I promise you, if you apply it in the immediate present, you’ll see the results. It’s based upon dreams. The Bible recognizes only one source of dreams, and that source is God. But today, in l963, our doctors, our psychiatrists [...], they know that the source of a dream is Imagination and so they will say, no, it’s not God, it’s one’s Imagination. But they do not know that the word God and Imagination in the scriptures are the same. The word potter is Imagination. The word potter is God. And so we all agree there’s only one source of dream, and that source is God. But if it helps to change the name, I’m all for it, and to say it is human imagining, well, I’m all for that. By identifying God with human Imagination, we close the gap between God and man, and then we start from there.733 ¶1

The Bible is simply filled with the secret of dreaming, and tells us that God speaks to man through the medium of a dream and reveals himself to man in vision. Now, there are intentional dreams, and there are unintentional dreams. Most of us have the unintentional dreams. We go to sleep and we dream. Many of us do not remember the dream. The Bible tells us every dream has its own significance, that God instructs man through the medium of dream. Now, the dream could be in a simple manner, told in very plain language that needs no interpretation. But quite often the dream comes in the form of symbolism, symbolic, and then it needs the real interpreter of the dream.733 ¶2

The first grand interpreter of the dream in the Bible was Joseph. He rose from a slave to the second in command of the whole land of Egypt through the ability to interpret dream. So he took the dreams of Pharaoh, and because he gave them the true interpretation, he rose right under power of Pharaoh. It was through his dream that he was sold into slavery because of the jealousy of his brothers, for he saw the sun and moon and eleven stars bow before him. The father rebuked him and said to him, “You mean that I and your mother and your brothers will bow before you?” He saw his sheaf rise to its full height, and all the other sheaves bow before this sheaf. And so you know the story, I think you are all familiar with the story of Joseph, how he was sold into slavery because he was the dreamer. “Behold this dreamer cometh.” He not only had the dreams but he could interpret the dream. But here we find in the Bible not only these unintentional dreams, for we didn’t plan to have them. And God prophesied through the medium of dream the seven years of abundance and the seven years of starvation, of famine, and it came just as he said it would happen.733 ¶3

But there is one dream that was intentionally [...] and that we read in the 1st Book of Kings, the 3rd chapter, and then the same kind of a dream in the first chapter of the 2nd Book of Chronicles. And this is the dream that was induced by Solomon.733 ¶4

So Solomon went up to the high hill, called Gideon. It was a holy place. For kings would speak in synagogue and the temple or some holy spot as they considered it, in the hope that they would in some strange way induce some communication between God and themselves. So Solomon went up for the purpose of inducing a dream where God would reveal himself to him. And so God appeared and God said to him, “Ask of me what you want.” He asked for an understanding mind that he may rule his people, more numerous than the dust of the earth. And then, said he, and this is his prayer, “O Lord God, thy promise to David my father fulfill this day.” That was what he wanted above all things in this world: Thy promise to David my father, let it now, this very moment, let it be fulfilled now. And then God said to him, “Because you did not ask for a long life and riches and the life of your enemies, I will grant you all these plus.”733 ¶5

Now the promise that God made to David was to bring forth from David a son who will be God’s son, and that God will be his father. The son to be brought forth from David would come after David dies. “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up after you your son, who will come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.” So Solomon is asking for the fulfillment of this promise. When you read it on the surface, Solomon seems to be his son. No, Solomon is a state of consciousness. All of these characters are states of consciousness, and you reach a certain state when you believe God’s revelation. Is it true that when David dies that out of David’s body, a dead body, will come a son that will be God’s son and God his father? If that is true, Lord, this is my prayer, “O Lord, thy promise to David my father…” David is my father? Yes. I’m a man; you’re a man; David is humanity. So here we are, the whole vast world of mankind, that’s David. And you and I don’t realize that we are dead. We have no concept that this is death. To us, when we say good-bye to a friend in the event we call death, and that’s death, but this is life. Yet, this is the world of death as spoken of in the Bible. So here is David, he’s dead—everyone walking the earth, the sleep is so profound, it is likened unto death. And now if the promise made to this state called death is true, fulfill it now, O Lord; bring forth from this state of death—for I am one—bring forth from me that which will be your son. Bring it out, just as you promised, from David. Bring it out and be the father of that son and let that which comes forth from me be the son of you. And so that was his promise.733 ¶6

Now, how did he do it? He does it just as you would do it to bring about a business success, just as you would do to bring about a marriage, anything in this world but anything. It’s the same thing. For this is God’s promise, the intentional dream can be done just as the unintentional dream he uses to reveal to us his secret.733 ¶7

Now, in this book, he makes this statement; the dream was doubled. Joseph interpreted the dream of Pharaoh, and he said to Pharaoh, “The doubling of your dream, Pharaoh, means this, that the thing is fixed by God, and God will soon bring it to pass.” If the dream is doubled, then it’s fixed and no one’s going to change it if the dream is doubled. So he had a dream, he stood on the side of the Nile and out of the Nile came seven fat cows, fat and sleek. And then out of the same stream, the great Nile, came seven emaciated, thin, awful-looking creatures, never seen in the land of Egypt. They ate up the seven fat cows, and yet, you could not see after they devoured the seven fat cows that they in any way increased in weight. They were still emaciated, all. Then came one stalk and on that stalk came these seven ears; then came another seven, and they were horrible. The first seven were fat and lovely and the thin ones ate up the fat ones. And eating up all the fat ones, they had no increase in weight. And so he interpreted that. Then in this interpretation, which is the 41st chapter of Genesis, he makes the statement, When the dream is doubled—for he had a second dream using the same symbolism—whenever the dream is doubled then God has fixed that thing—there’ll be no altering, you can’t change it—and soon it will come to pass, if the dream is doubled.733 ¶8

Well now, let me share with you my doubled dream. I’ve told it before, and maybe everyone present heard it. Well, this is the technique by which you can induce a dream and make it something that is intentional. It was a year ago last Christmas, when I found myself in a mansion. There were three generations present but one invisible. The invisible one dominated the visible state. He was called grandfather. They were telling the story of grandfather: The grandfather would stand on a vacant lot and grandfather would say, “I remember when this was a vacant lot,” and then he would paint a word picture of this area so vividly that people saw it as something objective before their mind’s eye. He painted a word picture of his desire for that lot, and they all saw it. I woke; the thing was so vivid, it was so startling. It was a little after three in the morning when I awoke; I went to my living room, and I wrote it out on a nice long yellow page in detail, just as it was shown to me in the vision. I went back to bed, I thought it quite early in the morning, and I re-dreamed the dream. This is now the double dream. It’s fixed; you can’t change it. I re-dreamed it with a slight alteration. Instead of hearing them tell the story of grandfather, I was grandfather. I had so completely absorbed the message of grandfather that then I told them, “While standing on a vacant lot, I remember when this was a vacant lot.” Then I would paint a word picture of my desire for that lot, and paint it so vividly they all saw it. And that was God’s secret to me. “Go tell it to the world.”733 ¶9

In the end, the end is where we begin. You always begin in the end. So he goes to the end, God’s final promise: I will now bring forth from your body, after you’re dead, for “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up after you a son that will come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son.” Now, “O Lord God, thy promise made to David my father be now fulfilled”; that was his request. Well, if that is his request, what would he do? For God revealed to me what I should do if I wanted a home. I have no means for buying the home. He doesn’t ask me about means. I don’t have the qualifications for entering that neighborhood. He doesn’t ask for that. I don’t have this. He doesn’t ask me that. He only tells me what to do. Well, what do I do?733 ¶10

You stand on the vacant lot, and you see it as you would see it were it true, that it fulfilled your dream of your future. But it must be now. And so I go into the end, and dwelling in the end, I see it as I would see it were it true. And living in that state—this is now the intentional dream—and I call it incubation dream; I incubate it. You stand on the empty lot, empty of anything, without any qualification in the world, and standing in it, you paint your word picture mentally; and you see it come into being to your own satisfaction. You did it. That’s all that God told me to do, and then he repeated it. So in this 32nd verse of the 41st chapter of Genesis, he tells you: Whenever the dream is doubled, if it is ever doubled, the thing God has fixed and will shortly bring it to pass, if it’s doubled. Well, that night it was doubled. I woke a little after three, wrote it out in detail, went back to bed, and re-dreamed the dream—here’s the double dream. But I so completely absorbed the message that I am telling it now. Everyone who will listen to me, I’m telling them.733 ¶11

You know what you want? You really know what you want in this world, and you don’t have it; therefore, it is empty, isn’t it? It doesn’t exist. Well, this is what I’d do were I you. So the lot is empty, the space is vacant. Stand right now. You aren’t married, are you? You know you’re not happily married? All right, if you were, would the world see you in that light? Yes. Well now, this is spaceless because you are not in that way. Well now, be in that way. Wear the ring. See the faces of your friends; that is, an expression on your friends’ faces, see them all seeing you as they would see you were it true, and lose yourself in that state. That’s the end. The end is where we start from. Now, then you are incubating the dream. You actually, I would say, make it alive, and make it real, for this cannot fail. I’m telling you from an experience. My dream that night was the double-dream. [...] and if the dream is ever doubled, God has fixed it; it’s part of the eternal law, and you can’t change it. So I’m sharing with you his eternal law: it’s the end. So I go to the end of anything in this world, I don’t care what it is, and then see the fulfillment of the dream because that’s the end. The end is all fulfillment. I open my eyes and I come back to a seeming empty lot, but to me it isn’t empty; I saw the end. Having seen the end, I am sustained by the end, and I walk through all the things of the world sustained by the end. I saw it, I am still seeing it, I continue to see it until that which I am seeing and living in is perfectly realized in the world. So that’s the story of the dream.733 ¶12

But we ask for the most fantastic dream. As many of you have said to me, “Neville, I would give anything in this world”—and you should, you should give everything in the world, not anything, but everything—“for the fulfillment of God’s promise to man.” When you die—and this is death—and you go into it, I will raise up from you, your dead body, my son. He’ll come forward from your body, but he’s my son; I’ll be his father. Can you conceive of anything that the wisest man that ever lived would want more than that? Well, Solomon was called the wisest of all men. That was his outstanding request. And when he came before God and God said, “Ask of me what you will, anything,” and that was his request, “O Lord God, O Jehovah Elohim, thy promise to David my father be now fulfilled”; that’s what I want. It’s not a man called Solomon, it’s the state of consciousness that man reaches when he can really want that more than anything in the world. When he wants that more than anything in the world, he’s Solomon. He’s at that point, that state of awareness, where he is concerned in the depths of his soul asking, instead of asking for an extension of life in this world of death. He didn’t ask for long life. He didn’t ask for riches. He didn’t ask for the life of his enemies. All these things were given him, but he didn’t ask for them. He asked for the one consuming desire of his heart, and that was the fulfillment of God’s promise to David his father. And humanity is David; this is the Son of God. And out of this son he brings a real Son, the Spirit that is one with the Father. For God is Spirit and those who worship him worship in Spirit and in truth. So he brings out of this decaying, dying body that which cannot die, the immortal you. He brings it out and it’s you and you’re one with God. Then you see the symbol of the child, proving that he gave you himself, because he takes the whole vast world of humanity and puts it into one single Son and symbolizes the whole humanity in a single Son.733 ¶13

But to make this practical, if you haven’t that longing of the heart—I know in this audience there are a few of you who said to me, “In your prayers remember me in this hope: I want that more than anything in this world”—and so there are in this audience tonight a few who have asked that of me, but the majority would like more of the comforts of this world. And it’s perfectly all right. No matter what it is, it is the same technique. “Neville, go and tell them to go to the end.” Go to the very end. What would be the end if you were now the man that you want to be, now the woman that you want to be? How would you see the world? That’s the end. Well now, see it just as you would see it were it true. And that is intentional dreaming. I call it, in one of my books, “thinking from the end instead of thinking of the end.” When I think from the end, I’m in it, and the whole vast world mirrors that end. If I’m thinking of it, where am I when I think of it? For where I am is what I’m going to resurrect, what I’m realizing.733 ¶14

So the state called Solomon puts himself in the end, where God did grant to him the promise that he made to his father David. So everyone gets into the state called Solomon, and there he brings out God’s promise. Somewhere along the line, everyone has to enter that state. You might just as well enter that state tonight because somewhere, “You see yonder hills, the sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn, the silence and the darkness knew; so is a man’s fate born.” You mean my fate is born in that manner? Yes. And the silence and the darkness knew it? Yes. Well now, I’ll take the silence and the darkness and manipulate them—no one knows it. And I will go like Solomon and stand in the silence and the darkness, and I will ask in the depths of my soul to have granted to me the promise he made to my father David. For maturity comes to the individual when that individual becomes his own father’s father. Here is David, the whole vast world of man, and then suddenly out of him comes something that is God’s son. And God’s son turns because he’s one with his father, and “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They not knowing said, “Why, David, son of David.” “Why then does David in spirit call him Lord?” Why did he call him “my Father”? “If he calls him my father, how can he be David’s son? And no one asked him any other questions.” He who is David’s son becomes David’s father. That’s when maturity comes to man.733 ¶15

So tonight, if I could aid you in building that picture, just imagine you could tell me tomorrow that it happened to you, just imagine. Well, that’s the end. You could tell me after the event, couldn’t you? You can’t tell me before the event; that’s only a hope. So he’s asking, Grant to me this night, now, the promise you made to my father David. Do it now. Well now, if it happened to you tonight, when we meet next Tuesday, or in the interval, or beyond [...], wouldn’t the first thing you would tell me would be it happened to you? Wouldn’t you tell me you saw him and he called you “Adonay”; he called you “my Father, my Lord, the Rock of my salvation”? You couldn’t wait to tell me! You wouldn’t wait ’til Tuesday, you’d call me tomorrow on the phone [...]. You’d seek an audience right away. Whether I had a thousand people to see or not, you couldn’t restrain yourself. Well now, what would the feeling be like were it true? Well then, do that. That’s exactly what Solomon, the state called Solomon, did. In other words, it was intentional dreaming, not unintentional.733 ¶16

In the unintentional dream he speaks to me every night. We’re all past masters at misinterpreting the dream if it is symbolical. If it is a simple direct statement, like when I was in the army and I sought my honorable discharge, that was a direct statement, no confusion. The voice spoke to me in plain, plain language that no one had to interpret for me: “That which I have done, I have done. Do nothing.” And then he added to that by showing me my discharge papers, where the hand wrote “approved” when formerly, only a matter of hours before, he had written “disapproved.” So here, on my application for a discharge, the colonel wrote “disapproved.” That night, in a simple direct message—no need of any interpretation—the same application came before my eyes, at four in the morning, and a hand, from here down, scratched out the word disapproved, and it wrote in approved. Well then, to make it very simple and very clear, the voice spoke to me and the voice said to me, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing.” I woke; it’s four; I did nothing. And the very person who had disapproved the application was the one who approved it nine days later. That’s direct communication. That’s simple.733 ¶17

But, when it comes now, say, to the little pig, when suddenly, I find myself in a huge big area where all the plants are being displayed and it’s closing time and I see a little pig. Being merciful at the moment, I took the little pig and tried to give it some food and some protection. So I did the best I could from all the leaves and the bushes and the things around, all the flowers. I thought at least if it didn’t want it as food, if it got hungry enough it would eat it. And so, I took flowers and took leaves and put the little pig on a table maybe four, five feet tall. Then the scene changed, and I am in a huge big supermarket. Here in the supermarket with everything displayed, I look down and here’s the pig. He’s not a little runt where I found him a moment before; he is now a tall rangy pig, very rangy and very tall. In other words, he had grown in the interval, but he had not been well fed. I knew he should have been better fed, and so I started getting a meal—I started fixing meal. My brother Victor said to me, “What are you doing?” I told him, “I’m going to feed my pig.” And so he took some lovely thick white gravy-like and added it to my meal and I began to mix it because I thought that would give him substance, far better than plain meal and water. Then I sent my daughter over there to get me some crackers. She said, “What would I use for money, Daddy?” I said, “This all belongs to us. You don’t need money here, everything is ours, just go and take it.” So there’s a huge big pyramid, and she took from the base of the pyramid a package of crackers and dislodged the balance and the whole thing fell, revealing a single little candle about four or five inches tall, and the candle was lit. I said to her, “That’s my candle. It must never again in eternity be covered. Never must that ever be covered again; it’s now lit and it’ll be lit forever.” The words of Job and the words of Proverbs came rushing through my brain: “When his candle shines upon my head, by his light I walk through darkness.” So here, it was lit. But I didn’t know the symbolism. Here’s the pig.733 ¶18

So God spoke to me that night, not directly as he did when I was in the army—that was no symbol in the army. It completely comforted me. I didn’t ask anyone to do anything in the interval of nine days. I knew I was out. But this is all symbolism. And what is this little pig, for he dominated the entire picture? Here’s a little pig, at the end of the closing of the day. I found him, cushioned him, and put flowers, leaves, all kinds of things around him. And then it changed from the interior and the display of plant life to a huge supermarket, and here is the pig, but now he’s a tall rangy fella. Without the aid of the language of symbolism, I would have been lost, because until that moment—unless I had completely forgotten it—I never associated Christ with a pig. A lamb, yes. I’ve always thought of a little lamb. She is the sacrificial lamb, the Passover lamb. I had heard of other things, but never… the fish, yes. You can take an acrostic and spell the word Christ out and it comes to fish. And so, yes that, but never a pig. And so here in the language of symbolism, all over the world, it’s a universal language, in every land in the world the little pig has always been the symbol of the Savior and the Redeemer of the world.733 ¶19

Well, I found him. I found him this little tiny pig, when I first discovered the creativity of my Imagination. So I imagined a certain state, lost myself in it, and in time it became a fact. It took all the things of the world and molded them to produce what I was imagining. So I found him. But in the interval between discovering that Christ was my own wonderful human Imagination and that moment in time, I had neglected to properly feed him. I had seen so many opportunities in the world to do a loving thing mentally, not physically. There’s no need to go to the bank and write a check to take care of someone who is distressed. He isn’t asking for that. He asked me to simply use my Imagination. And I had seen the need and didn’t do it, so I wasn’t feeding the pig properly. He told me exactly what to do: Now that you have me, feed my sheep. These are all my sheep. You have found me? “Yes we know. I have found you, Lord.” Well, feed my lambs. “You know I feed your lambs.” “Lovest thou me, Peter? Yes, Lord. Well then, feed my sheep. You know I lovest thou, Lord.” And three times, he comes back because he thinks he loves him.733 ¶20

Because we still, conditioned as we are, we are thinking of some other external Christ. Raised as I was raised in the Christian faith, it was the most difficult thing in the world to stop thinking of an external Christ, something that came on the outside that belonged to the pages of history. I found him in myself as my own wonderful human Imagination, but because I was conditioned as I was conditioned, raised in the environment in which I was raised, automatically the mind jumps back to an historical Christ, not the living Christ that walks with us as our own wonderful human Imagination. So in the interval of discovery of Christ and the interval thereafter, so many opportunities I missed. So he was tall and rangy. He lived all right, for Christ is the living Christ, but he wasn’t fat enough; he wasn’t well fed enough. I should have in that interval exercised my Imagination lovingly unnumbered times. Every time I did it, I was feeding him; and when I didn’t do it, I neglected him. He was hungry, and I gave him nothing. He needed shelter, and I gave him nothing. He needed something, some comfort; I gave him nothing. And yet, every moment of time was an opportunity to feed him and make him a lovely, big wonderful fatted pig.733 ¶21

Now I know the very word offends people, to say that Christ is symbolized as a pig. But that is universal—all over the world the pig has always symbolized the Savior of the world. Here, we have hundreds of millions of people in this world today who will not eat the pig. That’s all a symbol: they will have no part of Christ, so they will not touch the pig, they will not touch the pork. There are 400 million Mohammedans who will not touch the pig—it’s the unclean animal. They will have nothing to do with the concept of Christ. And here is the Savior of the world; they will not touch it. And yet it’s not the pig.733 ¶22

My old friend, Abdullah, he was born in Ethiopia. He was born of the black race, of the Hebrew faith. He was a strict vegetarian for other reasons because that is not part of the Hebraic faith. But he never in his life touched pork, never, not in any form. One night, God spoke to him, as he spoke to me, and he said to him, “If you will not eat the food that they place before you, why do you expect them to eat the food you place before them?” He was teaching. He would go to a place, and they would prepare special physical food, knowing he did not take pork. So they would go out of their way to prepare things that they thought he, a strict orthodox Jew plus a vegetarian, would eat. He had been a strict vegetarian for forty-odd years. Then, after the vision, he was invited to a banquet where he was the honored guest. And what do you think they served that night? They did it not to hurt him, not as a jest; they simply did it and thought it the most marvelous thing in the world. And he grew up a strict vegetarian and had never in his life eaten pork. When they brought on this fabulous table and the honored guest was led into this dining room, here was a lovely little suckling pig, with a sweet potato in its mouth, beautifully roasted. He broke his diet on pork. He had not in forty-odd years eaten any kind of meat, but never pork. And after the vision of God begins, “If you will not eat their food, why do you expect them to eat yours?” So he was teaching this principle, as he understood it through revelation, yet he was restraining himself.733 ¶23

You see now why a savior comes into the world and he’s called a glutton; he’s called a winebibber, a drunkard; he has no taboo. He eats whatever man puts before him because if he eats what man will give him and serve, they will then take his food. And so in the Book of Acts, Peter said, “I cannot eat meat from unclean things.” Then comes the vision and a sheet descends from heaven; on it was all manner of food, and the voice out of the depths of his soul speaks, “That which I have cleansed I have cleansed… slay and eat.” Nothing is unclean in all my holy mountain, eat it. If you eat everything—it’s all mine, I made it all—well, then, you will be able to tell my story; and they will eat the food you will give them if you in turn eat the food they are capable of giving you. And so that was the story.733 ¶24

And so, when I met Ab, I was a strict vegetarian and had been for seven years. When I saw the dinner he first prepared and invited me to sit with him, I wouldn’t sit. I wouldn’t touch it. I had a little of this, a little that on the side. He started off with three or four huge big shots of Rye, and then this enormous amount of food, which he washed down with many, many bottles of Porter, a good strong—if you don’t know Porter, it’s strong as beer. But many bottles would wash it down. And after all this Rye and all this Porter, he then had a huge big, enormous helping of ice cream. I said, “Ab, what are you doing to your stomach?” He said, “Oh, you couldn’t eat it.” I said why? “Because you have [...]. It would poison you. Can’t poison, Ab.” And so, it didn’t poison Ab. Last time I saw Ab, he was well over a hundred years old. I’m told he went back to his Ethiopia to lay the garment down that he picked up in Ethiopia a hundred years before. So here was his story.733 ¶25

So I tell you, he speaks to us through the medium of a dream, the medium of a vision. He has shown me so vividly by repeating the vision in one night that if I go to the end, and tell you to go to the end of anything and paint the end as it would be seen by the world were it true. You want to be, you name it, a successful businessman? You really want to be? A great artist? You really want to be? Would the world see you were you such a great artist? Would the world know of you if you were a great success in your chosen field? Go to the end and let the whole vast world see it, or that section of the world that would see it were it true. Don’t quiver; go to the end. Dwell in the end and see the end. Then, as you see it, feel the thrill that is yours because it’s true. Paint it as Grandfather did. When you open your eyes, you’re back here seemingly, and the lot is still vacant. You forget it. You prepared the end, and the end is where we start from, “In my end is my beginning.” And so I go to the end and start in the end. Then in a way that I do not know and need not consciously devise, I move across a bridge of incidents, a series of events that leads from where I am now at this moment to the fulfillment of that end that I had imagined and made real in my world. So this is the story of the dream.733 ¶26

So the whole thing begins with a dream. He tells us in the very second chapter of the Book of Genesis, and “he caused a profound sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept.” There is no statement in the entire Bible, save the very end of the Bible, “He is the first fruits of those who slept.” All through the Bible the call is, “Awake, O Lord, and rise from the dead. Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake.” God is sound asleep in man dreaming all these things in the world, but the sleep is so deep it is likened unto death. And then comes the use of this same technique by which I dreamed all the unlovely things to dream the lovely things. But the wisest of all, he remembered, or he heard of, a promise that God made to David. And when he came into the presence of God, and God said, “Ask what you want of me,” he didn’t ask for the things that man could ask—long life, riches, the life of my enemies—“O Lord God, thy promise to David my father be now fulfilled.” Can you imagine having that clarity of thought in the presence of God to ask for that? Well, that’s the Spirit.733 ¶27

So how would the world look to you? Well, forget it, because the world to me is the same world, but I am not the same to myself. So you could not keep it to yourself, any more than I can. I’ve shared it with every person that I met, so you would share it too. So with whom would you share it tomorrow if it happened tonight? Well, then, tonight, in your mind’s eye let that be your request. If it doesn’t happen tonight, at least you have incubated the dream. You’ve accepted it. You heard it and heard it to the point where you’re willing to ask for it more than anything else in the world. And so you incubate the dream. And because all visions have their own appointed hour, and they’re all ripening and they’ll all flower; this, the dream, it will ripen and it will flower. And when you least expect it—it always comes like a thief in the night, suddenly—and then you are born from above and David stands before you; the temple is split in two, and you’re never the same. You enter into heaven.733 ¶28

And the greatest in this world was called John the Baptist. “No one born of woman is greater than John, but I tell you, the least in the kingdom is greater than John.” So the first one in, and everyone in thereafter, is greater than the greatest who walks the face of the earth. There are those today—and you don’t condemn them if that’s their request, leave it just as it is—they will have unnumbered fortunes, but they want more. That’s their security. But your security is in God and his truth. You’ll know the truth and only the truth can set you free, nothing else. You aren’t free because of anything you own in this world, it’s only what you know of God and his truth.733 ¶29

And so he speaks to me, speaks to you. Every dream is God’s communication within the dreamer, and the dreamer is God. For the dreaming one is imagining and imagining is God in action. That’s the only source; but the only source of all dreams, all visions, happens to be God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. So this whole wonderful play has been laid out, and no one’s going to change it, but no one.733 ¶30

Now, don’t be disturbed no matter what headlines you see tomorrow or in the future. God is still in control of the entire play. Everything is going to come out as he planned it. His only purpose is to bring out of David, after he dies, a son who is God’s son; and the one he’s going to bring out is you. He brings you out of the pit, part of the great structure of humanity. And then he summarizes the whole vast world of humanity in a single youth, and his name is David. He doesn’t have to tell you, you know it; he knows it; and you both know it, and he calls you Father. Just imagine the thrill when every person that is now fighting in this world, all these racial conflicts, just imagine that every person in the world is destined to be the Father of David, but everyone. Because he has one Father, one Son, we’re all one. What a play! The most glorious play in the world! Everything is a play, and God is playing all the parts. The day will come every being that is now walking the face of this earth, I will know that I am not just like him, I am he. And you know the same thing. We look together—there are billions of us—and all will only see one Son, and all will know it is “my Son.” The most intimate relationship in the world, my Son, and he’s God’s Son; therefore, I know who I am. If my Son is God’s Son, I need not ask anyone in this world, “Who am I?”733 ¶31

He asks the question, “Who do people say that I am?” They answered, “Some say you are John the Baptist come again, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah, others say one of the prophets of old.” “But who do you say that I am?” “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” “Flesh and blood could not have told you this, but my Father who is in heaven he has revealed it unto you.” No man in the world can tell it. It takes the Son to tell you, for the Son calls you Father. So, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is he?” “The son of David.” “Then why did David call him, Father?” And so, what think ye of the Christ? Well, you ask the question, and they bring all kinds of answers. But he does not respond to these answers. “But whom say ye that I am?” “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And then he knows, and that Christ is the Father of David. That Christ says to all, “When you see me you see the Father. Don’t ask to see the Father, for when you see me you see the Father.” Father of what? Well, the only Father; there’s only one Son, David.733 ¶32

And so, that is the story of the Dreamer. Tonight you can dream, intentionally, as I did to get out of an imprisoned state. Took me nine days. I did nothing after my intentional dream the first time. That’s exactly what I did. While wearing some sweaty old army fatigues, I simply imagined that I was living in my own lovely bedroom, and it had an odor so unlike the barracks of the army. So I reveled in the change of odor, the change of fragrance, and then I saw what I would see, and could only see, were I there. I saw nothing that I would see were I still in the barracks; I saw everything I would see were I at home. The actual distance was over 2,000 miles apart, 1500 miles from it. And there I reveled in all these things. And then, I got into my imaginary bed in my New York apartment and slept. And then it happened. That was an intentional dream, a controlled waking dream. Then, nine days later, I was on the way to fulfill that state. And because in those days we were all shunted off the place to give right of way to more important traffic, it took me three days to make the trip. [...] three weeks, I was on my way. That’s all that matters. There I was, honorably discharged, a civilian once more, by the simple technique that God taught me and I’m teaching to you.733 ¶33

And now, don’t do what I did, for he reminded me of my neglect when he once more showed me the pig. That was a double dream, all in one. For in Pharaoh’s dream: seven cows, seven lean cows, the lean cows ate up the seven fat cows; seven ears of corn, seven lean horrible ears, and the seven horrible ears ate up the seven fat ears. One dream repeated, in my case, a little pig. And then in the same dream, the same pig grown now, but skinny, and he should not have been. That’s how God showed me what I did in the interval between the revelation of Christ and my neglect of Christ. So don’t you neglect him! Every moment of time is an opportunity to feed him, and you’re always feeding Christ every time you use your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another. Now let us go and feed him.733 ¶34

My mother used to “let” my father do these lovely things for her. My wife does the same thing. I learned a wonderful lesson from her. When she wants—of course, I do all the dishes anyway, but even before I started doing them, she would say to me, “You know, I’m going to let you wash the dishes tonight.” How can you say no if she’s going to let you do it? “I’m going to let you make the bed.” “I’m going to let you sweep the floor.” Well, she’s going to let you do it. Well, you can’t say no. But if she said to you, “You will sweep the floor tonight.” Well, you aren’t going to sweep it. So she knew exactly how to let me do things that she didn’t want to do herself. So she let me do all the things, and today it’s become a habit. Good night.733 ¶41

Tonight’s subject is “The Way.” In the 14th chapter of the Book of John we read, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes unto the Father but by me.” And Phillip said to him, “Show us the Father.” Then he said, “I’ve been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” So he is the way to what? In this passage specifically to the Father, but he is the way to everything in this world, may I tell you, good, bad or indifferent. That seems insane if you’re trained to believe that God is creator of the good only, and some other being other than God creates the evil. There’s only one Creator, only one God. “I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal” . There is nothing but God and God is your own wonderful human Imagination.731 ¶1

Let us now find out why then are we acting as we act in this world. Let us go back to scripture, to the 82nd Psalm, “And God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” . Now God speaks, “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall fall and die like men, and fall as one man, O princes’” . Now you think this took place in eternity and it’s not related to us. It is related to us, you are the gods in the state that is fallen. Not because you did anything that was wrong; it is for a purpose, a creative purpose, to expand beyond what we were prior to the fall. And here, we fell into the limit of opacity and contraction called man of flesh and blood. Regardless of the pigment of the skin, regardless of the nationality, regardless of any racial background, we are one.731 ¶2

The word translated God is the Hebrew word Elohim. It’s a plural word. It’s translated in this passage both God and gods. It’s a compound unity; one made up of others. One made up of all the others. Now, here we are in this world in states. The rich man, the poor man, the man that is known, the man that is unknown, the man that is wise, the man that is foolish, all these are the gods. Whether rich or poor, known or unknown, wise or foolish, these are only states (of consciousness) into which we have fallen in our sleep. For we actually fell into this world made up of infinite states.731 ¶3

