Tonight’s title is “The Potter’s House.” This story is told in the 18th chapter of the book of Jeremiah. “The Word of the Lord came to Jeremiah, ‘Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words.’ So, I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.” Now, as we told you last week, these stories are parables. You have to extract the meaning from the story. In the 64th chapter of the book of Isaiah you read, “O Lord, thou art our Father, we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work of thy hand.” Here he equates the Lord our Father with the potter, and it is stated quite clearly that we are the clay. If I am to go down to the potter’s house, I need not move from where I am. For am I not told, “We are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in us”? So, where could I go, other than just where I am? So, this is the “potter’s house.”705 ¶1

The word potter means by definition in the Bible . . if you take James Strong’s Concordance . . it means imagination. It means “to determine; to form a resolution.” Well, now, I determine to be a certain man, which, at the moment, reason tells me that I am not. My senses tell me that I am not. Nonetheless, I would like to be that. If I am not the man that I would like to be, then the clay that I am using . . which is the being that I am, for I’m told we are clay . . then that vessel is spoiled in my own sight, but instead of discarding it, I should rework it into another vessel, as it seems good to me to do.705 ¶2

Well, how will I go about reworking this clay? First of all, I must know what I would like to be, for it means, “to determine.” I must make that decision. What would I like to be? I do not modify it. I know the Lord is going to do it. Well, I know exactly what I would like to be. Let me ask a very simple question: Suppose it were true? How would I see the world? What would I feel like? What would I hear if it were true? Then let me assume that it is true, that I am the man that I would like to be. Then let me look for confirmation in my imagination and see my friends as I would have to see them, were it true. Let them see me as they would have to see me if it were true. Now I am reworking the vessel in my own imagination, for that is the potter.705 ¶3

Will it work? I know from experience it does work. All I ask others to do is to try it. Don’t judge it; try it. And you will see that we are living in a world of imagination, that the human imagination is God.705 ¶4

When Blake said, “I know of no other Christianity and no other Gospel, other than the liberty of both body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination,” then he adds, “The Apostles knew of no other Gospel.” This mystery has been told in the form of a tale because: “Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors.” Man finds it difficult to think abstractly, so he takes the great truth and he tells it in the form of a story. You and I were told the story, but we haven’t gotten beyond the story to discover exactly what they are trying to tell us. What they are trying to tell us is: Our own wonderful human imagination is God.705 ¶5

Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help and not ourselves, in whom God dwells? If He dwells within me, I’ve got to find out where He is. When I find that He is the only creative power in the world, I find that to be my imagination. I will not always be in control of my imagination. In the course of a day I am ashamed, possibly, of unnumbered things that I have imagined, but as I am told in Scripture: “I AM the Lord, and there is no other god beside me; I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal.” I create the evil and I have formed the good, the weal and the woe, for there is no other creative power in the world! I cannot turn to an evil being and call it God and “turn to a good thing and call that another God. It is the same creative power. The light that illuminates the room, it could electrocute me if I misuse it, and yet it serves to illuminate the room. I can put it to a thousand purposes, or I could misuse it. That is the same thing that we do with our imagination.705 ¶6

The human imagination is God. “Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us, and we in Him.” “The Eternal Body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself.” That is the Divine Body that we call Jesus, and Jesus is crucified upon man, and is buried in man, and is awakening in man as the human imagination that every man aches for. And when it awakes within man, man will know Who Jesus is! He will know Who God is.705 ¶7

So, here the “potter’s house” is just where you are seated right now. You don’t have to go any place to find it. In fact, because you are one with God, God could never be so far off even to be near, because nearness implies separation, and He is not separated from man. There is no place where you can go and separate yourself from your imagination. You can divorce yourself from the body. You can separate yourself from the body, but you can’t separate yourself from your imagination, because “God (literally) became as we are, that we may be as He is.” He’s not pretending that he is us; he literally became as we are, and He is our own wonderful human imagination. We are told, “By Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Well, you name something that was not first only imagined. There isn’t a thing that you can name that was not first only imagined. And if “by Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made,” then we have to find Him. And you will find Him as your own wonderful human imagination. That is God!705 ¶8

The worship of God is simply using His gift. His gift is Himself. He gave me Himself! That is the true and real worship of God . . not to get before something that human hands made and put up on the wall and then crosses himself for luck, but that is what the world does. They make some little thing and then worship it . . that which is made with the human hand. No, the God I worship, and the God that the whole vast world will worship . . to worship Him is simply using His talent. He said, “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away,” as we are told in the 25th chapter of the book of Matthew. He went away . . in other words, He became invisible. We are told, He becomes invisible, so He is not objective for me to worship. He takes His residence in me. He became as I am, and I’ve got to actually use that talent, and use it wisely.705 ¶9

I use it wisely every time I exercise my imagination lovingly. I don’t care whether I do it for myself or for myself pushed out. The whole vast world is myself pushed out, so if I encounter an aspect of myself . . a friend or a relative or a total stranger, and I see the need, without his consent I can simply exercise my imagination lovingly on behalf of him and see if I can take that, instead of discarding it, and remold it and shape it into a better form. What do I think he would like to be? Well, I could ask him, Are you satisfied with life? Maybe he tells me, No, he would like more money, a greater income, security, more health . . he names it. Then without raising a finger or asking anyone to help me, I could, by the use of my talent which is my imagination, represent him to myself as he would be seen by me if it were true, and without waiting for confirmation, let me assume that it is true, knowing in my heart that “The vision, which is now my vision, has its own appointed hour. It ripens, and it will flower. If it seems long, then I must wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late.”705 ¶10

It will not be late for the thing that I have done, for all little seeds have their own appointed hour. A man comes forward in nine months, the horse in twelve months; how long the elephant takes, I don’t know, but a chicken in twenty-one days. So, every little seed has its own appointed hour. So, that peculiar seed that I have just planted for a friend or for myself . . how long it is going to take, I don’t know, but I must actually believe it. And when I believe it, I drop it. A seed must fall into the ground and rot if it is to be made alive. I cannot hold it in my mind’s eye; if I take it and do not drop it, then it remains just a seed. I must drop it into the earth and let it rot. And when it rots, it means that I have dropped it from my mind. I’ve done it. That’s all I can do. And then, in its own wonderful appointed hour it will ripen.705 ¶11

Now you try it and see how it works. I will wager that it will work. It is working morning, noon and night anyway. We are totally unaware that we are doing it, but all day long you and I are harvesting what we have done! We’re imagined it, and then the thing is done, but we do not recognize our own harvest when it comes up, because our memory is very faulty, and we can’t remember when we ever did a thing like that. And, yet, it couldn’t possibly come up unless, at some moment, someone imagined it. So, “Go down to the potter’s house” . . I’m always in the potter’s house . . “and there I will let you hear my words.”705 ¶12

In a vision . . in a dream of the night, a deep sleep falls upon a man while he is upon his bed, and he opens the ears of men and sealeth their instructions. This you will read in the 33rd chapter of the book of Job.705 ¶13

Well, many years ago I had this vision. I was taken in spirit in what would be the turn of the Century in New York City on Fifth Avenue, when they had these huge palatial homes, fully staffed, for these great financial giants of the day. This was before income taxes took it from them. If you made ten million, you kept ten million. You spent it, but you didn’t pay anything in income taxes. So, these palatial homes were all on Fifth Avenue, and they kept their stables on the West Side. They were enormous homes. A few were left when I came to New York City in 1922. The Vanderbilts and the Astors . . they were still there. But I was taken in spirit into the interior of one of these palatial places, and here there were three generations. The oldest of the generations was not present. The man speaking spoke of him as “Father,” but he was the grandfather of those addressed. There was the grandfather, the father who was speaking, and the children whom the father addressed, and he was telling the secret of his father to his children, and he said, “Father used to say, while standing on an empty lot, ‘I remember when this was an empty lot.’ Then he would paint a word picture so vivid that you could actually see it as he painted it, with the building standing upon it, although it was an empty lot. And he believed in the reality of what he did. And now you and I are enjoying the fortunes that he left behind. That was his secret: I remember when… and then he painted the word picture. He knew exactly what he wanted for that lot.”705 ¶14

Now, that was the secret. I awoke and wrote it down. Then I fell asleep again and redreamed the dream, but this time, instead of eavesdropping and hearing a man telling his children what his father did to become successful, I became the grandfather. I was not talking to others. I was simply communing with myself. And I was saying to myself, “I remember when this thing was only an empty lot. Well, look at it now!” Well, you could take that same technique and do it concerning anything in the world. “I remember when I didn’t have a job.” “I remember when he had no money.” If I say, “I remember when he had no money,” that would imply that now he has money. “I remember when he couldn’t contribute to any charitable cause in the world. In fact, he was on the receiving end!” That would imply that today he can contribute and he is on the receiving end.705 ¶15

Well, that was a lesson that was revealed to me. For we are told, “In a dream, in a vision of the night… he opens the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction” in the form of a vision. It was told me so vividly, so I share it with you. If you can stand perfectly still and assume that things are as you would like them to be, but at the moment they are not, well, then, you can say, “I remember when.” Now, remain faithful to the vision and forget the appearance of the moment. The appearance tells you it cannot be. Reason denies it, and your senses deny it. But if you take this revelation which was given to me as it is to everyone . . because all these dreams come from the depths of a man’s soul; it is speaking to the surface mind. The surface mind is now telling you what it heard in the depths of its own soul. And the depths of my soul are one with me. Your soul is one with you, for there is only one God. But it seems to be fragmented when it comes to the surface because there are unnumbered individuals in my world. But in the depths of my being there is only God. In the depths of your being there is only God. And because God is one, and only one, that depth is speaking to the surface mind in all of us.705 ¶16

So, here you can try it. Be perfectly still, and just remember when . . “I remember when I couldn’t go into that club,” or “. . when I could not dine in that place,” which implies I can go there now, and I can dine where I want to now because I have the means. Well, just do that. Anything in this world that you desire, take that technique and try it.705 ¶17

Here is the story concerning the potter . . he is reshaping; he doesn’t discard the vessel. Man will discard a friend if the friend cannot make it. He doesn’t want a further friendship, because he is always asking to be helped. Well, instead of discarding the friend, you reshape the vessel. Instead of discarding anyone in this world, you reshape it in your mind’s eye, and you will be amazed, as time goes on. He finds himself . . in a lucrative manner, he finds himself doing all the things he couldn’t do before, and he doesn’t know that you did it. You need never tell him that you did it. It doesn’t really matter. What does it matter if he knows that you planted the seed for him?705 ¶18

For in the end, we are one anyway. There is only really one body, one Spirit, one hope, one faith, one Lord, one baptism, one God and Father of all. In the end, when man discovers who he really is, he is going to find one body, and that one body is the one Lord. And we call that Lord “Jesus Christ.” And Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination, which is the Divine Body of God. But man beats it morning, noon and night by the misuse of his talent. He literally gave Himself to us . . not in any uncertain manner. “He (literally) became as we are, that we may be as He is.”705 ¶19

This is the story of the Bible as I read it, so when I see it, I do not see it as secular history. I cannot see it as secular history, for I have experienced Scripture. The more man experiences Scripture, the more he integrates within himself Jesus. He is eating of the body of Jesus and drinking the blood as he experiences Scripture, for it’s all about this One Being. The One Being is crucified on Humanity and buried in man. He remains buried in man until He awakes in man, and when He awakes in man, He is the man in whom He awakes. He is not another coming from without, as the world thinks. The great and popular evangelists of the day depict the Christ as coming from without in order to save the world. Well, they will wait forever. If they wait till the ends of time, He cannot come from without. Is he not within? Are we not told: “Test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, if He is in me, what am I looking on the outside for? What signs am I trying to find in the world for His coming? You could find all kinds of signs. He isn’t coming by these signs. His signs are spelled out for us in the story of Jesus in Scripture. Everything said of Him is literally true, and you are going to experience it.705 ¶20

But in the meanwhile, we can exercise the talent, for the one who had the five made five more, and he highly commended him and said, “Enter into the feast of the Lord,” which is the glory of God. The one who had two doubled it; he made four, and he was highly commended. But the one who buried it because he was afraid to use it . . he was condemned. The talent was taken from him. So, do not bury the talent and say, “Well, now, this may be stupid, but we’ll try it.” And when you try it, it will prove itself in the testing, and when it proves itself in the performance, what does it matter what others say, or how unsound it may seem to the rational mind? If it proves itself in the testing, then use it. But to bury it, as so many people do . . they will not even test it. Well, I ask you to test it, and you will find Who God is. He’s not even nearer than hands and feet, for you can sever the hand, you can’t sever God. You can sever the foot, but you can’t sever God. You can take out all sorts of parts of the body; you can take out a lung. You can take out all kinds of things. They have even taken out a heart and put another heart in, but you can’t do that with God, because He is your actual being. He literally became as you are, that you may be as He is.705 ¶21

Come right in. Be my guest. You’re late. We are just discussing the technique here, and you’ll catch up in just a moment. Blake claimed that God is man’s human imagination, called in Scripture “the Father.” And we are molding and molding within our own mind’s eye everything that is happening in our world; that the world is simply man’s imagination pushed out. And instead of discarding objects in our world, we simply remold it. And the object is simply a man, any man, anything at all in the world that is our world, and we don’t discard them anymore, but we discover who we are. We take the vessel made of clay . . and we are the clay. We are the potter. The potter is our own wonderful human imagination. And we simply reshape it. We don’t discard it; we reshape it, and then let it, in its own good time, come into being. “The vision . . “as you and I have now reshaped it . . “has its own appointed hour, and it ripens and it will flower.” If it seems to us a long time in coming, be patient, “.. .it is sure, and it is not going to be late.” These things always work. If something is great, it may take two years or a year or even longer. What does it matter? It will come if I am confident that it will come. I’m telling you it does work this way.705 ¶22

Now, return to another aspect of Scripture. It is not strange to me, though it may be to others, but it’s not strange if you and I seem to have a far greater confidence in the sense of touch. We are more thoroughly convinced by the sense of touch than we are with sight or hearing or smell. This is told us in the 27th chapter of the book of Genesis. If you are not familiar with this story, let me just refresh your mind, if you’ve heard it once but you may have forgotten it. It is the story of Isaac and his sons. He is about to die, or he thinks he is. He says, “I have very little time left, but I don’t know the date of my death, and I am blind. My eye is dim, and I cannot see.” And he wanted to taste some savory food, so he called his son Esau and sent him into the field to hunt, to get him some game and prepare it in the savory manner that he likes, that he may eat. Now here is food. His wife overheard what he said to Esau, but she loved Jacob, so when Esau went hunting for game to prepare it for his father, she then turned to her son Jacob and told him what the father had said. Now she said, “You do what I tell you. You go into the flock, and you take two kids and prepare them for me. I’ll do the cooking and make them savory as your father likes them, and I will give you a coat that belongs to Esau. When you come to him, he will feel the hair on it . . on you. I will take the skins from the kids and cover your hands and the smooth part of your neck.” So, when he came with the food prepared as his mother had prepared it for him, the father said to him, “Come near, my son, that I may feel you. Your voice is the voice of Jacob, but come near that I may feel you.” And when he felt him, he said, “These are the hands of Esau,” and then he gave him the blessing. The whole thing was determined by touch. He could feel him. He heard the voice, but he wasn’t trusting what he heard. He wanted to touch him.705 ¶23

We find that same sense of touch carried through the Bible. When Thomas doubted the resurrection, he said, “If I could but touch you.” He said, “Put your hands in and feel.” He heard the voice, but he didn’t believe it. He saw, but he didn’t believe it. Then, when the girl touched Him, He said, “Who has touched me? For I perceive virtue has gone out of me” . . all based upon touch. So, it isn’t strange that you and I have a far greater confidence and more thoroughly believe in the sense of touch than we do in sight or hearing or smell.705 ¶24

So, here is this story, and now in a simple way this is how we apply it: Think of something that is distant . . anything, I don’t care what it is. It could be a place, it could be a condition that you think is going to take time to do it. Now, draw near. He said, “Come near, my son.” Well, if you think of something, that is your offspring . . your idea. You think of a trip, say, to New York City. It is three thousand miles away. How would I draw it and make it near? Well, I stand right here where I am, and then I “draw it near.” I draw it nearer and nearer, and then I occupy it. Man’s great weakness is that he is always building and building, but he doesn’t occupy; perpetual construction but no occupancy. He doesn’t go in and occupy it and give it what I would call sensory vividness and a sort of cubic reality. It is always like a sketch to him in his mind’s eye. As you occupy it, it surrounds you. I can’t be in San Francisco and New York at the same time, but to prove that I am in New York, then let me think of San Francisco. I must see it to the west of me by three thousand miles. I can’t see it under me or around me. I must turn my mind’s eye to the west . . three thousand miles to the west. Then I give this . . now New York . . all the sensory vividness, all the tones of reality that I can muster. Then I open my eyes, and what happens? Well, San Francisco returns.705 ¶25

Well, that is the story as told concerning Esau and Jacob. Suddenly he remembers, and Jacob now vanishes. This objective state that I have just appropriated when I returned to my conscious, rational mind, has vanished, and this seems the only reality, but I say I cannot take back my blessing. I gave that state my blessing, the right to be born, and I cannot take it back. It is called the birthright. So, he gave it the birthright, the right of birth. So, when this state complains that he was robbed, then the father says, “I have given it the birthright and I cannot remove it; I cannot take it back.” In other words, having actually felt myself in New York, when I opened my eyes in this room and find I am kidding myself, that whole thing was simply self-deception. I say to myself, having done it time and time again, “It doesn’t matter.” It seems that I am self-deceived, but I know from experience that now a bridge of incidents will start to be built. I do not consciously build it, but some series of events will occur, and I will pass over this bridge of incidents that will take me from where I am now to where I was in my imaginations and I cannot resist it.705 ¶26

I ask you not to try it unless you are serious, because it will work. And many a time you will try it in an idle moment not knowing this thing is going to work, and when you least expect it, when you’ve made plans for other things, you will have to cancel those plans because it is going to work.705 ¶27

I will tell you of an experience of mine. Back in 1941, it was the month of February, and I had come out with the book called “Your Faith Is Your Fortune.” My audience in those days in New York City numbered, say, a thousand people three times a week. I thought I would have a fair audience, but that night it snowed and snowed. It started about noon, and kept on snowing. I began my lectures in those days around quarter of nine, and suddenly no one came. I had not more than a hundred people, when I was accustomed to a thousand people. They couldn’t get through. We must have had between fourteen and sixteen inches of snow, and no one could get through. So, when I went home I was a little bit disappointed in the attendance because I brought my new book out, and I wanted to have at least a good-sized audience.705 ¶28

That night, this is what I did. In an idle moment . . I didn’t intend it consciously, but I did it; I went to sleep in my bedroom, and I assumed that I was in Barbados, two thousand miles away across the water to the little island called Barbados. I dropped off to sleep feeling I was in my mother’s home. I could hear the coconut leaves against the woodwork. I could smell the odor that comes only from the tropics. I could feel the entire atmosphere of Barbados, and I thought of New York City and saw it to the north of me, two thousand miles away, and I fell sound asleep in that assumption.705 ¶29

When I woke in the morning, the snow was still on the ground, say, fourteen or fifteen inches of snow. I made plans for my wife and myself to go to Maine in the month of August for a vacation and sent off a deposit to hold my place for me. In the month of August . . late August . . I got a cable from Barbados saying that Mother was desperately ill, and they didn’t want to tell me anything about it because war was on. At least, England was at war. And there was no transportation, just a couple of ships moving out, and they did not want to disturb me. Mother was desperately ill, and it was terminal. There was no possibility of any recovery. And if it was at all possible to make the trip, she wanted to see me before she died. All the others were present. I was the only one who was missing. In twenty-four hours my wife and I sailed for Barbados. The ship was leaving that night, and we couldn’t have gotten together all the things necessary, but we sailed for Barbados instead of going to Maine. I had no plans to go Barbados, but here suddenly came the cable revealing the need to go to Barbados, and we went to Barbados, and we did not go to Maine.705 ¶30

What I did in February took approximately seven months to mature. I did it . . consciously did it, not thinking for one moment . . I did it only to relax and to put myself into that mood because I was disappointed that the crowd did not come out and get my new book, “Your Faith Is Your Fortune.” So, I tell you from experience, don’t do it idly, because when you plant something, that is still coming into being. It is going to come into being and disturb your so-called conscious plans. It works that way.705 ¶31

So, I do know that when it comes back into this world, it doesn’t really matter. I stand here just perfectly simply now and do something in my mind’s eye and give it sensory vividness and give it the tones of reality, and then I open my eyes, and this shocks me, because this tells me that what I just did was self-deception. You deceive yourself. It is all in your imagination. But I know now that my imagination is the only reality; that this world is still the world of imagination, and that all the things that I see as an objective fact in my world . . they are all “pushed out” because of my imagined acts. To try to change circumstances before I change my imaginal activity is to work against the very nature of things. It can’t change of itself. It can only change as I change the imaginal activity.705 ¶32

So, if I now actually know the man that I would like to be, though at the moment reason denies it and my senses deny it . . if I really know what I’d like to be so that I could write it out, name it, state it . . well, then, in my mind’s eye assume that I am that man. And to prove that I am that man, look at my friends’ faces, look at the people in my world and let them see me as they would have to see me if it were true. Then if I want to carry on a conversation with them, carry on the conversation from the premise of my wish fulfilled, and then have them say to me what they would have to say. And I say to them what I would say, were I such a man, and then see what happens. And you mold yourself into that being, for you are not discarding yourself. You do not jump off the bridge because you do not like yourself as you are; you simply remold yourself.705 ¶33

So, the vessel in the hand of the potter was spoiled, but he didn’t discard the vessel. He reworked it into another vessel as it seemed good to the potter to do. And the potter was his own wonderful human imagination. And that is addressed in Scripture as God. Thou art our Potter. We are the clay. And “Thou” we discover to be I AM. “Go and tell them that my name forever and forever is I AM.” You can’t get away from I AM. How are you going to get away from it? Where would you go that you are not aware of I AM? I don’t care where you go; you cannot go any place and not be aware that you are. That is God’s name forever and forever. When you use the word “God,” you might think of something other than I AM. Well, that’s not His name. His name is I AM. We give it the name “God,” we give it the name “Lord”; we give it all these names.705 ¶34

As I said to you earlier last week, if the name “God” or the name “Lord” or the name “Jesus Christ” conveys to you some existent something outside of man, that is a false god. You have the false Jesus Christ in that case. If you think for one moment Jesus Christ is something other than your own wonderful human imagination, you have the false Jesus Christ. That may seem sacrilegious, blasphemous, but I am telling you what I know from experience.705 ¶35

One day He will awaken in you, and He’ll awaken in you as you. Then you will know the truth of it. No longer will you look for Him as coming from without. He can only awake from within. He is already in you, and He is buried in you. The Crucifixion is over.705 ¶36

As Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” He literally became me just as I am, with all my weaknesses, all of my limitations. He took upon Himself all of these, and waits upon me just as quickly and as indifferently when the will in me is evil as when it is good. He became a slave, we are told in Scripture, and this is the garment of a slave. He took upon Himself the garment of a slave . . emptied Himself of all that He truly is, and took upon Himself the garment of a slave.705 ¶37

And this body is the garment of a slave, for you are enslaved by it. You have to feed it, bathe it, wash it, and perform all the normal, natural functions of that body. No matter how much money you have in the world; you can’t pay any sum of money to another to perform the natural functions for you. You hate to do them all by yourself. So, here, this is a slave . . the garment that He wears. And one day you will take it off, when He awakes within it. Then He will take it off and return to the garment that was His “before that the world was.”705 ¶38

And when He does, you are told in Scripture, He transforms my lowly form to be one form with His glorious form. Don’t try to even conceive what that form is. It is not this at all. It hasn’t a thing to do with the weaknesses and the limitations of this garment of flesh. It is . . well, fire; I could call it. It is human, I grant you that . . at least, the face is, the voice is; the hands are. But do not try to even conceive of the body itself; I only know from experience that it is a fiery being of the night. That is the Being that it is.705 ¶39

Wherever you are, clothed in that body, is Heaven. In that body, if you walk through the Petrified Forest, it will burst into foliage. If you stood in the desert, it would bloom like the rose. So, Heaven is not a location. It is not some area or realm; it is the Body that you wear. Wherever you go, clothed in that Body, everything is perfect. When you are not clothed in it . . well, as Milton had his Satan say: “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” Wherever you are in this garment . . the Christ garment . . wherever you go, it is perfect. There is nothing inharmonious wherever you are.705 ¶40

That happened to me back in 1946. I was coming through the Caribbean Sea on the way to Mobile, Alabama, and suddenly this motion took place within my head, and I found myself actually clothed in this beautiful garment of light. I thought at the moment that I had overcome death, and a heavenly chorus was singing, “Neville is risen, Neville is risen.” And then I saw this infinite sea of human imperfection, and I knew they were waiting for me. I glided . . I didn’t walk; I simply glided. And when I got to this enormous crowd; the blind, the deaf, the halt . . everyone of them was transformed into perfect beings. Eyes that were missing came out of the nowhere and filled the empty sockets. Arms that were missing came out of the nowhere, and everyone was perfectly marvelous. And, yet, I didn’t raise a finger to make it so. I showed no compassion. No one asked anything of me. Just as I walked by, because Perfection was within me in its fullness, everything in my world had to be perfect! And when I got to the very end, that same choral group that began by singing my praise, “Neville is risen. Neville is risen;” when I got to the end it exulted and sang, “It is finished.” And at that moment I crystallized and came back into this little body that was on the bunk on the ship.705 ¶41

That whole thing was altogether so vivid in my mind’s eye. I had a manuscript that would have been, say, a book of 300 pages. I tore it up and threw it away and wrote the little booklet called “The Search,” based upon that experience. Out of the blue, it happened!705 ¶42

So, I do know from my own experience that when you are clothed in that garment, as you will be one day, you are in Heaven. It is your Heavenly Body. It cannot die. It is your Immortal Self. Wherever you are, it’s perfect. If you went into hell, hell would cease to be hell and it would be heaven. Wherever you go, everything is transformed in harmony with the Perfection that is springing within you. So, Heaven is not a realm, as our evangelists are talking about.705 ¶43

I went to a party last Saturday, and this man . . a retired gentleman . . has studied them all. He has them all catalogued! No. 3, No. 5, No. 2, No. 7; he has millions who will never get to heaven. He has some peculiar concept in his mind’s eye. He’s all there. Then this sweet lady with her two little girls . . she had one, I presume, five months old, and then one, I daresay, oh, a year and a half . . sweet little children, and he said to her, including the two of us who are here tonight – a gentleman here was with me, and he knows exactly what was said. No one had asked anything of him, but he said, “You know, I have the virility and the sex life of a youth eighteen and a half years,” and this mother of these two little girls very innocently said to him, “But you look so old.” What silence! Dead silence. No one had ever had the courage to tell that man before, “Why do you look so old if you are this virile thing that you are talking about?” Then, of course, he got up and walked away.705 ¶44

People go through this marvelous world of ours with the strangest concepts of heaven and hell. It’s all within the man. When you are clothed in this wonderful garment – and I am speaking from my own experience – everything is perfect. Forget the so-called second heaven, third heaven, fourth heaven – just forget it. You are clothed in that garment; the garment is perfect, and wherever you go, it is perfect. There is no hell when you are clothed in that garment. There is no room for it. No man could be blind in your presence. No man could have an arm missing in your presence. Not a thing could be imperfect in the presence of the Perfect One. You are Life Itself! You are the Resurrection and the Life. You resurrect all things – yes, the Petrified Forest won’t be petrified in your presence. The whole thing will burst into blossom. The desert would begin to bloom if you walked into it. That’s Heaven! So, you don’t have to go to a place. You simply have to be reclothed. We are told, “He will transform our lowly bodies to be of one form with His Glorious Body,” which is the Body of Christ.705 ¶45

So, here tonight, you take me seriously and know that your own wonderful human imagination is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus. Now, try to use it lovingly whenever you use it, and you are using it morning, noon and night, whether you are conscious of it or not. Whenever you are in doubt, do the loving thing; then you have done the right thing. Whenever you are in doubt as to what you should do, do the loving thing, and it’s the right thing.705 ¶46

So, let me now gather it together. If tonight you know what you would like to be but you are not that person, don’t despair. Be honest with yourself, and ask yourself: What would I like to be? What sort of an income would I like? Where would I like to live? Don’t do these things based upon what you think you are capable of doing. Just what would you like to be? Then dare to assume that you are it! And, then, see the world from that assumption. Dare to assume it, and then view the world from that, and try to give it sensory vividness and the tones of reality. And then believe what I told you: The vision that you have made so real in your mind’s eye has its own appointed hour, and it will definitely, in its own good time, appear in your world in a way that you do not consciously know. It builds itself the bridge of incidents, the bridge over which you walk to its fulfillment.705 ¶47

Now, we can go into the Silence. Are there any questions, please?705 ¶48

If you have never heard this before, it might have shocked you, but I wouldn’t apologize. We grow by shocks anyway. No one in my audience at any time, I don’t care who he is, can tell me that he is more – I would say, rooted in the Christian faith than the speaker. I am rooted in the Christian faith. I was born and raised in a Christian home, and learned the story at my Mother’s knee. If I was ever beaten in my life, I was beaten in a Bible class in school when I was a child. Corporal punishment was allowed in those days. And I quoted correctly, but I was asked to produce my Bible to verify the quote. The quote was, “Take up thy bed and walk,” and my sadistic head master asked me to produce the Bible. Well, I didn’t have it with me. I am one of ten in the family, nine boys and a girl. We didn’t have ten Bibles, so, when I couldn’t produce the Bible – well, he was allowed by law to give me all the beating he wanted. He was a sadist. So, he brought out a long cane and tapped on a little bench for me to kneel on it, and he proceeded to simply cut me in half. When my father saw what he did to me, my father that night intended to kill him. It took the next-door neighbors to restrain my father from going straight to his home, and he would have killed him. I was just a lad. And the next day he took me out of that school. I was bleeding from my buttocks to my knees. I had quoted the Bible correctly, but it had been changed from bed to couch. He said his Bible said, couch. Of all the nonsense in the world! But he was a sadist, and he blew his brains out that year. He was simply a peculiar sadistic creature.705 ¶49

