The mystery of creation is to be understood in terms of faith, so what is faith? “It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen with the mortal eye. Through faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.”232 ¶1

“Many suppose that before creation, all was solitude and chaos. That is the most pernicious idea that can enter the mind of man, for it robs the Bible of all sublimity and the nature of the man who entertains that idea a little grubbing worm outside of himself. Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation which was an act of mercy.”232 ¶2

All things exist, and the mystery of their creation must be understood in terms of faith. But faith does not give reality to that which is unseen. Faith is loyalty to the unseen reality! Only in this sense can the meaning of faith be understood. If you have a goal, although it is unseen, it already exists. Your normal mortal eye cannot see it, but by rearranging the structure of your mind, you can see it clearly.232 ¶3

If, as the days follow one another, you remain loyal to this unseen reality, and your goal is reached, you will have discovered the mystery of creation. Eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of your creative act. You may continue to build only upon what your mortal eye sees, and perpetuate the same thing over and over again, remaining forever where you are. But if you know that all things exist, though unseen at the moment, and you have access to them through your imagination, you can rearrange the pattern of your thinking and change your world by remaining loyal to your unseen construction. And when it externalises itself by becoming a fact that you may share with others, then you will have found the secret of creation, which was an act of faith.232 ¶4

The 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews tells fantastic stones of what the ancients performed – and they did everything! Beginning with Enoch, all of the characters are named, as well as their achievements. Then it is said: “They received the promises, but not the promise.” Having been promised that if they could believe, it would come to pass, they believed and received the promises. But no one knew the fulfillment of the promise until it broke through in one. Then he knew that by the same act of faith, he could leave this sphere and enter the heavenly one.232 ¶5

God’s promise has fulfilled itself in me. I have recorded it for posterity as vividly and as accurately as I can in my book, Resurrection. You can read of my experiences and believe them or disbelieve them. It’s up to you. Perhaps at the present time you do not want to leave this sphere and enter the kingdom of heaven.232 ¶6

Now, “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God,” which is His power and wisdom, called Christ. Any Christ other than he who is crucified, buried, and rises in you, is false. And anyone who teaches of an outside Christ is a false teacher. Paul tells us: “The mystery hidden from the ages, Christ in you, is the hope of glory.” Any hope you have of entering a glory that transcends all earthly power and wisdom is already in you, but hidden. Christ is the way, the pattern to follow for entrance into that glory.232 ¶7

If everything exists, whether visible or invisible, then my father and mother who have departed this world exist, and would revel in anything that I accomplish here. Although my mother left this world in 1941 and my father in `59, I can bring them into my mind’s eye and hear them speak of their pride in their son. Believing that everything I can conceive is part of the structure of the universe, I can assume they are fully aware of my accomplishments, so I listen to their joy. Now, can I remain faithful to that scene? My faith is not going to give it reality, but my loyalty to the unseen reality will. I listen and remember what I heard, and in the tomorrows I continue to remember. Then, in its own appointed time, when that which I have been faithful to externalises itself, I will have found the great secret of creation.232 ¶8

God tells us he does not create something out of nothing, for all things are! That he calls a thing that is not now seen as though it were seen, and the unseen becomes seen. Instead of calling something out of nothing, you simply rearrange that which already is until it implies what you want. Then you remain loyal to that unseen reality.232 ¶9

Faith contains a power which can link you to a world where you are eternal. Paul tells us to put our faith, not in the works of men, but in the power of God. And no earthly power – be it atomic, megatons of multi-megatons – can compare to that power! Can you conceive of being a power so great that if you desire, you can stop the world? That you can make it stand still and see it as dead? Then release it and let the world continue to fulfill its so-called intentions? Could you deal with such a power by changing your intentions, thus causing the world to be reanimated and do the opposite? That is the power which will be yours when you know you are one with the body of love, called the Everlasting Saviour.232 ¶10

Contemplate this thought. On this level you may achieve any objective, and prove to yourself that invisible states, when properly rearranged, will externalise what they imply, for the potency of every imaginal act is in its implication. Listen closely to your invisible thoughts. What do you hear? What are your words implying? That is their potency. What do you want? Name it and rearrange the structure of your mind to imply you no longer desire it, because you already have it!232 ¶11

Perhaps another has injured you or caused you grief. It doesn’t matter what has been done, when you know this law you can forgive anyone by rearranging the structure of your mind and set him free by imagining it never happened!232 ¶12

You see, there are two things that displease God. One is the lack of faith in “I am he”, and the other is eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil by using yourself as the criteria as to what is good and what is evil. Unless you believe you are the seeming other who caused your grief, you will continue to reproduce the same unhappiness and miss your mark in life by dying in your sins.232 ¶13

So, without faith it is impossible to please yourself! For the moment, think of everything as existing now! Although unseen by your mortal mind, your desire exists and can be seen in your imagination. Although your father and mother may be unseen by the world, they exist, and the love they have for you has never passed away. Because all things are, you may use them or those who are now in your world. If, for instance, your friends heard of your good fortune, would they empathise with you or be envious? Do not choose one who would sympathise with you, for you do not want sympathy. You either want empathy or envy. If you know someone who, when hearing of your good fortune would now go wild with envy, use her. Or, if you know one who would rejoice because of your good fortune, take that image. It’s your choice, but you must remain loyal to the unseen reality you have constructed.232 ¶14

Your faith will not give it reality, for faith is your loyalty to the unseen reality. “Abraham believed, and it was accounted unto him for righteousness,” and all things come out of Abraham. Someone once defined faith as: Believing what is incredible, Or it is no virtue at all. Hope is hoping when things are hopeless, Or it is no virtue at all. And love is forgiving what is unforgivable, Or it is no virtue at all. These are the three virtues under which the civilised world comes – Faith, Hope and Love.232 ¶15

You may not be able to see the fulfillment of your desires with your mortal eye. Your senses and reason may deny their existence, but this is the way God created the world. You are invited to imitate him as a dear child, by remaining faithful to the unseen reality in your mind until it becomes seen in your world. And when it does you will have proved God’s law. Then that great moment will come when that which was promised in the beginning erupts, and the creative power you once knew yourself to be is restored, only magnified because of your journey into this world of death.232 ¶16

All of the promises of God have found their Yes in me. I remain with you now only to encourage you to move into an entirely different awareness. There is nothing here, however, to aid you concerning that world. How can you understand God’s power, when you only know the power to burn wood and boil water? You are aware that a bomb can kill millions; yet you also know that the ones who created and dropped the bomb will die, just like the millions killed; so you have nothing to compare to the power of that world, as it transcends anything known to man.232 ¶17

I have described the pattern for entrance into that world. It consists of a series of four mystical events which, when experienced, frees the individual from this level and opens the door into the world of the promise. I have shared my experiences; yet men – believing I am Neville who will die as everyone does here – do not believe they are the Messiah which is to come, so they turn a deaf ear in my direction. But I will continue to share my experiences and leave them behind in my books, just as Paul did in the form of letters, and those who experienced the visions recorded the gospels.232 ¶18

Those who wrote the gospels knew what they had experienced; but man has misinterpreted the message, believing Jesus Christ is external to self and not realising he is God’s creative power and wisdom. My visions have paralleled those recorded in the Book of Luke. Luke does not claim that his experiences were chronologically accurate, but that he feels better qualified to write the source material. I have told it chronologically, just as it happened to me.232 ¶19

Now I tell you this: As persons differ, so will the experiences. Two people here have had that birth. In one case there was no witness; therefore his witness is scripture. In the other case, the lady had three witnesses: two brothers and a friend she thinks of as a brother. So, because we do differ in the kingdom, the visions will differ, but the pattern will remain the same.232 ¶20

Even if you haven’t had the experiences, you can construct a scene that would imply scripture has been fulfilled in you. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could say to your closest friend, or most bitter opponent, “There is no doubt in my mind that I have been born from above, for I have held that infant wrapped in swaddling clothes in my hands.” How would you feel if that were true? What scene would you construct? Remember, all things exist. Scripture exists, so use it to construct your scene. It is said that three men were present at the birth. Church tradition claims the three kings were brothers; but friends may be used as witnesses, as the scene you are creating is for the purpose of implication, for therein contains the power. But one must lift the child and place him in your arms. Imagine, and then watch the mystery of creation unfold in terms of faith, by remaining loyal to the unseen reality of that which already exists.232 ¶21

“Unto you is born this day a Saviour…” And the only Saviour is the Lord God! The infant wrapped in swaddling clothes is only a sign, given to tell you that what I have told you is true. Imagine anything that would imply God’s birth has already happened. Remain faithful to that scene, and when it happens there will be no uncertainty on your part.232 ¶22

Salvation history is over! We are not here to sow, for the fields are already white with harvest. Because all things are, and the harvest is, you are not here to till the soil and plant the seed, but to reap that which you did not sow. If you know that faith is simply loyalty to unseen reality, you can construct a scene, remain loyal to it and harvest it, for everything is already completed.232 ¶23

God conceived the history of salvation, plotted it, and fulfilled it by becoming humanity. Believing that he already did accomplish his purpose, humanity is raised to enter the kingdom once more and God’s second coming has been fulfilled. But until individual man believes in his own wonderful human imagination, God remains imprisoned within him. If you do not harvest God’s promise it is only because you do not believe!232 ¶24

Now I want to share a dream of a friend, as it contains a message for us all. Bear in mind that the dreamer is protean. Like the legendary god, Proteus, who served Neptune and would assume any shape or form in his service, God is the dreamer in you and assumes the forms of all the characters in your dream.232 ¶25

In this lady’s dream she encounters her mother, yet knows she is herself. Her husband, yet her father, was missing, and her mother said: “Listen, I can hear his voice.” Then the scene changed, and she and her mother are being entertained by four little men, each one foot high. As she looked into the eyes of one of them, she realised he was her father. Calling her mother’s attention to this fact, her mother approached, touched him and said something in code. Then suddenly she knew that her father was not free to identify himself and she awoke sobbing.232 ¶26

This dream speaks volumes. Remember, all dreams are egocentric, with God as the dreamer. Everyone is seeking the Father, the cause of the phenomena of life, not realising he is imprisoned in all. Belief, however, will set him free! If you will imagine David standing before you and feel the Father/Son relationship, remain loyal to that scene. You will release your heavenly Father!232 ¶27

Because of one’s former religious training, when the truth is heard that will set him free, he is torn between the two. To think that one can come to hear my message, yet still believe in what the churches teach, is like what someone once said to me: “I have given up all belief in numerology and astrology, but the moon is passing Venus tonight and because he is in my second house I know what to expect tomorrow.” They have completely given up their belief BUT… That big “BUT” happens in all.232 ¶28

This lady’s vision was so clear. Her father, entertaining in a group of four and not free to come forward and identify himself, is the four-faced man Ezekiel speaks of. In his vision every living creature had four faces. Beside each creature was a wheel, with wheels within, all moving in the same direction. This has been a perfect revelation to her, if she will accept it, telling her she is either for me or against me.232 ¶29

Would that you be either hot or cold – believing my words or leaving, never to have anything to do with me again – rather than being lukewarm and remaining on the fence, warmed by my words, but unwilling to put them to use in the form of belief. I have had people say: “I’ll come hear you. You are interesting, but I know that in order to get ahead in life I must know the right people and be at the right place at the right time. That is the reality to which I choose to anchor myself.” This is what her wonderful vision disclosed to me.232 ¶30

Another lady wrote, sharing a very long dream filled with scriptural symbology. The crystal clear water rising. Logs cut to the height of men who were carrying them vertically. A dog with a human face. A piece of rope becoming animated and acting like a serpent, entangling the little dog.232 ¶31

Each symbol was perfect, and when properly arranged reveals the mystery of salvation. The wood is the spinal cord upon which God is crucified as Man. Caleb, the symbol of faith, wears a human face, dies only for a moment, for faith is destined to be freed.232 ¶32

Another lady wrote, saying: “I woke laughing, hearing these words, ‘It’s so easy to know you are God. All you need to do is to expand.’” This is true. William Blake began his great poem, “Jerusalem,” on the sixth line, saying: “Awake! Awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! Expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine.” Love’s secret is expansion. Contract your senses and you see multitudes. Expand them and you will see one Man, one Love!232 ¶33

Dwell upon this great mystery of creation in terms of faith. All ministers, rabbis, and preachers teach faith – but faith in what? In little icons? A lighted candle? Our maid comes every Monday and we always give her our used candles. This afternoon we gave her two, which she will take to her church to light. She has faith in a discarded, lighted candle!232 ¶34

All of these things are on the outside. Faith in any power other than He who is within you is false, and anyone who teaches a power on the outside is a false teacher. Christ in you is your hope of glory, and there is no other power. The world was constructed in the mind’s eye, out of things unseen by the mortal eye, and made alive by faith.232 ¶35

Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of the creative act, which is the assumption of unseen reality and loyalty to its assemblage. In spite of denial by your senses and reason, if you will be faithful to your unseen assumption, it will externalise itself. That is how all worlds come into being, but men do not understand this. Structuring their world based upon the evidence of their senses, they continue to perpetuate that which they do not desire.232 ¶36

Knowing what you want, close your eyes and enter its fulfillment, knowing that God is seeing what you are seeing, that He is hearing what you are saying; and what God sees and hears and remains loyal to, He externalises. Now let us go into the silence.232 ¶37

Man thinks history is moving towards an inevitable climax of good, but that climax has already occurred and is recorded in the New Testament in the words: “It is finished.” So when I speak of the last days, I am referring to definite events which will occur in the life of you, an individual, which will take you from this age of sin and death to enter the New Age of eternal life! The most astute book in the Bible is Ecclesiastes. In it we are told: “What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See this is new’? It has been already in ages before us, but there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be remembrance of things yet to happen among those who come after.”231 ¶1

This statement is difficult for man to grasp, for he is forever thinking of progress. Man sees things today and thinks they are new and wonderful because he cannot remember them. Just a century ago electricity was unknown. Now we have light powered by nuclear energy and think it was created for and by us, but scripture tells us it has always been! The play of life moves in a wheel, closed-circuited by time, and man with his short memory cannot remember other times.231 ¶2

We are told in the same Ecclesiastes: “I saw all the people who move about under the sun, as well as the second youth who is to stand in his place. There was no end to all the people. He was above them all, yet those who come after will not rejoice in him.”231 ¶3

Now in the Book of Hebrews it is said: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” The word “son” has no article in the Greek. The writer is not saying that God revealed himself in one who would be a son among many sons, but in Sonship! Man has completely misinterpreted this passage, as well as the entire Bible. The New Testament writers recognized the Spirit of Christ who controlled their lives to be one with the Spirit of Jehovah who inspired the prophets. There is only one Spirit. You cannot discriminate between the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of Jehovah, so who is the Son?231 ¶4

I tell you from experience: the Son who speaks to you in the last days is David. It is he who “reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person, thereby making him superior to the angels, as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs. For to what angel did God ever say, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee’?”231 ¶5

In this letter to the Hebrews, Paul pinpoints David as God’s Son; yet every Christian (and I include myself) is taught that Paul is speaking of Jesus Christ, and it is not so, for to the New Testament writers Jesus Christ is Jehovah. It is David who reflects God’s glory, for it is David who is the express image of his person.231 ¶6

Having stood in the presence of the Risen Lord, answered his question, embraced him and been incorporated into his body, I know exactly what the Ancient of Days looks like. And when we were united, I became one with that body, one with that Spirit. I now know what it is to be that body and that Spirit, but I first saw the face. Many years later when I saw David, who called me Father, he was the youth of that being. He bore the express image of his person. No, David didn’t look like Neville any more than Neville looks like the Ancient of Days, so when I saw David he was the express image of my Spiritual person. One is the Ancient of Days and the other the eternal, or second youth. “I saw all the people that move under the sun, as well as the second youth, yet those who will come after will not rejoice in him.”231 ¶7

Why? Because they have no interest in the story of David and God. But I have found in David, the Son of Jesse (I AM) a man after my own heart, who will do all my will. You are David playing a male or female part right now, and you are God the Father of all life, but you will not know this is true until the drama is over and David calls you Father.231 ¶8

You see: history to the Hebrew mind consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into one grand whole, and this concentrated time into which they are all fused and from which all generations spring is called eternity. The whole vast world is David playing parts.231 ¶9

Now, in the same Ecclesiastes we are told that: “The Lord put eternity into the mind of man yet so that man could not find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” The word “eternity” is “olam” in Hebrew and means “a youth; a lad; a young man.” God placed an eternal youth in your mind, a young man to do all of his will. If it is necessary for you to play the part of a blind man, or that of a fool, the important, rich man, or that of Hitler, Napoleon, or Stalin in order for the work to be done in you, David will do it. And the one who is blind, who is doing the executing and being executed, is God the Father. You will know this to be true, for when the work is done, David will stand before you as your only begotten Son and call you: “My Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.” You have reached the last days, when this drama takes place in you.231 ¶10

Then you will say with Paul: “The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. Let no one bother me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” These masks are the four great events which begin with your birth from above, for “Unless you are born from above you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” The sign of your birth will be this: “You shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. That is the sign.” But David is not a sign. David is your Son, which is given. “Unto us a child is born; to us a Son is given.” These are two entirely different events.231 ¶11

The Son is not the child. The child is born as a sign, but “God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son.” You were taught to believe the Son spoken of here is Jesus Christ, but David “in the spirit” calls Jesus Christ “Father”. As long as you think of Jesus Christ as God’s Son you miss the mystery altogether, for he is God the Father. The same being is called the Lord, God, Jehovah, Jesus Christ. That is the being you will know yourself to be when you fulfill the second Psalm, for when you see David in the Spirit you will say: “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.” David is not an old man but eternal youth, a man after your own heart, who will do all of your will.231 ¶12

No matter what state you choose to identify with, David will play it wearing the mask you call yourself. Believe me, for I have finished the race; I have fought the good fight, and I have kept the faith in the story which was told us in the beginning of time. Before we entered this arena, before the light began, we saw the end. We saw the series of events which would take us out of this world of sin and death into the age called the kingdom of God.231 ¶13

So when I speak of the last days, I am not speaking of the end of this world, for it is a play, which goes on and on and on. Having entered the play, you are always the same actor. You will play the rich man, the poor man, the beggar, and the thief, retaining the same identity. And when you reach the last days, a series of events that are mirrored in the story of Jesus Christ, will unfold in you in a first person, present tense experience. You will not observe it happening to another; you will experience it happening to you!231 ¶14

The last days begin with your awakening to the realization that you have been entombed in your own skull; that you have been dreaming this world into being. You think you are fully awake right now, yet you are dreaming the dream of life. I know, for when I awoke within my skull I had no memory of how or when I was placed there, I only knew I was alone in an empty skull, and I came out of it just as a child comes out of the womb of a woman. Being born from above, I found all the symbolism of scripture unfolding before me: a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and the three witnesses to the event of which I was invisible, for God was born and God is Spirit. You are told: “This shall be a sign, for unto you is born this day a Savior.” The only savior is Jehovah, who is one with Jesus Christ. “I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior, and besides me there is no Savior.” There is only one God, so when He is born the symbolism of his birth is described in scripture as the birth of Jesus Christ.231 ¶15

Now, since God is a Father there must be a Son. I tell you that Son is David, and when you look into his eyes you will see the express image of the Ancient of Days. You will see your image reflected in his eyes, for you will be wearing and know yourself to be the one body, the one Spirit, the one Lord, the one God and Father of all who is above all, through all and in all. One Father, one Lord, one body fell and fragmented into unnumbered beings and all are gathered into that one body.231 ¶16

The King James Version calls David “the express image of his person”, while the Revised Standard Version states: “He bears the very stamp of his nature.” That does not describe my experience, for when I saw David he was the express image of God, for God is a person. God is not an impersonal force; God is Man. “Thou art a Man, God is no more, thine own Humanity learn to adore.” You are Man, and when you stand in the presence of the Risen Lord you see the Ancient of Days as a Man of Infinite Love. You feel this love! Although you can’t describe the joy of wearing the body of love, when you see David you feel yourself to be that Risen Lord! David expresses youth in detail. He is the youth and you are the Ancient of Days. These are the last days, which precede your entrance into the New Age called the kingdom of heaven.231 ¶17

Nothing comes near the Bible, and it is literally true! Men have misunderstood it and those who are preaching it as secular history are doing far greater harm to the soul than those who damage the body by getting blind drunk during the day. The alcoholic injures himself, while the preacher who does not know what he is saying distorts the mind by misinforming the people concerning the mystery of scripture.231 ¶18

Ecclesiastes is right when he claims there is nothing new under the sun. I know this from experience, for I have gone into other worlds - terrestrial, just like this - where dreams of modern man appear as child’s toys. These worlds are here now, one within the other, all part of the one grand play.231 ¶19

My friend Bob, who has had all of the experiences, found himself in a fantastic world where at the lunch hour people stopped what they were doing and took a little card from their pocket, made notes on it as to what they wanted to eat, and replaced the card. Then he saw heavenly expressions on their faces as they enjoyed the food which no one could see. This is taking place now. It’s a real world, yet man here hasn’t begun to dream of such a time. He is interested in producing more chickens, more cattle, pigs, and lambs for the bursting population; yet a world exists where a little card in the pocket allows food to be selected and consumed.231 ¶20

These are worlds that are taking place right now, worlds within worlds, all part of the world of Caesar. But I am speaking of another world. A world where those who are accounted worthy to attain neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore. They are now sons of God, being sons of the Resurrection in the sense that God’s creative power has returned. But you never return until David calls you Father, for only then is the drama at its end. When David, in the Spirit, calls you “My Lord,” (which means “My Father” in the ancient world) you bear the marks of Jesus.231 ¶21

“What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is he? David?” Then why did David in the Spirit call him ‘My Lord’? If David called him Lord, how can he be David’s Son? He can’t, for he is David’s Father. The average Christian believes that Jesus Christ is God’s Son, not God the Father; but David is God’s only begotten Son. There is no mother in David’s story. He claims: “I am the Son of Jesse, the Bethlehemite.” This is eternity, which was put into the mind of man. Giving his creative power to man, God came with him. Everything God wants done David will do while he wears the mask called John, called Bill, called Helen. Now wearing the mask of everyone in this world, when the mask is removed for the final time, memory will return and he will know himself to be God the Father once more, but now individualized.231 ¶22

And the only one who can reveal him to himself is God’s only begotten Son, David. There is no other way that you can ever know that you are God, save through David! So in the last days he speaks to us through Sonship. I can tell you from now until the ends of time that you are God and you may think me either mad or arrogant; but the day will come when David will stand before you and call you Father. Then it will not matter what the world will say; you will know who you really are and that’s all that really matters.231 ¶23

When you see David you won’t have to ask his identity. There will be no uncertainty, for you will see the express image of the being you saw as the Risen Lord. “Express image” really means: “the impression of a seal on wax or clay.” He is not a resemblance, as something painted from a model, but the express image of the Ancient of Days, only young.231 ¶24

So the last days do not signify the end of this world, for it is not coming to an end, in spite of all the prophecies. The end of which Ecclesiastes speaks is when the individual departs this world through the fulfillment of scripture. He is not speaking of a departure by shooting yourself or taking poison. You could drop dead this very moment to be instantly restored to life in a body the same as before, only unaccountably new, to find yourself in a section of time best suited for the work still to be done in you. You may be in the year 1,000 or the year 4,000, but it will not seem strange. You will be perfectly at home in an environment you understand. There you will play your part, get married, and be just as afraid of death there as you are here, until the last days come upon you.231 ¶25

In this wonderful group so many are waking. Yesterday a lady wrote, saying: “I woke receiving an enormous blow on my head resounding like a hammer on steel. Then all the suns of the universe came alive; all the planes, buses, and cars of the world moved within me. And then the suns magnified to the nth degree, then subsided and the normal street noises returned. That night I was awakened about 1:00 o’clock in the morning hearing my neighbor say good night to guests. I rose, had a drink of water, and returned to bed. Suddenly I was aware of looking at my body. It was lying prone on the bed outlined in light. As I looked at it I saw a light descend toward it, and before they merged the body disappeared and the light possessed me from head to toe. For the past week I have been feeling the presence of God surrounding me. Now I feel the presence glowing from within.”231 ¶26

