Tonight’s subject, I will call it, “The Human Imagination.” I could call it, maybe you will, by many other titles. The human Imagination is the true vine of eternity, the eternal body of God. So let us turn to the works of Paul and see what light he throws on it. You will see that there is nothing impossible to your wonderful human Imagination, but man will not accept it. He turns out to other gods, gods that do not exist. In the writings of Paul no trace can be found of an historical Christ as we today use the term. And yet that is all that Paul preached. He only preached Christ crucified, and yet there’s not the slightest trace of an historical Christ in the letters of Paul. He said, “From now on we regard no one from the human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from the human point of view, we regard him thus no longer” .311 ¶1

Now let us see what he has to say about Christ. He said, “Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it please God through the folly that we preach to save those who believe” . Well, what did he preach? He preached “Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Greeks. Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” . That’s what Christ meant to him: the power of God and the wisdom of God. As you read his letters you can come to only one conclusion…that he is speaking of your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s Christ. He said, “The wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God. The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men” .311 ¶2

He looked upon the crucified Christ as God keyed low, the very lowest point. To him he was impotency of the creative power; and yet that impotency that appeared dead was to him more creative and more wise than the power of man and the wisdom of man. So when he speaks of “bearing on his body the death of Christ that he may also manifest the life of Christ in his body,” the word translated death is defined in scripture as “impotency.” It’s keyed so low it appears to be dead; and yet, in spite of the appearance of death, it is wiser than the wisdom of man and stronger, the seeming weakness, than the strength of men. You can try it and put him to the test. He said, “Come test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test” .311 ¶3

Well, if he’s my human Imagination and all things were made by him and without him there’s nothing made that is made, I certainly can test him if he’s my human Imagination. You see, he has the wisdom to devise the means. I don’t have to consciously devise the means. He has the power to execute the imaginal assumption. So I dare to assume that I am what reason denies, what my senses deny, knowing that the being that is assuming it is Christ Jesus, and it has this wisdom, though weak. For what is weaker than a mere assumption that a thing is so, though reason tells me that it is not so? When my senses deny it and every person around me [...] wise persons forbidding it if I confided what I had done? But here I am behind the eight-ball and I dare to assume that I am now what everything denies that I am, does that assumption have the power and wisdom to execute itself? I am told it has if I will accept it. But I’m also told that man will not accept it…very few will.311 ¶4

Samuel Brothers was writing about the cross, said, “He that takes up that bitter tree and carries it cannily”—in other words, carries it quietly, don’t discuss it, just carry it quietly—“will find it such a burden as wings are to a bird or sails are to a boat.” If you dare to carry that bitter tree, you’ll find it that kind of a burden. Is that a burden? We understand the words “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” . Is there any burden to that, to carry that kind of a cross? Where could you go that you cannot imagine? Where could you go where you’re devoid of the capacity to imagine? Put you in a dungeon, I can’t stop you from imagining. I don’t care where I put you, I can’t take from you…if I knocked you unconscious I can’t take from you your capacity to imagine. Well, is that a burden? He said, “My burden is light and my yoke, if you accept it, is easy.” He offers his yoke which is his knowledge based upon experience, his knowledge of scripture for yours based upon speculation, based upon theory, based upon your misconceptions as taught you in the cradle.311 ¶5

So he offers you what he personally has experienced. I’m speaking now of Paul…he offers this entire picture…for he went out to persecute all those who believed in “The Way.” Christ said, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life” . Well, what’s true about an assumption that reason denies? Is that a true judgment? If I now wrote out exactly what I want to be and wrote it out as though I had it, well, that’s not a true judgment if truth must conform to the external fact to which it relates. So I write out exactly what I want to be, but I don’t write it in that manner, I write it as though I am it. Well, if I present that and can’t present the evidence, well, then that’s a lie. And so, he said, “I am the truth.” Well, if he’s my Imagination and all things are possible to him, I can write it in that manner, knowing I contain within myself the power and the wisdom to make it so. I need not try to break a blood vessel to devise the means to make it so. I simply assume that Christ Jesus is the eternal vine, the eternal body of God, and this is my own wonderful human Imagination. If this is true, and all things are possible to him, and without him there’s not a thing made that is made, well, then I start to assume that I am now what I would like to be. So I stop wanting to be it because I am it, and wait confidently for it to externalize itself upon the screen of space.311 ¶6

Let us turn to a little passage in scripture. You see, the book is a mystery. Paul uses the word mystery no less than twenty times. We think it’s simply history, secular history. Hasn’t a thing to do with anything in the world we call historic. You’ll never find these characters in any part of the [...]. Never will you find them by digging up the earth and looking for them; they’re all in the human Imagination. So let us see tonight if you are not Simon. I hope you are. Your name may be Ann, may be Mary, may be some other name, but I hope you can say that you’re Simon. Simon appears in the beginning of the story and at the end of the story. But we are told to reverse the story: The first shall be last and the last first. So if you take his last appearance…and they’re leading him to the cross, and they seized one called Simon and made him carry the cross. So, they laid on him the cross, and when they came to the place called “the skull” there they crucified him…the skull. The word Simon means “to hear.” It’s Shema, the first great word of the confession of the Jew as to his faith: “Hear, O Israel”—that is Shema, that’s Simon—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” . Can’t get away from it, can’t find two Gods, only one, and his name is I AM .311 ¶7

When I say “I am,” I don’t mean two. It’s just so much the core of my being…I am. So his name is Simon. It means “to hear intelligently, to understand,” but “to consent, to obey.” I can hear intelligently and turn my back on what I’ve heard, understanding every word you said, but I don’t agree with you so I turn my back. If I hear with understanding and consent to it and then obey…he said, “Why call me Lord, and do not do the things I say?” So you heard it now, well, will you consent to it? Well, now obey. So here is Simon carrying the cross. He tells him, my cross, this burden is light. He who will take upon himself this bitter tree and just carry it, carry it cannily, quietly, he’ll find it such a burden as wings are to a bird, as sails are to a boat, no place where I can’t quickly and easily go…if I accept it.311 ¶8

Now we turn to the first use of the word Simon, and we find that he comes in spirit, not in the flesh. This whole drama takes place in the supernatural being. For this being called your own wonderful human Imagination, personified as Messiah, personified as Christ Jesus, is a wholly supernatural being. So he comes in the spirit into the temple. What temple? Are we not told, “You are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you” . If I come into the temple, the drama is going to unfold within me. So Simon comes into the temple and here is the Christ child being presented according to the law. He takes him up in his arms, and then he said, “Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.” This is from the 52nd chapter of Isaiah . For God’s promise to Israel, to the whole vast world, was that you would see God’s salvation. He calls it a sign. He takes up the infant child; but he calls the child a sign for the whole vast world to see. He takes the child in his arms, and asks now for permission to depart; for he is the beginning of God’s redemptive power. A complete reversal now takes place, and that power that was keyed low to human Imagination is now reversed; and from generation—creating on a divided image, male-female, it now turns up, and moves above the organization of sex where it doesn’t need a dual image to create. It is God creating in himself now. No divided image; above, completely above the organization of sex.311 ¶9

A reversal of the great powers that were keyed low, called in scripture, “the fall.” And yet, the verb He Vau He in the great name of God, Yod He Vau He, its primary meaning is “to fall” or “the one who causes to fall”; or it means “to blow” or “the one who causes the wind to blow.” So we take it in its primary meaning, and so who fell? God and his creative power can’t be separated. So when we speak of the fall of man, it is the fall of God, his creative power, his wisdom, keyed low. And it reaches the limit of contraction called man, the limit of opacity called man. And then after this frightful journey through the wilderness—this is the wilderness—he reaches that moment in time which was all predetermined, where the individual having gone through the furnaces of affliction called experience, now the forces are turned around. It now not only returns to where it was but returns expanded. The whole thing is expanded beyond what it was. The wisdom has increased beyond what it was. There is no limit to expansion; there was only a limit set to contraction. There is no limit to translucency, only a limit set to opacity. So when that limit was reached and the journey began, in spite of that reduced power right down to the very lowest key, it was still wiser than the wisdom of man. It was still stronger than all the strength of man…though it was God at his weakest point, when he simply took upon himself the garment called man.311 ¶10

So here, the Christ spoken of in scripture through the eyes of Paul, the one who carried the message beyond all, he finds no human Christ, no historical Christ; only the power of God and the wisdom of God, and it’s keyed low, and it’s human Imagination. So he said, “I preach only Christ crucified.” Well, he’s crucified—this body is the cross that he bears, this is the Tree of Life. The wise men seek for this tree in the laboratories of the world, but he said, “There grows one in the human brain.” It’s all turned down, like the inverted tree, as told us in the Book of Daniel. It was felled and the tree fell, but the roots remained in tact. Don’t touch it, leave it as it is. It will once more be watered with the dew of heaven, and it will grow, this time beyond where it was; this time being the shelter for all and supply the food for all. This is the great tree. “So the gods of the earth and the sea they sought through nature to find this tree; but their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain” .311 ¶11

So the whole thing is here as we’re seated here. Could you say to what you’ve just heard, “I am Simon. I’ll carry the cross. I will not only hear what you said, I will consent to it; I will obey.” So when I hear all the discussions and no one comes up with a solution, there’s always a solution present: What do you want in place of what you have? Well, that’s the solution. But you say, “It can’t be obtained, can’t be had.” Doesn’t matter what they say, it’s what you want. All things are possible to God, even when he’s keyed so low that it’s only human Imagination. But human Imagination and divine Imagination are one. The difference is simply a degree of intensity. And so, when keyed low, it seems dead, it seems impotent. But when you become a Simon knowing now…as the poet Francis Thompson said, “For birth has in itself the germ of death, but death has in itself the germ of birth.”311 ¶12

So it begins now with the cross, leading towards the skull where they crucify him. But that death carries in itself the germ of birth. Reverse the story. He first appears holding the birth, the sign of God’s promise to man, the sign that he promised Abraham: “I will give you a son” , the prototype of this child. There is something born when someone couldn’t bear a child, when someone couldn’t sire a child; therefore, he’s not to be thought of as a child born of woman. It is to be thought of as God begetting himself, actually begetting himself. So here is this child…it’s an actual child when you encounter the story, when you have the experience; it all takes place in you. You do see the child, you do hold the child, and you pick it up. And the word Isaac means “he laughs”…the child does laugh; it breaks into the most heavenly smile when you hold it in your own hands. At that moment you are Simon. Yes, they call you Neville in the world of Caesar, but you are playing the part of Simon in the drama. To have played the part of Simon holding the child you must have carried the cross. And so they gave it to Simon and he carried the cross to the place called The Skull; there they crucified him.311 ¶13

Crucified whom?—the power and the wisdom of God. Now it’s personified in scripture. Well, certainly it’s personified, aren’t you a person? You’re a person, I am a person. So the power is personified, for the power needs man as an agent to express itself. And so here I stand as a man, but I know the power, the power is my own wonderful human Imagination, and that’s Christ Jesus. There never was another, there never will be another… just your own wonderful human Imagination. And so, test it and see. So if I dare to test him, I should prove him in performance. And so I will take the challenge. You do it not only for yourself, you do it for another.311 ¶14

Now, many used to come here when I had the theater filled to overflowing, but it was a social gathering. Night after night when I would come out from twenty-one lectures, we’d go back to the hotel, and it was simply a raft, all having fun. Not one word I said was ever heard. As long as you’d keep it going on a social pattern, wonderful, but when I called a stop to that, we’d meet at odd intervals, still friends, but they never understood one word. There’s a couple who I call friends, they’re really dear friends of mine, they never come…but twenty years ago when we met he represented a very small, little pharmaceutical manufacturer back East. He graduated from Princeton, came back, married, bought a little home where there were only two homes on the street. Naturally, with inflation all things have grown, the house is now worth many, many times what he paid for it, but it’s still a little home, a little tiny home. The lot’s small, but the value because of inflation has gone up.311 ¶15

She said to me one day, about fifteen years ago, “Oh, I do wish that he could just get more…be more important. Here is this man from [...], Princeton, and all these things, and look what he’s making.” I said, “You want him to really make more?” “Yes.” “Alright!” Turning to the only power that I know of, my own wonderful human Imagination, I carried on with her a conversation from the premise that he was making more. I didn’t outline the means that would be employed for him to make more, I just simply imagined that he was making more, and that it came from her. Finally, his little firm was absorbed by a larger firm, and so a reorganization. He was kept, he knew the doctors, knew the druggists, knew the territory. But then they enlarged his territory. They gave him the whole state and they gave him all up to Washington, and all these states, Utah, Nevada, into, well, Arizona, which meant he had to be away seeing his sales force. He then began to take on a sales force, and he employed, oh, six or seven. He was always letting one go and getting another. Then she began to complain: “He’s making more, he’s important, he’s actually employing now six, seven people. He can fire them and hire them as he feels.” “But didn’t you ask for it?” “But he’s not at home.”311 ¶16

So we got together. She still wanted the feeling of power that such a job gave him; so then another firm, bigger than the two together, absorbed the two. They kept him on, raised him in salary, and then gave him a commission on the sales efforts of his four to twelve now. And then the fire began. I said he has a small home…he has spent in that home to satisfy her, without avail, the value of the house many times over. In the fifteen years since, he’s completely re-carpeted it, completely refurnished it. I’ve seen them bringing the furniture in. She has the money, she picked it out—he didn’t send it home—picked it out and one week later a new set. Carpets, take it back after a week; wallpaper, tear it off and put on some more. For what he has spent on it he’ll never get out of it…all to pacify her. She can’t be pacified.311 ¶17

She doesn’t know one word of the story of Christ Jesus, yet she calls herself a Christian. Well, multiply her by all the Christians of the world, because there are so few who understand the mystery of Christ. You might say that 500 million do not know the mystery of Christ. They stick him on the wall, made out of plastic or something, monstrous artists… [...] all the artists that made them. All these little indulgences, and there they are, and they call that a Lord, making and violating the second Commandment: “Make no graven image after me ”…none. How can I make a graven image and fall down and worship the works of my own hands? I’m creating out of my own wonderful Imagination. That’s Christ, that’s the power and the wisdom of God. To personify it I must see myself. And the day will come you will see yourself in the depths of your soul; and you’ve never seen such beauty you’ve never seen such character, such majesty as yourself in depth. And there he is, meditating you, this surface thing that is flesh and blood. When you accept this, really accept it, to the point where you consent to it, and you obey it, then you can’t turn to the left or to the right. In the midst of hell you will still call upon this power. No matter where you are, call upon the power.311 ¶18

I am not saying the body will not decay. As Paul said it so clearly, he said, “Our hearts are not cast down. Though our outer nature is wasting away, but our inner nature is renewed every day. And this temporary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison” . So to his very end the body was fading, before his eyes the body was wearing out, wasting away; but he still taught it from morning to night. And when they [...], but look at yourself, “Physician, heal thyself,” he still taught that the only Christ was your own wonderful human Imagination. Knowing that this outer garment more…it begins in time, ends in time…and though they may live to 120 they make their exit too. If they live that long, the chances are they’ll have not one around them who truly call themselves lucky. They may be senile, dependent upon everything other than themselves, doing nothing for self. Paul didn’t care, for he knew there is a time for everything in this world, a time to be born and a time to die. He wasn’t going to hasten it. He knew that no one could delay it, but it would waste away…and he would continue to preach forever Christ crucified. As if infinite power was reduced to the little tiny human Imagination, and yet it was wiser and yet it was more powerful than the wisdom of man and the power of man.311 ¶19

Yesterday, we were confronted with a picture. The mightiest land in the world, America, our production exceeds the production of the world put all together. If you take real production, we have the mightiest machine [...], 190-odd million of us, higher standard of education; and here a little country of seventeen million, they have no productive power, no know-how as we understand the word, and we are tied down? This mighty machine and it’s tied down? And nothing will get us out of debt? Did you hear our Secretary of State [...]. He said not a thing that you hadn’t read a year ago in the paper, not a thing. I rushed through my shower to hear it. I should have remained under the shower. There wasn’t one word he said I hadn’t read it in the papers that go back for months, and magazines, and commentaries, all double talk. They say they really want the solution. Well, the solution that you really want, peace, as we understand it. So the government decides for itself. And let’s not have some outside force impose its will. Then let them really believe, because all are going to suffer, and with few exceptions they are Christians. This is the land where most everyone in it calls himself a Christian, you find [...] a Jew, but a 190-odd million Americans. We have others that call a different…we have a few Buddhists, a few of the Hindu faith, but even if you take the atheists away and the agnostics away, we would still have well in excess of 100-odd million who call themselves Christians. Not one of them seems to know the power of Christ and the wisdom of Christ. Tomorrow they’ll go to church and pray to an unknown God, and go through all the outer palaver, all rituals.311 ¶20

If there was one thing that Paul was dead set against, all institutions, all authorities, all customs, all laws that interfered with the direct access of the individual to his God. Anything in this world that in any way turned him aside from a direct access to his God, Paul was against it. And so that God is in man, man’s own wonderful human Imagination. It is the power, the creative power of God, the wisdom of God, and you can’t separate a man’s creative power from his Imagination which is imagining from Imagination itself. Imagining is Imagination in action, but you can’t separate them. So Christ is God in action. So you say he’s imagining and God is all Imagination. So “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” . Man turns to the outside in the hope that some little thing is going to intercede and help him. He’ll look in vain; he has a false god.311 ¶21

So this is what he meant by “I preach Christ and Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews” . He didn’t mean people who accept the Jewish faith, for that’s the foundation of Christianity. He means those who look for signs and who believe in external worship, whether it be a dietary law, whether it be some other kind of outside worship. “And it is foolishness to the Greek.” The Greek was called “the scholar of the world” and if you couldn’t bring it out of the laboratory and prove it and show them the evidence, well, then it isn’t. But not to Paul; for he found him not as a man, he found him in himself, and was quite willing to teach it, even though before the eyes of those he taught he faded. And he said, “My heart is not cast down. Though my outer nature is passing away, is fading, my inner is being renewed every day. And this temporary affliction is preparing for me this weight of glory.” It’s an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison. There’s not a thing in the visible world that you can use to compare to the glory that is man’s when he begins to rise within himself. When that something turned around in man, the creative power, and it starts up, there’s not a thing in the world that is as luminous, not a thing in the world that is as powerful, not a thing in the world that is as beautiful. So he couldn’t find anything in the outer world to compare to this weight of glory that was simply rising from within.311 ¶22

And he knew at the very end he would do what everyone has to do, take it off. And in his case there was no return. He knew those who did not accept it, and dared not to the point of holding that child, would be restored at what we call death only to die again. But everyone at death is restored to life only to die again. And only those who hold the child that is the promise of God to man…where the whole thing has been completed…for birth has in itself the germ of death, but death has in itself the germ of birth. So when I carry the cross[...] self, I am carrying it right into death; but the germ of birth is in death, and so I will now hold the child in my hand and say, “Let me depart, according to your word” . And your word was that the whole vast world of flesh would see your salvation, and here is your salvation. So everyone who holds him departs, never to return…he can die no more.311 ¶23

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *311 ¶24

Now are there any questions, please?311 ¶25

Test Christ, your own Imagination, test it. Put it to the test. You should prove it in the testing. If he’s your Imagination, you should prove it. Don’t just have someone else do it for you. This friend of mine who is still a friend, a dear friend, she hasn’t one thought concerning Christ, yet she has her prayer answered. She herself knows she did nothing, but she didn’t like the way it was answered. So she doesn’t see him, save on a weekend. Maybe that was his prayer too. He comes home on Friday night, goes off on Sunday, and, personally, I think that he’s never been happier. For not a thing that money could buy can make her happy. And so, we get together now at very long intervals…never discuss this. We discuss personalities that a long gone from this world, long, long gone. She had some relative in the theater before the turn of the century, had a name, the old days of Vaudeville, and she’s still living in that ancient dream. Why spoil the evening? Go along with it, and just pick it up and talk about [...]. The same…put the record on, over and over and over. But to bring this up, it’s like talking Greek…doesn’t know what you’re talking about.311 ¶30

Tonight’s subject, as always—but tonight it will be more potent than ever—is all about you and you individually. You may not know it, but the greatest book in the world is written about you. People spend fortunes having ghost writers write some biography for them. They spend millions renaming cities and rivers and mountains after themselves. Now, according to a rabbinical principle, what is not written in scripture is non-existent. The principle of Jesus or the drama of Jesus follows this principle. You may not know it; I will try to persuade you tonight that you are Jesus Christ. Everyone must experience scripture for himself before he can begin to know how wonderful it really is. That is why no account was given in scripture of the personal appearance of Jesus. It couldn’t be. Yet men insist on making pictures of this central figure called Jesus Christ. My task is not the easiest, for there is no, I would say, heavier weight than that which is required to change man’s misconception of Jesus and scripture. We speak of dead-weights, but what weight could be heavier than to try to change a man’s fixed opinion when he was conditioned in the cradle, whether he be Christian or Jew. So he was conditioned as a child before he began to think and he believes scripture to be a book of history; and there is no secular history in the Bible. The Bible is sacred history and this history must be fulfilled in us.310 ¶1

Let us turn to scripture. The Bible is called the Word of God. We’re told in the Bible, “And his name shall be called The Word of God.” So he, speaking of him as a “he,” is scripture. We’re told, “And my word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me empty, but it must accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” Now what is this Word? He’s called “the Word.” He said, “I came out from the Father and I’ve come into the world; again, I leave the world and return to the Father” …but not until I accomplish the work he sent me to do. Now are these two? The Word of God is called Jesus Christ and the Word of God is called scripture.310 ¶2

Now, you follow this closely: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Suddenly this plan of salvation—for the word is logos which means “plan of salvation,” which means “meaning”; it’s a thought with a plan, with a purpose—suddenly it becomes a person. “He was in the beginning with God.” Now if the Word is God and suddenly now the Word is a person, is God not a person? Are you a person? You’re a person. Tonight I will show you from experience that you really are Jesus Christ. You have to awake to it and become the Word awake or “The Word of God.”310 ¶3

Now if scripture is his Word and the name by which Jesus Christ is called is “The Word of God” and we have just heard that he comes and all of a sudden this plan takes on the form of a person, yet no description is given us of this person…well, where is this Word sent, into the world? We’re told that not a thing out there will last, it will all vanish—the cities, the mountains, the trees, the very lands themselves will be submerged—but the Word will stand forever. It will never cease to be. It has to fulfill itself wherever it is sent. And sent where? Sent into man…and there it is buried in man, it unfolds in man and when it unfolds, that man knows from his own experience he is Jesus Christ. Everything recorded in scripture concerning this Jesus Christ he experiences…without loss of identity, without any change of individuality, just a complete radical change in his form that no mortal eye can see. He wears now an entirely different form that no man on earth can see.310 ¶4

Now does he first come into the world? I have heard people say, “Oh, wouldn’t it have been marvelous if I lived when he walked the earth.” What a misconception! “If I had only lived when he walked, even if I didn’t understand it, to say I actually walked when he walked”…as though he were another. They would give anything to have walked when he walked as something other than themselves. This is the first appearance of Jesus when you hear the message of salvation. It comes through the lesser revelation to the ear, the 42nd chapter of Job, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear.” And then we find it in the 10th of Romans, “And faith comes through hearing and hearing comes by the preaching of Christ.” Then we read it, almost as a criticism, in the 3rd chapter of Galatians, “So let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having heard the Spirit and received the Spirit through hearing by faith, are you now going to follow the flesh? And turn to a man of flesh and blood?” “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” So you heard it first and you accepted it. The acceptance of the plan of salvation was his first appearance through the lesser revelation to the ear.310 ¶5

And so, it was dramatized as though I took a book and read through the plan of God’s salvation. Of whom? Of himself. God prepared the way for himself to return; for when you experience scripture, it’s not another, it’s yourself. All that is said in scripture of the Word of God unfolds in you as a personal experience. Therefore, who was experiencing it when God and the Word are one? Is it not God? Well, if you’re saved in this manner, is it not saving himself? Are you not then that self that he saves? There is only God. So the lesser comes from the ear and to the ear. I’ll take the story and tell you, not as you heard it in the cradle, as I have experienced it. You hear it either with acceptance, or you reject it, it’s entirely up to you, and continue the sleep, the deep, deep sleep in the grave.310 ¶6

Then the second appearance, the second coming, is when the Word is experienced in you and by you. Then you can say scripture must be fulfilled in me. And beginning with Moses in the law and all the prophets and the psalms, you will interpret to all all the things concerning yourself. So when he comes, that second coming is simply the fulfillment in you of what you heard and accepted with faith. I can take that story as told in Galatians, “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Who bewitched you? He was portrayed as crucified. “Now let me ask you only this, did you receive the Spirit by works of the law”—external ceremony, ritual, and all these things—“or by hearing with faith?” When the drama was told you, you saw it mentally; you heard it and you believed it. Now, having accepted it, are you going to turn back to the flesh and see now a man of flesh and blood? Then he tells them, even though my thought was once absorbed with the human Christ, I see him so no longer. He experienced scripture; having experienced it, he couldn’t turn to any outside man. See, there is only God in the world. The word Jesus means Jehovah. It means “Jehovah is salvation.” Scripture recognizes only one Savior, that is, Jehovah. “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior…I know not any.” Read it in the 43rd and 45th of Isaiah. So the only God is the God who is actually buried in man.310 ¶7

Now, this whole drama begins with the resurrection. Man is redeemed. For man is born again into an entirely different world, differently formed, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. So when you experience the resurrection, there is no other. If you had any doubts in your mind as to who you are, and if only Jesus Christ is resurrected, and by his resurrection I am reborn. I know I was born on the heels of the resurrection—but I was the resurrected. So if I am the resurrected and only Jesus Christ is resurrected, well, I know who he is. So go and tell it, go and preach the story of salvation. We’ve all heard it incorrectly.310 ¶8

Priests will circumnavigate the world to make one proselyte and bar him from going in, because they themselves have lost the key. They’re so completely concerned with ritual and outside paraphernalia they know nothing of the kingdom of God within them. And this whole drama must unfold within us. So the pathway of salvation is so very short, really. When the first bud appears, the tree falls into bloom in just three and a half years…just completely falls into full bloom in three and a half years. No one can see the bloom, no mortal eye can see the flowers, no mortal eye sees that Tree of Life in full bloom. There are those who have experienced scripture. So you walk the earth completely unknown, for you are the lit Tree of Life, and no one sees the tree in bloom. But I tell you from experience, when the first flower appears which is the resurrection on the heels comes the birth. Then the others quickly unfold and it takes three and a half years as told us in the end of Daniel . Seal it; no one can break the seal until he comes [...]. It’s broken in him. And no one walking this earth could ever have foretold the manner in which the flowers will appear.310 ¶9

Judging the world only through mortal eyes, how could you ever conceive of the resurrection in the way that it actually happens? How could you ever have foreseen it? But it comes not at the end of history but within history. While you’re walking this earth it happens within history. You tell it to those who have been misled and you hear nothing but deaf ears. They blind their eyes…they don’t want to see it. Your most intimate friends don’t want to see it. It’s not the way they heard it. And there is no dead-lift so heavy, but really none, as that which requires this to change man’s misconception, no greater. You name one…where your most intimate friend turns his back and pities. When your brothers and your sisters and those who truly love you, and have proven it by their gifts and their actions towards you, if you raise one finger to change the course of their fixation, they’ll have no part.310 ¶10

Again, scripture…and his brothers did not believe him. If they believed you, it would not be the fulfillment of scripture…just as though they had to start with a misconception and hear the Word along the way; and some toy with it and wonder if it is true as they go their way, if the time is right. For it cannot happen before its time. The prophets who prophesied of this grace that was to be yours, they searched and inquired about this salvation. They inquired what person or time was indicated by the spirit of prophecy within them, the spirit of Christ within them, when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you. The time had not yet come. But when the time had fully come so that one could burst, he broke it by beginning in the grave.310 ¶11

