When we say that the supreme power that created the universe is the same power that is resident in man, people question that statement. Possibly everyone here owns a Bible, and when you go to court as a witness – say you are called to swear that you will tell the truth – and to swear you put your hand on the Bible, or the Word of God. Then you open the Bible and read: “Whatsoever things you desire, believe that you have them and you shall receive them. And when you stand praying, forgive, if you have aught against your brother, so that your Father in heaven may even so forgive you.” You put your hand on the book of truth and swear to tell the truth, and here is this statement in this very book on which you swear, and you don’t believe it. It is true. It is based on the statement: Imagination creates reality, for the Bible is addressed to the real man, Imagination. “For the Eternal body of man is The Imagination; that is God himself.” Is there anything you cannot imagine? Yet many cannot believe what the Book says is true. You admit you can imagine it, yet man does not believe that the thing imagined can be true. But I tell you that if you can imagine it and persist, your persistence will win and you will prove the truth of that statement in Mark 11 given above.43 ¶1

However, that is on this level of the world. It is called in the Bible “feasting on the bread and fish,” or the loaves and fishes. We can bring about all the changes we desire in our world if we imagine we have it and persist in that state, for if I will persist I will win.43 ¶2

But there is another diet spoken of in the Bible and it is called “bread and wine.” You can go and get all the things of the world with the bread and fish, and you are invited to feast on it if you wish, but the other diet does something to a man that not one in a billion would believe. We are told that they despaired, for they could not believe it. They were told regarding this second diet: “If you eat it and drink it you do it in remembrance of me.” Who? The one who is called Jesus Christ in the Bible, or the spirit of forgiveness. You must feast on this, and it has nothing to do with a cup of wine or a little wafer. It is “the spirit of forgiveness.” It is “the mutual point of forgiveness between enemies, the birthplace of the Lamb of God.” And throughout eternity I forgive you and you forgive me, and just as he said: “This is the wine and this is the bread.” So if I know how to eat of that bread and drink of that wine I am forgiving every person in the world.43 ¶3

But I cannot do it unless I see and understand the difference between an individual and the state the individual is occupying. If I condemn a man, or a society, or a thing, and I do not understand that they are only states, I am condemning them. Only when I begin to distinguish between the state and the individual can I forgive. Then I can take the most horrible beast in the world and embrace him. He might in this present state be my worst enemy, but if I know he is only in a state, I can take him mentally and embrace him and pull him out of that state into which he has fallen and put him into a nobler state. And that is the “point of mutual forgiveness between enemies, the birthplace of the Lamb of God.”43 ¶4

So when man will eat this bread and drink this wine he can have anything there is, for there is only One, for the whole is given to us, if we know it. If any man gives you anything he gives you what is mine as well as yours, for everything is given to you and to me. All is ours. We are one.43 ¶5

Get things if you want them. But there is something far beyond the mere getting of things. But if you want to imagine things, they are here. Do not deny yourself anything you desire, unless you would be gaining by another’s alleged loss. That is not the way to do it. You do not take from anyone. You create what you desire only in Imagination, and if you persist in the state it will prove itself, and it will come to you in a way that will not hurt another, for it is my Father who is giving it to me. There is only God. Nothing is lost, for “all things by a law divine with one another’s being mingle.” So I do not have to ask you or another to play your part in bringing to pass what I want in this world. If you are relative to my drama you will be drawn into it. All I must do is eat of the bread and fish.43 ¶6

But there is the other diet, the bread and the wine. Then when I meet someone I call enemy I must know that he is in a state, and I must distinguish between the individual and the state into which he has fallen. For it is really God in the state. There is only God to play every part. So I can embrace that being I call my enemy and have him see in me his most interested friend. So I redeem him. That is the wine and the bread, and if I eat of the bread and drink of the wine I will actually give birth to the Lamb of God.43 ¶7

What must I do to bring about this experience? It will not come to anyone unless he eats this bread and drinks this wine, for that is the unconditional forgiveness of sin. No matter what the person has ever done, if you can distinguish between the individual and the state into which that individual has fallen, you can embrace him, and then you prepare the way for the birth of the Lamb of God.43 ¶8

If you feel you cannot do it yet, then try the other diet. It is wonderful. If you want better health, or a finer job, or a larger world, then you use Imagination to create it. You hear and see and touch as if your dream were a reality, and then you persist, and with persistence you will win. If you will only persist in hearing and in seeing what you want to see, you cannot fail to realise it. It is a wonderful diet, and everyone is invited to feast upon it. “Whatsoever things you desire, when you pray believe that you have them, and you shall have them.”43 ¶9

You need no other on the outside, but if you will have anything against another forgive him and your Father will forgive you. Some pious monk added the last part, which is now deleted from the newer, more accurate version of the Bible: “If you don’t forgive, then your Father will not forgive you.” That was not the original text. There is no punishment, no retribution. It is all up to us.43 ¶10

We are walking through this fire which is called Earth, but if man only knows that these are states, he will understand that the spirit is walking as God, walking as the Son of God. Then it is the God we embrace, but man cannot believe it and he worships another, unknown God. Everyone who walks the face of this Earth is God, but there are unnumbered states created for a purpose, and we can use our minds to take anyone from an unlovely state.43 ¶11

You recall the recent discussion regarding juvenile delinquents. They could all be put away, we are told. The judge does not know that he could do something about it instead of just corralling them and putting them on the backs of the taxpayers. If the judge only knew that this being before him is in a state, and that he could create a new state and bring that being into a new state and enable him to become a noble wonderful being in society! But we cannot see that, so we continue to condemn the individual as the state. No one can feast on the bread and wine until he can see that, and then he can reach the place of mutual forgiveness of enemies, the birthplace of the Lamb of God.43 ¶12

“So spoke the merciful Son of Heaven to those whose Western Gates were open, but sleeping humanity heard him not, and slumbered on.” Only those whose Western Gates were open heard it. And those go forward to create new states for another and so he saves himself, for man is saved by (and only by) the saving of his fellow man. Finally in each the Western Gate opens and then the Lamb of God is born.43 ¶13

A good Catholic friend said to me: “What do you do to have this experience?” And I said, “Drink the wine and eat the bread.” He did not understand, for he takes Communion every Sunday. I said: “Has anything happened to you? Has there been an expansion in your consciousness? You have taken it for these many years.” But that is not the bread or wine I mean. The wine is mutual forgiveness of all enmity throughout eternity, just as the dear Savior said. If I cannot embrace a being and feel myself thrill to his good fortune, I have not taken the wine or the bread. But if I do it within and not by taking something in a tangible form, then I have partaken of the true bread and wine, and we have schoolrooms within schoolrooms.43 ¶14

It does not matter who you are or when you were born; that has nothing to do with the awakening of God in man. Who are the “right” people? Everyone is God.43 ¶15

I had a long distance call yesterday from New York. The lady who called me is very, very rich by the standards of diamonds and money. She has not fingers enough for all her diamonds. She has everything she wants – except one thing: she wants to be happily married to someone in the social register who has more money than she has, and is at least twenty years younger. She is seventy-five, but she wants more money and bigger diamonds. She said to me: “Look what I have done for my son by using this law. He can now send his four girls to private school. I did this for him when I persisted. But I cannot seem to bring this picture for myself into being.” I said: “Anything you can imagine you can create. But you are thinking the market is limited because there are so few in the register or in your social sphere. Everyone walking the Earth is God and there is no greater background than that. These people are only in states, and if you took them out of that state you might not care for them at all – the same being, but another state. You do not distinguish the being from the state. You used this same law to put your son where he now is. You can realise your dream of being married to someone richer and younger than you are, if that is your concept.”43 ¶16

It is not mine. We judge no one, for when you awaken you do not see the state. You only see the individual who has fallen into the state, and when you see that, you do not meet anyone you could not embrace and pull out of an unlovely state and put him into another state. Then we can intermingle as one being.43 ¶17

Now, he may go back into the old state, like Lot’s wife. “How many times must I do it, Lord?” “Seventy times seven.” That is how it is. If a child of yours fell downstairs, would you not pick him up seventy times seven? God is playing all the parts.43 ¶18

There are unnumbered schools teaching that you suffer because of something you did in a previous life. You must do this or that. You do not awaken by sitting on a mountaintop, or by diets, or by joining some “ism.” You can only awake as you eat the bread and drink the wine, for that is the mutual forgiveness of enemies, and that place is the birthplace of the Lamb of God.43 ¶19

You do not say to another: “I forgive you.” That means nothing. But you bring him before your mind’s eye and embrace him. You are in states that seem to oppose, but when you feel that touch, you are opening the Western Gate, for the Western Gate is touch. The Southern Gate is sight. The Eastern Gate is scent. The whole world remains asleep because the Western Gate is closed in you. And then you eat of this bread. You touch the one you embrace. Embrace mentally the very one who would cut off your head. Then the Western Gate is open in you, and then you eat this bread and drink of this wine, and then you prepare it.43 ¶20

It is not by joining any orthodox church or going on some diet. You can sit on the Himalayas until you freeze and cannot do it. But you walk the marketplace and mingle with God (which is man) and then you have unnumbered opportunities every day to eat this bread and drink this wine. Distinguish between the individual and the state he is in.43 ¶21

[Transcriber’s note: Neville tells here the previously told story {of the} incorrigible child in the New York school who was redeemed by the wise use of her teacher’s imagination in seeing her in a newer and lovelier state, with corresponding results. The child was not blemished; it was a state.]43 ¶22

You have never been tarnished. Hitler, you say? Stalin? The states were horrible, but the individual has never been touched. We do not give birth to the Lamb of God by condemnation. We must reach the point of mutual forgiveness of enemies, the birthplace of the Lamb of God.43 ¶23

Then everything begins to unfold and you will know and understand that everything said in the Book is being said about you. There is only the one Son, and God is begetting that Son unceasingly from you and from me forever.43 ¶24

If you want the Son to be born in you, you must practice drinking the wine; or, if you want to, feed on the bread and the fish. Bring before your mind’s eye your world as you want it. Hear, touch, see, and feel what you would if your desire were true, and you will change your world in harmony with that image.43 ¶25

You can make it conform to your image, but beyond that are worlds within worlds. This universe, which seems so vast – a million light years in diameter – is only the skin of a greater world, for there are endless worlds within worlds.43 ¶26

So when God created me and lit me, therefore I predated the thing created. So before the world was I AM. I begin then to remember who I am and I am He, for God and man are one.43 ¶27

We awaken by drinking the wine and eating the bread. You can practice it all day long. You do not leave where you are or go anywhere to do it. You can do it standing in a bar. It has nothing to do with moral virtues. These are only states.43 ¶28

Then you will understand the words of Paul: “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake.” “Water” is psychological truth. Stop simply absorbing it and begin to put into practice what you know; that is turning the water into wine. It’s the first great miracle in the Bible. No more just reading and not practicing. I can absorb the water, but now I must take a little wine – or put into practice what I have heard and so transform your world – and that is life.43 ¶29

The 11th chapter of Mark is true: “Whatsoever you desire, when you pray believe that you have it, and you shall receive it.” “And as you stand praying, if you have aught against your brother, forgive him, that your Father may forgive you.” But you cannot forgive until you distinguish between the state, and the individual in the state. You create for him that other state, where he is your friend, bring him out of his former state, and embrace him. That is the opening the Western Gate – and then something happens within you.43 ¶30

So, who spoke this? “The merciful Son of Heaven to those whose Western Gate was open, but sleeping humanity heard him not and slumbered on.” I can speak and you may not hear. This diet may not appeal to you. It is only a state which you are in at present, for you are still God, no matter what, and you are still unblemished. But all will awaken, for God plays all the parts. Therefore “disaster beyond redemption is impossible.”43 ¶31

Let no one tell you that you are better than the other. You may be in a more wonderful state than the other, but that is all. Good and evil belong to the tree of knowledge.43 ¶32

We are rising up to a more expanding world as we awaken. You will step into another world as real as this one, and yet behind you in this world you will discover you have left a little garment – your body.43 ¶33

All things exist in Imagination, and it is one with the supreme imagining that creates and sustains the universe.43 ¶34

Now, you take the diet you desire. If you are not yet interested in embracing someone you think is your opponent, and all you want is to transcend your present level, then live in the state that proves you have done it. You may never, after it comes about, give credit to your wonderful Imagination, for it happens so naturally that you will think it would have happened anyway. You may discount that your Imagination did it.43 ¶35

But the day will come when you will want to transcend just things, and you will want that which does not have earthly value. You will see those with great possessions and know they are actually only moments from the grave, but up to the last second before they flicker out they are still only conscious of possessions. But it is all right, for they too will awaken in time, though they do not even know that there is someone who walks among them who is awake.43 ¶36

In the world beyond worlds you are completely awake and not known because of possessions – because then you own the world. For there you know that you and your Father are one, and he creates all out of nothing. Whatever you desire to create you create, and you do not need atoms to do it; forever those you create out of your Imagination.43 ¶37

But tonight bring a friend (or he may be an opponent) before your mind’s eye and represent him to yourself as being in a finer state, or freer, and then be faithful to your mental structure. Then, in a way no one knows, it will take on reality in your world and crystallise and become a fact.43 ¶38

Now let us go into the silence.43 ¶39

[...] wonderful principle of God’s eternal law and his promise. The law is so very simple, only it is conditional. We are the operant power; it doesn’t work by itself. You can be anything you want to be in this world if you are willing to pay the price. The only price you pay is to give up what you are that you may in Imagination become what you want to be. That’s the price you pay.40 ¶1

The coin you use is simply diligence, persistency, faith—faith in the reality of your invisible act. You imagine yourself to be what you want to be and you believe in the reality of that unseen act. And then you become diligent, you become persistent, and you persevere in that state. And then it takes root and it grows into this world.40 ¶2

So you are not the same person when you become the other person. So you can’t be one being in one state and not suffer the consequences of not being in another state. There are infinite states and you can choose. Man not knowing this, he thinks he has to simply accept what is called fate. He was born in a certain environment, he didn’t have the proper encouragement, no background, this, that and the other. He accepts that. If he does, then he lives in that state.40 ¶3

But you need not if you really know this principle that whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will. That’s scripture. I tell you from experience, my own personal experience, that you will. You ask no favors of others; no one need help you. The whole vast world is response; they respond. They have to respond, they can’t help it, for the very simple reason all things really exist in us. As Blake so wisely said, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”40 ¶4

It’s so clearly revealed in the depth of one’s soul through vision that everyone in the world is simply responding to what is taking place in your own wonderful human Imagination. So, it’s entirely up to you to know what you want and then dare to test this law.40 ¶5

As we are told in scripture, “Come test me and see. Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test.” Well, Jesus Christ in scripture is defined as the power and wisdom of God. And so, the power of God is in you, your own wonderful human Imagination. So you can test it and see.40 ¶6

When we come to the Promise and because we only have two weeks left—and I do hope that many of you will be reading the Bible in the interval between now and when we return in late October—I’d like to give you a few points on how to read the Bible.40 ¶7

When you take a book in your hand and you read a novel, and they’re all characters in the imagination of the writer, and you read the book, and they all become alive to you. Today you read Dickens, and the characters of Dickens are more alive than Dickens. You read them and all of a sudden you endow every one with a personality and they’re so real. You read Shakespeare. Turn on your TV tonight and a man sat down or a lady sat down and wrote that script, and yet all are in his Imagination or her Imagination, but they’re all real as you look at it.40 ¶8

Now, when you look at the Bible and you open the Bible, may I tell you, from the very beginning to the end…but I will limit it now from Adam which is the very beginning of Genesis to the first of John where John the Baptist is introduced as a character; and so we are told, the law and the prophets were until John. That is the script, a script written just as any author here would write a script, only this was shown in vision. He didn’t sit down and cogitate and try to figure out how to write the script; the whole thing was revealed from beginning to end. It’s not the product of some man’s composition. These men inspired by the depth of the soul wrote scripture. They wrote the eternal drama. So from Adam to John…and you can close the book. The whole thing is in you, that sacred scripture.40 ¶9

Now, always bear in mind when you open the book and you read this book that the names Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob are not there meant but the states signified by those names. The individuals are but representatives or visions of those states as they were revealed to mortal man in the series of divine revelations as are written in the Bible.40 ¶10

May I tell you, with Blake, I have seen these various states in my Imagination; and seen at a distance it appears as one man, and when you approach and you come near, they are multitudes of nations…one man.40 ¶11

Now in Hebrew thought history consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into one grand whole; and this concentrated time into which all the generations of men are fused and from which all spring is called eternity. Eternity is personified as a single youth, and that youth is David.40 ¶12

So really when you’re told “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee,” these words are addressed to David, they are addressed to humanity, the whole vast world. But all the sacred scripture, every one within them, all experiences, fused into a single being and that is David. And you have to bring him forth. When you enter the arena—and it really is an arena—and you play this frightful tragedy, at the end of your journey you bring forth humanity. But not multitudes, you bring humanity forth as a single youth, just David, and David calls you “Father,” calls you “my Lord.” You are his Rock.40 ¶13

Then you understand the words in Revelation, “I am the root and the offspring of David.” I AM, that’s the root. And humanity came out of me, as told us in the 11th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: And out of the stump of Jesse—the word Jesse means I AM—out of the stump of Jesse will spring this root, this little branch will come out. So, out of I AM the whole vast world of humanity comes out.40 ¶14

And then in the end when the drama is over and dream is over, you see it all fused into a single one, and it’s David, and you are the Lord. You are the root of the whole vast world; and strangely enough, you transcended yourself, you are now offspring.40 ¶15

Then you will understand the words in the 7th chapter of the 2nd Book of Samuel, and these words are addressed to David: “When your days are fulfilled”—and listen to the words carefully, “fulfilled” as told us in the earliest of the gospels—“the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand.” So, “When your days are fulfilled”—brought to fullness—“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.” So, a supernatural being rises in you, individually, and when that being rises in you, the power of it conjures that single being representing the whole vast world of humanity, and he calls you “Father.”40 ¶16

Now you understand these words of Paul: “When I was a child, I thought as a child, I spoke as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” “From now on we regard no one from the human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from the human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” He is speaking of that entire closed book. He’s not speaking of you and speaking of the speaker, he’s speaking of the characters of sacred scripture. He, too, thought Abraham was a man and not a state. He thought Moses was a man and not a state. He thought all the characters…so when he heard of Messiah, he consented unto the death of Stephen and joined in the stoning; and did all these things that when a man, mentally speaking—not physically speaking but mentally speaking—is a child he does all these things. They are men, and so they will stone any man who comes to take away the glory, the little light from his great patriarchs of the past, and stone him to death.40 ¶17

He didn’t know the mystery of Christ until it was revealed to him. So said he, “The gospel that I now preach I did not receive it from a man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through the revelation of Jesus Christ.” So I will not now discuss it, said he, with flesh and blood. He goes to meditate upon it, for the thing began to unfold within him. So then we see in his letters that Jesus Christ is the pattern for every man, not a man. It’s the pattern of the unfolding God in man.40 ¶18

So, I once saw him from the human point of view, as I saw Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. I no longer see him from the human point of view. I will see only the risen Christ, that which is buried in every man, now rising to fuse and to be actually one man, the father of humanity, that is personified as David. So in everyone God rises and in everyone he becomes God the Father. That’s his name. And if he’s a father then there must be a son. Humanity is the son, but when you see humanity on high you see a single youth, and it’s David. David represents the whole vast world of humanity.40 ¶19

So start with your Adam, go through to John the Baptist, fuse them into a single whole; and this fused concentrated time, personify it and you find eternity. Now we are told in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “God has put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning until the end.”40 ¶20

Only in that eschatological moment when man rises at the end will he really understand what God placed in his mind. He put the whole vast world, he put eternity into the mind of man, and eternity simply consists of all the generations of men, all their experiences, fused into one grand whole. So the whole vast world is placed in the mind of man and when he comes to the end, having played these many parts—fighting against himself, running from himself, and all the horrors of the world—he awakes. Then he finds the whole fused into a single youth that he loves beyond measure. For the words are, here is my beloved David; I will never take my steadfast love from him.40 ¶21

Now here we are told, he is king over all of them when they are in battle, but at the end he is their prince forever, not king. He is king when the whole vast world is fragmented, but in the end, he is prince, and he is my beloved forever. For if he is the prince then I am the king. I see my son who is now prince forever having played all the parts, a man after my own heart. So “I have found in David the son of Jesse”—the son of I AM—“a man after my own heart.” My own heart…well, “blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” So when I bring him out and I see him and he calls me “Father,” he’s the pure in heart; he is by his very presence telling me who I am. He has to be perfect as his Father in heaven is perfect.40 ¶22

And so, everyone is playing the part. Everyone in this world is playing the identical part. For in the end we all come out and there aren’t two Gods, three Gods, only one. So we are told, everyone who is united to him becomes one spirit with him. Everyone who is united to him becomes one spirit with him. So we are told again, “I am gathering you one by one, O people of Israel.” Everyone, in due time, is called to awake. As he is called, he’s fused into the single body and that body is infinite love.40 ¶23

If I could take anyone this night with me into the presence of this personified love, it’s infinite love. But how to persuade others who are conditioned to read the story as told us in Sunday school? For I dare say many of us went to Sunday school, I know I did. I didn’t want to, but I had to. And so, I went and I heard the story from beginning to end, Sunday after Sunday, at 4:00 in the afternoon. And here I heard Abraham was a man and he had these sons and they were boys and they grew into men. But I couldn’t understand the Bible; it had to be revealed. My school teacher didn’t know it any more than the priesthoods of the world today know it. What do they know about it? It has to be revealed—you can’t rationalize it—the whole thing is unveiled within you.40 ¶24

