Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles (July, 1951). In the creation of a new way of life, we must begin at the beginning, with our own individual regeneration. The formation of organizations, political bodies, religious bodies, social bodies is not enough. The trouble we see goes deeper than we perceive. The essential revolution must happen within ourselves. Everything depends on our attitude towards ourself – that which we will not affirm within ourself can never develop in our world. This is the religion by which we live, for religion begins in subjective experience, like charity, it begins at home.11 ¶1

“Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” is the ancient formula and there is no other. Everything depends upon man’s attitude toward himself. That which he cannot or will not claim as true of himself can never evolve in his world. Man is constantly looking about his world and asking, “What’s to be done? What will happen?” when he should ask himself, “Who am I? What is my concept of myself?” If we wish to see the world a finer, greater place, we must affirm the reality of a finer, greater being within ourselves. It is the ultimate purpose of my teaching to point the road to this consummation.11 ¶2

I am trying to show you how the inner man must readjust himself – what must be the new premise of his life, in order that he may lose his soul on the level he now knows and find it again on the high level he seeks. It is impossible for man to see other than the contents of his own consciousness, for nothing has existence for us save through the consciousness we have of it. The ideal man is always seeking a new incarnation but unless we, ourselves, offer him human parentage, he is incapable of birth. We are the means whereby the redemption of nature from the law of cruelty is to be effected. The great purpose of consciousness is to effect this redemption. If we decline the burden and point to natural law as giving us conclusive proof that redemption of the world by imaginative love is something that can never come about, we simply nullify the purpose of our lives through want of faith. We reject the means, the only means, whereby this process of redemption must be effected.11 ¶3

The only test of religion worth making is whether it is trueborn – whether it springs from the deepest conviction of the individual, whether it is the fruit of inner experience. No religion is worthy of a man unless it gives him a deep and abiding sense that all is well, quite irrespective of what happens to him personally.11 ¶4

The methods of mental and of spiritual knowledge are entirely different, for we know a thing mentally by looking at it from the outside, by comparing it with other things, by analyzing and defining it. Whitehead has defined religion as that which a man does with his solitude. I should like to add, I believe it is what a man is in his solitude. In our solitude we are driven to subjective experience. It is, then, that we should imagine ourselves to be the ideal man we desire to see embodied in the world. If, in our solitude, we experience in our imagination what we would experience in reality had we achieved our goal, we will in time, become transformed into the image of our ideal.11 ¶5

“Be renewed in the spirit of your mind – put on the new man – speak every man truth with his neighbor.” The process of making a “Fact of being a fact of consciousness” is by the “renewing of our mind.” We are told to change our thinking. But we can’t change our thought unless we change our ideas. Our thoughts are the natural outpouring of our ideas, and our innermost ideas are the man himself.11 ¶6

The end of longing is always to be – not to do. Be still and know “I am that which I desire.” Strive always after being. External reforms are useless if your heart is not reformed. Heaven is entered not by curbing our passions; but rather, by cultivating our virtues. An old idea is not fickly forgotten, it is crowded out by new ideas. It disappears when a wholly new and absorbing idea occupies our attention. Old habits of thinking and feeling – like dead oak leaves – hang on till they are pushed off by new ones. Creativeness is basically a deeper receptiveness, a keener susceptibility.11 ¶7

The future dream must become a present fact in the mind of anyone who would alter his life. Every great out-picturing is preceded by a period of profound absorption. When that absorption is filled with our highest ideal, -- when we become that ideal – then we see it manifest in our world and we realize that the present does not recede into the past, but advances into the future. This is essentially how we change our future.11 ¶8

A “now” which is “elsewhere” has for us no absolute meaning. We only recognize “now” when it is at the same time “here.” When we feel ourselves into the desired state “here” and “now,” we have truly changed our future.11 ¶9

It is this “Changing Your Future” which I hope to explain to you fully next Sunday morning when I am speaking for Dr. Bailes at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega. It is my purpose to stir you to a higher concept of yourself and to explain so clearly the method by which you can achieve this concept that each one of you will leave the service on Sunday morning a transformed being.11 ¶10

Discouraged people are sorely in need of the inspiration of great principles. We must get back to first principles if we are to speak with a voice that will kindle the imagination and rouse the spirit. Again, I must repeat, in the creation of a new way of life, we must begin at the very beginning with our own individual regeneration.11 ¶11

Man’s chief delusion is his conviction that he can do anything. Everyone thinks he can do – everyone wants to do and all ask, “What to do? What to do?” It is impossible to do anything. One must be. It is hard for us to accept the fact that “We, of ourselves, do nothing.” It is especially difficult because it is the truth and the truth is always difficult for man to accept. But, actually, nobody can do anything. Everything happens – all that befalls man – all that is done by him – all that comes from him – all this happens, and it happens in exactly the same way that rain falls -- as a result of a change in the temperature in the higher regions of the atmosphere.11 ¶12

This is a challenge to us all. What concept are we holding of ourselves in the higher regions of our soul? Everything depends upon man’s attitude towards himself. That which he will not affirm as true within himself can never develop in his world. A change of concept of self is the right adjustment – the new relationship between the surface and the depth of man. Deepening is, in principle, always possible, for the ultimate depth lives in everyone, and it is only a question of becoming conscious of it.11 ¶13

Life demands of us the willingness to die and to be born again. This is not meant that we die in the flesh. We die in the spirit of the old man to become the new man, then we see the new man in the flesh. “Subjection to the will of God” is an old phrase for it and there is, I believe, no new one that is better. In that self-committal to the ideal we desire to express, all conflict is dispersed and we are transformed into the image of the ideal in whom we rest.11 ¶14

We are told that the man without a wedding garment reaches the Kingdom by cleverly pretending. He does not believe internally what he practices externally. He appears good, kind, charitable. He uses the right words, but inwardly he believes nothing. Coming into the strong light of those far more conscious than himself, he ceases to deceive. A wedding garment signifies a desire for union. He has no desire to unite with what he teaches, even if what he teaches is the truth. Therefore, he has no wedding garment.11 ¶15

When we are united with the truth, then we will put off the old nature and be renewed in the spirit of our mind. Truth will strip the clever pretenders of their false aristocracy. Truth, in its turn, will be conquered and governed by the aristocracy of goodness, the only unconquerable thing in the world.11 ¶16

Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles (July, 1951). I wish to ask each one of you listening to me today a question – a question which must be close to the hearts of us all concerning truth. If a man known to you as a murderer broke into your home and asked the whereabouts of your mother, would you tell him where she was? Would you tell him the truth? Would you? I venture not – I hope not.10 ¶1

In the most mystical of the Gospels – in the Gospel of St. John, we read, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Therein lies a challenge to us all, “The truth shall make you free.” If you told the truth concerning your mother, would you set her free? Again, in John we read, “Sanctify them by the truth.” If you gave your mother up to a murderer, would you “sanctify her?” What, then, is the truth of which the Bible so constantly speaks?10 ¶2

The truth of the Bible is always coupled with love. The truth of the Bible is that spiritual realization of conscious life in God towards which the human soul evolves through all eternity. Truth is an ever-increasing illumination. No one who seeks sincerely for truth need fear the outcome, for every raising erstwhile truth brings into view some larger truth which it had hidden.10 ¶3

The true seeker after truth is not a smug, critical, holier than thou person. Rather, the true seeker after truth knows the words of Zechariah to be true. “Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor, and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor.” The seeker after truth does not judge from appearances – he sees the good, the truth in all he observes. He knows that a true judgment need not conform to the external reality to which it relates.10 ¶4

Never are we so blind to the truth as when we see things as they seem to be. Only pictures that idealize really depict the truth. It is never superior insight but rather, purblindness that reads into the greatness of another some littleness with which it happens to be familiar.10 ¶5

We all know at least one petty gossip who not only imagines evil against his neighbor, but also insists upon spreading that evil far and wide. His cruel accusations are always accompanied by the statement, “It’s a fact,” or “I know it’s the truth.” How far from the truth he is. Even if it were the truth as he knows the truth, it is better not to voice it for “A truth told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.”10 ¶6

Such a man is not a seeker after the truth as revealed in the Bible. He seeks not truth so much as support for his own point of view. By his prejudices, he opens a door by which his enemies enter and make their own the secret places of his heart.10 ¶7

Let us seek sincerely for the truth as Robert Browning expresses it: “Truth is within ourselves; it take no rise From outward things, whate’er you may believe. There is an immortal center in us all Where truth abides in fullness.” The truth that is within us is governed by imaginative love. Knowing this great truth, we can no longer imagine evil against any neighbor. We will imagine the best of our neighbor. It is my belief that wherever man’s attitude towards life is governed by imaginative love, there it is religious – there he worships – there he perceives the truth.10 ¶8

I am going to speak on this subject next Sunday morning when my title will be, “Imaginative Love.” At that time, I am to have the pleasure and the privilege of taking Dr. Frederick Bailes’ service at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega. The service will be held as Dr. Bailes always conducts it at 10:30 Sunday morning.10 ¶9

It is an intuitive desire of all mankind to be a finer, nobler being, to do the loving thing. But we can do the loving thing only when all we imagine is full of love for our neighbor. Then we know the truth, the truth that sets all mankind free. I believe this is a message that will aid us all in the art of living a better and finer life.10 ¶10

Infinite love in unthinkable origin was called God, the Father. Infinite love in creative expression was called God, the Son. Infinite love in universal interpenetration, in Infinite Immanence, and in Eternal procession, was called God, the Holy Ghost. We must learn to know ourselves as Infinite Love, as good rather than evil. This is not something that we have to become; it is, rather, for us to recognize something that we are already.10 ¶11

The original birthplace of imagination is in love. Love is its lifeblood. Insofar as imagination retains its own life’s blood, its visions are images of truth. Then it mirrors the living identity of the thing it beholds. But if imagination should deny the very power that has brought it to birth, then the direst sort of horror will begin. Instead of rendering back living images of the truth, imagination will fly to love’s opposite – fear and its visions will then be perverted and contorted reflections cast upon a screen of frightful fantasy. Instead of being the supremely creative power, it will become the active agent of destruction.10 ¶12

Wherever man’s attitude to life is truly imaginative, there man and God are merged in creative unity. Remember that Love is always creative, causative in every sphere from the highest to the very lowest. There never has existed thought, word or deed that was not caused by love, or by its opposite – fear of some kind, even if it were only a desire of a not very worthy aim. Love and fear are the mainspring of our mental machinery.10 ¶13

Everything is a thought before it becomes a thing. I suggest the pursuit of a high ideal to make a fact of being become a fact of consciousness and to do this by training the imagination to realize that the only atmosphere in which we truly live and move and have our being is Infinite Love. God is Love. Love never faileth.10 ¶14

Infinite Creative Spirit is Love. The urge that caused Infinite unconditioned consciousness to condition Itself into millions of sensitive forms is Love. Love regarded as an abstraction – apart from an object – is unthinkable. Love is not love if there is no beloved. Love only becomes thinkable in relation, in process, in act.10 ¶15

Let us recognize with Blake that, “He who will not live by love must be subdued by fear,” and set ourselves the highest of ideals to love and to live by. But our highest ideals do not bless unless they come down and take on flesh. We must make results and accomplishments the crucial test of our imagination and our love, for incarnation is the only true realization. Our faithfulness must be to the sum of all the truth we know and it must be absolute. Otherwise, that truth lacks a vehicle and cannot be incarnated in us.10 ¶16

Our concept of ourselves determines the scenery of our lives. We are ever our own jailers. The prison doors that we thought closed are truly ajar – waiting for us to see the truth.10 ¶17

“Man ever surrounds himself with the true image of himself,” said Emerson. “Every spirit builds itself a house and beyond its house, a world, and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then the world exists for you, for you the phenomenon is perfect. What we are that only can we see. All that Adam had, all the Caesar could, you have and can do.”10 ¶18

Adam called his house heaven and earth. Caesar called his house, Rome. You perhaps call yours a cobbler’s trade, or a hundred acres of land, or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line, and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without such fine names.10 ¶19

“Build, therefore, your own world, and as fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.”10 ¶20

The truth is our secret inward reality, the cause, the meaning, the relation of our lives to all things. Let the truth carry us heavenwards, expanding our conceptions, increasing our understanding until we know the “Truth” and are made “Free.”10 ¶21

Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles (July, 1951). It has been my privilege and pleasure to address Dr. Frederick Bailes’ Sunday audiences in the past few years. Today, I am to extend the privilege in speaking to you, his unseen audience of the radio. This will be a very practical series of talks for my subjects will be drawn largely from the Bible, the most spiritual of all books. And I am firmly convinced that whatever is most profoundly spiritual is, in reality, most directly practical.9 ¶1

All mistakes made in Biblical interpretation come from referring statements of which the intention is spiritual and mystical, and implying principles or states to times, persons or places. In one sense, not one work of Scripture is true according to the letter . Yet, I say that every word is true; but the Scriptures are true only as He intended them that spoke them; they are true as God meant them, not as man will have them. A spiritual and symbolical interpretation alone yields truth, whilst a literal acceptation profits nothing. The Bible contains historical elements, but these are always used as picture language of great ideas.9 ¶2

The Gospel narrative is to be studied in order that we may know. It does not convey knowledge immediately. Getting to know is a gradual process – a progressive inner experience. God reveals Himself within us as we are able to receive Him. The deep meanings have always been recognized partially by a few, as will be found by consulting the writings of the seers of all past ages.9 ¶3

In assigning to the Bible its proper meaning, it is necessary to remember that as mystical Scriptures it deals primarily, not with material things or persons, but with spiritual significations. The Bible is addressed not to the outer sense or reason, but to the soul. Its object is not to give an historical account of physical life, but to exhibit the spiritual possibilities of humanity, at large, for religion is not in its nature historical and dependent upon actual sensible events, but consists in processes such as Faith and Redemption. These, being interior to all men, subsist irrespective of what any particular man has at any time done.9 ¶4

The perennial value of the Bible is its symbolic value. There are great controversies as to what is and what is not historical in the Bible, but let us remember that if we could settle all the historical questions tomorrow, that would not give us religion, nor would it give the Bible a biding value. Everything depends upon our finding the symbolical value of the facts. A fact of past history has nothing in it for present day religion unless it stands forth as a symbol of a Reality behind itself.9 ¶5

The Bible is a revelation of Truth expressed in Divine symbolism. From the literal point of view, the wording may sometimes be confusing; it is the symbolism, alone, which is precious and worthy of our best efforts to elucidate. All Scripture was written from the inward mystery and not with a mystical sense put into it. The stories conceal an underlying meaning, and the task of scripture interpretation is to discover these psychological truths which are expressed in this symbolism. We, here, are not concerned with the surface meaning of the Scripture, whether it be reasonable or absurd, for in no case does it constitute the inner truth we are seeking.9 ¶6

Throughout the centuries we have mistakenly taken personification for persons, allegory for history, the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself, and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended. In most of the little things of life, this confusion is of trivial consequence. But the error which arises when you carry the confusion into questions of greater moment, such as religion, assumes gigantic proportions.9 ¶7

For centuries, men have sought eagerly for bits of evidence which might be related to the happenings described in the Bible. While most people believe that its characters lived, no proof of their lives on earth has ever been found and may never be found. This is unimportant for the ancient teachers were not writing history, but an allegorical picture lesson of certain basic principles, which they clothed in the garb of history.9 ¶8

The form of the various stories of the Bible is as distinct from its substance as the form of a grain of wheat is distinct from the life germ within it. As the assimilative organs of the body discriminate between food that can be built into the physical system and food that must be cast off, so do the awakened intuitive faculties discover, beneath allegory and parable, the psychological life germ, and feeding on this, they cast off the fiction which conveyed it.9 ¶9

The Bible is the largest selling book in this country. It is probably the least read and certainly the least understood. Throughout the Bible, the symbols of stone, water and wine are used. The stones of the Bible are its literal truths. The Ten Commandments, we are told, were written on stone. The water of the Bible is the psychological meaning hidden in these literal truths of stone. “I give you living waters,” that is, the inner knowledge that can make these stories a living reality in your life. The wine you must make for yourself through the wise use of this living water or psychological truth. This is an absolute necessity to the truly religious man. This is what Sir Walter Scott meant when he said, “Man’s greatest education is that which he gives to himself.”9 ¶10

On Sunday morning, I shall speak on, “Are You Stone, Water or Wine?” I shall be taking Dr. Bailes’ service at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega. When you hear this message, you may ask yourselves, “Are you stone, water or wine?” You may judge whether your understanding of the Bible is merely literal, psychological, or truly spiritual and, therefore, profoundly practical.9 ¶11

The Bible is, from beginning to end, all about transcending the violence which characterizes mankind’s present level of being. It affirms the possibility of a development of another level of being surmounting violence. The point of view taken is that the goal of man is this inner development, which is the only real psychology. To take the Bible away from its central idea of rebirth, which means an inner evolution and implies the existence of a higher level, is to understand nothing of its real meaning.9 ¶12

The Word of God, that is, the psychological teaching in the Bible, is to make a man different, first in thought and then in being, so that he becomes a new man or is born again. Whenever an entirely new attitude enters into a person’s life, psychological rebirth to some extent has occurred. Man wants to be better, not different. The Bible speaks, not of being better, but of another man, a man reborn. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God… Except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again.”9 ¶13

The Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone for those incapable of seeing any deeper meaning. Stone represents the most external and literal form of spiritual truth, and water refers to another way of understanding the same truth. Wine or spirit is the highest form of understanding it.9 ¶14

“Such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be,” wrote John Smith, the Cambridge Platonist. “The God of the moralist is before all things a great judge and schoolmaster; the God of Science is impersonal and inflexible Vital Law; the God of the savage is the kind of chief he would be himself if he had the opportunity.” No man’s conduct will be higher than his conception of God, and his conception of God is determined by the kind of man he, himself, is. “For such as men themselves are, such will God appear to them to be,” and what is true of man’s concept of God is equally true of man’s concept of God’s Word, the Bible. It will be to him what he is to himself.9 ¶15

“God is God from the creation, Truth alone is man’s salvation; But the God that now you worship Soon shall be your God no more For the soul in its unfolding Evermore its thoughts remolding, Learns more truly in its progress How to love and to adore.”9 ¶16

Radio Talk, Station KECA, Los Angeles (July, 1951) How many times have we heard someone say, “Oh, it’s only his imagination?” Only his imagination - man’s imagination is the man himself. No man has too little imagination, but few men have disciplined their imagination. Imagination is itself indestructible. Therein lies the horror of its misuse.7 ¶1

Daily, we pass some stranger on the street and observe him muttering to himself, carrying on an imaginary argument with one not present. He is arguing with vehemence, with fear or with hatred, not realizing that he is setting in motion, by his imagination, an unpleasant event which he will presently encounter. The world, as imagination sees it, is the real world. Not facts, but figments of the imagination, shape our daily lives. It is the exact and literal minded who live in a fictitious world.7 ¶2

Only imagination can restore the Eden from which experience has driven us out. Imagination is the sense by which we perceived the above, the power by which we resolve vision into being. Every stage of man’s progress is made by the exercise of the imagination. It is only because men do not perfectly imagine and believe that their results are sometimes uncertain when they might always be perfectly certain.7 ¶3

Determined imagination is the beginning of all successful operation. The imagination, alone, is the means of fulfilling the intention. The man who, at will, can call up whatever image he pleases is, by virtue of the power of his imagination, least of all subject to caprice. The solitary or captive can, by intensity of imagination and feeling, affect myriads so that he can act through many men and speak through many voices.7 ¶4

“We should never be certain,” wrote William Butler Yeats in his IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL, “that it was not some woman treading in the wine-press who began that subtle change in men’s minds, or that the passion did not begin in the mind of some shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way.”7 ¶5

Let me tell you the story of a very dear friend of mine, at the time the costume designer of the Music Hall in New York. She told me, one day, of her difficulty in working with one of the producers who invariably criticized and rejected her best work unjustly; that he was often rude and seemed deliberately unfair to her.7 ¶6

Upon hearing her story, I reminded her, as I am reminding you, that men can only echo to us that which we whisper to them in secret. I had no doubt but that she silently argued with the producer, not in the flesh, but in quiet moments to herself. She confessed that she did just that each morning as she walked to work.7 ¶7

I asked her to change her attitude toward him, to assume that he was congratulating her on her fine designs and she, in turn, was thanking him for his praise and kindness. This young designer took my advice and as she walked to the theater, she imagined a perfect relationship of the producer praising her work and she, in turn, responding with gratitude for his appreciation. This she did morning after morning and in a very short while, she discovered for herself that her own attitude determined the scenery of her existence.7 ¶8

The behavior of the producer completely reversed itself. He became the most pleasant professional employer she had encountered. His behavior merely echoed the changes that she had whispered within herself. What she did was by the power of imagination. Her fantasy led his; and she, herself, dictated to him the discourse they eventually had together at the time she was seemingly walking alone.7 ¶9

Let us set ourselves, here and now, a daily exercise of controlling and disciplining our imagination. What finer beginning than to imagine better than the best we know for a friend. There is no coal of character so dead that it will not glow and flame if but slightly turned. Don’t blame; only resolve. Life, like music, can, by a new setting, turn all its discords into harmonies. Represent your friend to yourself as already expressing that which he desires to be. Let us know that with whatever attitude we approach another, a similar attitude approaches us.7 ¶10

How can we do this? Do what my friend did. To establish rapport, call your friend mentally. Focus your attention on him and mentally call his name just as you would to attract his attention were you to see him on the street. Imagine that he has answered, mentally hear his voice – imagine that he is telling you of the great good you have desired for him. You, in turn, tell him of your joy in witnessing his good fortune.7 ¶11

Having mentally heard that which you wanted to hear, having thrilled to the news heard, go about your daily task. Your imagined conversation must awaken what it affirmed; the acceptance of the end wills the means. And the wisest reflection could not devise more effective means than those which are willed by the acceptance of the end.7 ¶12

However, your conversation with your friend must be in a manner which does not express the slightest doubt as to the truth of what you imagine that you hear and say. If you do not control your imagination, you will find that you are hearing and saying all that you formerly heard and said. We are creatures of habit; and habit, though not law, acts like the most compelling law in the world.7 ¶13

With this knowledge of the power of imagination, be as the disciplined man and transform your world by imagining and feeling only what is lovely and of good report. The beautiful idea you awaken in yourself shall not fail to arouse its affinity in others. Do not wait four months for the harvest. Today is the day to practice the control and discipline of your imagination. Man is only limited by weakness of attention and poverty of imagination. The great secret is a controlled imagination and a well sustained attention, firmly and repeatedly focused on the object to be accomplished.7 ¶14

“Now is the acceptable time to give beauty for ashes, joy for mourning, praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that He might be glorified.”7 ¶15

Now is the time to control our imagination and attention. By control, I do not mean restraint by will power but rather cultivation through love and compassion. With so much of the world in discord we cannot possibly emphasize too strongly the power of imaginative love.7 ¶16

Imaginative Love, that is my subject next Sunday morning when I shall speak for Dr. Bailes while he is on his holiday. The services will be held as always at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard, near La Cienega at 10:30.7 ¶17

“As the world is, so is the individual,” should be changed to, “As the individual is so is the world.” And I hope to be able to bring to each of you present the true meaning of the words of Zechariah, “Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor and let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor.” What a wonderful challenge to you and to me.7 ¶18

“As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” As a man imagines so is he. Hold fast to love in your imagination. By creating an ideal within your mental sphere you can approximate yourself to this “ideal image” till you become one and the same with it, thereby transforming yourself into it, or rather, absorbing its qualities into the very core of your being. Never, never, lose sight of the power that is within you.7 ¶19

