Note: Time travel [...] “In these last days by his Son.”138 ¶1

I know from my own personal experience across this country that scientists and philosophers that I meet or are introduced to me as brilliant minds are unwilling to accept as explanation anything beyond and above this world of nature. I begin to discuss with them my personal mystical experiences; they want me to bring it down to this world—I’m not a physicist, I’m not a scientist, and I’m not a philosopher—but bring it down and explain to them in terms of the structure of this world. So I can’t do it. I can only tell what has happened to me.138 ¶2

So tonight’s subject, which is “In these last days by his Son,” and this is taken from the epistle to the Hebrews. The author is unknown, it’s unsigned, and it’s really not addressed to anyone in particular. He doesn’t address it to the Corinthians, or this or the other; it’s simply an epistle to the Hebrews. And so, we are the Hebrews; he’s addressing it to us. This one begins his letter: “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.”138 ¶3

A few verses on, which is the fifth verse, he pinpoints the Son by quoting scripture. For this author bases his entire argument upon scripture, which he quotes or refers to in every chapter. So in the fifth verse, he pinpoints the Son for us by quoting scripture. He’s trying to prove to his own satisfaction the superiority of man over everything in the world, for man bears the very stamp of the nature of God; he makes that plain. And now he comes to this quote, and he quotes for us first the 7th verse of the 2nd chapter of Psalms. He asks the question, “To what angel did God ever say, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee’?” Or again, now he quotes 2nd Samuel, the 7th chapter, the 14th verse, so he makes the statement, [...] again, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son.” Now, these two are addressed—and anyone reading the Bible can see it—these are addressed to David. So he pinpoints the Son by whom he will speak in these last days.138 ¶4

Now this is the letter to the Hebrews. Now how did he speak in many and various ways to our fathers by the prophets? But first, the nineteenth Psalm: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” I think anyone who has ever seen the heavens, even with the naked eye, would see the glory of God. But when we ask the physicist to look at it through the mathematical eye, trained as they are with the aid of telescopes, what a joy would be ours were we to look at it through that eye. But then we come down to the geophysicist, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. And here we see this fantastic world in which we live today.138 ¶5

Because here, only in our century, here, a young man in 1905 had a different concept of the world; his name was Einstein—an entirely different concept of the structure of this world—and gave us his famous equation. It startled the physicists of the day, and it still startles them, but we’re living in that world today, a world of nuclear energy. And he gave that to us in 1905.138 ¶6

Here is a statement in Paul’s letters written 2,000 years ago. You read it in the the 1st chapter, the 20th verse of his letter to the Romans: “Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” Doesn’t mean the chair, this building, but the elements, the eternal elements of the world. “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” After 2,000 years, no one saw the structure of that basic brick of the world. But Einstein saw it and revealed it in his famous equation.138 ¶7

In 1928, Professor Dirac, studying his great theory, that is, Einstein’s theory of relativity, postulated the existence of a little particle that he named the positron. He said, “If the equation is true, this must exist.” But no one else heard of it; no one ever saw it. But he predicted the existence of that positron. Four years later, Professor Anderson proved it experimentally in his experiments with cosmic rays and had them photographed. When it first appeared, it disturbed our theoretical physicists. They never heard of it, they’d never seen one, and what to do with it? It completely upset all of their thinking concerning the structure of the universe. But now they saw it, and although they were skeptical when it was first told them by Professor Dirac, they could not now discount it. In great scientists and great physicists, they had to accept it, so they accepted it, but what to do with it? It was a great embarrassment. For this thing didn’t act like anything ever heard of by man before.138 ¶8

And so in 1949, another great theoretical physicist by the name of Feynman, he’s now at Cal Tech, and he wrote a paper on it that came out in the Physical Journal, a scientific journal. And this is what he said, “It’s a wrong-way electron. It’s upside down, so completely wrong-way its charge is positive instead of negative.” It’s an electron, but it’s completely opposite to all that they knew concerning the electron. Then he said, “When a speeding electron hits something, it is usually deflected and continues on its way. If it is hit too hard, its time sense is reversed, and then it moves backwards in time, and it is a positron.”138 ¶9

It goes backward in time. If I started from here to the end of the room, and someone got in my way and deflected me and then others got in my way and deflected me, at the end of an hour, by all of these detours I found myself back here, I still am not moving backward in time. I come back here in space, but I kept on moving in the right direction of time; an hour later, I’m still here. The clock didn’t go back to find me starting at eight and then finding me here at seven; they found me here at nine, with all my deflections. So an electron when speeding, if it hits something, it’s deflected but continues on its way. But if it’s hit too hard, its time sense is reversed, and it moves backward in time, something entirely different. And no one knew what to do with this [...].138 ¶10

For now we go back to the book of books, the Bible; and you listen to it carefully, for these are based upon my own experience. You’ve heard the story of the prodigal son, haven’t you? Every minister in the world has used it and tried to explain what it means, but I don’t think they come near the point. So a prodigal son went into a far country. One day, he became hungry; and when he was really starving, he came to himself and said to himself, “I’ll return. I’ll go back to my father’s home, for he has everything.” And so he made his journey back to his father’s home. The father seeing him afar off ran and met him and commanded the servants to bring the best robe, not just a robe but the best robe, and put it on him and give him a ring and put the ring on his hand—the symbol of authority, of power, and of a princely being forever—and put shoes upon his feet. “For this my son was dead and he’s alive again; he was lost and he’s found,” when he came to himself.138 ¶11

And may I tell you from experience that we’re all on a journey. I saw it, all of us moving in a negative direction, like the electron. An electron is a negative particle. It’s proceeding without noticing that it precedes, as we do. And here we move forward in one negative direction, regardless of all the details of life. So if today you’re disappointed, and you move all around and come back spatially to where you were, but you’re still moving negatively in the right direction, the clock didn’t turn back.138 ¶12

But there will come a moment in time that God will hit you and hit you so hard that you will jump back in time to the one thing that begins the whole vast unfolding of God’s wonderful play. For when I was struck, may I tell you, it’s an experience that no one can describe in words adequately. When you are struck from above, it’s a peculiar sensation—that you think you are going to die. This is it, there’s no possibility of coming out of this. But at that moment when you are struck, you are struck so hard that you are turned around, and you go back in time to an experience that took place—if today is 1963, 1,963 years ago. Were it l959, as it was in my case, l,959 years ago. And you jump back over that section of time, not space; and now instead of having heard of the story, you are the star in the drama and you enact the drama. You are the star performer of the entire play as you jump back in time.138 ¶13

And then here you move forward negatively with the whole vast world for another five months, and he hits you again. He hits you so hard that your time sense is reversed; and this time, you jump back not 2,000 years. You jump back 3,000 years and encounter a scene recorded 3,000 years ago. Suddenly, before your eyes comes his Son, and he speaks to you as your Son. You have no doubt in your mind who he is. The whole thing is so vividly clear to you and you’ve always known him. But you knew him negatively as you journeyed through these far, far countries over the ages. And then God hits you, and at intervals you jump back and jump back and jump back and enact positively God’s eternal drama.138 ¶14

So here, we are told this is a particle discovered only in the year 1928, postulated in ’28, discovered experimentally in l932. But God is one and his name is one: The first great commandment, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.” So God is one and his nature is one, so the physics of the mind cannot differ in any respect from the physics of the rest of nature. If the little particle behaves this way in this cloud chamber when they bombard it with cosmic rays and discover and photograph it, it cannot differ in any respect from that same particle in the mind of man.138 ¶15

So God and God alone knows how to hit that mind at a moment in the journey, as we journey forward into the far country. As we are struck at that moment, it is so intense we are turned around in time, not in space, and we move back across time in the twinkle of an eye as we encounter and begin to unfold God’s eternal drama.138 ¶16

So we are told in the 33rd chapter, read it from the 18th through the 25th verses of the Book of Exodus. Moses said to God, “Let me see thy glory” and God answered, “I will let my goodness pass before you… but my face you shall not see. I will cover you with my hand as I pass by; then I will take away my hand, and you will see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”138 ¶17

The face of God, everyone in the world would like to see the face of God. They would like to see the tomorrow—that’s the face of God. He shows you the back—his eternal play, all that is taking place. But everyone would like to see the face of God, and should they see the face of God, man uncivilized as he is would hurt man all the more.138 ¶18

I’ll give you a story. Seventeen years ago, I gave a Bible class in New York City. I give them here, but this was seventeen years ago. A couple flew in, or rather they came in—whether they came by plane or train, I do not know—but they came in from San Francisco. Checked in at the Plaza Hotel, where they had a suite of rooms and lived there for six weeks while they came to my Bible class. That’s not a pretty penny, may I tell you, when you check into the Plaza and take a suite of rooms. I learned afterward that they had nothing but money. They were millionaires on both sides; they had no children, were fabulously wealthy, and had this huge apartment in San Francisco up on Nob Hill. And then they had eight acres with the most fantastic home, which I saw on many occasions, here in the Holmby Hills. And so money meant nothing to them.138 ¶19

Well, what do you think he wanted in my Bible class? And this is a Bible class; he came all the way to New York City from San Francisco to attend my Bible class, he and his wife. No children. She had one brother who was one of the huge, big financial giants in Bay area, up in San Francisco, no children. They came from a family of no children, all of them, but all had millions. And she wanted more millions. He wanted to see the face of God: if he could only see tomorrow’s closing stock market quotations. And so he would sit in the hope. He read one of my books, which is now out of print and called Out of This World, in which I stated in this so-called Out of This World what someone could do. On the strength of that they came. Money meant nothing. If they could only find out the closing prices of the stock market on Wall Street twenty-four hours before, he could make another, what, 20 million in one day. He could sell short, he could depress the market, and he could raise it; he could do anything if he could only see the face of God.138 ¶20

But suppose he bought the paper that was printed twenty-four hours in advance and as he’s moving forward quickly toward the stock market quotations, his attention is arrested by a little notice on the obituary column, and it’s his. He could. He’s turning quickly to make another billion; and finally, his attention is arrested, and he reads his own obituary notice that is printed for the next day, but he reads it. What do you think would happen to him? He would die at that very moment. Well, that’s what he wanted to see, the face of God.138 ¶21

And yet I tell you it’s already done. For tomorrow is all done, yet you can modify and change within certain spheres. You can do it, but it’s done. Listen to these words, the 10th and 11th verses of the 1st chapter of Ecclesiastes: “Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? I tell you it has been before. But there’s no remembrance of former things, nor shall there be any remembrance of later things to come after among those who will follow.”138 ¶22

Man can’t believe that because he only has a memory of the past, and he can’t see the future until one day when he is struck hard enough for his time sense to be reversed, and then he goes back. And then everything said of God in that fantastic verse that’s recorded in the Book of Matthew and the Book of Luke he experiences. And now he knows who he is.138 ¶23

Then he is struck again, and he’s brought into the presence of the Son of God, as told you in the 1st chapter, the 5th verse of Hebrews by the two quotes. You can’t get it any clearer than the author—whoever he is, he’s the unknown author of the epistle to the Hebrews—when he quotes that 2nd chapter, the 7th verse of Psalms: “And to what angel did he ever say, ‘Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee’?” These words are addressed to David. Or again, “I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son.” These words are addressed to David.138 ¶24

I tell you David is humanity. The whole vast world—all races, all nations—altogether form David. But when you have the experience, all together are coalesced into one lad, and he’s David. The whole vast world of humanity is David, God’s only begotten Son. But when you have the experience of seeing God’s only begotten Son, you don’t see it as a nation, as races, one wonderful lad about twelve years old, and it’s the only David. And it’s your son.138 ¶25

So, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken unto us by a Son.” It’s the finality of God’s revelation to the individual when he speaks to that individual by his Son.138 ¶26

And when he speaks to him by his Son, it is then that God succeeded in giving himself to that individual. For he gave you his only begotten Son as your Son, so you are the father of God’s only begotten Son. And there’s nothing but God. So he gives you his Son, then you know you are truly the father, collectively, of humanity.138 ¶27

And what aspect of your own being you wouldn’t forgive? If this hand began to itch, it’s easier for me to take the hand, over here, and ease it, than to take the hand and compel it to release itself. It’s all part of my being. If my back began to itch and I can’t reach it with my hand, I will scratch it with the door, but it’s my back. So the whole vast world is my body and collectively they form one being, and that being is personified as David. And when you are struck hard enough to go back in time, you see it all as one man. It’s your Son, and he’s David.138 ¶28

So here, our scientists in this generation, in our generation, they have found this peculiar particle. Well, I am not a scientist, but I have found that I can use it in a way that maybe they will not admit, and you can use it. I was struck, and I jumped back in time 2,000 years in the twinkle of an eye after an enormous blow in my head delivered by God to have the experience as described in the Book of Luke. And then five months later, another blow, terrific blow, and I jumped back another thousand years in time, not in space; and then, four months later, another thousand years, where the stories are buried. It’s a true story of the brazen serpent. All of these are true, that man can only encounter, for they took place unnumbered thousand years ago. You encounter them, as the star of the role, as you move backward positively in time.138 ¶29

For we are all moving forward negatively, like sleepwalkers… forward. I saw it so vividly one night, that all of this enormous crowd moving toward some invisible Mecca. And yet that very moment, it was revealed to me that I would reach six hours. I didn’t know then my journey would be backward in time, for I was walking with them toward some invisible goal in the future, in the negative direction of time. And I had to reach six hours and go back in time, for God’s history is completed; it’s all done.138 ¶30

And man takes God’s eternal history, and he himself after his journey into a far country, like the prodigal son, and the prodigal son comes to himself because he was hungry. What is the hunger? Physical hunger? No. You’re told in the 8th chapter, 11th verse of the Book of Amos that “I will send a famine upon the land; it will not be a famine for food or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.”138 ¶31

When that famine comes to man, nothing in this world can satisfy that hunger but an experience of God, but nothing.138 ¶32

And so until that hunger comes, all right, we walk forward negatively, hoping we’ll see tomorrow that I could take advantage of my brother. But I can’t see tomorrow, not really.138 ¶33

But I’ll show you in a way how you can apply this same technique toward tomorrow. You can stand here today and assume that it is not this day, this month; you can assume it’s another day of this month, forward in time, or another month, and then in your mind’s eye build a world around you that would imply it is that day. You can go to the calendar in your mind’s eye and cross “this is the day.” Do anything to make it natural. When you make it natural to your mind’s eye, see that things are as you desire them to be on this day. Today is Tuesday. Suppose you went forward in time and this is now, say, not March but April. Go forward into April and take a day that would mean something to you, and see that what you want today, in the month of March on this day, you now realize. Look at the calendar, see it, and talk to your friends about your accomplishment. Then open your eyes, and you’re back on this day, Tuesday, on this day in the month of March. You were shocked when you came back to discover that here you are. You’re like someone else turned around, and now you move forward across a series of events leading up to that day in April. When you arrive there, things will be as now you’ve imagined them to be. That’s how you can use God’s law. That was only recently discovered in the negative world we call the world of nature. You try it.138 ¶34

When I first read with understanding the 14th chapter of John, something in the depth of my soul told me I could apply it in this manner and I did and it worked. Then I told my audience in New York City many, many years ago what I had proven to my satisfaction and asked them to join with me in an experiment.138 ¶35

A lady in the audience, a Mrs. Bower was her name, was a widow, and she had two homes in Brooklyn that were not in the best district to bring in money, but they were all the things that she had in this world, and no [...]. She wanted money to repair them. She couldn’t go to a bank and ask for a loan unless there were tenants.138 ¶36

This is what she did in the month of October, in the first week of October. She assumed it was—she named a date, the twenty-ninth of October—and they were completely rented. And she felt all that she would feel were it true that they were rented. Then she opened her eyes; it’s only the first week of October. By the twenty-ninth of October, every room in her two apartment buildings were rented. Every room was rented.138 ¶37

I said to her, “Mrs. Bower, why did you take the twenty-ninth of October? Is it an anniversary? Is there some reason for it?” She said, “No. I wanted to get a loan, but I couldn’t get a loan. I didn’t think I could, unless they were filled. So I wanted to get a loan on the first of November, so I took the twenty-ninth of October just to feel sure that if they were rented on the twenty-ninth of October, I could go to the bank on the first of November and get my loan.”138 ¶38

And by the twenty-ninth of October, every room was rented. She went forward in time and actually saw that it was the twenty-ninth of October. She opened her eye, and she bounced back to that day on the first week of October. She went back in time, not in space. Then she moved across a bridge of incidence, and people began to come in and rent the place, and they were all rented. So by the twenty-ninth of October, her two buildings were rented.138 ¶39

I discovered that by an experiment, just as Professor Anderson discovered the existence of the little positron that was mathematically predicted, for it fitted in with the theory of relativity. And so Professor Dirac discovered that if Einstein is correct in his theory, this thing must exist. But nobody wanted it. What to do with it? It was an embarrassment because everything about it was backward. It moved backward in time, where electrons always moved forward, as they should [...] electrons, in time.138 ¶40

So all of us are the electrons of God’s world, and we obey willingly; we move forward in time. We think we’re so free. We don’t know tomorrow is already completed. And we want to see the face of tomorrow, if it does exist; and God said, “No, you can’t see my face, but I’ll put my hand over you, and as I pass by I’ll take away my hand and you will see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”138 ¶41

And so he takes away the hand and shows the back, and the back is God’s eternal play. And man when he hits us over the head, we then, at that very moment, we move back, not in space, we move back in time and cover 2,000 years in the twinkle of an eye. But we think at that moment we are struck that we’re going to die. We think this is it.138 ¶42

But instead of dying, we go back and enact God’s wonderful drama, where the whole thing begins at that point in time. Then we have access to both the past and the future. Then he strikes us again and strikes us again. But every time he strikes us, just as we are told, an electron speeding if struck is deflected in a new direction but continues on its way in the right time direction. If it’s struck too hard, its time sense is reversed.138 ¶43

Now, this is what Professor Feynman concluded. It changed the entire concept of man’s picture of the world. Up until that moment in l932, people believed that the future is continuously developed out of the past, and we still do. The whole vast world stops and plans its future based upon that concept. He said, “No one now knowing the structure of the atom can hold that view. We must now believe the entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively.” I am quoting Professor Feynman. The entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively.138 ¶44

So if man could see as my two friends who came out from California to New York to take my course. If they could get their wish by taking my class—so they sat listening just for twenty-four hours to make more millions than they already possessed—then they would have seen the face of God. But you don’t see the face of God; you see the back. “I will show you my back; but the face you shall not see.”138 ¶45

And so he shows us that divine history is completed. And divine history begins with Christ Jesus and ends there too. Everything prior to that was all prophecy about him. So it begins there. And then he is the father of God’s only begotten Son, for the Son calls him Father in fulfillment of scripture. He is the one who ascended, in fulfillment of scripture again, in the Book of Exodus, where he ascended as the brazen serpent. And the whole thing unfolds backward in time. But when you move backward in time, you are positive; when you move forward in time, you’re negative.138 ¶46

And so the prodigal son goes forward in time into a far country until he becomes hungry and that hunger was for the word of God. At that moment, he was struck and returned to his father’s house; and he was given the best robe and the ring upon his hand to signify his princely power, forever in the kingdom of God, and shoes on his feet. Only slaves went without shoes, so the shoe was the symbol of sonship. But here he goes back into his father’s kingdom, and everyone will.138 ¶47

But collectively, humanity is David. When you are struck the second blow after you are born from above, you will encounter David in one piece, not scattered all over the world, personified before you as one heavenly boy. And he’s your son, and he calls you Father. You don’t ask anyone who he is; you know who he is.138 ¶48

The Father of David is I AM. In the Bible, he’s called Jesse, but the word Jesse in Hebrew means I AM, and God’s name is I AM. And Jesse has no forefather in spite of the Book of Ruth and the Book of Chronicles. These were later insertions as now admitted by all scholars. But Jesse has no forefather, just like Melchizedek, because God has no forefather. God has no origin outside of God.138 ¶49

And so when he calls you Father and his father is Jesse, you know who you are. And everyone will become that Jesse, that I AM, and all will be redeemed. All the races and nations of the world will one day look into the face in that second blow from God and see God’s only begotten son as his only Son.138 ¶50

So God speaks to man in the last days through his Son.138 ¶51

And so we have all the characters of the Bible; they’re all states. And the day will come that you’ll see how true this story is in spite of our scientists and our philosophers. And I know the arguments that I’ve had. If I tell them the story or they’ve read about it before I’ve met them, they invariably will ask me to give them some philosophical or physical reason for these things. Can’t do it. How can I do it? I can’t present anything known to science to support my claim. I can only do what the author of Hebrews did. His entire argument is supported by passages from scripture. He either quotes them or refers to them. In the [...] chapter of the thirteen chapters of the Book of Hebrews, he supports his theme by quoting scripture because as some wonderful rabbinical principle has it, according to this principle what is not written in scripture is nonexistent.138 ¶52

God’s play is over, God’s entire plan is over, and we’re on the journey. No matter where we are on that journey negatively, it doesn’t matter what’s happening to us at all. You’re struck, and when you’re struck, you go back to where the real play and start it from there. And the first is the birth. And then, it gives himself to you by giving you his Son. And then comes the great brazen serpent, which you are. And all these are backward in time.138 ¶53

So we’re all moving forward, seemingly in a negative state, just like the electron. And so we have money today and none tomorrow; we’re famous today and not known tomorrow, and all these things; doesn’t matter, it’s all a journey in a negative state like a sleepwalker.138 ¶54

And then who knows his great secret of elective love? So he hits this one tonight and that one tomorrow night. And each one as he hits it, there is a power. You can’t conceive of the power that is used to turn you around, but you are turned around in time, not in space. As he hits you, just like that little negative electron, if it’s struck too hard, it’s turned around in time and its time sense is reversed.138 ¶55

Now here is something that’s said of this little thing. “It starts from where it hasn’t been and speeds to where it was an instant ago.” Can you figure that? I’m quoting Professor Feynman: “It starts from where it hasn’t been and speeds to the place it was an instant ago.”138 ¶56

So I stand here, and I put myself elsewhere, say, New York City. I’m physically here, but now I will imagine that I’m in New York City. So I will think of California, and I will see it to the west of me 3,000 miles. If I really see it that way, I must be then 3,000 miles to the east of me. If I see it still under me, I haven’t succeeded in the journey. If I see it around me, I haven’t succeeded in the journey. But I will remain perfectly still until I can think of California and see it 3,000 miles to the west of me. Then I will hear and see my friends all around me in New York City, those I would know in New York City. And now, seeing it naturally where I’m shaking the hand of a friend who lives on, say Fifty-seventh Street, I’m embracing her; I know her so well and am talking to her. And while in the midst of talking to her, I open my eyes, and she isn’t there and I’m here, haven’t I started from where I haven’t been, and didn’t I speed to where I was an instant ago? And arriving there I am struck so hard, my time sense is reversed, and then I go back to where I haven’t been. Is that clear? I hope so.138 ¶57

That’s the story of this little particle. And remember what I told you earlier; God being one and his name one, well, that’s the first commandment: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” His name is one and they [...]; he is one and his name is one.138 ¶58

Therefore, the physics of the mind cannot differ in any respect from the physics of the rest of nature. If this is how the positron behaves, that an ordinary negative particle known as the electron, if it’s hit too hard, its time sense is reversed and then it moves backward in time. Is that clear?138 ¶59

Well, now, it cannot differ from the structure of your mind. You can put yourself any place in this world and make it natural, make it real; and when you make it natural and make it real, suddenly you open your eyes, and you aren’t there, you’re back where you were. So you start from where you haven’t been and speed to where you were an instant ago. Arriving there, you’re bumped so hard your time sense is now turned around, and now you move negatively across a series of events leading up to where you had been only in your consciousness, only in your Imagination. I’ve done it, it works.138 ¶60

And don’t be concerned about losing your mind. Because if you read the modern scientific journals, you would think they’re stark mad if you could follow them. Luckily, you can’t follow it. But these are men who live in an entirely different world, especially the great theoretical physicists—men who are quite willing not to come down into the practical world and execute their dream, but just simply to dream. And when you read their papers, you think they’re completely mad.138 ¶61

For these words are the words of one of the truly great present-day theoretical physicists. He’s over here at Cal Tech. He called it the upside-down, wrong-way, twisted-around, electron, where everything about it is reversed. Instead of having the negative charge, it has the same mass as the electron, but its charge is positive instead of negative. And then it moves backward in time.138 ¶62

And I tell you, from my own experience, I was struck a blow from above in my head. The one who administered that blow was God, and he did it because of his infinite mercy. He took me out of that enormous sea of humanity as we’re moving negatively forward toward what we thought to be the goal. The goal wasn’t there; it was back in time, right back in time to where the whole vast thing started. And everyone must go back in time and replay that scene as the star performer in the drama, but everyone will, all that you now read about Christ Jesus.138 ¶63

But may I tell you, you are Christ, the Lord, the Son of God, the Son of man, and that human life has its significance only in the relation to these eternal visions. Everything here in this whole vast world has significance only in relation to these eternal visions that are already spelled out for us in the drama of Christ Jesus. Everything that preceded him told about him and his coming.138 ¶64

That very moment in eternity when God is born is going to happen to you, and he’ll be born. And then you don’t move forward, but you jump backward.138 ¶65

It took many blows, all administered by God. The second blow, he reveals his Son as your son. And then the third blow and all the blows come, all from above, and each new one seems like the end. It’s not the end. The end is that moment in time when you jump and you reverse this interval of a thousand years in the twinkle of an eye and relive the scene as before in scripture.138 ¶66

So we’re moving forward negatively given us now, for man has discovered about this peculiar particle, and it all is in us.138 ¶67

So you can sit here this night and dream nobly and put yourself forward in time and give yourself a shock when you open your eyes and see you’re not actually there. But you went forward in time.138 ¶68

And read the first two verses of the fourteenth of John: “In my Father’s house are many mansions; were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye shall be also.”138 ¶69

So you go forward in time and prepare the place, and having prepared it, it seems so natural that it’s taking place now. Then you open your physical eye to find you’re not physically there, and so the very opening of the eye is a shock, bringing you back to where you were. So you start from where you haven’t been, physically, to where you were the first time, and you’re turned around: and then you move forward now negatively across a bridge of incidence, which leads you up to that very moment where it seemed so natural to you [...].138 ¶70

Tonight’s subject is “Christ Unveiled.” That’s quite a tall order, for we are told in the Book of Mark, the 13th chapter, the 21st verse, “If anyone says, ‘Look, there is Christ!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ believe him not.” And I endorse that 100 percent. “If anyone dares to tell you, ‘Look, there is Christ!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ believe him not.” But listen to it carefully and see the pronoun used in that sentence: “Here he is,” believe him not.137 ¶1

So here, who is Christ? What is Christ? Where is Christ? Paul found him; and having found him he said, “From now on we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” If you’re taking notes, that’s Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, the 5th chapter, the 16th verse. He regards him not from now on as man. He thought he was man and went out to destroy those who believed in Christ as a man.137 ¶2

