believing in the reality of the scene and what the scene implies; for its potency is really what it implies. Alright, so I would construct a scene, and simply believe in the reality of this imaginal act; and if it proves itself in performance, well then, I have found the creative power of God. If the creative power of God, as told us in the first chapter of the Book of Corinthians, 1st chapter, the 24th verse, that “Jesus Christ is the power and the wisdom of God,” well, if I test it and it proves itself in performance, well then, I have found who Jesus Christ is. I have found him as my own wonderful human Imagination.761 ¶4

Now, in the audience that night sat this mother and this daughter, and, naturally, all the others who were present. I said, “If what I say any night is true, signs must follow to support the truth of what I’ve said.” So that night, on the way home, the mother said to the daughter, “How did you like it?” She said, “I liked it very much…not only that, what’s more I believe it.” Alright, so she believed me. That night she had a dream and she dreamt she saw a little serpent, a live, live serpent, and she picked it up and put it in her purse. That was the dream; this followed her visit here. Now a serpent has always been, as other symbols of the world, the symbol of Christ. She saw a living Christ, symbolized in a universal language as a serpent. She did what here on this level she never would have done. I doubt that anyone here, male or female, seeing a serpent would pick it up alive and put it in a purse or a pocket, but that’s what she did, put it in her purse. Well, a purse is where you carry valuable things. So she valued what she just heard. Now the Bible has only one source of dream: all dreams, all visions proceed from God, as told us in the 12th chapter of the Book of Numbers . So, all dreams proceed from God and God speaks to man through the language of dream. So there she saw the symbol of Christ. She accepted it; she believed what she heard here from this platform, that Imagination creates reality. For, the Bible claims that “Jesus Christ is the creative power of God…and by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” So here, she found it, and she identified her own Imagination with Christ. A symbol had to follow, and there she saw the symbol, the symbol of the serpent. She so valued what she found and believed in she put it in her purse. Then she woke.761 ¶5

So the next day she called her mother and told her mother of this simple, simple dream. If everyone here could only believe that their own wonderful human Imagination is Jesus Christ, really believe it, there is nothing impossible to that belief, but nothing! Nothing is impossible to God if one really would believe it. But if I use the word Christ and instantly the mind jumps in time 2,000 years ago and you see a man, or I use another name and you see something else, you don’t quite believe this story.761 ¶6

Today, a friend of mine, who is here tonight, called me to tell me that two days ago he had this experience. In a dream…and bear in mind God is speaking to all of us through the medium of dream. We may be past masters at misinterpreting the dream, but he still speaks through the dream. He found himself in a circle. There was a schoolmaster or a teacher, and he sat to the left of him, and this man made a bold negative statement, “I do not know of any passage in the Old Testament where Christ is promised.” No one responded. That’s what he said; then he asked a question, “Does anyone here know that Jesus Christ is crucified within you?” and he rose and raised his right hand. He didn’t give any further demonstration of his knowledge, but from the depths of his being he knew that Jesus Christ was crucified within him. So today, he knows the truth of that statement in the 6th chapter of the Book of Romans, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” . So he knows today…regardless of the three billion who walk the earth…for in the depths of his soul he responded to that challenge, “Does anyone here know that Jesus Christ is crucified within him?” and he raised his right hand…he knew. So here in this wonderful revelation of Paul, the 6th chapter of Romans, he knows tonight he has been crucified with Christ in a death like his; and now he lives in that wonderful statement of hope, “Set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” within you . He has to resurrect it. The one who’s going to resurrect within him is his own being, and it’s Jesus Christ. When he rises within you it’s not another; it’s your own wonderful being, your wonderful human Imagination, that’s Jesus Christ. Let no one tell you it’s another; there is no other. I stand before you speaking not from theory, I’m speaking from experience, that when he wakes within you it’s you who wakes. The word translated in our language “resurrection from the dead,” look it up carefully, it means “to rise; to be stirred from a profound sleep; to lift up within oneself.” This is exactly what happens.761 ¶7

Now listen to these words…they called him, “Behold, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners” . When you read that you think a man who is a gourmand, who simply gorges himself with food. If you say a man is a glutton and a winebibber, you think of a wino, a man who’s a drunkard. In fact, the modern translation of the word is drunkard. A friend of publicans and sinners…the new translation is tax collectors and sinners. But take a biblical concordance and look up the words and see what they really mean. Behold, a glutton, “one who shakes as in the wind and scatters profusely.” What does he scatter?—the Word of God. He scatters it in the wind that every mind, which is really the soil of God, could take it. Some would be simply like a highway, it won’t take root; and some like thorns, all cluttered up, it will choke it; and some like a hard rock, it will grow over night and then wither tomorrow; and some, prepared to receive it . For man, called Adam, means “the red earth” and this called Adam has to be prepared to receive this scattered Word of God.761 ¶8

So he’s called a drunkard and you think a man who simply imbibes heavily. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. The word winebibber is the root of the word dove. It is taken from the word Jonah. So here is the Holy Spirit who walks the earth and scatters his Word to everyone who will listen. Some hear and throw it out. Some get it eagerly…it may work over night and they think “I’ve got a little secret now, I will just control the world”; but there was no depth in that mind for it to really go deep and become a real, wonderful tree. So, a glutton and a winebibber; a friend of publicans and sinners, what is publican? Look it up…”one who has a definite aim in this world, one who knows exactly what he wants in this world.” That’s how it is defined in my biblical concordance, which is James Strong’s Concordance; to me the most exhaustive concordance that I know of, and I have many of them: One with a definite point, a definite goal in the world. But a sinner is “to miss the mark.” He has a definite goal, but he doesn’t know how to achieve it, so he can’t achieve it. And here comes the one who scatters the Word of God and shows him how to achieve it.761 ¶9

Well, how would I achieve it? If tonight you believe me, signs should follow in two ways: You should get it, you should realize it in this world; and then signs come from the depth of the soul to confirm your belief in what I’m talking about. Like my friend with the little serpent…she really believed me. She may tomorrow neglect it because of the rush of the day. She has four little girls, she’s married, and there are problems in any family life. So she may tomorrow by the pressure forget for a moment, but the soul has already responded and the soul has told her that she has accepted as true that Jesus Christ is her own wonderful human Imagination. For it came in symbolism and you can’t conjure it; it’s not something that you can evoke, it just happens. All things spring from the depths of the soul in the universal language of symbolism. If tonight you really believe it, you can now take your objective, form a little scene in the mind’s eye which would imply that you’ve realized it, believe in the reality of that scene and feel whatever it is implying has taken place. Feel the thrill of that accomplishment. You should have two symbols then; you should have the thing actually coming to pass in the world in the not distant future, and then in the depths of your soul some wonderful dream or vision that God conjured from the depths of your own being to reveal your acceptance of the law.761 ¶10

So, “Show me a sign, master.” They didn’t want a sign…those who asked for a sign didn’t want the sign, they wanted him to conjure some little thing and have a little trick. He said to them, “If one rose from the dead, they still would not believe. So don’t ask me to raise someone from the dead, for if one rose from the dead they would not believe.” So, not one thing is going to be happening on the outside, like a little trick. No tricks. I tell you the law, you apply the law, and you’ll get a sign outwardly. The success that you seek you will get. The help you seek you will get. The conditions in your world that you seek you will get. These are all signs, everything is a sign. If you really believe in the reality of your own imaginal act, believing that your own wonderful human Imagination is God and your imagining is God in action. God in action is a power and that is Jesus Christ. Believe it! If you really believe it, it would prove itself in the testing.761 ¶11

After that, in the depths of your soul, these visions begin to take place. Then comes the very end of the series of the visions. And you can’t evoke them, you can’t bring them to pass, they just happen. The last one is when it’s sealed and that is the dove, told us in the 1st chapter of Ephesians, “Sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.” What does he seal me for? He seals me and that sealing is the guarantee of my inheritance. When I take off the garment then I will acquire possession of it. No one here still wearing these garments of limitation can completely come into his possession while he’s here. He’ll have the symbol of it, and the symbol will be seen; for all the symbols precede, the signs precede, they do not follow. So I will know my inheritance by the sign…and the sign has come. So I am sealed, and the guarantee of my inheritance is a completed fact. I’m waiting patiently for it. When this thing is taken off and then I acquire possession of it. The possession of it is simply to his glory. So that is the purpose of it all.761 ¶12

So tonight I ask everyone to ask himself a simple question, do I really believe in Christ Jesus? I expect that everyone here will say yes, I believe that…but that’s not enough. Do I really believe that my own wonderful human Imagination is Christ Jesus? Can I really say yes to that? Can I then test him? As we’re told in the last chapter of 2nd Corinthians, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Come test him and see” . We’re invited to test this power. Well, we test the power in a simple, simple way. If today you seem to be satisfied with what you have, maybe some friend in your neighborhood is not, and if he’s a friend, you could take that friend without his consent into your mind’s eye and represent him to yourself as you would like him to be. You’re not asking for any praise from him; he doesn’t know that you’re doing it. But it should be a thrill to you to see him conform and actually move from what he is to what you would like him to be; and see the joy in his life when he becomes the embodiment of what you are now assuming that he is. You take a total stranger, without his knowledge, without his consent, and bring him into your mind’s eye and talk with him mentally. Actually feel the reality of what you are doing, and then trust it, trust it implicitly. In fact, faith is to hold God trustworthy. Alright, God is your own wonderful I-am-ness, and as you begin to imagine that’s God in action. Hold him trustworthy and see this thing actually move into your world and objectify itself in your world. If it proves itself in that manner, then you’ve found him. So, you can say I have found him.761 ¶13

Not everyone finds him because they were seeking him, you know. They find him as the Bible tells us…Philip found him and then he called his friend Nathaniel. Nathaniel couldn’t believe it. Then Andrew found him and he called his brother Peter. Peter wasn’t seeking him. “Come, we have found Messiah, the one of whom the prophets wrote.” “Well, how do you know?” “Come and see” . So they came and they brought him to see the one that Andrew had found. Peter wasn’t seeking him…and so, you may bring a friend here one night and they’re really not seeking anything but they may believe more than you who brought them.761 ¶14

So, you feel that you have found him…not the speaker but the message…for that’s Christ; certainly not the thing that stands before you…but the message that is Christ. And so, he just simply looked into the world and said I will never hereafter see anyone after the flesh: “Even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” He sees him entirely differently now, something rising in us.761 ¶15

And so, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood” . Now, he makes the statement that what he is teaching is not new, not a new teaching at all. This is not new…if you never heard it before, may I tell you, it is not new. This is as old as the faith of Abraham; this is simply the fulfillment of his faith. So he made the statement, “I am the seed of Abraham. I’m of the tribe of Benjamin.” Know what Benjamin means? That’s a confession…he’s telling you exactly what happened to him…for Benjamin means “the son of the right hand.” So if he tells you, I am the son of…I am of the tribe of Benjamin…he is telling you he has experienced resurrection. For we are told in scripture that resurrection is identified with the motion to the right hand of God. Those who are resurrected move to the right hand of God, the place of honor. He tells you, I am of the tribe of Benjamin, the son of the right hand. But if you don’t think that it means these things, just go and look it up in your concordance. Take nothing for granted.761 ¶16

What person reading it just as you and I would read it…a glutton means not a glutton who gorges himself but one who scatters; the prodigal, that’s what it means, one who takes the Word and he simply is prodigal with it. He simply throws it all over the world; he tells it to everyone that he meets…and that’s the glutton. And he’s a winebibber; he’s the Holy Spirit who does it. A winebibber?—yes, he’s Jonah, he is the dove, and he walks the earth and he tells it to everyone. Who’s telling it? The Holy Spirit is telling it. To whom does he tell it? Who are his friends? Those who have objectives but they can’t realize them, the publicans and the sinners. So he said, “What do you want?” “I know exactly what I want”—-that’s a publican—“but I don’t know how to get it”; therefore, you’re sinning. Then he tells you how not to sin.761 ¶17

How not to sin? Yes, put yourself in the end, always to the end. If today I want something, I go to the very end which is fulfillment. Then I view the world from the end. Instead of thinking of the end, I think from the end. If tonight I desire to be elsewhere, wherever that elsewhere is, I would put myself there. And to prove that I am there, I would think of here. It could not be to me, while I’m thinking of it, here; it would have to be there. If I’m in New York now, New York isn’t there, now New York would be here, and Los Angeles would be there. So I would think of Los Angeles to prove that I am in New York; and in my mind’s eye Los Angeles would be there, relative to where I’ve assumed that I am. I take the same spatial law and use it in a temporal manner. If I want it now, July 4th, to realize something, I don’t wait for July the 4th, I assume that this is July the 4th. How would I know that it is? Well, the flags would all be out, and all the things would be closed, every public business is closed, all businesses are closed. It would be a national holiday…no mail, but nothing…just a holiday. But the flags are always flying on that day. Well then, in my mind’s eye I would see it and then feel the fulfillment of what I desired back in the month of March. So I will collapse time. I will take the same technique and apply it to everything in my world, and always view the world from the end instead of thinking of the end. So when I know what I want, I assume that I have it, and to prove that I have it, I think of my world and the world must reflect my position that I’m occupying. If it does not reflect it, then I haven’t occupied it. So this is the technique of this simple principle.761 ¶18

If I really believe it, my visions and my dreams will prove it to me; because God speaks to me through the medium of dream and makes himself known in vision, and all of my dreams and visions would reflect this state. So when my friend could stand and say, “I know that Jesus Christ is crucified within me,” he did it automatically from the depths of his soul…so he knows. I have been saying that to him and to you for as long as you have been coming here, but now he knows. It’s not an intellectual concept…he actually knows. And I have told you, I have had the experience of the crucifixion, and it’s the most glorious sensation, isn’t painful at all. It’s sheer ecstasy when these hands begin to whirl as vortices, and the head a vortex, and the side a vortex, and the two feet vortices. You can’t describe this sheer ecstasy of emotion, not painful at all. It was a deliberate act of God becoming man that man may become God. So I know from my own actual experience that I am crucified with Christ Jesus, and the life I now live in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and became me .761 ¶19

This is actually the creative power that is here now, nailed to me in this whirling vortex, these six points like the Mogen David, the six-pointed star. The day will come—-and it has come in my case—-that he simply awoke within my skull. He stood up. Who stood up?—-I stood up. And everything said of him I experienced. So these signs all began to unfold from that moment on. Every sign as recorded in scripture concerning from his resurrection through to the descent and the sealing of the Holy Spirit…as “he was sealed with the promised Holy Spirit as the guarantee of his inheritance.” What was his inheritance?—the kingdom of God, he inherits God. Everyone inherits God, as told in scripture, “I am the portion of your inheritance” . God gives himself to man, so we inherit God.761 ¶20

So tonight I ask you to really believe it and then let the signs take place. You don’t manufacture the signs, the signs simply come. They come in response to your belief. But if you don’t really believe it and you hope for a little gain, just a temporary gain, and you have a mental reservation that you’ll go back to some little church where he still is outside, and he’s watching in some strange wonderful way to see that you don’t go astray into some weird philosophy, well then, you get a little based on your temporary belief, you get a certain sign on the outside, but you don’t get the great depths of the soul coming to the surface in vision. But here you can have both.761 ¶21

I give you only one sign, he said. There will be no sign for this adulterous generation. What is adultery in the Bible? It doesn’t mean sex…hasn’t a thing to do with sex. It means to depart from the true God to the false gods of the world. Whether you call that other god astrology, numerology, teacup leaves, or call it by any other name, any belief in a power outside of your own wonderful human Imagination is to commit adultery. You may say, Well, I know, I know this thing isn’t really permanent. And they will say, it doesn’t really compel, it doesn’t really; it will simply in some way impel but it doesn’t really compel. Well, that’s justifying that little, still little belief in a power outside of yourself. If you will say, well, now this is just for fun, read my cards just for fun, or now read me my teacup leaves just for fun. It isn’t just for fun at all and you know it. You want to look into the future through the teacup leaves or through the cards or through something else. You don’t really believe in Christ Jesus as your own wonderful human Imagination. So when you have all these little things on the side, you may not know it—-you may have never gone astray from your husband or your wife, and you’ve never entertained a thought concerning another—-and yet you are, in scripture, an adulterer. You’ve gone, in scripture language, a-whoring…you’ve gone to other gods.761 ¶22

For if you will now come back to this one God, the only God, which is your own human Imagination, and believe in him implicitly, trust him a hundred percent, he will not fail you. Cannot fail you! And then signs will follow, and then the other signs will follow these signs: the signs of the soul will follow. You unlock the door after you first repent. For, “I will give you only one sign, the sign of Jonah” and Jonah’s first message is repentance…that comes first. The name tells you who he really is: he is the dove. The dove comes at the very last of the series of events. You will get him if you start repenting.761 ¶23

Repenting? Alright, I don’t like what happened today. Instead of complaining, see what happened today, change it radically in my mind’s eye, as though I took a bunch of letters and rearranged them and made the whole thing spell a different sentence. It comes out differently. Take any letter or group of letters and rearrange them into the words differently, and then change the whole vast world, change your world today. If you do it, then you’re repenting. If you repent, the sign of the dove will come. That comes automatically at the end of the series I call salvation history. It begins with resurrection and moves rapidly in a matter of three-and-a-half years from resurrection to the seal of the Holy Spirit. But before that, practice the art of repentance. So the first words put into the mouth of Christ Jesus, in the earliest gospel which is the gospel of Mark, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” These are the first words put into his mouth: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent, and believe the gospel” . Believe this good news.761 ¶24

It’s such fantastic news! And so tonight, let me remind you of this lady—who only came, I think, twice in her life—-but she meant it when she said to her mother that night, “I believe him. I like what he said, and furthermore I believe it.” And that very night she has a dream confirming her belief, for she saw the symbol of Christ. She so valued it she placed it where you keep all valuables, right in her purse. Now, no lady in this audience tonight finding a little serpent would pick it up, far less put it in her purse. But in the depths of the soul, this is a different symbolism altogether. The purse is a symbol of that where values are kept. And the serpent is a symbol of Christ…he who fell with me from innocence into the world of experience to rise into the world of Imagination. For that is the whole Promise: innocence, experience, Imagination.761 ¶25

I embrace the fires of experience and I am consumed as its victim, and then from the ashes I rise, the prophet of Imagination. Just like the little butterfly, or little moth whose God would be a flame. It goes in search of some knowledge of this God. Two are sent and they come back with uncertain information. A third, moved by intense desire, goes towards the flame, and folding its wings beneath it, it plunges headlong into the sacred fire until it becomes one substance and one color with the flame. “He only knows the flame who would in it burn, and only he could tell who n’er to tell returned.” Completely consumed within the flame, and that flame is your own wonderful human Imagination.761 ¶26

But there are those who can return, and do return, sent by God to tell you who Jesus Christ really is, to tell you of the mystery. You quickly unfold after you have been sent. To see him is almost an essential to being sent. As Paul said in the 9th chapter of 1st Corinthians, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the risen Christ?” Here is a qualification that is a must for one who is sent. So to be called is to be sent. When you are called, you stand in the presence of the risen Christ who is God himself, and then you are sent. Sent to do what? To preach one thing: to preach the risen Christ—the crucifixion of him which is on every child born of woman, and the risen Christ. He’s already risen and that rising is taking place. Everyone will rise, but everyone must first know he is crucified with Christ.761 ¶27

Well, tonight you try it. You try putting this to the test, to the extreme test. I don’t care what you will say. A friend of mine who was here tonight, his company called a strike. They all voted for a strike, couldn’t get together with management and so they voted for a strike. He voted too, and said he at the meeting—at the union, he’s a union man—-here they all, well, they were divided, yet ninety-eight percent voted for the strike. But he knew…he said, as far as I’m concerned, I could make it through the strike, I could live as I now live, but many of them, with their wives and children, couldn’t live with this strike. Nevertheless, together ninety-eight percent voted for the strike. He said and he explained to me in this union language, which I’m not quite familiar with it, that you’ve got to first vote the strike before you can get together on a contract. If you don’t vote the strike, you’ll take what management offers. But if the strike is voted, then between the voting of the strike and the discussion things can happen. Well, at that union meeting, this man who has not one home—as he thought he had— completely cleared but he has two homes, an income producing property. The last thing, naturally, he’s going to get right down and oppose any settlement, not thinking of the other members who have wives and children. He had money. So he got up and he opposed any reconciliation; he was completely against it. My friend, who is here tonight, said, “Strangely enough, I who voted for the strike, I felt a power lift me off my seat and I was lifted off my chair, and I opposed his argument…and all these faces who I worked with in the factory, all glued upon me with anger coming out of their eyes. But I simply took the other position, not to have a strike, and I gave my reasons for it all. The next day, no one at the factory would speak to me. But it was settled, amicably, to the benefit of all. Now they’re all my friends.” But he said, “I couldn’t sit in the chair, something pulled me right off the chair and made me speak. I said, ‘If this thing is true, it’s not a one-way street; it’s for all. I will now apply this principle as I understand it.’” He applied it to the benefit not only for the men of the union but management. You can’t get a one-sided street. In other words, both must benefit or it’s going to close. This very large factory was jacked up by one person who never thought that he would ever do it. But he got up and simply the words poured out of him, and the whole thing was resolved amicably to the satisfaction of both. But one man spoke for the entire crowd because he had money. So they can strike for a year…he still had money coming in. Strike for four years, he had it coming in. The others didn’t. And this one was moved to do what he did.761 ¶28

So you’ll be moved, too. So tonight, take your wonderful dream, a noble dream, and don’t modify it, make it something wonderful. And believe in the reality of what you are seeing, actually believe in it, knowing that the one who is seeing it is Christ Jesus…and what you are seeing is implying something…and what it implies is what you’re actually extracting, and go sound asleep in confidence that it’s done. May I tell you, it will be done. And then signs will come, maybe this very night, because there are so many symbols that represent the universal Christ. The serpent is one, a fish is another, the pig is another. Oh, there are many symbols. And you have no doubt as to who comes when the symbol comes. They spring from the depths of your soul and spring so easily, without effort.761 ¶29

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *761 ¶30

Tonight’s subject is “Christmas, The Redeeming Message.” If you owned the world, but really literally owned the world and all within it, and a billion dollars your servant, and at the end of your short journey here that was all, wouldn’t that be sheer nonsense? Well, Christmas, the redeeming message, is that man lives forever. This is the story.760 ¶1

