[...] very practical and yet you’ll find it very spiritual, which to me is the most practical. When you see a cross, do you think of suffering? And you hear someone say he was crucified, do you think, as the world undoubtedly thinks, that it is a suffering state? And if I told you that the cross is a spiritual wedding ring, would you believe it? When you see someone wearing a wedding ring, you know that there’s a union, there’s a marriage, and there should be love in that state, there should be. But may I tell you, when you see the cross hereafter think of a spiritual wedding ring, for it really is. For the cross is the symbol of God becoming man that man may become God, and that’s the cross. The central teaching of the Bible is the cross.157 ¶1

He actually becomes us, nails himself upon us. For we were dead, and he was alive, and he so loved the creature that he became his own creation to convert it, to transform it—like a Pygmalion and a Galatea—into himself.157 ¶2

Now, we are told in Genesis, a little man is given seemingly to another, but all the commands in the Bible are to God by God. For man was not alive. And he commands man to leave everything and cleave to his wife, and then they become one flesh. So when we read the Bible and saw the bodies male/female, you might think when you read of a woman that it means a female—no, it doesn’t; when you read of a man it means a male—no, it doesn’t. Whether it be male or female, it is speaking of us.157 ¶3

And woman, we are told in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, “And woman will be saved by the bearing of children.” If you take that phrase “the bearing of children” and go to the bottom of the page—it should be in your Bible, it is in my Bible, in all my Bibles, I have many—there’s a little note at the bottom of the page which tells us that that phrase “bearing of children” literally means “by the birth of the child.” Definitive, the child. So woman is saved by the birth of the child. Well, I am that woman. I am a man, a male. I have sired two children. My children live in this world. I’m married. But I am the woman spoken of in that passage, the last verse of the second chapter of Paul’s first letter to Timothy. I am the woman; God is the husband.157 ¶4

Listen to these words carefully. Sing, O barren—it begins Isaiah 54— Sing out, you barren one… for you will be more fertile than those who are married. In the same chapter, Isaiah 54:5, the statement is made, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” My Maker is my husband; the Lord of hosts is his name. Now I am told he has to become me and cleave to me, for I am his wife. He had to leave everything and forget everything and so cleave to me. We become one flesh.157 ¶5

Now, Paul tells us, in the very end when he completes the job, Paul makes the statement, “Henceforth, let no one trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” Not little holes through here or a crown of thorns on my head or a gash in my side or holes in my feet, but everything said of him you experience seemingly in your body. You go through all the experiences, and it takes place in your body. His birth, his fatherhood, everything in the world takes place in you. So you bear on your body the marks of Jesus.157 ¶6

Now, in the meanwhile, let us now turn to what came after this comment was made to man. It came, if you read Genesis it’s only 400 years; if you read Exodus and the letters of Paul, it came 430 years after the promise, and this is what he calls the law. He said, “No man is justified before God by law.” Yet here was the law, and God gave it to us because of transgression. It pays to the nth part, to the most simple iota of one’s transgression, whatever it is. And here, use it, but you can’t be justified by it. But learn the law, for we are told in the 1st chapter in the Book of Psalms, “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of God, for in all that he does he prospers.” This is a promise. Dwell upon it. It’s not the real promise, but this is a promise concerning the law of God. The real promise preceded it by 400 years if we read one book and 430 if you read another book. But regardless, it precedes this law. “But blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” You can’t fail in the law. But no matter how wisely you exercise your talent, which is the use of law, it doesn’t in any way qualify you for the marks of the body of Jesus. That is grace, that’s the gift. It will happen regardless of what you do in this world. Not one person in this world will fail. It can’t fail because you, personally, are not doing it. You are the bride of God. It is God who is doing it, and God is doing it on us.157 ¶7

He fell in love with us, as told us in the 1st chapter of Ephesians, “He chose us in himself before the foundation of the world.” So I was his choice before the foundation of the world. He selected me, as a man will go out to find a woman that he wants, and he wants her with all of his heart to bear his name and bear children, if he can have children. In this case, only one child God is going to have from you, only one. Only one, as told you in the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse of Galatians: there will only be one. Everyone’s going to have one to prove that God loves you and became you. The one is going to be God’s child, and it’s going to be your child because that child is going to call you Father. Although I am his bride and seemingly female, in this state, a wonderful statement is made, “We shall all be one in Jesus Christ.” And the phrase in Greek “all be one in Jesus Christ,” “all will be masculine.” Why they didn’t use it, I will never know, but there it is. We shall all be one, and that phrase all be one literally translated “all be masculine.” He fell in love with man, generic man, in a capitalized sense, though in this level, we’re all split in two, male and female.157 ¶8

Now, we come back to the law. In all that you do you will prosper if you abide by the law. And the law is just as simple as this: as I stand here now I could in twelve seconds be in twelve different states of consciousness. I can think of you, think of you, think of the other one; and then all of a sudden, everything that I think of, that’s a state of consciousness. I could be in as many states as there are seconds in the time that I’m thinking. But the state that I’m going to externalize and objectify and make real in my world is the state that I occupy more than I do others. That state to which I most constantly return constitutes my home, my true self. And so, I go into a state.157 ¶9

If tonight you want wealth, let no one in this world tell you, you shouldn’t want it. If you want health, let no one tell you, you shouldn’t want it. I don’t care what you desire now in this world. You may after you realize it tire of it. We know that in the world. There are people who build a home, spend a fortune on the home, they’re in it just a matter of moments and they tire of it. Not just the home alone but family relationships in the home change, and they don’t want any part of that home because it [...] the relationships that occupy it. They don’t want the home, they don’t want the relationships, and they don’t want any part of it. And yet they wanted it, seemingly, forever when they got it. That’s life. There is no static thing in this world because man at every moment in time could change a state.157 ¶10

So when you know what you want, I don’t care what it is that you want. You want to be happily married, perfectly all right. There are people all over this world today, many of them are in the limelight, running for the highest office in this land, who wanted a change of marital relationships more than the highest office in the land. Because if they wanted it more than that change, they would have subjected themselves to what they considered the unlovely relationship in the hope of fooling the voters tomorrow because they wanted it. No, they wanted a change of this relationship more than they wanted the highest office in this land, and did it. So I say there is no static picture in this world. Tonight, let no one and ask no one if you should want it.157 ¶11

For let me quote one of the truly great awakened minds of all eternity, Blake, “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be simply states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil.” So I fall into a state. It seemed to me good, and it’s good because I so hungered for it. I am in it. I may tire of it in a matter of moments or in a matter of thirty years or in a matter of some other length of time. It was neither good nor evil, simply a state. There are infinite states in the world into which man falls. But when you come here, you shouldn’t fall into states, you should deliberately enter a state. Even though you think, well now, this is a state, but don’t fall into it. With your eyes wide open, “I want to be wealthy!” as you conceive wealth to be.157 ¶12

All things being relative, what you and I consider a normal income to live graciously in our present world would be a millionaire’s income in most of this world—if you think x-number of thousands you require to live well in this world we live in. But you go to ninety percent, maybe ninety-five percent of the world, if you had that sort of income, you would be a king of kings in their area. So all things are relative. So where you are, what do you want? And you name it.157 ¶13

Well, when you know exactly what you want, listen to the words, “Blessed is the man”—this is a Beatitude—“Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” You can’t fail if you delight in the law of the Lord. You don’t feed your mind with anything other than the image desired to be externalized in your world. If today reason denies the image, you deny reason. If anything in this world, if your senses dictate that these are the facts of life, but they are in conflict with the image that you want to externalize, you deny your senses. Completely deny the senses and reason and entertain the image, for this is God’s creativity. And so I live this night in the assumption that I am the man that I want to be, even though everything, reason and senses, deny it, but I live in it—and I’m speaking from experience—then at the end of the not distant future, I begin to crystallize it and externalize it. And then I duplicate it. I tell the story to others and they begin to duplicate it, and then they tell it to others. At the end of a few years we have hundreds and hundreds of witnesses to this principle. Does it matter what the world thinks? Does it matter what anyone in this world would tell me about it if I can duplicate it and prove it by experience? Well, this is God’s law.157 ¶14

The law is conditional. I can’t be feeling sorry for myself and expect to call some practitioner who will push a button, leaving me as I am, and then produce results for me. I have it all the time. Someone will call up and say, “Will you do so and so?” The purpose of it all is to produce a change in the individual, not just a change in the circumstances round about, where it vanishes like a snow when the sun comes out. It’s to produce in the individual a change that sustains the change when it externalizes itself in the world. But someone will say, “You know, my people aren’t paying the rent. Three of them are now in arrears, they owe me three months,” and they want you to in some strange way produce some little miracle where they all put their money down. And they remain just as bitter as they were prior to the loss of the three months. They remain just where they were prior to the call and think that the little pushing of the button is going to produce a change in their life. That call will come through day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year until you can produce in them, the caller, a change in their own heart. When you produce it in them, they need not call you ever again, for the simple reason that the change in them externalizes itself in their world. And it works that way. So if there’s a practitioner here, you don’t [...] push buttons, you produce changes in them.157 ¶15

And may I tell you, you don’t need the income from any being in this world. If they pay you, all well and good, but don’t depend upon any person’s income in this world. You don’t need to. Your own consciousness of wealth will produce wealth. You’ll have everyone in this world, and it will simply flow like a river toward you. Don’t depend upon anyone. No one is your source of supply. The only source is God, and his name is I AM. That’s God. There is no other God. So if they call, let them call. Try to persuade yourself that they have changed their attitude toward self, toward life. That change in them will automatically result in a change in their lives. They can’t help it.157 ¶16

But when someone makes them feel; and here, I tell you this because of a recent call, where in the city three different ones from different groups, not all in the same so-called -ism, different -ism, and they tell her, “Forever you will have to depend upon me to produce these things for you.” Well, here this poor child believes it, and so she sends x-number of dollars every month to this one, this one, the other one, and then she calls the speaker. I’ve always warned her, “Don’t you send me one penny”—which she doesn’t have a dime—“Don’t you send me a nickel. I want to produce in you the change.” But she so completely believed that they could influence her that unless she calls upon them these things will recur. But they recur and recur and recur. How to get her to really believe in God? The only God in the world is her own wonderful I-am-ness.157 ¶17

Now here is the story. He loved her; he loved her more than any man in this world could ever love her. I love my wife, and she and I together produced in this world this glorious child, and we revel in the daughter that we have. But I could not in eternity, as a man, love my wife to the degree that God loves us. God so loved her he became her, and he’s one with her. And his name is not Neville; his name is I AM. That’s his name. He’s anchored upon her, crucified upon her. She was but a thought, that’s all she was to him, and he so loved her he nailed himself upon her and completely forgot his divinity. He actually cleaved to her, and he will not let her go until they become one, not two. They were two in the beginning, God and this one that he loved; in the end, only one. And to him, he is so lost in his identity that when he rises in her, it’s she, it’s not another. It’s just the individual that he fell in love with. He gives his name to her. She had none. He gives his name, and she bears the name, and it’s I AM. [...] and she wakes now. “Henceforth let no one bother me, don’t let them trouble me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” And these are the marks of Jesus.157 ¶18

You aren’t going to find them as the religious world tells you with the stigmata, bleeding hands and bleeding head and bleeding side and bleeding feet. They are not the marks of Jesus. I have had these, and they’re marvelous. It’s a thrill beyond the wildest dream when you feel yourself sucked in like a vortex, or a series of vortices, sucked into this body. I’ve had that. But they’re not the marks of Jesus. The marks of Jesus are all written out in dramatic form in scripture.157 ¶19

The first mark of Jesus, but the very first one, is the resurrection—that’s the first mark. How do you mark that? When the individual in himself awakens from a profound sleep to find he really, prior to this moment, was dead, for he awakes in a grave and no one but the dead are interred. So you inter them. And if a person is now in a sepulcher, the Holy Sepulcher, he awakens to find himself awake and alive, but he’s in a grave. Then he must have resurrected. That’s the first mark. The second mark is his birth. He comes out of it, and he comes out of that sepulcher just as a physical child comes out of a physical womb. And then come the other marks in discovery.157 ¶20

Then you look at it. “When the fullness of time had come, God sent the Spirit of his Son into my heart crying, ‘Father.’” When the fullness of time had come. When the nine-month pregnancy is over. Nine months could be nine ages. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent the Spirit of his Son into my heart crying, “Father.” So in my being when the fullness of time has come, his Son comes and calls me, “Father.” If he calls me “Father,” God’s work on me is complete. For he used me as his bride, he cleaved to me and wouldn’t let me go. But he had to produce his creative power, and he had to produce it by producing a son. He produced in me a son that calls me, “Father” after the fullness of time had come. So when the fullness of time had come—if you want it, the 4th chapter, the 4th verse of Galatians—“When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son forth into my heart crying, ‘Father.’” And then the Son calls me, “Father.” His work in me is complete.157 ¶21

One more step to bear the marks of Jesus. But he takes it—and this is now the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Hebrews—and he strips me down from top to bottom, and it’s called “the curtain that separated man from God.” There’s one little membrane to be severed, and that which separated man from God is now split right down the middle; and it’s called “the curtain that is his flesh.” You feel it all on your body. Everything that I am talking about, you actually feel it is taking place here. But it’s not on this, but you feel it here, for this is the shadow of the real body. So it actually, in some way, has all the effects that you get in the depths. The real body, the immortal body casts its shadow upon this and you feel it is taking place here. But it’s not. It is in the soul, the real you.157 ¶22

So here, you could this night wisely apply God’s law, and no being in the world can stop you from becoming what you want to be. If you stop for one moment and look over the roster of the world, take all the big so-called intelligent, wise, wonderful men in the world, all the great politicians of the world, any of them, go back, oh, just so short a time and you will see they were all just as you are now. They had no reason in the world to believe that they are what they are today, but none. Not one is endowed with any more intelligence, with any more power. Undoubtedly, ninety-nine percent of them stumbled into these states. I don’t want you to stumble into it; I want you to go deliberately into these states. If you stumble into a state, when the convulsion takes place as it always does in the world and you are emptied from that state, you may not know how to get back into it because you didn’t go into it deliberately. If you go into these states deliberately, it wouldn’t make any difference what convulsion took place—and they will take place, they always take place—how to go back into that state if it’s a comfortable state to be in. You may go into any state in this world that you want. But if you don’t know you are in a state and you think, well now, this is simply a natural thing based upon my birth. Well then, when you are emptied from that state you may never find your way back into that state. But you can. Everyone in this world could go into the state of his choice.157 ¶23

I’m speaking from experience, when I have over 900 letters at home each testifying to a deliberate entrance into a state from people who knew nothing of this before. But they simply decided to take a state into which they would go; they entered that state, viewed the world from it as though it were true, and then in a way that they could not consciously define or devise the state appeared and became real in their world. Everyone can do it. But don’t forget, don’t fall into it; go into it deliberately. Tonight if I would be, and I name it, anything in this world, then let me assume now that I am the man that I want to be. Remaining in it, let me view the world and see it mentally as I would see it were it true. If I do, I am delighting in the law of God; and in all that I do, I prosper. No one can stop it.157 ¶24

But no matter how I do it, I cannot earn the grace because the grace cannot be earned. The grace is a gift. Because it is a gift, it is unconditional, and that’s my glorious concept in this world. No one can fail. So if tonight you be a pauper of paupers, when in the fullness of time God is calling you, you’ll receive the kingdom. And the greatest in this world does not compare to the least in the kingdom. So you may be at the moment when you are called unknown, poor as a church mouse with not a thing in this world to support your entrance. But you don’t need it; you become heir, the heir of God, at that moment when the fullness of time has come. But in the interval, waiting for the fullness of time, use God’s law. God’s law will never fail you, but it doesn’t qualify you to receive his grace. If you could qualify to receive his grace, then it isn’t grace. For grace means “unmerited gift,” something given without merit on your part. It is love in action that isn’t earned by the one to whom it is given. You couldn’t earn it.157 ¶25

On the other hand, if you have done something of which you are ashamed, may I comfort you, the 11th chapter of Romans, “God has consigned everyone to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all.” Were it not for divine mercy no one could be saved, but divine mercy chose us in himself before the foundation of the world. He chose me, he chose you. When he emptied himself upon me, I do not remember. I have had moments where I have had remembrances of the thrill. It was a thrill, may I tell you. It wasn’t pain to me. Whatever it was to God who nailed himself upon me, that I don’t know. But to me on whom he nailed himself—for I’m the cross, this is the tree on which he hangs—and when he nailed himself upon me, the tree became alive, and it was a thrill. There was no pain whatsoever, as far as I’m concerned. It might have been a pain to him who so loved me that he hanged himself upon me, it may be.157 ¶26

And so we’re told by Blake, “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.” So here, on my brain, he is nailed and the extension is right on this body. But as far as I’m concerned it was no pain. It was ecstatic delight, supreme delight, when he made me alive. And then, he cleaved to me, remained faithful to his love, and then he awoke me. Today I can say with Paul, “I now bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” The birth from above, the memory of it is so vivid; the resurrection from the grave is so vivid; the discovery of David is so vivid; the splitting of this body from top to bottom and the ascent up the spinal cord into my skull are so vivid. All these marks of Jesus I bear upon my body. So I know that this is the last time; he has completed his work in me.157 ¶27

And he had to bring forth only one child. Listen to the words, the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse of Galatians, and here he promises to bring forth one. The Greek word really means “seed,” and the King James Version translates the word as seed, but to give it meaning in the modern translation, the Revised Standard Version, they translate the word seed as offspring. And so we’re told in Galatians 3:16 that this offspring—and then they said, “He does not say offspring, meaning many; but offspring, meaning one, which is your offspring, which is Christ.” Now when you hear the word Christ, you think automatically, if you’re a Christian, of Jesus Christ. The word Christ in Greek is the identical word of the word Messiah in Hebrew, identical: The word means “anointed.” So I bring forth Christ, my offspring, and you think only in terms of Jesus Christ. Go back, “Anoint him; this is he.” Go back into the 1 Samuel and who is spoken of? “That is he; rise and anoint him. He is my chosen one.” It’s David. “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” He is the anointed. It is David who appears; David is the anointed. Well then, who is Jesus? God himself, you are he. For when God succeeds in giving you himself, who gives you himself? Therefore, you, who began in time, when he, your husband—“your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name”—the husband must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one. When you become one, he who was your Maker, who so loved you, who became the husband, when you become one, you have an offspring. The offspring proves to you who you are. But the offspring is God’s only begotten son, who is the anointed David. And then you see him. Everyone will bring forth only one, and that one is God’s son.157 ¶28

People can’t quite see the mystery that Jesus… the word Jesus means “Jehovah saves,” that’s what the word means. It is really Jehovah and Jehovah’s name is I AM. And so when the child appears, he is the son of I AM. In the Old Testament, it’s revealed to us in the most marvelous way, but man can’t quite believe the word Jesse means I AM. We have all kinds of Jesses in the world. People name themselves Jesse, Jesse this, Jesse that, Jesse that, and to them it’s a name. The word Jesse is I AM. Well, “Whose son are you?” “I am the son of Jesse,” that’s what David said. And who is Jesse? I AM. So when you come forward, you come forward, because he so gave you himself you are one with God. But how will I know it? Wait, just wait a little while, and then a child will be brought from you. When the child comes, you’ll know him. He was always the Son of God. Now he’s your son, therefore, you are God.157 ¶29

So the purpose of this whole fabulous wonderful drama is to bring forth his predetermined purpose. And the purpose is to give himself to me, to you, to all of us, as though there were no others in the world, just you and God in the beginning, and finally only you as God. That’s the great sacrifice: he completely gives himself to you; there aren’t two anymore. The only heaven is your son bearing witness of your fatherhood, and the son is David.157 ¶30

But in the meanwhile, we apply the principle of his law. “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” And the law is conditional, no respecter of person. You could be the wisest, the loveliest, and the kindest person in the world. You begin to feel sorry for yourself and you’re entering the state that will bear the fruit of that state, and you’ll have every reason in the world to feel sorry for yourself. Don’t envy anyone; they’re only in a state. They’re either in that state deliberately, knowingly, or they entered it unwittingly. I ask you to enter every state knowingly. You can be healthy, you can be wealthy, you can be famous, and you can be anything in this world. And there is no man in the world based upon the state that he occupies today who is worthy of your admiration, no person in the world. Someone is in a state where he’s acclaimed as a great person. It’s only a state, and people bow before the state and make of it a god. There’s only one God and his name is I AM.157 ¶31

So someone goes by… I have seen it. A few years ago, in San Francisco—and may I tell you I admire General MacArthur, a marvelous, to me he’s a grand, wonderful man, I admire him as a true great American and a leader of men, no question about it. He entered this country after years abroad. A friend of mine in San Francisco, a very able lawyer, he acted like a little child of about three. You’ve never seen such devotion, such complete hypnosis when the general drove by. The crowd was hailing him for what he’d done for our country in the last war and in the first war; but this man, he would have followed him right straight to a gallows, and put his neck in place of the general. You’ve never seen such worshipfulness. And I wondered, I said to myself, “What is it all about? He’s been coming to my meetings for years, and he can’t see a state moving by.” Recognize the state of greatness. Recognize a state, but to identify the individual as the state, he could tomorrow fall from that state and the same one will wonder what happened to his hero, not knowing it was a state.157 ¶32

Where is Stalin? Where is Hitler? Where is Goering? Where, mention all of them, Trujillo, with all their statues and cities and towns named after them to be perpetuated forever? Suddenly the state is vacated and the little occupant is decapitated. [...]. These are all states. So don’t worship any being in this world. Worship only God, and God is really your husband.157 ¶33

Love the man whose name you bear, love the woman who bears your name, but in the end they are shadows of the relationship of God and man. These are only shadows. Your real husband is God, and he’s more faithful than any man in this world could ever be to you. And so, they’re married for fifty years and sired many. I think of one mentioned earlier. So after thirty-odd years, leaving behind his many children, he marries another one who has four children. No criticism, perfectly all right. His father outlived his mother by a couple of years, and then he married a widow that he’d known through the years. Perfectly all right, and so he married her. God will never marry anyone other than you.157 ¶34

But no one in this world he loves more than he loves you; and you are, individually, his only love. That’s the mystery. He could never divorce you for another. And in his life because he is life itself, you could never die because he is life. He is wedded to you, and he’s so wedded to you that he’s determined to prove to you his love in the begetting of his son. And when he brings his son forth, it’s your son, your boy. And strangely enough, in that little phrase “one person in Christ Jesus” is a phrase used in Matthew, you’re his father, for God is a father and the heart of a father. Though he picks you out as his bride, when he completes the process, you are he. But he wasn’t a bride; he was father. That’s the mystery. He transforms you into himself. And he was, before he wedded you, a father, and so he transforms you, his bride. You are his emanation yet his wife ’til the sleep of death is over. When the sleep of death is over, you’re transformed into him; and he was, before he wedded you, a father, and so you are a father, and there is your son.157 ¶35

Now let us go into the Silence.157 ¶36

A man’s true environment is in his Imagination. The thing to do with a man is to get the true story that reveals to man into man’s Imagination that he may be guided by it. A man is overwhelmed by that figure in his Imagination. And I firmly believe that the Bible reveals that God became man to get into us the true picture as revealed through the prophets. For man’s entire life is determined by that figure, that dominant figure, that he holds in his Imagination. He believes himself to be this, that or the other, and it’s going to influence his every action in the world. He can think that he’s wanted or unwanted, wise or unwise. No matter what he thinks, that dominant figure will influence everything that he does. For man’s true environment is really in his Imagination. Now, an event can only be made known as it is borne witness to, as it is proclaimed, as the story is told. So tonight, I hope to be able to tell you the story, and I bear witness to it because I have experienced it.156 ¶1

The Bible begins with God and ends with God. But man has not been told the true story. The Bible begins with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and it ends, in the very last part of the Book of Revelation, it ends, “Come, Lord Jesus.” The very last verse is like signing off a letter, for I would say to you having written a lovely letter to you, “Blessings upon you and yours.” The last verse of that twenty-second chapter reads, “And the grace of the Lord Jesus upon you.” There are many translations, “upon all the same,” but the best manuscripts omit the word “all the same” and other manuscripts omit the word all. So the best manuscript has “And the grace of the Lord Jesus upon you.” It’s addressed to you personally. But the verse before that, it is the very last word, “Come, Lord Jesus.” It begins with God, and it ends with God.156 ¶2

But man cannot believe that God became man that man may become God. It’s the most difficult thing for man to accept. And because you’ve been taught to believe that Christ Jesus is something outside of yourself, you rebel against it. The whole vast world, those that call themselves Christians, and there are 900 million Christians, they believe that Jesus Christ is something other than themselves. They really believe it. They make little statues, all kinds of paintings to a being that they call Christ Jesus. They cannot believe the words of Paul, “Jesus Christ is in you.” “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test?” He invites us to put him to the test—for all things are possible to him—inviting them to put him to the test. They can’t believe that the being in the mirror, seeing something that does not fit their concept of Jesus Christ, they cannot believe that Jesus Christ is in them. So they rebel.156 ¶3

Now, this is the path. You follow this closely. It begins with God; it ends with God. In between, there is a drama, a horrible tragedy, but a frightful tragedy, that is essential to awaken us and make us sons. Can’t do it without the tragedy.156 ¶4

So after the statement, “God,” God makes a selection and he chooses Israel: “Israel is my choice.” And you think of a race of people. Israel is not a race of people; Israel means “the pure in heart.” By pure in heart, it doesn’t really mean that you are namby-pamby in this world. It means that you are incapable of deceit. You would die, you’d be cut up into pieces, rather than deceive another for personal gain. That’s Israel. So when he finds an Israelite, he said, “I have found a man after my own heart.” It has to be the heart of God, the pure in heart, for only the pure in heart can see God. So after “God,” the passages of old, he now has put his model, and the model is Israel. Nothing but Israel can be salvaged from this entire play, the pure in heart. So he said of Nathaniel when he saw Nathaniel, “Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile” but none whatsoever. That’s the first chapter of the gospel of John, when he sees Nathaniel, a pure Israelite in whom there is no guile. So the next is Israel.156 ¶5

Then the next is the play, the stage, the battleground, and that’s called the Holy Land. The Holy Land is not in the Near East, where today modern Israel is established; no, the Holy Land is your mind—that’s the Holy Land. The whole battle, the whole drama, takes place in the mind of man. That’s the Holy Land of God, and on that battleground, he’s going to bring out Israel. So here we first find Israel, then we find the Holy Land.156 ¶6

Then after that, God reveals a law. It’s called the Torah. The Torah is a law to lead man in exile, where he passes through this barren land of Egypt; and yet with the use of the Torah, with the use of this wonderful law, man can cushion the blows. For there are blows and they are coming, and you can’t stop the blows. But you can cushion them through the wise use of God’s law. God’s law is conditional. It is all mental, but man did not know it was mental. He thought it was an external behavior, that if I would attend school, do all the things on the outside, that this in some way would comfort God or protect me in his presence. And so man still today in l963 observes the outer actions in his temples, believing that is keeping the law of God. But the law of God was explained to us in the Sermon on the Mount, that when you do something physically, yet mentally it’s in conflict with what you’re doing physically, it’s what you did mentally. Listen to the words, “Any man who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery.” Now he didn’t commit it. He might have restrained the impulse because he was afraid of the consequences of his act, but that does not excuse him from the act. To look upon a woman with lust is to have committed the act. Now, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, we are told one should not commit adultery. Man thinks adultery is an act, a physical act, where a married person is known by another other than her husband, or vice versa. Then we are told that is not adultery in the true spiritual sense of the word. Adultery is to look upon another with lust and want it, even though you do not perform it because you may contemplate the consequences of your actions—how it may bring about disgrace to you and your family. But that is not good enough. The very contemplation of the act was the act. So the whole thing is lifted to a mental level.156 ¶7

But here we have a Torah, a law by which we live. So I may be tonight unemployed and the world tells me I can’t get the job, that all these are being displaced by automation, and so I accept that. I want the job, but I am told by those who are supposed to know, I can’t get it. I am told that creation is mental; it is not based upon any physical law in this world. Creation is completely mental, that all causation is in my Imagination. That’s where my entire environment exists. And so I want to work. In my Imagination I’m gainfully employed, and I go to sleep in that state as though I am gainfully employed. I have never earned so much, I have never contributed so much to the world’s good, and I have never been so happy in what I’m doing, all in my Imagination, regardless of the evidence of my senses to the contrary. So that’s the Torah.156 ¶8

