Now tonight’s subject is “No Other God.” A God tested in the fires of experience is the only God upon whom to rely. Man may say, “How can you test God? Isn’t that blasphemy?” No, it is not. You’re invited to test God, as you’re told in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves. Test yourselves whether you are holding to the faith. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!” . He speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ as dwelling in you, and he invites you to test him. Well, how would I test him? He said to me, “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will” . I must now meet one condition: I must believe that I have it. I must dare to assume that I am the man that I want to be and remain faithful to that assumption, and that assumption, if he has not lied to me, should harden into fact. So I am called upon to test him…but I too must be faithful as the model. We can’t change models every day and produce anything but confusion. So if I’m going to be the model, well then, I must dare to assume that I am the man that I want to be. And having assumed it, I remain faithful to that assumption that it may have one model from which to work; then he will objectify it and produce it in my world. It’s entirely up to me. So I test him. And when I find him faithful to his claim, then I have found the only God worthy of my attention.175 ¶1

So when I read in scripture, “And this is my name…when you come to the people of Israel and they ask you, ‘What is his name?’ Just say I AM…I AM has sent you,” that’s all. No other being has sent you . Now we are told that “I made myself known unto Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob by my name God Almighty. But by my name the Lord I did not make myself known unto them” . Oh yes, the name “the Lord” was known but not understood. You have heard time and again, “I am the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and beside me there is no savior” , but none. You’ve heard it, but do you really grasp it? Do you understand it? The great confession of faith that you read in the Book of Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” . Oh, we’ve all heard it, do we understand it? When I say I am, that’s one, that’s God. But you will say, “But you aren’t God.” I’m not saying Neville is God. I’m not saying anything you see is God. I am saying, “I am,” and being, before it conditioned itself to say it is a man of this race or that nation or something else, before I say anything and condition it, the unconditioned “I am,” that’s God. Now, can I believe? Would I trust it? Well, let me show you how we trust it, how we trust.175 ¶2

A friend who is here tonight wrote me this letter. He said, “While sitting in the Silence here recently I mapped out exactly what I wanted. It would depend upon hearing a certain voice say something to me, which would imply that I had what I desired…I had to hear that voice. And so, when we went into the Silence, I listened attentively for that voice, and I heard exactly what I wanted to hear as I had predetermined…which, by the way,” said he, “has already manifested. It’s all done. But when I came out having heard the voice, I waited for you to start lecturing. For in that Silence, following what I did, I had seen in my Silence a certain panel door and I was curious and wondered what is behind that door? So waiting for you to start the lecture my curiosity was answered, for the door opened and out came a white pig.” Now, said he, “Does it have any significance? ”175 ¶3

It has tremendous significance. A pig, in the universal language of symbolism, is simply Jesus, the everlasting savior. You’ll read it in The Lost Language of Symbolism . For here, a pig, the sow, with upwards of twenty little suckling pigs are nursing simultaneously—the everlasting sustainer. And here, the two pigs that are drawn in this symbolism have the crown on them, and then below the figures of the pigs you’ll find the initials Jesus Christ or you’ll find the initials Christus Redeemer, Redemptor. So he saw the symbol …it’s only a symbol of his own wonderful human Imagination, for that’s Christ. There is no other Christ. But if I imagine a state and remain faithful to it, and the thing externalizes itself in my world, I have found the Creator of the world. For if he made all things and without him not one thing was made that was made, and then I found how I made something, then I’ve found him. I have found him of whom Moses and the law wrote, the one who created all of this: My own wonderful human Imagination.175 ¶4

Many years ago I had this vision. I was in an enormous coliseum, a huge exhibition of flowers and trees. In fact, the entire plant world we found exhibited there. It was closing time and I was all alone as everyone had left. I looked down…at my foot was a little pig, a little runt. I wondered, “Now what can I do with the pig, he must be fed?” Well, there was no one around, no attendant, so I took the little pig up, put him on a chest, maybe a little bit larger than this, and I broke off some branches, flowers, leaves and all kinds of things. I had no other food for him but what comes out of the plant world. I bedded him down for the night, knowing that tomorrow when some attendant comes in they will see the little pig and feed him properly. So I got him completely down.175 ¶5

Then suddenly the scene changed and this enormous coliseum became a huge supermarket. I looked down and here is the pig. He’s grown in the interval but he’s not well fed. He is tall and rangy, he’s thin. He should have been far better fed in that interval between my discovery of him and when I saw him the second time. So I went over, got a bag of meal and I started to mix it. I called out to my daughter Vicki, I said, “Vicki, bring me a package of crackers so I may feed the pig while I mix the meal for him, because he could have something in the interval.” She said to me, “Daddy, what would I use for money?” I said, “Why, this whole thing belongs to us, it’s all ours. You don’t need money. Go and take a box of crackers.” Well, she went over to a pile that was simply arranged like a pyramid, and instead of taking one from the top, she took one from the bottom and just started the entire pile, and the whole thing crashed, revealing a single lit candle. The candle was where that whole pyramid hid it before. Then I said to her, “Do not rebuild the pyramid. Now that the candle is lit it must remain lit and never be hidden ever again.”175 ¶6

I started kneading, and my brother Victor came over and he asked what I was doing. I told him I’m mixing it for my pig. Then he took from a bag what appeared to be like some white thick gravy, and he took three handfuls and added it to my mixture. I began to mix it…and then I woke.175 ¶7

But I woke hearing these words from scripture: “The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord” and “When his candle shone upon my head, by its light I walked through darkness” . So here is the story as told in scripture as Job tells it and the Preacher tells it in the Book of Proverbs. I heard it coming through, and I realized it had great significance.175 ¶8

And so, seeking the symbolism of the pig I found it meant “the everlasting sustainer of the world” and I found my Imagination to be Jesus Christ. But I had not in the interval between the discovery and the second discovery of the symbol exercised it enough. I had not fed that pig well, for I neglected to exercise it when the opportunity arose. Every day it arises for me to take my Imagination and use it lovingly on behalf of others. So if all day long I hear people’s distress calls and I do nothing about it, well then, I’m not feeding the pig. If I want something in this world and I do not exercise my Imagination towards the fulfillment of that state, based upon the statement “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will,” well, having heard that and it comes from Jesus Christ, and having heard Jesus Christ to be and discovered him to be my own wonderful human Imagination and not doing it, I’m not feeding him. And so, in the interval he grew but he was lanky. He was tall and quite rangy, but he should have been much, much fatter. In fact, I couldn’t call him fat. He simply survived in spite of my neglect. [...] think of him, you saw the pig.175 ¶9

So when that door opened and the pig came out, you had just proven to your own satisfaction that this thing works. In the interval it worked, for what you did in the Silence, in no time flat, because it’s only a few weeks ago that you did it…and in that short interval what you did in the Silence came to pass.175 ¶10

In the same letter he wrote this. He said, “You, in my vision, you were looking above my head at the branches of a perfectly straight tree. It was perfectly straight, but you were looking above my head at this tree at its branches. The tree was about three or four years old, and there you are looking at it above me. The tree came out of the top of my skull. The tree was growing out of my skull, and you were looking at it, just above, and it was about three or four years old.”175 ¶11

Well, I tell him tonight, if he had any doubt…and I told him about a week ago that he was born from above but he has no memory of it. He certainly should not doubt now. For no one can have this tree growing out of the skull, the tree of life, who has not been born from above. And if it is three or four years old by now, well then, he has not brought back the memory of the three of the four great events. If it is four years old, well then, he hasn’t brought any back. If it is three, he still has hope that he may bring back the one with the dove. But this is the tree of life.175 ¶12

As you are told in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark, “And when the man’s eye was opened, the man who was born blind, and when his eye was opened he was asked, ‘What do you see if you see anything?’ and he answered, ‘I see men as trees, walking’” . The tree of life turns up at birth; it is down into generation until the second birth, which takes place above. “Ye must be born from above. Unless ye be born from above, you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of God” . And this tree of life that goes down into generation, at birth is reversed and turns into regeneration where your creation is from above…an entirely different world. So here, he said it was perfectly straight and he emphasized the word straight in his letter. Well, when Paul was blinded by the light…the vision came to Ananias and said to Ananias, “Go to the street called Straight and there to the house of Judas, and you’ll find a man who prays. For I showed him in a vision that you would put your hand upon him and restore his sight” .175 ¶13

So maybe the sight will be restored from now, for you emphasized the word straight in your description of this tree…the perfectly straight tree that grew out of your own skull.175 ¶14

Personally, I had this vision, I saw men, prominent men in the village government, and one in particular, who was the third in the Labor government, and he was trying so hard to stick a tree on his head that he may take off. Every time he jumped in the hopes that this tree would support him, he fell flat on his face…he and the tree, and the tree [...] off his head.175 ¶15

But as Blake said, “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through nature to find the tree; but their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain.” The only tree of life you’ll ever find is growing in the human brain, and when it begins to grow it grows up, not down. If you saw a man on these charts, mortal man, the man who dies, you’d see a tree growing down. The brain, the roots and then all the veins, and all the nerves, and the whole thing looks just like an inverted tree. If you saw that same man through the eyes of [...] after his re-birth, you would see the tree turning up and growing into the most majestic [...]. So this night when I saw these men who really are the awakened society, they looked like a forest walking, the most majestic beings in the world. You might mistake them for, well, things you have seen on earth like a stag. But what antlers! Well, it’s a tree growing up out from the brain of man.175 ¶16

And so, he said that I looked at him, but not at him, I looked above him at the branches of a tree that was so perfectly straight growing out of the top of his brain, of his skull. And it seemed to him the tree was about three or four years old. So I know from my own experience that not everyone who has the experience of re-birth and the discovery of the Son brings back the memory of it. I can’t tell you why, but they have no knowledge of the memory of the events. But his visions following in the past few months led me to the conclusion that he has had it. He has definitely had the experience.175 ¶17

But tonight, the subject is “No other God.” Do not turn to any other God…there is no other God. This only God is your own wonderful human Imagination, and do not turn to any other God…there is no other God. The day will come you will find him, and when you find him you’ll find yourself. He will unveil himself and when he unveils himself, he unveils you as himself. You don’t see another; you are the being. And it takes his Son to unveil you: “Only the Son knows who the Father is, and only the Father knows who the Son is” . So when the Son unveils you, he calls you Father, and only then can you really know who you really are…that you are God the Father and there is no other God.175 ¶18

If this thing proves itself in performance, what does it matter what the world thinks. And so test him, for there’s no other God worthy of your attention but that God that you have tested in the fires of experience and proven true. He proves himself in the testing. If he proves himself in the testing, what does it matter if the whole vast world rose in opposition and told you that you’re insane or that you’re blaspheming? What does it matter? Let them say anything that they want, for you’ve found the only true God.175 ¶19

So Abraham called upon the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. He called upon the name of the Lord, and the name of the Lord is “the everlasting God.” That’s the divine definition of Jehovah, and the word Jehovah, which is translated the Lord, is Yod He Vau He which means I AM. That is its meaning. So he’s called upon the name of I AM, the everlasting God. The word translated everlasting is the word Olam, the same word translated as eternity, as the world. “And God has put eternity into the mind of man yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” . So he’s put everlasting, put Olam…well, the word also means a youth, a stripling, a young man.175 ¶20

These are the terms given to David when David stands before the king and he inquires of David. But he’s not asking who David is he’s trying to find out who is his father? And so, he asks his lieutenant, “Whose son is that young man, that youth?” and the lieutenant said, “As your soul liveth, O king, I cannot tell.” He said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is” . No one knows. Now this young man comes before him with the head of the giant in his hands, Goliath, and he said to the young man, “Whose son are you, young man?” and he replies, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.” Well, the word Jesse means “I AM.” I am the son of him whose name is I AM.175 ¶21

Now, that is put into the mind of man so that man cannot find out what was placed there until the very end, not until the end. But in the end, he that was placed there will come out and reveal you who carried him in your bosom through the centuries as you journeyed from heaven back to heaven. For you came out of heaven; you didn’t begin here in your mother’s womb. You came out from yourself, the Father, and you came into this world of death to conquer it and you will. In the end you will actually unveil yourself: It will take your son who will stand before you, and he’s David of biblical fame. He’ll stand before you and call you Father, and only then will you know who you really are—you are God the Father. His son calling you Father reveals you to yourself.175 ¶22

And this is the story of scripture. When this happened no one believed the man in whom it happened. The earliest Christians when they spoke of scripture they referred only to the Old Testament; there was no New Testament. What they meant to say, they had found by revelation some clue to its meaning. But they only had one scripture and the scripture was the Old Testament. They knew nothing of any plans to write a new one, for the New Testament only interprets the Old. Without the Old there will be no New; and the New without the Old would be stupid, for the New is the fulfillment of the Old. But he said, “I have come to fulfill scripture,” well, there was no New Testament, so the only scripture he could have fulfilled was the Old. So he goes back into the old scripture and finds passages related to his inner experiences.175 ¶23

So the whole pattern is contained in man, and man, at the fullness of time, like a tree, the tree erupts and bears its fruit. And all the things told of Jesus Christ are contained within that seed, and then the tree erupts. Your birth is called the first eruption…the breaking of the shell. Then comes the second, the third, the fourth, and the whole tree comes into bloom…all within you.175 ¶24

But, while you’re here in the world of Caesar, you can take his challenge and test it. Tonight, you want to be other than what you are? Or you want a friend to be other than what they are? Without their consent, without their knowledge you represent them to yourself as you would like them to be, and persuade yourself that they are. To the degree that you are self-persuaded that they are they will become it. No power in this world can change it. They will actually become that which you have convinced yourself that they are, because the whole vast world is yourself pushed out. There’s only one God: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one” , not two. Well, that one is I AM. I didn’t say we are; I said I am. So when I see unnumbered people in the world, they only bear witness of what I am.175 ¶25

So without their consent, without their knowledge, you simply, all within your mind, you do exactly what he did. He goes through the Silence…and the Silence here is not long. In that short little interval he could not only complete the whole thing by a complete concentrated attention on the sound of a person’s voice, which voice is telling him what he wants to hear, and if he heard it, it would imply that things are as he desired them to be. So he heard it. He still has time to become curious and wonder what was behind the panel door. His curiosity was answered, because the door opened and out comes the pig. Yes, he was exercising this talent that is Christ. I hope in his case the pig was big and fat. Mine was just a runt when I first found him. In the interval I had not fed him properly. I hope he will continue to feed him properly and bring him in to some good big luscious meal. It’s only a symbol…but the symbol of the sustainer, the everlasting sustainer of the world.175 ¶26

So here tonight, believe there is no other God but God, and that God is your own wonderful human Imagination…there is no other God. If you turn to any other God, you turn to a false god. Now, “Make no graven image of God” . If you say “I am,” before you put anything on it, it has no face. Put no face on it. Let no one tell you, “That’s the face of Jesus Christ or that’s the face of Jesus Christ.” Forget it! There are unnumbered artists drawing faces of what they conceive Jesus to be. Forget it…he has no face. It’s simply I am. But, it’s a person because you are a person.175 ¶27

And he has a son. He calls himself the Father: “When you see me, you’ve seen the Father” . But you can’t be a father unless there’s a child. When the child appears, the child calls him “my Lord.” He calls him “the Lord.” In other words, he’s telling him, “You are my father Jesse,” well, Jesse means I AM, and I AM is the Lord. And the one who stands before you is David. I’m giving you something that is entirely new, and yet it’s not new, it is as old as the faith of Abraham. But man does not believe it, he’s been misled. He’s been led astray with strange concepts of who Jesus Christ is, when Jesus Christ is God the Father. As Father he has to have a Son and the Son is David.175 ¶28

I tell you what I know from experience. I did not read it in a book, I never heard it from the lips of a man; it came by revelation. The whole thing unfolded in me. And every tree contains the same story; there’s only one story. So if it hasn’t happened in you, don’t be distressed. I know in my friend’s case tonight, it has happened but he hasn’t remembered it. Well, I can say to him, pray that you will remember the experience.175 ¶29

But I ask you also to read that 9th chapter in the Book of Acts. It is almost, well, I wouldn’t say it’s frightening to say, but if you read the 9th of Acts, you will see that Paul didn’t know it either, and yet he was the one selected for a peculiar challenge to do what he did. And others who remembered were not selected. But Paul, who was violent against the early Christians and brought them shackled into Jerusalem to be beaten…and he consented unto Stephen’s death. And all that he tells you in the Book of Acts, well, when he was blinded by the truth, he came to the street called Straight—it’s capitalized just to emphasize it—and yet he was the one that the Lord picked out because of some peculiar quality in him: He would take that same force that he used for evil and now use it for good. That’s the same power. He was a man of intense power. Everything he did he was intense about it. And so that was Paul.175 ¶30

And maybe you are the one. You’re young enough to be the one singled out to really tell it…and then it will come back.175 ¶31

One thing did come back to Paul, and that was he remembered when his Son was unveiled within him: “When it pleased God to unveil and reveal his Son in me, then I did not consult men of flesh and blood. I did not go up to Jerusalem. I did not go to any place and discuss with those who were [...]” . No matter how great they were as apostles, it never occurred to him to get their permission or do anything with them. He went about doing exactly what he was told by the one who revealed his Son in him. And there’s no one on record who revealed more than Paul. So I’m not saying you are the one, but it will be my real hope that you are.175 ¶32

Nothing would please me more—because I am departing, my time is short—that you would be selected to tell it…I hope you are.175 ¶33

So tonight, believe me. Your own wonderful human Imagination is the one and only God. And put him to the test tonight with the most simple thing in the world. Doesn’t matter, he is the only Creator. So you want something? Well, let’s use the Creator…no other being in the world can create it. No matter what you want, he is the one to do it. And who is he?—your own wonderful human Imagination. So what would the feeling be like now if things were as you desired them to be? What would it be like? How would you see the world and how would the world see you? Well then, let them see you as they would see you if it were true, and you see them as you would see them if it were true. Now don’t change the model, for he within you must have a model, as you are told in James, “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” . He looks into the mirror and sees what he looks like, then he turns and forgets what he looked like. And so, you turn away from what you just imagined and completely forget what you really look like. Now persist in the state. It calls for a certain perseverance on your part. You know what you want to be, well alright, assume that you are it. Now remain faithful to that assumption, and let the one within you who is Christ the Lord externalize it…for you and he are one. While you’re in this world, you seem to be two, but you’re not really two. In the end, you’ll find yourself one with the Lord. I don’t mean you and the Lord, you as the Lord. There’s only one God in the end and you are God.175 ¶34

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *175 ¶35

Are there any questions, please?175 ¶36

Any other questions, please?175 ¶39

B lake asked the question: “Why is it that the Bible is more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because it is addressed to the Imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only immediately to the understanding, or reason?” The one book, called the Bible, is composed of sixty-six books. Take this challenge. Read each book as though the depth of your soul is speaking to your surface mind. As though the ineffable Imagination is speaking to the human Imagination, and not to your immediate understanding or reasoning mind. Let us examine this thought.172 ¶1

In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians Paul says: “We walk by faith and not by sight.” When we walk by sight, we know our way by objects that the eye sees. But Paul tells us to order our life by objects seen only in the imagination. In other words, when you know where you want to go and what you want to be, you are told not to rearrange your physical structure, but to walk by faith, viewing only the rearranged structure of your mind. And if you will remain faithful to that state of consciousness, what is seen only in your imagination will objectify itself in your world.172 ¶2

Paul now adds another observation, saying: “This one thing I do. Forgetting what lies behind, I strain forward to what lies ahead.” Paul’s goal was the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, but you need not have such a goal. Your desire could be a successful business. Now, everything begins in the imagination, for man is all imagination and God is man. God and man differ only in the degree of imagination’s intensity. Now keyed low, man walks by sight or by faith in his human imagination. Walking by sight is easier, because buildings rarely move. But when you walk by faith, the objects in your mind’s eye must remain as stable as those of the physical eye.172 ¶3

My brother Victor wanted to be a successful business man, and he knew how to remain faithful to what he imagined. In 1924, when our family didn’t have a cent, Victor rearranged the name on a building (in his mind’s eye) to imply we owned it. This he did for two years, when – without any more money than when he started imagining – a casual acquaintance purchased the building for us without collateral for $50,000. Eight years ago we sold the building to a bank for $850,000, and there is no capital gains tax in Barbados!172 ¶4

Walking by faith, every day as Victor passed that building, he saw “J. C. Goddard and Sons” on the marquee in place of the existing name of “I. N. Roach & Company”. Sight told him the building belonged to another, but faith said the building was his. By simply rearranging the structure of his mind every day for two years, our family’s fortune changed.172 ¶5

Now, we are told: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen, so that what is seen was made out of things that do not appear.” Only my brother Victor saw his mental act. Others saw the sign, “J. N. Roach & Company” – by sight, but Victor saw the words, “J.C. Goddard & Sons” – by faith.172 ¶6

Someone once asked Blake what he saw when he looked at the sun, and he replied, “I see a host of angels singing, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’” We can all see the same tree but see it differently, just as we can the same man. One may see him in need, while another sees him gainfully employed, both using the same power. You have the power to either live by faith or by sight. If you live by sight, accepting everything that happens, you remain an automaton, unable to change the conditions and events in your world. Only as you begin to live by faith will your life change.172 ¶7

Paul tells us that no matter what he has done or did not do, he puts it behind him and stretches forward towards what lies ahead. Paul’s ideal was to be called to the highest point of God. I hope this is your ideal, too, but perhaps it is not. Maybe other things are pressing upon you, such as the need for money. If so, make that your objective, but use the same technique. Put the past behind you. Do not look back and become like Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar of salt – which is a preservative. You always put what you want to preserve in brine. If you turn back and dwell upon the state you want to leave behind, you have placed it in brine and will become it once more. But if you will turn your back upon the past regardless of what you have or have not done, and stretch forward to what you want to be or do and remain faithful to your desire – nothing can stop you from achieving it. You will become the man you assume you are, if you persist in the assumption that you are already there!172 ¶8

Like Blake, I have found the Bible most entertaining, challenging, and instructive. It is not an easy book to read, however. If it were, it would not be worth my care, for as the ancients discovered, that which is not too explicit is fittest for instruction, as it rouses the faculties to act. Take this simple statement in Hebrews: “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 his son who reflects the glory of God and bears the stamp of his nature.”172 ¶9

The prophets, instruments through which God spoke, recorded their visions of what God intended, saying: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows forth his handiwork.” But in the last days God speaks to us by his son, David. This is a fantastic revelation, for in the end God is going to reveal himself. I could tell you until the ends of time that you are He, but only David can make you believe it. I’ll tell you why.172 ¶10

Many people, like Bishop Pike, question the authority of scripture; but it will never be questioned after it is experienced. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus Christ is called “the word of God”. And in the Book of John he declares his word is truth. May I tell you: only when a truth is experienced can it be known. I know what I have experienced is true. You have heard my words and believe me, but you will not know their truth to the degree that I do until they are experienced.172 ¶11

I have told you how my brother walked by faith rather than by sight, and created a fabulous business in the islands. Sight told him he didn’t have a penny to his name. But in faith he began to alter his life by that which only his imagination could see. Your sight registers what is before you right now. If you do not like it, you have an “I” within that is Christ in you. He is the power of imagination which, through faith, can change your life. As the operant power of your imagination, you can tell where you are going and what you are doing by watching your thoughts. If certain events in your past are unlovely and you remember them, you are ordering their experience. But if you turn your back on the past by forgetting what lies behind and stretch forward to what lies ahead, you will order your conversations aright and become what you behold. This truth will never be disproved, but you are its operant power and must live by it.172 ¶12

You need nothing on the outside, but can start just where you are; but you must walk in the direction you set up in your imagination. Ask yourself this simple question: What would it be like if it were true that I am now the person I want to be? Then reach for its feeling, its spiritual sensation. What is that? I’ll show you in a very simple way. Feel a piece of glass, now feel a baseball. Does the baseball feel like glass? Can you feel a tennis ball? Does it feel like a baseball or a piece of glass? Can you feel a piece of cloth, a violet, a piano? Do they all feel alike? Of course not. That’s spiritual sensation – a vivid way of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling reality.172 ¶13

A few years ago I gave a similar lecture in New York City and a lady in my audience decided to test me. While sitting in her chair she embraced a large bunch of roses. She smelled them, felt their velvety petals, and saw their beauty in her mind’s eye. Then, breaking the silence, she left my meeting and returned to her hotel room at the Waldorf Astoria. The next day the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth, was given a party at the Waldorf Astoria, with two thousand people in attendance. After the reception the maitre d’, not wanting to discard the flowers there, instructed his men to take three dozen roses up to this lady’s room. And when she came home that evening, all she could smell were those lovely roses. She had embraced and lost herself in the feeling of the possession of beautiful roses. She walked by faith and not by sight, and the next day her room was filled with the heavenly aroma of roses.172 ¶14

Now, perhaps because of its memory, you find yourself continuing to look back at what you were (and are) and not ahead into what you want to be. If you will order your conversations aright, right now, their truth will happen in the simplest way.172 ¶15

A seamstress and dress designer I know wanted more money. Using her imagination, she held an envelope in her hand and listened to the paper tear as she opened it. Shaking the contents out, she counted the money to the very penny. This she did for seven nights. On the eighth day, a lady called, offering her a job which paid her, to the penny, what she had imagined. Do you know – that lady could have counted out much more and she would have received it, but she was quite satisfied with the amount she had imagined.172 ¶16

Now, if there is evidence for a thing, does it matter what the world thinks? Could you ever take this lady’s experience from her? No! The truth, experienced by her, parallels scripture, for all things are possible to one who believes. How did this lady believe what she was imagining? She did it by bringing forth all of her senses to bear upon this event. Using her sense of hearing, she heard the paper tear. Shaking the contents of the envelope, she heard the money fall on the table. She felt the envelope and saw the bills inside. Do you know, money has an odor unlike anything else? So you can smell money. She determined what she would do if she had the money and she did it.172 ¶17