The Book of Acts associates the grave with rising from the dead, and it is said they laid him in a tomb and God raised him from the dead. The tomb is present right here. Don’t be disturbed if you should drop this night. And what I will now call the tomb…I will speak of this…but, really, it isn’t this little physical skull; it is an eternal skull, really, in a way where God is buried, where no man has ever yet been buried. It’s a skull…it’s your skull. One day he breathes upon it, he breathes upon himself, and that breath is called “a wind, the sound of a trumpet.” The word sound is simply a vibration or a reverberation or a tone like striking a tone on the piano. And all tones in sympathy with it begin to sing. So when your tone is called, and not before—he calls him according to his purpose—and when all are called, we are a tone unlike any tone in the world. You can’t resist it. When that tone is sounded by God to God (for you are God) and when he sounds that tone, you begin to stir, and you can’t stop it. You begin to awake and awake and awake, and finally you are awake as you have never been awake before. And where are you?—in your skull. You know it to be a sepulcher and you know that someone placed you there because they thought you dead. So you understand the words, “God himself enters death’s door with those who enter and lays down in the grave with them, and shares with them their visions of eternity until they awaken”. So this whole vast nightmare he shares it with us; for he is my very being, he’s not another. And when he awakes, I am he. I didn’t know it until that moment when there was no one but myself, yet I am in the sepulcher, I am in Golgotha. And there isn’t the slightest little opening, not a hole, nothing leads out, and I’m sealed as an egg. Yet I know that if I could but push the base of this skull, I would get out. And so I push and out I begin to come, like one being born. So it is said truly that I am reborn by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.310 ¶12

It’s out you come, and you don’t see yourself…no one sees you, for you’re not clothed in this garment. You see this garment on the bed. You see the garment out of which you’ve just emerged, but you don’t see yourself. You are God and God is Spirit. Therefore, no one can see the Father at any time but the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. So your next step is going to be the revelation coming from the Son.310 ¶13

Strangely enough, all of these experiences save the one with the Father take you by surprise. You cannot say I did this before. You cannot say that you have any memory of this. The only memory is God’s written Word. If you’re familiar with it, you can go back and find out the witness that was recorded in the written Word. When it comes to the Son revealing you, memory returns. It doesn’t seem to have any beginning. It’s something you’ve always been, the Father. You didn’t know it until that moment, because memory hadn’t returned. But this is the one event of the unfolding four where memory plays the part, and suddenly you know. There is no uncertainty in you concerning this relationship between you and God’s only begotten Son…and you know who you are. You know you are the being spoken of in scripture as Jehovah, called Jesus Christ; for both are one, and that one is the Father of this Son David.310 ¶14

The others, they take you suddenly and by surprise, but you cannot honestly say you played the part before. All these other events are new. They were foretold you by yourself, and you believed it, and became subject unto death, even death upon the cross. To do it, you had to empty yourself of all that you are and you are God. So you emptied yourself of being God and took the form of death called man. Only one of the events is memory, all the others were foretold you. So when he comes, he tells you, I will bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you. But this concerning the Father is something that everyone has as memory, but memory has vanished. It’s like being in a deep, deep coma. And you know the party well, you can scream at him and tell him you know all about him and tell him…but he can’t remember. So I can tell you from now to the ends of time about David and his relationship to you, but not until memory returns do you fully understand this relationship and how you’ve always known it. You were always his Father.310 ¶15

Now listen to the words. We’re told the Word cannot return void; it must accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. Now, he said, “I’ve glorified thee on earth”. Glorification is equated with lifting up the Son of man. He said, my hour has come, the hour for the Son of man to be glorified. I’ve glorified thee on earth, now “Father, return unto me the glory that is mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was made”. I’m not asking for anything that was not mine. He glorifies me with himself, and the self is Father. Now return, return that memory which I willingly gave up to do a work that I was sent to do. You and I are one; now return this unity by bringing back this memory of my fatherhood. And only the Son can bring back the memory of the fatherhood, so if the Son appears and calls you Father, then you know it. So when this rises in man, there is conferred upon the risen Christ in the experience of men the divine name of Lord. And what is “the Lord”?—Jehovah. He confers not only his name but all that the name implies, for the Lord is father. So the memory returns and you are the Father.310 ¶16

Then you mark the little time trying to correct the misconception, trying to show them the truth concerning God’s Word. And no matter how many hear it, if just a handful, tell it, because in the end not a thing will last but his Word.310 ¶17

Now this will not take from you a plan of all he gave you after he read you that message of salvation. He knew the horrors that would befall you, he knew the pitfalls. He knew everything, and he gave you a law, a law that would enable you to go through this horrible scene and be the man, the woman that you want to be…even though you know in your heart it’s all vanity…it’s all going to pass away. Yet until it passes away you can have it. Take it all! Indulge yourself! Realize all your dreams though every dream will pass away. Man not knowing that, he builds his monuments and hopes to perpetuate his little name, and that’s not the name at all. None of these names will last, for that’s not the name. For, in that day the Lord is one and his name one. What’s that name?—Father. Just one…you are the Father and I am the Father, there’s only one Father. But we can speak of fathers, because the book allows it. It uses the plural word Elohim. It was the Elohim who made the decision to create this scene. And the word is true, so we are the fathers, the Elohim. Put them all together, for it’s a compound unity. It’s only one Father, for all have the same Son. Having the same Son…must be the same Father…not one greater than the other.310 ¶18

So in the very end, you will say, yes, “I heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” To see and to know are the same in scripture, same word in Greek; to know it is to see it, to experience it. So he knows now that he has experienced all that he accepted only in faith. And this is the one whose life is the life of every person in the world…Job. This comes at the very end, the 42nd chapter. Then we are told in the end of Job, all those who left him—his brothers, his sisters, friends, all left him—they came back and ate with him to comfort him for the evil that the Lord had brought about. Here was the most cruel experiment ever to be seen. But he brought it upon himself for he played the part. He didn’t put it upon a man called Job. The word Job, the meaning is “Where is my Father?” That’s the true meaning of Job, “Where is my Father?” If he could only find the Father, he’d find himself. And finding himself, he finds the reason behind his suffering: for only through suffering would he come to the end, more brilliant, more wonderful, more expansive, more translucent than he was when he started the journey.310 ¶19

So don’t think for one second he did anything that was wrong. Read the story of Job. He did nothing that was wrong…any more than you did. To justify inequalities in this world they bring in reincarnation, karma, and all these irrelevant things, hasn’t a thing to do with it. You’re not playing the part you’re playing because of anything you did in the past. You’re doing it because it is the will of God. “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he is born blind?” “Neither the man, nor his parents, but that the works of God may be made manifest”. You play all the parts…or you will. And in the end, having played all the parts you’ll forgive all, forgive every part in the world, for the same actor plays all the parts. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men”.310 ¶20

So the story of the gospel is your biography. No ghost-writer wrote it for you. It’s not of human composition. No man could sit down and compose the gospels; it’s all revelation, it’s eternally true and it’s your biography. So tomorrow, dwell upon it; dwell upon it as much as you can from now on. Try to correct your misconception.310 ¶21

Well, how will I know that I am correcting it? Well, I can’t avoid in this land of ours seeing or hearing the name Jesus, can I? It’s so much a part of our society. Well, when you hear it, just watch your reaction…do you think of another? Then you haven’t yet corrected it. If you go to church and someone says, “And Jesus said” and you think of another, you haven’t corrected it. When you hear the word Jehovah and “the Lord God,” and you see a being on the outside creating, you haven’t corrected it. “In the beginning was the Word”—the plan of salvation—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. He was in the beginning with God. Here we find a person and you are that person. For God being a person, his wisdom and his power are personified. It’s his wisdom, his power buried in you as a plan of salvation revealing his own power, his own wisdom, but enhancing it as you come back. So, when the whole thing unfolds within you, the last flower appears.310 ¶22

Then you simply tell it and tell it and tell it. Whether they listen or not you tell it. Not a thing else to tell but Christ. As we are told in the 10th of Romans: “And faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the preaching of Christ.” What else to preach? Yes, I can tell you how to make money and I will. I’ll tell you how to get a home…yes a home. You may want one in the flood area. There are thousands of them. Down in Brazil tonight thousands of homes are gone. They thought they had it forever. Year after year we have it too, all the plots and plans of men, but it all vanishes; everything vanishes but the Word of God. So get the Word correctly, get it just as it was intended, and get it from one who has had the experience.310 ¶23

In the 10th chapter of Romans he then qualifies it: “And how can they believe in him of whom they’ve never heard? And how can they hear of him without a preacher? And how can there be a preacher unless he’s sent?.” Can’t send yourself…not on this level. You are called and sent, and you are sent to preach the experiences that are about to unfold within yourself, to preach Christ, the true Christ…who he really is. So no man can ordain you to send you. And those who hear the story and believe it, yes, they can tell what they have heard from the one who experienced it. That’s good, very good, but the one he sends, he knows the ripeness of that tree and it’s just about to burst into flower. So he calls him in advance and sends him. And the one command ringing in his ear is “Time to act!” Don’t postpone it, don’t keep putting it off…time to act.310 ¶24

You’ll always feel as Paul felt unqualified. He said, I’m not a voice. I have a thorn in my side. They laugh at my physical limitations. Moses did not volunteer; he was drafted. So, when no one volunteers for the job, you are called, you’re drafted, and then you’re sent. When you are sent, you flounder because you always feel unqualified. Your background doesn’t qualify you. But he knows best, because no scholar can arrive at these conclusions. You’re not a scholar. He didn’t ask you if you wanted it, he said, “My grace is sufficient for you.” Three times he prayed to take it from him. My grace is sufficient…I will be your voice. I’ll speak, I’ll put you aside and I’ll speak, but you’ll be the instrument through which I’ll speak. For in this instrument I’ll unfold the flowers and bring to completion my plan which is my Word.310 ¶25

When they’re completed…no one knows the time, and you don’t have to ask when. The tree is in full bloom any moment of time you call him into an entirely different world, clothed in the one form, the form of the risen Christ. Completely transformed into the one body, that of the risen Christ. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *310 ¶26

Don’t let it shock you, don’t be disturbed when I tell you how great you are. This is not to flatter you, because no mortal tongue could tell you how truly great you really are. When I talk to you I’m talking to God! I’m talking to God who deliberately imposed this restriction upon himself. And before he did it, he had a plan, a plan to bring himself back to where he was but enhanced and expanded beyond the wildest dreams.310 ¶27

We’re closing tonight for just a little while. We’ll be back on the 19th of October. If you’re on the mailing list, you’ll receive a notice. We’ll have a small ad in the paper, but not everyone gets the paper…but if you are on the list you’ll receive a notice. If you are not on the list and you would like to be on the list for the purpose of receiving a notice, may we have your name and address? I assure you we do not use the list for any other purpose. We never share it around and do not solicit. It’s only to let you know I am in town and where we’re conducting the meetings.307 ¶1

Well, this being the last night, I thought I would make it a sort of summary and bring back to your mind the things that I have tried to say, how successfully I do not know. Your results are, really, the only indicator I have. If you realize your objectives, if you really had a goal when you came here and applied this technique and you realized it, well, then to that extent I have succeeded.307 ¶2

So when we discuss the law, I want you to know that you are the operant power; it doesn’t operate itself. If I say to you imagining creates reality, I mean it. But you may know that and to a certain degree believe it, but not quite trust it. And you’ve got to trust it—that when you imagine an end, don’t be concerned with the means, just the end, and really believe it. That’s the only act, really, that you’re called upon to do. I am not saying that you’re not going to act thereafter; but your act, your real act is simply complete faith in the reality of the imaginal act.307 ¶3

So when I know what I want and conceive a scene implying the fulfillment of my dream, and re-enact that scene in my Imagination until it takes on certain tones of reality, certain feelings of naturalness, and then I believe in it, well, then I have done my part. That is the act.307 ¶4

Then I’ll be forced to move across a certain bridge of incidents to bring to pass that which I imagined as the end. I could not in eternity devise the means necessary to bring it to pass.307 ¶5

Man gets completely lost in means. I know from experience that I could not have devised the means; yet on reflection it seemed so natural. It seemed so natural, you say to yourself, well, it would have happened anyway. It’s the most normal, natural unfolding of a picture after the individual completely accepts the end as fact. That’s what I have been trying to say to everyone here.307 ¶6

We identify Imagination with God—your own wonderful human Imagination. So we close the gap between God and man by identifying God with human Imagination. We have scriptural support for this claim. But aside from that, my visions allow me to claim it from experience. But if you haven’t had the vision to claim it from experience, believe me it’s true. Your own wonderful human Imagination is God.307 ¶7

Listen to these words, “The reproofs of those who reprove you have fallen on me.” This you will find in Paul’s letter to the Romans the 15th chapter . He is actually quoting from the 69th chapter of the Book of Psalms . The Greek translation used the word reprove rather than the word insult. In the Hebrew it is insult, “The insults of those who insulted you have fallen on me.” That’s in the 69th Psalm. Paul puts these words into the mouth of Christ. Now I’m going to say to you, all the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. Well, then I must be the very core of you, because you reacted; you heard the reproach and you reacted. I am telling you they fell on me. Now I turn to another party and I say the same thing to the other party, “The reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen on me.” Well, then if I’m the core of you and the core of the other, then you must be one and the three of us one. And we’re only masked. So we’re wearing a mask, because behind the mask we must be one if the reproaches of those who reproached you have fallen on me.307 ¶8

So, now we go to another passage and take it from John. He tells a story, he said, “I will tell you these before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he” . Now, you think a man is speaking to disciples, to men. No, you heard a story. The story of Jesus is an acted parable and this acted parable must be experienced and will be experienced in the depths of every being in this world. So he tells a story, he said, “I will tell you the story before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he.”307 ¶9

On the surface, a man is talking to men. No, I heard the story, and when I heard it I believed it, and so I started my journey in the world, confidant that the day will come that I will know I am he. That’s what I’m told.307 ¶10

Start the journey…you seem to be nobody, a slave, enslaved in a strange and foreign land. But I tell you, the day will come, having accepted it (you acted on faith and you start the journey) and the day will come you will know and say in the depths of your own soul, from experience, I am he. I am what?—Christ Jesus! That’s what you’ll know. You will know you are the God of scripture, and you will know it from the experiences foretold you.307 ¶11

“All was foretold me, naught could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be” . Yes, what the Spirit would feel like, how it would sound, after all that was foretold me has come to pass. It wasn’t a pleasant story; it was a horrible story! I’d be enslaved, injured, tormented, but at the very end I would be the very being who conceived the drama and who plays the drama. And in the end, just one, I am he.307 ¶12

So, this is what I’ve tried to get over, that you will dwell upon the fact that I am he. Don’t point to another…don’t say Neville is. Neville is not the being. Don’t point to any being in this world. In the depths of your own soul, I am he. You will know it, for everything said of this central figure of scripture you’re going to experience. When you experience it, well, then I am he; for only Christ is resurrected; only Christ is supernaturally born; only Christ is called “my lord, my Father” by David. And only Christ who claimed that he is the Son of man is lifted up in the manner in which Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. And only Christ was the one in whom the dove, which symbolized the bodily presence of the Holy Spirit, descended and sealed the work as finished. And so, when these things happen to you—and one after the other will happen to you—well, then you will know that I am he.307 ¶13

So you and I are personified as the simple one called Mary, the innocent one. “And blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of what was spoken unto her from the Lord” . Then who is Mary? It was spoken unto me, unto you. Am I that womb? I am that womb; so are you.307 ¶14

And just as the sperm in this land of shadows so easily penetrates the surface of an egg, although the outer part of the egg has no holes in it, either before or after fertilization, so “the word of God” he is called—and Christ is the word of God, the power and the wisdom of God—so I heard the story and it penetrated me and fertilized me. Well, the sperm of God will bear his image, and so the sperm of God is the power and the wisdom of God; and it’s called in scripture Jesus Christ. Read it in the first chapter, the 24th verse, of 1st Corinthians: “And Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”307 ¶15

So, he sends his word and his word cannot return empty, but it must accomplish that whereof it is sent and completely fulfill its purpose .307 ¶16

And so, I heard the Word, we all heard the Word. And having heard it, in a way still unknown to this day—because no scientist knows how the sperm gets through the surface of the egg when there is no hole in that egg either before or after fertilization, yet it gets through; and what comes out is the image of that which sent it in…it bears the image of the father…and so it comes out.307 ¶17

So God penetrates man with himself; he actually becomes man. But his penetration of man is called in scripture his son, for he’s making me his son by sending into me the power and the wisdom of himself, and that’s his son, and it’s called Christ Jesus. But it’s the image of the Father and so when it comes out it is God. And so he can say, “I and my Father are one”—carrying now within me both male and female. I do not have to divide my image anymore in order to create.307 ¶18

So, this is done in us. Now, another point I want to bring out tonight. I have a few ladies in the room tonight, no two know each other, and strangely enough out of three two asked the same question. So if two thirds are puzzled then two thirds present will be puzzled. This being the closing night for a while, it should be made clear.307 ¶19

The Bible speaks of two ages: this age and that age. This age is not from the cradle to the grave; it’s a stretch of time that mystics in their vision, like a Blake, he said, “I behold the vision of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years.” He said, I see the past, the present and the future all before me, the whole vision of 6,000 years, co-existing. You and I come upon it moment after moment after moment. But on a higher level it all co-exists, as though I rose above the earth to see the earth existing altogether, and not having to travel from here to Europe, to come piece after piece. So take not only space this way but take time that way, and see time co-existing, all the events within it. So, he speaks of this age and calls it the “age of death.” Now he speaks of that age and he calls it the “age of immortality, eternal life.”307 ¶20

Now, the wise men of the day, not believing in immortality, not believing even in survival, said to him, “Master, Moses in the law taught that if a man marries and leaves no offspring, having brothers the brothers should marry the widow and raise up seed for his brother. Well, there were seven brothers; the first married and died leaving no offspring; then the second brother took her and he died leaving no offspring; and the third took her and he died leaving no offspring. Eventually the seven married her and all seven died leaving no offspring, and then the woman died. Now tell us, Master, whose wife is he in the resurrection?” Not believing in the resurrection, whose wife is she? And the answer is this,307 ¶21

The sons of this age—now that’s a long stretch, 6,000 years—those in this age of death, they procreate and are born. We have it in our Bible in other translations, “they marry and are given in marriage.” But the Greek word is far better translated “procreate and are born.” “But those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age they neither procreate nor are they born, for they cannot die any more” .307 ¶22

That little sentence “they cannot die anymore” implies all who are not resurrected will die again. In other words, they are restored to life to marry, to procreate, to be born, and have the same things we have here.307 ¶23

My own experience bears it out. I move into that world and it’s just like this world. The people are solid as I am solid, they suffer as I suffer, they worry as I worry…they do everything I do here. It’s the world of death, and yes they are afraid of dying, too, because they die…all the things here. It’s not completed in a little span of three score and ten. So this age takes in the whole vast structure of incubation; and then you and I, one by one, are lifted out.307 ¶24

He goes on to tell us, for they’re now called sons of the resurrection, sons of God.307 ¶25

And then he ends with the Sadducee, who is like today’s modern atheistic scientist. Not every scientist is an atheist or even an agnostic but many are; and we have a large society today who are atheistic or agnostic. But, he represents the mind, that state of consciousness that would challenge the vision of the mystic.307 ¶26

You cannot explain to anyone to their satisfaction what you mean by a world beyond the range of the senses.307 ¶27

Yet I know from experience that this world does not terminate at that point where my senses cease to register it. For I sat in a chair, not once, many times, sat on a bed, on a couch, and suddenly I see a world as real as this, a world I should not see. If reason dictates my life I shouldn’t see it, but I can’t deny I’m seeing it.307 ¶28

Then consciousness follows vision and I step into the world that I am contemplating, and the world is just as real as this. I explore it. And people walk by clothed as you are clothed; they’re wearing dresses, they wear suits. They are people as we are, and the world is just like this, three-dimensional, not numberless dimensions, three dimensions just like this.307 ¶29

Then you’re completely shut out from the world or that section of that time; for it’s still the same world only a different section of time. So you either slip back in time or you slip forward in time, because the whole thing is a circle. And there you find people. Then you remember where you were in this section of time.307 ¶30

Then, in my case, I used feeling and feeling brought me back. That’s why I stress it from experience. For had I not remembered that experience of mine where feeling took me out of this section of time into another section and the same feeling brought me back into this section, I would have been shut out.307 ¶31

Last year in San Francisco this very successful surgeon [...], he said, “Neville, I am in surgery all day, and may I tell you, seven days a week I’m in surgery, and ten percent of all autopsies all over the world, but ten percent—whether it be here, Europe, China, Africa, no matter where you go—there is no physical cause of death, none whatsoever. You can dissect it from beginning to end and you cannot find any reason for the death of that body. So what you said tonight simply supports our claim that something happened and he couldn’t get back; for there’s no reason for that body to have died. It should not have died…there isn’t one, but not one, little cause for death.” And this is from the surgeon himself. This is not someone who read it in a book that might have been some fictitious book; here is one who had two years at Mayo in surgery.307 ¶32

He said to me the same night, “I came in with other doctors and here this man was dead, we all agreed he was dead, and all ought to sign the death…he’s dead. Then suddenly while we’re still in the room just about to depart he sits up and he turns to us and tells us, ‘It’s thinner than you think!’—the veil between the two— ‘It’s thinner than you think!’” He didn’t fall back and die, he came out. He was a very prominent man. That’s why five doctors were in that room and they all agreed that man is dead by every test known to medical science. He sits up in their presence and announces the fact that it is thinner than you think.307 ¶33

“Another one, I came into the room, she was my patient, as I came in she sat right straight up in bed and said to me, ‘I am dead!’ and, Neville, she was. At that very moment every examination proved she was dead; she announced it.”307 ¶34

So he said, “I don’t understand these mysteries and I am a doctor. I’ve done nothing in my life but medicine; I’m a surgeon, in surgery all day, every day.” He never missed one of my meetings, because something he heard the first morning intrigued him, and it was related to this thing with this very prominent man in our country who returned and announced, “It’s thinner than we think!”307 ¶35

And may I tell you, it is. It’s so thin! To sit in a chair and suddenly you see a world just as real as this world. There isn’t anything here that you can call more real, just like this, but you shouldn’t be seeing it. It isn’t there…it shouldn’t be there. A simple wall, a bureau, a painting on the wall, that’s all you should see and you aren’t seeing that at all. Then consciousness follows vision and you step into it. And to yourself you are real. You are seen by other people. They see you, you talk to them and they hear you. So everything is just like this.307 ¶36

So I hope I’ve made it clear from my own experience, and that is, there are two ages that the Bible speaks of. This age, which you can stretch it 6,000 years, where no one really dies—they’re all restored, unfinished business, lessons to be learned. And you and I have no choice in the matter. It’s automatically determined where we are placed in this vast world, for lessons unfinished or lessons not conquered—for to him who overcometh I will give it. And then man goes through all the problems. Finally, when we least expect it, suddenly and vertically, while we walk this long stretch of time, we are resurrected.307 ¶37

Resurrected, just as told you in scripture, to find yourself in the tomb of your skull where God himself entered. For when you find yourself in that skull, may I tell you, there is no opening, just like an egg, but you know it’s your skull. You don’t see these sockets of the eyes. Were I in a skull and there’s no flesh on it, I should look through sockets; and the mouth and the ears, all these should be open. But when you find yourself in your skull and you are in your skull, it’s sealed, completely sealed like an egg.307 ¶38

So, the Word of God penetrated and got through, although on the outside of the egg there is no opening either before or after fertilization.307 ¶39

So, God fertilized his emanation. We are his emanation, yet his bride ‘til the sleep of death is past. So we are the grand emanation of the woman called Eve, and he’s the grand man called Adam. He took upon himself that limitation and then comes this emanation. Then his Word, his plan, his purpose, fertilized us and it grows in us.307 ¶40

Well, what can grow in me if the sperm that entered me came from God? “All ends run true to origins”—if my origin is God, my end is God. If my origin is a worm, as our scientists teach us, the end is a worm. If the origin is anything, then for the end it’s going to be the same thing. I can’t plant an apple seed and expect something other than an apple. It won’t come out. So if God planted himself in me and buried himself in me, only God can come out. Nothing but God could grow from this egg if I be his emanation.307 ¶41

So he states so clearly the signs that will appear. He only really gives us one; he tells us, these things will happen and you will know I am he. Forget someone on the outside now; they’re going to happen to you. Having heard them, you will know when they happen I am he.307 ¶42

He said, “You want a sign? I’ll give you one sign; there should be no other sign but the sign of Jonah…that’s the only sign.” Well, the word Jonah is Hebrew for dove. That’s when the work is finished. When the work is completed and he unveils it the last time, it’s that of the dove descending upon you in bodily form and smothering you with kisses. That is when the image is exactly as he wants.307 ¶43

He told you the story of his plan, of his purpose, and “As I have planned it,” said he, “so shall it be, as I have purposed, so shall it stand” . No one in the world is going to change it, in spite of all the plots and plans of men. He will take every plot of ours, when we try to control the world, and he will use us like the Assyrian staff to further his will for man, which is simply to bring out of man his image, for that’s his purpose.307 ¶44

So in the end, there aren’t two of us, only one. For if I am his emanation yet his bride, and he must leave everything and cleave to me until we become one flesh, well, then when we actually are one—so I am his image, not just a little bit like him; I am the very being that he is—well, then he awakes.307 ¶45

So in scripture all the commands to awake are directed to God. Here, from the 44th chapter of the Book of Psalms : “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever!” And then in the 78th Psalm : And the Lord awoke as from a dream and then he called David…just from a dream the Lord awoke.307 ¶46

So in the beginning, when we are told a deep, profound sleep fell upon Abraham after Abraham received the Promise, not a thing is said about Abraham waking. He received the promise of a son. Isaac must not be thought of as the result of generation. Isaac must be thought of as the shaping of the unbegotten, for God is the unbegotten—no father, no mother, no genealogy, no beginning, no end.307 ¶47

This unbegotten is shaping itself. So Isaac, the promised son, is not the result of man’s passion. This we can take and equate it with the 1st chapter of John: “Born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” . No human passion, none of these things, no human parentage, only God, and it comes out of man.307 ¶48

So he actually fertilized us with himself…and he and his power are one. Man and his power are one. Then out…as it grows to maturity the image breaks the shell and you come out of that skull.307 ¶49

Then all the great imagery of scripture surrounds you: The witnesses to the event, the child signifying the event wrapped in swaddling clothes, and the wind. You hear it so…it’s an unearthly wind. You can’t describe it until you hear it. It’s a strange unearthly wind. It’s all centered in your head.307 ¶50

Then all you can do is go and tell it. Tell it to all who will hear it—for they’re going to experience it anyway—until that moment in time when the garment is taken off and then you come into your full inheritance. And your inheritance is the body of God, for there is only God; there’s nothing but God in the world. And the purpose of it all can’t be seen from this level, not in its fullness, and so we war with each other.307 ¶51

But let me go back, “the reproaches of those who reproach thee fell upon me”; well, if they fell upon me, I’m the very heart of your being. That’s why only recently one could hear the voice from that one body saying to her, “Do not be afraid! I am with you always” .307 ¶52

So, in that day, you will know and you will say “I am he,” and you’ll stop looking for Christ coming out of the pages of history, stop looking for some Christ to return.307 ¶53

In today’s Time magazine, under the religious section, now they’re going to change this transubstantiation—it doesn’t fit in with the modern day—so they’re going to give it a new name and call it transignification. So it’s not the actual substance that you eat of the body of God when you take the wafer, and not the actual blood when you drink the wine, but it signifies a mysterious something. Why didn’t they say that unnumbered centuries ago? So one little girl asked the priest, “Having eaten of the body of God (the little wafer) I can’t now eat ice cream because God’s head would get cold.” This is all in that story today, today’s Time magazine.307 ¶54

So she took it in the most literal form—she ate his body. Well, we’re not, I hope we’re not, carnivorous to that extent; we aren’t cannibals. We were at one time, possibly. But we don’t eat human flesh and yet they tell you “Eat it.”307 ¶55

No, when you eat the body of God you absorb his message, you hear the story.307 ¶56

May I tell you that the gospel is not a human production; it’s not a product of human wisdom. For the human mind, in its quest for the meaning of life and for God, could never have conceived it. No one could sit down and conceive the story as in scripture. It was all revealed, the whole thing was revealed. It came through man just as we are, came through man so adjusted for this communication in the depths of the soul, and they saw it in vision, and simply wrote exactly what they saw.307 ¶57

They told what they had experienced. Then, men either believe it or they don’t believe it.307 ¶58

So every time that you believe it, well, then there’s fertilization. You hear the story…millions haven’t heard it, billions haven’t heard it…so they’ll think [...].307 ¶59

As someone said to me today over the phone, “I can’t make it tonight, I’m not up to [...] But why so long?”307 ¶60