Now, first comes Israel. I’m going to make a heart so pure—not pure as the world calls pure, I mean pure in the true sense of the word: guileless. He could stand in the presence of nothing, and couldn’t raise his finger to put something into his mouth to satisfy a hunger if that is at the expense of another for personal gain. That is the pure in heart, the guileless, the Israelite. Now I’m going to give him a law by which, as I send him through the most horrible furnaces of the world, I’m going to give him a law where he can cushion the blows and play the part to aid in the awakening of myself in him, and comes the Torah. After the Torah, we get the prophet, and the prophet reveals God’s promise to man. This is God’s promise to man—we read it in Isaiah, all the prophets, really—“And I have called Israel in whom I will be glorified.” I’m going to be glorified in Israel, only Israel, nothing but Israel. Forget a race of people and think only of the pure in heart, regardless of the pigment of the skin, regardless of the national, racial background—only the pure in heart is Israel. And I’ll call Israel in whom I will be glorified. That’s his command, and his command will not fail. He’s going to be glorified in Israel. So read it in the 49th chapter of the Book of Isaiah.156 ¶9

Now, he tells us what will happen before he reaches the end, which is himself; for the end is Jesus Christ. You are Jesus Christ, but you don’t know it yet. You are Jesus Christ; and the day is coming that God will awaken in you as man, and Jesus Christ is God the man. God becomes man, and man became God. So the end is Jesus Christ. The beginning is God; it ends with Jesus Christ; and in between comes Israel, the Holy Land on which the battle takes place. Then comes the law, Torah. Then comes the prophets, the promise to man and the fulfillment of that promise. The promise is that he will make you himself.156 ¶10

So the cry is, “O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory that I had with thee before that the world was.” He’s asking for one thing in this world: for the glory of God. And God cannot give his glory to another. Now listen to it carefully; the glory is given to us after the furnaces. You listen to it; it’s now the 48th chapter of Isaiah: “I have tried you in the furnaces. For my own sake, for my own sake I do it, for how should I give my name to be profaned and my glory to another?” Now he calls Israel, “And Israel, whom I have called; I am He, I am the first, and I am the last.” If I am the first, I am God who created it all; I am the last, “Come, Lord Jesus!” The beginning and the end of the entire story: I am the first and I am the last. So here, “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction. For my own sake, I do it, for how should I have my name profaned?” And what is his name? His name is Father. The heart of God is the heart of a father. So the cry is, “O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self… for I will not give my glory unto another.” He can’t give it unto another; he can only give it to himself. He has to make us himself. And it takes all of the furnaces of affliction to transform us into that part, incapable of deceit, incapable of taking advantage of another because in the end there is no other; there’s only God. When man thinks he got the better of another, who is fooling whom? There is no other, there’s only God. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.’ There is no other. And so when I think something moving across the face of my world is other than myself and I can take advantage of it for personal gain, I am still asleep. I still must go through the furnaces to burn away that concept that blinds me from the oneness that is God.156 ¶11

So here, there are six definite states. You may call it the Mogen David if you will, the six-pointed star. It is God at the beginning. Then comes, “My choice is Israel.” Then comes the Holy Land—the mind of man is the Holy Land on which the battle takes place. There is no other land. No matter where you go in the world, the only Holy Land is your mind. Then comes a law by which, in that land when the battle rages, you can cushion the blows. If you find yourself in jail, you could while in there imagine yourself elsewhere; and the doors will open, and you will go where you’re imagining yourself to be. You could find yourself this night unemployed, and you could imagine yourself gainfully employed, and the doors will open from that prison state, and you would moved toward a wonderful job where you’re gainfully employed. So the Torah is a conditional state. You cannot be in one state and not suffer the consequences of not being in another state. They’re only states.156 ¶12

So he doesn’t blame any being in the world. The being who played the part of a thief and the being who played the part of the judge who sentenced him are played by the same people. The supreme actor of the world is God. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” So tonight in this room, only one being is present, and I am a speaker teaching the law as I understand it, as I have experienced it, and you are listening. The being listening and the being speaking are one and the same being. There aren’t two of us, there’s only God. So the man who is shooting the so-called culprit tonight because he was picked up as a spy, the one who was actually executing the order and the one against whom it is executed, are one and the same being. To tell you that Stalin and the Pope are played by the same being, you might be shocked, but there is no other being to play the part. It’s all a play, the whole vast world is a play, and one being is playing all the parts.156 ¶13

In the end, we are all Jesus Christ, the God that became man that man may become God. So in the end, no man by the wise use of law could redeem himself, no man. I can know the law so intimately, know it so well, that I could cushion every blow. Knowing that, I could imagine myself now while I’m in prison to be elsewhere and actually move elsewhere. When I am there, another change in pattern and once more I’m encircled, imagine myself to be elsewhere and I would go elsewhere. I could play it so beautifully that no one could ever long encase me in any prison. But I cannot redeem myself no matter how wisely I use the law. Redemption comes only by the act of God. Divine mercy steps beyond this fabulous world of horror, really, and raises me and redeems me in the body of Jesus. I am redeemed in his body. I am one with him. Standing here tonight to tell you I am one with his body, it seems so stupid, for I respond to the name Neville. If you call me Neville, I will answer. If you called me Jesus when I walk the street, I wouldn’t answer. If you said, “Jesus Christ,” I might be curious, but I would not think you mean me. I wouldn’t turn around. But if you say Neville, I would turn around and respond to the call called Neville, but I would not respond to that called Jesus Christ. Yet I do know from an actual experience I was absorbed into his body and became one with him, and I was the very being, by an actual experience.156 ¶14

So I tell you, by this experience, the event can be made known only as it’s borne witness to. So I told you my experience and recorded it in book form that it may outlast this little earthly garment. I’ve told you the story from time to time and will continue to tell it, for that’s the only way that I can proclaim it and have someone hear it. But it has been mistold through the centuries; it has not been told correctly. We’re all one, the whole vast world is one, and God is playing all the parts. And this is the sequence through which it moves. God, in the beginning… “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” then selects the mold, the model, the Israel, the pure in heart. And then he has a stage, and the stage is the Holy Land, and the Holy Land is the mind of man. There is no other Holy Land. Then comes from that, the law. He reveals the law, and the law is made conscious to us and unveiled to us in the form of a mental approach to life: that causation is mental; it isn’t physical. When man discovers it is mental and it’s not physical, and he abides by it, and applies it, he lives beautifully in this world. But he can’t redeem himself; he has to be redeemed by God. He’s buried in the sepulcher called “the skull of man.” That’s the only Holy Sepulcher in the world, your own skull.156 ¶15

And then comes a prophecy and man discovers the prophecy by reading scripture. God has promised man that he would raise up out of man something that will come forth from him as though it were his son; and yet, it will be God’s son, and God will be his father, and this which came out of man will be God’s son. That’s the promise made in the 2nd Samuel, the 7th chapter: I promise you I will do it. And then the years go into years, and centuries into centuries, and where and when will it happen? Because the world thinks it’s going to happen once and for all. Today, all the churches teach that once upon a time an individual was raised from the dead, and his name was Jesus Christ and that is it. Now listen to these words, and he mentions some teachers in his letter to Timothy—this is Paul writing his second letter to Timothy, the 2nd chapter—“They have swerved from the truth by teaching that the resurrection is past.” The resurrection hasn’t past; it is taking place. If you think that Jesus Christ is a single being that lived and died and was resurrected 2,000 years ago, and that’s it—you don’t know the story and you don’t know the mystery.156 ¶16

Jesus Christ is God himself buried in every child born of woman, but every child, regardless of race, regardless of pigment, regardless of any background. In every child God is dwelling. God became man and becoming man is Jesus Christ. It’s in man, buried in man. Now it’s Jesus Christ that has to do the resurrecting. God’s mightiest act is the resurrection of Christ in man as that man. So you come out of your own skull, which was a tomb; and while it was a tomb, God transformed it into a womb. And out of that womb, your own skull, comes you. But you’re individualized. You don’t respond to the name of Jesus Christ, but you are he. For the only one that he is resurrecting is Jesus Christ, the man that is God, but it’s you, John or Mary or called by any name. When you come out, listen to these words now; these are from the Book of Galatians: “There is no bond, no free, no Greek, no Jew, no male, no female, in Jesus Christ.” That which comes out is above races, above sex, and above everything known to mortal man. There is no bond, there is no free, there is no Greek, there is no Jew, there is no male, and there is no female in Jesus Christ. He’s completely above the organization of this world. It’s an entirely different world, a new world. And it takes a new man to function consciously in the new world. All of the blows of this world were necessary to produce that man.156 ¶17

So in the midst of tragedy, don’t forget the glory. This was given to us in a very simple little way in the Book of Revelation: “And I saw a little scroll… and he offered me the scroll. He said to me, ‘When you take it, eat it; it will be bitter in your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.’ And so I took it; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, but in my stomach it was bitter.” For that’s life, like a Jewish wedding, have you ever attended a Jewish wedding? They have two glasses of wine, one is sweet and one is bitter. The bitter one has very little in it, not much, and the sweet one is almost up to the brim but not quite. During the ceremony, you partake of both; you take the sweet and you take the bitter because that’s life. “Joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.” But there is more of sweet than there is of bitter.156 ¶18

So in the midst of tragedy when the things are falling all around you, don’t forget the sweet, the glory, and the promise of God, for he’s giving you himself. So if today the whole world collapses all around you, don’t forget the glory, don’t forget there is more sweet than there is bitter in life. So in this marriage ceremony, you take both—you take the sweet and you take the bitter. There is more of the sweet than there is of the bitter, and so you go through life that way. But man in the midst of tragedy, he forgets the glory.156 ¶19

So Paul makes this statement in the 8th of Romans, he says, “I consider that the sufferings of this time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed to us.” I don’t consider even comparing them. A man may be in pain, or he may not be physically in pain, but he may be embarrassed because of some behavior of a relative or his family or his, well, inside himself in conflict. His country may be embarrassed, and he is hurt because the country’s embarrassed. But I can’t consider that I should even compare the sufferings of this time to the glory that is to be revealed to us. So the whole vast thing, you can’t compare them. The little bit of wine that is sour and bitter, you can’t compare it to the sweet that is ours. For when man is completely unveiled and he’s God, this whole vast world then disappears; it vanishes from consciousness. He is in a world that is completely subject to his own creative power. That’s God.156 ¶20

So here, don’t forget the six-pointed star, the Mogen David. You begin with God and you end with God. Here you have, your second is God’s choice, that is the mold. He uses the pure in heart, the guileless being, called Israel. Then comes the stage. He gives us a stage on which he’s going to play the drama, and that stage is called the Holy Land; and the Holy Land is your own wonderful mind. That’s the Holy Land. Then comes the law, a simple wonderful law, which is conditional. All things are conditional in God’s law. If I go in a certain direction, I will encounter certain events, but I am free to change my direction and that is called in the Bible repentance. Repentance means change of mind. I may at any moment in time change my mind. Repentance does not mean what the world tells you it means, such as feeling regretful or remorseful or in any way sad of heart, no—no sense of guilt. I know what I am; well, then, I change my mind. A change in attitude toward life is a change of the world in which I live, an automatic change if I remain faithful to the change. So repentance begins the law in its spiritual sense. So the whole concept is “Repent, for the kingdom is at hand.” Well, that change in attitude of mine toward life is a complete change in myself in this world. That’s the Torah in a spiritual sense.156 ¶21

Then comes the promise, the prophecy, and he prophesies to man what he’s going to do to man: He’s going to give you himself. It is God’s purpose to give us himself and to give us himself so completely it is as though there were no others in the world, just God and you. Believe that, and the most fabulous story that I’m telling you becomes permanent and, I tell you from experience, possible.156 ¶22

For in one short little interval of nine months in human time, three fantastic events will unfold in you, all leading up to the fulfillment of God’s promise to man. You’ll be born from above, out of your skull, just as a child is born from below from the womb of a woman. Just as a child is born, as you and I were born from our mother’s womb, we will be born from our own skull, and come out in the same way of a child coming out. Only we’re not little babies. It’ll be symbolized as a babe, but we will be adults coming out, a fully-grown being coming out of our own skull. And the whole drama is symbolized just as told us in the Books of Matthew and Luke.156 ¶23

But man has completely misunderstood the story, and they say a little child was born of a woman called Mary 2,000 years ago. It isn’t so at all. It never was so. The only Mary in the world is the skull of man, the only Mary, never was another Mary. And out of this wonderful skull of man, this divine womb of God, comes man; but his birth is symbolized in that of a little child, wrapped in swaddling clothes. The little child is discovered by men of the same age, right here. They can’t see the one who came out because this being is something entirely different. He belongs to an entirely different world, not wearing these garments at all. But they know of him, and they know he is born. So they speak of him, and they will say, if your name is John, “How can John have a baby?” They still are [...] the concepts of this world, so they think the being found is not a sign, it’s a fact. That’s not the fact; it’s a sign bearing witness to a fact they cannot observe. And he who is born stands in their midst, and he looks at them, well, they’re just like toys to him. He is now so powerful, so wise, so altogether omniscient and omnipotent as he stands in their presence, yet invisible to them. And harmless—he’s as harmless as a dove. He wouldn’t hurt one hair of their head. Because of their ignorance they can’t see him. Not a thing that he can do to make himself visible to them because they haven’t eyes to see the kingdom of heaven and they haven’t ears to hear the sounds of heaven. So he stands in their presence, a man clothed in the garment of heaven, invisible and inaudible to all who are present. But all the signs are present bearing witness to the event that took place in his case.156 ¶24

And after the event comes God’s promise to give himself to one that he succeeds in raising from the dead, which is to be born anew, born from above, and he gives him his Son as his own Son. He doesn’t give him his Son [...] planning to walk the street with him; he gives him his Son as his own son. And that being, invisible to the world, is the Son, and it’s David, the immortal David that is the sum total of humanity. So he gives you humanity symbolized in one youth, and it’s called David. You have no doubt as to who he is when you see him.156 ¶25

Then, God separates the veil. There will be no need as far as you are concerned to ever go to any intermediary to reach God. For when that veil is severed you have direct access to God. You don’t need any priest, any rabbi, any pope, anyone in this world to go to God. You’re one with him. And so, the temple is split right down from top to bottom. When it’s split from top to bottom, the prophecy is fulfilled: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” And that Son of man is lifted up as God, for he beholds his own Creator and knows it to be himself. He is now self-begotten. There’s only God. He can’t beget other than himself, and the whole vast play is to bring him out. He created the whole vast world for the purpose of bringing them out.156 ¶26

I think Blake put his finger on it when Blake said to Max Beckman in vision one night, “Have confidence in objects, do not let yourself be intimidated by the horrors of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Follow this path and you will obtain from your own ego a far deeper perception of the eternal beauty of Creation: and then you will attain greater and greater release from what to you at this moment seems to be so sad and so horrible.” You will be released from the horror of it all if you follow this path. Yield completely to it; let it be.156 ¶27

And this is the play. This whole vast tension today in the world between races and nations, all these are part of God’s play. And when it’s all over, the scenery will remain, the [...] may remain, but you and I will be extracted, and all are one. If tonight you played all the parts of Hamlet, just suppose you played all the parts of Hamlet—you played Hamlet, you played his mother, you played the uncle, the ghost of the father, you played all the parts. At the end of playing all the parts, who are you? You’re not Hamlet and you’re not the mother or the murderous uncle, the wounded and dead father, or any part. You are the actor.156 ¶28

Well, “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” And so the supreme actor of the world… God is not a passive observer of this pageant of Israel, he is the supreme actor in the drama. And so God in man is I AM, that’s God, and he’s playing all the parts. If I’m playing all the parts of Hamlet tonight, but every one, if the play came down and I changed my costume and came back as the mother, changed my costume and came back as the father, the ghost, changed, came back as the uncle, the murderer of the king, I’m still the same actor. Well, do you know that God is playing all the parts? There is nothing but God in this world. But he’s playing it for a purpose: to individualize himself as Jesus Christ; and when the play is done, you are Jesus Christ. Everyone will be Jesus Christ.156 ¶29

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *156 ¶30

Life has a purpose, and that is saying God has a purpose. You and I may have plans in conflict with God’s purpose and God allows it for a short while and you and I can realize our dreams but only within the framework of God’s plan. As we are told in the Book of Isaiah, the 14th chapter, the 24th verse, “The Lord has sworn: ‘As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.’” No one will thwart God’s plan, God’s purpose. God’s purpose is to give himself to us, individually, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you; ultimately, because the gift is complete, just you. That is God’s plan, that is God’s purpose, and he’s mapped the whole thing out for us in the Bible.151 ¶1

The entire story he told us in the Old Testament; the New Testament is the fulfillment of God’s plan. Men will not believe this; even the hundreds of millions who claim themselves to be Christians do not fully grasp it, if they do at all understand it. Well, it is his plan; it is his purpose.151 ¶2

Tonight, it is my desire to share with you what I have experienced concerning God’s plan. Night after night, I want to share with you the joy of a change in imagining, really. If I could take you with me and persuade you to believe that you are already the one that you want to be and that you could really believe that you really are and remain loyal to such an assumption that you really are the man, the woman, that you want to be, I know from experience that you would become it. I trust you will do it just as we are told in scripture within the framework of his purpose. You will not try to influence me, influence the other, but you will do it just as we’re told in scripture, to alert him that I am what I want to be, and do nothing about it, just live in it just as though it were true; and I, in a way I do not consciously know, I will become it. That I know from experience.151 ¶3

But tonight’s purpose is to show you to the best of my ability God’s purpose, which we said earlier, is to give you himself.151 ¶4

In the very last book of the Old Testament, the thirty-ninth book, the Book of Malachi, he said, “The son is the honor of the father, as the servant honors the master. If then I am a father, where is my honor?” . That’s the end, the very last book. “If the son honors the father, as the servant honors the master, if then I am a father, where is my honor?” The entire thirty-nine books have prophesied such an honor, that God is going to give himself—God is God the Father—he’s going to give himself to me. And I do not know that I am a father. If I really am a father, where is my honor, where is my son? So the book closes on that note, the Book of Malachi.151 ¶5

The first book of the New Testament begins to express beyond: he gave the son. But people do not understand this great mystery. So tonight, listen carefully and let me share with you the mystery, as I know it from experience. For you could be rich, you could be poor, you could be known, you could be unknown, and you could be anything in the world; it hasn’t a thing to do with God’s promise. God’s promise is the most fantastic thing in the world, for he gives you himself. You actually become one with the body of God—it’s your body. You are he. You contain all other beings. So whether you are in part a rich man, a poor man, a beggar man, or a thief, these things are really not important. They don’t add up to God’s promise. But God’s promise is not given in [...] to any work of man. You can be the wisest man, the biggest man, or the richest man; it still doesn’t entitle you to his promise. His promise is a gift; you can’t earn it. It’s a gift, it’s grace, it’s all grace, and he actually gives you himself.151 ¶6

The promise goes back to Genesis. We read the first inklings of the promise in his promise to Abraham. Then we find the promise coming through, evolving slowly, and we find it really crystallizing in his promise to David. Then we find it maturing; and finally, we find it in its fulfillment in the New Testament, in the story that we’ve been taught, the story of Christ Jesus.151 ¶7

The story is true, but not as I learned it in my church. I was born and raised in the Episcopal Church. We had it in school. I had Sunday School every Sunday. We had it every Wednesday. Yet it was not the story that my minister taught me. It was not the story that my mother understood and she taught me. It was not the story that my father understood. And they were all Episcopalians. That’s not the story. It’s a fantastic story, how God gives himself to us. Now listen to it carefully; it’s true. I am speaking from experience.151 ¶8

God becomes man that man may fully become God, one body. As we are told, “As there is but one body and it has many members, and all the members one body, so it is with the body of Christ” .151 ¶9

The day will come that you will be brought into his presence, believe it or not, into the presence of God. And in spite of the year 1963, where our scientists could not conceive of God as man—to them God is a force, God is a power, God is a process—I tell you God is man. You will be brought into his presence, and he will ask you a very simple question, in your own tongue. If you speak only English, it’s asked and you hear it in English. If you speak only Hebrew, you will be asked in Hebrew and you will hear it in Hebrew. You will hear it because it’s thought you hear as words. He asks a very simple question, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and you will answer correctly, as though you are supernaturally prompted and you cannot fail in the answer, and the answer is love. You will answer in the words of Paul, “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love” . And as you answer, God himself will embrace you and incorporate you into his body. And strangely enough, it becomes your body. You occupy as your own body the body of God, as though there were no others, just you. No loss of identity, but none whatsoever, and you’re actually incorporated into the body of God.151 ¶10

We are called this way, one by one. And after this incorporation, you are sent into this world to tell it to the best of your ability. You will never in eternity forget that incorporation. Although you wear a little garment that wears out in this world, subject to all the pains, all the limitations, and all the restrictions of garments in this world, you have the memory of the garment into which you were incorporated. And it is the body of God. You have no doubt in your mind who asked you the question, none whatsoever. You have no doubt who addressed you when you answered correctly. And the whole thing is done in the most glorious manner, and you feel as you never felt before—well, or since for that matter—a delight beyond the wildest dream of man. A joy you can’t describe when love, personified as man embraces you, and it is God.151 ¶11

Then it’s God’s purpose to take each and every being in this world and save him by incorporating him into his body, and the body becomes his body. You are one with God. So it’s God’s purpose to give himself to us, individually, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you, and finally, only you.151 ¶12

But God is a father. Listen to the words of Malachi, “The son honors the father as the servant honors the master. If then I be a father, where is my honor, where is my son?” So the end of the Old Testament comes on that note. You’ll read it in the first chapter of the Book of Malachi; I think it is the sixth verse. It is you asking a question, “All these promises to us through the ages have been made, where is my honor?” If God is going to give me himself and God is a father, he can’t give me himself unless I am aware of being a father.151 ¶13

My child in this world, I know I am the father. I fully believe that I sired my two children; I fully believe it. But millions and billions have done the same thing. That’s not what God intended. God has a son, an only begotten son, and unless he gives me that son, I am not God the Father . But God gives you that son. It’s the most fantastic thing in the world.151 ¶14

I’ve talked since it happened to me to dozens and dozens of ministers, and they all turn away from me. They think they’re in the presence of mad men because they were not taught it any more than I was taught it. I was raised in the same strict orthodox background that they were. I’ve talked to rabbis; I’ve talked to priests, Catholic priests; I’ve talked to Protestant ministers; and none of them see it. And it’s true. God gives the individual his only begotten son, and that son is David, David of biblical fame. The only one, it’s David.151 ¶15

And one day you will have this experience. There will be an intensity you’ve never felt before all possessing you; and then you’ll explode, your brain will explode, and standing before you will be God’s only begotten son, but he’s your son. And you know it more than you know anything else in this world and he knows it. David, the symbol of humanity—for he symbolizes the whole vast world of humanity. But he is a single youth, beautiful beyond description, and he looks into your face and calls you Father. You know you are his father, and he knows that he is your son. And then the fulfillment of the 89th Psalm, “I have found David. He’s cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation’”151 ¶16

So here, you come to fulfill scripture, and God is fulfilling his promises. He’s promising in man. He promised everything to man, which is himself, that’s everything. And then he’s a father, and the honor of the father is the son and “If I then be a father, where is my honor?” Well, from the Old Testament ends this note: It hasn’t yet fulfilled the promise of God. Then comes the New who makes the claim—and men to this day will not believe that it happened because they were misinformed—it has happened and it is happening. At every moment in time, it is happening in every child born of woman. God is giving himself to every one of us, but actually giving himself. And then you will have the complete knowledge of being the father of God’s only begotten son. He doesn’t walk with you as a companion; he’s your son.151 ¶17

So when we are told he gave his only begotten son, people misunderstand it, and they speak of Jesus Christ. And I swear I do not know anyone that will take his words, but when I quote the words of the 14th chapter of John, they’ll say, Well, I’ve heard that, but it isn’t literally true. And I tell you it is literally true. The day is coming that you will know who God really is. You will actually be that being, and his name is Jesus Christ, and you are he. You will be the father of David, as Jesus Christ claims in scripture if one reads it carefully, he is the father of David.151 ¶18

It is said to him, “Show us the Father and we’ll be satisfied.” He said, “I have been with you so long and you do not know the Father? He who sees me sees the Father. I am the way to the Father. No one comes unto the Father save by me.” But they didn’t understand him—that I am the Father—and I said that after it happened. A man said to me, “Well, it’s not recorded in scripture.” You’ve got to go back in scripture; it’s got to be recorded in scripture that he’s a father.” And when you quote him, he still can’t see it. But now he goes further.151 ¶19

No one asked him, if I said to you, “I am the Father,” would you not normally ask me, “Well then, where is your son?” Wouldn’t you? I can’t be a father unless there’s a child bearing witness of my fatherhood. There must be a child, so where is the child if I am the father? No one asked him the question, so he brings it up, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They answered, “The son of David.” Then he replied, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord? If David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” And they asked him no more questions thereafter. The word translated Lord is Adonay, which is “my father, my lord.” But every child spoke of his father as Adonay, my father, my lord.151 ¶20

So David in Spirit calls him “my father.” He revealed who he is. But who believes it? Who accepts it? It’s a mystery. As I told you over the months, a mystery is a matter not to be kept secret, but a truth that is mysterious in character. How can I explain to anyone this peculiar, mysterious experience where David of biblical fame—go back now unnumbered centuries—and out of my own skull comes a child, David? An explosion and David looks into my face and calls me “Father”? I had no feeling prior to that moment of any relationship to any biblical character. I was taught it as you were taught it. Everyone was taught it just like I was taught it, and then suddenly to find the whole thing recorded in scripture unfolding in the individual, that God inwove the whole drama in man and then inweaves it and all these characters become personified, and there they are.151 ¶21

Now listen to this carefully, it’s the 4th chapter of Ephesians, only three verses, the 4th, 5th and 6th. And the word “one” is repeated seven times in three verses. Each time it is attached to a noun. The first noun, “There is one body.” Then comes the next, “one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.” One. Now, here in Zechariah, the one next to the end of the Old Testament, [...] Zechariah comes, the thirty-eighth book, and this is the 14th chapter, 9th verse, And the Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day his name one and he one. “On that day the Lord will be one and his name one.” One body, one Spirit, one life, one king, one everything, just one.151 ¶22

And then you are absorbed into his body because you answer correctly, “The greatest thing in the world is love,” and he absorbs you. He incorporates you into his body, and you are he. The body of God you wear—it’s your body—without loss of identity.151 ¶23

So today, there are three billion of us in the world, and they project billions to come. I wouldn’t care how many billions. We’re told in scripture, more than the sands of the sea, and yet the whole vast world and the sands of the sea, how many billions? It would make no difference, each is the one. That’s the great mystery. God gives himself to us as though there were no others in the world, just God and you. And finally the gift is so complete, there’s only you, and you wear the divine body that is God. That is the great mystery.151 ¶24

And then we understand the story that is told in the very end of the 2nd of Genesis, for it is all God. It is God who is called man in that chapter. Man must leave everyone and cleave to his wife until they become one flesh. It is God who emptied himself and became man and redeemed man, became one with man and gave himself to man. That’s the story. He gave everything up and became man and redeemed man.151 ¶25

So we are told in the great mystic’s concept—the works of Blake—“And those in great eternity who contemplate on death said thus: ‘What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be… even of despair, torment and eternal death; but the Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems Man in the body of Jesus’” .151 ¶26

You and I, and you prove it, what seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be. You can assume anything this very moment and rise to the very highest position in the world of Caesar, or you can go down to the very depth in the world of Caesar. What seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be.151 ¶27

And you can’t save yourself. No individual can save himself. He is redeemed because Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus. And that’s the body. But when you are incorporated into the body, you are he.151 ¶28

Now you know the second verse, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him” . It doesn’t yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him. As he embraces you, you are the very being who embraced you; you are one with God, and no loss of identity, none whatsoever. You dwell upon it.151 ¶29

This is God’s purpose because life has a purpose. But within the framework of God’s purpose, you are free to be anything you want to be in this world. You can be rich, you can be poor, you can be known, you can be unknown, and you can be anything in this world, if you really believe God’s principle.151 ¶30

And God’s principle is very, very simple, very simple. Whatever you desire, make it known to God and do nothing. That’s what you’re told, just do nothing. Sleep this night as though you were the man, the woman that you would like to be, just as though it were true. Have confidence in that assumption, just as though it were so. And in a way that no one knows because all are incorporated into the one body and all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle, it will influence every being in this world that can play a part to aid the birth of that assumption. If you assume that you are (you name it), and if I can play the part, without my consent I’ll play the part. Without my knowing, I am playing the part to aid the birth of that assumption; I’ll play the part. Everyone in this world will be used if they can be used. And God knows it all, for he [...] me it all, “All things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle.” So I can, without anyone asking me, if you dare to assume that you are what you want to be; and if I can be in any way instrumental in aiding the birth of your assumption—you don’t need to influence me deliberately and consciously—I will be used. And I will be used totally unaware of the fact that I was used in the birth of your assumption.151 ¶31

