When you hear the word “gospel” you usually think in terms of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but tonight I want to introduce you to the gospel as found in the letters of Paul. Listen to these words carefully: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel, not that there is another gospel, but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or any who hear him, should preach a gospel that is contradictory to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.” Then he repeats this saying: “I have said before, so now I say again. If anyone teaches a gospel that is contrary to the gospel we preach, let him be accursed.”404 ¶1

You will notice that Paul includes himself in that statement, because it is possible under the threat of death or pain or torture for man to confess that he was wrong. (The churches made Galileo confess, under the threat of Cain, that the earth was stationary and not moving around the sun, even though today we know Galileo was right.)404 ¶2

The churches still teach a Christ that never existed, but Paul taught what he had received through revelation, saying: “Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. I will have you know that this gospel, which I preach, is not man’s gospel. I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”404 ¶3

Then he tells us who Jesus Christ is, saying: “From now on I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” Now, the word “Christ” and “Messiah” are the same in scripture. Confessing “I am a child of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin,” Paul was a master in the law of Israel. Looking for some physical descendant of Jehovah to come as a messiah and destroy the enemies of Israel, the mystery unfolded in him, and he said: “I want you to know how greatly I strive for you that you will have an assured understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” To Paul, the wisdom and power and knowledge of God which suddenly erupted in him was Christ, for when the visions came he understood who the messiah really was.404 ¶4

Paul realized that God, called “the Word”, was buried in man and had three stages to its history: its planting, its death, and its resurrection. First the Word is sown (or imparted). Entering the world of death, it is forgotten in the struggle for food and clothing, rent and taxes. Then the Word is heard with understanding, quickened, and as it erupts all the promises of God to Abraham unfold from within the individual. When it erupts in you, you will no longer search for a physical Christ, for you will know Christ as the wisdom and power of God in you! Like Paul, you will then say: “I no longer regard anyone from the human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view I regard him thus no longer.” Knowing that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, you discover who can!404 ¶5

Paul, speaking to the Thessalonians, said: “When you received the Word of God that we preach to you, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it really is, the Word of God that works in you, the believers.” In this statement Paul is speaking to those who hear God’s eternal story and believe it. They are the ones who, when the world calls their dear ones dead, persist in believing they are not dead but alive, and that God will fulfill his promise in them. They believe, not in the words of men, but in the Word of God buried within.404 ¶6

Now, here is a story I received last Friday night. This will illustrate how you will know when the Word is quickened in you. This lady found herself, in dream, in a huge crowd, seated on a grassy hillside. A man was standing on a small, raised platform speaking into a microphone. In his hands he held an open Bible. Then a gentleman stood up and said: “I challenge anyone to disprove my knowledge of the Bible.” (This lady, in keeping with the character that she really is - and she certainly is not lukewarm in anything that she does) rose, and quoting the 22nd chapter of the Book of Matthew, the 42nd, 43rd, and 45th verses (she omitted the 44th verse which is a quote from the 110th Psalm) said: “Question, please! What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? They answered, ‘The son of David.’ Then he said to them, ‘Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?’” Completing the quote, she continued to explain to the crowd the relationship between Christ and David, saying: “Christ is the Father and David the Son in fulfillment of scripture.” Then in the dead silence that followed the statement, she awoke.404 ¶7

The Word has become so quickened in her that it is only a matter of moments before it will erupt and the story of Jesus Christ will be her story. No individual called Jesus Christ was ever crucified on a wooden cross. When Paul said: “I have been crucified with Christ” he was speaking of the Cosmic Christ who is crucified on humanity that humanity may become a living soul. It’s the wisdom of God and the power of God that is crucified, died, and is buried in you. And it is that same power and wisdom which awakens to reveal you as God’s power and wisdom. In the state of Paul you, too, will say: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” You may think a person is speaking but it is God himself, who so loved you he gave you his power and wisdom called Christ, that in time you would awaken to the realization that you are God.404 ¶8

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he asks this question: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”404 ¶9

Now I am going to ask you: Are you going to think of a physical man called Jesus Christ? An external savior who will come through the loins of the descendants of David? Or are you going to think of the Christ-Spirit that is buried in you when I speak of the Christ? Will you accept the idea that the Spirit of Christ is crucified on you and buried in you? Will rise in you as you? Or are you going to continue to see a physical being called Christ as God’s power and wisdom?404 ¶10

Paul confesses: “I did not receive this from men, nor was I taught it by man. It came through a revelation of Jesus Christ, which is God in the act of self-revelation!” Then he continues, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I did not confer with flesh and blood.” How could you ask another to explain a revelation, which came from within you? They could tell you all kinds of things about the outside, but they cannot tell you a thing about this great mystery until it has unfolded in them.404 ¶11

In the 2nd chapter of Colossians Paul says: “I want you to have the assured understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery of Christ.” He tells you Christ is a mystery, as all the treasures of the wisdom and the knowledge of God are hid in him. Christ was never a single little man who walked the earth. The Christ-Spirit, God’s very own power and wisdom, is crucified and buried in you, and one day that power will rise in you and you will know that you are He.404 ¶12

“Let any one who teaches another gospel be accursed.” Well, the whole vast world teaches another gospel. They tell you that a little man was physically born from the womb of a woman who was spiritually impregnated, and that’s not the story at all! Everyone will give birth to Christ! This will be a sign unto you when you hold that babe in your own arms, for at that moment you will be holding the sign of your birth into life itself!404 ¶13

Let me share with you a vision of George Russell (known to us all as AE) from his book, The Candle of Vision, which he begins by quoting from Proverbs and Job, saying: “The Spirit of man is that candle of the Lord and when his candle shines upon my head, by its light I walk through darkness.” His vision begins: “Where I saw this I will not say. There was a hall vaster than any cathedral, with pillars that seemed built out of living and trembling opal. High between the pillars were thrones upon which sat Divine Kings, all fire-crested. One wore the crest of the serpent, another plumed with feathers of flame. At the end of the hall sat one greater than the rest who radiated light as the sun. Below on the floor lay a dark figure, and two of the Divine Kings made motions with their hands above it over head and body. Where their hands waved, sparkles of fire like flashing jewels broke out. Then out of this body rose a being as tall, as glorious and majestic as those seated on the thrones. As he woke to the hall and became aware of his brothers, he lifted up his hands in greeting, and the tall golden figures leaped up from their thrones, raised their hands in greeting, and quickly faded into the light where the great one sat.”404 ¶14

AE had eavesdropped upon a god who was awakening from his passage through darkness into light. Now so entranced in this world, you have forgotten that vast hall where you laid yourself down to dream this world into being; but one day you too will awaken, and your brothers, all vested kings, will be there to greet you. One by one everyone will awaken in that same manner to be incorporated into that single body which was at the end, waiting for the return of all.404 ¶15

You and I agreed to dream in concert and this world is our dream. It is a world of darkness, a world that is a nightmare, but in the end you too will return enriched by the dream. You will awaken to find yourself glorified by it, glorious and majestic because of your experience in this world of darkness, this world of death.404 ¶16

Now, another lady gave me a letter on Friday, saying: “I have been having the strangest thing happening to me. I have been having double vision. While in my living room doing the normal housewife chores I see a roadway there, bathed in living light, with a light of greater intensity at its end. All day long the two worlds converged to remain with me, yet one world did not seem to disturb the other. The first night of the double vision, as I lay down to sleep I saw a tall being robed in white. He was so magnificent I felt that I must be at his feet, yet I knew I was on my bed. Standing erect with his arms raised above his head, I see he is holding a lamp which illuminates everything round about him. Then I am looking through his eyes and seeing my husband sleeping on the bed. Suddenly I realized that I am the being having the experience and the one who is conveying it.” Then she asked this question: “Could I be this glorious being I saw?”404 ¶17

May I say to her: You are infinitely greater than you think you are, for you are the being looking through the eye and the one stretched out on the bed called your husband, as you are the invisible cause of all! You are awake, really home, and it’s only a matter of moments before you will be completely awake from this dream of life. Oh, you will have many fantastic experiences, which may frighten your friends and disturb relatives, but you cannot help it, for you have arrived.404 ¶18

Now, Paul wrote his Gospel to the Galatians before 52 AD. All of his letters were written before the four gospels came into existence. Mark, the earliest gospel, was written in the year 70 A.D. and John, the last, was written in 90 A.D. Read the Book of John and you will see that it has drawn heavily on the story of Paul. All of the promises of God awoke in Paul. Telling the story as it unfolded in him, he said: “Anyone who tells another gospel, let him be accursed.” Any other gospel destroys the truth and keeps men as slaves. Even today, after 2,000 years, men are still led astray by being taught the historicity of Christ, for it is a mystery.404 ¶19

When Paul read the Old Testament without its revelation, he believed that Abraham was a being of flesh and blood. In the Book of Galatians he tells the story of Abraham and his two wives: Hagar, who bears children into slavery, and Sarah, who bears children into freedom. Then he said: “This is an allegory.” Now, an allegory is a story that is told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover its fictitious character and extract its meaning. If the story of Abraham as stated in the 4th chapter of Galatians is an allegory, and the New Testament begins: “This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” - is the story of Jesus Christ not an allegory, written for us to learn its message? This doesn’t mean the story is a lie, but because man cannot grasp the mystery of God, it is told in the form of a tale. Unfortunately, man has accepted the story instead of its message. The story of Jesus is an allegory, yet it is truer than anything known to man, for the wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God, who wrote the story.404 ¶20

In 1929 at the age of twenty-four, I stood in the presence of the Risen Lord, and when he asked me a simple question, I answered in the words of Paul: “Faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” When I came back to this world I must confess I wondered why I used the words of Paul rather than one of the evangelists. I am not saying that which is recorded in the four gospels is not true. It is all true, but the experiences recorded there were built from this original gospel, and any teaching contrary to it is a lie.404 ¶21

There is no historical Jesus Christ. There never was one and there never will be. Paul was looking for the Messiah to come from the outside, and when he came from within, Paul was honest enough to record what happened to him, and for that he was condemned by the Sanhedrin, his own earthly brothers. They imprisoned him, chained him, and wanted his death because he dared to bring a translation of the prophecies of God that differed from what they expected. They wanted an external Messiah, but Christ does not come that way. He awakens from within, for it is He who is playing all the parts.404 ¶22

So the Word, having been received by man, awakens to discover himself! It has been him all along, and when he returns from his passage through darkness into the heavenly guild, all of his kingly brothers will be waiting for him. Arriving there, he will contribute to the wisdom and the power and the glory of God, for everyone returns with his gift!404 ¶23

Read Paul’s thirteen letters carefully and you will realize that the system of the Christian faith was fully matured before Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John came into existence. Paul calls his system the Gospel of God, the message of salvation. Having fulfilled scripture, I know that everything said there is non-historical and yet true.404 ¶24

One story is told of the feeding of the five thousand. Calling himself the bread of life that came down from heaven and referred to as the great fish, he tells us all that we must eat his body and drink his blood, so in this story the five thousand are spiritually fed. This is my experience of that story.404 ¶25

In the year 1946 I was sailing through the Caribbean toward Mobile, Alabama, when suddenly I was lifted up on high in one spiral motion. As I rose, a heavenly chorus began to sing over and over again: “Neville is Risen” and I felt as though I had been encased in a conflict with death and I was its victor. Clothed in a body of fire, I was a fiery being dwelling in a body of air. Before my eyes I could see an infinite seat of human imperfection and I knew they were waiting for me. Knowing that if I be lifted up to a state of perfection, I lift all men unto me, I glide by them completely undisturbed and unconcerned. And as I do, each and every person was made perfect, as missing members of their bodies appeared out of the nowhere and remolded themselves into the bodies. All this time the heavenly chorus accompanied me, singing: “Neville is Risen.” When everyone was made perfect the chorus exulted: “It is finished,” and then - for the first time since I left eternity - I knew the cramped stage of being here, for at that moment I felt myself come down and condense once more into the straightjacket of this body on the bunk of a freighter coming into Mobile, Alabama.404 ¶26

In that vivid experience I fed the thousands - not a little bread, but myself. Having conquered death, I was perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect, and I fed them what they wanted. The one who wanted the eye got it, he who wanted that arm got the arm. Whatever they wanted they got in its fullness, and when everyone was made perfect the chorus exulted: “It is finished,” and I was crystallized into this little thing called Neville, where I have remained since 1946.404 ¶27

Now I know what is in store for me when I break the bonds of this straightjacket and return to the heavenly guild, as I know my brothers are waiting for my return from this journey through darkness into light.404 ¶28

Now let us go into the silence.404 ¶29

“In a vision of the night when deep sleep falls upon men, while they slumber on their beds, he opens their ears and seals their instructions.” Tonight you may find yourself in a terrestrial world like this one, and you feel just as real to yourself as you do here. And when you return with its memory you may think it was a dream, but it was a vision. You are dreaming right now, for this world is the dream you and I agreed to complete. Its end will appear when we turn around through a series of visions. The Old Testament outlines the dream, interspersed with vision, while the New Testament tells of the awakening. The trinity which the churches refer to as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, can be taken in a simple way as Mighty Father, the proceeding Son, and the returning Holy Spirit - for they are all one. The dreamer in you is God.403 ¶1

Tonight as you dream ask yourself where you are. Many times while lying on my bed I have left this body I know so well, to enter a world just as real as this. Remembering where my body was when I started my journey, when I desired to return I had to feel myself in the body - now cataleptic - on the bed. I could not move it or open its eyes. The body felt dead, yet I was very much alive. Gradually I was able to move a finger, then the toes. But only as I opened my eyes and saw the familiar objects on the wall and dresser did I know I was back. But was I really? Am I not dreaming this world just as much as I was dreaming that one? If so then where am I right now?403 ¶2

Man cannot remember where he laid himself down to dream this dream of life. If he could, he would return through the secret of feeling. Finding myself in a world like this, I remembered where I left my body and felt myself back into it. I returned with the memory of people who were there. They were clothed and real and the world was terrestrial, just as it is here. I talked to them and they answered. Now if that world was a vision then this one is also, for one world does not differ from the other. So God has two ways of speaking to man, but man does not perceive it.403 ¶3

A dream contains one central thought. Like a thank you note. You don’t try to interpret every word in it, just the message it is trying to convey.403 ¶4

I have a friend who dreamed it was his birthday and many people had arrived to attend his party. There were two large cakes, with one lady very adamant about the design she had placed on hers. (This is not significant to the dream, but only part of getting the story started.) Leaving to find candles for the table, my friend returned to discover one cake was missing, as well as all of the guests. Disappointed because he had not seen or heard me speak, the dream ended.403 ¶5

Suddenly he finds himself on a beach with a friend. Asking where everyone was, his friend points to a rock in the middle of the water, and said: “There they are, away out to sea.” Seeing another rock near it supporting a child, afraid and alone, he said: “How did they get there?” and his friend answered: “Mentally.” Then he mentally went to the child, took her by the hand, and placed her on the big rock.403 ¶6

Now the dream changes and my friend finds himself in a lecture hall with a stairway in the center of the stage. Coming down the stairs, I place his hands in mine and say: “I’m glad you have made it, chosen one.” Then he awoke.403 ¶7

This is a very significant dream, whose single jet of truth is the rock. It’s not the birthday, the party, or the cake, but the language of scripture that will reveal the truth of any dream. The journey of life is a mental one, which is taking place in the sea of illusion. And only when you find yourself on the Rock will your journey be at its end. We are told: “You are unmindful of the Rock that begot you and have forgotten the God who gave you birth.” This passage of scripture tells us that the Rock is equated with God. And in the New Testament it is said: “They drank from the supernatural Rock that followed them and the Rock was Christ.”403 ¶8

This gentleman is now standing on that Rock. Since all dreams are egocentric, he conjured me from within himself. Containing the whole vast world within him, he called forth those he chose to play a part he wrote for himself. This he did without our knowledge or consent. My friend has now reached that foundation stone upon which he will build his house.403 ¶9

No longer will he build on shifting sands, where the winds and storms destroy the structures, but upon the Rock who is Christ; and Christ is God who is the Human Imagination. The central figure of Christianity is the Human Imagination. When you accept this as the first principle of religion, then all governments, rituals, and external worship will have heard the trumpets of Joshua. All of the buildings that are of any structure than that Rock - which is your own wonderful Human Imagination - will fall.403 ¶10

This gentleman had a wonderful experience. He is on the Rock, but he may move from it. He may turn his back and forget that the cause of all of the phenomena of his life is the Human Imagination. It is my hope that he will not.403 ¶11

There is only one source of all creation. “By him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” If anything or anyone comes into your world, remember the cause is your Human Imagination, who is the God of scripture and the dreamer in you. Stand upon that Rock, knowing you are God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as these three are the chosen One. In the 1st Epistle of John, the 5th chapter, these three are called the Spirit, the water, and the blood. Knowing that God is spirit and there is life in the blood, the Risen Christ calls himself the Living Water, saying: “If you had asked, I would have given you living water that you would never thirst again.” Living water is the truth. Once truth has been experienced, you will hunger and thirst no more. “I will send a famine upon the land. It will not be a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.” This gentleman has found the word of God, for he has found the Rock.403 ¶12

Another friend shared this vision with me. (I call this a vision rather than a dream, for it was her own back door.) Although it was early in the day, my friend became so sleepy, she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes. Suddenly she heard a knock at the back door. Upon opening it she found a pleasant looking young man there, obviously hungry. She invited him in and as she was preparing his food, she realized it was 5:30 P.M. and her husband would be home shortly. Wondering how she was going to explain the stranger’s presence, her little daughter woke her, to discover that it was only 11:00 a.m. in the morning.403 ¶13

Lying there she remembered she had not fed the man, so she did so in her Imagination. That’s what I mean when I tell you to carry Imagination to the extreme point and feed the world. Although my friend did not feed the man in her vision, she did so in her Imagination, knowing she was feeding Christ. She knows that when she does this to the least of one of these, she is doing it to Christ. And when she does not do it, she is not doing it to Christ - who is her very self. My friend has learned her lesson, and is at the end of her journey. Having a vivid memory of what had transpired, she carried through her intention and fed the man in her Imagination.403 ¶14

All of this may seem insane to the world, because they do not understand this great mystery. In 1946 I wrote a little booklet called The Search. I ended it on this note: “The universe which we study with such care is a dream and we the dreamers, dreaming non-eternal dreams. One day, like Nebuchadnezzar, we shall awaken from our nightmare in which we fought with demons, to discover that we have never really left our eternal home; that we were never born and have never died - save in our dream.” Since that time nothing has happened to cause me to change one word in that little book for, like Nebuchadnezzar, I have awakened from this dream of life.403 ¶15

Now when I close my eyes in meditation, I sometimes have a little dream; or other times I enter a world just like this, where I am totally awake and aware of what is happening. You see, one day the being that is really dreaming your life will awaken, and you will be enhanced beyond your wildest dreams because of your experiences. You never descended in body, but in consciousness. Descending in your dream, you entered this world called eternal death to see things appear, wax, wane, and vanish. They appear to die, yet you are dreaming their death. One day you will discover that you have never gone anywhere, save in your dream.403 ¶16

This past weekend I was visiting with a doctor, who told me that he was fascinated with anthropology, and if he ever came back again, he was going to be an anthropologist. He said: “Neville, in spite of what you say, we go back millions and millions of years.” And I asked: “Are you proud of the fact that your ancestor was an ape? If all ends run true to origin, and your ancestor was an ape, no matter how wise you are, you are still only a wise ape. Well, my origin is God. I assumed this limitation for a purpose, and when that purpose is revealed, my end is God.”403 ¶17

I cannot see any relationship between the physical body and the ape, as there are still apes with us. Did it ever occur to you that change does not need to be gradual, but can be a combination in a sudden mutation? Think about it. God is a dreamer. He could take a root or a branch, and by forcing mutation among members of a certain colony of apes, when they multiply the new feature is transferred, and man suddenly appears. Man thinks in terms of millions and millions of years; yet one generation could be more instantaneous than the nth part of a second, if you are going to measure life in terms of time. I’m not saying this is true. I am only giving you something to think about. If you do, you will change your mind about having an ape for an ancestor.403 ¶18

As God, you started your dream by coming down in consciousness to the level called man. You died in order for humanity to be made a living soul. Now, bound by what you took upon yourself, you are dreaming a predetermined, horrible dream; yet the results of these experiences will transcend your wildest dreams. The story of Jesus Christ is your story, which you will fulfill - in vision - in a three-dimensional world.403 ¶19

Now, I used the word mutation for a purpose. We are told that at the end: “In the twinkle of an eye, our lowly bodies will be changed to be one form with His glorious body.” This does not take time. The moment you are embraced by the Risen Lord, your lowly body is transformed to be one form with His glorious body of light, of love, and wisdom. These bodies of flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You need an entirely different body to function in that age. That body is a mutation, as it comes suddenly.403 ¶20

When I stood in the presence of the Risen Christ I was asked to define the greatest thing in the world. I answered with the words of Paul, “Faith, hope, and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” Then Infinite Love embraced me. We fused and I became one with the Risen Lord. There is no creative power comparable to love! I know, for I am one with that body; and when this aspect of myself is called dead, I will wear that body, for my dream is over. Then you can say of me what Shelley said of one who had departed: “He has awakened from the dream of life. ’Tis we who, lost in stormy vision, fight with phantoms, an unprofitable strife.”403 ¶21

Everyone will awaken from this dream to know he is love; for there is nothing but God and God is love. The most horrible being is God, as the most glorious. In the end, when the curtain comes down, we will collectively form the one Man, the one Spirit, the one Body. Then we will understand why we conceived the dream and played it, as we will have expanded into a further existence as a result of this experience of coming down into the world of eternal death.403 ¶22

I know that when I have entered other sections of time, in vision, the experience was real, just as this is now. The world may say my experience was just a dream. But if this is reality and that just as real as this, then this is a dream. The difference is that when I was there, I remembered where my body was and was able to return to it. Could you remember the being you were before you started this dream of life, and use the same technique, you would feel yourself there and vanish from sight to awaken in that body.403 ¶23

For myself, I have worn that wakened body since 1929, when I was embraced by the Risen Lord. At that time we became the one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all. I have heard Him say: “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed . . .” and I knew exactly what He was saying: “I am dreaming I am Neville.”403 ¶24

One day you will know that the visions of the day are no more real than those of the night, for you will know you are their reality. You will realize that you cannot encounter strangers, regardless of whether they be harmful or helpful, as they came out of you to play the part you had already played from within.403 ¶25

The world and all of its conflicts appear to show us that Imagination can and does run amok. Imagination is the only foundation. It is the Rock upon which one builds his house. No matter what happens, blame no one, but remain on that Rock; for Christ (your own wonderful Human Imagination) is He, and the only cause of the phenomena of life. Accept this truth and you will have a firm foundation upon which to build.403 ¶26

As you dwell upon this power vested in you, you will discover it will help you far beyond your wildest dreams. You will realize that you do not need the help of anyone. All you need do is assume you have what you want. Then dare to walk in that assumption; and if it takes a thousand people to aid its birth, they will appear and play their parts, not knowing why or what they do. They will do it without their permission or consent, just as I did in my friend’s dream.403 ¶27

Man prays to an outside Jesus and believes in an outside God, because he has forgotten the God who gave him birth. Scripture tells us that when Moses revealed the true God as I AM, he hadn’t been gone more than moments when the people once more turned and worshipped the golden cow as the cause of their fortunes, good or bad. They started worshipping things made with the human hand in violation of the eighth commandment: “Make no graven image unto me,” either with your hands or in your mind! If you see a Jesus Christ as other than your own wonderful Human Imagination, you have made a graven image. But when you find the true Christ - called the Rock - and start building on it, no rumors or arguments can knock your house down. Build on the sand and your house will slip away, but if you create your world believing in your own wonderful Human Imagination - called Jesus Christ - nothing will destroy it.403 ¶28

Your Imagination is Christ, dreaming in you and creating your world. Feed him noble thoughts. Become selective and dare to assume something wonderful for yourself.403 ¶29

Our newspapers are telling us how to transcend death and live to be one hundred, adding years to life - yet no one thinks of adding life to years! Schubert lived only thirty-one years, yet he gave us a thousand pieces of music. Keats died at twenty-six. So many of the great poets died young but look what they gave us! They didn’t add years to their life, but crowded a lifetime into a few years.403 ¶30

Now there are those who are trying to have transplants in order to live to be one hundred, and vegetate. Well, that’s not what we are here for. We’re here to fulfill scripture, and no matter what appears on the outside I promise you: you will not die. You cannot go to eternal death in that which cannot die. You are the God of the living, not the dead - dreaming of death, of birth, health and illness, poverty and wealth. You have never left your eternal home. Your descent was in consciousness and it is in consciousness that you will ascend. Now let us go into the silence.403 ¶31

We are closing tonight and if it be the Father’s will, I’ll be back in September. My work is finished, completely finished. Tonight I want to share with you some of the things you’ve shared with me and some of the things that have been shared with me from a different source. I have told you that imagining creates reality, and because God creates all things I identify God with imagining. I do not for one moment modify it. God and human imagining are one and the same presence, and that presence is a person. So we’ll start on this level fist that you may apply it in your own personal lives. These letters came this week, all came this week. I can’t use all of them, I will only use four. One has so many in it, I can only use two or three from that one.400 ¶1

Here is the first. “Friends and I went to this luncheon party, a luncheon fashion party. As we got in we discovered a raffle was on…on the table things to be raffled. So we bought tickets, as we all would, and here was a plant, and I thought, ‘Isn’t that a lovely plant…I would love to have it on my coffee table in the den.’ So instantly, knowing imagining creates reality, I put it on the coffee table in the den, and there I saw it in my mind’s eye as I would see it were it true. And in that state I felt the thrill of having that plant in the den. Well, came the raffle, the ticket was called, but I didn’t get it. Then a ticket is called and my friend said, ‘Why, that’s my number, but I don’t want the plant, I can’t use the plant, would you like it?’ Well, need I tell you the end of the story? So the plant is where it ought to be, right in the den on the coffee table.” That’s that story.400 ¶2