No one is delayed from hearing with acceptance to birth, same thing. Many hear it, but they don’t believe it and so they remain in the world of death.307 ¶61

Here is a story we were discussing the other night…it was last Sunday afternoon…a friend of mine, he works for Hughes, and he’s working on this fantastic space thing, and he was telling about the July 14th when they’re going to take pictures of Mars. He’s a wonderful chap, all excited about what is going to come back on the 14th of July…twenty pictures. It’ll take eight hours to get a picture back from Mars. So he’s going to have all this and he’s so thrilled about it.307 ¶62

Then he said, “We aren’t really trying to go to the moon—the moon is only a spaceship—it’s interstellar space. Anyone who can actually find a spaceship…we can put a spaceship up. The moon is a perfect spaceship,” he said, “but we want to get beyond that to Mars and all these things. If the pictures show the canals that we think they will, we will know there is life there.”307 ¶63

So I said to him—he’s a very close friend of mine—I said, “Have you ever read the book called Man and the Stars by Sir James Jeans?”307 ¶64

He said, “No.” Well, I said, in this very tiny little book a man spent all of his life studying the stars—considered one of the world’s truly great astrophysicists—he said, “The more I study it the more it reminds me of a huge brain, and we are but brain cells in the mind of the dreamer.” And someone asked him, “If you don’t believe that all of these fabulous things are alive, as we are alive, how do you account for this tiny little thing called the earth where it’s the only cradle of biological experiment?” This was his answer, he said, “I have looked all over, mathematically, telescopically, and I can’t see any place in the universe that could cradle what we call man but the earth. It either lacks the necessary water, it lacks this, it has too much of that, and I can’t see any place but earth. And all I can say is this, having seen the orgasm of man through a microscope here, I saw potential billions of men, and one comes out. Well, this is God’s creative act and only one could actually bring to pass his plan, and his plot, and his purpose.” That was Jeans.307 ¶65

So my friend is hoping that he’s going to find in these pictures…he expects twenty pictures to come back and they’ll come back in eight hours. It takes eight hours to travel there. Now, we shot the stuff, oh, months ago, and he claims it will go within 5,000 or 5,600 miles of the planet and it will bring these pictures back…and we’re all so excited and so eager about it!307 ¶66

And yet scripture speaks only of these two ages. It doesn’t deny the glory of the heavens. “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord and earth shows his wonderful handiwork.”307 ¶67

But the real revelation, as told in Hebrews, is when he sends his Son—when the Son comes forward! “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken unto us by a Son” . But no one knew that was the purpose, that a Son was coming out that was the image of God the Father, who was one with the Father, until he appeared.307 ¶68

Then, reading the ancient document which was God’s purpose as he revealed it through his prophets, he saw that all that was foretold happened in him; and could easily claim “I am he,” knowing that it was not something that one little being could claim. You will claim it and therefore if I am he and this one said that I am he, then the core of both is simply “I AM.” And that’s God’s name; there is no other name.307 ¶69

So when I claim it, you claim it, and others claim it, all are claiming “I am he.” So go tell them “I AM has sent you…that is my name forever, and by this name I will be known throughout all generations” . So when he awakens in us, we are God, and there is nothing but God.307 ¶70

Now to encourage everyone to apply it while we wait patiently for the unfoldment of the image, apply the law and become the man, become the woman that you want to be.307 ¶71

This morning’s mail brought me a letter from a friend who is here tonight. He said, “This, if you can use it, you can tell it to anyone. I decided to go the ballet, the Royal Ballet. Well, I didn’t send my check in when the announcement came that they were coming to the city. I should have, but I didn’t. Only a week ago I decided, well, there’s a certain party I want to take. When I made my decision to take a certain party, without getting the tickets, I invited the party. Then I called a friend of mine who’s a junior executive at the Hollywood Bowl, because in his capacity he could get all these things, and he said, ‘Oh, easiest thing in the world! I’ll get you a pair.’307 ¶72

Well, this was the early part of the week. Thursday came by and I didn’t hear from him so I thought I better call him. Then he said to me, ‘I didn’t realize what an enormous demand that there is today for the tickets for the Royal Ballet, but leave it to me, I’ll still make the effort and I’ll in some way get them.’307 ¶73

Well, Friday he didn’t call, Saturday morning he didn’t call, and my friend went off to Laguna Beach for the day. When he came home late that night he thought it was too late to call.307 ¶74

So Sunday morning he thought, I must give him time to really get out of that bed before I disturb him. So he waited. When he thought this was a reasonable hour then he called him. He said, ‘I’ve been trying all day Saturday to get you and I couldn’t get any response…I have two in the seventeenth row of the balcony.’”307 ¶75

Well, my friend said, “That’s not what I heard!”…not to the man…he accepted them. He said, “Leave them at the box office and I’ll pick them up.” But he said to himself, that’s not what I heard. I heard I was actually in this crowded theater enjoying the most heavenly ballet, because the two great ones are in it. And he knew that he sat in a favorable seat and everything was perfect. He heard the man say to him over the phone, “I have good seats for you”—but not any seventeenth row in the balcony.307 ¶76

So when he went down on Sunday, this enormous crowd waiting for returns, because everything is sold out, not a seat in the house, and there are many people waiting in the event that some ticket is turned back at the last moment, and they can pick it up. He goes to the box office and to his surprise a man that he’s known for years is the ticket seller. So he called for his tickets, and just facetiously, as he said in his letter, when I got the tickets, because they were in the seventeenth row in the balcony, I said to him, “Tell me, Max, are these in the theater?” Well, it struck his friend funnily and the friend said, “How would you like two in the first row?” He said, “I’d love it!”307 ¶77

So he pulls two seats from a little box and said, “Here they are. They are in the second row, right off the center aisle!”307 ¶78

So he got his two seats in the second row, right off the center aisle and there he saw these two heavenly dancers.307 ¶79

I haven’t seen him…I saw Fonteyn in New York and she is really tops. I think I’ve seen them all, but I haven’t seen this Russian. But Fonteyn, Margot Fonteyn…I have never seen anything like her. To get both together the same night!307 ¶80

So he simply knew exactly what he was doing.307 ¶81

In his letter he said, “If this would encourage anyone to apply imagining towards achieving objectives, tell it to them. It cannot fail you!”307 ¶82

But he said, “When I went home, when it didn’t come in, I began to think of means. I rejected the means, and still when he didn’t call me I began again to think of means. And occasionally, I must confess, to be honest I was a little bit depressed, because this was a friend and I was trying to do something great for him. I had invited him and I really wanted to put on a show as it were. I invited him and how can I turn him down now? I invited him before I bought the tickets, and as it came towards curtain time and no tickets, I tried to think of a thousand different kinds of means of getting them. I rejected it and went back to Imagination. I heard my friend at the Bowl, I heard his voice and I heard him call me by my name and tell me, I have your tickets for you. And I thanked him. Then I saw the crowd and I knew I was seeing it from a wonderful spot in the theater; and it even surpassed my expectations, second row, right off the center aisle.”307 ¶83

So that is why I ask you to share with me your results, that others may be encouraged when they hear how you applied this principle towards a definite end and it works.307 ¶84

It always will work if you know that you are the operant power and wait patiently for the veil to be taken away. For revelation is only unveiling; and you unveil the face of God in yourself, in the acts described in scripture as belonging only to Jesus Christ. And then they happen to you. Then you will know “I am he!”307 ¶85

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *307 ¶86

Now first, may I call your attention to the book table, you’ll find my books and the books that I recommend.307 ¶87

If you haven’t the little one called He Breaks the Shell, may I tell you, if you don’t want to buy it, borrow it from someone and just really read it. There are the steps, just as I experienced them, all supported by text from the scripture.307 ¶88

And so, that’s how he breaks the shell. The work is being done in the Silence, as told us in the Book of Philippians: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” . So when the image—for he’s the image of the invisible God—and when that Unbegotten is formed in you and the image is perfect, he breaks the shell, and out you come in these wonderful acts as recorded in scripture. If you haven’t read it, then read it!307 ¶89

Are there any questions, please?307 ¶90

Any other questions, please?307 ¶93

Now do put it into practice and when I return in October I hope I have dozens and dozens of wonderful letters. How you took this wonderful principle and applied it toward noble ends and realized them—not only for yourself but for others. Realize them for everyone in this world, for in the end we’re only one. Thank you.307 ¶96

Tonight’s subject is “Paul.” When we speak of these characters of the Bible we invariably think of men—it’s a person as you are, as I am—but the Bible is not secular history, not the smallest part of it is history as you and I understand it. It is sacred history. It is God’s plan of salvation beginning with the call of Abraham and culminating in the career of Jesus Christ. When I use the word Abraham I’m speaking of the eternal state of faith. With these characters, as we call them, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and so on, bear in mind they simply represent these eternal states through which the immortal man passes in this journey towards complete awakening as God the Father. So when I say culminates in Jesus Christ, I also take Jesus Christ as the eternal state. I speak of Paul, and you think, well, Paul certainly was a man, as you are a man, as I am a man. No, it’s a state that you and I enter. That’s the last state before the crown of glory which is Christ Jesus. Paul’s name is not mentioned in any ancient non-biblical source. You can’t find his name in anything outside of these early manuscripts. Naturally, after that the churches got together and wrote unnumbered volumes on the personality called Paul. But Paul is a state of consciousness as Abraham is, as Jesus Christ is. So here, we turn to Paul tonight.302 ¶1

It is said the word means “small.” His first name was Saul, which means “to enquire, to ask, to desire.” But the word Paul means “to desist, to stop, to come to an end.” It’s the end of the journey.302 ¶2

Paul was intense, in fulfillment of Revelation: “Would that you were either hot or cold, but because you are neither hot nor cold and are lukewarm, I spew you out.” There was nothing lukewarm about the state called Paul. When he persecuted, he went to the extreme. And when he was converted not from one religion to another, when he was transformed, he called it revelation, and then no one was more merciful, no one kinder. No one pursued the telling of the story more than that state.302 ¶3

Everyone enters that state. When he enters that state, he enters it from Saul, the state where he’s so furious, looking and looking.302 ¶4

His name first appears in the Book of Acts; he is consenting unto Stephen’s death. They are stoning Stephen, and when he heard the cry of Stephen, “O Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” he could hardly believe that man could reach the state where he is being stoned to death and holds nothing against those who are killing him. Unlike the blood of Abel that cried out for revenge, the blood of Stephen cries out for forgiveness. Like the last cry on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” Then you see that state, when man could forgive every being in the world for what he’s done.302 ¶5

Now the word Stephen means “crown.” If you take any passage of the Bible…in the New Testament where the word crown is used—as Paul said: “The time of my departure is come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness”—that word crown is the word Stephen. When we are told, one appeared like a son of man and on his head was a golden crown, the word translated crown is Stephen.302 ¶6

So when you are in the state of Paul, you see the entire book differently. So Abraham, Isaac, Jacob are no longer persons to you, they are simply states, eternal states. The individuals are but representatives or visions of those eternal states which were revealed to mortal man in the series of divine revelations as they are written in the Bible. They are simply signifying by their names the states of consciousness that man must pass through. So when you are in the state of Paul you see the entire book differently. You don’t see persons, but you see them as these eternal spiritual states of the soul through which the immortal man passes. So he said, “From now on I regard no one from a human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.”302 ¶7

So until you reach the state of Paul, Christ Jesus is going to be to the man not yet in the state of Paul a little icon; and he’ll worship it as a man external to himself, and make some little image of him and hang him on the wall, or a painting, and speak of his Lord Jesus Christ as something other than himself…not the eternal state toward which he’s moved.302 ¶8

So Paul is the state toward which everyone here is being moved. When he hits that state, the visions begin to unfold.302 ¶9

And so, he makes the claim, and I say he advisedly…I’m speaking now of a man because it’s easier to just call it now a man, because it takes a man to externalize and express the state. The state of love needs a man as its agent; the state of error, the state of honor, the state of truth all these states need man to externalize them and to express them. So in this state called the state of Paul I will now speak of him as a man, because it’s easier than to stop every moment and remind you I’m speaking only of a state. So we call Paul “the man.” In his letter to the Galatians: “Paul an apostle, not by men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the father who raised him from the dead.”302 ¶10

Now I know from experience the drama at the very end when he’s finished the race and he’s kept the faith and the crown is waiting for him, the laurel crown of gold—it’s not a crown you see on the king’s head, it’s a halo of golden, liquid, pulsing, living light. It’s all over your head. It’s a pulsing, living golden light, as a result of having finished the race, that’s the crown, when you come to that state and the crown is waiting for you.302 ¶11

Paul makes the statement, he didn’t get this from a man, no man gave it to him, it came from a revelation of Jesus Christ. The gospel that I preach is not man’s gospel. For I did not get it from a man, nor was I taught it by man, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ: He saw the mystery of Jesus Christ, the way of salvation.302 ¶12

Now here is one that you would have thought because he stressed it so much, the importance of being resurrected; for resurrection begins the unfolding of the end and the descent of the dove consummates it, and there are four mighty acts. Paul in his letter to the Philippians makes the statement, “All that I may know of him and the power of his resurrection…that if possible I may attain to the resurrection from the dead…not that I have attained this or am perfect, but I press on to make it mine, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”302 ¶13

Now you would have thought that Paul, having been revealed the son of God, when he said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” For no man wearing the garment of flesh and blood not having the experience of who Jesus Christ really is could tell him anything… he couldn’t throw any light upon it. So he said, I will not discuss it with flesh and blood.302 ¶14

Yet here is the man who confesses that the Son was revealed to him. He describes the Son as the power and the wisdom of God.302 ¶15

In the Old Testament the power and the wisdom is personified as a little child in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. In this chapter the little boy speaks and he makes the statement, “God created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old.” How could you create without the creative power? So the creative power comes first, the wisdom and the power of God. He said, Before he brought forth any, the heavens, the earth…when he stretched out the foundations of the earth, “I was beside him like a little child, daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world.” Then he goes on and he warns us, “Listen to me…he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” Here is the little child speaking…always the little child that is the personification of the wisdom and the power of God.302 ¶16

Now he said this was revealed to him. But he would have thought if the whole drama as it unfolds at the end begins with the resurrection, he must have had the experience of resurrection. But he confesses to the Philippians he did not: “Not that I’ve obtained the resurrection, or am perfect, but I’ll press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.””302 ¶17

Well, that throws a great deal of light on two things that have happened in my life to two of my friends. One is here tonight, one I haven’t seen. He’s a lad now twenty-one, haven’t seen him since he told me the story three years ago. I pass this on not as a vision. I share it with you as an opinion. This state called Paul tells us in the 7th chapter of 1st Corinthians, “This is not from man, it’s not a revelation, but it is my opinion”…and he gives it as his opinion because it suited him.302 ¶18

Well, I’ve been trying to find out why the experience of the resurrection did not precede the birth in the case of the lad in San Francisco, in Sausalito, and my friend here. But other light has been thrown upon it from what they have told me.302 ¶19

Both have had the experience of the birth from above, both held the child in their arms, both had witnesses to the event. The one in Sausalito heard the voices coming from behind and they said, “He is born” and he walked off into space holding the Christ child in his arms. The one here, it came out of the same way from the forehead as it did my friend in Sausalito, right through the forehead; and he caught it, and held it in his arms as he walked up the stairs of his home. He heard the laughter behind him from the workmen getting ready to work. They were witnesses to the birth.302 ¶20

My friend up north said nothing of the resurrection and it comes first. My friend here has said he has not experienced the resurrection, but he has gone into that tomb of his skull time and time again and it’s completely empty. It’s empty…there is nothing more empty…”It’s the emptiest thing you could ever see, when I go in and explore.”302 ¶21

So I have concluded from this experience—and Paul’s letter to the Philippians when he confesses that he hadn’t see it—that his last time on the stage he made his exit the night of the resurrection and could not tell it. When we return here, we return here minus memory. The memory of that past is completely shut out. So he starts here not with the repetition—you can’t be resurrected twice—he starts here with an entirely different…what comes after the resurrection is the birth of the child. And then they go through, as one of them has gone through now the three of them, waiting now for the descent of the dove.302 ¶22

The lad up north unfortunately…he was an adopted son, wanted more than children who are normally brought into this world by married parents are wanted. He really was wanted and his adoptive parents put in their bid for him before he was born. If he came in blind, they would take him. If he came in crippled, they would take him. Deformed, they would take him. They just wanted that child regardless of how he came into this world. But, they didn’t tell him he was adopted. And the year that he was getting ready to go east to Phillips Exeter, a prep school for boys, one of the finest prep schools possibly in the world—he was a straight A student here in Sausalito—some neighbor in the neighborhood had reasons which were not merciful reasons to [...] the boy against his parents and he told him they were sending him east to get rid of him…not for his education, just to get him out of the house and get rid of him. That’s as far removed as anything could be. So, he went for two years, straight A right through, refused to go back the third year…said they couldn’t teach him anything. Said that no matter what they said they couldn’t teach him. English…he was a master in English. Blake to him was like reading just the ABCs, and how he loved his Blake.302 ¶23

When he came home, he refused to live at home, ran away, and they’ve never heard from him since. So I haven’t seen him or heard from him to question him concerning the unfolding of the pictures. I only saw him right after the birth of the child.302 ¶24

So in his case I can only offer it as my opinion. When the state of Paul is asking and hoping that he will know him and know the power of his resurrection, that if possible he too will attain this power of the resurrection, I say he has had it or he would not be born from above. I say my friend here tonight has had it. That’s why he goes into the empty tomb, finds himself at intervals exploring his skull and it’s so empty.302 ¶25

So that’s the state of Paul. When anyone reaches that state, he’s on the verge of complete awakening, awakening as Christ Jesus—Jesus Christ the power and wisdom of God returning to God.302 ¶26

The whole thing is but the redemption of Jesus Christ. The whole vast world is only the theater for the redemption of Jesus Christ: “Jesus Christ in you is the hope of glory.” Were he not in you, he couldn’t emerge from you. Were he not in you, you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t live. Well, that’s the power of God, the wisdom of God. There is nothing but Jesus Christ.302 ¶27

But it takes that long, long journey from the call of Abraham, the call of faith when the story is told, the most incredible story in the world, that in spite of the fact that you will appear to die and are buried with your fathers, that in spite of the seeming exit from this world and the decay of the body: “I will raise up after you a son that will come forth from your body; I will be his father and he shall be my son.” Well, that’s the most incredible promise in the world. But Abraham, the state called Abraham, could believe—he thought nothing too difficult for God. So he was willing to go into a foreign land and become enslaved and not own one square inch of it; but when he comes out he receives an inheritance that would dwarf all the things of earth. He would come out the blessed one that he saw afar off.302 ¶28

So Paul is not a man. You are a person, I am a person, and we pass through these states. When you reach this state of Paul you may be a very difficult person to live with because you’re so intense. You’re either hot or your cold. And the things that today you would condemn, your friends will wonder what’s happened to you because tomorrow you praise it, as though you’ve never condemned it. Today you go because you think it’s the way towards awakening and you assume the prohibitions of not smoking, not drinking, not eating meat, fish, fowl, assuming the vows of celibacy, and you will take a platform and swear by it, believing it. Then, without knowing you do all these things and you’re equally intense in promoting the opposite. That is Paul, the state of Paul.302 ¶29

Then comes the revelation, and the revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ. He doesn’t see him now as a man. Before that he thought that Jesus Christ was a man, a unique man, a different man. Now he sees that’s not so at all: Jesus Christ is the way of salvation…and he discovers the way by revelation. Now he knows the truth concerning God’s plan of redemption.302 ¶30

So Paul, like all the characters are simply states of consciousness through which every individual must pass. I cannot tell what state you’re in at the moment; let no one try to judge it. If you know scripture, you can sense the state and see really where you are in the unfolding journey. But the characters of the New Testament are just as much states of consciousness as the characters of the Old Testament. But our churches got them together and they personified all and made them persons. So we have pictures of Paul, we have pictures of Peter, we have pictures of all these on the wall. We even go so far as to have a piece of bone and we say this is the bone of Peter…come and kiss it. It’s 2,000 years old, but come and kiss it and acquire merit if you kiss the bone. If you haven’t the courage to kiss it, well, then look at it…just to see it…and all this nonsense is given in the name of religion. Hasn’t a thing to do with religion. There is no such thing as Peter of flesh and blood, or Andrew, or John, or Thomas, or any of these characters; they are eternal states through which we pass. We pass through them all and come to that final one, where now you desist, where you stop, where you come to the end. And your name is changed from Saul to Paul. No longer are you inquiring, no longer are you delving into the things of man.302 ¶31

So he makes the statement, “Among the mature I teach wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of man or the rulers of this age. For it is a secret and a hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification.” It’s entirely different. All the wisdom of man and the rulers of men is doomed to pass away.302 ¶32

Don’t we see every day when a new periodical comes out, the Science magazine, that every month it changes or modifies last month’s predictions? What we thought concerning the atom at the turn of the century no one today who is a great physicist would conceive of that concept of the atom, and yet his will pass, too, at the end of the century. All that we think about the heavens, all that will pass, all theories, nothing based upon revelation.302 ¶33

So Paul said, I have a mystery, a secret and hidden mystery of God, which I preach and I teach. It was decreed by God before the ages for our glorification. So he’s speaking now only of his vision, and therefore he’s not disturbed. He said, “Henceforth, let no one bother me; for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”302 ¶34

What are the marks of Jesus? Well, they are ways of salvation, and these marks are on the body of one who has experienced them. The first mark is resurrection. It’s indelibly impressed upon you what the experience was …to find himself waking in his own skull…and to know this is the tomb where I was placed, when I don’t know. Someone thought me dead or they would not have placed me here. So here I was placed in the skull, a tomb that was hewn out of this rock, and it was completely sealed when I woke or was awakened. I never thought myself dead prior to this, but now the surroundings confirm the story of the Bible: I must have been dead, for this is a tomb and only the dead are placed in a tomb. And yet, that power that possessed you, the power of resurrection, and the whole thing awakened you. It’s an entirely different kind of a power, a different kind of an awakening than you’ve ever experienced before. Then you come out, you break the seal. There’s no witness to your exit from that tomb. There is no mention of witnesses in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to the resurrection. Only one person declares “he is risen,” but not any description of the nature of the resurrection, therefore, there’s no witness to it. You and you alone find yourself in this tomb; then you come out.302 ¶35

When you come out, you come out in the form of being born. You feel yourself the same matured being that you are, only the symbol of your birth is that of the little child. And here is a new birth in a new world, a new age, and here the symbol signifying your birth is right at the lowest point on the floor. Now there are witnesses to that. They do not see you, for you cannot be seen by their eyes. They belong to this world. But they see the symbol of your birth and they raise the symbol, the little infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, and they announce the fact that it is your child. Then you do exactly what you’re told in scripture, you take the child in your arms. Now you must depart: “For now let thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for I have seen thy salvation.” So here was the measure of the birth; then come the second, the third, and finally the fourth.302 ¶36

But because we are all witnesses to God’s word and the truth of God’s word, we linger for awhile until we’ve told it to the best of our ability. If you only find a remnant who will believe it, that’s all that matters. If in this audience tonight just ten percent would give ear to it and listen with attention and toy with the idea in the hope of understanding it, in the hope of accepting it, then my work is done. It doesn’t really matter…you don’t speak to the billions, to the millions…that means nothing: I send you to teach the remnant and tell them the truth of God’s word.302 ¶37

So this story is not as the whole vast world believes it to be. It never took place on earth in flesh and blood. It takes place in the depths of the soul of man. Hasn’t a thing to do with any man being born in a strange way, without a woman knowing a man. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. You are begotten of God, but it’s not in flesh and blood. You are Spirit, for God is Spirit. So he brings forth himself, his creative power, and it’s you. No loss of identity, none whatsoever, it’s all you.302 ¶38

And then we are gathered by these words “one by one” to form into a single being who is God. So in the end there is only God, and you coming to the very end, the fullness of it all, you are Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is simply the wisdom and the power and the Spirit of God brought into fullness…and you are it. No loss of individuality, no loss of identity.302 ¶39

But through Paul you will pass, everyone will pass. You can always tell the one who is not in him by his indifference (that it doesn’t matter), and if that is the attitude toward everything in this world, well then, he is not yet born. Because Paul was intense, consenting unto Stephen’s death, consenting unto violence. So he went to catch the people of the Way, for the earliest name given to the earliest Christians was “the people of the Way.” So he went with his arms—his arms were credentials from the Sanhedrin—that if he found anyone belonging to the Way, male or female, he would bring them bound into Jerusalem and persecute them. And while he started, in this 9th chapter of Acts, he was blinded by the truth of the mystery of Jesus Christ, and now Jesus Christ becomes a person in the telling.302 ¶40

You and I take the phenomena called death and we personify it, don’t we? We speak of the cold hands of death, jaws of death, the king of terrors.302 ¶41

Well, here is a true story. Seven years ago when we lived on El Comino, I rose early one morning as I always did, got breakfast for my daughter and saw her off to school. Then went to my little library and started reading the Bible. Well, just about 10:30 or eleven my wife came out and we would have brunch then. Well, she said, “I had the most interesting experience this morning. I woke, sat up in bed, and you were on the bed and your arms were around me, and I said to you, ‘Oh, I’m so glad it’s you, not someone else who is holding me, because in my dream someone held me tightly, and how I dislike being held, but now that I see it was you, well now, I’m relieved.’” So I said, “Do you think I would let someone else hold you this way?” and a little smile. With this she looks up and as she looks up a hand comes out and takes her hand. I looked towards what would be the face bearing that hand if a hand held her hand. So I looked and I remarked, “Oh, my friend Death.” She then said to me, “I don’t want to die!” I said, “Are you afraid to die?” She said, “No, I’m not afraid to die, that’s all right.” At that statement the hands disengaged. Then, she found herself waking. She was not sitting up, I was not in the room on the bed, I was in the far room. She is coming to and she is under the sheets, flat on her back. Then she woke up to discover she was dreaming within a dream.302 ¶42

In the depths of her being she was having this experience, where death became personified—at least in her case to the extent of a hand, the human hand. So when we speak of the hand of death, she’s had the actual experience of seeing the symbol of death.302 ¶43

And may I tell you, several years ago she went through a state where she entertained not any violent exit but did entertain among her feelings from a feeling of weakness that she hadn’t long here and she seriously entertained the feeling of death. In fact, she made preparations with her effects, to whom they would go, this, that and the other, she was so serious about the exit from this world. So she held the hand of death. We personify it.302 ¶44

So why not personify these states? Death is a state. It seems a terminal state; it seems the end but it isn’t the end really. You die here to find yourself restored to life, everyone. The only one who is not restored to life is the one who by resurrection is “life himself.”302 ¶45

So you’re told in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke, discussing the resurrection—for the wise men of the day were called Sadducees and they did not believe in the resurrection. So they asked him, to trip him up, and they told the story of Moses, that he said that if a man marries a woman and he dies leaving no offspring, his brother should marry her to raise up offspring for him. Well, there were seven brothers. The first married, left no offspring. Then the second took her and he died leaving no offspring. Then the third, he died…and finally the seventh married her, and the seventh died and left no offspring; eventually she died. So the question is whose wife is she in the resurrection? He said to them, “You do not know the scripture. The children of this age marry and they are given in marriage. But those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, and to the resurrection from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, because they cannot die anymore”.302 ¶46

Well, that would imply unless they are resurrected they continue to die, because they cannot die anymore, for now they are sons of God and sons of the resurrection. So here he answers the proverb.302 ¶47

You and I, if I’m Paul here now, I know from my experiences it’s my last in this age. Had I not had these experiences with the knowledge of scripture, I would know I would be restored to life. Long before you could take the garment and put it in the morgue, I would be restored to life, inserted into a section of time of this same wonderful play; that section best suited for the work that is being done in me and that work is to transform me into the likeness and image of God. When that image is complete, then I will pass through the story called Jesus Christ. That’s my last state, and the last state comes with these four majestic events, beginning with the resurrection and ending with the descent of the dove which is the seal of approval of the work that is done.302 ¶48

That work is simply to form man into the image of God. For he said, I will not give my image, I will not give my glory to another—“I tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake I did it, for my own sake, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another”. So he has to make it the perfect image of himself to give you himself; for he actually gives you himself…that’s grace. So because it is a gift, he has to bring you to that state that you can receive the gift. We pass through all these furnaces of affliction until the image is perfect. When it’s perfect, then God becomes man that man may become God.302 ¶49

