If I say to you that it was Jesus himself and not the crowd who was conscious of the mighty acts of God, would you think of another? I hope not. By Jesus, I simply mean your own wonderful I amness. That is Jesus. So I mean the individual who has experienced these mighty acts of God acts for his redemption is not an individual outside of you but your own wonderful I amness. When you say I am, that is God and that is Jesus.1137 ¶1

Here for the last three or four weeks they’ve been running a series of questions in the LA Times on Saturday in the religious section and the editor started it by asking a question. How long should a sermon be and many of them said three minutes, for the span of interest cannot be held. They cannot be attentive beyond say 3 minutes but some special to five. And then this past Saturday John Charles Thomas Jr. you’re familiar with the name the great singer. Now whether he is a junior or this is his son, I do not know. But he wrote a very sweet letter and said he could take 15 minutes if it’s well prepared and if the man who speaks it is convinced of what he says, if he really believes what he’s talking about and he’s prepared his thought, 15 minutes would be perfectly all right. But he added this much. He had a sermon that disturbs. The sermon that in some strange way moves the individual, disturbs him like the comfortable person, the complacent person. It is almost certain that that preacher has an outside source of income. Now that you may take it for the whole vast world.1137 ¶2

Fortunately, my heavenly father saw that my earthly father could supply me with that outside source of income that I did not have to take what I would have to take were I not free of Caesar’s will. But when I first came into this city back in 1945, I was confronted with just such a picture. I had already spent quite a few thousand to come here. I brought my family of four, really, three, and my wife’s niece, and we lived in the Gaylord Hotel. And I think the room was $40 a day. That is a suite because there were four of us, two little girls. my wife and myself and we ate in hotels and lived normally. But it was quite an expensive uh journey and we came across the country by training those days because planes were not flying not commercially as they are today. And so the journey on a train for three and a half days across the country and then here and he tried overnight to shut me up because I was controversial that I said that I do not believe in the historicity of Jesus. Not as is described by the priesthoods of the world but as I get it out of the Bible. Yes. but not and he said, “Well, as far as I’m concerned, I teach the historicity of Jesus, and so you cannot take my platform or any of my groups.” And he had dozens scattered around the area where I was already contracted to speak. So John Charles Thomas was quite true. When this man learned that I was not dependent on his little money to go back to New York just as I came, he relented. He ran. He relented too late though. After I took one of those that really represented him and gave her all the money that he could have made, he went through the ceiling. It was only money. It wasn’t historicistic at all. It was a matter of money. He thought I would disturb those who gave to him generously.1137 ¶3

And so if you disturb the complacent, the comfortable who support the churches because there are some to sleep 3 minutes. So they can’t go beyond 3 minutes. Five minutes, that’s too much. By then they’re snoring. Ask anyone what is the text of today’s sermon and they can’t tell you. But it was something to do. You are seen in church and therefore you were a holy man like the chap who just dropped out of the skies with $500,000 extorted. He was a Sunday school teacher, a very good member of the church, a junior in the Mormon University, Brigham Young’s University, and undoubtedly a verybrightle, but he could extort $500,000 from the company. So, he only had time enough to spend $30 of it. They got him and they got the almost the $500,000.1137 ¶4

But to come back to the substance of it all when you take the pulpit, you are almost warned not to trade on toes, not to trade on anything. Just leave it asleep. And if you don’t, well, then out you go. And we will simply call a meeting and bring in another one, another preacher who will not disturb. And if he doesn’t have an outside source of income, he will have to tow the mark. Well, that is life in this world.1137 ¶5

Fortunately, he who sent me sought to it, I would not have to tow the mark. For when he embraced me and he was infinite love and then sent me and told me done with the blue bloods. In other words, with all protocol, with all ceremony, with all that is now given off in the form of Christianity or religion for that matter, done with it by ignoring it and go all out until exactly what you are going to experience. And so I began to experience God’s plan of redemption. And so I was bold enough to go out and tell it just as it happened to me because I have what we call in Barbados a hind claw. When you find people chasing through the night to catch crabs and the crab can run as fast as the individual behind him and he can run in every direction just as fast forward, backwards, sideways, anything. and they’re going to make a wonderful dish out of crab meat. Well, the crab can go to a precipice. It could be 70 ft tall and right below is the ocean. And that crab can go just as fast as the man can run and disappear, but he isn’t falling. He has a hind claw and he simply holds on and simply buries himself and hides himself. If the man goes one second beyond his speed into the water 70 ft below he goes. So we speak in Barbados of having a hind claw that you can run and break your neck but you aren’t going to break it if you have a hind claw. So let them try to get you off the pulpit, get you off the stage, all these things. And if you really are sent, it will be prepared for you. You will have the hind claw. You will have that outside source of income. So you can speak boldly and tell exactly what has happened to you.1137 ¶6

Now Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. They are not two religions. It’s one. It’s the tree and its fruit. And Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. And when did it happen, and where? Do you know? It all happened in the Jewish synagogue. The entire Old Testament is written by Jews. 90% of the New Testament is written by the Jew. The New Testament is telling you what happened in the synagogue. Why? In the synagogue, men began to experience the fulfillment of their own wonderful prophecy. And then they told it. Now you will say, well, how did the one that is now symbolized as the one who told it? He was not the only one. It happened as is happening here. Many of us are happening now. If I preceded you by a few years, what does it matter if I am the voice? But many of you are actually coming forward with the identical experiences. So we were formed the single unit.1137 ¶7

Jesus is only a name given. The word Jesus is I am. It’s Jehovah. Jehovah is salvation. So in man, man is having this experience. Now did he have an outside source of income? Well, may I tell you? You read the eighth chapter, the second and third verses of the book of Luke. If I said to the average Christian in the world that he was supported by rich women, they’re slapping that box my ears. All I would have to say to them, go back to your Bible and read the 8th chapter, the second and third verses. If you are not familiar with scripture, may I quote it for you? First of all, Luke mentions three by name. Mary who was called Magdalene. Well, Magdalene was a lady of the evening. He said he came to the sinners. He came to the harlot. He came to the tax collectors. These were his friends, those that the world calls sinners. So Mary Magdalene is mentioned first. Then came Johanna and then came Susanna. And then Luke adds, “And many others, not just others, and many others gave to him of their means.” Now the King James version has it him which is a right translation of the Greek. The modern translation to modify it under pressure of the errors of the present day use the word them trying to include disciples and followers which it is not. The Greek word is him. It was to him that they gave of their means and three women are mentioned and then and many others. So he had an outside source of income if you take it on this level.1137 ¶8

But you’ve got to take it on an entirely different level when we come to speak of Jesus. Jesus is simply the individual who has experienced God’s mighty acts of redemption. Now let us go back to the beginning of Luke first. He starts with the events here. First of all were events. These things that have been accomplished among us. Now the word translated the mom really should be translated within. It’s the same word that we read in the same book in the 17th chapter. The kingdom of heaven is within you. So these things have been accomplished within, not among but within. But nevertheless, we start with the events. And here are the first four verses. In as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us as they were dictated to us by those who were ministers of the word who were eyewitnesses from the beginning. It seemed good to me also, having thought all things closely from the very beginning, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things that have been told you.1137 ¶9

You heard these things. They’re all things that man only heard from those who had experienced it. Can you believe it?1137 ¶10

Now, all this happened in the synagogue. It did not happen on the outside. These are all Jews who knew their Bible, but they’re not scholars. They were not brilliant minds. They were not the Sanhedrin. There were men who simply it happened within them as told us in the book of Daniel. He will give it to the lowliest of men. He is not coming to give it to the so-called wise men of the world and those that are known. But to the lowliest of men, he will give it. So here are men and women in whom the thing began to unfold like a tree being ripe and suddenly the blossom unfold. And here we see the fruit and they begin to describe their experiences and knowing scripture well. out. They could pinpoint the events that were foreshadowed in the Old and here they’re now there’s no New Testament but they know they’ve brought the Old Testament and the Old Testament to fruition and so they began to tell their story.1137 ¶11

So here we find, first, the events; then we find the oral tradition. So people heard what the few experienced, and then they are the preachers who told the word. Then came the committing of the oral tradition to the written word because it has to be recorded, because those who actually heard it from those who experienced it are dying off. And so it’s time to record for posterity what actually we heard. So now is committed to the written word.1137 ¶12

Now Luke sees what has been committed. For he said in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us. Now he does not criticize those who made the attempt. But he said, “It seemed good to me also, having studied all things closely from the very beginning, 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.”1137 ¶13

Now, Theophilus means one who loves God. It means you or you would not be here tonight. You are in search of God. And so he’s speaking to you when he speaks or writing it for Theophilus, one who loves God, who is in search of God. He does not condemn or in any way criticize those predecessors who attempted the narrative. He simply claims that he has a better arrangement of the source material and not necessarily a greater I would say chronological exactitude.1137 ¶14

He does not put it in a chronological manner. No one does in scripture. I think I have given you a far greater chronological picture than anyone I have ever seen in print. I have told you exactly how it happened to me and the spaces in between from the moment of the awakening within me which is resurrection and the birth coming the same night 139 days later for the discovery of the son who reveals me as father. Then 123 days after that for the splitting of the curtain of the temple and I am the temple for my whole body was split and then another 298 day not no two years beyond that bringing it to 1260 days and here I’ve given you exactly one after the other chronologically is not really important but I do feel that having been sent to do what I am doing and must do and will do that it was important for one night on my bed I wondered how long did it really take I know what came first and what came second and what came third and I marked them all in my Bible. So I marked them all in the Bible and put the date down and a voice said to me, “Count them up.” So I got off of my bed, went to my living room, turned on the light, took my Bible, and took the days. And I went over and over and over and each time it came out 1,260 days, which is the day numbered in the book of Daniel. If your name is written in the book of life, then what does it matter? It takes 1,260 days. Well, I went in and I looked at it. I took my calendar. I went through the entire thing. I could hardly believe I’m seeing correctly. Went over the whole thing again. The next day that same thing and as often as I go over it came out to 1,260 days. And I know that no one saw these mighty events of God in me but I myself.1137 ¶15

So in scripture, if you read it correctly, no one but the individual who experienced it. Now here is the earliest of the gospels. The book is Mark. It’s the baptism and he is coming out as it is said he saw the heavens open. Didn’t say the crowd did. He saw the heavens open and the spirit descending upon him in bodily form as a devil. Yes, there is a voice. In my case, there was a voice and the earliest rabbitical tradition has it that the voice of God is like the sound of the voice of the dove. It’s called bath co B A T H QL. the echo of the voice of God. And when it comes down and descends upon you and smothers you with affection and your whole body is completely filled with love, pardon me, no one but you and the voice. But the voice is now personified as a woman, the daughter of the voice of God. And she said to me, which is not recorded in scripture, they meaning the dove, avoid man because man gives off an awful odor, a horrible, horrible odor. Most offensive odor. But he loves you and he penetrated that ring of offense to demonstrate his love for you.1137 ¶16

Well, now the order that I give off and you give off is not because we are carnivorous and eat meat because the vegetarian stinks as much. They all do. It’s not that. It is simply the thoughts we entertain. You and I entertain the most horrible thoughts in the course of a day. And man lives not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And God is I am. So every idea that I entertain is proceeding out of me. And when I entertain these things, I am feeding upon them. And they give off the most offensive odor. And the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, avoids man until that moment that is so compelling, he has to penetrate that ring of offense and come down upon that one and gives his seal of approval.1137 ¶17

So the story opens up with this statement in Luke. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me. You read it in the early chapters of Luke. He comes out of the water.1137 ¶18

But may I tell you, you don’t see water, but the dove floats. Well, a dove can’t float. He’s not given like a duck or any bird of that nature. It doesn’t have a web foot. And yet when I looked at the dove, say 20 ft above me, it simply was stationary and the crystal clear ar atmosphere. As he said, the heavens opened. He saw the heavens open. And here is the dove floating actually floating because only if it floated could remain so stationary. And his eye on my eye the most affectionate look. And then I raised my hand like Noah in the ark. And I raised it and my index finger on the left hand went out automatically and the duck descended through this crystal clear area and then lit on my finger and I brought it to my face and it smothered me in love and kisses and affection. And while it is actually smothering me with affection, the whole thing dissolved. No one saw it but the voice of the daughter which is the echo of God. She it was who stood on my left who told me of the offense that man gives off and how his love was so overpowering that he penetrated that ring of offense to demonstrate his love for me and then it came down in bodily form upon me.1137 ¶19

So he fulfilled the 61st chapter of Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me. He has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor and to open the prison doors of those who are enslaved.”1137 ¶20

And then he closed the book and returned it to the attendant. And then all the eyes were upon him because of what he had said. And in a matter of moments they were stoning him to death. So he disturbed the complacency of people. So when you take this platform and you in any way disturb the comfortable, those who are complacent, those who are now quite satisfied with their prefabricated misconception of scripture, they don’t want any disturbance and you disturb them and they’ll warn you, you won’t get a salary. You’ll be out. For if they learn that you have an outside source of income, then they respect you. That’s all they respect anyway, money.1137 ¶21

What caused this man to take this $500,000? Was it not the love of money? And someone imitating him within 24 hours. So they caught him. They said he was about an imbecile, but he was asking for another 500,000 because how easy it was to get it. So they got them both. one had mapped the whole thing out and he thought it the perfect crime. They could never find this. He did everything he thought was the right thing and seemingly betrayed by his intimate friend who knew his secret. Can’t you see scripture? His closest friend betrayed him. No one can betray you who does not have your secret. And so his closest friend and his sister-in-law betrayed him for reasons not yet told, but they couldn’t stand it. And so we are told in scripture, “His closest friend, he who dipped into the dish with me betrayed me. Only my intimate friend to whom I reveal my secret could ever betray me.” No one knows the secrets of a man but the spirit of man. No one knows the secrets of God but the spirit of God. So if God reveals his secret only the one to whom he revealed it could be trained and he has to be his closest friend. That’s the story.1137 ¶22

So he writes a narrative around these events. So you can tell all kinds of things around the series of events and they aren’t very many. They are mighty acts by which God unveils himself in the individual for the salvation of that individual. And the salvation of the individual is to reveal him as God himself.1137 ¶23

So this story of Jesus Christ, if I could only get you to feel, I will break it right into two and speak of Jesus as Lord and Christ as his son. But man hasn’t been taught it that way yet. You will write it one day. I have given it to you from the platform and now you have it on tape. That’s all right. But I still feel the written word is more lasting. This is a wonderful electronic age and you can put it on if you have the machine. But the written word when you have it written so at leisure you can simply be turned back and read it. One day someone is going to write it just as I have told it and now record it on cassette but you will take it from the cassette and one of you will have the ability to write it.1137 ¶24

And he claimed he simply took the oral traditions, for he followed them closely from the very beginning, and having seen what others attempted to do, for in as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us. And how they came, they came by the oral tradition, the preachers of the word that they heard. Then having followed all things closely from the very beginning, it seemed good to me also, to write an orderly account for you, Theopoulos, you lover of God, that you may know the truth concerning these things of which you have been informed. And so he writes the book of Luke and the book of Acts. There’s no bragging, claiming that he is better than it claims. is simply a better arrangement of the oral traditions.1137 ¶25

Who Luke is, no one knows. They’re all anonymous. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are anonymous names. No one knows who they are. But there were those who were qualified to write the oral traditions for it all came down in that manner. But then when those who heard it from the source in the beginning are approaching the point of dying from this section of time and leaving it, it naturally behooves someone to record it if it’s worth recording. And so he thought it worth recording in the written form. And so he recorded it in our gospel called Luke. So that’s how it’s done.1137 ¶26

Now I have been sent to clarify points. I feel my entire mission is to tell you who Christ really is and Christ is David. If the whole vast world rose in opposition tonight and if I were physically nailed, it would make no difference. I would not enjoy the pain naturally. But if that was what I had to pay, I would willingly pay. But I could not recant. I could not recent what I have experienced that David of biblical fame is the Christ. He is the anointed of the Lord. He is the son of God and the only one that can reveal God to you. And he isn’t going to say that is your father. He is going to look at you. And the minute he looks at you, you know who the father is because you know you are his father and he is God’s son. And you know that there is no doubt in your mind as to who he is and therefore who you are because you know the relationship. And that’s what I’ve been sent to tell you.1137 ¶27

And so in the notistant future, this garment will come off. You will have a record. Others will have an oral tradition and someone will have the ability to tell it and the power to tell it. But in this present state, my heavenly father, the depth of my own being, saw it fit to give me an outside source of income that I could tell it and that I could not be shunted from here to there because I am disturbing the slumbers of the complacent and the wealthy and the very comfortable people of the world. Don’t think for one second that it hasn’t happened and happens and will happen forever.1137 ¶28

One lady in New York City, she hated Bishop Manning. He was the bishop of St. Thomas, 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue. And she left $2 million and her will was it goes to St. Thomas if Bishop Manning is dead or if he is still alive, it goes to St. Luke’s Hospital. Well, St. Luke’s is owned by the Episcopal Church. So, it doesn’t really matter. You give it to St. Thomas or you give it to St. Luke’s. So, she left a will that if it is if he is still alive that thing, then St. Thomas does not get it. If he is dead, it he’ll get it. If he is alive, St. Luke’s gets it.1137 ¶29

Now, here one day I was dining at the university club in New York City and my friend who was my host took me to the window and I looked out through the window and I saw this enormous wall and I said, “What am I supposed to see?” He said, “Just what you’re seeing. Do you see anything?” I said, “Well, just a wall. a plain wall that goes all the way up to the height of some building that is there.” Well, he said that building that it hides is St. Thomas’s church and that is a spite wall built by John D. Rockefeller I. He too had an argument with the bishop, Bishop Manning. And to spite him, he built on his own land a wall that completely covered all the beautiful uh glass windows, these beautiful colors that faced north in New York City. and he left to will that even to this day which is now the fourth generation after his death they cannot break that will. So you go into St. Thomas today and you see beautiful tapestries hanging where if you could remove the tapestry and the wall to get the light through you see the most beautiful wonderful glass that is there. You can only see the birth that faces the west and that which goes south. But the northern view is completely blocked out by the spite wall by a man who considered himself a very religious man. He was against prohibition, against spoken, against all things. And he was a devout Baptist, but not devout to the point he would not go and an and an analyze all kinds of soil. And only he knew figures backwards. And so he could just multiply it and multiply it into billions. And so he thinks that is spirituality. And that wall still is there in New York City.1137 ¶30

And you go into that lovely church.1137 ¶31

I’ve gone in many a time at the vespers just to hear the organ. A beautiful organ. And some great organist is always playing. So you’re going, especially in the winter months when winter sets early around 4:00, it’s all dark. And quite often around 4, I would go into St. Thomas and just sit in the back and hear that beautiful organ and look to the setting sun because just before it would set we got from that western view that enormous burst through those beautiful colors that is over the altar and I could get a bit from the south by the north all hidden by these statistries but at least I thoroughly enjoy the beautiful music that came from the or so This is what everyone confronts in this world of Caesar.1137 ¶32

So tomorrow have a little fun and ask the complacent and ask those who are completely asleep if Jesus had any supporters and they will tell you, “Oh no, he could bring gold out of the fish’s mouth. He could do all these things. And why would he want anything other than the the ability to do these things?” And then just casually open the book of Luke to the 8th chapter and have him or have her read the second and third verses that they gave him of their means and many others. And they named three and one was a harlot. She had a wonderful clientele and gave generously to one who set her free. Instead of condemning her for her profession, he let her go. And then he took that one commandment from the 10. And any man, he uses that in the sermon on the mount. Any man who looks lustfully on a woman has already committed the act in his heart with her. So then he said to her, “What man is without sin?” So go, my dear. And so she continued to go her way and reward him generously if you take it on that level.1137 ¶33

But on all these levels, you can take scripture for the ark is built on three levels. And you have your physical level, your psychological level and your spiritual level. I am trying to raise you to the spiritual level where these mighty acts take place within us. And when they take place within us, they are seen by no one but the individual in whom they took place. So the dove comes down and who sees it? No one of the crowd. And so you’re split in two and who sees it? No one but you. You see David and who sees it? Just you. You come back and you tell the story how you rose within a grave and you came out of that grave with an innate wisdom as to what to do and no one saw you do it. Will they believe you?1137 ¶34

I said to my dentist, I told the whole story to him one day. He said, “Do your brothers remember it?” He had to bring it down to this level. For my three brothers were the witnesses to the event. As told you by tradition in scripture, the three who witness, the three kings were brothers. In my case, they were my brothers, Cecil, Victor, and Lawrence. And the three kings in the book of Matthew were considered brothers. And so tradition has it that way. In my case, they were brothers. And they came from afar, 5,000 miles away. But certainly they came in spirit. And they have no knowledge in this conscious little world of Caesar of the part they played in my awakening. None whatsoever.1137 ¶35

I told them when I went home, I got the air of the one who hung the child, but I didn’t get the air of the others. They thought, well, it’s Neville. He’s still dreaming. He was dreaming when he was a child. He is still dreaming. Still the same mystical child doing what he did when he was a child. He hasn’t changed at all. So, leave them to themselves.1137 ¶36

My brother Lawrence before he departed this world, he had the experience and he questioned me seriously when I went home and would ask me certain passages of scripture. Can you quote the first verse of Hebrews? When I did, the first of Luke and the first of this, the first of that. And he was so surprised. How can you do this? I said because I love the book. Sometimes, Lawrence, I feel I wrote it. I feel I so love it. I feel sometimes I inspire it because I am now awakening to remember it and I’m actually having the experiences of all that is there. And so I can’t deny the feeling sometimes that possesses me that I inspired it. Well, because if he who is the father of David inspired the book, I certainly must have because I am the father of David. But Lawrence took that under consideration and then a year later he was gone from this section of time.1137 ¶37

The other two are still with us and they are businessmen and very successful businessmen and they have no time for this. I am Neville and they are what they are and they allow me to be what I am. But it was so set up in the beginning with my heavenly father that he is going to send me into this world to do what I have to do and do I must and do I will. And knowing what happens to the preacher when he steps on the toes of the sleeping ones who contribute to his income they can fire him overnight. He saw to it that I would not be fired.1137 ¶38

And oh, the thing that struck me so forcly when I first came here when this man with all of these degrees all self-imposed because where did he get them? He gave them all to himself. And then he dared to tell me that I must not teach from his platform the nonhistoricity of Jesus. And I told him that I know from experience that he is the only reality in the world. but not secularly. So it’s not secular history that our evangelists were writing. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, they themselves are unknown. And they were not writing secular history. They were writing theology. They were not writing as historians, as biographers. They were putting down things that no mortal eye could see and building around it the most glorious story that it could enter into lowly minds just like yours. And so you believed in the historicity. And he wouldn’t bat an eye to take from you what was in your pockets if you didn’t have them nailed down. I’m not criticizing him. I’m just telling you what I know from experience. I went through that with him.1137 ¶39

God the Father has given himself to us, where this gift is still to be realized in experience. It remains a gift to be attained, and let us see how you and I, who possess the gift, become aware of it. I absolutely believe one hundred percent the statement of Shakespeare, in As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts” — the parts, from the cradle to the grave, beginning with the little infant, mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms, and ending with the end, where a doting man, pardon me, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything. But I’m going to expand that beyond this little section of time, from the cradle to the grave, because I speak from experience. I’ll go along with Blake: “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years, dazzling around the ice skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold.” I know that — what — myself, for my Creator and Redeemer.1136 ¶1

So here we take a play, and try to follow me closely with this play. I tell you it is true: judge not the play until the play is done. The last act crowns the play. The last act we call Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the very center, the way — in Judaism the way out of bondage, being to liberty. Let’s think of a play in this form. Think of a vast plan, six thousand years, the whole thing is kept, and you think it must begin at one point and come to an end in one linear motion. But think of the entire play as taking place, think of it as something that is taking place absolutely and continuously — without reference to duration, to repetition, to position in time. Let’s think of it as taking place, and in the end, when you are crowned, having gone through all the thoughts you’ve played, everybody then just scattered in place in time — portions of it are brought into one wonderful state.1136 ¶2

A portion in Genesis — pardon me — that took place, if you read the play chronologically, thousands of years ago: two angels came to the house of the Lord and Lot received them into his house. And then the men on the outside knocked on the door and demanded — the one who was on the inside, the stranger — Lot pleaded with them not to take the man, but he had two virgin daughters; take them, but not the stranger in my house. They demanded the stranger in the house, not knowing the stranger was a messenger from God, and a messenger from God is God — I whom he sent, I am one with the center. If you see me, the son, you see the one who sent me, and he was sent by God the Father, with the power and the wisdom to do anything on earth. And so they insisted on the man, not knowing who he was. And the man took Lot — by the way, the word Lot means to veil, to conceal, to cover. So he took Lot by the neck and pulled him into the house and closed the door, then blinded all those who saw it so they could not find the door. It is telling you that Lot is not revealing, he is concealing a great secret. The word Lot means to veil, to cover, to conceal — a great secret. So behind the story there is a secret: on the outside the men are seeking a man rather than a woman. It is telling you they are homosexuals — that’s what the story is telling you. It is the story of Sodom. And then comes the power from within, and he blessed the city and brought down fire and brimstone and destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. We have a word today, sodomy, which is simply homosexuality. Here the whole thing was destroyed because they insisted on the stranger, not knowing the stranger was the one sent from God.1136 ¶3

That is a portion, just a shadow of things to come. When you come to the end — here is a story told thousands of years before; it’s linked to a story told thousands of years later; and they linked to a story told another thousand years — and prior to that, which is the 19th chapter of Genesis, of the story, we go back and we take the story of Abraham. And he was sitting in the tent, the door of the tent, when suddenly three men appear before him. He didn’t see them approaching; they suddenly appeared and announced the birth of a son. He couldn’t believe it, he was too old, and Sarah was too old — here was the announcement.1136 ¶4

You take that story, you take the story of the homosexuality. When we jump a thousand years into the story told in Samuel — the story of Samuel, who refused to wear the armament of men. They gave him the sword, the shield, everything; he said, “I cannot wear these,” and he went unarmed, only armed with the grace of God — a youth, a young man, his name was David. He took five stones. He went forward to meet the giant, who would destroy — if he could — destroy Israel. And when he saw the youth, he laughed: “This ridiculous little thing coming towards me.” And David said to him, “This day the Lord of Israel, who goes with me, will deliver you into my hands, and I will sever your head and feed your carcass to the fowls of the air.” And that day one stone went through, into his forehead, and he fell. He had no sword of his own, so he took the sword from Goliath and severed his head, and then threw the carcass to the fowls of the air, and brought the head into the presence of the king who had promised to set his father free if he destroyed the enemy of Israel — for anyone who destroyed the enemy of Israel, his father would be set free.1136 ¶5

Now you take these stories. Now we go into the New Testament, which is another jump of a thousand years: “What think ye, is he the Christ, whose son is he?” And they answered, “The son of David.” He said, “How, when, did David in the spirit call him my Lord? If David in the spirit called him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” And they asked him no more. We take these stories, spread over thousands of years, and in one single moment they all gather together into an entire new pattern which leads man from this misery, from the slavery, into living into freedom.1136 ¶6

I do not know of anyone — I haven’t read any place other than where I have held it in my room — where they gathered it together; it comes in the twinkling of an eye, so suddenly, because I have told you things of old, things that no one said before, and then I spoke, and it came to pass, as told us in the 48th of Isaiah: suddenly all that I told you in the past I now suddenly speak, and it comes to pass. How do you take it? Here is the promise: I will give you a son, in spite of your age — you were a hundred, and she is beyond the time of the bearing of a child. And here comes Lot, the nephew of Abraham; he entertains the angel of the Lord, and the homosexuals want the angel that they saw — it was a man — they do not wish his virgin daughters, they want the man, not knowing he has the power and the authority of God, for he is sent by God, and the sender and the sent are one. He pulls Lot, which means the concealed, the veil, the hidden, the secret, into the house, and he blinds them so they could not find the door, and he calls down brimstone and destroys Sodom and Gomorrah. He’s widely separated in time. Another thousand years we find David destroying the enemy of Israel. Here is the head, severed from the body — the body is thrown to the fowls — and here is one: “Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee.” We jump into the story of the Lord — well, Jesus is called the Lord, and David calls him my Lord, which means my father. When it happens to you — and it is going to happen to you, not one person in the world can fail — or, as we are told in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy, the eighth verse: “When the Lord separated the peoples of the earth, he set bounds to the people according to the number of the sons of God.”1136 ¶7