There is a West Indian carol called “Mary’s Boy-child”: “Jesus Christ was born on Christmas Day and because of this birth man lives forever more.” That’s a recent thing from the West Indies. But centuries ago this story broke upon the world. Men wanted it. They speculated, but they couldn’t quite discover the secret hidden in the Old Testament. And they thought, and thought that by searching the scriptures, but they could not find the Christ of whom they spoke and of whose coming they foretold. They just couldn’t find it, because it wasn’t in the way they expected it.760 ¶2

Paul makes the statement in the second letter to the Corinthians, the 4th chapter, the 2nd verse, and he speaks of a treasure: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” When you read it, you wonder what is he talking about, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. It means “conditioned by human limitation: the limitation of human understanding, human language, the meaning of words, and especially that limit set to one person’s unveiling of his own inner consciousness to another.” How could one who is the first really tell it, for everyone knew him in the world as a normal person? And this has been going on for unnumbered ages and suddenly “at length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.” And he tells it, and he tells it with all the limitations of the earthen vessel, called man. Well, how could he tell it to persuade anyone that this is what was foretold?760 ¶3

Now tonight I will tell it just as it happened. And I hope that someone in the audience—I know that there are many from time to time who may add to it memory images of what I’ve said. Others have taken it down on tape; others have taken it down in shorthand, but they’ve taken it down.760 ¶4

The story that you’re told in the Book of Luke… Luke, if you listen carefully, in the very first four verses: “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which happened among us, just as they were declared by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, so it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” He does not claim he was an eyewitness, but he followed closely those who were eyewitnesses. In scripture, an eyewitness is one who has experienced it. The one essential to be an Apostle was to see the risen Christ, as told us in the first chapter of the Book of Acts. No one can be sent—for an Apostle means one sent—unless he himself experienced the risen Christ. It’s called “seeing the risen Christ.” You don’t see it as another; you experience your own resurrection; that is “seeing” Christ.760 ¶5

“For Christ in you is the hope of glory.” “I tell you a mystery,” he said, “a mystery hidden from all ages, all generations, and now made manifest to his saints… this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” . And so, the one condition imposed upon one who would be sent is that he saw, that is, he experienced the risen Christ. Luke does not claim that he saw it; therefore, he doesn’t claim he experienced it. But he claims, listen to it carefully, “Inasmuch as many”—and there were many prior to Luke—“who attempted to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us… a narrative compiled from the things told by those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of this word, now it seemed good to me also to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” Now he does not claim that his record is a greater chronological exactitude than those who preceded him. What he is really claiming, that his narrative is really a better arrangement of the source material: he heard it, these things from those who really experienced it. He heard it and compiled it into a story, into a narrative.760 ¶6

I want to tell you tonight the story as it actually takes place. For after unnumbered years the story has been overlaid with all kinds of extraneous things, and it isn’t so at all. Next Wednesday, the whole vast world of Christendom, one billion of us, will tell the story and enact it in churches and homes all over the world. Yes, even in China, in Russia, there are those who believe it and who will tell the story, that a man and a woman had a child that was different, and that he was the savior of the world. And that is not true. The only savior of the world is God, called in the scripture Jehovah. “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior… and besides me there is no savior” . The name is, we call it, Yod He Vau He. In our language it’s I AM. But, if you understand the scriptures, the word Jesus, which is the anglicized form of the Hebrew word Joshua, means the same thing. So whatever you read of Joshua or you read of Jehovah, you can read of Jesus the same. It’s not a man.760 ¶7

The gospels are not biographies of Jesus. They are really telling the story of salvation. Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a certain series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. So you ask the question, “Did they really happen? Did they happen?” So as I stand before you, I can tell you they did happen.760 ¶8

That I am not unique, I’m just as you are, with all the weaknesses, all the limitations of flesh, but all of them. And I had no idea the story was literally true in the depths of the soul of man. For like you I too was taught that this story took place on the surface of man, that the history of it was secular; that it actually took place in the Near East. But I know today that it didn’t take place in any Near East; it takes place in the soul of every child born of woman. And when that moment arrives no one knows; only God knows. No man can predict it. No man is wise enough to see that moment in time when at length for hatching ripe you will break the shell, and then the series of events unfolds in your soul and you are Christ Jesus.760 ¶9

Christ Jesus in man, which is God in man, is Jehovah in man. God actually became man that man may become God. This is the story, and may someone present this night have the ability to tell it. I did my best in the last chapter of my latest book The Law and The Promise. Without adding to it or taking from it, I told it just as it happened. But maybe you can do a far better story.760 ¶10

And leave out the being called Neville completely. It hasn’t a thing to do with a man that stands before you now—it’s the story of every being in this world—and that being will take off this garment as something that vanishes. It makes no difference. But the being that experienced it you don’t see; you see the mask that he wears. I don’t see the real you; I see the mask that it wears.760 ¶11

This is exactly how the story unfolds in the soul of man. There will come a moment in your life, and you will not suspect it, you won’t have the slightest concept that it’s going to happen to you. Then out of the blue, you will find yourself awakening, really awakening; and you awake to find yourself in a sepulcher, and the sepulcher is your skull. You had no idea up to that moment that you were entombed. But at that moment, as you begin to awake, you awake to find yourself completely awake, as you’ve never been awake before. And where are you? In your skull, and it’s a tomb and you know it’s a tomb. At that moment, you make an effort to come out and you do come out. You come out in the same manner that you came out of your mother’s womb, head first, inch by inch. And you come out… just as you came out physically from your mother’s womb you come out spiritually from the skull, your own skull. As you come out and find yourself completely out, you’re bewildered.760 ¶12

It never occurred to you before that you were dead. We’re told in the Book of Genesis: “And the Lord God placed a profound sleep upon man and he slept” . There is no thought that the man awakened until this moment in eternity. There isn’t one word in scripture. The appeal is there, but there’s not a word that he awoke. In the 44th Psalm, the appeal is made to God. It’s God who fell asleep in man. “Arouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever!” . So the command is by God to God who sleeps in man. He is individualizing himself in man. So, “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever!” So, God awakes in man as that man. And he didn’t realize until that moment in eternity that he really was asleep. He thought he was awake.760 ¶13

This dream has been imposed upon man, which really is God, and he must dream the dream of this world. At the end of the dreaming of the dream, God awakes. And because it was dream, no matter how horrible he was in this world, it’s all forgiven. If tomorrow morning my wife said to me, “I had the most horrible dream. I murdered you and murdered our daughter and murdered all of our friends,” because I love her I would embrace her and try to comfort her because of the horror of her dream. I couldn’t condemn her; it was a dream. So at the end of this drama this whole thing is a dream, and the dreamer awakes, and awakening he is God. But he is subjected to the dream of this world, and the most horrible dreams we dream while we are subjected to it. And then we awaken from the dream to find we are the dreamer and the dreamer is God.760 ¶14

So I awoke—and you can take it down and this is true—I awoke to find myself in the sepulcher of my skull. I did not know until that moment that I had been, throughout the centuries, dead—for you wouldn’t put anyone in a sepulcher unless he’s dead. And so, I have been buried, buried in my skull, but I didn’t know it until that moment in time. Then the most fantastic power stirred me: I was resurrected from the dead. Resurrection is God’s most wonderful creative act. He awakens himself from this profound sleep that is so deep it is just like death. So I awoke from the grave, and then I came out.760 ¶15

Now we’re told in Revelation, he is the first of those who woke from the dead, the first to be born from the dead. Everyone will be born from the dead in the same way. The story of Christ is the story of man. Every man will have the identical experience when he comes out from the grave, and the grave is his own skull. Now, we are told in the Book of Luke that three came to witness this event. For the angel of the Lord appeared and said to them that “Unto you this day is born in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” . And they went and discovered the thing was true. They found the sign. Listen to it carefully: “This shall be a sign unto you: you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” The child is not the event. The child is no more the event than the flag flying over the White House is the President. It signifies his presence; it is not the President. Is he in residence? Well, I don’t know. Well then, look, see if his insignia is flying. And so, I will look, if the President’s flag is flying, he is in residence. When he’s not in residence, it’s lowered. So, “This shall be a sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” But that is not the event that took place in heaven.760 ¶16

What took place in heaven: you who have been asleep throughout the ages, you awoke by God’s most wonderful creative act. He woke you, that is, himself, for you and he are one. He simply disturbed the sleeper and woke him from his frightful dream. And then he came out of his skull in the form of being born. The sign of birth from above is always that of a child, so the child signifies your birth. But the child is not what you gave birth to: it’s you. The child is simply a sign and a portent of your birth. And three men are present. They come just as you’re told in the 18th chapter of the Book of Genesis. Suddenly, he to whom the promise was made, called Abraham, for Abraham sat in the tent, in the door of the tent is in the tent, and suddenly he looked up and behold, three men stood before him. They were not seen approaching. They suddenly appeared; they were before him. And these three men are not seen approaching, they suddenly appear and they are before him.760 ¶17

You see them and you know them. They know you but they don’t see you, for you are not here anymore. This event takes place in heaven. Although they will be invisible to anyone in this world, you are invisible to them, because this is something entirely different, an entirely new age where you are born. You have broken this life’s invidious bar as it were. You aren’t here anymore. And you’ve been born after being a dreamer for unnumbered centuries, dreaming the horror of this world. Then you awake and three men witness it. Now you’re told, in the story one announces the fact and two question the fact. He does not argue the point. He presents the evidence—the evidence, not you, for he can’t see you—he presents the child. The child can be seen. That’s the flag, that’s the insignia, that’s the portent. So he who finds the child on the floor—which is a manger, the lowest point in that inn, for you’re in an inn—and he picks it up, presents the evidence. You take this heavenly child in your hands and you look into his face, and you ask—if you ask the same words that I asked—“How is my sweetheart?” And he looks into your face and smiles. Just as you’re told, his name is Isaac and Isaac means “he laughs.” He does, he laughs. Then the whole thing dissolves and you are back on this level to ponder this fantastic experience that you’ve had.760 ¶18

And then you know who Mary is. Prior to that if you were raised in a Christian faith, you thought Mary was a woman who lived two thousand years ago. And now you know who Mary is, and yet you are male, wearing a male garment. You may be the father of children as I am; I have a son and a daughter. And yet I gave birth to myself, and it was symbolized as that of an actual infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. So then I knew: “I am Mary and birth to God must give if I in blessedness for now and evermore would live.” And so, I brought forth myself. God can only bring forth himself; he can’t bring forth another. Corn brings forth corn. Everything brings forth after its kind. This was stated in the beginning that this is the law forever and forever, the law of identical harvest . So if God is bringing forth something, he brings forth himself. So God is begetting himself and bringing forth himself. But if he brings forth himself and begets himself, it has to be symbolized. What is the greatest symbol of birth but a child? So the child is the insignia that he did succeed in bringing himself forward and he’s born from above.760 ¶19

Now, Luke is not claiming that he actually had the experience, but he heard from those who had it. They were called eyewitnesses—and an eyewitness is one who experienced this birth—and then he wrote the narrative. Writing it as beautifully as he did men took it literally on this level. And so, you are going to find on Wednesday morning, you’re going to find a woman and a little baby, and a man, and then animals around, and all these things, and that is not it at all. So if someone here this night could be like a Luke and who would actually be present to hear how it happened, they could tell the story as it really happened. For it’s going to happen to everyone born of woman in this world. But that moment in eternity when it happens, no one knows; it comes like a thief in the night.760 ¶20

And how do I know this is what was foretold? Well, I go back into scripture and I read. I find it foreshadowed, I find it foretold in scripture. So I tried to explain to the world what happened to me. But again I come back to Paul, “This treasure is hid in earthen vessels.” So I try to tell it. Because of my limitations of language and your limitation of what I’m trying to say, we talk from different premises. You’ve been conditioned to believe that when he comes into the world, he’ll come as we came, through the womb of woman; and he doesn’t come through the womb of woman. And so, you believe if he does come he has to come that way, and that’s not the way that Christ comes into the world. Christ is simply God awake. And it’s God in man that must awake, and when he awakes he comes out of the skull of man. It’s called in the Bible Golgotha, which means skull. That’s where God was placed. He was buried on Golgotha. “Unless I die thou canst not live, but if I die I will arise again and thou with me” . So God is actually buried in the skull of every being in the world.760 ¶21

Now, for those who may say, “Well, if it doesn’t happen to me before I die here, will it happen?” Yes. It’s a peculiar mystery: you don’t really die. How can I persuade people in this world who actually die and I see the body actually incinerated, and tell them they didn’t really die? It’s a strange thing. You don’t vanish. The world does not cease to be at the point where my senses cease to register it. It doesn’t. My father at eighty-five died, as the world would see it. He’s buried in Barbados. My mother died at sixty-three. And so many of my friends by the dozens have died, but they haven’t died! It’s a wheel of recurrence, and they are playing it as though the play will play tonight when the curtain comes down and it goes up tomorrow night. You replay the play until a moment in the play you awake. You are the author of the play, the dreamer of the dream, and you leave the play.760 ¶22

Now, the next stage in this… if I would rewrite Luke, but I don’t have the qualifications to rewrite Luke, but I do know he didn’t make the claim that he was writing a chronological order, an exact order, because it did not happen that way. It happened differently. The drama begins with resurrection, and it ends in the drama in Luke with resurrection. The end of all the drama in the four gospels is resurrection, and that’s not so at all. It begins with resurrection. You resurrect and you didn’t know you were even dead. You didn’t know that you were asleep, because you seem so alive here. I am so awake! So the greatest act of God is to resurrect himself in man from the dream, this horrible dream. And it is horrible, where man seemingly dies, and he has disease, and he has pain, and he has all the frightful things in the world in this dream. And yet, at the end it is only a dream; therefore, he didn’t really go through it at all. Therefore, in the end you say, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” They were dreaming the most horrible dream in the world.760 ¶23

So the next stage will prove it is God, and not some little tiny thing that you thought you were in the dream, but it was God who did the dreaming, and it is still God who you are now. He has individualized himself as you. He has completed the act, his purpose, to individualize himself as you. Well, how will I know that God succeeded in his purpose to give himself to me? Well, God is a father. If God is a father and he succeeded in his purpose, which was to give himself to me, then I’m a father. If I’m a father, then show me my son. I can’t be a father unless there is a child. And so he does, he shows me my son. Then comes another explosion in your brain—it’s all taking place in your skull—and this fantastic explosion. After the dust settles, you look and you understand the words of scripture: “I will open the door and no one can shut it.” In Revelation, “I will open the door and no one can shut it.” And then you look and here is your son, he is David, the David of biblical fame. He’s leaning against the side of an open door. He turns around and looks you right in the eye and he calls you Father. You know you’re his father and he knows he’s your son, and then you know who you are. For David is God’s only begotten son, so if God’s only begotten son calls you Father, then you know who you are. There aren’t two Gods in this world; there’s only one God.760 ¶24

So he calls you Father. He will call every being in this world Father; and then you will know that we are really one, that we aren’t billions as we appear to be in this world. We are completely individualized, granted, and yet one. So David calls you Father and you call him Son to fulfill the 89th Psalm. For I only must fulfill scripture. I didn’t come here to make a pile of money. It’s nice to have money to cushion against the horrible dream that we dream. It’s nice to have the lovely things of this world, certainly, but that’s not the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to fulfill scripture. Well, the 89th Psalm is: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my Salvation’” . So I must find him. And you don’t find him by going searching for him. He explodes out of your own brain and stands before you. And he’s just as he’s described in the Book of Samuel, just as he’s described! You have never seen such beauty in your life as when you look into the eye of David. And that face of David, a youth, eternal youth, about twelve or thirteen and here, he’s being personified before you, eternity. For eternity is youth, not age. It’s David.760 ¶25

It is David who stood beside him, as told in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs: “I am the first of his works of old,” the first . He created me before anything else in the world, and I stood beside him as a child. “Before he brought forth the seas, the heavens, I stood beside him as a child.” It’s David. And so, when God succeeds in giving himself to you, he has to give you his Son. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son” . And his Son is not Jesus Christ; his Son is David. Jesus Christ is simply God Awake. Jesus Christ is God the Father. So David calls you Father. And that’s how the mystery unfolds. He asks the question “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered, “The son of David.” He said, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Father? If David does call him Father, how can he be David’s son?” . So, David calls him Adonay, a word used by every son of his father, when he calls him Father. So he called me Father.760 ¶26

And then comes another scene. And this is the chronological order as I have experienced it. This is not as Luke told it, or Matthew told it, or Mark, or John. But they were not trying to be chronologically exact. They were simply compiling these oral traditions, and putting them into a narrative. It made sense the way they put it, because, on this level, birth would come first and death last. And if you survived death, then resurrection should follow it. But that’s not the order in God’s mystery. Resurrection comes first. You begin with resurrection. You awaken to find yourself entombed; and then you come out, and that’s birth. And the signal of the birth, or the thing that signifies it, is a babe. And “this shall be a sign unto you that something was born this day in the city of David that is Christ the Lord” . Well, what is the sign? Go and “you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the floor.” That’s where you find it. That was telling you that something was born this day in the city of David. Well, the city of David is Zion. Zion is not in the Near East; Zion is your own wonderful skull. That’s where it was born. You come out of your own wonderful skull, and the birth is symbolized as that of a babe. You can take this, and you, too, can compile a narrative.760 ¶27

I think the time has come to tell it—to tell it because after 2,000 years of misrepresentation people completely lost the entire picture of this great mystery. And they’re looking for a coming of another being called Jesus Christ in the flesh, and he can’t come at all. He comes in us. And he keeps on coming in every individual in this world until all have hatched out. When all have hatched out all will be the father of one son; therefore, all are one. Then you will know the mystery: that “The Lord will be king over all the earth; on that day his name will be one and the Lord one” . Therefore, the name is Jesus Christ, and everyone will be Jesus Christ, without loss of identity. No one will lose identity. I’ll know you in eternity. But I will see you beautified beyond the wildest dream of man. I will see you with a character that is God. I will see you with the majesty that is God, with everything that is God, because you are God. All will be hatched out and all will be one. You’ll not be male or female; you’ll be man. Man will then, in that moment, be above the organization of sex as we understand it in this world. We don’t need the divided image of male-female to create. We create because everything is then subject to our own wonderful imaginative power. But we’re God completely awake. And everyone, not one will be addled. It’s his purpose to save all. Save all, he saves himself; there’s no one else to save. All the commands in the world, as we read in the Bible, are given by God to God. Man can do nothing on this level. He simply is giving himself to individualize himself, and bring himself up as God.760 ¶28

Because, there is no limit to the expansion of God; there was only a limit to the contraction of God. The contraction was Adam, humanity, the limit to opacity, yes. But no limit to translucency, none whatsoever, so that God will forever and forever be expanding. And when all are awake, and the play is over and his purpose realized, he still can expand. He can still be this composite God made up of others—one God made of all of us. We are the Elohim, and all the Elohim form Jehovah, the one Lord. Then tomorrow another act he will write, and then in that other act, a still further expansion of this infinite being that we are.760 ¶29

So, the story of Christmas is the story of salvation. It is God redeeming himself. Because he placed himself in a restricted area, and it was so restricted! What is more restricted than death? And the dreamers did not know that they were actually dead. They didn’t know they were dreaming, for their dreams were so real they were lost in the dream. When you fall asleep tonight, unless you awake from that sleep, isn’t the dream real? And don’t you bleed, and don’t you feel pain, and aren’t you afraid, and don’t you control, and don’t you run from others in your dream? Then you awake from it and say, “It was only a dream.” And while that dream lasted, it was just as real as this. For when you come back here, you don’t think this is a dream. Oh, no, this isn’t a dream, that was a dream. It’s a dream within a dream until man awakes from it all.760 ¶30

So Shelley was perfectly right. But he wasn’t speaking of some friend of his who died, as we see a friend die. He was speaking of one who awoke. For Shelley had the visions—he made his exit at thirty-six, but like all these brilliant intuitive minds they saw it so clearly. So they said he was full of incest, they said Shelley and his mother, Shelley and someone else. But, may I tell you, if I am the father of your son, my wife will one day have the experience of being the father of my son, and my son is David, yet she has borne me a child, well, isn’t that incest? Why, she’s myself. In the end, if we’re all the father of one son, then no matter what, you can call it by any other name, it’s incest. Well, they said of Shelley that he was incestuous. But this is what he said: “He has awakened from the dream of life. ’Tis we who lost in stormy visions keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.”760 ¶31

So we think this is altogether real; and we strive for the highest office in this country; and we aspire for the highest office in a religious sense, and we strive for a higher office in some other sense, and it’s all but the dream. When we awaken from it, we are Jehovah. Jehovah’s only name to be known forever and forever throughout all generations is I AM. So who had the dream last night? Wouldn’t you say, “I did”? And if someone said to you, “What are you doing?” You would say, “I am dreaming.” And when you awoke from it you would say, “Well, I am awake.” You always precede whatever you say with “I am”; that’s Jehovah’s name.760 ¶32

So in the end, this series of events will unfold in the soul of every person in the world. But as Paul said in his second letter to the Corinthians, the 4th chaper, the 7th verse: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” That is conditioned by the limitation of human understanding, human language, the limitation of our understanding of words, and especially that limitation of an individual who had the experience of trying to unveil it, which is something you can’t share save in words to another. So tonight I have tried to unveil my inner consciousness that sailed and had that experience with you who, at the moment, have not had it. But you will have it! And so that is Christmas. It hasn’t a thing to do with some physical event that took place 2,000 years ago. There was no Mary, who didn’t know a man physically, who bore a child physically from her physical womb, none whatsoever.760 ¶33

The Mary, if Mary, is the one called Sarah, if Sarah, which is the back of your own wonderful skull. She was ninety years old and the numerical value of the word “she was ninety”; the symbolical value of that number is a fishhook. The first use of the word Jesus in the Bible is Joshua. Moses could not enter the Promised Land, that which was promised, it took Joshua to do it. Joshua is called Joshua Ben Nun, Joshua the son of Nun. Nun is a fish. He comes into the world to transform us into fishers of men, called fishermen, and he was called “the great fish.” And Sarah was ninety years old and ninety has the symbolical value of a fishhook, it’s Tzaddi. Look it up, the fishhook. What is he fishing for? What is he bringing out of himself? For everything comes out of man: “All that you behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your own wonderful human Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” . So he brings it out and that is the Sarah or that is the Mary. But forget the Sarah, the Mary, it’s your own wonderful being and it’s coming out of your own skull.760 ¶34