Another lady went to Sterns Department Store in New York City, saying to herself: “Neville says I can have anything I want if I will imagine and believe in my imaginal act.” Having no money, this lady walked over to the hat department, took off her hat and tried on a new one. Walking around the area, she admired herself in front of all the mirrors, but when she returned, her hat was gone. When she described it to the sales lady, she learned that her hat had been sold! The section manager was called in, and he told her to take any hat she wanted, compliments of Sterns. She liked the one she had been wearing, so she left the store with her new hat on her head, and she hadn’t paid a dime for it.172 ¶18

Here is another story of a similar nature. This lady’s profession was that of being a lady of the evening. She attended all of my meetings, and one day she said to me: “You know, Neville, the strangest thing happened. You told me that I could have anything I wanted if I simply imagined it. One day I saw a beautiful hat in the window of a department store on Broadway. It was $18, but I loved it so I imagined wearing the hat. As I walked up the street I kept looking at my reflection in the shop windows, seeing that hat on my head. Arriving home, I imagined placing the new hat in the closet instead of my old one. Every day, for the next week or ten days, as I put on my old hat, I imagined it was the new one. Then one day a friend called and asked me to come see her. While there, she brought out a hat box and said: ‘I must have been insane when I bought this hat. I wouldn’t wear it to a dog fight; yet strangely enough I feel it would look lovely on you.’ She opened the box and brought out, not a hat, but the hat, the very hat I had seen in the window and worn in my imagination.”172 ¶19

Then she asked: “Neville, why didn’t God give me the money to buy the hat myself, instead of giving it to me in this manner?” Knowing her profession, I said, “Ann, do you owe any rent?” and she replied, “Yes, two weeks.” “What do you pay, about $17.50 per week?” “Yes.” “So you owe $35. What price hats do you usually buy? Three or four dollar ones? Have you ever bought a $17 hat?” “Never.” “Then tell me honestly. If, when you were looking at the hat, you had seen a $100 bill on the ground, would you have brought the hat?” She said “No.” Then I said, “No matter how much money God might have given you, you still would not have bought the hat, so someone else had to buy it for you, and they did.”172 ¶20

I have bought clothes, brought them home, and wondered what possessed me to buy them. I did it because someone was treading in the winepress elsewhere. Someone imagined a suit of clothes, so I went to my tailor, chose the cloth, and paid for the suit. But when I brought it home, my wife wouldn’t let me bring it into the house. Then a friend who wanted something just like it contacted me and got the suit. He was treading the winepress while I paid for the suit.172 ¶21

Believe me, imagination is spiritual sensation. It is a vivid sight, a vivid sound. When Beethoven went deaf, all sound to the outer ear came to its end. Then Beethoven began to hear with the inner ear and wrote all of the beautiful music we so enjoy. You can now think of someone you love and hear him speak. If you can’t hear him, use one of your other spiritual senses. A touch, a sound, a sight, or an odor will do.172 ¶22

I know in New York City, years ago, as I walked through Harlem, I smelled the odor of cooking that instantly took me to Barbados. Although I was physically in Harlem, my sense of smell told me I was 2000 miles away in Barbados. You can remember a sound, a touch, a sight, and put yourself any place. Like Paul, learn to walk by faith and not by sight. Forget what lies behind and stretch forward to what lies ahead. In the third chapter of Philippians, Paul names his desire as the calling of God in Christ Jesus, but it need not be yours.172 ¶23

I urge you to try this, for your life is forever. Nothing dies. The little rose that blooms once blooms forever, for nothing passes away. If a loved one ceases to be in this little sphere he doesn’t die, but is instantly restored to life to carry on his wonderful journey in this age until that moment in time when God speaks to him through his Son, who calls him Father. Only then will he know he is the author of his world. Then his journey will be over, and when he takes off his little garment it will be for the last time.172 ¶24

Paul tells us in Philippians: “I desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is better by far, but it is more necessary that I remain in the flesh on your account.” Paul longed to depart and be one with God the Father, but he knew it was necessary for him to remain in the flesh and continue his instruction, just as I do.172 ¶25

Take my words to heart and achieve your every desire. Learn to walk by faith and not by sight and, like Paul, turn your back upon everything you have ever accomplished and go forward – by faith – towards the goal you have set for yourself. Knowing what you would see if your goal were reached, how you would feel if you were there, what you would do now if it were true, walk in that state and you will achieve it. Now let us go into the silence.172 ¶26

[...] for a very short while, closing tonight and reopening on the 4th of January, same place, same time. But I’m not sending out notices, so please remember the date. I will take a small ad to remind those who may read the Saturday paper, and that would appear on the 1st of January stating that we’re reopening on Tuesday, the 4th of January. Outside of that we have no notice to send. The subject will be “Your Future.” It will be based mostly on this level of Caesar, just a small portion given to your ultimate future. But on a whole it will be on this level. So if you have a friend you can tell him. For I have no other way of reaching him save through that small ad.170 ¶1

This being the last and Christmas follows within a week, I thought it best to give this as the last of the year. So my subject tonight is “Christmas,” as misunderstood as all the other great mysteries of scripture are. There are supposed to be one billion Christians and a week from tomorrow millions will fill the churches and hear the story as it never took place. So tonight I want to share with you what I know of Christmas from my own personal experience.170 ¶2

The evangelists are not recording incidents of the past as you record the story, say, of Abraham Lincoln. They tell what happened in the depths of the soul of Jesus. The resurrection, the birth from above, the discovery of the fatherhood of God, the rending of the curtain of the temple from top to bottom, the serpentine ascent of the Son of man, and the descent of the dove upon the risen Christ were seen and heard by none save Jesus. No mortal eye witnessed this series of events, yet man believes that at the birth a woman with her spouse were present when it happened, and three shepherds, mortal men, came in flesh and blood and witnessed it; and then the crowds came. They’ve even added things like the donkey and the little lamb and things of that sort. As the years go on they build it up and they really believe that these series of events were witnessed by mortal eye…and they were not. The evangelists were not telling that story…an entirely different story.170 ¶3

They were not interested in the events in the life of Jesus between the physical birth and his physical death; they were simply concerned in telling the story of salvation. Theirs was essentially, well, a revelation of the risen Christ.170 ¶4

The Jesus you read about in the gospels is one with your own wonderful “I am,” that’s Jesus. One day you will discover it, one day you will know it from experience by the same series of supernatural experiences. Always bear in mind that Jesus is a wholly supernatural being. He’s in you now, actually in you now. When you say “I am,” before you say anything, that’s Christ Jesus. But he’s not awakened, he’s not aroused, but that’s Christ Jesus. And everything recorded in scripture of that Christ Jesus you will experience; for there’s only one Christ Jesus. You will experience it without loss of your individuality, the loss of identity. It’s a very grave mistake in interpretation to ignore the out and out supernatural being that is Christ Jesus, this character that is in man, and try to explain him in some naturalistic way, as they will one week from tomorrow. They will tell of a unique being who was born of a physical woman of flesh and blood but he had no father; the Holy Spirit came upon her.170 ¶5

If you take it in that light, well, then declare “I am Mary and birth to God must give, If I in blessedness For now and ever more Would live.” If that is the story, then every person in the world, regardless of sex, is Mary. That the Holy Spirit comes yes. The word Spirit is wind, it does come. It comes upon you and then you awaken. That is the beginning of the entire drama, the resurrection.170 ¶6

So the resurrection comes first and you awake in the tomb of your own skull. While in that tomb, you know the drama, you know it intuitively, and then you come out as one that is being born. And the signs that accompany that event are recorded in scripture, and man has taken up the signs and personified it and made it something real, like flesh and blood. It’s only a sign of your own departure from the skull, from the tomb.170 ¶7

And then comes the series—for Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. For in a simple, simple way it is simply God in you awakening, stirring from a long, long self-imposed restriction in which he dreamed the dream of life. Then comes that moment in eternity where he awakens. And you haven’t changed; there is no other; it’s you, your own being, and you awaken to find that you haven’t changed at all. No one on the outside witnessed it.170 ¶8

And when you tell it they will smile indulgently. The witnesses to the event could be, as it was in my own care, my own physical earthly brothers. But they know nothing of the fact that they were present, for they were present in the soul of me. Everything is in my soul and they were chosen to witness, but chosen in Spirit. So when I told them for the first time, they smiled. What wonderful dreams he has, as far as they’re concerned. And friends of mine, one a doctor, his first question was “Are they aware of it?” They’ll bring it right down to this level. They must be aware of it. “If when you meet them next year or year after next when you go to Barbados and they are not aware of it, then it has to be a dream, Neville, hallucination.” They can’t conceive of a supernatural being containing the whole vast world within himself and this selection of your earthly relatives to play a certain part that’s all to witness the event.170 ¶9

And so Christmas is not to be celebrated as something that took place on this level. Christmas is a completely wholly supernatural event that takes place in every child born of woman when that individual awakens. And may I tell you, it is awakening, it’s rising. As the very word itself when you define it in scripture…look up the word resurrection and the first definition given is “to rise and to awaken from sleep.” And you had no idea that you were asleep. You had no idea that the sleep took place in a tomb. You had no idea that sometime in eternity you entered death’s door, which is called a sepulcher; and that in that state you were placed into a profound sleep; and that you would dream the dream of life, this horrible dream; and in the end it would vanish just like a dream, for you will awake.170 ¶10

And that you, of all people, regardless of your earthly history, you are Christ Jesus. You walk the earth completely unknown by the three billion who walk with you. They pass you by and you’re not known, so you’re ignored. They don’t know that he as he walks by we have a neighbor this night who has had the entire series already unfolded within him. He may be the poorest in the neighborhood and so he is not wanted, for man judges in the world of Caesar by the little tags, the little earthly honors, ….and the bank account. And all these things stick upon him and he’s just so proud of them he tries to perpetuate them forever in this world, forever. And one comes without earthly goods, he has nothing, but it unfolds in him. His departure from this world would be marked when at the very last moment he takes off this garment for the last time. But all the others are restored to life to play and continue to play these parts and all these relationships until this happens in the individual.170 ¶11

So Christmas…yes, this glorious event takes place in you…and the being who is to be born, you have no father, you have no mother, other than your earthly father and mother here. But they didn’t give birth to you; you were self-born. You came out all by yourself and left the tomb empty.170 ¶12

So we are told in the Book of John, when the wise men and the Sanhedrin came, he said to them, “You must be born again; for except you are born again you cannot in anywise enter the kingdom of God” . Well, he went away very sad of heart, for he couldn’t understand how a man his age, old in years, could be born again. And he said to him, “You a leader, a master of Israel, and you do not know that unless you’re born again you cannot enter the kingdom of God?” And he didn’t understand it.170 ¶13

When you read it, bear this in mind, you can always if you read “birth” it can be considered either from the father’s side or from the mother’s side. If it’s taken from the father’s side, the verb is always it’s meaning is “to beget”; if it’s from the mother’s side, it is “to bear.” John uses the verb anothin, “from above,” with the meaning “to beget.” It’s always from the father’s side; in other words, “begotten of God.” “Not begotten of blood, nor born of the flesh, nor born of the will of man, but of God” .170 ¶14

So you’re told the Holy Spirit will come. Well, how does he come? Well, you wait and see. One night when you least expect it your head will seem to you as though it can’t take any more, there’s an intensity in it that you’ve never felt before. It’s all concentrated in your head but at the back of your head. And then it reaches the apex of intensity and you feel this is it. I either let it recede—and you have no control of it—or else I’m going to split wide open. Something is happening to me and I’m either going to completely split all open and they’ll find him and say a massive hemorrhage, or else it has to recede because you can’t take any more.170 ¶15

At that apex of intensity you feel yourself waking as you’ve never wakened before. You’re waking, waking and suddenly you’re wide awake. As you’re wide awake you rise and you stand, where?—in your own skull. There you are alone in a tomb, in a sepulcher, and you know if you pushed the base of that skull something will give. You do it, and you come out, just as a woman is bearing a child, in the same manner, inch by inch by inch. When the whole thing is done you come out and the whole thing unfolds before you, the witnesses and the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. You are invisible to those who witnessed this event. They only see the sign bearing the…or testifying to what happened to you.170 ¶16

Then you read back into the ancient scripture, the Old Testament, looking for some intimation or foreshadowing of this event. You’ll find it. And here you come upon the words, the 30th of Jeremiah: “Can a man bear a child?” Well, the answer, naturally, would be no. But he doesn’t wait for the answer, he answers: “Then why do I see every man with his hands on his hips drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? Why has the face turned so pale?” . He doesn’t argue the point, he makes the bold statement, this is the word of the Lord speaking. He sees a man pulling himself out of himself. Well, that’s exactly what you do.170 ¶17

The minute the head comes out of the base of the skull, you have one consuming desire to get out and you pull yourself out. You come as far as here and then you pull with all of your might and the whole of you slips out at the base of the skull, and you’re on the floor. Then you rise and look back from this out of which you came and it’s ghastly pale; it looks like simply death itself. Out you come and before you know it witnesses are present. You go back into the story and read once more “And three appeared.” Who were they? They were heavenly visitors and they came to announce the birth to Abraham. Abraham looked up in the heat of the day, for he was seated in the door of his tent, and, behold, as he looked up three men stood before him. He didn’t see them approaching. They appeared out of nowhere and stood before him and bore witness to the fact that he is going to have and be giving birth to a child—one that is called laughter. For the name is Isaac, and he shall laugh . That’s why the name is called Isaac—it means “he laughs,” exactly what the little symbol does when you hold him in your hands.170 ¶18

So that is Christmas, the only Christmas in the world, and it comes to every man, every woman in the world. And so, until you get it right in and see it, you’re led astray with this strange concept of what Christmas really is. Christmas comes to all in his own good time. And as that wonderful West Indian carol sings out: “And man will live forevermore because of Christmas Day.” His Christmas…he now is the immortal being. Until then he dies, restored to life to die, to be restored to life to die, and the cycle goes on and on until his Christmas Day appears.170 ¶19

Then he enters immortality to an inheritance, as you are told in the 1st chapter of the Book of Peter: “We are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading” . Can’t fade; it’s forever. It’s imperishable and completely undefiled. You enter and inherit the kingdom of God. Your inheritance is not fully realized by you while you’re still wearing garments of flesh and blood. But the moment you take it off your entrance there is assured by the events that took place while you walked within that interval from the cradle to the grave.170 ¶20

So they were not writing the story of a man from his little physical birth to his little physical death. In that interval, an unknown man experienced scripture and then went back into the scripture, and there in the volume of the book he could say, “This was written of me.” They didn’t believe it. How could this be written of you, you came thousands of years after these things were written? Ah, but the scribes searched and they could not find the Christ of whom they wrote and whose coming they foretold. They were looking in the wrong direction. They were organized by divine providence for spiritual communion, and they wrote under dictation, and left it for us. But someone had to break the seal and interpret scripture, and so he’s “the first fruit of those what slept.”170 ¶21

But because there’s only one Christ Jesus and that one Christ Jesus is in every man, you, too, when it happens will be the first fruit of those who slept. No one greater than you and no one less than you, all equal, all one, for Christ Jesus is God himself. It was God who assumed the limitation of man, the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity; and it was God who awoke in the grave that he imposed upon himself, and then began to expand. There’s no limit to his translucency, no limit to his expansion.170 ¶22

So here, the story is true, absolutely true and literally true, and will take place in every being in this world, but every being. No one will be lost. No one will be left aside, no matter what part you now play in the world. You may be judged harshly by society and condemned; but, nevertheless, your redemption is assured because the being dreaming you—even the horrible dreams that you may dream—is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ must awake in everyone.170 ¶23

So Paul warned the world who taught that the resurrection was past, he said, “You’re leading the people astray and turning them from their faith by teaching that the resurrection is over.” The crucifixion is over but not the resurrection. The resurrection is taking place. He said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and became me” . He actually became me in the most literal sense; so I have no sense of two of us, he became me. I am the very being that was crucified. I’m crucified with him, and then he must rise in me, and when he rises in me, I am he, without loss of identity. And the name conferred upon the risen Christ in the experience of man is Jesus Christ, and he’s called Lord.170 ¶24

There are only a few of the great events that are obvious that no one witnessed but Jesus himself. The earliest gospel is Mark. It’s not placed chronologically as the first; it’s Matthew first, then Mark; but all scholars are agreed that Mark is the earliest gospel. From Mark, Matthew and Luke took it as their source and claimed that they had a better arrangement of the source material. But the earliest is Mark, and the first event that he records is the descent of the dove. As you read it over and over, I defy anyone to find in that description of the first chapter of Mark anything said about a witness other than Jesus himself. There was no witness to the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove…only Jesus. So you can take his word for it or you don’t.170 ¶25

So Jesus in man reveals what happened, and he tells you exactly what happened in the order in which they happened. So he tells you the first shall be last, and the last first. Well, the first recorded is the dove; it’s the last to happen. And then what is the last? What is now this one? The birth, called the first. Alright, the birth follows on the heels of the resurrection. The last thing is the resurrection as recorded in all, that’s the last; it’s the first! And the first recorded in Mark, the dove, that’s the last. The last shall be first and the first last. Doesn’t mean that you come into this world after others and being the last you’ll be the first, and those came first will be the last. No, the series of events are reversed in order. And the last event recorded is the resurrection…it will be the first.170 ¶26

For the whole thing starts on the resurrection, God’s mightiest act in man—he awakens man. When I tell you God became man that man may become God, I mean that literally, in the most literal sense. And to us it can’t describe the awe. You can’t describe the feeling that possesses you when you go back into the ancient scripture. In 1965 it happens to you. You go back and read a book…in the volume of the book written centuries ago it was all recorded and it was all about you. So you can say to anyone this was written about me.170 ¶27

So every time that he cites scripture…the Book of Luke, the very first words put into his mouth are from the 61st of Isaiah, and he said, “This scripture has been fulfilled today. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; he has anointed me to preach glad tidings to the poor…and set the captive free” . Then he closes the book and says the whole thing was fulfilled this day—he’s telling you it happened to him—closed the book and gave it to the attendant, and sat down; and all eyes were upon him . They all knew him. “Why, that man is Joseph’s son. I know his brothers…his sisters are with us today. What is he talking about?” They were looking at it on this level. It’s not this level at all.170 ¶28

So I could say to my brothers, “You witnessed,” and now I kid them about it. I can say to Lawrence, the one who found the child, “And this is the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. You can’t go first; I must go and prepare the place for you.” I kid him all the time. He’s my brother who is a doctor, and he’s been quite under the weather, and so to lift him up I’ll say, “After all, I may be the younger brother too, but I’ve got to go first. How could you go before me? You have no place to go unless I go and prepare it for you. So just have fun, because I’m not going yet. Just have fun, relax.” That sort of gives him a lift.170 ¶29

But he kids. After all, brothers are brothers, and we all know each other’s weaknesses. It hasn’t a thing to do with our position in this world. If it had anything to do with position in this world, well then, all those who are socially prominent, intellectually great, financially sound they would be chosen one by one. It’s not God’s order. They’re all being hatched out in order; he calls us according to his purpose; so his purpose which he set forth in Christ Jesus as a plan for the fullness of time . So when the fullness of time comes to the individual, then his will according to his plan which he set forth in Christ is unfolded within you.170 ¶30

So he calls himself “the way.” Here is the way…there is no other way. I get this argument all the time. I go to San Francisco, New York, wherever I go: “But surely, Neville, God didn’t neglect the hundreds of millions of people all over the world; and so, their religion is just as true in that area as this.” I will go out on the limb, the very end of it, and tell you there’s only one way to the Father. He said, “I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes unto the Father except by me.”170 ¶31

This is the only way and the series I’ve explained to you, the series I have named. It begins with the resurrection; the second is the birth from above; the third is the discovery of the fatherhood of God through his son and only through his son. The son is not Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ is God the father. The son is David. The whole vast Old Testament was inspired by the spirit of Christ. It was the spirit of Christ who said in the 2nd Psalm: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” . Then you see David not as a man as I am before you, you see David as the personification of all the generations of men, all of their experiences, fused into a single being, and that being personified called the eternal youth and he’s David, David of biblical fame.170 ¶32

So in the Bible he is the one that they cannot say mortal eyes saw him. For he said, Why then did David in the spirit call Jesus Christ Lord? Why did he call him Adonay, the name which is used by every son of his father, my father, Adonay? In the spirit he called him—so they can’t say there were witnesses, mortal witnesses to that event. You read it in scripture. So, as he said, he called me Father…then I’m a father. And you will stand amazed, aghast, and I’m speaking of priests, I’m speaking of the rabbis, I’m speaking of he Protestant ministers as I discussed with them as I go across the county. They can’t see it at all, that Jesus Christ is God the Father. So “When you see me you see the Father. How then can you say show us the Father? Have I been so long with you Philip and yet you do not know me? He who sees me sees the Father” .170 ¶33

And then, how would you know he’s a father? “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” . So David comes revealing me as God the Father. So he’ll reveal you as God the Father, and everyone is God the Father. Well then, this unity of being…are we not one? Are we not now the fulfillment of scripture? “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” . It’s one Lord; it can’t be two and he calls me Lord. He’ll call you Lord, and without loss of identity we are one, a compound unity, one made up of others.170 ¶34

Everyone with the same son, and that son the embodiment and personification of all the generations of men, and all that they’ve ever dreamed, all they’ve ever accomplished, fused into the single youth that scripture calls “eternity.” So, eternal youth is really the true personification of time, our eternity—not an old man with a scythe. It’s simply a young handsome, beautiful lad that you can’t describe his beauty, that’s David. So he comes and he reveals you as God the Father. And then comes the curtain of the temple…and the Book of Hebrews, the 10th chapter, identifies the curtain of the temple with the body of Jesus. It’s your own body that is split from top to bottom; and it’s you (the Son of man) at the base of that severed body that like a serpent as the Son of man ascending into heaven. Then comes the descent of the dove upon you the risen Christ; for the Bible is only about the risen Christ. It’s not about the sleeping Jesus in man. That’s the crucifixion—and we all have been crucified with Christ, every one of us—in you.170 ¶35

So he sleeps in man until that moment in eternity when the Holy Spirit awakens you. And the Holy Spirit comes like a strange unearthly wind, a peculiar wind, and all of a sudden it gets more intense and more intense and more intense, and you feel this is it. It either is some massive hemorrhage and tomorrow they’ll find the body on the bed, or else let it recede. It doesn’t recede; something entirely different happens as a result of it. What happens? You wake and you’ve never had such an awakening in your life before.170 ¶36

This whole thing is preceded by the most wonderful experience with children, as told us in the end of the Old Testament: All the children came. Well, I’ll tell you, take the widest avenue in our city that would be the width of the sidewalks. There were no tall buildings, nothing taller than three stories, but masterpieces of beauty. Just beautiful things beyond description but not more than three stories tall. Theses enormous sidewalks and streets about four times the width of the sidewalks, and the concert grand pianos at stated intervals down the sidewalks. These men would come and play, no money passed, just for the joy of playing. And there was a strange wonderful rivalry, a friendly rivalry between the great artists. And they all had their followings. I was seated at a piano and there was an unwritten law that anyone who was seated was never asked to give it up. It was his until he desired to give it up. And at that moment, the crowd of kids, beautiful little children of ten, eleven, twelve, around their favorite and he was coming in my direction.170 ¶37

A young woman, twenty-eight, twenty-nine…and I knew her motive in doing what she did…she quickly sat on my lap to make him a little bit envious. As he came and stood beside me, he could not ask me to give him the piano, so I took her by her seat this way and took her right up, put her on the side. Then I said it was my pleasure and he thanked me profusely. He looked into my face, and I could read his mind; he knew that he should know me but he couldn’t bring it back. But he knew he should know me and there he is struggling with himself to put a name, to put something on this face that is looking right into his eyes. But he turned to the keys and still looking at me and he began to play divinely.170 ¶38

All of sudden out of the piano came the most beautiful geometrical patterns you’ve ever seen. Not only are they beautiful but they’re in color as he plays and a constant change of form and all beautiful in color. As I looked at him and looked at this wonderful display of beauty coming from his playing, I froze it. I knew I could do it if I could only arrest the activity within my Imagination. As I did this, these wonderful trees in bloom froze as I’m looking at it and seeing this power that I now possess, this peculiar power, unknown by anything on earth. I am actually taking the music that’s coming out in geometrical form and I freeze it.170 ¶39

At that moment the wind possessed me and the scene changed, and I am now waking from a deep, deep sleep. And then is when I awoke within the skull to find myself encased and sealed within the sepulcher of my own skull; after that followed the birth, and then the others.170 ¶40

And the shock and the awe and the peculiar feeling that possessed me when I then read back into the ancient scripture and found all these intimations and all these foreshadowings, that it was truly said in the 40th Psalm: For in the book all this is written about me. And I didn’t know it was written about me. For I was one of the billion Christians who as a child I was up early in the morning Christmas morning, up at four, service started at five, and we looked forward to it. Up at four, all dressed, off to church. Of course, I didn’t understand the story, but we had to get that behind us before we could come home and get our football and cricket that was always the present. Because we are a huge family and mother could ill-afford to give us each a present, so she gave us a communal present, a football and a cricket set. It was ours, not mine, not his, but ours.170 ¶41

So we learned to play together, and in that learning to play and share together they built an enormous fortune because they still play together, they still share together. The one best qualified to lead no one envies his ability, they throw it at him. Like playing cricket, if you can do a better job opening bat, you go first. If you’re better going fourth, well then, wait until the fourth cricket is yours. So you play it based upon your ability. If you have no talent, put you in the last one; get you out at the very end. And so, that’s how we learned to play; and business simply followed into the footsteps of our playing soccer and cricket.170 ¶42