Here is why I told you nothing dies I this world, but nothing dies, not even a little flower dies. My friend writes me this story…this goes back now quite a few years…but I only got the letter this week. He said, “This man who was really the porter in our plant, he cleaned out the offices and the plant, and this man works at a bench at a lathe, and, he said, one year after I met him he stopped at my bench one day, called me by name, my name is Clare, and he said, ‘Clare, do you have any religion?’ And Clare said to him, yes, I was raised in brimstone, fire and brimstone, but I no longer accept that. I go to a man, his name is Neville, and he tells me, he tells all of us, that imagining is God in action, that human Imagination is God, and that God became man that man may become God. And so I told him, and he listened, and he said, ‘Maybe,’ and walked away. But, over the next two years he would come back to my bench and he would say, ‘What did Neville say last night?’” after my lecture. And Clare would tell him what I said. He was vitally interested in anything I said about the Bible. “Well, how can Neville interpret that passage of the Bible?” and Clare would tell him. Well, this went on for two years.400 ¶3

Then one Thursday afternoon—his name is Randy—Randy didn’t feel well and they took him home. And the next day, the plant was notified that Randy died under operation. They rushed him to the hospital and operated on him, and under the operation Randy died. “Three months later,” he said, “I felt the presence of Randy. I knew it was Randy next to me. I’m bent over my work and a voice is speaking, and it’s Randy’s voice. There’s no voice like Randy’s and he’s speaking to me. He said, ‘Clare, you are right, you are right, you are right! Clare, you are right.’ Then from within me is coming Randy’s voice and from within me he is saying the same thing, ‘Clare, you are right, you are right, you are right! Clare, you are right’—all from within me. I have tried since that day to hear his voice again but I have never. But the revelation to me means this—not only that Randy that I loved and the whole plant loved him—that Randy survived, but one when they make their exit from this world, they remember this life. That to me is the most important part of this revelation—we remember. He remembered this.”400 ¶4

May I tell you, as I have told you in one of my books, live so that the mind can store a past worthy of recall, for the mind whose contents vanishes that mind has not vanished, as told in scripture, but its world is reduced to the limit of the contents of the mind that has vanished. For things must be clarified, so unlovely things cannot be perpetuated forever. So the mind whose contents vanished, it doesn’t vanish, but it’s reduced to the limit of the contents that has vanished from the mind. It is always a clarification, a purification of the contents of mind. So you are going to live in a world made of the contents of your life. Everything will be out pictured as you have imagined it and lived by it—your hates, your loves, everything in this world. So live by it! So the mind whose contents vanish will be reduced to the limit…but all will not vanish. There were certain lovely things in your life. When you were a baby you loved your mother, loved your father, loved your brothers and sisters. There was something that was lovely, all the lovely things, because God is love. Everything else will simply disintegrate and you will live in a reduced world if today your living is made up of things that cannot be sustained and perpetuated in the world into which you go. He heard the truth—and came back—that Imagination does create reality. “Clare, you are right, you are right, you are right!” So this to him, that man departs from this world but he remembers the life from which he has just departed…but it is going to be reduced to the level of all that can be sustained. Now that is his contribution.400 ¶5

Now comes a third. This lady tells me in her letter—and it’s written this week—“Last night I had a dream. I owned a wonderful sapphire and it was given to me by you and I loved it. I took it to the sea, and then I felt myself without a body, and I rose above the sea to compare my sapphire that you had given to me to the sea, to see if it was as blue as the sea. When I rose body-less and looked at the sea, my sapphire was the bluest of blue. And I knew that Neville had given me the truth, for the blue is the symbol of truth…the true blue. And I woke with this exhilarating feeling, and then as I woke I didn’t hear these words but they penetrated my mind, ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free’ . And I woke hearing within me, without actually hearing from the outside, ‘The truth will set you free.’” You’ve been given the truth!400 ¶6

Then came this fourth one from our friend Ben, this happened. “A friend of his called him up and said, ‘My little daughter, six months old, is in the hospital and the doctors have given her up. She has meningitis. She’s been unconscious for eight days and they say there is no hope. All the doctors gave her up.’ And he called me and told me this story. I got so enraged when I heard the story, I told him of scripture. Are we not told that whatever you desire, when you pray, believe you have received it and you will? . Then I exposed him to the law of assumption, and told him what it really means: how to dare to assume things are that reason denies. And having hung up on this man, I then fell into a deep, a real deep; and in that deep I heard his voice telling me that she has come out of the coma, that she has no symptoms of anything called meningitis, she is perfect! I heard his voice over and over and over until I felt the feeling of relief.”400 ¶7

As I’ve told you in one of my books, of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt; it’s a creative act. One is in the most intense act, it’s a creative act, and when one explodes, that relief…there is no pleasure in the world comparable to explosion, to relief. He was hearing over and over and over that which if he heard it would imply the child was perfect…and then came relief.400 ¶8

Now, he said, “For the next seven days I walked through the usual furnaces. I heard everyone associated with the child and the parents and the most negative expressions in the world. Everyone knew the child would have to die, I mean the thing was that natural. And I heard it all but I remained faithful to what I had heard. I remembered a story of yours that you had told when I was in San Diego, and you told the story of “feed my pig.” How you found the pig, it was your pig, and you had neglected to feed it, the symbol of Christ, but it still grew but it was rangy. Then you told the story of your pig, how when it came into the changing picture, you said, ‘Feed my pig.’”400 ¶9

The story is I asked my daughter to go and get all these things from the bins, and she said, “What would I use for money, Daddy?” I said, “You don’t need money—all this is mine. This belongs to us. Take anything and bring it to me, and feed my pig, the symbol of Christ.” I found the pig and the pig, having found it, at first I fed it…and then turned the page, it had grown but it was too thin. It must have been neglected in the interval. It was grown all right, but very thin.400 ¶10

So he said, “I remembered that story as you told it in San Diego, and so in the seven days no matter what I heard, I fed the pig. I kept on hearing only what I heard that first day that I spoke to my friend. On the seventh day, the child became conscious and the coma was broken. The child returned to consciousness and then the doctors told him there is no evidence it was ever present. And all she needs now when she comes out of the hospital is the normal help and care and rest that you would give to anyone who had gone through such an ordeal. Then, a few days later when the child came out of the hospital, and I met the father, he took his hand and put it into my hand and shook my hand with such feeling, and thanked me, and told me this part of the story. Then within a day I had this dream. I dreamt I was in the foyer of a hospital, and one nurse said to another, ‘Ben paid all the bills.’ Another one said, ‘He paid the price.’ Then I woke.”400 ¶11

Yes. Ben paid all the bills. In heaven there is only forgiveness…the only price in this world. To change anything in this world is forgiveness, and it tests man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite state. She is dying…well, the father brought this little child into this world, he and his wife. They didn’t want the child to die…six month’s old. Here is the evidence—meningitis. Now he paid the price by actually reversing the entire thing in his mind’s eye…and Ben paid all the bills. The other one confirmed it by saying, “He paid the price” and the price is one’s ability and willingness to step into the opposite state and so live in it that it seems so real, there is nothing but. And you step into that state. And Ben paid that price.400 ¶12

So he said, “Strangely enough, at a party one day someone said, ‘Let me see your hand. You know, you were a physician. Did you know you were once a doctor?’” Well, he was never a doctor. Working in his business—what the business is I don’t know—his supervisor came to him one day and said, “By the way, Ben, do you ever go under the name, the assumed name of Dr. Benjamin Gould?” Ben answered, “No, never.” Well, he said, “There’s a long distance call from Denver, Colorado, for Dr. Benjamin Gould in this firm, and they want Dr. Gould to return the call.” He said, “I’m not Dr. Benjamin Gould; I am Benjamin Gould.” And he is the only Benjamin Gould on the payroll. Here a call came asking for Dr. Benjamin Gould.400 ¶13

I can tell him tonight he is a spiritual physician, and I would rather call him this night than anyone and ask him to help me; for he knows how to completely detach himself from the evidence of the senses, and go into a state, and see me as I would like to be. And so, in his letter he goes on with many, but I will give you one more.400 ¶14

He said, “I was taken in spirit into a desert, a vast desert, and there was an enormous crowd in the desert. They were all haggard and pale of face, and suddenly out of the nowhere you appeared, standing on a hill, dressed in blue. Before you was a table of fruit, and these haggard, pale-faced things, as they came by you gave them fruit; and as they ate it, the blood rushed into their faces, and you could see the color in their faces, and they became normal, healthy beings again.”400 ¶15

I tell you, whether one believes it or not, I am telling you from experience, I am giving you the truth. But you must eat it, not just hear it, you must live by it. You must apply it, as Ben applied it, as the others applied it. One goes to a party, it’s a gay party, what, a luncheon and a fashion display…that’s fun. Whether you win anything or not means nothing, you go for the fun. She sees something and she wants it. She doesn’t just want it. She put it where it would be if she had it. That’s acting upon what I am talking about. When I know what I want, what would I do after? Then do it, do it in Imagination. When you do it in Imagination, you’ve done it…and then keep the sabbath.400 ¶16

And so here he said, “I was driving at night with my friend, and suddenly this taxi cab struck a car. In the car was a man, a woman and a little boy two years old. The impact was so intense it turned the car around. First of all, it knocked it thirty feet and then turned it in the opposite direction, and the little boy came hurtling through the window and here I see this little child. I said to my friend—now this is not a dream, this is now physical—I said to my friend, ‘This can’t be real! It can’t be real!’ Instantly I closed my eyes and my head was flooded with golden liquid light, the living light, and in that state I said in my Imagination, ‘Get up!’ to the child, ‘Get up!’ Then I opened my eyes and the child rose. At that moment, all things became animated—the father came out of the car, the taxi driver came out of his car, and all came rushing towards the little child of two years old to give their aid to the child.” He said, “I instantly did it… I said this can’t be real, the whole thing is unseen, it’s unreal, and I revised it immediately in my mind’s eye, and made the whole thing become alive as it ought to be.”400 ¶17

That’s what I say is believing what I am talking about. Oh, one can believe it and repeat it in words as the whole vast Christian world and other worlds repeat these little things. The Mohammedan world, they will bend three or four times a day towards Mecca, meaning nothing, and go and cut your throat one second later. And they will just steal you left and right one moment after they bend towards Mecca. And the Christians will do the same thing. I read here the other day what is the definition of a bandit—a bandit is one who takes from you by force what you, in turn, took from him by guile. And so, that is the world in which we live, the whole vast world is this…but then one hears that imagining creates reality and that we are one.400 ¶18

Now, let me share one more vision of his. He said, “I found myself in the dream with my grandmother and we were going to visit the cemetery. We were going to see our plot and in this plot not only were the family buried but so many strangers were buried. I asked my grandmother, where is my aunt and I called her by name? She said, ‘She’s right here’ and her face appeared on the tombstone. The tombstone was so small and the plot we had so small, I asked my grandmother how could all these strangers be here? And she was indifferent, she didn’t answer. I wondered how could they all be here, and I said to my grandmother, ‘Do you know, if I stretch myself out on this plot, it would just hold me and nothing else?’ She smiled, that’s all. Here all the strangers of the world plus my family.”400 ¶19

That’s Israel. Not only Israel, but go into the whole vast world and gather all together, and it’s all contained within one man. The whole vast world is contained within one man. You are the man! The whole vast world! “All that we behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in our Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” Now he said, “It was only my height, and it would not have given one square inch more. If I stretched myself down on my back and sank into this space, not a thing more could have occupied it, and yet all were there. Everything is contained within man, the whole vast world. That is the unity of which I have been speaking through the years.”400 ¶20

Now I say, no greater love has man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends, no greater love. You can’t conceive of a greater love. God so loved us that he laid himself down within us, and took up the same position that you now occupy in this world. God containing all brought with him all when he entered you. Not just a little you, he brought himself; and God being all when he buried himself in man, he buried all. There was nothing but God. God became as I am that I may become as he is, that is, God. There’s nothing but God.400 ¶21

Now, we are told in the Epistle of John, “He who confesses the Son has the Father also” . In the King James Version of the Bible, the word “confesses” is translated as “acknowledge.” But these words are defined in the Concordance—listen to it carefully—the word translated confesses means “superimposition of time, place and ordered contents.” God revealed to Abraham the gospel we are told, and “Scripture knowing that God would save the heathen, too, through faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham” . The gospel which is the story of salvation is an eternal fact in the heart of God. God superimposes this fact upon the heart of man, and that and only that is how man is saved. The secret of his elective love remains his secret. Why one is called prior to the other remains his secret, but, may I tell you, it is not the Father’s will that one be lost, so all will be saved.400 ¶22

We are saved by the superimposition of the story of salvation: being born from above; becoming the Father of God’s only Son; being raised into the heavens; and having the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descend upon us and smother us with love. This is an eternal fact in the heart of God, which at a moment that comes like a thief in the night—no one knows it, comes when you least expect it—suddenly you are the one elected and you are called. He superimposes the eternal drama upon you in this world of time. While you move across the world of time, it is superimposed upon you like a seal…putting a seal upon you that you may be forever protected against the entire vast world of sin and death. He is simply superimposed upon you. It’s a story that is true, it’s forever.400 ¶23

I confess the Son. Why do I confess the Son today?— because I have experienced it. He who confesses the Son has the Father also. If I confess he is my Son, I am confessing the Father also, for I am the Father. “He who sees me sees the Father” . Yet not the mask that you see, for I tell you, that’s not the feeling that possessed me when I saw David. When I saw David, the feeling that possessed me was the Ancient of Days, a being that no earthly eye has ever seen. You don’t see it with mortal eye, yet that was the feeling that possessed me. I felt myself to be that Ancient of Days spoken of in Daniel, and here before me stands my only begotten Son, and he’s David, and David calls me Father. Here is my seal of approval. So he who confesses the Son has the Father also.400 ¶24

And the confession of the Son is the result of a superimposition of God upon that chosen one at that moment. So you don’t earn it. No man can earn it. I can only tell you, for your own wonderful sake live so that your mind can store a past worthy of recall. For if the contents of that mind, because it is unworthy of perpetuation, is reduced…for we’re all being cleansed. After the harvest all things are cleansed and you shake all the things out, and take out the weeds, so the unlovely things are destroyed. And you go into a world so reduced, but reduced to the lovely things that you have acquired while you walked this earth.400 ¶25

So I am telling you from experience, I am not theorizing. I am not in any way trying to create a new philosophy. I am telling you what scripture tells me that I have experienced. It is not my interpretation of scripture as a scholar; it’s my understanding of scripture as one who has experienced scripture. I am not a scholar. I could never in the wildest dream claim scholarship as understood in the world of Caesar, I couldn’t. I have no qualification for the scholar; but I have experienced scripture. And so when I read the commentaries of scripture by the great scholars and the exegeses of these wonderful passages, I stand amazed. They don’t understand it, and you can’t blame them. As you’re told in scripture, “I thank thee, Father, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes” .400 ¶26

It is like a babe…and suddenly it happens to you because your hunger had to be satisfied. From the time I was a child I had this hunger: I had to know something about the reality of God, it was my hunger. The only time I was ever beaten in this world physically by a schoolmaster was for the Bible. But he was a sadist and beat me unmercifully, and just tore my legs apart, and the blood coming from it. That was allowed where I was born and still is allowed, I think. But here, it was a peculiar hunger, it couldn’t be satisfied. I had to know if this thing really is as I was told it. Well, it wasn’t. The whole thing is true but it happens in man.400 ¶27

It is an eternal fact in the heart of God, which God at a moment in time superimposes upon his choice, and that eternal fact is now becoming a present fact in the one that he has chosen. He puts it right upon him and he is the Christ Jesus: born from above; one who finds David who calls him Lord and calls him Father; and then split down the middle and moved up to the very heavens within himself; and then the dove descending upon him and some voice saying “He loves you.” The whole story unfolds within us by superimposition upon us by the will of God.400 ¶28

Therefore God cannot give me his kingdom and not give me himself because God is the king of his kingdom. I am not heir only to a promise; I am heir to a presence. So here, I am promised a Son that will be heir of the kingdom. But I am not only heir to that Son. If that Son is the Son of God, I cannot have the whole thing unless I also inherit God. So I am heir not only to the promise of the Son which is the kingdom, but I am heir to a presence which is God. For if I suddenly woke up and here he stands in front of me and he is my companion but not my Son, that’s not my promise. I’m promised a Son, but the Son I am promised is the Son of God. [...]. If then I am given the Son of God not as a companion but as my Son, well then, God gave me himself. And so, the Father becomes me and the proof of that fatherhood is the Son calling me Father.400 ¶29

This is the most fantastic thing in the world! Just think of the universe existing only for God, and God so falling in love with his creation that he wants it to exist for itself and share with him all that he is enjoying; and the only way to do it is to die and become his world of humanity. Become it! So God emptied himself of his divine form and took upon himself the form of man, and was born in the likeness of a slave: Man. Being in the likeness of a slave he became obedient unto death, yes, the death upon this cross and he walks this long horrible road.400 ¶30

But he had prepared the way of escape, and that was the story as told in the gospel, which is the fulfillment of the Old Testament…which man does not understand. The whole thing is told there but not understood until realized in a man. Then a man realizes the Old Testament in himself, and it’s so differs from what when you read the Old it seemed to be. And he tells it and he is rejected—that is not it at all. And so he is rejected, but he tells it, and there are a few who will hear and believe.400 ¶31

Now in scripture we are told in the epistle of John, the friends send greetings, “Give greetings to my friends, each by name”…that is how the Kg. James Version translates it. The Revised Standard Version omits “by name” and they are wrong. The manuscript has “each by name.” They are trying to in some way impersonalize it. No. You are so unique in the eyes of God I can’t just say give greetings to my friends collectively—each by name. You cannot be replaced in God’s world. No one can be replaced; you are unique. And so, give greetings to my friends, each by name. Read it in the 3rd epistle of John, “every one by name” . You will find it in the Kg. James Ver. and that is the real translation of the manuscript. To omit “each by name” is to really not get the point of John at all.400 ¶32

You cannot, not in eternity, can you be replaced. You are so lovely in the eyes of God. Never would you have made anything had you not loved it, that’s what we are told. He would not have made you had he not loved you. And then he doesn’t want just to bring you up as some little thing as a slave. “No longer do I call you slaves, I call you friends” …“give greetings to my friends, each by name.”400 ¶33

So you and I will meet in eternity and we will meet as the one God who created the whole, who then so loved us he gave himself to us; he became us and gave us his own creative power, personified as David, who in turn calls us Father. We all wait, and we’re all the one God who created the whole; so loved what he created he could share what he is with what he created, and die for it. “For unless I die, thou can’st not live; but if I die I shall rise again and thou with me” . So when Blake tells us eternity is in love with the productions of men…he calls it “time”…eternity is in love with the productions of time. So time is producing all this and eternity is God, in love with what he has created; and then he descends and buries himself in man, and then awakes in man.400 ¶34

So in his wonderful first chapter, called the 4th Plate—but he begins his first chapter on the 4th Plate and he’s appealing to the whole vast world—he said, “I reside in you and you reside in me; lo, we are one.” But man will not believe it. It tells you that I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine, and we are one. Well, Benny had the vision in the graveyard—“It only would fit my body, it wasn’t more than six feet, and if I would stretch myself on my back, I would fill everything that was our grave. This is our burial plot for the whole family, but there are strangers here as well. And my grandmother said nothing…she simply looked but didn’t react. But I knew the whole thing I would fill it if I stretched out. So I’m to be buried in it, but in it are not only those I know but the strangers as well.”400 ¶35

So we are told in scripture, these are the sheep of my flock, but I have other pastures. I have other pastures that I must go to, to bring everyone into the one plot. There is only the one plot where all are contained.400 ¶36

So I tell you, God became as you are that you may become as he is. There will come a moment in your life. You will stand in his presence and you have never known such a moment of love. Infinite love stands before you, and you will answer correctly. He will ask a very simple question and, may I tell you, you will answer correctly. At that moment he embraces you. At that moment you become God, one with the infinite body that is God, one with the Spirit of God, not two, no more two. All things are broken down; one body one Spirit, one Lord, and you are one. You will be sent to tell what happened to you. That’s all right, you still cannot be divorced from that union; you are one with it forever and forever.400 ¶37

Now, man might think that, well, speaking now of Christ as the world speaks of it, they might think of the Christ-likeness of God. How? Well, he is so much that I believe God to be. For they can’t quite reverse it…they can’t quite reverse the God-likeness. They speak how much like God that man…the God-likeness of man…but the man-likeness of God, that seems difficult. But I tell you, believe me as I stand here and may I this very moment just drop before you if God is not man. I stood in the presence of God and God is man. So I can speak today of the man-likeness of God, because God is man. You are man. May I tell you, when you meet him you will see man is infinite love.400 ¶38

One day you will be embraced by him and become one body. I am already one with that body. One Spirit…I am already one with that Spirit. One Lord…I am already one with that Lord. One God and Father of all…I am already one with that God and Father of all. And it is man! Everyone one day will be called; not one will be lost, not one be discarded. Let no one tell you that you’ll be discarded, not in eternity. This story is told us, “If you had ninety-nine and one was lost, you would all go in search of the one.” One cannot be lost. So everything is God…there is nothing but God. So when asked to name the greatest Commandment, what did he say? “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” …just one.400 ¶39

So tonight, I leave you hoping that the stories I told you will take to heart and act upon them as you desire. So I want a plant? Well, don’t say, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a plant.” No, put it where you would if you had the plant. And when your ticket is called and you didn’t get it, you still put it where you would if you had it. If a stranger—there aren’t any strangers in this world—if a stranger got it, she would find no place for it and would wonder, “What lady who came here today would like this plant?”400 ¶40

May I tell you, today if someone gave me the most glorious plant in the world, I could not graciously accept it. I am leaving in a couple of weeks and will be gone for months, so what would I do with the plant, let it die? So if I accepted it, I would have to give it to some friend to take care of the plant while I am gone. I couldn’t accept it. The most beautiful plant in the world I could not desire, not today. So don’t think for one moment others there had the same intensity to have that plant. Maybe a box of candy would be more desirable to them or a carton of cigarettes were it your brand, but something. So don’t think for one moment when God gives you a desire that you are in competition. No. He gives you a desire and the desire is for…and you name it….well then, act in your Imagination as you would act after you had realized it. That is what that story is telling you.400 ¶41

When he saw this accident, the child hurtling through the window, he closed his eyes and lost himself in the golden light of his skull, and said in Imagination, a commanding voice, for that little child to rise: “Get up! Stand up!” and the child got up. So I tell you, I am telling you the truth. And tonight’s confirmation from the lady with the sapphire and Ben’s story seeing me on the hill dressed in blue, giving food that is truth. He said, do not forever go on looking for the food that will perish but seek the food that does not pass away.400 ¶42

For may I tell you from experience, that if you had tonight a million dollars, you will not be satisfied. You will still feel uneasy and insecure, you will want two million, and if you had ten, you would want twenty. Do you think Rockefeller tonight thinks himself satisfied and secure? He doesn’t. His job pays him, I think, $50,000 a year. It’s a four year job and he spent ten million to get it. Ten million to get a job that pays you $50,000 a year for four years? He is not secure. No one is secure! Our President is not secure. When I didn’t have one nickel, I thought if I only had a hundred dollars I would feel like Croesus. Came the day I had a thousand, I thought “if I only had two.” Now, today I can leave my body this night and leave my family two million, and I still in the world of Caesar do not feel I am leaving them enough. Goodnight.400 ¶43

[...] something that we call Christmas, which, as you all know, is the birth of Christ, a birth that gives eternal life to man. And we are about to celebrate it as a day in a certain month of the year. May I tell you, the Bible makes no reference whatsoever to any person that ever walked the face of this earth, no event that ever happened here; it happens in the remote regions of the Imagination of man who walks this earth. Hasn’t a thing to do with any little event that took place in this world. But all with [...] takes place in man, in us, as we are seated here, as I’m standing here. It takes place in us in some remote region of the reality of man, the soul of man, which is all Imagination.399 ¶1

But man has unfortunately mistaken the personifications for persons, and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended, and the vehicle that conveys the instruction for the instruction itself. Now let us take just the first four verses of Luke for a moment. Then we’ll go into other parts of scripture tonight. Here we are told in the first four verses that [...], “Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us.” Now, the word translated “among” is the Greek preposition “in”…“in us.” Many had it. The time of fulfillment came and many began to experience what we in this small audience are experiencing. So “among” is “within” us. Then he goes on to say, “As it was delivered to us by those who were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”—they heard it from those who experienced it and they began to tell it. Then he goes further, he said, “It seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus”—he’s writing it for you, for Theophilus means “one who loves God”—“That you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed” .399 ¶2

Now, he makes no claim that what he’s about to write is a greater and more exact chronological exactitude, but he does feel he’s better equipped to use the source material. He heard it all from everyone and he also experienced it. Who Luke is, who knows? These are all anonymous names: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are anonymous. No one knows the true identity of these characters. But here, one is making a statement that all the things that we have heard concerning this fantastic thing that has happened, now he’s about to write a narrative, because “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.”399 ¶3

Man knows that if I tell you a story…if I tell it as though it were true on this level…it has a far better chance of getting over to your mind than if I tell it as though it were a dream. If I tell you it’s a vision, oh, well, then you discount it altogether. So I tell it in the form of a tale. So, “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” On this level we hear it as a story, a story that happened in this world, where a woman bore a child; she didn’t know a man, and that child was the Son of God, who was one with God, and therefore God. That’s the story as told on this level. Man accepts and then worships this thing on the outside. This whole drama takes place in man as he walks this earthly level. The entire story is true, but not as it is presented to the world.399 ¶4

Now, we’re told in the Book of Galatians, Paul is writing, because Paul tells you, “I am a child of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin” . Now here he’s giving you the background, that he knows the entire Hebraic law, all of its promises, everything concerning what God promised Israel. When he heard the story, believing it to be on this level he fought it. Then it happened in him: “And when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I did not discuss it with any flesh and blood” . Because, what man on this level could explain it to me? It happened to me. I heard it, thinking it to be on this level, then I discovered it was not on this level but in some remote region of my own being, which is all Imagination. Then he went all out to tell it to the entire world.399 ¶5

Then he tells the story: “Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. He explains the difference between the two. The one by a slave was born after the flesh, the one by the free woman was born after promise, the promise.” He said, “Jerusalem below, the present Jerusalem, is the mother of those born after the flesh and her name is Hagar. And the one born from Jerusalem above, she is Sarah; she is our mother.” Then he quotes the 54th chapter of Isaiah. And then he quotes this fantastic thing, which on the surface would make no sense because it doesn’t seem related to what he is talking about. He said, “Rejoice, O barren one, who bears not; whose womb is not in travail! For the desolate one has more children than she who has the husband.”399 ¶6