Imaginative love lifts the invisible into sight and gives us water in the desert. It builds for the soul its only fit abiding place. Beauty, love and all of good report are the garden, but imaginative love is the way into the garden.7 ¶20

Sow an imaginary conversation, you reap an act; Sow an act, you reap a habit; Sow a habit, you reap a character; Sow a character, you reap your destiny. By imagination, we are all reaping our destinies, whether they be good, bad, or indifferent. Imagination has full power of objective realization and every stage of man’s progress or regression is made by the exercise of imagination.7 ¶21

I believe with William Blake, “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, and eternal death.”7 ¶22

By imagination and desire we become what we desire to be. Let us affirm to ourselves that we are what we imagine. If we persist in the assumption that we are what we wish to be, we will become transformed into that which we have imagined ourselves to be.7 ¶23

We were born by a natural miracle of love and for a brief space of time our needs were all another’s care. In that simple truth lies the secret of life. Except by love, we cannot truly live at all.7 ¶24

Our parents in their separate individualities have no power to transmit life. So, back we come to the basic truth that life is the offspring of love. Therefore, no love, no life. Thus, it is rational to say that, “God is Love.”7 ¶25

Love is our birthright. Love is the fundamental necessity of our life.7 ¶26

“Do not go seeking for that which you are. Those who go seeking for love only make manifest their own lovelessness and the loveless never find love. Only the loving find love and they never have to seek for it.”7 ¶27

Tonight we have the fifth and last lesson in this course. First I shall give you a sort of summary of what has gone before. Then, since so many of you have asked me to elaborate further on Lesson 3, I shall give you a few more ideas on thinking fourth-dimensionally.5 ¶1

I know that when a man sees a thing clearly he can tell it, he can explain it. This past winter in Barbados a fisherman, whose vocabulary would not encompass a thousand words, told me more in five minutes about the behaviour of the dolphin than Shakespeare with his vast vocabulary could have told me, if he did not know the habits of the dolphin. This fisherman told me how the dolphin loves to play on a piece of drift-wood, and in order to catch him, you throw the wood out and bait him as you would bait children, because he likes to pretend he is getting out of the water. As I said, this man’s vocabulary was very limited, but he knew his fish, and he knew the sea. Because he knew his dolphin he could tell me all about their habits and how to catch them. When you say you know a thing but you cannot explain it, I say you do not know it, for when you really know it you naturally express it.5 ¶2

If I should ask you now to define prayer, and say to you, “How would you, through prayer, go about realizing an objective, any objective?” If you can tell me, then you know it; but if you cannot tell me, then you do not know it. When you see it clearly in the mind’s eye the greater you will inspire the words which are necessary to clothe the idea and express it beautifully, and you will express the idea far better than a man with a vast vocabulary who does not see it as clearly as you do.5 ¶3

If you have listened carefully throughout the past four days, you know now that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons that ever existed, or to any events that ever occurred upon earth. The authors of the Bible were not writing history, they were writing a great drama of the mind which they dressed up in the garb of history, and then adapted it to the limited capacity of the uncritical, unthinking masses.5 ¶4

You know that every story in the Bible is your story, that when the writers introduce dozens of characters in the same story they are trying to present you with different attributes of the mind that you may employ. You saw it as I took perhaps a dozen or more stories and interpreted them for you.5 ¶5

For instance, many people wonder how Jesus, the most gracious, the most loving man in the world, if he be man, could say to his mother what he is supposed to have said to her, as recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Jesus is made to say to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” You and I, who are not yet identified with the ideal we serve, would not make such a statement to our mother. Yet here was the embodiment of love saying to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” You are Jesus, and your mother is your own consciousness. For consciousness is the cause of all; therefore, it is the great father-mother of all phenomena. You and I are creatures of habit. We get into the habit of accepting as final the evidence of our senses. Wine is needed for the guests, and my senses tell me that there is no wine, and I through habit am about to accept this lack as final. When I remember that my consciousness is the one and only reality, therefore, if I deny the evidence of my senses and assume the consciousness of having sufficient wine, I have in a sense rebuked my mother, or the consciousness which suggested lack; and by assuming the consciousness of having what I desire for my guests, wine is produced in a way we do not know.5 ¶6

I have just read a note here from a dear friend of mine in the audience. Last Sunday he had an appointment at a church for a wedding; the clock told him he was late, everything told him he was late. He was standing on a street corner waiting for a street car. There was none in sight. He imagined that, instead of being on the street corner, that he was in the church. At that moment a car stopped in front of him. My friend told the driver of his predicament and the driver said to him, “I am not going that way, but I will take you there.” My friend got into the car and was at the church in time for the service. That is applying the law correctly, non-acceptance of the suggestion of lateness.5 ¶7

Never accept the suggestion of lack. In this case I say to myself, “What have I to do with thee?” What have I to do with the evidence of my senses? Bring me all the pots and fill them. In other words, I assume that I have wine and all that I desire. Then my dimensionally greater Self inspires in all the thoughts and the actions which aid the embodiment of my assumption. It is not a man saying to a mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” It is every man who knows this law who will say to himself, when his senses suggest lack, “What have I to do with thee? Get behind me.” I will never again listen to a voice like that, because if I do, then I am impregnated by that suggestion and I will bear the fruit of lack.5 ¶8

We turn to another story in the Gospel of St. Mark where Jesus is hungry. “And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.” “And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.” “And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.”5 ¶9

What tree am I blasting? Not a tree on the outside. It is my own consciousness. “I am the vine.” My consciousness, my I AMness is the great tree, and habit once more suggests emptiness, it suggests barrenness, it suggests four months before I can feast. But I cannot wait four months. I give myself this powerful suggestion that never again will I even for a moment relieve that it will take four months to realize my desire. The belief in lack must from this day on be barren and never again reproduce itself in my mind.5 ¶10

It is not a man blasting a tree. Everything in the Bible takes place in the mind of man: the tree, the city, the people, everything. There is not a statement made in the Bible that does not represent some attribute of the human mind. They are all personifications of the mind and not things within the world.5 ¶11

Consciousness is the one and only reality. There is no one to whom we can turn after we discover that our own awareness is God. For God is the cause of all and there is nothing but God. You cannot say that a devil causes some things and God others. Listen to these words. “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.” “I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.” “And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.” “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” “I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.” “I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.” “I AM the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.”5 ¶12

Read these words carefully. They are not my words, they are the inspired words of men who discovered that consciousness is the only reality. If I am hurt, I am self hurt. If there is darkness in my world, I created the darkness and the gloom and the depression. If there is light and joy, I created the light and the joy. There is no one but this I AMness that does all. You cannot find a cause outside of your own consciousness. Your world is a grand mirror constantly telling you who you are. As you meet people, they tell you by their behaviour who you are.5 ¶13

Your prayers will not be less devout because you turn to your own consciousness for help. I do not think that any person in prayer feels more of the joy, the piety, and the feeling of adoration, than I do when I feel thankful, as I assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled, knowing at the same time it is to myself that I turned.5 ¶14

In prayer you are called upon to believe that you possess what your reason and your senses deny. When you pray, believe that you have, and you shall receive. The Bible states it this way: “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” “And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” “But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”5 ¶15

That is what we must do when we pray. If I hold some thing against another, be it a belief of sickness, poverty, or anything else, I must loose it and let it go, not by using words of denial but by believing him to be what he desires to be. In that way I completely forgive him. I changed my concept of him. I had ought against him and I forgave him.5 ¶16

Complete forgetfulness is forgiveness. If I do not forget then I have not forgiven. I only forgive something when I truly forget. I can say to you until the end of time, “I forgive you.” But if every time I see you or think of you, I am reminded of what I held against you, I have not forgiven you at all.5 ¶17

Forgiveness is complete forgetfulness. You go to a doctor and he gives you something for your sickness. He is trying to take it from you, so he gives you something in place of it. Give yourself a new concept of self for the old concept. Give up the old concept completely.5 ¶18

A prayer granted implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, I myself am the spring of action, the directing mind and the one who grants the prayer. Anyone who prays successfully turns within, and appropriates the state sought. You have no sacrifice to offer. Do not let anyone tell you that you must struggle and suffer. You need not struggle for the realization of your desire. Read what it says in the Bible. “To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.” “When ye come to appear before me, who hath required that at your hand, to tread my courts?” “Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.” “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them.” “Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel.” “Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth.” “Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.” “Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head. They shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.”5 ¶19

The only acceptable gift is a joyful heart. Come with singing and praise. That is the way to come before the Lord — your own consciousness. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, and you have brought the only acceptable gift. All states of mind other than that of the wish fulfilled are an abomination; they are superstition and mean nothing. When you come before me, rejoice, because rejoicing implies that something has happened which you desired. Come before me singing, giving praise, and giving thanks, for these states of mind imply acceptance of the state sought. Put yourself in the proper mood and your own consciousness will embody it.5 ¶20

If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.” I would try to sustain it without effort, that is, I would live and act as though it were already a fact, knowing that as I walk in this fixed attitude my assumption will harden into fact.5 ¶21

Time does not permit me to go any further into the argument that the Bible is not history. But if you have listened attentively to my message these past four nights, I do not think you want any more proof that the Bible is not history. Apply what you have heard and you will realize your desires. **************5 ¶22

“And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” Many persons, myself included, have observed events before they occurred; that is, before they occurred in this world of three dimensions. Since man can observe an event before it occurs in the three dimensions of space, then life on earth proceeds according to plan; and this plan must exist elsewhere in another dimension and is slowly moving through our space. If the occurring events were not in this world when they were observed, then to be perfectly logical they must have been out of this world. And whatever is THERE to be seen before it occurs HERE must be “pre-determined” from the point of view of man awake in a three-dimensional world.5 ¶23

Yet the ancient teachers taught us that we could alter the future, and my own experience confirms the truth of their teaching. Therefore, my object in giving this course is to indicate possibilities inherent in man, to show that man can alter his future; but, thus altered, it forms again a deterministic sequence starting from the point of interference — a future that will be consistent with the alteration. The most remarkable feature of man’s future is its flexibility. The future, although prepared in advance in every detail, has several outcomes. We have at every moment of our lives the choice before us which of several futures we will have.5 ¶24

There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by everyone — a natural focus and a spiritual focus. The ancient teachers called the one “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.” We may differentiate them as ordinary waking consciousness, governed by our senses, and a controlled imagination, governed by desire. We recognize these two distinct centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The natural view confines reality to the moment called NOW. To the natural view, the past and future are purely imaginary. The spiritual view, on the other hand, sees the contents of time. The past and future are a present whole to the spiritual view. What is mental and subjective to the natural man is concrete and objective to the spiritual man.5 ¶25

The habit of seeing only that which our senses permit renders us totally blind to what, otherwise, we could see. To cultivate the faculty of seeing the invisible, we should often deliberately disentangle our minds from the evidence of the senses and focus our attention on an invisible state, mentally feeling it and sensing it until it has all the distinctness of reality. Earnest, concentrated thought focused in a particular direction shuts out other sensations and causes them to disappear. We have only to concentrate on the state desired in order to see it. The habit of withdrawing attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on the invisible develops our spiritual outlook and enables us to penetrate beyond the world of sense and to see that which is invisible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” This vision is completely independent of the natural faculties. Open it and quicken it! A little practice will convince us that we can, by controlling our imagination, reshape our future in harmony with our desire.5 ¶26

Desire is the mainspring of action. We could not move a single finger unless we had a desire to move it. No matter what we do, we follow the desire which at the moment dominates our minds. When we break a habit, our desire to break it is greater than our desire to continue the habit. The desires which impel us to action are those which hold our attention. A desire is but an awareness of something we lack and need to make our life more enjoyable. Desires always have some personal gain in view, the greater the anticipated gain, the more intense is the desire. There is no absolutely unselfish desire. Where there is nothing to gain there is no desire, and consequently no action.5 ¶27

The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in ready obedience to its voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal has said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.” Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, and then living and acting on this conviction, alters the future in harmony with his assumption. Assumptions awaken what they affirm. As soon as man assumes the feeling of his wish fulfilled, his fourth-dimensional Self finds ways for the attainment of this end, discovers methods for its realization.5 ¶28

I know of no clearer definition of the means by which we realize our desires than to EXPERIENCE IN THE IMAGINATION WHAT WE WOULD EXPERIENCE IN THE FLESH WERE WE TO ACHIEVE OUR GOAL. This imaginary experience of the end with acceptance, wills the means. The fourth-dimensional Self then constructs with its larger outlook the means necessary to realize the accepted end.5 ¶29

The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by the senses. But here is a technique that makes it easy to “call things which are not seen as though they were,” that is, to encounter an event before it occurs. People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things. But this simple formula for changing the future was discovered after years of searching and experimenting.5 ¶30

The first step in changing the future is DESIRE, that is, define your objective — know definitely what you want. Secondly, construct an event which you believe you would encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — an event which implies fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant. Thirdly, immobilize the physical body and induce a condition akin to sleep by imagining that you are sleepy. Lie on a bed, or relax in a chair. Then, with eyelids closed and your attention focused on the action you intend to experience in imagination, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action here and now. You must always participate in the imaginary action; not merely stand back and look on, but feel that you are actually performing the action so that the imaginary sensation is real to you.5 ¶31

It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which FOLLOWS the fulfillment of your desire. Also you must feel yourself into the action until it has all the vividness and distinctness of reality. For example, suppose you desire promotion in your office. Being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination, immobilize the physical body; and induce a state akin to sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive without effort. Then visualize a friend standing before you. Put your imaginary hand into his. Feel it to be solid and real, and carry on an imaginary conversation with him in harmony with the action.5 ¶32

You do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, you make elsewhere HERE, and the future NOW. The future event is a reality NOW in a dimensionally larger world and oddly enough, now in a dimensionally larger world is equivalent to HERE in the ordinary three-dimensional space of everyday life. The difference between FEELING yourself in action, here and now, and visualizing yourself in action, as though you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and failure. The difference will be appreciated if you will now visualize yourself climbing a ladder. Then, with eyelids closed imagine that a ladder is right in front of you and FEEL yourself actually climbing it.5 ¶33

Desire, physical immobility bordering on sleep, and imaginary action in which Sell feelingly predominates HERE AND NOW are not only important factors in altering the future, but they are also essential conditions in consciously projecting the spiritual Self. When the physical body is immobilized and we become possessed of the idea to do something — if we imagine that we are doing it HERE AND NOW and keep the imaginary action feelingly going right up until sleep ensues — we are likely to awaken out of the physical body to find ourselves in a dimensionally larger world with a dimensionally larger focus and actually doing what we desired and imagined we were doing in the flesh. But whether we awaken there or not, we are actually performing the action in the fourth-dimensional world, and will in the future re-enact it here in the third-dimensional world.5 ¶34

Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action, to condense the idea which is to be the object of our meditation into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, the attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to our attention, and in a few seconds they will lead us hundreds of miles away from our objective in point of space, and years away in point of time.5 ¶35

If we decide to climb a particular flight of stairs, because that is the likely event to follow the realization of our desire, then we must restrict the action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should the attention wander off, bring it back to its task of climbing that flight of stairs, and keep on doing so until the imaginary action has all the solidity and distinctness of reality.5 ¶36

The idea must be maintained in the field of presentation without any sensible effort on our part. We must, with the minimum of effort, permeate the mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Drowsiness facilitates change because it favours attention without effort, but it must not be pushed to the state of sleep, in which we shall no longer be able to control the movements of our attention, but a moderate degree of drowsiness in which we are still able to direct our thoughts.5 ¶37

A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and sleepy state, repeat over and over again like a lullaby, any short phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, such as, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” until the single sensation of thankfulness dominates the mind. Speak these words as though you addressed a higher power for having done it for you. If, however, we seek a conscious projection in a dimensionally larger world, then we must keep the action going right up until sleep ensues. Experience in imagination with all the distinctness of reality what would be experienced in the flesh were we to achieve our goal and we shall in time meet it in the flesh as we met it in our imagination.5 ¶38

Feed the mind with premises — that is, assertions presumed to be true, because assumptions, though false, if persisted in until they have the feeling of reality, will harden into fact. To an assumption, all means which promote its realization are good. It influences the behaviour of all, by inspiring in all the movements, the actions, and the words which tend towards its fulfillment.5 ¶39

To understand how man molds his future in harmony with his assumption — by simply experiencing in his imagination what he would experience in reality were he to realize his goal – we must know what we mean by a dimensionally larger world, for it is to a dimensionally larger world that we go to alter our future. The observation of an event before it occurs implies that the event is predetermined from the point of view of man in the three-dimensional world. Therefore to change the conditions here in the three dimensions of space we must first change them in the four dimensions of space.5 ¶40

Man does not know exactly what is meant by a dimensionally larger world, and would no doubt deny the existence of a dimensionally larger Self. He is quite familiar with the three dimensions of length, width and height, and he feels that, if there were a fourth-dimension, it should be just as obvious to him as the dimensions of length, width and height. Now a dimension is not a line. It is any way in which a thing can be measured that is entirely different from all other ways. That is, to measure a solid fourth-dimensionally, we simply measure it in any direction except that of its length, width and height. Now, is there another way of measuring an object other than those of its length, width and height? Time measures my life without employing the three dimensions of length, width and height. There is no such thing as an instantaneous object. Its appearance and disappearance are measurable. It endures for a definite length of time. We can measure its life span without using the dimensions of length, width and height. Time is definitely a fourth way of measuring an object.5 ¶41

The more dimensions an object has, the more substantial and real it becomes. A straight line, which lies entirely in one dimension, acquires shape, mass and substance by the addition of dimensions. What new quality would time, the fourth dimension give, which would make it just as vastly superior to solids, as solids are to surfaces and surfaces are to lines? Time is a medium for changes in experience, for all changes take time. The new quality is changeability.5 ¶42

Observe that, if we bisect a solid, its cross section will be a surface; by bisecting a surface, we obtain a line, and by bisecting a line, we get a point. This means that a point is but a cross section of a line, which is, in turn, but across section of a surface, which is, in turn, but a cross section of a solid, which is, in turn, if carried to its logical conclusion, but across section of a four-dimensional object. We cannot avoid the inference that all three-dimensional objects are but cross sections of four-dimensional bodies.5 ¶43

Which means: when I meet you, I meet a cross section of the four-dimensional you — the four-dimensional Self that is not seen. To see the four-dimensional Self I must see every cross section or moment of your life from birth to death, and see them all as co-existing. My focus should take in the entire array of sensory impressions which you have experienced on earth, plus those you might encounter. I should see them, not in the order in which they were experienced by you, but as a present whole. Because CHANGE is the characteristic of the fourth dimension, I should see them in a state of flux — as a living, animated whole.5 ¶44

Now, if we have all this clearly fixed in our minds, what does it mean to us in this three-dimensional world? It means that, if we can move along time’s length, we can see the future and alter it if we so desire.5 ¶45

This world, which we think so solidly real, is a shadow out of which and beyond which we may at any time pass. It is an abstraction from a more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — a more fundamental world abstracted from a still more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — and so on to infinity. For the absolute is unattainable by any means or analysis, no matter how many dimensions we add to the world.5 ¶46

Man can prove the existence of a dimensionally larger world by simply focusing his attention on an invisible state and imagining that he sees and feels it. If he remains concentrated in this state, his present environment will pass away, and he will awaken in a dimensionally larger world where the object of his contemplation will be seen as a concrete objective reality. I feel intuitively that, were he to abstract his thoughts from this dimensionally larger world and retreat still farther within his mind, he would again bring about an externalization of time. He would discover that, every time he retreats into his inner mind and brings about an externalization of time, space becomes dimensionally larger. And he would therefore conclude that both time and space are serial, and that the drama of life is but the climbing of a multitudinous dimensional time block.5 ¶47

Scientists will one day explain WHY there is a Serial Universe. But in practice HOW we use this Serial Universe to change the future is more important. To change the future, we need only concern ourselves with two worlds in the infinite series; the world we know by reason of our bodily organs, and the world we perceive independently of our bodily organs.5 ¶48

I have stated that man has at every moment of time the choice before him which of several futures he will have. But the question arises: “How is this possible when the experiences of man, awake in the three-dimensional world, are predetermined?” as his observation of an event before it occurs implies. This ability to change the future will be seen if we liken the experiences of life on earth to this printed page. Man experiences events on earth singly and successively in the same way that you are now experiencing the words of this page. Imagine that every word on this page represents a single sensory impression. To get the context, to understand my meaning, you focus your vision on the first word in the upper left-hand corner and then move your focus across the page from left to right, letting it fall on the words singly and successively. By the time your eyes reach the last word on this page you have extracted my meaning. But suppose on looking at the page, with all the printed words thereon equally present, you decided to rearrange them. You could, by rearranging them, tell an entirely different story, in fact you could tell many different stories.5 ¶49

A dream is nothing more than uncontrolled four-dimensional thinking, or the rearrangement of both past and future sensory impressions. Man seldom dreams of events in the order in which he experiences them when awake. He usually dreams of two or more events which are separated in time, fused into a single sensory impression; or else he so completely rearranges his single waking sensory impressions that he does not recognize them when he encounters them in his waking state.5 ¶50

For example, I dreamed that I delivered a package to the restaurant in my apartment building. The hostess said to me, “You can’t leave that there,” whereupon the elevator operator gave me a few letters, and as I thanked him for them, he, in turn, thanked me. At this point, the night elevator operator appeared and waved a greeting to me. The following day, as I left my apartment, I picked up a few letters which had been placed at my door. On my way down, I gave the day elevator operator a tip and thanked him for taking care of my mail, whereupon he thanked me for the tip. On my return home that day, I overheard a doorman say to a delivery man, “You can’t leave that there.” As I was about to take the elevator up to my apartment, I was attracted by a familiar face in the restaurant, and as I looked in, the hostess greeted me with a smile. That night I escorted my dinner guests to the elevator and, as I said good-bye to them, the night operator waved good-night to me.5 ¶51

By simply rearranging a few of the single sensory impressions I was destined to encounter, and by fusing two or more of them into single sensory impressions, I constructed a dream which differed quite a bit from my waking experience.5 ¶52

When we have learned to control the movements of our attention in the four-dimensional world, we shall be able to consciously create circumstances in the three-dimensional world. We learn this control through the waking dream, where our attention can be maintained without effort, for attention minus effort is indispensable to changing the future. We can, in a controlled waking dream, consciously construct an event which we desire to experience in the three-dimensional world. The sensory impressions we use to construct our waking dream are present realities displaced in time or the four-dimensional world. All that we do in constructing the waking dream is to select from the vast array of sensory impressions those, which, when they are properly arranged, imply that we have realized our desire.5 ¶53

With the dream clearly defined we relax in a chair and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep, a state which, although bordering on sleep, leaves us in conscious control of the movements of our attention. Then we experience in imagination what we would experience in reality were this waking dream an objective fact.5 ¶54

In applying this technique to change the future it is important always to remember that the only thing which occupies the mind during the waking dream is THE WAKING DREAM, the predetermined action and sensation which implies the fulfillment of our desire. How the waking dream becomes physical fact is not our concern. Our acceptance of the waking dream as physical reality wills the means for its fulfillment.5 ¶55

Let me again lay the foundation of prayer, which is nothing more than a controlled waking dream: 1. Define your objective, know definitely what you want. 2. Construct an event which you believe you will encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant — an event which implies the fulfillment of your desire. 3. Immobilize the physical body and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. Then, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, until the single sensation of fulfillment dominates the mind; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW so that you experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now to realize your goal.5 ¶56

Experience has convinced me that this is the easiest way to achieve our goal. However, my own many failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the movements of my attention. But I can, with the ancient teacher, say: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize.” ‘*’*************5 ¶57