But here, as told in the end of the Old Testament…and the Old Testament ends upon a note of expectancy; the New Testament begins on the note of fulfillment. The whole thing is fulfilled in the gospel story. But our evangelists were not recording events and situations of the past as historians; they were simply telling the story of salvation as they themselves experienced salvation, as I am telling you tonight the story of salvation as it really is. Not from hearsay, I am telling it from my own, own experience. I have experienced it. I am not hiding the moment of departure, for that is all fixed. No one departs before his time and no one delays it. No matter how wise the doctor and what he thinks he does, he does not delay it. We go on time as we come in on time. You and I were born physically by the actions of powers seemingly beyond our own.170 ¶43

And the Holy Spirit when it actually comes upon you, you don’t know it as yet that it is your very self. But you feel it as something other than yourself, but you feel it in yourself, that peculiar vibration that is a strange unearthly wind. Now let us go into the Silence.170 ¶44

* * * Now are there any questions, please?170 ¶45

Well, on the 4th of January, here, the same time, and the subject is “Your Future.” Thank you.–170 ¶50

Tonight’s subject is, “What shall you ask of me?” This story we find in the Book of Genesis, we find it in the Book of Samuel, and repeated again in the New Testament. It really begins with [...] “What wilt thou give me?” and that is in the 15th of Genesis. Then he said, “I am childless, I have no heir… and a slave boy in my home will be my heir” and he was told, “The slave will not be your heir; your own son will be your heir.” Then we are told, “As the sun went down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and a dread and great darkness fell upon him. Then the Lord God said to him, “For a surety your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be as slaves in that land; they will be oppressed for four hundred years… and afterwards they will come out with great possessions” . Now, there’s not a word said that Abram was in any way awakened from this sleep, not a word. He fell into a deep sleep and all this was told him in a deep sleep, and there was a dread and great darkness that fell upon him. Now this is our subject this night.169 ¶1

He asked for a son; he was promised a son. Then we are told in the story, as he dreamed and the son was mentioned, he made this statement, he fell on his face and laughed when he was told he would have a son. And said he, “Shall a man who is a hundred years old have a son? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child? And said that he laughed—is this the laughter of derision, laughter of incredulity, or the laughter of rejoicing? We’re told in the scripture of John that “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and was glad” . You can take it in any form you want. Either you can say, well, he laughed because of disbelief, or he laughed, he rejoiced he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.169 ¶2

Now when we read scripture, we’re not reading secular history, we’re reading divine history. Man is not aware of that. The Bible is a vision. It is a mystery to be known only by revelation. And those who think they know it by trying to analyze it, they’re far removed from the truth. It comes by revelation and only by revelation. If you haven’t had the experience, listen to one who has had it, and either believe him or disbelieve him. Don’t try to rationalize it. So I will tell you and I have told you what I have seen, and you will not accept my testimony. Seeing and knowing in the Greek are one. Seeing is experiencing. He is telling you, I have experienced it and you will not believe it, because I can’t share it with you on the level where you now live. And so here, what is he trying to tell us in this story of falling asleep and being told what must happen to man?169 ¶3

Well, first of all, we’re reading in the Hebrew. Every letter in the Hebrew world, as it were, has a numerical value and a symbolical value. He was a hundred years old. The nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Qoph. If you want to sound it, Q-o-p-h, Qoph. We put a q in the q. The symbol of it is “the back of the head.” The number, its numerical value is a hundred. A man is not a hundred years old. This is a mystery. Here is a hundred. A hundred what? The number of the back of the head. He is being told you will bear a son; it will come from the back of your skull. And so you will say, he fell on his face and laughed. That’s ridiculous on this level. It comes from the womb of a woman. But he is told, he’s a hundred years old, and you will bear a son, and it will come from the back of your skull. Well, you can take the laughter in any way you want, either the laughter of disbelief, or, as we’re told in the Book of John, the 8th chapter, rejoicing. “He rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and was glad”.169 ¶4

Now we are told in this story, your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs. It’s this world. We don’t belong here. These garments belong here. Every garment in this world is part of the eternal structure of this world. No matter what you do, it’s part of the eternal structure of this world. When Kennedy was shot, that is taking place forever and forever as part of the structure of this world, and the one who pulled the trigger is pulling it forever as part of the structure of this world. God gets into this world as a sojourner and in this is the land that is not his as it were. In this he is as a slave: “took upon himself the form of man and became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross” . Death upon the cross—we think it took place on the north shore of Africa two thousand years ago.169 ¶5

Now listen to the next line in this statement, “And they will be oppressed for four hundred years… afterward they will come out and have great possessions.” Four hundred years. The last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the twenty-second letter, Tau, has a numerical value of four hundred and the symbolical value of a cross. The symbol of Tau is a cross and it is numerically four hundred. So here, for four hundred years—not four hundred years as we measure time. No, this is the journey: we are sojourners in a land that is not ours. And while we journey we are enslaved, and while we are enslaved we are oppressed for the length of time that it takes for us to come out with great possessions. And the possession is not only the kingdom of God; we will possess not only the kingdom, we possess the King . We possess a presence; the presence is God. So we go through the horror of the world and come out as God. God becomes as we are that we may be as he is. So that’s the story of this journey that is a horrible journey, frightful horror. But in the end, we possess a great man, and great possessions, and possess a presence, and the presence is God. All ends run true to origins: if the origin is God, the end is God. “You see yonder fields! The sesame was sesame; the corn was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! And so was a man’s fate born” . So the origin is God and the end is God. There is nothing but God.169 ¶6

So in this story he makes the statement, “Before Abraham was, I am. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it, and he was glad.” They said to him, “Why, you are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham?” He said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” So I stand before you now, I am approaching fifty-nine, and yet I know there’s a David, for David is my son. Is a father not older than his son? Did he not call me Father? Did David not call me Lord? “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” “The son of David.” The son of David? “Why then did David in the spirit call him Lord? If David doth call him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” . But you’re not yet fifty. It doesn’t matter. You say he is 3,000 years from this moment in time? Well, he called me Father. If he calls me Father, am I not older than he is? Well, he called me Father. So he called me Father. Am I not older than Abraham? Then who are you talking about? I am talking only, at every moment of time, about God. There’s nothing but God.169 ¶7

So, what shall I give you? What was the answer to that statement? “O Lord God, let thy promise to David my father be now fulfilled” . Well, what was that promise? That “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son” . Let that promise now be fulfilled. So he brings forth from humanity, from you, from the back of your skull; that’s the being I will bring out of you. You’re a hundred years old? That’s Qoph, the back of the skull. I will bring forth from you a son. And so he laughed. The whole thing was crazy, ridiculous. It’s so unnatural. It’s not something that could ever happen in eternity. This is not a natural birth; it’s a spiritual birth—born from above, not from below. And so he comes out. Let it happen now, said he.169 ¶8

But before it happens, can I ask for anything else? Certainly. Listen to these words, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” You want to check it? The 14th chapter, the 14th verse of the gospel of John, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Well, who is speaking? They never once addressed him as Jesus. They spoke of him, but never addressed him as Jesus. Jesus and Jehovah are one and the same. When we translate the word Jehovah, Yod He Vau He, which is really I AM, we always speak of it as the Lord. Only on rare occasions do we say I AM, as in Exodus, “Go and say unto them, ‘I AM sent you. I AM that I AM. I am what I am. I am who I am.’” But beyond this and a few statements, it’s always translated as the Lord. So they speak of him as the Lord in the New Testament, not Jesus. No one addresses him as Jesus and then, “Jesus, tell us so and so,” but “Lord, show us the way.” “I AM the way.” “Lord, show us the Father.” “I AM the Father.” So, always, the Lord is the name given to him. So when he’s called the Lord, he’s called the Father. So here, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” So the name is not Jesus, the name is not Jehovah, the name is not the Lord, the name is I AM. That’s the name.169 ¶9

Well, how would I ask for health or wealth or fame in his name? By daring to assume that I am healthy, when the doctors give me no hope. By daring to assume that I am wealthy, when all my creditors are on my neck. By daring to assume that I am known, when I am, by reason of my senses, unknown. And so daring to assume that I am that which I want to be, when at the moment of my assumption reason and my senses deny it, is asking in his name. There is no other name. “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Well then, test him. You’re invited to test him. Come prove him and see. “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test!” . So we’re invited to test him in his name, and his name is I AM.169 ¶10

Let everyone dare to assume that I am… and then name it. Then see the world as you would see it were it true. What evidence have I that I really am this before it becomes objective to the world? Well, the only evidence that I have now is to see on the faces of my friends an expression implying recognition of that which I am. Let me look at my friends mentally and see them seeing me as they would see me were it true. Let me now see my world as I would see it were it true. And then, if in the not distant future I crystallize that which I am assuming into this world, by a way that consciously I could never devise, the thing happens, then haven’t I found him and I know who he is?169 ¶11

Well, I tell you this story is true from beginning to end, but not as the world sees it. They’re trying to see it as secular history, and it’s not; it’s divine history. The whole drama unfolds in man. And the story of Abraham is true. In the depths of the soul God slept. It is God who fell asleep. It is God who fell to make sons, to bring us into the world as sons. And because the father and the son are one, if the father and the son are one, then the son must be father. If he’s a father, then there must be a son. And who is that son? If I and my father are one, and my father is Father, then who is the son?—David. David is the Son of God. Jesus Christ is God the Father. It’s Jesus Christ in us that is buried that must awaken. And as he awakens and is the father, then how do I know I am a father? Where is the son? And then comes David.169 ¶12

Now, the nineteenth letter, Qoph, is “the back of the head.” Out of that will come the child. You’ll be born, right out of the back of that skull of yours. I’m speaking from experience; I am not theorizing. Having come out of the back of the head, then there must be a son bearing witness of the being that you are. The next letter is Resh, and its value is 200. Its symbol is the head but the crown of the head, the whole head, but, above all, the crown of the head. All right, so out of the crown of the head will come this explosion and right before you one day will stand this immortal son, David. You look into his face and you see David and he will call you Father.169 ¶13

Now, you are only fifty years old. “And you not yet fifty years old and you know David?” Yes. Before David was, I am. Well, I AM is the name of his father. His father was called Jesse, and Jesse is any form of the verb “to be”: it is I AM. And so he calls you Father. And so you look right into the eyes of David, and yet in this world of mortality you’re only fifty. And you can say, “Yes, before David was, I am.” Because the father precedes the son, and the son calls you Father. And so you will know in the eyes of those who are still blind you are only fifty. And they know your background. They know exactly where you began in this linear world, as one [...] blind as it were. So you know, in spite of what they think you are, you have experienced the fatherhood of David.169 ¶14

And David is God’s only begotten son: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,” the 2nd Psalm, 7th verse. It’s addressed to David, in spite of the priesthoods of the world. No matter how they try to justify it and call that Jesus Christ, they are in error. They’re not speaking from experience; they’re theorizing. And the whole vast world takes the Word of God, and theorizes it, and comes up with false conclusions because their premises are wrong. Their beginnings are wrong. It is David. And when you see him you know without any uncertainty that he is your son, and he knows without any uncertainty you are his father.169 ¶15

It is David that God buried in the mind of man. As told us in the 3rd chapter, the 11th verse of the Book of Ecclesiastes: “And God has placed eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” But at the end he will. When man comes to the last days of his journey, when the pilgrimage is over, and the oppression is over, and he comes into his inheritance, then David explodes out of his brain. From the top of his head this time, not from the base of his skull. He came out of the base of his skull, but the Son of God, buried in his head, comes out of the top of his skull, the king, and he is the father of that only begotten son. The son calls him Father, and he sees him, and they both meet in an understanding that no one on this level could really grasp.169 ¶16

So I say believe it. Believe it, because the beatitude is pronounced upon those who did not see and yet believed. By seeing they didn’t experience it, and yet they believed the one who tells them he has experienced it. That beatitude is given to us at the end of the 20th chapter of the gospel of John. So they may not see, yet they believed. But many who did not see still would not believe, because they insisted on taking it on this level. I tell you, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see this day, my day. He saw it—experienced it—and was glad.”169 ¶17

So this is the story: What shall I give you? You can ask this night for help. You can ask for anything in this world. But the day will come that you’ll have a hunger that only an experience of God can satisfy. “I will send a famine upon the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of God”—a hunger that only an experience of God can satisfy . And so, until that hunger comes upon you, believe the one who had such a hunger. Whose hunger has been satisfied by having experienced David as his son; and can with scripture, “What think ye of the Christ, whose son is he?” And when they answer, “Why the son of David,” then he replied, “Why then did David in the spirit call him Father?” He called him Adonay, my Lord, which is the name used by every son of his father. Every son referred to his father as Adonay, my Lord. So David calls him “my Lord,” how then can he be David’s son?169 ¶18

So tonight you can ask for anything in his name, if you know his name. Get down on your knees and say, “In the name of Jesus,” not a thing is going to work. “In the name of God, in the name of Jehovah, name of this?”—no answer, no response. Ask in his name and his name is I AM. So without any help from anyone in this world, dare to assume “I am…” and then name it. “I am employed, gainfully employed.” Don’t ask others if you can make it. “I’m gainfully employed, making more than I have ever made in my life.” Let them say what they will. Things will reshuffle themselves in this world. And you, by being faithful to his name, will externalize what you are claiming by your assumption, and it becomes fact. Then you can share it with the whole vast world.169 ¶19

So, “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” Who will do it? Jesus on the outside? No, Jesus is in you. God became man that man may become God. Listen to the words, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!” I am quoting from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. It’s the thirteenth chapter, the last chapter, of 2 Corinthians, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” . Well, if he is in me, and making these statements “Ask in my name,” well then, I know his name. He said, “I am the truth.” You mean of anything that I claim? Yes, because all things are possible to God, and his name is I AM. And I am the truth? The truth of what? The truth that is confined to the evidence of my senses?—certainly not! Truth is determined by the intensity of my Imagination, not upon the evidence of my senses. So I dare to assume that I am what I want to be, and assuming it, remaining faithful to it, I externalize it. It becomes a fact in my world.169 ¶20

So here, “Ask what I shall give you.” The day will come you will ask, as Solomon asked, “Let thy promise to David my father be now fulfilled.” And that promise: let the son be born. For he promised him that when his days are fulfilled and he lies down with his fathers, he will raise up after him his son, who will come out of his body; and that you will be the father and he will be your son. Let that now be done. Let him come out. Let him bring forth David out of me. For David, the origin is David, the end is David. Bring him out, out of me. If you bring him out of me and your name is I AM, or Jesse, and I see David, then I am Jesse. I AM the I AM of whom I spoke and others discussed, but I didn’t know it. Suddenly he comes out, and the only way in this world I would ever know that I am he is by the son. “For no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father” . So if I could only know it by reason of the Son, then let that Son come. Bring him out.169 ¶21

So what comes out of David but David. He brings David out. Well then, if he brings him out of me, this garment must have been David. Humanity then is David; the whole vast world of mankind is David. But, bring something out that I know when I see him; it’s altogether different. And you do. Well, then who brought him out? It came out of me. He actually came out of me and I saw him, and he called me Father. You dwell upon it. It’s something entirely different, but you dwell upon it. It’s far more than if this night I put into the hands of everyone here a fabulous earthly fortune, for the earthly fortune disappears. It all withers, it all vanishes like smoke, but this of which I speak never passes away. This is the immortal faith.169 ¶22

And so, you can have anything in this world that you want, but anything, if you ask in his name, and his name is I AM. But the day will come, you will have a hunger, a hunger that not a thing in this world—you can go from lecture to lecture, from place to place—and nothing can satisfy you but an experience of God, to know that God really exists. And God is a person. You’re a person. Well, God is a person in your own very being. He becomes you and raises you up through this horrible experience that [...]. Listen to the words, “Your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs.” Can’t take one piece with you. If Rockefeller dies tonight, he can’t take one shilling with him. Has to leave it just where it is, as his father did and his grandfather did. His grandfather left a billion dollars; couldn’t take a penny with him. And then, the father left hundreds of millions and he couldn’t take one-half penny with him. All the others will leave it all behind and they can’t take a penny with them. Leave it just where it is.169 ¶23

So they will be in a land that is not theirs, and while in that land they will be as slaves. Who is not a slave? Can Rockefeller buy health with billions of dollars? Oh yes, he can have all the doctors in the world, all the services of doctors, but can’t buy health. I know people sell you health out of bottles and out of health stores and all kinds of things, and those who run the little businesses from their health stores die just as young and just as painfully as the others. So they all have the same exit, with all their little things, selling you all kinds of things: “You will live forever.” At forty you read his obituary. And so, they play all these little parts. They’re all slaves in this world.169 ¶24

And they will be, as we are told, oppressed for 400 years—as long as they wear the cross of the flesh. This is the cross on which Jesus Christ is crucified, not any wooden cross. This cross, this is the 400 years, the Tau, the twenty-second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is on this—not 400 years by measure of time but as long as it takes to bring me out. There is one disconcerting note in the 28th chaper of the Book of Deuteronomy, which I would not fret, but the whole chapter implies that the time is not really measured as we understand time; that if at the very end of what we should think would be the whole journey we start it all over again. Start it all over again. It is not explained why, because God is playing the parts, and I can’t understand how God could fail in what he has predetermined, I can’t. But, nevertheless, there is the word of God in the 28th of Deuteronomy. But I will say to everyone, don’t be disturbed by it.169 ¶25

The end is determined. God will not fail. He will not fail; he brings everyone out. And when he brings us out we’re all equal. We’re all God the Father, and all have the same Son. What symbol in this world would make you and I one more than to be the father of the same son? If you look into the eyes of my son and you know he’s your son, and I look into the eyes of that same son and know he is my son, are we not one, one Father? “For in that day the Lord will be one and his name one.” We’ll be one, although seemingly many. So it is a oneness made up of many. So “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” “Hear, O Israel, the Lord”—and the word Lord is the I AM—“our God”—our I ams—“is one I AM.” So the whole vast world of… everyone can say, “I am” . . . and that forms our God. And together it is the I AM. The one Father of the one Son, and we’re all the Father of that one Son, so we’re all one. And that’s how it unfolds in this world.169 ¶26

Now what I’m telling you this night I’m telling you from experience, I am not theorizing. I’ve gone on panels with priests, with rabbis, with Protestant ministers, with great educators, and they stand aghast, because it’s not what they ever conceived. I can’t blame them. It has not been revealed to them. They’re speculating and I am not speculating. I’m not trying to set up some workable philosophy of life. I’m telling you what happened to me. It happened to me as naturally as a natural physical birth happens to another. So I think it, at the moment, disturbing, and then you go back into scripture and you read it to find it was all foretold.169 ¶27

Now listen to this lovely poem by Edward Thomas, “Now first as I shut the door I was alone in the new house, and the wind began to moan. Old at once was the house, and I was old. My ears were teased by the dread of what was foretold. Nights of storm, days of mist without end, sad days, when the sun shown in vain. Old griefs and griefs not yet begun. All was foretold me, naught could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” You dwell upon it. The new house—God enters this world of death. For we’re all dead, we’re part of the eternal structure of the universe, every garment in the world. It’s new. He buries himself and shuts the door, and he’s alone in the new house. Then the wind began to moan. In scripture, the wind and the Spirit are one and the same word. And then, the whole thing is foretold him, but naught could he foresee—the horrible oppression in the land of Egypt, this world. And only at the very end do you really realize how the wind really sounds. “All was foretold me, naught could I foresee, but I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.”169 ¶28

May I tell you, when this thing happens that was foretold in the beginning: I’ll give you a son, when you’re a hundred years old, and [...] to the back of your head, that’s where you’ll come from, and I fall on my face and laugh, it’s ridiculous. It’s the most unnatural thing in the world. Or, maybe I rejoice because I saw it and was glad. But then the journey starts and, oh, what horrible nights and misty days when the sun shone in vain. But I didn’t quite understand until the very end. The story is “But I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” And when it happens, now you know how the wind really sounds. The whole house vibrates like a cyclone and you don’t know what is causing it, and you wonder where it is coming from. You feel it in you, and yet you feel it coming from the far corner of the room. And then come the wise men to discover what has happened.169 ¶29

Now listen to the words, “And Abraham sat in the door of his tent in the heat of the day and looked up and beheld three men standing before him.” They were not seen approaching, suddenly they are standing before him, three men, exactly as described in the 18th chapter of Genesis. Suddenly, three men stand before him… and the wind begins to moan. They, too, are disturbed. And may I tell you, of the three, two also laugh. They laugh because it seems to them incredible what one is announcing, that the child is born. One announces it; and two are completely hysterical with laughter because what has happened shouldn’t happen; it’s incredible. But he presents the evidence of what he’s declared. And then and only then do you know. So I learned then how the wind would sound after these things should be.169 ¶30

So believe it, and let that beatitude be pronounced upon you who have not seen and yet believed. You haven’t had the experience, but believe one who has had the experience. I am not theorizing; I am speaking from experience. And a truth which man knows from experience he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or than he can know that same truth in any other way. You know it tonight because you believe me; I hope you do, but you don’t know it to the extent you will know it after these things should be in you when you experience it. So I tell you, no matter what you hear from others, if they experience it they will duplicate what you’ve heard from this platform tonight. If they have not had the experience, they’ll speculate from now ’til the ends of time, and might be persuaded and try to convince you of the reality of their speculations. So, it’s entirely up to you. I am not theorizing.169 ¶31

So, what shall I give you? The last question, or the last one is, “Let it now be fulfilled.” What fulfilled? The promise you made to David my father. And that is that you’d bring out of him a son, and the son will be your son, and you will be that son’s father. Let it now be fulfilled. That comes from the very top of the skull, Resh. Before that is fulfilled, you have to come out of the back of the skull, Qoph. And so you are the Abraham when it happens and you are a hundred years old, though in the body you’re but fifty. The hundred is Qoph and the symbol is the back of the skull. Out you come and you are born, and you see the symbol of your birth. The next one is the explosion from Resh, the top of the skull, and that which comes out is David, and he’s your son.169 ¶32

So here, we are in the spirit of Christmas, a week from tomorrow. The whole vast Christian world will celebrate the birth of Christ, and I wonder what proportion of an nth part of one percent will really know the story. They’ve been taught it, but, may I tell you, they’ve been taught it erroneously. They’re now making some great caravan to go off to Jerusalem to find the birthplace. He wasn’t born there at all. To find where they put him in some sepulcher, and he wasn’t buried there at all. It is God who became man that man may become God, and he’s buried in man’s wonderful human skull. That’s where he’s buried and it’s from there that he will be resurrected. There’s no other place in the world from which he’ll be resurrected. He’s resurrected right out of your own wonderful skull, and the whole drama takes place there. And so, every word of scripture is literally true in the depths of the soul, but not on the level where now man finds himself in the world of Caesar.169 ¶33

Now let us go into the Silence. And if tonight you really want a home, more than you really want Solomon’s request—which you read in the 1st chapter of 2nd Corinthians—if you want a home or you want a job or you want money or you want these things more, don’t for one second let anyone divert you. You can get them. “If you ask anything in my name, I’ll do it.” You don’t have to ask for Solomon’s request, you can ask for dresses, for suits, for homes, for fame, for anything, but ask it in my name.169 ¶34

Tonight’s subject is “The Holy One.” We are told in the Book of Isaiah, the 43rd chapter: “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I, I am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior.” Read it carefully, only one savior: I am the Lord. I am the Lord, and there is no other savior. One has to dwell upon it, and really dwell upon it to extract from it its message. One cannot discover the true character of God by investigating or discussing him. One must let him save; then one knows. He’s a savior in every sense of the word, so one must let him save. And only then does one really know the character of God. You can discuss him, investigate him, from now ’til the ends of time, but you will never really know God.167 ¶1

So tonight we’re discussing this Holy One, and this Holy One is I AM. God has clothed himself with humanity, completely clothed himself with man. He’s put man on as you would an outer garment, and so with the garment on say, “I am.” That’s God, the only God. There is no other God. Is he really God? Well, he tells that he is a savior: “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. I, I am the Lord: and beside me there is no savior.” Is this really true? Well then, I should really test it. If when I stand here and I say “I am” before I say I am this, that and the other, is that really God? Is he really a savior? Well then, test him. See if he really can save me from my present restriction in this world. Just test him.167 ¶2

Well, I’ve done it unnumbered times. I’ve been trying since I discovered it to share it with these aspects of my own being, for they’re only my being pushed out. There’s nothing but God in the world. We think the Bible is something that records the past. It’s contemporary. We think that the Israelites were saved from Egypt by some miraculous act of God unnumbered years ago, thousands of years ago, and we don’t know it’s taking place now. We think the pharaohs died thousands of years ago and we don’t know that they are in our present; that any tyrant in this world who can enslave you, who can restrict you, he is a pharaoh, and he will not let my people go.167 ¶3

So without my consent, without any desire on my part, I was picked up, like millions of others when the world thought it needed manpower, and put into the army. Then at that very moment instead of making, say, $10,000-12,000 a year, I was told from now on until they would let me go I’ll make $50 a month, not a week. They’ll give me my clothes. I had clothes. They’ll give me my food. Well, I had food, much better food. They’ll give me shelter. Well, I had shelter. I had a home. I had everything I wanted. No, they didn’t listen to that, so they put me into a compound, they called it camp, and here, in this area, reduced from $12,000 a year income to $50 a month, without my consent. And I had a lease that ran for quite a while, with a wife and child to support, and all these things. They didn’t consider that. Who is pharaoh in this world?167 ¶4

But then I believed in scripture. I believed that with God all things are possible, and I firmly believed that God is I AM. There is no other God. I will not in eternity know another God. But the God that I know is a present-tense, first-person experience: “I am the Lord thy God”—first person, present—and so I firmly believed him and I trusted him. So he clothed himself in me and made me alive, that’s how I became alive. And now I will trust him implicitly. His name is I AM. He has no other name. There are other names but the real name is I AM. And so I will now trust him and test him.167 ¶5

