“Where are you from?” This you will find in the 19th chapter of the Book of John. And the rabbi said to Pilate: “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, for he claims he is the Son of God.” And their law would not allow that, for we know where this man is from, know all about him; and when Messiah appears no one will know where he is from. So his claim is false. When Messiah appears it will be mysteriously done. And yet we know exactly where this man is from. Even his own brothers do not believe in him. And he said to his brothers, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.” And then he repeated it, but qualified it: “My time has not yet fully come.” He knew his time. He is speaking of two entirely different times, two entirely different worlds, two different ages. So: “My time has not yet fully come, but your time is always here.” But my time had not yet fully come. So Pilate said to him: “Where are you from?” And Jesus gave no answer. Pilate said to him: “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have the power to set you free and power to crucify?” And Jesus answered him: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given to you from above; therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater sin.”751 ¶1

He does not answer Pilate’s first question, but he corrects Pilate’s misunderstanding of power. He does not answer: “Where are you from?” He doesn’t answer him because Pilate would never understand; and he corrects Pilate’s misunderstanding - which is the world’s misunderstanding - of power. Pilate thought he had the power to set him free or to crucify him. He was simply telling him he had no power whatsoever unless it has been given from above.751 ¶2

For, one day you will have this experience, and you will taste of the power of the new age. You will see a scene just like this. As you taste of the power of this new age, you will know it is all animated, and you are the power animating it. You will arrest within yourself an activity that you sense, and at that moment of arrestment everything stands still and is dead; it’s made as though it were made of clay. Not just the outer aspect, but your brain, that is so fluid and so alive and so pulsing - that, too, if you opened up the skull would be like clay. The heart that pumps - that too would be like clay. The whole thing including all the inner works would be frozen. Then you would release within yourself the activity which you have arrested and everything once more would become animated and would continue in its course and would perform its intention. Then you will know what he means by this time, which is forever - as against His time, when he said to him: Brothers, my time has not yet fully come, but your time is always here.751 ¶3

Now, man’s conventional view of time - including our great scientists - is that the future develops continuously out of the past; but that is not the Biblical view of time. The Biblical view of time is: what appears to be so new in our world is only the appearance of the return of phenomena already old. The whole vast world is moving on a circle, and all of this is already so, so that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out and we only become aware of increasing portions of it sequentially. But it is on a curve, and therefore what seemingly is past isn’t really; from the Biblical view, it is your tomorrow. It hasn’t receded into a past; it’s advancing into a future and it is forever. Now listen to these words: What had been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, See, this is new? It has been already, in the ages past. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who will come after.751 ¶4

Well, who would accept that! The conventional view completely denies it, it couldn’t possibly be. He is telling me that I have a memory of my youth. I can’t quite remember the moment of my physical birth. I vividly remember the moment of my spiritual birth. But he is telling me it has been - that I do know. And everyone here - without memory of that physical birth - they can’t deny by observation of other people being born, that they, too, must have been born in a similar manner; so they say it has been. Now he tells me: that which has been done (which is my birth) is that which will be done. That I am moving towards that same thing on a wheel of recurrence, that same thing in this world of Caesar, and only divine mercy can redeem me from the wheel. That: What seems to be, Is, To those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to Whom it seems to Be, even of torments, despair, and Eternal Death; but then Divine Mercy steps beyond and Redeems Man in the body of Jesus. So here the wheel returns.751 ¶5

Now, let me share with you a story told me last Tuesday night - the lady is present. She gave me a letter just before I started. I had no time to read it before my meeting, and had no time until just before I retired that night - so about midnight I read the letter. It was dated Nov. 23rd, which as you know was a week ago last Saturday, the day after the great event in this world that took place on the 22nd. She states in the letter: This is my experience of ten days prior to the 22nd of November (that is the 12th of November). I go from my office home and back always in a certain manner, a certain road. It is my habit when I get into a certain intersection that I turn and read the headlines at a newsstand. Quite often a red light is with me, and so I have a moment to turn and read the headlines. This night on my way home it was dusk, the sun was setting. I am moving west into the setting sun, and a few cars moving. I turned to read the headlines of the day. As I turned, I saw four papers on the rack - three the usual black and white, and one was a green sheet and this enormous black type as a head mat read: KENNEDY SHOT. This is the 12th day of November. I almost put my foot on the brake to turn, but I was in the intersection. Then reason prevailed. I said, No it’s the headlight, it’s the dusk, it’s the sun that is setting; and surely above all things in my office where I work, the radio goes all day long, and such horrendous news would be on the radio. So that capped it, reason prevailed, and I knew I had not seen correctly; but I saw on this green paper: Kennedy Shot. Well, I kept going across the intersection. How long does it take - 2 or 3 seconds? And so at the end of the three seconds I crossed the intersection and kept moving. It wasn’t one block before I completely forgot the incident.751 ¶6

In my office ten days later, on Friday the 22nd, I came to the office late. Two radios were blasting, a TV is going, and nothing but this news on the air. Some are crying, many are talking, others are cursing, and I wanted some quietness to do work. I am at the typewriter. 3:30 in the afternoon I am still trying to remember a dream, a dream that is related to what I am hearing. I couldn’t call back the dream. I know that something I dreamt is related to what I am hearing on the radio. What is coming across TV too, but I couldn’t bring back the dream. A co-worker leaves the office. He is gone not more than a few minutes, when he returns bringing in a folded paper. He comes in my direction and he calls me by my name. He comes over to my desk and he slaps it down on the table and said to me: Isn’t it amazing how fast these papers can move? and he intended that I should have the paper. I took the paper and opened it and here is a green sheet, the outer covering is green; and only two words as the mat head: KENNEDY SHOT. Then suddenly what had happened to me ten days before springs into my mind, and here I am seeing the entire scene as I drove home going west and watched this headline on this newsstand.751 ¶7

I took that letter, because it meant a tremendous thing to me. I read it over and to my wife. She and I reacted as I would expect her to react - I knew how I would react. But last weekend a friend of mine who sponsors my meetings in San Francisco came home, and so I invited four mutual friends that knew her well, to dinner. There were the seven of us. I took the letter and read it and gave it to each to read and see the letter and hold it in their own hands. There was only the moment of surprise of a strange coincidence - no more. Within a matter of seconds - just as the lady said in three seconds she had completely forgotten the incident and tried to bring it back to memory like a dream; for the event is now turning something in the depths of her soul, that she experienced it. But she couldn’t bring it back until the fact was presented when the paper was put before her in a physical manner, and then she saw it. Through the evening they discussed all kinds of things relevant to the great drama; but they thought that the FBI, the Secret Service, the local police - all these people should have done what they did not do. And here it is, stated so clearly in the first chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes.751 ¶8

So in her letter she said to me, at the very end: When the man looked at me, having given me the paper and I saw it, black type on green, I must have turned green myself, because he said to me: What’s the matter? and I couldn’t answer him; because how could I tell him that creation is finished? How could I tell him that this is a drama, and it is finished? That because it is animated, blood flows instead of tomato juice (as it does on the stage). But having had the experience of arresting in me an activity which animated the scene I saw, I know that it is no more than that on the stage. But it is for a divine purpose, and the purpose is that God is individualizing himself. He individualizes himself through this play; and when he comes out individualized, that’s Jesus Christ, the only name that the individualized God bears. So in each, as he comes out individualized, he is incorporated into the one body; for the Lord on that day, the Lord will be one and his name one and the Lord will reign as King over all the earth.751 ¶9

Then, said she at the end of her letter: Could my reason - that is, my refusal to recognize as true what I actually saw - be the lines spoken in the 30th chapter of Isaiah? Then she quotes the 9th - 11th verses: For they are a rebellious people, lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord: who say to the seers, See not and to the prophets, Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave the way, turn aside from the path, let us hear no more of the Holy One of Israel. Yes, I can answer her. They are these lying sons - your reason. They took everything that night - the setting sun, the dusk, the absence of the news from the radio, everything, the headlight - to persuade you that you had not seen what you actually saw. And it went so deep into your being that even when the news began to blare at the office, you thought it was related to a dream. This was a waking dream, just like another dream, and you tried to bring back memory - and you couldn’t recall what you actually had experienced.751 ¶10

But it also struck me in a very forceful manner, because in the same 30th chapter of Isaiah I took the verse I wanted for the title page of my latest book, The Law and the Promise. I took the 8th verse, and she took the 9th, 10th, and 11th: And now, go, write it before them on a tablet and inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever. And so I took that verse for my title page, that I would inscribe it in the book, whether one believed it or not. For I know it is more true than anything being discussed this day concerning what happened in Dallas, for they think it should not have happened. They don’t know this time against that time. So he said to his brothers, who did not believe in him: My time has not yet fully come, but your time is always here.751 ¶11

These garments are part of the eternal structure of the universe; and this thing here (the body) I will one day vacate it, but it remains as part of the eternal structure of the universe - like Hamlet remaining after Lawrence Olivier makes his exit from this world. And so he remains, as part of the eternal structure of the play called Hamlet. Tomorrow another one - unborn today - will put on the costume of a Hamlet and play Hamlet as conceived by God, because I will have vacated it for the last time. But the time here is to be worn forever and forever until he completely individualizes himself. And more than the sands of the sea we are told. He is the great Abraham of scripture, the father of the multitudes, individualizing himself. There is a series of events by which he breaks this invidious bar, and then causes the individual whose shell he breaks to separate and escape from this strange, wonderful wheel of recurrence. At that moment in time, this series of events begins to appear within you - that’s his secret. But everything is here and that bullet in the brain of Kennedy is part of the eternal structure of God’s world, and God conceived it. And so is the one who pulled it - God conceived it. And that’s a part to be played - and played over and over and over. And man can’t quite see the garment, because it doesn’t make sense, because he thinks it’s here. It isn’t here. This is forever, as the play. But he is speaking of the other time: my time has not yet fully come. My time belongs to a world where I am then really free - where I am in a world where everything is subject to my imaginative power - but everything! And I too, will be part of that world, animating this, seeing it differently, so that the bullet and the one who pulled it, and those who weep will not really disturb me from that level.751 ¶12

So Blake made the statement: Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, and Future, see; whose ears have heard the Holy Word that walks among the ancient trees. He is telling you the experience of that 3rd chapter of Genesis: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And then in the 4th chapter of Daniel - and this Holy One who walked in that garden gave the command: Hew down the tree. We were the tree in that holy garden, but innocent trees. And we had to fall into experience to awaken into the world of imagination, where everything is subject to our imaginative power, awakened as God. So here: Hew down the tree and cut off its branches, strip off its leaves and scatter its fruit. But leave the stump of its roots, let him be wet with the dew of heaven. Take from him now, (it’s a tree and suddenly becomes a person). Let his mind be changed from a man’s and let a beast’s mind be given to him; and let seven times pass over him to the end that the living may know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will, and sets over it the lowliest of men.751 ¶13

So here the tree is felled. And again with Blake: The Gods of the earth and sea sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree; But their search was all in vain; There grows one in the Human Brain. So it is turned down into generation, and suddenly it becomes an animal. This (the body) is an animal. This is an animal form. Everything we call human - that’s animal - is related to the animal world. It has the animal heart, the animal mind. And seven times pass over him. What is a time in the language of scripture? Blake implies approximately 900 years. So seven times must pass over him. Blake leaves off the little additional 300 years and speaks of a solid number, 6,000 years. He says: I behold the Vision of my deadly Sleep of Six Thousand Years dazzling around thy skirts like a Serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is my Self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.751 ¶14

So here he saw the whole thing clearly. The Holy One he heard - the Holy One walking in the cool of the day - in this world called the Garden of Eden. And he tells us by implication that he actually heard the command: Hew down the tree. So said he in this very opening to what he started as a series - but only gave us one. He calls it, The First Book of Urizen, but he deleted the word First afterwards because he only wrote the one. But in this one he addresses the Holy One, the immortal, and he calls them Eternals. Eternals! I hear you call gladly. Dictate swift winged words and fear not to unfold your dark visions of torment. This I am quite willing when I see the result of passing through this horror - I am quite willing that I seek in my mind’s eye the vision, which is your vision for me, when you complete your dream and you individualize yourself. So Los beheld the vision, and he was faithful to the vision in time of trouble.751 ¶15

So when you go through it, know it has happened and happened and happened, but you have no memory. In some strange way, this lady in ten days, within one block - it so passed from memory that even when the radios began to blare and the TV, and even the weeping and cursing and talking, she is prodding herself to remember a dream. And only when the facts of a paper were placed before her and she saw the green page with the headline: KENNEDY SHOT did the whole thing run into her mind like some photographic plate. And she remembered the intersection where she saw these four papers on a rack, three the normal black and white, and the fourth one the green with this headline; then the struggle with herself as she crossed the intersection which only took two or three seconds. Then all of sudden it rushed into the mind.751 ¶16

And our theologians for centuries have been trying to delete from our Bible the Book of Ecclesiastes, because it doesn’t make sense. Because the normal view of time is that the future develops continuously of the past: I was born as a babe and so I will grow as any person in this world, grow to manhood, and then - having waxed - I will then wane and vanish. That is the normal progression of this linear motion of time, but that is not the Biblical view of time at all. It is something entirely different, and he separates the two times. He speaks of your time that is always here, and my time when I chose the words I wanted for the title page of my book: Inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come For that is what it is. I am not speaking of this.751 ¶17

The Law - yes. I still say, within the framework of God’s grand dream there is another dream - my dream, your dream. And these that have unnumbered experiences - we aren’t going to change His dream for us, but we can modify and change within the framework of His dream the things that we will encounter. And if I use the Law wisely I will avoid repetition tomorrow when the wheel turns again. I won’t break the foot the next time; I won’t have the distorted arm the next time; I won’t have anything the next time if now I revise it. So I say: if there is one thing I have been brought into this world to tell you, it is the secret of revision: that if something today is unpleasant, you don’t like it, don’t let it slip by. The Bible speaks of redeeming the time. Every moment, if it is unpleasant, it should be redeemed, because you are going to meet it tomorrow as the wheel turns. So don’t let the night descend and catch you with the unredeemed day. Take the day and redeem it. You may produce the results now, in the immediate present. But if you don’t redeem it, when the wheel turns because you haven’t yet hatched out (or as Blake says, For hatching ripe he breaks the shell,) - but if the shell isn’t yet broken by the series of events which detaches you from this wheel of recurrence, then revise the day. So that next time when the wheel comes around you aren’t going to relive the unpleasant thing of this moment in time.751 ¶18

But I tell you: your time is always here, my time has not yet fully come. It takes one more link to break it, for it is all only hanging by a link. To be part of the world, where - having once tasted of the power of the age to come, then to return to the world where you are part of this age and be animated - as he confessed: You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above. Here is one who is confessing he is only at the very brink of leaving it. But while he is in the world of Caesar - having tasted of the world to come and the power that belongs to that world - while in the world of Caesar, wearing an animal garment, then no one has the power over him unless it was given him from above. So the one who gave it to you, he has the greater sin. If now he sends you to the gallows because he sends you to perform an act that is condemned by society, you have the greater sin, for it is part of the great play. And this dual time is so difficult for man to grasp. But I am only quoting scripture. He speaks so often of time, and he separates these two times: this time which belongs here forever, and that time; this world and that world. So he speaks of two ages: this age where there is rebirth, but he doesn’t mean reincarnation, for that which had been done is that which will be done. Were you once born of your present mother? You will be. It is happening all over again, at the moment in time when the wheel turns, and we will get the same surprise that is conceived of reincarnation, being born in the same manner of the same mother. Because they can’t see these garments and they think these are themselves, and these are garments that God wears.751 ¶19

And so, the whole vast world will say: O yes, I believe in reincarnation. It justifies the inequalities of life. Nothing justifies the inequalities of life - as you are told of the blind man in John 9:2, 3: And his disciples ask him: Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. All these are the experiences through which God goes: the blind, the lame, the withered, the halt - everything. It is not any justification, because the God of whom I am speaking is not a God of retribution. In spite of the horror of the play, he is a God of Love; because in the end, he individualizes himself, and you are he. If it took 6,000 years of horror, the end results justify the means he conceived as a play to bring it out.751 ¶20

I ask you: don’t forget the lady’s letter. Don’t do what my friends of last Saturday night did. So when they departed and I started washing dishes in the wee hours of the morning, I said to my wife: What a strange reaction. Now, that lady sponsors me, she has sponsored me for the last seven years, and prior to that she came to my meetings when she was not my sponsor. She sells all of my books, and all of my other friends have known me here on the West Coast for the last fifteen years. And so it was like reading a nice little mystery and then throwing it into the ashcan - that’s it - and then we go back to discuss the facts of life. Why were not the FBI on the job, and not these people on the job? And they just got through reading, that ten days before he was actually shot by the human standard, he was already dead. But time with a larger focus, you see a larger focus, you take a larger section of time. And she, in some wonderful way, the green light is with her, she hadn’t time to really focus, so she is moving forward with the green light, and in the intersection, she is almost on it, but habit possessed her and she turned to see - she is in the right-hand lane - and here on a green paper the headline, Kennedy SHOT. But then it fades. But are we not told in Eccl. 1:9: There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after. And so she is trying, when it does happen, that we on this level will appreciate it. She is trying to remember what she called a forgotten dream. She thinks it’s a dream and she is wondering: When did I dream this? but she can’t bring back to memory, can’t recall it -until the paper is brought and the voice said: Isn’t it amazing how fast these papers can move? Even then she didn’t - and she opened up and saw the same headline on the green page. Then the whole thing rushed into the brain.751 ¶21

Being a student of the Bible, she searched the Bible for something that caused her to lie to herself, and she found the 3 verses of the 30th chapter of Isaiah: Lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord They will not listen to him. And they say: “O seers,” those who see like a Blake, tell us not. Do not look. Don’t tell us any more. Tell us smooth things, pleasing things. And so thats the world. But I am not sent to tell you the smooth things or the pleasing things. But I can tell you - through the one thing I have brought to tell you, which is revision - it isn’t hopeless. You can, if the day is unpleasant, revise it. And if tomorrow the results are not before you, and the next week and the next month, they are not before you, I know that by your revision you will change the events, when once again you must come to that moment in time. And so you will change the pattern, for the wheel is turning and you can’t stop it.751 ¶22

I saw it. For one moment in time I was part of it, and I stopped it within me, and they all stopped. Not one could move, not even the bird in flight. The birds couldn’t fall. There was no gravity - gravity was in me. And I thought (as I was taught in my little school) that Sir Isaac Newton discovered it; and I almost thought he made it, because the whole thing was Sir Isaac Newton. I heard it, and so no one was as great in my mind as the great Sir Isaac Newton. As a child I really believed that he determined how things should fall and how they should go on. Then one day I came into a taste of the power into which tomorrow I would inherit - for I will inherit the kingdom of God, with all the power that goes with it. But I tasted of that power before the last link was broken. And so the birds couldn’t fly, the leaves couldn’t fall, and the grass that was moving in the wind couldn’t move; and people walking couldn’t walk, and the diners dining couldn’t dine, and everything was frozen. I looked at them. I was moving; I was not frozen. I froze in me an activity which froze them. I went over and looked at them, and these were dead things, part of the eternal structure of the universe. Forever these are garments to be worn by God. And then I released it and they all moved. The birds continued in flight, and the leaves began to fall, and the grass began to wave, and the diners dined, and the waitress walked, and everything continued to fulfill its purpose. Then I knew of a different time, a different age, of a different use of power - and that here we are only an animated world.751 ¶23

So, to repeat: You have no power over me, unless it has been given to you from above. The word is “anothin,” the same word used in the 3rd chapter of John. When he said, Except you be born from above (anothin) you cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You are still part of the wheel of recurrence, still part of this time - which is forever. But God in his infinite mercy, having put seven times over you, will move beyond, and redeem you in the body of Jesus. Because there is only one body, you are redeemed in the body of Jesus. Jesus, believe it or not, is God. People won’t believe it. They smile at you and they laugh. But Jesus Christ is the only God, but so are you when you enter his body and become incorporated into it. Because there is only one name, only one Lord, and that one name is Jesus Christ. And all will be redeemed in the body of Jesus and all will have the same power, the same being; everyone will be Jesus. Now it doesn’t make sense.751 ¶24

But what I told you earlier doesn’t make sense. The lady is here and I must tell her that one of my friends who read the letter knows her quite well, and she said: You know, having seen the name of the one who signed it, I believe every word of it. Were it not that she wrote it, I would question it. So the questioning mind already was there, but she read the one who sent it and - trusting her implicitly - she said, I believe every word of this letter. But still, only three or four seconds, right away she is discussing the possibilities of changing God’s play and changing it radically so that he would still be here as our President. And they can’t see these wheels within wheels within wheels that Ezekiel spoke of. So I tell you: it is not reincarnation, as the world teaches to justify the inequalities of life; you can’t justify them. For man didn’t sin. He didn’t gouge his eyes out, he was born blind. And his parents didn’t sin? And this only so that the works of God may be made manifest? What a horrible God! And that is the word of God speaking? He didn’t sin and his parents didn’t sin? It is only that the works of God be made manifest.751 ¶25

Therefore, revision - which in scripture is called repentance (but the word is tarnished). It was taught - the very first word used in the earliest Gospel, which is Mark - that first word spoken by the embodiment of God is repentance. The time is fulfilled. He speaks of time. The kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel. Well, repentance really is the ancient word for the word I use today of revision. For repentance is a radical change of attitude toward life. And if in the revolution of this world there is really a revolution, it’s not what took place in Cuba or in Russia or this country - or in any part of the world. The real revolution is when man discovers that by a radical change of his own mental attitude towards life he can change the outer aspects of life. When man makes that discovery, there is a real revolution in the world. A man discovers that by his own change of mental attitude he changes the outer aspects of his life! For I can’t conceive of any greater revolution in the world - and that is repentance.751 ¶26

But the churches have put barnacles on it, and they teach us to be remorseful, to be regretful; and to this very day you turn on the radio or the TV, they are still talking of the event that should not have happened. They all sit in judgment of God. And here is the whole grand wonderful play unfolding. When one really sees it in the end, and when one completely awakes, he, too, will be able to say to all of the characters who played the part: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. How could you tonight - if you really believed the vision that was written to me ten days ago - how could you today condemn anyone who had a part, whether his part was to play a part in not properly arranging protection, or the one who has gone berserk and bought his gun, and then hate, as he did, if he did it; and then the one who came and did all these things to hush the very voice that might be able to throw light on it? All these things in the wonderful drama. And then this fantastic pageantry that we had in our country, where the whole vast world - with the aid now, of this Telstar - saw it all at the same time. Russia saw it, all of Europe. If there are TV sets in China, they could see it too, because by this new beam the whole vast world could see it. And what drama! A tremendous pageantry that she actually saw ten days before this level could receive it.751 ¶27

So where are you from? I came out from the Father, said he. And I have come into the world. Again I am leaving the world and I am going to the Father. In four short phrases he states his prenatal existence, his incarnation, his breaking of the wheel - he’s going to die leaving this wheel - and return to the Father. But he said to the others: Where I go you cannot now come, but you will. Where I now go you cannot now come - not now. He tells you he is breaking the wheel, and therefore he departs for the last time; but he did incarnate and took human form. He tells us by the words, the little phrase: I came from the Father - that is a confession of a prenatal existence. I came into the world from the Father. But when you see me you see him who sent me. And who sent you? The Father. When you see me you see him who sent me. Well, how could that be? But if God is individualizing himself and God is Father, when he is individualized that individualized presence must all be Father. That is why he is saying these are the ways to the Father. You will never know that you are father unless God’s only begotten son appears and calls you Father - no uncertainty when you look into his eyes and he into your eyes and he calls you Father. And so God is Father. When he begets you as himself, you can’t be less than God; and, therefore, he is father of the same child, not another child.751 ¶28

And so this is the way by which this invidious bar is broken - this envious bar. For, someone who has wealth, they may envy someone who has more; one who is poor envies the one who has some; one who is known is not envious of the unknown, but they are envious of the known. All this strange, peculiar enmity in the world is part of God’s play, these unequal discriminations in the world. And the world thinks it is going to change it in some strange way. You will change it only in one way; if you know the art of revision. But you will change it only to the extent when you reach that point in time - which is forever - you do not encounter (again) what to you was unpleasant. When you encounter that moment in time, it’s the completed circle. Now let us go into the silence.751 ¶29

The same technique that you and I use to achieve our objectives in this world is the technique that God the Creator uses to achieve his objectives. Same technique. Now listen to these words taken from Milton, that is the poem by William Blake: “When he entered into his shadow, himself, his real and immortal self, he appeared to those who dwell in immortality as one sleeping on a couch of gold. But to himself he seemed a wanderer lost in dreary night.” A complete abandonment of Self to the shadow, and in that shadow he sleeps and he dreams his predetermined pattern until it becomes reality.750 ¶1

So in his poem called Europe, which is a prophecy—has not a thing to do with Europe as you and I understand Europe—it is a prophecy, and it’s all about you, it’s all about man. So in this prophecy he said, “When I woke, I knew not that I had slept and 1,800 years were fled as if they had not been.” Now he doesn’t say, I am putting it in the first person, for I speak from experience; he told it in the form of a story and he uses a name called Enitharmon, which is an emanation. Well, your dream, your desire is an emanation. You desire to be…and you name it…that’s an emanation from you. It’s an image, and he’s calling upon everyone to enter into the image and dwell in it, occupy it, make it alive.750 ¶2

So Enitharmon is the emanation of Los, and Los is Imagination. Los has the similitude of the Lord…it is all Imagination. So he enters into the image and remains in that image, and he will dream it. When it becomes real, then he woke and knew not that he had slept. Then he mentions 1,800 years were fled. In my case I would say 1,959 years were fled as if it had not been; and I had no idea that I, myself, had entered into that image and made it real. And so, I entered into my shadow. I was in love with the image that I cast and so I entered into my shadow. To those who are in immortality who contemplate on death—for I entered death, the shadow was dead—I seemed to them as one sleeping on a couch of gold; but to myself I seemed a wanderer lost in dreary night. But I kept the divine vision in time of trouble and still kept on dreaming that I am Neville, and did not for one moment wander from it, did not turn from it. Then eventually I woke and did not know that I had slept…and yet 1,959 years had fled as though they had not been.750 ¶3

So Blake tells us that in that very beginning all of us were united with him in a death like his, all of us, and then we heard the story. For, this shadow that he speaks of —I must enter into my shadow, right into it. He calls it an image in one passage, he calls it a shadow in another—but a shadow is a representation either in painting or in drama in distinction from the reality portrayed. So in scripture when Paul tells the Galatians: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” To see it as something like a little drama on the outside? You heard a story, the most fantastic story imaginable and you’re called upon to enter into that story as the central character and remain in that story until it externalizes.750 ¶4

So, “He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” Well, here is his image and he enters his image. Well now, he tells us he does it through Jesus Christ…and Jesus Christ is the pattern. If I stand here now and I conceive a scene…first of all, I know what I want. Having decided what I want I construct a scene that if the scene were true it would imply I had what I want. So that scene now becomes the pattern. It must unfold. Well, when it unfolds I have achieved what I really want. It’s not the scene, it’s my objective. So I will now conceive a scene which if true would tell me that I am the man that I want to be…that I’ve achieved it.750 ¶5

So Jesus Christ is the pattern. He said, “He’s revealed unto me the purpose, that is, the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.” Well, Jesus Christ is the pattern man, it’s the plan. If I could enter my shadow, my image, and really make it real so I am it and we are one, then this pattern must unfold. The pattern is: I will wake. They will call it resurrection, and I will know not that I have slept, and 1,800 years or 2,000 years or 3,000 years were fled as though they had not been.750 ¶6

So, how long does it take? For, we all were one, gathered together at one moment. “If I have been united with him in a death like his, I shall certainly united with him in a resurrection like his.” So Blake tells us, in his own case, in the 18th Century—for he wrote these words in the year 1794, which is almost the end of the 18th—and said he, “Enitharmon woke.” That is Blake telling you he is Enitharmon, he is the emanation, he is the shadow. God entered him and identified himself with his shadow, with his image. Then he tells us, the image woke: Enitharmon woke and knew not that she had slept.750 ¶7

He used the feminine because the emanation is always feminine: Eve came out of Adam. So it’s always the feminine, the radiation…what I desire. I being man I desire that woman. Well, the woman could be a house, it could be a business, it could be money, could be anything…my emanation. I am the male now desiring to possess it, but I must now leave everything and become one with it until we are one. Leave everything and cleave to my emanation until we are one. But to actually make it one I must enter into her, so I enter into my shadow. When I am in it, I’m not conscious of the fact that I ever was other than this that I am now part of. I am part of the being, and I call it Neville. So I enter into and play the part. Then I wake and I knew not that I had slept and 1,959 years were fled as if they had not been.750 ¶8