So, I know my Bible, for I have studied it. But it happened that the whole thing occurred to me, not as secular history, but salvation history. The whole thing is true, but it’s not secular. It is salvation history.705 ¶50

Now, are there any questions?705 ¶51

Any other questions, please?705 ¶56

[...] John is my favorite, really. So in the 18 th chapter of the gospel of John, Pilate is speaking to the Jews. And he turned to the Jews and he said, “You have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover; who would you have me release, the King of the Jews?” And they cried out, “Not this man, but Barabbas!” Then he adds, “Now Barabbas was a robber.” Now, we know nothing of any such amnesty as a custom. It is not attested outside of the gospel. You can’t find it as a custom at all; therefore, it’s a mystery. We have to start digging for the mystery, for it’s not a custom. And so we are told, just like an aside, Barabbas was a robber. So you have to start searching the scriptures to find out what is this robber, where is he? Now, listen to it carefully—-also in John, you’ll find this in the 10 th chapter of the gospel of John—-“He who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens to him; the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” Then we are told, “They did not understand what he was saying to them, and so he said to them again, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, I am the door of the sheep.’” They didn’t understand him. Any attempt to acquire anything in this world without the consciousness of the thing that you would acquire makes you a thief and a robber. The consciousness of health produces health; the consciousness of wealth produces wealth. You could inherit this very night a million dollars. Without the consciousness of wealth you’d spend it, you’d waste it; in fact, it would vanish from you. You can’t hold it. You can only hold that which you are aware of being. So the story is a revelation to man.703 ¶1

Now you pass judgment: “Without me you can do nothing.” Honestly, nothing? That’s what we are told. “If you abide in me and I abide in you, then you will bear much fruit, but apart from me you can do nothing.” So you pass judgment, will you accept it? May I tell you, you are not going to find him outside of yourself. Tonight, there are in this country of ours, well, hundreds…how many millions? One hundred ninety million they claim? Well, take the world…they claim a billion Christians are in the world. I hate to be harsh in my judgment, but I don’t imagine that an nth part of an nth part of one percent have accepted Jesus. They think they’ve accepted him, but they haven’t, because they have some image of a being on a wall, or some being in their mind’s eye that they turn to mentally as Jesus. And that’s not Jesus. Jesus is your own wonderful human Imagination. When you say “I am,” that’s he. Will you trust him? No, I trust another Jesus, well, then you don’t know Jesus. By him all things are made, and you can easily find him if you accept that claim: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”703 ¶2

Alright, here is a simple story told me this week. A man remembers the place in Denver where he slept, and by his own confession in his case history as I received it yesterday morning, he said he slept in a basement, next to a deep freeze. And so, he didn’t tell me why he wanted to return to Denver…just to experiment…and so in his Imagination he slept in the same basement next to the deep freeze. Just one night he assumed that he was there. Physically he was here, but in his Imagination he slept there. The next day was Sunday, so he called on a friend, and while at the man’s table the man turned to him, casually, and said, “By the way, how would you like to go to Denver? We’re going to Denver to visit my brother and how would you like to make the trip with us?” A gift! The very next day another party said to him, casually, “How would you like to go to Denver?” Of all the things in the world, two invitations to go to Denver! He, in Imagination, occupied a state and the state is Denver, and then in twenty-four hours, one invitation, in forty-eight hours, the second.703 ¶3

Who did it? “Apart from me you can do nothing”—well, hasn’t he found Jesus? Then who was Jesus? Wasn’t Jesus his own wonderful human Imagination? Well, who was doing it?—-apart from him you can do nothing. If I saw you reading a book, well, who’s doing it?—-Jesus. I am reading a book; apart from me you can’t read a book; apart from me you can do nothing. You can’t be anything other than through the consciousness of being it. And so, will we accept Jesus? It’s the only Jesus in the world. I don’t care what the world will tell me, that is Jesus. He creates everything in the world, and apart from him you can do nothing. “If you abide in me and I abide in you, then you’ll bear much fruit.” If you do not abide in me, then you’re severed from the vine, for “I AM the vine.”703 ¶4

So here, the trial takes place, and “You’ll have me release one, and who will you have me release, the King of the Jews?” They said, “No, Barabbas.” So they chose Barabbas, and Barabbas rules over them to this day. On one level you take it that way. On a deeper level, when you come to another portion of John, he said, “Now that you have found me, don’t let me go but let all these go.” And, therefore, if you don’t let me go, well, then you’ve released the robber from consciousness…on another level. But on the level that we treated here this night, man has chosen Barabbas and he would not accept as his leader, as his God, Jesus. No matter how many statues you have of Jesus, how many paintings you think you have of him, you’ve never really seen him until you see him; and when you see him you see yourself. That’s the grand I AM. And the day will come you’ll meet him—-you look right into the face of yourself, beautified, glorified beyond your wildest dream, and it’s self. That’s Jesus. And so, you either accept him or you reject him. If you reject him, then you’ve made your choice and you’ve taken Barabbas, Barabbas the thief and the robber.703 ¶5

Man tries morning, noon and night to become other than what he is conscious of being and he can’t do it. You could this night simply assume that you are the man, the woman that you want to be…just a mere assumption that you are it. Then looking into the face of others—mentally, of course—and let them see you as they would see you were it true—-do nothing to make it so but nothing—and it will become so. You will actually grow into the character that you’ve assumed that you are, whether it be a rich man, a poor man, a wise man, a fool, anything in this world. You choose it, you choose the man, the woman that you want to be, and dare to assume that you are it. If you dare to assume that you are it and sleep as though you were, well, then you will become it. And then you have found him. How did I find him? Well, “By him all things were made and without him there’s nothing made that is made.” So if you become it, then you’ve found the maker of the thing that you become; and you’ve found Jesus. You’ve found him as your own wonderful, loving, human Imagination.703 ¶6

And, may I tell you, I use the word loving advisedly, for when you meet him he’s infinite love. Everything in the world that you thought, well, inanimate and not alive, and certainly if it was alive, indifferent to all that’s taking place in the world, and one day you have an experience where it isn’t so at all: It’s all love. But everything in the world is love, and it’s all God, and God is your own wonderful I-am-ness.703 ¶7

So tonight, you pass judgment on it. You can accept it or reject it. I know you would find it difficult to have such confidence in this form of Jesus, in this reality that is Jesus. It’s so much easier to lean upon another, to get on that telephone and call a friend, have the friend do it for you, or call a teacher, or in between, the doctor, the dentist, someone else…but not self. And so, to actually assume full responsibility and take the whole thing upon self, and call that Jesus, it’s so much more difficult. But may I tell you, eventually you’re going to do it. Everyone will accept the only Jesus, and that’s the only Jesus. There is no other and there never was another, in spite of the one billion this night who believe in another. And so, the one of whom I speak this night, you’ll find him if you look carefully and dig. You’ll find it. All was told in the gospels.703 ¶8

So I ask you to believe in this Jesus. I’ve found him…would like to share it with you, share what I’ve found with you. As you’re told, he who sent me, I’m just like him. He who sees me sees him who sent me; and he who receives anyone I send receives me. He who receives me receives him who sent me. Then you get right back to the one who sent me. Well, how could I be sent by myself? I am sent by myself. I am then self-begotten? Yes, begotten by myself. And the being that I really am is the being that in my blindness I thought lived centuries ago and lived elsewhere, and he wasn’t there at all. I’m not saying it’s the easiest thing in this world to accept, but accept it you will one day if you have not already accepted it. My hope is that you will accept it, if you haven’t so far, accept it tonight. Let your judgment be: I will accept the King of the Jews. The King of the Jews?—well, who is he?—I AM. When you go into the world, “Go and tell them I AM has sent you.” So sit quietly and prove that I am he. When you do it, you’ll prove it and no power in the world can stop you from proving it. Having proved it you are free of all idols.703 ¶9

But man has made of Jesus the grand I AM, have made of him an idol. You don’t believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved. Well, the word Lord is I AM. Believe in the I AM that is my I am and be saved…you and your household. But man when you use the word Jesus, he always thinks in terms of a man, living elsewhere, or who lived 2,000 years ago. He never thinks of Jesus as I AM…and that’s how you spell the name. It’s really Yod He Vau Shin Ayin. The Shin is put into it for a very good reason. Rather than Yod He Vau He, it’s Yod He Vau Shin Ayin. Shin is a consuming flame which enables every man in this world not only to create but to unmake what he’s made. He makes something. If he had to live with it forever, then he couldn’t unmake it. So a Shin is put into the name of the creative power of God. For Yod He Vau He is God, I AM; but I AM-in-action, which is imagining, a Shin is in the name. The Shin is a consuming flame—-its symbol is a tooth. A tooth crushes, it consumes. And so, I make something; I don’t like it now; I want to unmake it. Were it not that I contain within myself a Shin, I couldn’t unmake it, I couldn’t undo my mistakes. But I can undo all my mistakes when I know who made the mistake. I made it, I can unmake it. So a Shin is in my name. The last one is an eye, an Ayin, and that is an eye. I see clearly what I want to see, in spite of the facts of life, and if imagining creates reality, well, then I can create. I don’t have to limit my vision to the facts of life; for I make facts, I create facts. So he creates all the facts of the world by knowing who he is.703 ¶10

So I will now say, will you release Barabbas and hold onto Jesus, or will you now pick Barabbas and reject Jesus? That’s entirely up to you. No one in this world can force him on you, because, really, in one sense of the word, real spirituality is the gradual transition from a God of tradition to a God of experience. And so, when you have the experience you know that’s all there is to it. You don’t have to turn to anyone in the world to ask them, “Did it really work because I did so and so?” Ask no one, try again and see.703 ¶11

Now the same gentleman who told me the story of Denver, he writes of a lady. Because of an age condition she couldn’t get a job, couldn’t find a job because you’re beyond a certain age limit. So she turned to him and asked him to help. He said, “It only took forty-eight hours. I simply imagined that she told me that she had a job, a good job, and she liked the job. In forty-eight hours she was employed and now working for the Civil Service.” He said she said to him before he imagined, “Should I lie about my age?” He said, “No, don’t lie about your age, they’ll find out. They have ways of finding out. Tell them your age, just what you are. I don’t care what they tell you about your age, you tell them exactly how old you are.” In forty-eight hours she was working. Yet prior to that she was turned down, turned down, turned down. All that he did was simply he imagined that she told him that she had a marvelous job and she loved it, and they loved her, the entire office staff. That’s all that he did. Well, “If apart from me you can do nothing”—and who is speaking?—Jesus—well, then who is Jesus? What did the man do? If I said to him, “What are you doing?” “I am imagining that she has a job.” Well, he told me Jesus is doing it, but he didn’t use the word Jesus as the world thinks…but he did, because Jesus is I AM.703 ¶12

And so, in everyone Jesus is buried, but everyone. We carry him within us. Within our bodies, we are told, we carry the death of Jesus. That’s what we are told in Corinthians: “In our bodies we carry the death of Jesus.” Because man is unaware of him, and that of which I am unaware doesn’t exist for me. A thing has no existence for a man save through the consciousness that he has of it. So the man is totally unaware that he is carrying the actual death of Jesus within him; that he bears on his body the marks of Jesus. He said, “Henceforth let no one trouble me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” But if I don’t know it, well, then it doesn’t exist for me. I could read these words over and over, say, in Galatians, but if I don’t know it, if I haven’t had the experience that I actually bear on my body the marks of Jesus, well, then I don’t know it. So, I can tell you, and maybe you yourself can read it, but you have to experience it. So we are gradually moving from a God of tradition which is the false concept of God to a God of experience where man experiences God; and then he knows. And then you find Jesus, and having found him, do not let him go. “Now that you’ve found me,” he said, “let these go, but don’t let me go.” This takes place in the garden prior to the trial.703 ¶13

So they come out with staves to find one in the darkness of the night. They can’t see him because this is a dark night. He said, “Whom do you seek?” Well, “We seek Jesus.” “I am he.” These are the words; I’m quoting, “I am he.” Didn’t say I am Jesus…I am he. And so they all fell to the ground. Now, you can’t conceive of hundreds of people hearing a man from the dark say, “I am he,” and that all would fall to the ground, would they? The shock was so great when man discovers it he mentally falls to the ground. The whole thing is taking place in man. I can’t believe it, for Mother taught me that this was a little boy who was born unnaturally; God came into the world in this peculiar, marvelous way; and that he rose to manhood; then died for us; he was sacrificed on a wooden cross. That’s what she taught me and that’s what I believed. That’s what I was flogged for when I went to school, because I misquoted a passage of scripture, and so, beaten unmercifully by some sadist. But, that’s not the story.703 ¶14

And when I heard it, I heard it from the lips of one who was not born a Christian. I heard it from the lips of one who was not in the Caucasian race. He was a Negro. Here I actually heard the mystery, Christianity. But what a blow to me! Everything that I believed in tumbled within me. I represented that crowd seeking Jesus, and I thought I would hear from him something comparable to what I heard from my mother, and it wasn’t. The shock was so great; whatever I held within me that was dear all fell to the ground. I had to rebuild my world from ashes practically, and then gradually begin to believe in a true Jesus, and prove it. He said, “Come prove me and see. Come test me and see”. So, how could I test him? Then you start to test him. For could I imagine that I am what at the moment reason denies, what anyone would deny that I could ever become, and dare to simply assume that I am it? Not that I’m going to become it, that I am already that being, and sleep as though I really am? And then, in a way that I could not devise, that I’d become that being? I actually mold myself into the very likeness of the being that I dared to assume that I am. Becoming it…then I’ve found him.703 ¶15

Then, when you began to discuss it, wise men tried to dethrone you. Two years ago, back in Barbados, my two nephews came out from Cambridge. They just recently graduated in medicine. We were discussing on the beach and one, Michael, said to me, “Uncle Neville, you don’t believe in Jesus?” I said, “Michael, I believe more in Jesus than one hundred million people who claim they believe in Jesus. Put all their beliefs together, it would not equal my belief in Jesus.” “But, Uncle Neville, you say that as a man that man wasn’t born from a woman called Mary.” I said, “But, Michael, I am Mary. I am Mary.” He said, “Uncle Neville, how could you be Mary?” “I am Mary, I am Mary and birth to Christ must give. I have to give birth to Christ; I am Mary. And so, I’ve found him. And I was actually blessed because I gave birth to him, actually became him. I didn’t give birth to something other than myself, Michael, I gave birth to myself. I actually gave birth to my own being. And then, when I gave birth to it, I discovered who I really am. For the one that called him, [...]of the great mystery, the same one called me Father. Therefore, who am I, Michael?” He said, “What you’re telling me doesn’t make sense, Uncle Neville. You’re telling me, without using these words, you’re going all around the circle to try to tell me that you think you are he?” I said, “I don’t have to think it, Michael, I am he, but so are you. But you don’t know it yet. You don’t know it yet and you’re denying him, although you think that you have found him. And you think…you have six years at Cambridge, and your brother Roger he has six years at Cambridge; you married two lovely girls—one an ardent Catholic and one from Scotland, I dare say a good Presbyterian—-and the four of you really believe in Jesus and your Uncle Neville doesn’t believe in Jesus. But I have found Jesus, the living Jesus. Not something that died 2,000 years ago but something that is alive in all of us. But you’ve got to find him. And so, I will tell you about Jesus, if you will listen, and then you pass judgment. You either accept that Jesus or you reject him, it’s entirely up to you.” And we had these lovely discussions on the beach. But I left him unmoved, completely unmoved. He has to go through…he’s a doctor and he knows that you go into the lab and he makes up his little potions and he simply gets results today and maybe not tomorrow under similar conditions. One day he’s going to find Jesus, because everyone must find him.703 ¶16

When he finds him, he believes in him. “Believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved, you and your household.” Take your whole household with you and save them by actually turning only to Jesus, and Jesus is your own wonderful, loving human Imagination…that’s Jesus. So you find him, and when you find him you test him. As you test him and he proves himself in the testing, you try to share with others what you have found and hope they will listen.703 ¶17

Listen to the words: “One was on his way from Jerusalem armed with letters to all the synagogues that if he found anyone along the way who were the people of The Way, he would bring them bound into Jerusalem. And on the way, looking for people who belonged to The Way, he heard a voice and the voice said, ‘Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?’ Who are you, Lord? And the voice answered, ‘Jesus’.” But Jesus in Hebrew is Joshua and Joshua is I AM. He heard it from the depths of his soul, the being from within himself. And they were the people of The Way…alright, go back and read the story. How is The Way defined in scripture? He said, “I am the way.” The way to what? The way to everything in the world but specifically to the Father: “I am the way; and no one comes to the Father, but by me.” You can’t possibly come to the Father save you come by me. And so, who are you?—-well, I AM. The strange part about it, when you meet the one Son who calls you Father, his name in scripture was I AM…the name was Jesse. So you see you can’t come to the Father but by me. Well, who are you? I am, I am he. So “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life” revealed. I am everything, but I am the way to all things. And I am the truth. So if I am the truth, then truth need not be confined to facts. A true judgment need not conform to the external fact to which it relates. That’s a piano, I know, but I may desire something in the place of the piano. I must begin to see in my mind’s eye what I want to see there instead of a piano. If I persist in seeing it, I’m not going to go mad, someone’s going to come in here and say, “You know, we’re going to change this entire place.” And they think they initiated the desire to remove the piano and put the flower that I’m seeing there. They will take full credit for the change in this room when they are only executing the imaginal act of one who was persistent in that act, and just didn’t accept anything other than what he imagined. So they go forward and change the things to conform to someone imagining, and that one imagining has found his Christ. He’s found him and he isn’t going elsewhere.703 ¶18

So tonight the great trial is on, this whole week, and they’ll tell the story this coming Friday. I know many a wet eye will be in the churches this Friday, because I, myself, as a boy when they dramatized it as they did they always made me cry. So they dramatize the story, three hours this coming Friday, and if you are emotionally given to life, you will cry too the way they dramatize it. But that’s not the story. They should cry for the one billion who have rejected him and they think they have accepted him. They have not accepted Christ. If they accepted him, they wouldn’t make all the preparations to defend themselves as they do. They would simply know that he is love, infinite love. And the day will come you will have experiences that all who have found him have, and they will find everything speaking love, but everything…without the aid of mescaline, without the aid of any artificial, I would say, injection. You don’t have to. One day you will actually look at this room, or look at the street, or look at any place, and suddenly the whole thing comes alive to you. The whole thing will come alive. Even though after the experience it goes back to its normal, you can never forget the experience—the whole thing was alive. When I say alive, it was communing and it was all love. The so-called inanimate things, all love. You and I were placed here, as Blake said, “Put on earth a little space That we may learn to bear the beams of love.” We can’t bear them yet. We are put here a little space to learn to bear the beams of love. For the day will come that you are one with the whole vast creative power of the universe, and you are it. You’ll see the whole thing was made out of love; there’s no other substance in the world. But while we’re in it, so much of it seems horrible.703 ¶19

So, I’m asking you today to go back and read it and bring in your own verdict. For you are the Pilate, and you are Jesus, and you’re Barabbas; and the drama takes place in you. So as you read the story let the whole thing take place in you. Will I [...] Barabbas as the world has done, or will I take now Jesus? And so, hold on to Jesus and then live by him morning, noon and night. Walk just as though you were he…don’t be embarrassed. Now, for what was he condemned? We’re told in the scriptures ask the question, what was it? He said, “Why do you stone me? For what good work do you stone me?” and they answered, “Not for any good work but for blasphemy; because you, being a man, make yourself God”. Aren’t you a man? Well, that was what he was stoned for—blasphemy, because being a man he dared to make himself God. For he said, “I and my Father are one…and my Father is he whom you call God; only I know my Father and you know not your God; and my Father and I are one”. So they took up stones to cast at him. Not stones from the street but all the facts of life. For they knew exactly where this man, who dared to claim that he is God, where he was born, they knew his entire environment, they knew the family life, everything about him. And he dared to make this bold claim, and so, for blasphemy he was stoned with the facts of life.703 ¶20

For he claimed he was not of this world. The day will come you’ll have an experience which is not in this world, an experience far more real than anything here. You will know you are not in this world. Your earthly father, yes you honor him, you love him, but you know he’s not your father. And you can’t point to anyone who is your father; you have no father. You’re like Melchizedek: you have no father, you have no mother, you have no ancestors, for you’re one with the cause that is the origin of all; therefore, you have no ancestor. Because, actually, the only one that could call you Father was the one that God said, “You are my son”. If he called God Father and then he called you Father, and God has no ancestor, then who are you? You’re one with the origin that caused it all to come into being. So isn’t that blasphemy? Isn’t that the most arrogant claim in the world, a simple, little you, man? These are the words, “I stone you for blasphemy, because you, being man, dare to claim that you are God.” Who else can claim it?703 ¶21

And so, you don’t talk about it. This is all a mystery. It’s all written in our scripture for us that man, really, suddenly becomes aware that it’s all about himself. It’s not about someone else, it’s all about himself. He goes back and reads it. He can hardly believe it until the visions begin to appear within him, and one after the other confirms this impression that he is the one spoken of in scripture. And then the entire thing unfolds within him, word after word, and then he knows that the whole thing is true. But it’s true of everyone in this world. And so, go and tell it in the hope that they will accept it.703 ¶22

So when the one heard it, “Lord Jesus, have I been persecuting you?” and then the voice came from within him, “I am he.” So he then stood in the presence of a judge. This one, well, this judge was now a king, King Agrippa, and he said to him, “Why should it be thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?” He had the experience; for he tells us in the very first chapter of Galatians he had the experience. He said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood”. So the Son was revealed in him. Doesn’t name the Son, but the Son revealed in him was David, and David called him Father. Then he knew the ancient scripture for the first time. He went out to persecute all the people belonging to The Way, for he didn’t quite know the definition of The Way was “I am the way.” So he thought there was some little ism gathered together, and then when he had it revealed to him—-for it pleased God to reveal his Son in me and when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood. To whom would I go? So, you will have it, everyone will have it. But in the meantime, believe me. Don’t believe in Neville, believe in Christ within yourself. Believe in your own wonderful I-am-ness. Believe there.703 ¶23

Accept him one hundred percent as Lord. Believe in the Lord, the I AM, my I am…and be saved. Saved from what?—saved from anything that now is my problem. If I am unemployed and an employment is my solution to my problem, believe I am gainfully employed. If today I am unwell and a state of health is my solution to my problem, dare to claim, as told us in the Book of Joel: “Let the weak man say, ‘I am strong’”. While he’s weak, let him say, “I am strong” and let him persuade himself that that claim is true. Tomorrow or the next day, the not distant future, he begins to radiate the health that he dared to claim that is his. Well, he calls upon whose name? He called upon the name of God, because he was saying, “ I am strong!” That’s what we are told in the Book of Joel. Let the weak man say, “I am strong”; let the poor man say, “I am rich”; let the unknown say, “I am known” if that’s what he wants in this world. And everything comes into his world because he’s called upon the only name that can respond and create in this world. There’s no other name under heaven by which man is saved save the name. Well, in the scripture, when you read it the name is Jesus. But get it into your mind the word Jesus actually means I AM, that’s what it means.703 ¶24

So this night, when you go to bed let your prayer be simply an internal communion with self, and dare to clothe yourself in your assumption just as though it were fact and live in it just as though it’s true. May I tell you, it will become true.703 ¶25

So the choice is man’s—-Barabbas or Jesus—-just as simple as that. And the world has rejected Jesus even though a billion claim that they’ve accepted him. That’s why I told you the story of my two nephews…and I speak for all the family.703 ¶26

I had my two brothers in New York this past November—-one is a doctor, the father of these two doctors, and the other one is the head of all the businesses. Well, we didn’t get into deep discussions, but at intervals we would. But Lawrence, the doctor, and Victor, the businessman, they can’t go along with me. Yet they wanted to see every church in New York City. I saw more churches this past November. I went to all churches, lovely feeling, all of them pealing out lovely organ music, everything was lovely about it. But I didn’t feel any different when I came out. But they loved to just sit in the silence and drink in something lovely, perfectly alright. But I went from church to church, Catholic churches, all the Protestant churches, every kind of church, and so they loved it. But we didn’t get into the deep discussion concerning what these things represented.703 ¶27

I took them to St. Thomas’ church, this glorious painting, these glass stained windows, beauties! On one side, looking north, tapestries, and I said to my brother Victor, “You see these tapestries?” “Yes.” I said, “You know, behind them are the most glorious stained glass windows, but the tapestry hides them.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because a man who has built so many churches in this country, who gave them, his name was Rockefeller (this was the first one who made the billions) and he had a fight with the bishop of this church (this is St. Thomas’ church). His home came right up against the wall, the north wall of the church, St. Thomas’ church, so he built a spite wall, built it right up to the very top of St. Thomas’ church. Couldn’t stop him, it was his property, his money, his bricks, and the whole thing was blocked out so not one little ray of light could enter that church from the north. But when you look to the west…the glorious burst of light; when you look south…all these lovely lights coming through the stained glass windows. But here, they couldn’t have that blackness—because you saw the glass but not a thing coming through—so someone gave these beautiful tapestries. But it should all be nothing but sheer beautiful light coming through. So here, he built a lovely church on Riverside Drive. Riverside Drive and 125 th Street is this wonderful church that Rockefeller built. But he left a Will that no one can break, for the old boy has been gone for years. His son couldn’t break it and his grandsons can’t break it and their sons can’t break it. He so left that Will…that wall cannot be brought down; and so, all was done in the name of Jesus Christ, for he was a good Baptist. He gave millions and millions to the Baptists. He’s a good Baptist. The bishop is the head of the Episcopal church, St. Thomas’ on 53 rd Street and the [...].703 ¶28

So here I tell you, let us find the real Jesus. Victor didn’t find him in that church. And when I told the story to Vic, he said, “Well, I always thought much of that man. I admired him as a businessman, but now he’s gone all the way down in my estimation” because he saw what spite could do. Yet he died believing he was a believer in Jesus. Never found him. But now don’t you die from this little sphere without finding him. If tonight you’re disturbed, you take it under submission, take it home with you, and sleep on it, and feel the nearness of Jesus as your own wonderful human Imagination. I can’t begin to tell you when you accept him in the true sense what begins to happen within you. You become alive, something in the head becomes alive, and you can feel it. May I tell you, long before the experience of the birth from above, I began to sense something alive in my skull, actually could feel a pulsing, a pulsation alive in the skull. You could feel it move up and move down, move all over. At night you go to bed…that lovely sensing something alive. I dare say you can call that spiritual pregnancy.703 ¶29

And so, all of a sudden when I least expected it, the event happened as recorded; and not a thing changed, just as told in scripture. Well, if he is the only one who is born that way, and I know I was, then am I not he? And when you duplicate the same experience, are you not he? And if only Jesus is born that way, haven’t you found Jesus, because you’ve found him as your own I-am-ness. Because when you awake, you are awake; and you come out, it’s you coming out. Then three men come and take away the body, and the body’s all taken away, and three men are there. You know the three men of scripture and there they are. Every symbol is true and perfect. The wind that you are told in the 2 nd chapter of the Book of Acts, that same strange unearthly wind, is present. So when you go through the experience, the identical experience, are you not he? There’s only one—-that’s I am. You can say it in the depths of your soul, just say “I am”…that’s he. But now begin to believe it.703 ¶30

And then you test him and he proves himself in the testing. What chance would you put it down to—a man sleeping only in Imagination in Denver just as a joke? But he sleeps there, next to the deep freeze in the basement, and then casually calls on a friend the next day, and the man turns to him without prompting and asks him if he’d like to make the trip to Denver, that he’s going to see his brother.; and then the very next day another invitation to go to Denver. How could you cast that aside as a mere coincidence? That’s not! You can try it tonight. I tell you, I tried it and I don’t ever do it any more just as a joke, because whenever I do it it’s going to work. When I least expect it I’m on my way to fulfill that journey…when I don’t want to make the journey. I am moved under compulsion, for outer moments are compelled; it’s the inner motion that is self-determined, that is causal. All the outer motions are all under compulsion. And so, I don’t want to do it now and make it real—and then tomorrow, when I don’t want to go be moved by compulsion, I had to go. So don’t treat it lightly, for he will hold you not responsible for it, and he doesn’t care because he’s doing it. Who’s doing it?—your own wonderful human Imagination.703 ¶31

Tonight you bring in your verdict. Don’t tell me, just sit there quietly and say, “I will accept that Jesus” or “I don’t accept it. I prefer the one that my mother taught about, the one that I have at home in a book, where I can look at the picture of something.” So if you want that Jesus, alright, I wouldn’t take him from you. Go on with that Jesus until you find the living Jesus. That’s why you’re told, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him.” So always ask yourself, Do I look like him in my mind’s eye? No? Well, then he hasn’t yet appeared, because when he appears you’re going to be like him. You’re going to see exactly your own being magnified and beautified to the nth degree. That’s the being.703 ¶32

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *703 ¶33

[...] Jung’s book, a few copies I noticed tonight before I came on. And then my books are there. If there’s any other book you would like that’s not displayed, you ask them to get it for you and they’ll get it for you. On your way out stop and browse.703 ¶34