And so, while in Egypt—Egypt means Camp Polk, Louisiana. So that’s Egypt—I am in a compound, can’t get out of it—a pass to get me out of the gate and then to get back, show the pass again, and there you are, completely restricted. My pharaoh whose heart was hardened… when I applied for an exit from this land called Egypt, it was denied. Same story as told us in the Old Testament. So pharaoh said “no” to the children of Israel, “You cannot go. I will not let you depart from Egypt.” And so, all the pleas in the world would not soften his heart. He said no to my application.167 ¶6

So while this night, believing in the scripture, that the only name of God is I AM, I assumed that I am the man that I wanted to be. I assumed that I am where I would be were my assumption realized, and there I slept. In the wee hours of the morning, four in the morning, before my face came a sheet that resembled the sheet that I had signed and applied for my honorable discharge. And here it came back “disapproved” and signed by a colonel. Didn’t sign it pharaoh, but that was pharaoh. He had the power to hold me there forever. That was the power invested in him by the laws of the land. That was pharaoh. But in spite of pharaoh, denial of my application for escape from Egypt, I believed in God. And God’s name is I AM. I simply assumed that I am the man that I want to be, a man that is now a civilian, a man that is honorably discharged, a man living in the outer world, not in this compound that is Egypt. And that night this paper came before my eyes and a hand up to the elbow. The Bible uses the Spirit of God and symbolized it as a finger, as told us in the Book of Judges, that is the finger of the Lord. It tells us in the Book of Daniel the hand appeared and wrote. It tells in Isaiah of the arm of God. So the finger, the hand, and the arm, they are symbols of the activity of God, when one believes in his name, which is I AM. So that night before my face came this sheet and then the arm came out, right to the elbow, it held a pen, and it scratched out “Disapproved” and it boldly wrote in above it “Approved.” Then I heard the voice of God. It’s my own voice in the depth of my soul and the voice said, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing.” So who can stay the hand of God? And so, nine days later the same pharaoh who disapproved my application for my exit from Egypt wrote in the word “Approved” and I was honorably discharged.167 ¶7

So we think this means a history that took place 3,000 years ago? It’s taking place, if you believe in the name of God. There is only God. He actually clothed himself in humanity, clothed himself, and we the outward garment, this is the outward garment that he wears. So I ask you a question, you say I am before you say, “I am…” That’s God. You may not believe it. You’re called upon to believe it. The children of Israel found it very difficult to believe in the present tense. They addressed him as “Thou art.” That’s not his name at all. They speak of God, “he is.” That’s not his name. His name is I AM. But man can’t believe that’s the name of God. It’s the only name of God that works in this world. You can pray forever to some external god and another being, it isn’t going to work. Go and tell them when they ask you my name, I am has sent you. Tell to them I AM who I am, I am what I am, I am that which I am. Just say I AM . But what man will believe that this works?167 ¶8

Well, I am speaking from experience. And the only God in this world that never, I would say, I would ever outgrow… I could never outgrow this God, not in eternity. But I could never lose the God that I know through a present-tense experience. How could I ever outgrow that God that produced my escape from Egypt? I know exactly how it works. I know exactly what I did. I fell asleep, who fell asleep?—I did. That’s his name. It’s one, the Holy One. So I really fell asleep. In what manner did you fall asleep? I fell asleep as though I were a free being out of Egypt, living in New York City as a civilian and honorably discharged, so that no one could ever question my exit from that area. My papers were in order. And the one who opposed it nine days later had to sanction my departure from Egypt. And we think Egypt is the northeast shoulder of Africa? Egypt is here. Egypt is wherever you are where you are confined and you can’t escape. And the only exit from it is the name of God. If you don’t know the name of God and do not wisely apply the name of God, you’ll never get out of Egypt. And so Egypt is the world of restriction. And the Holy One’s only name is I AM.167 ¶9

Now here is a true story. You might have read it. It came out in one magazine, oh, maybe a year ago. A man is shaving and his little girl, six years old, comes in and watches the father shave. Suddenly, out of the blue, she said to him, “Daddy, where does God really live?” and he, shaving, said, “In the well.” In the well. And she said to him, “Oh, Daddy!” with this disgust in her voice, because the reply, the response was so silly, so stupid. So at breakfast that morning his wife said to him, “Say, what have you been telling Debbie about God living in a well?” And he said, “[...], did I say that to Debbie, that God lives in a well?” It came so absent-mindedly he didn’t know he said that.167 ¶10

Suddenly in his mind rushed a picture that took place in his boyhood, when he was five years old, thirty-odd years ago in Poland where he was born. Then the story came… five years old, and here a troupe of traveling Gypsies and they always travel, they have no place where they can remain forever, and they stopped in his father’s courtyard for a drink of water. This giant of a Gypsy, fantastically, marvelous man, with a short-cropped beard that was brilliant and fiery, fiery red, and he drew from that well a bucket of water. With his feet wide apart he took it as easily as you would take a cup of tea, and held it to his mouth and drank from that wonderful pail of cold water, and it dribbled down his red beard. And this little boy, five years old, was intrigued. When he was finished with his water and placed the pail down, he bent over that well and held the side of the well, and peered into the very depths of it. The little boy was so curious he tried to climb up the side of the well to see what this giant of a Gypsy was looking at. Then the Gypsy saw the little boy and with a big smile on his face he scooped him up in his arms and asked him, “Do you know who lives in there?” The little boy nodded his head. “No, he didn’t.” He said, “God lives there.” Then he picked him up in his arms, and pushed him over that well and said, “Look!” The little boy said, “Why, it’s me!” Then the Gypsy said, “Ah! Now you know where God lives.”167 ¶11

That’s God. There is no other God. “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him” . There is no other God. God has clothed himself in humanity, actually clothed himself with all of us and he’s wearing these garments. He is in the depth of our souls; the only God and his only name by which he responds is I AM. You can call him Lord, you can call him God, you can call him Jesus, you can call him anything in the world—but when you call these names it’s another. When I say Jesus, and the whole vast world of Christendom crosses themselves, and bends their knees, and they bow; they think of another. So I speak of the Lord, I speak of God, I speak of Jehovah, I speak of any name, but when I say, “I am”, it’s first person, singular. “Go and tell them my name is I AM. Well, if I say to them I met the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and they say unto me, ‘What is his name?’ what then shall I say?” “Just say, I AM”—the only name in the world that really works.167 ¶12

And I am speaking from experience. My pharaoh said no, he will not get out from this compound, he will not leave Egypt. And so that was pharaoh’s decision. Then I remembered the name of God by which all things are possible, and I assumed that I am what I wanted to be, and that was 2,000 miles away. I assumed that I was not only 2,000 miles away, but I was there so I wouldn’t have to run any more; I am there honorably discharged. And so, nine days later that pharaoh’s heart melted and then he wrote “Approved” when before he wrote, “Disapproved.”167 ¶13

But the hand of God appeared before my face. We think this is all symbolism and it is, but, oh, what beautiful imagery! The finger of the Lord appeared, as told us in Judges 6, and then the hand of God appeared in Daniel, and this hand appeared in Isaiah. When the hand appears, it’s God in action. It is God. So the Spirit of the Lord, when it possesses man, you can dramatize that possession in the most marvelous way by seeing God actually clothing himself in that person, and actually wearing that man as though he were an outer garment.167 ¶14

For I wore that home of mine like an outer garment. We’re told, “Be ye imitators of God as dear children.” If I would imitate God and God’s name is I AM and he made me alive by wearing me, I’ll make anything in this world alive by wearing it. And so, I will wear it. I wore that home that normally would not have been seen by me physically until the end of the war, at the end of 1945. Maybe they’d even send me back in 1946, as they did many. But I didn’t wait for any end of the war. I didn’t wait for the voice of pharaoh. There are always pharaohs in this world. And the man who played the part of a pharaoh, may I tell you, was an awfully nice chap. He didn’t know he was playing pharaoh, but he played it for me to make the effort to believe in the name of God. And so, if I did not accept the name of God as reality, I would have played the part and gone through the entire five years, or whatever it was, four years.167 ¶15

But I remembered God’s word as revealed and God’s word is contemporary. People think it happened thousands of years ago, and that this is an entirely different age, it’s a different age altogether. This is the same age, and all the same people that thousands of years ago believed in the historicity of the story on this level, are reenacting the entire scene. Now they’re plotting and planning a trip to a holy land and they believe the holy land is on north shore of Africa. They’re going to see where he was born and where he was buried in a tomb, and they don’t know where he was born or where he’s buried. He is entombed in the skull of man. It’s out of that same tomb that he’s born, whether you be here in America or in South America or in Africa or in any part of the world, or in Europe, no matter where you are. He is not born in the physical little area called Egypt. Egypt is the world, this whole vast world, and there is always that Egypt from which the children of Israel must escape.167 ¶16

So I tell you I’m not speaking from theory, I am speaking from experience. I have experienced scripture, and I know the whole thing is true; every word is true. What a man knows from experience he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or than he can know that same truth in any other way. Tonight, I told you what I did to escape from Egypt in spite of pharaoh’s denial of my journey. And you know what I have done, or you believe I did it, but you will know it more thoroughly when you apply it and do it.167 ¶17

So if tonight you are unemployed, or some loved one is unemployed, and you would only think of it, put him on, and see this radiantly happy world in which you would live after the event, and remain faithful to it. It will be hatched out just as normally as God hatched you out as a living reality in this world. But everything has its own appointed hour. And you can’t, because you want it tonight, say it must happen this night. It has its own appointed hour, and it will ripen and it will flower. If to you it seems long, well then, be patient, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.167 ¶18

So here is this fantastic world in which we live and the story of scripture is true, every word of it is true. You could clothe yourself this night in anything in the world, and it’s the same thing that God did to make you alive. He clothed himself with you. He is wearing you as an outer garment. What is the core of that outer garment?—I AM. If I tell you, “Tell me, who are you?” before you answer, whether you use the words I AM or not, you say, “I am so and so and so.” That’s the core, the heart of you, that’s God. But you may not believe that is God, because you identify yourself with the outer garment.167 ¶19

But God is working in the depth of our soul and he is breaking down the wall of division between these two and making of the two one, as told us in Ephesians. He breaks it down and makes of the two one new man in place of the two, so we have peace . He makes peace that way, because two is division, two simply is conflict. And so he breaks it down within himself, so the two become one to fulfill scripture. And so, he leaves everything in this world and cleaves to his wife until they become one flesh. I am his emanation, you are his emanation. Then he enters his emanation and then he leaves everything until the two become one. So he breaks down that wall of division.167 ¶20

So I speak of God—that’s two—I speak of the Lord, I speak of this, I speak of Jesus, I speak of Christ; but I can’t speak of I AM, when there’s only I AM. That’s the Holy One—one, not two.167 ¶21

Now listen to the words carefully. It’s from the 43rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior. I, I am the Lord; and besides me there is no savior.” Now the word translated, and listen to it carefully, go back, “I am the Lord”—the word translated Lord is the same “I am”—“I am the I am.” Now the next word is “your God,” that is, “your I am.” I am the I am that is your I am—that’s what literally it means. “Your savior”—you have no other savior but your own wonderful I am—“and beside me there is no savior.”167 ¶22

So I could have written to the President and said, “I’m a good Democrat, and I will vote for you, and I’ve got the whole community behind me. I want to get out and I’m thirty-eight years old plus.” Maybe he would have believed me or investigated my claim and maybe acted upon it. But I didn’t write the President; I went straight to the I AM. And so, I granted my colonel his right to say no, “Disapproved.” That’s his right. He is pharaoh. So am I not the child of Israel asking to let me go? And so I’m pleading, “Please let me go from Egypt” and pharaoh said, “No, disapproved.” And so, I slept on my little cot and I assumed that I am, and I named it. I clothed myself in that which I desired and I remained nine days hatching it out. So nine days later he, pharaoh, whose heart formerly was like flint, now melts, and he signs the petition without any further appeal on my part. He called me in; I didn’t go see him. Nine days later he called me and said, “You still want to get out?” I said yes, sir. So he signed the petition, and then nine days later I was out of Egypt into a land of freedom.167 ¶23

And so I am trying to share with everyone in this world what I know God’s name will do. So you think yourself poor? All right, maybe you are poor and therefore you’re restricted in the land of Egypt, praying the name of God will get you out. Well, where is it? It isn’t God, and it isn’t Lord, and it isn’t Jesus Christ, none of these, it’s I AM. That’s the name of God. And so when you go to bed, “I am… you name it” and you clothe yourself in it, just as God clothed himself—and his name is I AM—with you. He clothed himself with a man and put it on as you would an outer garment. And then he believed himself the garment; until finally he knows he’s not the garment, he’s the wearer of the garment. And the wearer of the garment is I AM.167 ¶24

So you try it. And may I tell you no power on earth can stop you from realizing your every desire in this world.167 ¶25

And then will come the most fantastic predetermined series of events, that God in the beginning to prove he could come into death, actual death, and escape from it, expanding himself beyond the wildest dream. It is God’s doing… and God will do it.167 ¶26

So this is the story of the Holy One. The Holy One, the Infinite One, is seated right here in everyone. When you say, “I am” that’s he. But if you identify yourself with the garment that you wear and think “I am limited,” and look at the world just as you see it, then you will remain in Egypt. The purpose is to get completely out of Egypt, until that moment in time comes when you really get out by a series of the most fantastic mystical experiences that could ever be conceived. Normally, one could not conceive the visions. But they’re all prophesied in scripture, that series will take place when that moment in time comes for you to completely depart for the last time from this world. But until that moment comes, he who has had the experiences must share it with everyone who is left behind.167 ¶27

And so they told him not to talk about it. These are his words in the 20th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah: “If I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire, all shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” . I could no more restrain the impulse to tell you what has happened to me and what I have experienced than I could stop breathing now and expect without breath to be five minutes later still in this world in what you call a life, I couldn’t. I can’t restrain the impulse to talk about it. If I say I will not mention him or speak any more in his name, then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire, all shut up in my bones, and I cannot take it, just cannot. For, I cannot restrain that impulse to tell you of the true God in this world.167 ¶28

And the only true God is housed in you as your own wonderful human Imagination. So that, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your wonderful human Imagination, and this fabulous world of mortality is but its shadow.” You have never really been included in the world that you describe. The world that is described from observation is always, as it is described, relative to the describing observer. He can’t put himself into the thing he describes, not in eternity. It is always less than himself, the observer, I don’t care who you are. When I describe a world it is always relative to myself who describes it, and I can’t include myself, the describer, in the world as I am describing it. I am always greater than the world I describe, and that’s God.167 ¶29

And so, you simply describe a world. And then, although it is less than you, to have the experience of it, then put it on as a garment. It’s less than you, but put it on as a garment. So God put this thing on as a garment, he put all these on as garments; he put the world on as a garment. But he who wears it is infinitely greater, and always will be greater than that which he wears and that which he describes. He can’t include himself into his description of the universe.167 ¶30

So you try it. You try it this night. And if it doesn’t work tomorrow morning… mine didn’t work the next day, although I saw the picture. The very first night I did it the hand came, the hand of God, and I knew it was done. But I waited nine days, and nine days later it was done. I didn’t go berserk in the interval waiting; I waited patiently; I knew it was done. And I knew, in spite of that wonderful man, who was my colonel, he had no choice in the matter. No, not even if at that very moment he had to drop dead in the world and his successor would sign the thing, it would make no difference to me, none whatsoever. I wouldn’t have killed him. I wouldn’t have shot him. But no matter what happened, either he, himself, as the bearer would sign it or he would be displaced and someone would sign it, that’s the law.167 ¶31

For when the hand of God appeared… and “who can stay his hand, or say unto him, ‘What doest thou?’” So when you see the hand, the hand is like the Spirit of the Lord. In fact, in the Book of Matthew they use the word Spirit in the 12th chapter and Luke in the 11th chapter uses the word finger: “If I by the Spirit of the Lord cast out demons,” and then in Luke, “If I by the finger of the Lord cast out demons.” So they accused him of casting out these things in a strange way. So the Spirit of the Lord in one book is called the finger of the Lord in the other.167 ¶32

When you see it, all the imagery of scripture is true. They didn’t make it up. The evangelists did not sit down and try to figure out some workable philosophy of life. They simply had the vision and put it down. In the Old Testament they weren’t working out some philosophy of life. They had the vision and they put it down. So when one called it the finger of the Lord, and one called it the hand of the Lord, and one called it the arm of the Lord, it’s the same thing as the Spirit of the Lord.167 ¶33

So when the Spirit of the Lord descends upon man in bodily form as a dove it never departs thereafter. But until it descends upon man in bodily form as a dove, you can have it descend upon you temporally by remembering his name and invoking it. But when it descends upon you in bodily form as a dove it never departs from that moment on. But until then, it will come in temporal form, and you can do as I did when pharaoh said no to my request. And in spite of his no, you get out anyway.167 ¶34

So this is the story that I have this night on the Holy One. It is One with a capital O-n-e, and “This is my name forever, for all generations” you’re told—the 3rd chapter, the 14th-16th verses on in the Book of Exodus—“Go and tell them, it’s my name forever; I have no other name.” The 3rd chapter of Exodus, beginning at the 14th verse, when this fantastic revelation is made to man. And so here, when you say “I am” that’s he, and there is no other God. He isn’t today in some high office, other than where he is where you are now.167 ¶35

So don’t go to [...] yourself. You’ll never find him, where he was born or where he was buried. He is buried in your own wonderful human skull, that’s where he’s buried. And he’s dreaming the most fantastic dream. I’m showing you how to change the dream by the use of his name, until that day when he awakens from the dream to find himself entombed, and then he comes out. When he comes out, the whole world changes to him. Never again will he enter that tomb. He’s left it. He enters an entirely different world, a world that is prepared, waiting for the out coming of the Dreamer, who is God.167 ¶36

Now let us go into the Silence.167 ¶37

[...] the 18th chapter of John, “It is for this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” . And Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” Well, he did not answer. Then Pilate went out and he said to the crowd, “I find no crime in him. But you have a custom that I should release a man for you at the Passover; will you have me release the King of the Jews?” And they cried out, “Not this man, but Barabbas.” Now Barabbas was a robber. That’s what they said, “Now Barabbas was a robber.”166 ¶1

Well, what are they trying to tell us? For the story is eternal, it’s forever. Here is one who bears witness to the truth. But truth is an ever-increasing illumination, so how could it answer one level to the satisfaction of a true definition of truth? On the level of Pilate, which is reason, it could not really answer “What is truth?” For he said, “I am the truth.” You are asking me, Who are you? Define yourself. Tell me, what is the truth that you bear witness to in the world? And he said not a word. Well, on this level, a true judgment must conform to the external reality to which it relates. I [...] the facts. And then if you discover that it is a [...], you say, My judgment is true. Then I say “I am” and then I define it—“I am rich, I am known, I am this.” Then you investigate the facts of life concerning me and you discover that I am not rich, I am not known, I am not the things I claim, so my judgment is false. That’s what on this level one would say.166 ¶2

But here comes one who bears witness to the truth, and it isn’t confined to this level, where a true judgment must conform to the external reality to which it relates. For we are told, every word of God proves true. Well, what word now in scripture, which is the word of God, will allow me to claim that I am which at the moment my reason denies, my senses deny, and those who would investigate my claim will prove false? I turn to the Book of Mark, and here we find the word, “Whatever you desire”—no restraint to your desire—“Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe you have received, and you will” . That’s an entirely different level of truth. Is it true? Well, I’m called upon to test it, just test it. Dare to assume that you are what you want to be, and then try to remain to the best of your ability faithful to that assumption, and see if it doesn’t prove itself in performance. If it proves itself in performance, you have risen beyond this level of Caesar, where things must be confirmed by external facts to prove that judgment.166 ¶3

Now, tonight, just before I took the platform, a lady saw me and told me of a vision of hers. She’s never had one before. And it happened within a matter of, well, twenty-four hours or so. She heard a voice speaking to her in the [...] and the voice said to her, “Most people can’t part with what they don’t want long enough to get what they do want.” She got up in the middle of the night and wrote it down. It was most startling… a voice is speaking to her, “Most people can’t part with what they don’t want long enough to get what they do want.” So she wrote it down. The next morning when she got up she knew that she had written in the night and she had written down something. Before she looked to see what she’d written down, she tried to recall it and couldn’t. She tried to remember what she had written down and couldn’t bring one word back, but she knew she had done it. Luckily, on the paper is what she had written down. Let me repeat it. It’s something just revealed. It’s been told forever, but this is something modern, in our language, not in a biblical tongue.166 ¶4

“Most people”—that qualifies it, not all people, most, [...]. We need not be among the majority; we can be in the minority. We can be the remnant. “Most people cannot part with what they don’t want long enough to get what they do want.” Well now, you here, who are coming here as you do as often as you do, you are not in the “most.” You’re not in the majority or you would not be here. Were you numbered among the many, you would not be here. You would be satisfied to go on Sunday morning early, so you could get off to the beach during the day, and just say your prayers, and do what you think you should be doing in order to pacify your conscience that you pleased God. But you don’t… you come here at your own expense and time and money, and this, to me, is not included in the “most” people; this being that remnant that is not mentioned. That we can, coming here, get away from what we don’t want long enough to get what we do want.166 ¶5

So here, on this level of truth, whatever you desire, when you pray, believe you have received it, and you will. If I really believe this night that I am the man that I want to be, I would see, as I fall asleep, the world as I would see it were my assumption true. I would actually see it just as though I would see it were it true. And I would remain in that state not only tonight but when I sleep tomorrow night and the next night and the next night. I would have the persistency to remove myself from what I don’t want long enough to get what I do want. That is another level of truth that is not the Jesus level; so he could not respond to Caesar.166 ¶6

Now, who is Barabbas in this world? The crowd wants Barabbas. They don’t want Jesus, crucify him, give us Barabbas. You could take this on many levels and treat it wisely, toward the fulfillment of a desired end. But they want Barabbas and Barabbas was a robber. What robs me now of the man that I want to be?—the facts of life. My bank balance as it comes from the bank tells me I am not really the man that I’m saying I am financially. All right, so that’s a robber. Then, my world as I know it, as my friends view me, everything in my world bears witness to the man that I am at this moment in time. But I don’t want this. If I accept the evidence of my senses, yet I don’t want to be the man that they tell me that I am, I am being robbed of the man that I could be—if I really know the one who bears witness to the truth. For he tells me all things are possible to God and if I read the story carefully I find out that he and I are one. For he comes to bear witness to the truth.166 ¶7

Now we go on. He said, “My word is truth. I am the way, I am the truth, the life. No one comes unto the Father save by me. If you knew me, you would know the Father. Now you know the Father and you have seen the Father.” We have seen the Father? said Philip. “Oh, show us the Father.” “I have been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” .166 ¶8

Now, a scribe said to him, “What is the greatest commandment?” And he answered, “This is the greatest commandment, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.’ This is the second commandment”—and it’s equal to the first—“Love thy neighbor as thyself. There is no other commandment greater than these” . Now, he’s speaking now of a commandment, the question about a commandment. But where do we find it? He’s witnessing the truth. The whole book, he tells us, is the truth and that every word will prove itself. “Every word of God proves true. Do not change his words lest you be reproved by him and found a liar” . So don’t change his words; leave them alone. So here are the words.166 ¶9

The first commandment, and the greatest commandment is to “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord, and love him with all our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind.” And then the second is equal to the first, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Here we find the compound unity: the Lord is I AM. The word translated “our God” is plural, Elohim, the immortal, the eternal, the God—the first word translated God in the Bible. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” that’s Elohim, that is “our God.” And then the last one, “the Lord,” is back to I AM. So, “Hear, O Israel: I AM, our I AMs, is one I AM.”166 ¶10

Well, how can you prove that? Must I love my neighbor as I love myself? Well, yes. But does he mean that? Is he witnessing that truth or is it something deeper? It’s something far, far deeper. I must love him as myself because we are one. And I will show you how we are one, he tells you. Don’t just love him as you love yourself, love him because you are the very being that you think to be other than yourself. On this level, God is fragmented, and every being is saying “I am,” yet there’s only one I AM. So the one I AM is fragmented, and all are saying “I am.” I say, I am Neville, I am Jane, I am Peter, I am that—but only one. Well, how would I know it’s only one? Well, you wait. I will witness now and tell you how you will know that we are one, that “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Well, how will I know it?166 ¶11

Well now, “our Lord” is Father. Now we go back to that 12th chapter of Mark that I quoted earlier when they asked the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” So he answers, he brings it all out, as I quoted earlier, and then the one who asked the question [...] said to him, “Teacher, you’re right; the Lord is one and there is no other Lord, just one. And all the sacrifices that man could make are not comparable to that command to love thy neighbor as thyself.” He turned to him and said, “You are not far from the kingdom of heaven.” And then no one dared ask him another question.166 ¶12

So the question was asked, and now he brings in a mystery. He’s going to show them how they will know that the Lord our God is one Lord. And you listen to it carefully. Nobody asked the question, but he makes the statement, “How do scribes say that Christ is the son of David… when David in the Spirit calls him Father? If David thus calls him Father, how can he be David’s son?” . And no one asks the question.166 ¶13

Here is a mystery. He’s leaving it, for he is now bearing witness to the truth. For he said to Pilate—on this level the embodiment of reason—“For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” And now he makes the most fantastic statement in the world, because, if you take it as of 2,000 years ago and he’s speaking of a being, if you take it chronologically, who lived 3,000 years ago. So no one saw David, for David was not born on the earth. David in Spirit calls him Father. If David in Spirit calls him Father, how can he be David’s son? David calls him, Lord, and the Lord is one. He’s telling everyone who hears him, wait, I have come to bear witness to the truth. The day is coming that the same David will call you Father. Then you will know why I tell you, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” for there is no “other.” You’re living on this level in a fragmented world and everyone is saying “I am.” But, really, we aren’t billions of I am’s; in the end, all are the Father. And you will know that greatest of all commandments, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” I AM, our I AMs, is one I AM.166 ¶14