So when you pick up the works of Paul, after it was unveiled in him, does he not personify a city? He calls Jerusalem “my mother from above.” He said Abraham had two sons, one was born into slavery and took with him his mother into slavery, and the mother he calls Hagar. Then he said Hagar is the present Jerusalem. But there is another and she is our mother and she is “Jerusalem from above.” There’s a Jerusalem from below; the womb of woman that is Jerusalem of this world, it’s from this world—and every child born of the womb of woman is born into slavery. Then comes another Jerusalem who is from above, bearing children into freedom, and he said, “That is our mother.”40 ¶25

In the story of the gospels, is it not put into the mouth of one called Jesus Christ, who is only the personification of God’s plan of salvation? Don’t think in terms of a man; it’s the plan of salvation. And does he not say, “O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem,” and then speaks of her as a mother? He calls her a hen, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you? How often I would have gathered all of your children together as the hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not. So he personifies a city, he calls Jerusalem “mother” and likens her to a grand hen, gathering all of her chickens under her wings, just like a wonderful brood…and they would not.40 ¶26

So here, we find all through scripture not only the personification of these states called the law of Moses, and this wonderful plan called Abraham and the wonderful son—when all brought together and the heart is the heart of God, called David—all humanity. But we find cities personified and called mother and all the inhabitants of that city called children. So when you open the book, don’t forget it; try always to remember that the persons, called by names Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and so on, are not there meant but the states that are signified by those names.40 ¶27

And every name in scripture has meaning, has significance. Look up the name in your concordance and find its true significance. Abraham, “the father of the multitudes.” Here is the beginning of the grand journey, the father of the multitudes, more numerous than the sands of the sea, more numerous than the stars of the heavens.40 ¶28

Not a man, and yet he has two sons, said Paul. If you read scripture, there are more than two. He has been promised more than the sands of the sea, but even in actual chronological order there are more. But he only takes the two: the slave (this body), born from Jerusalem from below, which was my physical mother; and then that which happened in me, born from above, which he called, my mother Jerusalem from above, born into freedom.40 ¶29

So here, no matter how you look at it, always try to remember that you can’t read it as you would a novel. But think of a novel as a creation of an author, single author and he conceived all these parts and they become alive to you the reader. Well, the Bible is written in the same manner, only it’s under inspiration. It’s the eternal story by which God brings into being the supernatural being that is Christ. Christ is the supernatural being.40 ¶30

And tonight I say without hesitation, I wouldn’t for one moment hesitate to rest the case for the divine meaning and the validity of the gospel on the testimony of my own inward experience as was wrought in me by the Spirit. I know it is all unconditioned. For here is a man with all the limitations of man in this world and in spite of my obvious limitations it happened in me. So I know it is unconditioned. I did not earn it. I did not acquire and gather together any merit for it. It’s a gift from beginning to end.40 ¶31

But the law, of which I have been well informed, is conditioned. And while we are waiting for the fulfillment of the Promise, let us learn to operate the law. For, the law is conditioned and we are the operant power. So I tell you of the law and leave you to your choice and its risk. There’s a risk involved. You can burn your hand, I tell you of it. If you use it lovingly you’ll never go wrong…can’t hurt if you use it lovingly. But, may I tell you, you can use it as a Stalin or a Hitler or any tyrant in the world and it still works. It’s the law. You can become anyone that you want to be if you are willing to assume that you are, and remain faithful to that assumption just as though it were true. You can become it, but you’re going to pay the price. Hitler paid the price. Stalin paid the price. Mussolini paid the price. They all paid the price in the end, but they were willing to pay another price and that price was bigamous. They were completely alerted to what they had assumed that they were.40 ¶32

If you are willing to assume that I am…and you name it. And you be the judge—I am…and you name exactly what you want to be, and then see in your mind’s eye the world that you would see were it true. What would it be like were it true? How would it feel were it true? You simply ask yourself these simple questions and you get responses. Then you feel natural in it. When it seems natural to you, this is right, alright, that’s it. It’s taking root, and in a way that no one knows it begins to unfold. It will lead you across a bridge of incidence that you don’t build. You walk across the bridge of incidence—at least, you don’t consciously build it—and across this series of events you are taken to the fulfillment of that which you are assuming that you are.40 ¶33

When you get to the end, and now you realize it completely, you turn back and on reflection things happened so normally and so naturally you might say, “Well, it would have happened anyway.” You might say it, because it happens so naturally as it unfolds. But it takes you across this series of events, and you must confess you didn’t actually make the events. They seemed to appear and you were led across the series of events right up to the fulfillment of what you assumed that you are. All you’re called upon to do is to remain faithful to your assumption that you are already the man that you want to be. Assuming that state, remaining faithful to it, you fulfill it. And that’s the law.40 ¶34

But it all depends upon you and your willingness to make the decision and then assume it. As you’re told in scripture, “What man desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost? Will he have enough to really complete it?” He doesn’t want to be laughed at. And so, the tower is simply the elevated state that you desire to fulfill, that’s the tower. You count the cost. Do you have enough faith? Do you have enough stick-to-itiveness? Do you have enough persistency to really assume it and stick to it?40 ¶35

But I’ve found in all who have had it—and I’m going into my closest circle of friends and relatives—they forget it in the end. They don’t forget the law, but they become so much what they dreamed of being that they crow, just as though—and I can’t deny that they did do it—but it was the law, a simple principle, that their porter could have done. Anyone who employs now a thousand porters and men working for him, anyone in that crowd who knew what he did could have done the same thing had they counted the cost.40 ¶36

As you’re told, “What man who desires to build a tower doesn’t first sit down and count the cost?” Is he willing to go hungry this night rather than deviate for one moment, and just simply pull in his belt and simply go to bed just as though he didn’t want a meal—not that he couldn’t get it, just didn’t want it—and live in that state just as though it were true, and so remain faithful to that assumption? If he does, the porter, who today still remains the porter, could, had he started when the boss started, have done the same thing.40 ¶37

So this is this principle, a simple, wonderful principle based upon scripture: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will.” It doesn’t say that you go to the priest and ask the priest if it’s good for you. It doesn’t say that you take into consideration any moral code. The Bible is not a moral book. Man can’t get it through his head it’s not a moral book. It’s a book of law and promise, and the law is conditioned and the promise is unconditioned. But man has read into it morals that are not present in the book.40 ¶38

He’ll take you through everything and bring you out in the end, and in the very end you awaken, and you are God himself. The Spirit of truth will take the believer right through all these experiences, for he sends the Spirit of truth upon man. When the Spirit of truth comes upon man, he takes that believer, and in that believer the believer has the experiences, all these wonderful experiences. And he brings him out at the very end as the one who created and conceived the whole thing.40 ¶39

And you discover that your creator and your redeemer are one and the same being, and the two are one; and you are one. You created it, you prepared the way of redemption, you redeem self, and in the end you are the very one who conceived it, who played it, and who fulfilled it. It’s only God…there is nothing but God in this world. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Not two, no room for two. No room for the creator and the redeemer—they are different parts played by the same being. And so, he conceived everything, played all the parts, and in the end we are gathered one by one to unite into a single man who is God.40 ¶40

So I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing. And when you read in scripture that God is love, may I tell you, that is true. But just as Jesus Christ is the personification of the power and the wisdom of God, you will meet a man, glorious beyond measure, and all you can actually feel is love. You can’t think of any emotion in this world but love. Yet you stand in the presence of the risen Christ who is God and it’s love. But I can’t deny that all these that were to me as a child—when I was a child I thought as a child, spoke as a child, reasoned as a child, but now that I’ve become a man I should simply put away childish things—and they are no longer men, they are states.40 ¶41

But encountering the states you see a man, for it takes a man to express every emotion in this world, the evil and the good. And so, error needs a man as an agent. Truth needs a man as an agent. Everything that is expressed needs man to express it. So when the thing to express, the state to express, is being expressed, a man appears. But all these men are only personifications of the states.40 ¶42

So who, really, is the reality behind these personifications? I stood in the presence of man and it was love. But we are told in the very end that no mortal eye could see the glory that awaits the awakening of the creator who died, and became this, and then rises from it. When he rises from it, what is the glory that is in store for all to see when all of us are it? But I only know I saw man. And I didn’t have to ask any questions when I stood in the presence of infinite love.40 ¶43

The question asked me was based upon love, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and I answered “Love,” and at that we fused. There was one more gathered into the body of love. And yet I was sent—fused into the body of love, one with God—and then commanded to go and tell what I had experienced—and the words ringing out in my mind, “Down with the blue-bloods.” Didn’t understand the meaning of it, but that was my command. It was years and years later before I understood the meaning of the words, and they simply mean church protocol, that’s all that they mean.40 ¶44

All external ceremonies, all outside activities in the hope of gaining merit, down with it all, have no part of it. And I can’t tell you how often from that moment on I have been—never really tempted but—invited by numberless across this country to join their organizations, saying “Speak. You have your books, you wouldn’t have to go to school; we’ll ordain you today.” That’s done too, you know, without exams…ordain you today and send you out. That would be completely in violation of the command that was given to me when I was sent from the presence of the risen Christ: “Down with the bluebloods,” all outside ceremony, but all of it, from the top to the bottom.40 ¶45

He is not reached that way. You don’t reach him by rising in the world of Caesar, where someone could raise you from the lowly state to a higher state, to a higher state, and finally to the highest in the eyes of man, because God does not judge from outward appearance. He who today wears the greatest robes, the most glorious robes, may not have a heart comparable to the heart of the one who cleans his shoes. And the Lord sees only the heart, not the outward appearance.40 ¶46

Now, when that heart comes to perfection, it’s automatic, and then David appears, and David who should be the father becomes the son. That’s the great mystery. How can a man become his own father’s father?40 ¶47

And that’s what happens, for “I am the root and the offspring of David.” Here is David…and I will raise up after you your son who will come forth from your body…your son…and I the Lord will be his father, and he will be my son. He comes out of David, so he should be David’s son. Yes, he does come out of David, he comes out of humanity. The whole vast conflict gives birth to this supernatural being coming back, the creative power of God. And that which was its father is now congealed into a single youth and it’s his son, not his father. So he who is David’s father becomes David’s son, and he who was the son of David becomes David’s father. It’s an automatic reversal of the process.40 ¶48

So he put into the mind of man eternity, David, who is nothing more than the complete concentration of all the generations of men. And then he fragmented that man—he was a single little unit among billions of men—and the struggle was on. He goes through all the hell of the world. In the end, having played it all and overcome it all, only through love, he arrives at the point where he begins to awaken and the whole vast mass of humanity once more becomes congealed and stands before him as a single youth and calls him Father. And the journey is over.40 ¶49

All he can do for the remaining days on earth is tell it to anyone who will hear it, that’s all. Some will hear it believing, some will say it’s insane, but tell it anyway. For, all I can tell you is what I have told you this night is true. I haven’t speculated, I’m not theorizing, I am telling you exactly what I have experienced.40 ¶50

These various states I have seen in my Imagination. One night I saw it so clearly. I was with Blake and he showed me the kind of a fall that I should take. Taking this fall, when I steadied myself, I came like a meteor through space. When I steadied myself and that fall came to a halt, here, in the distance stood a single man, a glorious man and his heart was like a ruby aflame. He was radiant and the heart was simply a burning ruby. As I approached him, why, the one man became a multitude of nations. And I saw it, saw this perfect vision of the one man fragmented into all the nations of the world, and yet seen at a distance one glorious man with a heart of a burning ruby.40 ¶51

So I tell you, I am not speculating. I’m speaking from experience: You are that man! And for a purpose beyond your present understanding, you created a scene, and became the fragmented man, the one man. Your end has already been predetermined, because it’s not based upon any effort on the part of a man here. It’s always been set up. He’s prepared the way for the return of himself. And when you return from this great tragedy, really you will be far greater than you were prior to that moment in eternity when you conceived the play. For there is no limit to the expansion of God; he only set a limit to his contraction. There’s no limit to expansion; he only set a limit to his opacity.40 ¶52

Now let us go into the Silence and in the world of Caesar use his law and conceive yourself to be the lady, to be the gentleman that you would like to be. In spite of what the world may think, dare to assume that you are now the one that you want to be. Now let us go.40 ¶53

This morning’s subject is “The Four Mighty Ones”. The history of humanity is little else than a long struggle with this infinite riddle – the riddle of the Four Mighty Ones. When Origen, one of the early church fathers, was asked, “Why are there four Gospels? Why not one?” he answered and said because there are four quarters of the Heavens, north, south, east and west and, therefore, four quarters of the human soul. The Bible speaks of this riddle which we will quote from the Book of Proverbs, and I will tell you the promises made to the individual and to the nation who can answer or un-riddle the riddle. It is veiled throughout from Genesis to the Book of Revelations; the four rivers, the four horsemen, the four creatures around the throne of God, the four men loose and walking in the fire; and the form of the fourth was like the Son of God; and they parted his raiment into four parts, and throughout, they speak of the four, but man cannot seem to un-riddle the riddle. This morning I hope to do it, and if I do it to your satisfaction so you walk in it, then certain things should happen to you.37 ¶1

Now, let us see what should happen to us. First, let me quote the riddle. It is from the 30th chapter of the Book of Proverbs: “Who hath gathered the wind in his fist? Who hath bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name and what is His son’s name? Cans’t thou tell?” For that is the riddle.37 ¶2

Can we tell it? Do we know the name of the one who did it? Do we know the son’s name? And you follow it, closely. The first is Spirit, the second is Water, and the third is Earth. That is the question asked. The first one is about the wind; well, the wind in all languages, in all ages, has been used as a synonym for spirit – the breath. He speaks of water second. The mystic knows water in the Bible, and all scriptures, symbolised psychological truth. The ideas that men entertain as Truth; either true or false, if he accepts it and consents to it, he weaves this into a garment, so he wonders who has actually gathered or bound the waters in a garment. And the third – who has established all the ends of the earth? Who made it fixed? Who could take this liquid state, that is only a moving state, that is unseen, and objectify it, actually establish a something that is solidly real and make it to others a fact? Do you know the name? What is his name and what is his son’s name? Canst thou tell?37 ¶3

Now, let us now turn to the promises. “I will set him on high because he hath known my name”, which you read in the 9lst Psalm, which all of us love to recite. “I will set him on high.” When I am set on high does it mean I am made a king, a president, a dictator, a great giant of industry? It hasn’t a thing to do with such exalted positions on earth, for the real journey of a man is up the ladder of awareness, ever increasing awareness, an awareness of objects of increasing significance; but I am set on high because I know the name. A bird will not be merely a feathered creature. A bird will be to me what it was to Blake, simply a wonderful delight, a heavenly delight, bringing me a message. Birds will talk to me, not as you understand language, but their very flight will reveal to me God’s intent. They will speak to me; not only trees, birds; everything in the world is the language of God. When man is lifted up, they cease to be objects – they are expressions of meaning – as a book is lifted up in consciousness from merely an object in space to a series of marks on paper, to finally an expression of meaning. As I ascend in consciousness, I lift an object, but if I am lifted up because I know the name, then every object in space ceases to be objects. They have meaning and they are expressing meaning. So I can read the open book of God. A tree now becomes a message; birds in flight, why two and not three, or why three and not ten? Why in the form in which they did fly; there is no accident – everything is the unfolding pages of God’s book to the man who is set on high because he knows the name. The name then becomes, we are told, “a strong tower and the righteous runeth into it and is saved.”37 ¶4

Now, let us take one more promise and you answer whether nations know the name. If our priests and our rabbis and our leaders, who should know the Name, really know the Name: – for this is the promise that the Prophet gives us in the Book of Micah. “All the people will walk, everyone, in the name of his god, and we will all walk in the name of the Lord our God”, and in that day all the nations will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and no nation shall lift a sword against a nation and they shall learn war no more; and the history of humanity has been the history of war and crime, and these words were penned hundreds and hundreds of years before our era – hundreds of years B.C.37 ¶5

Only the individual has found the name and become one who took his own sword and turned it into a plowshare. He escaped from the turmoil, the individual mystic, the individually awakened man or woman who found the Name in the midst of the struggle. He goes in and finds a saviour in the Name. It is a strong tower to him and now he goes in and he rests. He is lifted up on high and he sees the unfolding of the times. Now, if nations really knew it, if the word uttered by the priests really was the Name, if the rabbi pronouncing the so-called holy word was the Name, we would not have war, so the Name as sounded by the priesthoods of the world cannot be the Name, so what is the Name?37 ¶6

Let us go back now to the riddle. “Who hath gathered the wind in his fist?” What imagery! – What is the fist? The fist is the symbol of the first letter in the great mystery name of God. The fist is Jod. Now, what is a fist? The hand is the one organ of the human body that sets him completely apart from the whole of creation; so it begins the name of God, for without a hand, if I were simply an Einstein multiplied by the nth number, I would only be a smart monkey. I could not build, I could not fashion, I could not mold, I could not create; I could have all the ideas in the world but without a hand I would not be a creator. So here that very first question asked is about the creative being, for the wind is spirit – I am speaking now of the creative spirit – and so it puts it into the form of a fist. Who has taken it and gathered all the wind in its fist?37 ¶7

So we find the first letter that is, in the language of the mystic, to be aware. Can you conceive of being any place in this world and not being aware? You may not know who you are, you may not know where you are, you may suffer from total amnesia, but you can never in eternity not know that you are. It is the one thing of which man is sure – I AM. He knows that he is, and he doesn’t know who he is and where he is and what he is, but he cannot stop knowing that he is, so that is the very first question asked; that creative spirit which is the JOD, which is simply being aware.37 ¶8

The second one, now. Who bound the waters in a garment? When I speak of garments in the scriptures, they symbolise what the mind wears. When a man is clothed in soft raiment, we are told he is in the King’s house and the Kingdom is within. He does not have teachings concerning external life. When a man comes clothed in camel’s hair or a leather girdle, these are made from external objects, made from skin, made from hair, the most external thing on a man, so that man’s teaching is represented by external things, therefore, he speaks externally. He does not speak of the kingdom within, he speaks of the things without that man should do. You have two coats? Give one to one who has not any. You have more than you can eat? Give some to one who is hungry, but when one comes wearing soft raiment, he doesn’t tell you anything to do on the outside, for he is now clothed with the clothing of the King, and the King is in the Kingdom and the Kingdom is within. So we speak now of a garment; a garment simply represents the intelligence of the individual or what the individual has accepted as true.37 ¶9

Now where we speak of water – he gathers water into a garment and water is psychological truth. Now, who can take a mere assumption and gather it into something that is altogether real to him, that no one sees, as you would take say the cloud and gather it and form it. And then the third one, who can solidify it? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name? Go back to the name.37 ¶10

We found that the hand was JOD and the second letter in the great creative Power, (known as JOD HE VAU HE) is HE. HE is symbolised as a window. The window of the man is his mind. With my mind I see. With my imagination I see in fashion so I will now gather in my imagination, what I want to be in this world, so I will gather it without the aid of any external force. When I see clearly in my mind’s eye what I would like to be, I have gathered this state into a garment.37 ¶11

Now, how to solidify it! What is the third letter in the name, this mystery name? The third letter is VAU and VAU is symbolised as a nail. A nail binds together, it joins things together, so I can stand here and first I am aware, just simply aware. Then I become aware of something and I become very discriminating, very selective. There are numberless things of which I am aware but I need not single out one to become identified with it but I will simply let them all pass through the mind, as it were. Then I will hold upon one – I will arrest one – the kind of man that I would like to be. Well, I will fashion that into a garment. The next step is now bringing it into solidity, which is the VAU. But how do I apply the name to the point where I can use the VAU in my name? I will assume that I am that man. When I walk in the assumption, I am walking in his Name. We are told in this state all will walk in the name of his God. I have found the Name – found it within myself as, first, my awareness, my ability to become aware of something, my ability to become not only aware of it but to become aware of being it, so I walk as though I am the man that I want to be, so I solidify it, and the last letter only bears witness of the internal imagery, for the last letter is another HE, so there are two HE’s in the name, a JOD and a VAU.37 ¶12

You cannot sound it – Jehovah is not the name – roughly translated it is I AM, but you have got to tear it apart and know what you mean by “I AM,” for to say, “GO and tell them ‘I AM’ has sent you unto them.” When I go to Israel and they ask me, “Who sent you?” what is your thought? Just say, “I AM has sent me unto you,” and then complete it and tell them, “I AM that I AM.” What does it mean – I AM That? Yes, that is as it is because I AM as I AM. Were I different that would have to be different, so I am that that mirrors the being that I am, for what I see the world to be is a measure of my own level of consciousness, for whatever it is seen to be is a direct index to the level of consciousness of the observer of the world.37 ¶13

It’s not the world – I am that – I really am – and that could not be other than what it is, while I remain as I am. The slightest change in my level of consciousness, the slightest change in the feeling of I am this, results in a corresponding change in that, which is the world round about me. Let me now desire peace and actually walk in the name of peace, that there is peace in my world, and I will look upon a world and I will see peace where others see conflict, for I am only seeing that at all times: so what is my authority? My authority is “I AM has sent me unto you” and I AM that I AM. Do I know it? If I know it I will never complain. If I broke my neck I would know you could not have done it unto me: I did it unto myself. If I find myself in any state in the world I could not complain for I have found the Law, I have found the Name by which all these things are gathered together. All the creative spirit in the world is gathered in the Name and the Name is I AM.37 ¶14

But the Name must be torn apart and be shown as Four Mighty Ones, and not just the single. It is all one, but there are four distinct functions of the one. There are not four fingers or four separate beings living in man. God is one and his Name is one, but there are four distinct functions, and you can call them the four Gospels, call them the four garments that he wore, call them the four rivers flowing out of Eden, call them the four creatures surrounding the great throne of God; call them four but understand what you mean by the four.37 ¶15