Now are there any questions, please? Yes, sir?703 ¶35

You, Bill.703 ¶38

Yes, Art?703 ¶41

Whenever you and I use our imagination unwittingly, we are asleep. We have to awake to God’s Law and His Promise. We are told in the very first chapter of Genesis, “And God said, Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And it was so.” Here we see the Law of the Identical Harvest, and you and I will not in Eternity violate it. We try to. Man has tried through the years to break this law. We are told, “Do not be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” “Therefore, do not grow weary in well doing,” for if we persist in it, in due season we will reap if we faint not, or lose heart.698 ¶1

Now, everything brings forth after its kind. If you really believe that you are the child of God, you will rest confident in that knowledge – in that seed, knowing that it can bring forth no more – no less – than God. If I really believe what Scripture teaches – “know ye not that ye are the sons of God, sons of the Most High? Nevertheless, you will die like men, and fail as one man, Oh princes.” – I will accept that. As a son of the Most High, what can I bring forth but God? Whatever He was prior to my being planted – for I am planted in death. All seeds must first die before they can bring forth. This is the great mystery. So, if I’m His seed, His sperm, His son, His child – whatever you will – then I’m quite willing to go through this Eternal world of death, knowing in the end I must emerge as Eternal Life – as God Himself.698 ¶2

In the meanwhile – while I am here – don’t try to violate the law. You can’t do it. Man has tried it, and he only produces a mule. We have taken – well, the horse and the donkey. We have millions of them in the world – mules. We cannot produce in the mule that which can bring forth its kind. It’s sterile. It’s impotent. I have seen the crossbreed between the lion and the tiger, but it, too, is a mule – beautiful to look at, but it is impotent; it’s sterile. I have seen birds that men mated. Normally they would not mate, but men forced them into mating and they have brought forth beautiful offspring; but the offspring is a “mule.” It will not reproduce itself. So, God has placed a limit to man’s mis-creation, so that you and I may speak in the world of Caesar of man’s evolution, and we think it’s part of God’s creation. It is not part of God’s creation. God finished it, and it’s perfect. The seed contains within itself all that parents have contained. If the seed is of God, well, then, it can only unfold as God. I can see evolution related to man and his affairs. Instead of digging the earth with my hand, I turn to a hoe, and then from the hoe, I turn to a plow, and from the plow to a tractor. Well, I can see the evolution in that, concerning the affairs of man. Instead of moving across a body of water on a raft then I took a sail, and then I took a paddle, and then I took a steam, and now we take atomic energy, and instead of walking a distance I know I can fly and move almost as fast as man can imagine, so I can see the evolution in the affairs of man but not in the creation of God.698 ¶3

So, in the beginning it was established that all things will bring forth after their kind.. All right, come right in. We’ve only just started, trying to establish in us the awareness of God’s Law; that we cannot violate it, we can’t change it − to awake, as we are told. “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead.” So, Paul equates death with the sleep of man, when man is unaware of what he’s doing. So, when we are told in Psalms – the 44th Psalm: “Rouse thyself. Why sleepest thou, O Lord?” – it’s addressed to God-in-man. Well God-in-man is man’s own wonderful human Imagination. So, every time that I imagine, and I am unaware of what I am imagining, well, then, I will not recognize my harvest when it appears in the world, will deny I had anything to do with it, but if man is as I think and I know he is – all imagination, and if God and man are one, then God is all imagination. So, we say Man is all imagination and God is man, and exists in us, and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself − the eternal body Jesus. We are His members.698 ¶4

So, everyone can imagine. The thing to do is to become aware of what we are imagining, and put no limit to the power of imagining. Do not put any limit to God’s power. Here is a simple, simple example. This friend of mind down south, Benny Gould − a friend called him and said, “You know, our little daughter, six months old − the doctor says she will not live the week; that she now has meningitis, and the crisis is now.” My friend Benny, instead of sympathizing with this father − he bawled him out. He said, “Didn’t you tell me that you are a good Christian? You go to your Baptist church, and you consider yourself a good Christian? I don’t go to the Baptist Church. In fact, I don’t go to church, but I consider myself a good Christian. What are you doing accepting the verdict of the doctor? Why can’t you now accept the teaching of Scripture and believe in your heart that the little girl that I saw a matter of moments after she was born is now alive and thriving?” After he bawled his friend out, Benny put the receiver up and then sat down and heard that man’s voice, as though he called him on the telephone; and the he heard the man tell him that the child has miraculously recovered. That’s all that Benny did.698 ¶5

That night a lady had a dream, and because it was related to Benny, she called Benny the next day and told Benny the dream, and this was the dream. She said, “I had a strange dream last night, Benny. I dreamt I was in a hospital, in the lobby, and two nurses were discussing a certain case of a friend of yours, a little girl, and one said to the other, ‘But who paid for the operation? Who paid the expense of the hospital?’ And one nurse said to the other, ‘Benny did.’” That was only a dream. Well, Benny did pay for it – not in dollars and cents, he said the price. The price was that he represented the father to himself in a different way altogether, not complaining, not feeling sorry, not feeling sad at heart, but he heard that man’s voice with a joy in it telling him that the little girl had recovered miraculously. That’s all that Benny did. Well, that’s paying the price. You are told, “Come, eat and drink without price. Buy milk – buy it all without money.” Well, the price that Benny paid was to exercise his talent wittingly, knowingly, on behalf of another, and to do it lovingly.698 ¶6

So, every time you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are actually mediating God to that other. So, if you become awake, you are awake to God’s Law. You can’t violate it. “Be not deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” And, then, we are asked to not give up; if it seems long, wait anyway, because the harvest will come. In due season we will reap if we faint not – if we do not lose heart.698 ¶7

So, anyone here tonight who has a problem – I don’t care what the problem is, the problem will yield its own solution. You don’t have to discuss the means. That’s not the solution. If I needed money, knowing the right people – knowing people of money, knowing people with means – that is no solution. The solution is having what I want in this world. That’s the solution. If I were unsheltered tonight, what’s the solution? Knowing a friend who has a huge mansion with rooms not occupied? That’s not my solution. My solution is to be sheltered. So, no matter where I sleep, I sleep as though I am sheltered. If I were in need of raiment, I would sleep as though I am well clothed. I am in need of money, I would sleep as though I had all that it takes, that I am affluent. I will do it in that manner.698 ¶8

If I know what I am doing well, then, “faint not.” I did it. I planted it. Well, now, in due season I will reap it. So, every man should become awake to this law. So rouse yourselves. “Why sleepest thou, Oh Lord?” Well, His name is “I Am,” so are you aware of what you are doing? I am speaking, then, to you. “Why sleepest thou, Oh Lord?” And just to be addressed as “Lord” – and I mean it when I say I address you as “the Lord,” for you are the Lord. If you are a son of God, you can’t develop in any other way, other than into God! So, we are destined to grow up into Him, the head, Jesus Christ the Lord. If I grow up into Him, the head, well, then, I am He. So, then everything, then, said of Him I must experience. So, here I must awake to the Being that I really am – not just to hear it, but to really believe it to the point where I act upon it.698 ¶9

Well, if all through the day I act upon it – do you know that even in dream you’ll act upon it? A dream, supposedly is something where man’s imagination – rather, his attention is the victim, and not the master. It follows all the phenomena of Life, but in dream you will get to the point that you do not find yourself the victim; you find yourself guiding your attention. And you’ll find yourself, in dream, modifying and changing a situation. The normal person in a dream doesn’t. He simply – his attention is the very slave, and follows everything, one after the other. But when you become awake here, you take it into the depth of your own being, in what the world calls sleep.698 ¶10

So, when I say “Awake, O Sleeper,” I’m simply appealing to everyone here to awake to God’s Law. For it is a law established in the beginning – the Law of the Identical Harvest. You can’t plant one thing and reap another. You could now sit here tonight in the assumption that you are – well, exactly as you want to be. I would not define for what you ought to want; I will ask you: What do you want? When you know exactly what you would like to be, and you deliberately assume that you are it, you’ve planted that seed. And in due season you are going to reap that harvest. Therefore, if you’re going to reap it, reap it wisely by planting wisely. But all day long you’re doing it anyway. Man is doing it, but he’s doing it asleep; and therefore when it comes into being and he harvests this marvelous – well, whatever it is, he doesn’t recognize that he had anything to do with it. And the purpose of life is to become awake – to wake everything in this world. So, I know exactly what I did. I sat down and I dreamed myself as affluent. I dreamed myself is this, as that, as the other, and having done it, I have confidence in God’s Law. No man can divert it. I can’t plant one thing and reap another. You see yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum; the corn was corn; the silence and the darkness knew, and so is a man’s fate born. So, I can sit down and actually do it.698 ¶11

Here, Marion Anderson was denied the right to sing in the famous hall in Washington. She was not a member, and she was denied the right. She did not oppose it. She didn’t fight it. These are her words. She said, “They had a right. These are the Daughters of the American Revolution. That was their right. They are all members of that club. They are proud of it. Why shouldn’t they be proud of it? I simply would like to have sung in that hall. So, what did I so? I didn’t fight it. I didn’t argue it. I didn’t tell the press. I made no issue. I simply in my imagination sang in that hall. I stood on that stage and sang to a full house –an appreciative house. They loved all that I did, and I was invited to sing in that hall.”698 ¶12

Now you will say, “Well, Mrs. Roosevelt heard about it, and she then took issue with those who were the members, saying, ‘After all, this is tax-exempt property, and all of this is something that is on the backs of the taxpayer, and I feel that we should occasionally open the doors to some great artist.’” She might have given them any argument, and she was then the First Lady of the land. You will say, “Now that’s why they invited Marion Anderson.” I say, “It was not.” Mrs. Roosevelt had to act as she acted because Marion Anderson acted first, and if one could only see what she did – not what Mrs. Roosevelt did; she was only the means to the end. The cause of the entire thing was one who did not argue, who did not protest, who did nothing; who, in her own heart, simply imagined that she had done it. And if you do it this way, you don’t have to fight in this world. You don’t have to argue with anyone in this world. Just do it. I have seen people say, “No, it can’t be done. I am not going to let this go.” Well, all right, it’s your privilege. It’s yours. If you don’t want it, unload it. And then someone who really thought of something far bigger than they could have conceived imagined it. Then they come, asking the very one to whom they turned and said, “No, it can’t be done, and we do not wish any part of it” – then they came and they got far more than in the beginning they were willing to take for it. I know these cases. So, you don’t have to argue. You don’t have to fight. You simply know what you want, and if you had it, what would it be like? How would you feel if it were true? What would you see in the world mentally if it were true? How would your friends see you if now you were the man, or the woman, that you want to be? Well, then, let them see you. That imaginal act – letting them see you, as they would have to see you, were it true – is the imaginal act being planted. So, you don’t have to rush it, dig it up and see if it’s growing. You did it in confidence that God’s Law never fails.698 ¶13

“Let the earth bring forth vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And it was so.” And “As long as earth endures, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.” Now, the seedtime is when you imagine a state – that’s the seedtime. That’s when you sow. And, then, in due season, you’re going to reap exactly what you sowed, so do not be deceived.698 ¶14

You can’t sow the unlovely act and expect something other than the unlovely act to appear in your world. You can’t do it. If you want someone in this world to be big in your world, treat him as though he were; not by flattering him, but in your mind’s eye treat him as though he were big. Think of him as important if you want him to be important. I know, in my own case, my family had really no financial, social, intellectual or any other background of mention, but my mother did not allow her ten children to know that. And if any of us did anything that Mother – well, she wasn’t exactly ashamed of it, but she thought it could be better, and it was something that we really should not have done, she would then say to us, “Have you forgotten that you are a Goddard?” She made the name important. It had no importance whatsoever, but she made it important. So, she treated us as though we as a family were important. The result is that she lived long enough to see her family grow into importance in the community, all pulling their weight and being very important in their community.698 ¶15

Now, you can start it with any family in this world and treat the family as though they were important. Unfortunately, our parents think they are doing the right thing when they compare us to a neighbor and find us wanting. “Why can’t you be like So-and-So?” Right away it implies you are not as good as – and, so, if that’s the seed she is planting for the child, the child has to do that. But if you will take any child, and then – not flatter it, no – but in your mind’s eye see it as important, and treat it in your mine’s eye as though it were. See it successful. I read here, oh, maybe eight or ten years ago the famous men in the theatrical world whose mothers always looked upon them as most important. Clifton Webb was one whose mother, from the time he was a little baby, treated him as most important, and they mentioned about eight or ten or twelve of them. Each rose to stardom in the theatrical world, because they had mothers who treated them in a different manner. And, so, the story came out in the magazine I read. I know it’s only based upon a single law, if the mothers knew it. Well, whether they knew it or not, that’s how they acted, and it’s simply putting into effect God’s Law.698 ¶16

So, when I say, Awake, O Sleeper, I mean that we are asleep if we are not aware of what we are doing – we are asleep. So, “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead.” And the sleep in most of us is so profound, we might just as well be dead. But become aware of the Law, and become aware of the Promise, and the Promise is that you are a child of God! As a child of God, you can’t grow into anything in Eternity other than God. You can’t possibly become anything but God if you are a seed of God. So, if you believe it – if I believe that I truly am, as the 82nd Psalm tells me that I am, “Know ye not that ye are gods, sons of The Most High?” – all of you, not a few, no little elect, but all of you. Then he tells us what we must first encounter in order to do it. “You now will die like men. You will fall as one man, O princes.” Well, if I am a prince, then my father must be a king; and if I am destined to become and take his place, then I must become one day, king – king in my own mind’s eye, and if he’s a father, I must become father. And that’s the entire story of the Scriptures.698 ¶17

So, to become aware of it is, then, begin to act upon it. You’ll find yourself acting upon it consciously, deliberately. You refuse to accept the negative suggestion of the press, TV, radio, or a friend; you will not accept it, any more than Benny did. Benny simply put the receiver down, brought his mind upon the same voice, but changed the conversation. And it was confirmed in the not-distant future. That entire thing changed in the outer world to conform to what Benny had done in the inner world, all in his imagination.698 ¶18

So, this is simply becoming awake, rousing the God- within-us. And then, one day to your – well, surprise is not a good word for it because you are so shattered by the experience – that thereafter you can’t rub it out of the mind. In my own case it happened in ’59 – almost ten years, and, yet, every moment of time I dwell upon it. I could hardly believe that this thing was so literally true – God’s Promise to man – that every child born of woman would one day actually discover that he is the Lord Jesus Christ! And when it happened to you, and the whole thing begins to unfold within you like a flower, one after the other – well, I can’t tell anyone the thrill. You don’t boast, within you like a flower, one after the other – well, I can’t tell anyone the thrill. You don’t boast. You don’t brag. You’ve not a thing to brag about, because the whole thing was contained in the germ, in the seed, in the sperm, of God; and it was placed in you. Well, if the whole of God is contained in His seed, and the seed is in us, when it unfolds, how can we brag? We can only be thrilled beyond measure, and be filled with awe and praise and thanksgiving that God so loved me that He actually became me, that I in turn may become God! And, so, I dwell upon that and let it happen. It unfolds like a flower.698 ¶19

So, to everyone, no matter what you are tonight, you can start tonight to plant the world differently, but do dwell, above all things, upon the fact that you are the child of God. And as the child of God, you can only grow into the likeness of God – into God Himself! You have no other way to go. But we are warned in Scripture, it’s going to be quite a journey. But Paul said, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” Not to us – the preposition is “in.” It is revealed in us.698 ¶20

So, all the sufferings, as told us quite clearly in the book of Genesis – we have three major manuscripts from Genesis known only by letters: the letter J, the letter E and the letter P. No one knows what they mean, but we’ve given meaning to them. We speak of the J as the Jehovahites, we speak of the E as the Elohim, and we speak of the P as the Prophets. But no one really knows if whoever put the J, E and P there really intended that, but scholars have given that meaning to these letters. That’s all we know concerning the authorship of these manuscripts. But in the E it does not begin with the first verse. The E manuscript begins with the 15th chapter; it begins with civilization – with Abram, and Abram complains to the Lord that he has no offspring, “and one born in my house of a slave will be my heir.” And God said to him, “That man will not be your heir, but your own son will be your heir,” and then God caused a profound sleep to descend upon him and then said to him, in sleep, “Your descendants shall be strangers, sojourners in a strange land, and there they will remain enslaved for four hundred years, but when they are brought out, they will have much.” An abundance will be theirs, but they must first go into slavery for four hundred years.698 ¶21

Well, the four hundred years is not four hundred, as you would measure years. Each letter in the Hebrew alphabet has, not only a numerical value, but a symbolic value. And four hundred is the last letter, the 22nd, which symbol is a cross. It is Taw, and the numerical value of the cross is four hundred. So, I will wear the cross of man – this is the cross that I wear. It’s four hundred years; it is a far, far longer time than that. Blake – time and again he said, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years dazzling around Thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is myself, Oh Lord, my Redeemer and Creator.” So, he always speaks of the vision of his deadly sleep that lasted six thousand years, but in Scripture it is called 400 years, because they are speaking of the symbolism of the number and of the symbol called the cross. So, as long as I wear a body of flesh and blood, I am wearing this cross of 400 years. So, as long as I do it, I am enslaved. I am enslaved by this body, by its passions, by its ambitions, by its needs. I have to bathe it, shave it, wash it; and then it has all the normal functions. I must take care of the normal functions like a slave. I’m a slave of the body! The day will come, at the end of my long journey, that I will take off the body of flesh and blood and put on my body of glory, which will not need any of these cares whatsoever, for it will be spirit, and not flesh and blood.698 ¶22

So, I’m quite willing to accept what Scripture teaches me. Yes, I am a slave here. I know it, and I will continue. But while I am a slave, He awoke within me – completely awoke within me, with all the symbolism in Scripture surrounding me. And then came the next one and the next and the next, and the whole Scripture begins to unfold within the man who is still, as yet, a slave, as told us in Scripture. Then comes that end of the journey when he can say, “It is finished.” And the whole thing is done.698 ¶23

For, here, not only these Four Mighty Acts become yours, but so many lovely passages of Scripture, in the interval they are yours – to feel yourself one day lifted up and to hear a heavenly chorus sing – unearthly chorus, and here it is singing, calling you by name. When I wrote the story and called the little thing “The Search,” I was persuaded by the one who read my manuscript to use the pronoun he and tell it in the third person. But I did not hear the chorus say he, I heard the chorus call my name, Neville. And they said, “Neville is risen, Neville is risen,” and how can you take that simple little phrase, “Neville is risen,” and repeat it – this enormous heavenly chorus singing it, and get out of it what they did, I could never tell you. They never used other words, and yet the melody – the change – everything about it – the majesty of all that they are singing on three little words! And, then, I found myself clothed in a body of light. It seemed to be a body of air and light. I didn’t stand on the ground, and I didn’t walk. I glided. I did it automatically, as though it was an innate knowledge of what to do, and I came upon an infinite sea of human imperfection: blind, lame, halt, withered – all of them, and I knew intuitively that they were waiting for me. And as I came by I had no compassion – none whatsoever. I didn’t stop to inquire. It was obvious that this one was blind, that one was lame, that one had no arms, that one was missing some other limb, and, yet, strangely enough, as I glided by, I did not raise a finger to change them, but they were automatically changed in harmony with the perfection I felt springing within me. Because I walked by as the Perfect One, everyone had to be in harmony with me, and everyone was made perfect. And the chorus is singing. And when the eyes came out of nowhere and fitted into these empty sockets, and when arms came out of nowhere and fitted into the empty socket, and legs, and everything was made perfect at the very end of this enormous journey, then the chorus exulted, and they cried out, “It is finished.” From repeating, “Neville is risen, Neville is risen,” in their own marvelous way, now they change it to, “It is finished.” And then I felt myself actually condense into this little garment here called Neville. I was actually the most imprisoned being imaginable, from that wonderful exalted state of freedom.698 ¶24

So, I can’t tell anyone what’s in store for you – that body of glory when you put it on. I simply tasted of it for that moment, that right coming through the Caribbean Sea from Port of Spain to Mobile, Alabama. We were at sea about seven days, and this happened one night while I was at sea. So, I know exactly the feeling of the risen body – that feeling of the glorious body, where everything that you touch or see must conform to you because you are perfect. “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” And, so everything in your world is going to be changed. You don’t stop to change it; you don’t do a thing. It simply changes as you go by. So, everything in Scripture, you, one day, will prove literally – prove it to be true, but not on this level. You are going to prove it in some remote area of your own soul. So, first of all, believe in His Promise. Believe that you really are the Son of God, and as the Son of God, you cannot grow up into anything other than God – not in Eternity. But while you are enslaved in this world, in a place that is really not home – everyone feels a stranger here. They try build something to feel secure – to feel not a stranger, but they are still strangers, and all through the day and night, they are leaving, dropping out, and departing out from this sphere – leaving you behind. Then you’ve got to depart and leave others behind. The whole thing is a strange world. It is not home. So, we are strangers in a strange land, enslaved in the strange land. Therefore, while we are here remember His Law – the Law of the Identical Harvest, that you can’t fool God, so “be not deceived. God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.” And, then, because you are going to reap it, do not grow tired – do not grow weary in well doing. Do it every moment of time, though you do not see the immediate harvest; do it anyway because you cannot fail to reap that harvest.698 ¶25

So, do it. Spend a little moment every day, and deliberately plant loving thoughts, loving seeds. Bring before your mind’s eye those that you know as friends. Represent them to yourself without their knowledge, without their consent, in some lovely manner. When they conform to that in the outer world, you don’t need praise. You don’t need to tell them, “That’s what I imagined for you.” You know. You have the satisfaction of knowing what you did; therefore they will conform to it, and you will see them, and you will reap it, and you’ll have the satisfaction, without having them feel obligated. If you tell them what you did, they will feel almost obligated to do something for you in turn. You don’t want anything in return. You simply do it because you enjoy the doing. And as you do it, it becomes more and more a habit, and every moment of your conscious life you’ll be doing it, instead of wasting your time with all the unlovely and negative things. You ignore that and do it deliberately in the loving things.698 ¶26

And when you read in the book, that 40th Psalm “In the volume of the book it is written about me.” Believe it. It’s all about you. Man doesn’t know it, but the whole book is about the individual, that’s your biography. So, in the volume of the book, it is all about me. Then when you read it, you will realize it’s going to unfold in you and, and you’re going to scream it from the housetops and tell everyone without boasting – because it’s about them, too. Everyone can speak in the first person, present tense. It’s all about me, and then one day he’ll experience it and know it really is all about me. And the book was simply a foreshadowing. The whole thing was a blueprint – a prophetic blueprint of your life. And you enter the world of death, that world of slavery. So, when Blake, in his greatest of all poems – he said, “The poem is not mine. The authors are in Heaven; they are in Eternity. I’m only the secretary. It was dictated. It came to me twelve, twenty and thirty lines at a time, and what should have taken a lifetime of labor came in no time at all.” That is his great poem “Jerusalem.” First of all, he begins it by first stating the theme. He tells us “Of the sleep of Ulro! And of the passage through Eternal Death and of awaking to Eternal Life.” Then he says, I in them and they in me – all in One. Here it is “the sleep of Ulro.” What is “the sleep of Ulro”? But we pass through Eternal Death, he makes that statement – but we will awaken to Eternal Life. He’s quite willing to admit it’s going to be a hard passage – a difficult passage, but because we are the Seed of God, we cannot fail, and one day you will erupt, and it’s God erupting – all in you, and you are He.698 ¶27

If you dwell upon it, I tell you from my own experience what it will do for you. You will not be arrogant, but you will meet not one person in this world that you will bend the knee to. You refuse to accept any being in this world as an aristocrat beyond you by the simple descent of the flesh. No, the only aristocrat that you will admit is the aristocracy of the Spirit – no other aristocracy whatsoever, no line of the flesh, for you are not flesh. You are wearing a garment of the slave – that’s flesh, but you are Spirit. You are the child of God, and God is Spirit. That is the only aristocracy that you will admit. And the day will come that you will prove it to yourself, and you will enter a heavenly sphere, and, strangely enough – from my own experience – when you enter this sphere consciously you’ve always known them! You know them more intimately than you know anyone here on earth. When you meet the Brotherhood, you know them more intimately than you know anyone here. I knew my mother, my father, my brothers, my friends, my wife, my children, and yet I know none of them as intimately as I know my Brothers in Eternity. And they are all Eternal beings.698 ¶28

So, when I take this off for the last time, there will be no waiting between the taking off and the putting on of that garment which, for one fleeting moment through the night, I was allowed to wear. I tasted of the joy to come that one night in ’46 coming through the Caribbean. So, I know exactly what is waiting when they say, “Neville is dead.” Far from dead, he will be clothed in his glorious body. Yes, the little garment will be dead, and they will cremate it and turn it into dust, and what they do with it, I don’t really care. I only hope my wife will be wise enough not to allow the morticians to burden her with all kinds of nonsense, keeping a little urn alive and paying rent on it. I told her, “Just have a little fun. The law demands that you’ve got to put it in a box. Well, get the cheapest box in the world – any box. They will burn it up anyway. Get the cheapest little box and burn it up, and don’t you pay rent on the little ash. If they will not allow you here to dispose of it, well, then, make some excuse and say, “Well, it must go to Barbados,” and then they will allow it. When it goes to Barbados, they will throw it into the sea, or throw it in the dust. That’s where it belongs – right there in the dust! But don’t make some little icon of it – no place where you can go and say ‘This is Neville,’ for I’m not there at all. I’m clothed in my glorious body, a body that is eternal – it’s immortal.698 ¶29

And I know what the body feels like, and I know what it is to be in it. I can’t describe to anyone the exaltation of just wearing the body. You feel infinite power, and yet you are man. You are a man. And here everything turns into beauty as you glide by, and you need no light, you need no sun, you need no moon, you need no stars, for you are light unto yourself. Not a blinding light, but a radiant light – enough to illuminate anything you want in this world as you go by. There’s no need for the sun, no need for the stars, no need for the moon, no need for any external light. You are the light of the world. That I do know from my own experience.698 ¶30

So, here tonight, when I say, “Awake, O Sleeper, and rise from the dead,” I’m appealing to you to become more and more aware of what you are imagining, for as you become more and more aware of what you are imagining, you are awakening. And, so you become every moment of time aware, and you refuse then to allow your imagination to entertain the unlovely things in the world, and you simply put it on the lovely. You do it, and that moment that you do it you plant it, and then you have confidence in God’s unbroken law that it must come up, that you may harvest it. In due season it will rise, and in due season you will harvest it. It’s a law established in the very first chapter; read it in the 11th verse. It’s stated so clearly and so perfectly that no man can break it, and then it is captured in the last verse of the 8th chapter: that as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest shall never cease. So, seedtime – you have it. Every time you imagine anything, that’s seedtime. And the harvest must follow; it can’t precede it. So, you have seedtime and harvest established forever and forever as long as the earth endures. And you are the one spoken of in 8th chapter. It is to you that the whole thing is addressed, for the whole thing is about you.698 ¶31

Now, let us go into the Silence. Good. Now, are there any questions, please?698 ¶32

Yes, Betty?698 ¶43

Any other questions, please?698 ¶46

The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint of the life of Jesus, and Jesus is the true identity of every child born of woman. Prophecy is over. What people call prophecy today is simply a little nonsense called fortune telling. You can use all the little –isms in the world; but true Prophecy is over, and that is in the Old Testament. The New Testament fulfills it, but that is the life of Jesus; and Jesus is the true identity of every child born of woman. So, the climax has been reached. It’s been done, for all the Promises of God find their “Yes” in Him. So, in everyone everything said of Him, the individual will experience; the whole thing is unfolding in man – in every child born of woman. It’s not written so that you could read it as you would the alphabet. It wasn’t intended in that manner. As this theologian said to Blake, “You need someone to elucidate your ideas,” and Blake said to him: “You ought to know that that which is grand is necessarily obscure to weak minds, for that which can be made explicit to the idiot isn’t worth my care. And the Ancients considered what was not too explicit as fittest for instruction, because it rouses the facilities to act.” Then he asked the theologian: “Why do you think the Bible is more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because it is addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only mediating to the understanding or reason?” So, the Old Testament is simply an adumbration; it’s a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way. They are sketches, and the sketches are done in an overall picture, leaving out the particulars, to rouse the faculties to act.697 ¶1

Now, here we will take, say, as many as we can get in tonight in this hour. Genesis is the “seed” plot of the entire Bible. It begins: “In the beginning God”; and it ends on this note: “In a coffin in Egypt.” “In the beginning God” … “in a coffin in Egypt.” Well, who is in the “coffin”? A man, and his name is Joseph, the dreamer. The Bible has only one source of dreams. All dreams proceed from God. So, then, who is Joseph? The Prototype – the prototype of God. Well, God is Man. You are a man. [Thou art a Man:] God is no more: Thy own Humanity learn to adore, God appears, and God is light, To those poor souls who dwell in night; But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day. [From The Everlasting Gospel and Auguries of Innocence William Blake] God is man, and you’re a man. You contain the whole drama within you, and the whole drama will unfold within you. So, “In the beginning God” . . . “in a coffin in Egypt.” Now, the entire Bible – here is the “seed” plot. How does it end? The end of Revelation: “Come, Lord Jesus.” Here is the fulfillment, for all of the Promises of God find their “Yes” – their fulfillment in Him. So, Come – Come, the fulfillment of all these Promises in me!697 ¶2

Now, here, everything in this world – every child, every chair, house or tree – I don’t care what object you see – everything in this world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. God speaks to man through the medium of dreams, and unveils Himself through the medium of vision. Well, here, a lady has this experience. She said, “I found myself in the strangest, darkest area – it was so dark – jet; and here, in spite of the darkness, I am holding in my hand what appears to be almost the shape of a shoebox. It could be a small coffin; but because it was so small, I thought of it in terms of a shoebox. Yet, it did resemble a little coffin. And in the darkness, I knew that I was in it. I was in it! But I didn’t understand. How could I be in it when I am looking at it and I am holding it in my hand? And here is a little tiny shoebox or a coffin, and I am in it! And in my dream, I turn over and as I turned over, I seemed to turn towards the light, and the light was blazing. And as I turned towards the light, the light seemed to illuminate me in the sense that I understood and then came a relief – a peculiar relief, because I knew what I was. Prior to that, I didn’t know what I was – who I was; I only knew that I was in it, and then I knew beyond all doubt that I was Joseph, and I could not get out of that box until I became Jesus.”697 ¶3