Then she continues: “Everything I see now, whether my physical eyes are open or closed, is in vivid color. During the day I can sit under a tree, be washing dishes, or taking a walk when another world appears and I simply step into it.” Here is a lady whose inner being is completely awake. This inner being of which I speak is stirring within all, and everyone will reach the last days, for that is the only purpose of life.231 ¶27

And when the time for your departure comes, the marks of Jesus will be placed upon you. You are born from above with the sign of the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes; David will call you Father; the curtain of the temple (which is your own body) will be split and you will ascend into heaven in a spiral manner. Then the dove (the sign of God’s love) descends upon you and smothers you with affection. When these marks are yours you will say, with Paul: “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.”231 ¶28

This world that appears so real to you now is repetitious. I have had moments when I have watched people repeat actions over and over again. One night I said to a group as they crossed a bridge: “Do you know you have been doing this over and over again? I have watched you cross this bridge unnumbered times to continue down the street beyond,” yet they would not believe me because they had no memory of ever having done it before. This is life!231 ¶29

Recently I was talking to my brother, who is a doctor, and he said: “Neville, the Bible doesn’t make any sense to me, especially Ecclesiastes. How can he say there is nothing new under the sun? Penicillin is new.” I answered: “No, it is not, only you have no memory of it. Penicillin is wonderful, but it would be considered nothing in other worlds which exist now. There are worlds where even a heart transplant is obsolete, yet each belongs to this world of Caesar.”231 ¶30

But the world into which everyone will eventually go cannot be described. You cannot describe “that age” when there is nothing here to relate it to. How can I describe fusing with the Lord of lords and the King of kings? Read the 30th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah carefully. The Lord is speaking, saying: “Can a man bear a child? Why then do I see every man drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? Why does every face turn pale? Alas! That day is so great there is none like it; it is a time of distress for Jacob; yet he shall be saved because of it.” (Because the whole thing is done, Jacob will be saved).231 ¶31

Now the Lord continues, saying: “I will break the yoke from off your neck, and I will burst your bonds. No more shall anyone make a servant of him. But they shall serve the Lord, their God and David their king whom I will raise up.” Here the Lord is telling you that he will not leave his Son in the grave, but will raise him up in the last days. Having found David, I have anointed him with my holy oil and he has called me: “My Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.” God the Father and his son David entered the human mind, and David - a man after his Father’s heart - does his will. And when he has fought the good fight, finished the race, and kept the faith in the vision shown in the beginning, David will rise and call you Father and the drama is over!231 ¶32

But you are told that those who will come after will not rejoice in him. This is true. You can tell the world of this beautiful Father/Son relationship and yet those who listen will say: “What? Oh, I want more money and some fun first.” A friend of mine, a very successful writer who was five years my senior, would not listen to me, for he was afraid. He was not interested, and therefore did not rejoice in the story of David. Stating he wanted some fun first, he did not care for anything of this nature. My friend died about three years ago while watching T.V., so now he is restored to life as a young man, jolly, handsome, and wonderful. He is in a terrestrial world like this, playing a part, perfectly oblivious of what he could have heard from me. And he will remain in this world until the last days come upon him. Then and only then can he depart the stage.231 ¶33

You cannot enter the kingdom of heaven until you are first born from above. Then you must find David, experience the splitting of the curtain and the descent of the dove. Then and only then do you enter the one body of the one God, to be one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. This is what I mean by the last days.231 ¶34

This world goes on and on, continuing to revolve on its wheel of recurrence, as the one actor plays his many parts in one lifetime. Just like the actor on the stage, he may play the part of Hamlet tonight and Othello tomorrow, but, regardless of the part he plays, he never loses his identity. You will play the rich and the poor man, the known and the unknown, but in the last days God will speak to you through his Son. That is the final revelation of God to Man, for God reveals himself through his Son, and you can’t go any further, for then God reveals himself as you! Now let us go into the silence.231 ¶35

Tonight’s subject is “What is His Name?” This is taken from the 30th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It’s a riddle and you and I are challenged to unriddle the riddle. Now, last meeting we told the story of a friend who heard this voice from within him speaking with tremendous authority, and the voice said to him, “Feed me with challenges. How else can I grow?” Well, the Bible has asked us to unriddle the most fantastic riddle in the world. I know—-if you will believe me—-I can share it with you this night. I have unriddled it not by labor, not by speculation, by sheer revelation. You can’t conjure revelation; it simply happens in its own good time. But the riddle is this: “Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Canst thou tell?” . So there is the challenge, to give the name of one who established all the ends of the earth, and also to give his son’s name.230 ¶1

Now we are told to search the scriptures, search them diligently, for if it is not recorded in scripture it’s nonexistent. So search it and search it over and over, for there are so many names given in scripture for the creator of the universe. In the very first verse we have the word Elohim: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Is it Elohim? In the very first chapter, the same Elohim: “Let us make man in our image.” That’s Elohim. Then we have the word El Shaddai, “God Almighty.” Then we have Adonay, “my lord.” Then we have the great secret name of Jehovah or the Yod He Vau He, defined for us as I AM. And we have all these names throughout scripture, and we’re called upon to name the name and then name his son.230 ¶2

Well, in the very question a part of the answer is given. Read it carefully or listen to it carefully, “Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name?” That should give you the cue right away. It isn’t asking us how this universe was created, by what process, but who created it and for what purpose. But if I ask you, “What is his name?” and then the second question is “What is his son’s name?” I have pinpointed it. Isn’t he a father? Isn’t that a father? Isn’t that the ultimate name that you’re seeking? It isn’t God, it isn’t Elohim, it isn’t Jehovah, it isn’t any name, it’s Father. “What is his son’s name?” is the cue to the first question “What is his name?” Because the second one pinpoints it: “What is his son’s name?” To have a son is to confess you’re a father, and so to say I’m a father is to admit of the existence of a child, to prove your own creative power. Your creativity is in the offspring, so right away we see in it a father-ship relationship somewhere.230 ¶3

Now, Jeremiah makes the statement—-and the word Jeremiah is defined in many ways, but here are three wonderful definitions of it—“Jehovah hurls; Jehovah will rise; Jehovah will loosen the womb.” That’s what the word means by definition. He hurls, he will rise, and he will loosen the womb. Then Jeremiah is made to say: “Thy words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart. …I am called by thy name, O Lord, God of hosts” . He discovered that he was called by the name. Now mind you, he was hurled into a turbulent state, but he knew as he was hurled Jehovah will rise. He hurls himself into this world of confusion, but he will rise, and he will loosen the womb. If he loosens the womb, well then, I can come out, I can be born.230 ¶4

Now only the indolent mind will really fail to rise to the challenge of a riddle. But I warn you, if you will accept it, I’ll tell you this night if you will accept it, it will save you from losing your way in the tangled speculations that pass for religious truth. That all over the world, they don’t mean to mislead you but they’re speculating—they haven’t had the experience. You’ll find unnumbered denominations and that goes for even the biggest of the organized groups, they are speculating. So here we find these words in the Book of Matthew, “Take my yoke upon you.” This “Take my yoke upon you” in Hebrew is a very common rabbinical expression, the yoke of the law, which means “the studies of scripture.” So he’s asking you to take his yoke, his knowledge of scripture based upon experience and not upon speculation. He’s asking you to exchange your yoke, your present inherited yoke, based upon the speculations of the priesthoods of the world, for his yoke which is based upon his own personal experience of the answer to this riddle. So, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me. My yoke is easy, and my burden light” .230 ¶5

Now in this 11th chapter of Matthew (and it’s all crowded together) he said, “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the prudent and revealed them unto babes…for such was thy gracious will” . And then he invites one to listen and accept his yoke. Now he makes this statement (it’s all wedged right into this marvelous claim that he’s going to make), he said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” . He’s asking you to take his yoke, his actual understanding of the scriptures based upon his personal experience; and defies anyone to name that Son. You could name…he always reveals the creator of the universe as Father. He doesn’t speak of him as some other being, just Father, and he speaks of Son. And the world has taught you to believe that he is the Son. And so, the priesthoods of the Christian world will tell you Jesus Christ is the Son of God, while in the story, if you read it carefully, he confesses he is God the Father. He said, “You want to see the Father, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you ask to show you the Father? When you see me you see the Father” . But he confesses no one has seen him, that is, they have not grasped him. They see the outer garment, the mask, the persona that he wears, but they can’t see the wearer of the mask. But when you see me, if you ever can grasp me as I tell you the stories, said he, then you’ve seen the Father. So do not ask to show you the Father; he who has seen me has seen the Father.230 ¶6

And no one asked him then concerning the Son, no one. So because no one asked him concerning the Son—-if I am a father, well, then there must be a child—-so he brings it up. He said, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered based upon tradition, “The son of David.” Then he replied, “Why then did David, in the Spirit, call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” . The word translated Lord is one of the words for God, Adonay, which is used more often than the word Jehovah, because Jehovah is the sacred name, Yod He Vau He, and so they used Adonay in place. Even though you see it in the script Yod He Vau He, the translators will concede it, and put Adonay in its place. It’s the closest to Yod He Vau He. And so, he was called Adonay. Adonay means “my lord,” but that’s an expression used by every son of his father. You asked the son of his father and he referred to his father as Adonay, my lord. And so David then is playing the part of son. So David in the Spirit, not in the flesh—-this is a drama of the Spirit—-and David in Spirit calls him Adonay, calls him “my Father.” So if David thus calls him Father, how can he be David’s son? So he establishes the riddle, he unriddles the riddle, and tells you who created the universe, who established it, who sustains it, and who is his Son.230 ¶7

Now, that is in conflict with the rabbinical concept and the priestly concept today. They will not accept that at all. They teach you that there’s a presence called God, something outside of man that created him, and that man in some strange way is simply begging a favor of this creator, and that he’s promised to redeem man. Man and God are really one! But in this mystery, it was done for a purpose: to extend his creative power. By putting himself into this complete contraction called man, he could then unravel a mystery which was predetermined. It isn’t worked out as he goes along; the whole thing was set up in the beginning. It is God’s intense nearness that makes him invisible to us. Were he not so near…he’s not even near, because nearness would imply separation; therefore, it’s not near, he actually is the very being in search of the answer to the riddle. In fact, the whole vast history of humanity is nothing else than one long wrestle with this infinite riddle.230 ¶8

And so, man having organized around the mystery not understanding it and rejecting it as told in scripture…for he told the story if one would read it carefully. But now, if I read it as I was taught it, I would be influenced by my teacher; and my teacher would have made me believe that a presence called God, where he is they didn’t know, therefore, they couldn’t convey it to me. But then they taught me of a being called Jesus Christ, and he was born as I was born. Maybe a little differently— he didn’t have a father, not an earthly father, his father was God—but I had the earthly father. She was something different, something unique, that’s what they taught me, that she brought forth a son, and she didn’t know a man. I believed that and believed it all the way through until I began to wrestle with the riddle, wrestle with life. And then certain visions disturbed me. And then came the vision of visions: the discovery of the Father. I hadn’t the slightest concept of the meaning of that statement: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” . I read it, as you read it, and my school master in his own limited way tried to explain it and only added to confusion. I had no light thrown on it whatsoever.230 ¶9

Then came that moment in time, to go back to Jeremiah, “Thy words became a joy and a delight to my heart…I am called by thy name, O Lord, God of hosts.” I am actually called by your name? Yes, called by my name. Well, my name is Neville and that is certainly not the Lord, God of hosts. Your name is Robert, your name could be Mary, name could be anything, but that’s not the Lord, God of hosts. So, how could I be called by thy name, which is the Lord, the God of hosts? Suddenly he tells us the name means “Jehovah will rise, Jehovah will loosen the womb.” Well, he did rise in me; and he rose in me and he loosened the womb, of that womb that was really a tomb; and then he came out of that womb. He rose from the grave, like a seed falling into the ground and it dies. If it doesn’t die, it brings forth nothing. It must die as a seed; so it is the earth which is its womb and becomes for a moment its grave. But to prove the grave is transformed into a womb, something grows. So when it grows and comes out bearing a hundred-fold, then that which was a grave became a womb. And out of the womb…he loosens the womb and something comes out. The very one that hurled himself into it came out. He came out of that loosened womb. And then, all that was concealed in him which is fatherhood began to appear; for before him appears his son bearing witness to his fatherhood. He didn’t know until that moment that he had a son. It was concealed in the very beginning of time, as told us in Ecclesiastes: “God has put eternity into the mind of man, but he’s put it so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” . Then, suddenly, at the end he comes out, that which was concealed in his mind, and he stands before him, and he does call him “my Father.” He calls him “Adonay,” “my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation” . Doesn’t call him John, doesn’t call him Robert, doesn’t call him Neville; he calls him Father.230 ¶10

Yet not for one moment did you until that moment in eternity ever believe you were the answer to the riddle. How could you? You can’t make one hair of your head; you can’t add one hour to the span of your life as you’re told. Not an hour can you add to the span of your life, in spite of all the false claims to the contrary. You make your exits and your entrances from the stage on time, and no one adds to or takes from that span of time. As we are told, “Who by taking thought, who by being anxious, can add one cubit to his stature?” . Well, that translation in the Goodspeed Bible is “Who by being anxious can add an hour to his span of life?” So, they’ve changed it completely to conform to the real basic meaning of the phrase. You do not come in before your time and you don’t leave before your time. Even when you seem to take your life, you don’t leave before your time, no one does. And no one comes in before his time.230 ¶11

So here, you didn’t realize, you who cannot add an hour to your span of life, who can’t grow one hair of your head, who can’t grow any of these things, and you establish all the ends of the earth? And that you have a son and that son is the princely David of biblical fame? Why, it seems nonsense…until it happens. When it happens, then it doesn’t matter what the world will tell you. You can share it with others. And the whole gospel of John, for instance, is completely based upon believing or disbelieving in his message…all that matters. These are the stories that he experienced to interpret scripture. And the rabbis rejected him because they had their own speculations; and he wasn’t speculating. He was simply giving his own personal experience of scripture. He said, “I came to fulfill scripture, nothing else; Scripture must be fulfilled in me.” So as the book unfolded in him, he was the grand being who was hurled by Jehovah—and Jehovah hurled only himself. There was no one else to send, so he sent himself. He sent himself into this maelstrom, this horror as it were, this place where you and I are subjected to the incarnation of the tragedy and the glory of the message of God. Well, we must not lose our vision of the glory in the tragedy. So while we are passing through all the afflictions, let us keep alive the vision of the glory. It’s going to come, and you are the answer to the riddle. So “Who established all the ends of the earth? What is his name and what is his son’s name? Canst thou tell?”230 ¶12

Well, I know in my own case, I have talked with so many rabbis and ministers and those of different aspects of the faith since it happened. I haven’t found one who is teaching it who will listen even with interest. They are so completely sold on the belief that God is something on the outside, and that he has one unique son, called Jesus Christ, and that is it. You can’t sway them for one moment. They will say after they read your book, “You know, I see and feel in your book a certain sincerity, Neville, but…” and there the book is closed and the mind is closed.230 ¶13

So when he said, “Take my yoke upon you,” he’s asking you to accept and exchange the yoke you now wear, based upon the false traditions, the speculations of the priesthoods of the world, for his yoke, which is his knowledge based upon experience of the scriptures of God. He tells you, I am he. Before I came into incarnation, I dictated it through my servants the prophets. They only served me. And throughout the centuries men have searched eagerly all through the scriptures to find that of which they spoke. They couldn’t find it by their speculations; it comes only by revelation. When it was revealed to one and he told it, they rejected the revelation and held onto their traditions. So he said, you will circumnavigate the earth to make one proselyte, and you’ve thrown away the key; so you can’t get in, and you stop him from getting in, because you become a slave to your traditions, and your traditions are keeping you out. So I will share it with you, but I can’t compel anyone to take it.230 ¶14

I tell you, the name of that father is “Father”…and it’s you. But you don’t know that your name is Father, who is really the God who established all the ends of the earth, because you emptied yourself of that knowledge when you took upon yourself the limitations of a man, and became obedient unto death, even the death upon the cross of man . So here you are nailed upon this cross of man, having emptied yourself of your primal form, your immortal self; and then you had to dream the dream of life that you had predetermined, for a purpose. And the purpose was to exercise your creative talent, called in scripture “your son”; for, he’s called “your son” and he is, in scripture, nothing more than the power and the wisdom of the God that you are . But you’re told it takes the son to set you free; you will continue to dream the dream of life until the son appears . It comes only in the end, and when he appears he sets free his father who dreamed him into being. He was hidden in his father from the very beginning, and it took the entire dream to bring him forward and have him presented as son. And so, “Where is your father?”230 ¶15

The word is asked in the Book of Samuel, “Whose son are you, young man?” and he said, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite” . That’s who I am…I am the son of your servant Jesse. The word Jesse is I AM. So when he appears he calls you Father. And who is he calling Father and who is Father? You say, “Well, I am the father. He called me Father, so I am his father.” But he doesn’t call you Jesse, any more than I call my father Joe Goddard. Others would call him Joe Goddard, but I always called him Father. So he can call anybody else the name Neville…he can’t call me that, he has to call me Father. So he calls me Father. You look at him, and you see him, and you are his father, and he is your son.230 ¶16

So I will tell you the answer to that riddle: You, as you are seated here, regardless of the name you bear on earth, you are the Father and your son’s name is David. Because your son’s name is David and you are his father, and my son’s name is David, the David, the same David, and I am his father, then we are one. That’s the only way you and I will know of our unity. We never lose our identity in this union. We are still completely individualized. In fact, this journey through death, when the curtain comes down on this fantastic drama, and we all awaken as the father of the one son called David, we will be individualized beyond that which we were when the drama began. When we began this drama, we did it for the purpose of increasing our individualization. We’re all individualized, and we tend forever towards ever greater and greater individualization. There is no absorption in this union; there is simply a unity, a oneness. We are all that being that was in the very beginning, called in scripture, the Elohim. The God—-it’s plural—-the gods created it all. It was the gods who hurled themselves into their creation. And they agreed to dream in concert, so the whole would be a dream in concert. When the concert is over, they all will return completely, not only without loss of consciousness or loss of individuality but an increase of individuality. And all together form the one God and that God is Father.230 ¶17

Then there’s the next step. What that step will be that you and I will conceive for the fifth act, I do not know. I can only share with you the ending of the drama as it has ended in my life.230 ¶18

Every story as told of Jesus Christ in scripture is true, but man himself has to realize it. As he realizes it he exchanges the yoke of the traditions of his fathers for the yoke of Jesus. And Jesus means Jehovah, that’s all it means. The word Jesus means “Jehovah saves.” It was Jehovah who threw himself into this maelstrom; it’s Jehovah who will rise; it’s Jehovah who will loosen the womb and save himself and bring him out; and when he comes out he is Jesus. And so, it was to Jesus that David in the Spirit turned and said, Adonay. So in the end, only one name; and at that name every knee in the world should bend and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He is God the Father. He said, “Why do you ask me to show you the Father? I have been so long with you, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” . And then he unfolds who he is as Father by revealing (if they will listen to him) his Son. But the traditions could not accept it, for time separated the event from the one he claims who called him in the Spirit, Adonay. For a thousand years separated the two events. If I go back 2,000 years, I hear the drama unfolded. I must go back 3,000 years to hear the promise and the question asked of the youth who could actually bring down the tyrant that annoyed Israel, and that youth was called David.230 ¶19

His name was Olam and it’s translated “the eternal youth” in scripture. He took this youth, this eternal youth, or the personification of all the generations of humanity and all of their experiences and personified it into one single youth. But when the whole is over it’s because of all the generations of humanity and all of the experiences of man that you could extract from it all that eternal being called David. You pass through the furnaces, pass through all the afflictions, and because you’ve passed through all the afflictions and experiences—-not in some other way but actually experienced it—-you could bring him forth. It takes all of the fires to bring out of you that which you buried in the beginning. So he took eternity and placed it in the mind of man so that man could not find out what God had done from the beginning to the end. That which he put in the mind of man was Olam, and Olam means “the lad, the youth, the stripling.”230 ¶20

So I will set your father free if I can only find the name of your father, so “Whose son are you, young man?” For I made a promise: Whosoever’s son should destroy the enemy of Israel, I’m going to set the father free. So the Father is dreaming and dreaming and dreaming the dream of life until he brings forth David. When he brings forth David, David has conquered life; he’s conquered all the generations of man. He’s passed through every experience that man could ever experience, really. Having passed through it, and memory being kind to him—not letting him remember the horrors of the past—he only now knows the glory. He hasn’t forgotten the glory in the tragedy through which he had to pass to bring forth David. So he brings out David. And when the king of earth, his name is Saul, and he sees this heavenly youth and that he was the conqueror, he remembers his promise: He is going to now set free the father of that youth. He cannot enslave him any longer in the dream of life. So the king of the earth must set free one of the dreamers who aided in the great concert. He has to go free.230 ¶21

So tell me, “Who is your father?” “Jesse.” And Jesse is I AM. And so you will know the answer to the riddle. When you know it, really, you step aside, and you take the yoke off of you.230 ¶22

In the gospel of Matthew, “I’ll take it from myself.” For in that one small little three or four verses (it’s all crowded together) he tells you that “No one can know the Son but the Father; and no one can know the Father but the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”. So, I will now choose to reveal my father: Said he to the king, “My father is Jesse.” Up to that, he didn’t know; but he’s looking for the father of that son to set him free, for he has to fulfill his promise. But until then, the fathers are enslaved. We are the fathers, we are the Elohim, we are the gods spoken of in Acts . “Great indeed is this day!” said the writer—-whoever wrote the Book of Acts, the one who wrote the Book of Luke—-“For the gods have come down to us in the likeness of men!” They’ve all come down and worn the forms of men, and they’re enslaved while they wear the forms of men; and they will continue to be enslaved until they find the Son. Because no one can set him free but the Son, and the Son will decide when he will choose to reveal his Father.230 ¶23

So in that 18th verse of the first John, first chapter of John: “No one has seen the Father; but the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” You see John, you see Mary, you see Neville, you see all these characters of the world, the masks that the Father wears, but you haven’t seen the Father. And not one knows the Father but the Son; and when he comes, he calls him, Adonay, in fulfillment of scripture. For the 89th Psalm…and the 89th Psalm makes the statement: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’” .230 ¶24

So here, Jeremiah, who threw so much light on it, makes the statement in his 23rd chapter…he is complaining about the false prophets of the world…oh, yes, they have dreams and they tell you the dreams came from God; but he tells you they’re not from God, they are the ambitions of men. So they have dreams and dreams and they try to encourage all in a strange optimistic way. Well, they haven’t had the dream that came from the depths of the soul. He’s asked them a very simple question: “Did you stand in the council of the gods? Did you really stand in the assembly of the gods?” They could not answer yes unless they lied. He said, “Then you have not been sent. Were you addressed by him? No?” And so, he put these questions to them and the answer is no. If you were not in the assembly of the gods, if you were not addressed by him, then you’ve not been sent by him…and so you’re false prophets. So that was Jeremiah’s message to the world. When you are brought in, in Spirit, into the council of the gods and asked a question by the risen Christ—the being that’s now about to embrace you and therefore you are he from that moment on—then you are sent on a mission because you are sent by him. And he doesn’t leave you, he goes with you. That’s the mystery: How could he go with you and still be there in the divine council, embracing one after the other, as he sends them on a mission? Well, that’s the great mystery. I fill all, said he, I fill all heaven and all earth; there’s no place where I am not. You take the wings of the morning and fly to the ends of the earth, he’s there. If you make your bed in hell, he’s there .230 ¶25

No matter where he sends you, and he’ll send you through hell that you may tell them of the true yoke, the true understanding of scripture, and have them exchange their yoke, which is a misunderstanding of scripture, for the true understanding based upon experience. He said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”230 ¶26

