[...] Christianity celebrates as the climax of the Christian faith. Although we are warned by Paul in his letter to the Corinthians when he said: “I observe that you are keeping these dates alive, like days, and months, and seasons, and years”; he said, “I am afraid I have labored over you in vain” . But, nevertheless, over the centuries we still have kept them alive, it’s perfectly alright, as reminders. Like a picture on the wall, your father on the wall, your mother, and they’re gone from this world, but the picture…you don’t need a reminder, yet you look at them and you smile and you talk to it. I know I do. And so, I have them in the living room where I see them daily, and I leave them there to remind me of my love for them or their love for me, but there they are. So these are things simply like reminders…all that they are, really.432 ¶1

But here in this great mystery which will be celebrated this week by hundreds of millions, and I wonder what percentage really understands the mystery. They see it as history, and it is not secular history; it’s divine history, something entirely different. And in the story of the crucifixion—it’s preserved for us in the gospel—have you noticed the correspondence between the suffering of Jesus and that of David? It’s documented. You can take it in the story as told in the gospel concerning the crucifixion and see the identical suffering in that of David. We speak of the seven last words on the cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” These are the words of David in the 22nd Psalm . Then we find another one, and he said, to complete and fulfill the scripture, “I thirst,” and they gave him vinegar for his thirst. That’s the 69th Psalm, the Psalm of David, the words of David . And “O Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit”…these are the words of David, the 31st Psalm . You go through all of these words on the cross and you find them the words of David. Then you ask yourself numberless questions. Is not David said in the Psalms that he is the Son of God? . Was it not the suffering Son? And then, who is David and who is Christ? Was he not anointed? And when he is anointed, is he not made Messiah and Messiah is Christ? All of these questions surge in the mind if you really are interested and curious. But until you actually experience it, your concept of this drama in prospect is so different from what it comes to be seen as in retrospect. After it has happened in you, the whole thing is entirely different from the story as you were told it by your mother, and the school, and the churches…entirely different…the drama unfolding within you.432 ¶2

Now here, the beginning, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” That’s the cry of every man in the world. Haven’t I been good? Haven’t I done the decent thing? Haven’t I served? Look what has happened to me and why should it happen to me? Here is a man whose funeral tomorrow…hundreds of millions…and I’m not exaggerating, because this is an international, not a national thing. All over the world there will be services for the Reverend Martin Luther King and hundreds of millions are asking, “Why did it happen to him?” The man has been non-violent all of his life and it happened to him. So, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”432 ¶3

But the last part of that 22nd Psalm is the most glorious thing to read. Just take the last two verses: “Posterity will serve him; and men will tell of the Lord to the coming generations, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn that he has done it, he has wrought it” . The unbelievable thing in the world, he wrought it. Generations and generations to come men will tell of the story, and not only that, they’ll declare it to a people yet unborn. Who are the people yet unborn?—those who have not yet experienced the second birth, that birth from above. They will tell it to everyone who is interested that it has been done, he has wrought it. Well, the only one spoken of in scripture who did it is Jesus Christ. But Jesus Christ is in you. He’s not outside, 2,000 years ago: “Christ in you is the hope of glory” . “If we have been crucified with him in a death like his,” and in that crucifixion we are one with him, well then, “we certainly will be united with him in resurrection like his” . Only God can rise. He has wrought it. And so God in man will rise in everyone. The crucifixion took place. We were all crucified with God. And then came that moment in time when the first flower appeared. And then, from then on, all are appearing. So the resurrection is taking place; the crucifixion is over. “Those who teach that the resurrection is over,” said Paul, “they are simply cursed, for they are misleading the world in teaching that it’s over” . It is taking place. The crucifixion is over, but not the resurrection. The resurrection is taking place in the whole vast world. And when man is resurrected, who is resurrected but God. There is only God. God became us that we may become God. So he actually became every being born of woman. And in our own good time we are raised one by one into that one body that is God. For only one man fell carrying with him all, and only one is rising, but he rises in all. And in the end all are united into that one being that is God. That’s the mystery.432 ¶4

So here, in the Book of Daniel, the last chapter, and in this book he said that “many of those who sleep in the dust shall awaken. And I asked, ‘How long, O Lord, until the end of these wonders?’ and I heard him swear, ‘A time, two times, and half a time’ ; I heard it, but I did not understand it’” . So he records it. He confesses he heard it, but he did not understand it. Then we find in Peter’s letter, “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired concerning this salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when indicating and predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory” . It was revealed to them that it was not for them or their time, but for yours, for mine. “Therefore, set your hope fully on the grace that is coming to you at the revealing of Jesus Christ” . The time had to be fulfilled. The prophets did not know. They were simply recording the vision of Jehovah, but they did not understand it. He said, “But I did not understand it. I heard it, but I did not understand it.” And how true the vision is! It does take time, and two times, and half a time. It takes three and a half years for the wonders to unfold. It begins with the birth. So tell it and declare the deliverance of him to a people yet unborn, those who have not experienced the birth. Tell them that when you are born, mark it, it’s going to take a time, two times, and half a time, forty-two months, 1260 days, as we are told in Revelation—three and a half years for the wonders to unfold within you, beginning with the resurrection . Resurrection is not something that comes at the end of history. It comes within history. You’re walking the street and suddenly the moment is come, the time is fulfilled, and then you bring forth your own being which is God. God comes out and all the symbolism of his birth is present…that of the child. And then comes in the next forty-two months, the wonders in these four major events that must take place in you. On the other hand, there will be other stories of scripture that you will experience, and they are marvelous and thrilling beyond measure, but the important ones are these four that must take place after the resurrection.432 ¶5

So the resurrection comes first and it comes within man. It’s an individual experience. It’s not a collective experience, it’s an individual experience, and it comes not at the end but within history. And where does it happen?—in you. “And many who sleep in the dust shall awaken.” It’s an awakening, it’s a peculiar awakening, something that I have never experienced before or since save that moment. I can’t quite describe how you feel when you awaken. It’s something entirely different. Well now, what is the dust? People think of a cemetery. “Many of those who sleep in the dust shall awaken.” Well, listen to this statement in the 2nd chapter of Genesis: “And God formed man out of the dust.” Are you a man generically speaking? Well then, that body that is formed is dust. So, if now those who sleep in the dust shall awaken, then where do you awaken but in the body of dust? Leave this body long enough either above or below the earth and it turns to the dust of the earth. So where does a man awaken, where does he resurrect? And it really is, resurrection means, really, “an awakening.” It’s a peculiar awakening. I know in my own case I felt myself waking and waking and waking, and then when I’m completely awake, here I am in a tomb. I am in an actual tomb and where was the tomb? Not in a cemetery; I was the tomb, this body here was the tomb. It was all in my skull.432 ¶6

As the lady wrote me this past week, she said, “I heard a voice, a conversational voice, and the voice said to me, ‘What was the color of your sepulcher?’ And she said ‘I answered quite without taking thought, white.’ But I added, ‘And it was long, elongated, narrow, and round at the end.’” That’s right. That’s your skull. And she wondered if this was part of the 23rd chapter of the Book of Matthew, when he spoke of the Pharisees and he called them “whited sepulchers” . No my dear. It was the custom, and still is, in the orthodox Jewish world at this season of the year Passover; one month before Passover they whitened the sepulchers to warn people off from touching them. Because the 19th chapter of Numbers has a threat to anyone who touches the sepulcher is unclean for seven days. And no one should be seen unclean in the Passover festival, so every sepulcher was whitened. And so when you answered, you answered from the depth of your soul, because we have innate knowledge. You didn’t reason, you said there was no premeditation, “I automatically answered, white.” Well, that’s exactly the custom, that sepulchers are whitened to warn off anyone from touching it and, therefore, contracting uncleanliness. And so you automatically answered and you added to it, and added wisely. It is elongated and it is curved at the end. That’s your skull.432 ¶7

So, my dear, it is not any whited sepulcher, although in the story, the 23rd of Matthew, he did say to them, you wash the outside, you clean the outside like the sepulcher. You simply put white on it—in other words, white-wash it—but the inside is full of dead men’s bones. So he was actually criticizing their attitude towards the mystery: You do everything on the outside for show and leave the inside full of dead men’s bones. But here in this wonderful mystery, you walk this earth and suddenly out of the nowhere, as it did in my case, and in the case of Bob, in the case of Benny, and the case of Christine, she didn’t know it. When these things happen, they happen so suddenly. The time has come. God has planned everything as it has come out, and as it will be consummated. Don’t be concerned. You can’t fail, because it was planned in the beginning.432 ¶8

And the crucifixion is so completely unlike what the world thinks that it is. They think of something 2,000 years ago on a little hillside, called Golgotha, when Golgotha is your own wonderful human skull. That is where you are buried…and the “you” that is buried is God himself. And the one who is playing all the parts that you’ve played is in scripture form, David. I call you David. Alright, so you are a woman, I still say you are David. And you’ve played everything and suffered all the pangs of hell. You’ve played every conceivable part in the world. “I have found in David the son of Jesse”—and Jesse means I AM, which is the name of God, so I have found in my son—“a man after my own heart, who will do all my will” . Who did he find? He found David, and you are David. So he’s made you a woman scorned. He’s made you a man that is brutal. He has made you every conceivable thing in this world. And God did it. In the end, when he awakens, the one who played all the parts was David, and David is his son, the conqueror. He never once failed to execute the will of his Father, and therefore he is loved forever. Therefore, you the one who is playing the part, you have never failed, not once. Even when in the eyes of the world you seem to be a cur, you seemed to be horrible, that’s the part. You were cast in that part and you are playing that part.432 ¶9

So here, on the surface this horrible drama that took place this past week and God played both parts the one that was murdered and the one who murdered. And so, the one who did the shooting, who murdered him, he intended evil against the Rev. Martin Luther King, but God intended it for good. The story of Joseph and his brothers: “You intended evil against me; but God meant it for good” . And time proved it was for good, he saved the whole vast civilized world from death by starvation, because he had the vision to take seven years to prepare for the feeding when there would be nothing in the world that could grow. But he had saved a fifth of all the crops for seven years, and therefore they even forgot that the ground ever grew anything in those seven years when nothing grew. But he had it. And so, you will see that God intended this act for good. And you will see an entire change for good as a result of that act. And the one who is now condemned—undoubtedly they’ll find him if he doesn’t destroy himself before—and he will get what Caesar demands. He said, “Whose coin is this?—“Caesar’s.” “Well then, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” If the law demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, well, let it demand it. Then let him take his life if that’s the law. But God played the part.432 ¶10

And all these parts are being played by one being. God is a protean being. There’s only one. God is one, he’s not two: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord thy God, the Lord is one” . Never get away from it. What is his name?—I AM. Well, you can’t divide I AM. And the day will come the whole vast world will see the mystery. But in prospect it’s so different from what it seemed to be after the experience; and then you reflect upon it and in retrospect the whole thing is unfolding. For the prophets confessed, “I heard it but I did not understand it.” It was not for their time. The time had to be fulfilled and all the violence; and then came that moment in time when it was fulfilled. The first broke earth and came out of the dust…the dust being his own body. He woke within himself, and the whole drama that was foretold for the first time was really understood. For he said to Daniel, “Shut up the words and seal the book,” because no one now can understand it…shut up the words and seal the book…in his last chapter, the 12th chapter, . And then he said, “I asked him, But how long until the end?” for he said shut it up until the end. And then he told him the wonders, and it will take three and a half years, a time, two times and half a time. At the end of that three and a half years after it begins, you’ll know the wonders of God and he has wrought it. So go and tell all the generations and tell the people yet unborn—those who are waiting eagerly to be born from above—tell them it has been accomplished. It is done! And the God who did it is the God who will do it in you, because there’s only one God. There are not two Gods, three Gods, four Gods, only one God. So if it was ever done, it was done by God. And because there is only one God he will do it in me. And he has done it in me…he has wrought the same thing in me.432 ¶11

In the end, everyone is the father of God’s only begotten son who is David. That causes such a tremendous stir in the hearts of people who have been taught otherwise. They don’t realize that Jehovah and Jesus Christ are one. And if David was Jehovah’s only begotten son, as told us in the 2nd Psalm, and he and Jesus Christ are one, David is the son of Jesus Christ, as told us in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke. “And he said unto me”…when he asked the question, ‘What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?’ And they said, ‘The son of David.’ Then he answered, ‘Why then did David in the spirit call him lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?’” .432 ¶12

When a boy calls a man “my lord” he is speaking of his father or to his father. So David was addressing him, the Lord, “my lord,” for every son in the ancient world always called his father “my lord.” As we told you here recently, in the Book of Genesis, when it was the daughter Rachel speaking to her father, “Let not my lord…” . Well, here was the father searching all over the place for the lost utensils, which he thought his son-in-law Jacob had stolen. And he comes into Rachel’s tent and he said to Rachel while he’s searching…and she said, sitting on the saddle where she had concealed these implements…and then she said, “Let not my lord be angry with me…because it is after the way of women with me.” She’s implying that she had that monthly moment at her age as a woman, and, therefore, she could not rise and stand in his presence. But she called him “my lord.” Well, here is the cue given in Genesis for that is the seed plot of the entire Bible. So when the child speaks to its father and addresses the father as “my lord,” then throughout scripture we find the same thing.432 ¶13

And so, David calls Christ “my Lord”…he’s calling him “my father.” So when he stood in my presence, he called me Father. It’s the most glorious experience that one could ever experience…to look into the eyes of this heavenly being, without any doubt in your mind that you are looking at your own son. And he is your son in the most absolute sense of the word, and he knows he is, and you know that he is. He knows you are his father. And so, everyone, regardless of race, regardless of nation, regardless of everything, will have that experience. So, in the end, are we not one?432 ¶14

So, a lady tonight, she writes a story. She said, “I heard a voice and the voice within me. At first I woke with these words, ‘Now I understand’ and as I pondered these words, I discovered the words were not uttered by me, they were uttered by my friend Jan. [...] her voice was there. And then I heard distinctly, and the voice said, her voice, ‘I am in you and you in me.’ And then from the depths of my soul I understood the unity of being, the oneness of it all. I thought I had before, but at that moment I understood it, the unity. ‘I am in you and you in me’…I had heard those words over and over and over, but I didn’t quite understand them. Here, suddenly, I heard them and I understood them for the first time, the unity of being.”432 ¶15

Well, here I look at Benny. You could not find—unless I was a blond, blue-eyed being in this world—you couldn’t find two more opposite in pigment than Benny and myself…unless you painted me white and made me an albino. And yet, we are the same man, because we have the same son. He met David, and David called him Father, and he knew he was David’s father, and David knew that he was Benny’s son. And that same David called me Father, so are we not one? So are these not masks that we wear, just as actors wear masks? So all these are masks and the actor is God. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” So in everyone the same being is playing the part. He’s a protean being and he can play all the parts in the world.432 ¶16

So here, this coming Friday when millions will go to a three-hour service, or parts of it, anyway, and then on Sunday the great day of resurrection…and it’s nice. I would not completely go along with the criticism that Paul gave to the Galatians because they kept it alive. But, nevertheless, that is not it…on the outside. Tell the story of his deliverance, that he has wrought it, that’s how the Psalm ends, the 22nd. He has done it! It’s been accomplished! Salvation is assured! It is over. It’s not going to be, as the world thinks; it is over. And we’re being called one by one to unite into a single being who is God. And that God…in scripture you can call it Jehovah or call it Jesus Christ, for they are the same. The Spirit of Christ that controlled the lives of the evangelists is the same being that inspired the prophets of the Old Testament, the same being. Jehovah and Christ are one. They aren’t two; for you can’t have two Gods, only one God.432 ¶17

So this week when you read it in the papers…and every morning I must confess I’m always shocked when I read what some prominent bishop or minister or monseigneur had to say the previous Sunday or something. Like this morning’s L. A. Times and they gave two long columns to the palaver of a professor at one of the great theological colleges in our country…and the nonsense that he wrote…a complete blind, blind person. He hasn’t the slightest concept of this mystery, and he wants to treat it as something on this level, and it hasn’t a thing to do with secular history. While we are walking the earth in this world then suddenly the whole thing erupts within us, and then scripture becomes something alive, and the whole thing is in us. And it was all about you, as told in the 40th Psalm. Suddenly you realize the whole thing was all about you; it wasn’t about another because there is no other. And so, you, individually, the whole book is all about you individually and there is no other. In the end, all of us will be one, and yet without loss of identity…a peculiar strange unity without loss of the members. I have felt it, I have experienced it, and so I know what I’m talking about. I did not lose my identity, and yet I became one with the risen Lord. Then infinite love that is his that was mine and is mine…and I feel it night after night as I drop off into the deep. I am that being. In a world beyond the world of dreams I am that being. I’m playing the parts that I must play, sent on this errand, that errand, and sent by self because I am the being who sent me. Yet when I am sent, I am given a form best suited for the part to be played. I do it willingly and eagerly, and then return to pick up this body once more and go through the day…all the normal, natural things that one must do in this world of flesh and blood.432 ¶18

So this is the great mystery, my dear. God actually, literally became you that you may become God. And there’s only God playing all the parts in this world.432 ¶19

So in these seven words of the cross…of course they, the church fathers, rearranged them to suit themselves, but they are all equal. It started off, some of them, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Others will start off the series, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do”…and then come down the entire line and end, “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Or some will end it in the Book of John, “It is finished.” But, regardless of how you take the seven, these seven declarations are all from scripture, and they all parallel that of David. To the very end he believed in his Father and believed in that eternal love, his Father, and he did everything that man could ever do.432 ¶20

You try to find something that man has done that is not recorded in scripture. And you’ll find that the one who is playing all those parts was David…the most horrible things on earth, all in scripture. You can’t conceive of a vice, you can’t conceive of anything that scripture does not record. Talk of genocide today? It’s all in scripture. Talk of the murders? It’s in scripture. And here, in the forefront of it all was David; and yet “he was a man after my own heart who did all my will.” So in the end, he is lifted up, the honored one, my son. And my son is my creative power who did exactly what I intended from the beginning. And so, he did it, for he is my creative power…that’s what the son is. It manifests the creative power of the Father, and so the son goes forward to do exactly what the Father willed. So in the end, because he did it, well then, here is my honored Son.432 ¶21

So in the end, there’s only the Father and the Son. You dwell upon it tonight. Take the 22nd Psalm and you’ll find it breaking itself in the 21st verse on. It only goes through to the 31st. So at the 31st it breaks from the horror, and then comes the deliverance. And see that glorious thing unfold within you. Take it…for posterity will serve you. It served him…I’m thinking of you…and men will tell of the Lord (that’s you) to the coming generations. Yes, all the unborn generations, they will hear of you. And men will proclaim your deliverance to a people yet unborn. (those who have not yet experienced it) they will tell them it has happened, for he has wrought it…for you have wrought it.432 ¶22

I know in my own case when I was a boy either seven or eight years old an old English lady, on a wind-swept area of Barbados, and she said to me one day, she said, “Neville, you will do something that unnumbered centuries after you are gone men will discuss. You will do something, and two others will be named with you in the doing, and it’ll be discussed. I can’t tell you what it is.” She thought I would discover something. But, she said, “To prove to you that I know what I am talking about, that I am seeing it clearly, you will leave this home of Barbados and make your home in a foreign country. You will be the first of your family to get married and you will have two children.” These three things came true. I left Barbados in 1922 and returned only for a vacation. Well, that’s a long time ago, 1922, here it’s ’68. All of my family left only to be educated, and returned to live in Barbados. I was the first to get married, although I was the fourth in line, and I do have two children. So she gave me these things to prove to me that what she said, which she could not quite understand or explain, would come true. So, she said, “I tell you, you will do something that centuries and centuries to come men will be discussing that you have done.” But she didn’t know what it was that I would do. And then she told me these other three things that when they came to pass I might believe what she told me. She couldn’t quite explain. Not that she didn’t want to explain, she had no words to use to explain it. She simply saw when I sat in her presence in this barren, wind-swept area that we called Bathsheba in Barbados. So I went to Bathsheba and there she sat and she told me the story.432 ¶23

So I tell you that I have wrought it. I can speak in the first-person. And in this audience I can speak of others that you have wrought it. And I do not know…because it’s not in scripture, there is no description of the event. Even though it’s the central point in the Christian faith, there is no description of the event of the resurrection in scripture. But I have described it in detail in my book that I’ve called Resurrection. And so read the last chapter, which is called Resurrection, and that’s my story. If I have told it sometimes in the third-person it’s only because I thought that man would accept it better. But I could have told the entire thing in the first-person, for I’m only telling my story. And yet, it’s not described as an event in any part of scripture. You see it adumbrated yes, it’s there, it’s forecast, it’s foreshadowed, but it’s not described. So I have described it. And maybe that’s what she meant. Here was one who had the courage to describe it. Even though I told it in the third and dropped back occasionally into the first, those who will read it tomorrow and in unborn tomorrows will know that he wrought it, he did it. And who did it?—God. Not Neville—God did it.432 ¶24

So when I told one of you one night when you asked me, “What is your name?” I answered correctly, I said, “Friday.” I meant it then and I mean it now, for God is a God of love and that’s all that Friday means; for I’m part of his body, incorporated into his body, and it is infinite love. So when you asked me, automatically the answer came “Friday,” which means simply “the God of love.” Now let us go into the Silence.432 ¶25

The culmination of the teaching of Jesus is reached in the thought of the mystical union of the disciple with the Father and the Son through the Spirit. Now first of all, let me explain what I mean by Jesus and what I mean by disciple. Jesus is the pattern man. “He has made known unto me the purpose of his will which he set forth in Christ as a plan, as a pattern, for the fullness of time”. So that plan, that purpose, revealed in a pattern is Jesus Christ, the pattern man. The word disciple simply means “learner.” Anyone who hears from the one in whom the pattern has unfolded and believes it and learns more and more about the pattern is a disciple. You might think through tradition of Peter, James and John. No…you are…if you believe it. Anyone who hears the pattern, this incredible pattern of salvation, and believes it is a disciple. And then he learns more and more about the pattern. So that’s what I mean about this mystical union of the disciple, the learner, the one who heard it, with the Father and the Son of whom the pattern speaks; for he is speaking of his own unfoldment of the Father and the Son and this is brought about through the Spirit.431 ¶1

Now, tonight I have quite a few perfectly wonderful eschatological visions to share with you that came to me this week. They are perfectly marvelous. Here is a disciple, one who heard it and he believed it to the point of faithful following all so that he could hear more and more about the pattern. And so he writes this letter that I got this week, “You were on the platform teaching and you smiled at me, but in your eye was an intensity as you looked at me. And then you took a golden arrow and you shot it at me. On the side of the arrow was the word in bold, bold type ‘resurrection’ and it penetrated my forehead. Then you took a second arrow and you shot it at me. On the side of it in bold type was the word ‘David’ and it penetrated my chest. Then you took a third arrow and you shot it at me. On the side of that arrow was the word ‘ascension’; it penetrated my belly right to my spine. Then you took a fourth arrow and you shot it at me. It had no word on it, but there was a dove, a white dove on the arrow, and it struck me all over, every pore of my body was struck by that single arrow. I’ve never known such ecstasy of love. I felt like a spiritual springtime of pure, pure love.”431 ¶2

