Tonight’s title is “Before Abraham Was.” This you will read in the 8th chapter of the Book of John. For those of you who were not with us on Monday, let me say that when you read the Bible you must always bear in mind that the characters are not persons as you and I are. They are eternal states of consciousness…that goes for every one from Abraham to Christ Jesus. These are eternal states of the soul and these spiritual states are all eternal. We must distinguish between the man who occupies a state and his present state. So when we read it, it is addressed to the Imagination, which is the eternal man, the real man. So as Blake said—and I can vouch for it, for I, too, have seen it as he saw it—he said, “You must understand that the persons, Moses and Abraham, are not here meant, but the states signified by those names, the individuals being representatives or visions of those states as they were seen by mortal man in a series of divine revelations as they are written in the Bible; these states I have seen in my Imagination; when distant they appear as one man, as you approach they appear as multitudes of nations. One man represented by multitudes, and multitudes of men in harmony will appear as a single infant” . I have seen them. The ancients saw them and many believed what they saw to the entire abrogation of reason. Then they prophesied because they saw it; they prophesied of the ultimate state which is personified in scripture as Christ Jesus.476 ¶1

So this drama tonight opens in this 8th of John. When you read it, bear in mind they are states. But the evangelist is writing of a state in which he himself entered, for they are relating their own experiences, that’s what the evangelists are doing. They are anonymous, no one knows the true authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. We speak of them as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but no one knows who they are. I can tell you, they were simply relating their own experiences. So the words are put now into the mouth of a personification, and Jesus turns to those who are present and said, “Your father 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 of age, and Abraham saw you?’ He replied, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ And they took up stones to throw at him. Now, when you read it you see a drama in the secular world, but he’s telling the truth. When in this state, you see before Abraham was that you really are. You are the immortal being passing through all these states and the final state is Christ Jesus. When you arrive there you are the author of the play; you are God himself. That goes for every child born of woman.476 ¶2

Now let us turn to the earliest book of the New Testament. This is the Book of Galatians. The thirteen letters of Paul were written and distributed and practiced and called the gospel—before any gospel that we now know of, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was written…at least by twenty years. He spoke of “My gospel that came not by man…I did not hear it from a man, I did not read about it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” . So here, the earliest book in the New Testament is the Book of Galatians and he tells the story of Abraham. He said, “Abraham had two sons, one born according to the flesh, one by promise” . The one that was born according to the flesh bore children into slavery with herself, her name is Hagar. The one that brought children into this world by promise, the name is “Jerusalem from Above,” he’s speaking of the state called Sarah. Then he said, “This is an allegory.” Well, an allegory is a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears it or reads it to discover the fictitious character of the story and to learn its lesson. So he states quite openly and boldly, “This is an allegory. These two women are two covenants: One bringing them into slavery and one into freedom” .476 ¶3

My mother was not called Hagar, and chances are your mother was not named Hagar, but every woman who has a child, in the language of scripture, is Hagar. For the child she brings in though it’s in a palace and she is a queen, though she brings it in and she is affluent, multiple millions and cushions everything for this child, he or she still is a slave. For, she clothes him in a garment that is that of a slave: Whoever wears it must take care of it until it’s gone from this world. It is a garment that consumes, assimilates and must expel through some orifice that which it cannot assimilate. Whether it be a queen or whether it be a scrubwoman, it has a garment that enslaves it; and no matter how strong the garment, it waxes and waxes, it reaches a peak and then it declines, and then it wanes and wanes, and no one can stop the inevitable decay and death. So every child born from the womb of woman is born of Hagar and every child born from the womb is a slave.476 ¶4

But there is another birth and it’s essential that this birth take place or man cannot enter the kingdom of God. “You must be born from above, for unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God” . That birth is a literal fact and that womb from which you spring is the skull of man. By man I mean generic man, I mean the human skull. It’s from there that the second birth takes place and when one is born from the skull, he is born into freedom. Blake identifies “Jerusalem from Above” with liberty. This one is now liberated. Here we are put into a world of slavery, a world of death, and the final victory is the victory over death. Everyone will be victorious, every one! We came into this world of death and we have fought the good fight and we continue to fight it. We are running a race, all will finish that race, and in the end, all will be victorious over man’s greatest enemy and the enemy is death. Everyone will be resurrected, everyone will be born from above, and everyone will then enter the kingdom of God. Ask no man to describe it for you, for we are told, “Eyes have not seen nor ears heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of men the things God has already prepared for those who will enter that state.” So don’t take any image of earth to aid you in trying to visualize what that state is like. Not a thing on earth can you use…it doesn’t belong here. It has not yet entered into the minds of men what God has already prepared. So let no one tell you that he knows and then try to describe to you using the images and symbols of earth. It can’t be done!476 ¶5

So, if this is an allegory and the New Testament begins in this manner, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and we go all the way down, and it culminates in Jesus who was called Christ. Well, if the origin is an allegory, then the end is an allegory. All things bring forth after their kind…that was established in the beginning: “Let every thing bring forth after their kind” …the tree bearing seed containing within itself the seed, and then it bears after its kind. So if the origin is an allegory, the end is an allegory. But it’s not to deceive us. Man not knowing how to read scripture has taken it as secular history and it is not. So he worships states and makes mental pictures of them or he even attempts to paint them and to sculpt them…and yet they are only states.476 ¶6

Let me share with you an experience of mine. Here I came upon, in my vision, a man. Looking at him I would say he was in his fifties, a man over six feet. He looked as though he had an infinite capacity of faith. You didn’t have to ask him his name…when you come upon these states the name radiates from him. You don’t see it, you know. This wisdom from above is without uncertainty. So when you come upon any state, the name goes with it. And here, I came upon this man and I didn’t have to ask who are you? I knew I’m looking at the state of Abraham. He was standing erect and yet leaning somewhat against the trunk of what looked like an oak tree. Here, the tree didn’t have one leaf on it, but the curly, knotted branches resembled the human brain. Nothing I’ve ever seen looked more like the human brain than that tree…he against the tree, and over his entire head were the gnarly, knotted branches of the oak tree. Twisted around the trunk of the tree is a serpent, and the serpent is looking not at Abraham, he’s looking at me. He had a human face…that is a serpent. You’ve never seen such wisdom, the personification of wisdom in that face…a human face with the body of the serpent. Abraham is looking off in the distance and you know he is not looking in space, he is looking in time. It’s away in time that he is looking, and you wonder what has this wisest of all God’s creatures whispered into his ear. For we are told it is the symbol of the final state called Jesus Christ: Christ is defined in scripture as “the wisdom of God and the power of God”.476 ¶7

Now, we are told in scripture, and Paul, to make it very, very clear to us, personifies scripture. For we are told in his letter to the Galatians, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles…preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham”. The scriptures preached it to Abraham, so if the scriptures can preach, well then, it becomes a personification. He takes the scriptures and he personifies them, and has scripture now speak to Abraham and tell Abraham of God’s plan of salvation which is the gospel. So, beforehand Abraham is given a preview of God’s plan of salvation in the form of the gospel 2,000 years before the coming of Christ.476 ¶8

So here, the picture is shown him and he’s looking into the future. He’s not looking in space. You can see it in his face, he is looking in time. So, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad” . “You not fifty, and Abraham saw you?” “Before Abraham was, I am” …before the whole play was constructed, I am. I constructed the play. When I say I, I mean we, for in that moment we formed God. We are the gods; collectively we are God. In the great play, it’s fragmented and the one becomes the many. But in that unity we wrote the play for a divine purpose: That we would come into the world of death, and completely forget who we are, and play it to the hilt, play it fully. We will return enhanced by the play, but we will not stop half way and turn back. Everyone will finish the race, everyone will fight the good fight, everyone will go to the end and keep the faith. So we all start in the state called Abraham.476 ¶9

And the tree I saw is the perfect symbol of the tree of life. As Blake said in his Songs of Experience, “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through nature to find this tree, but their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain.” That’s where the tree is. And the tree that has been felled is the inverted man, where the roots are in the brain. And take him with his nervous systems, take him with the circulatory system, and see the perfect tree but a tree inverted. The kind of a tree you would see if you went to a lake and it is very, very still and a beautiful tree grew on its banks, and in the stillness of that lake you saw the inverted tree. Well, here man is the inverted one turned down into generation; and one day he’ll be turned up and return from generation into regeneration. In that day, he is resurrected and brings back the fruits of the experience of this play of death. This is the great play of decay and death.476 ¶10

So Abraham is not a person as you are, as I am, any more than Isaac, Jacob, David, and all the others. These are the eternal states of the soul. And so, if the origin, as told in Matthew, is Abraham and the fulfillment is Jesus Christ, and the origin is an allegory, then the fruit, glorious as it is, that too is an allegory. But you have to reach it, and you return the being that you were only more translucent, more wise, more everything that is desirable in that kingdom into which you return. “For you came out from the Father and you came into the world; again you are going to leave the world and return to the Father” .476 ¶11

Not one will be lost, not one. We will play different parts in the kingdom, as we played them here. We will be one, sharing one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one Father of all…and yet there will be ranks, as taught in scripture. They will be just like an army. There will be those who will fill the stars of the crown, not by merit but by election, and that election remains a secret of the Most High.476 ¶12

But the least in the kingdom is greater than the greatest on earth. Bear that in mind. “I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than live in the house of the wicked” . Well, a doorkeeper is one who is in on the threshold, but he’s in the kingdom. “I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord.” So if you’re in, you’re greater than the greatest born of woman, as told us in scripture. “John the Baptist…no one born of woman is greater than John; yet I tell you the least in the kingdom is greater than he” . So no matter how great one is on earth, the wisest, the strongest, the most handsome, the most everything, put it all together into a composite picture and call it the greatest that could ever be conceived on earth, it is not equal to the least in the kingdom of God. So don’t be concerned as to what part you play in the body of the risen Lord. The least part is greater than anything on earth and we all play different parts.476 ¶13

In the third great act, when God awakens, you will know where you stand in the kingdom, for you re-enter it violently and the whole kingdom reverberates. You will know your position for in that one area you enter, and you enter like a bolt of lightning, and the whole reverberates like the whole heavens filled with thunder. You are the cause of it. And you know exactly where you entered and that’s where you are. Some will fill the crown, others will fill other parts, but there’ll be no menial part. All will be part of the body of the risen Lord.476 ¶14

So, before Abraham was…I can say…but I should not say we are because that would not be his name. His name is I AM. So “Before Abraham was, I am.” That is God’s name forever and by this name he must be known throughout all generations . So God preceded his play. And so the evangelist is telling the truth: “Before Abraham was, I am.” You can say it and everyone one day will know it. So when you hear it, don’t just say I heard it, dwell upon it, take it home and chew it, eat it, dwell upon it, to know how really great you are.476 ¶15

And then you will let everyone play his part perfectly. Leave him alone. He wants to feel important? Aid him in feeling important. If he wants to make an impression, aid him…let him make the impression. All this is part of the world of Caesar, and maybe he has to make that impression for certain self satisfaction. But you who have made it, you don’t have to go back to it.476 ¶16

You are passing through states, and looking at a person if you see him spiritually, you can see the state where he is now. By state I mean the spiritual state. Here he is in his state and he’s playing his part perfectly while he’s in that state. He comes out of the state and moves on, but the state remains permanent forever. He moves like a traveler passing through a city; the city remains, but the traveler moves on to another city.476 ¶17

So these states remain and we, the immortal being, we pass through ’til finally we come to the end of the journey…and that state is Christ Jesus.476 ¶18

And may I tell you, you are not embarrassed. When you enter that state and the whole drama unfolds in you and you are the central character, you are not embarrassed. You are awed and you’re thrilled. Prior to that you would have thought it blasphemy for anyone to have claimed it and suddenly it happens to you and you can’t deny it. You can no more deny it than you could the simplest evidence of your senses. Can’t deny it, you’ve experienced it, so you know scripture, and the only purpose of life is to fulfill scripture. There is no other real purpose. So here, the statement is a true statement: All the stories of the Bible are true stories but they are supernatural, they are not secular. They all take place in some remote region of the soul.476 ¶19

Now here, a lady (she’s here tonight) said, “I came in my vision upon a box, a translucent box covered with a translucent skin. The interior seemed like some mechanism; the outer was a translucent skin. I was looking at it when suddenly you appeared and you were peeling from your cheeks a translucent skin.” She saw correctly. At the end of the journey the skin that you’ve worn that was so responsive to the inner man that people thought it to be you, at the end you take it off and your true identity is revealed.476 ¶20

My little namesake in New York City, Neville Burleigh, in the month of September, prior to his birthday, which is in November, I saw him before he was born, and I said to him, “If I am your father, when are you coming on earth?” He said to me quite innocently, “Tenth of November.” This is now the month of September. So the next day I said to my wife, “Well, you’re going to have a baby tenth of November.” I said it kiddingly because she wasn’t pregnant and she said, also in a kidding manner, “You know, I believe you implicitly in so many things, but this is one time I can’t believe you because you know I’m not pregnant.”476 ¶21

Well, a very dear friend of ours was pregnant and she came to the meetings in the month of September and she was ballooned. So I told her the story. Well, she said, “It can’t apply to me because my baby isn’t due until late in December.” I said I don’t know. She said, “The doctor said, and Joseph and I compared notes, and it’s late December.” I said, “Should this little child be born and it’s a boy…” She said right away, “Oh, that’s not true…it has to be a girl.” I said, “I’m not arguing with you, I’m just saying if it is a boy and he’s born on the tenth of November, his name is Neville Mark…that’s what he told me.” Well, she ignored it and she went through the door laughing and said, “You know, Neville, really you’re a funny fellow. I like listening to you, and all these things you say they’re very interesting, but sometimes I think you must be really insane.” I said, “All right, Louise, if he comes on the tenth…” So he came on the tenth and she named him Neville Mark.476 ¶22

Well, about three or four years ago in New York City in their apartment, the four of them—one is now gone from this world; he was killed this summer in an accident in London, he was the older of the two—well, little Neville sat there and he always liked to ask me questions about dreams and visions. He’s eager! So he said to me, “You know…”—his mother sat next to him and his father sat next to him—“You know, Neville, I know I am not what I appear to be.” I said, “You know that Neville?” “Oh yes. I didn’t dream it, no one told me, didn’t read it, but I know it.” And then he said to me, “You know, if I could only stand still, perfectly still, and turn around. No, I don’t mean turn around the whole body. If the body could stand still and I turn around in the body, I would know who I am. I know I would know who I am. I also know I can’t do it until I die and I can’t wait to die!” With that, the mother blanched, turned as white as chalk. He said, “Mother, I didn’t mean it that way…I have no desire to die. I’m going to live fully, live fully in this world, but I can’t wait to find out who I am, and I know I am not what you think I am. If I could only get this body to stand still and turn around in it, I would see who I am. Well, I’ve got to turn right around completely.” Poor Louise is just having a fit, scared to death.476 ¶23

Well, Neville hasn’t lost that interest. He’s now sixteen or will be November 10th. He has everything that the world of Caesar could offer: The sole heir to millions, with international businesses all very well entrenched. It doesn’t interest him. He likes drawing, wants to be a drawer, wants to paint…that is his passion, to paint and draw. Let the father’s business—the father is seventy-six and he is sixteen—let it thrive as far as he is concerned, but his interest is in these things. And I saw it two weeks before he came into the world when he gave me his name.476 ¶24

So here, it parallels what my friend saw, peeling off the translucent skin at the end of the journey. And he, a little lad, he was then about twelve and he knew then that he wasn’t what he appeared to be. That it was only a skin that was tightly woven over him, hiding his true identity.476 ¶25

So, everyone here is wearing a mask. One day you’ll take off the mask and we’ll all meet unmasked and know each other as we knew before the fall; and there will be one grand wonderful joyous moment when all return and all recognize the being we were prior to putting on the mask…for we are wearing the mask. So the evangelist was telling his own experience, that before the state called Abraham was, I am.476 ¶26

So they took up stones, you’re told, to throw at him. Well, a stone in scripture is the symbol of literal fact. So they could say, “We know your parents, your brothers, your sisters…we know your background and we know that you’re only about fifty, and here we have a record of this one that you’ve just named and it is 2,000 years ago; so you couldn’t possibly have been seen by him, neither could you have seen him.” They threw the book at him; they threw the facts, as friends here will throw the facts at me.476 ¶27

I recall here at a dinner party one night with the late Aldus Huxley. I told him that these characters were not persons, not one of them. “Well,” he said, “Neville, Caesar did live and he’s mentioned in scripture, and Herod lived and he’s mentioned in scripture.” I said, I speak of the scripture. The scripture is the Old Testament and he’s not in the scripture. The only book that could have been read—if you want to accept Jesus as a man—that he could have read and called it scripture would have to have been the Old Testament. Well, they passed him a book…it has to be the Old Testament…and he reads from Isaiah. Every one he quotes he has to quote from the Old. He can’t quote the New. There is no New. I’m not denying that these evangelists lived, but they’re all anonymous. I’m not denying that Paul lived, but we do not really know who Paul is. I’m not denying these, but in the Old Testament they are states, the eternal states.476 ¶28

The prophets who recorded it were doing a work the full import of which was hidden from themselves. They did not know, and they inquired as to what time, what person was meant, and it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but us. When the time had fully come and the secret was made real to us, it was uncovered and then we saw the end. The end was the state called Jesus Christ and all enter it, one after the other and all experience everything that is recorded in scripture concerning Jesus Christ. When you experience the identical thing, who are you? And someone comes behind you and he experiences the identical thing, well then, if everyone experiences that, then who is Jesus Christ? Is it not the eternal state, the perfect man, that which reflects the glory of God and wears the very stamp of his person? Well then, when you actually reach that state, the work is done and you return, return to where you were before you fell.476 ¶29

But the fall was deliberate; it wasn’t something that you incurred because you did something wrong. It was a challenge and only God could take that challenge to die and rise from the dead. Only God could die in confidence that he would rise. And so, we were the gods who took the challenge and came down in these masks that decay and die, to find them restored, waxing once more, waning, and dying; restored, waxing, waning and dying. It goes on over and over and over until the end is reached and there is no more being restored. There’s only then resurrection. You are lifted out of the world of death into the kingdom of heaven or the world of life.476 ¶30

So everyone is destined to be in that kingdom. And the part you’re going to play there has already been pre-determined. “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” . So everyone, even the least, is glorified in the body of the risen Lord. Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Are there any questions, please?476 ¶31

Tonight’s title is “The Spirit of Truth.” I do not stop every night to remind those who are present that we are not speaking of characters, persons as you are a person, I am a person, when we speak of Jesus and all the other characters of scripture; because the Bible makes no reference whatsoever to any person that ever existed or any event that ever occurred upon earth. But unfortunately we have mistakenly taken personifications for persons, the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction, and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended; but how to tell the story…unless you take these principles and personify them? To see Jesus as an historical character is to see Truth tempered to the weakness of the human soul, unable ordinarily to bear the strong light of revelation.475 ¶1

You and I are not upset when we attend a play of Shakespeare and he personifies the morning. When the curtain goes up on Hamlet, in the very first scene he tells us, “The morn in russet mantle clad walks o’er the dew on yon eastern hill.” Well now, here he has given the morning feet and clothed him in russet and then he walks o’er the dew on the eastern hill. Well, I love it! Here is a man, the master of the English tongue with an inflamed Imagination like Blake, and he personified everything. As Blake said, “All are human.” He said, “Cities, mountains, valleys, rivers all are human, and when you enter into their bosoms you enter into heaven and earth as you enter into your own heaven and earth. And all that you behold; tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” .475 ¶2

So when I speak of Jesus I’ve got to speak of him and treat him as a person; but you must always bear in mind it’s difficult to take a principle and discuss it unless you can be allowed to personify it. Then you give him words and he makes these bold, bold claims. But first of all, bear in mind when tonight I say he stood before Pilate, who stood before Pilate? The evangelist is not writing history; he’s writing theology, theology which is simply the knowledge of God as he, the evangelist, experienced God. Then he tells it in this wonderful dramatic form.475 ¶3

So when we read in the scripture, “He stands before Pilate and Pilate said to him, ‘So you are a king?’ he said, ‘You say that I’m a king. For this I was born. For this I came into the world…to bear witness to the truth. All who are of the truth hear my word.’” Then he goes on to explain what they will do to those who accept this truth. It will be in conflict with the traditions of men…their concepts of God not based upon experience but what they believed God ought to have done…no vision…and that is what is called the theology of the world.475 ¶4

Have I not read statements of prominent theologians discussing the great mystery of Christ and where people unquestioningly accept it as fact because some authority of the church stated it? Having been cast in the central role of the Christian mystery, and having played the entire drama from beginning to end, I see it is so remote from the facts as I have experienced them. It hasn’t a thing to do with the Christian mystery, none whatsoever…and yet these are the great theologians.475 ¶5

I recall maybe fifteen years ago in New York City a friend of mine invited me to the Bohemian Club. It’s a club that meets the first Monday in the month at Harvard University. Mostly musicians form the club. They do have painters, singers and other artists, they’re all artists, but the majority of them are musicians. This chap introduced me to Walter Damrosch as one of the world’s great metaphysicians. Damrosch said to me, “Is it the German school, the French school, the Russian school?” I said, “No, it is simply my own visions. It’s all revelation from within. It hasn’t a thing to do with any orthodox concept of the metaphysical world.” Damrosch turned his back on me in the most insolent manner. Unless I had some tag to support the claim…and that tag had to come from a recognized body of men and he expected it to say the German school. That would satisfy Damrosch. Well, it wasn’t any German school or French school or Russian school or any other school. Now Damrosch is gone from this world and so is my friend who introduced me to him. Now, death to them is a blessing, forcing them to modify or radically change the ideas they championed while they were here. He and his German school…he’ll find there is no such thing related to Truth.475 ¶6

Many sit down to compose a workable philosophy of life; these are the schools, and it hasn’t a thing to do with that. It’s all vision, one hundred percent vision.475 ¶7

And so here, when I speak of Jesus I want you to bear in mind I am personifying Truth, the ultimate in Truth. For he said, “For this I was born.” But now he tells those in the gospel of John, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world” . Can you state it any clearer? He’s a super-natural being, he comes from an entirely different world. So when you have the experience, it is not here. You walk the earth as a man and while walking this earth as a man the truth unfolds within you. Who unfolds?—the truth—well, the truth is personified as the Lord Jesus Christ. He unfolds within you not as another but as yourself. And no one is going to accept it, but no one. Some will take it under consideration, some will take it because they trust you, but they will take it only as hearsay. They do not really know it as yet from experience. They’ll take it, but the majority will reject such a person because they know him intimately. They know the man, his background, his weaknesses, everything about him, and that’s not what they are looking for.475 ¶8

When they were looking for the Spirit of truth, they thought in terms of something entirely different. Not a personification of a principle, but a man who would come and save. He was called the Messiah, called the Christ. But to say to man that Christ is simply the pattern man, it’s a pattern buried in every person in the world, and in the fullness of time that pattern erupts; as it erupts, it unfolds in man as the man in whom it erupts. It is a definite pattern told in scripture as events in the life of a man.475 ¶9

But these events are super-natural. A scriptural episode is not a record of an historical event but a parabolic revelation of truth. All these are parables…every event recorded is a parable. Can I discern the story in the parable? For one day I’m going to experience it and strangely enough it will be in some remote region of my own being. But I’m going to experience it literally.475 ¶10