So when he addresses God the Father, you are misled, because he’s speaking of God the Father. But then, one doesn’t search long enough to find he tells you he is the Father. It’s like communion with self. He is communing with self while he is in search, while he’s playing the game, while he’s playing the part he predestined himself to play. He was, in the beginning, foreknown by himself. “And those that he foreknew, he also predestined, and those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified” . The glorification is simply the complete gift of himself at the end of the drama, when he returns to his prenatal state; when he returns to that primal form of which he was emptied when he assumed the limitations of a garment, and stepped upon the stage, on time, and played all the horrible parts of the world. It took all of these to expand and increase the creative power that he had prior to entering the great drama.230 ¶27

So in the end when the curtain comes down, we’ll all gather together and we’ll understand clearly what the great wonderful tragedy meant. We’ll all rejoice, because, in spite of it all, all tears are washed away, all scars are gone, and nothing but joy remains; with an expanded creative power for another drama, which you and I together, in concert, will agree before we hurl ourselves into the garment. Having seen it clearly in the beginning, then we hurl it in forgetfulness and become the part. Then, having played it fully, whatever is then the one to be brought forth at the end of the drama we’ll bring him forth. We can’t fail because God can’t fail…and you are he.230 ¶28

So now, let’s go into the Silence and take…you can take the answer and the hope that you will now be able to tell it from experience rather than from belief in one whom you trust who has had that experience. Now let’s go.230 ¶29

Tonight’s subject is “They Did Not Die.” It is possibly the most difficult subject to discuss, but I’ll do my best.226 ¶1

We turn to the greatest of all books, the Bible, and so the Old Testament really is prophetic history: Everything in it will come to pass, everything. So we turn to the 51st chapter of Jeremiah, the 39th verse: “While they were inflamed I prepared a feast for them and made them drunk, till they swooned and then they slept a perpetual sleep and did not awake, says the Lord”…while they were inflamed. The word translated inflamed is a “self-imposed trance” really—to become so completely carried away with a story that is being told me that I’m completely inflamed, I’m entranced. And so, the feast prepared is the story told me: I’m being told a story of transcending myself, and I’m feasting upon it. Then I feast upon it until I swoon away, I am drunk; and then in this state as I swoon away, I sleep a perpetual sleep and do not wake. That’s the story. You who have your Bibles you can check it, it’s the 51st chapter, the 39th verse of Jeremiah.226 ¶2

Now, I know from my own experience that nothing dies, but nothing dies. The little flower that blooms once blooms forever; and yet in this world of ours everything seems to come into being, it waxes, it wanes and it disappears, everything. So we see things constantly dying. They’re born and then they die. And yet, I can tell you from my own experience that nothing dies. So tonight we’ll take this and try to take it, in the limited time, from different angles.226 ¶3

The Bible begins, “In the beginning God…” This is Genesis; the Book of Genesis ends on the note “…in a coffin in Egypt” . All ends run true to origins; the origin is God: “In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt.” The word translated coffin is also translated ark, and so Blake said, “Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth and the sea.” I say man is that ark that contains God and God being all that there is, everything goes into the ark and the ark is man. So, “In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt.” But the one placed in that coffin is called Joseph, and Joseph was called the dreamer: “Behold, this dreamer cometh” . Now, the Bible recognizes only one source of dreams: All dreams proceed from God. So, Joseph is the prototype of God. So the dreamer is put into a coffin which is man, in Egypt. But he exacts from the sons of Israel a promise that they will not leave him there; they’ll bring him out of Egypt into that which was promised by God before this journey started.226 ¶4

Now, the Bible itself ends on the note (in the end of Revelation)—-omitting the very last verse which is only a benediction—but the very last verse of the actual end is “Come, Lord Jesus.” These are the words…so, “In the beginning God…in a coffin in Egypt…Come, Lord Jesus.” We are told in the New Testament, in Colossians, in Corinthians, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, the first-fruits of those that slept. So here something is placed in the coffin and it seemingly is dead; and the first awakening is called Jesus Christ, the first-fruits of those who slept. So, Come, Lord Jesus, come awaken us from this dream, this fantastic dream where we are fighting with demons.226 ¶5

A very great Irish mystic, poet, painter, essayist, his name was George Russell, but he’s better known to us as A.E. He chose the initials A.E. He wrote a book called The Candle of Vision and in this book he reveals his mystical experiences. The one I would like to use this night he called The Many Colored Land. He said, “I will not tell you where I saw it, but saw it I did. I will not tell you where I saw this.”226 ¶6

And then he describes what he saw: “A hall vaster than the largest cathedral, and its pillars made seemingly of living, pulsing opal. And between the pillars were thrones and they faded into the very end. On these thrones sat divine kings, fiery crested. He said, I saw one who wore the crest of the dragon, another, as I can describe it, said he, it seemed to be plumes of fire, and they stretched to the very end. At the far end was a throne higher and on it sat one greater than the rest, a light like the sun glowed behind him. On the floor there lay a dark figure and over this dark figure two of the divine kings waved their hands. And as they waved their hands over this figure, head and body, fire came from the body where the hands moved, like some strange moving fire; or he described it as jewels, scintillating jewels coming from the body. Then, out of this body came a figure as tall, as glorious, as radiant as those who sat upon the thrones. Then he awoke to the hall, and then he became aware of his divine kin and raised his hand in greeting. Those on the thrones leapt from their thrones with hands lifted in greeting to the one who had returned from his long dark journey. Then altogether they moved and vanished into the light.” Then he woke here in this world.226 ¶7

It’s the most perfect picture that I have read concerning this descent into this world. You’re only here for a purpose: to play a part. You are here to increase your creative power. You are not a being born in this world at all. But in this descent, when you were entranced from on high, you would have the experience of birth and of death. So, many years ago I wrote a tiny little pamphlet and I closed it with this thought, that “This universe that we study with such care is a dream, and we the dreamers of the dream, eternal dreamers dreaming non-eternal dreams. One day, like Nebuchadnezzar, we will awaken from our dream in which we fought with demons, to discover that we really never left our eternal home; we were never born, have never died, save in our dream” . That nothing in this world, I don’t care what they will tell me, passes away. But you and I are not the thing that we are observing or at the moment that we experience. And this goes for everything in this world. So now let me share with you on different levels what I know from experience.226 ¶8

Back in 1944, at a Bible class in New York City, a lady who lived with her mother, she was then forty-five; she wouldn’t marry because she thought, “Well now, if I marry I don’t think a husband would want to take on the obligation of my mother. I would not leave my mother for any man in this world.” So she refused marriage and she and her mother lived together until the mother died. At the Bible class, she said to me, “Neville, I just can’t tell you…my whole heart has gone out. Mother’s gone and my house is empty, my world is empty.” I said, “Do you want to see your mother? If it would be any consolation to you, to prove to you your mother hasn’t gone, you want to see her?” She said yes. This is Monday night, my classes were held on Monday night. I said, “Alright, this is Monday, it is now the following Monday and you’re in this room now and you’re telling my Bible class that you met your mother, and that your mother hasn’t died; there is survival in this world.” I said, “Will you do it?” She said yes.226 ¶9

The following Monday, she rose in my Bible class and she said this to the audience, she said, “I did it Monday night, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The wee hours of Friday morning I began to awake and I found myself out of my body. I knew that because I looked back at the bed and there is the body. At that very moment my mother is coming through the door. Well, it didn’t seem strange to me she was coming through the door, but that was not as interesting to me as the body. So as mother came through the door, I completely forgot that she was dead, the purpose of what I was doing, and so I said to my mother, ‘Look, my body!’ She said to me, ‘You’re just as stupid as ever.’” Because her mother would not come to my meetings, and her mother always disapproved of her daughter coming to my meetings, because her mother was a nice, orthodox Christian, and she thought that I was leading her daughter astray by teaching her a Bible along this line—this was simply the devil’s Bible. So, as the mother said “You’re just as stupid as ever,” a little dog came into the room, and she bent down and began to fondle this dog. She smothered the dog with kisses and affection, and then it dawned upon her, “Why, this is my dog that died five years ago.” At that moment, she became so emotionally disturbed that she snapped and found herself back in the body.226 ¶10

Two years later, I came west and received one morning a cable that my secretary who served me faithfully—he was like a brother to me—had died. And so, we went back and I took care of his funeral. He never really attended the Catholic Church, but he was born in the Catholic faith, and his sister that he never saw, and really heartily disliked, but she insisted that Jack should have a Catholic funeral, so we abided by her decision. So we went up to Haverstraw, New York, and he had the perfect Catholic funeral, where the sister went by and kissed the dead body, and they all went by and kissed it, and did all these things. Well, if that is par for the course or not, I don’t know, but that’s what they did.226 ¶11

Well, I have a sister-in-law, my wife’s sister, she’s a pillar of the Episcopal Church in Jersey, and I think she loves me dearly for one reason, because I take good care of her sister and our child. So being a good father and a good husband, she will tolerate my way of making a living. She doesn’t go for it; she said, “I don’t believe one word that you say, Neville, not a word. Immortality is simply the extension of oneself in children, in their children and their children. But immortality, as you teach it, I don’t go for it.” I said to her, “How can you say this when you are a Christian? Don’t you know the foundation stone of Christianity is the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and life everlasting? And you can’t rub out one stone. If you rub out one of these foundation stones, the whole building will topple. It’s the fatherhood of God, which you find in the words “our Father”, and the belief in the revelation of Christianity is eternal life. You can’t rub out one.” She said, “I will not believe one word you say”…said she.226 ¶12

Well, six or seven months after my secretary died, one night I was out, consciously, just as I am here. Al (my sister-in-law) came into the room, and my secretary who was then so-called dead six or seven months he came into the room. She said to me, “I still don’t believe one word you teach, Neville.” Then I said to her, “How can you say that when you see Jack?” She said, “What has he to do with what you teach?” I said, “Don’t you know that he died six months ago?” See, she’s not consciously out, she is in a dream state, so she’s not aware. Well, when I made the statement all of a sudden I can see her face begin to show a certain memory image, and she begins to bring back the knowledge that he did die six months ago. As she’s looking at Jack and Jack is here solidly real, I said to her, “I’ll show you how real he is.” I said, “Jack, come over here.” So Jack came, and I put my hand on his thigh, and the thigh was as solid as this. I said, “You see, my hand doesn’t go through his thigh. He’s real, he’s solidly real.” And with this, Jack did this to me. He said, “Take your hands off!” just what he would have done were he here. There was no transforming power in death…the same Jack, on the wheel of recurrence. There is no death, but there are wheels within wheels within wheels in this world.226 ¶13

Then the scene shifted from that moment and the most pleasant, I would say, few years that Jack had on that little wheel (he died at the age of fifty), so in fifty years the most pleasant experience was in Florida when he managed some little citrus grove of a hundred fifty acres. He managed it on the basis of so much per month and then if a profit, he got a profit. But he was living in the open and he just loved it. So the scene shifted and there we are in Florida and he’s throwing grapefruit at me. I caught a few, and then she said, “Where is my grapefruit?” At that very moment, my little girl, who was then only about four or five years old, she said, “Daddy, time for breakfast” and I snapped it and was back in this world on this wheel. There are wheels with wheels within wheels, and nothing dies.226 ¶14

So the purpose of it all is to awaken the dreamer. “In the beginning God…in a coffin”—-this is the coffin and this is Egypt. “Come, Lord Jesus”—the first-fruits of those who rose from the dead. Come that promise in me that I will not leave you, for I exacted a promise from the sons of Israel they would not leave me in Egypt; they would take my body out, out of Egypt, and bring it into the Promised Land. So, I am asking to come Lord Jesus that he will take me—the being encased in this coffin, in this ark where all things are contained—and awaken me. Christianity is only the awakening, that’s all that it is; the awakening from this age into that age.226 ¶15

So, man thinks while he is on this wheel that we are moving towards the inevitable climax of good in this world. The climax has already occurred with the words “It is finished.” “It is finished” is simply the end of one age and the beginning of a new one, a new age that is marked by the resurrection. So we are resurrected from this age into an entirely different age. But we came into this age…just as A.E. saw it so clearly and so vividly, that here, this dark figure entranced on the floor in this opalescent, scintillating world, where these already resurrected divine kings dwell. And these sons of Israel would not let him remain there. He’s entranced and he’s dreaming this world, for the dreamer was the one embalmed and put in a coffin in Egypt, for his name was Joseph. “Behold, this dreamer cometh.” And they took him and sold him into Egypt. Then Joseph died; and they embalmed him, and put him in the ark “in a coffin in Egypt” . But the verse before the very end of the first book, the Book of Genesis, the verse before the end, he exacts the promise: Do not leave my bones, my body in Egypt. Bring me out and take me into the land that was promised. Then comes…the next book is Exodus. So the seed plot of the Bible is Genesis. It’s also the great, I would say, introduction to this unfolding picture.226 ¶16

So here, when I say nothing dies, I mean it seriously. You’re on a wheel and the wheel is perfect. You can’t change it; you get off the wheel. And may I tell you this night what is the secret of getting off the wheel: It is revision. Revision is repentance. Repentance which I call today revision, for repentance simply means “a radical change of attitude towards life.” Then you break life’s invidious bond and turn the circle, the wheel of recurrence, into a spiral of ascension. You turn it right into a spiral and conquer Zion, or the home of God. So David built in a circle and he built inward at one and the same time; and to accomplish this unusual strange architectural feat, it could only be done if you built in a spiral .226 ¶17

And now I’m speaking from experience: By practicing revision you don’t allow anything in this world to be as it is. If it isn’t pleasing, you change it; therefore, you will not, when the wheel turns, you will not come back to that point. You’ve changed it. It will not return to that point. It will return in the form of a spiral and instead of being in a circle of recurrence when the wheel turns, you are turning on the spiral by changing one event in your present recurring circle.226 ¶18

Now there is a lady here this night (she and her husband) and three weeks ago last Friday she said to me, “I lost my father, my father died.” I told her without explaining in detail what you’ve just heard what I did with the lady in my Bible class twenty years ago. She came back two weeks later and I said to her “This is Friday night, you go forward in time one week, it’s still Friday, and you reflect upon the thrill—-for of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt—-so you feel the relief that is yours because you know beyond all doubt, from actual experience, that your father lives. He hasn’t died, he survived.” She didn’t come back for two weeks, but she could tell me on the seventh day, which was the night of the Thursday of the following week, in vision she met her father. So she knows now beyond all doubt that the father hasn’t died, she knows it. Took one week to prove beyond all doubt—not going through a medium, no medium tells her or tries to persuade her—-she knows—she had the experience that her father lives.226 ¶19

Well now, a gentleman wrote me a letter that I received today. To show you how this works, he said, “A friend of mine was out of work for quite a while, so I simply applied this principle towards him. In the past, I’ve applied this principle of imagining towards many things, but it happened so naturally I thought it would have happened anyway, and so I put it down to coincidence. But in this case, my friend being out of work, I applied it, and he got a job, a fine job. It meant going to New York City, or rather, going off to Connecticut and be trained for the job, to be trained in a month. Then the next thing I heard that they filled the job—-someone in the East got the job, and so they didn’t complete it here. I felt a bit disappointed. Then I remembered the story of revision, so I revised it. I revised the entire thing that I heard about my friend and saw him in the job. Then came Friday and I thought I’d give a little party the following day, thought I’d call a few friends in and have a little fun. I called a friend of mine, and he was busy, he couldn’t come, but he was curious and asked me, ‘Who are you having?’ I mentioned this friend of mine who had been turned down on this job. He said to me, ‘You’d better call him right away because he’s leaving on Sunday for New York City.’ I said, ‘Did he get the job?’ He said, ‘Yes, a better job. He was turned down on one; then they called him back through the same agency and gave him a better job. Now he’s leaving on Sunday for New York City to be trained for one month in Connecticut and then back to the job.’” Now, he’s not here tonight, but his letter came to me today.226 ¶20

So I can tell you from experience we are on wheels, wheels within wheels within wheels, and no one knows that they play this part over and over and over again. You won’t break life’s invidious bar until you start repenting, and repenting is simply revision. The first proclamation in the earliest gospel is: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe the gospel” . To repent is to radically change your attitude towards life, completely change it, no matter how factual it is. So the job isn’t his, he’s been turned down, somebody else got it, and it’s 3,000 miles away, and you can’t argue with them. I will not accept it! I will see my friend in that job. I will persuade myself that he has the job. And when I call him on a date, he’s leaving not…he’s leaving on Sunday. I’m calling him on Friday asking him for a date on Saturday, and he’s pulling out Sunday, and he’s pulling out Sunday to be trained in the East. That is breaking the wheel of recurrence and turning it in to the ascent, the spiral. That’s exactly what David did when he conquered Zion. For above, we are told, only the blind, the lame and the halt were necessary to keep him away forever. And so, unlike all the others who tried to storm it from without, he went up the water shaft in a spiral. You go up the water shaft in a spiral by practicing the art of revision.226 ¶21

So if I gave nothing to the world in my fifty-nine years so far, I have given the art of revision. It isn’t new, it’s simply repentance. But repentance, after the years of misuse, is like a ship at sea with barnacles. It should be taken in and scraped, because, today, repentance in the world means “remorse, regret.” After unnumbered centuries of believing that repentance means “to feel regretful and remorseful,” that was not the original intention, and never was and still is not. It is simply a radical change of attitude towards life. And so, I discovered it. It wasn’t new. There is nothing new under the sun. As we are told: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It was before in ages past. But there is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of things to come after among those who will follow later” . Because they are on a wheel, and the wheel is so vast there are wheels within wheels within wheels.226 ¶22

Well, take this wheel: In 1901, these two educators, Miss Mobeley and Miss Jordin…Miss Mobeley was principal of St. Hughes College at Oxford—and Miss Jordin was vice-principal—who when she resigned the principal-ship then Miss Jordin became principal. They came from a long line of educators; therefore, they were schooled in observing and knowing how to really observe carefully what they’re supposed to pass an opinion on. Well, in 1901, they made this trip to Versailles, and when they returned after their vacation in Versailles they wrote an account of their experiences, and they paralleled, they duplicated each other. You could superimpose one upon the other and they fitted. It was not what they should have seen in Versailles. While in Versailles in 1901 they both slipped in time and went back to Versailles when the queen was there, just prior to the execution. They saw the entire picture, the costumes of the people, what they wore, what they did, the little bridge that is no longer there, and their account was so accurate that the French government made a thorough investigation of what they said they saw as against what today the French government presents as factual, and they rearranged that picture to conform to what they saw by investigation. The little bridge that was not there they replaced; the costumes that were not worn they replaced; because a thorough investigation proved that their vision of what they actually saw was the true vision of that period. It hadn’t passed away.226 ¶23

If you could now slip in time into any part of this constant turning wheel, you would see things as they are always. When Sir William Ramsey, the English scientist, took doses of ether under control, and he had his secretary give the dose, and then record what he was observing and experiencing. Then he observed that “I now see a man delivering coal, and it seems at the moment that he is delivering coal because someone ordered coal. But at this level of withdrawal he is not delivering coal because someone ordered coal, it seems to me that he is the eternal part of the structure of the universe. At this moment in time he is always delivering coal.” You dwell upon it. At this moment in time, that part of the structure of the universe is always delivering coal. So at this moment in time, this thing here is always saying what it’s saying. But you break the circle, and you come out into the spiral, and leave this age and enter an entirely different age.226 ¶24

Hamlet remains to be played. It’s the four hundredth year of the great Shakespeare. Hamlet has been played for four hundred years, and they’ve come and gone as actors playing the part, but Hamlet, the internal structure of that creation of Shakespeare, remains. Actors come and they play and they go, they play and they go. The actor goes on…and the actor is the one that is called God in scripture. The actor is the one that was entombed and put into a coffin in Egypt, and this is that coffin.226 ¶25

So I am playing parts, and then comes a moment in time where I reach the end of my long dark journey, and in that wonderful structure my brothers are waiting, waiting, passing over this dark body of mine while it is entranced on the floor of that heavenly structure. And as they pass their hands over the dark body they awaken the fires within it and split it. That cloven pine is riven and out comes a being as tall, as glorious, as shining as those who are seated on the thrones. Everyone comes out in the same manner, for I exacted before I was entranced a promise they would not leave me entranced. I would dream the dream of life. I would take upon myself the limitations of death, and then dream this dream of being born and dying, and having nothing and having something, and being wanted and being unwanted, and being hurt, and being severed, no eyes, no arms, all these I would dream. But don’t leave me in the dream. Awaken, awaken, me at that moment in time when the dream is complete, because if I complete the dream I have increased the power of my creativity. And I will join with my brothers, my heavenly kin, and then as I awake and become awake in the room, I will look around and see those I’ve always known, and seeing them, raise my hands in salutation. They will leap from their thrones with their hands greeting me and together into the one body called Jesus Christ. Only one in all this fabulous world.226 ¶26

So, all of this is the dream and nothing passes away. It remains fixed, a fixed structure animated by the dreamer. As he dreams he animates it, and the whole thing becomes an animated world because of the dreamer that is God. So the Bible begins, “In the beginning God…” and ends, “Come, Lord Jesus.” But the seed-plot of the Bible being Genesis, the end of Genesis is, “And he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.” The word coffin is the same as ark, and this is the ark where all things are contained. He takes everything in, in a creative manner; so that they will reproduce he takes them in, in pairs. So that everything, all the animals, everything goes into the ark because God is in the ark, and there’s nothing but God. So the power to create and multiply beyond my wildest dream is contained within this ark, this coffin that you see here.226 ¶27

But above, that no one sees—not out in space but in the depth of the soul—those that I actually extracted a promise they would not leave me in the ark. They watch carefully, and when the dream is coming to an end they pass their hands over my sleeping dark body. From it come splits in the body and sparks come out, like scintillating jewels; and suddenly out from the dark body emerges a being as tall and as glorious and as brilliant as those who were seated on the thrones. I recognize the place, for that was where I was entombed and recognize my kin, my divine kin. And I know the end that was promised me; for we come out of God as God. We are the Elohim. You are the Elohim, not some little thing on the outside.226 ¶28

So when the Elohim said, “Let us make man in our image,” he assumed the limitations of man for the expansion of his creative power. So as Jung brought out in his book, and when he saw himself in deep meditation, he said: “Aha, so he is meditating me, and when he awakes from his dream, I will no longer be.” May I tell you, when you awake from the dream this age will no longer be to you, but you, the dreamer, will be simply expanded beyond what you were when you began the dream. Not a thing is lost; all is gained.226 ¶29

Now, do you know the meaning of the word ark? The primal meaning of the word coffin is “to pluck, to gather”…that’s the primary meaning of the word. You’ll find it in your Concordance: “to pluck, to gather.” So by assuming the limitations of death and dreaming of the horrors of this world, I pluck and gather a far greater power to create than I could if I did not descend to this limitation. So that’s the meaning of the word ark, the meaning of the word coffin. So here, “In the beginning God…Come, Lord Jesus.” So the cry to the whole vast world is “Come, awaken me from this dream.”226 ¶30

For it seems that man so entranced has told you—-let me quote it once more, the 51st chapter, the 39th verse—“While they are inflamed I will prepare for them a feast and make them drunk, until they swoon away and sleep a perpetual sleep and not awake, sayeth the Lord.” The sleep is so profound it seems forever and forever. “I make them drunk”…who makes them drunk? It is God. Well, this is God making the statement. What is this inflammation? It is the inflammation…in the normal translation is called “heat,” that is, in the King James Version. It’s the heat like the heat of an animal. When an animal is in heat, the neighborhood is disturbed. The whole neighborhood is disturbed when an animal is in heat. They come from afar and everything is disturbed when she is in heat. So in the King James Version it is heat; in the Revised Standard Version the same word is translated inflamed, means the same thing. While they are inflamed: when I am inspired with the story. For he’s preparing me a feast, and what is the food? When he was asked, “Haven’t you eaten?” he said, “I have food you know not of. My food is to do the will of him that sent me, his plan, his purpose” . I am feeding upon his plan, his purpose. I am so inflamed with this plan of expanding my creative power that I swoon and appear to others as though I am drunk; which is now repeated in the 2nd chapter of Acts when Peter said, “We are not drunk” when they were feasting upon the plan of God for expanding his own creative power. It left them in a swoon and the swoon was a sleep, like a perpetual sleep from which they would not awake until God in his merciful act awakened them.226 ¶31