So he comes bearing witness to the truth. But while we are fragmented in this world, keep this in mind—and yet play it fully and wisely on this level—his invitation to ignore the facts of life and dare to assume that you are the man, the woman, that you want to be. For his words are true. He said, “Every word of God proves true. Do not change these words, lest you be rebuked by him, and found a liar.”166 ¶15

Now we are told, “The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the sayings, the collected sayings, which are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything besides these.” Then he insists, “This is the end of the matter.” It’s all over, no other words, this is the end of the matter. Now, “Fear God, and keep his commandments; and this is the whole duty of all men. Now these are his commandments: fear God; keep his commandments; this is the duty of all men” .166 ¶16

And so, I seek out his commandments and I start reading, what did he command? Every word is a commandment, on different levels. So I [...] my world, the world of Caesar. But it doesn’t really matter where I start in the world of Caesar, how many stripes against me. If I have no financial, intellectual, social or other background, it doesn’t really matter if I know God’s word. It doesn’t matter where you are this night if you know God’s word, and you will accept that word. For his word is, “Whatever you desire, believe you have received it, and you will.” And don’t be among the majority, as the lady brought out this night, “Most people can’t part from what they don’t want long enough to get what they do want.” They can’t divorce themselves long enough from the evidence of their senses to actually put into practice God’s word, which is that 11th chapter, that 24th verse of the Book of Mark. Whatever you desire. It doesn’t say let the priesthoods of the world tell you that it’s good for you. It doesn’t say society tells you that you should want to transcend or you should not want to transcend your present level. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. It’s something entirely different.166 ¶17

From that moment when John was arrested all things changed, that’s what we’re told. And here is John who is telling us to be satisfied. He tells a soldier to be satisfied with his wages; those who have two coats give one to one who has none; if you have more than you need to eat for food, give it those who have none. But then John was arrested. When John was arrested, here comes Jesus into the world. Hasn’t a thing to do with doing things on this level in order to get things. Not a thing to do with it.166 ¶18

This past month in New York City, I had one of these marathon radio… it ran five hours through the night. I had two of them, really. But this night, my opponent was Rabbi Silver and Kylie [...], the actor, and then, [...] Oursler, the son of Fulton Oursler who wrote The Greatest Story Ever Told. He’s quite a successful writer in his own name. They were my opponents and the moderator was [...] John. Well, the Rabbi said to me, “Don’t you tell your people to give to certain charities, to give to this, to give to that, to give to the other?” I said, “No, I don’t.” “Then what sort of a teacher are you? Don’t you tell them that you must do this and do that?” I said, “I am not in the school of John the Baptist; I am in the school of Jesus Christ. If you want to tell your congregations to give all kinds of money to your synagogue, all well and good, do it. You think you can enter the kingdom of heaven by merit. You’ll wait forever. You’ll rust on this level until you accept the teaching of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ transcends John the Baptist, who said give one coat if you have two; you have more money than your needs, give it away to those who haven’t; you have more food than you need, give it away. So you go out to your congregation and you tell them all the time what you must do to earn the kingdom of heaven. You can’t earn the kingdom of heaven. It’s a gift.”166 ¶19

But I’ll tell you on this level what I am telling you now. You will transform your world if you tell your congregation how to transform this [...] on this level. It isn’t going to earn you the kingdom. In God’s own wonderful way he’ll single them out, one by one, and bring them into the kingdom. It’s a gift. You don’t earn it and you think you can earn it. Well, go on thinking you can earn it and remain in the world of John the Baptist. Although you do not recognize John the Baptist because you stop at Malachi, and I tell you John the Baptist is but a continuation of Malachi. They’re trying to earn the kingdom of heaven by good deeds. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be good. I find it easier to be good—I have to live with myself—to be kind, to be considerate. If someone asks help of me and I have what it takes, I will part and I will share. But I don’t go out saying I’ve got to share in order to earn the kingdom, because you can’t do it that way. So someone asks me for some money and if I have it and it doesn’t distress my immediate family, they can have it. I’ve done it and still do it, and will undoubtedly continue to do it. But that’s not the way that one goes into any kingdom. So I tell you how this thing works in this world.166 ¶20

Well, he was against me, so was Oursler, the whole bunch, because they live on a level that is, as the lady said, “Most people can’t part with what they don’t want long enough to get what they do want.” People go to bed thinking, only if Mr. Brown, Mr. Jones, Mr. so-and-so gave what they should give, with all that they have, to the charity he’s trying to raise. It doesn’t work that way. Well, you should have heard the response—the phones ringing, the mail coming in, the wires coming in, and all kinds of things plus the letters that followed. In the next two, almost three weeks, they were still writing that program and yet the program goes on six days a week. But it was so much of an impact on those who heard it. It covered twenty-six states and most of Canada. And so, this is something altogether different.166 ¶21

They talked about a man who claimed he was Christ Jesus. What if I say to them, “I am and so are you”? That would shock them all the more. They are all Christ Jesus. There’s nothing but God in this world. God is playing all the parts. There’s nothing but God, and God individualized is Jesus Christ. But God individualized as Jesus Christ is still God. And everyone who actually goes through that series of events awakens as Christ Jesus, without loss of identity. There’s no loss of identity, yet Jesus Christ. There’s only one body. So the Lord is one and his name is one, only one body. Everybody will one day awaken to a series of events and awaken as Christ Jesus. And then you will know the meaning of these words: For this I was born and for this I came into the world to bear witness to the truth; and everything said of me will now unfold within you, but I can’t share it with you, he said. You must believe it and trust me that I am bearing witness to the truth and everything said.166 ¶22

For I dictated the words to my prophets of old, that’s what he’s saying. Everything in that book I dictated to those I organized by my own providence for spiritual communion with me, and they took it down beautifully, just as the lady did. She forgot it within a matter of hours. Didn’t know what she had written, but she knew she had it. Luckily she wrote it down as the prophets did. And then she woke in the morning to find that there it was recorded on paper, that regardless of different memory that she had, she still could bring it back to the surface mind because she’d written it down. That’s vision. That’s revelation.166 ¶23

So the book is written that way, and the whole thing is dictated by Christ Jesus, by God, the only God. So he comes into the world in which the whole thing unfolds within him, and everyone will one day have the identical thing unfold within him.166 ¶24

And he will know why the greatest commandment is that “the Lord our God is one Lord.” And that if God is father before being individualized, then that in which he is now individualized must also be a father. And if you are the father of only one son prior to the individualization, then that same son must be the son of the one who is now individualized. So he appears and he asks the one simple question, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David… when David in the Spirit calls him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” No one asked any further questions. It’s a little mystery inserted into a conversation between a very wise scribe and Jesus Christ.166 ¶25

So he asks the question, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment? What is the first commandment?” Well, you and I know from your commandments, that’s not the first. It’s recorded in the 6th chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” But as you read the commandments it is, “Love the Lord thy God.” It’s something entirely different. And as far as “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as a commandment, you read that in the 19th chapter of Leviticus. It’s not in the commandments. All we have are the ten. It’s something set aside, but it is the second commandment and equal to the first. And then he ties it together. So “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” for the simple reason this is a fragmented God, and the “other” is not really another, it’s yourself.166 ¶26

If I could only share with you what it feels like when you reach the apex and the whole, and it’s all you. For I saw the fragmented stone, the stone the builders rejected it is called by Peter, and “The stone that begot thee, thou art unmindful.” The stone… it broke into unnumbered fragments. When it was all put together, it formed that of a man, and as you looked at it, it’s all yourself. So when it’s all put together and you see it, you will see yourself. And it’s man. The one grand stone fragmented, then regrouped into a form, not a stone but a man. And looking at it, you look right into your own face, beautified beyond the wildest dream of this level, with a dignity of features, with a majesty of face, with a courage that you could not conceive that you could ever have from this level. And there you’re looking right into your own face, when all are put together.166 ¶27

And who are they all?—everyone here, the whole vast world is part of the being that I am. I saw it one night, saw one being, and here is myself. But I came closer and I saw infinite people, all the races, all the nations of the world, all incorporated into one being, and I am he, the heart glowing like a living ruby. And here is a whole being. I’m looking at it and I’m looking at myself. I come closer. When the vision is contracted, you see nations, you see races, you see people, unnumbered people, and altogether form the one being that I am. And it’s you.166 ¶28

So, you’ll look upon your own being, and this that is now speaking to you will be incorporated into that being. And that’s the mystery. And all of us incorporated into one being—as you look at it, it’s yourself—you’re the only being. So, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord”—not two, only one—the greatest of all the commands; and the second equal to the first, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” for the very simple reason he is not another.166 ¶29

On this level, for the great mystery of [...] individualizing God as you, we are scattered and we are enemies on this level. But while on this level, I come to bear witness to the truth. And I know that this, if I say that this is a lectern and this is a microphone, this is a table, and you come forward and you feel it, examine it, and you will say, “Well, Neville is telling the truth. That’s right. These are what he claims that they are.” And all of a sudden I say, “Well, isn’t it lovely.” And you think, “You mean the table?” And I say, “No, the flowers. Aren’t they beautiful! Can’t you smell them?” You say, “Now he’s gone off his nut. There aren’t any flowers.” There is no external fact relating to my judgment. So at that moment you think, “Now he’s really gone.” But I insist that there are lovely flowers here. And so I will assume that they are and I will smell flowers and feel flowers, and live as though they were, convinced that there will be flowers. And you will have, one night, the impulse—or maybe when I’m not even here, I don’t have to be here to see them—there will be flowers. I have done it. I have taught others how to do it.166 ¶30

And so, whatever I desire when I pray, believe I have received it. Whether that be for things or for a transformation of myself from being what I am at this very level to another level. So if I desire this night to be elsewhere, I shouldn’t sleep in my apartment in the assumption that that is the apartment in which I slept last night. I must sleep where I would sleep were my desires this night fulfilled.166 ¶31

And when someone looks at someone in this world and they see them as their senses dictate and they think now that’s the truth, that isn’t true if that individual could be improved. It’s not the truth. But what does the word say in scripture concerning such a thing? Well, “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you see and hear my words. So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel in his hand was spoiled, but he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do” .166 ¶32

He didn’t discard that material at all, didn’t discard it as you and I would discard people who are not coming up to our ideals. He simply took the same vessel and reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do. So someone in your world is not as you think they ought to be, don’t argue with them, don’t discard them from your life, because it’s yourself. Don’t cut off a finger. We’re all one. Leave him just as he is, and then reshape him in your own mind’s eye, and try to remain faithful to that concept of him that at the moment his behavior denies, and live in that state just as though it were true. And see how true God’s words are.166 ¶33

But come back to what the lady said earlier, “Most people”—and don’t be among the most people—“they just can’t part from what they don’t want long enough to get what they do want.” So don’t be among the most people who cannot part with it long enough. Someone comes into your world and he’s no good. He’s always asking for help and you’re always pouring it out, because you don’t know how to say no. Well now, don’t just pour it out and then do nothing. In your mind’s eye do something about it because he’s yourself. “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” for he’s an actual self in a state of fragmentation. And one day we’ll all be gathered together and not one piece can be missing. “Not one is lost in all my holy mountain.” So all gathered together, they form the man. When you look at that one man, you are he.166 ¶34

So he comes to bear witness to the truth, and the truth is an infinite, an ever-increasing illumination. So the question asked cannot be answered on any one level to the satisfaction of the whole definition of truth. But something infinitely greater than truth is love.166 ¶35

For it is true that if a murderer came through the window right now and asked me where a certain man has gone, I would tell him, knowing exactly where the man is, I would say I don’t know. I would lie. I would lie to the murderer and I wouldn’t tell the truth. I know exactly where the man is hiding, but I would lie because love is greater than truth. I would lie and save myself, because the man that I am saving from this murderer is myself. And I would save myself from the violence that he intended. And so, love is greater than truth.166 ¶36

So when I stood in the presence of infinite love, who is Christ Jesus—I can see him now more clearly than I can see my own face—and when I answered, “The greatest thing in the world is love,” then he embraced me and incorporated me into his body. We became one being. And I am that body, yet no loss of identity; yet containing a greater self, a greater presence, which is the one being gathering all together into that one body.166 ¶37

And so, love is just infinitely greater than anything in this world. But don’t discount truth, for truth is forever going to higher and higher and higher levels of illumination. What holds good here will not be denied on a higher level but will be incorporated. Whether it is perfectly true here on this level, it doesn’t exist on a higher level. I could stand suspended in the air and have no power on the outside holding me, just hold myself, because all things are subject to my own imaginative power, allow anything in motion in my world, rearrange it, without any concept of gravity, and hold it there forever if I so desired. Not one would cease to be waiting for me when I arrived at a certain point, still my [...], my own self. That is the world in which we all move as we rise from this level to that level.166 ¶38

So, “What is truth?” and he doesn’t answer. And then he goes out and the crowds are screaming and he says, “I find no crime in him. But you have a custom, that I release a man for you at the Passover. Would you have me release the King of the Jews?” And they scream, “Not this man, but Barabbas.” Then it added, “And Barabbas was a robber” .166 ¶39

They chose the law—the robber being the evidence of the senses. Don’t release truth on higher levels, give us the robber on this level; I want to feel secure.166 ¶40

And a friend of mine, who is a practicing psychiatrist in this city of ours, I knew him back East, and when I wrote him how I got out of the army by believing in scripture, by sleeping physically in the army as though I slept physically in my home 2,000 miles away, and in nine days I was transported physically to my home 2,000 miles away, honorably discharged; he being a Freudian and a practicing psychiatrist doesn’t even answer my letter. I met him when the war was over. He was still in it when the war was over, and I got out in March of 1943. He came out when the war was over, the end of ‘45, my age, dying to get out. But he was too much… so he chose Barabbas, because he was trained to believe in the reality of his senses.166 ¶41

He once said to me, “I love listening to you, Neville. You know what I do when I hear you? I put my feet into the carpet”—that was in New York City where we had carpets—“I put my feet into the carpet and I would hold the chair with my fingers to keep my sense of the reality and the profundity of things.”166 ¶42

So I took him away from reality and the profundity of things. So while he was in the army, he had only a little cot to keep his sense of reality and profundity of things. I let go of the cot and slept in my lovely bed, which I still use here, I brought it with me. So that same bed, I knew it so well, I slept in it, and saw as I would see were it true that I was honorably discharged. One thing I made very sure to myself: I’m not here on furlough. I’m not on furlough; I am here honorably discharged. [...] no AWOL, I am honorably discharged, and this is no furlough. And so, when I got that whole mood and bathed myself in it, I slept, and I proved the word of God.166 ¶43

And so we are told in the Book of Proverbs, I think it’s the 23rd chapter and the 23rd verse, “Every word of God proves true. Don’t change his word, don’t add to it, don’t alter them, lest you be rebuked, and be proved a liar” . So just take his word. His word told me to do exactly what I did. You really know what you want?—I knew exactly what I wanted—well then, believe that you’ve got it. But if I had it, where would I sleep if I had it? I’d sleep in my own home in New York City… well, that’s where I slept, all in my Imagination.166 ¶44

So when I tell you that Blake is right, “Man is all Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in him” . “The eternal body of Man is the Imagination, and that is, God himself” . Now let us go into the Silence.166 ¶45

Tonight’s subject is “He Is Meditating Me.” The principal source of religious insight is revelation. Revelation makes us sure; without it all seems obscure. You can sit down and rationalize from now until the end of time on this greatest of all books, the Bible. Unless it’s revealed to you, I do not see how you can really grasp it. It is God’s word, and, may I tell you, it is true; every word of it is true. All the symbolism is true, all the imagery is true, and it gradually unfolds within the individual. Everyone will experience it. So tonight, in this strange subject “He Is Meditating Me”, well, who is meditating? When I say, “I and my Father are one,” am I the being really meditating myself, projecting on the screen of space this thing called Neville, having experience within the limitations of these dimensions? Well, listen to the words of Peter. It’s the first epistle of Peter, the second chapter: “O come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men, but in God’s sight chosen and precious. Become living stones, built into a spiritual house… that you may declare the oneness and the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his light” . Read it in the second chapter of Peter’s first epistle: He calls us out of darkness into light.162 ¶1

Well, many years ago, 1934 to be exact, I was sitting in the Silence, not thinking of anything in particular, just simply contemplating this interior structure of the brain as it were. If you turn your eyes, mentally turn them inward and just let them rest upon the interior of your skull, in a little while all these dark convolutions of the brain grow luminous and they fascinate you. The whole thing becomes liquid and golden liquid light. So while watching this wonderful golden liquid light, suddenly out of the nowhere came a stone, a rock. There’s nothing more sterile, nothing more opaque, nothing more contracted as far as imagery is concerned than a rock. So here was a rock, this quartz. As I looked at it, just simply looking at it, not wondering why it’s before me, but there it is before me, and suddenly it became fragmented, broken into unnumbered pieces. Then all these little pieces were gathered together, but not re-formed into the rock (the original form) but into a human shape. And here it takes human form. Here, I am seeing a man seated in the lotus posture. I became intrigued. As I looked closer, I’m looking at myself. I am the being that I’m contemplating. Here he is seated in the lotus posture and just the very image of the being I knew myself to be. As I looked at him, he began to glow and he increased in luminosity until he reached the limit of intensity, and then he exploded. Then I returned to this level with only the memory of what I had experienced.162 ¶2

We are told, “The Rock, his work is perfect,” the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy. The rock, which is now inanimate, “his” work, it becomes personal now. What was a rock takes on the form of a person… “his” work is perfect. “And of the Rock that begot you, you are unmindful and you have forgotten the God who gave you birth” . Here, a Rock begot me and God gave me birth, so God is the Rock. That’s Deuteronomy 32. Here’s a Rock, it begot me, and I forgot the God who gave me birth. If I was begotten by a Rock and born of God, then God and the Rock are one. So here, the invitation: “O come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men, and yet in God’s eyes chosen and precious.” It tells you: you will become living stones and be built into this spiritual structure. Then you are told that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who really begot you, these wonderful deeds of him who brought you and called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, from darkness into light.162 ¶3

Now, when I had the experience I didn’t understand it. I simply recorded it. Understanding comes over the years. You record the experience. You can’t deny it, you had it. It’s not theory, you didn’t seek it, it just happened. And then suddenly, as years move on, awakening comes and you begin to understand what has happened to you.162 ¶4

Now, last year a book was given to me. I read the review and my daughter and my wife said, “What do you want for Father’s Day?” Well, we don’t share presents for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day and all these things. But they said it to me in a kidding manner and I answered in the same manner, I said, “I have just read a review of a book. It’s Carl Jung’s latest work and so I would like to have it.” So I gave them the title Memories, Dreams and Reflections. He died in 1961 and the book came out in 1961. So it’s not only his latest, it’s his last work. It is really an autobiography; although it is not claimed to be one, it is written in the first person.162 ¶5

Well, in this, Jung made this observation. Mine happened in 1934, what I’ve just told you. His happened in 1944—not the full vision, only the middle section of the vision. He found himself in 1944 in a dream, but in a dream awake. And true vision is when you are in a dream awake. This, you may not know it, this is a vision. But because you are completely awake, you don’t call this a dream because you are in it and you are awake. For when you are really in a dream and you awake in it, it’s just like this. So a vision is in a dream awake; what Blake called “fourfold vision.” So this is the four-fold vision of Blake. But we are now completely awake in it and it has continuity, so we don’t even realize it is still a dream. But this is the vision of which I speak.162 ¶6

So, he found himself in a dream, walking along a little country road, and he came upon this wayside chapel. The door was ajar so he stepped in. As he walked into this little chapel, he walked toward the altar. And to his amazement there was no image of the Virgin and there was not anything that would remind him of a Christian chapel, yet it was. There was no crucifix and no image of the Virgin, but in place of these two images, this wonderful display of flowers. And then, looking down below the altar he noticed a Yogi seated in the lotus posture; and looking closer, this figure had his face. It startled him; and he awoke frightened, and said he to himself: “So it is he who is meditating me. He has a dream and I am it.” Then said he to himself, “And I knew that when he awakened I would no longer be.” Then said he—being the great analyst that he was—“This is a parable and what is its message to me? For here I am being confronted with something from the very depths of my soul, what is it trying to tell me?” And said he to himself, “The central jet of truth that this thing is trying to convey to me is this: on this level of my being I think this is causation and that is effect; and here now it’s revealed to me, that is causation and this is effect. That myself retired in meditation, and meditated this human form to have the experience in three dimensions of space and time; and then by this experience, I would increase my awareness, and this increased awareness would further my realization. So the whole story is to reverse in me my thinking about causation: causation isn’t here; it is there. And I saw the being who is meditating me.”162 ¶7

He didn’t see the rock and he didn’t see the light. The limit of contraction is the rock, the most sterile, the most opaque that you could think of in this world. If you thought of an image to convey these qualities, think of a rock, a quartz. And then it becomes fragmented. And then when re-gathered, it doesn’t take the original form, it takes the form of man. Then the man glows, becomes a breathing, living being, and then it glows and glows and glows, and reaching the limit of brightness it vanishes. The job is completed and it vanishes. And we are told, “I have brought you out of darkness into light.” For God is light: “I am the light of the world” . And yet I do not lose my identity, I do not lose the being that I am; only I inherit the greater being, the light of the world.162 ¶8

So here, in this vision revealed to me, I will now share it with you. What is the stone then that men will reject? “Come unto him, to that living stone men rejected.” What is the stone? For the stone I saw was only a symbol. I certainly was not the stone. What is the stone, that opaque contracted state that men rejected as causation?—your own wonderful human Imagination. The Bible recognizes only one source of dream, only one: all dreams and visions proceed from God. Well, I don’t have to be a giant in mind to discover who he is. I stand here and I think of my home that I left an hour ago. Well, that’s a dream, a daydream, but a dream. It doesn’t differ from the dream of the night save in one respect: when I fall asleep tonight and I have a dream, in that dream I am the victim of my attention, not the master of my attention. Here, in a daydream I am in control of the direction of my attention. So I can simply direct it and if it doesn’t please me, I can change it. But in sleep this night, if I dream, I may not be awake as I am now and become the victim of the direction of my attention rather than its master.162 ¶9

So, if all dreams proceed from God, but all dreams, I don’t have to go very far to discover who God is. For here, in this moment I was sitting in the Silence and suddenly before me comes a rock. Only a symbol, a symbol of what was recorded in scripture in Deuteronomy 32 and all through scripture, really: Isaiah 28, “I am laying in Zion a stone.” Zion is called the eternal home of God. “I am laying in Zion a stone.” And here, in this Book of Peter… and Peter, the word Peter means rock. The very word Peter is a rock, is a stone. So what is this stone symbolizing in my world? It’s symbolizing my own wonderful human Imagination that I, through the years, rejected. In my search for God I thought he was another and found him because others thought he was out there. They showed me pictures of him and showed me all kinds of things of a God, and in my innocence I believed them. And so, I kept on rejecting the stone, the living stone. I hadn’t touched it. And one day, I touched it and then I became a living stone. The stone became alive. You read it carefully—it begins on the fourth verse—how by finding it, you that you rejected, accepting it you are accepted. By association you touch it, and you that you rejected become a living stone. And then you can declare all these wonderful deeds of he who called you out of darkness into light. So here, we call that the projection on the screen of space of things I would approach. And then I knew, in the depths of my soul, I knew I would one day accept the one I had rejected. For I could not believe, trained as I was trained, that I, and I myself, was the cause of the phenomena of my life. I didn’t believe it, that I was the cause of all the strange things happening to me, all the misfortunes, all the strange things in the world. I couldn’t believe it, so I rejected that. I rejected the stone that begot me, and the God who gave me birth.162 ¶10

One day I found him, I accepted him, and then came the unfolding of all this wonderful symbolism as recorded in scripture, all the imagery, and it’s all imagery. Who would have thought on reading that that you were in conflict in the depths of your own soul and really encounter the symbol of the stone? But who saw it? I saw it. Well, where did it come from? It came out of my Imagination. For if all dreams proceed from God, and I know exactly what happened to me… I sat in the Silence thinking of nothing in particular, turning my attention inward into my brain and contemplating these dark convolutions of the brain, and as always happens they grew luminous. As they grew luminous, I am simply looking at this luminous cloud forming in my head, and suddenly out of nowhere, comes this quartz, this enormous stone. I didn’t do a thing, just simply looked at it. And it fragmented, the whole thing broke into unnumbered pieces. Not a piece was lost but re-gathered by some invisible hand. As it was re-gathered, it was not the original form, now it takes the form of man. So Jung makes the statement that “I myself retired in meditation, and meditated me in human form.” But he does not mention the fact that his dream encompassed the stone and the light. That out of this dark opaque state suddenly came light, light beyond the wildest dream of man. But I tell you, you have meditated yourself and brought yourself right into being right here in this world, that you may increase in experience and by this increase of awareness further your own wonderful self-realization. And that is forever. There is no limit to translucency. There is only a limit to contraction, to opacity, and the stone is the symbol of the limit of sterility, the limit of opacity, the limit of contraction. But there is no limit to man’s expansion, man’s translucency. So when I saw this thing reaching seemingly a limit, it exploded, proving to me that there could never be a limit to the expansion, to the translucency of my own being.162 ¶11

