Tonight’s subject is “In Praise of Wisdom.” The Bible speaks of two entirely different types: The wisdom of this world which they claim is foolishness in the eyes of God; and then the wisdom of God which is foolishness in the eyes of man. But the road to the wisdom of God is the great secret of God. It’s not through some initiation ceremony or philosophical instruction, but through the highest gift of the Spirit which is love. With this as your guide you can’t go wrong.274 ¶1

Wisdom in the scriptures is personified as a little child, and you will read it in the 8th chapter of the Book of Proverbs, from the 22nd verse through the 36th. “I was his possession before he brought forth anything, before the heavens were established, before the earth was established. I was beside him as a little child; and daily I was his delight, rejoicing in his inhabited world and rejoicing in the sons of men. Listen to me, my sons, and keep my ways; he who finds me finds life and obtains the favor of God. He who misses me injures himself; all who hate me love death.”274 ¶2

Now here is the personification of wisdom, a little child. We’re told in scripture, “Wisdom is justified by her children” . So here we see wisdom now becoming a parent, bringing forth itself personified as a little child. So, when it brings forth itself in an entirely different world, this wisdom is altogether different. The one in whom the child appears does not differ from what he was one second before. If he never went to college, he cannot think he did go to one and what he knew in this world of Caesar he knows no more. If he was all thumbs when he started to put a stamp on an envelope, he still remains all thumbs. He cannot enter into any conversation with the wisdom of this world beyond what he was when it happened to him. What happened to him will lead him into an entirely different world, and will appear foolishness in the eyes of this world, so he is no wiser in the eyes of the people of Caesar.274 ¶3

And what he stepped into begins to expand rapidly, and he comes into all kinds of things that he cannot even discuss. He’ll discuss it, but only a few will be able to understand him. What he is discussing is not only a wisdom beyond the wisdom of this world, but a power beyond the wildest dream of the power of this world.274 ¶4

Now you and I would not because electricity could be dangerous cease to use it. We know that it’s fatal if misused. You and I wouldn’t stop driving a car because every year 50,000 Americans alone are killed on the highways through cars. How many hundreds of thousands are injured and some very seriously? Many of them, but we still drive cars. So, because the power we use on Caesar’s level if misused becomes fatal and dangerous, we don’t stop using it.274 ¶5

Well, this power of which I speak is infinitely more dangerous, but we have to experiment. And you’re not going to stop using it because it is dangerous. So, tonight we come down to the one use of it where it cannot hurt you. It can’t hurt you if you realize that the road to this power, the road to this wisdom of God is through the highest gift of the Spirit which is love.274 ¶6

Now, last Tuesday night I told you the story of a friend of mine and many of you were present. I think you can catch what I said even without going over the story itself.274 ¶7

In a vision which he shared with us (because he shared it with me and I shared it with you) he was told in vision to use his Imagination for another in the same way he uses it when he writes a story. Well, he’s a professional writer and writes stories daily. Well, in this writing of a story on the level of Caesar he has to play all the parts to make it natural. So when he makes a love scene or dramatizes a love scene he has to make love to himself. As he said in his letter to me, slap himself, slap himself in the face if the situation calls for it.274 ¶8

So, with this in mind (all in a dream), he thought he would try it, and he tried it with two that he mentioned, and said, person after person…who the persons were I do not know. With his success in these, I hope many of you are friendly enough with him to be brought into his sphere to use you in the experiment.274 ¶9

Now, he wrote me a letter which I told you, but I didn’t tell the end of it. I didn’t realize what was written at the very end in the script was part of it. So he wrote me another letter, which I got a day after.274 ¶10

Well, the story is this. In his experience, he left his body and did what he would in a play, and assumed the body of the one he wanted to help. He became not only another person but another sex, for the one he wanted to help was a young woman. In this, her immediate need, the most pressing need, was a car. So after putting on the personality of the young woman, looked into the mirror and pronounced herself beautiful—because he is not the man now, he is the young woman—then he tripped out onto the street where the new car was waiting, got into the car and drove off, sitting in the form of a woman, this woman, with the wind blowing against his face. Then, after enjoying the ride, with a few little moments of discomfort when his high heels were not quite what he was accustomed to wearing, and so then he pulled over to the curb and parked the car. Got out of the body of the woman now, looked at the woman sitting behind the wheel, and she gave him this radiant, glorious smile. And that was it, that scene.274 ¶11

The very next day, he goes to the restaurant where this young lady works, and she, in a moment of excitement, took him and his wife out to show them the car. It’s the make of car, the color of car, the top was down. Everyone, with a thing like this, would like to know, well, how did she get it? Well, since she did not have a car she has not been visiting her mother. Her mother, knowing the reason for the lack of visits was owning a car, sent her this unexpected gift of money, which she then put down on the new car—the make, the color, and the convertible…the top down. The mother said to my friend—because on Easter day then they drove out to him, and called on him—and said it was really a very selfish gift: “Because I hadn’t seen her as often as I’d like to see her, I gave her the money that would permit her to get the means of seeing me more often, which is a car.” And so, they always justify these things on the level of Caesar. But it was on that level this whole thing started. He gave her what she did not have either the strength or the faith to give herself.274 ¶12

Now, because she has a car, she wants to disengage herself from a relationship, which has been present in the interim, from one who works in the same restaurant playing music. He’s a musician, a man much older than she is, but he has been kind, he’s been very considerate. He might have had ulterior motives that I do not know. He did propose marriage, but she declined and said, “No, let us remain friends.” But he would take her home every night when she worked late and take her to her apartment where she lives, and then would allow her to use the car in the course of the day. Then, as it went on from weeks to months, and months to months, he not only would take her home but would suggest that he would come in and sit and rest for awhile, which he did. And that became a habit to the point of even receiving an extra key that he may use the apartment in her absence.274 ¶13

But now with her car and this new freedom, she doesn’t want this to continue. So she said to my friend who was so successful in this, “I don’t want him hurt. I want him out of my life but no hurt. He has been kind, he has been sweet, he’s been generous, he’s been everything that’s been lovely, only I want this to come to an end, without the hurt of this person.”274 ¶14

My friend, being very human as we all are…for anyone wearing these garments are wearing garments of animals, may I tell you. Anyone in this world, no matter [...], the so-called holy man, when he tells you how holy he is, don’t trust him through the door. Don’t for one moment trust him even with an extra dollar, because while you wear these garments you are subjected to the animal power.274 ¶15

So, he said in his letter to me, “I love her in the same way you love your daughter Vicki.” Well, that’s really doing something, because if anyone could take a total stranger who waits on his table and love her to the degree and with the same affection that I love my Vicki, I take my hat off to him. Because I breathe with her…I take her every hurt to be my hurt. And if you are the father of a daughter among sons, forget the sons; but of the daughter, you know what I mean when it comes to a daughter…at least in my case.274 ¶16

And so he said, “When I heard of this relationship, it so annoyed me that I think I must have been in some strange way as you would be over Vicki, jealous of his monopolizing the time and the affection of this girl. So I thought I would do exactly what she asked me, to free her.” Now remember, she wanted him out of her life without hurt; that was her desire.274 ¶17

She appreciated his affection, his tenderness, his consideration, his generosity all these things. But then, when he got into her body and became that being, he wasn’t playing two parts; he severed himself from his body and took possession of her personality, her mask, her [...], And then when it came to severing this relationship, he felt a great love when he entered her body. He said, “I can enter anyone’s body with love. It’s the easiest thing in the world to do. So I got into this body, and then came the request for complete freedom from this relationship. At that moment, instead of being kind I treated him as you would scum. In other words, I even found myself using a physical gesture which I noticed one day she used, in the restaurant when a man tried to be offensive, and she turned up her nose and with a flick of the hand.” What that meant, I don’t know. It suggested that she simply expelled him, like something obnoxious, something that was offensive, from her. It was a complete expulsion from her being by the turning of the nose up and some flick of the hand. “In this, as this lady (for I’m not the man, I am this being) I did the same thing.274 ¶18

Now that’s not what she wanted me to do, but I did it. I completely expelled him from my life, as though he were obnoxious. But now here came the horror of horrors…I couldn’t get out of that. I am completely Beth; I can’t get out of her. And for six hours I struggled and wrestled with myself to the point where my wife said to me ‘Who are you?’ I was panicked. I was scared to death that I would find myself in the nuthouse thinking I’m a girl. No one would know what I did to produce this. And yet, I couldn’t get out of Beth…I am Beth…I am this young woman. Finally, how I do not know, but finally after six hours of labor and struggle, somehow I got out. How I don’t know. I was so exhausted I fell into a sleep and slept for twelve hours, twelve unbroken hours. But, at the very end it was worth it, for the most heavenly voice of love spoke to me and it said, ‘I have restored my soul. I am now gathering my own in love, in beauty and in joy.’ And that was it.”274 ¶19

So, said he in a letter to me, “Having had this experience, Neville, I wish you would caution the class and tell them not at any time to exercise their Imagination save they exercise it in love; for they will be trapped as I was trapped. I moved into it willingly and eagerly through love, but when once in it something in…because she did not request this. When I brought about the divorce of the two she requested the whole thing would be severed amicably, in a loving manner, fully appreciated for what he had done at the time he played that part, but he will play no further part in my life.”274 ¶20

He, moved by some other feeling of ill will, exercised ill will while in her body and became locked in it. So, he was big enough and generous enough to share with me his own experience that I may share it with you and warn you that when you are going to exercise this enormous power for another, which is not on this level at all, do it in love and you’ll never go wrong.274 ¶21

It’s so altogether different, as we’re told in the 9th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah. We read these words: “Let not the wise glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty glory in his might, let not the rich glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice kindness, justice, and righteousness; for in these I delight” . Now, he can’t practice these save outside of a man…a man is his agent. “I delight in men who practice kindness, justice and righteousness,” and every time that we do this he delights in us and rejoices in us.274 ¶22

And so, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God. The might of this world is as nothing in the eyes of God. The riches of this world that’s nothing in the eyes of God. But you take these qualities, kindness, and you take justice, and you take righteousness, which is right-thinking, and he delights in these, sayeth the Lord.274 ¶23

Tonight you can take it just as he took it. And he’s promised to share with me when other things…and he must be frightfully busy taking others from what he said in his letter to me. When these fantastic results appear I will tell you about them. They’ve already begun to appear. How intense he was in wearing the personality of others! This is the only one I know of where while in it he acted in, well, in an ill-will manner. But if he doesn’t act…and now he knows he shouldn’t, for he can be locked in it and trapped, completely trapped.274 ¶24

So by his own words, he said, “It’s so easy to get into any personality if I do it through love.” It’s like the sperm, for what is the sperm but the creative power of God. The sperm passes through the surface of the shell easily, and yet on the surface of the shell there is no hole, no opening, either before or after fertilization. So he goes in like the sperm of God. For what is the sperm of God? Just Jesus Christ…it’s called the seed: “And your seed, who is Jesus Christ” . So he speaks to your seed, your creative power. Your creative power is your own wonderful human Imagination.274 ¶25

And it’s so easy to pass through the surface of the egg. Well, the egg in this case is this woman, or the man Eddy, or you, or me, or anyone that he selects to fructify as it were; to fertilize with a new concept of self, where it hatches out in a way unknown to the rational mind. If he so loves you that he would like to give you a lift in this world, having exercised this power he would find it very easy if love moves him to possess your personality; and while you then assumes for you-as-himself whatever he desired for you. If it is done in love he will not be trapped in you, and he will move out of it having fertilized it, and leave it to hatch out. It will hatch out. No power in the world can stop it.274 ¶26

This is the power of which I speak that is Christ Jesus. There’s no power on earth comparable to it, there’s nothing here. Talk about nuclear energy, talk of this power and that power, there’s nothing comparable to this. Talk of wisdom in this world, no.274 ¶27

If you take the catalogue of wisdom and put it against those that he designated in scripture, the 12th chapter of the Book of 1st Corinthians, and he mentions all the states as they come down from on high . The first is the apostle, and the second is the prophet, and the third the teacher, the fourth the worker of miracles, the fifth the healer, he comes all the way down, the administrator, and the last is the speaker of many tongues. Not glossolalia that people speak of today; the scholars of the world, the most brilliant minds of the world, comes under the heading of “many tongues.” And that’s the eighth segment.274 ¶28

So you, if the child is born and you stand in the presence of the risen Christ and you are sent, as you will be sent—if you stand in his presence, you are automatically sent—doesn’t mean that you are any wiser than you were before. It only means you are now sent and you stand at the top with an enormous power at your command unknown to those who speak in many tongues. You can’t enter their sphere. You do not know now, but all that you know now is something beyond what they know now. And, may I tell you, to play the part now having shut out all these other levels, they are contained within you, but you purposely had to shut them out when you come into the world at this moment in time to be born from above. They all return, because the law is contained in the one above it, and the two contained in the one above it, and the three contained in the one above it; and finally all are contained in the apostle. But he has to shut out everything below him to play this part. So he comes into the world, all these within him, all contained, but he has to shut them out.274 ¶29

I only know when I stood in the class with Abdullah I knew not one word of Hebrew, but not one word. When I was criticized or he was criticized for bringing me to the blackboard to instruct this class in Hebrew—I’d only been there a few months—and this one who spoke Hebrew and taught Hebrew, and then he criticized Abdullah for taking up his time, with taking this novice at the blackboard to describe Hebrew, Abdullah said, “You do not know who he is. Neither does he remember who he is. If you only knew who he was you would sit right now at his feet. But you don’t know who he is. Neither does he remember who he is.” Then six months later I was instructing this man who taught Hebrew. It came back. It came from the depths of my soul, but then shut up once more.274 ¶30

That was not the part I had to play. The part I had to play here, and came to play here, is simply to tell the story of Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ being your own wonderful human Imagination. When it begins to stir, and really stirs, it’s a power beyond the wildest dream of man. No man on earth knows its power.274 ¶31

If you take someone, and take off your own being…what person in this world would believe you could disengage yourself from your own being and assume the personality of another? And while you are now one with that personality, move into a car waiting for you on the curb, and get into the car dressed in a skirt, and wearing the personality of a girl, while you formerly were a man? And drive that with the wind against your hair, and pull the car to the curb; and then get out of that personality, and look at it from the sidewalk, and wave at it, and see this glorious smile on her face—to find the very next day she has that car, that make, that color and it’s a convertible and the top is down? Do you know of any power on earth like it? There is no power in this world comparable to it.274 ¶32

Yet, it remains a foolish power in the eyes of the wise. So you’re told that to the Jew—meaning not a person of a certain race, it means a certain state of mind—it’s a stumbling block, they can’t grasp it; and to the Greek—meaning not that you were born in Greece, but to those who are called wise people, the intellectuals of the world—it’s all foolishness . So they would not even listen, far less try it, so they wouldn’t even try it.274 ¶33

They are the giants of the world, they’re all honored, so they wear all over their breasts the honors [...], but they come at the very bottom of the list of those designated in the 12th chapter of 1st Corinthians. They are the ones who are the great interpreters of the world, the great translators of the world, they’re the great scholars of the world, and so erudite they can tell you exactly what it meant originally, and give you wonderful things, and they’re all part of the structure. For without them to give to one who is singled out for a purpose, he wouldn’t know the ancient script in its present form, which language he didn’t speak when he was here at a certain moment in time. And so, they give it to him in a language that now he’s assumed to tell the story, the story of Christ.274 ¶34

So I say to you, listen to him carefully…and use it only lovingly. For if you don’t, you not only will be trapped…I wonder how many people tonight are in the institutions of the world telling others that they are Napoleon, that they are this, that and the other, who slipped into these personalities and became trapped? They did not slip in with love, or if they did while they were in it they took on the personality of ill will, as one of Napoleon would. He was simply…in one of his letters when he wrote to his girlfriend back in Paris, Josephine, and said, “I lost 1,200 men today…no one of importance.” Twelve hundred men but no one of importance! Well, that attitude, usurping that personality, you certainly wouldn’t be as you felt it and became lost in it, you would have nothing but ill will. And you’d be trapped in it, and then they’d put you into the little nut house because you, being John Brown, are telling the people of the world that you are Napoleon. So how many are now in these states completely lost and trapped and can’t get out?274 ¶35

But I ask you, would you give up the use of electricity because the misuse is dangerous? Would you give up flying in a plane because there are occasional crashes and all go down? Well, even a ship at sea may be safer, but they do go down and hundreds are lost. And so, would you give up this pleasure of traveling across oceans or flying across oceans [...]; sitting in a car because there are accidents; and because something could go wrong today with the electrical setup and the house could burn down? But if you rebuild the house because one burnt from a short circuit…you aren’t going to give it up. You’re going to put it back again and hope you’ll do a better job the next time, better insulation or something.274 ¶36

Well, the same thing is true of this. So he shared with us again his own experience and that is he can get into any personality just as easily as anything in the world, like going through the door. It’s so easy for him to assume your personality. But he knows now when you request something in love he must not alter it. He must…if he does take your case and do it, he’ll do it. That’s called in the state the miracle worker. It’s very high in the rankage—you read it in the 12th chapter—-you’ll see it’s the fourth one, very high .274 ¶37

It doesn’t mean he can’t teach it, for the teacher is the third; and it doesn’t mean he can’t prophesy your tomorrow, because he did with Beth. He inwardly knew she was going to get that car, because she had the car, so the prophet is there too. And the apostle…he simply awaits the moment when he stands before the risen Christ.274 ¶38

No one is in line for the apostolic succession by any putting on of physical hands. So when certain groups of this world claim that they are, from Peter down, where they got into closed doors and voted in the same way that we vote here for President, and they call themselves the apostolic succession, forget it! No one is sent out by the risen Christ who does not first stand in his presence.274 ¶39

When you stand in his presence the answer to the question is always love. For you stand in the presence of infinite love and he asks you, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and you will answer “love.” He will embrace you and you will fuse with the body of love, an infinite body of love. And by his side is the personification of infinite power. You will know you will exercise power to the degree that you love; for there’s nothing greater than love. Love is the greatest, but here is power, the personification of infinite might, sitting right there. But here, standing before you…now you are one with him, and you’re sent out to act. But you act only in love, because if you act in love you are never trapped, never trapped. If you act not in love, you run the risk of being trapped.274 ¶40

He said, “I was scared to death that I’d be found in some nut house thinking that I am a girl.” And he meant it, every word of it. So he’s big enough, in spite of his position in the professional field, to share with us this. And I want to thank him for it. And I want to thank you for coming and also caution you when you go out to test it, and if you test it, see that you use only love when you exercise this power. The story is given to us, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Can’t go wrong! Would I want it done to me? No, well then, don’t do it unto you. You can’t go wrong if that is your mark by which you exercise this power.274 ¶41

Well, when a man can sit here tonight and tell me that he finds it so easy, the easiest thing in the world, to pass through the surface of a being and occupy its personality, that man is so high in the levels. For I can say to you, yes, this presence has been born in him, completely born in him. And so, wisdom is justified by her children. Wisdom is the personification of God’s might and power and wisdom that is called Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus brings forth in us himself, symbolized as a child. That has been brought forth in him. And so, the child has been brought forth, so the wisdom is there and the power is there. At the present moment he’s now exercising the miracle power, but it doesn’t mean when you exercise one you can’t exercise the others; because the highest has been brought forth in him. If he hasn’t yet stood in the presence of the risen Christ, it doesn’t matter. He still can prophesy what’s going to happen, therefore, he’s standing on the second level. He can teach it, that’s the third level. They’re all contained one within the other and you’ll find them all contained within the apostle, and he is contained within Christ Jesus. So he sent him out from himself.274 ¶42

So tonight you take it seriously, and don’t for one moment think anything is impossible to this power. There’s nothing impossible to the power. So whatever is asked of you, accept it, and do it in love. Experiment! You won’t hurt yourself and you won’t hurt the other if you do it in love. Expect no return as to pay; expect nothing but the success of what you do. Don’t do it for one nickel, don’t do it for anything in this world, just do it for the joy of doing it.274 ¶43

For what was his delight? He said, “My delight…I delight in kindness, in justice, in righteousness, in these things I delight.” So if you are rich, don’t joy and glory in your riches. That’s nothing compared to what really is in store for you. For all the riches in the world would be as nothing to what’s really in store for you.274 ¶44

He said, “The earth is mine and the fullness thereof…the cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” Were I hungry, I wouldn’t tell you…I would slay and eat . It’s all mine. So this is as nothing compared to what has already been prepared for those who awaken into the new age.274 ¶45

So, you take this, it belongs to the new age. What he did doesn’t belong to this world. You see it exercised in this world, for in this statement he said, “I do this in the earth,” in that 9th chapter of Jeremiah . He uses that little phrase wisely: “In the earth I do it here that you may see.” But it belongs to a new age, an entirely different world. So while we are here, we exercise and simply prove this power and prove this wisdom.274 ¶46

It doesn’t make sense. The average person tonight who is considered a brilliant mind if he sat here, at the end if he’s a cultured person he wouldn’t scream while I’m talking, but when he got out of the place, he’d say, “Why that’s a nut house!” I mean that would be the impression of those who are brilliant in mind…it’s a nut house. And yet the people who are here are well dressed and they seem intelligent, you mean the same people come all the time? They’d ask a thousand questions about this. Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God; but, vice versa, the wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of man.274 ¶47

You read it carefully in the 1st Corinthians, the very first chapter. He said, “When I came, having been exposed to the risen Christ, I came determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified” . And he calls it the cross of Christ which was the power of God. Well, the cross of Christ is the power of God? It doesn’t make sense. All of a sudden, it is in you…this is the cross body. You discover something moving in you; and you can just disengage from this and put it upon another cross, and give yourself to that cross.274 ¶48

Now listen to these words, “No one takes away my life; I lay it down myself. I have the right to lay it down and I have the right to receive it again” . So let no one take away my life…so he actually put his life out. To become someone else is to extinguish oneself, is it not? In effect to die…he died and yet not truly died. That’s what we are told, “You will die…but not really die” . So he died, he gave up his personality and took upon himself another. He knows exactly what that 10th chapter of John means now: “No one takes away my life, I lay it down myself.” He did, he deliberately put his personality aside and assumed the personality of another, and having done that he “died.” He died to his personality and lived to another.274 ¶49

While he lived to the other, he gave it gifts and gave it gifts. But the one who does all things is infinite love. So the moment he departed from the gift of giving loving things and exercised intellectual ill will, he was trapped, and couldn’t get out, and struggled for six hours.274 ¶50

You know what it would be…that you can’t get out of a personality that is a female body and yet you are a male? What doctor in this world would believe it? I am surrounded in my little island of Barbados with doctors. I have doctors all over this country, too, who are relatives by marriage, and not one of them…my brother graduated a psychiatrist, practiced with the mental institution in Barbados for fifteen years. Do you think he would believe it? He wouldn’t dream of this story tonight, that someone could get out, in an act of service, and then while in it be moved by some little ill will towards one he thought had monopolized this one’s life, and then by acting in that manner be trapped. Could he believe it? So he had his six years at McGill University in Montreal, and two years at a university in London in tropical diseases, eight years in the great universities practiced, he’s a year my senior, all of his life in medicine, and yet he wouldn’t for one second believe it. He would treat anyone of that nature, as the whole vast world treats the snake pit. And that’s what it is.274 ¶51

But, he’s big enough…and I thank him from the bottom of my soul for sharing with us his experience that he may stop us…if we have any hesitation, don’t you do it. Don’t enter into the chamber of the other and do anything for them if within that chamber what you have to do is going to in any way arouse ill will, for you may be trapped. If you’re trapped, how are you going to explain to any man in the world of Caesar, that will satisfy their reason, that you are really someone other than what you are pretending that you are? You now are saying that you are a girl and yet your body reveals you to be a man. And so, they’ll put you away for safe keeping.274 ¶52

So here, we’re dealing with a power unknown to mortal man; we’re dealing with a wisdom unknown to mortal man. There are other stories he told me, and it’s too late to even begin to tell them, all in conflict with human wisdom, all; but much too long to go into. But I have his permission to tell them when the mood possesses me to tell them…but it’s too late now…all based upon simply possessing the personality of another and doing for them what they haven’t the faith to do for themselves.274 ¶53

Now let us go into the Silence. * * *274 ¶54

[The very beginning of this recording is unintelligible.] Now, we are told that Jehovah brought his people out of Egypt “with signs and wonders.” All these signs and wonders are in the story of Jesus. We are told that Jesus is the representative of humanity. Take just one story, the story of Jesus, for it is really your story. Study it carefully; and once you have found it, in the light of all the signs and wonders in the career of Jesus, . . that’s the end of the sentence, . . He is the Resurrection. That’s the key to the entire thing. When that happens, all the other signs follow. They all unfold themselves in the individual.636 ¶1

So, forget the individual, and think only of the reality of that individual; and the reality of the individual is the Lord Jesus Christ. He sleeps in man. He will awake in man as the man in whom he awakes. You will meet him playing all the parts of life. And you will know the story that he told you is true. You will see him cast in the role.636 ¶2

Let me share with you now one that was shared with me this week. “In my dream I was on my way to a finance house for a loan. I went straight through the door into the office of the one who owned the company; and to my astonishment, here it was you! You stood behind the desk piled high with letters. You were nothing more than radiant Love, and I knew I needed no collateral . . nothing; that if I asked you for the moon, you had the power to give it. You would have snatched it out of the heavens and given it to me. You were simply a helpless slave of Love . . possessed by Love and obedient to all the commands of Love, and I said to myself, as I left, ‘What a radiant, radiant fool! Not a thing in the world could be asked of him that he could not grant!’636 ¶3

“As I went out, I encountered a woman. She was the very limit of despair, and I knew she had gone to everyone, and turned now to you as the last resort, for she had emptied all channels. But I also knew as she went through that door, her every request would be granted. And then I came out, and I knew any man who got through that little door would find the answer to his every request, for behind that door was nothing but Love; and all the facade . . all this outside appearance of business . . was all a mask . . all a masquerade. The letters, the piles of paper, the desk, and the building itself was only a masquerade hiding Infinite Love and who was behind that door.”636 ¶4

Well, I told you, I stood in the presence of Infinite Love, and He embraced me, and we became one; and then He “sent” me to tell you the story as it would unfold within me. His Word is true, and the One He sent, you will find him playing all the roles.636 ¶5

Now I will tell her now: when you go home tonight, read the 55th chapter of the Book of Isaiah. “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come … he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine, buy milk, without money, without price.” And he who comes to Me, I will make a covenant with him, as I did with my loving David, and made him a witness to the people forever. Here, a witness . . and I am talking night after night about this witness to the Fatherhood of God. In this same chapter: “And the Word that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” . .636 ¶6

So, everything granted behind that door . . as you call it, “the little, narrow door” . . cannot return void. It is His to give and yours to receive if you ask for it. And she knew in her heart that any man who got through that door would receive every request that he made, for there was nothing there but Infinite Love and the power to grant it.636 ¶7

Now this is not something special for the speaker. Everyone in whom the story unfolds will play that part. And, may I tell you? It will unfold in everyone, because God Himself is the reality of every child born or woman; but man has completely misunderstood the signs, and he turns back in time two thousand years ago, and he cannot see that the whole thing is contemporary. The whole thing is taking place now. It’s not over. It is forever taking place, . . but the same story. It’s not another story. And this story of salvation is completely bound up with a special history. It’s the history of Israel. There is no other history.636 ¶8

But an Israelite is not one who descends from Abraham after the flesh, but the “elect of God” of any race or nation in the world. We are called, one by one, into His presence. Fusing with God, we are “sent,” and the one “sent” and the One who sends him are one. They are not two. So, the Sender and the “sent” are really one from that moment on in Eternity, for that one discovers who God really is. “And this is eternal life, to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.” But Jesus Christ is one with the Sender; and everyone who is incorporated into the body of Love and “sent” is Jesus Christ. He bears another name in the world. He bears the name of John, the name of Peter, the name of anything; but he is Jesus Christ! He is the only one that is “sent.” So, he is the one who knows from his own experience that everything said of Christ in the story unfolds in him, and there aren’t a number of little “christs” in the world. There is only one Jesus Christ; and so anyone who has the experience of Jesus Christ is Jesus Christ!636 ¶9

But it’s not what the world is looking for, and so they ignore it, and turn their back against him. They want something on the outside, some majestic figure, some great-looking being to come into their world and enslave their enemies. And it’s not so at all.636 ¶10

So, the whole drama begins with this mighty act when God awakes within man. So, when they say the whole thing is done through His resurrection, I wouldn’t criticize that statement. Some scholars criticize it, but I will say, Yes, His . . speaking of it. But really, you’ve got to come down closer. It’s your resurrection, because when the resurrection takes place in you, you don’t see another. It’s your Self. You are the Being who becomes awake within your own tomb . . your skull. It is you who comes out of your own skull. So, then at that moment you are “born.” So, as Peter said, “We are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”636 ¶11

I would not quarrel with that statement; but Jesus Christ is the true identity of every man. He doesn’t make it clear enough, but it’s when you are awakened from within yourself, you are at that moment . . without loss of identity . . you are still Jan, you are still Bill, you are still anyone whose name you bear; but at that moment you are Jesus Christ, for Jesus Christ fulfills Scripture, and you will fulfill all the Scriptures.636 ¶12

And others will see you in the different roles, and therefore they will be witness to the event. You are that witness called “the first who rose from the dead”; and, because he is the first, and He-in-you rises, you are still the first. You are not the ten-thousandth or the millionth; you are still the first, for only one rises from the “dead.” So, when he calls his people out of Israel, the representative of his people is Jesus Christ; and therefore it is Jesus Christ he is calling out of the graves, and He is calling His own Being out. But when he calls them, he comes, bringing with him the being with whom he is united, and they become one. For, “He who is united with the Lord becomes one spirit with the Lord”; and in that long dream . . this horrible dream . . you became united to the Lord. And it is the Lord that is coming out, but He comes out as you! Yet you are the Lord Jesus Christ.636 ¶13