We are told, “Thy Word is truth” and now he said, “I am the truth. I am your Word.” Your Word must unfold then in me, for I am the truth and therefore I am the Word. “Do not add to his word.” Now, here is the statement in the 148 th Psalm, and you will do it literally. By a storm wind he fulfills his word…by a storm wind. Well, anyone trying to write what God ought to have said is going to change that, and yet it is literally true. It is by a storm wind, a wind that possesses you and you cannot bend. You are under control and the wind clothes itself with you, and then all of a sudden the wind intensifies. You call it a vibration, and yet in the drama you interpret it as a wind. You hear the vibration…it reverberates your entire being. And yet when you stand and look at that thing out of which you had emerged—which was, first of all, in your own skull—now you come out of it and what do you feel? You feel it must be a storm, it must be a hurricane, because only wind of this intensity could do this. Where is it? You look to see where it’s coming from. Those present had the same feeling of a storm, a storm wind. And here it’s recorded, well, say 1,000 years B.C. that he will fulfill his word by a storm wind. And suddenly the Word unfolds within you and it is the storm wind. So when you’re told, “Wait until you’re clothed with power from above,” then we turn over the page which is now Luke. Luke-Acts are one book, divided for what reason I do not know, but our early fathers of the church divided them. And here we find in the very beginning of Acts, the 2 nd chapter, they’re all gathered together and this mighty wind filled the room . Their foreheads became luminous, just light on all, and they began to speak in multiple tongues so that each one heard him in his own tongue wherein he was born…this fantastic thing caused by the storm wind. Who’s going to change it?475 ¶11

There are many who attempt to change it. But I know, week after week I look forward to that little page in Time magazine to see what nonsense they’re saying now. One year, God is dead; next year, no, he’s sick; next year there’s something else, and every week some nonsense comes out where they have God buried…and all of this by the great theologians of the world.475 ¶12

So I tell you here tonight, I speak from experience when I speak of the spirit of truth, personified, yes. You’re a person and I’m a person. And I ask you to set your hope fully upon that grace that is coming to you, when?—at the revelation of this principle within you. It’s called in scripture Jesus Christ. Make no mental image of Jesus Christ in fulfillment of the Second Commandment: “Make no graven image unto me.” So make no graven image of Jesus Christ, for you are he. Jesus Christ is the pattern man; that pattern is in every man and only in the fullness of time can it erupt. When it erupts, you are he, and you carry that knowledge to your grave here with you.475 ¶13

You turn your back upon all the accomplishments that you’ve ever accomplished in this world. No matter what you have ever done, it is as nothing. If you owned the earth, you turn your back upon it, and set your vision fully upon what has happened to you. You dwell in it morning, noon and night. You go to bed dwelling in the four mighty acts of God. What the day brought in the world of Caesar makes no difference to you at all. What news you heard from friends…well, it’s joyous news, oh yes, you’re a friend, you rejoice with a friend, show a little empathy and really feel happy for him or for her or for them. But as far as you are concerned your back is turned to all the accomplishments of Caesar and his world, and you simply face the vision.475 ¶14

So here, the Spirit of truth is not something that is coming from without; it’s coming from within. So when you’re told, “I will send the Spirit of truth,” from where, “from my Father,” what will they do to me? Well, if you talk about it—and I can’t see how you can resist talking about it—you might incur the enmity of man. If they’re high in office they might put you out of the synagogue, out of the churches. There are times when death is allowed; the Inquisition proves that. Tens and tens of thousands were burned alive, because what they had experienced was in conflict with the church fathers. They were going to save their souls by burning them. And we were warned, “They will kill you and they will do this because they do not know the Father, nor me” . “Had they known the Father, they would have known me, for he and I are one” .475 ¶15

He became me when he sent me and he never left me alone. If you ever really see me, you will see my Father, for he and I are one. And you will see not this thing that you now look at, but you’ll see the Ancient of Days. That’s the one. You will see something that is infinite love, that’s what you’ll see, and yet it is man. That’s my Father, and yet he and I are one.475 ¶16

I must mark the time telling the story regardless of how this little body reacts, until that moment in time when he calls me back. At that moment, those who have been seriously following will find a freedom that they do not enjoy while I’m here. I do not know why. I tell you, you do not enjoy it while I am here, but the day I move you will enjoy it. And these things will erupt within you, many one after the other, and all that I have told you, you will know from personal experience; for you will have experienced God not as another but as yourself.475 ¶17

So you, too, will tell it, tell it with authority, because you’re speaking from personal experience. Then you will know not a thing in this world matters…it doesn’t matter what you have accomplished. When others say, “You know who I know?” it doesn’t interest you. “Know who I saw today in the restaurant?”…doesn’t really matter. “You know who wrote…?” Doesn’t really matter, for all this is the accomplishment in the world of Caesar and I’m not speaking of that.475 ¶18

Yet, I cannot leave anyone in the dark…so I speak of the Spirit of Truth. I must tell you, on this level a true judgment must conform to the external facts to which it refers. If I said, this is a lectern, if you know what a lectern is, you come up and you examine it, and you’ll agree with me it is a lectern. If I say, aren’t these lovely flowers and I name them roses. Now you say he’s gone a little bit off…where are the roses? I say a true judgment need not conform to the external facts to which it refers. That I know from experience!475 ¶19

In my audience in New York City I asked everyone to join with me now in putting this to the extreme test. Well, this lady could have had a fur coat, she could have had anything, but no, she said, “I’ll take roses.” When we went into the Silence, she simply embraced dozens of roses, beautiful roses, so that roses filled the air. If roses aren’t here, then why is the fragrance of rose in the air? She smothered herself in roses. She lived at the Waldorf Astoria, just a single room; she was a widow. She went home that night…no roses. The next night she went up to her floor and as she got off the elevator, here is this pungent odor of roses. She knew she had not ordered roses, she expected no rose, and she stopped at door after door to take a whiff to see if perchance it came from this room. But it got stronger and stronger as she approached her room, and when she opened her door she was smothered with the fragrance of roses, and on her bureau were three dozen beauties.475 ¶20

The night she did it they gave a huge, big banquet for the Queen of England, that is, the present Queen’s mother. They had grown that year special roses that they named after her…they were called the Elizabeth rose. Well, there were hundreds and hundreds for the occasion. It was the English Speaking Union and they met at the Waldorf Astoria. I dare say 1,500 attended this gathering. The next day, which was the day she had the roses, the maitre-de was dismantling the place for the next banquet and they asked him what must we do with the roses. He said, “Well, Mrs. Niemeyer loves roses…give her three dozen. So and so likes roses, give her a dozen, two dozen” and he simply dispensed roses. But Mrs. Niemeyer, the lady in the front row, she embraced roses, and she got three dozen. When she opened that door she was simply overcome with the fragrance of roses, which she did not buy.475 ¶21

So I say, a true judgment, when you know this principle, need not conform to the external facts to which it refers, or she never would have had roses. If I must confine myself to the human definition of what constitutes truth, well then, I’ll be stuck in my place of birth forever. I’ll never get out of it, for I am confronted every moment of time with the facts of life.475 ¶22

You have no background socially, intellectually, financially, so why butt your head against the wall? You can’t get out of the environment in which you were placed. Well, I didn’t accept that. My family did not accept that, so they climbed out of it by simply using their Imaginations and making their dreams conform to, at least for the moment, external facts. They saw the external fact in their Imagination that they were imagining, and they remained faithful to this imagined state, and in time they became what they imagined. That is law.475 ¶23

So I say to everyone here, although I ask you to set your hope fully on the grace that is coming to you at the unfolding in you of Jesus Christ, the pattern man, the perfect man who is God, use this principle towards beautifying all your world, getting all the lovely things that you feel you need. Don’t ask any man’s permission for them. You appropriate it in your own wonderful human Imagination. Do it and live by it morning, noon and night. It will not fail you, but remember you are the operant power.475 ¶24

To know it, that is one thing; to do it is another. And we are called upon to “Be doers of the Word, and not just hearers only, deceiving ourselves” . Well, I can say, I heard that, I read that book, but did I ever see anything in it that moved me to apply it? So I can say ten years from now I read that book, but it never occurred to me to take it up and read it with understanding and to apply it. If I apply it, it should prove itself in performance. So I call upon you to prove this in the testing. It will work! And this is the Spirit of Truth.475 ¶25

Not a person that was born physically from the womb of any woman in this world; I discard completely such a concept of Jesus. Jesus is the immortal man that is buried in mortality; and that immortal man erupts in man, and moves that man from darkness to light, from death to life eternal. Those who are not awake to this principle before they die here, they don’t really die, they are restored to life and they will continue their journey; for the work has been started in them. Nothing dies…no not even the little rose dies…everything lives in God’s world.475 ¶26

But you are destined to move out of a world in which things appear to die, where you go through the gate called death, and you’ll move out of that world of Caesar into a heavenly world. Well, heaven is a completely super-natural state, and all of its occupants are completely super-natural. They are not made of flesh and blood; they are immortal beings, beings who have life in themselves. They are not animated bodies; they are life-giving Spirits.475 ¶27

So you are destined for that. Dwell upon it! If you still have ambitions to shine in the world of Caesar, apply this principle. Well, I prophesy for you, the day will come you’ll turn your back upon it…when it will make no difference whatsoever what you have accomplished in the world of Caesar.475 ¶28

Look around…there was a Stalin. He named a certain city and a certain river after himself, Stalingrad. He wasn’t cold before they renamed it Volgograd. They are waiting now for another one…it used to be called St. Petersburg, now it’s Leningrad. The day will come and they’ll rub that out, too, and put it back into an entirely different name.475 ¶29

In little Santo Domingo, this little thing that stole a half-million dollars out of the treasury of a little tiny island, and he named a city after himself, Trujillo. It was called Santo Domingo when Columbus discovered it, who named it after the saint. He now calls it Trujillo and for twenty-five or thirty years he stole everything in sight, and renamed all the streets after himself. You got confused because every street was Trujillo. One day they caught up with him and used him as a little pincushion, only they used bullets instead of pins. Then, he wasn’t cold before they renamed it Santo Domingo. Now his little family, who had generals uniforms and all kinds of things, they are living on stolen funds in Switzerland…can’t get back. Here they are children of the thief of thieves, but while he strutted, he was so important in his own mind’s eye. Take a little Hitler…all these things he was going to lay out for 1,000 years, so he strutted for a few years and then there was no Hitler. Talk about thieves…all the art works of Europe they stole, and they had to give them back. So these accomplishments mean nothing—it’s what God does in us.475 ¶30

Now, the 22 nd Psalm throughout the centuries has been identified as the psalm of the Messiah. We use it on the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Almost the entire psalm is on that note; but in the end that triumphant note, “And they will tell of the Lord to unborn generations…”—what will they tell—“that he has wrought it.” That which in the beginning was his plan, that in the end in spite of all the suffering, he has wrought it. So they tell of him and tell that he did accomplish that which in the beginning he swore he would. And you will one day say, “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. Glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory I had with thee before that the world was” . There’s nothing but God. I had it with him, you had it with him before the world was, and for a divine purpose the one became the many.475 ¶31

But now we are gathered one by one to unite into a single being who is God. And these furnaces of affliction will turn into not furnaces but rivers of joy. So eventually we will all meet and remember who we were before the fall, only we will be enhanced, our beauty increased, our luminosity greater, everything greater as a result of our fall. And then all is forgiven.475 ¶32

So the Spirit of Truth is God’s plan of salvation, and it’s buried in every child born of woman. In the fullness of time it will erupt and all that is said in scripture of Jesus Christ can be said of you in whom it erupts. You will awaken within your skull and you will come out from that tomb to find that the symbol of your birth from above is present; then comes the second, the third, and finally the fourth mighty act of God. Now let us go.475 ¶33

* * * Are there any questions, please? None?475 ¶34

Sharon, I want to tell you that your vision is true. Even though the fact does not support it, it was true!475 ¶37

Tonight’s title is “I Am in You.” First remember, we are dealing with a mystery. As Paul said to Timothy, “Great indeed, we confess, this great mystery…is our mystery” . It is not secular history. So tonight, we’ll try…it’s important that we get it. In the 14 th chapter of the Book of John we read that Christ said to the disciples, “In that day”—well, that phrase “in that day” is an eschatological term meaning “at the end of the journey,” at the end of this age of Caesar. So, “In that day you will know ”…it will not be hearsay, you will have experienced it. Then he tells them what they will have experienced—that “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” It is in us as persons that the nature of God is revealed. It is revealed in a series of supernatural experiences in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience. When it is experienced, all arguments are hushed.472 ¶1

There is no one to whom you can turn, no wise man to throw any light on it; it just simply has happened. So Paul said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me…I conferred not with flesh and blood” and that, “My gospel I did not receive from a man, nor was I taught it; it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” .472 ¶2

Well, this question will be asked you. Undoubtedly it was asked Paul. I know my sister this past year in Barbados asked it of me. She said, “Now, Neville, don’t evade it. Just answer a simple, simple question, was your Christ once really a man?” My answer to her was undoubtedly the answer that Paul gave those who asked a similar question. I said, “Was? He is the heavenly man.” Then, quoting Paul, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” . Christ is the heavenly man. But, Daph, it is a mystery. Do not think of some little boy who was born in a strange manner 2,000 years ago. We are dealing with a cosmic principle where God actually became man that man may become God.472 ¶3

Now, the process has started. Resurrection has begun; it is not over. As Paul warned, “Those who teach that it is over are misleading the faithful.” He said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” . Henceforth I regard no one from the human point of view: “Even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” . He never meant a physical Christ.472 ¶4

So to answer my sister, “No, Daph, no, my Christ is the heavenly man, and I speak from experience, for I stood in the presence of the risen Lord. Had I the capacity to paint I could paint this Ancient of Days, and he is gathering us one by one into his body to become one body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one God and Father of all. You will not be less than the risen Lord, for there is only one body. I will be your body. You will not be less in Spirit than the risen Lord. There is only one Spirit and there’s only one Lord and you will be that Lord.” But Neville, what about you?—I am the same body, the same Lord, the same Spirit, the same God and Father of all. Without loss of identity we are this one, this unity of being.472 ¶5

So here, it is true I am in you and you in me. You will know it one day, because in our inner being he unfolds himself. So it is in us as persons—for you have to be a person for the nature of God to reveal itself. He reveals himself in us in this series of supernatural experiences. Well, Daph I don’t think was any more impressed than that chair.472 ¶6

It takes time. But it is so important that we get it. It is so important that you just rub out all intermediaries between yourself and God. The first letter of Paul is Galatians. It is the first letter and first book in the New Testament. He gave us thirteen. Scholars are agreed that this is the first in the entire New Testament. And in this, he declared his independence from men and his dependence upon God.472 ¶7

He repudiated all authorities, all institutions, all customs, all laws that interfered with the direct access of the individual to his God. There was no intermediary for Paul. He never knew a Christ after the flesh; he knew the risen Lord who appeared to him.472 ¶8

Well, in my case I was taken into his presence. I did not know that night would be such a night. But here, I am taken in spirit into the presence of the risen Lord; and strangely enough, when he asked me a question, the answer had to be in terms of the words of Paul. So I ask you, who is Paul? Is not Paul the first of the chosen who broke the seal and discovered the mystery that was shown to Abraham? For he persecuted everyone who he thought was a member of The Way, called a Christian. Suddenly, it broke in him; and then Paul went out to proclaim the Truth as it was revealed in him by the risen Lord. So he said, “If I have been crucified with him or united with him in a death like his, I shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” .472 ¶9

He doesn’t claim the resurrection is over. He claims the crucifixion is over, because you could not be wearing this garment of flesh were you not crucified. “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world” . The choice was his. We do not actually enter heaven because of any acquired merit on our parts. Fitness is the consequence, not the condition of his choice. Remember, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.472 ¶10

Then came the drama and it’s a horrible drama. But when you think of the glory to follow the drama then it doesn’t matter what suffering we go through here…it means nothing. So Paul could say, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed in us” .472 ¶11

So here the Word…now listen to the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” . “And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us —not “among” us” . The preposition is “in” and mistranslated “among” us. You think, “Well, where is he?” and you start looking among people for the one that became flesh…“The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.”472 ¶12

Now we are told in Revelation, “And this is the name by which he is called The Word of God” . Well, the word logos which we translate “word” means “meaning.” It is a meaning, a plan, a plot. God had a plot, a plan, a purpose in the beginning. This is not some emergency thinking after he brought forth creation. It was before the world was, a plan to give himself to us 100 percent, not to take back a bit.472 ¶13

So whatever he is when he became me, when he starts to unfold in me I must experience that. So it is in us as persons that the nature of God reveals itself. I am a person, you are a person, but it only comes at the end. In the very last, you are going to know it, and that last will come upon you suddenly like a thief in the night. You will have no knowledge that this is the night, but this could be the night, and suddenly it erupts within you.472 ¶14

The entire story told of the Lord, for it is the story of the Lord, you experience in the first-person. It is all your story. So you go to your brother, your sister, your father, your mother (if they are still here) and you tell them…but they know you. They expect something entirely different from this. They know how weak you are, how limited you are, you are not schooled. They’ll read the Bible, but they’ll never hear these words or see them: “How does this man have learning seeing that he has never studied?” Here, in the 7 th chapter of John that question is asked, for he stunned the rabbis, he stunned the Sanhedrin. They couldn’t understand how a man who had no learning could rise and say the things that he said. That he could say, “Today, scripture is fulfilled in me.” That, “I have come for only one purpose; I have come to fulfill scripture.” The scripture fulfilled is the Old Testament…that was the only scripture. The prophets foretold the coming of God, but he comes in man. He takes upon himself our nature and unfolds his nature in ours and we are God.472 ¶15

Well, if he was a father prior to his choice of us and he gives himself to us, then we are a father. There is no way that anyone can prove he is a father unless he has a son who calls him father. Well, that is done. All these things unfold within us.472 ¶16

So, when I say “I am in you,” the words are the words of Christ. Remember, this is the risen Christ speaking. He is telling you, “I am in you and you in me and we are one.” So the risen Christ is God. May I tell you, when she said, “But is he a man?” why, he is the eternal man, a heavenly man. God is man: “You are a man, God is no more. Your own humanity learn to adore” .472 ¶17

So man is looking for some impersonal force that they will call God. They can worship an impersonal force, but they can’t see man. May I tell you, when you stand in his presence, you realize how you couldn’t answer any other way other than in the words of Paul. You ask yourself a thousand times as I have, who is Paul? Who is this beginner of the Christian faith?—for it was Paul who started it. We have his thirteen letters. The gospels were written ten years after the letters of Paul.472 ¶18

Here he goes out on a limb in his first letter to the Galatians and declares his independence of every organization in the world. That was in a day where it wasn’t as free as today. I can leave the church and not be ostracized to the point where I can’t get a job; but in that day, you couldn’t get a job unless you were a member of the synagogue. Where would you go?472 ¶19

Paul goes all out: He will accept no intermediary between himself and God. No rabbi could come between him. He had found God and God was the risen Lord that he had gone about in his blindness to persecute. The day will come and you will meet him. He will bring you into his presence…but that is his choice. When you reach the end of the journey, he brings you into his presence, incorporates you into his body by an embrace, and you are one with the body of God forever and forever.472 ¶20

You go on your way for a little while and you tell it as I tell it to you, tell it to those in San Francisco and New York. And to tell it to those that I know in a social world that never will come here, but I meet them socially so I tell it then. Go to Barbados and tell it to them…no audience really…they aren’t interested. When I tell you that I told it to my sister, where? At tea…well, we’ve got to talk, so we got together every day for tea, and so Daph would raise a question and then you start to answer. Or maybe in the morning when you have your early meal and Daph and myself will simply chat for a while. But I assure you that after four months on the island with her, living in the home with her, she wasn’t at all moved…not at all moved.472 ¶21

She liked her physical Jesus that lived 2,000 years ago and she hoped I would see the light one day and come back and see that Jesus that was born differently here. She can’t understand he was born differently here, but not in the way that she thinks it.472 ¶22

So when I say I am in you, I mean it literally. I am in you, for I am one with the risen Christ. These are the words of the risen Christ; these are not the words of Neville. These are the words of the risen Christ and he never once after he embraced me separated himself from me. Yet he sent me. Well, that’s part of the mystery. How can I be one with a body and be sent? Yet the words are, “He who sees me sees him who sent me.” He has never left me. Well, how can he never leave me and yet we are one and he sent me? But we have concepts of three-dimensional space and we think now if you send me from here and I go through that door, well then, the one who sent me and remains here isn’t with me. It is an entirely different picture.472 ¶23

So here, this night you dwell upon it. You dwell upon the being who actually became you and go back to the point where he chose you. He chose you in him before the world was, and he has made known unto me the mystery of his way, of his plan…a plan which he set forth in Christ for the fullness of time. Well, that fullness of time comes in that day . “In that day you will know…”472 ¶24

So there is a plan in man; the plan is Christ. Christ is God and God is a plan . In the beginning was the Word (logos) and that’s a plan, that’s meaning. There is meaning to the whole vast world and that meaning was with God and the meaning was God. So that meaning is in you. Call it Christ—I think the name is lovely; call it a plan if it will make you feel easier. But it’s Christ and Christ is the Word of God, and it cannot in any way fail to fulfill its purpose: That purpose is to simply unfold itself in you as God. For God is the plan, he is the Word, and therefore you are the Word. So as you walk the earth you are the Word moving towards fulfillment.472 ¶25

Now, all the little things that are taught as the plan unfolds we should keep in mind and don’t for one moment fail to apply them.472 ¶26

Here is a simple little one. My friend is here tonight, she said, “Eight years ago when my little boy was quite young I gave him at Christmas Sears Christmas Catalogue . It always comes prior to Christmas and he loved it. All the boys and girls in the neighborhood would play and I called it then a wish book, Sear’s Wish Book. So they would take the Wish Book and pick out all these things that they wished and each would pick it out and pick out numberless things. Well now, that was eight years ago and they kept on playing with this Sears Wish Book. “The current issue of the catalogue that just arrived…they sent us a notice and now they call their Christmas issue Sears Wish Book . Now whoever has that account thinks that is an original idea on their part. So after eight years it’s now called Sears Wish Book .”472 ¶27

I have it at home, not the catalogue, but I have the notice that came to her in the mail and her letter saying what she did, and the thrill that is hers that she could actually create this way. You see, there is no fiction! How can there be fiction in a world where imagining creates reality? So eight years ago, playing with her little son she told him this is a wish book…and put him aside with his big book and all the boys in the neighborhood picking out what they wanted. Then year after year came a book and she called it a wish book. Now by actual printing on the cover of it—and it’s a beautiful cover—here is Sears Wish Book , their Christmas catalogue.472 ¶28

So if something is delayed in your world and it hasn’t yet arrived, keep this story in mind. You say, “Well, it should happen tonight.” Oh, I’m not denying that we are eager; we want things to happen now. We are children…we can’t wait. Countries plan…if they do plan they plan for unborn generations. Parents who grow and have a large estate, they plan not for just the little ones that are now, they plan for the offspring of the offspring and they plan their future. Maybe you disagree with that, but, nevertheless, they plan and it is in the future.472 ¶29

But you and I get anxious and we want…all right…you want to be married now. You do? Are you divorced yet? “No, but I want it now, tonight.” But she’s not divorced. Haven’t you heard that?472 ¶30

So I have had these stories time and time again. I have had them say to me, “Either that man or no man.” I haven’t gone down the aisle with them, but I sat in the church when they got married and they looked and smiled as they walked by because it wasn’t that man. What they really wanted, they wanted to be happily married, and they pinpointed it—it had to be that man. I said, “If he dropped dead now, do you still want to get married?” “Why do you ask that question?” I’m asking a simple question. If he drops dead now, still want to get married? “I presume so.”472 ¶31