Now, here is the perfect order of the unfolding of the pattern that penetrated him by his intensity and his interest and his persistency in hearing more and learning more and more of God’s plan of salvation.431 ¶3

Then he said, “Last Monday night this happened. In my dream a man that I have never seen before to my knowledge, but he invited us all to a great feast, and it was perfectly beautiful. There was such love in the atmosphere. Then he turned to me and he said: ‘I have prepared a great, great feast. I am coming again to take you with me. I am coming on the 17th.’”431 ¶4

Now you take seventeen, it could be the seventeen, literally, but in symbolism seventeen is a marvelous number. When you write a number in Hebrew, you do not write, say, as we write it in the Arabic, 17; you write seven and you write ten…seventeen. So you must know the significance of seventeen. Look it up in your Concordance. It first appears in the 37th chapter of Genesis: “And Joseph was seventeen years old.” That’s the first appearance of the word seventeen. Then it comes with his father in the 47th chapter: “And Jacob was in Egypt seventeen years.” But it really denotes a combination of seven and ten, and seven is “spiritual perfection” and ten is “ordinal perfection.”431 ¶5

Here he has a perfect order that preceded this vision, the order of resurrection, then the discovery of David, then the ascension from the spine, and then the dove that smothers him all over in love. So he has the ordinal perfection and, therefore, spiritual perfection in this. I can say to him he has not a thing to fear. They can chop his head off tonight; they can’t stop the penetration of these arrows from a world beyond the world of dream. They cannot. He’s a complete being now with the pattern completely embedded in him. And in the not distant future the pattern of Jesus Christ will unfold within him.431 ¶6

Now, here is one…you take it to heart. The earliest gospel begins with the words, “In the beginning”…or, “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” The word gospel simply means “good news.” Not good advice, good news, the most incredible news in the world. How God actually redeems man: He becomes man that man may become God. That’s the good news.431 ¶7

Now here, in her letter she said, “I found myself…you were present, but I cannot bring back any detail of what you did or what you represented. You were present, but outside of that I cannot say any episode or recall any episode, any sequence. So I will tell you what I recall. I was with our group…that is Jan and our group. We were walking in one direction, and then in another direction there were groups of women spaced, at intervals of space, and they seemed to be on a conveyor belt. They were not walking and they were being conveyed, like simply a moving platform. But we were walking and we were gay and happy, moving in the opposite direction.431 ¶8

“And the first group that I encountered was all dressed in black, with black shawls over their heads, and many of them were crying. They seemed to be a mournful crowd, and I had at the moment a feeling that this is a Catholic group, a Catholic religion. Then the next group were the most bitter, the most stern of stern faces, uncompromising, without compassion, self-righteous. You’ve never known such complete embodiment of self-righteousness of these women, and I felt they represented all the fundamentalists of religion, the unbending. They could ask no question because they knew it all. They knew everything and it was just as they knew it. And they were on the belt moving in the same direction.”431 ¶9

“Then I came upon another group of women and they were more friendly, they were amenable, and they could ask questions; they were seeking. One asked me a question, but I can’t recall the question. But I do recall what I told her, and I said to her, ‘You will find who you really are, and who God really is, and it is all there’”…and with her right index finger she pointed to her forehead.431 ¶10

Then she said, “I joined my crowd, I answered the question whatever it was, and then I jumped and leaped and, I would say, ran forward to rejoin the crowd, our group, all moving into the distance leaving them moving in the opposite direction.”431 ¶11

Now in the earliest gospel the turning point is to repent. Here, the very first words spoken by the pattern man: “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel”. Believe this good news. Well, repent means “a radical about face, a radical change of mind.” So that no matter what I think I now believe in, when the pattern is presented, can I so accept it that I can turn completely around from a physical Christ on the outside?431 ¶12

Paul, “Are you so foolish…O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” You know what the word portray means? Look it up. I can portray in a letter, I can portray if I can draw, I can portray a drama on the stage. It’s “portrayed as crucified.” “Let me ask you only this…” said he, “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having received the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”431 ¶13

So the turn-around is to turn from your belief in a fleshly being called Jesus Christ, a being of flesh and blood, to the spirit that is Christ—the pattern man, that pattern that is trying to awake within man.431 ¶14

And as you turn around, you turn by exercising your right to change your mind. And in spite of all the facts of the world, you dare to believe what you would like to believe is true, in spite of the facts screaming at you. And so you turn around. You turn around in your mind and begin to practice what I call revision and the Bible calls repentance. It’s the same thing: To revise is to repeal. I revise, well then, I repealed it. So if I repeal a thing, I’ve changed it. And so, I may modify it, not completely repeal it, I may still hold onto a little bit of the physical nature, but eventually I’ll drop it all. When I completely turn around and start moving up, I will simply move forward with the spiritual Christ, the pattern that must unfold within all of us.431 ¶15

Now here is another one. This lady said, “I found myself”—this is a dream; I call this a most wonderful vision—“and my niece and I went to a neighbor’s house and there were numberless people there. There were rooms and rooms and rooms, all filled with people, and suddenly I knew I had to feed them. And then suddenly without giving them anything or doing anything they’re all eating. Many came up to me and extended their hand as though I had a tray in my hands. I had no tray but they extended their hand and when they withdrew it, they either had food or they had a drink in their hand. And I did nothing. I felt so detached from it all.431 ¶16

“And then I said to my niece, I want to leave, so we left this place and went home. I found three implements: there was a shovel, and there was a pitchfork, and there was a rake. I didn’t like where they were in the front of my house, so I put them on the side. Then when I went in, I met a friend. I’ve never seen her so thin, never in my life, and she was so thin. I’ve always known her plump. And she said to me, ‘My husband wants to see you.’ Well, her husband’s been dead for many, many years, but she said, ‘My husband wants to see you.’ She has been a widow for so many years. Then I looked out and here in the distance on the driveway was an enormous stable. I saw a man approaching with a straw hat and overalls. As he approached he had on the uniform of either a general or a colonel—it was the grey-blue of West Point—and he said to me that he’s going to show me my horse. He entered the house and here is this perfectly beautiful, magnificent white horse.”431 ¶17

Well, here is the symbol of the white horse. The only one who rode it in scripture is The Word of God, that is the pattern man called Jesus Christ. And it’s her horse; she’s going to ride it. So, if she rides it, well then, it’s Jesus Christ: The pattern will unfold within her. And here is the horse. Now she sees the reason for these three implements; for these are the three that you would use in the care of any horse. And he said, “We will keep your horse in the stable,” and there was no other horse in that enormous, big stable.431 ¶18

Then she said someone gave her a white dog, a very, very friendly white dog, and she took the dog up and it weighed about sixty or more pounds. Then she took an oval basket, about twenty-four inches long, and she made a little bed and placed the dog in it on its back. Then she covered it with a blanket, and as she tucked the blanket in, it felt like a baby. It didn’t seem strange to her that it felt like a baby…but the face was the dog.431 ¶19

Well here, the dog symbolizes, in scripture, faith. It’s called Caleb, the only one that crossed the Styx, crossed over into Jordan, the Promised Land, with Joshua whose name means Jesus. It’s the Hebraic form of Jesus. And so here, faithful to the pattern man, here is the child that is promised. So she actually felt it and it didn’t seem strange, and tucking it in she woke. It was six in the morning and she said to herself, “I must remember this dream in detail,” and she fell asleep again.431 ¶20

This time, a man appears, and the man said to her, “Find me a surgeon.” Well, where to find a surgeon? He said to her, “Look into my skull,” and the skull fell apart, and she looks into the skull. Instead of seeing brains, as we who are not doctors have seen pictures of brains, it wasn’t brains, it was a red kidney-like substance that pulsed, it was alive and the whole thing was pulsing. And in it she found a little tiny head the size of a pea, a perfect head with a crown, and it seemed to grow. Then he said to her concerning the surgeon, “Feel my head.” The whole thing closed up now and it felt soft like silk. And then he said to her, “You know if the surgeon doesn’t come immediately, my skull is going to split open.”431 ¶21

And then…first of all, she began to quote from my book Awakened Imagination, for she had been reading it the night before, the Coin of Heaven, how imagining creates reality…and he completely believed it, she said. Then he said to her, “If God…” or rather “the surgeon does not come immediately, my skull will split open and then I’ll be imagining out of this world.”431 ¶22

Well, here is the perfect, perfect vision. This is all scripture really. Here the white horse—that’s Revelation—and the whole unfolding from within man…the child within the skull.431 ¶23

Then comes another one, she said, “I am in a deep cavern in the earth, and there is a long, long trough, really, with water, running water in this long, long trough. And this enormous white worm is in it. Sitting on the banks of this water is a babe, in the nude, about eight months old. He seems so completely in control of himself. He’s sitting up and in complete control, eight months old, looking at his extended hands.” She said, “You were up above it all and looking down at the child. I was looking at the child. And then, I heard myself repeating to myself, ‘Can a man bear a child?’ and I am waiting, repeating ‘Can a man bear a child?’”431 ¶24

Well, that’s scripture, the 30th chapter of Jeremiah. So when one begins to express scripture…and that is eschatology for that comes at the very end of the journey, “Can a man bear a child?” These, all these visions are eschatological, every one of them that I’ve told you or I will tell you.431 ¶25

Here is one…it’s a weird one and you’d wonder what on earth does it mean? She said, “Here I am in this…I call it a dream…I am in a corral, a huge oval corral. There’s no one but myself. I don’t see myself but I am aware; I am just a center of awareness. There is no animal, not a thing but the beautiful sky and limitless expanse of this open country. And the gate of the corral is open. Hanging on the top of the gate post, like a side of beef, is half of the carcass of a human being, and it seemed to me natural to be there. It didn’t strike me as something that was wrong. It seemed perfectly natural that it should be hanging there.” And so, she said, “At that moment I looked at it, and I wondered, and then I woke.”431 ¶26

Well, I will tell her to get the significance of this, the 26th chapter of the Book of Exodus, the 12th verse, but there it is called a half of a curtain. The 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Hebrews gives us the significance of the curtain: “He opened a new and living way through the curtain, that is, his flesh.”431 ¶27

So the flesh you saw was simply representative of the curtain of the temple…as Moses saw it, and he had to execute it just as he saw it from above. But he saw it in the form of the curtain. And the New interprets the Old; it’s not the other way around. And so in the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Hebrews, the curtain is called “his flesh” and “he opened a new and living way for us through his flesh,” and so you saw the curtain that was torn from top to bottom. That is eschatological.431 ¶28

And here is one. She sat in her den and she must have dozed just for a few moments, and in that short interval she’s in a small boat in a turbulent sea. The sea is turbulent and raging. There is no steering gear and no sails, just the mast and a crossbar, like a cross, on the prow. She is in the nude. She climbs the mast and extends her hands on the crossbar like a cross, to use her body as the sail…as that which would give power and direction towards a haven.431 ¶29

Now, she said, “What significance it has I do not know.” It has tremendous significance. First of all, let me quote, you’ll find the 28th chapter of Job, the 8th verse, and you’ll find in the 7th chapter, the 2nd verse of Daniel. And Daniel said, “I saw in my vision by the night, and behold the four winds of heaven were stirring up the deep sea.” And the phrase “were stirring up,” the Hebrew word translation was “stirring up” is translated in Micah, the 4th chapter, the 10th verse it’s translated “of a woman in labor.” That same word in Micah, which is translated “were stirring up,” that is “great irritation” is “the woman in labor.”431 ¶30

So I can say to her, you are this night, my dear, in labor. And being on the cross, what can you bring forth but Christ? You have to bring forth the pattern. Christ is the pattern, that’s all that Christ is, the power of God and the wisdom of God. And that pattern you are, and you are in labor, and you’re going to bring forth this pattern. So that’s your vision. It took, what, a moment? So what? A thousand years is as a day in the mind, in the eye of God. So you sat in the den and you nodded, just for a moment, but in that one moment you saw what you are doing. The depth of your own being revealed to you that you are in labor and you are bringing forth Christ.431 ¶31

So I can’t tell you my thrill in receiving these this week. Every one is eschatology, every one, the drama of The End. That’s all that matters. For the purpose of life is to fulfill scripture; there is no other purpose.431 ¶32

Tonight, our whole country is disturbed because of the death of one man by one man. I will tell you, the man who was killed and the man who killed him are one; and both will be gathered together in the bosom of the risen Lord, the most intimate brothers, having played their part in this world. The most intimate brothers with a love transcending anything known to man on earth, both the one who was murdered and the one who murdered. They did not know it and the world doesn’t know that we are one.431 ¶33

And so, tonight, on this level, the country has good reason to be concerned and to make all these speeches on the air and television. Certainly, I would not deny it and on this level all that is in order.431 ¶34

But I’ll tell you, they are one, and the one being who played both parts is God. God is a Protean being, he plays all the parts in the world. And maybe this death…unless violence erupts and takes away its significance…it could foster and further what he stood for one thousand-fold and far, far quicker than anything else in the world. If there is, on the other hand, a denial of sacrifice, well then, it could again delay it. But he of one race who was killed and one of another race who killed him are both one. For “in Christ there is no bond, no free, no Greek, no Jew, no male, no female, but one”; so there’s no black, no white, no yellow, no pink, no red, just one, all one.431 ¶35

So, what I am trying to say, having unfolded the pattern within me, that the end, the culmination of the teaching, you’ll find in the thought of this mystical union of the one who hears believing with the Father and the Son. And this is brought about through the Spirit. For you receive the Spirit by hearing, that’s how you received it. Now don’t be foolish, having received it through hearing return once more to the flesh, and see a physical savior on the outside; for there is no physical savior on the outside.431 ¶36

So, in this glorious 17th of John, he said: “O righteous Father, the world has not known thee, but I have known thee; and these believe that thou hast sent me. I have made known unto them thy name, and I will make it known, that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them.”431 ¶37

For where would he go? If he’s going to the Father, and he is the Father, and the Father is in you, then where would he go? So, he will never be so far off as even to be near when he goes, for nearness implies separation. And if he’s going to the Father, and I and the Father are one, everyone can say that, then where can he go? So when he comes, can he come in any other way than the unfolding of himself which is the pattern in you?431 ¶38

He can’t come in any other way. Don’t look for him coming as flesh and blood from without. He returns and he is only a pattern man. And when he returns to you, he returns unfolding himself as the pattern in you, for you are Spirit.431 ¶39

And in the end all will awaken and all will be one; they will not be two. There’s only one God, “one body, one Lord, one hope, one faith, one God and Father of all”. And we are that one…all returning one by one into the one body, the one Spirit, the one Father.431 ¶40

You dwell upon it. I tell you tonight, in spite of all the turmoil in our country tonight and the world, really, for men are thinking on the lowest level, but the very lowest level, and they are trying to solve the problems of the world on the lowest level, and you can’t do it. You solve it by repentance and repentance is simply radical change of attitudes of mind. You confront a fact, alright, so what? Is everything possible to God? Alright, so that’s a fact, so what? I can resolve it. If all things are possible to God and his name is I AM, at this very moment can I not assume that things are as I would like them to be? Well, who assumed it? I did. Well, therefore you mean I am assuming it? Yes. Well, that’s his name. And all things are possible to God? Well, that’s his name…I AM.431 ¶41

But now have faith in God, have faith in that imaginal act. Don’t go astray, have faith in that imaginal act. That turns you around and keeps you turned around if you practice repentance, practice revision. And if you practice it you’ll be on the way.431 ¶42

You’ll find a group who will be friendly and amenable, who will ask, and you’ll be bold enough to tell them, “You will find God, and you will find who you really are, and it’s all there.” You had that courage to tell them it’s all there within. He’s not coming from without, he’s all there. And when he unfolds himself within you, it’s simply a pattern; that perfect pattern that my friend Bill received with the four golden arrows as I told you quite a few months ago.431 ¶43

Who knows what the awakened man in the world beyond the world of dreams is doing when he shoots his arrows. You might have the tape, I don’t have it, and you will find what one does in that realm beyond the world of dream when he’s completely awake and he shoots his arrows in the perfect order. You can’t deviate from God’s plan. Well, if you awaken within yourself and it’s the plan that awoke, you are the plan that is awake. And so you shoot the plan to those you love.431 ¶44

Now, in the story of the piece of beef, she said, “Strangely enough, I looked at it and it seemed perfectly right to be there. The only emotion that permeated me was one of infinite freedom.”431 ¶45

Well, that is freedom…to go through the curtain. You free yourself from the world of sin and death, the new and living way through the curtain. Certainly you have to have the experience of freedom. She said, “I only felt free. I felt infinite freedom. And I can’t explain it, but that was the one emotion that permeated my being as I looked at it. And then I woke, not knowing for one moment that it had any significance.” Tremendous significance, my dear!431 ¶46

So, all these have. So you take the passages that I’ve quoted and see how they are related to the vision. It’s all in scripture…and you’ve all brought forth scripture…but you’ve brought forth the passages that are dealing with eschatology. Eschatology simply means “the doctrine of The End, the doctrine of the last things,” the things where man turns from this age into that age.431 ¶47

Now, this may seem a deep spiritual night to many of you, but, may I tell you, it’s practical. Give your attention to this and you will leave all this on the belt that is moving automatically. For the belt is moving in one direction. And they are all self-complacent. They are very, very contained within their own little sphere and they know that they are right, and they’re all self-righteous, and in hell the only conversation is self-righteousness. There is no forgiveness of sin in hell. It’s all self-righteousness, justifying oneself.431 ¶48

One of the greatest of all human weaknesses is the necessity of always being right. That is what that conveyor belt is taking down, until one group becomes loose enough to ask questions. And then, whether that one who asked accepted it or not is irrelevant. But they asked and they got a direct answer with a direct indication as to where it’s going to come from.431 ¶49

When you find God, you’re going to find him there, and when you find yourself you’re going to find it there. And when you find the two, you are he: I and my Father are one. That’s what you’re going to find eventually.431 ¶50

So here, if you haven’t read it, that beautiful 17th of John, I think it’s one of the most glorious things ever written! “O Father, I have manifested thy name to those thou gavest to me. They were yours and you gavest them me.” And then he said, “I in thee and thou in me and I in them…that they may be made perfect in one, for you and I are one.”431 ¶51

For he tells you who he is: For God and his pattern are one. “In the beginning was the Word”—the pattern, the plan, the meaning of it all—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So the pattern and he who sent the pattern are one.431 ¶52

So you’re told all through the 17th of John, he mentions several times, “They believe that thou sent me” and then, “I say this that they may believe that you sent me.” He’s always telling you that he was sent, and the sender and the sent are one, for I and my Father are one.431 ¶53

So the Father sends himself as a pattern and the pattern unfolds in man. The man in whom it unfolds tells it, and he has always a remnant who will hear it and believe it. He’s not going to get the whole vast world to believe it, for they are moving on the conveyor belt, moving down. And they hear the call, and the call is to repent, but they don’t stop to change their beliefs one moment.431 ¶54

I have an aunt. She’s still with us in this world, she’s ninety-odd, and she was born and raised in what is called The Brothers, the most bigoted Christian organization…if you can use the word Christian…but they call themselves Christian.431 ¶55

And I recall years ago…for I was always in love with the Bible…her name is Maude. We were discussing something and I said, “Well, Maude, don’t you know that the Bible teaches that Jesus had brothers?” “What?” She almost smacked me in the face. She was my aunt, my father’s sister, and she denied it.431 ¶56

I said, “Now you are supposed to be a good Christian. You’re always in church, seven days a week you’re there praying.” And she wouldn’t let her only child a daughter marry a man who is of the same Christian belief but not a Brother. Because he wasn’t a Brother he was a child of the devil. So she would deny this union of love because he was of the devil while she was an angel because she was born of her, one of the Brothers. I said, “Bring your Bible. I couldn’t bring mine because I don’t have it with me.” And I opened up to the 6th of Mark and said, “Read it for yourself. They not only are mentioned but they are named, four of them are named.”431 ¶57

She opened it up in her own Bible, she read it, and she slammed it this way, rushed back into the bedroom, and never came out. She still remained unchanged. She read it but could not believe it. She wished she could have torn it out, but there she remained, completely unchanged. She still is the same unchanged woman to this day in her nineties.431 ¶58

The only reason she loved my father is because he sent her a good, handsome, big check every month…because he drank like a fish and she never drank in her life and my father drank heavily. But he made a lot of money, she admired him for that and aside from making the money every month, and after he died, he saw to it that the family continued the gift. So she never failed to get her big monthly check from the brother who drank like a fish…and who raised one who is a devil.431 ¶59

And so, that is on the conveyor belt, can’t stop it. I tried that moment, unknowingly, to change her, to get her to go back and read her Bible with a different understanding. Oh no, she was already fixed. Don’t bring me the facts; my mind is made up. So she has all that she wants to believe in and she’s on the conveyor belt.431 ¶60

She will die eventually, for she’s ninety-five now, so she’ll die eventually to find herself restored to life in a world just like this, with a body same as before but new, young and nothing missing. And she will not even know what miracle has taken place to restore her to such youth, but she will still have the same fixed beliefs.431 ¶61

And she’ll go through another pattern of events to get her to become proximate matter.431 ¶62

Know what proximate matter is? It’s matter that is made so it could receive a form. Well, like taking a piece of wax and you simply soften it, bring it the point where it can receive a seal. For in that first chapter of Hebrews when we are told that “he is the express image of his person,” here is the son who is the express image of the father. That means, the impression of a seal on wax—not something that looks like it, it’s the identical. It’s the express image of his person.431 ¶63

And so, she has to go through and simply become amenable. And so, that proximate matter will be brought to the point where it can receive a form, and the form we receive is the image of God.431 ¶64

And so, what my friend saw in the skull was simply that proximate matter that was being molded, and shaped, and made more pliable to receive the impression.431 ¶65

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *431 ¶66

Good night.431 ¶69

The Bible, from beginning to end, is the vision of the Lord God Jehovah, yet the message given there can be applied in a most practical manner. In two weeks the Western world will be told the story of Good Friday. They will hear of a man who was in a garden with those who believe him, when a band of soldiers came looking for a certain person. Then it is said: “Knowing what was to befall him, Jesus came forward and said, ‘Whom do you seek?’ and they answered, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Then he said to them, ‘I am.’ (The pronoun ‘he’ is not in the original manuscript.) When they heard that, they drew back and fell to the ground. Again he asked, ‘Whom do you seek?’ and again they replied, ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ and he said, ‘I told you that I am; so if you seek me, let these men go.’” That is the story. And when man first hears that the one who is speaking is his own wonderful I AMness, he falls to the ground in shocked disbelief.429 ¶1