Now there’s a way out of any state into another state. You can get into a state in a second, it doesn’t take time; but will you remain in that state and occupy it until it seems natural? For my home is simply that state to which I most constantly return. That constitutes my home. A state…how would I know my state? Well, let me now think of my friends. Let them see me as they always see me. They know my limitations, my weaknesses, they know all the things about me, for we’ve discussed it, that I desire now to be seen differently in the world, first by myself. I want to transcend my limitations, so I assume that I have…a mere assumption. But does it work? Well, now let me think of my friends. Let me see them in my mind’s eye. Do they see me as they formerly saw me or are they seeing me as I am now assuming that I am? They should see me as I am now assuming that I am. If they see me, and empathize with me, because they are friends rejoice with me, well then, can I now so occupy the state that automatically I return to it long before there’s anything in my world to support this claim? My senses, at the moment deny it, my reason denies it, but in spite of this denial, can I so believe in Christ? Can I so believe that he is the way to everything and he is my own wonderful human Imagination? Can I believe it? For we are told, “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will” . These are the words of Christ, and Christ is called in scripture “the power of God and the wisdom of God” .731 ¶4

Scripture takes wisdom…listen to the words, the 8th of Proverbs: “And the Lord possessed me at the beginning of his way; before his works of old, I was set up from everlasting, ere the earth was. When he laid out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a little child. I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always. He who finds me finds life; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” He is called “the little child.” Here, wisdom is exalted and personalized as God’s companion in the creation of the world. Here, this is scripture. Well, who is this Christ? He is a little child, we are told, and Christ is in man. Know ye not that Christ is in you? Test yourself and see whether you are holding to the faith. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” . And he is the little child, who is God’s eternal companion in the creation of the universe. Now, he contains within himself, so scripture teaches, and “he has made known unto me, the purpose of his will, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time” . So here, this child contains within himself a plan, a pattern for the fullness of time.731 ¶5

Now, in the world of Caesar, which is this world, you and I—the fallen God, came down for a purpose—can achieve any goal in this world if we know who we are and we are willing to test it. Willing to dare it and accept the challenge that I can be the man that I dream of being by daring to assume, in spite of my senses denying it, that I am the man that I want to be, and sleep in this assumption as though it were true. As the great bard said, “Assume a virtue if you have it not. Restrain tonight. It will lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence, and the next still more easy.” So if I do it, believing that to be true, and it proves itself in the testing, then what does it matter what the wisdom of man now tells me? For this is the wisdom of Christ. Must I know the “right” people? That’s what men will tell you. Must I have the right educational background? That’s what men will tell me. And they’ll give me all the little reasons in the world based upon what man thinks. And the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God. So if I dare to assume that I am what I want to be and persist in that assumption until it seems natural, so when I think of my friends that’s what they see in me, what I’ve assumed that I am, and I act and live in this way as though it were true, well then, if time brings forward the results of my assumption, haven’t I confirmed the wisdom and the truth of the words of Christ?731 ¶6

Well now, that is on this level. Tonight, I want to take you into the level of The Way. You have no idea how truly wonderful you are, because you are the God that fell: “You shall fall as one man, O princes.” Together we are the God, the Lord, but the Lord is the compound unity, one made up of others. We are the gods. But there is a way by which we return to that divine congregation, the congregation of God. And there is only one way: “I AM the way, and the truth, and the life” . Here is the true and living way. He not only points the way, because he is the pattern he is The Way. Union with Christ is the only way to God the Father. Well now, how do I have union with Christ? He’s in me. When he begins to erupt within me and begins to unfold his pattern, for the pattern is in me, it begins with the first personalization of Christ which is the little child. Everyone will have this experience.731 ¶7

Here, in this world we are born from below and we are evil. Let no one tell you we are not; the Bible teaches it. Listen to the words, the first child of Abraham born of a slave, Hagar, his name was Ishmael. This is the prophecy of the Lord to Ishmael: His descendants will be more numerous than you can count. Today we are three and a half billion in the world. They estimate in the not distant future that there will be five billion of us and they’ll go to other billions of us. These are the descendants, these fleshly bodies, of Ishmael. Now this is what is said to Ishmael, “He’s a wild ass of a man; his hand shall be against every man and every man’s hand against him” . And that is individual man. There isn’t a moment in time we aren’t killing each other. Not only in our great conflicts in war and the gas chambers where we put millions into it, but on the streets, all over the world we kill each other. But not only in such violence, there are more subtle ways of killing. In the economic field…you can take a whole family and crush them, and then they all starve, through your individual greed to take from him the little he needs to feed his little flock and actually put him to the wall economically. It’s been going on since the beginning of time. So there are multiple ways of murder in this world. It didn’t end with Abel’s murder; it is part of the wild ass of a man that we are at birth. So man is born, really, an evil being and he requires a new self-hood.731 ¶8

The ancients saw it plainly by revelation, to the entire abrogation of experimental theory, and many of them believed what they saw and prophesied of Jesus. The prophecy is all in scripture: The coming of the Savior. Now, he doesn’t come as we have been taught to believe that he came. He is in you. He is the pattern of salvation buried in man. And when he comes, everything said of him you experience. You’ll be taken back by this one way, by the way of Christ, from this world of sin and death back into the divine congregation having done the job you were sent to do. And we all are returning into the one God. There’s only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, and we go right back into that body and form it, this time enhanced, for there’s no limit to translucence, no limit to expansion. There is only a limit to opacity and contraction and we have reached that limit of contraction and opacity. We now will start the expansion. And the individual expands in us, and the plan unfolds in us, and that’s the only way by which we return to that divine congregation.731 ¶9

There is no other way. Diets will not do it. Knowing the right people will not do it. You could meditate from now ’til the ends of time—go and sit in the [...] until you simply turn into worms—you still can’t do it. Not a thing on the outside is going to do it. You simply put all of your hope upon this grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ within you and then the whole thing unveils within you. You are the same, in the eyes of those who know you, the same being that you were before, the same limited being. And they look at you amazed that you would dare to claim that you have experienced Christ, because their concept of Christ is so false. Their concept is something entirely false. Has not a thing to do with Christ of scripture.731 ¶10

I’ll give you an example. Three years ago in Barbados, my wife and I had a small, little dinner party, a party of…I think there were about ten or twelve. My son and his wife, the two of us, and we had two ministers and their wives. They were perfectly lovely fellows, these fellows and their wives. One was Episcopalian of the high church, the Cathedral of St. Michael, and the other was a Methodist, the most prominent Methodist in the island. These two are very, very well known and very well connected. Well, we got to discussing scripture. I said to the Episcopalian that I had experienced the entire story of Jesus Christ and it is not a secular story at all, it has not a thing to do with the world of Caesar. That while we walk in this world we are redeemed by the pattern unfolding in us, that Christ is the pattern-man buried in man, and the pattern unfolds, and you are he.731 ¶11

So I came to the point of David. And I said to him that after the birth of the Christ child within me, a child that I held in my own hands, and expressed my feeling of tenderness towards the Christ child, that five months later I encountered God’s only begotten son, and his name is David, David of scripture. “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’” .731 ¶12

And then to illustrate to him, being the Episcopalian, I said that in the 22nd of Matthew, the 20th of Luke, you’ll read these words. He asked those who listened to him, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered, “The son of David.” He said, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus called him Lord, then how can he be David’s son?” . And I said to him, “David, in the Spirit, called me Father, and I knew that I was his father and I knew that he was my son. We both knew this relationship of father-son.” The Episcopalian minister said to me, “He did not call him ‘Father,’ he called him ‘my Lord.’” I said, “That is an expression every child in the ancient world used concerning his or her father. So when scripture records ‘my Lord,’ scripture is only telling you it is ‘my father’.” Well, he would not go along with that. It was a dinner party, a lovely dinner party and I had no desire to stir the ashes as it were.731 ¶13

But, here, in the 31st chapter, the 35th verse of the Book of Genesis…now Genesis is the seed, the very seed plot of the whole Bible. If you don’t know Genesis, you aren’t going to know the Bible. It’s the seed plot of the entire sixty-six books. Well, here is a story, if you’re not familiar with it: Jacob has two women, two sisters Leah and Rachel. He thought that his father-in-law, Laban, was not as favorably disposed towards him now as he had formerly been. And so, without telling his father-in-law what he planned to do, he hastily gathered all of his possessions together, his camels, his goats, his sheep, his cattle, all possessions, and his two women, and took off. When Laban found out what his son-in-law had done, he started off in pursuit of him, and he found him and accused him of stealing, taking his household gods. Well, he searched Jacob and his caravan and could not find them. He searched Leah’s room and could not find them. He went into Rachel’s room and Jacob did not know that Rachel had taken these household gods. So she took them and put them into the saddle of a camel, and then sat on the saddle. So when the father came in, he searched diligently and he couldn’t find them.731 ¶14

And she said to her father—now this is an actual quote from the 35th verse of the 31st chapter of Genesis—“And she said to her father, ‘Let not my Lord be angry.’” “Let not my Lord”—-she’s speaking to her father—“Let not my Lord be angry”—then she gave reasons why she could not rise—“because I cannot rise before you.” Then she gave the reason, for it is as it is with women, so it is…“the ways of women are upon me.” Well, that’s a euphemism for that little moment in a woman’s life that comes every month…a very gentle way of putting it…“For the ways of women are upon me.” The same thing is said only the word is translated “manner” when it comes to Sarah. I, at ninety years old, could have a son when it has long ceased to be with me after the manner of women . In other words, she could no longer conceive. But this one could, for she was a young woman, Rachel, and she’s simply stating that this is that moment of the month and therefore “I cannot rise before my Lord.” So she’s calling her father “my Lord”. If you do not understand this seed plot, you’re going to miss the entire Bible.731 ¶15

And he told me, “No, he called him ‘my Lord’” and I said, “Well, that meant ‘my father’.” And I explained the ancients always called the father “my Lord.” Well, it didn’t seem…because he couldn’t believe that David, who is not taught in his concept of Christianity to be the Son of God, in spite of the fact he reads it in the 2nd Psalm. They’ve been taught so long to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not knowing that they are one. “I and my Father are one. He who sees me has seen the Father. How then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” So the creative power of God can’t be separated from God—it is God. The wisdom of God can’t be torn away from God—it is God. And so, that is a pattern in man for man’s redemption.731 ¶16

So we are the gods. If you dwell upon that fact that you are the gods, everyone, even though we kill each other…but the killing of each other is simply a grand illusion, for the gods cannot die. They seem to die, but they cannot die. As the serpent said—he is called the wisest creature that God had made, a symbol once more of Jesus Christ—“And did God say to you that you would die? Yes. You will not surely die. But the day you eat thereof you’ll become as the gods, knowing good and evil” . Well, his prophecy came true, for God said, “Behold, the man has become as we are, knowing good and evil” . So he did not lie, he did not beguile, he simply prophesied a truth which came to pass. But all the wisdom of man in this world is not good enough to redeem man. A pattern had to be contained in man to redeem him, and there is no other way to God.731 ¶17

So, you’ll get these arguments, “But surely to the Chinese, to the Indian, to the so-and-so, there must be another way other than the way that you call the Christian way.” No. There are Christian Indians, Christian Chinese, Christian Japanese…they’re all over the world. The foundation is Judaism and Judaism is the seed plot. It is the foundation; Christianity is its fulfillment. It’s not the other way around. Christ comes to fulfill. But he didn’t come the way that you are taught—a woman giving birth to a child. There is a woman, but not that woman who bears from below, that’s Hagar, and she can only bear children into slavery. But this is another woman, the woman from above, called “Jerusalem from above” and she bears it into liberty.731 ¶18

Now, here is a lovely experience of a friend who is here tonight. She said, “I found myself on a horse, I’m riding. And then my mother dies. Then, I take the place of my mother. And that’s the dream.” May I tell her, that’s an enormous leap forward…an enormous leap. The horse is always the symbol of the mind and you the rider to control it. It must have someone to control the mind. If my mind isn’t controlled by me the rider, then it goes berserk. So I am riding the horse of my own mind. Now my mother dies. And I was born by a woman; a woman gave me birth, this garment. So that’s my mother, my physical mother in the world of Caesar. Now my mother dies and I take her place, because there must be a second birth…I must be the twice-born man. But the second one, I will give birth to myself. So I have to become the mother. And so, my second birth now is where I give birth to myself. So she’s become the woman that is now capable of giving birth to herself. In that one simple little dream an enormous leap in the right direction towards the second birth.731 ¶19

And then these two experience. One gentleman, it’s a very humorous one and yet the most marvelous experience, he writes, “I fell asleep simply desiring to teach the Bible. So I imagined I was teaching the Bible and instructing a group. And so, I fell into a sleep from my daydream into a real sleep, and I’m teaching the Bible and explaining it and telling them how to interpret. While I’m doing this, suddenly, I see this light and this energy coming from my head, an enormous head. My head seemed twice its size; my face seemed twice its size. Well, with all this energy…and I put my hand up and this enormous power and my knees seemed to be radiating energy…I thought, ‘Well, now I will simply do something about it.’ I thought I was awake. I had been sleeping maybe for an hour and a half or two hours. I thought I was awake.731 ¶20

“So I got off my bed, I’m on the third floor in my apartment, and I went downstairs, and I thought, ‘I’ll go and see Jan. I’m going to fly. I’ll take this energy and I will simply use it and I’ll fly.’ So when I got downstairs I said to myself, ‘How stupid of me, I could have flown through the window from the third floor.’ So I went back upstairs to the third floor and I took off. And there I am, flying through…on my own energy, about ten to fifteen feet above the ground. And it’s dark, it’s early in the morning, and I’m on the way to Jan. I say to myself, ‘I’m not getting a good view from fifteen feet, so I will simply go a little higher’ and I increased the altitude and up I went for a better view. Then I thought to myself, ‘Now suppose a cop takes a pot shot at me. Because they’re seeing this man flying through space he might take off and all of a sudden shoot me, or at least try to.’ So I said to myself, ‘No he can’t, he can’t see me.’ So when I got to Jan’s place, I said to myself, ‘No, her daughter will be home now, and if I disturb her daughter she’ll give me hell.’731 ¶21

“So I thought, ‘No, now I will go to Marge instead.’ And so I flew off to Marge’s house. Then when I got to Marge’s house, I said, ‘Oh no, suppose now instead of Marge answering the door her husband Ray answers. That would be terrible.’ So, I flew back home again, came on back home, went back to bed and, suddenly, I put my hand out and my hand went eighteen inches above my head…couldn’t feel my head. And then when I could feel my head, all that strange feeling disappeared, and I’m once more normal and I’m back on the bed.” But, he said, “I did it. I did it. I know there is something in me that is a power, that is a wisdom, that is not known to this little thing that I put to bed every night and waken in the morning. There is something in me that is now stirring and I proved it, for I was fully conscious in everything that I did.”731 ¶22

Now another gentleman—he’s here tonight—and he said, “I found myself in an ancient city and I was there for the purpose of teaching everyone to fly. And so, I took off, no machine, and I made the most beautiful swan dive, gentle, gentle descent after taking off and came right down gently on my belly. And at that moment I looked up and here stands my Jan. Well, his Jan is very dear to him and she happens to be his mother-in-law. There she is dressed in a monk’s robe and she isn’t a day over twenty, perfectly beautiful, dressed in a monk’s robe, as she takes my hand into her hands and silently congratulates me on my feat. Then, suddenly it’s changed a bit, and here is my brother Paul at my side. I do have in this world of Caesar a brother whose name is Paul. And at that moment I woke, but I was fully awake in the doing. I knew I was dreaming and I knew I was doing what I was doing. You can call it a dream within a dream, but I knew I was dreaming, and I knew exactly what I was doing, and I did it.”731 ¶23

So here, we are beginning to become aware of this power within us and use it in many ways until, finally, the pattern unfolds. It comes suddenly; it comes like a thief in the night. No one knows when Christ will erupt within man. But Christ is the pattern man, not a man who walked the earth 2,000 years ago. When we fell as one man the pattern came with us or we couldn’t even breathe. This is the power within us, the wisdom within us. And the only escape from this world of sin and death is by the way of Christ, which is the pattern man. So you’re going to start with the birth of Christ—you’ll be born from above. And all that is said of him in scripture concerning that infant child wrapped in swaddling clothes you will experience. And it will be your experience. It’s your child, your birth, that is, the sign of your birth. Then comes the discovery of the fatherhood of God and you are God the Father, for his Son calls you, Father.731 ¶24

Now this is the great mystery, how can you, individualized as you are, how can the speaker, individualized as he is, be one? Well, if your son calls me Father, and he’s my son, then are we not one God, one Father? For, your David is not going to be a David other than the David that called me Father. There’s only one David, and that one David will call everyone when it unfolds within him Father. And you will know that you are his father and you will know scripture, and God is his father. “For I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’” .731 ¶25

Well, if the whole vast world of billions of us has this experience where God’s Son calls him “Father” and he knows it, there’s no uncertainty as to this relationship, well then, are we not all one, one Father, one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all? And it takes the Son to reveal it. “For no one has ever seen God; but the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” . So you can’t look at me and see the Father; only the Son can tell me that I am the Father. And he tells it to me in a first-person, present-tense experience. So you can believe me or disbelieve me, that’s your privilege, but I do know you’re going to have it and after you have had it you’ll know the truth of my words. You will know that we are one. You and I are actually one because we have the same Son. If we are the Father of the same Son, well, then we are one Father.731 ¶26

So no one has ever seen the Son, that’s what we are told. “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” . Well, if no one knows who the Son is except the Father…and you’re going to tell me that you’ve seen him on the outside? How are you going to see him on the outside when only the Father knows him? No, you’ll never see him on the outside. This drama unfolds within you. It is a divine drama. It’s the drama of salvation, when the Son comes before you and calls you, Father.731 ¶27

And so here, these two must come first. Then comes the splitting of the temple, where you do not take the blood of another, the blood of a goat, the blood of anything else; you take your own blood. And you are split from top to bottom and at the base of your spine is golden liquid light. It’s the blood of God and you are God…for it was just revealed to you, just four months before, that you are the father of God’s only begotten Son. So who now is split? It’s you…and therefore God is split, from top to bottom. And it’s God’s blood, it’s your blood, and you fuse with it and up you go as prophesied in scripture, right up into the temple of your own being. And then, the dove will descend two years and nine months later, and smother you with affection. Who is the dove but the symbol of the Holy Spirit who descends upon it, and this is a completed drama then.731 ¶28

From then on your work here is finished and you only linger to tell it. Either write it out or tell it to those who will listen to it carefully. Maybe they will write it or maybe they will continue telling it. But you tell it while you remain for the remaining days or years. Then, when you depart this time, you depart forever. You have ascended into heaven, back into that divine congregation.731 ¶29

So Jesus Christ does not merely point the way, he is the way. And union with Christ is the only way to God the Father and the union is simply the unfolding of the pattern in you. You can’t get any closer than that…when the pattern unfolds in you. Not as something on the outside, in the first-person, present-tense experience. It’s not happening to him, it’s happening to me. And so, that’s union with Christ, for he is the pattern. Christ is the pattern man. The whole thing unfolds within the individual and then he knows who Christ is. Then he knows the gospel, he knows scripture.731 ¶30

So, even though an able, brilliant, intelligent man, like my friend in Barbados, who would stand and he’s blocked by that one little thing, that I said he called me “Father.” He said, “No, he called Christ ‘my Lord’” and could not get over that hump, that the ancients always called the father, “my Lord.” Well, chronologically speaking, is not David of the ancient world? If you took it chronologically he is supposed to have lived—which he didn’t as we understand it—but he’s supposed to have lived 1,000 B.C. and here it is 2,000 A.D. and here’s a man who is only sixty-three claiming that one who lived 1,000 B.C., which is 3,000 years ago, is his son. And I tell you, he is my son…more so than my physical son who calls me Father. He is forty-four; but he is not any more my son. I am told by his mother that I sired him. I take that on faith. But I have no woman in David; he has no mother. I begot him; he is my son. He has no mother unlike my physical son who had a mother. I have to go on faith that I did participate in this creation of a body, but that has to be purely on faith. But in this case there is no uncertainty when he stands before you and calls you Father. You’ve always been his father and he’s always been your son. There is no other creator in bringing me into that relationship of son to father. So there is no mother.731 ¶31

And if you read scripture carefully, in spite of the fact that Ruth does give him a mother and in other parts, like in Chronicles…but Chronicles is not altogether as complete as Samuel. Samuel is the book that tells the story of David. And the most scholarly of all Biblical criticisms, which is The Encyclopedia Biblica, states quite openly that he has by tradition no mother. But churches have inserted throughout scripture, in spite of the warning “Do not add to the words of this book,” and they have added verse after verse simply to build up the traditions of men. But these are not the revelations of God as recorded by the ancients. So when we find it, new editions come out and we delete anything that has been inserted that was not there in the original manuscripts. You’ll find many things inserted…and that is one where they gave him…to give it reason in the world, because how can you have a man if he doesn’t have a mother? So to give it a secular treatment they put a mother into the picture and he has no mother. Read it carefully, and you’ll find in the Book of Samuel he has none. You’ll also find in the 2nd Psalm, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord:”—he didn’t speak about any mother—“You are my son, today I have begotten you” . And, here he is the anointed [...] of the Lord.731 ¶32

So the only way to God is union with Christ. There is no other way. And whether there are three and a half billion of us in the world, and tomorrow five billion, and maybe eventually ten billion, makes no difference. That’s fulfillment of prophecy: “I’ll give you descendants more numerous than you can number.” That is said to Ishmael and we are Ishmael, the wild ass, whose hand is against every man, and every man’s hand against him. The kindest person in the world, push him hard enough and threaten someone that he loves, and you find he is not quite as gentle as you thought he was. He’ll react, as an animal would react, if pressed hard enough. Threaten the one he loves, a child, his wife or her husband, and if that really is a deep affection, they will die in the attempt to protect what they love. Well, that is the being spoken of as Ishmael: “His hand against every man and every man’s hand against him” .731 ¶33

And the economic war is just as great, in fact, more so than the military war. When people are impoverished through the greed of others, not one person suffers but many suffer. First of all, they’re embarrassed that they’re lowered into, well, extreme poverty. And so, to again…another euphemism, instead of calling it poor, that a man is poor, no, he is underprivileged. So we take all these words and dress up these hard, hard statements, where if we use them we’ll say exactly what the man is, he’s poor. He has nothing. No, he’s underprivileged. Well, a person could be underprivileged and still not be poor. But, no, they wouldn’t say a man is poor anymore, he’s simply underprivileged.731 ¶34

I tell you, the conflict is on. It was all foreseen: “You will die like men and fall as one man, O princes”…so that was foreseen. Not because you and I did anything that was wrong…for this is God’s plan and we agreed in concert to fall into these states, and then come out of these states having experienced them. And so, “I do not consider a great state…either the just or the wicked is 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” . When he falls into these states, he falls into something that either is lovely or unlovely.731 ¶35

And those who find themselves in a comfortable state, they think that they earned it because of some past. No, they haven’t earned anything; they’re only states. Today, money…my father always had a statement, “Money doesn’t care who owns it.” And so, don’t let anyone tell you that because a man is rich, or she is rich, that they are in any way superior. If most of them who have oodles of money would go back just a generation or so, they wouldn’t want to write about it. Not its origin. But they’ll brag about the fruit of the tree, but not how the tree came into being. And so, let no one brag about it because you could be anything you want to be if you know this law. They’re all states.731 ¶36

How would I feel if it were true? Well then, try to feel what I would feel were it true. And then look into my mind for confirmation of that assumption and see my friends congratulating me, see my friends empathizing with me. They all actually are so rejoicing with me that I know that they see what I am seeing. Now let me make a habit of this way of thinking. And so, when I go to bed, feel the state. When I wake tomorrow, in spite of everything that denies it, feel the state. The state felt to which I return constantly becomes my home, and then that home objectifies and crystallizes in my world.731 ¶37

But never forget the vision. Keep the divine vision in time of trouble. The divine vision is the story of Jesus Christ. He is the pattern. So no matter what happens to you, always keep the divine vision in time of trouble. You’ve seen it in words and one day you will experience it. You’ve heard it…I’ve told you exactly what happened to me. And I’m not alone…in this audience there are others and many others are on the verge of it. May I tell you, I’m thrilled beyond measure…thrilled beyond measure! I’m waiting eagerly for any one at any time, or many, to tell me, call me up, write me, “I had the birth.” Because I know on the heels of that, only nine months, and then the three major ones are over. And then what? Two years and nine months, what’s that? What’s that for the waiting to complete the forty-two months of revelation, or the time, times and half a time, or the twelve hundred and sixty days? This is the measurement between the birth and its completeness when the dove descends.731 ¶38

So, I can’t give you anything comparable to this. If tonight you inherited by the use of the law a million dollars, a billion dollars, how could it compare to departure from the world into which you’ve fallen and going back enriched? Because no one is going back poor! Everyone is going back enriched because we are the gods. We came down for a purpose. Everyone who returns by way of Christ—and there’s no other but by the way of Christ—goes right back into the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all. And they’re rejoicing in heaven because one has returned! And they’re coming up one after the other. So you will have it and you’ll tell others to encourage them to hold onto the vision and keep the faith to the very end. And then all will eventually return.731 ¶39

When all these masks are off—the white mask, the pink mask, the yellow mask, the black mask, all are taken off— we were never the masks that we wore. We were the gods we were before the fall, and we are still the gods that we were, only enhanced by reason of experience of the fall. For, we came down into death and conquered death…died like men yes…and still overcame death. Now let us go into the Silence.731 ¶40

[...] other than to assume. You don’t need the aid of any being in this world. The power within you can do it all…it is Christ. Assume the most noble concept of yourself, that you are honored in this world. It’s a nice thing to be honored. Not among men, they’re putting little things on you, but you feel honored, you feel dignified. No matter where you go you feel welcome, there are no closed doors.731 ¶41

Regardless of the present limitations, there aren’t any closed doors. You feel this way and walk this way, and may I tell you, doors will open. They’re all open. No chips on your shoulder, no battles to fight. You know who you are: You are God. You aren’t going to go out on the street and scream “I am God” but you know it. And that’s far greater than talking and trying to persuade others that you are and they’re not. Because there is no one who is not God. Every child born of woman is that one descending from the divine society, everyone. And that one, by one way and one way only, is going to return after his journey is over. Now, are there any questions, please?731 ¶42

Tonight’s subject is “His Eternal Play.” I call it a play because the end is predetermined, like a play. Paul speaks of it as a race, a game. He’s concentrating on the second act. He said, “I fought the good fight, I have finished the race. The time for my departure has come. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness” . So he calls it a game; but a game has an uncertain end. Not a play—I call it a play only because the end is predetermined. We start from innocence, we plod into experience, and we emerge as Imagination. These are the three stages. Blake placed them in his Songs of Innocence in this lovely dancing child on a cloud; then the Songs of Experience the child under the cloud; and then The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, where the child is above the cloud dancing in eternity. So he did synthesize these two states.730 ¶1

But, we call it a play. I do not mean like an ordinary play where every word is committed and that you are fated. No, I do not mean it in that sense. We do not hide under the cloud of fate. And so, evil which you and I encounter—I’m not denying that we do encounter evil—but evil is not a condition imposed upon man by some malevolent deity. Rather it is a state of experience through which the soul of man passes in order that knowing good and evil he might achieve a more noble state, a condition that we call Imagination or liberty. For he said, the whole vast creation groans, waiting for the liberation, or the unveiling, of the sons of God; that we were not eager to enter this arena. For, “The creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected him in hope; that the creature may obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God” . So there’s a purpose behind it all; so we are inserted into it.730 ¶2

Now the play is given to us in the Old Testament. From beginning to end, the thirty-nine books, that maps the play. The New Testament interprets the play for us. Without the New Testament it would have no meaning to the Old. But the Old is the play. We open the book to read it, bear in mind that this is a vision, as we are told in the scripture. This is a vision when Elias speaks of the vision of Isaiah, Obadiah the vision of Obadiah, Nebo the vision of him. And when you don’t use the word vision, you use the word “the word of the Lord came unto” and then you name the prophet. Well, “the word of the Lord” is the same as vision. “For if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision; I will speak with him in a dream” . So the whole from beginning to end is the vision.730 ¶3

But this is a vision unmodified by the conceptual mind. If you’ve ever had a vision, you know what I mean. You stand as a participant in the action. You may be the star in the drama when the vision begins within you, or you may be simply playing a minor role. But if you are playing a starring role, still the conceptual mind is suspended; it doesn’t interfere and ask questions, you ask no questions. The most impossible thing is taking place before you and it seems not only possible, the most natural thing in the world that this thing should be as it unfolds within you. So the vision, really, is truth and this truth is completely untouched by the conceptual mind. It’s completely set aside. For this experience belongs to a region that is deeper and more vital than that which the intellect inhabits; and because of this it is also indestructible by intellectual arguments and criticisms. You could bring all the criticisms in the world to one who has had the experience and he remains unmoved. You can’t shake him, because he has had the experience. So the New Testament is beginning to experience that foretold in the Old, and this is the picture of the great drama.730 ¶4

Now it doesn’t mean that you and I inserted against our will for this divine end, which is God, that we must one time play an evil part and another time play a good part. No, that is what we are inserted into…all these are eternal states. So when I open my Bible I must always remember that the persons Moses and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the rest are not there meant as persons as we are persons but they signify the eternal states of the soul—the states revealed to man in a series of divine revelations as they are now written for us in the Bible. So I’m not speaking of Moses as a person, Abraham as a person, Isaac as a person, or any other character in that scripture. They are all personifications of the eternal states through which you and I pass. As we begin the journey, at first it’s innocence. You start from innocence, fall into experience, and emerge as a liberated being, as all Imagination, one with God.730 ¶5

Now, who is playing the part? “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men,” all . God and God alone is playing the part. A man today who is simply so very poor he doesn’t know where to turn, he cannot feed himself…you say, “Who are you?” He will tell you his name possibly. He’ll say, “I am”…and he names it. And, “How do you feel, how are things going?” and he will say, “I am very poor.” Before he said very poor he said “I am.” You ask the man who is now rolling in wealth, “How are things going?” “Well, I’m very, very wealthy.” Well, he preceded his very, very wealthy claim by “I am.” The other did the same with his “very, very poor” claim. The same God, not two gods, there’s only one God in this world. And that one God is given to man, and he reveals his name to man in the Book of Exodus as “I AM…it is my name forever…to be known by all generations” . There is no other name.730 ¶6

So, knowing that God is playing all the parts, then I slowly begin to become discreet in my selection of the part that I will play. So no matter where I find myself in this world I now bear in mind I am only moving through infinite states. It is entirely up to me to select the states that I will play.730 ¶7

Now, let me share with you two experiences of two ladies who were here this past week. One lady, last Thursday night, left me a long typewritten letter, which I read when I got home. She said, On the 6th of February you spoke on a certain subject and you brought in Jung, Carl Jung, and you told an experience of Jung where he was contemplating the death of a friend whose funeral he had attended that day. And suddenly he felt the presence of the friend in his room and the friend is standing at the foot of his bed. But Jung being the brilliant mind that he is he said to himself, This is sheer fantasy. But he arrested that feeling and said, No, that would be sheer abomination on my part if this man is real. To say that my friend is not really standing there, it could be a horrible thing to do to him were it true that he is there. So said Jung to himself, I will now credit him with reality. The moment he credited the man with reality, the man became more and more real, and Jung could see him with the inner eye. He turned around and beckoned Jung to follow him to the door. Jung in his Imagination followed, followed through the garden, onto the street, and then several hundred yards away to the man’s home, where he entered with the man. The man went into his library, got up on a little stool, reached up to the second shelf from the top, and pointed out four books bound in red. Then he pointed to the second volume of the four, and then he vanished. The next day Jung was so curious he went to the lady’s home, asked the widow for permission to inspect the library. As he got in he saw the stool that he had seen in his vision, under the library. He stepped on it, and he saw the four books bound in red and then he went straight to the second volume, and it was The Legacy of the Dead. He said, “The contents meant nothing to me, but the title was most significant in view of the experience that I had the night before with my friend who had gone from this world.”730 ¶8