So this story of Paul…when you read him his name appears first in the 6th, no, the 7th chapter of Acts. Then you come into the 9th, and the last thirteen chapters are devoted exclusively to the story of Paul. Now bear in mind the Book of Acts in the early days formed a part of the Book of Luke. It was only one book Luke-Acts. But the early fathers separated them and ended the gospel of Luke, and then brought the gospel of John, and divided Luke from its own book called Acts. If you read the very opening statement in the Book of Acts, it carries on the ending of the Book of Luke…so it’s one book.302 ¶50

Well, if the story in Luke is not historically true…for these evangelists, call them by any name, they were not describing events of the past as historians; rather, they desired to pass on the message of salvation as they themselves experienced salvation. But no one knows these anonymous writers—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are not names of people. They are, well, simply anonymous names. So the writer of Luke wrote Acts. And if all the characters of Luke are states of consciousness, then we’re not going to stop it abruptly because the fathers divided the books, and put one and called it the Acts of the Apostles, and called the Apostles men— they are states.302 ¶51

You may be the wisest man in the world. A friend of mine sent Your Faith is Your Fortune, my book, to this professor of physics in Australia. He wrote back immediately he wouldn’t read the book. First of all, the title offended him. Your faith is your fortune, for without faith you would never have a fortune…it is your fortune. He said it was a play on the statement, your face is your fortune. Then again, what offended him was my chapter on the disciples, to treat them as psychological states rather than persons. That offended him because he is in the state of consciousness where scripture, if secularly true, it is all secular history. And it’s not! It’s sacred history.302 ¶52

For when I meet a person like David and David is supposed to have lived 3,000 years before I was born…I come into the presence of David and I am his senior, I am his father. I always have been his father, but I forgot it in the interval. And here, David calls me Father. How could he then if I am here in this Century and he lived a thousand B.C.? All of these characters come after us; they don’t precede us.302 ¶53

Nothing comes before Jesus Christ. Nothing comes before Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ is the power and the wisdom of God. It is in man, buried in man, doing a noble work of transforming man into the image of God. When that work is complete, as we’re told in Philippians, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion”—when?—“at the day of Jesus Christ”. And the day of Jesus Christ is when suddenly you resurrect. It begins on that day of your resurrection, which is his resurrection, because you see no one else. You resurrect. Now you know who you are—you are the power, the wisdom of God, but you thought until that moment it was another, a unique being who lived 2,000 years ago, and it wasn’t so at all. It’s all in us.302 ¶54

Now, you can’t force it. I can simply expose you to this story as told in scripture. Maybe it’s too much of a shock this night if you hear it for the first time. It may be a shock…you may be more comforted if you believe that a man, a unique man but a man, who formerly was God and emptied himself of his Godhood and took upon himself the form of man, and became a slave, even obedient unto death, the death on the cross.302 ¶55

Where he is buried is here…that’s his tomb. When he awakens, it’s you, not another, just you. You will come out, and then you will know the true story of the birth of Christ. You will see the same little infant—it is the symbol of your birth from above. You will find David, as told you in the 89th Psalm, and he will call you “my Father.”302 ¶56

Then you are the Son of man, for only the Son of man ascends: “No one ascends into heaven but he who descended, the Son of man”. When he ascends he ascends like a serpent. And so, it’s you who ascends and you do it just like a serpent. Now you know who the Son of man is.302 ¶57

Then you’re told that the dove came out of the nowhere and descended on the Son of man and smothered him with kisses. The dove will come and descend upon you and smother you with kisses, giving the approval of the Holy Spirit. The dove is simply the symbol of the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t fly away…while you are holding him in your hand and he is kissing you, the whole thing dissolves.302 ¶58

So Paul…though you may find it easier, those who are not initiated into the mysteries, to simply talk about him as a man, when you read the Bible try to bear in mind it’s the state you must enter; that intense state where you will destroy everything, and then turn around and protect the thing that you would destroy. And that is the cry from Stephen (the crown), “Do not hold this sin against them.” It could only be paralleled by the cry on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”302 ¶59

The day will come everyone will have the experience. The one who has had it so far is not better, not selected above others; it is simply he was called in God’s own good time. We are told in scripture, we are called according to his purpose. He is building this new world, and we are the living, living stones in the new world. So we are called; as he needs you he calls you.302 ¶60

So we are told in Romans, “Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified”.302 ¶61

For glorification can only be when he gives himself to you. As you’re told in the 17th chapter of John, “And now Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory I had with thee before that the world was”. But he sent forth Jesus Christ, his own creative power here; and therefore that which was one with him had to empty itself of that Godhood to take on the limitations of man.302 ¶62

Now the work is finished, and he’s brought forth the flower, the pulsing, living, golden wreath that’s called “the crown,” called “Stephen.” Then, at that moment, he glorifies you with his own self, and you are one with God.302 ¶63

Now let us go into the Silence.302 ¶64

* * * …my two weeks will really be a vacation. So bear in mind the dates, January the 4th, a Tuesday. I’ll put an ad in the Los Angeles Times. Outside of that I’m not notifying anyone of this date when we reopen. Now are there any questions?302 ¶65

Tonight it is “Teach Us to Pray.” You’ll find this the most practical evening. We’re told he was praying in a certain place; but when he ceased one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Then he tells a story…he told them a parable to the effect that we ought always to pray and not lose heart. Then he tells the parable: “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and in that city there was a widow who came to him constantly and said to him, ‘Vindicate me against my adversaries.’ And although he did not fear God nor regard man, he said to himself, ‘I will vindicate her because she comes constantly and she bothers me, and by her continual coming she’ll wear me out’”. So we see in this parable the central jet of truth is persistency.300 ¶1

Anyone can learn a prayer, but it won’t be effective. You can learn all the prayers in the world and they will not in any way produce the result you seek. Effective prayer, in the real sense, is an art; and to learn an art always requires a careful method and persistent practice.300 ¶2

So tonight we will show you what one lady (she isn’t here tonight)…but she gave me a series of stories based upon her technique.300 ¶3

Let me now tell you something about the lady. She works for the telephone company, in fact, all of her life she’s been there. So she went in as a long distance operator and worked her way up to the chief operator—now she’s superintendent. But she trained herself to hear a voice. Even if the voice wasn’t there, she could actually hear it just as though the voice is speaking. It’s become so much a part of her that she can really hear what she wants to hear.300 ¶4

So here in her office, an operator…she has a son Kenneth and Kenneth wanted to be a flyer, a jet flyer. Well, he was turned down by United, by TWA, by American, by all of them as too small—his arms weren’t long enough. So she said to Kenneth, “Get on the telephone and you phone me and you tell me over the phone that you’re flying jets and it’s wonderful! I will not answer…you just tell me that so I can hear your voice, and I will hang up.” So he got on the phone and called her, and told her that I’m flying jets and it’s perfectly marvelous, wonderful. She did exactly what she told him she would do. She hung up. Well, someone gave him a pass to Miami. So when he got to Miami, he was employed by Eastern Airlines. They trained him. He’s now flying jets. Before that, the mother thought “I should send him to school, to some engineering school, prepare him in some way.” Well, no preparation…just someone gave him this pass, he goes to Miami, he’s flying for Eastern.300 ¶5

He called her on the wire. He said, “I want a lovely home in a nice neighborhood.” Then she hung up. Not “I want,” she had to reverse that and say, “I have a lovely home in a perfectly marvelous neighborhood…and I have a sports car.” She simply, after she found out, she tuned him in, heard the same voice declaring that he has a lovely home and a sports car. Well, he has it right on the golf course, she said on the telephone, owns on the golf course—all within four months.300 ¶6

The mother one day in the office said to her, “I want to sell Kenneth’s Jeep. He’s gone now so I want to sell the Jeep.” She said, “Now, that’s not the way we do it. Isn’t it wonderful I’ve sold the Jeep at a wonderful price!” Two weeks later in the office as I walked by she said to me at the desk, “Isn’t it wonderful, I’ve sold the Jeep at a wonderful price.” I said to myself, “Does she want me to hear it again? I’ve heard it.” But during the coffee break, as she came out, I said, “Did you really sell the Jeep?” She said, “Yes, I sold the Jeep. I sold it at the same price I paid for it years ago. He’s used it for years, and we got the same price for it that I paid for it years ago, so I call that a good price!”300 ¶7

This one now…you can pass judgment if you want to. Were I this lady, I would say to this one, “Do not tempt God.” For there are people in this world who would try to make you feel you are responsible for them forever and forever. This lady said to her, “I have no money and just an old car. I would like a new car.” So I said, “I’ll just change that whole picture and you will tell me that you have a new car.” Five days later she has a new Impala. But she tells my friend that it would have happened anyway—“you didn’t do it”—although she asked my friend to hear it—“but you didn’t do it.” Then she said to her, “Now, I’m going to test you. See this ticket? This is an Irish sweepstake ticket. This is a winning ticket, this ticket won.” Well, when the tickets were drawn it won $280. This lady goes through the ceiling because she didn’t win the $150,000 and bawls my friend out. My friend had made a little note and wrote the whole thing out and she had underscored the word “this”—this ticket won. Well, it did. That ticket won, it won 280. She paid practically nothing for it, but she was annoyed at my friend because she didn’t push it up to 150,000.300 ¶8

So she gave me eleven of these stories, all perfectly marvelous.300 ¶9

One lady said to her—and I know this lady well and I know her husband well—she said, “Tell me, what do you want, Mildred? Tell me as though you had it. Don’t tell me what you want, but tell me really what you want. But you clothe it so that you’re telling me that you have it, the wish fulfilled.” She calls my friend Holly, she said, “Holly, I went to Las Vegas and I married the most wonderful man.” This is October the 10th. On November the 15th she went to Las Vegas and she married, in her own eyes, the most wonderful man. So that’s one—all through her hearing.300 ¶10

Another one, “I gave his lady away last June. She called me up and asked me to play the part of her father. So I said, all right, when?—on the 9th of June. So I went to the church and brought my “daughter” down and gave her away. So, the day before, a friend called who was coming to the wedding service and I said, ‘What do you want?’ She said, ‘Well, I would like to get married [...] security, to a very, very wealthy man.’” Now this is June 8th. Holly said, “Go into my church and do today what you’re going to do tomorrow.” [...] going to walk down on the arm of Neville and he’s going to give me away. But now Neville isn’t here. “You take your imaginary hand and feel the texture of the dress you’re going to wear, whether it be lace or satin or anything of your choice…just simply walk down the aisle.” Didn’t hear from her until the 15th of this month, and she writes, ‘Holly, I’m engaged to a millionaire, and I want to get married in your church…the same church that in my Imagination I walked down feeling the dress I would wear.’”300 ¶11

But what I’m getting at today is Holly’s ability to hear.300 ¶12

Blake made the statement, “Man has no body distinct from his Soul; that called body is a portion of the Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the Soul in this age.”300 ¶13

Well, there are five; she is simply cultivating hearing. You can speak to her now, and then you can just leave the room. She has recorded the sound of your voice. She can put on that sound the sentence she wants to hear, and hearing it, she drops it. So Blake made the statement, “Oh, what have I said? What have I done? O all powerful human words!” So she simply takes a person’s request, but she turns it around, and it’s not a request anymore. You’re simply making a confession that what you wanted you have. She doesn’t do anything to make it come to pass; she simply lets it come to pass. Here is one with her husband. She is a minister, and he said to her, “Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had the church painted and new chandeliers!” Now he hasn’t her training. He’s a lovely fellow, a wonderful fellow, but a bit emotional. He can’t quite control that Imagination of his. He goes completely [...]. But Holly can control it, so she said to him, “Now you tell me in your own way what you would tell me if it were painted and new chandeliers and all paid for.” That’s really what he wanted, all paid for. So he said to her, “Honey, isn’t it wonderful! The church is completely painted and we have new chandeliers and everything is paid for.” She said, “Within a matter of two months, Neville, we had the church painted, new chandeliers, and all was paid for…all on him.”300 ¶14

So here, this is an art. You can sit down and listen as though you heard. If you are very still it will become audible. When it becomes audible, do you know what it is in scripture? It’s the 3rd chapter of Exodus and the 6th of Isaiah, that when the vision breaks out into speech the presence of God is confirmed. Out of the burning bush that burned but consumed itself not came the voice: “Moses, Moses,” and then the voice began to speak to Moses; then it was confirmed, the presence of God is confirmed. You can actually sit and listen as though you heard and what you are hearing is going to come to pass. Now you don’t see anything. You could…if you’re still enough you’ll see it. But if you will listen to something that’s implying a vision…if I heard a sentence, my mind may not be concentrated on what it implies as much as the actual sound. Or I might not move from the sound to what it implies. The potency is its implication. So what it’s implying you’re actually seeing, though it may not be objective to your vision. But if all of a sudden when you’re thinking about it you’re seeing it—as you think about it, if you hear the voice so that the sentence becomes audible—then the presence of God is confirmed. Now, it doesn’t matter what the world thinks about it. If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what anyone thinks? If I can stand here now and listen as though I heard, and what I’m hearing has no external fact to support it, none whatsoever, well, then tomorrow or the day after or the immediate future it becomes an objective fact, does it really matter to me what the whole vast world will tell me about it? If they say, “Well, you’re insane,” alright, give praise for insanity of that nature.300 ¶15

So here is a lady, she wanted this, she wanted that, and she got it. But if anyone does to you what this one tried to do to my friend Holly after she gets the ticket, from then on ignore them. They’ll stand on your feet forever, and they’ll use you as a flea uses a dog and live off you beyond that point, all the time begging you to hear things for them; and they will never, themselves, exercise the talent that God gave them.300 ¶16

Now to whom did she turn when she prayed? People say, “I’ll pray to Jesus.” Well, where is he? We’re told, Call on the name of the Lord Jesus. How could you call on the name of the Lord Jesus? You do it by confessing his lordship, but you don’t pray to him. Well, who is it that I confess? Well, in this lady’s case was it not her Imagination? Isn’t that Jesus? If we are told “By him all things were made and without him there is nothing made that is made”, well, she brought forth a church painting, and new chandeliers, and the money to pay for it, then who did it? She didn’t pray to Jesus. She listened as though she heard her husband say, “Holly, isn’t it wonderful! The church is painted, we have new chandeliers, and everything is paid for!” Well, then if this thing became a fact, as it did in two months; and the little boy, too small for United to employ or American or TWA, so he’s working for Eastern at their expense, they trained him; then she sells the Jeep for the price she paid for it not having used it for years; then he has his own little car now and a home—all this by listening—therefore, hasn’t she found Jesus? She’s found him, because if all things are made, she knows how she made this. So she didn’t really pray to Jesus; she confessed his lordship. She confessed the lordship of her own wonderful human Imagination. That’s Christ Jesus, that’s God in man!300 ¶17

Now, when I think of Jesus in scripture, he’s defined as power. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians, “Christ Jesus, the power of God and the wisdom of God”. Well, what is power but effectiveness in realizing our purposes in life. If that power is the creative power that is called Christ Jesus and I know what I did—I simply sat down and listened, and I listened until I heard, and when I heard what I wanted to hear—well, then wasn’t that God in me being active?300 ¶18

You can actually feel him, actually see him in action.300 ¶19

Now, don’t go astray and worship any other God in the world. In the Bible, immorality is not sex, it’s idolatry. To turn to any other God in this world other than the only God which is your own wonderful human Imagination is idolatry.300 ¶20

So in this art of learning how to pray—“Lord, teach us to pray”—he gave them no formula other than the Lord’s Prayer. That’s not something which you repeat idly with words; that’s something you contemplate, that’s the Lord’s Prayer. “Our Father”…it’s an established fact that we all have one Father, our Father. If I said that the fatherhood of God is universal, then I’m also establishing the fact that the brotherhood of man is. You can’t have one Father of all and not have all brothers. So that’s not something you utter in words. That prayer is simply to sit down and simply extract its meaning. That is “to contemplate.”300 ¶21

But in this frame, you can use the sense of touch, the sense of taste, the sense of, well, smell, the sense of sight. In her case, because she’s trained as an operator she uses the sense of hearing. And so, were she here tonight, I would ask anyone to turn to her. She’ll do it quickly and easily. It doesn’t cost her anything, she doesn’t charge for it, and she’s a simple, perfectly wonderful lady who knows how to tune in and she can hear what she wants to hear. As she said to me in the letter, “Why, Neville, it’s the easiest thing in the world if one would only listen until they hear it.” And if you really believe you’re going to hear it, you’ll hear it. It will come as an audible sound and be exactly as you have predetermined it; and not just a sound, it will be the sound of the one who asked it of you. It will be unique. After you have heard it, who could disturb you?300 ¶22

So here, when he was asked, “Teach me how to pray,” then he tells the parable that shows you persistency. So you sit down, you’re interrupted, alright, go back to it. You’re interrupted again, go back to it. Eventually, in just a matter of moments, you’ll be able to become so still you will hear what you want to hear. Well, if you are interrupted and interrupted, don’t give up. You mustn’t give up. You simply listen until you actually hear what you want to hear. If to you seeing is easier than hearing, well, then use the sense of sight.300 ¶23

Because you have a body that’s an inlet to the soul—“We have no body distinct from the Soul; that called body is a portion of the Soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of the Soul in this age.” So it’s almost like a something you exude, this thing called body, but we think we are it. No, it’s simply a portion of the soul. You are the soul.300 ¶24

So here, after you leave this night and you go home, sit down and try it; doesn’t cost you a thing. And without consent of one, if you know a person’s voice, just listen to it and try what she did. If you can’t quite recall it, call them up and have them tell you what they would like to have in this world as though they had it. Make them phrase it so that they are telling you that they have it, and then you hang up. You hear the voice, and then you sit down and then you listen to the same thing and affirm it. They said it and now you hear it on the inside. When you hear it on the inside the thing is done! And you don’t have to make any effort to make it so.300 ¶25

This so-called daily praying [...] for the same thing, pray daily. As he said, “In all things pray.” So he told them a parable that they should always pray and never grow weary of praying. But praying is in this simple, simple way. It’s not going up the stairs on your knees, or getting down and crossing yourself before some cross, or saying any prayers someone wrote for you. What would you do? You go to church and the minister will say, I will lead you in prayer. Well, every word is disturbance of what you want to hear. You go into the Silence; you hear what you want to hear. How can you hear some…if a minister is leading you apart, and a thousand people on the outside and a thousand different desires in this world—they all have something different—and he’s leading a word prayer that he wrote? That’s not praying.300 ¶26

So when you pray you’re told, “Go within and shut the door; and your Father who sees in secret rewards you openly”.300 ¶27

So you go within, you close the door of the senses, and then inwardly you tune in and listen.300 ¶28

I know what fantastic results one can get by this simple, simple method. So I can’t tell you what is your best…maybe sight is better than hearing, but I find hearing very simple. No two voices are alike. They may seem to be alike but they’re not, really. They are as distinct as your odor. No two people in the world—there are three and a half billion of us—and we don’t have the same odor or the bloodhound couldn’t find us. We don’t have the same thumb print. We don’t have the same sound to our voice, even though it sounds to those not attuned to be alike. I presume that sitting here if I said that a Chinese is speaking, to the average untrained ear in the Chinese tongue all Chinese would sound alike. But to the Chinese trained in his tongue no two would be alike. So I dare say, to them all Americans sound alike, and yet no two really sound alike.300 ¶29

You may think, well, I don’t tell you it’s the easiest thing in the world, but practice will make it easier. It’s an art and all arts require a good method. It must be a careful method and then persistency in practice. You’re going to practice and practice daily.300 ¶30

You can help someone without their consent, you know. You don’t have to wait for someone to ask you to help them. If you are aware of their distress or their need, you can do it if you know their voice or what they look like. Construct a scene implying the fulfillment of their dream, and see it clearly. But when speech breaks out in vision, then it’s done. That’s automatic.300 ¶31

As told us in that wonderful story where he comes and sees the Lord on the throne and the seraphim behind him; and then the Lord speaks and said, “Whom will I send?” Isaiah says, “Send me.” So he sends him…but he heard the voice before he was sent. Well, the same thing as this…you will hear the voice. As you hear it, whose voice did you hear? You heard the friend’s voice, you heard it all on the inside.300 ¶32

So, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” So the whole vast world of three and a half billion, how could you crowd them into one man? But they are that. You single out from your own being the one you’re going to help and you help him. They…here he’s projected on the screen of space, and he seems so completely independent of your perception of him; here, he’s out there actually becoming all the things you heard for him. I am convinced, in my own case, that my mother had in some strange way some knowledge of this, because she always would go [...], and she would sit alone when she darned our socks. The sock reminded her of the one who wore it and she would talk to herself, but she was talking to her son. Actually as she darned that sock she was building in her own mind’s eye the future she wanted for that son. They all became successful. I’m quite sure if one could trace their success to the source it would go all the way back to their mother, where she instead of criticizing them and comparing them in some strange way to neighbors she never compared us to any neighbor, not for one moment. If she did, she never found us wanting. That was Mother. But to ourselves she would always build it up and she built it up in her own mind’s eye, confident that time would take care of it, and each one would mold itself right into her image of that child. And eventually they all did.300 ¶33

So in learning to pray, don’t commit to memory any prayer. It doesn’t work. But take your own wonderful soul, which this is only a portion of it, the five senses, and these are the chief inlets of this age—well, think sense. You may be given to color, given to pictures, and the sense of sight may be easier for you. Some can think of someone and see them vividly in their mind’s eye. This lady, she thinks of them, she hears them.300 ¶34

Another one can touch. No two handshakes are alike. You take a hand…some give you just the fingertips. A big strapping man and you put the hand out, he gives you this; well, forever you think of him in terms of that. There’s something about that handshake. Others go right in and grip you…a good firm shake. Others almost take your hand away; they want to show how strong they are or how they feel—well, that’s another kind of shake.300 ¶35

But if you know and associate with any one person, you can do that and touch them.300 ¶36

That’s again in Genesis, the 27th. And so he came close and received the blessing through touch. He put these things on his hands, a hair…he was a smooth-skinned lad and he took the hair of a goat and wrapped it upon his hand and his neck so when he came to his father he would deceive the father into believing he was Esau. For the blessing belonged to Esau. As he came close, the father said, “Come closer still, my son, that I may touch you…I can’t see.” The father was blind. So here, Isaac is blind, so Jacob comes very, very close and he’s now clothed as his brother would be clothed, and he receives the blessing that belonged to his brother—through the sense of touch.300 ¶37

So you can take someone if you know that sense of touch and bring them very, very close and touch them. Feel the joy of their good fortune.300 ¶38

You aren’t robbing yourself by feeling the joy of another. As you’re told in the story of Job, when Job prayed for his friends his own captivity was lifted. So you don’t have to be concerned about giving yourself a little time for your own prayers for self. Your prayer for another is your prayer for self, because in the final analysis there is no other.300 ¶39

This whole vast world is one being fragmented and that one being is yourself, the whole vast world. It doesn’t make sense. How can this whole vast world be contained within one being? And yet, some day you’ll have the vision and you will see it. I have seen it so vividly, so clearly. At a distance it seemed like one man, and as you approached, multiple nations, but unnumbered nations in one man. I saw it so vividly one night when I was with Blake and he told me to lean back and fall. I fell like some meteor through space, and when I settled and came to a stop, there in the distance was this wonderful being. The heart was like living ruby, the whole being was alive. But it seemed like one being. As I approached it and I got nearer and nearer, here, multitudes of people all contained in one man.300 ¶40

My friend (who is here tonight) that vision of his, looking down on a prone man, and the prone man contained every conceivable thing that man could do. You couldn’t conceive of a situation that was not already worked out in detail in that prone man…and his desire to come down and identify with a man in that vast world of men. They’re all contained in one man. He came down, identified, and played his part here in this world that’s fragmented.300 ¶41

So here tonight, if you treat it seriously your fortune is in your hands…if you treat it seriously. You could go out and say this is stupid, it doesn’t make sense, that isn’t religion, it isn’t spiritual, well then that’s your choice. I can’t force it on you; I can just offer it. I acquaint you with God’s law and leave you to your choice and its risks.300 ¶42

Only, as you succeed don’t let someone stand upon your back and simply make you the goat—that if they don’t get what they want, you have failed. You can tell them the principle and leave them entirely to themselves that they in turn may begin to exercise the talent within themselves.300 ¶43

You know the story of the talents. He came back, called for the one who had five. The one who had five had multiplied it because of use, and he commended him and said, “Keep all ten.” The one who had two, alright, he had doubled his, too, by use, and he was highly commended, and allowed to keep it. But the one who was given one was afraid to test it and he buried it. When he heard he had buried his talent, he was condemned and cast out; and the talent he received was taken from him and given to the one who had the most.300 ¶44

So it’s entirely up to us whether we use the talent or we don’t use it. So I’m not teaching some moral law here. I think everyone who comes here should have acquired some kind of ethical code long before they came here. You should have acquired it at your mother’s knee. So I’m not to acquaint you with any moral code whatsoever. I leave you to your choice.300 ¶45

So you can simply know what you want in this world for your friend and then attack it in this manner.300 ¶46

She told me some perfectly marvelous ones, but that last one…$280 and to bawl her out for only $280…she wanted the $150,000.300 ¶47

Here is one, she said, “My brother had a small taxi business, and about three weeks before this thing happened he said to me, ‘You know, I have a feeling, a strange feeling that if I don’t sell or give it away, something’s going to happen to me!’” Well, he didn’t…he’s in Bakersfield…so, two weeks later some litigation with a man and a woman in his cab. So the day of the trial she’s working in her office here with the telephone company and all day long she was thinking of him, seeing that he’s free, released. She called at four and they said he’s in court. That seemed kind of late to her. She called a little while later—still in court. She got into her car and drove to Bakersfield.300 ¶48

When she got there at this very late hour he’s still in court. Here it is ten, ten-thirty. So she went in and saw the brother, and she said, “You can’t go into the jury room, but you can send your mind in there. You can’t go in, but you can send your mind in and you can tell them to release me—I am released, I am free! Sit down here and go into that jury room and you tell them that I am free, I am released.” Then she said, in my purse I had a huge, big white envelope, so I took it out, with a pencil, and I said, “You sit right down here now and write as many times as you can: I am free! I am released! Keep on writing it, keep on writing it.” At five minutes after twelve they brought in the verdict: He was released, he was freed.300 ¶49

Now, she did not give me the nature of the trial, why he was on trial, why they brought the action against him. She just gave me the facts, that here he was, he had this premonition that something would happen if he didn’t sell his small taxi business. He didn’t sell, and two weeks later he’s litigating with this man and a woman. While the jury was locked up, she drove all the way to Bakersfield, and told the story: You can’t go in there physically, but you can go there in your mind, go right in and proclaim “I am free, I am released.” And then you sit here and you write it over and over and over and fill this envelope with the statement “I am free, I am released.” At five minutes after twelve at night, 12:05 A.M., the jury came out and he was free, released.300 ¶50

These stories are all true. I know this lady well. And this is an amusing part of it, I gave her away, and this little line [a reception after the wedding] and this lady came forward and she came to me, she said, “Who are you?” I said, “Well, did you see the service?” She said yes. I said, “I am the bride’s father.” She looked at me as though I were completely insane. I learned afterwards the lady who asked me was the bride’s sister. The sister had not seen the bridegroom, had seen none of this crowd that came. Well, I’m not [...] wedding’s are always gay. So she came forward, I said, “You saw the wedding didn’t you?” “Yes.” “Well, I’m the bride’s father.” And what a strange look on her face…she’s in an insane asylum.300 ¶51

Now this lady knows this thing well enough to know how to do it. Although the man’s a perfectly marvelous fellow, he hasn’t a chance, not a chance, because he doesn’t know how to work the law. She does. She made up her mind, “That’s it,” and he was hooked. But he’s divinely happy now…he’s very happy.300 ¶52

Now let us go into the Silence.300 ¶53

Well, if there aren’t any more questions, our next meeting is Tuesday. Because Sunday is Advent, my subject will be Advent. The great season begins this Sunday, called Andrew’s birthday. He is the first disciple, the first one to be told the law. So you have four Sundays, four great events leading up to the fullness of the image. So Tuesday “Advent”…until Tuesday.300 ¶62

Tonight’s subject is “The Steward.” When we speak here of God, I’m really speaking of your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s all the Bible speaks about, really, when it talks and tells us about God. “God the Creator is like pure imagining in myself. He’s at work in the very depth of my being, underlying all of my faculties, including perception, but he streams into my surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy” . As I sit here or stand here, and just think and plot and plan, that’s God in action. I can see him best as I simply dream and remember my dream.299 ¶1