Now when we are told in Galatians: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh? Are you going to see Jesus Christ as a little man of flesh in the outer world? You have heard the story, and you have accepted the story in the spirit in which it was told. You didn’t see a man; it was portrayed. Do you know what the word “portray” means? “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed.” To portray a thing is to represent it in a drawing, in a painting, in an engraving, or on the stage acting. That is to portray a certain thing. Well, here before the eyes of the Galatians, Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. How could you ever dramatize it? I’ll tell you. I know of no way. You could explain it . . yes, in words as I have tried to explain it; but how could you dramatize it on the stage?636 ¶14

The night it happened to me, only in memory, for it was the fulfillment of the Second Psalm. And when I led this enormous crowd in this wonderful, gay procession to the House of God, and the Voice said, “And God walks with them,” and a woman to my right asked the Voice . . no one saw the face; they only heard the voice. And she said, “If God walks with us, where is He?” And the Voice answered so all could hear it, “At your side.” And she automatically turned to her left and looked right into my eyes, and then she began to laugh, and she was hysterical . . it struck her so funnily. And she said to the Voice, “What! Is Neville God?” And the Voice replied, “Yes, in the act of awakening. Then the Voice spoke only within me, . . it didn’t come from without, . . and the Voice said from within me: “I laid myself down within you to slept and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed” . . and I knew what he was dreaming. He’s dreaming that He is I. At that moment my two hands, my head, my right side, and my two feet became vortices . . whirling vortices, each a vortex; and that was the Crucifixion, when God became as I AM, that I may be as He is! . . He actually crucified Himself upon me, and started the dream, dreaming that He is Neville, and when He completes the union, He awakes in me as Neville.636 ¶15

And then to prove it’s true, all that he said concerning the one that he “sent,” called Jesus, unfolds within the speaker. And everything said in that story unfolded within me. So, as I stand before you now, I can actually say there isn’t one thing left out that I have not experienced. I am only now waiting for the final taking off of this outer garment when I am one with the Being who “sent” me, in essence . . in reality, yet without loss of identity.636 ¶16

So, he asked the questions “Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you going to end now with the flesh?” . . and see a little being after the flesh? There is really only one body, one spirit, one lord, one God and Father of all; and all are being called, but they are called individually, one after the other, one by one, to be united into that One Body and that One Spirit, and become the one Father of all.636 ¶17

So here, Jesus is a sign. If you tell that to the world, they will not believe it. And you tell them the signs that you call “miracles” everyone is going to experience, and others will see you in the role of the story.636 ¶18

There is a lady here tonight, . . I see her here with her husband, . . saw me stepping into the boat on the beach when she was exhausted and could not reach me; and then having entered the boat with these fishermen in this ancient world . . and here, I got out of the boat, and as I turned, she recognized me. She didn’t know. I was dressed in white . . a long white robe; but when I got out and stood upon the beach and she recognized me; and I said to the fishermen, “No, I will wait until dawn.” She thought she had lost . . lost out in her attempt to reach that boat and to reach me. But when I said to them, “No, I will wait until dawn; there are others to come,” then she felt the relief that she had not failed. Exhausted as she was in her attempt to reach the fishermen and reach that boat and reach the speaker who entered that boat, and he was exhausted and placed his head between his hands and waited in that state.636 ¶19

Well, that is recalled in the Bible. That whole story is Scripture. All these are signs. So she saw one sign to prove the truth of what I am saying here. Another saw it in another way, another in another way. These are witnesses to the truth of what I am talking about.636 ¶20

But there is another kind of a witness that He is looking for. You yourself become the central witness, the one known as Jesus Christ, as told us in the first chapter of Revelation: “He is the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead.” The first chapter, the 5th verse of Revelation. Each in turn will play that part, but he will play all the other parts; and those that come to him, as you have come here, . . you are going to see me in all the different roles as my friend to whom I gave in-current eyes that she may become an in-current eye witness.636 ¶21

And she saw me here recently in the role that I have just told you, playing the whole chapter . . the 55th chapter of Isaiah. That is what she saw, . . playing the role. Come, no money. You don’t need the money. You don’t need anything to buy what I have to offer. Well, what have you to offer? You name it. I have that. “For the world is mine, and all within it. If I were hungry, I would not tell you,” he said, “for the cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” The world and all within it, . . that’s mine! “All mine are thine and thine are mine.” Well, you name it, for it all is God’s and all God’s belong to the one that He “sent,” for He and the “sent” are one.636 ¶22

So, she said, “I felt you could have given me the moon, had I desired it, and would have willingly, for you are the victim of your own Love, possessed by Love, and could not do anything but obey the commands of Love.” I tell you, God is Love. He’s Infinite Love. And He willingly gives everything if you come into His presence; and she knew anyone who got through that little door, that that one could receive anything that he voiced, because He would have voiced it and His words could not return unto Him void; they had to be accomplished. No matter what He sent them on, they had to fulfill the purpose for which He sent them.636 ¶23

And so, you need money? No, you don’t. I share with you what I have discovered. All you need is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. That’s all that you need to do, because He is within you. Though asleep, He still grants the wish, for that is His Law. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Though reason denies it, though your senses deny it, don’t waiver in that assumption. You assume it. Persist in the assumption, and that assumption will harden into reality, if you call reality these concrete things in the world. But really, these are the shadows. The reality was the invisible state that projected itself into what we can the “reality”; but the real Reality was invisible. Have faith. Have confidence in that invisible state. Assume it, “wear” it; it will externalize itself.636 ¶24

But here, everything said in the Old Testament is adumbrated. It’s a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way. When it comes into the fulfillment of itself in the One Being in whom all the Promises found their “yes,” . . it is said, in Jesus Christ all the Promises of God found their “yes” . . their fulfillment in Him.636 ¶25

Study it carefully. If you don’t understand what is meant about Crucifixion . . you just heard it from me. The Circumcision, we are told so clearly, but you can’t see it in the Old, . . in the Book of Deuteronomy they only speak of the circumcision of the heart. It speaks nothing of the flesh. The flesh signifies an invisible, spiritual reality. Then what is that circumcision? It unveils the head of creation, the organ of creation, and He is called the Creative Power of God. That is the organ . . the Creative Organ of God. Who? Christ is. What is this circumcision? As we are told, “circumcise with a circumcision made without hands,” a circumcision in the circumcision of Christ. Then what was it? On the eighth day he was circumcised. I tell you, it is the eighth month. The child is born, and then you find the Fatherhood of God through David 139 days later, and then 123 days later you’ll find this great act, which is really spiritual circumcision of the heart. Why? In this sense: “Do you not know that you are the Temple of the Living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” and that temple must be torn in two from top to bottom . . the curtain of the temple? And without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.636 ¶26

Then what is this circumcision of the heart? How is it done? Well, this is going to be the blood that you are going to take into the Holy of Holies; and on that day a bolt of lightning splits you in two from top to bottom, and at the base of your spine is the golden liquid light . . living, living, pulsing light. It is the blood of God. But you look at it, and you know it’s your Self. For are we not told the life is in the blood? And did he not say, “I AM the Life,” . . “I AM the Resurrection and the Life”? So, I AM the Life. I looked at it, and I knew as I looked at it I am looking at my very Self, “O my Redeemer and my Creator!” . . my very Self. And then I fused with it, and then ascended into the Holy of Holies like a fiery serpent; and I took the blood, not of bulls, not of calves, not of lambs, . . not of anything on the outside; I took my own blood. It was the blood of God! And it was the temple of God that was torn in two . . the body. “Do ye not realize ye are the Temple of the Living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” So, I saw the Spirit, the Life, and it was in the blood; and I knew it to be my Self. And I fused with it and then I went up . . right up like a fiery serpent into the Holy of Holies where the outer man cannot enter. The outer priests cannot enter. They go in with the blood of a calf, the blood of a turtle-dove, the blood of a pigeon; but they come out still conscious of the sins of the world and their own sins. This . . you are completely exonerated, and you exonerate all the world no matter what they do. So, you go up with the “blood.” That is the Circumcision.636 ¶27

Now, how on earth are you going to dramatize that on the stage? So, the dramatization that Paul spoke of in that third chapter of Galatians is simply an adumbration. If someone today had the courage and the ability, . . there is only one medium that I know of that could really tell it, and that would be the movies. They can do strange things with the camera and with lighting. I can’t see how it can be done on the stage without the aid of a camera, but I could tell them in detail, as you could because you have the record of it, exactly how it happens.636 ¶28

Now how on earth are you going to tell of the birth of God? As it is depicted year after year at Christmas in all the Christian churches of the world? That’s not the birth. This is a spiritual birth. How are you going to depict it when it begins with the Resurrection? And the story is told that he’s only been born; he hasn’t yet been crucified. In the beginning he was crucified! The drama begins with the Crucifixion. “We have all been crucified with Him,” Paul tells us. “I have been crucified with Christ.” But now the Resurrection is taking place. When it takes place, then you are “born from above.” It’s the second side of the coin, the birth. So the Resurrection comes first; then comes the “birth from above,” the same night.636 ¶29

How would you tell it? You can tell it in pictures. A man with the imagination to conceive the scene all taking place in the skull of man, . . and a man is sound asleep within his own skull and doesn’t know it. His daily habits could be that of a carpenter, that of a mason, a lawyer, a banker, . . anything in the world . . digging ditches, . . but anything. And then he goes to sleep; and while he sleeps, he awakes. The camera could do it. A man who has any knowhow in the use of a camera and great imagination could find the man sleeping in the enlargement of his skull; and then something of which he was totally unaware, which is himself . . his true identity . . awakes within his skull to find that it is completely sealed and it now resembles a tomb; and yet, it is a skull, as told us in Scripture. It’s called “Golgotha,” which is the Hebrew for the word “skull.” It’s called “Calvary”; that is also “skull.” So, within your skull you come out, and then all the imagery then surrounds you. Are you not told in Scripture that the imagery is a sign? Well, Simeon comes by spirit into the temple. He comes all in the spirit and comes into the temple, and man is the temple of the Living God. So where is he going to go? He goes right into man in Spirit! And here he finds on the floor a little child, and he picks up the child, announcing whom it represents and what it represents. He announces that it is . . and he calls you by name. If your name is Bill, it’s Bill’s child. Other witnesses are present, and they deny that Bill could ever have a child. How could he beget a child? All this could be done beautifully, and what a shock it would be to the hundreds of millions of people in the world! But a jolt of that nature would really take this wonderful “ship” and scrape all the barnacles off!636 ¶30

You could make a short story out of it and simply tell it . . tell it beautifully and clearly and use just the things that you’ve heard from this platform, for I am telling you exactly how it happens. Not one story in the Gospels . . Matthew, Mark, Luke or John . . tells it in the true chronological order. They have taken this homogenous tradition, and from that body they have unraveled a story . . a beautiful story, but they have not told it chronologically. It begins with the Resurrection, and the second act is the Birth the same night. And then the discovery of the Fatherhood of God is the second big act. And then the third is simply the severance of the body from top to bottom and the ascent of a being carrying his own blood into the Holy of Holies . . up his own spinal column into his own skull! Then the last and final act is the descent of the Holy Spirit in bodily form as a dove. Well, that could be done easily. That is a simple matter, but use your imagination to find how to do the others. I wouldn’t tell you. I know nothing of the camera. I know nothing of the tricks of light and things of that sort. But you could tell the story in the most glorious way, and it would be an awful shocker!636 ¶31

Talk of these strange, filthy things today that shock people. That is a shock, but not this kind of a shock. This would be a shock beyond shocks to ask everyone to put their faith completely in this and hope that the day will come that the unveiling will take place in them, for this is true Christianity. Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. Judaism is the Promise. That’s the big tree. And Christianity is the fulfillment, the fruit that tree bears. And this is what comes out; and when it happens to you, everything said in Scripture you will play. And others that you’ve called; especially those to whom you have given your eyes and made them in-current eye witnesses, they will see you in these different roles, and they will know beyond all doubt the truth of what you talk about. Even at the moment, if in one night it is not completely understood, they will understand it eventually because they will see you in the role. They will all see you playing these different parts. They will see you playing the part of Power. They saw me playing the part of Love.636 ¶32

It’s not completely the Love of which I spoke, but she did see me playing the part of Love. One day she will see me in that absolute role of Love; but then, by that night, she will be called, and called for a purpose to be “sent.” And she will not be “sent” until she is incorporated into the very Body of Love. This night she was not incorporated into the Body of Love, but she does know of the existence of Love, and Love is man, for God is man! So, Love is not some impersonal force. It IS man. It takes a man as the agent to express Love. She saw it actually embodied in a man, and knew that man, and knew him to be a radiant fool. What a radiant, glorious fool! He gives everything away, and it’s his to give. And no one going through that door could ever fail to receive everything that they wanted, because he is possessed by Love, and the slave of the very Love that possesses him.636 ¶33

So, I tell you, you keep this in mind; and someday when I am gone from the scene you can be the one who can brush it up for them, because you have your notes . . you have a record of it, exactly how it happened.636 ¶34

And these are the four Majestic Events of God. The first is His Mighty One . . the awakening of God in man. That is the Resurrection. At that very moment he is “born from above,” and he comes out of that sealed tomb where he had been sealed and dreaming for these unnumbered centuries . . dreaming as though he is on the outside and that the drama is taking place on the outside. He has been dreaming it and dreaming it. And then from there, you move into the next scene. It is a simple scene.636 ¶35

And may I tell you? The whole imagery of the 22d chapter of the Psalms comes into being. The whole thing actually comes into being. Here you stand before your son, and David this time . . and I can correct one little thing, because in the 17th chapter of First Samuel when David stands before the insane king . . the king made by man and not by God . . he didn’t know the boy’s name and he didn’t know the boy’s father’s name; and it was essential that he discover the boy’s father’s name, for he had promised to set the father free of the one who brought down the enemy of Israel. The enemy was . . the first time . . Goliath, for he was a man, as we are told in the Scripture . . from his birth he was a man of war. So the whole vast conflict of the world, and this one brings him down, and he has his severed head. It’s an enormous head. But when he stands before the insane king, he holds the head in his hands. The night that I knew Who-I-was and who my son was, the head was there, buy it was on a table before me. It was not held in his hands; it was on a table . . this enormous head, the head of a giant. . .636 ¶36

And then the same people that the 22d chapter speaks of, . . for they speak of these harlots; they are male harlots in the service of the priests of the temple. There were two handsome, handsome men . . very, very attractive men. They were looking concupiscently at my son David, and I warned them, pointing out the head, that he is Invincible . . he had never lost one battle. He is the invincible warrior. And then I pointed to the head of Goliath and showed them the head that he had just brought down . . that youth, that son of mine. But there they were looking . . “eating him up” mentally, with the most concupiscent look on their faces as they looked at David. It was David looking at me and still with a glance towards that pastoral scene, for he was shepherd tending the flocks. And this whole scene is perfect.636 ¶37

And at the very end of that chapter: “Look what God hath wrought.” He sees the turmoil, the travail of his soul, and is satisfied when he contemplates what the end result of it is. And when he saw the fruit of his travail, he was satisfied; and the book ends. “And see what God hath wrought.” He actually kept his promise that he would not leave his son David in the pit. He raised him, and David is resurrected, and he stands before his Father and knows his Father and calls him “Father.” And the father knows that he is looking at his son David.636 ¶38

Now that is an easy way to dramatize that; but the Crucifixion will be a difficult one, but you can do it. The birth and the resurrection will be difficult, but it could be done.636 ¶39

There is one picture of Turner. It was shown in New York City. Unfortunately I didn’t see it. My wife was it. It was the day of the closing of the exhibition; so I didn’t get over to see it. And she came back and said, “Oh, you just missed the treasure of your life.” Here is the picture of Turner, and it was a skull . . a human skull; and in the depth of the skull is this Being rising . . rising in the skull. So he must have had somewhat of a vision, and he caught it. It was displayed in New York City. It was called the Turner Exhibition. She went over and she saw it. She said, “Oh, it was the last day and I couldn’t come back to get you.” I missed it when it came to this city. I wasn’t here; but it was the human skull, and way in the depth a peculiar light and a man rising in the light within the skull.636 ¶40

Well, you could do that as Turner did it on the canvas. Surely, with the camera and the knowhow of today you could do it and see someone rising within his own skull to find it completely sealed, and with the know-how of how to come out of it . . to push that stone from within and roll it away, not from without, but to roll it away from within, and then to come out, and to find the imagery all around him of the infant and the witnesses to the event. Then you certainly could get the sound. An unearthly wind accompanies this entire scene . . just a peculiar wind. Well, you can do that with all the tricks that people do on TV and in the movies. And you can make this the most glorious drama and bring it up to date so you would not have to write that third chapter that Paul wrote to the Galatians: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?”636 ¶41

Well, you wouldn’t have to challenge the world that way. Let them see it. Did you receive the spirit by the seeing of the story and the hearing of the story? You could have it dramatized . . have some beautiful voice actually explain it from the words of Scripture. This is something for you to dwell upon. I won’t be here to help you, but you can do it. You know it, and you can tell it.636 ¶42

But this story is nothing more than a sign from beginning to end. The first 39 books . . the Old Testament . . they are all adumbrated. And the New fulfills it. It completes the drama, what happens in the interval between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New. Now let us go into the Silence.636 ¶43

Tonight’s subject is “God Only Acts.” You may ask, how could a thoughtful man born as we were born and who will die as we will die know that? Yet I tell you I know it from experience. I told you in the card that I sent you that this is on the Word of God. I have experienced the Word of God, so tonight I will tell you, and I will tell you from my own personal experience how I know that God alone acts.320 ¶1

The name of God is the key to understanding the biblical doctrine of God. In biblical terms, the question is not, “Does God exist?” but, “Who is our God?” What is his name and what is his Son’s name? For Israel, the personal name of God is I AM. You can read that in scripture, as I read it in scripture, but I didn’t know it until I experienced it.320 ¶2

Let us go back tonight to an experience of mine that took place in 1929. It was in the summer of ’29. Before I quote the passage from the 82nd Psalm, let me say that the editor of the most scholarly of all high criticisms of scripture, his name was Thomas K. Cheyne; he was the editor of the Encyclopedia Biblica. You will find this statement concerning the book in both the Americana that is the great dictionary, American dictionary, and great British dictionary, called Britannica, that it is by far the most scholarly of all higher biblical criticisms. This is what he said of the 82nd Psalm. He said, “It makes the strongest demands on the historical Imagination of the interpreter. The ideas may be perennial, but the outer forms are no longer understood.”320 ¶3

Now let me quote the passages in this Psalm that disturbed this great professor. He was the outstanding biblical professor of the day at Oxford University, a master of the Hebrew tongue. He interpreted the entire Old Testament from the original scripture. And here was this master, in his day the giant, and he’s still considered…his book of Psalms as we have in our library is still considered tops in translation. When he said, “It’s the greatest demand of all Psalms on the historic Imagination of the interpreter.” He confesses that the ideas there may be perennial, and still they are, but then he said as far as understanding them they have long been forgotten to man.320 ¶4

Now there are two verses in the very short Psalm that disturbed the great professor, the first and the sixth. The first is this, “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” That’s the first verse. In the sixth, “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall as one man, O princes.” You read it in your 82nd Psalm.320 ¶5

Now the crux of the interpretation hangs upon the meaning that the interpreters will give to the word Elohim. And may I tell you, I have read so many commentaries, I have many exegeses at home, and they differ widely. Yet the word Elohim is simply stated in scripture as God. It’s a plural word. It first appears in the very first verse of Genesis. “In the beginning God…” that’s the first time it appears; it’s singular, yet the word is plural. In the 26th verse it reappears, and here we find the word now plural, “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” Here we find it now in its plural form. In this 82nd Psalm, the word Elohim appears twice, in the first verse and then in the 6th verse. In the 1st verse, “And God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods”—that’s plural—“he holds judgment.”320 ¶6

Well, the historic Imagination is concerned only with the facts of secular history. There is no record on earth…even though no history book agrees with another history book on the same event, still they were facts. We know that the Battle of Waterloo was fought, we know the Civil War here was fought, the 1st and 2nd World Wars were fought, and now we’re fighting another one. But no historian in telling the story of these events will tell it in the same manner. They will see it through different eyes, but they were recording facts.320 ¶7

I say, in the midst of changing theories and opinions of men in secular history, stands the unchanging Word of God. Secular history is over; it’s finished. The time is fulfilled now for it to be fulfilled in us. So, secular history is over, secular history a changing thing that will tomorrow fade and vanish like the grass. It will wither like the grass and vanish and fade like the flowers. No matter how big a nation is today it will tomorrow vanish. No matter how big you are you’re going to be rubbed out completely like some footstep on the little sand as the waves come in. But salvation history is forever. So in the midst of these changing theories and opinions of secular history stands the unchanging salvation history of God. This is literally true.320 ¶8

I’ve just quoted you from the 82nd Psalm. I experienced it in the summer of l929. Now here is my experience of this…and I know that God only acts. So when Blake wrote that memorable fancy of his, called The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he wasn’t exercising his right as the poet when he said, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” And when he advanced it into Jerusalem, in his greatest of all poems, and he said, “Let us to him who only is, and who walks among us, give decision.” The only actor is God. God alone acts and there is no other actor.320 ¶9

Now if you remember what I said when I quoted that passage from the 82nd, “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.” Now, “God takes his place in the divine council and in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.” Is this literally true? Well, the great scholars up to this day cannot by their scholars’ Imagination encompass that statement, they can’t. Until it’s revealed, they cannot by all of their knowledge of the tongue, called the Hebrew tongue, or the Greek tongue, or any tongue with which this thing was revealed, they cannot grasp it. It is not part of the facts of secular life.320 ¶10

But here is my experience. I was a dancer in that day. It was just before the great financial crash enveloped our country for almost twelve years. We didn’t come out of it until the 2nd World War and everything collapsed. But I was a successful dancer, successful about making money and pulling my own. I was sound asleep in my hotel room in New York City when I was taken in Spirit into this divine council.320 ¶11

Now the phrase translated “divine council” if you look up the words in the King James Version, they translate that as “the congregation of the mighty, the mighty ones.” You go further and it is called “the synagogue, the church.” He stands in his church, the synagogue; the synagogue being the assembly of the mighty ones, those who are called by name, the called ones by name; and then ordered and commanded by word. It’s the point whence motion proceeds. You are going to be actually sent after you are called. I’m giving you now the definitions of the words as given to us in the biblical concordance, which is Strong’s Concordance.320 ¶12

The mighty ones…when I entered this wonderful assemblage of mighty ones, I saw one, the personification of infinite might. Others were around, all the assemblage of the gods. I was taken to this heavenly woman, and there she was with an enormous ledger open. She was seated. I stood at her left side. She turned and looked me in the eyes. She didn’t say one word; I said nothing. I simply looked and she looked as though she looked for confirmation, for the word is “the called ones by name.” She looked, then she looked back at the ledger, and with a long quill pen there she either entered or checked off, I do not know which. I knew she made a motion on the ledger as she looked at me.320 ¶13

Then I was taken before God, the risen Christ, infinite love. As I stood before him I felt nothing but love. He asked the most simple question in the world, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and I answered in the words of Paul, “Faith, hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” With that he embraced me; we fused and became one body, not two, one, infinite love. I wore the human form divine, which is love, fused with God and no one can put us asunder. At that moment I was one with God, and no power in the world can separate me from the love that is God with which I am fused. We’re wearing the same body.320 ¶14

As I was embraced, a voice out of space came and the voice said, “Down with the bluebloods.” I heard the voice but I saw no face. And then I found myself before the embodiment of might…the mighty ones, now gathered as one. When God first reveals himself to man he reveals himself as God Almighty: He said, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord (which is I AM) I did not make myself known unto them.” So here, I stood before God in his appearance as Almighty God. He didn’t commune with me as God in the appearance of love did; didn’t ask any questions. Now comes the order, as the word Mighty God is translated in the concordance. He doesn’t ask me anything, he commands it, and the words were “Time to act!” Then I was whisked out of that divine assemblage and found myself back in the secular world of man, where I knew I was born here and I will die here.320 ¶15

I didn’t know then, but I searched the scriptures, that it was the fulfillment of the 82nd Psalm, “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; but you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.” So I said earlier that the name of God is the key to the interpretation of the doctrine of God in the Bible and to Israel that name is I AM. So the word “the Lord”—and he reveals himself to the state called Moses—-is “I AM.” “Say unto them I AM has sent you.” But how do I know I AM has sent me? Well, I saw it. Is this really I AM who sent me? Who did he send? He sent me. Well, who is this mighty one that sent me? He was mighty…and here I am told it contains all the gods…and you and I fell. Listen to the words, “You will fall as one man, O princes.”320 ¶16

Now the word Yod He Vau He, which we translate I AM, its primary meaning is “to fall, or to cause to fall; or to blow, or to cause the wind to blow.” That’s the primary meaning of the word Yod He Vau He. We mustn’t forget that when we read scripture. Here is one being containing all of us, and the one who fell caused the fall. This is no after-thought, all predetermined…the way that God expands. So the one God, containing the gods, all of us, sons of the Most High, fell. He fell and caused to fall, confident that he contained the power to rise from this world of sin and death. And the first comes out, then the second comes out, the third comes out. It was one in the beginning; it’ll be one in the end. We’re gathered one by one, O people of Israel. As we are told in Isaiah, “I gather you one by one, O people of Israel.” So we are all gathered back into the same oneness that we were before the fall, but enhanced infinitely by the experience of the fall into the world of sin and death.320 ¶17

So everyone here, when I look at you it seems so insane to tell you this, I say you are gods, all of you, sons of the Most High, yet, nevertheless you shall die like men—who doesn’t die here like a man—and fall as one man. The one Rock fragmented into these infinite pieces, and then all are put together again to reform into the one man, this time transcending himself before the fall.320 ¶18

So the word that came to me was “Time to act.” So I say, in everyone is the actor; the only actor in this world is God. God is playing all the parts. God is acting. And it seems at moments a horrible part of the drama; at moments it’s a pleasant part of the drama. And then you have moments where you are on the wing and nothing is happening. But at every moment God is acting. The most horrible situation in the world, only God is playing the parts. And when I tell you it has sprung from a God that is love it seems incredible. Yet I stood before the God of love, and the God of love embraced me, and I fused with him. We not only became one, we are one. You can’t see the body that I wear through mortal eyes; these eyes die. You’ll need other eyes to see the garment that I wear, for there’s no divorce. Let no man put asunder what God has joined together. And we are brought back one by one and united with him. As we’re told in scripture, “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” So when you are united to the Lord you are one spirit with him, and no man or organization can put asunder that which God has joined together. We’re joined to the oneness, one by one.320 ¶19

When he said, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men,” this was not taking liberty as the poet would with words. He saw a vision and he told it in his own wonderful way…as he could really use words. I wish I had the talent in the world of men to use words as Blake did, for I could tell that same vision but no more beautifully than he has told it, “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” He must have heard the identical words, “Time to act.”320 ¶20

Now if you are here for the first time, you might wonder, “What were the words ‘Down with the bluebloods’?” And because of your conditioned mind, you might think it means down with the social world. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. The bluebloods throughout history has been church protocol, the external trappings of the world that is a substitute for religion. All the so-called outward trappings, all the doctrines, the rituals, these, this is called collectively “the blueblood.” Down with it! I did not receive my knowledge of scripture from any man in this world, and my authority to preach it is not from any organization in the world. It came, as it did through Paul, by a revelation of Jesus Christ.320 ¶21

When he unveiled himself before me, I answered correctly and he embraced me, in fulfillment now of the gospel. “And when they bring you into the synagogue before the rulers, do not be anxious how or what you are to answer or what you are to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” You are divinely prompted. I heard no words. It came automatically, as though I’d been so well-rehearsed in what I ought to say that when this moment in time comes for you to answer, like an actor stepping on the stage, he does it automatically. He doesn’t take thought as to what he’s going to say. So take no thought; do not be anxious how or what you’re going to answer and what you’re going to say, for the Holy Spirit will in that very hour teach you what you ought to say, and you say it. Divinely prompted you couldn’t make a mistake. So no one is going to falter when they’re brought into the great assemblage of the gods.320 ¶22

You will see only two, really, there are others, but in the end there are only two: the one who embraces you, the risen Christ, who’s infinite love, and then the one who is the same presence, revealed only as might, God Almighty, El Shaddai. And that’s all that he is, infinite might without compassion, and the other, infinite love, nothing but compassion, and yet the same being. So “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord (which is I AM) I did not make myself known unto them.” But, beyond that comes the greatest revelation, when he reveals himself as the Father. God is the Father, with the heart of a father. He could never be envious of a child, for he’d be proud of his son. He couldn’t in any way hold back his son from accomplishment; he would simply be proud of his son. So here, we are the sons of the Most High, all of us. Not one will be lost, not one in all my holy mountain.320 ¶23

So now, here on this level, while we are in the world of Caesar, there must be some use I can put to this vision. For here, while I wait to be called into the divine assemblage for no one knows—for he who fell is the one who caused the fall, and he who blew is the one who caused the wind to blow. So he is the wind and the causer of the wind blowing. And that is God’s elective love; the secret remains with God. No one knows this night where the wind…the uncertain nature of the wind’s course. Who knows how it will come this night and breathe upon you? If it breathes upon you, you awaken. You can’t stop it, there’s no resistance; you’re taken in spirit into the divine assemblage. “And so as the wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot know whence it comes or where it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” And the very word wind and Spirit are one in both Hebrew and Greek. The same word is used for both wind and Spirit. So no one knows when it’s going to happen, and it comes in the same unpredictable manner.320 ¶24