Then we are told in Peter’s letter, his 1st letter, the 1st chapter, read the 10th and 11th verses: “That the prophets who prophesied… they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.” They thought they were looking for a person, and they wondered when he would come. There was no reply to that save “it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but serving you.”137 ¶3

So what is Christ? I tell you, Christ is the way of salvation; Christ is the way to the Father.137 ¶4

Now we’ll turn back to the gospels, where we have all these events together. For scripture, as we understand it, says, the New Testament, Christianity is based on the affirmation that a certain series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. Did they happen? I tell you from experience that they happened. Not only did they happen but also they are happening—they are taking place at every moment of time in our world. If you have not experienced these events, may I tell you that you are going to. Not a thing in this world that you will ever do that would stop it. You are going to because God will not fail, no, not in one being in this world.137 ¶5

So here we are told the events were assembled. Luke, in his first four verses, makes the statement: “That many undertook to compile a narrative of the things which have happened or have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word.” So here we have the oral tradition. They’re all talking about it; these things happened, and they’re telling it. But then came the moment in time that many undertook to put it into written form. And so he thought it wise to do the same thing. So he said, “Having observed all things closely for some time past.” Then he thought that he too would put it into the written form for one called Theophilus.137 ¶6

Theophilus means “one who loves God.” So he’s speaking to you. You love God and I love God, for he’s the source of everything. He’s the source of our life; he is the end of all things. And so he is addressing his remarks to you, “O dear Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.”137 ¶7

And so we heard it orally. I did as a child. And then when I began to read and write, I could read it for myself, but I didn’t understand it. But before I could read it, Mother taught it to me. Then I was sent to school, and then they taught it to me in school. Then I go to Sunday school, and there I heard the story by the teacher. And so we heard it orally; then came the moment in time that we could read it for ourselves, and then came this closed book. Let us see if we can find and unveil Christ tonight.137 ¶8

In the 16th chapter of the gospel of Matthew, one called Christ Jesus turns to his disciples, and he asks the question, “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Right away that second question identifies it with the Son of man. The first question is “Who do men say that the Son of man is?” and the second question is, “But who do you say that I am?”137 ¶9

So he’s asking the question about the Son of man, and then he’s asking the question about himself. “But who do you say that I am?” Now he identifies himself with the Son of man.137 ¶10

And Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” To this, he answered, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” He confesses that no flesh and blood could have told him; it had to come by revelation.137 ¶11

Now, where do we find this same flesh and blood revelation? We find it in Galatians, the 1st chapter, and Paul said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” That mortal mind could not reveal no matter how it rationalized; no matter how it tried to unravel this mystery, it can’t. It has to be revealed. It has to be completely unfolded in the individual.137 ¶12

So he said, “I am the Son of man.” Well, now we go back into the Old Testament to find this cue. Where did God promise this? We turn to the 7th chapter of the 2nd Book of Samuel and this is a vision, for we are told between the 8th verse and 17th verse that Nathan received the vision, and according to all these words and according to all this vision, Nathan spoke unto David.137 ¶13

This is what he told David: “And the Lord of hosts said unto me, ‘Go to my servant David… and say to David that when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son.’”137 ¶14

Here we have to now spiritualize the mission of David. Here is David, a man. If “I will raise up your son after you,” then he’s David’s son. I can’t deny that. “I will raise up your son after you, who will come forth from your body. I (now the Lord is speaking) will be his father and he shall be my son.” So if he is the son of David, then he is the Son of man. If, on the other hand, the Lord adopts him—“He shall be my son”—then he is the Son of God.137 ¶15

So in this question, “Who do men say the Son of man is?” and they all thought of all kinds of things. He said, “But who do you say that I am?” “You are Christ the Son of God.” And right away you think in terms of Christ the Son of God, and yet he’s Son of man, then you think of a man. And it isn’t so at all.137 ¶16

Here is a man as you are, whether you be male or female, walking the earth. You’ve heard this story orally, and when you began to read you could read it for yourself. You didn’t understand it but you read it. And you are playing your normal part in this world; and one day, when you least expected it—in fact, you never expected it, as you always thought it happened 2,000 years ago to one person and that was it—you are that person. It is happening to you, and you go through the entire series of events as recorded in scripture.137 ¶17

And then you know who Christ is. Christ is the way to the Father, and there is no other way. “I am the way.” To what? [...] to everything in this world, but specifically to the Father. “I am the way. No one comes unto the Father but by me” as told us in the 14th of chapter of John. But no one comes unto the Father but by me, so here is the way.137 ¶18

Well, what is the way? And then you search the scripture and you find the way. The way you just determined is [...] in the beginning. Now listen to these words, this statement, carefully—Paul’s letter to the Ephesians—“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” I think that’s the fifteenth verse, but you can easily check it.137 ¶19

Now where is this statement in the Old Testament, because the New is only the fulfillment of the Old? The whole is in the Old, and the New is simply fulfillment. Well, where is it in the Old? You’ll find it in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old.” “Ages ago I was set up, before the beginning of the world. When he laid out the foundation of the world, I was with him, beside him, like a little child.”137 ¶20

Here is God’s way of salvation. But God’s way in scripture is always personified. Every attribute of man’s mind, which is God’s mind, is always personified. When it’s wealth, you see wealth as a man. When it’s power, you see power but it’s a man. When you meet infinite might, it’s a man. [...] it’s a man. And so all the attributes of mind are always personified because God is man and man is God.137 ¶21

So he personifies this way, that way that was in the beginning. This is not improvised. Before God brought the whole vast world into being, he plotted and planned a way, a way of redemption for all of us. This is not an afterthought of God; it came first: “I am the first of his acts of old.” Before he brought forth the world, the universe, anything, he planned a way; and the way was to God personified as a little child. “I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in the inhabited universe and delighting in the sons of men.”137 ¶22

Now listen carefully, “He who finds me finds life and obtains the favor from the Lord; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” That’s the eighth of Proverbs.137 ¶23

Now where do we find this in the New Testament, this second part we just quoted? The very first words uttered by Jesus recorded in scripture you find in the last few verses of the 2nd chapter of Luke. It takes place in the synagogue, in the temple, and his parents said, “Why did you do this unto us?” He replied, speaking about seeking him, “Why did you seek me? Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And they did not understand the saying… but the mother kept these things in her heart. Then Jesus grew in years, in wisdom… and in the favor of the Lord.”137 ¶24

The first recorded utterance of Jesus in scripture, when he was only a lad, a child, in his father’s presence: “Do you not know I must be in my Father’s house?” Well, where’s my Father’s house? He said, “Heaven is the throne of God and heaven is within you.” Where do you find him? You will seek him. Where would you seek him? They sought him elsewhere. They couldn’t find him until they found him in the Father’s house. For you are the temple of the living God. It’s called the synagogue, outwardly; that’s only a symbol of what you really are. You are the synagogue; you are the temple of the living God.137 ¶25

I will not find the way until I find it in myself. And I find him without searching for him. One day, it’s going to please God—for this comes at the fullness of time—when it pleases God, and he sees in me the ripeness that he’s looking for, and then he unfolds me in his home by the series of events. First, the birth, then the discovery of his Son, and then the splitting of the temple. And there I am taken into his home, and his home is within me.137 ¶26

And may I tell you, just as it’s described in that 13th chapter of Mark, there is a most frightening earthquake when you are taken into the home. And you are the cause of it. When you move up and move into that heavenly state within you, there is a vibration that you’ve never experienced before. Speak of an earthquake! The whole vast world within you begins to shake because you have been redeemed. You are brought in, and there’s a joy beyond the wildest dream you’ve ever conceived because one more has been brought into the temple, into the house of God. It’s true, just as I’ve told you.137 ¶27

So Christ? Christ is a way, the way of redemption, and the way is in man. “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old.” So before he brought forth a star, anything in the world, he created a way of return to himself, and that way is called Christ in the Bible.137 ¶28

And the people sought it: “The prophets who prophesied inquired as to what person,” and to this day in 1963, they’re still looking for a person. Every year, you see the papers; they’re always looking for some person coming into the world that will be Christ. And they’re always so eager to find a Christ on the outside that they will follow. They found one in Hitler, one in Stalin, and one in someone else; they were always the savior of the world.137 ¶29

But read now that same one we quoted earlier, the 13th chapter of Mark, the 21st verse, “If anyone says to you, ‘Look, there is Christ!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ do not believe it.” You’ll never find him in another. But in no being in this world would you find Christ. You either find him in yourself as the way that leads you to God or you never find him. But you will find him. Everyone will find him. And when they find him, they’ll find him as the way.137 ¶30

So he said, “I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. I am the resurrection. I am the door.” There is no other door. You can’t get through any other way. And this is the way to the Father. And so the way is inwoven in every child in this world, and that child will find the way when God is ready for him; for only God knows that moment in eternity when he will awaken that child.137 ¶31

Now why are we called, in the 7th chapter of 2nd Samuel, “those who sleep with the fathers”? Here we are three billion in the world today. And “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son.” “When you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who will come forth from your body.” And you think therefore of the fathers.137 ¶32

May I tell you, you are the fathers. You’ve already fulfilled your day in preparation and now you are sleeping with the fathers. You are sound asleep, but you don’t know it. You came here tonight as a conscious being and you go home tonight very hungry, drive your cars, or walk or take the bus to get off at the right point and to go to bed; and you’ll be fully conscious of the fact that’s where you’re going to sleep. But all prior to that, you were awake, for you did all these things consciously.137 ¶33

And may I tell you, I have observed my brother, Bruce; from the time he was born, he was a sleepwalker. Bruce would come downstairs, go to the larder, unlock the larder, pour some milk, put some jam on a piece of bread, eat it and drink his milk, walk around objects that we put in his place, and we would do everything to make him fall on his neck. Boys will do that. But he never did. He never struck a chair, but walked around the chair. He would go upstairs, go back to bed, and go sound asleep; and he was totally unaware that he’d done anything in this world that was to him unnatural.137 ¶34

The only person in this world that convinced him that he did it, as we told him he did it, was my mother. Mother would say, “Yes, Bruce, you did it.” “But, mother, I couldn’t have done it.” But he would not oppose mother. He would oppose us but not mother. Not that she would have done anything violent to him because mother wasn’t that way. But he couldn’t distrust my mother. Not one of us could distrust her. She was to us the ideal. After all, she wouldn’t lie to us; that’s what we believed. And so our brother Bruce trusted her. But he couldn’t; he would rack his brain to find out how he did it. He would get out of bed, go down the stairs, open the larder, put some butter on the bread or put some jelly on the bread, eat it, drink some milk, walk around the objects that we put in his way, go back to bed, and be totally unaware that he’d done it.137 ¶35

That taught me a lesson in my mature years. Not when I did it to him as a child but in my mature years, when I was awakened to find that I had been asleep all through the ages, and I didn’t know it. All through the ages I had been sleeping, and how long are these ages?137 ¶36

Now Paul tells us in his letter to the Colossians, I will tell you a mystery, a mystery that has been hidden for ages and generations. The mystery is Christ in you, the hope of glory. He tells us a mystery. The mystery is Christ in us, the hope of glory.137 ¶37

Well, here, I didn’t understand it any more than the world understood it, and one day it happened. God in his infinite mercy looked upon me and found me ripe at that moment, and he awoke me. As he awoke me, I awoke for the first time in eternity, and I was sealed in a tomb, and the tomb was my skull. I was completely sealed in a tomb, and the tomb was my skull. And then God rolled away the stone, and I came out.137 ¶38

But until that moment, I never thought for one moment I was asleep. Not only asleep but the sleep was so deep, so profound I was dead. So profound was that sleep that I was dead, for when I awoke, I was in a tomb, and you don’t put anyone in a tomb unless they are dead. And so when you enter that tomb, you’re dead. So you are one with Christ who died for you—he is the Way—and together you are completely sealed in a tomb. But you don’t know it. I didn’t know it.137 ¶39

But may I tell you, I have never been more awake in eternity. And when I saw things round about me and saw them all objectively, and they couldn’t see me, then I understood the words, “He is the image of the invisible God.” The image, how can you be the image of something invisible? These are the words: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first of all that was created.” How could I actually reflect something that’s invisible? But it’s true that you are the image of the invisible God. And nothing that is mortal that looks at you can see you. You are more real than any being in the world when you look at them.137 ¶40

And then the whole thing began to come back, and I began to see these experiences that I had gone through. And I wondered, for it puzzled me, looking at you and looking at myself, bathing, shaving, taking care of the body; and it seemed so alive. It seemed so independent of any man’s perception of it. I could leave the room in spite of what my wife would suggest; I could do what I wanted to do within certain areas, and yet at this moment in time, I realized that this isn’t so at all.137 ¶41

When I awoke, then I realized an experience I had many years before of God bringing me to that point of awakening. When one moment in time he took me, took me into a world just like this, and showed me the power that was mine tomorrow, mine in complete control. But he allowed me to exercise it just for a moment, and I saw people just like you.137 ¶42

As I saw them, I [...] within myself arrested a rhythm, an action. As I did it, the people that I observed stood still. They couldn’t move and nothing moved. Things that were in space stood still; everything stood still. And now how could this be? [...] and they couldn’t move. But when I released within myself that activity that I had arrested, they all moved on and completed their intentions. And then it broke.137 ¶43

Then on several occasions, he has taken me into the same, not the same scene but similar scenes. So I would come upon a scene, and I knew if I could stop within myself an activity which I felt it would stop. I did it and it stopped. Then I understood what he meant: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted unto the Son to have life in himself” .137 ¶44

So everyone is destined to have life in himself. And then you wonder, then what are all these garments? What are all these things round about us, this thing called Neville, and you that I know and love? What are all these? Are these really costumes? Is something being formed in us that is the image of the invisible God, and we have to play these parts and wear these costumes for a moment? I have concluded that that’s so. That the whole vast world is truly, as Shakespeare said, a stage; and all the men in it are merely players, and one man plays many parts in his time. And so the being playing it all is God, individualizing himself, begetting himself.137 ¶45

Just as we are told in that 7th chapter of 2nd Samuel: “I 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.” So out of this human body, something is coming forward that is going to be called Son of man because it comes out of a man; but it is going to be the Son of God, and it’s the image of the invisible God. Something is being formed in man, and he brings him forward.137 ¶46

And may I tell you, it’s your own sense of I-ness. No loss in identity when you are awakened, but none whatsoever, none. So I will know you in eternity; you’ll know me in eternity. But for all the sameness of identity and we know each other, there’s going to be a radical discontinuity of form, a radical discontinuity of form.137 ¶47

You have no idea how beautiful you really are. Human face yes. Human hands yes. Human feet yes. The human body no. Not this body, not for one moment! And I can’t describe it to you. Not that I wouldn’t if I could; I can’t describe it. You are beautiful beyond measure, the being that you really are. If I made an attempt, it would only be just radiant light, like, well, a rainbow. How would I describe it, the being that you really are?137 ¶48

But I will know you, and you’ll know me, for there’s a sameness of identity and human enough to recognize each other. But the form, a radical, radical discontinuity of form, and I can’t describe it. You can display it; and you know who you are; and then you return to this that someday you’ll put down and put down forever. And this is essential.137 ¶49

But before these came into being, God mapped out his Way, and the Way was called Christ. No one understood what Christ was. They thought it was a man who would come and save the world. Men were always looking for the coming of Christ as a man, and Christ is the way of salvation, not a man.137 ¶50

But in man, in you, you are David; he brings forward your son, but that’s his son. Then you will understand that great opening statement in Matthew: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David.” But then he brings up the question, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose Son is he?” The question isn’t complete until you listen to the last part, “Whose Son is he?” “The son of David.” Well, then, “Why did David call him Father?”137 ¶51

You see the Son of man is also Son of God. But the Son of God and God are one: “I and my Father are one.” You get it? I and my Father are one, and yet I am Son of man. This is man and out of man comes a being that is God’s son. Then, David, who played this fantastic part, which is now universal humanity, becomes the Son of man. You follow it? Son of man is one with the Son of God. And that out of which the Son of man comes who is the Son of God in turn becomes the Son of man. You follow me? If you don’t, ask me when the questions are in order.137 ¶52

Son of man—Son of God—God. The Son of God and God are one; yet the Son of God cannot deny he’s a father, a man, and therefore, the Son of man.137 ¶53

There’s a question asked in that sixteenth of Matthew, “Who do they say the Son of man is?” Naturally, because he’s Son of man, you’ve got to think in terms of man; so they say, “Well, he is John the Baptist, he is Elijah, he is Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” so they mention man. Now he doesn’t follow with that, he doesn’t ask any further question about that. He changes now: “But who do you say that I am?” He’s asking now, “Who am I? I asked you of the Son of man. I’m telling you I am the Son of man, but who am I?” And they mention, “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” Now he tells them, “Simon, flesh and blood could not have told you this. It had to be revealed by my Father who is in heaven.”137 ¶54

So here, he comes down to the foundation: Who is the Son of man, who is the Son of God, and who is God? It comes out of David. Well, that was the promise given to him. So David is collective humanity; out of David comes the Son of man, and that Son of man is the Son of God. Well, when the Son of God awakens, he has to have a son, and it is David.137 ¶55

David never got beyond that age of twelve, where he appears (in that 2nd chapter of Luke) in the temple. They ask, “Where were you? We’ve been looking all over for you. Why did you do this unto us?” And “Why did you seek me?”—they were seeking him. “And you couldn’t find me until you found me in my Father’s house.” Why would you seek me elsewhere? You were looking all over for me. “Do you not know I must be in my Father’s house?”137 ¶56

You can’t find me, but if you find me, you find life: “He who finds me finds life and receives the favor of the Lord.” And when you find life, you’ll do to every form in this world what has been my privilege to do at these moments when I was taken in spirit and shown sections of humanity and stopped them. No matter what they were doing, just stop them, and they could go no further. And then I released it, and they completed their actions. I stopped them again, and they could go no further. A bird flying, I stopped it, and it didn’t fall, but it could go no further. A leaf falling, I stopped it; it could go no further.137 ¶57

And then you ask fantastic questions in the depth of your soul, “What’s it all about?” And you come to the conclusion that the whole vast world—all the men, women, and children and everything in it—is the resultant state of God’s first creative act, and all this was brought into being like a resultant state.137 ¶58

And you are not these garments of flesh at all. Something is being formed in this garment of flesh. What is being formed? It’s called the Son of man. But God calls it his Son, and his Son and himself are one.137 ¶59

So God is begetting himself in man, his very own self. And the day will come that the individual will be able to say to himself, he’s not only begetting his Son in me, he begot his Son in me, and I and my Father are one. For when you are awakened, there’s no other being; it’s you. You awaken in yourself to discover that you’ve been sound asleep and really dead for these unnumbered years.137 ¶60

So when he tells us in his letter to the Colossians, I will tell you a secret, “a secret hidden for ages and generations… Christ in you, the hope of glory.” There’s a way in man that leads him to God, but man doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s completely awake and independent.137 ¶61

I can go back, oh, maybe thirty years ago and I would walk up Broadway, and it happened to me so often. I was young and strong; I was a dancer, a professional dancer. Not a thing was wrong with me. And yet I would walk up Broadway, and all of a sudden I knew that someone was arresting me, and I couldn’t walk. I would stop in the street, and I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t understand it then. Then I would be released, and I’d walk on. Then it would happen again; on the sidewalk I could not move, and I was fully alert, conscious, seemingly, but I was still.137 ¶62

And I know now that someone was doing to me then what I, years later, was taken in spirit to do to others. I was being trained and prepared to do the same thing to another that was done to me: I could not move. And yet I was playing on Broadway. I had my four little shows. I played every theater east of the Mississippi. I had my six Broadway shows. I was a strong, strapping fellow, dancing for a living, a professional dancer. And so not a thing was wrong with me, and yet I couldn’t move. Walking up the street, all alert, and suddenly I am still. I could feel something holding me, not embracing me, but I could feel something binding, and I couldn’t move. I stood there paralyzed. Then after a few minutes or so, whatever it was released me and I moved on.137 ¶63

So I was used as the guinea pig by someone who was being introduced to this power in himself, just as I, years later, used others as a guinea pig when I was being introduced to that same power.137 ¶64

“For as the Father has life in himself, so he grants the son also to have life in himself”—as he is about to awaken that son. And he knows it who is being ripened, for we all must conform to the image of the invisible God. When the image is coming into view in the eye of God, then he introduces that being, who’s going to be his son, to the power that he will exercise tomorrow. And so he takes him in spirit and shows him this fabulous world, and he has control over it.137 ¶65

And so what is the world? The world is a stage. And you are not the garment you are wearing, but I’ll recognize you. There’s a certain identity, a sameness of identity, and you and I will know each other in eternity. But for all this sameness of identity, there’s a radical but radical discontinuity of form. So this body of ours—face, yes; hands, yes; feet, yes, but not the body. You’re beautiful beyond your wildest dream!137 ¶66

Now let us go into the Silence.137 ¶67

Tonight’s subject is “The Original Sin.” Undoubtedly you’ve heard time and again that it’s some sex violation. It hasn’t a thing to do with sex. It’s ancient, yes, but not a thing to do with sex. The Bible is a mystery. You can only understand it as it is revealed to you or believe it when you are told it by one to whom it has been revealed. It’s not a book that you just pick up and read as you would a novel. As we know, there are sixty-six books and you would start at taking Genesis and go through Revelation, and say that’s the way that it’s done. Because that’s not the way the Bible really is presented. All the attributes of mind are personified in the Bible, and you and I take them as persons, and they’re not persons. All the characters are simply personifications of attributes of mind, eternal states of consciousness. So we must find out the first state that appeared in the Bible. What is that first state? For it is against that state which is the ideal that man has sinned. Sin means “to miss the mark,” or I could disbelieve it or I am ignorant of it. And these are different levels of sinning: To know it and not to heed it is the most serious state; to hear of it and disbelieve it, that is a secondary state; never to have heard of it, that is not really a severe case. Yet all carry with it certain responsibilities. So we must search the Bible for this initial state that was presented to man. Man heard it but didn’t believe it; man heard it and believed it but didn’t quite find it; and man never heard of it.135 ¶1

So this initial state is personified as a little child. You will read it in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When he marked out the foundations of the earth, I was beside him like a little child, delighting, ever a delight before him, rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the sons of men. He who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” Now that’s Proverbs 8:22-36. That’s the first state that is set up.135 ¶2

As we told you last Tuesday night, Jesus Christ is not a person. Jesus Christ is this eternal state, a state of salvation, and a series of mystical experiences in the depths of the soul. If man finds it, he passes through this series of experiences, which leads him to God. “For no man comes unto the Father save by me.” This is the state called Christ Jesus. But no man comes—“I am the way”; there is no other way. The earliest Christians were called the people of the Way—as told us in the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts and all through the Book of Acts, the people of the Way. For here is the way: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” So here is a state personified as a little child, as told us in the 11th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “And a little child shall lead them”. Lead them where? Lead them to the Father. Everything is personified. Well, here is the personification of the initial state that was his eternal delight, delighting in his inhabited world, rejoicing ever before him, and delighting in the sons of men, hoping that the individual man would find him. If he found him, then would come the unfoldment within that man who found him of the series that would take him to the Father. There’s no other way to go to the Father than through that series that he laid down.135 ¶3

So here, the first state is the state [...], the original state. Man hears it, and he doesn’t believe it. Paul heard it and Paul didn’t believe it. But Paul then confessed in his first letter to Timothy: “Formerly, I blasphemed and persecuted and insulted him; but I received mercy because I ignorantly acted in unbelief.” I didn’t believe it. I heard it, but I just did not believe it. And so I received mercy. And so mercy is in all of us. If you don’t receive mercy, which completely sets you free from your horrible acts, as he confessed, well then, it is from the extreme state to the modified state because he never heard of it.135 ¶4

Now listen to this chapter, the 12th chapter of the Book of Luke, say from the 46th through the 48th verse. It’s the story of a master, and the master has made known his will to his servants. One servant knows his will, but he doesn’t do it. He doesn’t act upon what he knows the master desires, so when the master comes, he is severely beaten. Another servant does not know, but he does what is deserving of beating, but he is lightly used. You are not set free from the responsibility of falling into a state, any state in this world. So I am in the state of being poor, all right, I will reap the fruit of poverty. But I will not experience the beating in the state of poverty comparable to you who know how to use God’s law. If you dare to assume that you are unwanted, knowing that you are only in a state and knowing it, you deliberately allow yourself for unnumbered reasons to enter into a state where you feel unwanted, feel beaten, and feel poor, then you really will be beaten by the events and the circumstances of life. If you never heard it and you don’t know it, you cannot avoid reaping the fruit of the state, but it will be a light beating. It will be modified, as told you in that 48th verse of the 12th chapter of the Book of Luke. The forty-seventh tells you that if you know what the will of the Father is, the will of God, and you don’t do it, you will be severely beaten.135 ¶5

Now, what is the other aspect that Paul spoke of where he received mercy? You can exercise that. So someone doesn’t know it. Paul didn’t know it; he confessed he did not know it, and he received mercy. Like my friend in San Francisco, he meets a man who never heard this story; but he, my friend, heard it. The man is unemployed and wants a bill for a dinner. My friend made himself a pledge he would not give any panhandler a dollar at any time. He had an experience when he was a boy at fifteen, so true to form, he did not give the dollar. But now he knows this story; he can’t get away with it anymore by simply ignoring the request. The man wants food. The man wants a job. The man is in need. Well, he cannot ignore it and walk by knowing this. He is confronted now with a request. He has to stop right on that street and see that man gainfully employed, knowing in his heart that that imaginal act of his has its own appointed hour. It ripens; it will flower. If to the man, who doesn’t know this law, it seems late, it seems long, in getting the job, well then, he isn’t concerned. He did what he was called upon to do; and although it seems long, he will wait, confident that it will not be late, and it will simply come into complete flower in that man’s life. He knows it. So he was merciful and forgave the man. If he, knowing what he knows today, daring to teach this law to others, asking them to join with him in simply setting the world free, that he met a man because he had a good meal, the man didn’t, and instead of doing this, simply ignored it and walked by, went home to his own home where he’s sheltered, comforted, and has a full larder; he will be held responsible. He was not merciful.135 ¶6

So here is the story. The original sin is to hear this story. The story of salvation is set forth for us in the gospels. Follow the story of one called Christ Jesus. It’s not a person. Christ Jesus is simply God’s method of salvation. The first state he ever created was that state. He is ever before him as sheer delight, delighting in the sons of men, always rejoicing before God, for this is his only way of salvation. And so he created—he didn’t improvise after he created the world; before he brought forth anything in the world, he created the means of redemption; and the means of redemption is personified as a little child—“and a little child shall lead them”—to us, Jesus Christ. That is God’s eternal method of salvation. So read the story, and exactly what happened to him as a seeming person, that is going to happen to you.135 ¶7