So, everyone is simply on the way, expanding, after he sees this wonderful thing taking place within him. Until you see it, may I tell you, share with me what I have experienced. You don’t have to wait to see it to test it in this world. For if all things come from him and without him there’s not a thing made that was made, I don’t have to wait to prove it. I just have to test it this night. And actually, if I know that my own Imagination is God, the rock that I rejected, the God I rejected… I went in search of a strange God, some God that didn’t really exist, that someone painted on the wall, or carved in wood, and some peculiar thing outside of myself. But then, if this really is what all along I rejected and now I will accept, then comes testing me [...]. So we are told: “Come test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!” If you want to search it, it’s the 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians: “Come test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test” . Well, if he is in me and by him all things were made, and without him was nothing made that was made, I certainly should be able to test him. Well, how did he work in this world? Read this now, “He called a thing that is not seen as though it were seen, and the unseen becomes seen.” That is the fourth chapter, the seventeenth verse of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “He calls a thing that is not seen as though it were seen, and the unseen becomes seen.”162 ¶12

I’ve just returned from New York City, and last month on a Wednesday evening this lady came in from Baltimore. That’s quite a long journey, and she came to bring me good news.” She said, “A friend of mine, working in my office, last July” . . . now last month October… “last July, her purse disappeared, her pocketbook. She reported it to the office, they made a thorough search, and no trace of it.” She said, ‘All I had in it as far as money was concerned was $1.35, just lunch money. But I did have a lovely bracelet that I valued—not only to me, it was of great value sentimentally—but I also thought it had great value in a monetary sense, so I placed a double value on it. But I wanted the bracelet, not the $1.35 that was in my change purse. And not one little thing happened to retrieve this purse.’” This lady who came to my meetings told her of my work and told her what to do, and then she gave her a complete set of my books. And this is what the lady did. She imagined that she was wearing the bracelet, that’s all that she did. She imagined she was wearing the bracelet. If she wore the bracelet, well then, it wasn’t lost. And day after day she wore that bracelet. This lady who came from Baltimore on Wednesday night to tell me the story could tell me the previous day, on Tuesday in October, the purse was found in this strange manner. The firemen were called in to give some estimate on structural changes because they suggested certain changes for safety. And then they brought the firemen in to make these so-called suggestions. One fireman simply took a certain [...] should come out, and as he did so, behind this thing that he pulled was the purse. The only thing missing was the little change purse of a dollar and thirty-five cents, and there was the bracelet.162 ¶13

If “By him all things are made and without him there is nothing made that is made,” well then, I can test it. If I test it and he proves himself in performance, I’ve found him. But, if all things are made by him and without him there’s nothing made that is made, doesn’t she know this night who Christ Jesus is? Who God is? She found the one who made it. But she may, in spite of this, tomorrow still reject it. That’s life. I can find him this night and then tomorrow, by the confusion of the world, reject him as not really the God who creates everything in my world. At least she’s proven in one instance from her own satisfaction she has found a causative power within her. She may not want to feel it is Christ Jesus, although scripture tells you it is, the Bible tells you it is, but churches tell you that it isn’t. The churches want to lead us on the outside and point to some being hanging on a wall or to something in time and space 2,000 years removed from now, and call that Christ Jesus. And they have organized around a certain idea and mislead man. I don’t say they do it consciously and deliberately; they do it unwittingly. They don’t know Christ Jesus. They can dress themselves up in all the flowing garbs of the world and that does not mean that they’ve experienced Christ Jesus. For when they experience him then it’s so simple, it’s so easy, it is so wonderful.162 ¶14

And one day, you have all these marvelous experiences spoken of in scripture. I can’t tell anyone the thrill that is in store for you when you move up from this age into that age. A body already prepared for you, not of your own choosing, and certainly you did not earn it. The body prepared, completely prepared, but waiting for you to fill it. And you become molten light. As molten light you move up and fill this infinite garment, an immortal garment, already prepared for you. And you fill it in one marvelous circular motion. This temple of yours will be struck like lightning, as told you in scripture: “Tell me, Master, what is the sign of your coming?” and he answered, “As lightning comes out of the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man!” And it’s just like that. It’s a bolt of lightning right out of your own skull, and it splits you in two from top to bottom—the bottom being the base of your spine. It’s just the torso that is completely torn in two, and you see it separated by several inches. And at the base of what was your spine is molten golden liquid light. As you look at it, you can say with Blake, “I know it is my Self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.” I am one with the very thing that I contemplate, and then as it, in serpentine motion up you go into Zion. And you fill a garment prepared for you.162 ¶15

That garment is unseen by mortal eye, because no mortal eye could behold the beauty of that garment. It is beyond the wildest dream of anything known to man. It’s not man as you understand man. Yes, a human face, human hands, human feet. But how could you describe the body that is yours now when you move up and take possession of it? And then you are in Zion. So I say to everyone, it’s going to happen to you, to every being in this world. For you don’t earn it, it’s a gift; it’s given to us. And as he gives us the gift of himself, he gives us the garment already prepared for us. All will get it. And no two… he doesn’t tell the other what garment he is preparing for the other… but all will be molded as living stones into his living wonderful temple. It’s a living thing, not made of dead stones. The stone was converted into something alive, and suddenly the whole temple becomes alive, and you and I form the stones of that temple. You can’t describe the beauty of the body that forms.162 ¶16

So here, who is meditating me? I am meditating myself. God became me that I may become God, and in becoming me he passes me through all these furnaces of affliction. At the very end, then he draws me out, singly. He doesn’t draw me in a pair. I’m unique in the temple. I cannot be replaced in the temple. You cannot be replaced in the temple. So he draws us, as told us in the Book of Isaiah, the 27th chapter: “I will gather you one by one, O people of Israel” . One by one… I don’t bring two. It’s unique; this temple is unique, only one can come at a time. The door is narrow and only one can get through. And God draws us “one by one, O people of Israel” into this temple that he’s building. It’s a heavenly structure, something altogether, well, you can’t describe it. Not a thing on earth could even be a shadow of it.162 ¶17

That’s how unique you are, how perfect you are in his eyes. So you don’t reject this night the stone that begot you. The stone that begot you is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God. “Man is all Imagination and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself.” And if God makes all things, well, then test it. I will this night imagine that I am the man I would like to be, and although reason denies it, my senses deny it, and everything denies it, I will walk in that state just as though it were true. Like the lady wearing the bracelet. It was gone between July and October. She believed her friend who came to my meetings, who gave her the books. She read the books, she never met me in person, never saw me, only from the books. And she began to make a game of it and she wore her bracelet day after day. And then, seemingly out of the nowhere, there must be structural changes in the building. And the firemen come in and they say what they will allow and what they would disallow, and “this must go.” One fireman—why did he do it?—he takes some little thing and pulls it from the wall and says, “This must go. This is a fire trap.” As he does so, behind it here is a pocketbook, and in the pocketbook the one thing she wanted. And the only thing lost was the change, the $1.35. But the bracelet was there!162 ¶18

Well, didn’t she find God? Now many don’t believe that is God. Maybe you can’t quite feel that Imagination could be personified. May I tell you, I stood in the presence of God. He is just as described in the Book of Daniel, just as he’s described. And standing in the presence of the Ancient of Days, I answered in scripture, that’s all that I answered. He asked me the simplest thing in the world, which you may not know if you were asked that suddenly. But you don’t have to know, as told you in the Book of Luke: Don’t be concerned when you are brought into the Divine Council, brought in before the authors, or rather, the rulers of the synagogue . For a synagogue is simply a place of assembly; it’s the assembly itself or those assembled. But they only read in synagogue, that’s all that they do. They don’t give sermons, it’s simply the reading of scripture that all may hear it, as told in Nehemiah, hear it with understanding. Read it so they understand you when you read it, the 8th chapter, the 8th verse. Read it so those who hear you understand what you say. And so, read it, that’s all that is read in synagogue, it’s simply the reading of scripture. So when you’re told, “Bring your [...] into the synagogue before the rulers and the authorities of the day, do not be anxious how you will answer.” Well, if I’m to answer, something was asked me. I can’t answer unless something was asked of me. So, “Do not be anxious how you will answer or what you will say; because the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” .162 ¶19

So you are supremely and divinely prompted what you ought to say. That gives man freedom to disobey. That is the only place in the Bible I can find where a man could really disobey to the point of sinning against the Holy Spirit. Having been prompted what to say then not to say would be a sin against the Holy Spirit. Well, I can’t conceive of any being in the world being divinely prompted what he ought to say failing to confess his faith. And so I was asked, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and my automatic reply was, “Love.” I said, “Faith, hope and love, these three abide, but the greatest of these is love.” With that the Ancient of Days embraced me and I became incorporated into his body, one with his body. I was the very being who embraced me. I have had no sensation from that day on of any separation or divorce from that union. It was a union that has been abiding since. And slowly he who embraced me is rising within me, instructing me as to all my visions that I had and recorded without understanding. Then understanding comes slowly as he rises within me. When he completes his rising fully within me, I am he. Then all the things foretold will be mine. And so they come week after week and month after month.162 ¶20

Well, just imagine going to bed, fully convinced of the reality of God having experienced it, and asking him as you would a person, “Why did you make this? What is the purpose of it all? Why?” Not doubting for one moment that he created it, I’m not asking him to define his act. How was it made, that isn’t my concern, but why? What is its purpose? And then from the depths of your soul one word comes in response to your inquiry, and that one word is “hatching,” just “hatching.” For hatching the whole thing was made. Then your mind goes back and you remember the words of Blake in his Gates of Paradise. Here he has an egg, and he breaks the egg in a drawing, and out of the egg comes a cherub, this thing you couldn’t see to be a cherub with the shell unbroken; you wouldn’t know what it contained. But within the egg it contained a cherub, a winged immortal creature. And then Blake drew an egg, broke the egg, and out of it comes a winged cherub. And the caption of that winged cherub is this: “At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.”162 ¶21

So, why did you make it? “For hatching,” came back the answer. The only purpose of the whole vast universe is for hatching out sons of God. But being a son in the process of becoming, we are invited to imitate him as dear children, and hatch out our dreams as he is hatching out his dream. His dream is to beget sons more numerous than the sands of the sea. All the sons, these are the Elohim that go to make the one God, the only God. So, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord”—that is one—“our Elohim”—that’s a plural word—“is one Lord” . It takes all of these completely awake to make Jehovah. All one.162 ¶22

So here, the word came back, why did you make this? And the answer came, “For hatching.” The only reason for the whole vast universe was for hatching out sons of God. As told us in the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans: “The whole creation groans waiting for the unveiling of the sons of God” . Everything is waiting for that moment in time when the whole curtain is lifted and all the sons are born. And all are he, and altogether form God. So I tell you, I share with you that revelation: it’s only for hatching.162 ¶23

So tonight you can hatch out a dream. You want a home? Dwell in it, just as though you were in it. You want to dispose of one? Keep out of it mentally as though you had sold it. You want to get married, be happily married? Wear the ring as this lady wore the bracelet, and be as persistent in the wearing of it as she was in the wearing of the bracelet. Whatever you want, hatch it out! For the whole world is only for hatching. Everything in the world is hatched out by God. But don’t reject the God in you that is one with the God that brought the whole thing into being. Your human Imagination keyed low is still one with the God that brought the whole vast universe into being. And if he brought the whole vast universe into being for the hatching of his sons, keyed low as we are, we can hatch out ours, jobs, income, anything we want in this world.162 ¶24

For it’s only for hatching. This is not something manufactured; this is revelation. For when you hear a word, one word, from the depths of your soul, and it comes in response to your inquiry; don’t neglect it. Share it with everyone who will accept it, and it is only for hatching. So you can hatch out anything in this world, I don’t care what it is. Someone wants to be a president; he hatches it out. It doesn’t mean anything in the eyes of God. For in the end, when we awake as God, we inherit God. Then all the little things of earth will wear out like a garment and dissolve like smoke.162 ¶25

So your human history will be as nothing. It’s only your divine history that is already written for you in scripture; and all that is written in scripture you are going to experience in the depths of your soul. And if you can’t understand it the very day you experience it, wait, it will happen. I had mine in 1934. I didn’t understand it. I have had visions all through my life. I didn’t understand them but I recorded them. So these things are indelibly impressed upon the mind. It’s exactly what has happened, but then you didn’t understand it. And so, you go through life waiting, and finally the real series begins to unfold within you, and then understanding comes. And all the things that previously happened to you without understanding suddenly begin to unfold like a flower and you have the full meaning of it.162 ¶26

You go back to your scripture and there it was. “Come to him”—to him? And then the very next line tells me that this one spoken of as a person is now a living stone? And you couldn’t understand it. And to see a stone, this inanimate sterile thing, broken, reshaped into a human form and that human form becomes living. Then you understand it. A living stone and the living stone is human. Then he calls you out of darkness into the marvelous light that is he. He brings you into his own light and you are one with him.162 ¶27

So here, tonight you test it. Take your dream this night that you want to realize in the not distant future. For man’s span is short in this little world of ours, three score and ten. You haven’t too many months or years to wait for the fulfillment of the dream. And this revelation is true: “Why did you make it, O God?” “For hatching.” Well now, be imitators of God as dear children. As we’re told in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in his fifth chapter, “Be imitators of God as dear children.” Well, if he brings it this way, by calling a thing that is not seen as though it were, and I must imitate him, well, then I will imitate him. I will dare to assume that which is not now seen, and then I will be faithful to my assumption as though it were true and bring it into being. For the world is for hatching.162 ¶28

This is God’s wonderful nest that he made. It’s the nest and he’s hatching out. So then, that wonderful picture of Blake’s; when you see it the next time, you will see it based on understanding. “At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell” and out comes this winged creature, the immortal you, out of the shell that you could not have seen the contents until the shell was broken. Who looking at a caterpillar could predict his future as a painted butterfly if you’ve never seen a butterfly and didn’t know the source of the butterfly? How could you look at it and see a painted butterfly?162 ¶29

How can you look at man—as it was shown me so vividly and explained to me so clearly that man to the higher world is simply this carnivorous bowel, giving off the most offensive odor? And how could you now look at man seen from a higher level—as we would now look on the lower level and see a caterpillar, for that is all we are to the higher level—and see this cherub, see this God coming out of this carnivorous bowel? For that’s all that we are. The night that it descended upon me and smothered me in affection with kisses, and then this woman to my left explained to me what we were to the higher world. But she explained to me that he who came in the form of a dove came because he so loved me; and he demonstrated his love to me, and all over my face this dove smothered me in kisses. And she told me how we offend the higher world, for to them we are only a carnivorous bowel. But out of this carnivorous bowel, as told us in the Book of Daniel, how we were given the garment and the heart and mind of an animal, and then seven times must pass over us until the people know that the Most High rules .162 ¶30

Then something comes out. It’s a hatching out process. So we are just like the bowel, that [...] picture of the bowel than the caterpillar? And yet out of it comes the painted butterfly. So if we are to the higher world a carnivorous bowel, out of it comes God. He buried himself in us and then brings himself out completely awake, and we are he.162 ¶31

Now let us go into the Silence.162 ¶32

[...] I wondered if I should start with what most people need [...], the normal sphere of how to get a house or how to get a better job or how to get a fortune. I said no, time is short as far as I am concerned, so I must tell you what I have discovered. And so, in the course of time, you will know how to get a house and a better job, and more money and all these things [...], but for an opening night I thought I couldn’t compromise and I had to tell you about him. For I have found him. I have found him of whom Moses and the law, and the prophets wrote. Yes, I have found Jesus Christ. So when you find him, if he is all that you feel that he is, you can’t keep him to yourselves, you must share him. And so I want to share him with you.161 ¶1

So we are told, “If anyone ever says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it” . And that I will endorse. If anyone, no matter who he is, says to you, “‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it.” And yet this night I’m going to share him with you. But I can’t point to another and I can’t point to myself, and yet I will share him with you.161 ¶2

The first book written in the New Testament was written by Paul. Scholars are divided whether this book was Galatians or Thessalonians, but both were written by Paul, so it doesn’t really matter. But they all are agreed that Paul wrote the first book in the New Testament. In the letters of Paul there is no trace whatsoever that man can find an historical Christ as we today use the term, none whatsoever. Yet, if man wants to see Jesus Christ, he’s always sure to see him more clearly if he looks at him through the eyes of Paul. For Paul saw him clearly. Paul saw, also, the deep mystery of its meaning.161 ¶3

Now, to Paul it’s about a mystery. He said, “Great indeed we confess is the mystery of our religion.” A mystery is not a matter to be kept secret but a truth that is mysterious in character. So I will reveal the mystery; so look at it now through the eyes of Paul. Paul made the statement that “The gospel that I have preached is not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” . Revelation to Paul was an act of God in self-revealing. God revealed himself. So, Jesus Christ to Paul was God himself, not a man. He said, “I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” . No one from a human point of view, no, not Jesus Christ. Well, then who is he and where is he? How can I share with you my discovery of Jesus Christ, and not point to another; and not point to any being in this world, and make no image of him? Well, how can I show you who he is? Well, that’s my task this night, and I hope I succeed in showing you Jesus Christ.161 ¶4

We turn now to what I think is the earliest book, the Book of Galatians: “Paul an apostle—not from man nor through men, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead” . And “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me… then I conferred not with flesh and blood” . There was no one to whom he could turn to explain why it never happened in eternity before. “Then he spent his days from morning to evening expounding the matter to all who would listen, trying to persuade them, to convince them of Jesus, both from the law of Moses and the prophets. Some were convinced by what he said and others disbelieved” . That’s the eternal story: The man who finds him cannot convince them, for no man can see David in bodily form and show who the Son is. They can only invite you to come with them… and then they turn back to scripture and show you what was foretold; and tell you, hoping that you will believe what they have experienced that matches what was foretold, that you may see who he is. And some will believe it and others will disbelieve it.161 ¶5

Now he turns to his letter to the Galatians, he says: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”161 ¶6

Now listen to the words carefully. He uses every word as a poet would use words, with great caution. Every word has significance. “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” The word portrayed means “represented naturally and vividly, whether by drawing, painting, verbal description, or by action.” So the entire drama, whether you saw it painted, just in drawing, or someone like Paul verbally describes it to you in his letters, or, whether you sat in an audience, and the curtain rose, and before your eyes was portrayed a man—so that the entire drama of Jesus Christ crucified was portrayed, as you would go to the theatre and see it on the stage. So everything was vicarious—the suffering and the shameful death—like an actor being slain this night on the stage, he is not dead and you know it, and the one who so killed him, as it were, didn’t really kill him. The curtain will go up tomorrow night and the same actors will reenact the part. One will perform the action of murdering and one will drop as though murdered. And yet, night after night, they reenact the part.161 ¶7

So it was portrayed as crucified. It was not a drama that took place 2,000 years ago; it takes place in the soul of man.161 ¶8

This past month I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see one grand picture, the picture by Rembrandt of Aristotle contemplating the head of Homer, valued at a million and a half. It was a perfectly marvelous painting. There were guards all around, and we, the viewers, were separated from the picture by, say, five feet. We could get no closer, all roped off. I don’t blame them, because there are certain fellows in the world who would throw something on it and disfigure this masterpiece. But in the same gallery there were pictures of the crucifixion, valued in the hundreds of thousands.161 ¶9

They were portraying a drama that I personally have experienced, and they did not portray it correctly. For here, one has the stigmata on the left side, the hands, the feet, the head and the left side. That is an incorrect portrayal of the drama. There were others that had it correctly done, hands, feet, head and right side. But even that isn’t true. For they had nails driven into fleshly hands upon a wooden cross, and that is not true.161 ¶10

That which binds God to the real cross that is man is a vortex. And may I tell you, the expression on these faces that I saw and these priceless masterpieces by these great artists is a sad, sad face. And it’s not a sad face at all. May I tell you, when you experience it this will be a recurrence, because you have already experienced it. But when it is once more brought back to memory and once more you feel it, it will be an ecstasy that you cannot describe in words.161 ¶11

Your hands, your feet, your head and your right side, you are nailed upon this by vortices, not nails. And yet in all of these great masterpieces [...] if they knew it, they would have painted a vortex honing into my body as it were. But they nailed my body to a wooden cross. It’s no wooden cross. I am actually nailed to a tree, but the tree, as Blake so beautifully brought out: “The gods of the earth and the sea sought through Nature to find this tree; but their search was all in vain: There grows one in the human brain” . It’s on that tree that we are nailed, and we are nailed by vortices, not by any nails, as depicted on the canvases that I saw only this past month in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Where within that confine you couldn’t buy it for, maybe, a billion dollars or two if you took the value placed upon these canvases by men who are supposed to know what they are addressing.161 ¶12

So here was portrayed the great drama of life through death, but not properly depicted. It wasn’t true.161 ¶13

So I want to share with you what I know from experience. And I can’t conjure a being and point and say, “Here is the Christ! Or there he is!” for that would be a lie. It is a way of salvation, just a way of salvation.161 ¶14

And may I tell you, when you receive God’s grace, which is God’s gift of himself to you, and you are fully aware of it, you find yourself ascribing the entire process of your salvation to God’s actions. You, yourself, will confess you had not a thing to do with it, nothing whatsoever. Your very faith, in your eyes, was a gift of God. You had nothing to do with it. It’s all God’s gift, therefore, all will receive it and none can fail. Every being in this world will be salvaged by God’s grace, grace and grace alone.161 ¶15

By grace we mean, “saved through faith.” It is not your own doing, it is the gift of God: “Not by works, lest anyone should boast. We are his workmanship.” I am his workmanship. Well, how can I, the thing worked, the pot, say to the potter “Why do you make me in this form?” I have no choice in the matter. He has made me as he desired me, and then endowed me with life by giving me himself. Then, it’s by grace he ascends from faith and it’s not my own doing. Then salvation by faith is really salvation by the faithfulness of God.161 ¶16

So I know there are many in the world, especially today in this nuclear age, those who call themselves scientists and great philosophers and the wise men of the world, they will ask such—nothing beyond what they call the world of Nature. No explanation whatsoever unless it comes within the confines of what they say is the world of Nature. And so I can’t speak to them.161 ¶17

If you’re present, my words would be simply an idle tale, wouldn’t mean a thing to you, because I am not speaking of this world at all.161 ¶18

Like Paul I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it. It came to me, too, by the revelation of Jesus Christ. And what is this revelation? God unveils himself in us at his own appointed time. And, we are told, God’s vision of man “has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” .161 ¶19

So don’t try to hasten it. Don’t ask “When will it happen to me?” for no one knows the time or the season. As we are told, Wait for the promise of the Father. Do not ask the time, ask the season, for it’s not yours to know. For the Father has fixed it by his own authority. Just wait, wait for the promise of the Father. But power will come to you when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and then you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, in Samaria, to the end of the earth .161 ¶20

Well, how will you and I be witnesses to all that is told us? For the Father is God’s witness. You are told, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” All that is prophesied is going to happen to you. Not a thing matters, really, outside of the fulfillment of God’s word—your homes, your position in the world, socially, intellectually, financially, in the intellectual world, all will vanish and not even leave a trace of ever having been present. But God’s word will remain forever, and he has to have witnesses to the truth of his word, “For thy word is truth.”161 ¶21

Well, how are we going to have witnesses? When it happens to you, when it happens to me, we witness. As we are told, only by the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses can charges be sustained. I can’t bring one witness. I can know the Bible backwards and say, “Here, this is the witness.” Well, that is true. But I can’t defend it as one witness. I must have two witnesses at minimum, three, yes, and the more the better. But I can’t have just one witness. So I will say, I’ll memorize the Bible; I know it backwards. I’ll present that as my witness, that God’s word is true, and it’s very good to know the Bible, but that’s not what God will accept. “For God has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” . So when God enters into that divine council, he has to have two witnesses. And the external witness we all have—that’s the Bible. We must have an internal witness, where our internal list of experiences parallels the Bible.161 ¶22

And so you step into his presence and you don’t have to say one word. For God does not judge you by your social position in this world, by your intellectual position in this world, for the wisdom of man is foolish in the eyes of God. So when you’re brought into the divine council, he sees only the heart. He does not see outward appearances; what you did in this world, what you made, what you accomplished, that is as nothing. He’s only looking for the witness, the witness that parallels his prophecy of what will unfold within the mind of man. So you stand before him and he sees the Father.161 ¶23

And then it parallels this way of salvation. And the way of salvation is this. It will happen to everyone born of woman. I don’t care if you are dead now and it didn’t happen to you before; you haven’t really died. That’s also a grand mystery. Your body was consumed by the fire and scattered in the four corners of the earth, but you really haven’t ceased to be. Man does not terminate at that point where my senses cease to register him. He still is a living reality, whether he has experienced it or not. But he will experience it, because to himself he is just as solidly real as he was here to us who touched him and felt his bodily presence. But he has to come one day into the divine council where God sees the witness that no man can see.161 ¶24

And when they are parallel so that the birth spoken of Christ Jesus, he has experienced; and when David, the eternal David, calls him, Lord, he has experienced; and when his departure from Egypt, which is always symbolized by the turning of a rod [...] into a serpent, when he has experienced that; it simply signifies his departure from Egypt, meaning this age. He doesn’t have to say he’s done it. It’s so obvious to the one who sits in judgment.161 ¶25

So when these experiences are paralleled by the external witness of scripture, he enters the divine council. Now we are told the day is coming that the Lord will reign as king over the whole land; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one. That name is Christ Jesus—only one, Christ Jesus. It’s Christ Jesus that David calls Adonay. He calls him “my Father” in fulfillment of the 89th Psalm, “I have found David… he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’” . When you find him and he calls you the same thing, then you know who Christ Jesus is: Jesus Christ is God the Father. And everyone one day will be called by David, “Adonay,” and when he calls you “Adonay,” he knows who he is.161 ¶26

Well, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? And they answered, ‘Why, the son of David.’ He said, ‘Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?’” . Well, you’re going to have these experiences, and then because he only calls in scripture, he calls Christ Jesus “Father,” when he calls you that you know who you are.161 ¶27

For on that day the Lord will be one and his name one. So in the end, when all awaken, there’s only one; and that one is God the Father.161 ¶28