Now she came to me with this dread, and she said, “What on earth could that mean?” Well, you go to any one without the knowledge of Scripture, and what would they tell you? And here is Scripture: “In the beginning God” . . . “in a coffin in Egypt.” But he exacts a promise that they will not leave him in Egypt; they’ll bring him out. Now, God is being formed in man. Here is the Unbegotten forming Itself in man; and when it is completely formed, it comes out. And who comes out? The Lord Jesus Christ! There is nothing but Christ; so He comes out.697 ¶4

So, here is this lady – a perfectly lovely lady. She’s married; she didn’t have a child, but she adopted one. They live happily in their sphere with this adopted son; so she’s a normal, natural person, having a simple dream; and she turns to ask, “What on earth could it mean?” Well, here is Scripture. She is actually seeing Scripture in an adumbration. It’s a foreshadowing, but not in detail. It leaves out the details – leaves out the important points, because if it didn’t – well, then, we could not be roused. So, we are roused to find out, what on earth does this mean? And you begin to speculate. You begin to stir within you. And, so, “If it can be made explicit to the idiot, it isn’t worth my care.”697 ¶5

So, here, every one – and who is that box? What is the box? This is the box; this is the elongated box – the coffin in which God is buried. He’s buried in every one born of woman. And one day He will come out of the box. Who comes out? God. So, He’s buried in the box, and He’s buried as a man. You’re a man. I’m a man. We are Man – generic Man. And after all the unnumbered blows that society gives us, we simply emerge from this box, and we emerge as the Lord Christ Jesus. It frightens people. But may I tell you? Don’t be scared, and don’t be cynical about it, because you are going to have it anyway. You only delay it by your cynicism. So, if you’re a cynic – all right, be one, if you must be; but I tell you, you are only delaying the inevitable – the inevitable “birth” of God-in-you.697 ¶6

What does it matter if you own the earth and you didn’t have this? You are building on sand, for you are going to leave everything you build behind you – but everything! You’ll depart this world, maybe tonight, and leave everything behind you but the unfoldment of Scripture within you. The only purpose of life is to unfold the Promise of God! And so, the entire Promise is contained in the Old Testament, and you come into the world to fulfill it. And only to the degree that we have fulfilled Scripture, have we really built anything, for we can only take the fulfillment of the Word of God. Everything else is left behind. I don’t care what name you call yourself, what position you occupy in the world – the presidents of the world, the kings, the queens, the czars – they all vanish and leave no trace behind them. All they take with them is that portion of Scripture they have fulfilled. That’s all they are taking, and they take no more. So, you either believe it or you don’t believe it.697 ¶7

So, here are the prophetic sketches. We will take a few. Who would believe this sort of a statement: “Can a man bear a child?” Now, the Lord is asking the question of the Prophet Jeremiah: “Can a man bear a child?” Well, the obvious answer is, No, he can’t do it. “Then why do I see every man with his hands drawing himself out of himself, just like a woman in labor? And why is every face turned pale?” Jeremiah 30:6 “How can a man bear a child?” Zechariah 14:6 “Oh, of the day—there was no daylight.” So, now, it’s just simply stated in the 30th chapter of the book of Jeremiah and dropped – just dropped. It’s an adumbration; it’s a foreshadowing. Now, that book was written six hundred years B.C. Who knew that it really was intended one day to be fulfilled in man?697 ¶8

So, you and I are walking the earth, just as we are today – not understanding, not knowing a thing about it. There it is, and so we read it, and people speculate, and we wonder, “What on earth is he talking about? Was Jeremiah insane? So many statements that he made seem insane. Was he insane? And here they are considered words of God. And then we are told not to add to it.” “Do not add to the Word of God, and do not take from it”, for the Word of God will prove itself in performance. And don’t take from it; leave it just as it is, whether you understand it or not. Well, men not understanding through the centuries – they altered it. And now today it reads: “Can a man bear a child? Why, then, do I see every man with his hands on his loins just like a woman in labor?” It hasn’t a thing to do with any loins! The word in Hebrew is “khawlets”, and it means to draw oneself out of oneself, using one’s hands. That’s exactly how it takes place! But man, not understanding that has said, “Well, now, we’ll just change it,” so they changed the meaning of the word. But fortunately for us, we do have the original word and the original meaning of these words, and they didn’t make sense. They didn’t make sense then; they do not make sense now. It only makes sense to the one who has experienced it; and when all of a sudden you awake within yourself, and when you start moving out of your skull, you actually use your hands and pull yourself out of yourself, just like a woman giving birth to a child in the fields.697 ¶9

In the ancient days, they didn’t go to the hospital. There weren’t any hospitals. You were in the fields when the child was delivered; and you took your own, formed being – you formed it within yourself, and with your own hands you pulled what you formed within yourself out of yourself. Well, you form this within yourself, and the body of man is the Womb of God; and He forms Himself within man, and then pulls Himself – that which is formed – He pulls it out of Himself, just as a woman pulls the child out of her womb – that is, primitive woman did. Today we go to the hospital, and you are put into a sleep; and when you awake, you’re told you have a child, and you know nothing of it. But this Book was not written when you went to the hospitals and you had sleep imposed upon you. You were in the field when suddenly it became necessary to take out of your own being what you had formed within your being.697 ¶10

Well, this is the grand miracle! How did it form in the skull of man? How did man, who is God – how did God form Himself – the Unbegotten, forming Himself within Himself – within a mold called “man”? So, here, that is an adumbration, isn’t it – a foreshadowing? But it does not give it in detail. It purposely leaves out all the little – I would say – things that the rational mind could hang onto, leaving man to live by faith. Can he really live by faith? So, here, the entire Book is nothing more than a blueprint. It’s the foreshadowing of what every child born of woman one day will experience.697 ¶11

Now, what came into the world? Let me show you in this manner. I’ve told you in the last few days what you are destined to be. I tell you what I’ve experienced. You may believe me. You may doubt. It doesn’t really matter. As far as I am concerned, it really doesn’t matter! It does matter to you if you believe it. And I will show you to what extent I mean, it does matter to you if you believe it. I tell you that I’ve been “born from above.” I tell you that there’s only Jesus in the world. Everyone who is “born from above” is Jesus Christ – everyone. Now, you can see a man, but you don’t believe it. Why did you see him? Well, he is “born from above.” To leave it on this level, all right, it makes no difference; you have to actually have the experience of seeing him on the level above, and know the truth of what he is talking about. Now, why is that important? I’ll show you why it’s important.697 ¶12

A lady just dropped dead – yesterday, really, when the call came through. The last time I saw her was the last Friday in June; and sitting at the table were four enjoying a very nice, simple lunch. She said, “Oh, what a strange feeling!” and the head fell over, and she’s gone from this world. And, so those who know her – well they regret the departure of Marta; but Marta is free. Marta is not restored to life; Marta is free. I’ll tell you why Marta is free. Six months ago Marta had the vision of the carriage coming up, self-propelled and I got out; and when I came into this room where she was – and she was seated she knew that I am the being you know I am. I am Neville. And I was clothed in power – sheer, almighty power – just power. I began to speak on power and while Marta sat and looked, she said, “Why, he is Neville, and he is God.” And she kept on repeating audibly to herself: “He’s Neville, and he’s God. He’s Neville, and he’s God.” Well, here, Marta actually saw God, clothed in power, wearing the face of a friend – the one she knows as Neville. I said, “There is only God in this world; He wears all the faces.” So, she saw the power of God wearing the face of a friend.697 ¶13

Now listen to the words: “I call you no longer servants. I call you no longer servants, because the servant does not know what his master is doing. I call you friends. All that I have heard from my Father, I have told you.” When you see Him, and see Him as a friend, you are set free. How? In the 8th chapter of John: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” The truth of what? That two and two make four? No – “I am the truth.” “I have told you all that I have heard from my Father,” and “I am the truth.” Now you see me. You see God wearing as a “garment” power, sheer power; but you see a face, and the face He’s wearing is your friend. “And so I call you no longer a slave, for slaves do not know what their master is doing; I call you friends.” And, so, you see a friend, and the friend sets you free. So, Marta, by that one vision of six months ago, today is not restored to life; she is set free. You can only see it in vision; you can’t see it here. Here you see a man, with all the weaknesses of the world; but in vision, He unveils Himself in vision. So He unveiled Himself, and He was wearing the body of a man; yes, but the body was sheer Almightiness – all Power. And, then, He wore the face of Marta’s friend – the same Being; so she knew the truth of what I taught. So, she said, “I am your friend, for all that I have heard from my Father I have told you.”697 ¶14

So, she saw the entire drama gathered together into one marvelous picture. The self- propelled carriage comes up. Out steps this Being called Neville. He comes in and begins to proclaim the power of God, and he’s clothed in power. The first appearance of God to man is power, almightiness, called El Shaddai. “I made myself known unto Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai. By my name, I Am, I did not make myself known.” He made Himself known as “I Am” to Moses first; but to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He appeared only as Power – sheer power. And strangely enough, the night that I stood in the presence of Infinite Love, when He embraced me, and then I heard the cry “out of the blue”; and then I found myself before Might – sheer Almightiness; and He wore, as she saw me wearing it, an Inverness cape – the One who commanded me to go into the world and tell it. And His words were: “Time to act!” He wore an Inverness cape, and He was Infinite Might. There was no compassion in that Being; and one second before I was embraced, and I was one with the Body of Infinite Love. And, yet, when I was commanded to go, it wasn’t Love that commanded me – it was Might – Almightiness. Now, she didn’t know this; and yet when she saw me, the face wearing Infinite Power – here was Neville, and he was all power. Well, it was Power who sent me. Love didn’t send me. Love embraced me, and I became one with Infinite Love, but it was Almightiness that sent me into this world to tell the story – to tell the story of Might – the story of Power. And, so, when she saw me this night, I was wearing the same cape that He who sent me wore; therefore the words are: “He who sees me sees Him who sent me.” If you knew the One who sent me, then you would know me; and if you knew me, you’d know the One who sent me. Who sends me is the One that I resemble. When she saw me, I was wearing the same thing that He wore when He sent me. Now, this is a strange, peculiar mystery, but it is true. Every word I tell you is true.697 ¶15

So, Marta tonight– this simple, sweet lady, my age who worked up until the very day – she went down to Laguna to the Art Festival, and it is a perfectly marvelous festival that meets every year. The four of them enjoyed the festival, and on their way back stopped in to have a simple Mexican meal; and there is no alcohol stronger than beer in these Mexican restaurants – and so, a glass of beer – she’s not a drinker. And sitting there with the simple little meal and a glass of beer, she said, “Oh, what a strange feeling!” and then her head began to move towards the table, and she’s gone suddenly. And Marta did not find herself, I know, restored to life in a world like this: no, Marta is as free as anyone can be. She’s obtained the glorious liberty and freedom of the “sons of God,” because she saw the vision six months before. She saw the vision of God clothed as man – clothed in Power, wearing the face of a friend – the one called Neville. And then as she saw me, she said, “He’s God, and yet he’s Neville; he’s God, he’s Neville!” because there’s only God in this world, and He’ll wear every face in the world.697 ¶16

And, so, tonight as you tell the truth as you hear it from the depths of your own soul, tell it based upon, not speculation; tell it based upon experience. Well, then, tomorrow you could be worn, clothed as Power; and he who sees you in the garment of Power – but sees you, and you are his friend – he sees a friend clothed as Power; and, therefore, he is set free. That’s how God frees them in this world. Now, it doesn’t make sense on this level; but, I tell you, it is true! And, so, should I drop a tear for Marta? No, Marta has been set free. She’s not restored to life to continue the drama and the horrors and the sorrows of the world. So, everything in Scripture is true. Everything is true. So, I ask you to believe it. I have been set free; so it doesn’t make any difference to me, as far as I am concerned, but it makes all the difference in the world to you whether you believe it or not. If you believe it, as Marta did, then you will have a similar vision. I may not be the one used; someone else who tells you a similar story, based upon his own experience, for I’m only telling you what I’ve heard in the depths of my own soul – what I’ve experienced. So, having told exactly what I have experienced, my face is used among those that come to me. But others could come in my footsteps and tell you of a similar experience, and maybe their face will be used, because all faces are the faces of God! He is a Being of infinite faces, and every face is His face. So, do you really believe the story as you’ve heard it? If you do, as she did, you may this night encounter a similar experience; and then when the story comes to its end in this little world of Caesar, instead of being restored to life – no, you aren’t restored, you are set free. You are in an entirely different world, the world of Heaven, above it all.697 ¶17

So, here: “In the beginning God” – there’s only God; “in a coffin in Egypt.” And that “coffin” is every little form that was formed in the womb of woman. Now, here is a little adumbration. You read it in the 4th chapter of the book of Galatians: “And Abraham had two sons. One was by a slave, and one was by a free- woman. Now, this is an allegory.” Well, if this is an allegory, what on earth are the priesthood and the ministers and the rabbis of the world doing when they teach this story as history? Listen to the words: “Abraham had two sons; one was born of a slave, and one of a free-woman – and these are Paul’s words: “Now this is an allegory.” Do you know what an allegory is? It’s a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover the fictitious character of it and learn its lesson.697 ¶18

Well, if the story of Abraham is an allegory – now listen to these words as the New Testament opens: “And this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Well, if the story of Abraham is an allegory, then what is the genealogy of Jesus? Listen to it carefully: Read the 4th chapter of Galatians, which is the earliest book in the New Testament. That came first. It was written long before the four Gospels. That was the Gospel, and Paul claims it to be the Gospel – “my gospel”; and he said, “Any deviation from this, let him be accursed, because: “This came to me, not by man – I was not taught it by a man; it came by revelation.” Now, he tells you the story is an allegory, because that was revealed to him. The whole thing was an allegory. Well, if it’s an allegory, can it be history? Can it be secular history? No. Therefore, if Abraham begins the whole drama in the story of Matthew, culminating in Jesus Christ, and that story is an allegory, then what is the culmination? It doesn’t mean it’s untrue, but it’s not as the world believes it to be true. So the world believes it to be secular history, and it is not; it’s supernatural history.697 ¶19

The whole thing is completely outside of this sphere, just as my coming into view in a self-propelled carriage into the presence of a woman, and I unveil myself to her. I unveiled myself as the Being that I’m telling everyone in this world that I am. But you choose an individual, and you unveil yourself to that being. I know I’ve been “born from above,” therefore I’m one with the Being called Christ Jesus, and he is God. So, in this moment of time, I took Marta. In the depths of my soul I knew Marta had just a matter of moments in this sphere; and here was Marta’s faith, and so I unveiled myself in that picture. And she had no doubt – no uncertainty in her mind – she’s looking at God and she’s looking at Neville – the same Being, and yet it’s man; it’s Neville, and it’s God. And she awoke, and there was no uncertainty on this level. Reason begins to analyze it and tear it apart. Luckily for her, she wrote the whole thing down and then said, “Now, Neville, I don’t understand it, but this is what happened. When I saw you, I knew you to be God – I had no doubt. I had no uncertainty. As I talk to you now, I know you are Neville, and you have all the weaknesses of the flesh; and still I know that was true.” Well, that was Marta; and she goes, enjoying lunch with three friends. So, that moment of departure, she simply found herself in Heaven; and Heaven is the last – the final union of man with God. So, that’s where Marta is now.697 ¶20

Not only that, listen to these words: In the 9th chapter of 1 Corinthians, when they questioned Paul concerning his claim that he was an apostle, he said, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen the Lord Jesus?” He said, the indispensable prerequisite for apostleship and freedom from this world of death was to have seen the Lord Jesus, and to know it. And that’s what Marta did. He states it in the first verse of the 9th chapter of I Corinthians: “Am I not free?” Freedom depends upon seeing and knowing the Lord Jesus. You can see Him, but not know Him. You can walk the street as Him, seen by people, but they don’t believe it. They do not know it. To see and to know are the same, so they didn’t really see. Well, had they really seen him, they would have known him. But Marta saw me in the true sense of the word; and having seen, she knew me, for the words “see” and “know” in Greek are the same. To see Him in the true sense of the word is to know Him. So, had you really known me, you would have known my Father; but you know neither my Father nor me, for had ye known me, you would have known my Father. So, you have seen me, but you see me what? As the carpenter or the carpenter’s son?697 ¶21

So, in the very, very end, He appears, and they did not recognize Him. They thought he was a carpenter. This is after the Ascension. And then they said, “Did not our hearts burn within us when he interpreted to us the Scriptures? He opened our minds and interpreted the Scriptures, and did not our hearts burn within us?” But they didn’t know Him! At the very end, He was still unknown – unseen by those who followed Him all through life. But an individual really believes it – and the whole thing is determined from within, based upon faith; and so, the only one who really believes it will be singled out; and a drama similar to that will unfold, and he will see, or she will see Him. He’ll be wearing the face of the friend – the body of a man, and the body will be all power – sheer Almightiness; and she will know, or he will know, she stood in the presence of the Risen God! And she saw Him as a friend; and so seeing Him as a friend, she is set free, and he is set free – free from the world of sin and death, no more returning to this world at all.697 ¶22

And I don’t mean reincarnation. The Bible does not teach reincarnation. It teaches restoration, but not reincarnation. You are restored. Everyone is restored in a body that is unaccountably new – wonderfully new, in a world just like this; and you move on, playing the part that you must play, until that work is done in you. When the work is done in you, then He is formed in you; and so you will actually be telling the story that I am telling you now. The day will come that you will become so hungry, not for food – as you are told in the book of Amos: “I will send a famine upon the world. It will not be a famine for bread, nor a hunger nor a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the Word of God.” And not a thing in this world can satisfy that thirst or that hunger but an experience of God. So, Marta had to have a thirst – a hunger to experience God; and so I told her what I had experienced, and that God and man are one. She believed it, and she had to come to the point where she could experience God as a friend. “So I call you no longer slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is doing; I call you friend, because all that I have heard from my Father I have told you. In other words, all that I have experienced from my Father, I have told you. I haven’t held one thing back.”697 ¶23

There isn’t a month but what I get invitations from people, little groups, saying: “You certainly must have something more than you tell publicly. Would you form a class? We’ll pay anything you ask.” And they are willing to pay any price for an exclusive class of, say, twenty. I have not one thing I could tell a class of twelve, twenty, or one, that I haven’t told you! I have not a thing that I have kept back as a secret. I have no secret. So, I couldn’t possibly, unless I was a liar – if I formed a group as an exclusive class to tell them something I haven’t told publicly, it would be only to make the dollar that they’ve offered me. It’s quite a temptation. When twenty people get together and say, “I’ll give you one thousand dollars each,” – so twenty thousand dollars, you say how long the class will be – one week, two weeks – well, it’s quite a temptation not to take the twenty thousand dollars in two weeks. But what could I tell them and live with myself that I haven’t told everyone in the world?697 ¶24

I tell it to my maid. She comes home once a week, every Monday, and she’s like a member of the family. When Doris comes to the house, we discuss. When I hear some statement from her that is on the negative side, I jack her up; and then I will spend five, ten, fifteen minutes with Doris. I’m paying her, mind you; so I am simply stopping her doing the work she is supposed to do by telling her something. What more could I tell someone else than I tell Doris? I can’t find anything that I’ve held as a secret. “All that I have heard from my Father, I’ve told you.” So, I have not a thing that I could give to any private class that I cannot give, and haven’t given, to the public class. No private class, none whatsoever.697 ¶25

But there are those who believe you have a secret that you haven’t yet revealed, and it’s something they can put their fingers into and claim that they had something that no one else had. Well, I don’t have that. So I call you friends. I called Marta a friend. I called Marge, with whom she was when she dropped dead – and Marge had a similar experience; only Marta saw it was God – he’s Neville, and he’s God; but Marge, with whom she was when she dropped dead, saw me as Jesus standing on the beach, facing this enormous crowd of people, all of different faiths, and I am speaking in a language they all understood, yet they differed, but each heard me in the language of his own tongue, and she said, “Why, he’s Neville, but he’s Jesus!” It seems the height of blasphemy to say this, but I am telling you what I know from my own experience. But it doesn’t take place here. Jesus as a man never walked the face of this earth – not here. The Bible has no reference to any man that ever walked the face of this earth. It’s a supernatural drama unfolding in man. So every child born of woman is the Jesus-to-be; and that is simply a pattern unfolding within him. He is the Pattern Man. And when it unfolds, he knows who he is. He tells it to his friends; some believe him, some don’t. The majority will not. He tells it to his family, and they laugh at him. As you are told in the 7th chapter of John: “His brothers did not believe him,” and they turned from him. They did not believe him. No one believed him, save a very few – just a handful; and at the very end of the drama he walked with them and said, “What is all this ado about?” And they said, “Haven’t you heard?” and they began to tell him, but they thought he was the gardener. They still did not recognize him!697 ¶26

But the glory to me this night is that Marta recognized it here, and that today, by that recognition, she’s been set free. Free as the wind – no more restoration to life in the world of Caesar; and the same thing is happening – will happen eventually to Marge when Marge falls from this world – the same thing. And every one will have it who really has faith in what I am talking about and they will see me because I will have the urge to unveil myself. He unveils – self in a vision, and reveals Himself in that manner. He speaks in a dream, as Marge had the dream of the box like a little coffin, and she knew that within it she was there and she was Joseph. She knew she couldn’t get out of that box until in that box she became Jesus, for only Jesus resurrects. And so, he resurrects. Who resurrects? He is designated “Son of God” in power by his resurrection from the dead. So, only Jesus resurrects; so she has to actually form herself into Jesus to resurrect, and everyone who resurrects as Jesus. There’s not a thing in this world resurrects, but Jesus! So, even though your name is John or Mary or Peter, when you rise from the dead, you are Jesus without loss of identity of being Mary, being Peter, being Neville, or being any other name. This is the mystery.697 ¶27

Now, these mysteries of the Bible are not matters to be kept secret, but they are truths that are mysterious in character. It’s difficult to convey them to the rational mind. The mind stands still before the mystery of God. You are trying to rationalize it. You can’t do it. So, here, the entire Old Testament is an adumbration – a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way. It is like a rough sketch. That’s why, when Paul said to the Galatians – he said: “Oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” He’s asking them: Have you forgotten? Let me ask you only this: “Did you receive the spirit by the hearing of the law or by faith? Are you so foolish? Having received it, the Spirit by faith, are you now returning to the flesh?”697 ¶28

Are you going to see Jesus as a being of flesh and blood? He’s not flesh and blood; He’s not of this world – “I am not of this world.” “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” Are you going to see Him of this world? “Oh, foolish Galatians!” you saw Him “portrayed” – go to a play and see the drama unfold before you. Do you really believe what you see as the fact; or are you going to extract from it, like the allegory, and take from it what it really intends to tell you? So, here is a play unfolding before you. That’s not the fact; that’s the allegory. Now, try to extract the meaning of the story as you saw it unfold before you, for it was portrayed before you. Then said he: “From now on, I consider no one from the human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard Him thus no longer.” So, he believed in a physical Christ, as the whole vast world does; then when the light came to him and the whole thing unfolded within him, he couldn’t see a physical Christ. He said, “I regard no one from a human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” Read it.697 ¶29

So, here, you and I are the One Being, wearing this cross; and from this cross we will rise and when we rise, we are the Lord Jesus Christ. And then dramas like the one I’ve told you will take place, and you will set free those who believe it. “And everyone who believes me now,” he said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The truth? Well, what truth must I know? He said, “I am the truth.” The truth? Well, what truth must I know? He said, “I am the truth,” – in other words, “Know me. I’ve told you who I am, and the day will come that I will unveil myself to you, and you’ll know me; and therefore you’ll be knowing the truth, and that truth will set you free.” You will actually know me as I have told you I am; and in that day you’ll be set free the minute you know me. For the minute I unveil myself before you, I’ll be wearing the body of a man, for God is man. I’ll be clothed in that of power, for He is Infinite Power. But I will wear my face, and my face is your friend. And, so, I will be your friend, and call you no longer a slave, for the slave will not know what I am doing; but I will call you a friend, for I’ve told you all that I’ve ever heard from my Father – all that I’ve ever experienced in the mysteries I’ve told you. So, then, you are my friend, and you will see me as I’ve told you that I am; and in that moment that you see me and you believe it, because you have no uncertainty within you, you are set free!697 ¶30

So, when your little moment comes in time to depart this world and you drop the body, you are not restored; you are free. You are a child of God – immortal, wearing a glorious, glorified body in the Body of the Risen Christ. Everyone is going to have it. We can only postpone it by our cynicism and our – well, unbelieving attitude towards it. It’s the most difficult thing. I’m not saying it’s the easiest thing in the world to grasp, but it’s true. Every word of it is true. And can you conceive of anything worthwhile dwelling upon, other than this?697 ¶31

It doesn’t deny the world of Caesar. Oh, in the world of Caesar you can have anything you want – but anything you want you can have! It’s all here for the taking. If you dare to assume that you are now what you want to be, and do not fail in the assumption, you’ll get it. If you walk as though you were what you would like to be, you’ll get it. Here is a friend of mine in L.A. He comes to all the meetings, a handsome, wonderful lad of about 40 years of age. He says, “In my office this perfectly lovely girl, she serves all the different gentlemen who are in the office and we all love her. One day she came into my office, and she spent twenty minutes telling me of the horrors of this world, where there are so few eligible men for marriage, and so many jerks – millions of jerks and so few eligible men. So, after she poured it out for twenty minutes, I didn’t say a word to her; she left the office, and I sat there for a few minutes, and I heard within me – I heard her tell me that she had met the man – the most glorious man that ever walked this earth, and they are dating and – oh, she’s just walking in the heavens. I did it at that moment. On my way home, driving on the freeway, I did it again. The next morning when I was shaving, I thought of her, and I did it again. Well, in ten days I had no confirmation of it. She still came into the office bringing the papers; and as she came in and she still seemed to be gloomy, I did it again. Well, ten days went by, and all of a sudden she came in, and here is sheer ecstasy! She spent one-half hour of my precious time telling me of the man of men in this world. They are dating, and they are dating night after night. Why, there’s not a person in this world comparable to this man.”697 ¶32

Well, what did he do? He simply used his imagination to give her what she wanted. She wanted a man, not a jerk; so he simply got a man. And, now, as far as she is concerned, he is just the best man in this world. Well, I closed on this very last Friday in June; so I do not know if it is consummated or not – I don’t know. But they are dating every, every day; and as far as she is concerned he is the only man in the world. But who did it? My friend, his name is Ray Lee. He sat down – he likes her as a friend, and all the men in the office – they like her. She has worked in the office for a while. It’s an advertising office. And Ray, knowing this principle, he figures, “All right, we’ll forget all of the people in this world that she thinks are no good, and I will now see that she has a perfect man.” And that’s all that Ray did. On his way home, he did it; next morning when he was shaving, he did it; and he was reminded by her gloom that something must be done more than what he did, so he did it again. So, he did it maybe four or five times in that interval; and in less than two weeks, she finds an angel on earth. Of course, he may not always be that; but, nevertheless, at the moment, he is all that he wanted her to find.697 ¶33

You can have anything in this world – I don’t care what it is, if you’ll apply God’s law. And God’s law is simple: Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will. Well, if you believe that you’ve received it how would you feel? Just how would you feel? That’s the feeling – catch it! Catch that feeling, and don’t let it go! You have found Me; well, don’t let Me go. Let all the others go, but don’t let Me go. You have found salvation in that mood. That mood, were it true, would save you from all that you formerly had but you didn’t want. Now, this mood will save you. Catch this mood, for that’s the mood that will save you – and walk in it. That belongs to the world of Caesar; but while we are in the world of Caesar, why not use it? And use it wisely; use it lovingly.697 ¶34

But I am trying to get you beyond the world of Caesar to something that never passes away, because the most glorious romance in the world today must come to an end, and death will end it. You love your child, and you’ll die this very moment for your child. If you and your child were held by some monster in the world, and they said: “One of you must die,” no father in this world would hesitate for an nth part of a second, who loves his child, to say, “Take my life.” He couldn’t for one moment, if he were a father who loves his child, hesitate to say, “What are you asking about?” You don’t ask those questions; it’s just, “Take my life.” What does it matter? “But promise me as a man and save hers. Don’t take hers – you can’t take both. You take my life.” You wouldn’t hesitate if you loved someone. Yet it has to part; either you go first or she goes first; and every man worthy of his name wants himself to go before the ones he loves. He doesn’t want to say “Good-bye” to one here that he truly loves. He wants to go first.697 ¶35

But it has to be a parting in the world of Caesar, but not in the world of Heaven. There is no parting. It’s an immortal body. It is a body that is forever, and relationships are forever; they are not parted. And it is harmony, and one body holds it all: one lord, one body, one spirit – without loss of identity.697 ¶36

So, here, while we are here, even though we know we’ve got to part, you go into a building or you go into a city, and a building that you knew and loved – where is it? It’s gone. I go to New York every year. You can get into a taxi and say, “Take me to So-and-So.” “That’s gone, Sir.” “Well, I’ll tell you what – take me to that restaurant.” “Why, that’s gone, too, Sir.” Then you get another restaurant; after a while, you think, “What’s left?” You had better stick to something that you think is left, because you mention this hotel… that hotel is gone; and I’m not kidding. I mean from experience, I lived there for years and years. I came to New York City in 1922, and I have lived in New York City. I knew every square inch of it. And here, these lovely hotels where I used to go to dinner and different restaurants– well, that hotel is gone now, that restaurant is gone, and they are all gone. New buildings are in their place, yes but you don’t know these buildings, and you don’t know the personnel of the restaurants. They are all gone.697 ¶37