Now, how? Believe it. First thing, you hear it, and then you either accept it or you reject it. I plead with you to accept it, just accept it, for we are told in that same 8th chapter of Proverbs, “He who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; he who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death”. Love death? Yes, they love this world more than anything else in the world. And the world here that seems so alive to us, may I tell you, is the world of death. I’m speaking from experience; this is the world of death. So they’ll give anything to extend what they consider life by twenty-four hours. Promise them a month, oh, they’re thrilled. Promise them an extra year and that’s marvelous. And this is death. For in my vision, when I saw the world not yet descended here, and all must come through death. For the mystery of life is life through death; the mystery of the grain of wheat is that it must fall into the earth and die before it can be made alive. If it doesn’t fall into the ground, then it remains alone; if it falls into the ground and dies, it brings forth much. So God falls into the ground. This is the ground, this flesh. The world of flesh is the element of death where God falls into death, into this ground, called a fleshly being. And so those who hate me, they love the flesh; they love death. And they will give anything to perpetuate if only for an hour, one more breath in the world of death.135 ¶8

Those who hear it, they know the Spirit is the element of resurrection, and so they are not completely attached to the world of death. But those who hear it and do it have life. Those who hear it but would not do it are the ones condemned, severely beaten. Beaten only to get them back upon the track as it were and put through the furnaces of affliction, these fiery, fiery states. Those who have never heard of it are not completely free of the responsibility of falling into that state, but it is modified for them. It is lessened for them. They’re not as hurt as those who know it who did not do it. So the original sin begins with hearing this story and either rejecting it or seeing it in a way. So I ask you not to reject it, for if you find him, you find life. The minute you find him the entire series awakens in you, and it’s the only way to the Father. So the only intermediary, really, is the Way, called in the Bible Christ Jesus, who is not a person. It’s the Way, a series of mystical experiences inwoven into the soul of man, that man, individually, finding it then begins to go through. He goes through these states automatically at stated intervals known only to God the Father. At the very end, he awakens, and he is one with the Father. That’s the purpose.135 ¶9

God is bringing us not only into his world but bringing us into his world as himself. So in the end, there is no one but God. Because God’s purpose is to give us himself, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you, God and us. But in the end, not even God and you, or God and I, just God. But you, in that moment, will be he. As told us, he leaves everything and cleaves to his emanation, his bride. For we are his bride, as told us in the 54th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” And a husband must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one flesh, one being. So in the end, they will not even be two, just you, and you will be he. So God is giving himself to me; he’s giving himself to you. And in the end, when he completely completes his purpose, there’s only God, and you are he.135 ¶10

So the original sin is to have heard this wonderful first state. Listen to it carefully: “The Lord created us at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago, I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When he laid the foundation of the earth, then I was beside him, like a little child, I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the sons of men.” Here was the Way personified, really personified, as a child. For everything in this world is God, and God is man; therefore, everything becomes man—everything’s personified. So the first state that is personified [...] God is a delightful child, and it’s the Way to bring man to himself as himself. It seems silly and it seems stupid, but not when you go into the depths of your soul and see this personification of all the attributes of mind.135 ¶11

Five years ago, when my daughter was in high school, it was my pleasure every morning to get up early and prepare breakfast for the two of us, then make a little lunch basket for her, and then bid her good-bye as she went off to school. Well, this morning, after she went off to school, I went back to my library where I’m reading my Bible because my wife slept late and we would meet at brunch. This morning, when she came out and we were having brunch, she said, “I had the strangest experience this morning. I woke, I was sitting up in bed, you were sitting on the bed, and then my hand was engaged with another hand. You turned—I couldn’t see the face who had the hand—but you turned, and you evidently recognized him. You seemed to know him quite intimately and you said to me, ‘Why, it is death.’ Then I said to you, ‘I don’t want to die.’” Then I said to her, “Are you afraid to die?” She said, “No, I’m not afraid to die, but I have unfinished business. I don’t want to die.” I said, “All right, if you are not afraid to die, all right.” Then the two hands disengaged, and as they disengaged, she then began… she thought she was sitting on the bed, she thought I was sitting on the bed next to her, and then she came to. This was an experience in the depths of her soul where death was personified as the cold hand of death. Haven’t you heard it? Haven’t you heard of the king of terrors, the jaws of death? All poets use it. And here she had the experience of an actual hand, the hand of death, that I, sitting on the bed, in the depth of her soul, recognized him, and I knew him quite intimately. Being not afraid of death, I asked her, “Are you afraid of him?” She said, “No, I’m not afraid to die. But I don’t want to die. I have unfinished business.” At that moment, when she didn’t feel afraid of death, the two hands disengaged, and then she woke. [...]. And I was not in the room; I was in my library reading my Bible.135 ¶12

So I tell you, all the states of the Bible that we call characters are simply personifications of these infinite attributes of the human mind, which is divine mind. So what we speak of as this little child that leads them—“a little child shall lead them… and I stood beside him as a little child… and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the sons of men.” Then comes that wonderful statement, “He who finds me finds life.” Here I am delighting among all the people of the world, trying to encourage everyone to find me. If you can only find me you’ll find life. He’s asking everyone to please believe him. How would I find him? Believe it. Believe what I’ve told you. Believe that he is really a series of mystical experiences, inwoven in the soul of man. Believe it. And if you believe it, maybe tonight you’ll find him. If you find him tonight, the first one, like a little petal on a flower, opens as an actual experience. Having opened up one, you know from actual personal experience it’s true. You’ll never then waver. Then, in the not distant future, a second petal will open, and all will open. As they open, they lead you to God, God the Father; and when you get there, you are he. So the whole story is inwoven in man. Hasn’t a thing to do with your violation of any sexual [...], which would be implied if you read the story in a certain way. But it isn’t that at all.135 ¶13

And may I tell you, that first so-called disobedience, which we find in the 3rd chapter of the Book of Genesis, that very first disobedience was God. As we are told in the 11th chapter, the 32nd verse of the Book of Romans, “And God consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all.” So don’t think for one moment any Eve or any Adam disobeyed. It was God who disobeyed. God commanded himself, and the only way he could bring about this fabulous dream of his into its complete bloom was his play. God entered into every one of us. And God is the one who disobeyed. He knew in his heart he couldn’t die, but he also knew he would have the illusion of death in the world of flesh. And so God disobeyed his command of God. God became man that man may become God. And so he’s sunk in all of us as our own wonderful I-am-ness—that’s God.135 ¶14

And in it now they’re trying to find out the way back. There’s only one way back and that was in the beginning. He wrote that story in the very beginning. “God created me at the very beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago, I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth.” You mean the way of salvation? Yes. The way of salvation was the very first act of God. It wasn’t improvised. It wasn’t something thought of after the event; it was before anything was brought forth. And God is playing all the parts, and he’s written out completely in detail the means of salvation.135 ¶15

And the means of salvation? You’ll be born again—that’s the very first act, in the true sense of the word—and be born from above. Then will come another act. He will give you what he promised you. To prove how much he loves you, he will give you his Son. That’s the second act. Then you are a father. If you have a son, you are a father. Then will come a third act. In the third act, he will unveil himself in you, spiritual circumcision, and you will see the true head of creation; and you are it. You’ll know exactly who you are, and you are he. You’ll still be clothed in a garment of flesh; therefore, your ultimate inheritance is delayed, delayed until you take off this veil for the last time. But the veil has been split. You’ll wear it, but it’s split, so you aren’t as shut out from the vision of eternity as you were prior to the splitting of the veil. And then all the stories told in the gospels concerning Christ Jesus begin to unfold in you, every one.135 ¶16

Then you will know that Christ Jesus is not a person. Christ Jesus is the way, just as told us in the 14th chapter of the Book of John, “I am the way, I am the life, I am the resurrection… I am the way; no one cometh unto the Father save by me.” There is no possibility of coming to the Father. I have had unnumbered arguments across the country: “Well, after all, Neville, you were born and raised a Christian in the Hebrew-Christian faith.” They are one: Hebrew and the Christian faith are both interwoven because one is the fulfillment of the other. “But, after all, don’t tell me that the Buddhists haven’t the same thing and the Hindu’s haven’t the same thing and the others haven’t the same thing.” And may I tell you, as I stand before you, there’s only one way. There’s only one way, and this series of events is the only way to the Father. You will be born from above; you will see his only begotten Son as your son; you’ll be torn in two from the top to the bottom; the dove will descend upon you and smother you with affection. All these things will happen to you just as it’s recorded it happened to him. That was only the personification of the Way. That’s not a person. He personifies the Way, from beginning to end. So everything claimed of him you will experience. When you experience it, you will tell it, tell it to the best of your ability, in the hope that they will believe it. Some will believe it, and some will not believe it.135 ¶17

But may I tell you, in our world where we live now, you have heard it and you have [...]. Having heard it, you carry out full responsibility for all the states into which you fall. You’ll be beaten severely because you’ve heard it. If you never heard it, then the trial would not be as severe. Read it carefully when you go home, and here is the story. I think it’s the 18th of Matthew. A king calls his servants together. He wants all the accounts settled. One servant owes him ten thousand talents, and he didn’t have it, so the king ordered that the man, his wife and children be sold, and whatever they had, to settle the account. He fell on his knees and pleaded with the king for patience and for mercy. Then he would, if the king were patient, he would pay in time. The king heard his plea and forgave him, completely forgave him. Then the man went out and saw a man who owed him a hundred denarii, and he grabbed him by the throat and demanded immediate payment. The man couldn’t pay, and he had the man thrown into jail as a debtor. And when the king heard what the one he forgave did to another who only owed a hundred denarii, not ten thousand talents, then he treated him severely and threw him in until every last talent was paid.135 ¶18

So they know to pray in this manner: Father, forgive us our debts as we forgive those… just [...] forgive the other. Father, forgive us in proportion to our ability to forgive the other who owes us. So when you meet anyone in this world, no matter who you [...] another, don’t pass by. Doesn’t cost you one nickel; it only costs you an imaginal act. It’ll take you just a second. So think of anyone that now needs something in this world but anyone in your world, and imagine that they are as you would like them to be but everyone and don’t you raise a finger to make it so. Believe in God. God is creative. That imaginal act of yours has a little interval of time between the imaginal act and its fulfillment. Like every vision in the world, “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it seems long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late”. So in your imaginal act concerning any person in this world, make it loving and make it altogether marvelous. And if you do it, then drop it. It’s done! Without the man’s knowledge or his consent, you did it for him. Forgive every being in the world, and as you forgive others, the Heavenly Father forgives you. And so you may not know it but at the moment that you did it, it is really done, although it hasn’t yet appeared within the world of effects, on this very, very low intensity. This is very low. But you believe it and try it.135 ¶19

But you have been exposed to it, and no one who has been exposed to it from that moment on is free of a severe beating. If you’re not exposed to it, the beating is light. If you are exposed to it and feel sorry for yourself, the beating is really severe. No man can afford to feel sorry for himself having heard that these are infinite states of consciousness into which the soul, moving to God, falls either knowingly or unknowingly. So if you feel sorry for yourself knowing that you are in a state, when you reach the fruit of that state, it really will be severe. So I ask you not to feel sorry for yourself, not to feel sorry, just simply move out of one state into another state and lose yourself in it just as though it were true. In the not distant future, you will reap the fruit of that state. For listen to what he tells us. You know the tree by its fruit; the good tree bears good fruit, and the evil tree bears bad fruit. So if that is truly right, that this is the law of harvest, identical harvest, that I am in a state and I can’t reap the fruit of any state other than that state into which I have gone knowingly or unknowingly, so we try it, try it tonight. Take someone in this world of yours who you would like to help and see him or see her as you would like to see him, as you would like to see anyone, and believe in the reality of your imaginal act and that act will come to pass just as surely as I am standing here. But you are held responsible for it. You must do it.135 ¶20

So the original sin is to have heard this story of God’s plan of salvation: “I have prepared a way for my banished ones to return.” The first thing I did, said he, was to prepare the way. I didn’t banish them and then contrive a way, improvise a way; I prepared the way in the beginning. He planned everything that has come out and as it will be established. So he’s prepared the way, and the way is told us in the story of Jesus Christ. So we read it, and the churches encourage us to read it as the history of a man. No, the story of Jesus Christ is just like an actor on a stage. When he walks across the stage, he plays a part, and the audience either understands it or they don’t. If they don’t understand it, they aren’t held responsible. If they understand it and don’t believe in it, then the beating is severe. If they understand it and make the effort but still don’t find him, then read the second [...]. First, “He who finds me has life and obtains the favor of the Lord; he who misses me injures himself (that’s not fatal, he injures himself); all who hate me love death.” They may hate the story having heard it, for they like the fleshpots. They’d like to be here more than any other place in the world.135 ¶21

May I tell you from experience that when I entered the world and saw people who had not yet descended this low—for this is the very limit of opacity, this is the limit of contraction—when I talked to them, they thought I was telling tall, tall stories. They couldn’t believe that I had just come from this world and that I would go back to this world because I came there consciously. So when I looked at them and saw them, I was told by one who was here years ago—I never met him here; he was a German, Heine, you know the works of Heine—and Heine said to me, “You know, Neville, they don’t speak of earth as earth, they call earth Woodland and they don’t believe that anyone who ever goes to Woodland could ever come back to what they call life.” Because Woodland, this is the earth, is the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity, and so those who are here are in Woodland. It’s a tremendous accomplishment to be here because you can’t turn around and hear this story and find God until you come here. You must reach the limit of contraction before you can hear the story of salvation. While you are here, you hear it, hear it, and believe it. It’s a series of mystical experiences in the soul of man that leads you from wherever you are when you find him, to God, and arriving there, you are one with God. There’s nothing but God.135 ¶22

So all the characters of the Bible are personifications of the infinite states of mind, these states of consciousness. But the first state that he created was the “Way of salvation,” and he personified it for his own delight as a little child. And may I tell you, it is sheer delight when you see the little child. It’s infinitely beautiful, and it is the personification of this state. For it comes first and as you encounter it and have the experience of your own birth from above, here comes the child. It’s a babe. “And a little child shall lead them.” They speak of it as child, but the word translated child is really “a babe.” And the little babe shall lead them through the series of experiences up to the fulfillment of it all where he awakens as God.135 ¶23

So the very first thing that he created was the way of salvation, personified for us as a child, but told to us in the Bible as a person called Christ Jesus. But Christ Jesus is not a person but the way of salvation. “I am the way,” he’s made to say. But I do not know the way. Well, I am the way. The way to what?—well, the way to everything, but specifically to the Father. I am the way to the Father. “No one comes unto the Father but by me,” but no one. So you can’t get to the Father save you come in this manner and this is the way. He marked it out for you. This is how you come. So you believe the story. Believe in the story and you may this night find him. And “he who finds me finds life,” for “as the Father has life in himself so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” And then you have life in yourself. So tomorrow, arriving at the Father who has life in himself, and you are one with the Father, you have been [...] life in yourself. And then you can animate anything in the world, make anything become alive.135 ¶24

In the meanwhile, believe it. Believe it and I promise you it’s my sincere desire that before I leave this platform, whenever I will leave it in the future, that many of you, if not all of you, could tell me that you had the identical series of experiences because you’ve got to have them anyway. But I can’t think of any greater thrill to me than to hear you tell me that “it happened to me last night,” and tell me the story that I know you are going to tell me. Because everyone must have it and having it, then you’re on the way toward the Father; and when you arrive there, you are one with the Father. Because I am one with the Father, when you get there, you and I are one, and yet we do not lose our distinctive individuality. [...] the one, because it’s the same Father, so we have the same Son. And that’s how he set the whole thing up in the beginning. Before he did anything he set up this state.135 ¶25

Now take it on this level and think of a friend that you would like to help. There must be some friend who today knows they’d like to be gainfully employed. Regardless of what he made in the past, regardless of the figures you see on the paper’s headlines today, forget that! Everything is possible to God. I wouldn’t care if you doubled that unemployment figure by ten, it still doesn’t stop your imaginal act from working. But you take a friend, bring him into your mind’s eye, bring her into your mind’s eye, and see him and see her gainfully employed, making more than they’ve ever made before. Don’t raise a finger to make it so, but just imagine that it is so. Leave it just like that and believe in God. God is your own wonderful Imagination. God is your own wonderful I-am-ness that’s imagining. So believe it, believe in it. Know in your own being that it takes an interval called incubation between what you imagined and the fulfillment, the birth, of that state. So don’t be anxious in the interval. You imagined it. You’re still imagining it. You will continue to imagine it until what you have imagined is completely externalized in your world. Try it now with someone.135 ¶26

And don’t tell them what you have done. Don’t ask for any praise. Don’t tell any being in this world what you have done. Without their knowledge, without their consent, you be merciful. You are encouraged to be merciful. Let me remind you of that first chapter of Paul’s letter to Timothy: “I blasphemed, I persecuted, I insulted him; but I received mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief”. All right, now you are not going to act ignorantly in unbelief. Maybe he did. Maybe he thinks the whole thing is stupid. But don’t you argue with him. Maybe you tried to persuade him to come here. Maybe you tried to persuade him to read one of my books. Maybe he thought the whole thing stupid. But in spite of that, God is love. It doesn’t matter what he did or what he said. You now bring him into your mind’s eye and see him as gainfully employed. And don’t tell him what you did. Let no one know what you’re doing, and you remain faithful to what you have done. He will get the job, even if he doesn’t know that you did it. Doesn’t really matter. Try it.135 ¶27

Now let us go into the Silence.135 ¶28

Tonight’s subject is “The Fourfold Gospel.” As you know, for I think you do, the Bible is a mystery, a mystery to be known only by revelation. As I told you in the past, a mystery is not a matter to be kept secret but a truth that is mysterious in character. The four gospels are the plot of the entire Bible. Everything that was promised Israel as we have it recorded in the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament came into flower, into fulfillment, in the four gospels. But even to this day, two thousand years later, many are still seeking in the Bible for the Christ of whom the fathers spoke and whose coming they foretold. As we are told, “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours inquired and searched about that salvation; they inquired what person or time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.” Well, they could not find him. They were all looking for a man, and today the whole vast Christian world still turns to a man. And those who deny it think in terms of a man that they deny. They do not know the Christian mystery.134 ¶1

So Paul made the statement, “From now on we’ll regard no one from the human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from the human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” Yes, even though I once thought of Christ from the human point of view, I think upon him so no longer; he is something entirely different. To understand this mystery, we have to find the root, and that is in the Old Testament. What did they promise? The promise is in the eleventh chapter, the first three verses, called the Messianic book, one of the many chapters, but this one is prominent. “There shall come forth a stem from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of that root. And the Spirit of the Lord shall be upon him.” The imagery turns from a root, from a branch, and from a stem into a man. And the Spirit of the Lord shall be upon him, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of the fear of the Lord—all these will be upon him. He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear.”134 ¶2

So here, something is said about a branch. Something is said about a stump out of which this branch will come. So we search the scripture, and we find in the Book of Daniel: “And the king said: ‘I beheld the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and a watcher, a holy one, came down from heaven.’ And he cried aloud, ‘Hew the tree down, cut off its branches, strip its leaves, scatter its fruit. But leave the stump’.” Do not disturb the stump. And now he turns from the imagery of the tree, with its branches, its leaves, and its stump, to that of a man. “Let him be watered with the dew of heaven”—speaking now of a stump, and it becomes now a man—“let him dwell with the beasts of the field; take from him the mind of a man and give to him the mind of a beast; and let seven times pass over him… until he knows the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will.” You ask, “What is it all about?” For this is a prophecy that is fulfilled in our gospels. The word Jesse means I AM. It’s called the stump of Jesse. The word I AM is simply called Jehovah, the name of God. In its root meaning, it means “to fall” or causatively “to cause to fall.” The only being that fell, this tree of life, is God himself. And for us, God fell; he sacrificed himself to redeem us, to give us life in ourselves, and the mystery of life through death, the death of God.134 ¶3

So this Branch, now, [...] and we begin to study the word branch in the Bible, for branch comes out of the stump of Jesse. The stump is I AM. The first presentation is Matthew, and Matthew presents the Lord as a king. So where is the Branch identified in the Bible as a king? We find it in the 23rd chapter, the 5th verse of Jeremiah: “And the days shall come where I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king.” So here we find a presentation of this Branch, which is not a tree, for we see now it is a man. But he is presented as a king, so Matthew gives us the genealogy of a king. He comes down through the royal blood. But Matthew begins the book with “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David.” David is the source of the dynasty. The first king of Israel was Saul, chosen by the people, but Jehovah rejected Saul and chose David. David is the first king of Israel as chosen by God. So this is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David. When I trace the genealogy of a king, I always must begin at the source of the dynasty and come down and finish with the king. When I trace the genealogy of a man, I begin with his father and go back as far as I may. But not with a king; you do not say this is king [...] so and so, the son of so and so. You go right back to the source of the dynasty and then you bring him forward and it culminates in the king himself. That’s how you get the genealogy of a king. That’s what Matthew does in presenting the Lord as king to fulfill the 23rd chapter, the 5th verse of Jeremiah.134 ¶4

Mark presents him as a servant; therefore, there is no need for a genealogy—the perfect servant, the ideal servant. So God is now presented as a servant. And here, where is the Branch of the servant? The 3rd chapter, the 8th verse of Zechariah: “Behold, I will bring forth my servant the Branch.” All this is prophecy. He hasn’t brought him forth; he’s bringing him forth, going to do it, by “bringing forth my servant the Branch.” So Mark does not have a genealogy. Who are you? Well, “I am the servant of the Lord.” That’s good enough. If you are the servant of the Lord, there’s no need for any further credentials. So his credentials are simply his position in life: he is the ideal servant. That’s Mark. Now in the 10th chapter of Mark, he makes this statement, “I came not to be served but to serve.” He is the servant in Mark.134 ¶5

Luke presents him as the ideal man, Jehovah’s man. Where is the Branch concerning him? Again in Zechariah, the 6th chapter, the 12th verse. First of all, Isaiah claims it in the fortieth chapter, “Behold, the man,” but he doesn’t use the word Branch. But Zechariah, to fulfill the prophecy, brings in the Branch: “Behold the man whose name is the Branch.” So Luke presents him—the ideal man should have a genealogy—so Luke presents him as man. When you read the two genealogies of Matthew and Luke, they differ. At the beginning of David the king, they part and David’s older son, Nathan, becomes the line through which Luke takes Jesus Christ. His younger son, Solomon, becomes the one through whom he takes the one bringing him into a king. So here, you find a complete different genealogy for fourteen generations, then another fourteen following that. Here you have these many, many generations where there are entirely different backgrounds; and people think you can’t be telling the story of the same person, but people don’t know the mystery.134 ¶6

You’re presenting not a person; you’re presenting not a man, but you’re presenting something that is altogether different. Christ is not a man, a king, a servant; Christ that saves is a series of mystical experiences through which God reveals himself for the salvation of man. That’s Christ. The whole vast New Testament is based upon the assumption that a certain series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. Did they happen? Now we are told in scripture that they happened. I claim that the evangelists were telling their own story, as told us in the end of Luke: “And they told what had happened.” As Moffatt takes that phrase and describes it and translates it, “They related their own experiences.” They are relating a series of mystical happenings in the soul of the individual where God revealed himself in these actions for the salvation of that individual.134 ¶7

So Luke presents God as the ideal man: “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch”—6th chapter, 12th verse of Zechariah. He must have a genealogy, and this goes all the way back, unbroken, back to Adam, the son of God. John, on the other hand, presents him as God himself—no need of a genealogy, none. And this you find in the 4th chapter, the 2nd verse of Isaiah, “And the day is coming”—and the day is always in the future, for this is all prophecy—“when the branch of Jehovah will be beautiful and glorious.” All this is in the future, and men are still looking for this branch to flower in some mighty conqueror who will come and save humanity from the tyrants loose in the world. And he doesn’t come that way. So they denied he was a king because they did not read carefully: “My kingdom is not of this world.” They are still expecting him to, in some way, entrench himself in the world and establish a kingdom and rebuild what they believed to be David’s kingdom.134 ¶8

And all these must be spiritualized. All the characters mentioned as his background, his genealogy, are states of consciousness, all of them. Here, it begins: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David”; the very end of the genealogy, Joseph’s father is called Jacob, that seventeenth verse . A few verses on, on the 20th verse, the angel of the Lord appears unto Joseph in a dream and says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take unto thyself Mary thy wife.” Three verses before, it is stated in the genealogy that his father was Jacob. And along the way, just a few verses down, the angel of the Lord addresses him as Joseph, son of David. Here, in the genealogy, Joseph is called “the father,” and the genealogy begins with Jesus Christ, son of David.134 ¶9

Don’t you see it? You’ve got to spiritualize all of these characters. They are states of consciousness; they are not persons any more than Jesus Christ is a person. Jesus Christ is that series of events unfolding, like a tree, in man for the salvation of that man in whom this series unfolds. That is Jesus Christ. And man cannot think that way if he wants to personify it and put it on a wall, put it in some little hole, and do something with it. And it isn’t that. So here we find the presentation of God as a king in Matthew, the presentation of God as a servant in Mark, and the presentation of God as the perfect ideal man in Luke and God himself in John.134 ¶10

So in John, he speaks and calls himself constantly I AM. “I am the vine. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the resurrection. I am the door.” All through he is emphasizing who he really is—the being that you are. But the series of events, I promise you, will unfold within you. When they unfold within you, you know who you are. And you could no more keep it to yourself than the evangelists who experienced Christ could have kept it to themselves. They couldn’t if they experienced it. Having experienced Christ, they could not keep their experience of Christ to themselves, so they tell it.134 ¶11

Now, let me show you what Luke tells us in his own way. Why they translated it this way, I don’t know. Luke begins his book: “In as much as many have undertaken to assemble a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, as it was revealed to us by those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning, it seemed good to me also, having observed closely for some time past.” Now that phrase “for sometime past” is a translation of the Greek word Anothin, which means “from above.” When it is used in the third chapter of John, it is used “from above.” It is said to Nicodemus, “You must be born from above. Except you be born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” Yet here, in the Book of Luke, the same word, no alteration, the identical word is translated into this phrase “for sometime past.” So he’s telling you, if you go back to the original tongue where he got it. “Having observed all things closely from above, it seemed good to me also to write an orderly account for you, Theophilus—one who loves God—that you may know the truth concerning these things of which you have been informed.” He’s writing it down for all of us who claim we love God, for we are Theophilus, a lover of God, one who seeks God. He’s telling you where he got it. He is not making any claim that his arrangement is a greater chronological arrangement of the source material. What he’s telling us is God is from above, and he’s going to write it in an orderly arrangement, which he claims this arrangement is better, better understood by man; for he begins with a birth and he ends, for man’s sake, with a crucifixion. That’s not the way in which Luke got it. For Luke is not his name—all this is anonymous—but whoever calls himself Luke did not receive it in that order. But he thinks it’s a better arrangement to be understood by mortal minds until they, themselves, have the experience.134 ¶12