Well then, he can’t be the only man, because if he dropped dead and you still have the urge for companionship in marriage, he’s not the only man. So single out what you really want in life and don’t condition it on something of that nature. Just, you want to be happily married?—all right, happily married. You want a certain home?—all right a certain home. “But I can’t afford it.” I’m not asking that. I’m asking can you now play this game of wishing? It’s the wish book. Single out of God’s book any wish. He speaks to man through the medium of desire. Well, take that desire and then it’s yours. How would you feel if it were true? How would you see the world were it true? Then lose yourself in the feeling; give it all the tones of reality.472 ¶32

All of this goes along as you walk toward the fulfillment of our real purpose in life which is to awaken God in you. You aren’t going to become a little god, some little god running around with other little gods. No room for them. There’s only God: That fundamental confession of faith called the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God the Lord is one” .472 ¶33

And don’t forget it! So when they have all kinds of little gods, forget it…only one God, one body, one Father…and you are destined to awaken as that one God and Father. He awakens, strangely enough, in this simple little thing called a man. How can a little thing that is mortal bear such responsibility? How can this little thing here with all its weaknesses know in its heart it has already unfolded the purpose of God? And he has no way to show it to anyone on earth save in words.472 ¶34

I can’t convince anyone unless they have faith. I can tell them it has happened to me. This is exactly how it happened and I have tried to tell it to the best of my ability in written form, and tried to give the parallel passages of scripture to support what happened to me; for I only come to fulfill scripture, and in my case I have reached the end. Well, I’ve told it hoping that someone would pick it up from there and maybe dramatize it. As I told you last Friday night, take it and tell it in a dramatic form. You speak of Ionesco and his wonderful dramas. Why this would put his into nothing, because you’re dealing with the greatest story ever told, and telling it as it actually happened, not as people would like it to happen…like my sister who wanted it her way. She’ll go see the wonderful picture The Greatest Story Ever Told and it is so far removed from the story.472 ¶35

That’s not the story. The story is a simple man walking the earth containing within himself that potential and unexpectedly it unfolds within him. He is the most startled person ever. He never thought for one moment he was worthy of it, for he was taught you had to acquire merit and he wasn’t acquiring any merit. He knew that if he actually let his mind go back for the short interval of fifty or sixty years, he would not be proud of all the things that he has done…or proud of the things he entertained doing but didn’t have the courage to do them.472 ¶36

Yet, in that weak body God the perfect unfolded and everything said of Christ in scripture unfolded in him. Can you take it if I tell you that the story of Christ in scripture is an acted parable? Do you know what a parable is? It is a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who heard or read it to discover its fictitious character and learn its meaning. So we simply know it is an acted parable. So he takes a little child in his arms and tells them, “This is the kingdom of heaven. Except you accept the kingdom as a little child, you cannot enter it.” Then he puts the little child down. Well, you think a man did that with a child? It is an acted parable.472 ¶37

The day will come. You will take a little child in your arms and it will be your entrance into heaven, for it is your signal of your birth from above. Who was born? It was God that was born…not from the womb of a woman but from the skull of man; for it is there that God is crucified. He entered death’s door, the human skull, and in that skull is the plan . Strangely enough, when he awakens, there is no other. It is simply “I am awake.” What is God’s name forever and forever?—“I AM.” He has no other name. So, “Go and tell them I AM has sent you” . And so, when you awaken, who awakes?—“I am awake.” You look around for a Christ?—no. You have no urge to see anyone else; it’s you!472 ¶38

Then, from then on the whole thing unfolds within you. Now this may be shocking if you are here for the first time, but, you know, I would not retract one word to make it any easier. I’m not saying it is not disturbing, but you will know in the not distant future.472 ¶39

All of us here will depart this world, all of us. Don’t be afraid, you will, and death will be a blessing if you have any doubts now, for death will force you to modify or sometimes radically change the ideas you championed while you were here.472 ¶40

I got a notice today that my very dear friend, who is my eastern doctor—he took care of my wife when she was pregnant, took care of me when I needed his attention, and all the family back east—and at only sixty-five he died. A member of the family wrote today that Randy died.472 ¶41

I’ve been thinking of him all day, because in ’52 when I had a serious operation, Randy was my doctor. He wasn’t a surgeon. He came to the hospital. I always carried my Bible with me—I’m proud of it, it’s the Word of God, there’s no greater book in the world. So when he came into the room and sat down for his usual little visit every morning he said, “Neville, do you read the Bible?” I said, yes, daily, hours. Then he said to me, “What do you make of it?”472 ¶42

I said, well, I teach it. “You teach it?” Well, being a college man and a brilliant doctor, he expected that I had some scholastic background in the Bible and that I went through some regular training in theology. I said no. But then I did not have my visions; my promise was not fulfilled; it was only the law. So, I began to explain to him the law based upon the stories of scripture, taking first of all the story of Esau and Jacob. That Esau represented my outer world, I simply closed my eyes to it; and Jacob represented my inner world that I want to clothe in outer reality. When I shut out the outer and bring in the inner, I clothe it with the skins of Esau, and believe in the reality of what I have done. Then my Jacob…well, I’m self-persuaded and self-deceived, for I deceive myself into believing that my subjective state was an objective reality.472 ¶43

Well, Randy didn’t like that at all. He’d have no part of it and made short the visit, quickly closed the book and turned it down, because that’s not what religion is to him. On Sunday morning he and his wife and his two daughters would go to the Presbyterian Church and spend an hour. That was something to be done. That’s like walking with a cane in the days when you had to have a cane. You were undressed if you didn’t have a cane and so you are not complete in the course of a week if on Sunday morning you didn’t cap it off with a visit to the church.472 ¶44

Now today, I thought of him all day, but he has been gone a few weeks.472 ¶45

Undoubtedly Randy is modifying his beliefs. He knows the great work…not as yet…it will take time. You don’t awaken there as some wise, wise person. If you are foolish here, you are foolish there. If you are a thief here, you’re a thief there. The same innate thing is with you and you overcome them. That you could put everything in the world before a man who is not a thief, you couldn’t tempt him; therefore, there is no satisfaction, no merit, you can’t tempt him. You take a man who doesn’t drink and you put before him all the liquor in the world and he doesn’t want one…that’s no temptation.472 ¶46

If a man is regenerated and he is no longer in the world of generation, you could undress all the people in the world and expose them completely and he remains unmoved. That’s no temptation because his energies have been turned up. They’re no longer down into generation; they have been turned up into regeneration. And so everyone passes through the same picture. He simply overcomes without effort because when these things happen in us, not a thing you can do about it. They just simply happen and as they happen you change. You don’t change prior, because fitness is the consequence , it’s not the condition of the kingdom of heaven. The minute it happens in you that’s the consequence; but you didn’t find yourself being chosen because you acquired merit…you didn’t acquire merit at all.472 ¶47

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Now are there any questions, please?472 ¶48

Tonight’s title is “Brazen Impudence.” You’ll find that it pays off. Night after night we repeat certain ideas here. But it’s necessary to reiterate them and repeat them over and over, for a new idea will not become part of the common currency of thought until it’s really repeated over and over and man begins to live by it. Here we state that “Man is all Imagination. And God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself”. Now, I mean every word that I’ve just said…but it’s new. Man has been taught to believe that God exists outside of himself, so until this becomes a part of his thinking every moment of time when he hears the word God, out goes the mind to something that he has conceived God to be. But here, when I say “I am,” that’s God, that’s the Lord Jesus Christ of scripture, that’s Jehovah. Now you say “I am”…you go to bed at night and you put your head on the pillow, you are aware of being…that awareness of being, that’s God.471 ¶1

Now, tonight we’ll try to show you certain exercises that you really should practice. Here we come to this brazen impudence. In the 11th chapter of Luke it is said he was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray,” and then he gave the Lord’s Prayer, but that’s not what he’s teaching. He gave the Lord’s Prayer and you and I have it translated from the Latin. I’m told by Ferrar Fenton that the Latin tongue does not have the imperative passive mood of the first [...] to convey the meaning of the Savior. But if you take it from its original Greek that has the imperative passive mood, it’s an entirely different prayer, which is like this brazen impudence. For it seems to be this imperative passive mood is a standing order, something to be done absolutely and continuously. In other words, when we are told, “Thy will be done,” the imperative passive mood would be “Thy will must be being done.” When we are told, “Thy kingdom come,” it would be properly translated “Thy kingdom must be being restored.” It’s a standing order and the kingdom is being restored.471 ¶2

But that’s not what he’s teaching. He taught in the form of a parable and this is the story. “Which of you who has a friend would go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has come on a journey and I have nothing to set before him’; and he from within will say, ‘The door is locked. Do not bother me. My children are in bed with me; I cannot rise and get you anything.’ Yet I tell you, because he will not rise because he’s a friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him anything he needs’”. Well, the word translated importunity really means “brazen impudence.” He would not take no for an answer. Now, he’s teaching, mind you, a disciple how to pray. Well, he isn’t praying to some being on the outside, he’s praying within himself…he’s adjusting to himself…and he will not take no for an answer. He knows what he wants, he’s assuming that he has it, and he continues to assume that he has it until his assumption seems to take on all the necessary moods of reality. When it seems real to him, well then, he’s got it; but he will persist and persist in that assumption.471 ¶3

He’s trying to show us how to realize God in ourselves. It’s not on the outside…all in ourselves. Now he tells another story, that they should always pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge and he neither feared God nor regarded man; and in that city there was a widow and she came constantly asking him to vindicate her against her enemies. At first he refused. Then he said to himself, ‘Although I do no fear God nor regard man, this woman by her much coming bothers me, and so before she wears me out I will vindicate her’” . Again, the need for persistency in prayer.471 ¶4

Now, when you know how to pray, that’s when you really begin to forgive every being in this world. Because, one that you love dearly may be the instrument used by your persistency to aid the birth of your prayer, and he or she may be condemned in the act and pay society’s price while you escape, and you are the cause of his actions. I will share with you a very personal story. Every time I have told it I have been severely criticized for it, so I’m not saying tonight I’ll be exempt, but it is essential that you know it. I know that many years ago at the Fox Wilshire Theater when I was speaking for Dr. Bailes, Mrs. Bailes called me in and told me of the horrible reactions she got from this story. About a year later, there was a banquet at the Ambassador and I did not know that one of the ladies present was one of my most severe critics. But there she was, a lovely lady, and again she mentioned it to Mrs. Bailes, that I simply horrified her that I would use such a story from a spiritual platform. I used this story to illustrate a principle…I wasn’t bragging about the story. I was telling the story just to illustrate a principle, and I did say from the platform that I was the cause of that lady’s misfortune. Society blamed her and she paid the price, but I was the cause of her actions.471 ¶5

Now, if you can take it…if you can’t take it, well then, I’m not going to justify it. But, may I tell you, have you ever seen someone who has just given up alcohol or tobacco or meat or sex? Well, anyone who has just recently given up anything of this nature invariably condemns the state from which he has recently escaped. He feels too close to it to feel secure. So I’m not saying that this lady had a similar experience where she was the victim, I am not. But I do know these principles.471 ¶6

So here is the story. When I decided I wanted the girl who now bears my name for a wife, I applied this principle. I was terribly involved: I was married at the age of eighteen, I was a father at nineteen, and separated at nineteen, but never sought a divorce, just separation, and it was not a legal separation. It was the state of New York. But when I decided I wanted the present girl for my wife, I thought, now the principle is I sleep as though we were married. So in my hotel room I slept as though I slept in an apartment and she shared one bed and I shared the other, and I went sound asleep in that assumption. In those days, my dancing partner was living very well off of my income…why disturb the boat? So she told my wife that I was seeking a divorce and was looking for her and to make herself scarce, which she did. She left New York City and took up residence elsewhere in another state. Well, my dancing partner thought, now I have it made, my rent’s paid, food bought, clothes bought, and so we have him exactly where we want him…he can’t get a divorce, therefore he can’t marry the girl. She didn’t want me to marry my present wife. All I did was persist, I slept night after night in the assumption that she is my wife and she’s there, and I’m sleeping in this bed here.471 ¶7

One morning, less than a week, the phone rang. I answered. I didn’t rise early and it was quite early, maybe, 9:30. They got me to identify myself, I said, “Yes I’m Neville.” “Do you lecture?” I said, “Yes I lecture.” “How often?” I told her how often a week I lectured and where I lectured…they had the entire record. “Well, you’re a public character and we do not like to interfere with those who are in public, and it will be to your advantage to be in court next Tuesday morning at ten.” Well, I was sort of half sleepy anyway, and so I said, “All right, where is the court?” They gave me the street and the place and the court. So I hung up and after I hung up I said how stupid of me…some total stranger is pulling a joke and calls me up and tells me to be in court next Tuesday morning at ten. I have no reason to be in any court and they wouldn’t tell me why…just said be in court. So I thought nothing of it, and the next Tuesday morning at 9:30 I’m still unshaved, I’m not dressed, when the phone rings. Again, the same voice or similar voice getting all these answers again; she said, “I thought you said you’d be in court this morning.” So I said, “Well, how do I know who you are…you could be some prankster, disturbing my entire day by getting me out of bed, coming into court for no reason whatsoever.” Then she said, “It would be to your advantage as a public figure to be in court. Your wife is on trial this morning.”471 ¶8

Well, my wife’s on trial, so I went unshaved, no tie, just rushed on down to the court. The taxi got there just in time, really, as the judge was coming in. There were three judges on the bench. Then one whispered to an attendant, and he rose, and said, “Is Mr. Goddard in the audience?” I rose and said, “Yes, here I am.” He said, “Would you please take this place.” I came up and he said, “We aren’t going to swear you in, but maybe you can throw some light on this. Do you know this woman?” I said, “Yes, she is the mother of my son, she is my wife.” All right, “How long have you been separated?” So I told them fifteen, sixteen years. Now “This is what she’s accused of…lifting out a few dresses for which she didn’t pay, and they caught her, and here she is. Can you throw any light on it?” I said, “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think she’s ever done this before. I don’t think she’ll ever do it again. I tell you we have a marvelous son, and please do nothing to her to reflect in any way upon my son. He lives with me. I don’t think she ever did it before or she’d ever do it again. If I can say something, she’s eight years my senior, and she may be passing through a certain emotional state which prompted her to do what she did. I don’t think she’ll do it again. If you must, sentence her, then please suspend it.” He said to me, “In all my years on the bench I have never heard an appeal like this. For one who if you had this honor you could have some tangible proof or evidence to get what you want, because she tells me you want a divorce.” Perfectly all right. He sentenced her to six months and then suspended it. She waited for me in the back and said, “Neville, that was a decent thing to do. Give me the subpoena.” I said, “I didn’t bring it with me.” We rode together in a taxi back to my hotel, and I did what I should not have done, for it’s not legal to actually serve your own, and I did. Went upstairs and got it, she waited for me, and I gave it to her.471 ¶9

Now, who was the cause of her misfortune? She lived in a different state. She came to New York City and did the act and they caught her there, so it was tried in New York State in the city. So I say, every being in this world will serve your purpose…so in the end you forgive all. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” She moved under compulsion to do what she did. So I told this story as I’ve just told it only to illustrate a principle. You don’t need to ask anyone to aid you in the answer of a prayer for the simple reason God is omnipotent, omniscient. And because he is omniscient and he’s in you as your wonderful I-am-ness, where would you ask and who would you ask? They are all your servants; they’re slaves, bidding and doing your will. Know what you want, construct a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your dream, and then enter it. Actually go right into it and stay there. The next night do the same thing. Now, if your imaginal construct agrees sufficiently well with that which it is used, I would say, to illustrate, well then, your fancy becomes fact. If it doesn’t, all right, throw the whole thing out and start all over again. Costs you nothing.471 ¶10

So you construct a scene. In my case, a simple scene…she is there and I am here…and I am not in my hotel room. I’m married now living a better life in an apartment. I went sound asleep, and in one week I had all that I needed to start action for divorce. So that’s what the Bible teaches and that’s what I teach. It is my textbook. “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will”. That’s the story. He sets no limit to the power of belief, no limit to the possibilities of prayer. But it calls for, I would say, brazen, brazen impudence—you don’t take no for an answer.471 ¶11

Try it! When I say you are all Imagination, I mean it! I’m standing here on the platform, it would take me a split second, eyes open or shut, to imagine I’m standing on the outside looking from that angle at the building…looking at this building from that angle; or one split second to be in London and view the world from London. You say, well, that’s all hallucination, that’s all in your Imagination.471 ¶12

All right, now let me share this one with you. I was in New York City when I heard that my nephew, he’s seventeen years old, was in a terminal state of cancer, my sister’s oldest child. I knew how she felt…she was desperate. What could I do to comfort her, to show her that man is not flesh and blood, that man is spirit? While in New York City I went to my bedroom, closed the door; before that I told my wife not to disturb me, leave me alone until I came out. I went in and I assumed that I was in my father’s home in Barbados where my sister lived, the old family house. I assumed I was on the bed where I knew Billy would be. I assumed that when my sister entered that room she could not see her son Billy, she could only see her brother Neville. I lost myself in the assumption that my sister Daphney entered the room, looked startled, came forward, looked equally startled, and then left the room. When I was satisfied that I saw her and she saw me and couldn’t see her son, then I broke it, and came out and joined my wife and a friend who had come to cocktails. This friend said to me, “You know, Neville, you look very heavy…you’re always so light and gay, and now you seem so heavy, so heavy in spirit.” So I told her what I had just done. It didn’t impress her. That was simply one of those things that Neville does, as she would say.471 ¶13

Well, about ten days later it so happened that she was at home when I received a letter from my sister, Daphney, and in the letter Daphney said, “Nev, I don’t understand it” giving the day, giving the hour coinciding with mine in New York City…allowing the difference of one hour because of the time difference. She said, “I went into Billy’s room and I was startled to see you. I knew you were in New York City and yet here you are on Billy’s bed. I went over to the bed and I couldn’t see my son Billy…looked and looked and looked as I did and couldn’t see him. I’m looking at you and you are looking at me. So I turned around, I must confess, a bit half afraid, a bit scared, and so I went back into the outer room…and when I came back I could see Billy.” By then I had departed. If I am all Imagination, I must be where I am in Imagination, I must be. I can stay there until I give it sensory vividness, until I give it the tones of reality. And if I can be seen by my sister 2,000 miles away across water…for that’s the Caribbean and I’m in New York City and I don’t yet walk on water, so here, I’m there. And all of a sudden she is seeing her brother; she can’t see her son.471 ¶14

Now, I didn’t save Billy, he died. He was riddled with it. But it did convince her that her son Billy is not flesh and blood. If her brother in New York City could appear to her in Barbados, there is something that departs this body that cannot go to death. There is an immortal you that cannot go to eternal death in that which cannot die. And that’s what I gave my sister that day…the conviction of a reality in man (her son Billy) that will survive that moment when the doctor will say to her, “Mrs. Batterson, he is gone.” Gone where? Restored, a young lad just like that, in a world terrestrial just like this, in a garment like before, a wonderful garment, to continue a journey that was set up in the beginning for him. And that journey was for one purpose, to form in him the image of God, and that image is Jesus Christ. So when Christ is formed in Billy, well then, Billy will awake as Jesus Christ, the one being that is God.471 ¶15

But now I say, practice it. Tonight when you go home, sit in the living room and assume that you are now not looking at one angle, you are at the other angle looking at this angle. Sit where you can’t be seen. In New York City I had my telephone in the hallway. And my big chair where I sat and read all through the day…I would sit in that chair and assume that I’m at the telephone. Then, I would assume at the telephone I’m looking into the living room, but you couldn’t see it because it could not be seen from the telephone. And make it natural. You get so easy, in a split second you can be in any part of the world. And if, like my sister, there is a sensitive present where you imagine yourself to be, you’ll be seen. And they will say, “I had a strange experience, I saw John, I saw Bob, I saw so-and-so.”471 ¶16

You might become so [...] a part of it you even forget that you did it. I do it all the time. There are those here tonight…one lady when I was in New York City, she didn’t know I was in New York City, she thought I was in Barbados; and when she saw me the last time before I went to Barbados…not this last time, the previous one…I was painfully thin, down to 138, emaciated, and she thought of me and hoped I was feeling better and looked better. As she thought of me, instantly I am in her living room standing before her, brown from the sun in Barbados, in a grey suit—which I did not own when I left here, a business grey, which I bought on my way back in New York City—and I said to her, “There is no time” and vanished. Well, she’s accustomed to these things, therefore, she was not afraid, she wasn’t startled.471 ¶17

So I say to you, don’t limit yourself to the little body of flesh and blood. You are not flesh and blood. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” You must one day put it down and that which puts it down is the immortal you; that is your own wonderful human Imagination that is God. And when you learn to live this way, may I tell you, it becomes so exciting…your days are so full; you’re never alone. They say, “What do you do, Neville, you spend all day home reading the Bible?” Yes and meditating…close your eyes and you’re elsewhere. Close your eyes and you’re just traveling, and that’s fun. Not only is it fun but it’s educational. It expands you. It makes you become more and more aware of the infinite being that you really are.471 ¶18

So here, the one lesson that he gave in these two stories is the lesson of persistence. So you pray tonight, get down on your knees and pray to whom? You aren’t going to be answered. Go to bed with a loving wonderful thought, clear conscience. He isn’t seeing you on your knees. You just go to bed and dare to assume that you are now the man, the woman, that you want to be, and that those you love are what you want them to be, and go sound asleep in that assumption as though it were true. If you sleep as if it were true, that’s the road to success. You bring things into being by this manner. So tonight if it’s not for yourself then for another. You’ll find that someday, too, you might be paying a price when someone else is treading in the winepress. Because who knows who is treading in the winepress that starts the subtle change in men’s minds? I know that my first wife didn’t. Had she known for one moment that that meant my freedom and her disgrace, do you think she would have done it? She moved under compulsion and I was the compelling force. So I could forgive. So in the end, you forgive everyone for everything he’s ever done, because you might have been the one who was the cause of what they did.471 ¶19

So as Blake said, “Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help and not ourselves in whom God dwells?” Why call on any God when he dwells within you…he actually became you. He’s not pretending that he’s you; he actually became you. So when you walk the earth, don’t confine yourself, which is confining God, to the one little garment which he had to wear when he became a slave. He became a slave in this world of slavery, but don’t limit him to that little garment. You don’t need the help of any person in this world. You need no intermediary between yourself and self, and that self is God.471 ¶20

So don’t run from this city in the hope of finding something more comfortable elsewhere. The one person you’re going to carry with you is yourself, so you can run from here to the ends of the earth and you carry self. So resolve it here! You know what you want? Well then, don’t compromise. Know exactly what you want. When you know then assume that you have it. How would you see the world if it were true? What would the world look like? And then see if you can’t construct a scene which would imply that you have it. If your mental construct comes close to that which it is used to illustrate, well then, your little dream, the day dream becomes a fact.471 ¶21

When it becomes a fact, what does it matter what others think about your principle…it proves itself in performance. And you can share it with another and have them share it with another, and keep on sharing this principle with the whole vast world. Because in the end we are one, anyway, we aren’t two. Without loss of identity—you do not lose your individuality—yet in the end we are one, and that one is the Lord Jesus Christ: One body, one Lord, one Spirit, one God and Father of all. All will awake…and in the end all will be the Lord Jesus Christ.471 ¶22

Don’t be ashamed to claim it. For man’s concept of the Lord Jesus Christ is a very puny little thing, some little thing on the outside. These monstrous little pictures that they have of him—that’s not the Lord Jesus Christ! When you see him, he’s just like you, just like you.471 ¶23