Well, the one who had the husband was Sarah. She only had one; and the one who had multiple was Hagar, the womb from below, the womb of woman, brings forth everything in this world that is man. But in man there is that which is called “the one from above.” She has the husband. Yet the one from below has the same husband, for the simple reason there is only one cause in this world; but she is not wedded to the Lord. She brings forth from below unnumbered children into this world, more than the sands of the sea or the stars of the heavens. But the one from above only brings forth one, and she brings forth Isaac. She brings forth the child that smiles, that laughs…he laughs.399 ¶7

So here, we’re moving towards a celebration of a day. I am telling you of Christmas in you; not Christmas as celebrated in the outer world, but Christmas in you. Now Blake said that when men and mountains meet something great takes place in this world. “Great things happen when men and mountains meet.” This is not done by jostling in the street. The “mountains” of Blake was the Bible and he had to climb it. It was the personification of truth. He had to climb that mountain and then declare, as he climbed it, in poetry, in paintings, in his engravings all that he saw as he climbed it.399 ¶8

He would not jostle and argue with anyone below, jostling in the streets…it would accomplish nothing. I could argue on a certain level with anyone in this world and we would part and both remain of the same opinion. But if I climb the mountain, and proclaim it and proclaim it, and keep on climbing it, and leave it behind me as a record as he did, well then, you will one morning you’ll start climbing the mountain, too. You stop this nonsense on this level. You will find this mountain and you will climb it. As you climb it you will find the truth of scripture. The whole thing is revealed to us.399 ¶9

So here, we’re moving towards the celebration of a day that takes place in us. It doesn’t take place on the outside at all, it’s all in us. And everyone must start climbing this mountain. So he said, “The combats between truth and error”—and he spoke first of all “between good and evil,” that good and evil is eating of the tree of knowledge—“The combats between truth and error is eating of the tree of life.” Now he tells us, “This is not only universal but particular.” Each is personified. There is not an error but it has a man as its agent; there is not a truth but it has also man. And so in the Bible, Jesus is the personification of the truth of scripture.399 ¶10

Man worships Jesus as a man that is different from himself. He worships all these characters as something different from himself and they are not. I am climbing the mountain of truth. The combats of truth and error are personified. There is not a truth, there is not an error but there is a man as its agent to express it. He first used the word actor and then he crossed it out, and then used the word agent. It would be more all inclusive…so that it takes a man to express anything in this world. “Where man is not, Nature is barren.” It doesn’t exist. It’s dead. So man is the living active power in the world. And so here we find people speaking of Jesus, they speak of the devil, they speak of all these things, and they’re only states, eternal states towards which man is moving. When he moves towards the mountaintop, he is moving towards the Lord Jesus Christ. When he arrives there, he is the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s not some little pygmy and the Lord Jesus Christ, he’s moving towards that state—he is the Lord Jesus Christ. It takes man to express truth and truth is Jesus, and Jesus is Jehovah, and that is the Lord. So everyone is moving towards the fulfillment of this play.399 ¶11

Now, on this level, I would argue and turn my back upon the argument because I would leave the party and they are still as they were before we started talking. Climb the mountain and then leave it behind you to the best of your ability in your talent. Can you write? Can you paint? Can you write a poem? Can you engrave? Leave it that way. You’ll never convince anyone on this level. You go up and proclaim what you know as you climb the mountain, for when men and mountains meet then something fantastic happens. His mountain was the Bible. He climbed that wonderful mountain of truth, and as he climbed it he wrote his poems and he engraved and he painted and left behind him these fantastic visions of his as he rose into the mountain. I hope I have left something behind in at least my last which was Resurrection that one can see what this whole vast wonderful play is all about.399 ¶12

So here we’re moving towards the celebration of it. He tells us the barren one…“Let the barren one rejoice.” Let this one rejoice beyond measure, even though the [...] has more children. You’re only going to bring forth one child, may I tell you, and that child you bring forth only symbolizes your own birth. It’s not a child. When that child pops out of your head and it’s discovered and you find it, it only symbolizes your own birth from above. From then on there is no limit to the unfolding within you as you climb the mountain.399 ¶13

Now listen to these words carefully. “Thus sayeth the Lord…Can a man bear a child?” I’m quoting the 30th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, “Can a man bear a child?” He doesn’t wait for the response, he answers his own question, and this is the Lord speaking: “Why then do I see every man with his hands drawing himself out of himself like a woman in labor? Why has every face turned pale?” There is no day like it…“This day is so great there is none like it.”399 ¶14

Then he goes on…“At that day I will break the yoke from off your neck.” It is wrongly translated by saying “their” neck, but you see a little footnote in the Revised Standard Version changing the word from “their” to “your.” “I’ll break it from your neck and I’ll burst the bond from you.” Then it goes on to say, “I will raise up their King David and give him to you.” Israel’s king who never lost a battle, who was always victorious, he’ll raise him up and give him to you who drew himself out of himself, just like a woman in labor. You draw yourself out of your own being and then David a few months later, five months later, appears and calls you Father. Why? We’re told in the 7th chapter of 2nd Samuel, “Go to my servant David and you tell David, ‘These are the words of the Lord…When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son’” .399 ¶15

Now scholars will say concerning this passage it cannot mean that he would raise up David from the dead, but that he would raise up the line of David to rule. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. This didn’t take place here at all. There was no David here. This is all a drama in eternity. Every character in scripture is a state of consciousness in eternity, and eternity is in man. The whole vast thing is contained in man. So, at that moment in time I will raise up David. That’s what he said in the 54th chapter, you read it: “I will raise up David, their king, and I will give him to you.” Now they have the pronoun “I will give him to them.” It isn’t that. It means that you can’t change it because all will get it, but it means to you. It’s a very unique gift to the individual. “I will give you David.” Who is David? David is the Lord’s son. “And the Lord said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,’” said David. So David is the Lord’s son. He’s going to raise up that which is dead.399 ¶16

Well, where is he buried? Now we’re told that this whole drama is going to take place in Bethlehem. Where is Bethlehem? Bethlehem is called the city of David, and the city of David was called Zion . He captured Zion, remained in the city of David…and it became Bethlehem. Where is it? May I tell you, the whole drama is unfolding in you. David is buried in the city of David and this is the city of David, it’s right here. When someone asked Blake, “You speak of all these things, where do you see them?” He raised his finger to his forehead and said, “Here.” Then they thought he was insane, a madman. But he left behind him a book which you can’t buy for any price today. He left five copies of Jerusalem. Only one did he color. It’s at Yale University. Go to Yale University and try even to get a look at it. You have to give all the credentials of the world just to look at it. It’s under lock and key, put away. If you came with a check for any price, you couldn’t buy it. And he was buried in a pauper’s grave.399 ¶17

He wasn’t concerned with this level at all. He was telling what he actually saw as he climbed the mountain. “When men and mountains meet”—and his mountain was the Bible, and he would conquer it, and he did. He wasn’t concerned with this level at all. Money meant nothing. Prestige meant nothing. He simply climbed the mountain as he simply unraveled that book within himself. For the book is contained within, it’s all within us. So, Christmas, the 25th of December, so what! It happened on the 20th of October with Benny, the 20th of July with me, and my friend Bob, it happened on a different day with him. And so, what does it matter? It isn’t the 25th of any month, or any other. It is simply that the drama is contained in us, and then we hear it, we believe it, and it unfolds within us. The whole thing unfolds within us. Up we go from level to level to level until we climb the mountain. And if we have talents, we can tell it as we climb the mountain for those behind us. If we don’t have the talent, alright, doesn’t really matter. It would be good if we did have a talent, like a Blake, to tell it in poetry that would last indefinitely. But tell it in some way.399 ¶18

So when the unknown author called Luke began to write his story, he said, “In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who were eyewitnesses from the very beginning and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely, for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.” Then he starts and he takes all the things that he heard, as you will take tomorrow if you are a writer. You know what I said from this platform time and time again. You know what I have quoted concerning my friend Bob, my friend Benny, all my other friends and the experiences they have had, and you take all these things and you compile it into a narrative. “For truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So if you are qualified as a writer to tell it, then you tell it. But, he doesn’t claim that this is the only…he admits that many attempts were made prior to his attempt. He doesn’t condemn them for not bringing it out perfectly. He simply admits they made the effort, but he feels himself better qualified. Not that he is a more accurate chronological picture, but a better use of the source material.399 ¶19

So all present what they experience. Now my friend Bob, it popped out of his head in a different manner; my friend Benny, in a still different manner; in my case in a different manner. So you simply get all the materials together and you tell a story, this fantastic story of God awakening in man. But here, the fundamental is there. And Luke told it beautifully, may I tell you, he told it beautifully. But we’re all awakening, all within ourselves, all fulfilling the promise as made in the Old Testament.399 ¶20

So Blake made this statement, just this one short little verse, he called it The Virginity of the Virgin: “What ere is done to her she cannot know, and if you ask her she’ll swear it so. Whether ‘tis good or evil there’s none to blame. No one can take the pride, no one the shame.” So here I am, as I’m told in Philippians, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” . And then I go through hell, and, therefore, there’s no one to take the pride for what’s going to come out of me, and no one to blame. For my Father did it; and I and my Father are one. So I sent myself through this world of hell, the world of death. And no one can take the pride. If Christ is formed in me, he has to be born. When he is formed, I can’t brag. I’m happy and thrilled beyond measure, but I can’t brag that I did it as a man. It is formed in me and it comes out. And who is it? It’s Christ. Who is Christ? The Lord, the Lord Jehovah. So he brings himself out; therefore, no one can take the pride and no one can take the shame.399 ¶21

But whatever is done to me as I walk this journey of 6,000 years, if you ask me, I do not know. I do not know why it happened to me, but it is all part of the work being done in me. When the work was completed, he brought it forth. And who did he bring forth? He brought me forth. So he raised me out of this garment that did his will. Well, who did his will? David did his will. “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my own heart, who will do all my will” . Well, I did all his will, so this was David. And it got old and then it was automatically renewed, and it was young again. Then it got old and then it died and it was young again. Then it got old and it died and it was young again. And he did all of God’s will, that youth. He was always a youth when restored to life. So I have found in David the son of Jesse…and Jesse is I AM, my own being, who will do all my will. So every time I depart from this world I am restored to life, not old, always young. Put him through the paces once more and then I come to the end, I get old, sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything, and then they declare “he’s dead” and then he’s restored and he’s young again.399 ¶22

And in the very end he raises him up, he who played all the parts. And what a youth! What a beauty! He stands before me now, his Father, Jesse, I AM, which is Jehovah. And he calls me, as he should, Father.399 ¶23

This is the story that begins with Christmas. Christmas is simply the rising in oneself and then the coming out of oneself, drawing oneself out of oneself. We speak of finding a little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. Have you looked up “swaddling” in the Bible? Know what it means? “To draw out”…that is the basis, the root of the word, “to draw out.” And when you do see it actually wrapped in swaddling clothes, no question about it, you do see the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. But “swaddling”…don’t take anything for granted. Like taking the word “among” and here it means “within”: “The things that have been accomplished within us.” Not “among us,” like someone out there, and yet it is, because I tell you my story and my friend Bob tells you, Benny tells you, and these are among us, no question about it. So you can’t deny the use of the word. But basically the word is “within.”399 ¶24

When I tell you it happened to me…I can’t take you, I can’t take you to the place where it happened or that moment in time when it happened. I can only tell you it happened in me. It seemed to happen on something on the outside. Well, then others come and they confirm it in their own lovely way. And so, you gather it altogether. So, “In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have happened, have been accomplished among us as it was dictated or delivered to us by those who were eyewitnesses from the very beginning, and they were ministers of the word”—they talked about it—“then it seemed good to me also having observed all things closely for some time past to write an orderly account.” And so, the best writer with all the materials at hand could produce the orderly account, that’s all that it means.399 ¶25

So, where is this being called Jesus Christ? He’s buried in you. So don’t think of any individual being called a Jesus Christ, 2,000 years ago. It is the great mystery of the unfolding of God’s plan in us. Now, as we are told, “He made known unto us the purpose of his will which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time” . When the fullness of time came, then it came forward. It erupted in man and he tells what is happening. There’s not a person in this world who can see it or understand it from this level. So he doesn’t jostle in the street; he simply climbs the mountain and proclaims it as he climbs the mountain, just as it happens in him. As he climbs he talks about it and others hear it. Then comes a recorder, who simply writes the narrative, telling it in the form of a story.399 ¶26

Now, Paul tells us the story is an allegory, as you read it in his letter to the Galatians. Well, if it is an allegory, do you know what an allegory is? It is a story told as if it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover its fictitious character and learn its lesson. So to go back to what I first started in the beginning, the Bible has no reference whatsoever to any person that ever walked the face of this earth or any event that ever happened here. But man has mistakenly taken personifications for persons, and the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself, and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended. So I’m telling you, the ultimate sense is that you awaken as God. There is only God playing all these parts. So when he awakens in you, you are he. God himself limited himself to man.399 ¶27

Now when you start searching scripture for these things and searching the traditions, it is said, he was born in Bethlehem—the house of bread, the house of food. “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” It goes back now to the middle of the 2nd Century that all tradition had it he was born in a cave. What is a more perfect representative of the cave than the skull of man? There’s no place in the Near East they can find this cave. But, we are told, in the 3rd Century the fathers erected an octagonal over a certain cave. Couldn’t find the cave, but they did erect a basilica in the octagonal shape. Well, the eight is the number of Jesus Christ. They couldn’t find the cave because the cave is not there: the cave is your own wonderful skull. That’s where he’s buried, and that’s where he rises. That’s where he is born and he comes out of that. That’s where David is buried and that’s where David will be raised. He raises him up. Who?—Israel’s king and then gives him to you, as what?—as your son. And whose son is he? He’s the Lord’s son. And he gives him to you.399 ¶28

Now all this tonight you’ve heard. If you have a good memory you could record it, and to the best of your memory and your ability to tell it, you can tell it, just as I’ve told you. It’s true. Because, I am not really…I’m not trying to be strange about this…there isn’t long for me to be here. You will carry on and I hope you won’t forget it. Keep it in mind: this is the story of Christ. There is no other story.399 ¶29

It hasn’t a thing to do what is taking place this very day in our city, that is, in our State, I should say. A man who is a priest gets married and they excommunicate him. Well, that’s scripture—they will excommunicate you. And there was a time, only a few hundred years ago, where they would have burned him. In the day of the Inquisition they would have burned him for such things. And so, you’re told in the 16th chapter of the Book of John, they will excommunicate you, “They will put you out of the synagogues” . Well, in that day it was only the synagogue, but the synagogue means the “orthodox church.” And so, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Mohammedan, that is the synagogue. “They’ll put you out of the synagogue, excommunicate you; indeed, they will kill you and think they are doing God a service. And they will do this because they know not the Father, nor me.”399 ¶30

Now, the head of the church who excommunicated the man because he got married, he thinks he is serving God. And he’s as blind as a bat. In fact, a bat is far more alert, because I have seen bats in the West Indies when they come out at dusk and you think you can hit them. I’ve tried to hit them and you can’t hit them. I’ve taken rock after rock to fire at them, as a boy. But, they have a peculiar sonic nose and they can detect anything as their nose comes to it. They can detect it and divert, just like turning at a right angle. You throw a rock right straight at them. It’s a flying mouse if you’re ever seen a bat. We have oodles of bats. At just about dusk they come out. They come out of the nowhere, these fantastic things, that I, as a boy, I’d go to my rocks, a whole pile of them, and try to get one. Never got one, because they had this built in sonic thing and you can’t hit them. So he is far more alert and he sees better than this bishop, who excommunicates this man who married his [...].399 ¶31

And so, may I tell you, let him alone. One day he will awaken. If it’s not tomorrow or a thousand years from now or maybe 5,000 years from now, what does it matter? He will awaken. He thinks today he is serving God, and he thinks when he drops off this little garment that some physical little Jesus will meet him. I have news for him. He’ll find himself restored to life, full of passion, doing all that he now condemns. He’ll find himself a young man, twenty years old, filled with all the passion of the world, falling in love with a beautiful girl, and he’ll be completely oblivious to all the nonsense that he’s now playing. That goes for all of them, from the pope down, may I tell you. Hasn’t a thing to do…you either are born from above or you’re not.399 ¶32

Listen to the words. Nicodemus who was one of the Sanhedrin…this is the 3rd chapter of the Book of John. Nicodemus means “victorious among his people”—Nico and demus—victorious among his people. But he didn’t understand and he came at night, and the conversation starts in the form of a dialogue and trails off into a monologue. He said, “You must be born from above. Unless you are born from above, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus answered, “Can a man when he is old be born again? Can he reenter his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “You, a master of Israel, the great teacher, and you do not understand these things?” ; “Truly, truly, I say unto you, unless a man is born from above he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” . Then he uses the so-called plural majesty, which is never on his lips save in this one chapter. For he said, “We tell you what we know; and you do not accept our testimony.” These are never found on his lips save in this chapter. But regardless of that, he is speaking now. Is he speaking for many or is he using the plural of majesty? Well, regardless of that, this is what the evangelist is using.399 ¶33

Then he goes on to explain to him: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” He explains to him that no one ever ascends into heaven but he who descended from heaven. Well, I have ascended, therefore I must have descended. You will ascend, therefore you must have descended. Then who are we? Are we not the gods who descended? Are we not the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm? “I say ye are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O ye princes.” Are we not those gods, the same gods spoken of in the 14th chapter of Acts, “Behold, the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men”? So we all came down and took upon ourselves the limitations of man; and we will rise and return, enhanced beyond the wildest dream.399 ¶34

May I tell you, not one will be lost, not one. I don’t care what he’s ever done in this world. Not one will be lost. It can’t be lost, for the body of God, the risen Lord, would lack something if one were missing. It can’t be, not one can be lost. Everyone must rise, and we all rise in our own good time.399 ¶35

So the Christmas story, which is about to take place in a matter of weeks…and people speak of going to Bethlehem and spend a fortune to go there to see the little place, and Bethlehem is in them. They will travel thousands of miles to see a little place and to find some little holy place that some cardinal marked out years ago as the holy spot. And it was never there. It never took place on this level. It took place in a remote region of our own wonderful soul, the human Imagination, that’s where it took place. And people try to locate it in the Near East and it isn’t there at all. Hasn’t a thing to do with that or any [...]; it’s all in man. Man contains the whole vast universe and it unfolds within him. He plotted it, became the limit of contraction and opacity, and started a journey that was horror beyond horror. And when he comes to the end of the journey, then it all begins…it bursts within him and it begins to awaken. And he is the very being that he, in his ignorance, he worshipped as another outside of himself. So this is Christmas that you and I will celebrate in just a matter of days…Lent being the first of the month. Now let us go into the Silence.399 ¶36

[...] this month and reopening on the 8th of January, the same schedule…there may be a few days that we cannot get here. There are not really many. But I do not feel like sending out notices.399 ¶37

Well, I need not remind you that this is the season of the year where everyone plots and plans to distribute gifts. But the real day marks an event that sets man free; that when this birth takes place in man, man is set free from this world of sin and death. And “Though Christ a thousand times be born in Bethlehem, if he is not born in us, our soul is still forlorn. And the cross on Golgotha we will look to in vain unless within ourselves it be set up again.” If there be any other Christ than he who was crucified within us and who rose and continues to rise in us, he is a false Christ. Anyone who teaches of a Christ on the outside is a false teacher…I do not care how they label it. If you have all the robes in the world and you’re acclaimed as a very wise, wise person, if you teach some external Christ, external to yourself, it’s a false Christ.398 ¶1

When you know the story, you’ll see it in scripture. Here in the 16th of Matthew, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” . Now when you read it you think a man standing on the outside is asking another on the outside, that Jesus is asking Peter, and they are two different men. It is not so. The drama is taking place within, for were he on the outside he is flesh and blood. I can tell you from now ’til the ends of time that you are Christ and Christ is God the Father, but I can’t persuade you. I can’t reach that level of conviction until you have experienced it.398 ¶2

So here he is saying, “Who do you say I am?” It’s from within me, the I AM in man. Well, maybe he hasn’t experienced it, and if he hasn’t, he will say John Brown, Paul Smith, Neville Goddard, whatever the name is. But that’s not it. The day will come I will have the experience. I will know from experience. And he tells me it came from my Father who is in heaven. For he said, “Go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and to your Father”—same Father—“to my God and to your God”…same God . So when the experience takes place in man, it’s the same Father; and the kingdom of heaven is within, so it is from within that the revelation comes . It cannot come from flesh and blood. No matter how wise a man is in this world, he cannot persuade you and he can’t persuade himself until it happens within himself.398 ¶3

Well, I’m telling you from my own experience it’s going to happen in every one of us. When it happens, you will know who Christ is. When you find Christ, you have found yourself. When you have found yourself, you will find God. When you find God, you’ll find God the Father. And it’s all within yourself. No flesh and blood can ever convince you. They can tell you what they have experienced, if they have experienced it, but there are no words to convince a man the thing is so profound. It’s so altogether marvelous. It’s such a mystery!398 ¶4

When I read scripture, I find the doctrine of the hidden-ness of Christ clearly stated. The hidden-ness of Christ is there as beautifully unfolded in all the gospels. Take these three passages from John—we go first to the 6th chapter of John. He is telling them that he came down from heaven and he is the bread, the living bread, and they said, “Is this not Jesus, Joseph’s son? And his father and his mother, do we not know them? How is it then he tells us he comes down from heaven?” . Then in the 8th chapter of John, they said to him, “Where is your Father?” He answered, “You know neither me, nor my Father, if you knew me, you would know my Father also” . Anyone knowing me, a man, if they knew me a way back in my early days in Barbados, they would know my father, my mother, my brothers. But when I tell them I am not of this world, they will deny it for they know my record is there, my birth certificate is there. My father’s name is Joseph, my mother’s name is Wilhelmina, and they have that record. Well, flesh and blood yes…they have the record of the flesh and blood, but they do not have the record in this world of what took place in me. The drama that is recorded in scripture took place in me.398 ¶5

What was that drama? He said, “My word shall not return unto me empty, but it must accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” . What is the “word”? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” . Then what is his purpose?—to unfold himself in man. For if his word cannot return empty, but must accomplish that which he purposes, well then, it is not going to return empty. But what is his word? The Word is God himself: “And his name shall be called the Word of God” .398 ¶6

So the only objective form you will ever see concerning Jesus Christ would really be the gospel. If you read the gospel, you are seeing the only objective form, with human eye, of Jesus Christ. Now eat it you’re told: “Eat my body.” In other words, assimilate it…try to grasp its meaning. For the word translated “word” which is the Greek word logos, simply means “that which is behind the thing.” In other words, its sense, its meaning, what is the meaning behind the story as you read it? If you read it and don’t get behind to its sense, you’re going to see a man on the outside. And yet there is no description of a physical Jesus in the Bible. No description whatsoever of what he looked like, how tall he was, how short he was, anything about him. All that is said, “When he was about thirty years of age, he began his ministry.” But anyone could be at thirty years of age…but there is no description whatsoever of a man, because he is The Word and The Word is in man. Man, as he walks this earth, finally finds himself unfolding the Word within himself. He has assimilated it; he has eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ which is the Word.398 ¶7

He heard the story. At first he thought it was on the outside and he worshipped an external Christ. That was a false Christ. He kept on through the years worshipping and looking to some external Christ to whom he prayed; he would cross himself and pray to something on the outside. Then one day, this thing erupts within him. It’s The Word—suddenly it erupts within him and he is born from above. He goes back into scripture to find everything said of Jesus the Christ he himself experienced. The whole thing unfolded in him. The sign of his birth, which was the child wrapped in swaddling clothes; the men who bore witness to the fact that the child was there. But they couldn’t see him. Why? Because it was God who was born and no mortal eye can see God. But God saw them and understood everything they entertained as thought, everything that they thought of while they were present, and he heard the wind…just as foretold in scripture.398 ¶8

Then came the moment in time where God the Father is about to reveal himself further as God the Father in the one in whom he was born. So I can tell you, you are God the Father, but I can’t persuade you because you cannot be persuaded by flesh and blood. So the thing talking to you now is flesh and blood, and this will not long be here. It will die like all men…all men die, this will die, too. But this is not the being of whom I speak. This thing called Neville will die in the not distant future. But what is within that I experience while walking this earth I cannot share it with you save in words. Everything said of the character called Jesus Christ in scripture I have experienced, all within me. So I know that the Word spoken of in the 1st of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and God’s Word cannot return unto him empty, but it must accomplish that which he purposes, and it must succeed in that which he sent it to do in this world.398 ¶9

Well, what did he send it to do?—he’s only begetting himself. He is unfolding himself in every man in whom the Word is deposited. So you hear the Word and you either reject it or you accept it. You accept it with faith, and then you go through all the trials of the world, and then it begins to unfold. It stirs and you feel it stirring. Long before it erupts into the first grand event, you feel it…the whole thing is stirring within you. It’s a hunger that only an experience of God can satisfy. You may search for it and seek it in alcohol. You may seek it in some dope. You may seek it in all kinds of things. It isn’t there. Suddenly it erupts within you and you find him within you, and you are he.398 ¶10

On the surface plane you do not look any different and you will age and get older and older before the eyes of others. You can’t prove to anyone that this thing has happened in you; you only prove to yourself. And all you can do, either write about it or talk about it and tell it to the world if they will listen, to encourage everyone to persist in the faith. But I tell you, if there is any Christ whatsoever other than he who was crucified within us and who rose and continues to rise in us, that Christ is a false Christ; and anyone who teaches that outside Christ is a false teacher of a false doctrine. For this is the hidden Christ buried in the heart of every person in the world. So you will stir it by acceptance and by belief.398 ¶11

So here is the Christ. When this little thing is taken off, it’s off for the last time…no more death for this one. Everyone else who has not had he birth, they are instantly restored to life, new, unaccountably new. New—no loss of faculties, no loss of anything, but in a world terrestrial just like this one—solidly real. And may this be your experience in the immediate present, for you can see these that the world called dead…they’re not dead at all. When you meet them they’re all so young, about twenty. Drop off here when they’re ninety and suddenly they’re twenty. Many of them don’t even realize the change, totally unaware of the change. They see themselves this young, wholesome, healthy being filled with all the passions of the world and the ambitions of the world, and the desire to succeed; and they don’t realize that they were once, only a moment before, an old, decrepit person. They take it for granted. Many of them I had to persuade that they went through the experience that the world here calls death…they don’t believe it. When I talk to them, they can’t believe they went through the gate called death, because they’re not dead. They take for granted the newness of that body that they’re wearing. They do all the things you do here. No transforming power in this transition called death. You go through it, and you die again and find yourself instantly restored to a healthy, wonderful, new body in a same terrestrial world until the birth called Christmas takes place within you.398 ¶12