Again I want to remind you that the responsibility to make what you have done real in this world is not on your shoulders. Do not be concerned with the HOW. You have assumed that it is done, the assumption has its own way of objectifying itself. All responsibility to make it so is removed from you.5 ¶58

There is a little statement in the book of Exodus which bears this out. Millions of people who have read it, or have had it mentioned to them throughout the centuries, have completely misunderstood it. It is said, “Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk.” (King James version, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk.”) Unnumbered millions of people, misunderstanding this statement, to this very day in the enlightened age of 1948, will not eat any dairy products with a meat dish. It just is not done. They think the Bible is history, and when it says, “Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk,” milk and the products of milk, butter and cheese, they will not take at the same time they take the kid or any kind of meat. In fact they even have separate dishes with which to cook their meat.5 ¶59

But you are now about to apply it psychologically. You have done your meditation and you have assumed that you are what you want to be. Consciousness is God, your attention is like the very stream of life or milk itself that nurses and makes alive that which holds your attention. In other words, what holds your attention has your life.5 ¶60

Throughout the centuries a kid has been used as the symbol of sacrifice. You have given birth to everything in your world. But there are things that you no longer wish to keep alive, although you have mothered and fathered them. You are a jealous father that can easily consume, like Cronus, his children. It is your right to consume what formerly you expressed when you did not know better.5 ¶61

Now you are detached in consciousness from that former state. It was your kid, it was your child, you embodied and expressed it in your world. But now that you have assumed that you are what you want to be, do not look back on your former state and wonder HOW it will disappear from your world. For if you look back and give attention to it, you are steeping once more that kid in its mother’s milk.5 ¶62

Do not say to yourself, ‘I wonder if I am really detached from that state,’ or “I wonder if so and so is true.” Give all your attention to the assumption that the thing is so, because all responsibility to make it so is completely removed from your shoulders.5 ¶63

You do not have to make it so, it IS so. You appropriate what is already fact, and you walk in the assumption that it is, and in a way that you do not know, I do not know, no man knows, it becomes objectified in your world. Do not be concerned with the how, and do not look back on your former state.5 ¶64

“No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Simply assume that it is done and suspend reason, suspend all the arguments of the conscious three-dimensional mind. Your desire is outside of the reach of the three-dimensional mind. Assume you are that which you wish to be; walk as though you were it; and as you remain faithful to your assumption — it will harden into fact.5 ¶65

There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by every man, and the ancient story tellers were fully conscious of these two outlooks. They called the one “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.” We recognize these two centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” To the natural mind, reality is confined to the instant called now; this very moment seems to contain the whole of reality, everything else is unreal. To the natural mind, the past and the future are purely imaginary. In other words my past, when I use the natural mind, is only a memory image of things that were. And to the limited focus of the carnal or natural mind the future does not exist. The natural-mind does not believe that it could revisit the past and see it as something that is present, something that is objective and concrete to itself, neither does it believe that the future exists. To the Christ mind, the spiritual mind, which in our language we will call the fourth-dimensional focus, the past, the present, and the future of the natural mind are a present whole. It takes in the entire array of sensory impressions that man has encountered, is encountering, and will encounter. The only reason you and I are functioning as we are today, and are not aware of the greater outlook, is simply because we are creatures of habit, and habit renders us totally blind to what otherwise we should see; but habit is not law. It acts as though it were the most compelling force in the world, yet it is not law. We can create a new approach to life. If you and I would spend a few minutes every day in withdrawing our attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on an invisible state and remain faithful to this contemplation, feeling and sensing the reality of an invisible state, we would in time become aware of this greater world, this dimensionally larger world. The state contemplated is now a concrete reality, displaced in time.4 ¶1

Tonight as we turn to our Bible you be the judge as to where you stand in your present unfoldment. **************4 ¶2

Our first story for tonight is from the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Mark. In this chapter there are three stories told as though they were separate experiences of the dominant characters. In the first story we are told that Jesus came upon an insane man, a naked man who lived in the cemetery and hid himself behind the tombs. This man appealed to Jesus not to cast out the devils that bedeviled him. But Jesus said unto him, “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.” Thus Jesus cast out the devils that they may now destroy themselves, and we find this man, for the first time, clothed and in his right mind and seated at the feet of the Master. We will get the psychological sense of this chapter by changing the name Jesus to that of enlightened reason or fourth-dimensional thinking.4 ¶3

As we progress in this chapter we are told that Jesus now comes upon the High Priest whose name is Jairus, and Jairus the High Priest of the Synagogue has a child who is dying. She is 12 years old, and he appeals to Jesus to come and heal the child. Jesus consents, and as he starts toward the home of the High Priest a woman in the market place touched his garment. “And Jesus, immediately knowing in himself that virtue had gone out of him, turned him about in the press, and said, Who touched my clothes?” The woman who was healed of an issue of blood that she had had for 12 years confessed that she had touched him. “And he said unto her, Daughter, Thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.” As he continues toward the home the High Priest he is told that the child is dead and there is no need to go to resurrect her. She is no longer asleep, but is now dead. “As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe.” “And when he was come in, he saith unto them, Why make ye this ado, and weep? The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth.” With this the entire crowd mocked and laughed, but Jesus, closing the doors against the mocking crowd, took with him into the household of Jairus, his disciples and the father and mother of the dead child. They entered into the room where the damsel was lying. “And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.” “From this deep sleep she awoke and arose and walked, and the High Priest and all the others were astonished. And he changed them straightly that no man should know it; and he commanded that something should be given her to eat.”4 ¶4

You are this very night, as you are seated here, pictured in this 5th chapter of Mark. A cemetery is for one purpose: it is simply a record of the dead. Are you living in the dead past? If you are living among the dead, your prejudices, your superstitions, and your false beliefs that you keep alive are the tombstones behind which you hide. If you refuse to let them go you are just as mad as the mad man of the Bible who pleaded with enlightened reason not to cast them out. There is no difference. But enlightened reason is incapable of protecting prejudice and superstition against the inroads of reason.4 ¶5

There is not a man in this world who has a prejudice, regardless of the nature of the prejudice, who can hold it up to the light of reason. Tell me you are against a certain nation, a certain race, a certain “ism,” a certain anything -- I do not care what it is -- you cannot expose that belief of yours to the light of reason and have it live. In order that it may be kept alive in your world you must hide it from reason. You cannot analyze it in the light of reason and have it live. When this fourth-dimensional focus comes and shows you a new approach to life and casts out of your own mind all these things that bedeviled you, you are then cleansed and clothed in your right mind. And you sit at the foot of understanding, called the feet of the Master.4 ¶6

Now clothed and in your right mind you can resurrect the dead. What died? The child in the story is not a child. The child is your ambition, your desire, the unfulfilled dreams of your heart. This is the child housed within the mind of man. For as I have stated before, the entire drama of the Bible is a psychological one. The Bible has no reference at all to any person who ever existed, or any event that ever occurred upon earth. All the stories of the Bible unfold in the minds of the individual man.4 ¶7

In this story Jesus is the awakened intellect of man. When your mind functions outside of the range of your present senses, when your mind is healed of all the former limitations, then you are no longer the insane man; but you are this presence personified as Jesus, the power that can resurrect the longings of the heart of man. You are now the woman with the issue of blood. What is this issue of blood? A running womb is not a productive womb. She held it for 12 years, she was incapable of conceiving. She could not give form to her longing because of the running of the issue of blood. You are told her faith closed it. As the womb closes it can give form to the seed or idea.4 ¶8

As your mind is cleansed of your former concept of Self, you assume you are what you want to be, and remaining faithful to this assumption, you give form to your assumption or resurrect your child. You are the woman cleansed of the issue of blood, and you move towards the house of the dead child. The child or state you desired is now your fixed concept of yourself.4 ¶9

But now having assumed that I am what formerly I desired to be, I cannot continue desiring what I am conscious of being. So I do not discuss it. I talk to no one concerning what I am. It is so obvious to me that I am what I wanted to be that I walk as though I were. Walking as though I am what formerly I wanted to be, my world of limited focus does not see it and thinks I no longer desire it.4 ¶10

The child is dead within their world; but I, who know the law, say, “The child is not dead.” The damsel is not dead, she but sleepeth. I now awaken her. I, by my assumption, awaken and make visible in my world what I assume, for assumptions if sustained invariably awaken what they affirm.4 ¶11

I close the door. What door? The door of my senses. I simply shut out completely all that my senses reveal. I deny the evidence of my senses. I suspend the limited reason of the natural man and walk in this bold assertion that I am what my senses deny. With the door of my senses closed, what do I take into that disciplined state? I take no one into that state but the parents of the child and my disciples. I close the door against the mocking, laughing crowd. I no longer look for confirmation. I completely deny the evidence of my senses, which mock my assumption and do not discuss with others whether my assumption is possible or not.4 ¶12

Who are the parents? We have discovered that the father-mother of all creation is man’s I AMness. Man’s consciousness is God. I am conscious of the state. I am the father-mother of all my ideas and my mind remains faithful to this new concept of self. My mind is disciplined. I take into that state the disciples, and I shut out of that state everything that would deny it. Now the child, unaided by a man, is resurrected. The condition which I desired and assumed that I had, becomes objectified within my world and bears witness to the power of my assumption.4 ¶13

You be the judge, I cannot judge you. You are either living now in the dead past, or you are living as the woman whose issue of blood has been stanched. Could you actually answer me if I asked you the question: “Do you believe now that you, without the assistance of another, need only assume that you are what you want to be, to make that assumption real within your world? Or do you believe that you must first fulfill a certain condition imposed upon you by the past, that you must be of a certain order, or a certain something?” I am not being critical of certain churches or groups, but there are those who believe that anyone outside of their church or group is not yet saved. I was born a Protestant. You talk to a Protestant, there is only one Christian, a Protestant. You talk to a Catholic, why there is nothing in the world that is a Christian but a Catholic. You talk to a Jew, and the Christians are heathens, and the Jews are the chosen. You talk to a Mohammedan, Jews and Christians are the infidels. You talk to someone else and all these are the untouchables. It does not matter to whom you talk, they are always the chosen ones. If you believe that you must be one of these in order to be saved, you are still an insane man hiding behind these superstitions and these prejudices of the past, and you are begging not to be cleansed.4 ¶14

Some of you say to me, “Do not ask me to give up my belief in Jesus the man, or in Moses the man, or in Peter the man. When you ask me to give up my belief in these characters you are asking too much. Leave me these beliefs because they comfort me. I can believe that they lived upon earth and still follow your psychological interpretation of their stories.”4 ¶15

I say, Come out of the dead past. Come out of that cemetery and walk, knowing that you and your Father are one, and your Father, who men call GOD, is your own consciousness. That is the only creative law in the world. Of what are you conscious of being? Although you cannot see your objective with the limited focus of your three-dimensional mind, you are now that which you have assumed you are. Walk in that assumption and remain faithful to it. Time in this dimension of your being, beats slowly and you may not, even after you objectify your assumption, remember there was a time when this present reality was but an attitude of mind. Because of the slowness of the beat of time here you often fail to see the relationship between your inner nature and the outer world that bears witness to it.4 ¶16

You be the judge of the position you now occupy in this 5th chapter of Mark. Are you resurrecting the dead child? Are you still in need of having that womb of your mind closed? Is it still running and therefore cannot be fertile? Are you now the insane man living in the dead past? Only you can be the judge and answer these questions. **************4 ¶17

Now we turn to a story in the 5th chapter of the Gospel of John. This will show you how beautifully the ancient story tellers told of the two distinct outlooks on this world- one, the limited three-dimensional focus, and the other, the fourth-dimensional focus. This story tells of an impotent man who is quickly healed. Jesus comes to a place called Bethesda, which by definition means the House of Five Porches. On these Five Porches are unnumbered impotent folk- lame, blind, halt, withered, and others. Tradition had it that at certain seasons of the year an angel would descend and disturb the pool which was near these Five Porches. As the Angel disturbed the pool, the first one in was always healed. But only the first one, not the second. Jesus, seeing a man who was lame from his mother’s womb, said to him, “Wilt thou be made whole?” “The impotent man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool - but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.” “Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” “And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed, and walked, and on the same day was the Sabbath.”4 ¶18

You read this story and you think some strange man who possessed miraculous power suddenly said to the lame man, “Rise and walk.” I cannot repeat too often that the story, even when it introduces numberless individualities, takes place within the mind of the individual man.4 ¶19

The pool is your consciousness. The angel is an idea, called the messenger of GOD. Consciousness being God, when you have an idea you are entertaining an angel. The minute you are conscious of a desire your pool has been disturbed. Desire disturbs the mind of man. To want something is to be disturbed. The very moment you have an ambition, or a clearly defined objective, the pool has been disturbed by the angel, which was the desire. You are told that the first one into the disturbed pool is always healed.4 ¶20

My closest companions in this world, my wife and my little girl, are to me when I address them, second. I must speak to my wife as, “you are.” I must speak to anyone, no matter how close they are, as “You are.” And after that the third person, “He is.” There is only one person in this world with whom I can use the first person present and that is self. “I am,” can be said only of myself, it cannot be said of another.4 ¶21

Therefore, when I am conscious of some desire that I want to be, but seemingly am not, the pool being disturbed, who can get into that pool before me? I alone possess the power of the first person. I am that which I want to be. Except I believe I am what I want to be, I remain as I formerly was and die in that limitation. In this story you need no man to put you into the pool as your consciousness is disturbed by desire. All you need do is to assume you are already that which formerly you wanted to be and you are in it, and no man can get in before you. What man can get in before you when you become conscious of being that which you want to be? No one can be before you when you alone possess the power to say I AM.4 ¶22

These are the two outlooks. You are now what your senses would deny. Are you bold enough to assume that you are already that which you want to be? If you dare assume you are already that which your reason and your senses now deny, then you are in the pool and, unaided by a man, you, too, will rise and take your couch and walk.4 ¶23

You are told it happened on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is only the mystical sense of stillness, when you are unconcerned, when you are not anxious, when you are not looking for results, knowing that signs follow and do not precede. The Sabbath is the day of stillness wherein there is no working. When you are not working to make it so you are in the Sabbath. When you are not at all concerned about the opinion of others, when you walk as though you were, you cannot raise one finger to make it so, you are in the Sabbath. I cannot be concerned as to how it will be, and still say I am conscious of being it. If I am conscious of being free, secure, healthy, and happy, I sustain these states of consciousness without effort or labor on my part. Therefore, I am in the Sabbath; and because it was the Sabbath he rose and walked. ***'********4 ¶24

Our next story is from the 4th chapter of the Gospel of John, and it is one you have heard time and time again. Jesus comes to the well and there is a woman called the woman of Samaria, and he said to her, “Give me to drink.” “Then saith the woman of Samaria unto him, How is it that thou, being a Jew, asketh drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” “Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.” The woman seeing that he has nothing with which to draw the water, and knowing the well is deep, says: “Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?” “Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again- But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” Then he tells her all concerning herself and asks her to go and call her husband. She answered and said, “I have no husband.” “Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. ” The woman, knowing this to be true, goes into the market-place and tells the other, “I have met the Messiah.” They ask her, “How do you know you have met the Messiah?” “Because he told me all things that I have ever done.” she replies.4 ¶25

Here is a focus that takes in the entire past at least, and tells her now concerning the future. Continuing with the story, the disciples come to Jesus and say, “Master, eat.” “But he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. ” When they speak of a harvest in four months, Jesus replies, “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” He sees things that people wait four months for, or wait four years for; he sees them as now in a dimensionally larger world, existing now, taking place now.4 ¶26

Let us go back to the first part of the story. The woman of Samaria is the three-dimensional you, and Jesus at the well is the fourth-dimensional you. The argument starts between what you want to be, and what reason tells you that you are. The greater you tells you that if you would dare assume you are already what you want to be, you would become it. The lesser you, with its limited focus, tells you, “Why you haven’t a bucket, you haven’t a rope and the well is deep. How could you ever reach the depth of this state without the means to that end?” You answer and say, “If you only knew who asks of you to drink you would ask of him.” If you only knew what in yourself is urging upon you the embodiment of the state you now seek, you would suspend your little sight and let him do it for you.4 ¶27

Then he tells you that you have five husbands, and you deny it. But he knows far better than you that your five senses impregnate you morning, noon, and night with their limitations . They tell you what children you will bear tonight, tomorrow, and the days to come. For your five senses act like five husbands who constantly impregnate your consciousness, which is the great womb of GOD; and morning, noon, and night they suggest to you, and dictate to you that which you must accept as true. He tells you the one you would like to have for your husband is not your husband. In other words the sixth has not yet impregnated you. What you would like to be is denied by these five, and they hold the power, they dictate what you will accept as true. What you would like to accept has not yet penetrated your mind and impregnated your mind with its reality. He whom you call husband is really not your husband. You are not bearing his likeness. To bear his likeness is proof that you are his wife, at least you have known him intimately. You are not bearing the likeness of the sixth; you are only bearing the likeness of the five.4 ¶28

Then one turns to me and tells me all that I have ever known. I go back in my mind’s eye and reason tells me that all through my life I have always accepted the limitations of my senses, I have always looked upon them as fact; and morning, noon, and night I have born witness to this acceptance. Reason tells me I have only known these five from the time I was born. Now I would like to step outside the limitation of my senses but I have not yet found within myself the courage to assume I am what these five would deny that I am. So here I remain, conscious of my task, but without the courage to step beyond the limitations of my senses, and that which my reason denies.4 ¶29

He tells these, “I have meat ye know not of. I am the bread that droppeth down from heaven. I am the wine.” I know what I want to be, and because I am that bread I feast upon it. I assume that I am, and instead of feasting upon the fact that I am in this room talking to you and you are listening to me, and that I am in Los Angeles, I feast upon the fact that I am elsewhere and I walk here as though I were elsewhere. And gradually I become what I feast upon. **************4 ¶30

Let me give you two personal stories. When I was a boy I lived in a very limited environment, in a little island called Barbados. Feed for animals was very, very scarce and very expensive because we had to import it. I am one of a family of 10 children and my grandmother lived with us making 13 at the table. Time and again I can remember my mother saying to the cook in the early part of the week, “I want you to put away three ducks for Sunday’s dinner. ”This meant that she would take from the flock in the yard three ducks and coop them up in a very small cage and feed them, stuff them morning, noon, and night with corn and all the things she wanted the ducks to feast upon. This was an entirely different diet from what we regularly fed the ducks, because we kept those birds alive by feeding them fish. We kept them alive and fat on fish because fish were very cheap and plentiful; but you could not eat a bird that fed upon fish, not as you and I like a bird. The cook would take three ducks, put them in a cage and for seven days stuff them with corn, sour milk and all the things we wanted to taste in the birds. Then when they were killed and served for dinner seven days later they were luscious, milk fed, corn fed birds. But occasionally the cook forgot to put away the birds, and my father, knowing we were having ducks, and believing that she had carried out the command, did not send anything else for dinner, and three fish came to the table. You could not touch those birds for they were so much the embodiment of what they fed upon.4 ¶31

Man is a psychological being, a thinker. It is not what he feeds upon physically, but what he feeds upon mentally that he becomes. We become the embodiment of that which we mentally feed upon. Now those ducks could not be fed corn in the morning and fish in the afternoon and something else at night. It had to be a complete change of diet.4 ¶32

In our case we cannot have a little bit of meditation in the morning, curse at noon, and do something else in the evening. We have to go on a mental diet, for a week we must completely change our mental food.4 ¶33

“Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. If I could now single out the kind of mental food I want to express within my world and feast upon it, I would become it.4 ¶34

Let me tell you why I am doing what I am doing today. It was back in 1933 in the city of New York, and my old friend Abdullah, with whom I studied Hebrew for five years, was really the beginning of the eating of all my superstitions. When I went to him I was filled with superstitions. I could not eat meat, I could not eat fish, I could not eat chicken, I could not eat any of these things that were living in the world. I did not drink, I did not smoke, and I was making a tremendous effort to live a celibate life. Abdullah said to me, “I am not going to tell you ‘you are crazy’ Neville, but you are you know. All these things are stupid.” But I could not believe they were stupid.4 ¶35

In November, 1933, I bade goodbye to my parents in the city of New York as they sailed for Barbados. I had been in this country 12 years with no desire to see Barbados. I was not successful and I was ashamed to go home to successful members of my family. After 12 years in America I was a failure in my own eyes. I was in the theatre and made money one year and spent it the next month. I was not what I would call by their standards nor by mine a successful person. Mind you when I said goodbye to my parents in November I had no desire to go to Barbados.4 ¶36

The ship pulled out, and as I came up the street, something possessed me with a desire to go to Barbados. It was the year 1933, I was unemployed and had no place to go except a little room on 75th Street.4 ¶37

I went straight to my old friend Abdullah and said to him “Ab, the strangest feeling is possessing me. For the first time in 12 years I want to go to Barbados.” “If you want to go Neville, you have gone.” he replied. That was very strange language to me. I am in New York City on 72nd Street and he tells me I have gone to Barbados. I said to him, “What do you mean, I have gone, Abdullah ?” He said, “Do you really want to go? ” I answered “yes.” He then said to me, “As you walk through this door now you are not walking on 72nd Street, you are walking on palm lined streets, coconut lined streets; this is Barbados. Do not ask me how you are going to go. You are in Barbados. You do not say ‘how’ when you ‘are there’. You are there. Now you walk as though you were there.”4 ¶38

I went out of his place in a daze. I am in Barbados. I have no money, I have no job, I am not even well clothed, and yet I am in Barbados. He was not the kind of a person with whom you would argue, not Abdullah.4 ¶39

Two weeks later I was no nearer my goal than on the day I first told him I wanted to go to Barbados. I said to him, “Ab, I trust you implicitly but here is one time I cannot see how it is going to work. I have not one penny towards my journey, I began to explain.” You know what he did. He was as black as the ace of spades, my old friend Abdullah, with his turbaned head. As I sat in his living room he rose from his chair and went towards his study and slammed the door, which was not an invitation to follow him. As he went through the door he said to me, “I have said all that I have to say.”4 ¶40

On the 3rd of December I stood before Abdullah and told him again I was no nearer my trip. He repeated his statement, “You are in Barbados.” The very last ship sailing for Barbados that would take me there for the reason I wanted to go, which was to be there for Christmas, sailed at noon on December 6th, the old Nerissa.4 ¶41

On the morning of December 4th, having no job, having no place to go, I slept late. When I got up there was an air mail letter from Barbados under my door. As I opened the letter a little piece of paper flickered to the floor. I picked it up and it was a draft for $50.00.4 ¶42

The letter was from my brother Victor and it read, “I am not asking you to come, Neville, this is a command. We have never had a Christmas when all the members of our family were present at the same time. This Christmas it could be done if you would come. ”4 ¶43

My oldest brother Cecil left home before the youngest was born and then we started to move away from home at different times so never in the history of our family were we ever all together at the same time.4 ¶44

The letter continued, “You are not working, I know there is no reason why you cannot come, so you must be here before Christmas. The enclosed $50.00 is to buy a few shirts or a pair of shoes you may need for the trip. You will not need tips; use the bar if you are drinking. I will meet the ship and pay all your tips and your incurred expenses. I have cabled Furness, Withy & Co. in New York City and told them to issue you a ticket when you appear at their office. The $50.00 is simply to buy some little essentials. You may sign as you want aboard the ship. I will meet it and take care of all obligations.”4 ¶45

I went down to Furness, Withy & Co. with my letter and let them read it. They said, “We received the cable Mr. Goddard, but unfortunately we have not any space left on the December 6th sailing. The only thing available is 3rd Class between New York and St . Thomas. When we get to St. Thomas we have a few passengers who are getting off. You may then ride lst Class from St. Thomas to Barbados. But between New York and St. Thomas you must go 3rd Class, although you may have the privileges of the lst Class dining room and walk the decks of the 1st Class.” I said, “I will take it.”4 ¶46