This whole drama is a transformation, a complete transformation of the son into the Father — that’s the mystery of the entire story. God, and God alone, plays all the parts; there’s nothing but God playing all the parts, and all the phases, all the appearances — such as sonship, which is named — this, anyone in this room tonight, no matter who you are, that is a phase called the Son of God, but the one playing it is God the Father. When he brings you to the end, this thing closes in upon you, and it forms an entirely new story, which you experience, revealing you as God the Father.1136 ¶8

The play is so lasting you cannot tell it, and you wonder, how long, O Lord, how long — because the whole thing seems to be a repetition over and over and over again. There is one vile crime in the world that is not openly described in the Bible — do you think? Read the Bible carefully; there is no one that is not described in the Bible, and described in detail. When you come to the end, and you’ve played all the parts, then you walk around with God himself.1136 ¶9

Now, this is how it happens. Who would have thought that a story told — this is 1971, this is the 20th century — who would have told that a story told two thousand years B.C., and one told a thousand years before that, and one told the first century, A.D., is contemporary with the 20th century. The whole vast six thousand years, which man could not understand, certainly portions of it come together like a magnet and forms an entirely new story, and you, the individual, experience — and what you experience: the one — he said, “Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee” — who stands before you, preceded by the homosexuals by a thousand years, and there are two next to you, and they’re looking at him with concupiscence. Is it not said of him, “I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, who will do all my will”? He is the one he sent; he is called the hidden one in the Old Testament, away back — he is the secret.1136 ¶10

Now, a secret or a mystery in Scripture is not a matter to be kept secret, but a revealed truth that is mysteriously inherent. He calls to me — who calls? You, the one who was sent — David stands before you, and two homosexuals stand next to you, and they’re looking at him, and you know they’re looking at him — your son — with concupiscence. And you warn these two homosexuals of his victory, and before you, on a table, is a head — an enormous head, severed from the body, and there is the head of Goliath. And you are living in the 20th century, and here is the head of Goliath, here is David, and here are the two homosexuals from the story of Lot.1136 ¶11

There is a play, completely fragmented, taking place forever and forever — a thing to be done absolutely and continuously, without reference to duration, to repetition, or to position in time, but sometimes with reference to past time. So you take all that is seemingly past, because you read it, and having read it, it seems to you, having read it, it is past. So suddenly it becomes contemporary, and the whole thing is now taking place now, and you are the Father of this land. The two homosexuals are looking at him with concupiscence; you warned them he never lost a battle and never will, for he said, when he went into battle, “I go in the name of the Lord God of Israel; on this day he will deliver you into my hands, and I will sever your head and feed your body to the fowls of the air.” And that day he severed his head — the whole thing actually unfolds before you. And this whole drama then reveals to you who you are: you are God the Father.1136 ¶12

The transition took place; that was God’s promise to his sons. You will go into hell, and this world is hell — there is no other hell. Every vice possible for man to experience is clearly and openly described in Scripture. Read tomorrow morning’s headlines, or anything — nothing transcends what is in Scripture. As to violence, you have played it, you’re playing it, and you will play it if you haven’t. Then comes the end, and the end is the crown of the play. So judge not the play until the play is done. The last act crowns the play, and the last act is the story of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the pattern man; he is the way — in Judaism, that leads Judah, which means the world, from slavery into liberty, from bondage into freedom, from this world of Egypt into heaven.1136 ¶13

So the whole drama is taking place in us. How near you are to this eruption, I do not know — you’re told no one knows. But the point, for here is the part that you are playing: you are the Son. Not one child could be born in this world unless begotten by a son of God. He has set the bounds to the people according to the number of the sons of God. So today they’re trying to stop the population explosion — oh, they’ll try it, maybe they think they will stop it — but not one child can be born who is not actually begotten by a son of God. It takes all the sons to form the Lord. So when you awaken from your present state as Son of God, becoming God the Father, you contain all, and you will not rest until everyone is brought back. Everyone must come back, but everyone must have the experience of wearing a garment called a son of man. He scattered these, the sons of men, and then placed them according to the numbers of the sons of God.1136 ¶14

And when it happens, the play which man could not understand — you’re reading it now as secular history — well, this shadow is cast in this world, and you do see the shadow of violence in the world, all the crimes of the world; for this thing was done before, that the world was — it’s called the purposes of affliction in Scripture. And when you pass through them all, then things that were scattered and widely separated in time, like the story of Abraham, and the story of Lot, then the story of David, then the story of Jesus, in one single moment — how could you put it all together? Here I stood in this wonderful, marvelous interior, a simple interior, and here is a man recorded as having lived one thousand years B.C., and I’ve gone three thousand years beyond it. And here are two homosexuals that went a thousand years before him, and they are present too, and here is the entire thing unfolding before me, with the head right before me, and I know: my son bought that — I turned to these — they’re widely separated by a thousand years, and I turned to them, I warned them that my son never has lost a victory and he never will, for he said that the Lord of Israel goes with him, and the Lord of Israel says to him, “Thou art my son,” and he is my son — he is telling me who I am, and I go with him, and he cannot lose a battle.1136 ¶15

And here the entire play unfolds — for God created the two homosexuals, he created David, he created everything in that play — it’s a play. He condemns none; he does not condemn the homosexuals, that’s part of the play; he doesn’t condemn anything in the world. The head — here is the head, enormously — may I tell you, there’s no head in the world, no matter how big it is in some museum, that doesn’t compare to that head. It filled the entire table, right straight from the neck — that’s all it was, from the neck; the body is severed and thrown to the fowls. And the whole thing is clear before me, clearer than you are now, vivid, clear, etched before my body, and here I am sitting, I’m looking at this fantastic unfolding of a play, with portions of six thousand years gathered together into a contemporary state, and it all makes sense.1136 ¶16

And then, when you come back to this level of consciousness, you read Scripture, and your mind, for one moment, is just simply stunned. You’re being — Genesis, and there it is; you read First Samuel, and there it is; you read Second Samuel, and there it is; you read the second Psalm, there it is; you go forward into Luke, and there it is. And here, six thousand years gathered together into one contemporary moment, and you are the central figure, and you are God the Father. I am telling you what I have experienced.1136 ¶17

So here, God himself gives himself to us, yet that gift is still to be experienced. It remains a gift — something that we do possess, but our goal — to be attained. It must still be experienced. When you experience it, then it’s yours. And then, at any moment after that, you can drop off this garment and you can say, with Paul, “I have finished the race, I have kept the faith, I have fought the good fight, and now the time of my departure has come.” If I linger for a year or a few months, what does it matter, only to kindle and encourage everyone who hears it, that you are the only ones spoken of in Scripture. You are not the little thing that you said you are, and always have been — the Son of God, destined to be God himself. That’s the plan.1136 ¶18

So, as we are told by the poet, “Be patient, our playwright will show, in some fifth act, what this wild drama means.” He will show the meaning of it all — but I’ll tell you the meaning: the meaning is to reveal God. All right, God is revealed in you: he is you, lifting you, the Son of God, to the level of God the Father. That’s the greatest of all mysteries — how can a son become his own father? And that’s the mystery of the play: you become God the Father, you become the author of it all, and in the end everything is forgiven. So you’ve played it all, or you are playing it all, or you will play it all, and in the end you and I are one — one king, one Lord, one God and Father of it all. I’m right here in you, one body.1136 ¶19

I know what a power — I can’t begin to describe to you the power that is yours, the wisdom that is yours — blinded, yes, while you’re here, completely shut up. But when it happens, you have a power beyond the wildest dream of man. Nuclear power is like little firecrackers for the Fourth of July, it means nothing. We speak of the exploding sun and the power of a son — it is just nothing to the power that is yours. You’re coming into that power, with the wisdom to use it lovingly. May I tell you, a beauty beyond the wildest dream — power, but don’t think for one moment that it is violent; it will then be used lovingly. And when you actually wear — you will wear — the human form divine, and that form is love. I can’t describe to anyone in mortal word what I mean by a form that is love, and yet it is a form, and it’s love, and it’s your father. When you stand and look at David, David is the image of it, only in youth, and you are the Ancient of Days. You are the infant of love, the Ancient of Days, and David, the sum total of all your experiences, is the image of you — only he is you, he is eternally young; he is the result of all the pain and the self in which you have had.1136 ¶20

So when someone tells you, “You can do so and so and avoid this,” and the boy — that, all right, play the part beautifully, take the law and use it wonderfully; well, use it. But may I tell you, you will not avoid the essential parts, for joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.1136 ¶21

There are a few of you having some strange, interesting, mystical experiences. I’ll go along with Blake, because I too have gone through the world to which he speaks. “I traveled through a land of men, a land of men and women too, and heard and saw such dreadful things as cold earth wanderers never knew. For there the babe is born in joy, that was begotten in dire woe; just as we reap in joy the fruit which we in bitter tears did sow.” Now he tells us, in that fourth verse of his wonderful poem, The Mental Traveller, he mentions the exact parts of the body that really are nailed to this cross. First of all, the child is pierced upon a rock, his hands and feet, his head a crown of iron thorns; they cut his heart out at his side, that he may feel the cold and the heat. It is your head, your hands, your feet, and your side. But he’s telling it poetically, but he mentions the identical parts where you are actually nailed and pierced to this garment of flesh. But he told it in his own wonderful, beautiful use of English. I know from my own experience exactly how it happens; I pass through these worlds night after night, and I see exactly what he’s describing.1136 ¶22

And some of you are passing through these states now, and you are scaring to death those who love you and think that something is wrong with you. May I tell you, nothing is wrong with you — you are near the end; that’s why you’re passing through them. So let no one stop you — first of all, that couldn’t stop you anyway, you couldn’t be stopped now, it’s too late — and who would want to stop it, from your nearness to the end, to receive the crown? You’ve fought a good fight, and you have finished the race, and you have kept the faith, and now there is laid up for you the crown of righteousness. Let no one now bother me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus — his stigmata, and yet not as the world calls it. You bear all the marks, and all the marks of these experiences, as we call it in Scripture.1136 ¶23

And so here are the events. The very first one takes the story of Abraham — three men occur suddenly, and they come from nowhere to announce the birth of a child; that’s Abraham. It starts that way right after the resurrection. You are awakened within the tomb, and then three men, after you come out of it, and you’re born — from about three men — you don’t see them coming, they’re there suddenly. They come to witness the birth of that which they had foretold: “Is anything too hard for God?” And so here is a child you said you could not have, but there he is, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and you call him Isaac, as I tell you you’d call him, and Isaac means “he laughs,” and he does — you pick him up and he bursts into the most heavenly smile. That’s in Genesis, and here’s the year 1959 — that’s a long time. 2000 B.C., it’s 4,000 years that it happens, and then comes his son.1136 ¶24

As I told him: “Thou art my son” — but I didn’t know I was his father until God gave me himself. I went through hell, then came that moment in time that he kept his promise, and his promise is: he gives himself to us, and yet the gift is still to be realized in experience — then comes the experience, and you realize it, it remains the gift, as a gift to be attained until the experience, and then you realize it. And here, a thousand years B.C., those words were said: “I say unto you, you are my son” — who is saying that? The Lord is saying it, and he stands before you and reveals you as the Lord. And then you turn to Scripture, the first century: “What think ye of the Christ, whose son is he?” “The son of David.” “How can this be — David in the spirit call him my Lord? If David calls him my Lord, how can he be David’s son?” And here the whole thing standing before you, then you know who you are. To whom did he say that? He said that to the Christ, who is called the Lord, and only David, in revealing, can no one else be viewed. And so David reveals him as the Lord.1136 ¶25

So I tell you, Shakespeare, though the greatest of all poets in the English tongue, was also a man of vision, with the capacity to write such beauty, and he told me — so you and I go, and we see, as you like it — it’s a very amusing play, if you’ve ever seen it, I love it. So it was in Central Park, in New York City, in the summer they have these open-air theaters, and we saw As You Like It, and here he throws these words upon the wind, and who really got it: “All the world, all the world is a stage — old men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” Then he mentions the seven parts, from the cradle to the grave.1136 ¶26

But I explained it for you tonight — it takes in a greater time than the span between the cradle and the grave, it takes in the six thousand years, and the play is all told in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is an admiration of foreshadow that no one could understand, and Christianity is simply the way within Judaism. It was before the play, that was the purpose of the plan; it had a purpose, the purpose comes first, then the play, to unfold the purpose. So Christianity is the purpose buried in Judaism, which is the play, and when it unfolded they would not believe that was the meaning of the play, so they continue to observe the outer ceremonies, which is simply the play. But as it erupts and unfolds within us, we see all these parts, widely separated in time, pull into a single act, and here you see all these characters, and they’re still alive — these are the eternal states of consciousness. David is forever and forever and forever; he is forever, because you are the king, and if you are the father of David and you are king, he has to be a priest — “I’ll make you a prince forever,” for it is told in Scripture — he’s eternally the prince, awaiting the one who is king to recognize him, and then memory returns. In fact, now it is given — or prior to that you are the Son of God, and now you are God himself.1136 ¶27

That is the sacrifice: God gives himself to us, yet the gift remains a gift until experience; right in this experience we become possessors of the gift, and the gift is not your — is God himself. So I know from my own experience that I experience it, as I my ordered race have run, and I can say to the whole vast world that all of us, all the inhabitants of earth, we have one religion — the religion of Jesus, and that is the eternal, everlasting gospel; there is no other. It is the heart, the purpose of Judaism. Judaism is the foundation stone, that’s the play, but before the play was written there was a purpose behind the play, and the purpose was concealed, it was hidden, and in the end the purpose unfolds in a way that no one, knowing only the play, could ever have seen. It comes at the end. So judge not the play until the play is done. The last act crowns the play, and that last act is Jesus Christ, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God himself. Now let us go into the silence.1136 ¶28

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and grace is the gift of God unmerited, unearned. There’s not a thing that the son did to merit being the Father — he was God, the Father’s desire to raise his son to the level of himself. But only me — it doesn’t mean a little stone, that’s all symbolism — he was armed only with grace; that is sufficient for you, as we are told in Scripture. And when the thorn in his side screamed out for correction, three times he appealed to God to remove the thorn, and three times the Lord said to him, “My grace is sufficient for thee, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So your weakness could be anything — it could be bankruptcy, it could be a physical pain, it could be anything, whatever is human is weak, for we are all weak in these garments. “My grace is sufficient” — this goes on, only with my grace.1136 ¶29

You have no sword, so you take the sword from the one that — my grace brought down — and then you say, well, he said, resume sword. So this simply means grace, and grace is God’s gift of himself to man, and if he gives me himself, and I face the world as an opponent, they will vanish if I go on with the grace of God, “not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord.” So if I am armed with the grace of God, what does it matter what opponents will say?1136 ¶30

Any other questions, please? Destiny — follow the story is...1136 ¶31

All I understand was imparted by Abraham. Some, I’m just raising somehow the presence — in Abraham’s vision, three men suddenly appear while he sat in the door of the tent, in the heat of the day; he didn’t recognize them as messengers of the Lord, and he didn’t recognize that one was the Lord. And when he questioned at moments — but he, an old man, could have a child — They say to him, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” And he admitted no, there was not — so he believed that nothing was too hard for the Lord, in spite of the fact he was already a hundred years old, and Sarah ninety.1136 ¶32

So when the child is born, three made a play — in his case there were three; in Lot’s case he offered his two daughters, therefore in offering two virgin daughters he was offering the two men, and there were two homosexuals who appeared in the drama. So here the child appeared first, and that was the story of Abraham, because three brothers appeared, and these three brothers simply to deny that you — one — could have the child, but the third one spoke and lifted the child, and he embraced it, and it smiled in his face — it was, I think, the laughing one.1136 ¶33

“Whom God hath afflicted, for secret aid, He comforts and heals, and calls them friend” — in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, which is the basis of the Christian faith. In a way, he had done nothing that was violent — he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth — yet it was the will of the Lord to bruise him, and to put him to grief. But when he makes himself an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring, and he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied. Now, to understand this strange mystery, let me share with you an experience of my childhood. Undoubtedly you know it, you are the witness of it, or you’ve done it yourself. My mother was very fond of flowers. I can see her every morning with her parasol — she was very fair-skinned — and she always had this parasol against the sun, not against rain. She had a gardener who would do all the weeding and the digging and the raking, but she did all the little grafting herself; she loved doing it. But you know what a graft is: you take a shoot — some tiny shoot of a plant that is capable of propagation. When you make an incision into another stock, I would say, and then you take this shoot and you simply insert it into another stock, a different plant altogether. And then you tie it securely, and in time it takes — the graft adheres to that place. And then, when the time comes for the bearing of the flower or the fruit, it brings forth after its parent stock, not the kind on which it is grafted — — it brings forth after that from which it was taken.1135 ¶1

That is the story of the Christian faith. Here is the Bible: that which exists in its perfect state in the parent tree of life is then detached from the tree of life, and, inserted into another stock, becomes, for the fruit that it brings forth, the fruit of the parent tree.1135 ¶2

So Jesus Christ — let us find out, just for reason, for a little moment, as to God — that which exists on the tree of life is transplanted not upon any particular person in this world, but upon human nature, to lift human nature to the level of God. So here, this transplant, transplanted on human nature — this violent, violent thing that is human nature, with every moment of time the horrors that take place in the world — on this it is engrafted, out of the tree of life, not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For here we are, now, on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it is to be raised to the level of the tree of life, for it has light in itself. But it is translated — it is grafted onto this human nature; it is not grafted until an individual — so I can see my mother now, doing this little job on a certain branch, and then, in the course of time, saying it was ripe, or the bursting of the flower — out will come the flower, not of that on which it was grafted, but that from which it was taken.1135 ¶3

Though we are the sons of God, and we actually came down into this world, we are grafted unto human nature. And in the fullness of time we will bring forth the fruit of the tree of life, and the fruit of the tree of life is David. David is the Son of God the Father. You, who existed and participated in the life of the tree of life, when detached from it and inserted into this tree of knowledge, which is human nature — when the graft takes place, and you actually absorb the sap, you do not pretend that you can retain only that — you actually become human, with all the violence that is in the animal world. And so you actually adhere to that sap of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then, as you adhere to it, it not only feeds upon the sap of that stock, but it begins to grow, and then, in the fullness of time, it brings forth its fruit. But the fruit is of the stock from which you were taken. And you bring forth — therefore you are saying, “Father, you are of heaven.” You were not a parent when you participated in the life of that tree, the tree of life. You can only become equal to, and be, the parent by detachment from that tree and attachment to human nature. And you suffer in all the things that you do in this world. But in that fullness of time you bring forth the fruit of the tree from which you were taken — not the tree on which you are grafted.1135 ¶4

Now we know this is true in the world. My mother’s gardener — he had a passion for flowers, and I can see him now, going months, six days a week; Sunday was out, he didn’t come to work. So Sundays were not included in the day of mother’s grafting and mother’s doing the things of the garden, but six days a week I can see her with her little parasol, shading her head — she was very fair, blue-eyed — shading her head from the sun. And our gardener would simply dig and rake, but when it came to this little incision into the plant, she would take the shoot quickly — just capable of propagation — and then she would actually insert it. And that was an insertion into this new stock, and when it came forward it brought forth, not the thing on which it was grafted, but that from which it was taken. It only can bear that fruit.1135 ¶5

So here, you and I have not associated as sons of God; we are the gods coming down from the tree of life. We have not appropriated this individual or that individual — we’ve appropriated the nature of humanity. That’s what we appropriated.1135 ¶6

We are pretending — we have to actually assume all the limitations of humanity, as we are told in the eighth chapter of bathrooms [garbled in source] — he took upon himself all the infirmities and all the diseases of man, as we are told in that wonderful fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Oh, well — looking upon himself.1135 ¶7

So here tonight I am talking to you who came down with me. Do not let anyone tell you that you are one little being, separate from that — you are that, part of the tree of life.1135 ¶8

So, when you are told in Scripture, “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” — bear what I’ve just told you in mind: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” And that Word became flesh and dwelt in us. That incision was made — it is not going to be made, it is made; it dwells in us. The graft is there; it will not fail. “My word shall not return unto me void, but it must accomplish that whereunto I sent it, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” For what did I say — to bear the fruit of the tree of life? And the ideal flower of that tree is David; you bring forth David. And if you bring forth David, then you are the Father. While you are still in the tree of life, partaking of the life of that tree, you are not the Father — you are perfect, enjoying it all, but you are not the Father. By detachment, and then incision into this that is called human nature, feeding on the sap as a little shoot, you begin to grow on that on which you are grafted. But you do not bear the fruit of the tree on which you are grafted — you bear the fruit of the tree of that from which you were detached. We are the sons; we are the beings detached from the tree of life and grafted onto human nature. And in this way we lift the whole thing up — everything must be lifted up, so that in the end there is only God, the one divine.1135 ¶9

Oh — So here — now I want to read you a letter this week; I have received certainly some wonderful ones. Here is one, one of hers: — a dream of her dead father. Her father died a few years ago, and here she is in this room, and it’s obviously these days, and she knows her father had died. And then, looking at him, suddenly she began to sense: “You are living” — as the blood is coming into him, and then from the feet, right straight up to the head. Then he stood up, and he tells her that he is not dead — it’s obvious that he is not dead. Here is the return of the father. If someone in my audience tonight is to have a vision of that nature — well, the average person, it means nothing to them; to me it means so much. Because here is actually seeing what the whole inner world is — a subconscious state within man. They would never find their father, who is buried in them from eternity, within them. She is finding that cause now, of the whole phenomena of her life — for the father who, she thought, died, is the earthly father in her vision. And she said — and all of a sudden he’s returning to life, and he sits up and tells her, “I’m not dead” — which is obvious. So now the father in her is coming to life. And if the father comes to life, then the father has one son. Therefore she is, in her very being, I believe, going to have this proof of being the father — of what? Of the perfect fruit, which is David. That’s why we are here; everyone must bring forth that flower, which is David, which is the tree of life, by detachment. As she said, you could see that all the veins were detached, as she said in her letter, and in some strange way it must adhere, and then, like once more, it became alive within him — he was regenerated.1135 ¶10

Well, take a little shoot — I can see my mother tackling it — you take some little shoot and detach it from some stock, and then you make an incision, and then you put it in, and then you tie it, and then it adheres to that stock. And then, all of a sudden, in due course, it begins to grow, and it grows, and then, in season, it brings forth its fruit, its flower — and it’s the flower of the tree from which it was taken, not the flower of the tree on which it is grafted.1135 ¶11

So here we are the grafts; we are the being spoken of in Scripture as the Word of God: “I will send my word and heal them.” I send my word, and my word becomes flesh; it takes upon itself human nature and dwells in human nature — it does not retain only that, it is more.1135 ¶12

So let no one tell you, because of your past — if you have a memory of any violence — that it is unforgivable. You are outliving it. You are attached to the most violence in the world; the thing called human nature is part of the animal kingdom. And your attachment will actually take you — you came down, and only that which comes down can ascend into heaven; that which descended from heaven, for you were the one who came down. And you came down to redeem human nature, but you are the God of the Kingdom, and all of us are the sons of God. It was God’s pleasure for us, the sons of God, to be detached, and then, ourselves, become God the Father. So, “whom God hath afflicted, for secret aid, He comforts and heals, and calls them friend.”1135 ¶13

So here, in that wonderful fifty-third chapter, it was the will of the Lord — being God, the God of love, it was his will to bruise him, to detach him from the tree, to send him out — as being where I participated in the life of the tree of life was in operation, and that’s where he was bruised; that was preparing the whole thing, to send me out, and thereby insert me into human nature. And so we are all implanted in human nature. And so let no one tell you that it will fail: “My word shall not return unto me void; it must accomplish that whereunto I sent it, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Therefore, “receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” So, instead of being a part of the tree of life and being perfect in it, you are detached, and therefore you now become the Father.1135 ¶14

Before, you were not from heaven; you only participated in the life of the tree — by detachment, and by the transplant, you then, in turn, become — and now you are God the Father. Everyone is destined to become God, and to be God the Father you must produce the fruit — that is the fruit of the tree of life, which is God the Father — and that fruit is David. So he brings forth the fruit; you bring forth the fruit; and when it all comes to pass, we are David; we are the tree of life, having life in ourselves. Rather than participating in the tree of life, we are the being that is the tree of life; we have light in ourselves. So, as the Father has life in himself, he granted the Son also to have life in himself, and the only way he can prove it is to bring forth the fruit of that tree, and the fruit of that tree is David.1135 ¶15

So here, when you read it, bear in mind what I’ve told you tonight: you are independently greater than you think you are. You and I came down, and if one goes before in time, it doesn’t mean he is better than another — no one is better than another; we all bring forth the same Son. So let no one tell you that, because he preceded you in a chronological time sequence, he is better than you — we all are of the same God. He chose us in him before the foundation of the world; he told us all — thank God — not as individuals, to make one better than the other, but in human nature.1135 ¶16

We assume human nature unto our salvation, as a person — I mean, I tell you, Jesus Christ is a person — believe him as a personal, individual being. I can’t develop this tonight to its fullest; I will continue on Monday. But it’s too long a story to show you how Jesus Christ truly is a person — that this, which I speak of just to use as an analysis, is truly a person.1135 ¶17

And that person comes out — although he existed on the tree and participated in the life of that tree, he was not the Father. To make him the Father, we have to understand why he came out from the Father: “and I have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world, but I am returning” — but really he is returning as the Father. So, if you see me, then you see the Father; if you see me, you see the Father. When he comes out and comes into this world, and assumes human nature, and then bears the fruit of the Father, you suppose — until he goes back, and he goes back as the Father.1135 ¶18

So here, I will have you, before you have the experience, develop upon it, and try to identify yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, who is really your true identity, before you actually have the experience — identify yourself.1135 ¶19

I wrote this morning — — and all things are simple in our world. Your earthly father is the symbol of your heavenly father. Everything is important, and it was shown to me so clearly in a simple little thing, like an umbrella. I was dwelling upon birth, and the birth from above, and how it’s brought about — how man awakens within himself and then comes out of himself; it’s a reversal, like something from the inside coming outside. And here is this umbrella, and I saw the whole thing: the wind turned it inside out. And I saw that was only the first stage; the event that happens after that, physically, is another turning inside out, and that is the glory. So, you see, it is turned inside out, and you are born from within it. And then you tell the story — if you are brought about by being drawn from within yourself outward, looking back at the little dawn out of which you came, and you feel it, really, and you tell about it — and then, when men hear you, at that moment you are turned again from within out, and then your whole world is unfolded, and you are the Father. You know why you are here — because you actually brought forth your son, that is the Son of God. When they see your state, they are saying that you really are coming into your entire glory, radiating and reflecting the glory of yourself.1135 ¶20

So when you read, “it was the will of the Father to bruise him,” you ask how could the one who is God the Father have the will to bruise his own son, called Jesus Christ. It is because we don’t quite understand the mystery of Jesus Christ. But you dwell upon it, as I told you tonight, for all the little things that happen in your world — they have meaning; they all happen. And when I can see now the little graft, a little incision into a stock, and then, in the fullness of time, it is feeding on the sap of that stock — as it grows there comes a moment now for the bursting of the flower. And we are waiting eagerly to see the flower, and the flower is the flower of the tree from which it was taken, and not of the tree on which it is grafted. So Jesus Christ is grafted onto human nature; he’s not retaining that — he’s not the precarious set-up; he actually became man, human nature, so that he could actually transform it and lift it up, and it grows into that which will give birth to the Son of God. That everyone is going to do it, I hope, is part of yourself. I hope I’ve made it clear. I can make it no clearer at the moment; if it should come tonight, or become clear in another manner, I will tell you the next time.1135 ¶21