You are coming out of your skull, for that’s where you’re buried. And the whole drama of salvation begins with God’s mightiest act, which is resurrection. He resurrects you. And you didn’t even know that you were dead until that moment when you’re resurrected. When you’re resurrected, you find yourself entombed. What would you put into a sepulcher but the dead? And you are in a sepulcher, and the sepulcher is your skull. That’s exactly what the Bible tells you: he was buried in Golgotha and Golgotha means skull. That’s exactly where Jesus Christ was buried. Then Jesus Christ in you awakes to find himself entombed, and he comes out. As he comes out of the tomb, he’s born from above. And then comes the series of events as described in scripture.760 ¶35

Then, Luke says: “I heard it from those who were eyewitnesses; and it seemed good to me now to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus.” Well, Theophilus means one who loves God; so if you say, I want to find the secret, God’s purpose, God’s plan, you are a lover of God, you are Theophilus. “That you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed” . So now you have been informed. And to those who have been coming here over the years, and have taken it down in shorthand, tape, longhand, maybe they can compile a narrative and tell the story as it actually happened.760 ¶36

But leave the speaker out completely, for this is only a garment that he wears. You have never seen me anymore than I have seen you, for we are veiled. This garment of flesh is a veil it comes through. I’ll recognize you, you’ll recognize me, but we’re lifted up to the nth degree of beauty compared to what you see now. So, leave out the first narrative… that was born from a woman’s womb… and tell the story of salvation. How the individual walking this earth as though he were alive, thinking he’s alive and thinking he’s awake, suddenly one day God hits him over the head as it were and he wakes. He didn’t realize until then that he had been asleep. And when he awakes, he doesn’t awake in a crib, he awakes in his skull, and finds himself completely sealed in his skull. He breaks the seal and comes out. It is now “at length for hatching ripe” and out he comes, comes out of a sealed tomb and the tomb of his skull.760 ¶37

Then he understands what the prophets could not see. Because they sought and they inquired what person, what time was indicated by the spirit of prophecy within them, when it was prophesied and predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. But they couldn’t. They sought throughout all the scriptures and yet they could not find by all their searching that Christ of whom they spoke, and whose coming they foretold. They couldn’t find him. It wasn’t there until you have the experience.760 ¶38

So I’m telling you the experience before you have it, that when you have it you will know that it is true. Until it happens, continue, and knowing it to be a dream, dream nobly. You can change the dream. The Bible recognizes only one source of dream: all dreams, all visions proceed from God. So if I can think of my home right now, that’s the waking dream. Well, now who’s doing it? Who’s doing it?—I am. That’s God. So I think of something else, well, who is doing it?—I am. That’s God. There’s only one source of dreams in scripture; and all dreams proceed from God, and God is I AM. So if I know I am dreaming, I can control the direction of my dream. If I don’t know I’m dreaming, then I am the servant, the slave of my attention, not its master. If I know I’m dreaming, I can direct my attention. Directing it, I can control the dream. Try it and see how it works.760 ¶39

If today you’re poor—that’s a relative term—but if you think you are, assume that you are wealthy, which also is relative. But assume that you are, and remain faithful to your assumption, knowing that God is the dreamer and all things are possible to God, and you will actually crystallize it in your world of dreams. You can change the dream and make it come out just as you want to, any dream in this world, until that moment in time when you awaken from dream to find yourself Christ Jesus, God Awake. So while you’re dreaming, dream the most noble dreams in the world. If you don’t know you’re dreaming, well then, you can’t change it. You are lost in your own creation. But if you know you are dreaming, you can control the direction of your attention and therefore control the dream. All dreams in the world proceed from God.760 ¶40

So tonight, just assume. When you assume something, isn’t that a daydream? You’re told in possibly the greatest book next to the Bible, the works of Shakespeare: “Assume a virtue if you have it not. Refrain tonight, one night. It will seem easier tomorrow, and then the next night still easier.” At the very end, if you dare to assume it and restrain the impulse to go back to habit, then your assumption will harden into fact. You are still dreaming and will continue the dream until that moment in time when God awakes in you as you, and he’s individualized as you. So you try it. Now we go into the Silence, for this is our closing night until January 7.760 ¶41

Tonight’s subject is the “Wonder-Working Power.” I hope I can tell it tonight so simply that no one leaving this room can say I didn’t quite understand it; that within the immediate present you can put it into effect and prove the truth of what I am talking about from this platform. This wonder-working power is a showing in four different levels of vision. Blake made the statement: Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; ’Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in soft Beulah’s night And twofold always. May God us keep From single vision and Newton’s sleep!758 ¶1

Now here is the perfect description of single vision. Maybe you are familiar with this one little poem, just one verse: A primrose by a river’s brim, A yellow primrose was to him And it was nothing more… He looks at a tree, it’s a tree—that’s all there is. He looks at a man, it’s a man; he looks at a rock, it’s a rock, and it’s nothing more. So, “A primrose by a river’s brim, a yellow primrose was to him, and it was nothing more.” That’s single vision, and the whole vast world sees it in that light.758 ¶2

But now, we want to bring everyone here into a double vision. We are all familiar with a fireplace. So we look at a fireplace and say something is burning [...]. And then one day, I see it was lit by something similar to itself. A spark lit it and then it was fed and it blazed up, warming me, radiating this wonderful heat; and then it cooled, and we had the embers and then the ash. Looking at it you and I would say, well, you know, it reminds me of my life. That’s my life; my life is like a fire. It comes in, lit in some strange way, and then it’s fed and fed and fed, and it blazes up, and then becomes an ember, and then an ash. And so I have a simile. Then I say, “My life is a fire.” Now I have a metaphor. One day I leave out the little “is,” and I say, “Life and fire are synonyms.” I can’t see one without seeing the other, without imagining the other. Then I have an image; I have a symbol. And I do it with everything in the world, and I have many images. When everything in the world is to me but a symbol, then I have double vision. Double the vision, my eye can see now that nothing appears as it appears to the world; everything is different.758 ¶3

A man who appears to be a man, so when I talk with him, and I get his moods, and while he takes advantage of other men—he’s in business, he doesn’t pay good wages to anyone who serves him—then I see that man as I would see any blood-sucking, blood-drinking insect, just a parasite. He may be the head of society, he may be the most powerful person in the world, a dictator, but I see him using men for his own personal gain. And you see him now spiritually. And one sight only sees the garment, and his name the little tag it appears, and they bow before him. But you now with double vision and you see him and you see him as a parasite, just like a flea… a flea that lives on the body of the dog or the animal or anything in this world. He’s only a flea. You see him as a flea, although he may have billions of dollars; he may control the armies of the world, but he’s only a flea. And that’s how God sees him. When you begin your sight that way, all of a sudden, you see differently and he doesn’t offend you; you aren’t moved by him. You see him just as he really is in the eyes of God. That’s the beginning of double vision.758 ¶4

Now comes the third vision. The third vision, when these images interplay and they marry and beget other images; that’s the threefold vision. Now, here is what I want to talk about this night, the threefold vision.758 ¶5

Here is a little child; the child is three. This is a true story. The grandmother is present here tonight. This story was told me before I took the platform. She’s now five and a half—but the mother knows this, as she’s been coming here over the years—so the child’s now five and a half. When she was three, the father and mother had no money. He was working on a job at a small salary, and they dreamed of owning their own home, a wonderful home, but they had no money and they were in debt. So the little child, while in bed, was told by the grandmother and the mother, “Close your eyes and see this lovely home, a huge big fireplace right up to the ceiling, glass all around, two bedrooms for you, Pammie” (her name is Pamela), and then Julie, her sister, who was then only a year old. “So you see it clearly now. Go into the bedroom. Keep your eyes closed. If you open your eye, it’s going to deny what I’m telling you. So keep your eyes closed, go into the bedroom, and go into the other bedroom—one is yours and one is Julie’s—and a huge fireplace up to the ceiling.” In a little while, this firm was absorbed by a larger firm, and all the men were given aptitude tests. His came out with this kind of a test: you are a salesman. At first, he refused to accept the thought he could sell. He was going to quit. They said, “You may quit, but you can’t work for us unless you become a salesman. That is what we see in this test. You must become a salesman.” In the immediate present, he was making a fortune, and they bought the home—glass all over, two bedrooms leading off of this enormous fireplace, up to the ceiling. Now he’s making money.758 ¶6

He was never given to spending money and was never considered a generous father or husband, possibly afraid of the future. When it came to Christmas, the mother wondered, “How am I going to get five dollars out of him to buy toys for my children?” So remembering what they did prior to getting this home, she said, “Pammie, do you remember what we did with the house?” Yes, she remembered the whole thing. “Now close your eyes and there’s a huge, big playpen in the backyard filled with toys. And you go into the backyard and play. Remain here physically, but now you go right into the backyard. Don’t open your eyes because it will then be single vision. Go into the backyard, and all these images are playing now.” Just before Christmas, she called her mother, who is here this night, and said, “I think he’s gone mad. You know what he’s contemplating? He’s contemplating buying a hundred-dollar playpen for Pammie and Julie, and undoubtedly, he’ll fill it with toys.” But she said, “I was there Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day when we opened the toys. This enormous playpen—he paid a hundred dollars for it—and it was filled with toys.” But said the grandmother to her daughter, “Have you forgotten what you did with Pammie only a week or two weeks ago?” And then she remembered. How could she now criticize the extravagance of her husband, who was always so mean, when she herself had put the child into the state of seeing this wonderful playpen filled with toys? Now that is threefold vision.758 ¶7

You take a vision. Everything is a symbol. Take me, I’m a symbol, you’re a symbol, and everything’s a symbol. And you interplay them to form a certain pattern, which will then give birth to another image. So I bring you before my mind’s eye in a certain manner. I bring another party into the same picture. Then I add to these two a conversation between the two of them, which conversation would imply that you know I am what I want to be. I bring you, I bring another, and I eavesdrop and I listen. I hear them discuss, and they are discussing my good fortune. I listen until I actually hear what I would hear were it true. Everyone is discussing exactly what I want to hear, for if I heard it, it would imply the fulfillment of my dream. That is taking now symbols, taking images, and interplaying them. Interplaying them so that I marry them; and as they marry, they beget another image—the images that are bringing me forward in the image that I want to see myself express in this world. That’s threefold vision.758 ¶8

Now, fourfold vision. I trust you have it. If you haven’t had it, I can’t describe the joy of fourfold vision. If I could describe it, it is dreaming, yes, or loving or imagining, and these are only three forms of the same thing. But dreaming with such intensity that it obliterates the daylight, just as daylight ordinarily obliterates the dream. You’re sitting in a chair, and you’re loving, you’re imagining, you’re dreaming, and suddenly it is no longer something that is unseen by you. For this little child, she saw it in her mind’s eye, but not as I’m seeing you now and you see the speaker. She saw it, kept the physical eyes closed, and moved into the imagined state and made it real to her. But fourfold vision, something goes out, and suddenly you say to yourself, “I’m dreaming. No I’m not; it’s real. I’m not dreaming, here it is; it’s real, just as real as this.” The curtain goes up on it, and then what began as a dream, just a daydream, but you did it with intensity, and suddenly the curtain goes up, and you step into the world of your dream. You are awake in what formerly began as a dream.758 ¶9

And now, let me tell you my first experience of it. I used the threefold vision unnumbered times to produce results, and talked about it, told all my friends about it, and all these things worked. Threefold vision produces the same results that the little child produced. It never fails. But one night, here in Beverly Hills, I suddenly looked up, my eyes were closed, and I was awake. I knew exactly where I was. I was in my home in Beverly Hills on El Camino, and I knew what I should see were my eyes open. I felt my eyes closed, and yet I am seeing more vividly than I’m seeing you now. I should see the familiar objects on the wall. I should see the familiar things on my bureau, for I was lying on my right side; but instead of seeing these, suddenly I am seeing the interior of a fantastic building. Consciousness followed vision, and I stepped into the state that I am seeing. I came back to my bed; and once more, I am now in a horizontal position. Then again, I stepped into my vision, and I am now vertical. I’m stepping right into what I see. I did it maybe a dozen times, and then I decided to explore.758 ¶10

Regardless of consequences I’m going to explore. If it’s the very end of my life in this world, I can’t stop it; I must explore. And so I stepped into this place with the determination to go on. As I did so, it closed around me. The room that seemed when I was on the bed, it seemed maybe thirty by twenty, it now became ten by seven. I discovered, as I examined it, that it’s simply a dressing room. I left this room into a huge, big suite, an enormous suite of rooms, unoccupied but prepared for occupancy, but not occupied. It was just as solidly real as this room is. I was to myself just as I am now. Everything I touched was solid. My hands could not go through it; it was solid. I came out of this room into a huge hallway, which led to a huge, big public hallway. When I got there, I saw two ladies coming down the hallway. I knew how the whole thing started, and so I said to them, “Ladies, this is a dream.” Well, they were just as startled as you would be if you met me, a total stranger, say, at a hotel, the Ambassador. You never saw me before, and suddenly you saw a man coming into this place who suddenly talks to you. You don’t know him, and he tells you, “Ladies, this is a dream.” Wouldn’t you be startled? You would say, “Well, the man is insane. Let us get out of this place as fast as we can.” That’s exactly what they tried to do. They got as far away from me as they could, right next to the wall. But I insisted it’s a dream because I remembered exactly what I did. But now I’m fully awake in the dream. My eyes are wide open, and I’m awake in my dream. As they passed by, walking rapidly, I saw this ornate thing over my head, and I remembered a little visit a few months before in a friend’s home near the hills of Hollywood, where he had a similar thing hanging from his wall. I remarked then, “How does such a thing remain up?” He said, “If you look closely, you will see an almost invisible thread supporting it from the ceiling,” which I did. It was a beautiful cluster of leaves made of very thin copper. Well, this resembled that and reminded me of that. Again, because I saw this in my now waking dream, I said, “Now I know it’s a dream because this is only a memory image of what I saw in my friend’s home in the hills of Hollywood, there six months ago, so it must be a dream. Even though they’re so real, and this is so real and I am so real, everything is so real, it is a dream.” And so as I did this, I held one of the leaves, and I said to myself, “C’mon, Neville, you know it’s a dream. Wake up! Wake!” and I came to, standing in that place more awake than I am here now.758 ¶11

Now, being a father, then my little girl was in high school. She had to go through high school; her desire was to go through college, and I said to myself, “Here, Vicki is unschooled, and she must be educated. If I make my exit now, I leave a wife unprepared for this problem and so I can’t leave here now. I have unfinished business in that world—for I am completely shut out in an entirely different world.” So while standing there, I closed my eyelids; and just as if I closed them here now, I wouldn’t see you, so I didn’t see the hallway. I opened my eyelids, and here is the hallway. I did it maybe a dozen times. I am completely locked out in this world. I said to myself, “They’ll find the body tomorrow morning in Beverly Hills, and because of insurance policies they’ll have to cut it up and say, well, he died of this, that or the other.” But I still didn’t want to terminate it in this way; I wanted to get back. And this is what I did. Standing there, completely shut out in this other world, I simply imagined with the same intensity that brought me into that world, I imagined a pillow under my head. I stood there just simply feeling a pillow, that’s all. Suddenly, while standing there, I could feel a pillow. And then to my great surprise, I am not vertical; I am horizontal, but I could feel myself on a pillow. But then I was cataleptic, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t open my eyes. I went to the most enormous effort to open my eyes, and I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t move a hand; I couldn’t move a finger; I’m completely cataleptic. Then, maybe thirty, forty seconds later, I could navigate the little finger. We had a double bed, and so my wife slept on the other side. After a little while, I could move from the elbow and I pushed it over and I could feel that nice warm body of my wife and I knew I’m back. A little while later, I could move the other hand. And then with a tremendous effort, I opened my physical eyelids and saw the familiar objects on the wall.758 ¶12

So I tell you, when Blake said—he didn’t claim it was his always— Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me; ’Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in soft Beulah’s night And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision and Newton’s sleep!758 ¶13

So when you only see a man, when you look at a man, and he is no more than just a man, he’s not a loving being or a hating being or a bloodsucking insect, he’s none of these things, just a man, that’s single vision. If a fire is a fire, and it means nothing else, if a tree is a tree, nothing else, but not a thing becomes a symbol or image to you, then it’s single vision.758 ¶14

And may I tell you: the difference between fourfold vision and single vision is the difference between normal eyesight and blindness. One who was born blind—I don’t mean going blind, with memories of what you once observed while you had sight—I mean to be born blind, where no one in this world could convey to you what it means to look at red. If you’re born blind and you never had the experience of the color red, there’s no word, not a thing in this world that man could use to convey to you the sensation of red or blue or any other color. A form, yes. You can bring your hands and you can touch a form. And you can say this is a symbol of that term, and then this is something different and this is something different and a bed and a chair and this and a cross, and all the materials. But you haven’t seen color. There is no word known by man that could convey to you the experience of color. Well, the difference between fourfold vision and single vision is the difference between normal eyesight and blindness from birth. So when one gets into it, I can’t tell you the thrill. It’s supreme delight. And you enter it, as I say, yes, dreaming or loving or imagining—three forms of the same thing—but with such intensity that suddenly you are awake in the state you contemplate. You’re contemplating it, and suddenly you are awake in it and it takes on all the objective qualities that this room has now. That’s fourfold vision.758 ¶15

But for practical purposes in this world, we discuss and try to encourage you to practice threefold vision. And threefold vision, like this little child; here is a child, three years old, and “Now see the fireplace.” So she sees it. “Don’t open your eyes, Pammie, because if you open your eyes you aren’t going to see it, and right away you’re going to come right down to onefold vision. So a fireplace, do you see it? See the wall?” “Oh, yes.” “And lots of glass all around?” “Yes.” “And then over here, there’s a room, it’s your bedroom; and over there, there’s another bedroom and that is Julie’s bedroom.” You get it? And then out of the nowhere what seems like a disaster, for his firm was being absorbed, and all the jobs are uncertain. So they’re all given an aptitude test, including the father of this child. He comes out on the top but not what he had been doing in the other job. He now must change jobs and become a salesman, which he doesn’t want to do. But the aptitude test revealed he has all the qualifications for salesmanship, which he never thought of before. Now he becomes a salesman, and he’s making a fortune. But now he becomes uneasy. He wants lovely things in this world but very penurious. However, they buy the home, the home of the child’s dream, Pammie’s dream.758 ¶16

Then comes Christmas. How to get out of him five dollars to buy presents for my children? He, on the other hand, comes home with a hundred-odd dollars worth of presents. And she, forgetting what she did, thought he’s gone insane. So when she called her mother and said, “He’s gone mad. He is contemplating buying a hundred-dollar playpen,” and she said to her daughter, “Have you forgotten what you did with Pammie? Didn’t you put Pammie into that lovely place where she actually played in the backyard with the playpen?” “Oh, yes. I completely forgot it!” Well, who did it? It’s not his generosity; it’s Pammie who did it. Pammie stirred him to go looking for the hundred-dollar pen. Because Pammie had played in it, it had to be there. Now she takes all these images and she interplays them and marries them, and it produces a result. And she is the result.758 ¶17

So I tell you, nothing is impossible to this wonder-working power. Christ is called in the Bible “the power and the wisdom of God.” You read it in the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the twenty-fourth verse, “Christ the power and the wisdom of God.” For God is all Imagination, and his power is imagining—that’s Christ. So Paul could say having once thought of Christ as a man, he then said, “From now on I regard no one from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” He now sees who Christ is. Christ is the power and the wisdom of God; and the power and wisdom of God is imagining, as God is all Imagination. And God became man that man may become God. So Blake said, “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.”758 ¶18

Now you may not with your concepts of Christ and concepts of God accept it. But I suggest if there is evidence for a thing, what you think about it or even wish about it is nothing to the point. So this little girl and her mother remembered what she did and brings about this, and you may not relate her imaginal act to the fact and you may say it would have happened anyway. That’s your right to say that. But if she repeats it, as she did, and you still insist in saying, “Well, it would have happened anyway.” Then the third time she does it, all in the interval of two years, and the parents realize exactly what they did.758 ¶19

Now, we come to the crux of the story of the child. As happens in the lives of all people—especially in California, why I do not know—but in California there are so many divorces. Anyone who is married for ten years is the senior citizen. It’s a more fantastic thing. If you remain united for more than five, that’s really an accomplishment. Well, in spite of their two little girls, sweet children, they grew apart. He is Catholic, and he didn’t want a divorce. He’d rather live in hell than have a divorce. But nevertheless, they got a divorce. The divorce was granted and finalized—using the grandmother’s story and her very words, using the word finalized—it was finalized two weeks ago. And she began, so she said to me, to lose faith because she called me on this case when it began to develop a couple of months ago, say, three months ago. And she said, “I don’t want them to be divorced. I’m quite sure they can reconcile the whole thing and become a loving, wonderful family as they were and must be.” So I agreed with her, certainly they could be. Well, in spite of that agreement here came a divorce, and the papers signed, the whole thing finalized.758 ¶20

So the grandmother said to the little girl, “You want mother back, don’t you?” and she began to cry. She said, “All right, you know what you did with the house and the fireplace and the grass and the two bedrooms?” “Yes.” “You remember what you did with the playpen and all the toys?” “Yes.” “Well, now, tonight, right now, you close your eyes, and mother is coming through the door. You hear the door open. She is coming in, in her nightgown—not in any suit, not in a dress where she’s leaving this house tonight—she is coming here in her nightgown. She’s sleeping here. So the door is opening, and it’s mother. She’s coming over, and she’s kissing you. Feel the kiss; it’s mother, and she’s in her nightgown.” She did it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and mother returned to that house on Friday. And mother is now back in the household, in spite of a divorce decree that has been finalized. Maybe in the eyes of the priest they are living in sin, but there they are, parents of the two little girls, and mother came back, just as the grandmother told her granddaughter that it would happen. And so, when she met the grandmother, she said to the grandmother, “You know, Grandma, you’re mature, you’re old, but with me Imagination works like thunder!”758 ¶21

For we are told in the Bible to never send a child away, for the child will lead us—in Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them.” A little child brings back the grandmother’s faith, for she called me, the teacher of this principle, and I agreed with her over the phone, yes, reconciliation is perfect. So I heard her say yes, not devising the means toward the end, simply the end. And then came what seems to be final and absolute, a signed decree of divorce. You can’t go beyond that. Who says you can’t go beyond that? Everything is possible to God. With God, nothing is impossible, if you know who he is. God is your own wonderful human Imagination, and God in action is Christ. Imagination in action is imagining.758 ¶22