So you take anyone—leave them alone; you don’t have to take any person and use them—you simply know what you want. And it may not come within the framework of his purpose; but in these short distances, it works anyway. God will adjust it.151 ¶32

As we’re told in the 16th chapter of Proverbs, “He has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.” But he tells us in the beginning of that third verse, “Commit your works to the Lord, and your plans will be established.” You commit them to the Lord, and your plans will be established. If you start to work on them yourself, it may be in conflict but just commit them to the Lord.151 ¶33

Well, how would I commit them to the Lord? If tonight I wanted (and I name it) without telling you, without asking anyone to help, I would this night see the world as I would see it were it true that I am the man that I want to be. I would see my friends, seeing me as they would see me were it true. I would see the world as I would see it were it true, and then I would sleep in the assumption that it is true. And I know from experience it would work. Everything in the world would move and adjust itself to mirror that which I am assuming that I am; and in the not distant future, I would externalize it. I would become it in my world. I am not in conflict with God when I commit my work to the Lord. If it’s not within his purpose, that’s something entirely different. But he’ll work it; he’ll externalize it.151 ¶34

And to show us how he allows it, the 18th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah tells us how he allows it. He warns us, and he tells the prophet, “Go and tell them to amend their way and change, and turn from their evil doings” . “But they said, ‘We will not. That’s all vain! We will continue in our stubborn, evil way.’” And then God said you’ve plotted and planned the consequences of their acts. He isn’t going to hurt; their concepts produce what appear to be God’s plan and the consequence of their misbehavior. God doesn’t hurt; he’d be hurting himself because we are all God. It’s all God. For he tells me to change my way, to amend my way, but man will not. You read it carefully in Jeremiah 18: Go and tell them what’s going to happen if they do not amend their ways. And then man will not do it.151 ¶35

In that same wonderful chapter, he tells us how you and I should operate in this world, just like a potter. We take anything in the world and refashion that being in our mind’s eye, just as though he or she were as we would desire them to be. Just do it and believe in the reality of that reshaped being. A man unemployed, see him gainfully employed; a man who is up against it, see him freed; a man who can’t make the grade, see him already on the top, in your own mind’s eye. Don’t tell him what you’re doing. Don’t ask his consent. But do it lovingly. Whenever you operate this law lovingly, you are doing it wisely. So you aren’t hurting anyone if you see him as a better person than formerly he appeared to be. And so take any person in this world without their consent and see them as a noble, glorious being—don’t tell them that you’ve done it—and then be quite satisfied to see them become that being. And give full credit to other people, completely rubbing you out as something that had nothing to do with it, perfectly all right. You know God’s law.151 ¶36

But within the framework of his purpose, these wonderful promises are made in the Old Testament. For he said to David, I’m going to bring forth out of you a son, and I will be his father. The very end of the book, it didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. The promise is made to David. Where is his son who could reveal me as God the Father? And no one understands it.151 ¶37

I said it to this minister—a very prominent minister right here in this area, the head of his very, very large following, running, so they tell me, to over a million—and when I quoted the 2nd Psalm to him to tell him who David was, he confessed he never saw it in that light. In the 2nd Psalm, addressed only to David, “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” . That is established in the beginning. But man never saw it.151 ¶38

Because as a speaker, I was misinformed; I was told that Jesus was God’s son. I believed it. I was raised in that environment as an Episcopalian, and I did not know, even though I read it myself, that he was God the Father. I always thought he was the son. And yet, he tells the whole vast world who will receive his word, “When you see me you see the Father.” But no one believes it. It doesn’t make sense.151 ¶39

How can the Father condense himself, empty himself, and become a man, a simple man, as you are? How could you and I plus individuals in billions in the world occupy one body, and that body is our body? It doesn’t make sense. How can he so give himself to me that I am the father of his son and give himself to you to the same extent that you are the father of the son? If you are the father of God’s only begotten son and I am, are we not one? How could I ever reach unity unless there’s a son to unify us? Only one son, and if I am the father of that one son of God and you are the father, every being in the world is the father, are we not one? Can’t you see this great mystery unfolding where all the people in the world become the only father of the only son? Not sharing, occupying the only body that is God.151 ¶40

And is that one body? Listen to the words, “Divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus” and that one man we call Jesus the Christ, and you are he. If you see him on the outside, you don’t see the right one. The day will come you are he.151 ¶41

You’ll stand right in his presence and then the 82nd Psalm is fulfilled: “And God has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” And you’ll be taken in Spirit right into his presence, and he’s just as he’s described in the Book of Daniel. Believe it. Just as Daniel the prophet described the Ancient of Days, there he stands before you. You don’t have to ask who he is; he’s infinite love, but infinite love. And then you see an attribute of him and it’s almightiness and it’s man, everything is man. There’s nothing but man. And then you see infinite wisdom is man. But God himself is love, infinite love. When we are told in the letters of Paul that God is love and the letters of John that God is love, believe it. They didn’t manufacture this; it happened to them. God is love, infinite love. And you will stand in his presence and he’ll embrace you, incorporate you right into his body. And you don’t see anyone else, just you. You are he and the body of God is your body.151 ¶42

So go back in Ephesians, one body… it begins with the word body. “One body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all” . And then you will know what it means, he’s [...] one, only one body, only one Spirit, only one hope.151 ¶43

So when Paul tells us, as he stands before the king, “Here I stand in chains, stand on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers.” What promise? He promised me himself. He promised to give me himself because he’s going to draw from me a child who is his child. If a child comes out of me and it’s my child and God makes it his child, so he brings out of me a son and calls the son his son, and then gives it to me as my son. Then I wait and wait and wait through the ages and wonder, “When is this thing ever going to happen?” And I was misinformed until it happened to me. When it happened to me, then I knew how it happened to everyone. And so I tell you, whether you be Christian, Jew, or Mohammedan, or you call yourself an atheist, it’s going to happen to you. It’s the only way in the world that we will ever be unified. And when we are completely unified in one body, it’s the body of God. And each will be the father of God’s only begotten son, the personification of humanity.151 ¶44

So in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs, he is personified as wisdom, the very first act of God. As you are told in the 22nd verse, and it goes through the 36th verse, “God created me in the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old.” Before he brought forth the heavens, before he brought forth the earth, “I stood beside him as a little child.” Now scholars are all agreed that this personification in the form of a little child is the personification of wisdom. All right, Christ is defined as the wisdom and the power of God. And so when Paul writes his letter to the Corinthians, the 1st chapter of 1st Corinthians, he said, “Christ… the power and wisdom of God.” So all right, I would go along with the scholars that the teacher who wrote that 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs meant wisdom, but he personified wisdom as a little child.151 ¶45

But I still say the whole vast world of humanity is personified as a youth, just as you’re told, and you look right into his face. It represents the whole vast world of humanity, and he’s your son and it’s David. And so who would you hurt when every being in the world rolled into one makes one youth, and that youth is your son? Who would you hurt, who would you rob, who would you destroy when it’s all going into one being, and it’s David? A beauty beyond the wildest dream of man, you can’t conceive of the beauty of David of biblical fame, when he symbolizes and personifies the whole vast world of humanity, and it’s all your son. For humanity is the son of God, personified as a single youth.151 ¶46

It’s told so beautifully in the Book of Samuel, if one could only see it. And here is the one; if he succeeds, he will set his father free, and we’re all set free by the son. So if he succeeds, the promise of God is “I will set his father free” . And so the king asks a very simple question, “Whose son is that youth?” And no one knows. Then he said, “Inquire whose son the stripling is?” No one knows. So he turns to the youth himself; he said, “Whose son are you, young man?” and he answered, “I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite” .151 ¶47

Well, the word Jesse is any form of the verb “to be.” In other words, I am the son of whom I am: I am self-begotten. That’s what he’s telling you. That’s exactly what God does to us. God’s name is I AM, “Go tell them I AM has sent you” . So the father of David is I AM. So when you are embraced and you see him, that’s your name, I AM. It’s all in the Bible. Check me.151 ¶48

So you are the being spoken of in scripture as the one who has been promised this fantastic gift from God, and the gift is the gift of himself. He gives man himself. And there’s no way in the world that he can prove to man that he gave himself unless there was a son, for God is God the Father.151 ¶49

So to go back to Malachi, “The son honors the father, as the servant honors the master. If then I am a father, where is my honor?” And then the book closes. And no one can read the story other than the [...] unfold in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. For the Old Testament closes on the question, Where is my honor? This promise is long overdue; if then I am a father, where is my honor, where is my son? And then comes the unfoldment: here is your son. And who believes it?151 ¶50

As I said, I’m testing the limits of the rabbis, the priests. Who can follow the reasoning behind the visions, an actual series of mystical experiences? They won’t believe it. How can David be the son? How can David be Messiah? How can Jesus be the Father in spite of all the confession: “He who sees me sees the Father”? “And I tell you there is only one body, one Spirit, one hope, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of us all.” No other, only one, “And in that day the Lord will be one and his name one,” and you are that one.151 ¶51

To prove who you really are, he sends his son and gives him to you as your son. Now, you believe it. But whether you believe it or not, it is true. And because not a thing that man can do to thwart it, I’ll prophesy for you: you’re going to have the experience. If you oppose him with all your might, you can’t thwart God’s promise to you, which is to give you himself. And God is a father, and he can’t give you himself unless he gives his only begotten as your son. No other way in the world that he can give you himself unless he gives you his son.151 ¶52

I am telling you in advance, before it takes place, that when it takes place you may believe. For I tell you, he gave himself to me. And although fragile as I am and wearing out this garment as all garments wear out, and it can’t be too long delayed before it’s worn out, I still know the body that I have inherited. There’s only one body and that one body we call Jesus the Christ. It’s my body; and it is your body, and it’s everybody in the world, the one body. Man cannot, looking into this fabulous world, believe that God is man and that man is God. But I tell you it is true.151 ¶53

Now let us go into the Silence.151 ¶54

You have within you a wonder working power! To understand this power, let us turn to the Book of Joshua, where we are told: “Wherever the sole of your foot shall tread, I have given you.” The Hebrew form of the word “Joshua” is Yad He Vav and means, “Jehovah saves”. So you see, Joshua is not promising another, but himself! Jehovah leads the dance of life. We are his dancers, yet his very self; for God and his eternal name is one I AM. There is no place you can go and not know that you are! You may suffer from amnesia and not know who you are or where you are, but you know that you are; so without voicing it you are saying I AM! That’s God. There is no place where God is not and there is nothing that God is not; for if there is something, it has to be God!150 ¶1

Now, all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle. If you will take the idea of inner penetration seriously, you will find its possibilities are staggering. Everything in this world penetrates your brain. You penetrate my brain just as I penetrate yours. My apartment is several miles from here. New York City is three thousand miles, and the place where I was born is five thousand miles away. I know they are there, but if I accept the thought of inner penetration then I believe they are also in my brain.150 ¶2

If I desire to visit my island home in Barbados, but do not have the means or the time to go there, I can enter its image in my imagination by approaching it on the fiery chariot of my contemplative thought. I have done it. I do not use this wonder working power lightly anymore, because I know that after imagining, my desire fulfilled (although I may forget it) I will be compelled to experience it in this world of shadows.150 ¶3

This wonder working power is to be used for anything you desire. It now penetrates your brain, and it is wherever you are. I know that Barbados is in the outer world, but I also know that I am all imagination. I know that God is Man and exists in us and we in Him; that the eternal body of Man is the Imagination, and that is God Himself. So if I - imagination - enter into an image I desire to occupy, no earthly power can stop that image from becoming an objective fact.150 ¶4

What is the secret that makes this wonder working power operate? Feeling! Reality is controlled by feeling, as told us in the 27th chapter of Genesis. The central character in this chapter is the state called Isaac, who has two sons - Esau and Jacob. Esau is clothed in objective reality, while Jacob wears subjective reality as longings, wishes, and desires. When Jacob disguised himself as an objective fact, Isaac said: “Come near that I may feel you to determine whether you are Esau or not.” And when he asked: “Are you really Esau?” Jacob answered, “I am.”150 ¶5

Put yourself into a subjective state. Then feel the objectivity of the state by giving it sensory vividness and tones of reality. Then deceive yourself into believing that the image into which you have entered is now objectively real. Do that, and you have entered the state called Isaac. And we are told that when Isaac once more saw his objective world, Esau returned and Jacob disappeared. Then he realized that he had been self-deceived, but could not take back the blessing given to the subjective state. Although your objective world denies the reality of what you have done in your imagination, that which you have subjectively assumed is on its way to supplant your objective world and become your Esau.150 ¶6

You see, in life you are playing the part of Isaac with your two sons: Esau - your objective world, and Jacob - your subjective one. Your subjective world may seem to be clothed in unreality; but when you enter into its image in your imagination and clothe that image with feeling, your subjective desire takes on the tones of reality.150 ¶7

This is how I do it: When I close my eyes this world is shut out and I, like Isaac, am blind to the outer world. Then I feel myself into the state of my desire. With my inner eye I see it all around me. I sense its solidity, and when my five senses are awakened I have the feeling of relief, knowing it is accomplished. When I open my physical eyes, Esau - my physical world - returns and tries to persuade me that what I did was unreal. But having done it time and time again, I know that my desire is moving towards its objective fulfillment.150 ¶8

This is what I mean by wonder working power. It is all within your own wonderful human imagination, for that is God. The promise to Joshua is God’s promise to himself, for there was no one to play the part that is so uniquely you, but God. Having conceived a play which existed only for him, God, the director and author, became the actor. His name is I am! Before I am known as John, Peter, man, or woman - I simply am! Clothing myself in what I would like to be, I am rich, poor, known, or unknown.150 ¶9

Although my objective world denies the reality of what I have done, when I have felt the reality of my desired state, I have given it my blessing and cannot take it back. The moment that which was subjective becomes objectively real to you, you have given it your blessing and cannot take it back. Clothed in the feeling of insecurity, your outer world (Esau) reflects that feeling. But when you clothe yourself in the feeling of being rich, even though it is subjective, watch - for as insecurity will no longer have your blessing to remain alive, riches will supplant it.150 ¶10

Every state of consciousness is within you, for everything is God made visible! And all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle. The moon is remote in space, yet it penetrates your brain; therefore it is in your brain. I can’t take you with me to view the earth from the moon, but you can go there yourself. You can go to any point in space that you can conceive of, by just imagining you are already there.150 ¶11

When I was in the army, my commanding officer denied my request for discharge. His word was final in the world of Caesar - but not in the world of God, for that very day I assumed I was honorably discharged and living in my apartment in New York City, 2000 miles away. Sleeping on a little cot in the barracks, I assumed I was in my own comfortable bed. I made it quite clear to myself that I was not on furlough, but was honorably discharged and once more a civilian. In my imagination, my wife was in her bed and my little girl in hers. Then I got off the bed, walked over to the window, and looked out upon a familiar scene that could only be seen from there. I saw the Holly Apartments across the way, as well as Washington Square. I walked through every room in the apartment, touching familiar objects, and then returned to my bed to sleep in New York City as though it were a fact.150 ¶12

Early the next morning, I saw a sheet of paper which resembled the application I had made. Then a hand holding a pen scratched out the word “Disapproved,” and boldly wrote the word “Approved”! And I heard a voice say: “That which I have done, I have done! Do nothing!” Knowing exactly what I had done, I knew I was moving towards its objective confirmation and no power on earth could stop it. Nine days later, the man who disapproved my application gave me an honorable discharge!150 ¶13

I tell you: everything is possible to the individual when he knows who he is. You are the Joshua of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New. And Jesus, your own wonderful human imagination, is Jehovah. He is your awareness, but as long as you see Jehovah as someone other than yourself you will not apply this principle. You must be willing to give up all foreign gods, all idols, and return to the one and only God, whose name is in you as your very being!150 ¶14

If you were trained in the Christian faith, you were taught to believe that Jesus was on the outside. But how can you put him to the test if he is another? There never was another Joshua or Jehovah. There is only God, the director of the great dance of life whose dancers are himself. God plays the part of the bum and dances the dance of poverty. He also plays the part of a millionaire and dances to the tune of millions, as every part is being played by God.150 ¶15

Now, everyone must act from where he is! Ask yourself: where am I? If I am God, where can I go and God is not? If I make my bed in hell, God is there. If I make it in heaven, God is there, for everything penetrates me! I do not have to physically move. Simply by adjusting my thinking I can move from one state to another.150 ¶16

I remember one cold winter night in New York City. I was lecturing in a church off Times Square where the usual crowd was in excess of a thousand, but because of the cold and snow there were only about 200 in attendance. My first book had just been released, and that night maybe 50 copies were sold, and since I had run the presses on 5000 I was eager to get the book in distribution. Because of the storm outside, that night I spoke of the warmth of Barbados: the palm trees and the odors of the tropics. And when I retired, I felt myself in my mother’s home in Barbados. I listened to the movement of the leaves and smelled the tropical atmosphere. Then a cable came saying that mother was dying and I should return home. Within 24 hours my wife and I set sail for Barbados. I had put myself there and had to fulfill my imaginal act, even though it was an inconvenient time for me to go; so I do not treat my wonder working power lightly!150 ¶17

When I ask you to adjust yourself to a certain state, I mean for you to feel it is real, for reality is controlled by feeling. The day will come when feeling will modify, or even void, that which you think are the laws of nature and science, and you will discover they are not so at all. This wonder working power is all within you, and can be operated consciously when you know who you are.150 ¶18

If you get down on your knees and pray to an external God, you do not know this power. Whether you are in a church or a bar, God is there; and wherever God is, that place is holy. A bar is just as holy as a church, when you are there knowing who you are! It does not matter where you are or what time it is; you can adjust your mind and make anything real through feeling. Although your objective world will deny its reality, the state you entered subjectively is moving towards fulfillment.150 ¶19

We are always imagining, although totally unaware of what we are doing. Yeats once said: “I will never be certain it was not some woman treading in the winepress who started a subtle change in men’s mind, or that a passion, because of which so many countries have given to the sword, did not begin in the mind of some poor shepherd boy, lighting up his day for a moment before it ran upon its way.” Someone in prison feeling abused by society can cause the combustion of the world by imagining getting even with those who placed him there, while those who did it think they are safe, not realizing that - although the man is in prison - he is God, using his wonder working power.150 ¶20

If you know there is only God, who would you want to hurt? You would realize that no man could ever shoot another, for there is no other. There is nothing but God, the one and only reality. This is the Sh’ma, the great confession of faith: “Hear O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Keep this in mind and you will never go wrong. If God is one, there cannot be another.150 ¶21

I am the one body fragmented in order for the poem to become alive. As I gather myself together to rebuild the temple which was destroyed when I deliberately shattered myself, the dead stones are made alive once more. One by one each fragmentation returns to the same body, making it more luminous, more transparent, and more creative, for God is an ever-expanding creative being.150 ¶22

This wonder working power is in 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. A Christian calls the imagination Jesus. A Jew calls it Jehovah. Tradition claims Jesus and Jehovah are idols - but God’s true name is I am! Believe in the human imagination, the only true God, by consciously using your wonder working power.150 ¶23

Where can you go that you are not imagining? No matter where you are, you are imagining (aware of) being there. A newborn child does not know who he is, where he is, or what he is; but he knows he is. That is God. He is your wonder working awareness, the wonder working power of Imagination!150 ¶24

I hope you take me seriously and learn to consciously believe in your inner penetration. Everything penetrates your brain, or you could not be aware of it - be it good, bad or indifferent. You don’t have to take a train, a boat, or a car to go anywhere. All you need do is adjust your thinking. Affirm: “I am possessing it now” and persist until you feel the relief of possession. Then go about your business, knowing that in a way you know not of, you will be led to the fulfillment of what you did within yourself!150 ¶25

You do not have to consciously determine the series of events you will encounter; they will simply unfold in your world. You may meet a seeming stranger. Others may appear, and - upon reflection - you may even give them credit for your success; but they were only playing a part, as all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle.150 ¶26

Others penetrate you and you penetrate them, for we are all one. If someone can play the part necessary for you to climb on that rung of the ladder, then he will do it without his knowledge of consent. Do not think of individuals, but of what you want as an end!150 ¶27

Shape your life wisely by becoming aware of the desire you are shaping in your mind, for without desire there is no power in life. Your power line is I am, while your desire is the light bulb. Just as it is impossible for a light bulb to give off light when it is not attached to the power line, so it is with you. You must attach your desire to your I am for it to illuminate and become objective to you.150 ¶28

Give lovely gifts to all you meet, for everyone is yourself pushed out. Take a noble concept you would like to experience, and adjust your thinking to it, by feeling you have moved into its fulfillment. Give it reality through feeling. Look at your world from this point, then open your eyes knowing that although your objective world denies it, you have given your desire its right of birth, and nothing can stop its fulfillment.150 ¶29

Read the 27th chapter of Genesis carefully, remembering that all of the characters spoken of there are personifications of states within you. As Isaac, you always have two sons: your present objective world and your present subjective world. The story tells you how to clothe yourself with the subjective desire, through feeling, until it supplants its objective brother. That is how you move from one state to another until you reach the state called Jesus. Then the story recorded in the gospels will fulfill itself in you, casting you in the central role. Only this experience can save you from this world of Caesar, for you are redeemed, from within yourself, by recreating the story of Jesus Christ.150 ¶30

Now let us go into the silence.150 ¶31

[...] by one of our great educators—whether you agree with his political opinions or not that’s irrelevant, really—but his name is Robert Hutchins. Regardless of what you think of a man’s political opinions, if the man has accomplished much in this world as he has, then listen to what he has to say. He said, “When I taught Macbeth as a professor in school”—now here are these great schools preparing our young men for great universities—he said, “My pupils looked upon it as a blood and thunder story. That’s all that they saw in Macbeth. They could not understand Macbeth as Shakespeare meant it to be understood by us without the experience, vicarious or actual, of marriage and ambition. For that’s the story of Macbeth. They thought it was simply a great Scottish western. And so these are fellows just entering our great universities. But you couldn’t understand the great story unless you had either a vicarious experience of it, someone who had experienced it and told you, or that you yourself experienced it. And here is one of the truly great tragedies of all time taking as its theme marriage and ambition. What it can do to man, distort all values in this world, if ambition goes outside of the bounds of your moral and ethical code—what it does to marriage.”148 ¶1

So here, I say the same thing is true of the greatest story ever told, and that is the story of salvation, as given to us in the scriptures in the life of Jesus Christ. You cannot fully understand it save vicariously or unless you have the experience. I hope that you will listen to one who has had the experience and believe it. For salvation is pinned upon hearing the true story of salvation, understanding it, and believing it. For belief is essential for it to take root in man.148 ¶2

Now we will turn to one of the many stories told in the gospels. This is the gospel of John, the tenth chapter. In essence, he calls himself “a door.” He says, “The sheep cannot enter save they come through this door. They will hear the voice of no one but the voice of the shepherd. The shepherd will lead them first, and they will follow the shepherd.” Well, that’s not the point I want to make tonight. The point in the same chapter is this, “I and my Father are one.” It’s the boldest claim that man ever made, the 30th verse of the 10th chapter of the gospel of John: “I and my Father are one.” Then we are told, the Jews took up stones to stone him, and he answered them saying, “I have shown you many good works from my Father; for which of these do you stone me?” They answered, “For no good work do we stone you but for blasphemy; for you being a man, make yourself God.” Then he answered, “Is it not written in your law”—now bear in mind he was born and raised a Jew, fully familiar with the law—“Is it not written in your law that ‘I said, you are gods’? If they are called gods to whom the word of God came, (and scripture cannot be broken), then why do you feel that the one who is consecrated by the Father and sent by him into the world blasphemes when he has said, ‘I am the son of God’? If you do not believe me, believe the works. Believe it just for the works sake if you cannot believe me that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father”. Then we are told they tried to arrest him, and he escaped from their hands.148 ¶3

Now here is the boldest of all claims, “I and my Father are one.” My Father can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. He can’t be so far off as even to be near, for it implies separation: We are one.148 ¶4

And then he turns to that wonderful scripture, the 42nd Psalm, where it’s a sad, it’s a lonely psalm, “As the hart panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God” . And then he paints a word picture of the sadness of life. He has a thirst that nothing can change but an experience of God. Then he speaks of his own tears, he said, “My tears have been my food day and night”—intensifying the [...]ness of the tears, intensifying these things—“while men say to me and say continually, ‘Where is your God?’”148 ¶5

They’ll do it all the time. If you dare to claim that I and my Father are one, let the smallest little thing happen to you in this world, a toothache, let there be a rip in your hand because you simply got your finger cut, let anything happen to you, and you’ll find crowds liking to say, “Where is your God?” You dare to claim that I and my Father are one and you go further and say, “My Father is he whom you call God; but I know my Father and ye know not your God.” Make these bold assertions and see how the whole vast world—when your food day and night happens to be your tears, and you think you can conceal them; you can’t conceal them—men will say to you and say continually, “Where is your God?” But in the midst of it all you still must persist in identifying yourself with God. You’re one with God, and he’s molding himself on you, in you, as his very being. Then you start from there to prove things. As he said, “You don’t believe me, then believe the works.” Believe the works, for you must begin to believe for the thing to take root in you. If it doesn’t take root in you, it can’t grow.148 ¶6

Salvation depends upon hearing the story of salvation, hearing it, understanding it and believing it—that you don’t see it as blood and thunder. For if you take the story as it really is presented by the churches of the world, it’s blood and thunder, a little child, and they try to snuff out the little child and slaughter the innocents. Tens of thousands of innocents were slaughtered in the hope of reaching the one. That’s how the story starts, blood and thunder. Then, his family denied him, his brothers wouldn’t believe him, no one believed him as the story began to unfold within him. No matter what he did in the world, all the signs of the world did not convince them that he was the one promised who would come into the world. For the world looked for something entirely different, some conquering hero would come out of the clouds and enslave the enemy of Israel; and then himself would set up as this conquering hero, and that would be the one they called Messiah.148 ¶7

Messiah doesn’t come that way. For Messiah makes the statement, “My kingdom is not of this world.” It’s not of world. Everything you see here is fading; it’s vanishing, but everything is vanishing like smoke and everything is wearing out, just like a garment. There isn’t a thing in this world… all the medals of the world will be poured out and emptied. This building, solid as it is, will make way for something greater than what it is today, or maybe just an empty parking lot, like the one next door. That was a lovely old building too just a matter of months ago; it’s now a parking lot. So everything is changing in this world and nothing endures in this world. But says he in the 51st chapter of Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes and see; look at the heavens, they’ll vanish like smoke, and lower your eyes to the earth, it wears out like a garment; but my salvation will be forever, and my redemption will never come to an end” .148 ¶8

So listen to the story of redemption. How is it done? It’s a simple story. The most impossible thing in the world but it’s true. I stand here because I only have two more lectures; and if you’ve heard it a hundred times, hear it again. For if tonight you got a million dollars by the application of God’s law and you didn’t know the story of salvation, and didn’t understand it so that you could believe it, the million dollars would be as nothing. That’s part of the earth that wears out like a garment, that’s part of the heavens that vanish into thin air, leaving nothing. But there is a plan that God has for the whole vast world, to redeem the world, and he redeems it with himself.148 ¶9

So his statement, “I and my Father are one” is a true statement. For when God redeems you it’s himself because God himself became as you are that you may be as he is. That’s a true statement. God actually became you, taking upon himself all the limitations of this fragile little garment and all the weaknesses of the being called Neville, but all of them, not a few of them. He actually entered into me and partakes of everything that I am in this world, to redeem me. He redeems me by a predetermined plan. It’s a blueprint inwoven into the soul of man that is God’s prophetic blueprint. And at a certain moment in time it begins to unfold. When it begins to unfold, go back into scripture, and then you’ll see it all foretold. Every word was in scripture, beginning back in the Book of Genesis and coming all through the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament. But no man understood it until it happened. When it happened, the one in whom it happened then told it. But that’s not the way they thought it should happen, so they didn’t believe it. And still today they don’t believe it because the churches are not telling it.148 ¶10

May I tell you, no church in this world can save you. No church in the world can in any way produce a Christian. A Christian can only be produced by the hearing of the story of salvation, hearing it with understanding and believing. It’s the most incredible story in the world.148 ¶11