So here, The Legacy of the Dead…the man is trying to convince Jung in spite of his brilliant mind that we survive. He could make no further than that, that there is survival, not after unnumbered months waiting, for the man died the day before; he was buried the next day; and here the very day of the funeral the man appears to Jung. So all the so-called “you must wait three months, or three days, or three years” that meant nothing to an experience. The man experienced the presence of a man who could take him into his library and show him a book with a title that signified the reality of the experience; for here is The Legacy of the Dead. So the man had not ceased to be; he was the same man, there was no change in appearance, no change whatsoever. So here, this struck the lady forcibly. She said, “You know, I’ve had many experiences like the one of Jung. It’s an odd feeling because I’m a single lady, living alone, and then to find suddenly a man standing in my room. And some day, maybe, it could be an actual fact, and wouldn’t I be surprised! Or maybe he’d be the more surprised,” said she. However, she said, many a time I sensed the presence of a man in the room, and I see them quite vividly. But now the one I want to talk about is the story in which you appeared.730 ¶9

And then she started telling me this, she said, “Last year I looked all over for an apartment. I was dissatisfied with my apartment, but because I’m French background I resent paying high rents for an apartment. So I refused to pay these extravagantly high rents…it’s my French blood, she said. But I wanted a nice street and I knew the street I wanted, I knew the kind of apartment that I wanted, and what I wanted to pay for it. So I went out every weekend and looked, and got no results. I really labored. Then I said to myself, What am I doing? I go to the man, I listen to him, I have all his books. I shall now read and not go searching for any apartment. So I took your books and instead of going on Saturday, as I always did, with my paper all marked where I would go, I sat down and read the books. Suddenly I read the books, all the way; every night for the week I read the books, and I didn’t go any place. On Friday night, one week later, I finished my book and I retired.730 ¶10

Between three and four in the morning I sensed the presence of someone in my room, and I said, before I looked at the presence, I’m going to have that presence smile. He must have something good to tell me. I will not have anything other than something nice and good. So I looked over and here you are standing at my bed, the same you that is on the jacket of your book. And then you turned around and I recognized you and you walked to the far corner of my bedroom. At that moment, I distinctly heard my door click shut. It was a definite closing of something, my door, but something came to a conclusive end, that it was so definite in the way it closed. So, I turned, I felt that I turned my head from you to the door. And then when I looked back, I said to myself, Before I look back, now Neville is gone before he could tell me the message that he brought for me. But, fortunately, when I looked back you were there, you hadn’t moved at all. Then when you saw my eye you went to the far, to the very end. And then you went to a picture and from below the picture you seemed to take something, at least, I thought you did. But suddenly the whole area where you were became luminous. You were completely surrounded in light and everything was luminous. I could see you more vividly, the whole room was light. Then you took whatever you had in your hand and you went to a door, a big panel. It was so very difficult for you to move…you couldn’t move it. It seemed so very difficult, but you kept on struggling with the door that you tried to open or to move. I said to myself, ‘There is no door there…but there is a door. That picture is my picture, but it isn’t hanging there…and yet, there it is hanging there.’ Then you got my attention and you tried to show me how difficult this door was, then you vanished.730 ¶11

This is on Saturday morning between three and four. So the next day I didn’t go looking. Saturday evening came, I thought I would either read the books again, or else I would read an evening paper, the evening news. So I took the paper and I turned to the section where they are renting apartments. I saw one on the street I wanted, and everything about it in the ad seemed to be what I wanted. Normally I would have gone straight to the telephone and called the apartment, but I didn’t. The next day I called, and when the party said, You better come right over and see it, I said, No, I’ll be over tomorrow, on Monday, at noon…a thing I would never have done in the month that I looked. I seemed so completely complacent, as though I didn’t want it. It wasn’t that, something possessed me, and I didn’t go until Monday. At noon I saw it and I liked it, liked it immensely. The price was right and the street was the very street I selected. So I contracted for the place and I moved in two weeks later. And to my surprise, for the first time in all the apartments that I had ever rented there are two moving doors on a sliding something, she said, and it was most difficult to move them, in fact, impossible to move them. I said I must get someone to fix it or oil it or do something, because you can’t move the doors. Then, she said, I started hanging my pictures. Then I saw this area, and after I took a picture, the very picture, and hung it there next to this panel, and got in my bed that night, I said, Why that’s the picture…and there’s the panel door. And what Neville did under that picture…there is an electric switch that floods the room with light, right under the picture where she caught him.730 ¶12

So she said to me, “Neville, would you throw some light on it, other than the light you threw in that room? Did that something have to happen?” No, but she called…she read the books all through the week, began to apply it, and as you are told in that same book of mine, the latest book, The Law and the Promise, quoting Butler, Samuel Butler: “Who writes a book which others read, while he is asleep in bed, what knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are read? Now, which is the he—the he that sleeps or the he that even this he cannot feel nor see?”730 ¶13

So here, you think of someone…and I tell you and I mean it the whole vast world is within you. She trusts me implicitly. She reads my books. She likes my books. This thing that she saw is within her. It’s not contained here and only here. Every one of you, but everyone in this whole vast world, must be contained within you, but everyone. And so, the being that she saw standing in her room, I, the person called Neville, may I tell you, I’m totally unaware of having been present.730 ¶14

I’ve been accused by many people of entering their rooms uninvited, but I’m totally unaware of it. In New York City, many years ago, my friend, Alice Bentley—she’s now gone from this world—she was a darling soul. Ouspensky and Gurdjieff all used her studio at Carnegie Hall. And Ali was just one wonderful person. Her name was Alice Bentley; we called her Ali-Ben. Ali used to walk the streets of New York without shoes with this lovely shock of white hair, long flowing Indian robes, and she was quite the character. But, people like Ouspensky and Gurdjieff and all of them arrived, when they came here, it was Ali’s studio that they all used. And so one day, so this lady told me—she ran all the restaurants in the Wellington Hotel—and Ali told me the next day, after the event, she said, “Know what happened to me last night, Neville?” I hadn’t the slightest idea. Well, she said, “You appeared bodily in the room and called this lady’s name”—who was the manager of all the restaurants, and she lived at the hotel. I appeared in her room, so she said, and I said to her, “Ali needs money, and she must have it right away. I want you to go downstairs right now and take all the money you have in your purse and empty it right into Ali’s lap.” Well, she said, I spoke so convincingly that when I disappeared she thought this was some divine message; she went right downstairs to Ali, took all the money in her purse, and emptied it in Ali’s lap. Ali thanked her profusely for the most generous gift. Ali did need the money…she owed rent.730 ¶15

But I, with my conceptual mind, restrained as I am, I never would have done that. Never would I have even suggested that she help Ali. That’s not my province in this world. But when truth begins to spring within man, unmodified by the conceptual mind, he can play any part. And so, when God sends his messenger into the world, it is unmodified by any conceptual mind, so he can be the perfect messenger to execute anything in this world. And so the God within her, praying for some light, some succor, something, and then all of a sudden she conjures one she trusts, and I became her messenger. And the suspended conceptual mind, I could stand boldly in the presence of a lady I didn’t know very well, the wee hours of the morning, and tell her that she has to go right down stairs and empty the contents of her purse into Ali’s lap. And so, that’s how this wonderful world works.730 ¶16

This is a play. So you don’t have to play the evil part. You don’t have to play the good part. But you are ushered in unwillingly into this fabulous world of experience that you may know good and evil, and then rise above it all into a far more noble state; and that state I call Imagination. I call it the liberating state, because when man arrives at that point he is Christ Jesus. So the end of the play is Christ Jesus. The end is when the name is on your forehead. And what name is placed upon the forehead? You’re told, “his name”…speaking now of the one who went through the battle, all the battles, and the Father’s name. Well, the Father’s name is I AM, and he who went through the battle is Jesus. So on your forehead is “I AM Jesus.” Who else do you think played it?730 ¶17

Through the entire journey only God is playing all the parts. So “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” So because God is one, whether you’re left poor or rich, God plays both parts. You don’t have to be poor. You can assume whatever you want in this world if you dare to trust God and hold God trustworthy, actually hold him trustworthy—he is trustworthy—knowing who he is: he’s your own wonderful I AM. So assume that I am…and I name what I want to be, and then thank God for it. Trust him completely in moving you through the necessary states to bring me to that state into which I have gone and given thanks for. But these are infinite states and they are eternal, they don’t come and go, and you can’t change one into the other. The poor man never changes poverty into wealth. He leaves, he departs from poverty, and he enters a state that is permanent called wealth. When he departs from wealth and reenters poverty, he does not change the rich man into the poor man. He departs from wealth and enters the state of poverty. They’re only states. And when we occupy the state we give it life and it becomes real within our world.730 ¶18

So anyone knowing this wonderful law can play the game. As Paul played it beautifully. He said, “I fought the good fight.” And so, you and I must accept destiny, completely accept it, because we did it unwittingly. But finding ourselves in it, accept destiny. And may I tell you, when you accept it, you accept the conflict. You joy in the conflict. Know what a conflict is? It’s not fighting against a man; it’s a mental fight, I overcome and overcome and overcome. And so I rejoice in the mental fight. So finding myself at a certain state, I go right into it. There is the conflict, and I rejoice now in the mental conflict. So I overcome it by simply assuming that I am what this now denies that I am. I dare to trust God and dare to hold him trustworthy. And so, I will assume that I—well, that’s his name, I am, and all things are possible to him—-so “I am”…and I name it. And then I thank him, I say “Amen” to that state; and then allow myself to be pushed through all the necessary states, knowing that God is trustworthy and I’m holding him to that state. And so, I live in it, and he pushes me into that state. In the end, I know I’m going to come out. As he said, “A crown of righteousness is laid up for me…for I finished the fight.” Paul knew from the experiences which he recorded in Galatians that the fight was over, the race had been won. He kept, what?—the faith.730 ¶19

Now Paul makes the statement: “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” . So, all the wisdom of the world with the conceptual mind cannot find God. He can rationalize from here to the end of time. It’s a mystery to be known only by revelation. God unveils himself in an experience, and then you know. But you can’t sit down, no matter how wise you are…so he says, “Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God…” Well, what pleases God? We’re told in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, “Without faith it is impossible to please him,” can’t please him without faith .730 ¶20

And so, I will dare to assume that a friend of mine tonight has made the most wonderful, I would say, killing (if you want to use that word) in business. Wonderful! No hurt to anyone, mutual benefit to all. He has signed a contract or done something wonderful, and he is thrilled beyond measure. So I would assume that for him. If he calls me tomorrow or writes me next week or next month, I would not accept one word that is in opposition to what I have assumed. I heard it. I am still hearing it. I will continue to hear it until that which I heard and am still hearing is perfectly realized by my friend. So if tomorrow I hear that he’s distressed, I will not tell God how to move him. He’ll move him through all kinds of things if I remain faithful and hold God trustworthy. I will hold him trustworthy and he’ll move my friend toward the fulfillment of that where I see him in my mind’s eye. So that is part of the play.730 ¶21

And Paul is right by calling it a conflict. He calls it a fight: “I fought the good fight.” And I will not quarrel with Paul. It is a play, but it’s also a game. But because the end is predetermined I cannot altogether call it the fight. Because the fight, like tonight’s fight, is most uncertain…as you heard the outcome. All the wise boys, all the wisdom of the world put it on one person because of a record, and the other fellow won. And so, this strange, strange…all the wisdom of the world means nothing in the eyes of God. The one fellow who won, did you see him on TV? He said, “Who is the greatest?” and he had his second say, “Cassius Clay.” “Who is the prettiest?” “Cassius Clay.” “Who is the biggest?” “Cassius Clay.” “Who is the wisest?” “Cassius Clay.” And he beat that into his mind’s eye, and he said, “I’ll take him before eight because I’m great.” He’s a poet. And all these things he weaved into his mind’s eye. While the other was simply brawn, he was going to go along on sheer brawn, and the other fellow wasn’t doing that at all.730 ¶22

Now we come back to another beautiful one told me last Friday night. This lady was here on Thursday, the 20th. She heard me once before when I quoted my friend [Hallie?] Smith at the Chinese Theatre. But, that was simply one Sunday morning when you have enormous crowds and so it was a quick meeting. I met her because I knew her mother and father so very well, it was a joy to meet her, but with the crowd moving you can’t talk to her. But she was here last Thursday for the first time. Her mother drove her home and they discussed the meeting. Her mother said to her, “Did you like it?” She said, “Very much.” “Do you believe it?” “I certainly do. That’s what I believe. I believe every word of it.” Well, the next morning they got on the phone again, again the conversation of the night before and the meeting. Because I was speaking of crossing the Jordan, that every moment of time man is at the Jordan; the facts stare him in the face and he’s got to get beyond the Jordan. The only one who gets beyond the Jordan is Joshua, and Joshua’s name is Jesus, and Jesus is Jehovah, and Jehovah is I AM. So I put myself beyond the Jordan, and assume that I am where I want to be, either spatially or in other states, like in a more noble state, that also you move into that state.730 ¶23

Well, she liked it. Then she said, “But Mother, I had the strangest dream last night.” This is now the early hours of Friday morning. “This is what I dreamt. I saw a living serpent, small one, but very much alive. I picked it up and put it in my handbag. And then I woke.” What a glorious dream!730 ¶24

You see, the Bible recognizes only one source of dream: all visions and dreams proceed from God, all dreams.730 ¶25

Now we go back to the great entrance into this world: from innocence, beyond the dream, into hell, the fires of experience, where man is called upon to embrace the fires and be consumed as its victim; and then rise from its ashes as Christ Jesus. But he has to completely embrace it, like the great moth, where the two moths went in search of their idol, the flame. They came back with uncertain intelligence—one thought it was hot, one thought it bright, but they did not agree as to what the flame represented. And a third, moved by sheer desire and true desire, rushed to the flame, and folded his wings beneath him, and plunged headlong into the sacred fire, until he became one color and one substance with the flame. “He only knew the flame who in it burned, and only he could tell who n’er to tell returned.” He so became absorbed in it he could not return anymore; he rose as Christ Jesus. Couldn’t discuss it on the level of the moth and the flame, he became the flame; and so, he rose as the flame, the light of the world.730 ¶26

And so, in this story, she heard it, she believed it. What did she believe?—that her own wonderful human Imagination is Christ Jesus. She heard that. She told her mother, “I believe that. I believe that that could save me from what I am, if I want to be saved from what I am…that if I really understood this, I could really apply it.” And that truly is the state of the world. One’s own wonderful human Imagination, that’s Christ Jesus, that’s God. So she so believed it that in the depths of her soul, unmodified by the conceptual mind, because in this world she wouldn’t dare touch a serpent, anymore than you would. She would run from it or try to kill it. But she picked it up and put it in her handbag.730 ¶27

Now in the beginning, the serpent leads man out of innocence into experience. The word that we call “fall” is He Vau He, in scripture the root of the verb “to be”, He Vau He. “To be” is, alright, the Self-Existing Being. The original meaning of that verb was “to fall, or to cause to fall.” Here, to cause to fall…the one who caused the fall also fell. He caused the fall, and he himself fell. So, God himself enters death’s door with those who enter, and remains with them through the whole furnace of experience, and shares with them all of their visions of eternity, until together they awake as one, and it’s God.730 ¶28

So the serpent has always been the symbol of Christ Jesus. So she heard it, she believes now that Christ Jesus is her own wonderful human Imagination, that when it’s said in Corinthians, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” now she knows that this Jesus Christ in her is her own wonderful human Imagination. So she sees him now symbolized, something alive, not a dead Christ, a living Christ. She picks up a living serpent and puts the serpent in her handbag, where all valuables are kept.730 ¶29

For, whether you believe it or not, a handbag is part of a Western woman’s equipment. She is undressed without one. I think that it’s a horrible thing that our tax experts should tax a lady’s handbag when you don’t tax a man’s pair of pants. It’s another part of her wearing apparel. She puts everything into it that she considers of value—her car keys, her house key, her little notebook, her charge accounts, everything. It’s part of the dress of the day. Without it some people feel undressed. So she has everything in it. Where she keeps her valuables she placed Christ.730 ¶30

Now what she has to do is to prove she really believes it. But she does…from the depths of her soul she does. Now exercise him, because he only grows by exercise, and every time she exercises her Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, she is feeding Christ Jesus.730 ¶31

And that serpent will one day appear to her in the most glorious way. I’ll tell you exactly how he will appear. One day, when the temple of her body is torn from top to bottom and then she stands divided, looking at the two sections of one body, she will see at the base of what would have been her spine, coiled, this glorious golden liquid light, pulsing and moving. She will know it is her Self, and then she will fuse by that knowledge, for we become what we behold. She beholds it and she becomes it. Then she, as it, will move up that spinal column of hers, right into her skull that is Zion. And she will be it: the one who fell is the one who will ascend.730 ¶32

“No one ascends into heaven but he who first descended” . It is it that descended, your great Savior; and he descended, and is dreaming in you all the strange things of the world. So he went right down into generation, the base of the spine; and there he dreams all the dreams of eternity, all the creative dreams, by any name, all the sexual dreams, everything he’s dreaming. It’s Christ Jesus.730 ¶33

And one day, he turns around and what was down into generation becomes regenerated. All the currents of the body are reversed as he moves up into his heavenly world, leaving everyone to perform all they’re performing and allowing all their dreams because he is doing it. And one day, you’ll know these words in that 96th plate of Jerusalem: “I behold my deadly dreams 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.”730 ¶34

Right after he makes that bold confession, which he claims was dictated by the spirit of love, who was no one other than God, he then comes into the next line and he puts the words into God’s mouth, and calls God, Jesus. Jesus is made to say, “Fear not, Albion (speaking now of humanity): “unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.”730 ¶35

So he comes down into generation from his heavenly state. He empties himself of his immortal form and takes upon himself the form of a slave, called man; and there he dreams with man until that moment in time when the fight is over, he’s overcome the battles, and now the crown of righteousness awaits him as he moves up into Zion.730 ¶36

So this is the most glorious play. If you know it’s a play and someone is playing an unlovely part, don’t condemn him, pull him out of it. He doesn’t have to play it if all eventually awaken as God. For eventually he’s going to awaken as God regardless of what part he played. So, the only predetermined state in the play is the end. But within the conflict of the second act, which is the act of experience, you can play any part in this world. And in the end, all will be forgiven, because God is playing all the parts and God forgives them. But all these are the eternal parts.730 ¶37

So this is a message of man: This being, sound asleep, moving through eternal death (this world), and awakening to eternal life. The story of the little seed falling into the ground, and unless it falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it brings forth much. It’s the mystery of life through death.730 ¶38

So innocence…well, let me share with you a vision of mine. I once saw in this vision an infinite field of human flowers, beautiful flowers, big wonderful sunbursts, and every one with a human face. And when one moved, they all moved. If one smiled, they all smiled. If one frowned, they all frowned. They moved in concert, directed by some invisible hand. But they moved in concert. And I looking at them knew that I enjoyed more freedom than all of them put together; though I certainly was not as beautiful and certainly not in that state above the cloud or on the cloud, for I had gone down into generation. I was limited by the garment that I wore, the animal garment, subject to all of its weaknesses, subject to all its violence. And yet, in spite of these limitations of the human physical garment, which is an animal garment, I knew in my vision I enjoyed more freedom than all of them put together. They had not yet left the state of innocence and entered the world of experience.730 ¶39

I was shown in my vision where I formerly was, one with that that moved in concert, and then unwillingly detached. For I did not volunteer, no one volunteers, because you are in a state of bliss, but it’s an innocent bliss. And then you pass through the world of experience, and when you emerge you are as free, free as all outdoors, because you are liberated, and you are God. And you fly, like that angel in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell above the clouds, into that wonderful world and you dance as a liberated being. But in the other, you don’t, you move in concert. And you’re beautiful and untarnished, unwithered, everything is perfect, but you’re anchored, anchored to the ground. No flying around, no freedom whatsoever, but beautiful…waiting when that moment in time comes that God himself will subject you from that field of beauty into the world of experience. And you too will enter. And one day, like the little butterfly, or the little moth, you too will become so curious that you’ll plunge right into the sacred flame. And then you’ll be consumed as its victim, and you’ll rise from the ash, but no one will see you because you’re the flame. And you rise as the light of the world. So everyone will do it.730 ¶40

So I can share this vision with you. It’s perfectly marvelous, unmodified by my conceptual mind. Because, had I seen it with memory of what I’d gone through, I would know the flowers could not be that human. I would know the faces, living wonderful fresh faces, couldn’t be true. But you see, your reason is suspended when you have the vision, and it seems such a normal thing to see living childlike faces in a flower. And every one was a wonderful beautiful face, not one was unlovely, every one perfect, you couldn’t improve upon it, it was perfect. And yet I knew inwardly I had more freedom than all of them put together.730 ¶41

For, I, reluctantly, unwillingly was subjected to this futility. And then, passing through the great furnaces of affliction, exercising the being, as I found him slowly, to find he is my own wonderful human Imagination. It was he who subjected me, he who I didn’t recognize. I sought him in everything but where he was. I sought him in the wind, in the earth, in the sunlight, in the lightning, and finally I heard him in the still small voice speaking from within: “That which I have done, I have done. Do nothing.” And I heard the voice; it came from within; and then I did nothing, and what I had assumed within nine days it happened to me. I did nothing, he simply brought it from the depths of my soul and it happened. He influenced the behavior of everyone who could be used to make real that which seemed so impossible, so unreal, when I dared to assume that I am. And so, it came from within.730 ¶42

My friend may look for him in everything in the world ’til one day he’s going to find him. And when you find him he’s just like you. So if anyone should ever say, “Look, here is Christ!” or “Look, there he is!” don’t believe him . Why? Because, although “It does not now appear what we shall be, we know that when he appears we shall be like him” . Just like him, because he’s within you. So in that very twinkle of an eye he takes your lowly body and he changes it to be like his glorious body, to be of one form with that of the exalted Christ. Not something less than, one with the form of the exalted Christ, one with God.730 ¶43

So the play…it’s perfect as a play because the end is predetermined. As you’re told, he called us all to himself, and “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to the conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” . When you glorify in the Bible, you glorify with God: “I will not give my glory unto another.” He can only give it to himself, therefore, when man is glorified, God succeeded in his purpose and gave man himself. Therefore, he has the glory that is God, and rises as God.730 ¶44

So you are predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, and the Father and Son are one when you rise.730 ¶45

But in this battle, in the conflict, you must accept destiny. Not your particular destiny…and say that the stars have consented unto your misfortune; they have not consented to your misfortune at all, nor have the teacup leaves, or the coffee beans, or the bones, or anything in the world. It is simply your choice. No matter where you are inserted, begin to believe in God, and find him as your own wonderful human Imagination. Then become selective and get out of any place where you might have started life. And you can do it by holding God trustworthy.730 ¶46

Go to sleep this night and try this. When you get flat on your back, before you lose consciousness, and your eyes are shut to the outer world, just think of this being that you would like to be. Don’t be embarrassed. If it is something…that you want more income and considerably more, don’t be embarrassed, don’t think you’re greedy. All things are possible to him, and he’s right with you as you are contemplating the man, the woman, that you would like to be. Contemplate yourself as that being. And then in the most simple way say “Thank you.” Just mean it. When you say “Thank you” it is always for something received, you know. I don’t say “Thank you” in the hope I’ll embarrass you into a gift. I say “Thank you” because you’ve given it. And so, I saw it clearly…I become what I behold…so I saw myself clearly as such a person, and then say “Thank you,” meaning I’m holding God trustworthy.730 ¶47

Try it, and see if you can’t give me the most wonderful stories in the next few months, because beginning next week our series, five-eighths of it, is geared really to the law: How to use this law constructively to achieve definite goals in this world…so that we’ll take it then as the race. But I tell you the end is predetermined, the end is God. Now let us go into the Silence.730 ¶48

* * *730 ¶49

“The Last Days by a Son,” this is taken from the epistle to the Hebrews. It’s an unknown author. Many scholars believe that Paul wrote it, but if you read it carefully along with the letters of Paul, you will come to the conclusion that it is not Paul. Whoever wrote it, the unknown author, certainly had one of the most profound understandings of this great mystery. And I say mystery advisedly, for most of us think it is history, human history, and it’s not. In this you will see he is not speaking of Jesus Christ that the world thinks of when they use the words Jesus Christ. Yet he uses the word Jesus, [...] him first in the 2nd chapter, the 9th verse. But before that he establishes a cosmic Christ; he is speaking only of a cosmic Christ that is God himself. Now listen to the words: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature” . Here he establishes this presence. He reflects the very glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature.729 ¶1

If I say to you “Jesus Christ,” were you a Christian you would think in terms of a being who lived and died approximately 2,000 years ago. If I say to you “Joshua,” you would think of an ancient patriarch, an ancient prophet, the author of the sixth book of the Bible, but you wouldn’t associate Joshua with Jesus, would you? You’d think they were two entirely different beings, Joshua and Jesus, and yet both words spell the same thing. Joshua is the Hebraic form of Jesus, and Jesus is Jehovah. You spell Jesus, Yod He Vau Shin Ion. That’s how you spell Joshua. You spell Jehovah, Yod He Vau He. So why do they differ in spelling as to the last two syllables, the last two letters? Because, listen to it carefully, God in creative activity is called the Son. Infinite love in unthinkable origin is God the Father. Infinite love in creative activity is God the Son. Infinite love in eternal procession is God the Holy Spirit…all God…one God, not three Gods. But, God in creative activity is God the Son.729 ¶2

The word translated “reflect”—he reflects the glory of God—that word can either mean “reflect” or “radiate.” A radiation is a creative activity. It is this God, this infinite love that actually became us, every one of us. It is this God in man. Now listen to it carefully, for when I use the words Jesus Christ I do not think of a unit, one little man born in an unnatural physical way 2,000 years ago, I do not. The being of whom I speak is not born in any physical unnatural way. He is born of flesh and blood. He comes into this world, clothed as you are clothed, in the most normal, natural conception, as I was conceived and you were conceived, in the same manner, in a family, a large family. And while walking the earth and he knows his real name [...].729 ¶3

Well, Jesus Christ now is the name given to God in creative activity, buried in man, all men, the cosmic Christ. It’s Jehovah himself that is buried in us. When we say “I am” that’s Jehovah, and the word Jehovah is Jesus, same thing. So here, when I speak of Jesus Christ…listen to the statement carefully, I take it from the last letter, the last chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the 13 chapter of 2nd Corinthians, it’s the 5th verse: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, if you ask that of the average person in the world and if they say yes, they don’t really mean it, not really. For when they think of Jesus Christ they do not for one moment feel his presence, feel him in them as their own very wonderful human Imagination, they don’t. If they begin to rationalize it, they may say to you, “Well, yes, I will accept that.” But let them be honest with themselves, and when they think of Jesus Christ they see him as some historical character back in time 2,000 years ago. So the words are not contemporary with them at all. So when you read the words, “Do you not know, do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” These are the words. Well, if you realize it, it’s that one I’m speaking of this night.729 ¶4

That is the one and the only concern of God the Father. God the Father is going to resurrect in you his Son. When he rises in you, you are he. He resurrects only Jesus Christ that is God himself. So the grace of God is linked with a specific event, and that event is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.729 ¶5

Now, there are many who believe that because of a certain experience they have experienced this birth of which I speak. Now, there are definite patterns that we follow in this birth. It’s given to us so vividly in the 1st letter of Peter, the 1st chapter, the 3rd verse. Listen to it carefully, “By his great mercy we are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” You dwell upon it. By his great mercy we are born anew by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But if Jesus Christ was once and for all resurrected 2,000 years ago, you have already then been born anew. And you have not been born anew. Therefore, it is simply the unfolding of the cosmic Christ in all, individualized as you. And when he is resurrected in you it begins the new age; a completely different age begins with the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the individual. It does not begin with the birth. The birth is the other side of the coin. It begins with the resurrection. No one has the birth prior to the resurrection. The resurrection begins Christianity, it begins on that note; but within a matter of moments after the resurrection comes the wonderful heavenly birth from above.729 ¶6

So, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.” In what way? Well, he spoke in that 19th Psalm, the very first verse: The heavens are speaking of the glory of God; and the earth shows forth his handiwork. Today, our astrophysicists, through their telescopes and their trained mathematical minds look off into this fabulous world of ours, and they become excited…and the stories they tell us of this enormous display of the glory of God. Then, our geophysicists, they look down to the earth itself and what they tell us of the structure of this wonderful world of ours, made of one substance differently arranged in many patterns. A rearrangement of its pattern of one substance, and instead of having gold we have silver. Another rearrangement, we have coal. Another rearrangement, we have something else like gas. But one unit, one substance in a complex pattern produces this variety of things in our world, and our great scientists look at it. But he said, “That was secondary to his revelation by the Son.” “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.” And you can find it in the 1st chapter, the 20th verse of Romans, “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly seen in the things that have been made.” Looking for his power? See it through the microscope of the great geophysicists or the great chemists today, and you see this power was always there. He tells us, “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and his deity, were clearly seen in the things that have been made.”729 ¶7

Well, you can’t say that he turned from that. As Paul tells us in his very first chapter to the Romans, 1st chapter, the 20th verse, when you read it you transcend that view, and tells us now we transcend it when now the Son speaks to us. The Son is not now this cosmic Christ. The Son…and he gives now the quote in 5th verse of the 1st chapter of Hebrews. For he bases his argument only on scripture, everything is based upon scripture, and so he either quotes or refers to scripture in every chapter of the entire thirteen chapters of Hebrews. He begins with two quotes: “For to what angel did God ever say, ‘Thou art my Son’”? Or again, to what angel did he ever say, ‘I am your Father, and you shall be my Son’”? To what angel did he ever say that? He’s trying to tell you how infinitely great man is beyond all the forces of nature, including angels and archangels and all the beings in the world. For it was not to them that he came. They are his servants, we’re told, the angels serve man.729 ¶8

Because God came to man, and fused with man, this infinite pulsing being that is God in action, which is God the Son but still God the Father. Only, when he is in action he’s God the Son. For we are told, through him also the world was created. So when God goes into creative action that is called in scripture the Son, the cosmic Son. It is that that he’s going to awake within you. And when he awakes him in you, you are not another—there is no change in the sense of I—only now you include within your being this cosmic being. But you are told he has given him the entire inheritance, to him all things are given; but your heavenly inheritance cannot become actual, or it’s not fully realized by you, while you’re still wearing this garment of flesh.729 ¶9

When you take off this after you’re resurrected, and may I tell you, in the Book of Luke it shows you so clearly it takes nine months to complete the entire mission, from the resurrection to the end, which is the ascension into heaven. Resurrection; birth; discovery of the fatherhood of God, which is yourself; and then the ascension into heaven, and it’s only nine months. So the entire, I would say, missionary work required of the central character of scripture is given nine months in Luke, if you read it carefully. It’s not any long, long years. All he’s concerned with is that one, that little section of nine months. From his mightiest act which is to resurrect you, resurrect his Son, which is himself in creative activity. But when he resurrects his Son in you, why then you are fused with the Son and you are that being, and you rise in yourself. So resurrection is an event happening within, not on some outside place; within the life of the individual, within this earthly life of the individual. This all takes place right here.729 ¶10