You see the word “Jesus” means “I am.” Recorded in the Old Testament as “Jehovah the Lord”, when the name is revealed, it is “I am.” This is true all through scripture. When those who are seeking a savior on the outside hear that their own wonderful human imagination is Jesus, they draw back in shock, for they simply can’t believe it.429 ¶2

Now let me tell you a story I recorded in one of my books. The year was 1950 and the man is my brother-in-law. Having graduated from Harvard, he entered the banking business, where he remained for many years. Now, in the banking profession a promotion occurs only when someone dies, is fired, or resigns. Qualified to hold the finest job, he wanted the best for himself, his wife, and their two children. He was a pillar of the Episcopal Church in New York City, sitting on the planning committee, advising them as to the care of their money, yet he knew nothing of the art of prayer or the secret of Christ.429 ¶3

One day he came to the house, and telling me of his financial desires, he asked what he should do. When I asked him if he would like to be in the investment business, he replied: “I want it more than anything in the world.” Then I said: “Go to bed tonight knowing you are now investing large sums of money. Do that night after night and the position you desire will be yours.” Shortly after his visit my family sailed to Barbados, where we remained for three months.429 ¶4

When we returned, my brother-in-law and sister came for dinner, and this is the story Sam told me. Three weeks after our previous visit he attended a meeting on Wall Street. After the meeting was over, a man he had known for years came over to him and asked if he would consider leaving the bank and joining him. He then quoted a salary which was twice what Sam was presently making, as well as promising him a five week paid vacation every year. Well, Sam was stunned beyond measure. He went home, discussed the offer with his wife, and they agreed it was a marvelous opportunity. That day he began his investment career representing the Rockefeller brothers - not the foundation, but the five brothers and their sister. He never bought stock, only suggested it. One day he told me he worked with one portfolio for $394 million, and that’s just one of many! Sam remained there for eight years, leaving to become a junior partner in a brokerage firm.429 ¶5

I wrote his story in one of my books and gave him a copy. A short time later, while visiting them, I discovered my book had found its place on a top shelf, completely out of reach. They had read the book, but as a pillar of the church with its orthodox concept of things, they could not associate the Jesus they worshiped with what they did, and the next time I went to their home, my book was completely out of sight. As a Harvard man, he could not believe that one who had never seen the inside of a college had helped him.429 ¶6

So whom do you seek? Is it not Jehovah, the savior of the world? The one who created all things, and without him there is not a thing made that is made? Sam knew what he did to get the job, but he could not believe that what he did was Jesus. Through the years we have remained close and dear friends, but never has one word been said concerning this. At dinner he gives grace and thanks someone on the outside for their food, doing it by rote. He can’t help it, for it is part of his training, but the day will come when he will discover who Jesus is.429 ¶7

He found him, but - unable to recognize him - he turned his back upon the one and only one who is Jesus Christ. We are told: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who will not gather with me scatters.” At the present time Sam is not with me, but continues to worship something on the outside.429 ¶8

Now you see how practical this story is. Do you seek Jesus? Say “I am,” and you have found him. Man finds it so difficult to understand that his own wonderful human imagination is the being he is seeking, but the day will come when he will find him. On that day Jesus’ Son will stand before him and call him “Father”. Jesus is not Jehovah’s son as you were taught. Jesus is Jehovah. Now, if Jehovah has a son and Jesus is Jehovah, is not David the Son? One day the veil will be lifted and God’s Son, David, will stand before you and call you “Father”. Until then, although many will listen to my words, they - like my brother-in-law - will not accept it.429 ¶9

Everything came about as Sam desired it to be. They are now living in a beautiful apartment. Their children have graduated from Smith and Harvard and in two more years he plans to retire and travel throughout the world. Sam found Jesus but did not recognize him. He is still looking for something on the outside - but may I tell you: no physical man is Jesus. If anyone comes to you saying he is a holy man, do not believe him. Jesus is holy, for Jesus is Jehovah, he who can only be recognized through his Son, as it takes God’s Son, David, to reveal your true identity, that of being the Lord God Jehovah. Jesus Christ, that’s who you really are, and only God’s Son can reveal it to you. I know the truth of which I speak, for it has happened to me.429 ¶10

The world teaches that everything is on the outside, that your success or failure depends upon where you live, the church you attend, your school or college education. This they believe because they do not know Jesus Christ, who is their own wonderful human imagination! When I asked Sam, he told me that regardless of how disillusioned or tired he was, he imagined every night, and that although he had known the gentleman for many years, he had never been approached until three weeks after he had applied this principle. Sam saw the results of what he did. He knew he did it, but he could not believe that what he did was Jesus Christ!429 ¶11

So I ask you: whom do you seek? Do you seek Jesus, the savior of every being in the world? Jesus can save you from whatever you are. He can save you from missing your mark in life. “His name shall be called Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins,” and to sin is to miss your mark. Who is he? Your I am!429 ¶12

Can you believe that? Is that idea so shocking to you that, like those recorded in scripture, you fall to the ground, then rise again to ask the same question: “Whom do you seek?” Jesus? I have told you he is your I am. And if you are really seeking me, then let the idea of a man go! You aren’t seeking a man, a new president to lead you. You don’t need any leader. All you need is Jesus! It doesn’t matter who is the president tomorrow. A few years ago our president was voted in by an enormous majority, and tonight everyone is disillusioned, for they sought a man. Don’t seek a little man of flesh and blood, for flesh cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Jesus is Spirit. While walking in a garment of flesh and blood, Jesus will awaken in you!429 ¶13

This is the story that will be told on Good Friday, but not as you have heard it this night. And Sam will be ushering the people into that grand old church, just as he has done for years. He was married in that church. His children were baptized there and he has been active all these years, but he does not know Christ. I introduced him to Christ, for by him all things are made, and without him was not anything made that was made. I brought him to the only living Christ and he proved himself in the testing, yet Sam continues to believe in a false Christ - a Christ he will meet on the outside, not knowing that Christ dwells within.429 ¶14

I have been quoting the 18th chapter of John, the 4th to the 8th verses. As you read this, you see they first play the garden scene, and then it is said: “Jesus, knowing all that was to befall him…” The phrase “to befall him” in the Revised Standard Version is translated in the King James Version as “to come upon him.” This phrase in Greek means: “a pressure from above that is mental or emotional which causes changes in the world.” So Jesus said to Pilate: “You could do nothing to me were it not given you from above.”429 ¶15

You see you are really not here in the true sense of the word. The being that is externalized here is putting on pressure, and you are willingly playing the part. And when everything is done that scripture says you will do, you will awaken as the one who placed the pressure on yourself. That is why I have no power over you were it not given me from above; therefore I who deliver you into the hands of another have the greatest sin. But as you move through the play, he who is pressing himself upon you, forcing you to do everything you have ever done, will be forgiven. “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” Then you will awaken to the realization that your I am is God. See how practical the story is?429 ¶16

Now let us go back to the three manuscripts which make up what is called the Law of Moses. The manuscripts only have initials, which are J, E, and P. Although scholars tell us “J” means “Jehovah”, “E” the “Elohim” and “P” the “Priestly Code”, no one really knows who they are. J and P begin: “In the beginning God.” But “E” begins on the 15th chapter of Genesis, stating: “After these things…” (In other words, after what is called the creation, the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.) After these experiences, one is found who will do these incredible things.429 ¶17

Then it is said: “The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. And the Lord said to him, ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; great shall be your reward.’” Then comes a discussion between the two concerning the child. Abram wants a child to be his heir and the promise is made: “Your own son shall be your heir, and not one born into slavery.” Then it is said: “A deep sleep fell upon Abram and a great darkness fell upon him” as the Lord told him of the horrors that would take place, and promising him that after his journey is over he would awaken with great possessions.429 ¶18

Now, in the New Testament it is said: “The Lord spoke to Joseph in a dream,” and there is no record, either in the Old or the New, of their awakening! May I tell you: Abraham - he who believes, and Joseph - the dreamer, awaken when God in Man rises. Then Man, who has been searching for salvation on the outside, awakens to discover that he is the Lord who imposed all of the horrors upon himself. So you see: the “E” manuscript records events from Abraham on; events that take place in vision, for the drama of creation takes place in all!429 ¶19

Now, what I have told you this night about my brother-in-law can be applied to transcend any limitation desired, I don’t care what it is. I knew by nature Sam would do what he said he would. He had promised that even though it was not rational (and Sam is a rational man), he would sleep in the assumption his desire was fulfilled until I returned from Barbados. Then he would tell me it didn’t work! Knowing Sam would not falter in the doing, I knew by that time it would be done, and of course it was.429 ¶20

So I urge everyone to take my words seriously and try it. When you go to bed tonight, catch the feeling that would be yours if your desire were now realized. Then fall asleep in that feeling. If you do it, you will not fail. How it is going to happen I do not know; I only know that if you do it, it will happen. And when it does, don’t forget the lesson you have learned.429 ¶21

Sam has money now and continues to invest it in the world of Caesar, but has forgotten the principle behind it all and is looking for a physical Jesus on the outside. May I tell you: he has a great surprise in store for him, for when he dies, there will be no Jesus there to welcome him. Instead he will be restored to life in a body the same as before. His body will be young and unbelievably new, as he finds himself in an environment best suited for the work yet to be done in him. This he will continue to do until he finds and believes in Jesus.429 ¶22

Everyone is looking for Jesus Christ, for Jesus is Jehovah and Jehovah is the Lord God, the Savior of the world. And when you find him you discover his name is “I am.” So when you go to the people of Israel and they say, “Who sent you?” just say: “I am.” That’s all! If you do not believe you are this fabulous being, that your own wonderful human imagination is the cause of the phenomena of your life, you are still searching for its cause. But when you are convinced, you will begin to awaken and discover that there never was another God. Then you will see how practical this vision of God really is.429 ¶23

Your own wonderful human imagination is the Lord Jesus. Prove it! Believe in the only Jesus, for all things are made by him and without him is not anything made that is made. It is he who made the statement in the Book of Deuteronomy: “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal.” The same being who wounds, heals, because imagination does it all! So you see how practical and wonderful this whole principle is?429 ¶24

Tonight, if you really want something - I don’t care what it is - you can have it. For your own sake I hope it will not injure another. You don’t have to hurt anyone to get what you want; all you have to do is accept it! To live as though you had it now! And when you get it (and you will) I urge you to share your good news with others to encourage all.429 ¶25

The other day my barber was telling of a conflict in his family, and I said to him: “The problem is within you. Change your thoughts of your family and they will change.” Well, he didn’t understand me, but that’s all right. If I have to tell him seventy times seven times, I will because the story must be told.429 ¶26

The boy who shines my shoes tells me about going to church on Sunday, then having dinner with friends. He loves to be a part of that group. That’s religion! But when he asks me a question, I try to tell him who Jesus Christ really is. It hasn’t gotten through, but that’s all right.429 ¶27

Release a drop of water on a piece of granite, and it will take a while to penetrate, but if you keep on dropping the water, eventually it will get through. Well, water is truth, and every time you tell of the true Jesus Christ you have released a drop of water.429 ¶28

Christ is your own wonderful human imagination. That’s an awful shock, and when you first hear it your world collapses, for there is no one to turn to but self! Formerly you could point to another as the cause of your misfortune, but you can no longer do that when you discover who Jesus Christ really is. From that moment on you must turn to yourself to blame or praise. And when you have played all of the parts, you will find him of whom you seek, Jesus of Nazareth! Now let us go into the silence.429 ¶29

Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism, the fulfillment of all that was prophesied in the Old Testament. This week the Christian world celebrates Passover, the triumphal march into Jerusalem - the trial, the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. Let me share these events with you as they are seen through the eyes of one who has experienced them. In the 18th chapter of the Book of John, Pilate said: “So you are a king?” and Jesus replied: “You say that I am, but my kingdom is not of this world. For this I was born. For this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” Then Pilate asked: “What is truth?” and when there was no response, Pilate left, saying: “I find nothing in this man worth condemnation.”428 ¶1

Having already claimed: I am the truth, and my word is truth, here we find Jesus making the claim: I came to bear witness to the truth. Peter tells us that “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired concerning this salvation. They inquired what person or time was indicated by the spirit of Christ in them, when predicting the suffering of Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves, but you.” The prophets were doing a work, the full import of which was in the promise. They were conditioned to hear - and quite often to see - the word of God. Although they recorded what they heard, they did not understand the writing. Daniel declared: “I heard but did not understand.” Then he was told to “Shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.” The time when the word, embodied in flesh, unfolds in a man who - having broken the seal - interprets the written word from experience.428 ¶2

He came into the world and the world knew him not. Even today the word is still misunderstood. Hundreds of millions of Christians will go to church this coming Friday and the following Sunday, to proclaim Christ has risen; yet they do not know the Word. But when he who is sent by love enters the world, he finds a small group who will accept his words. From that group, an even smaller group will understand him to the point of complete acceptance.428 ¶3

Scripture is completely misunderstood and can be interpreted only by one who is called, incorporated into the body of love, and sent back into this world of death to await that moment in time when the word unfolds from within. And when he tells his experiences, the multitude cannot believe him, for it is not what they were taught; yet, having become an eyewitness, he can no longer say “I think”, or “I believe,” as our theologians do. His is an assured “I know!” To believe in something is marvelous, but it cannot be known until it is experienced.428 ¶4

Many years ago I was a dancer in New York City. One day I took a taxi from rehearsal to my hotel. When we arrived, the driver claimed I had broken the glass when I slammed the door, and asked me to pay for it. I knew I had not broken any glass and suspected he had been collecting $8 from every fare all through the day, so I did not pay him other than what the meter read, plus a generous tip. A short time after I had retired to my room, the phone rang, and the operator said that there was a policeman in the lobby who wanted to see me. When we met, he asked me about the broken glass, and I told him I had not done it. It was the dinner hour, so I was asked to go with him to the night court. This I did, and when the driver was asked if he knew I had broken the glass and he said: I think he did - the case was dismissed. He thought I did it and maybe he believed it, but he did not know!428 ¶5

One must have an assured I know, which can only be obtained from experience. I stand before you knowing the truth, and it is not as it will be re-enacted this coming week in all of the Christian churches of the world.428 ¶6

Christ in you is your hope of glory. One day - like a tree - that living word will bloom in you and bear its visionary fruit, all related to the Old Testament. The only Bible that the early Christians had was the Old Testament. Those who wrote the New Testament were called “the people of the way”. Do you know who they were? Jews! Although the unknown authors of the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were Jews, they did not confess that they were, like Paul did. Paul’s 13 letters, which form the bulk of the New Testament, came first. It was he who said: “I am a Jew, a child of Abraham of the tribe of Jacob.” Paul never denied his Jewish ancestry, yet he laid the foundation of the Christian faith. Man forgets this, and thinks the Old and New Testaments represent two religions; but there is only one religion, whose foundation is Judaism and fulfillment (like the fruit appearing on a tree) is Christianity. This is the greatest story that has ever been told.428 ¶7

The crucifixion is over. I know, for I remember when I - a whirling vortex - crucified myself upon this body called Neville at six points: the hands, the feet, the head, and the right side. The Word of God, who is God, is nailed to your body by whirling vortices. This is the same Word who was in the beginning with God and was God. There was meaning in that Word, a plan, and a purpose, which was revealed to you before the world began. This is not some emergency thinking on the part of God; he chose us in him before that the world was!428 ¶8

Christ is in us, crucified on our body. He became a slave that your body may be alive, and he will wear that body until he awakens. The body you now wear can be cremated and therefore gone from the mortal eye; yet you, its wearer, are still very much alive, continuing your act of slavery in a body just like the one you now wear.428 ¶9

In my own case, however, I will not wear a body of death any longer; for the Word has erupted within me. I know scripture is true from beginning to end, for I have experienced it. I also know that those in whom it has not erupted will find themselves restored to life. If our late president Eisenhower has not had the Word unfold within him, even though he was the president of our great country, he has been restored to life as a young man, about 20 years of age. He will be in a terrestrial world like this one, in an environment best suited to his needs, to continue the work that was started in him by the son of God, who is his ancestral self.428 ¶10

When I speak of the son of God, I am referring to man’s true being. No child enters this world unless a son of God - who is his ancestral self - supports him by dreaming him into being. And everyone who leaves this section of time moves into another section of time automatically, until his ancestral self awakens. The only purpose of life is to bear witness to the truth of the Old Testament, which is the word of God.428 ¶11

God’s word has erupted in me. Having fulfilled the prophecy of the Old Testament, I bear witness to its truth. The Old Testament is the prophecy, but dead until it erupts. Then the individual within whom it erupts becomes Jesus, the Spirit of prophecy. Men have speculated on the meaning of the Old Testament, and will believe their speculations from now until the ends of time; but they will not know the truth until it erupts within them. You may trust one in whom it has happened. You may believe he is telling the truth and adjust your thinking to conform to his words; but you cannot know their truth until you individually experience it. To believe the words of another are true is not good enough. The judge will throw out the case unless the witness can say, I know! For it happened in me!428 ¶12

This week the trial, the crucifixion, burial, and death of God’s creative power will be celebrated - but not the other side of the coin of resurrection, which is the birth. Christianity is an Easter religion. Without resurrection, Christianity would just be another little ism. The world is full of little isms and they are all helpful. Being psychological, they encourage positive thinking, telling you how to assume a certain attitude of mind and live a freer, healthier, more wonderful life. But when it comes to truth, Christianity is the religion of Easter, the religion of rising from the world of death and entering the world of life, called the kingdom of heaven.428 ¶13

It is the story of the salvation of the gods who came down. In the Book of Deuteronomy we are told that bounds have been set to the peoples of the earth according to the number of the sons of God. A child could not know life here, were it not for his ancestral self, who is one of the Sons of God who fell as one Man. Containing all men within the one, all will return to that one Man - but each in his own good time. No one can tell when that hour will come. You may long for it, but you cannot force its coming.428 ¶14

While on the cross, Jesus said: “I thirst.” You may think he is thirsting for water, but his thirst was caused by the famine which is sent upon the land. It is not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God. Thirsting, they gave him vinegar, in the fulfillment of the 69th Psalm, “...for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” Having come into the world only to bear witness to the truth, I know God’s word is truth! When his word becomes alive in you, the Old Testament will erupt like a seed, and you will know the truth of scripture from experience. Then you will tell the world, who will receive you not, because they will know your physical background and not the Word of God who unfolded within you.428 ¶15

Only one who has fulfilled the Word can interpret scripture. The prophets wrote it, but they could not understand their writing. The scribes - not understanding - lived by the external word; but experience brings the internal Word to match the external one. It is said that two different persons must agree in testimony for the testimony to be conclusive. The two can be the external word of scripture, and the internal Word unfolding within the individual. If they agree, their testimony is conclusive.428 ¶16

When he said: “For this I was born,” he was not speaking of a physical birth, but of a spiritual one; for unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God. Man, born into the world of Caesar, lives with reason and logic. To him one must be born as an offspring from the womb of a woman; yet Jesus is speaking of an entirely different birth - the birth of Spirit, which comes from above, and not the birth of flesh, which comes from below.428 ¶17

His statement continues, “For this I came into the world.” This is true, for the Word became flesh, as you and I, and now dwells within us. “He is clothed in a robe drenched in blood, and his name is called the Word of God.” Is not the body you now wear drenched in blood? Our Cardinals wear red robes and call themselves princes of the church, but that is not the robe spoken of here. Every child born of woman wears the red robe as his body of flesh and blood. Incarnating himself, the Word is made flesh and dwells in us all.428 ¶18

You are the incarnated Word of God, who at one moment in time will be called. Your name, already written in the Book of Life, will be checked off; and you will be incorporated into the living body of love, which is God’s most radiant form. In that instant you become one with that same body, that same Spirit, that same Lord, that one God and Father of all.428 ¶19

As Love, yet wearing a body of power, you will be sent back into the world to wait your time of thirty years. While here, you will do all of the normal things you did before. You will make mistakes, you will laugh and cry, and then suddenly scripture will erupt from within, and you will find yourself compelled to tell your experiences to all who will listen. But because it is not what tradition teaches, many will turn their back and walk away, unable to believe what they cannot comprehend.428 ¶20

This Friday, many will spend three hours celebrating an event which took place in me in the matter of moments; for I remember the night memory returned, and I reenacted the 42nd Psalm. I remember when I walked in procession to the house of God, when a voice rang out saying: “And God walks with them.” A woman questioned the voice, saying: “If God walks with us, where is he?” and the voice replied: “At yours side.” Turning to her right, she looked into my eyes and laughed, because she saw a man she knew was weak and frail, a man who could succumb to temptation. Her question: “What? Neville is God?” was answered: “Yes, in the act of waking.” Then the voice spoke to me from the depth of my soul, and said: “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream...” Suddenly I knew exactly what he was dreaming, for in a split second I felt myself become vortices, as I penetrated my hands, my feet, my head, and the right side of my body. I felt the six points of the Mogen David, the Star of David, experiencing an ecstasy greater than my wildest dreams.428 ¶21

Now I know the crucifixion happened on the night of the triumphal journey into Jerusalem. Tradition is correct in keeping it in the same time slot, but they do not tell the story correctly. In the Book of Acts, we find this quote from Deuteronomy: “Cursed be anyone who hangs upon a tree.” The crucifixion took place upon the tree of life, in Man, and not on any wooden tree. Blake tells us so beautifully: “The gods of the earth and sea Sought through nature to find this tree. But their search was all in vain; There grows one in the human brain.”428 ¶22

Look at a picture of the human body with the skin removed, and you will see all of the veins and arteries rooted in the brain and turned down into generation. That is the tree spoken of in the Book of Daniel. It was felled, stripped of its leaves, and its fruit was scattered. The root, however, was not to be interfered with. After seven times pass over, and the one who was felled knows that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will, the tree is reversed; and its energy will move from generation to regeneration, as it bursts into bloom and bears its glorious fruit.428 ¶23

In that crucified state we fell and crucified ourselves on the living tree, which was felled. Its root is the human imagination, which will awaken in the holy sepulcher, where the drama began. You see, it is there that God entered death’s door and lay down in the grave of man to dream the dream of life. It is there that He will awaken. It is there that He will come out and look back upon that which contained him that body of a slave. Then all of the imagery of his birth from above will appear, so that He can make the statement: “For this I was born; for this I came into the world: to bear witness to the truth. Thy Word is truth.”428 ¶24

The written word is a sealed book of which I, the living Word, interpret through experience. True scriptural interpretation can never be gained through learning. Knowledge must be obtained from experience. Learning may cause you to think it is true; but you can only know scriptural truth through experience. When the story of Christianity has fulfilled itself in you, you do not have to believe in the Christian faith - you know it is true! And Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. It is man’s departure from this world of death and his entrance into the world of life!428 ¶25

After the Word has erupted in you, you will wear a garment of death no more. No one ever really dies, because the immortal Word is in him. A friend may appear to die, but he does not. He is instantly restored as a living being without change of identity, where he will continue his journey until God’s word becomes activated and lives in him. And when it does, he becomes a witness to the written word of scripture.428 ¶26