But he extracted a pledge from himself: He would not be left in Egypt in this coffin, he would be awakened. And so, A.E.’s vision, he said, “I will not tell you where I saw it.” I wish he had. But that’s his privilege, “I will not tell you.” But if you have The Candle of Vision—-it’s out of print but go to the library. It’s beautifully written, it’s simply…it’s all in prose but it’s poetry, and it’s all based upon what the man actually experienced. It’s a small little book.226 ¶32

I called his son up in New York City and asked him if he had extra copies and anything that A.E. wrote; and the son was delighted that I mentioned and remembered his father, but, he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t even have a copy of it myself.” I can hardly believe that, and yet, when I think of it I don’t think my son has one book of mine, so it doesn’t really matter. I’m quite sure that if I went to Barbados, as I will in two months, and asked my son for a copy of anything that I have written he couldn’t produce it. He’s not interested.226 ¶33

And so, I called young Russell, the son of George Russell, and asked him for any copy that his father had written, for he wrote some lovely novels, all based upon this strange, wonderful use of Imagination. But the one I quoted this night is The Candle of Vision. He begins it…in a very little note that precedes the entire work he quotes from the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Job. In the Book of Proverbs it is said, “The Spirit of man is the candle of the Lord” and in the Book of Job it is said, “And when his candle was lit upon my head, by its light I walked through darkness.” So he takes these two passages from Proverbs and Job and puts them in the first page, and then starts his own wonderful mystical experiences. So the book is called The Candle of Vision. I had two copies and I gave one to my friend Freedom Berry in San Francisco. Because he is doing this work, if I had any extra copies of anything that I loved, I would give it to him that he may be encouraged to simply go and keep on expanding.226 ¶34

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *226 ¶35

Tonight’s subject is “The Friend of Sinners.” I think you will find this a very interesting subject. It may be difficult, but you’ll find it interesting. We are told, “Call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” We’re told in the same book, the Bible, “there is only one savior, and that savior is Jehovah. Before me no God was formed nor will there be any after me. I, I am the Lord and beside me there is no Savior. It is I who blot out your sins and remove your transgressions.” You read this in the 43rd of Isaiah . No other Savior. So he must be the one spoken of in the Old Testament as Jehovah, and he is. The word spells the same thing and means the same thing.225 ¶1

So let us tonight see it in a practical light. You and I are inclined to believe that if something is wrong with us it’s caused by something on the outside—maybe our circumstances of life, our surroundings, something, but something on the outside. And yet, the Bible teaches that all of our troubles spring from sin. But you’ve been taught to believe that sin is the violation of some moral code. The Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible teaches that man sins for want of faith in “I am he.” “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins” . That’s what we’re taught. So, it’s want of faith in “I am he” that is the cause and the only cause of sinning, and sin is the cause of every problem in the world. I don’t care what you name it, regardless of the nature of the problem, it simply is. It results from sinning.225 ¶2

Now let me share with you two stories that came to me this week, one from a lady, one from a gentleman. I have just seen the gentleman enter, I haven’t yet seen the lady…oh yes, she’s here. So we’ll take her story first. She said, “Having heard you I took thirteen goals, and by the application of this principle I achieved every goal in detail just as I had envisioned it.” But the story I want to share with you is this—she didn’t tell me what she took as goals, having heard me she took thirteen—she said, “Now I’m working on two. They seem more difficult because they are so long in standing, they go a way back in my life; and because of a conditioned mind maybe I find it more difficult to overcome the two. But the thirteen that I simply fixed, I quickly realized them in detail.” But, she said, “Recently I was sitting in the Silence, simply reflecting on my thoughts, and suddenly you appeared in my skull, lifelike, not a little thing, simply a lifelike figure. And you looked directly at me and you said to me, ‘May I tell you, you are looking at your problem instead of the wish fulfilled.’” And then she said, “It seemed so real to me because you stood in my head, but you were lifelike, that then I heard myself say in answer, ‘You are right!’ And so my meditation ended.”225 ¶3

Let that be a warning to you. If you don’t want some uninvited guest to come into your Silence and disturb your meditation, then be faithful to God’s word. If I use, today, the terminology that differs from scripture, it’s only because of the year 1964. I am not changing the word of scripture, for in scripture we are told, “Whatever you desire, when you ask it in prayer, believe you’ve received it and you will.” If I have taken that thought from the Book of Mark, the 11th chapter of Mark , and I have put it into what is to me a more understandable, modern expression—“Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled”—I haven’t changed the thought behind it.225 ¶4

And so, another thought comes to mind. We are told in scripture that “no man understands or knows the things of another save the Spirit of that man who is in him. No man knows the things of another save the Spirit of that other who is in him.” Well, I appeared in her, did I not? She saw me in her skull, she said. These are the words, “You appeared in my skull, lifelike.” Are we two or one? Did I not know the secrets of her heart? Did I not see that she was actually looking at the problem rather than the wish fulfilled? And if no one knows the things of another save the Spirit of that other who is in him, then are we two? If she has not yet become aware of the fact that she is God the Father by reason of the Son who reveals it to her, and I have already become aware, it doesn’t mean that we are not the same Spirit. There’s only one Spirit, there’s only God. And so, I was in her in her skull.225 ¶5

Is that not where he is crucified? Is it not there where he resurrects? Does he not awaken in the skull? Is it not out of the skull he comes to be born? Is it not from there all things take place? I tell you, Christianity as the world should understand it is the story of simply awakening, then being born, and then ascending, just like a seed. A seed awakens in the ground, and it splits the ground when it awakens. It awakens in the ground and as it starts to come forward to be born it breaks the ground; it comes through granite. I’ve seen a little tiny seed come through the sidewalk. You see it all the time, not just a little crevice that is left between blocks but actually through the granite, through the cement. It will break it and come right through. And so, the seed is planted in the earth—the earth is man, man’s the earth—-and as it is planted and becomes alive it becomes awake, it begins to awake, and as it awakes it starts moving up. As it moves up it breaks that earth, and it is born. Then it starts ascending, moving towards the heavens as told us in the 4th chapter of the Book of Daniel .225 ¶6

So here, she tells me the story that only recently, sitting in the Silence, reflecting upon her thoughts, suddenly I appear in her skull, lifelike, not some little miniature. And this lady is an artist, so when she speaks of being lifelike she speaks of a live model, because this lady is an artist who draws and paints from live objects. Yes, still-life too, but live objects. And here I appear as a live model. She knows the man and I look directly at her and I say to her, “May I tell you, you are looking at the problem instead of the wish fulfilled.” And to her the thing was so alive and real, she agreed, and heard herself answer, “You’re right!”225 ¶7

So here is this story I share with you. We are one—the being in you is God; and you are God, I am God, everyone is God. You’ll find the whole vast world contained within yourself. But he who is awake in the entire unfolding picture will speak the words to you, because you and he are one; and you simply begin to listen as he tells you where you are going wrong—you’re not abiding by the word of God. For “sin” is simply disobedience, not obeying the word of God. Well, the word of God is: When you know what you want in this world, believe that you have it. If you don’t assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, you are not abiding by the word of God. And so, in this moment, she is not asleep, she is sitting in meditation, she is fully aware of what she is doing, and while she is reflecting on her thoughts, suddenly this thing happens in her skull.225 ¶8

Now, another letter came, came today (he’s here tonight), he said, “Two months ago I sat and deliberately conceived a scene.” He said, “I’m very fond of flying in jets and so I conceived a scene of flying in a jet, but then I included my family, my little daughter, eight years old. And so I imagined that my wife and my daughter and I were simply animated, all excited because we were going to go someplace. Then with all the animation around and the excitement of going someplace, I then jumped from that little episode, one little scene, to the airport where at the terminal I am explaining to my daughter the excitement of flying on a jet. Then, from the terminal I am on the jet. I am only talking to my daughter, and I am speaking to Lynn and I am telling Lynn of the scenes below as we take off. As the jet takes off, I am explaining the entire structure below. And that’s it. Three little episodes: getting ready for a journey, then the terminal, and then the flight as we take off…that’s two months ago. A month later I said to my wife, ‘You know, April the 3rd is Dads’ and Daughters’ Day, and so I’m taking off with Lynn, just the two of us, and she and I will have the whole day together.’ My wife thought that was an excellent idea, to go off, just you and Lynn.”225 ¶9

So came the 11th day of April, which is called Dads’ and Daughters’ Day (which I didn’t know until today) and so they got up early and they’re all dressed and they started off to have breakfast on the outside. No breakfast at home…this is going to be a whole day where they’d have fun on the outside. He said, “I hadn’t the foggiest idea what I would do with Lynn for the whole day. I knew I had plotted it and planned it, but I didn’t know what to do with her. I thought I could go to a movie after breakfast, and then we’d fly to the beach, and then we’d have lunch. And so, I started off with Lynn and I’m driving down the San Diego Freeway, and right on the freeway the most overpowering thought possesses me: go over to the airport and fly to San Diego. I couldn’t resist the impulse; it was something that completely controlled me. So off to the airport I went. My wife had a date that day with the hairdresser, so she went her way, and just Lynn and myself went to the airport.”225 ¶10

“We flew to San Diego, then I took a taxi to the zoo, and she and I took in the entire zoo, everything the zoo had to show. Then from the zoo we walked a half mile up to the Fine Arts Hall. After having seen that, I was dead tired. My feet just wouldn’t move. I was so tired and my feet were so sore. So having driven from the airport to the zoo by taxi I thought we’d get a taxi and go back to the airport. But no taxi in sight! So I turned to a lady and said, ‘Can I get a taxi?’ She said, ‘You wouldn’t find one…if you do see one it’s already occupied. But three blocks from here, three very long blocks, there is a booth; you may call for one.’ He said, I wouldn’t move three feet I was so tired! And so at that moment I had the impulse, I’ve got to do something, can’t stand here. So he said, Well, I turned to Lynn, I said, ‘You know, Lynn, let us now play the game we are getting into a taxi. Let us actually put ourselves right into a taxi and start for the airport.’ She said that she really loved these things and she delights in it, so she actually entered into the feeling of getting into a taxi. Together they did it. He said, ‘Within a minute a Yellow Cab came by, I hailed him, he stopped to say that he had a fare, there were four people waiting for him at some other point, but he would get in touch with the base and have a taxi for them in no time flat.’ In a matter of moments, he’d called in, and a taxi came, and off they went. But, before this taxi came, he had the impulse, he was so tired and so sore of foot, he said, ‘Well, I’ve got to start towards the phone booth anyway,’ and the minute he entertained that thought, he said, no, he denied it completely, denied what the woman said about you can’t get a taxi, and did what he did.”225 ¶11

Now, you’ve heard the word in scripture, you’ve heard it from the pulpit, you’ve heard it all over the world: antichrist. You’ve heard it, you must have heard antichrist. Well, in essence antichrist is only an idea or a person in history who denies the Christian mystery. The Christian mystery is simply “imagining creates reality”; and all that is told in the story concerning how Imagination is born, how he awakens, how Imagination awakens as the being in whom he awakens, how he’s born, how he discovers the fatherhood of God, and how he ascends on high. And so, at that very moment when he rejected the idea of walking up to put in that call, he rejected and turned his back upon the devil called antichrist. There is no other devil. Antichrist is only the individual or the idea that would deny the truth of the Christian mystery, this great story as told in the world. So that very moment he turns back and once more called upon the great mystery, and with his daughter they entered into the taxi. Then within a minute here comes the other taxi right straight towards them and said, “I have a fare waiting for me, they’re a foursome, and so I must go. But I will call the base and have a cab sent to you.”225 ¶12

So sin by definition is “missing the mark.” Anyone in this world who has a mark, an objective, a goal in this world who fails to realize it is sinning. And so sin…a man sins only for want of faith in I am he. So we are told in the 8th of John: “I have told you that you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.” Before me no God was formed nor shall there be any God after me. I, I am he, and beside me there is no Savior. I, I am he who blots out your transgressions and remembers your sins no more. There is no other being. So you meet one in this world, you think you are saving another or helping another, there is no other. This whole vast world is yourself fragmented. The whole vast world is yourself completely fragmented. Did she not see me in her skull? Now, the world will think that I am at home on my bed, and physically I was; but being awake to this great mystery I could speak the word to her, which was really not another, it’s myself; she and I are one.225 ¶13

Now that she has made me aware of that which on this level I was not aware, the two things that she now finds difficult they are my problems, because she is my fragmented self. And seeing within me this being who now becomes aware of this inner self, I can now quite easily imagine that she has what—in her letter she told me that “don’t tell it from the platform, these are simply for you and you alone”—and so it’s easy now to hear that she has what now she desires, because, really, I am not doing it for another. There is no other. “Before me there was no God formed…nor shall there be any God after me” . There is no such thing as a twosome in God. It’s fragmented into unnumbered parts, but all will be gathered together, and only one God. For he’ll become one, king over all the earth, and on that day his name is one, and the Lord is one, not two; and that is called in the scripture, Jesus, which means, really, I AM. So everyone is awakening to the being that really is, which is the only God.225 ¶14

So call him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. Now we are told, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and I have done that which is evil in thy sight, so you are just in your sentence, and that which you’ve done is justified” . You read that in the 51st Psalm: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” Man thinks he sins against another; there is no other. He only sins against the being, I am. So he would like to see you in some better light and he doesn’t see you in some better light, “Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned.” Not you the one he wants to see in a better light, but against himself. He hasn’t yet learned the art of repentance.225 ¶15

The earliest scripture, which is Mark, begins on the note, his first proclamation: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” . Repent seems to be a prerequisite for any change in this world of ours, and repentance simply means “a radical change of attitude towards life.” So I see you and you tell me what you would like to be, and if I simply become indifferent and I don’t persuade myself that you are the one that you have just voiced that you would like to be, it is my sin, because I am now sinning against myself. “Against thee, thee only have I sinned.” For I have just seen a fragmented portion of my being in want of something…and there’s only one God: “Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me.” Alright, so he turned to me, that portion of myself, and said he would like a better job, he would like more money, he would like a measure of happiness that he’s never enjoyed. He’s made me aware of that aspect of myself of which I was not aware; because I dwell in him and he dwells in me, we are one. Well, if I now become indifferent and do nothing about it, just simply go my way, then I have sinned. At the moment of becoming aware of his need, I should represent him to myself as now the embodiment of that which he would like to be, and persuade myself of the reality of that imaginal act.225 ¶16

And to the degree that I am self-persuaded…like the gentleman who simply played three scenes… here, all in his Imagination, he’s now excited he’s going off on a jaunt with his daughter. He includes the wife only in the first scene of three, and she does, she leaves the house with them, but she has to go to the beauty parlor. But in the two scenes that follow he only has his daughter, Lynn. And so, in the second scene it’s the terminal where he’s all excited they’re getting ready to go. And then in the third scene, he’s in the plane, they’re airborne, and he’s describing the land below to a little girl eight years old. These are the three exciting scenes. He said in his letter, “The reason my wife didn’t join us, I didn’t include her in the second and the third scene. I had no reason for excluding her; I would have loved to have had her. But, strangely enough, since I have heard this story of Imagination, when she and I get together and start to discuss, she’s always trying to bring up to me the facts of life as against these things of Imagination.” Well, he said, “I do to her what I did to the lady at the Fine Arts building—-she told him what she said about the cab—-I didn’t hear her. And so, my wife talks to me about the facts and I don’t hear her. And I love her dearly, I’m passionately fond of my wife, I love her dearly, but I don’t hear her. She wants to convince me of the reality of the facts of life, and I will have none of it. I simply went on this thing…but strangely enough I was not only airborne, I was landed. I was in the zoo, I had almost completed the zoo, when suddenly it dawned on me what I had done the month before.”225 ¶17

For this happened to him in actual fact on the 11th of April. It was a month before that he set the whole thing in motion…that’s how short our memories are. Between doing it and realizing it he had completely forgotten. He went right through the entire thing like an actor stepping on the stage; and he forgets. Well, he has to, to be a good actor, he must forget he’s acting and lose himself in the part. Well, so he was the author, he wrote the scene, he directed the scene, he became the actor in the scene; and then stepped upon the stage and completely forgot that he was the author and the director, and thought himself only an actor, and, well, very well rehearsed.225 ¶18

So you and I play the same role in this world. You can be anything in this world that you want to be if you know who God is. And you can’t sin against another; you can only sin against God. And so, our sin is simply the lack of faith in I am he. You will believe in everyone else but “I am.” You will call this one, or write that one, or get in touch with someone else in the hope that they can do it; and the only being that can do it is “I am.” So you are told, “You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.” This is a mystery, a fantastic mystery.225 ¶19

But the day will come that you will discover as the lady had by her story, discovered that I am not another. I stand here and talk to her (she’s here tonight), I talk to her. She’s a very gentle, tender lady, and she’ll wait and I’ll shake her hand, we go downstairs occasionally together, but she thinks I’m another. I hope tonight she knows I am not another. When you saw me in your skull, that’s where God awakes, that’s where he’s crucified. And so, he spoke to you using the mask of what you know to be Neville. He used the mask—-the mask is the personality, the persona is the mask—-and so he puts on the mask and tells you, “Yet this moment you are not really obedient to the law, because I see that you’re looking at the problem instead of the wish fulfilled.”225 ¶20

And so, everyone must have an objective and see it clearly in his mind’s eye, and see it fulfilled. Then, from then on, regardless of all rumor, remain faithful to that end, the wish fulfilled. And he never sins then. And so, he comes into the world to save man from sin, that’s all. He comes not to call those who are righteous to repentance—not the righteous, those who are complacent, but the sinners to repentance.225 ¶21

And so I say, and I say time and again, religious faith must be tested. It must be tested. If it isn’t tested, it becomes some simple, oh well, emotionalism, “creedalism,” call it by a thousand names. It’s some liturgy where some outside ceremony takes place rather than putting it to the test. You must put it to the test. Religious faith must be tested as much as any other should be tested, such as my intelligence should be tested. If I go on a job, give me an aptitude test; test me to see if I’m qualified to fill the job. You’d do that. Well, religious faith should be tested in the same manner. So we say “imagining creates reality,” that’s the foundation, and then try to show you in numberless aspects how it works. And then ask you to share with me what you did and how it worked with you, and then I can tell others what you did. Then we become richer this way, on the same principle, imagining is creating reality.225 ¶22

Well, if I make that bold statement and you prove it, tell me how you proved it so that I can tell another. I have proved it time and time again. I live by it. I try to live by it, and if I forget what I do this morning in my imaginal act, I know regardless of my lack of memory it’s going to come anyway…that tomorrow it will come up. I may not even recognize my harvest, but I cannot encounter something that I did not bring into this world. Because, God is not mocked; be not afraid, be not ashamed. “God is not mocked; as you sow so shall you reap” .225 ¶23

And so, you sit in the Silence and you plant it, and then it comes. It may take a day…in the gentleman’s case it took a month. In the lady’s case, there were thirteen case histories. She didn’t tell me the nature of the case history or the time interval between the actual doing and the actual reaping…she didn’t know. I hope some day she’ll share with me the thirteen that she simply mentioned as thirteen objectives that she realized in the most minute detail. The two that seemed at the moment to stick with her she confesses that they go back in time; and because they go back, and they’ve been over a period of years, they seem to be more of a problem. But may I tell her, it’s no more than the thirteen that you realized so easily if you’ll treat it in the same manner.225 ¶24

And so, the friend of sinners is called in scripture, Jesus. If I could only convince you that you are Jesus, you may not know it but you are Jesus. There is only Jesus in the world. God became man that man may become God; and there is no other God; there’s only one God. Jesus is God. He’s buried in you; and say “I am,” that’s Jesus. But you do not know it. But the day will come you will know it by a series of events that I have, night after night, told you. Because, when these begin to unfold within you it has come through the earth called man.225 ¶25

One of her visions (which is a very lovely vision) she says, “Sitting in the Silence—-this has happened to me now three times—-the first time it happened I saw through my skull a crack.” Lovely vision! “And it was so exciting I wanted to…I knew something wonderful, more wonderful than anything I’ve ever experienced before was going to take place. I felt like pulling myself through it. And then the whole thing vanished. And the second time it happened, a crack, but this time in another part of my body; from my solar plexus right through to the heart, another crack. Then the third time, in the skull again but the crack deepened.”225 ¶26

May I congratulate you! You are the earth. The word Adam means “red earth,” doesn’t mean anything else. And God became man, Adam, and then he planted himself in the earth called man; and while in this earth it grows, it stirs, and becomes alive. As it becomes alive it cracks the surface of the earth, and all of a sudden you will see through from below; there’ll be light. You will crack it and crack it and crack it, and finally you’ll come out. When you come out you are Christ Jesus. There is only Christ Jesus in the world. So everyone in this world is simply God awakening, God unfolding.225 ¶27

So to sin…you don’t sin because of any so-called violation of a moral code. You have an objective in this world and you fail to realize it, you’re sinning. You will change your objectives when you know we are only one. You will have no objective of hurting any being in this world when you know we are one. You’ll have no objective of getting the better of another when you know we are one. You don’t need to get the better of anyone in this world; there is no other. You simply have objectives. You need money? It need not be at the expense of others. You need a bigger home, a more secure future? Not at the expense of another! You simply have the objective in itself, and take your mind off the problem, and try not to solve it by thinking and rationalizing it, go to the solution of the problem. And then dwell on the wish fulfilled…not how you’re going to do it, where’s the money going to come from, how you’re going to get it—just dwell in the end. And the end is where we must all start from: “In the end is my beginning.” I start in the end.225 ¶28

That was shown me so vividly a couple of years ago where I saw this fantastic story. I was taken in Spirit into this palatial home, and here I saw this family, two generations and a third, they spoke of a third, but the third was the oldest, unseen by the eye of man. He had gone from the world, but he left a fortune that they now enjoyed. It was well invested, and they lived on this fortune. They would speak of this one who had made the fortune and they called him Grandfather. They said, “Grandfather used to say while standing on an empty lot, ‘I remember when,’ and then he would paint a word picture for this lot and paint it so vividly that those who listened to him saw the structure rise in their mind’s eye. He never thereafter thought of this place in any other way other than the end that he saw, so he would always say, ‘I remember when this was an empty lot.’ And to him, he’s standing on an empty lot but it was no longer an empty lot, it was simply the structure he desired. And you can do that with everything in this world.”225 ¶29

So I awoke, it was a little after three in the morning, and I took my yellow page and I wrote out my vision. Went back to bed and re-dreamed the dream, but this time I was Grandfather. I had so completely absorbed the message of the vision that I stood in the same mansion, and I told the others that I would stand here and I would remember when this was…and I painted building after building in my mind’s eye. I was that grandfather. This vision was revealed to me by the depths of my own soul. We are told in the 41st chapter of the Book of Genesis that if the dream is doubled it means that the thing is fixed by God and will shortly come to pass . So the dream need not be a dream where I am not in control of it. The dream could be as we sit here right now and enact it vividly, break it, and five minutes later, go into the same scene and enact it. That’s a waking dream. That’s affirmative. If it happens twice, we are told, in the 41st chapter of Genesis, it means that God has fixed it and it will shortly come to pass. So you do it twice, do it vividly in your mind’s eye, and let it happen. It will happen!225 ¶30

For I saw it so clearly, that the secret of it all is to go to the end and live in the end, the wish fulfilled; and then if you break it, go back into that end, do it again. Then God has done it. But you say, “What God? I did it.” But you said, “But God did it.” Well, who did it when I say I did it? What’s his name? Well, his real name is I AM. Well, who is doing it? If you ask me in the midst of something I’m doing, wouldn’t you say to me, “What are you doing?” Would I not answer, “I am”…and then tell you what I’m doing? Well, I called upon his name when I did that: I am imagining that I am now…and I name the thing that I think I am. And so you ask me again, and would I not answer, “I am doing so and so”? But you said, “God did it.” Well, God’s name is I AM; he has no other name; and so, I am doing it.225 ¶31