So when you walk the earth can you walk in his Name? If I can walk in his Name, then I know what built the world, what keeps it sustained and establishes every end of this fabulous wonderful universe. It is the Name, and the Name is simply I AM. It is not Jehovah, it is not Christ Jesus, it isn’t the Lord, it’s not a thing you utter, it’s a thing you keep in the silence of the heart, because you know you are and you don’t have to affirm I AM in order to be. You simply know that you are, and the one sure thing in this world that everyone knows, he knows that he is, but he doesn’t know sometimes who he is. He doesn’t know sometime where he is and sometimes he doesn’t know what he is, but at all times he knows that he is – that is the one deep conviction in the heart of every man, so he walks in that but he has to tear it apart and get understanding of the Four Mighty Ones within him given to us in a symbolical way in the JOD HE VAU HE.37 ¶16

Those not understanding it within themselves treat it so sacredly they will even cover the name as they unfold the scroll to read it. Have you ever gone to these wonderful churches and seen them reading a scroll that man himself wrote, for some rabbi wrote that down, yet when he comes to read it he will cover it, because he must not look upon the name of God. It’s a holy name. It’s not on paper. It’s not on the scroll. He can’t even utter it. It’s within him as his awareness, his ability to become aware of things, his ability to become aware of being the state of which formerly he was only aware of, and he walks as it and then he objectifies it and it becomes that, so I AM that I AM.37 ¶17

So when a world is described from observation, it is always, as described, revealing the level of consciousness of the describing being. It is not the world – that changes automatically – if I, in one little way, change within myself. Now, today test it – test the Name. He said, “I have kept everything you gave me in your Name, and your Name and my Name are one.” We have the same Name, so when you spell the son’s Name strangely enough you start off JOD HE VAU. When you spell Jesus in Hebrew it begins JOD HE VAU. You don’t have to go further – that is the Creative Power – to be aware, to be aware of, and to be aware of being the state decided on and then, but it’s not Jesus, you don’t sound Jesus, it’s simply in the being’s own heart – that’s the Name.37 ¶18

Now, the day we really believe it and are bold enough to walk in that Name, there will be peace in the world. If we turn on the outside to an external God, there will be war in the world. For you have denied me and when you deny the real God there is confusion and conflict in the world. So any man who turns to a power outside of himself and bows before it as some sacred relic or some sacred object, or in any other way turns to it, he worships idols, for the living God is within you. Ye are the temple of the living God. He’s not outside and to look on the outside is to be led astray, and when you are led astray, you are led into confusion and nothing but confusion would result and, therefore, conflict and war.37 ¶19

When a man finds the Name and answers the riddle he is “set on high.” I can promise you a thrill beyond your wildest dreams when you begin to toy with it and test it, and if you are lifted up even one little level beyond where you now stand, so meaning begins to reveal itself, a world of meaning, there isn’t a thing in the world without meaning. There is no accident – not one little thing in the world is without significance and when you lift in consciousness to the level of meaning, where things take on greater and greater significance, what a world into which man then rises.37 ¶20

So the whole thing begins in that 4th verse of the 30th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. He asked first who hath ascended into Heaven and who hath descended; then he puts the riddle, and the same being that descended is the one that first ascended, and the one that ascended was the one that descended – so this is the great ladder of life, the ladder of consciousness on which the individual descends here to discover his own being – the Four Mighty Ones within him, and when he finds himself completely shut out from that knowledge and he starts the conflict within himself and discovers within himself the cause of all the phenomena of the world, then he starts to ascend, and the same being that is going to ascend is the one that descended in consciousness to the level of complete and utter confusion.37 ¶21

Now, today, to make it practical, as we did in the 2nd chapter of my latest book – I treated it as a drama and the Four Mighty Ones in you – play with it. Call yourself a producer. You are going to produce a play – and the producer in man only suggests the theme. He goes no further. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, (and you name it), were I, (and you name it, ) successful, happy, and you name a certain state, but you go no further as the JOD: he only suggests the spirit for he just takes the wind and that he binds in his fist. He only recommends the motive, the little theme.37 ¶22

The second one, now, in man that works out that theme is the author, and the author in man is man’s wonderful inner creative power that can take the theme of success and work out the last scene, which implies the theme is realised. What would I do were I successful? What would I see? What would I say? How would I act? Well, then construct one little theme or little scene which implies the fulfillment of my desire. That is now the second mighty one’s work.37 ¶23

The third Mighty One’s work in man is the director. The director in man is man’s controlled attention, so that my attention must be completely absorbed in the single idea, the idea which implies the fulfillment of my wish.37 ¶24

Now, the fourth one is the one whose form is like unto the son of God. Now, who is the fourth one in man that will now do it? Man’s Imagination. Man’s real being is a splendid Imagination. An Imagination has form but man does not understand it and man doesn’t believe it, but the real being is Imagination. It can be anything in this world, and so he puts himself through the paces by simply inwardly enacting the drama that he himself has constructed, and whatever it would be that he has constructed, which drama implies the fulfillment of his theme, he inwardly acts it over and over and over again until it takes on the tones of reality.37 ¶25

When inwardly he feels natural in the part that in which he is now se1f-rehearsed, the curtain will rise and he will see it there. He will cast the inner drama on the screen of space and he will see moving on the screen of space all the characters necessary to complete the play. He doesn’t have to consciously direct one of them. They become relevant to his theme, and because they are relevant they are drawn into the drama without their knowledge, without their consent. Any change in the drama must take place within him and not them, so he never appeals to one on the outside to change. He leaves them just as they are and he re-writes the play within himself and changes the end. As he changes the end, the whole cast are cast in different roles and have moved back into his world to complete his play.37 ¶26

So the Four Mighty Ones in man may be likened to the producer, the author, the director and the actor – the four most important members in the production of a play, and this is a play. The whole vast world is a play – this is a stage – but this actual movement and the actual drama is not taking place out there. It has been conceived, dramatised, rehearsed and completely enacted elsewhere. When you see it here it is as much a screen as when you see a picture on this screen later on today. You cannot appeal to the actress to change, they cannot even hear you. Any change in the script must take place where it first originated, not here. This is only a screen, so as Blake said, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”37 ¶27

So when you find the Four Mighty Ones, you have found the Name and when you find the Name you will be set on high. You will run into it like a strong tower and be saved and there will be peace in your world. If a nation finds it, there will be complete peace in the world. If the individual finds it, it is peace in his world though the whole vast world rages, in his world there shall be peace. Not a thing will touch him for he has found the Name, and the purpose of this whole vast journey is to find the Name and the son’s Name.37 ¶28

If I find the Father’s Name, His Name is just like mine, so I have found my Name and the Name ceases then to be Neville. It ceases to be John, to be Mary, but you never utter it. It is your sacred trust. You tell it to no one, you keep everything in the Name but you don’t tell it. In other words, you will call yourself by some other tag but the real name is covered from sight because you, yourself, cover it. You walk in the Name.37 ¶29

Now you can try it and see if I have told you the truth this morning. See if you cannot conceive of things today and identify yourself with it. Remain faithful to that association and see if that association will not result in a corresponding state in the outer world. Boldly assume that you are the one that you want to be. Remain faithful to the assumption and see if it will not establish itself and become hardened into fact, and you will know then the one who really establishes all the ends of the earth, for your earth will be anchored down and bearing witness of the man, the woman, that you have conceived yourself to be.37 ¶30

Then you will be free of the greatest tyranny in the world, and the greatest tyranny in the world is the belief in the secondary cause. There is no second cause. There is only first cause, and the cause of everything is the Name, but when you don’t know it, well then, you blame another and I cannot conceive of a greater tyranny than the belief in a second cause. There is only one God, expressing himself as Four Mighty Ones within the individual.37 ¶31

So think now of your personality as something that is informed by this mighty selfhood but informed by it, in respect to its level of consciousness in varying degrees. On one level I am informed as to the language of birds. On another level the language of trees, and on another level the language of the motion of clouds; every little formed cloud is telling me something. Every little ripple is telling me something. On a certain level the language is revealed. On a lower level it is simply an object moving in space. Lift up the object only, any object, and it takes on increasing significance – and what a thrill when man so lifts himself that everything is talking and telling him of the kingdom within himself that not one little thing is by accident – that the bird that seemingly is wild and simply lit in your yard just for a moment, on its way south or north, did not by accident light, it brought a message – and every little thing in the world is telling you something when you rise in consciousness, and you rise in consciousness the day you find the Name and walk in it for “I will set him on high because he hath found my Name.” He knows my name. The only reason for the lifting up was the knowledge of the Name.37 ¶32

So you take this morning’s drama, enact it within yourself and see if you, yourself, cannot prove to your own satisfaction, you have found the Name by changes in consciousness not only here but your dreams will change, your visions will change, everything will change: for you have changed, and the success or rather the change or the cause of all change is you. No other cause. If you change, everything will change. And now my time is up.37 ¶33

As you have been told, this morning’s subject is Seedtime and Harvest. Although it bears the same title as my latest book, it is not to be found in that book, for that book is an attempt to interpret some of the more difficult passages of the Bible. I have given you in the nine chapters a mystical view, and also a certain approach how you yourself may approach the interpretation of the Bible, for, as you know, it is not a book of history. And so, when I became aware of deeper meanings in the passages than those normally assigned to them, I began to see them or to apprehend them mystically, and so I have given you a mystical interpretation of many of the darker passages.36 ¶1

For instance, when Solomon made himself a chariot of the wood of Lebanon, he made himself – no one made it for him. That’s what you must do – that’s what I must do – that’s what everyone must do – and in that chapter, I showed you the wood is not wood as you know wood. It means the wood of Lebanon is the incorruptible mind. But you make it for yourself, and we showed you the sides, what they were made of and what the meanings really are.36 ¶2

Then we took that very strange passage, the instruction to the Disciples to take off their shoes or provide no shoes when they travel, and we showed you the word “shoe” is not just the thing I wear on my foot; it is the symbol of the spirit of ‘let me do it for you’. For the shoe takes upon itself not only the dirt and the muck that would normally fall upon the wearer’s foot, but it protects the wearer from any contact with the outer world, and so anyone who offers to do for us what we should do, and could do far better ourselves, is offering himself as our shoe, and if I would awaken spiritually I must do it for myself. I must take my own mind and control it – take my wonderful imagination and actually control it and set it to noble purposes and not have some intermediary come between myself and God. For the God of this world is an internal God. He is that inevitable force that expresses in outward facts the latent tendencies of the soul, and so, if I would discover that God I cannot have you do my work for me. I cannot have you eat my spiritual food and expect to grow spiritually. So that is really the attempt of the nine chapters in the book “Seedtime and Harvest”.36 ¶3

But this morning’s subject – I want to approach it differently. This statement is taken from the Book of Genesis, the 8th chapter of Genesis – it is a promise made to man that “while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, hot and cold, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease.” We are told that man was placed in a garden – the garden was completed – every tree was bearing fruit – everything in the world was finished – and he was placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it. He doesn’t plant it, he doesn’t do a thing but dress it and keep it. He is not called upon to make trees or to grow new trees – everything is finished! As we are told in John – “I have sent you to reap that whereon you bestowed no labor”—for Creation is finished. Every conceivable human drama, every little plot, every little plan in the drama of life is already worked out, as mere possibilities while we are not in them, but they are overpoweringly real when we are in them. So man can get in touch with that particular state of his choice, for my imagination can put me in touch inwardly with the state desired so I and in it. If I am in it I will realise it in my world.36 ¶4

The states in which we find ourselves are the seed time. The harvest is simply the encountering of events and circumstances of life. But man’s memory is so short he forgets the seedtime, but all ends run true to origins, so if the origin, say is misfortune the end will be misfortune. But when you reap misfortune, you wonder “Why should it happen to me? When have I set a thing like this in motion? Haven’t I given to the poor? Haven’t I attended service? Haven’t I prayed daily, and why should these things happen?” But you see my God never forgets because He always gives the end in harmony with the origin, and you and I are selectors: we don’t make; we are not creators; – creation is finished, the whole vast world of creation, as told us in Ecclesiastes “I am the beginning and the end. There is nothing to come that has not been and is.”36 ¶5

So look upon creation as finished – and you and I are only selectors of that which is. By selectors I mean that you and I have the privilege (we may not exercise it) but it is our privilege to select that aspect of reality to which we will respond, and in responding to it, we bring it into existence for ourselves. Not knowing that we are so privileged, we simply go through the world reflecting the circumstances of life, not realising we have the power to create or to out-picture the circumstance of life.36 ¶6

So now let us now analyse what I personally mean by seedtime. If everything is finished and completed, then why the promise there shall be seedtime and harvest as long as the earth remains? Now seedtime, to those who are here this morning, as we should really know, we are not taking it literally, our seedtime is that moment in time when you and I react to anything in this world. It may be to an object, it may be to an individual, it may be to a bit of news that we have overheard, but the moment of reaction, that emotional response, is our attitude. Our attitudes are the seedtimes of life, and although we may not remember the seedtime or the moment of response, nature never forgets, and when it suddenly appears in our world, that suddenness is only the emergence of a hidden continuity. It was continuous from the moment of reaction until it appeared in the world. Its appearance in the world is harvest so you and I may harvest anything we desire but we must first have a seedtime. It must be preceded by a moment of response or an attitude.36 ¶7

How often you say, “I approached it in the wrong attitude” or “He is in the wrong attitude” or “You must change your attitude if you would get on in this life”. I have said it – you have said it – maybe we have said it to each other – but we know the importance of right attitude. We know this much: that I can change my attitude if circumstances change – that’s automatic. We know that if something happens suddenly in my world of which up to that moment I was not aware, I, becoming aware of a change of circumstance would automatically produce in myself a change of attitude. We all do that, morning, noon and night, but that’s not important, that is a reflect of life. Ninety-nine percent of the world reflect life.36 ¶8

Now, can I consciously, can I voluntarily, can I deliberately produce in myself a change of attitude, one of my own discretion, one that I myself single out, and not one that is determined by or in any way is dependent on a stimulus of a change in the object itself. Must you change before I will change my attitude towards you? We know that if you do change I will change my attitude towards you, but must I go through life simply reflecting these changes in the objects, and can I not deliberately determine the change prior to the change in the object? For if I can, I am moving towards complete control of my fate and becoming the master of my fate if I can assume an active, positive attitude and not depend upon changes in the object for changes in myself. If I can do it, I really am, if not a complete master, I am becoming more in control of the circumstances of life, but ninety-nine percent of the world waits for things to happen on the outside and then they reflect; that’s no accomplishment at all. If we would awaken and become real selectors of the beauty of this garden that God gave us so that we can single out that particular aspect to which we will respond, then we will do it by deliberately changing our attitude towards life itself.36 ¶9

There is a little fable given us to show us how it is done. If you will study the fable carefully, you will see the importance of imagination. The fable is the fable of the fox and the grapes. You all know it. When he failed to obtain the grapes, then he persuaded himself that the grapes were sour, and by imagining the grapes to be sour he evoked in himself a change of attitude. He no longer felt about the grapes as he formerly felt. Now that’s a little fable on a negative tone or a tragic tone.36 ¶10

You and I take the same story but now we put it on a positive tone. We contemplate our ambitious dream, our noble concept of life. It may seem we haven’t the talents to realise it – instead of saying what the fox did, that the thing is beyond us and therefore it is sour anyway, we can take the same technique and wonder what it would be like had we realised it. What would the feeling be like were we – (and we name it) – if I can contemplate what the feeling would be like were I the man that I want to be, were you the person that you want to be, and rejoice in that state as though it were true, I am producing in myself that emotional response necessary for seedtime. I may not see an immediate harvest, maybe the thing that I am now giving expression to in the form of seedtime is an oak, it is not a little mushroom that would grow overnight. Maybe my dream would take a little longer interval of time between the actual planting and the reaping, but if I know that all these things are consistent, – “See yonder fields! The sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! So is a man’s fate born” – so, if that moment of response is the actual planting of the seed, and if it was corn, it must be corn when it appears in harvest time, then I can select the nature of the things I want to encounter in my world.36 ¶11

I can take not just Neville as a man, I can take the request first of my circle, my intimate circle, as a family man – my wife’s desires for her child, for her husband, for herself – the child’s desire for itself – and move beyond my little circle as a family man into the circle of friendships, move beyond that into my acquaintances, move beyond that into total strangers, impersonal states, but if I know the law holds good, no matter when I operate it, if I do it unconsciously or consciously, you get results regardless, and the results are in harmony with the planting, with the actual seedtime.36 ¶12

Now what is now our seedtime today. There are maybe two thousand odd here, we have two thousand odd different requests, multiplied by a large number because we have requests for others but you can take, today, as you sit here and you can actually contemplate what it would be like – suppose it were true. Suppose I could turn now to a friend and rejoice with him because of his good fortune and actually carry on a mental conversation with him from the premise that he or she has already realised the dream. Now as I do it in my imagination I am setting up within myself a certain changed attitude in regard to that individual. I am producing within myself a certain positive, deliberate, emotional response, and that very moment that I do it, is seedtime. I will encounter that individual tomorrow or next week or next month and he will bear witness of that thing I plant now. He may be totally unaware that I planted it in this garden. I am not seeking his praise, I am not seeking credit – I am seeking results. If I see the man become the embodiment of the success I know that he desires and I desire for him, that’s praise enough, that’s payment enough. What more payment would anyone desire other than the results, for everything is a gift. Why should I be given more!36 ¶13

My Father gave me the garden – the whole thing is in complete and full bloom and gave me choice – the greatest gift of all, complete freedom of choice of the nature of the fruit I will reap in my world; but I cannot just barge into the garden and start picking fruit – there must be a seedtime, but I must always bear in mind I will reap that whereon I bestowed no labor. I don’t labour to make it so, I simply plant it, for in that moment of response is contained all the plans, all the energy necessary to unfold that plan into a perfect wonderful objective fact which I will then harvest by becoming aware of it as an external reality, but I don’t labor to make it so; I simply must know it is so. So that is our privilege, that is our choice.36 ¶14

If you believe it, aren’t you amazed at the kind of things that you planted, at the kind of seedtime that in our ignorance, in our sleep, we allowed to actually scatter in our world? You see some will say, “But why does God allow it?” You cannot conceive of an infinite God that is not infinite in every respect. If I was incapable, actually incapable of assuming, say, an unlovely state, I could not be my Father’s son because my Father is infinite, and if He were actually incapable of assuming any state then He would not be God. Everything is within me – but everything. You cannot conceive of something that I don’t contain – the most horrible thing in the world were it not so I could not be infinite, and, therefore, not the son of my infinite Father. So God is infinite and gave us everything, but He gave us freedom of choice that we may become selective, discriminative and bring out everything that is beautiful out of that garden.36 ¶15

If I took the piano, the eighty-eight notes of the piano, if I could extract from that piano keyboard every discord, I would not have a piano keyboard. If I could strike a discord and because it frightens me or it disturbs me, the thing grates upon my nerves; if I could now extract the notes that produce the discord and then keep on extracting the notes that produce the discord, I would remove the eighty-eight notes – there would be no notes left on which I could play tomorrow’s harmony. But let me leave the notes and learn the art of playing the piano so I can from the same eighty-eight notes bring out all the harmonies of the world. The same thing is true of man.36 ¶16

Instead of looking at someone and accepting as final the evidence of the senses; there is someone who brought out into his own world, say disease: he is trying to analyse it from the outside – when did I contract the bug, when did I come in close contact with someone who had the bug and they are taking me into the laboratory with my blood and try to find it there. You will never find it there, in spite of all the wisdom of man. You will find it only in the consciousness of the individual, who, at a moment now long forgotten, planted the thing he is now harvesting – and you are not going to find it in any external analysis at all because things seen were never made of things that do appear.36 ¶17

You are warned time and time again in all the books of the Bible, but especially in that 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews, that “things seen were not made of things that do appear” but no man believes it. He insists on finding it in things seen, so he extracts my blood, he extracts a little piece of my skin, and he starts to make an analysis of that, and he will tell me yes, he has found it. It’s in my blood. I am not denying he has found it in my blood, but why is it in my blood ? It is in my blood or in my body, or in my world because at some point in time, I, exercising the right as a free child of God, singled out some unlovely state relative to another. It need not be to myself; it could be to another, wherein I rejoiced in the hurt of another; where my emotional response to the news I heard was “good” so, I set it in motion, but when it happened in my world, I did not think it was so good but it was my harvest – and all these things are the harvest of things you and I have planted; for all things run true to form.36 ¶18

Don’t be surprised at the suddenness in our world – someone is ill – it is only sudden because we have forgotten, and man’s memory is very, very short. You know that lovely little poem of George Meredith: Forgetful is green earth; The Gods alone Remember everlastingly; they strike Remorselessly, and ever like for like. By their great memories The Gods are known. If man could only remember these moments of seedtime, he would never be surprised when the harvest appears in his world. But because he has no memory as to that moment in time when he dropped that seed, which is simply his emotional response to something he contemplated, something he overheard, something he observed, at that moment the thing was done; he didn’t have to labour to bring it to harvest – he simply encountered it as something already full grown, so he reaps now that on which he bestowed no labour, outside of choice. He selected it by his attitude, by his reaction.36 ¶19

Now, am I responsible for others in my world? I certainly am! When I take my little mind, my little imagination and think because it’s mine – my Father gave it to me, that I can simply misuse it, it isn’t going to hurt another. I tell you you do have to use more control for the simple reason I am rooted in you and you are rooted in everyone and all of us are rooted in God. There is no separate individual detached being in my Father’s Kingdom. We are one. I am completely responsible for the use or misuse of my imagination.36 ¶20