I went back to my friend Abdullah on the afternoon of December 4th and said, “It worked like a dream.” I told him what I had done, thinking he would be happy. Do you know what he said to me? He said, “Who told you that you are going 3rd Class? Did I see you in Barbados, the man you are, going 3rd Class? You are in Barbados and you went there 1st Class.”4 ¶47

I did not have one moment to see him again before I sailed on the noon of December 6th.4 ¶48

When I reached the dock with my passport and my papers to get aboard that ship the agent said to me, “We have good news for you, Mr. Goddard. There has been a cancellation and you are going 1st Class.”4 ¶49

Abdullah taught me the importance of remaining faithful to an idea and not compromising. I wavered, but he remained faithful to the assumption that I was in Barbados and had traveled 1st Class. **************4 ¶50

Now back to the significance of our two Bible stories. The well is deep and you have no bucket, you have no rope. It is four months to the harvest and Jesus says, “I have meat to eat ye know not of. I am the bread of heaven. ” Feast on the idea, become identified with the idea as though you were already that embodied state. Walk in the assumption that you are what you want to be. If you feast on that and remain faithful to that mental diet, you will crystallize it. You will become it in this world.4 ¶51

When I came back to New York in 1934, after three heavenly months in Barbados, I drank, I smoked, and did everything I had not done in years. I remembered what Abdullah had said to me, “After you have proven this law you will become normal, Neville. You will come out of that graveyard, you will come out of that dead past where you think you are being holy. For all you are really doing you know, you are being so good, Neville, you are good for nothing” I came back walking this earth a completely transformed person. From that day, which was in February 1934, I began to live more and more.4 ¶52

I cannot honestly tell you I have always succeeded. My many mistakes in this world, my many failures would convict me if I told you that I have so completely mastered the movements of my attention that I can at all times remain faithful to the idea I want to embody. But I can say with the ancient teacher, although I seem to have failed in the past, I move on and strive day after day to become that which I want to embody in this world.4 ¶53

Suspend judgment, refuse to accept what reason and the senses now dictate, and if you remain faithful to the new diet, you will become the embodiment of the ideal to which you remain faithful.4 ¶54

If there is one place in the world that is unlike my little island of Barbados, it is New York City. In Barbados the tallest building is three stories, and the streets are lined with palm trees and cocoanut trees and all sorts of tropical things. In New York City you must go to a park to find a tree.4 ¶55

Yet I had to walk the streets of New York as though I walked the streets of Barbados. To one’s imagination all things are possible. I walked, feeling that I was actually walking the streets of Barbados, and in that assumption I could almost smell the odor of the cocoanut lined lanes. I began to create within my mind’s eye the atmosphere I would physically encounter were I in Barbados.4 ¶56

As I remained faithful to this assumption, somebody canceled passage and I received it. My brother in Barbados, who never thought of my coming home, has the commanding urge to write me a strange letter. He had never dictated to me, but this time he dictated, and thought that he originated the idea of my visit. I went home and had three heavenly months, returned lst Class, and brought back quite a sum of cash in my pocket, a gift. My trip, had I paid for it, would have been $3,000, yet I did it without a nickel in my pocket. “I have ways ye know not of. My ways are past finding out.”4 ¶57

The dimensionally greater self took my assumption as the command and influenced the behaviour of my brother to write that letter, influenced the behaviour of someone to cancel that 1st Class passage, and did all the things necessary that would tend toward the production of the idea with which I was identified. I was identified with the feeling of being there. I slept as though I were there, and the entire behaviour of man was molded in harmony with my assumption.4 ¶58

I did not need to go down to Furness, Withy & Co. and beg them for a passage, asking them to cancel some one who was booked 1st Class. I did not need to write my brother and beg him to send me some money or buy me a passage. He thought he originated the act. Actually, to this day, he believes that be initiated the desire to bring me home.4 ¶59

My old friend Abdullah simply said to me, “You are in Barbados, Neville. You want to be there; wherever you want to be, there you are. Live as though you are and that you shall be.”4 ¶60

These are the two outlooks on the world possessed by every man. I do not care who you are. Every child born of woman, regardless of race, nation, or creed, possesses two distinct outlooks on the world. You are either the natural man who receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, because to you in the natural focus they are foolishness unto you. Or you are the spiritual man who perceiveth things outside of the limitations of your senses because all things are now realities in a dimensionally larger world.4 ¶61

There is no need to wait four months to harvest. You are either the woman of Samaria or Jesus at the well. You are the man waiting on the Five Porches for the disturbance and someone to push him in; or you are the one who can command yourself to rise and walk in spite of others who wait. Are you the man behind the tombstones in the cemetery waiting and begging not to be clean, because you do not want to be cleansed of your prejudices?4 ¶62

One of the most difficult things for man to give up is his superstitions, his prejudice. He holds on to these as though they were the treasure of treasures. When you do become cleansed and you are free, then the womb, your own mind is automatically healed. It becomes the prepared ground where seeds, your desires, can take root and grow into manifestation.4 ¶63

The child you now bear in your heart is your present objective. Your present longing is a child that is as though it were sick. If you assume you are now what you would like to be, the child for a moment becomes dead because there is no disturbance any more. You cannot be disturbed when you feel you are what you want to be because if you feel you are what you wanted to be, you are satisfied in that assumption.4 ¶64

To others who judge superficially you seem no longer to desire, so to them the desire or damsel is dead. They think you have lost your ambition because you no longer discuss your secret ambition. You have completely adjusted yourself to the idea. You have assumed that you are what you want to be.4 ¶65

You know, “She is not dead, she but sleepth.” “I go to awaken her.” I walk in the assumption that I am, and as I walk, I quietly awaken her. Then when she awakens I will do the normal, natural thing, I will give her to eat. I will not brag about it and tell others. I simply go and tell no man.4 ¶66

I feed this state I now like with my attention. I keep it alive within my world by becoming attentive to it. Things that I am not attentive to fade and wither within my world, regardless of what they are. They are not just born and then remain unfed. I gave them birth by reason of the fact that I became conscious of being them.4 ¶67

When I embody them within my world, that is not the end. That is the beginning. Now I am a mother who must keep alive this state by being attentive to it. The day that I am not attentive, I have withdrawn my milk from it, and it fades from my world, as I become attentive to something else in my world.4 ¶68

You can either be attentive to the limitations and feed these and make them mountains, or you can be attentive to your desires; but to become attentive you must assume you are already that which you wanted to be.4 ¶69

Although today we speak of a third-dimensional and a fourth-dimensional focus, do not think for one moment these ancient teachers were not fully conscious of these two distinct centers of thought within the minds of all men. They personified these two, and they tried to show man that the only thing which robs him of the man he could be, is habit. Although it is not law, every psychologist will tell you that habit is the most inhibiting force in the world. It completely restricts man and binds him and makes him totally blind to what otherwise he should be.4 ¶70

Begin now to mentally see and feel yourself as that which you want to be, and feast upon that sensation morning, noon, and night.4 ¶71

I have scoured the Bible for a time interval that is longer than three days and I have not found it. “Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it Up.” “Prepare you victuals; for within three days ye shall pass over this Jordan, to go in to possess the land, which the Lord your God giveth you to possess it.”4 ¶72

If I could completely saturate my mind with one sensation and walk as though it were already a fact, I am promised (and I cannot find any denial of it in this great book) that I do not need more than a three day diet if I remain faithful to it. But I must be honest about it. If I Change my diet in the course of the day, I extend the time interval. You ask me, “But how do I know about the interval?” You, yourself determine the interval.4 ¶73

We have today in our modern world a little word which confuses most of us. I know it confused me until I dug deeper. The word is “action.” Action is supposed to be the most fundamental thing in the world. It is not an atom, it is more fundamental. It is not a part of an atom like an electron, it is more fundamental than that. They call it the fourth-dimensional unit. The most fundamental thing in the world is action.4 ¶74

You ask, “What is action?” Our physicists tell us that it is energy multiplied by time. We become more confused and say, “Energy multiplied by time, what does that mean?”, They answer, “There is no response to a stimulus, no matter how intense the stimulus, unless it endures for a certain length of time.” There must be a minimum endurance to the stimulus or there is no response. On the other hand there is no response to time unless there is a minimum degree of intensity. Today the most fundamental thing in the world is called action, or simply energy multiplied by time.4 ¶75

The Bible gives it as three days; the duration is three days for response in this world. If I would now assume I am what I want to be, and if I am faithful to it and walk as though I were, the very longest stretch given for its realization is three days.4 ¶76

If there is something tonight that you really want in this world, then experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you to realize your goal and deafen your ears, and blind your eyes to all that denies the reality of your assumption. If you do this you would be able to tell me before I leave this city of Los Angeles that you have realized what was only a wish when you came here. It will be my joy to rejoice with you in the knowledge that the child which was seemingly dead is now alive. This damsel really was not dead, she was only asleep. You fed her in this silence because you have meat no one else knows of. You gave her food and she became a resurrected living reality within your world. Then you can share your joy with me and I can rejoice in your joy.4 ¶77

The purpose of these lessons is to remind you of the law of your own being, the law of consciousness; you are that law. You were only unconscious of its operation. You fed and kept alive the things you did not wish to express within this world.4 ¶78

Take my challenge and put this philosophy to the test. If it does not work you should not use it as a comforter. If it is not true, you must completely discard it. I know it is true. You will not know it until you try either to prove or disprove it.4 ¶79

Too many of us have joined “isms” and we are afraid to put them to the test because we feel we might fail; and, then, where are we? Not really wanting to know the truth concerning it, we hesitate to be bold enough to put it to the test. You say, “I know it would work in some other way. I do not want to really test it. While I have not yet disproved it, I can still be comforted by it.”4 ¶80

Now do not fool yourself, do not think for one second be that you are wise. Prove or disprove this law. I know that if you attempt to disprove it, you will prove it, and I will be the richer for your proving it, not in dollars, not in things, but because you become the living fruit of what I believe I am teaching in this world. It is far better to have you a successful, satisfied person after five days of instruction than to have you go out dissatisfied. I hope you will be bold enough to challenge this instruction and either prove or disprove it.4 ¶81

Now before we go into the silence period I shall briefly explain the technique again. We have two techniques in applying this law. Everyone here must now know exactly what he wants. You must know that if you do not get it tonight you will still be as desirous tomorrow concerning this objective.4 ¶82

When you know exactly what you want, construct in your mind s eye a single, simple event which implies fulfillment of your desire, an event where in self predominates. Instead of sitting back and looking at yourself as though you were on the screen, you be the actor in the drama. Restrict the event to one single action. If you are going to shake a hand because that implies fulfillment of your desire then do that and that only. Do not shake hands and then wander off in your imagination to a dinner party or to some other place. Restrict your action to simply shaking hands and do it over and over again, until that handshake takes on the solidity and the distinctness of reality.4 ¶83

If you feel you cannot remain faithful to an action, I want you now to define your objective, and then condense the idea, which is your desire, into a single phrase, a phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, some phrase such as, “Isn’t it wonderful?” Or if I felt thankful because I thought someone was instrumental in bringing my desire to pass, I could say, “Thank you,” and repeat it with feeling over and over again like a lullaby until my mind was dominated by the single sensation of thankfulness.4 ¶84

We will now sit quietly in these chairs with the idea which implies fulfillment of our desire condensed to a single phrase, or to a single act. We will relax and immobilize our physical bodies. Then let us experience in imagination the sensation which our condensed phrase or action affirms.4 ¶85

If you imagine yourself shaking another person’s hand, do not use your physical hand, let it remain immobilized. But imagine that housed within your hand is a more subtle, more real hand, which can be extracted in your imagination. Put your imaginary hand into the imaginary hand of your friend who stands before you and feel the handshake. Keep your physical body immobilized even though you become mentally active in what you are now about to do.4 ¶86

Now we will go into the silence.4 ¶87

May I take just a minute to clarify what was said last night. A lady felt from what I said last night that I am anti one nation. I do hope that I am not anti any nation, race or belief. If perchance I used a nation, it was only to illustrate a point. What I tried to tell you was this — we become what we contemplate. For it is the nature of love, as it is the nature of hate, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. Last night I simply read a news item to show you that when we think we can destroy our image by breaking the mirror, we are only fooling ourselves. When, through war or revolution, we destroy titles which to us represent arrogance and greed, we become in time the embodiment of that which we thought we had destroyed. So today the people who thought they destroyed the tyrants are themselves that which they thought they had destroyed.3 ¶1

That I may not be misunderstood, let me again lay the foundation of this principle. Consciousness is the one and only reality. We are incapable of seeing other than the contents of our own consciousness. Therefore, hate betrays us in the hour of victory and condemns us to be that which we condemn. All conquest results in an exchange of characteristics, so that conquerors become like the conquered foe. We hate others for the evil which is in ourselves. Races, nations, and religious groups have lived for centuries in intimate hostility, and it is the nature of hatred, as it is the nature of love, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. Nations act toward other nations as their own citizens act toward each other. When slavery exists in a state and that nation attacks another it is with intent to enslave. When there is a fierce economic competition between citizen and citizen, then in war with another nation the object of the war is to destroy the trade of the enemy. Wars of domination are brought about by the will of those who within a state are dominant over the fortunes of the rest. We radiate the world that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagination and feeling. But in this third-dimensional world of ours time beats slowly. And so we do not always observe the relationship of the visible world to our inner nature.3 ¶2

Now that is really what I meant. I thought I had said it. That I may not be misunderstood, that is my principle. You and I can contemplate an ideal, and become it by falling in love with it. On the other hand, we can contemplate something we heartily dislike and by condemning it we will become it. But because of the slowness of time in this three-dimensional world, when we do become what we contemplated we have forgotten that formerly we set out to worship or destroy it.3 ¶3

Tonight’s lesson is the capstone of the Bible, so do give me your attention. The most important question asked in the Bible will be found in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. As you know, all of the Bible stories are your stories; its characters live only in the mind of man. They have no reference at all to any person, who lived in time and space, or to any event that ever occurred upon earth. **************3 ¶4

The drama related in Matthew takes place in this manner. Jesus turns to his disciples and asks them, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” “And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” “He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?” “And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” “And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” “And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”3 ¶5

Jesus turning to his disciples is man turning to his disciplined mind in self-contemplation. You ask yourself the question, “Whom do men say that I am?” In our language, “I wonder what men think of me?” You answer, “Some say John come again, Some say Elias, others say Jeremiah, and still others a Prophet of old come again.” It is very flattering to be told that you are, or that you resemble, the great men of the past, but enlightened reason is not enslaved by public opinion. It is only concerned with the truth so it asks itself another question, “But whom say ye that I am?” In other words, “Who am I?” If I am bold enough to assume that I am Christ Jesus, the answer will come back, “Thou are Christ Jesus.” When I can assume it and feel it and boldly live it, I will say to myself, “Flesh and blood could not have told me this. But my Father which is in Heaven revealed it unto me.” Then I make this concept of Self the rock on which I establish my church, my world.3 ¶6

“If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” Because consciousness is the only reality I must assume that I am already that which I desire to be. If I do not believe that I am already what I want to be, then I remain as I am and die in this limitation. Man is always looking for some prop on which to lean. He is always looking for some excuse to justify failure. This revelation gives man no excuse for failure. His concept of himself is the cause of all the circumstances of his life. All changes must first come from within himself; and if he does not change on the outside it is because he has not changed within. But man does not like to feel that he is solely responsible for the conditions of his life.3 ¶7

“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” “Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?” “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” I may not like what I have just heard, that I must turn to my own consciousness as to the only reality, the only foundation on which all phenomena can be explained. It was easier living when I could blame another. It was much easier living when I could blame society for my ills, or point a finger across the sea. And blame another nation. It was easier living when I could blame the weather for the way I feel. But to tell me that I am the cause of all that happens to me, that I am forever molding my world in harmony with my inner nature, that is more than man is willing to accept. If this is true, to whom would I go? If these are the words of eternal life, I must return to them, even though they seem so difficult to digest. When man fully understands this, he knows that public opinion does not matter, for men only tell him who he is. The behaviour of men constantly tell me who I have conceived myself to be.3 ¶8

If I accept this challenge and begin to live by it, I finally reach the point that is called the great prayer of the Bible. It is related in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.”3 ¶9

It is impossible for anything to be lost. In this divine economy nothing can be lost. It cannot even pass away. The little flower which has bloomed once, blooms forever. It is invisible to you here with your limited focus, but it blooms forever in the larger dimension of your being, and tomorrow you will encounter it. All that thou gavest me I have kept in thy name, and none have I lost save the son of perdition. The son of perdition means simply the belief in loss. Son is a concept, an idea. Perdido is loss. I have only truly lost the concept of loss, for nothing can be lost. I can descend from the sphere where the thing itself now lives, and as I descend in consciousness to a lower level within myself it passes from my world. I say, “I have lost my health. I have lost my wealth. I have lost my standing in the community. I have lost faith. I have lost a thousand things.” But the things in themselves, having once been real in my world, can never cease to be. They never become unreal with the passage of time. I, by my descent in consciousness to a lower level, cause these things to disappear from my sight and I say, “They have gone; they are finished as far as my world goes.” All I need do is to ascend to the level where they are eternal, and they once more objectify themselves and appear as realities within my world.3 ¶10

The crux of the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John is found in the 19th verse, “And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” Heretofore I thought I could change others through effort. Now I know I cannot change another unless I first change myself. To change another within my world I must first change my concept of that other; and to do it best I change my concept of self. For it was the concept I held of self that made me see others as I did. Had I a noble, dignified concept of myself, I never could have seen the unlovely in others. Instead of trying to change others through argument and force, let me but ascend in consciousness to a higher level and I will automatically change others by changing self.3 ¶11

“There is no one to change but self; that self is simply your awareness, your consciousness and the world in which it lives is determined by the concept you hold of self. It is to consciousness that we must turn as to the only reality. For there is no clear conception of the origin of phenomena except that consciousness is all and all is consciousness. You need no helper to bring you what you seek. Do not for one second believe that I am advocating escape from reality when I ask you to simply assume you are now the man or the lady that you want to be. If you and I could feel what it would be like were we now that which we want to be, and live in this mental atmosphere as though it were real, then, in a way we do not know, our assumption would harden into fact. This is all we need do in order to ascend to the level where our assumption is already an objective, concrete reality. I need change no man, I sanctify myself and in so doing I sanctify others. To the pure all things are pure.”3 ¶12

“There is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” There is nothing in itself unclean, but you, by your concept of self, see things either clean or unclean. “I and my Father are one.” “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.” “But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.” He made himself one with God and thought it not strange or robbery to do the works of God.3 ¶13

You always bear fruit in harmony with what you are. It is the most natural thing in the world for a pear tree to bear pears, an apple tree to bear apples, and for man to mold the circumstances of his life in harmony with his inner nature. “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” A branch has no life save it be rooted in the vine. All I need do to change the fruit is to change the vine. You have no life in my world save that I am conscious of you. You are rooted in me and, like fruit, you bear witness of the vine that I am. There is no reality in the world other than your consciousness. Although you may now seem to be what you do not want to be, all you need do to change it, and to prove the change by circumstances in your world, is to quietly assume that you are that which you now want to be, and in a way you do not know you will become it. There is no other way to change this world.3 ¶14

“I am the way.” My I AMness, my consciousness is the way by which I change my world. As I change my concept of self, I change my world. When men and women help or hinder us, they only play the part that we, by our concept of self, wrote for them, and they play it automatically. They must play the parts they are playing because we are what we are. You will change the world only when you become the embodiment of that which you want the world to be. You have but one gift in this world that is truly yours to give and that is yourself. Unless you yourself are that which you want the world to be, you will never see it in this world. “Except ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”3 ¶15

Do you know that no two in this room live in the same world. We are going home to different worlds tonight. We close our doors on entirely different worlds. We rise tomorrow and go to work, where we meet each other and meet others, but we live in different mental worlds, different physical worlds. I can only give what I am, I have no other gift to give. If I want the world to be perfect, and who does not, I have failed only because I did not know that I could never see it perfect until I myself become perfect. If I am not perfect I cannot see perfection, but the day that I become it, I beautify my world because I see it through my own eyes. “Unto the pure all things are pure.”3 ¶16

No two here can tell me that you have heard the same message any one night. The one thing that you must do is hear what I say through that which you are. It must be filtered through your prejudices, your superstitions, and your concept of self. Whatever you are, it must come through that, and be colored by what you are. If you are disturbed and you would like me to be something other than what I appear to be, then you must be that which you want me to be. We must become the thing that we want others to be or we will never see them be it. Your consciousness, my consciousness, is the only true foundation in the world. This is that which is called Peter in the Bible, not a man, this faithfulness that cannot turn to anyone, that cannot be flattered when you are told by men you are John come again. That is very flattering to be told you are John the Baptist come again, or the great Prophet Elias, or Jeremiah. Then I deafen my ears to this very flattering little bit of news men would give me and I ask myself, “But honestly who am I?”3 ¶17

If I can deny the limitations of my birth, my environment, and the belief that I am but an extension of my family tree, and feel within myself that I am Christ, and sustain this assumption until it takes a central place and forms the habitual center of my energy, I will do the works attributed to Jesus. Without thought or effort I will mold a world in harmony with that perfection which I have assumed and feel springing within me. When I open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, give joy for mourning and beauty for ashes, then and only then, have I truly established this vine deep within. That is what I would automatically do were I truly conscious of being Christ. It is said of this presence, He proved that He was Christ by His works. Our ordinary alterations of consciousness, as we pass from one state to another, are not transformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction; but whenever our assumption grows so stable as to definitely expel its rivals, then that central habitual concept defines our character and is a true transformation.3 ¶18

Jesus, or enlightened reason, saw nothing unclean in the woman taken in adultery. He said to her, “Hath no man condemned thee?” “She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” No matter what is brought before the presence of beauty, it sees only beauty. Jesus was so completely identified with the lovely that He was incapable of seeing the unlovely. When you and I really become conscious of being Christ, we too will straighten the arms of the withered, and resurrect the dead hopes of men. We will do all the things that we could not do when we felt ourselves limited by our family tree. It is a bold step and should not be taken lightly, because to do it is to die. John, the man of three dimensions is beheaded, or loses his three-dimensional focus that Jesus, the fourth-dimensional Self may live.3 ¶19

Any enlargement of our concept of Self involves a somewhat painful parting with strongly rooted hereditary conceptions. The ligaments are strong that hold us in the womb of conventional limitations. All that you formerly believed, you no longer believe. You know now that there is no power outside of your own consciousness. Therefore you cannot turn to anyone outside of self. You have no ears for the suggestion that something else has power in it. You know the only reality is God, and God is your own consciousness. There is no other God. Therefore on this rock you build the everlasting church and boldly assume you are this Divine Being, self-begotten because you dared to appropriate that which was not given to you in your cradle, a concept of Self not formed in your mother’s womb, a concept of self conceived outside of the offices of man.3 ¶20

The story is beautifully told us in the Bible using the two sons of Abraham: one the blessed, Isaac, born outside of the offices of man and the other, Ishmael, born in bondage. Sarah was much too old to beget a child, so her husband Abraham went in unto the bondservant Hagar, the pilgrim, and she conceived of the old man and bore him a son called Ishmael. Ishmael’s hand was against every man and every man’s hand against him. Every child born of woman is born into bondage, born into all that his environment represents, regardless of whether it be the throne of England, the White House, or any great place in the world. Every child born of woman is personified as this Ishmael, the child of Hagar. But asleep in every child is the blessed Isaac, who is born outside of the offices of man, and is born through faith alone. This second child has no earthly father. He is Self-begotten.3 ¶21