So what the gospels are telling us, believe this, believe it for the works’ sake. Then he tells us how to prove the law of God, and in proving the law of God, you may believe his promise. Then he tells us what to do about the law of God. “Ask anything in my name”—but don’t forget my name; my name is I AM—“and it will be done unto you.” Ask anything in my name and it will be done unto you, but my name is I AM. But don’t call it by any other name. And when you call upon my name, call with my name. Don’t call upon it, for I have no other name. So don’t say, “In the name of I AM”; just prepare yourself to be “I am.” Now, I am what? You name it. Whatever you want to be, just name it. But call with my name; don’t call upon my name. So call, I am healthy, I am wealthy, I am known, and I am anything that you think lovely in your world. Call upon it by calling with the name. Then he tells them, “I have come to testify of things that I know and that I have seen. If you will not receive the testimony that I bring you of things of earth, how may you receive the testimony of mine if I tell you of things of heaven?”134 ¶13

Now, let me give you a vision of mine that happened many, many years ago to show you it was revealed to me long before it began to awaken in me. Just like the vision of the fourth of Daniel, only in my case it wasn’t a tree. But just as he starts off the vision, “the visions of my head as I lay in bed,” suddenly I saw this fabulous field, and consciousness followed vision. I entered the field. It had no limit; it was infinite. At first I thought them to be flowers, long, tall flowers, like sunflowers, huge, big flowers. As I approached them, they were not flowers. They were all rooted like a flower into the earth, but the faces, beautiful faces, human faces—everyone was a face. As I came upon them, they moved in concert as though someone led them in some orchestra. And they all moved; if one bent over, the whole vast field of them bent over; if one smiled, they all smiled. They all did everything in concert.134 ¶14

When I walked among them, admiring the beautiful human faces that were anchored and stationary like a flower, I realized right at that moment that I am not comparable to them in beauty, nothing in that rhythm, and yet I enjoyed greater freedom, limited as I was, than all of them put together. They moved in concert, and I had freedom of movement even though my motion was not in harmony. I had freedom of choice even if I made the wrong choice. I could choose evil, and they could do nothing. They could do nothing but move as some invisible power moved them. They could do nothing of themselves. And I realized that with all of my limitations, I was greater. I could make mistakes, and they couldn’t make a mistake. I could actually move without the consent of another, and they couldn’t do it.134 ¶15

And beautiful as they were, I realized how much infinitely greater I was, limited as I was, because I was detached from that field. And I thought, in the depths of me, that at one time, I must have been one of that orchestra. And God in his infinite mercy fell with me and then took up residence in me. Then seven times had to pass over me, the fiery ordeal. I had to be given… this is a human face… “take the mind of man from him and give him the mind of a beast. Let him now live with the beasts of the field, sever everything from him, cut off the branches, strip the leaves, scatter the fruit, but don’t disturb the root.” And the root is God himself; that’s Jesse. But “seven times will pass over him until he knows that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will.” He gives it in that moment that he gives us Christ, and Christ is that series of mystical experiences taking place in the individual’s soul for that soul’s salvation.134 ¶16

I can see that field of flowers now. Perfectly beautiful human faces, not a blemish, everything perfect and everything moving in this perfect rhythm as some invisible director directed them, and they all moved in concert. So you and I were once part of that harmony, and then the harmony became broken for our salvation. We descended because God descended with us; he doesn’t push us out. The word He Vau He means “to fall,” and that is the root of the verb that we have as Yod He Vau He, which we call Jehovah, the great sacred name, the name by which all things are made.134 ¶17

So here, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John present this mystery of the branch; and I tell you, it grows in us. As Blake said, “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.” And that tree is turned down. If you saw the human being and take off the skin and see just the nervous system, it’s just like an inverted tree, where the brain is the root and the whole tree grows down.134 ¶18

But that tree is going to be turned up. One day, you’ll see it turned up. There will be a complete severance of your being, called “the curtain of the temple,” and then you that were living down, not even knowing it, that it turns right up. And all the currents of eternity are now reversed in you, and you’ve turned up, and from then you grow up. And the vision I had of this many years ago startled people. I first told it in San Francisco. Why, the reaction was horrible. Yet, the Book of Mark, speaking of the servant of the Lord, who is the Branch, speaks of it. When the blind man’s eye was opened, the Lord opened the eye of the blind man; he said, “What do you see?” He said, “I see men like trees walking.” There it is, “I see men like trees, walking”.134 ¶19

This night when I had this vision of the majesty of man when he is turned up, you will think, “How could I be a tree?” but I am telling you, such beauty, and such joy when you see it! Something altogether different, but how could you describe it? You can’t describe it to the satisfaction of anyone because who wants to be a tree? And yet here inverted and we’re called the branch; don’t forget it: “And there shall come forth a stem from the stump of Jesse”—from the stump of I AM—“and a branch shall grow out of its root, and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, and the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord”. Fear, by the way, means reverence of the Lord, the awe of God, not fear as we understand it.134 ¶20

Again, these same four, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it is revealed to us in a strange way when the child is given a name. This is now the 9th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given”—two entirely different experiences, a child is born, a son is given—“and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called ‘Wonderful Counselor.’” Don’t put a comma between Wonderful and Counselor as so many Bibles have. Bear in mind that there were no punctuation marks in the ancient Hebrew, none whatsoever, not even breaks as paragraphs, just all continuous. And they put a comma in between Wonderful and Counselor. It is not. There are four names given, in keeping with the fourfold gospel: “His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” the four titles.134 ¶21

Wonderful Counselor, that’s omniscience itself. You could ask nothing of a being who is completely awake that would not have the automatic answer, for there is omniscience. Mighty God, divine omnipotence. And here, Everlasting Father, Father forever. That’s when the Son is given; that’s when the third title comes. And then, Prince of Peace; that’s at the very end, when you are about to take off the garment for the last time, as told us in the Book of John: “And my peace I leave with you; not as the world giveth give I unto you”. He gives a peace that is beyond understanding. You can’t disturb that peace, for he’s the Prince of Peace. He is an Everlasting Father; he is Father forever. When you see me, said he, you see the Father, Father forever. Almighty God, a might beyond the wildest dreams of anything you’ve ever seen. And when you see that might, you see it personified as a man. Look into his eyes, and you see might like you’ve never known might before, and it is man. And then Wonderful Counselor, so he promises to send us the Counselor. When he withdraws, he will send to those who have the understanding to follow him as he revealed what happened in him.134 ¶22

So when you read the gospels, whether it be Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, do not see a man walking through the pages. See the great mystery of Christ the Branch unfolding in you. And it takes root. There must come out a root from that stump. It takes root. How does it take root? Well, you first hear the story and you believe it, then the Word is planted. As one believes it, he’s accepted the Word.134 ¶23

The Word he translates in the Book of John, called logos, that’s “In the beginning was the Word”—that’s the Greek logos—“and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That’s really the translation of the Hebrew Dabar, which means “the Word of God which contains within itself the power of its own expression.” That Word in the Book of John, the first verse, is Christ: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now turn to the 55th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and fulfill that where I sent it”.134 ¶24

So the word when it comes, it’s the word called Christ. I tell you the story. Believe it. The minute you believe it, you’ve accepted it; it has fallen on fertile ground. It will then take root, and the Word contains within itself the power of its own expression. And the whole vast program of God for man’s salvation is contained in that Word, the seed. It falls upon man; man hears it. He either believes it, or he rejects it. And so here, we move across the world, and seven times pass over us until one day, we hear it with acceptance; and then the little root takes place in that stump of Jesse, the stump of I AM. Then out of it comes the Branch, and then the Spirit of the Lord descends upon him. From then on, it moves and you can’t stop it.134 ¶25

So you can’t earn it. Accept it. Believe the story as it was intended when it was first written, completely misunderstood through the centuries. It told us of a certain individual who was born in a strange way and raised in a strange way and died a horrible death. But that’s not the story at all. If I would comfort you with a death, the 6th chapter of the Book of Romans should comfort you. For here in this sixth chapter we are told that “if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his”.134 ¶26

He uses the past tense when it comes to death and the future when it comes to resurrection. If we have been united with Christ in death like his, then we shall be united with him in a resurrection like his. So the unity took place in his death, for he fell and all of us are in it. Now he’s asking us for acceptance through the Word. We have union with him in a death like his; we shall have union with him in a resurrection like his. He resurrects us one after the other by this series of fantastically wonderful mystical experiences, one after the other. And you can’t contrive them; they come like a thief in the night when you least expect them, one after the other. So everything said in the gospels concerning the central figure is all about you, everything, from the beginning to the end.134 ¶27

But I tell you, the death has already taken place. But even though the death took place, for the tree has fallen, it’s been felled: “Hew down the tree, cut off the branches”—that’s all over—“strip the leaves, scatter the fruit, give him the mind of a beast.” Well, haven’t we the mind of a beast? Go back twenty years, what beast in the world would have conceived of ovens to burn innocent people by the millions? Isn’t that the mind of a beast?134 ¶28

Have you read here recently the current stories of Stalin? The things the man did to those, even the most intimate circles, that no one felt at ease in his presence. Molotov down to all like little children, shaking, every one of them. This came up last Sunday in the Sunday Times, in yesterday’s Observer, in today’s New York Times, for I get that every day, and all these stories because today is the tenth anniversary of his death. Here was the strangest—call it a beast; there is no beast that would have done the things the man did to his own people. He hated everything in the world. And so did Hitler, who hated everything.134 ¶29

And so take the man’s mind from him and give him the mind of a beast. Who gave the order? God. And this is the order from on high. Now in the eyes of the world, they seemed to be so far advanced because they were so powerful in the exercise and misuse of power. They are on the down; they’re descending. They have… seven times must pass over this mind of a beast before it could accept the story of Christianity. Both rejected it. Both called it foolish, that the whole thing was stupid. The opiate of humanity, said one, quoting his master Karl Marx, and the other looked upon Christianity as the weakest thing in the world. Christ to him was simply nothing but a weakness because he couldn’t kill. He said, “Put up the sword… and turn the other cheek… and Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”134 ¶30

And so here you see the beast of beasts, and it was all at God’s command. “Take from him the mind of a man and give him the mind of a beast, and let his lot be among the beasts. But do not disturb the root. Leave that stump and let it be watered with the dew of heaven.” And then there’s a reversal; it just suddenly appears, and all of a sudden, the stump puts out a shoot. It can’t put out the shoot until it first heard the Word of God.134 ¶31

So we’re told, “Go and tell the Word, and it must start in Jerusalem and spread to Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. Go and tell it. And some will accept it and some will reject it. But those who reject it, all right, because seven times has not passed over. And what are the seven times? Read the 3rd chapter of the Book of Daniel, and “heat the furnaces seven times more than they were wont to be.” And then comes the three Hebrew boys, and they are put into the furnaces, clothed. And then the king said, “Were there not three?” They answered yes. “But I see four… and the fourth has the form of a Son of God”.134 ¶32

So here there were four, not three. Three were put in, the threefold man, the three-dimensional man, but goes with them the fourth, God himself. For the fourth [...] is God himself altogether. When they came out, not even with the smell of fire, their hair was not singed, and not even the smell of fire upon their garments. Then he, Nebuchadnezzar, worshipped the God of Israel, worshipped the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Here, this whole thing is a mystery to be unfolded in the simple way it began: by telling you that Christ of the scripture is unfolding in you in a series of events, revealing to you your salvation.134 ¶33

So not only before, [...], for Peter in his epistle said that the prophets saw how they searched and inquired about this grace that was to be yours, and how they inquired about this salvation; and asked him what persons, what time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within him when prophesying and predicting of the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory. But they didn’t find him. They couldn’t find the Christ of whom they wrote and whose coming they foretold. They couldn’t find him because they were looking for a man. And today they are still looking for a man and looking for a time. They think maybe l963 will bring him, 1964, and all through the ages, people have thought of just a moment in time was the coming of Christ, or the coming of a person.134 ¶34

And he doesn’t come that way. He comes in you. And when you have him, you share him with everyone who will listen. But many will say because they know you so well, “But don’t I know him? Isn’t he Mary’s child and his father named George? Doesn’t he work in a factory with me? I know him. What’s he talking about?”134 ¶35

And so they expect an entirely different kind of person to come. They don’t expect this garment to have within it an experience that no mortal man possibly could ever have. And it all happens in the man, in the depths of the soul of the man. Then he goes back, and he sees where it was all foretold, but naught could he himself foresee. It was all there, but he couldn’t really dig it out any more than the scholars can, until it happens. After it comes to the surface in him and he’s bewildered, when the dust settles so that he can really talk about it without excitement, a few will listen and a majority will turn their backs.134 ¶36

And they’ll say, “That poor fellow. He used to be so normal, used to be a very normal person. Used to tell me how to get a better job, and I used to get the job. He used to talk about how to get enough money, and I got the money. I went to the track and made $84,000. I went to the track and made $54,000. Went out [...], and I met all kinds of things. But now he’s talking of stranger things. He’s talking about a Christ I never heard of before. I’d rather have my old Christ because to him I can kneel and to him I can say a prayer in the hope that he will have compassion on me and respond. But this Christ, a series of mystical experiences in the soul of man, where the whole tree unfolds? And suddenly the tree fell down and turns around, and then the whole thing goes up right back into the great stump itself, the skull of man; and from then on, it begins to really grow?”134 ¶37

And then he knows what the glory is that Paul spoke of, for there is laid up for me in heaven a crown of glory. But he himself grows it; no one puts it upon him. It’s a living crown, but not a crown as the human eye sees when they see the queen’s crown. This is entirely different, a real crown. Do you know of any crown comparable to the antlers of a stag? Have you ever seen such majesty in your life when you see this beautiful thing? Did you ever see such majesty as a tree in full bloom? No. Don’t even try to visualize it when I tell you. The writer of the Book of Mark could see it correctly: “What do you see now with the eye open?” “I see men like trees walking.” Don’t even try to visualize it because it frightens people.134 ¶38

But believe the story as I told you this night concerning Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: the fourfold man you are. One presents you as a king to fulfill the 23rd chapter of Jeremiah. For he said, “I have come to fulfill the scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me. And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”. It’s all about this being that you are. And then comes the presentation of the ideal servant: “Behold, my servant the Branch”—the 3rd chapter of Zechariah. “Behold, the man, the Branch, whose name is the Branch”—the 6th chapter of Zechariah. Then comes the fulfillment of the 4th of Isaiah. For all must be fulfilled, and so these four branches must take root and all grow and mature in man. So here you have the king, the servant, the ideal man, and God himself.134 ¶39

Now don’t neglect the use of the law, even though it will never justify you before God. You have the law. Now let us go into the Silence and use the law wisely by assuming that we are the man, or the woman, that we really want to be. Try to persuade ourselves in this short interval of a minute that we really are this being. And if you believe it, that’s another form of the word that now cannot return unto you empty but must accomplish that wherein you sent it. By assuming that you are, you have sent it on its way, and you’ll be transformed into the likeness of your assumption. Now let us go.134 ¶40

Tonight’s subject is “The Pure in Heart.” I think you are all familiar with it, the sixth beatitude: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” . I dare say that it would be unwise to pick and choose among the beatitudes, and yet I hear that most people look upon this beatitude as the brightest particular star in the heavens. It really seems the most inaccessible, not only the promise but the condition that must be met in order for the promise to be fulfilled: for we must be pure in heart to see God. And what wouldn’t man give to see God? And yet all he needs to do in this world is to fulfill the condition: to be pure in heart.133 ¶1

And so what do we mean by pure in heart, just what is it? First of all, may I tell you that you need not think of moral perfection; and certainly, it does not refer in any way to sexual purity. For we are told by the same one who uttered the beatitude that the harlot given to love will go into heaven before the Pharisee. The Pharisee was perfect in keeping these outward laws—the washing of the outside of the cup and the washing of the hands and feet. He abided by the law, outwardly, and yet he was told that the harlot given to love would go into heaven before he would. So it isn’t that.133 ¶2

So what is this purity spoken of: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”? You see, the Bible is a mystery; and although on the surface it seems so simple, anyone should be able to understand that simple statement, but anyone: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” But the Bible isn’t that simple. So what is this purity, and what is the heart? For the word pure is Tahor, which means clear, which means “unalloyed, pure, pure gold.” It was used as a tract of land completely cleared of trees, without structures, none whatsoever; but here, it is pure gold. But to understand it, we’ve got to go all over the Bible to get it.133 ¶3

And here in the seventy-third Psalm, the very first verse, “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.” So right away he set up Israel as the pure in heart. And then in John 1, he sees Nathanael—Nathanael means “the gift of God”—and Nathanael looks at him. At the moment, he is not quite sure that anything good could come out of Galilee. And Jesus looking at him said, “An Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile” . So that’s an Israelite, one in whom there is no guile, no deceit, and incapable of duplicity—that’s the true Israelite, and that’s the heart.133 ¶4

Now, in the 24th Psalm, the 3rd and 4th verses, the question is asked, “And who will ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” Then comes the response, “He who is of clean hands and the pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.” So “Who can ascend the hill of the Lord? Who could stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and the pure heart.” Then you are told in the next line exactly what he means by it: he doesn’t lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. So we bring the whole thing down just to one simple, simple voice: a man that is incapable of deceit for personal gain. If I tell you a story for amusement where you and I can laugh together, that’s not deceit. But if I do it for personal gain, say, in politics—whether politics being government or in religion or in business—anytime that I plot and plan a little scheme to get the better of another for my own personal gain, then I am not pure in heart.133 ¶5

So he’s looking for one who is pure in heart because no one but such a one can see God. No one can be brought into the presence of the Ancient of Days and be presented to him but the pure in heart. He may have no intellectual, social, or financial background, but nothing in the world of [...], but he is incapable of deceiving another for his own personal gain. That one has the heart of the Israelite. At the very moment that it’s observed by God, who sees all and knows all, he brings him right into his presence and you see God. When you see God, you see that only reality and you become what you see. At that very moment, like a seal upon wax, the impress is made and you bear the image of God. Not on this physical garment, but you bear it on your eternal garment, which was waiting for that moment in time when the heart was pure gold. It’s the unalloyed gold.133 ¶6

When you start with this homogenous substance called the body—for this is simply containing all, all minerals, all things—and then we are put through furnaces, furnaces of affliction as the Bible speaks of them. I’d rather speak of them as furnaces of experience. But every test in the world is given to the individual by himself (but he doesn’t know it) to do what is called, not the right thing but the loving thing, where you could never deceive. And when you’ve been put through all these tests and you’d still, in front of your own being and your own poverty, rather die than take advantage of another and that heart becomes pure gold, only it can receive the imprint of the King of kings.133 ¶7

Now he finds such a person. Now this is the mystery. He’s been looking and looking, and he finds him, and his name, he calls him David. After putting himself through all the furnaces, he extracts the pure gold that can take his imprint, and that he calls David. “I have found in David”—the 13th chapter, the 22nd through the 24th verses of the Book of Acts—“I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart.” Here, for the first time, I brought forth exactly what I wanted: “I found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart. Of whose posterity God has brought forth a Savior, Jesus, as he promised.”133 ¶8

Now the word Jesse actually means I AM. He is the father of David. So who is begetting that heart? “I am.” You put yourself unknowingly from your present level into every situation in the world to test that goal. So here you are embedded in this homogenous substance containing all things, but you’ve got to extract only pure gold. And that pure gold is David. So I have found in David—I brought him forward—the son of Jesse, the son of I AM. So I bring it out, and out of it now I make myself a pledge. This is the pledge that’s told us in the 7th chapter of the Book of 2nd Samuel, and I will now bring forth from your body your son. The words are “And when you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up after you your son, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” .133 ¶9

And now the process begins. He’s found him; and from him, he’s going to bring forth now his own likeness. He’s found David, his only begotten son—that’s pure gold. Now God now begins the process of making what he has brought forth into his own image. Now, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” . You can’t make man until first you produce this pure metal, this pure gold. And so God became embedded in what is called a garment of flesh; and in it he moves through all the furnaces of experience until he can produce out of it the pure gold. Then from it he now brings forth himself. He’s going to make himself; and making himself, he’s making us, individuals. Now it doesn’t make sense, but you listen to it carefully.133 ¶10

In the 44th chapter of Isaiah, the very last verse, what is said of Cyrus is said of David, and the name only appears twice in the book, just a couple of times in the book, in the forty-fourth and beginning the forty-fifth of Isaiah. Cyrus is called “my shepherd.” That’s what David was called: I have found my shepherd and he will do all of my will. David will do all of my will, so you can see the two are as one. Now in a wonderful manuscript, which is used in the Apocrypha, also in the traditional books of our Bible; and Cyrus is made to say—it’s supposed to have this manuscript, this parchment—“I am Cyrus the king, the great king, the mighty king. I am the son of Cambyses the great king. I am the grandson of Cyrus the great king, exalted according to the beneficence of their hearts.” Now here we find Cyrus, Cambyses, and Cyrus. I make the claim that man awake matures completely when man becomes the father of his own father. He’s Cyrus; his father is Cambyses, and his grandfather is Cyrus. So Cyrus awakes, and he says, “I am Cyrus the king, the great king, the mighty king. I am the son of Cambyses the great king, the grandson of Cyrus the great king, exalted according to this love of their hearts.”133 ¶11

Now here we come back. David seems to be something that I begot. I promised myself I’m going to extract something that is gold, my very being. “I will raise up after you, raise up out of your very body, your son, who will come forth from your body.” Well, that’s gold. “I will be his father, and he will be my son.” Now we are told that he buried this in the mind of man. The word mind and the word heart are the same in Hebrew. When we are told in the 3rd chapter, the 11th verse of Ecclesiastes that “God has put the world into the heart of man, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end,” that word translated heart and the word translated world are now changed in the modern version of the Bible, and the word heart now becomes mind and the word world becomes eternity. So, “And God has put now eternity into the mind of man, so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” That same word translated world is now translated eternity, and the word translated heart, in the King James Version, is now translated mind. It’s the identical thing.133 ¶12

What did he put into the mind and the heart? The whole personality of a man is that gold. He had to first make him. When man becomes incapable of duplicity but incapable of deceit, he has the gold, and the gold is in that man. And now that’s placed in man by whom? By the one who brought it into being. Who is that being? Jesse. Jesse is producing David and David is pure gold, and “I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart.” Now out of him I am going to actually extract my own being. I can’t extract it from anything but pure gold. And now he begins to make man in his image after his own likeness. And it takes that gold to take the imprint of God Almighty, of Jehovah himself.133 ¶13

So everyone in the world will do it because Jesse is buried in you as your own wonderful I-am-ness. If you should drop dead this very second, it doesn’t make any difference; the play goes on. And he’ll put you into situation after situation after situation until finally you become incapable of deceit. What you do sexually is not his concern, unless it is to deceive for personal gain. To marry someone with all the outer appearance of love, when basically you really want to get rid of them within twenty-four hours for what they have, that’s marrying for personal gain. That’s deceit.133 ¶14

But if you married a thousand people, if you lived without marrying to a thousand people, that’s not a thing to do with it. No matter how you are given to such love, you are told that you will get into heaven before the Pharisee, in the 9th chapter of the Book of Luke. But the question is asked to lead up to it. So I ask you a question, said he, “A man said to his first son, ‘Go into the vineyard and work.’ And he said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward repented and went into the vineyards. He said to a second son, ‘Go into the vineyard and work.’ And he said, ‘I’ll do it,’ but he did not. I ask you, who obeyed the will of his father?” They said, “The first one.” He said, “I tell you, the tax collectors and the harlots will get into the kingdom of heaven before you” . For you are just then like the second son; he says, “I’ll do it,” but you don’t do it. The first son repented. He said, “I won’t do it,” but he repented and changed his mind and he did it.133 ¶15

And so everyone in the world is brought into these unnumbered situations where they are faced with it, and though you starve, you still can’t take advantage of another. You’d rather be dispossessed; go through all the things of the world that would seemingly dishonor everyone. You’d rather do it than take advantage of another for personal gain. Can’t do it. When man comes to that point, he’s the pure in heart. And it hasn’t a thing to do with the moral code of the world. So don’t think of this in any way as moral perfection that is attained by an individual; and don’t think of it, as the world would naturally think of it, as sexual purity. Nothing has to do with sexual purity, as the world sees it; it is all to do with duplicity.133 ¶16

Can you really be double-minded and say one thing as a promise when you intend another, which is to get personal gain at the expense of the other, whether it be a party, an individual, a family, or a government? And so, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” And that pure in heart is that when the gold is actually there, having been put through all the furnaces of experience, and finally, when I arrive at the point, “Just let me die. I haven’t eaten this day; I haven’t eaten this week, but let me die. But I can’t take advantage of another for personal gain.” At that moment, may I tell you, and I’m speaking from experience, that you are taken into the presence of the Most High.133 ¶17

For my experience, I go back to the days of the deep Depression. I mean that when I didn’t know where to find a nickel. There’s a lady in the audience tonight who, along with my wife, came to my very first meeting, and she knows the truth of which I speak. I would walk from my little place in the village in the hope of finding a friend, fifty blocks away—I couldn’t ride the subway; that was a nickel. In the hope I could find some friend who would give me—I couldn’t borrow it with collateral—in the hope that eventually someone would give me a quarter and I would make something and pay it back. For I had four mouths to feed—my dancing partner and her parents. If I could I find a quarter, I would buy vegetables and a little olive oil and walk back the fifty blocks. Many a day I couldn’t find a friend who had a quarter. But I would pass the places, and I couldn’t take one piece of lettuce. I could not take anything from these trays all exposed, I couldn’t. I’d go back hungry, just tell them of my experiences. I couldn’t lift a thing from anyone who I hadn’t paid. It wasn’t mine.133 ¶18

So I know exactly how this thing works. While I was in that state where I was incapable of stealing, but incapable of stealing, and I could not deceive for personal gain, one night, taken in Spirit right into the presence of the Ancient of Days, he asked me the eternal question, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” I was by him prompted what to say what I ought to say, and I simply repeated the 12th chapter, 12th verse of the Book of Luke. So when you’re brought into his presence, don’t be anxious how or what you are to answer or what you are to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. So in that moment, what I ought to say I said it, that the greatest thing in the world is love. Well, you couldn’t steal from one you love. You couldn’t steal from anything in this world if you loved them—you couldn’t. If you asked them for it and they had reasons, without explaining the reasons for not giving it, you couldn’t condemn them for their reasons they didn’t give it. You couldn’t condemn them for their actions and their reactions. So you accepted it; that was all right, perfectly all right.133 ¶19

So when you are brought into that state, it’s because the heart is guileless. And so he finds some Israelite. “Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.” No guile whatsoever; he is guileless. And then he can see the face of God, for he looked into the face of God. But you’re told in the same book, the fourteenth chapter, “When you see me, you see the Father.” So he saw the Father because he was without guile. And his face was unveiled.133 ¶20