To understand a picture of it, let us go to the 7th chapter of 2nd Samuel. This has been completely violated throughout the century, and yet it’s essential to the picture. I say now to my servant, my prophet Nathan, “Go to my servant David.” David is humanity. David is not the little individual; David is symbolical of the whole vast world of humanity. Go and tell mankind not to build a house for me; I will build a house for him. The word house has a peculiar meaning; it means “a dwelling place” and it means “family.” Mankind must not build a dwelling place for me, “for I the Lord do not dwell in buildings or houses made by hands” . I dwell with them who believe in me. That’s where I dwell: right in the heart of all who believe in me. I will build a house, meaning now a family, for him. He personifies David as a single individual. Although David represents the whole vast world of humanity, in speaking to David he speaks to David as a unit, as an individual being. Let him not build for me, I will build for him. I’ll build him a family. And that’s the great secret of salvation.148 ¶12

God in the soul of man is building a family for David. He’s building out of David—this is David—he’s building out of David and in David, a father. For David could not call him, Father; he always spoke of him as The Lord, as God. But he’s going to build in David, and out of David, a father, and when David sees him he can’t restrain the impulse to call him Father. This is what he promised David: “When you sleep with your fathers”—in other words, saying, when you die, and this world is death—“I the Lord will raise up your son after you, who will come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” .148 ¶13

So out of David—you, the speaker, every being in this world—God is actually bringing forth himself, for the words I first started tonight with, “I and my Father are one.” He isn’t bringing forth another, he’s bringing forth himself: “I and my Father are one.” So he’s bringing out of David himself. He is begetting himself on David. So begetting himself on David, the thing begotten is his son; yet it’s one with himself that is God the Father. The minute he completes it, David awakens and David sees what came out of him. But David has to call that which came out, Father. He redeems humanity. He redeems the individual first, and eventually redeems the whole vast world of humanity by this wonderful process of salvation. He redeems the individual by bringing out of that individual, himself. But the thing brought out has form; it’s begotten, and the being who brings it out is the unbegotten; it is God. And so the being begetting is the Father; the being begotten is the Son. The being begotten is the father of that out of which he came. And here is a mystery. He comes out seemingly as the Son of man. Well, he is; he came out of David—he comes out of you, comes out of me. If he comes out of me, then he’s the Son of man, yet the Son of man is the Son of God. For what comes out of man was begotten by God. And yet you can’t deny it came out of man; therefore, it is the Son of man, and yet it is the Son of God.148 ¶14

So the Son of God makes the statement, “I and my Father are one.” You’ll say to me when he calls you God, and who hears the word of God is called the Son of God. And he’s quoting in that chapter, the 82nd chapter of the Book of Psalms, it begins, “And God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Then he turns to those that he brought forth, “I say that you are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High.” Well, then he told them the story, before this was accomplished, “I say, ‘you will die like men and fall like any prince’” . And so you and I die like men and fall like any prince, although, eventually, what is brought out of us is begotten of God and, therefore, the Son of God. But it came out of man, and therefore it is the Son of Man.148 ¶15

So the Son of man can say, “I and my Father are one, though my Father is greater than I.” Let me repeat it, my Father, if I really believe it, can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies a separation. So in that 42nd Psalm—it’s a very lonely psalm—he turns and he communes with himself, that’s how he finds God. He turns to himself. And then, at one moment, it didn’t come to him, that communion with God, and then what does he do? He turns to memory, he said, “I remember thee.” Then he turns to memory, and that’s it: there is the secret. He’s revealing to us the means of escape.148 ¶16

So tonight if I am now troubled because someone said, “Where is your God?” Haven’t you had it? One Sunday night, I am lecturing in New York City but hadn’t the slightest idea I ever had a gall bladder. Had no knowledge whatsoever that I had such a thing as a gall bladder. Here I am lecturing in town hall—but a dinner party is scheduled the next night, and then that Sunday night, when I came home from my lecture, colic beyond the wildest dream, pain, excruciating pain. So my dinner party I wouldn’t cancel. I left my wife to be the hostess of the evening, and I remained in my bedroom. Came eleven that night, when the pain did not subside, not a thing I could do; they rushed me to the hospital, and that was it. Then came my wonderful friends, “Where’s your God, Neville?” It only fulfilled the 42nd Psalm of David. I came to fulfill. Everything is a word in the word of God. I must fulfill. If I didn’t have a friend in my world, who would say to me, “Where is your God?” part of my scripture would be unfulfilled. I can see him coming through now, before he even started to know that this is Neville; he was asking the question on the outside, “Where is your God, Neville? Why did it happen to you?” In other words, I’ll go back now to my own concept of God, whether it be lighting a candle or saying a little prayer on the side or giving to charity in the hope of appeasing something up in space. But someone must have sent to me here, as you know he is, because were he here, one with me, and he and I one, why should you be there in that bed? And so this happens to everyone that’s in the world. So I have come, said he, to fulfill scripture. And every word of scripture must be fulfilled, for scripture, said he, cannot be broken.148 ¶17

When he’s quoted in that 10th chapter—the words are set aside, “scripture cannot be broken,” the 10th of John—and calls you gods ; and yet he tells you you’ll die like men and fall as any prince? And the one that he’s consecrated and he’s sent into the world and you tell me he blasphemes because he said, “I am the Son of God”? Well, “Don’t believe me now, believe the works.” “Have you seen the many things that I have done?” said he. Well, believe the things that I have done if you don’t believe me. Well, the things that happened to me I can’t share them with you, but I can share, the eyes being open, I can share those who wanted to dispose of [...], and dispose of it to celebrate the thing that they used: the imaginal act. I can share with you the unnumbered things that happened in the world when I told of my Father’s law, that imagining creates reality. If a man dares to imagine that he is the man that he wants to be and remains loyal to that imaginal state regardless of what happens in the world, if he is loyal to that state it must become an objective fact in his world. And it does! Have you followed the story? said he. It all happened, didn’t it? They conceded that it happened. They were miraculous. But no matter how many and how multiplied the number, neither the number nor the nature of the signs that he produced in the world evoked faith. They had no more faith because he did all these things. So he asked us to believe in the things, if you can’t believe in me. For he couldn’t take them into the depths of his soul where these things take place and really show how they took place. He could only tell them.148 ¶18

So to come back to the first statement, the little pupils did not believe it, and they could not understand it without the experience whether that experience is first vicarious or actual. And so a vicarious experience is all I can give you. I ask you to share with me my experience, and to you, before you experience it, it’s vicarious. After you’ve experienced what I tell you, you will know how true it is, and then, it is something that is real in your life. And you will not look upon this as blood and thunder. For the story of Jesus is really blood and thunder, for that’s the story of life. Every child born of woman goes through all these horrible experiences in the world. It’s the story of Job. And in the very end, he’s salvaged, he’s saved. How is he saved? He’s saved by God who saves himself because God played all the parts. Only God is playing the part in this world today. No matter what the man is doing, whether he’s the most horrible beast in the world, God is playing that part, because there’s no other being to play it. “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” God actually became just what I am. I’ve done so many things of which I am not proud, but today I know, in the very end “Though my sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” In the very end, all is forgiven, because in the end I am one with the being who begot me. Then he lifts me up completely, beyond this level, and I’m in an entirely different world.148 ¶19

So the story of salvation, although difficult to grasp, I am not repeating it because I heard it. I am like Paul. It was revealed to Paul, in the sense that he experienced it; it was revealed to me in the sense that I experienced it. And although these events are separated in time, they form a single complex, and they start with resurrection. You can completely forget the crucifixion. You were crucified with God in the beginning of time. That’s behind us. Forget that, you aren’t facing that; that’s behind you. But what is ahead of you, and the first event in the series that awakens the entire drama is resurrection. You only resurrect if you’re dead. Therefore, when you are resurrected, you come out of the grave, the grave of your own wonderful skull. Coming out of that is in itself a birth. The next event is the discovery of the relationship he promised David, “I will build for you a family.” David doesn’t know, but he promised him, “I will build for you a family. Do not you build for me a dwelling place; I will build for you a family.” And so he builds a family using you, his own begotten self, as the father of David. So David has a father. What is the father’s name? Your name. What in the Bible is his father’s name? Jesse. What does Jesse mean? I AM. So who is your father? My father’s name is I AM. So he builds David—he keeps his promise, he never fails in his promise—so he builds for David a family, a relationship of father-son. Then he takes the next step and he tears the curtain of the temple from top to bottom so there’s no more intermediary between his son and himself: they are one. Then the son as the father—his own begetter, his own redeemer, his own creator—move up and ascend into Zion. They move up in this wonderful living liquid light state, right into Zion, into the skull. And then he remains for the few remaining years to tell his story. He tells it to as many as will hear it. Let them all be exposed to it, but they must hear it as it really took place, hear it and understand it, and believe it.148 ¶20

So that is how salvation takes place in the world. For no priest, no man, no church in this world can make you a Christian. Christianity is the unfolding of the promises made to Israel. The New Testament is simply the unfolding and fulfillment of the Old. It’s not a new religion, one as old as the faith of Abraham, one scripture. And so you hear it with understanding. You’re told that it first took place in one person and naturally rejected because it wasn’t as they expected it. Forever it’s the same, same story. They called him a drunkard, they called him a glutton, one who loved harlots, one who loved tax collectors, one who loved all kinds of things that the good people thought should not be done by one who makes such a claim. For they had their own concept of what the one should do in this world if really he was anointed by the Lord. He certainly shouldn’t do the things that they would judge harshly. And yet every time it comes, it comes in the same way. He could never be accepted by those who have their own standards, their own codes by which men should be judged who make the claim that God has consecrated him and sent him into the world to tell the story, one in whom the entire thing unfolded itself. We don’t look the part, and so if he is a stumbling block in the world, all he can say is “It happened, anyway.” But invariably he is a stumbling block to everyone in the world who’s looking for an entirely different personality, a different character, something different, a mental giant, or maybe a physical giant, or maybe a combination, or maybe someone with a marvelous social background, a great wonderful background, but he isn’t that at all.148 ¶21

When he comes, he comes into a very simple environment, completely unknown. But then the time is right in the eye of God for the seed that was hidden in the soul of man to begin to unfold, and at the appointed hour, it unfolds in the individual and all he can do is tell about it. If they believe it, all well and good. If you won’t believe, he will say to them, “What do you want? I will tell you how to get it.”148 ¶22

And then he will tell them the simple story of causation: That causation is mental, as told us in the Sermon on the Mount. It’s all mental, not physical. You see that woman? You like her? Would you like to know her intimately? Yes. You really would? You have already committed the act of adultery. Your very longing to know her in that intimate state is the act, therefore, causation is mental. That’s what he’s saying right away. Now if causation is mental, I’ll show you how to create. It’s very simple, for here was the act: by a longing on your part, you committed the act. And this is what we do. Causation is the assemblage of a mental state which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies.148 ¶23

And so I would like (and I name it). You would? Yes. Well then, what would happen if you had it? Well, I would do so and so, and they would say so and so to me. They would? Well, then, bring so and so into your mind’s eye and let them say to you what they would say were it true. Would you? Yes. Well, then do it.148 ¶24

Last Tuesday night my friend at home, who drives me home from these lectures, he said, “I’ve been thinking over your very, very brilliant statement, ‘Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. What would it be like were it true? How would I feel were it true?’” And then said he to me, “Here is a statement, a very common statement, but it really fits” and this is what he said, “Try it on for size.” It’s a very marvelous statement. Try it on for size. You want to be (and you name it), something much bigger than you’ve experienced before, much bigger. Well, it’s too big! But try it on for size, and then we can adjust it. We can fit it. Try it on. How would the world see you were you now the man that you want to be? How would they see you? Well, I’m embarrassed, it’s too big. Well, we’ll cut it down, bring it down until finally it seems natural. You do it until it seems natural, when it seems to take on the tones of reality. What’s real to you, what’s natural? Well, try it on for size. What would the feeling be like were it true? And so, you feel that it is natural and it feels natural. From that moment on, things will begin to happen. It’s going to come into this world as a perfectly normal, natural fact.148 ¶25

Now, the world will know of it, because you will tell, others will tell it, and they’ll have all the evidence in the world. And they will say, “Well, he told me this law and this is what happened; and this is what he did and that’s what happened.” Well, let me meet him in the flesh. He doesn’t look like a person who ought to be person that God consecrated. I once met him at a party and he drank much too much, and I’m quite sure he ate too much. And so all the stories go concerning the person, the individual, the external garment that he’s wearing, and they judge him by the garment; because they haven’t ears to hear and eyes to see the God housed within him. They don’t know that being at all, and they can only judge from appearances.148 ¶26

But when he comes into the world, as told us in the 11h chapter of the Book of Isaiah, he judges not by what his eye sees, nor does he decide by what his ears hear. He doesn’t, he can’t. He doesn’t care what you look like. All he asks, “What do you want? ‘What wantest thou of me?’” and you name it. Well, he knows causation, so he assembled in his mind’s eye the necessary imagery that would imply if true that you are what you want to be, and he remains loyal to that assumption. He doesn’t waver in his loyalty to the assembled imagery, regardless of what happens to you in the interval between your request and the fulfillment of that request. So when it happens, you may turn back like the one percent and say “Thank you”; or you may, like the nine percent, forget it. Nine percent [...], but it really is ninety percent, for there were ten and one turned back, and nine never turned back. So nine will receive the word and go their way, oblivious to the fact that one heard good news for him, and off they went unmindful of the act. He doesn’t care. He only asks a very simple question to go on record for the word of God: “Were there not ten of you? Where are the other nine? For you’re all cured of leprosy, so where are the other nine?”148 ¶27

And so, here is the entire story of salvation. Hasn’t a thing to do with a church, lovely as they are, but I am warned in the 2nd Book of Samuel, the 7th chapter, not to build him one. Let no one—David is the whole vast world—Let no one in the world of humanity build me a church; I will build for you a family. The word is a play on the two meanings of the word house. Do not build for me a house; I will build you a house. And David [...] do not build a dwelling place, for I do not dwell in buildings made by hands. I dwell in the heart within who believe it. But I will build you a house, in other words, I will build you a family. And then he builds me the family, and David doesn’t know until finally the Father appears, and then he calls him Father, automatically. The two view each other as though they knew each other forever. He builds him a Father; he builds him a family, and this relationship goes on forever and forever; it never comes to an end.148 ¶28

So he hid him in man, and then brought him forward as man’s son. You can’t call it a reward because this is grace, and grace is an unmerited gift. But he brings him forward as the most glorious gift in the world, the gift of a son. Now we are told in Isaiah, the 9th chapter, “To us a child is born, yes, but to us a son is given” . It’s a gift: David. And to us a son is given and David is given to us, individually, as son.148 ¶29

Then in the very end when the curtain comes down on this drama everyone will be the father of one son, and that son is David. The father can say of his own begetter, “I am the son of John,” but in this case “I am one with my Father.” For the being begetting is one with the self-begotten. He isn’t begetting another; he’s begetting himself. So God is begetting himself, but as he begets himself, the self-begotten is God. And you are God.148 ¶30

So don’t be embarrassed. And when they start throwing stones, and a stone is not a stone we see, the stones are the literal facts of life, these are the stones. So they pick up the stones in their mental hands and show you that they know who you are, when you were born, how old you are, the limitations of your background, both intellectual, financial, social, and every other way. They name them all. These are stones they throw at you: the facts of life. So they throw all the literal facts of life to stone you. Then you will ask a simple question, “For which good works do you stone me?” and they will say, “Not for any good work but for blasphemy. Because you are a man”—I know you, I know where you were born, we have your birth certificate, all about you—“and you being a man dare to make yourself God.” And if you say to them, “Is it not written in your law ‘I said that you are gods’? And if he calls them gods to whom the word of God came (and scripture cannot be broken) then why is it blasphemy when the one whom God consecrates and sends into the world makes the statement, ‘I am the son of God’?”148 ¶31

Now, you don’t believe that? All right, you don’t have to, believe the works. Ask nothing but the works—don’t ask him how it happens—where it’s a simple, simple mental causation. Do not believe in the one in whom the whole thing happened, believe the works. And then at the very end they were still denying [...]. Now let us go into the Silence.148 ¶32

Tonight is “The Resurrection.” Although the resurrection is not described in the scriptures, it stands at the very central point of the Christian faith, for if he is not risen, our faith is vain. We are told if the dead are not resurrected, then Christ is not risen. The Christ, we are told, is the power and the wisdom of God. Every child born of woman is crucified with Christ—with the power and with the wisdom. In God’s good time, he resurrects that individual when the individual has completely absorbed Christ—when that wisdom and that power is one with the individual who is actually crucified on that cross. No one can resurrect himself. It is an act of God. God’s mightiest act is the resurrection, to save mankind and establish his people. So we are told in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, “What you sow, unless it dies, it is not alive. And what you sow is not the body which is to be. But God gives it a body as he has chosen”. For the resurrection body is determined entirely by the gift of God as he has chosen.146 ¶1

Don’t try to even visualize it; you couldn’t visualize it. Don’t speculate. It’s an immortal body, an eternal body given to the individual as that individual is resurrected. Now let me share with you my experience of the resurrection. It’s a true experience. Everyone will have this experience. Resurrection is a privileged new birth in a new creation. You did not earn your physical birth; you were born by the action of powers beyond your own. You’ll be born spiritually by the action of powers beyond your own. So let no one tell you that you earn it. You don’t earn it; it’s a gift. It’s all grace and still grace. Because it is a gift, everyone will be born from above. So though it’s not described in scripture, I can describe it for you, for I’ve experienced it.146 ¶2

We are not born from the body; we are awakened in it. We aren’t awakened from it; we are awakened in it. It’s something entirely different.146 ¶3

Now we are told that they came to the tomb, but bear in mind that only one person saw him placed in the tomb. Joseph placed him in a new tomb, but no one saw him in the new tomb. So they came early in the morning, and they said they looked in. These are the words, “They’ve taken away the Lord from the tomb and we do not know where they’ve laid him”. They looked in, and they saw what appeared to them to be angels seated where the body of Jesus had laid, one at the head and one at the feet. Now no one saw how that body had been placed, for it was placed by Joseph , not by the women who came early in the morning and not by the disciples. And yet they claim that they saw what they thought to be angels in radiant light, seated where the body of Jesus had laid, and they said to them, “He is risen.” “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it”. That’s how the story is told, it seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it.146 ¶4

But now let me share with you what I have experienced.146 ¶5

That record of the 20 th of John and the 24 th of Luke is not correct, but they do not describe the event. No attempt is made to describe the actual resurrection.146 ¶6

I tell you, the resurrection is simply a new birth into an entirely different world. Don’t try to visualize the world. Here, I tell you, you rise into a world completely subject to your imaginative power. There will be no such thing as systems as we have systems. Everyone will be God, but everyone. You will not have to contend with politicians or men in the churches who call themselves your superior, or anyone in this world who thinks himself greater. You are God , and everything in the world is subject to your imaginative power. You enter that world where God is the substance of that world by taking us one by one into that world. And we do not have a thing to do with this body. In other words, it is as he has chosen. As we’re told, “And what you have sown is not the body which is to be, for God has given it a body as he has chosen.” You read it, the 15 th of 1 st Corinthians, read the 36 th through the 38 th verses. The entire thing is given to us, and he simply lifts us from this world into that. So I tell you from experience, resurrection is a new birth into that age as against this age. It’s a privileged birth given to us by God.146 ¶7

Now when it happens, this is exactly how it’s going to happen. You will awaken not from the body, as people teach; you will awaken in it. And when you awaken in it, you will be the most startled being in the world because until then you had no idea that you were asleep. You had no idea that through the ages you’d been sound asleep, dreaming this fantastic world. All this is man’s dream, a nightmare. He dreams wars, revolutions, and convulsions, and sickness and poverty. Everything in the world he dreams here because he’s sound asleep.146 ¶8

Resurrection is God’s mighty act to awaken him in you, the body, from this dream. He awakens and the whole of him is in his skull, but the whole of him. The whole being finds himself completely sealed, entombed, in a skull. And then he comes out. He knows, seemingly, that he is unaided because he makes the effort to get out. He pulls himself out of his skull, so he can’t say that anyone pushed him out or even aided him. He is self-begotten.146 ¶9

He absorbed Christ in that state of dream, exercising unwisely that power. For Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God but the power of God. And he made this fantastic dream, these horrible things come true by the exercise of that power that is Christ. And then suddenly, in God’s own time, he saw him absorb Christ; he became one with that power, one with that wisdom. God of old, sound asleep. And then the drama begins to unfold, and the tomb is empty; he comes out of it. As he comes out of it, there are men to meet him. Call them by any other name but they’re men to meet him. The men cannot see him because the men present are men [...]. They cannot see that heavenly being that is born. He belongs to an entirely different realm; he belongs to the kingdom of God, and mortal eye cannot see him.146 ¶10

He doesn’t even see himself because the body given to him is yet to be given, as God has chosen. What he sowed in this world is not the body which is to be. For God has given him a body as he, God, has chosen. And so that glorified body that is his to be worn in heaven, he doesn’t see it at that moment, and no one sees him. He’s simply aware, more aware than he’s ever been before, completely awake. And then the drama unfolds. And they don’t believe it either. Let me quote the words, “And the words they heard seemed to them like an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”146 ¶11

So here is the story; one makes the fantastic, incredulous announcement that an event has taken place that is impossible to mortal mind. And so they didn’t believe it. They asked in the most incredulous way, “How is this thing possible? It can’t be!” He doesn’t argue the point; he presents the evidence that this thing did take place. This is a birth unknown to any mortal man. This isn’t the kind of a birth that takes place in this world, in this age. An entirely different birth, something that is self-begotten, out of his own fantastic skull he comes. And once you see beyond the symbol, it’s a symbol signifying that birth. They did not believe it. I can hear the word now, Impossible ! As far as they are concerned, they can’t believe it. But he doesn’t argue. The one who found the insignia, who found the little symbol called “a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes,” puts it on the bed. And they look at it in amazement, but they still will not believe it. No little child is born; that’s only the signal, the symbol of an event that no mortal eye can witness.146 ¶12

They accept it on faith, or they don’t accept it. And they didn’t accept it. And so here, it’s presented, and no one believes it. Even the one who finds it and finds it difficult—not only announced it but also finds it difficult, being human, to accept the evidence about the symbol as coming or signifying a completely new birth, a privileged birth into an entirely different world. But there it is. That is the insignia. That is the resurrection, resurrection in a new birth into the kingdom of God.146 ¶13

Listen to the words from the 20 th chapter of the Book of Luke, speaking of this world, “And whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” You do not know the scriptures, said he, for “in this age they marry and they are given in marriage; but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die again… they are now sons of God, and sons of the resurrection,” something entirely different.146 ¶14

But no man can see that. They can only see things based upon their experience here. And I can’t blame anyone for it, for, may I tell you, I hadn’t the slightest idea, certainly not any conscious idea, of this experience until it happened. Not the slightest concept that such things were possible until it happened, for I can stand today before the whole vast world; there are three billion of us and not bat an eye when I tell them I know the mystery of the resurrection. Although it’s not described in scripture, I know exactly what the individual must go through to be resurrected, and he does not do it of himself; it’s a gift from God. God, in his own wonderful time, resurrects us individually into an entirely different world, and he clothes us in this immortal body that cannot be seen with human eye and no one can describe it. It’s fantastic beyond the wildest dream; that’s the being that you are, clothed in this body that is forever. It’s immortal. And so that’s the first act in the great scene of the resurrection, the birth.146 ¶15

And then comes the series as it unfolds, and no one understands it. Conferred upon the risen Christ in the experience of man is the divine name, Adonay, which means “my Lord, my Father.” That’s conferred upon the Christ that is risen in man in that individual’s experience and conferred upon him is the divine name, Adonay, which is “my Lord,” which means “my Father.”146 ¶16

Well, how will you know it? Well, then comes the experience, which is just as exciting, just as unexpected, just as perplexing and bewildering as the first. You have no idea of this relationship; and suddenly it happens, and then he calls you, “my Father, my Lord.” You look at him and here is this wonderful relationship and there it is.146 ¶17

Then comes the third. The third is the ascension, where man actually ascends. He is not man, yet he is man. He hasn’t any loss of consciousness and no change of identity, but here is a golden, liquid being that he is. And just as described, an earthquake takes place. You don’t get out; this whole thing takes place in the body, not out of the body. For when you rise up, after having been split right down the middle, from top to bottom, and then you rise into Zion, which is your skull—that’s the great holy sepulcher—you make an Herculean effort to get out. You can’t get out. You are around the throne of God. That’s where he dwells. And you try to get out. You’ve never made such an effort in your life, but you don’t get out. There you are in the holy city, the New Jerusalem, clothed as he had prepared it for you in that area.146 ¶18

So I tell you, the story is true from beginning to end. This coming Sunday, they will think a peculiar survival of death. It isn’t that at all. It’s entirely different. Resurrection is not that Christ survived death according to some general capacity for survival inherent in the human soul. No, it’s the mighty act of God to save mankind and establish his kingdom. Hasn’t a thing to do with survival—everything survives.146 ¶19

I have said good-bye to my father and mother in this sphere, to a nephew in this sphere, and dozens and dozens of friends in this sphere. They’ve all survived. Nothing dies. But they are on the wheel of recurrence, and they’re playing their parts over and over and over on the wheel of recurrence. And then in a moment that they do not suspect and no one knows, God redeems them and lifts them one by one. Not collectively, for we are known individually and loved individually by God. You are unique and can’t be replaced; not one person in the world can take your place. You are completely unique and desired and loved and wanted by God to complete his purpose in this heavenly kingdom. So no one can replace you. Not one person in the world can take your place.146 ¶20

So in God’s own time, he lifts you up by the mightiest of all acts, the act of resurrection, which is the redeeming power that saves man from this wheel of recurrence.146 ¶21

So here, on this occasion, let me show you some of the power that will be yours. I tasted it. I tasted the power of the new age. It didn’t happen in the last few years; it happened back in 1946. Therefore, the one who wrote the story, whether it be in Luke or in John, they rearranged the sequence of events. For before this happened to me in the ascent, I had this fantastic experience back in 1946. And it is said they said in the tomb, “He is risen.” They said in 1946, called me by name, called me Neville. “Neville is risen.” And then came this heavenly chorus singing, “Neville is risen!” and they kept on filling the whole heaven with this wonderful heavenly chorus.146 ¶22

Then I moved upon a sea of human imperfection—blind, lame, halt, withered, shrunken, everything that was imperfect. And here is the power that you exercise: as I came upon this enormous sea of humanity, without eyes, without arms, and without feet, sections of the face missing and sections of the body missing, I simply became a luminous being, made of light and air as it were, and I simply glided. I didn’t walk in some labored manner; I glided by. They seemed to be waiting for me. Without effort, I molded eyes—I didn’t do it consciously—but eyes that were molded into these empty sockets and ears that were missing came back. No scars, no surgeon in the world—put all the surgeons in this world together, they could not have molded one eye as I did with thousands in that sea. They could not have put one hand back as perfectly as I put it back. Arms that were missing came right back, legs that were missing came back, everything without a scar. There wasn’t a scar, but it was perfect.146 ¶23

When the whole thing was done and completed; this chorus exulted, “It is finished!” And then, I, of whom they sang and to whom they addressed every remark, crystallized, actually crystallized once more into this garment. I could feel myself becoming smaller and smaller and smaller into this little, tiny garment, on a ship at sea as I plowed through the Caribbean Sea, moving from Port of Spain, Trinidad to Mobile, Alabama.146 ¶24

And so here, I can tell you the story is true. When they said, “He is risen,” in my own case, they called me by name. I’m quite sure the translators would have found the word there, but now they use the pronoun he . So in telling the story, not to offend those who might think me arrogant, I too used the pronoun he , when I wrote in my little book The Search when I told my experience. But they didn’t say he ; they said, “Neville is risen.”146 ¶25

Here this experience, and then through the years, it dawned upon me, for the 9 th chapter of the Book of John: “Master, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” He said, “Neither this man nor his parents, but that the works of God be made manifest.” Then I realized over the years that this sea of human imperfection these are the things that I have played. Always Neville but blind Neville once, lame Neville, drunken Neville—everything in this world that would be distasteful I dreamt. They were all my broken body, and I rebuilt my broken body.146 ¶26

And so no more eyeless in Gaza; the eyes came back. No more the lameness and the armless, and all these, they all came back. So, “Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain.” So I fell, and that was my broken dream. The whole thing that was there was my fall into the state of sleep, and I dreamt all the unlovely things in the world and played them too. So in the end, you are lifted up, and being lifted up everything returns to its divine perfection and nothing is imperfect. And every being in the world is going to have that experience. You and I will meet in the new world, called that world in scripture. We will be in control, completely in control, of a power that would dwarf any power known to mortal mind.146 ¶27