What is the second birth? I find myself man, I cannot go back into my mother’s womb, and yet I must be born a second time. “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” I quietly appropriate that which no man can give me, no woman can give me. I dare to assume that I am God. This must be of faith, this must be of promise. Then I become the blessed, I become Isaac. As I begin to do the things that only this presence could do, I know that I am born out of the limitations of Ishmael, and I have become heir to the kingdom. Ishmael could not inherit anything, although his father was Abraham, or God. Ishmael did not have both parents of the godly; his mother was Hagar the bond-woman, and so he could not partake of his father’s estate.3 ¶22

You are Abraham and Sarah, and contained within your own consciousness there is one waiting for recognition. In the Old Testament it is called Isaac, and in the New Testament it is called Jesus, and it is born without the aid of man. No man can tell you that you are Christ Jesus, no man can tell you and convince you that you are God. You must toy with the idea and wonder what it would be like to be God. No clear conception of the origin of phenomena is possible except that consciousness is all and all is consciousness. Nothing can be evolved from man that was not potentially involved in his nature. The ideal we serve and hope to attain could never be evolved from us were it not potentially involved in our nature.3 ¶23

Let me now retell and emphasize an experience of mine printed by me two years ago under the title, THE SEARCH. I think it will help you to understand this law of consciousness, and show you that you have no one to change but self, for you are incapable of seeing other than the contents of your own consciousness.3 ¶24

Once in an idle interval at sea, I meditated on “the perfect state,” and wondered what I would be were I of too pure eyes to behold iniquity, if to me all things were pure and were I without condemnation. As I became lost in this fiery brooding, I found myself lifted above the dark environment of the senses. So intense was feeling I felt myself a being of fire dwelling in a body of air. Voices, as from a heavenly chorus, with the exaltation of those who had been conquerors in a conflict with death, were singing, “He is risen -He is risen,” and intuitively I knew they meant me. Then I seemed to be walking in the night. I soon came upon a scene that might have been the ancient Pool of Bethesda for in this place lay a great multitude of impotent folk — blind, halt, withered -waiting not for the moving of the water as of tradition, but waiting for me. As I came near, without thought or effort on my part, they were one after the other, molded as by the Magician of the Beautiful. Eyes, hands, feet — all missing members — were drawn from some invisible reservoir and molded in harmony with that perfection which I felt springing within me. When all were made perfect the chorus exulted, “It is finished.”3 ¶25

I know this vision was the result of my intense meditation upon the idea of perfection, for my meditations invariably bring about union with the state contemplated. I had been so completely absorbed within the idea that for awhile I had become what I contemplated, and the high purpose with which I had for that moment identified myself drew the companionship of high things and fashioned the vision in harmony with my inner nature. The ideal with which we are united works by association of ideas to awaken a thousand moods to create a drama in keeping with the central idea. My mystical experiences have convinced me that there is no way to bring about the perfection we seek other than by the transformation of ourselves. As soon as we succeed in transforming ourselves, the world will melt magically before our eyes and reshape itself in harmony with that which our transformation affirms.3 ¶26

We fashion the world that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagination and feeling, and we illuminate or darken our lives by the concepts we hold of ourselves. Nothing is more important to us than our conception of ourselves, and especially is true of our concept of the deep, dimensionally greater One within us. Those that help or hinder us, whether they know it or not, are the servants of that law which shapes outward circumstances in harmony with our inner nature. It is our conception of ourselves which frees or constrains us, though it may use material agencies to achieve its purpose. Because life molds the outer world to reflect the inner arrangement of our minds, there is no way of bringing about the outer perfection we seek other than by the transformation of ourselves. No help cometh from without: the hills to which we lift our eyes are those of an inner range. It is thus to our own consciousness that we must turn as to the only reality, the only foundation on which all phenomena can be explained.3 ¶27

We can rely absolutely on the justice of this law to give us only that which is of the nature of ourselves. To attempt to change the world before we change our concept of ourselves is to struggle against the nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first an inner change. As within, so without.3 ¶28

I am not advocating philosophical indifference when I suggest that we should imagine ourselves as already that which we want to be, living in a mental atmosphere of greatness, rather than using physical means and arguments to bring about the desired changes. Everything we do, unaccompanied by a change of consciousness, is but futile readjustment of surfaces. However we toil or struggle, we can receive no more than our concepts of Self affirm. To protest against anything which happens to us is to protest against the law of our being and our ruler ship over our own destiny. The circumstances of my life are too closely related to my conception of myself not to have been formed by my own spirit from some dimensionally larger storehouse of my being. If there is pain to me in these happenings, I should look within myself for the cause, for I am moved here and there and made to live in a world in harmony with my concept of myself.3 ¶29

If we would become as emotionally aroused over our ideas as we become over our dislikes, we would ascend to the plane of our ideal as easily as we now descend to the level of our hates. Love and hate have a magical transforming power, and we grow through their exercise into the likeness of what we contemplate. By intensity of hatred we create in ourselves the character we imagine in our enemies. Qualities die for want of attention, so the unlovely states might best be rubbed out by imagining “beauty for ashes and joy for mourning” rather than by direct attacks on the state from which we would be free. “Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, think on these things,” for we become that with which we are en rapport.3 ¶30

There is nothing to change but our concept of self. As soon as we succeed in transforming self, our world will dissolve and reshape itself in harmony with that which our change affirms. I, by descent in consciousness, have brought about the imperfection that I see. In the divine economy nothing is lost. We cannot lose anything save by descent in consciousness from the sphere where the thing has its natural life. “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”3 ¶31

As I ascend in consciousness the power and the glory that was mine return to me and I too will say “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.” The work is to return from my descent in consciousness, from the level wherein I believed that I was a son of man, to the sphere where I know that I am one with my Father and my Father is God.3 ¶32

I know beyond all doubt that there is nothing for man to do but to change his own concept of himself to assume greatness and sustain this assumption. If we walk as though we were already the ideal we serve, we will rise to the level of our assumption, and find a world in harmony with our assumption. We will not have to lift a finger to make it so, for it is already so. It was always so. You and I have descended in consciousness to the level where we now find ourselves and we see imperfection because we have descended! When we begin to ascend while here in this three-dimensional world, we find that we move in an entirely different environment, we have entirely different circles of friends, and an entirely different world while still living here. We know the great mystery of the statement, “I am in the world but not of it.”3 ¶33

Instead of changing things I would suggest to all to identify themselves with the ideal they contemplate. What would the feeling be like were you of too pure eyes to behold iniquity if to you all things were pure and you were without condemnation? Contemplate the ideal state and identify yourself with it and you will ascend to the sphere where you as Christ have your natural life. You are still in that state where you were before the world was. The only thing that has fallen is your concept of self. You see the broken parts which really are not broken. You are seeing them through distorted eyes, as though you were in one of those peculiar amusement gallery’s where a man walks before a mirror and he is elongated, yet he is the same man. Or he looks into another mirror and he is all big and fat. These things are seen today because man is what he is.3 ¶34

Toy with the idea of perfection. Ask no man to help you, but let the prayer of the 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John be your prayer. Appropriate the state that was yours before the world was. Know the truth of the statement, “None have I lost save the son of perdition.” Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain. The only thing that you lose is the belief in loss or the son of perdition.3 ¶35

“And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” There is no one to change but self. All you need do to make men and women holy in this world is to make yourself holy. You are incapable of seeing anything that is unlovely when you establish within your own mind’s eye the fact that you are lovely. It is far better to know this than to know anything else in the world.3 ¶36

It takes courage, boundless courage, because many this night, after having heard this truth will still be inclined to blame others for their predicament. Man finds it so difficult to turn to himself, to his own consciousness as to the only reality. Listen to these words: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” “I and my Father are one.” “A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.” “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” “You did not choose me, I have chosen you.”3 ¶37

My concept of myself molds a world in harmony with itself and draws men to tell me constantly by their behaviour who I am. The most important thing in this world to you is your concept of self. When you dislike your environment, the circumstances of life and the behaviour of men, ask yourself, “Who am I?” It is your answer to this question that is the cause of your dislikes. If you do not condemn self there will be no man in your world to condemn you. If you are living in the consciousness of your ideal you will see nothing to condemn. “To the pure all things are pure.”3 ¶38

Now I would like to spend a little time making as clear as I can what I personally do when I pray, what I do when I want to bring about changes in my world. You will find it interesting, and you will find that it works. No one here can tell me they cannot do it. It is so very simple all can do it. We are what we imagine we are. This technique is not difficult to follow, but you must want to do it. You cannot approach it with the attitude of mind “Oh well I’ll try it.” You must want to do it, because the mainspring of action is desire. Desire is the mainspring of all action.3 ¶39

Now what do I want? I must define my objective. For example, suppose I wanted now to be elsewhere. This very moment I really desire to be elsewhere. I need not go through the door, I need not sit down. I need do nothing but stand just where I am and with my eyes closed, assume that I am actually standing where I desire to be. Then I remain in this state until it has the feeling of reality. Were I now elsewhere I could not see the world as I now see it from here. The world changes in its relationship to me as I change my position in space. So I stand right here, close my eyes, and imagine I am seeing what I would see were I there. I remain in it long enough to feel it to be real.3 ¶40

I cannot touch the walls of this room from here, but when you close your eyes and become still you can imagine and feel that you touch it. You can stand where you are and imagine you are putting your hand on that wall. To prove you really are, put it there and slide it up and feel the wood. You can imagine you are doing it without getting off your seat. You can do it and you will actually feel it if you become still enough and intense enough. I stand where I am and I allow the world that I want to see and to enter physically to come before me as though I were there now. In other words, I bring elsewhere here by assuming that I am there. Is that clear? I let it come up, I do not make it come up. I simply imagine I am there and then let it happen.3 ¶41

If I want a physical presence, I imagine he is standing here, and I touch him. All through the Bible I find these suggestions, “He placed his hands upon them. He touched them.” If you want to comfort someone, what is the automatic feeling? To put your hand on them, you cannot resist it. You meet a friend and the hand goes out automatically, you either shake hands or put your hand on his shoulder. Suppose you were now to meet a friend that you have not seen for a year and he is a friend of whom you are very fond. What would you do? You would embrace him, wouldn’t you? Or you would put your hand upon him. In your imagination bring him close enough to put your hand upon him and feel him to be solidly real. Restrict the action to just that. You will be amazed at what happens.3 ¶42

From then on things begin to move. Your dimensionally greater self will inspire, in all, the ideas and actions necessary to bring you into physical contact. It works that way.3 ¶43

Every day I put myself into the drowsy state; it is a very easy thing to do. But habit is a strange thing in man’s world. It is not law, but habit acts as though it were the most compelling law in the world. We are creatures of habit. If you create an interval every day into which you put yourself into the drowsy state, say at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, do you know at that moment every day you will feel drowsy? You try it for one week and see if I am not right. You sit down for the purpose of creating a state akin to sleep, as though you were sleepy, but do not push the drowsiness too far, just far enough to relax and leave you in control of the direction of your thoughts. You try it for one week, and every day at that hour, no matter what you are doing, you will hardly be able to keep your eyes open. If you know the hour when you will be free you can create it. I would not suggest that you do it lightly, because you will feel very, very sleepy and you may not want to.3 ¶44

I have another way of praying. In this case I always sit down and I find the most comfortable arm chair imaginable, or I lie flat on my back and relax completely. Make yourself comfortable. You must not be in any position where the body is distressed. Always put yourself into a position where you have the greatest ease. That is the first stage. To know what you want is the start of prayer.3 ¶45

Secondly you construct in your mind’s eye one single little event which implies that you have realized your desire. I always let my mind roam on many things that could follow the answered prayer and I single out one that is most likely to follow the fulfillment of my desire. One simple little thing like the shaking of a hand, embracing a person, the receiving of a letter, the writing of a check, or whatever would imply the fulfillment of your desire. After you have decided on the action which implies that your desire has been realized, then sit in your nice comfortable chair or lie flat on your back, close your eyes for the simple reason it helps to induce this state that borders on sleep. The minute you feel this lovely drowsy state, or the feeling of gathered togetherness, wherein you feel- I could move if I wanted to, but I do not want to, I could open my eyes if I wanted to, but I do not want to.3 ¶46

When you get that feeling you can be quite sure that you are in the perfect state to pray successfully. In this feeling it is easy to touch anything in this world. You take the simple little restricted action which implies fulfillment of your prayer and you feel it or you enact it. Whatever it is, you enter into the action as though you were an actor in the part. You do not sit back and visualize yourself doing it. You do it.3 ¶47

With the body immobilized you imagine that the greater you inside the physical body is coming out of it and that you are actually performing the proposed action. If you are going to walk, you imagine that you are walking. Do not see yourself walk, FEEL that you are walking. If you are going to climb stairs, FEEL that you are climbing the stairs. Do not visualize yourself doing it, feel yourself doing it. If you are going to shake a man’s hand, do not visualize yourself shaking his hand, imagine your friend is standing before you and shake his hand. But leave your physical hands immobilized and imagine that your greater hand, which is your imaginary hand, is actually shaking his hand. All you need do is to imagine that you are doing it. You are stretched out in time, and what you are doing, which seems to be a controlled day dream, is an actual act in the greater dimension of your being. You are actually encountering an event fourth-dimensionally before you encounter it here in the three-dimensions of space, and you do not have to raise a finger to bring that state to pass.3 ¶48

My third way of praying is simply to feel thankful. If I want something, either for myself or another, I immobilize the physical body, then I produce the state akin to sleep and in that state just feel happy, feel thankful, which thankfulness implies realization of what I want. I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and with my mind dominated by this single sensation I go to sleep. I need do nothing to make it so, because it is so. My feeling of the wish fulfilled implies it is done. All these techniques you can use and change them to fit your temperament. But I must emphasize the necessity of inducing the drowsy state where you can become attentive without effort. A single sensation dominates the mind, if you pray successfully. What would I feel like, now, were I what I want to be? When I know what the feeling would be like I then close my eyes and lose myself in that single sensation and my dimensionally greater Self then builds a bridge of incident to lead me from this present moment to the fulfillment of my mood. That is all you need do.3 ¶49

But people have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things. We are creatures of habit and we are slowly learning to relinquish our previous concepts, but the things we formerly lived by still in some way influence our behaviour. Here is a story from the Bible that illustrates my point. It is recorded that Jesus told his disciples to go to the crossroads and there they would find a colt, a young colt not yet ridden by a man. To bring the colt to him and if any man ask, “Why do you take this colt?” say, “The Lord has need of it.” They went to the crossroads and found the colt and did exactly as they were told. They brought the unbridled ass to Jesus and He rode it triumphantly into Jerusalem.3 ¶50

The story has nothing to do with a man riding on a little colt. You are Jesus of the story. The colt is the mood you are going to assume. That is the living animal not yet ridden by you. What would the feeling be like were you to realize your desire? A new feeling, like a young Colt, is a very difficult thing to ride unless you ride him with a disciplined mind. If I do not remain faithful to the mood the young colt throws me off. Every time you become conscious that you are not faithful to this mood, you have been thrown from the colt. Discipline your mind that you may remain faithful to a high mood and ride it triumphantly into Jerusalem, which is fulfillment, or the city of peace. This story precedes the feast of the Passover. If we would pass from our present state into that of our ideal, we must assume that we are already that which we desire to be and remain faithful to our assumption, for we must keep a high mood if we would walk with the highest.3 ¶51

A fixed attitude of mind, a feeling that it is done will make it so. If I walk as though it were, but every once in a while I look to see if it really is, then I fall off my mood or colt. If I would suspend judgment like Peter I could walk on the water. Peter starts walking on the water, and then he begins to look unto his own understanding and he begins to go down. The voice said, “Look up, Peter.” Peter looks up and he rises again and continues walking on the water.3 ¶52

Instead of looking down to see if this thing is really going to harden into fact, you simply know that it is already so, sustain that mood and you will ride the unbridled colt into the city of Jerusalem. All of us must learn to ride the animal straight in to Jerusalem unassisted by a man. You do not need another to help you. The strange thing is that as we keep the high mood and do not fall, others cushion the blows. They spread the palm leaves before me to cushion my journey. I do not have to be concerned. The shocks will be softened as I move into the fulfillment of my desire. My high mood awakens in others the ideas and actions which tend towards the embodiment of my mood. If you walk faithful to a high mood there will be no opposition and no competition.3 ¶53

The test of a teacher, or a teaching, is to be found in the faithfulness of the taught. I am leaving here on Sunday night. Do remain faithful to this instruction. If you look for causes outside the consciousness of man, then I have not convinced you of the reality of consciousness.3 ¶54

If you look for excuses for failure you will always find them, for you find what you seek. If you seek an excuse for failure, you will find it in the stars, in the numbers, in the tea cup, or most any place. The excuse will not be there but you will find it to justify your failure. Successful business and professional men and women know that this law works. You will not find it in gossip groups, but you will find it in courageous hearts.3 ¶55

Man’s eternal journey is for one purpose: to reveal the Father. He comes to make visible his Father. And his Father is made visible in all the lovely things of this world. All the things that are lovely, that are of good report, ride these things, and have no time for the unlovely in this world, regardless of what it is.3 ¶56

Remain faithful to the knowledge that your consciousness, your I AMness, your awareness of being aware of the only reality. It is the rock on which all phenomena can be explained. There is no explanation outside of that. I know of no clear conception of the origin of phenomena save that consciousness is all and all is consciousness. That which you seek is already housed within you. Were it not now within you eternity could not evolve it. No time stretch would be long enough to evolve what is not potentially involved in you. You simply let it into being by assuming that it is already visible in your world, and remaining faithful to your assumption. It will harden into fact.3 ¶57

Your Father has unnumbered ways of revealing your assumption. Fix this in your mind and always remember, “An assumption, though false, if sustained will harden into fact.”3 ¶58

You and your Father are one and your Father is everything that was, is and will be. Therefore that which you seek you already are. It can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. The great Pascal said, “You never would have sought me had you not already found me.” What you now desire you already have and you seek it only because you have already found it. You found it in the form of desire. It is just as real in the form of desire as it is going to be to your bodily organs. You are already that which you seek and you have no one to change but Self in order to express it.3 ¶59

Tonight’s subject is the unalloyed. We all know the unalloyed is the unmixed, the pure, the complete. And you and I are seeking that state: the complete unalloyed. We are making our exodus from this age into another age, and the exodus of man begins when man accepts the God of Israel. If the journey seems long, it is only because the children of Israel — those who have accepted the God of Israel — find it difficult to keep the tense. For the God of Israel is I AM; that’s his name forever. And when I find it difficult to keep the tense, then the journey seems very long. So here we’re moving from this age into another age, an entirely different age, and we will move when we have completely accepted the God of Israel. And the one who has not accepted it, no matter what he has done, no matter how kind and generous, how wonderful he is, he doesn’t move from this age. Now you can take this from every level of your own being. You and I were made subject unto futility, not willingly but by reason of the will of Him who subjected us in hope that you and I would be set free from this bondage of decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. That is our hope.304 ¶1

But while we are subjected to it, this presence who subjected us disappears from view. He takes up residence in us and we have to find Him. He is the Unalloyed, the pure, the unmixed. No child born of woman could cross the threshold that admits to conscious life unaided by the light of God. The Bible speaks of the life of God as the blood of Jesus. We are told the life is in the blood and one day man will find it. And one day this tree [...] of good and evil and this cloven pine will be ripped from top to bottom, and the imprisoned spirit set free. Every one of us, but not until we completely accept the God of Israel; and that God of Israel is simply I AM.304 ¶2

You can start this night, from where you are to where you would like to be in this world of Caesar, led by the God of Israel. In other words, when you know what you are and you know what you would like to be, instead of what you seem to be, you assume I AM that . Assuming I AM that or I AM it or I AM he , call it what you will; and sleep in the assumption that you are really the being that you would like to be. Sleeping in this state, you move across a bridge of incidents that leads you to the fulfillment of your assumption. But when you forget the tense, and you say ‘I will be’, ‘I was’, or any other way, you delay the journey. And it seems so long only because man in his journey finds it difficult to keep the tense of the God he promised to worship.304 ¶3

So Elijah said to the people of Israel, he came near to them, and he said to them concerning this presence of the I AM: “How long will you go limping between two, how long? If the Lord is God, follow him. If Bael is God, then follow him.” You say you’ve chosen the Lord as God, the Lord of Israel. Then do not start limping between these two opinions. Either choose one and reject the other, or you reject what you should take and reject the other. In other words, there is no cause of the phenomena of life outside of your own wonderful human imagination. You are bringing it into being morning, noon, and night. So how long will you go limping between two opinions? If the Lord is God, choose Him. If Bael is God, then choose him.304 ¶4

And then we turn to the book of Joshua. And Joshua said to the people of Israel: “Choose this day whom you will serve. As for myself and my household, we choose the Lord”. And the people of Israel replied “We choose the Lord”. And then Joshua said “Then you are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord”. And they replied “We are witnesses against ourselves”.304 ¶5

And then the journey starts for the exodus from this age into that age; or from my present state of consciousness, what I want to express in this world depends upon my choice of the God of Israel. So, if I choose the God of Israel to guide me, to lead me, and his name is I AM, I may find it difficult to keep the tense, and instead of sleeping night after night in the assumption that I AM already the man that I would be, I may go to sleep in the belief ‘I will be’. That delays it. I may go to sleep in any other kind of belief but I must, to the best of my ability, not only choose the God of Israel but remain as faithful as I can to my choice. So tonight, you can take anything you want, if you choose the God of Israel.304 ¶6

And may I tell you that if there is anyone in this audience this night who is an orthodox Jew, and you think because I say ‘I must choose and you must choose the God of Israel’ and you are born into a family who are Jews that you have already made your choice, you are mistaken. Your concept of God is just as far removed from the God as the Christians’ concept of God. They had it up there in space some place, other then in time some place. The God of which I speak — I speak of your own wonderful human imagination. That’s the God. That’s the God of Israel. And so, you choose Him to guide you.304 ¶7

So tonight, when you know exactly what you want, you sleep in the assumption that you are already the man that you want to be. And fall asleep in that state and that state will externalize itself within your world. You either do it or say that ‘I will be that man’ and delay the process. But may I tell you you’ll never reach ‘I will be.’ You can only reach I AM it. And so, everyone here, try it.304 ¶8

Try this state, for the day is coming that this wonderful tree that we are — I saw it so clearly in vision — it’s just a tree. Many have never returned since they heard me speak of this ancient tree. And here is Blake. I never read him when I had my vision. And when he said, “Hear the vultures above whose present past and future sees, whose ears have heard the Holy Word that walked among the ancient trees”. For that night I saw the trees, and I saw this wonderful vision of earth, and it all is like a tree, unnumbered trees. And the eighth chapter of Mark, when the man’s eye was opened, he was asked, “What do you see?” He said, “I see men like trees walking.” And here they told me, in this vision, that no one in that state where I was believed for one moment that anyone could come here and ever return. This to them was death, absolute death. They did not know God’s plan to insert himself as you, as me, as everyone in the tree.304 ¶9

And then put us in furnaces of affliction, real furnaces of affliction as we’re told in the 48th chapter of the book of Isaiah: “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction, for my own sake, for my own sake I do it. For how should my name be proclaimed? I will not give my glory to another.” And so, he puts himself as us through the furnaces of affliction; and when we are the unalloyed, pure gold, which is His blood, then comes that pine, the cloven pine is ribbon from top to bottom and the imprisoned spirit set free.304 ¶10