Do you recall seeing on TV, a dramatised version of the sinking of the Titanic? Do you recall it? Have you read the book “A Night to Remember”? Well, the book itself is by Walter Lord, but 14 years before the actual harvest or that frightful event of the sinking of the Titanic, a man in England wrote a book. He conceived this fabulous Atlantic liner and there he built her just like the Titanic, (only the Titanic was not built for 14 years) but he, in his imagination, conceived the liner of 800-ft. She was triple screw, she carried 3000 passengers, she carried few lifeboats because she was unsinkable; she could make 24 knots; and then one night he filled her to the brim with rich and complacent people, and on a cold winter night he sunk her on an iceberg in the Atlantic.36 ¶21

14 years later the White Star Line builds a ship. She is 800 ft., she is a triple screw, she can make 24 knots, she can carry 3000 passengers, she has not enough lifeboats for passengers but she, too, is labeled unsinkable. She is filled to capacity with the rich, if not complacent, but the rich, because her passenger list was worth in that day, when the dollar was one hundred cents, two hundred and fifty million dollars was the worth of the passenger list. Today it would be a billion dollars. All the wealth of Europe and the wealth of this country was sailing on that maiden voyage out of Southampton. Five nights at sea in this wonderful glorious ship and she went down on a cold April night on an iceberg.36 ¶22

Now that man wrote a book either to get something off his chest because he disliked the rich and the complacent, or he thought it might sell or he thought this is the means of bringing him a dollar as a writer. But, whatever was the motive behind his book which, by the way, he called “Futility” to show the utter futility of accumulated wealth, but the identical ship was built 14 years later and carried the same kind of a passenger list and went down in the same manner as the fictional ship. Is there any fiction? There is no fiction! Tomorrow’s world is today’s fiction. Today’s world was yesteryear’s fiction – the dreams of men of yesteryear.36 ¶23

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could talk with someone across space and just use a wire? And I couldn’t see that one: it would be a mile away beyond the range of my voice – then maybe five miles and maybe a thousand miles – fantastic dreams – then they came true. When they came true, suppose I could do it without the means of a wire. And it came true; suppose now I could do it not just in an audio sense but in a video sense. Suppose I could be seen? And that came true, but when they were conceived, they were all fictional, all unreal.36 ¶24

There is nothing unreal, because God is infinite, and God has finished creation. You cannot conceive of something that your Father has not only done and conceived of it, it is worked out in detail, in all its ramifications. You and I are only becoming aware of increasing portions of that which already is. We are not making a thing – we are discovering God’s wonderful world.36 ¶25

But now in this church – at least here it should be done, for this is a church of the mind: this is Science of Mind, where there is a science to planting and you do it in a certain scientific manner. You just don’t walk the street and reflect; read the papers and reflect – you go out a more positive person than people who gather in similar areas, for the simple reason they go just to hear a service and to be told how bad the world is. You’re not coming here to be told how bad the world is, for if you believe it is bad, there is something you must do about it because you have planted the world. You have your seedtime. So here people gather to be told how to operate this wonderful gift that the Father gave them. There is this wonderful mind and imagination. So you are told to go out and be choosey in your selection; single out that aspect of reality to which you want to respond, success, health, dignity, nobility, something wonderful that you contribute to the good of the world. As you walk by you are contributing to society, you contribute to the community in which you live, not necessarily by giving dollars but you contribute by your wonderful seedtime.36 ¶26

If, in your community, you see the need of maybe a church, you see the need of some wonderful school, you don’t wait until people get together, you actually, in your mind’s eye, contemplate the joy that is yours because of the wonderful school here for the children, a wonderful church here to lift man spiritually, and you wonder what it would be like were it true; – you feel the thrill of witnessing it within. That is seedtime. Then in a way that you do not know and you need not labour to produce, you will encounter that school and that church and these lovely things in your community. So you plant the seed and let others, who think that they are bringing it into being, let them think so. You go about this world planting the good – that is why you are here.36 ¶27

We are gathered here on Sunday mornings to discover more and more about this wonderful gift that God gave us, that we may single out all the lovely things in the world and bring them to birth in our world. This morning you take not only yourself – start with self – then turn to a friend in your mind’s eye, and congratulate him on his good fortune – congratulate him on his expansion in his world, and actually feel the thrill of such contact – at that moment of response that was a changed attitude in regard to that friend - at that moment you planted. Now, in a way you do not know and you need not know, that seed is going to go through its normal natural hidden passage and appear as a reality in your world. Then you will know the power latent within you and you will stop reflecting life and you become one what I call a true creator in the sense that - I mean creator – that you are creating by selecting wise, wise, lovely things in this world and giving them expression in this world of ours.36 ¶28

So that’s what I mean by seedtime and harvest; the importance of the right attitude: and you can do it, you need not wait for circumstances to change, you need not wait for the stimulus of a change in the object to produce in yourself the change of attitude.36 ¶29

In your office, does the boss act in a rude way towards you ? Well then what would it be like if he now saw in me the lady, the helpful person that I really am, or want to be. Suppose he saw in me someone he could praise for my work and raise me in the salary world, give me an increase in salary because of my added effort; suppose he could see that in me, well, contemplate the boss seeing that in you as though he saw it and rewarded you with an increase. That moment is the moment of planting. It may not come tonight, it may not even come this week in the paycheck, but it will come.36 ¶30

You simply keep on planting the lovely things; but if every day when you leave the office you say, “What a skinflint”, and you go home and you discuss him with your mother or your husband or someone else, and they sympathise because they really believe you, for they are playing the same reflective, negative approach to life; but if as you ride home or walk home, you walk in the attitude that he had done it – he had increased your income, he had praised your work, and day after day, in spite of other things to the contrary, you persist in it, do you know he will do it? You will produce in him the change of heart because you first produced it in yourself, and he will see in you qualities that he cannot now see, and then your whole vast world begins to blossom – you do it in every sense of the word.36 ¶31

You know someone who is lonely – one who really should be happily married in this world. What would it be like if you were told, not by the individual necessarily, but by a third party of the good news concerning John, concerning Mary, or someone else—someone desirous of a lovely home and a gracious home. What would it be like ? Don’t be envious. Try to rejoice. Feel the joy that is theirs, and that moment is seedtime for them. They will harvest it – and that is our opportunity to go through the world planting and planting wisely.36 ¶32

Unfortunately, too many of us in church movements – I don’t think you will find it in this church – but too many of us in church movements have a very serious attitude towards life. And, of course, the basic attitude is the attitude towards life, not necessarily the individual attitude towards an object or towards an individual, but the attitude itself that the individual adopts through life, towards life, and they have a very serious one. Well, Orage very wisely and very humorously said the serious attitude is this: they really believe that God has an enormous struggle against helpless odds, and he said that produces in the individual the emotion of “helping poor Father”. They go to help poor Father who has created the world and gave it to his children.36 ¶33

Now he brought up another interesting point of the scientific attitude towards life. Having discovered the little molecule or the little atom and the wonderful construction, that is, theoretically – having discovered this wonderful orderly construction of the bricks that make up the world, their attitude is one of orderly insignificance because they believe the world is gradually burning itself out, so no matter how orderly it is, if they really believe the sun will eventually go out and the earth will consume all its resources, what other attitude could they adopt than all dressed up with nowhere to go, because if eventually it is all going to be in nothing anyway, no matter how orderly it is today, it could only be orderly insignificance, but I tell you, as one who has seen beyond the veil, there is no such thing as coming to an end. Life is forever and forever and forever – and forever you are moving up this everlasting pilgrimage revealing the infinite glories of your Father.36 ¶34

So go out wisely today – go out determined to become more selective, more discreet in your choice of ideas you will entertain, and single out the idea that would bless an individual and produce in yourself the emotional response that you have witnessed that state in his world, and know at that moment of response, you planted for that individual, and he is rooted in you, there is no such thing as he will not be found in your world for he is rooted in you. Everyone is rooted in you – therefore you will not lose them. It is planted relative to that being and that being is going to harvest it, and you will know the harvest when it appears in his world. You simply plant and let the harvest take care of itself. Now my time is up.36 ¶35

M y subject this morning is taken from the First Epistle of John. Now these twenty-one letters (or as we call them, epistles) are not really addressed to individuals or groups. They are mysteries, as is the entire Bible. Whether the Bible in the Old Testament tells the story in the form of history, or whether they tell it in the form of a parable, or whether in the form of a letter, they are all revelations of the mind of God expressed in symbolism. Now, I do not claim that I can give you an exhaustive interpretation of any single story of the Bible. Because they are revelations of the mind of the Infinite, no single interpretation could ever be exhaustive. On one level it may be true, and then you and I expand in consciousness and we re-read the letter and see it differently, and a further expansion in consciousness causes us – even when we re-read it for the fiftieth time – to still see the letter in a different light. So in this morning’s interpretation I will try to keep it on a level that is most practical.34 ¶1

We are told in the First John, 5: “This is He that came by water and blood even Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by water and blood.” So these are symbols of birth. Every natural birth in the world is accompanied by the flowing of water and blood. It’s trying to tell the individual of a certain mystery of birth, but he uses the words Christ Jesus and that is the symbol of a truly mysterious birth – something out of nothing. That is the mystery. Out of death, life.34 ¶2

Man cannot conceive it. How can something alive come out of that which is dead – how can something come out of nothing? Man accepts it in the mineral world, for he sees, if he goes back far enough in time (he could push the mystery in some remote past), he will accept the fact that sometime, in a way not known to modern science, out of non-organic substance came organism. He will call it by some little tiny name: an amoeba, and that will satisfy his mind. But he stops; he still will not admit that he stated that there was a non-organic substance, or nothing, or something that was dead, out of which came life, out of which came something. He doesn’t want to wrestle with that problem, so he leaves that, jumps over the pages of history, and comes to some little thing more complex. Then he teaches evolution from that state. But when he goes far enough back he finds no answer for the appearance of life out of nothing or death.34 ¶3

So here is the mystery. It comes by water and by blood – not by water only, but by water and blood. This is the great mystery of the incarnation, the death, and the resurrection. What incarnation? What death, and what resurrection? The mind instantly thinks in terms of 2,000 years ago and we think that was the great mystery.34 ¶4

But before I jump into the mystery let me quote you the very last verse of this wonderful 5th chapter: “Little children keep yourselves from idols.” No matter how officialdom justifies them and tells you this is the image of your savior revealed through the minds of a saint or a great artist, you are warned in this chapter to keep yourselves free of idols, in harmony with the second commandment: “Thou shall make no graven image unto the Lord thy God.” No matter how it is justified by officialdom or orthodox society, you are asked please not to make anything external to your own mind and bow before it as creative power, for here he is trying to reveal the true creative power that is in man. It sleeps in man as his passive mind. As you unfold the mystery, it awakens from its passive state into its active state, and the birth of active mind is truly the resurrection of Christ in man. It is Christ in man. It is Christ in man that is the hope and the glory.34 ¶5

Now, here in another verse he gives you a test. He asks you to ask whatsoever thing in this world in my name, that the Father may give it you. He did not restrict you to one desire; ask whatsoever thing you desire in my name and the Father will give it to you.34 ¶6

Now, if you take it literally, as I have heard thousands of prayers in my own home. Raised in a Christian atmosphere, we said grace at meals and Mother invariably said it, and invariably ended with the words: “For Jesus’ sake, amen” – but nothing happened. We ate the food and enjoyed the food. And you will say prayers, long verbal appeals to God for something, always ending: “For Jesus’ sake, amen,” thinking that if I said it was for his sake that I would thus tempt my Father to give it to me. For did he not say: “Whatsoever thing ye desire, ask it in my name, and the Father will give it to you”? Well, you ask it forever in that name, and nothing happens – therefore, he didn’t understand the mystery.34 ¶7

So what is the mystery? Even Jesus Christ, who came not by water only, but by water and the blood. We have put it into the most practical manner in the world – something out of nothing, life out of death. Conceive of something you desire. Just think of it. The mere thinking of something – that is a conception unaided by another. Is that not an “immaculate conception?” You knew no one in the formulation of your desire. Now you intend to “realise it.” It is clear in your mind’s eye; it is a holy conception, it is a virgin conception. Can you bring about that something that seemingly is not existing – it is non-existent, it has no existence in fact – and embody it? Can you incarnate it? For this is the mystery of the incarnation that comes by water and blood. Here is a birth that could take place if I am willing to give it human parentage. I must give it human parentage. It cannot of itself be born, for unless I myself become it, it cannot be born; so I desire to be something other than what I am.34 ¶8

Now what is the water? The water is the great mystery, the great psychological truth that I must discover which will enable me, if I accept it, to live a life according to that truth and give expression to my desire. For water is the truth and the blood is the application of that truth. I could know everything in the world to be known of the mystery, but never live by it – still continue to live as I have always lived, passively accepting the evidence of my senses as fact, accepting the dictates of reason as my guide. I could overhear a conversation or could read it in a book, or hear it in a place like this on Sunday morning, that if you desire something intensely and you truly desire it, and you have a clear mental picture of what you would like to be or what you would like to accomplish, or what you would like another friend to realise – you know exactly what you would like in this world. Now, this is the water by which it could be born. But it cannot be born of water only; it must be born of water and blood.34 ¶9

So I will give you the water. When you know what you want, you make as vivid and as lifelike a representation of what you would see, of what you would hear, and what you would do, were you physically present and physically moving about in such a situation.34 ¶10

To take an example: Suppose I desired a certain apartment, or home, or business. (Take one, so you will not be confused. We will take an apartment.) But reason tells me I cannot afford it. Reason tells me I haven’t enough furniture for so big an apartment. Reason tells me a thousand things that would deny that I could ever realise it, but I still would like it.34 ¶11

Now this is what I would give you in the form of water, for something must come out of nothing and life out of death. To embody that state I make it real. You pull it seemingly from a state that is non-existent, therefore something out of nothing. To make it real and to incarnate it and to become alive to it and it to you, you are pulling life out of death.34 ¶12

Now this is what you do. There is a death involved but it is not the kind of death that men call death. There is a death – there is a radical change of state of mind. You completely give up the belief that you are not living in such a place. That is irrational. But that is what you are called upon to do, to completely deny the evidence of your senses and to boldly assume that you are already in that state that you occupy. There you dwell in a state that reason denies. You dwell in an assumption that your senses deny. That is not just the water. If you do it, you are applying the blood. If you are told to do it, you are given the truth, for it will work. That water, if you could only add the blood to it, will bring the invisible state into the visible world, and what seemingly is non-existent will crystallise and harden into fact.34 ¶13

But if you only know it as too many of us know it, and think the mere knowledge is enough, we will come here on Sunday and thoroughly enjoy this wonderful hour – the music, the message, the meditation, the feeling of companionship you find here. And the whole thing is a thrill for an hour – but such knowledge cannot bring Christ Jesus to birth.34 ¶14

In this state, Christ Jesus (now I’ll analyse it for you)… on a lower plane the word, “Jesus” (Heb. Jeshua) means “salvation, to save.” So if I desire something and I don’t realise it, then I simply continue a life of frustration. If I realise my objective, I have been saved from frustration. Take a simple matter: Suppose I wanted a suit of clothes because I was in need of raiment. If I don’t realise the suit of clothes, I am not saved from my nudity. If I realise the suit of clothes, I have been saved. For this is an all- inclusive savior, not just a man. If I wanted water, literal water, a lecture will not quench my thirst. If I wanted food, literal food, the most wonderful revelation would not actually satisfy my hunger. So Jesus is all-inclusive, meaning everything you desire. He is it, because if you embodied that desire, you embodied your Jesus.34 ¶15

Now, to embody Jesus, he cannot be embodied by the knowledge of what to do only. He can only be embodied by the application of that knowledge. So the knowledge of what to do is called water, the “water of truth”; but the use of that lovingly is called the flowing (shedding) of the blood. So here we find the symbols that always accompany birth, that which is presented in this mystery.34 ¶16

You are told the limit is within you. You make the limit; there is no limit. Whatsoever you desire, ask in my name, for name simply means nature. If I wanted to be in a house and to feel that I am the occupant of that house, there is a certain feeling, a certain nature that goes with it. I must appropriate it as though it were true. Here I am called upon to bring something alive out of a state that is dead. For if I told you what I have done, you would question my sanity and you would feel I am trying to give expression to something that is being pulled out of nothing. For you cannot see it -you don’t see me in the house, you don’t see me actually occupying and enjoying the life that you know I desire to enjoy. So if I persist in that assumption, to you (if you should know my persistence) you might think I am headed towards a form of insanity.34 ¶17

But if tomorrow the house becomes an embodied fact and I the occupant, then you look at it passively and you will still try to justify it by tracing its appearance back to a visible cause. You will see that in some way, unknown to you, my resources were lifted up, that in some way I became more eligible for that house and you will trace it back to a change in my fortune. You will trace it back to a change in something in my world, but you won’t trace these changes back to the unseen assumption in which I dwell.34 ¶18

So, as the mystic tells us in Hebrews 11: “Things unseen were not made of things that do appear.” Man refuses to accept it, so he takes everything in his world and tries to take it back to some visible cause, even with the aid of his microscope. He takes the microscope and he will peer through it to prove to his own satisfaction there is a visible, tangible cause; or he goes off into space with his telescope. He must find in the outer world causes of the changes in the outer world. He cannot believe that the whole vast outer world is held together from within. And if we are only on the surface looking at it from without – trying to analyse it and to understand it from without and all that appears without – though it seems there, it isn’t. It is all from within, all within the mind of man, and that is the mystery!34 ¶19

So do not make an idol, no matter who makes you the idol, no matter what holy man tells you this is a wonderful thing that will bless you. There is no blessing in states on the outside. Bow to nothing on the outside. We have wondered why throughout the centuries a certain race of people did not become greater sculptors, greater artists in the form of painting, great religious teachers. Maybe they were really taking that second commandment very, very seriously. Make no graven image – no not one- unto me. Make nothing that is graven, that is objective, as image of your Father that is free, for I AM Spirit. If you were to worship me, worship me in spirit and in truth but not in anything that you can turn to on the outside and bend the knee before, whether it be a church, a synagogue, or some statue that hangs upon your wall. He is not there. He is in your mind. He is housed within you; there is the living God within the temple and the temple is man. “Ye are the temple of the living God.”34 ¶20

So when I speak of the water and the blood, I speak not of the things that you can see with the eye, such as water and blood. They are only symbolised functions of the mind and the function first comes with water. I must first know what to do before I can do it. So water comes first. He takes water and puts it into a stone jar, gives it something like a shape, and from that stone jar filled with water, he draws – not water, but he converts it; he draws wine (blood). So here is the first miracle. I know what to do. I take this little world of mine that is one, and then I extract from it something that is not seen. Not quite as hard as that – I call it water. I see something bringing all this into being. I know how it’s brought into being.34 ¶21

That a man living in luxury is not to be judged harshly because he has it and you haven’t it. He is living in a state of consciousness that solidifies in the form that you see now and call luxurious. One in a state of health, one who is recognised, one who is accomplished, one who is contributing much to the world -don’t judge them. These are states made visible. Find out if you can. Get into a similar state. He is not occupying the only state in the world. There are infinite states and if you try even to duplicate that state (if it can be duplicated, or you can get close to it or you can transcend it) find out within your own mind’s eye what you want. Don’t be envious of him. Leave him alone for he is applying the law. He is entitled to everything in this world that he can actually conceive and desire and put himself into and live it, for man is living in an infinite world of invisible states and an individual wisely or foolishly occupies a state. While he remains faithful to the state, the state will externalise and become the circumstances and the conditions of his life. The moment he detaches himself in consciousness from that state, the things that he enjoyed before vanish from his world.34 ¶22

Now, if everything in my world depends upon a state of consciousness, it would be the height of insanity to seek the thing before I actually fix within myself the state on which the thing depends, for that which requires a state of consciousness to produce its effect cannot be effected without such a state of consciousness. So when I know what I want, to support that there is an invisible state of consciousness. The world calls that invisible state a non-existing nothingness. They cannot even call it a thing, for to them it has no existence, no reality. That is the mystery: a self-begotten child conceived unaided by another and carried faithfully in the womb of God – which is the mind of man. It was placed there without the aid of another, by man’s desire. That was the immaculate conception; that’s the virgin conception.34 ¶23

Now, the virgin birth – can I bring it from its invisible state and really make it a tangible fact within my world? Try it! As you try it with one thing and you succeed, you will try it with two and four and eight and so on, and eventually the sleeping giant in man – which is the Son of God in man called Christ – will awaken. He will awaken by moving from the passive state to the active state. The passive state is simply the complete and utter surrender of man to appearances, to live believing that life is on the outside, and he moves from that state where he surrenders and believes all these things to be causes to the active state, where he puts everything in subjection to that something within himself which is his awakened imagination. He imagines a thing to be so; he persuades himself that it is so and walks faithful to his assumption.34 ¶24

Then you will know why in Romans 14 he tells us that every man be fully persuaded in his own mind (don’t persuade her, leave her alone). You persuade yourself of the changes you desire expressed in her. If you desire a change in your relationships at home or in business, you don’t argue, you don’t persuade them. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. So can I persuade myself that you are as I desire to see you? Then, to the degree that I can persuade myself, you will conform in the outer world to that persuasion.34 ¶25

If I hope to see changes there before I myself will start the change on the inside, the chances are I will hope in vain. You, yourself, may desire certain changes and I might see them change in my world, but they were not caused because I moved into an active state. I am still reflective, and most of us in this world are reflecting life; and the purpose of a church of this nature is to make us not reflect but to affect life. If I affect, then Christ is awakened within me. If I only reflect it, then I sleep with Adam, and the purpose is to move from the sleep of Adam to the wakefulness of the Son of God called Christ. Adam too, is called the son of God but in the state of profound sleep.34 ¶26