For this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Through him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.”1135 ¶22

And then the Word became flesh and dwelt among us — it is translated “dwelt among us”; I’m not denying this, that he is among us, in those in whom he has awakened.1135 ¶23

But do not then turn out — if you think now he’s a man, and you turn to one in whom you believe, thinking now he’s walking among us, you’re going to miss the point: he dwells in us. He is still dwelling in us, and that — in us — is the point. And then, whatever you think of the one who told you his story, you are going to have that same story happen in you. But don’t turn out and think in terms of another — then you’re going to turn and worship something on the outside. I cannot deny that it has happened; indeed, I do not deny that. But if you turn to me as one on the outside, one who walked a while ago, you’re going to miss the point. The preposition is “in us” — it’s translated in all translations, why I don’t know, but it actually is “in us,” though they translate it “among us,” and he dwelt among us. They made you hear that, and you’re going to start looking around, “where is it?” And then someone who was looking very good, he has been freed, but then you’re going to start making an idol out of him, or an icon out of her — that’s not the point. The word became flesh and dwelt — it’s past tense — and dwelt in us.1135 ¶24

For now, let the graft take place; the graft is taking place, and as it takes place, in its own good time, in the fullness of time, he then sends his son into our hearts, crying “Father!” — in the fullness of time. That is the flower coming out; he stands before you. And here, you’ve always known it, but you didn’t know it — you just — can’t you know it now? Because when you participate in the life of the tree of life, you are not aware of being the Father; all is given, you were in a perfect, perfect state. But only by his bruising of you, by detaching you and sending you out, to be attached to human nature, do you actually have the experience of being God the Father.1135 ¶25

So then you come out, and you are attached to human nature, and no one will tell you more than you know yourself what you have to go through. If you read that fifty-third chapter, you wonder how on earth a God of love should do this — and only a God of love would do it: we see him put his own thought, his own son, and implant him on the horror of human nature, knowing that all the pain he’s going to suffer for it was the witness of God, to redeem them. And all the griefs he bore for a person, and then, in the end, he is God himself — or, in the end, there can be no other Lord but God, for God. So he takes it all together, that he has chosen — not all the people; there were those who would not come out. If you read it carefully, you will see it was a voluntary act on his part.1135 ¶26

And the power to lift it up again — if you read it, you will see it was not someone else grabbing it, as my mother took the shoot without harming it — this was a constraint on our part, but not all would forgo the joy of remaining and participating in the tree, in a perfect sense, in the tree of life. It is too great for all to consume — you and I can understand it.1135 ¶27

So, when he gave himself — “and I offer myself, to redeem human nature” — but to redeem it I couldn’t be saying, “I am human”; I had to become man — I came right down into the state called humanity, identify myself with it, and wear a mask, as I call it — never pretending otherwise — and I go through the world saying I am the same as others. I can’t pretend; I have, every moment of my life, been just a man, a human being.1135 ¶28

And then, as it grows, I am feeding — I started feeding on the sap of human nature, until I continued and I grew. Then came that moment in time, twelve years ago this year, when it was time for the fruit to appear, and the fruit of pain. And then, of a period of twelve hundred and sixty days, except in appearance, and all that is by faith of my Father — then I explained that I knew the reality of the detachment, and the incision into humanity.1135 ¶29

Now share it with all those who have also been through it before. Don’t crow, don’t brag about it — just tell it, for all are going to have this identification, and we all go back as the Father.1135 ¶30

We were not the Father when we came out; we were part of that real life, but not the Father — but after the graft, it was not transformation, but the incision into human nature — when we, in turn, became the Father.1135 ¶31

Don’t believe it ends there — in the end, go inside: I am the root and offspring of David. And others have not told the truth; and yet here, now, I truly am the root and offspring of David. I didn’t know it before. And then I brought forth, out of humanity, that which would come out of humanity in a few days.1135 ¶32

Now, in the meanwhile, you take it from this point — the being of which I speak — I’m not speaking of some impersonal thought; I will develop it to the best of my ability on Monday night. But let me tell you now: that being is your own wonderful human imagination. The Divine body is the Lord Jesus Christ — that thing that was detached and sent into human nature, to assume human nature. And his risen being is your own wonderful human imagination; that is the being of whom I speak. And on Monday I’ll try to show you how I know this — I know it’s my experience — and how we can actually put it into practice, and why it is an actual body.1135 ¶33

It is not some intangible thing — it’s the body. And they all try to touch that garment — you can read Scripture: the woman with the issue of blood, and the crowd testifying to touching the body — on Monday I’ve tried to show you what I mean by that: how that body is so alive, it’s so real, and that you could exercise it, and it’s actually producing results to the degree that you will exercise it and believe in the reality of the body that is the Lord Jesus Christ.1135 ¶34

But tonight — you receive with meekness the implanted word.1135 ¶35

As a friend of mine, again tonight, said — you were talking with a friend who sits next to her, and he used one word, “engrafted,” and it struck a bell, and something happened in me while he was talking; I could only think of the word “embedded.”1135 ¶36

Well, again, all this is coming to the surface in all of us — yes, he is embedded, engrafted — actually inserted into human nature.1135 ¶37

And while she was listening to her friend, and the other one, her father — who, she knows, symbolizes that which she is looking for, the cause of the phenomena of life — that’s the key. And he was only detached — she saw the return; in some strange way it was regenerated, and the body is coming back to life, and she felt life moving in, from the toes up, and the whole body is moving — he finally sits up and tells her that he is, obviously, not dead. So their belief that nevermore would they find their father, who is buried in them from eternity within them — but at that moment in time the father returned, and the father is the individual, when he has the experience of being father. And their father in David — that is the son — he says he is the father of David, and I must be about that again, in the same way.1135 ¶38

What you heard tonight has seemed not practical, may I tell you — that which is most profoundly spiritual is, in reality, most directly practical.1135 ¶39

If you catch this tonight, even though it seems not practical, and you put it into practice, all the problems in the world that offer you this — how to get this, how to do that — it all shrinks into nothing compared to this. Don’t touch them — and they got exactly what they wanted when they touched it, and he asked, “Who touched me?” — the virtue went out of him.1135 ¶40

And the healing need not be something physical; the disease could be the healing of some financial distress: if something goes out, what was now a secret sense of poverty is instantly healed if we touch that garment — for that body is everything; it is the creative power of the universe.1135 ¶41

So, I have never seen anything more profoundly spiritual, and not seemingly sensible, may I tell you, that is also the most direct effect.1135 ¶42

If you want to be given a proof, I speak to life, and what I’m trying to get over, by using just a few passages — a few from John, a few from Isaiah.1135 ¶43

But when we read that statement, in effect, and you begin to send it to the wrong address, through those twelve tribes of the dispersion — and now he really begins his blessing: “Jesus Christ, and God the Father, of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whose abundant mercy we are begotten again” — are you grateful? — “unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”1135 ¶44

He’s implanted in us, but we are the ones that were severed and implanted in human nature. Now our resurrection is our birth again, but this time moving back as God the Father — it is the Father’s desire to get all of these sons equal to himself. And because he is the Father, all must be father; and then we all come up as God the Father, and the only Son is the essence of the experience of being man — and the experience of being man is David. It’s very essential, for David is the symbol of humanity, where I pass through all the experiences — then, in the end, when I bear the fruit, it is David — and then I come to the end.1135 ¶45

I will take these days to conclude, and that’s when I am proving it for the first time. [...] Thank you.1135 ¶46

“No, no, my dear — you’re using synonymous terms.” Jesus Christ, in the making — as [Blake?] said, you know, that after Christ’s death he became Jehovah — the essence of God, detached and then buried in human nature, and now I call it to yourself as well: bring you to the experience, arrive at the point where you bring forth the fruit of the Father, which is David, and then depart this world.1135 ¶47

According to a rabbinical principle, what is not written in Scripture is non-existent. The story of Jesus follows this principle: “That I have come to fulfill Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me.” Now who is Jesus? That question was asked to eternity, really, but two hundred years ago a friend of Blake’s, on the way into dinner, said to him, “Tell me, what do you think of Jesus? Who is he?” And Blake replied, “Jesus is the only God, and so am I, and so are you.” Unfortunately, they went into dinner and that was the end of the conversation, so we have no further news on it. But he said, “He is the only God, but so am I, and so are you.” So tonight let us look at it and see how practical we can make this thing in our world.1134 ¶1

The New Testament begins with the statement that this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So the story begins with Abraham. So we go back to the story of Abraham and start with the fifteenth chapter of the book of Genesis. And as the story unfolds, first his name is Abram, exalted father. It’s changed later to Abraham, which means the father of multitudes. So his first name is Abram, this exalted father. And we are told that his reward will be very great. And Abram said to him, I have no offspring, you have given me no offspring. And the Lord said to him, you shall have a son, and the son will be your heir. He will not be one born of a slave in your home, but your own son will be your heir. Then he tells him what’s going to happen to him. He will go into a land that is not his, and his offspring will go into a land that is not his. And he will be a slave there for four hundred years. And when he comes out, he will inherit great possessions, very great possessions. Then we are told that Abraham believed him, and it was accounted unto Abraham for righteousness.1134 ¶2

First he tells him, I am your shield. In the New Testament we are told, when you put on the armor of God, above all things put on the shield of faith. So we see what the shield is, and the only faith in Scripture is faith in God, for God’s name forever and forever is I AM. That’s God’s name. That’s the name of Jesus. Jesus means “I AM there.” It’s Joshua, and Joshua is Jehovah, and Jehovah is I AM. That is my name forever and forever. Man finds it difficult to keep the tense, if he could only keep the tense. But he speaks of thou art and he is, and all these things he can’t quite believe, as Blake said to his friend Robinson: he is the only God, but so am I, and so are you.1134 ¶3

Now we are told a tremendous sleep, a deep and profound sleep, fell upon Abraham, and he slept, and then the whole thing unfolded within Abraham in the form of a dream. Now throughout Scripture we are told that God speaks to man in a vision, he makes himself known in a vision and talks to him in a dream. It would be difficult for me to tell you that this is a dream. But tonight when you do dream, you’re not aware of the fact that your body sleeps. If you become aware of the fact that your body is asleep, you start to awake. So here in this so-called waking state, I am telling you this is the dream, and the dreamer is God in you, and that God is your own self, your own I AM. But you do not know that this is a dream, any more than you know tonight when you sleep that your dream, in some strange, wonderful way, is to you objective and real, and you’re not aware of the fact that you have a sleeping body. So in this waking state you also have a sleeping body, but you say this body is not asleep, it’s awake. Here I am talking to you from this platform and I’m fully conscious that I am here, and you’re conscious that you are listening to me, so we seem to be completely awake. And yet I know this is a dream. I can control the dream, and you can control the dream if you know it’s a dream. The day will come, yet you will awake from it, and you will awake from the dream. When you awake from the dream you are God, and you know you are God only when you fully awake from the dream.1134 ¶4

I know in my own case it was revealed to me that “I will make myself known unto you in a vision, and I will speak with you in a dream.” Well, he revealed himself to me as the dreamer in me. He said, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream.” I dreamed, and I knew what he was dreaming: he is dreaming that he is I, and that when he awakes, I am he. He was revealed to me as vividly as anything could be to anyone. He laid himself down within me to sleep, and in his sleep he had a dream, and he is dreaming that he is I.1134 ¶5

Now, do I really believe it? To the extent that I believe it, I have made my world change to conform to my ideals. If I really believe it is a dream, I can dream a daydream or a night dream, but I must be in control of the dream. Now, when a man takes a state, it’s a daydream, and he sees a marquee, and it reads his name, implying ownership of a certain building. It’s all a dream, it’s a daydream, granted, he knows exactly what he’s doing when he stands before that sign. And he sees the same sign, although no one else can see it, because it isn’t there — the sign reads F.N. Roach and Company, and he is looking at it, and he sees J.N. Goddard and Sons, which would imply the Goddards own it, and they didn’t have a dime. And for two years he still is looking at that thing twice a day, on the way there and the way back home, and he actually feels the thrill that would be his if what he is seeing is true. And two years later an almost total stranger buys the building for him, and takes only a piece of paper with his signature on it, for he had no money, no collateral. He said, “I watched you, you and your father, and I trust you implicitly. Pay me six percent interest on the investment and reduce the principal every year for ten years, and have it all reduced in ten years.” Well, it was reduced in ten years, and it was six percent paid to him — in those days, six percent was a big return on your money. This goes back to the year 1922. And so that building became the family’s building. It began as a dream.1134 ¶6

He never forgot the principle: if God does all things well, he knows then who God is, because God did that — “if by him all things are made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Well, surely this came out of nothing. He had no money, no collateral, no one to whom he could turn. He only desired to own that building on the main street, at the corner, a wonderful corner. And out of the nowhere, he simply assumed it and remained faithful to it, and then it became his. He took that principle and applied it from that moment on to everything that he touched in this world, for he discovered the creator of things in this world. For God, and only God, creates — nothing is but God. Well, if Jesus is the only God, but so am I, and so are you, and Jesus is the only God, but so am I, and so are you, and Jesus is the I AM in every child born of woman, well then, let him begin to exercise that talent. Let him begin to test it, to prove it or disprove it. If you are faithful to it, you can’t disprove it. So put on the shield of faith, you’re told, in the sixth chapter of Ephesians. Put on the shield of faith, it will now protect you from all the fiery darts of the wicked. If you think someone is out to get you, it’s only part of your dream — the shield of faith. Faith what? It’s always faith in God. Well, faith in yourself, that’s faith in God, for the self of man is God, and that self is Jesus, and there is no other God. If you actually test it, you can’t disprove it.1134 ¶7

So here is the story of Scripture: a deep sleep fell upon him. Well, if a deep sleep fell upon him, then who is the dreamer in the sleep? He tells you it is God. He doesn’t tell you that you’re not going to have nightmares. You’ll have nightmares and daymares, because you’re learning to exercise a certain power, and you make mistakes, and you think these things on the outside are external to yourself and independent of your perception of them, and they’re not — they’re all yourself pushed out, in your bad dreams and your misuse of this power. If you are ever in control of this power, you’ll have nothing but harmony on the outside, but it will come only in the very end, when you awake from the dream. And in the very end you are in control of the dream, because you know exactly who you are, and the whole vast world is yourself pushed out. All that you behold, though it appears without, is within, in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.1134 ¶8

The whole thing is yourself projected on the screen of space. So you start with a dream, a daydream. What do I want in this world? You ask yourself a very simple question: what do I want? The minute you know exactly what you want, start there. Don’t look on the outside, and these shadows now may offend you, or they may oppose what you think you want. Then you give power to these shadows. Don’t give power to the shadows any more than he did — he didn’t have one red penny to put up as collateral, nothing. And a total stranger comes in, the day of the sale of that building, and with this lawyer, bids for it. No one knew who the lawyer was bidding for. But when it came out at the end of the day that this is what happened, he should have heard the remarks on the island. It didn’t matter one thing to him.1134 ¶9

Now, the building opposite — a far bigger building, the most expensive building, best located and bigger area than anything on the main street — was owned by someone in the family for a hundred and twenty-five years. There were absentee owners in England. And my father would stand now in his own building and look across at that building, and the name was Harrison. His name was Goddard, but he looked at that building and he wondered, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I owned it? Well, came the year 1942, and England was at war, and those who owned it, living in England — he had a son who was a priest, and he had the other one who lived comfortably with all the money that they had and didn’t want any part of the overseas problem, and thought they should unload it. So he wrote to his representative in Barbados and told him to find some family, a decent family who makes a great effort for the island, and offer it to them. This man comes over to my brother Victor and says, “Vic, how would you like to buy that building?” I said, I’d love it. And to my father — my father said, I’ve been watching that building for years now and feeling that we own it within. In about one week they cabled back to England, the news came back, and we owned the building. Now these are all dreams, but the dreams, in the eyes of the world, are now true. These buildings are now ours, based upon the dreams of my father and my brother Victor.1134 ¶10

My other brothers didn’t do it — they are sharing in the fruit, but they did not actually put it in motion. My brother Victor did. It started off as a child — in some strange way he felt it would work this way, why, I do not know. My father confessed years later that’s what he lived by, for he had nothing, didn’t have a nickel in this world, and really believed that his dreams would come true. Now, his name is Joseph. You’re told in Scripture, Joseph was the dreamer — “behold, this dreamer cometh.” And so Joseph comes, the eleventh son of Jacob, and the brothers sold him into slavery, into Egypt. But he didn’t care. He told his brothers, when they discovered who he was, equal to Pharaoh — for he could interpret dreams, and Pharaoh raised him to the point where he was equal to Pharaoh in the rulership of Egypt — and he said to them, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Take that to heart. If something appears now to go wrong, you will think, well, now it’s going wrong — no, it’s really going right, God meant it for good. Those who are working against you, seemingly they mean it for evil, but forget it, don’t give any power to that. You remain faithful to the vision. If I am not unfaithful to the vision, it can’t go wrong. If I now move away and give power to the shadows in my world, it will go wrong. But if I know exactly what I am doing, and regardless of what seemingly is happening in my world, I ignore it and remain faithful to the vision. He kept the divine vision in time of trouble. When he stood before King Agrippa, Paul said, “O King, I was not forgetful, I was not unfaithful, to the heavenly vision.” He kept it, and then it had to come to pass.1134 ¶11

So you are the dreamer. Now, in the Bible, when you read “your maker is your husband, the Lord of the whole earth he is called” — well, the word translated “maker” also means dreamer. It also means, because he has dominion over her, and people think it means a husband has dominion over a wife. It has nothing to do with that — not dominion over another shadow. No, it’s dominion over what is the wife — “this is my wife, this is my emanation,” whether it be male or female, this is my emanation. Well, emanation of whom? The emanation of the dreamer in me. Well, who is the dreamer in me? I AM. Well, who is he in Scripture? Jesus. Jesus is the I AM of man. That’s the Lord Jesus. He is God. There is no other God. So here your maker — he is the maker of this emanation — is your husband, and the word husband also means dreamer, so he is the dreamer. Well, do I have dreams, numberless dreams? Am I faithful to the ones I really want to externalize? I hope so, I’m not always faithful, but then if I’m not faithful, then I will not externalize it, I bring other things into the world. But whatever I am dreaming I will bring into my world, and I tell you from my own experience there is no thing in this world that isn’t contained within you.1134 ¶12

You think the Queen of England is something living over in London and it’s not in you? That her husband is over there? Our president is in Washington and he’s not in you? There are only shadows representing certain powers in this world. Let me share with you a dream of only a week ago. Here I stand in the presence of the Queen, the Queen of England, the present Queen, and she said to me, “Weren’t you once an atheist?” And I said, not really. I did not accept the concepts that many people held of God, and if I disagreed with them concerning their concept of God, it doesn’t mean that I am an atheist. No, I don’t think I was ever an atheist, not really, save they would judge me as one because I did not go along with their concept of God. Then she said, “Do you believe in Christianity?” I said, I don’t have to believe in Christianity. She said, “You don’t have to believe in Christianity?” I said, no, because I have experienced Christianity, so I don’t have to believe in it — I know it, I have experienced Christianity. With that, her uncle, the Duke of Windsor, comes up — little tiny fellow, old as Methuselah by the looks of him — and he tells her that it’s time to go to the party, “you’re a little bit late now.” And she introduces me to him. Well, he shook my hand, and I said, here is my sister, and here is her husband, so I introduced them to my sister and her husband. And at that, she invited me to a certain party. I said, I’m sorry, but I can’t come. When they departed, my sister reminded me that you can’t refuse royalty, that that’s a command. Well, I didn’t tell them, but I told my sister I do not accept any commands as far as I am concerned. I do not accept any aristocracy in this world concerning the flesh. The only aristocracy that I will admit is the aristocracy of the spirit, and they are not born of the spirit. So here they are, they come down — a physical descent does not interest me at all. Don’t tell me your physical background, for the most humble person in this world, born of woman, has a lineage that would stifle anything born of flesh, because the most humble child in this world has a noble background that leads up to God, and God is housed in that child as that child’s I-AM-ness. That’s God. But to tell me that this body comes out of a certain physical line and that that is a great line? Nonsense. So I said to my sister, it doesn’t really matter. So I refused the royal invitation, because I do not accept any physical lineage. I will only accept the aristocracy of the spirit and not of the flesh. I didn’t tell that to the Queen.1134 ¶13

But where did the whole thing take place? It took place in me. My sister, my brother-in-law, the Queen, her uncle, all these are all in me. If I could only animate a section of my brain at will, the whole thing would project itself, the same scene would take place. Now, at this very moment, the day is coming, you will know that brain of yours is infinite, and you will actually be able to animate sections of it and see it objectify itself and have a play, and then you can stop it, and it returns, well, back into you — that’s where it is. You will animate another section, it will be projected on the screen of space as something independent of your perception of it, and it will all act as though it’s completely independent of you, and it isn’t there at all — it’s all in you. You stop it, where does it go? It vanishes, it returns to you. That’s who you are. Your God — all things are contained within God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. That is Jesus. And so am I, and so are you.1134 ¶14

So this is the story that I would try to get over to everyone in the world. I don’t care who you are, it doesn’t matter where you were born and when you were born and who you are in the eyes of people — it’s what you are in your own eyes. You can start this very moment, and if you really want to transcend your present state in this world, you can transcend it, because you’re going to dream it. The whole vast world is your dream pushed out. If you didn’t know it as a child, learn it now. We were the poorest of the poor. My brother Victor, in some strange way, he discovered that a dream comes true if you are faithful to the dream. My father told me that he always practiced it. He never went through grammar school — he could afford the penny a week to go to school, we had no free education, but a penny was a penny, and his father couldn’t afford the penny — it was two cents, the British penny, a huge big coin. And so he left in what we would call the middle of grammar school in this world. But my father had the ambition, and he had the capacity to dream — he was well named, Joseph Nathaniel — and so he could dream all right, and he dreamed his family into being. Brought ten children into being, a lovely wife, and raised the ten and gave each financial independence when he died. And today I couldn’t tell you what they’re worth — I do know that I don’t think you could come and buy them out for multiple millions. And he didn’t have a nickel when he started, but he had a dream.1134 ¶15

And Victor had a dream, and they dreamed, and today they’re still dreaming, trying to convince the new generation, who’ve gone to school. They all came up with their college degrees now, so they can’t dream — everything is something entirely different. If the book doesn’t say so, well then it’s all a dissonance. So what the new generation will do, I do not know. Our generation enjoyed it fully. Now we want to give it to the next generation, but now they’re all educated, all of them who are now in the business, filling this position and that position and the other position, they have all the little IBM machines, and they punch this and punch that, and they give you all the things based upon our technology today. My father could look over the machine and see a list that long of numbers and give you the sum — just look at it, and in one second he’ll give you the sum. Push all the buttons and try to disprove it, it was what he saw. Didn’t go to school? Just a little bit. And so Vic, because of lack of funds, he didn’t go to — he went one year of college and we couldn’t afford to keep him there, so we brought him back. But he knew how to dream.1134 ¶16

So what do you think of Jesus? Jesus, the only God, and so am I, and so are you. You’re not less than God, because God laid himself down within you to sleep, and as he slept he dreamed the dream. You know what he’s dreaming — he is dreaming that he is you, and when he wakes he is you, and you are God. And when you’re completely awake you will return to the garment that you laid down when you entered the shadow world. So you entered this shadow world and completely forgot the being that you were prior to your entrance into the shadow world. One day you’ll awake from it, and you’re back in this glorious being that you are, beyond the wildest dream of men.1134 ¶17

I’m telling you from my own experience, I would not encourage you with a lie. I do not have to. I’m not here to make you feel good for a moment and then let you down. I’m telling you that if you believe me, that you are the dreamer, and you have dreamt everything into this world that is happening to you, and you will continue the dreaming. You can start tonight, if you know exactly what you want. May I tell you, get something noble, something big, that sort of fires you. See it clearly in your mind’s eye, and ask yourself a simple question: what would the feeling be like if it were true? What would I feel like? And then, as you feel it, do it.1134 ¶18

Here is a dream — he’s gone from this world now, but he was seventy-seven when he left. He was born in Odessa, in Russia, of a Jewish family, and he knows what it is to suffer, or he knew then, to be an outcast, not to have any new clothes at any time, only what charity could give him, wrapped his feet in bundles, never knew what it was to have a suit, but slacks all patched up. And he was head of a small family of about four, and his mother died when he was only eight. So he had to get out and earn a few pennies to bring in for food for the family, and he got a job taking money to the bank in large denominations, and they would change it into copper and silver, and he would go back to his business and give the money into the firm. And one day, looking into the face of this bearded teller, this cashier in the bank, he saw that the man gave him the copper and then the silver, and the outer wrapping of the copper and the silver were identical, and he wondered, wouldn’t it be wonderful if he made a mistake? And so he imagined he made a mistake, and so he took the money from the teller, put it in his pocket, and walked back in the assumption that the man had made a mistake. He didn’t make a mistake, but he walked for blocks and blocks, with his patched clothes and burlap feet, back to the building and gave the money back. The next day, standing before the same teller, making a similar change, the man made the mistake, and he spotted it. So he said, I wrestled with myself all the way back — well, I had never known what it was to sit down and eat a meal and feel satisfied, I was always embarrassed with the patched clothes that I had to wear. And so I wrestled with myself, what will I do? So I went to the next bank and changed it into the right denominations for my business, that is, where I work, and I kept the rest. And that night I went all through the night wrestling with myself, because it was not what my mother taught me. Things were percolating through my mind. But I was eight years old, and my hunger and my embarrassment got the better of me, and so I kept the money. Went out the next day and bought a pair of slacks, bought a pair of shoes, and ate until it came through my ears, and satisfied all the hungers of my body. But it taught me a lesson — it taught me that dreams do come true, but you are the dreamer.1134 ¶19

He died here about a year ago, left his widow — I introduced him to his wife, I introduced his wife to him at my meeting, and here he left her millions. In the interval he gave fortunes to all charities, not to get even, no, because he made so much, he gave it. And when I told this story publicly in the past, the barber said to me, was that a nice thing to do, did he ever give it back to the bank? I said, by the time that he could give it back to the bank, he would have given it back to Stalin, because Stalin took it all — there was no Stalin when he did it, and then by the time that he had enough money to send it back to Russia, who would he have given it to? Stalin, the very one who would naturally oppose the Jews and start the problems. No, he didn’t send one penny back. He learned a lesson.1134 ¶20

The day is going to come and you will know our moral values are not God’s moral values. These are all church-imposed. Has nothing to do with religion as it’s taught in the Bible. Every crime possible for man to experience is expressed in the Bible openly. It’s all there. You don’t have to do it, it’s entirely up to you. But you’re learning a principle, and you may learn it through something like this, and he learned it, and I know from my own experience with him — I have said many a time, speaking of a mutual friend, “he needs some help, Joseph, and at the moment I can’t give it to him, would you give him some money?” Joseph always gave it to him, never charged him one nickel interest. If he wanted to pay it back, perfectly all right, but he couldn’t pay it back with interest — it was always an interest-free loan, if you looked upon it as a loan. I have said it time and time to Joseph, so-and-so needs help, I think a thousand dollars will be in order at the moment, Joseph always gave the thousand dollars. And many a time they paid it back, and some tried to pay it back with six percent interest — he always sent the six percent back. He said, I am not a banker, I am a friend. He never told me to give it to you, and I gave it because he told me to give it to you, but I am not here to bank.1134 ¶21