So, not a thing is permanent in this world. It all vanishes. But while vanishing – all right, you have to live in the world of Caesar, apply His law, and have all the happiness that you want in this world. Don’t let anyone tell you that any limit is placed upon the power of belief. There is no limit placed upon it. But don’t forget the Promise. Dwell upon the Promise for that’s the only important thing in this world: When you awake and you are God, without loss of identity.697 ¶38

And, may I tell you? No matter what you might think of yourself today, as a man – and you know every person in the world can be improved in his body, in his face – I am telling you, when you see the face that is your face, there is no room for improvement. There is no room for improvement! I don’t care what you may think of yourself today, or what anyone in the world may think of you; there is no room for improvement. That face is God’s face! It’s perfect, and yet it’s your face; and everyone will know they are looking at you, and yet, it’s your face, and there’s no room for improvement. It’s God’s face!697 ¶39

And the body is man, and you may wear the garment of power, or you may wear the garment of wisdom, for both are the definitions of Christ. “Christ is the Power of God and the Wisdom of God.” In the case of these two: I wore the garment of Power in one, and I wore in the other the garment of Love, for that is God’s true garment. But you don’t wear it because you’re simply a man in the eyes of Caesar, and a very weak, limited, fragile person. Now, let us go into the Silence. Good.697 ¶40

Now, are there any questions, please?697 ¶41

For instance, I find greater belief among strangers than I would in my family. Among my family, I have no belief whatsoever. My wife, yes, my wife believes. My son, no – as far as he is concerned, this is all stupid. My daughter, she is believing; but like all these young girls today – she is 26, a college graduate– and no one is more stupid than your father when you’re 18; and then by the time you are 24, it’s amazing how quickly he became wise! In four short years he became so wise; but at 18 he was the most stupid person in the world, because she knew that I couldn’t pass any examination that was given her to enter college. I would flunk any college examination; and so, therefore, she catalogued me right away as stupid. And the wisest people she ever knew, which were in college, were the teachers. Everyone was simply a giant in her eye; but all of a sudden, they became just normal people; and then her father, who was stupid – well, she doesn’t voice it, but I know that she has changed her attitude.697 ¶44

But my brothers and my sister at home, they can’t give me one word because they don’t believe one thing I say. First of all, Neville is simply one of the boys. Well, I am one of the boys – I can’t deny that. And so, what on earth is he talking about, because they all believe in the historicity of Scripture. I tell my sister it isn’t history, not secular history. It’s Salvation history. It’s eternal history but it’s not secular history.697 ¶45

Well, my sister is a pillar of the Christian church – the Anglican Church. She contributes, not only her time, but her money. She gives generously to the church – supports the old men’s home, the old women’s home – all the homes; and she is the most generous one because she has it. She has oodles of money, and she gives generously to the church. But she also gives her time to the church, and she’s always in the church Sunday morning, whether she feels well or not; her husband has to drive her to church, and she goes. She has to be in church. So we get together and over the morning’s breakfast, she doesn’t want to discuss it; but something will always come up to – you know – prompt some little thing. But it’s an irritant as far as she is concerned. That will disturb her, and she doesn’t want to be disturbed. She’s satisfied that Jesus is a man, as she was taught not as she discovered from Scripture or from a vision, but as she was taught by her ministers. And they are just as blind as my sister.697 ¶46

And as far as my brothers are concerned, they have made all the money in the world that they want or they need and don’t disturb them. As my brother Victor said, “Look here, you are interested in what is going to happen after this world. I didn’t know what was going to happen when I came into it, and I made a good world of it. I came here without knowing what I am supposed to do, and I did a darn good job,” said he. “Well, when I go into the other world, I’ll do a good job, too.” So, that’s his concept. So, “just don’t bring up any of these things because I’m not interested.” So, when I go home, I leave them alone – only to fulfill Scripture. This whole thing is fulfillment of Scripture. “His brothers did not believe him.”697 ¶47

I have an Aunt – she’s 92 years old. The family supports her. She lives in Jersey. She and I, when I was just a boy and the visions began, she thought herself one marvelous, wonderful Christian. She couldn’t let her daughter marry the son of the devil, not because he was a Christian, but of a different denomination; so he was the son of the devil. So, they got married anyway. And here is this Aunt of mine, and one day I said to her, “Don’t you know that Jesus had brothers?” because I knew that she believed in the literal word of the Scriptures. She said, “Our good Lord had brothers?” And she just got up and ran out of the room. She couldn’t be in the presence of the devil who was her nephew! So, when she came back, I said, “Do you have a Bible?” “Yes.” I said, “Go and get it.” She brought it in. I said, “Open it up. Turn to the 6th chapter of Mark and start reading.” Well, you only get to the third verse when they name the brothers: James, Joses and Simon and Judas, and “his sisters are with us this day” – plural; and when she read it she took the book – and she could have eaten it, because I made her see what she hadn’t seen before. She wants the literal word. Well, read the literal word. He had at least – at the very least, it was a family of seven. And, so, she wants to believe in this strange, peculiar rigidity. No!697 ¶48

A man came to my meetings every night when I lectured in L.A. until one night when I said, “I am Mary.” I said, “I am Mary, and birth to God must give, if I am blessedness for now and evermore would life.” And he said from the audience – he was in the first row – “You don’t look like Mary to me.” I said, “May I tell you that you are Mary, too? You call yourself a man.” He’s a Green Beret – always wore his green beret; he’s from the Green Beret Regiment, and very proud of it. He always wore it, even though he was in the meeting – he never took the hat off. I said, “You are Mary; and just as I gave birth to Christ, you must give birth to Christ or live in hell for the rest of eternity, for the only salvation is to bring forth Christ, and you will give it.” He never came back. After the meeting, he came forward and said, “You know, I want to tell you something, Neville; you do teach some of the truth, but not all the truth.” I said, “Well, thank you very much.” End of tape recording697 ¶49

When man solves the mystery of imagining he will have solved the secret of causation, that is, that imagining creates reality. So, “The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which every man should aspire, for supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight, lie in the solution of this great mystery”.691 ¶1

We speak of Jesus Christ; well, Jesus Christ is your own human Imagination. When you solve the great mystery of imagining, you have found him and then you will know who Jesus Christ is and who is the cause of all the phenomena of the world. Jesus Christ and the one spoken of in the Old Testament as Jehovah are one and the same being: that is your own wonderful human Imagination. Divine Imagination reproduced itself in the human Imagination, and because Divine Imagination contains all within itself and having reproduced itself in our Imaginations, well then, we contain within ourselves all. All things exist within the human Imagination. So when you solve the problem of imagining, you have found the secret of causation and you have found Jesus Christ.691 ¶2

Now let me share with you two experiences that came to me this past week. Here is the first one, the lady wrote me dated December the 1st…that’s the date of her letter. She said, “I returned from a wonderful cruise through the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, returned to New York City. I checked my baggage at La Guardia Airport for Chicago where I expected to spend a few days with some friends. When I arrived in Chicago, one of my bags was missing. It really was my most valuable bag. Not only did it have most of my clothes, but it had all of my presents that I bought for my friends and my relatives, all my family. Plus the fact, in it I had left the most precious of all things, I left a wedding band and an engagement diamond that my husband gave me…he’s now gone from this world. I had them made into a locket. So I reported the loss when I got to Chicago and it wasn’t there. They said they would call me when they found it. Well, I arrived in California and there was no trace of the bag. A week later I got a letter from the airport saying that they were sorry but there was no trace of the bag. My first reaction was to curse them for their treatment of baggage, but I remembered the teaching, that which you teach us, that imagining creates reality. So I tried to reconstruct the letter that I received from them and revise it, but it didn’t seem natural. I tried it over and over, but it didn’t seem natural to me.691 ¶3

“So then, I tried to make it a natural scene. For if imagining creates reality, then what scene could I really construct that would be natural to me that I could feel in order to recover my bag? Well, I imagined that I had it. If I had it, what would I do? Well, I would put it on the bed. I would open the bag and I would put away all of my clothes and the gifts that I bought for my family and my friends. All these things I would do. So in my Imagination I took my bag, placed it on my bed, and I opened the bag and put all my clothes away plus the presents. I did it every night and sometimes during the day. If I thought of it I did it again. But every night I did it, not allowing for one moment any doubt to enter my mind that I was not doing that which causes reality. I firmly believe that imagining creates reality. Believing it as I did, I did it. And when my little grandchildren asked me, “Where are the presents?”—I always brought them presents; when my husband and I travelled together we never came back empty handed, we always brought presents, and so they asked for the presents—I said, ‘Well, it takes a long time for baggage to come by freight.’ I never allowed them to know for one moment that it was considered lost. I never told anyone.”691 ¶4

I assure you she didn’t tell me. And under the circumstances, she would have called me and asked for help as she has on other occasions for different problems, but this time I knew nothing of it. So I’m not part of it at all. It’s all what she did.691 ¶5

Then on the 26th of November…that is only a little while ago…she received a letter form the airport saying, “If you don’t not pick up your bag within five days, you’ll be charged storage.” So she called her friend and asked if she was free to go and get the bag. The friend said yes, so the friend went over with her and she got the bag. The friend said to her, “Why did it take so long? It’s been six weeks since you’ve been back.” You see, she did not tell her friend that she had lost the bag. She told no one, didn’t tell her daughter, her grand-children or the speaker. She kept it all to herself, because in her mind’s eye it was not lost…delayed but not lost. In her letter she said, “I do believe that love’s labor is never lost. Everything in it was loved. I bought every present with love. I intended to give it to those that I bought it for with love. There were no strings attached to it, it was all done in love. I knew that if this principle is true, and I firmly believe it, it would have to prove itself in the testing.” And so, she has her bag, all the things in it, everything in it.691 ¶6

Well, I can’t thank her enough for sharing that news with me so that I in turn may share it with you that everything in this world is created by your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God! There is no other God. You can use it wisely or stupidly. Most of us use it stupidly, use it foolishly, and we create havoc in the world. But it’s the same power. There’s only one power…there’s only one God. That one God you and I call Jesus Christ. In the Old Testament, we speak of that same power as Jehovah the Lord; but there is only one power, there is no other power. And you can use it as the most frightful power in the world or the most heavenly power.691 ¶7

So in her case, her first impulse was to curse the station that so stupidly mislaid or lost her bag. Then she remembered what she heard here and figured, no, I can’t do that, I must actually apply it. Well, she tried revision of the letter which said they could not find it and they were sorry about it. At first she couldn’t make it natural to revise that letter, so she struck upon something that would seem natural: if I had the bag, what would I do? Well, I’d take the bag and put it on the bed and open the bag, take my clothes out, put the clothes away, take the presents out and put them away until the moment when I would give them to those for whom I bought them. And this she did every night. It took six weeks to get a revised statement. Instead of a new letter here is a threat that if you don’t pick up the bag in five days, you’ll be charged storage. Then she goes and gets the bag. That’s what I mean by imagining creating reality. That is real faith. An assumption is faith and without faith it is impossible to please him. Please who? God! But who is God? Your own wonderful human Imagination that’s God and there is no other God.691 ¶8

Divine imagining reproduced itself in human imagining, therefore, divine Imagination containing all, the human Imagination contains all. Now I’m going to show you what I mean by containing all. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out, everything in the world is yourself pushed out, but man doesn’t know it and so he mistreats himself. He tries to murder himself as you see in today’s paper with this strange horrible little thing that is taking place in our midst. But do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world, don’t. Leave it alone. It is a horrible thing, but that is simply a misuse of the power. One stumbled upon a power without awakening…and if you don’t awake, Lord, what horror you can wreak in this world.691 ¶9

Now here is another lady. She’s here tonight, too, both are here. Her letter is dated December the 2nd, only a few days ago, she said, “I found myself in my neighbor’s living room and in her living room all are dressed as Mennonites.” You know what the Mennonites look like…you’ve all seen pictures of them. They came to this country in the 17th Century and they’ve been here over 300 years. They originated in Zurich, Switzerland in the year 1525, and then they moved into Germany, into France, into parts of the north, and then into Belgium and Holland. Finally in the middle of the 17th Century they came here. They are supposed to number around 150,000 to 200,000 today. You’ve heard of the Amish…that’s a branch of them. Like all these groups they splinter and they become other groups. Just as Catholicism split into the east and the west, and then the western splintered into all the Protestant world and they splintered…they all splinter. So the Mennonites splintered…but they dress today as they dressed when they came here 300 years ago; there’s no change in their outward appearance. All the men dress in the same manner, all the women in the same manner, and the children in the same manner. Here is a fixed idea. So she saw all the people in the household in a fixed, fixed state over a period of 300 years…no change in one’s attitude towards life. It perpetuates itself year after year.691 ¶10

Now this is the scene. It appears that the woman in the living room that the Mennonites, all brothers, had killed her second husband. It appears that she had been mistreated by her second husband, and so because they all belonged to each other, and he belonged to them, they killed him. That is the beginning of the dream—they killed him because she was mistreated by him. Now she comes upon the scene and she tries to explain to them that that was all wrong. But as far as they’re concerned that is right, that was the thing to do. He belonged to us, he mistreated her, and so we killed him. No matter what argument she used it could not persuade them in any way that they had done wrong. Well, that’s part of scripture and you’ll find that in the 16th chapter of the Book of Proverbs, and there you will read these words, “All the ways of man are pure in his own eyes, but God weighs the heart”. In the eyes of a man what he does is pure, is right, he should do just what he did, but God weighs the heart. You go on to the next verse, “And God made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.” So here, you find the whole thing was perfect. They thought themselves pure and good in the doing…an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.691 ¶11

Then she said, “At this moment a car drove up, a huge big limousine and a group of men came out, all dressed in black and carrying machine guns.” They all came into the place and they were standing then on the veranda. She ran into the house and pleaded with this woman to come, but she didn’t. She came quietly and reluctantly quite slowly into the house, but not before the men entered. One man held a gun to her, he was going to kill her, and the others ran all through the house. So, looking at this scene, the man with the gun right next to this neighbor of hers, this Mennonite, she said, “Suddenly I woke, but I woke in the dream. I didn’t wake here, I woke in the dream and I realized that the whole thing is taking place within me.”691 ¶12

As Blake said, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your own wonderful human Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” So, “I awoke and here I know the whole thing is taking place within me…but now they seem more real than ever. I am looking at them. Then I felt within me a certain activity which I stopped. As I stopped it, he froze. I looked at her, I stopped the activity which allowed me to see her as something apart and alive outside of me, and she froze. Then I went into the kitchen and I froze them all by stopping in me an activity which allowed them to appear to be alive independent of my perception of them…and they all froze. Then I came back into the living room and there they are frozen…two of them are frozen. And I turned to him and I said, ‘You don’t want to kill her, you love her, and she loves you.’ At that, the man simply put down the gun that he held in his hand at the woman, and then with open arms he moved towards her to embrace her in great affection. At that moment, as I was about to go into the kitchen to do the same thing, my alarm went off and I woke to this dream.”691 ¶13

That was a dream and then she woke to this dream. May I tell you, this is just as much a dream as that was a dream. But man is not awake. Man is sound asleep in this world and he doesn’t know what he is doing. So he can perform the most horrible things in the world and he is innocent in his dream. When you wake in the morning and you tell of a dream, the most horrible dream that you’ve ever had, no one is going to sentence you for it. They’ll try to analyze it for you and they all make such horrible mistakes in their analysis. They haven’t the slightest concept of what a dream is all about. I mean our psychiatrists and all the so-called experts on dreams are past masters of misinterpretation. They don’t realize the great mystery that is surrounding us in this world. The whole vast world is the individual dreamer pushed out and the conflict is within himself and not on the outside at all.691 ¶14

So here, she saw this whole thing taking place on the outside and seemingly independent of her perception of it. Then she realized as she became awake that she woke in the dream. But she felt within herself an energy, an activity that was animating and making real all that she perceived, and she arrested it. As she arrested that activity, the thing seen froze like a statue. She arrested one here and it froze. She goes into the kitchen, arrests the activity and they freeze. She comes back and before she releases it, now she changed their attitude, she changed their intention. Having changed with love, when she released them they were bewildered because there had been a radical change in them, and they knew nothing about it. It all took place within her.691 ¶15

That is taught in scripture as repentance. Repentance is not confessing some sin in this world as the churches teach it…hasn’t a thing to do with remorse. Repentance is “metanoia,” a radical change of mind. When something radically changes in me, all of my intentions change, all of my attitudes toward life change. So she changed it. That’s told us at the trial in scripture: “You have no power over me were it not given to you from above”. What is taking place here is a drama that has been set in motion based upon attitudes from above. She was functioning from above. She tasted of the power of the age to come.691 ¶16

That is told us in the 10th chapter of Luke, they sent seventy into the world, seventy more disciples, and they came back, and they were simply thrilled beyond measure. They said, “Lord, even the very demons were subject unto us through thy name!”. He said to them, “I saw Satan fall from heaven; nevertheless, rejoice not that the very spirits were subject unto you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” I will tell her, rejoice not that these things happened—you have a power, you tasted of the power—but rejoice because your name is written in heaven; that’s infinitely greater than to demonstrate a power in this world. For, you can demonstrate it in the most horrible way in the world…but you had to demonstrate it in love. Now, seventy doesn’t mean seventy individuals were to be sent out. Seventy is the numerical value of the Hebrew letter Ion; the symbolic value is an eye. You are an incurrent eyewitness. I gave my eyes to Sharon and she shared them with you. You will share them with others, and they will keep on sharing with the incurrent eyewitnesses. It doesn’t matter what number…seventy is only a symbolic number, the numerical value of the letter Ion, which symbolically is an eye. And the eye is the incurrent eye, the eye that sees inward into the world of thought, into eternity. Not an outside eye, no mortal eye could see it, and you have the incurrent eye.691 ¶17

Now I tell you, rejoice not because the spirits were subject unto you, but rejoice because your name is written in heaven. And that is a true story. You will see one day when you’re called into that assemblage that there is such a ledger and there is such a record of the name being written in heaven. All this so-called imagery seems so stupid to the intelligent mind of the world, but they don’t know how sound asleep they are. They haven’t the slightest concept how sound, sound asleep they are. They’ll try this boy who is now on trial for this murderous thing. He fell into a power of which he is totally unaware. They all became his slaves so said the papers. They didn’t know what they were doing, simple people, many of them cultured, one boy three years in college, and all became slaves of one who fell into a power of which he’s totally unaware. This power exercised without love is horror. But she exercised it in love. She said, “You don’t want to kill her, you love her…and she loves you.” Then having released him with a bewildered expression on his face she turned to her and said, “You love him and he loves you.” Then he takes the gun in his hand and puts it down, and with out stretched arms goes to embrace her and she to receive the embrace in love. Then before she can reach the kitchen to release them from some violent state she’s awakened to this dream.691 ¶18

This is still a dream. This world pushed out is the world of the dreamer and you are the dreamer and the dreamer in you is God. God is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God…there is no other God. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out.691 ¶19

So you can take it on either level. Take it on the level of my friend who came back from this heavenly cruise to find that one lovely piece is missing. Well, if imagining does create reality, then I will simply not accept the fact. That is the fact, well, why must I accept the fact? Are we not taught in scripture that whoever believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him? All right, so she takes in her Imagination the so-called lost suitcase, puts it on her bed, opens the suitcase, then takes out every piece and hangs it up. Then takes all the presents that she bought for her family and her friends and puts them all away for the appropriate moment when she will give them to those for whom she bought them. She did it every night for almost, say, five weeks. She started doing it after she came back and sometimes during the day when she thought of it she did it again. She never shared that with anyone because to her it was not gone, and therefore she could not concede that it was lost. It wasn’t lost, just delayed. She did it every night before she retired and sometimes through the day. Then she receives a letter, “If you don’t pick it up within five days, you’re going to be charged for storage.” I think that’s thrilling!691 ¶20

I can’t thank her enough for sharing it with me that I in turn may share it with you to encourage you to simply control your own wonderful human Imagination. For if I would steer a decent course towards a certain port, a certain goal in life, I must ever be aware of my imaginal activity, or at least I must be aware of the end that I am shaping. I may have other activities, but the end I am shaping I must not allow doubt to enter for one moment. If I know what I want, then I must shape that morning, noon and night…and then no power in the world can stop it. They can’t stop it, because I am the dreamer of my dream and I am pushing myself out into the world, shaping my world based upon my own imaginal activity.691 ¶21

For the Jesus of scripture is your Imagination, the Jehovah of scripture is your own wonderful Imagination, and the Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same being. The same root…Yod He Vau begins both words. And Shin Ion simply means “salvation.” And the word Jehovah means “Jehovah is salvation or Jehovah saves.” That’s what the word Jesus means. It’s Jehosua in Hebrew; we call it Joshua. Well, Joshua and Jesus are the same thing. So, Jehovah saves. Well, who is Jehovah? His name is I AM as revealed in the 3rd chapter of Exodus. I AM? Yes! You mean I am not John, Mary, Neville? No, just I AM…stop right there. Then you go back in the very first book, in the Book of Genesis, and go to the 4th chapter, the 26th verse, and the one who took the place of the first one killed, for the second one was killed…and she said the second husband was killed. Now, Abel was the second and then Seth took his place…for she bore another son to take the place of the one who was killed. Then Seth had a child and Seth called his name Enis, and then this lovely little statement, “And from that day on, men began to call upon the name of God.”691 ¶22

Literally the word “call upon” means “call with.” I don’t say, “In the name of Jesus or in the name of God or in the name of Jehovah.” That’s nonsense. All the priesthoods of the world do that: “In the name of Jesus Christ, so and so” and no one feels anything. When you call upon the name you call with the name and the name is I AM. Well, who is unpacking the grip? I am—that’s calling with the name of God. Who’s putting the clothes away? I am—that’s calling with the name of God. Who’s putting all the presents away? I am—that’s calling with the name of God. Who’s arresting the activity within them and silencing the being who stands before them? I am—that’s calling with the name of God. Who is saying, “You love her and she loves you?” Well, I am—that’s calling with the name of God. And from the very moment men began to call upon the name, you can change that “upon” to “with,” for that’s the true and literal meaning of that Hebraic phrase, calling with the name of God.691 ¶23

If you really believe it, you can prove it in the testing as these two ladies here tonight have proved it. One, on the first of December she wrote it; the other on the second of December. I can’t tell you my thrill, my two dears, that you heard it to the point of application. That one who is the incurrent eyewitness took it into the deep…for you have my eyes now and you are seeing into eternity…for you have the incurrent eyewitness as yours. And the other hasn’t yet received the eyes, she will, but she knows it and believes it and she proves it on this level of the dream. From this level she brings a bag back and all the contents in place. The other one goes into the deeper level of her being to discover there is nothing on the outside but herself and that, these Mennonites are only what…expressions of fixations, for they haven’t changed their outer dress in 300 years. In this land alone they haven’t changed it. You see pictures of them and you wonder, “Is this back in 1969?”691 ¶24

Yet they make lovely things, the Amish. They have one of the most wonderful refrigerators that man could buy. It runs almost a thousand dollars, and some models run higher than that, but it’s a beautiful thing. So they’re not against making money. They won’t charge, so they claim, any interest on a loan, for that’s against their ethical code. But they’ll buy land and have it increase in value, and they can’t see that that increase is also is interest on investment. How we kid ourselves…morning, noon and night we do it. You’ll buy stock and the stock grows. You loan a dollar and will not accept six percent interest on a loan, they just want the loan back. That satisfies their conscience. But they have not a thing against going out and buying what they think is a good deal and holding it until it rises in value…that’s something entirely different. See, man has a peculiar innate something that justifies everything that he does so that all the ways of man are pure in his own eyes. So there they go across the world, maybe today 200,000 of them. For what I quoted tonight is taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I bought for my daughter maybe fifteen years ago. Maybe the new edition will give them a larger number in our land today, because they certainly are increasing. But they still dress today as they dressed 300 years ago.691 ¶25

So I tell you, man’s Imagination manifests itself in the Imaginations of men. The whole vast world is playing their part because you are doing what you are doing. And who knows who is treading in the winepress tonight who is causing the subtle change in the minds of men? Someone who feels himself wrongfully accused and is sitting in some jail, and there he goes over it in his mind’s eye and is getting even with society. He’s treading out the winepress. If he lifts that to the point of vision…as Blake said, “All that man need do in this world is to raise Imagination to the point of vision and it is done.” If you ever lift it to the point of vision where you become awake…vision is simply becoming awake in the dream. This is vision because we are awake in this dream. When you dream at night, you seem to be the victim of vision, a slave of vision. Then you wake and you can choose whether you’re going to look at this picture or that picture, and you become now discriminating. So you are awake in the dream here and that is vision. So she awoke in her dream and that was then vision. Then realizing it started as a dream, therefore it still must be a dream, so these things are simply myself made visible, I will now change them. You don’t want to kill him…she doesn’t want to be hurt…you don’t want to kill her…she loves you and you love her. And then he takes the gun and puts it down and with outstretched arms goes to embrace her. A radical change within him and produced by one that he was totally unaware of who was the cause of the radical change in him.691 ¶26

Well, who knows who is actually producing the changes in the minds of men—to go to war or to have peace, to have this or to have the other? Someone…it could be some woman treading in the winepress, or as Yeats said, “It could be simply in the mind of some shepherd boy lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way”; and that little boy dreaming of heroism, dreaming of noble battle where he is the hero, and he causes the blood to flow. Who knows? If you know who you are and how the whole thing operates, well then, you will start as of now to control your imaginal activity. For if you don’t, it will be controlled for you by another and you will become a slave, the victim of the other even though the other is some woman treading in the winepress, living in a dungeon and going wild in her own strange Imagination. But if she ever takes it to the point that the imaginal act becomes vision, it’s done, may I tell you. But any time you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you’ve done the right thing. No doubts whatsoever if it’s ever done in love. But there’s always a question mark if it is not done in love. For I tell you that I know from experience that God is love. This is not the result of some philosophic reasoning; this is the result of God’s self-revelation. When God unveils himself within you he is infinite love. Yes, he’s infinite power as described in scripture: “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God”, no question about it. But power without love could raise the most horrible [...].691 ¶27

So I say to everyone believe me the Jesus of scripture, the Jehovah of scripture, is your own wonderful human Imagination…there is no other God. And I tell you from my own experience that God is love and you will know it one day from your own experience that God is love. But in the meanwhile, believe me as the lady believed me that imagining creates reality. When I told her that, as I’ve told you time and time again, she believed me. So a natural human impulse is to curse the airport for their stupid handling of bags. Then she remembered the teaching and began, “No, I won’t curse them. I will get my bag back; it’s delayed but not lost. And so I’ll perform in my Imagination exactly what I would do here in the flesh if I had it.” And so she does it and the bag comes back with all the things within it.691 ¶28

Now, that lady was not here when I opened in September to tell a similar story of my own, because she left this city for her cruise before I opened in September when I told a similar story. So she did not hear that story. Not having shared her story with others, she knew nothing of what I did to get my bag back when it was lost. So she was not in any way influenced by my own story of getting my bag back which was lost when I came down from San Francisco. How I simply took it in my hand and held it, and then I got a notice from San Francisco an air mail letter and it said, “Your bag is in box so-and-so. Sorry” and signed “The Phantom.” So I went over and I got my bag. I called up the airport, told them what I’d received in the letter, and they said, “We’ll investigate.” There was no such box in L.A. They called San Francisco where the letter originated, they investigated, and it was there. They opened it up and the whole thing was a mess, but not one thing was missing. Whoever took it hoped to find something that they did not find…but the whole thing was a mess. So I went over when it came down to L.A. and got my bag. Everything was in it, everything in tact, save it was all a mess. Now, I told that story when I opened in the middle of September, but she was not here. She was already on her way to New York City to take this cruise, a month at sea through the Mediterranean and the Caribbean and return to New York City. Not having mentioned it to her daughter or her grandchildren or her friend or to me, she simply applied the principle. So she was not influenced by what I had done under a similar circumstance.691 ¶29

I can’t thank her enough for sharing it with me that I in turn may share it with you. And thank my other friend for this wonderful depth, taking with you the eyes that I gave to you via Sharon, that you may taste of the power that is to be, for that is the power. This whole vast world is a play and all these are the costumes, and you are the actor, you’re writing the play and you change it as you go…as you did in your vision. Here, you set that in motion and now you’re going to prove to yourself that you can take the most fixed idea in the world. Well, you try to think in terms of a more fixed idea than the Mennonites when after 300 years they’re still dressing as the did 300 years ago, when men’s fashion today is changing almost every six months and ladies’ change every month. They change and change and change. And here are people who haven’t changed in 300 years that we know of. They really haven’t changed in 500 years, for they started way back in 1525.691 ¶30

So believe me, imagining really does create reality, believe it sincerely. If you say you believe in Jesus, well then, you’ll know him to the extent you know the mystery of imagining. You will never know Jesus unless you know the secret of imagining, for man’s Imagination is Jesus Christ. There is no other Jesus Christ. Man’s Imagination is God and there is no other God. So if you really believe in God, believe in your own Imagination. Believe that Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. So when you do what the lady did to bring the grip back, what wisdom is in that! To influence the entire outer world to produce that so-called lost bag and bring it back. So I tell you, there is no other power. There’s only one power in the universe and that power we call by the name of God, we call by he name of Jesus. But if you think of Jesus as someone on the outside who lived 2,000 years ago, you’ll never know him that way. You think of God as some impersonal force, you’ll never know him that way. He’s a person because you are a person. You are a person…well, your Imagination is God…God is a person. God became as we are that we may be as God is.691 ¶31