Well now, in this world of Caesar it could take an hour, it could take a day, it could take a week, a month. But will I enter into the image and do there as God in the foundation of time did to make me himself? For, when I woke in the tomb, I did not know that I had slept. I did not know for one moment that I was even placed there. Here I find myself in a tomb, and here I find myself awake in a tomb, and totally unaware of the fact that I was ever in that grave, ever in that sepulcher. I woke…well, who awoke? I said, “I am awake,” well, that’s his name. He so loved his image, he entered the image and became one with the image. So we are told in this book of Milton he actually entered into his shadow; and when he entered into his shadow, then he appeared to those in immortality as one that is asleep, sleeping on a couch of gold. But not to himself…to himself he was a wanderer, just a wanderer lost in dreary night.750 ¶9

Well, is not that the story of everyone in this world? He’s lost, he’s confused. But he is faithful to an image. Well, what image? You are faithful to the image that you are Ray, that you are Jan, that you are David…call it by any name. You’re faithful to that image. Who is faithful to it?—God. Why? Because you are saying, “I am John, I am Ray, I am Natalie.” That’s God being faithful to the image. He fell right in love with his image and he entered right into that image. Now, I am in the image of the being that I fell in love with, which is my emanation, my image, my shadow. And I’ve been faithful to it. Many a time I thought myself a wanderer in dreary night, confused. Where would I turn for a dollar? Where would I turn, well, to do anything, completely lost in this dreary night? But those who contemplate on death saw me as one asleep on a couch of gold, because they knew the purpose behind my entering into the state of sleep; and they did not know what I am experiencing in that state of sleep.750 ¶10

Now, I take the same technique right here in this world, and finding myself the image with which I am in love…I’m in love with being that I am. Well, you may say, “Isn’t that a stupid thing!” You’ve been taught to love others more, when, may I tell you, it’s impossible for thought a greater than itself to know. Don’t let anyone tell you that they love someone other than themselves more than themselves, they don’t. They do not! It is impossible for thought a greater than itself to know, and, therefore, you find yourself in an image. You are in an image. Yes, you want companionship, you want security, you want all these things that belong to that image with which you are in love…and you’ve entered that image. That’s why you are alive in this world, for you, the living being, entered the image and you made it at first a living being. You’re going to transform it into a life-giving Spirit because you are a life-giving Spirit, the being that you really are.750 ¶11

Now in this world a man sits down and he wants to be a success in business. If he were…now he maps out a pattern that if true would imply he is a success in business. He maps the whole thing out; then he enters into that image and believes himself to be a huge success long before anything in the world would confirm it. He has no reason to believe and to persist in that image, but he’s got to persist in that image as you and I persist in the image that I am Neville, you are Jan, you are Ray, you are John and so on. We’ve got to persist in that image that I am successful if that’s what I want to make real in my world…just as I have persisted in the image that I am Neville. The day will come that you will awake into a world where you are expressing the success that you desired and entered into that image believing yourself to be it…as you persisted in the image believing yourself to be whatever you are now.750 ¶12

So here, he entered into the image. When he entered into the image, himself, his real and immortal self, was to those who dwell in immortality as one sleeping on a couch of gold; but to himself he seemed a wanderer lost in dreary night. And the day will come that he will awake and he will know not that he had slept, and reflecting there were 1,800 to 2,000 years that were fled as if they had not been.750 ¶13

So the same technique that God used to become me…for he fell in love with his image and entered right into the image. His name forever is I AM, and I know that I am, so he is occupying his image; and that was what intrigued him and he entered it. Well, to enter it he had to dream that he is Neville, he had to. God himself laid himself down within me to sleep, and as he slept he dreamed a dream, and it took him nineteen hundred and fifty-nine years to dream. Then he woke and knew not that he had slept. Then having discovered that he’s in a tomb and in that tomb he spent 1,959 years and knew not that he had slept. Reflecting, it was as though it had not been…all time vanished then. He achieved his objective: His objective was to awake conscious of the fact that he was the one he loved. They were not two any more, they were one. He broke down in that interval all the barriers that separated the two, he and his image. It’s not any more he and his image; he is Neville.750 ¶14

And that’s the story. That’s the story of the whole vast world that we’re now about to celebrate in a matter of a week or so. This is God awaking in man…so man is awaking as God…and we call it Christmas. This is not the incarnation. The incarnation is when he entered into his image, when he entered into his shadow and made the shadow a living being. It would take in Blake’s case 1,800 years.750 ¶15

So you ask, “Well, why did it take this one 2,000 and another one only a thousand?”—each in its own order. To what degree am I lost in believing that I really am the man that I want to be? How long should it take me to be the success, if that’s what I want in this world, judged by human standards? Well, to what degree can I persuade myself that I am? For the whole vast world is my dream pushed out. So to what degree can I actually enter…what intensity to make myself believe that I really am the man that prior to my entering into that state I only desired? But now I must completely forget it was only a desire that I am it, and walk in this wild, wild state as though I am. For that’s how God became me. So in 1,959 years then he woke and knew not that he had slept.750 ¶16

Yet I had an adumbration many years ago where in this vision I heard him say, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream.” That was simply a foreshadowing of the end, when he had pre-determined a certain plan, which is called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the plan of redemption which is: You first awake and the awakening is a resurrection. You rise within the very tomb that God himself entered. Well, you were dead and therefore you were the tomb. You’re only a shadow…a shadow has no life…and he enters the shadow and makes it alive by his entrance. So God himself enters death’s door, which is his shadow, his image, and lays down in the grave of that image in visions of eternity until he awakes. So, “Rouse thyself, O Lord. Awake! Why cast us off forever?”…and then the Lord does awake. When the Lord awakes, he is one with what he fell in love with. He fell in love with being you, individually, and when he awakes, you are God. And that is Christmas: That is man becoming God. The incarnation was when God became man, when he fell in love with his image.750 ¶17

So Blake states the whole thing at that moment in time when time was divided between B.C. and A.D. It all started there in Blake’s strange and wonderful vision, and in his case it took 1,800 years for God to wake, and in my case, 1,959 years, and in another case, well, different. So the Bible tells you each in his own order. Now, whether this order was pre-determined…for he destined us in love. That’s what we are told in Ephesians, “He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” Well, the same God that dreams in me is the God that dreams in you. So is it really an order where I could not have awakened before 1959? I leave that in abeyance. I only know that was the year in which he woke and knew not that he had slept, because when I woke I didn’t know that I had fallen asleep there. Hadn’t the slightest idea that I had slept; but I did know that I was waking and waking and waking, and finally I was completely awake…and knew not that I had slept. Certainly not in that skull, certainly not there, and I wondered who put me there? Then when I emerged from the area where I fell asleep, it was God emerging, because the symbolism that surrounded me moments later is the symbolism revealing the birth of God. So God was born right after waking…he was born into a higher region of his being. Who was born? Well, he had so identified himself with what he loved, it was that loved one that was raised and was born…but it was God.750 ¶18

So here, he’s in love with his image, in love with his shadow, and the image and the shadow, the reflection on water or in a mirror, is dead, it has no life. But he so loves it, he enters into this shadow, and there he dreams he is. Being a life-giving Spirit he first animates it, so the shadow becomes real…and it seems so solidly real in this world. And so here he travels and walks around and it is all his dream. One day, when it is completed and he is truly what he loves and what he believes himself to be, then he has a pattern by which he will know that he did arrive at the end that he has predetermined. The first segment of that pattern is to wake. The waking is his resurrection; now he’s designated Son of God in power through his resurrection from the dead. Then comes his discovery which he set up in the beginning that he is the father who entered into that shadow. If he is a father, there must be a son. And so the son calls him Father; now he knows who he is. Then comes a third, his ascent as a fiery serpent…but it cannot precede the cutting of himself in two; that’s his sacrifice for this wonderful accomplishment. And it is his blood that is at the base, and he and that blood are one, and they ascend as a fiery serpent. Then comes the final sanctification of the dove; and the dove descends upon him and smothers him with love…for, he has accomplished what he had set out to accomplish.750 ¶19

So it took him 1,800 years in Blake’s case as he claims in Europe, and in my case 1,959. What does it matter? When you awake it is as though it had not been. So we can’t measure…we can measure in the world of Caesar the length of time. But the end…it was still the wonderful dream that resulted in the fulfillment of what he wanted in this world. So we do the same thing in the world of Caesar; you want to be and you name it. A great artist, if you were a great artist, would you be acclaimed? Do you desire that? Well, you map out the plan as God mapped out the plan which he called Christ Jesus. For, he set it forth in you as a plan for the fullness of time, and the plan is called Christ Jesus. There is no other plan that leads you back to the being that you really are which is God the Father. There is no other plan! Here you will have multiple plans that would imply that you are what you want to be. Now if I want to be, and I name it, well now, I map out something that would tell me that I really have achieved it. If I map it out, when that unfolds, I know that it has worked. And then I enter into the shadow that I conceived and walk the earth. And others may see me as dreaming on a golden couch, yet to myself, I may seem to myself a wanderer, wondering where the next dollar is coming from while I’m still faithful to my vision, keeping the divine vision in time of trouble. So, walking without any money in my pockets, none in the bank, no food, I still walk faithful to the vision…and I’m in my shadow. Then I will awake because a shadow will take on reality. When it takes on reality, it will seem to me as though there was no time lost at all. I’ll completely forget all the horrors of bringing this thing to birth. For, she is in labor while she is bearing it, and the pains are there, but after the child is born she forgets, in her joy, all that she went through. So man completely forgets.750 ¶20

Now the same technique that God used to bring us into being and make us real is the same technique that you and I use to bring something into being here. “If the Spectator,” said Blake, “could only enter into the image in his Imagination, approaching it on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could only make a friend and companion of one of these images…well then, he would know he would rise from the grave, then he would meet his Lord in the air and then he would be happy”. But he emphasizes entering into the image, and entering into the image is what God did to make us alive. He wants us more than to be alive; he wants us to be just as he is, a life-giving Spirit. So he mapped out the pattern in the end that would make us a life-giving Spirits…which is himself. Then, though we are the Son of God, the Son of God and God the Father are one. So we are really are God when we completely fulfill the pattern that he had predetermined. For, he will continue the dream no matter how horrible the dream, until that pattern arrives. When that pattern arises and he goes through it and we go through it then that barrier between the two is completely torn down, and we are he.750 ¶21

So this is what our Christmas means to us. We will celebrate it as something that took place, something on the outside, and that is not Christmas. It must take place on the inside. Christmas is simply that series of events beginning with the resurrection where he awakes, God awakes, within the tomb of man; for man was the death, the shadow that he entered. And one day he awakes and knew not that he had slept. Then finding himself entombed, his desire is to come out. And all things are possible to God and God is infinite power, so he pushes what seemingly is an unbreakable seal and it breaks and rolls away, and he comes out. For, he was sealed in the tomb and could never rise and get out, but he gets out because he is infinite power. Then the symbolism he had predetermined must be there to prove it. And if it isn’t there, then all visions related to it are foreshadowings, adumbrations, which simply, again, a definition of the shadow—“a representation in pictorial form in painting or in the form of a drama, in complete distinction from the reality portrayed.” But, a foreshadowing is what you are on the heels of it, for this is what you had predetermined in the beginning and you are coming nearer as you foreshadow it. And then suddenly, you actually coincide with the actual vision as he had predetermined.750 ¶22

That is given to us in the most beautiful form in the gospels. Now, the gospels…there are four of them, but we find in John…and the earliest date of John no scholar puts earlier than the very end of the 1st Century, but the majority of them put it 150 A.D. Well now, that was rewriting the story, for he had all the others to draw on. Then he completely eliminates the story of a genealogy for it is not anything on earth. He completely eliminates the virgin birth, that’s not mentioned in John, and this is the latest of the gospels. He does emphasize the need and the essential part of being re-born. He doesn’t tell you how it is done, but he does use a word meaning it has to be from above, “anothin.” So you must be born and born not from below from the womb, but from above…that’s essential. You must rise like a fiery serpent in the same manner that the serpent rose in the desert with Moses. So he does state these facts that are essential to this pattern, the pattern man.750 ¶23

He claims that God himself became what you are, because he uses the word “Word” for God. He said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. Now, “the Word became flesh and dwelt in us”. So God became flesh and that’s incarnation. Well, you’re flesh and you say “I am,” so God is incarnated. But now he tells us that that is not enough. That’s an animated being, but now to be a life-giving Spirit which is God, this pattern must be fulfilled. Then when you reach that pattern, then you never return to this world, you simply enter an entirely different sphere. But you did it all by entering the thing you loved…you fell in love with your own image, and actually entered that shadow, and made the shadow alive. To do it, you slept and did not even know that you fell asleep and now are dreaming. You’re dreaming that you are…and you name it, the name that you have today. That’s the being that you’re dreaming that you are. Don’t tell me that you’re not in love with it. When people will say, “No, I’m not in love with what I am. No, I’m not in love with being poor”…but that’s not what I am. I could be rich if that’s my desire. But don’t tell me I’m not in love with being Mary if that’s my name. I would not give it up for any other being. I would not mind having what they have, but I don’t want to give up my own identity. No man wants to give up his identity. He would like to possess what others possess, but he certainly doesn’t want to give up his own identity, and that you call by a certain name. Alright, call it Mary, call it John, call it Ray, call it Judith, call it by any name. No man wants to give that identity up because he’s in love with it. But, at first it was only a shadow, only an image; and God himself entered that death’s door, it was dead, and animated it by his entry and made it something alive, a living being. But that’s not enough. God wants it to become as he is, and God is a life-giving Spirit. So he remains as long as it takes in that dream. But when God awakes in that, the two have become one.750 ¶24

Then if it is true and not just a foreshadowing, if it’s a true awakening, then the drama will take one thousand two hundred and sixty days. That was predetermined in the beginning. The whole thing will unfold just as foretold in scripture. So if you have any doubts, count the days and if the days are not 1,260 to the end, they are wonderful foreshadowings, marvelous foreshadowings. And hold on…because I tell you, you have kept the vision in time of trouble. You might have denied that you were like Peter, “No, I do no know him.” You might have denied it, because under the threat of pain you could deny that you are the being that you are. If they’re looking for you and they find you, they’re going to torture you, so to avoid the torture you could deny. I would say, “No, I’m not Neville.” “Aren’t you Neville?” “No, I am not Neville.” “Don’t you know that man?” “No, never saw him before.” Yet I do know I am Neville and I do know I did see him before. And so, I don’t want to lose my identity but I want to avoid the pain, and so I would lie concerning that. But I’m still keeping the vision.750 ¶25

I fell in love with being Neville, as you fell in love with whatever you are. You kept on dreaming; you dreamt poverty at one time, you dreamt wealth at one time, you dreamt of being loved at one time, of being ignored at another. Well, these things are all still related to the being that you know that you are…you have never lost that vision. And you won’t lose it. You’ll come on back to it, because that is the one that you really fell in love with. In the end, you will awake and you’ll awake as the being that you are but it will be God…God individualized forever and forever. That individuality will never cease to be. You’ll be individualized as the life-giving Spirit, and you will tend forever and forever towards ever greater individualization. That was the purpose of the entire drama. That is what Christmas means. So Christmas is simply the image that he fell in love with and became to the point where it now became himself, a life-giving Spirit that he wakes, and he is it. And then that is Christmas. For, God who became one with his image, now the image becomes one with God…and that’s Christmas.750 ¶26

So you will not fail I assure you, not in eternity. Why it isn’t tonight I do not know…and maybe it is tonight…I have no idea. Because Blake in his symbolism is using the overall picture of 1,800 years, but that is…a poet is allowed that. They can take liberties. He was certainly not 1,800 years judged by the world of Caesar. He was born in 1757 and this was now 1794, but he is speaking that “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”. So he looked upon this division of time between A.D. and B.C. as the beginning of all; and, therefore, he was one with God in that death when God fell in love with his images, this universally diffused individuality. He started then as we did and then the God in him, which is the same God diffused in all, took 1,800 years to complete the dream and go through all that it took to awaken. So he’s telling us that he awoke.750 ¶27

And then he wrote Europe and people think it means Europe as we understand that area in the world. It hasn’t a thing to do with Europe. If you will read it carefully, he speaks of “the cavern man” and he speaks of these five openings of the cavern man. He speaks of the eyes that see only a small section of infinity, and the ears that will hear the music of the heavens. Then he speaks of the breath and of the mouth. But the fifth one he mentions as another one, but he doesn’t tell you where that opening is, because there are only truly four openings in the head. They are double here (eyes), double here (ears), and double here (nostrils), but these form the same function. These form the same and so the nostrils form the same function, so they can’t be six, they’re only three. And the mouth is one. But he speaks of five, he said that through this one he may leave at any time, but he doesn’t choose to leave. Well, what is that one but Imagination and he doesn’t tell you where the opening is. It’s obvious where the openings are, the four, but he doesn’t tell you where the opening of the fifth one is. He can leave at any time and return, but he doesn’t choose to leave. I sit here or stand here and imagine myself elsewhere, what opening was it that I used to imagine myself elsewhere, and so real when I imagine it that I think of this and I’m not here. Others see me standing here and yet I am not here. So what opening did I use when I imagined myself to be elsewhere? So he speaks of the cavern man and these five that contain him. And he mentions the four and they are so obvious.750 ¶28

So here, we’re facing a week from Wednesday this wonderful mystery completely misunderstood. But it doesn’t matter…one day the individual will actually experience scripture and he will know the mystery of Christmas. Whenever he knows it, he too can say, I woke and knew not that I slept. He didn’t know. But the sensation is one of waking. It’s not one of resurrecting, it’s waking, that peculiar feeling of waking. As you wake, you find that, well, somebody put me here. I don’t know who but someone must have placed me here because they could not have placed me here unless they thought me dead, for you only put the dead in tombs. And this is a tomb, a sepulcher, and you know exactly where you are; the sepulcher is your skull. Then you completely awake and you come out just as it is told. Only people tell us when they teach the Bible that the stone was rolled away on the outside. It isn’t, it’s rolled away from the inside. You push from the in and the stone rolls. No one comes on the outside and does anything for you at all. The whole thing is contained within yourself. Man brings into this world, because God is in man, innate knowledge, and it’s all there, so he knows exactly what to do. Everything comes seemingly from without, but it’s all being conjured from within.750 ¶29

The witnesses come…two to deny it, but one affirms it. You are the one who experiences the whole thing; so two witnesses are present plus a third which is the written Word of God, for you are fulfilling scripture. And where two or more different persons agree in testimony then it is conclusive. So one declares who the father of the child is and you, the father, witness the whole thing, and scripture tells you, so you have three witnesses. They agree in testimony and they’re three different witnesses, the Bible, you and the third. So this is the story of Christmas.750 ¶30

But now, we can take the same principle and in the world of Caesar we must enter our image, enter right into the image and believe you are it, because God had to enter an image, a shadow and believe himself to be it. In order to believe it, he had to empty himself of his wisdom and his power and fall asleep. He emptied himself completely and took upon himself the form of a shadow, called a slave, and became obedient unto death—for that is the world of death as told us in the 2nd chapter of Philippians—completely dead. Then one day he finds himself in the place where only the dead are placed, but he felt himself waking. So they thought him dead, but he really only fell sound asleep. So, awake, you sleeper and rouse yourself from the dead. And he’s speaking to the Lord: “Rouse yourself, O Lord. Awake! Do not cast us off forever”; that’s the 44th Psalm.750 ¶31

Now let us go into the Silence and enter into any image that is the most desirable image. Doesn’t matter what it is. * * *750 ¶32

Now I want to thank you for your visions that you shared with me and your experiences, for they’ve been very, very helpful, many this week. I can’t use them all, I used none tonight, but I still want to thank you. Don’t because I didn’t use them stop writing them. They are all true, all your visions are true.750 ¶33

One that came this week, she said, “I saw this shaft of light that stretched up into the heavens. On each side it began to unveil angels, and they seemed to be on the ascending, like steps to the very end leading into, well, into heaven. Then before me sat a man and his dress suggested that he was of the ancient world and one who lived in the desert. Then I heard a voice and the voice said, ‘Who will believe his report? Who will believe what he has said?’ and the same voice answered itself, ‘None’ and after a pause, ‘save but a few.’” And then I appeared beaming. Then she said, “This wonderful singing began and they were singing to me about myself. But it seemed not so much singing as a conversation all about myself. Then I heard the voice again and it said, ‘They all heard it on different levels.’ Whatever he said, his report, they heard on different levels.”750 ¶34

Well, that’s true. The 53rd chapter of Isaiah, “And who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Well, we hear it on different levels. Tonight, if the world of Christianity heard what you have heard, they would think me insane or a horrible monster, blaspheming the Word of God. We heard it on different levels. What I told you, I’m speaking now from experience, I’m not theorizing. I know the mystery of Christmas having experienced it. I am not for one moment theorizing. So I heard it on one level and I shared it with those who are willing to accept it on that level. But the same story will be told and read as I have written it, and they will receive it as they read it on different levels.750 ¶35

Yesterday, we had a little party, fifteen, many of them children, all relatives of my wife. Cousins and their wives and husbands and their children and grandchildren and what not…and it was fun. Well, one chap, who is in his last year at college here and he got interested in something, he said, “I heard someone say something about you and would you tell me.” So I began to tell him the story, the story of the birth from above. He was completely enthused about it all, but as I progressed and he saw that I’m getting to the point where I am actually claiming by experience that I am that central figure, his mental hands come up this way. Not his physical hands, but you could almost see him, “No, no, don’t go any further…that’s far enough…because that’s blasphemy.” So the lady heard it correctly, we hear it on different levels. If it was only a wonderful dream reflecting the truth of something that took place once and for all unnumbered years ago, that’s wonderful, but don’t come so close as to identify yourself with that figure. But to say that God actually became man that man may become God. No, that’s too much. If God became man to save the poor blighters, how would he save them? Leave them where they are? No, he can’t save them unless they become as he is, how else could he save them? Save them for what, to be slaughtered? He is saving them by bringing them into his own being as himself. But the hands went up this way mentally. So her vision was perfect.750 ¶36

And then another one, based on this level. His daughter, thirteen years old, won this wonderful prize which was Disneyland, the whole day, because of her wonderful work in a certain project. It was Wednesday of last week, but all the reports…rain, rain, rain, rain. Well, that would certainly not be a good day for Disneyland. So when she came home she said, “Daddy, do you think that imagining could influence the weather?” He said, “Why certainly it could.” Then he again repeated what he would do were he in her position leaving her to her own choice and her own use of imagining. Well, he said, “The next morning when I got up here was the rain coming.” She did leave and go to her own room and she imagined a lovely day. And he told her what he would do: “It is now Wednesday. This is not Tuesday night, it’s Wednesday and you are at Disneyland. You are so happy that you did your English report last night on Tuesday, because it has to be in tomorrow Thursday. So this is Wednesday, it isn’t Tuesday night, it’s Wednesday, and it’s a lovely day, and you’re thoroughly enjoying it.” That’s how he presented to her what he would do if he was presented with the same or similar problem. And told her he knows a man who will use this weather condition just to keep his mind exercised and with great success. But he said, “When I got up I despaired because here is the rain. But before I left to go to the office, it began to really get softer and softer. By the time I got to the office—my office is on the fourteenth floor—crystal clear atmosphere. You could see for fifty miles…this wonderful atmosphere on Wednesday with all the prophecy of rain and what not. Well, she went off to her Disneyland and she came back and she had a heavenly time.” It wasn’t as bright as his because he was on the fourteenth floor and it was a wonderful expanse of clarity. But he said, “I’m not discussing it with her. I know she has many other projects which she’s working on, and, after all, it is coming Christmas-time, and there are certain things she should keep to herself and not share with anyone else. So she has many projects, but she is using Imagination and I encourage her every day to continue in the use of it.”750 ¶37

If we fail, what does it matter? Try and try again…it costs you nothing. And so, in my case so it took me…how often did I fail? I never failed to keep the vision, for I fell in love with the image and I entered that image. I always kept that image and never lost my identity, but I certainly was distracted time and again in the interval. So what is 1,959 years and when you wake it is as though it were not?750 ¶38

Tonight’s subject is on “The Free Man,” the man who is set free. Paul, if we take him as a person, and I do not, but we’ll take him as a person that you may understand the mystery. He was the first man in history to be set free, but Paul really represents all who are set free. The first book in the New Testament chronologically speaking is Paul’s letter to the Galatians. When you read it in scripture it is not the first, but that is only the canon of the fathers; they arranged all these in their own order. But all scholars are agreed that Galatians came first, and his thirteen letters form a quarter of the New Testament.748 ¶1

He begins it in this manner: “Paul an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” If you understood that verse, it really tells the entire story…just that simple verse, the first verse of the first chapter of Galatians. An apostle is one who is sent on a mission. The mission in this case is to tell what he has experienced…to tell the story of salvation. So he tells you that he’s an apostle and he never saw any Jesus Christ after the flesh, never. But the mystery was revealed in him, and then he came out to tell it. He didn’t get it from a man or from any man in the world, any of them. He got it from Jesus Christ, having experienced who Jesus Christ really is and from God the Father who raised him from the dead.748 ¶2

Then he makes the statement in the same first chapter, “For I would have you know, brethren, that I did not receive this from man, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ”. He doesn’t deny that he heard the story from others, as you have heard it, as I have heard it. My mother taught me the story and she told it to me as secular history. She died believing that it took place in one little individual 2,000 years ago. That’s how she taught it to me, that’s how she was taught it by her mother, and throughout the ages men have been taught it in that manner. So, she heard it from others.748 ¶3

He couldn’t quite believe that that was what the prophets intended, because the only scripture was the Old Testament. So when he was told the story of Jesus Christ, of a peculiar, remarkable, miraculous birth, and a resurrection and an ascension, and a being who was man dared to claim that he was God, that he actually was God, God the Father, well, he rebelled against that until one day in this shocking suddenness it unfolded itself in him, and he realized the story of the mystery of Jesus Christ. So he did not deny he had heard it from others; what he insisted was defending his interpretation of that story having experienced it.748 ¶4

Now he said, “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me”, but “No one knows who the Son is except the Father.” He’s telling you right away who he is. “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me”…the preposition is “in”; it’s not “to” as some translations have it. It revealed itself in me. And “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”. So right in this revelation of his, when it pleases God to reveal his Son, he’s telling you exactly who he is…for only God the Father knows his Son. No one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son. “No one has ever seen God; but the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known”.748 ¶5

So Paul is revealing exactly who he is in that first statement, that “Paul an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.”748 ¶6

And we go on to read what Paul is saying to all of us…he tells you, “I am free.” He said, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”. Now, you can take that in two ways. He actually saw the risen Lord and became what he saw. He realized he was God the Father in seeing the risen Lord. The union took place. You can also take it, not only he became it in that way, but he understood the mystery. He said, “I will tell you a mystery which has been hidden for ages and generations, and the mystery is the mystery of Christ in you that is the hope of glory”. He tells you, “Christ is the image of the invisible God”…and yet Christ is in you.748 ¶7

Now, as I said, there was only one scripture and that was the Old Testament. There was no New when these words were written. We turn to the Old and we read the words, “Keep me as the apple of the eye. When I awake, I will be satisfied in beholding thy form”. He’s speaking now to the Lord and this is David speaking, the 17th Psalm: “Keep me as the apple of the eye. When I awake I will be satisfied in beholding thy form.” The phrase translated “the apple of the eye” literally means “the little man of the eye.”748 ¶8

Look into any man’s eye whether he be an evil man or a good man, and what do you see if you look right into the eye? For the apple of the eye is that which is hollowed out, that dark spot that is like a gate, and it is called “the gate.” Well, it’s called “the little man of the eye.” You look into anyone’s eye, you look right into the pupil, and you do not see the man, you see yourself. So, “Keep me, O Lord, as the apple of the eye.” So the Lord looks into my eye and sees his own reflection, and his reflection is Jesus Christ who is God himself. He’s not seeing another, he is seeing himself as he looks into my eye having hollowed it out and forming a pupil that could reflect. In the darkness of the pupil God sees only himself.748 ¶9