Now we are told in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, the 2nd Corinthians, the 3rd chapter, “So take heart. Not one will despair. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the Lord, will be changed,” but rather, it is said in the present active sense: “we are being changed from one glory to another glory” by the Spirit . We are actually being changed by beholding the face from one glory to another glory. He uses the word advisedly, “We all, unveiled, beholding the Lord, are being changed into his very image from one glory to another glory.”133 ¶21

So I tell you, don’t despair. If today you think, well, it’s easier to get away with it than to face society and you get away with it, perfectly all right, do it. Tomorrow you’ll be faced with a similar situation, whether it be in this little world of ours or another world—there are worlds within worlds within worlds—but you will not come out of the furnaces until it’s pure gold. No one in the world gets away with anything, but no one. And so when we are told in that sixth beatitude, “Blessed are the poor… blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” believe it. Nothing but the unalloyed gold can come out.133 ¶22

Now, I just love all the beatitudes, but I must confess that this excites me. There are eight if you read it in one way; you could make them nine in another way; and at maximum, you could get ten of them if you read it in another way. Some are inclined to read them as ten because it gives the feeling of a new Torah, a new Ten Commandments. But that’s stretching it a bit; but we can—you can read it in ten. But there are definitely eight. You can’t miss the eight, and you can push them into nine, or even ten. But it is a new code, a new law, where causation becomes mental and not physical. As you’re told, “You’ve heard it said”—as the eight are given and then we go into an explanation of the eight—“you shall not kill” but I say unto you, to even entertain it in your heart is to have committed the act. “You’ve heard it said you should not commit adultery, but I say to look upon a woman lustfully is to have already committed the act in your heart with her” . Therefore, the whole thing is raised from the physical level, the Pharisee, where he doesn’t do it physically, but he does it mentally. And it’s now raised to the level of the mind where if you do it mentally you’ve done it.133 ¶23

To plot and plan to take advantage of another but to restrain the impulse because you contemplated the act along with its consequences to yourself and to your friends and your family and because you couldn’t stand the, well, embarrassment if you were caught, and then you restrained the impulse to do it, but that wasn’t good enough. Shouldn’t even entertain the thought! And so to entertain the thought is to perform the act with the new code. And so you can’t even entertain the thought. And when you can’t [...], do not restrain the impulse. So if I contemplate an act and it seems pleasant, I might be inclined to do it if I could get away with it; but if I contemplate it along with its consequences to myself and to others, well then, I may restrain the impulse. But I’m told that’s not good enough. You don’t even contemplate the act if the act is to take advantage of another for personal gain.133 ¶24

And may I tell you, maybe you’ve all had the experience and you’d rather die than steal. Maybe you’ve had that experience. If you haven’t had it, may I tell you that you’re not going to avoid it. So don’t think that man is judged today because of his fabulous wealth. Sometimes I think that God starts us on the play at the top of the ladder. If all the honors are given to the world and they receive all the mortal honors—things that vanish—and how they love them, and then the play unfolds because they aren’t strong enough as yet to withstand the temptation if they’re up against the pressures of things when they have more than their own mouth to feed. If you have your own mouth to feed and that’s the only mouth to feed, oh well, so what? You won’t die. You can just go to bed hungry—sleep it off. But when there are others that you love and they depend upon you to find that quarter and you won’t steal it, and so you come back without the quarter. And you all have to amuse yourselves with fun—just turn on the radio or something—and you haven’t even paid the rent. And just simply play the game until that moment in time when pure gold comes out and he found David.133 ¶25

Having found David, of pure gold, he leaves David in you and then out of you he brings himself. Well, who is the very being he’s bringing out? He’s bringing out Jesse. Well, who is Jesse? Jesse is the father of David. So he’s pulling Jesse out of his own being, and Jesse is I AM. So he leaves David. So who is the one that he placed in the mind in the beginning? In the beginning was when the gold became pure unalloyed gold; that was the beginning. So he leaves it in the mind of man. And then he pulls out now his own image and the image is Jesse, for his name is I AM and Jesse’s name is I AM. But Jesse is the father of David, so he’s pulling himself out of himself, and he sets up in himself a son called David, pure gold, a man after my own heart. You get it?133 ¶26

This is a mystery. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to reveal, but may I tell you that it’s the most glorious thing when you contemplate it. Here, God himself, his name is I AM, decides to make his own being and bring forth himself, the image of himself. He sinks himself in this we call the tent—in the Bible it’s called the tent—flesh and blood, with all of the passions; this complete state that contained everything, all the memory, all the fires of the world. But he can’t use them. He has to extract from it pure gold, and that pure gold is David. He can’t start his work until he brings David out. And finally, he brings David out and only David is pure gold. “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.” And I will bring forth from him a Savior, Jesus, as I promised. And so he starts the work of bringing him forward; and bringing him forward, he brings forward himself, the father of David. So he first creates David, as told you in the 2nd chapter, the 7th verse of the Psalms, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee.” And now out of this I’m going to bring that which is my real being, and he brings his own being out who is the father of the son, and the father is Jesse. Well, Jesse is the father of David, and Jesse is I AM.133 ¶27

And so, all of a sudden, this begins to unfold within you. But it will not start until you reach that point where the pure gold is produced within you through all the experiences, all the fires of experience, where you are guileless.133 ¶28

So let no one tell you that your excessive energy expressed in anything in this world is wrong. It isn’t wrong, unless it was expressed falsely. Let me quote you the words “Who will ascend the hill of the Lord? And who will stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false, and does not swear deceitfully.” In any deceitful act on your part, there is still more fire that you must pass through, still more experiences, until finally, when you’re faced with everything and the world is against you and it means life or death, you still will choose death. You cannot violate your code of the guilelessness—you can’t. So when you could not raise a finger to take anything, then there’s harmony. It’s the harmony he’s looking for. Now he starts to mold it into his own image, as told us in the 1st chapter of Hebrews. Then he starts, and it takes on the imprint of God himself.133 ¶29

So don’t be concerned. It’s going to work because the one who does it is doing it in you. Your own wonderful I-am-ness that’s doing it. That’s the great Elohim, who sunk himself in you and began the process of extracting pure gold that he may work on it to mold his image upon it. And that’s you. So you believe it.133 ¶30

And when you go home—that 24th Psalm, it’s a short one and what a beauty! It begins with the words, “The earth is the Lord’s and fullness thereof, the earth and those who dwell therein; he’s established it upon the seas, and founded it upon the rivers.” He tells you who you are. For right now, you’re going to come into his presence if you are one who cannot lift up your soul to that which is false.133 ¶31

And so he tells you who he is. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof and all those who dwell therein. [...]. And you’ll find it one day, the whole vast world, all yours. You appear to it. And then if you can fit that bill where you can actually rise into the presence of the Lord, it’s because you do not swear deceitfully. Regardless of the temptation, you couldn’t swear deceitfully. And then you’re brought in. And when you take off this little garment after that moment in time, you’ll take it off for the last time. And then you will read in that wonderful chapter, the 5th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, what is waiting for you and what body of glory is waiting for you . And so you’ll fit it. It’s all perfect.133 ¶32

But don’t despair and don’t be concerned. You won’t fail; may I tell you that no one in the world is going to fail. So if today we seem to be on different levels, forget it. We’ll all pass through similar levels, moving toward that one point in time when we are fitted to come into the presence of the Holiest of Holies. So who will stand in his holy place? You will. And when you stand, you’ll see him and you’ll be just like him. You’ll take the imprint of the being that you behold, and in that moment, you become one with the being you behold. And although when you put on the veil once more and return to this world, no one sees it; they see the being that they have always known, but you’re veiled. You’re veiled, and all are veiled. And when it’s taken off, it’s taken off after that experience for the last time.133 ¶33

So when he is asked the question after the statement is made, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have their nests; but the Son of man has no place to lay his head” . The Son of man is waiting for just such: it’s unalloyed gold in the hearts of man. Because, literally, a nest means this moving tabernacle, this thing called the flesh. He’s waiting for it to be just right. And at the moment when it’s just right, when you least expect it, he’s taken into the presence where he receives the imprint, just like a seal upon wax. He returns once more veiled, and no one knows because he’s the being that he was prior to that. But he’s not so to himself. He knows what he saw, and he knows what he became at that moment. He was like the molten gold that took it and returned to tell it.133 ¶34

So I tell you, don’t seek the opportunity because he in you, your own I-am-ness; he’s working it out for you. He’ll take you through all the experiences necessary to reduce you to pure gold. And chances are the majority of you here—maybe all of you, I hope—have reached that point. But don’t test yourself, don’t. Life does that; all the thing is moving. And the day will come that you’ll have the experience. When you can meet them, it doesn’t matter if you die or not, but you cannot be double-minded about it. Knowing you couldn’t be, well then, it’s done; and he sees in you the David he’s been looking for. He’s always looking for David.133 ¶35

So in the 89th Psalm, he said, “I have found David… he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.’” And all these things are but true; they’re unbelievably true. Suddenly you actually have an experience that was written 4,000 years ago. These words were written and put on parchment thousands of years ago, and you thought they were relating some little incident of 4,000 years ago when they were not. They were telling God’s eternal mystery, how in everyone it happens, and suddenly you find him. Well, where was he all along? He was in you. After he has made you David: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,” now he hides him in the one in whom he made him. He hides him, as told you in the 3rd chapter, the 11th verse of Ecclesiastes, he hides him right into the mind of that man. But he so does it that that man cannot find out what he did from beginning to end—until that moment in time when he finds him—and there is David. And who is he?—your son. If he is your son, who are you? Jesse. And who is Jesse? I AM. That’s what the word means, just I AM. And that’s the name of God.133 ¶36

Now let us go into the Silence.133 ¶37

T onight we have as our subject, “The Sin Against the Holy Spirit.” Undoubtedly you have heard unnumbered concepts of this statement from scripture. The most common interpretation is the violation of the sex act. But that is not my picture – not as it has been revealed to me. As I told you: the Bible is not something you can open up and read as you would a novel. It is a building on three levels. As you are told: “A three-fold cord is not quickly broken.” I, personally, cannot conceive that you will violate and blaspheme against the Holy Spirit. I will give you my reason for it afterwards. So, if I can comfort you, may I tell you: don’t be anxious, that you will simply sin. Yes, we all sin every moment of time. But all sins are forgiven, all blasphemies are forgiven. The only blasphemy that cannot be forgiven is that against the Holy Spirit, as told in Matthew 12, Mark 3, and Luke 2. I find in the Book of Luke a more advanced development of the theme than I do in Matthew and Mark. Mark is the earliest revelation of this theme, but each statement is followed by the strangest, most irrelevant theme in the three books. That which follows in the Book of Luke gave me my cue.129 ¶1

He made the statement that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven. You will think you are reading an entirely different chapter on a different theme. Then it goes right into this statement: “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious how or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” That little word “ought” reveals so much. It implies you need not say what you should say. “The Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” – and that is the crux of the whole thing.129 ¶2

Man is free and, because he is free, he need not say what he should say. So, He will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. First of all, you must understand what a synagogue is. It is a gathering, a community called by Jehovah. We think a synagogue is built with human hands, but the synagogue in the true sense of the word is a place of worship, a place of instruction, and the only worship in the synagogue is the reading of scripture, the word of God. No getting down and saying prayers. “And they read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.”129 ¶3

Here, for almost 2,000 years, in the most populous of our Christian denominations, they read it in Latin, in a tongue not understood by anyone in the congregation. We are warned to “read from the book, the law of God, clearly; and they gave sense, so that the people understood the readings.” Were I in France and spoke only English, I could not go to any church and “hear” anyone who read to me in French. You would have to read to me in the English tongue, and with understanding, that I may understand. Here is the word of God. But if I understood some other tongue, read it to me in that tongue, read it with the sense so that I may understand it.129 ¶4

This is the story all over the world. We will take one little passage, and we do not understand it and we criticise others. It has nothing to do with things taking place in the outer world. It is all about you.129 ¶5

Before we go into this statement, let me show you the difference between Jesus, and the Christ – for the whole thing is about the Christ. The connection between Jesus and the Christ is not that of an historical figure and some metaphysical entity, but that of a visible history condensed into a few years, and the history that is continuously unfolded throughout the ages – a history that is known as the history of salvation. Christ is divine history inwoven in every child born of woman. The whole vast history of God is inwoven in you and in me and in every being, and when it reaches maturity in you in one short interval of time – that condensed amount of time, just a few years – the whole thing unfolds. But may I tell you: only a few will believe it. The entire divine history of God inwoven in man like a seed matures through the ages – all the pains and violence – everything in the world. And suddenly what you heard about another begins to awaken in you. It will come out petal by petal. The whole thing flowers in you and you are he. That is the story.129 ¶6

Now why do I not believe that you could ever sin against the Holy Spirit? I will tell you: “And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious how or what you are to answer or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” Someone asked me a question. Who asked me a question? Some question must be asked for me to answer. What am I to say? The Holy Spirit will teach me in that very hour what I ought to say.129 ¶7

So when I am brought into this wonderful gathering and presented to the Holy of Holies – God himself – I am told supernaturally, yes, I am prompted as though on a stage and the prompter is telling me what I ought to say. And I cannot, from my own experience, believe that anyone in this world could falter. It is automatic. When you stand in his presence and he is infinite love, he will ask you: “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and you—without taking thought or batting an eye or trying to rationalise – you will automatically, like an echo, say: “Faith, Hope and Love, these three abide, but the greatest of these is Love.” And he who asked the question and prompted you supernaturally what to say, will then embrace you, and you are one with God forever and forever.129 ¶8

Then you will be sent to tell that story to the whole vast world who will listen. Some will listen and accept it, others will reject it, and the majority will not even listen. It does not matter. The tree is growing in us, and when it matures in a very short interval of time—only a few years – the whole thing unfolds. It doesn’t take fifty years – I am fifty-eight – but in just a matter of years it begins to happen, and one after the other everything said of him unfolds in you, and you are he. So, Christ is divine history, and Jesus – the first to be raised from the dead—is the one in whom that divine history unfolds. Just a little short interval of time, and you are he.129 ¶9

Everyone becomes Jesus, because in everyone – in one moment of time – it is going to happen. When this garment of flesh comes off you will know exactly who you are. Personally I cannot believe (although the word is used, and I am told in Deuteronomy, Proverbs, and Revelation: “Do not change one word of scripture,” do not add to or take from it, leave it as it is) – therefore I cannot alter the word “ought,” and it is used both in the King James and Standard Revised Versions. He will tell you what you ought to say, giving man freedom to deny it and not say the greatest thing in the world is Love. That is man’s choice. But I do not believe man will ever not say it. In my own case it was like a response, an echo. How could you change an echo? Not if you screamed it from canyons. The voice will come back as I said it. You are supernaturally prompted what to say. So I cannot see how you are prompted in the depths of your soul what to say, and not say it. Don’t despair – you will not sin against the Holy Spirit.129 ¶10

But all other sins are forgiven – but all of them. What are they? It is stated so clearly for us if we understand the Bible: every sin in the world is forgiven. All blasphemies are forgiven and we hold the key. In the end of John 20, he appears, and the inner room was completely filled and he was shut out as it were. They wondered if he really rose. He appears in the midst of them and shows them the marks upon his body to testify to the reality of this appearance. Then he said to them: “Peace be with you.” Listen to it carefully. He said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” If you forgive the sins of anyone they are forgiven, and if you retain the sins of anyone they are retained.” He breathes upon them and gives them the Holy Spirit. (The words, “breath,” “wind,” and “spirit,” are one, the same word, both in Greek and Hebrew.)129 ¶11

So he breathes upon them. I will tell you what it is. It is the most intense vibration you have ever felt. There is nothing comparable to it – that breath which transfers to you the gift God promised, the gift of the Holy Spirit. It awakens you. It took place in the “upper room.” If you read it correctly, they were gathered together in the upper room. Suddenly he appears and breathes upon them and gives them the power to hold, or release.129 ¶12

I tell you: you can exercise this faculty right now. You can take someone in your world and represent them to yourself as you would like to see them. To the degree you are self-persuaded he is such a being, he becomes it. You are actually freeing him, and not holding him enslaved forever by seeing in your mind’s eye the being that is limited. That is your privilege. These are only states of consciousness, and every state a man leaves, he grows – as Matthew brings out: “If a tree be good it bears good fruit, if it is bad it bears bad fruit,” and he invites us to take the good tree. Luke went beyond Matthew in this statement of sinning against the Holy Ghost. If you sin against the Holy Spirit there is no forgiveness, but against anything else there is forgiveness.129 ¶13

Everyone in this world is bearing fruit – poverty, wealth, health, being known, being unknown, everything – and you who know this law can take anyone from the state where you find them and put them in the state you desire to see them. You don’t need his consent or knowledge. Don’t tell him what you are doing. Trust this power in your own being. Persuade yourself that this imaginal act is true and real, and to the degree that you are self-persuaded it is real, it becomes real. And so I tell you: if you forgive anyone he is forgiven; if you retain his sin it is retained.129 ¶14

Don’t blame him if he does not find the good job you think he should find. Don’t give him an argument. Does he need a good job, and you tell him to go and to make a greater effort? You are not applying this principle. Only after you become self-persuaded that he is employed are you forgiving his sin. Sin means missing the mark. If he misses it and you know it, you can help him.129 ¶15

Listen to the words: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they would not know sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.” He comes and shows man that causation is mental, that it is not physical – and now man has no excuse for his sin, missing the mark. If man has a mind – an imagination – he can exercise it. “You have heard of old that you should not commit adultery, but I say unto you to look on a woman lustfully you have already committed the act in your heart.” He raises it out from the physical state. He makes every man responsible for missing the goal. If I do not get the job, he does not condemn me. He only asks me to apply the law as it is revealed.129 ¶16

“They read from the book the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.” He reads from the Book (God’s revealed Word) that causation is mental, that imaginal acts create facts. So what are you imagining? I can say morning, noon, and night that I am holding the thought for you, and hope you get it. But I must so persuade myself, that I can’t see anything else in the world. That is what he taught us to do.129 ¶17

And I tell you the day will come (it begins in one moment when you least expect it) when suddenly the whole thing begins to awaken and the flower begins to unfold in you. In the beginning of time you were shown it on Mount Sinai. They can’t find Mount Sinai – they never will – God’s secret mountain where all of us were gathered together around Mount Sinai where Jehovah pledged it. He called us his bride. We were Israel then. Then he took us and pledged Israel to himself in this wonderfully holy covenant and showed us what we would go through. You forget it in passing through, and can’t remember it until the very end. In the very end, memory returns, and these wonderful words from Edward Thomas’ great poem: “All was foreshown me, what could I foresee, when I learned how the wind would sound after these things should be.” You do. Suddenly the thing begins to unfold and you hear the wind – this terrific hurricane of power. Then all things begin to unfold, and everything said of Jesus Christ in the scripture you will experience, from the birth to the very end – everything. Do not see him as something on the outside. See Jesus, as I told you earlier, a history – condensed in a few years, just a few years. And see Christ as history, continuously unfolded throughout the ages and you—the individual—matching this already unfolded divine history. You went through all the fires of the world and suddenly you reached the point of blooming, and in a quick moment you bloomed, and all that was foreseen and foretold – you suddenly awaken, and you are it.129 ¶18

Everything in the world is forgiven – I don’t care what you have done or plan to do. They are only states. The only thing not forgiven is the sin against the Holy Ghost, and that is – as I see it – when the individual refuses to confess his faith when supernaturally prompted to do so. You are brought into the presence of the God of Gods – the only God – and here in his presence you are prompted to confess your faith, and the words are told you. But you have heard it before. We have all heard them before, but even at that very moment they are still repeated in the depths of your soul that you may not make any mistake: “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and without batting an eye, you answer: “Faith, Hope, and Love, these three abide. But the greatest of these is Love.” And here is infinite love embodied before you, the Holy Spirit – Jehovah himself, and he embraces you and you are merged with him, you are one with him – infinite love – never in eternity to be dissolved from him, because you answered correctly. Yet you did not write the words.129 ¶19

So I cannot see how anyone can sin against the Holy Spirit. I cannot change the scripture, and as far back as we can go – to the earliest manuscripts – the word “ought” is there. But there is a possibility that one having been supernaturally prompted what to say could change the scripture – and that is the sin against the Holy Ghost. But I do not think you will. I cannot conceive of anyone doing it. I cannot conceive of God failing.129 ¶20

In the interval – all these things we sin against – we fall into states. A man falls into the state of feeling sorry for himself. Knowing the law, instead of arguing with the man, just take him out of it. He may fall in again twenty-four hours later. A friend called me today and my wife answered the phone, and he said: “What news have you of Vicki?” She said: “We are very pleased with her report.” He answered: “Pleased? I wish I could say pleased about things concerning myself.” He has been coming to my lectures for years. He was here last week. After years of saturation, he cannot conceive of feeling happy. And you tell him morning, noon, and night that these are states – that if you put yourself in a state of being wanted, you will be wanted. The state of being unwanted, then you will not be wanted. It will go on forever. He cannot believe in this reality.129 ¶21

I have brought him out unnumbered times, and yet I must never falter. “How often must I forgive? Seventy times seven.” If he calls me a thousand times I still must pull him out, and you go over it all again. You and I who know this principle must forgive seventy times seven and not ignore him, because he will not do it himself. If he wants to lean, let him lean.129 ¶22

One day when he least expects it, suddenly the whole story of Jesus Christ will unfold within him, and he is Jesus Christ. Christ is divine history, the history of salvation. And Jesus is history condensed into a few years that match it. Suddenly the whole vast thing has been stretched out and continuously unfolded throughout all the ages and is now telescoped in a short interval of time – the life of one man. May it happen to you now. When it will happen, only God knows. I do not know, but he knows, and when it starts to happen you cannot stop it. The whole thing will form the flower that is Christ.129 ¶23

When you make your exit from this world you have made it for the last time and then you are in eternity – but not better than those who have not. “Christ is the first fruit of those that slept,” the first that has been raised from the dead, but he is the beginning of the prophecy. We are not better than any being in this world because of our awakening. All will be one, and that one is God.129 ¶24

So the sin against the Holy Spirit – may I ask you not to be too concerned. I can’t conceive that you in any way will respond incorrectly when you are prompted supernaturally what you should say. God has taken His place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. You are brought into his presence and presented to the Ancient of Days – the Holy Spirit – and he is Man, the embodiment of love. And he will ask you a very simple question. He is the Rule, the Author, but don’t be anxious of how or what you are to answer or what you are to say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. And I tell you: what you ought to say, you are going to say. You are going to say it automatically and then he embraces you – and he is infinite love, joy beyond the wildest dream. No one could conceive of the joy when Jehovah embraces you.129 ¶25

And then you are sent to do what you will be doing: telling the word of God, just speaking – you can’t add to it or take from it. The four chapters from the 8th through the 11th of Nehemiah simply tell you about the word of God, nothing else.129 ¶26

Let no one tell you that the sin against the Holy Ghost means any physical departure or misuse or abuse, or any other thing. Hundreds of books have been written on that theme, and it is not so at all. They are rationalising God’s word. You can’t rationalise it. It has to be revealed. That is a mystery known only by revelation. I have read these books. I had them at home. Today, having had the experience, I know that everything is forgiven – but in the true sense of the word – no matter what man has done. Man has fallen into states. If he falls in time after time after time, you pull him out. And you do it for yourself, though your reason and senses deny it – it does not matter. You remain faithful and you – the only living reality in the world – will take the state, and the state will bear fruit.129 ¶27

In Matthew 12:33, we are told: “Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.” Those who do things you do not like are bearing bad fruit. But he is not the tree; he is the immortal soul falling into these states, one after the other. As Blake said: ‘I do not consider either the Just or the Wicked to be in a Supreme State, but to be every one of them States of the Sleep which the Soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.’ Man falls into these states unwittingly. You take someone, and without their knowledge or consent draw them into a level state and persuade yourself it is true. Though you have no evidence to confirm it, you persuade yourself it is so, and suddenly you will hear and he will confirm the fruit that he is hearing. But if you don’t do it and you believe all the things you hear and see in the course of a day, you are moving unnumbered (persons) into all kinds of confusing states.129 ¶28

I say: don’t be concerned, but do practice freeing individuals from the sin that is forgivable. You could forgive every being in this world before He breathes upon you and gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit. You still can forgive. Everyone can do it. My friends in San Francisco, and here – dozens of them whose stories I have told, who forgave, who took certain things that they wanted in this world and denied they did not have them and assumed they had them. These are all states, but you got them and you took others and changed them and made them conform to your dream of them and they conformed to it. Let us remember what we did and continue doing it, knowing that any moment in time, when we least expect it, like a thief in the night he comes upon us and he breathes upon us and our head becomes a vibrant center and we awaken from this sleep.129 ¶29

It is Christ breathing upon himself in us, for Christ – being divine history – he simply awakens and unveils it in us, and we suddenly become aware and we awaken and we are he. Then we look into our scripture and read the story in Matthew and in Luke, and everything said of his birth we experience, even to the three who were present, even to the swaddling clothes – and then you stand confounded and bewildered. Then a few months later something equally as fantastic happens.129 ¶30

And we are told: if the Son makes you free you are free indeed. The promise is made that the Son will make the father free. If he sets the father free, there must be a child, and he tells us he is trying to find the child. It takes the son to set the father free. In John 8:35, he said: “The Son abides forever. If the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.” Then you see the Son after another breathing (or wind) upon you, your head becomes a vibrant state, and all of a sudden, here he comes. He calls you, “Father.” You know who he is. He calls you, “Father” and you know exactly who you are. So everything is telescoped.129 ¶31

Let me again repeat the connection between Jesus and the Christ. It is not that of an historical figure and a metaphysical entity, but that of a visible history condensed within a few years, and the history that is continuously unfolded forever – continuously unfolded throughout all the ages. And suddenly this matches that, and it is telescoped, and all that is unfolded forever is telescoped in you in a few short years – and you are he. Now let us go into the silence.129 ¶32

We are told by Paul in II Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” The word “righteousness” is described for us in the Encyclopedia Britannica as “right thinking.” We are also told there is a three-fold cord that is not quickly broken. It is built like the ark, on three levels: the physical level here, the psychological level, and the spiritual level. Tonight we are taking three characters of Scripture: Esau, Jacob, and Israel. I think I have broken this cord – in fact I am convinced of it, so I would like to share with you what I know of these levels.127 ¶1

They are not persons as we are; they are states of consciousness through which the immortal soul passes on its way to God. We read this story in the 25th chapter of Genesis. We are told that Rebecca was childless and that she and Isaac prayed to God that they may be blessed with a child, and God responded. That is what we are told all through the Bible, this response to prayer for a child. In this case they are twins. And the Lord said unto her: “Two nations are in your womb and two people born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other and the elder shall serve the younger.”127 ¶2

Now here is a prophecy, before the children were brought into the world, which one would excel. Here is predestination – you cannot interpret it in any other way. They are brought into the world, they haven’t committed either good or evil, and yet one is predestined to excel. He is the younger – Jacob, the supplanter – and the first one, Esau, must serve him.127 ¶3