The Word doesn’t come to change Caesar’s world. It is the Risen Word who says: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” If Caesar wants taxes, give them to him. If you desire things in Caesar’s world, assume you have them and Caesar will be satisfied, for you will have them. You can always meet Caesar’s demands. If he wants something else, don’t quarrel with him, simply assume he has it.428 ¶27

You don’t change Caesar, for he is just as much a slave as you are. Whether he be a king or a Pope, man is still a slave to the body he wears, and cannot compel anyone to digest, assimilate, or eliminate, for him. He has to do it all by himself. And when he dies to this world, he is restored to find himself in a body that is just as much a slave as this one. Those who have gone beyond are now performing the normal, natural functions of the body. There is sex there, hate, and love - just as here. It’s the same world, for your life does not terminate at the point where your senses cease to register it.428 ¶28

Like a play on Broadway, you may leave the stage, but you remain the actor. Having left the stage, you are no longer seen by the actors who remain there; but your identity does not change. It goes on forever. The drama is concentrated this week; but the truth is not being told, as man finds it easier to see thought in picture form. But in the story of salvation - Jesus Christ - is publicly portrayed as crucified. The portrayal began in the spirit! It never existed in the flesh.428 ¶29

Haven’t you gone to the theater and become so carried away with the acting that you forgot the message the actor was trying to portray? Many a play is not just for amusement, but to educate. Such is the story of salvation. It is the greatest play that was ever conceived, but man has fallen in love with the husk, because he does not know the kernel. That is why Paul made the statement: “Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish that you have turned from the spirit to the flesh? From now on regard no one after the flesh, even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.”428 ¶30

This week Christians will celebrate a physical death, and Christ is not and never was a physical being. They will celebrate the ascension of an individual, yet Christ is universal. The Cosmic Christ is buried in every child born of woman. And that Cosmic Christ is represented by the sons of God, who altogether form the Lord God Jehovah. Every child possesses an ancestral self, who is an individualized son of God, who will awaken to reveal the true identity of that child.428 ¶31

Right now your ancestral self is individualized as you. And one day you, too, will know who you are. No one on earth knows your true identify; but you will know it, for you will return to your ancestral self that was - and still is - one of the sons of God. The word elohim is a compound unity of one made up of others. We are the elohiym which form YAD HE VAU HE, the lord. Not one of us can be absent, for it takes all of us to make the whole.428 ¶32

Remember: Jesus Christ is not a little man, but the Cosmic Christ who dwells in you and will erupt in you, causing you to return to the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all.428 ¶33

I am telling you what I know is truth. Our theologians recite creeds. They share their knowledge as to what they have learned and thereby believe; but they cannot tell you what they know until they have the experience. I tell you that you are God the Father; but you will never know it until you meet your one and only begotten son, whose name is David. You cannot come into the knowledge that you are God the Father except by him. “No one knows who the Father is except the son, and no one knows who the son is except the Father.”428 ¶34

When the living word begins to unfold, the Son you have been searching for throughout eternity will appear. Then you will know the truth and these words will become yours, “For this I was born. For this I came into the world: to bear witness to the truth!” When the personification of reason asked: What is truth? the personification of truth did not answer. How can truth make reason understand the true knowledge of God?428 ¶35

In his 17th chapter John said: “This is eternal life, to know thee the only true God.” The world has as many gods as there are stars in the sky. They have brought truth down into many isms; but to have eternal life, you must know the only true God. The evangelist, John, then added the words: “and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” There is only one pattern, only one path, which will lead you to sacred history - which is the same forever and ever.428 ¶36

There is nothing accurate, however, about secular history. Two accounts of a little section of the last world war differ from each other. Eisenhower’s son wrote a book about his father’s experience, and Mr. Montgomery - General Eisenhower’s right-hand man - wrote about the same experience, yet they are entirely different.428 ¶37

There is never any need to add to or take away from the Word of God. If, at the present time you do not understand it, just leave it as it is, for the day will come when you will. On that day the Living Word will unfold in you and interpret the written word, and you won’t have to add to it or change it in any way. Scholars without vision have tried to change the word to make it conform to what they think, but do not know!428 ¶38

As Paul said to the Galatians: “I notice you observe weeks, months, seasons, and years. I’m afraid I have labored over you in vain.” There are not special weeks, months, seasons, or years; for you awakening can happen at any moment in time. The crucifixion began before that the world was, while Easter comes when the age of Caesar has reached its end. Resurrection is one side of the coin of Easter, with your birth from above as the other.428 ¶39

God sent his Word into your mind. That Word cannot return to him void, but must accomplish that which God purposed, and prosper in the thing for which it was sent. You will return claiming: “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.” God gave you only one thing to do, and that is to testify to the truth of his Word.428 ¶40

You did not come here to make a lot of money, leave your name in granite, or your face carved on a mountainside. You did not come to change, judge, or condemn anything. Leave the world just as it is, for God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated. Simply set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you, for you have come to bear witness to the truth. Nothing else! God’s Word is truth, so you have come to fulfill scripture. Now let us go into the silence.428 ¶41

I’ve said time and again. That which is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most directly practical. Just about a week ago, a couple who came said, “I haven’t heard you in the longest while”—implying for a few years—“and I read that statement in your book and tonight you mentioned it, and thank you very much.” He didn’t say that he really fully understood it, but he did find some help in whatever was said that night.427 ¶1

So tonight, let us take it in the way that I mean. We are told, “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For our heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom and its righteousness, and all these things will be yours as well”. Now here we have a priority.427 ¶2

It does not deny that I have to eat and I have to drink and I have to be sheltered and to be clothed. No, that’s no denial. All these things my heavenly Father knows, yet I am told they will all be mine if I would put first things first; and the first thing is to seek the kingdom of God.427 ¶3

If I could bring about any modification in it, I would be surprised at the changes in my outer world. If I’m reading a book, I’m not unmindful of the fact that a phone would ring, that someone could enter the room, turn the light on, a doorbell ring. These are marginal, but the focus of my attention is on the book. I am absorbed in the book, but not to the complete exclusion of these things that are marginal.427 ¶4

So if my interest is held by the kingdom…so when I hear the story of the kingdom and how man enters it, the plan of it, it forces me in a little while to modify the concept I held concerning God’s plan of salvation. Did it mean simply, as a little child when I was totally unaware, to be baptized? For that’s what multiple millions believe. The mere fact that my parents took me before the baptismal when I was totally unaware and baptized me in the name of Christ…now I’m a Christian knowing nothing of Christianity. So, hundreds of millions have lived and died in that belief; that was their concept and no modification of that in their life.427 ¶5

I am told, if I read scripture correctly, to take that central point, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.” Well, we’re told that Abraham was a believing one, and his belief was accounted unto him for righteousness. So you see now what righteousness is: the faith. Not a faith. This is not a faith among faiths. This is the faith. Find out what “the faith” really means. Well now, if I find out what “the faith” is—that I must be born, and therefore will be born from above, that I who imagine receives God’s gift? What’s his gift?—himself. He is going to give me himself by giving me his son, not as a companion but as my son? For all that the Father has, everything, is mine? Well, he has a son and that’s his son and all that he has, that’s mine, and he’s going to give it to me.427 ¶6

Now I hear this from the lips of one who claims that he experienced it. Am I convinced to the point where as I leave his presence that I modify my concept concerning the kingdom, concerning God? To the degree that I have modified that belief, to that degree will I find corresponding changes in my outer world; for, I am living in a state, and a state is a body of beliefs. I can believe that I am healthy, I’m wealthy, or the opposite. I can take the whole body of concepts that we all pass through, and to what degree do I accept this, that or the other? But the basic, the fundamental is that is my concept of God. God and his kingdom are one.427 ¶7

Now from this platform, I tell you, that I and my Father are one; therefore, my Father can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. He can’t even be near. Well now, what is that that can’t even be near? Well, this is near, the skull is near, but I can’t in some strange light separate myself from what I call imagining. I can’t put it on the outside. I can’t take the sense of I-am-ness and in any way put it outside and point to it. I can’t get away from that sense of I-am-ness, so in that sense of I-am-ness I am imagining and I cannot in eternity get away from this sense of oneness. So if this is my Father, [...] really live?427 ¶8

Now he puts me to the test…this is from Matthew. The first one I quoted was from the 6th. Now we quote from the 10th to see to what extent my confession in words conforms to my deep, deep conviction. This is how he puts it: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. Anyone who denies me before men, I deny before my Father who is in heaven. Think not that I came to bring peace; I came not to bring peace but a sword. To set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes are those of his own household.”427 ¶9

The battle is within me. This is not a conflict between my earthly physical daughter and myself, or my daughter and her mother, my son and me, no, it’s all within me. The foe is of my own household. Not the household in the sense of the individuals who share the house with me, but it’s all taking place within me, for I am the house of the living God.427 ¶10

Now here, a new concept presents itself like a sunburst. Will I accept it? For now the young is placed against the old—a man against his father, it’s the daughter against the mother, daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law. And so you hear something and it’s in conflict with what you formerly heard. If you accept it, it cannot be put into the old skins; this is new wine. The new wine is not yet fermented. Put it into an old skin and it will burst it. It has to have a new bottle, a new skin, something entirely different. Will you accept it…will you accept the fact that your own wonderful human Imagination is the one of whom the world speaks when they speak of God but they don’t know it? Will you accept it to the point that you’ll confess it and acknowledge it before men? I may acknowledge it to myself and live in a certain way and feel that you know it’s easier to live with my wife or with my husband (depending upon my sex) if I don’t really confess it or acknowledge it in the household. We go to the same church that we went to years and years ago, we do all the things, and in the outer world here I am. I must acknowledge it before men and not be ashamed of him. If I’m ashamed of him, well then, he doesn’t mention me before the Father, and the Father sees only the heart. Doesn’t see the outer show at all, he sees only the heart.427 ¶11

And so, any modification in this basic belief, well, that takes precedence over every belief in the world. To say tonight “Well, I’m rich” and my concept of God remains what it was before, well, it’s like putting something on the surface. But change the core, and then the whole vast outer world changes to conform to it. Get down to the core and change the core and the core is God. That’s what I change. Do I have it so inwoven within me that I am willing to confess it openly and to acknowledge it before men? That’s what I am trying to get over.427 ¶12

I’m not ashamed of it, and if I had not had the experiences to support it, well then, do I believe the one who introduced me to it? Not every one found Christ who sought him; others found him first and brought others to him, as the story tells us in the Book of John. In the very beginning, this one finds him…Andrew finds him and brought his brother Peter; Philip found him and then took him to his friend Nathaniel. They did not find him, they didn’t seek him, but they were introduced to hm. Well, who did you find? “I found the one of whom Moses in the law and the prophets spoke, Jesus of Nazareth.” He is the one of whom they spoke. Well, where is he? Come and see…and you go in mind…the whole drama is supernatural.427 ¶13

You listen to the man who has experienced it and you either turn your back upon him or you accept it. If you accept it then you toy with the idea and to the degree that you become enamored, well then, you modify what you formerly believed true concerning Christ Jesus.427 ¶14

Tonight, one billion believe in some little personal being that walked the earth 2,000 years ago, and that’s him. That goes for all the priesthoods of the world too, not just people who were not trained in theology, I mean those who trained them. They have that concept of Jesus Christ. They do not know the vision, haven’t the slightest concept of the vision that is Jesus Christ.427 ¶15

Now listen to these words of Blake: “No individual should appropriate to himself or to his emanation any universal characteristic of David, or of Eve, of the woman, or of the Lord.” And he’s right. When you have it, you wonder, “What two, three, four billion people in the world and they single me out to show such blessings, such a gift?” In my own case I was hungry to find another who had had a similar experience. I ran across a young lad, twenty-two years old, in San Francisco who had just had them. But he was an adopted son. And a difference of opinion between the boy and his parents and he vanished from home, and they never heard from him since. So I never contacted the lad to find out the second phase after the birth. He lived in Sausalito. I was looking and looking and when my friend Bob Crutcher had it, I can’t tell you my ache…I can’t tell you my thrill in discovering another. Then Christine, she had it. Then Benny and he had it. Others have had it. So I can’t tell you.427 ¶16

So what does Blake mean by this? No individual should appropriate to himself or to his emanation—this body is the emanation, and the self is the core, one’s Imagination. That is God in man. He should not appropriate to that self these universal characteristics of David or Eve. Why?—because any appropriation of universality by an individual is a denial of the universal brotherhood. It’s a denial of the unity of all in the divine family. To think that I and I alone had this experience, that it’s mine and not other’s, I’m denying this universal brotherhood. I am denying the unity of all in the divine family. So David is not just my son, he is our son. For any individual to appropriate this universal characteristic of David for himself, he tells us it is wrong, because he will simply be broken on the very rocks of experience if he dares to think he differs by that unique…to him unique yes…but it’s unique to everyone. Then he goes on to say, “That the vegetated Christ and the virgin Eve is the hermaphroditic abomination—blasphemy that they seek to make a vegetated Christ into some corporeal form.” Well, you can’t do it. He speaks of the divine vision…“they will take this divine vision and turn it into a vegetated Christ”…meaning something that is here, that is on the outside of us. This body is my emanation. I cannot claim that this is a direct descendant, as some in this world claim, that they are directly descended from, say, David. David doesn’t belong in this world. He belongs to an entirely different age; the eternal play of God…that’s David…the son of everyone to whom God gives himself. His plan is to give himself to every being in this world, and the one way you will know that he gave himself to you is when David confronts you and you are his Father. So when he looks upon you and you are his Father, then you know and there’s no uncertainty, none whatsoever. But everyone is going to have it, so no individual should ever appropriate these universal characteristics of David to himself alone, because he must share it. For this is a universal brotherhood. That’s what Blake means by it.427 ¶17

When Blake uses the word hermaphroditic he means “contradiction.” If you wrote a book as you saw your premise, and that is your principle, that’s the principle on which you stand, and as he reads it he finds a contradiction, a conflict in principle, that book to him is hermaphroditic, it’s a conflict. It is something that is completely contradicted by what you stated in the beginning.427 ¶18

So if I say in the beginning that God is merciful, as all the churches say God is a God of mercy, and then I go out and I kill in the name of God, well then, where is…it’s a contradiction. Therefore, to him all orthodox religions are simply hermaphroditic, because they contradict the principle which is that our God is a God of mercy. If my God is a God of mercy and I go in the name of God and kill and I enslave and do all these things, well then, that is a contradiction. That’s what he means by the word. He doesn’t mean two sexes in one…because that in itself would be a contradiction…if I’m going to actually bring it out in my own being. So to him the word meant simply “conflict, a contradiction of principle of the foundation that you stated in the beginning as the principle on which you base your philosophy of life.”427 ¶19

So here, I never claimed it. I can’t tell you my hunger, and when I found him…and more and more I’m finding it, those who are having the similar experience, but are unique in the sense that it is not quite a duplicate. But they are all parallel, all the experiences are parallel.427 ¶20

So if you cannot confess it because of your social world, if you can’t confess it because of business reasons, if you cannot acknowledge it before men, acknowledge whom?— acknowledge your conviction of the plan of Christ. Christ is not any longer a little thing after the flesh. As Paul said, “I no longer see him after the flesh. Even though I once believed in him after the flesh, I see him so no longer”. He, too, believed as millions believe that here was a little being outside of us that walked the earth in some strange way. Suddenly the vision came, and it pleased God to reveal his son in me, said Paul; and “When it pleased God to reveal his son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood”. And so at that moment then he proclaimed it and was not ashamed of it. “I am not ashamed of the gospel, of this good news,” and he simply publicly confessed it to all.427 ¶21

Now here, this one within me is the only creative power. There is no other creative power.427 ¶22

Here is one who found him as a boy. A few of you have heard this story, because I told it years ago, but it’s worthwhile telling it again, because of this basic something in him. He hasn’t omitted all the blows of life, no one does; but he got down to the core of who God is, and he discovered that he didn’t have to go on the outside to worship God, that the God was within him. He knew from what happened to him in Russia how this thing operated. He was a poor boy, had no money, living on charity, the oldest of a family of five. His mother died when he was about eight and he was forced to go out and do errands to bring in a little money to feed the family…his father and the remaining children, the other four and himself.427 ¶23

He told me himself, he said, “Neville, I never knew what it was to eat until I was satisfied. I never knew what it was to have my own shirt, a new shirt, or a pair of slacks or a pair of shoes; we got all of our things from charity. I was in Russia in Odessa in the days of the Czars and we were the minority group of Jews. You’ve heard of pogroms? I saw them. I know what it is to go through such horror. I got a good job. My job was to take large denominations to a bank and have them exchanged into small denominations and silver and copper. I noticed one day this teller—he had a huge, big beard on him, here he is very formally dressed with his big beard—and as he gave me the money I noticed from the outside wrapping that the copper resembled the silver. I just noticed that. Knowing nothing outside of that, I wondered to myself, just playing a little game, and I wondered ‘Wouldn’t it be marvelous if he made a mistake, wouldn’t it be wonderful!’ So I assumed that he made the mistake. I took the money that he gave me and I put it in my pocket, put my hands into my slacks all patched up and my shoes burlap. I had my shoes all wrapped up, and hungry. I walked back in the belief that he had made the mistake. Well, he didn’t, but I had one wonderful time walking back the many blocks that I had to walk from the bank to my little place where I worked. I put the money into their hands.427 ¶24

“The next day, through habit, I went back again with my large denominations and put it in, and I watched what he did…and he made the mistake. So I put the money in my pocket and I knew what he had done. He gave me silver instead of the copper. I figured the whole thing out, how much he’d given me. Well, I could buy a pair of slacks and I could eat until it came through my ears. So I went to another bank and I changed the money into the right denominations and went back to the place where I worked, and gave them exactly what they should have but I had the rest for me. That night, I could almost hear my dead mother. She taught me an ethical code of right and wrong, and I knew it was wrong to keep the money. I knew it was wrong. But I wrestled all through the night with this. Next morning, my hunger got the better of me. And so I went out the next day and I bought a pair of slacks, and I bought the biggest meal a boy could ever eat, and I never returned the money. But it taught me a lesson.”427 ¶25

Now the whole world hearing this, based on their [...] would say, “Wasn’t that wrong!” Well, we ate of the tree of good and evil…that’s why we came out. There isn’t one person in this world who has not violated their code. If they didn’t have the courage to do it outwardly, they’ve done it inwardly. For here, “You’ve heard it said of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that anyone who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed the act.’” Now, let one person rise in the whole vast world and confess he has never committed the act. He may not have had the courage to commit the act for fear of consequences, but don’t tell me he hasn’t committed the act. So the drama becomes a psychological drama.427 ¶26

The kid was hungry and embarrassed by all the torn things. In the interval, he has given back to society a thousand times more…a thousand times?—ten thousand times more than that little amount. And that would still not be equal to what he has given. Not to compensate; it taught him a lesson.427 ¶27

So he came out into the world of experience and learned a lesson: The creative power was his own wonderful human Imagination. So after the First World War when Russia collapsed, and he came into Paris penniless and broke and got a job as a street cleaner, he didn’t forget the act. From there he rose today to a multi-millionaire in a legitimate business by simply applying this principle: That an assumption though false if persisted in will harden in to fact. He assumed the man made a mistake; he didn’t the first day but he did the second day. So he persisted in the assumption and the man made the mistake.427 ¶28

When I told that story in this city years ago, oh, maybe fifteen years ago, a lady said to me, “Well, did he ever send it back?” I said, “To whom, Stalin? He got it from the Czar’s regime.” Stalin stole all the things that the Czars had. To whom then would he repay what was the Czar’s? Give it to Stalin the thief?” Well, it didn’t satisfy her. He was wrong and he should have given it to someone in Russia. Well, he has given unlimited fortunes.427 ¶29

Now here is one that came this week. There were many and the first two or three were self-explanatory. He said, “This one, I’m not quite sure of this. My enemy goes to get an instrument to injure me, and so I hurriedly look around in his absence to find what I could use to defend myself.” He spoke of a rope, but he realized that’s not good enough for defense. He tried to find a place to put it back…but that’s not relevant to the story, because there’s only one central jet of truth in the story. So he made the first attempt, the second with the rope, and then from the present moment of time which is now, the theme shifts and it’s an ancient world. He has committed himself to the people to actually use this very, very vicious instrument against his enemy. All the spectators have gathered to watch him do it, and he’s got to go through with it because they are waiting. So he takes his enemy and ties him down, and then with an ax, a long blade of about twelve inches, he begins to put it into his back. He said, “By nature I’m a pacifist and I didn’t want to hurt him, but they were waiting for me to do what I said I would do. So I struck him and I could have in one blow severed him in two vertically, for that was the way I was hitting him. Then I realized that they were getting anxious, so I made several efforts like a practice shot and then I came down and withdrew the punch so the blade only went in three inches. Then a man came forward and looked at me and then snickered because he knew from what he saw I had pulled the punch and didn’t go right through with it to split him in two. Then the crowd began to grumble and they walked away in disgust.”427 ¶30

Let me tell him tonight this is an adumbration, a foreshadowing. The day that you 100% confess your belief in Christ as your own wonderful human Imagination, and pull no punches, none whatsoever, then will come the day that you will cut yourself in two with one fell blow, and release the imprisoned splendor. For within us is Christ, head down, now in generation. And the day will come we’ll actually release Christ by one blow that will sever us in two from top to bottom. Then we ascend. We perform the act…well, that’s God the Father and you are God the Father…you’ll fuse with it and up you will go right up into the kingdom of heaven; for he’s imprisoned within us.427 ¶31

Now, all of us in certain groups…I don’t say you go out and start screaming it, no, you don’t. But you go out and in any group where the question is raised you can confess it. There’s no need to hide it. If, for social reasons, you have to not mention it, alright, but don’t hide it. If anyone ever asks you, “What is Jesus Christ?” you can state that “Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination and there never was another. There is no other Christ. Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination and Christ became as I am with all my weaknesses, all my limitations that I may be as he is. And who is he?—he is God the Father. There’s nothing but Christ…he is God the Father.”427 ¶32

When man believes it to the point where he really believes it, his outer world will change to conform to these inner changes that took place in him. So my world is only mirroring and reflecting all of my beliefs. So any modification of a belief is simply a change in my outer world. So instead of working on the little things like wealth, health and these things, work upon major things, my concepts of Christ…who is he.427 ¶33

And so you can say to a hundred million people or a billion Christians— there are supposed to be a billion Christians. If you said to me “Are you a Christian?” I would say, yes, I’m a Christian. And then I say to you who asked me, are you one and you would say yes. If we get together we’re poles apart, therefore, what do we mean by being a Christian? I know in my own home in Barbados my sister Daphne, who is a pillar of the church, she is a Christian in her own mind’s eye and I in my mind’s eye I’m a Christian, but we do not agree on what Christ is. We have entirely different concepts of Christ as a plan of redemption.427 ¶34