You don’t know…it’s so strange how it comes. Here I was a dancer, sleeping, and then suddenly, of all people, why should I be chosen? I was not a member of a church, not schooled in what is called some religious training, and trying to keep myself afloat without turning to others to help, and suddenly I am chosen. So the secret of God’s elective love remains his secret.320 ¶25

And so, it is simply a state. Alright, we are called, as we are told in Romans, we’re called according to his purpose. “For those whom he foreknew”—he foreknew us all, then—“he predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined he called; and those whom he called he justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Well, these five terms, foreknew, predestined, called, justified and glorified, add up to a very strong affirmation of predestination. I know of no way you can take the five terms and interpret them to avoid a conclusion of predestination. You try it. Those whom he foreknew he predestined; those whom he predestined he called; those whom he called he justified; those whom he justified he glorified.320 ¶26

The implication is a gift of himself to the one that he glorifies. Justification is divine acquittal. No matter what you have done in the world of Caesar, and what haven’t we done; no man is without sin, but no man. No man can say that he hasn’t violated the commands of God…especially when we read that they must be done psychologically. For “You’ve heard it said, ‘You must not commit adultery. But I say the one who looks lustfully on a woman has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart.’” Well, what man is not guilty? What woman is not guilty? If I take the name man generically, what individual in this world is not guilty of violating that commandment? Yet, he will justify him and in justifying him vindicate him. It’s divine vindication. And the minute you are completely vindicated by the embrace of him, you are glorified in his presence; you are one with God. From then on, you aren’t two, you’re only one.320 ¶27

So on this level, we take that command “Time to act!” and then we read scripture, “Drink no more water; take a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your many infirmities.” Well, water is a psychological symbol of psychological knowledge. It’s a symbol of psychological knowledge. I come into the field and there’s a well, and a stone covers the well. I roll the stone away and draw water and water my flock, then I roll the stone back. The stone is a symbol of literal truth. The water is a symbol of psychological interpretation of the literal fact. Now I turn it into wine, as told us in the 2nd chapter of John. I take the water and I draw forth water, but the water doesn’t come out, I draw wine. Wine is the application of the truth that I have heard.320 ¶28

So, if I have heard that I must repent…the very first word used “repent”…well, repent is to change my attitude towards life. I change it radically. Well, if I see you and you are not well and I’m going to help you, I’ve got to actually persuade myself that I have just seen the most wonderful embodiment of health that I’ve ever encountered concerning you, and so persuade myself that that is fact, when I meet you when I think of you I can only see that. But, I only see this new being in my mind’s eye relative to you. Well, then I’m not drinking water any more, I’ve applied it. I am now drinking wine for the afflictions of my world. So I go through life simply taking wine.320 ¶29

I’ve absorbed all the water that I could take. I have taken all the literal facts of life, turned them into the psychological truths that they represent, and then instead of absorbing more and more of these truths, stop it. Start now drinking a little wine: start applying the little knowledge that you have. And so you go out to repent. Not to feel remorseful, not to feel regretful for anything you have done, but to see those in need…which is only yourself pushed out, for we are one.320 ¶30

We started in the divine assemblage and we all fell as one man, and it became fragmented. When we’re all gathered together again it will still be one man and that one man is God. There is only God. So while we are fragmented and think there is another, we are at war with self. Now I see an aspect of myself and I heard that he really isn’t another, he really is but an aspect. Well, I don’t want this little finger to be hurting me all the time. The whole body hurts. If I say, “Well, after all, that doesn’t matter, I’ll cut it off” I’m just simply chopping off a part of myself. So you need discard no one in this world. We simply change the one that formerly we would have discarded as something that could not be redeemed. Everything is redeemable.320 ¶31

So we take every person in this world and change them in our own mind’s eye, and change them in us radically. We wait for a moment, to find it conforming to the change that took place in us, and the whole vast world only mirrors and echoes the changes taking place in us. So we stop simply drinking more and more water, by absorbing more and more of the psychological meanings of scripture, and we apply the little that we know. The application is now drinking wine. So we will drink wine from now on, and simply change our world to conform to the ideal that we would like to have in our world, the world in which we want to live.320 ¶32

And that is acting; therefore, God only acts and is in existing beings or men. If you don’t act upon what you have as knowledge, then God is simply asleep within you. As you’re told in scripture, “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever.” “Wake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead.” If we don’t act, we are asleep, and we’re likened unto the dead. But to hear what we ought to do and to do it, is to begin to stir and come alive within ourselves.320 ¶33

So I say to everyone, I know this from experience. I am not theorizing, I’m not speculating; I am telling you what I know from experience. I have experienced scripture. I have experienced the Word of God. I can’t tell anyone in this world what it feels like. Not to the real extent that I would like to tell you what it feels like to have experienced scripture, to see how true it is…that everything here changes, all things fade.320 ¶34

There are those who have a billion and they want two billion. One young man is suing his father for a part of a trust fund that is already 300 million, and the father already owns one billion, and he doesn’t want to release one penny of it. The boy is thirty-one years old; the father is now seventy-six. He doesn’t know how near he is to where he [...], but he doesn’t want one penny of it taken from him. The son could use some of it…it belongs to the son. He’ll have none of it. Money is not for that purpose, he thinks. Money is to hold on to and invest until it grows. And the old story in the Bible, “O foolish man, your soul is required of you this night.” But he doesn’t know it.320 ¶35

So he holds on to a trust fund that his mother left not only to him but to his offspring. So he has offspring. And the three and a half million has grown in thirty-four years to almost $300 million. He’s been a very good steward, watching it carefully, protecting it and developing it. In thirty-four years three and a half million has grown to 300 million. Well, now one of the four entitled to his portion of it is asking for a portion, seven million, but seven million out of 300 million when he’s entitled to one-fourth of it. And the father…he has to bring suit…sue your own father that you love, at least I hope he does, in order to get him to cough up what is his own, and he is resisting it.320 ¶36

So I say to you, all this will fade. His billions will fade. Our fabulous world that we love so much, it will all fade like the grass. The grass will wither and the flowers fade, but the Word of God will remain true forever. This is the unchanging truth in the midst of these changing things in the secular world.320 ¶37

So when they say, “Is God is dead?” or “God is dead” and they make a very affirmative statement, it’s so stupid. But you can’t blame them, they have not experienced scripture. The very ones who made that bold affirmation are still gods. “I say you are gods,” not a few of you who will say God is alive, “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and you will fall as one man, O princes.” If you’re a prince, then your father is a king. He is the King of Kings. And collectively we are the King, for the Father and the Son are one. So when we come back from our fragmented state in this world and all gather together once more, we form the one God. There’s only God.320 ¶38

So when Blake was asked, “What do you think of Jesus?” he didn’t hesitate, he said, “Jesus is the only God,” but then he quickly added, “But so am I, and so are you.” There’s no division in God. Although the Elohim is a plural word and, therefore it’s a compound unity, one made up of others, it is still one. So when asked, “What is the greatest commandment?” he didn’t mention the ten, or any one of the ten. He mentioned the confession of faith of the Israelite, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” If you take the word, there are ten words. They are the Ten Commandments: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” This is the greatest Commandment. And the second is tied in to the first, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” For there is no other; he’s not really another.320 ¶39

So here this night, I tell you from experience that God only acts and is. So the most horrible act this night, it was God asleep; the most loving act is the same God in the act of waking. And the day will come, you and I will leave this world of sin and death and return where we were before, but our translucency is then enhanced. We were expanded beyond what we were prior to our fall into this world, which was a deliberate fall, it wasn’t an accident. It was something that was planned in the beginning: God’s way of expansion by self-limitation. He achieves his purpose by limiting himself to the limit called man, which is the limit of contraction; and then he breaks the shell and not only returns to what he was but beyond it, by such contraction.320 ¶40

So everyone will be saved. And there’s only one Savior and he’s housed right within you. “God is our salvation. Our God is the God of salvation; and to God the Lord, belongs escape from death”—the 68th Psalm. To God, the Lord, belongs escape from death and this is the world of sin and death. So, “Nevertheless, you shall die like men”—this is the world—“and fall as one man, O princes.” But because God is the God of salvation and to God, the Lord, belongs escape from death, and he who fell is within you, then be assured of redemption. You cannot fail. No one can fail.320 ¶41

But why not in the world of Caesar use what has been revealed to the nth degree in making for yourself and those you love around you a more beautiful world by acting; and no longer absorbing and drinking the psychological meaning of scripture but putting it in to practice by applying this law that you know. Now let us go into the Silence.320 ¶42

* * * [...] scripture from any school or any man. I simply read it now having had the experience only for confirmation of the experience. So my experiences parallel scripture. Now are there any questions, please?320 ¶43

If I could persuade you to believe what tonight I hope I, well, I will try to. Your entire world would change. You hear the word, God, the word Jehovah, the word Lord, the word Jesus, the word Christ, and you think of something other than yourself. One that is greater, one that you would worship. Tonight, it is my purpose to show you that God and the I of man are one. When you say I am, that is the God of Scripture.680 ¶1

Confined as you are, you think, how could it be? God created the universe and sustained it. And here I am like a little worm, threescore and ten years and then I vanish. And now, let us turn to Scripture. We turn now to the 16th chapter of Matthew. And the question is asked of the disciples, the followers, those who have heard him. And you say to them, “Who do men say that the son of man is?” And they reply, “Well, some say, John the Baptist come again. Others, Elijah, others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” Then he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And the spokesman called Peter said, “Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” You say to him, “Blessed are thou, Simon Bar-Jonah. For flesh and blood could not have told you this, but my Father who is in Heaven.” For here he equates the son of man with the I of man, not the organ that sees or through which you see, but your sense of awareness, that Iamness, when you are aware of being, your consciousness, your human imagination. So, he equates the two, the son of man spoken of in the Old Testament and brought forward into the New is nothing more than the “I” of man. And he calls it the Christ and defines Christ as the Son of God.680 ¶2

Now we find Christ being defined in the New Testament as the power of God and the wisdom of God. So, the “I” of man is the power of God and the wisdom of God. If a man does not know it, well, then he will not exercise that power. He will not exercise that wisdom. So tonight, I am trying to persuade you that when you say I, before you say anything, that that is the power and the wisdom of God. You can’t separate the power of God and the wisdom of God from God. So, you will say at the end, I and my father are one or he is called the son of God.680 ¶3

Now, we are called upon to test this. If it be true, can we test it? I hope you’ll put it to the test when I tell you that your own wonderful Iamness is God. Though prior to that, you believe that you’re a little something, moving across the earth for a few years, seventy years, and then you will vanish, in the hope of some restoration, but a hope, no assurance. Well now, I’m going to tell you that you really are God. Your own wonderful consciousness, your human imagination—that is the God of Scripture and there is no other God. Imprisoned as you are in these bodies of flesh, you did it for a purpose.680 ¶4

Now let us see what it tells us about this Son of man that is now equated with the I of man. “No one has ever ascended into Heaven, but he who descended from Heaven, the Son of man.” You’ll read that in the third chapter, the 13th verse of John. So here we find you are a preexistent being. No one can ascend into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the son of man.680 ¶5

Your ascension in the next verse, the 14th verse, is showing you how you ascend. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up.” That’s all imagery and yet it is true.680 ¶6

You descended into generation, in a world of death, where everything begins; it waxes, it waves, and then it disappears. But there’s something in you, sewn in this garment, that does not die. That is preexistent and its home is Heaven, which is harmony. You gave it up completely. You aren’t pretending that you’re a man. You descended into man. You became man with all the weaknesses, all the limitations, all the restrictions of man, to experience this world of death and decay.680 ¶7

There will come a moment in time that you will ascend from this restriction, taking with you the experience that is yours because of this restriction. And you will ascend in the same manner that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. That was an adumbration. That was a foreshadowing. You will rise from the base of your spine, up your spine into your own skull, for Heaven is within you. And you rise like a fiery serpent, without any loss of identity, the form you wear, I hesitate to describe it. I will tell you that your face is human, your hands are human, and your voice is human. But do not ask me to describe the body that you wear. It’s infinite power, infinite wisdom, and yet it is a form. You are that fiery being that descended.680 ¶8

Not because of anything that was wrong when you descended, the fall is not because of any mistake on our part. It’s a predetermined plan to come down into the world of death and decay and overcome it.680 ¶9

If coming down, wearing these garments, we knew who we were, pretending that we were men, we could not accomplish it any more than an actor on the stage, pretending that he is Hamlet, can actually play that part. He has to actually assume it but even then it is still, with a little something in his mind, he knows he is the great actor who tonight will go home, to his lovely home and he’ll take off the garment and hang it up once more and tomorrow he’ll replay the play. You don’t do that in this play of God. You don’t take off the garment, you wear it for your three score and ten, and if by strength, your four score or maybe even longer or shorter, but the I of man is the God of Scripture. Put it to the test.680 ¶10

Let me now, first of all, before we go into the testing of it, make clear what I said on the last lecture night, Friday night, prompted by a question that was asked here. For I had said in the previous lecture that there are ranks in Heaven as there are on earth, for this is only a copy. Everything here is a shadow, it’s a copy of eternal realities.680 ¶11

And in the 12th chapter of First Corinthians, Paul describes the eight ranks. He does it many times, but he never changes the first two. The first is always the apostle. The second, the prophet. The third, the teachers, and then he goes on, miracle workers, healers, helpers, administrators, and the speakers in tongues, but he never changes the first and second, the apostle and the prophet.680 ¶12

You might think because I told you I am sent—and the word sent means an apostle—that I am appropriating unto myself a certain first rank.680 ¶13

But now to put your heart at peace, I’m going to quote the 11th chapter of Romans. “As a whole, for there are always remnant of whole, and the remnant simply means the elect of God.” You’re not elected because you are born by accident into some ethnic group, it hasn’t a thing to do with that. A descendant of Abraham after the flesh is not necessarily the elect of God. You are chosen from any race, any nation, any religion. Well, how the choice is made, no one knows, it remains the Father’s secret, but Paul qualifies it in this manner, “There is a remnant to this day called by grace.” And if by grace, then it is not on the basis of work. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. Therefore no one who is called and sent can brag. If he brags, he is not the sent, because it’s all by grace. He didn’t earn it. It is not by merit. It is simply a secret known only to the Father.680 ¶14

So, when we are called, incorporated into the body of infinite love, who is God, and then sent, let no one who is sent raise a finger to brag, to boast, for it is all by grace. Read it in the 11th chapter, the fifth and sixth verses of Paul’s letter to the Romans. So now I have stated that. So do not think for one moment, when I tell you I have been called and think that in any way I am trying to act superior, for there is no intrinsic superiority to those who are called.680 ¶15

Now, he uses it in an analogy, which I do not think is adequate, but you can read it in the book itself. He uses the analogy of the human form. Not our head, eyes, nose, teeth, and so on, but that is a weak analogy. Nevertheless, he uses that to show you the different parts in one body.680 ¶16

But now to come back to make this a very practical night. Believe me, that when you say I, before you say I am John, I am Bill, I am this, I am that, I am the other, you are declaring yourself to be and that sense of being is God; that’s God. Now, what are you going to put on it? All things are possible to God, all things. You could say now, as you’re seated here, after first affirming that “I am.” You can then assume that I am, and your name is exactly what you want to be. If you believe what I tell you about your own Iamness and remain faithful to what you have assumed, that assumption will harden into fact.680 ¶17

When you pray in the true sense of the word, you do not pray to any external God. That was my command when I was sent. “Down with the blue bloods” hasn’t a thing to do with the social structure of the world. It has only to do with church protocol, all external worship, all ceremonies, everything that leads the individual outside of himself. To put a little cross on the wall and then bow before it, and see it as something external, is not what Scripture teaches.680 ¶18

Buried in the Old Testament there is a pattern. So, he said, “Taking the twelve, we’re going up to Jerusalem, and everything written about the Son of man, which is the I of man, will be accomplished.” But they did not understand what he said. It was beyond their ability to grasp. He’s going up. And only the one who has experienced Scripture, which means, he has actually resurrected the pattern, playing the part that is the central part of Scripture. He resurrects the pattern all within himself. He plays all the parts. He is the one who is born from above. He is the one who comes out of the grave, unassisted. He is the one who three witnesses bear witness to his birth from above. He is the one they cannot see because he’s now spirit, yet more real than all the flesh in the world. He is the one who actually sees his Son, David and David calls him Father and he knows he’s David’s Father. And David knows that he is his Son. He’s the one whose temple, the body, is stripped in two from top to bottom. It is he now who ascends like a fiery serpent from the base of the spine up into the skull. He is the one on whom the dove descends and lights upon his hand like Noah in the ark. And as Noah brought the dove into him, you bring the dove to you, for man is the ark of God. And as the ark contains all things within itself, man contains within himself all things. Everything—he creates from within himself.680 ¶19

In this pattern, the individual awakens within himself. And who does it? The I of man. And that is God.680 ¶20

Now tonight you can test it as you are called upon to test it, test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless of course, you fail to meet the test. Examine yourself, to see whether you are holding to the faith. What faith? To have someone tell me that I am a Christian or I’m a Jew or I’m a Mohammedan and holding to that faith that they talk about? No. The faith that I’m talking about tonight; that your own wonderful Iamness is God. Test it to see if you’re holding to that faith. If you are holding to that faith, and all things are possible to God, you should be able to prove it in the testing.680 ¶21

She’s not here tonight. She promised she will write me a letter, having told me the story on Friday, but I know she finds it difficult to express herself in writing. She can paint and paint and paint and do all kinds of lovely things in painting and drawing. But when I said to her, please write it that I may tell it to my audience before I close; that I have no future plans after I close on the 29th. So, I would like to share your experience, to encourage everyone in this world to do what you did. Well, the letter didn’t come. I can see her struggling over one page and rubbing out a line because she didn’t spell the word correctly and going over the next one. But she can take a piece of canvas, a piece of paper, and do miracles with it. But because she’s restricted in writing a letter, she didn’t send the letter.680 ¶22

But the essence is this. She is now a divorced girl with a little boy, a handsome little fellow. Well, when you’re living alone and you need money and you have a child to support and you have a home, all the things, and the money isn’t coming in, then you’re up against it.680 ¶23

She said, “I blew my top,” as you are told in the Psalms to do. “Then I applied this principle and I assumed that I had exactly what I needed plus and plus. Then I got a call from First National City Bank of New York City.” Now that is the second-largest bank in our country. Bank of America comes first, they’re second, and Chase Manhattan is third. “Giving me an order”—she has no agent, this is an unsolicited statement—“an order for $5,000,” which she can execute and deliver within a month. Well, the First National City Bank of New York is not going to be hard-pressed to pay her immediately $5,000. If she called them and told them to pay in advance, they would willingly pay in advance. And she said, I can execute that order in one month, but I want the detail I had hoped she would send me as she promised last Friday, but knowing her restriction concerning the use of words, you can use the brush and use the pen and use the pencil, but she’s limited in the use of words. Eventually, she will send it, but I’d hoped to have it by tonight, so I could give you exactly what she did, but this is what I do.680 ¶24

Having convinced myself through experience, I have come to the conclusion that because I am aware that I am, that that is God. For if by him all things are made and without him is not anything made that is made, and I start from scratch only imagining a state and then I boldly assume that it is real, that I actually experienced that state now. And then in the not-distant future, that state crystallizes in my world. Well, then I have found God. I have the source of the phenomena of life.680 ¶25

My only concern then is to share it with others and tell and tell them, for they are all one; we are one. No one is greater than the other. Not fundamentally. In his claims of what he is in the world of Caesar, he has more money or he has so and so, and so and so, but basically, the same creative power in the man tonight behind bars serving life is the same creative power of the one who sentenced him to life, is the same being, there is only one God.680 ¶26

Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. And the word translated the Lord is Yod Hey Vav Hey, properly translated is I am. When you go unto the people of Israel and they ask you, “What is his name?” And you claim that the God of Abraham and the God of Jacob and the God of Isaac sent you. You say onto them, “I am hath sent me. That’s my name forever. And by this name, I shall be known throughout all generations.”680 ¶27

But man finds it difficult keeping the tense. And so, he speaks of thou art or he is, and he never actually comes down to the fundamental and knows that I am. I am the cause of the phenomena of my life, good, bad, or indifferent. I have to live with it and change my assumptions if I would change the world in which I live.680 ¶28

But now can I help a seeming other? I say you are myself pushed out. Can I help another? Yes, because there’s only one. If your request of me comes within the framework of the golden rule, something that I would like done to me, then I can willingly help you. If you ask of me that which does not come within the frame of the golden rule, do not ask it of me. I grant you complete freedom to go elsewhere and go to anyone who will tell you they can do it in spite of what he said. Go ahead.680 ¶29

But if anyone asks of me any request, all that I do is this, it’s so simple. We are told in Scripture, that whatever we ask of him, knowing that he hears it, it shall be done for us, if we know he hears it. For can you imagine you seated here on the surface of your being, a rational being, knowing something that the depth of your own being that encompasses you doesn’t know? So, you know and you think, well, he doesn’t know.680 ¶30

Well, read that in the story of Ezekiel. You’ll read it in the 38th chapter. “And these are the elders of Israel that went into the dark room and they are carving on the walls, all gruesome things. And they said within themselves, the Lord does not see it.” And the Lord is speaking to his prophet Ezekiel. And he said the elders of Israel say that I do not see them—and watch what they’re doing, making all these abomination things within the great caverns. They will all reap them because I see everything that the elders of Israel see, but they think because it’s dark and it’s a cavern no one knows what you do, that God doesn’t know.680 ¶31

I have said time and again, that there is no fiction in this world. You might have heard the story and read the story concerning the seajacking of the Queen Elizabeth. You might have read the article in Time that some girl at Hunter College wrote that story in detail. And she was so shy when it came to the point to be read, she could not read it. She’s a shy, sweet lady with a gift of writing. She wrote that in detail, including those who seemingly participated, a terminal case in cancer, and one who is running away from the Law, who has not a thing to gain, and therefore is quite willing to blow the Queen Elizabeth with the 2,200 souls aboard, and everything is completely in detail in her fictional story.680 ¶32

Imagining creates reality. There is no fiction. So, someone expressed her thought and called the captain while at sea and demanded a million dollars and would settle for $350,000. Well, it must have cost them, I should say, more than a million to stop that huge hulk in Mid-Atlantic and then feed 2,200 people four times a day for the extra meals that they would have coming to them, plus all the things that you put it all together, it would cost more than a million dollars, and a little girl possibly writing this for her Ph.D., or writing it for some reason, and she writes it in detail. They gave her name, so you can contact her. They gave the school, it’s Hunter College in New York City. And everything in detail is told in that story.680 ¶33

So, I tell you, you sit down and write fiction. Need not put it down. My friend wrote fiction. She had a large sum of money coming in and she went to town within herself and she wrote in herself and blew her top, as it were. Thank you. Thank you. Didn’t drink enough tonight. So, she, in the depth of her own being, conjured the sum of money that she needed, beyond, always go beyond.680 ¶34

So, we are told in the Psalms, “Be angry, but sin not. Commune with your own heart upon your bed and be silent.” Yes. Blow your top, but do not let the sun go down upon your anger. Be silent as you commune with self, you don’t commune with another. For the self of man is God. So be angry, but sin not, commune with your own heart upon your bed. Start communing with another and then you actually know exactly what you want. And in that state fall asleep. And in a way that no one knows and you in your surface mind you do not know, it will all come to pass.680 ¶35

Everything in the world is created this way, but man does not know it. Who knows tonight who is treading the wine press that is going to cause a change of mind in tomorrow’s world? But when they do it, they are intent in the doing.680 ¶36

“If you are lukewarm,” you are told in the Scripture, “I’ll spew you out. Would that you are either hot or cold, but because that you are lukewarm, I will spew you out.” You can’t do anything if you are lukewarm. You must be intense about it. You want to be rich, all right, you can be rich. You want to be known. You can be known. No matter what you want but you must be intense about it and then commune with your own heart upon your bed and then let it drop. You’ll read that in the 4th Psalm, the Psalm of David.680 ¶37

So, I say to everyone here, believe me, your own wonderful Iamness, your consciousness, your wonderful human imagination. That is God. And all that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. So, you can change the shadow if you change the object, for you are the light. He said, “I am the light of the world.” Change the object that you are holding within yourself and identifying yourself with it. Change that object. You’re lighting up and you’ll cast a new shadow upon the world.680 ¶38

So, you say, I am and you name it. And then you say, I am unemployed. No, I am gainfully employed, making more than I’ve ever made before. Don’t ask yourself how, why, and through whom—that is not your conscious reasoning mind’s concern.680 ¶39

If you take the intellectual background, the educational background, of those who are making top money in the theatrical world, I doubt that they could pass any college examination. I don’t think they could pass any entrance examination to college. Yet, they’re making a million dollars, two million dollars a year. Do you think Bob Hope could pass today’s examination for entrance into college? But all of his material is written for him anyway, he can’t even write that. But he has millions.680 ¶40

All right, because that’s how he dreamt, may I tell you? I know the background of the man. A friend of mine who has now gone from this world, played in vaudeville with him. And he would borrow from my friend every week, a sum of money because he had to go to that post office and buy a postal money order and send it to his bank. He borrowed money that was interest-free because he was sending in money that was not interest-free. He had to send a certain sum of money every week and he would send it into his account. And borrowed from my friend, Harry Webb who had a band and they played together, not in the same act. Harry had his own act. He has a small band. And Harry was the outgoing personality who didn’t care about money. And so, he wanted money, Hope wanted money, he would loan him the money. He always paid it back the next week and borrowed it again because he had to have so much in that bank every week. And when they would go into a restaurant and food was leftover like bread and butter, who took it all home? Bob Hope. Bob took all the buns, all the rolls, everything that was there uneaten, he paid for it and you paid for it. “You don’t want it, Harry, do you?” No. All right. So, he took it home. So, he has $400 million, so they claim.680 ¶41

That was his goal in life. If that’s the goal, have it. I speak of another goal. The goal of awakening to who we are.680 ¶42

When man awakens from this dream, the whole vast world and all that it contained is as nothing to the being that you are. You came down from Heaven where the whole is yours. As you’re told in the 50th Psalm, “If I were hungry, I wouldn’t tell you, for the world is mine and all within it. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” So why should I tell anyone of my need when it’s all mine anyway? I would slay and eat. When you are awakened, you don’t ask anyone. If you awaken from this dream of life.680 ¶43

But while you are in it, all right, we are one. This little hand of mine, if it begins to itch here now, it’s easier for me to take this hand that is not attached to this and scratch it than to try to bend this thing out of shape, to scratch the back of it. I could rub it here, but why not? This is easier. And take a part of my own being to ease the itch. We are all one pushed out.680 ¶44

So, you can do it. Ask anyone that you trust. May I tell you, he isn’t, if he knows how to pray, he isn’t going to burst any blood vessel. He isn’t going to get down on his knees and pray to any external God if he knows how to pray. He isn’t going to beg of anyone in this world. What he will do, he will simply represent you to himself as one telling him that you have what you asked of him.680 ¶45

And when he is satisfied that you told him that you have it, don’t ask the second time for the same thing, because he’s not going to listen to you. He heard it, he is still hearing it, and he will continue to hear it until that which he has heard is perfectly externalized. So don’t think you need several treatments. That’s a lot of nonsense. Treatments for what? It either is or it isn’t. So, when they start getting you on the hook and say, now I think you need more treatments, you need more treatments. She or he or the crowd, they do not know what they are doing.680 ¶46

When you pray, go within and close the door of the senses, deny all that seems so obvious. And your Father who is within will reward you openly. But commune with self for you and the Father are one. So, you commune with self. And what did he tell you? Exactly what was asked of you. He heard it and he has all the ways and means that you, on the surface of your being, know not of. He will do it.680 ¶47

If you ask anything of one, if it comes within the framework of his code of ethics. Don’t ask anyone who knows how to pray something that does not come within his golden rule, do onto others as you would have them do unto you. Just as simple as that.680 ¶48

And most of the requests would come within that rule. And so, you simply hear it. And then you drop it completely. And in the depth of your own being, you are still hearing it. And the Father knows all means, all ways, and so he singles out the best way to externalize it.680 ¶49

Here in New York City many years ago, this lady, a lady of considerable means, she left her home in New York City and went off to Paris with her two children, leaving her home and her maid. Before she returned the maid took all of her furniture and took it away. When she returned the apartment was there, rent was paid every month, but there was no furniture, not a thing in it. She employed a private agency, told the police department, told all the authorities in New York City, and plus her private agency. At the end of a few months, they did not turn up one thing concerning that stolen property.680 ¶50

She came to see me. I said, all right, you’re seated there and I’m seated here in my apartment. Now you are not seated in my apartment. You are seated right now, close your eyes, you are seated in your own apartment. And you had a grand piano. She said, no, I had a piano, but it wasn’t a concert grand. It was grand but not a concert grand. And on it, I had my pictures of my two children. And I had pictures on the wall. She told me what they were. And the furniture. I said, all right, refurnish that place as you left it, you have a memory. She did. Now when I stop talking, it’s because you have refurnished that place to me. Now you’re going to go in and you aren’t going to see your apartment from my apartment, you are in your apartment, and you can feel your chair and get off your chair and feel the piano, and see the children, the pictures of the children. And that’s what you’re going to do. She agreed she would do it. And then we simply broke the spell. What did it take? Two minutes, three minutes.680 ¶51