Now, be faithful, O Lord…and be faithful to the image, faithful to the vision that you’ve seen. He only saw himself. “Let us make man in our image”. He looks into my eye, into your eye, and he only sees himself; and he keeps the vision in time of trouble. As Paul said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. I kept it in time of trouble”. So God keeps his vision of himself no matter what you do, no matter what furnaces he puts you through. He’ll take you through all the fires of the world in order to bring out himself as a living being, as himself. So, “Keep me as the apple of the eye,” said David.748 ¶10

And Paul realized after the experience what scripture really meant: that God beholds himself, but not when he looks at you outwardly, for he sees not the outward man, he sees only the inner man. So he looks at you and he sees the same image that he saw when he looked at me, and he looked at the whole vast world whether you be black, yellow, pink, white, and looking into the eye he sees only himself. That’s all that he’s going to bring out; he is going to resurrect himself. He sees himself buried in man, and he will bring out of man the being that he is, endowed with all that he is, power, wisdom, and clothed in the body that God wears, which is infinite love.748 ¶11

So you may be a violent, horrible creature, but when that one is awakened within you and it comes out, it will be God wearing the form of God, and that form is infinite love. I know that from experience.748 ¶12

He doesn’t tell you that having had the experience that the remaining years will be pleasant. No, his story is one of horror. He was imprisoned, he was beaten, he was left for dead, and he was ship-wrecked. All the horrors that could take place in man took place. So that represents man. Don’t think because a man has experienced scripture that he is in any way set free from the horrors of the world, which is this world. He still goes through it until the very end, but knowing that at the very end when he takes off the garment that he’s been wearing, which is his cross, that he is set free and he is now radiating the glory of God and reflecting the glory of God and he is the express image of his person. So when you see him, you see God…can’t see another. You will see God—everyone individualized, no loss of individuality, and yet wearing the form of God and with the power of God, which is a protean being, able to assume any form, any shape in the world that suits your purpose when you are sent on a mission. You are sent on a mission, for you are now the apostle, the one who was called and sent.748 ¶13

So here, the story of Paul is the story of the free man in the world. Who is Paul? Who knows? His first name is Saul and Saul means “Ask Paul.” He is seeking. Paul means “the little one.” As we are told in scripture, “How can Jacob stand? He is so small!”. You look into the pupil of the eye of anyone and the little reflection of yourself is so little. But Jacob’s name is changed to Israel and the word Israel means “the man who rules as God.” Not like a God, as God. He only sees himself. And he changes the name Jacob, which means “the supplanter,” into Israel, “the man who rules as God.”748 ¶14

So nothing in this world can really fail in God’s purpose. As Paul made the statement, “He has made known unto me the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time”. So Paul discovered what man has yet to discover, that Jesus Christ is a plan, a plan set forth in man. It is called in scripture, Jesus Christ. But that is not a man outside of you; that is the plan in you. And when it unfolds, it is man, for you are man, and it unfolds in you in the most marvelous manner.748 ¶15

He described it the best he could and he told it to the best of his ability. If we have discovered all of Paul’s letters, no one knows. We only have thirteen. There might have been others…or he might have taken into his confidence those who did not record it…and maybe he didn’t write it. But I’m quite sure he would have written the identical story as I’ve told you concerning that plan as it unfolded itself in me. It’s the same story.748 ¶16

Two cannot have different plans; there’s only one plan. “He has made known unto me the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time”. When the time is fulfilled, it erupts within man and man discovers he is God, and he is the Lord Jehovah; for the plan simply unfolds in him as a seed would unfold if it is dropped into the earth.748 ¶17

So whoever Paul was…and he certainly is not named in any non-biblical source in the 1st Century. How could a man go through all those experiences as recorded in the Book of Acts and recorded in his letters, where he was imprisoned, he was charged, brought before the governor, brought before King Agrippa, and he said, “I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision”…and “why should any of you think it incredible that God should raise the dead”? “Why do you think it incredible when God promised our fathers that is what he would do? And now for the hope that is the hope of our fathers, which God revealed to them through prophets, I stand before you a slave, enchained.” So here, that is not recorded in anything outside of the Bible, and yet there were works of the 1st Century where if the man lived as an individual then certainly his imprisonment, his arrest, his ship-wreck, all these trials certainly would be recorded, for we have all the others recorded. So he is no more a person than Jesus Christ, or Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob. These are eternal states.748 ¶18

When you reach the state of Paul then you are set free, for the mystery of Jesus Christ unfolds within you and you know who you are. Then you are that little one who was Jacob…and how can Jacob stand seeing that he is so small? But God will take his image as reflected in the pupil of your eye as he beholds himself. He is not beholding the thing beheld like your form—he sees not the outer man—he only sees the inner man, and the inner man is God himself. He is bringing forth from you himself and it is God that is born.748 ¶19

But you’re told in the story that Jesus Christ was born. “He was born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God”. And who was born? A Savior was born. Well, who is the Savior? The Lord God Jehovah: “I am the Lord your God…and besides me there is no Savior”. So if a Savior is born, it has to be the Lord God Jehovah, and what is his name? His name forever and forever is I AM. Well, who is having the experience?—I am. Well, that’s God.748 ¶20

And what was the experience? I felt myself waking from a sleep. You mean you were waking from a sleep? Yes, something unlike any other sleep I’ve ever had. I began to wake from a sleep, and to find myself in a holy sepulcher, and it was my skull. That was the place where I was born but buried, and that’s the place where I was born. I came out of it as I formerly came out of my mother’s womb, but this time it was different. I came out without loss of identity, knowing exactly who I am. Then the symbol of my birth presented itself before me, and then everything as recorded in scripture I have experienced.748 ¶21

Well now, go and tell it. Go and tell it to the world and encourage them to believe in the eternal story and to repudiate all authorities, all institutions, all customs, and all laws that interfere with the individual’s direct access to his God.748 ¶22

No one in this world has the authority to aid you towards that. That image is already in you, for God beheld himself in you. So you don’t need any authority, whether it be called by the name of a pope or some archbishop or some rabbi or priest or some institution. You need none! Therefore completely reject and repudiate all authorities, all institutions, all customs, all laws that would in any way interfere with the individual’s direct access to his God. He one day will awaken as God and not something other than God. There is only God in the world. Everyone in the world is going to have that experience, but everyone.748 ¶23

So I tell you from my own experience the story is the only true story in the world, for all the stories you read in the papers today about who made what and what they did and what they’re going to do and what they’re planning, all that will fade as though it never existed. But this eternal story which is planted in you will erupt, and when it erupts it interprets the Old Testament. The Old Testament contained it, but as an adumbration, as a foreshadowing, which could not be understood until it happened. When it happened in the individual then he understood the Old. Until it happened in one called Paul, he never understood the Old. He thought that you must abide by the laws, the external laws like the dietary laws, and all the ceremonies. We have kept these things through the centuries and none of these thing really matter. It doesn’t really matter if you never saw the inside of a church…never saw any so-called holy man. That doesn’t matter. Nothing must come between you and your God. When you find your God, you’ll find him in yourself as yourself.748 ¶24

And he does have a Son. His Son is called David, and David is simply the result of your journey through fire. You are the one who came through the fires of experience in the world of death. The result of all the experiences that man could ever pass through stands personified before the man who has passed through the fires; and that personification is an eternal youth, and his name is David. He’s not a David; he is the David of biblical fame. You’ll know how true the words were when he said, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: he said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’”. Well, here he stands before you and there’s no uncertainty as to the relationship and the identity of who he is, and who you are.748 ¶25

Then you will know the words, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood”. To whom would I go in the world who has not had the experience and ask them for an interpretation of the experiences when there is no uncertainty in me as to what happened? How could I go? So he went into Arabia…no contact with anyone in the world…just went into himself to commune and ponder this fantastic thing that was so true and he didn’t know it. Here was the one who said, “I am of the seed of Abraham. I am of the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Pharisee of the Pharisees…keeping all the laws, and I did not know it until it pleased God to reveal his Son in me.”748 ¶26

And because no one knows the Son but the Father, when he revealed the Son then the one beholding the Son is his Father. And he knows it. It isn’t something that this must be so because…you just simply know it. You know it more surely than you know any physical child of yours as your own child. A father is told in this world that he sired this child and he believes his wife. He trusts his wife or the woman whether she’s his wife or not…and maybe it resembles him. It’s not a duplicate, but it resembles him, and so he’ll say “All right, it is my child.” But he has no certainty that it is really his child. The woman if she’s in some sleep when she delivers, she doesn’t know whether it’s her child that they give her when she leaves the hospital or another woman’s child. What assurance has she? But there is no uncertainty as to this relationship between you the Father who is God the Father, and the Son who bears witness to your Fatherhood.748 ¶27

So, it pleased God to reveal his Son in me and then I knew at that moment who I really am; prior to that I didn’t know. I thought I was a little man born of a certain woman, of a certain father in this world and that was it. I was taught to believe and taught first by my mother and then by my school and then by the traditions of the world as I went to church, that all this happened 2,000 years ago, and that it’s not related to this age. But the whole thing is contemporary, it is taking place. God came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ…but Jesus Christ is the pattern of salvation. It is the pattern man that is buried in man. The moment God beheld himself in the eye and he called it the apple of his eye.748 ¶28

So we are told in Zechariah, which means “God remembers,” “He who touches you touches the apple of God’s eye”. To touch him, you’re touching the apple of God’s eye. Now, don’t interfere with him, leave him alone. He may be kind, he may be unkind…he’s going through the furnaces. And “How long, vast and severe the furnaces before they find their Father were long to tell”. How long will it take? Who knows? No one knows but the Father. In that moment when suddenly it appears, it’s the Son who appears to reveal the Father to himself and it is the Father who awoke. The Father’s memory returned and he awoke from a long wonderful dream, but a frightening dream, and the dream is this world.748 ¶29

This is the dream where God is dreaming everything in the world. “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Wake! Do not cast us off forever”. These words are addressed to the dreamer and the dreamer is God. A man dreaming is caught up in a reality that is his own and entirely his own creation. Even though it’s his own creation and he is the sole author of everything that is happening, he may be frightened by what is happening, he may be startled, just as though these events that he is now observing and experiencing are outside himself and beyond his control, just as in waking hours.748 ¶30

And that is the dreamer in us. We are the dreamer and the dreamer is God. Everything in my world I am conjuring; and everything has some symbolic significance for me if I could interpret it. The story of the Bible it all begins “And this is the vision of Isaiah, the vision of Obadiah, the vision of Ezekiel”…and these are all the visions. And here, all the visions are spelling out one thing: how God became man that man may become God.748 ¶31

So everything in the world is the unfolding of God and he’s unfolding in you as you. You are not some little thing on the outside cast away; you are God himself…but dreaming. You are dreaming undoubtedly horrible dreams and some lovely dreams. But mostly…you read the morning’s paper and the daily press and listen to the radio and TV and they are horrible dreams. Yet in the end you will awaken from it all to find that you are God, clothed in an immortal form, and that form is love, “the human form divine.”748 ¶32

Yes you’re human and God is man…let no one tell you he is not man. Oh, they can tell you but don’t listen, don’t be persuaded. I tell you God is man. “Thou art a man, God is no more; thine own humanity learn to adore”. For, he actually became humanity and this is the cross that God wears. He never wore another cross. There was no cross of wood, no cross of a tree. The tree is in man. Let our scientists search through Nature to find the tree. May I tell you, they will search in vain, for there grows one in the human brain. That is where God is crucified, right in the skull of man. That’s where he’s buried and that’s where he will rise; and when he rises he rises in you, and you are God.748 ¶33

His only begotten Son will stand before you, and he doesn’t even have to speak, although he will, but he’ll stand before you and you’ll be so in love with your Son, this heavenly eternal youth that is David. He has no mother and you are his Father, regardless of your sex here. May I tell you, forget your sex here, for in the resurrection there is no Greek, no Jew, no bond, no free, no male, no female. You are above the organization of sex. You are not a male, you are Man. Capitalize it. It is Man, not a little male which is a divided image of male-female. And you will find yourself completely fulfilling scripture.748 ¶34

So the basis of Paul’s authority was experiencing scripture. Not a dead written code as you read a Bible. You take up the Bible and start to read it and you’ll say, “What does this mean? Isn’t this horrible! What on earth could this be?” You can’t understand it. But after the experience, it’s an open book and all the seals are broken and you see it clearly. Everything in the book Man is capable of doing; he has done, is doing, and will continue to do until he has awakened from the dream of life. One day he will awaken from it all and just as he awakens he awakens as God the Father. Yet he continues in his little garment of flesh and blood, in prison, in bondage.748 ¶35

And he too will cry out, “O King Agrippa, why should it be thought for one moment incredible that God raises the dead? Is this not the promise that God made to our fathers through the prophets? And now why am I standing before you chained as I am? Would that you are all as I am—minus the chains”. That’s what he said. So he did not get rid of the limitations of the flesh, the weaknesses of the flesh, while he wore the body on which he was still crucified. But he knew what he had experienced, and he knew that at the very moment that it was taken off it would be taken off for the last time, and he would come into his glory. The glory was simply the radiation of the glory of God. He would not only radiate it but reflect the glory of God, and he would be the express image of his person. He was a person: God was Man. So when you met him in the future, you met God. You didn’t meet a little being; you met God, clothed in his immortal garment which was infinite love.748 ¶36

So the Paul of scripture is like all the other characters of scripture, all are eternal states through which Man passes. He passes and the states remain…but the pilgrim passes on.748 ¶37

You started in the beginning with faith in the story that was told you…as Paul makes the statement that the story was revealed to Abraham. Can you imagine the gospel being told to Abraham when if you take it chronologically they are separated by thousands of years? It is said, “The scripture, foreseeing that God would save the Gentiles”—call the word heathen—“through faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham”.748 ¶38

Now he tells you that the story of Abraham is an allegory. Do you know what an allegory is? It’s a story told as if it were true leaving the one who hears it to discover the fictitious character and learn its lesson. One should apply the lesson after having learned it. So he tells you in Galatians that Abraham—speaking now of the character which he tells you is an allegory—had two sons, one born into slavery and one born into freedom. Then he makes the statement, a bold statement, “This is an allegory.”748 ¶39

Well now, if that is an allegory and the New Testament begins in the canonical order of the books with these words, “This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham”…if Abraham and his story is an allegory, then what is his offspring? So what is the genealogy? These are the states of consciousness through which the immortal you must pass. So I can’t begin with an allegory and arrive at something that is called reality.748 ¶40

All ends run true to origins, and if the origin is an allegory, then what is the end? “You see yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum and the corn was corn; the silence and the darkness knew, and so is a man’s fate born”. So if this story is an allegory, then let me now sift it and separate the wheat from the chaff, and find out what it really means. Find out just what that story which is an allegory is trying to tell me.748 ¶41

There are two births. This one is born of a slave, it enslaves me as long as I wear it, and it was born from the womb of a woman, “my mother” I call her…a very wonderful lovely mother, my mother. But there’s another birth and that is born not from the womb, not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man but of God. And that is God himself—he begets himself. As these beget themselves, so God begets himself: one is born into slavery and one is born into freedom.748 ¶42

So the first man in history to be really set free is represented in scripture as Paul, and everyone who is set free by the identical experience is Paul. He is the free man, freed from this world of bondage and made in such a way as the son of God.748 ¶43

And he tells us in the 8th chapter of Romans that the whole creation is actually in turmoil and in slavery and in pain waiting for the liberation and the setting free of what?—of the sons of God. For, we’re all sons of God and it takes us all collectively to form one being, and that being is God the Father. No child is born in this world who is not a son of God. As told us, “He has set the bounds to the peoples of the earth according to the number of the sons of God.” Read it in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy. No child could be born who is not actually a garment worn by the son of God and it takes all the sons to form the Father.748 ¶44

The same word, may I tell you, the word is Elohim. It’s sometimes used in the singular and sometimes in the plural, but it’s the same word. Elohim is really a plural word as told us in that 82nd Psalm, “And God has taken his place in the divine circle, the divine assembly, and in the midst of the gods”—the same word now translated plural gods is the word translated God in the singular. And then he turns to the gods and he said, “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall as one man, O princes”.748 ¶45

So we are the gods who came down into the world in this fabulous biological experiment, the only spot in eternity that could really cradle this experiment. And the gods took upon themselves the limitations and the weaknesses of the flesh, and they were formed in this manner. Now he’s redeeming himself, for he and his sons are one. “I and my Father are one” we are told. So he is redeeming all of his sons, and when all are redeemed they form the Father. And there’s only one Father and there’s only then one Son. For you are the Father and the result of the experiment is personified as David the Son.748 ¶46

So, having had the experience I do not deny that the story was first told me by my mother and then I heard it when I went to school. I was beaten unmercifully for misquoting—which I did not misquote—but he was a sadist that I had as a master, and corporeal punishment was allowed where I was born, and he beat me until blood poured, for simply saying “Take up thy bed and walk.” When I could not produce my Bible, because his translation said, “Take up thy couch and walk.” To satisfy his own sexual pleasure, for he was a sadist, he simply went in and got a long cane that he could bend into a circle, made me lean over a chair, and beat me unmercifully. That was allowed.748 ¶47

And when my father that night saw what he had done, for my brother Victor told him what I looked like, when my father came in and saw the condition of my body, he started dressing. It took all the family to restrain him and the neighbors to restrain him, which was good because his intention was to kill him, and he would have. He could have…he was a big strapping strong man, my father, and in those days he was a very young man. But luckily they restrained him. One year later this man blew his brains out. Of course I was taken out of school that very day.748 ¶48

So, driven into my mind was the book of God…beaten unmercifully for quoting correctly, but it wasn’t quite what his Bible said. And maybe it didn’t say that, but he was looking for an opportunity, some excuse, to beat me.748 ¶49

So here, I tell you the book is the only true book in the world. All the others are theories. Today’s great theory of the moon, oh, they’ll change it…give them a few months and they’ll modify the age of the moon, raise it from four billion to maybe six billion or drop it down to two billion. Oh, they’ll throw it around and they will have all these theories. We’re always modifying our theories, for our men of science are constantly devising new hypotheses upon which to test and to experiment with their little concepts of life.748 ¶50

You and I have one and we need not change it. I call it God…and God is your own wonderful human Imagination that is God. Can you imagine? Well, that’s God, the only reality in the world. That’s the dreamer in man and the dreamer in man is God. That is called in scripture Jesus Christ. It contains a plan, a plan that was devised before that the world was to awaken all of his sons and bring them back from this world of death.748 ¶51

For we came into this experiment—and what a glorious experiment—but we were warned that we would die, we the immortal ones would experience death, and all of our friends would die, our loved ones would die. Yet we were told, “You will not surely die.” You will die but not surely die. And while it lasts, we have no assurance that that statement is true…we only see them die. We can’t touch the hand that we love, we can’t hear the voice that we love, and they disappear from our world. And we have to go along believing…is it really true? Is it really true that they didn’t die, the woman who bore me that I nursed, who loved me and protected me? My father who when he was about to depart this world that he would take all of his earthly goods and divide them among his children, and give them to his children, so that I came into an inheritance from him, and that he is no more…that I would never see him again? Well, I know that’s a lie, but my senses would go along with that and reason would confirm it. For how can you take a man and cremate it and turn it into dust before you and tell me something survived?748 ¶52

And yet I know that something survived in a world just like this and he continues in a world just like this, in a body that I recognize, only much, much younger, not an infant, a young man.748 ¶53

And he continues in a world, learning and experiencing all that he must until that moment in time when it is ripe. Then the pattern that was in him from the beginning of time, when God beheld in him his image and knew him as the apple of the eye, then in a moment when it is fully ripe it erupts, just like fruit coming out of a tree. What comes out? That pattern as described in the story of Jesus Christ: that miraculous birth, following on the heels of his resurrection. It comes first as a resurrection from the grave, coming out of the grave like a little sprig coming out of the earth. That coming out of the earth is his birth. He’s surrounded by the symbolism, as told us in the Book of Luke and Matthew: the little infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then he knows that this is the sign of his own birth and it’s the birth of God. And yet there’s no change of identity and no loss of identity.748 ¶54

Then comes the discovery of the Fatherhood of God and he is the Father. So in the end, he is not my father…he and I are brothers and we are the Father. We have the same Son and the Son is David. So here, my earthly father ceases to be my father…he becomes my brother.748 ¶55

Then we understand the words, “Now go unto my brothers and tell them I am ascending unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and to your God”. Here is the one who had the experience who is telling, “Here is the pattern and all are brothers regardless of the pigment of skin, regardless of your race, your nation, anything.” In the end we are all brothers and together, collectively, we form one Father, and we are the Father. The result of our pilgrimage in this world of horror and death is a Son called David, that eternal youth.748 ¶56

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *748 ¶57

Now are there any questions, please?748 ¶58

Now, just a couple of minutes left, any questions?748 ¶65

We’re here every Monday and Friday through into the early part of December. You’re all welcome. Every night is complete in itself. You don’t have to come night after night. Any night you feel like coming remember it is simply a complete evening in itself. We don’t try to tie into next time by leaving you in midair. That is not our purpose. I try to get everything together in the one evening. And if you feel so moved the next time, come every Monday, every Friday at eight. Thank you. Good night.748 ¶68

[...] with the series. May I tell you, each night is complete in itself. And I want to tell you it will take between forty and forty-five minutes, that is followed by a short silence and then that is followed by questions and answers. But each night is complete in itself. There’s no commitment…come when you feel like it. I hope I will see you often, but there is no commitment.746 ¶1

Every night I try to complete the thought. Tonight’s subject is “Imagination’s Power.” I hope you will listen carefully. I hope I will get a nice response; that you will agree when I tell you that when I use the word Imagination, I mean God, I mean the Lord Jesus. To me they are interchangeable terms. Well, I can’t stop every night to explain this is what I mean. I take it for granted that you will know when I use the word Imagination I might just as well use the word Lord, the word God. Now we are told, “Commit your work to the Lord and it will be established,” and that anyone who believes what he says will come to pass. It will be done for him. No restriction on the power of belief. It doesn’t say that if you are good or that if you’re evil…this is wide open whether you’re kind or unkind. It’s a principle. I will share the principle with you and hope you will use it wisely and lovingly, but I can’t deny you the right to simply do it as you want to do it. You may be wicked in the doing, but it’s entirely up to you. But this is the principle: “The eternal body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself”…the eternal body spoken of in scripture is the Lord Jesus. That is the being of whom I speak night after night.746 ¶2

Now let me share with you in the beginning before we develop it what I mean by it, so you’ll be fully aware of it. When my wife and I returned from San Francisco—we were there for a few weeks—and we checked in two suitcases. When we arrived in L. A., one was missing. We asked, “What must we do?” and they said to go to the Lost Department and register your complaint, so we did. They said to describe the bag and give us the contents, which I did. Well, I couldn’t remember all as my wife packed the bag, and so I told what I thought was there. Then they said to me that when it comes, if it does, we will send it over. Well, it didn’t come…four days…we called several times, they called us several times, and it did not appear. At the end of the fourth day they said to us that it’s lost and to put in a claim; itemize the contents and the value, what it would take to replace the contents of the suitcase. So my wife having packed it, she did it. Got the entire thing settled to be sent off to headquarters in San Diego.746 ¶3

Early on the fifth day I said now I’ve done all that Caesar has asked of me—“render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”—that’s what Caesar demands. In my Imagination I saw the bag…not more clearly than you would now see the interior of your living room if you thought about it. Think of your living room. You don’t see it as clearly as you see me or see your neighbor, but you can see it. You know exactly what it looks like. It was not clearer than that. It was a black and grey bag, a very big bag that my daughter gave me two or three years ago. When you go for a long trip it’s heavily packed, and so it was a heavy bag. In my Imagination I lifted the bag and felt the weight of it. I could see it clearly just like this…not as clearly as this room, but I saw it clearly. Then I held it in my hands until I got the emotion of relief. For, of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt. You know it from experience. You expect a loved one and they’re late, and then it’s an hour, then it’s two hours, and you know the relief that comes when you hear a familiar voice. I know a friend of mine when they saw a flame in the distance and all that they had put into their lovely home thought, “Well, certainly that is my home” and when they came to the point where it was not—all the other homes were burned to the ground—he broke down in tears. That was relief! So again I repeat of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt.746 ¶4

Well, I felt the relief of possession. The contents, yes, I didn’t want to go out and replace them, we loved everything in it…my wife’s dresses, my [...] to replace them, things of that sort. But why replace them if you like what you have? And it would have taken at least $1,300 to replace the contents. Long before we could settle we would have to put out that sort of money.746 ¶5

But I went to the one being that I trust implicitly. The world will call it by any other name. I call it my Imagination and I firmly believe that my Imagination is God. I believe he is the one character in scripture spoken of as the Lord Jesus Christ. To me there is no other. So I firmly believed in the reality of what I was doing. The fifth day went by and no calls from the airport.746 ¶6

On the sixth day when the mail was delivered, here came a letter. As I opened it…first of all, it was written in ink but printed so that no one could guess the script. When I opened the letter it simply said, “Your suitcase is in the locker. Sonny the bandit,” and then he enclosed the key, #164. My wife called the airport and read the letter to the security officer. He said they’d get in touch right away after they investigated. Within a matter of moments he called back to say that they had no box no number 164, but they would get in touch with San Francisco because it was mailed in San Francisco. They called San Francisco and within an hour they called me back that the police had found it in #164, opened the suitcase, and it was ransacked…everything was just simply ransacked. But they were sealing it and flying it off to L.A. Would I come over with my wife a little after six and in the presence of the Police Department of L.A., not their security forces, examine the contents. So we went over. It was simply a shambles…everything was turned inside out. Even a simple little thing like your handkerchiefs all were turned inside out. We bought two little presents for our daughter and a friend of hers. We went to Gump’s and we asked them to please wrap them as gifts, beautifully wrapped. They were torn apart but the presents were there. Everything was in tact, not one thing was missing—our checkbook, every check was there—but it was just simply a mess. They apologized for the condition of the bag and then said, “What may we do?” I said, “Nothing. When we go on a trip that exceeds a few weeks, we invariably have everything cleaned when we come back. It’s been our custom, and we’ll do it as we’ve always done, for we would have done it anyway.” Then he said, “Mr. Goddard, I’m awfully sorry, but when you and Mrs. Goddard travel the next time on our line, you are our guests, round-trip.” And so, we brought it back.746 ¶7

Yes, it was a mess. You may say, “Why did they take your bag when you teach this?” I cannot stop you from thinking what you want to think. If I’m a victim of your wickedness, well, I have to be the victim of your wickedness. But I must not forget my principle, that in spite of your wickedness I can turn to the Lord and he will retrieve that which seemingly is lost. I went to Caesar and did all that Caesar could do and they could not find it. The Police Department couldn’t find it here, the Police Department in San Francisco couldn’t find it. No one could find it and they considered it lost. I did not accept that and I simply assumed that I had it. To the best of my ability I simply felt the reality of that which my senses denied and my reason denied. Although they completely denied it, I still persisted in this and I committed my work to the Lord…the Lord being my own wonderful human Imagination. The reasoning being now I could do no more than I did and I left it that way. On the sixth day it came back in tact.746 ¶8

I’m asking you to accept the true being that is Jesus. Man’s true identity is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is a man’s own wonderful human Imagination. There is no other Jesus Christ: man’s true identity is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is a man’s own wonderful human Imagination. There is no other Jesus Christ.746 ¶9

God became man that man may become God. You can do this for everything in this world. Do not accept anything because at the moment reason denies it. Now this concept of Imagination raises a question. I have been asked, “Would you say then that Imagination is sufficient for all things? If he is God and with God all things are possible, is Imagination sufficient for all things, or must I add a little reason just like the chef adds a little spice to make it more palatable?” I say the answer to that question is this, “According to your faith be it unto you”. I cannot really add anything, but I can say, “According to your faith be it unto you.”746 ¶10

Do you believe it’s adequate? Do you believe it’s insufficient? If to your Imagination is insufficient, well then, to you it is insufficient. I can only tell you from my own experience you will never find another law and you will never find another God. Listen to the words, “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; I the Lord do all these things and none can deliver out of my hand”. Now choose this day whom you will serve and Joshua said, “We choose to serve the Lord.” Then, Israel responded, “We choose the Lord.” But Israel forgot the Lord, couldn’t keep the tense…it seemed too much, for the Lord had revealed his name as I AM. The fundamental sin in the world is lack of faith in “I am he.” “Unless you believe I am (is) he, you die in your sins”. You must firmly believe that the only Lord is I AM. I can sever this hand from the body; I can sever vital organs from my body—take out a lung, a kidney, do all these things—but I still am. Remove them, but I can’t remove I am and be. I can’t remove my Imagination. Where can I go in this world and not imagine? And can any man go any place where he hasn’t first gone there in Imagination? No! I can’t remove it, for I am Imagination. I do not observe Imagination as I do objects. I am the reality that is named Imagination. So here, I can’t get away from it.746 ¶11