But I tell you: these are states of consciousness. Or we can take them on different levels. We are told in the same chapter of Genesis that the first son he gave me was red all over, like a hairy animal, so they called him Esau. His other name was Edom – like Adam – spelled in the same way in Hebrew, the red earth, the red being. That’s the first one, who must now serve the younger. The second came out holding in his hand the heel of the first, and he was called Jacob, the supplanter. We are told the first one was a hunter, a man of the fields, and the second one was a smooth-skinned lad who lived in a tent. So on this level it is the outer and the inner man.127 ¶4

No matter how hairless you seem to be, just put a magnifying glass on the body and you will see the body is completely covered with hair (you may call it a fuzz but it is hair) and the most external thing in this world of man is hair; next will be skin. The second one has no hair, so, hairless – that is the inner man. Putting it now into our language so that you and I can understand it and apply it, the outer man is a man of sense. I am in this room right now and everything seems so real, more real than anything else in the world. I know this room by reason of my bodily organs. My senses allow it and my reason dictates it. This is fact; all this is real. There is an inner man and he is skilled in arranging things so that they reach to desired ends, not based upon the evidence of the senses. The inner man, by standing here, could desire to be elsewhere and deny the evidence of my senses, denying reason, dare to assume I am where I would like to be, and rearrange the furniture of my mind. Instead of using this to tell me I am here, I use other furniture – objects of my mind. Here I rearrange it and remain faithful to that state until it takes on the tones of reality. And when it seems to be sensory vivid and I open my eyes upon it, I am shocked to find I am still here. That is the inner man, called Jacob, the supplanter – he takes the place of the outer man. He supplanted his brother twice. First he took his birthright, then he took his blessing; so these are the two in conflict and the whole story is one of conflict.127 ¶5

Eventually, after unnumbered ages, Jacob will be given the name of Israel, “a man after God’s own heart.” It seems to come soon, but it doesn’t really. No one knows the length of time between the awakening of these two states of consciousness and the fulfillment in the form of Israel.127 ¶6

But you must read the Bible from all angles. First Esau is Edom. In the story of Job the hero is an Edomite, all the characters are Edomites, and the whole play is laid in Edom. “Edom” means the “red earth”. We are told the first one to make a name for himself by subduing all the Edomites was named David. (Read it in 2 Samuel, 8. He is the first king of Israel chosen by Jehovah. Saul was chosen by the people, but rejected by Jehovah. Here is one, David, chosen by Jehovah – the first king of Israel. Israel means “a man after my own heart.” “Behold an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.” That is what he said when he saw Nathaniel, and only the pure in heart can see God. “I have found David, a man after my own heart, one who could subdue the Edomite.” That comes way beyond this initial story of the parents of the two boys.127 ¶7

It is all in us. I am told, as you are told tonight, that it is possible that I can assume I am the man I would like to be. If I dare to remain faithful to that assumption and not waver in it – and to the degree that I am loyal to that assumption – it will crystallise and become a fact. I need not appeal to any person in the world to help me. I can do it all by myself if I know of the existence of the Being in me who is skilled in arranging things so that it leads to a desired end. How would I arrange the furniture of the mind to reach the desired end, but name the end first – the end is where I begin. My end is my beginning.127 ¶8

This is a very simple story; it is a true story. A man – an engineer who had never earned twenty thousand a year, he had never earned beyond ten – I said to him: “Where would you work if you made your twenty thousand?” He said: “I have picked out the job – they don’t know it, but the building is on Madison Avenue. I know exactly the floor, I have ridden up in the elevator, I have gotten off at the floor and walked into the office. I know where I would sit were it true that I work there; where I will hang my hat and when I take off my coat where I will put it. I know exactly what I will do.” I said: “Al right, now stand in that elevator and go up, see it stop at the floor and get off, walk right into the place, take off your hat and jacket, and just simply be natural in the job.” Within two weeks he was on that job at twenty thousand a year. He traveled all over the near east aiding in the building of dams and all kinds of these fantastic things he loved, after this last world war. One day he didn’t feel well, closed his eyes and made his exit from this world, but he had five years to exercise his Jacob.127 ¶9

What does it matter when we go from this sphere? It doesn’t really matter. Before he made his exit he discovered David, and if there is evidence of a thing, what does it matter what you or I or anyone thinks about it or wish about it? But he proved it and lived by it for five years. I can multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of the exercising of Jacob.127 ¶10

Jacob comes second – bear this in mind. The whole vast world, three billion of us, we only know the existence of Esau. We know the man, he was born in a certain social structure, and that’s it. He had no financial, social, intellectual, or other support behind him, and life is rugged. That is Esau, that is Edom. And then comes this story and he is made aware of another one that will be brought forth, and that one’s name is Jacob, the supplanter. And you tell him what you would do were you he, and he tries it, and he does it, and quite often having done it once, he forgets it and he goes back and serves Esau.127 ¶11

Then comes that moment in time when he hits the third level of the ark, the spiritual level, and knows the thing is literally true on the third level. All these stories are literally true on the spiritual level. It is only the psychological level where there is something different. Like I stand here and assume I am elsewhere and I see the world as I would if I was standing there physically, then I open my eyes to find there isn’t any difference, and I am shocked I am not actually there. I have gone to prepare a place, having gone to prepare a place I returned here, but I will now move across a bridge of incidents – a little series of events, leading from where I am physically to where I am consciously. I try it again, and as I try it and it works I am becoming aware of Jacob.127 ¶12

What about Esau? Jacob wrestled all through the night of human darkness and ignorance with the Lord himself, but he couldn’t grant him what he asked for. He had to change his name before he could give him what he asked for. He changed it from Jacob, the deceiving one; for he deceived his father-in-law, his brother, his father – he deceived everyone. But even though he deceived them, he was God’s chosen vessel. I deceive myself when I stand here and persuade myself that I am elsewhere. I deceive myself when I persuade myself you are what you would like to be. If I forget what you told me you are, and think only what you would like to be, and when I am self-persuaded you are such a person, I am self-deceived. So, Jacob is the deceiving one.127 ¶13

He comes into the presence of his father; he has no hair, while his brother is covered all over with red hair. And with the aid of Rebecca – the mother, he takes two goats, slaughters the goats, takes the hair, the skin, covers his hands and the nape of his neck, and puts on the robe of his brother that he may deceive the father when he comes into the father’s presence. The father said: “Who are you?” He said: “I am your son, Esau.” He said: “Come closer, I can’t see you, come closer that I may feel you.” So he comes closer and the father feels him, and he said: “You feel like Esau but your voice sounds like Jacob.” He said: “I am your son Esau.” He persuaded the father he was Esau and the father gave him the blessing that belonged to Esau. Then, when the father had completely acted, he could not now take it back, because God swears by himself and cannot take back his oath or change it. When he saw Esau coming from the hunt to discover his treachery, he said: “He is well-named, for twice he has taken from me,” supplanted me. So the father gave Jacob the blessing.127 ¶14

I clothe myself in imagery by rearranging the furniture of the mind, seeing myself and having you see me, as I would like to be seen by you. When I see you in my mind’s eye seeing me as you would see me were it true that I am what I am assuming that I am, then I am pre-clothed. Now to what degree can I fool myself? To what degree can I actually become all the characters and play now the part of Isaac and let myself be Isaac and believe what I am doing is real and true? Can I believe in the reality of that imaginal act? Yes, I’ve done it unnumbered times and it worked. Whenever I do it with persuasion to the point of acceptance, it worked, and I found my Jacob.127 ¶15

Now, there is another one. I have to find Israel. Israel is on the highest level, a man after God’s own heart. How do you find him? There is not a thing in this world you can do to find him; it is revealed. It just happens, and this is how it happened to me.127 ¶16

One night I saw these two fantastic creatures; I saw Esau and he is just as he is described, covered from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet with red hair, just like a huge big ape. And here, Jacob – instead of being a man – Jacob is the most glorious female you could ever imagine. Here is an angel beyond angels, and here is Esau, this monster-thing thriving on violence, thriving on everything that is evil in this world, living on it. And I thought when I saw the two of them that they existed independent of my perception of them. I didn’t know they did not. I did not know I had never severed the umbilical cord, that they are my children. I am the being spoken of as Rebecca, who gave birth to both of them, one, the embodiment of any unlovely thought I have ever entertained. Every time I have ever exercised my imagination unlovingly on behalf of another, it simply energised this unlovely creature. Every time I acted or reacted violently, I fed and energised Esau.127 ¶17

And looking at Esau, I had a desire without turning to anyone to ask their help or to pledge myself in their presence, and I pledged myself that I would redeem this monster if it took me to eternity. Such a creature should not live in this world and I, in my ignorance, gave him birth – this monstrous thing that fed and lived on violence. In my blindness he would whisper in my ear throughout the 24-hour day, yes, even in my dreams and urge me to violence and urge me to react in the unlovely way. Then I saw what he was. I still did not know at that moment that he was not independent of my perception of him. But I said I would redeem him. At that very moment that I said I would redeem him if it took me eternity, I discovered he was not an entity as you are; he was nothing more than an embodied force. Here was all my misused, misspent energy throughout eternity, for this monstrous thing before my eyes melted and left no trace of ever having been present; but as it melted, all the energy that it embodied came to me, it returned to me who gave it. I have never felt such power in my life. Everything came back to me and this glorious creature that was the personification of all my noble acts, my lovely acts, my ever-loving thought, every state – she glowed, and this one melts before my eyes.127 ¶18

So I tell you: you will meet both of them. They are present now. You can’t see them at the moment but they are present wherever you go, but I tell you of them after you exercise Jacob. Every time you persuade yourself of something loving, something lovely – even though reason at the moment denies it and your senses deny it, everything denies it – to that degree you are so persuaded, you are feeding this glorious creature and you are denying food to this monster. It isn’t his fault; we gave him birth.127 ¶19

As the poet said: “Alas, two souls are housed within thy breast, one to heaven does aspire; the other to earth doth cling.” Two are housed in the breast of every being and that is part of the structure of this world. Everyone is bringing into the world these two and they are invisible until that moment in time when you wrestle the testing of God and your name is changed from Jacob, to Israel. Then you will know why David, the true king of Israel, was the first to make a name for himself by being the first to subdue the Edomites. You will see the Edomite embodied in a single lad, and that being is a monster; his name is Esau. You will redeem him not by blows, as the historians tell you, for they tell you that he slaughtered in one night 18,000 Edomites. No, he didn’t slaughter any 18,000 Edomites as individual units. He conquered the whole of Edom, while knowing the embodiment of all was Esau. And when he melted the whole of Esau, he was a man after God’s own heart.127 ¶20

So, we are told: “I have found in David a man after my own heart, and he is mine forever, he is my son, I will go before him – I will be his father and he will be my son.” And that one is being brought forth from the body; it is God’s only begotten, who becomes, in time, the father of that from which it emerged, in Christ Jesus. You are giving birth to Christ Jesus, that is, the father of David. And David will call him: “My father, my Lord, and the rock of my salvation” . Every being in the world because of this conflict within himself is practically molding and shaping within himself Christ Jesus. Paul tells us: “My little children, with whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you!” And when Christ is born in you, it is because he comes from a heart which is the heart of God; and so, “I have found in David a man after my own heart.”127 ¶21

The whole vast world on the outside – that is Edom, that is Esau, and the victory belongs to Jacob. It is prophesied: “There are two nations within your womb, and two people born of you shall be divided – one shall be stronger than the other and the elder shall serve the younger.” This is the elder that comes first, so reason tells you it can’t be and your senses confirm what reason dictates. But the prophecy is the victory belongs to the younger, it belongs to Jacob, and Jacob is your ability, your skill in rearranging things so as to determine or predetermine an outcome.127 ¶22

How would I feel tonight were I . . . and you name it. What would I see were it true, then see it; and how would I feel were it true, well then, feel it. What would I say to my friends were it true, then say it, not audibly for this means in the psychological meaning. You say it inwardly, so you talk to yourself inwardly as though you spoke outwardly. You carry on these mental conversations from premise of fulfilled desire, you talk to all you friends on these premises – and that is Jacob. But do it lovingly. The more you do it lovingly the nearer you are to meeting God in that successful resting message.127 ¶23

And so, one day it’s going to happen. When it happens you will say exactly what he said. “I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.” Here I stood in the presence of God and I didn’t know it. This is the house of the Lord and I didn’t know it. So he takes the stone on which he slept that night to mark the place of the house of God and he calls it Bethel, the house of the Lord, the house of God. And in this dream who did he see? He saw the contact between infinity and finite man, for here a ladder rested on earth and stretched to the heavens and above it all stood God; and he saw on that ladder, ascending and descending, God. The Bible translates the word Elohim -“angel”. It is not angel, it is Elohim. It was God rising and descending, and above it all stood the Lord.127 ¶24

The Lord said to him: “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac.” If you read it as an historical document, Abraham was not his father, Isaac was his father. If you read it through the eyes of the spirit the voice is telling the truth: Abraham is the father of all above you. We all come out of Abraham. So, here I am the father – I, the Lord and God of Abraham, your father. Now we go to the first verse of the book of Matthew, which is the book of genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham, all coming out of Abraham. All the prophecies are made to him.127 ¶25

Then comes the most complex thing of the battle within man. No special event, because he is the Edomite of Edomites; his name is Job. The conflict within him, and Jehovah spoke to him and said: “Why should a mere man sin?” and he asks three very important questions: “Do you know the period of gestation of the wild goat? Do you know the habits of the wild ass? Can you domesticate the wild ox?” You read that and you wonder what it is all about, and what beautiful imagery.127 ¶26

In my vision I saw Christ as the ox, as the wild ass, as the wild goat. Was not the wild goat the substitute for Isaac the sacrifice of the sin of the world? And he found the wild goat. Can you tell me the period of gestation of the wild goat? How long will it take Christ in man to really come to earth? Can you domesticate the wild ox? How long does it take you to take that wonderful imagination of yours and actually tame it? Everything denies it, so you go wild in your reactions and you still remain the wild ox. Can you domesticate the wild goat? Do you know the habits of the wild ass? Are we not told, a stupid man will get understanding when the wild ass’s colt is for a man? And did he not ride the ass in the most triumphant ride in the world into Jerusalem? He came riding on an ass. He couldn’t if it was still wild, it had to be controlled, it had to be domesticated, broken in. So he comes riding on that which he had tamed, his own wonderful human Imagination.127 ¶27

Take that Imagination of yours – which is God in man – and no matter what the appearance seems to be, what would you like it to be? Well then, see it as though it were. Believe me, imagining creates reality. All things are created by him. I tell you I have proved to my own satisfaction that imagining creates reality. Therefore, if I know it and live by it, I have found him, and I too can ride triumphantly on this domesticated wild, wild beast.127 ¶28

You want to ride it, but normally, for the wild ass was given first to man; and so Christ in man was wild, but man didn’t know it and he starts with the state of consciousness called Jacob. I have told you the story – I hope you believed it. Every time you try it, even if you fail, Jacob is being exercised. But, may I tell you: obviously you cannot fail, because it is predestined. Jacob cannot fail.127 ¶29

A cue is given to us as to who he is when we see the one of the twelve sons he loved most. He loved Joseph most of all, for Joseph was the comfort of his old age. Joseph was born of the woman he wanted most, but in his conflict he had to marry Leah. Then, after he had served another seven years – seven for Leah – he was tricked. As he had tricked the father-in-law, the father-in-law tricked him. Then he had to serve another seven years, this time to get Rachael; and out of Rachel comes Joseph and his last, Benjamin. But Joseph was his love, the joy of his old age, and Joseph was a dreamer.127 ¶30

Listen to the words: “Behold this dreamer cometh, let us sell him, let us kill him.” He could not only dream, he could interpret dreams, for this faculty in man that dreams is man’s imagination, and any interpreter of dreams is man’s imagination. “Behold the dreamer cometh, let us kill him.” Judah says: “No, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites as the caravan moves on toward Egypt.” So they sold him, the dreamer. That is what everyone does in this world. But the dreamer rose to the heights of wealth and saved them in their famine. So, the dreamer in man will save him – that’s Joseph.127 ¶31

But what a long trail in time between the moment when they sold the dreamer into slavery to the one called David – who brings out the darkness, who brings out the Edomite, and makes for himself a name of names in all of Israel. So God said of him: “I have found a man after my own heart.”127 ¶32

The day will come when you will prove every word I have told you tonight. You will meet these souls just as I have described them. You will meet the most radiant Being, and you know who she is.127 ¶33

It doesn’t make sense, but these two are not detached from you. They are all in you, and at that moment in time, they seem to be external to you, but the umbilical cord has not been severed. You will see the only embodied enemies. Instead of spending any time to correct that mistake, right before your very eyes it melted, but it doesn’t vanish. All the enemies are there to be changed by you. And you know the words: “Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain.” In all my wanderings I thought it was lost, and yet nothing is lost – it was embodied in a monstrous thing. But then it came back; all that I had accused as enemy wasn’t gone or lost, it returned. It caused me frightful suffering in the interval that it first began to form within me, and I gave my whole body and my life over to my senses, to passion based upon this garment that was hairy from head to feet. Then I began to work on something entirely different, a Jacob that was smooth of skin that no one can see. He was the supplanter. I heard about him, I began to seek him and it worked; and then one day I saw that he was not forever an invisible state. He became a concrete reality. I saw him, and what beauty! And I saw Esau, but redeemed Esau.127 ¶34

Jacob does not need redeeming. It will not fail you, but these are the three states through which the immortal soul must pass.127 ¶35

You are doing it now anyway. Everything you said within yourself is being fulfilled. If you say: “I don’t believe it,” it’s perfectly all right, that’s your privilege, but that is father to anything you did to these two. They are struggling now within your womb. For long before they come out and you see them the struggle is on, because she asked the question: “Why is this so, why do I live if this fight is so within me?” Then the answer: he tells us: “There are two nations” and the war is on, and one will serve the other. He tells exactly which will do which – the elder will serve the younger.127 ¶36

The one that comes first – Esau, the elder – and he serves the younger. Who is he? What is Jacob’s name? The supplanter. He looks at the world and he doesn’t like it. Like that vision I had on Fifth Avenue. Looking at an empty lot I would say: “I remember when it was an empty lot.” It still is an empty lot to my outer senses, but I am not interested in my outer senses. I would build a word picture as I desired this lot to be. I would say: “I remember when it was an empty lot,” and still to outer appearances it is an empty lot, but not to me or to those who had that so-called dream. That is exercising the inner man, exercising Jacob.127 ¶37

The day will come when God, and only God, knows. He sees the heart just as he wants it and you are wrestling all alone with yourself. Then one day, he sees the heart, and the heart is owned by one called David, “A man after my own heart.” Suddenly he sees David, and David is his only begotten son. David reveals to him who he is: God the father. Everyone will one day find David, a man after God’s own heart and then he will reveal to you the one you have been seeking through all eternity! You are God the Father.127 ¶38

Now let us go into the silence.127 ¶39

Tonight we will speak on the Book of Job, possibly the most misquoted book in the world. I dare say all day long you use passages, and you aren’t aware you are misquoting this Book of Job. For no one knows who wrote the book. It bears the title of its hero, as so many books of the Bible: the Book of Joshua, Nehemiah, Ezra, Daniel, Ruth – so many, where the name of the hero is named. That is the Book of Job. The word “Job,” from famous scholars by analysis, means: “Where is my father?” You and I have heard it as “the persecuted one,” but the central point of the narrative is that Job was completely innocent – not guilty of any offense, but simply the victim of the most cruel experiment by God. The very last chapter reveals that it was all by God. Some scholars along the way or some scribe inserted some little story in the first chapter which is suspect, because they couldn’t believe that God could do that to man. So they claim that a pact was made between Satan and God allowing Satan to do it – Satan the accuser, Satan the devil; but Satan disappears in the very first chapter and never reappears. He does just for a moment, but he doesn’t in the forty-two chapters, not even in the epilogue. And so we know that this cruel experiment was by God. Now, you are Job, I am Job, the world is Job – the world of humanity. And to approach it as if it were an object lesson in patience – patience under stress, under trial – is to go astray at the very start. That is not the purpose of the story. I hope I can get it over tonight as I see it.124 ¶1

If I were to place it in the Bible, I would place it at the very end of the Old Testament, for it seems to lead right into the revelation of the New Testament. But I am not rewriting the Bible or rearranging it – but were I to place it, that is where I would put it. It leads right into the unfolding of the vision as we find it in the gospels and the epistles.124 ¶2

If you are not familiar with it, let me attempt to lead you through the highlights of Job. The scene is laid in Edom and all the characters are Edomites, renowned for their wisdom. Job, the story tells us, was an upright and very rich Arab Sheikh, owning thousands of sheep, thousands of cattle, hundreds of she-asses and oxen, numberless servants and ten children – seven boys and three beautiful girls. So we are told in the story. In the prologue we are introduced to this much of the great hero, which is Job.124 ¶3

Then comes the four woes, based upon the pact between Satan and Jehovah. The first one comes in and announces in this fashion, that the Sabeans came suddenly and slaughtered all the servants who were taking care of the sheep and took away all the sheep. And while he was yet speaking, the second woe appeared and he said that death took away all the cattle and slaughtered all the servants. Then comes the third woe, and took away all the oxen, the she-asses and slaughtered all the servants. Then comes the fourth woe, that his children – all of them – were dining in the house of the oldest son, and there came this mighty wind and crushed the four corners and the house collapsed and they were all killed and he was the only one who escaped to come and bring the news to Job.124 ¶4

And Job rent his robe, shaved his head, threw himself upon the floor, and then said: “Naked I came into the world, naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return.” Then he blamed himself, not for the act, but having said: “naked I came into the world and naked I shall return.” He saw nothing to condemn in God, and so he did not see anything wrong which God had done.124 ¶5

Then after the four woes, and everything is taken from him – all of his children, all his possessions, everything – then starts the physical, the substance of the man called Job, and it started with the boils. That is when Satan disappears from the scene and all these things follow one after the other – the sores from the sole of his feet to the crown of his head. Then his wife said to him: “Are you still going to be honest about it, your integrity unshaken? Curse God and die.” And he said to her: “You have spoken like a foolish woman, shall God who gave us the good not give us the evil?” So nothing came from his lips that could in any way be condemnation of God.124 ¶6

Then came his comforters, spoken of as “Job’s comforters.” There were three friends and they came to comfort Job. They heard of his plight: he lost everything, being the richest sheikh in all Edom, and they couldn’t recognise him. He was such a horrible-looking creature. When they saw him, they too rent their robes and sat with him for five days, five nights, without speaking, in mourning for their friend. Job breaks the silence and he breaks it with the claim that the very day should disappear from the calendar year. “Let the day perish wherein I was born and the night which said a male boy is conceived.” And then he has this tirade against being brought into this world. He didn’t have to be brought. He was brought: he was brought and he finds himself now without any guilt that all these things happened to him. Now he makes the terrific defense of himself.124 ¶7

Then comes the first comforter, who doesn’t comfort at all, for he is trained – as Job was trained and as you and I are trained – to believe in divine justice. We all believe in divine justice, in retribution. So we look upon a person like a Hitler, who lived to the very last moment in his fifteen gloating years, or a Stalin, for his thirty odd years, having slaughtered millions – and what happened to Stalin? He died as you and I will die – a little brain hemorrhage and in no time he was unconscious, after having slaughtered millions. Where is the retribution? Where is Stalin’s retribution, where is Hitler’s retribution, where is any tyrant’s? They live just as we live. They live on the fat of the land, murdering unnumbered millions, and then simply die as we die. Priesthoods will tell us they will have their day. God will punish them beyond the grave, or in some future embodiment if you believe in reincarnation. How could you live and how long would you have to live to repay the debt of thirteen million, when you burned them alive and slaughtered, too? So they bring argument after argument to persuade Job he has in some way violated this code. Maybe in his youth, maybe in the past – and he can’t remember what he has done. Maybe as a child, says he, some little infraction; but this is far beyond the proportion of anything he has done. The judgement of God, what has he done to me now? This far transcends what any just judge could put upon me for anything I might have done in my youth. They still tried to persuade him, and so, as the father said: “Even-handed is the justice of God.”124 ¶8

Then came the three comforters – who aren’t comforters at all; in fact they are like our friends. May I tell you: may you not have something physically wrong with you after having confessed you believed what I talk about. May you never be financially embarrassed after having once gone out on a limb and confessed to anyone you believed it. They will come like this Uriah Heep, and all will lament. “It shouldn’t happen to you,” they will say, “certainly not to you. You mean you who know what states are real and all you need to do is to get into a state and the state blossoms in your world and you?” These are the comforters of Job. And so, “Were I in your soul rather than in my soul I would not say to you what you say to me,” said Job. But they persisted; each had three chances to deflate him and each time they tried he comes back with a direct answer.124 ¶9

But he is so self-righteous, he shows all the things he did: he never turned away any infant, any fatherless child, any widow, any stranger from comfort, never understood – what I hope you understand – which comes in the flower called, in the New Testament, “grace” – that no one in this world can build himself a way to God. You can’t be good enough to earn coming into the presence of God, no man in the world. It comes by “grace,” the strange elective love, and he calls us one by one.124 ¶10

So he did not know there is no such thing in this world as divine justice; and they still – in all orthodoxy the world over – teach and preach divine justice, retribution – and it isn’t. There is no such thing. If I were the father of a child born demented, wherein I suffered, the mother suffered, the brothers suffered, the child suffered because of it – and that is divine justice? And they try to justify it by telling me that in some past embodiment he did this that or the other and that is why he is; and we were related in some strange way to him in the past and that is why today we all now fall into the same net. Well, that is answered for us in the 9th chapter of John: “‘Master, who sinned this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ The answer given: ‘Neither this man sinned, or his parents, but the works of God might be made manifest in him.’” No retribution whatsoever.124 ¶11

There is something different, that God has denounced him because of “grace,” because were I pure, I would never know there was such a thing as a God of mercy. God has consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy upon all, that not one can crow and boast of his own purity.124 ¶12

So, in the very end Job is still giving arguments of his own self-righteousness – how good he is, how kind he has been, and listing all these things that should not have happened to him. Job argued, while all these so-called comforters argued again back to him. Then in the very end he is demanding that God will appear. He wants to meet God, to confront him. He says: “I know he will slay me, I have no hope, but I will present my case to his face.” Then he makes this statement: “This will be my salvation for the godless shall not stand before him, and so if I can now persuade him to see me to present my case, then I stand before Him, and only the pure in heart can stand before him, so if I stand before him that is my salvation.” He is still, at the very end, justifying himself. He never heard of the great story of vicarious suffering, or the author of the book never heard of it, for Job didn’t write it – he is simply the hero of the narrative or the story. So the very end, by demanding that: “you listen to my case of how righteous I am,” he still believes in retribution and is demanding by his own self-righteousness that a verdict be brought in his favor. He feels he should be acquitted, that this thing should not go on as it has gone on for so long in his life. So you see: he has not yet abandoned the belief in retribution, though he denies it when the friends argue for it. The friends try to prove to him that he is wrong, that sometime in the past – because there is such a thing as divine justice or he could not possibly have these sores, lose his kingdom, lose his family, lose everything – were it not that at some time he had earned this judgement.124 ¶13