So what are you imagining, on a threefold vision or a single vision? A single vision is right here, and these are the facts of life, and I can do not a thing about it. So I perpetuate my world based upon the single vision. Then comes that moment in time, I get a double vision, where things are not what they seem to be. They become similes. They become at first just a simile. I relate myself to the burning fire, knowing that as I began at a certain moment in time, it will come to an end, just like the fire. So I am a simile. Then I say, “Life is a fire,” a metaphor. Then I rub out the little “is,” and I say life and fire [...] are synonyms. And then I see it as a symbol. I can’t feel one without thinking of the other. Then I have images.758 ¶23

I take it with everything in my world then. And so I think of people, and there are certain—well, I saw them in my mind’s eye spiritually, and they are all images. Then I begin to blend them, and I interplay the images. As I interplay them, they marry, and as they marry they beget other images. And then I tested it. I would like to be and I named it. I would like to be, say, elsewhere. Well, elsewhere is an image. And so I assume that I am elsewhere. Were I there, I would see people that I couldn’t see from this angle. And so were I there, I would have to see them, for they would be there; then I began to see them in my mind’s eye. Seeing them would imply that I am there. And so I began to talk with them, just as though I were there. And then I found that things rapidly change in my world to compel the journey, and I move across a series of events, some bridge of incident, that led me up to the fulfillment of that journey, and there I am. But then I remembered what I did. I took images, just simple images, and so interplayed and intermarried them that they produced another image; and the image was the fulfillment of my desire for myself, and I made the journey.758 ¶24

So this is the threefold. He calls it “soft Beulah’s night,” the thing nearest to heaven in Blake’s terminology. First of all, he has eternity; he calls it Eden, and he likens it to the sun. The sun is the symbol. Then he had next to that “soft Beulah’s night,” and the symbol of that was the moon, for the moon reflects the light of the sun, and this reflects the activity of heaven. Then he has the limit of it all—he had five worlds—the limit of it all he calls “Ulro,” this world, for it was opaque; the limit of contraction; and the limit of opacity, where man has single vision.758 ¶25

Now, everyone in this world has single vision. But we are here for a purpose; this is for a divine reason that we are here. You and I didn’t do a thing that was wrong to bring us here. We are here that we may be awakened as God. Just like a chicken dropping an egg and the egg contains the chicken; and by an effort from within, after germination, it comes out. The egg, giving birth to what it contains, is God coming out of this egg, and the egg here is the human skull. God actually comes out, and it’s God. God became man that man may become God. So here, the fall, spoken of in the Bible, is no more than the fall of the egg from the chicken. That’s the full doctrine of the fall; and then the chicken rises from the broken egg, and it’s God. And that’s the end of the doctrine of evolution. So God became man that man may become God.758 ¶26

So I tell you, treat it seriously and become as the little child. This night, when you go to bed, put yourself into the state of the wish fulfilled. And then blend all the images that would imply the fulfillment of that state, and live in it just as though it were true. How it will happen, I do not know.758 ¶27

Another lovely story which I must tell you. For last Friday night, my wife came to the door and said, “Is there a gentleman in the room or a lady in the room who left a little dog in a car? Well, he is needed, or she is needed.” So the gentleman jumped right up and went out looking for the dog. He called me late that night, said he hadn’t found the dog. He said, “I love the dog. I know it’s my own negligence; I left the door open because I was so eager to get to the meeting without missing any part of it, that I did not close the window.” It was a little poodle. So he sought all over the neighborhood, and he couldn’t find the dog. He was up very late that night and called me. He said, “What must I do, Neville?” So I told him what I would do were I he, I would go to sleep just as though the dog were in the house. Feel the presence of the dog and think only in terms of the nearness of the dog; it’s right here. And so I am able to tell you tonight—not the details; I don’t have the details as yet—he has the dog. And so it never fails.758 ¶28

You know the meaning of the word prayer? You’re told in the 11th chapter, the 24th verse of the Book of Mark, “Whatever you desire, when you pray believe you received it and you will,” for the word prayer means by definition in the biblical concordance: “Motion toward; accession to; nearness at; at or in the vicinity of.” Now, you have a little dog and it’s lost and now you are living miles and miles away from where it jumped through the window? No. Prayer means “nearness to; motion toward; nearness at; at or in the vicinity of.” If you found him, where would he be tonight, in a kennel? No. He’d be home, wouldn’t he? Well, now that’s praying: he’s here at home, and you feel his presence at home. That’s praying. For if he actually came back, if you found him, you wouldn’t leave him behind you; he’d be at home. Therefore, you would actually bring him into your house. Now sleep as though you can touch him and feel him and smell him and feel his presence. Then go to sleep. Well, tonight I can tell you he is at home, and the owner of this little dog has learned a lesson, not to leave the window open.758 ¶29

So here, I invite you to join me in threefold vision. May I tell you, it will not fail you. No power in this world can stop it from working. For there’s only God; there’s nothing but God. God is reconciling the world to himself through Christ, and Christ is your own wonderful human imagining—that’s Christ. Christ is the power and the wisdom of God. You don’t need to be any wiser than you are. What would it be like were it true? And then you go to bed in the assumption that it is true and sleep in that assumption.758 ¶30

Now, Friday night, a lady—I do not see her here tonight, but maybe she’s here—but she gave me a letter Friday night. Pardon me, I now see her. But on Friday night, she gave me this perfectly wonderful letter, a true story I told because she gave me permission to tell it. I told it last Sunday morning without using her name, without using the firm’s name. So I didn’t tell the firm’s name or her name, but she’s here tonight. Three weeks ago, she and I were in the back room here where I speak. She wanted to see me before my meeting to discuss her problem. Her problem was the filling of a position in a fabulous company with resources in excess of a half billion dollars. No lady had ever filled that position before. It was never considered that any woman could fill that position. There were many men, eligible, with ability to fill that job, but she wanted it. I simply said to her, “Were I you, I would just simply occupy it, just as though it were true.” So she occupied that job, and three weeks later, she was appointed to that job. Now she is loan counselor in a corporation whose resources exceed a half billion dollars—the first woman ever appointed to such an office. She is here tonight. I’m not going to ask her to identify herself. But someday, maybe, in this wonderful world of ours, you will be in need of her services. So she will tell you what I told her, and yet she can be of service to those who need her services.758 ¶31

So here, join with me in putting into practice this threefold vision. It won’t fail you. But may I tell you, you are the operant power. Knowing it is one thing and doing it is another. You either do it, or you don’t do it. If you do it, it will not fail. If you say you know it and that you are a good person therefore, God, because you are good, is going to take care of you; I have news for you! So let us go into the Silence and put into practice this perfectly wonderful principle.758 ¶32

Tonight’s subject is “Love Endures.” I made you a promise when I started that everything I tell you from this platform I know from experience. I am not theorizing. When we are told, “He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.” The apostle John was not speculating. This is not a conclusion that he reached after years of philosophic contemplation. This was an act of God in self-revelation. If God had ever revealed himself as infinite love to man, I doubt that man could ever, with all the philosophy in the world, ever come to the conclusion that God is love. God is love, in spite of all the horror of the world. I tell you it is true; I know that from experience. Another apostle tells us that “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am as sounding brass or tinkling cymbals.” Then he takes all the gifts of God and compares them to love, and if love is not present, I am as nothing. I may have all the wisdom in the world, all the power, everything in the world, if I have not love, it is as nothing. There is no gift of the Spirit comparable to love, and in the end love is the only thing that really will abide. It will abide forever. Faith will be realized, hope will be realized, these are attributes of God, but God is love. He’s not an attribute of God; God is love. When you stand in the presence of the risen Christ, you have no other emotion in the world, no other feeling, it’s simply love. God is love. And when love embraces you, it’s only love. And you wear the body, which is the body of the risen Christ, and it’s only love. So everything else will pass away, but love will endure forever. So he who does not love does not know God, for God is love.756 ¶1

Now tonight, I will tell you several things that seem incredible. They are all scriptural. [...] aren’t true. We are told, “Let us be persistent in the race as we run it, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was to be realized by him endured the cross, despising the shame.” Embraced the cross and despised the shame. That’s true…I know that to be true. When he nailed himself upon this body, I know that’s true, and despised the shame to which he would have to go as the speaker. When he did it on you, embraced it willingly with the joy, and despised the shame which he knew he would have to go through, that was love.756 ¶2

Now tonight the things that I will tell you, all from scripture, you wonder, how could anyone believe it? Here is one, “He who drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” Well, I have a very large selection of Bibles at home and commentaries, and many scholarly works, exegeses on all kinds of the sixty-six books. I haven’t read one where they can grasp this theme. They cannot believe that it could be taken literally. But may I tell you these statements are expected to be taken literally and fulfilled literally. I will drink the blood of God? “He who drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.” It doesn’t make sense, does it? That’s why Myers in that lovely poem she called “St. Paul”, “Oh, could I tell, ye surely would believe it. Oh, could I only say what I have seen. How can I tell, or how can you believe it, how, until he bringeth you where I have been?” Until you see that temple split in two and the liquid golden light at the base of the spine, as though you put a sponge upon it and every drop is absorbed. You look upon it and the word “drink” or to “eat the flesh” or “drink the blood” is defined in the biblical concordance as “to do it with enjoyment.” It’s the most repulsive quote in the world if you take it on a certain level. May I tell you, the concordance is right. When you look at it there’s nothing but joy in your being, because you say within yourself, “I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.” Then coming closer you fuse with it, absorbing it every little drop like a sponge; and then up, like a spiral of lightening into heaven. I will raise you after you have taken my blood: “He who drinks my blood…I will raise him up at the last day.” The last day is not some day in the remote future; it comes every moment of time to the individual. This thing has happened, but it is still in a sense happening. Look to him, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was to be, I would say, realized by him, embraced the cross, endured the cross and despised the shame. Everyone will simply have that experience. And when you drink it, it’s sheer enjoyment. You don’t absorb it with the tongue. I don’t put it in my mouth and drink it. I look at it and I know with infinite joy that it’s my very being, my Creator and Redeemer; and I fuse with it and absorb it as a dry sponge would that pool of golden liquid light. Then he tells you, I will raise you up after you have drunk my blood, and I will raise you up at the last day; and up you go right into heaven. So how to tell it? If one could only tell it, I know there are those who would believe it. But how to tell it that one could receive it?756 ¶3

Here in New York City, this past summer, I always call on my friend who has run this wonderful bookstore over the years. In fact, most of my library I bought from her. She was only interested in money. I would go…she would sell my book because she made a dollar. She had no interest whatsoever in anything I wrote in the books. She had a fabulous library of metaphysical books. She didn’t know the contents of one of them, but she knew where every one was and the price of business. If she knew your interest and you started in a certain direction, she could divert you for a moment while she’d take that book out, rub out the price and put another price in. I never corrected her. I caught her doing it with me. She always did it to my wife when my wife went in looking for a certain books for me. She knew she would never question the price if she had the book, and she would do it. I would go in and she would say, “Oh, Neville, you certainly do dream, don’t you?” I said, “Mary, these are not dreams, these are visions paralleling scripture.” “Oh, Neville!” then she’d turn to something else. If I would talk politics, which I didn’t, if I would talk money with her, occasionally I did, then she would have all ears. But when I began to tell her of a vision, of an experience of mine, Mary had no time for it at all. This goes back into the 20s.756 ¶4

So this year, as was my custom, I thought I would go and call on Mary. I said to a friend of mine at the meeting one night, “I haven’t had the time as yet to go and see Mary. I think I’ll go tomorrow.” She said, “Haven’t you heard?” I said no. “Mary was killed last month. She [...] and there is no more metaphysical library.” It used to be called The Gateway. She and her husband had no children, married for 40-odd years and they went their separate ways. They made lots of money. Mary ran the bookstore, and he lived in a home in the country in Bucks County, where so many artists and writers live in Pennsylvania. So they would call each other if someone needed something. If she needed someone to go hunting for certain books, she’d call Bill and Bill would take the train in or ride in and do whatever Mary needed. She would occasionally go out to the house. So they never had any feeling they should call and really inquire. No reason for it, so they thought. So, many days went by and he called, he wanted some help, and there was no response. He called all through the day, both the shop and her home in the Village, on 18th Street, and there was no response. So he came on in, went to the home first, there was all the uncollected mail. The neighbors said, we haven’t seen Mary in five days. He went to the shop, right off Madison Ave. and 60th, and here uncollected mail, and they hadn’t seen Mary in five days. It appears that Mary, five days before, needed something from the grocery store and it was late. It was just at the end of the block. So she went out with just a little change purse and no identification at all, nothing on her but her little change purse. Stepped off the curb and a truck moving at tremendous speed…and she was gone instantly. So Bill went down to the police department and inquired about this missing wife of his. They said, “You know, have you tried the morgue?” He said, “I’m not talking about a dead wife, I’m telling you my wife is missing. She has been missing for five days.” The cop said to him, “After all, these things happen all day in New York City. You’ve just described a woman just like your wife and she’s at the morgue. Why don’t you go and look.” So Bill goes to the morgue and there’s Mary, unclaimed for five days.756 ¶5

Not one moment could I arrest her attention as I have yours now. Mary made a considerable sum of money on other people. That’s all she wanted. And I would have given her any day that I visited…I would say four or five days a week I’d go and browse in her library, the most wonderful metaphysical library. I think that and the one in Long Beach are the two outstanding libraries in this country that I know…the one called Acres of Books in Long Beach. Well, these are the two fantastic libraries. Mary made this quick departure from this level unprepared, not knowing one word of the great mystery of life. She had every opportunity over the years to hear from one who had experienced scripture, and Mary wouldn’t take it at all.756 ¶6

So we are told, at the very end of his days Paul turned many and he spent from morning till night trying to persuade all who would listen to him about Jesus, and using as his argument the laws of Moses and the prophets and the psalms. Many were convinced by what he said, while others disbelieved. Well, Mary didn’t even give me the chance to disbelieve it. It was simply to her all sheer fantasy, all [...].756 ¶7

Yet I tell you every precept in that book, called the Bible, is literally true, and will one day be experienced by you and fulfilled by you literally, even to the drinking of the blood. And it’s not blood as I would cut my veins. When you see it you know it’s the only living reality in the world. It’s that which made you alive while you walked this earth. It was the blood of God, and because God became me that I may become God, when I was severed in two, there was the blood that gave me life. And on that blood I knew it was myself, for in the blood there is life, life is in the blood, golden liquid living light. And you saw it. You become one with it, and then, as you are told, “Then I will raise you up after you drink my blood.” All that scholars can get out of this statement is, if I would only read his words and assimilate them and begin to understand them, well, then I am eating his flesh and drinking his blood. You will do it literally. I’m not saying you should not understand them and that is the lowest aspect of what is intended. That is intended to be taken literally and experienced literally. “He that drinks my blood has life eternal.” Now he said, “Because I live, you will live also.” See the difference in tense? He has completed it. “Because I live”—that’s present—“you will live also.” He’s telling everyone that he addresses, and this is in the 14th of John , that though you seem to be alive you’re really not, not yet…not until you drink my blood. But I have animated you, for I have put my blood within you. “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” So he dies by crucifying himself on me, on you, on everyone. So his blood is in you. But I did not drink it until he severed me in two. And then after he severed me in two, I absorbed it. Absorbing it was complete drinking of every drop of the blood, and then on the heels of it, you ascend like a serpent, or like a bolt of spiral lightning, just as you’re told in scripture.756 ¶8

So here, I tell you love endures…it was love. You take the word Jesus in scripture, it means God, it means Jehovah, and it means love, for that is the nature of God. That’s the ultimate reality. So every time you read it, you can say love. If the word Jesus offends you, say love…and love said so and so and so…that’s alright. And Jesus said so and so, fair enough, same thing. Jesus is love, infinite love.756 ¶9

Now here, I asked you for your case histories. I want to thank you for the six that have come so far. I will use them as the evening permits. One I will use tonight. This lady gave it to me and she said it happened to her on the night of the 4th of September, this month. She said, “As I fell asleep and my body lay asleep on the bed, I found myself looking for something. I didn’t know what it was that I should find, but there I am looking and looking for something. I had to find something, but what it was I didn’t know until in my left hand appeared three coins. I said, not to anyone, just speaking aloud in the dream, ‘Should there not be thirty pieces of silver?’ The voice answered and said, ‘No, you have the three precious ones.’ Then, as the voice spoke, the three were taken out of my hand towards the right, one by one, each separately. As the hand took the first one out, the voice said, ‘This is faith’; took the second one out said ‘This is hope’; took the last one out said ‘This is love.’ And then I awoke.”756 ¶10

There is the fulfillment of the 13th of Corinthians, 1st Corinthians: “Faith, hope and love, these three abide; but the greatest…is love.” Faith will one day be translated into vision and therefore fulfill itself. Hope will be completely realized in this state. But love endures forever. It’s something that is basic, you can’t analyze it. It’s something that’s altogether God…there’s only God and God is love. So she held the three coins, the three precious ones in her hands, and she thought in terms of the thirty pieces of silver. The voice said, “No, you have the three precious ones.” And then came…and the voice…as she relinquished, she didn’t have any choice in the matter, it just took one after the other. The voice began to speak.756 ¶11

So whenever vision breaks out into speech the presence of Deity is affirmed, as told us in the 3rd chapter of Exodus and the 6th of Isaiah. But it breaks out into speech. When you are in presence of vision and speech takes place, then the presence of Deity is affirmed.756 ¶12

So I say every word of scripture you one day will experience. I have experienced scripture and now, night after night, all the lovely things that come afterwards. Like the 23rd Psalm, who would have thought you took that literally? “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; he maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” Would you believe that is literally true for a man to experience? Well, the last two years in New York City we were warned not to walk through the park, Central Park. There were muggings day and night. They said you took your life in your hands if you entered the park. Professors of Columbia were murdered. Bing, the head of the Metropolitan Opera, he was mugged, and stripped, and all of his money gone, right at the very beginning of 59th Street as you entered. And this is where the lights are on, only at ten at night. But I felt regardless of all these rumors I must go through the park. And so, I go for my daily walk and I started through the park. I can’t tell you how green the grass was, that luscious, luscious green, and it was so thick. For years New York has suffered from the lack of rain. And they wouldn’t give you water in the restaurants; you had to ask for it. They had little signs in the hotels “Please do not keep the water running and only use it when you have to.” And they asked you all kinds of pertinent things about “Don’t flush the toilet unless you have to” and all these things to save water. It was down to almost fifty percent of capacity. Well, in the last year, for some wonderful reason, the rains came and the grass was so deep. I can’t tell you my thrill as I walked through the park and remarked to myself, “How green the grass is.”756 ¶13

The following night this is my experience. I saw my earthly father. He looked about fifty years old. He died when he was eighty-five in the year ’59. But he looked about fifty and radiant and robust, and I was lying on the grass, right on this wonderful stretch of green luscious grass. I said to him, “Isn’t this strange, only yesterday I had a dream, I had a dream that I saw this grass and remarked to myself how green it was, how altogether comforting and wonderful it was, and now here it is an objective reality, it’s a fact. Last night in my dream it was subjective, and now here it is objective.” He looked at me and smiled. What is objective and what is subjective? Is it not wholly determined by the level on which consciousness is focused? I’m telling him in a dream that this is the reality, and what I experienced only yesterday was the dream. I told him how I dreamed it, and when I woke back here I realized from this level what I told him was the dream. And what I told him was the dream was really the fact. Which was the fact and which was the reality?756 ¶14

Now who is my Father? We’re told in scripture the whole vast world is seeking the Father, and Christ tells us, “I am the Father. He who sees me has seen the Father.” The whole vast world is seeking Christ. They are seeking the authority that is imaged as your earthly father, that seat of authority, that seat of power that you can trust, that you can respect. That power to which you can submit yourself, even if it does, and it does sometimes, chasten. And in doing so, you think it’s afflictions, but still you will submit to it if you can trust it. Now what is it? It’s the Father in our very selves that we are seeking, that same Father that the Christ of the gospels claims himself to be. So when I met my father, I was only seeing the authority that I had found. He was the image, the symbol of that authority that I loved. I always trusted him. I could always submit myself to him. He was always generous and kind.756 ¶15

And here I am, stretched out on the grass, in complete fulfillment of the 23rd Psalm. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,” who?—the Lord. Well, we’re told in scripture Christ is the Lord…and he calls himself the Father. Here’s my father. And I’m lying down, not standing on it, lying down in green pastures. It’s so green and so luscious.756 ¶16

And night after night the entire book unfolds as experiences, after the four major ones take place. Well, they have taken place; that’s all behind me now. So I’m sharing with you…and to repeat it, how can I tell and anyone—I wouldn’t say anyone—-but the majority receive it? How until he brings them where I have been? He takes them to that same level and then they will know, and they will know all of these precepts are to be taken literally and fulfilled literally. So I tell you, God who is love endures. Everything is going to pass away. It will simply wither like the grass and simply vanish from the earth, and the earth itself. But God will rise, and then you are he, completely incorporated into the one being who is God. There is nothing but God, and God is all love. Everything else is an attribute of God. Faith will be fulfilled, hope fulfilled, all the attributes fulfilled, but God, who is love, endures forever. It is love.756 ¶17

So here, this wonderful story of the three coins…I can’t tell you my thrill when someone who comes here will have a vision of that nature and will share it with me. She very sweetly wrote it out in a type written form and gave it to me. Others I have…I have five others and they’re perfectly marvelous, and when the night comes that they fit I’ll share it with you.756 ¶18

So again I’m going to make an appeal to share your experiences with me. They encourage everyone. This sweet lady who wrote it, her message has gone out tonight to everyone who is here. And you will know that you, too, will have a similar experience and know that these three qualities, virtues, they abide. The greatest of these came last, and the last is first, and the first is last. So the last was love, comes out of her hand last.756 ¶19

And these, “You have the three precious ones,” not the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who would gore a man by what he said; for that’s the price you would pay the owner of the ox. If the ox gored a slave, you pay the owner of the slave, not the slave. You paid the owner of the slave thirty pieces of silver if you had the ox. The ox is the symbol of Christ. And Christ comes to gore man. He simply gores him into…like that ox state called the Lamed or the [...] in scripture, an ox goad…and it goads you into moving on to higher and higher levels of awareness. So when he comes he doesn’t bring peace, he brings the sword, he brings the ox goad. So when the ox goads someone, the one injured, well then, thirty pieces of silver must be given to the owner of that slave. So she wonders, “Are there not thirty pieces of silver?” and the voice answers, “No, three…and you have the three precious ones. These are the three.”756 ¶20