Doing it in this light, see how it works. If it works, does it matter what the world will think? There is no other world than yourself-not-yet-gathered together. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out, because “All that you behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow”…a shadow reflecting the activity taking place in your own wonderful human Imagination . And so, his only name is I AM. Put into a sound where you can call it, it is Jesus. And so when you are told, “At the sound of Jesus all knees should bow,” alright, bend within you to the power that is within you, which power you really are. Look upon it in that sense…that’s the only awe you should feel.225 ¶32

So the friend of sinners is seated here this night if you know how to forgive sin. It’s a challenge to every person in this world. When you meet someone in want, represent that one as he would like to be, and persuade yourself that he is. It tests your ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. For you see him in want, and you persuade yourself that he is affluent; and then you leave him, physically, but you do not leave that image of him that he is affluent, and you walk in that state. To the degree that you are self-persuaded that he is that which you have assumed that he is, he will conform to it. Don’t try anything to make it so. Call no one to do it, ask no favor, leave him just as he is, because you dwell in him.225 ¶33

As the lady brought out, she saw me in her skull. I am in her skull. Not in eternity can she throw me out, she can’t get rid of me; I am in her skull. Because I awoke a few years ago, I am in the skull of every being in this world, but especially those who hear me. Those who hear me, I am awake in their skull, watching if they are faithful to the law, the law being: Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. For, “I came not to destroy the law or the prophets but to fulfill them.”225 ¶34

So far, as far as the Promise goes, I have fulfilled it. As far as the law goes, I have not destroyed it. I’ve only changed the words to make it more, I would say, palatable in the year 1964. So if I told you that when you sit down to pray…maybe you don’t want to pray…that you must now believe that you have already received what you are asking for in prayer . And maybe like today in this world of ours they are trying to rub out the word God or the word prayer in our schools and in all government offices, I can still get around that. Without using the word God, without using the word prayer, I can say to the atheist, “When you know what you want, assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” Well, they can’t rub that out of school, because I’m not using the word God. Well, who is assuming it? He doesn’t know that God’s assuming it, because he will say to me, “Well, I’m assuming it” and I won’t tell him at that moment who “I am” is. That comes after. So I get around this objection to the use of the word God. Because, he is offended by the word God, and he’s offended by the word prayer, offended by the word religion, and so we get around it.225 ¶35

So “I’ve come not to destroy the law or the prophets, not to abolish them, but to fulfill them.” And so, you will never in eternity rub me out or get rid of me. If you shot this body now, you still can’t get rid of me, because I am in every being who walks the face of this world.225 ¶36

So as John Dunne said, “I am involved in mankind; every man’s death is the death of me. Do not seem to ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for me.” Every man’s death has to be the death of me, and every man’s life must be my life, for I’m involved in mankind, as you are. We’re one, we aren’t two. So everyone is completely interwoven.225 ¶37

So you ask favors of no one. When you hear an aspect of yourself in need, do it, just simply do it, because you’re doing it to yourself. “When you do it to the least among one of these, you do it unto me.” Get the mystery? “When was it you were hungry and I didn’t give you? When were you thirsty and I gave you no drink? When were you in need of shelter and I didn’t take you in? When were you in need of raiment and I didn’t give it to you? When you did not do it to the least among one of these, you did not do it unto me” . And so, they are looking for one being to come that they could really fawn upon…no, every being in the world… you’re buried in every being in the world.225 ¶38

So I will say to this lady (who is here this night) I have heard it, having received your letter, and will continue to hear what I have heard until what I have heard you will echo. You will echo it because I am doing it unto myself; because, I, as you, do not want the two things that you mentioned in the letter.225 ¶39

Now let us go into the Silence. [...] attention to the book table. All the books [...] although mine are there and any other book there I have and love.225 ¶40

Now are there any questions, please? None?225 ¶41

Tonight’s subject was taken from Paul’s letters: “The Mystery Hidden for Ages and Generations.” Then he tells us what the mystery is. He tells us the mystery is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” . Well, through the years, through the centuries, man is taught to believe that Christ is something other than himself. He’s been taught all kinds of things about Jesus Christ. Yet the author of this book, in another work, defines Jesus Christ as the creative power and wisdom of God. You’ll read this in his letter, his first letter to the Corinthians: “Christ the power and the wisdom of God” . Well, what is one’s power? What is one’s wisdom? I tell you, it’s your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s your power, that’s your wisdom. We are told, “All things were created by him and without him was not anything made that was made” . The Bible recognizes only one source of dreams and that one source they call God. And Paul calls God’s creative power, Jesus Christ.223 ¶1

This morning’s mail brought me two very interesting letters. One is too long to discuss tonight, but I’ll just give you just the end of it. She said, “I had a vision. I saw before me the Bible, bound in maroon, and on it I saw the titles; and the first was ‘The Way’ and then ‘The Story of [...],’ and then ‘The Bible’…all three on the book. Then, a few days later, the visions returned, this time with a single title, it was the Bible, and it was titled ‘Adventures of Me’; the whole book ‘Adventures of Me.’” I wish I could tell you about the letter but there are four very large, very closely spaced, typewritten pages, so I can’t discuss it tonight. But it’s perfectly marvelous.223 ¶2

Another came, and this gentleman said it suddenly came to him that the purpose of life is simply to learn how to create. Well, I couldn’t agree with him more to that. That’s exactly what the purpose of life is, to learn how to create. Now, you listen to this point that he drove home. He said it was the most thrilling thing to him! He said, “There’s a world of difference between using creative power to achieve certain goals, and using goals to develop creative power.”223 ¶3

You dwell upon it. One is man; the other is God. God took death…the whole vast world was dead…he took death as a challenge and turned death into sleep, and sleep into his own being that is a creator. Infinite mercy: That is, God turned death into sleep. And then he gradually turned this sleeping being who dreams (if you are asleep you dream). So he turned death into sleep; and then the horror, the despair, the everything in this world; and finally he awakens the sleeper; and the sleeper is himself, the creator. That was his challenge.223 ¶4

So he took a goal to develop further his own creative power. But we are allowed while we are here to use our creative power to achieve a specific end… perfectly alright. But there is a wide difference, a world of difference, between using creative power to achieve a definite end and using an end to develop this creative power, all the difference in the world. So it fired him as a creative artist and he shared it with me that I, in turn, may share it with you.223 ¶5

And it is, really, all the difference in the world. So you can take a goal this night and if you want to have a home or a bigger home, more money, more of everything in this world, you can do it. That is, you take your creative power and use it towards the achieving of a definite end; that is the dreamer working. Then you take an “end” and use it to develop creative power, that’s God in operation. And God took it by taking death…he took death and God himself entered death’s door; and laid down in the grave of death which was man; and then began the wonderful dream while encased in death, confident that his predetermined plan would have to be fulfilled. His predetermined plan is the mystery of the Bible. The whole vast Bible is about this mystery; the gospel is the mystery, the whole Bible is the mystery.223 ¶6

Now let us take just pieces of it, because you can’t cover it in any one evening. We couldn’t cover it in a year. There are sixty-six books in the Bible. Any one would exhaust the year, and there are sixty-six. But we’ll take pieces of it, because we are told that those who studied it carefully, they sought and sought and sought, and they could not find in him the Christ of whom they wrote and whose coming they foretold, they couldn’t find him. So they enquired what person or what time was indicated by the spirit of prophesy within them, called the spirit of Christ, when indicating the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory . They couldn’t find him. It’s all promised in scripture, but they couldn’t find him. They were looking elsewhere; they were looking for something on the outside.223 ¶7

No one suspected that the thing prophesied was coming from the inside. That Jesus Christ foretold in scripture…not by the name Jesus but the name Jehovah, for Jehovah is “the Savior of the world.” But the word Jesus means “Jehovah saves,” that’s what it means. So no one thought in terms of something coming from the inside. They didn’t know that God himself entered death’s door and laid down in the grave of man, confident that his purpose would be realized; that he would transform death into sleep; and a dream would start, a horrible dream, the dream of confusion, the dream of war, conflict, the most horrible dream in the world. But gradually he would transform this dreamer, and then awaken him, and he would be God. So the whole thing is simply God.223 ¶8

Now, what are we told are the signs? They’re all signs. There are signs to watch for when the dreamer begins to awake, definite signs. The promise is made in the 15th chapter of the Book of Genesis. But we are told even to this very day when Moses is read a veil lies over their minds. Now, you might say that was written 2,000 years ago. It’s the same thing today, our scholars are no nearer to this picture than they were 2,000 years ago. They’re still trying to rationalize God’s picture. You can’t rationalize it; it’s a mystery. So when Moses is read a veil lies over their minds, because in the 15th chapter of the Book of Genesis the promise was made and it was unconditional. It was not a covenant between two where one could violate it and break the contract. It was unconditional. God made a promise, but no one understood the nature of that promise.223 ¶9

It was made seemingly to an old man. He was an hundred years old and the promise was: You will have a son. Your present son, which is completely denied in scripture, will not inherit your kingdom; but you will have a son—-it’s not yet born—-you’ll have one and he will be your heir. But he was then an old man, a hundred years old. Well, no one knew the symbolism of a hundred, that it was “the back of the skull.” The letter is Qoph and the numerical value is a hundred. So it was told to him when he was a hundred that he would have a son—-it would come from his skull. But it isn’t spelled out. This is a mystery, you don’t spell it out.223 ¶10

So when the question was asked, “Why do you speak in parables?” he said, “Unto you it is given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but to those who are without it is in parable” . So this is a parable, this is the dream of God, where he dreams into being his plan of salvation for every being in this world, but every being.223 ¶11

So everyone will be seemingly old. He now painted a fantastic journey, a journey into a land that is a strange land where he will be enslaved, he’ll be ill-treated; but the promise is: At the end you’ll be brought out and you’ll be heir to a fabulous kingdom. He didn’t know what that kingdom was. The kingdom, may I tell you, you fall heir not only to a kingdom but to a presence, and the presence is the kingdom: You inherit God. So we are told, “They should have no inheritance; I am their inheritance: they shall have no possession; I am their possession” . You inherit God! He became you and gave himself to you; and finally, after this fantastic journey of a horrible dream you awaken as God. You inherit God and you possess God. God is all creation; God is the creator of it all.223 ¶12

So when my friend writes me this wonderful letter, I want to thank you, because it is true. Let me share it with you: “There is a wide, wide difference, a vast difference, between using this creative power to achieve a specific end and using an end to develop this creative power.” So you can take the most stubborn thing in this world as an end and then use it to develop your power. And gradually something begins to awake within you, and the child is born. So here, we are told a child will be born. It is called Isaac meaning “he laughs” is what it really means. When you look at it, if you’re a scholar or any person in the world, you’ll simply ignore it and yet the thing is literally true.223 ¶13

It’s exactly like that when it happens. When it happens to you it happens suddenly, in an unknown room, a guest room in an unregarded inn. He comes [...] into the world, to signify the coming of the awakening of God in you. God begins to awaken in you. He told you the first sign that he would give you is that of a child—his name is Isaac. He will come unnoticed into this unobserved guest room in an inn that has no value whatsoever. He’ll come just like that. When suddenly he awakens within you and comes, as far as I’m concerned just as you’re told in scripture, just like a thief in the night, unobserved, unexpected. It wasn’t expected this night. It comes so quietly and it comes so within you that that’s not the way you expected Messiah to come, he doesn’t come that way. But he comes that way.223 ¶14

And so, God awakens in man as man’s own wonderful human Imagination, and that is Jesus Christ. There is no other Jesus Christ. He awakens in man and when he does, other signs will follow to show you that God is one and his name one. As we are told, “He will be king over all the earth; and his name will be one and the Lord is one” . If he is a king and he has a son, the son should be a prince, shouldn’t he? Now listen to the words: “I will raise up David.” I will make him a prince among men. “I will make him a prince forever.” That’s what we’re told in the 34th and 37th chapters of the Book of Ezekiel, I’ll raise him up. Well, if David who is now dead is raised up, isn’t that now alluding to the resurrection of the historic David? May I tell you, it is exactly like that, for when he is raised up—there are unnumbered thousands of David’s in the world—when you look into David’s eyes there is only one David that you know and he is the historic David, the David of biblical fame.223 ¶15

But he’s not king, he’s prince. You are told, “I’ll make you a prince forever”…for you are king. “For, the Lord will become king over all the earth; and the Lord will be one and his name one.” For if he is your son he’s prince, for you are king, Lord over all the earth and your name is one. So one by one it happens. So in the end there’s only one man and his name is Jesus Christ. It seems a fantastic story…only one man. But contracting our infinite senses we behold multitudes, nations, unnumbered nations; expanding, we behold one man.223 ¶16

So in the story of Paul…and Jesus appeared, and Paul beheld the Lord and saw his form, the form of a man; then, as a man, a man conversed with man in ages of eternity. He beheld Jesus and called him “the Lord,” and then he saw his form, and the form was man. Jesus is simply universal humanity. Everyone that awakens is Jesus Christ. There’s only Jesus Christ. We go back to the story: “I tell you a mystery, a mystery hidden for ages and generations…Christ in you the hope of glory” . Not Christ outside; Christ in you is the hope of glory. I tell you a mystery, he said, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion” . It’s a mystery, something not to be concealed but something that is very mysterious in character. How could one man contain all of humanity? And yet I speak from experience—it’s true: One man contains the whole.223 ¶17

The day will come that you will be absorbed, embraced by Jesus Christ; and at that very moment you are forever Jesus Christ because you wear his body of love. It’s only love, nothing but love, and so you feel infinite love. And you’re never divorced from it. But there’s work to be done, and so you are sent to tell the story of love: How God became man that man may become God. And so, in that moment of being sent there are pains to be suffered, to be endured, disappointments, all kinds of things; but never for a moment do you entertain the thought you are ever separated from the body that incorporated you into it. You’re one with the body of Jesus Christ, it’s your body, and in the end all will wear the same body. That body is the body of love.223 ¶18

Then we’ll understand Blake’s vision of it: “Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love is God, our father dear, and Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love is Man, his child and care. For Mercy has the human heart, and Pity a human face, and Love, the human form divine, and Peace, the human breast” . This is how the Divine Man is clothed. In the end everyone is completely incorporated into the body of God; and that name, for his name is one, is Jesus Christ.223 ¶19

But if you are taught to believe that Jesus Christ is a unique little individual born 2,000 years ago, and that’s it, something set apart, you don’t know the mystery of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the creative power of God, and God is all love. The creative power of God he gives to man; therefore, what does he give man when he gives power to man? The power that God gives to man is the power of his own love. I saw it so clearly in my experience, that only to the degree that man can really fall in love can he really exercise true power. And this is creative power.223 ¶20

And so, this friend who writes this letter to me is perfectly right. It came to him like a bolt out of the blue. He said, “This is the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me: that the purpose of life is to learn how to create.” This is educative darkness…it’s to learn how to create, how to create imaginatively. Then he saw that wide distinction between man’s use of the creative power and God’s use. Man uses it…perfectly alright, use it that way, take a definite goal and use your creative power which is your Imagination to achieve that goal. That’s man’s use of it. God’s use of the same power is to see a goal and not to use it to achieve that goal, just that goal to develop his creative power. He took the limit of contraction which is death and then took that as a challenge to develop his creative power beyond whatever it was when he conceived this fantastic play in four acts, because there is no limit to the expansion of the creative power of God.223 ¶21

When people speak of absolutes, I don’t go for it. There is no absolute, because there’s always an expansion of the creative power of God, always an expansion of translucency. There is a limit to contraction, yes, but not a limit to expansion; a limit to opacity, but not a limit to translucence. Therefore, it must ever be expanding in this world. And so, the creative power took the limit upon himself and the limit is man and man was dead. Took the very limit upon itself which was opacity; that is called in scripture, Satan. Took the limit of opacity and then broke through with his creative power; transformed death, first of all, into sleep; and then to awaken the sleeper as himself; and make God.223 ¶22

So this is this great mystery as told us in scripture. And Paul uses the word no less than eighteen times, all through his letters he’s always referring to the mystery of Christ. So when you read the story of Christ you may think there’s no mystery attached to it. One came into this world born unnaturally, and you’re told he was born without a father. Don’t believe it! He was born without a mother. He was born of a father who became the one he would form in this world. In the 13th verse of the first chapter of John, speaking of this unusual birth: “He was born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” He was not born in any physical way whatsoever. He was born of God, out of a grave called the skull of man where God himself entered and laid down in the grave of man which is the skull of man. And then he came out of that as man, and you are he. But you cannot realize your divine inheritance so long as you are still wearing this garment for educative purposes to tell the story to everyone who will hear it. So while you walk still clothed in flesh and blood, you cannot fully realize your inheritance, for your inheritance is God.223 ¶23

“They should have no inheritance; I am their inheritance. They should have no possession; I am their possession.” So when you inherit the kingdom, you inherit God, for you inherit all the creative power of the world. What do you need with something that is already created when you can create forever and forever? And there’s no need of holding onto anything, because you are a creator. You inherit creativity when you inherit God. So they should have no…read it in Ezekiel…“They should have no inheritance; I am their inheritance. Give them no possession; I am their possession” . So everyone possesses God, inherits God.223 ¶24

So this is the story of the great mystery of Christ in you who is the hope of glory. So the day will come that you will know that you and I are one, because he gives us the prince. He shall be a prince forever, and he shall be among all a prince. Now in this world of man we think of a prince, say, of some lands of the world who still have princes; and they speak of him as the prince of the land, and the people might refer to him, if they don’t understand any better, “their prince.” No, in this case, he is the son of God, because God is king, and a prince would be the king’s son. “And the Lord will become king over all of the earth. On that day his name will be one, and the Lord one.” So we’re all being absorbed into one body, and, may I tell you, I have seen it. When your vision is contracted, you see the whole vast world as nations, and when it is expanded you only see one man. May I tell you who that one man is? You are! You look at him, you can’t…well, it’s the most thrilling sight in the world! You contain the whole of humanity, the whole vast world contained within one man when your infinite senses are expanded.223 ¶25

So when my friend wrote this letter, I thought of Blake in his early part of Jerusalem, he said, “I must cerate a system or be enslaved by another man. I will not reason and compare. My business is to create.” That’s the business of everyone who awakens in this world: to create. I will not compare, I will not reason what they did, I will simply create. And so, I must create my own system of creativity. There are infinite aspects of how you use this power to create. And so, he is perfectly right, that the purpose of life is to learn how to create.223 ¶26

That’s why I ask you night after night to share with me one little aspect that you discovered that you actually use…how you created it. Whether it be from the male, I mean, the man’s side or God’s side. So you wanted a home, what did you do? Did you irritate yourself to possess a home or to dispose of a home? How did you do it? Share it with me that I may share it with others. What did you do? Because this is creativity and there are infinite facets of this power of creation. And the power of creation is Jesus Christ, it’s the only Jesus Christ in the world, and that is your own wonderful human Imagination.223 ¶27

And so, this mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations and now revealed to man, it is called in scripture, “Christ in you the hope of glory.” The hope of glory! Now listen to the words: “And now, Father, return unto me the glory that was mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was” . He’s asking for a glory. What glory? How does God give glory to you when you awake?—he gives himself. Listen to the words, “A son honors his father. If I then am a father, where is my honor?” Where is my honor? A son honors his father—-this is the last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, the very first chapter—-“a son honors his father” . Well, if I am a father, where is my honor, where is my son? For the son honors the father. Bring me my prince that I may know that I am king.223 ¶28

And so, “The Lord will become king over all the earth.” Well then, if this is really true, and you really succeeded in giving me yourself and you are king, and you are Lord, and you are father, then where is my son? And then he brings the son. Then he brings the son by an explosion. For you are told in this 34th chapter, he’s going to raise up David. Now if you read Ezekiel and you take it chronologically, David is dead; therefore, if I’m going to raise up David, I’m going to raise David and resurrect David from the grave, am I not? So you are going to resurrect David from the grave. Where is the grave?—-my skull where I experience it. The whole thing takes place in my skull; the whole drama takes place in me. So he picks David and he brings David out of my skull.223 ¶29

I felt it; I felt the explosion when he raised him up. And then there was no doubt in my mind when I saw David, the David; the David of biblical fame. Not just a David, the David. I have two nephews and a nephew’s son who are called David. In fact, in our family I think there are all kinds of David’s. And in my circle of friends, my friend who brings me here every week he is David. I have so many friends…it a marvelous name. But when you meet this David, the David, there is no doubt in your mind when you look into his face that he is the prince, the Son of God, and he calls you, Father. You have no doubt you are his father and he is your son.223 ¶30

So he will raise up David to be a prince among men. As he raises up David, he automatically reveals that he has succeeded in his purpose, which was to give himself to you. So in the end, everyone will have the experience. And therefore it can only be one man, and that one man has one name, and his name is Jesus Christ. You are Jesus Christ as these things unfold within you, for they unfold as a pattern that he hid within Christ, as you are told, according to his purpose, which he planned in Christ before the foundation of the world . He planned it and he hid it as a plan in Christ before the foundation of the world. So then the whole thing unfolds like a scene.223 ¶31

So this is the great mystery of life through death. He took the challenge to take death, turn it into sleep, and then after the dreamer dreams the dream of life, awakens the dreamer, and the dreamer is himself. Then by this act, this creative act, God has expanded beyond what he was when he created this fabulous universe. There is no limit to the expansion of the creative power of God. I can’t conceive of anything more stale than an absolute. There would be no challenge, no challenge whatsoever. In this world of ours, courtships, love affairs, these are challenges, aren’t they? You go into business, that’s a challenge—there’s no assurance that you’re going to succeed. When you meet her for the first time or you meet him for the first time, there’s no assurance that this is going to culminate in a romance. It could, but you don’t know. That’s your challenge. So everything is a challenge in the world. And the whole vast world is a challenge for God. Were it not so, it would be horrible. You mean the whole thing has to be cut and dried because he’s absolute? No.223 ¶32

So you go back, and let me once more quote the words of my friend that there is a world of difference between using creative power to achieve a definite goal and using a goal to develop creative power. You dwell upon it, you just meditate upon it. It’s all the difference in the world. So I’m not minimizing the use of it from the side of man, we’re man. We’re living in this world and limited in our exercise of this power. So use it on this level. But don’t for one moment neglect to contemplate and to meditate the other use of it, because you’re moving towards that point where you are God. For you’re going to, tomorrow, not just build a home or more homes, you’re going to take the ultimate challenge as you will see it. And tomorrow, as the poet said, “Be patient, our playwright will write in some fifth act and explain to us in some fifth act what this wild drama means.” So be patient.223 ¶33

In the meanwhile, listen to these words of Blake: “And in great eternity, those who contemplate on death said thus, What seems to be, Is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death; but Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the Body of Jesus” .223 ¶34

Everyone by exercising his talent on the level of man is creating worlds, destroying worlds, conquering nations; and so it’s sheer torture and despair. But at a certain moment of his exercise of talent, Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems him in the body of Jesus; for divine mercy is Jesus Christ himself. And he incorporates you into his body, and from then on you’re one with and you are Jesus Christ. So all of your sins have been washed white, all of your sins have been forgiven, everything you did in the exercise of your talent on the level of man.223 ¶35

And so, you use it on the level of man, and then, while you’re maybe going wild in the use of it or misuse of it, divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus. So everyone will be, and consciously so, Jesus Christ. So this is the mystery hidden for ages and generations: Christ in you who is the hope of glory; and the glory is you wear the body. It’s your body—no little piece of it, it’s the whole thing. It’s your body; you contain the whole of humanity. All of humanity will be contained within the body, and it’s your body, and you wear it, and it’s a man. That seems mad, but it’s true.223 ¶36

Then your senses will be extended and expanded, and you only see a man. When they are contracted as we are to the limit of opacity and contraction, we see multitudes of nations. I saw it so clearly, I saw the whole vast thing as a man. And then, contracted senses, and it broke into unnumbered and fragmented pieces; and then nations appeared and all the parts of nations. Then, an expansion of my infinite senses, and then all the nations formed one man. And that man is infinite love. That man embraced me when I answered correctly, “The greatest thing in the world which is love.” Because I answered that way, he embraced me and incorporated me into his body; and then sent me to tell the story, but not with any loss of what happened to me, as a part forever of the body and wearing the whole body.223 ¶37