Now Joseph has gone from this world, but he left his wife this fortune, and she didn’t have a nickel, but she too had the dream. And so she met the man who had the dream, and together they made this fortune, because he made it before he met her. And left a lovely son, and they named him Neville. So his name is Neville Mark. I saw him in vision, and she thought her baby would come the end of December, and I met him and he called me father. I said, if I’m your father, this is the month of September — I said, if I’m your father, what’s your name? He said, my name is Neville Mark. I said, when are you going to come into the world? He said, this is September, I said, I’m coming on the tenth day of November. I said, you’re coming on the tenth of November? He said, yes. So next morning I told my wife, you’re going to have a baby on the tenth of November. Well, she isn’t pregnant, and she’s long beyond the age where she could have a child. So she left, she said, no, you get everything you want, but this is one time you aren’t going to get it. So when I saw her in my meeting the following week, and she was a ways out, I said, you know, I saw your son. She said, no, I don’t want a son, I have a son, I want a girl, Joseph and I want a girl. I said, all right, you’re going to have a son, and his name is Neville, and his next name is Mark, Neville Mark, and he’s going to be born on the tenth of November. She said, it couldn’t be, the doctor tells me the end of December. I said, all right. Well, he was born on the tenth of November, so she called him Neville Mark. And so when he didn’t behave well, I said, your name is Mark, when you behave well, it’s Neville. But now he behaves well, so now it’s plain Neville. From now on, it’s all Neville.1134 ¶22

So I’m telling you that the dreamer in you is God, whether it’s a daydream or a night dream, that is God. Believe it. You can start right now, no matter how old you are or how uneducated you are, you can dream. And I’m giving you stories of those who were not educated, who had no financial background. Joseph Burleigh was the man that I spoke about — you see his ads in all the fashion magazines, the Burleigh fashion. Well, Joseph had no financial background and no educational background, but he knew how to dream. My father, his name was Joseph too, and he didn’t have any financial background or any social background or any educational background, but when he left this world in 1959, he left behind him ten children, each financially independent. That’s his gift — if you leave one child financially independent, that’s a tremendous accomplishment. He left ten, each independently secure in the financial world, made no discrimination between his ten, they all got the same. And that was my dreaming father.1134 ¶23

And he said to me one day, when he heard me for the first time — I told the people, close your eyes and simply see it in your mind’s eye, and I began to describe exactly what I would do. After the meeting he said to me, you know, son, everything you said today was right but one thing. I said, what’s the one thing? He said, don’t close your eyes completely, leave them partly open, that’s what I do, I see better. Just shut them, but don’t close them completely — you lose control of your imagination, you just completely, you go away. If you leave it partly open, you can control it better. And so I would sit alone every morning and just simply shut my eyes, but I don’t shut them completely, and then I see what I want to see, and I carry on conversations with those I must meet today from the premise that I want, and they only answer what I want to hear, and they completely do exactly what I want — that’s how I control it.1134 ¶24

That was a waking dream. That was what my father did, that’s what my brother Victor did, and they became what they are. Well, in the little island of Barbados today, they are tops in the financial world. Even the government, if they want to move, they always see my brother Victor — they’ve got to see him first before they make great moves in the financial world, because he knows it backwards.1134 ¶25

So I’m telling you, it’s all a dream, the whole vast world is a dream, and it’s the dream of God. Now, have you heard these words? Pilate’s wife sent a messenger to Pilate, saying to her husband Pilate, “Have nothing to do with this righteous man, for I have suffered much this day over him in a dream.” I suffered over him in a dream — that was Pilate’s wife sending the messenger not to have anything to do with this righteous man. Well, what is the righteous man? Abraham was the righteous man. Righteousness is simply when the individual fulfills the condition imposed upon him by a relationship, he is accounted righteous. Abraham believed him, and there was accounted righteousness for Abraham. But what did he believe? He promised him a son, and before the son came into the world, when he was already ninety-nine years, and Sarah ninety, he still believed that all things were possible to God. It’s a beautiful story — that child was simply the foreshadowing of the coming of the Christ. He knew his name was Isaac, the laughing one. And I’m telling you the whole story is true from beginning to end.1134 ¶26

Tell all your friends how to dream, but to dream you must believe in God. But tell them who God is, don’t point on the outside, tell them that God is their own wonderful human imagination, that when they say “I am,” that’s God, that’s God’s name forever and forever. Now let them test it, you’re invited by Scripture to test it — “come, test yourselves and see, do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” If he’s in me, then where is he? He can’t be in my arm, because I can chop it off and I’m still awhile. He can’t be in my foot. He can’t be in my heart — I can take out the heart, and that’s a transplant, so he can’t be there. Can’t be in a lung either — a lung I can live with one. Now, I can live with all parts being removed or cut away, but where is he then? He’s my own wonderful human imagination, and you can’t take that from me. That’s the foundation, that’s the reality, that’s I AM, that’s God. I can dissect this body and live with parts of it gone, arms and feet gone, and still I’m aware. But I can’t cease to be, when I am aware that I am, and that’s the thing that actually transcends death.1134 ¶27

So you can chop off your head, you can’t chop off I AM. It instantly clothes itself, like a dream tonight. Your body’s on the bed and you aren’t aware that the body is sleeping while you’re dreaming. Then, in what are you clothed? In my case, I sleep in the raw, but when I dream I am always clothed. When I stood before the Queen I was in clothes, and yet that body, that night, was sleeping in the room, because for forty years now I’ve slept in the nude, I find it easier, but here in my dream I’m clothed appropriately to stand before the Queen. And I didn’t bow before her — I knew that her little so-called line in her eyes is a very important thing, but she was very humorous. But when her uncle came into the picture, he was of that old, old school, very, very important. But she is Queen and he is not king, he is only the uncle of the present Queen. And so if he wanted to hurry her up, she would not be hurried — she wanted to get something out of me, but who is getting it is myself, the whole thing has taken place within me.1134 ¶28

I’m confronted now with what is called the symbol of authority, but that’s Caesar’s authority, Caesar’s world. So Caesar’s world stands before me, she is the Queen, and when she said to me, weren’t you an atheist, that’s not failing — I didn’t believe in the concepts of God that people hail, but I wouldn’t call that atheism. What do you think of Christianity, do you believe it? I said, I don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to believe it? She said, no. I said, don’t have to believe it, I know it, I have experienced Christianity. You have experienced Christianity, said she? I said, yes. Now, she is the head of the church in England and she hasn’t experienced Christianity. But this is all a drama taking place within me.1134 ¶29

So when the dream came to an end, where did they go? Back into me. And I know from experience that if I could animate, stimulate, the smallest little section of my brain, what it represents would push itself right out, something objective and independent of my perception of it. Stimulate it again, the same thing happens again. You can’t conceive of one situation in this world that isn’t contained within you. Everything is within you, so there’s not one being in the world that’s on the outside — it’s all within you, and one day you’re going to completely awaken from the dream. And I’ll tell you, you’ll realize you haven’t gone anyplace, you never really left your eternal home, you never died, save in your dream.1134 ¶30

I wrote those words in 1946, and now, the thing that’s happened to me since to cause me in any way to modify it — that experience happened to me, and I wrote that little book called The Search, I told it on the very last page, and not a thing has happened to me to cause me for one moment to change it or in any way modify it. The whole thing is a dream, and we are the dreamers of the dream, and the day is coming that we are awaking from the dream to discover we never left our eternal home, we were never born, we were never dead, we have never died, save in our dream. Seems fantastic, but I tell you it is true.1134 ¶31

When God awakes, he awakes from a dream. So you’re told in Scripture, “let God awake and his enemies be scattered,” and when the Lord awoke, “he awoke as one out of strong drink,” and all the enemies were scattered. He has no enemies. When he awakes, it’s only in his dream that he has enemies.1134 ¶32

Two nations, rival races from their birth, one the mastery to gain, the younger over the elder. This is taken from the twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis. It’s the story of the twins, Esau and Jacob, and you might think, as you read it, that here is a woman who gave birth to two boys, and one came first, covered in hair, and then one came out so smooth he had no hair. One was called Esau and one was called Jacob. That’s how it’s told — but that is not the story. We are told, “the first man Adam,” and then “the second man Adam.” The first man Adam became a living being; the second Adam became a life-giving spirit. It was not the spiritual that was first, but the physical, and then the spiritual. This drama is separated in time between two distinct births, stretching over expanses of thousands of years — it has nothing to do with two little boys who came out within a matter of minutes of each other. This is Esau: this outer garment that I am wearing — it’s covered with hair all over, and it may not be obvious to the eye, but put it under the microscope and it’s covered with hair all over. The other is Jacob — you cannot see him, he’s spirit, he is within. He comes second, but he is destined to be the ruler over the first, the elder. This is called the first man Adam, and what you cannot see, which must be born of everyone, is the second man, who is the Lord from heaven, and he is destined to be the ruler, and this which thou seemest is the ruler will move under compulsion to fulfill every wish, every command, of the inner man. These are the two — so, two nations, rival races from their birth, one the mastery to gain, the younger over the elder.1132 ¶1

Now, in a practical sense: here I stand before you, and reason dictates what is right or what is real to me, and, my friends, is confirmed — there is something within that is not born, that must be born, that will take over and not allow reasoning and things seen to dictate what is factual and therefore real, and the only reality in my world. I find myself behind the eight ball, and I would like to be more, and I am not, but here the outer man tells me it’s impossible, it changes. Yet there’s something in me that is screaming for recognition, feeling to be born, and it could take over and rule this outer man and actually dictate. That is the second Adam. The second Adam is called Christ in the Bible. The first Adam is whatever your name is that you respond to when it’s called — as an outer person, that is the first Adam.1132 ¶2

Now I am here to tell you of both of them. You’re quite familiar with the first pattern — the one that you clean in the morning, the one that you feed, the one that will come with you — that is the first Adam. Eventually the second Adam will be born. It cannot be seen by mortal eye. He cannot be seen even by the middle level of your being. He is seen only in the deep of your being — pure spirit. That being is your own wonderful human imagination. The eternal body of man is the imagination — that is God himself, the divine body, Jesus — we are his members, because we are his members, one body.1132 ¶3

You can say this whole vast world is the solidity of God — God talking to God. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out; there is nothing but you in the world. Here is this divine unity that reveals itself in multiplicity — call it division, or fragmentation — but they’re only members of the one body, and that one god is you. When you say, “you do not,” you say, “I am.” Be still — I know that I am God, as the being.1132 ¶4

Now, before this subtler man is born in you, you can become aware of him and begin to exercise his power — the power that one day you will completely and consciously exercise. The outer man must yield to him in your body. They are two races, and they are rival races from their birth. Can I tell you — one will prevail, one will become the reigning power, and that one comes second. He is the second man, who is the Lord from heaven. He doesn’t come first, he comes second, and he’s completely unknown by the world. When he comes, you recognize he is your own true identity. You thought yourself, prior to this, to be the thing that you are wearing — the outer garment, covered in hair — when really you are the one underneath, undetected, and that one is the Lord of the universe.1132 ¶5

Now, how do I know it? By testing it. I know it from experience. Here I stand in the world, and everything is against me, against what I would like to do, and reason tells me that I could not be what I want to be — or I could not. I’ll be very practical. A lady in the audience would like to dispose of her home. It’s all hers, it’s her home, but they tell her — reason, character, money — that you can’t possibly find the money, because, well, it is expensive to raise money. I’m speaking to her, but to all: she has a home; maybe you don’t have a home, maybe you have need of a job, and they’ll tell you jobs are scarce, as they tell her money is scarce.1132 ¶6

It’s a good home, I know the home, it’s in the eighty-thousand bracket. She could get seventy-five thousand for it now if she would take it, but she knows it’s worth more — they rezoned the neighborhood, in fact I live on the street so I know it well, and the whole thing is now allowed to go up, well, nine, ten stories, and only individual homes now. She wants to unload it because she lives in one unit — she has two, and hers is eight rooms — and she lives alone. Her son has his own home, his own apartment, but for her sake he will stay there, still paying rent, where he is, in his own place, but he has to come and comfort her and come to see her there. He doesn’t want to do that, and he doesn’t want to do that, but she rambles in eight rooms.1132 ¶7

I’ve told her, and I would tell her over and over and over, so that — how often, Lord, how often must I do it? Seventy times — you cannot sleep in your place physically, only in your imagination, in that state, and he’ll dispose of it. If I would dispose of that home tonight, I received it as a person, even though I haven’t found my permanent, or seeming permanent, place, for nothing is permanent here. I will still see myself elsewhere in my imagination, as though I simply took a vacation, having sold it. And I thought of the home that my husband built for me — it was the home that he built, now that it is my home — but in spite of all the memories, I have unloaded it, and I speak of it now.1132 ¶8

This is a secret: when the being within you begins to awake, you realize things are real only as he thinks from a state. Thinking of it doesn’t make it real; thinking from it makes it real. You have to ask for these things from the state desired, and not think of the state that you don’t want — you can think of it forever — but you must think from what you want in this world. She has to actually sleep this night in a state which allows her to think from the home that she formerly occupied, for almost, I would say, going on eighteen years, where it was built — it was their home. I know she doesn’t own it, she had unloaded it, so she thinks of it, not from it. It’s all the difference in the world between thinking from what you want and thinking of what you want. I can assume other states from now to the end of time and never realize it. Let me begin tonight to think from it — don’t ask yourself how it happened, through whom it happened — just let me think from it, because the you that you were thinking from is that second man. He has all the power in the world, he’s defined in scripture as the power of God and the wisdom of God. He has all that it takes to devise all the means necessary to unload it in the immediate present, if you think from it instead of of it.1132 ¶9

I am telling you this — my own personal experience — I am telling it to you from my family’s own history. I can face an audience, no matter how vast it is, and I would defy anyone to rise in the audience and tell a story where they were more behind a financial eight ball than my very, very large but perfectly wonderful family. We had no money, we had no one to whom we could turn to borrow from, for the family. I did have a problem, but in some wonderful way I stumbled upon this wonderful thing — the only book in this world, if you really knew — but really, it was the Bible. I never turned to any other book in our house, but he knew the Bible, and in some peculiar way he actually stumbled upon this secret. He stumbled upon it at a very tender age, and he believed it and he applied it — this, from before birth, because he was not yet born, but before he is born the thing jumps in the mother’s womb, and you almost feel his presence.1132 ¶10

I know, in my own case, when my daughter was conceived, and this joy — the joy of putting my hand upon my wife’s stomach — I feel as if something not yet born, but it’s alive, and to feel something stirring there — and it was such fun — just to put your hand there, it moved, out over here, and moved one time, and when I would say, “kick over here now,” she would — I’m telling you, it’s a fact, and it’s moving all over, because she talked to me, and she gave me her name, she told me all about herself — a lovely little girl, she’s about, maybe, four or five, a sweet little thing. When she was born she looked nothing like the child I saw, but when she was four she was the embodiment of what I saw her to be. And I would put my hand and feel there’s something not yet born — well, you can see it, may I tell you, you’re going to feel the presence of that something in you, for — Two nations, rival races from their birth, one the mastery to gain, the younger over the elder. So something in you is being born — it will come out, but when it comes out, it is the Jesus Christ of scripture, who is the God of the universe.1132 ¶11

Now learn to exercise him before he’s born. I tell you, you are all imagination. Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us, and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself, the divine body that he calls Jesus, and we are his members, because here is one body, diversified — a unity. When you look out at the world, the whole vast world is yourself pushed out, and this is only a soliloquy, it’s a monologue, so that everything is simply you, and God is talking to God. We are told in scripture, the forty-second Psalm, “deep calls unto deep.” It is all within us, it is above. Every other, strangest person in the world, and you think you’ve never seen him before — it’s only an aspect of your own being, and in the depth of that being you are, or he couldn’t even be alive. There’s only one God, so the whole vast world is man.1132 ¶12

Now, in a simple, practical way, you simply — you know what you want. Well, as I said to the lady earlier tonight, you don’t have to know exactly where you’re going to live tomorrow, having sold the house. You’ll go anyplace — you’re going to a hotel, go to a friend’s home, go to any place — but you will not be in a place, having sold it. Then you think of your home when you speak tonight: if you haven’t sold it, you’re thinking of it, and you’re thinking of it as someone who owns that house. You can go on thinking of it and still desiring to unload it. You must think of it as something you formerly own.1132 ¶13

The same thing is true of a job. Tonight, oh, you say, “well, I don’t have a job” — you don’t have a job. Well now, still, that being who is not yet born in you, but he is coming to birth — but before he comes to birth you will feel his presence. Now, how would I do it? I stand here, I see you, I see the room. Can I put myself on the street? Certainly I can — I can stand here and assume that I am standing on the street. I’m looking at this lecture, and don’t observe this thing at all, called Neville — I am on the street. I can put myself there and think of this, and keep — or see it — with someone standing here, but I am putting myself elsewhere. Now you can actually put yourself where you want to be, which, when you are there, in a few minutes — The power is in what the thing is implying. If I am sleeping elsewhere and seeing it as formerly my own, that implies that I have sold it, it is no longer mine.1132 ¶14

Now you don’t have to compromise, and I’m telling her, don’t compromise — you feel the value in what you say, it is all right, put yourself there and don’t let anyone — then the others are telling her, “this is short,” “this is tight,” “that is so-and-so,” and then maybe your husband is holding on to it — he isn’t holding on to it. At their advanced years in life, they’re divorced — so what, this happens in this world — after forty-odd years of marriage he wanted out, and so he got out, leaving her children — they had two, the daughter died, leaving two lovely children, but they’re taken care of, there’s no problem there, it’s not a financial problem. And then someone told her, “oh, you see, he is holding on to it because he built it” — well, it isn’t he — don’t let anyone tell you anything.1132 ¶15

Be still — the forty-sixth psalm — “be still and know that I am God.” Take that literally: you say “I am,” that’s God. But as long as the outer man is the reality, you’re taken care of, and your children too, and this one — this one only — don’t be unaware of one who is coming in, who is second, and the second is going to reign over all. A seeming ruler will come first — he doesn’t come first in appearances, he comes at the last — so the first is physical and not spiritual, but when the spiritual comes he will rule over the physical. That’s what you’re told in the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians: the first is only a living being, the other is a life-giving spirit — it gives life to the thing that it occupies, it makes it become alive. This is only a breathing, living organism, that’s all that it is, and so I animate this body when I get up in the morning, but there’s something in it that just came back from the depth of my own being, which was myself, my essentiality — that is the being of whom I speak night after night here.1132 ¶16

Last night I said to myself, “come, let us go” — I’m talking to myself, it’s a soliloquy, I now reveal. Well, all of a sudden my head became the most fantastic vibrancy, and did I travel through eternity — all in my head. So you have to see it after it’s seen, and I’m talking to myself — I know it’s myself, but here is my deep, the deep of my being, and the surface being went for a ride. Under compulsion I moved, knowing that I am the very being who is taken over. I’m finding it almost impossible to describe the beauty that is in store for all, when you actually know that you’re one. This being within me is the very being called God, called Jehovah, called the Lord Jesus Christ in scripture.1132 ¶17

The day will come. He will actually, literally be born, and the symbolism of his birth you all know — you will be told, in a month from now, all the churches will have chatted about a little child being born; that is not the true story. It is you — that second man — that awakes. It is already the reality within you, it’s only awaiting, and awaiting you. You are both from the deep, deep sleep, which is self-imposed, and although you come after the physical appearance of yourself, it was, before that, the world was. You’re told, Jacob have I loved, and he comes second, and he moves — he came there so smooth you can’t even see him — called, in the beginning, Jacob. Yes, you see the Esau; they don’t see the Jacob, who is the one who is coming, and coming, and coming, and finding his abode. Then he is called Jesus, which means the Lord is salvation, and that Lord who is salvation is your own wonderful human imagination — but at that moment it’s born, and you can trust him implicitly.1132 ¶18

Suppose I stand here, but assume myself in London. What’s wrong with that? Well, don’t you have any money? You’ll say, “so what does it matter, I’m in London,” and suddenly things will rearrange themselves, and I will be compelled — whether I can afford it at that time or not — I’ll be compelled to make the journey, and it will be perfectly all right, it’ll be done. I’m speaking from experience: don’t treat it lightly, because you’re going to make the journey, and it may not be convenient for you, because you’re tempting — yourself, who is the Lord — if you shall just test it now, or you test it, and you will find it will happen at a moment when you least expect it, and it is not convenient, but you should go anyway. You’ll be under compulsion to make the trip.1132 ¶19

Do it in your finances — what’s wrong with money? Is anything wrong with having money, having enough to pay all your expenses, with leftovers? Feed the crowd, but pick up all the things that are held back, left over — it didn’t stop, well, you started with what — two fish and five loaves — and you took up all these leftovers. So a number of things, after you’ve done it, are circumstance. Come, and I tell you, live it fully, live it to the nth degree — you are all imagination. Tonight you could clothe yourself in anything that you desire.1132 ¶20

I have done it with people whose profession was simply, well, the harlot — but I don’t care what a person’s profession is, though she’s a harlot, so what — a friend of mine, not a customer of mine, not a client of mine, I assure you, but a friend of mine — I don’t care what they are. I attended one of the most amusing parties ever given, by a very dear, close friend of mine who was a lawyer, and he gave it, all night, Christmas Eve. I remember a huge, big buffet tray, and he had this huge ham on it, an enormous ham, and he invited his clientele — he was a criminal lawyer — all the pickpockets in the world were there, and he said to me, “tonight, everything is easy here, you could put all the diamonds in the world in your pocket, wear them, do anything, not once will you be taken — here, tonight, under my will, all these are my clients, they’ll serve time in Paris, in London, in Germany — all the jails of the world, and I am their lawyer, I get them out.” And, “uh, what is your racket?” I said, “I teach the word of God,” and he began to smile.1132 ¶21

One introduced himself to me as “Benny the Brahman” — you get about twelve aliases — but this one was “Penny Develman” at the moment, something else five minutes later, thirty minutes something else, and one was called “the Doctor” — one of the most amusing evenings, and everyone was a professional thief, and not ashamed of it — that was their concept of life. And I went through the whole thing like a dream, and I wonder what on earth did Gil do to bring me here — but Gil is a friend of mine, and he thought, “now this would really amuse Neville,” and so he invited me this night, and here I came to this party, and everyone had gone through all the jails, not only of our country, but all over Europe.1132 ¶22

So I am not criticizing anyone — that’s their profession, that’s their profession, I am not here to change anyone, but to tell everyone how to use Jesus Christ within, because the true being within them is Jesus Christ, and he forgives all, he forgives every being in the world — they’re all a part played by one being, because this is just soliloquy, I’m telling you, the whole thing is a monologue, God is playing every part in the world, so he is the accuser and the accused, the thief and the one who was robbed, and nobody’s robbing anyone but himself, but they don’t know it.1132 ¶23

So here, as I stand here, the being of whom I speak is my own wonderful human imagination, and if tonight I wanted to be other than what I am, or to have possession other than what I have, I would not ask anyone’s favor, anyone’s permission — I would appropriate it. My mood attracts its affinity — it doesn’t create what it attracts, for all that’s done, the whole thing is done, but in fact what I assume, so my mood attracts its affinity. So, what would a feeling be like if — and then I name it — what would the feeling be like if I were the man that I would like to be? I catch that mood, and it attracts its affinity, because everything in the world — I don’t care what it is, a tear, it’s already done, the laughter is already done, everything is done — I am only drawing together, like a magnet, through my mood. So I catch the mood, that’s all I’m going to catch — I’m going to catch a mood that would imply that I am already the person that I would like to be, and I sustain that mood, and then it draws things like a magnet and objectifies it on the screen of space. That is the being who is coming into your world, and that being is God, realizing — throughout scripture — the mood, and we’re going to assume only mood in the world.1132 ¶24

Now, only two things in scripture — I can search scripture — this is the feeling: one is that of faith in “I am he,” there’s a fundamental theory of the world — is the lack of faith in “I am he” — and the second is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If this is good and that is evil — but all you have to do is put yourself in the position of the opponent, and what you think is evil, he is thinking is good, and what you think is good, you think is evil. You take a war — you want to dramatize it — and, we, as Americans, feel that it was an evil thing that any opponent will try to do to us, and he is thinking that what we are trying to do to him alone is evil. Good and evil, the tree of knowledge — only two things in the entire Bible we are told of: the Lord, and one is lack of faith that “I am he,” and the second one is the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.1132 ¶25

Now, you will ask, will you have an ethical code? Certainly I have an ethical code, and the more I know that the world is myself pushed out, the more I become incapable of hurting myself. I now find the Golden Rule so easy to abide by, because I wouldn’t want it done to me, and here is my very self, so I can’t do it, again, because he really isn’t other than myself. You start off by thinking, “what I would like done to me,” being in this little thing, and then suddenly you realize that little thing here isn’t confined — here is: do not do unto others what you would not want them to do unto you — but then the whole vast world will become yourself, and you don’t hurt anyone. As he is born in you, you find a whole vast world with one being, and everyone is simply in communication with you, because if you’re talking to yourself, deep is talking to God.1132 ¶26

So, all things, by a law divine, in one another’s being mingle, therefore I penetrate you, and therefore all I have to do is become concerned only with what I want in this world, without hurting anyone, and it penetrates every being, because it is all myself pushed out, and all that can be used to aid the birth of what I am assuming will be used, without their knowledge, without their consent — I don’t need their consent, it will all happen, may I tell you. You are the being spoken of in scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ; you are the other being spoken of as God. Begin to believe it, but long before it is born, may I tell you, you can feel it, just as I felt the little body jumping — in my wife’s womb.1132 ¶27

In your marriage, if you’ve had the joy of being a father, or the joy of being a mother, you know what I’m talking about, when that first little sign of life stirs, and then she tells you, “I’m pregnant.” I think she feels it first, and then it’s kicking, and you become curious and put your hand on her, and all of a sudden it’s a kick — there’s kicking over here — and you go from place to place, feeling that little body kicking. And she hasn’t been born yet, but there’s something in you — may I tell you, before this thing happened to me, I used to feel it in my head. Oh, I couldn’t tell you — something actually moving in my head, something alive was moving in my skull, I could feel it, and then night after night these things would happen, but I would sit down in my silence, and then all of a sudden something is kicking — it’s in my head, it was my very self. And then the night that it happened, when I awoke within my own skull, to find myself in two, but the two which seemed a tomb was really the womb, out of which I would come.1132 ¶28

So the second man is the Lord from heaven, and you’re told in scripture, “heaven is within you” — within and above are the same in scripture, and without and below are the same in scripture. So the first man is from below, from the womb — a woman comes out with hair all over — and the second man is within, in his spirit — you can’t see him. Not on this level, not on any other level, only in the depth of your being — when you’re seeing, he’s gone. Every creature — that same being — and then humanity gathered together as a single being stands before you, and you know who’s standing there, it is your son. Humanity, symbolized as a child daily, and it calls you father.1132 ¶29

So this is what I try to get over, night after night after night — to tell you, before the birth takes place, the actual birth, you can feel his presence, and you can prove the power and the wisdom of this being by exercising it. What would a feeling be like — would it be true that I am now the man that I would like to be, what would it be like? Well then, dare to assume the feeling that it is so, and trust this presence to individually make itself known, and it doesn’t fail — no power in the world can stop it. If you have all the oppositions in the world, it makes no difference whatsoever — don’t look at your position, don’t look at anything, just simply the end — in the end is what you want. He has the wisdom to do it and the power to do it. If it takes all the things of the world to put them together, they will, because the whole vast world is intermingled. You’ll take everyone and put it together and make it conform to what is necessary for that which you’ve assumed that you are, to be born in this world.1132 ¶30

And when you see it — what freedom, what complete relief from this bondage into which we deliberately descended, to exercise our power, that we could actually enter the world of death and overcome it, overcome death. And I tell you, the things I could tell you, and yet, sometimes it’s so embarrassing to talk about them, because they’re frightening to people who have certain ethical codes, certain moral codes, and they may think I’m encouraging them to go out and violate their own moral code, and I wouldn’t want that, ever. But what is right and wrong here isn’t right and wrong in the depth of your being at all, because there is only one being. What is right here, wrong here, when you go to the depth of your being, it’s all one very wonderful creative act — it isn’t wrong at all, it’s sheer ecstasy in the depth of the being.1132 ¶31