So here, when I speak of the last days they are these days. Not when the whole vast world will be consumed, no. When your world, this age, has ceased to be and you enter on a new age, an entirely different world. Well, how am I clothed for that world? Listen to the words carefully, from the 3rd chapter of Philippians, speaking now of this cosmic Son, Jesus Christ: “He will change our lowly body”—and the word change literally means “refashion”—“He will change our lowly body to be like his.” The phrase “to be like his” literally means “of one form with”. That’s what it means. “To be like his” literally means “of one form with his glorious body.” So your future body is actually that of the radiant exalted Christ, not another. One body, one being, for God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are one. And God the Son, which is a seeming certain aspect, which is only his creative aspect, became you, raises you to be one with him. So really in the end, you’re not less than, you are one with the Godhead.729 ¶11

Seems mad, doesn’t it? But I am not speculating. I’m not asking any being outside of my own experience to throw light on it. I’m telling you exactly what happened. Now our scientists tell us that only that which is scientifically proved can be relied on. Our scientists, not all of them, there are a few, like Alexis [...] who still remains a devout religious person, even though he did so much in the scientific world; and there are others who still remain willing to accept what they cannot prove through a test tube. But the majority of them, many scientists and philosophers, will not admit as explanation anything that comes from beyond or above this world of nature. If you can’t prove it to them scientifically, then they will not accept it. And yet, I tell you there is not a test given in science today that must meet that acid test that this must meet if you will accept what the mystic must accept.729 ¶12

The Old Testament is his frame of reference. You can have all the visions and all the dreams in the world, if you can’t find the parallel in that book it’s only a personal communication between the depth of your soul, which is God, and you. It’s meant for you; it’s not part of the great unfolding drama of God. You go back and you read the ancient script for intimation and foreshadowing of that which you have experienced. If you can’t find it there, then look upon it as a private communication between you and God, and try your best to ask for light to interpret it should it come in the form of symbols. It may come in a direct, simple manner and it needs no greater interpretation than your simple intelligence. If it comes in symbols, ask for light as to the meaning of these symbols. But if you don’t find it in scripture, then it is not part of the unfolding play.729 ¶13

The unfolding play must meet the most acid test. And I tell you from experience it begins with the resurrection. It’s the exact opposite of the way man on earth thinks. Here, everything begins with birth. A man cannot be resurrected until he first dies and here it begins with the resurrection. So what is this death that we speak of, and in the next four or five weeks we are all really observing? That has taken place. Read it carefully in the 6th chapter of Romans: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” . So here we have the crucifixion is over. Everyone has been crucified with the cosmic Christ or you could not breathe. No one could cross the threshold that admits for conscious life unaided by the crucifixion of God, couldn’t do it. But that’s behind us.729 ¶14

But the real mystery begins with the resurrection. You walk the earth and do not think for one second that you are entombed. Who could think himself entombed? He goes to the cemetery and he sees sepulchers, he sees tombs; he knows he isn’t there. He will say, yesterday they put some friend of his in one of them…but he isn’t there. And he doesn’t know the great mystery. He is walking in his dream…he isn’t moving…in his dream. He is so sound asleep he doesn’t know that he was placed in a tomb. And every child born of woman was placed in a tomb by that clothing of flesh and blood and completely encased in his skull. God’s mightiest act, when he least expects it, will descend upon him, that merciful act, and arouse him. It will awaken him, and he will awake to find himself completely entombed and sealed in a sepulcher; and that tomb is his skull. After the initial panic, he will come out, in the same manner that a child is born. But he doesn’t feel a child, he doesn’t feel himself any little baby, he is the same man, the same woman that he is now and was just one second before he was awakened. And when he is awakened he thinks it’s a normal awakening, that’s what he thinks. Only the intense vibration is something he’s never experienced before. It hits him in his head, and he thinks, “This must be it”—not awakening, this must be death. It’s the opposite of death; this is now really awakening unto life when he awakens in the sepulcher. You only put dead people in tombs, therefore, he must have been dead to be so sealed in a tomb…and the tomb is his skull. It is only then that he realizes that he was all through these unnumbered ages dreaming in his tomb. And then he comes out; and then the symbolism of the first chapter of Luke begins. Then the whole thing begins to unfold and he is the one spoken of in scripture. He goes back into the ancient scripture now to find not only that which the New one tells…for the New Testament interprets the Old, not the other way around. The Old is a sealed book until the first breaks the seal. What is the name of the first one? We call Jesus Christ outside of it—because everyone who breaks the seal is Jesus Christ. There’s only one Jesus Christ and there’s only one God; and Jesus Christ is God.729 ¶15

Now, what is this [...] trying to show us? He speaks to me now not only through the cosmic Christ, he’s going to speak to me through a Son, and he names the Son and where to find him in scripture: “To what angel did he say ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee’?” and again, “To what angel did he say, ‘Thou art my son and I am thy father’”? And then we go back into the 2nd Book of Samuel, the 7th chapter, the 14th verse, and there we find him. Did I have the experience? Well, then listen to it…and you begin to feel, well now, that all has taken place in me; I have just had that. You mean something written 3,000 years ago foretold, that foreshadowed the experience of last night? And you go back and you read it over and over, and you can hardly believe this whole thing is all about you, and that’s all that it is about. The whole Bible is about God, only God. And God became us because he loves us, because God’s nature is love. Yes, he’s infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite all these, but they are only attributes of God. God’s true nature is love, infinite love, that’s his true nature. And God’s real name now he’s about to reveal to you through this Son.729 ¶16

Now, who is spoken of in the 2nd Psalm, the 7th verse? For that’s what he’s quoting. He uses only scripture to support his argument, and that’s what he quotes, the 7th verse, the 2nd Psalm: “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.” Well, these words are addressed to one called David…David. Now the next one, “And when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” . To whom is that spoken? Read it carefully. That’s spoken by the prophet Nathan to David: “Go unto my servant David and say, ‘When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I (the Lord) will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father; he shall be my son.’”729 ¶17

You read it, but you haven’t had the experience. And then one day this fantastic thing happens within you, and you begin almost to explode, and you do, something explodes, and here standing before you is David. There is no uncertainty as to who he is. I don’t care what sculpture of David is now in the Vatican. I don’t care what painter paints the David. Until you see him you can’t paint him. And I defy anyone to capture the beauty of that David on canvas, that David in marble. You can’t do it! He’s radiantly beautiful! He stands before you and he is the David of biblical fame. He looks you right in the eye. He’s just as described in the Book of Samuel, the 17th chapter…or the 15th chapter of Samuel, just like that . And you have no uncertainty as to this relationship. And what does he call you? He calls you Father. And you know you are his father, and he knows you are his father, and you also know he is your son. You are looking right into the eyes of this spiritualized being.729 ¶18

Well, what is he? You didn’t even know he was buried in you. You had no idea that was the thing that God in the beginning hid in man, as told us in Ecclesiastes: “And God has put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning until the end” . The last days…in the last days when he is departing from this age and entering through the series of mystical experiences into that Age, clothed in the exalted body of Christ Jesus, the cosmic Christ; because he took my lowly body and changed it be like his glorious body. And so we are departing. So in the last days it will be revealed what God hid in the mind of man. And what did he hide?—David. The very word tells you: Olam. He hid Olam in the mind of man, and Olam means “the eternal youth”; it means “the lad, the stripling, the eternal youth.” So eternity now is revealed not as an old man but this radiant lad. And he is God’s spiritualized son to reveal fatherhood, because without a son there is no father. A son, there must be a father, and the son comes to reveal you as God the Father. So it’s God’s purpose to give every child born of woman himself, and no one will thwart God in his purpose. His purpose is to give you himself, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you. Finally, the gift is so complete when the Son comes before you, just you, because he so gave himself to you, you are he.729 ¶19

So when God rises in man, man is just like him. So you are told in the epistle of John, the 3rd chapter of 1st John, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him” . Don’t go looking for any being in the world as your leader. You are Christ Jesus; he’s buried in you…because we are like him. And his sleep is so profound, which is now your sleep but you don’t know it, that it is as though he were dead. And the day is coming—and it may be this night because who knows?—but I’ll give you a cue as to how you will know when it is coming, and the Bible gives it. It tells of a peculiar famine that comes upon man when he’s about to return to the Father. It’s called the return of the prodigal son.729 ¶20

What caused the prodigal son to come to himself and resolve to go to his father?—a famine. He was eating the husks; instead of giving it to the pigs, he ate the husks. And the world thinks it means husks of corn.729 ¶21

No, the whole vast world is husks compared to the reality that is God. No matter how ambitious you are and how you realize all your ambitions, they all turn to dust. The rich man dies like the poor man, the wise man like the fool, the strong like the weak, and all is vanity, and vanity of vanities. So this is husks. No matter how ambitious you are, you can realize it by God’s law. But after you realize all of your dreams in this world, they turn to ashes, so they’re called husks in the Bible.729 ¶22

And when man grows tired of feeding on things that always pass away, that they wear out like a garment and they dissolve like smoke, then he changes the nature of his hunger. But God changes it for him. And the words are these, in the 8th chapter, the 11th verse of Amos: “The Lord will send a famine upon the land. It will not be a famine of bread nor a thirst for water, but of the hearing of the word of God”—a hunger so intense that nothing but that can satisfy it. It is not for money, it is not for greatness, not to be the president, not to be a dictator, not to be anything in this world that is known to men, but a hunger for the word of God. Not a thing in this world can satisfy that hunger but to understand the word of God, and the only way you understand it is to experience it. Scripture must be experienced for man to see how truly wonderful it really is. You can analyze it as scholars do, you can take the grand exegeses and see this most wonderful display of words, what the original words meant when it was used, and it’s exciting, it’s thrilling, and you may know Greek backwards and Latin backwards and Hebrew backwards, and really understand it from the scholarly point of view. But you don’t know scripture until you experience scripture.729 ¶23

You get…all the scholars of world cannot by their learning extract the wisdom of that book until they experience it. They must experience scripture to know really what it is. So you can speak with all the tongues of men and angels, and know it in and out, but you don’t know scripture until you experience it. And the day will come, may I tell you, everyone will experience it, for that is God’s plan. “As I have planned it, so shall it be; as I have purposed it, so shall it stand” and no one in the world is going to change it.729 ¶24

So until that hunger comes, take God’s law, and eat more and more of the husks, doesn’t make any difference. You’ve been eating husks all of the time since you started the journey, and you will continue to eat husks until the nature of the hunger changes and it becomes the hunger for God’s word. But only an experience of God’s word can satisfy that hunger.729 ¶25

So let no one tell you while the hunger is for this building or to join a club or to be some prominent person in the world that it’s wrong. It isn’t wrong. God gave it to you. You needed that kind of mood at a certain moment in time. He gave you that hunger; you feed upon it. Learn his law by which you can satisfy the hunger until that moment in time, like the prodigal son, you turn around.729 ¶26

And when you are brought in, what does he give the prodigal son?—commanded the servants, “Put the best robe on him”—there is no second best in God’s kingdom, the best robe. “Put the ring on his finger”—that’s the insignia of being the heir to it all; and “put shoes on his feet”—for only the slave went barefoot. When you put shoes on him…but now he’s free man. He has found David, and he who sees David, his father is made free, as told us in the 17th chapter of 1st Samuel. Anyone who finds the one who destroys the enemy of Israel I will set his father free . So to be a free man you must be shod with shoes, for only those who are slaves go without shoes. This is all symbolism but it’s beautiful symbolism.729 ¶27

So when the hunger comes upon you, real hunger, I would say to you the time is drawing near for the fulfillment of God’s promise. He’s promised you to give you a son that is his son; and when he gives you his son as your son, he has given you himself. That’s the only way God could ever reveal to man that he has fulfilled his purpose to give himself to man is through the medium of a son. “So no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” . Well, the moment will come in your life when the Son will choose to reveal you as his Father, and his Father is God. So in the end there is only God.729 ¶28

So when asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” the reply was, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” . The Lord, spelt just like Jesus, it’s Yod He Vau He, that’s how you translate the word “the Lord.” Yod He Vau He, we call it Jehovah, but so as not to mention the name, they translate it “the Lord.” Sometimes Adonay is called the name, but it means the same. Well, in this case it was Yod He Vau He…you’re going to say Jesus. The next word is Elohim; it’s a plural word meaning gods. The first time it appears in the Bible, the very first verse, “In the beginning God created the heavens and earth”…that word is plural . If you properly translated it, it would be gods…but God. Here is a compound unity. For in the end you will not lose your identity, I will not lose my identity, no one will lose their identity, and yet we are one…a compound unity, one made up of others.729 ¶29

So, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord.” Hear, O Israel, Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah, one Jesus Christ. Not a little man, but all are that cosmic Christ, the second aspect of divinity that is creating. So infinite love in creative activity is God the Son; infinite love in eternal procession, God the Holy Spirit—because the same thing is going to happen to every child born of woman, so it’s eternal procession.729 ¶30

So he makes the statement, “I will send the Holy Spirit upon you.” Because when the Holy Spirit comes it’s eternal procession of the same thing: It is resurrection; it is birth; it is the discovery of the fatherhood of God through the Son, David; and the ascent into heaven. So, the eternal procession—it doesn’t alter the pattern.729 ¶31

If anyone has any doubt as to “did I really have the experience of being born from above,” I say to you, were you resurrected? If you say no to that answer, then it is no to the other. You cannot be born until after the resurrection. It’s an entirely new world. You’re resurrected into a new world and born into that world, but the resurrection precedes the birth by a matter of seconds. But it does come first. If you haven’t had the resurrection…and no one who experienced it could ever forget it in eternity. You can forget what you had for breakfast, you can forget what you had for dinner, you can forget the last telephone call you made and to whom, but you can’t forget the resurrection. You can’t forget any of these four stages, you can’t do it. They are indelibly imprinted upon you and you can’t forget them. So no one need ask did I have it?729 ¶32

Many of us in our anxiety and our eagerness to experience it will conjure in the mind’s eye a certain experience of a child. We are eager…and who can blame anyone for being eager to have the experience…and we’ll conjure it. It’s a false birth. For the birth is so unique that it defies description. How are you going to describe it? I tried my best, I tried not to embellish, not to add to or take from, tell it just as it happened to me. As you’re told in those five words in the Book of Luke, “They related their own experience.” Almost the entire Bible could be wrapped in those five words; they told what had happened. When they told what had happened, it seemed like the words of an idle tale, and they did not believe them. So it seemed like the words of an idle tale.729 ¶33

For our priesthoods of the world taught us to believe that because Jesus Christ, a man, born physically in an unnatural manner, was resurrected from the dead, you who believe in his name and believe in him as a being outside of yourself, not buried in you, then you will enter the kingdom of heaven. May I tell you, don’t believe it. Listen to these words, “Of all born of woman none is greater than John the Baptist; yet I tell you the least in the kingdom is greater than John” . I need not analyze it for you, it tells you John is not in the kingdom. Doesn’t it tell you that? The least in the kingdom is greater than John, therefore, John is not in the kingdom.729 ¶34

John belongs to this world and he was the most perfect born of woman. Wasn’t born from above…born of woman. He tried to change his nature. He thought by a change of nature he would bring about the birth. Can’t do it. It’s wonderful to change from being violent to being kind, marvelous. And people will say, “But he must have been born again because look, I recall him when he was a thief. Look at him now, a gentle, kind, wonderful person. I knew him when he was violent in his reaction to everything. Look at him now, how loving he is. Surely he has had the spiritual birth.” Not at all.729 ¶35

Listen to these words of William James, “The greatest revolution in this century was the discovery that man by changing his inner attitudes of mind could change the outer aspects of his life.” Anyone can practice that and you’ll amaze your friends. They all stand dumbfounded when they see you, the man that you are, as against the man that they knew. But it doesn’t mean that because they see that radical change in your physical life that you have experienced the spiritual birth. That is something that is not shown on the outside. Hasn’t a thing to do with what you are now doing on the outside. It’s something that is a gift: It’s the gift of God. And the grace of God is always linked with a specific event and that event is the resurrection of Jesus Christ in you. That’s his grace.729 ¶36

For when God gives you his grace, it is when he awakens himself in you as you. For, Jesus Christ is God, believe it or not, and God is infinite love. Infinite love is buried in man. Yes, even the man this night who may be going to the chair, having in cold blood killed one or a dozen people. That being who could do such a thing, that dastardly act—still buried in that man that we in the world of Caesar will now exact from him a life for a life, and take his for the twelve that he took—buried in that man is the God of love. But, so sound asleep, and the nightmare of the being who is walking the earth is so intense that he is totally unaware of the presence in him of Jesus Christ.729 ¶37

And may I tell you, Jesus Christ could not emerge from a man in whom he does not now exist, couldn’t do it. What could come out of the ocean that is not now in the ocean? What could come out of man that is not now in man? So Jesus Christ is the life of man, he is in man. And the day will come when God the Father who is Jesus Christ—but not in creative activity—Jesus Christ is God in creative activity; and it is he in man that will be awakened by that infinite, merciful act of God the Father, who will simply arouse him with the most intense vibration you will ever experience right in your head. And when he arouses him, it’s you, you awake. The fusion has taken place.729 ¶38

And then you know that wonderful mystery of the 54th chapter of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband” . For bear in mind, through him [...] created the world. So “the Maker” is “he who created the world.” This is God in creative activity, called God the Son. He is your Maker and he is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name. And what must a husband do? We are told in Genesis he must leave all and cleave to his wife until they become one, not two. So here, you are his emanation yet his bride ’til the sleep of death is past . He emanates man…that’s his creation. He creates it by emanation, and then falls in love with his emanation, and cleaves to his emanation until they cease to be two, God and man, and only God. You’ll become one with the being who cleaves to you. So when you awake, no loss of identity. But now you have inherited a presence. Aside from inheriting a kingdom you inherit a presence, and that presence is God the Father. So this is what I mean.729 ¶39

And the first three verses of that wonderful epistle to the Hebrews: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days”—for the turn of the age is now to the individual who experiences it—“in these last days he has spoken unto us by a son” . And this son he gave all things. This son created all. This son which is himself reflects the very glory of God, and this son bears the very stamp of his nature. It is this son that is changing our lowly body to be like his glorious body, so that in the end the body you will wear will be one in form with that of the exalted Christ.729 ¶40

But, this night, if your hunger is on an entirely different level, take the advice of William James. He certainly proved it. He could have read this great advice in the Bible, but he was a great scientist, a great psychiatrist, a great philosopher. He taught at Harvard for years, his brother Henry wrote these fantastic books, and they were brilliant minds; but like all of these brilliant minds they don’t really read the Bible. I saw in last week’s New York Times that the Bible Society last year in 1963 distributed thirty-three million Bibles. That’s one house, the biggest, granted, but only one house. Harper, Enroe, they publish Bibles, Schribner publishes Bibles, Nelson and Son publishes Bibles, all the big publishers publish Bibles; but one house, the Bible Society of America, distributed thirty-three million Bibles.729 ¶41

Now add to that what the other parts of the world sold in Bibles. And then you will take all the best sellers of the entire year, put them all together, multiply them by a very large number, and they would only come to a fraction of the sales equal to that of the Bible. And yet, these best sellers, may I tell you, they are read, and the Bible, with a hundred million distributed, isn’t read. You give it to a girl at confirmation, or a boy; he’s confirmed, and he thanks you for the Bible, takes it home and puts it where it gets dust. When one gets married, they go to their lovely Bible before they consult a priest, and he keeps that as a wonderful memento, that’s all, never opened the book.729 ¶42

And so, it’s the most unread book in the world, and year after year it is a fantastic sale. If you take all fifty million in our land—for thirty-three in one house, surely the others would make it fifty million—and then take England, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and all the other parts of the world, France, Germany, all Christian nations, and see what there would be. And these books, I tell you, they’re not opened. People who ride the subways in New York City if they have a Bible, know what they do? They put a cover on it. They’re embarrassed to be seen, especially a man. A lady who had a Bible she wouldn’t mind showing it, but a man on the subway with a Bible? He puts a false cover on it. He doesn’t want anyone to know that he is so feminine that he’s reading a Bible, the greatest book in the world.729 ¶43

And until man actually experiences the Bible he remains on the wheel of recurrence. So when the hunger comes to know the word of God which is the Bible, I say the time is drawing near for the promise of God to be fulfilled in that one who has the hunger.729 ¶44

Now let us go into the Silence for a moment. We’re supposed to close, you know, at the end of this month, that’s by my contract, but I have an extension to the 26th day of May and then I close, and I will not be back here until the middle of October. I’m leaving on the 27th for New York to attend my daughter’s graduation, and then we’re going off to Barbados for a couple of months. Then my next stop will be in San Francisco in September. So I will not be back here until the middle of October. But I will be here through until the 26th of May.729 ¶45

Another point I want to make, these Tuesdays and Thursdays come to an end with this month. They have committed this room for Thursday night, and so we have to go back to our old stand of Friday night. So it will be every Tuesday and Friday beginning in March. Then I have scheduled the program for March and I would say five-eighths or three-quarters of it will be on the law. There will be enough of the promise woven into it, but it’s going to be on the law, much of it, beginning with the very first one “Is Causation Imaginal?” We hope to prove to you with case histories and all kinds of proof that imagining does create reality. So, we have just a few left in the present series, and I hope maybe by Thursday night to have them for you. But, anyway, before we close the new programs will be out.729 ¶46

Now are there any questions?729 ¶47

If I titled it, I would call it “The Word.” We’re told in the 17th chapter of the Book of Luke that “he came to a certain village and ten lepers raised their voices and said, ‘Master, have mercy on us’, and, looking at them, he said, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ As they went they were cleansed” . So every word of scripture is a message to us, for the Bible is simply the word of God that would not keep silent and could be expressed in no other way…just poured through those who were qualified to receive it. So in this simple little story you and I could transform our entire world if we could only extract its message.726 ¶1

What is the story trying to tell us? When you hear the word “leper” you think of some unclean person who is put aside from society and they cannot mingle with man because they are unclean, and it’s contagious. But you and I have been put aside and ostracized socially, financially, intellectually, ostracized in a thousand ways…and we are the lepers. So what is this story trying to tell us? He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Well, in the ancient world the priest was not only the one who instructed man in the word of God, he was also the physician, and only a certificate of approval from him could allow one who was ostracized to mingle freely with the crowd. So show yourself to the priests and if he approves of your cleanliness, he will give you that certificate of approval; then you can mingle freely with the crowd. And as they went they were cleansed. What a story!726 ¶2

You and I as we are here, suppose now we were embarrassed, say, financially, how would I take this story and become cleansed of that poverty and find myself in a sense of security, how would I do it? First of all, there is an action here: To produce the new requires a complete rearrangement of the furniture of the mind. Well, the furniture of my mind, your mind, our minds, is simply those that we know. We have friends, we have relatives, and all of these people, all really, are bits of furniture in the mind. Any rearrangement would change meaning, wouldn’t it, but any rearrangement.726 ¶3

And so, were I tonight in an office and I desired a higher position in that office with greater responsibility and more income, I would in my mind’s eye see the same office and see myself occupying a different position in that office. And that change would automatically change me relative to everyone in that office. Everyone would have to see me differently, for I would see them differently. [...] I now see everyone differently in that state. And just make them, for one little moment, just make them remain stationary in my mind’s eye as I would set you up for a portrait. If I’m going to take a picture of you, I would ask you to pose in a certain way; when I get it just right, then I’ll snap it. So in my mind’s eye I make it, I make this rearranged structure of the mind, remaining stationary long enough for me to actually take a picture of it, a mental picture.726 ¶4

You look at it mentally and you inhale until you feel a sense of relief. A peculiar thrill goes through you. For all of the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. I think anyone has had this…anyone here undoubtedly you’ve had this experience…you’re waiting for someone to come home and they are late, and you love them…could be a child. But they’re late. It’s an hour late, maybe it’s two hours. You get more and more tense. Then you hear the familiar footsteps or the familiar voice and that relief that comes…there is no pleasure in the world comparable to relief. Of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt.726 ¶5

So you want to expand your world, you want to go beyond where you are in the world, and so you rearrange the furniture of the mind. Then, when you get it all set, you feel that thrill of accomplishment and the relief that comes with it. You do nothing thereafter. That’s impregnation, it’s a self-impregnation, it’s all that you need; and in a way that no one knows that will move through a certain series of events and come to fruition and suddenly appears in your world. But suddenness is only the emergence of this hidden continuity from that moment in time when you self-impregnated yourself up to that moment when suddenly it appears. But not until the whole thing has germinated can it break forth into leafage as it were…can’t be done.726 ¶6

So here in this simple little story of the leper…I am the leper, you are the leper, we’re all the lepers…and, here, “Go show yourself.” Now the entire Bible is really imaginal. I don’t take a physical journey to the priest and display myself to the priest, I do it mentally. Were it true, how would I feel? If this thing were really true, that I am actually now free of any restriction, then with whom would I share it? Well, I’d share it with my wife, share it with my daughter, share it with my family, share it with my friends, they’d all know it. Well then, let them see me, all in my own Imagination. So let me now assume that I am the man that I want to be; and then to confirm it, let me bring into my mind’s eye those who would see it were it true. So my journey is mental, it isn’t physical. So I am the leper, and I am told, “Go show yourself to the priests.” As I go, I am cleansed, as I make the act, make the effort. And so it’s all an imaginal act. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.”726 ¶7

Well, who is God? God is my own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. There is no other God. His name forever and forever is I AM. “Go and tell them I AM has sent you. If they ask the name, just say I AM has sent you. That’s my name forever…and by this name I shall be known through all generations”…no other name . When I’m doing it, who is doing it? I am. So I bring into my mind’s eye a certain state, and I see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Then let me actually focus it to make a picture, take a portrait of it. Then by a deep inhalation I impress it upon myself, I become self-impressed. Now, God being my own Imagination, God does not will about things but in things. Not about them but in things. Having impressed his purpose upon things, God’s will is their will, and therefore it must be done. And so who is this God? God is my own wonderful human Imagination.726 ¶8

So let me give you a simple little story. I’ll go back now into the fifties, early fifties. My little niece came up here. She’d gone through school in Barbados, gone through what we call the girls’ high school, which is comparable to our high schools here. But we haven’t any educational system beyond that, not really. But our high school in Barbados, if you really graduate with high honors, you can make Oxford and Cambridge without further examinations…as my two nephews did…today they are doctors out of Cambridge. No further examination if you really go through, because the system is a wonderful system. And in spite of our claims to the contrary…we cannot claim the same…our system in Barbados…not by any high school standards here, I assure you. So she came up. She had a very good education, but only to what we call the girl’s high school. She wanted to be a nurse, so she thought. She applied at St. Luke’s in New York City, which is an excellent place; but the head nurse, for reasons that I need not explain, was prejudiced right away and just made her feel about that big, and told her she wasn’t properly educated to enter that system, that school. So she came home that day—-her parents came up with her, they were all in our apartment, they were living with us, hoping to get her into this lovely nursing school—-and Sally began to cry. Her mother, my only sister, she began to cry. And I said in a light, light way, I said, “Sally darling, you came here for one purpose, you came here to get married to a perfectly wonderful American doctor. That’s your purpose really, and so I will see that you’re happily married to a perfectly wonderful American who is a doctor.” Well, my brother-in-law, he was so tense and so keyed up, he exploded. He said, “Sally, I will send you all over the world for two years, go any place you want, and then after two years of travel come back to Barbados. You need no nursing, you don’t need a job, you have all the cushions of the world.” And she does have all the comforts in the world as far as money goes…she needs no money. But that’s what Sally wanted; Sally wanted to go through nursing.726 ¶9

So my wife said to her, “Alright, this is what I’ll do for you. We’ll go over and see my personal doctor, who is at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and he has quite a voice there.” Said my wife, “You make out a new application and instead of saying that you went through a girls’ high school—in this country they wouldn’t understand that; in England if you say I went to a public school you mean Eton, you mean these wonderful schools; here, if you say you went to public school, you don’t mean that at all. So maybe the person who will interview you will not understand if you say you went to a girl’s high school, so give it another name. Give it another name altogether.” So we gave it another name altogether and she went to Columbia, Columbia University. They have a nursing school associated with Presbyterian Medical and Sally made it. And so, Sally went through. She met a doctor there, wonderful man, young chap only two years her senior. They courted in my apartment, they married, they have three children and the fourth is on the way.726 ¶10

All that I did, I saw her—-when I saw the tears falling down her cheeks and her mother’s cheeks—-I simply made a mental picture of Sally being happily married to an American, a doctor, of whom she was proud. That’s all that I did…one deep inhalation and I felt the relief…that I didn’t care what happened thereafter, whether she made nursing school or not. She did, she went through the entire four years of nursing, and she came out a very fine nurse. And then right after she got married to this chap.726 ¶11

And this is the picture of the leper, ostracized—“You aren’t worthy of our school, [...]” and then you cry out for mercy. What is mercy? Mercy is only love in action, that’s all that it is, “Lord have mercy upon me”; and God is all love; therefore, act. I’m asking for action. And you are the one called upon to act, for that’s God. God became man that man may become God . So when the appeal is made to you don’t turn to any outside God…it’s to you. Alright, so you have an Imagination, it’s your being, your whole being; then bring that individual before your mind’s eye, represent that being to yourself as you would like to see him, to see her, see them, and then feel thrilled, and believe in the reality of that imaginal act. That imaginal act on your part was God in action. And that’s the story. It doesn’t make sense, but even though it doesn’t make sense, if it proves itself in performance, what does it matter what others think? If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what you think or I think about the matter? It doesn’t really matter at all, does it? Not if I can prove it in the testing.726 ¶12

Well, here is something I prove in the testing. I can multiply it by the thousands. And you do nothing about it, really. You simply imagine “the end” and you photograph “the end.” Don’t go back to the beginning, the end. That’s “the end” when you set someone up for a picture. You go to “the end,” that’s what you want to take, and then you take it, and then you develop it. Well, in this process life develops it, and all things move toward that end. And then you are made to move across a certain bridge of incidents, a certain series of events that leads towards the fulfillment of that imaginal act that you impressed upon yourself. It’s a self-impression, that’s all that it is.726 ¶13

So, to bring forth something new in this world means that we rearrange the furniture of the mind. We all have the same furniture. But, my position in this mind of mine is related to furniture. If I change anything, the slightest little change would result in a change of meaning in this world. Now, we’re told in scripture, “So shall my word go forth from my mouth; and it shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish my purpose, and prosper in that for which I sent it” . It shall not return unto me empty. Well, what is the word spoken of, my words here? No, these aren’t the words. The “Word” in scripture is simply “meaning.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” . That word “logos” which we translate “word” means “meaning.” If I spoke in some foreign tongue to you and it had no meaning, it would mean nothing. If I repeated it and I didn’t understand what I am saying, it would mean nothing. It must mean something. So, “In the beginning is meaning, and meaning is with God, and meaning was God.” Well, God is your own wonderful human Imagination. Now, let there be meaning to this rearranged structure of the mind. If I saw now in my mind’s eye something implying something, I have a word; and the potency of that word is in its implication. What does it imply? That is its power.726 ¶14