It is the body I wear when this thing drops and they say he’s gone and he’s dead. But death then is swallowed up in the victory that is [...] because I have that body. It’s my body, it’s your body, because in that body, whether you know it or not, we now live and move and have our being. But tomorrow you’ll consciously wear that body, and it is the body called Jesus Christ. Now let us go into the Silence.223 ¶38

* * * [...]book table you’ll find Living Time there. [...] books that you ordered. I’m quite sure that they’ve been received by now. Jack told me last week that you ordered some books, that some of them had arrived. So if you ordered a book, just stop by and ask if it is there. Meanwhile, look it over and Nicoll’s Living Time may I recommend. It’s a perfectly wonderful book. Now are there any questions, please?223 ¶39

Any other questions, please?223 ¶42

P eter tells us that Christ bears our sins in his body on the cross. And the prophet Isaiah said: “He takes our infirmities and bears our diseases.” Who is this being who bears our sins, our infirmities, and our diseases? Christ! Our wonderful human imagination! When you are in pain, or experiencing deep sorrow, your imagination is doing the suffering. If a friend tells you he is not feeling well, or is in great pain, and you tell him that his imagination – called Christ – is doing the suffering, your friend would not believe you, because he conceives Christ to be someone other than himself. But Christ is the human imagination, and until man discovers this for himself the Bible will make no sense to him whatsoever. We are told: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and dwells in us.” That word is your I Am! And if the Word is God and dwells in you as your awareness, is not God doing the suffering when you say, I am suffering? Having just revealed God’s name, you are confessing that God is in pain; therefore, does He not bear all the sufferings of the world in his body while he is on the cross of mankind?221 ¶1

When I speak of the joy of awakening to the knowledge of who God really is, I would think everyone would be eager to experience that awareness; yet only an nth part will say, Yes!221 ¶2

A friend wrote, saying: “My husband applied for and received a temporary position as a carpenter, working for the Los Angeles school system. When he was let out he said, `They will call me back for another temporary period.’ I suggested that if he wanted to work there on a permanent basis he could, if he would imagine it. Instead he gave me all kinds of reasons why a permanent position was not possible. Recently he was called back for another temporary position. When I reminded him of what he had imagined six months ago he did not want to recognise his harvest of the seed he had planted and became very angry. As he spoke, our souls made contact and I heard him say, `I am asleep and don’t you dare awaken me!’”221 ¶3

Her husband, like 99% of the people of the world, does not want to be awakened, feeling that if he awakens to a higher level he will lose the pleasures of the flesh.221 ¶4

A friend, a very successful playwright, with many famous stars as his clients, used to listen to my visions and my interpretations of scripture for a short time, then tell me he had heard enough. He didn’t want to go beyond the point of curiosity, to become interested and desire the spiritual world, because he was afraid he would lose his physical contact with life and he was only interested in sex. He had money and everything money could buy, and he loved playing the field in the theatrical world. He died a few years ago and is now restored to a body just like the one he had here, only young, full of vigor, eager to continue his sexual life.221 ¶5

This man has not felt the famine which is sent. It is not a hunger for food or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God. And until that famine possesses you God’s word will not hold your interest. I could go on the radio and TV or write articles for the newspapers regarding my experiences, but – like the lady’s husband – they would say, “I am asleep and don’t you dare awaken me!”221 ¶6

Now, God and his word are one, so if God sent his word, then he sent himself declaring: “He who sees me, sees him who sent me; for I am the word which will not return unto me void, but must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I was sent.”221 ¶7

The outer man is the external word, which comes first. The inner man is then sent to animate and eventually give life to the outer man by fulfilling the word. And when the outer man hungers for the word of God, everything said in scripture concerning God’s plan of self-redemption fulfills itself in him. He doesn’t redeem someone else, as there is no one else. We are the gods who came down and God can only redeem himself by fulfilling scripture.221 ¶8

Now another lady shared this vision saying: “I am standing in the midst of an enormous crowd. Everyone around me is screaming, `He is crazy. He is mad. He is crazy. He is mad,’ over and over again. Walking quickly to discover who they are referring to, I see a man standing alone at the head of the crowd. Recognising him as the man I love, I run to him and cry, `I love you, I love you.’ ” Although the crowd surges upon him and beats him, I continue to express my love. Suddenly he places his hands upon my neck. I feel his thumbs press into my throat and feel as though I am going to die. Then the pressure is released. The man raises his hands, which become two white wings, which caress me with an indescribable love as I awake.”221 ¶9

That night this lady fulfilled the 40th, 48th, 51st, 52nd and 53rd chapters of Isaiah. I say to her without any doubt in my heart, that she is very near salvation. Everything in her wonderful vision was made visible. She was the man and the crowd. She sent herself through hell because she loves herself, just as you and I do.221 ¶10

In Blake’s lovely song, “A Little Boy Lost”, he said: “Nought loves another as itself, Nor venerates another so. Nor is it possible to thought A Greater than itself to know.” How can thought know a thought greater than itself? How could you love another more than yourself? It is impossible, for there is no other. Love is the being playing every part. Love is the crowd, the tempters, and the one abused.221 ¶11

Feel distress, and you are abusing Christ by saying, I am distressed. Feel ashamed, limited, inadequate or afraid, and God is experiencing them all; for He is your awareness, believing himself to be ashamed, limited, inadequate, or afraid and dying in your sins.221 ¶12

Just as my friend heard the vision tell her to change the comma, for the statement should read: “Before Abraham, was I am,” here again we find that unless you believe your I am is the one you have worshiped on the outside, you die in your sins; for your I am was before Abraham.221 ¶13

It is Christ who bears all of your afflictions, your sorrows and diseases. There is no record of a man who took upon himself a terminal disease while the one he took it from was set free. The implication is there, for – bearing our afflictions and weakness – God has the power to set man free.221 ¶14

But Christ is not someone external to yourself. The Universal Christ is a diffusion of an individuality. You say I am, I say I am. We are the same I am, who is Christ, who is God, who is Jehovah – for there is nothing but I am! Christ, who is your very self, bears all of your afflictions, your weaknesses, and sins; but this is difficult for man to understand.221 ¶15

Several years ago I gave a series of nineteen lectures in San Francisco, attended by a lady and her lawyer son. At the end of the series the lady questioned her son, saying: “Do you believe Neville?” And answering with his rational mind he said: “He sounds sincere. He may be sincerely wrong, but I’m sure he is sincere.”221 ¶16

At that time the son was living with his mother. Every night before retiring they would remind each other to put the law of identical harvest into practice. When I returned to San Francisco the next year I learned that this man had formed an organisation which was in the process of building the largest and most modern co-op in the Bay Area, called the Comstock. This project was followed by building up the peninsula and now this gentleman is worth millions.221 ¶17

Both mother and son used the law to achieve their every goal, yet she admitted she did not understand what I meant when I said Christ suffers for her. Although she could tell me: “I have a toothache,” she couldn’t grasp the fact that she is her imagination and therefore the cause of the toothache as well as the wonderful co-op.221 ¶18

If you are suffering, Christ is suffering, for his name is I am, and there is no other Christ. God actually became flesh and dwells in you. Once you realise this you will never turn to another.221 ¶19

This gentleman has made a fortune, yet he does not understand how it all came about, because the hunger is not upon him. Although it would not be necessary, he is not willing to give up his enormous earthly holdings to have the experiences which would result in regeneration.221 ¶20

You do not kill desire. You do not have yourself castrated. You are simply beyond the organisation of sex and your desire for earthly things ceases to be.221 ¶21

Ninety-nine per cent of the people here desire worldly pleasures, while I speak of a pleasure that transcends this world – where one lives in a world of reality and creativity. But until that famine comes, you will continue to desire things that die in this world.221 ¶22

Now, another lady shared this experience, saying: “In my vision I knew you had died, yet you had returned to lecture and teach as usual. You were wearing my earthly father’s face, yet I knew the bone structure to be yours. Everyone called you the Father, but not knowing my earthly father, they could not see his face, only yours. As I woke I knew that the face I touched on the surface would be that of my earthly father, but its structure would be that of the Father.”221 ¶23

There is only one Father. It is He who wears every mask. In this wonderful experience, she saw her earthly father wearing the frame of the Father, because the Father is a protean being and assumes every face. She saw the foundation, the bone structure of the man who told her salvation’s story, wearing the face of her earthly father.221 ¶24

We are told that when God took upon himself the sins of the world, he was a man of sorrow, despised and rejected by men. There is no description of the man in whom God awoke because he is never a sculptured, beautiful man on the outside, but a perfectly normal person.221 ¶25

This lady said that she is very fond of the Book of John, as it seems to be more loving than any other book in the Bible. I will go along with that.221 ¶26

She felt that the answer to the experience I just spoke of would come to her from the Book of John. I suggest she read the 10th chapter of John. In it Christ is called a man who has a devil, and they question, “Why listen to him?”221 ¶27

You, my dear, are that central figure, and you are also the crowd screaming at yourself; and you deny the existence of the Christ within, for there is no other. There is only God.221 ¶28

You can put God to the test, and if He proves himself in the testing then you will know God is your own wonderful human imagination. If you want the joy of marriage, a love affair, or a romance, you can test God by assuming the one you desire is with you now. And to the degree you persist in that assumption, it will be yours to experience. Do not be concerned as to how or when it will happen; simply persist in the assumption that it has happened, and when it does you will know who God is.221 ¶29

My wife woke too early to get up this morning, so she thought about what she wanted most, and that was for her husband and daughter to be blissfully happy. Thinking of what she could do to make it so, she realised that it was something they alone must decide. Then she fell asleep dwelling on their happiness and this is her dream: Seeing me lying on a couch she heard me say: “I don’t feel comfortable here,” and she replied: “I know – you don’t like to sleep on the first floor, but would rather be elevated and sleep above.” Then the dream changed and she was putting a puzzle together with our daughter Vicki, who began to laugh as she picked up a piece of the puzzle and watched it fall into its perfect place. Looking at Vicki she said to herself: “I have never seen her look so pretty and be so blissfully happy.” Then she awoke.221 ¶30

Her desire for happiness was answered in the depth of her being and must now come to the surface. Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination and his story is all about you. Told in the third person, it is written as though another is doing all the suffering for you; yet you know you are the one who is suffering. I tell you, that unless you believe your awareness of being is God you will continue to miss your mark, thereby remaining in sin.221 ¶31

I am is the key to scripture. Called Jesus Christ in the New Testament, God the Father’s name is revealed in the Old Testament as I am.221 ¶32

Having come into the world to fulfill the word, you cannot return empty but must accomplish that which you purposed and prosper in the thing for which you sent yourself. After inspiring the prophets to tell your story, you came not only to fulfill their prophecy, but to share your experiences to encourage others.221 ¶33

The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint which you will fulfill, for you are the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Jesus Christ of the New. You may either accept this truth or reject it, but what I am telling you is true.221 ¶34

Christ is not a little man, but the universally diffused individuality of which we are. So when one awakes and the second one follows, the third will awaken and eventually all of the universally diffused individuals will awaken in that one glorious body called the kingdom of heaven.221 ¶35

Having come into and overcoming the world of death, we will be victorious over our challenge.221 ¶36

The men of science tell us that the universe is melting and will one day come to its end. I am not going to question this, but I do know that Imagination came into this world of death to overcome it. I also know that nothing dies, because we are the immortal Imagination who clothed himself in these garments of flesh which die, but we – their life-giving spirit – cannot die.221 ¶37

I cannot force anyone to want my experiences. My family in Barbados all live in comfort and know they earn much more than I do. They judge a man by what he has in this world and are not interested in who he is. They cannot understand why a man of my age continues to do what I am doing, when I could move to Barbados and live in clover with all expenses paid by the business. And I can’t persuade them to listen to me because the hunger is not upon them.221 ¶38

Until that hunger for the hearing of the word of God possesses you, you will continue to be possessed by the world. You may become the Pope, but that does not mean you hunger for the word of God. It may mean that you hunger for the power that rests in the office of the Pope, the hunger to be recognised and praised.221 ¶39

But when the hunger to experience the word of God possesses you, you will know you – the Word – sent yourself. You will then understand the words: “He who sees me, sees him who sent me,” for you will fulfill God’s word.221 ¶40

There must be two witnesses: one external and one internal. The external witness is scripture, and you who have the spiritual experience are the internal witness.221 ¶41

Knowing your experiences parallel the scriptures, you know that the Father in the depths of your own being watches to see that all the pieces are in place and the image of his declared purpose is perfect. Having prophesied what must take place, God will fulfill it; and you – the image of the invisible God – will radiate his glory and become the express image of his person.221 ¶42

Then you will be used as the bone structure on which every face will be placed to reveal to the one who has the experience, the meaning of being God the Father.221 ¶43

In my friend’s vision everyone referred to me as the Father. Her father was a father, but I am the Father upon which every father’s face is placed. She was aware that I had died and had returned, only to tell the story of God’s plan of salvation in order to redeem myself, for there is only God in the world.221 ¶44

Now let us go into the silence.221 ¶45

This is the season of the year when the entire Christian world’s concentration, for the next week beginning on Sunday, our churches will be crowded to overflowing, and I wanted to watch degree they will understand the great mystery — beginning on Sunday, on Sunday, and culminating the following Sunday, in Easter, or Resurrection. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he said, “Christ died for our sins according to the scripture.” Oh, they’ll tell that story for Good Friday. When you heard the word Christ, did you think of another guy for you, and therefore vicariously he suffered? Because that’s what it would be — having the function of a substitute would be the vicarious state for our sins, bearing his suffering and his shameful death, world by carelessness. So that’s what the word would mean: one who takes the place of, one who represents or takes the place of something that is primary or original. There is another meaning to the word vicarious, and that is: an occurrence in an unexpected or abnormal part of the body, instead of the usual one — for instance, the bleeding of the gums, which replaces the discharge of the uterus, in vicarious menstruation. That’s what you’ll find. As reported in the Third International Dictionary: “the bleeding of the gums, which sometimes displaces or replaces that which would be the normal discharge of the uterus, menstruation.” In this sense, birth from above — the skull — replaces the normal birth from below, of the womb, as the normal, natural portion of the body where one should be born.216 ¶1

Here is one now being born from the abnormal portion of the body, which is the skull. Now, if he died — as we are told, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, which you will read in Paul’s fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, I think it’s the third verse — now let me turn to the scripture, for it used to be taught in ancient Israel that the fathers’ sins were actually visited upon the children, to the third and fourth generation. Now comes the new revelation — that voice which you will find in the thirty-first chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, the twenty-ninth and thirtieth verses. In those days, in the day of the Lord, when man begins to awake, in those days it shall no longer be said that the fathers ate sour grapes and the children’s teeth were set on edge; everyone shall die for his own sin, each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.216 ¶2

No longer the substitute. Therefore, who is this Christ? I say, if the word Christ in any way conveys to you the sense of an existent something or someone outside of you, it is delusion — you have a false Christ. For here, every man — but everyone — shall die for his own sin. Now, this is the mystery, as we are told, hidden for ages and generations, but now made manifest to his saints, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. For who are his saints? The saints are simply the redeemed. It has nothing to do with anything that our so-called holy men say in this world. There is no holy group on earth that could take an individual, male or female, and declare that that one is a saint. That’s the height of nonsense. The saint is the elect, the called, the chosen, the redeemed, called by God.216 ¶3

And only the one called knows that he is called; he can tell it to another, but it is a law of human behavior that the man called — calling him a conscious man, for all the others are not really conscious, even though they seem to be conscious — a conscious man shall not appear as the one he profoundly sees; if he does, he will definitely become a caricature of himself.216 ¶4

For Christ is not of this world. This is what Paul did when he said in his third chapter of Galatians that you should not know Christ after the flesh; or in his second letter to the Corinthians, when he says: “From now on, no man, from the human point of view — even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” So no longer does that man who has been called, who has been awakened, ever regard Christ aright from the human point of view, from the world of flesh. And yet it is in this world of flesh, and only here in the world of flesh, that he is awakened. No one can consummate the bliss without being generated on earth. It is right here on earth. But earth does not end when a man seems to die, for I come to the end and my senses cannot follow him, and he seems to go, and I see him cremated, the ashes gathered, but he has not died to himself. So that the world does not terminate at that point where my senses cease to register it — he is still in a world just like this, and he continues his journey until that moment in time when he is called, when he is awakened, when he is elected.216 ¶5

That being, whether he be here, there, or elsewhere, does not ever appear as the one that he knows that he is. If he ever dares to play that part, and seek to be something important in the eyes of those he’s talking to, he becomes a caricature of himself. But from that moment on, he is one with the glorified body of the risen Lord, and that living glorified body is made up of the redeemed, of the elect, of those who are chosen, those who are called. Ultimately everyone will be called.216 ¶6

So it is happening — but it is happening — that’s the strangest thing. Here the drama that will be unfolding for us next week — and all the pulpits will be talking about it, and they will tell us that he is risen. And I will not deny that. He’s not only risen, he is rising. This is something to be done absolutely and continuously. It’s something that is not set up that it is related to somebody, to say the happenings now — it is an eternal drama, without reference to position in time, without reference to duration or repetition. Sometimes with reference to past times, so you can say “he is risen,” or that he wrote — but you have to act, and he is rising, because he’s actually buried in humanity.216 ¶7

This is the Christ of whom I speak, not a little man that lived two thousand years ago, that different from you. I am speaking of that Christ in you that is the hope of glory. That Christ is crucified on humanity — this body is the only cross that he’s ever worn, this skull is the only tomb in which he was ever buried, this skull is the only womb from which he will be born. It will first rise within it, and then he will come out of it — he’s coming out of it, it will be his birth from above. That is the unnatural birth — that is the vicarious state of which I speak, an occurrence in the unexpected or abnormal part of the body, instead of that which is the natural. What the womb is, the natural organ of birth, the skull is not. So we speak of this as the vicarious one, who took upon himself the sin — it is simply telling us it is an entirely different birth, an entirely different being, in this world it has to be. We can use the physical analogy — I never knew, for one moment, that sometimes the bleeding of the gums is simply a replacement of the discharge that would normally come from the uterus, and therefore it is called vicarious menstruation. You can find that in Webster’s Third International — look it up and see the definition given to it.216 ¶8

I tell you, it’s my own experience — it’s the most exciting, the most thrilling, the most unexpected thing in the world. Who would ever think, for one moment, there is another portion of the body from which man could be born, and that that man is a supernatural man? He is not the man that was born from the womb. That which was born from the womb is flesh and blood, and flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. That which is born from the skull is Spirit, as God himself is — from the unexpected, the unnatural portion of the body, instead of that which is the natural portion of it. And that is the Christ in man that will be talked about, for the next week, from every pulpit in Christendom. But I am telling you who you really are — you are Christ. If you have not yet become aware of it, through this wonderful series of experiences you will become aware of it.216 ¶9

But until you become aware of it, and act on personal experience, you will continue the journey, even though you go through the gate called death. But death does not end your journey — you cannot end it, for the being in you is immortal, it cannot die. That being is your own wonderful human imagination. That is the Divine body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your own wonderful human imagination is the immortal you, and cannot die, for it has to be born — born here in this world of flesh and blood. You cannot consummate the bliss which is heaven until you actually, in this world below, which is the world of flesh, live it — as this series of experiences called Christendom, in scripture. A series of experiences, in this manner, Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God expressed himself in action for the salvation of man. That series of events I have gone through; I am telling you what I know from experience.216 ¶10

It begins with your own awakening. You awake in that unexpected, abnormal portion of the body, and as you awake within the skull, you don’t expect to be awakened there, if you’re going to be born — we think of birth from the womb. I came out of my mother’s womb — even if it was cesarean, it is still from the womb, though it is simply a section from the side of her body; they are still taking me from that womb. You’re not taken from the womb when you’re born from above — you’re coming actually, literally, from above, and it is out of your own skull. But first you are awakened, and when you are awakened, then you come out, and it’s an actual birth from above.216 ¶11

Now, you may tell it to those who are drawn to you, because “no man comes unto me,” says the Father, unless he calls him. You’re in search of the Father, and soon after the birth you’re going to find the Father, and you’re going to find him as yourself. Then you tell it to those whom the Father draws — but you are the Father, you are drawing your own. Now they’re all coming to you that can come. Many fall by the wayside — they can’t take it, so they go back. They can’t conceive for one moment that Christ means what you’re talking about — you haven’t had the experience — you know what you’re talking about. They have a fixed idea concerning what Christ is — I mean, they use the word, they have something on the outside. You use the word, and you mean only one thing: your own wonderful human imagination. There is no other Christ, there is no other God, there is no other Father. That is the Divine body of the Lord Jesus Christ, your own wonderful human imagination.216 ¶12

But it has to be born again, grow to above, and it comes in the unexpected, abnormal part of the body, right out of the skull. And when it comes out, and you tell the world — you cannot ever think, ever appear as the one — you only know that you are. If you do, and you try to put on all the nonsense about it, you’re simply going to make a target of yourself. Many years ago — maybe twelve years ago — I went to my friend’s office on Sunset, and this very good-looking man, a handsome man about six feet, all dressed in his ankle-length white robe, with a little girdle around his belly — no shoes, on a hot summer’s day — with a black beard beautifully trimmed here to his shoulder. Someone once told him he looked like Christ, and so he’s going to play his part; so he came in asking for money. And my friend and his wife — they work together, she is the secretary and he is the agent — and they said, “No, we give to charity, we’ll give to organizations like the Red Cross and so on; we do not give this way.” He was insulting, in the most unmerciful manner — he was now playing the part of Christ. He asked me, said, “Brother, would you give me something?” I said yes, so I gave him a dollar. He thanked me, he pronounced a blessing on me — a curse upon them, he is Christ.216 ¶13

So my friend said to me after he left, “Why did you give him a dollar?” I said, “I go to a picture and I spend three dollars, three-fifty for a show — this is funnier, this is far more amusing.” Here is just — what’s a dollar? Let him go out and have himself a sandwich for his dollar, or whatever he wants. But here’s someone, someday misled him. There is no physical description of Jesus in the Bible, none whatsoever, but someone, based upon the pictures that others have painted over the years, told him he looks like Christ, and so he began to take on more and more the outward apparel of Christ. But you see, I was born with that sense of humor — the amusement, gave him a buck for him.216 ¶14

But I was a little boy in Barbados, and we had these pictures twice a week, but on the reel it would run for a little while, and all of a sudden it came to the end — you heard the tape over and over and over, up went the lights, then you would have to rewind it, put on another reel, and then you run another one. So they ran five or six reels of these things, whatever they were, twice a week. I paid a boy of my father’s his six cents — the going rate to the pit — the pit was what we call the orchestra, and we sat up in what would be, say, the balcony; that was thirty-six cents, and the pit was six cents. And I would pay him six cents to laugh at the wrong time — when everybody was about to cry, he had to laugh; if he didn’t laugh he wouldn’t get my six cents. But he never failed. But every time he did it, that would come to the manager, it was a little light, they’d take him out, and he never saw a whole picture, not in his life.216 ¶15

But twice a week, we had fun. All of a sudden the girl is tied to the tracks and the train is coming through, and they’re all screaming, and all of a sudden — his name was Mashama, he had feet like that, no shoe could fit it, so we called him National, meaning he could match things. And National would sit there, then, exactly where he was. Sometimes he would get lost in the thing himself, so he couldn’t laugh too early. But sometimes he was carried away — he laughed early, when it was a serious scene — that night he missed it completely. But I was given that way, to just make fun of this entire thing that seemed so serious to the whole vast world. And week after week, well, I had my fun. He had his, and he always enjoyed my six cents, because they too were shocked as he was pulled out and taken out. It’s good to be shocked.216 ¶16

And someone is so confident, and he is so hopeful, and he thinks that he is this — turn away. Any man who thinks he is holy, and puts on that act for you, just turn away, for no man who has had the experience is going to put on any appearance concerning what he knows he is, because you can’t describe it in flesh and blood. You could not in any way dress up to look like the being that you know that you are, for no mortal eye could see it. It takes the inner eye — it takes the eye of the spirit, whether it be a little girl of eight months, or eight years, or a lady of thirty — it takes the inner eye to see the being, and you don’t care who sees it. To know what one has to say, one has to bear witness to what you know from your own experience, but you aren’t going to go and talk about it, because your mortal eye can see it. So I say it is a law of human — I would say — understanding, that the man who actually has experienced it, I call him a conscious man; all the others are sleeping. But the conscious man shall not appear as the one that he actually knows, in the depth of his being, that he is, because if he does, and he attempts to appear that way, he’s only fooling himself, and he simply makes a target of himself.216 ¶17