A friend of mine wrote me this week…it’s a sweet vision. I don’t think she thinks much of it, but I’ll tell her it’s a truly great vision. One page, and for this lady one page is really a tremendous accomplishment, because this lady will go into eight, ten and twelve pages…and, of course, I love them because she does tell me much. But this is one page. “I saw a man in white, white robes, up on a hill and a temple. He was building a canopy over the entrance of that temple and he was using twelve inch stripes to build it. So I went into the canopy and looked up, and it was translucent green, beautiful. I remarked how radiantly beautiful it was. As I looked at it, it was you, Neville, and yet it was Michelangelo. I said to myself, it can’t be, you can’t be two. You can’t be Neville and be Michelangelo, and yet you are both. Well, I let it rest there. He said, ‘I have been working on this throughout eternity, and it still remains invisible for others to see.’ I felt he desired to have recognition, so I took these stripes and I wove them across him and formed a kind of basket. And then it was you again and you thanked me and said, ‘Great work!’ I knew either you or he or both wanted recognition for a work that had been taking eternity. Then I woke.” She added, “Isn’t that an odd thing.”471 ¶24

Well, may I tell you, if you can write, you take the story of the resurrection. It has never been told in a living form. Put it in the living form. It’s been told throughout the centuries and it still remains dead, like his Pieta made of marble or his David made out of marble. Let David become alive in the mind of those who see the play…who David really is as against the Pieta on the mother’s lap. So take the story. I say it’s public property. I don’t want one penny from you if you have the ability to tell it. Take a normal man, fifty years old, doing a normal job in the city, any city, lay it in any city. Need not be American, could be an Italian, French, a Japanese anyone in the world. He has brothers, he has sisters and he has friends, and he has to work to feed and clothe himself and his family.471 ¶25

One night like all other nights in the fifty years as he walks the earth, he goes to bed to find it’s a different night. In the wee hours of the morning an unearthly vibration awakens him, and when he awakens he awakens in his skull and not in his bed as he had throughout the years, to discover he is resurrected from the grave, from the dead. All the imagery concerning the birth of God comes before him…this simple man that his little community knew and liked. He was not a big man, not anyone highly publicized, just a normal man, and it happened in him, the entire drama.471 ¶26

Well then, dramatize that and put it into a half-hour TV, or put it into a play, and let Michelangelo’s great labor become alive. So I have made it alive because I have experienced it. So you saw correctly: The two widely separated in time are closely woven in the tapestry of life. He labored with his tremendous know-how of the human form and he could work in all these different media. And I came along to find it happening in me, without the ability to mold a stick; and yet a babe, an unearthly babe, and people and a grave, and everything in this world that even he in his giant days could not have produced with his hands all happened by exploding from within. So show them, show them this wonderful story as it really is as against the story that we have heard for 2,000 years.471 ¶27

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *471 ¶28

Now are there any questions, please?471 ¶29

The Bible begins with Abram, a character whose name means “exalted father.” Abram was placed in a profound sleep, told of the trials and tribulations he would pass through, and the length of time which he would suffer. Then the Lord God said to him: “Behold my covenant is with you. No longer shall your name be Abram, but Abraham for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.” The insertion of the letter “he” (the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is “grace”) changed the name from Abram to Abraham. Now, grace is Jesus Christ, for we are told: “Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” So into the name of Abram goes the letter “he” and grace is inserted into the exalted father. Then the journey begins.470 ¶1

Scripture tells us that God speaks to man through the language of dream and makes himself known in a vision. If God speaks to me in a dream and makes himself known to me in a vision, there is nothing more important than to record that vision.470 ¶2

Here is a vision I had in 1934. I was alone in my living room. My eyes were closed and I was meditating, but not on anything in particular. I love to just turn my eyes inward and watch the liquid, golden clouds form. (If you try it you will find it very easy to do. Simply turn your eyes inward, close the lids as though asleep, and suddenly all of the dark convolutions of the brain will grow luminous. They will pulse and form themselves into clouds around your head.) Here I am, not thinking of anything in particular, simply observing these golden forms, when suddenly before my vision appears a large, rough quartz. As I watch, it fragments itself into numberless little pieces. Then some magnetic hand or invisible force took all of these pieces, and gathering them together, molded them into the human form.470 ¶3

Here is a man seated in the lotus posture in deep, deep meditation. As I looked at him I saw myself. Here I am observing myself meditating myself. As I watched, it began to pulse with life. Then it began to glow like the sun, and when it reached the limit of intensity it exploded. I broke the silence and returned once again to the normal state in this world.470 ¶4

That was an adumbration, a forecasting of my last days in this age. I saw my exit. When the moment comes for this garment to be taken off for the last time in this age (which will be this present little stretch of time) I will explode into eternity. There was no form. The form preceded it. That meditating figure in the lotus posture was perfect. It could not be improved upon. It’s difficult to conceive such perfection, yet I was looking at myself. I knew he was meditating me, and that I do his will. I came to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work, which is to fulfill scripture. And when that is completed he will explode and we will be one.470 ¶5

We are told: “Call no man on earth Father, for you have but one Father who is in heaven, and the kingdom of heaven is within.” You have a being just like yourself, meditating you! What you think is an original thought, an original desire, is nothing more than the will of your Father, the one meditating you. So in the end no matter what you have done, you are forgiven because you only played the part he willed you to play. To him you are David, the son of Jesse (I am) a man after his own heart who will do all his will. You have always done his will and you will always do it, and in the last days, to you alone he will appear.470 ¶6

We are told: “Scoffers will come in the last days scoffing and saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming, for ever since the fathers fell asleep all things have continued as they were from the creation of the world.’” Man is looking for the Father to come from without and not to resemble the one who is looking for him, but when he finds him he finds himself. You are God the Father meditating your projection for the experience of this world, and you will redeem yourself in the last days.470 ¶7

Let me show you how scripture reveals this. Bear in mind the Bible is a mystery, not as something to be kept secret, but mysterious in character. You must search the scripture to find the Father. When the letter “he” was placed in the name of the exalted Father, he became Abraham, the father of a multitude of nations. “And the scriptures, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham.” The gospel is the play. Let us see how this is revealed to us.470 ¶8

At the end of the journey, one that should know better said: “Master, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.” He then replied: “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How then can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” They do not believe he took upon himself the form of Man and became obedient unto death upon the cross of Man. But I know that the being I saw meditating me as my very self was Christ, who is God the Father.470 ¶9

Now, if God is a father he must have a son, and if he was the Father before he began to meditate this projection of himself, then he had a son before he began this projection. So he asks the question: “What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is he?” And when they answered, “The son of David,” he said, “Why then did David, in the Spirit, call him my Father?” (The word “adonai” is translated “Lord,” as every son referred to his father as “my lord”). But David called him Father in the Spirit, and not in the flesh! Here he reveals who the Father is and who the Son is, but no one understood it.470 ¶10

The evangelists recorded it. I read it over and over, but didn’t see it until I experienced it. Not until David stood before me and I experienced the relationship of Father/Son did I really understand that passage. I have talked to priests, rabbis, ministers, and truth teachers, but none see it, and because of their fixed belief they will not see it. They do not believe that the character in scripture called Jesus Christ is God the Father, and the character in scripture called David is the Son of God, even when they read the 2nd Psalm, where David says: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord, he said unto me, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.’” In spite of that, they still cannot see it.470 ¶11

Now, I say the Bible is completely consistent in imagery and symbolism. I saw the rock, and the meditating figure who is the cause of my behavior. The thing that is cause is Father, for he is the source of all. I saw a man who did not just resemble me but was me, raised to the nth degree of perfection - alive, breathing and radiating until it exploded like the sun. We find the same symbolism in the 89th Psalm: “I have found David, he cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation!’” The Rock, the Father, and God. This meditating being has me in his power. There is not a thing I can do but fulfill his will. And in the end when he explodes we are one, and he has gathered, from the experiences he has put me through, that which was necessary for his own personal expansion, his own personal luminosity, going beyond what he was prior to the deep sleep into which Abram, the exalted Father, was placed.470 ¶12

So a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and as he slept the Lord God said to him: “Your descendants shall be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and they will be slaves there for four hundred years.” In the Hebrew world (especially in the mysteries) every letter was a numerical value as well as a symbolical value. The last letter, tau has a numerical value of four hundred. Its symbol is the cross. Four hundred does not mean years as you and I count them. It means as long as you wear the cross of Man.470 ¶13

At the very end, when you take off the cross, you will explode into a new being - a new body, a new age, a new world. The exalted Father had to take upon himself the limitation of Man to enter the world of three dimensions, but when he has completed his journey, he and his projection which he put through hell explode, and they are one.470 ¶14

We are told: “No one comes unto me unless my Father calls him, and I will raise him up at the last days.” Now, this is a difficult passage for anyone to understand. No one comes to me unless my Father calls him. Well, I saw my Father, and he calls everyone into my world; but he is calling a certain remnant in the last days and these, with my explosion, will be raised.470 ¶15

The day you hear Neville is dead, far from being dead I will be in an entirely new age, and I will raise with me those that my Father designates. I cannot name one of them. When they said: “John and James, let them sit at your right hand,” he said: “It is not mine to give, but my Father’s who is in heaven.” He knows who he is calling. And when the real end comes, far from being restored into a world just like this with my Father still in meditation, still putting me through the paces, I will explode and return to the Father, expanded, greater than that which I was before that the world was. I came out from the Father and came into the world. Again I am leaving the world and returning to the Father, taking with me everyone my Father calls.470 ¶16

The Father is not something you are going to find in some cathedral, some retreat, or holy place; he is wherever you are. The Father is within you, and one day you will be sitting quietly, not thinking of anything in particular, when the symbolism will take place. The rock (the quartz) will shatter into pieces, then reassemble itself into the perfect statue of you as a meditating Buddha. Then it will begin to glow like the sun, brighter and brighter, until it explodes and you return to the awareness you were when the vision possessed you.470 ¶17

So do not go beyond where you are in search of the Father. When you see a picture drawn by an artist who claims it is a picture of Christ and it doesn’t resemble you, don’t believe him. Every Sunday morning sculptures and paintings are sold in all the churches in the world claiming they are in the likeness of Christ, yet they don’t look like anyone you know - or like anyone in this world, for that matter. Those who buy them have forgotten that Christ is God’s Power and Wisdom which was put into the Father as the Father when he fell asleep to dream the sons of God into being.470 ¶18

Carl Jung had a vision similar to mine about ten years after I did, but it frightened him, which indicates to me that he is not at the end of the journey. When he saw himself in the lotus posture he was afraid, because he knew when he awoke he, Carl Jung, would be no more. But the Father does not see the projection that is the dream of himself, the real self who could not enter the sphere. He must dream it and make it real. He cannot pretend, for complete incarnation is essential to individualization.470 ¶19

It’s a tragedy, yes. It’s a separation from the Father, for I was looking at him. It’s a fall into decay and death, for that is what this world is. It’s a fall into hell, for this world is hell, but the end will justify the means. Paul said: “I do not consider the sufferings of the present time worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed in us.” No matter what you have gone through and still have the memory of, or what you are going through, or may go through, no suffering can compare to the glory that will one day be yours. That glory is the unveiling of God within you as you. You are not going to see him as another. You are God.470 ¶20

But the one passage I quoted earlier is still puzzling, for I tell you: your Father is meditating you and yet here is a passage saying that my Father has called a certain number which I will raise at the last moment. Are they to be exempt? Will they be freed by reason of the fact that I will raise them up? I do not know. I only know that scripture cannot be broken.470 ¶21

We are told: “You must be born again, for unless you are born again you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” The same one who made that statement claims that when he is raised, he will raise all that his Father (which is himself) calls in the last days. But while he, the Christ in you who has come only to fulfill scripture, projects himself on the screen of space, he has no choice but simply executes his Father’s will. “My meat is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work,” and the only work he came to accomplish was to fulfill scripture.470 ¶22

He never attempted to change Caesar’s world. If there was slavery he left it in slavery. All of the things that are happening today, you and I think never happened before, but it has always happened. Cruelty there, cruelty here, slavery there, slavery here, and he never attempted to change one thing. He said: “You want to pay taxes? Give me the coin. Whose inscription is this? Caesar’s? Then render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”470 ¶23

Now this happened to me in 1934, and the mighty acts of God did not start to awaken me until 1959, so my Father knows all. He knew in ’34 that regardless of what happened (wars or rumors of wars) I would be here in a garment of flesh and blood in ’59, for in the interval of time between ’59 and ’63 he knew what he was going to do to his projected image. He also knows the moment of my departure. I only know it is this interval of time, for I have finished the race. I have fought the good fight and I have kept the faith, but the day of my departure I do not know. That hour only he knows. Whenever it comes I know an explosion awaits me and I will awaken as the very being that I saw, only it will not be man as we know man, but an entirely different being.470 ¶24

Your Father resembles you. He looks like you and is in love with you because you do his will. If you did horrible things in the past it is because he willed it. If today you do lovely things, he wills it, but you will not escape the doing of one thing in the play. Before we fell asleep we all agreed to dream in concert, that we may enter this world of three-dimension, this world of dream.470 ¶25

May I tell you: the dreamer cannot be destroyed by his dream because he is dreaming in a remote region of the soul. Not a thing that happens in this world can ever touch him. If you blew the whole earth apart you couldn’t touch the Father who is dreaming, and because he can restore the dream, he will restore the earth. He will restore anything.470 ¶26

His projected self dies at the age of eighty. She looks old and is old, when suddenly she is formed into a lovely girl of twenty. She is totally unaware of how it happens, but her Father is doing it. He is all powerful. Having dreamed and projected her, his dream for eighty years, he simply restores her to youth with everything in place. Nothing is missing and she is twenty and no longer eighty.470 ¶27

Now, isn’t that a miracle? I see this constantly. They are not babies or children, but young men and ladies, twenty years of age. They procreate there and have their children too. They work there as they do here. The world is terrestrial just like this and solid just like this, and they do not know the Father.470 ¶28

So he said: “If you knew me you would know my Father also, but because you know not my Father, you do not know me.” If you only knew me you would not kill, but you kill because you do not know me or the Father. That’s what he is saying. That’s the one who is dreaming us into being.470 ¶29

I hope that this will be your experience in the not distant future, for you can mark it down. From ’34 to ’59 was the time allotted in my case. Then from ’59 to ’63 the four mighty acts unfold. The first is your resurrection and birth from above. The second is the discovery of David, who calls you Father. The splitting of the temple (which is your body) from top to bottom and your ascent like a serpent into heaven is the third. The descent of the dove which smothers you with love is the fourth and final mighty act of God.470 ¶30

Now the first word uttered by the figure called Jesus Christ was when he was twelve years old. Appearing in the temple he turned to his earthly parents and said: “Do you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” At the end of the journey he is still speaking of the Father when he announces: “Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit. Thou hast redeemed me.” (If he completes the verse of the 31st Psalm which he is quoting he would add: “O Lord, faithful God.”) Then he commits himself into the hands of himself, for he has withdrawn and the race is over.470 ¶31

Tonight, don’t even feel the nearness of the Father, for the Father is never so far off as even to be near, as nearness implies separation. When you fall asleep this night remember his name is “I AM.” That’s the one on the pillow. And may it be this night that he will seem to be another, but that’s the way it has to be done in the language of symbolism and imagery. Now let us go into the silence.470 ¶32

A ccording to a rabbinical principle, what is not written in the Old Testament does not exist. The life of Jesus follows this principle. He made no attempt to change the world of Caesar or its social order, but left it just as it is, for man to make mistakes and live as he desires. Urging man to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s, Jesus comes into our lives for one purpose and that is to fulfill scripture. Tonight I want to show you how this is done in 1,260 days.468 ¶1

Daniel confesses in the last chapter of his book that he did not understand the vision, when: “A man stood clothed in linen, above the water, who said to me, ‘The words are closed and sealed until the time of the end.’ I asked him, ‘How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?’ and he said, ‘A time, two times, and half a time.’” In Hebrew thought, a time is a year or 360 days; so we have three years of 360 days each and a half year of 180 days, which equal 1,260 days. Daniel was not told when the signs would begin, only that it would take 1,260 days to complete them.468 ¶2

Let us now turn to the 12th chapter of the Book of Revelation, where John tells us: “I saw in the heavens a great pulpit. A woman clothed with the sun, wearing a crown of twelve stars upon her head, was standing on the moon. In labor and with great pain she brought forth a male child, which was caught up to the throne of God. Fleeing into the wilderness to a place prepared for her, she was fed for 1,260 days.” Here we find the clue to the beginning of the 1,260 days as the birth of the child.468 ¶3

Now, the manner of Jesus’ birth is – for those who know who he is – a sign of divine initiative in our redemption. No doubt you have heard the story of Jesus’ birth unnumbered times, told as some man who was born almost 2,000 years ago; but let me tell you: if there is any other Jesus Christ other than he who is buried, rose, and continues to rise in individual men and women, he is a false Christ. And any teacher who talks about Jesus as someone from without misleads the millions who hear the story.468 ¶4

We carry in our body the death of Jesus. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his as he rises in us individually; therefore, who is he? From my own personal experience (I am not theorising, I am not speculating) I know that your awareness, your I AMness is Christ Jesus, who is the Lord God Jehovah. The word “Jesus” is the anglicised form of the Hebrew word “Joshua” which means “saviour.” We are told: “I am the Lord, your God, your saviour, and beside me there is no saviour.” It is the Lord God Jehovah who became as we are that we may be as he is; therefore there is no intermediary between you and God, your saviour.468 ¶5

Now to the 1,260 days. On July 20 of the year 1959, my day was normal. I lectured in the morning to a large audience in San Francisco. Calling my wife around 9:00 P.M., I read the Bible and a bit of Blake and retired about 11:00 P.M., expecting nothing other than a normal, restful sleep.468 ¶6

At 4:00 in the morning, a vibration centered at the base of my skull began to increase in intensity until I thought I would explode from the force of it. I am not a doctor, but I have read of massive brain hemorrhages and thought I was having one. I couldn’t conceive of living through this experience, yet I was unable to arrest it. Then I began to awaken, to discover that I was completely sealed within my own skull. I had but one consuming desire, and that was to get out of it. Intuitively knowing that if I would push the base of my skull something would give, I did, and something rolled away as I came out inch by inch just as a child emerges from the womb of a woman.468 ¶7

Then the imagery spoken of in the books of Luke and Matthew began to appear before me: the witnesses to the event and the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. I was unseen by those who were present. They spoke of me and knew the child was mine; but me they could not see, for I was clothed in an entirely different body of spirit, and no longer the flesh and blood body that they knew. I not only saw them, I could discern their every thought. And when the child was placed upon the bed and I picked it up and looked into its face and said: “How is my sweetheart?” it broke into a heavenly smile. Then the vision was caught up into the heavens and disappeared from sight, for the whole thing had come out of me.468 ¶8

Then on January 1, 1963, the fourth event appeared in the form of a dove who descended on me and smothered me with love.468 ¶9

Now, I have recorded the date of every great mystical event I have experienced, next to the passage of scripture which parallels it. Next to the passage concerning the resurrection, I had marked July 20, 1959. That was one side of the coin, for the same night was the birth; so against the passage regarding the birth of Christ (who is the Son of God who is one with God) I also wrote the date of July 20, 1959. When another vibration exploded in my head and David of Biblical fame stood before me and called me “Father”, I wrote the date of December 6, l959 next to the passage in the 89th Psalm, where the Lord said: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’”468 ¶10

On the 8th day of April, 1960, a bolt of lightning split me in two from the top of my head to the base of my spine and I separated. At the base of my spine I saw golden liquid light, which I knew to be myself. Fusing with it, I ascended like a serpent in a fire of lightning back into my skull, as it reverberated as though shattered. I recorded that vision as against the passages: “The curtain of the Lord was split in two from top to bottom” and: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”468 ¶11

Here recently I was reading the Book of Daniel, gathering my thoughts together as I was on my way to San Francisco to start a series of lectures on the 15th of July. Sitting alone in my living room with my Bible in my hand, memory returned and I knew that if I counted the days between my resurrection and birth, and the descent of the dove, it would come to 1,260 days. Checking the dates I had recorded in my Bible, I discovered that there were 139 days between the first event (the resurrection and birth) and the second one, which was the discovery of David and the fatherhood of God. The third vision appeared 123 days later, with the fourth and final vision arriving in 998 days. No matter how many times I checked them, they always came out to 1,260 days. Here is a definite pattern of four major visions which complete themselves in 1,260 days, making the one who experiences them the pattern man.468 ¶12

Now, the calendar of the ancients differed from ours. Their year consisted of 360 days, which were divided into twelve equal parts of thirty days each. I did not use the ancient calendar, but our modern one, yet the pattern remained the same: 1,260 days. If tomorrow someone changes the calendar, the same number of days will appear between the birth of God in Man and the descent of the Holy Spirit.468 ¶13

Now, against the passage: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim liberty to the captives and to open the eyes of those who are in prison” (recorded in the 61st chapter of Isaiah) I wrote January 1, 1963. I can now say with the central figure of scripture: “This scripture has been fulfilled in me. The book is now closed, given back to the attendant, for I know who Christ really is.” I have not changed my identity, but now wear a garment – although unseen by mortal eye – that is all power. There is nothing here on earth to compare it with. No longer am I an animated form. I now know myself to be a life-giving spirit. The power that I know myself to be animates all forms, so I know now who Christ really is.468 ¶14

As a child I was raised in a Christian environment and taught that Jesus was a man outside of me. Although I read in the scriptures: “I carry in my body the death of Jesus” it meant nothing to me. And “If I am united with him in a death like his I will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his,” were only words, for I was taught Christ was another, someone different, and not a simple, normal man. But now I know that God assumed the weakness and limitations of man by assuming his form. The rabbis of the day, however, expected some fantastic being to come out of space and lead Israel out of its misery and enslave those who had enslaved Israel – but that is not the story. God became Man and erupts in Man in these four mighty acts. I have experienced all of the events recorded in the Old Testament, but the ones I have spoken of tonight are the four important ones.468 ¶15

We are told that when Jesus stood upon the Mount of Olives, they asked him: “When will you come and what will be the sign of your coming?” Pointing to the wonderful buildings, he said: “You see these buildings? I tell you, not one stone will be standing upon another that will not be thrown down. That is when you will know.” On the 21st day of December, l960, I came upon fantastic city of tall buildings, and as I looked at each building it tumbled until not one stone was left standing upon the other. So I wrote that date against this prophecy in the 24th chapter of Matthew and the 13th of Mark.468 ¶16

Other visions came after the 1,260 days. I recorded them, but the important ones are these four. The first, a dual one – the resurrection and birth. The second, a single vision – the discovery of David, who called me Father.468 ¶17

Who would have thought that a man born in this century was the father of one recorded to have lived 3,000 years ago? But there was no other way that God could give himself to us and prove that he did it equally, unless his only begotten Son revealed it. And when David calls me Father and calls you Father, are we not one? How could we ever know we are one unless we have the same son who calls us Father? David will one day rise in the life of everyone so that all will know that he (or she) is God the Father.468 ¶18

Although it may sound strange, I tell you that you – a lady – will know you are the Father. You see, sex belongs only to this level. When these visions come upon you, you are in a region above the organisation of sex, so you will not think it strange when David calls you Father, as you will know that you are neither male nor female, but Man, and God is Man. Seeing your wonderful Son is the fulfillment of the 2nd Psalm. In it David speaks, saying: “I will tell you of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me: ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.’” Start counting from the day the child appears, to the descent of the dove, and you will discover it to be 1,260 days.468 ¶19

I tell you the Bible is literally true, but it is not concerned with the world of Caesar. If tomorrow you rose to the heights of this world and received all the worldly honors offered here, in time they would turn to ash. Oh yes, apply the law and have all of the worldly gifts you desire while you are here. Live graciously, but I tell you: only as you fulfill scripture do you really fulfill God’s purpose.468 ¶20

The visions come suddenly, like a thief in the night. I had no idea that the night of July 20, 1959 would differ from any other. I did not know that the story of Jesus Christ was mine. I did not know Jesus interpreted the Old Testament with himself as the very center of it; that the human imagination – our human IAMness – was He. But now I know that there never was another Jesus and there never will be another, and those who teach another are false teachers teaching a false Christ.468 ¶21