That week she went to her bank on Madison Avenue. As she was coming out of the bank, she had a past history of her little mental state, where she was put away for a while because she needed psychiatric treatment. And the bars on this window reminded her of her past history and therefore addled her for a while. So, she came onto Madison Avenue and turned south instead of turning north where she should have. When she discovered her mistake, she was at the end of the block. When she got there and discovered her mistake, she looked down and two very familiar ankles were standing right before her. She came up to the face. That’s her maid, and the maid started to scream. She went over to the maid and grabbed her before the light changed, and hailed the oncoming taxi, said, “You are taking me right now,” and the maid who could have killed her, she was so big and strong, was so reduced to impotency because of the discovery. And the maid took her to the place where she had stored that furniture. She said, “I’m not bringing an action against you. I want my furniture.” And she got it back into her own apartment within the week.680 ¶52

A seeming mistake was the way the Father led her. All I ask is to go to the end. If I go to the end and give thanks to the end and for the end, it’s done. Now, let the one in the depth of my own being devise the best means to take me to that end. The end is where I start. The end is my beginning. And that is a story that I know from personal experience.680 ¶53

So do not attempt to devise the means and tell the one that you ask to pray for you how it should be done. He will lose all interest and turn his back and say, go elsewhere. You don’t go into a doctor’s office and tell him what he should do. If you go to him, because you trust him, well then, you’re either going to trust him and continue or you’re going to leave him. Well, if you go to someone that you really believe who knows how to pray, don’t tell them how to do it, and what means should be employed in order to do it. He is going to go to the end if he knows how to pray. The end is where we begin. In my end is my beginning. And we’re always ahead of our evidence. So I go to the end, I see the whole thing done, and then drop it and let it happen in my world.680 ¶54

So, to come back, the I within you now, when you say I, no matter how little you have thought yourself so far, may I tell you, you are the infinite God. And when the story of Jesus Christ repeats itself within you, you will know it’s all I. No one called Jesus is going to appear. He’s not going to push any stone away from you when you come out of that tomb. And then you’ll know the words of John, “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”680 ¶55

I want to ask you to feel that you are wanted, that you are chosen, that you are the elect. As we are told, he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world. But man will not believe it, he will not believe that he is that important. So, we are speaking now of the Lord, the creator of the universe who chose us in him before the foundation of the world. So, tonight I will try to convince you that you are the chosen.681 ¶1

The most controversial verse in Ecclesiastes, the most disputed, is the 11th verse of the third chapter: “And God has put eternity into the mind of man. Yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from beginning to the end.” This is the only time in the Scripture that the word is translated eternity. In the King James version, it is translated the world. The other books, say, Moffatt, James Moffatt. And he translates the word as mysteries. “To the mind of man, he appointed mysteries. Yet so that man cannot fathom God’s own purpose from beginning to end.”681 ¶2

Paul comes on and he tells us he waited for the fullness of time. “And when the fullness of time came, God sent forth the spirit of his Son into our heart, crying, Father.” And that he is made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him both in Heaven and on earth.681 ¶3

Now, the word translated eternity or world or mystery is the Hebrew word olam. Now this is the only place in the entire book where it is translated the world or eternity or mystery. And yet, it is used hundreds of times in the Bible. The word is olam.681 ¶4

Here is one. “And when you go to the people of Israel and they ask you, who sent you, simply say, I am has sent me unto you. This is my name forever.” The word forever is olam. When you read the word everlasting in scripture, in the Old Testament, it is olam. And you read all of these, it is olam. Here in the 136th Psalm, there are twenty-six verses and each verse ends with the same statement: “Thy steadfast love endures forever.” And that forever is olam.681 ¶5

Now, he put olam into the mind of man. Remember his name endures forever, “which is my name forever.” What did he put into the mind of man? His name is himself. His name forever is I am. That is the immortal being who created the universe. His steadfast love endures forever. So, into the mind of man came God himself, which is I am. That’s the Lord. There is no other God.681 ¶6

If you could only believe for one moment, as you are seated here, you are aware of being, awareness of being is actually saying without the use of words, I am. And that is God. If you could only believe that you are that altogether wonderful being that he chose to give himself to, your entire world would change. You will see everything differently. To feel that I am wanted. The average person in the world feels that he is unwanted, he’s unknown. And yet you are known and loved by the only presence in the world that matters. That’s who you really are. You are the being that God so loved, he actually became you that you may become God. So, when you say I am that’s God, and there is no other God.681 ¶7

Now, in Hebrew thought history consists of all the generations of men and their experiences fused into a single whole, and that concentrated time into which all the generations of men and experiences are fused and from which they all spring is called eternity. The predominant sense of the word olam is permanent. It means the continuous as against or in contrast to the fragmentary time that quickly passes away. That’s something that is forever. So, he put forever, which is himself, in you.681 ¶8

So, Blake could quite honestly say all things exist in the human imagination. So, when you sleep tonight, though you may not be able to pay rent, though you may think you are unknown and unwanted, dwell upon this thought: you’re not only known but you are known by the only being that really matters. And that only being so cared that he became you. He dwells in you as your own wonderful human imagination. When you say, I am, that’s God, there is no other God.681 ¶9

And that is God forever and forever. That’s the immortal you that cannot die. I could chop off your head right now and see the body turn into dust by putting it into the flames. Yet you cannot die. That’s only a mask that you wore when I saw you. But you, the real you cannot die, it is eternal because it is God, the real you.681 ¶10

If you could only catch this feeling, your whole world would change, you’ll feel important, you’ll feel wanted. Wanted by what? The government? No, that’s nothing. That’s transitory. All things pass. But this one that so loved you passes not. He simply so loved you, he actually became you. And he is the eternal being in the world. You dwell on that and your whole feeling changes concerning your value in this world, who you really are, and what you amount to; you are the chosen one, you are the elect.681 ¶11

Let me share with you a few letters that came this week. I see a few of them here who wrote them. One lady wrote saying that she found herself in her swimming pool and she was floating on her back. And she decided to make the entire swim on her back from one end to the other. And she said I felt that I had had too much wine. And I felt really to the point of capacity. And I shouted out, “I have had too much swine.” And then I got embarrassed that I had so much wine that even my words would not take the proper course. And I corrected myself and said wine. I said, I do enjoy a drink, but it’s not wine. I like something stronger. I am not given to excessive drinking, but when I do have a drink, I like something stronger, but here it was wine. And I am floating on water in my own pool. Then she said, I felt your presence. I didn’t see you. I couldn’t say to anyone, I saw you. And now I cannot actually say that you were another. Yet here, I know you were present and you and I are one. We are one. So, I could no more use the word, “we.” I will have to say “I.” Yet, I know that you and I are one and I cannot divide it and say, “we,” it is simply “I.” And then I awoke.681 ¶12

Well, she caught it perfectly. Where do you think I am going when I depart this section of time? If heaven is within you, and that’s where I am headed, all of my experiences have completed the journey in this world of tears. Where can I go but within heaven and heaven is within you. Read the 17th chapter of the book of John: “I dwell in them, in everyone, and we are one as thou and I are one.” And I mean that seriously, we are one because there’s only one God. So, when you awake and you are the Father of God’s only begotten Son, you are God. So, where are you going to go? But back to your source, which is God. And so, she felt my presence and yet you were not another I could see, I couldn’t refer to you as something, as another. I could not even use the plural and say we, and yet I knew we were one. I felt your presence. And yet it is my very being.681 ¶13

So, in the end, God played all the parts. There is nothing in the world but God, he conceives the entire play. He played all the parts for his name forever is I am. You say, I am, don’t you? Well, that’s God. I say, I am. It’s the same God, it’s not another God.681 ¶14

So here in this marvelous story but concealed for the word olam means to hide self. It means to conceal. It means to hide from. It also means the lad, the youth, the stripling, the young man, and he put olam into the mind of man. What did he put into the mind of man? There’s only Jesus Christ but divide the word. Jesus is the Lord, that’s I am. Christ is his Son, is the Son of the Lord. And that Christ is David. He is the man. So, when he stands before the King, the demented King Saul, and Saul said to him, “Whose son are you young, man?” He first inquired of his lieutenant, Abner. He said Abner whose son is that? “As your soul liveth, O King, I cannot tell.” Inquire whose son this stripling is. And then when you could not find out, he brings him before the King with the head of the giant, in his hand. And then the King addresses David. He said, whose son are you, young man? He said I am the son of Jesse. The son of Jesse.681 ¶15

Well, Jesse means I am. I am telling you, I am the Son of God. The word Jesse means I am, in any form of the verb to be. It means Jehovah exists and Jehovah is Yod Hey Vav Hey, which really means I am. He is telling you, I am the Son of the one whose name forever and forever is I am.681 ¶16

Who stands before you? Well, who did he put into the mind of man? He put himself and his Son into the mind of man. So, Paul, making the discovery could say, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ, which is the Lord and his anointed one, his Son, is in you?”681 ¶17

And at the end of time, his purpose is revealed. God’s purpose is to give himself to us literally. So, in the end, you awake and his Son calls you Father. You tell the story to those that he gave you, out of all that he has, that you may bring them to a certain level of awareness. And then you depart—and where are you going to go? Into heaven? For where is heaven, but within?681 ¶18

So, when she said, “I cannot say we, I can only use the personal pronoun in its singular form, I, and yet I felt your presence, I knew that we were one, but I can’t use the word, we, I am so much you, I can’t say we.” That’s what I’m trying to tell you. So, we come to the end—and the journey is over. I am just simply your own wonderful, I am. So, in the end, when the curtain comes down on the entire drama, God who conceived the entire thing, played it all, and forgave all. Forgave everyone because he played every part in the world.681 ¶19

Now, another letter and he is here tonight, it says through my years, I have used imagination to achieve my goals in this world. And yet I have found myself having used my imagination and I’ve completely forgotten the incident. Then it came to pass and I reap the results. And I can’t get over that belief that I, intellectually, did it. And so, I completely forget that imagination did it. I imagined it to be done and then dropped it. And then in the interval of time, it happened. I’m confronted with the evidence, and yet here I am stuck because I cannot get over that belief that I intellectually did it. And yet I do remember having done it in my imagination.681 ¶20

Then he quotes several lovely passages of Scripture. He quoted the 20th chapter of Numbers. He quoted the 8th of Deuteronomy. He quoted the 10th of Isaiah. And the 7th of Judges. If you read these stories, the Lord is trying to convince Israel that Israel didn’t do it, that the Lord did it.681 ¶21

So, in the book of Judges, he said, I am now stuck. I can’t understand this test that the Lord gave to Israel in the book of Judges. You’ll read it in the 7th chapter. He is about to conquer Midian for Israel. And so, the call goes out and 32,000 responded. Now he gave them two tests. The first test was one based upon fear. And 22,000 of them confessed that they were afraid. So, they were released from duty and sent back to their home. He still had 10,000. He thought that’s too many for Israel would say, “We did it.” But if I can reduce that number from 10,000 to just a skeleton against the mighty hordes of Midian, they can’t say that my mighty army did it but the Lord must have done it.681 ¶22

So, then he gave them a second test. Anyone who could lap water as the dog laps water. And so, then they all had to make the test at a running brook, and those who went down on their knees were disqualified. Those who cupped their hands and drank it from their hands, being alert constantly, they were drinking water, bear in mind, that the lady said she was floating on water, and she was filled with wine. The first sign in John is to turn the stone and fill it with water and then turn the water into wine.681 ¶23

There are three levels of awareness: there’s solid, objective fact, the reality; then the water is the psychological meaning of Scripture; and then comes the wine, the spiritual understanding of it. So here only 300 cupped their hands and drank from it. And they are put aside, that they were the only ones who would be taken to conquer all the hordes of Midian, that Israel could not say by my own strong hands, I did it.681 ¶24

What does it mean? That’s a parable. All these are parables. It’s a parable of life for all of us. Spiritual nourishment. He’s obtained by those who, while they move along the normal, natural paths of experience, feed themselves as it comes. And there are those who think there must be a special occasion, a retreat for my meditation, a withdrawal from the world. I must actually put myself apart and be something entirely different for the spirit of God to come upon me. May I tell you, they will wait and wait and wait for unnumbered of years and it will not come that way. Go about your Father’s business, going to the marketplace, and whatever you were doing, do it, but always remember the Lord.681 ¶25

So, they cupped their hands but they were alert. They didn’t get down on their knees and bury their head in the running stream. They cupped their hands and they were alert for they were on a journey. Three hundred. So, he reduced it from 32,000 to 300.681 ¶26

So, I say to him, you feel that you take credit for your intellectual accomplishment and you know from experience that you did receive that with an imaginal act, and then you forgot the imaginal act. But the imaginal act didn’t forget itself. It came to pass and you reaped the harvest of what you had done, imaginably, knowing you did not really accomplish it with your own intellectual powers.681 ¶27

Well, go back to seeing now, you do not need any withdrawal from this world for spiritual nourishment. None whatsoever. You think you need some special occasion. If you need some little retreat where you can go and meditate, you have the wrong concept of God, for he is in you. Where are you going to find him more than where you can find him wherever you are? If you’re standing at a bar, he’s present. No matter where you are this night, he is present in you. He is not in any holy place in the world. Wherever you are, that’s the holy place. There is no cathedral in the world. No so-called holy place, call it a sanctified cemetery. Cemetery of what? He is buried in you, you are the sepulcher where God is buried. He is not buried in any cemetery in this world. He never was. He’s buried in the skull of man. That’s where he is buried.681 ¶28

So, a lady now writes from San Francisco and she said, you know, I had the strangest dream and I can’t understand it. I met you and here you are expounding Scripture. And then you came over to me and you embraced me and I pushed you away. And I said, no, Neville. What I did, I do not know. She doesn’t say that in her letter. And then she said, I said to her, you know, I would’ve married you. And she said, but I am married. And I said, yes, I know, but the day will come when you will know that Jerry, that’s her husband, and I are one.681 ¶29

It is not a union of sex. It’s a union of my teaching. Take my yoke upon me and learn from me for my yoke is the teaching. So, she loves it. She has the records because she made them herself at the last meeting in San Francisco. So, she made ten, and she tells me she plays them over and over and he made others before that. So, they must have maybe thirty or forty of these recordings. But she hasn’t quite absorbed it for she could not have said no. There would be no sex in this. It’s a union with God. For I am telling you, I became one with him when he embraced me. So, we are no longer two, just as my friend said, I can’t use the pronoun, we; I will use now the singular, I; and yet I feel your presence and I am you. And yet I haven’t lost my identity. And I can tell you from my own experience, we’re all the sameness of identity; when this thing happens, there is a radical change in form. It’s not this form at all. It’s spirit.681 ¶30

Now take these words and see if you aren’t shocked by them. In the book of Proverbs, the 8th chapter, the 22nd verse: “The Lord created me at the beginning of his way. The first of his acts of old.” Look at the word beginning, “at the beginning of his way.” And this is the definition given in Strong’s Concordance: “To shake the head, the top.”681 ¶31

The beginning is when that head of yours vibrates, so you think this is the end, and it’s only then the beginning. When your head so vibrates that you think this is it, meaning to yourself, never having experienced anything comparable to this, that this is the end of what the world would call, now, you’re dying. Far from dying, the Lord shook the head. He vibrated the head. And that vibration woke you. Who did he wake? If you would be asked, who heard it? And who actually was wakened when he heard it and felt it? You would answer, I. I am wakened. And who found himself within the tomb and knew it to be his own skull? You would answer I. And who then knew how to come out? You would say I. And who came out? You would say, I. And who found the child and knew it to be his own? I. So, the I is buried in there and it’s God. And it comes with the vibration of the head when the whole head begins to shake. It is the shaking of the head.681 ¶32

Rosh, we have a New Year. We speak of Rosh Hashanah. Rosh is the shaking of the head. It’s not another year pass by and I mark it off the calendar and go to another year. This is an entirely new age when that head shakes. You can mark off year after year, we call this now the year 1972. And the Jews speak of their year, going back over five centuries, meaning 5,000 years, but that’s not the rosh of the Rosh Hashanah that Scripture speaks of. It speaks of the shaking of the head, of the top. And then it goes on to say the first born, the first fruit, all these are the definitions given to rosh.681 ¶33

When the head begins to shake, then you come out, and you are born from the top. You are born from God. And all ends run through the origins. So, if the origin is God, the end is God. It is God that is born.681 ¶34

So, then you are in this world. You are now only an extension of the Lord, for he extends himself in those that are born, born from above, but all will be born from above. And that’s how God expands and expands and expands himself. So, “He has put eternity into the minds of men. Yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”681 ¶35

Nevertheless, at that end, he does make known his purpose. As Paul said, in his letter to the Ephesians, “He’s made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he sent forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.”681 ¶36

So, when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son who is Christ, which is David crying in our heart, Father. And we look up and he is your Son. And he has called you Father. Who did he call Father? He’s calling you God, Father, and God is your own wonderful, I am. Who is he calling? He is calling me, Father. I am his Father and everyone is going to have that experience.681 ¶37

So, in the end, as my friend had the experience, we are one. We are not two. I dwell in them and they dwell in me, and we are one. “Keep them in my name oh Holy Father. And the love that thou gavest me is the love you give them that they may be one as we are one.”681 ¶38

“So, I am not a God of far-off,” said he. “I am a brother and a friend.” But many will not believe it. And he turns down, tired and weary, he turns down that that is God. He won’t believe it. He can’t believe that the one he dislikes is himself. He can’t believe it, that the man who stole from him this day is himself. He can’t believe that the man who gave him good this day is himself. They’re all separate. And I’m not saying that you’re going to be absorbed.681 ¶39

As her words are beautifully told in her letter, I felt your presence. The identity was there. No question about it, but for all the sameness of identity, we are one. I didn’t lose my identity and yet I am, and I am you. And your presence is an identity. And yet I cannot use the plural in speaking of we are floating on the water.681 ¶40

So, she was filled with wine. Are we not told in Paul’s letters to Timothy, “Drink no more water, use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your many infirmities?” Do not constantly absorb the Law and apply only the Law toward the getting of things in this world. From now on, let it become wine, let it become spirit, so it becomes a part of you.681 ¶41

So, you drink wine, not the little bottle of wine, although I’m very fond of wine. I love it. I had my full bottle of wine today with some cheese for my lunch, and thoroughly enjoyed a bit of wine and, oh, a section of Edam. Thoroughly enjoyed it, but that’s not the wine spoken of in Scripture. The wine is the transforming of the water into wine.681 ¶42

That psychological law is forever. Apply it towards becoming the man, becoming the woman that you want to be. But it’s enough, after a while, to become this, become that, become the other, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Jesus Christ within me. When the Father is unveiled and he can only be unveiled to his Son who reveals you as his Father. And that is the story.681 ¶43

So, he has put, yes, I would use the word eternity. I use the word world. For he has put everything within you. You don’t have to go outside of self to find anything. You find it within. And by applying the principle, you rest having done what you are supposed to do and let it come to pass.681 ¶44

But do not forget what my friend so wisely said, in quoting these passages from Scripture, that he finds it so difficult, trained as he is. He’s a college graduate. He’s a professional psychiatrist, teaching psychiatry to many, and he finds it difficult not to claim that his own intellectual powers brought these to pass. Even though he remembers that there was a moment in time when he, not intellectually, but when he imagined the state by denying the evidence of the senses, by denying reason or reason did not come into it, because he denied what he is now doing in imagination and having done it, he forgot it. And then, in good time, it happened in this world and he reaped the harvest of what he did in imagination. But he said, I find it so difficult, trained as I am, not to take the credit. And that’s exactly what these passages that he quoted in the Scripture are against. They will not give the credit where it belongs. They have taken it to themselves, their own puffed-up intellectual state.681 ¶45

And this whole vast scene is so unlike what the world believes it to be. The whole vast world. I haven’t time tonight to develop it—I will on Monday—to show you that everything in this world on this level is so unlike what it is on the next higher level, and man can’t believe it until he’s had that experience, he can’t believe that this is not what it appears to be, but I’ll show it to you on Monday.681 ¶46

But hear that most disputed verse in the book of Ecclesiastes, the 11th verse of the third chapter: “And God has put eternity into the mind of man. Yet so that men cannot find out what God has done, from the beginning to the end.” But in the fullness of time, shows it to those to whom he now comes at the end of time. He does not consign them to silence. They may go and tell it to the best of their ability exactly how it happened.681 ¶47

So, when Ecclesiastes tell us that we will never find out, now in the end, you do find out God’s own purpose. You find his mystery, and his mystery is to actually, literally give himself to us. That’s his steadfast love forever. And that is forever. “And thy name will endure forever.” That is olam.681 ¶48

The word everlasting, he has made an everlasting covenant with me. That word is olam. David’s last words in the second book of Samuel, the 23rd chapter: “And he has made with me an everlasting covenant.” And that word is olam. It is forever and forever.681 ¶49

And so, he will now be a witness for all generations. He will always come at that appointed moment when I need to be revealed as to who I am. And then he will rise and here, I look into the face of my Son, but I know that Scripture told me he was God’s Son, but I have no feeling of God as another. He has so become me that I am his Father. So, he was perfectly right in saying, I can’t use the plural. I can’t say we are his Father. He has so become me that I am his Father.681 ¶50

And so, she in the floating filled with wine, and may I tell her, don’t be embarrassed because you said you are filled with swine. The pig has been the symbol of the Savior throughout all the generations. And so, you’ve eaten of it. You’ve eaten his blood. You drank his blood and you ate his flesh, which means you actually absorb the teaching. That’s how you eat it. You eat it by absorbing the teaching.681 ¶51

Now, another friend of mine, she’s here tonight, and she writes, but here I had this vision. I am in a cathedral and there is an enormous choir. And there are two persons present writing out announcements of my death. And I say it, but I am not dead, look, I am alive, but they’re all writing out announcements, announcing my death. Then the choral group bursts forth into this most glorious hallelujah. This song of praise, hallelujah, praise Jehovah. That’s what the word would mean. And I joined in with the chorus singing of my own death.681 ¶52

Death of what? It is death to his level. Death to this level. She is joined with the choral group in singing her own departure from this level, moving into another level. So, I’m telling you, you are all awakening.681 ¶53

My letters are now becoming more and more along this line. This week, I must have received at least two dozen. I had to give one today to a friend of mine to answer, please answer this for me because I don’t have the time. And yet I hunger for the letters. But if it demands an answer, and this one did, an interpretation because they’re not here, they are a thousand miles away. And naturally that has to be answered. But you who are here, I can answer your letters from the platform. But those would come, like my friend from San Francisco, I haven’t answered that yet. It’s been there for ten days, but I may get to it this weekend, but I have so much to do at home with my wife, that I do not have the time to answer letters. If I could answer them from the platform, it’s a tremendous help.681 ¶54

So here, I hope I have convinced you this night, how wonderful you are that you were chosen. Not by some head of government. What would it matter tonight if you had the Stalin medal? And so many were given this Stalin medal and the Hitler medal. Well, you should melt it. But to be chosen by the Creator of the universe. He so loved you that he became you. And his name is forever and forever. And his name is I am, and it’s buried in you. That’s God in you. Sleep in the feeling of being so wanted, being so chosen, being the elect, and you cannot rise feeling unwanted and feeling shunted in this world.681 ¶55

Now let us go into the silence.681 ¶56

New ideas require many reiterations and restatements before they become part of the generally accepted currency of thought. The idea that I’ve been trying to get over since I started back in 1938 is still new. It comes as a shock to anyone who hears it. And even after you’ve heard it for years and years, and think you’re living by it, I’ve discovered that one is not really living by it. It has not yet become a part of their thinking. And it is that imagining creates reality. I say this because I identify imagining with God in action. To me, man is all imagination and God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination. And that is God himself. If by God, I mean the creator of the universe, the maker and the master of the whole vast universe and I identify that creator with the human imagination, then man should be more careful as to what he’s imagining. So, I can give lip service to the statement imagining creates reality. And yet if I’m observant in the course of a day, if I observe what I’m imagining, I would find unnumbered moments in my life, in one twenty-four hours or other, the waking eighteen, where I am imagining things I do not wish to experience. If I really believe that imagining creates reality, I would be more careful, more concerned about what I’m imagining. So, I will give it lip service and say imagining creates reality and go blindly on imagining anything other than what I want to create, beginning with the morning paper and reacting to things that you do not know, whether they be true, they could be planted by some press agent, planted by some lobbyists. You do not know. And here we react as we read and then we go through life in just twenty-four hours and find that most of the twenty-four hours we spend imagining what we do not wish to experience. If man would only look upon the world as a world of appearance, behind which the reality of imagining lay, he would find the truth, he would find God.666 ¶1

As it is totally told in the 17th chapter of the book of Acts, now it’s a story, whether it was historically true or not, it doesn’t really matter. It’s trying to push a point to the fore. It is said that the men of Athens spent all day in the marketplace looking for a new idea, either telling one or hearing one. Then came upon the scene one called Paul. And they wondered, “What has this babbler have to say? What is his new idea?” And he told them the idea of Jesus and the resurrection. And we are told the Epicureans and the stoic philosophers mocked him and scoffed at him. Others say, “We will hear more about this later.” And he said to them—and this is all ironical if you read it carefully—he said, “Oh men of Athens, I see in every way you are very religious. For, as I passed by, I observed the objects of your worship.” Right away that’s irony, the objects of their worship. Then he said, “I noticed this inscription over an altar, ‘to an unknown God.’ What you, therefore, worship, unknown, I declare to you.” Then he tells them of the only God, the God that created everything and he’s not a God of far off. He is indwelling, he is within every single being in the world, the God of the universe, not made with hands. You wouldn’t find him in a temple, in a church, in a cathedral, or the little objects of your worship that you make of man with your own hands and then worship him and call him Apollo. But hear, the God that I speak of is within everyone. That’s the God of whom I speak. That’s the God that raises from the dead. Well, they laughed and they mocked him. Then we are told he went on from Athens to Corinth. What he performed there, no one knows, whether Athens ever took him up because they were the wise men. They were called the very learned men of the day. We have them today, too. They scoff at anything that is not part of their great voluminous works.666 ¶2

But I am telling you, if as Paul said to the Athenians, if you would only feel after him, you’d find him. If you would feel after him, you would find him. Find what? Find the God of the universe. For he gave us not the spirit of the world but the spirit of himself. That spirit of himself in man is man’s own wonderful human imagination. When you say, I am, that’s God, the one and only God, and there is no other God, therefore he’s in every man, every woman, every child born of woman. It is the God in that being that allows that being to breathe, live, and experience what we call life in this world. That is the immortal you. So, the eternal body of man is the imagination. And that is God himself. The one we speak of in the New Testament as Jesus. That is God. But where is it? Something on the outside? No, he is in you. When you say I am, that’s Jesus. Now the world is taught differently, therefore, it comes as a shock when they hear it, they don’t want to hear it. They will listen if it could simply improve their life in this world, get more money, do things that they want to do, and still hold onto this little object on the outside. So, he spoke: “I observed the objects of your worship.” Well, man does that with what they call Jesus. They take their human hands, they make a mold of something, they call it Jesus, put it on a piece of wood, or put it on something else, stick it on the wall, and then cross themselves for good luck. There is the object of their worship. Something they made themselves. The maker is greater than the thing made, no matter how wonderful it’s made, certainly the artist is greater than his work. And so, we make all these things and put it on the outside and then bow before it and worship it. I tell you your own wonderful human imagination is God; that’s God.666 ¶3

Now, if I would only observe this and keep it in mind, I should be able to put Paul to the test. He said, “Feel after him and you’ll find him.” Blake said, “Imagination is spiritual sensation.” Spiritual sensation, but how would I “feel after him and find him?” Well, first of all, he does all things good, bad, or indifferent. And he waits on me just as indifferently and as swiftly when the willing me is evil as when it is good because he’s creative power. He kills, he makes alive, he wounds, he heals—all things are done by the one creative power. There isn’t another God who is evil and one that is good. One that is altogether loving. And one that is altogether hating. No, only one power. And that power is the human imagination. So how will I then feel after him? What would the feeling be like if it were true? What true? That I am the man that I would like to be. What would the feeling be like? Test it, for all things are made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. But now if I had dared to assume that I am now the man that I want to be, and I persist in that assumption, watching my mind morning, noon, and night. So, anything that I find myself dwelling upon that is in conflict with that assumption, I ignore it, I put it aside. I will be faithful to this divine vision, the vision of myself. So anytime I catch myself daring to feel less than the thing that I’m feeling or trying to externalize in my world, I simply stop it and go back to that assumption that I am the man that I want to be. If I persist in it and it becomes a fact, then I have found him.666 ¶4

I don’t observe imagining as I do objects in space. I am the reality that is called imagining. So, you don’t see God because God is spirit, but you see the results of his activity in you. He’s active in you as you imagine. You’re completely free to imagine good, bad, or indifferent. So, you simply select what you want to imagine. Would you like to be—and you name it. But you say, I don’t have the background for it. I do not have any of the qualifications for it. It doesn’t really matter. If imagining creates reality, you do not need the qualification that the world thinks you need. All you need do is simply to boldly assume that you are the man, the woman that you would like to be. And if it proves itself in performance, then you have found him. So, Paul said to the Athenians, “Feel after him and you’ll find him.” Well, I have seen it numberless times in my thirty-four years of teaching. I started back in February of 1938 and here I am, this is February of 1972, and I’m yet to see it fail—if we, the operant power, apply it. It doesn’t apply itself. We are the operant power. For in man is God and God is man’s own wonderful human imagination. So, if I dare to assume that I am the one that I would like to be, well, that’s God who’s doing it.666 ¶5