But he moves from that state of sleep – or the passive state of mind – to the active state, will be no nearer the proving of it than you are now. But if you took a little bit, one drop of this water, and went out even to disprove it – in order to disprove it, you must seriously and sincerely try it. If you try it, you won’t disprove it. You will be encouraged to drink more water and still more and bring about this birth of your saviour, and you decide what will save you today from your present predicament.34 ¶27

It may be a job, it may be an increase of funds, it may be companionship, it may be something I don’t know – but whatever it is that you this day desire (and unless you get it you feel thwarted, you feel frustrated), then it would save you if you got it. Now take that as your savior. Look into your mind’s eye and see it clearly.34 ¶28

It may seem almost sacrilegious to the orthodox mind to tell you that when you see clearly in your mind’s eye the state desired – either for self or another – you are actually looking into the face of Jesus, for you are seeing the state that could save you from where you are or what you are.34 ¶29

So you try it and the mind will expand. You will find yourself not only increasing in this world, in the outer world, but you will find mystical revelations taking place within you, which is the purpose of the teaching. It is not just to bring about changes in the inner that man ascends on higher levels of consciousness.34 ¶30

The purpose of the whole appearance is to awaken from the lowest descent on the ladder to the highest. He is ascending to the highest, for we are told in the vision of Jacob: above it all stood God – on the ladder stood these heavenly beings ascending and descending – but above all stood God.34 ¶31

So the real destiny of man is to reach the height that he may awaken as God. So the mystery is: God became man that man may become God. He came down as man.34 ¶32

Take the same verse and give it a higher interpretation. So here God died – yes, died – to become man. The death of God is complete forgetfulness of the fact that he is God. He had to completely forget that he is God, therefore died to awaken as man. If he remembered he was God, he just couldn’t be as man, but a complete and utter death, which is forgetfulness that I am God to become man. So the poet wrote it beautifully and said: “God became man that man may become God.” He said: “Unless I die you could not live, but if I die I shall arise again and you with me.” Then he goes on to ask a man: “Could you love one who had never died for thee or could you die for one who had not died for thee,” and so he is putting this into the most wonderful poetical mystery in the book, “Jerusalem” by Blake.34 ¶33

He reveals to the mind who can see it, that you who believe yourself because you are visible, and you must do what man passively must do – he traces your origin back to a germ. As long as you began as a germ, you are no more than a big germ. If you begin as something else, you are only something enlarged of the same thing. For all ends run true to origins. If I can take you back where you cannot see it, and take you back to the great mystery that you are actually begotten of God – if your origin is God, your end is God. If your origin is a bug then your end is a bug. So you have the “choice.”34 ¶34

The passive mind (which is really the scientific mind) must still insist on finding causes external to itself. It cannot find causes in that passive state within itself. I tell you: the great mystery is that you came out of a seeming death. It is a death. God died to become man, because he desired the companionship of men as Gods, as the poet told us: Man should not stay a man. His aim should higher be. For God will only Gods accept as company.34 ¶35

So you cannot in your present state of the passive mind be companions of your Father, who longs and desires that every son, every child, awakens to become companions of Deity. So to do it, he had to die as God, and became his creation in the hope that the creation would awaken and become his companion.34 ¶36

But you see he gave us such a gift. He completely freed me of the responsibility of returning. I don’t have to awaken; I am as free as the wind. He gave me complete freedom of will. I may hurt myself, ruin myself, but because of the gift of God to me, to make me alive, he cannot interfere and make me awake. He may appeal through awakened children and they may appeal to their sleeping brother, but they cannot by the same law interfere and make me awake. They can only appeal and try in some subtle way to suggest, but the gift was absolute.34 ¶37

God gave himself to become me, finding myself, man. I think my origin was man, so my destiny – no matter how big a man I become, no matter how wise a man – it will still be a man. But if my origin is God, my destiny is God, and I will awaken one day to discover this wonderful unfolding mystery within me.34 ¶38

Now let us go into the silence.34 ¶39

This morning’s subject is “The Pruning Shears of Revision”. I firmly believe that if you will wisely and daily use the pruning shears of revision that you will find there is no objective beyond your ability to realise. And I mean that seriously, no objective beyond your ability to realise. When I was a boy of seven, a lady said to me, “I have had a vision concerning you. I’ll make it now very, very clear to you–I do not know what it is you are going to do, but I’ve been shown you will do something that through the centuries after you are gone man will not undo it. I can see it and through the centuries you will grow in stature long after you have gone. And then three men will be mentioned in hundreds of years to come and you will be one of the three when something is discussed that was done for man.” I feel that this morning’s subject that this could be it, that if I never said another word, and you heard it and believed it, and really used it, this would be the planting that would spread from us here that tomorrow could not undo. For it is magic, this pruning shears of revision.26 ¶1

It really is not only the achievement of objectives, but if you do it daily, it will awaken in you the spirit of Jesus, which is continual forgiveness of sin. In this teaching the sinner should always go free; you will never condemn him, for when the spirit is awake in you you will realise in him there is no condemnation, only forgiveness, and forgiveness is not as man of the world thinks when he omits the actual execution of his revenge. What we mean by forgiveness: the identification of the other that we would forgive with the ideal that other wants to embody in the world. And so we do to him what we expect or would like the world to do to us. So whatever I myself would like to embody, that is the vision that I must hold of every man that I meet in my world; that no man is to be discarded, every man is to be redeemed, and my life is the process whereby that redemption is brought about.26 ¶2

And I do it by simply identifying the other with the ideal I want to externalise in my world. Now we will go back to the 2nd of Genesis. It is said, “And God placed man in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” Now when you read the story you think it happened thousands of years ago. I have come to tell you it is now. You are now in the garden of Eden and you think you are shut out or banished. You are in it, and the garden is your mind, but you need–like every gardener–you need pruning shears. For you have slept, as you are told in that second chapter; having slept, weeds have appeared in the garden and the weeds are revealing themselves by the conditions and the circumstances of life. For your garden is always projecting itself on the screen of space, and you can see by looking carefully at your world what you allow to grow in the garden of God. But you have a mission, you have a purpose, it is not to amass a fortune–you can do it if you want to–it’s not to be famous, it is not to be some mighty power, but simply to tend the garden of God. That’s your purpose. You are placed in the garden to dress it and to keep it, that only the lovely things grow in the garden of God.26 ¶3

Now every man in the world is rooted in you who look out and see that world. Every man is rooted in me; he ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God. Because he is rooted in me he cannot bear other than the nature the root allows. So he is in me and any changes desired in the outer world can be brought about only if I change the source of the thing I see growing in my world. “You see yonder fields? Don’t be surprised when you see sesamum: The sesamum was sesamum, The corn was corn, The silence and the darkness knew So is a man’s fate born.” So don’t judge it, because you are the source of the thing that you are beholding. Now turn within and prune it by using these pruning shears of revision.26 ¶4

Now this is how we do it. At the end of my day, I review the day; I don’t judge it, I simply review it. I look over the entire day, all the episodes, all the events, all the conversations, all the meetings, and then as I see it clearly in my mind’s eye, I rewrite it. I rewrite it and make it conform to the ideal day I wish I had experienced. I take scene after scene and rewrite it, revise it, and having revised my day, then in my imagination I relive that day, the revised day, and I do it over and over in my imagination until this seeming imagined state begins to take on to me the tones of reality. It seems that it’s real, that I actually did experience it and I have found from experience that these revised days, if really lived, will change my tomorrows.26 ¶5

When I meet people tomorrow that today disappointed me, they will not tomorrow, for in me I have changed the very nature of that being, and having changed him, he bears witness tomorrow of the change that took place within me. It is my duty to take this garden and really make it a garden by daily using the pruning shears of revision. I know from experience it will not only bring about these objectives, and bring about these changes, but the glorious thing is, it awakens in you, who use it, the spirit of Jesus, and you find yourself then not justifying but forgiving, and you will realise that freedom and forgiveness are indissolubly linked. You cannot be free and not forgive, for the one that you would bind and judge and condemn anchors you by your own judgement of him–for he is in you. And so by identifying him with the ideal you want to really realise you free yourself.26 ¶6

You are told, “Forgive and you shall be forgiven. Forgive not and then you shall not be forgiven.” It’s automatic; it can’t be otherwise for the whole springs from you who behold it. And as you begin to practice it, the very spirit arouses itself within you and you know that you are he that others spoke about and thought lived 2000 years ago. So, when you realise it, you realise it through actual knowledge; you know it. No argument. You don’t tell others; you know that you are he. And then you will read the words in the ninth of Hebrews, “He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” And you will know you are the one that put away sin by the sacrifice of self, and by the sacrifice of self it’s not being a brave one who throws himself in the line of fire to protect a brother; it doesn’t mean one who gives his body to be burned, one who is nailed on a cross, but the self of man is the sum total of all that that man believes and consents to as true. So that’s the self that is sacrificed.26 ¶7

I heard of this lady and she would make some man a wonderful wife, and yet she is unwed. She desires to be the companion of a great noble person, but she is unwed, I heard that. That becomes a part of myself, that’s my knowledge; I must sacrifice that self, that that aspect of my being be as happy as I am and those in my world are. For that’s the self I must sacrifice and put away sin, for sin to the mystic means missing the mark; it doesn’t mean the violation of certain codes, unless of course you have a mark and the violation fell short, but sin to the mystic is simply haying an aim in life and failing to realise it. So when you miss the mark you have sinned; so he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and knowing that himself is only all that he consents to, all that he accepts, all that he believes to be true, then what am I believing concerning that one–he is unemployed and he can’t find a job? I’m believing it.26 ¶8

Now put away that sin where he is missing his mark and then by the putting away of the sin I do it only by the sacrifice of myself, and myself is that belief, so now I revise. I can’t say, “Well, I will no longer believe he is unemployed: I believe he’s employed.” I do it by the pruning shears of revision. I bring him before my mind’s eye and I congratulate him on his good fortune because he is now gainfully employed. I allow him to accept my congratulations, because I do not see a man unemployed; I see him employed, and he knows he is in my mind’s eye, for in that state I have pruned him from the unemployed state and once more reshaped the branch that grows in the garden of God. Tomorrow people will see him as they could not have seen him before the pruning that took place within me, and he will be gainfully employed. That one is unwell: you prune that branch. You don’t accept one thing in the world as final unless it conforms to the ideal you want to realise in the world.26 ¶9

But you do it daily; if you do not prune it daily you will get out of the habit, then weeds will grow. Every man who really is a gardener who calls himself a gardener, a gardener in the garden of God, for every day is the opportunity to really prune the tree, this wonderful tree. And so everyone that you meet is a branch rooted in the vine that you are and you are that special tree in the garden of God, a tree bearing life, a tree bearing fruit for the food of the nations. You are that one.26 ¶10

If you take me seriously today, tonight do not let the sun descend upon any vexation of the day. Just look at it, don’t deny it, don’t duck it, look at it that you may prune it and then reshape it. Take the conversations with your friends today, were they pleasant, were they arguments, no matter what it is, were they negative? Then rewrite the script and just imagine the conversation to have taken place that now you are rewriting for the first time. And it will take place, for everything in your world that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination. And this wonderful imagination of yours is Christ Jesus. Imagination is the actual habitation of every created thing. No matter what you see in the world, it springs from your imagination. So that’s where you go, that’s the workshop, the garden of God.26 ¶11

And now you have a mission, you have a purpose in life; it’s a noble purpose, because you have been selected to really become the chief gardener in the garden of God, and in the garden you must have pruning shears, and pruning shears is revision. You simply revise, and as you revise the day you repeal the day, for the day is not slipping into the past, it does not recede as people think, it is always advancing into the future to confront you, either pruned or in some strange weed-like state. So it’s entirely up to us–I hope that every man and woman here today will take me seriously and start this day pruning your garden. Pruning your mind. I know before I leave this city in a matter of two weeks that you will be able to tell me of the new things that spring in your world or that spring from the pruned tree that is your own lovely imagination.26 ¶12

You try it: then you will know what Blake meant when he said, “In heaven, the only art of living is forgetting and forgiving.” The only art of living is complete forgetfulness by putting something in its place, no vacuum, but putting something in its place. So when you read these strange stories that you read in the daily press, you simply ignore them. They mean nothing. Men who are calling themselves leaders, shepherds of the flock, they excommunicate–not just one religion; all religions, the leaders take it upon themselves to excommunicate, not knowing nothing is to be discarded. Not a thing in the world can you discard, for it is forever, but it can be pruned and made to conform to the ideal image. The man who will not revise his day either does not know it or he has lost the vision of that life into the likeness of which it is the true labor of the spirit of Jesus that transformed this life. So you don’t discard them.26 ¶13

In the current issue of “Time” magazine there is that noble soul who is known to us as Spinoza, Baruch de Spinoza, who has given so much to the world of philosophy; so much, everyone has been enriched because he walked the earth. And here, 300 years later, the ex-premier of Israel, Ben-Gurion, has asked the leading rabbis today to rescind that excommunication of 300 years ago, and they tell this noble soul today that they cannot rescind the works of their forefathers, that the curse remains forever. And you should read that silly, silly curse as it’s printed in the current issue of “Time” magazine. They call upon all the angels to curse him, as though angels would curse; they call upon everything to blast him. You could not walk within four cubits of the man’s shadow; no one should talk to him, no one should show him kindness, no one should write him and never read anything he ever has to say; and that’s 300 years ago. The rabbis who so cursed him have long been forgotten and if they do live, they live only by reason of their curse. And no one knows really who they really are, but you can’t forget if you read in this world the works of Spinoza. Everyone in this audience possibly has used one of his phrases; did you know it was he who said, “nature abhors a vacuum”? Now you use it; I use it, but what is the source of it–it was Spinoza.26 ¶14

For here was this giant of a mind that, after 300 years, little minds who think they’re leading the flock–they call themselves shepherds. They should go back and read well the Book of Jeremiah: “You shepherds who spoil my vines and you who have come into my garden and you have taken my vines, now it bears no grape and it bears no leaf, and the garden of Jerusalem now has become a weed.” Read it in Jeremiah, how he cries out because shepherds, who call themselves shepherds, are blind leaders of the blind.26 ¶15

You take me this morning at my word; you owe me nothing, it costs you not a thing to come here this morning, you come you give me your time and I give you my time, but you go out and try it and start this day pruning that wonderful imagination of yours. Do you know someone that is evil? Stop knowing it by bringing him before your mind’s eye and carry on with him the most wonderful conversation in the world, with a tender spirit, a loving spirit, and believe in the reality of this communion, because if you really do it, you are entering the kingdom of heaven, for you enter heaven by a loving, knowing communion with a friend. So make him a friend, if he is a lovely one, no matter what he is, you can prune him and then as you prune him you are doing the work which you were sent to do for man–and you are that man–you are placed this day in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Don’t let it continue growing weeds in your world. You are absolutely responsible for every being you meet in this world; that’s your responsibility.26 ¶16

Just like the teacher we told you of who took this little child that was just about to be expelled; no, the child is not expelled because she heard what you are hearing this morning. So she brought before her mind’s eye the child that the principal, the psychiatrist and all the faculty had agreed unanimously to expel her on her l6th birthday, for she was rude, she was crude, she was unethical; and she went home on a Sunday night and brought that child before her mind’s eye and communed with her and saw in her a tender child, a considerate child, a loving child. The next day, Monday, in class she expressed all the kindness of that revision of the night before, and ten days later when it was seen and witnessed by all the faculty, and the psychiatrist, another meeting was called and they repealed their verdict of ten days before and the child is not expelled. She still sits in the George Washington High School in New York City, which is considered an excellent school; and so there she is, with no black marks against her because one teacher sat in the audience, as you are here, and she believed what I hope everyone here will believe, and she redeemed a branch of her own tree.26 ¶17

She didn’t realise the child was herself. She saw up to that very moment all the children that she taught in pure objectivity. Blind man sees the world objective to himself, something detached from himself. When man begins to awake he sees everything subjectively related; everything he meets is part of himself, and what he does not now understand, still he knows that it is related by affinity to some as yet unrealised force in his own being. So he doesn’t discard it, he knows his life is the process by which he will redeem it and he redeems it by using the pruning shears of revision.26 ¶18

So I feel that if after these fifty years of walking this earth that this is what that lady saw when I was but seven, I could really close the eye on three dimensions at any moment knowing you will not disprove it: you may never use them but you will never disprove this art of revision. And any man who will try it will prove it to his own satisfaction that he can rise beyond the wildest dream of men, and rising he awakens the spirit of forgiveness. He will rise in the early stages in the successful venture; he will increase his income, he will do all these things, but he will realise after a little while that wasn’t the purpose. They were only toys to tickle him, toys to amuse him until he awoke within himself the spirit of Jesus; then he sees an entirely different mission, not the amassing of wealth but the redeeming of society, the redeeming of every man in the world.26 ¶19

He comes to do his Father’s will and we are told in the 6th chapter of John, “This is my Father’s will, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing but I should raise it up again.” Lose nothing–no, you don’t excommunicate, you don’t rub out, you simply raise it up again and as you raise it up you raise yourself up and the journey is forever. You are moving up an infinite vertical line in your own wonderful imagination, and you only move up by lifting others up. Blind men think they can save themselves, and because they think they can save themselves and discard the rest. The blind man also said this hundreds of years ago. He saved as he saved others; himself he cannot save. I say to you that it’s a false statement; it was put into the mouth of the Pharisee, put into the mouth of the Sanhedrin, the leaders who thought they were leaders, but I will tell you a man saves himself by, and only by the saving of his fellowman. There is no other way of saving self other than by saving the real self and every man is rooted in you who observes men. And so don’t discard, raise them up, prune the tree, and become the real gardener in the garden of God.26 ¶20

Take anything; you have a child today: we took all the requests this morning, there were dozens and dozens of requests this morning. Everyone must be answered, none must be discarded; don’t say one is impossible, there is nothing impossible to your imagination and your imagination is Christ Jesus. With Him all things are possible. Use him, stir him, wake him from his sleep; he has been sleeping through the centuries: because he has slept he has dreamed into being all these strange misshaped states. For the world only bears witness of the use or misuse of imagination.26 ¶21

As we are told, he is the only thing in the world. What he is the only thing in the world? –Your imagination, for it is the habitation of every created thing and by it all things are made and without it is nothing made that is made. So use it wisely, use it lovingly, and any time you use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another you are at that moment literally mediating God to man. Imagination is the redemptive power of the world, and you are actually mediating God to man by using it in a loving, wonderful way.26 ¶22

As you have been told, this morning’s subject is “Your Supreme Dominion”. As a man does not possess it, or he does not know that he possesses it, for he certainly is not exercising it. As we read in the very first chapter of the Book of Genesis, “And God made man in His own image, in the image of God made He him. He made them male and female, and God blessed them.” And God said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it and have dominion over all the fish of the sea and all the fowls of the air, and every moving thing that moves upon the earth. And God saw all that He had done, all that He had done, all that He had made, and they were very good.”20 ¶1

Now, you and I reading the Bible, not knowing it to be a psychological truth and seeing it as historical fact, we cannot understand the word. But when man knows the Bible is the greatest collection of psychological truths and was never intended to be seen as history or cosmology, then he gets a glimpse into this great wonderful book. For man himself is the great psychological earth that must be subdued. In man move all the passions, all the great emotions symbolised as creeping things and animals. In the deep of man actually live the invisible states symbolised as fish. In the deep of man actually live all the unnumbered infinite ideas symbolised as the fowls of the air. It is this man that must be self subdued, for “subdue it,” then comes the promise, “and have dominion” over this vast wonderful country that is man.20 ¶2

If man does not know that he himself is the earth spoken of, he thinks he must go out into the world and conquer it. The world reflects the work done on man. And so when he looks upon this wonderful world round about him, he thinks himself so little. The Bible also tells us he calls himself a grasshopper, and referring to himself as a grasshopper, he sees giants in the land, the giants of industry, the giants of economics, the giants all round about him, and he feels smaller and smaller because he does not know how to go about actually subduing the earth, which is himself.20 ¶3

When man knows it, he will realiSe that man as an individual is supreme within the circle of his own consciousness, for within the circle of his consciousness the entire drama of life is re-enacted over and over again. He has to start with self and then he will see this outer wonderful world, this visible world, is not what he thinks it to be, a place of exile from God; it is the living garment of the Father, and although to many of us its discordant harmony needs some interpretation, to the wise it has a voice and the voice speaks of hidden things behind the veil, hidden things behind the veil of man’s mind, for this whole vast wonderful world is a response to the arrangement of man’s mind. For when he knows it he will look within for the hidden causes, look into the deep to see the fish and how they swim and how they are related, for this arrangement of the deep is going to project itself as circumstances and conditions of life.20 ¶4

And so today, if you haven’t started, today is the time to start to really put into practice this teaching, and make of this violence a garden of God. It is called Eden and man was placed within it to keep it and to care it, for the garden of God is man. It is the mind of man. You never find a garden unless a man is present, for without a man there would be a forest of wilderness. But when a man is placed in it he begins to cut the trees or the seeds of wrong thinking; he clears the ground and he cultivates the ground, and then plants wisely. Then you will have dominion, for you will select the seed you will plant, the ideas you will entertain, and you will cultivate them. Knowing the outer world constantly bears witness of the inner arrangement of mind, you will only select the things you want to project into the living garment of your Father. For the whole vast world round about you is a living garment worn by your Father.20 ¶5

So how did he reap? He said He made man in His own image; well, the methods of mental and spiritual knowledge are entirely different. You and I can know a thing mentally by looking at it from the outside, by comparing it with other things, by analysing it, by defining it, by even giving a description of it, but we can know a thing spiritually only by becoming it. We must be the thing itself if we would know that thing spiritually. We must be in love if we would know love. We must be God-like if we would know what God is. For God made me, not out of something other than Himself; He made me perfect, so He made me by becoming me. There was no other way in the world that God could have made me unless He became me. So God became man that He may know man in the only way that He could know anything, for He knows all things spiritually and He calls them very good.20 ¶6