Therefore, God that is my Imagination is never so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. When the world speaks of God, it’s always man and God…they’re separated. He speaks of Jesus…Jesus is the one talking about Jesus. But you cannot separate them, not the real God, not the real Lord, not the real Jesus. Therefore, these things happen as they happened to me. Why? I go out on a limb and teach others what I am now telling you. But I am not left apart as something different. I must day after day examine myself to see whether I am holding to my faith. It’s not enough to tell him that I must hold to my faith. “Test yourself and see,” said Paul, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”746 ¶12

So I must examine myself day after day. So the bag is missing…and it’s certainly missing. I have the ticket. What good is the ticket? Where are my clothes, my wife’s clothes? And I need them. So to whom would I turn? I turn first to Caesar and Caesar demands things, it’s part of the law, and I render unto him that which I must. But then when they all fail, I turn to the one that I pledged myself to serve. I pledged myself to serve the Lord and the Lord is my own wonderful human Imagination. There is no other Lord. And he brought it back. Yes, disheveled…so what! This night everything has been cleaned and laundered and hanging where it formerly was. It’s in perfect order. And now, not that we wanted any little thing, but he did give us roundtrip tickets next time we travel. So that was a picture.746 ¶13

I say to everyone, you hear a friend’s need. It may be the most horrible thing in the world judged by human appearances. Don’t be disturbed. The very one who told you of the need, bring him before your mind’s eye and see them as clearly as you can as you now think of a friend who is not here. Think of anyone who is not here. Well, you can see them clearly enough. Do you know what their voice sounds like? Listen to their voice and have that voice tell you what you wish it could tell you…and not what it did when the voice concerned about a friend’s health or whatever you call it, no matter what the condition. You do not listen too carefully to what they complain, you simply reverse the entire thing and then you listen. Now listen to the words, “Whoever believes that what he says will come to pass, it shall be done for him.” What a promise! Read it in the 11th chapter, the 23rd verse of the Book of Mark. Whoever believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him!746 ¶14

I can sit here or stand here and believe that I’m hearing a voice, and I can actually believe that what he told me—though reason at the moment would deny that he’s physically present—but I can persuade myself it’s true. Then I physically do nothing. Not a thing can I do beyond what I have done. I do nothing other than what I’ve done. That imaginal act of mine was God’s act. That’s how God acts.746 ¶15

He brings things that are not seen into the world that they may be seen, and all the things that were made were made out of things that do not appear. No one saw what I imagined. So, my Imagination and your Imagination are forever enveloping us, surrounding us, permeating us as our very being; and ever waiting for the act of faith where we cast ourselves upon Divine Imagination and then free ourselves from the bondage of the senses, from the bondage of mortality. For the mortal man did all that he could and the senses did all that they could but they’re limited. Man is shut up in the limitation of his five senses; and yet housed within him the real being that he is is God, and there is no limit now. In this little world of mortality, what limit could you put upon God? So I ask everyone here to test it, to try it. Don’t say yes hurriedly…try it. Because we’re creatures of habit it might take a little while for you to undo what has been done in you when you were taught the story of Jesus. For if you were taught it as I was taught it…I was taught it as one other than myself, that a man 2,000 years ago came into the world in a miraculous way, and then he died, he was killed, and then he was buried and then rose from the dead. I was taught that story, lovely story, and I believed it implicitly. My mother taught it to me and I would never question mother. It’s a true story but infinitely greater than that story. Do you know who he is?—your own wonderful human Imagination. That is Jesus. This is the Christ of faith: one who comes into our world completely unknown, yet one who will in some ineffable mystery let man experience who he is. He has allowed me to experience who he is. And when he allowed me to experience who he is, I discovered I am he, for in the experience it was a first-person, singular, present-tense experience. I didn’t see him coming from without as the world teaches; no, he rose from within as my very self. And it’s all there in the Bible. But man because he has been taught as I was taught looks at it and still can’t see it.746 ¶16

Listen to these words from Ephesians, “He is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility…making in himself one new man in place of two, thus making peace”.746 ¶17

Now you read it and you’re inclined to go on, because the mind has been so trained you think a man is talking outside and now he’s going to make peace with the Lord Jesus…something other than himself. Come back to it. He is our peace…he. That pronoun is emphatic. The word follows the verb. That’s an expression of a central being: he is our peace. Now the body of peace, as we see it here, is not a doctrine, it’s not a philosophy, it’s not some abstraction, but a person. You’re a person, aren’t you? Well, don’t think your Imagination is some intangible force. It’s a person…the ideal you, unseen by you, the one who came unknown. Now he’s going to break down that wall of hostility and make of the two one new man. And when he breaks it down and they become one new man, then he rises. Not out there, he rises as you and you rise as the Lord Jesus Christ. No change of identity, no change of name. Is your name Peter? Then it’s Peter. Is your name Neville? It’s still Neville. No change whatsoever as to identity. You’re following an eternal pattern and the pattern is described in scripture as the life of Jesus Christ.746 ¶18

All things are possible to him, so don’t turn back to anyone in this world after you hear it. After you hear it, accept every challenge in the world, I don’t care what the challenge is. So someone asks you this night the most impossible thing based upon reason, don’t turn away and rationalize it. And don’t send them away; accept the challenge in your own mind’s eye as you hear it. Don’t take any challenge concerning doubt, like turn this stone into bread. We don’t do that…get behind me, you doubter. But what do you want? You don’t want to turn this stone into bread, you want to challenge my right to say what I say and prove and disprove it. Well now, get behind me. I have no use for that. But what do you want? Is your mother ill? Are you unemployed and can’t find a job? Are you up against it? Name it! Well then, I will get it…I’ll hear that. But don’t you come with any challenge to cause me to doubt, because I will not doubt the Lord. I made my choice: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” I have chosen the Lord to serve, and the Lord is my own wonderful human Imagination. I will admit my limitation while I’m in this world wearing a garment of flesh and blood. Yes, I am limited, very limited, subject to all the weaknesses, all the limitations of the flesh. But I know how to reach the true being that I am, my true identity, and he’s not too far away—never so far as even to be near, for that would separate us, and therefore I would confess that he hasn’t yet broken down the dividing wall of hostility between us and made of the two one new man. But he has made of the two one new man, for he rose in me as himself. And now don’t ask me any more, I will yield, completely yield to what I have heard as though I witnessed it in the flesh. I expect confirmation from you who asked it of me in the not distant future. I don’t care what others will say. I don’t care what they’re doing, I’m not interested. I only know that I’ve found the one that I can trust and he’s not in the sky, he’s not outside. He’s not anything other than where I am at every moment of time, and he’s my own wonderful human Imagination. That is God. His name to you is I AM, and you can’t get away from it. That fundamental being is I AM. You’re told in scripture that only two things displease the Lord: the first one is the lack of faith in I am he, and the second is eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He didn’t make an evil man. The man or the woman or whoever they were who stole my suitcase, whatever the motive was I don’t care. I don’t know and I’m not searching for him. But he didn’t make an evil man. He made good and evil a tree, a tree bearing fruit of good and evil, and these are states. You can’t conceive of a state in the world that is not now in existence. So wickedness is in existence. And I could unwittingly fall into a state of wickedness, and then I animate that state, and I have to express a wicked man, for it takes a man to express the state whether it be good or evil. But he didn’t make a good man and a bad man. Man is God, because man is all Imagination and Imagination is God and dwells in us and we in him. The eternal man is all Imagination and that is God. It’s not a good man or a bad man, but passing through states.746 ¶19

Should I fall into a wicked state at my right hand will be something or two to express wickedness. And someone who has come to my meetings—why even speculate—who could have resented my interpretation of scripture because he believes that Jesus is something other than himself, and he could resent it to the point of feeling I’m going to get even with that man and then he acts. But the being to whom I turn knows everyone. He knows every being in the world. You know why? “Because all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle”. And so, he knows the one who did it and can instantly change the man’s attitude toward the act, and have him put it back, and then scribble that little thing, and send it off. He need not have done it, he could have burned it or he could have destroyed the evidence, but he was compelled to do it. Now, if I had not acted, it never would have returned. So we are the operant power; it doesn’t work itself because we know who the Lord is. I have found him to be my Imagination, but that’s not enough. I must day after day examine myself to see if I am holding to the faith. So do I really believe it to the point of acting upon it? For I am the operant power; it will not operate itself.746 ¶20

So I must every day…no matter what happens…if I should have the most horrible dream at night concerning the most intimate love of mine, I must not say, “Why did it happen to me?” How often do you hear people who consider themselves kind and generous and sweet say, “Why would this happen to me?” as though they are completely apart from the vast world when they are all individuals. It could happen to everyone in this world…but anything. Only don’t forget the Lord. Let it happen. He has the right to be wicked…he fell into the state of wickedness, and if I could be the victim of his wickedness, well, let it be. Only I must not accept it as final. I must now turn to the Lord and the Lord is my own wonderful human Imagination; and turning to him, completely abandon myself to the act and cast myself upon Divine Imagination. Then at that moment I am freed from the bonds of mortality. I am not going to call the station any more, I’m not going to write any more letters, I just let it be, and then it must come back! It has to come back.746 ¶21

So I ask everyone, before you judge it, try it. And when you do it and it works, you will find who you really are. In the end, you will find you will spend your days from morning to night proclaiming the kingdom of God. And some who hear you will be convinced by your arguments, because you will use scripture, the laws of Moses, the prophets, and the writings. Then some having believed it will turn to the other side and they will disappear. They are fixed in their belief as to who God is and how he only likes the good people and he hates the bad people; and they have their concept of what is a bad person and what is a good person and they go through life that way. But you will discover in the end all things work for good with those who love the Lord. So everything will work for good.746 ¶22

First of all, you become strengthened in your faith when someone calls you and tells you that you missed something. And when they opened the plane and saw the show and they were hurt, I asked not one penny from them, didn’t need their money. Yet undoubtedly they were insured, and if I sent them a bill for sixty dollars for cleaning, they willingly would have paid it. But I wouldn’t have felt right, because I would have cleaned those things anyway whether they were disheveled or not. So I have to live with Neville, so I couldn’t take their sixty bucks. But I did take two tickets from them.746 ¶23

However, this is the power of which I speak tonight. It’s not in armies, no, it’s not in any implement in the world. You don’t do it while they use their implements…you do it all in your Imagination. And everyone in this world will work for you. If it takes a million people to bring what you have just done in your Imagination to pass, they’ll take a million people and they’ll do it. They’ll do it not even knowing that they are doing it. All will work toward the fulfillment of what you have done in your Imagination. So you don’t have to seek the army to do it, you don’t have to seek out individual brains to have them do it, you simply do it and completely commit yourself.746 ¶24

So, faith is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. What do you hope for, the recovery of a friend? That’s your hope? Well, now appropriate it subjectively. How would I go about appropriating that subjectively? Well, bring your friend before your face and have the friend tell you, “Why I’ve never felt better, never!” And you respond, “But really I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look better. I’ve never seen you look better and stronger. You look so altogether lovely, so altogether wonderful.” Well now, believe that, for whoever believes, what is said will come to pass. It will be done for you.746 ¶25

Now, whatever has to be done…I’m not saying that she, he, they may not seek the help of some doctor. Whether he does or does not, it doesn’t make any difference so I’m not concerned. I’m not saying they will or will not. I will not recommend him. I would just say, “All right, I’ve done it” and then suddenly the change will take place in them. I had that report only this night. A friend of mine called me in tears about a week ago, and she couldn’t even get out her request. She was in such tears. So I said, “All right, [...] called me. I didn’t know it…I don’t go around seeking for these things, but I am here to help and I will help. Well, at that moment I simply did what I thought I had to do, which I wanted to and I reversed the entire conversation. Tonight she saw me. Yes, she’s thin. What’s wrong with being thin? “I’m thin but I feel fine.” She’s thin and she doesn’t want to put on any more weight, and she said from that very moment on she felt so much better. She knows now after a whole week of not being able to eat now she can eat and it remains down. The food is down so she is actually building strength. Before that there were six weeks where she couldn’t keep anything down.746 ¶26

And what did I do? I’m not a doctor and I know nothing of the human body, but nothing. But I do know the law. I do know the law is not out in space, I do know it’s not in time; I know he’s right here…I AM. I’m not saying that Neville is the Lord. I say “I am.” Neville is a mask that I am wearing…but I am he.746 ¶27

You can say the same thing. But now test it if you really believe it. It’s easy to say I am he, but do you believe it? Can you actually believe that today you have what you want in this world? That your friends have what they want in this world? And then walk as though it were true. Because these precepts are to be taken literally: “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and you will.” If you really believe that you’ve received it, well then, you’ll walk as though it were true and then you aren’t concerned.746 ¶28

And any doubt, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Well, Satan is only the personification of the doubt in man. There’s no being called Satan. Everyone in the world can play the part of Satan. The pope can play the part of Satan tonight by challenging me to say what I’m saying without being ordained. He could challenge me, and in a certain manner if I were other than what I am he could fool me into believing that he holds the authority. Like the Queen of England trying to speak with authority, isn’t that nonsense? What authority? Yet there are millions who believe she has it and yet she has no authority whatsoever, but they endow her with authority. And for those who know, it’s laughable.746 ¶29

So, everyone in the world will try to dethrone you and move you from the being that you’ve found. Tell them to get behind you. You have made your choice and the choice is, I will serve the Lord and the Lord is my own wonderful human Imagination. There is no other Lord. May I tell you, you will not fail. So the answer to “Is this sufficient?” well, sufficient so far as I’m concerned, but if you think it’s insufficient, well then, to you it’s insufficient. But may I tell you, it is not insufficient. It’s the power of the universe, the power that created and sustains the universe. It is your own wonderful human Imagination.746 ¶30

It seems madness, seems insane. Well, standing on the moon seemed insane not more than half a century ago. But someone imagined it a hundred-odd years ago, a Frenchman by the name of Jules Verne. He even wrote a book and he named it Going to the Moon. He named the people who would do it Americans…that they would have the mechanical know-how, the engineering know-how to do it. Well, they did. The Americans went first. A Frenchman saw it, but didn’t have confidence in his own country to have the know-how to do it. The Americans went, and there they put the flag out, and they actually walked on the moon. You and I saw it. I saw it in San Francisco…you saw it wherever you were. I’m quite sure many of you said nothing could interest you more than one of our boys walking on the moon. You and I saw it…and so it happened.746 ¶31

You can’t conceive something that isn’t possible. You can’t conceive of it because why?—you are God. God became man that man may become God, and he’s slowly breaking down that wall of hostility between two and making of two one. So, when he rises, you are he. But how can I know I’m he? I didn’t change my identity and I didn’t change my name. Well, how do I know? He gave you a pattern: this is how God is born. He’s born in this manner; he resurrects in this manner; he comes out of the tomb in this manner; he finds David who calls him Father in this manner. He gives you the entire pattern: he is the pattern man. So all of a sudden that pattern erupts within you and you experience everything said of Jesus Christ. Yet you still bear the same name, you bear the name of John or Peter or whatever it is that you bear, but the entire thing recorded in scripture concerning him you have experienced. So I say, Christ of faith comes to us as one unknown, yet one who is actually by some peculiar, wonderful mysterious way lets man experience who he is. When he experiences who he is, you’ll know the words, “Yes I am he.” For unless I believe I am he, I die in my sins. Believing prior to that experience…I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that I am he. The experience has convinced me that I am he…and there is no other Jesus.746 ¶32

So if any man will ever come to you saying, “Look, here he is” or “Look, there he is,” don’t believe him. Why? Because whenever he comes to you, you’re like him. So if you look out there, no matter how close he resembles you, like a twin, he still isn’t you. It can’t be another. So if any man ever comes to you telling you, “’Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there is the Christ!’ do not believe him”. And then John answers why: “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall know him”— how?—“because we shall be like him”, the very image of him. Because, he rises in you as you and you are the Christ.746 ¶33

There’s only God in the world. There’s not any room in the world for anyone but God and there’s only God. Regardless of race, regardless of nationality, regardless of anything in the world, there’s only God, nothing but God. Plays all the parts and in the end when the curtain comes down, here one being achieving this only, and you are he. It’s the most wonderful play in four acts! It begins with the law of Moses, it moves into the prophets, then it moves into the writings, and then it comes into the gospel, the most heavenly play in four acts! The gospel is the good news of salvation.746 ¶34

Now let us go into the Silence.746 ¶35

* * * Are there any questions, please?746 ¶36

Tonight’s subject is “Counting the Cost.” In the gospel of Luke, the fourteenth chapter, he asks a certain question, “Which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether you have enough to complete it?” So you and I are called upon to count the cost. It’s not in dollars and cents. That’s not the coin that you use. God counted the cost when he decided to transform us into himself. It’s a frightening cost! Because, God actually became us; he didn’t pretend to become a slave, he became one. As we are told in Philippians: “Jesus Christ, who, though in the form of God, emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.” He actually took upon himself the form of a slave and this mightier self that is our self who is Jesus Christ, is your own wonderful human Imagination. Completely emptied himself and assumed the form of a slave, and now he serves us in the capacity of a slave. A slave does not question the order given by his master, he only obeys. For today he serves us as indifferently and as quickly when our will is evil as when it is good. I can conjure in a second, a split second, the most horrible picture or the most wonderful loving picture, and he does it. He is my own wonderful human Imagination, who gave up his primal form, his prenatal wholeness, and took upon himself the form of a slave, which is my own wonderful human Imagination that serves me in this capacity.743 ¶1

Now tonight, I want to take it on this level, this level of Caesar, and show you how on this level we do the same thing. Just as he gave up everything to become me to transform me into himself, so that I may wear the form of God and wear that primal form that is eternal, so today I give up, too, certain things. But I must count the cost.743 ¶2

Well, how would I go about counting the cost if I wanted to be other than what reason tells me that I am? Well, this is how I do it. First, I must know what I want to be, and then I conjure in my mind’s eye a certain imagery which imagery implies the fulfillment of my dream. And then, this is where I now count the cost. Do I have the necessary persistency, the necessary faithfulness, the necessary power that in spite of all things to the contrary I will persist? Do I have these virtues? Am I willing to start with what I have in the hope that it really is enough to build the tower?743 ¶3

For the word translated tower means “a simple watch-tower.” As we are told in Habakkuk: “And now I will stand, and watch, and take my station upon the tower; and I will look forth to see what he will say unto me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. The Lord answered me and said, ‘Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets that he may run who reads it.’” And then comes the promise, “For the vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens; it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure, and it will not be late.” Here you find these three verses of 2nd Habakkuk. This is the tower spoken of in this Book of Luke, “I will stand upon my tower.”743 ¶4

So I bring before my mind’s eye a certain imagery. I bring you, my friend, and hear you discussing each other and your discussion is all about my good fortune. I listen as though I actually heard you say what I want everyone to say. I listen and persuade myself I’m actually hearing it. And then have I now the courage, in spite of tomorrow when everything denies it? Have I the persistency? Have I the faithfulness? By faithfulness I mean loyalty to this unseen reality. So here, it is unseen, but to me it’s real. I’m seeing it vividly in my mind’s eye, but it hasn’t yet objectified itself upon the screen of three-dimensional space so that you may share it with me. Well, can I remain faithful? Can I remain loyal to this unseen reality until it becomes something I can share with the world? Have I that coin?743 ¶5

So the coin I use is not the coin of Caesar, it’s the coin of God. He knew exactly the price he had to pay when he decided to transform me into himself, for he had to grant me all the freedom in the world to make mistakes. He had to become my slave and wait upon me just as swiftly when my will was evil as when my will is good. He couldn’t discriminate and say you shouldn’t do it. He has to wait upon me and let me make all the mistakes in the world as he slowly transforms me into his form, that I, too, may bear the form of God. So just as Jesus Christ, who, though he was in the form of God, emptied himself and then took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of a man, not a man 2,000 years ago, you are the man in which Jesus Christ is born. Every child born of woman is Jesus Christ, born in the likeness of man. And now in the depth of that soul is one’s own wonderful human Imagination, which is Jesus Christ, a slave of that man. And he takes the part of the slave in the true sense of the word: he only obeys. He doesn’t suggest anything in this world, only obeys your wonderful vision and he will in the twinkle of an eye conjure up the most horrible animalisms in the world and lust at the call of your desire. And the same one does it that will conjure to me, if I so desire, the most loving thing in the world, the same being, not another being. There’s only one God and that God is Jesus Christ. Forming us from what we are into what he was when he gave himself up to become us—and that is God himself.743 ¶6

So here is a story. Last month in New York City this lady came to me, she brought her husband—nice looking chap, tall, fine, handsome looking fellow. She said, “Do you recall my story of last year? I was at my wit’s end, and I told you my husband, who I consider a very fine lawyer, he graduated from one of our greatest universities, and here at his age, he was then only forty, he was only earning eighty-seven dollars a week in a very large law firm. I asked you if I could apply this technique for him, without his consent, without his knowledge, because, trained as he is in the legal world, he could not conceive of the rational side of this picture at all. It made no sense whatsoever to him. So could I, without his knowledge, without his consent, use this technique to increase his income? And I asked you if I could take it and double it. You said to me, ‘Double it? Treble it! Make it three times or make it more than that. A man trained as he is trained—years at a great university, at the age of forty, only making eighty-seven dollars a week? Why that’s insane. Treble it!’” Well, she said, “Now I want you to meet my husband.” So I met her husband. She said, “He’s now making $300.00 a week. Now, this is what I want, Neville, I want him to be a judge.”743 ¶7

I said all right, does he want to be a judge? So I said to him, “Would you like to be a judge?” He said, “Yes. I think I would be a very good judge. I have all the qualifications and I think I’d be a good judge.” I said now to her, I said, “Now you did it, he didn’t do it. He didn’t have a thing to do with this $300.00 a week. It simply came over the year to him and now he is earning $300.00 a week. But you paid the price. You were very vigilant, you were persistent, you were faithful to the vision concerning your husband. Now, I’m telling not to him, I’m telling to you. Now that you are making $300 a week, don’t you have someone who helps you out with cooking the meals, or maybe serving the dinner in your apartment, or cleaning the house?” She said yes. I said, “All right, from now on, you only think of your husband as a judge. And so now you say to your servant, take a certain product to your husband, say, a glass of water, a cup of tea, or whatever it is, you refer to him as the judge. Take this to the judge or ‘Would you please take to the judge an ashtray.’ Whatever it is you want to send to your husband, he is the judge. He is not just your husband, Mr. So and so, [...], he’s earned the right to be called Judge and you refer to him as Judge. When I come back here in May next year I want him on the bench as judge.” And do you know he’s going to be judge if she will pay the price. If she is persistent, if she is faithful to that vision, referring always in her mind’s eye, that even in her dream, she refers to him as “the judge.”743 ¶8

I have a brother who is a doctor and from the day he was married—and I give his wife one hundred percent credit for this—she always referred to him as “the doctor.” She never once spoke to anyone in her household—she has a full complement of servants; there are five in the house and three in the yard—but anyone who had to take anything to my brother Lawrence, when his wife suggested it, “You take this to ‘the doctor’ or ‘the doctor’ wants this done or ‘the doctor’ wants that done.” Then she has two sons who are doctors, and she discriminates between her husband “the doctor” and her two sons that she calls them by name, Dr. Michael and Dr. Robert. But they are not “the doctor.” In her mind’s eye her husband, my brother Lawrence, is “the doctor.” Today in Barbados he is the most prominent doctor, he has the biggest practice, many doctors working for him, and a clinic with thirty beds. And so, he’s the most busy doctor in the island of Barbados. I go back to my sister-in-law Doris’ concept, which people laughed at when she started. For when he came out of McGill as a young doctor, in her mind’s eye he was “the doctor” and always referred to him as “the doctor.” And Lawrence grew and grew and grew in the world of medicine.743 ¶9

So I said to her, from now on he has to be “the judge.” “You take this to ‘the judge’.” There’s only one judge in your mind’s eye in your household and that is your husband. You take it. Not only is he earning $300.00 a week, but the dignity that would go with his new position and increased funds and responsibility.743 ¶10

Another one came from Baltimore and he said, “Do you not remember my problem, Neville? My problem was money. Well, I want to tell you I am making four times what I made a few years ago when you and I discussed my problem. I think I can say from the actual evidence I was vigilant, I was faithful. Today I am making this four times more and making it more effortlessly than I did when I made my bit of money when it was really my problem.”743 ¶11

Now, this is the price you and I pay. Causation is mental; it is not physical. Causation is the assemblage of mental states which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies. You can put it down. That’s exactly what causation is: it’s the assemblage of mental states which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies.743 ¶12

So I create a scene… and so I have a servant in my house and I’m saying to the servant, “Take this to ‘the judge’.” Here is one image, a servant; another image, something I’m giving to her; and then another image, a man. I refer to him as “the judge.” So here is the assemblage of mental states which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies. What does this imply? He’s not a judge at that present moment in time, but what is that conversation implying? It implies he is a judge. I’m asking to take this to ‘the judge’, and so, she takes it to the judge. Then I must be persistent, I must be vigilant, I must be faithful, I must be courageous. Regardless of tomorrow’s denial, I must be courageous and still live in this state. And when the day comes, I cannot predict it, I cannot tell you how it’s going to happen, but they will see in him the man they want to be judge. Some party, a [...] party, either the Democratic party or the Republican party or someone, they’re going to see in him the man they want to be a judge, and he will have no choice in the matter. Because one woman unknown to the party sat in a certain mood and she was faithful to that mood, and then they had to see him as she always saw him, she saw him as the judge. Well, this is how this fabulous law works.743 ¶13

My brothers came to New York City last month and stayed two weeks with us. We got a suite of rooms on our floor at the hotel, so we were in constant contact. I bought a dozen shows for them, that is, seats to go to a dozen shows, all in two weeks. But there was one thing my brother Lawrence wanted; above all things he wanted to see Aida, the opera. He loves music, he appreciates music, he understands music. My brother Victor had never seen an opera, so anything would be exciting to him. But Lawrence wanted to actually see and hear Aida. This year they’ve changed the format of Aida, the same music but new costumes, new scenery, and new format. And it’s a sellout. You can’t get near Aida in New York City now. In fact, in New York City all the operas are sold out, anyway. But when it comes to this present presentation of Aida, well, it’s just like asking for a [...]. Just can’t get near the place. Well, he wanted to see Aida.743 ¶14

So, I said, All right, you’re going to Aida. Went down to the Metropolitan Opera, the four of us, my wife, my two brothers and myself. We got there around 11:30 in the morning and there were two long lines, two windows serving this entire crowd. They always sell ten seats in advance at the Met, that is, ten operas. Not the same opera, but the next ten performances are always sold in advance. So I got into one line—it’s a very long line—and then the other line was maybe five or six shorter. But my line wasn’t moving. It was simply a static line because the one up front was asking a thousand questions: “Can I see from this one, can I hear correctly, and are these good seats for the money I’m paying?” Well, the man was very kind and very considerate and he answered her very gently, but it wasn’t moving. I saw this line began to move, so I broke line and just went over to this, and got at the very end of it. It moved rapidly down toward the teller. When I got to the teller I was the second now in line. The man in front of me bought two seats for some opera, which opera I don’t know, but the two seats were two little pink seats and they were stuffed in an envelope and just about to be pushed to him.743 ¶15

At this very moment, just as the man is pushing the seats to him, a tall man about six foot five or six foot six stuck his hand over my head from my side, and he registered this man’s attention and called his attention to the side. So the teller looked up this way and began to answer the man’s question. At this moment, this man took the two seats and pushed some bills under the window, and started toward the door. The man thanked him after the questions were answered, and then the teller looked back and he sees four one-dollar bills. So he said, “What is all this?” And the man is now almost to the street. So he looks through the window, and he calls out, “Mister!” and the man doesn’t respond. “Mister!” he calls a second and third time. He doesn’t respond. So I turned around and said, “Sir!” At that he stopped. I said, “You! You come right back here.” So he did that. So he came right back, came in front of me and the man said, “What have you done here? These are four one-dollar bills.” He said, “I gave you twenty.” He said, “Oh, no you didn’t.” He said, “I gave you twenty.” I said, “Oh, no you didn’t. You only gave him exactly what is there, because I was standing here and saw exactly what you did. Whatever that is that’s all you gave him, you gave him no more, because I was standing here.” He looked at me this way but did nothing. He just simply looked. And then he opened up his wallet. I could see a bunch of ones in the side of the wallet and a twenty-dollar bill tucked in the side. So then he said to the man, “I gave you twenty dollars.” The man said, “You didn’t.” Closed the other window, he came around, “You heard the man. He said that he was standing next to you and he saw exactly what you did, so that’s what you did.” So the man now takes his four dollars back, puts the twenty dollars into the window, and then says, “When will you discover your mistake?” The teller said, “I didn’t make a mistake.” He said, “When will you discover you have more in your cash box than you should have? Tonight?” and the teller said, “No, not tonight.” He said, “When?” He said, “The end of the season.” Could he argue with him? And they all loved that.743 ¶16