So you take it to heart and apply it from now on. The man that you would like to be you can be. But don’t start dreaming about it, do something about it. And you don’t do something about it by trying to meet the so-called right people. Leave the so-called right people, they’re all dead. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out and they’re dead. They’re only reflecting the activity taking place within you; change the activity and you change the behavior of those who surround you. So if it needs the so-called aid of those, it’s only because a change took place within you. As you change it within you, you change it within the seeming others which is nothing more than yourself made visible, all pushed out. Just as she saw so beautifully when the man is about to kill the woman, “You don’t want to kill her, you love her and she loves you.” Then she releases the activity having given the order that is a command…she turns to the woman, “You love him and he loves you.” Then she releases in her an activity which allowed her to seem real and alive independent of herself, and then they embraced each other. Then she returns to this dream.691 ¶32

The day will come you will awake in this dream and you will see just what she saw in another aspect of the dream, that the whole vast world is as dead as dead can be and it’s only reflecting the activity of your own wonderful human Imagination. Then you will awake from it all and depart from the world, and leave it just as it is for others to play upon it. And we return to the being that we really are…the Creator of it all.691 ¶33

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *691 ¶34

Are there any questions, please?691 ¶35

12/5/69691 ¶38

When I tell you the Bible is your biography, I am actually saying that you are God, and I mean it. We are told in the 82nd Psalm: “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall like any prince.’” So I mean exactly what the psalmist said: that you are gods. But man has such a strange concept of the word “God.”579 ¶1

This morning’s mail brought me a letter. I do not know the lady - she claims she is eighty-two. She said: “I am returning your latest book, The Law and the Promise.” She can’t be returning it to me because I did not sell it to her. She may have returned it to my publisher or to some store who sold her the book. She said: “I read the 156 pages, the forty stories told about the promise, and no credit was given to God; not one who received the answer to their prayers thanked God, and so it is a Godless book.”579 ¶2

So she is returning it to someone. Do not criticize her. She is eighty-two and undoubtedly like my own mother and father, who had strange and wonderful concepts of God, but God on the outside of themselves. God was on the outside to whom they turned, and she undoubtedly turned to some external creative father and that is her God.579 ¶3

If she feels that way about it, you can’t blame her when she reads in this, as I have brought the two together and identify God with human imagination. By identifying the two and making them one, I rubbed out the vision that has plagued man. For we are told: “All things were made by him, and without him was not made anything that was made.” Then we discovered that we could imagine ourselves to be what we want to be and - remaining faithful, remaining loyal to that assumption - it became an external fact in our world. If “all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made,” and we did this as an experiment and it worked, well then - we discovered God! And he wasn’t some being in space who would return. We found him in ourselves as our wonderful human imagination.579 ¶4

That we failed many times - certainly, we are still torn between the concept of God, the father of David, and what we ourselves discovered, so we are still under that influence of an ancient concept of God. So she is going to return the book…and let us all feel that tomorrow she will see who God really is, but don’t judge her - not harshly anyway. Leave her exactly as she is, because at least she believes in God, which is far greater than not to believe in some power that is creative in this world.579 ¶5

Now we turn to the Book of Books. You can’t read it by saying: well, I opened the book and read from Genesis to Revelation. There are sixty-six books in what we call the Bible. It’s a library. The Old Testament is something you almost can’t believe - certainly not with sense - without the key given us in the New. The New is completely hidden in the Old and the Old is made manifest in the New. So we turn to the first book, the book of beginning, the Book of Genesis and - listen carefully -we are dealing with a mystery. When I speak of a mystery I am not speaking of a matter that must be kept secret, but a truth that is mysterious in character. And the Book of Genesis has a strange reversal of order right through it: “The first shall be last and the last first.” This reversal of order begins right in the very beginning.579 ¶6

Let us see what is first stated in the book. “In the beginning God” - that is the beginning. The end of the book: “In a coffin in Egypt.” “In the beginning God - in a coffin in Egypt.” And the one placed in a coffin is man. Then he was called Joseph, and Joseph died. He was 110 years old and he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt. So here we find the beginning and the end. “I am the beginning and the end. The alpha and omega, the first and the last.”579 ¶7

Let us see how the thing unfolds for us. In the first chapter, God’s purpose is stated: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps over the earth.” Let us give him dominion - that is God’s purpose, not his creative act as yet. His creative act comes in the second chapter, but that is God’s purpose, stated: he is going to make man in his own image and give him complete dominion over all things. In the second chapter comes the creative act, and God from the very “dust of the ground made man and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”579 ¶8

Now jump from the second chapter, 7th verse, to the 21st verse: there you will find the creative act. He states this in the 7th verse and then completes the creative act from the 21st through the 24th verse. “And God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man and he slept,” and then comes the creative act of the division of man. Male-female he now makes it. Man is not a male; man is not a female - man is the image of God, a being above the organization of sex. But he is destined to be that being. He is not yet completed. To arrive at that level where everything is subject to his creative power, he passes through this divided image of himself, called male-female.579 ¶9

Then we are told: in the divided state he is led up into a world of experience. Here was a world of innocence, because here he is dead, so the dead could not in any way be tempted, the grave could not violate anything - it is dead. Yet he is made alive, he is made alive by the sinking of God in himself, for God - don’t forget the last verse: “In a coffin in Egypt”…579 ¶10

But the story is, having made the image of himself, the image has no power in itself. It only becomes animate and alive and responsive if God sinks himself in his image. So God sinks himself in his image and in that state the image becomes divided, male-female, as we are. And then comes the most horrible story in the world: that God is in it, that image of himself, the very torment of eternity. It is necessary to take the image that was dead and just made responsive, made alive - but only made alive (which is a responsive state) - and then to turn it into a life-giving being, just by God. So it took the entire story of 6,000 years (called “six days”) to complete the act of God.579 ¶11

Here, you and I are the beings. I am not speaking from theory tonight; I am speaking from experience. I tell you the story is true from beginning to end, and if I cannot stand here before you and demonstrate for your own satisfaction the might that is God, it is only because I am still wearing this garment of flesh. And so as long as I am wearing it, the glory of the heavenly inheritance cannot be actualized by me, or at least is not fully realized in me while I wear and continue to wear this garment of flesh. But everything said in the Bible I have experienced. I have experienced the depths of my soul and it is all true from beginning to end.579 ¶12

A few years ago William Blake - he died in 1827, and I met him in these heavenly spheres, the majestic patriarch, and he said to me: “Stand still. Now fall backwards and let yourself go - no restraint, just fall.” I obeyed him and I fell like some interstellar star falling through infinite space. When I came to, I looked and I saw this scintillating being, this heavenly creature, human and yet not human - human yes, but it was all light, all fire and the heart was like living ruby. As I looked at it, I was looking at myself. Here I was looking at my very being. I came closer to discover the whole vast world of man was encased within me. Humanity in its fullness was encased within that one being, and I am it. All the nations, all the races in the world were right in that body. As I looked at the bit of myself containing it all, I then felt myself crystallize, and here I am in this world of shadows once more.579 ¶13

That story is true of every being in the world.579 ¶14

And then Blake revealed to me what he meant when he said: “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” I never fully understood those words before, but then with this vision I understood it.579 ¶15

Then I understood more clearly than ever before his vision called the “Vision of the Last Judgment,” where all the characters of the Bible are not characters at all, but only states of consciousness. When we speak of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all these characters - they aren’t persons as we are; they are states of consciousness, and the individuals are only representative or visions of these eternal states as they were revealed to mortal man (as we are) in the series of divine visions as they were recorded for us in our Bible. I have seen them in my vision and you and I can be in any one of these states any time - a certain pattern that we pass through.579 ¶16

But we can be any state and to do it. Who does it? Don’t you say: God can do it? God can do anything? But I would change the word - if you would not be offended - and that means: what I formerly called “God,” (and still do, because I like the name) I call “divine imagining,” and divine imagining and human imagining are one, they aren’t two.579 ¶17

An imaginal act is an immediate objective fact. Functioning on low intensities as we are, an imaginal act is realized in a time process. And so every vision as it stands there, I assume that I am; but at the moment reason denies and my senses deny, but I assume that I am. And if I assume it and it seems to me real and natural, when I break the spell I know I have planted it, and then it has its own appointed hour.579 ¶18

Every vision has its own period of gestation, as we are told by the prophet: “It has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower, if it seems slow then wait, it is sure, it will not be late.” If you see it clearly in your mind’s eye, if you were really in the image, it will become just as objective as this room is now - and again I am speaking from experience.579 ¶19

Sitting in my chair at home or reclining on a couch or in my bed, suddenly - without my eyes being physically open - I see a world that I would not see if I know where I am physically, and I can’t deny it. It’s just as real as you are. It’s objective, it is seemingly solidly real, and consciousness follows vision and I step into the world that I am observing. And stepping into my image it closes around me, and this world which is seemingly the only world I should know is shut out, and I am part of the world I contemplated, I am in it. I explore that world and it is just as solidly real as this world, and I can’t find my way back to this world.579 ¶20

Then I discovered the way back, and the way was feeling. Standing in that world with no street leading to this world, I assumed my head was on a pillow on the bed in the room, in the house, in the city that I knew so well; and feeling it I suddenly found myself as though standing vertically. I felt myself in a horizontal position and I am back, but I am cataleptic - I can’t move the body. It is just as frozen as this little instrument here on the table, just as solid, just as stiff. Within, say, a half minute, I could move my finger and then my elbow, and then after great effort I could move an eyelid and open my eyelid. As I opened the eyelid I looked at the familiar objects on the wall that I knew so well. I am back in this world and now this world has shut out that world.579 ¶21

I tell you: there are worlds within worlds. Here you can take an image - the image of your success if you want success, the image of your awakening if you want it - any image, and then you contemplate it. And maybe you will see it as I am seeing you now, and then consciousness may (and I hope it will) follow your vision, and you will walk right into that image and it will close around you, closing around you just as I did this.579 ¶22

And you have planted it. You entered that age, as it were, and fertilized it; and bear in mind it is the image, and the vision has its own appointed hour. Don’t try to hasten it - it ripens, it will flower. But if for you - because you were impatient - it seems slow, then wait, it will not be late, not for itself nor to a world, unless they are the same species and would ripen in the same interval of time. A chicken hatches out in twenty-one days, some things come out in five months, some things come out in a year and some come out in two years. And so we plant things in this world and each has its own period of gestation. Don’t think for one moment in the world as we know it and as we are, that you are going to think it now and then force ripening as it were. Leave it - it will come as you wish in its own full time.579 ¶23

God is real. You may not question it - I don’t - but in 1963, the scientific world would question it. I don’t know all the uses of the word, “God,” but I like it. But if it will help you any, I use the word I use most: “imagination,” because to me when I think of God I mean the same as when I say “divine imagination.” When I speak of Christ I mean divine imagining, God in action. We are told: “God is Christ reconciling the world to himself.” Imagining is Christ, which is God in action. So imagination in Christ with his imagination, imagining, is reconciling the whole vast world to himself. But if it offends you, go back to the word, “God,” but don’t put God on the outside of something separated from you, because he is not.579 ¶24

God’s revealed name to this world is “I AM.” That is his great name. Can you say, “I am?” That is God. What am I doing? I am thinking you are no good - well, that is what you’re doing, that is God in action. And do you know: you will live to see the day you are right.579 ¶25

So “I am” doing what? Anything in this world, all things are possible to God. When you say: “I don’t believe so and so.” Perfectly all right, that’s your privilege, but who is not believing it? “I am,” you say - well, that is God. Don’t believe it. “I am no good, I can’t make a living.” Well that is your privilege; believe it and may I tell you how true God is: he’ll prove it. Finally you are relieved and you will say to me: “I told you it’s no good.” Can’t you realize that you are setting it in motion and you were fertilizing it in your world, for God’s only revealed name is “I AM.” So, what are you imagining?579 ¶26

Today in the New York Times, Brook Atkinson has this article. He just returned from Leningrad. They were not concerned, when he started through, to examine his baggage concerning liquor or tobacco, which is the item they all look for, for it brings in revenue. They were only concerned about ideas. They said: “Do you have any magazines?” He said “No, none.” “Do you have the Bible?” He said, “No.” That is the only thing they questioned the second time. “Do you really mean that? Do you have a Bible?” It is the only thing they really wanted to prove beyond doubt he did not bring into Russia.579 ¶27

And they could read - they know the Hebrew tongue, the Greek tongue; they have the different concordances. They could look back and find the true meaning of God and find it really means “imagination.” That is exactly what the word means.579 ¶28

The word “potter” in Hebrew means imagination. And who makes anything? If God made me out of the clay, out of the dust, was he not a potter? And I - the made, and he - the maker. The maker was the imagination, and then imagination sunk himself in the thing made and then gave me himself.579 ¶29

Take that “book of falsehood” across “The Border,” that man may discover who God really is, that he does exist, and they will now - without the consent of Mr. Khrushchev - assume they have a different form of government, and no power in the world can stop it from externalizing itself in the world if they do it.579 ¶30

So, not cigarettes, not liquor, not anything - furs, diamonds, bring them all in, they are all part of our way of living, but don’t bring in the Bible.579 ¶31

In this country of ours we aren’t teaching the Bible. We’re teaching ritual and ceremony and it’s all vague. It hasn’t a thing to do with the Bible. The Bible is God’s revelation of himself to man. If you never saw the inside of a church, it makes no difference. In fact we are told in the Bible not to build a church, but man insists on building churches. “Build no temple for me, I will build one for you.” This is what he builds, but don’t you build one for me. Do not build me any tabernacle in this world - I’ll build one for you, and some scribe to justify the building of tabernacles inserted the 13th verse, which all scholars agree is an insertion. It is not found in the ancient manuscript.579 ¶32

I tell you the drama begins in this manner: God made us and we are dead and there is no way to make us alive and creative as he is, unless he buries himself in us, and this is the mystery of life through death. “A grain of wheat unless it falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it falls and dies it brings forth much.” So he plants himself in us and is crucified on us. Listen to the crucifixion. “The crucifixion is over.” You aren’t going to be crucified again, you are already crucified. “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”579 ¶33

The resurrection is to be; it takes place individually. And may I tell you from experience: it is true. God’s mightiest act is the resurrection, and each individual will be resurrected, and the day that you are, you will be the most startled being in the world, because until that moment you had no idea that you were dead; you had no idea that you were entombed. It seemed so natural to walk this earth and play the part that you are playing and think you are alive. You move from the cradle to the grave thinking you are alive, and in this moment in time you are suddenly resurrected. At the moment of resurrection you become awake, aware of it in your being startled.579 ¶34

Joseph was 110 years old when he left. In Hebrew, every letter, every number has a certain meaning. 100 is the letter with its symbolical value of the back of the skull, qoph. Ten is the hand, the yod, and the yod begins the name of God. If you could sever the hand from man, he would not be creative, just simply nothing. The hand fashions, the hand molds, it is a symbol of creativity - and so in the back of man’s skull a creative act is going on, as we are told in Philippians: “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”579 ¶35

He started it in you, he initiated it, he will complete it, and a work is going on in man of which man is totally unaware. He is being fashioned into the image of God.579 ¶36

When that image is complete to the satisfaction of God - divine imagining - he awakens. He awakens him where he started the work: he started it in the back of his skull; he awakens in his skull to find he is entombed. There is one moment of panic and then you make an effort to get out of this fabulous sepulcher, and you come out of your skull like someone being born, and that is your spiritual self.579 ¶37

You don’t know a thing about it; it is being done for you - forget it. You were born physically by the action of a power not your own. You will be born spiritually by the action of powers beyond your own.579 ¶38

Don’t try to be holy. God isn’t making good people, holy people. God is making creators, just like himself. If you think you are holy, that is not the key in to paradise. No matter how good you are, no matter how holy you think you are, holiness is not the key that allows you to enter that special grace, your creativity. God is doing it for you, working on you, bringing you to complete fruition and fulfillment.579 ¶39

Try this principal of imagining, and if there is one thing I think man could do to aid - as something within a shell could aid the bird - the key is given to us in the Book of Job. He complained and complained of all the things that were happening to him, but his captivity was lifted when he prayed for his friends. If you would use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another and rejoice in his good fortune without any reward to you, you will see how this thing will begin to unfold within you.579 ¶40

So here is this book of ours, the beginning of all, truly. It is divine imagining and divine imagining buries itself in man, in a coffin in Egypt. The word “coffin” is the same as the word “ark.” The letter qoph is this, and you and I have no idea - I know I had none. I thought I was still alive. I thought everyone was alive or dying. They became either filled with dreams or visions, or unconsciousness, but when I awoke, then I was alive, awake. I didn’t realize it was a dream within a dream. Here we are dreaming the most fantastic nightmares in the world.579 ¶41

The day will come you will awake and you will see, as Blake describes it: “I behold the Visions of my deadly Sleep of Six thousand Years Dazzling around thy skirts like a Serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is my Self, O Divine Creator and Redeemer.” He had no idea that he had slept for 6,000 years in his strange dream. One day he was resurrected and he beheld this redeemer of his as a serpent of precious stones and gold and knew it was himself.579 ¶42

God has so transferred himself to the individual that he became the being who was taken out of the state of innocence into the world of experience, and now awoke in a world completely subject to the imaginative power. When I saw it, I had no idea that I was it. I hadn’t the slightest idea that the spell truly brought me out of a state of innocence for his own purpose, and although he took me through these frightening nightmares of 6,000 years, he took me through as the only way he could awaken and bring me to the state where I was not only responsive, but I became a creator and prepared to live on a higher level, one with the gods.579 ¶43

Everyone in the world will pass through the same state, for the Bible is your biography. The only subject in the Bible is about God, and because it is your biography it is all about you, and you are God. So stop looking for God on the outside. He sunk himself in you. Now test it. “Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? - unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”579 ¶44

I tell you that I know Blake hasn’t died, because I meet him. He died seemingly to the world, leaving behind him only the works he gave us in the printed form. I talked with him. It was he who actually told me what to do to see what he wrote in his “Jerusalem,” how to see one man containing the whole vast world. I had no idea when he told me, that when I came to a rest I would see myself as that man. I simply obeyed him and fell backwards and came hurtling through space like some meteor, and then when I came to a rest, here is this heavenly being, radiant being, that is all aflame, and I saw it was myself. As I approached it, it contained all the nations in the world - I actually see myself containing all the nations in the world - and then he explained to me: “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”579 ¶45

Take any image in the world and enter it, and the image becomes objectively real within your world. It is all contained within you. Take out poverty - it’s there; take out wealth - it’s there; take out recognition - it’s there, take out the unknown state - it’s there; everything is there and each state is personified. So you approach a state and the state is personified, and as you encounter the state you enter the state, and then you externalize it into your world.579 ¶46

“You are living in a world of shadows,” says he, until that day when you are resurrected. You will continue your journey for a little while, telling the story as you encountered it to those who will listen, and then when you take off your garment this time, you take it off for the last time. You will never put it on again. There is no garment of flesh in the resurrection. Now let us go into the silence.579 ¶47

Now tonight’s subject is “Who am I?” It should be of vital interest to everyone in the world. Blake made a statement that “Every generated body in its inward form is a garden of delight and a building of magnificence”. “Travelers from eternity,” listen to it carefully, “from eternity pass to bodies of flesh and blood, and forgetfulness. But travelers to eternity pass inward to the Father and remembrance.” Those who pass from eternity pass outward to these bodies of flesh and blood; those who pass to eternity pass inward to the body of the Father and remembrance. So tonight we ask the question, who am I? Everyone is asking this question. You think you are and you’ll name it. If I said, who are you? You will say, “I am John.” John what? And you give me your entire background…you’re John Brown and tell me your story. If I should say John in your presence, you’d respond, you would answer, and you think you are John. That’s your outward journey from eternity into a state of forgetfulness of who you really are.441 ¶1

Then you turn around by practicing repentance and repentance simply means a radical change of attitude towards everything in the world. I don’t care what it is, a radical change of attitude. You don’t like that, well, change your attitude toward it and represent it to yourself as you would like it to be. Even though at the moment reason denies it, your senses deny it, everything denies it, you simply represent it to yourself as you want it to be. That’s practicing repentance, a radical change of attitude towards life. By this you turn around, and then you move toward eternity; and to do that, you pass inward to the Father and remembrance. For you came out from eternity: “I came out from the Father and I have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father” .441 ¶2

Now here, follow me in your Imagination with a little story. Just imagine a man, born in a very modest environment in a certain city, and he never traveled beyond the few miles of that place where he was born, never. His background is nothing to write about…he has no social, financial, intellectual background. A simple normal man, whose family lives normally in that environment and he never traveled beyond the few miles of that moment or that place of birth. Now imagine this person making the most outrageous claims in the world, extraordinary claims. But they all knew him, they know exactly who he is, and here this man is making these claims. Here are a few of the claims. It would take us all week to tell you of the claims of this man.441 ¶3

He begins in the Book of Luke . He comes into the synagogue as was his custom on the Sabbath. The attendant gave him a book, the book was the prophet Isaiah. When he found the place—he was looking for a certain place—he rose, and he read the first verse and the first half of the second verse of the 61st chapter of Isaiah. And this is what he read them: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me, he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, and release to the captives”. He closed the book, returned it to the attendant, and sat down, and all eyes were upon him. Then he turned to those present in the synagogue and he said, “The scripture that you have heard has been realized today.” He tells them that in him scripture is being fulfilled, and this has been realized in him. Well, that’s not what the world was looking for. They aren’t looking for scripture to be fulfilled in an individual; they’re looking for it to be fulfilled by an individual on the outside, a conqueror, who will come into the world coming from without, and enslaving those who enslaved, and setting free those who were enslaved. And that is not how he comes. He comes to set the individual free. For, the individual though he be a billionaire is enslaved by his billions and he doesn’t know it. He could this night be a billionaire and be flat on his back and dependent upon everyone to take care of his normal, natural functions of the body for he is unable to do it; therefore, he’s a slave to that body that he wears and totally unaware of the being that he really is. So when he comes into the world, he comes not from without, he comes from within and he unfolds in you and you are that one foretold in scripture. And that is the story of Christianity. So he begins with this bold claim, the most extraordinary claim that the scripture is fulfilled today.441 ¶4

Now he makes this claim, he said, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad”. And they said to him, “Why you are not yet fifty years old and you saw our father Abraham?” Or it could read that Abraham saw you? And he said, “Before Abraham was I am”. Well now, that was too much. They said, “Why listen to him? He’s insane!” and they took up stones to stone him. They took the literal facts of life to throw at him. “Because we know your background, you are Joseph’s son. We know your brothers, and they named the brothers. We know your sisters. So we have the entire record of your history, and you dare to make these claims?”441 ¶5

He’s not claiming he was born differently from any other being in the world. He is telling the whole vast world how this thing unfolds in us, and tells the whole vast world not only “before Abraham was, I am,” he goes beyond that. He said, “Before the world was, I am.” In the 17th of John, “Return unto me the glory that was mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was”. He’s addressing his Father, but he says, “I and my Father are one”. So the whole drama is God the Father coming down into his pre-determined play, playing all the parts, and returning to himself, enhanced by the play. So all are one because God is one. And so, in the end, man finds himself God the Father.441 ¶6

So he tells you, “I will tell it to you before it takes place that when it does take place you may believe.” I will tell you this night before it takes place in you individually that when it does take place you may believe…that this story of Jesus Christ is the only story of salvation. There is no other story; there is no other way to God, none. But it is not a man that differs from you, it’s a plan. It’s a plan of salvation, because Jesus Christ is the pattern man that was activated and awoke in man. What is the name of that earthly man in whom this pattern awoke?—no one knows, any more than they know the authors of the Bible. We do not know who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We do not know the true authors of any order of the Old Testament; we only know what is recorded.441 ¶7

So here, in everyone in this world is a pattern awaiting animation. A man turns around, it erupts within man, and he finds himself the central character of scripture, and that central character is God the Father. So all return to God the Father…there’s nothing but God the Father. And it begins with the event called in scripture the resurrection. The resurrection is an actual awakening from a sleep of which you are totally unaware. So when you came out and started as a traveler from eternity, you passed outward into these garments of sleep. These bodies are the garment of sleep and you’ve been traveling for unnumbered ages. I say, if I would take the experiences of the mystics both in scripture and others like a Blake and so on, 6,000 years…and totally unaware of who you are. Then comes that moment when, as that same traveler, you are turned around, and instead to traveling from eternity, you travel to eternity to the body of the Lord Jesus Christ who is God the Father. But in traveling to, you find you are he. And the whole thing is mapped out for you in scripture.441 ¶8

So, on your “turn around” you awake. And where do you think you awake? You awake in your skull. The most unearthly vibration will awaken you one night, and you’ll find yourself waking in your skull, a waking you have never experienced before. When you are completely awake, there you are alone and sealed within yourself. You know intuitively how to get out. You push the base of your skull, and you do come out, as one that is born from above. For, you come out in the same way that an infant comes out of the womb of a woman…only you are coming from above, not from below out of your mother’s womb. You’re coming out of your own skull…out of the base of your own skull.441 ¶9

Then the entire drama as described in scripture unfolds before you with you cast in the central role. You are the star in the entire drama. No one sees you, but you see everything that is taking place, and there are the three witnesses to what is taking place. Here is everything before you, including the little infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. You are not an infant, you are the being that you are now, but the sign of your birth from above is the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes . And there you see it…and they all know what it represents; and they call you by name, your earthly name. That’s not your true identity, but they cannot see it as yet. They call your earthly name. If your name is Claire, Grace, Jack, Neville, Bob, whatever it is they say, “It is Neville’s baby” or “Claire’s baby” because they cannot see you the invisible presence, for you are born from above, you are Spirit. So they only know you by reason of the mask that you wore, and they don’t know that that one who wore that mask is now born from above, so they call that name. But am I that?—no.441 ¶10

So I move on to the next grand event that comes a few months later. And then, a similar vibration within your skull results now in another explosion within you, and here stands David of biblical fame. He stands before you and you know that David is your son. There’s no uncertainty about this relationship. Here is your son, and here you are the father. David is the one to whom in the 2nd Psalm the Lord speaks that “You are my son, today I have begotten thee” . So here comes David and you are the father of David. As told us in the gospels, “David in the Spirit called Christ Lord” . Lord means “my father.” Now you know for the first time who you really are.441 ¶11

So when they ask the question now “Who are you?” we go to the 16th of Matthew: “And he turned to his disciples and he said to them, ‘Who do men say that the Son of man is?’ and they answered, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and still others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ Then he said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” So he identifies himself with the Son of man. “Now Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of God.’ He said, ‘Flesh and blood could not have revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven’”. No earthly man or woman could ever have told you this because you cannot rationalize it…but you have to know it by revelation. It comes through revelation where the Son is unveiled to you.441 ¶12

Now we are taught to believe in our faith. I was born and raised in the Christian faith, and I was taught to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. I did not know that he was actually, literally, God the Father until it happened in me. “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me”…he revealed me as the Father. The Son who revealed me to myself was David of biblical fame. So when you read it in scripture, “Before Abraham was, I am”, I can say before you this night, “Before David was, I am.” And yet, David by a chronological measurement is 1,000 B.C. I was born in this century. That’s 3,000 years difference and he is my ancestor by that…yet I am his Father. So I tell you, the story unfolds within us.441 ¶13

Well, who am I—Neville? No, that’s what those who came out from eternity—and therefore coming from eternity they move outward into these garments of sleep and forgetfulness—and they only know me as Neville. But those who move towards and to eternity, they pass inward to the body of the Lord and remembrance. Man then begins to remember. The whole thing was shown us before we started from eternity, and the return is simply a remembering of the being that we are, but enhanced and expanded beyond what we were by reason of our plunge into forgetfulness, which is called the world of death. So we came into a world of sin and death; and then you return from it to the being you were before you came out. So, “I came out from the Father, I came into the world; again, I leave the world and I go to the Father” . So the whole vast drama unfolds within us.441 ¶14

So the being that you really are…I can tell you who you are tonight; but I will not from now till the ends of time persuade you that you are until you experience it. I can tell you and you’ll trust me, and believe me, but not with the assurance and conviction that will be yours after you have heard it…then you will know. I can tell you. “I believe him, I really believe he’s telling the truth, but how can this thing be?” How is it possible for us in this century, the 20th century, to know ourselves to be God the Father? The Father of the one to whom he spoke saying, “You are my son, today I have begotten thee” , and that’s recorded 1,000 years B.C. and this is now almost 2,000 years A.D.? How are you going to do it? You can’t do it unless it happens within you. So the whole thing erupts within you and then you know.441 ¶15

So I tell you tonight, whether you believe it or not, and I tell it before it takes place so when it does take place you may believe. And so, who am I?—the central character of scripture. As we are told, “In the volume of the book it is written of me” .So, “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you;”—why?—“because the world is mine and all within it; the cattle on a thousand hills are mine” . Were I hungry I would slay and eat, for it is all mine. “All mine are thine, and thine are mine” . You are the faithful being of scripture. But I can’t persuade you until you are turned around and the predetermined play that is buried in man erupts and unfolds within man. And I can’t tell you the thrill!441 ¶16

He doesn’t start the message until that fourth and final act, which is the descent of the Holy Spirit in the bodily form of a dove. Right after that takes place he starts his ministry, for he now knows that he is the one spoken of in scripture. He didn’t start it with the resurrection and the birth from above, or the discovery of David as his son—these things are [...]—or the splitting of the curtain of the temple of his own body, from top to bottom. He waited until the final act, which took exactly three and a half years. And so we are told in a very simple way that just before he starts his ministry, when they question him, he said, “In the days of Elijah…were there not others…and they were sealed for three years and six months?” . And did he go to any other widow? Did he go to any other one…and there were many lepers in that day…did he go to any other one but Naaman? . And it was but three years and six months. It’s a way of concealing and yet telling those who have had the experience it takes three years and six months from the awakening within your skull to the descent of the dove upon your body….when the voice says, “He loves you.” And then you tell it.441 ¶17