And after he is born within you, your night becomes joy, just joy, and you can completely abandon yourself, may I tell you, no fear whatsoever as to consequences. You ask within yourself to take me now, and then all of a sudden something starts in your head, and — what a joy, what a joy is in store for you — surprise after surprise after surprise, and it’s all you, for you are talking to yourself. “Be still upon your own bed, and commune” — thyself is called “heart” in scripture, that’s itself. And may I tell you, don’t be afraid, you will not depart in some violent manner. Others will tell you you’ll go mad, you’ll go insane, or you might burst a blood vessel — don’t believe it, not a thing is going to happen to you, just let yourself go. If you feel it coming on, don’t be afraid — “be not afraid,” as you’re told throughout scripture, don’t be afraid, why? Because the one who is going to do it is yourself.1132 ¶32

I go to bed enjoying, looking forward to the experience of the night, night after night after night, and some things would make no sense whatsoever on this plane, so you don’t discuss it — why talk about it? Because there aren’t words even to clothe them — how could you clothe it, it doesn’t make sense, and you’re only going to disturb yourself if you do bring it back. So Paul said he heard things in that third heaven of his own being that were unlawful to utter — it isn’t that they’re unlawful to utter, but how would you find words to clothe them, and how could you, in some way, describe them that would make sense to the rational mind? So just don’t talk about it, until someone arrives at that point, and understands, even though — They are here on this level.1132 ¶33

Bear in mind, you are now in the presence of two, seemingly, and one is taking over from birth — he was the first Adam, that’s the outer man, that’s rational, as we go to school to become more and more rational. And then comes something stirring within you — he comes last of all, he’s the last Adam. And though he comes after the first, the second will reign over the first. The first is physical, and the second is spirit, and the spirit will be born in you, and he will reign forever, completely, and when people tell you it’s impossible, you don’t even listen to it, because you’re concerned that nothing is impossible, and you almost stop using the word “God,” because his name is “I am.” Nothing is impossible to him.1132 ¶34

Don’t take any challenge, you know what you want, and the world will say to you, “well, I saw him grow, but he didn’t have anything” — yes, I saw him grow, but if you took his history you would find a most normal, natural unfolding of that picture, and they will look to the means, and give all credit to the means employed, not knowing that you were dreaming all along, and the means simply were drawn by the tendency of their moods, and therefore were brought forth — they give all credit to the means employed; this one came into your life at the appropriate moment in time and made possible this, that, and the other, therefore, without them you wouldn’t have this, that, and the other — they don’t know what you were doing inside, but you know it’s all your own soliloquy, your monologue, and because you interpenetrate every being in the world, they had to come when they came, to play the part that they played, because you are faithful to a mood, and the mood simply attracts its affinity.1132 ¶35

Now, this is the experience — I’m quite sure that all of you have had the feeling of this inner person, and you can get it, you will get it, before he’s born. But you must have had it — your head begins to feel like a pulsing something, and you see the radiance of that being, you see the golden liquid light, as though you’re golden all over, the whole thing becomes liquid light, and that’s you — a single awareness, and everything is gold, and everything is liquid, and it’s positive, and you can feel it long before you have the actual experience of being born from above. So don’t think you’ve got to be born in the way that I’ve described it in my book, in order to exercise his power. Now you’ll feel his presence, and his power is there long before the actual conscious birth of that being within you.1132 ¶36

Now try it tonight, try it overnight, try to live it, for eventually you want to live by it anyway, because now nothing in the world will be impossible to you, because you’ll know who you are. But on this level everything seems to be fixed. Here, I read in this morning’s paper — you wouldn’t think a DuPont could go broke, could you? Who would think a DuPont, whose estate runs into billions, a member of that family, could actually go broke? Well, because of his name and his credit, he was trusted to the tune of something like thirty or forty million dollars, and then he just declared himself bankrupt — a DuPont! So everything is possible — as well, yes, the rich can go broke too, and one poor, behind the eight ball, can become a rich king. So don’t think that anyone, or anything, is impossible — not a thing is impossible; those who have it today and lose it tomorrow, and those who have none can get it today, if you know who you are.1132 ¶37

Now, with all of his millions, he hasn’t found Christ, he hasn’t found him — he was living on the outer man’s possessions, and that is what his reality was. I’ll show you: let them take the whole vast world from you, but don’t let them take the being — it is forever your own wonderful human imagination, they can’t take that from you, and that can rebuild everything in the world, no matter what it is. Take it, if you will, and I’ll rebuild it — you take one, pick the other one too, and I’ll rebuild it, all by simply assuming that I am the man that I want to be. And friends of yours have lost — say that you love them, or I’ll assume that they have — but you know that they would like this, and then let this thing go, let them take it, and this is the being of whom I speak.1132 ¶38

It’s a dividing being in the early stages, but it takes a long span between Esau and Jacob — it didn’t come the same night, although you see it in scripture as two little boys who came out, one holding the heel of the other, and then the little dialogue between the two boys, where the one who came first sold his birthright, and so his blessing, to the second one. And you will think — are they only symbols? These are symbols of the eternal struggle in the heart of man, and the one that comes out first is Esau — he knows nothing but the garment that he’s wearing. Then comes the second one, and it comes at the very end of the journey — he’s called the second man, the Lord from heaven. But you take the span between Genesis and the Gospel, you’ll find the entire journey — the journey comes to its climax in the gospel.1132 ¶39

Thank you.1131 ¶1

From the first chapter, the third verse of the Book of Joshua: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” Believe it. But I know it’s true, I approve it, and this promise is made to the images — but you’re not even aware that there is an image. A reading in this manner: the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. You are told the first man — that is the outer man — is of the earth, earthy; the inner man, the second man, is the Lord from heaven. Now this book proves that the quote is from the Book of Joshua. The word Jesus is the Greek form of the word Joshua — they are identically meaning the same. Let me say there is: all the promises of the Bible are addressed to that inner being, that second man; it is the Lord from heaven. On the other hand, our domain is limited — limited to be saved in this, limited to what it allows, what is distant — but the inner man has no limits. Every place that the sole of his foot shall tread, that same is divided unto him.1131 ¶2

So let me show you how it’s done. I was confronted with what seemed to be an impossible barrier between myself and my objective.1131 ¶3

This experience happened — from there we flew to Barbados. On arrival, my brother asked me when I intended returning to America. Well, this was the 30th of January. I said, “We are home after so many years, I would like to remain until maybe the end of April and return around the first of May” — New York City. You don’t realize that there are literally thousands, tens of thousands, of people wanting the same for passage to New York, and little Barbados has nothing to offer. The only two ships that ply the water: one sails out of Boston carrying a hundred and twenty passengers, and one sails out of New York carrying only sixty. Every available space is already committed right through the month of September, and here it is January. Not only is the space committed, but there are actually thousands of people waiting on a waiting list — if you put your name down with your family, your dreams to get out of there. I didn’t care — everything I’m telling you now, I didn’t wish to disturb him, because he didn’t know I was not familiar with this decision. I made no effort to book passage. I should have put my name down at the bottom of the list, in January, and I am involved in this affair.1131 ¶4

So this is what I did, based upon understanding. Leaving the bay, I had a good mental image of what she looked like — the smaller one. So that day, as I returned to my hotel after lunch, I sat in the chair here in my room, and this is what I did.1131 ¶5

I knew that if the inner man could perform an act, the outer man would be compelled to duplicate it, and whenever the actions of the inner self correspond, the outer self must respond. If a desire — that desire must be realized. So I made an act, admitting a representative responsible for what I would see and what I would do and what I would hear — where I specifically better understanding when you wanted to, I would have to do it. If I failed, if it’s invalidated, there is no deep worry, harm that is offered yet — so all passes must take a small relationship, we call them — that’s a little long. I could perform it as a visitor, but the emotion of someone who actually is there is fairly different from the emotion of one who is only visiting — meaning I had to catch a sort of mixed emotion. Before it was fifty years — I was leaving a very wonderful and large family behind that I had not seen in fifteen years. Although I was returning to a home that I loved in New York City, I was happy to get back, but I was sad at the same time — that sort of feeling that mixed together joy and sorrow, as the prophet says: joy and sorrow are woven fine, our garment, and so divided.1131 ¶6

So I did exactly what he made — the experience of which means to be lulled into something that was a sweet dream. So this is my story: my mind, what I would have to visualize — my first interview I dreamed. And the reason for that is you’re told in the Book of Job: “In a dream, in a vision of the night... then he openeth the ears of men.”1131 ¶7

I knew the one who would enact it was within him, for God is in every man — not outside of man. God solves his problems. So the one thing he would have to be, my own wonderful I AM — that’s the darkling man — and that inner man is his son, his only son — the imaginary son, which is my imagination.1131 ¶8

So sitting in that chair, because — if you go to sleep, you lose control of the direction of your attention, and that is something you must always maintain, be under your own control, not the control of another. So I had to induce it, but only to a certain point, and just before I fell asleep, I arrested that thing — they say that state is likely to be known to a child, his age. What I’m doing there is not the state of the third — I do not know what I’m doing, which is unconsciousness, when all the clinical faculties are being exercised. There are any number of intermediary states. I wanted to say that God is a man — so, because I’m speaking of a child, I will call that now the hypnagogic state.1131 ¶9

This hypnagogic state is the — when you inflate it — no, I must define it — I must clarify it, to find myself — for they told me I couldn’t get out of the island, in my imagination. And this is what I worked out: I felt that if I woke up, and then on the top of that ship, holding the rail, I could look back at the little town of Bridgetown, and have that feeling of sadness and yet joy, because I was happy — that I would say. So I assumed I stepped off onto the dock, and I stepped, step after step, right after the entire experience. Welcome you back to New York City on the first of May.1131 ¶10

And I know from my own personal experience that this thing is true, that every place that the sole of your foot doth tread, that same is given unto you. If you presume, conceive, or would put yourself in possession of what you want to be in this world, and then embody it, in some quiet representation, exactly what you would see and what you would do — well, they do it.1131 ¶11

All the people who play there, faced with the same objective, and all the people who were getting on the ship — they were bystanders. In my drama I made my team so real, and because of their specific objectives, they became related to my drama, and because they related to it, they were drawn into my drama and had to play their part. I didn’t concern myself with the captain’s name, or the ship’s name, or any person on the ship who might be saving a passenger for me. I didn’t concern myself with how it would happen — I knew it would have to happen. This is based upon this simple principle: that whenever the acts of this inner man react with the outer man, that must be — what I would say, realized in me, or to a genius — that must be done in the outer world. I know so — when I returned to New York City, I shared my experience with my audiences.1131 ¶12

He almost fell off. Now, don’t you try to dispute it — don’t quibble a little either in the hope of the students — rather, put yourself into something. Yes, wonderful man, wonderful woman, whoever you are, he won’t know — well, he’s such a little drama, which implies the fulfillment of your dream. Then do it over and over and over, and make it now. I promise you: wherever the sole of your foot shall tread, the same have I given unto you.1131 ¶13

In my audience, he was faced with this problem: although blind, he was earning a wonderful, wonderful income, and of all things, entitled — but they had recently changed the routing of the bus, and he found himself standing two and a half hours one way on a bus line. I tell you now, when you say your eyes are removed, they are used to testify — when he’s looking through her eyes, changing — years and years ago, two and a half hours; I will do the same — that he had only one bus, he made it in fifteen minutes. So that’s right, this is what she did: he first of all investigated what it would cost to cab it — that was completely out of the question. He thought in terms of giving up on the thought, but he had a lonely story — for all the things that he thought of rapidly, he couldn’t put into effect. He came to the conclusion that going from her place to her place of work in a car was the only solution.1131 ¶14

He moved into — he finally came to the end of her imaginary journey, turned to her companion, and said, “Thank you very much,” to which she replied, “The pleasure is all mine.” They got out of the car, and there was the imagined sound of the car, the carpet, as he slammed shut, in her imagination, the door of the car, and then he walked up to play. He would carry her bag. The next night he did it all over again; he did it in earnest — he was actually in earnest, he could actually see himself in a car, and riding down the streets of San Francisco, talking, in front of her office building, giving out — pointing her passage in and out of her drive, and then making her way up the rest under consideration.1131 ¶15

He sat down and wrote her a letter and explained her problem simply — a problem beyond — when he talked to them, and he simply read it and put it in his pocket. On his way home he stopped, as he did, at the same three stops every day before he turned into his house, and one of those happened to be a bar. So he’s talking at the bar, and he’s the proprietor, and had his conversation, whatever it was, and while he was there he was prompted to tell the blind girl’s story.1131 ¶16

Having told the story to a total stranger — there were two of them there, because of some liquor — the house — he overheard the story, and he said, “Well, I make a good living, and I am sorry — she doesn’t understand — and I do nothing for this community. There is a girl who not only supports herself, but takes herself to work, but even more — he states that she is helping nine other blind people to earn their own living.”1131 ¶17

For this girl who should be supported by the taxpayers, earned her own living, and helped ten of us — rather nine of us — to earn our living, and I who earn a wonderful living, I do nothing for the community. I will drive that girl to work. The man who received the letter — that it was a total stranger, it was right, surgically, his eyes were affected and made him — made him blind — took her home, and that was that.1131 ¶18

Now, that’s almost three years ago. I saw that girl just about six months ago, and she told me that he did not miss one day in five days — five days a week he would pick her up and send her — take her to her work, and take her from work home, and here’s the same spot: the very first morning, his ego, which is there, he turned to him as he got out of the car, and he said, “Thank you very much.” He will never be replaced. Everybody...1131 ¶19

You must take — appease your desire — that desire will be realized, for this whole wonderful world of ours is nothing more than the achievement of hunger, that body building we have made to satisfy our lives. You have some intentions, some wonderful hopes in this world — it may be a job, it may be an increase of income, it may be some wonderful harmonious relationship in a home that is now strained. No matter what it is, when it happens inside — that your dream has been realized — then take that up, continually do it over and over and over, until it takes on the tones of reality, then it becomes to you natural. Then you make it a habit — but I do believe that in that sense, during the reaction, in some strange way, he wants to think about the time between the doing and the realization of it, because you don’t have to do it thirty-one days.1131 ¶20

You know, I knew I was going to sit on that trip. I had a chance, I had proof, I had the passage in my possession. This girl took me two days, although she was given the planet — she really only did it two nights, two nights, living in a living room. He assumed she was in the car; you could smell exactly, feel exactly her safety, and imagined everything into hallucinatory clarity.1131 ¶21

Now, let me take my — now, place yourself in this — book, and assume that I am doing something that is not here to be seen by anyone. I shall lose myself in it — the same as — the state of nothingness — if I do it until it’s easy, and I eat while I’m doing it — you know this will become my possession, my investment.1131 ¶22

You believe in the vision of the night, when he falls upon them — that slumber upon the bed — then he passeth away, and see the very structure — we all will be safe tonight — in the past we’re going to play, when we open our eyes on this outer world, and all that we will do we do under compulsion, for this inner motion is the force by which the elderly base is brought to bed, to live alone.1131 ¶23

Now here in this book, “Awakened Imagination,” you will find that consistency — the blind girl leaving at the front, becoming the man, the woman that you wanted to be. You can do anything in this world that you want to be, if you know these wonderful promises. I accept them, and then I test them through, inviting the testimony: “If I will not open you the windows of heaven...”1131 ¶24

The name of God is the key to the understanding of the biblical doctrine of God. His real person is concentrated in his name; his name is that which you and I must discover, if you really understand this great mystery contained in the Bible. It is not secular history; it is sacred history. It has nothing to do with anyone that ever walked the face of this earth. The whole drama takes place within us, within our own wonderful human imagination. It is there that we will find God. When the promise is made, and these characters are mentioned in scripture — whether or not persons as we are — they are states of consciousness. So when the promise is made that a guardian angel will lead the people of Israel, this promise was given precisely, by the assurance of Jehovah, that “my name is in him,” for God is concentrated in his name, which simply means that God himself goes with them — not as some guide on the outside, but within.1129 ¶1

It is your own wonderful human imagination that is God. But the name is revealed in stages; man could not take it all — he could not give the final stage in the beginning. So here we find the statement made to so-called Moses; this is the 23rd chapter of the book of Exodus. Now, Moses is not a person; the word Moses is the old Egyptian perspective, the Egyptian verb “to be born” — something you should be born in, man; well, it takes time; it should be born. And the Lord said to Moses, “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, unto Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known unto them.” Well, the word “know” — you simply — “I AM.” I did not reveal my identity to these states of awareness; he now reveals it to this — that is, to Moses.1129 ¶2

So first he is all-powerful, El Shaddai, God Almighty; man sees the symbols of it in the storm, in the lightning, in the convulsions of nature, in the violence of nature, and he worships that on the outside. Then comes the second revelation, and it is revealed to Moses, in this passage, as a name, which is I AM. When they ask you who sent you, and they ask me, say, “I AM has sent me unto them.” Just say, “I AM has sent me unto them, for this is my name forever” — I AM THAT I AM.1129 ¶3

Then comes the final revelation, and that revelation is given to us in his nature: that he is a Father — that it is God the Father. “I have made manifest thy name, and I will manifest it” — the manifest name of the Father — God is a Father. Well, if God is a Father, then he has a child; he can’t be a father and not be a father of a child. It is revealed in scripture quite plainly, if one wanted only scriptures, but it’s difficult for man to accept it, for the final revelation of the name of God is Father, Holy Father.1129 ¶4

Now, when we read in scripture of Jesus Christ — if you were trained as I was: I was born in the environment of a Christian home, and my parents taught me the story of Christ, and they died believing the story as they told it to me. Then I discovered it wasn’t so at all; it wasn’t strictly history. This is a great mystery, not something to be kept secret — these are not matters to be kept secret, but these are present truths that are mysterious in character.1129 ¶5

So, do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Well, if Jesus Christ is in me, I must find out who he is, where he is in me — yet, well, in what sense is he in me? But then I made the discovery, through vision, not through reason — reason cannot reveal it to me; it all came through vision. And I go back into the Bible, and I read the Bible to find that my vision parallels the story of scripture.1129 ¶6

I’ve come to the conclusion that Jesus in me is God the Father, and that Christ in me is David, his son. And there was no other way that I would ever know that I am God the Father unless his son revealed it to me, for no man knows who the son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. This is the most incredible story in the world, and the story is this: that God the Father is going to give himself to every child born of woman. No one will be left out — every child born of woman, regardless of what he may become in the world, the most horrible monster — it is still God’s plan to give himself to man, as though there were no other in the world — just God and you, just God and I. Believing this most incredible gospel will become possible to you, and the only way you will know it’s true is when Christ reveals you to yourself as God the Father, and the Christ who reveals you as God the Father is the Father’s son, and that son is David.1129 ¶7

In searching the scripture through the rational mind, I could never have discovered it — this happened as it revealed itself to me through vision; I know it’s a difficult thing for man trained as I was, and taught in doubt, as many of you were. You accept it, or you don’t. I was raised that way by my mother, and by my teachers in school, and when I read the Bible with the background of a fixed idea that my mother stuck into my mind — my teachers confirmed that, and then the ministers confirmed it — I had a fixed idea of Jesus Christ as a man of history, who lived two thousand years ago, as something external to us. I could read forever with that fixed idea; that “Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory,” I wouldn’t see it. But I hear the question asked in the book of Corinthians: “Do you not realize that Christ is in you, that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourselves and see.” Well, it would mean nothing, because it has to come through — a fixed idea would drop it, so reason could not get it; it has to be revealed.1129 ¶8

And so the day came in my life when it was revealed, and the block was removed, and his son stood before me, and it’s David, of biblical faith. And there is no uncertainty as to who he is; I’m looking at it, and that knowing, firstly, as to our relationship: I am his father, he calls me father, and I know I am a father; he knows that he is my son. And that’s the final revelation of the name of God. You will not, in eternity, know that you are God until that final revelation, when his son tells you “Father.” Then your journey is over. You simply live to tell it to anyone who will listen, and some will not.1129 ¶9

Let me share with you a vision of a friend of mine who is here tonight; it’s biblical. On the surface you will think, “No, that’s only a dream, meaning nothing,” but let me give it to you as best as I can recall it — it’s not a wrong one, you shall see. This is on a week ago last Sunday. I woke in the morning, Monday morning, and I knew I had had a most significant dream; I knew it was tremendously important, but I could not recall it. Try as I did, I couldn’t recall it. But I had to be about my business, because my son had to be up; I had to prepare his lunch, get breakfast, and get him into the orthodontist before eight in the morning, you see.1129 ¶10

I got the lunch, got our breakfast, and after that, I’m sitting in the car waiting for his return from the dentist, and I looked out through my window in the car, and across the street I saw a sign. It wasn’t the complete sign, only a partial part of it — it read, “Complete Vision.” And it triggered my memory; as I saw “Complete Vision,” the dream began to return, and the whole thing became so vivid I relived it as though I were actually repeating the whole thing once more. And this was the dream:1129 ¶11

I found myself — in me — looking out upon a sea of humanity. There were hundreds of thousands of people, swelling from an apex into an enormous base — like a pyramid, perfect — and I knew this as I looked at them: they all seemed independent of each other; they could move as themselves, like moving; no one was completely tied down by another, and although they seemed completely independent of my perception of them, and of the perception of each other, I noticed they were tied — each one — by a black chain, each attached from the breast, attached to me too, and everyone was attached to the other, and although they seemed independent of each other, they were all attached to each other.1129 ¶12

Then I turned around, and now I faced the opposite; my back was to this enormous sea of humanity. As I turned around, I’m looking at you, and — never — you are radiantly beautiful. You said nothing; you simply stood there, at the very top of the pyramid, and you looked at me. And then it dawned upon me, the significance, the meaning, of this dream: I noticed on your breast you too were attached, the same chain that bound me to this whole vast host, but I knew, without asking anyone, I knew — you were the top stone. You were the leader; you were the one — you were the head of it all.1129 ¶13

And then, as I knew, and you knew that I understood the vision, you smiled, and then the chain began to become invisible; yet I knew, in spite of the chain becoming invisible, it is still tying us all together, all linked together as one league. It becomes invisible, as it is invisible here now — you don’t see yourself tied to anyone, and you are convinced that you are completely independent of the perception of anyone in this world; you see no link. Yet come to the teaching: “I dwell in them, and thou in me — I have made manifest unto them thy name, and I will make it manifest, that they may be one, even as we are one — I dwell in them, and thou in me, that they may be one, as we are one.”1129 ¶14

So you could say, “I and my Father are one.” Not one can be lost in this world, for we’re all linked together; everyone will be redeemed, because God himself is in everyone, and there is nothing in this world but this relationship between God and his son. God and his son is buried in every child that is born in this world, and when that child grows into maturity — I don’t mean physical maturity, I mean spiritual majority — and he awakens from the dream of life, he is God’s own; and because God is a Father, he, being God the Father, he has the Son of God as his son, and that son is David.1129 ¶15

He has told us in scripture: “I will declare the decree of the Lord,” saith David: “Thou saidst unto me, Thou art my son; today have I begotten thee.” These are the words of David in the second Psalm. Then said he, “Rise, and anoint him; this is my chosen one.” To whom is it said? It is said to David — to whom the day would speak. And we call him Jesus, Father, if you read it carefully in the gospel. And David came in the spirit, and he called him “my Lord.” Well, “my Lord” is a term used by every son of his father, so he spoke of Jesus as “my Lord,” that is, “my Father.”1129 ¶16

No one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit; so he was inspired, in spirit, by his father. That is the search of everyone in this world: to find the Father, the cause of the phenomena of the world. What is the cause of my misfortune? What is the cause of my fortune? What is the cause of everything that is happening in my world? Suppository — putting it through all the furnaces in the world, that I may actually inherit God, actually, actually become one with God — divine — and there’s no power in the world that can convince me that this is so unless his son reveals it to him. I can stand here from now to the ends of time; I can persuade you to the point of convincing you that it’s true, until the son appears and calls his father. And I can tell you, I am not speculating; I am not theorizing; I am telling you what I have actually experienced.1129 ¶17

And I do know the vision of this lady who is here tonight, from Zechariah — the word “Zechariah” means “Jehovah remembers.” You remembered.1129 ¶18

Now, this is our wonderful sign, but I’ve told you time and again, everything in this world contains within itself the capacity of symbolic significance. A little bird flying by could trigger a memory that is gone and bring it back. The little sign — the sign at the end, when the car drove off — the sign was “Complete Vision,” an aid selling eyeglasses. You wouldn’t think a place selling eyeglasses could trigger so profound a vision, but everything contains within itself the capacity of symbolic significance; that little sign triggered it, and the whole thing came back — that she could not, with all the efforts she made in the morning, bring back and recall the vision of the night, yet she knew when she woke she had had a profound experience; she knew it was of tremendous significance, and that she couldn’t bring it back with a simple little sign, “Complete Vision” — but she didn’t see the word “Vision” until the car drove off.1129 ¶19

Now, here in Zechariah: “and he brings forth the top, the top stone, amidst shouts of grace, grace unto it.” Well, who brought grace into the world? We are told in the book of John: “the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”1129 ¶20

Now, in the tenth chapter of the same book I just quoted — the fourth chapter, the tenth chapter — announces this: there will come the cornerstone, and out of them will come the nail, and out of them will come everything, and to this — the whole of that sea of humanity — we are called; over that still humanity, one by one by one, and every one will be the Lord Jesus, and his son David, has told us, in Revelation, “and the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ” — the eleventh chapter of Revelation. Yes, the kingdoms of the world will become the kingdoms of our Lord and of Jesus Christ. They don’t tie it together as we find it in the gospel and the letters of Paul; they’re separated, in the last vision, to assure you that your thought of these as one surname — like Jesus being the surname of Christ — no, they are entirely different: the Father-son relationship.1129 ¶21

That’s when you are pronounced righteous, or the man who fulfills the conditions imposed — the foundation of a relationship is the Father-son relationship. See, in biblical terms, this is called righteousness, and that’s the crown of righteousness that is set up for a man who reaches the end, the top step, as Paul said: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith; henceforth is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” When you come to the end, you receive the crown; everyone will receive that crown, because everyone will be, in the end, the Lord Jesus.1129 ¶22

Jesus and Humanity together are symbolized in the boy called David — if you took the whole of your humanity, and all that experience, and they were infused into a single being and personified, he will come out as David. So David is nothing more than humanity personified as a single youth. So humanity is the son of God, and God, believe it or not, is personified in scripture as Jesus, and you are that God, but you do not know it yet. But you will know; one day you will actually have the experience, and you will know that this — what we call history in scripture — is not history as we understand history; it is not secular history, it is salvation history, it’s sacred history, and the whole thing unfolds within the individual.1129 ¶23

And the day will come when you will know that, from beginning to end, is all vision, from Genesis to Revelation. But man has confused the entire thing by making a little god out of this little thing called Jesus, or Christ, called Peter, called whatever — these are all states of awareness. The whole thing is unfolded within man; the whole drama is contained within them, in there, and one day it will unfold within man, and he is the God of the universe.1129 ¶24

Now let me show you the story of the pin. All these things happened to me without any contemplation; I never heard them, I never read them in a book. And here, one night — I was here at the Northland — I found myself, perfectly clear to me, and we were all sitting on the ground, and we were dressed in an ancient way, as depicted in pictures of the first century — just plain robes, that’s all, simple robes. The room was square, like this — not as big as this, but a square room like this, say maybe thirty square. One door was the entrance into this room, and to my left, as I sat on the ground, with one door. As I’m talking to them, and telling them — as I’m talking to you now — giving them the story of the Bible, just teaching the word of God and explaining what I know from my own experience, reinterpreting scripture in the light of my own experience and making the words become alive.1129 ¶25