So how will I turn then to God tonight? Say a half-dozen people asked of me tonight. It takes no time; they voiced their request. It’s a statement made in the book of John, the Epistle of John: “If we know that he hears us in whatever we ask of him, we know that we have already obtained the request made of him.” Well, when they’re talking to me, they say, I would like so and so, instantly it comes within the frame of my golden rule. It’s something I would like myself. If I were in their present state of consciousness, I would like that. It doesn’t violate my rule. It doesn’t injure someone. It doesn’t take from anyone. Well now, did I hear it? I heard it. Well, if I and my Father are one, well then, my Father heard it. I do not know the means that will be employed to bring it to pass, but I can’t deny that I heard it. If I heard it, and I and my Father are one, well, can I not now say to my inner being, “Thank you, Father”? You heard it because I heard it, for if we know that he hears all that we ask of him, then we know we have already obtained the request made of him. So, as they say to me, I would like so and so, well then, I heard it. I do not know as a man called Neville how it’s going to happen. I do not know. I’m not going to suggest what they do or what they should do. I only know that I heard it and if I heard it, my Father heard it because he and I are one. He is my own wonderful human imagination. So, I could actually say within myself, as though we were two, “Thank you.” You heard it because I heard it, and then allow the depth of my own being to devise the means necessary to bring it to pass. And that I am not responsible from that moment on. I do not call them up and say, “Did it happen?” I do not get in touch with them and write them and say, “Tell me, how are things coming?” It’s not my concern. I did what was asked of me. And all it was asked of me was to hear and use my imagination lovingly on their behalf. Well, I did it in the twinkle of an eye. You don’t have to go into some sweat to do it. I don’t have to go to some church and do it, go to some synagogue and do it, or some so-called holy place. Wherever I stand should be holy because the Father is within me. And where can you go to a more holy place than where God is? If I know God is my own wonderful human imagination, then where can I go that could be more holy than wherever I am, no matter where it is? So, the request is made, I heard it. And then having heard it, I give thanks to the being within me, who has the means, the wisdom, and the power to externalize it.666 ¶6

Knowing that the entire outside world, that all objective reality, is solely produced through imagining. What is now proven in the world was once only imagined. Try to deny that, try to deny it. There isn’t a thing in this world that you can say that’s real that was not first only imagined. So, I say to everyone here, take the statement, “Feel after him and you’ll find him.” He didn’t say you may find him. Feel after him and you’ll find him. But these ideas are so new and yet they aren’t new, they go back into the Old Testament. Here, we find the word for imagination used as the word potter. Well, if you say the word potter, go down to the Potter’s house, and I let you hear my word. So, I went down to the Potter’s house and there he was working at his wheel and the vessel in his hand was spoiled. So, he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. If you read it in the form of the story, in which it is told in the 18th chapter of Jeremiah, you will think of a man with clay in his hands, at his wheel, pumping away, making a vessel, making some kind of a, well, it could be anything, a plate. That’s not it. The word potter means imagination.666 ¶7

It’s like saying to you, go into your own imagination and see what you are doing with a friend. You just heard that he was in need. Are you now going to finish that and take him now into a greater need, or are you going to rework it into another vessel as it seemed good to you to do? You don’t go to some Potter’s house, go down to the Potter’s house, and there, I will let you hear my word. So, I went down to the Potter’s house and there he was working at his wheel. And the vessel in his hand was spoiled. He didn’t throw it away and discard it. He reworked it into another vessel as it seemed good to him to do. So, a man, a friend of ours, he’s unemployed. All right, so he’s unemployed and he doesn’t have the qualifications for a better job and there is no job at the moment for what he has. So what? I will rework it. I will hear him tell me that he has the most marvelous job and he’s gainfully employed. What the job is, I do not know. But I can say to myself, well, if I heard it surely the depth of my own being heard it. And so, I can say, thank you. Having reworked him in my own mind’s eye into an entirely different being; the same friend, but not one unemployed, he is now gainfully employed.666 ¶8

So, feel it. If I can feel this state, I’m finding God for God is spirit. And may I tell you, and by spirit, I do not mean some intangible thing. It actually is the human form divine. When I speak of the human imagination, it is a form, it is a reality, it is the divine form. So, the eternal body of man is the human imagination. And that is God himself. And there is no other God. He said, “I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal. I do all things and none can deliver out of my hands.” This is Scripture. But man, when he hears the word, God, he thinks there’s something out in space. Where, he doesn’t quite know, but something in space. If the word God, in any way, conjures within you something that is other than your own wonderful human imagination, you’ve got the wrong God. If the word Jesus causes you to think of a man who lived 2,000 years ago and died 2,000 years ago and rose 2,000 years ago, you’ve got the wrong one. You’re told Jesus is within you. If he’s within me, I should find out exactly where he is in me. And then who is he? Well, I found him. He is my own wonderful human imagination. That’s Jesus. And all that is said of him, every child born of woman, is going to experience, to discover he is Jesus, and there is no other Jesus. So, you’re told in Scripture, in the 17th of Matthew, “In the end, there is Jesus only.” Why? You’re told now in the book of John, the Epistle of John, “And when he appears, we shall be like him.” Because when he appears and it’s only Jesus, well I have to be like him. So, within me, the whole thing unfolds itself. And everything said of him, at least whether people believe it or not, I have experienced. And personally, I do not care whether they accept it or not. Any more than Paul did, the wise men, the Epicureans, and the stoic, scoffed at him and laughed at him, mocked him. So, he went on to Corinth. He simply did the work he came to do. So, he told the story and said you’re worshiping, what? Something on the outside. And here you put an inscription over the altar, “To an unknown God.” You say the unknown. What you know, say is unknown, I will tell you of a known God. Now take my word for it and feel after him and you’ll find him.666 ¶9

How would I find him? Well, tonight, if I wanted to be in New York and I put my body down on the bed tonight when I go to bed, I must assume that I am already in New York. Well, how would I know that I am there? If I am all imagination, I must be wherever I am in imagination. Well, if I am in imagination in New York, now think of the world, think of California, Southern California, where you place the body, or do you see it on the bed as you’re thinking, well then you are not in New York. Do you see it 3,000 miles away to the west of you? Well then you are in New York. For were you in New York, you would see the body in your mind’s eye, 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles. And you’d be thinking from New York rather than thinking of New York. So, the whole thing is simply finding out this fantastic power, creative power in man and how it operates. For, there is no problem in the world comparable to this problem of solving the mystery of imagining. For supreme power and supreme wisdom and supreme delight is in store for the one who conquers this mystery.666 ¶10

So, whether you be in jail, all right, so you are in jail, and you dare to assume that you are free. You aren’t going to break through the doors and be picked up and be sent to a longer term. You simply assume that you are free. Today on death row, many of them pray that their sons would not be put in the chamber, and they believe their prayers. And so, the Supreme Court brings in a verdict: no more killing of men because they kill someone. Whether you approve or disapprove, that’s not the point. All things are possible in God’s world, all things. So, I’m not going to pass any opinion, whether this thing is right or wrong. I’m not going to be involved emotionally as to whether they did the right thing or the wrong thing. I only know from personal experience, if I had a son there, I want him free. If he were there, he’s not there, but if he was there, I’d want him free. Regardless of what he did, as one who loves his son, I’d want him free. But I am not going to pass any opinion or any judgment concerning the Supreme Court’s decision. The thing is all things are possible. You tell me what you want and if it comes within the framework of what I call the Golden Rule, which is simply doing unto others, as you would have others do unto you. If it fits that frame, well then, you are on the right course. Well then, you can’t do it physically, no. You don’t have the power or the wisdom to do it. But there’s something in you, which is your essential being—it can do it. It knows exactly how to do it.666 ¶11

Can you trust it? Can you trust this being within you to have heard what you heard? I heard it on this level, the request made. And if I heard it on this level, certainly the depth of my own being heard it, and on that depth, he has ways and means I do not have on this level. Therefore, I’m not concerned as to how it’s going to work. I only know it will work by simply assuming that I am already the one I want to be. And if I dare to assume it and remain faithful to it, then it becomes a fact. So, imagining, plus this kind of faith—faith in God—and God is your own wonderful human imagination. So, faith in God is the way to success. You imagine it as though it were true and then you walk your way, not knowing how it’s going to become true, but it will become true, and I invite you to test it, just try it, costs you nothing.666 ¶12

And if I take from you your gods, as Paul took from the Athenians their gods, then it’s a blessing. If you can lose your God, it’s a good thing because the real gods you can’t lose and you can never lose being, you can never lose a sense of I am. You can lose everything else, but you can never cease to be aware that you are; that’s God. And so, if I can’t take that from you, well then, I can’t take the real God from you. If I can take any other thing from you and you worship it, you have the false god. And I did you service in taking anything but the reality, because I can’t take the reality from you. So, all other services and ceremonies, they mean nothing, nothing. Go about your Father’s business, which is yourself doing noble things in this world, imagining the best and it will come to pass. That’s why I say if it seems that I reiterate and restate night after night after night, it’s essential. Because if you are perfectly honest with yourself this day and you observe what you are imagining in the course of one day, you’d be ashamed of what you imagined. And yet you are imagining things you do not want to happen. And yet you’ll give lip service to a statement, imagining creates reality.666 ¶13

And then one moment later, a friend of mine up in San Francisco, she was a friend of a mutual friend and they didn’t get on very well, only at moments. One night, riding with her, we went down, oh maybe seventy-five miles down the peninsula for a dinner, a lovely dinner, and all the way back, this very, very heavy fog, you could hardly see a few yards before you. And she was talking of this friend of mine, who she claimed to be a friend of hers, and she would rant against this woman. So and so and so, I wouldn’t even print it. You couldn’t print it, it burned the page. And then at the end of her statement, she would say, “God, bless her soul.” She kept up the entire seventy-five miles blasting this woman. And then she would qualify the whole thing: “And is all forgiven. God bless her soul.” So, she is still here, the other one has gone from this little section of time, and she’s still playing the same part, using her imagination in every way she doesn’t want in this world. And things went from bad to worst in her world. And they’re still that way. And she can’t for one moment believe she’s the cause of the phenomena of her life. Oh no, she can’t for one moment. And yet I had one long, seventy-five-mile drive with her. Well, it would take a whole lifetime to reap that harvest, what she said in that long drive from dinner back home.666 ¶14

So, man has a very weak memory and he doesn’t remember when he did these things, but the depth in man who does not forget. We are warned in Galatians, “Be not deceived. God is not mocked. As a man sows, so shall he reap.” Then we are told by the poet, “See yonder fields! The sesamum was sesamum, the corn Was corn. The Silence and Darkness knew! So is a man’s fate born.” So, you don’t recognize your own harvest, but it couldn’t make a mistake. Everything is after the identical seed. You plant a seed. What seed was it? I had forgotten what it was. Well, wait until the tree comes up, you’ll know because it can’t be other than what was planted. If I plant an oak, well, then the oak is going to spring up into the oak tree. I plant that sort of acorn, that’s going to be the oak tree. But if I plant something else, well then wait. If I have forgotten what I planted, wait, the harvest will show me. And man denies his own harvest.666 ¶15

So, I’m telling you that your own wonderful human imagination is God, is the God of Scripture, the only God, whether in the Old Testament, you call him the Lord or call him Jehovah or call him God, or in the New Testament, you call him Jesus, it’s the same thing. This is the creative power in man. And that creative power in man is man’s own wonderful human imagination. Why repeat unnumbered stories that I’ve told you in the past? I could start with new ones but you know the technique and the technique is simple. If all things are created out of man’s human imagination, well, then, let him start imagining what he wants to be. And if he does, success will follow him. But in the meanwhile, try to prune the plant because when you hear for the first time that your imagination is God, it’s an awful shock. Because as the poet said, “Behold this vine, I found it a wild tree Whose wanton strength had swollen into irregular twigs … but I pruned the Tree, Then it grew temperate in its vain expense Of useless leaves, and knotted, as thou seest, Into these full, clear clusters, to repay The hand whose foresight wounded it.” So, when you first find the vine spoken of in the Bible, “I am the vine of eternity, I am the true vine and my Father is the vine dresser.” And you discover that vine is my imagination, but then the whole thing went into leaves, useless leaves and branches. It was not producing grapes.666 ¶16

Then I start to prune the tree by observing what I’m imagining in the course of 24 hours. It becomes a habit. Then the next day I do a little bit better; the third day, better still; by the end of a week, I am in the habit now of watching what I’m imagining. And don’t wait—instantly prune it. Stop it. Stop imagining, don’t indulge yourself. I have heard people say to me, “But just one more second. It’s such a pleasant thing to cut him off.” And so, in his mind’s eye, he’s telling off someone all in his imagination, knowing he’s going to reap the fruit of it. Now, if you know that, you aren’t going to simply spend an extra five seconds of precious time in finishing that emotion; stop that emotion and get on a new trend. And then you prune the plant. And finally, that plant’s going to reward you with clean, full clusters because you wisely wounded it. And then you keep that vine going and the vine will pay enormous dividends. I know from experience.666 ¶17

When you go to bed at night, let your last thought be something noble, something wonderful that you are now, or those you love are now, what you would like to be and drop off into the deep in that state and make it a habit. As we are told, you plant a seed and then the seed becomes an act and the act becomes a habit and the habit becomes the character. So if I seem to repeat myself, it’s because I have to, because if anyone here tonight could honestly tell me that in the course of 24 hours, they have observed what they were imagining and had not a thing to find fault with, well, I would like to hear that, and I will not call you a liar because I’m not here to judge, but it would be marvelous thing, if you could tell me that. But I know that all of us are victims of habit. And we get into the habit of these internal conversations that are not pleasant. And we think that no one observes, no one sees.666 ¶18

So, as we are told in the book of Ezekiel, “He said, son of man, go down and see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing. So, I went down to the house to observe the elders of the house of Israel. And there they were, each in his own room, carving on the wall.” What wall? The wall of your own interior, the wall of your skull. And they are making abominable things. And they say whether no one sees us, the Lord has forgotten us. They thought because they did it in the silence that no one knows when the only reality is their own wonderful human imagination. And that is fully aware of what man is doing and rewards man, good, bad or indifferent, with his imaginal act.666 ¶19

Now, no one can tell me that you could not tonight start to become, if you want to be prosperous, that’s a relative term. What you mean by prosperous would not be what another means by it. But what you—and just take yourself—what would it feel like if it were true? Just what would it feel like? And then go about to your business feeling as though it is true, instead of spending your precious time reading about Howard Hughes, or who cares? I asked a friend of mine who asked me if I’m following the story; I said, you know, he doesn’t know me and I don’t know him. And I’m quite sure that if I met him, he would not really buy me a sandwich. So, what am I concerned about? He doesn’t pay my rent, he doesn’t buy my clothes, he doesn’t contribute to my way of living, and I am supposed to be concerned about what he’s doing? He doesn’t interest me, none whatsoever. So, I must spend my precious time reading about Howard Hughes? My heart almost goes out to the man, Irving, who wrote the thing because the so-called wise editors of Life and the wise ones of the other one, got taken. And they’re so wise, taken for a half-million dollars. And so, I’m not saying that I would want to duplicate it in my life, but it almost serves them right. To pull that upon the people and who cares about Hughes, really? What is his contribution to life? So, he has made two billion. So what? Hasn’t bought you a dinner. Hasn’t done anything for you. And so, what is your concern?666 ¶20

You take the story of Scripture. See it, as it really was intended in the beginning to be seen: that your own wonderful human imagination is the God spoken of in Scripture. And by him, all things were made and without him was not anything made that is made. Start right in this room, you’re wearing clothes, you’re sitting on chairs, you’re in a house. Everything here was first only imagined: the clothes you’re wearing, the chairs in which you are seated, the building that now houses you. Everything here was first only imagined. And then it became some objective fact. So, objective reality is solely produced through imagining.666 ¶21

Now you want to objectify something entirely different from what you have so far. Well now, change the imaginal act. To attempt a change in circumstances before I change the imaginal activity is to struggle against the very nature of things. I can’t do it because my imaginal activity is producing the objective realities. And I can’t change that objective fact until I change what is causing it. And the cause is an unseen imaginal activity. As we are told, “He brings things that are not seen and calls them as though they were seen and they become seen.” Things that are now seen, were made out of things that do not appear. That’s what we are told in the book of Hebrews. What you now see, it was made out of things that do not appear. Well, if that is a fact, and Scripture’s had it now for centuries and centuries as fact, well then put it to the test. Challenge, yes, challenge the Scripture, as you’re taught in Scripture to challenge it. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Examine yourselves and see whether you are holding to the faith.” Well, test him. Test him and see. If he is in me and he does all things, I’m going to test him.666 ¶22

Well, I have tested him over and over and over and found him faithful. I dared at moments in my life to assume that I had what reason told me I did not, and my senses denied it, but I dared to assume that I had it, and it happened. It came out of the nowhere. It happened. So, I taught that principle to others. They applied it and it happened. But strangely enough, after someone becomes a little bit better off than they were, they reflect on it and because it always happens in a perfectly normal, natural manner, they say, “Oh, well, it would’ve happened anyway.” And then they go sound asleep again. You can give someone a sedative and you try to awaken them. And for a moment they’re alert, seemingly alert. And while you are talking to them, sound asleep again. That’s humanity. They’re dreaming this dream of life. And they see the fruit of what they’ve imagined and deny that their imagination produced it. So, they go sound asleep again, back up on the negative state.666 ¶23

But I’m asking you who come here and persist in coming to observe what you are doing in the course of twenty-four hours. You’re not alert for twenty-four hours, but take, say sixteen hours. If you give eight hours for sleep, well, take sixteen hours and try to observe what you are imagining. And if perchance you catch yourself imagining what you do not wish to experience, stop it, stop it right there and then, and don’t give it an extra second. It may be you are in the midst of an emotion and you’d like to complete the emotion and tell him off completely. Don’t. Stop it. Break it. And that causes a sort of a mental, well, a mental abortion, a mental miscarriage. If you break it without exploding the emotion.666 ¶24

So, feel after him and you’ll find him. That’s what he told the Athenians. But he pointed out all the objects of their worship. And every object he pointed out was something they themselves made with their hands and then worshiped it. I can see it now when I was a young man in the dancing world, there was a young girl, a pretty young girl, and she had a little figurine of what she called the Holy Mother. And before she took the stage, she would kiss it. The whole thing was to simply bring in rays from her kisses. And she really thought that gave her success. She kissed it and smothered it with kisses and on the stage she would go. And that was her little object of her worship. She thought that really was the Holy Mother. I mean, I tell you, without any criticism of the thing, most of these things are made by people who call themselves artists and are so far moved from any concept of being an artist. They’re monstrous things made by the millions, not by good artists at all; but she had her little one and sitting on top of the stage at her little dresser and she would smother it with kisses and then dashed on the stage and she danced.666 ¶25

I went to a party once, these boys, one with a priest or he was going to be a priest and he quit to join the war, the others, they all went into the army. One came out deaf, one came out with one foot missing above the knee and an arm. And this one who was the priest, or about to be the priest, he came out with something else, didn’t go back into the priesthood. But they all wore their St. Christopher medals when they dived into the pool at their home and they attributed their recovery or their so-called coming out of the army to St. Christopher. That was before St. Christopher was demoted. He’s now demoted. The Pope just said there was no such a thing as St. Christopher. But before that, they attributed the entire thing to that; one with a foot missing, arm missing, one deaf, and one with TB, and that is St. Christopher. He didn’t do a good job. But they’re actually, were completely, I said to my wife, I said, “Darling, suppose they know what I teach? Suppose they have heard what I do? Would they have me here?”666 ¶26

“Oh,” she said, “certainly they would have you here because as far as they’re concerned, you aren’t saved, you couldn’t be saved. You are a Protestant. So how could you be saved?” They loved my father dearly, said my wife, loved him more than they loved their own people, but he couldn’t be saved because he was a Protestant. Therefore, it doesn’t really matter what you do. So don’t be concerned if they knew what you are teaching, they wouldn’t even pass an opinion because it doesn’t matter. Only what they have been taught to believe is true. And that’s the only truth. Therefore, enjoy the day. So, I did. I enjoyed the day and observed all this nonsense.666 ¶27

So, I’m telling you your own wonderful human imagination is God; there is no other God. If you think there’s another God, then you’ve got two gods. And if you start with two, you’re going to have four, and four is going to give you eight, and eight sixteen, and then you have millions of gods. There’s only one God. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one.” And that God is I am. That’s his name forever and forever and forever. And when you say I am, you are actually announcing the fact that you are imagining. That is imagination, that’s God. And it’s the human imagination. And it is the eternal body of the Savior. And the only Savior is the Lord, God. “I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. And besides me, there is no Savior.” So, the Jesus of the New is the Lord, God of the Old. And where is he? In man. He gave us not the spirit of this world; he gave us the spirit of himself. And that spirit of himself is in man as man’s own wonderful human imagination. Now, let us go into the silence.666 ¶28

You should find tonight a very helpful message. We’re told that, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.” By faith, we understand the world was created by the word of God, so that things which are seen were made out of things which do not appear. If you see it clearly, you will see that faith does not give reality to unseen things. It is loyalty to the unseen reality that gives meaning to the word faith.664 ¶1

All things exist, eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation. So, on this level, the shadow level, we do not see the reality. We do not see the source, the cause of it all. That’s where we are called upon to exercise faith, loyalty, to unseen reality. It really is the abandonment of self. It’s an act of self-commission. A man cannot commit himself to what he does not love. And Scriptural faith is faith in God. So, any idea that we have of God, which does not spontaneously call forth out of our heart the feeling of love, is not a true idea of God. For the whole basic matter is that God is love.664 ¶2

I speak from experience. I stood in the presence of Infinite Love. And it’s man. So, I do not have the problem that others would have concerning this presence that is Love. I can yield to him instantly, or I know he exists. I know he exists in me. I also know he exists in you, but you may not be aware of it. I can only ask you to believe it; and yield completely to this presence within you, for by him all things are made. And without him was not anything made that is made.664 ¶3

So tonight, we will show you what I have done in the past with great success and how it operates.664 ¶4

Now, if I wanted something in this world, and who doesn’t, I would formulate an act, which would imply that I have it. And then in my imagination, I would simply, having performed that act, I would yield completely to this being within me to execute it. I would fall off into sleep convinced that he heard me, that he saw my act in faith, for we are told in that same 11th chapter that I quoted when I first started, the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that we must come to God believing that God exists. For unless we believe that he exists, we cannot please him. So, who would draw near to God must believe that he exists. Without faith, it is impossible to please him. And so, if I took the 13th chapter of Corinthians, Paul’s wonderful hymn, In Praise of Love, and paraphrased it, “Though I speak in tongues of men and angels. And though I had the power of prophecy that I understood all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I gave all that I have and gave it away. Though I gave my body to be burned and had not faith, I cannot please him.”664 ¶5

I cannot please him without faith. Because I am not on the surface level of my being, I am not going to do it. I simply yield completely to him having acted. It’s an act of self-commission. I perform the act. What act? I act as though I had what I sought. I act as though I heard that you have what you asked of me. I perform an act and then I yield completely to that depth of my own being who is God and allow him from that depth to externalize it for me, as he tells us in the 55th chapter of Isaiah, “Your ways are not my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” So do not ask how it’s going to be done. All I have to do is to completely yield to this being within me, for he has ways and means that I, on this level of my being, know not of.664 ¶6

I rise then under compulsion. And under this compulsion, I go through a series of events, which will lead up to the fulfillment of that to which I yielded. I assume that it’s done. And then I commune with myself and give thanks within me that it is done.664 ¶7

And it works in every way, even in the most marvelous things like this, for instance. My friend, he’s here tonight. He didn’t think he could make it tonight, but I got his letter this week. He said, “Last week, having heard you over the years and having received a hunger from your interpretation of the Scripture, what we are told in the Scripture, in the book of Amos, ‘I will send a famine upon the world. It will not be a hunger for bread or a thirst for water but for the hearing of the word of God.’” When that hunger comes upon you, not a thing in this world can satisfy you, but an experience of God. Now he said, “I am a stockbroker and things have been very, very slow since the bottom of 1970. The market has risen, but people with money will not come into it because, undoubtedly, they were burned prior to this. Yet the market is really healthy today, it’s growing and growing and growing. Yet, I must confess things have been slow. I have a wife, I have a daughter who is a minor, I have obligations in life. And yet, in spite of the fact, I should really think of these things first, the hunger for an experience of God supersedes all other hungers. And so, I went home from your meeting and I said to myself, ‘I commune with myself’—for you taught me to believe that the self, the depth of my own being is God, that sensible awareness that is God. I said, ‘God, you sent this hunger upon me, a hunger for an experience of you. Give me, I said in the 86th Psalm, show me a sign of your favor, just a sign of your favor.’664 ¶8

Well, I had a dream, which I did not recall until Friday morning on the way to my office. As is my custom, I turned on your tape. I carry a tape with me and on my way to the office. I turn it on and I listen to that first. Something there clicked within me and the memory returned. And I remembered the dream of the previous night. And the dream was this. I found myself in an ancient world. I knew from the feeling, from the atmosphere, from everything about it, it was an ancient world. And suddenly a youth popped up over a wooden fence and leaned against a post and instantly I knew that he was David. Here is David. I knew he was my son, yet he didn’t speak, I didn’t speak, but it didn’t come until I was driving on the freeway, driving to my office. I have no memory of the previous experiences that you say one must have prior to the coming of David. So, I’m a little bit confused. Was that an apparition? Was that a foreshadowing of the event that must take place?”664 ¶9

I will say to him now, as he in his office: “Yes, it’s the most wonderful foreshadowing. For when it happens, you’ll be so stirred, you’ll awaken from the state. It won’t happen that way. It will happen out of your own skull. Your skull will explode. That’s how it happens. The whole thing is contained within man, within the skull of man. And when David comes in the true form, he actually comes after an explosion in your own skull as though the whole thing came to an end. And then when the whole thing settles, he stands before you. And he calls you Father and you know he’s your Son and he knows you are his father. And then by this relationship, you know you are God. So, this is the most marvelous adumbration, for sharing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way, but who knows the time it could happen now in the fullest of itself tonight, tomorrow. I am not going to predict when it’s actually going to happen. But I do know it will happen. He’s been given a sign. Show me a sign of thy favor and the sign came.”664 ¶10

So, I tell you tonight’s subject is on faith and faith is something that we must all grasp the significance of. For without faith, it is impossible to please him. And if he makes all things, good, bad, and indifferent, and makes them through faith, find out the mystery of faith.664 ¶11

Now, faith does not give reality to the unseen things. It is loyalty to the unseen reality for all things exist. If you only saw it, everything in eternity exists, man exists. Man is part of the eternal structure of the universe. He doesn’t grow out of a worm as our evolution is saying. Evolution is confined to the affairs of man not to the creation of God. Yes, I take a hoe and then I turn from a hoe, digging the little land with a hoe into a tractor. Then I’ll find something far better than the tractor. So, I will swim across the ocean or rather swim across a little river. And then I will find a raft that will take me. Then I’ll find a little boat that will take me. Then I’ll put a sail on it and that’ll do better. Then I will take something more than the sail and I’ll find something with steam. Then I’ll go beyond the steam and I’ll find nuclear energy. And this is simply evolution in the affairs of man. So instead of walking across the continent, I now fly across the continent. That’s evolution in the affairs of man, but there is no evolution in the creation of God.664 ¶12

It still remains a theory, a marvelous theory, and we are all under compulsion to study it and, all right, to pass our lessons in evolution as though the thing was proven. There isn’t one single bit of evidence in the world to support the theory, the hypothesis of evolution, not one. Yet, it’s compulsory in all the universities of the world as though it had been proven—in the affairs of man, yes, but not in the creation of God. Man, as he is, and all things as they are, there are eternal parts of the structure of the universe. Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy.664 ¶13

So, when God said, “Let us make man in our image,” man existed. He didn’t say, “Let us make something and call it man.” “Let us make man,” man existed, “in our image.” And God became man. There’s no way to make him in his image until God actually becomes man. So, God became as we are that we may be as he is. And he’s not pretending that he is a man. He has to completely forget that he is God and lose all memories of his power that is God, and take upon himself, the weaknesses and the limitations of man. And in this, he now is pouring himself into his own likeness, which is God. He’s raising within himself that which he became, redeeming everything in his world. That is the power that is God.664 ¶14

Now, while we are here as man, you want to be and you name it. You want to be successful in the world of Caesar in dollars and cents, nothing wrong with it. You want to be a successful doctor, successful lawyer—I don’t care what it is you want to be, well then, formulating so it will read your mind’s eye, what would it be like if it were true? How would you see the world if you were now the man that you would like to be? See it in your mind’s eye and then yield yourself completely to the depth of your own being. How do I do that? You fall asleep in the assumption. I dare to assume that I am the man that at the moment reason denied and then fall asleep in that assumption, leaving it completely to the depth of my own being to externalize it in my world. I will wake tomorrow morning under compulsion to do certain things, which I had not formulated, I hadn’t determined. I’ll find I’ll meet the right people. I’ll do this. I’ll do that. I’ll do the other. And it all adds up towards the externalization of my assumption.664 ¶15

Just as in his case, he now has a sign of God’s favor. The depth of his own being responded to his abandonment. It’s a complete self-abandonment. And I can’t commit myself to what I do not love. I can’t do it. So, if my idea of God does not bring forth within me the sense of love, well then, I have the wrong God. If I know that he’s even full of love, believe me, he is, but the day will come, you’ll have the actual experience and you will know that God is all love.664 ¶16

I stood in his presence, and God is man. The world says God is not a man, he’s an impersonal force, they’ll say; he is this; he is that—God is man. The Ancient of Days, without beginning, without end. As is said concerning David, although he was a youth, he seemed to have no beginning, no end. He seemed like the Ancient of Days. And yet he was young, as described in the book of Samuel. Here is this youth, just as described in the book of Samuel, the 16th chapter, the first Samuel. That’s the one I saw. That’s the one you are going to see.664 ¶17

Well, where is he now? He’s within you. “He put eternity into the minds of men. Yet so that men cannot find out what he has done from the beginning to the end.” That’s what he put into the mind of men. That’s what he put there, the Father and the Son.664 ¶18