So I see you in my mind’s eye, and you are saying to me, “I have heard good news about you” and then you congratulate me. Well, then that is implying something. I accept your congratulations. I don’t excuse it, I don’t turn away, I believe every word that you are saying about my good fortune, I accept it. So this is a word of God; I take the full imprint upon myself. I need do nothing to bring it to pass; life itself will bring it to pass. Then I move across all these little events in this world leading up to the fulfillment of that impression which I made upon myself.726 ¶15

So everyone is free. Everyone can do it. No one can stop you from doing it. There’s no power in this world that can stop you, the individual, from making a self-impression. When people tell you that they did it the other way, let them tell you what they will. I’m telling you of a simple way, the way of scripture. And when it happens you may even forget. Most of us forget and so when things happen in this world we don’t even recognize our own harvest. So when we get into this mood, and we are now living in a luscious manner, we get so arrogant, we think we did it in some different way. When people ask us how we did it we either are embarrassed to tell them how we really did it, or maybe we don’t believe that that imaginal act did it anyway, and so we take the means by which it came to pass and give all credit to the means. So we met Mr. Jones and Mr. Jones introduced me to Mr. Brown, and between the two of them they took me to something else, and then I think the means actually was the cause and the source of my success. It wasn’t so at all. They had to come.726 ¶16

How many stories of this nature…here is my father standing on a lot, thirty-five acres on the little, tiny island of Barbados. He looks out to sea…he just bought a cow from one of these three ladies, three sisters who lived together. They had a cow that went dry and they knew this cow would either die or you could use it for food, so they called up my father who dealt in such things. He had a store where he had meat, and he had, well, all the things that go in a grocery store. So he went up to this place with my brother Victor, and having seen the cow he made her an offer, which she accepted, told the man to take it down to the slaughter house. And then looking over this fabulous land, thirty-five acres, and the frontage was a lovely beach, a heavenly beach, and he said to my brother Vic, “Oh, Vic, what a wonderful place for a hotel!” Then in his mind’s eye he imagined it, the whole thing done. Then he turned to these ladies and he said, “If you ever sell, give me a chance to buy.” And they promised that they would. Well, the years went by, a few of them died, it was much too big for one to maintain, and so they were going to sell. The day of the sale, the one person who wanted it more than anything else in this world was in Rio de Janeiro on business, and he forgot the day of the sale. And when he cabled his lawyer to bid for the property, he was twenty-four hours late. My father bought it. Today a perfectly wonderful hotel stands on that property. Not the whole thirty-five acres…he bought the thirty-five acres and sold off most of it for private homes, so it’s surrounded with lovely homes all over the place. But a hotel stands on that property. He simply took one deep impression…and this is it.726 ¶17

This whole vast world is brought into being in the same way. And so, you ask anyone—-they won’t tell you, maybe they don’t know—-how God creates. But you’re told he created by the word. And the word is not that you utter it with your breath; a word simply means “meaning.” Well now, you could be dumb and you can’t express anything, but you can in your mind’s eye see clearly what you would like to see. Seeing it clearly, bringing it in focus, impress it upon yourself with a deep inhalation, and feel the reality of the thing done, and trust it implicitly! As we are told in the 37th Psalm, “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act” . He will act, for “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” So you trust in him after you commit your way to the Lord…just my way.726 ¶18

So just like dear little Sally, and Sally today is blissfully happy living in Cincinnati; and he is a perfectly wonderful doctor, successful doctor, and she is blessed with her lovely family. So I say to everyone, you can do it. And do not for one moment limit God: All things are possible to God, but all things. But don’t put him on the outside: God became man that man may become God. There’s no place that man could ever go that he’s not aware that he is. I could, as I stand here, suffer from amnesia and not now who I am or where I am or what I am, but I can’t fail to know that I am. I know I am, but I don’t know where I am and I don’t know what I am or who I am, but how could I forget that I am. No one can forget that he is! Well, that is God. That is the grand I-am-ness that is sunk in man, and that is God. Then he takes man through the furnaces of experience and brings him out as himself in the end.726 ¶19

When he brings him out, the story of being brought out that story is told us in scripture. But man won’t believe it. They think in some strange way that it happened 2,000 years ago in a peculiar manner. No, it is happening all of the time. I am convinced that those who are here and who have made it a habit of being exposed to this thought are not far from having the experiences recorded in scripture of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, it’s only a pattern, that’s all that it is. It’s a portrait of God’s play. And so, everyone has the identical experience, born in the same manner that it is said he was born. Not by any miraculous woman not knowing a man, hasn’t a thing to do with that. Hasn’t a thing to do with some woman who knows no man, who has a child in a peculiar, miraculous way. It has all to do with you when you are born in an entirely different way. You find yourself awake within your own skull; that’s the first grand act. And you didn’t realize that you were dead; but you realize now that you must have been, or someone thought you were or they would not have placed you in the skull. For your skull becomes a tomb and you awaken in your skull to discover it is a tomb. Then you come out of that skull to find the symbolism as recorded in scripture is taking place right before your eyes. The child that you are told in scripture will be the sign of this fantastic event…and here is the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes . And men find it, just as men of scripture were told, Go and find it, and this is a sign for you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying on the floor. And then they do.726 ¶20

Then comes the unfoldment of the entire thing, all within you. Not on the outside, not a thing takes place on the outside. If you read scripture carefully, not one event recorded in scripture was seen by the eye, only by the one who had the experience…if you read it carefully. But you have been told through the centuries that the wise men on the outside heard it. You’re told this, that and the other. Listen to these words carefully: He came out of the wonderful temptation, came into the temple, and they gave him a book, the Book of Isaiah. He opened the Book of Isaiah and read that passage which is the 61st chapter. He read just a few words, just a verse and a half, really: “And the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; and to set at liberty the captives; and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” . Then he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant. Then when he sat down, he said to those who looked at him, “Today the scripture that you have just heard has been fulfilled” .726 ¶21

If you read it…not just that little passage…go back and read that which leads up to it. He comes out of the wilderness…you’re told he was alone in the wilderness. If he was alone in the wilderness, who would know what transpired? Could anyone in this world tell you of the temptations? Could anyone honestly record…and the evangelists are recording the temptations and then quoting the Book of Deuteronomy to support scripture. Well, who could actually tell if I came out after forty days alone? Who could tell you what I experienced unless I told you? If I tell it to you, then you could just record it. But you are not eavesdropping if I am alone. In that era it wasn’t bugged. He was all alone, therefore, if you’re going to tell what happened to him who was all alone, he either told it to you or in some strange way you, too, know the mystery.726 ¶22

No, the one to whom it happens, he tells you. Either you believe it or you don’t believe it. So he tells you this has happened. What happened?—this day I have been anointed. If I am anointed and the Spirit of God descended upon me, therefore, who could have seen that descent but the one on whom it descended? And he either tells you that he experienced it or you don’t know he did. So “I’m anointed,” said he. So the whole thing is a drama taking place within the individual, not a thing taking place on the outside.726 ¶23

So from beginning to end, the whole book is simply the drama of God unfolding in man. And there are many of us who will not believe it. May I tell you, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t believe it, it’s perfectly alright. Go through life and then you come to the inevitable end to find yourself restored and not dead at all but passing through the same kind of turmoil that you are here. Until one day you’ll hear the same story, and you’ll hear it over and over and over, and one day the soil of the mind will become fertile enough and prepared enough for it to take root. When it takes root then it grows, and then you have the experiences. But it takes quite a while to take that hard mind of man, like granite, and really make it amenable to the point where the seed, the word of God, can reach it and take root and grow. So the idea of the kingdom of God must be planted on man, and planting on man suddenly it takes root in man and it grows.726 ¶24

But many of us, as we are told in the 13th chapter of Matthew, it falls on the highway and the birds of the air eat it; and then it falls among tares and they choke it; and then it falls upon very hard rock and it takes quick root but there’s no depth, the soil hasn’t been prepared, and so the sun scorches it the next day. But then there is also an area where the land is well prepared and when the word or seed of God falls, then it is accepted, and then grows and brings forth thirty-fold, sixty-fold and a hundred-fold .726 ¶25

So those who are very, very brilliant in this world, bright minds, successful in the eyes of Caesar, who reject this, completely reject it, perfectly alright. Don’t raise a finger to persuade them, leave them just as they are, for that mind has to go through the furnaces. So they will reach the inevitable…like a Stalin…he has to make his exit too. He thought he’d live forever, and Khrushchev thought that he would simply be the grand man forever. Now they make them un-persons, rub them all out, so they cease even to be as far as they are concerned, cease even to be. They all become un-persons. But they’re not really dead; they’re restored to life, and placed in a position best suited for their tomorrow, because, eventually, that soil must be prepared to receive the word of God.726 ¶26

And the word of God begins with the promise to Abraham…that’s the word of God: “I will bring forth from you a son” . And then comes a greater development of the idea: to David, “And join your fathers, when you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up after you a son, who will come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” . Then comes the fulfillment of these promises in the mind of the one who heard these stories and didn’t reject it, who accepted it and waited in confidence for God to unfold himself in man.726 ¶27

But while we are waiting, having accepted the idea and believing it, let us change our world and make it a more beautiful world in this world of Caesar. There’s nothing wrong with having money, not a thing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with having something lovely in this world that you have now, [...]. Don’t let anyone tell you you aren’t entitled to it. And don’t be completely limited by these concepts of the outside priestly world. Hasn’t a thing to do with reality.726 ¶28

Hear God’s word…and he gives you complete freedom of choice and the arrangement of that structure. If I move from here to there, and look at this room after having moved, the room differs. The room remains the same to itself but differs relative to me if I move. So I move relative to where I am financially, socially, intellectually, and then I look at my world, contemplation of that motion, and then I see it differently, and everyone looks at me and sees me differently. If today you became the person that you would like to be, your friends would know it. Well, then move mentally and then let your friends know it mentally. Let them see you as they would have to see you were it true, and then take a wonderful deep inhalation and take that picture. You don’t have to really develop it, it just happens, it just happens in this world.726 ¶29

Others will tell you, you must go out and struggle. Alright, let them struggle. As far as I am concerned, let them struggle from now to the ends of time. I didn’t struggle, I assure you. I didn’t struggle, didn’t raise a finger. And when I became aware of what I had…I hadn’t the slightest idea…and I didn’t struggle. I simply day after day after day heard good news for others and got into the mood of hearing good news. It seemed such a marvelous thing to do to hear good news for people. I got so much in the habit of hearing good news that I couldn’t hear other news. Then I was made aware of the fact that what was given me back in 1941, I think it was, 1942, which I [...] suddenly had this fantastic value. Came back last year with a consciousness of actually having what I’m quite sure ninety-nine percent of the people of the world wouldn’t even dream of having. I don’t feel any different about it…I am still telling the same story…makes no difference to me whatsoever. I could put my hand upon it, I don’t really care, I don’t need it, but it’s there. I had it, my wife will have it if I should drop this night, my daughter will have it. But I, personally, have no desire for it— and yet it’s mine—none whatsoever.726 ¶30

So I tell you, don’t be concerned. Everything is possible to God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. Lose yourself completely in hearing good news for people. It doesn’t matter what the world will tell you. They’ll call you a sap, call you a fool, call you all these things, it doesn’t really matter. Don’t argue with them at all. Just go blindly on speaking the word of God and the word of God is simply that concept in your own mind’s eye that has meaning. Does it have meaning? Does it mean something? Well, that’s a word. Well, now speak it into being without using words. You speak it by simply seeing it mentally, accepting it as true, feel the thrill, that relief that comes, and then let it go. And no power in this world can stop it from coming to fruition.726 ¶31

Any more than that nurse, who was the head nurse of St. Luke’s, could have stopped my little niece from going through. If you compare the two today, although St. Luke’s is a wonderful school of nursing, I don’t think any doctor will tell you that it is as good as Columbia. Because Columbia University far excels…because they have as professors all the doctors there, all professors from [...]. You get four years of that training. Judged by human standards, she didn’t have a chance of a snowball in hell to get into Columbia to come straight from little Barbados with only a high school degree. But she did. When I said to her—-I did it kiddingly—-“Sally has come here only to marry a lovely American boy who is a doctor,” I thought I’d break the spell. That’s what I did it for. Then when I got the reaction—-tears from her mother, tears from herself, and this reaction from her father—-I said right there I’ll do it…and I did. Then two years went by, one day she comes home bringing this young intern. He’s a nice chap. Then next week brought him back, the same chap. Then after five or six visits of this nature I knew this thing was serious, and so, in my own home came this wonderful proposal and consolation. They went to Barbados, got married.726 ¶32

So this is how this law works. Don’t try to rationalize it. You can’t reason it, it just doesn’t work that way. But I’ll tell you one thing, the very first act of correction or cure is revise. It’s called in scripture repent. But that word has strange connotations, and using it means “to feel remorseful, to feel regretful.” Hasn’t a thing to do with that. Repent is a radical change of attitude towards life. I call it revision, for revision results in repeal. I take the contents of my mind—-I’m going to live with them if I don’t repeal them—-and to repeal them I must revise them. So I revise them; I change the furniture of my mind. The average person will go home year in and year out and wouldn’t change one piece of furniture in his home. He found it so and it is so. So he might pull it aside just to dust it and put it right back again. It would never occur to him to change it. Well, that’s simply a picture of the fixity of his own mind…doesn’t change anything.726 ¶33

Well, you change the structure of your mind. You have all of the furniture of the world. All of your friends are part of the furniture of the mind and change them relative to you. Let them see you as they must see you were you what you would like to be, let them see you that way. And then don’t for one moment…someone asked me earlier today, “Well, do you do it every night?” If it pleases you, yes, if it pleases you. But doing it every night doesn’t mean that is going to make it so. It only takes one inhalation to do it. It’s like a pregnancy, so after one has become pregnant they’ve conceived, they may or may not perform the act until birth, I don’t know, they may. But all the acts between the impression and birth aren’t aiding that growth. It’s going to grow in its own normal time, and when the time is fulfilled it will be born.726 ¶34

As told us in scripture, “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” . Everything has its own appointed hour. A little chicken comes out in three weeks, a little lamb in five months, a baby in nine months, a horse in twelve, so we all have different intervals of time. But additional impressions will not help you. When you do it once, if you really do it, it’s done! Then leave it alone. And then live in confidence that that self-impregnation has its own way of bringing it to pass and objectifying itself on the screen of space. And it will!726 ¶35

So try it, costs you nothing to try it. So let everyone this night take a noble concept of self and then use a frame of reference to reflect that you are that person; because if you were that person, others would see it, they would know of it. So just simply take it, let the world see it, and feel the thrill that comes with it and feel the relief that comes with accomplishment. Then drop it and go about your business in this world. Everything will simply add up to bring it to pass. So you try it.726 ¶36

And then, may I ask a favor of you, when you get the results, as you will, share them with me so I may tell it to my friends here. Either tell me at the meeting or tell me in writing, write me a letter, but do share it with me. You see, in the story we started tonight there were ten and only one returned to say thanks. Nine didn’t come back. One came back and said, “Thank you, Master,” and he said, “Were there not ten? Where are the nine who did not return?” Now I can take any little child and teach the child to say “thank you,” any child can do that. But I hardly ever need teach him to feel thank you. Well now, all you do is simply feel it. I could teach you to say thanks and these empty words mean nothing…but to feel tonight grateful and thankful because a thing is real and it’s true.726 ¶37

But I would ask more than one of the ten to return and tell me. Not for my own satisfaction, for others so I can share it with them and tell them, tell everyone, how it worked for you. That would encourage them, because it will work if you do it. So this is a simple, simple story of the ten lepers who asked for mercy, asked him to act in a loving way relative to them, “Have mercy upon us,” and all he said is, “Go and show yourself to the priests.” Just imagine that wonderful thought, because if I really believe what I’ve told you this night I would act, wouldn’t I? If you believe what you heard this night you would act, wouldn’t you? Well, going and showing myself to the priests, isn’t that acting? Well, the priests happen to be the crowd who will now give me approval for what I asked. It could be my wife, my daughter, my son, my friends…that’s the priest. And I show them that I am the man that I wanted to be and they approve it. So as I go, I’m cleansed…cleansed of what I was because I become what I am assuming that I am. That’s the story. It’s a simple story, but every little story in scripture has a profound meaning: the meaning to set man free, for when he starts the Word it’s to set the captive free. Tell them the good news for now you’re anointed, go tell them the good news and set the captive free. Set everyone free by the good news. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *726 ¶38

Tonight’s subject is “Spiritual States,” that the spiritual states of the soul are all eternal; learn to distinguish between man and his present state. When we open the Bible and read any passage whatsoever we encounter men and women, and you might think that they existed in time and space on this earth—-and the whole vast world who accepts the Bible will take it in that light. May I tell you, the Bible has no reference whatsoever to any person that ever walked the face of this earth, to any event that would occur that ever occurred on earth. But man has mistaken these characters, these personifications, for persons; and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended; and the vehicle that conveys the instruction for the instruction itself.723 ¶1

In the current issue of Time magazine (I got mine today), under the head of The Church, here was this brilliant man of letters D. H. Lawrence, considered a brilliant writer, a master in the use of words, and here he said, “The resurrection is simply Christ becoming aware of sensual love.” That’s what the resurrection is to D. H. Lawrence. There’s another writer who bears a name that I would call a Greek name—-I don’t know him, never heard of him—-he said, “The last temptation of Christ is simply Christ struck with sexual desire.” Well, here are two men undoubtedly…I know one is considered a great mind. And then in yesterday’s Times, the L. A. Times, I read a little extract from what the Pope had to say the previous day last Sunday. And here is one who is head of possibly 600 million who call themselves Christians, and he said that the Jew killed Christ, but he did it in ignorance because he did not now who he was. Now, here are three men, leaders in their field, who still see this story as taking place on this level.723 ¶2

They do not see the mystery at all, in spite of their titles. It either is revealed to you or else someone to whom it has been revealed tells it and you believe it, or you reject it and go along your business on this level. Christ Jesus is a supernatural being housed in everyone or one could not live, one could not breathe.723 ¶3

Now, let us take a state, a spiritual state. I mention the word…anyone instantly thinks of a man. He is the first patriarch as tradition has it. Tradition has it that he lived 4,000 years ago. You can find it catalogued, the very day and month of his birth on earth, and scholars will spend, oh, limitless hours trying to find the exact day and month, because they give him a father. His father is Terah. So here now we have one called Abraham—where real civilization begins—-in Abraham. He is told that he will have offspring more numerous than the sands of the sea. Can you conceive of that, more numerous than the stars of heaven? Here is a man…alright, all will come out of Abraham we are told…but only a certain kind will come out.723 ¶4

So, let us see how it begins in the 12th chapter (Genesis), where he is told to “leave his home, leave his father, leave his kin and go into a land that I will show you.” Then we turn over, where now the real beginning starts in a dream, the 15th chapter of the Book of Genesis: “And as the sun was going down, a great sleep fell upon Abram, and a dread and great darkness fell upon him. And the Lord said to Abram, ‘Your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be slaves there, and they will be oppressed for 400 years.’”723 ¶5

Now, you read that and you think a presence called God is speaking to a man called Abraham. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. Abraham is an eternal spiritual state, and you and I enter that state and do exactly what we’re told here in scripture: we fall asleep in that state. Then we have the dreams, this dream of horror which is this world. It doesn’t last 400 years. Four is a symbol. Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value as well as a symbolical value. 400 is the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, that letter is Tau; the symbol of that is the sign of the cross. This body is the cross, the only cross on which Christ was ever crucified…no wooden cross. This is the tree. As Blake said, “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through Nature to find this tree, but their search was all in vain; there grows one in the human brain.” That’s where we are nailed. Christ is nailed upon this tree, upon this cross. No Jew ever nailed him on this cross; he nailed himself on this cross. As we are told in the 10th chapter of the Book of John: “No one takes away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the right to lay it down and the right to take it up again.” No one takes my life.723 ¶6

And it’s from this Book of John that the Pope was quoting to justify his claim that the Jews killed him. Had he turned only two chapters over—-he was quoting the 8th chapter—-had he gone over two to the 10th he would have found this. Surely he must know it…but seemingly you can’t seem to know it until it’s revealed; or you hear it from one to whom it has been revealed and you believe him. We are told that a truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors. But how long it’s going to take for this truth embodied in a tale to enter in through these lowly doors? It’s been now hundreds and hundreds of years, and men in positions of trust still do not see the mystery.723 ¶7

Blake made the statement in his Vision of the Last Judgment, he said, “It ought to be understood that the person Moses and Abraham are not here meant.” He’s talking about the vision that he saw of Moses and Abraham and they appear in vision as persons because all attributes of God are personified. So when you meet belief, as Abraham represents belief, represents faith, you see faith personified. The essence of faith would be Abraham. It’s a man in vision, but the man only personifies a state, a state of belief, a state of faith. So he calls upon us when we read his work, which is based purely on vision, to bear in mind that he is not speaking of the persons; that the individuals only are representatives or visions of these states of consciousness. These states of consciousness were revealed to mortal man in a series of divine revelations as they are now written in the Bible.723 ¶8

He said, “I saw these in my Imagination. When you see them at a distance they appear as one man; as you approach, they appear multitudes of nations.” I know that’s true, for I have seen it that way. I saw the one man, the one man in radiant light and his heart aglow like a living ruby. As I approached, it wasn’t one man, multitudes, but an infinite number of men contained in one man. So here is the one man fragmented in this world, and the states through which we pass, and we start with Abraham.723 ¶9

Now, what did Abraham believe? We turn now to the 3rd chapter of the Book of Galatians, and as you read it in three or four little verses, the 6th through the 9th: “And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness. So you see it is the men of faith who are the sons of Abraham.” Now listen to this passage carefully, “God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham”…the gospel…which if you take it in a chronological manner came 2,000 years later. That begins our Christian era, this age as it were. Abraham preceded it by 2,000 years and we’re told, “God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” That’s what Abraham believed. Not a man; you, in the state of belief, the whole vast future is revealed to you—God’s purpose, God’s plan—and the purpose is realized at the end of a journey through darkness to light.723 ¶10

And while you fall asleep in that deep, deep sleep where you have the appearance of death, the dreams come from within while you are dreaming, and this world appears, and they seem now to come from without and completely detached and independent of your perception of them; and yet your dream is causing every motion in the world. The whole vast world is but your animated internal self, and you’re doing it in the state of dream. Then you come to the end of the dream and the fulfillment of what you saw in the beginning.723 ¶11

“For Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Abraham rejoiced because he was going to see your day? “Why, you’re not yet fifty and you know our father Abraham?” “Before Abraham was, I am.” He’s telling you exactly who he is now. This is a mystery, not taking place here. The Grand Being, his eternal name is I AM, “my name forever and forever…through all generations.” So if before Abraham was I AM, he’s identifying himself with the supreme being who preceded the state called Abraham, through which he, the supreme being, will now pass and constrict himself to that state, and take upon himself the form of man, limit himself to that limit of contraction called man, that limit of opacity called man, and have these weird dreams of the night. For this is all called the dream of life regardless of the time of day, because you don’t know the cause of the phenomena, therefore, you are sleeping at night; then comes the day of the Lord when you awake from the dream.723 ¶12

Now, let us go back and take the symbolism. He was a hundred years old when the promise was made. You think a man was a hundred years old? It’s said he was a hundred, beyond the bearing and siring of children, and the wife, with her at the age of ninety, it had long ceased to be with her after the manner of women; and yet, a promise is, “You shall have a child.” For he said, “You gave me no seed, and one born in my home is my heir.” A voice said, “He is not your heir, your own son shall be your heir.” And you’re told they laughed, so when he was born they called him Isaac, which means “he laughs.” Now Isaac is not a child born of generation: Isaac is the shaping of the unbegotten.723 ¶13

For God has no background, it’s now the grand…like Melchizedek, where he embraced Abraham. Melchizedek has no father, no mother, no beginning, no end, no background at all. So it’s the shaping of this that has no background in you. So when it’s shaped in you, though it takes form, it has no ancestor, for God has no ancestor. God is shaping himself in you, and that state is called Isaac.723 ¶14

So he was a hundred. Well, we go back now and see the symbolical value of a hundred. It’s the 19th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, it’s Qoph. You write it Q-o-p-h, Qoph, the 19th. Its symbolical value is “the back of the head.” It is from this area that you come. You awaken in your skull at the end of the journey when the day begins to dawn, and it’s from the base of your skull that you come out, and you come out just in the same manner as a child comes out of the womb of a woman. You come out inch by inch by inch. As you are pulling yourself completely out and you come right out, the symbolism of scripture comes into being, because there is a weird, unearthly sound of wind. The word “wind” and “spirit” are the same in both Hebrew and Greek. So he appears in the form of a wind. As you are disturbed, looking at this thing out of which you came, you look back and the witnesses are there for the event, as told in scripture. One witness finds the evidence of this birth, finds a little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. Here is Isaac now, the Christ child. You don’t know it yet, it’s picked off the floor, placed on the bed, you lift it up in your hands, and the child smiles. You look into its face and ask the most endearing question, “How is my sweetheart?” It looks into your eyes and smiles…then the whole scene dissolves. But it came from Qoph, from the back of your head.723 ¶15

The next letter, the 20th, would be Resh, and that would be most [...] from here, that would be the head altogether, the whole head. But Qoph is the back of the head; that’s the sign of it, the symbol of it. So the hundred does not mean a man of a hundred years as you and I measure time. It’s simply this sign of that state in which he was placed, and you and I are placed in the state of believing. So what did he believe? He believed the gospel, yet the gospel had not yet appeared. He was told and shown the gospel: “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” He saw it as it was revealed to him before the journey began; so it was revealed to you before the journey began. And everyone is in that state.723 ¶16

So, the 400 is the cross, the 100 is the back of the head, and Abraham is only a state, an eternal state that everyone must enter to start the journey. And the end of the journey is the resurrection, the birth, the discovery of the fatherhood of God, the ascension, and the seal of the Holy Spirit upon the work that is done. And everyone should have it. But you start with Abraham, just a state.723 ¶17

So all these characters that we think are persons are not. Yet when you meet them they appear as persons. When you see Abraham, you see this far looking, looking far off into the distance, as though he saw eternity in his eyes. But it’s a man when you see him, and yet you know it’s a state. As you come close, they all take on forms, and you take on forms, but they are only states, infinite states, and they are permanent.723 ¶18

Now, we can take this spiritual lesson and put it in to practice here in this world. He fell asleep in a state called Abraham; it said Abraham fell asleep. Now the one who enters it he falls asleep. And so, it’s totally that manner. So tonight you can fall asleep in a certain state, and when you feel the reality of the state in which you fall asleep, trust it. You’re not going to find when you wake tomorrow morning that you are actually in that crystallized form, but trust it. Remember what you did. Believe what you did. And then, go through the night where you don’t see any evidence to support it, you see nothing to encourage you, but you know what you did. Keep on doing it. In your mind’s eye fall asleep in the state. But see that you’re not falling asleep in another state. Your mind may wander. Bring it back if it takes you a hundred times, until you can fall asleep in a state.723 ¶19

As you fall asleep in a state, that state is going to unfold in your world. The state of health or the state of wealth or the state of being wanted or the state of being unwanted, the state of being poor, any state, as you fall asleep in the state, the states project themselves on the screen of space. So the same spiritual lesson can become the most practical lesson in this world of Caesar, while we wait for the grand thing to appear in our world.723 ¶20

So here, when you find these brilliant minds given all the space in these national magazines and powerful papers, leading and influencing the minds of millions of people, and they are sound asleep. You say that in the presence of a believing Catholic and he would slap you because you dared to say something about his holy father. Well, I am not given that way. Today, I reached the point I see no one in this world to whom and before whom I would bow. I don’t care who he is, what position he holds. Let me hear from his lips the story, the only story in the world, the story of the gospel, listen carefully to his interpretation of it and see what state he’s in. If he’s not in that state of absolute faith in that story beyond this level, well then, what does it matter what he says?723 ¶21

So if D. H. Lawrence comes out and tells me the resurrection is simply Christ awakening to the sensual love…of all the things in the world! When this presence in the resurrection is above the organization of sex! It can assume any sex at will. Because it doesn’t use sex to create; its sex is all now in awakened Imagination. It’s only on this level that sex, a divided being, is used. It’s not used in the resurrection. And he tells me the resurrection is simply this sensual love, the awakening to it. Of all the things in the world! And these are supposed to be brilliant minds. Then another one comes and tells that a certain race of people, called the Jew, killed the Lord because they didn’t know who he was. In this very book: “No one takes my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power and the right to lay it down, and the power and the right to raise it up again, to pick it up again.”723 ¶22

So I tell you, this story is eternal. But when you read it, see states. Isaac is the state, Jacob is the state, Abraham is a state, and they all represent these eternal spiritual states. Distinguish between the man and the state. You can be in a state from morning to night. You can have a dozen states in a dozen seconds. It’s entirely up to you.723 ¶23

But the state that will work, the clue is given us in that 15th chapter: and when the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon Abram. Then it begins to happen, when the sun was going down a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And then, what kind of sleep was it? A dread and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord tells him the birth pains that will follow. For these are all the birth pains to bring forth what he saw: he saw the child. He saw him coming out of the back of his head. But he saw him only a symbol of himself, for he would come out, and he will be the one speaking to himself. He would be God moving into an entirely different world, because he dared to contract himself to this limit in order to extend and expand his creative power.723 ¶24

There is only God in this world, nothing but God. So in the end there’s still only God. We have Ten Commandments, haven’t we? And yet, literally the word commandment simply means “word,” so there are ten words, literally. So we find the Ten Commandments—-he broke every commandment but not the Ten. Take the ten words that form the Ten Commandments and you find the great Commandment—when he was asked which is the greatest Commandment, and he answered, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Add them up, ten words; that’s the great Commandment. The minute you turn to another—-another could kill me, another could help me, another could do this—-I have another God. All that is being done unto me I am doing to myself. You bring me fortune or misfortune, because I am doing it to myself. There is only God. So, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”…these are the words that really mean the Ten Commandments.723 ¶25

So every Commandment he broke. Those that are written out in long words, there isn’t one he didn’t break. He broke the Sabbath. He said, “Who is my father and who is my mother?” Did he not break that Commandment in his speaking of his father and mother? There wasn’t a thing he didn’t do. So when it happens in you, it’s not the ten that people speak about but the ten words that you must keep forever locked in your heart. And any temptation to turn to another, then remember the great Commandment, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.”723 ¶26

When you take it and break it into meaning for us, the word translated “the Lord” is I AM. The word translated “our God” would be “our I AMs.” For all our I AMs together, it forms only one I AM. So when you see him at a distance, one man; you approach, comes close, multiple nations. All the I AMs contained in one I AM: “The Lord our God is one Lord.”723 ¶27

So here, you can take it this night and try to keep it in mind so that you will not go astray concerning these characters. When they asked a question and they were told it was not for you but for us that you did this service. These are states. And so when the prophets of old inquired about this person or this time when they prophesied the coming of Christ, and prophesied of the subsequent glory of Christ after, of course, the tribulation, and they were told they were serving not themselves but serving us. All these states when animated speak their contents, and so they’re asking and speaking, when is it going to happen? But they’re not, they’re only states. And you come upon these states. They look like people, look like individuals as you do, but they’re only states. There isn’t one that you will ever go astray in identifying; it screams at you who it is. And yet, they’re not characters of history as we are. We are the Elohim who actually became man for a purpose, and the purpose was to extend and expand our creative power.723 ¶28

So let no one tell you—as I told you earlier only quoting from these three people—-just what Christ is. That’s not Christ. Christ is this superhuman, supernatural being buried in you. And the nearest I can clothe him in a word is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s God…one with the supreme deity which is supreme Imagination. Doesn’t differ, save we are keyed low here and therefore it takes a little time between the imaginal act and its fulfillment. But on these higher intensities it’s instantaneously.723 ¶29