And we all sat on the ground, and one of the twelve gets up and leaves the room, and I knew exactly what he was going to do — he was going to reveal the fact that I am talking about an entirely different king, the king that is housed in everyone, a different Lord altogether, not a Caesar, but the Lord housing everyone — that everyone is King, everyone is the Lord, everyone is God, and there’s nothing but God. And I’m telling these stories based upon my experience; one jumps up and he starts out, and the minute he goes out, I know exactly what he’s going to do — he’s going to tell them that I am teaching just this.1129 ¶26

In a matter of seconds, in comes a man — tall, handsome, high-looking man, about forty years of age, beautifully done, the most expensive style — and he walks like a great soldier, and he walks as straight as you could walk, up the aisle, turns at right angles to it, across that side, at right angles, comes to the middle, then he turns at right angles and comes straight in front of me and stands before me.1129 ¶27

And an attendant of his passes him a mallet and a pin, and then he takes that mallet, and then he takes the pin, and he hammers it into my shoulder. It made the blood flow out — it didn’t hurt, but I heard every blow as he nailed it right into me. Then he took a sharp instrument, and with the attendant that gave it to him, in one circular motion, like you would with a knife, cut the sleeve of my tunic, and then he took his hand this way and pulled the thing off and revealed my exposed arm, from my shoulder to my fingertips.1129 ¶28

Now I stood before him, completely unveiled — and that thing driven into my shoulder. Then he stretched his hands out like this, like a cross, then he embraced me, and he kissed me on my right — the neck-like side of my neck — and I kissed him on the right side of his neck. And then the whole thing began to fade.1129 ¶29

And now, this painting I am looking at — the discarded sleeve — he was wearing the most beautiful shade of blue, light, a baby-blue beauty, and I knew it was fine; I love these things as much. Cast away that way, but the hand was completely exposed.1129 ¶30

Now listen to the word: the 53rd chapter of Isaiah: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Then, in the 22nd chapter, the same Isaiah: “he nails it into the shoulder of the one that he has chosen” — a great nail, and on it he hangs all the vessels of his father’s house. Only for a season we will rule, for a season; then he will break, and all these will fall — his viceroy-ship will be at an end — and then he joins those who have attained, to listen.1129 ¶31

Each will play that part, each will have that experience.1129 ¶32

I am not alone in her vision — he saw me as the one at the top. She saw a different scene altogether; it’s not the world of seasons, it’s an entirely different scene. And I will not deny that you saw correctly; I know she saw correctly, for I am fully aware of what you thought — that I cannot be boastful about it, because everyone is going to be called; not one will be left, not one is lost, in all my holiness.1129 ¶33

And the one who precedes is not better than the one who follows, because you can’t perceive God and be better than God — it’s all gone; there’s nothing but God in this world. The whole vast world is God made visible, and he is concentrated in his name, and his name is in us, and that name is I AM. That is it; there is no other God. But do not turn to the outside to find any other God; your looking is in vain — this is the only God.1129 ¶34

God, and his whole, is concentrated in the individual, so if that individual goes berserk, perfectly all right, he still is linked to the one who thinks himself good. And the one who is so good — who may be called tonight — is not better than the one that he condemns in this world; the whole world is linked together, every one of us — as she thought so clearly, from breast to breast, and then, when the thing became invisible, she still knew — so invisible, we are tied together. Even the one who is now the top, the one who is the ruler, the one who is the head, he is not divorced from that vast crowd — they are numbered people; the base was enormous, and it narrowed and thinned as it formed the pyramid to the top.1129 ¶35

And when you bring forth the topstone, it is by grace — which means it’s a gift; you do not earn it; no man can earn it. Grace means an unmerited, unearned gift of God, and that gift is God’s gift of himself to man, and no man is good enough to earn it, so let no one tell you that he earned it through hard labor and devotion to so-and-so — forget it.1129 ¶36

We all go through the furnace; everything in this world that seems so horrible, the whole has passed through it, or you’re going to go through it. Don’t think you’re going to escape by anything that you’ve done — not a thing — you will pass through it. So do not judge by a person, and say this man is very marvelous because he’s rich, and that one — because he’s not wealthy — as something that God has ignored; forget that, it has nothing to do with these little tags that hang upon man.1129 ¶37

Everyone will be redeemed, and the redemption is — the gift is complete, and the gift is God’s gift of himself to man, and God’s name, forever and forever, is I AM. But remember, he is not only Almighty, he’s not only all-aware, he is a loving father, and humanity is his son, and humanity, gathered together and fused into a single being, comes out as David.1129 ¶38

He stands before him, and I can’t describe to anyone the thrill when you find the son who brings back your lost memory, because it’s not enough — the minute you see him, you know — you’re always the same. You can suffer from total amnesia, and then comes your son before you, and here you know exactly who you are. Do we not know him? And what does he mean, saying that “I came down from heaven”? What does he mean by saying, “I and my Father are one,” and “my Father is he whom you call God”? Because when I listen to him, they say “he’s insane, and he has a devil” — read these words, in the book of John, the tenth chapter of John: “He has a devil, he’s insane, he is mad; why listen to him?” — because we know his spirit; we’ve always loved it; we know his ways, and he dares to say, “I came down from heaven.”1129 ¶39

But may I tell you, you did; no one has ascended into heaven but he who descended. And therefore, it is said to us, saying, you first have to be slain, and you lose all memory in your contact with man; this is completely the nature of our mission — the minutes touch man and penetrate these bodies and annex these brains. You started thinking, and think that you are John Brown, because your mother’s name is Mrs. Brown, your father’s name was Mr. Brown, and the name — you, John something — you think you were John Brown, and you’re completely forgotten who you are; you are never John Brown.1129 ¶40

Say, for the moment, that you’re playing the role, as you annex the brain of the little body that is named John Brown; it became a person, but only a temporary portion of your soul, and through that you inhabit these bodies as you arrive, wearing a garment. Take good care of it, but don’t think for one moment it is you; you are the immortal one, your God expanding — and this is how the spirit becomes contracted and assumes a limit of contraction, O man. And then he bursts the shell and begins to expand, and there is no limit to that expansion; it is forever and forever. He’s only set a limit to the contraction, and not to the expansion, for this drama, I tell you, is true.1129 ¶41

But the Bible, the greatest book in the world, is completely misunderstood; they don’t understand it, they teach it as history, and they’re looking for all kinds of things — the archaeologists, looking all over the world, trying to find the evidence for the story — the story in the Bible. You’re not going to find it; the Bible you’re looking for in some little sepulchre — who said Jesus is supposed to have been buried in — he’s not buried in any tomb outside of this world; the only burial ground of God is the sepulchre of man — that’s where he’s buried. So they go to the Near East to find the so-called Holy Sepulchre, and they carry all these things into that little place — I think it’s unholy ground. Take off your shoes where you stand — oh, where you stand is holy ground — if you’re leaning up against a bar, that’s probably where you’re unaware, but that’s where God is standing.1129 ¶42

But his son is asleep. Amen. And he’s dreaming the dream of life; one day he will awake in man, and he will awake in the grave — and the grave is the sepulchre of man — and he will come out of that, and all the drama of scripture will unfold itself before him in a series of the most fantastic mystical experiences, and then he’ll know who he is.1129 ¶43

Then he tells us, to the best of his ability — not all are equally gifted; I would say that “gifted” is not a good word, but equally qualified, through lack of training, to tell it. I would like to tell it in writing, but I am not trained as a writer; I write, but I do not consider myself a writer — the making of words and thoughts on the printed page — I have not really applied myself towards it, so I have not told it as clearly as I would like to tell it, but some day this will come, and I’ll pick it up and tell it daily.1129 ¶44

But it doesn’t matter; I’m telling it from the platform to the best of my ability, and I’m telling you what I know, and I am not speculating; I am not engaged in any speculation, trying to set up some little workable philosophy of life. I go back to scripture and find that — I find there confirmation of what is happening in me; it was always there, but I didn’t have the ability to see it, not until it happened in me.1129 ¶45

So when people confront you with Jesus, and you think of something on the outside — or we use the word “God,” or use the word “Lord,” and your mind jumps outside of yourself — is that something on the outside? You have a false God and a false Lord. And of course, Jesus — if the name Jesus causes you to think of something other than yourself, you’ve got the false Jesus, for he is concentrated in his name, and his name is enough — that’s what you’re told in scripture, and that name, forever and forever, is I AM — that’s the name; that’s your own marvelous, wonderful human imagination, that’s God.1129 ¶46

That you misuse it, no one can deny; but the day will come when you fully understand it — I’m fully convinced — you will not misuse it any longer; you’ll be completely in control of your imagination and what you’re doing with it. So his name is actually concentrated in you, and that is his real presence, and therefore he’s not on the outside. Don’t think for one second you’ll find him better in the cathedrals of the world, or the synagogues of the world, when they have all these things in hidden veils, and all these — it’s all nonsense.1129 ¶47

Hold on — you step into a cathedral or a synagogue, and you think you’re in holy ground now? Wherever you are is holy, in the presence of one you love — that is the holiest of holy, that’s the Holy Bible. You love one, and really love one — your love of the universe.1129 ¶48

That statement is true: I stood in the presence of the Ancient of Days, seeing nothing within myself, for he dwells within — yet he seemed, at the moment, to be another, because he questioned me as though I were another, and asked me to name the greatest thing in the world. When I answered “nothing,” he embraced me, and our bodies fused, and we became one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all — yet I did not lose my identity. Then he sent me into the world.1129 ¶49

So, that I know, being few, I cannot reveal you, therefore they would misunderstand it all wrong. So, in the capacity of a servant — a player, and I, less than myself — a defender only, in the office of the son — but in my essential being, I am infused with this one; “I AM” is the one who sent me, I was told. I chose — so, the center, in the center of one — but I am limited while I am in the office of the son, and one day I will take off this little garment which I have put on, and then I’ll return to myself, the spirit who is God’s own, having chosen this story as I was sent to play it.1129 ¶50

But I am self-centered — one day you, of yourself, will draw yourself into the depths of your own self and stand before the Ancient of Days — it’s yourself — and you will answer as I did. But make no mistake about it: he’ll ask you the very simple question, “what is the greatest thing in the world?” and you’ll answer automatically, “faith, hope, and love — but the greatest of these is love,” and you’ll embrace yourself and go on.1129 ¶51

Then, at that moment, you’re safe, and it’s the same words that ring out in your ear that rang out in mine: these are the words, “done with the blue bloods” — which does not mean to destroy society; it has nothing to do with the social structure of the world. It means done with all external ritual, all church protocol, so it’s an empty, empty gesture, meaning nothing.1129 ¶52

So when you see all the rituals, as people turn into thinking this is something sacred, forget it — it’s all within you. I am done with all church protocols, all ceremony, all ritual, and you can go to the Christian church or the Jewish synagogue, and they all have the same external ritual. Have you ever gone to a synagogue on the day of a bar mitzvah?1129 ¶53

It was my great pleasure to go to a bar mitzvah, and they are divided based on whether we are Orthodox or not — well, I was neither one or the other, but I was invited, so they put me on one side, because it was the boy’s father who invited me, so I went there.1129 ¶54

I went in, and I noticed, when they came to the name of God, he took his wonderful robe and he covered the name, that you may not look upon the sacred name — but I mean, a man wrote that; the scroll was first of all made by the human hand, and it was written by a human hand, as it was written, and yet man then worshiped the works of his own hand — as we do in the Christian churches; every little thing up there was made by man’s hand — the candlesticks, the candles, the little icon, the little thing called Jesus on the walls, across on the wall — who made them? Man’s hand made it, and he turned around and worships his own hands, the works of his own hands.1129 ¶55

But I told you the words that rang out in my ears when I was sent out: “that wonderful spell within me is done with the blue bloods,” and then it was revealed to me, after I came out, that it means church protocol, every external form of worship, all written — everything of that nature — you’re not going to find him there.1129 ¶56

Well, I’ll tell you, you’re going to find him, and when you find him, the Bible will become alive to you, for the whole thing is now a written word, and the words become alive, because you have experienced it, and so then you reinterpret scripture in the light of your own experience, and you realize you are the God who actually acts, for these are the words of God through his messenger, the prophet.1129 ¶57

It’s a Sabbath night, and still a very profoundly spiritual night. When we read the Bible as has been taught, we think it’s secular history — that these things happened on earth like things happen here on earth. But it isn’t so at all. It’s salvation history. The whole thing is an inspired work recorded for man. But in what manner? When we read it, bear in mind that those who wrote it were not recording events on earth as history, because they related their own experience. Now, I’m speaking of the gospel — the four gospels. They simply related their own experience. They were not concerned in setting up some workable philosophy of life. They were not speculating. They were simply recording the road that they themselves had traveled.1128 ¶1

They are unknown. We speak of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. All scholars are agreed that they are completely anonymous. No one knows who Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are.1128 ¶2

They were actually telling you the road that they had traveled. But here was a closed book — God unknown, God the Old Testament. Then, in the fullness of time, it happened indeed. And then they told it — they told it just as it happened in them. No two completely agree as to the use of the source material — these things happen, but they must tell it in the form of a story to capture the mind. Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors. So if you tell it in the form of a story, then men will catch it, and they will keep alive the story until one day the truth of that story will erupt in them, and they will understand what they intended that you should understand. For they were simply relating their own experience.1128 ¶3

Were it not that God is in you, he could never emerge from you. Were it not that God descended and became as I am, he could never awaken within me and then rise to the level where he was prior to his descent. So God became as I am, that I may be as he is. For the descent took place, and he is in man. He will awaken in man, rise in man, and then as man will ascend.1128 ¶4

That’s the entire topic. So they related their own experience. They were not concerned, as you speak today in the world, in speculations, theorizing, trying to work out some workable philosophy of life. That was not their concern. They simply recorded the road that they had traveled. They were familiar with what was said in the Old Testament — the promises made by someone through the prophets, who inspired the prophets to say what they said. Who inspired them to say that these things would happen? And then they waited and waited and waited through the centuries. And then suddenly, at that fullness of time, at the decree, it happened.1128 ¶5

It happened in those who told the story, and then that’s the record of what happened in them, but they told it in the form of a story, and man, taking the story, has made a mess of it — coming to see Jesus Christ as something on the outside of himself, rather than that which is God himself who is buried in man. Now, the occurrence — one story, the story of Jacob wrestling with an unknown, mysterious being. And he wrestles through the night, and he is asking this being with whom he wrestled to reveal his identity, to tell his name, and he refuses to tell his name. But now comes the breaking day, and he ought to go. Jacob will not let him go until he reveals who he is. He still will not reveal who he is.1128 ¶6

But he blesses Jacob and changes Jacob from Jacob to Israel, and changes his name. He’s no longer Jacob; he is now Israel — which, in a literal sense, means “the man who rules as God.” Not like a God — as God. But in another sense, it is translated by most scholars as “the one who perseveres.” He would not take no for an answer, and he simply continued and continued in the act of wrestling, trying to find out the name of God. For in scripture, the name of an individual is the character, the nature, of that individual. As we are told, Adam named everything, and that was its nature — whatever he named it, that was its nature, its character. If I could find the name of God, I would know his character; I would know him. As we are told in the ninth Psalm, “those who know thy name put their trust in thee” — but only find his name.1128 ¶7

So here I am, wrestling not with another. This is an act within myself. I am trying to find out the cause of the phenomena of life. What is the secret behind the things that are happening in my world? Can it be caused by something other than myself? Is it something on the outside — then I am helpless. I must find out the name, the nature, the character of causation.1128 ¶8

I’m wrestling with myself. So the night is not the night of twelve hours. It is the night of human darkness. And then comes the break within man, when the light is coming, and he discovers that it is not anything on the outside of himself that ever caused anything that happened to him. It’s all caused from within himself. Now, the revelation as given in scripture concerning the name of God — a name that is forever and forever throughout all generations — is I AM. And when they come and ask you what is his name, just say, “I AM hath sent me.” I am that I am. That is who I am. I am the cause of everything in my world, good, bad, or indifferent. I wrestle with it. I don’t quite believe it, and I spend all the night trying to find out if it is true, and I’m called upon myself to test it. He is personified in the gospel as the Lord Jesus Christ. But we are told in the letters explaining the gospel to test ourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, of course, you fail to meet the test. Now I will put myself to the test to see what I am holding to, this faith.1128 ¶9

For you heard it from me, as we heard it from reading the story, or heard it from our mothers as she read the story to us when we could hardly understand it. So we hear the story.1128 ¶10

Now, is it really true that my own wonderful human imagination is God? Well, it wouldn’t take me long to test it. If it is true that that is the source of the phenomena of my life, then I must put it to the test, or I should put it to the test. And this is the story as told in scripture. They put it to the test and discovered the whole book is not about death at all. So they related their own experience.1128 ¶11

That’s the translation of that Greek sentence by Moffatt. It is still, as far as I’m concerned, the best translation of that Greek sentence. Other Bibles — in fact, most Bibles translated — they simply say what had happened. Oh, that’s all right, that’s true — they’re told what happened. But if I tell you that I am actually relating my own experience, that’s all — I’m telling you what has happened. But this is far more graphic. I’m speaking then from experience.1128 ¶12

I’m not speaking from hearsay. If I take the King James Version or the Revised Standard Version, and I simply take the quote, they told what had happened — well, I could have heard it as I walked the street: “This is what happened.” That’s hearsay. I’m not a witness.1128 ¶13

But if I now tell you I am now relating what I personally had experienced, I relate my own experience. Now, I need you to go back and search the scriptures to see if what I’ve told you happened to me is confirmed by scripture. So you go back into the scriptures, and you read, and I will take you through the scriptures and show you what happened to me is recorded in scriptures.1128 ¶14

But there it is — Adam. It’s a foreshadow — it is a foreshadow, in that all the other, not conclusive or immediately evident, way is simply a shadow of what is going to take place. When it does take place, it is real — but not as its foreshadow was.1128 ¶15

It’s the difference between a three-dimensional reality, a cubic reality, and the depiction of that reality on a flat surface. So I can take a cubic reality, and then I can take it as an artist and draw it and paint it, and then I will show you what it looks like on a flat surface. But you can’t compare that flat surface that you observe to the cubic reality it depicts. So when it happens in man, it’s the cubic reality of the foreshadowing as told in the Old Testament.1128 ¶16

So the new is simply the completing figure, and they’ll relate their own experience. Okay. So I go back and I figure it out — what is it all about?1128 ¶17

He promised an incredible thing. At my advanced age, he promised me a child. And then he promised me a fantastic inheritance, and probably a fatherhood of everything in the world — more numerous than the stars, more numerous than the sands of the sea. That’s what he promised.1128 ¶18

And when did it come to pass? When on earth did this promise fulfill itself? When did I become the father of all? He promised me a son. He promised me to follow the law. He promised me the ideal state. All right.1128 ¶19

Then comes that moment in time when the child does appear. The child’s first name was called laughter — it’s called Isaac. But the word Isaac means laughter, just simply laughter. And when that infant appears, be that when you hold it in your arms — could that be what was promised?1128 ¶20

That was what was promised him. But what did it signify? That he’s going to keep all his promises. He’s going to make you now the father of all. He’s going to give you infinity to possess.1128 ¶21

Now I keep on — I read the story, and as I read the story I see that here in this — the names in the Bible are significant. When he brought the host into being, in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah, when he brought the host into being, he called them all by name. You might think he’s calling the stars. No, he is calling the characters of scripture. These are the eternal states of consciousness through which the immortal man passes, and each has a name, and the name has a tremendous significance.1128 ¶22

So he does take this name called Jacob and he turns it into Israel. He takes this name and he turns it into that name. As he turns a name from one into another, that being is a new man, a completely transformed being. So when Jacob wrestles all through the night trying to find out the name, he does give him a blessing, but the blessing he gives him is a new name, which means a completely transformed being.1128 ¶23

He turns him from Jacob the supplanter, who supplanted Esau his brother, and gives him the name of Israel, which is the man who will rule as God — one who persevered with God and would not take no for an answer. And so he actually was victorious in his wrestling with God. But who was the God? God revealed himself as I AM. So the same God who revealed himself is the God who hid himself from man. He was hidden in man.1128 ¶24

I am wrestling with myself to find out why these things happen to me. What on earth is it in me, or in someone else, or in some place, that is causing the strange things in my world? Am I a victim of something on the outside of myself?1128 ¶25

I will not take yes or no — I’ve got to find out. I’m wrestling only with myself. Well, then I begin to test it. I would try to find him. And this is how I wrestle with it.1128 ¶26

I will now take it for myself, or for a friend, or for anyone, and I will assume that they are as I would like them to be. I will assume that I am as I wish to be. And if what I think is the cause of the phenomenon of life, well then I must find it in this manner. So I will assume that I am the man that I want to be, and I will persevere in that assumption. I will resurrect — and it seems normal and it seems natural to me — should I now become that which I’ve assumed that I am. I come — I have actually found the cause of the phenomena of my life. Now go and say, “I AM hath sent me unto you.” And now I see the world as I would see it if what I have assumed did come to pass. If I put that to the test, and it proves itself in the testing, I have found him — I found his name. Well, now, how can I test anyone, or put faith in anyone, outside of him? For “those who know thy name put their trust in thee.” I must first discover his name. I discover it by testing it. And then I test it, and then things begin to happen within me. As they happened, I searched the scripture to find what it told, right here — this is what it meant. But I didn’t understand it. I turn the pages over, and I come to the second chapter of the book of Psalms. And here are the inspired words: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord.”1128 ¶27

And the Lord said unto me, Thou art my son; today I have begotten thee. And then I read the book, and scholars tell me, well, that was written a thousand years BC, and here is the twentieth century AD — that means it’s three thousand years ago. Therefore it’s not related to me at all — that’s three thousand years ago; how on earth could that be related to me? “I will tell of the decree of the Lord.”1128 ¶28

He said unto me, Thou art my son, the day I have begotten thee. Then I go on, and suddenly an eruption takes place within me. And the one recording the words, who claimed that God said to him, “You are my son, the day I have begotten you” — and then in the eighty-ninth Psalm, the same one is speaking, and now he’s recording the words of the father, and the father is saying to him — “Thou hast taught me, father.”1128 ¶29

He has said unto me, “Thou art my father.” Could it be, after three thousand years, that I would have that experience? Was it three thousand years later — if you take it chronologically — I had that experience. But it’s me: who said God called him his son, and he called God his father, and it happened in me. Well then, I know now the cause of the phenomena of life.1128 ¶30

I know the purpose of the entire story. The purpose of the entire story is for God to unveil himself in man, in whom he is buried. And he set the whole plan up by which he would unveil himself. There was no other way for God to unveil himself to you other than to first portion, and then become, go through hell, and then in the midst of it all erupt within you, and you discover that you are God — that he stands before you, immortal in nature, and there is no uncertainty within you when you see him, and no uncertainty within him when he sees you. And here he stands before you and calls you father, and you know you are his father, and he knows that he is your son.1128 ¶31

So they related their own experiences. They were not telling the story of another. They took all the things that they might have heard, but when it happened in them, they related their own experience just as it happened. But they told it differently, because in my own case it happened in that manner; I tell it as it happened in me. If it happens in you, you will tell it.1128 ¶32

But they are parallel, they are related — the story is related. But no two — well, the three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptics, they do tell it in an almost parallel manner, yet they differ. John tells it differently. It’s a more profound telling in the book of John, but he tells the identical story, though he tells it more profoundly — that which must happen in every man in this world.1128 ¶33

By “man” I mean generic man, male or female: “Name he them, then, and call their name Man.” So in everyone, the story is going to take place. But while I’m living in this world of Caesar, I can test it long before the actual event takes place within me. I can find out his end — for he causes all things in the world.1128 ¶34

If I say his name is called the Lord, on the outside the mind comes. If I say his name is called Jesus Christ, it’s on the outside. If I say it’s God, it’s on the outside. So he said, “I came to you, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”1128 ¶35

I did not make myself known unto them by the name I AM. I revealed myself to them by the name El Shaddai, which means God Almighty. They saw power external to themselves, and they worshiped that power external to themselves. “But to you I now reveal my name, and my name is I AM. By this name I must be known throughout all generations, forever and forever.”1128 ¶36

And those who really find it — I AM — they’ll put their trust in me, and they’ll call upon me. Well, the word “call upon me” doesn’t mean what you think. I’ll call upon the Lord and say in the name of God — not call it upon God. It literally means to call with the name, and his name is I AM. How would I call upon, or with, the name of God — in the name of God — for health or wealth or power? I would have to assume I am healthy, as we’re told in the book of Joel: “Let the weak man say, I am strong.” Let the poor man say, I am rich. Let the unknown say, “I am known” — that I call with the name of God.1128 ¶37

For his name, forever and forever, is I AM. So if that is the name that man must know God by, forever and forever, can I ever get away from that name?1128 ¶38

If I make my bed in hell, can I leave I AM behind me? Is there any place I can go in eternity where I can put off I AM, and be other than I AM? No matter where I go, thou art there. But thou art I.1128 ¶39

If I make my bed in hell, thou art there. And your name is what? I. If I make my bed in heaven, thou art there. And your name is what? I AM.1128 ¶40

So where can I go that God is not? And his name, forever and forever, is I AM. And there is no other name for us.1128 ¶41

We translate the word YHVH as “the Lord.” And you go to synagogue, or you go to Catholic churches, or the churches, and they will use the word “the Lord.” They use the word “God,” and the mind easily jumps outside of itself, and they see an existence, something external to themselves.1128 ¶42

That’s not God. And yet, when you say “I am,” it doesn’t convey to a man who feels himself so little that he is calling himself God. He feels so insignificant that he can’t say “I am” and for one moment believe that is God.1128 ¶43

Yet it’s the only God, because “by him all things are made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” Therefore, if you are now in poverty, who made it? God makes all things, but he makes it by his name. Well, if he makes it by his name, well then stop saying “I am poor.” If you don’t want to experience poverty beyond what you have already experienced, stop calling with his name in the name of poverty. If you don’t want to experience any longer the pain that you deserve — well, then stop calling with God’s name — for his name is forever.1128 ¶44

So all through the gospel of John you get the fundamental thing: I am — I am the door — I am divine. All this bold declaration, “I am.” I am from above; you are from below. Anything outside of I AM must be below. I am from above; I am not of this world; you are. But if you know who I am, you’ll call with my name and change this world.1128 ¶45

That’s the story of the Bible. So, as it is stated, the entire secret of the Bible — the whole secret, from beginning to end — you’ll find wrapped up in these five words: “They related their own experience.” The whole secret. Can you imagine that? They’re only telling you what happened to them.1128 ¶46

As I’ve been trying to tell you since it happened to me — it happened to me, or began, I would say, in 1959. The actual eruption began and came to its fulfillment on the first of January, 1963, when the dove descended and smothered me in affection, kissed me all over my face, my head, my neck, and remained upon me. So in that twelve hundred and sixty days, the whole drama unfolded in me.1128 ¶47

Where else could it unfold? By this entire assurance — what I know from experience — I have not been segregated. I have no desire to leave behind me any little issue, no little church, no little anything, just to share with you what I’ve learned. That’s exactly what the evangelists, whoever they are, who wrote Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — they did not invent some huge organization, but all these outside ceremonies, outside things to worship — all that takes man away from who he really is. You go to church and you see someone walking down the aisle carrying a cross and carrying a crucifix, and then all the singing and all these things, and then you go up and you take communion — all that from the outside.1128 ¶48

It takes you away from who you really are. It has nothing to do with the true nature, the true character, of God. For God is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. There never was another; there never will be, in eternity, another. And it is because of the phenomena of life, whether you are poor or rich, known or unknown. But you’ve got to reach the point where you have absolute faith in God, and God is your own wonderful human I AM. That’s right. So you sleep in the assumption that you are the man, the woman, that you would like to be. And you have absolute confidence in God — that’s the only God. You wake in the morning — nothing has apparently happened which would bring about a change in your world. You persist in it. That night you still sleep in that assumption. You walk through today in that assumption. And if what I’m telling you is true, it will prove itself in performance. And when it proves itself in performance, the problem is this: it’s going to happen so naturally, you’re going to give all credit to the means employed, and not to God.1128 ¶49