Then comes the voice of God. For the first time, God speaks. God refuses to answer all the arguments of the men, refuses to answer the arguments and requests of Job. Job is stewing in his own self-righteousness, for in hell the only voice is the voice of self-righteousness. In heaven all is forgiven and the voice of heaven is complete forgiveness of sin, no matter what a man has ever done. He was in hell though, still walking the earth – as we are in hell, if we are filled with self-righteousness.124 ¶14

Then God answers him out of the whirlwind. And may I tell you: it is a perfect expression, the “whirlwind.” That is how it comes. Even though it is a lovely poetical expression, when it comes, it comes from the medium of a whirlwind. You hear it and you feel it. You think it is the most frightening storm you will ever encounter, that any man could experience. When you hear it and you feel it, then God is about to speak. Either hear the words or you have the scene, and it begins to unfold – the most fantastic vision, more real than this room.124 ¶15

God answers Job out of the whirlwind and he asks all the questions concerning creation. “Where were you when I created the universe?” He asks one question after the other, all pertaining to creativity. Job cannot answer, and then God shows himself. He explains himself (the 5th verse of the 42nd chapter). He now repents and covers himself in ashes and sees how audacious he has been demanding that God answer him. Then he says: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.”124 ¶16

His religion, like our religion before the experience, was inherited. The oral tradition of the father, the oral tradition of the churches – and then I heard it. I didn’t experience, only heard it; mother told me, and then mother took me to church, and the minister said, or the rabbi said it. I heard it from seeming authority. My religion was inherited, and so I expected to find a different kind of a God – a God that man made in his own image down here, a God that he called a just God: “eye for an eye; tooth for a tooth.” I couldn’t conceive of another kind of a God, a God of infinite love where there is “grace.” It doesn’t matter what a man has ever done in this world – not even a Hitler or a Stalin – everything in the world will be forgiven. “Though your sins be like scarlet they shall be as white as snow.”124 ¶17

Then Job returns to his friends, and Jehovah calls to the friends and he tells the friends to sacrifice, because: “You lied about me. All that you said of me was false and what Job said about me was true.” Job’s rebellion was against orthodoxy, against all ecclesiasticism, all ritual, as if this is the way to God, for he did them all and yet he suffered. He kept every law of the ancient church; he sacrificed, he did everything – and yet in the end he suffered as no man has suffered, and he knew that it wasn’t true. So he commended Job, because what he said of Jehovah was true and what they (the righteous ones) said of Jehovah was false. So he made them sacrifice and told them to go to Job and ask Job to pray for them. If Job would pray for them, then they would be set free; it would depend upon Job, and Job prayed for his friends and his own captivity was lifted.124 ¶18

That is where you come in: to completely forget yourself in the love of a friend who is in need. Without raising a finger, you lift him out of one state and put him into another; no matter what he has been in the past, you forget it and put him in another state. He was only expressing in a state, he was never the state that he expressed. We condemned him thinking he was the state. So Job prayed for his friends, lifting them out of that state of self-righteousness and divine justice, and he saw them in the state of grace. So the whole thing hinged upon man’s ability to forgive.124 ¶19

We are told in Luke 13, when they came to him and said Pilate courted the Galileans and mingled their blood with their sacrifices, he said to them: “Do you think that they were worse sinners than those other sinners? I tell you, no, unless you repent you shall meet a like fate. And do you think when the tower fell in Jerusalem and crushed eighteen that they were greater offenders than those who it did not crush? I tell you, no, but unless you repent you will meet a similar fate.” When you hear someone is hurt, don’t gloat that God is getting even; God doesn’t get even. If you hear of anyone being hurt tonight, don’t say it serves him right. No retribution at all, not in this revelation. Simply a man unknowingly falls into a state; falling into a state, it could be a good state or an evil state, but he reaps the fruit of the state. But he is neither good or evil.124 ¶20

Blake said: “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a Supreme State, but to be every one of them States which the Soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of Good and Evil when it leaves Paradise following the Serpent.” Who was that serpent? God himself! For he consigned me, he consigned you – every being in the world – to disobedience, and we left through disobedience, for he said: “You shall not surely die.” And who told me that? God himself, who is the serpent, just a symbol of God himself. So he told me I wouldn’t die after first telling me if I ate a certain thing, did a certain thing, I would die. Then he tells me I will not really die: I will become as wise as the gods, and so he came into a world of experience where I fall headlong into different states. And after unnumbered experiences – falling into states and redeeming myself from states – he redeems me from it all and lets me into a world completely subject to my imaginative power, where I completely awake. Here, I am in a state of sleep, so I don’t know I am in a state. I think this is my right being and so I am only in a state.124 ¶21

Blake made the statement: “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. Seek this path and you will attain from your own Soul an even deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation. You will attain an ever increasing release from that which now seems so sad and terrible.” Not a thing to be judged in this world, not a thing to be condemned for you to redeem. So you and I play the part of redeeming individuals here, until that moment of God’s own good grace he lifts us up out of the whole vast world of states. But until then we can redeem each other. You don’t feel well – all right; I’ll look at you as though you never felt better. I’ll persuade myself you never felt better and to the degree I am self-persuaded I’ll pull you out of the one state into another. But don’t try to pinpoint it as though it serves him right (“I knew him when he was no good.”) Forget that! The being that was never any good at a certain time, you pull him out into another state, as though his sins then were as scarlet, now to you they are as white as snow. And keep on redeeming people, one after the other; regardless of how many times you fail, try it again and you will pull them out.124 ¶22

Then one day when you least expect it, God will reveal himself to you and you will know. I didn’t know he existed. I believed it. I hope you did. “I heard of you with the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees.” It doesn’t matter what the whole vast world will say. I see something entirely different. You are not at all as they told me you were. You are not a judge. There is no such thing as righteous judgement, no divine justice, only grace. “The law came through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” So, now I see. I don’t have to be taught any more who you are – I see. And may I tell you: he will embrace you, because when he asks you, he answers you.124 ¶23

What do I mean by this vicarious suffering? It is the most difficult concept in the world, I think, for a man to grasp. Every time I have used it with someone who at the moment suffers, I invariably got the same reply. Someone said to me recently in San Francisco: “I am suffering. You said God suffers for me? Maybe he is suffering somewhere in eternity but I am suffering.” I said: “What is his name?” “God,” I said: “No, that is not his name; his name is ‘I AM.’” “Who is suffering,” but “I am.” “Good, that is God.” “No God here, I am suffering; no God, I am suffering.” It’s the most impossible thing to get over to man, that man who seems to be alive, is alive only by reason of the fact that God became him. As God became man, that man become God. He sunk himself in man, that man could say: “I am.” But that is God’s name, and all things are done by God to God, who individualised you and me, individualised all of us.124 ¶24

And when in his eyes the work is done, after unnumbered ages of days, his days . . . It is like putting gold in the raw state of ore into the furnace and then bringing out molten gold, pure gold. It takes heat, it takes fire, and this is the fire, these are the furnaces of experience, and we are put into the world of experience and brought out as pure gold. When we are brought out in his presence we are just right. “It does not yet appear what we shall be but we know when he appears we shall be like him.” He became what we behold: as we behold it we become it. “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees.” As you see him you are stamped with the image of eternity; you’re one with him, one with God, as God. You don’t gain the victory; you are really united with the victor.124 ¶25

It is he who is doing it in you, in me, in all of us, and when he has completed the task, as we are told: “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” He initiated and he will complete it. He took eternity and put it into this clay that is man, that is himself, and he has worked upon it and brings it out and individualises you when you become one like the thing created. That is the story of Job. It is the most glorious story, but I think if not the most misunderstood, it is not far from it. You and I have spoken it and we speak of the patience of Job. There was no patience of Job – he rebelled. You saw from the third chapter the rebellion.124 ¶26

If I can this night reflect on any good thing I think was good, that is all self-righteousness. It doesn’t earn me one little step towards where I am going. Do it because you want to do it; but to feel you are adding up and putting this in the bank for yourself – forget it. He was so good, he was so self-righteous, he never once turned anyone away from his place. Whatever he did, he abided by the law, all the sacrifices demanded by the law. He atoned every day for his sons, that should they have violated in any way that which Jehovah demanded, that he by his sacrifice would atone for them. Still he broke out with all the boils. And he learned in the end that we can’t be good enough to earn God’s gift. Self-righteousness is only the voice of hell. So you are right, Job: there is no such thing as divine justice, no retribution at all, none.124 ¶27

Did he not say: “Behold the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, the staff of his hand is my indignation.” “I have made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of judgement, so just as I have planned it, so shall it be, as I have purposed so shall it stand and the anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.” () Only in the latter days when he reveals himself, and you will see that all the suffering you went through, a God of love put you through, just like the great artist who is putting ore through the heat to extract the gold. He wasn’t concerned about the heat (just extracting pure gold for his labor) any more than the great sculptor is concerned about the clay. Job said: “You made me of clay, are you going to return me to the dust?” What does the potter think of the clay when he puts it through every form to fulfill its purpose, or what was his purpose for it? He isn’t concerned. You and I are the clay in the potter’s hands and he brings us out into his own image.124 ¶28

When you read the book in the future, see the whole drama taking place in the mind of Job. This is fantastic, where he himself is the accuser and he himself is accused. As you read it, see only one being playing all the parts, and that is Job and that is you. He is in conflict with himself, and at the very end he is integrated. He is torn apart between the one accusing him and the one defending his rights, but suddenly he becomes an integrated soul at last. At that moment of complete integration when there is no one but himself he finds God, for God becomes him that he may become God!124 ¶29

Now let us go into the silence. Question & Answer Period124 ¶30

But for sheer beauty of English, read the book. What English! Carlyle said it is the greatest piece of literature of all time. Tennyson said of it: “It is the greatest poem ever written.” Luther – who gave us a great religion when he broke away at the beginning of the reformation – claims it is the most magnificent book of all scripture. So, he makes extravagant claims for the Book of Job. But for sheer beauty of English read the book.124 ¶33

You are Job. I am Job, and when you ask these things: “Why did it happen to me?” Not only physical things but the loss of a friend, loss of a child. What is more heart-breaking than a father who has raised a child and loved that child, and hopes he will transcend him in time, and will leave an estate for him – to go to the graveside and bury him? And he buries him, the same way Job lost his estate, lost everything, and his ten children all snuffed out. But the play is taking place in him.124 ¶34

In the very last chapter, not only they all came, in the very end after he was redeemed – his brothers and sisters, all of his friends of old came to sympathise and to comfort him for the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. His seven sons and his three daughters were there, yet in the first chapter they were dead. In the last chapter they were there.124 ¶35

He lived 140 years. Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value and symbolical name. In symbolism, 100 has the letter “qoph” – “the back of the head.” The hundred is simply this, and 40 is “mem,” whose symbolical value is “womb.” So, here is the womb where he lived (the back of the head). In the back of the head this womb becomes man’s tomb. It infers that man is actually buried, but doesn’t know it and one day he will awake. He will awake within himself to find he is entombed. He never knew before he was entombed; he thought he was walking the earth. He didn’t realise all this was like a dream unfolding, until one day he awakes, and the tomb is his own skull. Mem-Qoph. Here is the mem and here is the 40, the womb. It is here that he is begotten by God Himself. And so he lived 140 years. Qoph-Mem.124 ¶36

Tonight’s subject is “Prophetic Blueprints.” Now we could take it on this level, but I will not. To summarise it on this level, may I tell you: if you could conceive of an infinite might as a great computer, and if the imaginal activities of all of us – every man, woman and child in the world – make us free to change this activity at any moment in time, then you could predict the future for this level; for this level is the outpouring or outpicturing of the imaginal activities of men, women, and children in this world. You can prove it in your own individual life by setting a goal and imagining that you are at the end of that goal. Remain faithful to your goal, and no power in this world can stop it in your peculiar individual life. Take it and multiply it by the world, and you will see what it would be on this level. You will see that you and I are free to imagine things that are in conflict with God’s purpose, and in the short run we can accomplish them. Yet, it is God’s purpose that is ultimately the only true end and that is realised. So, tonight we will take it from a higher level.122 ¶1

If you would know your future, study the story of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the actual realisation of God’s prophetic blueprint for man’s redemption. Everything said of Jesus Christ will one day be said of you, individually. Everything that he ever experienced, you will experience. Jesus Christ is only the fulfillment of all that was told us in the Old Testament. The old is the plan, the plot, the purpose of God – and Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that purpose. There is a rabinnical principle that what is not written in Scripture, is non-exisistant. Now, when they speak of Scripture, they meant only the Old Testament. There was no New Testament. The drama of Jesus was this principle.122 ¶2

As I stand here tonight, I am speaking from experience. I make no claim to be any other than the man you know me to be. I do not differ from you at all – just a man with all the weaknesses and limitations of any man in this world. Yet, I know this story to be true, and I know it to be true from experience. The five words in the end of Luke could summarise the entire Gospel: “They told what had happened.” Moffit describes this phrase in Greek as he translated it: “They related their own experience.” Tonight, I will relate my own experience, to tell you how true this is.122 ¶3

The entire drama of Christ Jesus took place in the fall of man. It did not take place on the surface, like this. It did not take place here at all. Therefore, no one believed him. At the very end of the journey a few – just a remnant – accepted it, and the rest rejected it because he could not share with the world what he had experienced in the depth of his own soul.122 ¶4

The cue was given in the earliest of the gospels, Mark. Here, we are told the very first sign to appear: “Immediately the heavens opened and he saw the Spirit like a dove descending upon him” and then we hear the words – seemingly from out of space – “This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.” Now it is said (if you read it carefully): no one experienced this but Jesus. It is recorded in scripture, but he must have told it, because no one saw the heavens open or saw the spirit like a dove descending upon him, but him upon whom it descended. If Mark records it as an experience, then it could only be an experience that was told him by the one who experienced it. The other gospels modify it somewhat and imply that John saw it, but they pull forcefully upon the earliest gospel, which is Mark.122 ¶5

I can tell you my experience of that scene, and it is true. The same simple man, limited as I am, had that experience. No one saw it from this level. I can tell you, and you can either believe it or reject it. You are told: “Immediately the heavens opened.” It does, suddenly, and you see nothing but infinity, translucence, infinite expansion– and hovering above you is a dove of a light beige color, and the dove is looking at you and you look at the dove unconcerned, and it is all anchored on you. It remains there over you, seemingly without effort on its part, and yet it is alive and looking at you. Then you automatically lift your hand (in my case it was my left hand) and it descended and perched on my index finger. I brought it down to my face, and it smothered me with kisses. I had the impulse to take it across my head, and it kissed and kissed me. Then a woman on my left made this statement: “He loves you.” I heard no voice saying: “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” I only heard the woman’s voice, and she said: “He loves you,” meaning the dove, symbolising the Holy Spirit. Then she said to me: “They (now using the plural, and speaking of birds) do not come near man,” And she gave me the reason: “To them, we are like a large bowel – a consuming bowel, and we give off to them a most offensive odor, so they try to avoid contact with man. But this one pierced this ring of odors and came through because of his love for you.”122 ¶6

And the only sign of “I love you” was the demonstration – the actual physical demonstration – of a dove smothering me with kisses all over my head and ears and neck. So I know that story is true. I can share it with you only in words. You may believe it or disbelieve it. The choice is yours.122 ¶7

We are told in John 7:3-8: “So his brothers said to him, ‘Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples may see the works you are doing. For no man works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.’ For even his brothers did not believe in him. Jesus said to them, ‘My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil . . . Go to the feast yourselves; I am not going up to the feast, for my time has not yet fully come.’” The disciples had not yet seen any demonstration of the power of which he spoke. Our time is always here, and this time is curved, and we are moving on a circle that is a recurring circle, and we have a short memory and cannot remember the things that have happened; therefore we cannot foresee the things that are going to happen, for this is a wheel of recurrence. Our time is always here, but he has tasted of the power of the New Age and can only describe the satisfaction of that power of the New Age, but cannot demonstrate it to the satisfaction of anyone in this age. Here he speaks of this power and he knows, and tells them quite firmly: “You will experience it.” He knows everyone will experience it. It was on this level. In this age none believed it – it is too fantastic. He rises into a world completely subject to his imaginative power.122 ¶8

Now, here is a sign: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” Bear in mind the symbol: this is the earth, and I, if I be lifted up from this garment called “earth,” I will call all men unto me.122 ¶9

I see in the audience tonight a gentleman who wrote me a letter last Saturday. His experience preceded mine. He is much younger than I am. He does not look any older than my son, who will be 39 in May of this year. In his letter he said it happened to him in 1940.122 ¶10

In my case, it happened in 1941. I was coming through the Caribbean Sea on a freighter from Port-of-Spain, Trinidad to Mobile, Alabama. I retired early that night. Suddenly I am lifted up from this earth, and as I am lifted up, a heavenly chorus comes into view and they are singing: “Neville is risen, Neville is risen.” Here I am – I do not need the sun, or the moon, or the stars for light, for I am light unto myself. It is not brilliant, but it is luminous beyond the wildest dream – but it is a gentle light.122 ¶11

Then I came upon an infinite sea of human imperfection – the blind, the withered, the halt. I had no human compassion, may I tell you. As I walked by, there was not a shred of human compassion in me. I simply demonstrated this new power called, “the power of God.” As I walked by, I fed every one of the thousands waiting for my appearance. Not everyone wants meat or bread. I gave them their most urgent need. One wanted eyes, another wanted arms for empty sockets – and lovely eyes were molded into empty sockets and arms into empty sockets. Everything that was missing in the human body came into being as I walked by. As I came to the end and the last one was completely satisfied with whatever he needed, then this chorus exalted: “It is finished.” Then I – in a world of luminosity, of infinite expansion – contracted into this world of opacity, and reached the limit of this contraction called “earth,” which is the body I am now wearing.122 ¶12

Here is this experience verifying the truth of that statement that “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” These experiences are adventures of the soul. It did not take place on this level. To this day, in 1963, our most brilliant scholars, reading this ancient manuscript do not understand it, because you cannot grasp it without these experiences. And here is one who has had them, and I am going to say to you: I am confident that some of you present tonight must have it before you taste death. Of that I am convinced.122 ¶13

This is the statement made in Mark 8:36: “For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?” Then he said: “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.” I tell you: there are some seated here tonight that will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power. It has all to do with the age to come, and you will taste of the power of that age to come. In other words, you will experience that power before you taste death, for all things in this world die. These are mortal garments and they all die.122 ¶14

Who are you? No one knows – no, not the angels of heaven, only the Father. When the curtain begins to lift in him and Christ is in him, wherever he goes there is a remnant – whether ten, or a thousand, or a million – a remnant present will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come with power. Who you are, I do not know. That is hidden from me.122 ¶15

Listen to these words: “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours, searched and inquired about this salvation. They inquired what person of them was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory.” It was revealed to them that they were searching not themselves, but you. Not the things that are now announced to them by those who preach the good news – things unto which angels long to look; therefore, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.122 ¶16

Here are men organised by divine providence for spiritual communion, and from the depths of their soul Christ is speaking. Listen: “Christ in them predicts this.” Not Christ on the outside – there is no Christ on the outside. If any man tries to influence you to trust him as a leader, do not believe him. Christ in you is slowly being unveiled, the only Christ in the world. “The prophets who prophesied of the grace, that was to be yours,” meaning God’s gift of himself to man, unearned, unmerited – you cannot earn it. It is too good. No one could ever in this world earn it. It is given to you by God. You will receive it as an inheritance.122 ¶17

God tells us “They shall have no inheritance; I AM their inheritance; and you shall give them no possession in Israel; I AM their possession.” You inherit God – you inherit his kingdom, for there cannot be a kingdom without a king. You inherit the whole as he slowly unveils himself in you, and the plot of his unveiling is described in the New Testament.122 ¶18

They searched the scripture (the Old Testament) and could not find the Christ of whom they were told. They searched it from beginning to end and could not find who he is. “What person of them was indicated by the Spirit of Christ in them when predicting the sufferings of Christ and his subsequent glory?” They could not find it.122 ¶19

Have you ever had a toothache? Who suffered? Christ did. Have you ever been cut? Christ was cut. You witnessed a friend go through “the gate” and you wept? It is Christ weeping. Christ suffers. There is nothing but Christ, and he is your own wonderful human imagination. He suffers until the moment of that last day, when he begins to unveil himself in you as you.122 ¶20

And so, the prophetic blueprint for you, individually, is revealed to us in the New Testament. You cannot find it in the Old Testament until it begins to unfold itself in the New, and then you go back and see where the prophets have recorded it – but they could not understand it. Like all of us, they were looking for a person. Where will he come from? They asked a simple question. When Christ comes, no one knows where he comes from. The last words asked him by Pilate were: “Where do you come from?” He does not answer. If he answered he came from a certain area, he is not speaking of the outer garment, and he could not tell them because they would not understand it.122 ¶21

So, that is the fulfilled scripture in the last book of the Old Testament. Suddenly he appears in a temple, and no one knows where he comes from. Who appears? The Lord. He appears so suddenly in you that you do not have the slightest idea what is taking place. And suddenly you are in possession of a power no being on earth dreams of – greater than any power on earth. What power on earth could take unnumbered eyes and hands and arms and legs and mold them in perfect bodies? They cannot make a hair of your head. Here, a man walks by, unmoved by human compassion, and he could make anything appear that was urgently needed. He is exercising a power.122 ¶22

Seeing this human imperfection, the question is asked: “Who sinned? This man, or his parents?” “Neither this man nor his parents, but that the works of God be made manifest.” What did I care who sinned, when I saw the blind and the lame and the halt made perfect! It is an entirely different world into which we are all moving. Every being is moving into this world, and God’s will surely will be manifest, even by the cruel surgery of war. “He has made everything for its purpose – even the wicked for the day of trouble.”122 ¶23

His purpose is to give us himself, that we may inherit God. We inherit God, that we may live and function as God in an entirely different age. But you do not change your identity. I have not changed my identity. From my own experience, there will be a radical discontinuity of form.122 ¶24

The lady said to me: “We are to them (the birds – the symbol of the Holy Spirit) but large bowels giving off the most offensive odor to these beings of peace and gentility. The dove is not only the symbol of gentleness and peace, but the symbol of the creative power of God. When he is smothering you with kisses, he is transferring to you the creative power of his own being. Slowly the whole thing begins to unfold in symbols – actual mystical experience – and you will see that that offensive area of your body will be completely transformed. You cannot describe it to anyone. Identity remains; hands, feet remain, but what that large bowel is transformed into, I cannot tell you.122 ¶25

Look for the large bowel on the leaf in the cabbage patch and you see the caterpillar – but you cannot see the butterfly. Suddenly comes the state of the limit of contraction –or chrysalis – unmoved. Out of that seemingly dead state comes the butterfly. You could not have predicted it when you looked at the large bowel consuming the leaf. Something altogether different comes out. Hands, feet, legs remain, but what the transformed bowel is, is a power beyond the wildest dream of man. It creates without the divided image it sees. It does not need any transforming itself. It, in itself, is life. You are life in yourself and need nothing to sustain life – no food. I know on this level when one enjoys a good meal, it may not be the most desired anticipation. But in that age, you are life in yourself. No need of any substance from without. You will have these demonstrations of the power of the New Age. I am speaking from experience.122 ¶26

There is a strange reversal of order in these experiences. The first experience recorded in Mark is the descent of the dove. In my many mystical experiences, that has been my latest. It happened on the 1st of January of this year. So, I do not know. I will not speculate. He has nothing recorded earlier than that. How close to departure from this level, I have not the slightest idea. It makes no difference to me at all. The earliest recorded in Mark is my last experience. Those he recorded all the way down, coming to the end, were my earliest experiences.122 ¶27

When he said: “I am the Light of the world,” I have had that experience. It happened when I had just turned twenty. An infinite sea of liquid light, and I am it. That comes late in the story as he unfolds it, and the one that comes first, is my latest. If this thing recorded for us in the scripture is by design or by accident, I do not know. If the evangelist recorded it by design and mixed the things up so you would not question as to how they would unfold, I do not know. It could be that the parchments were dislocated. We had no printers in those days. I only know: if I told you the story as it has unfolded in me, the order of arrangement would radically change, because we are all unique in God’s eyes, and the experiences would naturally come differently.122 ¶28

My friend who is here tonight had this experience in 1940. I do not think he could have been more than a boy in his teens. He was a scoutmaster. He was happy with the boys and felt delighted with their accomplishments. He went to bed feeling pleasure with the accomplishments of the day. This night, he too, was lifted up on high and heard this heavenly chorus. I heard the words: “Neville is risen.” In his letter to me, he used the pronoun “he.” Whether he heard that as recorded in scripture, or his own name called, I do not know. I heard my own name called over and over, and that was the theme of this heavenly chorus as it swelled through the heavens.122 ¶29

But because we are different in God’s eyes, these eternal experiences would take on certain changes as we individually experience them. We could sit tonight in a concert and no two here would have heard the same thing. But I do hope you will hear and believe it. There are some seated here tonight who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power. One here tonight – and he has not left this garment of flesh – has tasted of this experience.122 ¶30

There is always one, everywhere, who has tasted the unveiling of Christ. Everyone will be Christ-like without losing his distinctive individuality. Not one will fail, because God would fail, and that is an impossibility. So I tell you: believe this prophetic blueprint of which I speak this night. It may not be to the satisfaction of those who want a bigger and better job tomorrow. But that is simple – all that is easy. You can have a plot and plan contrary to God’s purpose, and execute it. But you will not thwart God’s purpose. He is not concerned whether you are rich or poor, known or unknown. He does not care about these superficial values on this level.122 ¶31

“What does it profit a man who would gain the whole vast world and forfeit his soul?” Yet, there are such men. I saw in this morning’s paper – and undoubtedly he has left hundreds of millions behind him – suddenly he fell back and is gone. The dust to dust returns from whence it was taken, and the spirit returns to God.122 ¶32

Don’t for one moment forget this, when people tell you they need not suffer. They predict the sufferings of Christ. Only through suffering can you turn into Christ. God is looking for the guileless heart, not the guileful heart. He does not care how you can out-trick any being in the world. He is looking for other than that. He is looking for the heart of the Israelite: only the pure in heart can see God. Nothing in this world matters but the unveiling of Christ, and Christ is buried in every being.122 ¶33

“I have been crucified with Christ. It is not I who live but Christ lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” He actually became me, and I did not know it. I went about my business between receiving the promise, and receiving that which was promised. There is a vast difference between receiving the promise and receiving what is promised. When we receive the promise, we are recipients of the inheritance. We are declared recipients of the inheritance. When we receive what is promised we obtain the inheritance. And, between these two points, of receiving the promise that I will inherit God, and actually receiving what is promised – that is God Himself – lies the life of the individual.122 ¶34