This whole thing is unfolding just as I’m telling you, all by one’s wonderful human Imagination. So when I stepped forward, after the man takes his seats and leaves, and then I said, “What is that horseshoe [...] right over the orchestra? I want it right over the orchestra and I want two seats in the center for Aida next Tuesday night.” He said, “Well, that horseshoe [...] is called the Grand Tier.” I said, All right, then I will take two in the center of the Grand Tier for Tuesday. He didn’t hesitate a second. He pulled the two seats out, and I got my two seats.743 ¶17

This is how the law works. I could not have plotted that. In that line was one in the state of a thief. No one’s a thief, no one is honest, no one is this—they’re only states. And so, here in a line, and the line is broken. There’s no one in that line that’s in the state of a thief, but in this line there’s one that will play the thief. I am determined I’m going to get two seats for my brothers. And so, this line is frozen, this begins to move, and the depths of my soul moved me from this line, right here, next to the thief, the one who’s in the state of the thief. For he and the tall fellow were working together, the tall one waiting at the door for him. And so, when this one paid the twenty dollars, took his four dollars back and his tickets, at the end the two began to talk, the very one who diverted the teller’s attention. It was all a set up job. These were states.743 ¶18

He wanted to defraud the man of sixteen dollars. I was not in the state of the thief, and walking down, my Deep Being put me right behind him, so that I could say, “You didn’t do it at all” and protest this attempt to steal sixteen dollars. The teller now seeing that I protected him and saved him sixteen dollars gave me two house seats. These are reserved always for the VIPs, people who come at the last moment, like a president, or a governor, or some so-called great, important person. They are always kept back to the last moment to be sold only to VIPs. But having served him faithfully and saving him sixteen dollars, he didn’t wait for one second to pull the two out, and I got my two for Aida. And it’s a sellout; the sign is up “Sold Out.” You can’t get it. I never saw the sign. I just got right behind, in this wonderful drama, a thief and protested.743 ¶19

And so, the wonderful words of Lincoln, “To remain silent when we should protest makes cowards of us all.” And I have never once felt like being a coward. I’d rather die in the attempt to be what I would call the decent person than to be a coward by being silent when it’s so obvious the man is trying to steal sixteen dollars.743 ¶20

And so, this is how this wonderful law works. You don’t have to worry about how it’s going to work. You must count the cost. Are you willing to pay the price? And the price is simply your own vigilance, your own faithfulness, your own persistency, your own courage. Are you going to pay the price using this coin? Then your dreams will come true. I don’t care what the dream is. So you want something that can’t be obtained? It doesn’t matter what the world says: “Sold Out” means nothing. Hasn’t a thing to do with it. You just get into the line, and the line isn’t moving? All right, the depth of your soul will move you out of this line to this line. But not just this line, he put me behind the very one who is plotting and planning his little scheme to get sixteen dollars. And you are going to protest, because you haven’t [...] him. Puts you right behind him, and so right as he said, “I gave you twenty dollars,” you automatically say, “You didn’t. I was standing right there, didn’t do it at all.” And so he’s taken by surprise, he looks at me, but can’t raise a finger to slap you, can’t hurt you. You know exactly what you saw and you do it.743 ¶21

So this is how this law works. Are you willing to count the cost? “For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first discuss and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?” Will you tonight count the cost and say I will complete it? Tomorrow will deny it, reason denies it, my senses deny it, but I will complete it. I will persist in feeling that which if true implies the fulfillment of my dream. And if you do it, no power in this world can stop you from realizing your dream, but no power. Because causation is mental, it is not physical.743 ¶22

And so I know, just as this lady, without the consent of her husband, raised his salary from his eighty-seven dollars a week to over $300.00 a week, she will raise him from his present position in his present office to judgeship in the city of New York. And the other chap, who is a Kennedy, he’s now earning many times what formerly he earned. He can go beyond it. As I said, “You have a daughter just about ready for college and I know if you want to send her to a private college you’re going to have to think in terms of not less than $5,000 a year. And so, you think in terms of an extra five or ten thousand dollars a year.”743 ¶23

You say that is selfish? Forget it! It’s all part of your own wonderful Imagination. If you can imagine yourself earning x-number of dollars, and you are persistent, and you believe it, and sleep as though it were true, in a way you do not know, and no one could devise the means by which it will become a fact, it will become a fact. If you are persistent. If you are courageous. If you view yourself as such a person. This is how it works.743 ¶24

And so, he actually—from the depths of my soul he waits upon me just as indifferently and as swiftly when I am evil as when I am good. Let no one tell you that he only sells the good. No, [...] both for good and evil. “I kill, I make alive; I wound, I heal; I create the good, I create the evil.” But you are invited to choose the good, to choose the blessing, but we aren’t compelled; and he who serves as our slave will serve us just as swiftly when the will is evil as when it is good.743 ¶25

So let no one tell you he is not your slave. “Jesus Christ, who, though in the form of God… emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of men.” And so, as you’re seated here now, the slave, your slave that will make everything for you is your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s Jesus Christ. He’s actually buried in you and will form anything in this world, if you will pay the price. Sit down and count the cost. Are you willing to be that persistent? Are you willing to stand upon your tower and actually watch faithfully? For you’re building a tower and the tower is only a watchtower; and I will watch and watch faithfully until what I am seeing comes to pass. So we are told the vision—what vision? your vision, my vision—it has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late.743 ¶26

So, you know exactly what you want in this world, either for yourself or for another. This lady did not consult her husband. She said he’s too rational, he’s trained in the legal world and the mind is trained rationally. And so you couldn’t possibly explain to him that this could work. So don’t explain it to him. You bear his name and you want him to succeed because his success is your success, well, then do it. And so, I go back one year later, and then he is brought, not reluctantly this time, he’s brought, introduced to me, and he did not blush when I said to him, in her presence, “Do you really want to be a judge?” And he didn’t say timidly, he said yes, quite openly. “Yes, I would like to be a judge. I think I’d make a good judge.” Then I [...] and I addressed him as judge. Then I told her exactly what to do, and when she does it, he will be a judge.743 ¶27

So do you know what you want to do? Maybe you will not bear a title like professor or doctor, where someone could refer to you as that. Doesn’t matter. You conjure in your mind’s eye a certain scene which if true would imply a certain fulfillment in your life. Well then, see the scene and enter into that scene just as though it’s taking place now, and persist in it, and that scene will come to pass and give birth to what the scene is implying. So, causation is the assemblage of mental states which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies. You can put it down and dwell upon it. That’s how this law works.743 ¶28

Because I tell you these stories, you could not for all the money in the world have bought the two seats. I paid no more than the twenty dollars for the two seats. That’s exactly what they were selling for, twenty dollars. I didn’t go to some scalper. I didn’t go to some agent. I went straight to the box office. And here in the depth of my soul, because I knew exactly what I wanted, I wanted my brothers Lawrence and Victor to see Aida—and so I went straight to the box office, and he puts me right behind one who is in a state of a thief and causes him to act. And then causes me to act in such a way that the teller is grateful for my defense of his honesty, and gives me the seats.743 ¶29

Now, the man wasn’t a thief. He may play the part of a thief for the rest of his days, but no one is a thief. He’s in the state. When you are in the state of a thief, you can’t do anything else but steal. You can’t do it. They’re only states, infinite states. So Blake said, “I do not consider the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil.”743 ¶30

And so, he fell into a state, and that state was to get the better of other people all through his life. He will continue to do it until he gets out of that state. Either he gets out by his own efforts or someone who will love him enough to get him out of that state. If he has a wife or a mother or a friend who knows the kind of a state that he dwells in and would like to see him out of that state, making just as much money but this time honestly, they can get him out of that state. He is only in a state. All things are states. That’s why in the end you can say, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”743 ¶31

So if I’m only expressing a state, then don’t condemn me. It’s a state, and the states are permanent and men move through these states. Not knowing they are only states, they express the state that they are in. And so, if I return constantly to one state, you can call me by the name of that state. If I’m always stealing, I’m expressing the state of stealing. But if I live in it constantly, it’s perfectly all right to call me a thief because I’m so identified with that state.743 ¶32

So the state to which I most often return constitutes my truest self. But no matter how often I’ve been in the state of stealing I could get out of it, get out of it permanently, and never fall into it again. So everyone is at every time in his life just in a state.743 ¶33

Now get out of the state that is not productive. If you aren’t pulling your own weight in this world, that’s embarrassing. Now construct a scene where you are not only pulling your own weight, more than yours. Actually feel it and see a scene implying that you’re doing it.743 ¶34

Let’s have a scene [...] when—that was one of my visions—“I remember when.” That vision came to me so vividly a few years ago where I found myself in a scene and the scene is giving me the most fantastic story to tell the world. The story is this. I found myself in an enormous mansion and there were three generations present, grandfather, and then the other two generations. The two were now enjoying this great, fantastic estate brought in because of grandfather’s vision. They would say—and I was taken in Spirit into this mansion—and they would say, “Grandfather would stand upon a lot and while standing upon an empty lot he would say, ‘I remember when this was an empty lot.’ And then he would paint a word picture of his desire for that lot and paint it so vividly you saw it existing as an objective fact.”743 ¶35

Then I woke and wrote the vision down. It was early in the morning, about three or three thirty, so I went back to bed and I re-dreamed the dream. Re-dreaming the dream I had a slight change in the dream. Instead of saying that grandfather said it, I had so absorbed the faith of grandfather, I became grandfather, and I said “I remember when this was an empty lot.” Then I would paint the picture of my desire for this empty lot and paint it so vividly everyone who heard me saw it as something objective to them.743 ¶36

And then, going back, as we are told in scripture, if an event in your life is foreshadowed by a word of scripture it’s predestined, it’s fixed. So I went back and reread scripture, and here in the 41st chapter of the Book of Genesis, the doubling of a dream means that the thing is fixed by God and it will shortly come to pass. So my dream was doubled that night. I was taken in Spirit into this fantastic mansion and heard a certain secret of creativity. I woke, recorded it, fell asleep again, and re-dreamed the dream. So it was the doubling of the dream, and the doubling of a dream means that God has fixed the thing and it will shortly come to pass.743 ¶37

So when we double the dream, well, we need not fall asleep in it, you can double it in a waking dream. You can take it this night and see yourself as you would be seen by the world were you the man, the woman that you want to be. All right, that’s a dream. That’s a waking dream but it’s a dream. The same power that created the dream of the night is creating this. It’s Christ Jesus in you, your slave. Now tomorrow do the same thing—that’s a doubling of a dream. And you can treble the dream, and that’s persistency, that’s vigilance, and that’s faithfulness. And it will come to pass.743 ¶38

So you take your wonderful noble dream for yourself and for your friends, and for others. Regardless of the circumstances of the moment, if they’re not in tune with your desire for what you want, well then, ignore it and remain faithful to the dream. And then double dream. For that was shown me so clearly for I was lifted in Spirit into the mansion. I heard the conversation: Grandfather used to stand upon an empty lot and as he stood upon it he would say “I remember when this was an empty lot” and then paint his word picture of his desire for it.743 ¶39

Well, I can say of a friend, “I remember when he was unemployed.” Well, if I say I remember when he was unemployed, I’m implying he’s not now unemployed. “I remember when he only earned” and I name an amount. “I remember when he only earned x-number of dollars a year.” Well, if I remember when he only earned that, I’m implying he isn’t earning that now, he’s a way beyond. “I remember when she was not well.” Look at her now. She must be radiantly happy and healthy if I remember when.743 ¶40

And so you take this technique and apply it to everything in your world. That conjures a picture. You bring someone before your mind’s eye, “I remember when he was simply unknown.” Then what am I saying? He must be known.743 ¶41

Of course, you can do this in a negative, too. You can use it and just as swiftly Jesus Christ in you, your own wonderful human Imagination, will answer the call. You can say, “I remember when he was known, when he was someone, when he had money” if you want to use it negatively. So I tell you, I acquaint you with God’s law and leave you to your choice and its risk. For he in you will serve you as indifferently and as swiftly when the will in you is evil as when it is good. So I can’t deny that he will serve you even when you are evil. So I leave you to your choice and its risk.743 ¶42

It’s like electricity. Because it could kill I shouldn’t deny man’s use of it. Because it has done so many wonderful things in the world, but it could destroy. So because it could destroy, why not use it constructively where it doesn’t destroy and helps man [...].743 ¶43

So I tell you God’s law. As we are told, “Blessed is the man… who delights in the law of the Lord… for in all that he does he prospers.” That’s the 1st Psalm. “Blessed is the man… who delights in the law of the Lord… for in all that he does he prospers.” So if you know the law and you delight in it, you will prosper.743 ¶44

I only hope you will not use it negatively. But, may I tell you, I have no power to stop you from using it negatively. I still must acquaint you with it and hope that you will use it constructively. But you could use it negatively, and he will wait upon you and respond to your call just as swiftly as though you used it in the most glorious manner in this world.743 ¶45

But in the end he is faithful to his picture for you and brings you out just like himself. I only hope you will not use it negatively, because I don’t believe, in his case, that the hatching out is going to be delayed. But if you use it destructively, it may be a more painful process of coming to the end. But I can’t conceive of delay in his vision for man, and as a vision for man, individually, he calls us one by one. And so, he’s seen you in his mind’s eye and he so loved you he emptied himself of his primal form and took upon himself the form of a slave and became born in the likeness of you. And as you he goes through all the furnaces of affliction, obeying your will, even [...]. But he has a fixed date for the bringing of you out into his own wonderful primal form. So I do believe, and yet I cannot say that it’s true, I believe if you use it negatively you may find the birth more painful.743 ¶46

Now let us go into the Silence.743 ¶47

Tonight, I will call this “Seminal Moments” or “Creative Moments.” The Bible speaks of Jesus Christ as the power and the wisdom of God. Man has misunderstood it and personified it as a man, a man, who lived and died 2,000 years ago. That’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the creative power and the wisdom of God. If you want the record, turn to the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians . I’m quoting you exactly: “Christ the power and the wisdom of God.” Our effort here is to find out more and more about this power, this creative power; for surely the deeper meaning of power is effectiveness in achieving our purposes in life…it should be. And so, the more we can find out about this power then the more we know of what the world calls Jesus Christ. I say Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s Christ.742 ¶1

When I speak of God, his name as revealed in scripture is I AM . When I say “I am” that’s the center of consciousness. I can’t get any closer to center than saying “I am.” I may say, I am a man, I’m a this, I’m a that, I’m a rich man, a poor man, a beggar man, a thief, but I must first say I am. So that’s God, and God operates and creates through Jesus Christ, as you’re told in 2nd Corinthians . Here are the words, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them; and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” No misdeed is counted against the man…completely forgiven. If man could only become that channel through which he could operate, and completely forgive every man, and reconcile him to his objective in life. It takes Christ as the medium through which God reconciles man to himself.742 ¶2

The Bible sets down God as my own wonderful I AM…and take his creative power as my Imagination and start from there. See how it works, put it to the test. If it proves itself in performance, well, what others say doesn’t really matter. What does it matter what anyone in this world will tell me if I have evidence to support my claim? And so, we’ll take it from here tonight.742 ¶3

A week ago tonight, a friend of mine told me a story based upon an experience of his. It happened in a dream. Well, most people would discount a dream, but the Bible doesn’t discount a dream. We’re told in the 12th chapter of the Book of Numbers, “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord God will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream” . Well, here this night in question, he went to bed in the assumption…first, he asked the question, “Who am I?” Then he answered based upon what we claim here, “I am Christ.” Here is a man younger than I am by, say, five to six years younger, a man within our sphere, a normal man, a man who works for a living, successful business man, an artist, he said, “I am Christ. I am awakened man. I am God aware of his creative power.” These were the thoughts that permeated his mind, a week ago tonight, and then he fell asleep.742 ¶4

“In the sleep,” he said, “I did not hear a voice, not at first, but the depth of my own soul communicated to me through the form of some mental telepathy.” Well, this man is a writer, professional writer. He said, “I didn’t hear words, but I got the meaning of this communication. It said to me, ‘When you use your Imagination for another, use it as you do when you write a story.’” Well, said he to me, “When I write a story, I must play all the parts, but all the parts. If I dramatize a love story, then I must make love to myself. No matter what I do in the story to make it natural, I have to actually feel it and play it. I must become every character to make it natural. Well, if I’m now to use my Imagination for another as I use it when I write a story, then I must become the other.” So he started to practice and he took many friends, person after person, and then as he became them, he led them towards the fulfillment of his desire for them; and gave to them in this imaginary act what they either could not give themselves or did not have the faith to give themselves. So he went through the night, or rather, the interval, just simply practicing this way. As it came to an end, this experiment of his, a voice spoke for the first time and the voice said, “Tell this to Neville!” which he did a week ago today, and I shared it with you.742 ¶5

Since that night those who were present have tried it (I’ve tried it) with great success. It was a different technique. Others tried it. I expect all who were here to have tried it and that you will share with me the results that I, in turn, may share with others.742 ¶6

A friend who is not here tonight (he wasn’t here last Tuesday) but he called a friend of mine (who is here…I see him), he said, “What did Neville talk about tonight?” Well, he told him everything graphically in detail what the whole technique was about. This was then 10:30. He said, “Well, I will think it over and try it, and if it works I should be told something in vision or in dream to confirm that it really is something I could use.” So, he said, “It was 10:30 when I called. After I put up the phone, I took a shower and retired. Then I took many members of my family, I became each member, and my consciousness led their body to the fulfillment of my wish for them. Then I took associates in my business, I became them; and my consciousness led their form to the fulfillment of that which I desire for them.”742 ¶7

Then he said, “I fell asleep and woke at 3:30 with this vivid, vivid dream. I dreamt that I was in an Oriental gift shop. I was attracted to one of these little chimes, these little things where the wind blows against the chimes and it sort of sings somewhat. I went through the entire store looking at different objects, and to my surprise I came upon a scene of American Indian clothes and all the things that American Indians wear. I thought that’s a strange thing, how incongruous in an Oriental shop, run by an Oriental lady, that these things should be present. So I took a coon skin cap and I put it on. I turned to a man who was with me and I said, “Watch this!” I felt myself to be my son Michael, and at that moment of feeling I am Michael, a boy in his, what, eleven or twelve, suddenly Michael appears before us, pushing himself between the two of us, dressed in an Indian outfit. Then I woke, convinced of the truth and the reality of this technique. God has shown me on a more pliable level of my being that this thing does work. Maybe on this level I may have to wait an interval between the assumption and its fulfillment, but in the level of dream it worked just like magic. I put this little thing on my head and said to him, ‘Watch this!’ I assumed I am Michael, my son, and instantly he appears before me, pushing himself between the two of us, dressed like an Indian.”742 ¶8

Now, my friend David, who brings me here twice a week, he decided about two months ago to sell a unit that he had. He has an apartment house, three units, and he thought “Well, I’m an Associate Professor at U.C.L.A. in ethnic music, it takes all my time to prepare my work, and I don’t really have the time to give to supervising this apartment house, so I’m going to sell it.” So he got in touch with an agent, and the agent said, ‘I’ll list it and take care of it.’ She got a buyer, the buyer said, “I’ll buy it; we go into escrow immediately, the price is just right, but we will go into escrow with one condition, that every unit must be rented.” Only two were rented, so he told me he had to have the third rented. They could sell it, alright, but there would be an adjustment in price if at the end of the time (it was today) the unit wasn’t rented. So I simply heard…I did not know this technique, because my friend Bob had not revealed it…he only got it a week ago…but in my own technique I heard him tell me it was done, and I felt the emotional reaction that would accompany the thought that it’s sold, it’s all done, and that was it.742 ¶9

Well, a week ago, as time moves towards the inevitable end, escrow is today, it’s the end today. He said to me last Tuesday before we came here, as he picked me up, “You know, we only have a week, but you told me it’s done and so I believed you…and yet I can’t in some strange way completely put aside the anxious, critical, conscious mind. It still gives me a little needle…we only have a week, and so the time is moving on…only a week.” I said, well, David, I can only tell you I stood perfectly still in my kitchen, I thought of you, and I heard you simply say to me, “It’s done! I’ve sold it; the whole thing is done!” and I got the emotional thrill that would accompany that coming from you, my friend.742 ¶10

Now, I cannot say tonight if that was the moment, or if what I did following hearing the story from my friend Bob. Because, having told the story which I told you last Tuesday, when I went home that night, he said to me (having heard this thing tonight), “I feel so much more encouraged…I should try it when I go home.” Well, that night when he left…now David recently has taken to shaving his head. Well, I’ve never had hair that close to my skull since, possibly, when I was born. But I had to feel David…he’s smaller than I am in stature, and so I felt David’s head, it’s my head. I had to feel myself bald. Then with this, I too took my consciousness and then led him to be standing in front of myself-as-David, and have myself-as-David tell me “It’s all done.”742 ¶11

Well, Saturday he called me to say a total stranger in the neighborhood…now he had to advertise, based upon this agreement with the agent. No one responded to his ad, no one came from the ad. The agent sent no one to see him. Someone in the neighborhood desiring to move but not out of the neighborhood passed by and saw the sign out front, and came in, and rented right on the spot. Seized it right there and then on Saturday and today the whole thing is behind him.742 ¶12

So I cannot honestly say which of the two…because I have no way of knowing. I only know I heard it distinctly, his voice, and he told me that it was done; and I felt the emotion, the thrill of accomplishment, knowing that God creates reality out of imaginary circumstances. So I take an imaginary circumstance which would imply the fulfillment of my wish for a friend, and then create the reality of it, make it seem natural to you, then it comes to pass; well, isn’t that the power, the creative power of God? So when we are told Jesus Christ is the power and the wisdom of God, haven’t I found him? Is he someone in space, someone in time 2,000 years ago? No, he’s right here in every child born of woman, and that individual little child’s Imagination that’s Christ. The God of whom we speak is in Christ operating, and that power is your own wonderful I-am-ness. That is God operating through Christ.742 ¶13

Now we are told, “We are ambassadors for Christ, and God has appealed through us” …so we are ambassadors through Christ. Now, are all these stories true in scripture? I tell you, they are true. Listen to this one, taken from the 2nd chapter of Hebrews, “For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin” . The one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified have all one origin, all one. Then he asks a question…but first he makes a statement and then he asks a question, and the statement is this, “He was not ashamed to call them brethren” . Then he quotes from scripture the 22nd Psalm to support his argument, the 22nd Psalm, the 22nd verse, “That I will declare and proclaim thy name to my brethren.” Then he quotes again from the 8th of Isaiah, “Here am I and the children God gave me” .742 ¶14

If you turn to the 8th of Isaiah and read the entire passage, it’s fascinating. The children are called signs and portents of the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion. I have at least forty Bibles at home, many commentaries, exegeses, all kinds of books dwelling on the Bible, and many written by brilliant, brilliant scholars. They come to this passage and they all agree the words of “the two children” mentioned in the 8th of Isaiah are unknown. They cannot find the roots of these words. They try to arrive at them based upon the text itself. Some come to the conclusion the first child mentioned means “a remnant shall return”; and the second child mentioned is simply “the spoil, or spoiling Judas’ enemy.” That’s all they can arrive at; they do not know what the words are. But we are told, if you read it correctly, no one believed Isaiah, and so he sealed the script as Daniel did. He sealed it until that moment in time when the seal would be broken, at God’s appointed hour; then one could read it with understanding.742 ¶15

If these same scholars who wrote this would accept my experience, they would have no problem. For I have had the experience of the two children. But man seeing the Bible as some secular history will never see them, because Isaiah, if you take it chronologically, was supposed to have lived in the 6th Century B.C. If you take David, he is supposed to have lived 1,000 years B.C. Well, certainly David could not be one of his children when he came 400 years later. The word Isaiah means “Jehovah is salvation,” the same word that you find, the same meaning of the word Jesus or the word Joshua, same word. There’s only one Savior and that is Jehovah: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and beside me there is no savior” . For the word Jesus is simply Jehovah; the word Joshua is Jehovah; and Isaiah, “Jehovah is savior, is salvation.” How can I take these two children? Who are the two children in this case?742 ¶16

I can tell you from my own experience. He said they are signs and portents; they aren’t children like my two children. I have two children, a boy and girl. They were born as you were born and I was born normally from the womb of a woman. These children are not born from the womb of a woman; they are signs and portents of something taking place in us, individually. The first one, which is called “a remnant shall return,” it doesn’t mean that at all. It is simply the little infant that you find when you are born from above and called Son of God. You find yourself being born from above, and the symbol of your birth is a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes. That’s the first one—“I and the children that God gave me”—-the first one. It’s a sign, a portent, of my own birth from above.742 ¶17

Then comes the second, and the second also…but he’s a youth…it is David of Biblical fame. That’s my sign of the discovery of my own fatherhood that is God. God reveals himself to man as Father through giving to that man the one mentioned in scripture as his only begotten Son: “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee” . That’s meant and said to David. So David comes suddenly before you, out of your own skull, and there you stand and you see him.742 ¶18

The whole vast world here is only God and God unfolding. This is the great tree of life that is God. All these are buds within the great tree that is God, and at moments in time they unfold. These are the “last days” when the children begin to appear. So you’re told in the 8th chapter of Isaiah “…the children that God gave to me,” and to this very moment all scholars are going completely berserk trying to find out who they are. They happen within man as the tree comes into ripeness, and these buds begin to flower within man.742 ¶19

So I say, everyone (not a remnant) will return. Not one will be lost. How could one be lost when God became every man! So, every man in this world is God; and as he uses his Imagination it is God hoping that that Imagination is filled to capacity with love, that he can reconcile the world to himself.742 ¶20

So my friend, a few days later…and for you who were not here, he had the experience where he used this technique without love and he was trapped. So I tell you tonight, don’t use it unlovingly. Don’t use it for any purpose other than love. You can give everyone in this world that you desire exactly what you want for him. And don’t be concerned as to how it’s going to happen. You have the power to reconcile everyone to fulfilled desire.742 ¶21

There would be no need for reconciliation were it not that man is missing his aim in life, his goal in life, which is called in scripture “sinning.” For, to sin is “to miss the mark.” If someone has a goal in life, he has a mark, and he isn’t hitting it, he’s sinning. But it isn’t held against him, it’s completely forgiven.742 ¶22

Ask any man, do you really believe in the gospel of reconciliation? So tonight, you know the gospel of reconciliation. You can, this very night, sit quietly, assume that you are your friend that you would help and then your consciousness leading his body towards the fulfillment of his dream, or his desire. Do nothing more. You don’t raise a finger to make it so; it was so when you did it. That little interval of time between what you did in your Imagination and that moment when it’s fulfilled in the world, what does it matter? If in dream…as my friend (who is not here tonight) found that it happened instantly, alright, he was on a different level where the substance itself is more pliable. But here on this level we have reached the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity, so it takes the little interval of time between the imaginal act and the fulfillment of that act. So here tonight, if you know anyone in your world who desires…and it comes within your code of decency…if they want you to kill someone, you don’t do it! If they want you to rob a bank, don’t do it! It doesn’t come within your code of decency. But no matter what they want, it goes way beyond their capacity at the moment, judging from appearances, to realize it, you grant it. You simply put on their little form, and simply move towards the fulfillment of what they want, feeling all the time that you, as the little one called John, called Mary, called by any name, that you have it. And feel the emotion of success, the emotion that would accompany that claim. And then drop it, and return to your former state called by your present name. You’ve done it!742 ¶23