And this is what Paul told us, when he said not to know Christ after the flesh, for he’s not of the flesh — he’s a completely different being, he’s supernatural. So somebody, they’re going to see him on a donkey — in their minds they picture him physically. Are they going to see him on Friday on a wooden cross? They’ll see him taken down and put into a little grave, and they’re still digging for it in the Near East. And then they believe that someplace in the Near East he came out of a little tomb made with mortal hands, a little tomb, too. And they say, although scripture doesn’t call it where they’re buried, they still think about the area as resembling a skull, and that’s why they called it Golgotha. It doesn’t resemble the skull — it is the skull. That’s very real.216 ¶18

And this is where — one man is crucified on humanity, and he is buried in man; he rose in one man, and then in men, and continues to rise in individual men and women. Eventually he will rise in all, and there’s only one cry. So in the end, one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God, unfoldable — and not one is going to be greater than the other. When you know it, you don’t want to be, because it’s one — to be greater than your spirit, they’re going to be others. It’s one body, one Spirit, one love, one God, unfoldable. That’s the Christ that I’m talking about, that’s the one.216 ¶19

The word, how to read it — but Paul is not confusing when he tells you Christ has died for our sins according to the scripture. He is not quoting — not quoting, but he’s implying the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah: just like a little lamb before her shearer, and the sheep before her shearers is dumb, he opened not his mouth, but he saw the fruit of his travail, and he was satisfied. Yet he waits upon man here, just as quickly, as innocently, as willingly when the willingness is evil as when it is good, because we know that we are asleep, and we can dream. You don’t blame a man for a dream. If tomorrow morning your wife woke and tells you, “You know, last night I had the most fantastic experiences with a man, and it wasn’t you” — and she’s talking to her husband at breakfast — you think he’s going to strike her for a dream? He came home and said, these are the realities, I had them on the outside — he’s going to actually ostracize her for a dream? He’s not going to ostracize the person — and yet that dream is telling something.216 ¶20

Now, this is the premise, because we’re not going to awaken. When he calls us, and we are awake, something happens in the one in whom he awakes, and the whole vast world changes; a complete change takes place within it, but nothing — everything is different in this world. He sees everyone as Christ, asleep. Until that one awakes, he still sees Christ — he sees Christ in his wife, in his child, in his friend, in his neighbor, in everyone. And there’s no other way, after he awakes, that he could ever see anyone — you can’t see anyone but Christ, because Christ is the reality of man. That essential being is your own wonderful human imagination.216 ¶21

And he’s not going to condemn anyone who is dreaming, or who is dreaming Christ this evening. He took upon himself the limitations of this body, and he dreams it well. I’m going to tell you, you can dream anything between now and tonight, and he doesn’t limit you to what you can dream — you can dream anything. He is the Creator, and will help you externalize the dream. You want to feel that you’re successful — what’s wrong with that, if you know what you mean by success? What would it be like if it were true? Do you dare to assume that it is true? If you dare to assume that it is true, then live as though it were true, and it will become a fact. You’re actually going to find yourself externalizing your assumption that, when you began to assume it, it had no basis in fact. That’s how it works. Then you know who you are.216 ¶22

It doesn’t mean, because you project it under the screen of assumption, that tomorrow night you’re going to have the experiences of which I speak, because no one can tell you when you’re going to have them — it could happen tonight. I only hope that everyone here will have it in the immediate present. I do hope. But I have no assurance that you have it now, but I do know you’re going to have it, that no one will fail in eternity to have it, because God would fail, and God cannot fail, and God is in you, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God — the eternal body of man is the human imagination, and that body is the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no other Jesus Christ, no.216 ¶23

And he is the one who, suffering so great, could say so beautifully: “Thou sufferest also with me, although I behold thee not.” You can’t tell me — do you actually see your imagination? You feel it, you exercise it, and it’s you exercising yourself, but you don’t see it as you see objects. And you see the results of the exercise of imagination, you see the fruits, but you don’t actually see that invisible God, because God is to be seen only by his son. No one knows him but the son, and he knows who the son is. Outside of that, you aren’t going to see imagination, but you see imagination in operation, because imagination is God, and God is invisible to all, save his son. His son sees him, and he sees the son. So I tell you, your own wonderful human imagination is the Lord Jesus Christ.216 ¶24

Don’t look for him in any other place — he’s seated right here, just where you are, that’s where he is. He is buried in you, but not so deep that, in his dream, he can’t hear my words. I’m sure, because truth is talking to truth — deep is speaking to the deep, and he hears my words. That I’m talking to myself in you is the being that is speaking, it is one, it is Christ. One day, suddenly, it is going to happen, and just as you’re told in that definition I read you earlier tonight — yes, it will come in an unexpected, abnormal part of the body, instead of the usual one. And that abnormal, unexpected part of the body where he is born is your own skull. That’s where he comes out.216 ¶25

And when he comes out, it’s not another, it’s yourself. Who rose? I do. Who was present? No one — I was alone. And who pushed away the stone? It is said the stone was rolled away — I did. Well then, how did you come out — a midwife? No, no midwife came. I got up by myself, I pushed myself out and pulled myself out of that tomb, to find that the tomb was breathing, a womb, because the minute I came out, the symbolism of the birth was surrounding me — the child wrapped in swaddling clothes, and the spirit is the wind, and it was the wind that disturbed — and disturbed the witnesses that came to witness the event. And they heard the wind and knew the truth — everything happens just as described in the Book of Luke and the Book of Matthew.216 ¶26

I think Luke described it more beautifully, more vividly; John does it perfectly. But, at the end, in symbolism — unless you know the language of symbolism, you don’t see it, because he speaks of the empty tomb, but the little cloth, the little napkin, was aside from the body — here was the cloth, the linen clothes were there — but the little napkin was not part of it. But it was part of it in the beginning; it covered his head. That’s where he came out. And then the napkin was removed, and all by itself was the napkin. In the ancient world, it means simply the afterbirth, the placenta — that was the meaning of the word. It is telling you a birth took place, because that wrapping — if you wrap the head, then it came out of the head, that’s where it was — and the napkin is all by itself, all rolled up. So if you understand the language of symbolism, you’ll know what took place in that empty tomb. And the tomb was — he was born, he came out of that tomb, and left behind him, as if to present, the afterbirth, implying that a birth took place here.216 ¶27

But where is it? I see the evidence — the body, I see the linen clothes. But now, what actually came out of those linen clothes, you can’t see, because it’s spirit. Only the heavenly eyes can see it. Only those who are already awake within the body of the living God, those who are now the living stone in that temple, and they rejoice — one more has joined the living body. But others can’t see it. But those who know the symbolism, they know something took place.216 ¶28

But John tells it beautifully — what he tells, he tells it symbolically, by Matthew and Luke they tell it — or they tell it that mortal mind can understand — and they tell it as though it happened to the womb of a woman, and it never happened to the womb of any woman — it happened to the skull. But I’m speaking of generic man, male or female — so it comes out about, describing male or female, because what is coming out is above the organization of sex.216 ¶29

So man in the resurrection is above the organization of sex. You’re told that in him there is neither male nor female, no, not even Greek or Jew, bond or free, just one. So something comes out — you don’t depend upon any other being to create — you create all, yourself, for the body is one, and you are that one. But you make no display of it to anyone in this world — you still are the devoted father, devoted husband, devoted friend, a friendly neighbor, and you play the same part in the eyes of those who know you. And you walk the earth until the very end, and no one would ever know.216 ¶30

Say, though, if you took someone into your confidence, and you tell them what happened to you — some believe you, and some disbelieve it. But it doesn’t really matter; their response to what happened to you is their judgment of themselves. If they do not believe, we’ll let them go on until one day they will actually understand it from experience. See, I have no feeling for organized Christianity — say that with the individual, as experience; organized Christianity means nothing to me.216 ¶31

Last year they threw out a hundred saints — but you can’t throw anything out of the body of God. If they were saved in the beginning, they will still have to be saints today. So the organization gets together and says, “I’m going to make a saint,” and then they bring this woman in, or that man in, and these people in, and pronounce them as Saint so-and-so. Saint Christopher has been dethroned, Saint Barbara dethroned, and all the other saints — a hundred of them — last year. No man can make a saint.216 ¶32

The Lord suddenly calls one, unexpected. And when you are called, and incorporated into the body of love, which is God, and then a saint — you’re saying, as the word is, to fulfill scripture. And when you fulfill it, you are a living stone in the one body that is God, and you are one with that glorious body. That is one — not a little portion of it, with only one body — and you are that body.216 ¶33

Anyone seeing you after that, in the eyes of the spirit world, they see God, and they know they are looking at God. There’s no doubt as to who you’re — still looking at God, looking at love — they’re looking at the only being that there really is. But all the others sleep until they are called, and when they are called, then they are awakened, and as they awake they have these experiences, and when these experiences are completed within them, it doesn’t matter when the little end comes, because they do not return to life anymore — they are thought of the heaven world, they are already a citizen of Heaven, already sharing in that one body — it is the glorified body.216 ¶34

So when you hear the story on Sunday — if you go to church on Sunday, it’s nice, you won’t find me there — but if you go on Sunday, it will be Palm Sunday, that triumphant entrance into Jerusalem. Then comes the grand disillusion, the trial, that one man must die for the nation. As we told you last week, what it meant was only one being caring with us all, so the one is the original, and the very you is the Son of God, and when he wakes in you, you are the Son of God. But beyond that, just a matter of moments — to the exact — one hundred thirty-nine days later, he brings forth the son, and the son calls you Father, and then you know who you are: you’re God, the Father. And then the other events unfold, normally, within the span of twelve hundred and sixty days, that is in store for every being in this world.216 ¶35

Then you tell it — some believe it, some do not believe it, it doesn’t really matter — they will pray and pray and prayed, because everyone will be friends. But God, in his infinite mercy, hides from you the pain of the past, until you’ve gone through hell. No one tells you that you have not gone through the furnace — everyone goes through the furnace before he comes to this point in the drama.216 ¶36

So all the things were placed upon your shoulder, and you are beaten, as you are told in that word — Face. And they put the word before Jesus, they call it Son; they put it before David, they call it Seven — they should not do that, translated, but nevertheless that’s what they do. I tell you, you are the son, raised to the Father, and when you’re raised to the Father, the son’s name goes to David — and I’ve told you this in scripture. But scholars, with all their studies, cannot arrive at that conclusion, because they start from false premises. If I start from a false premise, my conclusion will be false, and all the scholarship in the world cannot undo it, if my premise is false. But revelation undoes it, and you can’t deny revelation. And revealed truth cannot be logically proven — it is simply revealed.216 ¶37

Then you go back in the scripture, and you try to find where on earth this was foretold in scripture, and there you find it. But you didn’t find it before it was revealed. So revealed truth cannot be logically proven to anyone in the world without this revelation. Don’t go any further in the Bible — go back into the Old Testament, and there you find it. It was always there, but not for the scholarly mind to detect, not until it actually happened. So, after two thousand years of teaching a false premise, the conclusions must be wrong, because premises must move forward to the normal conclusion. Or, a being from its own origin brings forth after its kind — and so that is my origin, my premise; then the aim is going to be justified, not going to be false. And I am telling you, the day will come, you will meet him, and when you meet him, you are God the Father, and he is exactly what scripture tells you: he is your son, and his name is David the Beloved.216 ¶38

So on Sunday, when you see the palm, bear in mind — the palm is in the genealogy of Jesus. You’ll find it: she was the mother of the twins, her name was Tamar; the word Tamar means palm. She’s one of the few women mentioned in the great drama of Christ.216 ¶39

And Jacob had Judah — he was the father of Judah, and his brother — they didn’t mention the first three, they couldn’t mention Reuben, and Dan, and so on, but they jumped to the fourth one, and mentioned Judah — the one who holds the scepter, and it never passes from his hand. And then, by Tamar, he was the father of the twins, the division between Perez and his brother. And Tamar is the palm tree, the stately one, as the psalmist writes of Israel, that king of Israel is just like the palm — that stately, majestic being. So you’ll find the reason for this palm, which will be used, but they will not understand it. Why? Because we are going to hand out our little palms, made in the form of a cross, and give them out to those who come to service — but nevertheless, it is only a part of the unfolding drama, all within scriptures.216 ¶40

Let me tell you, I think I do tell you from time to time, no matter what the title is, I am talking about only one thing, really, and that is your own wonderful human Imagination. And I call your human Imagination God. The eternal body of man is our Imagination. In scripture it is called Jesus. Man misunderstands it and limits it to a little being, one being who lived and died 2,000 years ago. But that’s not my concept of Jesus. My concept of Jesus is that of God, and my concept of God is that of the human Imagination. “Only the Imagination of man is vast enough to contain the immensity of space.” And so, tonight, we ask the question concerning this new and living way: Can any man go forth where his Imagination has never gone before? I will answer that. No, he can’t. Therefore, tell me the greatest story ever told, if you know it, so that I may walk with you in Imagination. For I cannot walk there with you through faith in Imagination, I can never get there; so you tell me if you know it from experience best of all. If hearsay and you believe it, that will do. But don’t mislead me. Tell me the story, the greatest story ever told. That is the story as read in the gospels, that’s the story. Read the story in the Bible, from beginning to end, but it comes to a flower in the gospels. If you tell me that story and I can respond to it and go with you, I am walking in Imagination with you, then I can go there. But no man in this world would ever go forth where his Imagination has not gone before, no one. So if you know the story, share it with me, and we can take it on many, many levels.214 ¶1

So I’ll show you this new and living way. A new book came off the press I think this week. I can’t recall the title. The author is Bill Donovan, the great attorney. He represented Colonel Abel, the master spy, a few years ago. He was the lawyer for the defense. Abel, as the testimony brought out, was the arch-spy for Russia. He was not a traitor; he was a spy in the true sense of the word. Prior to his trial the Rosenbergs were tried on less evidence and executed. Both paid the ultimate penalty, but they betrayed their country. This man Abel did not betray his country; he worked for his country against what his country considered the arch-enemy, America. But the testimony against him was mountainous, and Bill Donovan knew he was defending a man who was guilty as guilty could be; he knew that. But in the end, this was his plea. He turned to the court and asked the court not to execute the prisoner—-he was found guilty—-but to sentence him, well, maybe to life, which he received. Then this is what he said, “In the not distant future we of America may want to exchange him for one of equal importance in Russia…one of equal importance.” It is said the courtroom burst into hysterical laughter at that peculiar plea, and a columnist dubbed him a Red or a Pink or some other name, because he dared to plead this case for this arch-enemy of this country. Well, he received a life sentence, Colonel Abel.214 ¶2

Three years later it was Bill Donovan who was the one who negotiated the exchange, and he exchanged this arch-spy Colonel Abel for Lieutenant Powers, who was shot down over Russia. We would have given anything to get Powers alive and consciously alert to find out how he was shot down. For until then no one brought down our U-2 planes, and we were photographing the entire Russia from altitudes that we thought they could never reach. We weren’t quite sure but what it could be some mechanical defect and the plane simply faltered in the air and came down, but we didn’t know. He had all the orders to destroy the plane, destroy himself—he was paid well for it—to blow his brains out. He didn’t blow his brains out and the plane wasn’t destroyed, so what did the Russians do to bring him down? Was it from the ground? Was it a plane even higher than ours? What did they do? And we would have paid anything. Well, the price we paid was Colonel Abel.214 ¶3

Where is the origin of the entire drama? Isn’t that in Bill Donovan’s Imagination? When Bill Donovan pleaded this case with passion to the point where the whole court exploded in laughter, he still got his point over to the point where they took his plea under submission and brought in, well, a judgment based upon his recommendation: he asked for life rather than execution. And three years later we did have the man that Russia wanted badly, for he was their top spy, as we understand or thought. I hope he was the top spy! Well, we got all these things on him and they said the evidence was mountainous, so that Donovan could not possibly plead any innocence; everything was so obvious. But he could ask for mercy. The court granted mercy in the sense of not killing him. They put him away for life and three years later he was the instrument that negotiated between the two countries and exchanged Colonel Abel for Lieutenant Powers.214 ¶4

So I say this is a living way…a new and living way. I ask you to think carefully before you imagine anything. For the interval between your imaginal act and its fulfillment may be longer than you could remember, and because you can’t remember, you deny the harvest that is your own harvest. You planted it. Were it not that this book is out now, and even though the book is out (came out this week) I question seriously that Bill Donovan believes that his imaginal act was causative. He thought himself a very smart, wise lawyer, and he still is, but he doesn’t for one moment trace that plane coming down in Russia to anything he did in that court in New York City three years prior to the event.214 ¶5

Man will not accept the testimony of Jesus. This is the testimony of Jesus: “You have heard it said that any man who lusts after a woman”…or that no man should lust after a woman…”but I say unto you, any one who lusts after a woman has already committed the act with her in his heart” . Well, the word heart, the word mind, the word Imagination are one in this drama. He’s already done the act. By the very act of imagining that, he has performed that service, that act. He has committed it. Now, take it down to every level in this world. And so, you put yourself into a court and you perform this imaginal act, where you can see yourself actually exchanging this man for another man. And they want the other man so badly the country will be very happy they didn’t shoot him, that they had him to really offer as the prize for the one we needed badly. And so, I ask everyone here to watch carefully how you imagine anything. For all day long you are imagining things, and the interval between the imaginal act which is the sowing, and the reaping of that act may be longer than you can imagine what you did; and so you deny your own offspring, you deny your harvest. You can’t recognize any relationship between it and you.214 ¶6

Now, if you can walk with me that far, we can take you beyond that. And so, the testimony of Jesus must be heard and responded to; for faith is response to revelation rather than discovery of new knowledge. Yes, you can go into labs and find out about the most fantastic things and hear it told and love it. You see the explosion of it, you see the demonstration of it and you love it. But that is not the faith of which the Bible speaks. The Bible speaks of a faith that comes in response to revelation, and the most fantastic revelation in the world is the revelation of God, put into the story of Jesus Christ. Can one believe it? Now, churches have distorted it. They’ve told the most fantastic story that is not the story of Jesus Christ. It is not the story. The whole story is our own wonderful human Imagination.214 ¶7

So now, we go back this night to the title, taken from the 10th chapter of the Book of Hebrews. In this 10th chapter we are told that there is a new way, a living way. First of all, it starts off by inviting us to enter into the Holy of Holies, “the sanctuary, by the blood of Jesus, the new and living way, which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, by his flesh” . That’s what we are told.214 ¶8

We go into the very presence of the Holy of Holies, right into the presence of the Ancient of Days, by his blood. And this we do through a new and living way; not any dead sacrifices. We don’t kill animals; we don’t destroy anything and offer it in the hope that we could enter the Holy of Holies. No sacrifice, no external sacrifice at all. It’s all something new, a new and living way, by something that is the blood—the blood of whom?—the blood of Jesus. And he did this in a new way, through the curtain. Then he tells us, he identified the curtain with the flesh of Jesus.214 ¶9

Well, what is it? I can tell you that experience from experience. I am not theorizing. No man taught it to me. I never read it in a book outside of the Bible. But before I went back into the Bible and read it, I experienced it. So I can tell you this new and living way into the sanctuary, into the Holy of Holies, and yet by his blood. There will come a time after the series of events of which I have spoken time and time again. It is said when he gives up the Spirit, there was tearing of the temple; and the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom; and the earth quaked; and all the stones were split, every rock was split. You read it and you wonder, “What is it all about, something in the Near East?” For there were no Christian churches. The only temple he knew was the temple of the Jew; everything was the temple of the Jew. So what was this temple? The only curtain we know of was the curtain that hides the Torah. Behind the curtain is the Torah, the holy word of God, his law, and in some places he spoke of the ark behind that wonderful curtain. Now he identifies the curtain with his body, the author of Hebrews does: Through the curtain which is his flesh. Well, I’ll tell you what happened. A bolt of lightning out of your skull will split you in two, from the top of your skull to the base of your spine, and every section of your spinal column will be actually split in two. And then you will look at the base of your spine and you will see living liquid molten gold; it’s alive, just gold but a living gold. You will know as you’ve known nothing before that I am it. As you look at it you know you are it. And then at that moment of knowing you fuse with it; and as this living blood of Jesus you go up in a serpentine manner into the Holy of Holies, which is your own wonderful skull. That’s the blood of Jesus and Jesus is God and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. The drama takes place in you.214 ¶10

Everything—listen to the story carefully—all the testimony of Jesus, for everything to which he testifies you are going to experience if you will accept it. You cannot walk beyond where you’ve gone in Imagination, and so when you hear the testimony, you’re response may be negative and you will not accept it. So I ask the question, “Can any man go forward where his Imagination has not gone before?” And the answer is no. So you listen carefully and then you respond. If you say, “I’ll walk with you, I’ll walk that far with you, but I can’t go any further. That is as far as I can go with you; beyond that, leave me right here. I’ll go back and hold onto these things that seem so much more real, and so I’ll hold onto the things around me. But I won’t go that far.”214 ¶11

And so, listen to it. It’s the most fantastic story that man could ever hear, for it’s the story of God. It’s the story of you. How you awaken into the whole being that is God, for there’s only God. For in the end, the Lord is one and his name one; there aren’t two, just one, and you are that being.214 ¶12

If you hear the story, respond to it positively, then you can walk as far as you’ve heard. If you haven’t heard the story, you can’t venture beyond what you’ve heard, for no man can go forth where he has not walked in Imagination before.214 ¶13

And so when I hear a story or someone tells me something else, as I hear it I am walking with him in Imagination. Turn on the TV, I may deny it or accept it, but I walk with him in Imagination. And everything is one’s Imagination. There’s nothing but one’s Imagination. So the story must be heard, and having heard it, it must be responded to, either negatively where you deny it and reject it, or you accept it. So it’s entirely up to us to accept it if we really want to walk as far as the story will take us, which is the new and living way, right through the curtain.214 ¶14

And the curtain is one’s own wonderful—-it isn’t this body—I saw this split. But surely when I woke in the morning to find this body still knit together and no scar on it, it could not have been this. This is but the shadow world. So Blake in his wonderful Jerusalem: “I know of no other Christianity,” said he, “and no other gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of Imagination. Imagination the real and eternal world into which we shall all go after the death of these vegetable, mortal bodies of ours.” Then he asked, “What are these gifts, these treasures of heaven that you and I must lay up for tomorrow? Are they not all mental gifts—the arts, the literatures, all these lovely mental gifts of the world?” He said the apostles knew of no other gospel, only the arts of Imagination.214 ¶15

Well, when a man could come out and he could bring about the…and the book is in print, you can buy it tomorrow…where he confesses his argument, and then you see the facts as they followed three years later. He himself did not relate the fact to an imaginal act. He was simply a shrewd, wonderful lawyer. But yet in scripture we are told…don’t…the whole thing is mental, causation is mental. It is not physical; the physical moves under compulsion. The self-determining motion is all mental, it’s all in us; it’s not on the outside. And try it. All you need do is just simply try it and find the new and living way. It’s all in us.214 ¶16

You can take anything in this world…a gentleman (I don’t see him here tonight) he said to me last Friday night, “My brother said to me, ‘You mustn’t go or you should not go to Neville anymore,’ and the reason given is this, ‘You went to Neville for an increase in business. Now we have so much business that we haven’t time to fulfill it, so don’t go any more, wait awhile.’” These are his own words. He said, “I don’t write letters but this is my…you want a testimony? You want to prove to yourself and the people who listen to you that imagining creates reality? Well, my brother said to me, ‘Don’t go to Neville anymore; not yet anyway.’” Well, he isn’t here tonight and he comes here all the time, but he said, “We have so much business we haven’t really time to fulfill the business, and the purpose for going there in the first place was to get business, and now we have more than we can take care of.” So that was his letter, given to me verbally.214 ¶17