When you stand in the presence of the risen Christ, the only question asked is to name the greatest thing in the world. You do name the three and you also go on to say, “But the greatest of the three, these three, is love.” And that’s when love embraces you and you become one with love; forever you are one with the body of love and there is no divorcing it. What God has now joined together—you and God are one—no man or organization of men can put asunder. You are one with the body of God, and forever you are that body. So when you leave this sphere in the not distant future after that experience, you awaken as the very being the whole vast world talks about. While you experience it and remain covered in flesh…for the Godhead on this level is simply veiled perfection…and while veiled perfection, no one sees the body that you really wear, and so they have to simply guess at the reality behind what you say.756 ¶21

How can I preach God’s love? How can God have love, for God is Spirit? How could I see his body? How could I lie down in green pastures? And lying down in green pastures tells me I am protected forever. It’s the story of God’s protection of his anointed one, his elect. So you are told he actually allows you to lie down in green pastures, for what? He tells me in the very beginning, it’s all because [...] no concern about where it comes from, no concern about anything in the future, just, I will let you lie in green pastures…an abundance is yours from now on, just for the taking.756 ¶22

And then you go on to the fields, “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 so, were I hungry I would slay and eat.” Why tell anyone of my hunger if the world is mine, when you have an inheritance that is infinite, that is unspoiled, unwavering, when these things begin to happen within you?756 ¶23

And the minute you drink the blood, you are raised. The whole story begins on the resurrection. There would be no Christianity without resurrection, and resurrection without crucifixion is simply sheer nonsense. How could there be resurrection without death? So God dies, and that was his love for you, his love for me: “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” Not as two, as one, yet without loss of identity of the one whom I raise. No change of identity, no change of that wonderful specific individuality, the same self, yet now including a far greater self than before, who is none other than God the Father, Jesus Christ. To include him and yet remain the being that I am? Yes. Without change of identity you encompass this infinite presence who is Jesus Christ, and you are he, without change of identity. That’s the mystery. And in the end, only Jesus, nothing but Jesus, and you are he.756 ¶24

So I tell you, love endures forever as told us in the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians. Everything will pass, but love endures always.756 ¶25

Someone defined the three virtues, faith, hope and love: faith as believing what is incredible, hope is hoping when all seems hopeless, and love is forgiving what is unforgivable, that’s love.756 ¶26

But everything that you have ever done is forgiven. If I had to expiate my past as the world teaches one must, I could never be exonerated, not in eternity. But in that embrace of love, though my sins were there at that moment like scarlet, they were, at that very moment, made white as snow. Here was complete divine acquittal of all that I had ever done…and I did everything that man could ever do. I had to. Everything that man was capable of doing I did up to that moment, and he embraced me, and exonerated me. I was divinely acquitted, and my sins that were then like scarlet became white as snow.756 ¶27

No one can really save himself. We are saved by the grace of God. It’s not your own doing, so there is no way to boast…it’s by the grace of God.756 ¶28

Now tonight, take this. We are called upon to imitate God as dear children. Tonight, here is how I would imitate him were I you. It’s told us in the 1st Epistle of John, the 4th chapter, “We love, because he first loved us.” “Because” implies causation. Our love is response, only response; the cause is God loved me first. Now, that apostolic “we” must now become a personal “I”: I love, because God first loved me. Now imitate God as a dear child, as I’m told in Ephesians . Start to love. I want a response of love? Then I start loving the one I would have respond. If I expect it to come from there and I don’t initiate it, I will wait in vain. I’ll wait forever, for I must imitate God as a dear child. Well, I’m told because I live, you will live also…therefore, I must be dead. I live, therefore you will live also. See the change in tense?756 ¶29

Pygmalion and Galatea: She’s dead, the creation of the great artist. She’s made of marble. And to whom does he pray to make her alive? He prays to the goddess of love, and asks the goddess to make her animate that he could embrace her, and find affection, and find a companion in his creation. And love responds. When love responds, Galatea utters…her first word is to call her creator’s name, and she calls out “Pygmalion.”756 ¶30

Well, the first word I ever uttered and you ever uttered is to call our Creator’s name. Before I can say anything or see anything, though I couldn’t utter the words, I had to be aware of being before I could become aware of being aware of something. I had first to be aware of being before I could be aware of anything. So although I couldn’t use words, I was but a tot, you made me. No matter what I could [...] my hand moving before my eyes, but I had to be aware of being first before I was aware of a hand, or whatever it was moving before my eyes. And so, a little child is first aware of being before it becomes aware of anything in this world. So here, the first word that the child is really uttering is the name of its Creator. Because, to be aware of being is saying in the depths of one’s being, “I am.” If I am, then I’m aware. So I must first be before I can be aware of anything. So, as Galatea became aware she calls her creator’s name and she calls out, “Pygmalion.” Here is simply an aspect of this eternal vision.756 ¶31

So, if I must imitate God, and the initiative is with God, and I am loved because God first loved me, well, then imitate him. Well, then I am aware of being, and I want someone in my world to respond, to appreciate what I do, and to express that appreciation, well, then I must start loving. I must start expecting that appreciation and go beyond it and hear it as though it were true. I must listen just as though I heard what I would hear were it true, then comes the response; for the world is but an echo, the world is only a response of what you are doing.756 ¶32

So when I am not loved, then I am not imitating God as a dear child. I’m expecting it to originate there, and it can’t originate there, it has to originate in you. So the whole vast world is myself pushed out. And if God is love, then I love him because he first loved me, and I must imitate him. Well, then I see the whole vast world round about me. Alright, I want the world to respond in what kind?756 ¶33

I once said to my brother Victor, who has made a fortune in this world on the little tiny island called Barbados. You could put four Barbadoses in Los Angeles and still have room. He’s made a considerable fortune and he started behind the eight-ball. He said to me, “You know, Neville, nobody will believe it…maybe you will…when they say, ‘What is the secret of your success?’ they think that because I have money that I love money. I don’t love money. Oh, yes, I have it, I have millions, but I don’t love money. I love the use of money. But if I told you what I consider my success and the secret of my success, maybe you will believe, maybe you won’t…others don’t.” Because, being a successful businessman, they are afraid of him, and they think he’s hard. They think he’s everything that he’s not. And this is what he told me. What do you think he said? He said, “My secret is this: I love people. They’re all afraid of me because I have money, but I’m never too busy to see anyone. Regardless of the pigment of their skin, they can sit right down…with anyone coming in. If Churchill came in…when Churchill was alive he came…he would sit in the same seat that my porter would come, if my porter wanted to see me. And I really love people.”756 ¶34

And so, he’s done it all through believing, by giving. He’s always giving, not thinking of himself, just simply giving. But he makes a fortune and he can’t stop making it. It pours and pours and pours. And he tells me his secret is because “I love people.”756 ¶35

Now he doesn’t know the Bible as you do. He certainly doesn’t know it as I do; but innately he knew that God is love and I love because he first loved me. How he got that I don’t know, but he just loves people. People have to bring him all kinds of information that you can’t buy in any other way. He finds all kinds of deals because people love him, and yet they’re afraid of him.756 ¶36

Just as man not knowing the unknown is afraid of God, who is in the flower. If you ever saw the risen Christ, you wonder, how could I ever in eternity have ever been afraid of God when there is not a thing in the risen Christ but infinite love, nothing but love? And yet man fears this unseen. You can’t see him until he calls you. He hides his face, because you went astray, and simply served another god, and played the harlot with one who is not God, by worshipping some false power, call it by any name. There’s only God, and you go back to him. And one day he will not hide his face any more, he’ll unveil it, and you will see infinite love. He embraces you and then you are he. The union is complete and no one can sunder it.756 ¶37

So tonight, you take me at my word. I’m telling you what I’ve experienced. You start tonight and, alright, fall in love with being successful. And success…you always need, a state always needs a man to express it. And so, a man will express it. He’ll come into your world. Fall in love with being successful, and then men will come, and you’ll be successful without the effort you think it will take. All these things work almost without effort, if you really believe in God and imitate him as a dear child.756 ¶38

So I tell you everything in the world that we now hold so dear will all pass away, but love will not pass away, because love is God himself.756 ¶39

Now let us go into the Silence.756 ¶40

* * * [...] and I think you will find the story I will tell on Monday a very fascinating story, based upon a letter I received. She doesn’t know as yet how perfectly it fits in with the visions, my own personal visions over the past, I would say, twenty years. She may not be here tonight, I don’t know if she is here or not, and she may not even come on Monday. Doesn’t really matter. But what she wrote me this last week…and how perfectly it fits with the visions that I will tell on Monday. Is this drama secular or sacred? Now are there any questions?756 ¶41

This is going to be a very practical Course. Therefore, I hope that everyone in this class has a very clear picture of what he desires, for I am convinced that you can realize your desires by the technique you will receive here this week in these five lessons.755 ¶1

That you may receive the full benefit of these instructions, let me state now that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons who ever existed or to any event that ever occurred upon earth. The ancient story tellers were not writing history but an allegorical picture lesson of certain basic principles which they clothed in the garb of history, and they adapted these stories to the limited capacity of a most uncritical and credulous people. Throughout the centuries we have mistakenly taken personifications for persons, allegory for history, the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction, and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended. The difference between the form of the Bible and its substance is as great as the difference between a grain of corn and the life germ within that grain. As our assimilative organs discriminate between food that can be built into our system and food that must be discarded, so do our awakened intuitive faculties discover beneath allegory and parable, the psychological life-germ of the Bible; and, feeding on this, we, too, cast off the form which conveyed the message.755 ¶2

The argument against the historicity of the Bible is too lengthy; consequently, it is not suitable for inclusion in this practical psychological interpretation of its stories. Therefore, I will waste no time in trying to convince you that the Bible is not an historical fact.755 ¶3

Tonight I will take four stories and show you what the ancient story-tellers intended that you and I should see in these stories. The ancient teachers attached psychological truths to phallic and solar allegories. They did not know as much of the physical structure of man as do modern scientists, neither did they know as much about the heavens as do our modern astronomers. But the little they did know they used wisely and they built phallic and solar frames to which they tied the great psychological truths that they had discovered.755 ¶4

In the Old Testament you will find much of the Phallic worship. Because it is not helpful, I am not going to emphasize it. I shall only show you how to interpret it.755 ¶5

Before we come to the first of the psychological dramas that you and I may use in a practical sense, let me state the two outstanding names of the Bible: the one you and I translate as GOD or JEHOVAH, and the one we call his son, which we have as JESUS.755 ¶6

The ancients spelled these names by using little symbols. The ancient tongue, called the Hebraic language, was not a tongue that you exploded with the breath. It was a mystical language never uttered by man. Those who understood it, understood it as rnathematicians understand symbols of higher mathematics. It is not something people used to convey thought as I now use the English language. They said that God’s name was spelled, JOD HE VAU HE.755 ¶7

I shall take these symbols and in our normal, down to earth language, explain them in this manner. The first letter, JOD in the name GOD is a hand or a seed, not just a hand, but the hand of the director. If there is one organ of man that discriminates and sets him apart from the entire world of creation it is his hand. What we call a hand in the anthropoid ape is not a hand. It is used only for the purpose of conveying food to the mouth, or to swing from branch to branch. Man’s hand fashions, it molds. You cannot really express yourself without the hand. This is the builder’s hand, the hand of the director; it directs, and molds, and builds within your world. The ancient story-tellers called the first letter JOD, the hand, or the absolute seed out of which the whole of creation will come.755 ¶8

To the second letter, HE, they gave the symbol of a window. A window is an eye — the window is to the house what the eye is to the body.755 ¶9

The third letter, VAU, they called a nail. A nail is used for the purpose of binding things together. The conjunction “and” in the Hebraic tongue is simply the third letter, or VAU. If I want to say ‘man and woman’, I put the VAU in the middle, it binds them together. The fourth and last letter, HE, is another window or eye.755 ¶10

In this modern, down to earth language of ours, you can forget eyes and windows and hands and look at it in this manner. You are seated here now. This first letter, JOD, is your I AMness, your awareness. You are aware of being aware — that is the first letter. Out of this awareness all states of awareness come.755 ¶11

The second letter, HE, called an eye, is your imagination, your ability to perceive. You imagine or perceive something which seems to be other than Self. As though you were lost in reverie and contemplated mental states in a detached manner, making the thinker and his thoughts separate entities.755 ¶12

The third letter, VAU, is your ability to feel you are that which you desire to be. As you feel you are it, you become aware of being it. To walk as though you were what you want to be is to take your desire out of the imaginary world and put the VAU upon it. You have completed the drama of creation. I am aware of something. Then I become aware of actually being that of which I was aware.755 ¶13

The fourth and last letter in the name of God is another HE, another eye, meaning the visible objective world which constantly bears witness of that which I am conscious of being. You do nothing about the objective world; it always molds itself in harmony with that which you are conscious of being.755 ¶14

You are told this is the name by which all things are made, and without it there is nothing made that is made. The name is simply what you have now as you are seated here. You are conscious of being, aren’t you? Certainly you are. You are also conscious of something that is other than yourself: the room, the furniture, the people. You may become selective now. Maybe you do not want to be other than what you are, or to own what you see. But you have the capacity to feel what it would be like were you now other than what you are. As you assume that you are that which you want to be, you have completed the name of God or the JOD HE VAU HE. The final result, the objectification of your assumption, is not your concern. It will come into View automatically as you assume the consciousness of being it.755 ¶15

Now let us turn to the Son’s name, for he gives the Son dominion over the world. You are that Son, you are the great Joshua, or Jesus, of the Bible. You know the name Joshua or Jehoshua we have Anglicized as Jesus. The Son’s name is almost like the Father’s name. The first three letters of the Father’s name are the first three letters of the Son’s name, JOD HE VAU, then you add a SHIN and an AYIN, making the Son’s name read, JOD HE VAU SHIN AYIN’. You have heard what the first three are: JOD HE VAU.755 ¶16

JOD means that you are aware; HE means that you are aware of something; and VAU means that you became aware of being that of which you were aware. You have dominion because you have the ability to conceive and to become that which you conceive. That is the power of creation.755 ¶17

But why is a SHIN put in the name of the Son? Because of the infinite mercy of our Father. Mind you, the Father and the Son are one. But when the Father becomes conscious of being man he puts within the condition called man that which he did not give unto himself. He puts a SHIN for this purpose; a SHIN is symbolized as a tooth. A tooth is that which consumes, that which devours. I must have within me the power to consume that which I now dislike. I, in my ignorance, brought to birth certain things I now dislike and would like to leave behind me. Were there not within me the flames that would consume it, I would be condemned forever to live in a world of all my mistakes. But there is a SHIN, or flame, within the name of the Son, which allows that Son to become detached from states He formerly expressed within the world.755 ¶18

Man is incapable of seeing other than the contents of his own consciousness. If I now become detached in consciousness from this room by turning my attention away from it, then, I am no longer conscious of it. There is something in me that devours it within me. It can only live within my objective world if I keep it alive within my consciousness. It is the SHIN, or a tooth, in the Son’s name that gives him absolute dominion.755 ¶19

Why could it not have been in the Father’s name? For this simple reason: Nothing can cease to be in the Father. Even the unlovely things cannot cease to be. If I once give it expression, forever and ever it remains locked within the dimensionally greater Self which is the Father. But I would not like to keep alive within my world all of my mistakes. So I, in my infinite mercy gave to myself, when I became man, the power to become detached from these things that I, in my ignorance, brought to birth in my world.755 ¶20

These are the two names which give you dominion. You have dominion if, as you walk the earth, you know that your consciousness is God, the one and only reality. You become aware of something you would like to express or possess. You have the ability to feel that you are and possess that which but a moment before was imaginary. The final result, the embodying of your assumption, is completely outside of the offices of a three-dimensional mind. It comes to birth in a way that no man knows. If these two names are clear in your mind’s eye, you will see that they are your eternal names. As you sit here, you are this JOD HE VAU HE; you are the JOD HE VAU SHIN AYIN.755 ¶21

The stories of the Bible concern themselves exclusively with the power of imagination. They are really dramatizations of the technique of prayer, for prayer is the secret of changing the future. The Bible reveals the key by which man enters a dimensionally larger world for the purpose of changing the conditions of the lesser world in which he lives. A prayer granted implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer, which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, man is the spring of action, the directing mind, and the one who grants the prayer. The stories of the Bible contain a powerful challenge to the thinking capacity of man. The underlying truth — that they are psychological dramas and not historical facts — demands reiteration, inasmuch as it is the only justification for the stories.755 ¶22

With a little imagination we may easily trace the psychological sense in all the stories of the Bible. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” Here in the first chapter of the Bible the ancient teachers laid the foundation that God and man are one, and that man has dominion over all the earth.755 ¶23

If God and man are one, then God can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. The question arises: What is God? God is man’s consciousness, his awareness, his I AMness. The drama of life is a psychological one in which we bring circumstances to pass by our attitudes rather than by our acts. The corner-stone on which all things are based is mans concept of himself. He acts as he does, and has the experiences that he does, because his concept of himself is what it is, and for no other reason. Had he a different concept of himself, he would act differently and have different experiences. Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, alters his future in harmony with his assumption, for, assumptions though false, if sustained, will harden into fact.755 ¶24

The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by the senses. But the ancient teachers discovered that sleep, or a state akin to sleep, aided man in making his assumption. Therefore, they dramatized the first creative act of man as one in which man was in a profound sleep. This not only sets the pattern for all future creative acts, but shows us that man has but one substance that is truly his to use in creating his world and that is himself. “And the Lord God (man) caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman.” Before God fashions this woman for man he brings unto Adam the beasts of the field, and the fowls of the air and has Adam name them. “Whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” If you will take a concordance or a Bible dictionary and look up the word thigh as used in this story you will see that it has nothing to do with the thigh. It is defined as the soft parts that are creative in a man, that hang upon the thigh of a man. The ancient story-tellers used this phallic frame to reveal a great psychological truth.755 ¶25

An angel is a messenger of God. You are God, as you have just discovered for your consciousness is God, and you have an idea, a message. You are wrestling with an idea, for you do not know that you are already that which you contemplate, neither do you believe you could become it. You would like to, but you do not believe you could. Who wrestles with the angel? Jacob. And the word Jacob, by definition, means the supplanter. You would like to transform yourself and become that which reason and your senses deny. As you wrestle with your ideal, trying to feel that you are it, this is what happens.755 ¶26

When you actually feel that you are it, something goes out of you. You may use the words, “Who has touched me, for I perceive virtue has gone out of me?” You become for a moment, after a successful meditation, incapable of continuing in the act, as though it were a physical creative act. You are just as impotent after you have prayed successfully as you are after the physical creative act. When satisfaction is yours, you no longer hunger for it. If the hunger persists you did not explode the idea within you, you did not actually succeed in becoming conscious of being that which you wanted to be. There was still that thirst when you came out of the deep. If I can feel that I am that which but a few seconds ago I knew I was not, but desired to be, then I am no longer hungry to be it. I am no longer thirsty because I feel satisfied in that state. Then something shrinks within me, not physically but in my feeling, in my consciousness, for that is the creativeness of man. He so shrinks in desire, he loses the desire to continue in this meditation. He does not halt physically, he simply has no desire to continue the meditative act. “When you pray believe that you have received, and you shall receive.” When the physical creative act is completed, the sinew which is upon the hollow of man’s thigh shrinks, and man finds himself impotent or is halted. In like manner when a man prays successfully he believes that he is already that which he desired to be, therefore he cannot continue desiring to be that which he is already conscious of being. At the moment of satisfaction, physical and psychological, something goes out which in time bears witness to man’s creative power.755 ¶27

************** Our next story is in the 38th chapter of the book of Genesis. Here is a King whose name is ]udah, the first three letters of whose name also begins JOD HE VAU. Tamar is his daughter-in-law. The word Tamar means a palm tree or the most beautiful, the most comely. She is gracious and beautiful to look on and is called a palm tree. A tall, stately palm tree blossoms even in the desert — wherever it is there is an oasis. When you see the palm tree in the desert, there will be found what you seek most in that parched land. There is nothing more desirable to a man moving across a desert than the sight of a palm tree. In our case, to be practical, our objective is the palm tree. That is the stately, beautiful one that we seek. Whatever it is that you and I want, what we truly desire, is personified in the story as Tamar the beautiful.755 ¶28

We are told she dresses herself in the veils of a harlot and sits in the public place. Her father-in-law, King Judah, comes by; and he is so in love with this one who is veiled that he offers her a kid to be intimate with her. She said, “What will you give me as a pledge that you will give me a kid?” Looking around he said, “What do you want me to give as a pledge?” She answered, “Give me your ring, give me your bracelets, and give me your staff.” Whereupon, he took from his hand the ring, and the bracelet, and gave them to her along with his sceptre. And he went in unto her and knew her, and she bore him a son.755 ¶29

That is the story; now for the interpretation. Man has one gift that is truly his to give, and that is himself. He has no other gift, as told you in the very first creative act of Adam begetting the woman out of himself. There was no other substance in the world but himself with which he could fashion the object of his desire. In like manner Judah had but one gift that was truly his to give — himself, as the ring, the bracelets and the staff symbolized, for these were the symbols of his kingship. Man offers that which is not himself, but life demands that he give the one thing that symbolizes himself. “Give me your ring, give me your bracelet, give me your sceptre.” These make the King. When he gives them he gives of himself.755 ¶30

You are the great King Judah. Before you can know your Tamar and make her bear your likeness in the world, you must go in unto her and give of self.755 ¶31

Suppose I want security. I cannot get it by knowing people who have it. I cannot get it by pulling strings. I must become conscious of being secure. Let us say I want to be healthy. Pills will not do it. Diet or climate will not do it. I must become conscious of being healthy by assuming the feeling of being healthy. Perhaps I want to be lifted up in this world. Merely looking at kings and presidents and noble people and living in their reflection will not make me dignified. I must become conscious of being noble and dignified and walk as though I were that which I now want to be. When I walk in that light I give of myself to the image that haunted my mind, and in time she bears me a child; which means I objectify a world in harmony with that which I am conscious of being. You are King Judah and you are also Tamar. When you become conscious of being that which you want to be you are Tamar. Then you crystallize your desire within the world round about you.755 ¶32

No matter what stories you read in the Bible, no matter how many characters these ancient story-tellers introduced into the drama, there is one thing you and I must always bear in mind — they all take place within the mind of the individual man. All the characters live in the mind of the individual man. As you read the story, make it fit the pattern of self. Know that your consciousness is the only reality. Then know what you want to be. Then assume the feeling of being that which you want to be, and remain faithful to your assumption, living and acting on your conviction. Always make it fit that pattern.755 ¶33