God himself entered death’s door, the human skull. And he laid down in the grave, the human skull. And he is dreaming the dream of life that man is dreaming. And in the end, he will awake. And when he awakes, he is the being in whom he ended, the being in whom he awakes. So, you are John, he awakes as you. And because he was a father before he entered you, when he awakes as you, you are a father. And because his son, before he entered you was David, when you awake, your son is David. David of Biblical fame is the son of God. That’s the Messiah. That’s the Christ. That’s the power under wisdom of God. So, within you is that power, within you is that wisdom to do anything that you desire in this world.664 ¶19

So, this is the faith of which I speak. How do I do it? You can sit right here and you go to bed at night. As you’re told in the 4th Psalm, “Commune with your own self, upon your bed and be silent.” You don’t commune with another. You commune with your own self— that’s God. For the self of man is God. When you say I am, that’s God, there is no other God, but you don’t see him.664 ¶20

Now, he is becoming visible. The darkest night in the world was when God became invisible. He told the story to all of us before we set forth, then he became invisible and took up his residence in us. He became invisible and in us he is, I am—my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. So, I don’t see my imagination but I see objects in space. For imagination is the reality that is causing these objects in space. So, I see the fruits of its activity, but I do not see it because it is invisible.664 ¶21

The day will come, I will see it. I have seen it. He is the Ancient of Days just as described in the seventh chapter, the book of Daniel, and also in the book of Revelation, just as he described: he has no beginning, no end. He is the Ancient of Days. But he’s Infinite Love, there’s nothing but love. Yet he will wait on us just as swiftly and as indifferently when the willing up is evil as when it is good. For it is he who does all things. He said, “I kill, I make alive; I wound; I heal. I do all these things and none can deliver out of my hand.” So, if the willing man is evil, he will execute it; if he is good, he will execute it—because there is no other creator. So, it’s entirely up to man, what he imagines. What am I going to imagine? But remember when I imagine, I must imagine, and then completely yield. That is faith.664 ¶22

For by faith, we understand that the world was created by the word of God. What word? A spoken word? You’re told in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God; was God himself and his son—and his son is David. I have found in David, a man after my own heart, who will do all my will, any will, good, bad, or indifferent, is that power in you for he is defined in Scripture as the power of God and the wisdom of God. So, the power and the wisdom to create anything in this world are housed within man. That is David. When man comes to the end of the journey, there’s an explosion within his head and then that power and that wisdom of God comes out personified as that eternal youth, who is his son. His son is David. And you are the one who awakes and you are the Lord.664 ¶23

The Lord called Jesus. So, who is Jesus? An eternal question. I read in the morning’s paper, rather yesterday morning’s paper, that the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke, the first Archbishop ever to speak at St. Patrick’s in New York City. And the Cardinal introduced him. He had a standing ovation, they turned the crowds away. The Cathedral was filled to capacity. And this Archbishop of Canterbury, he spoke to the crowd and he went up to Riverside Church and he spoke there. He had seen in the interval, he saw Jesus Christ Superstar; well, I haven’t seen the play. And he commented on it. He didn’t quite describe it. He said, at intervals, it comes close to a certain Christian faith. There are certain passages in it he thought offensive, but they did not say who is Jesus.664 ¶24

Neither did he, the archbishop; he didn’t say, who is Jesus? Who is Jesus? I’ll tell you.664 ¶25

Jesus is the man in whom the will of God is fulfilled. And that will be true of every child born of a woman. Jesus is the man who accomplishes the work that his father gave him to do. And when he accomplishes that work, he is his Father. Man matures when he becomes his own father. And the day will come, everyone will awake, and he will be the Father.664 ¶26

And that is when he fulfills the will of God as we are told in Jeremiah, the 23rd chapter. The word is wrongly translated, anger. “The anger of the Lord will not turn back.” That word, anger means breathing forcefully, a forceful breath. It doesn’t have to be an angry breath because you’re breathing forcefully. The word breath and the word spirit are the same in both Hebrew and Greek. So, the spirit of the Lord will not turn back until it has executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days, you’ll understand it clearly. From the very end, you’ll understand, he will not turn back because he has a purpose. The purpose is to transform man into God. As God, not something just to reflect him, but as God.664 ¶27

So, you came down, you are the Gods that came down. You are the Elohim. You’ve been taught to believe you’re a worm. You came out of the swamp and then suddenly you became a tadpole and you became something else. And finally, you find yourself a man—forget it. You are the Gods who came down from heaven and assume the restriction, the limitation of man, this is the limit of contraction and you assumed it. And you are going to fulfill a definite purpose in man. While you walk the earth as man that predetermined plan will erupt within you. And the whole thing will unfold within you, beginning with the resurrection.664 ¶28

The resurrection did not take place in the Near East in some little place where they’re looking for it now. It takes place in man. Man is where God is buried. The Holy Sepulcher is the skull of man. It’s not in the Near East. The Bethlehem that they are talking about is in the skull of man. Zion, the holy place, where he dwells—that’s the skull of man. And the whole drama unfolds within man. And man awakens within himself to find himself completely sealed within his skull. And he comes out like a child being born out of his own skull. And then a few months later comes an explosion in his skull and that compartment that contains the Son of God, who in his will, who in his wisdom, releases the Son. You would not let my soul remain in hell, said he, in the 16th Psalm. So, he brings him up. He resurrects his Son and the Son is David. And David, looking at the Father, and the Father for the first time knows who he is, memory returns. And the Son was the one who revealed him to himself. So, the whole drama unfolds within man. And the whole thing is contained within the skull of man; has nothing to do with anything on the outside.664 ¶29

They’re looking in vain, all the archaeologists, and they bring back all this nonsense. I was on TV one night with one archaeologist and then a Baptist minister and a Seventh Day Adventist minister. And here I am, all these groups around me, and this man brought a piece of cloth. And he said, “This is taken from the tomb of Christ.” I said, “Are you kidding?” “No,” he was sincere, he was very serious. He’s an archaeologist. “This is where, in some strange way, light has impressed upon it, this cloth, the image of Jesus.” I said, “You are an archaeologist.” And he was brought there with a Seventh Day Adventist and here’s the other fellow, he is a Baptist, and I have no degrees. None of these things that these fellows have. I said to the archaeologist, “Tell me, do you look like that picture?” He said, “No, that’s the picture of Christ.” But don’t you know Scripture? “It does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him and shall see him as he is.” Do you look like him? You’ll never see Christ save you’ll see him in yourself. You are the Lord, Jesus Christ. The Baptist then said, “ you’ve just taken from me 2,000 years of Christianity.” I said I can take it from you, I should. Because if it’s true, I can’t take it from you. And if I have taken it from you, well, then it’s good I’ve taken it from you.664 ¶30

He didn’t like that. All this nonsense, this piece of cloth, mind you—well that’s what our great writer said, Mark Twain. He went across Europe. Now, as he traveled, they brought pieces of cloth. This was taken from his robe and this, the piece of wood that was taken from his cross. He said, if you took all the wood together, it could build a huge house. And that was the cross he bore on his shoulder on the way to Golgotha. Take all the little pieces of cloth together. They could actually clothe an army, and people fall for it. Can you imagine that? They’re looking at the holy cloth, holy piece of wood. There is nothing outside of man. The whole drama takes place within man. He has nothing to do with anything outside. You’re living in a world of shadows and the drama is within.664 ¶31

So, let us now get back to this simple approach of faith. Do you know what you want either for yourself or for another? Construct a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your dream; just construct it. Enter into it just as though it were true. Feel what it would feel like if it were true. And give thanks to the one who is going to execute it. It’s your own being, I grant you, but he is the depth of your own being. He is the Father. You haven’t yet found him, but he is the Father.664 ¶32

And you are now on the surface of your being, so fall asleep in the conviction that things are as you desire them to be in confidence that he will execute it. I use the word he, it’s yourself. But for clarity’s sake, I say he, because you’re not aware of him as yet. You will be one day. Everyone will be aware of their being. And because that being has one son and that one son is the son of all, we are one. There’s only one. There aren’t millions of gods, only one God; but the one God is made up of brotherhood and we are the brothers, raising ourselves to the level of the one God. And that one God has one son and the son is David.664 ¶33

And I’ve been sent to tell you this and tell you I will and must. If only a few hear it, what does it matter? You hear it with conviction because I tell you the truth; they will laugh. I am not here to set up some little “ism.” I am not here to speculate and try to set up some little philosophical setup that may work. No, I want no church, no “ism.” Just to tell you who you are.664 ¶34

And you will tell it to others and others will tell it because, in the end, you’re going to prove it to be true. You can’t rub it out because it is true. All that I have told you is true. I’m not speculating. I’m not theorizing. I stood in the presence of the Infinite Being and Infinite Love. And he embraced me. And he sent me, after he embraced me. Therefore, love embraced me. Therefore, guided by love. We became one body. As we are told in Scripture, he who is united in the Lord becomes one spirit with him. So, in the end, there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all.664 ¶35

So don’t go looking for him in any so-called holy place in the world. People are misled morning, noon, and night by so-called holy men—forget it. Man comes to you telling you he is a holy person, turn around, and start running. All these holy fellows, they just simply meet you and meet another crowd, and next thing they do, they run to the bank. What was in your pocket? Just pick that one fellow here, he is flying off to Switzerland. He was in Spain after having collected a fortune. They found $300,000 on him. And he was at the Maharishi that came up through this country; it wasn’t the Maharishi, it was his secretary running off to Switzerland where you’ll put it into your Swiss bank. And all the people fall for it, morning, noon, and night. And so, if you’re taken over, you hate to hear it because people hate to know that others know they were beguiled. And so those who gave their fortunes to him, $500 to teach them how to meditate, of all the nonsense in the world.664 ¶36

Teach you how to meditate? It’s just a simple, simple thing. You don’t meditate on your navel. You don’t meditate on any of these things whatsoever. You know what you want. What would the feeling be like if it were true? What would it be like? Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Well, anyone can do that. A child can do that. What would it be like if it were true? That’s meditating. Now yield completely and the being within you will take that and externalize it for you. Meditating on your kundalini and all this nonsense. It hasn’t a thing to do with it.664 ¶37

And going into so-called diet. Diets will not commit you or commend you to God. He gave you a palette, didn’t he? Well then, exercise the palette, too. And so, I’m going to go on a certain diet. A friend of mine went on the diet of things that you should only feed parrots, but she isn’t a parrot. Eating pumpkin seeds, eating all these things. If you really enjoy them. But don’t tell me that you really enjoy them. Of course, you could acquire a taste for anything. I don’t. So, you can’t. But exercise that God-given gift: it’s a palette, and simply enjoy it.664 ¶38

So, to come down to the night’s message on faith. By faith, the worlds were created by the word of God. Faith does not give reality to the unseen things. Faith is loyalty to unseen reality. For this thing exists. All things exist. I tell you of my own experience that the entire world that is unseen to this world exists now, it actually exists, not out there beyond the stars, right here. It’s all existing right here. And the day will come that you will actually awake and you’ll be able to step into these unnumbered sections of time. A thousand years ago has not passed away. And two thousand years from now is not something that is going to suddenly form itself, it is now. And you are simply in a section of time. And the day will come when you’ll be able to move into any section of time. All these things exist now. And the purpose of it all is simply to awaken. And when you awaken, who are you? You are the author of it all. You are God, God the creator. And God, the creator is a Father. And the Father-Son is simply the sum total of all the experiences of humanity, fused into a single being and that single being personified is David.664 ¶39

There is no other Christ. David is the Christ. The anointed. Listen to these words in the 89th Psalm, “I have found David.” These are the words of the Lord speaking. “I have found David. With my holy oil I have anointed him.” The anointed one is the Messiah. That’s what the word Messiah means. And Messiah means the same as Christ; it’s the identical meaning. Now go down a few verses and come to these: “He shall cry unto me.” That’s future. What I just quoted is an accomplished fact. “I have found David. With my holy oil, I have anointed him.” That’s done. Now, “He shall cry onto me, thou art my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” That’s future. It will happen to everyone, but the whole thing has already been accomplished. Now it’s completely contained within the skull of man. That’s where the whole drama is unfolding. And when it unfolds, you are God the Father and your son is David.664 ¶40

If the whole vast world rose in opposition because they were taught differently, it will make no difference to me whatsoever. They have accepted some mis-concept of the great story, as told in Scripture. The New Testament only interprets the Old. The Old is the foundation. The New interprets the Old. Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism. But Judaism is the foundation, that is the tree. And Christianity is the fruit of that tree. And so, to bring something else into it is stupid. Where in the Old, which is the tree, it is stated who is the son of God, and Scripture cannot be broken. And who is the one who is anointed with the holy oil of God? Is it not David? Rise and anoint him. This is he. “And then the spirit of God came upon him mightily, from that day forward, never lost a battle. For I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart.” And Jesse means Jehovah exists. Everyone one day will know he is the Father of David, therefore, he is the Jehovah who exists. That is what Scripture is teaching. It is not secular history. Until a man stops looking at it as secular history, he is not going to understand the Scripture.664 ¶41

But to come back to our wonderful approach tonight. You want a better job? You want more money? You want this, you want that? Don’t be ashamed of it. Who gave you the urge? Your Father did. You have the desire. It came from the depth of your own being so he can execute it. He only asks you to have faith. Faith in what? Faith in him. Have faith in God. All right, where is he? He’s my own wonderful human imagination. I cannot see the fulfillment now, but he will do it, for now assume that I am already the man that I want to be and yield completely to that assumption and fall asleep, just completely fall asleep and completely forget it.664 ¶42

A lady who is here tonight, she called me up on the phone here just a few days ago and asked something of me. I will not tell you, it’s too personal. But she asked me to please pray for a certain thing. It’s so simple. I sat in my chair after I spoke to her on the phone and heard her tell me, but she came back tonight and told me. Yet it has happened. She is here, she’s seated here tonight, drove all the way from San Bernardino to tell me the story. And it simply worked.664 ¶43

What did I do? It didn’t cost me anything. Are we not told in the 55th chapter of Isaiah, “come buy wine, buy milk, without money”—cost you nothing. What does it cost anyone to have faith in God? Why put a price on it? Why charge anyone? It costs nothing.664 ¶44

I think you’ll find tonight an interesting night, for we are taking ends, the ultimate end and then the temporary ends. For it is the end that gives meaning to all that goes before. The Psalmist said, “Lord, let me know my end and the number of my days.” We read, “Fear not, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom of Heaven.” That’s the ultimate end. In giving you the Kingdom of Heaven, he gives you himself, for you can equate heaven with God. God is able to give himself to all of us, to each of us. And the gift comes suddenly and without warning, after the tribulation of human experience. He said, “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 profaned? My glory, I will not give to another.” And when we read the story in the book of Exodus, we see that glory and God are equated: “I’ll make my glory to pass before you. And when I pass by, so the I and glory are synonymous.” He cannot give himself to another. So, the furnaces are simply to change man into himself. He became as I am, that I may be as he is. And so, I pass through the tribulation of human experience and then the end comes suddenly. The event comes in unique and unpredictable ways.673 ¶1

Man thinks you can discover the way without having experienced it; you can’t do it. For when you experience it, listen to the words carefully now, taken from the 48th chapter of Isaiah, the third verse: “The former things I declared, although they went forth from my mouth, I made them known. Then suddenly I did them and they came to pass.” Now here, the one proclaiming what is going to be done, his intention; but no one could fulfill it. He had to fulfill it himself. So, if he would give me himself, he has to fulfill it in me. So, when this unpredictable, unique event takes place, it takes place in the first person, single tense, in me. And it comes suddenly without warning. So, when I actually experience the gift of God to me, it isn’t someone on the outside giving me something; he rises within me, and rising within me, he gives himself to me. Then I know who I am.673 ¶2

And he set the entire thing out for us in his word. If I have heard, undoubtedly you have heard too. You’ve heard preachers claim that they met Jesus and they’re waiting for him to return. I know I have heard them. I dare say you have; if you haven’t actually heard them as I did, then you read their words, claiming that they actually met him in spirit. And then you ask them, and they are going to tell me who is Jesus and they’ll reply, well, Jesus is the Son of God. Then you can say to them, if you know Scripture, if you met him and you saw him and you say he is the Son of God, well, then you must be God. They’ll be startled, shocked, and think that you are blaspheming. And yet we are told that no one knows the Son except the Father, for if they know him and they met him, they must be the Father. If they met him, and they claimed they met him, well, then they must be God the Father. I can tell you, you can say right into their face, you are a liar; some grand hallucination, because you cannot meet him from without. When you know God, you know him through his Son and you want me to know him through Jesus. Jesus is the Father and David is the Son. When you meet David, you know that he is your Son and because he is God’s Son, then you know who you are. And there’s no other way to know God. It’s the only way; it comes in unique and unpredictable ways, the entire story of Scripture.673 ¶3

So, “The former things I declared are old, they went forth from my mouth and I made them known when suddenly I acted and they came to pass.” Read it in the 40th chapter of Isaiah and the word Isaiah simply means, Jehovah says. It’s the same meaning as the word Jesus. The same meaning as the word Jehovah. Jehovah is salvation. Jesus means Jehovah is salvation. The word Jesus and Jehovah are interchangeable terms. No one can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit. And who is the Holy Spirit? The remembrancer. He will bring to your remembrance all that I have said unto you. So, when it comes, then all of a sudden it awakens within you. He told you what he will do. He’s going to give himself to you. It is his purpose in life. His intention is to give himself to all of us, but to each of us, not collectively, but to each of us, he comes to us individually. And when he comes, he isn’t coming from without. He is coming from within for he is buried within and he rises within.673 ¶4

So here now we are facing a day, two weeks from today, I think it is, when they all celebrate. I shouldn’t use the word “celebrate” because it would be very sad about the day, because they do not know the day. It’s called crucifixion and they will simply remember the day. What day? 2,000 years ago? No, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. And one man fell and became fragmented into unnumbered beings, all sons, and then comes the great affliction, the great tribulation of human experience. And then he calls us back one by one. But when we return, we are the one who fell, who is God the Father. You’re raised from the level of the fragmented being called the Son into the level of God the Father, and he’s personified in Scripture as Jesus.673 ¶5

So, when someone tells you, I met him, I’ve gone on TV panels with ministers; they’ve brought on all kinds of pictures to show me, these ancient things concerning Jesus. Well, about thirty-five years ago, an artist friend of mine took me to the Metropolitan Museum, rather the Metropolitan Library on 42nd and 5th, the New York Library. He was a member and he took out forty-six pictures of Jesus, no two looked alike. They were simply personifications of the artists who painted them. There was the American Jesus, an open shirt, radiant blonde youth. Here came the Germanic Jesus, who would’ve enjoyed a lovely stein of beer. And here came the Italian with a sad face. Then the French, he could have winked his eyes at any passing girl. All these were Jesus personified by the artist who painted them. Yet, there were forty-six and he threw them on the screen and I looked at them for quite a long while. Forty-six, each claiming to be the Jesus as he appeared to them. And there are those who put them on the wall and think there is a picture of Jesus. I saw in yesterday’s paper, a coming TV show in the not-distant future, where the sculptor is going to actually show you how he sculpted the face of Jesus. And there’ll be millions, if they have that vast an audience, who will believe it and possibly buy one of these things and stick it on the wall, too. That’s not Jesus. You will never know him unless he reveals himself through the Son and the Son is David. And when David comes into your world, you instantly know, it instantly comes to pass; listen to the words, “I made it known to man, suddenly I acted and it came to pass.” It’s a sudden act all within you.673 ¶6

No preparation whatsoever. It comes without preparation, without any warning whatsoever. And suddenly when he appears, you know who you are, that you are the Lord Jesus. But no loss of identity. If your name is John, it’s John, but you know, you are God, the Father of that Son. If he is God’s Son, then you must be God, because he is your Son and you know that you are his Father and he knows that you are his Father. And there’s no other way of discovering God in this world.673 ¶7

You can do all the holy things in the world if you think holy. Someone came the other night for the first time; he asked me after the meeting if I knew a certain esoteric society and I told him, I’m not a joiner, I don’t join any kind of society. I’m not a member of any club. So, he told me about this esoteric society, where if you are a member and then you’ll be born from above and the seed must remain in you. I said you can sit on that seed from now to the end of time. And if you are not born literally from above, you are going to have night explosions and you’ll think you are doing God a favor. No, until that is turned around, suddenly without any warning on your part, you can have all the diets in the world, take all the saltpeter in the world, take all these things and you aren’t going to stop the normal flow of that energy going down into generation. And when it’s reversed into regeneration, you do nothing about it. You lose all interest in that impulse, the impulse is gone, and you’ve lost nothing. In the world of generation, it is part of living, but in the world of regeneration, you are above the organization of sense. It means nothing to you. You love them all equally, but you have no urge whatsoever to indulge in that which you wanted so badly when you were turned down into generations. Well, I don’t think I persuaded him one iota. He is going to actually become a holy man by restraining the impulse. Well, after all, the man’s my age, he should. I mean nature should have outlawed it by now. However, it doesn’t work that way.673 ¶8

All these wonderful things that you read in Scripture, and these are the word of God, but they’re only shadows. These are the shadows of reality. And when reality takes place, it is so unlike what the shadow appears to be. When you read the story of the serpent being lifted up on the tree or the trunk of the tree or the staff, and you think that someone called Moses took a serpent, a fiery serpent or a brazen serpent, and lifted it up with a staff, and all who looked upon it were cured, were healed. No, that was the shadow when it actually happens to you. Now listen to the words. We are told that on this day when he rose, when they crucified him and then he rose, that the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom, the curtain of the temple. And you think of some temple, some cathedral, some synagogue. Now listen to these words: “You are the temple of the living God, and the spirit of God dwells in you.” If you are the temple, well then, the curtain of the temple must be you or at least a part of you. So, if the curtain of the temple is going to be split in two from top to bottom, when that event becomes alive within you, it has to be you. And I’m telling from my own experience, it is you. And it comes suddenly and without warning and your body is split in two from top to bottom. And at the base of your spine is a golden liquid, pulsing living light. And as you contemplate it, you know, it’s your very self and you fuse with it. And then like a fiery serpent, you rise.673 ¶9

The entire thing is reversed. The fire that went down into generation is now reversed into regeneration. And who did it? Well, you said, but I experienced it. So, it’s all now in the first person singular. So, listen to the statement again from 48th Isaiah: “The former things I declared arose. They went forth from my mouth. I made them known.” It’s all in the first person, I, I, I. “Then I acted and they came to pass.” Well, who is acting? Who actually did the feeling? Well, I did. Who ascended? Well, I ascended. Who fused with the light? Well, I did. Who was split in two? Well, I was split in two. It’s all in the first person. That’s how God actually gives himself to man.673 ¶10

For God is the “I” of man. When you say, “I am” that’s God. There is no other God. But he sleeps in man and man is totally unaware of the true God. When you hear the word, God, or you hear the word Jesus or the word Jehovah, the word Lord, and in some strange way, the mind jumps out to something other than the “I” of yourself, you have a false god. If you ever hear the word Lord and you think of something external to self, you don’t have the right Lord. If it in any way conjures some feeling, something that exists external to you, then get back to Scripture and try to find out who he is, for he is buried in you. You are the spirit of God and the spirit of God dwells in you. You are the temple of the Lord and the spirit of the Lord dwells in you. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless of course, you fail to meet the test. If he is in me, then what am I doing looking on the outside? When I hear the word, Jesus, am I going to think of someone on the outside to come today, tomorrow, or maybe a thousand years from now? I’ve got the wrong Jesus. Then who is the Christ? His Son, Christ, is the Son of God. Well, then who is he, if Jesus is not? He is David. He’s the Lord’s anointed. Did David not call him in the spirit, my Lord, my God, my Father? So, when you hear any priest or any minister or any rabbi speaking of the Lord on the outside, bear in mind, they do not know the Lord. They do not know him. If you knew him, you would only think in terms of the I am within you. That’s where he is buried.673 ¶11

Now we promise you to take it to a practical level also. The ultimate end is God is giving himself to you individually. And when you are awake, you are God. And there is no other God. But now we are told to imitate God as dear children until that gift is given. It comes at the end of human tribulations. But until I’m finished with the furnaces, and how long and how vast and how severe the furnaces, here I find the Father. And how long to tell, but he will try me by the furnaces for his own sake because he cannot give his glory to another. But when he gives it, it’s going to happen suddenly and without warning.673 ¶12

And then suddenly you’ll know because the Holy Spirit returns and the Holy Spirit is simply memory returning. For he told the entire thing to us before the foundation of the world. When we came down, we were told in the beginning, but when we came down into the world of complete forgetfulness, we forgot it. But when it returns, memory returns after complete and total amnesia and then we know exactly who we are. But we know individually because you are unique. Although we are one, still you are individualized, and not in eternity will you be other than the individualized being. Yet, we are one, have the same Son and we are the same Father, but you are individualized as John, I am individualized as Neville. And this individuality tends toward greater and greater individualization, forever and forever. That’s the story.673 ¶13

But if I must imitate him as a dear child, and that’s how he does it, now, let me now know my end, now. I do not mean the end of which he just spoke; I mean, a temporary end. I want to be successful, a man will say, or the girl will say, well, I want to be happily, happily married. And I want him to be successful and I want to live graciously in my world. Well, that’s an end. Go to the end. View the world from that end. Don’t think of it. If you think of it, you are not in it. I must actually occupy the end. Go to the end and view the world from that end. Now act in it. How would it be if it were true? What would the feeling be like if it were true? For this is simply taking the end and drenching it in feeling. I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and I drench myself with that feeling; then I open my eyes and the world denies it. It doesn’t really matter. Let me remain faithful to that end. And then it will come just as suddenly.673 ¶14

But strangely enough, I’m going to pass through, it may be not severe tribulations, but I will pass through certain trials, certain heartbreaks, and certain delays that I can’t quite understand; but when I reach the end, and the end comes suddenly upon me and the whole thing is fulfilled, I will see it was all in order. Everything was in order.673 ¶15

My own disappointments in my world led up to whatever I am doing today. When the teacher in my school, I could ill afford the $500 that my father gave me to go to this small school in New York City, and she made me the goat. She called me out before an audience of about forty students. And she said, “Now listen to him speak. He will never earn a living using his voice.” She should not have done that, but she did it—but she didn’t know the kind of person that she was talking about. Instead of going down into the grave and burying my head in shame, I was determined that I would actually disprove her. It did something to me when she said to me, “you will never earn”—to the class, using me as the guinea pig to show them what not to do—and so, she said, I spoke with a guttural voice and I spoke with this very heavy accent, and I will never use my voice to earn a living.673 ¶16

But I do not know what the others are doing. I haven’t heard of them. And there is not a thing wrong with selling shirts for Macy’s. You can use your voice there, too. And I dare say most of them wound up selling groceries or something. I met one of them and he was selling groceries at Macy’s. And he said, “Neville, what do you do?” So, I said, “I talk on the Bible.” “You talk on the Bible—are you a minister?” I said, “No, I’m not a minister. I simply talk on the Bible from having experienced the Bible.” Well, I do not know what they do, if they’re still in this world, but I don’t think one of them ever earned a living using his voice unless he was selling groceries as this one chap I know, he sold groceries. We all went to this school and this teacher simply singled me out to make some little, well, exhibition of what I should not be doing in class.673 ¶17

But I went home and I was so annoyed that I had lost my father’s $500 or $600 that he gave me for the six-months course, but I was determined that she was false, that she was wrong. So, I went to the end. I went to the end and actually felt that I was facing an audience and unembarrassed that I could talk and talk and talk forever without notes, no notes. And so, class came to an end and I left. She was convinced, and maybe they were convinced, it doesn’t matter what they do. It’s what I do. So, others may be convinced. It doesn’t really matter. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out. Maybe I needed that joke at that moment in time.673 ¶18

And so, I went through the different tribulations and finally, I found myself doing what I always wanted to do, to tell the story as it happened to me in my vision. I was having all these visions and they were related—and yet how to do it?673 ¶19

So, the first night I started, I think six people came. I paid three dollars for the hall and they all came. I sat down, I wore a tux for the occasion and I sat down and spoke for ten minutes and dried up. And I asked them to ask me questions. So, they did, very graciously, they were all friends. I sent out fifty penny postcards—in those days, you could send a card for a penny—sent out fifty and six came. And out of, well, sympathy each gave a dollar bill. So at least I paid $3 for the room and I made $3. And that was my beginning.673 ¶20

And then it grew from three to ten to twenty. And one night when I had about fifty, a man in the building saw me growing and growing and growing. And he thought he would put a stop to it. And he was going to one of these New Thought conventions in Washington, D.C. And so, he asked me to take his platform and he had a very large audience of about 500. He thought that would throw me. And so, I accepted his generous offer. I learned afterward his purpose was to simply get me out of the place. He thought I would simply make a monkey of myself before a vast audience who were trained differently. Unfortunately for him, and fortunately for me, the next time I spoke, my room couldn’t take them. I had to move several times in six months. And then I moved to an old church, attracted 1,100. So, you see, he thought he was going to hurt me. As Scripture teaches, “You meant evil, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” So, I got his audience.673 ¶21

And then about three years later, for some little infraction of the laws of New York City, they put him away for a couple of years. And when he came out, he asked me if I would speak for him, and I said, yes, without one penny, I will willingly speak for you. Because no one else would speak for him. They cut him off completely and said no. You don’t realize how good you were to me, and so, I will speak for you. And I went up and I spoke for him without taking one penny. And then he couldn’t get going again. And then he and his secretary got into his car, turned on the ignition, closed up all things, and called it a day.673 ¶22

But you see you go through these things and that moment they seem to be against you. And they’re all for you. If you remain faithful to the end. So, let us be imitators of God, as their children. So, then we are told I was not ungrateful. I was not, I will say, forgetful of the divine image. I remained faithful to it. If I remain faithful to it, let anything happen, and then say within yourself, you meant evil against me but God meant it for good.673 ¶23