Now tonight we come to this wonderful story which stumps all the scholars. I haven’t read one commentary on it where they can agree. They admit the very oldest manuscript carried the story—it’ not an insertion. We haven’t found any manuscript that doesn’t carry it, and as far back as we can go and find these manuscripts it carries the story of the steward. You’ll read it in the 16th chapter of the Book of Luke. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians, he asks all those who followed him to regard him as a “steward of the mysteries” . But, you see, the word steward has changed its meaning. When you and I speak of a steward today, as the dictionary defines it, it’s simply a person who takes care of the estates and the properties of someone else. We go aboard a ship and the chief steward is responsible for the services or provisions. That’s his appointed [...].299 ¶2

Now, that’s not the meaning of steward as it was used in the Bible. The word steward in the Bible is “a ward of the sty; a keeper of the pig.” And the pig has always been the symbol of the savior and redeemer of the world. Well, the only savior, as we read in scripture, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior” . This word is simply Yod He Vau He, which we sound as Jehovah. There is no other savior. Your own wonderful human Imagination that is the great…symbolized in the world as a pig.299 ¶3

Now you as a steward, you have to guard it and watch it and take care of it. Now this can be taken down into the very depths of man’s soul, as it must be.299 ¶4

Here is the story. “There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were brought to him that he was simply wasting his goods. So he called the steward and said, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ And the steward, seeing that he’s out of a job, said to himself, ‘I’m too old to dig and I am too proud to beg.’ And this is what he did, ‘He called all his master’s debtors and he said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?” and he replied, “A hundred measures of oil.” He said, “Sit down quickly and write fifty.” Then he said to the second, “How much do you owe my master?” He said, “A hundred measure of wheat.” He said, “You sit quickly and you write eighty.”’ And the master, discovering what the steward had done, commended him for his prudence; and then said to his [...] to emulate this wisdom, this cleverness of this unrighteous steward, and invited all people to practice this art of unrighteous mammon . Then he said, ‘If you are not faithful with the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches?’”…asking all people to emulate.299 ¶5

But on a certain level you would think God is encouraging stealing and dishonesty. That you may understand that God does everything, all parts, he’s trying to get you to exercise your Imagination, for that’s God. So anything that will make you exercise this power that is only God, he calls upon you to do it.299 ¶6

So let me share with you a true story. It’s on the lowest level, but you’ll see one using it wisely out-smarting all the so-called wise ones who surrounded him. This is my brother Victor, the year is 1939, and my brother Victor sensed the coming of war. He’s a business man, in many, many businesses; he’s also a ship chandler, where ships [...] in certain shipping lines. Well, it’s an international agreement, when a ship comes into port they may have anything that you have and pay for it out of pocket; it never pays taxes on the products it buys. If it’s a cigarette or if it’s a bottle of liquor or if it’s tons of merchandise, if they need it and you have the supply, you supply the ships—but it’s duty free. You make a profit on your product, but you cannot ask him to pay the duty, therefore, you too are free of paying duty. Well, being a ship chandler and carrying stores for ships and sensing the coming of war, he went to his bankers and raised about a million, about a million and a half in excess of what he always carries in overdraft that was for the local trade. This was to put in ships stores for incoming ships.299 ¶7

He knew in his heart that not one ship is going to come to Barbados when the war breaks, because England couldn’t build ships fast enough but what the Germans sank the ships. So they’d be an isolated island and it would have to simply survive by its own efforts, living on fish and breadfruit and sweet potatoes and whatever they could grow—but certainly not the lovely things we brought in from America, Canada and Europe. So he took advantage of that interval of time, as the calendar turned into 1939, and he raised this money. He rented all the space he could possibly find plus his own warehouses, and filled it to the gunnels with all the merchandise in the world that he knew that the people locally would want as the war progressed…and he saw it as a long war.299 ¶8

Well, on the first day of September, 1939, England declared war on Germany. Two years later we were not yet at war. England was at war. Two years later not one passenger ship, save American ships, came in and they certainly didn’t need anything from Barbados. They sailed from New York, they were in Barbados in five days, and they sailed out of New York harbor with everything they needed for the entire roundtrip of thirty-eight days into the Argentine and back into New York. So he didn’t sell them one pound of butter. He knew it, but he carried this enormous amount of merchandise. Two years later he went to the government. Mind you, when you borrow $1,500,000 you are carrying very, very high interest rates. It’s not just a few pennies, and the bank demands that interest when due, and you still owe principal.299 ¶9

So he went to the government and explained the facts of life that he had waiting for ships this enormous amount of merchandise and there aren’t any ships. The government said, “What do you propose to do about it?” “Oh,” he said, “I would like the duty paid and sell it locally with the merchants. Yes, I will share it with the merchants. They can have their share of it, I’ll take my share of it, and we’ll simply let the people in the island enjoy it. There it sits unused for two years.” The government said to him, “I will call upon him with the merchants, and discuss it with them.”299 ¶10

The merchants went to Government House and they heard the story, and they all rejoiced. They said, “No! We have him exactly where we want him, he’s frozen, and so we’ll push him right out of [...]. He’s our worst competitor, he’s the biggest tax payer, he can raise this money, and so now we really have him where we want him, he’s frozen.” They gave their final verdict, “No is the answer to his request.”299 ¶11

The government then called my brother, asked him to come to Government House, and he told the story that I’ve just told to you. And my brother reminded him that the tax payers paid his salary, meaning the government. He said, “We pay your salary and your upkeep. The crown appoints you, you weren’t elected, the crown appointed you for four years, but we the Barbadian tax payers pay your salary and you know it’s a very big salary. It’s a plum for everyone who has served the crown for a long spell of time; when they’re just about to retire they give them Barbados or Trinidad or Jamaica as a little, I would say, reward, so they can save every penny for those four years, go back to England and retire and have a wonderful nest egg. But the local man pays that salary.” So my brother reminded him who pays his salary. Well, he didn’t like that, so he said, “Nevertheless, I’ll give you my final word, Goddard. No is the answer. You bought it for ships and for ships it remains!” Then my brother said to him, “Is that your real final word?” “Yes, Goddard.” He said, “Well, I have given you your last chance.” He said, “Goddard, do you realize you’re speaking to the government?” He said, “Yes, your excellency” and departed.299 ¶12

He went to his office, he said, “Bring me my lawyers.” He asked the lawyer to give him a legal definition of a ship, just a legal definition of a ship. “I know you think of a huge, big ocean liner, but I want a legal definition that will stand up in court. Would a rowboat be called a ship? Don’t we find lifeboats coming in here with passengers after a ship has sunk? Didn’t they make it here in a rowboat?” “Yes, that’s right.” He put the words into their mouths to define a ship. “A rowboat, a fishing boat, a motorboat, that’s a ship. If a man gets on it, if he has courage, does he really feel there’s a reasonable hope he could reach another island a hundred miles away? Yes. Alright, then that’s the definition of a ship. Thank you, gentlemen.”299 ¶13

Then he called in his publicity department. He said, “I want a full-page ad tomorrow. I want you to define a ship for me at the very top of the page, and then itemize these things for me, all these are for sale duty free. Anyone who owns a boat, a little rowboat, a little ship, he is eligible—but you must have a boat.”299 ¶14

Well, when it broke the next morning, the government saw $600,000 flying through the window in taxes. The merchants saw all this money flying out of their pockets and they went up in arms! They tried to get him on the wire. The secretary would answer and say, “I cannot locate Mr. Goddard. He’s not available today, so busy.”299 ¶15

Well, in forty-eight hours he didn’t have one pound of butter left to sell. Sold everything in the [...] for cash, no credit. He said, “You bring your money and you can get it for cash and you don’t pay duties.” They rowed out of sight, turned around the bend, came back ashore, and sold it to the people. They were all waiting for it. To this day, the merchants don’t cross him anymore.299 ¶16

That’s using your Imagination. You call that, well, that’s a dishonest, unrighteous steward thing. Yes, the Bible tells you he was a dishonest, unrighteous steward. But, at least one person could use his Imagination and overcome that mountainous opposition of all the merchants plus the government. He was playing to the majority, not to the biggest tax payer but to the majority, and so he simply circumvented all of them. Sold everything in the warehouse and came out with a fortune in forty-eight hours. That’s the lowest level. But he first used his Imagination.299 ¶17

Here tonight, we’ll take it on another level where you can come in. You aren’t selling butter, you don’t have a store, but this is how you use it. He said, “Do not think I’ve come to abolish the law and the prophets; I’ve not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” . Now, we pinpoint one outstanding thought that you could not possibly miss it. He said, “You’ve heard it said of old that you should not commit adultery. But I tell you anyone who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart” . He lifts it from that level to the psychological—it’s now an imaginal, creative act. He’s telling you whatever you do in your Imagination that’s done…that’s God in action.299 ¶18

So, must I emulate the unrighteous steward? Yes! Well now, who is the steward? The steward is the keeper, the bookkeeper. What in man is the perfect bookkeeper? It would be memory. Memory, though faulty, is still adequate to the recall for sameness. But if I had a perfect memory, a perfect recall, 100 percent recall, that would be the perfect bookkeeper.299 ¶19

If at the end of a day I could recall my entire day and see the points in my day in my own Imagination that didn’t quite come out as I hoped it would, I’m going to falsify the record. I’m called upon to falsify the record. Go over that scene…now I don’t like that scene…rewrite it. So I rewrite the scene where I do come out alright. And so everything’s now going to be written in my mind’s eye, and I’ll replay it…I like that.299 ¶20

So in one case I can’t quite do it all, so I make it fifty percent. Another case, I can’t quite do it, I’ll put eighty. You owe him a hundred, make it fifty. You owe him what, a hundred, make it eighty. So there are certain things in our life that we can’t feel, that we really didn’t overcome 100 percent, alright, to what degree can you overcome it? A man making, say, $10,000 a year who’s never earned beyond that, and you tell him he could get $50,000, you stun him. He can’t make it over night, can’t do it right away. He could ease up a little bit on it and then jump from ten to fifteen. He can feel better wearing an income of fifteen than he could wearing an income of fifty…it doesn’t seem natural to him.299 ¶21

If you lived always in one room and don’t know what it is to live in your own apartment or your own home, where you leave one room and go into another room, another room, and it’s still all yours. You see a man, or a woman, who’s always lived in a very quiet, frugal way in one room, and she would really like something bigger, and you paint a word picture for her, something more I wouldn’t say palatial but more spacious, something freer, would she feel easier? Maybe two rooms would seem an enormous jump, three, four…so mention a six-room apartment, they couldn’t take it in, it’s too big, too great a responsibility. So you just modify it to the point that it is natural to you.299 ¶22

But the steward in this picture is memory. Remember what the steward is, he is the keeper of a pig, and the pig is the symbol of the Savior of the world. But who are you working on? You are only working on yourself. For the Savior of the world…listen to the words, “I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior.” The words translated “I am the Lord” are simply “I am your I am.” That’s really what it is, and this is the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.299 ¶23

So if I am watching and caring for this Savior, symbolized as a pig, I watch the activities of the day. Memory is the conservative aspect of imagining; therefore, I call upon this servant, which is memory, and ask memory to recall the day for me, and memory recalls the day. I go over all the scenes and I beautify them, turn one into something a little bit better, that one into a little bit better; and to the best of my ability I simply revise the script of the day.299 ¶24

I’m called upon to emulate that falsified record…emulate the man who falsified the record. Why? Because the book itself only teaches that imagining creates reality…that’s what the Bible teaches. We think we’re hidden. As we’re told in the 8th of Ezekiel, “Look at them, all in the darkness, and they say to themselves, no one sees us and they are making abominable things within their own being.” But they’re seen by themselves. They thought no one saw us, but the only one seeing is themselves, so they know exactly what they’re doing. But because they did it in the dark and in the silence, they didn’t believe that that was going to create the external fact to confirm it.299 ¶25

So here, when we’re called upon to emulate the unjust steward, it simply means at the end of the day when the record is before me, go over the record, and simply take scene after scene after scene; and when I come upon an unlovely scene then rewrite it, make it conform to a lovely scene, something that I wish I had encountered the first time. Doesn’t really matter now that I know I can falsify it and make it come out…then the day isn’t lost. If I don’t do it, I think, “Well now, it’s past. The present…I’ll forget it and try to do better tomorrow.” But the present is not receding into the past; the present is advancing into the future to confront us, either spent or invested. I either invest this moment or I spend it.299 ¶26

If I discover that I spent it, I can, by the use of my Imagination, call it back and not spend it but invest it…call it back. So we can take it down to the very lowest as my brother took it. But, at least, he used his Imagination.299 ¶27

Now he called him a prudent man, he said, “I highly commend the unjust steward for his prudence.” If you look up the word prudent in the dictionary or the word provident…because they’re both really the same…I think of Mr. Hoover when he, oh, about four years ago when he was still in this world with us, they asked him to what did he attribute his success. He was a very poor boy, worked his way through college at Stanford, and had no money. He had not only a great reputation and much to admire in this world but millions, and he said, in answer to the question, “Because of providence.”299 ¶28

Now, you might think that something smiled upon him. No. You look it up in the dictionary: the prudent and provident man looks far and sacrifices the present for the future. Prudence: watching; saving; [...]. Provident planning: doing and yet expending largely for the demands of the future.299 ¶29

Here is that mind…I go back to my brother. Didn’t pay dividends for years; he simply sacrificed the present for the future. He knew what he needed—he needed cash and lots of it. So why give it out in ten parcels to ten of us who owned it? If you can pull your own weight, do it, and then let this thing be plowed in and plowed in. So he used his Imagination just as described in the dictionary—he simply looked forward; he saw it coming. Then it appears, expended largely for the demands of the future, what would be needed in the future. So, on the lowest level he still commends it.299 ¶30

Then you come to this level, the psychological level, where everyone has all these parts within himself, and he plays the part of the steward. So sitting at home tonight, before you retire or when you’re in bed just about to retire, call back the day and go through the scenes that you had with a group of people, or the mail that you received, or the telephone calls that you received, and if they were not to your standard of what you wanted, pick up that receiver once more and go over it as you want it to be, as though you had heard it so. Replay the entire day, for that day, now that it’s been replayed, you will fit it into this picture of the unjust steward. You falsified the record of the day, knowing that it’s not receding, it’s advancing, and your creative acts are creating “the facts of life” because imagining creates reality.299 ¶31

Here, when you read these stories, though the scholars can’t understand them—I’ve yet to find one that is in agreement with it—but they are honest men and because you can’t find an ancient manuscript that doesn’t contain it, they say, “He must have said it, he must have.” But they do not know the ancient meaning of the word steward and treat it in the modern manner [...], such as my brother.299 ¶32

Yet he didn’t intend that when Paul said to regard him as the steward of the mysteries. The mysteries unfolded in Paul and he was a steward. He was keeping the mysteries of God and trying to pass them on untarnished, untouched, to all those who would listen to him and tell exactly what he meant by this mystery or that mystery or the other.299 ¶33

Now, maybe you haven’t had the experience of the great mysteries. I hope you’ll trust I have, and so you’ve heard it from one who’s had the experience. Trust me, I tell you the truth. When I stand before you tonight, I’m a witness to the truth of God’s Word. I know the resurrection is a fact. I know the birth from above is a fact. I know the fatherhood of God is a fact. I know the sacrifice, the only acceptable sacrifice, is one’s own blood and I know it is a fact. Yet I didn’t bring blood from this body, yet I took the living blood up into the Holy of Holies. I know the story of redemption, which is always identified when we leave Egypt, that great exodus; and the serpent is always associated with that exodus…I know that to be true. I know that the power laden work of Messiah begins at the descent of the dove—I know that from experience. You who are here tonight, you’ve heard me tell it time and time again, but until I draw my last breath I will still have to repeat it over and over and over again. For what in this world could interest me more than to tell you that I am a steward of the mysteries of God, that they are all true, every one is true.299 ¶34

If you offered me this night…as a friend said to me before I took the meeting, took the platform, he said, “Neville, I am so hungry for an experience of God. If you took Getty’s wealth added to Rockefeller’s and added to the Ford’s, add them all together, and offered me it as against an experience of God, I would say, ‘Keep your wealth and give me the experience of God.’”299 ¶35

Well, he can’t be very far away from such an experience. As we’re told in the Book of Amos, “I will send a hunger upon the land; it will not be of bread, nor a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God” —in other words, for experiencing God. It’s a hunger that not a thing in this world can satisfy but an experience of God. And so, let all the others have their hungers satisfied—for we are not made for frustration; we’re all made for satisfaction.299 ¶36

My brother gets great satisfaction in bursting year after year, exceeding himself. With every year he grows, always expanding, always expanding. Alright, so he has a hunger on this level. The day will come he will have a hunger on your level, just as my friend tonight, that hunger.299 ¶37

One day my brother Victor will have that hunger; he doesn’t have that hunger. He gives generously to churches…loves to go in and sit down in the nice cozy church. By cozy, I don’t mean the little churches, but if you go at a certain time of day when no one is around but yourself, or if you go at vespers and the organ is playing but no one is there but it is vespers, you come out and here is this lovely, lovely darkness. Or you go in at a certain time in the summer and that wonderful sunburst as you look west and the sun comes through those lovely colored windows…just to sit alone…well, he loves that.299 ¶38

But to have an experience of God as I described it in my little pamphlet or in the last chapter of The Promise, that doesn’t interest him, just doesn’t interest him. He has his own concept of what happens after he makes his exit from this world.299 ¶39

But in the meanwhile he is playing the part of the unjust steward, which is only the use of your Imagination to overcome all barriers in this world. There is no barrier that is permanent if you become the unjust steward—you out figure every thing in the world.299 ¶40

And so he’s frozen…all the merchants want him to be frozen…get him out of business; and he turns to the government, “Is that your last word?” “Yes, Goddard.” “Then I’ve given you your last chance.” And the government was appalled at the audacity of this merchant. But he wasn’t the next day—the next day they looked all over Barbados for him, couldn’t find him; the next day, all over, couldn’t find him. By the third day it was too late, all the merchandise was sold.299 ¶41

And the merchants got nothing and the treasury got nothing, and they could have had $600,000 in taxes from that merchandise. Who benefitted? First of all, my brother, but indirectly we did, because we’re all partners. Secondly, the people who live in the island—they didn’t have to pay those taxes. So they ate all the butter they wanted and all the things we had in cold storage, emptied everything, and they got it nice and fresh, and didn’t have to pay the high prices, paid a good…so everyone made a profit. The fishermen didn’t have to go fishing for the longest while; they made so much money. Took their little boats out to sea, turn around and come back, and sell the merchandise.299 ¶42

So this is in scripture. You can’t conceive of one thing that man is capable of doing that is not openly discussed in the scripture. So what is he telling these stories for, to make me a thief? No, to get me to use my Imagination—for if I don’t use my Imagination I stagnate.299 ¶43

If today’s life is just what it appeared to be and the facts are the facts and they can’t be altered, I’m lost! But if in spite of facts I can modify the facts, change the facts, rub them out completely and put something in its place that’s more enticing, and it comes to pass, well, then haven’t I found God? Is there any other Creator in the world but one? There’s only one…and he’s the Creator.299 ¶44

So we started this meeting, “God, the Creator, is like pure imagining in ourselves. He works in the very depths of our soul, underlying all of our faculties, including perception, but he streams into our surface life least disguised in the form of productive fancy.” So you sit down and you dream, and believe in your dream, believe in the reality of the unseen state. Feel it, clothe yourself with it, make it real, and see how it works. If it works, and it will, haven’t you found him? Haven’t you found your savior? Was he something other than yourself?299 ¶45

That’s why Blake said, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years dazzling around thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold.” And then he exclaims as he looks at the base and sees this molten gold, “I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer” . He identifies himself with his Creator and Redeemer. It wasn’t another.299 ¶46

Man is in search of another, and everyone leads him astray to the other. If you haven’t seen the current Time magazine—and I’m not selling magazines, may I tell you, mine came today—turn to the religious page and read the nonsense. Want a good laugh? Turn and read it, read the ecumenical set-up on indulgences: kiss the king’s ring, rather, the pope’s ring, you get 300 for that; a bishop’s, only 50. If you go up the steps of St. Peter’s on your bare knees, one by one, say a prayer on each one, oh, you’re going to get enormous ones for that. Of course, you have to pay money for them too. But all of this is your credit; you’re acquiring merit by all these things.299 ¶47

But don’t stop there, go on and read Worship by the Episcopal minister whose name is Boyd, Malcolm Boyd. Well, I could hardly believe I’m reading…I looked up at the calendar, is it 1965? But I’ve always thought that the year one and the last of eternity are one; they intertwine, they all mix together. You couldn’t believe if it’s a linear thing…maybe you’re stuck. But if it’s all cyclic, and therefore you can’t tell which is the beginning and which is the end, you can understand this, that morons and the wisest of the wise live at the same place in the same apartment house. So really, what this bishop…a whole bunch of prayers and I wouldn’t even attempt it from the platform…just read it in the current issue of Time magazine.299 ¶48

I tell you, that’s not religion. It hasn’t a thing to do with the Bible. These stories are purposely [...] to get you to stop condemning people in this world—that’s the fruit of good and evil. Stop eating it.299 ¶49

It doesn’t matter in the eyes of the merchants who didn’t make a penny—my brother was Satan, he was the devil. If they got him against the wall and froze him, and he couldn’t pay the interest, and the merchandise simply sold at auction to pay off the banks, well, then he was simply getting his just dues, and God being an honest God gave it to him. But in their eyes God can’t be honest—look at the money he made, all in forty-eight hours, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he brought it in. He knew he wasn’t going to sell that to ships. He wouldn’t sell it in peace time. He couldn’t unload that merchandise to ships, why, in years and years and years. Knew exactly what he was doing. So he paid off the bank in full and made a handsome profit for the Goddards.299 ¶50

All the fishermen made money and the only ones who didn’t make money were his opponents, the merchants. The government didn’t get $600,000. [...] to give over $100,000 a year to the government. Because, he gets 25,000 a year tax free, his mansion fully staffed, his police is always not one but round-the-clock guardian, all expenses. He is costing the taxpayer a hundred thousand a year. “But the crown gave it to him.” Gave what…out of our pockets?299 ¶51

So the crown appointed him, and gave him for the service he rendered the crown over the years, but gave it to him at the expense of the Barbadians. My brother and family are one of the largest payers of taxes. It was coming out of our pockets, so he refused to put $600,000 more into the treasury, and gave it to the fishermen instead, and all the people who live in the island. So they came in and bought the finest merchandise minus the taxes.299 ¶52

So I tell you this story [...] believed it. The chap who criticized my telling the story of the Russian at the age of eight, and criticized another, he hasn’t been back since, hasn’t been back since. I’m fortunate that we do not give that mind the Bible to edit…he’d take away everything. He would emasculate it, and at the end of this emasculation we would have nothing. He would see only…set himself, first of all, as the criterion of what is good. If it doesn’t come up to his standard then delete it—God would not have said that.299 ¶53

I tell you, leave the Bible just as it is. But from time to time a word does change its meaning, and if we can find the ancient meaning—what the author at the moment meant when he used that word—if we can dig it up and get the word. I tell you, the word “steward” meant when it was used in the Bible “the ward of the sty; the keeper of the pig.” The pig has always been, in all languages and in all ages, the symbol of the Savior and Redeemer of the world.299 ¶54

The Savior and Redeemer and Creator are one and that’s you. Your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. It redeems itself. It limited itself to this state for a purpose, for a creative purpose; and then having assumed the limit of contraction, it then expands, and there is no limit to its translucency, to its expansion. But it purposely assumed this limitation, and therefore, if it assumed it, it is going to break it and start the expansion.299 ¶55

When you come to that wonderful end, as you begin to move up you see it. And you’ll cry with Blake, “I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer” and it’s yourself. You fuse with it, and that’s your sacrifice, your own blood, as you move up in the form of a serpent right into Zion, into the Holy of Holies. Now let us go into the Silence.299 ¶56

Now tonight, I think you’ll find it very practical. The purpose of a teacher is to encourage and to stimulate, sometimes even to belabor one to become curious to detect the principle in operation. Our principle is that imagining creates reality. We make the claim that “the eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God himself, the divine body Jesus…we are his members.” Buried in everyone is Christ Jesus, and Christ Jesus is God himself.298 ¶1

Here, we must awaken from this state, and awakening from this state is called in scripture, the resurrection. The signs of the resurrection in the life of the believer are the indispensable internal testimony, without which Jesus might have been raised but could never have been preached as risen. Everyone will have this experience, and they can preach from experience that he is risen because he is in them. When he rises in them, they become a witness and they can preach from experience that Jesus Christ is risen. If they don’t have the experience, he may have been raised, but they will never know with that authority that they can preach that he is risen.298 ¶2

As I stand before you tonight, I can speak with the authority of one who is witness to the risen Christ, for he has risen in me. I know beyond all doubt I am he. I know we are one. Limited, yes, in this world of the flesh, for I can’t prove it to anyone’s satisfaction. When they say, “Turn that into gold” or “Turn that into bread” or “Turn that into something else” or “Jump off the cliff—would he not give you some support and if so, you would not dash your foot against the stone?” No, I will not attempt in any way to prove anything to another. I am sent to tell you only of one presence: the risen Christ. So, “The eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God himself, the divine body, Jesus; we are his members.” So buried in all, every child born of woman, buried in us is Jesus Christ.298 ¶3

Now, let me tell you of a story. As I said as I opened the meeting tonight, my purpose is to stimulate, to encourage everyone to prove this, what to others who have not yet proved it is a theory, that imagining creates reality; that man’s dreamer is all Imagination, the whole vast world is a dream, and we are the dreamers of the dream. The day will come we will awaken. When we awaken from the dream, we are the dreamer who is God. This morning’s mail brought a letter from a friend of mine who came here over a period of two or three years, Tom C., a young lad, maybe in his late twenties. He’s now living in New York City, and so he’s been informing me every two or three weeks with his visions and his dreams. He knows I’m interested in his visions. What he does in the world of Caesar that interests me too, but not really. If he has a job he makes money, perfectly alright, but his visions, they do interest me, and so on the morning of the 30th day of April of this year, this is what happened to him.298 ¶4

He said, “About 5:30 in the morning I woke and I was completely cataleptic. I couldn’t move any part of my body, not one little part would move, it wouldn’t respond to my will. After a little while, with an enormous effort my right hand moved, but it seemed to have been such an effort I was completely exhausted and I fell back into the state of catalepsy. Then suddenly I found myself behind an enormous bar, and I seemed to be the bar owner. In front of me stood my brother Jerry and Jerry said to me, ‘Someone just died!’ I stopped him and I said, ‘Stop, say that over again for me,’ which he did. As he said it over again, I realize that I am in a dream. I was the one who couldn’t move my body, it was a dead body…someone had just died. And suddenly I said to myself, Neville teaches us that if I know I am dreaming, all I need do is to hold some solid object, a pillow, a chair, anything that is solid that will not move when you hold it, and don’t let it go. Hold it and then compel yourself to awake while you are holding it. So I held what seemed to me like a box-like object and I held it and said to myself, Tom, wake up! As I did this, I began to awake and I was fully awake in this place.298 ¶5

“A lady out of nowhere came into my presence and I said to her, ‘This is a dream, this whole thing is a dream,’ and she was startled. But I couldn’t more than say to her, ‘I know it’s a dream and God is the Dreamer of it all; there is only God, he’s the only reality; everything else is a dream.’ As I said that, my cousin, a girl, came out of nowhere and she said to me, ‘This is all stupid, this is silly.’ Then she went quickly away and quickly returned with a book, and she said to me, ‘I have read this book over and over and over again. You mean to tell me it is a dream? And it doesn’t have anything in it which speaks of a dream, that this world is a dream.’ She gave me the book, so I took the book and I fingered it awhile, and here I came to page thirty-six, and on page thirty-six it said, ‘The world is a dream and God is the only reality.’ So I said to her, ‘Turn to page thirty-six, at the bottom of the page, and read what I have told you, that the world is a dream and God is the only reality.’ Then said he, I couldn’t see her reaction, because at that moment I awoke in that body that I left that was cataleptic. Now it was not.” That’s all, said he.298 ¶6