And may I tell you, when you see it, you will know it. You will see this golden glow and you will say within yourself, “I know it is myself. Oh my divine creator and redeemer.” And you will fuse with it and then rise to the very height. You can’t go any higher. You will rise to the very limit as you fuse with this golden liquid light which is the blood of God.304 ¶11

But on this level, the same thing holds good; on all levels, it’s the same principle. I make my exit from where I am to where I want to be only when I accept the God of Israel, and the God of Israel is I AM. I call Him by no other name, just I AM. I don’t say ‘I am Neville’ or ‘I am John’ or ‘I am Mary’, just I AM. On that I can put anything. I can say I am healthy, wealthy, known, unknown, anything; it’s entirely up to me. Accept the God of Israel and then put the mask upon Him, for He is the actor. I AM is the actor, and the assumption is the mask the actor wears. That’s why I assume that I AM and I name it, and when I name, then I rise, moving across a bridge of incidents which leads me to the fulfillment of that which I assume that I AM. So, this is the God of which I speak.304 ¶12

And then will come that moment in time when you move from this age to that age where everything then is completely subject to your imaginative power, for you are God. You are God now , but you do not know it, and you find it difficult keeping the tense. Most of us don’t think in terms of the tense, we think in terms of something outside itself in some strange part of the world or part of the universe. So the inner world of which I speak tonight will come right down to this one simple state: I AM. Not mixed with anything. I don’t say I am an American, I am a Russian, I am a White man, I am a Negro; I say nothing, just simply I AM. That’s my God.304 ¶13

If I should say to you now that some Russian is more proud of being a Russian than he is of being I AM, you might, in some strange way, rejoice. But I’ll turn it around and ask of the whole vast 190 million of us, are we more proud of being an American than of being Christ? I AM is Christ. Are we more proud of being White than of being Christ? Are we more proud of being you-name-it than being Christ? And Christ is simply I AM.304 ¶14

This morning’s mail brought a letter, typewritten, unsigned, but a little type perplexed. I can’t answer your letter if you’re here tonight. You say you were terribly disturbed last Sunday morning because of what I said, and then you went into all this detail about our country being completely eaten by subversion.304 ¶15

May I tell you, if you are here tonight, imagining creates reality. You couldn’t discuss with me either in the letter that you wrote or verbally, or in any other way, and not create what you discussed. We are incapable of discussing anything as an object that is in the opinion of imagining on some level or levels. You couldn’t do it. I tell you imagining creates reality. There is no fiction in our world. I can sit down here now and imagine something that is not based upon fact — there is not one fact in the world to support it — and wait. If I am faithful to the God of Israel — for the God of Israel is I AM — but I’m doing it. And if I know all things are possible to this God that I have discovered, all I need do is wait and it’s externalized in my world.304 ¶16

So when you wrote me this long, detailed, typewritten letter, if you are present, may I tell you I was perplexed. You signed yours perplexed. I asked you to share with me your experiences. Now what I said last Sunday morning to disturb you, I really don’t know. I was trying to explain what the creative power of God is.304 ¶17

It’s called in scripture ‘Jesus Christ.’ Jesus Christ is personified, and we take the personification as a person and go sound asleep. Make some little icon of him and stick it on the wall, or make some picture of him and put it on the wall, and we think that is Christ. That’s not Christ. Christ is the creative power and the wisdom of God. And if those who wrote the story personified this quality, it’s perfectly alright. Always bear in mind it’s a personification of a quality, of a power, this creative power of God, and don’t worship the personification. It’s not a person. Jesus Christ is in you.304 ¶18

I tell you a mystery, a mystery hidden for ages and for generations. Christ in you is the hope of glory. Christ in me is my hope and glory? Yes. Then where is he? Your capacity to imagine, that’s He. And all things are possible to him? Yes. Well then, test Him and see. “Come test me and see if I am not the being that I tell you I am. I’m the creative power of the universe” — that’s what he’s telling me.304 ¶19

And so, I’ve been able to test him. I can imagine that I am what at the moment my reason denies, my senses deny, everything denies; and if I am faithful to the tense, I AM, this — then I will become it? Yes. And if I do become it, will I then forget how it happened? I may.304 ¶20

That’s the journey that man takes in his exodus from this age to the other age. You’re always forgetting and find it very, very difficult to keep the tense, but the journey starts when man is bold enough to accept the God of Israel and the only God of Israel is I AM. If a rabbi should tell you his name is Jehovah, turn unless he knows Jehovah means I AM. No matter how wise they are, all the ritual and all the ceremony and all the things on the outside, it means nothing if he doesn’t know who the God really is; and that God is simply I AM.304 ¶21

And if you believe it, accept it as you are told the people of Israel did. Choose this day whom you will serve. For myself and my household, we choose the Lord. Now you choose and they said, “We choose the Lord”. Now you are witnesses against yourself. You can’t pass the buck from now on and say, “He is against me”. You’ve chosen the Lord as the only Lord; therefore you are witnesses against yourselves.304 ¶22

So tomorrow something doesn’t go as you think it ought to go, and you look around for some scapegoat and you think, “He is doing it, she is doing it, they’re doing it.” And the minute you begin to say, “They’re doing it,” you’ve forgotten your choice, for your choice was I will serve the God of Israel and only the God of Israel and that God is I AM.304 ¶23

So, you should ask yourself, “What am I doing? Where did I go wrong in my assumption that I am the man or the woman that I want to be?” If I want to be this, that or the other, then I can’t say, “I will be that.” I must dare to assume I AM that right now . Although at the moment reason denies it, the senses deny it, I must persist in this assumption.304 ¶24

There isn’t one story told in (I’m not selling the book because it isn’t available; it’s not on the table tonight) The Law and The Promise ; there are 40 case histories, and everyone is based upon that simple choice of the God of Israel. I didn’t mention the words God of Israel, but that is their choice. “I am not living in my home,” said the doctor, “A lovely home with many units to rent, bringing in income allowing me my office and my own space for my personal life, and yet I have units bringing me in an income.” And he didn’t have a nickel, not one penny. His name is Dr. Moore.304 ¶25

A total stranger goes by and stops in to see him not as a doctor, to visit him as a potential client, for he was a builder. He had the money, he had the vision, and saw this empty lot and he built it for Dr. Moore without one penny out of Dr. Moore’s pocket. Because Dr. Moore at the time was given to saving every penny he could for his old age, as he says, and couldn’t venture into this, although he would like to do it. When he heard this, he said, “It costs me nothing to do this, so I will simply sleep in the assumption that it is built.” And he slept in the assumption that the building was done. Then a total stranger drives by and stops in and proposes the building and raises the money and completes the building and turns the key over to him.304 ¶26

There is not one of the 40 stories that isn’t based upon the God of Israel as our God. And that God is I AM. So tonight, if you really know what you want in this world, and you’re willing to take this God as the only God, don’t turn to any other God. And then assume that “I have it,” or “I am it,” or whatever it is, and sleep as though it were true. May I tell you, in a way that you cannot consciously devise, you’ll wake tomorrow under compulsion, to move in certain directions. And no matter where you go, it may seem wrong; but upon reflection, it will prove to be right. It will be the thing you should have done. You’ll meet this party, that party, the other party; it will all add up to the fulfillment of your assumption, if you are faithful to the God of Israel.304 ¶27

So, when Joshua asked the question (and the word Joshua is the Hebraic word for Jesus)… It was Joshua that led the people across the river into the promised land. Moses couldn’t do it. He’s buried in man as that power. Joshua comes out and does it. Joshua is your own wonderful I Am-ness. It’s spelled just like Jehovah with a Shin Ayin at the end of it, for many marvelous reasons.304 ¶28

If I take the name Yod Hey Vav Hey and analyze it for you, Yod is a hand, a creative hand. Hey is a window, the eye of the body. Vav is a nail and the last one is a Hey. What I see internally the first Hey, I will now so feel it, I will externalize it in my world; that’s the Yod Hey Vav Hey.304 ¶29

In the word Jesus, or Joshua, the same word Yod Hey Vav, the same first three, but then Shin Ayin. Shin is a tooth as a symbol. Ayin is a eye. The truth is that if I bring something into my world and I don’t like it, I must have the power to destroy it or change it. If I have to live with all of my creations, and I created when I didn’t know better, and I must live with them, I’m living in hell. So a shin is inserted into the vein of the savior of the world where he brings it in; it’s not as he wanted it to be, he can consume it. It’s a fire, a three pronged fire called a tooth; for a tooth is a symbol for that which crushes and consumes. It also is a flame, so the flame burns it and destroys it that I may rebuild it into a better shape.304 ¶30

So here we have this Yod Hey Vav Sin Ayin, the name of Joshua, the name of Jesus. The same letters Yod Hey Vav is the name of Jehovah, which is I AM. That’s all that it means. So, the whole thing is taking place in us as our own wonderful human imagination. So, if you choose that God and no other God, you can’t go wrong. This is the God. So, I ask everyone here to put it to the extreme test.304 ¶31

But if tonight you feel that it may be wrong, suppose I have chosen the wrong God. Suppose now that he really is something external to myself; he hasn’t taken up residence in me, he’s something on the outside watching me, and Neville has misled me to believe in my own wonderful human imagination — then where am I then? I’ve gone astray from the God I formerly worshipped to the God he has proposed. I tell you I know from experience the God of whom I speak.304 ¶32

You will meet him one day, and strangely enough, although it’s internal, you will see it standing before you as an external being. And it’s infinite love, and it’s articulate and speaks to you as another, for he will address you, and you will answer the question asked; and yet the whole drama is taking place within you. And this God is infinite love. And he stands before you and asks you a very simple question, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” You will answer correctly. You will answer love. He will embrace you and you will fuse; and you are one person. And forever, you’re still one person. This infinite being that stands before you is housed within you. He simply is awakening as you remain faithful to your choice to serve the God of Israel.304 ¶33

So, you make the decision: I either serve him or I don’t serve him. If I serve him, I’ll walk through here tonight in the assumption that I am already the man, I’m already the woman that I want to be and try to the best of my ability to remain faithful to that tense I AM. And not say that ‘I will be that eventually’, just I AM. And if you do it, I tell you, you will become it in the not distant future.304 ¶34

So here this unalloyed being buried in man, and one day you will see it; it’s pure, unmixed, complete, and you will see it as this tree that’s cleft in two from top to bottom. And looking at the base, you see the blood of God that sets you free. And you’re the imprisoned spirit in that tree; it is now one with the blood, and up you go, and you are free of this age. But not one child in this world could live unaided by that sacrifice of the life of God. So, when we read in the book of Blake: “Unless I die, thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and you with me” — and that’s true. It’s a voluntary act that he gives himself for us. Because you and I were subjected unto futility not willingly.304 ¶35

May I tell you, in my vision, no one wants to come here. No one. And when I spoke of my stories of earth and told them of my experiences on earth, they wouldn’t believe me. And [...] not one will believe you. They have not yet been subjected to this section of time. You have been subjected, and therefore it’s a blessing because everyone that’s subjected has told us in the scriptures we were called. We were chosen. He called us in himself before the foundation of time. And having called us, he subjected us without our consent; and He came with us, right into this world of death.304 ¶36

And then having called us here, those that he foreknew — for he foreknew me, he foreknew you — he now predestines to be conformed to the image of his son. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.304 ¶37

How would he glorify me? Only with himself. He has told us in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of John: “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do. Now glorify thou me with thine own self”. And so, he glorifies him with himself and gives him fatherhood, for God is a father. So here everyone will reach that moment in time when God will glorify him, and that’s the end. These are the five stages. Those who he [...] for you, he predestined. Those whom he predestined, he called. Those whom he called, he justified. Those whom he justified, he glorified. And these are the five stages. I don’t see how anyone can interpret these five terms and come to any conclusion other than predestination.304 ¶38

Relative to that age, everyone will be taken out of this age, though they may be late by not quite keeping the tense. You have chosen the God of Israel as your God. You may delay the exit because you find it difficult to keep the tense, but you will still be taken out because you come back and back and back, time and again, to the true God. And finally, you are taken out of this age and into that age called the Kingdom of God. So, everyone who is here will be transported into the kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. It’s an entirely different world. Isn’t this world at all.304 ¶39

But while we’re in this world, we use God’s principle, the same principle, and make our exit, not from this age into that age, but from this state into that state . So, we take states here. And so, I’m in a state that isn’t pleasant… or I know a friend who is in a state that isn’t pleasant, and so I represent him to myself as the man that I would like him to be. I believe he’s taking place now , so I am faithful to the God of Israel by saying ‘I am seeing it now .’ I am hearing it, I am continuing to hear it, and always I will hear it, because I’m doing it now . And he has to conform to what I’m hearing as true of him. And so, I move him from one state into another state, and from that state — after he’s exhausted it — into still another state. And that’s how we move in this world of ours.304 ¶40

And so here tonight that unalloyed of which I speak is that pure gold of God; it’s his blood that made you alive, for the life is in the blood. And were it not for that sacrifice, a voluntary sacrifice, you could not breathe in this world. So, God himself entered death’s door, always with those who enter, and this is death’s door. And he lays down in the grave with them, in visions of eternity till they awake. And when they awake, God and the one with whom he entered are one. For in the end, there is only God, nothing but God, and his name forever and forever is I AM.304 ¶41

So tonight, if you have any objective, I hope it is a great, noble objective, but any objective, do it in this simple way: What would you see were it true? How would you see the world were it true? Well then begin to see the world mentally as you would see it physically were it true, and go sound asleep in the assumption that what you are seeing mentally is physical fact. Just try it. What you see mentally is physical fact.304 ¶42

Here, my friend in the city who treated you throughout the year, he takes off for the time that I am here, and we are daily together. The story I told in the book, the Law and the Promise , when he goes in for a record having seen exactly what he wanted, and the man said, “We do not have it.” And he replied mentally, not physically (the man did not hear him), “That’s not what I heard you say”. He was so sure that what he had imagined and heard mentally was fact that when it didn’t have the echo to support it, he said inwardly, “That’s not what I heard you say.” And then on the way out of the store, the man saw the record, took it off the shelf, and then said, “Oh here, we do have it. The exact album that you want the same artist, [...] 36 47, everything is just as you wanted it.” He thanked him, took it, and paid for it. But before he went off physically to the record shop, he simply enacted the scene, the scene that would imply the fulfillment of what he wanted I this world. Then he went and asked for it, and the man said ‘we don’t have it,’ as he said to his friends who tried to get it for him for Christmas. And so here is a story based upon one’s own creative act. The creative act is your own wonderful, human imagination.304 ¶43

So, I hope that you who wrote the letter that I got this morning, I hope you are present. And this country, as our forefathers said, as Robert Frost stated that they said it, they did not believe in the future, they believed it in . The mere passage of time would not bring anything to America. You and I, citizens of America who love it, we must believe our ideals in. We can’t wait and hope that some star who is shining is going to do it for us. The minute you believe that some star, some constellation, or teacup leaves, or cards, or something else has the future of our country in its hands, you have turned from the God of Israel.304 ¶44

Choose this day whom you will serve. We choose the God of Israel. What is his name? I AM. You choose that as your God? Yes. Now you are witnesses against yourself. From that moment on, of your choice you cannot turn to anyone and say ‘they are against me and they are making it impossible for me to realize my objective’. The minute you do that, you are not serving the God of Israel for the God of Israel is simply I AM. There never was another God of Israel and never will be.304 ¶45

All over the world in spite of claims to the contrary, you will not find such a God. This is the one God in the extreme. You go to other religions and there are multiple gods. They all have unnumbered gods, but not the God of Israel. Monotheism began in that state and Christianity is but the fulfillment of Judaism.304 ¶46

The true Christianity, where one not only believes it but brings it to fulfillment, and all that was promised in the Old Testament unfolds within the individual if he is faithful to the God of Israel. For he himself goes through every experience. Not the other one, but he himself. Birth, the resurrection, all these things promised in the old, he as the individual experiences it as I AM. Who was resurrected? I AM. And all these things happen in the individual. So here, the God of Israel, forever and forever, is I AM. Let us go into the silence.304 ¶47

We are told in the Book of Deuteronomy that “The Rock, his work is perfect.” And then we are asked, “Is he not your father, who created you?” Then he goes on to tell us that “He fixed the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of God.” Today we are thinking in terms of curtailing the population and we have no chance really. It’s all written here that not one child should be born were it not for the Son of God. Now, he speaks of the sons of God and he calls it “the Rock.” I will share with you tonight…and I have had those who were here in the past…my own personal experience of this claim of scripture.515 ¶1

You’re told in the Psalms “I will behold thy face in righteousness; and I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness.” Now you read these words and you’ll say, “Well, certainly the Rock could not be God. It says, ‘Our God is the Lord.’” Who else could be the Rock but our God? “And the Rock was Christ. And other foundations no one can lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” And that is the Rock. Now in scripture truth is literal; the words to express it may be figurative. Nevertheless, when you experience it, it is literal. First of all, the Rock becomes a person: “And the Rock, his work is perfect…and be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” So when the question is asked, “Is he not your Father who created you?” And then he sets fixed bounds to the people according to the number of the sons of God.515 ¶2

Now the word translated God in scripture is a compound unity, one made up of others. There is a fixed number to the sons of God, a fixed number, and that unity knows each by name. I am telling you that you really are now, as told you in the first epistle of John, the son of God. You may not believe me, but “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, and we shall see him as he is.” So you look into the mirror and you see your face, and you know with anyone in this world there’s always room for improvement. No matter how handsome, how beautiful they may be to others or maybe even to themselves, if they are honest they know there is really room for improvement; therefore, they’re not perfect in their own eyes. But we are told, “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” …and Christ is called the Father, and Christ is the Rock.515 ¶3

Well, in 1934 I think it was, sitting in the Silence, not contemplating anything in particular, with my eyes shut as in sleep but certainly not asleep, contemplating the golden pulsing light that came out of my head. For if I sit in the Silence just for a minute or less than a minute, then if I look, here is this pulsing, golden, liquid light that is alive. All I was looking at was simply this light, when suddenly before my vision appeared this quartz…about that size…this solid, solid rock, but it’s a quartz. And then before you could think, it fragments, broken into numberless little pieces, and then just as quickly, it re-assembles itself but not into the form of a rock. It reassembles itself into that of a human being seated in lotus posture. But it’s not stone; it’s flesh, it’s a breathing, living being. As I look at it, I’m looking at myself, but with this difference: it is perfect. You can’t describe the majesty, you can’t describe the beauty, the dignity, the strength of character in that face. It would seem it would take more than eternity to turn this face into that…and yet I’m looking at myself. I have no doubt in my mind who I am looking at, I am looking at myself, but I am looking at myself raised to the nth degree of perfection. As I look at him, all of a sudden he begins to glow and he increases in luminosity. When it seems that he reaches the nth degree of luminosity, it explodes. And then I open my eyes and I am back in my room in New York City.515 ¶4

The Rock is Christ. The Rock is the limit of contraction. So here, the sons of God left the Father’s glory and clothed themselves in mortal flesh. He is within me, that same being that I saw is housed within me and he’s perfect. He’s molding me into his likeness and when it’s completed we aren’t two, we are one. In the interval, I am his emanation yet his wife ‘til the sleep of death is past. When I awake I’ll be like him, as the psalmist says. “I shall be satisfied that when I awake I will have his likeness.” I will not only have his likeness, I am he when the work is completed. So, “He who began a good work in me will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” So when the work is completed, he awakes, and when he awakes I awake and we are one, completely one, and that is God.515 ¶5

So we are limited in this world to the number of the sons of God, but who knows the number of the sons of God? So we are trying to stop the explosion in this world, because we say we can’t afford to feed them, we can’t clothe them. Well, I go back into the thirties and I heard George Washington Carver at a forum in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria. Every year in those days when the Herald Tribune was a New York paper (now it’s gone), they held every year a forum that lasted about three weeks, seven days a week. All of the prominent men from all over the world, men and women, were invited—religious leaders, politicians, scientists, artists. There were always about a thousand of them who gathered and it would go on for hours. They had a luncheon and then the speeches.515 ¶6

George Washington Carver—I’m quite sure you know who I’m talking about—one of the greatest Americans that ever walked the face of this earth who gave us all the by-products of the peanut and the Southern Pine. Over 300 by-products of the peanut, the [...]. As he stood before that audience he said, “The clothes that I wear came out of the peanut; not only my tie but the color of my tie. All these pigments came out of the peanut. I asked God why he made the peanut and he said, ‘I gave you a brain. Go into yourself and you’ll find out why I made the peanut. Everything in the world is contained in the peanut, but everything! And it’s contained in everything. So I brought out 300 by-products.’” He called it the “synthetic kingdom.” Now, he said, “From the southern states of America…” meaning that which is south of the Mason-Dixon line, not going into South America, just the United States. He said, “We can grow enough in the Southern states to feed and clothe the entire world.” We don’t need the Northern states, and we don’t need any part of the outer world.515 ¶7

So the problem is not curtailing the explosion that we’re talking about, it’s economics…how to distribute what we are capable of producing. Today we are paying billions every year not to grow what we could grow. You pay a man who has x-number of acres not to grow a certain number. And after he grows more than he really, well, when he produces more than they want him to produce, then he has to store it. So he spends millions storing it and all this money paying out for the interest on the storage bill. We haven’t yet found out how to change our economic system to actually take care of what man is capable of producing. Communism is not the answer…that’s failed. Socialism is not the answer…that has failed. And our present set-up is not the answer. But I have not the answer, I do not know. I am not an economist. But the problem is certainly not to curtail children in the world. First of all we can’t do it, for he has given a fixed limit to the peoples of the world and it is according to the number of the sons of God.515 ¶8

Now what is that number? He said, “There are more than the stars of the heavens and more than the sands of the sea.” Well, try to number it! And it takes all, and each is known by name, and it takes all together to form the Lord. For the word Elohim is that compound unity, one made up of others. We are the gods. I saw it clearly. Here is this rock and then the rock breaks into many parts, gathers itself together, and then it forms itself into the perfect human form seated in a lotus position. I’m looking at myself, but I am seeing myself that as a man I could not believe that it would not take eternity to actually mold me into its likeness. Yet the promise is, “Let us make man in our image.” So here he is within me. That’s where the Rock was and that’s where the figure was and that’s where that figure is.515 ¶9

So “Rouse thyself, O Lord, why sleepest thou? Awake!” as we’re told in the 44th Psalm. So in everyone is the son of God, known by name, known in eternity, and that has to awake, but it cannot awake until it completes its work. Its work is to make its emanation, which is this form it wears, as perfect as it is. When it is as perfect as it is, it awakes and naturally the emanation has to awake too; and they cease to be two, they become one. So he leaves everything and cleaves to his emanation, which is his wife, until they become one flesh, one being, one Lord. So in the end everyone will awake.515 ¶10

But how to persuade man that he really is the son of God? So I tell you, you are the son of God. And the day will come that you’ll have the same experience that I’ve had…everyone will have it. You will see the Rock and you’ll know why they said, “Of the Rock that begot you, you are unmindful, and you’ve forgotten the God who gave you birth.” So here, a rock—you can’t conceive of anything more dead than a rock, a quartz. So he died, in what sense?—he took upon himself the limit of contraction which is the symbol of the rock. The rock symbolizes that very ultimate of contraction, which is death. Then it forms itself. It leaves the Father’s glory and then clothes itself with mortal flesh.515 ¶11

And here I’m clothed in mortal flesh, but I know I’m awakening. I know that the whole thing is over as far as I’m concerned. I can only now remain just long enough to tell it. Whatever time is between now and the inevitable departure, it doesn’t really matter; the whole thing is over in my case. I’m telling you this thing is true, true from beginning to end. We are the gods, we are the sons of God, and collectively we form the God, the only God. There is no other God.515 ¶12