And I can go back in my own family. When people tried to take from my father the little equity that he had in the business, and we thought the world came to an end on that day, for he had a large family, and how to feed them? How to support them? Ten children, your wife, yourself, your mother-in-law, and the few servants that we had. And no one would come to see him because they weren’t quite sure that the accusation might be true. And that, on reflection, was the turning point in the family’s fortunes. So, from being a minor partner, having very small equity in the business, he turned around without partners and then transcended the wildest dream of the family. And that was the turning point. He kept his vision. He knew he hadn’t done a thing that was wrong. He kept his vision concerning what he wanted in life and what he wanted for the family.673 ¶24

So, if you have a vision, and by vision, I mean, a daydream. What would you like to be in this world? Do you know it? Just what would you like to be? How would you like things to be in your world? Well, that’s a vision. Well, now remain faithful to it. Tomorrow you may be given a severe blow and you may interpret that as being a setback. Time will prove it was a turning point in your fortune. Everything will add up towards the fulfillment of your dream if you remain faithful to that vision.673 ¶25

It’s all in your own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. God actually became, as I am, as you are, that you may be as he is. And he takes upon himself all the weaknesses of man. But we say, well, God doesn’t suffer, but now I ask you a question. If you are in pain, are you in pain? And you will say to me, yes, I am. But that’s his name. God’s name. He has no other name. That’s who he is. So, you say, I am in pain. I am embarrassed. I am unwanted. That’s God’s name. He’s doing all the suffering because he goes through life with you, as you, until one day, he reveals that he is you. It is God and God alone playing all the parts in the world. There’s nothing but God.673 ¶26

If God did not become as I am, I couldn’t breathe. He’s my breath. But he doesn’t limit me to my wishes. He doesn’t limit me to my outlook on life. He plays all the parts. He waits on me just as quickly and as indifferently when the will in me is evil as when it is good. And therefore, he subjects himself to all the things in my world. God is like pure imagining in you, in me, in every being in the world. So, you imagine, all right, that’s God. And he waits on us because we imagine this, that, and the other.673 ¶27

Now, you know this—go to the end, a noble end, a successful end in your world. All right, having seen it clearly in your mind’s eye what would the feeling be like if it were true? Drench yourself in that feeling. Now tomorrow, you may be disappointed; don’t expect it tomorrow. It may come tomorrow. When it comes, it’s going to come suddenly and unexpectedly. But remain faithful to the end. And all the little things will happen in your world that will seem to deny it. They’re adding up to it. Everything will add up toward that.673 ¶28

I am telling you from my own experience. There’s nothing but God in the world. He’s playing all the parts. The most horrible part and the noblest part. He’s playing all the parts. And no one is greater than you are because no one is greater than God. Let no one pull any rank on you. No one is greater than God. You have a background that goes back to God. It’s not a physical background. You’re not a horse. If I’m breeding horses, I want to know their background, but you are not a horse. You’re not breeding pigs. You’re not breeding sheep. You are simply the unfolding of God. And there is nothing but God.673 ¶29

Let anyone challenge it. And if he wants me to go to the Bible to support my claims, I’ll go with him to the Bible, and then I’ll find the passage just suited or the argument he is trying to present. So, when they tell me, I met Jesus and I say, you met him? What did he look like? And they begin to paint a word picture of him. Now tell me who is he? Well, he’s the Son of God. He’s the Son of God. Well, then you must be God. So, do you not know in the 11th chapter of the book of Matthew that no one knows the Son except the Father? And you say, you know the Son and you’ve seen him, but if you’ve seen the Son, well, then you must be the Father for no one knows him but the Father. Now listen to these words: “No one has ever seen God but the only Son who is dearest to his heart, he has made him known.” That’s the first chapter, the 18th verse of John. So, if now you say you’ve seen him, well I tell you, if you have seen God, then you must have been named the Son for no one has ever seen God, except his only Son who is dearest to his heart. And he has made him known. You’re either Christ the Son or you are Jesus the Lord. One or the other. Yet they are one. One reflects the other. The Son, not only radiates but reflects the glory of God and bears the express image of his person. So, when you look into the face of the Son, he is the eternal youth and you, the Ancient of Days, and you’re one, he reflects your glory and your glory is simply, I am.673 ¶30

So, I tell you, the greatest book in the world is the most misunderstood book. When he said I’ve declared these things of old, but they were shadows. All these were shadows of the reality. And when he himself comes into the world and fulfills his own declaration, then his shadow world rejects him, it’s not what they were expecting. So, we are told they rejected him. “He came unto his own and his own received him not.” They could not accept it because they were looking for some man on the outside to be a savior.673 ¶31

No one on the outside is going to save you. God and God alone is savior. Listen to the words of the 43rd and the 45th chapter of Isaiah: “I am the Lord, your God, the holy one of Israel, your savior. And beside me, there is no savior.” I am he—not a being on the outside, talking to you. I’m speaking from within you, your own wonderful, I amness. That is the Lord, God Jehovah. That is your savior. And beside him, there is no savior. And when he reveals himself to you and completely unfolds himself within you, it’s because he has brought the only one in the world that could reveal him as you. And that is his Son and his Son is your Son. If his Son is your Son, then you and he are one. So that is the story.673 ¶32

So, the end gives meaning to all that goes before. If I only know the end, for the end is, it is God’s purpose to give himself to me as though there were no others in the world, just God. Just self, and not two, just one. He broke down the barrier of partition between us and now we became one. So, he cleaved to me, his emanation, yet his life until the sleep of death was passed. And when the sleep of death was passed, then I awoke, and I awoke as the Father and that is God the Father, and there is no other.673 ¶33

Now, tonight you have your wonderful dreams. Dream nobly. You want to be happily married. You want to be financially successful. You want to be known in your chosen work. All these things are but dreams. And if you know the Law, you can dream them and make them come into this world. And when they come, they’re going to come suddenly. Just without any warning whatsoever, they happen suddenly. Not even a little foreshadowing, just suddenly it will appear. I know in my own case, these events one after the other, I had no inkling, but I slept that night, that this night a great event would take place and casting me in the central role.673 ¶34

So, we are told, and I acted, and it came to pass. I acted and it came to pass. And so, I didn’t see a being on the outside calling himself God. I awoke within my skull and found it to be a sepulcher. It was I who awoke, it was I who came out. It was I who found a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes. It was I who saw the three witnesses, bearing witness to the event that I had just experienced. It was I who heard the wind and the wind was like some storm. It was I who saw David, who revealed to me that I am his Father and he is my Son. It was I whose body was split in two from top to bottom. And it was I who actually looked upon that liquid golden living light, fused with it, and then like a fiery serpent rose into my own skull. And it was I on whom the dove descended and smothered me in kisses. It was all I, as you are told in that passage. Read it carefully, the 48th chapter, the third verse of Isaiah. The whole thing is centered in the first person, singular, not we but I. It’s unique. That’s the being that you are.673 ¶35

And all that has happened to me is going to happen to you, that you may know in the end that you and I are one. And we are the Father. Therefore, the Father is a compound unity, one made up of others. And that’s what the word Elohim, which we translate God in Scripture, is. It is a plural word. It’s a compound unity. And so, the very first time it appears in Scripture is the very first verse of Genesis. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” That word God translated, God is Elohim, plural. And God said, “Let us make man in our image”—after all like that word is plural, it’s Elohim. So, the Elohim is a compound unity, one made up of others. And we are the fragmented ones. Now we are called back into that unity. But when we are called back, we become the one, the Father. And there’s no way to reveal you as the one other than the Son, the only Son calling you Father. And you know it.673 ¶36

So, the Holy Spirit comes, the remembrance returns. So, say what you want about the Father, say what you want about the Son, all that’s forgiven, but the sin against the Holy Spirit is not forgiven. When remembrance returns, you couldn’t possibly deny it. So don’t be concerned. You will never in eternity deny it because memory has returned. So, there’s no possibility of sinning against the Holy Spirit. And you’ve heard all kinds of arguments. It means deviation in sex, all that nonsense. It hasn’t a thing to do with it. When memory returns from the total amnesia that you suffered, you can’t deny the being that you are. So, all the arguments about God and his Son, we’re told, all that is forgiven, but the sin against the Holy Spirit and who is the Holy Spirit? I will send you the comforter, the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of truth. And he will bring to your remembrance, all that you have heard from me. So, everything you heard before the world was, then the whole thing comes back and you’ll see who you really are.673 ¶37

So, I’m telling every person in the world who will listen, you are God the Father. And the day will come, and it will come suddenly and without warning, in the most unique, unpredictable way, and here you can’t deny it. And then when a little thing called death takes place, you’ve taken it off for the last time. And then you and I in the eternal world will be one in the most intimate sense and yet separate because we are individualized—and yet one.673 ¶38

It’s something that only you can experience when you are in that state. How can two bodies fuse and actually literally become one body? I have had that experience. Two fuse. You can take the most intimate embrace in this world, and yet they’re two. Now when I talk about, when you are embraced, you become one. He who is united to the Lord, becomes one spirit with him, you become one body with him, you become one with eternity—and yet you are individualized. “So, Lord, show me my end, tell me my end and the number of my days.” And he was told, it is not for you to know the day or the hour, only the Father knows. And when that moment in time comes, it will not be delayed, but you will not know the moment. It’s going to come suddenly and unexpectedly, and then your entire world has changed. No matter what you believe prior to that moment, everything has been rearranged within your mind. And then you go about your Father’s business and you are the Father. And what is your business? Trying to awaken everyone who is sleeping because that’s the Father, he’s buried in every child born of woman.673 ¶39

Tonight, if you know someone who is now up on trial for the most horrible crime, he still is the Father. And if you hear of some glorious person, he’s still the Father, not any more than the one on trial for his life. So, it’s all God and God is playing all the parts. And in the end when it comes down, you and I will understand why as the poet said, be patient, our playwright will show in some fifth act what this wild drama means. So, when you meet any person in this world, regardless of the pigment of the skin, regardless of their background, you are looking right at a mask behind which God hides his face.673 ¶40

I received a letter this week from a gentleman who attends the lectures: “Did I attend them? First of all, I love them. They make me feel so secure and peaceful and fulfilled. But it doesn’t last very long. The following day, I am full of doubts again. And I wonder why? So, you talked on prayer and you showed us how you would pray. Well, I applied that. But again, the prayer is erased by my doubts the following day.”668 ¶1

For those who were not here, here is a quick summary. The foundation is I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I. I am not inferior to my essential being called Father, but only in the office of the sent, but the sender and the sent are one. So, when I am sent into the world, I am restricted, I am wearing a garment of flesh and blood, depending on my senses, depending on my reasoning mind, which cannot fathom revealed truth. It has to depend upon the depth of its own being; for that which reason tells it, it cannot do. It must believe that all things are possible to that depth, that Father, that we call God. And if it is all possible, knowing I cannot do it on this level, I would do the normal, decent thing and give thanks to my own being for doing for me on this level what on this level I cannot do for myself.668 ¶2

But now the secret is how to keep that divine vision in time of trouble. When Paul said, “Oh, King Agrippa, I was not unfaithful to the heavenly vision.” He was not disobedient to it. He kept it, knowing from the depth of his own being, it would be done. Well, I say to him, it is not another spoken of in Scripture when Peter says, “If my brother sins against me, how often oh, Lord should I forgive him?” We’re living in an egocentric world. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out. It is not John over there, it is this; what St. Francis meant when he said, and on his deathbed, he asked the forgiveness of poor brother donkey. My body for all the hardships that I’ve caused it to suffer. This limited me; I must forgive it morning, noon, and night.668 ¶3

So, when the Lord answered, “70 times 7,” that does not mean 490 times. It means until my vision, which is 70, that is the “eye”. It’s an ayin. The symbol of the ayin is an eye, and 7 is a sword, until I fix it. So, it does not wander, it does not move from one place to the other. I am not disobedient to the divine vision. When I keep the divine vision, even in times of trouble and things are all denying that it could ever happen, He is working; the depth of my own being is working from the model. I supply the model. I want this, that, and the other. I dare to assume that I have it. Having assumed that I have it, it is entirely up to me to hold that model from which he works. He will externalize it in my world if I am faithful to the divine vision. That divine vision need not be some wonderful, heavily spiritual vision; it’s something based upon the world of Caesar; that’s the vision. It is not yet externalized, but I know what I want. I must hold it in my mind’s eye. And if tomorrow I wander, 70 times 7, remember you come back to the model because he is working from a model and the model is supplied by you on this level, in the capacity of the sent; you have been sent into this world.668 ¶4

Now I say to him, that’s what I would suggest to you, if you were here tonight, that you simply try to go back to the vision, because you became aware that you had wandered, not everyone is aware that he wandered. At least you are aware that you have wandered from it. You go back to it.668 ¶5

Now in the letter, he said, “The previous week it seemed to me that you were very critical of a multimillionaire in his eighties, who is now taking up yoga to extend his earthly days in this world. Do you mean he should have prayed instead?”668 ¶6

No, I don’t say he should have prayed instead. That was not my point. My point is this, that a man in his eighties, not a multimillionaire, he is a billionaire. A billionaire is one who has in excess of 1,000 million dollars, not a few million dollars. In any man’s language, a million dollars is an awful lot of money, but a billion is a thousand million and he still wants more, and he’s in his eighties; and to prolong his body, that he may gratify that hunger he’s taking up yoga. And he thinks he’s a very spiritual man, because he doesn’t eat certain foods and he doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke. So, he is a holy man in his own eyes. But I will say this for him, he cannot, by my saying to him, you should now change your attitude towards life and want the spiritual things of life; no, the hunger hasn’t come upon him. He has a hunger for Caesar’s dollars. And as long as that hunger remains, he has to gratify it. So, I’m not critical of it.668 ¶7

I use it only as an example, but I am fully aware of the fact that he has not yet had that hunger as you’re told in the book of Amos; the eighth chapter of Amos, the eleventh verse: “I will send a famine upon the earth. It will not be a hunger for bread nor a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.” Well, he doesn’t have that hunger.668 ¶8

So, at the age of 80-plus he still has a hunger for things in this world; but Scripture warns us in the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews and the sixth chapter of First Timothy: “Be free, let your life be free from the love of money. For the love of money is the root of all evils.” It didn’t say a few evils, all evils. You can trace it back to what money means to man. Money means power. All the wars in the world are economic wars. When man thinks that he can lead his nation into war and get more markets for his people, more of these things, it’s all economic. And so, if he thinks he can, he does it. And all wars are economic wars; they reach a certain point and they break forth into violence. But before wars come, it’s still an economic war, and it’s based upon the love of money.668 ¶9

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have money. I need money to pay rent. I need money to buy clothes, to buy food, and do the normal things of life. I’ll not deny that. But to fall in love with money and to want money for money’s sake is simply a false concept of power.668 ¶10

I am speaking of an entirely different power. And may I tell you all the power of this world is like a little firecracker compared to the power of which I speak. The day is coming when you’ll realize this power. It’s all within you. And you must arrest it. You’ll feel it within you and you will arrest it. And the whole vast world that you are perceiving will stand still. It’s absolutely still and dead. You can change its motivation while it’s still, and then release the power within you. And it will execute the change motivation and think it initiated the change. That’s power. There’s not a thing in the world comparable to such power, it’s all within a man. The day will come, man will have access to that power in that day, and he’ll know he is God.668 ¶11

So, I am not criticizing the man for wanting another billion. I use him only as an example, to present it to you who come here, that you are not on that track. I trust you are not. If you needed money, certainly ask for it. And then if you do not know how to bring it into your world, then give thanks to the depth of your own being, as you are told “commune with your own heart on your bed and be silent.” So, you commune in the sense, what would it be like if it were true? What would the feeling be like if it were true? Well, then you assume that feeling, you wear that feeling. That’s the vision. And then that forms a mold and the depth of your own being who is your Father, who is God, the ultimate God takes that mold, and from that mold, he externalizes it because he has ways and means that the surface mind knows not of. So that’s what I meant when I used this man as an example of it, but certainly not to criticize him.668 ¶12

You’re told, and this is Scripture, “I am from above, and you are from below.” He’s not speaking to another, he’s speaking to himself; he is speaking to this being down here, this thing. The being within me is speaking to this and it said, “I am from above and this is from below.” It was born from the womb of my mother, my earthly mother. This that is speaking when I say, “I am from above,” is born from above, out of my own skull. That means it is born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God. He who comes from above, he’s above all, we are told. He who comes from the earth belongs to the earth and of the earth he speaks. He who comes from heaven is above all. So, he equates the one coming from above with the one coming from heaven. You’ll read that in the 31st verse of the third chapter of John.668 ¶13

When you read the third chapter, jump from the 21st verse to the 31st and go on to the very end, the 36th verse, then go back to the 22nd verse and read through to the third. There was a break there, a dislocation of the manuscript. So read to the 21st and then go straight to the 31st and put those letters from the 31st to the end, in red letters. It’s all part of the same speech of the central figure. He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth, belongs to the earth and of the earth he speaks. He who comes from heaven, he is above all. Now he tells us that he speaks of that which he’s seen and heard, but no one receives his testament. He who does receive his testimony, he tells them they will put this seal to this: that God is true. The word is going to prove itself to be true in the individual, for he has come only now to fulfill that word.668 ¶14

He dictated these words in the depth of his own being and comes into this world and puts upon himself the limitations of the garment called flesh and blood to fulfill it while walking this earth. Fulfill it in spirit, fulfill it in himself. Now listen to the words. It’s not taking place on the outside. If I tell you, “I am Mary and birth to Christ must give, if I, in blessedness for now and evermore would live”—I mean that literally.668 ¶15

And let me see now what it is said in Scripture concerning Mary. The angel sent from the Lord appears to Mary and tells her the secret, our supernatural conception. That the power of the most high will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the son of God. Then Mary answers the angel and Mary said to the angel, rather, she’s now speaking to herself, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be to me, according to your word.” And then the angel departed from her. I am the handmaid of the Lord. In the hundred and sixteenth Psalm, the 16th verse, and it’s now David speaking, “Oh Lord, I am the servant, the son of thy handmaid.” He is the son of the handmaid and Mary claims, “I am the handmaid,” and she’s just been told that child will be born of her must be called holy the Son of God. A thousand years prior to that, if you take it chronologically, one declares, “I am the son of the Lord’s handmaid.” And his name is David.668 ¶16

I am not theorizing it; I have experienced it. And so, I’m telling you that it is David, and when it actually takes place in your world, who then is Mary? Did you not give birth to the Christ Child? I know I did. I held the child in my arms, and looked into his face and said, “How is my sweetheart?” And that heavenly smile broke upon its face. And then the whole thing dissolved. And then a few months later here comes the evidence; here is David, the one who said, “I am the son of thy handmaid.” Well, did he not come forth? Was it not pronounced by my brothers who were present, “It is Neville’s baby?” Well, if it is Neville’s baby, then I am Mary. I brought forth the Christ Child. And yet, why now is the son calling me father? Listen to the words carefully.668 ¶17

We are told in Genesis that a man must “leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife until they become one flesh.” A man, now, if he cleaves to his wife, he is her husband, is he not? He can cleave to a woman, but it may not be his wife, but the word is wife. The man leaves father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become one flesh. Now, in the 54th chapter of Isiah, your maker is your husband. The Lord of hosts is his name. The Redeemer of Israel is this one, the God of the whole earth he is called. But remember your maker is your husband.668 ¶18

We are so told of Eve, she came out as an emanation from man. Therefore, who is this man now but her husband and who is that husband, but God? So, the man, my man is my husband and that husband is God. Now, this is the emanation. “My emanation yet my wife till the sleep of death is passed.” Is not some woman in this world for male-female made he them and called their name, man. So here, whether you be male or female, this is the emanation of your maker and your maker is God. And he cleaves to you. You are not cleaving to him. It is he who cleaves to you until you become one. And what proof have I that you’ve become one? Christ is the son of the living God. If I bring forth the Son of the living God, well then, he has completed that union. For I am Mary then, for we are told that Mary is going to bring forth the Son of God. Well, if Mary brings forth the Son of God, you bringeth forth, after the cleavage has taken and they have become one, one body, one flesh, one spirit.668 ¶19

So here, the whole drama is unfolding itself within you as an individual. And when you see confusion in the world, it is only the confusion within you. When you see anything in the world, it is all taking place within you. It’s really a soliloquy. The whole vast drama is the unfolding of the mind of the individual. So, you are the one sent and you are the sender. In the capacity of the sent, you seem inferior to your essential being the sender, but do not forget, “I and my father are one and he who sees me, sees him who sent me.” If you see him who sent me then I am the sender.668 ¶20

And I’m telling you from my own experience, you are that very being who embraced you. He actually embraces you and you fuse, you become one. And when you see the Son, he is the image of the one who embraced you or when you were embraced by him, you felt you were one with him. He who is united to the Lord, becomes one spirit with him. So, in that union of you and the one who embraced you, you actually are the very image of that being. And David is the image of that being and you are that being, and it’s all done in spirit. It’s not done here in flesh at all.668 ¶21

In spite of all the arguments of the contrary, this belongs to the world of Caesar and many men of science and philosophy will accept as an explanation nothing that comes from beyond or above this world of nature. They will not. You can’t blame them. They see it here and they’ve done marvelous things with it. They confine themselves to things here that they can prove. But we confuse ourselves, deeply confuse ourselves, when we simply identify the wisdom that comes from above with this wonderful knowledge that comes from below. Knowledge is science and wisdom is revealed truth. And you cannot in any way prove it to anyone.668 ¶22

I can take the wisest man in the world who called himself the scientist and tell him what I’m telling you tonight. And the chances are he will go away and say, “The man is a little bit cracked. There’s no proof.” You can’t present the proof and he wants proof, well you can’t present the proof. There is no way of proving to anyone that the kingdom of heaven exists until you have entered it. There is no way of proving that God exists until you have the experience of God who exists. There’s no way of proving to another that the Christ Child is an eternal child, that David is eternal, that he represents, he is the sum total of humanity. He is the resultant state of all the experiences that man is capable of going through. You go into this world of man and play all the parts. And when you played all at the very end, the cleavage is taking place and he is the resulting state. He comes out as the Son of God who played the part.668 ¶23

But while he is playing it, he’s in the depths, molding your world in harmony with that mold that you offer him. But what mold am I offering him tonight? When I say I am and I put a name on it, that’s the mold I am offering him. If I say I am secure, I am blissfully happy, I am and I name it—that’s his name I’m calling. I am. And then I put the mold on it. Now, I must be faithful to that vision. That’s the vision, it’s not yet in the world. It’s a vision. And so, I must keep the vision in time of trouble and turn to him when I become aware that I’m not faithful; instead of wasting my time condemning myself for turning away, go back. He said, “Seventy times seven, you forgive your brother.” And this is poor brother donkey that God himself is riding.668 ¶24

In a few weeks’ time you’ll find all the churches decorated. There’ll be a donkey and they will have the Lord seated on it. And then have all these things moving up to the cross. And people will think that that actually took place on the outside. Now this body is the donkey that the Lord wears and I’m riding him and many a time, he has thrown me; many a time he’s turned aside. They’re very stubborn animals, do you know that? I used to take a donkey on the beach in Barbados. I had one special one and he had the capacity to stop on a dime. He could run as fast as lightning and stop on a dime, which meant you went about twenty feet over his head. But it was fun. You’re kids, you didn’t care. You never thought of consequences. You break your neck. You got on that beach, a nice wide beach. You got on that donkey. No halter, nothing, bare back. And often he would start and you are holding on and all of a sudden, bang, and Neville goes twenty feet in front of it. Sometimes you’ll come up, you have blood all over because the sand cut you. But it was fun. Go into the beach and wash it off and that’s all, hoping that the mother wouldn’t see it.668 ¶25

But that animal is a symbol of this body that you and I are wearing. It is called among the animals of the world, it is called one of the most salacious of animals. All through the West Indies, these men who are seeking public office, they go through with a donkey, a donkey in the open cargo, as a symbol of their virility. And of course, all these crazy people are howling and carrying on with them because he is a strong man. That’s a symbol, the donkey. But I tell you all these wonderful symbols are true, but don’t worship the symbol. The donkey is your wonderful body of flesh and blood and you have to be constantly in control of it, constantly taking care of it, and simply turning to the depth of your own being when on the surface self, you can’t do it.668 ¶26

So, when you are told “you are from below and I am from above,” don’t think some man feels himself superior to men, and he’s telling them that they’re below him. That’s not it at all. It’s the being within you that is from above. It is that being who will ascend; this being cannot. This being belongs to the earth and of the earth it speaks. But the being who came from heaven is the being who is from above; and the day will come because he and he alone descended, he and he alone will ascend. He will leave this world and ascend to himself from which he came. So, he tells us, “I am leaving the world and I am going unto my father. You’ll see me for a little while and then you’ll see me no more, for I am ascending unto him who sent me and you return, that very being.” But the being here is wearing a very restricted garment while he is here. And that garment is the form of a donkey. And that has been made to suffer through our mistakes in this world.668 ¶27

So again, I say to my friend, if you are here tonight, I had no intentions of criticizing anyone; I just use it as an example to show you that there’s something far, far greater in this world than the love of money. Far, far greater, as you are taught in Scripture, “Seek ye the kingdom of God and all these things will be added unto you.” Not because you’re going to have more and more homes. No, you’ll find you don’t need them. Not because you’re going to get more and more billions, you’ll find you don’t need them. And the day will come by eliminating all the nonsense in the world, you are freer and freer and freer. And people think by accumulating that they are freer and freer; it’s by simply eliminating the unnecessary things in this world.668 ¶28

If I bought everything that came to my door, I’d have to move out from a seven-room apartment into a fifty-room house. Only yesterday and today, a man tries to sell me now water, only five dollars a month, only five dollars a month. Yesterday someone tried to sell me the cable TV, well that’s only, I think, five dollars a month. Another day, another five dollars a month. You put it all together and finally you’re spending something like $200 on things you do not need, a month.668 ¶29

And these go on and on and on. But people are told through propaganda that you need them, you must have them. Must have what?668 ¶30

I once enjoyed a lovely, big $600 color TV set. Then it cost me a fortune to keep it going. You pay $600 for it. And all of a sudden, he tells you the tube is gone. I said, yes, well then let’s have a new tube, but that’s going to cost you $250. $250 for the tube. He said, yes. I said, take it away. I gave it reluctantly to my maid. I said, “Doris, I shouldn’t give it to you, this is a burden because to put that tube in, it’s going to cost you $250, and I’m going right out tomorrow and buy myself, a nice, small 21-inch black and white. Well, I got a 19. That’s all I need it for. I do not need the huge, big color TV set. Everyone thinks he has to have a huge, big color TV set. I have a 19-inch black and white. I rarely turn it on. If a game is on and I like games, I’ll turn it on. That’s good enough. I prefer my Bible. So why must I be always keeping up with the Joneses?”668 ¶31

So, I only use this story to illustrate a point. Keep yourself free from the love of money. For the love of money is the root of all evils. It’s the cause of all the wars in the world; that love of power. It is a symbol of power. And the power of which I speak puts all the power of this world into nothing.668 ¶32

You can’t conceive of any power in this world that you could use to make humanity stand still and you change its motivation. And yet within your own head, you have that power. And you look upon the world as you see it, and suddenly you stop the activity within your head and all activity stops, and they’re not independent of your perception of them. You think they are, but they’re not. They’re all yourself pushed out and they’re animated by the activity within you. And you are carried away by the things that they’re doing, as though they’re things completely strange and different from what you are doing within yourself. And it’s not so. And if you stop it and then you release it and everything moves on to fulfill its purpose, but you can change its purpose.668 ¶33

And then you will know you are on the very verge of being born from above, where this is your right, this is your power, and you entered an entirely different world. And when you’re asked by others, describe that world to me, Paul tells us, “Eyes have not seen nor ears heard, nor has it entered into the hearts of men the things already prepared for those who love the Lord.” How could you use any image of earth to describe that world? You can’t do it.668 ¶34

When I tell you that I actually have gone by thousands and thousands waiting for me to come by and they were all broken members of humanity, blind, lame, halt, withered. You name it, they were there. And I didn’t raise a finger to make one of them better. There was no compassion that possessed me. I simply glided by, a radiant being; one of fire and air, and that I glided by off the earth. I didn’t walk. I simply glided. Everyone was made perfect. Eyes came out of hiding and filled the empty sockets. Arms that were missing, came out of hiding and filled the empty sockets. And those who could not walk, they jumped for joy. Everything became animated and perfect. And when the very last one was made perfect, this heavenly chorus that accompanied me, sang out, it is finished, the last cry on the cross. So, these are the last words of the cross, it is finished.668 ¶35

And then I felt myself once more congeal into this body. I have never worn that I know now in this little section of time, I have not had the experience of wearing a straitjacket, but I have seen men put in straitjackets. And so, I know the confinement that they must feel in a straitjacket. Well, this was just like a straitjacket. That’s how confining this body is after you’ve experienced the freedom of this heavenly immortal body that is yours. It is radiant, it’s immortal, and that body is yours.668 ¶36

And the day will come, you will complete the journey in these garments, and then that body will come out. But when that body comes out, you, the sent, will return to yourself, the sender, and you and I will rejoice together in a heavenly sphere that you cannot depict by using any image on earth to describe it. It can’t be done because eyes have not seen it and ears have not heard it. And how can you tell it until he brings you where those who have gone there have been? Can’t do it.668 ¶37

I am here to encourage you to set your hope fully upon this grace that is coming to you. It is coming. No power in the world can stop it. You came down deliberately. No one took your life.668 ¶38