************** Our third interpretation is the story of Isaac and his two sons: Esau and Jacob. The picture is drawn of a blind man being deceived by his second son into giving him the blessing which belonged to his first son. The story stresses the point that the deception was accomplished through the sense of touch. “And Isaac said unto Jacob, Come near, I pray thee that I may feel thee, my son, whether thou be my very son Esau or not. And Jacob went near unto Isaac his father; and he felt him…. And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had made an end of blessing Jacob, and Jacob was yet scarce gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting.” This story can be very helpful if you will re-enact it now. Again bear in mind that all the characters of the Bible are personifications of abstract ideas and must be fulfilled in the individual man.755 ¶34

You are the blind father and both sons. Isaac is old and blind, and sensing the approach of death, calls his first son Esau a rough hairy boy, and sends him into the woods that he may bring in some venison. The second son, Jacob, a smooth skin boy, overheard the request of his father. Desiring the birthright of his brother, Jacob, the smooth skinned son, slaughtered one of his father’s flock and skinned it. Then, dressed in the hairy skins of the kid he had slaughtered, he came through subtlety and betrayed his father into believing that he was Esau. The father said, “Come close my son that I may feel you. I cannot see, but come that I may feel.” Note the stress that is placed upon feeling in this story. He came close and the father said to him, “The voice is Jacob’s voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” And feeling this roughness, the reality of the son Esau, he pronounced the blessing and gave it to Jacob.755 ¶35

You are told in the story that as Isaac pronounced the blessing and Jacob had scarcely gone out from his presence, that his brother Esau came in from his hunting. This is an important verse.755 ¶36

Do not become distressed in our practical approach to it, for as you sit here you, too, are Isaac. This room in which you are seated is your present Esau. This is the rough or sensibly known world, known by reason of your bodily organs. All of your senses bear witness to the fact that you are here in this room. Everything tells you that you are here, but perhaps you do not want to be here. You can apply this toward any objective. The room in which you are seated at any time — the environment in which you are placed, this is your rough or sensibly known world or son which is personified in the story as Esau.755 ¶37

What you would like in place of what you have or are is your smooth skinned state or Jacob, the supplanter. You do not send your visible world hunting, as so many people do, by denial. By saying it does not exist you make it all the more real. Instead, you simply remove your attention from the region of sensation which at this moment is the room round about you, and you concentrate your attention on that which you want to put in its place, that which you want to make real.755 ¶38

In concentrating on your objective, the secret is to bring it here. You must make elsewhere here and then now imagine that your objective is so close that you can feel it. Suppose at this very moment I want a piano here in this room. To see a piano in my mind’s eye existing elsewhere does not do it. But to visualize it in this room as though it were here and to put my mental hand upon the piano and to feel it solidly real, is to take that subjective state personified as my second son Jacob and bring it so close that I can feel it.755 ¶39

Isaac is called a blind man. You are blind because you do not see your objective with your bodily organs. You cannot see it with your objective senses. You only perceive it with your mind, but you bring it so close that you can feel it as though it were solidly real now. When this is done and you lose yourself in its reality and feel it to be real, open your eyes. When you open your eyes what happens? The room that you had shut out but a moment ago returns from the hunt.755 ¶40

You no sooner gave the blessing — felt the imaginary state to be real — than the objective world, which seemingly was unreal, returns. It does not speak to you with words as recorded of Esau, but the very room round about you tells you by its presence that you have been self-deceived. It tells you that when you lost yourself in contemplation, feeling that you were now what you wanted to be, feeling that you now possess what you desire to possess, that you were simply deceiving self. Look at this room. It denies that you are elsewhere.755 ¶41

If you know the law, you now say: “Even though your brother came through subtlety and betrayed me and took your birthright, I gave him your blessing and I cannot retract.” In other words, you remain faithful to this subjective reality and you do not take back from it the power of birth. You gave it the right of birth and it is going to become objective within this world of yours. There is no room in this limited space of yours for two things to occupy the same space at the same time. By making the subjective real it resurrects itself within your world. Take the idea that you want to embody, and assume that you are already it. Lose yourself in feeling this assumption is solidly real. As you give it this sense of reality, you have given it the blessing which belongs to the objective world, and you do not have to aid its birth any more than you have to aid the birth of a child or a seed you plant in the ground. The seed you plant grows unaided by a man, for it contains within itself all the power and all the plans necessary for self-expression.755 ¶42

You can this night re-enact the drama of Isaac blessing his second son and see what happens in the immediate future in your world. Your present environment vanishes, all the circumstances of life change and make way for the coming of that to which you have given your life. As you walk, knowing that you are what you wanted to be, you objectify it without the assistance of another.755 ¶43

************** The fourth story for tonight is taken from the last of the books attributed to Moses. If you need proof that Moses did not write it, read the story carefully. It is found in the 34th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. Ask any priest or rabbi, ‘who is the author of this book?’, and they will tell you that Moses wrote it. In the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy you will read of a man writing his own obituary, that is, Moses wrote this chapter. A man may sit down and write what he would like to have placed upon his tombstone, but here is a man who writes his own obituary. And then he dies and so completely rubs himself out that he defies posterity to find where he has buried himself. “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord. And he buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, over against Beth-poer: but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” You must this night — not tomorrow — learn the technique of writing your own obituary and so completely die to what you are that no man in this world can tell you where you buried the old man.755 ¶44

If you are now ill and you become well, and I know you by reason of the fact that you are ill, where can you point and tell me you buried the sick one? If you are impoverished and borrow from every friend you have, and then suddenly you roll in wealth, where did you bury the poor man? You so completely rub out poverty in your mind’s eye that there is nothing in this world you can point to and claim, that is where I left it. A complete transformation of consciousness rubs out all evidence that anything other than this ever existed in the world.755 ¶45

The most beautiful technique for the realizing of man’s objective is given in the first verse of the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy: “And Moses went up from the Plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho. And the Lord shewed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan.”755 ¶46

You read that verse and say, “So what?” But take a concordance and look up the words. The first word, Moses, means to draw out, to rescue, to lift out, to fetch. In other words, Moses is the personification of the power in man that can draw out of man that which he seeks, for everything comes from within, not from without. You draw from within yourself that which you now want to express as something objective to yourself. You are Moses coming out of the plains of Moab. The word Moab is a contraction of two Hebraic words, Mem and Ab, meaning mother-father. Your consciousness is the mother-father, there is no other cause in the world. Your I AMness, your awareness, is this Moab or mother-father. You are always drawing something out of it. The next word is Nebo. In your concordance Nebo is defined as a prophecy. A prophecy is something subjective. If I say, “So-and-so will be,” it is an image in the mind; it is not yet a fact. We must wait and either prove or disprove this prophecy. In our language Nebo is your wish, your desire. It is called a mountain because it is something that appears difficult to ascend and is therefore seemingly impossible of realization. A mountain is something bigger than you are, it towers over you. Nebo personifies that which you want to be in contrast to that which you are. The word Pisgah, by definition, is to contemplate. Jericho is a fragrant odor. And Gilead means the hills of witnesses. The last word is Dan the Prophet.755 ¶47

Now put them all together in a practical sense and see what the ancients tried to tell us. As I stand here, having discovered that my consciousness is God, and that I can by simply feeling that I am what I want to be transform myself into the likeness of that which I am assuming I am; I know now that I am all that it takes to scale this mountain. I define my objective. I do not call it Nebo, I call it my desire. Whatever I want, that is my Nebo, that is my great mountain that I am going to scale.755 ¶48

I now begin to contemplate it, for I shall climb to the peak of Pisgah. I must contemplate my objective in such a manner that I get the reaction that satisfies. lf I do not get the reaction that pleases, then Jericho is not seen, for Jericho is a fragrant odor. When I feel that I am what I want to be I cannot suppress the joy that comes with that feeling. I must always contemplate my objective until I get the feeling of satisfaction personified as Jericho. Then I do nothing to make it visible in my world; for the hills of Gilead, meaning men, women, children, the whole vast world round about me, come bearing witness. They come to testify that I am what I have assumed myself to be, and am sustaining within myself. When my world conforms to my assumption the prophecy is fulfilled. If I now know what I want to be, and assume that I am it, and walk as though I were, I become it and becoming it I so completely die to my former concept of self that I cannot point to any place in this world and say: that is where my former self is buried. I so completely died that I defy posterity to ever find where I buried my old self.755 ¶49

There must be someone in this room who will so completely transform himself in this world that his close immediate circle of friends will not recognize him. For ten years I was a dancer, dancing in Broadway shows, in vaudeville, night clubs, and in Europe. There was a time in my life when I thought I could not live without certain friends in my world. I would spread a table every night after the theatre and we would all dine well. I thought I could never live without them. Now I confess I could not live with them. We have nothing in common today. When we meet we do not purposely walk on the opposite side of the street, but it is almost a cold meeting because we have nothing to discuss. I so died to that life that as I meet these people they cannot even talk of the old times. But there are people living today who are still living in that state, getting poorer and poorer. They always like to talk about the old times. They never buried that man at all, he is very much alive within their world.755 ¶50

Moses was 120 years, a full, wonderful age as 120 indicates. One plus two plus zero equals three, the numerical symbol of expression. I am fully conscious of my expression. My eyes are undimmed and the natural functions of my body are not abated. I am fully conscious of being what I do not want to be. But knowing this law by which a man transforms himself, I assume that I am what I want to be and walk in the assumption that it is done. In becoming it, the old man dies and all that was related to that former concept of self dies with it. You cannot take any part of the old man into the new man. You cannot put new wine in old bottles or new patches on old garments. You must be a new being completely.755 ¶51

As you assume that you are what you want to be, you do not need the assistance of another to make it so. Neither do you need the assistance of anyone to bury the old man for you. Let the dead bury the dead.755 ¶52

Do not even look back, for no man having put his hand to the plow and then looking back is fit for the kingdom of heaven. Do not ask yourself how this thing is going to be. It does not matter if your reason denies it. It does not matter if all the world round about you denies it. You do not have to bury the old. “Let the dead bury the dead.” You will so bury the past by remaining faithful to your new concept of Self that you will defy the whole vast future to find where you buried it. To this day no man in all of Israel has discovered the sepulchre of Moses.755 ¶53

************** These are the four stories I promised you tonight. You must apply them every day of your life. Even though the chair on which you are now seated seems hard and does not lend itself to meditation, you can, by imagination, make it the most comfortable chair in the world.755 ¶54

Let me now define the technique as I want you to employ it. I trust each one of you came here tonight with a clear picture of your desire. Do not say it is impossible. Do you want it? You do not have to use your moral code to realize it. It is altogether outside the reach of your code. Consciousness is the one and only reality. Therefore, we must form the object of our desire out of our own consciousness. People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things, and the suggestion to create a state akin to sleep in order to aid you in assuming that which reason and your senses deny, is one of the simple things you might slight. However, this simple formula for changing the future, which was discovered by the ancient teachers and given to us in the Bible, can be proved by all.755 ¶55

The first step in changing the future is Desire, that is, define your objective — know definitely what you want. Second: construct an event which you believe you would encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire – an event which implies fulfillment of your desire – something which will have the action of Self predominant. The third step is to immobilize the physical body and induce a state akin to sleep. Then mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action. Imagine all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW. You must participate in the imaginary action, not merely stand back and look on, but FEEL that you are actually performing the action, so that the imaginary sensation is real to you.755 ¶56

It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which FOLLOWS the fulfillment of your desire, one which implies fulfillment.755 ¶57

For example, suppose you desired promotion in office. Then being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination to imply promotion in office, immobilize your physical body and induce a state bordering on sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive without effort. Then visualize a friend standing before you. Put your imaginary hand into his. Feel it to be solid and real, and carry on an imaginary conversation with him in harmony with the FEELING OF HAVING BEEN PROMOTED.755 ¶58

You do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, you MAKE elsewhere HERE and the future NOW. The difference between FEELING yourself in action, here and now, and visualizing yourself in action, as though you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and failure.755 ¶59

The difference will be appreciated if you will now visualize yourself climbing a ladder. Then, with eyelids closed, imagine that a ladder is right in front of you and FEEL YOURSELF ACTUALLY CLIMBING IT.755 ¶60

Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action which implies fulfillment of the desire, to condense the idea into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, your attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to your attention, and in a few seconds they will lead you hundreds of miles away from your objective in point of space and years away in point of time. If you decide to climb a particular flight of stairs, because that is the likely event to follow the fulfillment of your desire, then you must restrict the action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should your attention wander off, bring it back to its task of climbing that flight of stairs, and keep on doing so until the imaginary action has all the solidity and distinctness of reality.755 ¶61

The idea must be maintained in the mind without any sensible effort on your part. You must, with the minimum of effort permeate the mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Drowsiness facilitates change because it favors attention without effort, but it must not be pushed to the state of sleep in which you no longer are able to control the movements of your attention. But a moderate degree of drowsiness in which you are still able to direct your thoughts.755 ¶62

A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and drowsy state, repeat over and over again like a lullaby, any short phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, such as, “Thank you, thank you, thank you” as though you addressed a higher power for having given you that which you desired.755 ¶63

I know that when this course comes to an end on Friday many of you here will be able to tell me you have realized your objectives. Two weeks ago I left the platform and went to the door to shake hands with the audience. I am safe in saying that at least 35 out of a class of 135 told me that which they desired when they joined this class they had already realized. This happened only two weeks ago. I did nothing to bring it to pass save to give them this technique of prayer.755 ¶64

You need do nothing to bring it to pass – save apply this technique of prayer. With your eyes closed and your physical body immobilized induce a state akin to sleep and enter into the action as though you were an actor playing the part. Experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now in possession of your objective. Make elsewhere HERE and then NOW. And the greater you, using a larger focus, will use all means, and call them good, which tend toward the production of that which you have assumed. You are relieved of all responsibility to make it so, because as you imagine and feel that it is so your dimensionally larger self determines the means.755 ¶65

Do not think for one moment that some one is going to be injured in order to make it so, or that some one is going to be disappointed. It is still not your concern. I must drive this home. Too many of us, schooled in different walks of life, are so concerned about the other. You ask, ‘If I get what I want will it not imply injury to another?’ There are ways you know not of, so do not be concerned.755 ¶66

Close your eyes now because we are going to be in a long silence. Soon you will become so lost in contemplation, feeling that you are what you want to be, that you will be totally unconscious of the fact that you are in this room with others. You will receive a shock when you open your eyes and discover we are here. It should be a shock when you open your eyes and discover that you are not actually that which, a moment before, you felt you were, or felt you possessed. Now we will go into the deep.755 ¶67

I need not remind you that you are now that which you have assumed that you are. Do not discuss it with anyone, not even self. You cannot take thought as to the HOW, when you know that you ARE already. Your three-dimensional reasoning, which is a very limited reasoning indeed, should not be brought into this drama. It does not know. What you have just felt to be true is true. Let no man tell you that you should not have it. What you feel that you have, you will have. And I promise you this much, after you have realized your objective, on reflection you will have to admit that this conscious reasoning mind of yours could never have devised the way. You are that and have that which this very moment you appropriated. Do not discuss it. Do not look to someone for encouragement because the thing might not come. It has come. Go about your Father’s business doing everything normally and let these things happen in your world.755 ¶68

I think you will find this hour a very practical hour and yet a very spiritual hour. We are told in the Book of Romans, Paul’s letter to the Romans, the very first chapter that all the invisible things of God are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made . So man is called upon to look at the made and then to discover the invisible God. All of the invisible things of him are clearly seen, and how do I know? Well, I look at the things that are made…and I begin to reflect upon what I did. For here I find myself in a world and am I really responsible? I try to find out why. I look at all the things round about me and finally I come upon a certain thought. You know, when there was not a thing in the world to support my belief, I began to believe that one day I would experience this…and then I experienced it. So I relate the things seen to the unseen. Could that be God? Well now, Paul tells us in the very next verse, “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God.” Oh, I found the relationship between the things seen and the unseen reality, the imaginal act, but I did not honor him as God. And then I turned to images resembling man and I thought man on the outside was the cause, because he seemed to aid me in bringing this to pass. I turn and I exchange the immortal God for images resembling man. Or I might have turned to other images, that of a man, not only a man but that of a reptile, that of an animal, that of a bird, and I turn to these and think that they are the cause of my good fortune or misfortune. And I gave up the truth about God for a lie, and began to worship and serve the thing created instead of the Creator; for I could relate the outer world in which I live to an imaginal activity within myself. Then I knew that that was the cause of it; for if God is the cause of everything in the world and I discover how it happened and then I will not accept the fact, I do not honor him as God. Read it in the 1st chapter of Romans, from the 20th to the 25th verses, this wonderful revelation to all of us, for he’s addressing us. This is not just for those to whom he sent the letter 2,000 years ago; it’s to everyone who reads the letter. Stop for a moment and see if you can’t relate the things around about you to something in you that caused them, and if you’re perfectly honest you’ll see a cause in yourself. The cause was an imaginal activity. But then you will not…or I hope you will…but I mean he said, “But then they did not honor God as God.” They did not honor him as God. They saw it, but did not in some way accept it…it was too great. And then they turned to man, an image, and turned to the created rather than to the Creator.754 ¶1

Tonight let us see how we bring about these things in our world. The Bible begins on this note, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” . He created the within and the without, and God dwells within. You’re told that he created the heavens, well, heaven is within you we are told . He created the heavens which is within, and then he created the without. Now how did he bring anything on the outside? We are told that “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” We find that motion was causative, that without motion it is impossible to bring forth anything, so God moved. Well, how does God move? We’ve discovered that he is our own wonderful human Imagination, for I can relate what happens to me to my own imaginal act, so I know where he is. But now how does he move? It’s impossible to detect motion unless you have some fixed frame of reference against which motion moves; because motion can only be detected by a change relative to some other state. Well, what would I do now to move from not only where I am but what I am to that which I would like to be? Eyes can be open or shut, it doesn’t matter…I’m doing it all in my Imagination. So I imagine now that I am…and I name it…and it differs in what a moment before I thought myself to be. How do I know that I have moved? Well, I look at my world mentally and I must see a change. I must see that which implies that I have moved.754 ¶2

I’ll take it spatially first. If you are familiar with San Francisco, and here we are in Los Angeles, I put myself in Union Square in San Francisco. How do I know? Well, my eyes are open and I’m seeing the St. Francis Hotel. If I turn around, my back is to the St. Francis Hotel and I’m looking towards the other side of the Square. I go beyond it in my mind’s eye and I go down to Market Street. I feel that I’m there. Well, how do I know?—now think of Los Angeles. I think of Los Angeles and I see it 500 miles to the south of me. If Los Angeles is 500 miles to the south of me, I must be at least 500 miles north. But now I will locate myself in San Francisco by these familiar objects, and then think of Los Angeles and see it 500 miles to the south. Well, that’s where I am. But I am told I can’t be double minded. Let not the man think that he will receive anything from the Lord if he’s a double-minded person, for he’s nothing more than simply a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind . So when I sleep this night I must sleep as though I were in San Francisco, and as I’m falling off to sleep I must think of the place that I formerly knew which is Los Angeles and see it to the south of me 500 miles away, and fall asleep in that assumption that I actually am in San Francisco. That is a motion and without motion it is impossible to bring forth anything.754 ¶3

This is true of everything in the world. In the beginning God created the inner and the outer, and then the Spirit of God moved, and then Creation began. So everything is within us…everything is within us. But now how do I bring these things forward? Well, by the same simple, simple technique. I found that I did it and it worked. I don’t want to fall into that category spoken of in that first chapter of Romans that although he knew God he did not honor him as God. I found how it worked. I found that if I slept while in New York City as though I were in Barbados…and to prove I was in Barbados I thought of New York City and saw it 2,000 miles to the north of me. Then came a letter from my brother giving reasons justifying why I should come to Barbados, and then making it possible by enclosing a draft. In the letter he stated that if I would go to a certain steamship company that he had already written them and they would give me a ticket for Barbados; that I needed no money, the draft would take care of my normal needs aboard the ship and that I could sign for anything that I wanted. If I used the bar, sign everything that I wanted, and he would meet me on arrival and pay all expenses that I incurred on the trip. I did not write him to ask anything of him. He, at the same time that I was doing what I’m telling you that I did, he had the impulse to write me and give me reasons why I should come to Barbados—that I hadn’t been there in twelve years and the family gathering at Christmas needed me to complete the link of the family. I was the only missing one of all the members. So his letter justified the draft, justified the expense that he would incur. And all that I did, I simply imagined that I was in Barbados. I didn’t have a nickel, literally.754 ¶4

Now, I know exactly what I did and therefore I found God. For all things are made by God and without him not a thing is made that is made . So if I’ve found God, am I going to fall into the trap now? That although I knew God, I did not honor him as God, and then turn to an image resembling a human being and say he was the cause of my trip? And give all credit and all praise to my brother who sent me the draft and notified the steamship company to issue me a ticket so that I could come in and present myself and give proof of my identity and then get the ticket? So, did I fall into the trap that he was the cause or did I remember the God that I discovered? That’s what Paul is asking everyone who reads that letter. They found God and then they did not honor him as God. They found him and then they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. For, to turn to see my brother as the cause of it…though he wrote the letter I had set it in motion long before he wrote the letter. The one who set it in motion he was causative…that was causation.754 ¶5

So here, nothing is happening to us that we have not set in motion in our own wonderful human Imagination. I tell you that you can be anything you want to be in this world. But when you voice your request and you say verbally I want to be so and so, it must be a genuine desire and not something that you just flippantly say that I would like so and so. You must so want it that you’re going to remain faithful to that change in position relative to a fixed frame. If you want to be other than what you are, well then, you can’t just assume for one little moment that I am it and then go back to your former state. Let not the double-minded man think for one moment he’ll receive anything from the Lord as we’re told in the Book of James. Don’t for one moment think that I can be double minded and get anything from the Lord. I want to be successful in business? I don’t care what the register told me today that I have and what I sold. I must sleep tonight as though it were all that I expected it to be, even though reason tells me it isn’t and my senses deny it. But I’ve got to actually assume that things are as I would like them to be, and then regardless of all the things round about me denying it, persist in that assumption. If I do it in this way, I cannot fail. This is the law by which we live in this world.754 ¶6