So this is the great event. When Christmas takes place in man, he departs from this terrestrial world and enters an entirely different age, spoken of in scripture as “that age.” An entirely different age…you can’t describe it…because you have life in you. There’s something entirely different. You’re not just something that is simply marking time and getting older. You’re not getting older and you’re not getting older and you’re one body. That body is the risen body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Everyone who is born form above enters that body, they’re incorporated into it, and that body is their body. It’s not another body; you actually are one with the risen Christ, and you wear that body. What a glorious body it is! It’s all love, it’s nothing but love. When you enter it, you can’t think of anything but love. And you are that being, it’s the Ancient of Days, and you are one with this body: “One Spirit, one body, one Lord, one God and Father of all” . For you are that Father. God succeeded in actually giving himself to you; not as another, you become God, you become the Father. That is the purpose. For the Word that was in the beginning was God. So it’s not something he’s speaking out into space, like my words now. He actually is the Word and God becomes man that man may become God.398 ¶13

So the Word is buried in man, and then at one moment in time it erupts and the whole drama unfolds within man. Here comes the birth and the sign of the birth; here comes his only begotten Son calling you Father. Everything unfolds within you. Finally the curtain will come down and that’s the last time you will walk this terrestrial sphere where you are born, mature, die finding yourself restored; maturing, dying finding yourself again; maturing, dying…and it goes on and on until Christmas takes place in man. So this marks this great dividing line between “this age” and “that age.”398 ¶14

So anytime anyone teaches you of an external Christ, I tell you he is a false teacher. When they paint all these pictures of Christ—and there are forty-odd in the museum in New York City, all supposed to be authentic—they are lying. You can’t paint that picture. How are you going to paint and capture it? How are you going to paint it? You can’t even paint it in words. That memory has not faded, I feel it all the time, but no mortal eye can see it. Yet, though I feel it and sleep in it and walk in it, I can’t describe it. So how are you going to describe it to anyone? Can’t describe it any more than you can describe David when you see him. Oh, I can tell you what he looks like, in a way, and in that 16th chapter of 1st Samuel, they tried to show it, too. They tried to describe him, but you can’t describe him. They simply refer to him as “ruddy, with beautiful eyes” . Well, how are you going to go beyond it? He’s a youth, and how are you going to go beyond that?398 ¶15

Well here, in that 7th chapter of 2nd Samuel, the Lord speaks to Nathan his prophet, he said, “Go to your servant David and you say to David that I, the Lord of hosts, I brought you from the pasture from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. And say to David that the Lord declares to him that the Lord will make a house for you, and that the Lord…“When your time is fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers”—it’s plural, fathers—“I will raise up your seed after you who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” . The word translated house means “not only a dwelling place but a dynasty.” It is not a house made with human hands but one consisting of human lives, for everyone that is raised is incorporated into this house. It’s a living house, consisting of human lives. And it’s a dynasty in the sense that it contains the entire family of David and all of his generations.398 ¶16

Now, David lies down with the fathers…not Davids plural, David. But the fathers, that’s plural. You are the father, I am the father, we are the fathers…yet in the end it takes all the fathers to form the Father. And you will be the Father of the only Son. It will not be another Son; you’ll be the father of the same boy that I am the father of; therefore, you and I are the same father, without loss of identity. That’s the mystery. How is this thing possible? How can I be the father of a son and then suddenly it erupts within you and you have the same son and he calls you Father? You have no doubts in your mind as to the relationship. He is your son and he is my son. Well, can you and I then be two? And we understand the Book of John, “I dwell in them and they dwell in me and we are one, Father, as you and I are one” . It’s a peculiar mystery…and you can’t explain it on the level of flesh and blood.398 ¶17

So this event that is being celebrated is an eternal event taking place within man in that unseen Christ, no seen Christ, nothing on the outside. So when they make statues of him and paintings of him, and the priesthoods of the world teach of an external Christ, they are misleading the people. They are simply blind leaders of the blind. They are false teachers teaching a false doctrine. And they say in scripture they will circumnavigate the world to make a convert, they will kill you and believe they actually serve God, and they do it because they know not the Father nor me. If they only knew the Father, they could not preach any external Christ, none whatsoever.398 ¶18

So here, we are on the very verge of a day…it’s not that day, the 25th of December…it’s any moment in time it could happen. It could happen right now in this audience, it could. It could happen this night to anyone or many in this audience, because it’s going to happen, may I tell you, in the not distant future.398 ¶19

A friend of mine wrote me, I got the letter today, she said, “Last week I found myself attending a lecture of yours held in the outdoors by a river, and among the audience were priests, Catholic priests, there were ministers, there were rabbis. And someone went up to a rabbi and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ and he replied, ‘Because Neville teaches the truth.’ They were all present, all denominations, all faiths.” Then she said, “I had a jar and in it was a bug, and that bug seemed to be sound asleep, it was still. It could have been dead, but it was sound asleep. Then I turn it over. As I turned it over and it fell, then I woke.” Beautiful symbolism! A complete reversal of all thoughts and then one wakes. A complete reversal…as you’re told in scripture, first last, last first…a complete turn around. You turn it over and reverse it and then she wakes…only symbolizing her own waking-ness.398 ¶20

And so, we all were trained in this external worship. The mind is held on the outside first. We speak…and may I tell you, forget those who claim that they’re so very wise in the world. They think because they have some position of some importance in the eyes of the intellectual world that they really know. You can’t analyze it, you can’t rationalize it, so don’t aspire to it. This whole drama unfolds within us. It is not secular history; the whole thing is supernatural…Christ is wholly supernatural. He is the Word of God…and “No one has ever seen God, but the Son in the bosom of the Father, he makes him known” . Yet you’re told in John that he did see God, and those who are of God see him; they see the Father but others do not. In other words, you can’t see him on this level, so let no one paint any word picture or any other picture for you concerning an external Christ.398 ¶21

But you will see him, may I tell you, and when you see him you are incorporated into his body and you are one with him—you wear that body. That is the one baptism. When he embraces you, you completely fuse…you melt into his body without loss of identity. From then on you’re so aware of wearing that garment. Though this little thing hurts, this hurts and it tires, and you get sleepy, and you put it down, and many a night you feel, oh well, why do I wake tomorrow? You get so hungry to depart, and yet you’re told you’ve got to finish it. But as far as I personally am concerned, I feel I’ve finished it…yet I cannot depart before my time. Yet having worn it and still wearing it, you long…as you read the words of Paul, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ” . Yet they told him he has to wait for a while, not too long, for a while, and continue the work that he was doing. But having once worn it even though you are shut out and insulated with this little garment, you still feel it and you still sink into it, and the joy is so great.398 ¶22

May I tell you, when you come back here and once more pick this thing up in the morning, it’s like actually wearing some tight little garment. You come back into something that is so completely constricted, as though you’re wearing some, well, the kind of thing you put the insane in. You feel yourself actually crystallize into this garment, and it’s such a tiny, little thing you feel so bound in it. Then you depart once more to wear it and to return to this. After a while it does get a little bit, I would say, distressing.398 ¶23

But don’t be concerned. You will not always wear these garments, because the Word has gone forward. You’ve accepted the Word, and one day when you least expect it, it’s going to erupt in you. As it erupts within you, from then on the whole drama unfolds, and no one can stop it. It doesn’t matter what job you are now doing. You could be now for a living washing floors, you could be running the country, you could be doing anything in this world. It hasn’t a thing to do with any external appearance. Did you hear it with faith? That’s all that he’s asking. And may I tell you, you get to the point you feel nothing is impossible and you don’t raise one finger to make it so, not a finger.398 ¶24

Saturday morning I was shaving and my wife said, “David is on the wire and he asked me to tell you he needs a little help right now.” David’s show was going on at U.C.L.A. last Saturday night, and there’s a part where the soprano must wear this perfectly long head of hair…it’s part of the drama, the Magi. Well, it disappeared and they couldn’t find it no matter where they looked. The looked all over and they couldn’t find it. Well, you had to have it; it’s part of the equipment.398 ¶25

I stopped shaving, I heard David’s voice. Now he’s not talking to me, but I heard his voice and all I would allow him to tell me is “I found it!” That’s all…then I went on shaving. My wife had to go out that afternoon. And just before my friend Benny came—Benny didn’t come until about 6:30 or even later—but some time between 5:30 and six the phone rang. It was David and he said, “I’ve found it.” He looked all over that area for it and he couldn’t find it, and no one could find it.398 ¶26

Well, I didn’t bother and I never thought of David after that moment. I wished him good fortune with the show. I saw it the previous week and loved it. I thought it was perfectly marvelous…the music, the whole treatment of everything, I loved it. I just said to him, “Well, I do hope tonight you have a full house and that everything will be perfect.” Well, he tells me tonight they turned away about 250 to 300 people, and the theater seats about 540. So it was crowded and they turned away 250 people. But he found it!398 ¶27

All that I did, I listened as though I heard his voice. I can hear his voice…well then, I look upon that as a promise of God. I heard him tell me that I have found it. Well, who heard it? I did. Well, what is his name? I AM, that’s his name. Well, who is hearing it? I am hearing it. Then that becomes God’s promise. Now the little thing called Neville, of flesh and blood, what could he do to find it? I’d be lost in that university it’s so big. If you told me tonight go and find a certain hall, I wouldn’t know where to go. So how would I go looking for that piece of hair? I couldn’t find it, but I knew that that word would have to fulfill itself. And it had to fulfill itself not on Sunday, that’s too late; it had to fulfill itself on Saturday. So you hear it and then you drop it, and do nothing but simply look upon that as a promise of God. All of his promises are fulfilled in me. I heard it, and so I go about my Father’s business, and he and I are one.398 ¶28

I confess I did not do one thing in the interval, neither was I concerned. When he called, I was busy. My wife was out and she’d left the stove on. I had to watch it to see that certain things were in order. She and my daughter went out shopping or doing some little errand. So in that interval I was busy with household duties…but then he calls and confirms it.398 ¶29

So I tell you tonight, this is going to happen to you. Christmas will happen, no question about it. But in the interval, listen as though you heard what you want to hear. You want to bless someone, you can bless. Listen to their voice and then allow them to tell you what you would like them to tell you, and then believe it. Believe in the reality of what you heard and do nothing to make it so…just believe it! That’s a word. A word went forth from your mouth and it cannot return empty, it cannot return void. It must accomplish that which you purposed. So you try it. But don’t burst a blood vessel to make it so. It’s a simple, simple technique and you simply believe. Can you believe it?398 ¶30

Well, this wonderful day that is approaching the outer world is a day that takes place in man. It’s a moment in time. In my own case it was not December the 25th, it was the 20th day of July of 1959. That was my Christmas. And my discovery of the fatherhood of God was on the 6th day of December of ’59. My splitting of the curtain of the temple of my own body was on the 8th day of April, 1960. And the descent of the dove upon me, smothering me with love, was on the 1st day of January in 1963. So these days are indelibly impressed upon me. But I do not use them as anniversaries, I simply wrote them down when they happened. These events are stationed in this manner, in this chronological order, and I put them down for a purpose.398 ¶31

When my friend Bob had the first experience, I was hopeful, but I did not write it down and he did not date his letter to me. But it did, it came in the same chronological order. If it’s a day or two one way or the other, it makes no difference. But the same difference in time between the birth and discovery of the fatherhood of God through his Son who calls you Father; then comes the splitting of the temple, completing a nine-month-period. Then comes the interval of another two years and nine months to complete that three-and-a-half year period with the dove descending. And so two of us paralleled chronologically. And so I am now waiting for Benny to bring out his around, say, the 6th of March of next year…and he better not disappoint me!398 ¶32

So here, believe it. Not a thing in this world could happen to you comparable to this birth. Nothing could thrill you more! For if you can be thrilled thinking of an external Christ, just imagine the thrill when you find he is not external to you…that he is you. That when you find Christ, you’ve found yourself! And when you find the Father, you’ve found yourself! When you’ve found his Son, what a thrill! That no one ever told you before that it was David, save scripture. Scripture tells you, but man has been educated out of it. And he went in search of another son and it wasn’t that son at all—that one, Jesus Christ, was the Father, who David in the Spirit called Father. “So what think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? And they answered, ‘The son of David.’” Then he replied, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” . The word Lord, Adonai, is what was used by every son of his father. He always referred to his father as Adonai, my Lord.398 ¶33

Who would have thought that someone walking this generation in the year 1959 would be the father of one who the world believes to have existed 1,000 B.C.? Then you know the words, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and he was glad” . “You saw our father Abraham? Why you’re not yet fifty years of age, how can you see Abraham or Abraham see you? He replied, ‘Before Abraham was, I am’” . And they took up the s tones—meaning the facts of life—to stone him. They’re going to stone him with the facts—you’re only fifty years of age, therefore, it’s impossible for you to have seen him or he to have seen you. Well, he rejoiced that he was going to see my day and he saw it. He had a preview of this great event and he was glad, because “He chose me in him before the foundation of the world” . So the whole thing is not something that happened by accident; this is a plan, a play.398 ¶34

Then I come out from the Father…and yet before I came out from the Father I was one with the Father. Then I came out, and “he who sees me”—if he ever sees me—“sees him who sent me” . So I’m not left alone…he who sees me sees him who sent me. Well, who sent you?—the Father. If you saw me, you would see him, but you can’t see me with mortal eye. For if you saw me, you would see him, for he and I are one . Then I will leave the world and return, where?—to the Father. “I came out from the Father, and I came into the world; now I am leaving the world, returning to the Father” …but enhanced by reason of the journey. So the power that was ours prior to the journey is increased, the creative power and the translucence that was ours prior to the journey has increased, and we’re expanded beyond what we were prior to the contraction as we came out and limited ourselves to these garments of flesh and blood.398 ¶35

Now here we only have one left and we’re closing for a short interval of three weeks, so we’re closing on Friday, and then re-opening here, same place, same time on Monday the 8th of January. I’m not sending notices; it’s too short an interval. So I will take just a small ad in the L.A. Times the Saturday before I open to remind anyone who may forget the day. But I’ll be open on the 8th of January, here, at 8 PM.398 ¶36

The subject will be the same: God becoming man that man may become God; that man’s Imagination is the creative power of the universe; and that you can imagine, therefore, all things are possible to you because you can imagine…if you could only imagine and accept as true what you’ve imagined. That is my story, and I’ll tell it over and over and over until it gets over. Now let us go into the Silence.398 ¶37

The most incredible story ever told man or that could ever be told man is the gospel. You and I read in the morning paper, and we’re all excited that someone transplanted a heart. Time magazine refers to it as the “ultimate operation”; take a heart from one who is dead and put it into the body of one who needs one badly. Why, I do not know, but he wants to vegetate beyond his present moment. But nevertheless it’s called the “ultimate operation.” Now, may I tell you what the gospel really is in essence: God, the God who created the whole vast universe and sustains it, became man that man may become God. Can you conceive of any greater story in the world?397 ¶1

Well, when man hears it, he turns his back upon it. We are told that it is told to the men of the world and they receive it in four different ways . The majority completely turn from it as the most incredible and stupid story that ever could be told. It is said, it falls upon the wayside and the birds of the air devoured it. Then there are those who eagerly take it, but they’re not prepared to really receive it; and then over night it takes a little root but then comes the sun and scorches it because it had no depth. The sun makes visible the facts of life, the things that you and I call real—and it completely denies the reality of what was heard, and they thought it must have been just an idle dream. Then it falls upon, well, the thorns and the thistles of the way…all the cares of life. They’re about paying rent, buying food, clothing, and getting on in this world. And so there must be a moment in time when we will take care of that, but not now; and so all the thorns and the thistles and the cares of the world choke it. Then there are those who have been prepared. They heard it and they struggle to keep it alive. As they struggle to keep it alive, they prepare the ground to receive it. Some bring forth the thirty-fold, sixty-fold, and an hundred-fold.397 ¶2

Now when you hear it, that is imparting the word. You can reject it; you can have it simply scorched by the facts of life, choked by all the cares of the world. Or you can hear it, this most incredible story that ever could be told man and so prepare yourself to receive it that then the word, having been imparted, can then be implanted…all the difference in the world. “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your soul” . This may seem to you, well, the height of insanity. But I am not talking out of turn, I am not speculating, I am telling you what I know, what I know from my own personal experience.397 ¶3

So, this is the difference between imparting the word, getting it rejected, choked, scorched, or accepted. Then comes that moment in time when the word can be implanted, engrafted. The word translated “engrafted” in the King James Version and “implanted” in the Revised Standard Version is a compound word. We have, first of all, the preposition “in, within” which means “to fix in place, in time or state.” And then we have a word which means “to puff up, to blow up, simply to sprout”…in other words, “to germinate.” So we take the word and the word is God—God himself being implanted into that soil that has been prepared that is man. It’s done within. When it is implanted, well then, in its own good time it erupts, and a definite system unfolds within, a definite plan, and that one actually begins to expand from that moment on; expands and continues to expand, and expands into God who created this universe and sustains it. Not some little thing, he expands into God forever and forever, the very God who created the whole vast universe.397 ¶4

Now, may I tell you, it seems stupid and silly but it’s true…I operate nightly. I impart the word daily, all through the day…whether I do it as I’m doing it now I’m imparting the word. But there are moments in time when I am called upon—and you do not do it here—where I am the surgeon and I am implanting the word, engrafting the word. There are in this audience those who have had that experience where I engrafted it. It doesn’t hurt. “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” for the soul could remain indefinitely in this world…it’s all in our own wonderful human Imagination.397 ¶5

And man is quite satisfied to make a billion and make two billion and make four billion, and think himself completely marvelous. If you’ve read the current issue of The Post magazine, it really if you look at it with a wonderful humorous eye, you’ll laugh your head off. There are those who have two billion dollars, a single man, his name is H. L. Hunt, came from Canada, a poor boy, he’s now seventy-seven, and he has his two billion. Tonight, someone reading that would be so envious of this seventy-seven-year-old man with his two billion dollars, and who, in the not distant future, takes off the little coat called the state of consciousness of two billion and finds himself returned to youth, twenty years old, and not in possession of two billion dollars at all…a complete unveiling of this state…and he starts all over again.397 ¶6

So he hears the Word and it doesn’t interest him. But he’s not alone. There are others, believe it or not, in our fabulous land with another two billion—a Getty, a Hughes, all these—who have no concept of the story, the most incredible story in the world: that you are destined to become the very one who created the whole vast universe and contains within you these billionaires. And they are all paupers in your world. They can’t make one hair of the head. “He who made the eyes, shall he not see? He who made the ears, shall he not hear?” And you are destined to become that being that creates all the eyes and the ears of the universe, and grows all the hair of the universe and everything in the world. With its two billion, it can’t make one little string of hair. Oh, it can buy a wig, no question about it. With that sort of money you can buy all the wigs in the world, but you can’t make one little hair that grows. And you are destined by the story when you are engrafted to become the one who creates the whole vast world.397 ¶7

Now here, I have a friend of mine, he sits in the back tonight, his name is Bill. A few years ago, he was prepared for “surgery” and it was engrafted in him. No one knows when the graft actually begins to germinate. So we are told in the first chapter of Acts, “When?” He said, “It’s not for you to know the time, the season that the Father has fixed by his own authority” . So don’t ask when it is going to burst and erupt into flower and start the expansion. There’s another lady, she sits here tonight on my right, and only a few weeks ago she was engrafted. Now, when it’s going to erupt, no one knows. You’re told, no, not even the Son know it, only the Father by his own authority. And all are being engrafted as they are prepared. It takes preparation for the field to receive this fantastic story.397 ¶8

So when they say this is the ultimate operation that is no operation compared to this operation. As we’re told in Ezekiel, the 11th chapter, and Jeremiah, the 24th, “I will give them a new heart and I will put a new spirit within them, that I may take from them the stony heart and give them a heart of flesh; then they will be my people, and I will be their God.” Jeremiah tells us, “I will give them a new heart that they may know that I am the Lord.” I can tell you from now ’til the ends of time that I AM, meaning I AM in you, this is the Lord. But without the new heart, you can’t get it, you can’t quite believe it, you can’t quite grasp it. So, “I will give them a new heart that they may know that I am the Lord,” and the only way you can get the new heart is when the graft takes place. Then God grows in man and man begins to expand, and expands and expands and expands within the bosom of God forever and forever…the same God that created the universe. That is the ultimate operation.397 ¶9

Not the transplant of some little heart from a woman who had this fatal accident into the body of a man who is well on in years, who has everything in the world wrong with him, and so he will vegetate. Then the doctor who performed the operation will be acclaimed internationally and he will have his day in this little passing world. I will not take from him that it is a wonderful operation, no question about it, but that’s not the ultimate operation. The ultimate is to receive with meekness the implanted word, and the Word is God.397 ¶10

So, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” . So take the Word…this most incredible story. At first you hear it, that’s the imparted word. When you hear it, you either reject it or you toy with it, and if the cares of the world are too many and too pressing, you drop it. But the word is always being imparted and imparted and imparted—and then you pick it up again. Finally you once more ponder it and dwell upon it, and the seed begins to break up this stone that is man. Then comes one when it’s well prepared and he comes to implant the word. That is something that takes place not here on this level at all. It takes place in an entirely different region, a way beyond this, in the depths of your own soul. That’s where it takes place.397 ¶11

As we are told in the 2nd of Luke, “And there was a man in Jerusalem, his name was Simeon, and he was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel; and then the Holy Spirit possessed him and he was taken in Spirit into the temple”. Now, if I’m taken in Spirit into the temple, don’t think for one moment I’m moving into anything made with human hands—no synagogue, no cathedral, no church, nothing made with human hands. I’m taken in Spirit into the temple. Now, Paul tells us, “You are the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you”. So if I’m taken in Spirit into the temple, where am I taken but within myself! So, he’s taken now in Spirit into the temple.397 ¶12

The parents bring the Christ child, for he is now eight days old and they bring him in to do for him according to the law. Simeon takes the child into his ams and lifting him up in his arms he blesses God. Then he said, “Lord, now let they servant depart in peace, according to thy Word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” . Then he said, “Behold this child is set for the fall and the rising of many in Israel; and for a sign that shall be spoken against, for he shall unveil, or reveal, the heart of all” . Your reaction to the story as told will reveal where you stand in the great play. Now, here is the child, it comes in, and he has been promised that he would not see death before he saw the Lord’s Christ. The Lord’s Christ which means “the birth of God in man” is symbolized in the form of a little child, which we will now celebrate in a couple of weeks. It isn’t any child—that is only the sign—this is set for a sign, as we are told. It repeats itself throughout scripture: “This shall be a sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the floor”…that’s where you find him. But that is only the sign of an event that has taken place. What is the event? That engrafted Word has erupted, and the whole thing is now unfolding in the one in whom it has erupted…expanding forever in the bosom of God, the very God that created the universe and sustains it. And when he expands and expands, he is that God. But not until the Word has first been implanted within him. It takes root and then in the fullness of time it erupts.397 ¶13

So Simeon sees it. Now, may I tell you from my own experience how true this story really is. Others will see it and will deny it. Not all who witnessed it believed it, but one will believe it and the one who believes it always raises the child in his hands. He lifts the child up in his hands, and he who lifts it up is the one who will not depart this world until he has seen it. He has promised, “You will not see death until you see the Lord’s Christ” . When he sees it, soon after he will depart into the sphere where he has now gone. He is being implanted. He’s still in this world, terrestrial world just like this, in a body same as before but young. But before he departed, he held the child in his arms…and now he’s being implanted. That I know from my own personal experience.397 ¶14

There were three of my brothers present when it happened in me. The one who was the youngest of three lifted the child and declared whose child it was; and when he said, “It’s Neville’s baby” the others denied it by asking in the most incredulous manner, “How could Neville have a baby?” But he didn’t argue the point he simply presented the evidence, the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. Well, a few years later he did depart this world. He was the youngest of the three who were present, but he went first, leaving behind the two who are still so busy about making money. They’re darlings, may I tell you, they are perfectly wonderful, but their concern is to make more and more and more of the same thing—the same thing is money. As one said to me this past year: “Well, I’ll face it when I come to it. I came in here not knowing why I came and so I will depart not knowing where I’m going, and if I do survive then I will know what to do then. It doesn’t concern me concerning what you talk about, doesn’t interest me.” Well, he showed it in the vision. The other one has never listened to one word I’ve ever had to say. It doesn’t interest him. But my brother the doctor he was all ears for everything concerning this, and he was the one who was youngest of the three…just as scripture describes it that you will not see death before you’ve seen the Lord’s Christ.397 ¶15

The Lord’s Christ is only symbolized in the form of a child. But you are the Lord’s Christ, for Christ will be born in you. God is born in you. So the little infant that we all now celebrate on Christmas day, that’s only a sign, a symbol, of what is going to take place in the man after the man has been engrafted with the word of God. When he has been actually exposed to it, and the operation does take place, it’s an implanting of the word of God by God’s heavenly hosts. It’s going on all the time. It can only be implanted in the one whose soil has been prepared to receive it.397 ¶16

So if I am so busy that I am not interested—I want to make more money, I want to be more famous, I want to be called, well, one of the best dressed men of the year or the best dressed lady of the year—if that is my interest in life, alright, well then, that’s my interest. No criticism! Leave them alone! Let them be just as they want to be.397 ¶17

But those who really are sincere about it…to listen to the most incredible story in the world…how could the God who created the whole vast universe become you in this tiny little planet? It’s so insignificant compared to this vast, enormous display of light. How could this be the cradle where God actually descends into man, in this little thing called earth; not only earth but you this tiny little dot on earth? And how could that be a true story…that God actually becomes man that man may become God? So, you tell the story and what ears have you to listen? They don’t…they turn away from you. But I tell you, the story is true. “Receive with meekness the implanted word.” But, may I also tell you, when it comes to the implanting you will; when it comes to simply telling the story, imparting it, you may turn from it. So there’s a difference between imparting the word of God and implanting the word of God. When man is ready for the implant he doesn’t resist it at all.397 ¶18