Someone comes to your world and says, “By the way, I want you to meet so-and-so.” And so you meet so-and-so. You have certain talents, and they can use your talent, and therefore you get a job through them. And because you get a job through them, and then things begin to look nice and rosy, you attribute all things to the means employed, and not to the act that caused the means to occur. And there’s only one causation, and that causation is your own wonderful human imagination.1128 ¶50

It’s personified in scripture, and it is called Jesus Christ. I certainly know no lovelier name than Jesus Christ, as far as I’m concerned.1128 ¶51

But I must always remember that it means I AM — that I AM is buried in man, and I AM is the Lord Jesus Christ. He is actually buried in man, and he will rise in man. And when he rises in man, man is the Lord Jesus Christ. And no being in this world can rise but he who was dead. The Lord Jesus Christ, which is your own wonderful human imagination, descended from this infinite source and put upon itself the limitations of this cross called the human form, and is now actually buried in your skull.1128 ¶52

And one day it’s going to arrive — you will awake. He said you will awaken, and you’ll be all alone. There will be you, and you, awake. When you awaken, who would awake?1128 ¶53

You will say, “I am that.” And who comes out? Well, I’m coming up with that — his name is I. And who looks back, and who is looking back at the body although it decays? I — whatever the name. And who are they discussing when they pick up the infant and say, “It is your baby” — what does this mean — and who is picking up the baby when they put the baby in your arms? Well, I am picking it up — that’s his name. But who is hearing?1128 ¶54

The stone — I am — well, that’s his name. And who is David calling father? All of you, father — the I AM — that’s the name. But his father, inscribed, his name Jesse.1128 ¶55

Well, Jesse means I AM — the word Jesse means Jehovah exists, the eternal existing being. Jesse is the name of David, and David called him father — did he not call the Lord, “my Lord, my all”?1128 ¶56

That was good, because all of a sudden you explain to all these, saying, “Well, then, who are you?” And when the day comes that you take off this little garment, you’re filled with the play — the whole thing was a play that God himself set up, and it’s only God, and there was no one to play any part but God, so he played all the parts. So the one became — the one became fragmented, and here this diversification of one, and then the gathering together of all into one — in the end, only one.1128 ¶57

That I am telling you, I know from experience, that you are going to have the identical experience. And if my son David calls you father, are we not one? How can you be the father of my son and not be my very self? Though in the end there’s only God, and his name is one, and he is one.1128 ¶58

Everyone, without loss of identity, will be that one. And I know from experience, in this world we can test it, in the world of Caesar, to see if we cannot prove that this is the only creative power in the world. But you must have absolute confidence in God. But you must find out who God is, because “I believe in God,” the whole world says. A few — well, I will call them “nuts” — say there is no God. And we are told, in the fifty-third Psalm and the fourteenth Psalm, “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”1128 ¶59

Well, leave them alone — the day will come, they will know God. So they will not really be — the day will come, everyone will know there is God, and only God. So in the meanwhile, leave them alone.1128 ¶60

That’s their view, whether they call themselves atheist, or let them call themselves agnostic — it’s perfect. All right. But you who are here, you know, and you do believe in God. But that’s not enough — you must believe in the true God. If you worship anything on the outside, you’ve got the false god. It is when you hear the word “God,” or the word “Jesus Christ,” or the word “Jehovah,” and at any moment the mind jumps to the outside, to the existence of some presence external to yourself — you’ve got the wrong God. It has to arouse within you the “me” that at that moment you might have forgotten, which is your own wonderful human I AM — that’s not that wonderful human imagination, that’s — and nothing must take it from you.1128 ¶61

So when you rise, dwell upon it. When you speak, dwell upon it. When you discuss, don’t be embarrassed — discuss it in the presence of anyone. Never for one moment feel embarrassed when you discuss the infinite being, the only being. No matter what they believe, it doesn’t really matter. If you’re moved to discuss it, please discuss it. Don’t go out to do it — just, if you’re moved to do it, and be adamant when it comes to your deep conviction of the true God.1128 ¶62

And that true God is your own wonderful human imagination. And with him all things are possible; there is nothing impossible to God. Nothing. But you must believe in the true God. And when you believe in the true God, I can tell you the comfort of it. It would make no difference to you if the whole world began to shake and everyone thought, “This is it.” What does it matter?1128 ¶63

There is no end. When you go to bed at night, it would make no difference to you if this is the last night in the world of Caesar — none whatsoever, because you are an eternal being. Fear simply goes from you. There is no fear. You’re not concerned with what people think and what they’re talking about — it just doesn’t end with them.1128 ¶64

People found the true God, and he is yours morning, noon, and night. But may I tell you, if I repeat myself night after night, it’s because people forget it. And I can tell stories here over the years, and yet one in the audience could so misinterpret it that after twelve years of listening constantly, they never really heard me — never really heard me. So one has to tell it, and tell it. And how often, Lord, how often? Seventy times seven. In other words, don’t give up. It doesn’t matter how often you have to repeat it — seventy times seven, or all right, I’ll tell it until it gets through, and they realize it is not something on the outside that I am talking about.1128 ¶65

I am talking about God, and I’m only speaking of the true God, which is an internal thing. You are wrestling with yourself. You’re not wrestling with anything on the outside, or dramatized in scripture as wrestling with something on the outside. Not a thing is on the outside — it’s all within. All that you behold, though it appears otherwise, is within, in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of variety is but a shadow. The whole thing is yourself, and you are creating it.1128 ¶66

So don’t give up if you have not a thing in the world at this very moment, and you need things in the world of Caesar. You have to live, you have to pay, you have to buy food, to do all the things — you’ve got to do these things, you don’t avoid them, you can’t avoid them, they must be met. All right — God can do all things. Assume that you are the one that you would like to be, that would have all the necessary things. Delete all the claims of Caesar. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Whose inscription is this? Caesar’s — give it to Caesar. He demands taxes; I’m not going to argue with him. If he needs more than I can — say, now here — and he demands more, because he claims he needs more, then I must simply make more. That’s all there is to it. I’m not going to argue with him.1128 ¶67

That is Caesar’s world, and I am not in Caesar’s world. But I am walking in Caesar’s world to tell the story that it is in Caesar’s world that God awakes. He comes out into this world, and in this world he awakes. Therefore, while I’m in it, I’ll render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.1128 ¶68

And so, may I tell you, the story is true from beginning to end, the whole thing. But when it happens in you, you reinterpret the story in the light of your own experience, and not as you heard it. As you heard it, you saw, and you keep it alive that way, because the one who told you didn’t know any better — they heard it that way too. And everyone hears it. And as Tennyson says, “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So you take this profound truth and you embody it in a tale.1128 ¶69

And then my mother taught me the story, and I went and I saw a picture in my living room, when I was a little child, of the massacre of the children, trying to find the one that was this holy one. And there were huge, monstrous paintings of all these children being slain. I can actually go back in memory when I wept before the slaughter of the innocents. My mother had that painting — I don’t know if she bought it or someone gave it to her — and she had it hanging in the living room. Then she had other paintings of a religious nature.1128 ¶70

And she taught me the stories of Jesus Christ. But I accepted the story as she told me until I actually experienced the story. And when a man experiences the story, it’s so unlike what is taught in the Bible. One has to experience the gospel to realize how altogether wonderful it is. It’s really the only true story in the world. And when he experiences this story — oh, what a story! — he knows the whole thing is all about himself. That all these millions upon millions of Bibles that have been printed in all the tongues of the world — something like fifteen hundred different translations — you actually have experienced that story.1128 ¶71

Therefore, they’re only reading about you. It’s all about you. But not about Neville. It’s not about Neville. It’s not about anyone.1128 ¶72

It is you. The you that is really — a world you can’t put a name upon, because they call it God. They have a strange concept — if you call it “Lord,” a strange concept; if you call it “Jesus Christ,” a strange concept. It’s this nameless being that is an infinite being. And may I tell you — human, God-man. Infinite love, and his eternal body is infinite love, and it’s man’s.1128 ¶73

It doesn’t make sense to those who think in terms of an impersonal force. No — impersonal force? God is man.1128 ¶74

And when you stay in the present, yourself — but in that depth of your own being, you seem to be another. And then you are one with the being that you were in the beginning of time.1128 ¶75

You are simply the same, to do a certain job for the expansion — the ever-expansion of this one being. There is no limit to the expansion of God, and he expands only by first contracting himself. And he reaches a limit of contraction, and that contraction is called man. He reaches the limit of opacity, and that opacity is called Satan, which is doubt — absolute doubt: “I can’t believe anything other than what my senses dictate.” So he takes upon himself these limits, and then he breaks the boundaries, and then expands, and there’s no limit to transmute them, no limit to expand them.1128 ¶76

That’s God. There’s nothing beyond God.1128 ¶77

And you are this glorious being, and you can’t put it in words. How could I, if I said “glorious being” — one has a faint concept of what glory is. You can’t describe it. You can’t describe infinite love that is human, until you stand in the presence of infinite love. And it’s man — it’s God. And you are that God. I tell you the story is true, and one day it’s going to happen to you, and everything said in the gospel of Jesus Christ you are going to experience in a first-person, singular, present-tense expression, and you will know it is all about you. And then, without writing another gospel — there’s no need for another gospel, that’s complete — you will know, or you will relate your own experience. And when you relate your own experience, you’re only telling what the unknown authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did. They related their own experience.1128 ¶78

And the whole—1128 ¶79

Suppose you heard the most incredible story in the world, the story of Jesus Christ, and someone said to you, “I have told you the most fantastic story, and now let me tell you — this is your future.” Would you believe it? For that is the story you are destined to play the part in, in detail, of Jesus Christ. Forget the crucifixion — it is over, that’s over. You are now crucified on the tree, the travailing way [...], of Blake’s saying: “Teach me, O Holy Spirit, the testimony of Jesus. Let me comprehend wondrous things out of the divine law.” He is asking for all the testimony, for we are told in Scripture the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. He poured out doctrines as prophecy unto all the ages, forever and forever. So his story is your story. Christ in us is the hope of glory. You could not breathe were he not within you. So the story as told in the Gospels is your future. So listen to his story, and everything said by him you will yet experience, for his is all prophecy of thee.1127 ¶1

He said: “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. Henceforth you know my Father, and you have seen him. For if you see me, you have seen the Father. Believe I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves, for he who believes in me, the works that I do he will do also, and even greater works than these, for I go to the Father. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and I am in you, and you are in me. In that day you’ll know it.”1127 ¶2

Now, what are the works? Then listen to all the statements that he made. He inspired the prophets — therefore you inspired the prophets. “The book is all about me” — before it is all about you. In the volume of the book it is all about me. “I have come to fulfill Scripture” — therefore you are here for one purpose: to fulfill Scripture.1127 ¶3

Tonight, at some party, if someone is present and they claim they can read the future, everyone becomes so excited. What does he do, or what does she do? Suppose they all set up their hands, or read tea leaves, or coffee grounds, or maybe the stars, or maybe something else — that’s not your future. Your future is to fulfill what you foretold to your servants the prophets, what you would come to do — you came. Yeah, you are the Word of God, for we are told the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the Word of God is — “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” “The word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purposed, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” You sent yourself; there was no one else to do it but you.1127 ¶4

You foretold it, and you came into this world to fulfill what you foretold. But you had to completely forget that you had done it. You couldn’t pretend; you had to completely forget that you had foretold all that you are going to fulfill. Then came that moment in time where a new self erupted [...] — and the eruption is taking place, and it will continue to take place, and the identical story will repeat itself in every one. So it was you who inspired the prophet to write, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord,” he said. “He said unto me, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” It is you who dictated the word; it is you who have come to hearing, confirming; it is you before whom he will stand and call you Father, and call you my Lord. The very thing written in Scripture is all about you.1127 ¶5

So the real prophecy is not — you’re going to have this debt or the other, what does it matter? Read the obituary column this morning: here, those who are making all kinds of plans for their future, they called that a future. One man dropped dead at forty-nine, a very brilliant mind, doing a wonderful job in this world, head of the Urban League, only forty-nine, swimming in the sea on a tour in Africa, and then his heart gave out. His true task was to play the part of Jesus Christ, not what the papers will tell you. Everyone must play the part of Jesus Christ, and it is not, as I stole from our pulpit — Jesus Christ is actually buried in every child born of woman. He will rise in every child born of woman, and everyone in whom he rises will express the entire story of Jesus Christ. He’ll be born in the same manner that he is supposed to be born — from above. He will rise in that tomb, and unaided he will come out of that tomb. He will encounter the one that he foretold to be his David, which is the sum total of all the parts of humanity, for David simply symbolizes humanity — he became humanity, and playing all the parts, the essence of all the parts is David, and that’s the Son who calls me Father.1127 ¶6

So everything told of him, and all of his doctrines — he poured out doctrines as prophecy unto all the ages, forever and forever. He doesn’t differ from himself in you; that’s not the greater Christ and thee the lesser — there’s only Christ. But don’t think for one second there is one child in this world that is more important, or will be more important, for what man accomplishes in this world, whether he be a president or a dictator or a king — that’s not important, that’s all rubbed out, it has nothing to do with the reality of your future. Your future is to fulfill Scripture. Your future is to completely play the part of Jesus Christ, and he is not seen by mortal eye. Had you known me, you would have known my Father also; henceforth you know him, and you have seen him, for he who sees me has seen the Father. Have you seen me? And he told them, no, you haven’t yet seen me, I had not yet displayed myself to you. One day I will, and you will have the same form, and you will display to another, and to another, for in the end we’re all transformed into the one body, the one spirit, we will be the one Lord, we will be the one God and Father of all — so no one will be greater than the other, all equally great, all begotten of the Father.1127 ¶7

So that is your future. Dwell upon it, instead of dwelling upon what the world holds for you concerning dollars and cents. Everyone in this morning’s paper — say, this one gentleman who died, everyone who got any notice in the obituary column was because they left money, this one did so much, this one that much — it’s all money, not their accomplishment. But they left money, they can’t take it with them. So don’t you think for one second your future can be seen in the palm of your hand, or the tea leaves, or in the stars — it is not there. Your future is in Scripture, and you came here for one purpose: to fulfill what you yourself dictated through the prophets. You were the God who inspired the prophets; you prepared a way for your own return, you prepared it, and that preparation was all mapped out in the light, as defined for us in the story of Jesus Christ.1127 ¶8

So your future is the fulfillment of the gospel. When you read the story carefully, find out what he’s talking about. He tells you that he told me, and I told it to myself, because I was the one dictating it. “You must be born again, you must be born from above, and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. All that I’m telling you, you must eat” — and he calls it my flesh, calls it my body — drink my blood, make it alive within you. And then, as you accept it and you believe it, it will unfold within you. Well, I’m talking to myself — I had to come down and completely forget it, and then hear the story from below and have faith in what I have heard. His own memory is returning, for he tells me, “I will send” — now the Holy Spirit, called the Comforter in some translations, called the Counselor in others, but it’s the Holy Spirit, he is called the Spirit of Truth. “When the Spirit of Truth comes, he brings to your remembrance all that I have told you.” He is bringing to my remembrance all that I told myself that I would do — it’s memory returning. I can’t explain it to you in any better way, in some strange way, but it happened. But I’ve always known it, the thing actually comes back. You’ve always known who you were, but you forgot. I suffered complete and total amnesia, and all of a sudden the whole thing is coming back.1127 ¶9

Who could tell a man in this century, the twentieth century, of a child born three thousand years ago that is down as part of history, great history, that that child is alive, and you promised that child that you were raising from the grave and not leave him in hell — and that is your child? You, born in this age, in the twentieth century, and one born three thousand years ago, and that you are his father — who, for one moment, would accept it? An incredible story, and it’s a true story, that here is something coming out of the nowhere, untouched, untarnished, not corrupted, the same beautiful creature that he was when you declared to him, “You are my son, today I have begotten thee.” But now I must sleep and dream the dream of life and go through hell in order to bring you out, bring you back as my son, and then you and I play all these parts, and we played all the horrors of the world, and you’re still playing. And then in the end he comes up, and here he stands before us, and we fulfilled what we ourselves predicted that we would do, and that was for a purpose — self-expansion. God is forever expanding himself.1127 ¶10

He placed himself on this plane for one purpose: to expand God beyond what he was prior to the conceiving of the flame [uncertain], and he needed to propel himself to the limit of contraction — the human form, this body — and the limit of opacity, a complete, complete forgetfulness, darkness. And then, playing all these parts, he breaks the shell and he comes out of that tomb. As he comes out, all that he said he would experience, he begins to present — everything unfolds within him.1127 ¶11

Night before last, I seemed to go from one teacher to the other in this country — there were those who are teaching what is called New Thought, and I said to them, one after the other, “You call it new thought” — there is no such thing as new. You have a great, great shock in store for you, that a thing is new that you’re talking about. I mean, I tell you, it’s all false, that you’re talking about — this is not what you’re here for. Don’t for one moment think that you came for this purpose, this little ism and that little ism and the other little ism — all this we’ve forgotten. You only came to fulfill Scripture. You’re all my brothers, and you’re asleep — listen to one who is awakened from the dream of life. They could only smile, no, they could not for one second accept it, going about their own little business, making a dollar, making a dollar, and teaching nonsense to the whole vast world, if the world will listen to them — only a matter of moments, just a matter of moments, when you all, before you find yourself, restored in the same grand illusion that you are now lost in. And then I went from one to the other, and then returned to this state.1127 ¶12

I can see their faces before me now, some most — almost still here, a few were gone, to find themselves still in the same grand illusion, but they could not see me. They heard, they saw me, but not the being that I am — the transformed body. They could not see it; you cannot see it until it actually erupts within you. And then, as it erupts within you, you’re clothed differently, in your new glorious body [...].1127 ¶13

[The following passage is heavily garbled in the source recording and could not be confidently reconstructed; it is rendered here close to the raw transcript, lightly punctuated:] The being that you were before, that the world — for the being buried in you is God. You are God. “I am,” they say — in me, and I, and I — and now we need that, for it dwells in us. So if God is in me, God is in Christ; Christ in me is not other than me. Where would I go? That I’m going to God the Father — when I depart, I’m only returning to myself. But I can’t return to myself until I reach the limit here and explode; then I can return to the source of my being, and then I reach them. I could only reproduce the pattern; I am to restore myself to light in a terrestrial world. I have to first reach the limit and break it, and when I break the shell and come out, then I return to myself, who is God the Father, return to the source. But I can’t return to the source until I am born from above. I cannot enter that state called heaven, I can’t be clothed in that body that makes everything perfect, as I walk — my clothes in that body — until I am born from above.1127 ¶14

So I’m telling you who you are, your real future. Let no one hold your hand and tell you your future; don’t go to any mediums to find your future. Your future is in Scripture. You are the Lord Jesus Christ — that’s who you are. You have already been crucified, and I tell you, it was ecstatic, it was joy beyond measure, far from pain, as the world thinks it was — it wasn’t pain at all. You deliberately did it, no one took away your life, you laid it down yourself, because you knew you had the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again. And it is just as though six points, as you’re told in Scripture — the hands, the head, the right side, and the two feet — and they are vortices, they’re not nails, each is a vortex. When you are nailed by the six vortices, it is sheer ecstasy, that I know from experience. And then you forget, as you enter this, having the nail purposely nailed by your own self.1127 ¶15

I will say, I came for the purpose of which I’ve just told, and now you’ve come in, having foretold it, you come to fulfill it, for no one in the world could fulfill it but God himself. So God became man, and then he raises himself out of man, bringing with him the written experiences of man. Therefore, in a way, your age is the nature of man, transformed into that which is God himself, because it is God begetting himself. For “like” is simply the principle upon which we depend for sameness — self-same, transmitted light. Therefore man transmits man, man transfers man, God begets God. And so, when you come out of the tomb, it is simply God begetting God, bringing yourself out once more, plus the experience of having been man in this world, magnified beyond your wildest dreams [...].1127 ¶16

So tonight, dwell upon your future as Christ Jesus, not some little thing you’re going to leave behind you — they’ll all be rubbed out, all the accomplishments of man will become pretty deeply forgotten, completely wiped out, another thing will be left, but you are immortal, and your future is the fulfillment of your own prediction. You predicted the Word, because you are the Word, and you foretold it through your prophets, your servants. Then, finding no one who could fulfill it, you came down yourself. You are the Word, and the Word is God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt within us, and now the Word is flesh, and you’re going to fulfill your own prediction, and everything said about Jesus you are going to experience, and you’ll know exactly who you are. This very moment, dropped before you, is not to bother you for any purpose whatsoever. I could not, because you’re great beyond the wildest dream of man. You’re not some little pygmy, no matter what part you’re now playing — you are the Lord God Jesus Christ, you are. And the day will come you will know it. You will not always be playing a little part of John, or Peter, and this and the other — you are the Lord Jesus Christ.1127 ¶17

So your future — all right, forsake this world, assume a dignified state for yourself. Why shouldn’t you, if you’re in need today, because you are truly the Lord Jesus? Rise, assume that you have what you need, because it’s yours for the assumption, yours for the appropriation [...] — it is all yours. You don’t go to steal it, you simply appropriate it. What would a feeling be like if we dared to appropriate it, by simply tapping the feeling? That would be yours. You aren’t stealing it, in a way that no one knows. Everyone must play his part; I’ll bring to you what you’ve assumed. What garment in this world could be used to play the part, to bring it here, bring it? But I would not make money my goal — but if you want to make it your goal, may I tell you, it’s perfectly all right, no condemnation at all. But whatever you want in this world, dare to assume it, that you have it, and live as though it were true, and walk in that as something that is true, sleep in it.1127 ¶18

But don’t forget the story that is your true story — you are the Lord Jesus Christ, don’t be ashamed of it, don’t be embarrassed, there’s no need, it doesn’t make a difference. Get this — this little thing called Neville, roughed up [...], all right, but the being that is wearing it, you can’t touch that thing, you cannot offend God, he knows who he is. So this little thing, related to some physical little background — I’d be that stupid to react because of some remark about the physical background of the thing called Neville. No — but the thing that I really am, you do not know; that being, I know, and that being — why talk about it? Because who would believe it?1127 ¶19

This morning’s paper — some lady, prominent through her very prominent brother, came to defend her parish, and she was offended because someone spoke at one of the colleges, and she went up and made an attempt to slap his face, because it affected her concept of the Virgin Mary. And you look at this thing and you wonder, what on earth — a woman, prominent, associated with a very wealthy family, that she could react in this manner of violence because someone made a statement concerning the Virgin Mary from the platform of a college in our country, and she dared to become violent about it. And here is the one who is speaking, now, nothing but doubt and the forgiveness of all things, and he’s going to defend the Virgin Mary — if she only knew who the Virgin Mary really is. [The following clause is garbled in the source and rendered close to verbatim, not confidently reconstructed:] If I childres a man I am Mary and birthed the God — not muskie — if I have given birth, and don’t look outside to see where he is, I gave birth to myself. God only gives birth to himself.1127 ¶20

She will then possibly jump up here and stop me, but I am telling you who you are, and I do hope that you will actually accept it and dwell upon it. Your dreams will change, your visions will change, your whole nights will change, and get you alert when you wake in the morning.1127 ¶21

Your teaching, as Paul said: “My gospel, that no one — even if I myself changed it, do not believe me, for this came by revelation.” So let no one change it. And he was writing these words before we had four Gospels — his message came all by revelation. “So I preached only Christ, and him crucified. I came before you knowing nothing but Christ and him crucified,” and he’s talking to you, because he makes the statement, “And I have been crucified with him. If I have been united with him in a death like his, I certainly shall be united with him in a resurrection like his.” So he admits the crucifixion is over, the union with him is over.1127 ¶22

Look at it this way: Christ is a pattern, God is buried in Christ the pattern; God, in the Father [...], buried in man — the person fulfills himself by fulfilling it, God is doing the work. So, buried in the pattern, and in the fullness of time, the pattern unfolds — like a seed is a pattern, and then in the fullness of time the seed breaks, and then the pattern unfolds. So Christ is a pattern, the pattern man, buried in men, and in that pattern is the author of it all — it is God the Father. So he unfolds within the pattern, and it is a definite pattern, and you cannot change the pattern, and it begins with resurrection.1127 ¶23

[The following clause is garbled in the source and could not be confidently reconstructed, rendered close to verbatim:] And the second, that same night, please birth, mobile, then the discovery of his promise to David: “You are my son. I’ve got now to actually fulfill what I tell you that I am. I’m your father, I’m humanity’s father, and you are the symbol of humanity, having played all now — you were sustained before me, and actually fulfilled my prophecy, and call me father,” and he does — he stands before, he calls you Father. I know — I, who became man and came out of it, and I live for the Son of Man.1127 ¶24

Now, the Son of Man was risen as a servant into heaven, just as I foretold it through my servant Moses, but he only had a copy of the reality, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy, not the letter — it’s the spirit of prophecy. You read it in the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation: his testimony is the spirit, for the letter kills, the spirit makes alive. So he comes to give type and to make real — for not only the way and the truth of the light, I am the true and living way, I give light and reality to the dead letter, for my testimony is the spirit, not the letter. So, “Teach me, O Holy Spirit, the testimony of Jesus, let me comprehend wondrous things out of the divine law,” because — if he is the student of truth, well then, let him find it. But he comes from within, he can’t come from around; as he comes from within, he interprets the letter in terms of his own living experience, and then he tells them, and those who believe his testimony, believe in him.1127 ¶25

Then, from one to the other, it carries on, and in them the same thing happens, proving there’s only Christ. So the one pattern is in all — it’s not a different pattern, it has to be duplicated in every one, and the one who is working it is God, as we’re told: “who began the good work in you, he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” So at that day you will know, “I am in my Father, and I am in you, and you are” — that’s what he tells us.1127 ¶26

And then what — it happens in a man, I can’t tell anyone before — the thrill! Here he’s been waiting and waiting, turning to the outside, listening to words on the outside, and all of a sudden you realize it’s all on the inside. They were always all about you. You foretold, and then deliberately became contracted and lost all consciousness of what you foretold, but you wrote it through your servants, and there was the written record of what you would foretell, that will come now to make it alive, and then within you the whole thing becomes alive. So you reinterpret Scripture in the light of your own experience, and those who have not had the experience, they can’t believe it — that’s not what they were looking for, they were looking for a savior to come from without, not knowing he was buried within, that the crucifixion was over before the whole thing began, that the whole thing began with a crucifixion, and then the resurrection is the beginning of the interpreting of the word, and you are the word.1127 ¶27

And you dwell upon your greatness, and may I tell you, all other things will fall into place. You don’t have to sit down there working on this problem and that problem, the other problem — dwell upon who you truly be, and memory begins to return, and then you walk every day in an entirely different state of consciousness. You don’t brag about it, you don’t talk about it, for the simple reason everyone that you meet in the world is also going to have the same experience. You see them asleep, sound asleep, but buried in that sleeping being is the Lord.1127 ¶28

And then you know the words in the song: “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou, O Lord, do not cast us off forever, awake,” and calls to God in man to rouse himself and awake, and the minute he arouses and awakes, the pattern unfolds, and the pattern is the identical pattern as told in Scripture — there is no other pattern.1127 ¶29

So your greatness is not in any physical accomplishment in this world, it is only in the fulfilling of your own word. You uttered it, so to be, and then you came in to fulfill it — or there’s no one to play the part. God only acts and exists in beings, or men — he is the actor in man, and that acting in man is your own wonderful human imagination, and it’s a person, I tell you, there’s not an intangible something, it’s a person, a real person. And lain awakened and clothed in his glorified body, no mortal eye to see it, no mortal could ever even conceive of it, the glory of that body. And wherever it is, everything is made perfect — “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfectly one,” as told us in the seventeenth chapter of John.1127 ¶30