So He made me by becoming me, and now I am called upon to go and take care of the earth, and to subdue it, and take dominion. And I am the earth – I must learn to plant as He planted, and He planted the world by becoming the world. I must now plant as man, by becoming the man I want to be. So I will itemise all the things, name them, give a name to everything I want to express as a man, and then know it spiritually by becoming and I become it as He became me. I identify myself with it and live in that identity and I clothe it in flesh, I clothe it in fact.20 ¶7

Not one thing in the world that is mine can be taken from me save by detachment from the state where that thing I love has its natural life. If I live in a world of beauty, if I live in a world of friendship, of comfort and all the lovely things that men enjoy, no power in the world can take one of them from me save I, who live among them, detach myself from the state where these lovely things have their natural life. When you and I know it, we begin to cultivate the earth, we actually weed the mind of all negative states, all unlovely emotions, and we bring into subjection not the outer but the inner, and then the outer reflects that cultivation on self.20 ¶8

Now, how is it done? You are told in the first book of the Bible how it’s done. For the promise is to the man who does it and the promise is a complete expansion beyond his wildest dreams of the state he plants. The one who first did it was called Jacob; well, I am Jacob. You are Jacob if you start to plant; every man is the potential Jacob, and Jacob did it by righteousness. As you are told, he did it through righteousness and he multiplied exceedingly, so that he increased a thousand fold his flocks, his cattle; he increased and grew beyond the measure of man in having all the maid servants and men servants and the camels.20 ¶9

And this is what he said, “My righteousness shall speak for me in time to come.” Righteousness is right consciousness. The only right consciousness is the consciousness of already being the man you want to be, for that attaches you with an invisible state. You can’t see it yet but you become attached to the state that you dare to assume you are, and you go fishing in the deep, you are beginning now to subdue the deep. You enter a state through the medium of feeling, through feeling that you are already what you want to be. And that is how you grow exceedingly great in your world, for you will be the Jacob expanding in your world.20 ¶10

The next one we come upon is Job. Here in the midst of all the trials and tribulations of a man, Job says, “I will hold fast to my righteousness and then my heart shall never judge me harshly as long as I live.” He will hold fast to righteousness in the midst of storm, in the midst of all the problems of the world he will assume that he is free and hold fast to that right consciousness knowing that not in eternity could his heart ever judge him harshly.20 ¶11

Then we are told, “The meek of the earth seek righteousness and it is to the meek of the earth that the earth is given.” As you are told, the meek shall inherit the earth. You might have been taught to believe it meant the beaten man, the man who falls and grovels like the grasshopper; it doesn’t. The word “meek” if translated actually means to be tamed as a wild animal is tamed. To the man who tames the mind, the man who tames his being that he can set it any task and have it execute that task, that man is meek and the meek inherit the earth. And the meek always seek righteousness, so if I today began to subdue this earth, I must make righteousness my watchword, and so if I were righteous I would now single out the nature of the trees I would plant, the nature of the flowers I would plant, the nature of the animals I would cultivate, the nature of the fish that I would catch, and I would name them as desirable states, called in the Bible beauty instead of ashes, called in the Bible the spirit of joy instead of mourning, called by all these lovely things. As you are told, all the things that are good, dwell on these things. To every good thing, for He called it very good. Every thing that I would call the good, which is a righteous judgment, will be the right judgement.20 ¶12

I, in spite of the evidence of my senses that would deny it, in spite of reason that would tell me that it was impossible of realisation, having discovered that I am the one planting my garden, that this is the only garden to cultivate, that this is the only earth to subdue, I would start now and boldly assume the good, first for myself – always start with Jerusalem – then go into the world and preach the goodness by knowing the goodness. When you meet someone, regardless of what the appearance would reveal, know the truth for that one and set him free. Know that knowing as he ought to be known first by himself, but if he hasn’t known it as true of himself, you at least know it for him. And though you never meet him in the flesh again, keep on knowing the truth that sets man free by knowing he is already free, and you are cultivating your garden. You are bringing it into subjection, you are subduing it and then you shall have dominion.20 ¶13

So you are supreme in your world if you only know the world that you really are; so man is the psychological earth on which this wonderful whirl of events takes place. Man is the psychological earth on which all the animals move; every emotion is symbolised as the animal. Every fowl of the air is truly the idea you entertain. Every fish of the deep is the invisible state that you could catch if you only knew how to cast your net on the right side. For you fish all night and catch nothing, but then comes one who knows, who is righteous, and he casts it on the right side, always that right side, and the right side is righteousness or right consciousness. And I will catch it; I may not see them, I don’t have to see them. I don’t have to wait for the evidence of my senses to confirm, for I am told, “And faith was accounted unto him for righteousness.” So I will have faith in the reality of the deep; I will have faith in the reality of invisible states. So it’s now invisible, I know it, it’s a fish, but I have faith in the existence and the reality of the invisible state I want to externalise, knowing I can externalise it, for every time I externalise it I add to this wonderful garment of my Father, and that is my job, my duty.20 ¶14

So here, everyone of us, begin to believe that you are the only earth spoken of in the Bible. You are the one chosen to live in the center of the garden, but make it a garden, for the words are, “Keep it, keep it and plant it well.” You have dominion over every idea in your mind. You say you haven’t. Well, some may be to you disturbing, but you do have the choice of rejecting it or accepting it. If you accept it, you identify with it and the state with which you are identified must, by the very law of your being, objectify itself within your world, that you may see by it how you plant that garden.20 ¶15

Now, don’t wait one second beyond the time that you observe weeds instead of flowers. Start right at the moment of observation, and start to replant the garden. Start really to subdue it. Become the meek and the meek is the bold. The meek is the bold of heart who does not ask assistance. He walks knowing he can do it. He can fish. He can actually bring into subjection every bird of the air, every idea of the mind. He will begin to know these things spiritually. He will know them in the only way that you and I should know anything, by becoming it, not to have a world of information concerning objective things, and knowing these things only mentally. I must learn to know things spiritually; I must learn to know what love is spiritually by being in love. I must learn to know what security is spiritually be becoming conscious of already being secure. I must learn to know what health is by becoming conscious of already being healthy, and sustain these states in the name of righteousness, knowing that my righteousness shall answer for me in time to come.20 ¶16

Make me no promise for when the father-in-law said to Jacob, “What promise should I make you?” “Just tell me that the offspring born in a certain manner shall be mine and no other promise, and no wages and no salary, all the spotted ones are mine. There isn’t a spotted one among the parents but every offspring that is spotted, though the parents are not, that is mine. That’s my wage and my righteousness shall know it for me in time to come.” And he begins to assume that his world is peopled with the spotted calves, and everyone born that was healthy was born spotted. And he increased beyond the wildest dream of a man.20 ¶17

Well, become that man, and start from the simple beginning as he started. There wasn’t one thing in the world to encourage him that one calf could ever be born from parents that were not spotted and be a spotted calf. Yet he knew and he assumed that they had given birth to such things in numbers, they would come and they came a thousand fold.20 ¶18

So in your case, maybe it’s business, maybe the doctors have given you a final, final verdict and it’s fatal. Well, I say in spite of this, and the doctor in his own way is doing his best, he would not have said it to hurt you or to frighten you. He firmly believed it, but you have another law and your law is that you can assume, in spite of that verdict, that you are well. And then, though tomorrow and the next day the tree doesn’t appear, know that in time your righteousness shall speak for you, and like Job in the midst of all the storms, when he should have gone to the grave, he held fast to the consciousness of already being what he wanted to be, that his heart may not in time speak harshly against him. Well, it didn’t – you know the story.20 ¶19

And so, all through we are told, “Break off the sins, break off missing marks by righteousness. Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” Now you are told, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all things shall be added unto you.” Well, the kingdom of God is within you. You have been told that a number of times. The Bible affirms it over and over – “The Kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are within you.” They aren’t without. You see them seemingly without; that is the response to the within-ness where they are.20 ¶20

Now, seek it and His righteousness. So assume within the mood that would be yours were you already the man that you want to be. Sustain that mood, occupy it as often as you can, and see how that righteousness shall draw things unto itself, and the things it draws are always in harmony with its nature. It never draws anything foreign to itself. If I assume that I am the man I want to be, I cannot then encounter events that are in conflict with my assumption. For my world mirrors the being I am.20 ¶21

So, here, today, when you return, read the whole chapter. It’s beautiful. But I started with the 27th verse, “And God made man in his own image, in the image of God made He him. Male and female made He them.” Then comes what is to be done. Then comes the promise if you do it. Then comes the judgment, “It is good and very good.”20 ¶22

So you start knowing that you are the earth on which you now start to labour. If you do it, you shall be fruitful, and you will multiply, and you actually replenish this world, though it seemingly is barren, you replenish it, if you subdue it. And the earth is self to be subdued, not by beating self as some people have misunderstood, not by isolating the self in some little secluded spot, not by running away from life, but in the midst of life is the opportunity to become meek: to take the violence that is man, it is individual man, and then bring it into the state of the meek, to transcend the violence by not fighting against conditions; know that conditions can only reflect what is within the one who observes that condition.20 ¶23

So don’t rage against it; leave it just as it is. If conditions remain the same, that is a sure, sure sign that you have not been faithful to righteousness. Had you been faithful to the consciousness of already being the man you want to be, conditions would have to change in harmony with that righteousness. So don’t rage against it; leave it as it is, and start today to take this wonderful earth, which is the foot stool of the Lord, which really is the mind of man, and start really to work upon it. Then you will not turn from left to right; you will keep the narrow path. You will go out knowing you can do it. I know from experience it will not take long to see shoots appear; it will not take long to see the flowers appear. They will all appear, if you will take yourself in hand and by an uncritical observation of self, watch the being you are; see the condition of the earth as it is now by the uncritical observation of your reactions to life. When you see who you are, that is showing you the state of the earth as it is now. Don’t condemn it, just start to subdue it, and know that you do have dominion over all the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and all the animals that move upon the earth. Knowing them to be the moods of thought, the desires, the passions that move in you, start to entertain only the good and the very good. Dwell upon them and you will re-people your earth for you are supreme within the circle of your own consciousness.20 ¶24

Now you may say it’s a very little one; may I tell you that though you have a body and a life of your own, you are rooted in me, and you end in me, as I am rooted in God and end in God. So every man can say the same thing no matter if you look into a world of 2,500,000,000 of them and every year they slip through the gates into the invisible state relative to this world, but as they come and go every man in the world is actually rooted in you and ends in you, and you are rooted in the ultimate that we call God, the Father. So the whole vast (world) is simply centered in you; start now to rearrange it that it may reflect the beauty that you want to live about and live in in this world.20 ¶25

You do it by assuming the best. Always imagine the best of self; always imagine first with Jerusalem and then go out and radiate what you have given to self. If you live in that wonderful state yourself, you will only have the good to shower upon others, for you have one gift that is truly yours to give and that is yourself. You have no other gift. If you are good, you can give only the good. If you are not – well, whatever you are – that you give.20 ¶26

So the story is you may find today when you observe yourself, by observing your reactions, that it’s not a very pleasant land but it is still a fertile land; it can be cleared of all these trees of traditional wrong thinking and can be replanted in harmony with the beauty that you desire. And in the immediate present it will bear fruit in harmony with the seeds you plant.20 ¶27

So let us go out determined to bring about a better arrangement of our mind that we may produce more noble garments for our Father to wear. For this wonderful, visible, objective universe is only the living garment of my Father, it’s not a place of exile, as so many believe, talking about home and their going home, as though they are not now in the very midst of their Father. When you see me, you see my Father. Whenever you see me, you see the state of my mind, for you will see the world in which I live and the state of my mind, that inner arrangement, that’s my Father. When you see me projected, you then call it the Son, and my world round about me tells me where I am. All these inner states are places in this fabulous psychological consciousness. Inner state is equal to place, and where I stand within myself determines what I see when I look outside the self. So, when I look out upon the world, that area of my Father’s garment, whether it be torn by reason of the inner place where I stand or whether it be lovely, I see only the inner arrangement of myself. I am forever surrounding myself with the true image of myself, and what I am in consciousness that only can I see. Knowing that, let me be determined today to seek righteousness, or right consciousness, that I may reap in the immediate present all the lovely things that I desire.20 ¶28

Now in summary, single out some noble aim in life. Having defined it clearly to yourself as a desirable state, the state you would like to externalise, ask yourself this very simple question, “What would the feeling be like were it true if I already embodied that noble state?” In response to your question will come a feeling; assume that feeling; it has reality outside of the present moment. Its being is in complete independence of present objective fact. It has real structure; it has reality in the deep of it. It came in response to your call when you said, “What would the feeling be like were it true?” And you named what you were thinking of – if it was security, if it was health, if it was any state, that fish came from the deep; it’s located and you took the “I” and placed it in that feeling. You were actually standing upon it though it is invisible.20 ¶29

Now remain on it. If you remain in that state, you are told in the Bible three days, you will be “spewed out on dry land.” “Three” doesn’t mean three days; “three” means fullness, “three” means complete. So if I will live within that fish for three days until the whole thing seems natural and seems real, and it has the sensory vividness of reality, I will then be spewed out as something objective, and something that is commonly called in the Bible “land” or “dry land.” But it does have reality, as you feel it, only people get away from it because it doesn’t have immediate objective fact to confirm it. But you ride it for your three days and you will know what it was to enter that fish and remain in it until fullness was attained, until reality was attained within. In that state you were righteous and your righteousness will speak for you in time to come. It will not fail you; it cannot fail you.20 ¶30

I think you know how thrilled I am to be back here, for this is the one platform that grants me complete freedom. You know that. Dr. Bailes has never once restricted me or even suggested any condition. He gives me complete freedom of this platform, and for that I am really very happy, for I couldn’t be here unless he did. Now I have brought you this year an entirely new series. I have named this first one “The Power of Awareness” because it is the foundation stone on which the entire structure rests. Not a thing has happened in the past year to shake that foundation. Many things have happened, many revelations, many experiments, and yet the foundation remains intact.17 ¶1

For those not familiar with this foundation, we make the claim that conscious ness is the one and only reality. So, if you call God the ultimate reality, that is the name we give to this ultimate reality. So we say Consciousness is God. We say consciousness in action is imagination. And if consciousness in action, or God in action, is the Son bearing witness of his Father, then we come to the conclusion that imagination is that son. We have had nothing this year, as I tell you, to disturb that deep conviction.17 ¶2

We look upon the world as, I would say, a manifestation of consciousness; and the whole vast conditions of men but revelations of individual states of consciousness. We distinguish between the individual identity and the state of consciousness that it occupies. You are an eternal being. The real you is the imaginative you, personified for us in our Gospel as Christ Jesus, but man doesn’t know it. But this is your real being. This being is your wonderful imagination. When we speak of the revelation of state, we simply mean that the state in which the real you for a moment abides, objectifies itself as the condition and the circumstances 0£ your life.17 ¶3

If you are dissatisfied with the conditions of life, there is no possible way of changing them unless you first change the state from which you view the world; for the state from which a man observes the world determines the world that man describes. For the world that is described from observation must be, as thus described, relative to the describing observer.17 ¶4

In a very simple way, were I to ask you now “Where is San Diego?” and you answered “About, I would say, approximately 130 miles from here.” And then I ask another question, “Where is Santa Barbara?” and you replied “Approximately 100 miles from here.” Well, I do not have to be an Einstein to tell you where you are, for if you tell me where these two are, and one is a hundred miles from here relative to you, and the other is a hundred and thirty miles from here relative to you, I know you must be somewhere within the vicinity of this City 0f Los Angeles.17 ¶5

Now the same law holds good in any description you make of the world. If I ask you to describe your world socially, and I listen attentively to your description of the world, you are revealing your position in the social world to me. If I ask you to describe it intellectually, financially, spiritually, you may not know it, but the description that you offer of the world is revealing to me who listens - or to yourself if you are attentive - that particular state of consciousness from which you view the world. And you will continue to see the world as you now see it, unless you change your state of consciousness.17 ¶6

Now, there are certain words that in the course of long use gather very many strange connotations. And so, in the course of time, they cease to mean anything at all. Such a word is the “sub-conscious”. Such a word is, too, - and do not be shocked - such a word is “Christ Jesus”. No two have the same opinion of the word, the same definition or mood of the word.17 ¶7

Let us now take a look at the word “sub-conscious” and see how it is defined for us. This is the definition as given to us in any good dictionary. It is that portion of mental state not directly within the focus of consciousness, but capable of being called into such focus by the proper stimulus. Now that is the definition of this fabulous realm.17 ¶8

Now let us look at the claim made for this realm. Our mental scientists, psychiatrists and psychologists of today refer to this region as the creative power in man; that everything in man’s world is determined by the activities of the subconscious mind; that man himself has absolutely no control over the activities of this region unless he first gets into a relationship with it. For here is a region that they call the sub-conscious; others call it the “unconscious” , and still others speak of it as the “collective unconscious”, but they claim for it a creative power that molds the outer world in harmony with the inner arrangement of its self. So they give it structure, they give it reality, they give it form, and they claim its structure determines the outer structure we observe and call the only reality: that any modification in the internal structure of this deep region results in corresponding changes in the outer objective world. But then they leave us at the mercy of IT, unless we can find the trick of entering into a relationship with it.17 ¶9

Now, let us turn to the Gospel. What is said of the central character of the Gospel - the one I refer to as Christ Jesus? It is said of this central figure that “All things were made by Him, and without Him there is nothing made that is made.” All things, not a few things, all things - it includes all.17 ¶10

I read my Gospel carefully and I find that from within out is the order of the Universe. In the 7th Chapter of Mark “Not what goes in defileth the man, but what proceeds out of the heart”, either for good or for evil. Not just the good comes out, but the evil can come out too. All things come from within out; what goes within cannot defile the man; only the thing that proceeds out of the heart of man can bless him or defile him; that there is some creative power in man that constantly molds the outer world in harmony with itself, and this Creative Power is described for us as Christ Jesus .17 ¶11

Now, let us take another look at what they teach us: that there is a method they use to pry into the deep of this region; that when a man is asleep, they use the method of dreams to pry into the deep. For the Bible tells us that from cover to cover. “In a dream, when deep sleep falleth upon men, then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction.” You are told that God speaks with his prophets chiefly in dreams. It was a dream that prompted them all to bring about their great revelation. Your are told that this wise man, the wisest of all, was promised riches and long life and great power, and behold, Solomon awoke, and it was a vision in the night! You are told the birth of the central figure was prophesied in a dream, and everything was but the dream.17 ¶12

Now we discover there is another way of looking into the deep, and the waking way of looking into the deep is through man’s imagination; that imagination is now the waking method used to pry into this great mysterious deep. For the ancients discovered that if they would ever discover really the ultimate reality, it could never be by any instrument made by man. In order to discover the ultimate reality, they would have to set Mind to observe itself, and then to accurately record those observations. For they concluded that no description of Mind made by any science known to man could be an adequate description of the Mind which made that science. So when today we are speaking of taking the imagination to look into the deep, it is looking at itself. You set imagination to observe self and then to accurately record those observations.17 ¶13

And you must come to the conclusion: imagination is the central figure 0f the Gospel. When you will read your Gospel with this in Mind, the whole thing becomes a luminous book. One simple little passage, take it from any passage - if this was an open meeting I would challenge you now to ask me anything concerning the central figure, and taking the simple little technique of identifying that figure with my own imagination, the answer will be automatic .17 ¶14

So here is one. “Peter, lovest thou me? Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. Then feed my sheep.” And three times the same question is asked and three times a similar answer is given. And the last answer brought about a certain rebellion for it was asked three times. But now you take it as imagination asking itself, “I have discovered my savior, I discovered my shepherd, and what would be the sheep, for our minds are like rambling sheep, or our thoughts like rambling sheep that have no shepherd. Now that you have found me to be your shepherd, to be your savior, your own wonderful imagination to be the central figure; ‘Now, do you love Him?’ You answer “Yes!”. Well, then feed my sheep.17 ¶15

“Well, then did I not feed the sheep? At any moment when did I not feed the sheep? “When you did not do it unto the least among one of these”. Any time you imagine any unlovely thought against another, you walked me in the mud. And then you said you loved me, but any time that your imagination was ever exercised on behalf of another, and it was not lovingly exercised, you did not feed me. You walked me in the mud.17 ¶16

And yet man goes blindly on believing he serves the Master; believing he truly understands Christ Jesus; that he understands and loves his Savior. And morning, noon and night he imagines the unlovely things against his neighbor, not knowing at that very moment he was walking his Master in the gutter.17 ¶17

And so we are told “I sought water, and you gave me not to drink. I sought food, and you gave me not. I sought shelter and you took me not in. I needed raiment and you clothed me not.” But when did these things happen? I don’t recall ever turning you away. When you did not do it unto the least among one of these, you did not do it unto me. And then when did I do these things ? Whenever you did it to the very least among one of these, you did it unto me.17 ¶18

And the day will come when man will discover the “least” spoken of is himself. When man discovers that the greatest of all the tyrants, the one who is the most impudent of all the offenders, the one who is the greatest of all the beggars is himself. Then he will discover that he stands in need of the alms of his own forgiveness and instead of railing against himself, he will start with self to ennoble his own thoughts, to lift himself up by imagining the best first of himself and then he will share that with the world round about him. For he will look out on a world and describe it relative to himself and he will not now see the unlovely things that formerly he saw.17 ¶19