Let me share a vision with you now. We are told in the Book of Jeremiah that God sacrificed himself. In the story, Isaac said to Abraham: “Father, I see the fire and I see the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham answered his son, saying: “The Lord will provide himself, the lamb.” Here we see that no earthly sacrifice is required, for God sacrifices himself. He is the lamb provided for the great offering.468 ¶22

Well, about two weeks ago, just before we retired, my wife said to me: “I can’t go to sleep before I tell you what has been disturbing me all day. I had a vivid vision when I saw you bathed in radiant light, carrying yourself in your arms. It was the same kind of a limp body as seen in Michelangelo’s Pieta, only you – a radiant being – were carrying yourself, the sacrificed one.”468 ¶23

Here is a vision with tremendous spiritual significance. This vision was showing her the only way that man can ever awake. You are God! You, yourself, became human for a divine purpose. You died, and at the very end you will see the symbol of what you did. It’s the story of the seed: “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone, but if it dies it brings forth much.” The seed of God is His image and Jesus Christ is the sperm which is buried in Man. One day he will appear in the form as I have just revealed him to you, and you will reflect the glory of God the Father and bear the very stamp of his person.468 ¶24

There is only God. There cannot be another, so in the end there is Jesus only. Transfiguration takes place when all of the promises of God are fulfilled. Moses, the personification of the law, appears and Elijah, the personification of the prophecy is there; but having fulfilled the law and the prophecy, their personifications vanish, leaving Jesus only. That’s the story.468 ¶25

Zechariah tells us that on that day “The Lord will be king over all the earth and the Lord will be one and his name one.” In the end, all of us, without loss of identity, will form that one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. In eternity I will know you far more intimately than I can ever know you here, for now – like Pieta – you are wearing a mask; but the being I will know in eternity is he who is behind that mask. Yes, I will know you, yet I will know you as myself, for we will all form that one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.468 ¶26

Who, reading the scriptures today, would believe that they could be taken literally and fulfilled literally; yet I know from experience that they are. Before I began to count I knew it was going to come out to 1,260 days. I checked each date as I had recorded it when it happened. I didn’t go back and put a date in – and no matter how I checked it, it always came out to 1,260 days. The Bible is truly the Book of books, and what is not written there is non-existent.468 ¶27

The day will come when this building will crumble, the house you live in and the clothes you now wear will be left behind, for everything that comes into this world of death waxes, wanes, and vanishes. But God’s eternal Word will never pass away, and everyone born of woman will fulfill it. “My Word shall not return unto me void. It must accomplish that which I purposes and prosper in the thing for which I have sent it.” You were sent here to fulfill scripture.468 ¶28

Methods other than those I have spoken of tonight have [not?] been added, for they have not been found in the oldest manuscripts. Revelation gives you the event to start the count, but those not knowing this teach the end of the age; but this is not true. The world goes on as before, but you, individually, reach the end of your age. Having finished the job, you will say with Paul: “The time for my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.”468 ¶29

After the dove descends there is not a thing to do but continue fulfilling scripture. In my own case on the 10th of October, 1966, a glorious vision was mine and against the 53rd chapter of Isaiah I recorded that date: “Who will believe our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” On that night I experienced the betrayal as told us in the Book of John (and the 41st of Psalms, because the New Testament only fulfills the Old): “My friend who ate my food has lifted up his heel against me.”468 ¶30

I am seated in a room, square, but not so large as this, where I am speaking to twelve men (who are seated in front of me) about the Word of God. I said something that caused a man on my left to rise and quickly leave the room. The moment he did I knew he was going to report to the authorities what he had heard. Suddenly a tall, handsome man in his forties wearing a very costly robe entered the room. Recognising the dignity and authority of the man, we all rose and stood at attention as he entered. Standing straight as an arrow, he walked to the end of the room, turned at a right angle, walked to the end, again turned right and moving to the center, he came forward and faced me. Taking a wooden mallet, he hammered a wooden peg into my shoulder. Although it wasn’t painful, I felt the impact of every blow. Then with a circular, sharp instrument he cut off my sleeve and with one sweeping motion he pulled it off, revealing my right arm from the shoulder to the tips of my fingers. Stretching out his arms, he embraced me, kissed me on the right side of my neck as I kissed him on the right side of his neck. As I did, I saw the discarded sleeve, which was a beautiful shade of pale blue, and I knew it was also of costly fabric. Then the vision dissolved.468 ¶31

I now know from experience that the arm of the Lord has been revealed in me. When Daniel told this story, he said: “I saw in a vision of the night, under the clouds of heaven one came like the son of man, who was presented to the Ancient of Days. To him was given dominion and authority over all peoples, ages and races and of his reign there shall be no end.”468 ¶32

Everyone is going to be a part of that one body which rules everything here. The moment I was incorporated into it I had that dominion, that authority; but it will not be used as long as I wear this garment of flesh and blood. I remain here now only to tell my story to encourage others to have faith, and to set their hope fully upon this grace that is coming to them. The day will come when I will take this garment of flesh off for the last time to be one with the body of God forever and ever.468 ¶33

That vision did not come within the 1,260 days; it came after, so I recorded it in my Bible. If I had dropped this garment the night of the dove it would have been perfectly all right, for in that vision the heavens became translucent and the dove floated twenty or so feet above my head. It made no motion with its wings, but simply floated on crystal clear water with me submerged twenty feet below. So when the dove appeared to descend, it didn’t come through water; instead I must have emerged, as told in the story: “When Jesus came out of the water the dove descended upon him.”468 ¶34

The way this story is told, people think of earthly water; but in the vision the water was crystal clear, so translucent I could not tell if it was liquid or not. Do you know that we are actually living at the bottom of an ocean of air? In the spiritual sense we are in the flood, and when the dove appears he floats until the individual emerges. Then the dove takes your finger and smothers the individual with kisses.468 ¶35

Tonight you have heard a mystery that I personally have not read in any book. I never heard it. I can say with Paul: “I wasn’t taught it. I never heard it. It came through a series of self-revealing acts of God.” I did not reach these conclusions philosophically by long reflections; they came suddenly, unveiling me as the central figure of scripture, so I can say: “In the volume of the Book it is all about me.” The day will come when everyone will know that in the volume of the book it is all about him.468 ¶36

When we are told: “If you do not believe that I am he you will die in your sins,” it is not some man speaking, saying you must believe in him. No, the drama is unfolding in us and unless you individually believe that you are Jesus Christ you will die in your sins. It’s just as simple as that. I must persuade myself that I am he. If the Book was written of me, then it had to have happened before that the world was; so now it has to happen here. We have come down into garments of flesh and blood, garments of sin and death, to walk through states as these things happen in some remote region of our soul.468 ¶37

Now let us go into the silence.468 ¶38

Tonight the subject is “Eternal States.” You’ll find this the most practical teaching in the world of Caesar. It may not make sense…I only ask you to accept provisionally and try it, test it. I know that if you really test it, you’ll prove it. We start on the premise that “Man is all Imagination and God is Man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of Man is the Imagination, and that is God Himself.”467 ¶1

Now, when we speak of eternal states, let me first define what I mean by states. A state is a body of beliefs. You sit quietly with yourself and ask yourself some very pertinent questions, “Who am I?” You may be wrong in the answer, but “Who am I? Where am I? What am I?” and all these questions you ask self, and they form a body of beliefs. You don’t see them, you believe in them, but you don’t see what the mystic sees when you answer these questions.467 ¶2

Paul said, “We do not look to the outer things, we look to things unseen; for the outer things are transient, the unseen things are eternal.” If your eye is not opened, you do not see these personified beliefs of yours. They form a state and then completely control your behavior in this world. Any modification in a state will result in a modification in the circumstances of life. The slightest modification within your body of beliefs will result in a change in the out-picturing of your world. Everything is personified if you have the eyes to see it.467 ¶3

So Blake said, “Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy” and “By this, you will see, that I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil, when it leaves paradise following the serpent.”467 ¶4

Now, he uses the word “mercy” only as one who sees the states ever uses it. Just imagine, eternity exists and all things, not a few things but all things; you can’t conceive of a situation, can’t conceive of anything that does not already exist in eternity. He doesn’t call that creation. “Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation which was an act of mercy.”467 ¶5

Now, before we go into this practical side tonight, let us show you what he meant by mercy. Here you seem so alive all of you and you go home tonight and expect to find the same place that you left when you came here, and it all seems so real and everything here is so alive, everything is so alive. If you could come with me, I would show you that it isn’t; you are the operant power and you make it alive. “Where Man is not Nature is barren”…it’s dead. So when we say eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy, he meant that everything that you see in this world is a part of the eternal structure of the universe. But it’s dead, really dead. You come upon it, but you don’t know that you’re the operant power, and so you enter a state and the state becomes animated, and you’re lost in your own animation, and think it is independent of your perception of it. You look upon it and you don’t for one moment believe you are causing the animation that you are perceiving.467 ¶6

Now, what does he mean by an act of mercy? Here you and I are embedded in this world of death, embedded in it. We are living souls destined to be life-giving Spirits, but until we are life-giving Spirits we are simply living souls. We animate what we perceive! He said, “Oh, miserable man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?” Well, there’s no power in the world that can deliver you or anyone in this world from this power of death, this body of death but God. Here are the words of Peter, “Blessed be the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ! By his”—now he’s not speaking of Jesus Christ, he’s speaking of God—“by his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”467 ¶7

Now you read it and without the mystic’s vision of what is taking place you’re completely lost. What is he talking about? He speaks of “by his great mercy”…only the act of mercy can do it. Well, what happens? You and I embedded in this world of eternal death, animating dead forms, and believing them to be actually independent of our perception of them; and then one moment in time this great mercy awakens Jesus Christ within me. Were he not buried in me he could not emerge from me. So, “I carry in my body,” said Paul, “the death of Jesus…always carrying in my body the death of Jesus.” Here, we are the coffins, the tombs in which he is buried…and God awakens in us as us…and that delivers us from this body of death.467 ¶8

But until we are delivered from this body of death, you listen carefully how to live in it and adjust to this body of death. It is a dead body!467 ¶9

Before we go further, let me share with you now an experience of a friend, who is here tonight. He said, “I saw a semi-circle of a dozen or more women. I would say they were all in their seventies. They were a pathetic sight. Here they were seated on these spindly wooden chairs, holes in their faded sweaters and skirts. To see this horrible picture of despair…then suddenly one rose, retired to the back, and instantly scenery came in appropriate to what was about to take place. And here was this star of the past singing as no one today sings, and you realize why she is a legend, why this stardom was placed upon her. You never heard anything so great…everything was perfect. When she was through she returned to the chair. There she sat, and returned to the holes in the sweater and the faded, faded horrible looking drab apparel.467 ¶10

One after the other rose, went back, and the appropriate scene. Those who danced, music came; those who had to act then the supporting cast came into view equal to the need, and everything was perfect. But one, the most pathetic of all, held my attention, and she seemed to be at the end. I looked at her and she opened her purse. She knew she would find nothing in it. She opened the purse…not a coin, not a penny…this cheap little, well a five and ten cent store purse. She opened a compact, no lipstick, and it was all chipped, the whole thing was chipped off. It was really a pathetic sight.467 ¶11

“Then came her turn. Instead of watching her, as I did the others, I concentrated on her purse and that compact. In my Imagination I brought before my mind’s eye many shade of lipstick. I discarded one after the other and found the most lovely red which I thought would be perfect for her. In my Imagination I imagined it there and instantly before my view it was there as an objective fact. I knew intuitively that she needed fifty-four dollars. I had a vision of how she lived and where she lived. She could have used several hundred, but she actually needed fifty-four dollars, so in my Imagination I said, “Why not be generous and give her a thousand dollar bill?” So I imagined a crisp thousand dollar bill, and instantly it is in her purse. I did not see her performance. She returned and took her chair. She opened the purse and the thrill when she saw the thousand dollar bill, but even greater when she opened the compact and found the lipstick; for here was a woman who had been far, far too long without a lipstick. And then I deliberately vanished that she may not see the benefactor.”467 ¶12

I can tell him…I’ve told him for the last few months —whether I’ve persuaded him or not, I do not know—he has already been born from above. When the angel of the Lord stood before him and tried to persuade him that he was born, he denied it. He was taking the literal fact of this birth as against the spiritual birth. He is exercising a power he will exercise in the not distant future. He’s young, just turned forty. Well, what is forty against three score and ten? So in the not distant future, he will be exercising this power in an entirely new age, a new age all together.467 ¶13

But what thrilled me with his vision was his compassion, his mercy, his love. He didn’t do it so that he may be seen of the one who received it…he wanted to be unknown. That’s how God gives us his great gift: God gives us himself and remains unseen in the giving. So here, the part he’ll be playing in that heavenly body, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, is the most glorious thing to imagine.467 ¶14

Now we come down to the practical side of this teaching. Until we are born from above we are in the world of Caesar. And although we do not know we are in a world of death, let me tell you, you can apply it in this manner. You are the operant power; you are making everything alive in your world. Were it not for you, everything would be dead. You go into a world, you call it dream, and you are a protean being. You are Proteus playing all the parts, animating all the parts, making everyone come to life…but you don’t know it. You think he is another one, she’s another one, and you fight with shadows of your own being. But you are the being operating all the things in your world.467 ¶15

Now this is what I mean by claiming that “Man is all Imagination. God is Man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself.” That all things exist in the human Imagination and that all phenomena I don’t care what it is solely produced by imagining. Where there is no imagining the thing vanishes. If something is now in my world and I cease to control it or support it in depth, the thing disappears in my world. Therefore, any modification in my body of beliefs the thing is going to disappear from my world.467 ¶16

So how do I go about adjusting to that which is? We made the claim, “Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation,” and you saw what creation really meant, that act of mercy, where we, embedded in a world of death, by the act of mercy we are delivered from the body of death. And that is called the second birth in scripture, which is brought about through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Well, Jesus Christ is buried in us, so when he’s awakened in us, and he rises in us, then we are born from above. That’s our delivery from this body of death. Until then, this is what we do.467 ¶17

I stand here and I desire, say, to be elsewhere, to be in New York City. Well, I can’t afford the time or the money, I just can’t afford it. But I don’t ask myself if I can afford it. I don’t need the means; all I need is to know this principle. So in my Imagination when physically I sleep this night in Los Angeles, I assume that I am sleeping where I desire to sleep. So I say it is New York City. Well, if I were in New York City, how would I see the world? I would see Los Angeles 3,000 miles to the west of me. I would see everything related to that assumption.467 ¶18

Now, an assumption is an act of faith, and without faith it is impossible to please him. “By faith we understand that the worlds were created by the word of God, so that things that are seen were made out of things which do not appear.” So someone looking at me sleeping in my home tonight would not know where I really am sleeping. For, if I’m all Imagination, I must be where I am in Imagination. So looking at me physically and thinking that is Neville, they do not know what I am doing. So here, they are judging from appearances and they don’t know what I am doing. I am adjusting myself imaginally to that state that I desire to realize objectively, so I sleep in it.467 ¶19

Tomorrow morning when I awake, do I expect to find myself physically in New York City? No, I find myself right here in Los Angeles. But if I did it with conviction and gave it all the sensory vividness of reality, beginning tomorrow morning when I rise in this city, things will move and move rapidly to compel me to make the journey. I do not do it lightly any more, because I did it lightly as an experiment and it worked and it was not what I wanted.467 ¶20

When I stumbled upon this principle I thought now this is, well, it’s stupid. Imagining creates reality? You mean, I actually believe a thing and I have no external evidence to support it, nothing in this world to support it, reason denies it, and my imaginal act is a causative fact and produces it and projects it? Well, I didn’t believe it although I stumbled upon it. Then I tried it and it worked. When it worked it was not what I wanted. I did it just as an experiment. So I warn you now, I acquaint you with what I know about this principle of imagining and leave you to your choice and its risk, for there’s risk in it. You may not want it after you get it, but that’s entirely up to you. Then don’t select it idly.467 ¶21

Do you know what you want of life? Do you know what you want? You can be anything in this world that you want to be if you know who you are and if you start on the premise I am all Imagination. I’m in states…I pass through states, so that eternity exists. All things exist now. Man passes through these states but the states remain permanent forever. Man passes through like a traveler, who may as well suppose that passing through a place that the place has ceased to be because he has passed through it. States are eternal.467 ¶22

Your individual identity, that is forever. So I am a rich man one day, I could be a poor man the next, but I am still the same man, that same individual identity. I can go back to wealth or go back to poverty.467 ¶23

I can be persuaded by the press, TV, radio, to change my concept of wealth and move unwittingly into another state which I don’t desire. But they can force me into it if I’m not on guard. So I can move into state after state after state, and play any part in this world, but the being playing it is the same actor. As the actor, I do not change the identity, I only change the role. So when I was rich and when I was poor, it was the same actor playing the parts.467 ¶24

So you can be anything you want to be in this world if you know who you really are, and you start on the premise “I am all Imagination,” that’s who I am.467 ¶25

Now let me share again with you another story, and you see the difference in the temper, to show that they are completely unique in this world. This lady finds herself in a theater, an enormous theater. She and her husband, the director and his girlfriend, and then young boys and girls on the stage dancing, that’s all in this enormous theater. She is seated in front of the director and his girlfriend. There’s no music, and in spite of the fact that they’re dancing, there’s no sound to their motion of the feet.467 ¶26

The director said to her, “Would you please bat out on your typewriter the first act, say an act, to give some sound to what they’re doing.” Well, the typewriter, as in dream, happened to be there, and with one hand, one finger, she batted out the act. At the end of the act, she said to the director, “Would you like me to use both hands? I can give you more sounds.” In her vision he lost his temper, berated her, called her everything under the sun, and then she reached the boiling point and she lost her temper. Then she rose and looked at him, and she said not to him but to herself, “I am going to freeze you! All I have to do is to arrest in me the activity that makes you alive. I’m going to freeze you” and she did. Eyes bulging, mouth wide open, finger pointing…and here is a dead form, it’s dead, completely frozen.467 ¶27

She was so mad she woke on her bed to discover “I left him frozen…can’t do that…I must go back and unfreeze him.” She goes back when she quiets herself down. The same scene appears and as she enters the scene, she being the operant power, he begins to talk. Now he’s not losing his temper, he begins to talk. But she gets mad all over again because he did not know that he was frozen by her. She wanted recognition of her power. Well, he was completely innocent, he couldn’t…if you were at this very moment all frozen and you’re frozen for the next thousand years, you wouldn’t know it. Whatever you intended to do at the moment of the freeze you would continue the action with no consciousness whatsoever that you were ever arrested in what you intended.467 ¶28

So here, again this lady—I know from my own experience—she has conceived of the Holy Spirit, and she has tasted of the power of the age to come, but being of a different temperament, she’s a fiery woman right in this world, and undoubtedly that same fire will be tempered. It will be used in the age to come, for all can be used and all must be used and all will be used. But two entirely different states—one, he gave without recognition of the giver, and she was delighted, and he vanished for the purpose of not.467 ¶29

You see, when these things happen, you’re not in the body you are Spirit. I annex this body for the experiences I am now having in this world. You annex this body, but you are not that body, you are Spirit. And the day will come that you will awaken and you will be Spirit, not a body. You will be a being like Proteus, who can assume any shape for the part that you want to play. If it takes a fish, you’ll be the fish. If it takes a man, you’ll be a man; for you are Proteus and that’s who God is, he plays all the parts. There’s nothing but God in this world, and God and man are one.467 ¶30

So here, she tasted of the power that is to come that she will exercise in the not distant future; and he tasted the power to see the thing objectify before his eye, the lipstick and the thousand dollar bill.467 ¶31

So here, you adjust yourself to what you desire to be in this world. As I adjust myself to New York City, I can adjust myself to wealth, adjust myself to being known, adjust myself to anything. “What would it be like if…?” you ask that simple question. “How would I feel if things were as I desire them to be?” Well then, you adjust yourself in your Imagination. Now, how do I know I have?—well then, look mentally at your world. You aren’t going to see it at your present level as objective fact, but you will see it in your Imagination. You will see friends looking at you and they will congratulate you on your good fortune. So let them congratulate you. If you would be congratulated by friends, then allow them to congratulate you…all in your Imagination…and believe in the reality of this unseen state. Just as Paul said that, “We look not to things seen but things unseen; for the things seen are temporal but the things unseen are eternal.” These are the unseen realities. You can’t conceive of something that isn’t.467 ¶32

Now Blake made the statement 200 years ago that all things exist: “Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of Creation which was an act of mercy.” Three thousand years ago the unknown writer of Ecclesiastes said it even more beautifully: “There’s nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See this is new’? It has been already, in ages past. But there is no remembrance of former things, nor shall there be any remembrance of things to come after among those who will come later.” There is nothing new under the sun.467 ¶33

Now, this past year, one of our great physicists got the Nobel Prize for saying the same thing but not as beautifully as Blake said it or the unknown writer of Ecclesiastes. This is how he said it and his name is Professor Richard Feynman. You’ll find him at Cal Tech and this is what he said, “The entire Space-Time history of the world is laid out and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.” For that he got the Nobel Prize and maybe $50,000…and Blake went to a pauper’s unmarked grave because he saw it. This chap arrived at this conclusion based upon his study of the disintegration of the atom. He watched the peculiar behavior of a little particle called a positron. When he saw how strangely it behaved, he concluded, well then, “the entire Space-Time history of the world is laid out, and man only becomes aware of increasing portions of it successively.” So in the year 1968 he gets $50,000 for saying the same thing not as beautifully, while Blake said it in poetry.467 ¶34

So I tell you, I see it…in my visions the whole thing is done, but it’s all dead. You come upon a scene just like this and it’s animated because you come upon it. You don’t realize at the time that you are the Spirit animating it. All of sudden, you know within yourself that you are and you decide to prove it, and you arrest the activity in you that causes this to become alive. As you do so everything freezes. The waitress walking walks not, the birds flying fly not, the diners dining dine not, the grass waving waves not, and everything is frozen. You look at it and you know that now if you release the activity, not there but in you, for that’s where it is, all will continue to complete their intentions. You release it in you and the waitress completes the service, and the boy completes the eating of the soup, and the bird completes the flight to a bough, and the grass begins to wave, and the leaf that was arrested in space begins to fall to the ground, and everything moves on.467 ¶35

Then you realize who you really are, that you are this center of creative power. The day will come you’ll awake and exercise it knowingly, exercise it among the gods. That’s our destiny, that all will awaken as God and use this power to create in the true sense of the word.467 ¶36

Tonight, you take it as I tried to say it. There is no limit to this power. He sets no limit to the power of belief! Can I persuade myself that things are as I desire them to be? If I can persuade myself that things are as I would like them to be and I sleep in that assumption, that assumption being the act of faith, well then, tomorrow the world begins to change to make room for the coming of that assumption. If it takes one or 10,000 to aid the birth of it, it will take 10,000. I don’t need their consent; I do not need their permission. You do not need the permission of anyone in this world, because the whole vast world is dead anyway, and what could you do talking to dead people? You simply know what you want and then you animate it, and the whole vast thing begins to move towards the fulfillment of what you desire in this world.467 ¶37

Now you try it. Before you judge it, try it. It doesn’t make sense, but it will prove itself in performance. No matter what the world will think after it proves itself, what does it matter? If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what someone else thinks about it? What does it matter if the whole vast world rose in opposition after you can present the evidence? Well now, you’ll present the evidence if you’ll try it. If you try it, you won’t fail! Now let us go into the Silence. * * *467 ¶38