There are those who’ll believe it and those who will not believe it. But that is forever…you’ll get that forever and forever. Tonight, if the whole vast outer world heard what you are hearing, 99.99% would question my sanity. But I have scriptural support for that: “Why do you listen to him? He is insane and he has a devil” . Why was he insane? Because he said, “I and my Father are one …and my Father is he whom you call God; only I know my Father and ye know not your God.” For he saw them moving out from eternity, and only those who turned around could grasp it to the point of acceptance. But he still tells it to all and all will hear it.441 ¶18

So the drama of Christianity is eternally true and unfolding in man. Not something that is unfolding on the outside of man; it takes place within man. It’s the only way of salvation. There is no other way to the Father: “I am the way.” Not a man called Neville; Neville is not my identity. But I’ll tell you a pattern…while I walked the world wearing a little garment called Neville that it happened in me. Certainly Neville is not the Father of David…but I am the Father of David. Neville is not anything other than a little garment that God is wearing, playing the part. And Neville is forever, may I tell you…this is like a Hamlet in Shakespeare’s play. Many an actor plays Hamlet and they rake over the character, but the one who wrote it is the one either to praise or condemn. Well, God wrote the play, the whole vast play God wrote. It’s all God’s play and there’s only one actor. It’s God who’s playing all the parts. God is a protean being; he’s playing every part, all of them.441 ¶19

And so, this body when I drop it down, whether I drop it tonight or tomorrow, it is not gone. For not one event in space is impermanent; it is forever. And tomorrow he’ll take it up and play it. And you will see it, may I tell you, in time, but I, the being who played it, am not playing it, I have passed on, on my way to the Father, and the whole drama is finished. This is being played forever and forever. When anyone plays the part called Neville, he has this experience, for this is part of the eternal drama. But the one who is playing it is God, individualized, for the gods came down, and that is part of the play. This is part of the eternal structure of the universe and no one can rub it out. If you blow my head off right now, if I drop dead and they turn me into dust, the thing called Neville remains forever and forever and forever, and that part is being played. I move back into these states of the world to find that not a thing has passed away. I have moved back in time, not only a few years, 200 years, 2,000 years. It’s a play and the whole thing is sealed. And you don’t unseal it, and you think, “Now this thing is taking place now.” No. You see it and you think, “Well, if it’s now then it’s taking place”…no, not necessarily…you’re seeing what has happened. But for you it is a present fact as the play unfolds in this world.441 ¶20

So you and I…who am I? Only your Father in heaven could reveal to you who you really are. No one in this world can tell you to your own satisfaction that you are Christ. You can read in scripture that you are, as we read in the 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians , “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, you don’t realize that at all. “Test him and see”…you’re called upon even to test this power. But we do not realize that he really is within us. Yet here is the statement, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” and that you are born from above by his resurrection in awakening from the dead. And he’s designated Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead. And that we are born anew through his resurrection from the dead. And he is in us, therefore, he has to wake in us. If he is in us, he has to awake within us to bring us about in that second birth, the birth from above. So, if by the birth from above it is brought about by the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and Christ in you is the hope of glory, well then, he has to awake within you. When he awakes within you, it’s not another. For in my own case, it was no other…I am he.441 ¶21

So I know, “Unless you believe I am he, you continue and you die in your sins” . Man thinks a man is telling him unless this man believes that he is…and that is not so at all. Unless you believe—and now it becomes part of you, first-person present—I am he, I continue as I am in my limitations and die missing the mark in life. For unless I believe I am he, I die in my sins. Well, they couldn’t understand it, for they knew his parents, “Isn’t he Joseph’s son?” . “And his brothers, they’re with us to this day…James, Joseph, Judas and Simon, and his sisters?” and these plural . Here is a normal, normal family. “And you are not yet fifty and you’re telling me these things, that you saw Abraham? That you know before the world was that you are? That’s insane…why listen to him? The man is insane.”441 ¶22

Because they are looking for a different kind of salvation…a savior outside of self, and there is no savior outside of the self! Because the savior awakens within you: God became man that man may become God. So there’s no outside savior, he actually became you. But you’re on your journey from eternity into these garments of sleep; and now you are turned around, and then move to eternity and pass inward to the body of the risen Lord. All will be gathered one by one into this one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. One body fell and diversified into unnumbered men and women. Only one body will be gathered together, taking all back, one by one, into the one body.441 ¶23

And when you’ve had it, may I tell you, it doesn’t really matter what the whole vast world thinks. You stand completely unashamed and [...], because it doesn’t really matter what anyone in this world tells you. They could tell you from now till the ends of time and bring all their truth about hallucination and all their little arguments based upon reasoning, and you simply sit there as though you’re in the presence of an infant. You tolerate the infant mind because it’s without vision. It hasn’t the slightest concept of this mystery. The vast world will try to persuade you. Sitting on the throne of the religious world or political world or the financial world…they are still ignorant. And you simply indulge them as you would a child. You don’t argue with them because they are incapable, without vision, of following what you have seen. You’ve see it, and that’s all there is to it.441 ¶24

You tell the world the true pattern of salvation. That God is buried as a pattern in man, and at the right moment in time that pattern erupts, like the tree of life, and it bears fruit. It begins with the resurrection. Then comes, after the resurrection comes this glorious birth from above. Then comes the Son of God calling you Father…and only then do you know who you really are…for no one knows who the Father is except the Son, but no one. As you’re told in scripture, “No one knows who the Son is except the Father.” So today, you can’t blame anyone who does not know he is the Father for thinking that Jesus Christ is the Son. “For no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” .441 ¶25

So when the whole vast world tells you that Jesus Christ is the Son, tolerate it, let them alone. They do not know the Father. If they knew the Father, they wouldn’t say that. For Jesus Christ is God the Father. And the Son…if he is a father, there must be a son…and that son is David. So no one knows who the Son is but the Father. So when they tell you Jesus Christ is a father, meaning another, they don’t know the Father. They do not know who that Son is. When they know who the Son is then they know the Father. For the Son calls the Father, Father, and he calls you Father.441 ¶26

So here, when you begin to move in…as Blake so beautifully told, “Every generated body is a garden of delight and a building of magnificence”…from within, not from without. From without, you become withered, old, just completely gone. That is not what he talks about. Every generated body within is this garden of delight…in its inner form. And so, when you see them move in, then you see the glory that awaits your return.441 ¶27

I think of my friend Bob Crutcher and that scene of his, in the outer form the dilapidated little shack in Paris, and the war is on, and he’s fighting and fighting all these soldiers. Then he goes out and finds me waiting for him at the door. All these soldiers become fused into a single man, and I am the man waiting for him. I take him to the back, and the back of this little shack, and the fields being harvested as far as his eye could see…just field after field of wheat, beautiful golden wheat. To his left what was a mountain of an enemy shooting at him is nothing more than one mountain of harvested wheat. And then he sensed that something is symbolic here. He asked me, “What are they doing?” I said, “The same thing they did last year. It goes on forever.” “Well, how long have I been here?” “Two years.” “Did I learn anything?” “Yes, you learned how to move, how to create.” And then, he looked at what was the little shack and it’s a castle. It’s not a shack but a palatial castle, with attendants waiting to escort him to his quarters. And the whole vision comes to an end.441 ¶28

So he is on his way towards. He has already discovered he is God the Father, so the outer form is nothing. No matter what happens to it, it is as nothing. It’s a garment of forgetfulness. It’s only when you’re turned around you move to eternity. When you move towards eternity then you must pass inward to the Father and remembrance.441 ¶29

So who am I? Every man asks that of himself, “Who am I?” I can tell you who you are tonight, that I know you are Jesus Christ who is God the Father, who conceived the whole vast play, but I can’t persuade you. I can only encourage you and tell it to you before it takes place that when it does take place you may believe. I can only do that for you. But I cannot, until you are turned around and start the journey inward, persuade you to inner conviction that it’s true. For the outer man wants an outer savior, and he wants someone greater than himself—and he thinks there is another one greater—to save him.441 ¶30

So we have the whole vast world today going on relief, and we have promised and promised everyone from the cradle to the grave a fixed sum of money. No matter what they do, go out and steal, they’re going to get so much every day, every week, every month, and they all promise it. And we’re already broke. And do you know, they’ll believe it and expect it from those who have lied from the beginning of time, because they are playing parts they can’t help. A politician, if he has any religion whatsoever, to be a good politician he’d have to put it in deep, deep cold storage while he’s a politician; for they are simply professional liars. They’ll make every promise in the world, but that’s based upon the outer man and they just play these parts.441 ¶31

I am not sent to tell you lies. I am telling you exactly how this thing works. While we’re on the outside we will listen to all these false promises. And one day we’ll turn around and we’ll tell them who we are. When we tell them who we are, we are the Lord Jesus Christ who conceived it all and played it all, and then we’re all gathered back into one being.441 ¶32

You’ll say it boldly as I’m saying it to you tonight. I have not a thing to fear. What does it matter if this moment in time was the moment for me to depart, what would it matter? As Peter tells us, “I think it right to tell you now that you may be brought to remembrance of these things, for it has been shown to me by the Lord Jesus Christ that I have not long to wear this garment of flesh.” And so, because he had not long to wear the garment of flesh, he told them that at any time in the future you may remember my words and bring back to your memory what I’m telling you. Read it in the epistle of Peter, I think it’s in the second epistle, the first chapter, the 14th verse. He knows he hasn’t long to wear this garment of flesh, so why delay in telling them. And he tells exactly what was shown to him…that he was on the mountain when the whole thing unfolded. He knows the majesty of [...].441 ¶33

So I ask you to believe it. Everyone believe it…it’s true. Today, they’re making, building a monument to God. It’s like making a monument to Hamlet and not to Shakespeare. So we have all these monuments in the world to the garments that God wears rather than to God the hero, the central character of the entire play.441 ¶34

So who am I? That question is forever, and you always start with the outer man: “Who do men say that I am?” They always mention some other man. But he comes back, “But who do you say that I am?” And then he tells him that “no flesh and blood could ever have told him but my Father who is in heaven has revealed it”…and heaven is within you. When I pray to my Father, I must therefore pray within, because God is in his kingdom, and so only from within could it be revealed who I really am. So the drama is unfolding not between two men, but in one man. He wonders, “Who am I?” and then the whole thing unfolds because here scripture is now being fulfilled. So he starts his drama by a quotation from scripture and tells you that this scripture has been fulfilled this day. “I’ve come only to fulfill scripture, for scripture must be fulfilled in me.”441 ¶35

So the purpose of life is only to fulfill scripture. It’s not to build up some enormous organization. Today we have countries building images of themselves, corporations building images, individuals who think that they need a good image for the public, they’re all building images…and these are false images. Every image that a man builds for the public to accept of himself is a false image. Get the real image when the Son unveils you and tells you who you are by calling you Father.441 ¶36

So I tell you, you are God the Father. The day will come, these words that you now hear with the outer ear you will experience from within, and you will know that you really are God the Father. Jesus Christ is God the Father, and as a father he had a son, and that only begotten son is David. “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,” the 2nd Psalm .441 ¶37

It shocked the outer world because they’ve been so misinformed. But they couldn’t help it. When they travel from eternity, they pass outward into these garments of forgetfulness…and they are misinformed. They bring their own prefabricated misconceptions of scripture to religions and feed the sheep with this false information. And all the outer trappings mean nothing, nothing whatsoever.441 ¶38

So he tells us to turn around. The word metanoia translated repentance means “a radical change of attitude,” that’s all that it means. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand, but repent and believe the good news, believe the gospel” . So, I see something that I do not like, represent it to myself as I would like to see it; persuade myself that this representation is true, walk in the assumption that it is true though reason denies it, and I will see it crystallize into my outer world. Then I will know I am really repenting and really practicing this art, and then I turn around. Turning around, then I turn to eternity and pass inward to the Father.441 ¶39

Now let us go into the Silence.441 ¶40

Tonight’s subject is: The Signs of the End. We are told that as he sat on the Mount of Olives, the Disciples came to him privately saying, “What will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?” This is a long chapter. You read it in the 24th chapter of the book of Matthew. I think most of us are familiar with it. It’s in the 24th chapter of Matthew and the 13th chapter of Mark; but here are the highlights:376 ¶1

He said – “Many will come in my name saying, ‘I am Christ.’ There will be wars and rumors of wars. There will be famines. There will be earthquakes in various lands. They will come saying, ‘Here is the Christ’ or ‘There he is.’ I tell you, believe them not. This is not the end. These are the sufferings, the tribulations, the sorrows that must precede the coming of the Son of Man.”376 ¶2

The word translated for us, in the King James Version, as “sorrows” and then “tribulations” and “sufferings” in the Revised Standard Version, means literally, “childbirth pains” – the pangs of the birth of the Messiah. All these things must happen. In spite of all the organizations in the world trying to organize peace on earth, there are wars forever and forever. The conflicts in man produce conflicts in society. Go home – is there harmony in the house? Well, that added to another house, added to another house; multiply the conflicts in the individual’s life; and you find the wars all over the world. There are “wars and rumors of wars,” and there is never peace here on earth. Don’t look for it. You’ll never organize it. These are the birth-pains of the coming of the Son of Man.376 ¶3

But now, he gives them a sign. What is the sign? That’s what they ask for. He said – “As the lightning comes out of the east and shines as far as the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.” There will be no doubts in the minds of the man, or the men, in whom He has come. Just as a flash of lightning lights up the entire horizon, from one side to the other and exposes the entire landscape in one flash – in an instant; so this comes just like that. You don’t expect it. It comes suddenly and lights up the entire landscape, and then you know who the Son of Man is. That’s how He comes.376 ¶4

Now, the words translated – “as he sat on the Mount of Olives” – well, the Mount of Olives we find in the Old Testament. We find it in Numbers; we find it all over the Old Testament. But there is a prophecy in Zechariah, in the l4th Chapter that before the coming of the Lord, the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, and a large valley – a deep valley will divide it; and then one half will move northward, and the other half will move southward. This must happen before the coming of the Son of Man.376 ¶5

Now, there is no such thing as any Mount of Olives, no matter where you look in the world. Oh, they will call a mount in the Near East, the Mount of Olives; it is some other place. The whole drama takes place right here in us individually. You are unique, and every one contains the entire Bible right here. As he said – “He who rejects me has a judge. My word that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day.”376 ¶6

I tell you; the Book is contained in you; and you are here for one purpose: to fulfill Scripture. You are not here for any other purpose. You may be led to believe you are here to make a fortune, to become famous, to become great, to become some intellectual giant. You are here for one purpose: to fulfill Scripture. For when you fulfill Scripture, the Wisdom of God is yours, the Power of God is yours; everything that is God is yours, for it is God fulfilling His Word. You are His Word – the Word is called “Christ.”376 ¶7

Now listen to these words carefully, as we come back eventually to the splitting of the great Mount of Olives. It must come first. It comes before the appearance of the Son of Man. It’s such a shock to the man in whom it happens. It just comes suddenly, just like the flash of lightning. “That is the Being? I am He?” – But it comes that way.376 ¶8

But now, let us show you for a moment who the Christ really is in Scripture. Christ is defined in Scripture as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” The power of man is in his “seed.” That’s his image. Therefore, Christ is the image of the Invisible God. He reflects the glory of God, and bears the very stamp of His image. The image of a man is in his seed.376 ¶9

Now we turn to the 3rd chapter, the l6th verse, of Galatians: “And the promises were made unto Abraham and his seed. It does not say ‘seeds,’ referring to many; but ‘to his seed,’ referring to one, which is Christ.” I am quoting Scripture. I am not elaborating; I am actually quoting the l6th Verse of the 3rd chapter of Galatians. The promise of God to His friend called Abraham – the father of the multitudes – “his offspring would exceed the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea”; but it’s not to the physical descendants; it is to a seed – his only son. Not to the physical descendants, but to one to which He will give His promise. And He gave the promise of Himself to that one, and it said, “Which is Christ.” That is the actual quote in the 3rd chapter, the l6th verse, of Galatians.376 ¶10

Now, we are told, “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” So, Christ – that same Christ, for there’s only one – is in you, the Seed of God, which is the image of God, which eventually will reflect the glory of God. It is the power and the wisdom of God. It is in man! It has to be brought forth. It must reach the point where it can expand and burst. It actually bursts. To grow, one must outgrow; and it grows, and finally it bursts, and then the most amazing thing comes out. You don’t realize until it happens that you are the one spoken of in Scripture as “Jesus Christ.” You are the Son of Man.376 ¶11

Now, what is the splitting of the great mountain? It must first split right down from east to west and leave a large valley and part, one moving northward, one moving southward. When you read that, you wonder, “Well, when is this mountain that they call ‘the Mount of Olives’ going to split?” It is splitting all the time, because the whole thing is here. It happens just as told you in Scripture: “As the lightning comes out of the east and shines as far as the west, so will it be with the coming of the Son of Man.” Just like that – but may I tell you? One moment after the Resurrection, for the whole thing is based upon the Resurrection. The solution, and the only solution of “death” is Resurrection. There is no other solution. Man first is raised from the “dead.”376 ¶12

He doesn’t know he’s dead. He hasn’t the slightest concept that he is dead. He struggles to keep what he calls “alive.” He insures himself, burdens himself with all insurances just to keep alive. He takes all the things in the world just to keep going. He calls this being “alive.” But he doesn’t know he’s dead. He is actually dead, and it is for a purpose. God actually “died” when He dropped Himself in me. He dropped Himself in me as his “seed,” and His “seed” is Christ Jesus. And He has to “die” to be made alive. A seed must fall into the earth. Man is called the “red earth.” “Adam” means “red earth.” So, he falls into the earth and “dies” in order to be made alive. “Unless the seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone but if it dies, it brings forth much.” And so, it comes in and drops into the mind of man. It’s the Word of God. The story is all about you individually – not collectively.376 ¶13

Now, on this day when the mountain is split, may I tell you from my own personal experience, – I never read it in a book; it is foreshadowed in Scripture, but it is not explained. All the things that I have told you in the last chapter of my last book I have experienced. I have not read them in books. They are all in the Bible, but they are only foreshadowed. They are adumbrated. In other words, they are so presented, symbolically and in a figurative manner, that it leaves much to man’s mind about what is happening. In other words, it is not a conclusive thing. It doesn’t etch it; it simply fore-shadows the event, and when it happens you wonder, “Well, this is what it meant?” You stand startled.376 ¶14

But, one night, after you are resurrected, you will find yourself suddenly – you go to bed, and it’s a normal night, the day was normal – and suddenly you are split by a bolt of lightning “from east to west” – from the top of your skull to the base of your spine, and the body parts just like this the two sides actually move this way – come apart, and at the base of your spine is the golden, liquid light that is alive, and as you look at it – without anyone prompting you – you know, “It is I.” You are actually looking at your Self, and yet it’s golden, liquid light. It’s the blood of God! The living blood of God – and you are that blood! And you fuse with it, and then, like a serpent, you move up the severed body and tie it together once more, right into your skull. That’s how the Son of Man comes. He started that way and he ends as a fiery serpent – the wisest of all God’s creatures. It was I that fell. It is I that moves up, this time with light in Himself, not a living body, but a life-giving Spirit. And you move up and reverberate the entire heaven, which is your skull! The whole thing is unfolding right within man.376 ¶15

So, when they speak of the “signs of the end,” don’t look outside of yourself for any sign. There will be wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famine – every conceivable horror in the world, but that is not it. When it comes, it comes suddenly, just like the flash of lightning, and man experiences all the things that are said of Jesus Christ. Make no claim that you are Christ for the simple reason no one in eternity will ever believe it, any more than they believed it when it was first said. It is said, his brothers did not believe in him. His own people rejected him. And so he said, “He who rejects me has a judge, and the words I have spoken will be his judge on the last day”, because he is going to experience the same thing that I have told him. When it is explained to him by Revelation, Who He Is, he will know I did not lie, because we are all members of a body that share in the one grand experience – all of us. We are all the one Christ. There are not a billion of little “Christ’s” running around: the same seed – only one seed. Listen to it carefully. “The promise was made unto Abraham and to his seed. It does not say ‘seeds,’ referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed which is Christ.” And so, in every one is buried Christ! I am the tomb – you are the tomb – in which Christ is buried. And “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”376 ¶16

It’s a deliberate plan, not some afterthought. He said – “He made clear to me the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, both in heaven and on earth.” So, here is a plan. Well, the plan is contained in that seed which is contained in man. It’s a plan. At a certain “fullness of time” the seed, like all seeds, bursts; and the first bursting of it, is the Resurrection. The seed bursts. It’s his skull. That is where it is buried; and then the man finds he himself has been buried there. He doesn’t realize it until then. He didn’t even think of it.376 ¶17

When I was told the story by my mother, she was the first one to tell me the story of Christ; then in Sunday School, they repeated what Mother told me; only they elaborated it. I went to school, and they did the same thing there. Then I read the Bible myself when I could read – the same story. It never occurred to me that it referred in any way, even in the most remote way, to me. I thought it was all related to a being who lived two thousand years ago. I hadn’t the slightest idea that the whole drama was all about me. As I now know, it’s all about you, about every child born of woman. Everyone is that story, but it’s not told that way. It is told in a way that we have made an idol of something, and we have forgotten the meat of the story, the instrument that conveys the instruction. We are worshiping the instrument rather than the instruction. The first gross sense we have accepted as the fact for what the ultimate sense intended. So, it’s a story. It is an epic. That is what Christianity is, and it’s based upon Resurrection. If there is no resurrection, there is no Christianity. So, it begins with that.376 ¶18

And you are told – “At the last trumpet, He awakens the dead.” Well, the word “trumpet” means “reverberation.” That’s true. You go to sleep and suddenly there is a reverberation in your head. You have never felt anything like it before; it’s unlike anything you’ve ever known before. Oh, I have held things – magnets – in my hand and my whole body goes this way. I have touched something inadvertently, and all of a sudden I am shocked; but that’s not what I am talking about. This is something entirely different. It’s a vibration centered in your skull, and suddenly you begin to vibrate, and you can’t stop it. You don’t know how it started, but you can’t stop it. Then as you can stop it, you begin to awake. And you wake in a way you’ve never been awake before, and you find yourself sealed in your own skull; and out of your skull you come, just as a child out of the womb of a woman. And you are “born from above.” You are not yet clothed, but no one can see you with the mortal eye. You are invisible to the mortal eye; they can’t see you, but you can see everything they are thinking about. Their thoughts are as objective to you as you are to me now: every thought, whether they express it in words or just simply think it – it’s all “heard” by you. You “hear” it. And everything round about you is so vividly clear, and you’ve never had such clarity before. And there you are – “born from above.”376 ¶19

Then comes the great revelation, which I would consider it the greatest, when you discover yourself as the Father – when God’s only begotten Son calls you “Father.” And you look right into his eyes; and then – and only then – do you really know Who You Are. Yet, the Son of Man hasn’t come. He doesn’t come until the next experience, and when the next one comes, then you move up like lightning into your skull. Following that comes, now, the sign given in Scripture, and “the one on whom you see the dove descend” – that is He. And so, I was told by the Most High God, the one on whom I saw the Holy Spirit descend, “That is He. Anoint Him.” And so I saw the Holy Spirit descend in bodily form as a dove; and it rested upon me, and there it remained. As you are told, it must remain; it mustn’t fly away. It remains, and the vision breaks while the dove is still upon you, smothering you with kisses. That is when the “seal” is placed upon you. And the drama is over.376 ¶20

You only linger in the world for a few short years to tell it to the few who will hear it. What does it matter how few hear it? You will never have a billion to hear it. How many heard it when it first happened? We didn’t have TV then or radio, or books printed. It was all handwritten in script. How few heard it at first, and yet it has spread all over the world. So, it doesn’t matter if tonight this small number hears me. This is a larger number than those who heard it the first time. And some one will tell it in the same wonderful form, but they don’t have to change our wonderful script. It is there for Eternity in the Bible. But you could tell it in detail, how it really happened, and not simply foreshadows it, for the Scripture only foreshadows it and prefigures; but it doesn’t give the detail as to actually how it happens. Now you have heard how it happens. And so, no larger number than this heard it, and it will go on forever, for the Word cannot return unto God void, but it must accomplish that which He purposes, and accomplish that for which it was sent, – it must. It cannot be void, for the Word is in man as the “seed” of God, which is Jesus Christ.376 ¶21

So, the signs of the end have nothing to do with anything on the outside. If tomorrow you read a headline that Russia has moved on Europe, that’s not the end; that’s part of the sufferings of the birth of Christ. If tomorrow you hear of some setback in Vietnam, that hasn’t a thing to do with any “end.” These things go on and on. You may tomorrow hear of the most violent quake and get horrible stories of friends of yours who made their exit, as a result. That is not the end. They don’t “die”; they are restored to life instantly, but they have not been resurrected.376 ¶22

Man must be clothed, after his resurrection, in his Immortal Body. That is his body; it’s already waiting for him. It’s not something that you manufacture out of this. It’s not the result of a natural development out of the physical body. It’s already part of the plan of God; and so, you have your garment. I have my garment, and I will know you by your garment.376 ¶23

Now, there will be false prophets in the world who will appropriate that garment – not appropriate it – but will tell you. So, you are warned in Scripture to test every spirit, whether it be of God, for you are told in the 11th chapter of Second Corinthians that Satan will claim he is the Angel of Light. You are told in the 8th chapter of John that he is “a liar and the father of lies”; and he will come through sensitive souls and distort them, try to disillusion them, try to get them to falter along the way by claiming he is that which has been revealed otherwise of another. You will see it in Scripture, and so don’t for one moment think it’s not all within us. The “devil” is not another. It is all within us – the doubter. He causes man to doubt. He is the liar in man. He cannot believe the truth when he hears it; and if the ear is open as it should be, in all of us, he comes through; but you are told, “Test him.”376 ¶24

Ask him a simple question: “Now you’ve told me that you are this light, and not the one of whom you heard. Well now, tell me a simple thing: What will I do tomorrow?” Ask him – he knows so much, ask him the simple little question. “Tell me now: he that you’ve just denied that it’s his garment, what will he be doing, say, next Friday?” Not standing on the platform, for that I know, and therefore you will know it, too. But, “What will he be doing, say, on Thursday?” Give him that. Test the Spirit, whether he be from God. If they can’t answer how, well then, they are liars and the father of lies, as told us in the 8th chapter of John. So, in the 11th chapter of Second Corinthians he is declared the liar, for he claims that he is the Angel of Light; and he is not light, he is darkness. He is all “death.” He is all doubting. He is the liar. So, test everyone who comes inwardly, either in your dream, your vision, or when you are really beginning to awaken, and the voice is being heard by you from within.376 ¶25

But I tell you, all these things happen to you. They will. You have a garment prepared, eternal in the heavens. You are first resurrected, invisible to those who see the sign of your “birth,” but they cannot see you. Then comes your discovery of the Fatherhood of God; and you are He, for His Son calls you “Father.” That’s a sign. Then comes the great splitting of your body – this “Mount of Olives” – from top to bottom; and the great valley is formed and the division one moves to the northward, one moves to the southward; and you move up as the very blood of God Himself, for life, now, is in the blood, we are told in Scripture. “Drink not the blood, for life is in the blood.” Then he tells you, “Unless you drink my blood and eat my flesh, you have no part of me.” So, you actually absorb it like a blot of ink – some little blob of ink on a blotter. It is absorbed. You look at it, and you are absorbed by it, and you are it; and you move up like the spiral being of light. Then comes – after this, the descent of the dove; and then your nakedness is now clothed, for we are told in Scripture, “Unless we are clothed from on high, we are naked.” Man remains spiritually naked until he is clothed with his Risen Body.376 ¶26

And so these are garments of skin. You are told it all the way back in Genesis – “He made for man garments of skin to clothe and to hide their nakedness.” The garment itself, not this, but the garment itself is the skin that He made me, for I am Spirit. Now we are told in the same book of Genesis, the 37th chapter – “And Israel made for the one he loved most” – the one called Joseph – “a gown of many colors.” The same argument comes all the way through. It is the Father who makes it. God made it for the first coats of skin. Now “Israel,” which means by definition “one who rules as God,” not like a god, but as God – all the difference in the world. He is God. So, here is Israel, and he makes for his son, the one he loves most – he makes him a “coat of many colors.” We come all the way down to the wedding garment, and finally we find here this garment that God has already made for every one of us awaiting our resurrection.376 ¶27

It’s the garment that we will wear in the Resurrection; and I will know you by the garment that you wear, as you know me now by this garment that I wear [indicating the physical body). If I take off this garment of flesh, you wouldn’t know me. You know me here by reason of the fact you know this garment of flesh that God made me – this skin. You will know me tomorrow by my heavenly garment without any uncertainty. There is no uncertainty when it comes from the wisdom from above – none whatsoever. The Disciples knew the Risen Lord by his garment that he wore. He could not have worn flesh and blood; so they would not have seen it. They knew him from his Risen Garment – the eternal garment. So, they’ll know everyone. I’ll know you, just as my friend spotted me and knew me without any uncertainty, “That is Neville.” She didn’t see the form, and she never encountered a man called “Paul”, but she knew him with the same certainty that she knew me. So, let no one cast doubt upon such knowledge.376 ¶28

These garments we know each other by, and they all form the one Garment – the one Body. As we are told in Ephesians; “There is but one body, one spirit, one hope, one lord, one faith,” – just one all the way through to – “one God and Father of us all, who is above all, through all, and in all.” And so, we are all sharers in this one Body, and all will experience it, and eventually all will be clothed in their Eternal Garments. And just as you know me by reason of the fact that I “wear” this physical garment, you will know me by reason of the fact that I “wear” my Eternal Garment. You’ll know me just as you know me now – in fact, more intimately; for then you will know that we are one, though we have not lost our individuality. We have not lost any such thing as the being that I know myself to be.376 ¶29