So take it to heart. The God spoken of in scripture is seated right here in everyone who is here and he is your own wonderful human Imagination. When you say “I am” that’s God. Now what are you imagining? If I could be so sensitive and I could feel your motion…that now you dare to assume that you’re other than what reason tells you that you are; and if I said, “Who has moved?” and you answered, I would say, “Tell me who is now moving because I can feel it?” and you would say, “I am.” Well now, you’ve called his name. That’s his only name. I am moving from where I thought I was to where I would like to be. I thought I was behind the eight-ball and now I’m completely clear. Things are rolling just as I want them. I moved from where I was to where I would like to be, and I detected the motion and wondered who is moving and then you replied “I am.” That’s God, and all thing are possible to God. So without the consent of anyone in this world you simply move from where you are to where you would like to be by a change of attitude, a simple change of attitude. But it has to be fixed. You move and then you fix it so that when you walk or when you sleep that attitude is yours. For that state to which you most constantly return constitutes your dwelling place. So that I constantly dwell upon this state and in this state, that’s where I live. And that’s where I will return to no matter where I go in the course of a day. I go back to that state. Then that will externalize itself in your world.754 ¶7

So, all the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen. How?—by the things that are made. So when they come into the world you recognize your own harvest. You’re bringing them in anyway, but man is unaware of it, and he exchanges the truth about God for the lie. He exchanges the immortal God for an image of a mortal man. And because a man was instrumental in aiding you to bring it to pass, you think he was the one who did it, that he was the cause. He’s not the cause at all. If tonight you inherited a fortune, don’t think for a second the one from whom it seemed to have come was the cause of it. No, preceding that you assumed it and he was only the instrument, the actor playing his part in giving it to you. A total stranger could be the one. You don’t need a wealthy uncle, a wealthy aunt, a wealthy grandfather.754 ¶8

I had it in my own family…a brother who…yes he did befriend a friend, but certainly there was no reason for him at the end of his life to leave him the sum of money that he did, a considerable sum of money. He had a wife and he had two sons and a daughter, and in his will he left it so that no one could break it. He said, “I gave them all that I thought was due them,” and then he left everything that he had to my brother Victor, and it was a considerable sum of money with all other things attached to it. My brother certainly was in his own mind’s eye assuming that he’s a wealthy man…he kept assuming that “I’m a wealthy man.” That was his consuming desire and there was no divided mindedness in my brother. He wanted that more than anything in the world. He actually wanted it. To this very day money to him is power and he wanted power. He was tired of poverty and he was tired of being shunted around. Then dreaming power, just dreaming wealth, then out of the nowhere people came and opportunities came. Well now, if he forgets the cause, he turns from the immortal God to an image resembling a man. That’s what you’ll read in that first chapter. And here he turns to a man and thinks that he was the cause of my good fortune, he gave me x-number of hundreds of thousands of dollars…and it wasn’t that at all. He had to or whoever it was. He’s only one of numberless who would have to do it at the very spur of the moment, because someone is dreaming that he is wealthy. Though he has not a thing to support his dream, he is dreaming that he is.754 ¶9

So I say to everyone, you can be what you want to be, but you can’t be double minded. You are told, “Let no one believe that looking into the mirror and turning away forgetting what he is that he will receive anything from the Lord; for the double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” So I say, well, I want it…and many a person will say to me I want so-and-so, and you meet them a week later and they forgot they even told you. How could you forget that was your request and then ask me, “Where is it?” This is not some little magical thing; this is based upon principle. You want it? You can have it! Are you willing to give up what you are to be what you want to be? That’s the only price you pay for it. You don’t make any sacrifice outside of giving up the state in which you find yourself to move into the state in which you want to be. They’re only states. So here, without motion it is impossible to bring anything forth, for everything is in the invisible world, but everything.754 ¶10

Now, how do I do it? I think of you who would actually congratulate me if you heard good news about me and I bring you into my mind’s eye and allow you to congratulate me. I know what this implies. The power is in the implication. What are you doing? You are congratulating me on my good fortune. I accept that congratulations and I don’t duck it, I accept it as fact. That is my subjective appropriation of my objective hope…because I am hoping that one day you will know of it and therefore you will congratulate me. So I go ahead in time and I go into that state and I allow you to congratulate me now. When you do it in the not distant future then it is only confirmation of my imaginal act. But I will remember what I did, and having done it I will not forget what I did. Then I’ll go about my business. When I think of you, I will let you know in my mind’s eye that you know of my good fortune. The day must come, it must externalize itself. So it externalizes itself, you will know of it, and you will congratulate me on my good fortune. So he brings things that are not seen into the world that is seen. As you’re told in the same Book of Romans, “And God calls things that are not seen as though they were seen, and the unseen becomes seen.” You’ll read that in the 4th chapter, the 17th verse of Romans . He calls a thing that is not seen just as though it were seen and the unseen becomes seen.754 ¶11

So how would I call it? In this simple movement…I move from where I couldn’t see it to where I could get a good look at it. Well, I can’t see on your face any expression other than what I would now see if you knew my present condition. If I don’t like that present condition, I want to see the same face but I see it differently. Now, if I move from what I am into what I would like to be, I would still know you, you would still be my friend. So I bring you into my mind’s eye and I let you see me as you would have to see me if things were as I want them to be. Then I don’t move from that. I mustn’t be double minded and go back and let you see me in my former state. I must persist in this one state where you are seeing me. Now this is true of everything that you do in this world, I don’t care what it is. If you want to be known, I don’t care what the world will tell you, you may have not a thing in this world to show to the world that would cause anyone to look back at you and point you out as someone that is known. Forget that. You want to be known, you want to be rich, you want to be this, you want to be the other, well then, dare to assume that you are! For these assumptions, though at the moment you assume them, are denied by your senses, if you persist in them they will actually become externalized…they’ll become facts in your life.754 ¶12

A friend of mine who is here tonight, and he’s promised to write it out for me, but here he said to me, “I started with $180 and I had so many debts that’s all that I had not so long ago in a small little restaurant in a small place, Ojai.” Now he’s contemplating an expansion into San Francisco. He said, “Tonight, Neville, the estimated value of my business is over a hundred thousand dollars.” I know him well. I first met him in San Francisco and he heard this. He was born and raised an ardent Catholic. In his mind’s eye he is still a deep, deep Christian, but he does not call it Catholicism or Protestantism or any other ism, but he was raised in the Catholic faith. He heard this from me in San Francisco and he believed it. He began to apply it and things worked. But we forget as he forgot, and then he remembered again, and then he forgot again. But now he has remembered and I hope this time that the memory is permanent. So he started in this manner and everything fell into line. Yes, men came in to help, all these things happened, but they were not the cause. The cause of everything that happened to him was all in his own wonderful Imagination. He would turn to his wife and say, “What have we forgotten to do? We aren’t applying this principle.” So when things did not go as they should go, he remembered there was a law behind it all: things are not just happening and they’re happening only because he is creating them. Then he got back on the ball. Now here is this wonderful opportunity for expansion in the city of San Francisco, and it all just happened. Today, they’re all about to incorporate and the value is in excess of a hundred thousand dollars…and he started with $180.754 ¶13

Now this is not too many years ago. So I say, everything in this world is possible to everyone if he knows who he is. If I asked the average person in this world, do you know God, and they were brutally honest, they would say, no I don’t. They speak of God, but Paul is not speaking of God. Paul said, “And they knew God, yet they did not honor him as God.” They knew God, for they found that one day they imagined a certain state and something happened that was related to that state.754 ¶14

Now, you might have read in yesterday’s paper or the day before yesterday’s paper, that this young lady, twenty-five years old, she read all these papers and read the magazines, she saw the TV, heard the radio, of all these murders of the young girls, and she became frightened. She read of these many nurses in Chicago who were killed, one after the other, because they didn’t cry out. She swore to herself she would cry out if it ever came to her life, and she took a knife and slept with a knife under her pillow for about two months. It was a knife and she toyed with the idea of getting a gun, but she said, no, I wouldn’t want a gun in the house…but she did have a knife. Then she put the knife back where it was in the sink area. Here, the girl is working undoubtedly in a very nice job, because she pays $160 a month rent, so she must have a nice job. Then she heard a sound coming from the kitchen and she saw a shadow. Next thing she knew a knife was at her throat. This tall blond man with long hair to his shoulders, about 6’2” and estimated weight about 190, and he said to her, “How old are you?” She said, “Twenty-five.” He said, “Take off your pajamas.” And she thought, “This is it, he’s going to kill me.” All these things she had done and imagined in the past, and what she would do if it ever happened to her. So she had a knife, mind you; but she didn’t have the knife this night, he had the knife. Then in some way she got out of the bed by his order to take off her pajamas, she got the knife and began to stab him all over his back. Then he ran leaving a trail of blood for at least a block. So she must really have done quite a job on his back. I don’t see how he can avoid being detected. He has to go to some hospital or some doctor to be repaired. But everything she had imagined having been exposed to TV, exposed to radio, exposed to all the things in the paper, came to pass. She may not relate it, but she did state that as she read it in the paper that all these things she did imagine and put herself as the victim and what she would do even to the point of getting a knife to protect her. And it was a knife; it was not a gun.754 ¶15

So, not a thing happens in this world by accident: this is a world of law. The most horrible things had first to be imagined and the most beautiful things had first to be imagined. So everything is being imagined, good, bad and indifferent, and these things are happening to us from morning to night. We have found God, as Paul said. The average person will say, “No, I haven’t found God. I never saw him. What does he look like?” Well, didn’t you see the phenomena? He tells you how you find him: “All the invisible things of him are clearly seen from the beginning of time.” How? By the things that are made! Well, that was made, that scene was made. Well, how could that be God? “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; I do all these things, and none can deliver out of my hands” . That’s God speaking…not just some outside being. I kill, I make alive; I heal. I am the Lord and beside me there is no God. Well, do you say “I am”? That’s he. You mean I did all these things? Yes, I did all these things, good, bad or indifferent. But I found him.754 ¶16

So they have found God. Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God. “Oh, I know that I imagined the thing and then it happened, but don’t tell me that is God, because that’s not my concept of God. I have a different concept of God…something up in the sky…but certainly not here in my own Imagination. Because I am capable of all the unlovely acts in the world and that could not be God.” But they don’t read their scripture. If they read the scripture they would hear the same God saying, “I kill, although I make alive; I wound and I heal.” Well, who is stabbing a person? She said, “I am.” Well, that’s God, that’s his name; his name is I AM. Who held the knife? I am! That was a person. And he was imagining all things, too, for he had imagined that “Suppose I’m not successful, what are the consequences of my act?” He had imagined that, too. So the whole vast drama is the unfolding of God within man, and there’s only one God that’s God.754 ¶17

If you really have a desire…but it must be a genuine desire so when you voice the wish it is not just an idle wish. It must be something that is so genuine that you mean it. Then I’ll tell you how to get it: you simply move from where you are mentally, not physically. People do all things on the outside. You don’t do it that way; you do it on the inside . What would the world look like if you were now the person that you want to be? What would it look like? Well, see it that way. If you see it that way, you have moved from where you were to where you would see it as you would see it if it were true. Well now, what would you see? Then move…the motion is all mental, all in your Imagination. But it must be genuine. If it’s genuine, you remain in that state. Don’t go from place to place, just remain there. “Into whatever house you go remain” he said. Just remain in it. So I’ll go into a state and I remain in that state regardless of what the world will do. If I remain in it, I will bring it into visibility. But it is impossible without motion to bring anything from the invisible state into the outer visible state. You can do it…everyone can do it…because you have an Imagination and that is God. That is God in you, and without him not a thing is created. Whatever is created is created by God whether it be good, whether it be indifferent, whether it be an evil thing.754 ¶18

So take me at my word. My friend is here tonight and I’ve asked him to write the story up for me in detail which he promised to do. But to start with $180…and that is not $180 clear, as he had debts, all kinds of debts in trying to make a little restaurant go. Then from there to suddenly find it growing and growing, and out of the nowhere someone comes down from San Francisco and said, “You know, this is my third visit here, all the way from San Francisco, because this is what old San Francisco used to be, and now it’s all tourists, all sophisticated. This is the real old San Francisco way of dining.” Then he proposed that he come to San Francisco, he’ll find him the place, and he’ll incorporate, and do all these things. Then the present value of this today is a hundred-odd thousand dollars from an investment of $180…which is not really $180, because he didn’t have any money and he had so many debts. Now he said, “Tonight I have the pink slip of everything in my restaurant. There is not one penny owed on anything in the restaurant, and I have the best material, the finest most modern equipment and everything. I hold the pink slip by simply applying this.”754 ¶19

So, I don’t ask him how you were born? He was born in a very devout Irish-Catholic family in Boston. His father is gone from this world but he went as a devout Catholic. His mother is still here and undoubtedly she’s a devout Catholic. They love him as a son, but undoubtedly before the father left he wondered, and the mother wonders, “What happened to my son?” But he found God. And they’re not yet…they found him, but they don’t believe that he’s God. Because no one can live a full ripe life and not at some time find a thing happening in their world and cannot see the relationship between what they imagined and what has happened. They refuse to believe that they are causative; they can’t believe that this is the cause of the phenomena of life, and so they will ignore it and brush it aside, but they found God. As he said in his own words, “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God; and exchanged the immortal God for an image resembling man, and exchanged the true knowledge of God, all that they knew about God, for a lie.” Then they worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.754 ¶20

The Creator is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God. If you are in control of what you are imagining, not a thing in this world is impossible to you. But you will find that when you find God your values will change: you will not worship things; you will worship God the Creator. You’ll be so thrilled when you can imagine something for a friend and see it work and then give thanks to the one that did it…all within you. So you thank God and you worship God and you serve God. When your friends give you the good news and it confirms what you imagined for them, you are thrilled and you honor God. You thank the friend for bringing the good news, for you knew it had to come some day, for you had imagined it. Therefore, thank him, but the real thanks goes to God for you’ve found him. And now you honor God because he never lets you down. You don’t have to burst a blood vessel to make it so…you let it be so. You knew the request was a genuine request. The man wanted this, the lady wanted that, and these wanted so-and-so, and you simply imagined it and trust him implicitly to do it. It was not based upon your moral code, your ethical code, no just your trust in God that he would do it. So you knew that what you had imagined was God in action and that God is faithful; therefore, it would come to pass in a way you could never devise, so you couldn’t tell them what to do to aid the birth of it. You only knew that you did it and therefore it had to work.754 ¶21

So I ask you who are in business, who have…if you’re not in your own business and you want to transcend what you are, imagine that you have. Don’t ask yourself if you are qualified…you’ll be qualified. All that it takes you will get. All that it takes to fill the better job will come to you; the know-how will come to you. You simply assume that you are the man, the woman that you would like to be. Then in a way that no one knows it is going to take place. Your businesses will grow, your family will grow, and all these things will grow just as you have imagined it.754 ¶22

So when you read that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep, you know who he is. He is your own Imagination, and it moves. You can stand perfectly still and move. And may I tell you, you can so move that you can be seen spatially at the point in space where you’ve imagined that you are. I’ve done it; I’m speaking from experience. Two thousand miles away I appeared to my sister, for I wanted her to see me, and yet physically I was in New York City in my own home. I wanted her to see me, and she came in and she saw me. She could not see what she ought to have seen with her physical eyes. She should have seen her son, but she couldn’t see her son, she could only see her brother Neville, for that’s what I wanted her to see when she looked at her son. Here I am physically in New York City, and yet to my sister in Barbados across water…and how did I move? I simply moved in my Imagination and yet in Barbados she saw me. Then she sat down and wrote me and said, “Neville, the strangest thing has happened to me. I went into the room to look at Billy and I couldn’t see Billy, I only saw you. I rubbed my eyes, I did everything, and no matter how I looked I couldn’t see Billy. My son was not there, it was you. Will you please explain it to me if you can?” At that very moment I was doing what she said that she saw and witnessed. And when I came out I told my wife and told a friend who was waiting for me to come out of my bedroom exactly what I had done. Eight days later came a letter from my sister asking if I could throw some light on this strange thing that had happened to her. Had I told it eight days before, then they might have believed me afterwards, yes, but there would have been a question. But they could not deny that I told them eight days before what I had done. It came not by air, because in those days you couldn’t get a letter by air, so it came by boat. It took eight days to bring that letter. I tell you that all things are possible to man because God and man are one.754 ¶23

So you’ll find this night a very practical night, and yet you’ll find it a very spiritual night. You take it, but you must be sincere in your wish, so that you’re not moving from place to place. Do you really want…and you name it. You want a glorious home? Don’t say, “Well, I can’t afford it.” Do you really want it? Then sleep in it as you will conceive it. Do you want this, that or the other? Well then, sleep in it as though it were true…and that’s your motion. You move from where you were into where you want to be. But remain there! When you rise in the morning and the world tells you that you’re not there, you simply walk through the door just as though you were. You’re leaving that place. And in that state you remain and then everything happens. If it takes the entire world to aid it, the entire world will aid it.754 ¶24

It took a man to come from San Francisco three times to enjoy a meal, a wonderful meal, but it’s not an extravagant meal, but a tasty meal. The kind of environment that he said old San Francisco used to have. He lived there for thirty years, and he said, “This is the kind of place we always had in old San Francisco, the décor, the atmosphere, the food, everything about it. Now today, all the restaurants have gone into catering to tourists and that old atmosphere has gone, and I would like to rebuild it, at least in one place. I tell you that when we open we’ll turn away everyone outside, because we’ll have so many of the local people coming, and they’ll come only by reservation. You’ll have no extra room for outsiders.” So I asked him to save me a spot anyway, coming from L.A. I know he will.754 ¶25

So take me at my word, it is impossible without motion to bring anything into this world, and the motion is all within you. The motion is a simple motion…all you do …you know exactly what you want. Well, if you had it, how would you see the world? If you see it as you now see it, you haven’t moved. If you see it as you would see it after the result, then you’ve moved. Now continue seeing that, for motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to another object. If I say I am moving now and I see everything as it is now, then I haven’t moved. But if as I move I look at the same frame of reference and I see it from a different angle, then I’ve moved. So I use as a frame of reference my friends, your face, and on your face I let you see me as you would have to see me if you knew of something that you do not now know. You have to see me differently. If you heard news of me that is not now known, when you meet me the next time you would see me differently. If that’s what I want you to know, then let me see on your face the expression that would imply that you know of that news. If you would be one who would congratulate me on that news, then let me accept the reality of your hand and the reality of your voice and the words coming congratulating me. Having done that, let me know that was true and let me have faith in this unseen reality. If I do, no power in the world can stop it, they can’t stop it.754 ¶26

If man only knew this, he’d be free, really free. But today he doesn’t know the source of the cause of all the things that happen in this world. He doesn’t know causation, he doesn’t know the cause of phenomena, and he thinks the president is doing it or the army’s doing it or the Pentagon or something on the outside…his competitor is doing it. Not a thing is doing anything but what is taking place within him in his own wonderful human Imagination.754 ¶27

In the deep Depression of 1929 we only hear of the hundreds of thousands who lost everything on paper in the stock market. For in those days you put up ten percent and even then you didn’t have to the way they manipulated it. So if you were wiped out and you say you’re wiped out of a half-million all on paper, you didn’t have it at all. But there were others who made fortunes. So, we read only of those who lost, but we do not read of the tens of thousands of men who became multi-millionaires. Because all stocks…I read in this morning’s paper that RCA dropped from this fantastic height down to eleven dollars and found no buyers, and the boy on the floor just as a joke bid one dollar for a block of stock at one dollar and got it. There were no takers and he got it at one dollar a share. Whether he could raise a few dollars to buy them I don’t know. But it kept on tumbling all the way down and they thought at eleven dollars it couldn’t possibly go lower. Then he put in a bid at one dollar a share and it fell to him because there were no takers. If he held on to it…and it has been split and split several times…what would that little boy who ran errands on the floor be worth today? But he was only one of that kind. There were those who had cash and they took advantage of it all and they simply bought. It tumbled and all stock lost seventy percent of their value. So, there were those who could buy.754 ¶28

But I’m not going into that side of it. I’m just saying, if you remember God…and God is not on the outside; God is on the inside and he’s your own wonderful human Imagination. He brings everything into being by moving. So he moves from one state to another state. He remains faithful to the state into which he goes, and then whatever is there must project itself on the screen of space and bear witness to his creative power. So, all the invisible things of him are clearly seen from the very creation of the world through the things that do appear. So they appear and you know exactly what motion he made. When this appears, that’s the motion that he made or it could not appear. If Depression appears, that’s the motion he made. If the papers begin to suggest to you that things are going to be on the way down, and you accept it, then you’ll move, suggested by a paper, a magazine, or some so-called expert, and then it will appear. It appears because you moved based upon some suggestion by what you thought to be an authority. And it isn’t that at all; it’s all within you. If you ignore the suggestions and do not accept them at all and keep on moving where you want to be, well then, you’ll move, and if you remain in it, it will externalize itself in your world.754 ¶29

Now, you’ll find this the practical night and yet you can’t divorce it from a very spiritual night because you’ve found God! What is more than finding God? And God is your own wonderful human Imagination. The day will come you’ll find him in a more wonderful way by the series that I’ve spoken about night after night, which we’ll pick up again, because that is to me far more important. But nevertheless, one should know who they are while they are here, that you’re not a victim of circumstances, you are not a victim of people on the outside; you are God! And there is no other Creator but God, there is no other Savior but God; and God is one, he’s not another, and he’s you.754 ¶30

Now let us to into the Silence. * * *754 ¶31

Now are there any questions, please? Well, above all things apply what you heard, and then share the results with me. Don’t give me anything, but tell me the story…that’s gift enough. I don’t mean that you apply it toward a fortune and then share your fortune with me, no, I’m not asking for that. But to tell me the story is enough. That’s a gift! For I love to hear the story, love to hear your dreams and your visions. So, until the next time…thank you.754 ¶32

In the Book of John we are told, “I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead you into all things” . Here, the incomplete form of the incarnate revelation will be continued by the Spirit of truth until there can be seen all the truth. When he comes you will know it. I will show you tonight how he comes into this world.753 ¶1

We think we are completely free to receive everything in the world that is true, but are we? I read recently a work called Vanished Pomps of Yesterday by Lord Frederick Hamilton, and in it he tells this story that Catherine the Great, finding the first violet of spring, ordered a sentry to be placed over it to protect it from being plucked. She forgot to rescind the order and so eventually it became a tradition, and day and night, summer and winter, a sentry stood where a violet a hundred and fifty years ago once grew. Now, these are researched stories that Lord Hamilton gave us in his works…150 years later a sentry was standing where a violet once grew. The generation that came didn’t know why he was there and he didn’t know. Well, make sure that some sentry is not standing now on the lawn keeping you from the Word of God. As we are told, just as this was the tradition in the Book of Mark and in the Book of Matthew that here you make the traditions of your fathers to void the Word of God and then you hand it on. You void the Word of God through your traditions and hand it on.753 ¶2