My friend said to me, “You know, I found it the easiest thing in the world to do. I took all of my relatives, I took my associates, and it was so easy to do it.” I do hope that everyone who was here last Tuesday tried it. If you tried it, you should have success now. I do not know what you did, but I hope you did it. Because this thing works! It’s a simple, simple technique. You simply assume that you are the one that you would help until you feel that you are wearing that form; even if it’s a female and you’re a man, or if it’s a male and you are a female, it doesn’t really matter. In the interval, I’ve taken my wife, I’ve taken my daughter, I’ve taken other sexes, and it didn’t seem strange to wear it. I wore them and I took them towards the fulfillment of what I would give them, and then dropped it.742 ¶24

So I ask everyone to try it. If it doesn’t make sense, well, forget it, it doesn’t make sense. What doesn’t make sense?742 ¶25

I turned the TV on the other morning and this man is explaining that a little bomb, not bigger than what you would hold in the palm of the hand was what was dropped in Japan, in Nagasaki. Only something you could hold in your hand. Then, said he, only a half of one percent of the energy contained in that was released, only 20,000 tons of TNT, and that only amounted to a half of one percent of what was held. We did not know then how to really unlock more. Now we know how to do more and more. But you don’t need a bigger bomb just to release all that is there that could be released. And a half of one percent was all they could release, and it came to 20,000 tons of TNT. Then he was using that as an example and explaining to us how something else followed, an N-bomb. I’d never heard that one before. But here you drop it on places today and no one is killed unless they are very near it. But it goes through trees, it goes through villages, it goes through everything; it goes through the man and makes him, well, one who has lost the urge to even defend himself [...]. It’s called an N-bomb…a neutron. So instead of destroying the area, you drop it and it penetrates all kinds of buildings and all trees, everything, goes through people and then they become…if they are very near they’re killed yes. If they’re not and they’re far away, it goes through them anyway. That’s what man has done with power.742 ¶26

Now, you and I are thinking of an entirely different kind of power, something infinitely greater. Not destroying anyone but helping everyone that’s in need in this world. It costs us nothing. So tonight you can take a child or take a friend, take anyone and give him what he hasn’t the strength or the faith to give himself. First, become him and then lead him towards the fulfillment of your desire for him. That desire that you hold for him might have been voiced by him and he wants it, or she wants it, and they do not know how to get it. Well, you can grant it, grant it by actually moving towards the fulfillment of it, wearing their garment, just as though it were true. Then let a thing happen in its own wonderful way…and it will happen.742 ¶27

I tell you from my own experience when these things begin to work, all of a sudden it’s at an end. The tree begins to blossom, the tree begins to put out all of its fruit, and all of these insane statements made in scripture come true. They come true in you. Who would think that you in 1965, you are the father of David of 1,000 B.C.? Who would think that anyone in this room would have the experience of being the Father of David, God’s begotten Son ? Who would think that anyone in 1965 would make the claim that the same little child wrapped in his little clothes, little bands that you held in your hands was only a sign and a portent that you were born Son of God? For you’re told that the child to be born will be holy, Son of God. Well, the little thing was a sign, it was only a portent. That wasn’t born: It was you who came out of the great tomb of your own skull, and you saw the symbol bearing witness to that event. Then months later here comes the second child. And there are only two; the Bible doesn’t mention a third. It says “the children” and they name the children. But no one today can find the root of these words and they speculate all around the place as to the words. And it’s so simple when it happens.742 ¶28

So we are told, when he comes and he breaks the seal, you will read it then with understanding. But who will believe him? He says, “Who will believe my report?” So I stand here and I tell you the names of these two: One is the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes that is only the sign of your own birth from above, and the second reveals to you that you are the very tree itself which is God the Father. So when he says, “I will proclaim your name to the whole congregation,” what was the name he proclaimed?—Father. He said, God…the name called “God” is really Father…and “I and my Father are one” . There’s only God; there’s nothing in this world but God, one being unfolding.742 ¶29

When one really believes it or sees it, and when one has had the experience of it, well then, listen and try to put it into practice. So tonight, this would be reconciliation. You could reconcile any being in this world to God, because with God all things are possible. If I’m missing the mark, then I’m not reconciled to God. But he’s reconciled to God through Christ and Christ is my Imagination. So, “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us this wonderful gospel of reconciliation, entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” Well, to be reconciled I must now be atoned. Another word for it in scripture is “atonement.” Well, atonement is at-onement, so I would become at-one with my friend. So I cease to be another, I am my friend; and then I move my friend through my consciousness to the fulfillment of that wish that I hold for him. Then I take him straight forward, and it’s all done. Then I return to the being called Neville. And then take another one, and take him towards the fulfillment of my desire for him. Then take another one. I have no responsibility beyond that reconciliation. In a way that I as a man called Neville, well, I do not know the [...]. I only know that all I need do is to bring about the reconciliation, and then the thing will mold itself into his world. And I will prove to my own satisfaction that I can create reality out of imaginary circumstances.742 ¶30

So if you tried it this week and you have results, please let me have them. Don’t be bashful, write me. If you don’t want me to tell them, write me anyway and tell me not to tell them. But give me the satisfaction of knowing that you tried it and that it has worked for you. I know it will work, for this week it was sheer [...]. I tell you that it can’t fail.742 ¶31

If it can’t fail and it’s so simple and costs you nothing, why not try it? Well, you try it in this simple, simple way. And it’s easy, may I tell you. If you’ve never tried feeling that you are another, well, maybe you’d be embarrassed. Well, don’t be embarrassed; try feeling anyone. I can’t tell you what an amusing thing it was when I began to feel that I’m David…I mean the David of today, my friend here…because I have never felt such a bare head. Because he puts the [...] on at night [...] puts the whole thing on. I had to feel almost, on a hot day I had to feel almost cold. I was so bare headed. Then his voice is higher than mine, I had to catch that mood as I was talking to myself. So I became David and put Neville in front of David, listening to David’s tale, and have David tell me the whole thing is done. The apartment is rented and no change of escrow, no change of papers; the whole thing is done. And may I tell you, it was a very pleasant sensation to just feel David and just be David for that moment, and talk to myself. That’s all that I did.742 ¶32

And so, on Saturday when the phone rang…I came home and got the news, and I was thrilled! But, really, I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t surprised. I was thrilled with him and for the working of the law.742 ¶33

So you try it tonight and don’t limit yourself to what you think you are capable of doing. It isn’t you, it’s God. God is your own wonderful consciousness…that’s God. All things are possible to God; but he has to work through an agent, and the agent is Christ, and Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s Christ. There never was another Christ, never will be another. This is all Christ. So he calls us brothers…that one person awakes, and the tree blooms first in one—he’s called “the first fruit of those who slept; the first to be born from the dead.” But not the last one! The tree is awakening. And so he calls us all brothers, because we’re all from one origin. The origin…that “one” doesn’t mean Adam and it doesn’t mean Abraham; it means God the Creator. So we are all of one origin: That one is God, God the Creator.742 ¶34

So when he is asked in scripture to name the greatest of all the commandments, he doesn’t name any of the ten; but he summarizes the ten in one taken from Deuteronomy, and there are ten words, for that’s what it really means biblically. The Ten Commandments literally means ten words: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”…ten words . Not two Gods; no room for two, only one. So he became the seeming many, and he has set up within the unnumbered fragmented parts of himself a means by which it will awaken to discover it is still that one: So he sets up his own Son. And strangely enough, when you and I read of David of scriptural fame, we think of him as a thousand years B.C., 3,000 years ago. When he appears before you, he’s contemporary, and, strangely enough, he was always your Son. You do not have a feeling that suddenly someone forced him on you. Because now you have awakened from the dream of being another to the consciousness of being God the Father, and his Son stands before you and calls you Father. If David calls you Father and he is the Son of God, then who are you? Therefore, everyone will have the experience of being the Father of David.742 ¶35

Now, before you have the experience, try this technique my friend so generously shared with us. I know it is true from my own experience. But may I also show from scripture, the 3rd chapter of Exodus and the 6th of Isaiah, that when vision breaks forth in speech, then the presence of Deity is confirmed. When it broke forth, the tree is burning but it doesn’t consume itself, and suddenly the voice is heard coming from the burning bush, “Moses, Moses.” In the 6th chapter of Isaiah, suddenly he beholds—it’s all vision—then he hears the voice, “Who will I send?” and then Isaiah answers. But the vision breaks into speech. So in my friend’s case, after the experiences, suddenly comes this voice, “Tell this to Neville!” So he told it to me. But before he told it to me, the presence of Deity was confirmed by the breaking forth of vision into speech.742 ¶36

So I ask everyone here to try it and try it tonight. Of a friend that isn’t well, try it. Try it with a dozen [...]. May I tell you, it’s such a wonderful feeling! You get into a nice quiet mood and feel one character after the other, and you become the wonderful actor. For that’s what an actor does; he has to feel, to some extent, the naturalness of the part that he’s going to play. We’re told in the works of Blake, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” He’s only an actor. Well, your consciousness only acts, but it acts through this frame called Jesus Christ which is your own wonderful human Imagination. Without Imagination, you couldn’t throw yourself into any character. But you can throw yourself with Imagination into any character and feel the naturalness of that character. So feel tonight you are a successful man. Well, who would share it with you were it true? Well, then your wife, your daughter, your friends, alright. You can take either part of yourself or just take the part of a friend who would sincerely rejoice because you are…and then have you as the friend congratulate you, standing in front of a friend, concerning this. Try it in that manner…try anything…and then see how it works.742 ¶37

So when this was revealed a week ago tonight we shared it with those who were present, and many have received results. But I want everyone to receive results, not just one. But keep on building it up more and more.742 ¶38

I know my friend who told it to me also gave me a wonderful one that he did. He received a horrible blow. His director who had been directing his shows for, well, years now, he went to the studio to discover that the man had a stroke. It paralyzed one side, found it difficult to speak, and had lost ten years of his memory. He knew no one that he had met in the last ten years. He was now planning the shows that he was going to do and they are already done. So he took this technique and got into the friend’s body, and simply revised the whole picture. Went to the studio and they told him that he is recovering rapidly in the use of the arm, his memory has returned, he hasn’t forgotten this interval of ten years, and he’s rapidly coming back to the norm. No one gave any hope for this man, but he (the friend) received it like a blow, a physical blow when he heard it. And after something very unpleasant happened to him because of his acceptance of that as a blow, he then turned to the application of this principle and applied it toward his friend’s recovery. He hasn’t written it out for me in detail as yet, but he told me the last time we were here, which was last week, Friday night, that it will be a wonderful story when he gets down the details of it.742 ¶39

So let nothing stand in your way. Just simply grant everyone what you would like them to have. If they want wealth, alright, wealth, if they want fame, fame. What does it really matter if all is created out of imaginary circumstances? And in the end, after you’ve exercised this power—for that’s all that we’re here for—in the end, there will only be God…and his name is one. So in the very end, all of these fragmented parts are brought back together, and in that day “The Lord will be king over all the earth; and the Lord will be one and his name one” . You and I are that.742 ¶40

Now let us go into the Silence.742 ¶41

* * * Are there any questions, please?742 ¶42

Tonight’s subject is eschatology. Eschatology is the doctrine of the last things. It is the dramatic end of history and the beginning of the eternal salvation of the individual who arrives at that point in time. The end of history and the appearance of the Son of man who is God come together after the tribulation of human experience. And of that day and hour only the Father knows.741 ¶1

So you will say, you speak of the Father as another and yet you say we are destined to awaken as the Father. Well, I do not deny that. God the Father is other, but not other than ourselves. Other yes, but not really and wholly other than ourselves: his Spirit is in us. Were that not so, he could not commune with us. So we are told, “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth; bring them all who are called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made” . Created for his glory because his glory cannot be given to another; therefore, if I’m created for his glory, I have to be the very one who created me .741 ¶2

Well now, that is eschatology—when we come to the very end of human tribulation. No one will avoid it, not one person in the world will avoid playing all the parts. So envy no one! You either have played it or you will play it. You may pity yes, we pity others, but you’ve played that part or you will play it. And you will not come to this dramatic end until you’ve played all the parts. In that day…and no one knows it but the Father within you knows the day.741 ¶3

Now all the events were predicted and are fulfilled. Their full meaning is now understood in the light of the new things. What new things? We read in Isaiah—and bear in mind, all the stories are visions—the Book of Isaiah begins “This is the vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos.” He tells you it’s a vision and the sixty-six chapters do not deny it or modify it or in any way contradict it as a vision. We speak of the vision of Obadiah, Jeremiah (“And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah”), the vision of Ezekiel, and they’re all visions. This is not secular history.741 ¶4

So here, in the Book of Isaiah, the 42nd chapter, “Behold, the former things have come to pass and new things I now declare to you; before they spring forth I tell you of them” . A literal rendering of the first part of that verse would be, “The former things, behold they have come.” But man will not believe the individual to whom they come; it’s not what the world was looking for. The world was looking for something entirely different than that which happened in the first one, and he told them exactly what happened in him: the entire vision of all the prophets unfolded in him. He knew this was “the end,” the end of history, the end of the tribulation of human experience, and his entry into what he called the kingdom of God. It’s entirely different from what the world expected.741 ¶5

The world expects some physical being coming from without to save. And so today it came to Israel, for the entire eschatology of the Old Testament is the coming of Jehovah. He came, but they would not believe it. They thought of him in terms of something entirely different from the way in which he comes. He comes only to fulfill what he had predicted. He predicted it through his prophets and said that something new would happen. “These former things, behold, they have come and now they’re here.” What are they? Well, the experiences of the one who fulfilled scripture. Everything in scripture is fulfilled in man in the last day. So he is the fulfillment of the prophecy of himself, for he prophesied what he would do. He would enter into the limitation of man and take upon himself the restriction of man. Become man by emptying himself of all that was his and take upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of man; and became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross of man . This is what God became, having foretold through the prophets what he would experience as man—but not on the outside. And when the one in whom it began to unfold told the story, they did not believe it.741 ¶6

So today, we still have that fundamental rock, Israel, carrying on by its calendar year—it’s now approaching the 6,000th year because to them he has not come. When it comes to the individual, then his B.C. turns into A.D. We cannot claim although we write letters and say this is now the year 1969, and we will write it out because it’s part of the world of Caesar. And so will the Jew write out 1969, but in his faith he keeps alive the long passage of time because he feels Jehovah did not come. He counts in an entirely different way, and everything said through his prophets that he inspired, the individual experiences personally.741 ¶7

Now here, if the whole thing is a vision, what must I do to experience it in vision? I must actually re-enact the entire drama within myself. Aside from the resurrection which takes place within us; aside from the birth as foretold to Abraham which takes place within us; aside from the three who appear unexpectedly…they were not seen approaching, they just simply suddenly appeared to bear witness to the birth foretold; aside from the story of the serpent in the wilderness when man himself becomes the serpent and ascends into heaven; aside from all the things told, man himself experiences them.741 ¶8

Now here, who would have thought for one moment, I know I didn’t, that I would re-enact the story of the 22nd of Isaiah and the 53rd of Isaiah in one night? For remember, these things are all written out and they’re not paragraphed, they’re not in chapter form, in fact they’re not even punctuated so that there are commas between them. In fact, one word goes into the other. It is only man who has taken this manuscript and tried to give verses, paragraphs and chapters to it. But here, the 22nd and 53rd of Isaiah one night without expecting it or dreaming about it, it suddenly unfolded within me. As we are told in the 53rd, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” .741 ¶9

Well, here I find myself in the presence of twelve men in a room like this, just like this, not as big, and I’m seated on the floor facing my twelve and simply explaining the Word of God. One of the twelve rose quickly and departed, and I knew intuitively that he was going to tell the authorities what he had just heard. I knew he was going to tell them. He had no sooner departed than a tall, handsome, wonderful looking man, I would say about 6’4” or 6’6”, a tall, good looking lad, well-dressed in costly robes, entered. He walked through, as straight as an arrow, walked to the end of the room, turned at right angles, walked to the end, turned at right angles, came down the center. But the minute he entered the room he was so important that all of us rose…the eleven who were left and myself. So we all rose and stood at attention while he came down, turned, and then down, turned, and came in front of me. As he came in front of me he took a mallet and a wooden peg and hammered it into my shoulder. I felt every blow, but it was not painful. I felt the impact of this wooden peg into my shoulder. Then he took a sharp instrument and with one quick circular motion severed my sleeve and pulled it off and discarded it. Then he stretched his arms out and he formed the cross. Then he embraced me and he kissed me on the right side of my neck, and I in turn kissed him on the right side of his neck.741 ¶10

As the vision faded, I could see that lovely shade of baby-blue, a light, light blue that was the severed robe. His robe was costly, but this seemed to be a priceless robe that he severed from my arm. So, “Who would believe our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” In the 22nd, he puts a peg into the shoulder of the one that he has chosen and on that peg he hangs all the burdens of Israel. Then after he has worn it for awhile, the peg is broken and all these utensils of the temple fall from the peg: he has played his part.741 ¶11

It was the most dramatic night. Here was part of the eschatology, part of the end, when the whole drama which was not understood and could not be understood if you’re looking for someone to come from without to play it. It’s only understood when the individual experiences it. Then he tells it to those who would not believe it, but he tells it anyway…whether one believes it or not.741 ¶12

So it is not the end of the world as people interpret these things year after year. This past year we had a huge crowd leave California. They went off to Georgia, because we were going to have an earthquake that would completely inundate us. So they went off to the east, others went to other parts of the east, and the first time in recorded history they had an earthquake in the east that shook twelve states. So they went off to get away from what they called the earthquake that was going to inundate California.741 ¶13

What does it matter…there is no death. The individual who seems to die is restored to life. He will find himself young, not a baby but young, about twenty years of age, and he will be in an environment best suited for the work that is still to be done in him. He will be cast in a role that he has not yet played, but he’ll play every role in the book. Only when he has played all the tribulations of human experience will he arrive at that hour, that day called the Day of the Lord. And only the Father knows it and the Father in one, in man, knows it.741 ¶14

So here, everyone is going to play it…I don’t care who you are. It is God’s purpose and he is able to fulfill his purpose: to give himself to you. He created you for his glory that you may radiate the glory of God and that you may actually be the express image of his person. No one can stop it. But you will not arrive at that moment called the moment of eschatology until you have played all the parts and gone through all the tribulations of human experience. So I say, envy no one. Doesn’t matter what they’ve done, what they’re doing, don’t envy them. You either have played it or you will. You pity someone…you’ve played it or you will. So that all the parts in the world that can be conceived…for the Bible has every conceivable evil in the world described openly. There isn’t one thing today that you can conceive of that man could do to man but what that is in the Bible, and it’s described openly. Well, you’ve played them all.741 ¶15

So, the last days, the last things, are simply the events of scripture unfolding in you in the most dramatic form imaginable. You can’t conceive of the drama when it really begins to happen within you…when it actually happens. I’m not speaking of an adumbration, I’m not speaking of a foreshadowing; I’m speaking of the actual event when it happens. It’s the most dramatic thing in the world when it possesses you and here you are the center of the entire Bible: you are the Lord Jesus Christ! Well, these things happen, as scripture reveals it, to the Lord Jesus Christ and they happen to you. Then you know who you are. You are the Lord Jesus Christ…you are the Lord Jehovah. So you tell it.741 ¶16

They say, “You, a little non-entity who suffers, who has nothing in the world that you can brag about, and you dare to make this bold assertion? Why that’s blasphemy!” Well, that’s what he’s accused of being. He blasphemed by claiming that “I and the Father are one…that when you see me, you’ve seen the Father” . But no one had eyes to see him. He said, “Had you known me you would have known my Father also, but you know neither me nor my Father” . So you will do these things because you do not know me, and therefore you do not know my Father, for I and my Father are one. So the Father in you is playing the part.741 ¶17

Now, the 42nd Psalm…the night that I fulfilled that, I certainly went to bed not expecting anything comparable to that. Here I found myself leading an enormous crowd in this gay procession to the house of God, and then a voice rings out, and the voice said “God walks with them.” A woman at my side asks the voice, “If God walks with us, where is he?” and the voice answered, “At your side.” She turned to her left and looked into my face and became hysterical it struck her so funnily, and she said, “What? Neville is God?” The voice replied, “Yes in the act of waking.” Then the voice spoke only to me—others did not hear the voice—and the voice spoke in the depth of my soul and said to me, “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed…” and I knew exactly how he’s going to finish that sentence. I became so excited that I was actually nailed upon this body in the same manner that we are told by tradition that he was nailed upon the cross. But it was not painful. There were vortices…a vortex held me here, a vortex held me here, a vortex in my hand, one in my side and two vortices each foot; and here I am with six nails but each nail was a vortex. And it was ecstatic, it was a joyful thing! It wasn’t anything that was sad or painful.741 ¶18

And I knew the story of the crucifixion: that “no man takes away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again” and I deliberately took upon myself this limitation. Well, who did it?—the Father. For I heard the voice that night, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream” and I knew what he was going to say, that he was dreaming that he was I, and when the dream is over and he awakes, I am he…that I can then radiate his glory and bear the express image of his person.741 ¶19

Well, that is not for me alone; that’s for us. Now listen to the words, “The glory that thou gavest me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one”—the very glory thou gavest me by allowing me, your own creation, to radiate your glory and become the very image of your being. I have told them how it happened. I’ve told them how it’s going to happen, so I’ve given them the glory that thou gavest me, that they may be one even as we are one. For now we’re one. “I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfectly one. I have made known unto them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love by which thou lovest me may be in them” . The same love, not less than that which thou gavest me. So the whole then becomes one.741 ¶20

But I say, in the end everyone in a very short interval of time will experience the whole Bible. You will tell it as I am telling it. You will find a few who will believe you and you will find a majority who will not believe you. But it’s perfectly alright. They have to go through all the tribulations of human experience, every one. Not one person in the world will skip it.741 ¶21

You may play the part of what is called today the beautiful people. By that they mean they have money, inherited wealth, so they’re called beautiful. Then they love at the end of the year to be named among the ten-best-dressed, so they can spend at the end of a year maybe a quarter of a million dollars on clothes for the one year, and will not be seen wearing the same thing a second time. That’s sent off to charity or to someone else. I knew someone in New York City who used to go to these fabulous homes and buy their dresses, and then she had a shop and she would sell them. Notified her clientele that she had, say, Jackie’s wardrobe of last year and they would all come flocking down to buy what Jackie wore the year before, because she wouldn’t be seen in the same thing a second time.741 ¶22

Well, she’s playing her part and playing it beautifully, but maybe tomorrow she will have to play, if she hasn’t played it, she’ll have to play the part of the scrub woman. She will play it! Let no one tell you that you do not play all the parts. You will not arrive at eschatology until you have played every part as written in scripture, and there isn’t one evil thing that man can do to man that is not described in the Bible openly. And you’ve played it. So in the end I could see a man betraying me. I’ve played the part of the betrayer. It’s all now coming back into my world. I was betrayed and I betrayed or I could not fulfill scripture. So everyone has played it all.741 ¶23

Don’t try to single out this part or that part. You’ll be cast in it. You’ll go through the gate, like leaving the set on a stage, and you go from view. You’re not seen by the audience for awhile, but you aren’t dead. You’ll re-enter, maybe coming back playing a different part. But in the great theater you depart this world and people call you dead, burn the little body and turn it into dust, but you are not dead. You are restored to life instantly and finding yourself in an environment best suited for the work that is still to be done in you. For you must play all the tribulations of human existence.741 ¶24

So, eschatology is not the ending of the world where the earth collapses and the moon ceases to be and the stars fall. No, it is the end of history, human history, and the beginning of the time of eternal salvation: that abrupt cleavage between this world and the transcendental world of God where now you’re in an entirely different world, radiating his glory created by your very being. For now you’ve become the Father. And the Father created you to radiate his glory and to bear the express image of his person.741 ¶25

So do not look when these fellows begin to talk about the world coming to an end, meaning that the earth is going to dissolve or we’re going to have some frightful, catastrophic thing in the world. Forget it! So, it’s simply a dramatic ending of your world of history as human history, and the beginning of an eternal history where it’s entirely different. You can’t describe it, because there aren’t any images on earth that one can use to describe what happens. You can’t describe it. Slight little things you may bring in, but you can’t possibly describe the new life. It’s something entirely different: you’re equipped to do it all and you are God. You are not some little pygmy; you are actually God himself.741 ¶26

So you see someone and you condemn him…the chances are you’re going to play it tomorrow. So don’t condemn, for you’re simply moving towards the fulfillment of what you condemn. And let no one be the judge. Don’t you be the judge…you know too much now. All you can do is hope you have played them all so far and that tonight may come your eschatology. That tonight may come the end of history as the world understands it.741 ¶27

For sacred history has been brought to its climax and fulfillment in Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ in you is the one that brings it to climax and fulfillment. He said, “I in them and thou in me.” Well, as he addresses the Father, he says, “Oh righteous Father.” Well now, if the Father is in me and I am in you, is not the Father in you? So the Father is in you and Christ is in you, and Christ is the pattern man that must fulfill scripture. So as it erupts in Christ—for in him the plan was made—and so the whole thing erupts in you and everything in scripture unfolds.741 ¶28

So you are the one spoken of as Abraham. The promise was made to Abraham that you will have a child. Well now, you have the child, therefore, what part are you playing? Suddenly he looked up and three men stood before him and they were messengers of the Lord, and he didn’t realize it was the Lord himself. But he did entertain them and then prepared a feast for them. They come so suddenly you don’t see them approaching just as told you in scripture. They’re not approaching; they suddenly are there. You’re diverted for one second, say, three, four seconds, you’re diverted from the thing out of which you’ve emerged by the wind, the unearthly wind, which is Spirit, which is God. As you’re diverted and look back, suddenly those that you did not see approaching are sitting where what was a body and the body is gone. They removed the Lord…where have they put his body? The body is gone, because he only wore it for awhile, and while he wore it something happened in him.741 ¶29

Now a lady wrote me this past week and she said, “I had a dream. I was digging in the earth, digging and digging, and I was using a shovel. The earth seemed loose, yet I was digging and digging and I knew as I was digging in the earth I was digging my own brain.” It’s a lovely vision! It’s a true vision: that’s where everything takes place. She was digging in her own brain, for it takes place in the earth, and man is made of the dust of the earth. So she was actually digging in her own brain. That vision came perfectly for her. Well, she is “on the verge,” but I could not tell her the day as no one knows the day or the hour. But many of you are “on the verge” of eschatology…coming to the end of the journey. Let no one tell you that he knows when it will be, for only the Father knows. The Father knows the day and the hour. You sleep and suddenly out of the nowhere this thing happens.741 ¶30

Now a strange thing…here, if you read the Book of John…and it differs somewhat from the synoptics…John pinpoints the very day of the week on which it will happen. He pinpointed, if you know scripture, that it will happen between six PM on Sunday and six PM on Monday when the birth will take place. Well, the birth is followed (really preceded) by the resurrection. They take place the same night. Well, it happened that way with me. It was the wee hours, four in the morning on Monday. I went to bed on Sunday night about eleven and here in the wee hours of the morning—which is Sunday night but really Monday morning—that’s when it happened. So it seems that you follow the same pattern.741 ¶31

And you can talk about it and tell it and they’ll point their finger at you and say, “What on earth is he trying to say? Is he trying to tell me that he has experienced the story of Jesus Christ? That’s blasphemy!” Well, they have to say it. They repeat the same thing over and over— whenever he comes he blasphemes. Whenever he comes he is denied by those who hear him. It’s the eternal story. But everyone comes into the world from B.C. Then suddenly when it happens his world turns into the year of the Lord, A.D., and from that moment on he is in the world of A.D. No one until it happens is actually in A.D. They are still living before the coming of Jehovah.741 ¶32

So, the Old Testament is simply crowded with eschatology and it is the coming of Jehovah. But he came and was not recognized. It was not what they were expecting; they were expecting something entirely different from what happened.741 ¶33

All that is going to happen, I’m going to tell you, in your world you’re going to fulfill scripture. You’re going to feel so wonderful within you that you are the central character of the Bible…that everything written in the Bible was all about you! Even though it happened to others it was all about you, because in the end there is no other. We’re all one. And so, I dwell in them and thou dwellest in me that we may be one, perfectly one. So in the end all are gathered together into one body and they’re one Spirit, they’re one Lord, one God and Father of all .741 ¶34

You will not have a different Son from the speaker; it will be the same Son. I tell that to priests and to rabbis and to ministers of the Protestant church—why, they throw their hands up in holy horror. They say, “Well, you’ve taken all of my religion from me. If that is true, all that I have been taught as a minister is now false.” I said, no, it isn’t false but I’m telling you what I know from experience. I have actually experienced scripture. This is true; it is not what you have been taught.741 ¶35