Like my friend who said to me a few weeks ago, “Is it necessary?” I assured her it was, it was necessary. She was lying prone on a hospital cot and I was the surgeon—it’s a spiritual surgeon.—and then I assured her it wouldn’t hurt. She wasn’t quite sure she was ready for it, but she said, “I’ve always believed you and believe you implicitly. Without any doubt whatsoever I believe you.” When I assured her that it would not hurt, I took, she said in her symbolism, an implement like a comb, a silver comb, and the teeth were simply like needles. It seemed a cool brushing on her body. Then when she said, “I’m ready now,” then she realized it was all done. The implanting took place.397 ¶19

But I cannot tell her when, for the Son does not know. When he starts, he is the Son, but the Father and the Son are one. He’s destined to be the whole Father, but he starts playing the part of the Son.397 ¶20

When it happened to Bill two years ago, three years ago, all the symbolism is perfect, may I tell you. Everything in this world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. So, I’m not a surgeon in this world, but to her a surgeon is essential for an operation, so she conjured me from the depths of her soul and I played the part in her world as the surgeon. Now, if these things are going to be done, a hospital would be in order, so she finds herself lying prone on a hospital cot, being prepared for the operation. So you see, everything contains the capacity for symbolic significance, because I am certainly not a surgeon here. I don’t know what I could cut with a straight line. I certainly wouldn’t attempt to cut anything…not in human form.397 ¶21

But here, as you know, dreams are ego-centric, so within her she has faith in me as a teacher who imparts the word. So when it came necessary for the operation, within her she conjured me to play the part of the surgeon. The whole thing is done by oneself. She’s willing to have this thing performed and she’s doing it. But in the depths of her own soul here is Neville, in whom she has faith, so she conjures me as the surgeon whom she will allow to perform this operation. That’s how the drama unfolds in man.397 ¶22

Because, “The whole vast world, though it appears without, it is within, in one’s Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” . So I did not come to her as a man called Neville, who’s speaking to you now, and perform the operation. I’m in every one of you and every one of you in me. So what you mean to me I would use when I want to reveal to myself a certain state. If this night I’m ready for the operation, the one in whom I have all faith concerning the word of God and his ability to actually implant that word, I will conjure out of my own being. I will conjure that being out of my own being. He’ll be the surgeon who will play the part he has to play because I am doing it. And so, the whole thing is unfolding within man.397 ¶23

The story of Jesus Christ is a true story contained in man. The day will come, man will awaken and he is Jesus Christ. So the word that’s implanted he implanted himself. But he first must prepare himself for the reception of that graft. He prepares himself by first hearing the word. He hears it, he believes it, and as he believes it he tries to live by it to the best of his ability. As he lives by it, applying this principle and living by it, then the story becomes ready to receive the graft. At that moment in time he will conjure our of his own being a being that he loves or she loves, one she trusts, and he will be the grand surgeon who will bring about the transplant, and bring about a new heart, a new spirit, that will be planted into that being. Then, at one moment it will germinate and burst, and the whole story of Jesus Christ will unfold within you. Then and only then will you know who you really are—that you are Jesus Christ!397 ¶24

It begins with an awakening within you, it’s a resurrection. Then will come the birth of the child; and the child will be discovered by three, they’ll find it. And you will hold the child in your hands. But one will hold it first; Simeon will hold it. In my world his name isn’t Simeon, it’s Lawrence…that was my brother Lawrence…the other two brothers were called Cecil and Victor. They denied it. They are my elders; they’re still here. But Lawrence didn’t deny it. Now Lawrence is departed, but not before he saw the Lord’s anointed…because, he went after the event, not before it. Then will come the revelation of the Father in you, revealing you as God the Father. The whole thing unfolds within you from beginning to end. The whole story of Jesus Christ is contained in that implanted word.397 ¶25

So, first we are prepared. Now as Paul tells us, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us” . So don’t be concerned about any suffering, who can avoid suffering? No one in this world can avoid suffering. I don’t care what he is. If any man tells me that he can completely avoid all suffering, that he’s so wise he knows how to do it, well, you’ll be called to their sickbed and then they look at you and wonder. You’ll be called to their funeral, because they all die, though gods they all die. Everyone dies…but he doesn’t really die. But he dies anyway to those who watch him go beyond. So let no one brag that he is so healthy, that he’s above it all because he eats well or he lives well, he doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke. I have news for him, all that he now condemns, that he doesn’t do, he’ll do. Everything he tells me he doesn’t do, I can prophesy for him, he’s going to do it. So, let no one feel himself so holy and feel himself so good, they’re good for nothing at that moment. But God is infinitely merciful and will put them through the paces, and then prepare them to receive the implanted word. Doesn’t put them through the paces to hurt them; God is a God of mercy. He’s not getting even with himself, because it’s God—the whole thing is God—just preparing the soil to receive himself. Because that word cannot fall upon the highway…it vanishes. It falls among the thorns and the thistles, they choke it. It falls upon a rock, doesn’t have any depth and so the sun bringing up the facts of life scorches it. It has to have soil that has been prepared…and pain prepares it! Those whom God has, well, I would say, hurt for secret ends he then comforts. In the end, comforts them. And then, what gift greater than to give himself!397 ¶26

So Paul says, “Set your heart fully, your hope, upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” . All your hope let it be on that grace that is coming to you. Well, what is grace? Grace is God’s gift of himself to man, that’s what grace is. Grace is the final expression of God’s love in action which man would experience when he unveils Christ in him as himself. Not some Christ on the outside; no “Christ in you is the hope of glory” . So he unveils him in you. But he can’t unveil that which is not in you; he can’t emerge unless he’s now submerged in me. How can he simply erupt in me unless he’s present in me? Well, to be present in me he has to be implanted, and so everyone receives the implant, the graft. And those who have awakened are the surgeons in the depths of the soul of all…and they conjure us.397 ¶27

Here is a lady, she is not present tonight, she said, “I had this wonderful dream, here I am and my youngest daughter said to me”—now this lady is a grandmother, one of the youngest grandmothers you’ve ever seen but a grandmother—“and my youngest daughter came to me and said there was a very ugly looking man, ugly face, in the house out in the back.” Well, she went out and as she entered the house it turned into a barn. What her youngest daughter thought to be an ugly face, it was her lover, in rags. In all of her dreams she always encountered this same person, and here he is. He seemed hungry and seemed to be either in rags or in old clothes. So she gave him something to eat, and then she took him by the hand and they walked out hand in hand, and she fell in love all over again with this person. In her dreams he follows as the one that she always loves. She passed a spot…she said, “Here was a spot…five feet from here is where the house was that I once lived in.” Then she walked… “Here is the house that I lived in…and here was a house that I lived in.” She walked by these many, many states of consciousness, signified by houses or places where houses ought to be. These were all states through which she passed. At the very end she heard the cry of a child. The child is crying because her brother had eaten some poison and he would die. The boy who had eaten the poison was about four or five. Then she went to a neighbor and told the neighbor, a woman, what had happened to this boy, and she began to scramble eggs for the boy. She said, “No, he doesn’t want eggs, give him milk. That will free him of the poison.” Then she realized that the one who was four or five years old when he took the poison is suddenly now only an infant, a little tiny infant. But she also realized that she herself, in this motion, she was just out of her teens. Well, just out of your teens is twenty—nineteen, and you hit twenty—she was just out of her teens when she became conscious of the fact that the little child, who had gone back in time to an infant, [...] she herself as she moved past these so-called homes where she lived.397 ¶28

Well, this body is a home; this is a house where I live. But a man’s true house is that state to which he most constantly returns. If I return constantly to the feeling of being unwanted, that’s my house. If I return to the feeling of being insecure, that’s my house. So that state of consciousness to which man most constantly returns constitutes her permanent dwelling place. Well, we can get out of it. So she saw the different states that she had dwelt in. These were all states of consciousness and, naturally, you call them homes. So you go to a house and you dwell in that house. But a state of consciousness is man’s true house. If I go tonight to New York City and live in a fabulous hotel, I still carry my state of consciousness with me, and I am still aware of my limitations, my potentials, all these things. That’s my house. Whether I tonight live in the Plaza Hotel and got the biggest suite they have to offer, I am still the being that I am aware of being. That being that I am aware of being is the house where I live.397 ¶29

So she pointed out to her lover…well, this man who was her lover, who seemed in rags, is the Father within herself. Man is seeking the Eternal Father, and when he finds the Father he finds himself. So you are in love with that being who brought you into being as it were. So she is now pointing out to herself these states through which she passed.397 ¶30

And then, she only confirms what I’ve been teaching here, that when one departs this world or a state, he finds himself restored to life, a body same as before only new, unaccountably new, and it’s new and young. You depart here when you’re ninety minus eyes, minus teeth, minus hair, minus everything to find yourself instantly restored to life. And you’re in a body just the same as before, only it’s new, not minus anything. If you had no teeth whatsoever, you have all the teeth in the world growing out of your gums. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s true for I see it. There is no loss, everything restored. If you’re bald, you’re not bald. If you’re without teeth, you’re not without teeth. If you’re without eyes or you couldn’t hear, none of these things are missing. You are new and completely restored, but still in a terrestrial world just like this.397 ¶31

And this goes on and on and on until the graft takes place. When the graft takes place and erupts within you, then Christ is born within you. That’s not a terrestrial world, that’s a celestial world. And you move from the terrestrial into the celestial world, an entirely different being expanding then forever in the bosom of God. We are the ones moving out of this sphere into that sphere. But you can’t get out of this sphere until the graft takes place and then germinates and then erupts. The eruption is: resurrection; birth from above; the discovery of the Son of God who calls you Father. Then the splitting of the temple of your own body from top to bottom, which reveals this glorious golden light, which is she blood of God that was shed for you and you are it. For he chose you in him before the foundation of the world and that blood you are, and you move up into heaven in that serpentine motion as described in the 3rd chapter of John . And then comes the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove on you and smothers you with love. Then you know that the drama on this terrestrial level is over, and when you take off the garment it’s for the last time in the terrestrial sphere. You do not find yourself restored to life after death. You are not restored to life, for now you are a son of the resurrection and therefore not of the terrestrial world.397 ¶32

So I tell you, believe it. Believe it and set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation or the unveiling of Jesus Christ. Now, we’re told that “the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours, they searched and they enquired about this salvation, and it was revealed to them that it was not about themselves but about you” . They were doing a work the import of which they were totally unaware. They were simply instruments through which the whole story was pouring out into the world for our age, for our time.397 ¶33

And now that we are in this age where it is taking place, I say to you, yes, you have to pay rent and you’ve got to buy food and you must buy clothes, all these things. You have obligations to life, you have wives and husbands and children, family, all these things must be done, and you must meet all these obligations. But give some time to the word of God. And when the word is imparted, don’t just let it drop, dwell upon it. In the course of a day dwell upon it.397 ¶34

May I tell you, even in the world of Caesar it pays off a thousand-fold, as we are told in the Book of Job, “When he prayed for his friends, his own captivity was lifted” . If you completely concentrate it on yourself and I forget the other until I first of all take care of myself, well then, you do not know this mystery. When you forget self in your interest of another and you can empathize with the other and rejoice in the other’s good fortune though it has not yet happened, but you rejoice as though it were true, you’re setting yourself free. For the other really is within you. And so, when he prayed for his friends his own captivity was lifted.397 ¶35

May I tell you, I started this work back in 1938 on the second day of February. I had nothing. It was with a borrowed five dollar bill to pay the rent…the rent was three dollars and six people came. I didn’t charge. Either through sympathy or embarrassment they each gave a dollar. Then it grew slowly, week after week, month after month. But in that same interval I didn’t care whether I had anything for dinner or not, made no difference. I knew I was telling the truth as I had experienced it in my visions. So I kept on talking and talking, never stopped, three times a week in New York City…and not charging. In the interval, while I am only hearing good news for others, I would see them. I didn’t charge for interviews; they came home, took all my time. But I lost myself in hearing good news about them; all day long I was empathizing, not sympathizing. I didn’t sympathize with any lack. I turned my back upon the lack and assumed that they were telling me what I wished they could tell me. So I began to empathize with all the lovely things concerning what they did.397 ¶36

In that interval, my father who was growing in this world of finances, and he started behind the eight-ball having nothing, but he struck it in a big way. When he made his will, he did not take me, the only one outside of the island, and give me less because I was away by thousands of miles. I did not contribute to his fortune. All my brothers did, even my brother-in-law. I have one brother-in-law because I have only one sister—and they all contributed. But when he wrote his will, he gave all equal parts, including the speaker. So while I was empathizing and not charging, but empathizing, here, unknown to me, my fortune was being built across the water in the world of Caesar. When he departed this world and the will was made known, here I had as much as any of those who had worked all through the day. As told you in scripture, one came at the eleventh hour and got as much as those who worked all through the day. And when one complained, he said, “Is it not mine to do with as I will? Did I not promise you two pennies for your labor? Did you get it?” “Yes, but you gave him who came at the eleventh hour two pennies also.” “Is it not mine to do with as I will?” . So my earthly father gave me exactly what he gave the others and there were ten of us…nine brothers and a sister…didn’t give me one penny less than he gave them. So, while not thinking of money and trying to get by with whatever I had, and starting from scratch, so I tell you I know from experience this thing works, it doesn’t fail. Yes, even in the world of Caesar.397 ¶37

But when it comes to this fantastic story of Jesus Christ, I tell you from my own experience, and I’m not theorizing, it is the truest story and the greatest story ever told. It is God becoming man that man may become God. So you dwell upon it.397 ¶38

And one night if you have not already been engrafted…for that is really a divine impregnation, that’s what it is. He is taking the seed, which is the Word of God, and engrafting it into you.397 ¶39

And when my friend felt herself lying prone and being prepared for an operation, I told her it was necessary, it was essential. So she conjures me…having faith in me and believing that I tell the truth, I could not speak anything but the truth.397 ¶40

On the other hand, there may be someone in this world tonight who thinks I am the devil, and do you know, if they conjure me this night I would be the world’s worst devil. So no one can play the part of the devil but God; no one can play the part of the beneficent, merciful being but God. God plays all the parts and there is nothing but God. So, in the depths of everyone is everyone…and as you begin to expand and to awake, you bring them all out. In the end all will be God.397 ¶41

May I tell you, God is infinite love. It was love that did it, love that conceived it, love that is playing it. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *397 ¶42

Now remember the date…we re-open on the 8th of January, same place, same time. It will be, well, for the first two months anyway no change in the nights—it will be Monday and Friday. But the ladies who own and run this place, there are just a few nights that they can’t give us. But I’ll let you know in time. Thank you…and may be erupt in you before we meet again. Goodnight.397 ¶47

[...]the season of the year where the whole Christian world will celebrate the great event. Here is the season of Advent, the coming of the greatest of all events. For were it not for this event you and I would be automatons forever and forever. So what is this great event? May I tell you, I can tell you from experience what it is. I am not theorizing. I am not speculating. I know. I’ve been sent to tell you, so tell it I will and I must. Whether one accepts it or not, that is to me irrelevant. There’s an event, so here is the story. Here, “For I bring you good news of a great joy that will be to all the people”—if not tonight, tomorrow night, but it will be to all the people, not one will be left out—“for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger” . Then the shepherds said one to another, “Let us go into Bethlehem and see this thing which has happened.” And they went into Bethlehem and found just as it was told.396 ¶1

You read this story in the 2nd chapter of Luke…though when you read it you think of something taking place here in this world. May I tell you, no, it isn’t here. You and I are here and we are lifted out of this world, a world of death, by this story. We are told it. And I am telling you what happened. It’s true, not 2,000 years ago only, but forever and forever.396 ¶2

Now, may I tell you, whatever man has ever done to you or whatever you have ever done to man, that was what God did to himself. This whole vast world is a play and God is acting, only acting. “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” And he acts upon himself. And “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” So he acts upon himself…and every blow ever given to me, whether it was physical, mental, an insult, all these things when people insulted me, all these were blows necessary to make me perfect. And when I was perfect in the eyes of the one who began that good work in me, then he brought himself home. He’s only bringing forth himself, that’s all. God is forming himself in man, and when he completes the work which he began in us with all the blows of the world, then he brings it forward. And this story of the birth of Christ is the story of God bringing forth himself. All things must bring forth after their kind, so if God be perfect, he has to bring forth the perfect being that is God. This is law, forever and forever. When he brings it forth, then he departs from this world into an entirely different age, where he is all creative. He is the creative power of the universe and he is bringing forth himself out of us, and we are he, believe it or not.396 ¶3

And so “When the time had fully come, then he sends forth his Son into our hearts, crying Father.” When he completes the work in us, because God is Father, then his Son buried in the very depths of our soul comes forward into our hearts crying to us, Father, confirming that we are God.396 ¶4

Now the most difficult thing in this world is to take anyone trained in the Jewish-Christian faith and bring about even a modification of these fixed ideas. Here, if I said, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?” if you are a Christian, you’d say, “Yes, I believe in Jesus Christ.” And if we got into a little conversation, I would say, “Well, tell me, tell me something about Jesus Christ.” And you would say, “Well, Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” “You really believe he’s the Son of God?” “Oh, yes! Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” Then we’ll start from there. I said, “Did he not tell us that he is God the Father?” and their eyes open up wide. Then you go to scripture, “He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you ask me to show you the Father?” I am the Father . That doesn’t register because they have been trained to believe he is the Son. “I and my Father are one. I came out from the Father and came into this world; again, I am leaving this world returning to the Father” . But I came out from the Father and I and the Father are one: I came out from myself the Father. Then their eyes go…well, they can’t quite follow it at that moment. I say, Jesus Christ is God the Father. “What think ye of the Christ, whose son is he? They answered, ‘The son of David.’” Then he said to them, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” . The word Lord, Adonai, was used by every son of his father, so referring to his father he would always say “my lord.” David called me “my Father.”396 ¶5

Now listen to the change in tense, the 89th Psalm. It begins, he tells every beautiful thing to David…he calls David “my anointed, my chosen, the first born, the king.” He calls him everything. All of this is now, “I have found David.” Now that is something that is accomplished, that’s past—I have found David. Now he changes the tense, “He shall cry unto me”—changes the tense, it’s future—“He shall cry unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’” Then comes a break, a complete break, and David cries out, remembering all the promises, “Why hast thou forgotten me? How long, O Lord, wilt thou hide thy self from me? Remember, O Lord, the measure of life. Can a man who lives not see death? Can any soul hide itself from hell or save itself from hell?” . And the next psalm, the 90th, now, tells us the measure of that life. That the measure of a man’s life is threescore and ten, or even by strength, fourscore, and the sands of time are running out. How long, O Lord, wilt thou hide thyself from me after calling me the anointed, your chosen, your son? When will it be that I will call you Father? And man despairs…when will it be?396 ¶6

Well, I tell you from experience, I have been through the mill and reached the end. You’re, almost all of you, at the very end, and so if you died tonight it makes no difference. The world does not cease to be when my senses cease to register it, it doesn’t. If someone drops now, because they have gone out of my sight, it doesn’t mean that they have ceased to be because my senses cannot touch them, cannot see them, cannot hear them, can’t sense them. They are in a world just as real as this, just like this, and in this world they are just as solid as I am now before you. And in that body where they find themselves this will happen, what I’m telling you: this great announcement. When he makes the statement to the shepherds, go, go into Bethlehem, for today this thing has happened. It happens in the city of David. Well, what is the city of David? Your own wonderful skull, that is the city of David, that is Zion, this is Bethlehem…it all happens here. And what would you find? You aren’t going to find the thing that happened; you’re going to find a sign. What happened? God was born, that is what happened. All things bring forth after their kind, so God is begetting himself. So I will tell you, this day in the city of David a Savior was born. Well, who is the Savior? You’re told in the 43rd chapter and the 45th chapter of Isaiah, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no Savior” . Jehovah is the only Savior. So when you’re told now, “Christ the Lord”, it is not Christ anointed, it is the Lord. Translated it is Messias Jehovah, Messiah Jehovah, the same thing. He is not translating that here is something that is the Lord’s anointed that is born. No, it’s not the Lord’s anointed. The Lord’s anointed is David. He comes after. “I will tell of the decree of the Lord…he said unto me, ‘Thou art my Son; today I have begotten thee’” . This is the anointed, this is the chosen, this is the elect. But here is God himself coming forward in man, in you, in all of us.396 ¶7

So tell it, it is good news that will come to all the people. Everyone in this world is going to experience it…not one can fail. For, “The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind; in the latter days—that is, the end—you will understand it perfectly” . Now, “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” . The word “perfect” is teleios, which means “the end, the latter days” but it really means “completeness.” It means “of a full statue, a full name”—when you come into perfection. God is actually beholding himself and he brings forth himself.396 ¶8

I tell you from my own experience, God is man. Man in his sleep cannot believe it. How could God be man? I tell you he’s man. But when you stand in the presence of the risen God, it is man, infinite man. I don’t mean bigness out in space, just man…the most glorious being you’ve ever seen. Infinite love, that’s God. Here, the human form divine stands before you and it’s man. He incorporates you into his being by an embrace, that’s all. He simply embraces you and you become one with the body of God. You understand these words in Philippians, “He will change our lowly body to be of one form with his glorious body” . You actually are incorporated into that body, and you are that body, the body of God. And it is man, a man of infinite love and yet infinite power, who brought the whole vast world into being for the purpose of bringing all things into himself. As we are told, how did he do it? By the power that is inherent in himself…a power that is even able to subject all things to himself.396 ¶9

I do not wish this night to go beyond that. But just imagine—you who love animals, you who love trees, you who love stones—that this power is not only able to, but one day will bring all things into his being. He has become everything in this world. And don’t think for one moment the animals that you and I eat, and the trees that we cut down and build and make homes out of it, and the stones we use that they will be discarded. Nothing will be discarded! He will actually bring everything into his being. And you and God are one. And we are playing that part.396 ¶10

So I tell you tonight I know from experience what I’m talking about. I was told it doesn’t really matter. I was told this from on high, “You will not see it now, Neville, not now, but what you are doing now will throughout the centuries to come and the ages to come be known, all will be known.” Then I was told that three of us—and who the three are I do not know; whether they were, they are, or they will be, I do not know—but three will always be mentioned when this work is mentioned. And so it doesn’t really matter. It was definitely implied, or rather stated, I will not see it here. That my time is short and I will go. But what I have done and am doing will throughout the ages to come, unborn generations will know it. I’m telling you what I have been told, told from on high.396 ¶11

So I tell you it is true, every word of scripture is true, the whole Old and New Testament. So when someone hurts you and you hurt someone, may I tell you, they meant, if they meant evil against you, but God meant it for good. The end of the seed plot, the 50th chapter of the Book of Genesis, here is the seed plot. Joseph looks at his brothers and he forgives them completely for what they did. For Joseph is a prototype of Jesus. Here is this one God adds unto…that’s Joseph. All these are prototypes, coming to fulfillment in the one called Jesus, and the word Jesus is Jehovah. So he turns to his brothers…and who are my brothers?—everyone in the world. And they all sold him into slavery and hoped that he would die. He said to them, “You meant evil against me but God meant it for good. And so you aren’t condemned. I hold nothing against you,” said he. So everything that man has ever done against you or that you have ever done against man is that which God did against himself, for God is playing all the parts.396 ¶12

Do you say, “I am”? That’s God; there is no other God. When you say “I am”…you say “I don’t feel well”…that’s God. You’re doing it to yourself. If, in spite of not being well, you dare to assume that “I’ve never felt better!” that’s what God is then doing to himself. If you say, “I can’t meet my way in life” and then you dare to claim that “I have all that it takes and I am meeting my way in life and beyond!” that’s what God is doing to himself. It’s entirely up to us in this world. But whatever I am doing to myself, then the whole vast world must confirm it and do it to me, and beat me beyond measure. And so, I feel weak and unwanted, feel neglected, the whole vast world must mirror that, and do it to me and hurt me beyond measure…and that is what I’m doing to myself.396 ¶13

To awaken, I must become perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect. I do everything to myself, and the world that is doing it to me is doing it because I am doing it to myself. And then, when I awaken, I will awaken and find this story so true. I can’t tell you how true the story is. That one day, out of the blue, when you least expect it, the child comes forward and you can’t believe it, this infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.396 ¶14

Now, there’s a little story told by Blake and he speaks of smiles. Now he tells us “There are many smiles. There’s a smile of love, we all know that, and there’s a smile of hate; and there’s a smile of smiles in which the two meet. They meet. But there is one smile that only once smiled can be, and it comes between the cradle and the grave. But when once it is smiled there is an end to misery.” That is the smile you find on the face of the one called “he smiles”…it is Isaac. It is the infant that comes not by nature, it comes by the forming of the unbegotten in man. When the unbegotten, who is God, is formed in man, he presents the sign that it is completed. It is the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he smiles. You hold him in your hands and you look into this heavenly face and it smiles. You’ve never seen such a smile. Anyone who brings forth the child holds in his hands that smile. It’s a sign of what?—of his own birth. The one who brings it forward, he and he alone has been born.396 ¶15

So they come, the shepherds come, the wise men come, to see only the sign. They can’t see what is born, why?—because God is born and you can’t see God by coming to see the sign. “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” . So here, “No one knows who the Son is, only the Father; and no one knows who the Father is, only the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” .396 ¶16

So I can tell you from now to the ends of time—and I hope you believe what I’m telling you of the story—but I can’t persuade you to the point of conviction until it happens in you. Because no one knows who the Son is. The whole vast Christian world tonight looking forward towards Christmas, and there are a billion Christians, they believe if asked the question concerning Jesus Christ, he is the Son of God. I tell you he is not the Son of God, he is God the Father. But, then who is the Son of God? I’ll tell you, it is David. Well, every Christian in the world would scream bloody murder, as they have to me when I tell them that. So I can’t persuade them. I must only tell it and depart.396 ¶17

I’ve been told from on high, “They will all know it. They will all know it, so you leave it behind you. Tell it to the best of your ability.” As you will tell it, always tell it in a short little manner, they say to me. I said “they”? The Elohim…it’s a plural word, the brothers; takes all the brothers to form God. And they told me, “Go and tell it in your own short unique way. But you will tell it.” And so I’ve told it to the best of my ability and they have assured me that throughout the ages to come it has been told and they will know it.396 ¶18