Now tonight, let me share with you (and the lady is here). When I got home on Friday night and read it, I was thrilled beyond measure, for the Spirit of truth has come to her. She said, “I found myself on a movie lot, I seemed to be in the company of two others. In the center of the lot sat a man and I walked up to him and he seemed to take on the appearance of John Wayne. He greeted me, he said, ‘Hello, Peggy’” Well now, that’s her name. “I in turn said, ‘Hello, John’ and I was thrilled and amazed that he knew me. Then he said something to me which I didn’t hear and I asked him to repeat it. He did, but he did in a softer tone and I didn’t hear it. I was embarrassed to ask him again. So when I woke I knew it was the most important thing that was said to me…and then I remembered what he said. This is what he said, ‘It is not “Before Abraham was, I am”; it is “Before Abraham, was I am” .753 ¶3

You dwell upon it. It will make all the difference in the world to your concept of this statement. In all translations the comma is after “was.” Now bear in mind that the original manuscripts from which all of our translations are made had no punctuation marks. These are all man made. There were no verses, there were no paragraphs, there were no chapters. We did not have punctuation and verses and paragraphs and chapters until almost the 16th Century. So man thought, well certainly, it is “Before Abraham was, I am” and a man is speaking. No. Here is the incarnate revelation trying to reveal the source of all the phenomena of life, and that source is I AM. When you read it with the punctuation after “was,” you think a man is telling you that he as a man preceded Abraham. But if you read it as it was revealed to my friend—I should say our friend for she now shares with us her revelation—read it “Before Abraham (comma), was I am.” He is not making any claim that would now separate him from us; for he said, “Go unto my Father and my brothers and say unto my brothers, I am ascending unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God” . Now there’s no separation from this revelation of the incarnate Word…not putting himself apart as something different that you and I should worship…just revealing to us what the I AM is unfolding within us. So I can’t thank her enough for this revelation. So when the Spirit of truth comes, he will lead us into all things as we are prepared to receive it.753 ¶4

Now tonight, can we really receive that revelation? Can we turn only to this one presence, I AM, and know it to be the source of everything in this world whether it is good, bad or indifferent? Now, we may think that God certainly could not produce wars and all the conflicts. There is no other God, there is no other source and there is no other Creator but God. What to us may seem the most horrible thing in the world…I would rather liken it unto a tapestry: one side it’s ugly, it’s horrible, but come on the right side and see the beauty of the tapestry. We cannot, here playing the parts that we play, know why we do what we do. I know certain very able imaginists who would like to see that all the things of the world are collected and they’re all preserved. But they cannot become eternally so. In other words, they can’t forever follow the eternal events. How it could be changed they confess they do not know. I would say to them revision would do it…but I would rather not. They say, “Let us look upon it and regard the entire history of man as so much material for the artistry of God.” Well, that’s beautifully said and it’s marvelous and you could be right, but I rather think that this event is coming up out of all the horrors that you and I experience, that everything that we do is simply in some strange, wonderful, magical way being transformed under that wonderful event that was the concept in the beginning. As we are told in Genesis, “You meant it for evil but God meant it for good.” So you played what you thought to be the evil part in selling me into slavery and yet by selling me into slavery I by my visions and my ability to interpret the visions of Pharaoh, I can now save enough of the harvest over a period of seven years to save civilization from death. For no one would have put away twenty percent of the yield of the field. But I know what the vision meant, and therefore interpreted it just as I knew that it ought to be and I saved twenty percent over seven years and saved civilization from starvation . So I rather believe that whatever we are doing is being instantly transformed into the beauty of this great event.753 ¶5

But if you dwell upon this lady’s revelation, it could only come to her through the Spirit of truth. First she saw John…well, John means “Jehovah favored”…that’s what the word means. But bear in mind that the dreamer in her is also manufacturing the being who is sitting on the chair and that here she comes to a director. Now, John Wayne in her mind and in my mind always plays the leading role. He is never cast in a secondary role. Well, God is the chief actor who plays all the parts in the world. He has always played the chief parts. You don’t see him playing the supporting role, he’s always the star in the picture. Here he is in the director’s chair, for that’s the typical director’s position. Here he’s not only directing, but he’s the chief actor. “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” So his name forever is I AM and so when you say “I am” that’s God. He actually became us that we may become God. So here she talks to him and she calls him John (Jehovah’s favored one) and he knows her by name. Well, we are told in scripture that he numbered all the stars and called all by name. And then, do you think he would have made you and not know you by name? And you’re far more precious than the stars…you are far more precious than all the stars and all the sands of the sea. Though we seem to be unnumbered, we are numbered in the mind of the Father and known by name, so when she comes forward he calls her “Hello, Peggy” and she in turn calls him, “Hello, John.” Then he tells her something she couldn’t hear. She asked him to repeat it, he does but softly and she couldn’t hear it and she was embarrassed. Thrilled that she was known by this one who undoubtedly was most important and what he said was most important. But when she was waking she remembered what he said. So let me repeat it if you haven’t a recorder. It is not “Before Abraham was, I am”; it is “Before Abraham, was I am.” Nothing came before him.753 ¶6

So he’s not making a claim—this quotation, by the way, comes from the 8th chapter of the gospel of John, at the very end—for here is the complete argument through the entire chapter concerning who is Father. “Did you know my father Abraham?” Well, they called Abraham father. And he said, “My Father is he whom you call God, but I know my Father and ye know not your God” . He is trying to get them back beyond a physical state to something that is far [...]. It is the source of all that is God, which he calls Father.753 ¶7

Now, I tell you tonight that you can test it. There is no other source. You can now assume that “I am” and you name it. You name exactly what you want to be and wear it as you would a suit of clothes until it seems natural. When you first put it on it seems unnatural. As a man, I know from experience, I buy a new hat and walk down the streets of New York City, no one knew me but I thought everyone knew I had a new hat. I was embarrassed with my new hat until I wore it long enough so that I could throw it in the corner and pick it up, put it on, and then it’s an old hat. When it became an old hat then I could walk normally. Put on a new pair of shoes and you think everyone knows you have new shoes. You may deny this but if you are honest with yourself, when you put on a new dress, a new suit, a new…you think everyone knows it, and nobody knows you. They don’t know you and they don’t care as you walk by. But you are in something new. Well, the same thing is true of an assumption. So you have an assumption and you assume that I am what reason denies, what your senses deny; therefore, it is new and you haven’t broken it in yet. All of a sudden you wear it until it seems natural. At the moment it becomes natural, you walk in it and it externalizes itself in the world, and the whole vast world then reflects the truth of what you are assuming. So the source of it all is I AM.753 ¶8

There’s only one God and Father of all and his name forever and forever is I AM. But if I think in terms of “the Lord,” well, “the Lord” is something on the outside. He said, “The Lord will make himself known in a vision and will speak with man in a dream” . Well, the minute I say “the Lord” I think another, but the word translated “the Lord” is Yod He Vau He, which is actually translated “I am.” So if I say “the I AM,” then man is not quite ready for it. So when man is ready to receive the Spirit of truth, then it comes. So she was ready and it came to her. She sat down and hastily wrote me last Friday night in script, for she had no time to type it our or write it in some other form, just hastily and gave it to me. I can say to her, The Spirit of truth comes to you and he will lead you into all things, for you’re prepared to receive it. But to be prepared to receive that you had to overcome an awful lot, for trained as we all were in the belief of an external God—some source outside of self who brought us to wherever we are and will lead us to where he’s going to lead us—is something on the outside. There is nothing on the outside! The being within you is the immortal, infinite being called God the Father. And you say “I am,” that’s God, that’s God the Father. When one day you discover it, you will know that you and he are one. So when the world rejects this revelation, it’s because they do not know the Father. They think they know the Father and they call him by some other name and worship him as something external to themselves.753 ¶9

Well, I tell you from my own revelation, from my own experience, the day will come—now this is revelation—that you will find scripture unfolding within you. One thing that is the most exciting thing ever is when that 2nd chapter of Psalms unfolds within you…when he stands before you and he calls you Father. You were taught to believe up until that moment that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and you did not realize until that moment that Jesus Christ is simply God revealing himself, he is God himself; and the Son that reveals him as Father is David. So, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: he said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’” . These are the words of David. In the 89th Psalm, these are now the words of the Lord, of the I AM, “I have found David and he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation” . So when you tell people who have been conditioned to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and God is something other, something where?—no one knows—that conditioned mind must in some strange way be dissolved. And when truth comes, it will gradually seep through and then that individual will realize that he is God himself, for the Son of God calls him Father. Well now, if he calls me Father, which he has, and he calls you Father, which he will if he hasn’t, are we not one? There is only one Son and one Father, only one God and Father of all. If everyone has the identical son call him Father, then are we not one? Have we not proven that wonderful 4th chapter of Ephesians, “There is but one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all?”753 ¶10

Well now, he became me, but if he became me, what was his purpose?—to give himself to me that I may actually become God. Then how will I ever know? He’s a father. Well, you can call me Lord, but I would not believe it. You can call me by any name and I wouldn’t believe it. But if the Son calls me Father and he is supposed to have lived 3,000 years ago, well, here I am in the 20h Century, and here is one who by scripture preceded this age by 3,000 years. He stands before me and calls me Father, and I know I am his Father and he knows he is my Son. He isn’t trying to prove it. It is as though I always knew it but I’d forgotten, like amnesia. I suffered from total amnesia and then he comes into my world and the memory returns. Now it’s not memory any more, it now becomes actual fact. Because to God, God doesn’t have a memory as we use the word memory…everything is actuality. So here comes the actual Son…I don’t remember having him. He stands before me, it’s actualized. So it’s not memory, it’s simply a returned memory which now ceases to be memory and it is now actual fact. He stands before me and here he is a youth as described in scripture, this beautiful…and you can’t describe the beauty of David. I have no sense that he ever had a mother. He is begotten and the verb “to beget” is always attached to the male; “to bear” would be attached to the female.753 ¶11

So we speak in scripture of two forms of birth: there is one that is attached to the female, and this body was born of a woman, formed within her. But there is another birth, a birth from above, where the verb is “to beget,” and that is always associated with the father. Here is “begotten,” that “Today I have begotten you,” said he to David. So in the 3rd chapter of John when the conversation between Nicodemus and himself takes place, he said, “You must be born from above.” The word “anothin” is translated “from above.” It is sometimes translated “anew” or “again” but, “Unless you are born from above (or again), you cannot enter the kingdom of God” . Well, that is a must. No matter what man has achieved in the world, having been born first from below, from the womb of woman, he still then must be born from above. That birth from above is of the Father. Who is born?—it is the Father himself. As you are born from above then all that the Father is you will experience. He’s a father, therefore if he is a father, “Where is my son?” Well, as you’re asked in the last book of the Old Testament, “If I am a father, where is my son?” Now, here comes the son and the son stands before you. That’s one of the most difficult things for me as a teacher to get over to the mind that has been conditioned to believe…and it has that sentry standing over that little violet that grew 150 years ago. But in this case unnumbered centuries ago it was planted in the minds of man that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God is other than man, Jesus Christ is other than man, and man is a little worm [...] here and he’s sinful.753 ¶12

I tell you, God actually became man—that’s a fact of life—that man may become God. He is buried in man, he is crucified on man and this body is the only cross that he ever wore. The birth will take place from the skull of man, for that’s where he’s buried. When he awakes within man and comes out emerging from man, soon thereafter here comes confirmation of his fatherhood. Then you know it and you tell it to the world in hope that they will receive it. But now, whether they receive it or not, the Spirit of truth is coming and I can’t tell you my joy because he has come to you. Whenever I depart this world he is still with you because he has come, he’s appeared. You’ll take whatever I told you plus what he is going to tell you from within all from within yourself, and then you will actually live in this vision that has been misunderstood through the centuries. So I have come to reinterpret the story as it really ought to be: Jesus Christ is God the Father. He said, “He who sees me sees the Father: How can you say, ‘Show me the Father’ Philip?’ Have I been so long with you and you do not know the Father?’ He who has seen me has seen the Father”. And so, in the end everyone will be the Father. And because there is only one Father and only one Son, this unity will be once more gathered together. It’s now fragmented, it’s now scattered, but eventually you and I will be so intimate, without loss of identity. I will know you more intimately than anyone in this world, no matter who knows you, could ever know you. The mother that you sucked, the father that loved you, the wife who bore you children, all these will be as nothing compared to the intimacy that we will have when all are raised and once more reunited into one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all.753 ¶13

So you dwell upon this revelation that came from Peggy. It is not “Before Abraham was, I am”; it is, “Before Abraham, was I am.” That is the foundation and that is that fountainhead of everything in this world. When you read of the horrors of the world as told to us morning, noon and night and all the things that would deny a divine event, bear in mind the story of the tapestry: one side isn’t lovely at all and this side is called in scripture “below,” the other side is called “above.” So he is made to say, “You are from below,” those who are having the experience here, and “I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. But you shall be of my world” . That’s what he said. In this world you’re playing your part and you’ll play it perfectly and in the end you’ll be lifted up. For he said, “I am lifted up” and that proves that all will be lifted up because we are one. But I can’t tell you the thrill in store for you when it happens. I can paint word pictures and could I draw I could paint that, but when it happens the thrill is beyond measure. You cannot describe the thrill that comes to the individual who has scripture unfold within him. For the purpose of life is to experience scripture. There is nothing but scripture to really fulfill in this world.753 ¶14

Oh, I could become rich, I could become known, I could become anything if I so desire it and do not lose confidence in I AM; for if I put anything upon it, it will grow. You want to be rich? You can be rich. You want to be known? You can be known. Anything at all! You simply assume it and wear it as though it were true, and that assumption, though at the moment you assumed it was denied by your senses, if you persist in that assumption, it will harden into fact. It will objectify itself and become a reality. But that is not the purpose of life. The purpose of life is to fulfill scripture. “Scripture must be fulfilled in me” . So when it is fulfilled in the individual he tells it, and that’s not what the world believes it ought to be anyway. He doesn’t look like the man that I thought would come. They’re looking for something other than themselves and it’s not another who comes. For when you say “I am,” you never turn elsewhere. You can’t divide it, it’s one. It didn’t say “we are”…that’s not the revelation…the revelation is “I am.” So when you go to Israel and they say, “What is his name?” just say “I am has sent me. I AM sent me.” I can’t think of another, for I’m not saying I AM meaning another whose name is I AM. But in translating it we call the I AM, the Lord. If I say, “The Lord sent me,” you’d think of another right away…if I said I AM.753 ¶15

When they said to Blake…one day they said, “What do you think of Jesus?” He said, “Jesus? Why, he is the only God,” and then he hastily added, “But so am I and so are you.” Then they went in to dinner and unfortunately the conversation stopped, and he only elaborated this for us. That’s all we have from the conversation that he had with his friend that he had invited to dinner, or he invited him. “What do you think of Jesus?” “Jesus?” said he, “He is he only God, but so am I and so are you.” Of course, Crabbe Robinson thought at that moment, “Well, this man is really touched…he’s going off.” Nothing could be truer than what he said, because there is only God. You are God, actually God. But you deliberately came here to play these parts. You’re weaving the most glorious event! When you and I all awaken and re-unite into the one body, oh! what we have done by this seeming horrible adventure. For I can’t deny it’s not the most pleasant thing in the world. The morning’s paper delights in giving some headlines that are going to frighten you. You rarely find a headline that is pleasant. In fact, they go out of their way…if they can’t find something that happened in our city that is horrible, they jump across the ocean to find something in some part of the world. We don’t care what is happening in India, but they bring it back: this is what happened in India and three people died. They only have 500 million. Three people died in an accident and they print it, some little accident, because they couldn’t find something similar in our city. Well, the whole vast world is built that way; yet it is moving toward the most glorious divine event. So when he said, “I have things to tell you that you cannot bear,” he’s not speaking to those to whom the Spirit of truth has come; he’s speaking to those who are still so hidebound in their concepts of a personal God external to themselves to whom they pray, and that mind cannot accept a God within themselves who makes himself known in vision.753 ¶16

So I would say to someone…the lady who ran the bookstore in New York City from whom I bought so many books and knowing my passion for a book—if I wanted it I never thought of price—she always marked it up. If she knew my interest, I could see the figure that was there before and she’d rub it out. If it was $8.50, now it’s $12.50…leave the .50, put in the twelve, and rub out the eight. She did it time and time again. I paid her as high as $100 for three books…she’d rub it out and put them all in. She always said to me, “You know, Neville, you have the most vivid dreams, don’t you?” “Not dreams at all. These are visions where I commune with myself, but the self is God, and yet it is myself.” “Oh, Neville!” she would say. Two years ago when I went back to New York City I inquired about her…“Oh, she was killed just a month ago. She went out at night, no identification marks on her, she stepped off on a dark street and a huge truck nearby couldn’t stop and she was instantly killed. Her husband couldn’t locate her for four days, but finally found her in the morgue where they kept the body waiting for someone to come and identify her. There was Mary.753 ¶17

So she still hasn’t awakened. She went over believing all she believed and she’s carrying all these beliefs with her. There’s no transforming power in what the world calls death. You are placed in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in you. So you are prejudiced here, you’re prejudiced there, and you’re this here, you’re that there, whatever it is. You have to go through all these things until finally you’re willing to have it all awaken within you. When he awakens, he’s not coming from without, he comes from within. When we read in scripture, “And God said to Moses…” it seems as though he spoke from without; no, he whispers from within. It is from within that the whole thing came and Moses then spoke with him face to face…no longer in dream as we are told in the 12th chapter of Numbers…he became one with him.753 ¶18

So I say to you tonight, you can test it. Test what I’m telling you. Your own wonderful human Imagination…so when you say “I am” that’s God. Would you like to be, and you name it. Don’t let me tell you what you ought to be, you name it. Well then, what would it be like if it were true? How would it feel if it were true? And you dare to assume that it is true. How would I know that my assumption is in any way real? Well now, think of the people who know me. Now let them see you after you’ve assumed it. Do they see you as they formerly saw you? Then you haven’t assumed it, so try again. Now, see the same people, do they see you as they formerly saw you? “Well, not quite…I’m trying to make them see me.” You don’t make them see you; you let them see you. And God, “Let there be light.” You don’t make it, you assume it; and then the world is simply a sounding box, sounding and reflecting what you’ve assumed. Well, you assume it. Now you think of those that would know if it were true. Let them see you as they would have to see you if it were true. Now, do they see you, do they congratulate you, do they discuss you in the new you? All right, it’s done. Now, you don’t take it off. You wear it as you wear now your present body…you wear it. When tomorrow morning you get up, you still wear the state. You wear this state and in no time it’s going to harden into fact, the whole thing is going to objectify itself in your world and you’ll confront it as a fact. Then you’ll know who the source, the cause of phenomena is, and there’s only one source and the world calls that source God.753 ¶19

It’s a lovely name, never tire of it, but don’t forget who God is. God is the translation of the word I AM—Yod He Vau He. In fact, no one can really sound it. It’s a peculiar word…if you try to sound it as it ought to be sounded, it sounds like a belch. You cannot sound Yod He Vau He. The best they could do is simply put another name to it, so they called it “The Lord.” Sometimes it’s translated “God.” But it is simply like a belch…it comes from the depths. You can’t sound it. How’re you going to sound Yod He Vau He? The best we can do is call it Jehovah (Anglicized) and Jah Adonay if you’re going to speak it in Hebrew. But Jah Adonay does not express Yod He Vau He. But the letters do, these four letters are the sacred letters. In Hebrew, if you’ve attended some Hebrew service, when they come to the sacred word they cover it so that they may not see even the printed word of God.753 ¶20

Well, this is covered by your body. Who sees I AM? They’ll see what I tell them that I am. So I walk the earth and I’m a man…they’ll see that all right…they know I’m a man. So I’m wearing a grey suit, they’ll see that. They inquire where I live, so they know where I live. They’ll ask a thousand questions and get answers to all these things, but all of these only cover the being that I am. So they never actually see I AM, but they see my metamorphosis. Just as Peggy saw a metamorphosis that she herself created, for here seated is John and to her he seems to be John Wayne. The being in man is a protean being and can assume not only one but all metamorphoses at one and the same time. So here, she comes upon her own creation, and he speaks seemingly from without, and he whispers so softly she can’t hear him because he’s really whispering from within.753 ¶21

In scripture we are told—not in these words but this will give meaning to it—whenever vision breaks forth into speech, the presence of deity is affirmed. So whether it comes from a burning bush and speech comes from it, or the 6th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, speech comes from it: “Who will I send? Send me, O Lord.” So the minute speech breaks forth in vision deity is affirmed. In this case, she was actually looking upon the form that I AM within her had instantly created. And she by association, John Wayne is a star, he is an important one, he’s the actor of actors now, never supporting, always the star and he sits in the chair of the director. He directs and he acts. He whispers a great secret and on waking she remembers. The story is, “It is not ‘Before Abraham was, I am’—every translation gives it that way—what it really is, is ‘Before Abraham, was I am.’” You get it? It makes all the difference in the world. So I can’t thank Peggy enough for this revelation.753 ¶22

How many will take it to heart and change the punctuation in future translations, I do not know. Because these punctuations are man made—we have none prior to that moment in Geneva when it was done either in the 15th or 16th century. But in the original manuscript there’s no punctuation, no verses, no paragraphs, no chapters. So the little comma there, as it is in that cry on the cross, if you change the comma what a difference that makes. “Behold, I say unto you, today thou shalt be with me in paradise.” Change the comma, “Behold, I say unto you today,”—I don’t time it now—“thou shalt be with me in paradise”. All the difference in the world and what confusion that has made among those who read it. Because, he said forty days later, “Touch me not. I have not yet ascended” and yet he promised that today you’ll be with me in paradise. Change the comma (man put it there) and you will see that everyone is saved and no one can be lost. How could God lose himself? He became man. Is there a man in whom God dwells who could be lost? How could it be? He has to redeem himself.753 ¶23

So, I’m not encouraging people to be violent and to go against their ethical code, no, far from it. When you discover this you hurt no one. You go out to help every being in the world. You can’t hurt anyone because you know everyone is yourself pushed out, but everyone, I don’t care who he is. So in this world of Caesar you mean what seems to be another; and they are in a sense because we’re individualized and we do not lose our individuality for we are called by name. You’ll be called by name…in heaven you’ll be called by name, so there’s no loss of individuality and yet there’s a unity. There’s an intermingling of beings and yet it’s one. The one body is your body; the one Lord you are he; the one God and Father of all you are he, yet without loss of identity.753 ¶24

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *753 ¶25