When I was drafted into the army, this one said to me, “What is your religion?” I said, “I’m a Christian.” She said, “You can’t just say you’re a Christian. What are you? Are you Roman Catholic? Are you a this or that?” I said, “I’m a Protestant.” Well, she didn’t like that. I said, “That’s exactly what I am. I am a Protestant.” She said, “You’ve got to say you’re a Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Baptist” all these things. I said, “Why must I? I am a Protestant.” She said, “That doesn’t go, because we have to have chaplains, and so we don’t have any Protestant chaplains. We have Episcopalians and we have Baptists and we have [...] and we have rabbis, but you can’t just have a protestant.” “But that’s what I am. Anyway, I’m a Christian, I am fundamentally a Christian.” But I couldn’t explain to her and maybe she was one in her own mind’s eye, a Christian. If I asked the pope tonight or the Archbishop of Canterbury, they would say they’re Christians. But I’m quite sure if the three of us got together and defined what we mean by Christ, we would be poles apart.427 ¶35

I tell you, Christ is the vision of redemption. That vision of redemption, that’s Christ. See the vision and don’t try to vegetate it and put it in to some corporeal body, and make it some little thing that died. Christ is not of this world, and yet he’s in you which means you belong to an entirely different world. The whole drama is supernatural…he is not of this world. And while you walk this world in these garments that decay, it unfolds within you lifting you from this world of death into the world of eternity. So believe in it and dwell upon it. As you dwell upon it the whole thing unfolds within in you. Then in your outer world, you won’t have to say what shall I eat, what shall I drink and what shall I wear? Things happen, strange, marvelous things happen in your world and you don’t have to be concerned about marginal things of life. What is the real focus, the center of your focus and not the fringe? And if you put the center of your focus on that, you wouldn’t have to consider about money and these things at all.427 ¶36

Let the world tell you differently, alright, let them tell you differently, it’s perfectly alright. I know from experience that if you dwell upon these things, things happen out of the nowhere.427 ¶37

I know in my own case, I never thought of money. I never contributed to any money that my parents ever made, never. They are a thousand miles away, yet when he made his will he did not leave me out. He didn’t modify his gift to me because I didn’t contribute. And when his will was read, to the amazement not to my brothers for we’re all like fingers on a hand, but to the amazement of the in-laws. Oh, they thought that’s not right, yet they didn’t contribute one penny themselves. They simply married into the family. But when the will was read, Neville got just as much as the other nine…there are ten of us. He gave us all equal amounts of his shares and didn’t give one because he had five children and one had none, give him more because he has five mouths to feed, no, he gave them all equal. He said, “I’m not giving my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren, I’m giving my children. You have your children and you give them what you have.” So one had no children after years of marriage, she got the same amount. One had two; he got the same as the one who had five. And they all had an equal distribution of his estate. And I didn’t know about it. I hadn’t the slightest idea I had one nickel until years later I went home to find out that I had just as much as any member of the family.427 ¶38

So I was about my Father’s business, simply teaching the kingdom of heaven, not concerned about dollars and cents, and unknown to me there it is growing in a foreign field and growing beautifully. I had no knowledge whatsoever but none, and I wasn’t concerned. I’ve never asked them for one little balance sheet, I trust them implicitly. I have never once entertained the thought that anyone would ever take advantage, because I can’t entertain that thought believing what I do. So I tell you, you go about your Father’s business dwelling upon the kingdom and all things will take care of themselves.427 ¶39

But don’t be ashamed to confess and to acknowledge him before men. So they are wounded, they’re hurt…forget it! They were wounded too when Paul spoke up. He said, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel.” And so when the vision becomes your experience, what does it matter what the world thinks?427 ¶40

So you stand before the whole vast world and you will say to anyone, “I am the father of God’s only begotten son.” A good Christian will say, “What? You’re the Father of Christ?” I say, “No, I’m the father of his son.” “He didn’t have a son.” “Oh yes he did. Read the scripture more thoroughly. He had a son. Well, what is his son?—David.” “And the Lord said unto me, Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” To whom are these words spoken?—they are spoken to David, by whom?—the Lord. Well, who is the Lord?—Christ Jesus. But he came after David. No. Nothing comes before Christ Jesus, nothing, for he is the Lord. Everything comes after God. So God the Father is Christ Jesus and it is his desire, his purpose to give himself to us. If he gives himself to me and succeeds in that purpose, well then, I, too, must become God the Father, or he didn’t give himself. There is no way he can prove to me that he gave himself to me other than through his son David, who stands before me and calls me Father. When he calls me Father, then I know who I am. Prior to that I didn’t know; I had no knowledge of who I am. I thought I was Neville Goddard, born of Joe Goddard, a member of a very large family. Well, physically in this world that’s what I am, but in the world of Spirit I am not; for he gave himself to me, and to prove it his son calls me Father. And when he called me Father, there was no uncertainty in this relationship between father and son.427 ¶41

He’s just as described in the Book of Samuel, just as he’s described. And he will be the son of every child born of woman; everyone will have this experience and then we have a brotherhood, in spite of all the conflicts in this world. So we have had the most horrible conflicts and we still have them, but in the end all will be resolved. We will discover that this play—it’s a play, horrible as it is—was essential for God to give his gift to man.427 ¶42

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *427 ¶43

[...] and I can take a letter like tonight and show this adumbration, for he isn’t far from it or he would not have had the experience. He was cutting a seeming other, but a man’s foes are those of his own household. There is no enemy outside of self, working against self, overcoming a certain whatever it is. He said, “By nature I’m a pacifist…always have been since I was a child” and he doesn’t want to hurt. Sometimes, though we do not wish to hurt, we hurt all the more. Stating your deep conviction may be a hurt because it’s a shock to the one who asked you, and not wanting anyone hurt you restrain your conviction. And it is a pacifist in a way.427 ¶44

Now are there any questions? If not, then good night.427 ¶45

“God is all Imagination and God is man and exists in us and we in him; the eternal body of man is the Imagination, that is God himself”. Now we are told that the Bible is God’s word, therefore, it must be man’s word if we are one.426 ¶1

A scriptural episode is not a record of an historical event but a parabolic revelation of truth. Accept it, though you may not understand it. When you experience it, it will be literally true. In Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy he said, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me. Guard the truth which has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us”. Here he’s called upon to guard this truth, this pattern. Only as we follow this pattern are we really saved, for if we do not follow the pattern we go astray.426 ¶2

If I am all Imagination, and all things are possible to Imagination, I should able to accomplish anything in this world that I desire. I should…but to what degree do I believe that statement? Entirely up to me, do I believe? We are all living in states, infinite states. That basic state from which we operate is simply the body of belief—I believe in this, that and the other—all the things I really believe in. If I believe in this, believe in that, and they form a body, it is from that that I operate. It is to that that I return constantly. If I can produce any modification in that body of belief, I should, if this principle is true, produce a corresponding change in my outer world. For the outer world is reflecting the inner world. If I listen to this truth and I toy with it and produce within me some modification of this body of belief, I should find changes in my outer world. If you don’t, either the principle is false or you did not succeed in changing this body of belief.426 ¶3

Now tonight, let us take just a few of this fabulous book. There are sixty-six books in what we call the Bible. Really, it’s a library. We are told that the symbol of the fall is a serpent. We are told in the 3rd chapter of Genesis, he was the most subtle of all of God’s creatures. But the word translated “subtle,” you’ll find it a dozen times translated in different ways, most often as “wise.” He is the sound wisdom of God’s creation. But now in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs we are told: “God created me at the beginning of his ways, the first of his acts of old.” All scholars agree that this is the personification of wisdom. In the New Testament we are told that “Jesus Christ is the power and the wisdom of God.” Who then is the serpent? You have been taught to believe that some strange monster, called the great dragon, betrayed man and led him into this world of sin and death. If you understand scripture, you will see that the one that brought man into this is Christ Jesus, the power and the wisdom of God. But he will take us from this world into the world of regeneration. He brings us into the world of generation and redeems us by raising us to the world of regeneration.426 ¶4

Now, he’s called “the serpent.” Do you believe that literally? May I tell you from my own personal experience, yes. We are told in the Book of John, the 3rd chapter, that: “No one ascends into heaven but he who first descended, the Son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up”. Here, who would think that infinity took the form of a serpent? Infinite power, infinite wisdom took the form of a serpent and entered the state called Satan. Satan means “the limit of opacity.” He took the form of man and man means in scripture “the limit of contraction.” You can’t get any lower. So here we find Satan now is nothing more than a blind man confined only to his five senses—nothing beyond what the eyes, what the ears, what the nostrils, what the tongue and what the sense of touch will reveal as true can be accepted as true. He is limited to the limit of opacity and contraction.426 ¶5

Now, we are called upon to exercise this power that actually sacrificed itself and became us, actually became me, became you. Well, how do I exercise it? Blake stated quite clearly: “I know of no other Christianity, no other gospel than the freedom both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of Imagination.” Well, can I actually exercise the divine art of Imagination and prove I can go beyond my senses, what my eyes dictate, what reason dictates, what all my senses dictate? I know from experience I can. So here, I start exercising the divine arts of Imagination and I dare to assume that I am at the moment what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny. And to the degree that I am self-persuaded that what I am assuming to be true is true, to that degree the outer world changes to conform to this change of belief within me. I am working on this body of belief based upon all that reason has dictated, all that my senses have dictated. And so, to the degree I can bring about modifications and sometimes radical changes within this body of belief, when I do it changes in my outer world.426 ¶6

But here, can I prove that infinite power and infinite wisdom actually took the form of a serpent and descended? Well, where would he descend? He descended into me, he descended into you. Your capacity to generate in this world is the descent of the serpent into generation. The day will come, you will turn around, and then the Son of man will ascend into heaven. But no one can ascend into heaven who has not first descended and the only one who descended was the power and the wisdom of God, and he came in the form of a serpent. Don’t be afraid. I am telling you what I know from experience.426 ¶7

And the day will come, that this body of yours will be split in two from top to bottom. As Blake said, “The furnaces of affliction became fountains of living water.” These are the furnaces of affliction. Every one here is in a furnace, and suddenly when he is split, suddenly he becomes fountains, all of us, fountains of living water springing from humanity. You rise like a fiery serpent up that spinal column of yours.426 ¶8

Now listen to these words from the 21st chapter of Numbers: “And the Lord God said to Moses, make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and anyone who is bitten, if he sees it, shall live”. He shall live, therefore, he was already dead. If he sees it, he shall live—you enter into life within yourself. “Make a fiery serpent…” Now these are all adumbrations, these are all foreshadowings. Every little episode in scripture is simply a rough sketch, that’s all that it is. It’s not worked out in complete exposition; it’s simply a rough sketch, leaving it for time to fill in, when you and I actually have the experience.426 ¶9

Now let me share with you the experience of a friend who is here tonight. Throughout the entire experience the presence of a father, and he knows it’s “my father,” he’s present. He is building this fabulous building and he knows that his father is a greater builder than he is, he knows it. But he’s building…doesn’t see the father. Then comes the noon hour and there’s a break. When he goes in to wash up, as he goes in he finds that his father had preceded him, for here, the remains of the father’s wash in the basin. And he knew the father loved him and he loved the father, but he hadn’t seen the father, only he knew of his presence. He knew he was a greater builder. He also knew that eventually he would be as great a builder as his father: “And I will be one day equal to my father in the building.” Now, he said, “Suddenly I saw a black and white king snake. I picked it up in my right arm and I loved the snake. I found some hamburger, I gave it a piece, and it ate it ravenously. I found another snake and I picked it up in my left hand. But I noticed it was poisonous and I quickly put it back, because I couldn’t control two in my arms. And this snake began to tell me of her husband. It becomes now vocal, and here it ceases to be a snake, it now has a voice. It’s telling me of her husband who has gone away, and she loves him dearly, but he has departed.” And a very intimate conversation takes place between a snake and this friend of mine, who is here tonight, who picked up the snake. “Then we separated. I’m now standing at a new building site and here there’s a pole and on it the snake, the same snake. And it’s moving up the pole, and then it turns around and jumps half way down, and starts the descent.”426 ¶10

Here is the perfect adumbration. You see it? Only that which descends can ever ascend. So he tells you, “You see the ascent? It was the same one that descended.” There is no other way up. And when you go up, you actually go up as a serpent. It doesn’t make sense. Let the whole vast world rise in opposition and scream, it makes no difference to me whatsoever. I have experienced it. I have fulfilled scripture from beginning to end. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up. How is he lifted up? In the form of a serpent…the same serpent which is the creative power of God that descended into man, which is your own wonderful creative sex power in this world, with the head turned down. So, turned down, it is sex in this world. It must be reversed. And you do not do it by anything that is a conscious act in this world. You can sit in meditation from now ’til the ends of time and you can’t reverse it. The reversal takes place when the whole body is split in two from top to bottom. Then you see the fountain of living water, and you become it. You fuse with it, and then, like a serpent, up you go. This fiery serpent moves up into heaven. So as Blake said, “Here, these furnaces of affliction suddenly became fountains of living water, all springing from humanity.” So everyone is destined to add to that fountain of living water as we all rise from this world into which we descended.426 ¶11

And the one that descended…as Blake tells us again, we followed the serpent: “I do not consider the just man, the weak man, the wicked man, any man to be in an ideal, supreme state, but to be every one of them states of the sleep in which the soul may fall in its deadly dreams of good and evil when it left paradise following the serpent”. We followed the serpent. We believed that we really could awaken as God. For that’s what the serpent, which is wisdom, told us. That, “Did God say to you that you would die? You will not surely die”. Well, read the 22nd verse of that same chapter, the 3rd chapter, where God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil.” That’s what the serpent told him that would happen to him if he would descend and partake of this knowledge of good and evil. He would then become awake to good and evil just like the gods. For if we become awake, knowing good and evil, and God said “he has become like one of us, knowing good and evil”, well then, the gods know good and evil, which is what we did not know before. We only knew…we were simply automatons, innocents, knowing nothing, really, simply awake in a strange dreamlike state. And here comes infinite wisdom—for he’s the wisest of all God’s creation—and said, “Follow me. I’ll take you into an experience.” So we leave the world of innocence, we enter the world of experience, and return to the world of Imagination. And that’s the story. When we go up, it’s all Imagination, and there is nothing impossible to man when he rises, because he is God. There’s nothing impossible.426 ¶12

But before he rises, we can test this right on this level. Do you know someone who’s in need? Maybe you yourself are in need? Well then, bring before your mind’s eye a scene that would imply the fulfillment of your desire, either for a friend or for yourself, and lose yourself in the feeling of this wish fulfilled. And do nothing to make it so, just let it be so. May I tell you, no power on earth can stop it from being so. Don’t say, “Well, suppose he opposes me?”…right away you’re in the world of Satan or opacity. You see “others”…there are no others; God is one. God is not a second, he’s one. So don’t say, “Well now, suppose he opposes me…suppose there isn’t a job open for me?” I don’t care what the world looks like; you’re creating it from within yourself. Try it. All I ask of you is to try it.426 ¶13

And simply keep and follow the pattern of these words that you’ve received from me. Just as Paul said for his experience, although he wrote beautifully, I do not write in that same vein—it’s the same pattern, it’s not another pattern. When it pleased God to reveal himself in Paul, it’s the same God who revealed himself in me. So when Paul said, “It pleased God to reveal his Son in me,” well, if he reveals his Son in him, then he reveals the Father. For when the Son is revealed, the Father is revealed. For if there’s a Son, there’s a Father. So Paul is telling you he knows he’s God the Father. And if you read it carefully, in Timothy what he’s actually telling you: You heard this from Paul and may I tell you, it came from Paul, not from Paul who got it from another. For he said, “I never heard it from a man, I was never taught it, it was revealed to me.” So he’s telling you that it didn’t come to him from another. He didn’t get it from a book, didn’t get it from some lecture, he didn’t get it from any person in this world; it came from revelation from within himself. So he’s asking everyone to follow the pattern of the true words that you have heard from me, Paul, that’s what he’s saying.426 ¶14

Well, I’ll tell you, follow these words you have heard from me, because I have actually experienced the entire story of scripture. And I tell you, it is not secular history. These individual stories all of them put together have not a thing to do with anything in this world, like recalling some true historical event. It’s not so at all. These are simply parabolic revelations of truth. They’re all parables…naturally, find out what it means. Well, I’ll tell you, when it does happen you’ll know exactly. I can tell you to the best of my ability, but when it happens it seems, well, this is natural. When the body is split and the serpent moves up from this base of golden liquid light, then you know what this living water really is in scripture, this living fountain that comes up—from what?—from humanity. So every story in scripture is true literally when experienced, but it is parabolically true until experienced. You see it as a rough sketch; it’s something that is not quite understood by the rational mind.426 ¶15

Now here, another friend writes, this lady, “I found myself in the depths of the earth, in a cave, and the walls were all hewn out of rock. The only object present was an urn or a jar, a large urn or jar. I noticed that on the side of it was carved a face, a human face. But, suddenly, as I’m looking at it I became so excited because something is happening to me. I am moving in and out of this cave, without effort, going right through the walls…a thing I have not experienced before, I’m moving right through the walls. And then after going through and coming back many, many times, I suddenly now become absorbed in the jar. I notice now it is not a carved face on the jar, the jar itself is a head, the whole thing…that stone jar is a head. I’m looking at it and the forehead is furrowed, which I didn’t notice before. I noticed that the lips are moving. I can’t hear any words, but I noticed it’s speaking. But again this impulse to move through the walls, and I start through the walls again. When I go back and forth many times through the walls and return, I notice the top of jar is off, the head is off, the top of the head. I peered into it and it’s empty. Then I thought, well now, I’ll investigate and get into it, and see what it’s all about. And then I awoke.”426 ¶16

Again, go back to Blake: “And he has a sepulcher hewn out of rock to receive me, and a death of eight thousand years that you have forged for thyself.” Here, he has a sepulcher to receive and a death of eight thousand years that you—he didn’t do it—you forged for yourself. Now, 8,000 in Blake’s symbology does not necessarily mean 8,000 years. Eight is resurrection. Eight is a new beginning: On the eighth day he rose. He said the third day, it’s after the Sabbath, and so the Sabbath, and the next day he rose…that is the eighth. So here, on this day he will actually prepare a death, leading up to resurrection. In this lady’s case I think she’s on it, so it’s not any eight thousand years in time. I think she’s on it…from this experience I would say she is. For here, she realizes that she can go through this cave. This is the sepulcher in which man is placed, and when man enters the grave he enters it with the one that descended with him. “God himself enters death’s door with all who enter it, and he lays down in the grave in visions of eternity until they awake” And so they will awake on the eighth. So here, I think it’s the 37th page or plate of Blake’s, I think it is. But you check it. But here, her vision is perfect, because all of Blake’s works are vision. Everything that he recorded was vision, and he’s telling exactly what happened to him. Luckily for us he had the capacity to write poetry, and that lives, poetry lives. And so, he told us in this marvelous way what actually is taking place within him.426 ¶17

Now another lady, and she is present, and this thrills me. In her experiences, she finds herself in the experience checking herself and revising it. And that is a thrill to me, that when it becomes so much a part of your life here that in dream you check it. You don’t like what you’re seeing and you revise it right there and then. That’s marvelous! For the whole story begins the Book of Mark…he begins by saying, “Repent!” That means revision, change your mind, change your attitude towards what you dislike in this world. Change it! If you can bring about any change in your belief concerning that, that has to change to correspond to the change in you. So in her dream, in her vision, she is having this desire to change it, and telling others in her dream that you must revise it now. Don’t wait ’til tomorrow, next month, next year; do it now! May I tell you, you are right. If imagining creates reality, what am I doing waiting for tomorrow when the emotion, as she brought out so cleverly, is stronger then. If I let it go for another day, another week, and it simply confronts me all the more, well then, I find it more difficult to overcome that thing that now faces me. So change it at the moment that you don’t like to hear what you’re going to hear but you’re hearing it, alright, change it. So these are perfectly marvelous that you’ve given me this past week. Perfectly wonderful!426 ¶18

So here, let me share with you, you are destined to awaken as God. Don’t be afraid of the serpent. Who would have told me years ago that I would rise like a serpent when I don’t like the animal. When I go to the zoo, I don’t go to watch the reptiles…I am not overly fond of them…they don’t interest me. And here, it’s a symbol of man’s redemption. And here, I who am not overly fond of any reptile if I go to the zoo, well, I’ll go and see other animals; but I certainly don’t go to the reptile cage, because in some strange way it just doesn’t interest me. It’s a peculiar something that goes back, possibly, into the very depths of one’s soul. For one seems to have been betrayed into this experience, and you harbor it all through, it simply betrayed you. For that’s what you’re told in scripture—he beguiled Eve and led her into experience. And only as we could be led from innocence into experience could we really awaken and return as God, who is completely awake as one grand wonderful human Imagination. For God is man.426 ¶19

So when we are told, again in Blake: “Thy own humanity learn to adore, for that is my spirit of life,” when he uses the word “humanity,” he’s using it individually. Your humanity is your own wonderful human Imagination…learn to adore it. Turn to it. If you would worship God, worship your own wonderful human Imagination. You would love God? Love your own wonderful humanity…“Thy own humanity learn to adore.” Now he tells you, “For that is my spirit of life.” That is Christ in you, that is life in you. Remove that from you and you are not, you don’t even exist. So “learn to adore thy own humanity for that is my spirit of life.”426 ¶20

So tonight, instead of turning to an outside God, or turning to anything, dwell upon what you are imagining. What a creative power! That you can’t draw a straight line, and yet in your mind’s eye you can bring before your mind’s eye the human face and embody all lovely things into it. You can take someone that is old and injured, and in your mind’s eye bring them right into the loveliest thing in the world, and yet you can’t draw a straight line. Well, isn’t that creative power? That’s God.426 ¶21

Learn to adore thy humanity, for the humanity in Blake’s symbology is your own Imagination. He doesn’t mean…he’s not speaking of collectively, he’s speaking of you individually, that’s “the humanity.” He first begins it by saying: “Thou art a man, God is no more, thy own humanity learn to adore.” You are the man and “thy humanity” is that man. Learn to adore it. “For that is my spirit of life.”426 ¶22

So tonight, don’t turn elsewhere. Your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. Well, you adore God? Then, adore your Imagination. But now, all things are possible to God, therefore all things are possible to your Imagination. Now what do you want to imagine?426 ¶23