But how to change man’s fixed idea concerning Jesus Christ…that Jesus Christ is a play, the whole thing is a play. Not on earth, how could it be on earth? Listen to these words, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him, and we shall know him as he is.” We shall be like him when he appears. Now, this is John, the 1st epistle, the 3rd chapter. Scholars are agreed that whoever wrote the gospel of John wrote these epistles. How then can someone walk this earth as the apostle John, seeing a being called Jesus Christ, who could in the epistle say, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him”? He’s speaking of the Father, as you’ll read it in the 1st verse of the 3rd chapter of the 1st epistle. The second verse is what I’ve quoted, but he tells you who he’s speaking of, he’s speaking of the Father. He doesn’t know the Father. Yet, in the 14th chapter of John, we are told, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” And this is John, the same so-called author of this epistle, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him.” Yet in that same Book of John, the 18th verse of the 1st chapter of the gospel, “No one has ever seen God; but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”396 ¶19

You must wait for the experience, that’s what he’s telling you. That’s what he is telling you, what I am telling you now, as though he heard it as you are hearing it; that he recorded it but had not yet the experience. But I tell you from my own personal experience it all happens from within you and it happens right in your own skull, that’s where it happens. Everyone is going to have it, not one can fail. But when, no one knows. No, not even the one who has experienced it—that is called the Son—only the Father who is buried in you. For when the time has fully come he’ll bring it to the surface. There will be an eruption within you and you will know it.396 ¶20

So here, I tell you this night this story which is being celebrated in our world in just a couple of weeks is the grandest story in the world. It’s the true story. There is no other story, really. But while we are here waiting for it to happen, don’t despair. Apply all that it tells us concerning changing things in our world to our own, not advantage, taking advantage of another, but to our own good. What would it be like were it true? What would any lovely, lovely thing in this world? And everyone in this world will aid the birth of it. Just as they bring all the evil upon you because you feel sad and sorry, sorrowful, and all these things…and they will bring it. It’s God doing it to himself to awaken himself. Therefore, now assume the loveliest thing in this world and then let the same people instead of bringing evil unto you bring the good. So, sleep night after night in the assumption that things are as you would like them to be in this world of Caesar. But don’t forget this glorious promise. Make that your first.396 ¶21

And then while we’re here we’ve got to pay rent, buy food and pay all the expenses of Caesar. But don’t forget that in the story Caesar set his soldiers over the closed tomb to keep that mystery, that secret from ever rising; for if it ever rises, he puts an end to Caesar. So when someone takes a soldier and throws him into the pool, he’s throwing that which tried to hold the secret buried in the tomb. The tomb is your own skull and soldiers watch it. But in spite of their watch the stone was rolled away and the secret came out. Well, the secret is out in the world. And still they’re still trying to hold it in that tomb. So the whole vast world is watching to keep this thing away from man. You can’t!396 ¶22

So you are sent into the world, not publicized, but sent into the world to tell it. You tell it to the best of your ability. But I have been assured, may I tell you, from on high it has been told. It’s going to be recorded, it’s registered, and generations to come will discuss it. This little thing called Neville means nothing. Yet they did say to me, “When it is told you’ll be mentioned with two others: the one who actually told it and brought about the change, the change from Jesus Christ being the Son of God to Jesus Christ as God the Father; and David, instead of being a prophet of old, to being truly what he is, the Son of God, set up in eternity to reveal man to himself as God the Father.”396 ¶23

Well, I do not know of anyone prior to this moment who has done it. So if the other two, as I was told from on high, they’ve been recorded. But I do not know…I haven’t read it, never heard it from anyone. But I was told three, through the centuries to come, will be identified as those who really got it over to bring about the change in the mind of man that Jesus Christ in man is God the Father. And if he is God the Father, then he must have a Son and that Son cannot be Jesus Christ, it is David. “I have found David…and he shall cry unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’” But then will come the horrors before he cries, because “He shall cry” is a different tense. “I have found,” that’s an accomplished fact; “he shall cry unto me,” that’s future. And I am telling you he has cried unto me, “Thou art my Father” when I stood and I saw him. And so here, I have brought it to the surface, and I know now the change has taken place in the world. Man from now on will find who Jesus Christ really is: he is his own identity, and that is God the Father. Well, if he’s father, then there must be a son, and that son is David. And so, if the world will deny it today, I have been shown from on high it is done. I have brought about the change and the whole vast world will accept it in time.396 ¶24

I don’t say tomorrow they’ll all rush out and do it.396 ¶25

You might have seen on TV last night, they just put Spellman into the little crypt, and they say that this holy man’s great accomplishment was he actually brought into the diocese hundreds of millions of dollars, tax exempt. That makes him a holy man. Someone else starts behind the eight-ball, as he did, and they earn a couple of million dollars by going into business, and speculating, and paying taxes, not tax exempt, and he’s simply an ordinary business man. The other one brought in hundreds and hundreds of millions, tax exempt…he’s a holy man.396 ¶26

Well, I’ll tell you, you believe what I’ve told you this night: Christ Jesus is God the Father and he’s in you, buried in you, and he rises in you. But he’s a father, don’t forget that. And being a father, he has to have some confirmation of father-hood and it is David. David represents humanity, the whole vast world of men. David is humanity, personified as a single being and it’s David. He calls him Father.396 ¶27

So you see the whole change has taken place in a small little band. And today, as it always has, when great changes take place in the world no one sees it. It takes generations for them to see the change. Then all of a sudden they will see it, hundreds of years hence. And then they will conjure a name and the name they’ll stick on it. That’s not my name, but they’ll stick the name of Neville on it, may I tell you, for I was told that in eternity. But that’s not my name. I stood in the presence of the risen One and this is the Ancient of Days. He embraced me, we became one, and he’s the God of love. Even though I told you in the deep “my name is Friday,” which is the God of love, it still isn’t Friday. It has no name; it’s simply love. That is the being with whom I am one and forever.396 ¶28

And you are too, but you are not going to wait [...], but you will be, every one of you. In the meanwhile, you live it fully here. Hurt no one, because you hurt yourself. If you feel sorry for yourself, you’re hurting yourself and the whole vast world will hurt you. They’ll have to hurt you. Everything that you’re doing to yourself man will do for you; and that is what God is doing to himself to awaken from this dream. When he awakens, he is God, the eternal God. There’s nothing but God. God is playing all the parts in the world and there’s nothing but God.396 ¶29

Now, before we go into the Silence, let me remind you that we have but two left, Monday and Friday of next week. Then we’re closed for three weeks, reopening on the 8th of January. I’m not going to send out any notices this year. It’s too short an interval.396 ¶30

–396 ¶31

Any other questions, please? You will experience what I have experienced. God actually became man that man may become God. If God is Father and man is God, then man is the Father. And that Son that bears witness to his fatherhood is David of biblical fame. When you see him, there is no doubt in your mind as to the relationship between you, the Father, and the Son that is David. This is the change that has now taken place in this section of time. Goodnight.396 ¶34

Now, may I tell you, when we read scripture you’ve got to read it with your Imagination. When Israel is delivered from Egypt, that’s only your own wonderful human Imagination being delivered from the facts of life. You see, the facts blind the eye of Imagination, who is the real man. For, “Man is all Imagination. God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself”. So God is leading himself out of this place into which he purposely, deliberately entered. He reached the limit of contraction, which is man, and now he moves out of this, where man sees all the facts and he’s blinded by facts. So he’s moving out of these into a promised land, which is returning to himself, enhanced by reason of the fact that he took upon himself this limitation. So the eye of Imagination which is the real man is simply blinded by the facts of life. So when man, called Israel—which means “he rules as God,” that’s what the word Israel means—is simply being delivered, not in Egypt on the shoulder of Africa, but being delivered from these facts of nature, the facts we call the facts of life.395 ¶1

So when one is sent into the world, if he has the talent like a Blake—he said, “I will not rest from my task to open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes of man into eternity ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human Imagination”. He would not rest from this great task of his until he opens the eyes of man, the immortal eyes of man, the eye of Imagination, into eternity. And these eyes would then forever expand in the bosom of God. Then these are his words following this wonderful statement in his 5th Plate, “O Savior, pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness and love! Annihilate within me this strange, peculiar selfishness, this center of selfishness: be thou my whole life.” In other words, possess me and make me your whole being.395 ¶2

He’s speaking now of the eternal being called God, when he speaks of the Savior. For the Lord God Jehovah is the Savior of the world. We speak of it when it becomes manifested in the world as Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ and Jehovah are one. But, it awakens in man…and he finds who he really is. He knows he is that very Spirit that was in the beginning spoken of as Jehovah. And so he wants the central [...], which is the selfish center, completely annihilated…and then, be thou all my life. Let me possess you. What?—the spirit of meekness and love.395 ¶3

Now let me share with you tonight what was shared with me this past week. I will not rest until I open…and I have so far succeeded in opening a few, a few eyes into eternity. These are immortal eyes. And may I tell you, this cannot fail if you really will apply it.395 ¶4

Now a friend of mine wrote me a letter, which she stuck in my box last Saturday when I was away. She said, “In the year 1966, in the month of April, I went east into Pittsburgh to revisit family and friends. I carried with me this story that you taught me and I tried to explain it. I was tested. The lady to whom I tried to explain it, she and I were raised in a family of deaf parents. We were surrounded with deaf people. It was quite a problem…they were stone deaf. Now she tells me that her husband has this disease of the inner ear and there is no cure, and it leads ultimately to complete and total deafness, accompanied by dizzy spells, loss of balance and retching. This has been going on for years and getting progressively worse.395 ¶5

“So I explained to them the secret of revision. You can go back to the very beginning of the state and replay the act and make it come out differently. Take any scene and replay it, as though you were the playwright, and make the whole thing come out differently. Then I told them of certain stories. I used Lucy as one, where she had this accident when she was a child of three.” Then she told of her own grandchild. And she told of others where she tried to illustrate this picture to this friend, Betty, and her husband, Matthew. Well, “Matthew made every effort, not with malice,” she said, “to find a flaw, to find some reason for believing what his senses denied. He hasn’t heard in years. And ‘How can I persuade myself that by imagining that I am hearing that I am hearing?’” And so, she made every effort to convince them through, well, case histories. Then she left and sent them all the books. Then she sent some transcribed lectures from the platform based upon the law that our friend, Natalie, has taken down and then transcribed and made copies of it. So she sent these copies of the working of the law. That is now a year and a half plus.395 ¶6

She said, “In the interval we never brought up the matter, never discussed it. I only heard it once with my friend, Betty. Betty and I went into the Silence and in this moment of silence I heard Betty tell me that Matt was hearing perfectly. That’s all that I heard and I felt relieved and I dropped it. It’s been, now, over a year and a half. Two weeks ago while at work this spasm possessed him, this excruciating pain from ear to ear. He screamed out in pain. They took him to the doctor. The doctor dropped into his ear a few little drops that would deaden the pain, and then he went to sleep, and slept for a short while. When he woke he was hearing, that which he hadn’t done in years.” So he came home…they sent him home early. When he came home, his wife said, “What’s the matter, you’re early?” He usually comes home at six and he arrived before the normal hour of return. Then he said to her, “Betty, I can hear!”395 ¶7

Now, these are the identical words that she, Betty, the wife, heard night after night as she retired. It became a habit with her. She heard her husband, Matt, say, “Betty, I can hear!” And it progressed and it got worse and worse and worse through the year and a half, reaching the point where these spasms were coming more often. These dizzy spells, and the loss of balance, and the retching, all these came more frequently. Still, she believed what my friend, Jan, told her when she visited her back in ’66. So every night through habit she simply heard the words from her husband, she heard his voice, saying, “Betty, I can hear.” And these are the identical words he used when this day he came home and said, “Betty, I can hear!”395 ¶8

Now, said Jan in her letter, having discussed it either by phone or by letter with Betty, “Now his sense of hearing is so acute that the normal things that you and I take for granted, like the ringing of the phone, the honking of a car on the street, and the normal noises—he has a little daughter, the youngest daughter playing the Beatles records—but it’s driving him insane.” He said, “You know, believe it or not, I actually can hear a gnat when the gnat is actually rubbing its two little legs together. I can hear the sound of a gnat when the little legs are being rubbed one against the other.” And don’t deny it, he can, the ears have become so acute, so sensitive to every sound in the world. I am told that a dove, that the bat, that the wolf has supersonic hearing. They hear things way beyond the range of man. Well, maybe he has arrived at that point. He hears now the gnat. She only heard it.395 ¶9

Now, don’t limit this to one’s physical limitation, say, the hearing or the eyes, it could be in finances. Is the purse empty? Well, can you hear what you would hear if it were full? Just as she heard what she would hear if the ears heard. Can you actually believe that you could hear whatever you would conceive of? For I tell you that imagining is creating: Imagining creates reality.395 ¶10

You are all Imagination. You are an imaginative being, wearing a garment of flesh and blood that is really the limitation of the soul. When I speak of soul, I mean Imagination. The soul and Imagination are one in my vocabulary. The soul is simply that which gives life to man. Imagination is an activity of life, same thing. I don’t mean two things when I speak of Imagination and soul. I mean one presence. I mean your reality, that’s God. Man is truly all Imagination. “God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is all Imagination and that is God himself.” That’s all that there is. Now, if you can bring about by a change within yourself an outer change to conform to it, then aren’t you creating? Then do you have to turn to anything in the outer world to ask for help?395 ¶11

Now, you may say, well, this took a year and a half. So what? He was fifteen years in this state. And Jan and Betty were raised in a family where both parents were deaf and their friends talked to them in the deaf language using their hands. Well, what a something to overcome. Just imagine someone born and raised in that environment finding a husband who was going into the same state and be faced with that. But she believed. “All things are possible to those who believe” you are told. There is no restraint upon it. No limit upon what you can believe. Can you believe it? “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief”. Just help me.395 ¶12

So here, I ask you, if it is a physical state like this, or if it is finances, or if it is anything do it and night after night hear it. So let me go back to my first statement from Galatians, “Did you receive the Spirit of him who works miracles within you”—the word is translated “among” but it is the Greek preposition “in”; miracles among you, yes, but miracles within you is the true translation—“or did you receive it by the hearing with faith?” Did you receive it and then believed it? Well, if you received it by hearing with faith, well then, live by it.395 ¶13

And so here, we have a complete transformation tonight in the life of a family where it’s so acute that Betty can’t hear what he hears. She can’t hear the gnat rubbing its legs against each other and the little daughter playing the Beatles records driving him mad. That doesn’t disturb her. She is now completely, well, insulated; it doesn’t bother her any more. Luckily, I don’t have so small a girl. It would drive me insane. But it does…I mean those things would drive anyone…suppose you didn’t hear and suddenly you could hear, and such nonsense comes on in your world that you want to go back and become once more deaf, wouldn’t you? Were I he and that was what I was exposed to, I wouldn’t want to hear it. But, nevertheless, he is hearing now and now everything is perfect in his world.395 ¶14

So I ask you to really try it. How do you do it? You listen just as though you heard. If I stop speaking, would you hear my voice? You can, if you apply yourself. You can listen as though you heard and did you know you’ll hear it? Then you can put upon my sound, my tone, what you want me to say. Now, use another voice. Use the voice of someone that you know far better than you know me, and have them say to you what you want to hear. Just hear it, and believe in the reality of what you have done. For I tell you, your own wonderful human Imagination is God. It’s the only God; there is no other God. And so you listen just as though you heard it. Well, that’s God hearing and all things are possible to God, so you listen and you hear it. As you hear it, believe in it. In this case, so what, it took a year and a half. Suppose it takes you six months to bring about a radical financial change in your world, a complete radical change for the good, what would it matter? What’s six months if that’s what you want? Suppose you heard someone say to you…and then you name it, name anything. All things are possible to God. There is no limit to this power of believing.395 ¶15

And you can only believe if you can imagine. So when we hear this fantastic story, the story of scripture, that Israel is delivered from Egypt and you think a group of people came out of Egypt, it hasn’t a thing to do with a group of people. This is the eternal story: it’s Imagination being delivered from the facts of nature, where man comes out and no longer is he enslaved by the facts. He is Israel. Go back and read the story of Jacob who became Israel. What did Jacob do? Jacob began to apply this principle.395 ¶16

He took physical things first and he took poplar trees and painted them. When the cattle came to the waterhole and they were all about to be sired, before the faces of the cows he put these poplar trees with long stripes on them. For he had a bet with his father-in-law, Laban, that all the offspring that came out with stripes would be his and those that were not striped would be Laban’s. Well, Laban took it up easily, because all the cows were of the same color. How could they ever be striped coming out of the same color? He put before the eye of the cow these poplar things, and so, when they were sired, she actually created within her what she was beholding at the moment of being sired. When they came out—and he did it only with the healthy cows and the healthy bulls—and he gave his father-in-law all the weak ones, so he had all the little ones of the same color, and then he brought out only the striped. Here was the beginning of the awakening of Imagination. If I could take an animal, the offspring of myself, because I am a part of an animal, this is an animal body, all these are animal bodies. So I take this structure and I work upon it and I see that the offspring, if I put before it that which it would be impressed upon it, and then when the calf comes out from a healthy union, it is striped. He got all the offspring that were striped and became fabulously wealthy.395 ¶17

So Jacob was called the supplanter; he supplanted his brother, Esau. He did all these things. He played himself to be Esau. He put upon himself the skin of an animal and came to his father. Then he came into the presence of his father, Isaac, and Isaac said, “Come close, my son. You sound like Jacob.” You sound like Jacob, come close. He came close and the father felt him, and he had on the skins, all the hair of Esau. Then the father gave him the blessing. So he learned how to deceive. This is self-deception…but it works. This whole thing is simply altering the facts of life. It’s simply completely changing everything if it doesn’t conform to what I want. So Jacob became so wonderful in the eyes of the immortal God, he renamed him and called him Israel, and Israel means “he who rules as God.” He becomes God. So that’s Israel. Hasn’t a thing to do with a race of people.395 ¶18

Anyone who comes out of this strange state where they accept everything in this world as a fact and do nothing about it in their Imagination, they are not Israel. Israel is the one who can take anything, no matter what it is, and then mentally change it, and believe in the reality of the mental change, and persuade himself that it’s true. If he persists in that change of attitude, it’ll become true. That’s Israel: He rules as God, nothing is impossible to him. So Israel simply is the one who departs from Egypt, Egypt being the world of facts, the dead facts. Everything is dead in Egypt. And Israel comes out of Egypt, which is Imagination coming out, departing from the world of facts, and not accepting any fact in the world. No matter where he’s born in this world he’s born behind the eight-ball. He doesn’t accept it if he’s an Israelite. He doesn’t accept any limitation if he’s an Israelite. So be born any place, all the restrictions of the world placed upon the Israelite, he’ll come out if he knows that Imagination is the only reality.395 ¶19

Now, two other wonderful letters came. Scripture tells us in the 12th chapter of Numbers that God speaks to man through the medium of dream. Now, there is no such thing as an idle dream. It’s not the result of some undigested piece of meat…it is not, as some will tell you. Every dream is simply from God. God is the source of all dreams. In fact, God is the source of everything in the world. So here, on the surface it would seem to be idle. Here’s the dream. “I found myself walking and suddenly I came upon a pool and there were service men and their families around the pool. I heard the conversation of a captain and a lieutenant. I took them both and I threw them into the pool. Then I continued my walk and went into a ladies’ room, and there I found myself bleeding.”395 ¶20

Now, one would think that means nothing…that has no significance whatsoever. Hasn’t it? Had she found the police, she would have found law and order. When you find a soldier, serviceman, captain, of that nature, you find nothing but war, you find violence, you find destruction. For soldiers are not policemen; they are for one purpose: to conquer. We justify it by saying they are going to defend. Oh, yes, say all these things. But that is to conquer…that’s the purpose of a soldier. To simply to conquer, take the [...]. Here she came upon that which represents violence—it’s all within her—and she threw them into the pool. Well, the pool in scripture—“and they came to the pool of Bethesda”—for what reason?—to be healed. The purpose of the pool is healing, the 1st and 5th chapter of the Book of John.395 ¶21

So she throws…at this moment in her life she now decides not to conquer by the sword, by violence; for the glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness. And so, if I’m going to still conquer by argument, by the sword, by violence, well then, I am not a Christian, no matter what I say I am. I could be born in the Vatican, sired by the pope, and mothered by the mother superior, I could be—may I tell you, that’s possible—but I still am not a Christian. I am not a Christian until I go forward to conquer only by forgiveness…and so, when I go forward not to use the sword but to use this that I have discovered. So she throws into the pool…she’s curing her own mind, healing it of violence, and then moving forward ’til she finds herself bleeding. She doesn’t tell me in her letter from what portion of the body the blood was coming, she doesn’t. But life is in the blood, as we’re told in scripture. And so she found blood, so now she’s found life, something entirely different from the violence that she formerly used to conquer in this world.395 ¶22

So as Blake said so beautifully, “But vain the sword and vain the bow, they never can work war’s overthrow. The hermit’s prayer and the widow’s tear alone can free the world from fear.” And so you can go forever with the sword and the bow, but you will never. Then he uses this to follow it, he said, “Vengeance, the hand of vengeance sought the bed to which the purple tyrant fled; the iron hand crushed the tyrant’s head and became a tyrant in his stead” (Pick. MS, Mental Trav.) You fight on this level, you remain on this level, and you become the very thing you try to conquer. So, with the sword, if you seem to conquer it, you become the very thing that you conquered: you become the tyrant himself. I tried to tell it in my own words in my little pamphlet The Search, where man descends to the level of the conflict and becomes the thing that he would fight. I tried it in my own words, so I have it in the little thing called The Search. But he told it in his own wonderful poetical manner that the iron hand crushed the tyrant’s head and became a tyrant in its stead.395 ¶23

And so, I tell her, that she has now reached that point in the journey. For we are all climbing the mountain of Christ who is God. We are climbing it. He is the one we are searching for. He is the one we are seeking. And everyone is climbing up trying to get to Christ. As Blake said, “Be thou all my life.” We’re trying to find God the Father. When we find him, we are he. “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins.” So we’re looking towards that [...], that something that is really God the Father. So she has now discarded the violence from without, and from now on she will conquer by forgiveness of sin.395 ¶24

Now to forgive sin is not to say to someone, “I forgive you, dear. You know you shouldn’t have done it, but I forgive you.” That hasn’t a thing to do with forgiveness of sin. Forgiveness is simply this…I see you and you are deaf. I don’t condemn you for being deaf. I will now represent you to myself as one who is hearing acutely, perfectly. And I would hear someone who cares…I will hear your wife and your wife will say to me, “You know, Matt is hearing perfectly.” And so, I will hear Betty say to me that her husband, Matt, is hearing perfectly. Then I forgive you for being deaf. In other words, it is entering into the opposite and partaking of the nature of the opposite that is forgiveness. It tests man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. So I will partake of the nature of the opposite. What is the opposite? That he is hearing better. Well, who would tell me if he heard perfectly?—well, his wife would. “I’ve known Betty all my life. We were raised in a household where parents were deaf. But I will hear…I will persist in hearing Betty tell me that Matt is hearing, Matt can hear” and then I do it. Now, that is practicing the art of forgiveness. I don’t condemn him.395 ¶25

People say, “Well, after all, he is deaf because you know what? He doesn’t want to hear anything.” Forget all this nonsense. [...] sometime…the day is, I hope it isn’t far off, take all our psychiatrists and all of our psychoanalysts and put them in some little bag. It’s all nonsense. They haven’t the slightest concept of Christ. Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is Christ. And there is nothing but Christ. So when they take all this nonsense—you know why you’re sick? You’re sick because of so and so. My mother died of cancer. When someone tells me she died of cancer because she didn’t love, you want to slap them in the face. Didn’t love! Forget all this nonsense. My mother who bore twelve children, and lost two at birth, and raised ten of us…and mother loved, truly loved. So she died of cancer. No one knew how to stop it and she was riddled with it, at the age of sixty-one, this darling, lovely woman that was my mother, altogether sweet, and to tell me that she did so and so? Forget all this nonsense and start practicing the art of forgiveness.395 ¶26

I don’t care what I ever did. To become deaf or to become blind or to lose this or lose the other, then let me practice and those who love me let them practice for me if I can’t myself do it. In this case he didn’t do it; his friend, my friend Jan, and his wife Betty, did it. And then, as she said, he tried every way to find a flaw…to find some reason not to support this idle claim that imagining creates reality. What nonsense!395 ¶27

Now a third letter, my friend Bill, and I got it today. He said, “I found myself on the top of a hill walking with a very dear friend of mine, and this friend, he said to me”—his friend is a lovely person in this world, perfectly wonderful friend, but he is completely uninterested, complete disinterest in this teaching—“and so, he started down the hill towards a pool of water, a lake. As he started down rocks began to fall, falling towards him. He went down to this huge lake and put his hand into the lake to catch a fish, but he couldn’t. The lake was too deep and he couldn’t catch the fish. I, at the very top of the hill, with my right hand, I had a pool at my right, and I put my hand into the pool and pulled out a huge, big fish. Then I said to him, ‘It’s easy if you were where I am.’”395 ¶28

Now, he asked me at the very bottom, “Has this significance?” But enormous significance! Fish, universally, throughout the ages has been the symbol of the Savior of the world. I ask him to go home tonight and read the 21st chapter of the Book of John, the first part of it. The second part is devoted to the lamb, the sheep. But the first part, it is mentioned several times. This is after the resurrection. And he turns to Peter and tells Peter to cast it on the right side and he brought in fish, and he could not draw it in, the catch was so great. Then they broiled the fish and he ate the fish: “Unless you eat my body you have no part of me.” Here is a symbol. So read his story: the story, the gospel, is Jesus Christ. So read it. But now eat it. Eat it in the sense—not like putting the paper in your mouth—but eat it. Digest it. Believe it. Assimilate it. So “eat my body.” He’s symbolized here as the fish. And here, if you eat the body, well then, you’ll find out how to fish…on the right side. He sits on the right side of the Lord, the Christ hand, and he pulls out the big fish.395 ¶29

The one who denied this story and went down the hill, he wasn’t on the hill, he went down, puts his hand in, but he could not bring out any fish. He couldn’t hold anything because he doesn’t believe. You can say the words “I believe,” put your hand in and not a thing will come out, no fish. If you believe, then you go up the hill and you are on the top of the hill, and you’ll bring out anything you want in this world. Well, what do you bring out but Christ? Christ is everything in the world. There’s nothing but Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ and Jehovah are one, they aren’t two. People speak of Jesus Christ and they speak of Jehovah as other, no, it is all one. You and I are moving towards that oneness and one day we will arrive there, and we are that one. For in the end there is only one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of us all, only one. And we are all moving towards that oneness that we were before the descent.395 ¶30