And, so, we move from receiving the promise to receiving what is promised, and we pass through hell. That is the Hades through which Christ passes after the crucifixion. In the beginning we are crucified with God and then come all of these experiences. And then comes the end, and the end is an unveiling process. And everything said in the gospels about Christ Jesus will be one day experienced by you as your own personal experience, and then and only then, will you know who Christ Jesus is. Revelation is the unveiling of Jesus Christ in you. And when you are unveiled, then you resurrect.122 ¶35

Now let us go into the silence.122 ¶36

[...] of Toynbee’s latest work and he said that the Judean-Christian faith leaves him cold. Now here in the eyes of the world he is a brilliant mind. At the age of three he could read Greek and Latin, and all these tongues were to him as easy as his own mother’s tongue which was English. But he was completely untouched, and is today at the age of eighty-odd, by the Jewish-Christian faith because he had no vision. He thinks he can arrive at some great pattern for man, and force them into a certain pattern based upon his rational mind and his knowledge, so he claims, of history. Now here, you read in the Book of Revelation, “Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead”. Now, you’ll think that is one man, Jesus Christ, for the whole world thinks of Jesus Christ as a unique being that came into the world 2,000 years ago. The word Jesus Christ really means—Jesus is the same as Jehovah—and Jesus means “the Lord.” Christ is the same as Messiah and the word means “the Anointed.” So really, the word Jesus Christ is “The Lord’s Anointed”. Not one man…the Lord and his Anointed. Well now, who is his Anointed? We are told, “The sum of thy word is truth”…the sum of them. “Thy word is truth,” do not alter it. Leave it just as it is. Now, Jesus comes to fulfill scripture and that’s the Lord himself coming to fulfill scripture. This Lord is your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s the only Jesus in scripture and that’s the only God. When Crabbe Robinson said to Blake, “What do you think of Jesus?” he said, “Jesus is the only God,” and then he hastened to add, “And so am I and so are you.” Well, man will not believe that. Man will not accept the fact that his own wonderful Imagination is God. He sees this little tiny thing here suffering and he can’t conceive that the God who created the universe and sustains it is one with his own wonderful human Imagination. But Blake meant it and meant it literally, that your own wonderful human Imagination is God. So he said, “Jesus is the only God, but so am I and so are you.” Then unfortunately they went in to dinner and there was no further discussion between Robinson and Blake.118 ¶1

Now, he tells us, “Thank you that you hid these things from the wise and the understanding and revealed them to babes”. Well, the word babes does not mean a little child, whether infant or a child; it means “the unlearned.” That is the child of scripture, the unlearned. But God would choose the unlearned to confound the wise, because he would reveal himself to the unlearned. So, “You’ve hidden these things from the wise and the understanding and you revealed it to babes, for such was thy gracious will.” Then he adds, “And no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son”. Now, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me”. “Take my yoke” is an expression in Hebrew for learning the scriptures. Take my understanding of the scriptures based upon my own personal experience and not upon the traditions of men. Take it. I’ll tell you who they are. Is man willing to accept that which is in conflict with the traditions of men? Here we just saw ninety saints defrocked…not only defrocked they were non-existent. After making hundreds of millions out of the poor people selling them little medallions and selling all these little things, now they come out and say they did not exist, just one grand myth. Who started it?—the church, for monetary reasons and made fortunes. But today the pressure is on to stop this nonsense and they brought ninety down to zero. Having sold hundreds of millions of theses little medallions to protect someone from what when there is no intermediary between yourself and God? For, you are God…your own wonderful human Imagination that’s God. Say “I am,” that’s he.118 ¶2

Now, let us see who this Christ is…“Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead.” That’s not Jesus; that is Christ who is the first born. Christ means “the Anointed.” Who is the Anointed? He said, “I have come only to fulfill scripture.” So I go back to the Old Testament, for he can only fulfill the Old Testament, there was no New. So he turns to the Old and in the 1st Book of Samuel, the 16th chapter, “Rise and anoint him; for this is he” and Samuel took the holy oil and anointed David…that was the Anointed. In the 89th Psalm, “With my holy oil I have anointed him”. He’s speaking now to David: “I have found David and David has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’… I will make him the first born”.118 ¶3

Now the words cannot be broken. He is the Christ of scripture and he is the Anointed. The Jesus of scripture is the I AM, which is God himself. It is God who comes into the world wearing these garments that you now wear…I mean your blood and flesh. This flesh and blood being that you are, that is the garment that he wears. You say “I am,” that’s he. But you will play all the parts. Now, what parts does he play?—all of them. In what sense? Listen to the words carefully, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me”. What earth? He said, “He made a garment for man and the garment was made out of the earth, out of the dust”…this garment. And when I am lifted up from this garment of flesh and blood I will draw all men unto me. What men? The word “men” has been added to give sense to the sentence; it isn’t in the script. But, “I will draw all to me.” Now, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men”. He acts in me. Well, who is he?—my Imagination, that’s God. He only acts in us. When I’ve played all the parts, but every one, then the sum of all the parts personified is his Anointed David. The sum of all the parts that man is going to play—because God is man and man is God—the sum of all the parts personified is the eternal youth David, the Anointed, the Christos, the Messiah.118 ¶4

No one will stop playing these parts until he plays all… because you cannot resurrect David. The promise is I will not leave you in the pit: “Thou wouldst not leave me in the desolate pit.” And then he cries, “Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God”. Well, the God that redeems David is your own wonderful human Imagination. You are the one who wears the garment and buried in you is this mighty power, your son. When you have played all the parts, suddenly there is an eruption within you and standing before you is David. This is sacred history, this is not secular history. This thing goes on forever and forever.118 ¶5

So here, the being that you really are is God. There never was another God and there never will be another God. For God is one: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one”…not two. So, say “I am,” you can’t divide it. Well, can’t you say “I am”? I say, “I am.” Now, how can you say “I am” and I say “I am” and we say “I am,” and say it isn’t divided? The one fell into division and we are now the scattered, all scattered. We are the Elohim. It’s a plural word, but it takes all unified to form the one. So the one falls into division, and after playing all the parts, it then is resurrected into unity; and that unity is simply God, I AM.118 ¶6

So at the end of the journey I don’t care what part you’re now playing, you have played many. This may be your last part, I do not know. But you will not leave this world of death where God became crucified. The crucifixion is over; the death is over; the burial is over; into hell is over. For this is hell and we rise from it. So do not say you are man going to hell, or when did he go into hell…he is in hell. This world is hell. Ask the question, how does he rise form it? He rises out of it only by playing all the parts, for that was his promise to himself in the beginning. You and I were together as brothers, and together as brothers we formed the one that is called the Lord, for this is the word Elohim. Whether we translate it as God, we translate also the word “I am” as the Lord. Can’t find any better way to translate it…“I am” that’s the Lord.118 ¶7

Now, who is the Father of David? You’re told in scripture it’s I AM. For the Father’s name is Jesse and Jesse is “any form of the verb ‘to be,’” which is “I am.” So, “I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my own heart, who will do all my will”. So, when you know this you can’t condemn any being in this world for what he has done and he is doing and what he may do. For when it all comes to the end you played them all anyway…you played every part. If you haven’t played it you could not conjure David. David comes at the end. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but made manifest in the end of the time. Only at the very end of the play do you see David.118 ¶8

No one will find him…and in finding him you know who the Father is because David stands before you and he calls you Father. It’s not just a David, it’s the David of biblical fame. Then you realize that it’s not secular, it’s sacred. The whole story as told in the Bible is sacred history, it is not secular history. And a David may or may not have lived as a king on earth, that means nothing; but the David spoken of in scripture is sacred history. When he stands before you he calls you Father, and you know without uncertainty the relationship between yourself and the one that you observe: here is your son. Before you started the drama this was part of the plot, but you will not encounter him until the end. So the story is not that the Son reveals the Father, which he does, rather the Father reveals the Son.118 ¶9

So, where is the Son? As you are told in the last book of the Old Testament, “A son honors his father. If then I am a father, where is my honor, where is my son?”. And the Old Testament closed upon the question mark, “Where is my son?” For if it takes a son to honor his father and I am a father, where is my son? Then you wait for the unnumbered years to fill up the time, and then starts the New, which is only the fulfillment of the Old. It’s one book. There could be no New without the Old and the New is only the fulfillment of the Old Testament. The Old is not secular history; the Old is sacred history. Then man begins to unfold within himself, and the whole drama as told us in the Old makes sense when it begins to unfold within man.118 ¶10

Here is a man born in this century in the year 1905. What relationship have I to any character in scripture? If you could trace it back as someone tried to trace someone back, and say you go all the way back to Solomon, what Solomon? You go all the way back to David, what David? Go back to Abraham, what Abraham? These are eternal states of the mind; they are not physical flesh and blood beings. These are eternal state of the mind through which man passes. And when man passes, God passes, because God became man that man may become God.118 ¶11

So here, the journey is from crucifixion, which is a self-imposed limitation. He said, “No one takes away my life, I lay I down myself”, yet we condemn a race of people for taking the life of one who didn’t live any more than St. Christopher lived. That is not the Christ of scripture; that is not the Jesus of scripture. The Jesus of Scripture is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s Jesus, and there never was another Jesus. So, in man Christ unfolds. Who is Christ?—David, he is the Anointed. When God plays all the parts then the sum of the parts becomes personified and it stands before him and he looks into the face of one that he knew before that the world was. He knew the end result, and David is the end result of the journey through death. This is the great mystery of the seed falling into the ground, as we are told, “Except a seed falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit”.118 ¶12

So, God, by restricting himself to the limitations of man, which is the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity, then he goes through this world of death, this world of generation. And having played all the parts, condemning and doing all the things that we do, in the very end when you arrive at the end of the journey then there is an explosion in him. As you are told, “He was buried in Zion.” Well, Zion is your own wonderful skull, that’s Zion. That is the stronghold that David took, and he took it by going up the water shaft, building it into a spiral. So he could only build it and take it by moving in a spiral form up into the skull. That’s where he is buried. One night there’s an explosion within your skull, and when the whole thing settles, here you look out…you, the observer who is God. Well, who is observing?—I am. Well, what’s God’s name?—I AM. That’s his name forever and forever. Well, who is observing it?—I am. What are you observing?—my son. And what’s his name?—David. Here is my beloved in whom I am well pleased, here is my Anointed. Scripture then is fulfilled in me, for “I have come only to fulfill scripture,” not to do anything in the world.118 ¶13

To be rich, all right, if you want to be rich; to be poor, all right, if you want to be poor…because, you have played all the parts anyway. But you aren’t destined to be rich or to be poor. The predestination of scripture is sacred. You aren’t destined to be rich or poor, you can be either. And now, by taking this wonderful power that you really are, which is your own wonderful human Imagination, and dare to assume that you are what at the moment your reason denies, your senses deny…if you walk in the assumption that you are what they deny—knowing who is walking in that assumption, and all things are possible to God—you will externalize it in your world. How? It doesn’t really matter. The whole vast world must play the part necessary to aid the birth of that assumption. That assumption may be false and is false at the moment of the assumption, but it doesn’t matter. If you persist in the assumption, it will harden into fact. Because who is assuming?—God, when you assume. And so, I dare to assume that I am, and I name it, then I dare to walk in that assumption as though it were true. If I am faithful to the assumption of seeing the world as I would see it were it true, it has to crystallize and become an objective fact. But, all these objective facts are only shadows and they fade anyway.118 ¶14

So the real predestination spoken of in scripture is not secular; it is sacred. That was before that the world was, and then God came down into the world of death and assumed these garments of flesh and blood and is playing all the parts. I speak from experience. So when I say from scripture “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” I ask you to believe my own experiences. For, you are told, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me.” Well, I have been lifted up from the earth and in being lifted up from this body in a spiral form to find myself clothed in a body of fire and air—no need of the sun, the moon, the stars, for I am the light of the world. I had no need of any external light. There I was lifted, literally, off the earth. Not only out of this garment, but I didn’t stand upon the earth, I glided above it. And I came upon a scene of imperfection, human imperfection—the blind, the lame, the halt, the withered. They were all waiting for me, all seated, and as I glided by, each was made perfect because I was perfect. Then scripture comes to mind, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Well, who wore that part?—the Father wore it. Well, who is the Father?—I am. And when I came to the very end and each was made perfect then this heavenly chorus sang out, “It is finished!”…the last cry on the cross.118 ¶15

This is the cross. There is no other cross that God ever wore. Man in his mistaken stupid concepts of scripture has nailed men to a wooden cross. But God is not nailed to a wooden cross; he is nailed to this garment of flesh. This is the cross, the only cross. When I came to the end they cried out “It is finished,” and I once more congealed into this little garment, the cross, to tell the story to all who would listen. Some will believe it and some disbelieve it, but tell it anyway to encourage those who may be persuaded to modify their fixed concepts and inheritance. You are born into a certain environment and so they inherited their religion. And they think now this is the only thing and they find it difficult to modify it, because their fathers and their forefathers taught them that. But I tell you, the whole thing is within us, the whole story of the Bible is contained within man and must unfold within man.118 ¶16

When it comes to the end of the journey, there are only two—the Father and his Son. The Father you’ll discover when you come to the end to be yourself. You are God the Father and the son is David as told in scripture. “This is my son” in the 2nd Psalm: “I will tell of the decree of the Lord, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’”.118 ¶17

Now, take a small passage from the 4th chapter of the Book of Acts. The Book of Acts was written by the same one who wrote the gospel of Luke, the same author. Whoever he was no one knows…they’re all anonymous anyway. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John no one knows who they were. These are simply titles, but we do not know who they are. We do know that the Book of Luke was written by the same author who wrote the Book of Acts. Now here, our so-called wise men, the great scholars, cannot bring themselves to believe what is in the script. Let me quote it from the 4th chapter of the Book of Acts: “Thou Lord, who by the mouth of thy servant David have said, ‘Why do the nations rage and why do the people imagine vain things… against the Lord and his Anointed?’”. Now, the word translated “servant” means in Greek—and every time it appears outside of these little peculiar points where the scholars cannot bring themselves to believe it is actually what it’s supposed to be—it is translated “son or child.” If it is found before the word Jesus, they’ll call it “son.” If it is found before the word “David” they call it “servant.” It isn’t so at all. For in the same 2nd Psalm—this is now the first and second verses—in the seventh verse, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord”…the same being speaking…“He has said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’”…and the word of God cannot be broken.118 ¶18

So we are told, “Do not add to it; do not take from it,” leave it, and one day you will fulfill it, for you have come into the world only to fulfill scripture…that’s all that you came to do. So your accomplishments in the world will all vanish, vanish like smoke as told in scripture: “And the heavens will vanish like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment, and all within it likewise; but thy salvation will be forever and thy redemption will have no end”. But everything else will vanish. Men today making fortunes, all right, let them make fortunes, and they want to leave behind them some library. Our new President who has just gone into the White House he’s now beginning to build a library as a monument to himself. He hasn’t made any dent so far upon our world, but right now he’s making some preparation to leave a little footprint on the sands of time, and the little tide will come in and wipe the whole thing out as though it never existed. Bless him, may he have his desire fulfilled with a lovely library and all these things. But it’s such nonsense when the only purpose to life is to fulfill scripture.118 ¶19

He said, “I have come to fulfill scripture” and then taking the Bible he explained to those beginning with Moses and the law and the prophets and the Psalms, all the things concerning himself. For he said, “In the volume of the book it is all about me”. Well, here is a simple man telling men born as he was born that the book is all about him. But it’s not the garment that he’s wearing talking, it’s the being within who experienced scripture, who understands scripture. And then he interprets it based upon his own experience, and now invites the world “to take my yoke upon you and learn form me.” Don’t take the traditional concept handed down year after year, for it is false.118 ¶20

And so, what Christian this night hearing the word Jesus Christ would not think of a unique single being who was born in some unusual manner 2,000 years ago? And it isn’t so at all. Yes, there is an unusual experience within the individual, but it’s going to happen in everyone. And it is a birth. But it’s not the birth from the womb of a woman called Mary or any other name; it’s from the womb of one’s skull. You come out of your own skull and all the imagery as described in Matthew and Luke surrounds you. Then you know it is all about you: “In the volume of the book it is all about me.” You didn’t realize it until it happened.118 ¶21

But it all begins with your resurrection. You awaken within your skull to discover yourself entombed as though…well, it’s sealed. The tomb is sealed, there is no opening. Then, having awakened completely within your skull, in a way you were never awake before, you come out. As you emerge from your skull, you come out in the same manner that a little child comes out of the womb of a woman, and then surrounding you is all the imagery as told in Matthew and Luke concerning the birth of Jesus. And the word Jesus means “Jehovah”. It’s the birth of God. In other words, it’s a higher expansion of himself.118 ¶22

There’s only God in the world, there’s nothing but God. And so, God is ever expanding. He makes a limit of contraction, but there’s no limit to expansion; a limit to opacity, but no limit to translucency. He takes upon himself the limit which is death, this world of death. This is hell! Then having gone through it, he breaks the bond, and he comes out of it. But in coming out of it having gone through it, he is expanded beyond what he was prior to his descent into hell. You say, well then, God is not absolute. If God were absolute, there would be no joy, there would be no son, and you couldn’t expand. How could you ever expand if you were completely beyond expansion? And that sameness would be hell beyond measure. But the joy of constant expansion…truth is an ever increasing illumination. You can’t pigeon hole it and say this is forever, it goes on forever. Having played the parts and having brought all out and united all within himself once more, he is greater by reason of the experience. Well, then he conceives another play, a far greater and more difficult play, and takes upon himself the limitation of it all; then he bursts the bonds of it and comes out resurrecting once more. For the resurrection is God’s mightiest act.118 ¶23

So here, you are God. God became you. I don’t mean this little tiny thing called Neville is God, no, the being that is speaking to you is. The being that had the experience is. This is still subject to all the pains of mortality. It can this night get a headache, this night it can drink too much and go to sleep with a big head and wake tomorrow with a bigger one. All those things it can do haven’t a thing to do with the being that I am. If you’re going to judge me by what I do physically, you’ll never know the being that I am. You’ll never know the being who anyone is, for the being of every being who is playing the part is God. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” And so he is acting in me as my wonderful human Imagination…that’s God. There never was another God and there never will be another.118 ¶24

Now you can put this to the test in this world. But take from me what I have experienced: take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I tell you, you are here for one purpose…to fulfill scripture. And the part you are now playing is adding up towards the whole. When you have played all the parts, the sum of the parts will confront you as a single being, and that single being is the eternal youth David. For you are a father and if you are a father there must be a son bearing witness to your fatherhood. So there must be the result of the experience, and David is the result, the son bearing witness to the experience that you as father have had. And this whole thing unfolds within you.118 ¶25

Now, on this practical level you can put it to the test. You mean, my Imagination really is God and all things are possible to him? Yes. How do I go about testing it? Well, what do you want? That’s the first question. What do you want…and you name it. Don’t suggest to anyone what they should want, let them name it. If it comes within your code of decency, well then, do it. If you said to me I want this one to die, then go to someone else. You’ll find others who will pray with you, but don’t come to me. I want this one to break his neck, this one to break his foot, well, don’t come to me. It doesn’t come within my code of ethics. If he said I want to be rich that’s all right, I want to be known that’s all right. Things that I feel would not hurt anyone in you becoming it; but if you’re going to hurt someone in order to fulfill your desire, don’t come to me. But I can’t deny a principle and I’ll tell you the principle and leave you to your choice and its risks.118 ¶26

So you may want to hurt someone…I can’t deny that you could apply it towards that end. But in the end you will discover one day it wasn’t another that you hurt, it was yourself, because ultimately there is no other…there’s only God and one God is playing all the parts. So if you want to hurt someone, in the end you’ll discover you’re really hurting yourself. As we’re told, “And Job prayed for his friends and his own captivity was lifted”. When he forgot himself in his love for friends and sincerely wanted them to succeed, and then entered into a state of empathy for them, his own captivity was lifted. He became twice as rich, twice as great as he was prior to the horrors that he experienced.118 ¶27

So, what must I do? Well then, you name it. As you name it you give me something that I can construct. When I hear what you want and it’s something that I could really want for myself, then we have a goal. I will say, well now, you name it and I know what you want and I will assume that you have it. I will try to persuade myself to the best of my ability that you have told me that you have it, and I will believe in the reality of this imaginal act. This imaginal act of mine is God in action, for God is my Imagination and I am imagining. So if I imagine that you are what you would like to be, that is God in action. That’s God’s word and his word cannot return unto him void, it must accomplish that for which he sent it, and actually bear the fruit so that he knows his word is a fertile word.118 ¶28

Well, if my Imagination is God, my imaginal acts are God in action. Look into the room…do you see anything in this room or in the whole vast world that wasn’t first imagined? The clothes you wear, the chairs on which you are seated…everything in this world was once only imagined and then it became fact…the pictures on the wall. All of that is out of man’s Imagination. All right, so he first imagined it. My tailor took a piece of cloth that had no shape, and when he discovered what I wanted as to color, he said, “Do you want single-breasted, double-breasted? Single breasted, all right. Now leave it to me, Neville, I know more about making a suit than you do. So don’t tell me how you want it pinched here or there…let me make a suit.” And then he used his Imagination to execute a suit. It had to be first imagined before he even started cutting the cloth, and then he produced what was once only imagined. This building was once only imagined and then it became fact.118 ¶29

You can’t stop a man from imagining. So let no one tell you that one man can in any way enslave the world, because he can’t stop men from imagining. He may have the joy for a few years of being the tyrant of tyrants like a Hitler, like a Stalin, they were the tyrants, but he can only frighten them into accepting him as their leader. The minute they stopped being afraid of him, he was afraid. He could only be a tyrant as long as he can scare people. The minute that people are not afraid, you can’t scare them and then you cannot enslave them.118 ¶30

Now, “Be not afraid,” all through scripture, “Let not your heart be troubled”. Fear not. So the minute you become afraid they’ve got you. If I can sell a tooth paste tomorrow on a fear campaign, I’ve got you. You’ll buy it even though your teeth are falling out and keep on buying it and buying it because I can scare you into buying it. Well, that’s the story of the world…scare them and you’ve got them. Whether it be a food product or some little cosmetic or something else, just scare them to death and you’ve got them. Our entire economy is based upon fear, the war scare and the peace scare. Can you imagine that, having a peace scare? Well, they have a peace scare and the market goes way down because it’s a peace scare. But you must scare them, you must frighten them.118 ¶31

Well, I tell you, fear not! If you can lose all fear…that it doesn’t really matter if they shoot you, it doesn’t really matter if they cut your head off, what they do, if you can lose all fear. Then in our own wonderful Imagination imagine what you would like in this world in spite of what seems to be, and if you persist in that state, you will rock the whole vast world to bring it to pass. If it took unnumbered tens of thousands to play the part necessary to take your imaginal act and aid in its birth, they will play it without knowing that they’re playing that part. You don’t have to go out and appeal to them, you simply remain faithful to your imaginal act and everyone in this world who can aid its birth will come to that assistance of that imaginal act. And they’re complete strangers to you. You don’t need to know who they are…it could be men who speak a different tongue. But they will bring to birth exactly what you have imagined if you persist in the imaginal act, because it’s God in action. But if you quit then you don’t know who God is.118 ¶32

As you’re told in scripture, “My word that goes forth from my mouth shall not return unto me void, but it must prosper in the thing for which I sent it”. It must! It must return to me bringing the fruit of that which I intended when I sent it out. Well, that word is your imaginal act.118 ¶33

So believe me, the Jesus of scripture is the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and the Jehovah of the Old and the Jesus of the New is your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s God. And the Christ of the New is the Messiah of the Old, and the word simply means the Anointed, and the Anointed is David. David stands before you…and the strangest thing about it is when you look at him memory returns. It’s all the returning of memory. So here you are in this century and here is someone who is supposed to have lived a thousand B.C. All of a sudden, you without any change of identity are looking at your own son. It’s the return of memory, as though you suffered from a long amnesia. Here he stands before you and you know he is your son and he knows you are his father. So when you see him it simply means you have finished the game.118 ¶34

And you’re like Paul now, you can say, “I have fought the good fight”—for it is a fight—“and I have finished the race and I have kept the faith. Now there’s laid up for me the crown of righteousness”. Well, what is the crown of righteousness? He said, “The son is the honor of a father.” Now I’ve found my son and he is my crown, he is my honor. I can’t return to a more exalted state than that which I left unless I take with me the result of my journey, and the result of this journey is David. So you take back the sum total of all the experiences of man. So take all the experiences of men and fuse it into one grand whole, and personify that whole, and you get David.118 ¶35

Then the world may not believe it. What does it matter? Leave them just as they are; bless them, knowing that each and every one must go through the identical parts. So in the end he forgives all the parts. You can’t condemn a part when you yourself as the author wrote it. You wrote the play and then finding no one to play it you came down, diversified, and played all the parts. Then you resurrected into unity and return with the result of having played all the parts. Now let us go into the Silence. * * *118 ¶36

Now there is one point I would like to make tonight based upon a letter that a friend of mine wrote me. You’ll find it a fascinating letter based upon a few dreams of hers. I have told you from my own experiences that there is no death, that you find yourself when men call you dead in a world that is terrestrial just like this. And you are solid just as you are now, young, not a babe, twenty years of age, but in a world just like this, making a similar struggle and afraid of death as you’re afraid of death here. But as far as you are concerned you are alive, as alive as you are here and just as solid as you are here.118 ¶37

She said in her letter to me, “I found myself in a dream talking to a friend that I knew well. His name is Jack. I said to Jack, ‘Well, Jack, I thought you died.’ He said, ‘No, it was my wife who died.’” Then in another dream soon after she found herself in the world of dream talking to one she knew in high school, one of her flames, and they were discussing in the same lovely old way, reminiscing, and it seemed—she capitalized the whole thing—SO NATURAL, SO NORMAL. And yet I knew I hadn’t seen him since 1940. But many years ago my mother wrote me that he had died.”118 ¶38

Now, when your loved ones depart this world to you they’re dead and to them you’re dead. You can’t touch them so they’re dead, can’t hear them, can’t see them, so you saw the body cremated, a little dust, and so as far as you’re concerned they’re dead. As far as they’re concerned you’re dead, because they know they’re alive, and they can’t see you, can’t hear you, they can’t touch you, and so you’re dead. And this goes on in this world of death—this is the world of death, it’s called hell in scripture—until you have the experience of which I spoke tonight, until you meet David. When you meet David you are of the resurrected, and you enter a new age, an entirely different age. Don’t ask me to describe it, because there are no images on earth to describe that. It’s a new age, an entirely new world, and you are the resurrected, one of those who go to make up the body of the Lord; for you are the Lord.118 ¶39

Now, are there any questions, please?118 ¶40