They’re going to tell it on the second day, rather on the second day of April is Easter. So, two days before that, they’re going to tell a story, which isn’t so at all. How a man was crucified by people who would not believe him. It isn’t so. The crucifixion took place in the beginning of time. And when you are born of woman, that’s when you are crucified here. But I was crucified with the Cosmic Christ in the beginning of time. And then I came down into this world and my mother gave me a garment of flesh and blood. And that’s the cross I wear. That’s my slave. I’m a slave of that cross. And I can’t command anyone to perform any of its normal, natural functions for me. I have to perform them myself, eat myself, assimilate, and eliminate, and no one in the world can do it for me, no matter how much money I have and how powerful I am and what I am. I have got to perform the normal, natural functions of that brother donkey.668 ¶39

So, I’m riding that towards the end. And they’re going to weep and say a certain group, a certain race, crucified a man. Didn’t do it at all. Have we not read the Bible? “No one takes away my life. I lay down of myself. I have the power to lay down and the power to take it up again.” So, he confesses that no one has ever taken away his life. And yet for 2,000 years, we perpetuate the lie and tell that story over and over and over. And it isn’t so at all. Read it in the gospel of John; the most profound book in the New Testament is the gospel of John. “No one takes away my life. I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again.”668 ¶40

And so, I have laid it down myself willingly to enter this arena. And at the end, I can say what Paul said, “I have fought the good fight.” It is a fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Henceforth, there is later for me, the crown of righteousness. And then he goes on to say, “Let no one bother me. For I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.” Everyone will bear them because everyone has them.668 ¶41

The marks are there, but they’re not driven in with any little nails. They are twirling vortices. A vortex binds me here, a vortex binds me here, one here, one to my right, and two, my two soles. The six-pointed Star of David. That’s the Christ Star. He is the Son of the Lord’s handmaid. So, you can safely say, and mean it when you say it, you have not yet brought forth the Christ Child, but “I am Mary and birth the Christ must give, if I, in blessedness for now and evermore would live.” In my own case, I have brought forth the Christ Child. But I can say to those who have not yet had the experience, you can put it in that test that I’ve just quoted because everyone’s going to have the experience and not one will fail. And then you will see the mystery. The whole thing is a mystery.668 ¶42

So tonight, you take your ideals, you take your dreams, and dare to assume that you have already realized them, knowing on the surface, you cannot do it. You do not know where to turn, but believe me, the depth of your own being knows: all things are possible to him. Before Mary said, “Behold, a handmaid of the Lord.” The angel said, “With God, all things are possible.” The same thing said prior to the first Child promised in Genesis. “Is anything too hard for God?”—it’s the same; it’s simply a different translation of the same meaning. Is anything too hard for God? And so, the Child was named Isaac because Isaac means, he laughs, and the Christ Child laughs. The minute you hold him, the face bursts into the most heavenly smile and the whole thing dissolves as you are holding him in your arms. You brought forth the Christ Child.668 ¶43

When you dwell upon this, it may not seem practical. It’s more practical than anything in the world. Far, far more practical than telling you how to go out and get a million dollars. Here, this morning’s paper, I opened up the paper, and here is one that I have seen and listened to at times, William Lawrence. A year before our ex-president said he would not run, he said in his column and his TV show that President Johnson will not run for office for a second term. The first was by the accident of assassination. This one is now his own by election, but he will not run for another term. They all laughed at him. Well, he was right. He did not run, but he kept it secret for one solid year. Well, he went off to New Hampshire to cover this election, coming up on Tuesday, the primary; went to bed seemingly all right, had all his friends that day, the maid goes in to clean the room. And there he is, he’s gone from the world, fifty-five years of age. Went to sleep, thinking he would awake the next morning to write the column, coming up on Tuesday, to tell what actually is taking place in our election year and Lawrence didn’t awake in this world.668 ¶44

A man, eighty years old, and still knowing that tomorrow he’s going to be called and still is interested only in another billion. Well, to me, it’s the height of insanity. But let him have it. Let him have all that he wants. I don’t want it. With it goes a tremendous responsibility and I don’t want that responsibility. If he wants it, let him have it.668 ¶45

But tonight, on this level, you formulated in your mind’s eye the one you would like to be, man or woman. And then having formed it, if, perchance tomorrow, like my friend, you wander, don’t waste one precious moment in condemning yourself. Forgive, forgive, forgive, and forgiveness means testing one’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. So, you find yourself in this state now, which is one wandering away, go back to that state that you have chosen; go back, how often? Seventy times seven. As often as it takes to keep the vision fixed so that that mold will always be before the depth of your own being, for he works from the mold that you supply. So, you supply him a glorious mold but don’t condemn yourself when you depart from it. Don’t. Condemn no one. Leave them alone.668 ¶46

So, the Christ of the Bible, one day, he stands before you and calls you Father. And remember, Christ is the Son of God, the Jesus of the Bible. One day you’ll know who you are and you are he. Jesus is the Lord. The Lord God, Jehovah, and Christ is his Son. We put them together like one name, like Neville Goddard. It isn’t Neville Goddard in this world. Yes, I’m Neville Goddard. But Jesus Christ are two separate states, I would call them. One is the Son, that’s Christ, and Jesus is the Father. Listen to the words: “He who sees me, sees the Father. How then can you say to me, Philip, show us the Father? Have I been so long with you and yet you do not know the Father? If you knew me, you know the Father.” So, he is telling you, he is the Father. And David in the spirit calls him, “my Lord.” So, is he not now the Father? For my Lord is the Father. And David called him, “my Lord.” So, David is calling his own father. And he’s telling you now who he is. It’s the greatest mystery in the world, eternally taking place, eternally true. So, take it to heart and if you have it down on tape, play it over and over; these ideas that are so different from what man has been taught to believe.668 ¶47

Tonight’s subject is “Blake on Religion.” When you discuss Blake, you are discussing one of the great spiritual giants of all time. You might just as well discuss St. Paul, for they had the identical vision, the vision of reality. So tonight we can cover only a portion of his gift to the world.140 ¶1

In his Auguries of Innocence: To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. What’s the sequence? The most inanimate thing in the world, a grain of sand, and in it to see a world. Then he moves to the first animation, a flower, and then to see harmony, which is heaven, to see a heaven in a wild flower. Now he comes to space: “Hold infinity in the palm of your hand”; and then to time: “And eternity in an hour.”140 ¶2

Then he moves on now to the bird world to show us the relationship of the whole vast world, the unity of the world, that we are all actually related. That you can’t disturb anything at this moment in any way and not actually affect the whole. A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. So we think we can catch the little bird and cage it for our own amusement, that which should be set free. For he said in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: Who knows that what every bird That cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, Clos’d by our senses five. So, the little “Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a rage. The dove house filled with doves and Pigeons Shudders Hell thro’ all its regions.”140 ¶3

Then he moves on to the next stage, what the world would call evolution, but he doesn’t call it that. Now into another aspect of the animal world: A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate Predicts the ruin of the State. A Horse misus’d upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood. And he takes the stages right through. You will read it as you go home, Auguries of Innocence. It’s his The Pickering Manuscript, if you have his book, for here is this mental giant who saw the complete relationship of all of us.140 ¶4

So I think I could be isolated. Were I in a dungeon and I thought of you, my thought is affecting the entire universe. I thought of you with envy or with hate or with love—whatever the thought was, as I conjure you in my mind’s eye and represent you to myself as I want you to be, whether it is in hate or in love, I am affecting the whole vast world. And if I believe in the reality of what I’ve done, it will come to pass. Because we are all one, all interwoven, I will use you without your consent, without your knowledge to fulfill that which I have imagined at that moment.140 ¶5

Then he makes this statement: 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; but the Divine Mercy Steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body of Jesus. He steps beyond. Because of this principle, man could be lost forever, not knowing what he’s doing; but “Divine Mercy steps beyond and Redeems Man in the Body of Jesus.”140 ¶6

Then he makes the statement, “God is Jesus.” There was no doubt in Blake’s mind that Jesus is God, not one of many gods but the only God. That was Blake’s concept of Jesus. God is Jesus, and we are but members in this divine body and therefore only one name; we are he. So he made this statement: Man is all Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is, God himself, The Divine Body, Jesus: we are his Members. And he meant every word of it.140 ¶7

Now he asks us to join with him in putting this to the test. When you read his work from beginning to end, he never wavered from this premise. One thing he asked us all to do and to always bear in mind at every moment in time was to distinguish between the immortal man, which he saw; he said, “When I first did descry the immortal man that cannot die” and that immortal man was Imagination. Imagination has a body, and he describes that body, but he begs us to please always discriminate between this immortal man, your wonderful human Imagination, and the state into which it has fallen.140 ¶8

So you may this night be in the state of love—I hope you are—the state of tenderness, the state of affluence—I hope so. But you may not be. You may be in the opposite state. But were you in the opposite state or some friend of yours or some total stranger of yours in the opposite state, he begs you and begs all of us to always bear in mind the distinction between the occupant of the state and the state; and lift everyone out of the state, if it is an unlovely state.140 ¶9

For man is like a pilgrim passing through states, as though I pass through the states of this country. If I pass through this night in Chicago, Chicago remains; but I, the pilgrim, pass on. If I pass through any state, say the state of poverty, when I leave poverty, it doesn’t really dissolve; it hasn’t disappeared; I have left it for anyone to enter. I hope they will avoid it, but anyone may fall into it or deliberately go into it by feeling sorry for himself and feeling unwanted. And so he tells us of these enormous states, infinite states in the world, that everything possible to happen to man is already created in the form of states. When man enters the state, the state unfolds because he, the operant power, has entered the state; and unknowingly, he simply unfolds the state. If the state is one of wealth, in a way he does not know, everyone in the world that can aid the unfolding of that state must aid it. If he enters any state, the state of poverty, although at the moment, when he enters it he may have everything in the world, in no time he will grow the fruit of poverty in his world, for he’s in the state of poverty.140 ¶10

But he, the occupant of the state, is neither rich nor poor. So he calls upon everyone to bear this in mind constantly and forgive every being in the world. For he said, “Mutual forgiveness of each sin, such are the gates into heaven in our world.” If I could only remember at every moment of time when I see someone that I dislike that he is only in a state. That’s why I dislike him: I dislike the state. I identify him with the state, and I dislike the state, but I think it’s the occupant of the state. It’s not the occupant. He could come out at any moment of time, or I could get him out of it. If I pulled him out of it and put him into another state, I wouldn’t dislike him. It’s only the state that I dislike. But not knowing the difference between the occupant and the state, I think I dislike him, and I don’t dislike him at all. He is simply in a state.140 ¶11

If I bear this in mind, knowing my power to pull him out of a state, I could save him, at least temporarily, until he’s actually redeemed by the “Divine mercy that steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus.” And that’s a true vision: we are redeemed in the body of Jesus. The day will come that you will actually be pulled into his presence, for it is he, divine mercy, that steps beyond, in spite of what we have done, and pulls us right into his presence.140 ¶12

Then we are asked a very simple question. The world will answer correctly, or he would not have pulled us. It’s automatically done. We are divinely prompted what to answer, what to say, when the question is asked. We cannot make a mistake, for we are actually prompted from the depths of our souls, and we answer. At that very moment, he embraces us and we become one with Jesus. We are fused into the body of Jesus.140 ¶13

And you say, “Well, is Jesus a man?” This is a man. So Blake makes the statement: If you humble yourself, you humble me; You too dwell in Eternity. Thou art a Man, God is no more, Thy own humanity learn to adore. So when you stand in his presence, you’re standing in the presence of man; and it is infinite man, and infinite man is Jesus. And you are actually saved in the body of Jesus because he embraces you and you are locked in his body, one with the body. You are the body. You aren’t locked in the sense that you disappear; you are one with that body, and you are that being. You become one with Jesus, yet you do not lose your identity. No loss of identity and yet one with God, for God is Jesus.140 ¶14

Now this is Blake’s teaching, and I have proven much of it to my own satisfaction by my own mystical experiences.140 ¶15

Now he comes to discuss the story of “The Virginity of the Virgin.” For are we not told in the 7th chapter, the 14th verse of Isaiah, “And the Lord himself will give you a sign. A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.” The word Emmanuel means “God is with us.” Listen to it carefully: “You will conceive and bear a son, and call his name Emmanuel.” The child will be given a name as a token. The child is not the great event. The child will be given a name and a token of deliverance. The child himself is not the deliverer; the child is simply the sign of an event taking place.”140 ¶16

Now Blake writes one single little verse, and he speaks of it as “The Virginity of the Virgin.” You are the virgin, whether you be male or female; I am the virgin; we are all the virgin. I didn’t know what was happening to me anymore than you will know what’s happening to you. And so he puts it in four little lines: Whate’er is done to her she cannot know, And if you ask her she will swear it so. Whether ’tis good or evil none’s to blame: No one can take the pride, no one the shame.140 ¶17

So it is said in the story, “How can this thing be, seeing that I know not a man?” And through the centuries, thousands of volumes have been written condemning the act, for it was out of wedlock. And they take it on this level. It’s not on this level. You are the bride of God, as told us in the 54th chapter of the Book of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” So the one who made me is going to sire me, without my knowledge, without my consent; so whate’er is done to me, I cannot know, and if you ask me I will swear it so.140 ¶18

Now, whether it’s good or evil, there’s none to blame, no one to take the pride, and no one the shame. No one can take the pride when I confess openly that I gave birth to a child out of wedlock, for no one sired that child and no one can claim he sired it. Whether it was a shameful thing to perform, well, the world will judge. Whether it be good or evil, well, who knows? But one thing I know is that no one can claim they did it; therefore, no one can take the pride and no one the shame, if it’s a shame.140 ¶19

So the prophecy was made, and then he writes in four little lines the story of “The Virginity of the Virgin.” He is telling every being in the world that they are that virgin, and you will be sired by the Holy Spirit. And you will produce in visible form an infant, just as told us in the gospel. And having produced it, you stand amazed because how could you produce it in such an unnatural way? For it happens so unnaturally, it doesn’t happen in a natural way. Therefore, you were the virgin who conceived unknowingly, for she said, “How can I conceive, how can I have a child, seeing that I know not a man?” And then you are told that the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the child will be the child of God. But it will only symbolize an event that is taking place, and you will be the Son of God In that act, you were the child who symbolized your acceptance. But the Son of God is also God the son, and the Son of God is made to say, “I and my Father are one.”140 ¶20

So Blake saw the whole vision so perfectly and so clearly, and told us in his fabulous works. So said he of the Bible, “I know of no other Christianity and no other gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination, Imagination, the real and eternal world… into which we shall all go after the death of this vegetable mortal body” . He would accept no other form of Christianity. And he said all rituals and all creeds—everything external in the form of a ritual was anti-Christ.140 ¶21

Now, religion means by definition a tithe, a devotion to the most exalted reality that one has experienced; but religion as practiced is simply artifice, creed, ceremony, confession, and all outward show; and Blake would have none of it. The whole thing to him was anti-Christian because to him the whole thing was from within, something that the individual experienced that no one by argument could shake. Years later, another brilliant mind, William James, made this observation and wrote it in a letter, not in a book; he wrote it to his son, and the son allowed it to be published in 1920 in the Atlantic Monthly. In this James said, “The mother seed, the fountain head of all religions begin in the mystical experience of the individual. All theology, all ecclesiasticism are secondary growth, superimposed. These experiences belong to a region that is deeper, wiser, and more practical than that which the intellect inhabits. For this they are indestructible by intellectual argument and criticism.”140 ¶22

Blake would have endorsed that 100 percent. You couldn’t disturb him. They called him a mad person. Even to this very day, they speak of him as one who was unbalanced. And he confessed in one of his letters that William Cowper was one of the great poets and himself considered one of the six greatest of all writers of letters in the English tongue; he was a contemporary, died in 1800 and Blake in 1827. He was a much older man than Blake, and Blake did not say in his letter whether Cowper came to him while he walked this earth or after he made his exit from this earth. Because Blake could not conceive of death in any sense of the word: nothing died, and all things survived. He said, “Cowper came to me and said to me: ‘Would that I were mad always. I cannot rest. Would you not make me truly mad?” Then he said, “Look at you, you are healthy and yet you are more mad than all of us. Would that I were as mad. I cannot rest until I am as mad as you are.” Now he claims that’s what Cowper said to him, that he would now be a “refugee from unbelief.”140 ¶23

We think that we are sane when we believe in the evidence of the senses, when we believe in some mathematical state that proved itself in performance. And he spoke of Blake as one who was a real refugee from unbelief. So I tell you a fantastic story, and you don’t believe it. Would that you would believe! Believe it though reason would deny it and your senses deny it, just to believe it and become a refugee from unbelief. Because true religion cannot be analyzed, you can’t rationalize it. It’s based upon these mystical experiences in the depth of the soul.140 ¶24

And so Blake said of the Bible, the entire Hebrew Bible—he did not mention a few of the works but just a few; he didn’t mention Ruth, Nehemiah and things of that sort. But he said the Decalogue, the first five books, and then he said, Joshua and Judges, 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, the Book of Psalms, and the prophets, without naming the prophets. So he just simply named “the prophets,” which he called the lesser prophets and also the major because he called Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel within the prophets. He said these are true visions, as well as the four gospels and Revelation. He did not mention the epistles. But he said the four gospels and Revelation and the Hebrew Bible are eternal vision of what really exists. He saw it so clearly.140 ¶25

So all these characters are personifications of eternal states. And commune with these states, for when you commune with them, they seem as real as you are. But they are personifications of God’s infinite mind. Every aspect of his mind is personified. But you are not an aspect of the mind, something entirely different; you are one with God. Man is All Imagination. God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The Eternal Body of Man is The Imagination, that is God himself, the Divine Body, Jesus; we are his Members, part of the body of Jesus, and because there’s only one name, we are he.140 ¶26

So we pass through a process, a simple process, which we can’t evoke; you can’t hasten it, but when you least expect it, the divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man right into the body of Jesus. Then he passes through these stages where he is born from above, where suddenly he beholds the divine Son as his Son, and then the great woven structure of the body, the temple, is torn from top to bottom. And then he ascends to be one around this infinite throne of Jesus who is God.140 ¶27

I actually believe it. I can’t prove it to you, and I can’t take you with me into that moment of time where I experienced it. I can only tell you I have experienced it and ask you to believe it and share with me in belief that you yourself may become a refugee from unbelief. For the man who cannot leave what he can touch with his hands and rationalize, cannot believe. And this is something that you are called upon, although you have not seen it: “Blessed is the man who has not seen and still believes.” That is how the gospel of John ends, chapter 20, verse 29: “Blessed is the man who has not seen and still believes.” Those who heard about it, who would eventually experience it, like Job, he said, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear but now my eye sees thee” . And so he heard about it and then came the experience, and he saw exactly what Blake is talking about because Blake saw it.140 ¶28

So I ask you to believe with me and take his works. I wouldn’t attempt to interpret for you. I have so many commentaries of Blake at home, and they cost much more than all of Blake’s works put together, any one of them. You can buy Blake for five dollars, for four dollars—all of his works, including his letters. And I have invested in Blake’s works at home close to a thousand dollars in commentaries, and no two agree as to what Blake means by these fantastic experiences. But you see, I bought all these commentaries of Blake before I had the experiences. I could have saved a thousand dollars. I don’t regret it.140 ¶29

I have them at home, and there they stand in my library. Three volumes I paid $100 for, published by a dealer whose name I don’t know and don’t care, said he just got back from England and these are rare volumes—it’s by William Butler Yeats. And so I have these three on credit, and he made me pay $100 for them. Others, he made me pay fifty-five dollars and sixty-five dollars for them, similar volumes. And I have the whole of Blake in a small little Nonesuch volume. So you read him, and all of a sudden, you see exactly what he’s trying to tell you because you had a similar experience. And then comes the unfolding of the flower within you, the tree within you, and you have the experience, the same thing. So all will have the identical experience, colored a little bit differently because we are all unique in God’s eyes. Not identical, a little bit different, because no two are alike in God’s eye. But we have the same experience as we unfold on this great tree of life.140 ¶30

So just think of it. If I could tell you what I would feel from Blake… someone said of Blake that he was the last civilized man. Well, I hope not, but that’s what was said of him. He was the last civilized man. For Blake had no venom in him, no impulse to hurt; he didn’t have to restrain the impulse. Being all virtuous, he acted from impulse and not from rules. He was simply a virtuous man in the sense that he loved people.140 ¶31

So if I would take the summary of Blake and tell you what I get out of it, I would say, tell your children while they are still tots, all the little children, and teach them never unnecessarily to hurt a creature or desecrate a flower. That is the beginning of reverence, and reverence is the beginning of wisdom. If you couldn’t hurt a flower, you couldn’t desecrate it. Have you seen little children, not knowing what they’re doing but in the presence of adults who should know better, and they will simply take a lovely rose and tear it and desecrate it. Well, if the parent at that moment, or the adult, whether it be parent or not, would stop the child and explain to the child not at any time unnecessarily to hurt a creature, take the wings from a butterfly (I did it myself), to take the wings from a fly, or to take the wings from something else. No reason for it, but I did it; as a child I did it. But I did it when possibly there was no one around, like my father or mother, to stop me in the act. But I did it—maybe you did it—but I did it. But I know today from experience that if you can take a child and in its youth, in its infancy, teach it never unnecessarily to hurt a creature or desecrate a flower, that would be to it the beginning of reverence, and reverence is the beginning of wisdom.140 ¶32

Take George Washington Carver, who would take a flower in his hand and talk to it. He couldn’t hurt; the man couldn’t hurt. He was incapable of hurt. He would talk to a sick flower and ask the flower what was wrong with it and try to tell him that he, in turn, may bring the solution to that rose bush, which he did. And he gave us because he couldn’t hurt, this synthetic world of ours today, really. He took the ordinary little peanut; he talked to a peanut and wondered, “What are you for? Why did God make you? He made you for a purpose. Tell me, why did God make you?” Then the peanut communed with George Washington Carver. Today we have 300 by-products from the peanut and hundreds of by-products from the southern pine and from other things.140 ¶33

I heard that gentleman the year he died. Just before he died, he spoke in New York City at a forum held every year by the Herald Tribune, always held at the old Waldorf Astoria. He said—and I heard him and saw him—about this concern about tomorrow not being able to feed the world, he said, from the southern states of this country, forget the northern states, from the southern states, we could feed the entire world and clothe the entire world from by-products. What we could extract from the southern pine, the peanut and all this, the synthetic world—he called it the synthetic world—we could feed and clothe the entire world from what could be produced out of the southern states of America. Forget the northern states, just from the southern states, I could clothe and feed the entire world. Now today, you go into a store and they brag about the synthetic garment. They call it Dacron, or they call it by some other name, and tell you how much better it is than the so-called natural thing, which you would normally wear. All these are synthetic products, and they claim they are better in feeling and in lasting wear and in everything else. All that goes back to a man who couldn’t hurt. He was born a slave. I think he was sold for a horse or something. Someone had to redeem him, and here is a man born to slavery, who just couldn’t hurt. And he is one of the mental, spiritual giants of the world. If you met him beyond the grave, you would see a glorious being like a Blake because he couldn’t hurt.140 ¶34

So I would say to everyone here who is in contact with tomorrow’s children, start it. If you start the child and tell the child never, unnecessarily—and by that I mean, if a horse breaks its foot, then you have to destroy it. You can’t mend it, and the merciful thing to do would be to blow its brains out. That would be a merciful act. But then you would do it not unnecessarily. So Blake said, A Horse misus’d upon the Road Calls to Heaven for Human blood. A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate Predicts the ruin of the State. A Robin Red breast in a Cage Puts all Heaven in a Rage. To take this wonderful thing and cage it for your own amusement when it should cut the airy way. And then he said, The Skylark wounded in the wing, A Cherubim does cease to sing.140 ¶35

You wouldn’t think a cherubim, one with the seraphim around the throne of God, would at that very moment when we wound the skylark in its wing would be silent. But that’s the interrelated world: “All things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle.” So you could not wound the skylark in the wing and expect a cherubim to continue to sing. And so all of a sudden, things come to an end by our misuse of this fantastic power that is ours. For being all Imagination, as we misuse the power that is Imagination we cause cherubim to become silent. We cause the whole of heaven to cry out when we cage something that should be set loose and free in this world.140 ¶36

But you start, and I’m quite sure it wouldn’t take more than one generation, if the world would believe it, if you start it in the home with children. Take them into the garden and let them see, and just watch their reactions. Some may be more violent and tear it off, but stop them right there. Don’t hit them, just stop them and explain to them that it is a creation of God. The one who made the stars made this for your enjoyment, not for your destruction. And explain they should not desecrate the flower. Then, if you see them taking off the wings of the butterfly because they are given that way, then explain that they should never unnecessarily hurt a creature. They would suddenly believe it, they trust you, and then suddenly that’s part of their structure. They couldn’t then violate that conditioned mind. Why, it wouldn’t take any time to really become a world like a Blake. What a world that would be!140 ¶37

So I say to you, Blake, read him. I could talk about him from now to the end of time and never exhaust him. He lived to be seventy years old. He never went to school. His visions began at four, and he thanked his father for not sending him to school to be flogged into memorizing the works of a fool. And even in today’s paper, the New York Times, [...] edition, a science editor told the story of man’s new concept of the Universe—a radical departure from what it held only last year. Well, this is not final you know. This will be a radical departure from what it will be called next year. And that is man’s concept. Whether the thing is really expanding to the limit of complete explosion, or whether it is like a breath, where it will go to a certain point and then once more begin to contract, taking unnumbered trillions of years, they don’t know and they hope to find it out through telescopes. So they are experimenting with their telescopes, and their mathematical concepts.140 ¶38

But Blake made this observation that “God is not a mathematical diagram.” You’ll never in eternity discover God through mathematics. Not in eternity will you find him as a mathematical diagram. When you find him, you’ll find him as man. And so he said, God Appears and God is Light To those poor Souls who dwell in Night, But does a Human Form Display To those who Dwell in Realms of Day.140 ¶39

When you meet him, it’s man. But how can I describe him when he himself describes the body and the form is love? How do you describe love? Yet I stood in the presence of love; it was human. But he said, Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. But how are you going to describe love? Love is the human form divine. When I stood in the presence of love, it was human, and it was Jesus, and it is form, but it’s infinite love. I couldn’t think of anything but infinite love as I stood in his presence.140 ¶40

Then you understand the words concerning forgiveness that “In Heaven the whole Art of Living Is Forgetting and Forgiving.” And you stand in his presence, and you hear these words ring out, “Forgive them, they know not what they do.” “Mutual forgiveness of each vice; such are the Gates of Paradise.” No one can get through holding any resentment because you are holding it against a being when it should be a state, and the states are fixed forever through which we pass.140 ¶41

So I would encourage everyone to read Blake. He grows every year bigger and bigger in the minds of men, yet he died and is buried in the unknown grave. I doubt if anyone truly knows where he’s buried, possibly, because he was poor, and in those days in England, they buried paupers four and six to a grave. So who knows where he’s buried? At least we have his works, those that survived. And so, after two hundred years, here is this giant. And in his day, we had men who were only remembered because of a certain violence, like George III, who reigned when he lived, when this was a colony. And here, this mad George, truly mad, and nothing was more sane than Blake. And so George, who was then king of England, who founded this colony, would give away sections of it, vast areas to those that he favored. He was mad as a hatter, and they called Blake the madman.140 ¶42

Yet Cowper, who did go mad—three times he was put away—appeared to Blake and asked Blake to make him “truly” mad. Not mad as the world judges it because there are unbalanced mental states, no question about it. But he called upon Blake to make him truly mad, “Make me so mad, Blake, till I become like you, a refugee from unbelief.” He was torn between the two. If I could only go all out and believe in the reality of my imaginal act and not look back, just go all out and believe that things are as I desire them to be. But don’t look down now to my understanding to see if it is really happening, like pulling up the little seed to see if it’s taking root. Really believe that it is going to take root and, in its own way, it unfolds within itself and grows. But don’t pull it up! Walk right out in the belief that things are as I desire them to be, even though at the very moment, it seems darker than ever. Walk right out in it, just as though it were true.140 ¶43

And if I will do that, that’s what Blake did. They said that many a day, he had not a potato in the house and no money. And his wife must have been an angel of angels. To remind him that there was no food in the house and that he would have to go out and sell one of his paintings or get a commission to make a painting, she would put before him at the bare table an empty plate and a spoon. So when he came to dinner, well, that’s it. Then he took the hint, and then he would go out and try to borrow a pound or a few shillings or try to get a commission for a picture that he hadn’t yet painted. He lived in that so-called dream world. But what he has done to posterity! How he has affected the entire world!140 ¶44

And when you think today that, no one who understands the English tongue called upon to make a list of the six greatest users of the English tongue of all time could, if they understood it, omit the name of Blake. They may not have the same order of value, but within six, they could not omit the name of Blake. And he never went to school, just that inspired mind, the greatest, wonderful mind. He said he talked to Isaiah, he talked to Ezekiel, and he asked them about Imagination, and they said, “Why, in the days of Imagination, Imagination moved mountains; but in this day there are very few who are capable of removing mountains because they are not imaginative. They don’t imagine anymore. But in the days of Imagination, Imagination would move mountains,” said Ezekiel to him. You must read it, that’s in his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell .140 ¶45

Well now, I could not, as I told you, for the rest of my days exhaust or do justice to Blake, but just enough to encourage you to read him for yourself. And take my experience, having spent a thousand dollars in the works of Blake—who can afford that these days?—you buy less and omit the commentaries. I have them at home and I read them and they remain read but not to be reread they remain. But I make Blake my daily companion; I read him daily as I do my Bible. So take Blake and take the Bible and read it. If you don’t understand it at the first reading, reread it and keep on rereading. I’ll tell you one thing it will do for you; it will increase your vocabulary and lift your use of words to the heights. Now let us go into the Silence.140 ¶46