For this is what we mean by this foundation stone that so far has not been shaken. A very wise man, Emerson, said that whenever a true theory appears it will be its own evidence. Its test is that it will explain the phenomena of life. I am convinced we have that true theory, for this theory we give you here, that your consciousness is the only reality and that the particular state of consciousness in which you abide is the sole cause of the phenomena of your life, cannot be shaken.17 ¶20

I ask you to test it, even if the test is motivated by the determination to disprove it. I will ask you to try it, for I know you will not disprove it. That this wonderful consciousness of yours is the ultimate reality, and you are free to choose the state into which you will go. But most of us have chosen, but unwisely. Not a thing is wrong with the state; the state is all right but it’s giving effect to it that makes it either right or wrong as far as we are concerned.17 ¶21

Now our theory, I assure you, has not been suddenly conjured out of the nowhere and the stories I have told you here for the last seven years, the case histories I have recorded in my last book, ‘The Power of Awareness’, were not fabricated to fit this theory. But this theory was slowly built up by careful observation of the facts. For when someone would come into my world and describe their world to me, they revealed the being that they really are.17 ¶22

When I ask the simple question, “What do you want?” and they named it and they told me they really want it with all their heart, and then I asked them how would they see the same world had they realized their objective? Looking at the same world they began to describe it differently. I said, “Now, that is the description you must make of the world. You must weave that into your mind, for in so doing you move into the state where that world becomes real relative to that state.” So if you now know the world you would see had you achieved your aim, then that is the world you must begin to see in the mind’s eye. And if in time that state becomes an objective fact, then the theory as you see was not made to fit it; it formed itself by a careful observation of these facts.17 ¶23

So if I could repeat that time and time again, and each time by moving this permanent “I” into the desired state and let it occupy that state long enough to make it natural, at the moment of naturalness the state becomes visibly objective to them, then we have a true theory. For it does explain the phenomena of life.17 ¶24

So here, in this series we have brought you many revelations. One that I want to stress throughout the entire series is the wide difference between thinking from an end and thinking of an end. Right now I am thinking from Los Angeles; every part of this world, if I should think of it, I’m thinking of it. But I am thinking from Los Angeles, and the difference between the two, as you can see, one is reality and one is a dream not yet made real, because imagination is the central figure of the Bible, and no power in the world can stop his travel.17 ¶25

He can go into any mansion and there abide. There is no power on the face of the earth that can stop me now from imagining myself into the state desired. So I begin to think from it. As I begin to think from it, all former states vanish and that is the great Son of God that can move into any mansion of his Father’s house and there occupy. If he ever goes in and occupies it, then I shall be there in the flesh also. So in this Father’s house of mine are the unnumbered states that are already existent and I, discovering who the son really is, and only the son can go into these mansions, so discovering the son to be my own imagination, I will dwell in imagination as though I dwell in the flesh, and then living in that state I will take my body also, that I may confirm that state. For dwelling in the state long enough clothes the state in flesh.17 ¶26

So here: every one of us, if you will accept it; can from this day on be as free as the wind. It’s entirely up to you to choose what mansion you will enter, for you are the only architect of your sufferings or your good fortune. There is no power outside that has caused anything to happen to you; it’s simply your choice, as I said earlier, your unwise choice.17 ¶27

Knowing who you are now, and not being ashamed to lay claim to this bold, bold assumption that Christ in man is man’s imagination, then you will stop calling on some external force for help. As the Prophets say, why stand we here calling on God for help and not on ourselves in whom He dwells, as our imagination? So why call elsewhere, when He dwells here where I stand as my imagination? For is there any power to stop me from imagining that I am the man I want to be?17 ¶28

So that I actually clothe it with a feeling of reality? If I can so clothe this imagined state with all the vivid sensitiveness of reality, then I will ultimately actually clothe it in flesh, for that’s the Law, from within out. If you are bold enough to take it, you will free yourself today.17 ¶29

If you are still timid, may I suggest you go back and read the seventh chapter of the Book of Mark, where you must then still keep alive the traditions of men and ignore the Law of God. So men wash the cups, and wash the pots, and pay all outside obeisance to things known as the traditions of men, that they may be seen of men and be considered holy. But I bring, said He, the Law of God and no man seems to hear it. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of the living God and the spirit of God dwelleth in you?” Have you ever heard these words, “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” Not some Christ without, but Christ in you is. But if we aren’t bold enough to lay claim to it, for we are told “Ye have the mind of Christ,” not a mind that you are going to earn in time to come, you have it now, so lay claim to it, and begin to exercise this giant of the mind that is called the Son of God in the Bible, and you will see who your savior really is.17 ¶30

Now, may I give you a few of his titles, for these are all taken from the Bible. He is called the Redeemer; He is called the Savior; He is called the Passover; He is called the Second Man; He is called The Desire of all Nations. Now take it and see how it fits your wonderful imagination.17 ¶31

The man you don’t know to exist - that Second Man - is the imaginative you; the one you hold captive by accepting the evidence of sense and only that which reason dictates. If you will now free the Second Man, you will see how he is the Passover. He can pass now from this present state into any desired state in the world, for no power can stop you from dwelling in imagination where you desire to dwell. So, placing yourself there, you begin to think from it, and not constantly starve yourself by thinking of it. So I will go and prepare it, and preparing it I will dwell in it, and begin to think from it.17 ¶32

Now, I assure you, unnumbered similar stories have been told me in the past year by those who took me at my word and began to awaken Christ within, for He had been asleep while the senses dictated their every step, and then completely denying the evidence of sense and boldly imagining themselves to be what they desired to be, they have found their savior, and what man the world could turn them back to the traditions of man? They are free from all traditions of men, and so no man can appear before them and call himself the intermediary between man and God. So they are turned from all intermediaries, having found the only Redeemer, and the Redeemer is the only intermediary between man and God.17 ¶33

So then you know that any time that you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are literally mediating God to man. So you don’t need any of the traditions of men and keep them alive, hoping that you will be considered by some invisible power, some holy being.17 ¶34

So, let us turn back and freshen up again this word which has been so abused, which now is your imagination, which people, without defining, call the “subconscious” as though it was some appendage. People go around speaking of “my subconscious mind”, or “My unconscious mind”, not knowing what they are referring to. Well, this fabulous series of mental states is your imagination. And may I tell you it has form, it has structure, just as real as the visible objective world; that the inner world is a world of reality. Call it by any name. I call it my wonderful imagination, and it assumes the form of all that I accept and consent to as true.17 ¶35

It actually assumes the form of the sum total of all of my beliefs, and my beliefs need not be true. They need not come near the truth. My beliefs could be prejudices; they could be superstitions. It doesn’t care. It will take all the stripes of men and wear them. So it will assume the form of the sum total of all that man consents to in this world, and then mold the outer world in harmony with the inner arrangement of itself. Therefore, to change the outer world, I must modify or change, in some way alter, the structure of the inner or second man - the second man being my imagination. So I set myself to observe myself and to watch how my imagination works.17 ¶36

And here is something that will interest you. I observe it always moves according to habit; that it is a being of habit, and so if I get into the habit of thinking the unlovely thoughts, it becomes very natural, so I listen only to that which is critical of another. I listen only to that which is not full of praise, that which judges harshly, and so according to habit it moves along these pathways.17 ¶37

Now, if I don’t like the outer world, and I really believe it is caused by the structure of the inner or second man, I then must change his likeness, change his form, by observing how I react to all the unlovely, and how I am not interested in the praise of another, and then begin to feed my sheep, begin to change my thoughts, my feelings, my moods concerning others, and as I begin to change my reactions to people, I find I am changing the structure of the Son of God. And then I automatically produce corresponding changes in my outer world.17 ¶38

If you really like it, and you are bold enough to take it, I promise you a world that is undreamed of by our wise men, for even sleep will no longer be the unconscious that it is to the majority of people in the world; that sleep becomes only a doorway into the world where this real you - the second man - really lives and moves and has its being. It is a dimensionally larger world, and you enter it quickly in meditation, or night after night in sleep, and you will find opportunities that would dwarf the wildest dream of men here.17 ¶39

So I ask you to really believe it, and try in the short interval of four weeks while we are here to so prove it that you can tell me of the things that have happened to you by putting into practice this Power of Awareness. Learn to become aware at any moment of time of your fulfilled desire. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and learn to become intensely aware of the state fulfilled, that you may look upon your world and describe it relative to your fulfilled desire. And learn then to sustain that mood. You will find in time through the habitual motion of your inner you, after a little while, because it always travels according to habit, it will move through habit into the feeling of the wish fulfilled, and the moment it is a natural wearing to itself, it starts to change the outer world to reflect the inner change of your mind.17 ¶40

Now, I hope you will take it, but there is no power in the world that can compel you to take it. You are as free as the wind to take it or not to take it.17 ¶41

If you would rather persist in the belief that your Savior lived years ago and died for you and through his death, external to yourself, you are saved; you are entitled to believe it. As I told you earlier, because the inner you is molded in harmony with the sum total of all your beliefs, you will continue to have visible proof of the truth of that belief. For you will find millions believing with you, and you will believe that the numbers make it right, and so you will contribute to the whole vast traditions of men.17 ¶42

If you want to come out and be apart and find your savior where you will only find Him, within yourself, by setting your imagination to observe itself, you must come to the same conclusion - that this ultimate reality that men call God, that the Ancients defined as I AM, is your own wonderful consciousness and that IT in action, or the Son, or Christ Jesus, is your imagination. And then, having discovered, you start really to feed the sheep and you will stop, as of now, this walking of your Savior in the mud.17 ¶43

Now I see my time is up, and so at this moment I’ll take the chair and let us all join in exercising our imagination lovingly on behalf of another. Simply imagine that they are talking to you, and they are telling you what they wish they could tell you, and you listen as though you heard, and then you will put into practice that first verse of the fifth chapter of the Book of Ephesians: “Be ye imitators of God as dear children” - for how would I imitate my Father?17 ¶44

“He calls things that are not now seen as though they were, and the unseen becomes seen.” That is the way my Father called things into being, and I am called upon to be an imitator of my Father as a dear child.17 ¶45

For now I will call the imaginary voice. I will listen as though I heard what I want to hear. I will look as though I am seeing what I want to see, and if I persist in my listening and my looking, I will then be imitating my Father as a dear child, and he will not fool me. He will call into flesh, into objective reality, that which I have assumed that I have heard and I have seen.17 ¶46

You will find tonight’s message a very practical one. I don’t think it will disturb anyone, but there are adjustments to be made concerning what man believes God to be, and what God really is. We are told in Scripture, in the birth of the twins, which begins the great drama as told in Scripture, “In your limbs…” and I am speaking now, not of anyone, but of you individually: “In your limbs lie nations twain, rival races from their birth; one the mastery will gain, the younger o’er the elder reign.” These are in you individually. We are told that the younger, which naturally is the second . . the “second man” . . is the Lord from Heaven. That’s the Second Man; He sleeps in you. You will rouse Him, and He will become the Master. He will reign. At the moment, in the majority of the world, they are totally unaware of it. So, He sleeps, and so He doesn’t reign. That one known in Scripture is called Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God!16 ¶1

Now, the whole vast world, and all within it, is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger. That’s the whole of life: the appeasement of hunger. And there are infinite states from which the Lord may view the world to appease that hunger. The “first man” can’t do it. He can only feed upon what his senses dictate. Wherever he is, he feeds upon the facts of life as he sees the facts. It takes the “Second Man” to disengage Himself from that restriction and enter into a state . . any state in the world . . and feed upon it, and then . . in time . . bring the “first man” to feed upon it.16 ¶2

We are told in the 14th chapter of John: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither be afraid. Ye believe in God, Believe in me also.” Now, this is not a man talking to you from the outside. “Believe also in me.” “You believe in God, believe also in me.” In the same chapter He is going to tell you He is God! But what man would actually believe that this Presence within himself is God? Now, He tells you: “Be still and know that I AM God.” This is not another man speaking to you, other than yourself, “Be still, and know that ‘I AM’ is God.” Can you believe that? If you can believe that, then all things are possible to you. For, “all things are possible to God.” Can a man really believe that? That’s what I AM told in the 46th Psalm, “Be still, and know that . . I…”. Put the little word is in there now. Now we are told, He sleeps, and then came the call, “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Do not cast us off forever.” This one sleeps in man. Man has to rouse Him. He doesn’t know that his own wonderful human imagination is God!16 ¶3

Now, “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? When I go I will come again, and I will receive you to myself, that where I AM, there ye may be also.” Now, this conversation takes place in you individually, between the two. I am speaking now to myself, “In my Father’s house” . . I AM the Father “…are unnumbered mansions” . . states of consciousness. “Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again, and I will receive you to myself, that where I AM there ye may be also.”16 ¶4

I am standing here, and my senses tie me here in this room but I don’t want to be here. I want to be elsewhere. I know my bank balance. I know my obligations to life. I’m tied by what I know. The “outer man” feeds upon that, but he wants more than that. There is something in me . . the “Second Man” who is born from Heaven . . who is telling me there are “unnumbered mansions” into which I can go . . you can’t go . . I can go and prepare it for you. But, “when I go to prepare it for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I AM, there ye shall be also.”16 ¶5

Now, how do I do it? I take a look at my world, and I am very restricted. Everything about me is something I would like to break through . . transcend it, become a bigger person, a more secure person, where I’m doing a greater job in the world. All these things I would like to do but reason tells me I am not doing it, and my senses confirm my reason. Now, is there something in me that is my True Self that can do it? Yes, my imagination can do it. In my imagination, I go and prepare the state. I actually go into the state and fill that state with my own being, and view the world from that state. I don’t think of it; I think from it. When I think from it, I’m actually preparing that state. Then I return to where I left this . . “the outer man,” and once more fuse with it, and we become one, once again. Now I take him across a bridge of incidents . . some series of events . . that takes me towards the thing that I’ve prepared, and I take him with me and enter into the very state itself. He feeds now, literally, upon that state. This is what I call prayer.16 ¶6

I don’t vote for it; I don’t petition, I ask no being in the world . . no one, including what the world would say is God. For, when you find God by being still, and know that “I AM” is God, then to whom can you turn for anything in this world, if you really believe Scripture, “Be still and know that I AM God”? If you are not familiar with Scripture, read it in the 46th chapter of the Psalms of David, the 10th verse “Be still, and know that I AM God,” . . then, to whom could you turn? It’s an inner communion with Self.16 ¶7

But man talks to an outside god and pleads with an outside god, and begs an outside god. This reminds me of a dinner party that William Lyons Phelps gave. If you do not know who he is . . in fact, who he was, he was one of the truly great educators in our country in this twentieth century: William Lyons Phelps. He and Mrs. Phelps entertained Edna Ferber, the writer. As they sat down to dinner, Mrs. Phelps said to him, “William, will you please say grace.” He closed his eyes, bent his head, and after maybe ten or fifteen seconds he said, “Amen.” And she said to him, “Why, William, I did not hear one word that you said”; and he said to her, “I was not talking to you, my Dear…”.16 ¶8

People sit down to say grace as: “Bless the hands that prepared this food,” all these words meaning nothing. You go within, and you don’t petition: you appropriate. Prayer is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. I hope for so-and-so; I want it as an objective fact. Now, I must go within and appropriate it subjectively. So, prayer is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. That is what I call “faith in God,” which is nothing more than faith in my Self, for the Self of man . . the true identity of man . . is God! That is the “Jesus Christ” of Scripture. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourselves and see.” That is what we are told to do in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Read it in the 13th chapter, the 5th verse, of II Corinthians. “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, if He is in me, then where will I go to meet Him? How will I address Him? He is in me. He is in my very Self. I simply commune with my Self.16 ¶9

There are unnumbered states in the world, so I single out the state that I want to express in this world, and I don’t ask you or anyone else in the world if it is good for me. I don’t consult anyone. Does it come within the frame of the Golden Rule? What I am now asking, would I ask it for another? Would I ask another, if what I am seeking now for another is something I would ask for myself? Well, the Golden Rule is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you keep that in mind, you cannot go wrong.16 ¶10

What’s wrong with asking for anything in this world for another that you would ask for yourself? Is there anything wrong in being secure? Nothing. Anything wrong in being clean and wholesome and decent? Anything wrong in being one who contributes to the world’s good? What’s wrong with that? Is there anything wrong in being happily married, proud of the girl who bears your name, or she proud of the man whose name she bears? What is wrong with that?16 ¶11

Forget that. The whole vast world is a field to reap. You don’t pick out this woman or that woman. Pick out the state. I want to be blissfully happy, and if I were, how would I see the world? And how would the world see me? Well, shut out the world and go within and appropriate that state. And from within, you let your friends see you, as they would have to see you if what now you are assuming that you are is really true.16 ¶12

That is why I have titled tonight’s talk, “The Mood” . . catching the mood. This whole thing is based upon that mood. The 25th chapter of the book of Genesis: and she brought forth twins, for in her limbs were these rival races . . rival races from their birth, called in Scripture “Esau” and “Jacob”; and you think they were two individuals who lived thousands of years ago. No, they are right here in everyone in this world! These are the eternal states of consciousness personified in Scripture as two little boys.16 ¶13

Scripture is not secular history. It is salvation history. And, so, they did not live thousands of years ago; they live now in you, and you have to give birth to both of them. You have given birth to the first one. The first one is your “outer man,” the man who is now a man of the senses . . a man who is covered with hair, as we are told. Esau came out first, and he was covered with hair all over. Whether you be female or male, you are covered with hair all over. That is the external you, the man of the sense world.16 ¶14

Then in comes the “Second Son,” and he is the smoothest skin lad, called Jacob. The name “Jacob” means to supplant. He is going to supplant his brother; he is the second, but he will come first. The Second Man is the Lord from Heaven, and the Second Son is your own wonderful human imagination. When you stir it and rouse it and make him come into being, you can do wonders in this world.16 ¶15

Try it right now. You sit here in this room . . I stand here; I could, in the twinkling of an eye, put myself outside of this room and view it from there, and see the interior of this room, not from this lectern, but see it from the outside. That is exercising the Inner Man. Go outside mentally, not physically, and view this room from the outside. While seated here, I can put myself in my hotel room downstairs, and then view this room and think of it, but thinking from my room downstairs. I can put myself in any part of the world and think from it, and think of the world and everything else. That is the secret: thinking from what I want, instead of thinking of what I want.16 ¶16

When I know what I want in this world, when I am thinking of it, it is always beyond me. When I know what I want, I enter into that state and think from it. Put yourself mentally into your own home tonight now, and view this building . . this club . . from your home, and you see this building, not from it; you think of it, and you are viewing it from your room.16 ¶17

Now, the state of consciousness to which you most constantly return is the place you really dwell . . that habitual state from which you view the world. Do you view it from poverty, saying, “I AM poor?” Do you walk the street feeling, “How poor I AM?” You are then viewing the world from the state of poverty. Am I viewing the world from the state of one who is completely unknown and unwanted? Well, that’s my home. The place to which I habitually return constitutes my dwelling place. I need not dwell there.16 ¶18

“In my Father’s house are unnumbered mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” And when I go and prepare the place, I will return again and take you with me, that where I AM . . in that state prepared . . you shall be also. So, I now take a state. I want to be known. I want to contribute to the world’s good. I want also to live well . . and I mean well. I want to feel secure, not only financially, but secure socially, that when I enter a room I am not embarrassed, no matter who they are. They can have all the degrees in the world. They can come from all the great universities in the world and be honored by the world. But I want to stand in their presence and not feel little. I want to feel a man. I am not to bow my head in shame because of any restriction in my past. If I were born “behind the 8-ball” socially, financially, intellectually, it doesn’t matter. I want to feel important; I want to feel great. I want to feel right.16 ¶19

All right, what state would that be if it were true? I conceive a state that, if it were true, that would make all my wishes come true. I go into that state. Now, the first time I enter the state and view the world from it, it is wonderful, but I may never reenter that state. Therefore, it is not my home. I want to make that state my perpetual home, so I automatically dwell in that state, and if I dwell in it so that automatically I am in that state, it becomes my dwelling place. So, “I will go and prepare a place for you.” I am not talking to you; I am talking to myself: “I will take you, Neville, born behind the 8-ball . . born unknown, unwanted, poor . . everything that is simply behind the 8-ball, and I am going to take you, Neville . . now that you have found me, the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven, your own wonderful human imagination . . now that you rouse me, I will go.”16 ¶20

And I will dwell in the state and feel myself to be Neville . . that “outer man” I just left on the chair or left on the bed, and I will see the world as Neville would see it if he were with me now. I view the world from that state. And, then, when it seems natural to me, I return to the physical “outer man” that I left on a chair . . that I left on the bed and as I return, we fuse and become one person, not two. Then I move across a bridge of incidents that I don’t really, rationally build . . it simply appears, and I move across a series of events that I do not reasonably determine . . they simply happen. I will move across this bridge of events up to the state where I entered and now dwell. But when I get there, it seems so natural!16 ¶21

The man that thought, because of his past limitations, he could never enter that state . . now he finds himself in that state. No matter whom he meets, he meets them from that state, and it is perfectly natural to him. This is the story that Scripture teaches to you, to me, and to everyone in the world. But until you find God, which is your own Self, you aren’t going to do it. “Be still, and know that ‘I AM’ Is God.” There is no other God!16 ¶22

And you think that’s blasphemy? All right, the one who teaches the story was also accused of blasphemy, for he said, “I AM God,” and they picked up stones to stone him. It doesn’t mean a man is making a bold statement on the outside. The “outer man” takes the facts of life . . these are the “stones” . . to stone him, and then he quotes Scripture, and he quotes the 82nd Psalm:.16 ¶23