And so, the rocks were in water…the rocks falling…for God actually limited himself to this limit of contraction; and the limit of contraction in this world is a rock. So, “Of the Rock that begot you you are unmindful, and have denied the God who gave you birth”. So he equates Rock with God. So the Rock is still following him down the hill, won’t let him go. He isn’t lost. They are still coming behind him, little rocks coming towards him. He can’t be lost. One day he will hear with belief and he’ll go back, go back up to the hill, up to the summit, and he will be God…so not a thing is lost. In the meanwhile he’s doing well undoubtedly…I hope he is.395 ¶31

There are millions doing well, totally unaware of this great mystery, the story as told us in the gospel. There is nothing but this story. Sometimes when I read the Bible—because I do daily, I spend five, six, seven hours in the Bible—I wonder if there’s any other book worthwhile reading, I really do. I read it and I think, now what on earth am I wasting my time in reading any other book? And yet, I read so many books and sometimes, what am I doing wasting my time when this thing, page after page looks like [...]? Today, I opened the book casually, the 88th Psalm, and he wonders if this steadfast love of God visits those in the grave. Do they really visit in the grave? Then he asks another question, “Do the dead rise to praise thee?”. I can say to the Psalmist, yes they do.395 ¶32

There is no death…instantaneous restoration, renewed, a body same as before and new, in a world just like this. But they need not know. It’s a constant miracle. What is that miracle that restores the dead instantly to youth, a young body? Not without eyes, without ears, without this, no; but everything restored, young and full of life, ex- pressing all the powers that are normal to the human body that is alive and young, all the passions. So as Blake brought out, two peculiar powers that man tries to restrain, they can never in eternity be restrained: abstinence and what he calls piety, because when he first defines that it’s strange. But abstinence, meaning the restraint of the sex passion, those who do it here think that they are pleasing God; they’re fooling no one but themselves.395 ¶33

So tonight, our great cardinal lies in state. On Thursday they’ll all come to see this and oh, what a show it will be! I saw the last one in New York City. It was beautiful pageantry, all the colors as they walked down Fifth Avenue. All the monks come. They come in their different habits, some in black, some in brown, some in white. Then comes the different, as the echelon moves, the different ranks, up to the great cardinals. We have eight in our [...] first and then they are ushered into this fabulous cathedral. He will lie in state and they will put him into the crypt. They do not know that at that very moment he is restored to life, a young man, about twenty, full of all the vim and vigor, and he will be doing all the things he denied while he was here…unless, in that interval, he was born from above. If he is not born from above, he is right here in this world, just like this, a body just as before, full of life. And he will have all the passions moving in his body. Isn’t that a miracle? How can that be? But I tell you, I know that’s exactly what his state is. I am not theorizing. I meet those who are gone and they aren’t gone at all. Only those who are born from above depart this age; but those who are not born from above remain in this age, restored, and so healthy, and not one bone missing, may I tell you, perfect.395 ¶34

So here, let me go back to the beginning. Did you receive the Spirit of him who works miracles within you by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Now, tonight, just listen as though you heard what you would hear if things were as you desire them to be. Not with your ears [...]. Don’t condemn the party, don’t condemn yourself, condemn no one. What would you hear were it true? Now listen as though you heard it. Keep on listening ’til you actually can hear. You’ll hear it. And that’s all that you do. Just believe in the reality of what you’ve heard. He who is hearing…who is hearing?—your own wonderful human Imagination. You didn’t hear it with the outer ear. And who is hearing it?—your Imagination. Well, who is Imagination?—God. That’s God in you. That’s the real you, the eternal you that cannot die. And all things are possible to God. And so you hear it, believe it, and then let it happen in your world…and it will happen.395 ¶35

So if you are distressed in any way, financially distressed, or in your business you lack a promotion, what would you hear were you promoted? Who would congratulate you? Just listen to the voice, and try it, and then persist. I’m not saying it’s going to take a year and a half as this case did. It took a year and a half for Matt to have this excruciating pain, from ear to ear, and he was taken to the doctor and given these little drops to ease the pain. Then he fell into a little sleep and in that sleep…and from it he woke. When he woke his hearing was so acute that they sent him home early. And the usual story, a wife sees you and the habit is broken now, it isn’t six o’clock, “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” That’s the first reaction, “What’s wrong?”395 ¶36

Now let me share with you another little story before I close. This friend of ours, she painted her kitchen—she has a home in the Valley—and the price, as usual, is always more than the estimate, no matter what they tell you. You go and get a something…to upholster a couch…it’s always going to be more than what they tell you. They gave me an estimate when I came across the country. He said, “I’ll take it across the country for $2,000, your furniture.” It wasn’t $2,000 when it got here. They’ll move me from one place to the other and they’ll say, “Well, it’s just a few blocks, we’ll say $500 now.” Which isn’t any $500, it’s always more. When they came across the country, they justified it by saying they crossed state lines. As you cross state lines you’ve got to pay taxes because of a different state. But, there’s no state line here, but they still justify it. And so you move from one place…we moved the last time, it was five blocks and they increased the moving $300. We moved five blocks. We got our estimate; when it came in, “Well, that was the wrong estimate,” so all estimates are completely broken off. And don’t blame the thieves—because they are—don’t blame them. God made a thief. God made everything in this world. There are thieves…no matter what they call themselves. Oh, they go to church on Sunday morning, but they’re a bunch of thieves, the whole bunch. So forget them and just pay the bill.395 ¶37

So, she had her estimate and it came to more than the estimate. She said to her mother, “You know what I really want now? I want some money, that’s all I want.” [...] and works on some money. She received in the mail an invitation to a show that goes on—I never saw it until I was told to watch it on TV at 10:30, Channel 4, during the week. So I watched it and here is this sweet, lovely Cathy on the stage. Maybe you haven’t seen it. But there are about twelve, I think there are twelve celebrities, all actors and actresses, and they are asked a question. When they answer the question, then they turn to these two and ask one if you agree with the answer, and you either agree or disagree. If you agree and she or he happens to be right, well then, you get so much. To bring it to a head, she won $800 in cash, a piano that she really wanted because her daughter is taking piano lessons, and a trip to the Virgin Islands in St. Thomas for two weeks for two. So she and her husband—I hope he goes with her and not one of the daughters, I’m hoping he goes—and they go for two weeks, all expenses paid, to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. And she has her piano and then 800 in cash. And they say this doesn’t work? * * *395 ¶38

Are there any questions? If not, we are here until the 15th of this month, so we have Friday of this week and then Monday and Friday of next week. Then we are closed until the 8th of January. So I’m not sending out notices in January. I will put an ad in the…395 ¶39

May I tell you, there is nothing impossible to Christ, but don’t put Christ out in space as a little tiny person who lived as a man 2,000 years ago. Christ is in you as your own wonderful human Imagination…and Christ is God. So God is in you as your own wonderful human Imagination. And this God of whom I speak is a God of the living. So you cannot die, you can’t die. Oh, a little body that I wear it grows old as the suit I wear grows old, and so this suit will grow old and I’ll throw it away. The body will grow old and I will discard it, finding myself instantly, but instantly, restored. And that is a miracle. How is it done? Don’t ask me, I do not know. I only tell you what I see—restored to youth, not born again through the womb of a woman but restored. Restored into twenty, that’s usually the time that I can see is twenty. All seems to be about that age and they’re placed in different ages. It’s not just you die today and you find yourself in the year 1967, no, you may find yourself in the year 3,000. See, the whole thing’s already done. You find yourself in that section of time best suited for the work yet to be done in you. So it’s not that you’re going to go from here into ’67 because you died this month of December and therefore you [...] in December. No, you may be in 3,000, 4,000 or 1,000. The whole thing is done. It’s a play and we move into the play and start it until you awaken as Christ. And Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. Thank you. Goodnight.395 ¶44

[...] a friend of mine, a doctor, who said, “Neville, you disturb me. But I am convinced that you disturb most of the people who come here, and so I would like to know what you could do not to disturb as you do?” I said, “I have no desire not to disturb. If I’m only going to tell the story, which is a lie that has been told forever, then I am not sent by God. I am sent to disturb, to stir man to the truth.” And the truth is so completely unlike what the world appears to be. So let me turn to Blake and here in his Jerusalem, “All things acted on earth are seen in the bright sculptures of Los’s halls, and every age renews its powers from these works.” Every state we see in this world is already worked out. Bear in mind he calls them sculptures. He said, “Everything, every pathetic story possible from hate or wayward love is completely worked out in detail, and everything is completely carved here.” He tells us that all affinities, “every affinity of parents, marriages and friendships are here in all their various combinations wrought in wondrous art. Such is the divine written law of Horeb and Sinai; and such the holy gospel of Mt. Olivet and Calvary”. Now let me tell you from my own experience how true this is.394 ¶1

We go back now to scripture, the first chapter of the Book of John, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men”. In him was life and the life was the light of men, for this is said of the logos, of Christ who is called the image of the invisible God. So we are told in scripture, “Let us make man in our image.” In other words, it’s the image of the invisible God, therefore Christ. Christ is being formed in man. Christ is defined as the power and the wisdom of God. So this is what is being formed in man: the power of God and the wisdom of God.394 ¶2

For if I’m made in the image and Christ is the image and Christ is the power and wisdom, that is what is being formed in me. Now, what is this power and this wisdom of God? Blake tells us, “Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy”. All things exist in eternity independent of creation which was an act of mercy. What is he telling us? That all this existed, this existed, you existed, the whole vast world forms a part, we are component parts of the structure of the universe. Now what is then the creative act that is the act of mercy? God became this, individualizing himself in us, forming in us himself, his image, his power, his wisdom. How do I know it? Well, I’ll tell you how I know it. The day will come you will be taken in Spirit, not by another, you’ll move in Spirit. You’ll actually move. It’s a motion in Spirit. You may go forward in time or you may go backwards in time, that’s irrelevant, it doesn’t matter. “The entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively.” So when I go back in time and then have a collision with a portion of it or I go forward in time and collide with a portion of it, that’s irrelevant. The minute I collide with it I am it. I come upon a portion of it and it’s all animated, it’s all living. There are people just like you, a room just like this, and everything is alive.394 ¶3

And then I know that if I arrest an activity that I am feeling within me, it’s going to stand still. I arrest within myself that activity and everything stands still. It’s dead, completely dead. The bird that is flying flies not, and the grass that is waving waves not, and those who are dining dine not, and those who are walking walk not, and the leaves falling fall not. Everything stands still and it’s dead. I mean dead. Blake uses the word “sculptures” advisedly and he uses the word “carved” advisedly. He didn’t say they are painted. They’re not on flat surfaces. Even though you give to paintings a three dimensional quality, he’s speaking of sculptures, people. You go up and examine them, just like you, and they’re three-dimensional, and they’re all dead. They don’t breathe. Then you release within yourself an activity and they all become alive once more, and continue to fulfill their purpose. The bird intends to reach a certain tree and it goes, it flies. Yet it didn’t fall when you arrested it. It was in space and didn’t fall. Now, a bird arrested in flight, like being shot, should fall, shouldn’t it, unless some pressure keeps it aloft. But you arrest it while it is flying and it does not fall, it stands there. A man is taking soup and as you arrest him, he brings it this far and he can’t complete it, he’s dead. The spoon in his hand is there and he is dead. The waitress walking is stopped and she is dead. You go over and look at them and they’re all dead as though they were made of clay.394 ¶4

So I ask, what is all this thing? Who are you? You’re wearing these garments. You came down and you entered the world of death, and you are playing the parts, from beginning to end. While you are in them you animate your world. The whole vast world is animated by you: you are life. “In him was life and the life was the light of men.” So when you can stop it and start it, and stop it and start it, who are you if “in him is life and that life was the light of men?” Then who are you? Are you not the logos? Is it not unfolding in you, the word of God? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. And in him was life, the Word, but the Word was God. Well, in God was life and the life was the light of men, the consciousness of man. He’s illuminated man and made man alive, made him appear to be alive. You’re playing on this fabulous sounding board of humanity. But you are Spirit. God is Spirit. If he is forming you in his image, well then, you have to be formed in Spirit. God is love; therefore, you have to be formed in the body of love. God is life; you have to become aware of being the light of the universe, all these attributes. But the specific attribute of the logos is the life-giving power that is his. So he gives life to what he perceives. I perceive the world and the world is seemingly independent of my perception of it. Well, it is. It all exists as part of the structure of the universe, but its life is not independent of me. I am life and I give life to what I perceive.394 ¶5

You’re going to have this experience, for I have had it. As my friend said to me, “Neville, you know four weeks before Dr. Kimberly died you and I visited him. He said to me afterwards—you talked to him for about an hour—‘Neville knows. I do not know, not from experience; I know only from what he said.’ Now, how can I know? Suppose I die before I know?” Well, you don’t die; you simply go on in the play. It’s a whole fabulous play.394 ¶6

Now let me share with you what was shared with me this week. The lady is here tonight. She said, “I found myself on what seemed to be the very top of the world. I’m standing on the top of the world, and yet I look over and below into a limitless amphitheater. It’s limitless. And then I heard my own voice speaking from within me and the voice is saying, ‘The whole world is a theater and I am the whole world pushed out.’” Then, said she, “I heard the breaking of a twig, and as the twig broke rocks began to fall and they passed me. Then, huge, enormous boulders began to come past and I was uneasy and afraid. The whole earth trembled, it shuddered, as the boulders began. It’s falling apart. Then a little white dog appeared. It had the face of a lamb and its body was clothed in wool, but it was a dog because it was barking. It barked and barked as though to call my attention to escape. I had to make some quick effort to get out of this falling-apart world. But, to escape I had to go across a bottomless chasm. My concern was for the little dog, how could he make it? But as happens in vision and dream I got across the chasm and the little dog followed. I wanted to call him by his name, but I didn’t know his name and yet I remembered that I once knew his name. Then, my voice from within me speaks and the voice said, ‘It is Neville’s dog.’ And then, why I called him by this name I do not know, but I called him Junior. He responded and he came. Now the world in which I found myself, it too is falling apart, all the buildings are collapsing, everything is falling. One building made of huge, big slabs is the only secure looking building and I entered it and the little dog followed, followed into this one secure building, where everything else collapsed as though the whole earth is collapsing. And then I woke.394 ¶7

“For a moment I was fully awake, having remembered the dream, and then I fell asleep again. In the second dream, I am lying prone on my face on a hospital cot, a cot, being prepared for surgery. You are the surgeon. You have in your hand an object, a luminous object, which looked to me like a silver comb with needles for its teeth, many luminous needles. And I said to you, ‘Is this operation necessary?’ and you said to me, ‘Yes. Were it not so I would have told you. But it will not hurt you, there’ll be no pain.’ Then I felt on my shoulder where you were making this preparation just a cool brushing, that’s all that I felt. Then I said to you, ‘Neville, I have absolute confidence in what you’ve said and what you say. If you say this is essential, this is necessary, it’s alright. But I do not know that I am ready for it.’” And I told her there would be no pain. Then she said to me, “Alright,” having felt this cool little thing on her shoulder, “I am ready.” Then she realized the operation was over and there was no pain to that essential operation on her shoulder.394 ¶8

Then she said, “I woke and it was 7:30. But why did I call your little dog Junior and he responded and followed me when I remembered his name?” I want to tell her exactly where she is in the drama. Eight is the number of Christ. She woke at 7:30. The dog was Junior. Now, you will say a junior means a person who is younger than someone else, a junior. But there’s another junior. We’re moving forward…you always use the symbolism of the times. A junior today is one who is in the class next to graduation. The junior in college is next to the senior, which is the class of graduation. She has reached that point, just one slight little thing had to be done on her, some corrective thing on her shoulder. And now it’s done. All she has now is to wait for that, just a simple thing, until she reaches the end. It’s not far.394 ¶9

She has gone all through the journey. She’s played the entire part. She woke at 7:30 with full memory. She saw in the little dog the symbol of Christ and his companion. For the dog is Caleb, who walks into the promised land with Joshua, and Joshua is the Hebraic name for Jesus, and Jesus is called the Lamb of God. “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world”.394 ¶10

All are destined to play the part of Christ, but everyone. When you actually awake as Christ, you taste the power of the age to come. That power is fantastic and you see everything differently. The world that seems so animated and independent of your perception of it, yes, it is part of the structure of the world but its life comes from you. Life is simply an activity of your own wonderful human imagining. And the day will come you will be so in control of it, what you’re looking at that seems alive and outside and independent of you, you’ll stop this activity, and they’ll all be dead. And you’ll know they’re not really alive outside of you. They are there independent as structures, but they are not alive. They’re dead…everything is dead. And Christ…in him is life. So what is the purpose of it all? To form you into the image of God and the image of God is Christ. His first appearance in the world is as power. “And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘I appeared unto Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty,’ which is El Shaddai, ‘but by my name Jehovah,’ which means I AM, ‘I did not make myself known unto them.’” To you I make myself known as Jehovah, which is I AM.394 ¶11

So here we have power revealed…and you sense it. He comes first in the form of power and you are the one. “Remain…until you are clothed with power from on high. I depart, but remain in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high. For I will depart and send the promise of my Father upon you.” That’s what we read in the end of Luke. Remain in the city, I will send the promise, and the promise is God himself. He first appears as power, El Shaddai, God Almighty. Now he comes revealing his name, I AM, and then finally he remains and reveals himself as the Father. That’s the final revelation of God, when God reveals himself as Father. Then there is no place to go but to depart this age and enter that age. That is the creative age.394 ¶12

Now, what do you do in that age? “Those in great eternity who contemplate on death”—this world is the world of death. I know it from experience, for when I withdrew the activity they all were dead, perfectly still, and when I released it, they became once more animated, reanimated. “So those in great eternity”—where we’re all going—“who contemplate this world of death, said thus, ‘What seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair and eternal death. But divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus”…this power that you will become. You’ll become a creative power. Not only a creative power but the wisdom that is God’s; for Christ is the power and wisdom of God, and you’re destined to become Christ.394 ¶13

So you taste this power as you move in Spirit. In my own case, I moved back 150, 200 years ago. I came upon a scene, a lovely, a beautiful scene in the New England states, like some holiday or Sunday afternoon, where they dined early. Even to this day in little Barbados Sundays we dine early. It’s always, I would say, a two o’clock dinner, the big meal is at two. That’s almost all over the West Indies. Now, what we do here, we change it somewhat. But, I’m going back in time, when in the New England states they dine on these holidays or Sundays at a certain…twelve in the afternoon, they have a heavy meal. I came into this place and here, four people, two young boys in their twenties and parents in their forties, and they are dining. The waitress is just through the door bringing the next service. They were having soup and she was bringing in the next course. And through the huge, big window…a bird is flying, leaves are falling, the grass is moving, and everything is animated, and they’re all talking. And I am in spirit; no one sees me. I am simply a spirit, in the power for the first time that I can exercise. Then I knew if I could arrest in me what I am feeling everything would stand still. I knew it, therefore, that was the wisdom of God. The power of God was present and now I knew it would stand still. Well, I did, I arrested it and it all stood still. I went over and saw these four and they’re dead. They aren’t breathing. The soup is frozen…everything is frozen. The waitress couldn’t walk. It isn’t that someone is walking and you stop her but she’s alive…she was dead. The bird didn’t fall. The leaves stopped from falling. Everything stood still. But I mean the stillness of death. I’m looking at it and then I knew if I release it, it’s going to become animated. So I released this activity in me and all [...], everything continued on its course.394 ¶14

I never saw this until after it happened to me. And then someone gave me a book, The Apocryphal Gospel of the Book of James. And this experience of a time 2,000 years ago is recorded by James. But it’s not in our Bible, but it is the Apocryphal Gospel. It took place the night of the birth of Christ, when Christ was born. It’s told by his father Joseph. Joseph said, “The shepherds walking walked not.” And the [...] against a pail of food. Here was the bishops’ food…all with their hands into the dish. For no spoons and forks, you used your fingers. “And all those who dipped into the dish dipped not. Those who were chewing chewed not. Those who were raising the food to their mouths raised it not. The little kids with the running stream, with their mouths to the running stream, drank not. The heavens stood still and the [...] stars stood still. Everything was still. And then, all moved on in their course.” It’s the birth of the Christ power, which is the wisdom and the power of God in man. So you are spirit. You are destined to awaken as Christ Jesus, the image of God and the power of God.394 ¶15

Now, the story of my friend with the amphitheater. The whole vast world, she said she heard from [...], is a theater and I am the whole world pushed out, and can play all the parts, from hate or wayward love. All the sorrows and the distress are carved there. Think of the whole vast world, with every conceivable state completely carved and finished, and you descend from on high and take on the limitations of a body. And then you play it and you go through all the hell of the world. But you’re going through so that you may come out as the image of God, possessing all the power and the wisdom of God…come out as Christ Jesus. And you go through it and all this is simply fixed in eternity. “Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy.” If God never descended, the whole vast structure would remain just as it is, dead. But now, let us go down and take upon ourselves the form of man and become man. And because God is life, man becomes animated and alive. The whole thing, now, begins in this world of ours.394 ¶16

He plays the most horrible parts, so in the end, because it is all part of the structure, he can say “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do”. They don’t know. For every man tonight thinks he is going to build it up toward some enormous structure, and then have oodles, and cushion himself against the blows of tomorrow. Or he’ll make some big name for himself and become the next president, or become the next dictator of Russia, or the next so and so…and they’re all ambitious for these things. They don’t realize that someone is contemplating the state and animating it. They’re all moving through…and they don’t realize they are moving through as slaves, even though they call themselves kings and queens and dictators and billionaires. You only realize it when you completely come out of it. The purpose of it all is to bring you out of this horrible race despite it…and you come out. You are Christ Jesus, who is the image of God and the power of God and the wisdom of God.394 ¶17

You enter an entirely different age. Not this…this is all behind you. But you leave it just as it is and then you join the heavenly hosts who contemplate death. You, too, will say, “What seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be”—he seems to be…and you know it’s going to go just as it seems to be—“even torments, despair and eternal death.” But no, as he moves through seeming to be and becoming what he seems to be, divine mercy will step beyond at a certain moment in time when he reaches the end and redeem him in the body of Jesus. So in the end there is only Jesus: “one body, one Spirit, one creative power, one God and Father of all.”394 ¶18

So he said, “You confuse me.” Alright, so I confused you. “You disturb me.” Maybe I disturb you, too. So I said, “After all, Kim, you come on my opening night and my closing night, so do you expect to understand a book when you read the prologue and the finale? When do you come? You come opening night and closing night. I see you every Saturday when we have three, four, five hours together around your pool, and what do we discuss? Your lovely garden, the birds that you breed, and the lovely atmosphere that is here, and everything that is irrelevant to what I am talking about.” And so I disturb him.394 ¶19

May I tell you, so Kim has gone from this world, he’s gone, but he hasn’t gone to himself, he’s gone to you. Kim is not aware of being dead because he’s not dead. He’s restored to life and living a full, wonderful life, a much younger man. He was only fifty when he left this world; now he’s in his twenties, early twenties. He was a dentist here, a good dentist, trained by [...], for Kim taught dentistry at USC, and an excellent dentist…to me, the best. But here, Kim is gone and he didn’t have the experiences of which I spoke. So what? He could have them tonight, because he’s still in the same terrestrial world, and he’s in a body just the same as before with no loss of identity, no change whatsoever. If you are a fool here, may I tell you, you’re a fool there. If you’re a thief here, you’re a thief there. If you are ambitious here, you’re ambitious there. If you’re given towards climbing socially, you’re given to it there too. There’s no transforming power in death. But to you who die you aren’t dead, only to those who see you die. We see someone depart and they died, but the one who departed is not aware of having departed. He’s in the same body as before only restored and young. They all go back to their twenties, just about twenty. Whether you were ninety or fifty, you find yourself twenty, and there you are restored, and it’s the same world. Moving forward through the play, it’s a whole fabulous play. And her vision was true.394 ¶20

Now, here’s another friend of mine, who is here tonight. She said, “I had this dream. I found myself in the Near East. I came here on November the 10th and I heard this story that you told concerning ‘When were you hungry and I did not feed you? Well, when were you unsheltered and I did not give you shelter? When were you naked that I didn’t clothe you? And when were you thirsty and I didn’t give you drink? When you did not do it to the least among one of these, you did not do it unto me.’” Well, she said, “This was on a Friday night, Nov. the 10th. The following Monday I thought I would simply relax and contemplate and digest what you said on Friday. A friend called and I will not go into the details of why I said what I did; and I’m not given this way, but I really laid it on. I was critical. I was extremely critical, and then I tore into him (or her).” Male or female she did not even imply, the way she worded her letter.394 ¶21

“Then I remembered your teaching…and I realized what I had done. Here, I heard about treating anyone, and as you treat another you’re treating God. For if I said I love God and hate my brother, I lied. For how could I love God, whom I do not see, and hate my brother, whom I do see, when God became man? So when I do it unto man, I’m doing unto God.”394 ¶22

So she realized all this and then she said, “I went to sleep and this is my dream. I’m in the Near East. Here, I enter a place; they’re all dressed like Arabs, they’re all in their robes, and they looked like Arabs. So I enter this room. But before I entered it I knew that it was entered before me, someone entered before me. As I entered, to my horror I see these men massacred, their knives thrust into their backs, thrust into them, and they’re all massacred and bleeding. I began to cry. I came out and closed the door, went to another room, and as I opened this room I saw a similar sight. Again, I’m weeping for the horrors…the unnecessary massacre of these men. I went to a third room and here all these men, they’re all men, and then I saw a man. He was not on a wooden cross, but he had the appearance of a cross. But he was hanging as though hanging on a cross, and his hands were bleeding, his side was bleeding, his feet bleeding, just like the bleeding of the cross. He had the most pitiful expression on his face, as though asking, why? I realized that I was seeing in symbolic form the story of the gospel and then what you taught concerning how I do it to one of these I’m doing it to him and he is myself. I’m doing it unto myself. So here, I’m actually crucifying and keeping crucified my being when I lose my temper or do any unlovely thing to anyone in this world.”394 ¶23