Now, there is no other foundation stone. “I have laid the foundation,” said he, “and no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” That foundation is the Rock, and the Rock, I’m telling you, has formed itself into this beautiful you. So no matter what you look like today when you look into the mirror, there is that something that is breathing in you that is why you breathe. It’s that in you that is your dreamer…that’s the one. Every dream you’ve ever had it inspired, even the most horrible dream. Every vision it inspired and all of your actions. It is the cause of everything in your world. When you are completed in its eyes, so that you actually can be superimposed upon him, and you aren’t two, you’re one and it has to fit perfectly, then he awakes and the work is over. You awake and you are he.515 ¶13

So we aren’t making more gods. It’s simply God in this venture, clothing himself in mortal flesh. By this experience he becomes more luminous, more expansive. Then we all go back because of the adventure greater than we were when we descended, having agreed to dream in concert. And this is our world in which we live.515 ¶14

Now here tonight…my friend just came through the door…and he called me today to tell me this story. He told me before and I asked him to write it out, but he’s been frightfully busy. A little while ago, it might have been say two or three years ago, a friend of his read my book Out of This World and he said to himself…at the time he read it he was about to give up the theater because it was too difficult as he thought. He’s a black man and yes a few big ones have broken through—the Belafontes yes, and the Poitiers yes, and the Eartha Kitts—but so few. He thought it would be simply an impossible task to continue in the theater being a black man. But he read Out of This World and he said, “In this book it said, ‘An assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.’ When you meet your friend Neville the next time, ask him for me if it doesn’t work then what?” So Benny came to me and told me that this is what he said. The man’s name, by the way, is David Moses. Benny gave me a book to autograph for him and he said, write something in it. Well, I only wrote one little thought from William Blake: “If the fool would persist in his folly, he will become wise.” When he got it, it did something to him…“persisting in my folly, for certainly it is folly to assume that I am what the evidence of my senses deny, reason denies it. So I must persist in my folly?” Yes, and if you do, you’ll prove it and you’ll become wise.515 ¶15

Well, in the meanwhile, soon after that, in a matter of weeks, he got the commercial for Greyhound and undoubtedly you’ve seen his face in that commercial unnumbered times. If you know anything about the theatre, he was not only paid well for the commercial but there are residuals and they keep rolling in. From that he gets pictures, he gets TV spots. Tomorrow night he’s on Diahann Carroll’s show in the second spot. She is the star and he is second in tomorrow night’s show. He has just done a pilot for Danny Thomas and Thomas tells him that he has every reason to believe, saying it is a ninety percent chance, that it will be accepted by the network to start in the spring. Well, if it starts in the spring…not the spring, September, pardon me…starts this coming September it will be either twenty-six or thirty-nine segments. And here is one who was about to give up his profession that he loved because he felt it was too much of a problem…and that one little thought conveyed to him.515 ¶16

Well, the dreamer in him is God. There is no other God, as you’re told in that same 32nd of Deuteronomy: “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; I do all these, and none can deliver out of my hand.” So he’s putting you through the paces because he is shaping you into his own image; and when he completes it there aren’t two of you, just one; you are he. You are putting yourself through the paces. You clothed yourself in this mortal flesh for a purpose and you’ve gone through hell, for the world here is hell…there is no other hell. This is the hell spoken of in scripture and he will not leave himself here because God would lose something. If one of us were left behind, then God would cease to be that being that he is. We would have to leave the ninety and nine and go in search of the one. So everyone has to awaken, but when he awakes he is the same being only enhanced in his beauty, enhanced in his luminosity, enhanced in everything that he was before.515 ¶17

But I tell you from my own experience having seen that breathing, living figure…and I knew I’m looking at myself…well, I could not believe that I could ever in eternity be that handsome, not only handsome in face but I mean of character. There was a strength of character, there was a majesty, there was everything…put the superlative to every characteristic that you would love in this world, put it on it, the superlative, and that’s what your face really is, not going to be, that’s what it is now. But the clothes, the mortal form that it now wears, will conform to it, and when it conforms to it in his eye, not in the eye of the world, then he wakes. For he only sees the heart; he doesn’t see the outer form at all.515 ¶18

So I tell you, when you see Jesus Christ he looks just like you. So “Beloved, now are we the sons of God. And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he does appear we shall be like him, and see him as he is.” So when he appeared to me, I’m looking into my own face. Here I am looking right into my own face, but it’s not a rock now, it is a living, pulsing, breathing man in deep, deep meditation, and he is meditating me. When he is complete, that the work is done, I awake. So we are told in that 17th Psalm, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with his likeness”. Everyone will be satisfied when they awake with the likeness of perfection, “For be ye perfect as your Father in haven is perfect.” And not one can fail, I don’t care what man has ever done. Hitler can’t fail for the son of God is in Hitler and the son of God is in Stalin. Not another one like Hitler; he looks just like Hitler raised to the nth degree of perfection…the nth degree of a Stalin…if you can imagine that. We on this level think, “How could it be?” But I tell you that’s exactly what’s going to happen and then we will all go back.515 ¶19

We knew each other before we came down. We are the sons of God who as one man fell, as told us in the 82nd Psalm: “I say ye are sons of God, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.” So, we are the princes, the sons of God, and collectively we form the king that is the Lord. So within you is the being. I’m telling you I know it from experience; I am not speculating. So then we are told he speaks with authority and not like the scribes. You can only speak with authority when you speak from experience. I am not speculating, I’m not theorizing, I am telling you exactly what happened to me. And I know I’m only the pattern man…that everyone will follow the same pattern. You’re going to see that rock. The rock will form itself into a breathing, pulsing, living being, and when you look you’re looking right into your own face. But a face that you could not believe you could ever in eternity see and yet you’re going to be, because that’s your face anyway.515 ¶20

“So let us make man in our image after our likeness.” And the word translated “perfect” in “And the Rock, his work is perfect” means “to set out for a goal, an end.” And the goal of God is to make man in his own image after his own likeness. That is the end! It’s not to make a country called America or Russia or any other thing in the world, not to make a man rich, but to make the image of God. That is the purpose and that is the end of God. This whole vast world came into being just for that purpose. Not to make one person more important than the other in this world, but to make you right into the image of the one and only God in you.515 ¶21

So you will never lose your identity, not in eternity. I cannot lose my identity. I am unlike every being in this world…and so are you. The being who is just the God forming me into his likeness is so completely unlike every being in the world, and he’s known in eternity, known by name. But there are more sons of God than there are sands of the sea, and yet we all know each other. That’s our wisdom. When we all go back, we know each other intimately—“all things by this law divine in one another’s being mingle”—and we will have access to the wisdom of all and this fantastic experience in this world coming down into this mortal flesh.515 ¶22

So, just as Benny’s friend…I haven’t met him personally, I’ve only corresponded. He hasn’t come to see me. He read the books and got the results, and so he feels, well now, all right, he knows, perfectly all right. I wish that some night Benny would bring him home and that we could chat. But at the moment he’s a success, and quite often when people become a success they then turn their back upon the ladder by which they did ascend and completely forget it. But it was the little book Out of This World that fired that Imagination which is God. And the God in him is the eternal God, perfect, absolutely perfect. No one gets off the wheel of recurrence until they are perfect as he who started the work in them judges perfection, and they must fit, superimposed, and no raw edges, just one.515 ¶23

A friend who came to see me tonight told me how he first came to hear me. He said, “It was early ’67, I was over in the Glendale library, and I went to get a book. As I pulled the book off the shelf, a book fell to the floor. I picked it up and it was by Neville and I read the title, Your Faith is Your Fortune, and I stuck it back in, that wasn’t the book I came to get. So a week later when I brought my book back, I went to the same area and pulled another book out, and that little book fell down again. Picked it up, it’s Your Faith is Your Fortune by Neville, and I pushed it back into the area. The third week I pulled a book off and it fell again. Well, after three times falling to the floor, the same book, I took it over to the table and read about twelve pages. Having read it, it appealed to me so I checked it out, and before I brought it back I read if from cover to cover twice. Then a few weeks later I saw an ad in the paper where you were speaking and I haven’t missed a Monday night since.” So he and his wife will come every Monday to these meetings because the little book fell three times. Well, that wasn’t by accident either.515 ¶24

That whole thing was done because in the same letter he encloses a vision. He said, “I’m driving my car at night”—this is all in vision—“and suddenly I feel that I’m going to have a baby. Well, my wife is going to have the baby…I couldn’t have the baby. But I couldn’t see her face.” Evidently it wasn’t his wife; nevertheless, it had to be a wife and she’s going to have a baby. Well, all the streets are dark, only one house had lights in it, so he pulled over to the curb in his vision and then he saw behind these open windows where the lights were what seemed to be a night school. There was an instructor or at least a lecturer and students. He rushed on in saying, “Call a doctor, quick, quick, quick because I’m going to have a baby!” Then the instructor and the students ran out towards the car, he opened the door, and here on the seat is a baby. There is no wife, just a baby. He picked up the baby and he said, “I’m a father,” and repeated it three times. “I am a father. I am a father.”515 ¶25

Well, here is the most beautiful adumbration, a foreshadowing of the event. I tell you, this is the most marvelous foreshadowing of the event. Everyone is going to have it. We never leave this until the Father in us knows his job is done. And his only one work in this world is to make us conform to his own perfection. He was perfect when he came down; he’ll be perfect when he ascends. When he ascends, by reason of this enhanced expansion he will still be the same perfection—you can’t improve upon perfection—but you can be more expansive, more luminous, the same perfect being.515 ¶26

So, all the sons of God are perfect, forming one body. As Paul in his analogy uses the body…there is a heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, all the vital organs and they have different functions, but they all form one body. So everything in my body still makes one body. We, together, form the one body, and each is known and loved by each other as brothers. So he said, “Go unto my brothers and say unto them I am ascending unto my Father and to your Father, unto my God and to your God.” There can’t be two Fathers, there can’t be two Gods. So I’m ascending…so we are brothers, really brothers in the most intimate sense of the word, and collectively we form the Father.515 ¶27

So here, the Rock…I’m telling you it’s literally true, and throughout scripture you will read about this Rock. “The Rock in the desert, they struck it and out came the living water.” In the psalms, they struck it and out came the honey…out came everything from this Rock. But the Rock is God and there’s no source of anything in this world but God. So everything comes out of God and he’s called the Rock. So the wise man builds his home upon the Rock. Let anything come now, the rains may come, all these come, and it cannot be washed away if you build upon the only foundation in the world.515 ¶28

And the Christ spoken of in scripture is in you—say “I am,” that’s he, your own wonderful human Imagination that’s Christ. Don’t entertain anything outside of what you want to see in your world. Don’t imagine anything outside of exactly what you want in your world. If you do, you’re going to get it, because all things come out of him. So take the most noble concepts in the world and entertain them as though they were true. Why shouldn’t you be everything that you want to be? You should be, because all things are possible to him and he’s inviting us all to simply believe it.515 ¶29

But I tell you, if you go through certain difficulties, certain sadness, all theses things, it’s because he is weaving you, grinding you on the stone of life as it were into his image. But when I say grinding you, you’re grinding yourself because you are that son of God, and you’re taking this form that you wear, this mortal flesh, and grinding it. So when Blake said in his vision to Max Beckman—this is a work on art, Looking at Modern Painting—and Beckman when he came back from the vision said, “I saw this noble genius, Blake, and he waved to me, he said, ‘Have confidence in objects…everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Follow this path, and you will receive from your own ego a deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation; you will also receive an ever increasing release from that which seems so sad and terrible.’” He will show you why this event that is so sad and so hard to bear took place…and the whole thing is ordered and correct. And in the end, then you awake and you are one with the infinite beauty that is your own being.515 ¶30

And all the majesty in the world…you could not conceive of such beauty, such character in the face that I saw. Until you see it, you can only speculate. Because I know that when I saw it I could hardly believe I am looking at the being I knew as Neville. I am looking at the most glorious being that one could ever see, and yet I’m looking at Neville. He’s breathing, he’s pulsing, eyes closed in deep, deep meditation, and I knew he’s meditating me. When he’s finished with his work, which is to make me conform to him, I must be just as perfect as he is perfect, then he’s going to awake. And when he awakes I will awake. When both are awake, we are one, not two. That was the work he set out to do in the beginning when this whole vast world came into being.515 ¶31

So the Rock is not something out in space and a rock, it’s a true statement: “And the Rock was Christ and the Rock is God, and “Who is the God but the Lord,” said the psalmist. “And who is the Rock but our God, and who is our Redeemer but the Rock.” So I am redeemed by what is called the Rock. I can see it now before my eyes…you couldn’t get something more concentrated. It was completely down to the limit of a quartz, not sand, just a quartz. It could be one solid diamond, but it was dull in color, as though you just took it out, but dull, just one solid, solid quartz, about that big. Then as I looked at it, it broke. And then all these things quickly gathered themselves together, and here is this perfect being sitting in the lotus posture. I’m looking at him, I’m becoming so excited as I’m looking, and then he begins to glow like the sun. When he reaches the limit of luminosity it explodes, and I wake in my room, just simply awed and bewildered by what I had just seen. Then you start searching his Word, called the scripture, and you find in scripture confirmation of your own experience, exactly what happened to you…there it is.515 ¶32

So when our wise men today are speculating about curtailing the population explosion and doing all these things, they have not one chance of a snowball in the equator, none whatsoever. So maybe we’ll have it here…some wise man may persuade our country to adopt a certain method. But it won’t work. The Chinese will still be growing hundreds of millions and so will India. We will find ourselves in this land just simply out numbered. And we will think, well now, that’s perfect. It is not a problem of biology, it’s not a problem of children; it is a problem that is economic. Because when a man who knows what he is talking about can tell a gathering as intelligent as that gathering of a thousand people—here are the leaders in science, in government, in religion, all are present—and then Mr. Carver got up and addressed them and stood before them, as I stand before you, and “everything on my body came out of the peanut…the cloth, the color on my tie, 300 by-products.” Then he said, “We can clothe and feed the entire world, not America, the whole world out of what we can produce in this synthetic kingdom from the Southern states of America.” Well, isn’t the problem economic?515 ¶33

But I do not have the solution. I am not an economist. I can’t balance my own checkbook. There isn’t a month I’m not told by the bank that I owe more, I mean, I have less than I thought I had. If it’s only forty cents…it’s always something less. Once, I think I got a credit for $100. We could hardly believe it…read it over and over and over again. And this is not a big checkbook, may I tell you, it’s a very small little amount in that balance. Here, in spite of it we can’t balance it…and my wife majored in mathematics at Smith. She took it in high school, she went to Smith, and that was her major subject. She can’t balance the book. So, I’m telling you that it is an economic problem. But what is the solution I do not know.515 ¶34

I’m always amused when I hear all these wise men expounding, like the Toynbee’s and all people who can speak maybe twenty languages more perfectly than we speak the one which is English, and they can speak all of these. I stand aghast at their nonsense, sheer utter nonsense. They seem not to know the Word of God at all. You read it carefully in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “He has fixed the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of God…and the sons of God are more numerous than the stars of the heavens, more numerous than the sands of the sea.”515 ¶35

So here are the sons. Not one little child could come into this world were he not brought into the world as the mortal clothing of the son of God who is within him…and that’s why he can breathe. God became man that man may become God. If that son of God who is perfect—he isn’t becoming perfect he is perfect—was not actually resident in that little child, the child couldn’t breathe, it couldn’t be born alive. So every child that comes into the world is brought in by the son of God. And he had sons, unnumbered sons, and yet there’s a limit to the number. This is not an infinite number; it’s a fabulous number known only to the collective one that is God. But he knows each by name…you are known and loved as an individual. You aren’t loved just as a collective being, no, you are loved as an individual and you are known by name, so that all gathered together that one speaks to you individually and loves you beyond measure. So that so-called infinite number isn’t infinite if you mean without boundaries…it is a limited number of sons.515 ¶36

Now, sons are clothing themselves in mortal flesh, therefore, who is going to stop it? You can take all the things in the world. We go out to stop this and then nature seems to take over and rubs it out. So we think we are immune to a certain thing and all of a sudden nature fights it, something within us, and puts it to naught as though it were not. Because these sons are going to come in, these children are going to come in because the son of God meditating you can’t stop it from coming in. I’m one of ten. There were twelve, but two at birth did not survive. But they’re still the results of God’s sons meditating, and they will still come in for the experiment. No one’s going to stop it.515 ¶37

Every one of us here, if you could only dwell upon the fact that you really are the perfect son of God and you can’t improve upon it. One day you’re going to see your face and I can’t tell you your thrill. You get an awful shock when you look into the mirror the next morning after having seen what you really are…and to see what is reflected in the mirror as against what you know it is. So, gradually it is woven into the likeness of the Father in you—for that is the Father that is Jesus Christ. Now all things are possible to him. Don’t turn to anyone on the outside, turn to him. He is your own wonderful human Imagination.515 ¶38

You put yourself in the place tonight of David Moses. We cannot duck it any longer. Here there is a barrier—for unnumbered years, it goes now into quite a few hundred years—where there was a limit as to what profession they could enter, where they could go. He heard the true story concerning Jesus Christ. Prior to that he was talking to and praying to something on the outside. Now he dares to assume that he is successful in the theater in spite of the limitation imposed upon that pigment of skin. Now all of a sudden he becomes a success. I only hope my friend Benny will remind him and constantly remind him that it is not an accident, and don’t now go off because he is a success and forget the principle by which he became successful, because that’s always possible. We become successful and all of a sudden we forget it and think it would have happened anyway, that it isn’t because of what I read in the book or what that man wrote in the front page of the book about the fool persisting in his folly. “No, all of a sudden I got the ‘breaks,’” he will say. He didn’t get any breaks. All things move from a certain source and you can’t plant one thing and reap something other than what you planted. You’re told, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for as a man sows, so shall he reap” . And so we put something in and we reap it.515 ¶39

So you having heard this story, you dare to assume the most noble thing in the world. I’ll tell you one thing. You could not achieve anything in this world of Caesar comparable to that which you really are: you are already perfect. But you’ve taken this challenge! It was in the beginning: “Let us make man in our image after our likeness.” That was the challenge and that’s the only end you have in sight. While you’re moving towards that end you play the part of the poor man, the rich man, the beggar man, the thief, the gunman, everything, you play them all. But all things were ordered and correct, so forget it. No matter what you’ve done, don’t dwell upon it and feel remorseful. No…you did it and there was a purpose behind it all. Now, start towards dwelling upon this one being within you and his perfection. And then dream nobly…noble, noble dreams and have no other foundation.515 ¶40

There is no other God: “See now that I, even I, am he and there is no God beside me; I kill, I make alive; I wound, I heal, and none can deliver out of my hand. I raise my hand to heaven, and cry, I live forever.” Read it in the 32nd of Deuteronomy. This is the being in you that is speaking to you if he could only get your ear. But I have been sent to get your ear for him that you may listen to him in you. And every noble thing that you desire in this world, he is telling you it’s possible, you can get it because all things are possible to him. All you have to do is to dare to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and walk as though it were true. If you dare to walk as though it is true now, in spite of all lack of evidence it will become true. How? No one knows. He knows, because he has all the means. His ways and his means are past finding out, so don’t try to find out the ways and don’t try to find out the means. You dare to walk as though you were…and you name it. You actually assume it and walk, and it will become a fact.515 ¶41

Now let us go into the Silence. * * * Now, are there any questions, please?515 ¶42

Well, that is from the Book of Ecclesiastes, “Is there a thing of which it is said, See this is new? It has been already in ages past but there’s no remembrance of former things, nor shall there be any remembrance of things to come later among those who will come after.” That’s the most difficult thing for man to accept, because we say today we are living in an entirely different world and it has never happened in the history of man before. But we have such short memories. We say it couldn’t happen in an intelligent community like Germany who gave so much to the arts, gave so much to science. Possibly the most cultured of all nations in the world at the time that a Hitler arose and they could follow a monster like that! Who could have believed it could happen? So we read scripture and it’s all recorded in scripture, but they called those then Pharaoh and the Egyptians. We call them by other names. Genocide is in scripture. There isn’t one evil act in the world that man is capable of doing that is not recorded in scripture openly. You name it, it’s in scripture. And there’s a recurrence, but man will not believe it. You could see the shadow coming, but “It couldn’t happen now! That happened when man was barbarous.” What was more barbaric than the Hitler regime and the Stalin regime? You can’t conceive…and yet scripture records it. Well, we thought, “Oh, that’s in the old days when they plowed with a hoe, but not today, when we have missiles and all these things.” They’ve only increased the capacity to destroy more quickly, but the same tendency is to destroy.515 ¶45

But you can’t destroy the being that you really are. For I saw him and he’s perfect. He isn’t becoming perfect, he is perfect. If you could look right into that being’s face—and you’re going to see your own face—and you will not see anything more majestic, you’ll never see any greater measure of character, nothing more handsome, I assure you. I don’t think, and you’re a man, you will take it from me that you will enter a beauty contest tonight with expectancy of winning, and yet the being that you really are would put anything on earth to shame. You’re not becoming that; that being is that. He is forming this mortal flesh into his likeness, and when they are formed they are one.515 ¶46

That’s the story of Adam and Eve. She came out of him; then he leaves everyone and cleaves to her and they become one. But the most intimate relationship in the world between man and wife they still aren’t one. They go to their sleep at night in their separate worlds of dreams. They have their day dreams and some of them may coalesce, but they have separate dreams too. She may be dreaming of something of which she would be ashamed to tell him and he the same way…so they aren’t one. But the day will come, you will be one. Their emanation is this body and yet it is your wife ‘til the sleep of death is past. When it’s past, we’re one. That’s when we wake and both awake. So in the 44th Psalm, “Rouse thyself, why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake!” If he wakes, well then, what he meditates will wake. But he won’t wake until he’s finished his meditation, which is to make that thing meditated as perfect as he is. “So be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”515 ¶47

Now, you may not…if you drop tonight and the year is ’69, it doesn’t mean that 1969 is where you pick it up. You may find yourself in the year 4000 or the year 1000 or the year one. As Richard Feynman said, our great physicist, and he is a theoretical physicist who just won the Nobel Prize, he said, “The time relationship is irrelevant”—he’s speaking of the little positron—“It starts from where it hasn’t been and it speeds to where it was an instant ago; arriving there it is bounced so hard it’s time sense is reversed and then it returns to where it hasn’t been.” Now this is Feynman…for that he got a Nobel Prize. Now, it goes back to where it hasn’t been. Then he ends his paper on this note “The time is irrelevant, whether it goes forward or backward is irrelevant. The whole thing is closed.” Then he said what scripture teaches only he put it in a modern tongue. Ecclesiastes tells us there is nothing new under the sun and everything is ordered, a time to be born, a time to die, time to laugh, time to cry, and all these things are fixed like a play.515 ¶50

Now, he tells us that the Hamiltonian concept of the world was that the future is developing slowly out of the past. He said, “Not what we now know concerning the positron. We must now think of the space-time universe as already laid out, fixed, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively. What portion we become aware of, whether it’s past relative to this moment or future relative to this moment is irrelevant.” So if I drop now and my work isn’t done, I may find myself in the world 3000, not 1969, and he in me who knows all, he’ll make it perfectly normal to me in that age. It will seem familiar because it is to him.515 ¶51

He was shown the entire play before he set out, as told us in the 3rd chapter of Galatians: “And scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham” . Abraham simply means “the father of the multitudes.” That is another name for God. So here, he preached it to Abraham, so he saw the whole thing…and then he slept. There’s not a thing in scripture that tells us that he’s awakened—he will awake as Christ, but not a thing in scripture. And “A deep sleep fell upon Abraham and he slept” . You read it carefully and all these things happened, but not a thing is said…it implies by the way it’s written that he must have awakened, but it doesn’t say so. In the Book of Job, no one reading the Book of Job…he heard these things, but he hadn’t seen the face of God. He didn’t know him.515 ¶52