Now, many years ago I had an experience, and since then many similar experiences, where lying on my bed here on El Camino in Beverly Hills I suddenly saw the interior of what appeared to me a most wonderful, luscious hotel, or something similar, and my consciousness followed vision and I stepped into what I beheld. I returned to my body on the bed and then still seeing this interior, I stepped into it again, and repeated this action time and time again…maybe a dozen or eighteen times. Then at the very last time, I decided to explore, come what may I would explore.298 ¶7

When I made that decision to explore, stepping into this interior the whole thing closed upon me, and I am in a world as real as this world, just as real as this world. It’s spatial, time is present, because space is a facility for experience and time is facility for changes in experience. So here I step into a world…that’s my experience…now I’m going to experience changes and I move from this room to the other room to the other room. And then I came into a huge hallway. It was all lit and really plush. I walked down to the end of the hallway and I saw two ladies coming down the hallway, and I said to them…knowing what has happened, for I knew the origin of this entire thing: I was on my bed in El Camino in Beverly Hills. I recalled the entire thing vividly, so I said to myself, “This is a dream.” So I said to these two ladies, “Ladies, this is a dream.” They did what you would do if you met a stranger in a wonderful hotel where you never saw him before and he said to you, “This is a dream.” It would startle you so that you would think he’s insane, and, naturally, you would try to escape from whatever he intended to do. So they looked at me, and they got as near to a wall as they could—couldn’t go through it because the world was just as real as this world, just as solid—so as they got near to the wall and very close to the wall, they started walking rapidly from me.298 ¶8

I said to them, “Look, I’ll prove to you it is a dream,” and I saw something hanging over my head. It reminded me of an object I had seen in a friend’s home here in the hills of Hollywood. I’d seen it only six or eight months before, so I said to myself, This is only a memory image of what I saw, surely this is a dream, and I thought if I held it the thing would collapse, like gossamer, it would be nothing. So I said to the ladies, “Watch, I’ll prove to you it is a dream,” and I raised my left hand and I held this object. Instead of dissolving into nothing, it was as solid as this. As I held it, and they walked by rapidly, then I said to myself, “Come on, Neville, wake up! You know it’s a dream.” And so, I held this thing and shook myself to wake up, and I did. I woke standing in that hallway, holding this object in space, and here I am completely awake as I am now, in an entirely different world with no avenue back to the world that I remembered so vividly that I left behind me; a world where I had a body as real as the body that I then occupied, that body that I left was in Beverly Hills on a bed in El Camino. The thoughts that ran through my mind were these. I had left a wife and a daughter unprotected. My daughter is in high school, she has the ambition to go to college, she is qualified to go through college, and I’ve left her uneducated and without adequate funds to see her through. I have left a wife unprotected, without adequate funds to go through life with my daughter.298 ¶9

I knew I had, in this world, unfinished business, but how to get back? There was nowhere that I knew that I could walk through a door and come back here. Then I remembered a scene that happened to me years before this, and that scene was this. I found myself in a dream and I did exactly what my friend Tom, who heard me tell the story, did. I found myself wading in water and I knew this was a dream. I came close to a pillar that was sunk in the ocean. The bridge was long gone, but the pillars remained. I felt innately that if I could hold that pillar, which was stationary, and compel myself to awake, I should awaken in the dream. Well, I did it and I did. I awoke in the dream. I was as awake as I am now in a dream that wasn’t this world.298 ¶10

So, this time I felt, what must I do now? Feeling did it, so I will try it. What can I feel to bring me back to this world and to be in Beverly Hills in California? So I imagined a pillow under my neck. I imagined it; I opened my eyes; I’m still standing in the hallway. I closed my eyes, I kept on feeling the pillow, and suddenly I could feel behind my neck a pillow. When I felt it, I finally began to awake, and I awoke on my bed, but I was cataleptic. I couldn’t move a finger of my body. I could move no part of my body, I couldn’t open my eyes, and after much struggle in this dead body, my left hand began to move. Then I pushed it out and I could feel the warmth of my wife’s body. Then after a little while, a great struggle, I could open the lids of my eyes and the familiar objects on the wall, the familiar objects on the bureau, the bureau itself, and everything came back into a normal focus.298 ¶11

So I stepped into a world as real as this world. So, Tom today, 3,000 miles away, has not forgotten his lesson. He learned it well. So in this wonderful experience of his, he “knew this is a dream and Neville teaches us if I hold an object that’s stationary and do not let it go and compel myself to awake, I should awaken in a dream.” So he awakes in the dream, and he said to the lady who would not believe him, “The reason why you will not believe me is because we are awake in the dream. You don’t know it. I am conscious of the fact I awoke in this dream, but you don’t know it. You are in the same dream, but you are not aware that you are dreaming. At the moment, I know I am dreaming; you do not know it. And the only difference between the two of us is that I know I’m dreaming and you do not know you are dreaming.”298 ¶12

So I tell you, the source of all dreams is your Imagination. The source of all phenomena is your Imagination. And the source of all phenomena is God, so God is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God!298 ¶13

The day will come you will understand perfectly, and the story as told in scripture concerning the resurrection of Christ you will experience. You will actually experience everything concerning the resurrection. Prior to the resurrection, it’s all a dream. After the resurrection he awakes from the dream and goes into world after world, awake. All the worlds are and all things are: “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity, independent of Creation which was an act of mercy.” So everything exists, there is nothing that is not now existing. All it needs is the individual’s occupancy of it. When he steps into it and occupies it, it becomes objective to him and it’s real. Until he steps into it and occupies it, it’s a shadow, a mere possibility. But everything is. There is nothing you can conceive of that is not already. Everything is! You could be as poor as a church mouse…that is too. You could be rich as Croesus…that is too. You could be known beyond the wildest dream of the world…that is too. Or you could be the most unknown being in the world…that is too. Everything is! And all it needs for you to prove it is to occupy it.298 ¶14

But how to step into these states?—that is the great secret. He said: “If the spectator could enter into these images in his Imagination, approaching these images on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could make a friend and a companion of one of these images, then he would know what it is to rise from the grave.” These bodies are the grave. Not everyone goes into the cataleptic state before or after the vision, but they’re all the grave. “And then he would meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy.” How to take this wonderful being that we really are which is all Imagination…for “Man is all Imagination, and God is Man, and he exists in us and we in him; the eternal body of Man is the Imagination.” That is the divine body that scripture speaks of as Jesus Christ; we are his members.298 ¶15

Now, let me turn to a passage in Isaiah, the 43rd chapter, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior…and beside me there is no savior. Before me no God was made, nor shall there be any God after me, I know not any,” the 43rd of Isaiah. Now the word translated “One” with a capital, it’s capitalized—-the Holy One of Israel—-the Hebrew word is “Iysh.” That is the word translated in the 2nd chapter of Genesis, and it’s also capitalized as Man. “She was called wo-man because she was taken out of Man,” capital M …in fact, the whole word is capitalized and the word is Iysh. So if I would translate this correctly, “the Holy MAN.”298 ¶16

People don’t believe that God is Man. They think God is a power, God is some peculiar omniscience, omnipotence, something that is impersonal, and certainly not a person. I tell you from experience God is Man. If I would translate this for you from the Hebrew into English, the words are, “I,” speaking of, “I am your I am, the Mighty Man of Israel, your Savior…besides me there is no savior.” They don’t believe you that God is Man. I am telling you from my own personal experience I stood in the presence of the risen Christ. The risen Christ incorporates within himself everyone who is risen. There’s only one in the end and that one is Jesus. There is no other God. Buried in every man is the great Jesus. The word Jesus, the word Jehovah, the word Jesse is the same; it means “any form of the verb to be,” I AM. “Go tell them I AM has sent you.” It’s this being that is buried in every being in the world. If you really would believe that “I am your I am.” This is God speaking now, not through this being called Neville, I’m quoting Isaiah, that here is an inspired word coming through the prophet: “I am your I am, the Mighty Man of Israel.” This is Israel, the whole vast world is Israel; there’s nothing but. There’s nothing but Jehovah; and Jehovah in the state of waking from his self-imposed restriction is Jesus.298 ¶17

So I go back to what I told you earlier, the signs of the resurrection in the life of the individual believer are these internal testimonies, without which Jesus might have been raised but could never have been preached as risen. So in the end of the story twelve go forward, one deviates. And so it must be completed, so they bring a twelfth in to fill his place, and they cast lots for him, because he must be a witness as we are told. You must be a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No one can go forward and teach it who has not truly been resurrected. He has to be resurrected, so the twelve must be completed. And they cast lots for two, Barabas (but they put an extra “s” into it, but it’s the same meaning) and then Matthais. And the lot fell on Matthais and Matthais became one of the twelve to go out. Well, he couldn’t go out until this thing happened in him. So when it happened in him, he is qualified as a witness. So we are told, you should all be witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, and you go through all the cities to the very ends of the earth. There must be a witness.298 ¶18

What is a witness? Unless there are two who agree, you cannot bring in a verdict. If two different witnesses agree in testimony it is conclusive. Well, who are the two? The Bible is the Word of God, that’s one witness, that’s the external witness; and then your experience becomes the internal witness. Can you match the Bible? Have you had the experiences recorded in scripture? If you can say I have actually gone through these experiences and these have taken place in me, then you are a witness. Because they parallel the external witness of scripture, and when these two agree in testimony it is conclusive.298 ¶19

Now, others may not believe, but you don’t have to appeal to anyone in this world. God sees the heart. Man sees the outward appearance of a man, but God sees the heart. You can’t lie; you can’t fool the inner man. When you lie you know you’ve lied. When you make a claim you know it, and that’s God who knows that you lie, so you can’t lie. And yet there are unnumbered people who will lie for temporary gain, because they don’t believe the story of Jesus Christ. They don’t believe for one moment this thing ever happened…and that is the only thing that is real in this world. For everything else will vanish, it will all pass away, but this will never pass away. It remains the permanent record, and everyone, one after one after one, will experience this within himself. As he experiences it, he then parallels the external witness of scripture and he removes himself from the world of the dreamer into the entire awakened state.298 ¶20

While we are here still dreaming, let us be like Tom who realized that that world in which he found himself, in which he moved, it was real. It was no more or less real than the world he left behind. So if he knows now when he returns to this world that his dreams are just simply dreams, and they are no more solidly real than his cousin in that world, and the lady in that world, and the bar, and he was a bartender, and all these things, he could now begin to dream his noble dreams…dream exactly what he wants in this world.298 ¶21

Now tonight just before I took the platform, a lady came to me. I know her well, know the family well. And in this world of Caesar, because a man today in this section of time hits the age of fifty-five, if he’s unemployed no one wants him. Who wants him? No special talent, he’s not a doctor, not a dentist, he’s not a this, he’s not a that, no special talent, an honest, wonderful man without special talents. So, she told me a story tonight—I know what others told me too—they took a project, they were determined to make this thing come true. If one individual dreamt it, for they all dream in concert, what does it matter? If we love each other, we can dream in concert. So she feels that when I said a couple of weeks ago that one should go to bed identified with Christ Jesus, instead of saying, I am John Brown who can’t pay my rent, I should go to bed as Jesus Christ who owns the world. For Jesus Christ having risen from the dead owns the world, so everyone in whom he rises can make the claim he owns the world. “Were I hungry I would not tell you;” said he, “for the world is mine and all within it. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” So why should I tell anyone of any limitation when there is no limitation when all belongs to me! So she went to bed in the assumption, “I am Christ.”298 ¶22

Now this has been going on for a long while, this husband of hers who every door was shut against, every door. You’re fifty-five and what can you do? I know that another very dear friend of hers and my wife agreed in secret—-and to this day I didn’t know they had agreed—but I know she and my wife agreed to simply make this a project, to bring him into a wonderful state of affluence, of real, real affluence. Well, he started yesterday on the payroll. He will not start officially until Monday, but he’s on the payroll; and there is no limit to what he can do with what he has, well, already done in this world. He’s done it; he’s equipped to do it, he’s qualified to do it. And out of the nowhere this thing happened. He didn’t advertise. No one sought the job for him. Suddenly the call came through. He saw this man and there was sort of an emergency in the atmosphere, a certain expectancy, and the whole thing rushed into this, and today he’s on this job with unlimited possibilities. At least he’s working and he’s on the payroll as of yesterday, beginning this coming Monday, to prove his talents in this field. And he can do it.298 ¶23

Now, whether his wife…who said to me, “When you said identify yourself with Christ Jesus, and assume I am Christ, and sleep in that assumption, and all things being possible to God, and Christ is God, well then, feel that the whole thing is done, whatever you want, and sleep in that assumption.” My wife and her friend, who are both friends of this lady, did it in their way. But what does it matter who did it? If I go to a concert and there are a hundred pieces and they’re all playing in concert, don’t let one get out of beat, don’t let one get off the tone, let them all play in concert. Well, if I had two, three or a hundred, if they all agree that he is working and gainfully employed, and the whole household is excited about it, they are playing in concert. So I will not say tonight to anyone because I don’t know if it is her assumption that she was Jesus Christ and therefore he, her husband, is now working and gainfully employed, or if it is her friend and her other friend, who is my wife, did it in their way. I would say they all did it.298 ¶24

So let us all know that imagining does create reality, that imagining is God. Can you conceive of anything in this world that wasn’t first imagined? Try and think of it. You might think, well, a tree, because you don’t know the depths of imagining. But the suit you wear was it not first imagined? The chair on which you are seated, the home that you will return to tonight, everything in your world, the business that you’re now performing in this world, was it not first imagined? I don’t care what the nature of the business is, the instrument for playing the piano, everything was once only imagined. So I tell you, to repeat myself, that “The eternal body of Man is the Imagination…and that is God himself, the divine body, Jesus Christ.” We are his members, for I imagine, you imagine, we all imagine. And when Jesus Christ buried in us comes to the end of the dream of this world, he begins to awake. The signs of awakening are recorded in scripture beginning with the resurrection.298 ¶25

So if I take, say, the gospels, the gospels were written to set forth a post-resurrection faith of the apostles. They were not written as documentaries, not for one moment as the world will believe it, to set up and record how Jesus himself saw the event beforehand. Forget it completely! They are written because men heard the story based upon the ancient claim of the Old Testament and here comes one who is a student of the Old Testament and in him the whole thing begins to unfold. He goes back into the Old Testament, which was the only testament, and he discovers parallels; he discovers everything back in the Old Testament that is happening in him that is now alive. He sees the entire promise of God differently. It isn’t as the world believed it to be. He sees the whole thing taking place in man and not on the outside of man by some strange being coming out of space. Then he tells those who will listen, and there were those who believed it implicitly, and in this small circle it began to happen. It happened in them. One turned away, and his space was filled, because it had to have another one in whom it would happen. The word Matthew means “gift of God.” So the grace of God will take place in him, and so all of a sudden it happened in him.298 ¶26

They go out to tell only one story: the story of the risen Christ. They could not speak of the risen Christ unless Christ had been raised in them. Christ might have been raised in one who told the story, but they could not go out and preach it as the risen Christ were he not raised in them. So here, everyone here is Jesus Christ. There is only Jesus Christ in the world. But in everyone Jesus Christ must rise, and he will rise. Not one can fail, because everyone lives by reason of the fact that Christ lives in him. Christ lives in me; he lives in you; in everyone in this world. Were he not in us we couldn’t even breathe…he’s our breath, he’s our life. So he rises and awakes in us, and then we leave this sphere of the dream and enter the entire new world, the awakened state.298 ¶27

So here, you try it tonight, try it in a simple way. Imagining creates reality. You have an objective in this world. Do you know what you want? If you know exactly what you want, what would it be like were it true? A simple question is asked in the Book of John, “Where are you staying?” and he said, “Come and see” . Well, the soul’s place of residence, like the citizen, is determined by the soul’s return. That state to which I most constantly return constitutes my home. If in the course of a day after I’m busy at my desk I dwell upon my problems, and then I turn away because someone asks a question and after I’ve answered the question I turn back to my problems, and in the course of a day that’s where I go back constantly, that’s where I dwell. And that’s what I’m going to multiply and perpetuate in my world.298 ¶28

So the soul’s place of residence, like a citizen’s, is always determined by the soul’s return. The day will come you and I will remember where we laid our immortal body down to dream. And remembering it—as I did, a partial state in Beverly Hills and returned to it—I’ll remember where I laid the immortal body down, which is Jesus Christ, and return. When I return to it, I will completely awaken from the dream of life. But everyone has these other areas where they sleep, where they dwell morning, noon and night. So you and I can in the course of a day know where we are dwelling by observing where we return most frequently. Am I dwelling in what I owe? Am I dwelling in what people think of me? Am I dwelling in what anyone [...]? If I dwell upon that and can argue the point and try to convince them, that’s where I’m dwelling. I’m in a state of want.298 ¶29

There isn’t a day that I don’t get letters [...]. Someone calls here on the phone and says some organization, one of the biggest international organizations of this so-called “new thought.” May I tell you, this isn’t “new thought” at all; it’s old as the faith of Abraham. I have nothing new to teach you, it’s all scripture. So she called yesterday, she called today again to repeat that this organization, international, very powerful, tells her she must not come to my meetings. [...] she calls for help. The organization so far has been unable to grant anything she’s asked of it. But she’s afraid of their power, so she doesn’t come here physically, but she calls on the telephone. She thinks by calling they won’t know, which undoubtedly they wouldn’t because they aren’t really spiritual. If she came here physically, they could have someone watched, then they would know. But they would never know if she called me on the telephone or wrote me a letter. So they are wearing the mask of being very spiritual and very important, and they are the blind leaders of the blind. I will not tell you the name, but they are international in this world. So they will frighten people away from here.298 ¶30

But who cares? It doesn’t really matter. My income does not depend upon your attendance, not for one moment does it. I welcome you because I can feed you that which Christ sent me to give you. But don’t think for one moment my livelihood depends upon your physical attendance, because it doesn’t. But I’ve been sent: I stood in the presence of the risen Christ and Christ is the One man, only one man, in this world. We are gathered one by one and incorporated into the one man who is God, and that God is Jesus Christ.298 ¶31

So I say to everyone here, take it and use it. Use it in the world of Caesar, knowing it is a dream. Because it is a dream, stop the bad dream. Why have a nightmare? The whole vast world has a nightmare. Well, you can stop the dreaming of a nightmare and turn it around, if you know you’re dreaming, and dream what you want to dream until that moment in time that Christ in you has reached the fullness of time and begins to awake.298 ¶32

When he awakes, he goes through a series of events, prearranged, all recorded in scripture. Then you will awake in the tomb of your skull, and you will come out of the tomb of your skull born from above, with all the signs of the birth of Christ—the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and the witnesses to testify to the presence of the child. Then you will find that which is the only symbol in the world that will reveal to you that you are God the Father, because you will see his only begotten Son who calls you Father. Then you will go through sign after sign, all within you. And if the whole vast world rose in opposition, it would make no difference to you whatsoever. You will know.298 ¶33

Let them have all the medals they want, all the honors they want in this world, it’s still dreaming. And lovely dreams…let them have their wonderful dreams. But you will know, after the signs, that when this veil of pleasure is taken off, it’s taken off for the last time…after the signs. But you will not condemn anyone. You’ll be one with the body of Christ Jesus. Still dieting, controlling, loving, and warning everyone into the waking state. No condemnation, there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t condemn anyone. He leaves them alone in their nightmares, and warns them, warns them through his messengers that he sends.298 ¶34

He sends messengers into the world. And everyone who stands in his presence is sent and everyone who is sent is an apostle. It’s the one prerequisite: For apostleship is to have seen the risen Christ. As Paul said, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” . So having seen him he is sent. You can’t be called and not be sent. And then you are sent and you will tell it to the best of your ability. After having spent that one moment in time, maybe thirty years, fifty years, sixty years, then the veil is taken off and you are forever incorporated into the body of Christ, that glorious body, still guiding all. And one will be called, one after the other, standing in your presence now, because you’re one with Christ, not another. There is only Christ.298 ¶35

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *298 ¶36

I’ve asked you in the past for case histories. I’m going to repeat the request, and the more current the better, for they make the principle become alive. Like tonight’s two…one told me just a matter of minutes before I took the platform and the one in this morning’s mail. They’re current, things that happened in the immediate present, and so they illustrate the principle. So, you who’ve actually proved to yourself that imagining does create reality, please share with us your experiences that I may, from the platform, share it with all. Now, are there any questions, please?298 ¶37

Tonight’s subject is “What are you Sowing?” We’re told in scripture, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that also will he reap” . Here we have the law of identical harvest: As you sow, so you reap, and the harvest is always the multiplication of the identical seed. We are told, “While the earth is yours, seedtime and harvest…shall not cease” . Now tonight, you be the judge of the seed that you will plant. I’ll try to show you how to plant it. You have to feel the feeling in your mind; you plant it right here. It may not be cultivated, not be prepared to receive the seed, but you can pick the seed and then plant it. Now the individual himself must accept the burden of the incarnation of his dream. The dream is always ready to be incarnated, but unless we, ourselves, offer it human parentage it is incapable of birth. It can’t be born of itself; it has to be born through man. So when Blake spoke of the combats of good and evil as eating of the tree of knowledge, and the combats of truth and error were eating of the tree of life, he said, “There isn’t an error in the world that it has a man as its agent, that is, it is a man; there isn’t a truth but it has as its agent a man, therefore, it is man.” So man is not only the field, he is the sower. He selects the seed and then he plants it on himself, and whatever he plants he is going to bring forth if he doesn’t modify the seed. He’ll bring forth, well, thirty, sixty or 100-fold. If he accepts it completely, he’ll bring 100-fold. If he modifies it because he can’t quite believe in such a vast dream coming true, well, then he’ll modify it. He’ll bring forth according to what he has accepted as true.297 ¶1

So you and I take a dream, a daydream—I would like to be and I name it, this, that or the other—and then I toy with the idea, what would it be like? What would the feeling be like if it were true? You mean that is true? Well, I’m going to try to persuade myself that it is true; and to the degree that I am self-persuaded I have planted it. Have I modified it? I might have, I might have thought it is too big, much too big. So all I can do is acquaint you with the principle; I leave you to your choice and quite often its risk.297 ¶2

I say this advisedly, for here, just recently, this is the end story. This lady…well, many years ago she came every Tuesday, every Friday, and when I spoke on Thursday, every Thursday, never failed. She had no money, very little; she was the poor member of a very large family of wealthy people. Her next door neighbor would bring her to my meetings and she came every Tuesday, every Friday, and quite often her neighbor would pay for her. My friend’s husband said one day, “Oh, the best thing in this world that could happen (calling the lady by name) is that if one of these rich members of her family would give her $20,000…if they’d only give $20,000.” Well, my friend said to her, “You go to Neville, I go to Neville, let’s try it! Just let us apply this teaching.” So they just simply applied the teaching to the end that she, this lady, had a lot of money—didn’t actually confine it to $20,000, just money, lots of money. Well, within the year a member of the family died and left her $600,000.297 ¶3

But, may I tell you, she has no friends today…she is miserable! The first thing she did was this. She stopped coming to the meetings. She said, “Neville may want some of the money. He’ll find out sooner or later that I have money.” She used to go to Christian Science, Unity, Science of Mind, Divine Science and Self Realization. She said, “I’ll not go to any of them, because they’ll find out and they’ll all have their hooks out to get my money.” She practically locked the door on herself. No one comes to see her and she lives this life of a hermit. So the other day, my friend knowing how sad she was, how miserable, invited her over. They sat down together to discuss her members of the family that she now has it against…suspicious of everyone. So my friend said, “Now you did go to Neville, you haven’t forgotten what he teaches, let us now start from scratch. What do you want? You have your money, $600,000, you can’t spend the interest, here you are well-advanced in years, so let us now sit down and work out a plan that you want…the relationship that you want with your family, with your friends.” Before my friend could go any further, she said to my friend, “If you’re so darn smart, why don’t you have money?” Here’s my friend who took her to the meetings, paid for her, did all these things; so the book was closed. She went back to her little home, put the key in the door, and there she stayed, dry-rotting.297 ¶4

So you want money…at that price? You can have it. You may have it. You can have anything in this world that you want. You contemplate something; contemplate it always along with its consequences to yourself and to others. If you contemplate it and it seems pleasant, but you don’t take into consideration the consequences, well, you may go head on and get it, and then you have to live in misery. There’s no reason why someone with $600,000 or a million dollars shouldn’t be happy if they know how to live. But she became fearful and suspicious, and she builds this suspicion day after day. I’ll tell you, suspicion carried too far is diagnostic of insanity. So she won’t be able to enjoy it, because eventually if she continues the suspicion, it will take her out. For her own good it will be simply put into the hands of some member to be her guardian.297 ¶5

So I warn you. Try it. You can have anything that you want if you are willing to assume the burden of the incarnation of it, if you are willing to be the parent of the thing you desire in this world. For you and you alone will bring it into birth. You dare to assume that you are the man that you want to be, that you are the woman that you want to be, and then you see the world as you would see it were it true. Look into your mind’s eye and see a world that would reflect the friends who would see you. How would they see you? Others who are mere acquaintances they would know of these new values that came into your life and they would recognize in you the embodiment of these new values. Let them all see you, in your mind’s eye, just as you would be seen by the world were this dream of yours already embodied. You try it. And you’ll know what it means in scripture to go forth and sow.297 ¶6

The ultimate word in scripture is the gospel—that is called the Word of God, the word of salvation. But it’s the same process of planting. That Word had to be heard. Man had to hear the Word. If he heard a distortion of the Word, he will grow that. If he hears the Word as it really is from one who has experienced the Word, he may not accept the entire thing, but to the degree that he accepts he’ll bring it into this world. I am here to send you the Word, or plant the Word, or hope to plant it, for I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing. When we are told in scripture, “And the child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God,” that’s the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. The King James Version it is not “child”: “That holy thing to be born of you must be called holy, the Son of God.” Well, the word translated “holy thing” in one Bible and “child” in another is the Greek word “logos.” Look it up in your Concordance…just logos. Look up the word logos and get its true definition. We have it as “word”—“in the beginning was the Word”—that’s logos—“and the word was with God and the Word was God” . But the word logos means “meaning; divine expression.” It really is the gospel itself. It was in the very beginning; it was God.297 ¶7

So if you hear the Word as it really is, and you accept it, you have accepted God. You’ve planted him on the inside, and God has to grow in you in a series of mystical experiences. That is the way of salvation—that only union with Christ would ever lead anyone to God the Father. Well, Christ is simply the way of salvation but personified in scripture as a child. Never see him in any other light, just a child, an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. Because when it begins to unfold within you, you’ll find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. It happens so beautifully, all within you, the very field where you planted it is your own wonderful skull. So one scene after the other comes out and here you encounter the Word unfolding like a flower; and everything said of Jesus Christ in scripture you will experience as a personal, first-person experience. Then you will know who Jesus Christ really is.297 ¶8

So the Word of God is God himself. Along the way you heard it. You either heard it from someone who experienced it; or you heard it from one who rationalized it, therefore, modified it; or you heard it by reading the book itself, getting inspiration and extracting the meaning of the Word. If you successfully extracted it and toyed with the idea to the point of acceptance, well, then it’s planted. Then that vision that you accepted has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. The whole thing will simply come into bloom. If in the meanwhile it seems long, wait; it is sure, and it will not be late —not late from the time that you accepted it to the time of fulfillment. For you do not know when, really, you heard the Word and accepted it. I hope that if you haven’t heard it and you hear it tonight, don’t reject it, toy with it. The sower went forth to sow…some fell on the highway, took no root; some among thorns, came up quickly and was stifled by the cares of the world; then some on rocky ground, not well-prepared ground; then some on fertile field. But even that brought forth only thirty, sixty; and then, of course, they did bring forth a hundred. But many could only bring forth thirty and many brought forth sixty .297 ¶9

So the Word of God, which we are called upon to plant, is that eventually this series of events will break the cycle of recurrence, this repetition, and this will make it then possible for you to escape from this time-space prison really. For we’re all imprisoned in this world of time and space; and the only exit is through this series of events, called in scripture “the life of Jesus Christ.” His life starts with his resurrection, and his resurrection is your resurrection. You’ll know exactly what it means in the Bible that Jesus is resurrected from the dead, the first fruit of those who slept. And the word “sleep” is wisely used, because when you feel it and you begin to awaken, it’s the sensation of waking. You have no sensation of rising from the dead; you have the feeling of actually awakening; then you’re completely awake in a way you’ve never been before. But the death scene is now where you find yourself. You awake, completely awake, to find yourself in a tomb, and the tomb is your skull. That’s the only moment in the whole drama that you know you must have died, or someone thought you did, for you find yourself in a sepulcher, in a tomb, and that tomb is your skull.297 ¶10