So the one speaking is in humanity, and the one speaking, God, is in him directly — bear in mind, it’s the pattern. And when you hear the word Christ, think of it as a pattern, it’s the pattern man; it’s the only way to the Father, and until that pattern has unfolded, man cannot find the Father in his search for him, forever — he cannot find him save through the pattern, and the pattern has to become alive and unfold, awakened, within man, and as it awakes within him, he discovers himself as God the Father. You’re not going to find it outside of self, and you aren’t going to find him as something on the outside looking at you — you only find him when you fulfill your word.1127 ¶31

Today, they knew — told, saying, “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” — not in eternity will you ever know you really are, down the fall [...], until you fulfill that word to David. You are the God who inspired the boy to write those words, and you’ll keep your word, because thy word is truth, and you’ve got to fulfill your word today, and only when David stands before you will you know why it is stated in the gospel: “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal.”1127 ¶32

So until you fulfill your word to David, you will not know who you are, but you will fulfill it, for your word in yourself — for in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and that word became flesh, in your flesh. So you will fulfill your own word, because your word cannot return unto you void, but shall accomplish that which you purposed, and prosper in the thing for which you sent it — and so you’ll send yourself to fulfill it, and the day will come you will stand before him, and you’ll fulfill your word, you kept your promise, that he is your son, and he calls you Father, and then you know you are not the Father alone, and then you will tell it to your brothers, and you will say to your brothers, “I am going unto my Father and your Father, I am going unto my God and your God” — my brothers, for we are all brothers, the way of sons to return as God the Father has been prepared, and that was the grand scheme [...], calling one person who is God, Son, and your son. And so you predicted that he would call you father, and then came the day he called you father, and then memory returns, and you know who you are.1127 ¶33

I can tell you the feeling when you see him. I trust my two wives implicitly — I’ve been married twice. My first wife bore me a son, and my second wife bore me a daughter. I do believe one hundred percent I sired them, that they are now my son and my daughter, that they are really my offspring, but I know when I see David, with such certainty, there is no uncertainty when he stands before you and calls you Father — none whatsoever, not that there has ever been one moment of doubt in my mind that my two children are my children. When it comes to this Son, there is no uncertainty. I can’t describe the feeling of certainty when you stand before him and you have fulfilled your promise, for you were the one who dictated those words.1127 ¶34

It is you who inspired him to write it down, when he said, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord, he said unto me, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” You inspired those words, you came upon David, and you’re going to fulfill it, for you dwell this night on your true being, your essential being, and whatever bothers you will not bother you anymore, because if you really know and feel you are the Lord Jesus Christ, accept no challenge from any person in the world to convert stone into bread, and cast yourself down to satisfy someone’s curiosity — do nothing for it, you do not accept any temptation whatsoever to prove your identity. You walk in the knowledge of who you are, and you do not have to prove it to anyone in the world.1127 ¶35

The day will come, the pattern will unfold, and you will know it. I am telling you what I know from experience, and I am not different — there’s only one Christ in the world. I would not have it otherwise, I would not have for one moment the feeling that I would transcend my brothers — we’re brothers, all one. My earthly mother is my father, my earthly father is my brother, as told in Scripture: “Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” — those who hear the word of God, and keep it, these are my mother, and my father, and my brothers, including all — we would here be all one. So let no one feel superior.1127 ¶36

Then, when they asked who would be the greatest in the kingdom, “it is not mine to give,” he hushed that down right away, when the mother insisted that James and John be placed at the top of the list. “It is not mine to give, we’re all brothers, we have a common father, and we’re moving towards fatherhood, and so we’re moving toward being the Father himself,” and he could only meet the one need.1127 ¶37

So when tonight you dwell upon it, I hope when you go to bed you always have some pleasant thoughts, rather than the tears of the day. They will occupy the mind as to who you truly be, for I’m not lying to you, I’m telling you who you are — you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and the pattern is the being that you truly be, your God the Father, and one day that pattern will unfold, and at a certain point of unfoldment your promise has been kept to your son, who is the only one that can be beheld, for no man has ever seen God but his only son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known. That’s how much you actually completely forgot, when you came down and assumed this garment of flesh and blood.1127 ¶38

Now, if you think this is not practical, may I tell you, it was the most practical night you could have, but while you are taken away from the cares of the day and listening to who you really are, some great, great work is taking place within you, for your Father knows your needs far more than your conscious reasoning mind knows. He knows your needs, and while you listen to his word as it came to you through one in whom he awoke, the work was going on, so your needs will be met — he knows all, far greater than your rational mind knows what you really need. Now that is going to the silence.1127 ¶39

The prophet Amos asked this question: Does evil befall a city unless the Lord has done it? And there is no — well, there’s only one Creator in the world. By him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. For that evil befall a city unless the Lord has done it — in a matter of hours a city is wiped out by a typhoon followed by the usual tidal wave, and we wonder why the Lord did it.1126 ¶1

For who is the Lord? You should study the scriptures carefully, you’ll find out who did it. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt within us. Aren’t you wearing a robe dipped in blood? That is the robe — this garment of flesh is the robe that the Word of God wears. And the Word of God is God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So the Word spoken of in scripture is seated right here in a garment dipped in blood, and that being seated here is your own wonderful human imagination.1126 ¶2

God and man are inseparable, because God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is human imagination — that is God himself. So whether it be the typhoon that wiped out two hundred thousand in a matter of hours, or the long weekend that took over seven hundred lives in our country — in this wonderful weekend, for it is all Thanksgiving and all a joyful state — it is still done by the Lord.1126 ¶3

So when Amos asked the question, he answered it: evil befall a city unless it has been done by the Lord. So one must know who the Lord is, and the Lord is our own wonderful human imagination. Therefore you and I have the identical — you want to call God a talent, but not all of us — trust me — not all of us cultivate the identical God, for God is one and his name is one. But you might trust the Lord — do I cultivate the Lord? All we have to do, if I really accept the Lord as my own wonderful human imagination, is to work it out — work up my own imagination to the state of vision, and then the thing is done.1126 ¶4

You mean it comes out that very moment before me? Not necessarily — it could, but the vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. Though it seem long, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late. You take any state in this world, and in your imagination you work it out, and I tell you from my own experience, you can see it — it becomes almost an objective reality in your mind’s eye. Others don’t see it — it doesn’t really matter — you see it in your mind’s eye, and it seems to you real, and it seems to you objective at that moment, and you’ll drop it in confidence that this vision has its own appointed hour, and it will ripen and it will flower. And if to others that you might have mentioned it, it seems long, then wait — it is sure and it will not be late. You will not bring it in one moment before its time, and you will not deny it, any more than you would deny the Word of God — you will actually experience it, until that appointed hour.1126 ¶5

So he said, “I am the truth.” I am the truth; in the meanwhile I am steeped in earth, believing everything — but in my own wonderful human imagination I believe in that one, I believe in that one, I believe in this person, I believe in all kinds of things other than my own imagination. And so what do I do? I am — you know — but at the appointed hour I will experience the truth. You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. So no matter how long I’ve been seeking in error, at the appointed hour I will experience the truth, and at that moment I am completely set free of all the things I formerly believed in. No, I know now — I know exactly what I am and who I am, because I have experienced the truth, and you shall know — which is your experience — the truth, and the truth will set you free.1126 ¶6

So let them all be as they are. I pray not only for these, but also for them who will believe in me through their word — so I’ll pray for them, yes, all those who hear me. But I will pray not only for these, but for those who will actually believe in me through their word, who have received it, and they will cherish it, for they will have experienced what I am talking about. And then, when they actually hear it, they will gather, one by one, and all become once more the one body, the one spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all. So I pray not only for you who come, but for those who will come after I am gone, who will believe in me — that is the story — through your word, you having received it, having experienced it.1126 ¶7

And so the question is: does evil befall a city unless the Lord has done it? He did not only allow it, he did it — but who was that Lord? The one who is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, that’s the Lord. Well, who is that Lord? Well — I am. I certainly wear a robe that is dipped in blood. Cut it, and you will see there is darkness, and this is the robe that I wear, and this is the Word speaking to you, that is acting out loud in a body that is flesh, and the Word became flesh and dwelt within us.1126 ¶8

So as you go out, believe it — your own wonderful human imagination, there is no other God, there is no other power, nothing outside of your own wonderful human imagination. To what extent will you accept it? Accepting it unconditioned, you may accept him with a little bit of this attitude, but the day will come you actually have him, and have him alone. I’m nothing but God — you’re either with me or against me, okay? You can’t take a little bit of me — but if you will, I will take a little bit while, and then eventually go into the holy thing entirely. But the day will come, you will only accept the Lord, and the Lord you will discover to be your own wonderful human imagination, that you’ve done.1126 ¶9

So man is God, and God is man, and they are inseparable. God appears in that place, and God is light to those poor souls who live and dwell in night. But does the human form display to those who dwell in realms of day. You want to see God in any more glorious form and use him as man? His face is man’s. Don’t go beyond it — the face, the voice, the hands are man’s, and that’s the glory of God. I mean, God is man.1126 ¶10

So whatever you do to man, you’re doing to God. And whoever beholds man, it is God who is doing it, because not a thing could happen to that man unless that man is exercising the power of the universe, did it to himself. My body is an emotional filter, and I bear the mark of my prevalent emotions, good, bad, or indifferent.1126 ¶11

So you hear something concerning a man, and you will say, “Well, you should have known better.” But the question — I should have known better — but nothing can happen to me if I had not done it. Can evil befall the city? Well, this house is the city. Can evil befall this thing called Neville, unless the Lord has done it? It cannot be — it cannot be. Therefore anything that is for me, I did it unto myself. No man comes unto me unless my Father draws him — I and my Father are one. So he cannot do anything to me unless I first did it to myself.1126 ¶12

I’m in my sleep, and in my ignorance I didn’t know it, and I thought I was doing it to another. And in my same sleep I imagine unlovely things of another, and maybe even wished them ill, and hoped for them, and set them all in motion, and they came — the appointed hour. And because there is no other, at that moment of the appointed hour, where it must ripen, it flowers, and indeed I bear the fruit of it.1126 ¶13

This is life. But you say, well, as a little child — there’s all this — as a little child we are coexistent with God. With regards to that little child, he was before the world was. He came down into the world and closed himself in a garment of flesh, just as you and I did, and he seems today more mature because we are now in our sixties, and the little child — he seems to just start. He didn’t begin in his mother’s womb, and he doesn’t end in the grave. He was before the world was — there never was a time when he was not, and nor shall there come a time when he shall cease to be. Beginning and end of a dream — just dreams. We are all one glorious dream, all one.1126 ¶14

Now tonight, if you really accept — well, I’m trying to get over it, and dwell upon how he is clothed — it will make it easier for you to accept it if you know that he is clothed in a robe dipped in blood. Read it in the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Revelation — he is clothed, his body, in a garment dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. Well, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. By him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made — not a thing.1126 ¶15

All right, he’s the only creator. Now the Word spoken of here became flesh — well, I’m flesh — he became flesh and dwells — the word “dwelt” really means “within,” according to — look it up — the word is within, not “a man,” although you could certainly use it for that. He is still among us, but he is within him, and he is clothed in a garment that is dipped in blood, and some little child is not a garment of blood. That’s where the Lord bears — and that promise, the Lord with us, and he is using his imagination morning, noon, and night.1126 ¶16

Imagination is the Lord. For he dwells in me as my own wonderful human imagination. By that power I create whatever I create. By that power I injure or bless myself. By that power — anything in my world is only myself. Well, if I know this, it doesn’t really matter where I start in life. If I’m stuck in a palace, I’m no better off at all than if I start in the gutter, if I know who I am. Well, if I know who I am, and start in the gutter, I can rise to any level that I want in this world, if I know who I am. That is the only power in the world — I could start at the top, not knowing who I am, and wind up all the way down in the gutter.1126 ¶17

As we told you this past week — here we go — DuPont. You could pick a DuPont — he could lose this money, and he got thirty-one million dollars, and his friends are all wondering how on earth could we get into this. There’s a man whose grandfather — our great-great-grandfather — started the DuPont fortune, and his present father is now the chairman of the board of the fabulous concern, and he loses thirty-one million and now has declared himself bankrupt, as the great-great-grandfather did, and rose to the top — if I know who I am.1126 ¶18

And so let’s learn — am I being? I am destiny. My consideration is just: what do I want now? Take my imagination and work it up to the state of vision. But how do I work up to the state of vision? Well, I take — I take my wife, I take my child, I take my brother, and let him see me as I would be — now I am assuming that I am. And so I work it out, and suddenly, in my mind’s eye, I appear, and they have to see me as I am, assuming that I am. And then I listen in on their conversation, which implies that they do see me — it is a fact. And when I am completely satisfied that they do see me as I am seeing myself, that I’m breaking through, I drop it, knowing that that vision has its own appointed hour, and it will ripen and it will flower unto me. Who did it? It seems gone, but anyway — for it is sure, and it will not be late. It will come — not before, and not late — it will be right on time.1126 ¶19

And suddenly the whole thing will appear in my world, and they will see it. If I know that is how things are created in this world, does it really matter where I start? Can I not tell every child born of woman who they really are? And what I define this world still — telling it — because there are worlds within worlds within worlds. This is not the end — when I depart this world, I hope — yes — in the morning.1126 ¶20

A friend of mine has been gone now for about six years — a doctor — a very funny fellow. I was with him about a month before he died — he went down to nothing in weight — and he said, “But you know, from experience, that there is continuity, that there is survival?” I said, “I don’t know, I have no assurance.” And he said, “Oh, you don’t know?” But — he claims he died, and I believe him, but I don’t know, I have no assurance whatsoever. He was a doctor, but he really wanted to be a musician — he loved music beyond anything in this world; his house was full of instruments, and that was his passion. He’s gone now six years — his wife remarried, his two children, they’re married — but he had a very peculiar, wonderful sense of humor.1126 ¶21

The first day I met him, years ago, when I came out — and — it’s now — used to be the townhouse, is now the church in the West, or something — for he moved in and spent the month that I gave my lectures here. And the very first day that I met him — as at his funeral — he said, “You know, I feel more like I do now than when I came in.” Pronounce that — doesn’t make sense, does it? “I feel more like I do now than when I came in.” But after he said it — it’s because it didn’t make sense — he said, “Now repeat what I said.” Well, I couldn’t — it made no sense.1126 ¶22

Well, he did the same thing just the morning before he died, to show you — he died at the age of fifty-six. I know — you go back to around twenty, and here you stand before me — and he didn’t look one day over — twenty-four, twenty-five — and he pulled not that same line, but something far more funny than that, and I — actually not screaming, but laughing, laughing out loud. And he took words and twisted them in the same way, and there he is, a man of about twenty-four, twenty-five — that was the way he would identify himself. Anyway, here I was in this place — it was a hospital — and I was talking with another doctor, and all of a sudden he comes in and does the same thing again. I tell you, the whole thing is within man — there is no death, but a man has thrown away — into who he is now — he knows that he has survived, he has no doubt in his mind’s eye that he is restored tonight, but he’s just the same wonderful boy that he was here at thirty-six. You wouldn’t call that a boy, but I call everyone a child who is unaware of who he is — just a child — and he’s the same child now that he was there, although now he’s only about twenty-four, twenty-five or so.1126 ¶23

But I tell you — if I could get over tonight, if you could dwell upon the fact that you are wearing a robe dipped in blood — why do you care? [The following short span is heavily garbled and left close to verbatim.] You can’t get away from that fact if you are wearing a garment, a robe dipped in blood; if you dwell upon it, then whatever I said prior to this moment, in this very moment, you’ll begin to see through, and you will take it more seriously. This one who is dipped in blood — well, this garment dipped in blood — then who am I? Well, don’t you say, “I am that” — that same one who is wearing this garment dipped in blood. I give it the name imagination — then you’ll come back and ask, “Is that the creative power?” Yes, that’s the creative power.1126 ¶24

And you mean that I am nothing but a child — that’s all that I am, an emotional child — and I bear the marks of my present emotions. Now, what is my present emotion? What is your name? You could name the wealth if you wanted — you could actually feel that you’re completely worthy — feel yourself to be anything in this world, if that’s what you want. It has never been my cup of tea — I have never really desired to be wealthy. I don’t consider myself poor — my income is adequate — not from the sale of my lectures, but my income is adequate, based upon what my earthly father left me.1126 ¶25

It’s adequate, more than adequate. So it’s not dependent on this, but this is my passion — to tell the Word of God, not for the income that it produces, because you can see it doesn’t produce it. But unto the very end of my days I want — okay, everyone — so I pray not only for these things, but for those who actually will believe in me through their word, for they will hear it, experience it, and then they will get it, that they may be one, even as you, Father, and I are one — and I will dwell in them, they will dwell in me, and we all — for eventually everyone must be — that is God’s plan.1126 ¶26

By knowing the truth I will know the truth, and the truth will set me free, so I will experience the story as told in scripture, and having experienced it, be automatically set free of the error that’s confining. But I believe in this, and that, and something else, and suddenly I believe in nothing but my own being, that I either played wisely, or played — and why — but I must reap the consequences of what I am doing with my own wonderful human imagination, because evil cannot come into some horrible world — can evil befall a city unless it is done by the Lord? And I found the Lord to be the wearer of that garment of blood, and the garment is this garment that I’m wearing now, and the one who is wearing it, I am — that’s the Lord, his name forever and forever.1126 ¶27

Therefore no evil can befall — unless the Lord has done it, and the Lord is my own wonderful human imagination. So that I can rub out the seeming accidents of the world — I can undo all the things that seem to be horrors of the world. I know that I cannot avoid what I have done, I must reap it. Eventually I learn then to plan wisely, and to live wisely, and to simply bless everyone — it’s myself anyway. I am not taking anything from myself by praying for another. For when Job prayed for his friends, his own captivity was lifted, because it wasn’t really another — the whole vast world was himself, pushed out.1126 ¶28

I don’t have to be concerned about it, what is in it for me — but I ask for the abundance for another — I can ask for abundance for any being in the world. Really, I have no desire for what is called real, real wealth. First of all, it would be a problem — I would have to give time to the management of great wealth — you just don’t have it unless you let it be — you have to manage it, and watch your portfolio, and do all kinds of things — that is not my cup of tea.1126 ¶29

What I have today, that my father gave me, I couldn’t even tell you what its value is. I do not know where it is — I know the family dividends, and therefore I know the stock is there. What its worth is, I don’t know, having the slightest idea where it is; what its true value is, I still do not know. I only know from what they tell me it’s thought to be in excess of what it is carried on the book — but being a family concern, we do not have to declare its true value unless we go public. If we ever go public, then the true value would have to be established.1126 ¶30

But I do know from dividend checks that the value on the book is ridiculous, completely ridiculous — how can they give you the cash check that they give you, and that’s — an accurate value? So they have to take that figure, whatever it is, and multiply it to get to its true value. But I am not concerned — I have but a few years to go, and what is there is adequate for my life, if she is surviving — and if she doesn’t survive me, and I follow her — it won’t be too long. My daughter will get it. I never got it just because I got it from my father — I don’t care what she does with it, I have no strings attached to it — she can take the whole thing, tear it up and throw it away, as far as I’m concerned.1126 ¶31

I would like them to know who they really are before I depart. But — “a prophet is not without honor, save in his own house” — you don’t find people interested in what you have to say. Thank you again. But I never hear my son ask me any questions at all — I don’t think he’s ever read one of my books. And my daughter lives alone, to the best of her ability, but I’m her father — a good, solid power of concentrated thinking concerning this mystery. He knows how I think and how I live — she sees it, and it sort of rubs off on us, but it’s not something that she really exposes herself to.1126 ¶32

But here — I’ll try my best to get it over to every one of them, that when I am gone, through your word, those who will come after will believe. But I say, in believing, in the teaching, it doesn’t really matter where someone is born — this night, in a very tense world — if he knows who he is, he can be anything he wants to be in his world. He can realize it all — all he has to do is work up his imagination to the state of vision. And — the one standing next to him is not the spirit, it is not some ghost where the other one will begin — no, it’s always in the man himself — you see this right within his own wonderful mind.1126 ¶33

And when Blake said — he came upon a flock of sheep, and suddenly the earth cried out into beautiful, beautiful flowers, and a lady — the children just returned — and she said, “Mr. Blake, where did you see these things?” Because he said, suddenly it all turned into beautiful — something — and she was flabbergasted, and thought the man was completely insane. And then the church claims stories of Blake, but they were not true, but just to discredit the man, because he said these fantastic things.1126 ¶34

And to walk down Cheapside, someone said he simply took off his hat and bowed right down to the earth, and — “what did you do that for?” — well, he said that was the Apostle Paul. No one — anyone — he didn’t do that, but all these things to discredit the man who only believed in the true Lord.1126 ¶35

Why did he have money? Well, that wasn’t of interest to him. Today you wouldn’t buy it — one copy that is colored, of the four, called “Jerusalem” — you could find, there’s no money that could buy it, it’s owned by Yale University. How they got it, I do not know — it’s the only copy that he colored — he left other copies of the great poem “Jerusalem,” and Yale has one, and the only colored one — others have been copied from them, that’s the original copy, and you put a price on it, you couldn’t buy it. I bet — one just sold in London for five and a half million dollars, but you couldn’t buy anything for this only colored copy.1126 ¶36

He didn’t want money. And I’ve asked that question, and — [the following short span is garbled and left close to verbatim] — well, I’m actually indifferent to it — but they had no money, and if he knew all of this, why didn’t he have money? Is that your only value in this world, that you have money? I have had the misfortune of meeting so many very wealthy people, my family and others, and it’s no pleasure, because their concept of life is simply right in the gutter — the most sorry things in the world — not all of them, but so many of them are. How would they understand one who would tell them that their inherited wealth, or their ill-gotten gains, means nothing to him? But he was quite satisfied to sit down with a potato and call it a feast and be happy, if you could put a little bit of something with it, and he didn’t have to have all the things on the other side.1126 ¶37

He lived and worked in one room — the very room in which he worked, in that room he died. And after two hundred years, all those who were prominent in his day are gone, and he gets bigger and bigger and bigger in the mind’s eye, as the giant in the use of the English tongue, and brought a revelation divine to the world. And yet he was completely unknown, and buried in an unknown grave. You’re wondering — but great to know.1126 ¶38

So I’m not here to tell you that you should or should not seek wealth — well, if you want it, okay, it’s yours for the taking, if you know who you are. And I’m telling you who you are — there’s only one God, and he’s actually seated here tonight in everyone — he’s seated here, and he is your own wonderful human imagination, and by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. So you name what you want made in your world, and then work up your imagination to that state of vision, and then it is done. At that moment it is done — just drop it — and the vision has its own appointed hour when it will flower. So you go your way, leaving it alone, and when you least suspect it, it’s going to erupt in your world.1126 ¶39

And yet we’re not predetermined to play a certain part — we are predetermined for the Word to fulfill the Word of God, but as far as the parts in the world, no — we are emotional children, and we will play our thoughts based upon the degree that we have understood who we are. If I really knew who I am, in the midst of some mental turmoil, now, stop it — I know what I’m doing to myself by continuing. And yet I have heard people say to me, “I know what I’m going to do to myself eventually, but it’s such fun — such fun to blow him out and tell him what I think of him” — and yet he doesn’t know the person at all.1126 ¶40

That story I know personally — in New York City, when this man hated Roosevelt, and I said, “Do you know him?” “No, but I despise him.” He despised Roosevelt because this friend, who was born in Brooklyn of Germanic parentage — and because he was born American, American, but he was of Germanic spirit — and Roosevelt declared war against what he called — this is his land. I said, “All right, keep on doing it and see what’s going to happen to you, indeed.” All that he wanted Roosevelt to experience, he himself experienced, and he knew it would happen — it happened.1126 ¶41

But he said, “If you only knew the thrill I get, morning after morning, doing it, you would allow me to do it.” Well, I can’t stop you from doing it anyway. He said, “I go to Broadway and spend ten dollars for a seat for a show, and no show on Broadway gives me the same pleasure that those three minutes before the mirror does in the morning” — strange enough. And so he knew exactly what’s going to happen to him — may I tell you, indeed so — he got an emotional kick out of the stupid activity.1126 ¶42

Well, now, you do it — it’s going to happen to you. You can stop me now — and no matter what you’ve done so far, stop it now. It’s coming up — when it comes, place it — stop it now and free yourself completely. But I make you a promise — the day is coming, you’re going to experience the truth of scripture, and the truth is — this is — “I am the truth” — and when you experience the truth, no matter how long you have been in error, you will be completely set free of all the things you formerly taught yourself. The day you experience it — and you know who you are, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the only God.1126 ¶43

Blake was asked one day by his wife, “What do you think of Jesus?” Blake replied, without batting an eye, “Jesus is the only God” — and so am I, and so are you. But at that moment Crabb Robinson must have gone cold — he asked a simple question and not this wonderful answer — “Jesus, he is the only God, and so am I.”1126 ¶44

Well, what is the other God? Jesus is your own wonderful human imagination — there is no other. Jesus is your own wonderful human imagination, and Jesus, his body, is everyone in the world, and by him, which is your imagination, all things are made, and without your imagination there is nothing made that is made — be it good, bad, or indifferent. And you can start tonight to test Jesus as yourself. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee, unless of course you fail to meet the test?” And I trust you will realize that we have not failed, in reading the text.1126 ¶45

Apologies — I should make every effort to find out who he is — but who is he? By the nineteenth chapter, he always wears a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he’s called is the Word of God, and that Word became flesh and dwelt within us. So that is his name forever — he’s the Word of God, and he wears the robe dipped in blood. Well, now you’re dipped in blood, and so while you’re wearing these garments, even though they are confining, no one is aware of them, and the wearer is your own wonderful human imagination. And you take it, and not one power in the world can stop you from becoming the one you want to be.1126 ¶46

Don’t blame it on the pigment of your skin, or your racial background, or anything in the world. When you read these things in the paper, you scream out, “If they could only know who they are! If they could only realize who they are!” Not blaming it on some so-called limitations of birth, or the so-called accident of birth — the speaker certainly can stand before anyone and honestly say that no one in that group started any more behind the eight ball than the speaker, to this day. You mentioned the word “Barbados” — first of all, it’s only twenty-one miles long and only fourteen miles wide, that’s the little spot, completely unknown, set out in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. And here are — a family, a very large family, and no financial background, no social, no intellectual background, and this large family — but my father knew the power of imagination, and my brother speaks to it, my mother, she also knew it, and in some peculiar way it’s passed on.1126 ¶47

For today, they don’t need anyone to help them — they are the ones in the position of telling people today. There’s no one on the island more prominent financially than they are — the governor comes to get the advice of my brother Victor on economic matters — they all seek his advice, not others. And you are hearing of a boy who had nothing, but he started off — exactly what he was doing, he saw in his mind’s eye what he wanted, as if it were true, would imply that we owned it, and he saw it, he worked himself, after the vision, and then in due course of time it happens. This particular vision took two years, and an almost uncanny stranger was the means by which we bought the building for eight hundred and forty thousand dollars — the same building for which we only paid fifty thousand, we saw grow to over eight hundred and forty thousand, in the meanwhile doing a favorable business — instead of one across the way, in the middle of the block, or something like a hundred and twenty-five thousand — we’ve already been offered something like six million for it. And that’s all Victor’s doing, in his mind’s eye.1126 ¶48

But that’s his property — he likes the use of money, not really to have money, but just the use of it — it excites him. He had a peculiar art of spending, and he had the art of investing, so he balances the two. He invests, his brother spends, each in his own way — but here, the God of the scripture is your own wonderful human imagination. The Lord Jesus Christ, prior to this moment he might have bowed before, is your own wonderful human imagination — that is the only Jesus in the world, that’s it — the sacred being, wearing a robe dipped in blood, and that robe of blood is your own physical body that you’re wearing now. That is — and so that’s the Word became flesh, and dwelt within us. Now, that is my story tonight.1126 ¶49