So I say you can’t fail because imagining is God and there’s nothing but God. Every imaginal act is a causative act. But you may not have done it with feeling; you may not have done it in a prayerful manner. And by prayerful I don’t mean any holy manner, because “to pray” is to move towards, to accede to, to get near the object of your affections, something that you really intend to have in this world. So the word prayer is defined as “motion towards, accession to, nearness at, at or in the vicinity of.”214 ¶18

Well, if today…like the chap whose story we told last week, he wanted to prove this law—-he’s done it numberless times—-but he wanted to prove it, and he actually fell asleep in the assumption that he was in Denver in a bakery that he knew so well, next to the deep freeze. And the very next day, on Sunday, seated at a table, a friend of his said to him, “How would you like to go with us to Denver? I’m going to see my brother.” Well, how can you simply rub that out as coincidence? And the very next day, a second party invited him to go to Denver. He could have been invited to go to Alaska. He wasn’t going to Alaska—Denver, exactly where he wanted to go. And he slept in his Imagination in the assumption he was physically there. Well, isn’t that praying? To pray is really “to want intensely.” In fact, a definition in my Concordance, my biblical Concordance, for “lusting after” is pray; and this is how it’s defined, “the superimposition of time, place or order with passion.” The superimposition of time, place or order with passion: to superimpose Denver upon Los Angeles so Los Angeles ceases to be in my Imagination and I’m really in Denver. And to see that I really have superimposed to the point of displacing Los Angeles, I think of Los Angeles, and then I think of Los Angeles in my Imagination as I would see it relative to Denver; and there I sleep. And so, I did it with intensity, I did it with feeling, I did it with passion. So I displaced Los Angeles as I put in its place this superimposed state called Denver. And that’s praying. He got it in twenty-four hours.214 ¶19

All I ask of anyone here is to try it, just try it, and you’ll see a new and living way. Eventually you’ll be able to take the whole story; and the whole story will lead you straight into the Holy of Holies where you’re in the presence of God. You will know God to be man. As Blake brought out so beautifully, “Thou art a man; God is no more. Thy own humanity learn to adore.” He is man. The world will say, “How can God be man? God is some impersonal force.” I tell you from experience God is man and you stand in his presence and he’s infinite love, in spite of all of the horrors of the world. And so, one day you will know the truth of that 13th Corinthians, the 1st Corinthians: that although you have all the gifts of the Spirit but have not love, you are nothing. And it’s just as simple as that. So you could take this wonderful law and go as far with me as earning billions and owning fortunes in this world, go as far as that in the use of the law, but you have not love, you have nothing, but I mean nothing. If you own the whole vast world and have not love, it is just as nothing. It’s as simple as that.214 ¶20

But the day will come, you will hear the story and you’ll go as far as you’ve heard—if your response to the story was positive, that you believed me; and one day right straight through the curtain into the presence of the Holy of Holies, into the sanctuary. And when you’re brought into the sanctuary, there is the Ancient of Days that is the embodiment of infinite love. It seems strange that such a being (man) that I could say of this man that he created the universe; and that only this man which is only Imagination personified is vast enough to contain the immensity of space; and that man’s Imagination manifests itself in the Imaginations of men: that you perform an imaginal act here and don’t concern yourself as to which individual in this world or how many in this world will be used as instruments to externalize what you’ve imagined. Leave it alone, because we are one and all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle. So leave them alone. You simply remain loyal to your imaginal act, confident in this presence that you really are. When you say “I imagine,” that’s God. Just wait.214 ¶21

If you wait a day, as my friend Ward waited a day, and the invitation to Denver. This man Donovan, he waited three years for a man to be shot down over Russia. If I told him this night that you shot down Powers, were he bigger than I he’d slap me in the face. And yet he shot down Powers, using an extension of his arm called a Russian soldier…if it came from the ground. Or if it came from a Russian plane, he used that, for he imagined it. He was a very brilliant, and still is a brilliant, brilliant trial lawyer, and yet, he cannot believe for one moment that causation goes back to his own wonderful dramatic feeling (imaginal act) in that courtroom. And if there is no other cause, you can stand right here, just right here, and imagine yourself the lady, the gentleman that you want to be. And then looking into the faces of your friends, all in your Imagination, and allow them to see you as they must see you were it true that you have become the man, become the lady, that you want to be. Then trust that imaginal act implicitly. And that is holding God trustworthy. You hold him trustworthy because he is faithful to his promise.214 ¶22

He told me that if I lust after someone without the physical confirmation of the act, I’ve committed the act. I may lust and restrain the impulse. I may contemplate the act along with its consequences and feel that I might be discovered in the act, and so the consequences I want to avoid. But I am told in this story that’s not good enough. To actually imagine the act, regardless of the restraint on my part having considered the consequences, was not good enough: I performed the act. And so, you imagine the act of anything, that you’re wealthy, you imagine that you are wanted, you imagine that you are contributing to the world’s good, you imagine that you are a great…and you name it, and you actually feel that you are. You don’t think in terms of the consequences. That’s an act in itself, well, then you are going to get it.214 ¶23

And when you get it it’s going to carry with itself certain obligations to society. You may not then enjoy the obligations that come with the birth of that imaginal act. Sometimes tremendous responsibility goes with wealth one has imagined, and they want the wealth without the responsibility. But it will come together if you are willing to completely accept the birth of what you really have created, recognize it as your own offspring, your own harvest, and take it. Then you will know this new and living way.214 ¶24

It comes straight through the curtain of the flesh. And in one moment of time, when you least expect it, you will realize the depth of this story, how true it is in depth. For your whole body will be shattered; and it’s not this, it’s that eternal you torn. Why? I can’t tell you. The moment I get it I’ll tell you. I only know what I’ve experienced. I only know that it parallels what I was told in scripture I would experience if I believed that I am he. For if this body that is torn is identified with the flesh of Jesus, and it was my body that was torn, wasn’t that the flesh of Jesus? And did he not say, “I am the way”? Well, I know exactly what happened to me. So I knew exactly what I’m told, that “I am the way.” So don’t divorce yourself from Jesus; don’t divorce yourself from God; don’t separate yourself from God. That the human Imagination…”the eternal body of man is the human Imagination and that is God himself, the divine body, Jesus” . And so, take it all together, and don’t put them apart—-that’s Jesus, and I’m a little me, and that is God who is his father—don’t. That’s what the churches taught for 2,000 years. It hasn’t a thing to do with the great story, the story of God actually becoming man that man may become God; burying himself right into man and then transfusing, transforming man with himself by lifting man as his own being. And there is a path by which this is done, and this path is told us in the story of Jesus: his birth, his discovery of fatherhood, his ascension into heaven, all these, one after the other takes place in the Imagination of man.214 ¶25

Well, when you feel it, it feels so physical. When I was severed in two, it felt like my body physically was severed in two. When I felt that infant, it was something physical in my hand. When I saw the witnesses to the event, they were physical. This is all man, there’s nothing but man in this world. Because why? God is man, and there’s nothing but God.214 ¶26

And so, when you look into the vast world, the whole vast world is man and you are that man. But how far will you go with me? I hope you’ll go all the way. I hope that you will take this story as I have told it in the Promise, and read it over and over, and go with it.214 ¶27

Some will go no farther than the law. One chap (he never comes here any more) when I wrote the book I sent him a copy because his wife was so kind in helping with the typing. He got me on the phone and he said, “You know, Neville, you’ve written an excellent book up to the end of the law, and then it became a spoiled book by the addition of the Promise.” He can’t take the story; he’d have no part of it. You can’t discuss it with him. No matter how you try to show him, he will not listen for one second, but he will take all concerning the law. That’s why I’ve told you in the beginning by asking a question, “Can any man go forth where his Imagination has never walked before?” No! So this friend of whom I speak he can’t go forth, he can’t go beyond the law, because he will not listen and respond positively to the story as recorded in scripture. Yet he trusts me implicitly. He feels I’ve told the truth, but he feels it’s hallucination, because that’s the whole vast world. You go back and you show him that in the scripture long before you physically came into this world it was written there. Well, how can your experience parallel what was written there 3,000 years ago and what was told by the servants of the Lord, called prophets; that these things would happen to man when the fullness of the time had come, when everything had been ripened, ready for hatching out, then it would start to be hatched out? But he will not believe it.214 ¶28

So, there may be many here this night who can go no further than the law. And so because of that, we’ve got to bear that in mind and night after night, week after week, come down to a certain level where everyone can benefit from whatever is said from this platform.214 ¶29

I tell you the same living way. Sitting here this night, you do not need the assistance of anyone to become the one that you want to be. All you need to do is to hear the story and respond positively to that story, and that is that your Imagination is the being spoken of in scripture as Jesus Christ. Will you believe it, that your Imagination is he, that’s Jesus Christ? And with him all things are possible and that by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made, you believe that? You believe it of Jesus Christ? Some will say yes; others will say, no, I can’t believe it of him; I believe it of God. But they won’t believe that Jesus Christ is God…they can’t go that far. Well, alright, go back…you believe it of God? If you say yes, alright, will you now believe that that God that you believe in, and by him all things were made? You say yes to that. Well, do you believe that that is your Imagination? If you hesitate there, well, then we can still go a little bit. Then come down, are some things possible to your Imagination? You may get a certain acceptance there, and you start from there, and try it in a little way, in some small wonderful little way. And then from then you start moving up and you go farther and farther and farther, and one day you’ll take the entire story and go the limit.214 ¶30

Then you’ll find that the God spoken of in scripture in the very beginning when he reveals his name as I AM—and that’s my name forever, to be known forever by all generations—-then you will find out who he really is. You’ll repose on him then until the morning of the grave, when the stone is rolled away, and you will know that he is your life. I AM life! “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life” . So you repose on it, you sleep on it. You sleep every night on I AM, don’t you? Who goes to bed and who gets out of the bed? You say, “Well, I am getting out of bed, I’m going to bed.” Well, repose on it. For when you go to bed at night, you repose on God and you sleep on God. And the day will come, that morning of the grave when the grave is opened, and you awake. Who’s awakening? You say, “Well, I am awakening.” Well, that’s God, and so God will awaken that morning. How many years I do not know? Blake claims 6,000 years in his own case. So how long you’ve been going in the journey, I don’t know. But you will repose on God and God is saying to you, I am your life, and I am the only way, and I am the truth, and there is no other way in the world.214 ¶31

So you repose on him night after night. You wake in the morning, you’re still with him, and you go through life not knowing that you really are the being spoken of in scripture as the one called Christ Jesus. And the day will come…and when you read it the whole thing becomes so luminous. Who would have thought that the blood of Jesus was this living pulsing golden light? Who would have thought that man is truly washed in the blood of the lamb? That he actually enters it and knows that blood of Jesus to be himself? And the life is in the blood, you’re told. So you go into the blood, and it’s you; and then like a serpent you ascend into the Holy of Holies, no loss of identity. You know that the story of the blood is true; the story of the temple being torn in two, that’s true; and the whole thing was true. But it is so unlike what the churches have told you in the past and still today tell you concerning this greatest of all stories. They’ve separated God from man and put him up there to be like something other than what you look like. And may I tell you, when you see him, you are like him. Whenever you meet him, you are like him. He actually became you and took upon himself your limitations, and raised you to be just like him, and you are like him. That’s the story.214 ¶32

So this new and living way…if you want to check it, you’ll read it in the 10th chapter of the Book of Hebrews. You understand these words of Paul from his 2nd Corinthians, the 5th chapter: “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” . And Paul means exactly what he has said. Don’t try any interpretation; he means exactly what he said in the 2nd Corinthians, the 5th chapter, “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.”214 ¶33

And so, no one on the outside would he ever judge by. He was looking for some Messiah to come in a peculiar way, some majestic way, and that’s not the way he comes. He comes from within. He may come in one that you would never judge. Because if you judge externally, you judge his situation in life, you will think he should come from this noble family or that intellectual ground.214 ¶34

Here, I heard only a few months ago where before Aldous Huxley made his exit from this world he called himself a humanist. He and his brother Julian and a raft of others, and they had this little [...]. They claimed they should now limit this exploding population to the intellectual crowd. In other words, stop all production save through this one channel, which they would decide (the intellectuals) who would bring forth tomorrow’s intellectuals; therefore, they called it the humanist crowd. Can you imagine that?214 ¶35

And so, Paul discovered that you couldn’t judge anyone, because here you will see someone who is very poor, unknown, unwanted, and in the eyes of God he is so close to complete awakening that his value, compared to all that Aldous would think, well, you couldn’t compare them if you took his worth in the kingdom compared to those that man on this level would judge as worthy. So listen to the words: “You see John the Baptist? No one born of woman is greater than John the Baptist; yet I tell you the least in the kingdom is greater than he” . And yet today we have cathedrals built to John the Baptist and we call him a saint. We call him Saint John the Baptist, and we have cathedrals, and here in the Holy Scripture, “The least in the kingdom is greater than he”—-stating quite openly he is not in the kingdom.214 ¶36

Not that state of consciousness…that is the rough state, against everything, a complete against-ness of things. He didn’t eat meat, he didn’t drink wine, he was simply in the rough state. All his clothing, we are told, which is all through, representing how the mind is formed as it were. He was simply against everything in this world in the attempt to be a very holy man. And here comes one who did not abide by any of these outside things at all, and he said, “He who is the least in the kingdom is greater than John.” Yet we’ve gone blindly on “sainting” this one, “sainting” that one, and putting ourselves up to judge who has entered the kingdom.214 ¶37

Listen to the story carefully and if you’ve had the experience, doesn’t matter what the world will tell you. You only get in, in one way: “Except you be born from above you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of God” and “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up” , in the identical manner; and you’re lifted up by the blood of Jesus; and so you are saved. You are told, “I will enter the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus, a new and living way, through the curtain, which he has opened” . The word opened literally means “inaugurated”—which he has inaugurated through the curtain that is his flesh. And so when you go through and your whole being has been cut in two, you know the flesh of Jesus. So you don’t separate yourself from Jesus, don’t separate yourself from God, you don’t separate yourself from this grand mystery…it’s all you. But how far would you go, I can’t tell you. Listen to the story and you be the judge. If you respond positively, well, then you can go as far as you can respond.214 ¶38

So now let me in closing again remind you by asking the same question we asked in the beginning, “Can any man”—I don’t care who he is, how wise, how foolish, how great, how little—“can any man go forth where his Imagination has never walked before?” No. So let your Imagination walk as far as it possibly can by hearing the story from one who has experienced it and walk with him. Because if you can walk with him—-it may not be tonight or tomorrow night—but if you can hear it and walk with him in faith that this is true, you will wait then patiently and in confidence that one day you will experience it. Then you will go as far as that. And the day will come, you will go to the very end and you will awake. And who are you?—-God. Seems incredible! You will awaken one day and you are he; and you will know the words “I am he.”214 ¶39

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *214 ¶40

Any other questions, please?214 ¶43

William Blake, in his poem “The Four Zoas: a Dream of Nine Nights,” tells of God’s fall into division and his resurrection to unity – his fall into generation, decay, and death and his resurrection into the unity of the one Father. Associating his poem with the 6th chapter of Ephesians, the 12th verse, he states: “We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places.” So we see that the fall into division and the resurrection into unity is mental.213 ¶1

From beginning to end, the Bible speaks of a certain temple that is being constructed. And every day we are building our temple for the dwelling place of God the Father. In the 2nd chapter of the Book of Ephesians, we are told: “The whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built into it as a living structure of God in the Spirit.” In other words, as you bring your building and I bring mine, we are fitted together as living stones in the building of God.213 ¶2

Let me explain this with a story told me just this past week. This is an experience of a lady who is very much a lady and only recently had a little baby. She said: “In my dream I am three people. I am myself, yet I am a man. As myself, I long for a little green dog. Becoming another, I see my dog standing among others. He shines like the sun and because I have ordered him, I know all I have to do is wait for his arrival. ” Now, in my dream I am always the sender. When something is to be told, I tell it to another (which is myself), then I become the other in order to retell the story to the third. Becoming the third, I then tell the second to tell the first. I know it doesn’t make sense on this level, but as the third person speaking, I hear the message as the second, and say to myself – the first: ‘The dog is yours now.’ And as the first I am so happy to hear the news. ”213 ¶3

Again as the third person, I tell the second to say to the first: ‘Your building is finished. All you have to do is turn around to take it.’ Now as the first person, my little dog disappears and I am looking at my many new buildings being constructed. Then I remember that my building is finished and all I have to do is turn around and claim it – when my little baby cries and awakens me.”213 ¶4

On the surface her vision appears to be nothing, but it has tremendous significance. Her green dog shining like the sun is Caleb in scripture. Caleb is he who goes with Joshua into the Promised Land. In the story, Caleb – having faith in the God who promised Israel land – was sent by Moses along with other spies into Canaan. Upon returning, Caleb said: “Attack immediately” but the men who had gone with him were afraid; so only the two, Caleb and Joshua (the Hebraic form of the word “Jesus”), entered.213 ¶5

In her dream she is waiting for a little green dog. The word “green” in this dream means “pressing with sap; luscious; health.” Bursting with all that is mine, I will take you to lie down in green pastures. Full of faith in the God who promised land to Israel, Caleb is highly recommended, as only two can enter. Others had the dog and others will find him, for she is not the only one who enters the promised land.213 ¶6

Now, who was waiting for his companion? God! As the third, the second is told and tells the first that the dog is now hers. Then the experience is repeated, as she once more becomes the sender (the teller), but she is never the receiver, for God only acts and is in existing beings or men. Now, as the first person she realises that the little dog has disappeared. Why? Because she has already entered the promised land. Seeing the fabulous construction going on, she is reminded that her building is finished and all she had to do is turn around and see it.213 ¶7

There are two passages in scripture, one in the 12th chapter of Acts and the other in the 15th chapter of Luke, where the Greek word “heautou” is translated “he came to himself.” In the Book of Luke these words were spoken of the prodigal son. And in the Book of Acts, Peter was imprisoned and shackled in chains. His garments were sold and he was alone in the cell, when the angel of the Lord entered, touched him, and as he rose, it is said: “he came to himself.”213 ¶8

Now, this word “heautou” could have been translated, “he turned around; it is fulfilled; it is finished; to be married.” And she heard the words: “All you need to do is turn around.” Turn around and you will behold the finished structure. As a living stone you have now contributed to the overall structure, which is the temple of the Living God.213 ¶9

I know from my own experience, everyone contributes to that one Living Stone called the kingdom of heaven! You will be turned around by a force that is greater than anything known to man, but it will not happen until the end. You cannot physically turn around, nor can you force the mind to do it.213 ¶10

Now, Blake tells us: “God fell into division” and this lady divided herself into three. Now heading for the end of the journey, when the force that is holding you to this world is relieved, you will turn around to see the structure your Father built and you will know that you are He. Your temple is not built by another. “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Who is he? I am he who began the good work in you. “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction. For my own sake I do it, for my own sake, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”213 ¶11

Your journey is at its end, my dear. You saw the perfect vision. Your building is finished and all you have to do is turn around. This will come at the end, for if you should turn around you will vanish, for, like Paul, you have fought the good fight.213 ¶12

Let no one tell you Paul was exaggerating; it is a fight, for we are contending not with flesh and blood. At the present moment someone is treading the wine press of hate, and – unrestrained – the thought is sent on its wings of feeling. Perhaps sitting in a dungeon this night, someone is treading the wine press of war, and some little boy out in the field catches the idea and wanting to be a hero dreams of becoming a great general, commanding the destruction of the world. He is dreaming and you can’t stop his dream.213 ¶13

So you are not warring against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers and spiritual wickedness in heavenly places, and heaven is within. In the inside of your mind these abominable, loathsome beings are carved. They are unseen forces impinging upon you morning, noon, and night.213 ¶14

But oh, what a thrill to get a letter of this nature! Her building is finished. She now knows that she only sends! She gave the order, saw herself as another, receiving, but when the message must be retold she once more became the teller. And when it is to be experienced, she will be the one who experiences it. So God only acts and is in existing beings or men, for God is playing all the parts.213 ¶15

In the end everyone brings his living temple to the house of God. Ephesians tells us how the structure is joined together and how the holy temple grows in the Spirit. It’s a spiritual temple, not one in this world. Scripture calls the church “the body of Christ”, but the word translated “church” is “communion of the assemblage of the redeemed.” It’s the assemblage of those whose building is finished. Playing the part of the receiver, we are the one being who is the builder.213 ¶16

Finding Caleb, you (as Joshua, who is Jesus) are led into the Promised Land, as scripture is fulfilled. Having shone like the sun in order to lead you in, Caleb disappears leaving Jesus only. And who is Jesus? Your own wonderful human imagination!213 ¶17

Now let me share another story. Three years ago, in a dream, this lady saw a man who embodied everything she could ever desire. They fell in love and an engagement was announced. Then, thinking she was awake, she put on her nightgown and retired in the hope that he would join her. But as he entered the room, the man shook his head and said: “Not yet, but I will return.” This month the same man returned and implied by his look that he had come to complete the promise of marriage.213 ¶18

I can tell her that, although it hasn’t been accomplished, she had the perfect revelation of that which is coming to her. She now has the assurance that: “I will come again and receive you into myself, that where I am there, you shall be also.”213 ¶19

This is all beautiful symbolism. This lady is not about to be married in this world of ours to a flesh and blood man of such magnitude. No, he is the symbol of the being spoken of in Isaiah: “Your maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name.” The promise is being kept in her. And one day she will turn around within herself and become that living temple of the Risen Lord.213 ¶20

I have seen the temple, and when I leave the garment relative to this age I will enter an entirely different age. And like Paul it is my desire to depart and be with Christ, but it is more important at the moment to remain and encourage you, even though you are fighting against principalities, powers of darkness, and all the horrors of the world. But I have seen the building being constructed for you, not by another, but by your deeper self, who is God the Father.213 ¶21

In 1952, while living in New York City, I had a thirst that only an experience of God could quench. “As the hart panteth after the waterways, so panteth my soul after thee, Oh God.” Then one night out of the blue I found myself fulfilling the 42nd Psalm: “These things I remember, as I pour out my soul. How I went with the throng and led them in procession to the house of God.”213 ¶22

That night I found myself leading an enormous procession toward the house of God. It was still in the distance, but as I led them a voice rang out: “And God walks with them.” A woman at my side questioned the voice, saying: “If God walks with us, where is he?” And the voice replied: “At your side.” Looking at me and seeing a man of flesh and blood, she said: “You mean Neville is God?” and the voice replied: “Yes, in the act of waking.”213 ¶23

Then the voice spoke only to me, saying: “I laid myself down within you to sleep and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed ” and suddenly I knew that he was dreaming he was me. At that moment memory returned, and I became six vortices, which I felt enter my hands, my feet, my head, and my side. That was when I knew the ecstasy of the crucifixion.213 ¶24

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, divided the tenses, saying: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” The crucifixion is past. “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” If this is true, then the universal Christ gave us himself, for did he not say: “No man takes my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again.” And we are laid down with him, because he chose us in him before the foundation of the world.213 ¶25

So, if you are united with him in a death like his, you will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. I know this is true, for he was resurrected in me, confirming the story of scripture. This is how the structure is enhanced and grows in God.213 ¶26

And when the final curtain comes down and the temple is perfect, you will be God the Father and I will be God the Father, yet none of us will lose our identity!213 ¶27

Now I ask you to continue to test your creative power by practicing revision. If you hear something that is unlovely, don’t accept it, but instantly revise it. Hear the words that ought to have been spoken and persuade yourself, to the best of your ability, that it is so.213 ¶28

What would it matter if you owned the world tonight and departed tomorrow to find yourself working as a fry cook, serving up flap cakes? Live your life fully while here, but remember you can’t take your money with you. So, enjoy the things of this world and apply this wonderful law for yourself and others, for imagining truly does create reality.213 ¶29

And remember: you are not wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and darkness of the rulers of this world and spiritual evil in heavenly places. And one day, you who have fallen into division will resurrect into unity!213 ¶30

Now let us go into the silence.213 ¶31