So here, you try it tonight, and take this message concerning this, and when you read the story, the minute you open the Bible, know you’re looking only at states. But they must be told in a certain form in order to get over to the mind, so they tell them in story form. They take a being and call it Abraham. They take the forming as though I were a grand sculptor or some potter and I’m fashioning something and the act of fashioning they call it Isaac. And I’m going to make something so pleasant, so beautiful, that when I finish it it’s going to laugh. I will smile with him. Together we agree with the beauty of the thing; it’s so altogether lovely I call it Isaac. And so, it’s not some little thing coming out from an old, old womb that was beyond the age of bearing, no, not at all. It’s simply coming out of the mind-womb, my own wonderful Imagination. And so I fashion something, I see it clearly in the mind’s eye, and then when the sun begins to fall a deep sleep envelopes it, and in that state I sleep.723 ¶30

When I seemingly wake tomorrow, I’m not awake. When I wake tomorrow it’s nighttime…there are still confusions…all these things are the birth pains. But it’s coming to pass, it’s coming to birth, and finally that thing will actually be born in my world and I will have it. But I’m still asleep.723 ¶31

I can’t tell anyone the shock to live for fifty…well, that happened in ’59…so fifty-four; I was born in 1905, so fifty-four—to be here for fifty-four years believing that every morning I was awake. And at night when I went to bed to sleep, I slept, had dreams, next day I woke, went about my normal duties, and that night I slept again—-and to find out after fifty-four years that I had been asleep all the time and didn’t know it? One night to find that this intense vibration, this electrical charge beyond the wildest dream, is placed upon me, as though someone took a wand, a magic wand and placed it to my head, and then just kept it there and I’m waking for the first time in 6,000 years. I’ve been sleeping that long. All of a sudden, he’s putting it to my head and I’m awakened. And where do I wake?—in Qoph, right in my skull. And where do I come out?—Qoph, the base of my skull. Therefore, who then was in that state of Abraham? Well, that’s what he is. He’s a hundred years old, has white hair, and the journey was on the cross, 400 years, and the journey is here. You come out and detach yourself from the cross, because you see it on the bed, this ghastly pale thing and that was the cross from which you have been detached, from which you’ve been resurrected. And then comes the symbol of your birth in an entirely different plane, a different world.723 ¶32

And those who belong here come and they can’t see you, because you are not, at that moment, you are not in this world. But for unfinished business you pick up that cross and carry it for another few years to tell the story as it happened to you, to deny, yes to refute those who are the blind leading the blind. If the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch.723 ¶33

And you can be blind as a bat and be a leader of 600 million, you know. Let no one tell you that because you have medals on you or that you wear crowns made by human hands or that you have honors heaped upon you that you are awake. Today, just reading the stories of the blunders of every war that man has ever had, read what they did…with all their medals. Alright, so a hundred thousand were killed here, but he who maneuvered the whole thing he wasn’t. But a hundred thousand killed there by someone’s plan…and he was so wise. Today if we appoint anyone to some office, instantly he becomes an expert. Read it in the papers. Our White House appoints someone as an ambassador…he doesn’t know where it’s even at. He can’t find it, can’t spell the name, never heard of it before, but instantly he is an expert on that land. And it happens all day long. So forget it.723 ¶34

The one thing that this state was shown was the gospel. Read it carefully, “God preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” That’s what he believed. “And Abraham believed and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.” Righteousness is defined in my dictionary as “right thinking.” And so, that’s right thinking: to believe the most unbelievable story in the world, that you, a man, can be born and be self-born out of your own skull? You have no womb and you are self-impregnated? You must be self-impregnated, because when you come out you know that’s you; no change in identity, it isn’t another. You come out of your own skull, and you were there all along, and you were there sound asleep, but dreaming within and see what your dream is—you realize you’re dreaming-—all coming from without. And it was a horrible dream. For you’re told, the horror, a dread and great darkness fell upon Abraham. Who can deny he hasn’t gone through or may be going through or will go through the horrors of the world? So this is the dream of you and I as we enter the state called Abraham. In that state we see the future and then we fall sound asleep. And though we will deny it today we aren’t going to break the spell because we accepted it and then fell asleep. That sleep is so deep not a thing happening on the surface of this world is going to disturb it. So don’t ask yourself, “Did I enter that state? Have I already accepted it?” I’ll tell you, you did, you accepted it, but the dream hasn’t come to an end, and everyone must dream the dream of life, everyone. You go through this furnace of affliction, and then the thrill that comes to you when that magic wand is placed upon you!723 ¶35

You can’t stop it, you wake and wake and wake as you’ve never been awake before, and there you are, enclosed in your skull, a sepulcher. You know exactly how to come out, because it was shown to you in the beginning, before that, and out you come, coming through the base here, which would be the base of the womb. Then on the heels of that, one after the other they come. Because the exodus is always associated with the brazen fiery serpent, when man is about to depart from Egypt then comes the serpent lifted up on the rod, and you see it.723 ¶36

Then you take with you the blood of God, and you know it’s yourself, and you take it right through the curtain that no man on earth can go. For the tabernacle was built, an outer and an inner, and there were three degrees of access to the inner; the outer they couldn’t come near. The priests could come only to a certain point, to the presence. Then came the high priest once a year with the blood of calves and the blood of goats, but he had no other offering, and it wasn’t adequate. Then comes your experience…and you take your own blood and you take it through, right up into the kingdom. And so, that’s the grand sacrifice, and the only acceptable sacrifice is yourself, torn from top to bottom, which reveals the blood, golden, liquid light. You mingle with it, fuse with it, you’re one with it, and then up you go like a serpent into the kingdom of God…still animating this for a little while to tell the story.723 ¶37

And tell it as clearly as you can so others may hear it and pass it on…to in some strange way lessen this peculiar dead concept that they have of the greatest mystery in the world. Of all the things to have said and gone into print! These were lifted from the books of these two men. It isn’t that they were overheard at some cocktail party; these are in print, so you can actually go back and find the book. A man said this in his book and he is a great giant of a man, judged by human standards. You can read yesterday morning’s Times and see what the Pope said. I didn’t misquote him. In fact, I’ve been kind, because if you read all that is there you’d wonder if he really understands anything about the mysteries…you would wonder if you read it. I don’t say this because I’m critical of his faith. No, it’s the same faith, but one is understood and one is not understood.723 ¶38

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *723 ¶39

Tonight you’ll find it a very practical night and, at the same time, a spiritual night. We’ll call it “God’s Law.” Paul said, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, so shall he also reap”. Here we find the principle of the identical harvest: Whatever you sow, that you reap. “See yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn. The silence and the darkness knew. So is a man’s fate born”. So we are told in the very 1st chapter of Genesis, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each after its own kind”. Then we are told in the same Book in the 8th chapter that “As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest shall not cease”. So everything that is happening to us, but everything, good, bad and indifferent, is happening because some imaginal act brought it into being.722 ¶1

Now you may think, well now, this is a horrible thing. I, in my ignorance, imagined so many unlovely things. Must I live with it? I planted it. If this is a law and it endures forever, I can’t deny if this is God’s law that whatever is taking place now in my world, I brought it into being because I imagined it at some moment in time; a moment, if it is unpleasant, when I was ignorant of God’s law. Nevertheless, he is no respecter of persons and here I am living with horrible fruit, where I in my ignorance planted it.722 ¶2

But we need not despair. There is a still greater law than that, a much greater law! And the law is, as we are told, “With the pure, thou showest thyself pure; with the crooked, thou showest thyself perverse.” That confirms that law, that the universe is only infinite response; so, what I think him to be that he will be to me. But in the 130th Psalm, you will find something far more profound than this. Here the Psalmist makes the statement that if you would mark the iniquities, who could stand? “If thou, O Lord, mark the iniquities, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with thee”.722 ¶3

So you need not ask anyone in this world why he did what he did to bring about the conditions that now he doesn’t want in the world. Don’t analyze it; don’t dig as to why he did it. He could have done it deliberately; he could have done it in ignorance. But here is a law that transcends this law of planting and reaping: It is the law of forgiveness. Forgiveness is simply revision, or you may call it repentance. But the Bible speaks of it as repentance, and speaks of it as forgiveness. You come upon a scene…alright, you don’t like the scene, and it’s factual, no question about it, and you know that someone somewhere brought it into being by first imagining a scene of that nature because it couldn’t come into being unassisted by an imaginal act. So it is brought into being by an imaginal act. Well, forget it. Don’t condemn her, don’t condemn him; just now do something about it, and do it now.722 ¶4

So let me share with you a story told me to confirm a check that I saw last Tuesday night. Last Tuesday night, a chap who’s here tonight, showed me a check for $10,000, which a friend of his (who is also here tonight) brought him from the office. Knowing that he’d find him here, he brought this check for $10,000. So he wrote me a letter, which I asked him, please tell me why he has the check and the details of it.722 ¶5

Well, he said, “About a month ago, I invested some money for a couple—-we’ll call them Mr. and Mrs. A. Soon thereafter some little annoyance took place within them, some insignificant little point they made much of. So when I called on them, they were irate. I went back to the office and revised the entire thing. I brought them into my mind’s eye, saw them smile, took their hands, and felt a warmth, felt a lovely atmosphere of friendliness, and everything that I wanted.722 ¶6

“Now, that behind me, I turned to the world of Caesar. I did it until it took on the tones of reality. Then I turned to the world of Caesar and a letter was involved, so the letter was sent off. Then some investigation had to be made, so I began to investigate. With all this information now in my possession, I called on them…that’s few days later. She was home; her husband was out. She greeted me with a wonderful smile and said how happy she was to see me, and would I come in and please wait, he’ll be back shortly…that friends of theirs called on them from Palm Springs and he was out taking them around. So I waited and in a little while the couple came along with the husband. This couple that came, they became interested in the work I do, and how I invested funds for this couple, friends of theirs. And this was the reason for the $10,000 check. That was the first payment on a series of investments that they intend to make, which will be a far greater investment than the original couple.722 ¶7

“Were it not for this irritation, I would have no occasion to call on them, but something came up in their mind’s eye and they were disturbed. I don’t want to disturb a client of mine. No client of mine should be disturbed; I want them satisfied. So I called on them to find them in the most irritable manner. And aside from that, I thought, now I can’t leave them this way, I must revise it. Regardless of what happened, something must have happened in their imaginations to cause that irritation, because it couldn’t happen unassisted by an imaginal act. So I went back to the office and revised it. Having revised it then I turned to the law of Caesar or the world of Caesar, got the letter off, made the investigation, found the material that I needed, and then in a few days called on them to find a couple—unknown to me, total strangers to me, never heard of them—-eager to make an investment. And I am the agent through which they make it.”722 ¶8

Now, in this world of ours God acts only through us. There’s no way for him to act save through us. As we are told, “He who receives you receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me”. Here is an unbroken chain. There is no error in the world that does not have a man for its agent; there is no truth in the world that does not have man as its agent. You can’t possibly conceive of something actually outside of man; it is the unbroken chain. He who receives you receives me; he who receives me receives him who sent me.722 ¶9

So if God would act in this world and change the horror that man himself in the misuse of Imagination has brought into being, he could only forgive through man. So if you and I know the law, you and I become the agents through which God can forgive everything in this world. But if he doesn’t find a man who’s willing to be used as the agent of forgiveness, God can’t forgive. For this law must hold good until the earth comes to an end: Be not disturbed and be not deceived, for as a man sows, so shall he reap. And that is law, and forever seedtime and harvest will go on and will never come to an end while the earth endures. And everything will bring forth after its kind; every tree bearing fruit in which there is seed brings forth according to its kind.722 ¶10

So you and I are the agents of forgiveness. So you come into a home and it’s distressed financially, or distressed because of sickness, or distressed in a thousand different ways. We don’t have to analyze that household. We don’t have to ask them why they did it, and make it all the more real in their mind’s eye. You and I can find—-and I think we have found—a more profound truth and it is the reality of forgiveness. You can forgive every being in this world.722 ¶11

Now, forgiveness along with healing are divine prerogatives. If you can forgive, then you know who you are…for only God can forgive. But in that passage that we quoted earlier, if I bind something on earth it is bound in heaven; if I loose it on earth it is loosed in heaven. It’s entirely up to us. If I see something and I say, alright, that’s law, you planted it somewhere. Yes, they wouldn’t deny it if they know the law. You and I, if we know the law, we ought not deny the law that someone somewhere planted this. So why should I steep him in it and keep him there? I can forgive and you can forgive. As long as we know the art of forgiveness we’re called upon to practice it morning, noon and night. So that is our picture here.722 ¶12

A lady wrote me this past, well, yesterday I got the letter from Boston. She was born in this state, lived here until about a year ago when she married a fellow who came from Boston, and they returned to Boston. She took her little boy with her. She said, “When the boy was nine years old (he’s now eleven), when he was nine, a psychiatrist and the principal of the school and a teacher had me in to tell me that the boy was backward, and could never really make the grade. Don’t push him, just leave him alone, because he is not equal to it, and he never will be as long as he lives. That’s the story that they gave me.”722 ¶13

Well, she said, “I was terribly hurt and terribly distressed, and for the first week I just didn’t know what to say or what to think. Then I thought I am not applying what you teach. So this is the psychiatrist’s comment, it’s confirmed by the principal, confirmed by the teacher, but certainly if what you teach is true, and I’ve proven it so often, why should I not apply it now to my little boy? Well, to make it short, she said, we went back east. I applied it every day. I didn’t take it now; I took it to the very end. I saw him with his cap and gown receiving his diploma. If he’s receiving his diploma from college—-regardless of what they tell me now about my little nine-year-old boy—-then something must have happened to change his attitude towards life and change everything in his world. “Well, now he is eleven, and the teacher in Boston said to him this past week, ‘If you continue as you have for the past month, do you know you’re going to get straight A’s?’” Straight A’s! If you continue as you have for the past month you are going to get straight A’s. She said, “Neville, I had no tutor for him. Bill and I did nothing about it other than to pray as you taught us how to pray. I simply kept in my mind’s eye that picture of my son graduating from college. Well, to graduate from college, he must do well in his present school and then through high school. He’s only eleven, but now he has confirmation that he can do it, and the teacher has promised him straight A’s if he continues from now on to the end of this term as he has in the past month.”722 ¶14

So in spite of what he might have done in the past…it was a broken home. He was divorced and she was divorced, and they met in AA; both drank excessively. They had their broken homes and they met in AA, and a friendship developed and then culminated in marriage. Well, this is the little boy of a broken home on her side, and I think he has three on his side, but the little boy was given to her. And they took him down to Mexico City. Took him out of school for six months when they went on their honeymoon. She said, “Alright, if this is all the boy can do, take him out of school, take him into Mexico City. It would be better for him than trying to force him and leaving him behind me in the home of some stranger.” But today, she has at least if not confirmation, she has the hope voiced by a teacher.722 ¶15

So here, no one need despair. They can always forgive. No one need despair. They can always revise. If you revise, that is to forgive. If you revise, that is to repent. So repent and believe the story.722 ¶16

So I say to everyone here tonight, just as this chap undoubtedly when he received this telephone call or a letter making some complaint, which he thought minor…it led to a bigger account. If you take everything that comes into your world, every irritant as simply not something that is going to be disastrous. But in this case, without that he would not have had the call. He would not have gone to the place to try to adjust it. When he came back, finding how disturbed they were, the average agent would simply forget it. He did what he could do, the best, and we’ll forget it. He didn’t forget it; he did something about it. Doing something about it, he simply put God in action. Because God can’t act in the world of man save through the agent that is man.722 ¶17

So, as Blake brought out, the combats of good and evil is eating of the tree of knowledge; the combats of truth and error is eating of the tree of life. Then he said, everyone is personifying good, evil, truth, error, it’s all personified. I know that to be true when I see it in my visions. So, every error needs a man as its agent, and every truth needs a man as its agent. So if I see something and it’s unlovely and I let it stand just where it is, well, I’m the agent perpetuating it in my imaginal act. I’ve heard people say, “They’re no darned good anyway. Leave them alone. Why bother yourself with them?” and so they refuse to be the agent of God’s mercy. They will say…and you give them all the arguments in the world, “But you know you did it.” Alright, so they did it. Well then, you can still overcome it. No matter what man has ever done, you can forgive them…it doesn’t really matter. When Blake saw it so clearly, then he made the statement: “I do not consider either 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.”722 ¶18

And so, you and I unwittingly fall into a state. We don’t know it. And if someone sees us in that state, if they know the law, they’re going to say, and rightfully so, “Well, then you must have imagined it somewhere along the way.” Undoubtedly I did. Undoubtedly one night I felt sorry for myself, I felt unwanted, or I felt this, that or the other. Alright, if this law is an eternal law it will never come to an end as long as the earth endures. Alright, so I must reap it and my harvest must come into being. But if you know a far greater law, which is the law of forgiveness, and you find me in this mess, it’s entirely up to you, as the agent of God, knowing more than I know, to set me free. I fell into it not knowing, I fell into it unwittingly. But if you come into my world and you know deeper and far greater things than I do, it’s entirely up to you to act as the agent of God’s mercy. If you refuse to act as the agent of his mercy, alright, that is your privilege. I say to everyone here, no one need remain in any state where he is if he’s in the atmosphere of one who knows how to forgive.722 ¶19

So we are told, that when Peter discovered who Christ really was—-and he said it came from the depths of his soul—-he said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And the voice said to him, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven”. Then he said to him, “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”. But anything, not if it is good, bad or indifferent, anything! You’ll read this in the 16th chapter of the Book of Matthew.722 ¶20

So here, you and I are called upon to go out into the world and put in to practice what we know of the creative power of God that the Bible speaks of as Jesus Christ. You see, he does not separate us—-“Who receives you receives me; and who receives me receives him who sent me”—so there is an unbroken chain. So even if at the very end of the chain they don’t understand and you are in the middle of that chain, the creative power of God, so you know who you are. If you know that your Imagination is the creative power of God and the wisdom of God, then it is entirely up to you to take over in the presence of those who do not know. And I would say that ninety-nine percent of the people, they do not know. But don’t condemn them if you tell them what you know. But then don’t walk away empty handed, do something about it, and then leave it. It’ll work. It will work just as surely as tomorrow’s sun will come. Whether you see it in this city or not, the sun is out.722 ¶21

Now read carefully that 119th Psalm. It’s a long one, 176 verses, but it wouldn’t take you too long. He said, “My eye fails with watching for thy promise.” And now that will comfort you: “My eye fails with watching for thy promise”. How many people since I started talking about the promise have said to me, “But when, when?” Well, be comforted. The great psalmist confessed his eye was fading with the watching for the promise. But then he also confessed that he was glad that he was afflicted: “I’m glad I was afflicted, for until I was afflicted I did not know or keep thy word”. And he goes on verse after verse being happy that he was afflicted; for he had to ask himself questions, “Why is this happening to me?” Then when he realized it was a law, he said, I delight in thy law. But before I knew your law…I didn’t know. Now he delights in the law of God. But the same psalmist, he now begins to tell us something entirely different. Of this…”If you marked it, my iniquities, then I couldn’t stand in your presence.” Who could stand if their iniquities were marked? “But there is forgiveness with thee.” He found something so much deeper than the law of God. Then he went on, verse after verse, pleading to comfort him with the promise. He called it “the righteous promise, the promise you made my father.”722 ¶22

So here, tonight…it may happen tonight, I don’t know. No one can tell you when it’s going to happen. It’s my constant prayer for everyone that it happens now, that you may know the truth of the word of God. But long before it happens, as far as the promise coming, you can actually use his law and transform your world and the world of those that you love. Actually do it, just as simply as this man who showed me his $10,000 check on Tuesday, and the letter that came yesterday from my friend Betty back in Boston.722 ¶23

Every morning’s mail will bring something of a similar nature. Some are too involved for me to take the platform and talk about them, because they go into all kinds of irrelevant parts of it, which is not really what I should tell you here. But every morning’s mail brings something, something to encourage everyone who would hear me. And this cannot fail; it’s a simple, simple law.722 ¶24

Even if I didn’t know the law of forgiveness and used the law of God wisely, well, not a thing in this world could stop me. I must not deceive myself, because God is not being mocked: As I sow I am going to reap. And how do I sow? I sow every time I entertain a thought. Every time in this world that I entertain a thought with feeling, I have sown that thought. That’s the seed. As we are told in the 5th chapter of Matthew: “You’ve heard it said, ‘You must not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that any man who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed the act with her in his heart”. He shows us the inwardness of the law. If I restrain the impulse, he tells me that’s not good enough. Regardless of my motive for restraint—-I may be afraid of the consequences; I may be afraid that I’ll be discovered; and maybe if I thought I would not be discovered, I wouldn’t have that desire to restrain the impulse. But he’s telling me that regardless of my motive for restraint, I committed it in that moment when I entertained the act. So, if I entertain any act, the act is done. Now, the interval between that act and its fulfillment, its objectification on the screen of space, is something that only the Father knows. How long is it going to take between this imaginal act and its fulfillment, I do not know. But if the law is forever, well then, regardless of when it’s going to happen, do it now anyway. What would it feel like to be secure? What would it feel like to be wanted? What would it feel like to contribute to the world’s good? Well then, assume that I am doing all these things now. Now, tomorrow may not bring confirmation of what I’ve done, but do it anyway. And if I do it, then in a way I do not know it will come to pass.722 ¶25

But anyone is here…I doubt someone is here tonight who is a stranger to this thought…but if you are, let me put it in a very simple, simple way for you. This is how I go about planting. I could do it walking the street, driving in a friend’s car, driving in a bus.722 ¶26

But suppose we take it simply when we’re home, and I find a very nice time is just before I go to bed. But before I lose consciousness, I put myself in the state of my wish fulfilled. That wish need not be for myself, in fact, quite often it is not for myself it’s for those who ask help of me. Some mother will call about a child or wife call for her husband, husband about a wife, and at that moment I simply, as I’m going to bed, I listen just as though I’m hearing their voice, and I carry on a mental conversation with them from the premise of their fulfilled desire. I try to hold myself in that state without wandering, so when I do sleep I fall into that state. If I fall into that state, hearing their voice tell me what they would tell me were it true, then I’ve prayed successfully relative to them. I need not ask them the next day, or call them or write them, they’ll call me. If they are given as so many people are not to let you know, I will hear about it anyway, in a way that I do not know how, but I will. Someone will tell me “Have you heard the good news?” and they will tell me the good news about that individual…if I’m faithful to the planting. So I take it clearly in my mind’s eye and simply fall asleep in that state.722 ¶27

For, there are infinite states in the world. And every state produces its response, for the world is infinite response. If I am faithful and this law is forever, that everything must bring forth after its kind, well, I know the kind that I planted. I planted good news for Mrs. Brown. I heard her tell me that the daughter is perfect. I heard good news for Mr. Brown…he has the job. And then I heard good news for so-and-so, and each one was simply falling into these states.722 ¶28

When I was in New York and had interviews five days a week, between the hours of one and five, well, five thirty, because I saw half-hour interviews, I found that I got good results if I took one after the other. One would come into this world, and one would go through the door, and the other one is waiting. She had no sooner gone through the door than I gave my entire attention to the request of the next one. I never thought of that other one, because I did all that I could do while she was present. We always sat in the Silence together. All I would ask of anyone who sat with me is to sit quietly, don’t talk, but mentally tell me you have what you sought. I will sit here in a receptive manner and I will hear your voice just as distinctly as I heard it just one minute ago while we were talking. I know exactly what you sound like, and so when you close your eyes and go into the Silence, and I’ll close my eyes and go into the Silence, and although your voice is inaudible to anyone in this world, it is to me, internally. I can hear it. Now, I will put upon this tone that I am hearing, which is your voice, the words I want to hear. So I will then go into the Silence and listen to her voice or his voice, and then at the very end, when it’s broken, it was done. I planted it. So when I said goodbye, I had no concern whatsoever beyond that door. The next one I gave my entire attention, undivided attention to the next one, and tried in the interval to ferret out what they really wanted. Not what happened to them, not what is happening to them, what they really wanted. Because I wasn’t going to analyze anything about them…just tell me what you want…I’ll plant that now. So we go into the Silence and I plant that. All I asked of anyone was to imagine that they were talking to me, but don’t do it audibly. Just tell me in your own sweet, wonderful way that it’s done. Don’t tell me how it happened, because you don’t know how it’s going to happen.722 ¶29

I had one very interesting case. This lady had never seen me before, but she heard about me, and she postponed it and postponed it because, well, she thought I might be some magician or something. So she came in this day and I explained to her what I do. Well, her problem was this, a friend of hers had disappeared and she hadn’t heard from her or seen her in over a year. Some friend of hers had told her to come to me and I could help her find this friend. So she came, and I said, all I can tell you is that you don’t understand this teaching of mine, you’ve never been to my meetings, you never read my books, you know nothing of me, so I can’t give you a lesson now, but I’ll tell you what I want you to do. Talk to me a little while and tell me about your friend so I may get your voice, which she did. I said now to be perfectly silent, very, very still, and all you do you imagine that you’re telling me that you’ve found her. I’m going to sit perfectly still here and I’m going to imagine that you are telling me that you have found her. Well, she said that doesn’t make sense. I said, well, I can’t explain the reason behind this, but I’ll tell you, you try it anyway. So she did. I took her to the door and said goodbye to her. Well, she went out as though she’d met an insane person, perfectly mad, because I’d seemed to her so completely off base as it were.722 ¶30

First thing she did, she inquired about her friend through a neighbor, and the neighbor said she went on off to New Haven. Well, that’s almost a year ago. She took a train to New Haven. New Haven isn’t too far, maybe two hours away from New York City. She inquired there. They said, yes, we know this lady…she left several months ago and went off to Boston. So she got on a train and off to Boston she goes. Well, that’s not more than another two and a half hours from New Haven to Boston. She goes to Boston and yes, they knew this lady, knew her quite well, but she left without any forwarding address, so we can’t tell you now where she has gone. So she knew New Haven and she knew Boston, but beyond Boston there was no address. So, she returned to New York City.722 ¶31

This day she was down on 14th Street, Kline’s department store. She went on the sidewalk, walking west—Union Square is where this department store is—so she’s walking west, opposite Kline’s, and suddenly here comes this lady. Had she been one split minute, a split second really, earlier or later than she was she would have missed this lady. She ran right into her, and they actually embraced right in front of that store.722 ¶32

What did it? All of her searching didn’t find her. What we did in the room, in that moment of Silence, brought her into that picture. It would have saved her time and money. She need not have gone to New Haven, need not have gone to Boston, could have remained right in New York City and saved her time and her money; for that’s where she found her anyway.722 ¶33

I could tell you unnumbered stories of this kind. So if you really believe God’s word, then you will not be deceived because God is not mocked. And you will not try to deceive him because you can’t deceive him. You will plant only the things you want to reap in this world.722 ¶34

But if perchance—and we’ve all done it unwisely—things are happening that are unpleasant, and you can’t deny that the law works, that you must have done it at some time—you have the far deeper law, the law of forgiveness. Just as you can forgive another, you can forgive yourself. You don’t have to say I can only use this for another, for you will know in the end of time there is no other. Every time you forgave the seeming other, you’re really forgiving self, because in the end God is one. And the whole vast world that you see is nothing more than yourself made visible.722 ¶35

So you can this night…as my friend resolved this irritant in the couple, and by resolving the irritant there, they were the means through which he got a client who is about to invest more than they did. For this $10,000 check is simply the first of a series of checks for his investment for them. So, do not let this night come to an end without planting something that is lovely. And you can plant it in the midst of what is taking place today. No matter what is taking place, if it is unpleasant, doesn’t really matter; from now on plant and plant only that which is of good report, things you really want to reap in this world. You may say to yourself, well, I don’t need this today. Well, plant it anyway. I don’t need money or I don’t need this, I don’t need the other. Plant it anyway.722 ¶36

And to go back to the 119th Psalm, if you’ve been anxious and you’ve asked, When is it going to happen to me? When are you going to comfort me, my Lord, with the promise?…know the psalmist asked the same thing. So that your, not irritation, your desire to bring it to pass now is not an unhealthy desire, because the psalmist wanted it as eagerly as you’ve ever wanted it. But he was not given it just because he wanted it; it would come in its own good time.722 ¶37

So what I took tonight, I took the first chapter, 11th verse of Genesis; I took the last verse of the 8th chapter of Genesis; and I took the 130th Psalm to show you the most profound truth that transcends the law of God without rubbing it out. That’s the 130th Psalm, the 3rd and 4th verses, and many verses from that very long Psalm, the 119th.722 ¶38

But there is a story told of the great Thomas Huxley. With quite a few of his scientific friends, one day a man said to the group, “If you saw a very heavy object suddenly rise from the floor and float through space unassisted, no power lifted it, no power seems to sustain it, but floating through space, and then it descends gently to the earth, what would you say that you’ve seen?” Well, before Huxley could answer another one answered and he said, “I would say I have just seen the suspension of the law of gravity.” Huxley said, “I would say I have just witnessed the operation of the law of which I am totally ignorant.” That’s better.722 ¶39

Well, God’s laws aren’t broken, but a law deeper than this law of the identical harvest could be brought into play. Leave that law forever, because it will always be operating. But in the confused world, there’s a deeper law, the law of mercy, the law of forgiveness, which can change everything in our world, no matter what weed we planted in the past.722 ¶40

So if today you can…without looking at your world and seeing what a barren world it is…you can actually in your mind’s eye plant the kind of world…and forget what you planted in the past…God allows that. He’s not going to suspend; there’s no suspension of the law of gravity, it’s something far greater that encompasses it.722 ¶41

So, one scientist thought he saw the suspension of the law of gravity, and the other one thought he saw or witnessed the operation of a law of which he was totally ignorant. I know in my own case, I not only saw the suspension of gravity, seemingly, but I also know that I was the cause of the seeming suspension, because I found a greater law. That the bird in flight didn’t fall when I arrested something not there but in myself. So, when I arrested the activity in me that was the cause of the motion of the bird, the bird was arrested, and arrested in space, it didn’t fall. Now the law of gravity seemingly was suspended, but I know what I did and, therefore, I simply operated the law of which prior to that moment I was totally unaware, totally ignorant. I know today that you don’t suspend the law of gravity. You simply bring into play a far greater law, and those not understanding the greater law will think the law of gravity suspended. It wasn’t suspended, because the whole vast animating power was in me all along, and I didn’t know it. I didn’t know it until that moment in time.722 ¶42

So I know today, though I can’t control it a hundred percent, that nothing in my world that I perceive is completely independent of my perception of it. Were it independent of my perception of it, I couldn’t forgive. Then that line would be broken as we read it in the Book of Matthew.722 ¶43

So when we read in that 18th chapter, the 18th verse of Matthew, “He who receives you, receives me; and he who receives me, receives him who sent me” that’s an unbroken chain. If that were not unbroken, well then, I could not forgive you. But because it goes all the way back to the source of all things, God, and we are one, so he who receives me, receives him who sent me. And he who receives you, receives me who sent you, therefore we are one on a chain of ascending degrees. So, on a higher level, you can forgive because you are in union with God, and this is his prerogative: to forgive.722 ¶44