Now you say you believe in God? Well, I’ll test you to what degree you believe in God: Believe in your own imaginal acts. So in the 14th of John: “You believe in God? Believe in me also.” For he’s telling you who he is: “For that is his spirit of life.” Do you believe in God? Believe in me also. Now, can I this night give the same feeling towards my imaginal act that I would if I thought that something external to myself acted? Well now, can I imagine and believe it, and actually accept it as real, and live in it just as though it were? If this principle is true that imagining creates reality, I should see it taking place in my world in the not distant future, I should. And if it doesn’t, and this thing is false, well then, throw the whole thing through the window. But I tell you, from my own experience, it is true. But to what degree do I believe it? He puts no limit on man’s ability to believe and he puts no limit on what belief can accomplish, none whatsoever. Whatever you desire, believe that you’ve received it and you will, no matter what it is. There’s no limit to this. Now, can I believe? Man will say, “I can believe that of God.” I’m not speaking of some God on the outside; can you believe it of the only true God? He is in you!426 ¶24

Go back and let me quote once more that 2nd letter to Timothy: “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me. Guard the faith, the truth that has been revealed to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Alright, it came from within us. So don’t look for any Holy Spirit on the outside. There is no one on the outside, it’s all within. Can you so trust him that you can believe it? Well, try it. Test it…just test it.426 ¶25

Again, let me go back to one—he is here tonight, the same one with the pole and the serpent—he said, “I was…well, we were all torn between what we think is the ethical thing and what we really want to do.” He said, “I wanted a better job that paid more money. But I was torn—if I gave up my job I would feel that I was just not quite the man that I should be because they’d been kind and they’d been helpful. But I wanted more money. And so, when I decided I would injure no one, I would hurt no one, I would simply get a better job, more money…and I named it, 20,000 a year.” He didn’t state what he was, but he implied it was double what he was making. Then he said, “In two weeks I was called for an interview. And in the past I always had to sell myself…whenever I was interviewed, I had to sell myself, really sell myself. This time they were practically throwing the job on me. And strangely enough the man who made it possible for me to be interviewed was a man who formerly worked for me, and there was an intense dislike of me by this man. He hated me and we parted company. At the end of the interview, when the whole thing was mine, he met me on the outside and he said, ‘You know, the job was offered to me, but I didn’t feel that I was capable, qualified.’” Then said he, a little aside in his letter, “Why, he is just as capable as I am, but he was kind enough after this break in the past to actually suggest me as the one best qualified for the job.”426 ¶26

So I tell you, there’s only one being in the world. When I change my body of beliefs, everyone must play the part necessary to produce the change in me. And if formerly he was my enemy, he has to play the part of the friend if he can play the part to bring about what I am doing in my world. So I thank him for sharing with me this story.426 ¶27

And keep on dreaming nobly. Fill that mind with lovely things that tomorrow you’ll want to recall. Because tomorrow…and I hope that everyone here will have it before I make my exit…all the experiences that I’ve had, because I can’t tell you the joy in hearing when someone has it. When someone has brought forth the birth, when someone has found David, and then the serpent rises from within, from the depths of generation into regeneration; and then when the great dove descends. For again, go back to Blake, “Everything is man.” He said, “The lion, the tiger, horse, elephant, eagle, dove, fly, worm, and the all-glorious serpent, clothed in gems and fine array, humanized in the forgiveness of sins, according to thy covenant, O Jehovah.” In the end, there is nothing but God, and God is man. So God becomes the worm to feed the weak. He’s everything. There’s nothing but God, and God is man.426 ¶28

So he said: “Double the vision my eyes do see and a double vision is always with me. With my inner eye it is an old man gray; with my outer, a thistle across my way.”426 ¶29

Haven’t you had that experience? I used to practice that morning, noon and night with my old friend Abdullah. He would say, “Look and tell me what you see.” So I couldn’t tell him that I’m looking at a lampshade. He told me to look at the lampshade, but he didn’t mean to look at the lampshade, for anyone can see a lampshade: “Look and tell me what you see.” I had to look through it, focus my attention beyond it but look at it. So that is a thistle, a lampshade. Look beyond it, you see all the human faces in the world, and then I tell him what I’m seeing. They’re all living, all become alive. He would say, “Look, Neville, and tell me. Look at the carpet. Look at the wall. But you don’t look at it, you look through it. You focus beyond it.” And so, with my outward eye it’s a wall, it’s a lampshade, it’s a thistle; but with my inward eye…and then I tell him what I’m seeing. And so, “Double the vision my eyes do see, and a double vision is always with me. With my inner eye it is an old man gray; with my outer, a thistle across my way.”426 ¶30

It’s exciting. Sometimes when I first start with it I have to break it because you can feel yourself moving right into this world that’s alive. You go right beyond it. I would sit in my living room and look at the couch. And suddenly I would look into the couch, not at it, and then I am not on the chair at all, I’m right in that world, entirely different world. That’s Imagination. But you’ll say, “Now what does that do?” What does it do? Well try it, go right into an entirely different world.426 ¶31

And this world seems so solidly real and the only reality, and yet I know from experience that everyone who departs here has been improved. So I’m not concerned if someone goes; there’s an improvement for everyone who departs. I don’t care what happens, if he hits his head against a post and he goes, he’s been improved by that very departure. But he’s still in a world just like this, and he goes on and on, until finally the pattern unfolds within him.426 ¶32

So, “Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me and guard it, guard the truth that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” So, he has revealed it to me, and so he has entrusted me with that truth. I must tell it, tell it and tell it over and over until I am through telling it. And then someone else picks it up. He’ll have the same experience.426 ¶33

These are patterns. The Bible is simply a book of patterns, that’s really what it is, from beginning to end, a book of patterns. And so, it hasn’t a thing to do with secular history.426 ¶34

And if you will take these patterns, for instance, take a simple little one: “In the beginning God…” that’s the first of Genesis, and the last of Genesis is “…in a tomb in Egypt.” Well, who is in the tomb? A man, his name was Joseph. Joseph was called “the dreamer.” The Bible only has one source of dreams and that source is God. So the one who “in the beginning God” is the one in the tomb in Egypt. He descended and took upon himself the limitation of man, which is this concrete, opaque state. So that is Joseph.426 ¶35

Look at this pattern in Joseph. He was born of one who was long barren. His mother was Rachel. He was a favorite son because he was a son of his old age. He didn’t come for years and years. Leah had them and concubines had them, but the one he loved most, which was Rachel, didn’t have a child. She prayed and here came Joseph. Now, his father Jacob was the son of his mother’s old age, and his father Isaac was the son of his mother’s old age. You find the pattern repeating it over and over and over. The book is a book of patterns.426 ¶36

So you ask yourself, what is the pattern? Is this a secular thing? No, it’s in us. If it seems long, alright, we have the pattern for it. “How long, O Lord, how long?” He will come, but how long? He will come. He comes in your old age. He comes after you’ve had all the experiences that life here can give you, then, all of a sudden. Don’t be concerned! You seem to be barren? The child will come.426 ¶37

Now, into the Silence, and then we’ll have some questions. * * *426 ¶38

[...] of the world and we think of the great men and women who are publicized in the world, and many of them are all-together wonderful. We speak of the great poets, the scientists, the business men, all these powers in the world, and we think there must be something different about them. May I tell you, there’s not a thing different about them. I want to convince you this night, if I can, that this inspiration that we think the poets have, the scientists, the great businessmen, is not an influx of a spirit that is different. It’s not different from the individual’s own wonderful human Imagination because there’s nothing greater. So, there’s no greater influx of spirit into a Blake, into a Shakespeare, into an Einstein, into you, than your own wonderful human Imagination, for there is nothing greater. There is only one Spirit in man and the universe: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”.423 ¶1

In a little conversation that Blake had with his friend Crabb Robinson, Robinson asked him what he thought of the divinity of Christ. He answered, “Christ is the only God, but so am I and so are you.” Now don’t forget it! When you think of Christ you make him something bigger than yourself, something greater than yourself. Blake said, “Christ is the only God, but so am I.” If Christ is the only God and so am I, I make myself one with him. Then he turns to Crabb Robinson and he said, “So are you.” So don’t forget it. If you forget this, you make yourself less than the one. You can’t be less than the one…there’s only one. There’s only God in this world. There’s nothing but God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination, that is God.423 ¶2

Now tonight let us put it to the extreme test. If God is the only reality, you can’t have two, not two Gods, and he is my own wonderful human Imagination, and all things are possible to God, all right, how would I go about proving it? For, I’m called upon to test him. I would dare to assume that I am the man that I would like to be. At the moment reason denies it, my senses deny it, but I would dare to assume that I am it.423 ¶3

Now, what am I told in scripture that I should do? Well, listen to it carefully. The story is told in scripture of the necessity of persistence because we are keyed low. The same God, the God that created the universe and sustains it by his creative power is the God that is sitting right here in these chairs tonight. But here for a divine purpose the same God is keyed low. So when I bring about a change in my world then I’m called upon in scripture to be persistent, because I see this world and everything that I’ve assumed is denied by the things round about me. Now listen to these stories as told in scripture.423 ¶4

A man came at the midnight hour to his friend and he said, “A friend has called and I have no bread. Would you just let me have three loaves of bread?” and the one who opened the upstairs window said to him, “It is midnight and my children are asleep in bed. I cannot come down and give you what you want.” The story as told us in the Book of Luke is this: He would not come down, but because of this man’s importunity he came down and gave him all that he needed. Well, the word translated importunity means “brazen impudence.” He would not take no for an answer. I don’t ask you as an individual and I don’t ask any outside God as an individual, I’m asking myself “Bring this thing to pass.” That’s what I’m actually saying because I’m speaking to the only God. There’s only God! If God is my own wonderful human Imagination, to whom am I going to turn? Well, it doesn’t respond. Well, I don’t take no for and answer. So within my own being I am assuming that I have received exactly what I need. Now the story is, even though it was midnight and he was in bed with his children, he came down and gave him what he needed. You do not take no for an answer!423 ¶5

Because there is no other may I tell you. I don’t care if a Shakespeare, of whom you say ‘My God, isn’t he marvelous!’ and he is, and the Blakes of the world, and they’re marvelous, and the Einsteins and they’re marvelous—bur the God of an Einstein does not differ from the God of your own wonderful human Imagination. There’s only God…there can’t be two. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord, our God, the Lord is one.” It is not a dual God, one God. So your own wonderful human Imagination is this God. And you are not less than any being in this world. But you have to be persistent.423 ¶6

When Benny came home last Saturday night, he said, “Neville, have you forgotten my vision where I was talking to someone and you came into the picture. This one said to you…and he asked a very simple question, ‘Tell us the story of Jesus’…you automatically said, ‘The story of Jesus is persistent assumption.’” Persistent assumption—that’s the story, for Jesus means “salvation.” Well, if persistent assumption is the story of Jesus, I must dare to assume that I am what I want to be and I must continue in the assumption that I am until that which I have assumed is objectively realized. That is the story of Jesus.423 ¶7

For, if I am one with any being in this world and he is great and she is great and I am not, yet we are one, well, what is “fragmented being” when there is only one? I tell you that one is your own wonderful human Imagination. And don’t let anyone in this world tell you that an Einstein or a Shakespeare is greater because of some influx of a spirit of greater validity than your own wonderful human Imagination, because there is no greater. Your Imagination is God and there is no other God. There can be no other greater being than your own wonderful human Imagination.423 ¶8

Now you begin to imagine. Well now, I will say I have assumed that I am the man that I want to be, I am still assuming that I am he, and I will continue to assume that I am he until that which I have assumed is objectively realized, as told us in the 8th chapter of John, “Unless you believe that I am he…”. Now when you read it you think—as you were taught by the churches of the world—that another greater than yourself is speaking. It is not another greater than you speaking telling you that unless you believe that he is it. It is yourself speaking. There’s only God and because God is one and you can’t get away from the oneness, don’t think of another. So these words must be accepted in the first-person, present-tense. So, “Unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins”…you’ll miss the mark. I must believe that I am the man that I want to be. If I do not believe that I am that very being so that I can say I am he, well then, I will continue in what I formerly believed myself to be. This is the story of scripture.423 ¶9

So we are all one. Everyone here…you and I are one…because there can’t be two. On this level for a purpose we are fragmented. But I am sent to tell you that we are not really many, we are one. The word Elohim is a compound unity, one made up of others. So here it seems to be others, but you and I are not really two, three, four, or many. We are one in the most intimate manner that you have ever known, without loss of identity. So I ask you this night to simply dwell upon it and simply try it…just try it. It will never in eternity fail you.423 ¶10

Here is a letter; it came to me this past week. She said in her letter, “I was awakened by the laughter of my husband. He was laughing, the sweetest laughter I have ever heard. Just a laugh and I’ve never heard him laugh like this. So I woke and here he is laughing a peculiar wonderful laughter. I said to myself, ‘Well, he’s undoubtedly dreaming something that’s altogether wonderful.’ Then next morning he said to me, ‘I had the loveliest dream last night. I dreamt that you were telling me it’s so easy to believe that I am God.’” Well, I’m going to tell him—he’s here tonight alone, she isn’t here—tell her and you two read it, the 126th Psalm. There’s your answer…only six verses. That was the laughter of God. She said, “I heard the voice coming from within me saying, ‘You’ve just heard the laughter of God.’” Well, read the 126th Psalm when all return to Zion. Those who were left, all left, and they all are brought back into Zion. And here you hear the laughter of God. So she heard him laugh in a way that she had never heard before, and she never heard this kind of laughter. She said to herself, ‘He’s undoubtedly having a wonderful dream,’ and the next day he said to her, ‘Well, I had a dream last night and in my dream you were telling me that it’s so easy to believe that I am God.’”423 ¶11

So I tell you, you try it. This thing doesn’t fail. There is only God. You are not something less than God…there is only God. And you and I are on this level for purposes beyond the wildest dream of men. We are keyed low, but we are called upon to make the effort to rise from this level. So we do it in a business sense, in a scientific sense, in an objective sense. So we begin to express this talent, which is what?—our own wonderful human Imagination which is God. There’s nothing but God. So I am called upon to assume that I am what I want to be: “For an assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.” As Blake said it, “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.” So I say, ‘But you can’t be’; forget it, it can be. There’s nothing that is impossible to God. So don’t say that something cannot be, I don’t care what it is.423 ¶12

When we see someone in the world and he’s a fabulously wealthy person, well, so what! Do you think for one second some influx of Spirit that differs from the being that you are possessed him to make it? No, he either did it wittingly or unwittingly, may I tell you. But you can do it knowingly. If he does it unknowingly [...] is yourself, and he loses it tonight, he may not know how to recover it. I’m asking you, without having anything, to do it knowingly. So should you tomorrow fall into another state and you remember this story, you simply come back and simply bring it back into your world as you want it, and multiply it, and live graciously.423 ¶13

For, there’s only one God. You can’t conceive of, well, you can conceive of a second God, but it is a stupid concept because there is no other God. When the world thinks of numberless gods that’s stupid. There’s only one God and that God is your own wonderful human Imagination. The day will come that you’ll prove it; you’ll actually witness the one God. He sets himself up at the very beginning. And this God has only one Son. When you awaken and that son calls you Father, and therefore you are the father of the only Son of God, well then, you know that you are the only God. Then another one comes and another one comes and eventually all come and they see the same Son, and the same Son calls them Father. Therefore, everyone is the same God the Father, and there aren’t two!423 ¶14

Forget all the pigments of skin. All of this is part of the play…to put me into an olive skin, and one in a black, black skin, and one in a white, white skin and one in a red skin…and it makes it appear as though we differ; and, therefore, because we differ, there must be different gods. Yet all will have that same Son. That one Son will call all, regardless of sex, Father, proving that there’s only one God. And the purpose behind it all is simply to create an expansion of this creative power. So here, we are scattered, fragmented into numberless parts and then all gathered together into one God, one Father.423 ¶15

I’m going to ask you all to try it, really try it. Because if you really prove it on this level, may I tell you, you will never forget it, and you will be sustained by this level…and then all of a sudden you will be born from above. I can’t tell you when…that is a secret hidden from one here. If you tell me when you were born from above then I can tell you all the other events that will follow and when they are going to happen. I’ll tell you that because I recorded it. But the actual birth from above remains a secret; it comes like a thief in the night.423 ¶16

But when it comes, you are born from above and you are God. You actually are God. Now, to prove that you are, you can create. Create in this simple, simple way: What would it be like if it were true? Just, what would it be like? How would I feel if…and then you name it. How would I feel if she or he were as I would like them to be? And so, you would like something lovely to happen to them and then you feel it. Now, can you persist in that assumption? I have imagined it so to be, I am still imagining it so to be, and I will continue to imagine that these things are as I have imagined them to be until it is realized. Can I do that? Well, if I can, they will conform to it.423 ¶17

Must I get their permission? I don’t need their permission if we are one…that’s what I want for them. I don’t need their consent if it is something I would like for myself. Always ask yourself, would I like it for myself if they reject it? And they can reject it…take it on this level…if they should reject it, would I willingly accept it? If I gave you a million dollars and you wouldn’t take it, would I be willing to receive it again? I would….well then, give it in that way. May I tell you, you can do it. You don’t have one nickel in the bank and maybe you don’t have a bank account, but you can do it, because there’s no one but yourself. There’s only God in this world: God is I AM…there’s nothing but God.423 ¶18

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one”…the greatest confession of faith that man could ever make. Read it in the 6th chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, I think it’s the 4th verse. But, oh, what a confession of faith! “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one.” Not two, not a dozen, just one. Well, if he’s one, what is one in the world? When I say “I am” that’s one; if I say “we are” that’s multiple. But I AM, and that is his name. Don’t forget it.423 ¶19

Therefore, if I am, even though now something is happening, I’m not receiving from some superior being—there is no superior being other than myself—the inspiration for anything I write. If I sit down and write something that is all trivial or something that is altogether marvelous, it doesn’t come from some other being who inspires me, because there is no greater being. There can’t be another being. Well, I sit down to write, and I’m in the mood, from my own being it is coming out and I’m writing. But to say some other being is possessing me and they are taking over, nonsense! No other being…there can be no other being. So the poets, the Shakespears, the Blakes, the great writers of the world, or any writer in the world, he doesn’t have any being influencing him, moving in some peculiar spiritual influx that is greater than himself. It can’t be. There is no one greater than himself. So when someone tells me “I was under the influence of something other than myself that came from the outside, forget it! There isn’t anyone. It’s all coming from the depth of your own soul.423 ¶20

So all of a sudden…you’re in advertising and you’re sitting and you’re wondering what does my customer need and all of a sudden from the depth of your own soul it comes, what you’re going to say to promote that product. It isn’t some influx of a spirit other than yourself, can’t be because there’s nothing greater than yourself. There is no other God. There’s only one God. So you sit and you’re communing with self as told you in the Psalms, “Commune with your own soul.” Well, you can sit on the chair or on your bed and commune with your own soul, and be at peace, and all of a sudden the thing begins to flow from within. Because there’s only one God, everything unfolds from within you and there’s nothing but God.423 ¶21

In the end you and I and the whole vast world of billions will be re-gathered into one body, and oh, what a joy! One fell purposely into this fragmented world of seeming others, and fighting seeming others, and the horror was in oneself. That a man’s, really, his enemies are of his own household, meaning himself. He’s fighting with himself, not knowing that everything in this world is himself. All of a sudden he realizes there is no other, just himself. Then he knows it and he tells everyone in his world in the hope that he can convince himself, because it’s himself that he’s talking to, if there’s only one God, only one being. Then he rises within himself; he once more coalesces into the one being. And knowing in the depths of his being everyone is going to be coalesced into the same being, and oh what a joy when all are raised into the one being that was that being before the fall. The fall was a deliberate fall for the expansion of his power. I could only expand my creative power by falling into this limitation and overcoming it. There’s no other way to do it.423 ¶22

As I fell I fragmented my being. I saw it so clearly in my visions. The being that fragmented was myself. I saw it. I saw this whole rock fragmented, then all gathered together. When I looked, I’m looking at myself…a glowing being, like the sun glowing. I’ve never known that I could…this little thing talking to you now, where every part of the body…at my age naturally it gets older and parts disappear…yet I’m looking at this being sitting in a lotus posture and this fantastic beauty. I could hardly believe I could ever in eternity equal that beauty, and yet I’m looking at myself. Here this is his meditated world, fragmented and when it was all put back together, I’m looking at myself. I can’t tell you my thrill when I looked at him. It was first a rock and then the rock became fragmented. Then the rock was gathered together, but instead of being a rock it’s now a being, human being, sitting in the lotus posture meditating, and this glorious, beautiful being. I can’t describe the beauty of that man and I’m looking at myself. How could I ever be described as a man called Neville with such beauty? And yet I’m looking at myself—such majesty, such strength of character, such power, all woven into one being sitting in the lotus posture and it glows and glows like a sun. When it reaches the intensity of power, it explodes. And then I awakened here sitting in my apartment on 75th Street in New York City.423 ¶23

So I’m telling you what I know, what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced. Well, that is true of everyone. You…there’s a being in you that’s meditating you. And the being in you and the being in me and the being in all, woven together, form that being that is the ultimate God. That being is perfect. May I tell you, I don’t care what you’ve gone through—you could lose your eyes, lose your hands, lose your feet, be dishonored in this world—but that being that is meditating you is the most glorious being that you could ever conceive. You’ve never known such beauty. Oh, you can go to all the beauty parlors in the world and they’ll bring one out and say, oh, isn’t that lovely. May I tell you, it’s as nothing compared to this living being that is meditating you. That living being, everyone’s living being, all united into one being forms the God that fell and fragmented himself. Each fragment was perfect and each fragment was the Father of the one meditating that one.423 ¶24

So I tell you, try it here on this level. There is nothing in this world but God. This greatest of all confessions, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one”…that there aren’t two of us, not really in the true sense of the word. But you take my word and test it here on this level in the world of Caesar. You want a better future? Alright, dare to take this statement and try it and try it for one week: I assume that I am the one that I want to be, I am still assuming that I am it, and I will continue to assume that I am it until that which I have assumed is objectively realized. And don’t give it any time on this level. Just bear down on it and dare to sleep in that assumption just as though it were true. Don’t give it any time.423 ¶25

There is a time limit in what God, your own wonderful Father who is in the depth of your own being dreaming you, he has that time limit…but on this level should not be the length of time. You’re told in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ”; all right, that will take its own good time. You will be brought to the same perfection of the being who is dreaming you. It is God dreaming himself into a greater imagery of himself, that’s all that it is; and you are the dreamer and the dream. You’re not another, you are the dreamer and the dream. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” You find that in the 1st chapter, 6th verse of Philippians. So you are the dreamer dreaming yourself in the image of yourself. That’s perfectly all right.423 ¶26

But while you are here, then take it in the world of Caesar and bring about these changes in your world for yourself and for those that you love. Eventually you’ll love all. But if you don’t love all now, do it at least for those that you do love. Actually assume it and dare to tell yourself, I have assumed it, I am still assuming it, I will continue to assume it until what I have assumed and am now assuming is perfectly realized.423 ¶27

For you are told, “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins”. Is another talking to me?—no. I’m saying to myself, unless I believe I am the being I want to be, I die in my sins, I miss the mark. It’s not another talking to me; there’s only one God, can’t be two, and so unless I believe that I am that man that I want to be, then I remain the man that I don’t want to be, and therefore I die in my sins. That’s the story as told us in the 8th chapter of the Book of John.423 ¶28