So, these are the signs of the end. The sign may come this night to you, I do not know. As you are told, “When?” He said, “No one knows the hour or the day; only the Father.” So let no one tell you that he can – from your horoscope or teacup leaves or your aura, or anything else, – tell you anything about the great mysteries of being. He can’t – that’s all nonsense. And so, tonight it may be that He will come to you; and when He comes, you can’t stop it. You’ll begin to vibrate; and may I tell you? If it happens to you as it did to me, you will think, “This is it.” Meaning tomorrow they will find the body dead because you can’t see how you can survive it. The vibration is so great; you do not believe you can survive it. But far from just surviving it, you awaken – And you didn’t realize until then that you had been asleep; and because you awaken in a tomb, well then, you not only were asleep, but the sleep was so profound you must have been dead, for they thought you dead.376 ¶30

So the seed was alive when it was planted in the ground, but it had to “die” to be made alive. So, we are told – “Unless the seed falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, then it bears much fruit.” It cannot remain dead. It’s alive first – it falls – and it dies. So, Christ literally – the Seed of God – it’s called “sperma” in Scripture. It’s the sperm. Literally translated, it means “the seed,” the actual seed from the Creative Power of God, buried in man; and then it comes out as man. So God becomes, as I am, that I may be as He is. And forever, I am simply expanding and expanding forever in the bosom of God. Who is expanding? My own wonderful human imagination. That is the Being that is expanding, expanding forever in the bosom of God, clothed in my Heavenly Garment.376 ¶31

So here, after it happens to an individual, he is “sent” into the world to tell it, and he tells it to the best of his ability. Some reject him, some will not believe him; but I say – “He who rejects me has a judge, and the judge is the Word that I have spoken to him,” that will be his judge, “on the last day.” He may be a year away from it; he may be a thousand years away from it. But because these words are spoken, he will remember it – how he rejected it when he first heard it – if he heard it and rejected it.376 ¶32

So, do not look for any other ism. There is no other ism. It is all right here in our wonderful Bible. The Old Testament is the plot; the New is its fulfillment, but it’s not clarified. It is not given to us in detail; it’s simply foreshadowed. But having experienced Scripture, I am sharing with you what I have experienced. I have experienced the entire story as told in our New Testament concerning the character called “Jesus Christ.” And I am just as weak as you are, just as fragile as you are – as fragile as the character personified there was, for not a thing is said in that story concerning his strong physical being or his beauty. No description is given of the man. He simply is denied by all who knew him. He is interpreting Scripture within himself, and no one believed when they heard it. That’s the way it ought to be.376 ¶33

They had their own preconceived notions as to what Scripture should mean; and when it didn’t fit their preconceived misconceptions, they rejected him. He should come from without, like some great leader on a white horse, and lead us to victory over our so-called enemies. And we have no enemies outside of our self. There’s not a thing outside of man. So, all the conflicts raging in my world simply mirror the conflicts raging in me. That’s all there is. So, he expects someone to come from without, but he doesn’t come from without. He suddenly awakens. He erupts from within. And here I am.376 ¶34

And you stand amazed. May I tell you when it happens to you? You will be the most strained, amazed, awe-struck person who walks the earth. You can’t believe it. How could something so glorious happen to me, a sinner– not only one who has sinned, but is still capable of sinning, with all the weaknesses of the flesh. You haven’t overcome them. And with all of these things it came to you. Then you realize the mercy of God: that our fitness for the Kingdom of Heaven is the consequence – not the condition – of His choice.376 ¶35

So, He chose me in Him before the foundation of the world – before He brought forth the Universe, for He brings forth the Universe as a theater wherein He manifests the power of His purpose and the wisdom of His purpose. He brings it forth, but before He brought forth the Universe, He chose me in Him. Therefore, my fitness for the Kingdom is not the consequence of anything that I did – not the result of anything I did; it’s simply His gift. He gave it to me before the world, but He had to send me through the trials; but when He sent me through the trials, because He sent Christ-in-me as Himself – Who suffered but Christ- in-me? For Christ-in-me is I AM. That’s the Christ-in-me, for that’s the God-in-me.376 ¶36

So, everyone is moving forward through the frightful tribulation of the world; and suddenly, when he least expects it. The night it happened to me, on the 20th day of July of 1959 – eight years ago – in the City of San Francisco, I hadn’t the slightest idea that this was in store for me that night. I went to sleep normally. I called my wife and daughter in Beverly Hills and had a little chat. I read a few passages of the Bible, I read a bit of Blake, and retired. In the wee hours of the morning here comes this uncontrollable vibration in my skull, waking me from my eternal sleep; but it presented me in my skull sealed; therefore I knew it was a tomb, and only the “dead” are in tombs. So, I knew whoever put me there thought me dead. But in this case, He planted Himself there; but He planted Himself in such a way that He had to completely forget Himself. That’s “death.” A complete amnesia is death. He had to completely empty Himself of His glory to become us – which He did. And so, I walked this earth believing I was awake – believing I was alive, not knowing that the Being who is dreaming the whole thing was sound asleep within me.376 ¶37

And that night He woke in me as my Self. And I came out to find the same symbolism as told in Scripture surrounding the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and three men to witness the event, two to deny it because how could Neville ever have a baby? And the third agreeing to it and just presenting the evidence. And then, taking that infant in my own arms and becoming ecstatic in my love for this Christ child – and as I am holding the child, it smiles this heavenly smile, and the whole thing dissolves. So, that’s the first sign, which is the Resurrection and Birth. Then come the others and all the others are signs of the end.376 ¶38

So, the end does not mean this world is coming to an end. This is a cradle to bring to birth God-in-man. So, this whole vast world is only – I would say – educative darkness. It’s a cradle. And when man is brought to birth here, it means that his world here is at an end. It’s the close of this Age to him, but it goes on to all the others who have not yet been brought to birth. So, we continue forever in this world until we are brought to “birth”, because “death” does not end it. When one “dies,” don’t think for one second that he has ceased to be. This world does not come to an end where our senses cease to register it. We know that much. Therefore, why should something come to an end because we can’t touch it? They are clothed instantly in the same “dream” body. This bodily form that bleeds if you cut it – that hurts if it is wounded; and it struggles, and it struggles here; and it marries there as it marries here, and goes through a life just like this until it is awakened. And after the awakening – then it’s the close of this Age and the entrance into another Age, which is called in Scripture “the Kingdom of Heaven.”376 ¶39

And don’t try to picture it from anything you know here, any more than that which was never a butterfly, could ever conceive itself a butterfly if it only knew itself to be a caterpillar. It could never, in Eternity, conceive of that transformation. So, the Transformed You cannot be judged by anything you know here. Only the few who have been gifted and blessed to ascend the mountain of Transfiguration to behold the beauty of that form, know what that form is like. And to know the Being who is “wearing” the form without seeing face, hands or any part that it knew here, because you are known by the Form there, as you are known by the form here. But it’s an entirely different Being; and all will be gathered into one body; and in the end, there is only one body, and that Body is the Risen Lord Jesus Christ. We are all sharers in the one Body.376 ¶40

Now let us go into the silence.376 ¶41

Tonight’s subject is the “Pearl of Great Price.” This is taken from the 13th chapter of the gospel of Matthew, 45th and 46th verses. It’s all about the kingdom of heaven. First of all, let us say that the kingdom of heaven is simply that state into which man rises, where everything is completely subject to his imaginative power. He is destined to be an heir, one with his Father who is God, where everything is put under his power. Now, here is the quote from this 13th of Matthew: “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.” It is my hope that I can bring you to that pearl tonight. You may not value it to the point where you’re willing to sell all that you have to buy it, but I will tell you of this pearl. Very few are willing to sell all and buy the pearl.94 ¶1

But let me now quote from another passage of the gospel, the 11th chapter of the Book of Luke, the 21st through the 23rd: “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace; but when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes from him the armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoil.” The very next line, as though it’s an afterthought, throws all the light in the world upon that statement, “He who is not with me is against me.” There is no benevolent neutrality, none whatsoever. He who is not with me is my enemy; he is against me.94 ¶2

So we find the one who is completely in control of this kingdom of heaven, and I tell you that being is called in scripture, Christ. But Christ is defined as “the power and the wisdom of God.” In the first chapter of the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, “Christ is the power and the wisdom of God”. Don’t look for a man. A man is only the instrument through which this power and this wisdom is exercised, but Christ himself is the power and the wisdom of God. You and I are the instruments through which this power and this wisdom is exercised. So Paul makes the statement, “From now on we’ll regard no one from the human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from the human point of view, we regard him so no longer.” You who are taking notes, that’s his 2nd letter to the Corinthians, the 5th chapter, the 16th verse. “From now on we regard no one from the human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from the human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” And then he, the author of that statement, defines Christ for us, “Christ is the power and the wisdom of God”.94 ¶3

Now we are told, “By him all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made,” but nothing. And so we invite you now to test Christ in you. Again from the letters of Paul, the 13th chapter, 5th verse—in fact, read it through to the 7th verse—but I’ll quote you the 5th: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test. I hope you will discover that we have not failed”. And then he gives us a warning, for now he’s speaking only of power, power and wisdom personified in the form of one called Christ Jesus. And now he warns us, “I hope and I pray to God that you do not use it in the wrong way”. Even if you think—he’s implying now that I have not used it to the full of my knowledge—I’d rather that you hear and feel that I have made a mistake or I have failed than that you use it evilly, implying, stating quite openly, that you can misuse power.94 ¶4

Everyone in the world is using this only power, but they don’t know it. And so, he’s trying to bring us to the knowledge of this power and the wise use of it. It’s called, as we first quoted it, the pearl of great price. So great is this pearl, so valuable, that it takes everything that you own to buy it. Now you don’t go and liquidate your stocks and bonds; you don’t sell your homes; you don’t sell anything in the world of Caesar. But it takes everything that you now believe in other than it to pay for it. You believe in authority? You’ve got to sell it. You believe in numerology, in teacup leaves, in astrology and all these things? No matter what you believe in as a power to control you, you’ve got to sell it. It takes all these beliefs and you’ve got to sell them. No one will buy them from you, but you give them up as valueless. Therefore, there’s no price attached, no value whatsoever. But you can’t hold on to one thing you now believe in as a power that controls your life and still hope to buy the pearl of great price.94 ¶5

Everything you now believe in, whether it be even the drugs that you take; even the things of diets—if you’re a vegetarian and you think that’s the way to God; if you’re a meat eater and you think that’s the way to God; if you’re a nonsmoker, nondrinker, and that’s the way to God; or if you are a smoker and a drinker and that’s the way to God. There is no way to God but Christ: “I am the way.” There is no other way, way to what? To everything in this world, but especially to the Father. “No one comes unto the Father but by me.” And here he defines it: he is the only way in the world to everything in this world that you and I seek. And it takes everything that we own as to beliefs that we think are powers to guide our life to pay for that pearl of great price. If you think for one moment you can hold on to one little thing in the event this doesn’t work, you can’t buy the pearl.94 ¶6

So when I buy the pearl, I go all out and live by it. And there is no other being in this world, just this pearl, and I live by it. This pearl is your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s Christ.94 ¶7

Now I see her in the audience tonight. Last Friday night, this sweet lady told me this story. She went into the baker to buy the usual things that we buy when we go to a bakery, and the lady who waited on her didn’t look well. She, without asking the reasons for her present appearance, in her own mind’s eye, when she got home, talked to her as though she stood before her physically. She didn’t sit down, she didn’t relax, didn’t go into a trance, just brought her before her mind’s eye and heard her say that she felt so well, and she complimented her on the way she looked. She looked so well. This was a communion between two souls, how she looked so well. And she believed in the reality of her imaginal act. One week later, she goes back into the same bakery, and here is this lady, same lady but radiant. So radiant it prompted a response from this one, and she said, “But you look so well! What has happened?” Well, she said, “This past week I inherited some money, and I paid all of my bills. I paid everything that I owed in this world, and so I have no debts and I have money.”94 ¶8

Now, this lady is totally unaware of the gift she received from the lady who is present here tonight, totally unaware of it. Now listen to these words and try to put any other interpretation upon them in the world, and then tell me if you can. This is from the 25th chapter of the Book of Matthew: “In as much as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me.” You don’t need the consent of any being in this world to hear good news for them. You don’t have to say, “Do you want me to hear it?” Do you want praise? If you ask them in advance, “Should I hear good news for you?” you are only asking in the event that it works, they’ll praise you or in some way give you something. You don’t ask anyone for their permission to hear good news. For, “In as much as you have heard it, as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it unto me. And when you did not do it, you did not do it unto me” .94 ¶9

And so every moment of time, there’s the opportunity to do it unto Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus being your own wonderful human Imagination. To see man in need and not act in your own wonderful Imagination, like she did, is to keep the wounds open and to bear more and more stripes upon the body of Christ Jesus, for the only Christ Jesus is in you as your only wonderful human Imagination. “Christ in you is the hope of glory. Come test yourself and see.” What a wonderful invitation, “Test yourself”!94 ¶10

How would I test myself? Well, this is how you test yourself. I tell you that if you imagine, as this lady did, that someone stands before you in bodily form, although they cannot be seen with your mortal eye, but actually you imagine they are standing before you and you carried on a conversation with them from the premise of your fulfilled desire for them, and then you feel them as you would feel them were they now solidly present, and you believe in the reality of that imaginal act, it’s done! And how it happens you need not be concerned. It has its own manner of externalizing itself within their world. All you need do is do it.94 ¶11

As told us in the 1st chapter of the Book of James, “Receive with meekness the implanted word”—and the word is called Christ Jesus, the power and the wisdom of God—“But be ye doers of the word, and not merely hearers, deceiving yourselves” . So when he tells me to be the doer of the word, the world thinks it means to go out and make some physical effort. No, James is not telling me substitute works for faith. Works are the evidence as to whether the faith that I profess is alive or dead. Is it alive? If it’s alive, I will act upon it; if it’s not alive, well then, I won’t act upon it. I haven’t yet bought the pearl of great price.94 ¶12

When I buy the pearl of great price, there is no other pearl like it. I sell all in this world to buy it. I sell all beliefs in powers other than my own wonderful human Imagination. Everyone, because he has Imagination and everyone can imagine and everyone can believe in the reality of his imaginal act, is free. It sets a man free, for we are told, “If you believe my word and abide in my word, then you know the truth, and the truth will set you free” . Well, how does he define the truth? He said, “I am the truth.” He said, “If you know my word, you know the truth” and “I am the truth.” So if you abide in this, then you’ll be set free.94 ¶13

You mean that if I simply imagine that I am the man that I would like to be, that’s all that I need do? Just try it. Imagine that you are already the man that you would like to be, the woman you’d like to be, your friends are and total strangers are as you would like them to be. Just imagine it. Try it. Test yourself and see. As you test yourself and it happens, well then, can you turn back to the belief in any power outside of Christ Jesus? It’s finding who he is, and I tell you Christ Jesus is your own wonderful human Imagination. Christ in you must resurrect. And so you start to exercise him, believing in him. Believe in the law of Christ Jesus and be saved. So I begin to believe in him, put all my trust in him. It doesn’t matter where I start in life. Behind the eight-ball? Makes no difference. I start believing in him and only in Christ Jesus. Then I take off from there, giving my entire life to him, just as though there were no others, just Christ Jesus, and I have found him: he’s my own wonderful human Imagination. When I believe in him to that extent, things happen.94 ¶14

Now she tells me, the same lady—that’s why I named this tonight “The Pearl of Great Price”—that she had a dream. And here is all mud, nothing but mud, whirling mud. As it whirled and whirled and whirled before her mind’s eye in her dream she noticed a small, perfectly beautiful, perfect pearl. She picked it up and held this perfect pearl—wasn’t big but it was a perfect pearl—in her hand, and then she woke.94 ¶15

Now, this pearl she found in the series of experiences that she conducted. For a boy came east, came from the East to the West, with instructions that if he couldn’t find a job in the immediate present, he had to return to the East. And so she simply, on a Friday night, saw him, not physically but in her mind’s eye, as though he stood before her physically and congratulated him on the job, just as though it were a true physical contact. On Monday, the boy got the job and therefore did not have to return to the East Coast.94 ¶16

Now, here is a young lady—I call her a young lady, as she can’t be more than her early twenties. If I looked at her through my eyes, all things being relative, she has three little babies, but I wouldn’t think she’s more than her early twenties. I’d be surprised if she’s past beyond the middle twenties, looking at her. Born in Italy, of a Catholic family, Catholic faith, brought to this meeting of ours by her mother-in-law, and adopted this concept of Christ Jesus. Her family despairs because they think unless you have their concept of Christ Jesus, there is no entrance into the kingdom of heaven as they understand it. But I tell her she is well into it. She’s exercising the only Christ Jesus in the world. He calls upon us to test him every moment of time. But you can’t buy him unless you pay the price, and the price—it takes everything that you have to buy him. Listen to the words, “The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, finding one pearl of great value, went and sold everything that he had and bought it.”94 ¶17

Everything, not a few things. The average person would say, “Well, after all, I know that’s all well and good, but Sanka does keep me in a state of sleep when normal coffee keeps me awake. And I know that an extra martini does so and so to me, and I take none. Or maybe, I could take vodka because it’s good for my breath and not the martini.” And a thousand things in the world people have concerning what they should do. Every belief in a power outside of Christ Jesus you give up, and you give it up and hold onto him and only to him. Then you’ve bought the pearl. Then you exercise it, the greatest value in the world, and that’s Christ Jesus. So here, she has tonight—I think she has—the pearl of great price. I hope you, tonight, will accept it.94 ¶18

You know, not everyone who finds Christ Jesus sought him; they’re brought to him by one who found him. In the gospel, Philip found him, and then he brought his friend Nathaniel. Nathaniel wasn’t seeking him. Nathaniel was waiting for things to happen, for he knew the scripture backward. For when Nathaniel heard that the Messiah had appeared, he said, “What? Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” . And Jesus said of him, “An Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile” . He knew his scripture. Peter wasn’t seeking him; his brother Andrew found him. Andrew went and called his brother Peter and said, “We have found him of whom Moses and the law spoke and all the prophets spoke.” So they were not looking for him, but they found him because someone found him and was so interested in what they found they wanted to share him with those that they loved. For if he is all that we claim that he is, we can’t keep him to ourselves; we have to share him.94 ¶19

And so maybe this night a total stranger may be here who is really not overly eager to change their concept of Christ Jesus. They aren’t seeking another concept of him at all. And maybe you will be interested enough to test what I’m talking about and see if this is not Christ Jesus, for listen to it, “By him all things are made and without him there was not anything made that was made” . Well now, here, a lady brought into being something that she had imagined without devising the means by which it would happen. She simply imagined it. Didn’t she make it? She certainly made it, without the consent of the one for whom she made it. Well, if she made it and all things are made by him, she didn’t say to herself, “Well, how can I make it? I only imagined it.” Therefore, he must be Imagination, and this being in action must be imagining. And there it is. So she found him.94 ¶20

She tried it again and it worked. And someone tried it a third time, a twelfth time, a hundredth time, and it works. But if I say this to someone in the world and they won’t even try it, well, you know in science to demand a proof before you are willing to make the experiment is nonsense. It’s only through the experiment and its working out in performance that proof can be received by us. So to demand proof before I make the experiment is stupid.94 ¶21

So I say to the world, if there is evidence for a thing, then what the world thinks about it or even wishes for it is nothing to the point. Makes no difference whatsoever what the world thinks about this if I can prove it in performance.94 ¶22

So I say to you, take a friend who is now unemployed and bring him before your mind’s eye, as the lady did, and see him now gainfully employed. He need not be physically present—in fact, he’s not physically present—but you treat him as though he were and put your mental hand upon him and give him the solidity that would be there were it true. Then carry on a mental conversation with him from the premise that it is true, and let him tell you that he’s gainfully employed and that he loves what he is doing; there are such opportunities, such growth in what he is doing.94 ¶23

And do nothing outside of that, for listen to the words of Paul concerning Christ, “Christ is the power and the wisdom of God.” It’s not only power, blind power; it’s wisdom, the wisdom of God. If it’s the wisdom of God, it knows how to navigate the whole vast world and move it to bring this one into a gainfully employed state. All you need to do is believe in Christ Jesus, and that is the pearl of great price. No power in the world can stop it. All it needs is acceptance on the part of us.94 ¶24

So here, “When there is a strong man, and he’s fully armed, and he guards his own palace, his goods are in peace; but when one stronger than he assails him and overcomes him, he takes from him the armor in which he believed, and then disposes of the spoil, divides the spoil.” Now that wonderful statement, “He who is not with me is against me. He who does not gather with me scatters.” It’s so irrelevant to that scene that preceded it, and it throws all the light in the world upon that statement.94 ¶25

Some power in the world comes into man’s mind; it’s Christ Jesus. You don’t need a social standing, a financial background, intellectual background, any of these backgrounds to feel secure in the world; you’ve found him. And this is the one who can overcome all the powers of the world, and if you are not with him, then you are against him. You wouldn’t think that. In this world today, we have countries that are called neutralist countries, benevolent neutralist. Not in scripture—you’re either with me or against me, and either you’re with me or you’re my enemy. Can you imagine that? I’m either for him or his enemy. Can’t be neutral. I either believe in it, or I don’t believe in it. And of the nine hundred million Christians in the world, how many really believe in the true Christ? They believe in lighting a candle; they believe in genuflection and all the other things in the world, and I wouldn’t criticize any of them. Leave them, until they find the true Christ. When they find the true Christ, then it doesn’t really matter whether you eat meat or don’t eat meat, whether you drink or don’t drink, whether you smoke or don’t smoke, and whether you do any of these things. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the true Christ, for you do not give power to anything outside of Christ, and Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s Christ.94 ¶26

So when you go before anyone, don’t even take thought as to what you’re going to say. Just imagine the end, and having pronounced his judgment based upon the end you have predetermined, do that. Live this way in the world, trusting 100 percent in the pearl of great price. May I tell you, it will not fail you, but you can’t modify it. You can’t hold back one little reserve thing.94 ¶27

I’m speaking from experience. Not knowing that it was my own Imagination that predicted accurately, through the medium of the cards and the medium of the stars, I held back a little reserve note in my mind’s eye when I found Christ. I would still have in my mind’s eye my old horoscope and I could quickly arrange its progression and I would know the day and justify failure. For the rule of my second house in conflict with the rule of my sixth, can’t get the job. There’s no money to it. So it’s all there; it’s all in my mind’s eye. I had to completely give it up and so tear up my horoscope in my mind’s eye. It doesn’t exist. I had to completely destroy it as a power that guided me.94 ¶28

But I held it because I successfully foretold events for unnumbered people in New York City. I had almost the entire Metropolitan crowd. The entire Metropolitan Opera, they came to me. I so believed in what I did that I predicted with conviction. It worked. And they were so sold on it.94 ¶29

Then I had to have an experience one day to show me it was only my own intense belief in these little symbols that made them work. I came into my friend’s home, and I taught her how to read charts and how to set them up. Her name was Carpenter, Norma Carpenter, and I taught her. Then, having retired from a teaching profession in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she had a small pension from the railroad where her husband worked, plus a small pension from her former job, so she eked out a living. But she could augment it in a nice way by telling and reading charts, and I taught her how to do it.94 ¶30

When I came to her place one day—she lived in a hotel—Norma was in tears. I said, “What’s wrong, Norma?” Well, she said, “A man called me up—he was recommended by a friend of mine—and he was very eager to see me right away. He had this fantastic deal on. So over the phone, before he arrived, he gave me his birthday, his hour, everything about it, and so I erected the chart. When he came, I told him, ‘I’m so convinced of this good fortune falling his way today that I can close the book on it.’ He said to me, ‘Mrs. Carpenter, if you’re telling me the truth, I will give you a hundred dollars.’ She said so confidently, “Well, give it to me now because it has to work today.” And she gave me all the reasons, which I knew—I taught them to her—how it had to work today because of this transitive moon over these certain aspects of the chart. He said, “No, if it works, you will get it today, but I’ll not give it to you now.” I said, “What’s wrong with that?” Well, she said, “I made up this chart from a bound volume of Ephemerides. I was sitting at the open window—it’s hot—and so I turned away, I was diverted. And when I went back, I didn’t realize the wind had blown over the pages, and I erected the chart of a man who was born ten years before this man. This man wasn’t even born. I progressed my chart from this horoscope, made up ten years before the birth of this man.”94 ¶31

I said, “Norma, did you believe it when you spoke to him?” She said, “Certainly I did!” I said, “Forget it! Just completely forget it. It’s done!” I was in her room, her suite of rooms, that night, around eight, when a Western Union boy came upstairs and delivered a check, a Western Union check for one hundred dollars. And the chart was drawn on a man who wasn’t born. He was born ten years after this chart of a man. But Norma cannot sell that because she feels “they all believed in me.” She cannot buy the pearl of great price because she feels her only security is to get her little, small check from the railroad in Pennsylvania and a small check from the schoolhouse in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and eke it out with this. So she cannot give up and buy the pearl.94 ¶32

You’ve got to give up every belief in this world in a power outside of Christ to buy Christ. There is nothing but Jesus Christ. So you either believe in him or you don’t believe in him. And any reservation for a rainy day—it’ll rain.94 ¶33

So you hold back the belief in stars? Well, I’m confessing, having done it so successfully over the years, that I still carried in my mental furniture my chart. And so you see you could always justify failure. As Blake said, “Self-justification is the voice of hell.” I didn’t know it… in hell everyone is justifying himself. No matter what he does; if it’s a failure, he justifies it. He gives you all the reasons in the world. But hell is not a place outside of earth; it’s right here. So we are in the hell justifying failure. We say, I couldn’t do it because look at my Venus. And then as soon as Venus gets beyond the point where it interferes with me, But I still have Mercury. And so there I go. And when in spite of Venus and Mercury something happens, Oh, why didn’t I see this? Well, there it was all along. A man goes back, and reflects and then again justifies.94 ¶34

No. He went and sold all that he had and bought it. All that he had, not a few things. You can’t just buy it with a few of the things that you will dispose of. Yet you can use it, use it wisely and successfully, but you don’t really possess him, that pearl, unless you buy him. And you can only buy him when you’ve sold everything that you have. Well, then buy him. And so that it’s all out or nothing, so he who is not with me is against me.94 ¶35

I know it’s a difficult thing, but is it worthwhile having when you consider by having Christ Jesus you are rising into a world of an entirely new order, where everything is subject to your imaginative power? You’re not here at all. You’re moving from the world of death into the world of life when you find him and make him one with you. So you take it.94 ¶36

And let me tonight in a quick summary—it will take me no more than one minute to do it, two minutes at the most—you take this pattern, it’s going to happen to you. Crucifixion is over for all of us. You aren’t going to be crucified. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who lives, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That is Galatians, 2nd chapter, 20th verse. The 6th of Romans, “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Listen to the tenses, “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his”—that’s past; then a change of tense—“we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”—that’s to be. Now we are told that those are misleading the people by teaching that the resurrection is over and past—the resurrection is not. It’s to be. It’s taking place one after the other.94 ¶37

So believe me, the crucifixion came first. That’s over. The second stage in the unfolding drama is resurrection. The second stage when man awakes in a grave to find that he was all along dead or he wouldn’t awake in a grave. You don’t put anyone in a tomb unless he’s dead. So you awake in the tomb of your skull to find that it wasn’t what you thought it was; it was a tomb. And then at that very moment, that you discover, in the act of resurrecting, it now is converted from a tomb into a womb. And then comes the birth. So it’s crucifixion and then resurrection, birth from above—these are the three stages. Then comes a fourth stage. The fourth stage is when the title of titles is conferred upon the one who is born from above. For conferred upon the risen Christ in the experience of man is the divine title, Father. No one can utter the word Father but the Son. So the Son, God’s only begotten Son, calls you Father, and then the title is conferred upon you and you are Father; one with God because he is God’s Son and he calls you Father and you know it . Then comes the next stage, the final stage, when the temple and its wonderful curtain that separated man from God, is torn from top to bottom. So that now you have direct access to the being that you were and are, the being that is God. No intermediary between yourself and God. Go straight to the being that you really are, which being is God. So these are the five perfect stages.94 ¶38

And all the others told about him will happen in their own wonderful way, regardless of the order in which they happen. But this series, as I just gave it to you, this is the sequence. We’re all already crucified and all will be eventually individually resurrected. Then after the resurrection will come a spiritual birth, where he is born into an entirely different sphere. And then on him is conferred, in that sphere, the divine title of Father. And it takes God’s only Son to confer the title, for the Son comes and calls you Adonay, my Lord, my Father, in fulfillment of scripture, in fulfillment of the 89th Psalm. And then comes the final one when the curtain of the temple is torn from top to bottom and everything is split, all the rocks are split, and all the earth quakes. Then you rise, as you’re told you must rise, in this form that cannot be described. It’s called in the scripture, the Elohim, a celestial being, and the closest they can come to describing the Elohim is a fiery serpent. That’s exactly what you are and feel and see when you rise. Human, yes, but for all the identity of personality, a radical discontinuity of form. Then you rise and the whole world quakes. It’s all within you. The whole drama takes place in the individual. You do not rise from the body; you rise in the body. You do not awaken from the body; you awaken in the body. And the whole thing takes place within the individual.94 ¶39

But tonight, you believe me. And if you didn’t know this was the pearl of great price, and I brought it to you this night, I hope you’ll buy it. But like all the great things of scripture, “Come buy wine, buy milk, without money, without price.” The only price you pay for it—not dollars and cents—you give up your belief in powers outside of Christ Jesus, and Christ Jesus is your own wonderful human Imagination.94 ¶40

Now let us go into the Silence. Now are there any questions, please?94 ¶41