So we are told in scripture that this birth of man is the result of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead . You see no one but yourself—so now you know who he is. Then you come out and you look at this thing out of which you’ve just emerged. And then the wind comes, and you find the symbol spoken of in Luke as the little child. The little child is the Word…that is the meaning of the unfolding picture. You come out and you look at this thing out of which you’ve just emerged. And then the wind comes, an unearthly wind possesses you. Well, the wind is the Spirit…same word in Greek and Hebrew. It completely possesses you. When you look back, this out of which you emerged is gone; so the tomb, now, is empty. But in its place here are the witnesses to the event. One finds the little infant and designates the infant as your child. You are the one who not only rose, you’re the one who came out [...] being born, so you are the one that’s born.297 ¶11

Then you go from that scene to the scene of the discovery of the fatherhood of God. From that scene to the scene of the ascent into heaven in the same manner that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness—the cutting of the temple door or the curtain of the temple—that all happens in you; right through to the very end, when the seal of approval is put upon you. Then you know what the Word is: In the beginning was the Word, God’s intention, his plan, his meaning.297 ¶12

But it has to be told. So it’s told to unnumbered people in the world; not everyone receives it. It’s the most incredible story in the world. Some will receive it wholeheartedly; others will modify it, take it under consideration, and they bring it in, in a lesser production. So I say, here on this level, you take the greatest story ever told which is the story of the gospel and just toy with it, try to accept the whole thing. I’m telling you the truth; I’m speaking from experience; I’m not theorizing.297 ¶13

And then take the same thing on a lesser level and beautify your world…become the bigger man. Don’t equate success and spirituality and lots of money and all these things with the Word. No, that’s what my friend’s friend did. She thought that spirituality, power, wisdom all these things she now possesses, she thinks, because she has $600,000. Don’t do it. You just take the Word on this level and ask a friend, “What do you want in this world…anything?” Don’t be embarrassed, all you’re going to do is plant the seed. So they tell you, I would like to be this, that or the other. Let it come within your code of decency—that you wouldn’t hurt the hair on one man’s head to bring about his good fortune. But you don’t have to, you just simply single out what you would like to be, and then in your own mind’s eye plant it. You assume the burden of the incarnation of that state. Do for him what he is either unwilling or unable to do for himself by simply listening to what he wants and persuade yourself that he has it. To the degree that you are self-persuaded that he has it, to that degree he’ll reflect it, he’ll get it.297 ¶14

You take no praise for it. You’re simply exercising a very simple principle as we find it in scripture, and so you can go about doing good. You don’t burden yourself with it…you don’t lift a finger to make it come to pass. You don’t get on a wire and call friends and ask them to help out. You do nothing but plant the seed, and the seed will grow in you and you will see them reflecting that growth in you. They’ll become the embodiment of the man or the woman that they want to be.297 ¶15

So this is what I mean when I ask the question, what are you sowing? For every little imaginal act is a seed planted if you accept it. But, as I said earlier, that which was sown is not invariably brought to pass; but that which is brought to pass must have been sown. The reason why I say it is not invariably brought to pass you and I can practice the art of forgiveness which is called in scripture repentance. If you know that this day in my idle moments I was unlovely in my thinking concerning you or anyone else, if I remember it, I can bring it back and revise it. I can practice the art of repentance and therefore addle the seed and it will not come into my world. I planted it, but then I dug it up. If I dug it up and destroy it, well, then it can’t. Or I can modify it, leave in the lovely parts and change certain parts and bring about a repentance or forgiveness so that it need not come.297 ¶16

So don’t be afraid. Our God is a God of forgiveness. As we are told in the 130th Psalm, I think it is, that if you are not a God of forgiveness, who could stand? Who in this world could stand if you were not a God of forgiveness? But he is. And yet, without forgiveness the world seems to be so cruel. Just response, the whole vast world is infinite response: To the pure you show yourself as pure, and to the crooked you show yourself as perverse. Well, if that’s the hard and fast law like the law of cause and effect, there must be some escape. Repentance is the escape.297 ¶17

You can change your attitude towards life and having changed it you will change the effects in your world. Everything in this world is simply response; it’s an echo of what we have done somewhere along the way.297 ¶18

So tonight, you can take…just like this lady…but you might say, “After all, she did have rich relatives,” and everyone stops right there. “She had rich relatives and I don’t have any, therefore, where would I get $600,000?” That question should have been asked of John D. Rockefeller I. He didn’t have a nickel. Neither did Henry Ford I. Henry Ford II, he had a foundation of two billion dollars; he didn’t earn one penny of it. This money was earned by the “Old Man” who started off broke at the age of forty. He was a watchmaker and went broke.297 ¶19

So don’t say, “Well, I have no one in this world who I could turn to, because all my relatives are poor.” You don’t need rich relatives. You don’t need anything in this world but the seed and the willingness to plant it. You have the field; the field is your mind. So if you know that the harvest will always be identical with the seed, you can forget the harvest once you know what the seed is. The seed is simply the Word, and the Word is simply meaning. It may take a hundred words to describe what you want in this world. Well, put them all together, it forms one word or seed. So extract the meaning from the long sentence and plant it.297 ¶20

Suppose someone would say to you tonight, “Oh, I heard the most marvelous things about you—and you didn’t die in shame but you admitted it,” and what they said would imply tremendous good fortune for you. Suppose they said it, but you will say, “But that would be false, it isn’t true.” May I tell you, falsehood is prophetic. You don’t have to confine yourself to the facts of life. If man had to confine himself to the facts of life, he could never transcend himself. So a true judgment need not conform to the facts to which it is related. I can say of you, “Oh, so you’re so wealthy!” if you want to be wealthy. Don’t say to me, “Oh, no I’m not”…instantly you deny it. Give me the privilege of saying you are secure. And security being a relative term, what would you mean by secure? Maybe you owe so much money you can’t see your way out of it. Nevertheless, I accept the fact that you are secure, that you are wealthy, and live in that assumption as though it were true. If you do, the seed goes down, it takes root, in its own good time it comes up, and then you’ll reap the harvest. The harvest will be identical with the seed—that seed was that you are secure if that’s what you want. If you want a companion, if you want friendship, no matter what you want, alright, take the seed. There are seeds for every occasion in the world and everything will grow out of the mind of man, for all things exist in the human Imagination, all things.297 ¶21

So tonight, we won’t dwell on the ultimate Word, but just on the Word of this level. You want a better job? You know exactly what you would do had you the job? There’s a friend of mine in New York City, he’d never worked for more than $10,000 a year. He came to my meetings. He couldn’t raise the sights too high. He was an engineer, helping out with the building of bridges all over this country. Came from the…almost the far West, not quite, but he landed in New York City. He and his wife and daughter came to the meetings. He said, “Neville, I would like to make $15,000 a year.” I said, “Alright, you put the figure at $15,000?” “Yes.” Well, where would you like to work? “There’s a firm on Madison Avenue and I don’t know that they need anyone. If they could use my services [...] and I’m willing to travel. They do things all over the world. They have plans now for a bridge in Turkey, eventually a bridge in Greece, and I’m willing to travel. But I want 15,000 a year.”297 ¶22

I said, “Have you seen the inside of the office?” “Yes.” Do you know of any place in that area where you would sit, where you’d hang your hat, hang your coat? “Yes, I know exactly where I would sit if I had a job for 15,000 a year. I’ve gone into the place and I’ve cased the joint.” I said, “Alright, you take the elevator now—these stores would not be on the first floor, it’s all merchandise—so you’d take the elevator to some floor.” He said, “I know exactly where I’d go.” So he took the elevator in his Imagination, called the number to the operator, and went up. It stopped, he got off, went to the door, went over to the place and put up his little hat. In one week he was working for that store, that firm, at $15,000 a year.297 ¶23

His first assignment…came back…was with the store for about five years, that is, the company for five years. Then one morning he just didn’t wake, didn’t wake in this world. He was a healthy man, my age…and I’m going back now fifteen years. He just simply didn’t wake…perfectly wonderful healthy fellow.297 ¶24

But he knows the working of God’s law. So wherever he was after that, wherever they sent him[...], I hope he hasn’t forgotten how it worked here. Because we don’t get off this time-space circle until we reach that fabulous series of events when the Word of God unfolds within us, the real Word which is the gospel. Then we break the spell and we completely escape from this predicament of time and space. Wherever he is now, it’s like a closed-circuit; and you can make your exit now, at this moment, to find yourself not in the year 1965 elsewhere but in the year 3,000. You think 3,000 does not exist…we’re coming upon it. That’s only the linear concept of life—this is [...] and there’s nothing new under the sun: That which has been, is, and that which will be, is; and there is nothing new under the sun .297 ¶25

So, within this fabulous sphere we can pick anything. Yet the modern concept of our world is that we cannot conceive as…well, even the turn of the century conceived that the future is always unfolding out of the past. He said, “No, we must conceive the whole vast time-space as already laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it.” The whole thing is, and I become aware. Well, become aware of yourself as being wealthy, become aware of yourself as being wanted—become aware of yourself…and you name it…because it is so. Everything is so.297 ¶26

But if you don’t assume the burden of the incarnation of this new value you sow, it remains forever unseen by you. So you are the sower spoken of in scripture. You have freedom of choice to single out any seed you want to plant. You have the soil, your own mind, and you can simply drop it, knowing it contains within itself the power and the plan of self-expression. You don’t have to do a thing about it after you plant it.297 ¶27

On reflection, reason will step in and will tell you it happened because …and then you go through the entire series of events that led up to the embodiment of it. You might be inclined to believe that’s true—if these things had not happened, then I would not have had good fortune smile upon me.297 ¶28

A man looks and he sees a name. He doesn’t like that name. That name represents to him the men who tried to dethrone his father, to make him walk in the gutter, and robbed him, in this man’s eye, of all he possessed. Instead of seeing the man’s name, he saw his father’s name, which happens to be his name, and so he saw his father’s name implying ownership of that building. Didn’t have a nickel…did it for two years…planting the seed until there was complete acceptance. In the interval, that firm went broke and the building is up for sale. The day of the sale, with no money at all, not a penny, a stranger comes into the building. A stranger in the sense he was never in this man’s home for a cup of tea and he said to him, kiddingly, knowing he didn’t have any money, he said, “Are you going to buy the building?” He said, “With what?” Well, he said, “Would you like to buy it?” He said, “I’d love it.” Well, he said, “I have money. I’ve been watching you and your father and you’re hard workers and honest people, and so, I have money. It gives me nothing in the bank. Are you willing to give me just a note—no collateral because you don’t have it—give me just your signature and your father’s signature with a promise to pay six percent on it and reduce the principal in ten years? Every year it must be reduced; at the end of ten years it must be completely reduced, and you pay me six percent on the remaining monies until completed.” He said yes! That day this man owned the building…didn’t have a nickel…that is 1924.297 ¶29

I just heard from this man. Since that beginning in 1924, he bought properties here, properties there, properties all over. He just sold one for $990,000…that’s just one piece. He sold one last year for $840,000. He has properties all over. One went up 600% and he sold it…and there is no capital gain tax where he lives. This is a man who had nothing, but he believed this principle. He started from scratch. He simply saw what he wanted to see, persuaded himself that he was reading a name that wasn’t there at all. Well, if the name were there, it would imply ownership by his family. So, there he simply believed what he imagined was so was so.297 ¶30

Therefore, I tell you from experience imagining creates reality. Be careful what you imagine! Most of us are planting the most horrible seeds in the world, nightmares. But one thing be assured, you the dreamer—as he was the dreamer, the day-dreamer, because what he was seeing and what [...] was seen, it was a controlled waking-dream, a daydream—but no matter how horrible the dream, the dreamer can never be destroyed by his dream. The dreamer is immortal. The dream can come into being and simply exhaust itself, or you can change it, go on into another dream. But the dreamer can never be destroyed by his dream.297 ¶31

That’s comforting! Therefore, it gives you all the freedom in the world, in this world of Caesar, to even have a nightmare…knowing that one day you’ll awaken from it and pledge not to repeat it.297 ¶32

But he never lost the vision. I can say of him, as Blake said of Los, he kept the divine vision in time of trouble. He never wavered. And so today he listens to all the arguments; it never sinks in. He knows exactly what he wants. So he took all of his family into the business with him, gave them all partnerships, that is, his father did. He didn’t want any more than he had, but he said, “One thing I want to have and I insist on having: I make all decisions and no arguments. There are all of you, you can tell me anything, I will listen, but the final decision is mine and mine until the day I die. No elections, no displacement, this is my child from birth. I share it with you, so you all share it, and you’ll have opinions, but it is my child, the [...] in my attention, and for the rest of my earthly days I and I alone make all decisions.”297 ¶33

You see him sitting in a chair…he isn’t asleep…he’s dreaming a controlled waking-dream. He knows what he wants. I knew when I was home two years ago he wanted to sell that piece of property. You see him sitting alone. All of a sudden [...] a man comes from Europe, makes him an offer, 990,000, and he takes it. And that’s the way he lives in this world. Doesn’t consult with others, just sits down and dreams controlled waking-dreams; knowing that, well, if he makes a mistake—he made a few—but they all, on reflection, panned out and they were not mistakes. They were not mistakes.297 ¶34

Here’s a simple one. He bought six diesel engines from, I would say, the stock [...]. They were all built during the war for submarines, [...] diesel. So they had a stock of diesel engines, unused, all crated. He bought six. We wondered what did you buy six diesel engines for, we don’t need one? But he bought six.297 ¶35

[...] became a quarry, using the diesel engines, but it didn’t really work. Then one day you couldn’t get parts and the entire island was blacked out. [...] in New York City the other day, only they could get repairs in ten hours. We were in darkness for a month. At the height of the tourist season the only power in the island were his six diesels.297 ¶36

So what did he do? He rented them out. This hotel wants one—it’s powerful enough to take care of three hotels—and you pay me so much a month. The newspaper wanted one, the cold storage wanted one to keep the cold storage going— big enough to supply both. The [...] banker wanted one, another one there. At the end of that month of distress he not only redeemed all of the money he paid for the six but made a profit. So it really wasn’t a fiasco to begin with. It seemed so when they began to dig the quarries, but then came the blackout.297 ¶37

Who made the blackout? That’s what William Butler Yeats asked. He said, “I will never be sure that it was not some woman treading in the winepress that started that subtle change in men’s minds.” She’s all alone and she’s annoyed, and she’s just lost in an angry mood, changing the affairs of the world .297 ¶38

So here, he’s not going to take a loss…doesn’t believe in taking a loss. And so, I ask who caused the blackout? On the surface, the big generator broke down and they couldn’t get the spares in time, so the island was blacked out at the height of the tourist season. So what would you do? He had six diesels. If you learn to dream as he dreams, you would grow rich over night if that’s what you want.297 ¶39

But I have seen so much sorrow from great wealth and such sordidness, I, personally, don’t want any part of it. I’ve seen such sordidness in wealth. You think behind that façade they must live beautifully. Just put your ear this way and you’ll hear what goes on behind and no decent person wants it. Yet we have to live in the world of Caesar, and we need money; therefore, take this wonderful principle and apply it wisely. Apply it towards the kind of fruit that you want to feed upon in this world of Caesar. Now let us go into the Silence.297 ¶40

Before I take the questions, I must share with you a little experience of last Tuesday night. This very sensitive soul comes here, she’s an aunt, and when we went into the Silence we were discussing the states that displease God. One is lack of faith in I am he, and the other is eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. They are the only two states mentioned in scripture that could ever displease God. Nothing else displeases him. So when we went into the Silence, she said to herself, I am he. Then she said, “I heard a voice ever so clearly and it said to me, ‘Leave it alone. It is true.’” She said, “It was as clear as a bell, this voice that spoke after I made the affirmation ‘I am he.’” She wrote it out and gave it to me last Tuesday night. I think it’s a thrilling experience for anyone. [...]. But she shared with me that wonderful experience…that’s why I ask you to share with me your experiences.297 ¶41

Now, before I took the platform tonight, this husband told me that his wife has two of the most startling experiences on the working of the law. She hasn’t given them to me as yet, but she’s here, and she knows what I am talking about. So I’m going to ask you to please write them for me that I may share them with those who come here; because our faith encourages their faith, and we’re all mutually benefitted if I can just tell your story as it actually happened. Don’t embellish it, don’t add to it, just what you had as an objective—what you did, how you applied the principle—and then what resulted, that I may take this platform and tell it. So I’m going to ask you, having heard it from your husband, not the story, the exciting news that you can tell. Now are there any questions?297 ¶42

These subjects that seem so spiritual are really in the end the most practical in the world…really they are. Tonight it’s “The New Man.” And by the new man I do not mean that a man who was, say, weak at birth and then became strong, or that he was poor and became rich and mighty. These are only states. I tell you that you can be whatever you want to be in this world by a change of state, which is simply a change of consciousness, that’s all that you do really. But that’s not the new man. Tonight, I’m speaking of the new man—not a state where if you said to me “I want to be” and you name it, well, it isn’t difficult to get into it. And if you’re willing to live in a state, I know from experience it would take you no time to reap the fruit of that state, good, bad or indifferent. I don’t care what it is…you name it. I will show you how to get into that state. It’s easy. You live in the state, and then all of a sudden, like a tree, you bear the fruit of the state. That is simple; that belongs to the world of Caesar. But tonight I’m speaking of the new man.294 ¶1

“You who once were far off are now brought near in the blood of Jesus.” Fantastic statement! You and I were once far off and we’re brought near in the blood of Jesus. “He is our peace who made us one, made us both one, and has broken down the dividing line or wall of hostility…that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.” You read it and you wonder “What is this all about?” You can’t rationalize it. Reason will not help you; reason belongs to this world. We were given reason only in the world of Caesar, and we can use it as best we can. Become so wise in the eyes of the world, so very wise—get all the degrees and all the medals, because we are wise, wise men and women in the world of Caesar.294 ¶2

Just about a year ago in New York City…in fact it was the month of June of ’64…I was there for my daughter’s graduation, and I read this little story in the Herald Tribune by John Crosby. He was then in London and he was interviewing some ex-minister of the Anglican Church. His name was Allen Stewart. He was born in Dublin. His father was an Anglican minister and his grandfather…strangely enough born in Dublin…but, nevertheless, they were all Anglican ministers. He gave up the ministry. So Crosby interviewed him and Crosby said to him, “Why did you do it?” Well, he said—while he was gorging himself with this enormous steak as Crosby entertained him—he said, “Typical Edwardian.” Well, he meant Edward the VII, who was like this, who just indulged himself to the nth degree. So he said, “That no one—as my father said to me, who was also a minister—no one can be a priest unless he’s either a moron or intellectually dishonest.” Well, I am not a moron, said he, and I refuse to continue being intellectually dishonest, and so I’ve given it up. So Crosby said to him, “Tell me what portions of the Christian faith you cannot accept?” He said, “I will answer you as I did the archbishop. The archbishop asked me the same question and I said, none of it…it’s all nonsense…this is a myth. How could anyone studying physics, astrophysics, biochemistry, biology, and all of these things, ever accept this peculiar allegorical myth?” His name is Allen Stewart, a brilliant speaker, brilliant mind. Well, they didn’t want to lose him in the church, because he was so brilliant as a speaker. Well, here is one who expects to find this great mystery through reason, and you can’t do it.294 ¶3

It’s revelation—the whole thing is revealed. If God doesn’t reveal himself to man, man remains in the world of Caesar. All he can do is take God’s law, based upon reason, and he has to use some other little angle with it to become this man, that man, the other man in this world. But I tell you, the new man is a reality, it is true, something entirely different; and every one is destined to be that new man, and the new man is Jesus Christ. You are destined to be Jesus Christ, regardless of your present sex, regardless of our present race, present anything. You are destined to be Jesus Christ without loss of identity. You will not lose your identity; it encompasses everything in the world; and you’re destined to be Jesus Christ, believe it or not. I am speaking from experience; I am not theorizing, I am not speculating. Everything said in scripture concerning Jesus Christ you are going to experience, and you will be the central character in the entire story. You are the new man. We are told he will return as told us in the Book of Acts and the Book of Hebrews. The truest return of Jesus Christ is when he repeats in us all that is recorded in scripture about Jesus Christ. Every word that is uttered in the New Testament as coming from God himself you are going to say, you’ll speak it, and you will be Jesus Christ when you say it.294 ¶4

Let me give you one simple little illustration. Oh, about eight months ago, my friends Jack and Grace, my publishers, they are well-advanced in years. They don’t look it…they have lived this principle, I would say, as best they could, and so you would never know how advanced in years in the world of Caesar they are, but they are. Well, in the last year or so she hasn’t been feeling well. And so, this night both sat in their living room, they were looking at a picture on TV, some documentary, and being tired she simply dozed. As she dozed, she came back to the world of Caesar and she was repeating audibly that which anyone could hear were they in the room. Jack heard it…and she was repeating over and over…at least three times she said, “Oh, I must remember what Neville said. I must remember what Neville said.” Jack said to her, “What did Neville say?” And then she came to. “Oh,” she said, “wait a second I’ll remember, I’ll get it.” Then after a little while, “Oh yes, this is what he said, ‘Do not be afraid…I am with you always, to the close of the age.’” These are the words of the risen Christ, yet she heard Neville say, “Do not be afraid…I am with you always, to the end and the close of the age.” I tell you these are the last words as recorded in the Book of Matthew.294 ¶5

The Book of Mark ends on a note from a woman, and the woman is…it is said, they were afraid. They told nothing to anyone, for they saw the empty tomb and they told nothing to anyone. If you have the normal Bible, the King James Bible, there are two little endings to it that are not really the true endings. It ends on the eighth verse. Two have been supplied by scholars through the years, because they felt it was an unfinished symphony. It’s not an unfinished symphony at all. It is true, just that end “they were afraid.” So the voice speaks now…you and I must finish it…you and I have to play scripture. And the being of which I speak, this being is omnipresent, it’s omniscient. You actually are incorporated into the body of God. I am speaking from experience.294 ¶6

The day will come you will stand right in the presence of the living Christ, the risen Christ; you will be incorporated into his body, and the body is all love. Love is the human form divine. There you stand, not only in his presence but you are actually fused and incorporated into that body, and you wear that body. So you come into this world and play your small, little part till that moment in time when the dove descends upon you, and then Messiah’s really power-laden work begins. At that moment in time when this happens to you individually your power-laden work begins, and then your work here is simply secondary. Oh, you tell the story, tell it to anyone who will listen, write it in books, write it in magazines, tell it; but your real work is not in this world anymore. It belongs to an entirely different realm, and you’re omnipresent. When someone like a Grace who despairs, she’s tired, and she falls into a little coma at the moment, looking at a documentary, and you appear and you tell her, “Be not afraid…I am with you always, to the close of the age.” She comes out of that state bringing you…she calls you by name, “I must remember”—and she calls you, whether your name is John, or Grace, or Peter, in my case it was Neville—“I must remember what Neville said.” I’m quoting the words of the risen Christ. They have become my words because I’m part of his body. I live in that realm.294 ¶7

So you go to sleep, alright, so you’re a little Neville who has all the pains of the world, he has all the limitations of this world; but that something that has happened to the depth, the new man in him, has no pain in this world. He puts this down; this is tired, and this little body will eventually go to the end, it will die, so you’ll burn it up, dispose of it. But that something that took place in him which is the new man, it’s an entirely different region. The new man is only one man, and everyone will one day be that one new man. God is gathering men, one by one, to unite into a single man who is God. And all will unite into that one being.294 ¶8

So here, Allen Stewart, a brilliant mind in his own judgment of himself, and he speaks of astrophysics—if anyone studied astrophysics, how could they ever accept this awful, stupid nonsense called Christianity? And only last month, you might have read it, if anyone knowing those who are tops in astrophysics today were called upon to name the outstanding members of that great group and you reduced it to, say, to three, you could not omit the name of Fred Hoyle, you couldn’t. Fred Hoyle of Cambridge has for, well, this whole generation been the outstanding astrophysicist. Last month he addressed a group of astrophysicists and he said to them, “I may have been wrong for the last twenty years. In fact, I believe I have been wrong.” Well, Fred Hoyle’s textbooks are required reading in all the universities of the world that would have a course in astrophysics. No one could actually pass and get his degree in that great science without a knowledge of what Fred Hoyle believes…only theories. Now after twenty years he tells them all he may have been wrong and he believes he has been wrong.294 ¶9

So Allen Stewart wants us all to study astrophysics, that which is only the speculation of the mind of man. Hasn’t a thing to do with revelation. When the evangelist said, “God is love,” do you think for one moment that this conclusion was reached after a long process of philosophic reflection on the nature and the attributes of God? No, it came as a self-revelation of God. The day will come you will stand in the presence of God, here is the risen Christ, and he’s all love. You don’t have to ask any questions, he’s all love. He embraces you, incorporates you into his own being and you are one with the body of God that is all love.294 ¶10

When Blake was asked this simple question, “What do you think of Jesus Christ?” he turned to his friend Robinson and he said, “Jesus Christ is the only God”—but then he hastened to add—“but so am I and so are you.” Unfortunately they were going in to dinner and we have no further comment from Robinson, who told the story, or Blake would have explained his vision: He stood in the presence of the risen Christ who’s all love. He was incorporated into the body of the risen Christ, therefore, he was love. He also knew that Robinson, who asked the question, would one day be incorporated into that body.294 ¶11

So I tell you that eventually everyone in this world, regardless of what they have done or what they are capable of doing, will be incorporated into the body of the risen Christ; and that is the new man, that is God himself. You can’t rationalize it. This belongs to a region that is completely outside of what the intellect inhabits. Therefore, all the wise men in the world could not in any way disturb it by their criticism and by their arguments, they couldn’t. It remains undisturbed.294 ¶12

What man in this world…if I hadn’t read Fred Hoyle’s confession that he’s been wrong for twenty years…here’s the outstanding astrophysicist of the world…now he confesses like the little old lady on TV, “Now she tells me. After I’ve labored and labored and labored to get going where I’m going, now they tell me I could go aboard this little Greyhound, and the whole thing was taken care of.” Now she tells me, said she, as she reaches the end of her day. So now Fred Hoyle confesses that he has been wrong for twenty years, and all who actually took their degrees in astrophysics had to memorize the works of Fred Hoyle and pass it based upon that which is untrue.294 ¶13

May I tell you, when it comes to “the end,” everything in the world of Caesar is but a shadow, a copy, and because it is a copy it isn’t true. It’s a shadow; it isn’t true. Nothing here is true. And the day will come when you will actually play the part that is recorded in scripture of Jesus Christ. You, too, will stand in the presence of someone who needs your help at that moment, after you’re incorporated into the body of Jesus Christ. We are incorporated one by one.294 ¶14

Now, when I tell you the simple little story, how would anyone reading it in scripture understand it, unless they either experience it or they believe the words of one who did experience it? For here we are told “We are saved by the blood of Jesus.” How could you be saved by the blood of Jesus? Well, the normal person would say that’s stupid, that’s completely, well, it’s idiotic.294 ¶15

May I tell you, it’s true, it is absolutely true. You sit here this moment and you’re all breathing and you’re alive. May I tell you, were it not for that drop of blood, you wouldn’t breathe, you wouldn’t be alive. Let me tell you my experience of that…I know it from experience. “You once were far off, but now you are drawn near in the blood of Jesus.” That’s what we’re told in Ephesians—once far off and drawn near in the blood of Jesus; and now, he is our peace who made us both one, and has now torn down and destroyed that dividing wall of hostility, that he may make in himself one new man in place of two. You think of yourself and you think of God, you and God. He’s going to break it down and make you one. God became man that man may become God. So he’s going to tear that wall down. We’re told he tore it from the top to the bottom. The Bible speaks of the flesh of Jesus as the curtain of the temple. I didn’t know what it meant until it happened to me, hadn’t the slightest idea.294 ¶16

And one night, this bolt of light, like lightning, tore me in two from the top of my skull to the base of my spine; and here I am, I’m looking at myself severed, two pieces. At the base of the spine here is this lovely, living golden, liquid light. Strangely enough, here I’m a man, I am looking at it, and there is no doubt in my mind it is my reality, my own very self. I know it is the blood of God and I know it’s myself. Here, I have been separated throughout these centuries as I was lost in this dream of life. Everyone has to dream it. I’m looking at it…as I look at it I fuse with it, and the union is made. We who were two are now one—as this wall of division, this dividing wall of hostility was severed, and then I became one with it. Then up I go like a serpent into the Holy of Holies, the sanctuary, into the presence of God.294 ¶17