Jesus Christ is God the Father, and Jesus Christ is in you. One day you will find out that you are God the Father; and because you are God the Father, there must be a Son to bear witness, for no one knows the Father except the Son . The Son must come into your world and then you will see who the Son really is. You will know him; you don’t have to ask anyone. The minute you look at him, you know exactly the character that he is, and he knows who he is and he knows who you are. This relationship reveals you as God the Father. Yet here you are in this little garment that suffers as all garments do. You are in the world of Caesar until the very end. You are not going to be restored to life at the end; you’re finished with it. This dramatic end has come, the end of history.741 ¶36

But until you’ve finished telling the story as told us in the Book of Acts he remained, and it doesn’t say how he ended. The story of Paul, he was at home talking from morning to night about the Word of God and the kingdom of heaven. It does not give us any way how Paul ended…in spite of tradition where they claimed he was a martyr, meaning that he was murdered. He wasn’t murdered. The word martyr means “witness.” Yes, he was a martyr in that sense: he was a witness to the truth of God’s Word. But all these so-called martyrs were not martyrs as we speak of a martyr; they were witnesses to the truth of the Word of God. For, the word is true and someone has to witness it. So he was a witness to the very end, but it does not tell us when he departed or how he departed. In spite of what the churches claim, it is not found in scripture.741 ¶37

So when it happens to you, you will tell it. You may not tell it as I tell it, publicly from a platform, but you will tell it. You can’t restrain the impulse to tell it. As we are told in Jeremiah: “If I say, ‘I will not mention it or speak anymore in his name,’ then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire, and I am tired of holding it in, and I cannot” . It is simply something within you and you cannot stop it.741 ¶38

So someone will ask you to please not mention it anymore, because you disturb those around about you. They don’t want to hear it. They’re quite satisfied with their church, quite satisfied with their concept of who Jesus Christ is—he was someone who was born 2,000 years ago back in time and space and he is my Lord to whom I pray, so forget it, that’s the one I want. So don’t you come with any stupidness that Christ is in you, and that the same Christ that is written up in scripture is the Christ in you, and that the same thing must happen to you. That it must be said of you, and you will know it’s true: “In the volume of the book it’s all about me” ).741 ¶39

So when David calls me Father, it’s all about me. So he said to David…and David called him “my lord.” Well, “my Lord” is simply the expression of a son of a father. He always referred to his father as “my lord.” But no one seems to have seen it because they haven’t had the vision. So you talk to a rabbi, talk to a minister, you talk to a priest, “Oh, no, couldn’t be” . And yet he said he’s a father. If he’s a father, he has to have a son. So he said, “When you see me you see the Father.” Well, if I’m a father, then where is the child? If there is no child to bear witness to my fatherhood, I am not a father. Therefore, if he is not a father then he’s not God, for God is Father.741 ¶40

“I have made known unto them thy name and I will make it known that the love by which thou hast loved me may be in them” , same love. Well, the name he made real was the name “Father.” I made thy name real to them—I told them your name. What was the name?—the name was Father, and I and my Father are one . Well, if I and my Father are one, then where is the one to bear witness that I’m a father? For, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” .741 ¶41

So here comes the Son. Well, it isn’t Jesus Christ standing before himself calling himself Father. It is his Son David who calls him Father. When he calls you Father, you have to be Jesus Christ, because David called him Father. So if he calls you Father, you are the same Jesus Christ. So I can say to every one of you, you’re going to have this experience and you’ll know that you are Jesus Christ. There are not a number of little Jesus Christs running around, there is only God the Father…only one Father.741 ¶42

So if I’m the Father of God’s only begotten Son, as told me in the 2nd Psalm , and then you have the same experience, then you and I are one, the same Father. And then if the whole vast world will have that experience then are we not one? So his prayer is that we be one, that they all become one as we are one. He speaks of the glory…just as Isaiah did…“I created them for my glory.” He said, “Now, the glory thou gavest me I have given unto them.” Didn’t take a little bit for myself and then share something else with them, the same glory, because there can’t be another.741 ¶43

So in the end there is only one God, only one Lord, only one Father, and, may I tell you, only one Son. You will be the Father of that one Son, as I from my own experience know I’m the Father of that one and only Son.741 ¶44

So this is eschatology—when we arrive at the end, the very end, and that dramatic sundering of the two, the end of history because I’ve experienced all the tribulations of human experience. I can’t bring it back to mind now, but I do know I’ve had to have played every part in this world to arrive at the fulfillment of scripture—the blind man, the deaf man, the poor man, the rich man, the beggar, the thief, the murderer, the betrayer, the betrayed, you name it, and scripture has mentioned every one of them. You can’t name one state in this world that is vile or evil that is not described in the Bible openly. So I’ve played them all. I think you have or you will.741 ¶45

But I think you who come here have played them all. You would not be this constant had you not played them all. You’d find something far more interesting tonight, raining as it is, to be elsewhere. But no, you’ve played them or you would not be here, I’m telling you. So in the not distant future you will be fulfilling scripture and everything in it you will play. But I can’t tell anyone the thrill when any one scene in scripture unfolds within you…it’s so dramatic. It’s so unlike anything.741 ¶46

Now we today saw this great event in Washington, a new president, and it was colorful and perfectly marvelous, no question about it. It pales into insignificance compared to the dramatic quality that possesses you when scripture unfolds within you.741 ¶47

Can you imagine yourself actually in the presence of the child bearing witness? “Unto us a child is born.” The child is there and you know exactly what happened to you and how you came out like one from a womb, but it was your skull. Then, five months later, “A son is given.” They’re two different events. So this 9th of Isaiah , “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given” are two entirely different. The son is given to bear witness to my fatherhood; the child is there to bear witness to my birth. I am the one born and a child is simply the symbol of birth. It’s an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. So my birth from above was symbolized in that of a child; but when the son is given it’s your fatherhood because he calls you Father. They are two entirely different events though they come together seemingly as one: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given.” And you think, well, the child and the son are the same, but they are not. They signify two dramatic events within you.741 ¶48

When they’ll happen I can’t tell anyone. I am quite sure that our new president today could feel the thrill when the crowd walked by and when he was actually sworn in by our chief justice…and it was a thrill. Undoubtedly he felt a tremendous thrill of accomplishment. But not like these. These thrills are so fantastic you can’t describe them. You know they will be experienced and only when they are experienced can one understand. It’s beyond anything you can describe! It belongs to the transcendental world of God…it’s not this world of history.741 ¶49

A dramatic state when you like a serpent, a fiery serpent at that, ascend into heaven. And it reverberates, as you’re told, they all take it by storm. For, it’s simply like thunder when you enter or re-enter, I should say, heaven, having been sent out. You’ve played the part of the degenerate, you’ve played the part of one in generation; you’ve played all those parts, and now comes regeneration. All that you ever did is forgiven…I don’t care what it is. Everything man has ever done is forgiven when he begins to unfold scripture.741 ¶50

So eschatology is simply the doctrine of the last things.741 ¶51

I’ve shared with you as you’ve shared with me your visions. I’ve shared with you the last things. I’ve told you exactly what happened to me, how these events unfolded within me. They came unexpectedly, suddenly. I certainly did not expect them and they came so suddenly upon me. Well, that’s how they come. They come like a thief in the night. You can’t watch for them, they happen suddenly. I certainly did not expect them and they came so suddenly upon me. Well, that’s how they come, like a thief in the night.741 ¶52

But they will not happen until after you have experienced all the tribulations of human experience.741 ¶53

So don’t try to go back…God in his infinite mercy has hidden from you the memory of the past. For if you could remember some of the horrible things that you have done as you’ve played the part, you couldn’t live with yourself. That you may not have that memory, it’s been taken from you for a purpose, because in the end it’s all washed out anyway. “Though your sins were as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” So it doesn’t matter. So condemn no one, for you have played it or you will play it. But I say in your part you have played it. And you will know it because you are compassionate. You meet anyone and you have no condemnation, none whatsoever.741 ¶54

Someone called me up and said, “My brother shot a man, killed him.” I didn’t ask why. He loved his brother as he loved his mother, who was weeping and weeping and carrying on. I said, I will hear the good news for you. It went on and on for about nine months and the verdict came in, freed, acquitted. He killed him and he knew he killed him, shot him. Why he shot him I never once asked the brother. It’s not my concern. He asked me to help. Well, all I could do was simply do what if I were the father of such a boy, I would want him set free. I can’t bring the one he killed back, but I would certainly want my son set free if I were the father of such a person. I do not believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. So I simply assumed that I heard his voice and it was ecstatic as he told me that his brother was set free. Well, his brother was set free.741 ¶55

So I say to everyone, in the end having played all the parts, you will have compassion for every being in this world, and you will see nothing to condemn, nothing.741 ¶56

What a play! It’s a horrible play! But in the end you will fully understand the meaning behind all the events and you will see that the one who conceived it in the beginning knew only through this play could he create beings to whom he could give himself. But really give himself in the full sense of the word. So it was God’s purpose to give himself to what he created so that the thing created became God. Whatever God was prior to that, that individual created, formed and made by God, had to be that as though he was never anything but.741 ¶57

Here, something is formed in time and enters eternity, so it has no beginning, none. Can you conceive of something formed in time and receiving the gift of eternity so it has no beginning? Well, that’s what you are.741 ¶58

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Now are there any questions, please?741 ¶59

This series is really a combination of both the Law and the Promise. Tonight, naturally, will be the Law, and yet some parts of the Promise may be woven into it. The title, as you know, is “Imagination Plus Faith.” So, we will have to define the words as we use them. I firmly believe that: “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 that we speak of as Jesus Christ.736 ¶1

I firmly believe that this is the Christ of Scripture that is buried in man – buried in the only Holy Sepulcher that there ever was, and that is the skull of man. And there he dreams the Dream of Life, and one day He will awaken within your skull, and then the drama of Christ as defined for us in Scripture will unfold within you, casting you in the first-person-singular, present-tense experience of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then you will know who He really is! You will actually awaken as the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the climax for every one born of woman.736 ¶2

But tonight let us get back to what I mean by imagination and what I mean by faith. First of all, faith is defined for us in the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews. It is called a hymn in praise of faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” By faith we understand a world was created by the Word of God, so that “Things seen are made out of things that do not appear.” That’s what we are told in the very first few verses of the 11th chapter of Hebrews.736 ¶3

Now, if faith is the evidence of things not seen and all things are made out of things that do not appear, then we must come to the conclusion that every natural effect has a spiritual cause, and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion of the fading memory. Man does not remember his imaginal acts, so when they come up and the harvest is ripe, he denies his own harvest. He cannot see where on earth what he is now experiencing could have been caused by him, because he has forgotten his imaginal acts. That is when he sowed it, and all things bring forth after their kind. Let no one be deceived, for God – which is his own imagination – is not mocked. “As a man sows, so shall he reap.” So, I am forever reaping what I have planted, but because of my fading memory, I can’t remember when I did it. So, then, I deny what I am seeing as my own harvest.736 ¶4

Well, now, who is this God spoken of in this verse? He said, “By faith we understand that the world was created by the Word of God.” Well, we are told in Scripture in the very first few verses of the book of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Then we are told, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt within us;” therefore the Word spoken of here is equated with God. If the Word was not only with God, it was God, well, then, that’s God, and it now dwells in us. Well, I tell you, this Word that dwells in you, spoken of in Scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ, is your own wonderful human imagination. This is the greatest secret in the world, and every one should strive after solving it. Supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lies in the solution of this mystery.736 ¶5

So, as far as I am concerned, the God who created it all and sustains it all is pure imagining in myself. He works in the very depths of my soul, underlying all my faculties, including perception; but He streams into my surface life least disguised in the form of productive fancy, like a daydream. A daydream is productive; a daydream is creative. I am planting when I daydream. I don’t have to be intense to drop a seed. I don’t have to go around and dig a hole and bury it. I can scatter it. So, a daydream is planting.736 ¶6

So, I sit down and wonder, “Am I doing it lovingly?” I do not always check myself. I may read the morning paper and then react on a story that I do not know whether it is true or false, but I react. Well, It knows exactly what I did, and It is my own imagination. It keeps the score, and so in time the harvest will come up, and I will see it. So, all objective reality is solely produced through imagining. So, I say, imagining plus faith – I must actually believe in the imaginal act.736 ¶7

Now, how do I go about doing it? That’s the important thing. I am told by one scholar that if ordinary things that I observe in this corporeal world – if they are present, that is sense, if absent, that is imagination. The room around me seems to me more real than anything in the world because it is present. Yet I stand – I am not familiar with this room save once a year that I come for ten nights. I am far more familiar with the home that I have in Los Angeles, but at the moment it is not present to my senses, so I am told that is only an imagination. That is simply a memory image of what may be still a reality, but at the moment it could be gone. Yet I do not think it’s gone, so they tell me. All right, if I think of it but it is not present, then that is imagination. But if things are present, then that is sense.736 ¶8

Well, how do I make what is not present real? That is where we come to imagining plus faith. I have tried it unnumbered times, and may I tell you, it works.736 ¶9

I could stand here and take a case history. Years ago, right after the Second World War – the year was 1945, I sailed with my little family, my wife and daughter out to the Island of Barbados. I hadn’t seen the family through the war years, because there was no transportation available. I was in the Army for a very short span of time, about four months. Because of my age plus this law, I was honorably discharged because I was over 38. My son was in the Marines in Guadalcanal, but my little girl was only a matter of months in age. So, at the end of 1945 I sailed, on the first ship out, for there were no planes taking any one to the Indies. So, I sailed with my wife and my little girl on a one-way ticket, not thinking for one moment of the difficulty in getting back to New York, and I had a commitment to be in Milwaukee in the first week of May. So, I sailed the end of December – New Year’s Eve, to be exact.736 ¶10

At the end of about three months, my brother Victor said to me, “You have a return ticket?” and I said, “No, but I want to get back the first week of May to go to Milwaukee.” He said, “How dare you leave the capital of the financial world, New York City, without making arrangements? All things are done there, and you have come to a little island like Barbados, and we have two little ships – one carrying a maximum of 65 passengers, and the other carrying a maximum of 120, one sailing out of Boston, one sailing out of New York, but all these islands are to be serviced, and we alone could use more ships several times a month. They only make a round trip – one makes it every 21 days, and the other one makes it every 32 days; and how dare you come out, knowing you must be back, without making any arrangement in New York City?”736 ¶11

Well, it was perfectly all right. I sat in my hotel room in a nice big easy chair, and I assumed it was a little boat that would tend the ship because we didn’t have a deep harbor in those days. We have one now, but there was no deep-water harbor, so I assumed that I was on a small little boat taking me out to the ship, and that my brother Victor and sister Daphne, my wife and other members of the family and little Vicki were all aboard the boat. Then I assumed that I was stepping off this little boat onto the gangplank. I could feel the rhythm; I could feel it give as I went up step after step after step. My mind wandered before I got to the top. So, I came back to the bottom again and started all over. It wandered again; I came back to the bottom and did it over. When I got to the top I had no room where I could go. I simply assumed now: My hand is on the rail. I could feel the salt of the sea on the rail. I could feel the salt of the sea in the air, and then I looked towards the Island of Barbados with a mixed feeling: one of sadness because I was leaving the family, and one of joy because I was going back to America where I live. That was a peculiar feeling, but it was a natural feeling. And while I had hold of the rail and assumed this state, I then fell asleep in the chair.736 ¶12

Now, I must go back. When I went down to the firm in Barbados to ask for transportation, they said, “You haven’t the chance of a snowball in hell of getting out of Barbados until October.” This was then the month of late March. Not a chance of getting out! They had a list that long and I was at the bottom of the list. Trinidad had a list that much longer, for they had so many more people. All the islands have lists. There were literally thousands of people waiting to get aboard, and they only had two ships, one carrying 65 and one carrying 120 passengers. So, they said, “Mr. Goddard, you have no chance of getting out before October.” I said, “All right.” Then I sat and did that which would imply that I was sailing. I simply did exactly what I knew I had to do. I simply subjectively appropriated my objective hope. I hoped to be sailing on that ship, and so I subjectively appropriated the objective hope, for if I were sailing I would get into that little boat, get off onto the gangplank and walk up to the deck of the ship.736 ¶13

The next day – the very next day – I had not dressed; I had not a thing to do but go to the bathing beach later on in the day. The phone rang, and it was the Alcoa Steamship Company asking me to come on down, that they had news for me. I asked them what news. They said we have passage for three sailing on the next ship, which will put you back in New York City on the 1st of May. I went down, and I was very curious and asked, “Why do you offer it to me when the list, you told me, is so long, with hundreds and hundreds waiting on it who are all ahead of me? And what caused you to have the vacancy?” Well, a lady on the island, so she told me, who desired to get out badly and wanted to go back to America – the first choice would be this lady. Well, suddenly she changed her feeling about it. Then they went down the entire list with no reason whatsoever and gave it to us, and they justified it in this manner: “The ship only carries two in each room, but your little girl is only about three years of age, and she can sleep in a bunk with your wife, and you can have the other one. So, because she is such a little child – only three years old, we gave it to accommodate three rather than two, and the two that we do have couldn’t share it anyway because they are different sexes and not married.” That is how she justified giving it to me when hundreds of people were before me.736 ¶14

I know how I did it. Every natural effect has a spiritual cause, and not a natural. A natural cause only seems. It is a delusion. Well, I remembered what I did. It was only a matter of 24 hours between planting that seed and the springing of that seed into objective reality. By the 20th day of April I was on that boat, getting off in New York City by May the 1st to meet my appointment in Milwaukee.736 ¶15

I could multiply that by dozens and dozens in my own case, and unnumbered in those who attend my meetings. So, it is simply imagination plus faith. As we are told, without faith it is impossible to please Him. The one we please is not some external being; it is internal – your own wonderful imagination.736 ¶16

Now, I will put you to the test. We are told in the 13th chapter of II Corinthians: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? – Unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”736 ¶17

Now I just gave you the test. This is the test: If the word “God,” “Lord,” “Jesus Christ” conveys the sense of an existent something outside of man, you have failed the test, for Jesus Christ is in you. He said, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? – Unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” If the word “Jesus Christ” conveys the existence of someone outside of you, you didn’t meet the test. And all things are done by Him. “Without Him was not anything made that is made.” And He is your own wonderful human imagination!736 ¶18

So, here, when you know to Whom you pray and Who is actually doing it, you’ll find that it is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. “All things exist in the human imagination” . There isn’t a thing in this world that you and I call real – objectively real – that was not first only imagined. You name it! The building in which we now are seated, everything here, the lectern, the clothes you wear, name anything here. You may go into other parts like the trees. We didn’t make those by imagination, but it was the Divine Imagination, the same as the human imagination, only we are keyed low. It is the same imagination, for there is only God. So, human imagination is one with Divine Imagination. On our level, God keyed Himself low with the weaknesses and the limitations of the body, God literally became as we are, that we may be as He is.”736 ¶19

In becoming man, He couldn’t pretend He was man. He had to actually become man, with all the weaknesses, with all the limitations and frailties of man, and assumed it completely. Then, in time, the whole thing unfolds within man, and man discovers that he is God! He discovers he is God because the drama is completely recorded for him. Everything said of Jesus Christ in Scripture, you are going to experience as something taking place within you. Not something of which you read as in the case of reading about another, no, it is all done within you. You stand dumbfounded. You are amazed beyond measure and belief. You cannot believe it, that you still capable of – well, of unlovely actions, could be that glorified. Yet you can’t deny the evidence of your senses. You cannot deny the experiences that you’ve had. And the whole thing will unfold in you. You will know from experience.736 ¶20

I am not theorizing. I am not speculating. No one taught it to me. I never read it in a book – in the Bible, but I never saw it in the Bible until I had experienced it, and then I went back and researched the Scriptures to find it is all there, but adumbrated. It was not spelled out in a way that man could understand it. The whole thing was an adumbration from beginning to end; and when it takes place in man, and the man in whom it takes place tells it, those who hear him can’t believe it because they know him. They know his past. They know his background in every little detail, and they cannot believe their traditional concept of Jesus Christ to be what he is talking about that actually unfolded within him.736 ¶21

The Bible tells the same story: “He came to his own, and his own received him not,” because really, in the end, there is only the Lord Jesus Christ. There is only God! God is buried in every being in the world, and only God will rise. And He will rise in the individual, and the individual in whom He rises, that one will know Who He is. And he will be the God of Scripture. That is the story.736 ¶22

But tonight, on the practical level you try it, knowing Who is doing it: that it is God doing it, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. Now, take faith, as defined for us in the 11th chapter of the book of Hebrews, and you will see that it is simply the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. I wanted to be on that ship; that was my objective hope. Well, I first subjectively appropriated it. I did it as though it were true. I actually acted just as though the thing had happened. I walked up the gangplank, held the rail, looked back with mixed feelings, and then fell asleep. And when I found myself wandering, I went back to the very first step on the gangplank and did it over again, and went on doing it over and over until I could walk right up that gangplank and actually feel I am at the very top and turn around and put my hand on the rail. And strangely enough, in my imagination I allowed my brother Victor to carry my daughter Victoria up the gangplank, and to justify his action when we got off the little tender onto the gangplank, he said, “Come, your father’s arms aren’t strong enough to take you. I will take you.” But my arms certainly were strong enough to carry my daughter, but he had to justify it, as we all do. He had to justify that action, and then took her up. Well, that is exactly what he did when we got to the little boat!736 ¶23

So, here, I ask you just to listen to it and not say, Well, I’ve heard it, and forget it, but try it. You will be the operant power. It doesn’t work itself. We are the operant power. In fact, all day long we are operating it, but I would ask everyone to operate it wisely, nobly, consciously, and not go into a fantasy wildly that tomorrow, when it comes up, we will not forget the harvest. For everything in our world, man once imagined.736 ¶24

And all the men of action in our world that you see out building the buildings and doing all the business – they are nothing more than the unconscious instruments of imaginative men. A man sits down at the drafting board, and he has conceived a building. He does everything in detail all in his imagination, and then he turns the blueprint over to the men of action, and they get all the credit, but the man who did it was simply the man of imagination. That is what William Butler Yeats meant. Having seen this law in operation, he said, “I will never again be certain that it was not some woman treading in the winepress that started that sudden change in men’s minds.”736 ¶25

And because of it, so many nations were given to the sword because of some dream in the mind of some shepherd boy that lighted up his eyes for a moment before it went upon its way. Someone feeling herself neglected and wrongfully accused, and she is vivid in her imagination, when she, unknown by the world, is setting the world aflame. Many a man tonight is in jail, and wrongfully there; he knows he did not commit the crime for which he was charged, and he is paying a price that he feels he should not pay. That man’s mind is inflamed, and what is he doing? It is going undetected, but the events will appear in the world.736 ¶26

Two or three weeks ago I received a letter, and I thought it was a strange letter when I began to read it. It is from a prisoner. I do not know the man at all. He signed his name “Bob,” and enclosed a self-addressed envelope. He is at Folsom. Folsom is a place where only the hardened prisoners are sent. Well, he confessed that he heard me on TV, and he practiced it and it worked. Well, I had twenty TV appearances on Sunday afternoons between 2:00 and 2:30. He said he applied it, and he said, “Neville, and it worked! Where I am going, I don’t know, but I am here for quite a stretch, and so it doesn’t matter whether you answer tonight, tomorrow or when you answer, because I am here. But I would like certain questions answered.” That fellow is interested in the use of imagination.736 ¶27

Strangely enough, they are vitally interested in the mystery of death. They would like to know if I can cast any thought whatsoever on death, based upon – naturally – my experiences; not things concerning others, but what I know concerning death. Well, I wrote him just before I came up. By now he must have the letter. I wish I could go to Folsom and talk to the inmates and tell them of their true dignity – the Man that they are destined to be, for they are destined to be the Lord Jesus Christ! Every child born of woman is destined to be Christ, and to be conscious of the fact that he is the Lord. But how to get there and address them, I do not know. He has my letter. I wrote him in detail as much as I possibly could, and he will share it with those who are interested. They are vitally interested in death.736 ¶28

I told him, as I would tell anyone, I meet people who are not aware of the fact that they have made the transition. They know nothing of the fact that they have died, because they aren’t dead! They are not dead, and nobody can persuade them that they died. They are talking to a man who is just as alive as you are, and you tell him that he died and you went to his funeral and you know exactly where they put him in the ground, revealing what he would expect of you as a friend, but he laughs at you, because he knows he isn’t dead. I say, “No, you are not dead, but you died, you know.” “But aren’t you stupid?” he said to me – “I am not dead but I died!” You see, there is all the difference in the world between restoration, which happens to everyone who dies here – instantaneous restoration in an unaccountable way in a new body – like it was before, but new – unaccountably new, and young. If you die at 90, you are 20, and it is an instantaneous restoration. Well, that is not Resurrection. Resurrection is the story that I tell when man actually awakens from the dream of life, while the other is restored to continue the dream.736 ¶29

He is dreaming the conditions round about him, as he is dreaming the conditions here. What was it but a waking, controlled dream that I did when I went aboard the ship?736 ¶30

When I got out of the Army, was that not a dream, a waking but controlled dream? When I put in my application for an honorable discharge, it was denied me and signed Colonel Theodore Bilbough, Jr. He was my Commanding Officer in the 11th Armored Division.” There was no appeal beyond my commander. I could not take it to the regimental commander or division commander; I could only take it to my battalion commander, and he was my commander. And he signed it “Disapproved.”736 ¶31

That night I went to sleep in my little bunk with all the other soldiers and assumed that I was in New York City in my own apartment in Times Square, where I had my apartment. I was in my own bed. My wife was in her bed, and our little girl was in her crib. And then I got up – all in my imagination – and walked through my apartment and felt the familiar objects. I could see them all. I could see them in my mind’s eye. And I made it quite clear to myself that I was not there on furlough; I was honorably discharged and sleeping now as a civilian. That same night before my vision about 4:00 in the morning came a huge white sheet, and here on the white sheet was the word “Disapproved,” signed Colonel Theodore Bilbough, Jr. Then came a hand – just a hand with a pen in it, and the pen scratched out the word “Disapproved,” and in bold script it wrote, “Approved.” Then a voice spoke, and the voice said to me, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing.”736 ¶32

Nine days later the commanding officer, Colonel Bilbough, called me in, and after giving me a lecture about the best-dressed man in America is the man who wears the uniform of America – I said, “Yes, Sir.” Then he goes on, and I said, “Yes, Sir,” “Yes, Sir,” “Yes, Sir.” At the very end of it he said, “I have decided I am going to let you go,” and then he signed my release. That very day I was out of the Army honorably discharged.736 ¶33

I didn’t tell him what I did. Would he have believed it? For geared as he was to war, sending millions of us into battle, could he believe that the imagination could bring about peace? How can you take a man trained as he was trained and persuade him that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact? How could he possibly believe that? Yet I was the living evidence of what I had done. If I had told him what I had done, he would never believe that that was the cause of the physical phenomenon leading to the train and then the journey to New York City. That is exactly what I did in the vision of that night, just as I have told you. The sheet with his name and the word “Disapproved”; and then comes the hand striking out the word “Disapproved,” and it wrote in bold script “Approved.” And then this voice coming from the depths said, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing.” I did nothing, and then nine days later he calls me in, approves it, shakes my hand, and he said to me, “Goddard, I will meet you in New York City after we have won this war.” I said, “Yes, Sir.” And that was it. No argument. I knew the causation behind it all, and I didn’t feel that that was the right time to share it with him. He was not in the mood to share what I had discovered.736 ¶34

Well, I had discovered it, and I applied it. Why not apply the truth if you think you have found the truth? And so I found it, I used it, and it worked. When something proves itself in performance, what does it matter if the whole vast world rises up in opposition to it? It proves itself in the testing.736 ¶35

So, I am sharing with you that which I have proved. But it doesn’t work itself. You are the operant power. So, you take it home and know exactly who God is. Are we not told in the 4th Psalm, “Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be silent.” Not with someone else’s heart – commune with your own heart. The words “heart” and “mind” are synonymous in meaning. Commune with your own mind, and trust that Mind; trust it implicitly. Believe in the reality of your imagined acts, and these imaginal acts will objectify themselves and become what the world calls objective facts. They will!736 ¶36