And she wrote this perfectly lovely description of her own experience. So when Blake tells us, “All things acted on earth are seen in the bright sculptures of Los’ halls,” it’s true. The whole drama is there. He said, “Such is the gospel of Mt. Olivet and Calvary.” You see the drama—it’s all in symbolism—but we’re playing it. God came down and took upon himself the form of man, and man is part of the eternal structure of the universe. Then he animates the whole vast dead world, because life is in him. Then he goes through the gamut. When he comes out at the end he is the image of the invisible God, and the image of the invisible God is Christ Jesus, who is the power and wisdom of God.394 ¶24

So if I disturb, I have to disturb. I’ve been sent to tell it and tell it I must and will. If it’s in conflict with man’s little beliefs…because my friend was raised in the Mormon Church. He’s not a practicing Mormon, but he was raised in that church. And that is why [...] he began to tell me all about Mormonism. I said, if what you told me is a true representative of Mormonism, may I tell you, it is as false as a $3 bill. If what you told me…now you tell me that you’re telling me the truth concerning Mormonism, if that is Mormonism it is just as phony as a $3 bill. It hasn’t a thing to do with the Jewish-Christian faith; and my own mystical experiences confirm the truth of Judaism and Christianity. If what you tell me—I do not know Mormonism—but if what you are telling me is truly representative of the Mormon faith, it is as phony as all outdoors. You’re going to die here and if you’re dressed in the proper white clothes and buried in the proper manner, then you and your wife will be forever in some little heaven?394 ¶25

There is no marriage in heaven, no giving or taking in marriage. You’re not a divided being; you’re one. You are a creative power and there’s only brotherhood. The one you loved here and loved dearly as wife or as husband, in the resurrection we are brothers, a more intimate relationship than you’ve ever known on earth between any two. It’s a love that you can’t describe—all brothers, all one. We are not divided in the resurrection. In the resurrection we are above the organization of sex. And here we are one: the brotherhood of God, the fatherhood of God, that’s what it is.394 ¶26

So if you tell me that you’re going to go through with someone…and show me any of them called by any name who really understand what love really is on this level. Oh yes, you love. You love someone in some passion; and then you grow older and you find this falls apart and that falls apart. And you wonder why she isn’t so and so and he isn’t so and so…and you’re going to patch it up? There’s no patching up in heaven.394 ¶27

It’s a completely different world, where we are creative beings, everyone is creative, and we are brothers. It takes us all to form God. Not one can be lost. All are brought into this wonderful being that is Christ Jesus, the risen Lord who is Jehovah. People don’t believe it. Christ Jesus in the resurrection is Jehovah. There’s only Jehovah rising. And all must rise one after the other as creators. And, oh, what a joy when all are joined as creators, all in harmony!394 ¶28

A brotherhood that loves beyond the wildest dream of man on this plane, be- cause, on this plane you love and you expect something in return. Yet you will give and give in hope for some return; and if it doesn’t come back pretty soon, it’s not the love, it’s not the giving. That’s all on this level. But in that level, you are a creator with life in yourself, and they can’t do without you, may I tell you. For God’s body, which is the Lord God Jehovah, which is Jesus Christ, would be missing a part if you were not in it. So all are being brought into it, and when you’re brought into it you are above the organization of sex. As we’re told in Galatians, “In Christ Jesus there is no Greek nor Jew, there is no bond nor free, there is no male nor female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.” So, completely forget it, neither male nor female, just man, this creative power that is God.394 ¶29

So I thank my two friends and they are two ladies, may I tell you. The one who stood on the top of the world and saw this, that’s a lady. The other who was in the Near East and saw the symbolism of Christ after her argument with a friend, that’s a lady. So, two ladies are right on the very top. One saw the truth of it all, and the other woke at 7:30. She’s only a little bit…so she called him Junior…the junior stage is next to the senior stage. It’s very close to reaching the eight, which is the number of God, the number of Christ. So thank you. Now let us go into the Silence.394 ¶30

[...] we’re opening on the 8th of January. And so, this time I do not think I will be sending out notices. It’s so short a vacation of three weeks. I don’t wish to start…394 ¶31

Truth cannot be told so as to be understood and not be believed. It is my hope that I will tell the truth of scripture, for that’s what he meant. When he spoke of the truth he meant the word of God, no other truth. But it cannot be told so that it is understood and not be believed. Tonight, we’ll take a few words of God and try to tell it so that it is understood. But, may I tell you, whether it is understood now or not I know from experience there are multiple ways of still telling that truth; for he’s planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated. So here, we have this in scripture, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” Then we are told, “I baptize with the water for repentance, but there will come one after me who is mightier than I; and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit” . So there are two baptisms spoken of in scripture. It hasn’t a thing to do with the little baptism that you and I experienced when we didn’t have any awareness, as little infants, when some minister or priest baptized us. It hasn’t a thing to do with that.393 ¶1

The first baptism is for repentance. So I must now explain so you can understand what is meant by repentance. And if you accept it, and put it into practice, and then prove it in performance, then you are really baptized for repentance. Repentance means “a change of mind, a radical change of attitude towards life.” That’s what it really means and nothing else.393 ¶2

A chap wrote me this week—he isn’t here tonight—but he said, “Every year we have in Anaheim this convention for all those who deal in computers, and my company is now demonstrating a million-dollar computer. It was delivered on Friday to be ready for the opening of the show on Tuesday, Tuesday morning. On Sunday, here the computer, there are parts missing and parts that are not functioning. Now we have sub-contractors all over the country, all over the nation, who made these parts that are now not functioning. When I arrived, they sent me over to the convention on Monday morning. When I arrived there, I think I was the only one calm and collected; they all expected a disaster. Here is a million-dollar system. But I simply began to apply what I heard concerning Imagination, and I simply imagined that it was Tuesday morning and everything was going perfectly. Then I began to look around to find out who made these parts that are not functioning and to my delight, within fourteen miles of the center were the two companies that made these particular parts. So they came over and repaired them. We got all things together and it opened on time, and was a perfect demonstration of this million-dollar system.393 ¶3

“Another one was, a salesman sold a computer of ours. It was an old model and this one was down in the basement or in the storeroom, and no one took the time to check it out—take an inventory of the parts, all the things. Here comes the day of delivery…almost the day of delivery. Again I went into this application of this principle and applied my Imagination towards this end that everything was perfect. And here were two most vital parts that were missing. We called all the states, because there are sub-contractors all over the nation, and not one knew anything about these missing parts. Here I sat lost in contemplation, seeing the end. The salesman who made the sale came into the place and he saw a little package not more than ten feet from the computer. He picked it up and he said, “Here are parts…all kinds of parts”…and there were the missing parts! No one to this moment knows how they got there. There they were, within ten feet of the computer.”393 ¶4

Now, here is a man who has been baptized with the water—that is the psychological truth of this law. Water is the psychological application of truth; then comes the wine. We have the stone, the literal…where play it out, cut off the head of a bull and then that is sacrificing to God, and you do things, literally, on the outside, that’s the stone. Then comes the psychological interpretation of this literal fact and it’s called “water” in scripture. He comes into the fields to water the flocks and he rolls away the stone from the top of the well. He draws the water and waters his flock; then he rolls back the stone. Now comes one who turns the water into wine, and shows you not only the psychological interpretation of scripture but that one must see the whole vast world as a psychological drama.393 ¶5

You’ve heard it said you mustn’t commit adultery, but I tell you to lust after a woman is to commit it. And so, to restrain the impulse isn’t good enough. The minute you lusted that was the act. The drama is psychological and you are setting things in motion by your imaginal acts. No matter how you restrain the impulse, that isn’t good enough. The impulse to steal was the act. The impulse to hurt that was the act. You may be restrained because you are afraid to carry out the act. You may be afraid of the consequences. If you could get away with it, then you would do it. But that’s not good enough. One mustn’t even have the impulse to steal. One must discover who one really is and therefore create from within oneself.393 ¶6

But you first get the baptism of water. You’ll find that in the 3rd chapter of Matthew. And here he baptizes with the water for forgiveness. And forgiveness—or repentance it’s called in scripture—tests mans’ ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. I see you in want, can I so persuade myself that you are not in want, that you are affluent? To the degree that I can persuade myself that you are the person that I would like you to be, to that degree I have simply put in to practice this baptismal by water. I have heard it, now I’ve got to apply it. As I apply it to the point of proving it in performance, well then, I am actually baptized in the real sense of the word.393 ¶7

But now comes the next baptism and that is something entirely different. It’s not a thing that I do or you do or anyone does. Having applied this repentance and having lived by it, then we are called one by one by one to unite into a single body who is God. So we are told, “By one Spirit we were baptized into one body” as you read it in 1st Corinthians, the 12th chapter. By one Spirit we are baptized into one body.393 ¶8

Now let me share with you this baptism: We are taken in Spirit. Now you may think I am taken out in some fabulous inter-stellar space. It feels that way, may I tell you, it feels as though you’ve been taken on an enormous journey outward, but it all is within one; it’s not without at all. “All that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (). So I’m not really being taken out of myself at all. But I feel the sensation is one of a long, long journey. When you come into the presence of the risen Lord, he asks you a simple question. You answer it quite simply, as though prompted from some depth of your own being. You can’t make a mistake. He embraces you and you become one. “By one Spirit we are baptized into one body.” So, all who have been baptized into this one body have put on Christ. All who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. From then on you are he. Mortal eye can’t see your garment, because no mortal eye can see the body of Christ. But you know it, and you feel it, and you wear it every moment of the twenty-four-hour day.393 ¶9

And so, if you tell the story, some may hear you and they are so filled with their own preconceived misconceptions of Christ that they will resist you. I’ll show you this way…my wife’s older sister…and she’s a darling…we love each other, respect each other, but she said to me many, many years ago, “I don’t believe one word that you teach.” I said, “Perfectly alright, Al, I love you anyway.” She said, “I love you too. First of all, you’re kind to my sister, I know you love her, and for this I love you.” Well, that was it. “But I don’t believe one word you said.” What she meant was this, she does not believe in survival. To her, though she calls herself a good Christian, she means that one does not survive save in their offspring. You are survived in your children and your grandchildren and so on, but you, the individual no. I said, “I have news for you, nothing dies. Not only you do not die, but the little flower that blooms once blooms forever. You pick it, put it into your lapel, you wear it for awhile, and discard it, and it blooms forever. It cannot die. “I am a God of the living, not the dead.” Well, that did not go down with her. No matter how clearly I thought I had told her, she did not believe me…for this is how you get over to those who on one level can take it.393 ¶10

My secretary, Jack Butler, died quite suddenly in the year 1948, ’48 or ’49, I think it was ’48, yes, ’48, for he was born in ’98 and he was just fifty when he died. So I went back…I was here in California at the time, here on a lecture tour, still living in New York City. Then I got this cable this morning, and we packed up, and we returned to New York City. I took care of his funeral in Haverstraw, New York.393 ¶11

Well, many months later, six or seven months later, I knew I was out of this garment, I was fully awake, out of this garment, and here is my friend Jack, restored to life and a young boy in his twenties. Jack was fifty and he looked much older when he died, but he died when he was fifty. But he looked much older. However, now he is in his twenties, completely restored to a newness that is fantastic. And here is my sister-in-law, Al, and Al said to me to open up the conversation, “You know, I still do not believe what you teach.” I said to her, “Well, how can you say that when you see Jack?” She said to me, “What has that to do with it?” I said to her, “Do you not know that Jack died, Jack died in August of last year, and I came back and took care of the funeral? And he’s buried, the body was buried in Haverstraw, New York?” And Al’s face took on a peculiar expression, one of complete amazement. She knows I’m telling the truth and she is seeing Jack. She always denied that one survived and she’s looking at Jack…that face with that peculiar expression, one of complete bewilderment, because it’s in complete conflict with what she always believed, in complete conflict with what I teach and always taught her.393 ¶12

As she looked at Jack, now Jack said to me, “Who is dead?” I said, “Jack, you’re not dead but you died, you know.” “Oh,” he said, “that’s stupid.” “Yes, you died. You died in the month of August of last year, and I came back from California and took care of your funeral and gave you a lovely Catholic funeral. You’re buried, you aren’t cremated, you’re buried in a Catholic cemetery in Haverstraw, New York.” “Oh,” he said, “you’re stupid! Who’s dead?” I said, “You’re not dead but you died.” Then I said to Jack, “Come over here” and he came [...] as he always would. Then I said to Al, “Now Al, watch this” and I put my hand on his thigh. I said, “You see, my hand doesn’t go through his thigh. He’s solid. If I cut him right now he’ll bleed. He will hurt as you would hurt. He is solid and he is real.” With this, Jack took my hand, my hand is on his thigh, and this is what he did: “Take your hand off me”, just what he would do were he here.393 ¶13

There is no transforming power in death and Jack did not know he had died. May I tell you, not everyone knows the transition. Some take years to discover it. They see themselves restored to a newness that is unbelievable, but they do not know it. And, Al was standing there, my sister-in-law. When she came back to this world it wasn’t even to her a dream. You don’t always bring back your dreams. Had she brought it back it would be in the form of a dream to her. I was fully awake. I knew exactly what I was doing every moment of time. Now, you’ll say, what did it do to Al? May I tell you, today she does believe in survival. She doesn’t know that was the beginning. So, when you are sent to tell it you’ll find an opportunity whether it be on this sphere, that sphere or another sphere. But you are teaching morning, noon and night and telling the message of the one who sent you.393 ¶14

So he said, “I am in them and thou art in me, that they may become one, perfectly one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and that thou hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (). No difference. There’s only one body, only one Spirit. So when he embraces you, it’s the same love that was the embrace for everyone that was embraced and incorporated into that one body…one body, one Spirit.393 ¶15

So here, as you put this to the test you’re simply explaining that you are baptized. Whether you went before some little baptismal pond and got water on your hair or not, it hasn’t a thing to do with it. That’s a symbol. And they give that importance, but that is not the importance. You never need see the inside of a church. But you could hear of the law of repentance. Repent…repent to do what?…change your attitude toward everything in this world that displeases you, and remain fixed in the changed attitude, and the change will mold itself in your outer world and prove to you that you know what you are doing. You are creating on this level.393 ¶16

But the day will come you also will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now, it said, “There stands one…among you stands one whom you do not know. I myself did not know him,” said John. “But I saw the Holy Spirit descend upon him as a dove, and it remained on him. And he who sent me said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Holy Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit” (). Now that word “with” is the preposition “in” in Greek. He baptizes not with something on the outside, pours water on you; he baptizes, he incorporates you into himself, the Holy Spirit, that’s how he baptizes. He baptizes in, not with but in the Holy Spirit.393 ¶17

He embraces you and you are completely incorporated and at that moment you are he, you are not another. Not a little thing in the body of Christ, you are the body of Christ. “He who is baptized into Christ has put on Christ” and you wear him. Then comes the unfolding of the picture and then you know exactly who you are when God’s only begotten son calls you Father. Then you know exactly who you are…and you feel this being that you saw. You stand in the presence of the risen Christ, you are incorporated into the body; and when he calls you Father, you feel yourself this being. Not some little thing, but yet no loss of identity.393 ¶18

And this is this wonderful story of baptism. So go and tell them the mystery of baptism. And, it is true if you tell it with understanding, for truth told so that it is understood must be believed. It cannot be told so that it is understood and not be believed. If today their prejudice bars them for a moment in grasping it, wait. An opportunity will come tonight or tomorrow night in another level of your being.393 ¶19

Now, if I dwell in you and the Father dwells in me, is not the Father in you? So “I dwell in them and thou in me.” Well, if you are in me and I am in them, well then, the Father is in them, and are we not one? Will we not see the same being, the same infinite one who will call us Father?393 ¶20

Here, when someone can write me this story…he’s only been coming the last few weeks—he just came south from the northern part of our state—and here in just a short interval of time he has so believed it that he puts it into practice when everyone expected disaster. Now hasn’t he been baptized? So what water did we use? I didn’t put any water on his head, simply told him the truth by taking the literal story and giving it a psychological interpretation. And he, believing the psychological meaning of scripture, he puts it into practice and begins to live imaginally—seeing the whole drama as an imaginal act and not a physical act. So the world sees it as a physical act and they’ll throw it to him morning, noon and night, “But do you not believe that Jesus Christ, a man, lived?” And then you [...], and you know they cannot for one moment, at that moment, receive it.393 ¶21

If you tell them exactly who Jesus Christ is, they’ll run. If you speak of a cosmic Christ buried in every person in the world and that cosmic Christ in man is God the Father, and that he is in all and through all, and yet you are he, there aren’t two, just one. That one God and Father of all is housed in you individually, and that one God will one day unveil himself in you, and you are he. Not you and God, you as God…just the same being…and his son is calling you Father. Yet you are clothed in this little garment, limited by all the limitations of the flesh, and you walk the earth.393 ¶22

Now, a friend of mine gave me last Monday night a perfectly marvelous poem of D. H. Lawrence. It’s a long poem…Huxley was a very dear friend of his…and many a day we discussed it. He said to me, “Of all the men I have ever known no one excites me more than D. H. Lawrence.” He said, “He was the most unusual person. You know, Neville, he could actually, in the most convincing detail, persuade you that he knows what it is to be like a tree, to be like an animal, to be like a wave, to be like the moon, and he could persuade you in the most convincing manner. He had his favorite cow in New Mexico on his farm. It was called Black Eyed Susan or Black Eyed Baby, one of the two. And he would actually describe to me…he said he could put himself inside the skin of the animal and explain to me the moods and the dumb almost the unthinking thought, a sub-human way of thinking, in that animal. Now, here is a man who could milk the cow, he could sew, he could embroider, he could darn a sock, he was a master worker in woodwork. He could do everything. I never saw any man with more talents…the great poet that he was…and yet, strangely enough, he could sit and do absolutely nothing, and thoroughly enjoy doing nothing. Yet the man had so many talents. I’ve never known so many talents. He didn’t putter in sewing, when he sewed it was perfect. When he darned it was perfect. When he embroidered it was perfect embroidery. He could take a mat and make a rug in no time flat. He was perfect in his concentration. Take a piece of wood and turn out a table, a chair…and everything was perfect. Then comes his poetry. Then comes his novels. And then, to do nothing.”393 ¶23

Well, my friend gave me this poem of his, which was shared with him. It’s called “The New Heavens and Earth.” In it he said, “I was so weary of the world, I was so weary of it all, and then came death, and I died.” Now he describes what he calls resurrection, which I know is misnamed; it’s restoration in his case, it was not resurrection, for he speaks of the body. He said, “A body as of before, only with a newness beyond the knowledge of newness. A newness that is unaccountable, you can’t account for such newness. For here is an old body and then you find yourself in a new body.”393 ¶24

He’s telling the truth…like Jack, a boy in his twenties when he died at fifty and he looked so much older. When I saw Jack six, seven months later, here is this boy in his twenties, completely renewed…a newness beyond knowledge of newness. How could it be? He went through the ground. About seven months later decomposition was way advanced…and you can take someone in a matter of one hour and turn him into ash. And they give you a little urn that day…and what you knew as a friend, 170, 200 pounds prior to that moment is now a little bit in a can. And there you’ll meet him in the worlds into which I go and here he is. How is he renewed? The body is real and it is solid, and it breathes as you breathe, and it grows old as you grow old here. It has its problems there as you have them here. It goes through the same thing all over again.393 ¶25

Faith, if it doesn’t awaken, well then, it doesn’t even know the story of baptism, how the story of life is psychological. Jack did not know it then; he didn’t know it here. Jack came to all my meetings, but he only was interested in seeing people. He refused to assume any obligations to society; he wouldn’t get married. But, may I tell you, he was quite a man and his eyes were all over the place looking for the ladies. And they loved him, this wonderful lad, born in New York City of Irish parents. He was quite the Irish boy, full of blarney, and they all loved Jack. But he would not assume any obligations of marriage, for he would run in the opposite direction. He’s the same Jack. He does not know now that life is psychological. There’s no transforming power in death. It’s a renewal. It’s a miracle. How does it work? I see the ash, this was Jack, and here is Jack. Now how did he get that body?393 ¶26

Now, D. H. Lawrence brings it up, he said, “I was not born again. This is not born again; this is resurrection and risen.” But he admits he was not born again. He didn’t go through any woman’s womb. He finds himself restored, and calls it resurrection and risen. But I can tell Lawrence he is not resurrected but he is restored. You’re restored to life. Everyone is restored to life instantly…and a newness that is unaccountable. These are his words, “An unaccountable newness” where he finds himself a new being, a newness, a life beyond life he’s so alive; a newness beyond the knowledge of newness he is so new. No lost teeth, no lost hair, no lost anything. Everything is renewed and not one thing is missing.393 ¶27

How can it be when only a moment before…but people don’t reflect and think, “Well, I was ninety when I died and here I am twenty, well, how could it be? I didn’t go through the womb of woman and here I am restored to life, how is this thing possible?” Then, because the problems of life are upon us they go blindly on and they’ve got to pay rent too, and they must eat too, and they must do all the things you do here. It’s just like this world and he uses the word “the same, the same terrestrial world, not another.” It’s another world, he said, but it’s terrestrial, myself terrestrial, and yet a complete unaccountable newness.393 ¶28

But when you are resurrected it’s entirely different. On the heels of it comes the birth from above. Then when you take off this garment…and they can do what they want with it. They can send it to UCLA, let them cut it all into little pieces, and try to find out what made it tick. They won’t find it. It isn’t there at all. They can cremate it and put it into a little urn. As I said to my wife, Don’t you be stupid…the cheapest coffin, the cheapest funeral. If you can get it for a dollar, give a dollar. If they say the cheapest is $250, don’t pay $251. That extra ten dollars you go buy a nice bottle of liquor with it. But no, don’t pay one penny beyond what is the minimum and no darn fool urn sticking me here with a little urn saying this is Neville. That’s not Neville at all. So don’t put one penny beyond the absolute minimum and don’t let any of these high-pressure salesmen sell you one dollar more than it takes by law. Now if you’ve got to put me here and they will allow me to be shipped, well then, ship me, to stop that silly little yearly [...], ship me to Barbados and throw me in the sea. For I am not there…I’m instantly restored, but this time I am not in this world at all.393 ¶29

For, the world into which Jackie went is this world, a different section of time. The world into which all people go is this world…just like it, the same problems. That’s where D. H. Lawrence went. But the world into which the resurrected go is into the one body of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is heaven. And the whole thing is within you, may I tell you? You don’t go off there to get it, you awaken within that body. That’s your body, endowed with infinite creative power, an entirely different world [...] where you are creating. Not the limitations of the flesh; no need for food as we understand it; no need for taking care of the normal functions of the body, they do not exist. It’s an entirely different body—a body of radiant light into which we shall all be incorporated, one by one, as planned.393 ¶30

So I tell you, if I could this night so tell the truth that it is understood, you could not fail to believe it. But if tonight something in you resists it, may I tell you, just like my sister-in-law Al, I will still catch you. For there are worlds within worlds within worlds and you will not be able to resist something like this. Her opposition was…she didn’t deny that there’s God the Father, God the Son—although she knew neither and her concepts of both were distorted—but she resisted the third fundamental of the Christian faith “life everlasting.” That she resisted completely. Yet she calls herself a pillar of the Christian church and attends church in [...], New Jersey. But, that one she could not understand and this day when Jack appeared and that face of utter, utter bewilderment…she knew I was telling the truth that Jack had died. But he didn’t know he had died because he’s so alive. He did not know he had died. In spite of his youth he didn’t know it.393 ¶31

Someone looking in the mirror and because they just came out of the beauty parlor, “Oh, isn’t it marvelous! Look, ten years off.” They’re so carried away with that ten years off they go through for the next, well, twenty-four hours, at least, ’til they sleep. And then, they’re in their mind’s eye ten years younger than they were the day before. Well, in this other world it is such a permanent state of youth that you never reflect upon “how did it happen?” because if you aren’t a philosopher here, you aren’t going to be one there. If you are not given to analysis here, you aren’t given to it there. There is no transforming power in death. So I can take something for granted, just take it, and not reflect upon it, and just act, well, it’s natural, it’s normal, I’ll do the same thing there.393 ¶32

And Jack lived that way. He dined with us every weekday, save the nights that we entertained. Didn’t come on Sunday nights, but every weeknight he dined with us. And no one could be more flattering to my wife than Jack. No matter what she prepared he would say, “Oh, Bill, this is the most marvelous” and he’d name it. And the next night, “This is the most wonderful” and he’d name it. Of course, he washed the dishes and I dried them. Then he died and then I had to take on his chores, so I washed and dried. He used to at least wash. So he departed and that [...] him do what he did. But he was fun. No matter what Bill gave him, she could give him the hash of hashes, and he would eat and say, “Oh, this is the best hash in the world!” You couldn’t possibly put anything before him that he did not rave about. And so, he dined on us and with us, I would say, every night we didn’t entertain. Occasionally, he would come around a lunch hour and there was always something in the refrigerator, so Jack would…he couldn’t scramble an egg. He could do nothing when it comes to cooking. But he came home, and Bill is a marvelous cook, and that was our life for years with Jack.393 ¶33

Six months after, he didn’t know he was dead, because he isn’t. Can’t blame him, he isn’t dead. But he did not see the youth that I saw. He saw it, but he took it for granted. It never occurred to him that he had gone through what this world would call the gate of death. Hadn’t the slightest concept of it. So he goes blindly on and in time he’ll realize certain things that he must have gone through, but he hadn’t the knowledge of doing it. They found the body on the floor. He went home on a very hot summer’s day in New York City, when it was humid and maybe a hundred degrees; next morning the maid goes to clean the room and here’s Jack. So he had one stricture and he was gone.393 ¶34

But if you are not given here to reflection in this world, and you don’t reflect upon things, why did this thing happen?—when something happens in your world, do you ask yourself why? Must have a cause. If you don’t do that here and see only outer causation and never an inner, well then, you aren’t going to do it there. And the whole vast world is a psychological world. When you accept it, you have been baptized; and it was the one called John who baptized you and brought it into being.393 ¶35

Now next week…I had a perfectly lovely letter that came today, perfectly marvelous. We’ll take that up on Monday and show this lady—I’m sure she knows but I’ll show her, and show a gentleman—what was the [...], and show this lady her story where I am involved in the dream. It’s perfectly marvelous. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *393 ¶36

We have three more weeks, we’re closing on the 15th of December and returning here on the 8th of January. We’ll be closed in three weeks and will remain closed for three weeks, and from then on I’ll tell you as we go. Are there any questions, please?393 ¶37