So we are creative, creative in the true sense of the word, without the aid of any being we create. But we will create in concert. You and I will agree to create in concert, and all of us will agree to create. No one will be greater than the other. All will be glorified in the eye of God. So fulfilling scripture, in the Book of Hosea, the 6 th chapter, the 2 nd verse, “And on the third day he raises us up, that we may stand before him,” on the third day.146 ¶28

I say that everything in the New Testament I could find it in the Old, but the Old is prophecy, the New is fulfillment. So it was there in the sixth chapter, second verse that he tells us on the third day he raises us up that we may stand before him to receive his glory and that we may know him and go on to know the Lord in his fullness.146 ¶29

So I tell you, the resurrection is an actual fact, although not described in the scripture. There isn’t one passage in the scripture that describes it. I know it, for I have experienced it, and I tell you exactly how it happened.146 ¶30

The resurrection is not from some little tomb; this is the tomb. And you don’t resurrect from the body; you awaken in the body, right in it. You awaken in the tomb; the tomb is your own skull. The word skull is Golgotha, it’s Calvary, the Holy Sepulcher, and you awaken in it and never had an idea that you fell asleep in this. It never occurred to man that he actually fell asleep, in a profound sleep, a sleep so deep it was likened unto death.146 ¶31

And one day, God’s mightiest act, the power of resurrection held him and awoke. And may I tell you, when that power is applied to you, that night that you are sound asleep and it’s applied, you think you are going to die. And then you are going to be awakened. But at that moment when it’s applied to you, it’s so intense you feel you can’t stand it; it means this is the end. You explode. But you don’t explode; you’re awakened. And suddenly you awake. You have no doubts where you are. You are all together but in your skull. The skull is a tomb, and you know it’s a tomb. You’re sealed, completely sealed in your own skull. After one moment of panic, you push and something gives at the base of your skull and out you come, just like a birth. And it is a birth from above. “For except you be born from above you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of heaven”. So man has to be awakened by God and come out himself, out of his own skull, born from above.146 ¶32

Then we are told, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up”. That act takes place in the same manner. All these statements, they don’t describe the act because who by reading it could see that as a description? I read it; I know my Bible, but I read that time and again. I never once related that to an actual mystical experience in me.146 ¶33

But I would read the Bible, and the Bible uses the word [...] and translates it not as “from above.” They translate the Greek word anothin as “again,” implying that millions believe in reincarnation. It isn’t any reincarnation. No, you are born from above. The word means “from above.” But the translators can’t believe it, so they put the word “again.”146 ¶34

So you must be born again. It is again but not as the world would see it. You are actually born out of your own skull from above, and you come out self-begotten. And here, the very symbol that you’re told you’ll find, you wouldn’t find it; they find it for you.146 ¶35

For the angel doesn’t speak to you; the angel speaks to the men watching the flocks at night, and they come looking for the event. “For unto you this day is born in the city of Bethlehem, the city of David, a Savior”. Well, who is the Savior? Jesus is the word Savior, the word Jesus means “savior.” “For unto you is born this day in the city of David Jesus the Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” “Christ in you is the hope of glory”. And Christ in you is that Savior; that’s Jesus Christ in you. He’s born.146 ¶36

So the story is true from beginning to end, and you cannot alter one little dot; it’s all true. This coming Sunday, when they sing out the Hallelujah chorus that he is risen, you who hear me tonight you know how true it is. They don’t know that city means “survival of the grave.” It hasn’t a thing to do with that.146 ¶37

No survival? My father survived; I see him. My mother survived; I see her. My secretary, Jack, talked to him; he’s as solidly real as he was here, I see him. But they survived; that’s not resurrection.146 ¶38

Resurrection is an act, a creative act, a new creation into an entirely different world—God’s purpose fulfilled. The resurrection really in the true sense of the word is the fulfillment of the eternal purpose of God. All this is preparatory to the act of resurrection.146 ¶39

So no matter how big you are in this world, how wise you are, may I tell you, the sum total of all the wisdom of man while he dreams this world will be as nothing compared to the power that is his when he awakes. All this is the dream of man. But while we are in the world of the dream, learn how to dream wisely.146 ¶40

And so I will take it up for you, and so next Tuesday, I’ll show you how to dream wisely while we’re still in the world of Caesar, waiting for that mighty act of redemption. How to really dream it into being in this world!146 ¶41

Everyone can do it. I think I know how to do it, and so I will show you and teach you from now on until we close in the end of May how we dream it, even though we are sound asleep. Dreaming, we’ve got to be asleep, and this is the world of dream. We must dream lovely things for each other and realize them in this world, hoping for God’s mighty act to take place in us. But until it takes place, why not learn how to dream constructively and dream wisely and dream lovingly. It’s just as easy as to dream the other things, for we’re dreaming anyway. While we are asleep, we can’t stop the activity of the dreaming mind, the dreamer.146 ¶42

But here, our resurrection unlike what will be said this coming Sunday morning… and undoubtedly the service will be beautiful. Last Easter, I turned on the TV and had the most delightful service at home, watching and hearing Nat King Cole at St. James. He sang beautifully with all the depth of feeling in him. He hasn’t much of a range, as you know, a very small range, but what he did with that range! I thought the whole thing was so all together wonderful.146 ¶43

I learned only a few weeks later, or a few months later, that the minister, Dr. Terwilliger, was relieved from his post. But now I do not associate it; but in the world of dreams, there are such prejudices, such stupidities. So I do not say that because of that, he was relieved because Nat King Cole was a member of the congregation; he’s a member of the church. Why should he not be spotlighted, known as he is with the opportunity to reach unnumbered millions across the country, really, if it went beyond our sphere here? But if it only went to this sphere at least three or four million could reach him and the church could be publicized beautifully.146 ¶44

For the service was wonderful. The doctor himself, Dr. Terwilliger, gave the most wonderful sermon, and then he was so dignified, so altogether wonderful. Then to my surprise, he was sent elsewhere. So I tell you, the congregation who would ease him out because of certain little prejudices, they haven’t the slightest concept of this mystery of resurrection, not the slightest.146 ¶45

First of all, they think they’re going to be resurrected with the body that they wear. And that’s not it. Let me quote it for you again, the 38 th verse, the 15 th chapter of 1 st Corinthians, “And what you sow will not be the body which is to be… for God gives us a body as he has chosen.” For the one wearing the garment today will not be like that. Yes, I will know you, but for all the identity of person there’s going to be a radical discontinuity of form. So you can’t envision that form, which is the new body, attuned to an entirely different world, where everything is subject to your imaginative power, where you are God. I mean that seriously, you are God!146 ¶46

But at the present state of the dream, you can dream fantastic things, all the things that we do, like we’ve all done it. But the day will come… and may it happen to you tonight. But I have no prophetic view; I do not know. It happens unexpectedly. It happens so suddenly. It happens, and you are bewildered. So I cannot tell you by looking at you with my mortal eye how close you are to God’s mercy when he steps in and redeems you in the body of Jesus. I cannot; I do not know just how soon it [...]. May it be, for your own wonderful sake, tonight.146 ¶47

But you can’t hasten it; it’s an act of God. God’s most wonderful dramatic act, his mightiest act, is the resurrection. The resurrection and the birth of Christ in man are identical; they’re one and the same thing. The beginning and the end are tied together under one act. When one awakes within himself, it’s Christ awake; it’s Jesus Christ awake. And that awakening within himself is one with his resurrection because you resurrect from the dead. You had no idea you were dead until that very moment when you find yourself entombed. Who goes into a tomb and has it sealed upon him if he isn’t dead? And so, when you awake to find yourself entombed , you must have been dead or you wouldn’t be there.146 ¶48

Then you realize the words until the end when Christ awakens in us . We go through a cycle, cycle after cycle, having been placed into such a profound sleep, and then comes God’s fulfillment of this promise, and he awakens from a sleep so deep that the world thought he was dead. Then he awakens, and when he awakens, he’s the very being that is God. Then he tells his story to those who will hear it.146 ¶49

Listen to the words carefully, “And these words seemed to them to be a idle tale and they did not believe it.” And then we are told in the same passage, which is the 20 th of John and the 24 th of Luke: “Behold, they did not know”—and the word translated “know” means “understand”: “they did not understand the scripture—that Christ must rise from the dead.” He told them, but they could not understand it. What does he mean by “rising from the dead”? And where did they lay the body? There is no body? Yet they see people sitting where the body had lain. How did they know the body had lain there when they never even saw the body? See the mystery?146 ¶50

It happens in you . You know where the body was, for you see it when you awaken within yourself. It’s exactly the thing out of which you came, ghastly pale, and you look at it. And then comes the mighty wind that is the Holy Spirit. You hear it and you are disturbed and you look away just for a moment because you are disturbed. Looking back a moment later, the body is gone. But in its place, men are seated where the head was and where the feet were, but the body is gone. They are actually seated just as told in scripture, “Where the body of Jesus had lain”. Out of that he came, he’s born; but first he awoke in it, and then it disappeared.146 ¶51

And they carry on this incredible conversation and unbelievable; they would not believe the tale. So one said, “It is” calling you by name. Whatever your name is, they’ll call it and call you as the one of whom the angels spoke this night that a Savior is born. And then the symbol of that birth is on the floor, and they will say, “How is this thing possible?” And calling you by name, they will think it’s the most stupid statement in the world. And whoever makes the announcement will present the evidence. They will see the evidence, but still they can’t believe it.146 ¶52

So who will believe that you—a frail mortal subject to all the vanities of the world, subject to all the weaknesses of the world—could be so singled out for such a blessing when they know your background and they know your parents, your weaknesses, moral weaknesses, all kinds of weaknesses? And that you could be lifted up into an entirely different world and given such glory? No, they don’t believe it. And so it seemed to them like an idle tale, and they did not believe it. That’s what the world does.146 ¶53

So it happens to every one of us. But may I share with you my experience. And I am just as you are, with the same frailties today that I had before the event, same frailties—subject to all the weaknesses of the flesh. Over-eat, I did it; over-drink, I did it; and I still do both. So in spite of all of my weaknesses, it happened to me. So you don’t become a goody-goody person after the event, and so you’re the same person.146 ¶54

It is said of him. Why do you listen to him? He’s mad. First of all, he’s a glutton and a winebibber. He’s a drunkard, and he loves harlots and tax collectors and all the people that are not socially prominent. He seems to make them friends of his. “Why do you listen to him?” And so he went about his way until the very end. No one believes that this has happened.146 ¶55

That’s the story. He goes to his exit from this world, knowing exactly what has happened to him, leaving others to write it up after he has gone and tell it as best as they can. For he knows the New Age has been inaugurated; and then from that moment on, all are being called, one after the other, into the New Age, an entirely different age, from the state of sleep into the age of fully waking beings, all God. He knew that he simply opened up the door. And no one believed him, not to the very end.146 ¶56

Because they were looking for some peculiar return in this garment and you can’t return in this garment because you’re not there. Yes, I’ll recognize you, you’ll recognize me, but we will not be clothed in these garments at all, for which I am most happy, because after fifty-eight years of wearing this, it’s burned out. I’m very happy that God in his infinite wisdom at least gave us such things as dentists and barbers and tailors, for which I am most happy, because they can cover up so many mistakes. But the garment that you and I will wear tomorrow will need no patching up. It will need no tailor to put a suit on it. It will need no barber to cut its hair. It will be an immortal body, glorified beyond the wildest dream of any man in this world. And so that will be our body.146 ¶57

So this night, I’ve tried to share with you that which I know, not from a book, that which I know from experience. And so I show you the resurrection is a fact. It is true . And the resurrection means the resurrection of Christ Jesus; therefore, Christ Jesus in man is the hope of glory. Christ Jesus in every man is waiting to be resurrected, everyone. And a body is waiting for you that is God’s own choice for you. Don’t try to visualize it, but you go back and read it. Everyone has it already prepared for him, waiting for God to waken him and then clothe him in his immortal body.146 ¶58

Now let us go into the Silence.146 ¶59

Tonight’s subject is “Barabbas or Jesus.” This is the greatest trial that ever took place in eternity. You have read of trials in countries where billions are involved. It means nothing compared to this trial. This is the greatest of all trials. When we read the scriptures we find things like the raising of Lazarus, which is the most fantastic thing you can imagine. A man who was dead for four days and his sister said: “By this time there is an odor” and he raises Lazarus, and yet only one Evangelist records it - only John tells the story. Matthew, Mark, and Luke do not mention the story of Lazarus. How could you tell the story of a man in this world who could raise someone who had decayed and bring him back to life, as we understand life, and not tell it as part of his biography? I could take you through the many stories and show you that one story is told by two, and sometimes three, and only by one, but here, in this story of the trial, all mention it. It has tremendous significance. The story of the greatest trial that ever took place in eternity. May I tell you: it is taking place here tonight and you are the witnesses. You are the ones who will either cry out for the release of one or the other. It is entirely up to you, for this is the story; it must take place in this manner.143 ¶1

The supreme effort of God to reveal himself in the present tense was the coming of Jesus. Jesus came to reveal God as the eternal contemporary. That is the trial. One believes it or they disbelieve it. But here is this supreme effort to reveal himself in the present tense - for the present tense is “I AM,” - that is my name forever. I have no other name.143 ¶2

Let us turn to John 18:38-40. Here a man is on trial. He knows who he is, for he has had all the experiences to reveal the being he is - sent into the world to tell the world who he is and to tell them who they are, for they are one. He is brought to trial and Pilate - the arm of Caesar - is trying him. And Pilate said to him: “What is truth?” But he does not reply - he does not answer. Pilate said to the crowd: ‘I find no crime in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the Passover; will you have me release for you the King of the Jews’? They cried out again, ‘Not this man, but Barabbas!’ Now Barabbas was a robber. “Barabbas was a robber.” That is all it states. “Not this man, release Barabbas.”143 ¶3

Well, here is the trial. Who is Barabbas? He is only mentioned in one little statement, but in the four gospels. It is very significant. To find out who Barabbas was, let us find out who the thief and the robber is in scripture. We go back to John 10:1: “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber.’” They did not understand it. He said to them: “I am the door of the sheep.” There is no other way in to this sheepfold.143 ¶4

Now you present the case to the world. Will you believe it? Will you believe as you are seated here tonight, regardless of your present limitations, that the only door in to your success, in to your future as you would conceive it or desire it to be, there is only one door, and that door is “I AM”? There is no other door into that sheepfold? And if you go through that only door the sheep will hear your voice, they will recognize your voice as the shepherd and will respond and come out? I would like to be healthy if I am unwell at the moment. I would like to be gainfully employed if I am unemployed. I would like to be - - - and you name it -to be happily married. I name all the things that I think would constitute a lovely life in your world. Do I really believe there is only one door into that sheepfold where I could bring all these unseen things out into my world? And these things could only respond to the voice of the shepherd - and the shepherd is “I AM”?143 ¶5

And so he asked the crowd and they shouted out: “Release Barabbas.” They would not have Jesus released - they would have none of it. So they chose the robber and the robber rules over them to this very day. That is the world. I chose the robber. My senses rob me of all that I could be. I see my bank balance - and I know the world as my senses allow it. I know what reason dictates in my world and yet I want to be other than what they dictate. Yet I can’t bring myself to believe the only way into that sheepfold is by the only door in the world, and the only door is “I AM.”143 ¶6

So, here Jesus comes to reveal God in the present tense, and man refuses it. They speak of God in the past - “He was” or “He will be,” but few people in the world can believe in the reality of “I AM,” and that is the great trial, and you are on trial tonight because you are asked the question: “Will you believe that your own wonderful I AM-ness is the one and only God?” Or: “Do you believe, because of your present social, intellectual, or financial position that you are less than someone else?” and you allow your reason to dictate this as something that is final? Can you believe tonight in this trial and really believe that I am - - - and you name it - - - and dare to believe it?143 ¶7

I could tell you unnumbered stories where it has worked - if people would believe me. In this audience tonight there sits a man - only a few weeks ago he was let out of a job. I told him it would make no difference to me if he was let out and they told him it was forever, that it was permanent - that I would hear good news for him, good news. So I heard exactly what he would tell me were it true, and tonight, just before I took the platform, he told me he has been transferred to a new job where his income is in excess of what it was before. All things being relative, when you make $13,000 on a job, that is not hay. Yet, it could be $100.000, and I am telling you right now I don’t care what he has ever done in the world today exceeding $13,000; it could easily be, if that is what he wants. There is only one door into the sheepfold and that door is “I AM.”143 ¶8

The supreme effort that God ever made to reveal Himself to us in the present tense came through Jesus. So Jesus comes affirming God as the eternal contemporary, forever and forever. If tomorrow you have a child or a grandchild, they are going to say, “I AM.” It is contemporary - forever contemporary, and eternally contemporary. It wasn’t that he was - it is always “I AM.” And so for one to declare, “I am” - and simply name it and sleep as though it were true - there is no power in the world that could stop it.143 ¶9

Now this is one level to this fantastic trial. There are numberless levels to this trial. First of all, the word “Barabbas” means “son of a father.” Jesus means “savior.” For every child born of a woman is the child of a father. “Bat” usually means “daughter” and “bar” means “son.” They are interchangeable depending on the context. So Barabbas is now known as “son of a father.” And they chose the son and denied - it does not say the father, but I will show you how they denied the father, for Jesus said in the same Gospel of John: “When you see me you see the father. How could you say, show us the father? He who has seen me has seen the father.” So he declares “I am the father.” “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.’… Philip said to him, ‘Lord show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father.’”143 ¶10

Now they deny the father to fulfill a prophecy. “They will put you out of the synagogues; indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father, nor me.” For there is a prophecy that when a son destroys the enemy of Israel, the Lord will set his father free. They didn’t choose the father to set him free - they set the son free. The one that is robbing them morning, noon, and night, they set free. “And the men of Israel said, ‘Have you seen this man who has come up? Surely he has come up to defy Israel and the man who kills him, the king will enrich with great riches, and will give him his daughter, and make his father’s house free in Israel.’” The father of one who destroys the enemy. His name is “I AM,” called “Jesse.” The word Jesse, the word Jehovah, the word Jesus - are identical in meaning. They mean simply “I AM.” I will set that being free - and his name is “I AM.”143 ¶11

Now, if tonight you could do what dozens or hundreds of you have done and believe this is not a little trick - it always works - and really believe in it, you would believe in God. When a lady sits in this audience and is in her seventies and has no money and dares to sleep in a home in need of repairs; and she looks at the unrepaired, unpainted house and she could smell paint and could see the whole thing as it would be seen were it true that things were exactly as she wants it to be, and she sleeps in that assumption - what is she actually saying? If I said to her: “Who is smelling anything?” she would say, “I am smelling paint.” “What are you seeing?” “I am seeing a repaired house.” “What else?” “I am seeing that the whole thing has been paid for.” She falls asleep in assumption of seeing from her own wonderful center - I am seeing it - I am smelling the paint - all these things she is doing and in one month it was all repaired and painted and paid for, with a surplus of $7,000 - a gift from one she had never seen in this world - only communicated with her two or three times in the course of a year.143 ¶12

Here, she saw it. Her story I told in my latest book. She may have even forgotten the name of God. Who did it? She may point across the water to a lady in England, 8,000 miles away, who died and left a certain will where she received $7,500 in U.S. currency, which allowed her to do all these things with something left over. She might think the cause of it all was one who died - and I tell you the cause of it was: she called on the only name of God in this world. She went into a sheepfold through the only door in the world, and that door is “I am.” She fell asleep in her bed, but before she fell asleep she saw and could smell paint and she saw the repaired areas all painted over and felt herself giving a check in full payment for all the work done. Because it was fun she did it for nine or ten days and then came this wonderful draft from England and a letter from Lloyds Bank telling her of the story.143 ¶13

She entered the sheepfold and they all heard her voice and they all came out. The sheep happened to be the money. Everything in the world responded to her voice. She was calling them out - she was calling out paint, calling out the repair job, calling out every thing. They only responded to the voice of the shepherd. Who is the shepherd? “I AM” the shepherd. There is no other shepherd.143 ¶14

If you think he will shepherd you, and put your trust in our President (or our mayor, or our governor, or your father or mother or some uncle who is about to die, and you are now giving the most marvelous meal in the world because you think he is going to leave you in his will, so he is your shepherd, and all these you think are the shepherd) you are simply looking in vain. There is no other shepherd and no other door into eternity save the one door, and that one door is “I AM.”143 ¶15

Here is the greatest trial that ever took place in eternity and you are called upon to scream out the one you want released; and the world invariably screams out (but not all, there is always that minority who will scream out, “Release Jesus”) but the majority will scream out, “Release Barabbas!” Release the robber! And so they chose the robber, and throughout the centuries the robber has ruled over them right down to this day.143 ¶16

You and I will go to bed tonight and our senses will dictate what we ought to believe to be true in this world. Read this morning’s paper and ninety-nine per cent, including the ads, were all paid for. And if it is something you like, you will buy it. It is perfectly all right. It has been paid for and you know it. But you don’t know all the news items were paid for also. That has been concealed. They are all paid for. All the press agents all over the world - there is not one who is in the public eye that does not maintain some press relationship, daily columns - not press agents. They have been glamorized into some name other than “press agents.” But still they take your money month after month and put these little items in the story and you read it morning noon and night and you believe that to be true.143 ¶17

I tell you: forget the entire vast world and ask yourself a simple, simple question: What would I like to be? Look at the world. Forget Cuba, forget Russia, forget China, forget all this stuff that is going on in the world. What would I like to be? A decent, wonderful being that contributes to the good of the world? To be happily married? Yes - to be in this world and contribute to the good of the world - but really contribute, so that when I am gone and my children’s children are gone, they will say: “He gave a thought to the world that has fed the world.” The unborn tomorrow could be fed by what I have left behind me. Would I like to do that?143 ¶18

At the same time not neglecting my obligations tonight, for I am married - there is a husband, a wife, a child, a father, a mother - all these things in the world, and I must, if I love them as I think I do, take care of them. And so I want enough to leave them cushioned. Regardless of all things they did not need my cushioning, but maybe they didn’t hear me, and I am selfish enough that if they did not hear me there is only one door in the world into the great kingdom - if I could still leave them a cushion so that they will be cushioned against tomorrow’s blows.143 ¶19

Then regardless of what the world tells me, I will assume tonight that I am what I desire to be and dare to fall asleep in the assumption as though it were true. I will actually believe in it. So I will cast my vote: “Release Jesus and hold on to Barabbas.” Or else I will say: “Release Barabbas, and hold onto Jesus.” And, so it is entirely up to us. I either believe it, or don’t believe it. The one called Jesus - his name is “I AM.”143 ¶20

Now let me quote from Galatians 4:13, 14: “. . . and you know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.” It is Paul speaking. He says, when I came to you I was a trial to you, yet you accepted me. And then one little phrase divides the thought. We will omit the phrase: “You did not scorn or despise me, but receive me as Christ Jesus.” He is telling you who he is. You accepted him, now you are going to turn back like those in the desert who disbelieve.143 ¶21

And then he said: “You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain.” Here we are in what is called “a season” - the Lenten Season - and then we have another season and another month. A few years ago we had the Marian Year, and all this goes all the way back. “You observe days, and months, and seasons and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain.” That man could turn outside of himself (and the whole thing has been revealed to him, who he really is) and believe in the sacredness of a certain day or a certain month, or season, or year! He is trying to tell the whole vast world who he is, and they received him as Jesus Christ.143 ¶22

There is only Christ; there is only Jesus. Jesus Christ is God, and so are you and so am I. If I believe it, I am it; even if I don’t believe it, I am it. If I don’t believe it then I go through all the fires of hell in this world. If I believe it, there is no being in this world that can stop me from sleeping this night in the assumption that I am the man that I would like to be, just as though it were true. I will bring it to pass in my world because I call all my sheep out and my sheep are the individual realities. No one sees them. They come right out and follow the voice of the shepherd whose voice they hear. They will not obey the voice of the stranger, only the voice of the shepherd. And the shepherd is “I AM.”143 ¶23

So here is the greatest trial in the world and you are the one to judge. You sit as though you sat in a jury and you bring in your verdict. And he rises and asks those who hear the testimony - “It is customary” - and may I tell you there is no evidence as far back as man can go to support this claim. No scholar or historian can find any such custom where there was an amnesty at Passover. It is only attested to in scripture. So you can see it is a play; it is a fantastic play, and here is the play and at every moment of time the play is taking place. “It is your custom that I release to you one man. Would you have me release the King of the Jews?” - for he is the King of the Jews - and who is he? Jesus. Who is Jesus? “I AM.” And so are you and so is every being in the world. That is Jesus and his name is “I AM.”143 ¶24

For the name is one with Jehovah. “I and my father are one,” as told us in John 10:30: “I and the Father are one.” I am one with him. What is his name? “I AM.” There is no other way in, no other door - just one. And so who will you have me release, the King of the Jews, whose name is “I AM,” or release Barabbas, who is a robber? A man based purely on the sense of the body. “Release Barabbas!” So, they released the robber and he, to this day, rules them.143 ¶25

For man cannot believe, or is unwilling to believe, that something is real that his senses cannot confirm. He must have it confirmed by the senses. If reason allows it or my senses allow it, then I will accept it, but to sleep this night, when unemployed (and I know six million are unemployed and I am not as qualified, as I think they are looking for certain qualifications) and I dare to believe that I am gainfully employed, with more than I ever made before - and go to sleep as though it were true, in the conviction it is true - and then I am employed and it is beyond what I make?143 ¶26

When he told me tonight, I can’t tell you my thrill. He will not be here because this takes him away a hundred-odd miles. I say to him: Good! Go and tell it. Tell it to those in your sphere. Tell it to everyone that you meet. If we never meet physically again, it does not really matter. I like him personally, he likes me personally, but the physical contact is not important. We are forever one in eternity, and so he can’t get away from me and I can’t get away from him. He heard the story and he knows it works. Now go and tell it.143 ¶27

So, here we are at every moment in time, called upon to pass judgment upon the eternal drama - the greatest trial that ever took place. God is on trial and he is presented to the world because the sense man is what he wears and so he presents it. Would you believe in me that you cannot see? For you can’t see “I AM.” You can see I am a man - that is the sense man. But man cannot believe in the reality of “I AM.” Something entirely different.143 ¶28

So, here, this great trial will be presented this coming Sunday (called Palm Sunday) and they will all tell the story of how they placed the palms before him. If you have the Apocryphal Gospel, may I recommend that you read the Gospel of Nicodemus. It is called “Ulsa - one of the acts of Pilate.” In fact the title is “Gospel of Nicodemus, or Acts of Pilate.” What a fantastic story! It is all about this trial. I think many of you have James’ combination of all the apocryphal books. Why they delete them I will never know, because they add so much to the thought. But here in this story of the great trial, when they placed the little piece of cloth before him as he came in to be tried, and all the standards and all the images bowed before him. They could not believe that this thing could happen. And they did it over and over and over again, every time he is brought in. Every inanimate object bowed before him as he came in the building on trial.143 ¶29

How true that is may I tell you? You will have the thrill of your life one day when suddenly the whole vast world is going to stand still before you and it will be dead - but really dead, and you will look at it and then you will release it and it will move on and you stop it to prove that you truly are life, and life itself. When you read these words: “I am the way, the Truth and the Life,” you will know how true that statement is.143 ¶30

When he said: “I am the Truth,” can’t you see what a marvelous thing he is telling us? A true judgment need not conform to the external fact to which it relates. Today I will say what is true concerning my world. Well, I pay so much rent and have an average income of so much, and I have obligations to life, and these seem to be the facts. That is true. I tell you: that is not true. For a true judgment need not conform to the external facts to which it relates. Truth depends upon the intensity of imagining and not upon facts.143 ¶31

So, I will imagine that I am [...] and I name it, that which I want to be, and believing that I am that which I am assuming I am and remaining loyal to the assumption, I become it. I have done it, or I would not be here tonight. I have actually done it, time and time again. But man will always slip back into Barabbas, the man of sense. He must ever remember the trial and always move out, in spite of all the facts that would deny it. Live in the dream just as though it were true, and no power in the world will stop you from becoming the fulfillment of your dream. But no power! You don’t need any other being, because God’s name is not “he is,” or “she is,” or “they are.” His name is “I AM.”143 ¶32

Before you say anything in this world you have to say: “I am.” You don’t pronounce it. But if I ask: “who are you?” You say: “John,” but before you say John, you actually, in the depths of yourself, said: “I am John.” Before you said anything you actually were aware of being, and that awareness of being was actually in the depths. I am. That is God. There is no other God.143 ¶33