First of all, I’m going to ask you to share with me your dreams and your visions, for we’re told in scripture that God speaks to man through the language of dreams and makes himself known through vision. Well, nothing is more important if that’s the way God reveals himself than your dream and your vision. No matter how stupid it may seem to be to others, it is significant. So share with me your dreams and your visions that I in turn may share it from this platform and encourage all to go forward. Now are there any questions?467 ¶39

Well, we are here on Friday. The subject…it’s not a come-on…I’m really very serious about the title. It’s “1260”…that is the title. I have never seen it discussed. In all the exegeses I have read, not one comes near it, because they do not understand it. I’ll tell you from my own personal experience what that one thousand two hundred and sixty means. Everyone will one day experience it. You find it in Revelation, and you’ll find it in the Book of Daniel. Daniel does not explain it, it only records it. He was told to close the book and seal it ’til the time of the end. He was doing work the full import of which was hidden from himself. Now comes the New Testament that breaks the seal, and then the whole thing unfolds. Having broken the seal and having unfolded the entire thing within myself, I will explain it on Friday. Thank you.467 ¶44

22-Jul-1968 San Francisco The Bible defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” “What is seen is made out of things that do not appear.” Faith does not give reality to things that are not seen. It is loyalty to reality that makes things appear.463 ¶1

Can I see the facts the world sees and still believe in the unseen state? If I can remain loyal to the unseen state, in some way I will get confirmation of it. “… ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” This is not Jesus Christ talking to a disciple on the outside; it is I talking to myself. “If all things are made by God, and without Him is not anything made that is made.” Then where is God? In my Imagination! You aren’t called upon to make the things. All things already are. The whole, vast creation is already finished; I am only becoming aware of it. Any state that I can imagine can be occupied. The whole thing is finished, and all I do is adjust to it and “feel” myself there until it becomes natural. You don’t give reality to the unseen; it is loyalty to the unseen reality that gives it objectivity.463 ¶2

You can revise the past. We, you and I – are here, born by the Grace of God, and yet we dare to put a limit on the power of God. Our “sin” is our doubt of God. “Some men see things as they are and say: Why? I dream things that never were and say: Why not?” Sen. Ted Kennedy used this quotation in his eulogy of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy without giving credit to the author, however Sen. R. F. Kennedy was known to quote it many times, giving credit to G. B. S. I know that I must be whatever I am in Imagination. So don’t treat this principle lightly. You truly move yourself into states mentally, wittingly or unwittingly. A bridge of incidents will develop, over which you will pass until the state is fulfilled like pure imagining in us, and that He works in the very depths of our soul, underlying all of our faculties, including perception; but He streams into the surface mind least disguised in the form of creative fancy, like a daydream – just a simple daydream.463 ¶3

I think of someone who is maybe a thousand miles away. Well, that act – that perceptive act, unseen by any one– that was God-in-action. Well, can I believe in the reality of that act? Can I represent him to myself as I would like to see him in the flesh? Can I see him successful? Can I see him – well, as I want to see him, and believe in the reality of that unseen state? If I can remain loyal to that unseen reality, I will have confirmation that he is the being that I am assuming that he is. Someone will write me or maybe I’ll meet him in the flesh, but in some way I will get confirmation that what I think I see in him or desire to see in him, and persuade myself that I do see in him, that it will come to pass.463 ¶4

Now, one day, in reading the 14th chapter of the book of John, having been told that Christ is in me, and here is Christ now speaking to the disciples, (well, if he is in me, what is he trying to tell me? He is speaking to the disciples) he said: “You believe in God, believe in me also. In my Father’s house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you? Would I have told you that I go prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye shall be also.” Well, it came to me as I read it, from some peculiar intuitive depth, that I am not talking to a disciple (something on the outside). I’m talking to myself! This whole conversation is something within myself.463 ¶5

I take the body called Neville – this visible thing that is weak and limited and fragile, and I’m talking to it. You can’t go; you’re limited. It will take time to get there; it’ll take money to get there. Maybe you can’t afford either the time or the money. But it will take me – if I’m Imagination – to go any place in this world without money, and I don’t need time. I can sit in a chair and put my body, cumbersome as it is, on a chair or on a bed, and if I am all Imagination, and God is in man as man’s own wonderful human Imagination, then I can be any place in this world that I desire to be. So, I can go and prepare a place.463 ¶6

So, I tried it. I tried assuming that I am where reason would deny it, my senses deny it, but I remained in that state until it seemed natural to me, just seemed natural. Well, then, I went there. And, then, I opened my eyes upon the world that I had shut out, and it was a shock to find myself back in the chair. Well, I if I analyze it, it seems stupid. What I did – it seemed real while I did it, and then one second later, here I am on my chair, and everything I see in my room denies that I did anything that the world would call real. But I did it! And, then, in the not-distant future, I was forced across a series of events, which led up to the fulfillment of that state.463 ¶7

Now, I did it on a very cold winter night in New York City. I had brought out my first book, called Your Faith is Your Fortune, in the month of February in 1941. It was so cold – twelve or fourteen inches of snow on the ground – and I expected in those days simply a voluntary offering on the part of those who came. And many came just for contacts. They didn’t care what I had to say. They came to meet people, and they would go out for their coffee klatches and all these things after the meeting. I didn’t care. It was a crowded house – over a thousand people – in a little old church off Times Square. I expected that night, when I brought out my book, Your Faith is Your Fortune, that there would be the usual thousand, and this night because of the weather they couldn’t get through the snow, I think we had a hundred and fifty people, and there was a certain personal disappointment, because here was my first effort in bringing out a book. And, so I had my books there and a hundred and fifty came, not prepared to buy the book, and so, we packed up at the end of the talk.463 ¶8

When I went home that night the snow was, as I say, twelve or fourteen inches on the ground, and it was cold. When I got into my bed, I did this thing almost absent-mindedly, but I did it, and I knew exactly what I did. Barbados, where I was born, is a little tropical island in the West Indies, and I assumed that I was actually on my bed in my mother’s home that I knew and loved so well. And to prove that I was actually there, I just imagined the world relative to that position. I saw the world – not from my place in New York City, I saw it from Barbados. So, mentally I saw the world as I would see it if I were in Barbados. I thought of my place in New York City, and I saw it two thousand miles to the north of me. I thought of other places, and they were all related to where I am assuming that I am, and I fell asleep in that assumption.463 ¶9

When I awoke the next morning, the snow was even higher, and I am not in Barbados, I am in New York City! Well, time progressed. The war in Europe was on. England was at war. No ships were plying the Atlantic. They were going down faster than they could build them, and we were almost at war, and then came the month of August, and I received a cable from my family saying: “We didn’t tell you, because we knew you couldn’t come to Barbados. There aren’t any ships,” (and certainly in those days there were no planes) and they said: “Mother is dying. She’s been dying for two years, but now, this is it, and if you want to see her in this world once more, you’ve got to come now” – I mean, now.463 ¶10

I received that cable in the morning, and my wife and I sailed the very next night.463 ¶11

One ship was leaving at midnight, the “Argentine,” and we sailed in late August for Barbados.463 ¶12

And there I went to Barbados, the last place in that world that I intended to go. In fact, we had planned to go to Maine for a vacation. We were going to close that month and go to Maine for five or six weeks, and then return to reopen sometime in October. But all plans were changed to fulfill what I had done in an idle moment because of disappointment. But it taught me a lesson: not to use this law idly, not to use it to escape, but to use it deliberately because you cannot escape from it. A series of events will mold themselves, across which you will walk, leading up to the fulfillment of that state. And so here I put myself, just to escape from the cold and the disappointment of the evening, in Barbados of all places. Then something happens, and I am compelled to make the journey, the last place in the world we intended to go. And we sailed at midnight, and got there four and a half days later on this “Argentine” ship. (It was an American ship, but it was called the “Argentine.”) Mother dies, as they all said she would, and I returned to the States with the knowledge of what I had done and began to teach it.463 ¶13

And in that audience of, I would say, a thousand, they all began to apply it, with tremendous success.463 ¶14

Then, where is God? If “all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that is made” then where is he? I knew exactly what I did, and I know what happened. Well, if I can trace what happened to an invisible cause (what I did) and repeat it, and tell that story to others, who can take it and try it and repeat it, well then, I have found causation. And if all causes spring from God, then I have found him. I have found Him as my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. There isn’t a thing in this world that wasn’t first imagined. Now, here you aren’t called to make the thing. Things are. All things in the world are. “Eternity exists, and all things in Eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy.”463 ¶15

You can’t conceive of something that isn’t!463 ¶16

As a result of this in 1941, it was 1949 that I gave a series of lectures in Milwaukee, and the head chemist at Allis-Chalmers came to my meetings. I made some statement using a term that is a scientific term, and the word was “entropy.” Well, I might have used it, not as the scientist would have used it, but I had my own concept of what the word meant and my definition of it, and I said I can change the past. If I can make something, I can unmake it. Whatever I can create, I can un-create. Whatever I can make, I can unmake. He said: “You can’t do it. For we use entropy in our laboratory every day, and entropy means the past is unalterable; you can’t change it. If the past could be changed, I wouldn’t know what I am doing in the lab…” He said: “All day long I receive little samples of water from all over the world, because we make these huge turbines. And from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – all over the world – they send samples, because the water passes through certain mineral deposits and carries with it whatever is in that mineral, and, so it cakes. We have to analyze that water and then bring up a solution, because we made the product.”463 ¶17

And I said: “I don’t care what you say. I know what I’ve done. And you can undo the past. You can change it.” “It can’t be done.” I said: “As far as I am concerned, the whole vast world is finished. Creation is finished, and I am only becoming aware of it. Well, I need not confine myself to what my senses see and what reason allows and what wise men tell me I should accept. I can imagine a state. I can’t see it with my physical eye, but I can imagine a state, and that state imagined is. I can imagine a state that is in conflict with the facts of life. And the facts, you say, are, and they can’t be altered. I can imagine a state that would undo the fact. Well, that state exists. If I occupy that state it will undo the so-called fact you say is fixed forever.” Well, he questioned my sanity, but he was an awfully nice chap. His name was Professor Imhoff. He was the head of the department of this chemical setup. So, while he was a very wise and gentle and kind person. I returned to New York City, and he sent me the “Scientific News Letter,” dated October the 15th, 1949, in which he said: “Now, Neville, I apologize for having said what I did. This man is far greater as a physicist than I am as a scientist. He is Professor Feynman, of Cornell University, one of the outstanding physicists of our day in speculative, theoretical physics; and this is his letter. And he wrote in this little letter, which was printed in the magazine, a story concerning the positron, a little particle that is produced in atomic disintegration. It’s like the electron, but differs in this respect. It is positive in its charge instead of being negative. Now, these are the words of Feynman, they are not mine. He says: “The positron is a wrong-way electron. It starts from where it hasn’t been, and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. It is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed, and then it returns to where it hasn’t been.” (Now, this is Feynman, this isn’t Neville.) Then he goes on to say: “When a little electron is moving speedily in space if it is bounced, it’s deflected, but continues on its course. But if it is bounced so hard, then its time sense is reversed, and it returns to where it hasn’t been.” “Now,” he said, “on the basis of this, we must now conclude that the entire concept that man held of the universe is false. We always believed that the future developed slowly out of the past. Now, with this concept which we have seen and photographed, we must now conclude that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively.”463 ¶18

This is 1949. That Professor, Richard Feynman, who is now at Cal Tech in Pasadena received the Nobel Prize last year for that paper. They held it up almost twenty years, for this is 1968 and he got it in 1967, and the paper came out in 1949.463 ¶19

I didn’t know it as a scientist. I knew it as a mystic. I see it. I can’t explain why; I only know everything is. The whole thing is finished, and all I have to do is to adjust to it. If I know what I want for myself or for another, I adjust to it, because the thing is. Well, if I adjust to it and it feels natural, when it feels natural, then I open my eyes upon this world that I have shut out for that purpose.463 ¶20

As I open my eyes, I am turned around. I have actually been where reason would deny that I have been there; and then, as I open my eyes, I have been speeding with the speed of light from wherever I have assumed that I am to where physically I am. Now I am so shocked to find that I am not actually there, but I am here physically. My time sense is turned around. And now, I move across a bridge of incidents – a series of events – that compels me to move towards the fulfillment of that invisible state. And when I get there it is not invisible, it becomes visible. It throws itself on the screen of space, and the world calls that a fact. And they stand amazed at that, because that to them is real. Prior to its becoming objective, it was unreal. So, I tell you: faith in unseen reality. You don’t give reality to the unseen; it is loyalty to unseen reality that is the secret of faith. So, when he tells us: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” by faith, we understand that the world was created by the Word of God, so that “things seen were made from things that do not appear…”463 ¶21

Now, let me share with you this story. A friend of mine living in L.A. came many years ago from Pittsburgh. So in ’66 she returned to Pittsburgh and met the few friends who are still in this world. Many have departed. There was one lady she speaks of as Betty. Well, Betty married this man, and his name is supposed to be Matthew. Well, Matthew was suffering from a certain disease, which led progressively to total deafness. In the interval, it is accompanied by dizziness, and retching. What the name is, I don’t know. She told me, but I am not familiar with these medical terms. But it is something that is incurable as of today. No doctor knows how to arrest it, and it progressively moves towards total deafness.463 ¶22

In the meanwhile, it is a most painful condition that accompanies it, and these horrible dizzy spells, and then the retching. She told the story as I told it to her, how you can revise the past; that in spite of the fact that he is moving towards the inevitable total deafness, it need not be. They can go back and change the past to the point in time – which was fourteen years before – when this thing began to show in his body. He didn’t believe it. She said to me: “He would ask me a hundred and one questions concerning it, not because he wanted to be cruel, but he is a rational being, a very intelligent person, and it didn’t make sense. Because it didn’t make sense, he discounted it; but Betty thought: ‘”I will try it.’” “Now, she said, “It was a very difficult thing for Betty and myself, because my parents were both deaf, and Betty’s parents were both deaf, and we were raised in the environment of deaf people. We had to learn sign language to communicate with our parents. So, Betty had the experience of deaf parents, both of them, and I had the experience of deaf parents, and to be confronted with this picture – it was a horrible, horrible picture. Betty said to me: “I will do it every night,” and she took a simple little sentence: “Matthew” (she called him Matt) – “Matt is hearing perfectly.” That’s all that she did. Meanwhile he’s getting worse and worse and worse. A year went by, and he’s still progressing towards the inevitable end of total deafness, when in his business he had this excruciating pain from ear to ear, and he cried out. Well, they rushed him to the doctor and the doctor gave him an injection to alleviate the pain. Then the doctor said: “You can’t go back on the job right away. You must go to your room and rest for a while.” Well, in the room, he dozed, and went into a little sleep and when he awoke, he was hearing perfectly – hearing perfectly! He was sent home early that evening. He usually arrives at 6:00 o’clock. When he came home on the early side, the wife greeted him with the usual: “Oh, what’s wrong? What happened at the office today?” and he replied: “Betty, I am hearing perfectly.” He used the identical word that she had, night after night, heard. All in her imagination, she heard him say: “Betty, I am hearing perfectly.” So, she heard her own name called by her husband, Matt, and he confirmed it by saying: “I am hearing perfectly.” Then he said: “I believe, I believe, I believe!”463 ¶23

Now, that is a year and a half ago. She said: “In the interval we never breathed it, did not mention it in our letters. I communicate constantly, but I did not for one moment state anything further than I did when I was there in the flesh and told her of a principle,” a principle which you could call by any name. We call it God. Well, God is one’s own marvelous human Imagination. That’s 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. And all things are possible to God.463 ¶24

You and I– here we are, fashioned by the grace of God, born by the grace of God, and we dare to put a limit on the power of God! Here we, the creature born by the grace of God, and then we tell God (or tell ourselves) what he can’t do. And therefore, give to God, who made us and brought us into the world…and now we give to him the sin against the Holy Ghost, which as far as I see it is man’s doubt—the only thing that cannot be forgiven is the sin against the Holy Ghost, which is man’s doubt in the power of God.463 ¶25

You might have heard the late Senator Kennedy in one or two of his political speeches. He was very fond of quoting this passage from George Bernard Shaw – in fact, his brother Teddy, in the eulogy in New York City quoted it. He didn’t give credit to George Bernard Shaw, but his brother had done it time and again, and therefore people knew, those who heard him, that it was not Teddy’s or Bobbie’s – it was George Bernard Shaw. And this is the quote: “Some men see things as they are and say, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?’” Why not? The world tells me it can’t be. Why not? Are not all things possible to God? And did not God become me, that I may become God?463 ¶26

Well, if he became me, I can’t dissect the body and find him in an atom. I can’t find him in the brain. I can’t find him in any organ of the body. Therefore, where is he? Just where is he? I am told in Scripture he has a name, and this name is his name forever and forever, and the name defined is: “I Am.” Well, that’s the core of my being. I can’t put it aside. I sit down to imagine. Who’s imagining? I am. I have never been able to put “I am” out there and look at it. It is the being perceiving, not the thing perceived. It is the being making, not the thing made. It’s the being creating; not the thing created. And man stands amazed at his own creations – and forgets the creator. He falls in love with all the things he makes, and he forgets completely the maker; and the maker is “I Am.” There is no other maker. There is no other God.463 ¶27

So, when I found that out, I knew that when I went to Barbados, I was actually sleeping in my mother’s home in a bed that I knew well, and it was warm. I could feel the warmth of the tropics. I could detect the odors of the tropics; they differ from the northern world. All the things that are related to the tropics, I detected. Well, who is doing it? I am. I can’t get away from it. Is that God? Yes. Well, he didn’t take a train there. No, there aren’t any trains. He didn’t take a plane? No, there were no planes then. He didn’t take a ship? No. He simply was there. Wherever I assume that I am, I am there. And, so, if I can assume that I am elsewhere, to the point that someone like my sister actually sees me there, well, I must be wherever I am in Imagination.463 ¶28

One day I had occasion, while in New York City, to assume that I am being seen by my sister, whose son was desperately ill, age 17, and riddled with cancer. No one knew what was wrong with him until they opened him, and then he was too far-gone. The whole body was completely riddled at the age of seventeen! And they say that if you are young when you develop this, then like all young things, it grows. If you are developed to the age of sixty or seventy, the chances are you won’t die of it because things aren’t building then. You are only marking time. But youth is growing. Whether it be a good cell or a bad cell, it simply grows rapidly. So at the age of seventeen he wasn’t feeling well. They wonder: what’s wrong with the boy? And someone suggested going in and taking a little look on the inside. They thought it might be some appendix or some peculiar thing there. So they opened him up and sewed him back – not a thing they could do. The whole body was simply gone.463 ¶29

Well, to comfort my sister, I thought I would put my body physically in New York City and assume I’m in Barbados. I’m in my nephew’s room, and when my sister enters the room she is going to see me, and not her son. I actually assumed that I am there. I am occupying the same space that my nephew Billy occupied, and then when I felt it natural, I assumed that my sister came in. She came in, and she came over and she looked, and she couldn’t see anyone but her brother, Neville.463 ¶30

I came out of that silence. I came into the living room where a friend, by invitation, had arrived for a cocktail, because I had said: “Drop by at the cocktail hour – it’s around 5:00 o’clock, and we’ll have a drink.” I went into the silence around 4:30, and I didn’t come out until maybe after 5:00 – 5:15 or 5:20. So when I came into the living room, she said: “Neville, what’s wrong with you? You are always so gay and light. Why do you seem so heavy now?” and I told her what I had just done.463 ¶31

Eight days later (we had no air mail coming, but had to depend upon mail by the sea), eight days later I received a letter from my sister. She said: “Neville, I don’t understand it, but this very moment I went into Billy’s room and I could not for the life of me see Billy. I am seeing you. I walked right over to the bed, and I looked at my son, and he is not there, and it’s you! And you’re looking at me and smiling. And I could not – I tried and tried and tried, and Billy was not there; it is you. I don’t understand it, Neville. If you have any knowledge or anything about it to throw light upon this, tell me.” That same lady was there eight days later, and I brought her letter out that I had received that day and showed it to her. So I had two witnesses: my wife and this lady. So, I know that I must be wherever I am in Imagination.463 ¶32

So I tell you: don’t treat it lightly. You can put yourself in prison, and find yourself committing an act of which you are totally unaware, or accused of something of which you are not aware, and going to prison. People put themselves there. People put themselves out of it. People don’t realize. Not a thing is happening by accident. It’s all by unseen causation.463 ¶33

So you actually move yourself into states emotionally, and dwell in them just for a split second. And you jump back – or you think you jump back. You did. But the bridge is now about to appear, and across the bridge of incidents you walk, leading up to the fulfillment of what you did unwittingly.463 ¶34

So, this is what I mean by faith. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” You hope for it? Well, now, the assurance is faith. Faith is not going to make it so. Faith is loyalty to the unseen reality. You know what you did? Well, now, that’s unseen by mortal eye. Now, you remain loyal to that unseen reality, and see how this bridge of incidents is woven, and you do not consciously devise it. No man can consciously devise the incidents necessary to lead you to the fulfillment of what you’ve done. Well, this is what I mean by faith.463 ¶35

The very substance of what the world calls real is unseen. It’s unseen reality. The whole vast creation is finished, just as Feynman said, and he got his prize for it. So he got the fifty thousand dollars for that which I said as a mystic, but you can’t give a mystic money, because he has no standing in the community. Feynman has standing. He teaches physics at Caltech, so he could say the identical thing in his own words, and they say: “Isn’t this marvelous?” And so, he has a paper on it, now a book on it, and a title to it, so he has all the titles. And because I am the unknown, and in the eyes of Feynman not educated by his standards, no formal education – but what I see, I see, and I can’t deny it. What I experience mystically, I can’t deny. So, I am speaking from experience; I am not theorizing. He goes in and he theorizes. He experiments, yes, and succeeds occasionally in taking a photograph of the so-called unseen little particle and he has enough photographs to prove the existence of the positron. And then comes his wonderful honor – fifty thousand dollars, and all that goes with it.463 ¶36

But I tell you, in spite of all the books that are written, with all the great titles signed behind his name of the author, the book of books is the Bible, and no one knows the authors. They are all anonymous. No one knows who’s Peter, who’s James, who’s Matthew, Luke, Mark, John – no one knows. They are anonymous and they remain so. The characters – no one knows if they ever walked the face of the earth. I tell you that they didn’t. Those who wrote it – they did, but the characters are anonymous. And the characters of Scripture are all eternal states through which man passes. They are states – eternal states, not historical states. It’s not secular history. It is salvation history.463 ¶37

What I have told you so far as of now, in the past week (I gave you five, and tonight is the sixth) it’s all based upon what I’ve experienced. And I tell you: everyone will experience it. Not one can fail, because if one failed, God failed. And He isn’t going to fail. So, let the fool say in his heart: there is no God, like this book, God is Dead and all that nonsense. Let them have fun. He wrote that just to make money. And of course, because the title caught on, especially today, he made oodles of money out of a title, a title with a book full of nonsense. But he’s not alone; he has a lot of company.463 ¶38

I tell you: you have faith in God, but don’t look outside to find him. You aren’t going to find him out there. You are going to find him one day by a series of mystical experiences. And when they happen to you, they will happen in the first person, present-tense experience, and you’ll know who God is! You’ll know that you are, for God’s purpose is to give himself to you as though there were no other in the world, just you. Well, if he gives himself to you completely, there can’t be you and God, just you, and you are he. And the whole plan is set up, and when it begins to unfold within you in a first person, present tense experience, I can’t tell you the thrill.463 ¶39

Now, when you depart this world, you are not restored to life, as all people are who have not had the experience. You instantly put on your body of glory, and you’re in an entirely different age, a different world altogether. And all the others wait for that moment in time when they, too, have the experience. And then when death comes following the experience, they instantly move from the body of decay (for this is decay) into a body that is immortal, a body of glory. So, that is for everyone in the world.463 ¶40