So here, let’s go into the Silence. * * *722 ¶45

Any other questions, please?722 ¶58

Tonight’s subject is “Eternal States.” States…by states I mean states of consciousness and these are conditioned. Unlike the Promise that is unconditioned, states of awareness are all conditioned. You can’t be in one state of awareness and expect to reap the fruit of another state. To reap the fruit of a state you must occupy the state, and any state in this world can be occupied. You are free to move from state to state, but man is not aware of it. The Bible teaches us how to do it. We are told, “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” In all, not a few things but in everything that he does he prospers if he knows how to operate God’s law. It’s not as difficult as you’ve been told. In fact, it is not difficult; it just needs application on your part. Like all arts in this world there must be a certain method, and then there must be a certain practice and persistent practice, so that you actually master the technique of moving from state to state.721 ¶1

Now here is a story told us…and I’ll tell you the story, and you go home and read it, and see if you do not see it through different eyes. The first one to really start the battle, who conquered, was Joshua. Joshua is Jesus. It’s spelled the same way. It is spelled Joshua in Hebrew, and then translated into English it would be Jesus. Jesus and Joshua are Jehovah, same thing. So the battle starts, really, with Jehovah. It’s the sixth book of the Bible. The first time that this thought appears in the Bible you’ll find it in the 13th chapter of Genesis. It’s the separation of Abraham and Lot. Abraham said to Lot, “If you go to the right, I will go to the left; if you go to the left, I’ll go to the right. The choice is yours. So you take it, you take the first choice.” And then he looked out at the valley, it was the valley of the Jordan, and it was well watered and so fertile and so real that Lot chose the valley of the Jordan. Then Abraham went into Canaan, and then everything was given to Abraham.721 ¶2

Now when you read “the valley of the Jordan” you may be inclined to think of a place, the Jordan as a river, and a magical valley well watered by that river. Today if you hear the word Jordan, you think it’s biblically…you think of a river in the Near East. That’s not Jordan. If you have a concordance, you look it up. Here is the meaning of the word: “To descend; or, speaking of the individual, the descender.” But we’ll take it “to descend; to go down to a lower region; right down to the boundary; to the shore; to the enemy.” These are the definitions in the James Strong’s Concordance for the word Jordan. You go down; it’s going down, right down to the boundary, to the shoreline, to the enemy. In the four gospels, the work of Jesus, his entire work, begins at Jordan. He goes right down into Jordan where he is baptized. If you will see it through my eyes, right now this very room, this is Jordan. No water around, but this is Jordan. If I took you into my confidence and I told you exactly what I have in the bank, and what my obligations to life are as against what I have in the bank; what my income is over the years as against what my outgo is; if I showed you my social background, my intellectual background, my entire background, and completely confessed all these facts of life, I have led you right into my Jordan. That’s my Jordan. Have I any ambition to transcend it? Can I get beyond the Jordan? Have I any desire to get beyond the Jordan? Well then, this is the story of the motion from state to state. It is all starting with the Jordan—looking at my world and seeing exactly what I have as against what I want in this world. When I know exactly what I have by looking at it honestly, I am right at the Jordan. So he doesn’t evade the issue, he comes right into the Jordan, God himself, and assumes all the limitations of the flesh; blinds himself completely to all that he really is, and takes upon himself all the weaknesses, all the limitations of the flesh. So my reason dictates the facts of life and my senses affirm it, or confirm it. Here is my Jordan. And then I want to go beyond what I am, the man that I am, can I get beyond the Jordan? So that’s the entire story.721 ¶3

Now, we are told Moses could not get beyond the Jordan. If you want to read it, in the 3rd chapter of Deuteronomy, he could not get beyond the Jordan. The Lord said to him, “Joshua, my servant, will do it,” and so it was given to Joshua to go beyond the Jordan into the land that the Lord had promised. Now, these words are addressed to you, not to some being who lived thousands of years ago, these are your words, addressed all to you: “Wherever the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you.” “Wherever the sole of your foot will tread upon I have”—listen to the tense—“I have given to you.” Not something held in abeyance; when you tread upon it I have given it to you. Now comes a picture, “Prepare provisions; for within three days you are going to pass over this Jordan, to possess the land that I the Lord your God gives you.” That’s the 1st chapter of the Book of Joshua. The last chapter, the 24th chapter, it ends, “Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Jordan, or whether they will be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now dwell.” And they made their decision: “We will serve the gods our fathers served beyond the Jordan.” That was their decision. Then he said to them, “You are witnesses against yourselves. You have chosen that you will serve the gods your fathers served.” And then they answered, “We are witnesses.”721 ¶4

Now, this is how I make my decision to go beyond the Jordan. It was taught me graphically back in l933…always beyond the Jordan. I looked at my Jordan, and I didn’t have a nickel. I had no bank account and I didn’t have a nickel, and there was no one to whom I could turn to borrow any money. Why, five dollars in 1933 would be like asking for $2,000 today. Very few had five dollars. And what I needed at that moment nothing under $1,000 could do it. I wanted to go on a trip. I didn’t have a job, living in the basement on 75th St. in New York City, overrun with cockroaches, I mean really a mess. Anything in New York City on that ground floor is just like that even in the best areas, but this was not the best area. I desired to go to Barbados, and I simply confided, I confessed to my friend Abdullah. As I confessed my limitations, my lack, everything, I was right down at the water’s edge and showing him this wide stream that was Jordan, and telling him of a land beyond the Jordan. It was 2,000 miles away across water. And he said to me, “You are now in Barbados.” Now, we’re standing physically together. He is not in Barbados, he is in New York City in his home on 72nd Street, and he tells me, I could touch him, that I am in Barbados. He would not discuss it with me after that day. I could not bring it up to ask him, “How am I going to go to Barbados?” He would not discuss it. I could not consider means if I am already there. How could I consider how I’m going to get there when I am already there? Wherever the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given you…it’s past. “Are you standing in Barbados? Are you sleeping in Barbados? Are you preparing your [...] for Barbados? Are you seeing the world as you would see it were you in Barbados? Have you prepared this food? Have you seen the world as you would see it? Are you seeing New York 2,000 miles to the north of you when you sleep this night? How can you tell me that you don’t have the money to go to Barbados when you are in Barbados? Well, if man is all Imagination, man must be wherever he is in Imagination, for man is Imagination itself. So are you now in Barbados? Well, you can’t discuss with me how you’re going to go there, the ways and means are not to be discussed because you’ve gone there. So you are in Barbados.” That’s crossing the Jordan, and only Jesus, Joshua, Jehovah could do it. Because Jehovah’s name is I AM, the only prayer of mine that is answered is that which I am. If I must call with his name and his name is I AM, I don’t say, “In the name of Jehovah do it, in the name of Jesus Christ do it, in the name of Joshua do it,” or any other being. The only name that answers is I AM. So where am I? Well, I say, I am…and I name it. So here is the Jordan; and suddenly there is no Jordan, I’m on the other side. It’s behind me now, I’m on the other side; I am dwelling in my wish fulfilled. I have changed the state. So I’ve decided not to serve the gods my fathers served. Now, I’m a witness against myself if that’s my decision. I will not serve the Amorites in whose land I now dwell: I dwell in the land of my senses. I refuse now to serve the gods of the Amorites in whose land I dwell. I can’t deny I dwell in this land, but every moment of time I can cross the Jordan. And man has to cross the Jordan to dwell beyond it. That’s what Abraham had to do.721 ¶5

And so, he lived by faith, and the promises became his, not Lot. Lot was destroyed. He lived in Sodom and Gomorrah. The whole area, wife turned into the pillar of salt, and the whole vast place was burned. Abraham went out into a land he didn’t know, all in Imagination, all in faith. So you want…and you name it. You want more money, and you just name the money, I don’t care what it is. God doesn’t judge you. He has never judged anyone. It’s man who judges, but God doesn’t judge anyone because God is infinite mercy. And so, Jehovah’s gift does not depend upon you doing anything to undo Jordan. You only go beyond it, that’s what you do, because Jehovah is without money, without price in the continual forgiveness of sin.721 ¶6

So one stands before you and confesses his limitation, he shows you his Jordan. Well, he tells you what he wants in place of what he has and he tells you of a land beyond Jordan. You say to him what my friend Ab said to me, “You are it now.” You want a nice wonderful job that pays more than you ever earned before? You have it now. He looks into your face and he thinks you’re mad. That’s what I thought of my friend Ab, but I so respected him I couldn’t tell him. I couldn’t tell him that you’re mad, you’re insane, because I loved him. I respected him. And so, I walked away from him dumbfounded—“I am in Barbados!” And here I am walking the streets of New York City without a nickel, without a penny in my pocket, going back to my [...] on 75th Street. And I am in Barbados! And then in a way that I could never have devised I was in Barbados within six weeks, all as a gift. Three heavenly months in the island as a sheer gift; and returned to this country not only after having spent three months, at some cost to them, but brought back several hundred dollars in hard cash that they gave me when I got aboard the boat. But I didn’t ask them for one nickel, not a penny. All was given because I went beyond my Jordan and lived in the state of my wish fulfilled.721 ¶7

So tonight, when you know what you want, you go beyond the Jordan. If you are right down at the water’s edge…listen to the definition, “to descend to lower regions, right down to the boundary, down to the shore,” and then the last word, we find, “the enemy.” Who is my enemy? So when he comes out of Jordan in the Book of Luke, the first one that meets him is the embodiment of Jordan and it’s called the devil. So here, Jordan is the enemy. So he now becomes personified, and so the personification of Jordan takes on the form of the monster that is called the devil, called Satan. He said, “You are the Son of God? Well then, turn one of these stones, turn a stone into bread.” “Man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” “If you are the Son of God, well then, stand on this pinnacle and cast yourself down.” Then he quotes scripture, “For did he not give his angels the command to hold you up, lest you dash your feet against a stone?” “You shall not tempt the Lord thy God.” Then he offers the entire kingdom for his wish. The embodiment of his senses is telling exactly what he is; for he took upon himself all the limitations of the flesh. He did not leave one little opening that he could see eternity and therefore be the being that he really is; completely shut the door on eternity and took on all the limitations and the weaknesses of the flesh. Then, from within he began to apply his law, his divine law, wisely.721 ¶8

As we are told in Paul’s letters to Timothy, “The law is good if used justly.” It is good if you use it justly. You can forgive every being in this world, and grant every request that comes within the framework of love. If anyone asks you this night to hurt someone for them, you have no ears to hear it. To injure someone, you have no ears to hear it. But if they told you the most horrible story about themselves, you can forgive them because they’re only in a state, and so they’re expressing a state. They just came from someplace where they stole. They did something that is horrible, something you hope that you would never do, that no friend would do, but you don’t judge them harshly for having done it. You ask them, “What do you want?” Well, they would like to be free of this picture, alright, beyond the Jordan. You take them from where they are. In your mind’s eye you put them beyond their Jordan into a state of joy, where they would never entertain the thought of taking advantage of another. And you see them through such eyes, right into the state of beyond the Jordan. So Blake could say, having seen these infinite states and the infinite possibilities for man, “I now judge no one. For I do not regard either the wicked or the just 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.” It falls into a state.721 ¶9

So, you and I are all day long, we don’t know God’s law; we’re right down at the water’s edge, at the shore, watching the Jordan. And there we stay…we can’t get beyond the Jordan. It seems so wide and so deep we can’t get beyond. But only Joshua was given the command to do it. If you read the story carefully, the battle was not completed, was not consummated, until the time of David. And so we are told, to him that conquers, I will give to him and grant to him to sit with me on my throne, as I myself conquered and am sat down with my father on his throne. And so, in the very end it is David who brings about the complete destruction of all these beliefs in things other than God. When he takes off the head of the monster, it is then he sets his Father free in the kingdom of heaven.721 ¶10

And so here, I tell you this day, your Jordan is just where you are now. If you’re in the desert, you’re right down at the water’s edge, and that’s your Jordan. In the desert you may be thirsty and dying of thirst, you want to get beyond this parched ground into some oasis. You’ve got to actually put yourself into the oasis, just as though you were there, and then believe and trust God implicitly to devise the means by which you are moved from where you were to where you are now assuming that you are. And in a way that no one knows you’ll go there.721 ¶11

I try to live by this morning, noon and night, but still wearing the garment of flesh I am always at Jordan. I must always make the journey beyond the Jordan. So every morning when I get up Jordan confronts me. The morning’s mail brings not only requests for help, news from friends across the way, and bills. So every morning’s mail there is a bill, which means you’ve got to face it, you can’t duck it. You’ve been using the gas, using the lights, you’ve been using your department stores, and so because you have credit you take it. And so, all of a sudden you must confront the evidence, and here it is, comes the bill. So that’s my Jordan. Now I’ve got to go beyond it and dwell with it all behind me as paid…not torn up and thrown away but all paid. And so, every day I’m at my Jordan. So every day who goes to the Jordan and starts his wonderful work in this world? Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, that Jesus Christ. So when you say “I am,” you’re calling on the name of God. So you’re told, “Whatever you ask in his name”—that’s not a good translation—when I ask in his name, I ask with his name. To ask with his name for wealth: “I am wealthy.” Not in words, but in the state I feel wealth. I put it on as I would a garment and feel it, and then allow it to hatch out in my world. No desire to pile it away because I feel insecure; no, that I can always cross my Jordan. If I know God’s law, I don’t have to pile it away for some rainy day. No, I can always cross the Jordan if I know God’s law.721 ¶12

So every morning you are at the Jordan, because you come right down to earth from wherever you were at night. At night it may be some heavenly vision, a wonderful dream, some wonderful communication between God and yourself, where God instructed you and advised through the medium of a dream. But when you wake and the familiar things are on the wall and you know where you are, back to earth you come, right back down to the Jordan. You start your day there and from there you’ve got to go beyond the Jordan. So I will extract from you this day a promise, who would you serve? I’m not going to say you must serve the gods of your fathers; you may serve the gods of the Amorites. That’s your choice. So choose this day whom you will serve. He doesn’t say you must choose it; he’s giving you the privilege of choice: Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served beyond the Jordan, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now dwell. You’re always in that land of the Amorites whenever you wake in the morning, and there is the Jordan. But the gods of your fathers, they are beyond the Jordan.721 ¶13

So if you now have a certain sum of money to meet in order to hold a job, you’re a salesman, and so double it, treble it. You aren’t doing it, God does it. Actually believe in him, so you can actually, as I told you earlier, you can say “Amen” to that. All of a sudden you think of something, you think of the person that you will be at the end of the month, when the report comes in and the sales manager sees the report and he congratulates you on what you’ve done. So you put yourself before him at that moment in time when he’s going to do this. Then you start the day. But you are faithful to that ending; you saw that ending. Then in a way you do not know, instead of signing up, maybe, a hundred small accounts, you may settle for one. That one may not come till the last day, but it will dwarf the hundreds beyond your wildest dream. It doesn’t have to be unnumbered little ones; you only want a big one at the very last day of the month. So you go beyond your Jordan into that land that has been promised you. “Wherever the sole of your foot will tread I have given to you.”721 ¶14

What a promise! To actually feel yourself in it! I can’t tread over there unless I’m saying to myself, “I am” and that becomes here. I must make there here to tread upon it. I have to make Barbados here. And if Barbados isn’t superimposed upon New York City, no, New York City must move relative to Barbados. So if I actually brought Barbados here, then I’ve displaced Los Angeles. And where would Los Angeles be in my mind’s eye if I’m standing and treading on Barbados? Well, I would see it to the west of me, approximately 5,000 miles. I mean northwest of me…not quite 5,000; 3,000 across the country and we are in the Atlantic and south by another 2,000 miles. So it would be 5,000 going around-about manner, but not as the crow flies, say 4,000 miles. So I would see L.A. as I think of it 4,000 miles to the west of me. So I’m treading then where, on Barbados, and wherever the sole of your foot will tread upon I have given to you. So I will sleep this night viewing the world. As I view the world, I have prepared my provisions; these are my provisions I’m feasting upon.721 ¶15

For in three days…now it doesn’t mean three days, three twenty-four hour periods. Three is resurrection, for “on the third day the earth rose up out of the deep.” It’s like the eight; eight is a new beginning, a new day of the week. So on the eighth day he rose, but the eight was a new beginning. It was the first of a new week, of a new age. But three in the beginning of the creative power is resurrection, for on the third day the earth rose up out of the deep. So on what would be the third day of this vision—it could be in one hour, it could be in a day, it could be in three days, it could be in three weeks—but that means that then the thing that is unseen (for it’s in the deep) you’re going to bring it up out of the deep. It’s going to be seen not only by you but seen by the world. For the earth, your earth on which you are now treading will rise up out of the deep.721 ¶16

And so, your Jordan will be behind you, but only for a while. Tomorrow morning the same Jordan will come back and your senses will be dictating to you what are the facts of life. So your senses and your reason every day of your life until you take this garment off puts you, everyday you start it right at the Jordan, at the water’s edge. So you learn the art of moving beyond the Jordan to that land beyond the Jordan. And who does it? Joshua does it, and Joshua is the Hebraic form of the Anglicized word Jesus. Jesus can do anything because Jesus is Jehovah, Jesus is God; and when you say “I am” before you say John or Mary or Neville or any other name, before you put any little tag on it, that’s Jesus. Now trust him implicitly. So, where am I? Well then, view the world to see where I am, for I’m located by looking at the world. What I see mentally is only locating me. If I see you and on your face is an expression that you see in me the man that I want you to see, well, then you’re telling me where I’m located in my own mind’s eye. Now feed upon it, prepare your provisions, and in three days, I will take you into the land that I the Lord your God give you. In three days I’ll bring it out, and so what you are now treading upon I the Lord your God have given you. It’s all done the moment you start treading upon it.721 ¶17

So these are the infinite states. And not because you are worthy of it, forget the so-called worthiness, forget the so-called sin in the world the world talks about. No, he isn’t judging you. The spirit of Jesus is continual forgiveness of sin. When you know that man is only occupying a state, you can easily forgive him. No matter what he’s done he was in a state, and because he was in that state he had to express the contents of that state. A man feels sorry for himself; he’s in a state; and things must happen in his life to make him all the more convinced that he had good reason to be sorry for himself. Because everyone must turn against him and make him feel that he is unwanted in this world because in his own mind’s eye he was unwanted, or he felt himself unwanted. But that was only a state. He is wanted because he is as loved by God as any being that ever walked the face of this earth. So everyone can get out of a state if he knows he’s only in a state.721 ¶18

But strangely enough, when we are in these states they seem to be the only reality. A person who is in any state, elated or deflated, whatever the state is, he thinks it’s the only reality; and everything else is simply like a cloud, that it isn’t real, it isn’t altogether something with substance only because he’s not occupying it. And so I always felt that one of the great weaknesses of the world is the continual construction but deferred occupancy. They don’t occupy it. One must occupy the state. I tell you from my own experience, in ’33, when I tried time and again to open up the discussion with my friend Abdullah, he just turned his back to me and walked right into his little study room, wouldn’t discuss it with me. Then you learned afterwards he was teaching the most marvelous lesson in this world. You said you believed, you actually said you believed in God, and you took his word honestly. You’re told not to change these words, in the 4th chapter of Deuteronomy, “Do not add to or take from these words.” Do not add to them; don’t take from them. What is the word? “Wherever the sole of your foot will tread upon that”—not something else—“that have I given to you.” So, “You told me, Neville, you’re in Barbados. Didn’t you agree with me you’re in Barbados? Didn’t you say when I asked you whether you would serve the gods of your fathers who dwelt beyond the Jordan or will you serve the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now dwell? Right now you’re poor and you couldn’t go even on a bus, far less a ship, and you want a ship that takes you ten days at sea, and feeds you three times a day, and gives you all the comforts of a nice ship, right to Barbados. That takes money. So you tell me you don’t have any of these things. Well, you’re at Jordan. Now come, you’re in Barbados. Now you’re going to tread upon Barbados…that is beyond your Jordan. Now, are you faithful to the gods your fathers served, or are you now going to be faithful to the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now dwell? That’s where you’re dwelling right now, because you say you haven’t anything. Well, then you haven’t anything, remain just where you are.”721 ¶19

And so, he had no compassion on any of us. You either believe or you didn’t believe. And so, he was trying to teach us this wonderful art of moving from state to state to state. And when you catch on, you don’t turn to the left or the right. Let the other fellow take the first choice.721 ¶20

And so, Lot takes the first choice, he wants this wonderful fertile land, it’s so green, so well watered, “I’ll take this, the land of the valley of the Jordan.” “Alright, you take that; I’ll take the other one, the unseen one. I will dwell beyond your Jordan in the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. I don’t know it, but I’m told by the Lord it’s a land flowing with milk and honey. I’ll take that one.” So Abraham, the faithful one, took the land that was unseen by mortal eye, and he lived in it, and then came the grand fulfillment of all of his promises. But they didn’t come to Lot. So man wants security here, he wants to build more and more to feel secure against the so-called inevitable rainy day. And so, he gets his rainy day.721 ¶21

But may I tell you, every day of your life you wake and you’re always at the shore, and that shore stretches out, and it’s always Jordan. This is Jordan. But when you read the story, if you don’t really read it with the eye of the mystic, you’re going to think of a huge body of water where a man came, and they’re all Baptists and they’re all being baptized. And so they all went out and almost got drowned. No, there wasn’t any body of water, hasn’t a thing to do with any body of water. Although today there are millions of them who go in droves—we have them in Barbados too—and they delight in it. Sunday morning when you see a hundred or two hundred out to sea, all being dunked, all being pushed in, with lovely white robes—they come out like drowned rats, all of them, lovely white robes. That hasn’t a thing to do with Jordan. Jordan is every moment of a man’s life when man faces the facts, and he doesn’t know where to escape. There’s no place to go…here are the facts. You either meet them—well, you can’t meet them if you don’t have a thing—but beyond the Jordan you can meet them. That land is always the good land.721 ¶22

So Blake said in his wonderful little poem, if you put the words into the mouth of a child, “Father, O Father, what do we here in this land of unbelief and fear? The land of dreams is better far above the morning star.” Just imagine, “the land of dreams is better far.” So I had a dream. I didn’t go to sleep and lose my dream. I had to stand right where I was and have a dream, a waking dream, and hear the sound of the coconut leaves on top of my mother’s home, and actually hear it. For Imagination is spiritual sensation. So I know if I slept in that room I would hear that coconut leaf; and the window is open, and I would smell the tropical odors as they come through the window. I would see what I would see only were I in Barbados. And so I would think of the place where I lived only a little while before in New York City, and see it there, a way north, 2,000 miles north. And then in this treading out of the land I fell asleep.721 ¶23

Falling asleep the three days came quickly. And the three days…and one morning a letter under my door, and here, a little draft fell out for only fifty dollars, but the letter said, “A ticket awaits you down at the steamship company. Go and get it, because we’re all expecting you for Christmas.” And so, I sailed on that lovely ship. Everything worked so beautifully. I went in and got the ticket, and the man said, “I’m sorry Mr. Goddard but we have no space for you first class. But you can go third class until you hit St. Thomas, and then someone disembarks at St Thomas and then you can go first class from St. Thomas to Barbados.” I said, “Thank you, I’ll take it.” So I took it. Went back to my old friend, Abdullah, I said, Ab, I’ve got it, they sent me a ticket. I didn’t ask them for it. They sent me a ticket and they justified sending it in the most wonderful, sweet, loving letter why they sent it, and they justified it. He wouldn’t talk to me. He said, “You are in Barbados. Not you’re going to Barbados.” Even then he wasn’t going to discuss it with me. Then one word he did add, he said, “You are in Barbados and you went first class.” Here, I’m going third class…and I’m in Barbados and I went there, it’s all behind me, first class.721 ¶24

So forty-eight hours later I went down to the steamship company, we’re sailing at noon, put my ticket in expecting to go third class, and the man, his name was Mr. Smith, he said, “Mr. Goddard, we have good news for you. We have a cancellation and so you’re going first class.” He wasn’t surprised, that was the agreement. They agreed. To what would you consent? Would you be a witness against yourself? And then I answered, yes, I’ll be a witness. And so a witness to God’s truth…that’s what you witness…that’s the only thing you witness to in this world: God’s word. God’s word is truth, you’re told. Well, is it true? Did you prove it? I proved it. Well then, you’re a witness to it. Don’t give me any argument how you’re going to get there and how you’re going to go there and what path you’re going to go: You are in Barbados. So now go and talk Christ and only Christ, and tell the whole vast world about Christ; that all things are possible to Christ. And so you go and you talk about it. You never tire of telling the world that he’s as free as the wind if he knows God’s law. So the law is simple. You ask no man’s permission to use God’s law. And so, blessed…a wonderful beatitude is pronounced upon the man who will delight in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers…not a few things but in all that he does. But bear in mind, tomorrow morning when you wake don’t be surprised to find yourself getting out of your bed and your feet in the water of Jordan. It’s going to be there again. But you know what you did, and so off you go again.721 ¶25

So I’m in Barbados and can’t get out because there aren’t any ships going from Barbados, for this was another year when the war was over. The war broke in the end of 1945, and the first ship out of there I sailed. Not thinking of return, I had no permission to come back into this country. I didn’t have any of these things, but I’m off for Barbados. Then I’m told in Barbados there isn’t a ship, not one ship before September, and I’m committed to a series of lectures in New York City in 1945 beginning the first day of May, and I can’t get out. So again, I start treading the water. So I walked up the gangplank of a ship that I saw in the bay. Not that day, but I walked up. And then a little while later they called me, and they had a list that long of people waiting. They jumped me over the entire list and put me at the top, and never justified why they did it. But I walked up the gangplank, not alone, taking my wife and my daughter with me, and so we all sailed on that ship. So I went beyond my Jordan. My Jordan there was a list that long and there were only two ships serving this little island, along with another three dozen islands, and the demand in this island alone exceeds anything they could possibly ever take out in the next few months. Then we had Trinidad, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, all the islands, to be served by these two tiny little ships. And so in spite of all their requests and their demands, my name was jumped in Barbados over all these and put at the top of the list. And I sailed and got in on time to give my series in New York City. So I tell you, it doesn’t fail. So you find yourself at the Jordan. Don’t cry, here’s the Jordan, alright, beyond the Jordan. You promised God…for the Lord is asking you a question, “Will you serve the gods that your fathers served—they served the gods beyond the Jordan—or are you going to serve the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now dwell?” And so, they all tell you, you’re in Barbados, and you can’t get out. That’s where the Amorites are, right there, and you are in their land. But now you can get out if you will serve the gods of your fathers, and they dwell beyond the Jordan. So beyond this barrier was my place called New York City. So I went up the ship and then got off in New York City. That’s exactly what I did.721 ¶26

So I say to everyone, you can do it. Don’t think that one person in this world is more loved by God than another. Don’t believe it. Because a man today that seems so kind and so wonderful, he is…he’s only in a state. He’s in the state of kindness, which is a lovely state to be in. A state of consideration, that’s a state. One’s in a state of horror, that’s only a state. But the occupant of the state of horror is just as perfect in the eyes of God as the one in the state of love. These are only states. And so the occupant is divine, the occupant is Christ Jesus. It is Christ Jesus in man that one day will be awakened in man, and that man in whom he awakes will be one with him. So when he rises in us, we are like him and he’s like us . And so here, these are states.721 ¶27

Tonight when you go to bed, be honest, look at your Jordan. If you like it, stay there, perfectly alright. If you’re satisfied with the day, there’s no reason to change it. But if you’re not satisfied with the day, beyond the vision of today there is a state that is the solution of today’s problem; you dwell in that state tonight. Then the words are, Provide or prepare the victuals, prepare the food that you are going to use. And the food is simply, it’s all mental. So you look at the world and see it as it would be seen were you now the man that you’re now assuming that you are. Falling asleep in that state, seeing the world as it would be seen were it true, you find yourself lifting it out of the deep. For within three days you will go across this River, and then you will enter the land that he gives you; and it resurrects, it comes out of the deep, the great earth on which you’re treading. So this is something that everyone should practice.721 ¶28

Now bear in mind when you read the word prayer, well, what is prayer? Is it not defined in our concordance as “a motion towards”? Is it not defined as “nearness at, accession to, nearness at or in the vicinity of”? That’s how it’s defined, “at or in the vicinity of.” So I want to be…and I name it. So I’m drawing nearer and nearer, and finally I feel I’m in it. How do I know that I’m in it? Well then, look at the world, mentally, and see if you are located properly. Because if you’re in it, the world is a frame of reference and it should tell you where you are. If this very moment I suddenly begin to see the Empire State building before me, then I look to my right and I see a way down on 34th Street, why, that’s the corner of Macy’s, then I look over to the Eastside, well, if I’m looking at this enormous building and I can feel it, I must be there. Then how do I know I’m there? Well, think of Los Angeles, and I see Los Angeles in my mind’s eye 3,000 miles to the southwest of me. And think of something else…then finally you’re located. So you must be there if everything else is as it would be were you there. And then fall asleep.721 ¶29

Then suddenly things begin to happen; radical changes take place in your life to compel that journey. So don’t do it lightly, because if you do it lightly even to disprove it, you’re going to prove it. And when you prove it, it may not be convenient to make the trip, but you’re going to make it anyway. That happened to me. I had no desire to go to Barbados in a certain year, l941, but it snowed in New York City and in no time flat we had twelve inches of snow. And so, to get rid of the snow, I slept in Barbados. Just to be [...] I felt the warmth of Barbados. Got up the next morning, there were twenty inches of snow, so I’m still in New York City with my Jordan. And I’d completely forgotten it.721 ¶30

Then came the summer and my wife and I made arrangements to go to Maine for a month, a little vacation in Maine. Sent off the check, sent off the request for our vacation in Maine, then came a cable from Barbados that mother was dying and there was no time to waste, come and come right away, come immediately. So my wife and I sailed in twenty-four hours. A ship was pulling out in l941…and no British ship was going, no other ship was going because war was on. Well, we were not yet at war, this was the end of August, and so we got aboard the American ship, the Royal McCormick, The Argentina, this lovely big ship. And we were all lit up like a Christmas tree at night, so that no sub could mistake us for a British ship. Huge big American flag on the side, on both sides, and every light on the ship burning all through the night that they could not use that as an excuse and say that we were dark and they thought we were British and then sink us. So in four and a half days we were in Barbados.721 ¶31

I had no desire to go there. I went and sent my money off to Maine, got my whole thing done for Maine. But, you see, back in January when it snowed, in February when it snowed, I had lost myself in treading out the winepress, and those three and a half days came beautifully…but it took eight months. In eight months the three days came and what I was treading out being in Barbados came to the surface, and I had to go to Barbados. And it was not my plan. So I went to Barbados and got back, but it was not my plan. My plan was to go with my wife to Maine and have a lovely month in Maine. But that whole thing was cancelled because I, in February, treaded out the warm clime of Barbados, and slept in it just as though it were true. So I say, don’t do it lightly, because I speak from experience. I did it in a light mood to get away from snow, and then it happened to me. I got away from…the thing I wanted most was to go to Maine. I certainly didn’t want to go home to see my mother dying, but that was the urgency of the call. The only thing that could have taken me away from my plan in Maine was just such an emergency. Any other request I would have thrown it out, but not when a cable comes saying that mother has no time to be with us any longer, and come now. Well, you couldn’t fly, there weren’t any planes. You had to go by boat, and luckily this lovely big boat was sailing in twenty-four hours. So off we went.721 ¶32

So I tell you, try it. Try it and try to master the technique of using God’s law wisely. And every time that you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are exercising this law wisely, any time you do it.721 ¶33

So if the request is made of you tonight for anything that is not a murder or to hurt someone, it’s good. And don’t judge them, no matter who they are they’re entitled to their request. They’ve confessed to you where they stand. For when they say, “I want so and so”, they’re telling you, I’m right down at Jordan, right down at the water’s edge and I can’t get across the Jordan. Take them across the Jordan in your mind’s eye. Take them out of that state and put them into the state of their wish fulfilled in your own mind’s eye, and you sleep in that state for them. And then you’ll take them across their Jordan. So they’ll get it when the three days are over. And those three days, it will resurrect, it will come out of the deep and they will have it.721 ¶34