So God stands on trial and he will be tried in all the churches of Christendom this coming week, and they will all weep and carry on how God was tried. “And the crowds shouted out: ‘Release the thief and the robber’” - one who was an insurrectionist, and they do not know who he is. They will make a mental picture of a horrible beast who was an awful, awful man. That is not the man at all. They are the man. For they are calling to release themselves of sense, and make that the real being in the world, and hold on and deny Jesus.143 ¶34

Listen to the words from Acts 16:31: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” The only Jesus that you could ever believe in that could save you, would be “I AM.” That is His name. And He has only one name in this world. Jesus simply means, “I AM.” It is spelled yod he vau shin ayin. The root of the name Jehovah is Yod He Vau - the shin ayin put into the name of Jesus, which is Jesua is for a definite purpose. Shin is made in three little prongs like this: ש"" and it is called a consuming fire, a tooth that devours, that consumes. And ayin is an eye. Were it not for that in the name of Jesus I would have to accept as final everything that I see. But in the name of Jesus - which is called “Savior” - what I don’t want I could consume. So, it is yod he vau shin ayin. So the Yod He Vau is the root - that is Jehovah, that is God, that is what I am. But a shin is put into my name and so is an ayin.143 ¶35

With a shin, I can just see the world. I don’t like the way you look. Don’t you feel well? No. Well, then I will consume it. I will see you as you ought to be seen by me and the world, and seen by yourself. Therefore, I actually see you differently. I am consuming what formerly you appeared to be. And how do I do it? The ayin - it is an eye. So what is his name when he comes into the world, and how does he operate? Listen to it carefully: When he comes into the world, “He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear.” So I see. I go to the hospital, you are dying. Go to see anyone else and you see him - it is fatal, regardless of the nature. They can’t get a job - there are too many unemployed - this, that, and the other. There it is, the fact. I will not now judge “by what my eye sees, neither will I decide by what my ears hear.” So what will I do then? I will see what I want to see - then a shin is present. It consumes the former state; it completely consumes the past as it seems to be real, and I will put in its place what I want to see and what I want to hear.143 ¶36

So they tried to quench the voice of Peter and John and they said what they would do to them if they continued to teach this story. And they said to the Sanhedrin, the great wise men of the day: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge: for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” So, whether you think I should do what you tell me I should do - all right, you judge it.143 ¶37

The wise men of the world - called the leaders in politics or religion - they will tell you without vision what you should see and what you should preach. They had no vision - none whatsoever, never in eternity - but they are going to tell you how you should tell the story. So: “Whether it is right in the eyes of God to listen to you, rather than to God, you must judge. We cannot preach other than what we have seen and heard.” So I cannot preach other than what I have seen and heard.143 ¶38

And may I tell you: I have seen this story, and when you see it from afar - it is one man, just one man. As you approach it, it becomes unnumbered races and nations of people. I saw it as clearly one night when Blake asked me to fall backwards and I did exactly what he told me to do to produce the vision. And here was one man, a glorious, radiant man. His heart was all like living rubies. I approached it and moved forward and I fell through space like a meteor. When I came to a standstill, here I saw one man and then with Blake’s suggestion I moved forward to this one man - a radiant being. As I came closer I noticed the heart was like a ruby and there were unnumbered, innumerable beings making up the heart, and the whole body was made up of nations and races - the whole body. When I came close enough I recognized myself. I was he, containing within myself the whole of humanity. So I know from experience that when you see God you will see yourself. At a distance it is one man. As you approach it, it becomes unnumbered men composed of races and nations - all one.143 ¶39

And so, this whole vast thing is the most wonderful play, and the final drama leading up to that very exit from this sphere is this trial. So I hope you will bring in your verdict tonight and your verdict will be: “Release Jesus.” But if your verdict is: “No, I must accept my senses more than I will accept the invisible reality,” then it is your choice. You are free to bring in your verdict. But your verdict will be brought by you. I can recommend the verdict, if you dare to believe in the reality of your own wonderful I Amness, believing that it is God and there is no other God.143 ¶40

Listen to the words: “For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior.” There is no other savior. I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel - thy savior - and besides me there is no savior. Believe that, and rather die than turn back, and you are moving toward being born from above.143 ¶41

Now let us go into the silence.143 ¶42

Read Galatians 4:14 - that one little thought in which “as an angel,” is superfluous, because the next phrase is “as Christ Jesus.” But “as an angel” - it might stop right away. That is all inserted to cushion him, because they actually saw him as the central being himself. He looked upon me as Christ Jesus, but if you put the little phrase before it, “as an angel,” that arrests the mind and you don’t associate Paul with Christ Jesus. I tell you: he was the one in whom the whole thing awoke. It was Paul. Everything has to come right out of the Jew. The world will not believe it. It is the most fantastic story in the world.143 ¶45

Now, Bishop Pike, who was born a Catholic and became a priest - he gave it up and became an agnostic; then became a most brilliant lawyer in New York City practicing corporate law. He then rejoined the church as a Protestant and rose in no time (he was only in his forties) to Bishop Pike of California. If you have ever heard him, he is an able speaker. He has a wonderful brilliant mind. Bishop Pike made the statement: “I am a Jew.” Remember, he was born and raised a Catholic, became a Catholic priest, gave it up then became an agnostic, became a lawyer, went back into the priesthood, this time a Protestant priest. Now he is the highest in the Protestant world. You can’t go beyond that. But he said: “I am a Jew because I am a Christian. I could be a Jew and not be a Christian, but I can’t be a Christian and not be a Jew.”143 ¶46

You think about it. Meditate upon that thought. It is true. The whole thing comes out of Israel. It is a mystery, the most fantastic mystery in the world. So, I am proud to say I am a Jew because I am a Christian. I have been born from above. I could not possibly be, unless I were a Jew. I know, when the veil is lifted and the whole thing is revealed - well, it is fantasy beyond the wildest dream!143 ¶47

Tonight’s subject is “Believe Him In,” which begins with believing in him. Believe him in only as you really believe in him. When Paul tells us in Romans, the 10 th chapter, the 13 th through the 17 th verses, he makes the statement that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. No one is excluded. “Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” Now you might think, based upon your training, your conditioning, that it means calling upon Christ Jesus or calling upon a name called Jehovah or calling on some other name. May I tell you, it is not. There’s only one name for God, and that name is I AM . When you speak of the word, when you use the word Jesus, Jesus means I AM; Jehovah means I AM; Jesse means I AM. It’s his only name forever and forever.142 ¶1

So everyone, not just a few special individuals, but everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. But now he goes on, he makes the statement, “But how can men call upon him in whom they have not believed?” Well, I promise the whole vast world would come under that heading. They have never believed, really, in I AM. How could men call upon him in whom they have not believed? They believe in God, they believe in the president, believe in the power of this country, believe in their money in the bank, and believe in everything outside of I AM. So how will men call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in him in whom they have never heard? The average person never heard that this is the name of God. And how can they believe in him of whom they have never heard?142 ¶2

I could take my own family. Go to Barbados tonight, and they are an enormous family, with three generations, and they all believe in God, but they’ll call him by some other name. They will never think of him as I AM, so how could they believe in him in whom they have never heard? They have read about it. My books are home, closed, completely closed, never opened. Neville wrote it, so what would I read of—Neville wrote it? So we’ll keep it here as a little memento because he did write it. But they’ve never read it. So there it is. Multiply them by the entire world.142 ¶3

You sign the name Neville… one chap in Australia, he signs five or six degrees behind his name, and so when he received my book just simply signed Neville, he closed it. There was no power of authority behind that name. He wasn’t a man of letters, just plain Neville. What could he say to me, a man who was a great professor, the head of a certain great university? So he closed it. And he was offended when he saw all through that book, which was Your Faith Is Your Fortune, just the words I AM, I AM, I AM, page after page. That meant nothing, so he closed it. But he would pray to God and address him as “Thou art” and speak of him as “He is,” and then in conversation use the words Jesus Christ, cross himself all over, and bow. But he doesn’t know the name that he would call on.142 ¶4

So let me go back, “ Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved,” but everyone. No one is left out, everyone, if he calls upon the name of the Lord. But how can men call upon him in whom they have never heard? And how can men believe in him of whom they never were taught about this being? How can they actually call upon him and believe in him? And how can they believe without a preacher? And how can there be a preacher unless he’s sent? Therefore, faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the preaching of Christ.142 ¶5

So I tell you, I’m speaking to you from experience. No one can be called and [...] and become one with the body of God and remain there. He’s sent. To be called at the same time involved as it were being sent, for to be called or to be rescued from something carries with it being sent to do something. And the being sent to do that is to tell you who he is, and he’s your own wonderful I-am-ness. That’s God.142 ¶6

So everyone in the world who calls upon the name of the Lord is saved. Saved from what? Saved from everything in this world. Here we’ll take it on this level. If there’s anyone here tonight who is in need of something, call upon his name. His name is I AM. And then you say to call, not call upon his name; you call with his name. That’s how you call. Don’t say, “In the name of I AM give me bread” but “I am filled to overflowing!” That’s asking for bread. Say, “I want a job. In the name of God, give me a job”? No, “I am gainfully employed.” Call with his name for everything in this world, and you’ll be saved from your present state. You’ll be lifted out of your present state into the state where you are affirming in his name, and his only name is I AM.142 ¶7

If you faced the court tonight and all the things of the world were against you, call in his name. Don’t say that in certain cases it can’t work. There is no case where it doesn’t work. Try it. If tonight you are faced with some court case where everything is against you, listen to the words—I am quoting now the 13 th verse of the 10 th chapter of Romans—“Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” The next verse, “But how can men call upon him in whom they have not believed?” Well, that’s so obvious. The whole vast world, how can I call upon my own consciousness when I never thought I was any more than a simple little man, that everyone was bigger? The President is bigger—he exercises enormous power—and the great churches of the world and society and the banker. We go into all these places and all seem so big, and so you call upon them. You go into a bank and ask to see the banker, feeling close and feeling nervous. And so you have no collateral, but you feel like a stuck pig; and he seems so big, a giant in your mind’s eye. You call upon that name.142 ¶8

So we are told in that fourteenth verse, “How can men call upon him in whom they have not believed?” What man really believes in himself, that resident in his own being is God, and God’s name is I AM?142 ¶9

So after that verse comes the next, “And how can they believe in him of whom they have never heard?” But may I tell you, how true that is. What priest in the world tells those who listen to him that the name of God is I AM. N o, they will say the name of God is Jesus Christ. Instantly you think of someone who was born 2,000 years ago. And others will say his name is Jehovah, and that goes back thousands of years ago. But others will call him by some other name. So how can we believe in him of whom we have never heard? Who is telling you the name of God, who God really is? And “how can we really believe unless there is a preacher? And how can there be a preacher unless he is sent? And so faith comes from what is heard and what is heard comes from the preaching of Christ.” Well, Christ means the power and wisdom of God, and God is your own wonderful I-am-ness .142 ¶10

Now you try it. You try it and see if it doesn’t work in the immediate present. In the Book of John, there are only a few case histories. They’re all called signs. Yet that book has been in print for 2,000 years, and people read it and are thrilled beyond measure. Only a few. You have hundreds of case histories that you have given to me, and I have given back to you in the written form in the last few years—same signs. Where a man had nothing and a woman had nothing and they dared to believe that “I am” and they named it and lost themselves in calling in the name of God, it happened.142 ¶11

A little lady had a little home in need of repair—it needed painting—and she dared to believe this story and she called upon the name. How did she call upon the name? She went to sleep, smelling paint. Who is smelling paint? “ I am smelling paint.” Well, who is seeing the thing repaired? “ I am ,” before it was repaired. Who is paying the bills? “ I am .” She paid the bills. So she is calling upon the name. In the true way, she is calling in the name, with the name. And in a matter of weeks, a letter comes bringing $7,500 from one she had never seen. You read that case history. She had never seen this party. She did a little tiny favor, investigating the cause of her brother’s death and where he was buried, and she wrote three letters in the course of a year, giving all that she found out about the brother’s death. And then years went by and she died. Then a bank notified her she was mentioned in her will to the tune of $7,500, where the repairs and the painting only came to about, say, $800 or $900. So she had almost $7,000 left over because she dared to call upon his name. Multiply that by the hundreds that I have told you from this platform.142 ¶12

It’s the same, really. So believe in him. How could I do it when I’ve never heard of the one in whom I must believe? Well, I’ll tell you in whom you must believe. Believe, not in Neville, don’t believe in Neville—I’m just as fallible as you, the same being that you are—but believe in him . Well, who is he? I AM. Not Neville; you’re saying it, “I am”—that’s the being. And so everyone, believe in him. But how can I believe in one in whom I’ve never had faith? What man believes in himself? Today, the President believes in the mighty power of his office and not in himself. He believes in the political power that he wields. And so someone who’s the head of the army or the navy, they believe in the power they hold by reason of that position, but not in themselves. Tomorrow when they reach a certain age, and they are let out to pasture, overnight they’re not the same person. Twenty-four hours before they are writing all these things and dictating policy and putting out billions of dollars of our money and overnight when they are sheared of that, they don’t believe in themselves. They believe only in themselves when they fill a certain office. They believe in the office, not themselves. So you have no office, but you do have a name, and you can call upon that name and that name is I AM, the only name by which I am to be known forever and forever.142 ¶13

You read it in the 3 rd chapter, the 14 th verse of Exodus: “This is my name forever. I have no other name. Go tell them I AM has sent you. I AM that I AM.” I AM what I will be. I AM who I AM. This is my name; I have no other name. And so ask in this name and call upon this name forever, and no power in the world can stop you because it’s the only power. You read it carefully, and see who you really are.142 ¶14

Now this is the being of whom I would speak this night. On this level, we can take it and transform our world. When it comes to being saved in the ultimate sense, forget it; you are saved. No one can be lost, but no one. “No one is lost in all my holy mountain,” as told us in Isaiah 11, but no one. I don’t care what you’ve done, what you’re contemplating doing. If you contemplate hurt, you’re simply blind, you’re simply asleep because no one could contemplate the hurt of another unless you were asleep, really. And so no one ultimately will be lost, but no one.142 ¶15

That comes in the most wonderful way through a series of events, all foretold in the beginning of what is known as sacred history. That’s the 17 th chapter, the 17 th verse of the Book of Genesis—that’s where it begins. Sacred history and divine history begins there.142 ¶16

And you and I are brought into that state of consciousness called Abraham, and there we are shown, only in words. But if I painted a word picture for you, you would say, I see it, but you don’t actually see it as you see me now or I see you. Well, you would say to me, I see it. I would paint the word picture to the best of my ability, and you would see what I’m talking about. So Abraham saw, but he only heard; he heard it in words. But he saw it, as you will see it, if I now paint it, what was promised. So it was said of him, “Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and he was glad.”142 ¶17

The word laughed in that 17 th verse of the 17 th chapter of Genesis when translated in Aramaic is “rejoiced.” He rejoiced. Well, it says he fell upon his face and laughed because it is the most ridiculous promise in the world. And the promise is the promise—it’s called a child—but it’s the promise of resurrection, when everything round about him died. All things are dying, and he is promised a child which would survive and seemingly extend—that’s all symbolism. What he’s really promised: that in spite of his seeming death, he will resurrect. All things will be resurrected; nothing will die in God’s infinite world. Nothing dies. He’s promised this resurrection, and to him, it’s the most ridiculous thing in the world. But he believed that all things are possible to God. With God all things are possible, and so he believed. He fell on his face and he laughed, which is a play on the word Isaac . For the word Isaac which is promised him means “he laughs.” And so you’re told in the story, which is all symbolism that he sired the one who is already beyond bearing a child, and the name was called Isaac. For the Lord demanded that the name should be called Isaac; he was called Isaac. The symbolism is perfect; it’s true. May I tell you, I’ve had it and I know this experience. The whole thing is completely true.142 ¶18

Now, in the epistle of John, and here comes the great first epistle, the very first and third verses: “That which we have heard with our own ears, that which we have seen with our own eyes, that which we have beheld and handled with our own hands… this we declare unto you.” Here comes now experience: “I heard of you with the hearing of the ear,” said Job, “but now my eye sees you” . I tell you tonight what’s going to happen to you, as I was told what would happen to me. I only heard it.142 ¶19

Then came that moment in time when I would handle the word of life with my own hands. It’s only a symbol. It’s a child, an actual, simple, wonderful child, Isaac, and you hold him. He’s solidly real to you. But you are told it’s going to happen to you, and you believed it. Who told you? God told you. Well, who is God? I AM. I told myself? Yes. In the depths of my own being, I told myself this is going to happen to you. And then you and I who now tell you the story will be one.142 ¶20

But you can’t become one with me until this series of events takes place. And the first one is going to be a child. You will be born from above out of your own being. It’s going to be symbolized to you as that of a child. And then I’m going to show you another. You’re going to find a son. He will be my son before he’s your son. I’m going to give him to you as your son; and therefore, if he’s your son and he’s already my son, then you and I are one. Then I’m going to resurrect you. I’m going to lift you up into heaven. You’ll be lifted up just as I promised in the symbolism of the serpent, lifted up just like that, and you’ll be one with me. That is told us in scripture. You go through this entire series of events just as I’ve told you and you are saved, completely saved, from this wheel of recurrence that goes on here.142 ¶21

But even though we are still locked on the wheel, call upon my name and you are saved from any state in this world. While you’re locked upon it, call upon my name. My name is I AM. So at any moment, when you’re in prison, say, “I am free.” If you’re now not feeling well, “I never felt better.” Let the weak man say, in the Book of Joel, “Let the weak man say, ‘I am strong!’” Let him say, “I am strong,” while he’s not feeling well. Let him call upon my name in everything in this world. And while we move upon the wheel of recurrence, call upon my name. And externalizing all the states as you call upon my name, I will one day stretch beyond and redeem you and lift you into my own being, and you become one with me, completely freed from the wheel of recurrence.142 ¶22

So I bring him into being by believing in him. So I tell you the story, well, here is the story. The first series of parables in the 13 th of Matthew, and here they’re listening to the parable of the sower. “A sower went forth to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell upon the wayside, and birds ate it up. Some fell upon rocks, and it quickly grew, but it had no root; there was no soil, no depth of soil, and so when the sun came, it scorched it. Some fell among thorns and it was quickly choked by the thorns. But some fell on good soil, and it brought forth a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold.”142 ¶23

And they said to him, “Why do you always speak in parables? Why can’t you speak clearly?” He said, “To you it’s given to know the things, the secrets, of the kingdom of heaven, but to others it is not” . Then he explained to them the mystery of the sower. He said, “The things sown, the seed, is the word of God.” Now, the word of God is the message of Christianity. The promise made to Abraham would be fulfilled in what we call the coming of Christ, that God himself comes into human history. He not only came, but I use the word he comes . The world thinks that God himself came. I say God himself came and comes into human history in the person of Jesus Christ. Not only came but he comes— everyone who has the identical experiences as recorded is Jesus Christ. For there’s only Jesus Christ, who is God, who is I AM, but then awake. So here, he tells us the story of the sower. The seed is the word of God.142 ¶24

And so it’s planted. There are those who do not even hear it and use the words “they do not understand it.” The evil one comes and snatches it away. Well, the evil one in the Bible means “unbelief.” First they don’t understand it. It’s incredible. It’s the most impossible thing in the world, so they don’t believe it, they don’t understand it. So it’s completely removed from them, from that soil, that mind.142 ¶25

Then comes the second planting, and that falls among rocks. The individual has no preparation in himself; there’s no depth in himself. So when he accepts it, he accepts it with joy; but overnight, when the sun rises and the facts of life present themselves, it scorches that little thing that he received with joy. That was simply, “Last night’s lecture means nothing. I must now face the world with today’s facts ,” and so the whole thing is rubbed out.142 ¶26

Then comes the third, and this is an interesting one, for I’ve seen it. It falls among the thorns, but the cares of the world and the greed for riches choke it, and then it doesn’t grow. How I have seen that!142 ¶27

In 1925, [...] in London—I was then twenty years old—I said to my friend, who was my age and whose name was Matthew Bentley, “Matt, why don’t you show some interest in your father’s philosophical approach to life?” His father was then what I am today, fifty-eight years old. Well, when you are twenty and your father is fifty-eight, he looks like Methuselah. And so he said to me, “Well, Father’s an old man. He’s retired.” He’s a mining engineer, and he’s retired. So he and his wife lived in a very small, modest little home in Hammersmith. Matt said to me, “Let me live first. Let me make a million. Let me earn some money and stand on my own feet before I become interested in what my father today finds so interesting.” But after four months in London, I returned to New York City, and then a few months later Matt went off to India in the service of some tea company. And three months later, Matt died. He contracted malaria, and Matt was gone from this world. He had to make a lot of money first before he could show any interest in things spiritual. Money was the only thing that to him would symbolize success in his world, not an experience of God but money in the bank or things in his house, or things.142 ¶28

And so the third seed fell upon soil, and the soil was among the thorns and the thistles of the way. Then he describes for us what he means by it, by the thorns: those who must have riches in this world, and the cares of the world and the desire for wealth overpower what he heard about this story, and so he simply stifled the word of God.142 ¶29

And then comes the fourth one. It fell upon good soil, and it brought forth a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold. So let me tell you, when it brings forth thirtyfold, you are born above. When it brings forth sixtyfold, you are the Father of God’s only begotten Son. When it brings forth a hundredfold, you have completely ascended, completely ascended in that serpentine form, right up into heaven.142 ¶30

Now here he tells us, “You see John the Baptist? No one born of woman is greater than John, but I tell you, the least in the kingdom is greater than John.” John was the greatest born of woman. If I could put John, without being offensive, put him into the modern world, he would be the head of the welfare state. John said to those who listened to him, “You have two coats, give one to one who hasn’t. You have more food than you can consume, give some to those who haven’t yet.” He said to the soldier, “Be satisfied with your wages. No disturbance and no strife, take what you are given and be satisfied with it.” And that is John. John is represented in our world by those who would take all of our earnings and share it with the whole vast world, whether they want it or could even use it. They are the ones who would share everything in the world—but not their own, ours. They don’t share theirs; they share ours. So he said, “You see John? John is greater than anyone born of woman, but the least in the kingdom is greater than John.”142 ¶31

John hasn’t the slightest concept of the kingdom. He proclaimed it, but he didn’t know what the kingdom was all about. He thought it meant doing good. He was the do-gooder. And that’s the whole vast world trying to earn the kingdom by doing good, and the kingdom is entered not by any doing good; it is God’s most mighty act. He singles us out, one by one; and God’s mighty act, he lifts us out of the wheel of recurrence into this kingdom.142 ¶32

And the first act is birth from above. His second mighty power, lifting us higher still, is to make us one with himself, and we are the Father of his Son. The third, he lifts us up into heaven itself, in that serpentine glorious form of luminous gold as it were, one with him, pure gold.142 ¶33

Believe it. I am telling you this that you may believe, for just as you must believe that you are rich to be rich, you must believe this story to be eligible to be lifted up. For man’s salvation has its source in God’s faith, but it is bestowed upon man in response to his faith. And so he can’t be qualified until he hears the story. I am telling you the story, for it has happened to me. If the whole vast world rose in opposition, it would make no difference to me: I have experienced it. You can’t take it from me. If tonight you shot me full of holes, if you annihilated me, you could only annihilate this garment; you can’t annihilate the experience, for I have already been lifted up into that sphere, and I’m sharing with you what I have experienced.142 ¶34

And so to be salvaged, to be rescued from something carries with it being sent to do something; and so one is sent because one has been called and rescued. So somewhere along the way, I was told this story as I’m telling it to you and somewhere along the way, I believed it. It was mixed in me with faith, as told us in the 4 th chapter of the Book of Hebrews. Here we are told the word spoken to us was also spoken to them. He calls it the good news, the good news given us was also given them, but it did not benefit them because it was not received by the hearers with faith. They rejected it; it meant nothing to them. Therefore, they did not enter into the rest of God.142 ¶35

So here, you and I hear it. I am telling you, you can prove it on this level, and proving it on this level you may be encouraged then to prove it on the higher level. You can’t on the higher level do anything about it. Simply live on this level fully , calling upon the name of God, in the hope that this that was promised our father Abraham—and we are he—would someday, in God’s own good time, be given to us.142 ¶36

So now we come to the great one who first proselyted the idea. He said, “O King Agrippa, here I stand before you on trial for the hope that was given to me as made by God to our fathers. I stand here on trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers.” Then said he, “Why should any of us think it incredible that God should raise the dead? Was that not the promise that he made our father Abraham?” When you read it carefully, you might think that it refers to some other promise, which was the child, but the child all through scripture is only a symbol of resurrection. The birth and resurrection are the identical experience. So why should any of us think it’s incredible that God raises the dead?142 ¶37

And then, he stood before the king, and when the king said, “Are you going to make me a Christian?” He said, “Would that you at this very moment were as I am—save the shackles, the chains on me.” Just as I am… would that you were as I am, minus the chains. Then, said he, from morning to night, he expounded this mystery of the kingdom of God and tried to convince them of Jesus, using all the law of Moses and the prophets. Some were convinced by what he said and others disbelieved.142 ¶38

I hope that if this is a repetition of Paul that in this audience tonight there aren’t any disbelievers, but I have no way of judging. I can only tell you that it’s true. I tell you, you can prove on this level that you can call upon the name by calling with the name and prove anything.142 ¶39

The other, believe it. In God’s own good time, after the seed has been prepared and the field has been prepared, he’s going to call you and call you into an entirely different world. It’s not this world; it’s an entirely different world where your body’s different. You haven’t this body. This body belongs to this world. But it’s not this body; it’s an entirely different body. You can’t describe it. I have tried to describe it, but I can’t. I can’t describe the body. It’s something that is immortal, something that never dies, eternal. Something that when you are housed in it, you’ll be an immortal being housed in the eternal body. Everything then is subject to your imaginative power, but everything. In this world you wait for it, confident that it will work and it does, but then it’s an immediate creative fact.142 ¶40

So here, I share with you that which has been experienced by me. The seed falls on four soils. I do not think tonight in this audience, unless you’re here for the first time, that it would fall on the first soil, where the evil one comes and snatches it away, which means complete unbelief. I hope I have not been that cloudy and dark in what I’m saying that you would not understand it. For he uses the word, “They did not understand it”; and then because they didn’t understand it, it was snatched away.142 ¶41

The second soil, I hope you aren’t that one; but if you are, listen to it carefully that you may overcome it. For the second soil is the rocky soil, not yet prepared, and you take it joyously, but the sun will rise tomorrow, you face the facts of life, and then having no depth in yourself, it will quickly be devoured by the sun and be scorched.142 ¶42

And the third—and that is a warning that Paul gives us in his letter to Timothy when he said to Timothy, “The love of wealth is the root of evil.” The love, not wealth—you can have all the wealth in the world—but the love of it, when someone has to be wealthy first before he can listen to the word of God. Let him get wealth first : when I get all of that and I’m well cushioned, then I’ll listen to you. Then they’ll be so fat mentally they couldn’t listen to anything. The brain would have no muscle whatsoever, just all fat, all cushioned. And so let me get it all first, and then I will listen. And that chokes the word. They couldn’t stay awake long enough to listen to it anyway.142 ¶43

But then comes the fourth one, and that soil is well prepared. It brought forth three different measures, a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold. And so the thirtyfold is the first, [...], and that is the birth from above. Then when the second wonderful experience comes and you are the father of God’s only begotten son, you have brought forth sixtyfold. Then comes the third when you are lifted up in the serpentine form right into heaven. Then you’ve brought forth the full measure, a hundredfold. But even though you only bring forth the thirtyfold, may I tell you, you are greater than anyone born of woman. So John was the greatest of all born of woman, but the least in the kingdom is greater than John.142 ¶44

So here, you try it tonight. You take this name and call upon it tonight if you are facing any problem in the world; I don’t care what it is. Listen to the words, I’m quoting correctly, “Everyone”—no discrimination—“Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” And we know tonight that millions are calling upon other names—“In the name of Jesus Christ,” so and so—not a thing is going to happen. They’ll go to church and light their candles, do all these things, cross themselves, and not a thing is going to happen. But you call upon the name, and you’ll be saved from any condition that now faces you. And his name and his only name is I AM. Don’t call with any other name, just I AM.142 ¶45

So what would it be like? Now I tell the story over and over because it’s a true story. I did not incorporate it in my book because my friend who read my manuscript (he has never had the experience) and he said to me, “Neville, if you tell this experience people will think that they must have that experience in order to be saved. And so let us eliminate the experience.” So I did. So I did not tell it in my story.142 ¶46