So Paul recognized no intermediary between man and God. He completely repudiated all institutions, all authorities, all customs, all laws that interfered with the direct access of the individual to his God. So man is sure that between himself and God is Jesus Christ. Don’t believe it! No intermediary between the self and God. But God is personified in scripture as Jesus Christ, and throughout the centuries man has mistakenly taken personifications for persons; and the acted parable for history; and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended; and the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself.161 ¶29

So here, Jesus Christ is not someone that lived 2,000 years ago. Jesus Christ is God himself, who became you that you may become God. He is actually the life of your being, as told in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians. And he acted as though he’s shocked that they didn’t know, “Do you not know that you are the temple of the living God and that God’s spirit dwells in you?” Well, if God’s spirit dwells in me, I should know it. If not now, eventually I should discover him, for God could not emerge from a man in whom he did not exist. He exists in you, and one day he will emerge by a series of revelations so that I will know him. And when he unveils it by the series of revelations, I will know him, and when I find him I find myself. It’s the unveiling of myself that is Jesus Christ.161 ¶30

So, Jesus Christ is the way of salvation, personified for us as a man. And so in this year l963 we are still bowing to a being who lived 2,000 years ago. We have made an idol of something that we were told, “Make no graven image unto me,” but none. [...] the second commandment, “Make no graven image unto me… and if anyone should ever say to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ believe it not.” But in spite of that we still make these images.161 ¶31

And there are unnumbered images that man will conjure in his mind’s eye when he hears the word Christ Jesus and see it as something objective to himself. You will not in eternity find him until he unveils himself in you as you… when he unveils it in the most marvelous way by that which was God’s mystery, the Bible. So the whole thing begins to unveil in you—you have the experience. You go back and read the scripture, the Old Testament, and there you see exactly what was foretold.161 ¶32

But you could not foresee it. Yet there it was; it was foretold. Then suddenly… whoever would think, in this modern day, that he or she is father of the David of biblical fame until it happens?161 ¶33

I share with you—I can’t say I will persuade you to believe it, any more than Paul succeeded in persuading those who listened from morning to night, as told us in the 28th chapter of the Book of Acts. And so, he spent his day from morning to evening, telling them about the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus, both from the law of Moses and the prophets. And some of them believed on what he said, while others disbelieved .161 ¶34

So what percentage this night will accept it, I do not know. I have not the slightest idea how many will believe it without having the experience. Many find him not because they sought for him, but those who found him brought them to him. And so, I found him and so this night I will share him with you, but I can’t persuade you that it is true.161 ¶35

But the day will come you will have the experience and having it, you will be automatically taken right into the divine council where God, in the 82nd Psalm we are told, has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.161 ¶36

Not to condemn; no one is condemned. He’s not a God of retribution. He’s waiting for the second witness, for you can’t come into his court bearing only one witness. You could be the greatest scholar in the world, memorize the entire book so you could repeat it word after word as it was in the original tongue. That’s not what he wants. Have you experienced the [...], those who bring the second witness? You have the external witness of scripture; you must bring the internal witness of the Spirit. Standing in his presence he sees, because he doesn’t have to ask questions, and seeing it, you become one with the body of Christ Jesus. You are then Christ Jesus.161 ¶37

And so when Blake was asked, “What do you think of Christ Jesus?” without batting an eye he replied, “He’s the only God” and then quickly added, “But so am I and so are you.” Well, he who asked the question did not know it. Blake did, for he had the experience. And so, I know I have found him. Having found him it’s my duty until the end of days when I take it off for the last time to share that discovery with everyone who will listen.161 ¶38

For like Paul when he said, “The time for my departure has come,” he didn’t mean a little physical death that all go through, he meant the end of an age. “The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. And now, henceforth, is laid up for me a crown of righteousness” . So he meant the end of this age for him. It was not what the world would call death but a coronation. That crown of righteousness was his and he would be that king. And only one king, not a bunch of kings; for “The Lord will become king over all the earth, and on that day, the Lord will be one and his name one.” So, there aren’t to be numberless little Christ Jesuses running around, but one. You will not lose your identity, any more than I will lose my identity, but you will have a greater self. For we are heirs not only to his promise but to a person. We actually inherit God, and without loss of identity. All will know each other and yet all Christ Jesus.161 ¶39

Now, you try it. When you go home, you dwell upon it. You dwell upon these two witnesses. Try to read it in the scripture. If you do not now do it, make a habit of it, just read it. Much of it will mean nothing to you, but read it anyway. Just read it and dwell upon it. When you hear the story of Job and Job [...] and cries out, “Oh, that I could find him.” He heard about him, but he hasn’t seen him: “Oh, that I could find him.” Tonight the whole vast world is trying to find him outside of self. Until the very end of Job, in that last chapter, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” .161 ¶40

I see what you meant in the beginning of time, but I was looking elsewhere. I was looking for some external savior I thought would come in some miraculous way and conquer my enemies and then set me up in some wonderful way. So I was looking for an external savior. And then it happened in me. It wasn’t an external savior; it was God’s way of salvation.161 ¶41

And so, Paul taught Christ crucified that all might see not God’s weeping but God’s love. All the difference in the world. The whole vast world sees on the crucifix, they see God weeping, the crying, weeping God. That was not what Paul did at all. He [...], in every letter he did, that we might see God, not his weeping but his love. That’s what he did. He portrayed the dying and the rising Christ in every letter, the mystery of life through death. “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I will arise again and thou with me.”161 ¶42

And so God dies by actually becoming one with this tree called man, and then putting himself through the furnaces of affliction. In the end, known only to God he unfolds and [...] himself by unveiling himself in man as man. Then man sees who he is… and he is Christ Jesus.161 ¶43

So let no one tell you that they know a man and then take you to meet a man, a holy man. Run in the opposite direction. Let no one fool you that they have found him in the form of some man that they have met. I meet them everywhere I go, these so-called holy men. And so, having gone through the furnaces myself, I invariably turn in the opposite direction. I have found him, so I am not looking for him.161 ¶44

But until that day when this garment is taken off for the last time… for the one single thing in scripture that is given to us that signifies our departure from this world is the turning of a rod [...] into a serpent. It has happened to me. And so having happened to me in the core of my being, I know this is my exit from this age into an entirely different age, where all things are then subject to my imaginative power. While I’m here I must, in the world of Caesar, obey the laws of Caesar and use God’s law to the best of my ability within the framework of his purpose. But at the end, there too waits for me the crown of righteousness, where I am one with the only being that reigns over all the earth.161 ¶45

Until then, play the part well, play it lovingly and tell everyone in the world who will listen to you that you found him. And try to the best of your ability by verbal description to describe who Christ Jesus really is. I love engraving… I can’t do it by engraving, I can’t paint, I can’t draw, and I’m not a playwright to write the play, but I can to the best of my ability by verbal description share with others my discoveries of Christ Jesus. And so I hope this night that you will exercise your own powers of perception to come with me and actually try to test what I’ve tried to tell you.161 ¶46

Only a few of the Galatians are well-favored to use their own power of perception. They couldn’t seem to put two and two together as he was talking to them, and so he accused them of being foolish: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” You started with the Spirit, didn’t you, and now ending with the flesh? And so, anyone who has some visible objective picture of Christ Jesus is ending with the flesh. You started with the Spirit and now are you ending with the flesh? Who bewitched you that you would turn back to the flesh having heard it with faith? “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Now are you so foolish having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”161 ¶47

So tonight, make no mental image of any being external to yourself as Christ Jesus, for you’re only having an idol. An idol has no power, none whatsoever. But wait patiently for the promise of the Father. Do not ask when he’s going to give it, for a time and a season are not yours to know; but the Father has fixed them by his own authority. We simply wait patiently for the grace that is coming to be given. When it comes, it will come in the form of a power. And power is given to you when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.161 ¶48

At that moment the veil is lifted, and then a series of mystical experiences you will go through, all parallel to scripture. Then you will become one of the witnesses. There will be crowds and crowds of witnesses to the truth of God’s word. Everyone one day will witness to the truth of scripture, which is God’s word. And God’s word is truth. So the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. So wait, it will come and it will not be late, that I assure you.161 ¶49

It came on me like a thief in the night; when I least expected it, it happened. I had not the slightest idea that this thing could happen. For as a boy I never heard it from a man. I certainly was not taught it by a man. No one ever shared it with me before. It came suddenly out of the blue that he shared his experiences with others, but I did not have the perception to see what he had left behind him in the form of letters. And so, no one [...] to see it or they would have shared it with me, but they did not.161 ¶50

So, like him, I did not receive it from a man nor was I taught it. It came by a revelation of Jesus Christ when he unveiled himself in me as my own being. For the one who calls him Father called me Father.161 ¶51

And so you say you’re looking for the Father? “Have I been so long with you, Philip, and you have not seen the Father? He who has seen me has seen the Father; why then do you say, ‘Show us the Father’? And they asked him no more questions” .161 ¶52

They should have asked him, “Then where is your Son?” Well, you can’t be a father unless there’s a son. But no one asked him, “Where is your son if you’re a father?” So he brings up the matter and answered it for them, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he? And when they answered, ‘The son of David,’ he then in turn said, ‘Why then did David in the Spirit call him Father? If David thus calls him Father, how can he be David’s son?’” So he answered it. He tells them who he is and there must be a son. You go back and you read scripture. Well, in the 2nd Psalm, “Thou art my son, today I have begotten you.” To whom is it spoken? To David… by the Lord… and David calls Christ Jesus the Lord, or my Father.161 ¶53

Now let us go into the Silence.161 ¶54

So, Ina, the time has come for your departure.161 ¶55

Thank you very much.161 ¶56

It was asked by someone present. Would I please talk on the Book of Revelation, and I in an idle moment said yes… because here is the end of the play. You see, the whole vast world is a play. The word genesis means beginning; an apocalypse is the end—a complete unveiling of the purpose of the play. So I could no more explain Revelation in one hour than I could do the most impossible thing in this world. I wish I had asked you all to bring Bibles and simply ask me questions from the book, because you can’t separate the last scene of a play from the play and give it any meaning. You can’t possibly do it. I can only tell you that God conceived the play. He not only conceived it and wrote all the parts, but he built all the scenery; and God and God alone is playing all the parts. His name is I AM. So you can say “I am”—that’s God. He’s playing that part that we call Mary or Jane or John, or by some other name. He’s playing that part. We are the incarnation of the tragedy and the glory of this divine play. We must not forget the glory in the tragedy. There’s more of the glory than of the tragedy, but when we are in that tragic state we tend to forget the glory.160 ¶1

Now, to cover this would be impossible. But there are a few aspects of the great play that will stick into the mind of man and I thought I would pick these out tonight. Then when we come to the question period, then you can ask anything that I have forgotten or didn’t have the time to cover.160 ¶2

It’s a play in seven acts and each act has seven scenes. The first chapter is a prologue where it states the star of the play, and the star of the play is named Jesus Christ. You’ll find it in the seventh verse. Although the book itself is titled The Revelation of John, the first verse tells you whose revelation it really is, the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Yet all Bibles will give you a title and call it the Revelation of John; yet the first verse tells you exactly whose revelation it is. In this prologue, the whole thing is set up what God intends to do. The last chapter, the twenty-second chapter, from the sixth through to the end, is… you may call it an epilogue.160 ¶3

Where in the beginning, which is Genesis, he needed a sun; in the end, there’s no need for the sun—we are light unto ourselves. In the beginning, there was an earth; in the end, there is a new earth. In the drama there is tragedy and tears, horrible things; in the end, he wipes away all tears. So Revelation is a complete wiping away of the entire picture as it started in the beginning.160 ¶4

Here, he speaks in Genesis of a serpent, which was the beginning of the exit from a state of bliss—and they speak of the serpent in Revelation. You might think, as I was taught to believe, it’s some horrible monster that in some strange way came into God’s picture, and it isn’t. There’s only God in this world.160 ¶5

Did you ever run, as child, an obstacle race? Well, in little Barbados we had those. Our teachers would simply put a tarpaulin down, and it was as flat as this desk, and we had to run through this very tightly formed canvas, where it was anchored on both sides. Then, when we came out we were exhausted from getting through this very tight canvas. Then you were confronted with barrels, and you went through barrels. Then you jumped over some kind of obstruction, and then you climbed a greased pole. Then, maybe it was more difficult, you had to catch the greased pig. And that is life: an obstacle race.160 ¶6

The opponent in this is God, and the being playing the part is God. And it’s called in the drama “the serpent.” May I tell you from actual experience, one day you will see him, the opponent. The opponent is called a slimy, greasy, horrible being, a monster. And the hero of the play is also a serpent but a winged serpent, a radiant winged serpent, while the opponent is the crooked serpent from the 27th chapter of the Book of Isaiah. And here is that strange monstrous being, as it begins the 27th of Isaiah. But in Isaiah 27 we are told, “We are called and redeemed one by one.” So redemption is not something that takes place as the world has been taught to believe, suddenly, where billions of us are suddenly brought to the end. No, the play is on and we are playing it, God is playing it, and we go through this horrible obstacle race.160 ¶7

As Paul said in his final letter to Timothy, he said, “The time for my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” That’s what everyone has to do, fight the good fight, finish the race, and finish it only by the keeping of faith.160 ¶8

Now, there are seven letters, which begins with the second chapter. No one can read these seven letters… it only takes two chapters to read them, they’re short letters addressed to seven churches. Now, seven in the Hebraic tongue is “spiritual perfection.” So when one has been brought to the limit, to the end, it’s spiritual perfection. And here, he addresses [...] and every one as you read it he emphasizes, he doesn’t criticize them, he praises them for what they’ve done; but there’s something lacking and the one thing lacking is repentance. Repent. I know you’ve done it. In the midst of the horrible world you kept the faith alive to an extent, but you have not quite fulfilled the command to repent.160 ¶9

Now, to repent means a radical change of mind toward what you see in the world. Here is the obstacle race. It’s a horrible race that God set up to develop himself, to bring forth himself as you, as me, as every being in the world. And the only way we can go through it is to repent. To repent means a radical change of attitude toward life. It hasn’t a thing to do with remorse, with regret. I see you and you do not look as I would like you to look, and you, in a conversation, you tell me things are not going well. I am supposed at that very moment not to wait, at that moment to change you in my mind’s eye and to see you as you ought to be seen by yourself and by me, and remain loyal to that changed aspect relative to you.160 ¶10

But every church is told to repent. They are catholic in what they have done. In the midst of the horror of the world, they have, in a way, remained loyal but not good enough. The one thing that he told one church after the other, they must repent. Teach the principle of repentance to the whole vast world. And the principle is this: When you see anything, beginning with yourself, and things are not as you would like them to be, assume that they are as they ought to be, and dare to live in the assumption as though it were true, just as though it were true. And then you go through this strange obstacle race quicker, easier, by repentance.160 ¶11

Because, in the end, the goal is God. When God takes himself through, he gives himself to us at the very end. It is God’s purpose to give himself to you as though there were no other in the world, just God and you. And at the very end, when the gift is given, it’s only you: You are he. It’s a new world, a new kingdom; everything is new. No need even for a sun—you are light unto yourself. No need for anything you have here, not even for the sea. If there’s need for a sea, you’ll create a sea. For the whole vast world will be subject to your imaginative power. It’s all Imagination that’s playing this wonderful, wonderful drama. Divine Imagination creates it, Divine Imagination is playing it, and when he comes out, your wonderful human Imagination is Divine Imagination, creating everything, as it desires in this world.160 ¶12

Now it comes, after he tells these stories to the churches. There are seven churches, seven bowls, seven lamp stands, seven seals that would seal the book, and seven all the way through. But so many people who I discuss the Bible with them, when it comes to Revelation their minds… as someone came to my door about two months ago and said to me, “Don’t you know only 144,000 will be saved?” So that’s in Revelation. It’s not in any other part of the Bible—there are sixty-six books—that’s in Revelation.160 ¶13

Then came, about two weeks ago, a fine wonderful looking lad, about twenty-six, twenty-seven years old, and he had the Bible all marked and there he was with all these marks. He started to open the book—the same concept of life—and he’s going to prove to me something about the Bible. And he goes to Revelation, about a beast, a beast that is six hundred and sixty-six, that’s his number. This you will read in the thirteenth chapter and here at the end of the thirteenth chapter they speak of a beast. But you must read it carefully. He tells you this calls for wisdom, this calls for understanding, when you hear about this beast, for the number of the beast is a human number. It’s the number of a man.160 ¶14

Well, I have heard all kinds of arguments about Nero was the man, Hitler was the man, Napoleon was the man. They can make it fit any name in this world. It hasn’t a thing to do with any individual man in this world. That Hitler represented a monstrous thing, no one denies that. That Napoleon did, no one denies that. That Stalin did, no one denies it. But this hasn’t any reference whatsoever to any individual man in history. The beast that opposes me happens to be myself. I am opposed by myself; for the number is the number of a man; it’s a human number. For man was created on the sixth day, so the number is 666, raised to the nth degree, three sixes. And I am man. You, though you are female, you’re man, you’re generic man. Everyone is man. And we are opposed only by ourselves.160 ¶15

We have to overcome our beliefs in this world, no matter what we believe in. That I am unwanted in the world? I’ve got to overcome it. Not by hitting the one who thinks that I think he opposes me, no, I must overcome that belief in myself. That I am unwanted? I’ve got to feel I am the most wanted being in the world and not crush anyone who reflects my unwantedness. I will actually feel, in spite of that reflection, I am so wanted. When I look at the same being, he wants me, and he reflects the whole vast world.160 ¶16

So the beast is not Nero—and you can take the name, yes, in a certain way you could write Nero out and give numerical values to the letters, and make it come to 666. I’ve seen it done with the name Hitler. I’ve seen it done with the name Stalin. But that is not scripture. They were not prophesying existence of a Hitler or a Stalin or any other being in the world. The only beast is man.160 ¶17

And the 4th chapter of the Book of Daniel reveals it to us. Daniel is the apocalypse of the Old Testament and Revelation is the apocalypse of the New Testament. And in Daniel, when the tree is felled, they are told to strip off the leaves, cut off the branches; bring it down just to a root. And then, strangely enough, a tree, which is referred as “it”—“take off its leaves, strip its branches”—suddenly it’s personified as man. Then we are told, “Take from him”—it’s a tree now, a tree of life—“take from him the mind of a man and give to him the mind of a beast, until seven times passes over him.” Here we have seven again. Heat the furnaces seven times more than they are wont to be, because only pure gold must come out. Seven times more, so let seven times pass over him. It’s a tree. Suddenly the tree becomes humanized, and it’s man.160 ¶18

Now, in this picture of the 666, I tell you it hasn’t a thing to do with any being outside of yourself. The whole vast world is the animal that opposes you, but it’s yourself. Because, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination” and this world of mortality only reflects that which is taking place within you.160 ¶19

But if you think you’re unwanted? All right, as long as you think you’re unwanted and you try to force the issue and break it down on the outside, you’re fighting the most horrible tyrant in the world. You’ve got to assume that you are the most wanted being in the world, that your contribution to the world is so great the whole vast world rushes to praise you. And when you live in this wonderful dream as though it were true, you produce whatever is necessary to make the world see it and praise you, regardless of where you are today. That’s how you overcome the beast.160 ¶20

And, may I tell you from my own experience, you will see him. He will fill this room, may I tell you. He is the most horrible, slimy, loathsome thing that you have ever seen. You don’t see yourself because they’re in opposition. You the being that is really the star of the drama, you are a winged serpent, a radiant winged serpent. But you don’t see yourself; you see only the opposition. The opposition is the crooked serpent of the 27th chapter of Isaiah. You see him as a green… when I saw him he was green, a greenish yellow-green, I can’t quite describe him, but a monster that would fill this room. There he came toward me and I’m trying in some way to corral him, not to kill him but to make him impotent. And I got him. One time I got just the head into a vice that was smaller seemingly than the head; he couldn’t dislodge it. But you don’t kill him. He’s always there to oppose you. He takes on all these forms and he’s always ready to once more dislodge that head, and once more because he’s slimy he can pull it out. So you think you’ve got him for a while and there he is. The vision is a true vision. I have had it. I have had the vision of this monstrous leviathan as told us in scripture.160 ¶21

Now we go to the next chapter, the fourteenth chapter, another number. Did you not know, said this lady to me, only 144,000 will be saved? That’s the fourteenth chapter—right after the beast appears. In the 144,000, you are told here they are the perfect ones redeemed from earth, redeemed from humanity. And they will sing a new song and no one in the world can sing this song but the 144,000. No one could even know it; only the 144,000 could know it. And they’re going to sing a song. May I tell you the song?160 ¶22

Because only the 144,000 can sing it, and you think that 144,000 persons; no, 144,000 is the number of man. It’s Aleph is one, Daleth is four, and Mem is forty. One plus four plus four is nine. No matter how many zeros you add to it, it still remains one plus four plus four, which is the number of Adam which is nine. So the 144,000 tells you everyone in the world will be saved, none can be lost. I don’t care what the world will tell you, no one can be lost, for God is playing all the parts. His opponent is himself. The opponent is a slimy, horrible, crooked monster; and he is the winged, radiant serpent, the cherubim.160 ¶23

So the 144,000 represents not 144,000 persons. That would be horrible. There are three billion people living in the world today. There may be six billion in another twenty years. There may be twenty billion in another hundred years. And 144,000 literally? No. Don’t believe it. This is all symbolism. Everyone will be saved.160 ¶24

So here we are told 144,000 sing the new song. And I’ll tell you, because I heard it, he’s going to call your name when you are called. And they will [...], the most heavenly chorus that you have ever heard, it’s a heavenly chorus, and the song, the new song, calling you by name—no impersonal thing saying he, she or it—but your name, your eternal name. They’ll call it and you’ll know it. You’ll feel yourself lifted up, right through your skull. And you’ll feel yourself in the most glorious world where there is no sun. You are light unto yourself—there’s no need of a sun. You radiate light from your own being. You are luminous.160 ¶25

And you will come upon this most wonderful world, a world of imperfection—the blind, the lame, the halt, the withered. And as you come upon them, the choruses sing, calling you by name. Whatever your name is, if it’s Jane, they will say “Jane is risen.” It will be simply a repetition of the same theme “Jane is risen.” They don’t change it. Not even something other than that. But in the most marvelous way that one little theme is made the most glorious thing you have ever heard. “Jane is risen” is multiplied in the numberless ways of telling it, as the chorus exults, and you are the being of whom they speak.160 ¶26

You walk by this sea of imperfection, and as you walk by they are all transformed into beauty. Those who are blind, they are made perfect. Those who are deaf begin to hear. Those who have lost their arms, arms come out of nowhere and the arms are returned, everything is returned, and everything is made perfect. And then you will understand the words, “And those I will call forward, the lame, the halt, and those whom I have afflicted I redeem” . Read it. I’ll call them all and those whom I have afflicted.160 ¶27

Haven’t I afflicted in my world? Haven’t I fought with my shadow? Haven’t I seen someone who I thought was my opponent and fought with them? And haven’t I, in my own mind’s eye, whittled him down to a smaller state so that I could take advantage of him? So I have whittled down everyone in my journey, from the beginning to the end. So all that I have lamed and maimed and I have hurt, I’ll call them all and redeem them.160 ¶28

And the song of the 144,000, because no one knows the song but the 144,000. It’s a new song. So forget the 144,000 persons, it means humanity. As you are lifted up you join the 144,000 and you don’t expand it to 144,000 and one, it’s still 144,000. And when all of us join that, we are still the 144,000. We know the new name and the new name is every person’s name as it’s given. For you’re called by name. You are loved by God. You are not known as humanity, you are known singly, individually. “I call you by name” as told us in the 48th chapter of Isaiah, just where the name and all of these are brought together. All that I have injured, all that I have hurt, I will now bring and redeem, and in that same 48th of Isaiah, I will now call one by one. Everyone will be saved. At the very end of the chapter, “He calls us one by one.” But he tells us he maimed us, he hurt us, everyone, and then in the end we’re all redeemed.160 ¶29

So here, to take this fabulous book, I couldn’t do it if I talked through night after night for several months. There are only twenty-two chapters but I could take any one verse. For he tells us: To him that overcometh, I will let him sit with me on my throne, as I myself overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. So here is a form of overcoming. But he gives us the clue in the very beginning: we overcome by repentance and repentance is a radical change of attitude toward the world. Instead of thinking that “he” is opposing me, it’s because I felt myself inferior he rises in my world against me. I know it. I’m speaking from experience.160 ¶30

When I came to this country unknown, uneducated, with no one to receive me, and I felt, being a stranger, that naturally the world stood against me, the world was against me. And then I began to have my visions. I began to appropriate them and put them into practice. So I can safely say and honestly say to you I have never been barred—and I have no high school certificate—I have never been barred from any club in this land where I was invited. I have been invited to the most exclusive clubs as an honored guest, from east to west, never any bar, because I overcame the bar in myself. I had all the limitations in the world against me, uneducated, unknown, with no social, no intellectual, no financial background, but none. And then, I overcame it within myself. When I did, I met those who were members of these clubs and they invited me as their honored guest. There was no question asked, I was simply welcomed as an honored guest.160 ¶31

So Revelation tells us, “To him that overcometh.” I don’t overcome the other by hitting the shadow and destroying the shadow, for I am ever casting the shadow. If I destroy the shadow at this moment and remain where I am, I cast a similar shadow one moment later. And so, I may kill John, who offends me, well then, Peter will rise in my midst and reflect the same distortion in me that I hold of myself. So everyone has to simply change his own concept of self. As he changes the concept of himself, he changes the world in which he lives, and goes on overcoming, overcoming and overcoming until he comes whose right it is to rule, and it’s yourself.160 ¶32

For God is playing the part. God’s only name is I AM. Can’t you say, “I am”? If you couldn’t say “I am” you wouldn’t be here tonight. Before you say anything you say “I am”—that’s God. And he’s playing the part against himself. He sets up the opponent. And there are two serpents in the scripture.160 ¶33