It’s not another being telling me I must believe in him. Believe in what? I’m not called upon to believe in any other being, for any other being is a false god. There’s only one God, so to believe in another, I don’t care who the other appears to be, to believe in someone who calls himself the head of some great religious body, whether it be Roman Catholicism, whether it be call Protestantism, whether it be called Judaism, and to believe he is the great leader? Well, that’s a false god. Unless I believe that I am he, I die in my sins. But I don’t die unless I believe that someone is talking to me who tells me that unless I believe that he is something…nonsense! It’s all stupid. I don’t believe that anyone else is. I must believe that God actually became me that I may become God. His name is I AM, so unless I believe that I am the man that I want to be then I remain not being that man and therefore die in my frustrations and die in my sins.423 ¶29

So here, I tell you to try it. It may seem difficult, but it will not be difficult if you dare to go out on a limb and try it. You are this being; there is only God, nothing but God. Let no one tell you he is better than you are. There is no one in this world greater than you are. If anyone dares to tell you that he is, turn your back on him and walk away. I don’t care who he is or she is or they are. There is no one your superior because you are God, and there is nothing but God in this world. God became you that you may become God.423 ¶30

So I admire the great inspired poets, I do. I take Shakespeare and I read him and isn’t he marvelous. I take Blake. I can’t follow the arguments of an Einstein, no. But here are inspired men, all of them, the Shakespeares, the Blakes, the Einsteins, and all the great painters of the world. But let no one tell you that these inspired men had some influx of Spirit that in any way whatsoever was greater than their own wonderful human Imagination, because there is nothing greater than their own human Imagination. It didn’t come from something outside of themselves; it was their own Imagination awakening. And that same Imagination is yours, because there’s only one Spirit, there aren’t two spirits. So the Spirit of man is one with the Spirit of the universe that sustains the whole vast world, that’s the one Spirit. So let no one tell for one moment there is another Spirit, there is no other Spirit.423 ¶31

So tonight when you go home…in fact before you go, start it right here, and this lovely wonderful feeling…I can’t tell you what a joy it is to sleep in the assumption, in the hearing that I am he. Well, what comes in the course of the night, what does it matter? When you slip into the deep, you come hurtling through all kind of things between that depth of consciousness from this level and then waking. And in that one short interval you can have numberless crazy little dreams between the hurtling back from unconsciousness to this level. And you give importance to the little dream based upon the surface as you’re coming through. But you don’t know what depths you have reached in what is unconscious relative to this level. So let no one frighten you, you are an immortal being who cannot die, you just cannot die.423 ¶32

If someone today has arrived at a certain point where it is simply before you did, it doesn’t matter. He or she, they’re no better because they got there first. There is no first…everyone is coming into that level. When all—and if they don’t all come in, may I tell you, it isn’t finished—when all come in the whole race is over. And what a rejoicing among all who form the one body! We are that body, “that one Spirit, that one body, that one Lord, that one God and Father of all.” There is nothing but God the Father. Everyone will prove to himself by the vision that he is God the Father, and he does not resent anyone else being God the Father. How could he?423 ¶33

When Benny came home on Saturday, I can’t tell you my thrill. Here is Benny and put us together…our pigments are just as opposite as they could be, and we are the same father of the same child. I said, “Benny, tell me, what did he look like?” because we have fun together. It’s not because we have Martinis together, that comes regardless, not because of any Martinis, and I said, “Benny, what did he look like?” He said, “Neville, he was the sweetest, blondest, blue-eyed blond, fair skinned lad, and here is my son, and he’s calling me Father, and I knew I’m his father. I so loved him, I didn’t care if the others left me, left me with all these children, they are all my children anyway. I thought I was the father of all of them, but here was my special one, here was David.”423 ¶34

That’s the same David that is my son. Now he is the father of my son, well, if he is the father of my son, are we not one? We are one. But on the surface, this strange peculiar thing where we fight each other, because he is of a very, very dark skin and I am of an olive skin, and then people think by that we’re different, and it isn’t! In the depth of our souls we are one, because God is one [...]. God is made up of the many, but God is one. When he tells me exactly how it happened the thrill that is mine to see that he and I are one and he has the same child. That was the symbol of his birth from above.423 ¶35

So, may I tell you, go home and on this level of Caesar apply this principle. Cushion yourself against the normal blows of the world. It’s only natural you want to be cushioned…you have a wife, a husband, children, friends, who cannot cushion themselves, because they don’t believe it. Well then, love them to the point where you want to cushion them regardless of whether they believe it or not. So they can’t believe it, all right, then you cushion them anyway because you love them and you want to leave them enough money to give them a cushion. You aren’t going to stop the depth of their own being from giving them blows; but you did your part in so loving them that you want to leave them a cushion. So you leave them a cushion in the world of Caesar, you leave them a little money. That’s a cushion in this world. So what would it feel like if I could leave to those I so love, say, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars? What would it feel like to depart this night just as though it meant nothing and just leave them a quarter-million, knowing that tomorrow they may lose the whole thing, it doesn’t really matter. You did your part. You cushioned them for a moment.423 ¶36

Because, the depth of their own being—which is your own depth—will simply give them certain experiences to awaken them to the point where they are part of the one and only begotten Son of God. For, all are searching for that one Son to reveal to them the cause of the phenomena, and the cause is a father. Well, the Father is oneself. Then one discovers that Lord, I am, the only cause of the things that are happening to me in this world; there is not a thing in this world that has ever happened to me that I didn’t cause it. Well, what a responsibility! You mean I caused all the nonsense? Yes I did. You mean all the stupid things that happened to me, the blows? Yes. Well then, let’s stop it, this peculiar silliness in my world and then start. And then tell everyone else.423 ¶37

Well, you can cushion those that are closest to you in the hope that they will accept it. But may I tell you, Bible must be fulfilled and the prophet has no believers in his own home. Those closest to him, they don’t believe. You must go into a foreign land to be believed. But those who really know you intimately, they don’t believe him. That’s fulfillment of scripture: “And his own brothers did not believe him.”423 ¶38

Benny said to my daughter last Saturday night, “Well, I finally have seen you. Now tell me, of all your father’s books which one do you like the best?” and she said to Benny, “I haven’t read them.” Oh, she read the little one dedicated to her, but a prophet is without honor in his own home. So I don’t expect my daughter to actually read it and think anything more because I am her father. In the intimacy of a family life, you see all the weaknesses of family life. So Benny said quite innocently, “Tell me, of all the books of your father, and he’s written twelve of them, which one do you like the best?” and she confessed, “Well, I haven’t read them.” So, a prophet has no honor in his own home.423 ¶39

But may I tell you, whether she would ever read them or not, it makes no difference to me. She still in my eyes is a darling! I loved her before she was born. I saw her before she came into the world and she told me her name, so I named her after what she told me her name was. So it would make no difference to me if she ever read one word that I have ever written. She doesn’t come to my meetings. I don’t think she has ever attended one. But time will prove to her that what I am saying to you is all true. And one day she will find herself the father of David; therefore, instead of being my daughter, she will be myself. Because if she is the father of David and I am the father of David, then she and I are one. And she is not then my daughter, for we are the father of David.423 ¶40

All I can do is simply tell it just as it happened to me, and try to encourage everyone in this world to believe it. There is no other vision. So when people say there must be another vision, another way, there is no other way. The only way to God is through his Son, and his Son David of biblical fame will reveal you as God the Father.423 ¶41

Meanwhile, in the world of Caesar, you take it here. You want to be successful…and don’t give it a long time…dare this night to assume that you are the one you want to be, so you can say, I have assumed that I am it, I am still assuming I am it, and I will continue to assume that I am he—whether male or female use that pronoun anyway, I am he—until that which I have assumed is objectively realized. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *423 ¶42

The truth of any concept is known by the feeling which it inspires. I tell you that imagining creates reality and ask you to imagine a certain state which would imply the fulfillment of your dream. Now, it doesn’t really matter what another thinks or anyone thinks in this world. It’s what you think. When you bring before your mind’s eye a scene which implies the fulfillment of your dream, do you remain looking at it until you have that feeling of certainty which it should inspire? If it brings within you that feeling of certainty, what does it matter what another thinks? What then must you do?422 ¶1

Now, let me turn to the Book of Habakkuk. The word means “to embrace.” If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a very short work. In this is said, the Lord is of too pure eyes to behold the evil, the iniquity. And the prophet is asking these strange but important questions, Why? Why are you silent when the wicked swallows up the righteous? Why are you silent? Then said he, “I will take my stand upon the watchtower and I will watch to see and to hear what he will say unto me, and what I will answer” . Then comes the word of the Lord. The word of the Lord is this, first, “Write the vision upon tablets; make it plain that he who runs may read it.” And then comes the statement, “For the vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” . There are those who try to rush everything into being and will try to force it from conception to birth. They can’t do it.422 ¶2

But I will not stand here as a judge of anyone who has had an experience that I have not spoken of here, for there are many things in scripture not recorded. As you’re told in the end of John, they’re just not recorded. And who am I to stand in judgment of anyone’s picture?422 ¶3

But I will say, knowing what I know from experience on this level, if you dare to assume that you are what you want to be, not knowing the interval of time between the assumption—this is now Habakkuk which means “the embrace” and the embrace is simply “impregnation” as we brought out last Monday night when he covered, “with his hand he covered Moses” and the word meant “copulation”—so who knows that interval of time? I know from the major things of scripture intervals of time. But between a simple thing like “I am wealthy” and its fulfillment, I do not know.422 ¶4

I know that when I assumed that I was walking up the gangplank of a ship, and everyone told me I couldn’t get out from the island of Barbados for at least, well, this was now in the month of March and I couldn’t get out until September, I walked up the gangplank and in the act of walking up I had that inner certainty. And I knew the truth of this statement that the truth of any concept, I don’t care what it is, comes when one has that feeling of inner certainty. Well, as I walked up, it seemed so natural, so real. Well, I hadn’t even broken the spell before the phone rang offering me passage on a ship and there were over 2,000 waiting to get a ship to take them north. I was singled out; I was at the bottom of the list. They gave me no reason why they singled me out with my wife and my daughter, but they did. That inner conviction! So I know that the truth of any concept…that was only a concept…so the truth of any concept is known by that feeling of a peculiar certainty. It’s just you know it and I can’t explain it other than you know that it’s true.422 ¶5

Now, you can take this same thing through all the levels of being. So I say to everyone here, when you know what you want, you really know, that’s a concept. All right, create a scene which would imply that you have it, that you are now living it, that you are now expressing it. Ask no one if you are entitled to it; and after you’ve done it, don’t ask anyone if you did it, only you know. If they should deny it, what does it matter what they say? It doesn’t really matter, it’s entirely up to you, you did it, it happened to you, and then wait to see it. For the vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it seems long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late. That’s the story.422 ¶6

Now when it comes to the overall picture of how God is awakening himself within man, let us go back to the Book of Exodus and here we are told that the time that it took the people of Israel to dwell in Egypt was 430 years . At the end of 430, on that very day, the whole host of the Lord departed from Egypt. It was a night of watching by the Lord, his night. Then we are told that Israel must now keep this night in memory…this night. It was 430 years. On that night, in one night, all departed and it was a night of watching for the Lord. Now you read it and you wonder “What is it all about?”422 ¶7

Here scripture is a mystery: “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion.” That is what we are told in scripture when Paul writes his letter to Timothy, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion” . Something mysterious, in a way, and yet the word mystery is defined as “a religious truth revealed by God that man cannot by reason alone discover.” He cannot by reason discover it; it’s revealed by God. Well now, this “great indeed is the mystery of our religion” means “the doctrine of revealed truth.” Here is a doctrine of revealed truth: 430 years.422 ¶8

We’re told in the 15th of Genesis, “You will be enslaved, your descendants, for 400 years…after that you will come out” . Then why four hundred and thirty as given in the 12th of Exodus? Here the 15th of Genesis is 400, but in Exodus when they begin to exit is 430. Paul when he speaks of it in Galatians calls it 430, but it is first stated 400 years. Well, 400 years is the symbol of the cross; it’s the 22nd letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the Tau, the cross. I wear this cross and it’s called 400 years. It doesn’t mean 400 years in that sense.422 ¶9

Then comes the first symbol. And as long as I am now in this world I am enslaved. As I’m told, “Your descendants will be enslaved in a land that is not theirs. Then, at the end, you’ll be brought out with great possessions”…at the end. But now, the next book Exodus, the 12th chapter, adds thirty years, so thirty years is added to the 400. “And Jesus when he began his ministry was about thirty years of age” . I remain in this world to play my part and I’m being enslaved…the whole world is enslaved. Then comes that moment of the embrace, of the impregnation, and it takes thirty years from that moment to the birth of Christ or the birth of the individual above after my trials and tribulations in this world. So 400 years does not mean 400 in, as I have mentioned, years; the thirty does. The 400 represents the length—you can call it, as Blake calls it, 6,000 years; he also calls it 8,500 years; call it what you will—where man is simply in this world where he is playing his part. He is playing it as he ought to play it, playing it beautifully.422 ¶10

Then comes that moment in time when he is elected, he is called, and he’s embraced. Now, stand upon your watch and watch it from this moment on, for it has its own appointed time. Benny called me today. After all, Benny was only thirty when it happened to him, so he could not have known the embrace. But there are others who are not aware of the moment of the embrace. So watch for it. In my own case, I was old enough to know it, it was 1929, and I am fully aware of that moment of the embrace. Then came 1959 when it happened. So I can say to anyone from my own experience this is how it happens. If you don’t know when, then I can’t tell you. I can’t measure the thirty years if you didn’t know when it began. But after it happens I will then actually state for you when these things will happen.422 ¶11

Now in this world of Caesar the same law holds true. It’s a reflection all the way down in the shadow world. I do not know how late or how long it takes say a little budgie to hatch out. A friend of mine is now breeding them and he called today to say he has three. Well, there were seven eggs the last time I saw them and in a week only three came out. When each one started he doesn’t know. So it’s just like this…I do not know if I now assume that I am wealthy what is the interval between my assumption that I am wealthy to the point where I actually reach that conviction. I must have the feeling of a peculiar conviction that it’s true. When I have it, that is impregnation.422 ¶12

I have a conception; the conception is the egg. Now, how true is it? How real is it? Well now, based entirely on my inner conviction that it’s done, if I can assume that I am now the man that I really want to be and know when I did it, I can time it from then on. Because if that is how it happened concerning wealth, it should always happen this way. If it’s that concerning something else, it always happens that way. So that a horse has a year, a cow nine months before it hatches out, a man has nine months, a sheep five months, a chicken three weeks. So there are intervals of time. But it comes down to that simple thing that the truth concerning any concept is known by the feeling of certainty and conviction which that certainty inspires…you know it…not a thing can disturb it.422 ¶13

Well, if I only watch it. I only know in my own case in Barbados while doing it, it happened, the phone was ringing; and at other times, it took a day, a week, a month, sometimes a year. I have known cases where it took for a huge business two years.422 ¶14

But we don’t make records, we don’t keep an account of these things to find out how these eggs hatch out. For a concept is only an egg, but it remains an egg unfertilized until I occupy it. If I occupy it and feel the certainty of it, well then, if I know how long it takes I could prophesy. In my own case, I kept a record in ’29 so I knew it happened. What would ever come of that I didn’t know, but I knew it happened then. So wait…1959 I was born from above, raised from within. I knew then that that was an interval of thirty years. Reading back into scripture I found that he was thirty years when he began his ministry; that Israel was 430 years before they came out and made their exodus, their exit from this state of slavery. The 400 was slavery, and the thirty was simply that moment; and then it took thirty years for them to actually bring about the birth…so that this meant the actual birth of Israel. Now they’re going to celebrate it in the immediate future as Passover. For Israel is called in this 12th chapter to keep this night in memory forever. They must always remember this night for this night was the night of the watching by Jehovah, called the Lord, to bring the entire host of Israel out.422 ¶15

But they come out one by one. So I do not know…so if one tells me a story and it’s not part of my experience, I can’ tell you. I only know what I know from my own experience and my experiences parallel to scripture. So I can tell Benny it happens on the 6th…it must happen on the 6th…as I now tell him it’s going to happen on the 8th of July. I’ll go all out on a limb and tell him that because I know exactly the time interval. And so, to you on any level there are intervals.422 ¶16

“Everything has its own appointed time; it ripens; it will flower. If it be long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.” It can’t be late; it will come on time. Then if you know the time interval…but we do not record these things. People have the experience and they don’t make a record of it, there’s no diary. In my case, I have a diary for these things concerning scripture, and I write them in my Bible. “It happened to me this night.” I study the scripture, I find out where the passage is, and I write in that same passage “This happened to me tonight.” Well then, when something does happen I know the interval between that event and the next event…and so I have it recorded that way.422 ¶17

But when it comes to the world of Caesar, I only know that I have had things happen while I’m in the Silence and the phone is ringing to confirm what I am doing. I have exploded myself for another and felt the thrill and I knew it had to happen, but I couldn’t tell you when. It would happen sometimes in twenty-four hours, sometimes in a week, sometimes in a month. Today something happened, a delightful thing happened. Well, it was only about two weeks ago that I exploded, and I knew. That was three weeks. Well, I’m not going to catalogue that in that sense. Because there’s something I desired for an individual and then came confirmation tonight. But I can’t tell you that that particular desire equals all desires, because that could be as different from a chicken egg as from an elephant’s egg, I don’t know. I only know when it comes to scripture that these things do have definite marks, and I have marked them.422 ¶18

And when you try to hurry them, forget it. You will not hurry them. This is God’s time and you will not delay it and you will not rush it…can’t delay it or rush it.422 ¶19

Now here came a letter from a friend of mine (she’s here tonight). She said, “I had this dream. I have this most beautiful plate and on it was a raw steak. The voice said to me, ‘Eat it’ and I ate it and enjoyed it. Then the voice said, ‘You have eaten the body of God.’” Well, that’s scripture. Read it in the 6th chapter of the Book of John, the 51st through the 56th verses: “I am the bread of life. My body, my flesh is the bread of life. Eat it.” Well, his body is the doctrine of revealed truth. She has completely eaten the body of revealed truth, she’s eaten it. Now you are told in these verses you have eternal life: “If you’ve eaten my body, you have eternal life.” So she ate the body of God. The voice said, “You’ve eaten the body of God” and that’s told you in the 6th chapter of the Book of John. So she has paralleled… her experience parallels that story. I cannot tell her tonight having eaten the body of God when she will now be called. She’s completely accepted the story of the revealed truth, which is the body of God.422 ¶20

Another one comes, and in this story she’s exhausted—I won’t go back in all the details that precede it—she’s exhausted. She spent the day in sheer, well, she worked on her husband’s books and brought all the books up to date, and it was now 1:00 AM. She’s tired, but at 1:00 AM the house isn’t clean. The chores of the day were neglected and she couldn’t go to bed unless they were all done, like the dishes, the pots and pans and all the things. Well, she’s exhausted, she has no energy left, and she starts to clean them and wash the dishes, and she’s in tears from sheer physical exhaustion. He comes and sees her in tears and pitches in to help. When she went to bed she felt, “Well, what can I do? I can’t take an individual episode; I can only say I want something exactly opposite to all these problems.” She simply imagined a scene that was extremely opposite to all these problems of the day.422 ¶21

And she actually could see in the darkness of the room…she saw the whole thing begin to unfold objectively before her mental activity is taking place. And out of the nowhere here comes this fantastic, enormous scene—mountains, trees, a huge, huge scene. And she notices that every change in her mental activity produces a change in this external scene. A tree away in the back comes forward to the right, and the mountain that was in the back comes forward, and the whole thing is adjusting to her mental activity, the whole vast world, and she did not know a thing about that. It’s adjusting as she adjusts her mental activity, it’s adjusting to it. And she came to the conclusion that my God is a God of activity, a God of action. For the whole vast thing is unfolding within her; everything that she imagines is taking place with her own being. She said, “I actually felt the whole vast world was moving in me, like beings moving up and down on parade.”422 ¶22

There is, I think it’s the 8th Zoa where Blake mentions it. I think it is, but I do know it is in the Zoa’s that he mentions that moving within you and the whole thing adjusting itself to what he is seeing on the outside. So that’s how God sees us. We are adjusting to his perfect Eden, and when we by our own mental activity produce the changes in Eden and they superimpose, there you are, you’ve done it. So the whole thing took place within her. As she’s looking out, the whole thing’s unfolding within her.422 ¶23

I ask you to try it. Take the most fantastic thing in this world. If I tell you tonight that, well, I don’t know whether you have had it or not, don’t for one moment just because I do not know stop there. If you have that inner conviction…for the truth of any concept is known by the feeling of certainty which that conviction inspires. So if it doesn’t inspire that conviction, well then, you haven’t had it. If, on the other hand, it inspires that conviction, don’t ask me to confirm it, because should I say I don’t think so, what would it matter? It would be nothing to you if I am not with you on it. So do not be disillusioned if I am not with you because it has not been my experience. So you take it from there and then go forward and trust this inner feeling…because on this level it works. Well, if it works on this level, it will work in the depths of your own being.422 ¶24

If I could climb a gangplank that is not visible and while I’m climbing it feeling that I’m actually doing it and watching all the things, and then put my hand on the rail, and look with nostalgia towards the island that I’m leaving and the family that I’m leaving behind. And yet it’s a peculiar feeling, I’m leaving them and I’m sad, and yet I’m happy in the going. I want to get back to my apartment in New York City and therefore I’ve got to leave them. So there’s a peculiar bittersweet in this feeling. I feel it so naturally. And suddenly the phone is ringing and the call is coming, I’m taking the next boat to get back just in time.422 ¶25

So here, I know from experience there is an actual time interval. That happened just like this. But I can tell you how to duplicate it. I only know what I did: I arrived at the point of the feeling of a peculiar certainty. And that certainty was inspired, it was a peculiar inspiration, and it worked that way. I’ve had it not only for myself but others time and time and time again.422 ¶26

So you have a concept. The concept, is it true? Well, you can tell the truth of the concept by this technique: You can always tell the truth of a concept by that feeling of certainty which it inspires. So when I imagine that I am seeing the world as I would see it were it as I desire it to be, so that I’m inspired it’s real, it’s true, well then, it doesn’t really matter what another thinks. What does it matter what he thinks or they think? I tell you it will work that way, it will not fail you.422 ¶27

So in this series, on the series of which I’m trying constantly to tell you which is the real thing. For if you just tonight owned the world…you saw the headlines and heard the headlines and this constant confusion tonight about gold, so what. But if tonight you wanted, I don’t care what it is, and the concept…you can contemplate it and so contemplate it that it seems to be real, so natural that it awakens within you that feeling of certainty it’s real, well, no power in this world can stop it. It can’t stop it. If you look out for confirmation from others then you’re not doing it. Don’t ask anyone if what you did is right or wrong. Did you do it…that’s all. I tell you this is true.422 ¶28