Everyone in this world is going to have that experience. It doesn’t make sense; you can’t rationalize it. No being in this world could reason it. How could they reason it? It’s outside of the region of reason. It belongs to something far deeper, far more vital than that which the intellect inhabits; and there, you actually become one with the blood of God. So when we are told, “Once you were far off, but you are brought near by the blood of God,” then comes the severance of that wall where it was completely separated, and you see…you didn’t realize that the blood of God was yourself.294 ¶18

Now listen to these words, “No one ascends but he who descends.” Well, you’re told that God descended that we may ascend with God. But we are also told that “We died, and our life is hid in Christ in God. And when Christ who is our life appears, then we too will appear with him in glory.” So when God descended, he descended and all of us within him; we are the blood cells of the being. And now he awakes…everyone awakes as God…but everyone in the world awakes. You are not some little pygmy; you are God himself. Everyone is individualized as God.294 ¶19

Makes no sense on this level of the Fred Hoyles, the astrophysicists, and those who leave the church like Allen Stewart—brilliant minds and they’re so wise, so erudite. They can just simply tear you apart in the use of words, and they’re great linguists. But they are men without vision and they do not know that God is love. They do not know that God exists. They do not know that God is light, infinite light, infinite wisdom. They do not know; for this could not be known by man unless God himself revealed it.294 ¶20

So he reveals himself. When he reveals himself to the one, called by any name, then he incorporates that one into himself. As we’re told in the Book of Isaiah, “I will gather you one by one, O people of Israel.” You are so unique that no one can take your place. You can’t be put aside, and you are going to be called in order. There is an order to the entire calling, one by one. No one can outrun the other, everyone is called in time. He is called by God, incorporated into the body of God, and he is God at that moment of incorporation.294 ¶21

The whole thing seems insane to those who want to get everything in the world of Caesar. Well, if you do, may I tell you, you can. But, I warn you, wealth doesn’t mean happiness. You can have it…sure you can have it. I have gone into homes from here to the coast, in Europe, the West Indies, fabulous wealth, fabulous! I wouldn’t say all of them, but so many of them are so sordid, so completely sordid that if that is what wealth does to one, then forget it if that’s what it means, complete sordidness. You wouldn’t expect it in any part of the world where there was nothing, and yet here it is in the world of wealth.294 ¶22

So they can have it. You may have it. You want wealth? You may have it. Nations get it, individuals get it. You can have anything you want in this world. It’s a simple technique.294 ¶23

The technique is this. Do you know what you want to be? How would you see the world were it true that you are what you want to be? How would it look? Well, then take one good look in your mind’s eye at the world as you would see it were it true that you are the man, or the woman, that you would like to be. Now believe in the reality of what you see mentally, just believe in it. If you remain faithful to this unseen reality, the unseen reality will project itself on the screen of space, and it will become a fact in your world. Be careful what you want! You want just wealth, alright, you can have it, have anything in this world. You want fame? You can have it. You want…I don’t care what it is, you name it. You’ll get it if you’re willing to actually yield to the state, and forget your previous state, and simply remain faithful to this new state. You’ll get it! I’ve witnessed it. I’ve done it myself.294 ¶24

But I tell you the promise is the important part of scripture and that promise is that God became man that man may become God.294 ¶25

Now listen to these words from the 11th chapter of the Book of John. A man is dead…and the sister said to him, “Had you not gone away our brother would not have died.” He said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life…though he died, yet he shall live. Do you believe this?” and she answered, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.” Listen to the sentence, “Who is coming into the world.” The King James Version translates that phrase, “Who should come into the world.” Well, where does the drama take place, where did this drama take place? “I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world.”294 ¶26

So everything recorded in scripture is to be fulfilled by you, by the speaker, by everyone in this world. So, all the words recorded, these words are true; they are immortal, they’re forever. You, too, will stand in the presence of one who is distressed, who is tired, who feels “This is it!” and “What have I accomplished?” You, too, will say to her, “Do not be afraid…I am with you always, to the close of the age.” You’ll do it and she will come out trying to remember what you said. Someone will ask her, “What did he say? What did he say?” Then she’ll make an effort to bring it back, and she’ll bring it back, and she will quote the very last verse in the Book of Matthew which you said to her. And so, you fulfill scripture. Every word in scripture must be fulfilled. And who fulfills it? You and I fulfill it, for he is coming into the world.294 ¶27

So, just as it’s recorded he was born, you have the experience of that peculiar supernatural birth. And just as you were told he discovered he was the father of David, you will have that experience. And just as you were told that the curtain must be split from top to bottom, and he takes his own blood—not the blood of calves and goats as the priesthoods of the world do every year, without feeling the conscience of man—he takes his own blood. He takes an adequate sacrifice, and so he takes his own blood into the sanctuary. And you will have that experience. Then will come that moment in time that the Holy Spirit himself will descend upon you in bodily form as a dove. Then comes your wonderful work; at that very moment then the power-laden work of Messiah begins…and it’s not here.294 ¶28

Every night when you go to bed and the body, this little thing, falls on its bed then you’re off. But even without going to bed, the body that you’re wearing that no mortal eye can see is omnipresent, and he speaks the world over. And you have no loss of identity and yet you wear the body of the risen Christ, the body of love.294 ¶29

So I tell you, what I have said this night I am speaking from experience. I am not theorizing, I am not speculating; all this I have experienced. So when this moment comes for this little garment to be removed for the last time, I hope I have left the impression with you—either from the platform or in the little books that I have written—that you will know who you really are and what you are destined to be. Everyone is destined to be the exalted risen Christ, everyone. Not some little thing that in some future day you’re going to sit down and be judged. No, you aren’t going to be judged; all is forgiven, the whole thing is forgiven. The most horrible beast that ever walked the face of the earth in human form still is forgiven. The day will come he, too, will stand in the presence of the exalted risen Christ who’s all love and be incorporated, and be one with God.294 ¶30

Whether you believe it or not, at the moment, really, I really don’t care, because I know how true it is…and eventually you will, anyway. But at the moment, if you can’t accept it because you think that this one or that one could not really be incorporated, well then, you must wait, wait until it happens to you.294 ¶31

The day will come when it happens to you; you will realize you’ve played all the parts of the world. I don’t mean that I’ve played the part, say, called John Brown or Mary Smith, no, I’ve played the states that they represent—the state of poverty, the state of wealth, the state of weakness and the state of strength—I’ve played them all.294 ¶32

My memory goes back quite a bit. As Blake said, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years,” well, my memory goes back too. I can behold the parts that I’ve played, fabulous parts and horrible parts, they’re all there. But they don’t confuse me any more, because I stood in the presence of the risen Christ, and when he asked the simple question, which I answered that the greatest thing in the world is love, he embraced me. As he embraced me I became one with the body of God.294 ¶33

For Jesus Christ is God, believe it or not. You may bow your head in shame when I make that statement, but I tell you Jesus Christ is God himself, and there is only God. Everyone will one day be Jesus Christ without loss of identity, no loss whatsoever. Everyone will be the risen Christ. It’s the strangest thing in the world, how can you rationalize it? You can’t rationalize it. So when someone tries to bring it down to this level and tries to rationalize it, you can’t rationalize it.294 ¶34

And may I tell you, it hasn’t a thing to do with churchianity, hasn’t a thing to do with outside rituals. All outside rituals and ceremonies are secondary states superimposed upon the great vision. They are simply like barnacles upon the ship. Hasn’t a thing to do with all these outside things in the world.294 ¶35

It’s all about you. Everything written in the scripture is all about you. As told you in the 40th Psalm, “Everything written in this book is all about me.” And he didn’t realize it until suddenly something happens in him.294 ¶36

How could I ever have believed for one moment, taught Christianity as I was as a child, that the whole thing was all about me; that this birth, this fantastic supernatural birth, would take place in me? I thought it took place 2,000 years ago. But to tell me that it’s going to take place in me in the same manner that’s recorded in scripture? And that David who lived 1,000 B.C. came after me, because I am his father? If I am his father then he came after me. I was born in 1905, and here is a little child, 1905, the father of one who was born 1,000 B.C.? How could it be? And here, humanity, the whole of humanity personified as a single youth, David, and I the father of humanity, when I am one of three billion of us? The three billion in the world…and here, take all the people in the world together, fuse them together, and personify them and you find David—and I the father of David, therefore, the father of humanity? Doesn’t make sense! But I experienced it.294 ¶37

And then I would come to that moment when that 10th chapter of Hebrews, this fantastic chapter, that “We are saved by the blood of Jesus.” And he takes through—not like the priests who take goats’ blood and calves’ blood and the blood of other things—he takes his own blood as the curtain is split from top to bottom. Who would have thought for one moment that my own body was the body that he wore, and that he splits it, and reveals at the base of my loins the blood of God? That I actually had been generating in this world, and now you turn up into regeneration, to discover that this wonderful ascent is God’s victory?294 ¶38

Who would have thought for one moment the resurrection was true in man? That the resurrection is simply not perpetuation of this world of life? No, it’s God’s victory over death. The last enemy to be overcome is death, and so he resurrects. He overcomes the greatest enemy in the world. He actually comes down into death, assumes it, and overcomes it by resurrecting.294 ¶39

And who would believe for one moment that when the earliest book of the New Testament, which is Mark—it’s put second, but it’s the earliest, really—and it begins with the descent of the dove. And the dove comes down and rests upon him. As you read it, no one saw it but himself, as you read the story. And that was the beginning of his mighty work, and then from then on things happen. You hear it no matter where you go in the world—“I heard you last night, You said so and so,” and you weren’t there by a thousand miles or three thousand miles. But they’re only quoting scripture and you were actually in their presence quoting scripture, as I was in the presence of Grace: “Do not be afraid…I’m with you always, yes, to the close of the age.”294 ¶40

And the whole vast scripture unfolds within man.294 ¶41

So I tell you, what I told you this night is not based upon anything that I heard from another; that I read in books save the Bible which I didn’t understand until I experienced it. I didn’t know scripture until I experienced scripture. I can’t find it in all the scriptures that I read, all the commentaries, all the exegeses; they do not tell it. They’re all lost in words, words, words, but they do not know scripture. It has to be experienced. When you experience scripture, well, then you know who you are. I say God actually became man; and the day will come he will break down the wall of division between the two, and man will become God. Then he will ascend as God. That’s the story.294 ¶42

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *294 ¶43

Now it’s a little after nine, so I must call this a day. Now Friday is going to be a practical down-to-earth application of the principle.294 ¶48

[...] naturally it is “The Name of God.” The name of God is the key to the understanding of the doctrine of God. In the Bible the great question is not does God exist but who is our God? Today unnumbered so-called wise men question the existence of God. We do not question the existence of God; we only ask, “Who is our God?” And the whole secret is in his name. We’re told “My name is in him.” Now you listen carefully this night. It will take you from wherever you are to where you want to be. There is only God in this world; there is nothing but God. Really, God only is.293 ¶1

And you listen to that carefully, God only is. “Let us to him who only is give decision.” …he only is. Now, we turn to the greatest book in the world, the Bible. “When you go to the people of Israel, you say unto them that the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent you.” “And he said to him, But if I say to them that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob sent me, and they ask me his name, what should I say?” He said, “Say unto them I AM has sent you.” That’s all, I AM has sent you. “That is my name forever, and thus shall I be known throughout all generations.” That’s my name. I am in them. “Do not touch him, for my name is in him,” as we are told throughout scripture.293 ¶2

The full significance of this name is apparent only in the light of its consummation when the name of God is manifested by him who is the Word made flesh. The Word made flesh…and it will come into this world clothed in a garment dipped in blood…and his name shall be called the Word of God, the Word of God. The Bible is called the Word of God. You mean he’s called “The Bible”? Yes, he’s come to fulfill it. For we are told, My word shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and it shall succeed in that for which it is sent. It cannot return unto me empty. Are you dipped in a garment of blood? You certainly are. Are you not clothed in flesh and blood? Is this not a garment that you wear? This certainly is not the speaker—this is a garment that he wears. I’m not addressing you as I see you; you are, too, dipped in a garment that is dipped in blood, so you are flesh and blood. But you the wearer, you are not flesh and blood; for these things disappear, they disintegrate; they become seemingly nothing, returned to dust. But you, the being that I address, you are the Word of God, and the Word of God cannot return to God empty, and the Word and God are one. As we are told, the Word is the seed and seed is the Word. It’s himself he plants in these garments dipped in blood; and they must return unto him bearing that which he sent them to accomplish.293 ¶3

Now, what is the being in man? It is I AM. There is nothing but God, and God is I AM. Now when I am told to call upon his name—call upon his name and I will accomplish anything in this world—how can I call upon his name? Well, his name is I AM. And yet when the whole vast world calls upon the name, they say, In the name of God, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the name of this, that and the other. That’s not his name. His only name is I AM. Well, how would I call upon his name? I don’t call upon his name—I call in the name. If I would call this night and conjure wealth, I would say, “I am wealthy.” Though everything in this world denies it—my senses, my reason, everything denies it—if really I believe in the name of God and believe his name is I AM, and that with God all things are possible, I would call in the name of God by assuming that I am what I want to be. If I don’t do it, I can pray forever and nothing happens; only as I call in the name of God, and his name is I AM.293 ¶4

He said, “Those who know my name put their trust in me.” Read it carefully. If you do not know the Bible, it’s the 9th chapter of the Psalms, “Those who know my name put their trust in me,” if I really know this name is God’s name. He has no other name, just I AM, and all things are possible to God. And if tonight I really believe that this is the name of God, and in scripture the name of God is synonymous with God himself, so I don’t say, that’s his name but he’s out there. It is himself. My name is in him; therefore, I am in him. God became man that man may become God. If I really believed it and put my trust in his name—I know I AM—well, then I put my trust in myself. And tonight, though I don’t have a nickel, though I have no one to support me, no one to come to my aid, I put my trust in him—those who know his name put their trust in him—then I dare to assume that I am and I name it, and fall asleep in the assumption that I am that which I’ve assumed that I am, I have put my trust in God. This is his name forever.293 ¶5

If you dare to do it, may I tell you, it will prove itself in the testing.293 ¶6

But if you think that God is something out in space…it seems so vast, this whole vast world, and you a little tiny thing seated here tonight. And you look out, and then the scientists tell us that there are unnumbered light years between where we are and where the fastest telescope can take us. It seems so big, so vast and we’re so tiny. And that is the grand illusion. May I tell you, only the Imagination of man, who is God himself, is vast enough to contain the immensity of space. Is there any place in this universe that man could ever go where he has not gone first in Imagination? I tell you no.293 ¶7

Here, I think a year or two years ago, I read in the New York Times when we were there, that Russia is up in arms against China for drawing a map that is called the map of China, and they include in this map vast areas of Russia. Huge, enormous areas of Russia they have put into the present map of China. In 1938 Russia drew a Russian map and they included all the Balkan states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, as part of the structure of Russia. In 1940 the Red army moved in and took over the whole vast area. Could they move in before they first went in Imagination? So they plotted the whole thing and now it’s part of Russia. China is following the same footsteps concerning Russia. You can predict what China will do for Russia. In spite of all the so-called nuclear bombs, they have marked out what they’re going to take and call it China.293 ¶8

You could start with nothing and mark out what you want in this world: this building, that building, the other building. We were at dinner the other night with two very dear friends of ours (we will not mention names)…and here, this fabulous building in which they operate—and this building is only one of numberless buildings across the country, possibly the world—and then she mentioned the name of the one who really…not the name of the one building of theirs…but the one behind it all who really owns it. And so, she mentioned the name—you’ll find it on the stock exchange; I will not mention it—then she said, “He, by the way, was Al Capone’s bookkeeper.” You and I reading the name and the billion dollars behind it, oh, we’re so carried away, so important…a billion, maybe several billion behind it. He started off in my generation, because Al Capone came in the 1920s in the day of Prohibition. He was the bookkeeper of Al Capone, but you read the name in the paper and all the social figures, my Lord, everything, all the glamour, all this…and the beginning was Al Capone’s bookkeeper. Don’t go too far back to find out anything in this world…you’ll be disillusioned. You start with the name of God. No matter how you go back, it will all be disillusioning, no matter who you are. Take any person in this world, you take him back and you’re going to find something that would frighten you. So forget it!293 ¶9

And start now with the name of God— it’s the only creative power in the world. That power is your own wonderful I-am-ness, that’s God. When you go to the people of Israel and they ask you for my name, you simply tell them I AM has sent you, that’s all that you say. I am who I am, I am what I am, I AM, and that’s all that you say.293 ¶10

Now the root of this word, which is Yod He Vau He—the verb is He Vau He—the primary meaning of this word, of this verb, is “to fall, or to blow; or causatively, to cause to fall or to cause the wind to blow.” So when we think in terms of this root, which is I AM, we should think in terms of the primary meanings of this verb, which is “to either fall or to cause to fall; or to blow or cause the wind to blow.” So that this world in which we live which is called the fallen world is not a mistake. It’s a deliberate act on the part of God to limit himself to these that we are; to contract to the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity, that he may then begin to expand beyond any limit of translucence; all limits broken into expansion, no limit to expansion, no limit to translucency. But we do it by a contraction, so he fell into what is called man, a deliberate act on the part of God.293 ¶11

You and I didn’t do a thing as men. But you think this thing over. Can you conceive of any greater affirmation in the world, “I AM sent you”? Can you conceive of any greater affirmation that would actually prove to us our unity with God and with each other? I can’t conceive of any greater affirmation. Before you say anything you must first be aware, and to be aware you say “I am.” Well, I can’t say anything before I first declare that I am. I can say a man, but man follows after I first declare that I am. I can say I’m a white man, a black man, a yellow man, a red man, but after I say “I am” then I put these limitations on it. But before anything, I first am. Well, can you conceive of any affirmation in this world that would actually reveal to us our unity with God and with each other? When these little limitations are taken off, as they all will be in the end, just I am. And in the end, “God is one and his name is one.” There is nothing but God.293 ¶12

So I tell you tonight, you can try it…try it and prove it on this level in anything in this world. Tonight you want to be…and you name it. You want to be happily married, alright, and you know no one who is interested in you or maybe you are not interested in anyone. And you dare to assume that you are blissfully and happily married, and you assume it, and carry on in your Imagination all the little imaginal acts that would imply such a union, such fulfillment. You feel the ring—in the Western world you would feel a ring on this finger—and sleep in that assumption. May I tell you, I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing.293 ¶13

I told my niece in New York City, and on a blind date she met this chap, who graduated from his college, which was Duke. Then came her second sister and she heard on the wind that her sister sought advice from me, so she came, and I told her what I told her sister. She did the same thing, and she met a man on a blind date as her first sister did, and he graduated from Dartmouth. And so, in no time flat they were married…all on blind dates.293 ¶14

So I say to anyone, if you really believe in the name of God, you’ll put your trust in him. “Those who know my name put their trust in me.” If they don’t know my name, they’ll call me by everything in this world and I can’t respond. The only prayer that really goes outside of this room, as far as I’m concerned, is the prayer of what I am. So I assume that I am—though the room denies it, the world denies it, reason denies, everything denies it—but I dare to put my trust in the name of God, knowing that the name of God is God himself. It’s not just a name. You call me Neville and you think that Neville differs from the being? No, I respond to Neville; but the true name is I AM if I know God’s name, and those who know my name put their trust in me. “All things are possible to me” said he. So put your trust in the name and the name is God himself. So tonight, as you sleep in this world, you dare to assume I am…and you name it…and fall asleep in the assumption that you are that which you want to be.293 ¶15

I tell you, the time will come—and may it not be distant—when you will see this name unfold within you. And the final name is Father: “I have manifested thy name. I have given them the name thou gavest me. O Holy Father, keep them in thy name as the name that you gave to me, that they may be one as we are one.” The final name of God is Father. It’s I AM to begin with, and you can put anything in the world upon that name: I am rich, I am poor, I am wanted, I am unwanted…put anything on it. It conjures everything you put upon it. In the final, in the very end, his name is Father; and there’s no power in the world that can reveal this fatherhood but the Son. The whole of humanity and all of its experiences, all that man has ever done or could ever do, fused together into a single being, and he stands before you, and you look at him, and he calls you Father. That’s the end of the name, when David stands before you and calls you Father.293 ¶16

And then you know the fullness of the name of God. So the full significance of the name is apparent only in the light of its consummation, when the whole vast name of God is manifested by him who is called “the Word of God”. “My word”—he sends it forward—“my word shall not return unto me void, it must accomplish that which I please, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” So, he sent his Word in you: “My word is in him. Do not touch him, my word is in him.” So you were sent out into this fabulous world, the world of death; and his name is in you, and it contains a plan. It cannot return void, it must accomplish that which I please, and brings back a reflection of himself and he’s Father. Well, how could you come back save you are the Father? And to be the Father there must be a Son, and that Son is David, and David calls you Father. So in the very end, the Word unfolds completely, like a flower. And then you stand in the presence of that which was in the very beginning, the fullness of all that man could ever accomplish, gathered together, personified as a single youth (eternity) called David. He looks at you and calls you Father, and you know this was forever. You come back as God himself. So God sends himself into the world of death, this great mystery of life through death, and brings himself back, the redeemed.293 ¶17

Only God…there’s nothing in this world but God. So I say to everyone tonight, you just try it on this level. Dare to believe…and you name it.293 ¶18

I don’t say that you should want this, that or the other. What does it really matter if someone has a billion, someone has something less, someone has nothing? Doesn’t really matter. Maybe you don’t want such money, I don’t know. I know in my own life, I never really wanted it, I never really wanted money. Today I have been blessed with it…it’s been given to me by my father…and yet I don’t really care whether it is or not. I don’t receive it. It’s there for those who will come after me, my wife, my children, but I don’t really care. I don’t get the income from it, but it’s there in abundance judged by human standards, and yet I haven’t the slightest urge to touch it. I have never touched it. I have no desire to touch it. There it stands, growing like a forest. I do well in my world and live in my world on what I earn; but I have no desire for money. I’ve never had it; not since I was born had I any feeling towards money. I know today it’s because I’ve gone through the gamut. I know that I’ve had it in abundance, and having had it in abundance it has no taste for me, but none whatsoever. I have to use it to pay rent and do these things, but I have no desire for money. And so, although I have it, a considerable sum, I still have no desire for it.293 ¶19

But if tonight you want it, may I tell you, assume in the name of God. God is the power of power. And so, you simply say “I am”…that’s his name. Those who know my name put their trust in me. So if you can do what millions of Christians do and other members of other denominations do, pray to a God and call him by the name of Jehovah or God, or the Lord, or the Lord Jesus Christ, you don’t know God. If you completely forget all external gods, and when you sleep this night assume I am, and you simply assume that you are what you want to be. Completely forget all external powers and really believe in God and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. You must first assume it. No man can walk forth where he has not first gone in 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.” So what you imagine now, based upon your senses, based upon what reason dictates, well, that’s what you’re going to perpetuate in this world. Can you suspend what they dictate and dare to assume that you are the one that you want to be, putting all trust in him, and he is your own wonderful I-am-ness? If you dare to assume it and remain loyal to that assumption, no power in this world can stop you from becoming that man, that woman, or whatever you are or desire to be in this world, but no power.293 ¶20

And in the end, the Word will return, and then the Word returns and unfolds in you; for the Word is planted in you. And bear in mind he is simply clad in a robe dipped in blood, and his name shall be called the Word of God. And the Word of God is called truth: “Thy word is truth,” and he said, “I am the truth.” So, I am the Word, and the Word is clad in a robe dipped in blood. This is dipped in blood. When it comes back it comes bearing the name of the one who sent it, and the ultimate name is Father. “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given unto me, that they may be one as we are one.” Well, the name he gave me is Father. He gave me the whole vast universe, the whole vast universe of men; and all of the experiences of men fused into a single being is the Son of God called David. And he gave me his Son; therefore, he gave me fatherhood. If he gave me the Son as my Son, then he gave me himself who is Father.293 ¶21

So the whole thing comes back and here I stand God the Father—a little tiny being that daily decays, waiting, not impatiently but waiting, for the moment when it is taken off, this robe in which I am clad, a robe, clad in blood, flesh and blood. But I tell you, everyone in this world is going to have this experience—but everyone in the world—because “My word shall not return unto me void; it must accomplish that which I purpose and it must fulfill that for which I sent it.” What did I send it to do? To unfold myself, God is expanding himself, and so he sends his Word which is his very self. My Word is in them; my name is in them and my Word is my name. So it can’t return void, and when it comes back it brings back the fulfillment of my purpose which is myself, the Father. Everyone has to look into the face of David and see David as his son which is the expansion of the fatherhood of God…and here is this wonderful lad, who is the summation of all that is created in this world.293 ¶22

So the name tonight on this level, try it. Forget all this thing on the outside where they tell you the Holy Father sits in a certain place in this world, and they call this one Father and that one Father. The only Father resides in you and he’s trying to awaken. The day will come he will awaken, and you will know the Father as yourself by reason of his only begotten Son that is David. But while he is awakening and struggling, use the name. In this name all things are possible, so you use the name. Tonight when you sleep, may I tell you, I don’t care what you want.293 ¶23

When God reveals himself in the Exodus, it comes at the end of Genesis. “In the beginning God,” that’s the first word; the end of Genesis “…in a coffin in Egypt.” The coffin is this elongated place where God placed himself, this body is the coffin: In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt. Now the exit comes in the Book of Exodus, and when God begins to make his exit from this coffin, it is by his name. He reveals his name in the Book of Exodus, the 3rd chapter. And his name is in them…and by this name he comes out of Egypt. Those who will not put their trust in his name remain in Egypt. And so he said, “I have chosen…choose this day whom you will serve.” And they said, “I have chosen to serve the Lord.” He said unto them, “Then you are witnesses against yourself that you have chosen the Lord.” And they answered, “We are witnesses against ourselves; we have chosen to serve the Lord.” Alright, it’s entirely up to you now. The choice was yours, and you made the choice to serve the Lord. Well, the Lord’s only name is I AM; until it fulfills itself and the very end of that name is Father. But while you are moving out of Egypt you move out by the name of God. So we come out of this world, this fabulous world of death. This is the world of death, this is the world of horrors, the conflicts one against the other. And we come out. As we come out, we come out and we are the Father.293 ¶24

So you start by your choice. I offer you a choice, choose this day whom you will serve. Do not go around [...] all the time, choose one or the other. If the Lord is the Lord, choose the Lord, if Baal, choose Baal. Baal means all of the gods of the world. So you believe the stars are going to influence you tomorrow, so you wait for tomorrow morning’s paper, and you read what some nut is saying about the stars. So you will simply read it and say, “I’m Pisces.” Did you see that cartoon recently? These two bums on the street, all patches and torn all over the place, and one says, “Oh, you’re Pisces…it’s good for you not to travel.” There they are, immobilized, completely immobilized, and one said, “Yes, so you’re a Pisces, so it’s good you can’t travel, because so and so.” And we all read this stupidity in the world. Then we read the numbers, and we read teacup leaves, and monkey bones, and all these things. So choose this day whom you will serve. You serve the Lord or you serve Baal. The word Baal means “all the beliefs in powers external to yourself,” that’s what the word Baal means. So they said, “We choose the Lord.” Now you are witnesses against yourself that you have chosen the Lord. They said, “We are witnesses against ourselves.”293 ¶25

So they chose the Lord, only to serve him and no other God. If you believe in something other than I AM, alright, believe in it and suffer. Go on throughout the world suffering until you choose the one God, the only God, and that God is your own wonderful I-am-ness. The day will come, he will take you through the furnaces and bring you out in the full consummation of his name, and the fullness of his name is Father. To be a father there must be a child, and then you look out and you see the only-begotten Son, and he’s David. He calls you Father, and you look and you see Father—Father, yourself—and here is his Son. This relationship was in the beginning, before he sent his Word into expression. So my word shall not return unto me void; it must accomplish that which I please, and it must prosper in the thing for which I sent it. I sent it to fulfill my own being and I’m Father. I want to expand fatherhood; and so he expands his fatherhood by getting all these, his own Word, and send them in, and all come back as Father. He’s infinitely greater at the end of the journey than he was in the beginning when he sent himself out buried in us as his Word. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *293 ¶26