Now listen to this one at the end of the third chapter where the serpent appears in the Book of Genesis. At the end of the third he banishes man, he drives man out, and then he takes a cherubim with a flaming sword that moves in every direction to guard the way to the tree of life. To guard the way, and the way is “I am the way.” There is no other way. So he sets him up to guard the way to the tree of life. Who was it? “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life.” There is no other way. The way to what? The way to everything in this world, but especially to the Father. No one in this world can come to the Father save they come through this way. And he tells you he is the way. Know who he is? You are he: it’s all hidden in you.160 ¶34

And the day will come, it will begin to like a flower begins to unfold, unfold in the most wonderful series of mystical experiences. When it begins to unfold, you stand amazed at the beauty of this story. And may I tell you, you are told that the kingdom is taken by storm? It’s true. When you move into it, and it’s called Zion: “And I looked up and behold there was Zion and the Lamb, and around the Lamb 144,000.” And it’s all here, it’s all in your own wonderful skull, that’s where he’s buried. And may I tell you, when you go into it having ascended that wonderful spine of yours, you will make the most tremendous effort ever to get out. You’ve never heard such a storm. But you cause the storm. So when we are told, “And they take it by storm today,” when you get in, you make every effort in the world. You’ve never heard such an earthquake, never heard such frightful, I would say, vibration that you cause. But you don’t get out. There’s no other place to go; it’s all within you. “So the whole vast world, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”160 ¶35

The Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning God,” and it ends with the words, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Jesus is God—the world does not believe it—and Jesus is playing the part. When you say, “I am,” that’s he; but he’s individualized when you say, “I am John, I am Peter, I am Ray, I am Mary.” But it’s the same Jesus. There’s only Jesus in this world. There’s nothing but Jesus, and Jesus is God. So, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and the end of the book, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Come, let him awake within you, for he had to die to become you.160 ¶36

So we are told, “I am the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. I am he who is, who was and who is to come. I am he who died but is alive again.” All this is Revelation. I am he who died. I had to die. He had to die to become me, to make these that are dead alive, for I was dead. He created a whole vast world, God did. It existed only for him, not for itself, just like a picture exists for the artist but not for itself. And then the artist falls in love with his picture. He so falls in love with his picture that he wants to make it alive for itself, and so to do so he has to become his picture, his sculpture. So he actually enters this dead thing called Neville, called you, by any name, and he enters us, and he lies down in the grave of the thing created. And then he starts his dream, dreaming that he’s you. Then he sets up the opposition to bring forth the dreamer and to awaken the dreamer as you. But the dreamer is himself—that’s God. And he’s dreaming he’s you and brings it forth through opposition.160 ¶37

For without opposition not a thing could happen in this world. I couldn’t leave the platform unless I was opposed, the car couldn’t move unless opposed, the bird couldn’t fly unless opposed, the plane couldn’t take off unless opposed, the fish couldn’t swim unless opposed. Everything in this world must be opposed in order to move, so God sets up that opposition. And then in me, the dead, he sets up the opposition and then he moves. And I’m frightened to death with all the things that scare us. But in the end, when he takes me through, he awakens and I am he. You and he are one. We are one.160 ¶38

Then you’ll know why that wonderful question when it was asked, “What is the greatest commandment in the world?” and he answered, quoting from the Book of Deuteronomy, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” “Hear, O Israel; The Lord”—the word translated “the lord” is Yod He Vau He, which really means I AM. The word translated “God” is Elohim, it’s plural, and then goes back to I AM. So, “Hear, O Israel: I AM, our God, is one I AM.” Here is a unity, a one made up of many. It takes all of us awake to be Jehovah. Everyone in this world will be awake, but it takes all of us completely awake to form one Lord. So, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord”—that is Jehovah, I AM—“our Elohim”—we are the Elohim—“is one Jehovah.” So all of us completely awake will be one Jehovah—that’s God. No little thing left behind, just God.160 ¶39

And what is the next? As the poet said, “Be patient. Be patient. Our playwright will show in some fifth act what this wild drama means.” And what you and I, completely awake, forming one body, will create tomorrow will put all this fabulous world into kindergarten. What we will do in our next creative power when we are awake will make it all look as though this was really kindergarten. And yet, we pass through it as though it’s the most horrible thing in the world. So take comfort, he who created all became you because he loved what he created when he created you, and he’s buried in you.160 ¶40

Now take the message of Revelation and practice the art of repentance. You start to read the letters and the emphasis in each letter save Philadelphia—Philadelphia means “brotherly love”—they so practiced brotherly love that he did not give to them this suggestion to repent. So the Philadelphians, which came in the sixth letter (which is man), so he didn’t do it to the sixth. But he starts off Ephesus and he goes through, and each one he emphasizes the art of repentance. But when he comes to one who loves, he doesn’t. If you fall in love with someone without trying to change him, just simply love, he allows that because God is love. And if you don’t change him in your mind’s eye and make him what you would like to see him in this world, that is permitted, that’s permissible. So Philadelphia did not receive the suggestion to repent, for it means brotherly love, the city of brotherly love. All the others had to repent.160 ¶41

Now let us go into the Silence.160 ¶42

[...]. Now we can make a habit of this and not really take it in. [...]. I would like everyone to really pay all attention. Our real beliefs are what we live by. Therefore, it is so important to get truth. For the belief, whether it be true or false, if we really believe it we live by it. And we need not, may I tell you, experience what we said we believe to really believe in it. I’ll give you a very graphic example. I personally have never, and I don’t think any of you have, jumped off a tall building. We haven’t had the experience, but we believe that if we did it would either be fatal or crippling. And so we haven’t done it, and yet we have not experienced it. So a real belief is tantamount to knowing. You can’t distinguish between the two, believing and knowing, when it’s a real belief. Now a real belief may be a lie, but it’s just as knowing as a true belief. So it’s so important that you and I are exposed to the truth.158 ¶1

Nothing is more important than that the testimony of Jesus be heard and responded to. Nothing is more important—I don’t care what it is in this world—than that the testimony of Jesus be heard and responded to. I am not saying that your response will be affirmative; it may be negative, as told us in the last chapter of the Book of Acts. Paul spent the day from morning to evening trying to explain to them the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus. He used the argument from scripture—there’s only the Old Testament, so he used the argument from the law of Moses and the prophets—and we are told that some were convinced by what he said and others disbelieved. Now that’s your privilege, to believe it or disbelieve it, but you should be exposed to the testimony of Jesus. For we are told, he is the first fruit; he is the first fruit that awakened from the dead. He is the pioneer and pinnacle of our faith. So God succeeded in his purpose, and here is the first success. No greater than you when he succeeds in you, no greater, but here is the first one in whom he succeeded in producing his prophecy, his purpose. And listen to his testimony, for he tells us, “These words are not mine. They are the words of him who sent me. And all the words that I speak are the words of my Father.” And so he’s only echoing what was dictated to him by the one who raised him from the dead.158 ¶2

Now we come down to this level and take one of his statements. Here is a statement, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you received it, and you will.” Now, unnumbered hundreds of millions of Christians have repeated that statement. Do they really believe it? Oh, they will quote it from scripture; do they really believe it? I have taken that same statement and put it into our modern tongue in these words, “imagining creates reality.” I know it from experience: I will say, “Imagining creates reality.” Many of you who come here, you’ve proved it. There are many of us who’ve proved it in a way, but they will repeat it and give it lip service.158 ¶3

But I say if it gets real to the individual who has heard it because the habit of worry discloses a lack of faith in that saying. If I worry, I’m imagining, am I not? Am I not fulfilling the statement of Job, “And my fears have come upon me”? So if I worry about a problem—he can’t find a job, things are going from bad to worse, I can’t pay my bills and I’m worried—do I really believe that imagining creates reality? Really believe it as I believe something I haven’t actually experienced, like jumping through the window? I know I’ll break my neck or injure my body, I’ll cripple it or kill it, I know it. And I haven’t experienced it but I know it. That believing and knowing have become one. But when it comes to that, well, do I believe that I know it with the same intensity? Do I really believe that imagining creates reality? If I do, I couldn’t worry, for worry is to only conjure what I fear in this world. For worry is an imaginal act. I couldn’t possibly be concerned about anything if I really believe that imagining creates reality.158 ¶4

So I say nothing is more important to us than to hear the testimony of Jesus and respond to it. I’m not saying that everyone who hears that statement will accept it. We’re told he was rejected in this world. Who was rejected? He was rejected. Now let me show you who he is. We’re told that he was rejected by the majority of the people of the world, and in spite of the numbers today, nine hundred million, I would safely say almost nine hundred million reject him because they don’t know him. They think they know him, but they do not know who he is.158 ¶5

Now, you take these words and you put them together and try to come up with your own answer. Here is one taken from the works of Paul; it’s the 5th chapter of 2nd Corinthians: “From now on I will regard no one from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” . Listen to it carefully. He saw him once as a man, and now he regards him thus no longer. The same author, Paul, now in his letter to the Galatians—he only wrote one—so in his letter to the Galatians, the third chapter, in which he tells us that our offspring is Christ. If you want it, it’s the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse—our offspring is Christ. Turn the page over to the 4th chapter, and he tells us, “My little children, with whom I am once again in labor until Christ be formed in you” . Now he sees the mystery. Now he sees who Christ really is.158 ¶6

And when I tell you everything in this world is human, everything, mountains, cities, rivers, everything in this world takes on human form when man begins to awaken. So Christ takes on human form. But the same author, Paul, defines Christ as “the power and the wisdom of God.” How can power and wisdom take on form, human form? May I tell you, it does. It actually comes out of you and takes on human form, but it’s your very self.158 ¶7

So before we come to this—this is the depth of the evening—let us go back now to the statement “imagining creates reality.” I received a tape last week from the state of Maine. A friend of mine brought his machine home and played it for me. And as I listened to it, here is a lady that I met eight years ago in San Francisco. On the tape, she said, “I feel I should give you a resume of the things that have happened to us since I first heard you. I heard you in San Francisco eight years ago. I remained there for the next two years, so I heard you twice. I really believed you. From the very first day I heard you I believed you. So I went out, I rearranged my home and I sold it, bought another, fixed it up, and sold it. Then on the second year when you came, I decided I am really going to travel. All we had then was a home fixed up.”158 ¶8

I recall vividly the night that they came by Beverly Hills. I had no idea that this lady and the other lady in the car and the two children and the dog were reduced to eight dollars. I had no idea. But in her tape recording, she tells me the story. She said, “I firmly believed you when you said ‘Imagining creates reality.’ And so we started off, that is, we started off.” She and her friend who had two little girls and a dog, a huge big poodle, whose name was Doris. I can see her now. And Doris was a perfect lady. So she stopped in front of our home—we lived on El Camino—I went out to see this peculiar thing, an old car and an old trailer. They were on their way to the east, and I mean Maine. You can’t get any further east [...] the water, and they only had eight dollars between them. She was putting into practice imagining creates reality.158 ¶9

That night they started off. The next stop was Palm Springs. They went into an employment agency and asked if there were any jobs available. They said, “Well, if you can paint.” Well, they were painters but artistic painters, I mean, they were not house painters. But they painted lovely things. She said, “If I can paint these things, I can paint a house.” So they said, “There was a shortage at the moment of house painters, and there is a home here hungry for work to be done. If you want to take the job, it’s yours.” So the two [...] and painted the house and did a wonderful job, recouped their finances, and started off to Arizona. They did something similar in Arizona.158 ¶10

Well, when it ended, they were in Maine. They still had very little, naturally, going all across this country, feeding four mouths and the dog, and buying gas and oil for the old, old jalopy. When they got there, they were there not more than a week when they received a letter via the bank that the house that they had sold in San Francisco on a long-term arrangement, the man came in to some money, he inherited some money in that interval, and wanted the entire thing completely cleared, and paid off all mortgages on the house. They gave him twenty years to pay and he paid the entire thing in two weeks. So they got their check. With that they bought a home, changed it, modernized it, sold it and made a profit. Next thing they knew, they were on their way to Spain. They went all over Paris, all over France, all over Europe, came back to Spain. There they stayed five months and bought themselves two acres of land in Spain. No house on it as yet. That’s for the future, they say. Then they came back to this country where they’re now living, back in Maine.158 ¶11

And she thought she should tell me and give me a resume of her experiences based upon the one simple statement “imagining creates reality.” To them that became a real belief. It wasn’t given lip service. The whole vast world will give it lip service, “Imagining creates reality,” and the first thing you know they do everything but imagine the solution of the problem. They never imagine the end and lose themselves in the end, they only say, “Imagining creates reality.”158 ¶12

Now we go back to the 11th chapter, the 24th verse, of the Book of Mark, “Whatever you desire”—whatever, doesn’t have to be good for you—“Whatever you desire, believe you received it and you will.” That’s the promise. I say nothing is more important in this world than to hear the testimony of Jesus and respond to it. They’ll say, “That’s nuts. That’s a lie. I don’t believe it.” All right, respond to it anyway. Or respond to it in the affirmative and say I believe it, as the girls believed it. They believed it. Today, leaving here, more than three thousand miles away, and started with eight dollars and an old car, two children, two adults, and a dog, and making it, and then going off to Europe.158 ¶13

And they had some peculiar happenings; they bought their ticket on a freighter and then came a strike and that line was struck. Now all these lines need to open, so they work with each other. And because the line was struck, based upon some longshoremen’s strike in New York City, they called up, of all lines, the Queen Mary. They didn’t do it; those who sold them the ticket did it. They said, “We have passengers here and the line is struck, can you accommodate them on the Queen Mary?” There was no accommodation in second or third class, only first class, so they went first class on the Queen Mary. I tell you this thing never fails. And you can’t half believe it; you’ve got to believe. A real belief is that by which we live; you really live by it.158 ¶14

Now, listen to the testimony of Jesus, for you’re told the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Everything that happens to him must happen to me, must happen to you, everything. I don’t care what the state; it must all happen to us. For the spirit of Jesus, the very testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. And what happened to him? He was born in an unusual way, a unique manner, the Son of God, begotten of God.158 ¶15

Listen to it carefully: God is begetting himself. When God begets himself, the self-begotten is still God. He’s not begetting another; he’s begetting himself. So God is begetting himself, and when he begets himself, he is still himself. But the self-begotten would have to be son and the begetter would be father. But if the Son-begotten is one with the begetter who is Father, the Son can say, “I and my Father are one.” Can’t be another. He is begetting himself; he is not begetting another. So if he begets himself, the thing begotten would be Son. But because it is himself, and he the begetter is Father, the state or self-begotten is also Father, is it not? He said, “I and my Father are one. My Father is greater than I.” But if the self-begotten though Son, yet Father, for he only begets himself, and, therefore, the begetter is a Father; the state begotten is Son. But he’s only begetting himself; therefore, the Son-begotten is also Father. If he is Father, then he must have a Son.158 ¶16

And so, here is the great mystery of the appearance of David. David is set up in the beginning to prove to all that he begets that he gave you himself that is Father. And so God begets himself. And when he begets himself in you, it’s you, it’s not another. You come out of this tomb; and it’s you, but it’s God. God and the state begotten are one, for he can’t beget another. And, therefore, begetting is Father, begotten is Son. Well, the Son and the Father are one. But because the Father is father and the Son is one with him, he has to be a father; therefore, “Where is my son?” Then comes David. David comes into his world and reveals him as Father. See the mystery?158 ¶17

So I say nothing is more important in this world than that the testimony of Jesus be heard and responded to. One should respond to it negatively or affirmatively. I hope you will respond to it affirmatively. Because if you believe it tonight with the same intensity that you now believe what you have not yet experienced, like dropping off the house—you haven’t experienced that—but no one in this world could argue you out of the belief that if you dropped from the top of this house you’d break your neck or cripple your body. That you would do it to disprove these statements; you would do it. Because to you, without the experience, belief has become [...]. To know is tantamount to knowing and yet you haven’t experienced it. So I ask you to believe this with the same intensity even though you haven’t experienced it. I have experienced it and I want to speak with the conviction of having experienced it that you who have not experienced it may believe it with the same intensity that you now believe that if you dropped off this house you would either cripple or kill yourself.158 ¶18

So this is what I’m trying to get over tonight. We only have a few left, three more after tonight, and not to give lip service to these revelations of Christ: For he said in his words and in our words “imagining creates reality.” If you worry and it’s a habit, you are disclosing a lack of faith in the claim that imagining creates reality. How could you actually worry about anything in this world and still believe that whatever you imagine will come to pass? For whatever you ask in prayer, believe you received it and you will. If you actually believe that, really believe it, not just give it lip service, you could not then worry, you couldn’t. For worry is simply a confession of your lack of faith in the claim that imagining creates reality.158 ¶19

So I’m not asking anyone here to take a secondhand car and start off for Maine. But if you only have a secondhand car and that is your objective, may I tell you, we have tangible proof that it works. Here we have in our latest book forty case histories culled from over, well, close to a thousand. I could have used them all, all based upon this simple claim that imagining creates reality. But you see, until it becomes something just as permanently fixed in our minds as an experience of falling off and yet not experienced, but believing to the point where it becomes knowledge, we can go back unnumbered times to former beliefs and not really persist in believing and applying this principle. And so many of us, even in the book, there are forty stories told. I hope they’re all still faithful to the picture. How faithful they are, I do not know. But even though their stories were used in the book, they could still go back to their former way of thinking and say within themselves, “Well, you know, maybe it would have happened anyway.” That’s quite possible.158 ¶20

I only ask you to believe, believe it with that same intensity that you believe something you have not experienced. There are so many things I could tell you that you have not experienced that you so believe that you know. You wouldn’t take a razor across your throat, and you haven’t experienced it. You know without experience that if you did it you would be dead. You haven’t experienced that, but you know it. So not everything that one actually knows is based upon experience.158 ¶21

So he comes, and he reveals to us the most glorious thing in the world and tells us what God has in store for us: to give himself to us, no strings attached. No intermediary. He gives himself to us [...] the Father. The Father actually becomes the state begotten; he begets himself. And he so begets himself he gives to the state begotten fatherhood, and David bears witness of that self-begotten as Father. For David calls him Father to fulfill the prophecy of the 89th Psalm: “I have found David and he has cried unto me ‘Thou art Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’” ; Psalm 2, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee” . So here was this thing set up in the beginning of time to reveal God’s purpose. When he begets himself in us and we come forward out of our own being as son, we have to be father. Although we are brought forward as God’s Son, the Father and the Son are one, but he’s one and the Father’s father, the Son has to be Father; therefore, “Where is my son?” Well, the cry in the very last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Malachi, “The glory of a father is the son. If then I am a father, where is my son?” If I’m really begotten of God and God is father and I am one with my begetter, we’re one, I’m self-begotten, and my Father and I are one, then where is my son? And then comes David and David calls you Father.158 ¶22

So if you have not experienced it—and I take it so far you haven’t—may I ask you to believe it with the same intensity that you now believe things you have not experienced. You have not had the experience of falling off the Empire State Building, but you know if you did you would die. Yet you haven’t experienced it, but you know it. So knowing and believing are equal when faith develops in man. As faith develops they become one. So I ask you to know this story, that it’s true, with the same intensity that you know things you have not yet experienced.158 ¶23

So this is this story tonight. To repeat it, “Our real beliefs are what we live by.” It’s so important then that our real beliefs are true; they could be lies. The last war is the result of the belief in lies. Every war, every violence is the belief in lies. But they will use the gun. We believe in an army. [...] believes in an army and came the convulsion of the world.158 ¶24

So the one truth is “I am the truth.” Listen to the words, the 14th of John, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the light” . You’re the way to what? “I am the way to the Father; no one comes to the Father, but by me,” but no one. “This is the way to the Father, and I am the truth—everything that I have said is true. They’re not my words, the words of him who sent me.” And so he tells the truth. Although they’re not understood, he tells the truth. He said, “If you do not believe my words when I tell you of things of the earth, how could you believe me if I tell you things of heaven?” . How could you understand if I told you the things of heaven, if you do not understand the things I tell you concerning the earth? And he tells them the things of earth, and they do not respond affirmatively. He said, “I am the life… and no one comes to my Father save by me. I am the way to the Father.” This is how it happens. He begets me, and begetting me he brings me forth, and he and I are one.158 ¶25

Now if you haven’t had that experience, believe it. [...] believe it. I have had the experience; just as it is recorded in the scriptures I have experienced it. And that’s exactly how it happens. It’s going to happen to every being in this world. You know why? Because the God in you… if I ask you now, “Who are you?” Even if you didn’t use the words or the words “I am” and you answer me, you might say, Grace, you might say, John; but before you said it, you’re actually saying, “I am Grace. I am John. I am so and so.” Well, I AM is the name of God. But before you can say anything of yourself, you say, “I am”—that’s God. Well, God is begetting himself in you, and he’s going to actually beget himself. And when he begets himself, you are actually formed.158 ¶26

Listen to the words in the 4th chapter of Galatians, “My little children, I am once more in travail with you ’til Christ be formed in you!” . Christ is being formed in you as you. All of you have to give birth to Christ, for Christ is the Son of God. Now I ask, how can he be the Son of God, when Christ is the power and the wisdom of God? In eternity everything is human, but everything is human. The power, when you see it, takes on human form. When you see wisdom, it takes on human form. When you see might, almightiness is human. Everything is human. Everything comes out of you because you are man. All of the attributes of the mind of man take on human form.158 ¶27

Many years ago, it must have been thirty-seven years ago, I sat in the Silence, and there I was lost in contemplation; and then before my vision, my inner eye, appeared a huge rock, a flint. And then before my eyes it broke and many pieces scattered all over. Then invisible hands molded it into the most beautiful figure of a meditating Buddha. And here was Buddha in meditation. I was glued to this beautiful figure. As I looked at it I became more and more excited. I am looking at myself. I was that meditative Buddha that I’m contemplating. And then it began to glow, and when it reached the limit of luminosity it exploded. It took on the luminosity of a sun and then exploded.158 ¶28

The day will come when out of your own being you will actually come forward and it’s Christ and he’s just like you, just like you. You’re bringing forth your own being; God’s bringing forth himself. And the self brought forth is a form: the form, the unbegotten, begetting himself… and it’s you. Christ is your offspring. When he comes forward, as you look at him, he is yourself. Then you understand that 1st John, the 3rd chapter, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him, and see him just as he is” . For I saw the meditative figure, all out of stone. We are just dead as stone in the beginning. And here it broke, molding into something that was a statue. And then out of it came a glowing, living being and I am the being I am contemplating. So God is contemplating himself in you, begetting himself in you. And when he brings you forward you are Christ… and it’s just like you, you raised to the apex of perfection. You couldn’t improve upon the glory or the beauty of the being you’re bringing forward out of your own self.158 ¶29

So here, we can start on one revelation, just like the girls chosen at the door of the coffeehouse. And try it there and you’ll prove it to your own satisfaction, as they have. But before you prove this I ask you to believe it with the same degree of belief that you believe things you have not experienced. You don’t have to experience many things in this world to really believe them. And so if I am going to start to believe—for my real beliefs are what I live by—I should believe only the truth. Therefore, nothing is more important in this world than that the testimony of Jesus be heard and responded to. And so respond to it. Believe it. I hope you do, because ultimately, you will anyway because God will not stop his purpose. His purpose is to beget himself in you and the mold is himself and the mold we have in the pioneer and perfecter of our faith called Christ Jesus. That’s the mold.158 ¶30

When it comes out, you the begetter and you the begotten are one. The begetter is a father; therefore, the begotten though son must be a father. Therefore, “If I be a father, where is my son?” And then David appears and David calls you Father. And then you go back and search the scripture. Then you find all the evidence for the experience. So David is supposed to call the Lord God, Father. “He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.” So whom do you speak of? Who is David? And who is Christ? And then you find all these answers coming into you. He called me Father. If he called me Father, how can I be his son? So Christ is the begotten of God. But he’s one with God. If he’s one with God and God is father, he has to have a son, and David calls him Father. So he asks the question, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” And they answered, “The son of David.” And so he replied, “Why then did David in the spirit call him Lord? If David called him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” . And so they said to him, “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” He said, “I have been so long with you, Philip, and you do not know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? And they asked him no more questions” . Do you see the mystery?158 ¶31

When you open that Bible, you’re reading God’s history, you’re reading a mystery. It’s not like any other book in the world. And a mystery, as I’ve told you time and again, is not something to be kept as a secret, but it is a truth that is mysterious in character. How to unravel? Well, in my own case, it happened. The whole thing is unfolded in me. I’m sharing with you my own experience, asking you to believe it without the experience that you may aid the forming of the unbegotten within. Because you will believe anyway; man lives by his beliefs. So don’t accept these lies and distort the picture, for it can’t come forward until it’s perfect. For we are told, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” So you cannot bring to birth any imperfection; it has to be right. And so you must be holy, for the Father, the Lord your God, is holy. But I can’t bring forward anything but the holiness, but the perfection. So if you believed a lie, then there’s a distortion and you can’t bring to birth anything but perfection.158 ¶32

So not a thing in this world is more important than the testimony of Jesus, and it must first be heard and then the response to that testimony. I hope that you will respond to it, as I desire with all my heart, with complete acceptance. Accept the testimony. It’s true. One day will come, who knows when, maybe tonight—it is my hope, tonight, tomorrow, but in the immediate present—that you’ll bring forward the perfection that is Christ. For you have to give birth to Christ and Christ is yourself. You don’t meet something going out of yourself; you go out. You actually come forward and you are born. And all the witnesses as told in scripture are present and they bear witness to that invisible presence. You are more conscious of being alive than anything in the world; but no one sees you because God is Spirit. It’s God that is born. God is Spirit; therefore, his Son is spirit. In God, there is life; in the Son there is life. You are the most living being imaginable at that moment when you come forth out of your being, self-begotten. For God only begets himself.158 ¶33

Now let us go into the Silence.158 ¶34