And may I tell you: don’t try to argue with anybody who tries to give you all the reasons of Caesar why it can’t be. They put you in a little furnace and bring out a few little ashes and say: that was the man. Therefore, he can’t survive, because that’s it. Well then, let him have his little fun. It’s perfectly all right. Let him be amused. Don’t move; let him be amused. He’s such a wise person! So wise in his own council and so wise in the eyes of fools. He can only be wise in the eyes of fools; so don’t argue with him. Leave him alone just as he is.463 ¶41

So, he will find himself – when men call him dead – restored to life, and he will be totally unaware how on earth it could happen. But he’s so blind anyway; he won’t even recognize it. He will take it for granted, as we take breathing for granted. We take all the normal functions of the body for granted, and yet each function is a miracle. You put a little of bread in your mouth, and suddenly by a chemistry you do not understand it is no longer bread; it’s blood and bone and tissue. And what you can’t incorporate into your system and use wisely, you expel. Even the act of expulsion from the system is a mystery. And yet we take all these mysteries for granted, and the whole thing is oh, well, we call it nature. That covers a multitude of nonsense. Nature! Define it for me.463 ¶42

So, I tell you tonight, you take your dream – your noble dream, not only for yourself, but for others. What do you want? Ask them. Now, don’t argue the point what do you want? Well then, in your mind’s eye dare to assume that they have what at the moment their reason and their senses deny and everything about them denies; but you remain faithful to the assumption, and your assumption relative to them. Though false at the moment, if you persist in it, it will harden into fact. Now, you try it.463 ¶43

I could give you unnumbered cases, but why repeat them over and over? Every case history in the Bible has been repeated now for two thousand years, and they still hold up, but they are all to encourage man to test God – to try him. “Come, test yourself and see.” You are not asked to test another. In the 13th chapter of II Corinthians: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourself and see, unless of course you fail to meet the test.” Well, if you fail to meet the test because of doubt and lack of faith, well and good. You might go and say: “It doesn’t work.” It’s perfectly all right. So, it doesn’t work for you because you did not believe it. He puts no limit to the power of belief. “All things are possible to him who believes.” So can I really believe at the moment that I am trying to believe, everything tells me it can’t be done? Can I ignore the facts of life, and then persuade myself that it is done and live in the end as though it were true? I tell you: if you try it, you will be able to write me and give me fantastic stories.463 ¶44

But in the end, it is God’s Promise that concerns me. Oh, to teach you the law is marvelous, teach everyone the law because you are living in the world of Caesar. You must pay rent, you must eat, you must shelter yourself, you must have clothing – all these things in the world of Caesar are essential, so teach man the law, that he may fulfill all these things. But don’t neglect the Promise. And God’s Promise is to give himself to you. That’s his Promise that he will actually give himself to you!463 ¶45

Before he made the Promise, God was the Father, so when he succeeds in giving himself to you, though you are now in the female body, when he gives himself to you (and you will not find it strange) you will one day awake, and you are the father, even though you may now be the mother of a dozen children. And in the day it will not seem strange to you that you are father, God the Father. And if he has a son (because he has to have a son if he’s a father) and then that son is going to call you “father” (he is not going to call you “mother”) he will call you “father” in the fulfillment of the 89th Psalm, because Scripture must be fulfilled in man. So, man’s purpose in life is only to fulfill Scripture.463 ¶46

But in the meanwhile, Caesar demands. He demands taxes. He demands this; he demands the other. Well, give Caesar what is Caesar’s, but don’t fail to keep alive the Promise of God, and dwell upon it. Now let us go into the Silence. Good. Now, are there any questions?463 ¶47

Well, Marta has had this experience. I tell you that God actually, literally became man, that man may become God. Every man that is “born from above” knows that he is God. But I could tell you from now to the ends of time, and you will only see me as an arrogant fool. You will never actually believe me until you have the experience to confirm the truth of what I say, because words could not persuade you. You have to actually have the experience.463 ¶50

So Marta, this night, finds herself in this huge, big interior. The front is one sheet of glass, and on the inside are huge, big columns like marble columns. It is very sparsely furnished. She sees one chair, and she takes the chair. She is seated, then, out of nowhere comes a carriage that is self-propelled. There aren’t horses, but it looks as though it should be drawn by horses. The door opens automatically and I step out, wearing an Inverness cape. (You know what the Inverness cape is.) I come forward into the interior of this place and, without showing any recognition of Marta, I began to proclaim the power of God. And she said, as she looked at me, I was clothed in sheer power. It wasn’t a merciful power, it wasn’t compassionate – it was simply power. It was creative power. And I am simply talking of power. And she said to herself: “Why, it’s Neville, and he is God!” and she kept on repeating to herself: “He is Neville and he is God; he is Neville and he is God.” And, then, without any further recognition of her, I completed the proclamation of power, turned, and then, as though by appointment, the carriage came into view. The door opened automatically, and I stepped in and vanished. The whole thing vanished.463 ¶51

So, here she saw God clothed in power, wearing the face of a friend. Her friend is Neville. Scripture tells you – and it’s the foundation by which man is set free – when Paul was accused of not being an Apostle, he said: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Haven’t I seen the Lord Jesus?” So, he laid it down as an indispensable prerequisite: to have seen the Lord Jesus in order to be set free from this bondage to corruption and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. Then, in the book of John, he said: “I no longer call you slaves, for a slave does not know what the master is doing; I call you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known unto you.” So, here she saw a friend, but the friend was wearing power. It was God’s power, and she knew it was God. So she is set free. She is not restored as the world is restored when they die. She is set free from this age, and Marta is now in her glorious body. She has met the qualifications for freedom.463 ¶52

But I can tell you from now to the ends of time… I could have told Marta, as I did, but not until Marta had the experience, could Marta ever believe. So, they laughed at Paul, because how can you share these experiences with man? You can’t do it. Man has to have the experience.463 ¶53

And the lady who was with her, whose name is Marge, had the experience of seeing me on the beach, standing with my back to an enormous body of water. There was no land beyond; it was simply an endless body of water, and I was speaking to an enormous crowd of people, all of different faiths, different persuasions – yet each heard me in the tongue wherein they were born. And as she came upon this scene (she knew that it’s Neville) she sees Neville, but she also knew he was Jesus, so she has had a similar experience. Only Marta called it God, and she called it Jesus, because she knew she was looking at her friend Neville, but she’s also looking at Jesus.463 ¶54

So, I tell you: in the end there is only one body, and that one body is Jesus. “One body, one spirit, one lord, … one God and Father of all.” So, in the end, all are Jesus! All are God! All are the Father! I can tell you in words, but I can’t persuade you. I have to desire to persuade you against your will. I know the day will come when you will actually have a similar experience and others will see you in that role, and have an experience and be convinced that you are God.463 ¶55

Now, it frightens people to say that. They want some little God on the outside, and I say everyone is God. We are told that in Scripture: “I say, ye are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High. Nevertheless you will die like men and fall as one man, oh, princes.” That’s in Scripture, and yet you read it and say: “Oh, it doesn’t really make any difference. That isn’t right. That was wrong. When God dictated that, or inspired the prophet to write it, he must have been drinking. Well, how can that be?” And, so, the prophets – that is, the great scholars – cannot quite understand that passage, the 82nd Psalm. They can’t get it. So, because they can’t get it, it isn’t true.463 ¶56

Well, we go through life that way. You will find people all over the world – if they can’t understand something, it just isn’t true, it’s not good, and they will set themselves up as the criterion of what ought to be. Their moral and ethical code is the only code that should be adopted. If they don’t smoke, no one should smoke. If they don’t drink, no one should drink. If they are celibates because nature allowed it, no one should know anything about sex. You find these people writing these things for us after nature has outlawed sex in their life. So, when they hit the age of eighty, because they are impotent, everyone should be. And they write laws and say they were divinely inspired.463 ¶57

If today, eating meat on Friday is right (it was always right) and, yet for centuries it was wrong and a mortal sin – but now it’s all right, well, if it is right today, it was always right. Now, if a man can marry today…and eventually they will say the priests can marry, it wasn’t always so that they could not. If you read Scripture, it speaks of Peter’s wife, and yet the present Pope claims that he is directly descended from Peter, the first Pope. Well, if the first Pope was married, then what’s wrong with marriage, when the very first command to man is: “Replenish the earth; multiply and replenish the earth.” That’s the command. So, what’s wrong with multiplying and replenishing the earth? Yet some Pope, who undoubtedly was impotent, just said that no one should marry. If he can’t perform the act, no one should perform it.463 ¶58

All right, we have Pope Alexander VI. Have you ever heard of the Borgias, Lucretia and Cesare Borgia, brother and sister? Well, they were his children, and he was Pope Alexander VI, and their name is associated with poison. If they didn’t like you, you were in their way politically – poison them. They were the Pope’s children. Go back and read history. You can find this in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Pope Alexander VI was the father of Cesare Borgia and Lucretia Borgia, the youngest ever given the cardinal’s hat, at the age of nineteen. Talk of nepotism!463 ¶59

Well, now, all this is history. You don’t have to be afraid of it. These are facts. Well, if it was right then, it’s right now! Because God’s Word cannot be altered. These things are not in God’s Book at all. These are the traditions of men. And we read in Scripture that to keep alive the traditions of men, you go against the Word of God. That’s what he tells you. So, find out, is it Scripture? Or, is it something that a man wants to impose upon society?463 ¶60

Now, you take what we have tried to tell you tonight, the story of faith, and try to live by it. You’ll prove it. You won’t disprove it, not if you realize that you are the operant power. It doesn’t operate itself. You are the operant power. And, then, you will find an easier way of living in this world, and then put your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ-in-you. Now, the time is up. Thank you.463 ¶61

16-Jul-1968 San Francisco Tonight’s subject is There Is No Other God. You find this in the First Commandment in the book of Exodus, the 20th chapter. “I am the Lord your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me,” followed by the Second: “Make no image, whether on earth, the heavens, or below the sea.” No image! Now, if I hear the word, “God,” do I make an image? If you hear the word, “Jesus,” do you have an image? If you have any image other than “I Am,” you are violating the Commandment. “I am the Lord.” Well, that could be translated: “I am the I am,” for the word translated, “The Lord,” is the same word which is: “Jod He Vau He” and: “When I come to the people of Israel, and I tell them that the God of their fathers has sent me, and they ask me, ‘What is his name? What shall I say?’ ‘Say to them, I am has sent you. That is My name forever, and by this I shall be known throughout all generations.’” My own name: I am. So, “Make no graven image unto me,” and those who know thy name put their trust in thee. Now, these are the commands of Scripture.459 ¶1

If I really believe it, I can turn to no other. I can turn to nothing in the world, but to God; and God became me, that I may become god. So, the very core of my being is I Am. Before I say, “I am a man,” I am. Before I say that I am rich, poor, known, unknown; before I qualify it, condition it, put anything upon it, that core is God. That’s I Am!459 ¶2

Now, “Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?” Now, he puts no limit on this power, none whatsoever. “Whatever ye desire, when you pray, believe that you have received it, and you will.” He does not say it’s good for you or it’s bad for you. It’s entirely up to man to make the choice. Do I know what I want? Well, if I know what I want and I believe this and trust wholly in God as my own wonderful human imagination, then I should change my outer world to conform to my imaginal activity; so Israel’s delivery from Egypt, from the house of bondage, is your own wonderful human imagination delivered from the facts of nature. You see the facts, you hear the facts, but I don’t like them. I will admit I must have had something to do with externalizing the things that I dislike; so in my ignorance I imagined all kinds of things. I thought I could get away with it. I thought no one saw me, that no one would know what I’m imagining when I’m alone, for no one is around. I am not speaking, I am not talking to any one, not writing it down; it’s a secret – it is my secret. It’s all my imagination, so can’t I indulge myself? I pass someone on the street and say, “Oh, what a face!” I said it all within myself, and then I heard some news of someone else, and I was envious of what I heard. I heard it, and I became envious of what I heard. It’s my own wonderful imaginal activity. I fail to recognize my own harvest when they appear in my world, but I cannot deny there’s a law that supports every phenomenon in the world. Therefore, be not deceived, for God is not mocked. “As a man sows, so shall he reap.” And I am sowing – morning, noon and night by what I entertain in my imagination, for that is Christ Jesus. Man is all imagination, and God is man and exists in us, and we in Him, and the eternal body of man is his imagination, and that is Jesus himself, and we are his members – one with the body of Jesus, and that is our own wonderful human imagination.459 ¶3

And one day, it will awaken like a flower, and we shall see what we did in our darkness, in our ignorance. No condemnation, for we have paid the price while we acted unwisely. So, there’s no final judgment when you and I are brought before some external being to be judged for what we did. We are paying the price morning, noon and night, as we walk the earth. I read this unlovely thing, I read this lovely thing, and then suddenly I realize, Why, I did it myself! I planted it. No God on the outside gave it to me in response to a prayer; my own imaginal activity did it. No one rewarded me – no reward! I simply set it in motion. I did it, wisely or unwisely. I did it, willingly or unwillingly; but I did it. And so everything comes into my world because I, in my moments of imaginal activity – and I don’t stop it; I’m doing it morning, noon and night – I set them in motion.459 ¶4

So, if I am really free in the sense that I have been delivered from Egypt, it means that my imagination is so controlled – and I am one with it, that I refuse to accept the “facts” of life unless they conform to the ideals that I want to enjoy in my world. So, I hear something of a friend of mine. He is unemployed. So, he’s unemployed – that’s the fact. Well, am I really free? If I am really free from the tyranny of Egypt – free from the house of bondage, having heard what I heard, I will now represent him to myself as gainfully employed. Now, the facts deny it, but I will remain faithful to my assumption as though it were true, confident that imagining creates reality, and therefore, if I persist in my assumption, it will harden into fact.459 ¶5

Well, having done it and proved it over and over and over, having shared what I have discovered with others, to see them doing it over and over – then you become indifferent as to what others think. If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what another thinks – if they tell you that you are stupid to believe that an imaginal act will harden into fact? You mean that you have nothing in this world – but nothing! And you dare to assume that you have – not only that you have, but you have what you want, and that others share it with you, and they know that you have it; and you’ll sleep this night on an empty stomach in the belief that you’ve been well fed? That you sleep this night as though things were as you desire them to be, when every fact of life during the day denies it? Well, that’s what we are called upon to do! We are called upon to trust Him – to put our trust in Him.459 ¶6

Who is He? My own wonderful human imagination! I don’t say his imagination – not his. “I Am” is his name. It’s first person present, not “I was;” not, “I will be,” but “I Am.” But suppose I have imagined it and it hasn’t happened? Well then, what are you doing now, saying that I once imagined it and I am not still imagining it? In other words, if you call me by my name, you say, “Well, Neville”, I’ll respond. If I’m running away from something of which I am ashamed, I will still in some strange way show that I do respond to that name. Well now, I’ve put a name on “I Am.” I Am – and you name it: healthy, wealthy, known – whatever it is you desire in this world. Why forget it? Why forget what you’ve put upon the name of God?459 ¶7

For the name of God, and the only name of God, and the everlasting name of God is “I Am.” He has no other name. Now, the Christian world will speak of Jesus Christ, but the minute you say, “Jesus Christ,” you make an image, painted by the churches of the world after two thousand years, in violation of the Commandment: “Make no graven image of me.” There is no personal description of Jesus in Scripture, but none! Can you write a biography of a man – any man, and not in some way give away just what he may look like? Can anyone write the biography of Lincoln or the late President Kennedy, and not say something about his personal being? You can’t do it. Yet, here is the greatest in the world, and not one word of his personal being is mentioned in Scripture. Was he tall? Was he short? Oh, I know there are priests in the world who will tell you he was five feet one. They have found some kind of a shroud. They’ve just found the bones of Peter! And all this nonsense in the world – this is not Scripture. Scripture is a psychological drama. It is supernatural, completely supernatural. It hasn’t a thing to do with any person who walked the face of this earth. And the living reality of the world is Christ Jesus. But Christ Jesus is your own wonderful human imagination. When you say, “I am,” that’s He!459 ¶8

Now, of course, the Christian will say, “The Lord Jesus Christ is my Lord,” meaning external to himself, and he worships that; but you will say, “Adonai,” or “Jehovah.” The Adonai Elohim – that’s my God. And something external, in spite of the Commandment, and both are totally unaware of the fact that Jehovah and Jesus are one; and Jehovah and Jesus, both being one – and what is one? I Am. I Am – that’s the oneness of the universe. Well, if I can get through any one’s head, and he completely believes it and trusts in it, and is willing to die rather than turn to a false god, he cannot fail. You will say, “Well, then, when is it going to happen, for I imagined it?” Well, here are the words of Habakkuk: “The vision has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower; if it be long, well, then wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late” – It’s like planting a seed. Well, don’t dig it up every day, just plant it in confidence that it contains within itself the powers to externalize the contents of itself, whether it be a grain of corn, a grain of wheat, or the sperm of a man. It will bring forth whatever is contained within it. And, so, all things bring forth after their kind.459 ¶9

So, if I dare to assume that I am the man I want to be and I define it – I don’t modify it, I don’t limit it. I dream of the kind of a person that I want to be. Now, it need not be based upon the assumption of another or upon any recommendation of another, because if I discuss it with another, he will say, “Well, you know, you should have money.” Well, it’s not my desire in life. I have to have money to live, yes, and pay Caesar’s world, but that is not my goal. Here recently, a man down south died leaving a personal fortune of seven hundred million dollars. You have heard of the name, his name is Ahmanson. We have his theater down south, a lovely theater – I’ve gone into it – something new in the Music Center. He owned the entire stock of the largest insurance – that is, home insurance and loan company in the country – it may be in the world with assets in excess of a half-billion dollars. He has all the stock; it’s his. He left it to his wife – his second wife of a few years, and his son by the first wife of 18 years. Now, that man thought that if you didn’t work eighteen hours a day making money, you were no good. He didn’t contact his people; in years he never made any contact with the managers of the different branches. He remained at home; he didn’t want that personal contact. He was aloof. Just money money – money – money! Well, I tell you, he didn’t take it with him! And, so, to give all of your life to the building of something that you can’t take with you – and you so love it and you can’t take it – that’s why we are told: “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all these things will be added.” “For your Father knows you have need of all of these things.” But put your heart completely on a goal that will be taken with you. So, we are told, “Set your hope fully upon the Grace that is coming to you at the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” If anyone would ask me tonight to advise him as to what he should want in this world, I would quote that passage: Set your hope fully upon the Grace that is coming to you at the Revelation – “the unveiling – of Christ.”459 ¶10

Well, who is He? Your own wonderful I-Am-ness! Christ is God the Father. Well, if He is God the Father, He has to have a Son. Don’t tell me you are a father and there is no son to bear witness of your fatherhood. So, is He really a father? Is He really in me? Yes, He’s in thee, and He’s a father. Well, where is it said in Scripture that Jesus Christ is a father? Did it name his son? Yes, it did, if one reads it carefully. “And so he turned to the crowd and he said, ‘What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?’” For the New Testament begins on the statement: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.” So they answered, “The son of David.” And he then asked a very simple question: “Why, then, did David in the spirit call him, Lord? If David thus called him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” Well, every son of the ancient world referred to his father as, “my lord.” He’s telling you David is his son. Well, now, chronologically, David lived – if I take it chronologically, as a secular history, David lived one thousand years before the Advent. Well, how can he be his son? Because it is not secular history! “Before the world was, I am.” – “Before Abraham was, I am.” And when the world shall cease to be, I Am. Therefore, he is not something that came into this time slot at a certain point in time. He was before the whole vast world was. And he was a father before the world was. And who is that son? David.459 ¶11

David is the sum total of all humanity. For to the Hebrew world, history consists of all the generations of men and all of their experiences fused into a single whole, and that whole is called Eternity. And Eternity – the Hebrew world is “Olam” (O-la-m); it’s translated: “Eternity.” Now, in Scripture, David stands before the king; and first he asks his lieutenant – he said, “Abner, whose son is that youth?” Listen to the sentence carefully. He’s not concerned about the lad; he’s concerned about the lad’s father. He said, “Abner, whose son is that youth?” And the lieutenant answered and said, “As you so liveth, O King, I cannot tell.” He said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is.” They inquired, no one knows. And then David stands before the king, holding the head of the giant Goliath in his hand; and said to him – “He said, ‘Whose son are you, young man’? And he said, I am the son of thy servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite.” Listen to it: in each case he’s inquiring about the father; so the answer comes back: “I am the son of Jesse.” Well, Jesse is any form of the verb “to be.” He’s telling the king: I am the son of Him Whose name is “I Am.” That’s who I am, the son of the One Whose name is “I Am.” Well, who is “I Am”? “I Am” is the name of God forever and forever; so he tells you he is God, for David calls him “Father.”459 ¶12

Now, if Christ became me, as Scripture teaches, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless of course you fail to meet the test!” Well, if He is in me, than I, too, must be a father, for He is a father; and if I am Christ, I have to be the father of the same son. There can’t be another son – not a David, but the David. Well, David does come – one glorious explosion in your head, and when it all comes down and the dust is settled, here before you is this glorious boy as described in the book of Samuel. Here is David; and he’s calling you, “Father” and there’s no uncertainty as to this relationship: you the father, and David the son. There is no other way that you will ever know that you are the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah, unless His only son calls you, “Father.” And that’s how Scripture unfolds within us, and everyone is going to have the experience. So, have no other God, but God. Do not turn to any outside God. They do not exist; they are false gods. If there be a Christ other than He who is crucified within us, who actually rose and continues to rise in us, that Christ is a false Christ; and that Christ, all the priesthoods – and I mean all denominations: Protestants, Catholics, and the Rabbinical world – teach as an external god. Any teaching of an external god is a false god. There is no external god. “Make no graven image unto me.”459 ¶13

So, here – to have no other God, we are asked by Scripture to put it into practice, for I must fulfill Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me. The only purpose for being is to fulfill Scripture, for everything in my world is going to vanish. If I owned the earth, I will leave it behind me; and eventually everything is going to vanish and leave not a trace of ever having been present. But this reality I cannot leave behind. So, I only can take with me that portion of Scripture that I have fulfilled. So, to what extent have I fulfilled Scripture? To what extent am I living by Scripture? I must live by it.459 ¶14

So, you find yourself free – free of the horrors of the world when you really have only the one God – not two gods. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” – not two. That is the great confession of faith of the Hebraic mind; but do they mean it when every Friday night in Temple they say it – and it’s a beautiful thing when it’s intoned in the Hebrew language; it’s beautiful, it moves you; but those who hear it and give the response, do they believe it? – When they believe that something outside of Self is their security? Take from me everything, but don’t take from me my name that is God. If you don’t take from me and rob me of the feeling that I am, then take all the little things for these are only shadows. I’ll rebuild it. I will rebuild everything as you take it from me. So, I grant you the right to take it from me, but don’t take from me the knowledge that I am the One that men call God, — not Neville, not any little thing that you can tag but just simply my awareness – when I am aware of being, and this wonderful human imagination, that is God!459 ¶15

Now, is there anything I can’t imagine? No. I may not believe it’s possible to do it, but don’t tell me I can’t imagine. I can take any one in the world and tell them a little story. The story could be fantastic; incredibly they will follow me if I use language that they can understand. Let me use the language that they use, and let me come down to their level and find words that they understand, and tell the story. The most incredible story in the world – they can follow me. They will follow me how? In their imagination! As I tell the story, they will follow me, and they will know exactly what I’m talking about; so let me tell it with understanding, for they can do it. What is impossible to a man who can understand? So, he begins to imagine the state.459 ¶16