But the very next day they’re still going to be at the Jordan. Every day of your life you wake in the morning, after your heavenly vision, to come down and start the day at the Jordan. You will find there always will be those in the world, “If it is so, turn this stone into bread for me.” I had that in New York City on this marathon. “You say imagining creates reality? Turn that yellow pencil into red for me.” And so you always get it.721 ¶35

If I said to him, this professional philosopher, that “Man does not live by bread alone,” you know what he would have said? “What arrogance. Why he is quoting the scripture as though he actually said those words.” And if I told him I did, he would have dropped dead. Who else could have said them but Jesus Christ? And who is Jesus Christ?—your own wonderful human Imagination. But if you don’t know it, well then, he still said it anyway, but you were walking in your sleep then when you said it. If you don’t know you said it, you said it as a sleepwalker. But the day will come you will know you said it. For the whole book is about you. The whole vast book from beginning to end is all about you. There’s no other being it speaks about other than God; and it’s only speaking about God, and who do you think you are, a worm? All ends run true to origins. If your beginning is a worm, your end is a worm…and the scientists are right, little worms will get you…and so, you’re only worms, maggots. But if your beginning is God, the end is God, for all ends run true to origins. So, if the origin is God, the end is God; and so you will awake as God if the origin is God. But if your beginning is a worm, call it by any other name, spermatozoa, it still ends as a spermatozoa, it’s a worm. But I tell you your origin is God and your end is God. Now let us go into the Silence.721 ¶36

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he said, “According to the commission of God, given to me as a wise master builder, I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let every man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. So we may build on it gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—whatever we build upon it will be manifested…it will be revealed by the day. If the work on it survives, he will receive a reward. If it is destroyed, he suffers loss. But he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” Then he ends it, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” This is his statement in the 3rd chapter of 1st Corinthians . In the first chapter he defines what he meant by Jesus Christ. He says, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” and there is no other foundation. Here in this act of God he was made an apostle. It was an act of grace, for no one commissions himself to be an apostle. He never volunteers; he is drafted, he is called. And then he is sent but with a definite command; in his case to lay the foundation and no other foundation other than that.720 ¶1

In my case, “Down with the bluebloods,” which simply means “all church protocol,” anything that interferes with the individual’s direct access to God. I don’t care what you call it, but anything in the world. There’s only one foundation…you build upon it. But any interference with the individual’s direct access to his God that when you go, rub it out. In other words, you don’t talk against it, you simply ignore it; and that was my commission, “Down with the bluebloods.”720 ¶2

This morning’s mail brought the usual number of pieces. Among the mail one envelope, when you opened it, it was a chain letter; that if you in the immediate present —they give so many days, two or three days, I forget what it was because I quickly tore it up and threw it away—but in four days you will have a great fortune; but if you don’t, then some horrible end will be yours. They mention someone who got $700,000 and then he broke the chain by not sending out twenty more and so he was killed. Then another one got $50,000. They broke the chain, and some horrible end to that. Well, the unnumbered superstitious people in the world receiving such a letter would simply burden the post office with another twenty sending them out. They will say, “Only costs me twenty stamps and twenty pieces of paper and twenty envelopes.” But it costs the poor postman this horrible nonsense. So as I saw it, I simply read the stupid thing, tore it up and threw it away. So in four days I’m supposed to be fabulously wealthy, and then because of what I did soon after to be, well, dead in the sense of a violent, horrible exit from this world. So you are witnesses.720 ¶3

Now, had I accepted that, I would have been building on a different foundation and there’s always a temptation to build on another foundation. Man, in his infancy, looks upon everything outside of himself as the cause of the phenomena of life. Many believe in astrology. I must confess at one time I did too…believed in anything because I didn’t find the true foundation.720 ¶4

I recall in New York City, many, many years ago, this lady who had retired, she was a high school teacher in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She came to New York City and we became very, very close friends, and what I knew of astrology I taught her. Well, she had a modest income from her retirement fund, but she thought she’d augment it and become a professional astrologer. I taught her how to erect a chart, how to read it, how to progress it, and do all the things with it. One day, I called on her (she lived at the corner of Broadway and 72nd Street) and Norma was in tears. I said, “What’s wrong?” She said, “A total stranger recommended by a very good customer of mine called me up and told me that he wanted to come and see me to project his chart.” I said, “What’s wrong with that?” She said, “He came in and I was sitting at the open window and I had a stack of Ephemerides at the window and a wind blew over the page. I didn’t recheck before I drew the chart, and I drew a man’s chart that was born ten years later. From this chart of a man who was born ten years later, I drew his chart. When he came, I read the chart and he said, ‘Mrs. C., if this thing is true I will wire you $100.’” She said, “I am so convinced that it’s true, give it to me now!” He said, “No, I will wire you $100.” And she read what he wanted to hear, but she was persuaded by her little hieroglyphics, so convinced that she really believed it to the point that she said, “Give it to me now.” I said, “Well now, did you really believe it when you said it?” She said, “Yes!” I said, “Well then, forget it. That’s all that matters. You were self-persuaded that what you saw was true, and you read it believing it, and he believed you, and so the whole thing is done.” It’s based upon the foundation: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it, and you will” . Well, she said, “That is not the chart.” I said, “I don’t care. Norma, you know that from what we’ve said recently I have outgrown that. I no longer believe in monkey bones, astrology, teacup leaves, numerology or anything outside of my own wonderful human Imagination. That is the foundation and that is Jesus Christ, and there is no other Jesus Christ. He is buried in me and I bear Christ in my body…but I bear what Christ?—my own wonderful human Imagination. Well, if I can persuade myself of anything, that will come to pass; because, all things are possible to him and he is my Imagination. There never was another Jesus Christ.” Well, I couldn’t console her, but that night I was in her place when the phone rang from downstairs and the operator said, “There is a Western Union man here and he wants to see you, should I send him up?” So I was there when this Western Union brought up this little $100 check. It came to pass that day as she foretold and the man kept his promise and wired her $100 by Western Union…and I was there when it happened. But Norma who saw the entire thing and actually witnessed it, because it did bring in a certain sum of money every month, could not bring herself to throw the whole thing through the window, and until she died she was the professional astrologer.720 ¶5

Well, she is not alone. There are millions of people in the world who have disproved what they teach, but where to turn now? They haven’t the strength of character to stand upon their own feet and say, “I will stand here regardless of what happens”…many a minister, many a priest, many a teacher knowing what he is teaching is not true.720 ¶6

So when I was sent, I was sent to say, “Down with the bluebloods”; in other words, to simply rub out every intermediary between myself and my God, for myself and God are one. God is my own wonderful human Imagination and there never was another. God actually became me that I may become as he is. He took upon himself all the limitations of the flesh, of the weaknesses of man so that I in turn discovering who he is, believing in him, applying it, will one day awaken, and I am he in every sense of the word. So, “Go out”…I was sent by the same being that sent Paul. Who is this being?—the risen Lord. You stand in his presence, he asks a simple question, you answer it quite simply, he embraces you, and you fuse and become one body. From then on, “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” . So from that moment on, you are one spirit with the risen Lord. And so, he sends who?—he sends himself. Because, if you are one with him and that happened before you are sent, well, who can he send but himself? For, “He who sees me sees him who sent me.” I am never alone, whenever you see me, you see him who sent. But you don’t see me with the mortal eye, for that being that was sent is one with the sender. The same thing is true with this statement of the 3rd chapter of the Book of 1st Corinthians, “There is only one foundation; there is no other foundation, only one.”720 ¶7

Now, if to dream is to dwell in unreality, not knowing [...], what is the life of the majority of the people in the world but a long uninterrupted dream. If I go to bed this night and then suddenly…not with my mortal eye, but seeing as clearly and more clearly than I do with the mortal eye, I see a scene that cannot be seen from my bedroom. I see it, it’s vivid, it’s just as vivid as this but I see it in all detail. And then, while stretched out on the bed, I step into it…and then I return to my body. Then I still see the scene. I go into the scene and it’s just as real as this, it’s three dimensional, to me it is. Well then, instead of falling asleep and dreaming of it to return the next morning remembering a dream and thinking as the world thinks it was simply dwelling in states not real; but not knowing they were not, until I return six hours later to reflect upon it as a dream, I step into it. I step into it and now remain. And when I step into it, I step in fully awake as I am now, fully conscious. Then the world closes behind me and this world is shut out. Reflecting upon it I know it was real, but by comparison, why, it is but a dream. It’s only a dream…yes, your wife, your children, all that you knew there, well, judged against this it is unreal. It’s just like a dream.720 ¶8

Then you explore this world into which you stepped and you find it solidly real. You try to persuade people that you meet there that this thing is a dream…because you remember how it started. You’re on your bed and you saw it clearly, and then you went into it, and then returned. Again, you went into it; you came back. After a dozen times of going into it and returning, you decided to go and remain and explore and investigate, have fun, not contemplating the consequences that you may not return. That never entered your mind that you may not return. Then you saw people, you didn’t know them, but you know exactly what you did. You know where one of the bodies must be, because here you are to them a being that is solid and real, they are real, and you try to persuade them that the whole thing is a dream. They are scared to death, as any ladies would be if they encountered a total stranger in a hotel lobby and he tells them that this whole thing is a dream. Why, they’d rush straight to the management and tell the management, “There’s a crazy man out in the lobby…you better go and get him.”720 ¶9

So, while standing there, trying to persuade them that the whole thing is a dream, I then close my eyes thinking, “Well now, I’ll return to where I knew the body was.” When I reopened my eyes, I’m still standing there. I said to myself, “Now this is really something. Here I am in this corridor of a lobby in an entirely different world…it’s not this world…and now how am I going to get back, for I have unfinished business where that body is on the bed. I have a child that is not yet educated, I have a wife to support, I have all these things…and how do I return because there is no road I can take?” While standing there, I remembered a similar experience years before and that feeling was the secret. There’s no road, but if I could only imagine that my head was on a pillow and feel it that in some strange way without going down a road I would return. Well, standing in that corridor (and it was just as real as this) I simply imagined that my head was on a pillow and that I could feel it. Suddenly, I did feel it; but I couldn’t move…this body was cataleptic. I couldn’t move my arms, I couldn’t move my eyes, I couldn’t move anything. It was a dead body and I a living presence within it. What seemed an eternal time but possibly only a half-minute, I then could move this little finger. After a little while, I could move it from the elbow down, and after a little bit more I could push it out. I was sleeping then in a double bed, and I pushed my hand out and I could feel the warmth of my wife’s body. I knew I was back but I still could not move. After another little while I could open my eyelids, and here are the familiar objects on the wall, and I knew I had returned. This body to which I returned was dead when I came back; but I slowly moved it and then it became re-animated in this world.720 ¶10

But the world that I had just left was just as real as this world. So we return night after night from a world that is just as real as this. We come back and we give it symbolic significance. I tell you, everything in this world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. We return and say, “I had a dream.” Well, tell me the dream and then I try to interpret the dream in its symbolical manner. At the end of the day, tell me your day, it’s a dream too, for it too could be interpreted in a symbolical manner. That is man.720 ¶11

There is only one foundation and that foundation is your own wonderful human Imagination. A friend writes me, I got the letter this day, it all happened in one night and yet it seemed like a period of time as though time differed. He is in England and he goes into a very marvelous eating establishment, something that is plush. He enters on four occasions at different moments in time and each time he enters through a different door. On one occasion he comes through this door and the maitre d’ greets him in the most wonderful manner, “Lord So-and-So.” “I can’t quite recall the name,” he said, “when I returned, but it was always Lord So-and-So.” That was the first of three entrances that he made into this eating establishment. On the fourth occasion, he thought he would go through the back door disguised, and he disguised himself, but the maitre d’ still recognized him under the disguise and began to tell the waiter who he really is, with a little twinkle in his eye, knowing that the Lord saw him and that he recognized the Lord for who he was. But this time he dropped the surname, it wasn’t Lord So-and-So, he said to the waiter, “That really is the Lord.”720 ¶12

Now that is all symbolism. I will say to my friend, from your previous visions and experiences you are awake. That experience of yours, you call it a dream…it was a memory, a memory returning of a previous experience of yours. Now, that previous experience is now about to be re-interpreted on an entirely different level; for, in the end, there is only the Lord. In the end there is only “one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.” So you reach the point where your shadow world is reflecting the being that you know yourself to be; not one pretending but actually recognized by the world that you have projected, the world round about you. And they know in you and see in you the Lord, for in the end there will only be the Lord. There’s nothing but the Lord. I don’t care what part you play today, you are destined to be the Lord, for the Lord became as you are. I don’t care what part you are playing—you could be playing the part of a thief, the part of a judge, the part of the one who is in prison, the part of the warden who watches and guards. But whatever part you’re playing now, you are destined to awaken one day as the Lord. These parts they play called Lord So-and-So they’re only adumbrations, foreshadowings. For everything has its own significance.720 ¶13

So here, your dream of tonight will seem a dream and a shadow world if you return and recall it, just a dream. But if you could only awaken in the dream or step into it prior to that moment…as I told you in my own experience, for that happened right here on El Camino, oh, about thirteen, fourteen years ago, when I saw it quite clearly and stepped right into it. And here, from a state on the bed into a standing position and I explored this fabulous hotel, and saw people that I didn’t know. I know you…I didn’t know the two ladies coming down the corridor. But everything about it was solidly real and so real I could hardly bring myself to tell them that it’s a dream. But I knew how it started and if I hadn’t stepped into it consciously and deliberately, but had slipped into it, I would have called it on waking I would have spoken of it as a dream. On return to a body that was dead I could not refer to that experience as a dream, and yet it could not differ from any other dream. Only when you slip into it not knowing, then you think, “Well now, you dwell in unrealities.” But I say, unrealities, not knowing them to be such, they are real. That reality of the dream does not differ from the reality here, for this too is a dream. This whole thing is a dream.720 ¶14

Now, that foundation of which he speaks and defines as the creative power of God and the wisdom of God, let no man come between you. Whether it be a chain letter or some paraphernalia in a church like all the rituals and ceremonies. Because you go to church on a Sunday morning, especially a high church in the Episcopal world or in a Catholic church, and you see from the little boy, the altar boy who lights the candles…many a mother goes just to see her son lighting that candle. The devil with what she’s going to hear, she wants to see her son, how he’s going to light the candle or prepare the wine and prepare the bread for Mass or Holy Communion, and that’s her consuming interest, this acolyte. Well now, I was told when I was sent “Down with the bluebloods”—anything in this world that interferes with the individual, and will stop him from a direct access to God…down with it! Rub it out completely, pay no attention to it. So that anyone who comes no matter what they ask you ignore it completely. It doesn’t exist. You do not need one person between yourself and God; for God in you is your own wonderful human Imagination. Who can lead you there?720 ¶15

So in the course of a day you are imagining. Be careful what you imagine, because it’s going to be tested by fire and if it survives, you receive a reward. There are certain things you build in your mind’s eye that all the fire in the world can’t destroy, it’s fireproof. If it’s all in your Imagination, it’s fireproof. If you believe it’s conditioned upon sending that letter or conditioned upon going to church, or conditioned upon something else, well then, something comes between you and God. Nothing must come between you and God. If tonight you really believe it and that becomes your one solid foundation, I can’t tell you the freedom that you will enjoy. Fantastic freedom! Just imagine, you don’t need anyone in this world, but no one, to lead you to God if you know the foundation of which Paul speaks; for that is the only foundation, and man cannot lay any other foundation.720 ¶16

So man tries to lay other foundations and all the isms of the world lay foundations that are not Jesus Christ; for Jesus Christ is your own wonderful I-am-ness, and that is your own wonderful human Imagination. And there is no other God. No other God! “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one” . Well, say “I am”…that’s not two…that’s his name forever and forever and forever. You accept that as your way of life and you’ll find a freedom you’ve never known before. I tell you, everything in your world will one day awake; you’ll see it all yourself pushed out. Nothing dies in God, but nothing! It seems to die but it doesn’t really die. As you move towards the inevitable awakening you awaken as what?—you awaken as God. Now it comes as it came to my friend…I have another letter today…but I will treat that possibly on Friday…from this friend of mine who is here tonight. She had the most wonderful experience of moving towards the inevitable, into the kingdom of heaven; but I’ll take that up possibly on Friday or maybe Monday.720 ¶17

But tonight, it is on this 3rd chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians…that others will make every attempt in this world…I know in my search how many foundations I laid. I was taught to believe diet was one. If I ate meat, that was anathema, and so for seven years I was a strict vegetarian. I was a strict non-everything; I was so good I was good for nothing. I didn’t eat meat, I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink. I assumed the vows of celibacy at that tender age, not realizing that my attempt to be the celibate was prompted by a complete disgust in my first marriage. So when we separated and went our separate ways, I just simply took a vow. I was not physically prepared for it, because I was every inch a man, a strong, strapping man, and nothing but suppression in my world. Fortunately the starvation diet of a vegetable life aided me. Here I am dancing all over the country professionally. I’d go into a restaurant…what restaurant in this world worthy of the name that is a restaurant…and I would say, “I’ll have a little soup providing there’s no beef stock in it.” Well, if he said there is no beef stock in it, he’s lying…if he has a restaurant. Well, his lie sometimes satisfied me and I’d take it…but, eating nothing but vegetables and fruit for seven years. And then one day, as my old friend Ab told me in advance, “You are about to die…but you will not really die. You’re going to Barbados and when you return you will have died. Everything that you have not done as of now…when you are back you will have done everything that you haven’t done in seven years.” Well, I thought the man was insane.720 ¶18

I went to Barbados, spent four months, and when I returned I had done everything that I hadn’t done in seven years. So he was perfectly true in his prognosis, in his prophecy that he knew that the time had come to break that spell within me. Well, I hope you don’t have to go through it. It’s not in diets. It’s not in not doing this, not doing that, not doing the other. The whole thing is in simply one solid foundation, which scripture calls Jesus Christ; and Jesus Christ is the creative power and wisdom of God and that power is your own wonderful human Imagination.720 ¶19

So, just as my friend Norma could persuade herself that these little hieroglyphics meant what she told the man it meant, and she could speak so convincingly that he believed it…and I was there to see that $100 check delivered. Then in spite of that she knew that her little things didn’t mean a thing thereafter, but she had established a nice clientele and she could not give up the money that came from it. She had almost everyone in the Metropolitan Opera as a client. So you see, your greatness in the artistic world doesn’t mean that you are wise. You can be just as stupid as all outdoors, because they came day after day, week after week, month after month, and they had their horoscopes progressed for a year, then progressed for a month, and then progressed for the day. They’d be coming in, one after the other, all these great singers, because I saw them. I was there with Norma. Norma would turn to me constantly, and I said, “Norma, you know I don’t believe in one thing but I’ll give you my intuitive power…what does the man want? What does he want? You tell me what he wants and I’ll show you how to see it in the chart; and then you’re self-persuaded, because certain things you aren’t going to see. Tell me what he wants, and the minute you tell me what he wants I’ll look at the chart that you’ve drawn and I’ll show you where it is, and then you’ll become self-persuaded. Where was the power but in your own wonderful human Imagination. It wasn’t in the chart and it wasn’t in anything else.”720 ¶20

So I tell you, don’t go to anything outside of self, don’t!720 ¶21

I read a little story here yesterday in the West Magazine, you might have seen it. This Frenchman, I can’t recall his name, but here he was…I think he was not an ambassador, more in the business side, representing France here…consul general, possibly. Well, he was having cocktails with Salinger and his wife and two other people. Salinger was representing Kennedy at the time and said to him, “You know, Bobby Kennedy has a very great chance of being nominated and then carrying it for the next presidency.” He said, “Don’t be silly. Bobby Kennedy will be assassinated.” He said, “Oh no, that’s a chance in a million. I know he doesn’t take the protection the country offers him, he exposes himself to all these people, but that would just be a chance.” He said, “No, it’s not a chance. There is no chance to this. He will be assassinated,” and he gave just his reasons for it. “No vision,” he said. Two weeks later he was.720 ¶22

It’s in the current West Magazine of yesterday’s Times. This Frenchman analyzed it in his own strange way: How people want to be identified themselves with someone else, and this time is ripe for these silly little fellows to play their part, and go down in history as the one who did it. And he gave his reasons. Now he was persuaded…this Frenchman was self-persuaded. You can become self-persuaded of anything and find it projected onto the screen of space. Therefore, I say take gold, take silver, take precious stones, fire will not destroy them. Take something noble in your life, something lovely. Whenever you’re in doubt, always do the loving thing. So you think that this man is going to be assassinated, rub it out of your mind.720 ¶23

There was no plot in the world…it’s not in scripture that he had to be, it was only in the mind of one who was self-persuaded. Now he would never for one moment believe that there was the causation. He will give you all the reasons in the world. No, he was self-persuaded. If you are self-persuaded of anything, it will happen; for the whole vast world is yourself pushed out. There was no reason in the world for this one, because it is not in scripture and scripture is the everlasting book. You aren’t fated to be wise or foolish, rich or poor. It’s entirely up to you what you’re going to build on the only foundation in the world. If you had wise parents and they told you that you could be a noble lady, a noble man in this world, living in comfort and living in freedom, and being honored, and being wanted in this world because of your contribution to the world, that you would contribute something noble to this world, well, if your parents told you that, you’d become it…if you believed them. If you accepted what they told you and you lived in it and dwelt in that state, then you’re self-persuaded; and because that’s the foundation of the world you would objectify it.720 ¶24

But most parents compare their children to the next door neighbor’s child and find theirs wanting, thinking that’s the way to jack them up. You don’t jack them up that way; you simply make them feel little and unwanted. You take a child and make the child feel noble…if it’s nothing more than the name he bears. His name is Smith, well, what makes Smith important? “Don’t you know you are a Smith of the Smiths?” even though there are millions of Smiths in the world. Make this particular family of Smiths important. It doesn’t have to be some strange name, just make it important to the child, so when he walks the earth he feels important. You’ve got to feel it. Let no one tell you you shouldn’t feel it, that that’s being arrogant, that’s silly. You’ve got to feel it!720 ¶25

Read the story as told in the gospels. “This one…for we know his parents…what does he mean claiming that he is not Joseph’s son but his father is God? Why that’s blasphemy!” Well, he walked as though he were. You have to walk as though you are. If you would do the works of God, then you must assume that you are. You can’t do the works of one that you are not. And so I tell you that you really are, but if you don’t claim it…the foundation and the only foundation is Jesus Christ. There is no other foundation.720 ¶26

So, if you this night move into a world as I have done time and time again to find those worlds are just as real as this. I can’t separate the world of dream from this. But men slip into that world and see them as simply—not at the moment because while they’re dreaming, they are the only reality—it’s only on reflection that they call them shadows and unreal things. But from these unreal things they get an interpretation of their state of consciousness. And then how can they be unreal and yet interpret a state of consciousness of the one who had the dream? Therefore, what is that world as against this? Objectivity and subjectivity are wholly produced by the level of consciousness on which consciousness is focused. So if it is focused on that world, while that lasts it seems the only reality. When I return to this level and reflect upon the experience of a few moments ago, it seems unreal compared to this. But this, if I remember it when I slip in there and I become awake, this seems unreal compared to that…for this is only a memory after I slip from it. So objectivity and subjectivity are wholly determined by the level of consciousness on which the individual at the moment is focused. If he’s focused on that level, it seems the only reality.720 ¶27

So here this night, I hope you’ll take it seriously and if anyone offers another foundation, ignore it. There is no other foundation. People will tell you, you have to be born into a certain nation or a certain race or a certain religious belief, forget it! You need never see the inside of a church, never see anything the world now talks about as a “must.” And if you know the one foundation, you can go to anything in this world that you want. You could become the lady or you can become the gentleman that you want to be. I don’t care what the world will tell you, you don’t need any other foundation other than this, because there is no other foundation. When people say, “You don’t have the qualification,” well, you can just pick out any one of a hundred people tonight who are actually living on the very top of their world, the envy of many, who had no background intellectually, socially, financially, but they had one foundation: They believed in themselves. They simply imagined that they were what they wanted to be, they lived as though they were, and they walked in that assumption. That assumption in a way that no one could have devised externalized itself, and then they lived in it in an external world.720 ¶28

You’ll see it morning, noon and night. But most people when they do externalize it forget that by which they did ascend and try to ignore it. There’s no reason for it. You don’t have to brag about it and talk about it, but if anyone should ask you, you could answer quite honestly (and that may encourage them) that you didn’t have the so-called “musts” that people think you must have in order to achieve a definite end. In spite of that you started believing, and you wound up entertaining the very thing that you believed. And you became the man that you wanted to be. You possessed that section of the world that you wanted to possess, and it is all within you.720 ¶29

So, can you believe in this one and only foundation? If the word Jesus Christ offends, well then, use another. It doesn’t offend me, I love it. I love the word, because to me I have found its meaning: It means your own wonderful Imagination. It is the power and wisdom of God, and that’s your own wonderful human Imagination. So you dare to assume that you are. Well, you say, “But I don’t have the wisdom to find the means to achieve it.” Forget that. You do have the wisdom, because whatever it takes it will devise. If it takes a thousand or ten thousand people to play their part to bring you into the embodiment of what you have assumed that you are, they’ll play their part. Knowingly or unknowingly they’ll play their part. So you don’t have to be concerned as to who is going to aid. Forget the so-called aid. They simply are moving then under compulsion. Because you have dared to assume that you are what you want to be, you compel everyone who can help you to achieve it to play the part necessary to bring about what you have assumed that you are. That is life.720 ¶30

So tonight, see that this is your only foundation, there is no other foundation, and build nobly on it, just noble, noble things on it. Live so that your mind can store a past worthy of recall, because as Paul said, “That section of your past that cannot stand the fire will suffer loss.” Therefore, build nobly, for you’re going to be confronted with it time and time again until that moment in time when he awakes within you. When he awakes within you and you are he, I can’t tell anyone the thrill. I can’t tell anyone what it is to awake knowing you are the one spoken of in scripture and the whole vast book is your biography. You didn’t know it and all of asudden here it confronts you, and you have experienced exactly what is recorded in scripture as Jesus Christ. There never was another. It’s all within you.720 ¶31

So if, as he tells us in this 3rd chapter, you are the dwelling place of God and the spirit of God dwells in you , what he’s telling you is that the dwelling place of God is holy, and that place you are, therefore you must be holy. Well, how do I become holy? I am promised that “Blessed are the pure, for they shall see God” . Well, how do I become this pure, how do I become holy? May I tell you, man is purified by the death of his delusions; everything other than this one foundation you’ll die to it.720 ¶32

Norma departed this world, because it paid off she had not yet died to it. I have friends of mine, and many of them come here, and this one said to me, “I know that what you say is true that if Imagination and will are in conflict, Imagination invariably wins. But, Neville, astrology has a certain something in this sense, it doesn’t compel you to be, it only implies. It impels in a way, but it doesn’t compel.” That’s justifying it, and as Blake says, “Self-justification is the voice of hell.” So he doesn’t know that he by justifying astrology in spite of all that he’s heard here is laying another foundation…and you lay another foundation, you’ll lay a third, and a fourth and a fifth, and finally you have all the other foundations. Yet he knows this philosophy, he knows it well, and does to a great extent live by it, but he’s always trying to tell me that after all astrology has a certain influence. Well, if it has an influence, then Christ is not the only foundation. He’s in rays and all these things coming at my birth, and as I move, and these little things move, then they’re impelling me. But as he will make it quite clear they don’t compel you, they simply impel. He draws a little line of demarcation between these two, but I tell you, that is another foundation and you can’t have another foundation. Not until he dies to that delusion…and we all have our delusions…and one day we die to them. As we die to all delusions but the one foundation, we are purified then as we die to them.720 ¶33

Here is a friend of mine and he said, “I was born in Boston of Irish parents, living in this environment of 101 percent Catholics, and if you were not a Catholic, anathema!” As far as he was concerned, anyone who was a Negro or a Jew that was out…couldn’t stand it. Protestants he tolerated. Then came the war and he was drafted, he was a sergeant, he was sent off into the Pacific. Here’s a sergeant with his company and he’s pinned down by a nest of Japanese machine gunners. You couldn’t move but the whole thing would start ricocheting and there they were, flat. Next to him was a Jew. He said, “I gave that Jew every dirty job in the company to do. Not because he did anything that was wrong, I just simply hated Jews and he was a Jew. Here we are, the entire company pinned down, couldn’t move and I’m the sergeant. This Jew said to me, ‘Sarge, do you have any hand grenades?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Let me have them.’ I barely could move to take from my belt these two hand grenades and I passed them over to him. This Jew that I gave all the dirty work to—I never thought a Jew could ever be that brave, no one who was a Jew could be brave—and the man jumped up. First of all, he had pulled the pins and he jumped up and threw them and blew the whole nest into hell. He himself was severely wounded; he survived.” He said, “From that day on, every Jew that I would meet I honored, and saw them in an entirely different light.”720 ¶34

“I came back to this country, saw my parents in Boston, returned to the West Coast, and settled for a while in San Francisco. All I knew at the time was simply what most of the Irish fellas back in Boston know, how to carry bricks and mortar and things of that sort. So I got a job in the building and construction. One day in the factory a little accident and I am burning. My whole back is afire. Not one Caucasian came to my help…and this strapping black man rushed up, picked me off the floor, threw me on the floor, and then smothered me with his own body, smothered all the flames. From that day on when I got the job to hire people if you came through the door looking for a job and you’re black, you got it. The minute you came through if you were black, you got the job. So I died to these delusions concerning the Jew and concerning the black man.”720 ¶35

Now, God in you knows exactly how to dramatize the thing to set it up. So he sets it up in a battle. We think there should be no war, but it took a war for him to die to the delusion that the Jew was not a brave person and the Jew should simply be made to do all the dirty work in the company. So the war was used by God: “All things move for good for those who love the Lord.” And so here, he died to that concept. And here, back in civilian life because he was burning and no Caucasian would come to his help, the Negro rushed up, threw him on the floor, and then smothered him with his own body. So he died to that belief concerning Negros. So we die to our delusions. Man is purified by the death of his delusions and we have so many to die to!720 ¶36

One day you’re told that Jesus Christ is not a little man born 2,000 years ago of a woman called Mary, who didn’t know a man, and then all this it isn’t. Well, what a death that is to a Christian! When he hears it for the first time, he wants to go off his mind. Because he’s lived by it and all of a sudden that is not the true story. When he hears that is not the true story, he just wants to go completely berserk, because he thinks his whole world has collapsed. But he died to that grand delusion. And then you can’t leave a vacuum, you must find out, well, who is he? If he isn’t that, then who is he? And then it comes. He gravitates to those who know…and he hears it with understanding and he hears it and he accepts it. His mind is set free: A far greater Lord Jesus Christ than ever was presented to him by his priests and his ministers and his parents. Something entirely different that now sets him free…but he first died. May I tell you, anyone born and raised in a Christian environment, believing that as I did, when he hears it, what a blow! He feels, well, the whole world has come to an end, and is there anything of value left in this world? And he simply goes for a little while off his mind as it were. What can I believe if that isn’t true? And then he hears it as it really is, and then as in my case he experiences it. Oh, what a joy! There is no other story worth talking about…certainly nothing as great as the actual experience of Christ awakening in you as your very self and not another.720 ¶37

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Now are there any questions, please?720 ¶38