But in the end of Job, the very last chapter, the 42nd, you’re told that all these things came upon Job by the Lord and all Job’s friends came and comforted him through all the horrors and the evils that the Lord God had wrought upon him. So in the end, Job was innocent. He was in the beginning innocent…read the very first verse, “an innocent man.” He was an innocent man and then these things happened. And in the end he got back not only what was taken from him but a hundred-fold more. That’s what’s going to happen to every one of us. We gave up the glory of the Father and clothed ourselves in mortal flesh, and as we clothed ourselves we had to give up the glory. But then, we return not only to the glory, but the experience will enhance that glory. Good night.515 ¶53

Paul tells us that whatever was written in former times was written for our instruction. When he speaks of things “written in former time,” he means only the Old Testament. He quotes no other book. He doesn’t quote Plato, the Vedas, Upanishads, or any ancient book, – only the Old Testament; and he tells us that they were written – these books – for our instruction. He tells us they were all brought to fulfillment; that all the promises of God found their “yes” – their fulfillment in Him, meaning in the Lord Jesus Christ. He identifies the Lord Jesus Christ with God Himself. Now he tells us that this is our hope. This whole picture of the past is man’s hope because God has completed His plan of salvation. What he is really telling us is that our brain actually backs up against Infinity, and Infinity unfolds itself creatively in us. We cannot fail, for the whole drama is over, and our brain simply backs up against Infinity. So, we can only become what God already is. That is the story to us. It is God’s pledge to Himself; that God became man, that man may become God. We are actually backed up against Infinity – our brain; and the drama takes place, may I tell you? In the brain of man.635 ¶1

Now he tells us in his Letter to Timothy to keep this pattern that he has given to the world – keep it in a faithful manner, and do not depart from this pattern. He doesn’t spell it out completely, but he calls it the pattern of “the true word which you have heard from me”, – that which was entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, – do not depart from this pattern of the true words which you heard from me.635 ¶2

Now the book is like this: I give you a map, and you can read a map, and you tell me where I would like to go on the map. The Old Testament is just like a map, but in this respect it differs: you tell me where I ought to go, based upon your ability to read a map. He could read the Old Testament; and when he found a pattern in the Old Testament, and the pattern that he found was this – the pattern as described in the Gospel, the story of Jesus Christ, – and how different was this pattern when experienced from the pattern that some one would point out for you! How different the cubic reality of this room from any artist’s depiction of it. Give an artist a piece of paper or give him a piece of canvas, and he can depict it beautifully; but how different is the cubic reality of this room when I am in it from any depiction of this room by the greatest artist in the world! So, they give me a pattern. He is telling us that when you experience the pattern that I’ve given you, you will know it unfolds in you as God.635 ¶3

There is nothing but God in the world! Think of your home that you know far better than you know this room, and yet this room at this moment is more real to you than your home. The pattern of Scripture is real. It’s perfectly real, but it will become all the more real when you actually experience Scripture.635 ¶4

Now he is telling us of the experienced Scripture, for he experienced the Lord Jesus Christ as himself. He tells us, Jesus Christ dwells in us. “Do you not realize that the Lord Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, the average person, if he is honest with himself, he does not know that Jesus Christ is in him. The pattern is in him, because we are backed up against Infinity; and Infinity only unfolds itself in us. Therefore we cannot become at any one moment in time other than what God already is! He has already played the part. The thing is over. But the awakening in us is not over. So, he warns Timothy that those who teach that the Resurrection is over and past are misleading the people. It has happened, yes; but it is not past. It is taking place in man.635 ¶5

Now he points out the pattern – not every word. All the horrors are in Scripture. You cannot conceive of one thing in this world that is not recorded in Scripture openly; every vice, every horror, everything in the world. We think this is new? It’s all in Scripture. And who actually experienced it? The Lord experienced it all! “Was it not necessary,” said he, “that the Christ should suffer and then enter into his glory?” Well, Christ-in-you is the one that is suffering. You have suffered. I know, I have, and still am, and will continue until I take off this garment that suffers; but having experienced the pattern, when I take it off now, I take it off for the last time. But it doesn’t mean for one moment because I precede my brother in the taking off of the garment that I follow a different pattern; that I am better, that I am wiser, that I am anything other than what he is destined to be, for there is only one destiny: to awaken as God Himself! God is buried in man, and He plays all the parts in the world; and in the end, man awakens as God Himself!635 ¶6

So, he doesn’t single out the individual sections. He tells you it’s a pattern. I will tell you, from my own experience, the pattern as I have experienced it in the end. I have tried to tell it. I have recorded it in words, but not all of it. Many parts I didn’t feel I should put in, because you are going to experience it; and you are going to feel, when you do experience it, that it has never been experienced before! The whole thing has been experienced and brought to its climax, as told us in the Gospel, leading the individual to believe – well, he did it. No; you are going to know by your own experience that “I did it.” The only one who was “born from above” – I did it. I am born.635 ¶7

Now there are these questions asked. “And the Lord said. Can a man bear a child?” Well, obviously you say, No. Then, “Why then,” did the Lord say, “I see every man with his hands drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? Why is every face turned pale?” Now in the same passage he tells you that he is the Lord, and “David is the king forever and forever,” – the same passage, the 30th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. Read it from the 5th verse through the 9th. He tells you who he is going to set up as the king forever. He is the Lord of Lords. You are going to have this experience, and you will know you do bear a child! It is translated: “Why do I see every man with his hands on his loins like a woman in labor?” And that little phrase, “with his hands on his loins” – “on his loins” actually means, by the Hebrew word, “pulling himself out of him self.” Just like a woman in labor, she pulls what she formed in herself out of herself.635 ¶8

This was written in the day, – and even to this day, China, India and the fabulous lands of the world with these enormous populations, – they don’t go to hospitals and have their women put into a twilight sleep and have a child delivered. While they are in the fields laboring, they stop for one moment and draw with their own hands out of themselves that which they have formed in themselves. Well, God formed us in Himself. We are the God – there is only God – and we draw our Self out of ourselves, out of these garments. There are two births, one below formed by a woman, and one from above formed by God; and he draws himself out of himself, just as the woman drew that which was formed in her out of herself. Well, when you see the thing out of which you come, it is ghastly pale. “Why do I see every face so ghastly pale?” the question is asked. So, you draw it out of yourself. Every one is going to draw himself out of himself; and he who draws himself out is the God, and no one sees the garment. The garment has been removed, as we are told in Scripture635 ¶9

So, you ask all these questions of the Pattern, and the Pattern unfold in us. But do not stop only at the pattern. We are still in the world of Caesar, and we go through hell. So, while we are here, learn what He gave us as the Law to cushion all the blows of the world. It is a simple law, but you’ve got to believe it, as you believe the most incredible story in the world. How can I tell you to convince you that I have actually gone through the entire story that is recorded in the Gospel concerning Jesus Christ? When I stand before you, aging month after month, year after year, with the inevitable end where they will take the body and put it into a furnace; but I tell you, exactly what is recorded in Scripture I have experienced. There is nothing left to be experienced. I’ve done it! Right up to the descent of the Holy Spirit in the bodily form of a dove, everything happened in me. And yet, here I am aging before you, and to come before you until that inevitable moment when the body has to be burned and discarded, and I leave you with only a pattern that I have gone through; and the pattern leads one to God Himself.635 ¶10

There is nothing but God. This is a pattern that God went through. Well, he did not deny that he suffered. “Is it not stated that the Christ must suffer, and then enter into his glory? And then beginning with Moses and the Law and the prophets and the Psalms, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” Read this in the 24th chapter of the Book of Luke . “Scripture must be fulfilled in me,” he said. There is not a thing in the world that I came to do but to fulfill my Word. He is the Word, and “the Word cannot return void; it must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it” .635 ¶11

He is called the Word of God. He comes, then, to fulfill his own Word. So, Scripture must be fulfilled in me – not a thing else. I may own the earth. Well, that’s not fulfilling Scripture. I may become anything in this world that I desire as a man, but that’s not fulfilling Scripture. Scripture has a pattern; and there’s a definite pattern, and that pattern is laid out for us in the Gospel, in the story of Jesus Christ.635 ¶12

It begins with his birth; but really it begins with his resurrection. The resurrection is his birth. I know that from my own experience. We are “born anew,” said Peter, “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” That’s how man is “born from above,” – through the resurrection, when he awakes within his skull. For that’s the skull – that’s the brain that is actually leaning back against Infinity. Infinity, having accomplished the entire thing, now unfolds Itself in the individual, so that man becomes only that which God already is. So, what he has already accomplished now unfold itself in man, and man duplicates within himself the entire story of Jesus Christ.635 ¶13

So, it begins with the resurrection, where he awakes. The resurrection is only an awakening. That’s all that it is. He awakes within himself. He’s been dreaming you, because God laid Himself down within man to sleep; and as He slept, He dreamed. He dreams your life, my life, our lives. He is dreaming the life; and then He comes to that moment in time when He simply awakes. As Paul said, when he came to the fullness of the day, then he awoke. He awoke within man. Awakened within me, I then duplicate all that I have read in Scripture concerning another and it really is “Another,” yes, – it’s God, but God is the only Reality; so that Reality unfolds Itself in me. This is the reality, compared to any depiction of it. When I read the story or hear the story, that is simply like some one depicting it on a flat surface; and then when it unfolds within me, then I, experience the cubic reality of the story.635 ¶14

Now, in the story he tells us concerning a son. He names the son, but man with all of his wisdom cannot find out that Son, and the son is David! In the story as it unfolds, David does stand before you, and you know who he is because it is a memory returning. If God has done it and then God unfolds in me, what is unfolding but the memory of God? He unfolds within me. So, Paul in that statement that I quoted tonight said, “the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Well, the Holy Spirit, we are told, is memory for, “I will send you the Holy Spirit, and He will bring to your remembrance all that I have told you” . So the Lord tells us He sends this memory. If He sends the memory of all that He has done and the memory unfolds within me, then it is called in Scripture the Holy Spirit unfolding within me and bringing to my remembrance all that He told me, for:635 ¶15

“All was foretold me: naught Could I foresee! But I learned how the wind would sound After these things should be.” After it happened within me – well, that is exactly what was foretold me; but I thought it was all about another, and it wasn’t about another at all. It was all about God, and it is God unfolding Himself in me! And He unfolds Himself in you. Every one in the end, is God! And there is nothing but God! But I must suffer, as I am told; and you must suffer. The whole vast world is a suffering world for the end, and the end justifies all the suffering in the end, for in the end is only one Being that comes out, and the Being is God.635 ¶16

So, I go back – all the way back – to the beginning. He takes me back, and he began with the words of the Law. So, “beginning with Moses and the Law,” – and then he comes into the prophets, he has quoted one from the prophets; then he comes to the Psalms. “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord,” said the Psalmist. “He said unto me, Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee.” So, he took all the Psalms into consideration. He took everything from Scripture, and he said the Scripture is all about me, for “in the role of the Book, it is all about me” .635 ¶17

Now he brings it completely to fulfillment – to climax, and then he tells us: Wait – wait until you are clothed with power from above. The minute you are clothed with Power from above, then He is going to unfold within you. Who? The Very One who brought it to climax. So, Jesus Christ is in you, and Jesus Christ will unfold within you as you; and you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other Jesus Christ!635 ¶18

So, the whole vast world is redeemed, because it has already been redeemed by One having done it. And that One has formed the pattern. The Pattern is now in man to unfold in man as the man in whom it unfolds. And that’s the story. So no one can fail! The most horrible being in the world – he can’t fail. He is only playing a certain part. He is in a state of consciousness that demands that he plays the part that he is playing. If tonight I slipped into the part of a thief, I will play the part of a thief. I may suffer the consequences if I am arrested and go to jail and be locked in for the rest of my days, if I slip into that state. But I am not the state into which I slip. I am the Being that the world calls “God.” So are you!635 ¶19

When Blake was asked, “What do you think of Jesus? Who is he?” without batting an eye, he said, “Jesus is the only God”; but he hastened to add: “So am I, and so are you.” So, every one is this God-in-the-act-of-awakening, because the pattern is already set; but he said, “Follow the pattern of the true word which you have heard from me,” – God the truth – “which has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Well, the Holy Spirit is simply the remembrance, for “when He comes He will bring to your remembrance all that I have told you.” Well, when he brings it to your remembrance, he doesn’t talk as something coming from without. He brings it into a three-dimensional, cubic reality, and you experience it.635 ¶20

There is all the difference in the world between having heard the story of the birth of Christ and having experienced it. Now I know exactly what it means when I read the story that he was born differently. He was “born from above.” I can tell you, “I came from above.” Speaking to himself, the lower man, “You came from below.” “I am from above and you are from below.” “You” came out of the womb of a woman; “I” came out of the Womb of God which is out of your own skull. For that skull of yours – that brain is simply resting against Infinity; and Infinity having completely accomplished it. Infinity now unfolds itself in you. So, if I came from above and “you” rest against “me” and I am unfolding in “you,” you too will be born from above.”635 ¶21

You simply unfold from above, as I, too, became a man. He became a man. He became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross. He, too was born from below – not something entirely different. This whole thing happened just as you happened: You were born from below and you shall be “born from above.” You were born from below, and you suffer all the hell of the world, for every one has suffered, may I tell you? Today you may enjoy the most perfect health in the world and the comfort of finances, and the comfort of being known and being recognized in all the lovely things that people strive for; but you have suffered. And if you haven’t, may I tell you? you will. No one will escape the sufferings of God, for God suffered! And if He unfolds Himself in you in detail, all that He experienced in the suffering, you are going to suffer.635 ¶22

But I will give you one thing. The Crucifixion is over. Don’t think you are moving towards the Crucifixion. That is over. That came in the very beginning. “I have been crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me, and the life I now life in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” So, the Crucifixion is over, but the Resurrection is taking place. So, don’t think of that moment of the Crucifixion. That is completely over.635 ¶23

And I will tell you from my own experience, it was not a sad moment. It was sheer ecstasy. It was ecstasy when I was crucified. I can’t describe the thrill of the vortices on these six points of my body. Every one will one day have a little memory of that picture because it’s all over. It has already happened to all of us. I happened to remember it one night when I led this crowd towards the Holy City. When the whole thing reenacted itself, it was sheer joy, not pain at all. But there is pain after the Crucifixion, and you have suffered, or you are suffering. I have suffered and am, and will continue until the very end. But the end justifies all the suffering because you will awake as God Himself.635 ¶24

This is the only way that God expands, for there is only God. God seems to exist by constantly becoming – constantly becoming, expanding beyond anything. Here is a drama. He’ll write another drama, maybe a more horrible drama, for His own expansion. But when He writes it, He will take us with Him and we in the end are God, for the word “God” is a plural word, “Elohim,” – one made up of others. That’s God. So, all of us form God. We made the decision in the beginning, and we actually conceived the play, and it was played and brought to its climax, and then each one after the other unfolds the same drama within him.635 ¶25

Why on earth should I look back and see that fact ghastly pale? I am a brown- skinned person. I am called “olive skinned.” I have never been accused of blue eyes and blonde hair, save as a child when my hair was white. But here I am olive skinned; and yet when I came out of it, it was pale – ghastly pale like death, yet moving its head from side to side, just as you are told in Jeremiah – that 30th chapter of Jeremiah: “Why has every face turned pale?” And then they will all come and worship the Lord and his king David. David is mentioned all the way through; and yet until it actually happens, having been trained as all Christians have been trained, they will never see that David is the Son. David does the will of the Father; and in the end, this personification of humanity stands before God, who is the Father of humanity, and sees that personification as a single being, and it is David. And then David calls you “Father.” And you know it. You know as though you have always known it; therefore it’s memory returning. The only thing that is coming back is your own memory!635 ¶26

You had to completely forget Who-You-Are to become man. So you emptied yourself of your God-hood and became man, and you are playing all these things here.635 ¶27

Now tonight there are those who want to know how to change the immediate present. Leave out the pattern, for if I am destined – and, as I say, you are destined, no matter what you have done, what you are doing, what you are going to do, you are destined to awaken as God the Father, the Creator of the Universe! You are destined for that. But now, in the meanwhile, while I am still dreaming and I do not know where the next meal is coming from or a better job, what can I do? Well, it’s simple, but you really have to believe it. Can I really believe that my imagination creates reality? Can I believe these words of Blake?635 ¶28

“Babel mocks, saying there is no God nor Son of God … That thou, O Human Imagination, O Divine Body, are all A delusion; but I know Thee, O Lord, when Thou awakenest upon My weary eye, even in this dungeon and this iron mill…. Thou also sufferest with me, though I behold Thee not.” And then the Divine Voice replies: “Fear not, I am with you always. Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from Death Thy brother who sleeps in Albion.”635 ¶29

Just believe in Me! He equates God the Father with the human imagination; and he tells, now, Imagination: “Thou sufferest with me.” Certainly! Could I suffer without my imagination being present? Take away imagination: you could cut the body into pieces; it could never suffer. Therefore, who suffers? So, the Divine Voice replies “I am with you always.” Can you divorce yourself from imagination? Could you be any place tonight where you are not aware that you are imagining? You couldn’t. If you are any place where you are not imagining, what you left behind you cannot feel. You can cut it to pieces. But wherever you are and imagining, that’s Reality! So, – “… fear not, I am with you always. Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death Thy brother who sleeps in Albion.”635 ¶30

So, let the world mock. They don’t know it. But may I tell you? they are forgiven, because the day will come, every atheist in the world – every agnostic in the world– will experience the story of Jesus Christ, and experience it in the first- person, singular, and a present-tense experience. So, forgive every one, no matter what he has done to you. Some of them use it only for a conversation piece just to get an argument. Well, I don’t argue any more with them. You don’t believe in God? It’s perfectly all right. I will not raise a finger to persuade you. I will only tell you, one day you will know, and maybe by reason of the fact that now you do not believe in it and you are so vocal, you’ll become so filled with zeal to persuade others that God exists. So, it is perfectly all right. Let them go their way. I tell you, every one is going to experience Scripture.635 ¶31

“Scripture must be fulfilled in me.” So, I begin at the very beginning, in Genesis, and I go through the entire Scripture, and you weave it like a pathway. And I tell you, the path that I have followed – much of it is suffering. And there are highlights; they are all glorious – the highlights. Then comes the end when the Holy Spirit descends upon you; and when He descends upon you and you hear that lovely voice coming, and the voice says He loves you, and that is why he penetrates this ring of offense to demonstrate His love for you, and here you feel and see the symbol of the Holy Spirit dwelling upon you as a dove. It remains upon you, and it smothers you with love – nothing but love. And then you wake, knowing He is with you. He remains upon you; and forever and forever you are that Being spoken of in Scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ. But you know every one is destined for the same thing. So, we are all brothers behind the masks that we wear.635 ¶32

So, if you are suffering tonight, may I tell you? there is a Law given you. Listen to it carefully. It’s very, very simple. What would the feeling be like if it were true that I am now, – not tomorrow, not next month, but now – the one that I would like to be? What would the feeling be like if it were true? Assume that feeling. Just assume the feeling of that wish fulfilled; and, may I tell you? in a way that no one knows, you in the immediate future will project it as a reality, as a fact. The words from Scripture that support it are theses “Whatever a man says, believing, it will be done for him.” Whatever any one says in this world, believing what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. “Therefore, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and you will.” If you want the reference, it is the 11th chapter, the 23d and 24th verses, of the Book of Mark. These are the words of the One who completed Scripture.635 ¶33

I know from my own experience that when I have actually assumed, either for myself or for another – seeming “other,” for in the end there is no “other”; we are all brothers, all one, – that if I persist in that assumption and really believe it, it invariably comes to pass. I could not tell any one how it’s going to come to pass. I only know it contains within itself the power and the wisdom of Self-expression.635 ¶34

As I told you the story at the last lecture, what I did with my friend Freedom,2 it was quite simple to me just to “hear” him play and to put my hands on his shoulders and to thank him for the joy he gave me in that wonderful piano concerto. I did it three times in the interval of one week, and then he called to tell me the piano came back.635 ¶35

Here, the average person would not have given him one dollar for the return of that piano, for at the moment unnumbered things are stolen between the pick-up and the delivery. And the truck disappeared. The contents disappeared. The driver disappeared. I have not heard from Freedom since, to get the details; but he did say when he first called, they have found the driver in San Luis Obispo, but he refused to give then any news concerning the truck or its contents. So, they put him in jail, and had to keep him there for five days before they could bring action because that’s the law, but they put him in jail for five days. Now, why he confessed where the truck was, I do not know, but nevertheless he confessed, and they finally got Freedom’s piano. So he has it back.635 ¶36

I only know what I did. I do not know anything concerning the case, other than what I did after he called me. I merely assumed the feeling of the wish fulfilled; and to do it, in my mind’s eye, I saw him sitting at the piano. I “heard” the music. I felt his shoulders. I felt the thrill and the joy that was mine because of what he did at the piano; then I felt the piano. And in a week the piano was located.635 ¶37

Now, I will say to any one – the driver who stole it – if I were now in judgment, I would forgive him. I don’t care what motive moved him to do it, I have reached the point: “Forgive him, Father. He knows not what he does.” We all fall into these states: the state of the thief, the state of this, the state of the other; and forgive them. They do not know what they are doing! The occupant of the state is not wrong; it is the state, but these states were created in the beginning, and they are eternal states.635 ¶38

They do not change, any more than this city changes when I leave it. The city remains, but I go on; but the city remains for any one else to enter the city. So I enter a state. The state remains when I leave the state. So, if I am poor and I cease to be poor, poverty has not ceased to be a state. I may go on to a state of affluence; and affluence is a state, as poverty is a state. But the occupant entering the state lights it up, animates it and makes the state become real.635 ¶39

So, if I move into the state of the thief, I’ve got to steal. If I move into the state of the affluent or being poor, or being anything, I must express that state. How do I enter the state? I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. That’s all that I do.635 ¶40

You tell me what you want, as Freedom did. Freedom said, “I want my piano back. I’m only insured for two thousand dollars, but I can’t replace the piano for four thousand dollars. I want my piano back. That’s all that I want.” He was beside himself – too close to the problem to work for himself; so he turned to the one person in whom he had faith.635 ¶41

And so, I just simply sat, in that week, on three different occasions; and the last one was the night before it came back. It came back at 4:30 in the morning, – of all the hours of the day to deliver a piano! But that night, I turned on KPAC, and this lovely piano concerto was coming through, and I used it to aid my imagination and I imagined I was hearing Freedom play that concerto. And I so reveled in the music! It comes on every night between 8:00 and 10:00, that lovely two hours, by the Gas Company; they sponsor it. And here, night after night, if I am home, I turn it on; and I imagined he was doing it. I didn’t wait until the person announced who did it. I cut it off before I would be disillusioned in the one playing it. I “heard” Freedom; I imagined that he was doing it. I held him – felt his shoulders, and embraced him and thanked him for the joy I received from the concerto he played. The next morning at 4:30 his piano is delivered.635 ¶42

When he called me the next day to tell me – he has promised to write me, “but he is not given to writing; he promised to give me all the details. I know what he is going to do; he is going to wait until he comes down, and then he is going to tell me in the flesh, because he is not given to putting anything down on paper.”635 ¶43

However, this is the simple, simple technique of getting things done in this world. It’s based upon the simple Principle that God exists in us and –.635 ¶44

Now let us go into the silence.635 ¶45