But when I, imprisoned as I was, called upon the name, this is what I did. Two thousand miles from my face, for I was in the army, and 2,000 from my home, I simply sat on the army bed, but in my Imagination, I said to myself, “I am sleeping right now in my own home on my own bed in New York City.” And there I remained until it seemed natural. It took on all the tones of naturalness, all the tones of reality. And then, I got off my imaginary bed, looked through the window, saw the things that I would see were it true, looked to east of me, looked to the west of me, saw what I would see, walked all over my apartment, all in my Imagination, and went back to bed. Who’s doing it? I’m doing it. I went back to bed. Who’s going to sit on this bed? I am. So I got back into bed, and I lost consciousness in that state.142 ¶47

And then suddenly, sleeping in that state, a thing came before my mind’s eye, a smooth big sheet of paper and a hand from here down. The hand held a pen, and the pen scratched out the word “Disapproved” and it wrote in the word in big bold type “Approved.” Then the voice said to me, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing!” So I did nothing.142 ¶48

Nine days later, the very one who disapproved my application called me into his presence and asked me [...] of me wanting to get out. And then among the things he said, he approved it, and he wrote in the same bold type “Approved.” But nine days before he confirmed it in his own writing, here it was confirmed in the depth of my soul. The voice spoke to me and said, “That which I have done, I have done. Do nothing!” So I did nothing.142 ¶49

So I tell you, I called upon the name. I didn’t say, “O God, get me out of the army.” I didn’t say, “O Jesus Christ, what am I doing here? Get me out of the army.” I did none of these things. All I did, I simply went to bed, sat on that cot and assumed I am in New York City. I slept in New York City just as though I were there. Then came this vision from the depth of my soul, speaking in the first person, saying, “That which I have done I have done. Do nothing!” And I did nothing until I got out, honorably discharged.142 ¶50

And so I eliminated that in telling my story only because the man who corrected my manuscript for me, never having had a vision himself, he thought, had he read it, never having had vision, people would think you had to have one in order to make it work. That’s why I eliminated it from the story when I told it in my book. But I tell you, it works. Listen to the words, “ Everyone ”—not an occasional one but—“everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” I was saved, saved from what to me—maybe you don’t think it’s horrible—but to me it was a horrible life. The whole vast world is a world of freedom. God has made us to be free. And so that to me was the most confined, restricted state I had ever experienced, save for school; but there I didn’t go too long anyway. And so may I tell you, you call upon his name and he will set you free. But his name is I AM; there’s no other name. Let no one give you some other name. It’s all over the world. Listen to it and read it carefully when you go home because how true these words are.142 ¶51

After he makes the statement that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved, he goes right in to the next verse, “But how can men call upon him in whom they do not believe? And how can they believe in him of whom they have never heard?” Well, do you know today in the world of three billion of us you could almost say three billion never heard that name for God? Three billion never heard the name. How could they believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how can they hear of him without a preacher? And how can there be preacher unless he is sent? Those who are not sent tell them his name is Christ or Jesus or Jehovah or Moses or some other name. And they use all kinds of names because they have not been sent. They do not know the name, yet they say the Bible for us. But when you’re called and enveloped in his being and you are one with him, you know his name. His name is I AM. And so you call upon his name and you are saved from any state in this world. But how can you call upon one in whom you do not believe? Well, you can’t believe in one of whom you’ve never heard; and if you haven’t heard about him, how will you hear about him unless you have been told? And how could you be told unless someone is sent to tell you? Therefore, you’re told faith comes by the hearing of the word; and this is by the preaching of Christ, and Christ is the power and wisdom of God.142 ¶52

So tonight, I ask you to join with me and prove it. You can’t disprove it. I know this much. It took me nine days in that state, and I did nothing in the interval of nine days. I simply went to that state. And when it happened to me at four fifteen in the morning, I couldn’t disturb the other soldiers. I waited until the sun began to show, and then I went down to the men’s room, shaved and bathed, and got ready long before anyone was up. I was so excited, and the whole thing was so vivid in my mind’s eye. So I tell you, everyone who calls upon his name will be saved. I was released, honorably released, in nine days.142 ¶53

And now, you may or others would, as they have, criticize that attitude of mind. Makes no difference to me if the whole vast world criticized it. They’ll say, “Well, we must have soldiers.” I’m not denying that to have soldiers. Let’s have morticians too. Let’s have, as long as we believe in burial grounds, let’s have Forest Lawn. I’m not denying that. The day will come that all will be the most ludicrous things in the world—burial grounds and morticians and all these things will be the most ludicrous things in the world when man completely awakes. And so I was awakened, and God did not restrain my right to awaken but granted my life based upon his holy word, “Everyone who calls upon my name will be saved.” And I wanted to be saved from what to me at that moment was the most frightful confinement and mental restriction.142 ¶54

But the only books that are safe [...] you know are those that nobody wants in the library. You start collecting books for the navy or for the army, and you see that people only give away what they don’t like. No one saves one decent book in the world. [...] go to the library and see what you’re going to find—all the trash in the world. So that’s your library plus all the other mental food. What mental food would you get?142 ¶55

So I ask you to believe what I’ve told you. When it comes to being saved in the true sense of the word, you forget it. You will be, because that is in the hand: God’s mightiest act is the act of resurrection. And no one will fail. But you can’t earn it. If you could take the greatest president in the world, the wisest president in the world, you cannot earn that. But you can prepare for it, but you can’t earn it. It’s something beyond the wildest dream of man, and God gives it to everyone in God’s own good time. When he does it, he does it without notifying you. Suddenly! And then you are resurrected and you awaken from the deep. And you didn’t realize ’til that moment in time that you had been sound asleep all along. You had no idea that all through the ages you were asleep, dreaming this fantastic dream. It was a dream until that moment in time, and then you awoke. And that was God’s resurrecting power. His birth, which was your birth, is your resurrection. And then comes the other, the sixty percent, and then the one hundred percent because a seed fell on good soil.142 ¶56

You can forgive sin. That to most people will be blasphemy, as you will hear later on, quoting from scripture. It is so common among all of us to ascribe our ills and our troubles to outward things, like the present conditions of the world, to our environment, or simply to things. And these things may be things that are absent from our world, or they may be things that we have in our world but still things, while all along the real cause of our ills is sin. So we’re told he was called Jesus because he came to save men from their sins. His only concern was the saving of man from sin. So what is sin? Sin means missing the mark, missing the road, and missing the goal in life. If you haven’t a mark, you can’t sin. If you have a goal in this world and you do not realize it and you missed it, then you’ve sinned. So his purpose is to show man how not to sin in this world. No condemnation. Tell me your aim and tell me your goal, and I’ll tell you God’s Word; that’s what he said. He’s come only to show a man how not to miss his objective in this world.141 ¶1

Now we turn to the Book of Mark, the 2nd chapter, or we can read the same thing with a little different twist to it in the 9th chapter of Matthew—it’s the story of a paralytic. As we are told, he was preaching the word, that is, the story of salvation, and they brought in a paralytic carried by four men. Seeing their faith, he said to the paralytic, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” Scribes sitting around thought in their hearts, “What is he saying? It is blasphemous! Who could forgive sin but God alone?” And discerning in their hearts what they contemplated, he said, “Which is easier, to say the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’?” And so he said to him, “Take up your bed and walk and go home,” and he rose and went on his way home. Then we are told those who saw him were afraid, and they glorified God who would give such authority to men, for it was a man who did it. We are that man. It is to us that this authority to forgive sin has been given. But the world thought it was simply the exclusive power of some being outside of man. You read it in the 2nd chapter of Mark and the 9th of Matthew.141 ¶2

Now, what is this ability to forgive sin? We know that sin means “missing the mark.” The one that forgave it called himself “the truth.” He said, “I am the truth. If you know my word and you abide in my word, then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” For the whole story begins, he was teaching the truth, teaching the word. Now he calls himself “the truth.” And “if you know the truth and you abide in my word, the truth will set you free.”141 ¶3

If I said to you tonight, “What would you like to be in this world?” and then you name it, “I would like to be…” and you name no matter what it is in this world, then I would turn to you and I’d say, “You are that. But you are it, right now you are it.” You would say, “I am it? Well, I can’t believe it. I am not that,” then you are denying the truth. “I am the truth.” I am everything in this world. Everything that man could ever imagine, I am. All right, so you imagine what you would like to be. If you cannot remain faithful, remaining loyal to that vision of yourself, then you are sinning.141 ¶4

And not to sin is to have a goal. You have a goal, what would it be like were it true? Were it true that I am and then I name it, what would it be like? Then I would see the world as I would see it were it true. If I remain faithful to that vision of the world just as though it were true, no power in the world could stop me from realizing it but no power. I’d realize it. How? Don’t ask me. But I would realize it. If it took the entire world of three billion to play different parts to aid me in the fulfillment of my vision, they would play it without knowing that they played it. Makes no difference if they knew it or didn’t know it; they would all have to contribute to the fulfillment of my vision if I remain loyal to that vision.141 ¶5

So what would it be like were it true? And I ask, “What true?”—that I were the man that now I would like to be. If I said to you right now, “Is there a man in this room who’s rich?” and no one said, “I am rich,” well then, that’s not your goal. Or if it is your goal, you are missing it if you didn’t reply. But “Is there a man in this room”—by man I mean generic man—“who is known, who is contributing to the world’s good?” and no one replies “I am he,” well then, either it is not your goal or else if it is your goal, you’re missing it. So the name is “I am he” as told us in the 24th verse, the 8th chapter of the Book of John, “Except you believe that I am he you die in your sins.” You remain just where you are, missing the mark, unless you believe that I am he. Not a man talking to me; this is taking place in the depth of the soul of man. If you don’t believe now that I am the one that I would be, well then, you’re going to miss your goal. You are sinning.141 ¶6

And so it doesn’t come from without at all; it isn’t caused by anything on the outside at all. My ills, my troubles, and my problems are not caused by conditions and by environment and by all the other things at all; it’s caused only by sin, and sin is missing the mark. There’s only one person, one being in the world, that could hit that mark, and it’s God. God forgives sin, as we’re told in the 43rd chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “I am the Lord… I am thy Savior, and there is no other Savior” . “I, I am he, and there is no other Savior” . No one was formed before me, and no one will be formed after me. I am the Savior.” So you’ll be saved from what you are. There’s only one being in the world that can save you and that being is I AM.141 ¶7

So you say to yourself, “What would it be like were it true that I am now the man that I would like to be?” Assume that you are it. Dare to believe that you are it. Walk in that belief just as though it were true and no power in the world can stop it, but no power. There is no one greater than God. Say “I am”; that’s God. There’s no one greater than God. You stand in the presence of a being; and because he has a little tag and he may be a premier of a certain country or maybe a queen of a certain land or maybe the president of a certain land, and you think that because of that title, he’s greater than you are? You’re missing the mark. You can’t stand in the presence of anyone who is greater than you are if you know who you are. You aren’t going to laud it over them, no, but no one is smaller either, all God.141 ¶8

Then you are told, “Go and tell them all.” So here we are told in the Book of Ezekiel, I think it is the 3rd chapter, the 18th verse, and 33rd chapter, the 8th verse. But you can read it; they aren’t long chapters. “Go and tell them. If you do not tell them and they sin, and you do not tell them, they will die in their sins, but their blood will be upon your head. If you tell them and they do not repent, they will die in their sins, but their blood will not be upon your head. So tell them.” And so Jesus is made to confess that he told them that their blood may not be upon his head. In the Book of Acts, Paul makes the confession, “I have declared it. I did not stray from the declaration of this truth; therefore I am innocent of the blood of all of them.” He told them that he may not carry with him that secret to the grave and did not share it with the world. And so I told them all that this is a principle that cannot fail.141 ¶9

Now let us come back to the paralytic. You came here tonight under your own steam, as it were. If I told you that we are the paralytic of scripture, maybe you’ll be surprised. They were brought into the place by four men. Know who the four men are? The ancients always called by the four senses, spoke of the four rivers that ran out of Eden. They didn’t think of five senses, they always spoke of four senses. They joined taste and touch together because they depended upon contact. To taste something, it must be contacted; and to touch something, it must be contacted. But they separated sight, sound, and scent. These three were separate in the great symbolism of scripture. But taste and touch were joined, so they called them the four senses. We came here tonight borne by these four men, the four senses.141 ¶10

I know my bank balance, all right, in two weeks, Uncle Sam wants part of what I’ve earned. He didn’t ask me to consider anything at all; he told me what I owed him. I don’t even know Uncle Sam, but they tell me he exists somewhere, where I don’t know, but he exists. So I’m supposed to pay on the fifteenth of next month x-number of dollars. Regardless of how I live, I must save something to pay him that much. Perfectly all right; it’s the land of Caesar. So I am fully aware of that; I can see my bank balance. I know what’s in my world. I can take all of my senses and bring them to play upon what I must meet tomorrow. I was brought here tonight on the shoulders of these four men. Now he tells me, “Your sins are forgiven you. Rise and walk.” How can I do it, knowing that I must pay on the fifteenth? Knowing what I must do between now and then, how must I do it? “Your sins are forgiven.” But who can forgive but God? Only God can forgive, and God is what?—I AM. All right, I will now see the world as I would see it were it now May 1, with all things behind me, completely paid and paid in full.141 ¶11

Suppose I were unemployed. I would walk here tonight on the backs of these four men. I know I’m unemployed, and I have rent to pay, food to buy, all these things, and he tells me that my sins are forgiven and to rise, take up my bed, and walk? How would I do it? I was brought in here on the backs of four men. I’m called upon to rise, ignore these four men, walk on my own steam now. Don’t walk based upon what before allowed you to think and to hear, and to smell and to taste, and to touch. Walk out of here not aided by these four at all. Walk on my own. Well, how would I walk on my own? I would ignore the evidence of the senses. They brought me in here. I completely ignore what they tell me that I really have in this world, and I see what I would like to see. I assume that things are as I would like them to be. I would influence every being in this world to play their part to fulfill what I am assuming that I am in this world. So I came in as a paralytic and walk out on my own steam.141 ¶12

So that’s the story. Every being in the world is called upon to rise and to walk out, for he forgives your sin. He comes into the world only to free man of sin. I don’t care what you’ve ever done in this world. Don’t look back. Don’t look upon the things as they are. Look upon things, as they ought to be. The man that you would like to be, assume that you are it; the woman that you would like to be, assume that you are it. And see that, and see that only. Then you will know what it is to forgive sin. Well, who forgives sin? God forgives sin. Who forgave you? Well, I assumed. Who assumed? I assumed. Well, that’s God. I AM is his name. So I am assuming that I am the man that I would like to be. Well, that’s God. There’s nothing impossible to God. So I am assuming that I am—that’s God. Then I begin to name it, and I walk in that state—and that’s God. There’s nothing but God. So forget what you have done, what you seemingly are doing, and dream of the man or the woman that you would like to be and dare to assume that you are it.141 ¶13

Now we are told by the great Blake, “The Spirit of Jesus is the continual forgiveness of sin,” every moment of time forgiveness of sin. Tonight, when we go into the Silence, we can sit here at this moment for a minute and forgive each other. Suppose now I could actually hear everyone rise and tell the most fantastic story in the world about themselves or about a friend of theirs, a relative of theirs, someone. Suppose I really wanted to be told from this platform, from this audience, that I would sit in the Silence and listen to that and only that, just as though it were true—the most fantastic story in the world that you could tell me, individually, all of us. And if I walked out of here tonight convinced that I have heard it and you heard it and remain loyal to what I have imagined that I have heard, I must hear it. No power can stop it if I remain loyal to it. If anyone should say it hasn’t worked, I am not asking any questions why it hasn’t worked, as far as I am concerned, it has worked; I have seen it. But I know that the vision that I will hold now concerning you, individually, will have its own appointed hour. I know it is ripening and it’s going to flower. If to you it seems slow, I ask you to wait, for this thing is sure and it will not be late. If I actually assume that things are as I would like them to be for every being here and I remain loyal, I either know that this story is true or it’s false. I know it’s true. It can’t fail. But there’s no power in the world to make it fail. It can’t fail!141 ¶14

But if… for instance, another word for sin in the Bible is trespass. In our wonderful Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It’s a minor infraction of this principle. Trespass means the “individual lapse, just a temporary lapse.” So that tonight, you and I begin to discuss a personality. What am I doing discussing a personality? He’s only in a state. So I [...] think he’s unemployed; and you and I get into a discussion and discuss a man who is unemployed and we see him as unemployed and begin to say, well, the conditions are bad or maybe he wasn’t good enough for the job, and suddenly I am trespassing. I am not applying this principle. I am seeing him as the state. He’s not the state. But I may fall into that little trap. We all do it every day and all day long. We read the paper, and a man is called a great man because he happens to be President or he may be some other person in this world and you read some columnist about him and then you’re carried away with what the columnist tells us, the arguments presented to us, and suddenly begin to think as he would have you think and you’re trespassing. “Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It’s a slight departure from our goal. We were moved aside by what we heard, by what we read, by what we saw in this world—and that’s trespassing.141 ¶15

And so I discuss someone who can’t find a job, and suddenly I think, “Well, what is his salary? Is he qualified? What did he earn in the past?” I’m asking all these things, and they are irrelevant. Not to this principle do they have any value whatsoever. What does he want? He wants a job? Well, how much do you want? And he names a figure. I don’t care what he names. Now, were it true—suppose it were true that he had it. Well then, let me assume that it’s true. I begin to see the world as I would see it for him were it true and feel the joy that should be mine were he now gainfully employed earning that sort of money. Now this thing is either true or it’s false. I tell you it’s true. And so every day, you and I can say the Lord’s Prayer, but really saying it asks for forgiveness of our trespasses. Then he shows mercy upon us to forgive us for having trespassed this day, for having gotten off the beam as it were.141 ¶16

So here is the story. He’s brought in on the backs of four men. He himself had no faith. He’s saying not to the man; he’s telling it to those who brought him in, the senses. In spite of what they knew, there was still a certain faith and brought him into the presence of God, knowing that God could forgive sin. He said, “Because of your faith”—he speaks now to those who brought him; he didn’t speak to the man at first, and then he addresses the paralytic—“My son, your sins are forgiven you.” Here is a vicarious faith. So I can have the faith for you if you don’t have it for yourself. You can have it for me if I don’t have it for myself. And quite often, vicarious faith is easier than the direct faith. That, if I can turn to you, if you really believe that an imaginal act is fact, and if you could actually believe that I am now what I would like to be and although at the moment I doubt and I am unfaithful, you can save me. It’s such a wonderful story. In spite of myself, you can pull me out of it. For the man had no faith. Those who brought him on their backs showed faith in bringing him into the presence of God. God commended them for their faith and then turned to the paralytic and said, “My son, your sins are forgiven.” And those who heard said, “What sort of blasphemy! Who can forgive sin but God alone?” Well, God did forgive sin, for he was the I AM. He said, “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins.”141 ¶17

So I ask you tonight, turn to your neighbor, turn to all, and maybe you could hear what the other one wants and rejoice in his good fortune, and he or she hear what you want and let them rejoice in your good fortune. And actually feel that it’s true. See the world as you would see it were they as they would like to be, and may I tell you, they’ll become it. So this is the story of our ability to forgive sin. So they were afraid when they saw what happened, and they glorified God who had given such authority to men. For we are told, if you retain it, it’s retained and if you release it, it’s released. So I see a man, and I judge him by my senses. I say, all right, so he’s no good, and so I retain his restrictions, his paralytic state. But I could release him by seeing him standing on his own feet and moving in this world in a glorious manner.141 ¶18

And so the material that formerly I would discard as no good, having heard the story, I don’t discard it anymore. I take it and use it. I take the same man that formerly I would discard as hopeless in this wonderful world of ours and see him as gainfully employed, loved, and loving. And believe that the thing that I am seeing for him is true. To the degree that I am faithful to that concept that I hold of him, it becomes true in his world. So that’s our power. We have power to forgive sin, and sin only means missing the mark. If you don’t have a mark in this world, you can’t sin. It doesn’t have anything to do with some moral issue, no, do you have a goal? Do you have some objective in this world? If you have an objective, then this is how you realize it: suppose it were true.141 ¶19

Now he tells us in the 8th of Romans, “Let us walk now not by flesh but by Spirit.” The flesh would be my senses. My senses deny that I am what I would like to be—let us not walk by flesh, and let us walk by Spirit. Well, Spirit is, well, to see it now in my Imagination just as though it were true. Well, tonight I may go home to find an empty cupboard, perfectly all right. To find that there’s a notice under my door that tomorrow or else. That’s perfectly all right. If I believe what I’ve imagined, it wouldn’t make any difference what threat was given me. It would make no difference whatsoever if I really believe in it. Now believe it, we’re told. If you believe it, it will crystallize into fact. It doesn’t really matter what threat at the moment, what my senses tell me, I will ignore the four who brought me into this place. I will not now anymore be borne by these four; I will simply walk by Spirit and not by flesh.141 ¶20

So I ask you to try it. If you try it, you can’t fail. And realizing your objectives, may I also ask you to share it with me that I may tell others of your wonderful stories. A man sat in this audience, he and his wife, a little while ago, well, it is now about three months, and he wrote me a sweet, wonderful letter, which I got this morning. He expected a big bonus. He had worked hard; found a good job, with all the promises; and then came Christmas and all the bonuses. One who was never on the job, one who was always off, but by his estimate, one of the girlfriends of the boss, and so she got the great big bonus. She was never on the job. He who had done all the work got practically nothing. He and I agreed just mentally that he would have the most wonderful job, with more money, with everything. This is now going on April. It seemed a long while, but today he is on that job with more than he had, more than he expected—more responsibility, more opportunity, and more of everything. And I received that letter this morning. I remained faithful to that letter that I knew would come from him when he would write it. Maybe he could have written it two weeks ago, maybe he could have; I do not know. I see his mother-in-law in the audience tonight. Maybe she can tell me after the meeting. But I got the letter today, and I can’t tell you the thrill that was in our household this morning when we read the letter from this man, who told us of this wonderful thing that had happened to him. Within the area that he wants to work, just what he wants to work, just what he wanted, everything. And all that I did, I heard him tell me what he would tell me were it true, and I never wavered. So I haven’t heard and didn’t hear, but this morning’s mail brought it.141 ¶21

So I only ask you to be as faithful to any imaginal state in this world; I don’t care what it is. Take anyone but anyone, because in everyone God resides. Everyone has to say, “I am”—that’s God. So you may say, “Well, I am an Einstein.” Wonderful! But you still say, “I am” before you say Einstein, and I AM transcends all the Einstein’s of the world, for I AM is God. When I say, “I am Neville,” Neville is a tiny thing resting upon the foundation that is God. If I say, “I am rich,” I don’t care what you call wealth, that’s a little tiny thing on the foundation of God. And God is infinite; God is everything. Therefore, whatever you say, before you say it, you say, “I am”—that’s his name; that’s God’s name. “Go and tell them I AM has sent you. When they ask, just say I AM. That’s my name” . And so before you make any claim, you say, “I am,” and that’s God’s name.141 ¶22

And so no matter who the being is, suppose now he would say to you, “I am… and [...],” and you listen. At the moment the four men who brought him into your presence brought him in paralyzed. He isn’t that at all because they deny it. For the four senses are bringing him, and his four senses deny that he’s that, that he’s [...] that he would like to be. So he’s called upon the name of God. And when you call upon the name of God, you don’t say, “In the name of God so and so.” You ask with the name of God, and to ask with the name of God, and God’s name is I AM, you say, “I am,” and you name it. I’m known, I’m wealthy, I’m secure, and I am healthy. Whatever you claim, ask with the name of God, and then believe it. If you ask with the name of God and believe it, mentally you will see the world as you’ve never seen it before you made that claim. And then seeing it as you would see it were it true, remain faithful to that claim, and it must crystallize in your world. This is this principle.141 ¶23

And it goes for every being in the world, regardless of nationality and regardless of the pigment of the skin. It’s all God because everyone in the world has to say, “I am,” before he says, “I am this.” He said, “Who are you?” “Well, I am a man.” All right, but you said, “I am” before you said man. You said, “I am an American.” But you said, “I am,” before you said American. You said, “I am an Indian. I am a Japanese. I’m a Chinese.” But before you said anything you said, “I am.” That’s God.141 ¶24

Now what kind of a being would you like to be? Well, I would like to be, and you name it. I would like to be loving. I would like to be loved. I would like to be sexy. I would like to respect. I would like—and you name all these things. All right, but it’s I AM doing it. Well, then, take this fabulous world of yours, and take all your dreams and put it on the only foundation in the world. There is no other foundation than God, and God is I AM.141 ¶25

So here, the paralytic came here tonight in all of us, and we were borne on the backs of four men; and the four men are our four senses: sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch. Taste and touch are joined into one because they depend upon contact. So these are the four streams, the four rivers of life that come out of the garden of Eden, and they bear us all over this world. But every moment of time we are in the presence of I AM. Let them put me down, and let me forgive me my sins. And so I forgive myself by daring to assume that I am what I would like to be. Assuming that I am what I would like to be, I walk in that assumption and that assumption slowly crystallizes into fact. So you try it. Try it and you’ll be able to share with me as this gentleman shared with me today his wonderful story of his good fortune. No power in the world can stop it, but none.141 ¶26

But here, when we speak of sin, don’t let anyone scare you about sin. He comes to forgive the sinner. His only interest is in the sinner. And so the so-called moral violations and all these violations, forget them! I’m not asking you to go through violations, but forget them. Everything will be wiped out, but everything. But it is my duty having heard the story and having proved it to tell you. For I am told through the confession of Paul, through the confession of Ezekiel, through the confession of Jesus, that if I don’t tell you what I know of God’s law, well then, your sin is upon my head. But if I tell you and you still do not believe me, you will die in your sins, but your blood will not be upon my head. So Paul said, I will tell them. I have declared the entire counsel of God to them, so I am innocent of their blood. Read it, the 20th chapter of Acts, the 26th through the 28th verses: I am innocent of their blood. I told them, they didn’t believe it, and I am innocent of their blood, for I declared the entire counsel of God to them.141 ¶27

Infinite states… A man falls into a state, so he’s in a state, but he is not the state. Take him out of the state by saying to him while he’s in the state, “What would you like?” He says, “I would like to be” completely opposite to the state he’s in. But he names the state that he would like to enter, and you put him into that state by asking yourself, What would it be like were it true that he now . . . and you name the thing that he would like to be. Then, as you name it to yourself, you see the man as he would be seen were it true. Then you remain faithful, leaving him just where he is, but you remain faithful to this concept that you hold of him, and he comes out of it. On reflection, he may say, “It would have happened anyway.” Perfectly all right, you know how it happened. So you tell every being in the world the story if you have the chance to tell them, and telling them, it’s entirely up to them. They either believe it or disbelieve it.141 ¶28

As we are told, “If you do not believe that I am he, you die in your sins.” Read it carefully in the 8th of John, “If you do not believe that I am he.” Well, those who read it, you might think a man is telling you that I am God and you are not. If you don’t believe that I am God and you are not, well then, you die in your sins. That’s not it at all. The whole story is taking place in the soul of man. If you don’t believe that yourself saying “I am” is the being that you would be, well then, remain as you are and die in that limited state. That’s the story. So, “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins.”141 ¶29

Now, he tells you the truth: “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” And they complain, “Well, we are free.” Here they are enslaved, and they thought they were free. That’s the whole vast world; you and I say, “We’re Americans. We’re free!” Can’t pay rent, to what state are we free? Can’t buy the soup, to what state are we free? By saying that I’m an American? These are all words. I must be free to move across this world. I can only be free if I know the art of forgiving sin, and the only one who can forgive sin is God, and God’s name is I AM.141 ¶30

In this world today, right in our wonderful land, there are hundreds of thousands who are imprisoned physically, but they are Americans. There are hundreds of thousands; in fact, they said six million who are unemployed, who can’t pay the rent. Free? They’re Americans. I say, go tell every being in the world of the story of God, as told us in both Old and New Testament, and set them free. They can be free if they know who they are. There isn’t one being in jail tonight who if you ask him “Who are you?” before he tells you the name says, “I am John.” I am John what? “I am John Smith. I am so many years old.” But before all these things, he tells you “I am.”141 ¶31

For I have seen this; you see, it frightens people. As you’re told in that 9th chapter of the Book of Matthew, they were frightened: “When they saw what happened, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.” In San Francisco, when I told this story, a lady sat in my audience who had just received notice from the army that her brother had been tried, court-martialed, and sentenced to six month’s hard labor. She went home and said, “If this man is telling the truth, I can set my brother free.” She sat upstairs in her apartment. She had to go down the stairs to the door if anyone came to it. And sitting alone upstairs, she lost herself in this imaginal state that the bell was ringing, and she ran down the stairs, threw the door open, and embraced a brother who was waiting there. And she did it. And she did it. For one solid week, she sat there in the morning when she had breakfast and imagined that the bell was ringing, and she ran mentally down the stairs, threw the door open, and saw her brother; and she embraced him. The next Sunday morning, before she came to my meeting, it happened. And when she came to my meeting, she couldn’t restrain herself any longer; she couldn’t restrain the impulse to rise. She jumped up in the audience, a thousand people present, and she jumped up and said, “I must tell this story.” And she told her story of redeeming and setting free her brother. He was honorably discharged. Although he had been court-martialed and sentenced to six month’s hard labor, it was retried, and he was honorably discharged, and he came home that Sunday morning, one week later.141 ¶32