When it comes now to the story of scripture, I would go all out in defending my own personal observation of what happened to me. And so when I said to Benny “the 6th” and he wrote me his letter, brought it up last night—I was in bed, but he stuck it in the door. This morning when I went out to get my morning paper here is Benny’s letter, and he confirmed it in his letter.422 ¶29

Now let me tell you his letter, he said, “I was invited by a couple, man and wife, they are Negroes, they invited me to a party. I joined them and we went off towards the party. On the way, they said, ‘Let us stop home’ meaning their home, and so we stopped at their home. There was a little party of Caucasians in their teens having fun in their home, all Caucasians. The two who invited me were Negroes. They left the room, the living room, where the party was taking place. I’m enjoying the kids…they’re all young people having fun. They quickly return with their hats and their coats in there hands and announce to me in a very authoritative and indifferent manner, ‘You stay and take care and mind the children.’ Well, it struck me funnily that they would do that to me, invite me to a party…they are going on now to the party and I am left to take care of the children. The children were very sweet and lovely, but I wondered, I don’t have to stay here. Out of the nowhere comes this blond, blue-eyed, fair skinned lad among these Caucasians, and I know he’s David. David looks me in the eye and David said to me, ‘I know that our Father will never leave us.’ I knew here is my son, this is my David, my son, and he knew I am his father. But I also felt I was a part of all of them. I felt that love for all of them. I was the father of David, but I also was the father of all of them.”422 ¶30

Now this was on Wednesday of last week. On Friday, he said, “I was telling some friends of mine how I met, in this wonderful experience of vision, David of biblical fame and David called me Father; and I knew he was my son and I knew I was his Father. Here I’m telling the story…and all of a sudden I am waking and I’m on my bed. It was a dream.” The doubling of a dream is the confirmation as told us in the 41st of Genesis. Here, he thought he was fully awake talking to these friends of his, that David of the Bible is his son and he’s telling them and calling him David, David, David. And suddenly he begins to awake and realizes it was a dream.422 ¶31

So here is the story. I tell you, you cannot violate it. It’s right in scripture as he is described in the 16th chapter of 1st Samuel, and you will not change his description no matter who you are. He is described there. The Christ child is not described; that Christ child could be anything. It could be black, pink, white, yellow, it could be anything. But David is described. Jesus is not described in scripture. There is no description of him in scripture, none. But I’ll tell you who he is if you read Daniel and Revelation, that is the closest description to the Ancient of Days; and when you see David, he is simply the youth of the Ancient One. And you…what David sees is the Ancient One. Benny, who to us wears a very dark skin, in the eyes of his son David was that Ancient One, which, may I tell you, is fair of skin, blond and blue-eyed.422 ¶32

And that’s Benny. He is wearing a mask, as we are all wearing masks. We’re all wearing masks. And Benny in the eyes of his son David was that Ancient of Days…that’s the only one that David could see. And he’s fair as they come and Benny is as dark as they come. Here, Benny in the eyes of his son is that one, the Ancient of Days, the risen Lord, that’s Benny.422 ¶33

Now I’m telling him, I’m going out on a limb, the 8th of July…that’s when you’ll be split in two from top to bottom. And you’ll have it just as you had it. He said to me, “You know, I despaired when you told me that. I was a little bit nervous that you would go out on a limb publicly and state such a statement.” And here out of the nowhere it happened, because the vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, wait, it is sure and it will not be late.422 ¶34

Now here in Ezekiel…Ezekiel opens up the book, “In the thirtieth year…the heavens opened, and I saw visions of God” . “And as I looked, behold, a stormy wind” . That’s how it opens. It gives you a month and a day meaning nothing. He’s giving you the year: “In the thirtieth year,” is how the whole book begins. In the thirtieth year, he is telling you, “the heavens opened and I saw visions of God…and as I looked, behold, a stormy wind.” That’s exactly what happens. You can’t describe this unearthly wind that comes in the thirtieth year, and in that thirtieth year you are born from above.422 ¶35

So we are told in scripture that we are born through what?—the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead . Well, Jesus Christ is the pattern man in every man. You couldn’t live were it not that Jesus Christ was in you. “Unless I die thou canst not live”—his actual death in the most literal sense took place that you may live, I may live. So God died, but really in the true sense of the word, his death is my life.422 ¶36

Now, he has to rise. As he rises, he rises only when he impregnates himself, because the one sent and the sender are one. Now he so loves the one that he sent, he impregnates him in me. He embraces me, and as he embraces me then count thirty years and my mission will start thirty years later. So in thirty years after he impregnates me, that’s the gestation period of God, after my 400, which is not 400, but thousands of years of wandering in the wilderness, this world. Tonight, what confusion in the world! What horrible confusion when they’re threatening the whole vast collapse of the Western economy! That’s confusion. That’s a horrible concept. But in spite of it, the individual when he’s called and embraced, what does it matter what he has to go through from that moment to the time when he’s awake, when he’s born? So he’s born into an entirely different age; he’s taken out of one age into a new age.422 ¶37

But you who come here and you know this law, it doesn’t really matter what the headlines said tonight. You know the principle and the principle is imagining creates reality. And you’ll take a concept…and don’t try to feel that you are better than someone else…you’re the creative power. Forget what’s happened to you or what they’re talking about. Well then, can you stand upon your watch and watch to see what he will say and how I will answer him? Well, that’s the world. Read it in the 2nd chapter of Habakkuk.422 ¶38

So I will stand upon my watch and assume that I am the man that I want to be. Now let’s see if I’m actually seeing what I ought to see if my assumption is real. I should see exactly what should reflect this assumption. Now, do I see it to the point of feeling that certainty that inspires me so that I know it’s true? If I can reach that point of satisfaction then it’s true. Let the whole vast world collapse and that will come true. No power in the world can stop it. Gold or silver or anything else goes through the window…it doesn’t really matter.422 ¶39

So I say to anyone, if you have visions that I have not had…and you’re told in the 21st chapter of John, if all things were told, the world would not contain the books. Therefore do not think because I have not had your experience that it is not true. And do not try to force me into accepting the fact that what you tell me is what you tell me it is. I’d say, all right, do you have the inner conviction? Well then, go your way, it is right.422 ¶40

I’m only following scripture. My pattern has been a complete scriptural pattern, from the embrace, the birth, the resurrection, the empty tomb, the three who witnessed the birth; everything of scripture I followed faithfully. There’s no deviation in my pattern. But I’m not saying because it has happened this way to me that it is the only way. So let everyone have their experience.422 ¶41

But follow along this line when it comes to the picture that you can be the man that you want to be, I know that you can. But you don’t do it by simply wishing. Can you bring about that inner conviction? You can. Stand still, look at the world mentally and see it reflect you as it would have to see you were you now what you want to be. Then seeing it, remain in that state until there is that conviction that inspires you to explode and you feel thrilled it’s all done. Well then, do nothing. What do you do after pregnancy? You do nothing. You simply wait, for it all has its own appointed hour. So I can’t tell you what to do to help…wait. And if you actually know that you conceived at that moment and the egg is a fertile egg, well then, wait. In a way that we do not understand, when you least expect it, that projects itself in the world and you enjoy, whether it be health, wealth, position, anything in this world. That’s how it works.422 ¶42

So you take what I’ve told you this night and treat it seriously. It will not fail you! But you are the operant power; it doesn’t operate itself. So if I have appeared to treat lightly, and I didn’t intend that, any vision or dream, then forgive me…I did not intend that. I only know that the story of scripture is true from beginning to end. And in my own case it has followed scripture so literally. But I would not go out and say that because it’s not in scripture…scripture tells us that not everything that happened in the life of Jesus Christ, which is the pattern man, is recorded. For, if all were recorded, the world would not be big enough to hold all the books, as we’re told in the 21st chapter of John. But do not try to force me to admit something that I cannot. Those who have had it, I ask you to believe it. It will happen this way.422 ¶43

Now to the one who had this experience the other night, I can tell her—and she wrote me a letter, a lovely letter which I got today, thank you—I know your reaction of impatience to bring it to birth right away, but you can’t bring it to birth right away. But what is thirty years in this fabulous eternity? It seems short, really. It’s so short to wait the simple little interval of time. When you’re awake, mind you, and moving forward, you do not lose your memory. Should you depart tonight you’d find yourself a young lady, twenty, and what is thirty years, that’s at the age of fifty, to find yourself bringing into this world the Christ child rising from within yourself? Then a few, what, three and a half years, the completed pattern, and then you enter a new age which is the world of eternity. You depart from death and enter life; you move from darkness to light. But your reaction was natural, may I tell you, perfectly natural.422 ¶44

And I told my friend who called me up because she was terribly concerned after your reaction and reminded me of this story that I had in New York City. This young girl comes rushing into the subway. Of course, in New York City as you know, no one gets up for anything—it’s your seat and you open up your paper without concern for anyone else. And she comes rushing into the subway and she says, “Would you please let a pregnant lady have a seat?” A gentleman jumps right up and he’s very concerned and he wonders, well now, when is this lady expecting? She says, “I do not know. I’ve just had the impression.” She didn’t know. I’ll tell this lady, she knows now it’s thirty years…thirty years. But what’s thirty years for such a joy? You’ve been selected, you’ve been chosen and you’re one of the elect.422 ¶45

Now let us go into the Silence.422 ¶46

I tell you that imagination creates reality and I ask you to imagine a state, any state, which would imply the fulfillment of your desire. It doesn’t really matter what anyone else thinks; it’s what you think that matters to you! If you create a scene which implies the fulfillment of your desire and dwell in it until you have an inner conviction that it is real, what does it matter what another thinks?421 ¶1

In the Book of Habakkuk (which means “to embrace”) the prophet speaks to the Lord as: “Thou who art of purer eyes than to behold evil.” Then he asks the question: “Why are you silent when the wicked swallows up the righteous? I will take my stand upon the watchtower, to see and hear what people say to me and what I will answer.” Now the Lord speaks, saying: “Write the vision plain upon the tablets so that he who runs may read it. For the vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens and it will flower. If it be long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.”421 ¶2

There are those who try to rush everything into being. They try to force birth from conception, but it cannot be done.421 ¶3

There are many experiences not recorded in scripture, and I am not here to stand in judgment of anyone as to whether they have experienced scripture or not. But I do know from experience that on this level, if you dare to assume you are what you want to be, your inner conviction, your feeling of certainty will bring it to pass. When you embrace the desired state, you have assumed its impregnation, and its fulfillment has its own appointed hour. It will ripen and flower. If the state is slow in objectifying itself, wait, for it is sure and will not be late.421 ¶4

I know that when I was told I could not get out of the island of Barbados for at least six months and I desired to leave immediately, I assumed I was walking up the gangplank of the ship. I felt the dampness of the rail and tasted the salt air of the sea with the feeling of certainty that I was leaving for America. I made that gangplank so real that I hadn’t even broken the spell before the phone rang and I was offered passage for the following week. Although I had been told that I was on the bottom of a list of over two thousand names, my family and I were singled out to board that ship.421 ¶5

So I know that the truth of any concept is known by the feeling of a certainty, a peculiar knowingness that it is true. You can take this same concept into all levels of your being, for any desire is a concept. You can move into any desire and express it. Ask no one if you are entitled to it or if you did it – only you know what you did. It happened to you. Now wait for the vision (the desire’s fulfillment) for it has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. If it seems long, then wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.421 ¶6

Returning to the overall picture of God’s rising in Man, let us go back to the Book of Exodus, where we are told: “The time that the people of Israel dwelt in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. And at the end of four hundred and thirty years, on that very day all the hosts of the Lord departed from Egypt. It was a night of watching by the Lord.” Then Moses is told to keep this night in memory. Scripture teaches a mystery. “Great indeed is the mystery of our religion.” The word “mystery” is defined as “a religious truth revealed by God that man cannot by reason alone discover.” Here is a doctrine of revealed truth.421 ¶7

We are told in the 15th chapter of Genesis that “You and your descendants will be enslaved for four hundred years.” Now, the number four hundred is the twenty-second letter of the Hebrew alphabet whose symbol is the cross. Your body (of beliefs) is the cross referred to as four hundred, and as long as you wear it you are enslaved in a land that is not yours. But in the end you will be brought out with great possessions!421 ¶8

In the 12th chapter of Exodus, thirty years has been added to the four hundred, and in the New Testament it is said that Jesus began his ministry when he was about thirty years of age. In this world you are enslaved, and here you remain playing your part until you are embraced, impregnated, and thirty years later Christ is born in you and your trials and tribulations are over!421 ¶9

So four hundred does not mean years, but thirty does. Four hundred records the length which Blake calls 6,000 or 8,500 years. Call it what you will, it is the period of time man plays his part in this world. Then comes the moment when, as Man, you are selected, called and embraced, and told to stand upon your watch; for the sign has its own appointed time to ripen and to flower, and that time is thirty years!421 ¶10

My friend, Benny, does not remember the embrace, but I remember it well. It was in 1929. I was fully aware of the embrace, just as I was fully aware of its fulfillment in 1959, so I can tell anyone from my own experience how it happens, but I can’t tell you when if you cannot remember the embrace. Only after impregnation can I prophesy as to what, and when these things will come into being.421 ¶11

But I do know that God’s law reflects all the way down to this world of Caesar. I do not know how long it takes for each egg to hatch in a nest, but I do know each one will hatch in its own time. And so it is with an assumption. If I desire to be wealthy, I may not know how long it will take me to reach the conviction that I possess great wealth, but when I feel wealth is mine I have conceived. Conception is my end. The length of time between my desire and its conception depends entirely upon my inner conviction that it is done. A horse takes twelve months, a cow nine months, a chicken twenty-one days, so there are intervals of time; but it comes down to the simple fact that the truth concerning every concept is known by the feeling of its certainty. When you know it, not a thing can disturb your knowingness!421 ¶12

In my own case, as I felt the gangplank under my feet and the salt mist on the rail of the ship in Barbados, the phone rang and passage was mine. There have been other times when it has taken longer. Unfortunately we do not keep an account to see how long it takes to come about after we have done it. But a concept is an egg and remains so until occupied. Occupy your desire! Feel its certainty and you can prophesy its fulfillment.421 ¶13

Although I did not know what would become of it, I kept a record of what happened to me in 1929, so when I was born from above and raised from within myself in 1959, I looked back to discover that it was thirty years. I discovered that Jesus began his ministry when he was thirty years of age, and that Israel made their exodus thirty years after the four hundred recorded in Genesis. We are going to celebrate this exodus in the immediate future as the Passover, “a day to keep in memory forever.” For “this is a night of watching by the Lord. On this day the Lord will bring the entire host of Israel out of the land of Egypt” and they will come out one by one.421 ¶14

So if someone tells me a story that is not part of my experience, I cannot confirm it or deny it; I only know that my experiences parallel scripture. But I say to you: everything has its own appointed time. It ripens and will flower. If fulfillment seems long, wait, for it is sure and will not be late.421 ¶15

Everything comes on time, but we do not know the time interval because we do not record the conception. In my case, I keep a diary. I check scripture to find out where the passage is that I have experienced and record the date beside it. Now I know the length of time it takes to fulfill scripture. I also know that when it comes to the world of Caesar, I have received confirmation while in the silence. I have exploded right into the now and, having felt the thrill I knew it had to happen. But I did not know when. It could be a day, a week, or a month. Three weeks ago I heard good news for a friend, and today I received confirmation that it was completed.421 ¶16

I will not catalog that event to say that particular desire equals all desires, because a desire can be as different as a chicken’s egg is from the egg of an elephant. I do know, however, that events of scripture do have definite time periods. Scripture fulfills itself in God’s time, and you cannot delay it or hasten its coming.421 ¶17

A friend wrote me this week, saying: “I found myself sitting at a table looking at a beautiful plate containing a raw steak, when I heard the words, ‘Eat it’. Obeying the command I then heard voice say, ‘You have eaten the body of God.’”421 ¶18

This lady has fulfilled the 51st to 56th verses of the 6th chapter of the Book of John: “My flesh is the bread of life. He who eats thereof has eternal life.” She has completely eaten the body of revealed truth and eternal life is now hers. I cannot tell her when she will be called, but she has accepted the revealed truth, which is the body of God.421 ¶19

Another letter came, telling of how this lady spent the day working on her husband’s books. She was so very tired that as she fell asleep, she said: “Father, I cannot take every aspect of the day and change it, but I can imagine that it never happened.” So she began to create a scene which would imply that all the problems of the day were resolved, when out of the nowhere she saw an enormous scene of mountains clothed with magnificent trees. As she watched, she discovered that her mental activity caused the trees to move, and that the world pictured on the outside adjusted itself to be in harmony with her thoughts. Then she said: “I came to the conclusion that my God is a God of action, for I saw everything I was imagining taking place now. I feel as though the world is moving in me like being on parade.”421 ¶20

That’s how God sees Man. We are forever adjusting to his perfect being. He is looking out, yet everything is taking place within.421 ¶21

Tonight I ask you to take the most fantastic thing in this world and find an inner conviction within yourself that it is yours, for the truth of any concept is known by the feeling of certainty which that conviction inspires. Once you have that inner feeling of certainty, don’t ask me to confirm it. What would it matter what I think? Do not be disillusioned if your experience has not been mine. Believe in yourself and trust your inner feeling. Test yourself and if it works on this level it will work in the depths of your being.421 ¶22

If, in my imagination I climb a gangplank, and as I look with nostalgia at the little island of Barbados and the phone rings, offering me the passage I desire, am I not influencing my outer world? Was the phone call not reflecting my mental activity? I arrived at the point of feeling a peculiar certainty, and that certainty was its inspiration. You can always tell the truth of any concept by the feeling of certainty which it inspires.421 ¶23

When you imagine seeing the world as you desire it to be and are inspired as to its truth, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I don’t care what it is; when you know what you want, you can make your desire so real, so natural that you will reach a feeling of certainty which no power in the world can stop. When that feeling is yours, drop it. Don’t ask anyone if what you did was right or wrong; you did it and that’s all that is necessary.421 ¶24

Now let me share the letter I received from Benny. He said: “Friends of mine (Negroes), a man and his wife, invited me to a party. On the way we stopped at their home, where a group of Caucasians in their teens were having a party. Suddenly my friends appeared in the doorway, coat and hat in hand, and said, ‘You stay and mind the children.’ I was shocked, but turned to look at the boys and girls, when out of the nowhere a blond, blue-eyed, fair skinned lad came toward me, and as I looked at him I knew he was David. He looked me in the eye and said, ‘I know that our Father will never leave us.’ At that moment I knew my son David, yet I also knew I fathered them all. This was on Wednesday. The following Friday as I told this experience to my friends, I awoke to discover that I had been dreaming, for I awoke on my bed.”421 ¶25

Here is the doubling of a dream, the confirmation as told us in the 41st chapter of Genesis.421 ¶26

Now, you cannot violate the story of scripture. David is described in the 16th chapter of 1 Samuel, and you will not change this description no matter who you are. The Christ child is not described, for he can be black, pink, white, or yellow. There is no description of Jesus either, but I will tell you who he is. He is the Ancient of Days as described in the Books of Daniel and Revelation. When you see David, he is the youth of the ancient one he observes.421 ¶27

Benny is now wearing a very dark skin, but in the eyes of his fair skinned, blond and blue-eyed son David, Benny is the Ancient of Days, the Holy One of Israel. The one we recognize and call Benny now knows himself to be the Risen Lord.421 ¶28

Now I will tell him that on the 8th day of July he will be split in two from top to bottom. I know, for the vision has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower. If it seems long, wait, for it is sure and will not be late.421 ¶29

Now the Book of Ezekiel begins: “In the thirtieth year the heavens opened and I saw visions of God.” Ezekiel gives you a day and a month, meaning nothing. The important thing is that in the 30th year the heavens opened and visions of God were his. “And as I looked, behold, a stormy wind.” That’s exactly what happens. An unearthly wind comes in that thirtieth year, and you are born from above, born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.421 ¶30

Jesus Christ is God’s pattern of salvation buried in you. His death in the most literal sense is your life, and his resurrection is possible only after he impregnates himself. God the sender and Man the sent are one. Falling in love with the one he sent, God impregnates him. He plants his seed, which takes thirty years to germinate and is his mission to start.421 ¶31

This experience comes to Man after he has borne his cross in this wilderness world for thousands of years. In spite of the horrible things that take place in the world, when the individual is called and embraced, what does it matter what he has to go through before he awakens? In a short period of only 30 years he will be born into an entirely different age, for during that time he is taken out of this age and placed in that age, the age of the kingdom of heaven.421 ¶32

Now, because you know this concept, don’t feel that you are better than someone else. You are creative power. Stand upon your tower and watch to see what God will say and how you will answer. Do this by assuming you are the person you want to be and seeing what you would see if your assumption was real. Remain there until you feel its certainty, until you reach the point of satisfaction, until you are convinced of its truth; and although the world may collapse around you, you will become that which you have assumed you are.421 ¶33

In the 21st chapter of the Book of John it is said that if all things were told concerning Jesus Christ, the world itself could not contain the books; so do not think that because I have not had your experience, that it is not true – but do not try to force me into accepting it. Believe what you choose and go your way this night.421 ¶34

My pattern has followed scripture completely, from the embrace to the descent of the dove, but I am not saying it is the only way.421 ¶35

I am saying, however, that you can be the man (or woman) you want to be, but not by simply wishing. You must make the effort to look at the world mentally and see it reflect your fulfilled desire. And when it does you must remain in that state until you reach the inner conviction that what you are seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing is true. Clothe yourself in the feeling of its reality – and explode!421 ¶36

Do that and you are pregnant. And what do you do after pregnancy? Nothing! You simply wait for its birth to appear in its own appointed hour. And it will! When you least expect it your desire will objectify itself in the world for you to enjoy, whether it be health, wealth, or fame. That’s how God’s law works.421 ¶37

Now, to the one who had this experience the other night, I know you are anxious to give it birth right away, but what is thirty years in this fabulous eternity? You were awake when it happened, and you will never lose its memory. Should you depart tonight to find yourself a young lady of twenty, you would only be fifty when you brought forth the Christ child. Then you would see the complete pattern fulfill itself in three and a half years and enter a new age, which is the world of eternity.421 ¶38

My dear, you are destined to know departure from this world of death and entrance into the world of eternal life as you move from darkness into light.421 ¶39

But your reaction was natural. It reminded me of a story I heard in New York City. This young girl came rushing into the subway, and standing in front of a gentleman she said: “Would you please let a pregnant lady have your seat?” Jumping up, terribly disturbed, the gentleman said: “When is the baby expected?” And she replied: “I don’t know, it just happened.”421 ¶40

But this lady knows it will be thirty years, but what is thirty years when you have been called, you have been selected, you have been chosen. You are one of the elect!421 ¶41

Now let us go into the silence.421 ¶42