So, if you start behind the eight-ball, or behind anything that seems to be in opposition or an impassable something – well, you believe in God. I am telling you Who He is. Believe in the true God. Test yourself and see if you really believe in the true God. I am convinced that ninety-nine percent of the world will claim to believe in God, but they believe in a false god. They stick him on the wall, made by human hands, and cross themselves. He isn’t there at all. Read the 115th Psalm. What a shocker! What a shocker when you see what man does with his own hands and worships that which he makes with his own hands and calls it God! He has no eyes that can see, no ears that can hear. He has eyes, he has ears, he has nostrils, he has arms, he has feet, but none of these things can move. The eyes can’t see, the ears can’t hear, the mouth can’t speak, the feet can’t move, and yet he looks upon it as God! The 115th Psalm is the most marvelous thing to read. It is a shocker.736 ¶37

And, then, come back to find the real God, the living God, the God that cannot die – the God that is in you, your Immortal Self. That God cannot die! And that is your own wonderful human imagination. And should you drop now, you would be instantly restored in a body just the same, only new, unaccountably new and young – not an infant, not born again, just new. How it happens, I cannot tell you. I only know I’ve seen them, and they do not know – the majority of them do not know that they have made the transition into a section of time best suited for the work still to be done in them. So, it does not mean that because you drop in the year 1971 that you are going to find the year ’71 now. No. You could find yourself in the Year One Thousand or the Year Three Thousand, but that is irrelevant.736 ¶38

The section of time into which you are placed is done by the depths of your own being. He knows best what you need for the work: that He has started within you, and He is slowly breaking down the wall of partition between two until they become one. He is rubbing out that wall between you and Himself; when it is completely rubbed out, you are one. It is essential that He leaves all and cleaves to his wife to become one, not two. You are His wife till the sleep of death is passed. So, this is God’s emanation, and then, in time, He rubs out that little division and He becomes one with you. And when He becomes one with you, He awakes, and you aren’t two – you are one.736 ¶39

And it is all spelled out for us in Scripture, and as we go through this series, the nine that follow tonight, we will try to explain it, using the Scripture to support my experiences. It is clearly stated, but I must confess I did not see it. I did not know it. I knew nothing of the Promise, even though it is right there in the Bible, speaking of promises, until it happened right here in this City twelve years ago tomorrow, on the 20th of July, 1959. It happened right here in this City at that hotel called Sir Francis Drake. I had retired after a very pleasant meal with a friend of mine. I retired early. And then at 4:00 in the morning the whole drama unfolded within me. Then the whole series took twelve hundred and sixty days to complete, just as foretold in the 12th chapter of Daniel, and then reaffirmed in Revelation one thousand two hundred and sixty days from the first great event to the fourth and final one. I have recorded it all, and you have it in the book called “Resurrection.”736 ¶40

Now, tonight, let us make it a full and interesting evening. After the Silence we will have your questions, and I will try my best to answer every question that is asked. Now, let us go into the Silence.736 ¶41

Now are there any questions, please?: Surely there are questions!736 ¶42

Any other questions, please?736 ¶53

Well, I think the time is up. Now we are here every night Monday through Friday this week and Monday through Friday next week, from 7:30 to 8:30. The door is open for us at 7:00, but we start at 7:30 and go through to 8:30. So, I do hope I’ll see many of you again. Good night.736 ¶60

I thought I would take a portion of John, a bit of Blake, something from a great scientist, and then my own experience and weave them together for you tonight, and make it a very practical night.734 ¶1

We’ll start first of all with the scientist. That seems to gel in the minds of people that the thing is really based upon fact. Why I do not know, but that’s how people look upon the scientific mind. This chap is called Feynman, Richard Feynman, Professor Feynman at Cal. Tech. He is considered one of the world’s greatest physicists, who is involved with our atomic bomb and our great nuclear bomb today, but basically he likes the theoretical side of it, not the down-to-earth side. He wrote a paper which came out in 1949. It was printed in what is known as The Science Newsletter and he was describing the behavior of a little particle which is produced by atomic disintegration. It is named today by our scientists as the positron.734 ¶2

He wrote of the positron that “it starts from where it hasn’t been and speeds to where it was but an instant ago; arriving there it is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed, and it returns to where it hasn’t been.” Now he said, “An electron that is bounced is really deflected but continues on its course, a changed course, but it doesn’t turn around.” So he calls this little particle “the turn around.” He said, “It has the capacity to meet itself coming back from where it hasn’t been.” “Having observed this,” said he, “we must now completely alter our concepts of the universe, and no longer can we consider the universe and the future of the universe as developing continuously out of the past. We must now see the entire space-time history of the world laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively. That the whole thing is done, and you and I only become aware of increasing portions of that which is; that the future is not developing out of any past, not after having observed the behavior of this little particle,” that they call the positron.734 ¶3

I maintain that our scientists by their observations are only discovering the workings of their own minds; that the physics of the mind cannot differ in any respect from the physics of the rest of Nature. So they will not go along the mystical path, the path of faith; they must have it proved to them in their laboratories, which is perfectly alright; they’re discovering in their labs the workings of their own mind. Now whether Feynman discovered it to the point where he accepts it, I don’t know. He’s here in the city, he’s in Pasadena. But here, these are his words and I’ve quoted them accurately. It’s the October 15 letter of 1949, it’s called The Science Newsletter and the date—-you can find it in the library—-October the 15th, 1949. When it was sent to me I was stunned and thrilled, because it is exactly how I felt towards the entire picture.734 ¶4

Now Blake makes the statement that the spiritual states of man, or he calls it the soul, are eternal. Then he calls upon us “to distinguish between the man and his present state; that eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy.” Everything exists; everything is present and everywhere now, right now. That’s what he claims.734 ¶5

Now we go to the Book of John and then we’ll come together and put them all together for you…the 14th chapter of the Book of John. First of all, he calls upon us not to be disturbed, “Let not your hearts be disturbed. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and I will take you to myself, that where I am there you will be also” .734 ¶6

Now you read this and you think a man is talking to men. It isn’t so, that’s not the Bible: the whole drama is taking place within us. As I read it it’s taking place within me. Do not be disturbed; you believe in God, well, believe also in me. The being speaking is my very being, for we are one. For in this same 14th chapter he tells you, I am the Father, I am the only way; there is no other way. “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life.” And so, you believe in God? Believe in me, for I am the way to God the Father; there is no other way, so believe in me. I’m talking to myself.734 ¶7

Now, in my Father’s house (but I am he) there are unnumbered mansions. A mansion is simply a possibility. There are infinite possibilities in this world, and every one can be realized if I believe in me…believe in me. Well, how could I do it? You mean I could this very night be the man that I want to be? I could actually be anything in this world? I maintain yes…if I really believe in me.734 ¶8

Well, let me share with you an experience. I did it this morning. I retired quite early and, therefore, I woke quite early. I had six unbroken hours and found myself at a very early hour of the morning fully awake, but much too early to rise and disturb the household. So while in my bed I practiced a little something that I’ve done over the years. While on my bed I imagined I’m seated on my black leather chair in my living room. I cannot see my bedroom from my living room. I imagined I am seated on my black leather chair in my living room, and when it seemed natural to me, so I could look mentally and see in the far distance this bedroom, my body in one bed and my wife’s body in the other bed, then I simply returned to the body. I did it a few times to get the feel. First thing, it proves to you the existence of something that isn’t this; you become aware of a soul, you become aware of a power that is altogether different. You look in to the mirror and you think “Now that’s me.” This is not it at all. You leave that that you think to be yourself on the bed and you withdraw. As you withdraw you think of what is on the bed. While you are seated, in your Imagination, on the chair, you think of the bed. You don’t go back until you want to go back; you sit there simply contemplating it. Then suddenly in your mind’s eye you feel I’m on the bed, and you feel a motion—-the whole thing takes place and you feel it as you return.734 ¶9

Then this is what I did. Having done the first thing deliberately, I thought “Now I’m not going to do it deliberately, I’m just going to experiment. I will withdraw from the body, but not say to myself where I will go. I’m not going to go to my chair in the living room. I don’t want to go to New York now, because I have no plans for New York until the fall of the year. I don’t want to go to San Francisco now, not until July. I don’t want to go to Barbados; I have no definite plans for that. So I will not put myself in some definite spot, I will simply withdraw in space. So I will withdraw not knowing where I am and think of the body on the bed. And this is what happened to me.734 ¶10

As I withdrew and became perfectly still, thinking of the body in my bedroom on the bed, suddenly I find myself in a room. And the room is sealed…no door, no windows, there’s no entrance or exit to that room, but I’m on the inside…beautiful room, lovely colors, and people very friendly. So I went back to the bed. Tried it again, not knowing where the next one would be. I withdrew and when I opened my eyes I’m in a room and here are the most angry crowd of men, all of the Oriental persuasion and they meant no good to the speaker. But I knew how I came into that room, and I knew I am completely free to leave it at will. They didn’t know that, I knew it. So I came into the room, and here I am thinking of the bed and the body; and as they began more and more…as they almost got together in a plot of real violence…I simply imagined myself on the bed, and I’m back on the bed.734 ¶11

So I entered that interior through a surface that had no opening, just as the sperm enters an egg, and it has no opening, either before or after the sperm has fertilized the egg. The being that entered that room was the power, the creative power of God, the sperm of God, and I am it, you are it; your Imagination is it; that’s the immortal you that cannot die.734 ¶12

I know now, having done it several times last night, I fertilized quite a few states—some were pleasant and some unpleasant—I have to reap them. I was experimenting. I must be willing to let those now come into being. For everything that I entered in that manner…for there are infinite possibilities in the world, infinite…and when I either wittingly or unwittingly enter I fertilize it. Then it grows in my world as my harvest. I do not always recognize my harvest, but there is my harvest. It couldn’t come were it not that I at some moment in time, either knowingly or unknowingly fertilized it. That creative power in man is man’s own wonderful human Imagination.734 ¶13

So you could this night take this series…just as Feynman said, “Think of the entire space-time history of the world as laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively.” I have the capacity to meet myself coming back from where I haven’t been. Well, physically I certainly had not been in these rooms, but I have been in these rooms, and they were sealed as an egg is sealed; there’s no opening on the outside at all. So the sperm easily passes through the surface of an egg, although on the outside of the egg there is no opening, either before or after fertilization. Well, these are the eggs—-infinite number of possibilities in the world—-and God’s creative power which is human Imagination penetrates them and they come into being.734 ¶14

The one who penetrates them stands and witnesses the harvest, but he doesn’t recognize it because he does not remember ever having been there physically. No, you don’t go there physically. Just as we are told, the positron starts from where it hasn’t been, and it speeds to where it was an instant ago; arriving there it is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed, and then it returns to where it hasn’t been. So I stand here on my platform…or this morning on my bed…and then I assumed I am not on my bed, without any direction; and then my inner eye opened and I am in a room and it’s peopled. My presence in that room animated it. It has no power in itself; it’s dead until I got there. So I am in a room and they all become alive. Why? Because I am the light of the world, I illuminate it. Then “I am the life, I am the resurrection, I am the way, I am the truth.” So, as I enter this state everything that was there becomes animated. You don’t recognize that you are the animating power, the operant power, that you bring it into life. There it is. Now, when I saw this angry crowd moving towards me, I decided to depart by simply remembering where the body was. And then I imagined myself on my bed, and then I opened my eyes, I’m back on the bed.734 ¶15

So did I not start from where I had not been physically? And did I not speed to where I was physically? And arriving there, I was bounced so hard my time sense was reversed; and then I start moving across a series of events which are going to take me to the harvest of that state. So this is the picture, how to bring things into being.734 ¶16

So tonight trust me, I have done it. We who sit here this night as we go into the Silence; and then don’t sit on the chair where you are, withdraw from it. And put yourself, deliberately now, not in some nebulous manner, deliberately withdraw into another state. And then while in that state whether your inner eye opens or not, you’re in another state, and you’re seeing exactly what you want to see…everything as it ought to be seen…and feel the thrill of it; and then return to the place on this chair. And you’ve fertilized it.734 ¶17

Now every egg has its own appointed time, every egg in this world. That was a vision of yours. And so, as you’re told in scripture, “The vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. If it be late, wait; for it is sure, and it will not be late.” If it seems to you to be late, wait, but every egg has its own appointed hour. And we fertilize every state in this world in the same manner.734 ¶18

You are the operant power; you are the creative power of God; you are the sperm of God. And you go into these states and for one moment you occupy them; as you occupy them you fertilize them. And then you return to that body.734 ¶19

Now Blake makes the statement, “Man has no body distinct from his soul. That called body is a portion of the soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age.” So here, we imposed this limitation upon ourselves for a purpose. And we will use it in this manner: I can put it down and withdraw for the purpose of impregnation. So I put it on a chair, put it on the bed, put it any place, and pull away from it, and then occupy another state. And then as Feynman tells me, I hurry back to it, start from where I haven’t been physically back to where I was an instant ago physically; and then I’m bounced by the blow—-I’m not deflected to go beyond it, I am turned around; and then I move back to where I have been in my Imagination.734 ¶20

So we’re told in the 14th of John: “In my Father’s house there are many rooms, infinite rooms; were it not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there you shall be also.” I’m talking to myself. So I put this thing down on a chair or I leave it on the bed, and I go and prepare a place for you; and so I withdraw from it and feel myself to be what at that moment reason denies, my senses deny it. And having felt it, I then return, and then take it with me to where I have been in my Imagination. So I go to prepare a place for you, that where I am there ye shall be also. And then I take it with me, right across a series of events, some wonderful bridge of incidents right into the place where I am in consciousness.734 ¶21

Here in this audience tonight, two gentlemen…one told me just a little while ago, Thursday, and the other wrote me. I have the letter of one at home and I have the memory of the words of the one who just told me his story.734 ¶22

“So when I heard you two years ago I had nothing, but literally nothing. Today, I have in my own name thirty pieces of property; fifty really, but thirty outright, thirty are mine. Well, I own fifty pieces of property and I had nothing literally when I first heard you two years ago. I believed you and I applied it.”734 ¶23

The other gentleman in his letter said, “There is a family problem that can only be resolved in court; you can’t resolve it outside. And we were told by the court because of a solid calendar and because of many other reasons it could not be brought to trial to be resolved until the end of the year. And it’s an urgent problem. I am part of that family and I wanted it solved immediately. So I denied the facts of a crowded calendar, I denied the words of my lawyer, I denied the words of the court, and simply remained faithful to the assumption that it is now resolved now. And this past week I received word from the court and from my lawyer it will be held next month, in the month of March. I know it’s completely resolved as I want it. But it can only be resolved in the court; it can’t be resolved out of court. They wanted me to wait until the end of the year, and it’s too urgent. And so now I have tangible proof it will be resolved in the month of March.”734 ¶24

So I say to everyone, it’s done in the same way. Your own wonderful human Imagination is not a state; that is your existence itself. The soul of man, the immortal soul, is your own wonderful human Imagination. It cannot go to eternal death in that body which cannot die. How can it? It’s forever. It’s passing through all these things and you and I…don’t try to become a holy person. That’s not our purpose. As Paul said (and he included Peter) when he made the statement in the 14th chapter of the Book of Acts, he said, We are men (speaking now of the two of them), men of passions like others. We pretend not to be holier than others, just as you are . You don’t have to be a holy man as the world calls a holy man to practice God’s law, because holiness is not a passport to heaven, believe me.734 ¶25

All you need to do is believe in your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s God, that is the being spoken of in scripture as God. And God’s creative power spoken of in scripture as Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination when it is in action. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men. So let us to him who only is, who is among us in our own wonderful Imagination, let us give to him the decision” .734 ¶26

So tonight when you go home, if you can’t do it here, when you go home do it. Just simply withdraw from your body. You can easily do it. And may I tell you, there’s no thrill comparable to this discovery of the soul of man, because as you withdraw and you sit elsewhere thinking of the body as you left it, when you return you feel the whole return. You actually feel something you can never feel while you are all anchored in the body. You feel it and you sense the reality of something that cannot be detected by mortal eye. You don’t have to go a hundred miles away. I used to practice this in New York City: Sitting in my chair in the living room, I would put myself at the telephone, which I could not see from the angle when I was looking in the living room. While I was at the telephone just simply talking, I would suddenly assume I am back. And that sensation of return…I discovered through that act this feeling in me that is the power of sense. For imagining is that wonderful sensitive power in man; it’s the soul of man. Imagination is simply this peculiar reality, really, that you don’t know until you try this.734 ¶27

Tonight, anyone here can prove to their own satisfaction that you have a soul, you are a soul. My dentist, yesterday, said he just came from a convention, and while discussing all the new techniques of dentistry, his small crowd was concerned about immortality. One chap in particular said to him, “Jim, do you believe in survival?” He said yes. “Do you know?” He said, “No, I believe.” “Well, do you know of anyone who knows?” He said, “I think I do, I know one chap. I’m going to see him today in my chair. He tells me he knows from experience of not only survival but resurrection.”734 ¶28

But you hear all of these doctors…they’re all dentists…but that doesn’t matter, doctors too, they can’t find this soul of which I speak in the brain as they operate. They can’t do anything to that body and find it. Yet you, without being a doctor, you could find it this night by simply sitting next door by a matter of yards. Put yourself on a chair and feel that you are on the other chair, and just wait, wait, don’t move, just wait in that state; and when you feel it naturally, you are just actually sitting in another chair, and then remember where you were. As you remember, all of a sudden you return and you feel what you can’t feel if you’re always anchored in the body.734 ¶29

Now just as you detached yourself to move there, you can detach yourself and move into any state in the world. There are infinite states, no limit to the states, called rooms or houses in the scripture. These rooms are simply [...]. In the early days of our state, we had the great monasteries and the weary traveler could remain for a night or maybe two days for a rest as he moved north or south, and there he remained. Well, in the grand manner, a far greater picture, these states are where we rest while we are seeking one thing only: We’re trying to find the only true God. And so we go from state to state to state in our search to find the only true God. And you can find him if you do what I asked you to do tonight. Not only you’ll find him but you’ll find him as a power, and you can go into any state and fertilize it.734 ¶30

Your entrance into a state as you occupy it fertilizes it. I know as I stand here tonight I’ve got to reap what I did this morning, just because I experimented. I’m quite willing to reap them. I’ll reap them, all of them. But it was such fun…not taking some definite spot, just taking a withdrawal and remained withdrawn from the body. As I withdrew, I remained, and suddenly I find myself on the inside of a closed room, and I mean closed, it’s sealed. There is no door, no window, no opening at all, everything is sealed. But I knew how I got in. I got in by the power of Jesus Christ, my own wonderful human Imagination, and therefore I could get out just as I got in. And when the angry crowd started moving towards me, for I animated them, they are a part of that state, they belong to that state. They are always part of that state. And so, I unwittingly fell into it by not deliberately setting myself a goal. So, I fertilized it. It’ll come and I must be quite willing to receive it, knowing I can escape from anything in this world if I remember who I am.734 ¶31

So I say to everyone here, take these passages and put them together. The scientist who finds a little particle—he doesn’t know he’s watching his own mind— and this little thing starts from where it hasn’t been and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. When it arrives there, instead of being deflected to continue on its way, it is bounced so hard it’s turned around, and it moves back to where it hasn’t been. So you move back to where you actually have been in consciousness in your Imagination. You haven’t been there physically, but you come back and pick up your body, physically, and you take it across a bridge of incident, a series of events leading up to where you actually have been in consciousness.734 ¶32

Then you can turn to the 14th chapter of John and see how the first three verses are related to Feynman’s discovery: “I will go and prepare a place for you. And when I go, I will come again and I will take you with myself, that where I am in consciousness there in flesh ye shall be also.” Then you move across a series of events, and there you go, to reap the harvest of your own fertilization, because you fertilized it.734 ¶33

Then you can see Blake’s vision, where the whole vast world, Eternity, is, and all things in Eternity, independent of our individual acts of creation. They all are; these states are. I didn’t create these Orientals; they were all in that state. I withdrew from my body, which is only a portion of my soul discerned by my senses, to find myself in a state. I’m the light of the world, I am the life, I am the way into these states, I am the truth of these states, so that when I moved into the state they became animated. And they are angry in that state. And I did not deliberately go into it. I was simply experimenting and I fertilized it, for my presence in any state is life and I fertilize.734 ¶34

So in the course of a day when we do not know this law, how many states you and I fertilize in our day dream. As children feeling sorry for ourselves…so mother simply punished us because we did something that we should not have done, and so not knowing this law, we go in the backyard mentally and eat worms. So when we go into the world we reap the worms because we forget that in these states we are fertilizing them, for our Imagination is the creative power of the universe. It is Christ Jesus, it is the creative power of God as told us in scripture. So you can start tonight and do it deliberatly. May I tell you, try it this night…just feel the reality of the soul. You will not be part of that crowd of dentists from yesterday who have no knowledge of a soul, because you’ll feel it, you’ll know it. You’ll actually know the existence of a soul. And so, instead of wondering “What’s going to happen to me? Do we really survive? Is there such a thing as a future beyond the grave?” you won’t have to ask that. And you don’t care whether you sleep tonight from the grave in this world or not, because you know as far as you are concerned it doesn’t really matter, you are immortal.734 ¶35

He’s prepared the way for his creative power to return to him, and that way that he prepared is revealed to us in scripture as the life Jesus Christ—-his birth, his discovery of the fatherhood of God, his wonderful story of the serpent. And you will discover this much that it’s on three different levels. I’ve been giving you the middle level tonight. You read the story on the first level—-which is called the first deck of the ark—-it’s literally true, like a story that you will read over, that’s the first deck.734 ¶36

The second is what we have been discussing, the psychological motion to fertilize these states. And the top story, which is the spiritual story, is identical with the first only it’s personal, it’s very personal. Everything said there and thought of another you experience.734 ¶37

So when he threw the rod down and it turned into a fiery serpent, you realize what throwing the rod down is—-that you are that very one. Your spinal cord is that rod thrown down, and you turn into this fiery serpent and up you go. So everything said in scripture on the third level is a personal level, and you experience the whole thing personally. On the lowest level, you read it as history, something that took place thousands of years ago…that’s how you read it. On the second level, which we discussed tonight, you can do it to fertilize states and change your world, change everything in your world to conform to your heart’s desire. Like the chap who would not take the statement “the calendar is so crowded you can’t possibly get the case in until the end of the year”…wouldn’t accept it. He denied the facts, fertilized the immediate present, and the court calls, the lawyer calls, it’s resolved in the month of March. The other chap had nothing; now he has thirty parcels in his own name and fifty all told, and he had nothing when he heard this story. He fertilized all these states. That’s the second level.734 ¶38

Then comes the third level—-and oh what a glorious level!—-when the entire story unfolds within you, personally, and it’s all your story. The child, the resurrection, the tomb, all these spoken of as another, it’s all about you and you experience everything in it. The dove spoken of another; not another at all. The luminosity of the heavens when the whole heavens open, and then the voice sounded out of its praise and its thrill and its pleasure with this son, and descended on that son in the form of a dove, and it’s all you. Everything spoken of another that took place thousands of years ago you experience…that’s the third level. Then you wait for the inevitable removal of this which you crystallized for a purpose. You assumed this limit of contraction, called this body, and when you take it off it resolves itself. And then you return…but then you return infinitely greater because of your experience in this world.734 ¶39

So when Blake made this statement, quoting the 14th chapter of the Book of Acts, he added a line to it. In fact, he changed it somewhat when he said, “We are men just as you are men, no holier than any man in this world” and knowing what he did to find it out, he said, “Bring forth all your fires, put me through all the furnaces of affliction, I will take them.” So I fertilize just to test a horrible state. Well, I can’t deny I did it; it’s my child, so bring it. And so I move into a state of war in my own stupidity, alright, bring it. I can’t deny my children on this plane. I heard of all kinds of things and then stupidly moved into it; unwittingly, and fertilized it. Now, they’ve got to come…everything must come into this world to prove the power of my creativity. If I know it, I will let them come and then quickly cut them off.734 ¶40

Because what you planted you need not let it go forever, you can cut it off. But don’t until it grows. He said, “Do not attempt to tear up the little weed. Let it grow with the wheat, and as they grow then you can separate them.” So let them grow. For you didn’t plant only the tares and only the little weed, you planted wonderful things in this world, so let them come together. When they’re completely matured then you can simply separate them.734 ¶41

So tonight, in a very simple way, for those who are here for the first time, let me show you how we actually operate this simple, simple principle. Instead of withdrawing from the body unknowingly into any old state, you withdraw deliberately into a predetermined state. So you put the body on the bed or on the chair and you imagine yourself in the state predetermined, a state you really want to realize in this world. You want to be successful? With whom would you share it, a few friends at a little dinner party, or a luncheon, or a tea, or a cocktail party, any kind of a party where they would discuss your success and truly discuss it in the sense that they would be happy about it?734 ¶42

Well now, know exactly where you’re going to go while you are still seated, anchored to this body; and then let the body relax, and get into that area in your mind’s eye where your friends are present and you’re all discussing your success. And it all seems natural…you are accepting their praise, accepting their congratulations, and it seems very, very natural, with all of the sensory tones of reality. Then, return to the body…and follow Feynman’s concept—-it starts from where it hasn’t been and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. As it arrives there, it is bounced so hard it’s turned around, its time sense is turned around, and now it returns to where it hasn’t been. See it? It starts in time from where it hasn’t yet realized the state, and moves back to where physically it was only an instant ago; and then it’s bounced and turned around, and it moves now across this bridge of incident leading up to the fulfillment of that state in consciousness where you were…where all these friends were gathered together to congratulate you on your good fortune. And that’s how it works.734 ¶43

So you can take Feynman, the 14th of John, my experience of this morning, and my friend Blake, and put them all together, and see they’re all talking about the same thing. Only, I would have everyone here do it deliberately and not unknowingly so that you would only fertilize lovely areas. But this morning I did it just for fun because I really don’t care. If I know that I’m bringing all things into the world, it doesn’t really matter. I don’t judge anyone, really, because he is not the state. He simply fertilized it at some point in time, and, therefore, forgive him, because he did it unknowingly or he would not have brought it into the world. So you can forgive everyone in this world for what he’s harvesting, because he had to harvest his own fertilized field, and he didn’t know he was doing it.734 ¶44

So Blake said, “Always discriminate between the state of the man and the man” and he identifies the man with Imagination. He said, “Man is all Imagination, and the God is man, and exists in us and we in him; the eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself.” So you can forgive a man for his state, for he certainly planted it or he fertilized it. It was always there but not fertilized, and could only be fertilized if the soul entered it. And the soul and human Imagination are one.734 ¶45

So we can start tonight in spite of what is coming into our world and duplicate the success of the two gentlemen that I spoke of tonight. There will be eventually a hundred percent success. I’m not saying that you’re not going to harvest the unlovely things that you did in the past, you’ll harvest them. But then know that you did them and forget it. Don’t blame yourself. Don’t feel sorry for yourself, because it’s feeling sorry for yourself in the past that caused you to fertilize that state. So we all know as children if we were criticized and we thought it was not just criticism we felt very sorry ourselves and wanted to hurt those who loved us most, by our own self-pity. In that act of self-pity you were fertilizing. You didn’t know it, because we certainly were not in the body, we were completely gone, were we not? So that’s how we do it.734 ¶46

But above all things, you can discover the reality of the soul, that which cannot die. So when Blake said, “When I first and once did descry the Immortal Man that cannot die”…and what a thrill, what a joy it is to discover that self of selves that cannot die. It doesn’t really matter…you don’t want to leave your friends, you have obligations to life, you have wives and husbands and children, all kinds of things in this world, and you feel that your presence is necessary. You know that much. But yet you are resigned to go any moment in time, because you know you planted enough, or you should know that, and you’ll take it off. Although they’ll miss your physical presence, nevertheless, you don’t have that fear of going. There’s no fear of going at all. You’ll go any moment in time when you know the reality of the soul of man. For they can’t die either, you know that much, so the parting is not forever. The parting is only for a little moment, and all must make their exit from this world, all must, so it really doesn’t matter.734 ¶47

So try this night to feel and discover the reality of the soul of man. And know that that is the sperm of God, the creative power of God, and every state it enters it fertilizes, and these states mature in the world. Now let us go into the Silence.734 ¶48

Before the questions, may I remind you this is easy. Don’t let anyone tell you it is difficult; let no one tell you that you must be a holy person to do it, let no one. It’s very easy. Without even bringing anyone into your mind’s eye, an individual, just reminisce—sitting physically one place and standing at your window, it could be the same room—-mentally, and looking out on a scene. Then feel the joy and the thrill of your accomplishments as though they were facts, and then snap back to the body that is only a foot or so away in the same room. In that very moment you fertilized the state, because everything is everywhere and now right here. Don’t have to rush off to do it at all…just right here.734 ¶49