“Is it not written in your scripture that I say, ‘Ye are gods, all of you sons of the Most High’? If, then, I say that I AM the Son of God, and the Son of God and God are one and the same Being, why do you stone me when scripture teaches you, you are the sons of God?” So they could not stone him then because he was only quoting their book. Well, I am only quoting tonight your book, which is my book. It’s the book to set every man in this world free if you know Who-You-Are. Your true identity is Jesus Christ! And Jesus Christ is not a being who came two thousand years ago and then departed. He said, “I AM with you always, even unto the very ends of time.” If He is with me always, where is He? He said, “I AM with you always, to the very ends of time.” Then where is He? I surely know where He is.16 ¶24

The conversation now . . I am quoting from the 8th chapter of the book of John. It is taking place in you. No one else is hearing it. I am only now quoting from a passage from the 8th chapter of John, “You are from below, I AM from above; you are of this world, I AM not of this world. I say you will die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I AM He.” I am only quoting from the 8th chapter of the Gospel of John.16 ¶25

In Scripture, above and within are the same; below and without are the same. So, when you read, “I AM from above,” he’s telling you, “I AM from within”, for he tells you, “the kingdom of heaven is within you.” So, I AM from above, therefore I AM from within. You, the ‘outer man’ . . you are from without, therefore you are from below. You are of this world. I don’t have to remain anchored to what my senses dictate and tell me that I AM. I need not be here. You, looking at me from the outside, as the “outer man,” will say, “Neville is on the platform.” Knowing my complete outer world, you would know my restrictions, my limitations. You do not know my ambitions, my dreams, my wishes. I, and I alone, know my ambitions and my wishes. The “Inner Man” knows them, and He knows how to enter these states and prepare a state for the “outer man” to fulfill it. The “outer man” can’t do it. The “outer man” is completely anchored by his senses and confirmed by his reason.16 ¶26

Now, let me share with you a simple story. At the time that it happened, it seemed an impossible thing. Right after the war was over, I took the first trip out with my wife and little girl to the Island of Barbados in the West Indies. I made no preparation for return. I sailed from New York. I thought I would go and stay a few months in the island with my family, who were all in Barbados, making no preparation for my return.16 ¶27

Then it came time for my return, for I had a schedule in New York in the first week of May. I arrived in Barbados the last of December and had these four heavenly months . . or almost four. When I went to the steamship company, they showed me a list which was as long as from here to there of people waiting to get on the boat. That was only in the Island of Barbados. There were lists equally long in all the other islands: Trinidad, St. Vincent, Grenada . . all the islands, and only two ships servicing all the islands: one little one taking sixty passengers, and one taking a hundred and twenty-five passengers; and hundreds and hundreds in each island waiting.16 ¶28

Well, they said, “Why, Mr. Goddard, you couldn’t get out of this island until the month of October at the earliest.” I said, “Is that your final verdict?” They said, “Why, that’s final. Look at the list, and this is only in Barbados.” This is the month, now, of April. I never thought of applying before that. My brother Victor said, “How on earth could you have left New York, the capitol of the world . . the financial capitol of the world . . they know everything there how to do these things. Why didn’t you arrange there when you left for return?” I said, “It never occurred to me. It doesn’t really matter.”16 ¶29

I sat in my hotel room in Barbados and got comfortable, and then I assumed that I was in a little boat . . a little tender, taking me off to the waiting ship in the bay. I could feel the rock of the little boat. In that boat I placed my family . . a few members of my family: my brother Victor, my sister Daphne, and one or two others, and naturally my wife and my little girl. Then I felt the ship come alongside the main ship that would take us back to New York. And, then, in my imagination I assumed that my brother Victor took my little girl and stepped on the gangplank and walked up with her and I aided my wife next, and then my sister Daphne, and then I got on, and we went up. When I got to the top of the gangplank . . all in my imagination, giving it all the sensory vividness, giving it all the tones of reality . . I have no committed stateroom, so I could not go down to the stateroom. I simply turned at the top of the gangplank, walked three or four steps, and then put my hands on the rail, so I could smell the rawness of the sea, I could feel the salt driven by the wind. I could feel it on the rail, and then I looked towards the island with nostalgia. I was leaving a perfectly lovely island with so many members of my family, and yet it was a divided feeling. I was happy to be leaving because I had to get back to New York on my way to Milwaukee, and then, at the same time, I was split in my emotion because there was a sadness . . like a sweet sadness leaving them and still happy to go. And that’s the mood that I caught. I caught that feeling. I can’t tell you if you haven’t had the experience of going any place being divided between wanting to go and yet reluctantly so, because you are leaving something precious behind you. Well, that was my mood. I caught the mood. And then I kept on looking at the island, and then I broke it and here I am, sitting in my chair in the room in the hotel in Barbados!16 ¶30

The next morning the phone rang. As I answered, it was the Alcoa Steamship Company calling: “Mr. Goddard, we’ve Just received a cable from New York canceling a passage sailing on the next ship, which could put you in New York on the first day of May. Would you like it for you, your wife and your daughter? It’s a smaller stateroom, really, there are only two bunks, but your little girl is only three years old, and so she could sleep either with you or with Mrs. Goddard, but there are two bunks, and there is a private bath. Everything is perfect but you know; the ship is small. It will only carry sixty passengers.” I said, “I’ll be right down.”16 ¶31

So, I went down, and I thought I would find out some more details. I asked the agent, “Why the cancellation?” “Well,” she said, “I could only speculate. They didn’t tell us: they cabled us. There was a cancellation for the return trip.” I said, “All right, it’s canceled. Why didn’t you give it to any of the others waiting?” There were hundreds and hundreds waiting. “Well,” she said, “we have one lady here . . an American lady who has been bothering us week after week to get her out of Barbados back to New York, so we called her first, and she said, ‘It’s not convenient for me to go now.’ So, then we called you because you have three to go, and I thought you could use the room for the three of you. And we will not notify any of the other hundreds waiting.” So, I asked no further questions. I took it and got back in time for my place in New York and then my place in Milwaukee.16 ¶32

When I first tell that story, the usual reaction is: Was that a fair thing to do? Can you imagine that! Was that a fair thing to do with all the others who were waiting? I wasn’t running the Alcoa Steamship Company. I was applying the principle of God. I wouldn’t care if one million people were there; I’d jump over one million. That’s not my concern. I am simply applying the Law of God: “When you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will,” as I am told in the 11th chapter of the book of Mark, 29th verse, and whatever you do, whatever you say, if you do not doubt that it will come to pass, it will be done for you.16 ¶33

Well, I did what I’m told in Scripture I ought to do, believe that I had received it, and act upon that belief. So, I acted upon the belief. What would I do if it were true? I would go up the gangplank. In those days, back in 1945, we did not have a deep-water harbor; we have one now. But then you had to go out to the ship by a little tender, so I did exactly what I would have to do if I went aboard the ship. So, I got aboard the little ship, and then, as we got to the big ship, strangely enough, my brother Victor went up with my little girl in his arms . . the very first one to step off. And then here came my wife, here came my sister, just in the order that I had imagined it. I wouldn’t care if that order was broken or not, but it did happen in the order that I imagined it.16 ¶34

So, I tell you, I have found Him. Who? Found who? I have found the Lord Jesus Christ. You did? What does he look like? He looks just like me! Have you found Him? Well, don’t look at me, because when you find Him, He’s going to look just like you! That’s the Lord Jesus Christ . . just like you. There is no other Lord Jesus Christ. He actually became you, that you may become the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you see Him, He is just like you. So, do not turn to anyone in this world and say, “There he is,” for that’s a lie, or, “Here he is” . . that’s a lie. So, anyone telling you that Neville is the Lord Jesus Christ . . your Jesus Christ, deny it! Deny it completely. Neville is not the Lord Jesus Christ for you. But I have found the Lord Jesus Christ in me as my own wonderful human imagination. And I share with you what I have found. One day you will find Him as your own wonderful human imagination. Then will come the day that everything said of the Lord Jesus Christ in Scripture, you are going to experience in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience . . everything said about him. Then you will know who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Then you will know who the Father is, who . . really . . God is! Meanwhile, test him. Go to the extreme test. I tell you, you will find Him never failing. He’s your own wonderful human imagination.16 ¶35

Well, in this story that we started tonight, the two sons are brought now to the father. The father is Isaac, and Isaac is blind. There were two sons; the first one is Esau. He is covered with hair. That’s every child born of woman; that is the “outer man,” for hair means the most external, objective thing in the world. In man, the hair comes first, then you get the skin, then you get the fat, then you get the bones, but the hair is the most external part of man. So, he is covered with hair. The next one has no hair. He is hairless. He is Jacob. The word means supplanter. The father has requested a meal. That is why I told you earlier the whole vast world . . the whole of life is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger. So, the father is hungry, and he wants venison properly prepared as he always loves it and he gives that command to his first son, Esau. Esau was a hunter. He goes hunting for the venison, and prepares it to please his father. Jacob overhears the request of his father. Remember, his name is supplanter but the command was given to his brother Esau. So, he slays a goat and skins it, and puts the skin upon his body to deceive his father into believing that he is Esau. He prepares the goat and brings it to his father, and he says, “Father,” and Isaac answers, “Yes, my son.” Then Isaac said, “I am blind, my son. I cannot see. Come close that I may feel you, that I may touch you.” And covered with the skin of the goat, he comes close, and Isaac stretches forth his hand and touches him. He said, “You know, your voice sounds like my son Jacob, but you feel like my son Esau,” and then he gave him the blessing. And, then, having been given the blessing, Jacob disappears. Then his son Esau comes with the venison, and he said, “Who are you?” He said, “I AM your son Esau.” “Well,” he said, “it must have been your brother who came, and I thought him to be you, and I gave him the blessing; and I cannot reverse it. I cannot take it back. I have blessed him, and the blessing remains his.”16 ¶36

So, you close your eyes, and you are Isaac; you cannot see. Isaac is blind. Shut your eyes, and you can’t see the room. Now, inwardly you have the two sons. The outer room is your Esau. You shut it out completely, and they both go hunting. Esau comes after; Jacob comes first, and he gives the tones of reality to his father. His father is his own wonderful “I AM.” Well, that’s God! God’s name forever is “I AM.” So, I AM is waiting to feel the tones of reality of what he wants, and he feels it to be so real, so natural. Now, he knows this thing is subjective, so he said, “You sound like Jacob, but come closer, my son, that I may feel you,” and he feels him as I felt the rail on the ship, as I could smell the salt of the sea in the wind, as I could see mentally the island, as I could feel the ship rolling a little under my feet. All this was the tone of reality. This, now, is Esau; it seems real, and so I am giving a reality to this state . . I am giving a blessing to it.16 ¶37

Then I open my eyes to find I am sitting on a chair in my hotel room. Well, suddenly Esau returns. Well, Esau was the place that I left. The room that I sat in was my Esau; that was the objective world. It comes back. And I say, “What have I done?” I went into a state and I clothed it with reality. I gave it all the tones of an objective world, and it seemed so real to me that I gave it the blessing to be real . . to be born. Now this comes back, and without one word spoken, it is telling me, “You deceived yourself. You were deceived by my brother, the subjective state called Jacob.” And I say to myself . . knowing who God really is, He can’t take back His blessing. He gave it the right to be born . . the right to become objective . . the right to become real, and in 24 hours it was born, . . it was real. And, then, three weeks later I sailed on that ship and completed the entire journey. I’ve repeated it over and over again, and it never fails.16 ¶38

And those who will believe it and who will put it to the test cannot fail. They cannot fail. This is the principle of Scripture. So, will you actually give it the tones of reality? Will you actually, first of all, believe that the God that you now worship as something without, actually exists within you as your own wonderful human imagination? If you will believe that, and not think me blasphemous for telling it and think me something accursed for having spoken it . . but may I tell you, I hope for your sake you will believe it. But really, in my heart of hearts, whether you believe it or not, I am not concerned, because the day will come you will have to believe it, because you will experience it. If only I can aid you to hasten the day . . that’s why I am here. But to actually say I am going to hit you over the head and make you believe it . . no. I am not indifferent to your believing it; I can only appeal to you to believe it for your own good, that you may take whatever you have and transcend it by the use of this Law.16 ¶39

Whatever you have in this world, may I tell you, no one is really satisfied! I dined well today, but tomorrow I am going to be hungry. And hunger is forever with man, and God is the ultimate satisfaction of hunger, but that hasn’t yet come upon the majority. He tells us in the 8th chapter, the 11th verse, of Amos: “I will send a famine upon the world; it will not be a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.” Now, that comes at the very end, for the average man is not hungry for the word of God. He is complacent. He will say, “I AM a Christian!” So, what! “I AM a Christian. I go to church. I contribute to the church,” and so he thinks that means all that he does as a Christian . . it stops right there. Well, the hunger is not satisfied, because when He sends that hunger upon the individual, nothing but an experience of God can satisfy that hunger.16 ¶40

Well, until He sends that hunger, all the other hungers can be satisfied, like the hunger for security, the hunger for a better job, the hunger for a raise in authority in your present position, the hunger for . . you name it. Every hunger can be satisfied if you apply this principle. But then will come that day He will send the famine upon you, for you are the earth of which He speaks. It hasn’t a thing to do with the world, the famine in the world, or whether there is famine all over the world, because they don’t know how to satisfy their hunger. There is famine, but that is not the famine of which he speaks. He says it’s not a hunger for bread; it’s not a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the Word of God! So, I am giving you the Word of God as I personally have experienced it.16 ¶41

So, tonight you try it. Close your eyes to the obvious. That’s Esau; send him hunting. And, then, become self-deceived. In his absence, bring in the “second son,” who is the Lord from Heaven, and clothe him in the tones of reality, and feel how real it is. Give him all sensory vividness, and when it takes on the tones of reality, open your eyes! Then Esau comes back from the hunt, and then you tell him what you’ve done, and he cries out because your son . . the “second man” . . has deceived you and betrayed him the second time. Every day you can apply this principle and become self-deceived, but it works. But always keep it within the frame of the Golden Rule, so that no one will be hurt.16 ¶42

I do not care who did not get the passage north. I do not care what prompted the woman not to take it. I do not care what prompted the passenger from New York to cancel it. I have no complaints, no words; I simply did what I was called upon to do. I wanted to get out. I found myself locked in . . locked in until October at the earliest, with my commitments in Milwaukee going. I couldn’t do that. I had to get back, and get back, I did!16 ¶43

So, I tell you, this principle cannot fail you. But we are the operant power. And you do not get down on your knees and pray to an external god. Do exactly what the great William Lyons Phelps did, and say to the whole vast world, “I am not talking to you, my Dear,” . . I am communing with my Self. And if I give thanks for what has happened, I don’t give it to you; I give it to the Being-within-me . . constant praise for this miraculous power that is housed within me. And you walk in the consciousness of being constantly praiseful for this miraculous power that became you, that you may become It! And that power is the Lord Jesus Christ who is in you, and there is no other.16 ¶44

So, when the whole vast world is looking for Him to come from without, as the great evangelist today has said, “It is imminent. He is on us. He is coming. I am here to greet Him.” He will wait forever in vain. For when He comes, He is not coming from without. When He comes, He rises from within, and you are He! So, he’s reaching millions of people, but he’s in kindergarten. And what do you expect? He cannot give them more than milk. But in time, you have got to be weaned from milk, and take meat, and then the true meaning of the great mystery of the Christian faith.16 ¶45

So, the world has accepted it in a little story. All well and good, but don’t forever and forever go on seeing only the little story. Learn to extract the meaning of the story, and hope it unfolds within you. Meanwhile, you apply what you have heard tonight, and before I leave the City at the end of next week, you should be able to tell me that what you tonight desire you have. Now let us go into the Silence.16 ¶46

Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles (July, 1951)13 ¶1

Recently, I asked a very successful businessman his formula for success. He laughed and was a little embarrassed. Then he replied, “I guess it’s just because I can’t conceive of failure. It’s nothing that I think about much. It’s more a feeling that I have.” His statement coincided completely with my own beliefs and experiments. We can think about something forever and never see it in our world, but once let us feel its reality, and we are bound to encounter it. The more intensely we feel, the sooner we will encounter it.13 ¶2

We all regard feelings far too much as effects, and not sufficiently as causes of the events of the day. Feeling is not only the result of our conditions of life, it is also the creator of those conditions. We say we are happy because we are well, not realizing that the process will work equally well in the reverse direction. We are well because we are happy. We are all far too undisciplined in our feelings. To be joyful for another is to bless ourselves as well as him. To be angry with another is to punish ourselves for his fault. The distressed mind stays at home though the body travels to the ends of the earth, while the happy mind travels though the body remains at home.13 ¶3

Feeling is the secret of successful prayer, for in prayer, we feel ourselves into the situation of the answered prayer and, then, we live and act upon that conviction. Feeling after Him, as the Bible suggests, is a gradual unfolding of the soul’s hidden capacities. Feeling yields in importance to no other. It is the ferment without which no creation is possible. All forms of creative imagination imply elements of feeling. All emotional dispositions whatever may influence the creative imagination.13 ¶4

Feeling after Him has no finality. It is an acquisition, increasing in proportion to receptivity, which has not and never will have finality. An idea which is only an idea produces nothing and does nothing. It acts only if it is felt, if it is accompanied by effective feeling. Somewhere within the soul there is a mood which, if found, means wealth, health, happiness to us. The creative desire is innate in man. His whole happiness is involved in this impulse to create. Because men do not perfectly “feel,” the results of their prayers are unsure, when they might be perfectly sure.13 ¶5

We read in Proverbs, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine but a broken spirit drieth the bones.” Orchestral hearts burn in the oil of the lamp of the king. The spirit sings unto the Lord a new song. All true prayer wears a glad countenance; the good are anointed with the oil of gladness above their fellows.13 ¶6

Let us, then, watch our feelings, our reactions to the day’s events. And let us guard our feelings even more zealously in the act of prayer, for prayer is the true creative state. Dignity indicates that man hears the greater music of life, and moves to the tempo of its deeper meaning. If we did nothing but imagine and feel the lovely, the world’s reform would, at once, be accomplished.13 ¶7

Many of the stories of the Bible deal exclusively with the power of imagination and feeling. “Feeling after Him” is the cry of the truth seeker. Only imagination and feeling can restore the Eden from which experience has driven us. Feeling and imagination are the senses by which we perceive the beyond. Where knowledge ends, they begin. Every noble feeling of man is the opening for him of some door to the divine world. Let us measure men, not by the height of their cities, but by the magnificence of their imaginations and feelings. Let us turn our thought up to Heaven and mix our imagination with the angels. The world that moves us is the one we imagine, not the world that surrounds us. In the imagination lie the unexplored continents, and man’s great future adventure.13 ¶8

This consciousness of non-finality in “feeling after God” has been the experience of all earnest God-ward feelers. They realize that their conception of the Infinite has constantly deepened and expanded with experience. Those who endeavor to think out the meaning of the experience and to coordinate it with the rest of our knowledge, are the philosophic mystics; those who try to develop the faculty in themselves, and to deepen the experience are the practical or experimental mystics. Some, and among them the greatest, have tried to do both.13 ¶9

Religion begins in subjective experience. Religion is what a man does with his solitude, for in solitude we are compelled to subjective experience.13 ¶10

It is of the Religious Attitude that I shall speak next Sunday morning. This will be the last Sunday morning I shall take the service for Dr. Bailes this season. The service is held at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, near La Cienega.13 ¶11

A True Religious Attitude is man’s salvation. God never changes; it is we who are changing; our spiritual eyes are ever getting keener; and this enlargement of truth will bring us an ever-increasing inner peace. The best defense against the deceptive assault upon our mental and moral eyesight is the spiritual eye or the Eye of God. In other words, a spiritual ideal that cannot be changed by circumstance, a code of personal honor and integrity in ourselves and good will and love to others.13 ¶12

“Not what thou art, nor what thou hast been, beholdeth God with his merciful eyes, but that thou wouldst be.” Through the veins of the humblest man on earth runs the royal blood of being. Therefore, let us look at man through the eyes of imaginative love which is really seeing with the Eye of God.13 ¶13

Under the influence of the Eye of God, the ideal rises up out of the actual as water is etherialized by the sun into the imagery cloudland. Things altogether distant are present to the spiritual eye. The Eye of God makes the future dream a present fact. Not four months to harvest – look again. If we persist in this seeing, one day we will arise with the distance in our eyes, and all the staying, stagnant nearby will suddenly be of no importance. We will brush it aside as we pass on to our far-seen objective.13 ¶14

The man who really finds himself cannot do otherwise than let himself be guided by love. He is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity. Our ability to help others will be in proportion to our ability to control and help ourselves. The day a man achieves victory over himself, history will discover that to have been a victory over his enemy. The healing touch is in an attitude, and one day man will discover that one governs souls only with serenity. The mighty surrenders itself fully only to the most gentle.13 ¶15

Recognizing the power of feeling, let us pay strict attention to our moods and attitudes. Every stage of man’s progress is made through the exercise of his imagination and feeling. By creating an “ideal” within our mental sphere we can feel ourselves into this “ideal image” till we become one and the same with it, absorbing its qualities into the very core of our being.13 ¶16

The solitary or captive can, by the intensity of his imagination and feeling, effect myriads so that he can act through many men and speak through many voices. Extend your feelers, trust your touch, participate in all flights of your imaginations and be not afraid of your own sensitivities. The best way to feel another’s good is to be more intensely aware of it. Be like my friend and have “more of a feeling” for the health, the wealth, the happiness you desire.13 ¶17

Ideas do not bless unless they descend from Heaven and take flesh. Make results or accomplishments the crucial test of true imagination. As you observe these results, you will determine to fill your images with love and to walk in a high and noble mood for you will know with the poet: “That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields The sesamum was sesamum, the corn Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew So is man’s fate born.”13 ¶18