Now, let me show you in a simple way – how this thing is done, because in the world of Caesar we do depend upon our senses, and we give reality to things based upon the sense – the sense of touch, the sense of sound, the sense of sight; and we give reality to it. So, we employ these. Imagination is spiritual sensation. Now, I don’t need the actual object before my senses or to touch it with my hand at the moment. I can imagine it, but can I touch it in my imagination? Well, see if you can’t touch it now. Think of a tennis ball. Just think of a tennis ball. Well, it’s out where? Can you bounce it and hear it? Bounce it in your imagination, and hear it. Can you hold it? Can you feel the texture? Can you smell it? All right, you’ve done that much. But you will say, “That’s all imagination; that is unreal. It doesn’t exist.” All right. Now, take a baseball. Do the same thing to the baseball. Does it bounce? No, it’s harder; it doesn’t really bounce in the true sense of the word. Well, does it feel like the tennis ball? No. Does it smell like it? No. Well, if you can discriminate between these two substances – these two objects – well, then, they must exist. You can’t discriminate between nothings. If one is nothing and the other is nothing – well, then, you discriminate. You can only discriminate if they exist. They exist, invisible to mortal eye; but they exist. Now, everything in this world exists in the same way. If you bring it into your mind’s eye, it exists. All it needs on your part is the acceptance of the reality. Can you believe that it’s real? If you can agree that it’s real to the degree that you are self-persuaded that it’s real, it will become real.459 ¶17

Now, when men like our late President and the late Churchill and the present Anthony Eden will make these bold statements – if you tell people as they listen to you, who said it, they are inclined to accept it because the men were prominent when they lived here. And, so, here, Mr. Hoover – he sent me an autographed copy of his address that he gave in the City of San Francisco the last time he spoke at the G.O.P. Convention and he said that nations with its many forms of government, its revolutions – all the things concerning a nation – “The rise and fall,” he said, “could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the minds of men.” Now that is Mr. Hoover. If I said John Brown said it, all this is silly; but a man who sat in the White House – and, although he only held it for four years, I do personally feel he was a very able man – a man that was far, far greater than present history has ever given any account of – a really great man. And he said, “The rise and fall of nations (or the rise and fall of families – the rise and fall of an individual) could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of that individual or that family or that nation.” Change those ideas – you don’t have to fight; it will go down if you put it down. It will go up if you rise up to it.459 ¶18

Now, Churchill said, “This is an age in which the fortunes of people are determined by their moods.” This is not an age where people think, “Well, now, give me something first and then I will feel happy about it.” No, he said the mood determines the fortunes, rather than the fortunes determining the mood. Now, that is Churchill, a very practical man; and here he is telling the entire world who will listen to him that a mood – if you hold a mood – well, what is a mood but an imaginal state? How would I feel if this moment I desired some intense wonderful thing and I had it? But how would I feel? Well, that’s a mood. Churchill tells us: Catch the mood, and the mood will determine the fortunes. Don’t wait for the fortunes to react to the mood, but catch the mood and make the mood become causative and produce the result in the outer world – the fortune.459 ¶19

And, then, Anthony Eden made the statement that: “An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.” It’s denied by the evidence of the senses; reason denies it, but he tells us, “If I dare to assume a thing…” – and he said this at the Guild Hall in London when he was Prime Minister. It was his duty to address all the heads of the different aspects of the Commonwealth on this day at the Guild Hall. And they were having difficulties then with Russia, and he was calling upon the entire Western World – speaking to the British people but calling on the Western World to change their attitude; for, unless the attitude is changed, you cannot change Russia; and if you are always going to be suspicious of her, and treat her as though she could never be trusted – well, then, you are going to have similar things multiply in the world. All you have to do, he said, “Assume that they are reacting as you desire them to react; and if you persist in that assumption, it will harden into fact.” Well, I have tried it. I have tried it with some person in my world that seemed stubborn in their attitude towards – well, another, or even self.459 ¶20

My wife, when we were first married, she worked at the Music Hall, and the man who was her boss – a Russian, would keep her after hours. He wouldn’t come to work until noon; she came to work at 9:00, and her hours were from 9:00 until 5:00; but he didn’t come until 12:00, and he liked to work late at night, and just as she was about to go home, he would call her into his office and say, Billie, I want you to do this, that, and the other, — and delay her dinner by an hour and a half, two hours, or more. And she resented this attitude of this man; so I said to her, “Why, Darling, as long as you are going to act this way towards him, he has to respond in like kind. You know the law; he doesn’t. So he makes a fortune, and you don’t make a fortune, but you are an artist.” She was a designer for the costumes that appeared on the stage of the Music Hall for eleven years. So, I said, “Talk to him as though he had praised you for your work. This morning when you go to work” – we were only five blocks from the Music Hall where we lived on 55th Street – “as you walk down Sixth Avenue, make a mental picture of him walking with you and hear his voice” – it’s a distinctive Russian voice – “and have him in his own broken English tell you how thrilled he is with your designs – so much so that he wants to use all of them, but the budget does not allow it; yet he wants to use every one you’ve brought down. How would you feel if he wanted all of them, and not take just two or three and send you back to your office to bring another four or five; but he wants everyone that you have submitted?” She started doing it. Do you know? It wasn’t 24 hours that his attitude changed towards Bill, and remained changed because she changed it.459 ¶21

So, we have that in Scripture: “We love Him, because He first loved us.” Our love of God is response. Well, your love of any one is response, unless you know what you are doing and you set it up in motion. And, so, if you want someone to respond, you have to start it first. So, she started it with him – Leonidov and to this day – of course, she hasn’t worked there in years – but to this day when we go back, if we go to the Music Hall, he is all praise and joy. He could not be nicer and, yet, for eleven years he was, in her eyes, the devil! Well, this is life. And it’s entirely up to us. What are we going to do if I have no other god? The minute she spoke of him as causation, she had another god and he had the power to do what he was doing, and he had no power because the very day she changed it to the real God, he had no power.459 ¶22

He could only reflect the activity of her own mind. So if I think, now he can fire me – then, I’ve given him a power he doesn’t really possess because the world is yourself “pushed out.” The whole vast world bears witness of the being that you are; for you are God, and God is a protean being. He’s playing all the parts – good, bad and indifferent. So, it’s entirely up to us what we are doing, that we conjure in our world the different ones that bear witness to what we are doing. They reflect the activity of our mind. So, if you have no other god, life will be so marvelous for you. You can’t begin to believe or to understand how free you are! Yes, in the world beyond this – in the world of dream, you still catch yourself in the world of dream not responding like some automaton. You find yourself breaking it and changing it even in the dream. When you get to the point where in dream you are in control, and your attention is not – I would say –the victim, but it is actually the one under control of you, then your whole vast world will change.459 ¶23

Now, all I can ask you to do is try it. Just simply try it, and don’t say one thing is too difficult or this one is impossible. Here is a chap. His best suit he tells me: “It was my best suit. I liked it. I sent it to the cleaners. I always liked the job the cleaner did; and when I call for my suit, the pants were missing. After two or three days of intense search all over the plant, he couldn’t find the pants. My wife began to bawl him out. I said, ‘Don’t do that. I really believe in this law.’ The man said to me when I made my third visit, ‘I want you to sign this. I’m insured and I will get a new pair of pants for you to match the suit.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want a new pair of pants; I want my pants. I just want my pants. I will not sign it – no signing.’” He said, “On my way down the freeway to work, I took my imaginary hands – I didn’t take my physical hands off the wheel; I’m driving down the freeway doing 65 miles an hour, but in my imagination my hand is on the pair of pants. I can feel the texture, as you just did it with the ball. I can feel the pants. I’m actually feeling it. I did it all the way down to the office. That night on my way back, I rode wearing the pants; I could feel them on my thigh, and my hands could feel the texture of the piece of cloth. The next day, the man calls my wife to say that in delivering a suit, that the pair of pants were under the pants for that suit.” Someone had hidden two pants on the one, but it happened that his were the hidden one. And they found the pair of pants!459 ¶24

Now, you will say, “Well, that’s a mere coincidence.” There is no accident in this world. Don’t think that one thing happens by accident. There is no sure thing. All things have causes. Everything in the world begins with some cause. Well, now, he redeemed his pair of pants by not accepting the evidence of the senses. You can do that with everything in this world – I don’t care what it is. But we are the operant power. It doesn’t operate itself. If I know what to do and I don’t do it, it doesn’t work itself! I have to actually operate this wonderful principle in my own wonderful human imagination. So, I can’t pass the buck. You get to the point, as my wife – years ago – said to me, “You know, the one thing wrong with you, Neville – you can’t trust anyone but yourself.” I said, “I trust everyone, but I don’t ask any one for help, if that’s what you mean.” I will trust them, because – they are myself “pushed out” – and I do trust myself. But why must I turn to another and ask another, when God is not another? He is centered in me, as my own wonderful human imagination. And wouldn’t it be far better for me to suffer in the interval to discover God than not to suffer and never discover Him? Always passing the buck? Asking this one, that one, or the other one? No! I’ve got to stand on my own feet.459 ¶25

In fact, my dancing partner, when Bill and I got engaged back in 1936 – she said to my wife: “You know, I’ll tell you one thing, how to keep him. Wear a dress that resembles the Bible. He’s always reading it.” She heartily disapproved of my interest in the Bible. To her, the theater and all the things of that sort were far more interesting; but for me to sit home and find interest six hours a day, seven days a week, in reading the same book – the Bible – well, I haven’t exhausted it, and I could not in eternity. It’s the Word of God. It’s ever fresh; day after day, the Book is fresh. And yet, the sixty-six books, I’ve read them over and over and over; and I read them with the Concordance – both the Hebrew and the Greek, and it’s ever a fresh book. When people say to me, “Have you read so-and-so?” I say, “What so-and-so?” “Well, it’s the best seller.” “No, I haven’t, and please don’t give it to me. I have no time to read it.” So, they are always forcing books upon me, but I don’t have time to read them, because I never exhaust the one Book, and that is the Bible.459 ¶26

Now, it may seem insane to take one book over the two thousand years and still make it modern, but the Bible is contemporary. It’s not an ancient work; it’s forever! It’s contemporary. These characters are eternal states dwelling in the imagination of man, and the day will come when you will meet them, and you will know they are states; but when you enter the states, they become animated. You animate the state of Abraham, and here is Abraham; but it’s a state, but suddenly it takes on to you flesh and blood. It becomes an animated being, and it is Abraham. You don’t have to ask any questions as to who are you? – You know when you enter the state of Abraham, which is the state of faith. All these are states – eternal states; which is God’s drama and man passes through states, as he passes through cities. If I pass through a city, the city doesn’t cease to exist because I passed through it. It remains for anyone to pass through.459 ¶27

Well, the same thing is true of states. I pass through the state of poverty. When I pass through poverty and rub it off and assume, while I’m poor, that I am rich; then when I become rich, poverty hasn’t ceased to be, any more than the state or the city ceased to be. It remains a state for anyone to enter it. When you know this, you can forgive every being in the world. He fell into a state, and people say, “He’s poor.” He isn’t poor; he’s in a state of poverty. He can get out of that state. While he’s in it, assume that he is free. Assume that he is now wealthy, or whatever he feels would be security; and while he is in that new state, the other one ceases to be to him; but it remains a permanent state for any one, knowingly or unknowingly, to fall into it. Therefore, when you know this, you can say with Blake: “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be everyone a state of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil.” It falls right into a state and remains in it, and then the state externalizes in his world. When you know this, you are as free as the wind, and you will not go to sleep at night in any state other than the state of your desire. You just would not.459 ¶28

And, yet, people will say, “Just give me five more minutes, because I so love the feeling of being unwanted.” Haven’t you known people that way? I knew a man in New York City during the Second World War. He hated Roosevelt – hated him! And the man said to me quite innocently – he came to my meetings; he said, “When I shave in the morning, I tell him what I think of him. I spend every minute that I’m shaving my face telling him what I think of him, and it isn’t pleasant.” I said, “Why do you do this?” “Well,” he said, “you know, if you go to a Broadway show tonight and spend ten dollars for a seat, you couldn’t get the kick in the two and a half hours for ten dollars that I get for nothing in ten minutes in the morning. I get all my emotions aroused, and they are flaming because I so hate the so-and-so.” He says, “Who do you think you are? A king? You put your son, who is not a soldier, and make him a general.” And he’s telling all these things. Well, Roosevelt wasn’t hurt; he was hurt. He offered Roosevelt gifts that he did not accept. If I give you a gift and it’s not accepted, who is stuck with it? I, the giver! I offered it and you didn’t take it; so I’m stuck with it. So, he offered these things to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt didn’t take them; so he was stuck with them, and his world simply went this way. He was an only child. What possessed him to dislike a man he’d never met – but people do that. And people will not get out of the mood; knowing the mood is causative, they still stay in it, and “eat worms,” as it were – just revel in it for a while, not knowing that it’s going to come to pass. And when they least expect it, the harvest will appear. They will not recognize their harvest, and they will deny they ever planted it or had anything to do with the planting of it, but it had to come just as they did it, and that’s the law.459 ¶29

So, here, take this seriously. Find out who God really is. I tell you from my own experience, He is your own wonderful human imagination. And that wonderful human imagination is the Eternal Vine – the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are His members. And the Lord Jesus Christ is one with the Lord Jehovah. They are one, and the name of both is “I Am.” That’s God! Well, can you say, “I am”? A little child when it’s born, before it can see anything or know anything, it must first know that it is. Its little hand comes up, and it doesn’t even know that its hand is its own, and it looks at it for a second and then it falls, and it wonders, “What has happened? Where did that something go?” It doesn’t know it’s its own hand – eventually, if it stays long enough for it to look at it; but before it can identify a hand, it must first be; and it is saying, without using words, “I am.” Every one is saying, “I am,” for that is the breath of man, because that’s God-in-man. Without God-in man, there is no man. And God’s name is Himself; and therefore, everyone, even the moron, is saying, “I am.” One who suffers from total amnesia is aware of being, even though he doesn’t know who he is and what he is and where he is. He still knows that he is. Well, that’s God.459 ¶30

Now, we start on that premise and build the structure that we want in this world of ours. Now, let us go into the Silence. Now, are there any questions, please?459 ¶31

Are there any other questions, please?459 ¶34

T he evangelists of scripture, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are anonymous names of men who wrote salvation history. They introduced characters who never walked this earth, but whose names are significant. In the Book of John, we find the story of Nicodemus. Now, Nicodemus is not mentioned in any other part of the Bible, or in any historical records of the time; so we see Nicodemus was not introduced for some historical purpose. The word means “conqueror of the people; all victorious”. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a very learned member of the Sanhedrin – which was the supreme council of Jews in New Testament times, having religious, civil, and criminal jurisdiction. In this case, Nicodemus desires to interpret scripture and pass judgement on his findings. Tradition has it that Nicodemus was the third richest man of his day; so we see he was not only learned, but very, very rich.457 ¶1

Observing all the rules of the rabbinical order, Nicodemus sought Jesus at night, as he did not want to be seen in the company of one who – according to scripture – had no education by standards known to man. Coming to Jesus by night, and recognizing him as a teacher, Nicodemus said: “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him.” Jesus then answered in the form of a dialogue, saying: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you are born from above you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus then said, “How can a man who is old enter his mother’s womb for a second time and be born?” To this Jesus replied, “You, a teacher of Israel, and you do not understand? I tell you, unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit; and flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.”457 ¶2

So we see that an entirely different birth must take place. That birth comes from above. The word is “anothen” and means “from the beginning; the top.” This same word, anothen, is used for the seamless robe John speaks of as having been woven from the top. And when Pilate said: “Do you not know that I have the power to crucify you and the power to set you free?” Jesus replied: “You have no power over me were it not given to you from above.” Here the word anothen is translated “above.” Through the Gospel of John the word anothen is brought into play, as he distinguishes that which is spirit from that which is flesh.457 ¶3

When reading the 3rd chapter of John, start with the 1st verse, and go through to the 21st. Jump to the 31st, and continue to the 36th. Then go back to the 22nd, and on to the 30th. Do this and you will find a flow in the dialogue that is completely broken as it is now recorded. It is as though the pages were dislocated before publication. The words belonging to Jesus flow from verse 10 through 21, then continue at verse 31 through 36. As it is now written, words have been put into the mouth of John the Baptist that do not belong there.457 ¶4

Nicodemus was introduced when the evangelist was seeking a greater understanding of the meaning of Jesus, God’s image which must be implanted in the individual. There is an interval between the implanting of God’s Word and its eruption. And when that eruption takes place, everything recorded of Jesus unfolds in a first-person, present tense experience, making that individual the son of God by nature, to be used as an agent to implant the idea that men may become sons of God by grace. That which is implanted, contains within itself the entire plan of redemption, which takes a period of thirty years to erupt into the individual’s birth from above.457 ¶5

Let us now turn to the Book of Luke, where it is recorded that: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” And Paul tells us that the power of the Most High is Christ Jesus. Anyone who is twice born can be used as an agent for the creative power of the Most High. There may be no awareness of it on the surface level, but a supernatural impregnation must take place; and it takes 30 years for the child – the symbol of spiritual birth – to occur.457 ¶6

You entered this world of sin and death for the impregnation and ultimate departure from it. While you are here, you may own all of the treasures, have its people worship and adore you – if that is your desire. But when you leave it, you will simply assume a new body in a terrestrial world like this one, to continue your same journey of slavery. This you will do over and over again, until your supernatural impregnation and your spiritual birth. Then you will depart this world and enter an entirely different one; for after the implantation, a metamorphosis takes place within you. Just like a caterpillar who clings to a leaf and cannot move beyond it, that which comes out of you when you are born from above, is greater than the painted butterfly. In that new body, you move into an entirely different world.457 ¶7

Now, in the 3rd chapter of John, the words put into the mouth of John the Baptist in the 22nd verse, are really a dialogue between Jehovah and Nicodemus, the victorious one. Experiencing that which he could not find in a book, Nicodemus was seeking a fuller understanding of the meaning of the word “Jehovah” or “Jesus,” which can only come through revelation. Now, if Nicodemus was a part of secular history, he would be mentioned elsewhere; but the Bible is not written about physical history, but about the supernatural history of salvation. There was no little boy called Jesus who was born of a woman called Mary. As you walk the earth and answer to your physical name, you conceive of the spirit and are supernaturally born.457 ¶8

Nicodemus personifies the Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, of today – those who keep alive any belief in an outside God. Believing that because of his social, educational, or financial background he should not be seen with certain people, Nicodemus sought one who could remove his blindness, because he was so eager to understand. His statement: “Rabbi, we perceive that you have been sent from God, for no one can do these signs unless God is with him,” is followed by these words which are seemingly not related to any sign: “Unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Then Jesus uses this phrase: “As the wind blows where it will and you hear the sound of it but cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes, so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.” This is true, for the vision comes so suddenly, just like the wind, as it is a spiritual experience. And if you conceived the word 30 years ago, your birth from above could come tonight.457 ¶9

Now let us turn to the other side of this principle, which is the law of identical harvest. We are told that whatever we desire, when we believe we already have received it, we will. This promise is based upon the premise that imagining creates reality. There is nothing you cannot become or have as an objective fact, if you believe you already have it. No restriction or condition has been placed upon the power of belief. If you will deny the evidence of your senses, suspend your reason, and persuade yourself that you are now the person you want to be, you will become it! Ask yourself how your friends would see you if you now embodied the idea you desire. Your true friends would rejoice, would they not? Then, if this statement in the Book of Mark is true, all you have to do is persist in believing your assumption is true, and it will harden into fact. I do not care what the world will tell you, imagination creates its reality. All of these precepts must be accepted literally, for they are literally true.457 ¶10

What person truly believes that he was born to be what he is today? He may have been born into a family of great wealth, and – being surrounded by it – he takes wealth for granted; but that is an assumption. He may even believe he is entitled to it; but if you checked into his family tree, you would discover that his father or grandfather had a vision which became his reality. And if he who was born into wealth does not know the principle that supports it, he can lose the money and never regain it again. But you who know that everything is based upon an assumption realise that no one can take anything from you that you really want! Take everything I have, but leave me with the knowledge of how I received it in the first place and I will reproduce it again by the seed of contemplative thought.457 ¶11

This is stated so clearly in the 11th chapter of the Book of Mark: “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it and you will.” These words are put into the mouth of one called Christ Jesus, who said, “I am the truth.” If Jesus Christ only speaks the truth, will you believe him? Live by his words! Accept on faith that which you do not understand, and apply that which you do. How would you feel if your desire were true? Catch the feeling and sustain it. Persist in your assumption and in a way that no one knows, it will become true for you!457 ¶12

If you were given enough money to take care of all of your expenses this month, but did not know this principle, you would remain in need and have to be given to again. No individual or country is rich enough to give forever. Those who receive must be told how to become a giver. I urge you to assume that you are important, that you are wanted, that you are contributing to the world; for as you do, you move to a higher level of yourself.457 ¶13

The politician urges you to vote for him, claiming that if you do he will take care of you. He knows he is lying, but the average person, conditioned as he is, accepts these words and perpetuates the state. There is no prison strong enough to keep you behind bars when you know this principle.457 ¶14

In San Francisco, about ten years ago, I was teaching an audience of approximately one thousand, when a lady stood up and said: “My brother is in the army. I do not know what he did, but I do know that he has been court-marshaled and sentenced to six months of hard labor. Neville, if I believe you, can I not set my brother free?” I said: “Yes, but only to the degree that you are self-persuaded that he is free.” One week later this same lady stood up and told this story.457 ¶15

“Believing you last week, when I returned home to my second floor apartment, I sat in my living room and imagined I heard the doorbell. Then I ran down the stairs, opened the front door and threw my arms around my brother. I rehearsed that scene over and over again until I could hear the doorbell ring, feel the banister in my right hand and my feet moving down the stairs. The doorknob became solidly real in my hand and I could see, touch, and feel my brother’s presence before I stopped imagining. Last Wednesday evening, as I was dwelling upon my brother’s return, the doorbell rang and I instantly knew it was he. I ran down the stairs, opened the door and there was my brother. He told me that the army had reviewed his case and changed their judgment, setting him free with an honourable discharge.”457 ¶16

This was a sign of the power of Christ operating in her. She believed the word and loved her brother deeply. Desiring her love to be free as the wind, she released it and in a way she could not rationally analyse, he whom she loved was set free.457 ¶17

You may think that was not right, but who is to say what is right and what is wrong? There are only two things that displease God. One is eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil by judging what is right and what is wrong, and the other is the lack of faith in yourself! If you do not believe that you are spirit, all imagination, you remain where you are and miss your goal in life.457 ¶18

You must believe that you became the physical you, with all of your weaknesses and limitations, that you emptied yourself and took on the form of a slave, thereby becoming a slave to your passions and ambitions. But before you did this, you were one with God. Then you emptied yourself of your god-like qualities, and assumed the weakness of the flesh by becoming human. Say to yourself and yourself alone, “If I do not believe that I am God I will die in my sins by missing my goals in life, so I must start believing now! And, because all things are possible to God, they are possible to me. I will begin by believing I am the person I want to be. I will believe my friends are what I would like them to be, and no longer eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”457 ¶19

Try to think of every person as one who is destined to be a son of God by grace, one who is destined to have union with a son of God by nature. When one is born from above he is a son of God by nature. Night after night he then enters the spirit world where he plays the part of the stallion, planting the seed of God in all that are called by his Father. Thirty years later, that seed which carries in itself the pattern of redemption, erupts within the individual, and he is redeemed. First, by waking in the tomb of his own being, finding the symbol of his individual birth, and then discovering the Fatherhood of God. This is followed by his spiritual body being split from top to bottom and the dove descending and sealing the Word with the words, “You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” Now let us go into the silence.457 ¶20