I say everyone can be forgiven. He’s not the same being that he was. Whatever he did to warrant the court-martial, why must he, so called, pay the last ounce? If she could redeem him by pulling him out of that state that caused him to do whatever he did, he’s not the same person. If I pull out of a state into another state… if I had tonight someone that was a horrible beast in my world but I determined to make him a loving, kind person in my world, and then he comes into my world and he demonstrates his kindness by his acts, by everything; he isn’t the same being he was when I disliked him. The same immortal soul, but he’s in a different state. Formerly I was judging the state. But I keep him in that state and make him pay a price that only belongs to that state? You see, there is such a thing in this world as God’s mercy. All sins must be expiated unless God intervenes and is merciful. Well, you are God; you can intervene. He gave it to you. Only God can forgive sin and you could forgive sin; therefore, are you not he? And God is merciful. But can’t you be merciful and completely transform any being in this world? Oh, what a thrill it is to be able to transform a being and see them differently at the end of a little while! So I ask you to try it, just try it. And you will share with me your good news and tell me how you’ve done it. It works, may I tell you it doesn’t fail. It can’t fail.141 ¶33

But believe that statement in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses,” for today we trespass; we actually trespass. We heard a rumor and we got off the beam and we simply went upon the other land, as it were. We see the sign No Trespassing all over the place, and we step on the other fellow’s land; well, that’s the way we trespass: we step upon it. Don’t! No matter what you hear of anyone, just have no ears to hear it if it is not something that is lovely. Because they’re only discussing a state, and they’re seeing that being in a state. So just don’t listen to it. Pull everyone out. But don’t forget to pull yourself. Put yourself right into the most glorious part in this world and be successful. Not a thing wrong with being happy, being successful, and being wanted, one who contributes to the world’s good. You try it. I promise you it will not fail you. And then do me a favor and share with the platform your success that I, in turn, may share with those what happened to you.141 ¶34

“Neville, may I say something? Many years ago, in New York City, the old [...] church, and I was very, very new in all of this. I would sit there and listen to you, and I was going through a very, very dark picture. Only the soul listened to the good news of the kingdom. I had a son that was in the service at that time, and how it was not a crime or anything like that, but it was a very, very dark picture. It looked so dark. Well, it was one of the things where it seemed that everything wrong happened to him besides the fact that he had [...] and everything else. But he was on a ship that was sunk, and everything was wrong. I asked you about it one evening, and you said, ‘Will you let me hear good news of his deliverance?’” Of course, I was overjoyed. “And I sat for one day… on George Washington’s birthday, I got up early in the morning, and all day long I just sat there and I did just what you told me to do, to hear this good news. I hadn’t seen my son for three years. Every time I’d get a letter from him, it used to—well, I’d almost quiver all over. He was ready to commit suicide, and the boys were leaving the ship, and everything was, well, in a condition that was almost impossible for any human to take. And I sat there all that day knowing and knowing and knowing and feeling just the truth that you had told me to try to impart to myself—when all of a sudden, something happened and such a thrill, a joy went over me, and I cried with gratitude. The next day, I received a letter from him, and it was another one of these indigo letters and I could look on it and destroy it and just laugh because it doesn’t mean anything. Within four days, I received a cablegram saying that he was coming in on a luxury liner and was coming into the States, returning home.”141 ¶35

Thank you, my dear. “I’ll never forget you, Neville Goddard. You don’t remember me, but I’ll never forget you.” May I tell you, thank you! It doesn’t fail!141 ¶36

Tonight’s subject is in the form of a question, “Is Christ your Imagination?” When we ask the question, we expect the answer in terms of our current background of thought, and quite often, that is not adequate to frame the answer. But I’m asking the question, and in order to answer myself, I should really clarify the terms Imagination and Christ. I think there would be no problem tonight if I define, say, Imagination. I think you will agree with me. But you may not agree with me when I define Christ. If I say to you that Imagination is the power of pre-deforming mental images, you wouldn’t quarrel with that, the power that pre-deforms mental images. Sitting here tonight, you can think of anything and see it mentally. You may not see it as graphically as you see it in the present forms in the room at the moment, but you could see it vividly in the mind’s eye and discriminate. Think of a tree and think of a horse, and you don’t think that one is the other. They are two separate objects in your mind’s eye. Well, that’s the power of Imagination.139 ¶1

But when it comes to Christ—and there are hundreds of millions in the world who call themselves Christians—the very use of the word instantly conjures in the mind’s eye a person. They think of Christ as a person, and no two have the same mental picture of this person. I know many, many years ago, in New York City, this French artist went to the library on Forty-second Street and brought up forty-six different pictures of Christ and threw them on the screen with his little lantern. No two were alike, and each artist claimed that this was an inspired picture and it was presented to him, and he painted the picture. There were blond and blue-eyed pictures; dark swarthy skin; there were those with a very black skin. There were forty-six pictures all projected as so-called originals. So man has been conditioned to believe that Christ is a person.139 ¶2

So I ask the question, “Is Christ your Imagination?” Can I personify Imagination? I will. But let us go back to the book, the Bible. What does the Bible say of Christ? Here, in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the 1st chapter, the 23rd and 24th verses—I’ll just give you the highlights. It is, “Christ, the power and the wisdom of God.” He defines Christ as the power and the wisdom of God. In the 1st chapter of the Book of John, which brings Christology to its height as far as the Bible goes, there is no single book that takes this secret of Christ and brings it to the heights as you’ll find in the Gospel of John. So in the gospel of John speaking now of this presence that was with God—his meaning, his power—that by him—now he personifies it—“by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made.” It’s the power, and yet it is wisdom, for all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. So here is a creative power.139 ¶3

If I take that now and analyze myself with another word from Paul, this time he goes to the end of his second letter to the Corinthians, and he calls upon all of us who would read that letter: “Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” Now here I’m told all things were made by him; he is the power and the wisdom, he is the power of God and the wisdom of God. But every attribute of God is personified, every attribute. And so his power is personified; and may I confess that I have seen that power, and it is a man. I have seen that wisdom, and it is a man. And when you stand in the presence of that personified aspect of infinite being, you know you are standing in the presence of infinite might. It’s not just power; it’s almightiness. You stand in the presence, and yet it’s man. So here he calls it the power and wisdom.139 ¶4

Now he asks me, asks you who read his letter to test ourselves. “Test yourselves”—this is the 13th chapter, the 5th verse of 2nd Corinthians—“Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee,” and he made all these things? Well, then, let us put him to the test in us. I say he is our Imagination. That’s the power; that’s the creative power of the universe. Look around the world. Do you know of anything in the world of man that man has created, from the clothes that he wears to the homes that he inhabits, that wasn’t first imagined? Do you know of anything in this world that is now proved as fact, as a concrete reality, that wasn’t first imagined—only imagined—and then externalized? Yes, using hands, using implements of the world, but it first began as an image. And an image is simply the product of this pre-deforming, image-making faculty in man, which is man’s Imagination. So if all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made, I can’t come to any conclusion other than the fact that Christ of scripture is my Imagination.139 ¶5

Now, who is Jesus? If Christ is the power and the wisdom of God, and God sunk himself in us, that was his sacrifice. He actually became us that we may live. For were it not for this sacrifice of God to actually limit himself to the state called man, man would, like the earth, wear out like a garment. As we’re told in the 51st chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “Lift up your eyes into the heavens, and look down to the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke and the earth will wear out like a garment, and they who dwell upon it will do likewise; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never have an end.” My salvation will be forever. Well, that word salvation means Jesus; the word Jesus is “Jehovah saves.” That’s salvation; that is forever. Were it not that God became man that man may become God, and he would save man and lift him up to immortality because the promise is that earth will wear out like a garment. Our scientists tell us today that the sun is melting in radiation, and it took unnumbered billions of years if it started the process of melting; no matter how long it takes, it has an end; and with its end, we have our end as part of the system. So we, walking the earth, all would have the end. So to stop that process of bringing man to an end, “My salvation will be forever and my deliverance will never have an end.” So God became man that man may become God.139 ¶6

In becoming man, and God is the only creative power in the world, what in me creates? My Imagination. I may not have the talent to put it on paper. I may not have the ability to execute it as great artists who did it, but I can imagine it. I can imagine the book. I can imagine the joy of having a book. I can imagine a picture. Without being an artist I can dream. And I cannot conceive of a picture that a man can paint on canvas that’s more alive than my dream, and yet I can’t put a thing on canvas. But I go to sleep, and I can dream. What is doing it? It’s just my Imagination. And here, when I lose the conscious faculty, this restricted area, I can actually dream, dream as no artist in the world can paint. Put color upon it, put motion upon it, and have the most wonderful drama. And that’s my Imagination.139 ¶7

But now, this is not only the power and the wisdom of God. In the greatest of all the New Testament, which is John, John does not emphasize the power. He states in the beginning, yes, he declares Christ as power, but the emphasis is not on power; it’s on redemption and revelation. Revelation, in John’s gospel, is an act of God in self-revealing. So in the very first chapter now he tells us what this power will do for us. First of all, there are two endings to John. Let us take the real ending, which is the twentieth chapter, the first ending. Whoever the writer is who calls himself John, “Now Jesus did many other signs that are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, and believing have life in his name.” He is the power and the wisdom of God, that’s what the author is telling us in the very end. Many signs he did, but in spite of the number of the signs and the character of the signs, it did not evoke faith. And the whole teaching of the gospel of John is based upon faith and unbelief in him, either one or the other. I have faith in him, or you disbelieve him. Few believed him, few, we are told; even among the disciples, only a few believed, and they imperfectly.139 ¶8

Well now, who is Jesus? If Christ is the power and the wisdom, but now who is Jesus? So here we have this wonderful thought as expressed in the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Though he was in the form of God, he did not consider that he should be equal with God as something to be grasped, but he emptied himself, and took upon himself the form of a slave, being born in the form of man”—that identifies man with a slave, every man—“And being found in the fashion, human fashion, he humbled himself and became obedient even unto death, death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name.” Not the indefinite article, the definite, “given him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord, the glory of God.” He gave him the name that is above every name, and at that name, every power in the world must bend. It’s the name of names. That’s the name called Jesus—but this is Jehovah—Jesus simply is “Jehovah saves.” Every child born of woman in this world will one day wear that name. There’s only one name, only one being—Jesus. You go through the same story as told us in the gospels, everyone will. And when he passes through this series of events outlined in the gospels, that name is conferred, conferred on the risen Christ. That power that is latent in man—that’s man’s Imagination—when it’s lifted, on that risen Christ, the name Jesus, the divine name Jesus, is conferred. And that individual then enters a new age, an entirely different age, an age that is immortal, an age that is eternal, because until the end of that age, we are still subject to being worn out like a garment, as told us in the fifty-first of Isaiah.139 ¶9

So everyone, moving on the wheel that is being worn out, wearing out the garment, and vanishing like smoke [...] heaven. But not one will fail, for God redeems us. God resurrects us one after the other, lifted up, and confers on that risen Christ the name, the name Jesus. So you’re told, in the end, they looked up, and there was Jesus only.139 ¶10

When Blake was asked quite innocently but in a serious vein, “What do you think of Jesus?” Without batting an eye, Blake replied, “Jesus is the only God” and then hastened to add, “But so am I, and so are you.” So in the end, all receive the name, where the power called Christ in man is lifted up, lifted up so the whole vast wonderful being that was sunk in man is now awake.139 ¶11

What that body will look like, I can’t describe it to anyone. I can’t find words to describe the glory that is yours, but everyone. It certainly isn’t this I am [...], yet I will know you and you will know me in eternity. But for all the sameness of identity, where we actually know each other, there will be a radical discontinuity of form. Not the form that I now wear and walk here this day and have been wearing for the last fifty-eight years, not this form. But identity, yes, you’ll know me. But how to display the glory of the being that you are when you’re resurrected?139 ¶12

Now, this is shown us by the Sadducee, who does not believe in the resurrection. They are the modern scientists. The Sadducees of 2,000 years ago were the wise men; the Pharisees were the priesthood of the world. The Sadducees were the intellectual giants of that day; and they, any more than today, could believe in not even survival, far less resurrection. Like today, the world puts the two words together, and they think of survival as resurrection, and they are not. Survival is continuity; resurrection is discontinuity—you leave the field completely and enter the world of eternity. So they asked the question, based upon the law of Moses, and Moses said, If a man married, died, leaving no issue, and has a brother, the brother should marry the widow. And if he dies leaving no issue and has a brother, he should take the widow, to raise up seed for his brother. Well, there was a man who married, and he was one of seven brothers, and he died without issue. The second married her, but he died. The third married her and he died. Finally, seven brothers married her and left no issue, and finally she died. So, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” It was a bait, because they did not believe in the resurrection. And he said to them, “You do not know the scriptures. For the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age, to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die again, for now they have become sons of God and sons of the resurrection”. They are completely above the organization of sex. What we call sex here, these garments of sex are shadows thrown by this fabulous being above.139 ¶13

And the body that you really have, as you’re told, I quoted earlier, Being in the form of God, he didn’t consider equality a thing to grasp, but emptied himself of that form and took upon himself the form of a slave; and being born in the form of man, didn’t think it strange, humbled himself in the image of a man. And then, finding himself with all the limitations of man, all the weaknesses of man, everything that is man, then God exalted him at the end when he resurrected him, and gave him the name. That name is conferred only at resurrection. So here, everyone will get it, for everyone will be resurrected. Then you will not be wearing this. These bodies, wonderful as they are for us, filled with all the passions of the world, that’s all wonderful, but it’s not the body that you will wear. You will be completely above the organization of sex. No need for this kind of creativity. Imagination will be completely awake and you create at will. Your imaginal act will be an immediate objective fact. What we call reality today, all this fabulous world of ours—may I tell you, and I’ve seen it—it is all Imagination. When it has played its part and God has completed his purpose, which is to bring forth from us himself and make us all God with him, then these garments, made up of all the elements that seem so permanent and so wonderful, they will vanish like smoke. Vanish like smoke. There isn’t an element that wasn’t brought into being by the creative power of God, by his own wonderful divine imagining, and it’s sustained in being because he sustains it by his imaginal acts. When he ceases that imaginal act, all the elements will melt, all vanish; and the world will be as though it never existed. But you and I will be lifted up above it all into an entirely different world, an eternal world.139 ¶14

So is Christ your Imagination? I say Christ is the power and the wisdom of God, and this power and this wisdom create everything in the world. I can trace to my own being an imaginal act that became fact; then I repeated it and it becomes fact. But if I can repeat it and repeat it and these imaginal acts externalize themselves in fact, then I’ve found him. I have found that power in myself. Well, the Bible calls it Christ, and personifies it and speaks of the presence of a man, and that man is Jesus. Jesus Christ is simply the resurrected being that is God now because he’s resurrected the power within him, which is Christ, and that’s Jesus Christ. Now he’s called the Lord, and everything should bow before him when it happens.139 ¶15

Well, I say to you, the day will come, you will have the experience and you’ll be startled. No one’s going to believe you, may I tell you. They aren’t going to believe you any more than they believed that first person to whom it happened. He is the first that rose from the dead, but no one believed him. Up to the very end, who would believe the story? They were looking for a different kind of Messiah, a conquering hero that would come just like a man, out of some glorious background of warriors, and then conquer the enemy of Israel and then lead Israel to some victorious end. And they always look for that kind of a Messiah. We have them all over the world today, these false Messiahs who promise their nations to lead them to some victory, even though a little temporary victory. That’s not Messiah. Messiah hasn’t a thing to do with this world. He’s resurrected out of this world. This world is vanishing; this world is wearing out just like a garment.139 ¶16

So Christ in man is the power and the wisdom, and when in that man, that Imagination becomes alert because he exercised it lovingly. So if I read John correctly, not only my salvation is dependent on it, I must actually believe in him. Well, who is this being? My own Imagination. If I don’t believe in my Imagination and test it, even though I fail, well, then I don’t believe in Christ. For Christ is really my Imagination, your Imagination. So you imagine something lovely of another, and you don’t believe in the reality of that imaginal act, you don’t believe in Christ. So you go to church every day and give ten percent of your income to the church of your choice—all these things are lovely, therefore, if you feel that way about it, give them—but that’s not Christ. That’s not believing in Christ. To believe in Christ: If you see someone in this world and have a sweet feeling toward that one, that he hasn’t yet realized something lovely, something without his knowledge, and then represent him to yourself as though it were true, and believe in the reality of what you’ve done mentally. Believe in it; believe in Christ, for all things are possible to Christ. And so bring him before your mind’s eye and see him as he would like to be seen by himself, as he would like the world to see him. But you do it, and then you believe in the reality of what you have done. That’s believing in Christ.139 ¶17

And may I tell you, you’ll be surprised beyond measure how it works. At that very moment, because all things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle, at that very moment that you interfere with his life, you reshuffle the entire deck, and all things will completely rearrange to mirror the change that is going to take place in him. And everyone in this world who can aid that change will be used to bring about that change, without their knowledge and without their consent. You don’t need the consent of any being in the world. If they can be used to externalize what you have imagined, they’ll be used. So leave them alone and simply imagine the best of every person in this world, and believe in what you have done, and you are believing in Christ.139 ¶18

When you least expect it, because you believe in him, then God resurrects you, then you are lifted up and you stand bewildered when you see what God did for you. Of everything claimed of him that you thought, that your mother taught you as mine taught me, happened 2,000 years ago, and it is happening. It didn’t stop. You go back and read the Bible, and here we are told in Paul’s letters to Timothy, “Those who teach that the resurrection is past are misleading the faithful.” Those who teach it’s past, that it’s over, they are deceiving. It isn’t past. It took place in one, and it’s taking place in unnumbered. But it’s taking place; it isn’t over. The crucifixion is over, yes, but not the resurrection. The resurrection is taking place in everyone that is called and lifted up. And so, as we are called, God’s mightiest act is performed, and we’re lifted up, and pass through the series of events leading into the kingdom of heaven, although we seemingly remain here still wearing this garment for a little short while. The garment will be shown you that you’ll occupy, and you can’t describe it to anyone even to your own satisfaction. It’s such a living thing, it’s so luminous, and it’s such light, like the rainbow. And you can’t describe it to the satisfaction of any being in this world who lives only in terms of a God of the flesh.139 ¶19

Now we are told—and you read it in the 1st chapter of John, the 11th through the 13th verses—for he’s speaking of an entirely different kind of a birth. “Those who believe in his name will be born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Not born in any way that this body is born. This was born just as you were born from the womb of woman, flesh and blood. But flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, only Spirit. So this is going to be born not as this was born. It’s born differently: not of blood nor the will of the flesh, and not of any human passion nor of the will of man of human parentage but of God. And may I tell you, when you are born you are self-begotten. You have actually no parents; you are self-begotten. You come right out of a grave, the mystery of the grain of wheat that falls into the ground. If it doesn’t fall into the ground, it remains alone. If it falls into the ground, it bears much fruit, the mystery of life through death. For God died, actually died, to become you and to become me. And God is divine Imagination. He limits himself to the very limit of contraction, called human Imagination and actually dies in the sense that all the power and all the memory of his glorious being had to be completely forgotten. So that cry on the cross is true, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He, himself, is crying out; because he so completely gave himself up, he suffers from total amnesia, complete forgetfulness of his divinity, as he became us. And that was what? Divine imagining becoming human imagining, and then we building our little world.139 ¶20

Now [...] to many of us, it’s so different, and the power we exercise is so fragile compared to that same power when it’s raised up, when lifted up, and the name, this great name, above all names, is conferred upon us. And the day will come, without loss of identity, that you will bear the name Jesus, no loss of identity. Everyone is destined to be Christ Jesus, that risen power with the name, exercising infinite power, without loss of identity. So we all know each other and all glorified, but everyone. There is no limitation of the gift; some exercise it more than others, but certainly the gift is the same, the gift of Christ Jesus.139 ¶21

So my question, as far as I am personally concerned, “Is Christ your Imagination?” I said yes. And yet you’re limited only to power and wisdom, for the emphasis is not on power and wisdom, it’s on redemption, revelation. And so he reveals himself. In that same first chapter of the prologue—the first eighteen verses, not a prologue—and the very last, the eighteenth verse, he shows you the revelation: “No man has seen God at any time, but the Son, in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” No one has seen him, but in the bosom of the Father, there’s a Son and the Son reveals the Father. Then we are told in the tenth of Luke, “No one knows the Son except the Father; no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” There will come that moment in time when the Son reveals you, and you will know your name is Jesus, Jesus Christ the Lord. For the Son is going to call you “my lord” and actually going to call you his Father, his Lord, and the Rock of his salvation; and then you will know who you are. I could tell you from now to the ends of time, but it can’t carry the conviction that the experience would carry when it happens. When it happens to you, it will make no difference to you if all the wise people in the world rose in opposition and told you that you’re suffering from some grand hallucination. It would make no difference whatsoever. This is revelation, and the whole thing is lifted, the veil is lifted; and now you know why you couldn’t see the face of the Father. You can see him only reflected in the Son. There was no mirror to reflect it but the Son. Can’t see your face. You go to a mirror on earth, but that’s not the face. And you’ll only know your face in the beauty of your Son. That Son can’t be described. He’s so beautiful. When you look at him, you sit there amazed that you would produce such beauty. It took the Son to reveal the beauty of the Father, for the Father is invisible, and yet more real than the whole vast world that seems so real that is slowly vanishing like smoke and wearing out like a garment.139 ¶22

So everyone in the world is destined to bear the name of Christ Jesus the Lord but everyone. And all will then be the first fruit of those who slept because it’s only God resurrecting himself. All will be resurrected, all individualized, and all one. All being the Father of the same beautiful Son, reflecting himself, and yet he’s individualized.139 ¶23

So you try this tonight. I told a friend of mine before taking the platform that many years ago, in the war, I was invited to go through this huge plant, Alyce Chalmers. The man who was the head of the chemical department, Professor Inmar, came to my lectures. And in my lecture, I spoke of a certain motion in time that produced physical results. If I could move forward in time and imagine something taking place at that moment in time, and open my eyes upon this world to find that it was not that time at all, I came back here. But, strangely enough, I would then be led across a series of events, which I did not consciously devise and as I moved across this series of events, I came upon what I had only imagined that I had done at a point in time. He said, “That can’t work, Neville. After all, I am a chemist, I am a physicist, and we have a laboratory bigger than this room, where there were unnumbered little vials, little bottles of water. For they make these huge, big turbines; and all over the world, they’re shipped. And as the water comes down the rivers, they’re [...] differs with chemicals because the world differs. And so, certain turbines were caking, enormous caking on the inside, so this was a problem. They would send samples of water, and all day long, he analyzed the sample of water and then he would give the solution. Because you can’t change the water, the water is coming through certain mineral deposits. And so it’s a very exciting thing to sit down and analyze these little sample things of water.” And they would write back to Australia, New Zealand, all over the world and suggest something to do to prolong the life of the turbine.139 ¶24

And then he took me into a thing and he showed me what they used in the lab and he called it entropy. He said that we have to have this in every lab in the world. And then he explained to me that entropy is based upon the unalterable past. Can’t change the past, said he; the past is unalterable. So you make a test and then you move forward; you know what you’ve done, and that is so. If you repeat that test, the result is the same under the same conditions. And so Larry said, this is something that we know, and we’re all scientists. And you come with this crazy idea? I can’t see how it could fit in with what we know about entropy. Well, he explained entropy for me.139 ¶25

Then he said, “Of course, the future is in a state of flux. We do not believe in the future as something existing. It doesn’t exist. We simply weave these strands, as it were, likening the whole thing to a rope—the past is already woven, and the future not yet woven, and we are weaving it moment by moment as we go forward to the future.” And I said, “But I went forward to the future that you say doesn’t exist and I wove it there. And then whatever I did, I know it worked because when I came back here, I moved across a bridge of incidence that led me to what I wove before I arrived there.”139 ¶26

Well, he didn’t believe that, but a very sweet man, an honest man. And then, about two months later, I was in New York City, and he sent me this wonderful clipping from the Science Newsletter, the story which I told you the last evening you were here, which was the story of the positron. In his letter to me, he apologized for taking that adamant position that he did as a scientist. For he said, here one far greater than I am, Professor Feynman, has just delivered this lecture at Cornell University wherein he makes these fantastic claims for a little particle just discovered, that is, a few years before, called the positron, and the same behavior of the positron, that it can meet itself coming back from where it hasn’t been. And so he said, “Now I apologize because here is the behavior of the positron. It starts from where it hasn’t been and speeds to where it was an instant ago, arriving there it is bounced so hard it’s time sense is reversed, and then it moves back to where it hasn’t been.”139 ¶27

Now these are the words of Professor Feynman. And so I would say it in my own simple way. I close my eyes on the now: for today’s the twenty-second, so it’s the twenty-second, and not a thing happened that I wanted today. So it’s the twenty-second. This is the first of April; make it All Fools’ Day, and so as to the calendar, it’s All Fools’ Day, the first of April, and then I feel emotionally excited because something just happened, and it’s so altogether wonderful I could not have foreseen back on the twenty-second of March how it could have worked. But it has worked! Look! It’s the first of April and it worked. Then I open my eyes; I’m back on the twenty-second of March. Not a thing has worked. But all of a sudden, I move forward the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth, and things begin to change. When I get to the first, it has worked!139 ¶28

Now, he put it in his own wonderful technical language and called it the positron. And then he also gave me this principle of entropy. But I never heard the word before. Entropy is the unalterable past, which you must have in the laboratory, or else it would be all confused. You couldn’t make any tests and be sure that you could repeat it. It’s a fixed fact.139 ¶29

Well, I said, as far as I am concerned, I knew a point in time, if you dwell in the future as though it were true and shocked myself so severely when I opened my eyes to think that I’m not there. It’s a little trick that my old friend Abdullah taught me in New York City. I had a telephone that I couldn’t possibly see, unless I could see around corners. If I sat in my living room, I couldn’t possibly see where my telephone was. It was down the hallway, and I couldn’t look around a corner unless I got off the chair and looked around the corner. But I would sit in my living room in my big easy chair, assume that I was sitting at the telephone, and then I would think of the living room and see that chair, on which physically I sat, and see it empty. Then I would, while at that place, open my eyes and feel myself bounce this way. Then I knew that man was where he was in Imagination, that man being all Imagination, he had to be wherever he was in Imagination. And so in that twinkle of an eye you would feel a change, a motion. That was a little exercise that old Ab taught me.139 ¶30

So try it now on other things, more important than that. Do that just as an exercise and feel it. Now, try it in other things. I began to try it and things worked. Well now, if we have evidence for a thing, what our scientists think or wish about the matter is nothing to the point, is it? If I can produce the evidence for anything in this world, although I can’t explain it, if I can produce the evidence, what anyone thinks about it or even wishes for it is not to the point.139 ¶31

So I ask that you try it and see if Christ, as stated in that wonderful John 1:3, is the creator of everything in this world. “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” All right, let him try this and see if you don’t come to the conclusion that if that is true, Christ, that is called the power of God and wisdom of God, is not your Imagination. I don’t see how you can come to any other conclusion than that—if he is the creator of all things; and you set a goal, and without raising a finger to make it so, it becomes so, because you know what you did in Imagination—then you go right back to the cause, and the cause was your imaginal act. And if Christ does everything, and you know what you did, then you’ve found him. You’ve found him as your own wonderful human Imagination.139 ¶32

And the day will come as you trust him and believe in him and test him and bring these things to pass, when you least expect it, [...] the resurrection. And that power will rise within you, and then you’ll move into a world completely subject to your imaginative power. And although you come back here to wear this garment for a little while, still limited; and with all the weaknesses of the flesh, you know when you put it down you are already numbered among those who are resurrected from the dead, dying no more, for now you are the son of God. And the Son of God is one with God, for the Son of God is also God the Son. And he said, “I and my Father are one.” Even though my Father is greater than I, we are one, one in nature. And so you’ll be resurrected. But trust in him. It seems we have our salvation, and its origin in God’s faith, but it’s bestowed in proportion to our faith in him. And we have found him to be our own wonderful human Imagination. Now let us go into the Silence.139 ¶33