Rudilambert

We’re closing tonight for a month. We’ll be back on the 11th of January. If you’re on the mailing list, you’ll receive a notice. We also take a small ad the Sunday before we open, so that’s about all we do as far as advertising goes. So we close tonight and reopen on the 11th of January. Tonight, I hope I can get over this. I hope I can quote what I’ve been trying to say over the years: “Hope deferred,” we are told, “makes the heart sick; but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” How to eat of this tree of life? For that’s how man realizes his desires. You’ll read that in the 13th chapter of the Book of Proverbs. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”924 ¶1

First of all, we must find out who grants the desire. We are told: “All things were made by God. Without Him was not anything made that was made.” Who is God? If the word “God,” the word “Lord,” the word “Jesus Christ,” conveys to anyone the sense of an existence—something outside of man—it is delusive. Therefore, where is God, and who is God, and what is God? If in any way the word conveys this “something outside of man,” then what is He? It is in man that is God. It is in man that is God, for we are told in Scripture that we are the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in us. And God is spiritual. What in us is God that creates everything in this world. I tell you that “man is all imagination, and God is man and exists in us and we in Him.” And the eternal body of man is just human imagination. And the eternal body of man is just human imagination. That is God Himself. Because it is God Himself, man must be wherever he is in imagination.924 ¶2

Now, the whole of life is only the achievement of consciousness. And the infinite states of consciousness from which man can imaginably view the world are purely the means by which he satisfies that consciousness. Must I always view the world from my present state of consciousness? Must I accept the evidence of my senses forever and forever? What reason dictates the limitations of my birth? All these things—must I go through life, from the cradle to the grave, viewing the world from that state of consciousness? If I know who God really is, I need not. If I really believe that God is my own wonderful human imagination, I need not allow this within me, which is infinite, to be dictated by the evidence of my senses forever and forever. Can I stand here now and select that state of consciousness from which I would like to view the world? And in spite of my body that holds me here, do it from that state? Yes, you can do it. Everyone can do it.924 ¶3

I can stand here right now, know exactly what I am in this world concerning all the normal things in Caesar’s world—my income, my obligations to life—and suppose they’re not adequate. Suppose I would like to change something—change something radically—but reason tells me I can’t. My senses tell me that, well, you can’t possibly do it. But could I do it? If I really know who God is—if I really believe that God is my own wonderful human imagination, and all things are possible through God—can I do it? Well, I could stand here, decide where I would like to be and all the things concerning that state, and then in my imagination, assume that I am in that state and view the world from that state of consciousness.924 ¶4

So you would say then, “So what? What does that do?” Well, try it. Try it. You’re told, “Examine yourself to see whether you are keeping the faith.” Well, what faith? It’s faith in God. And God is my own wonderful human imagination. You’re told, “Our God—He’s a God in heaven.” But we are also told, “And heaven is within you.” “And He does as He pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, made by men’s hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak. They have ears, but they do not hear. They have eyes, but they do not see. They have feet, but they do not walk. They have hands, but they do not feel. And no sound comes from their throat. Those who make them are like them, and those who trust in them are like them.” Read it in the 115th Psalm.924 ¶5

Now, what is the God spoken of who dwells in heaven? “And heaven is within us.” As told us in the 17th chapter of the Book of Luke: “The kingdom of God is within you.” We are told in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, in his third chapter, the 16th verse of his first letter: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” If the Spirit of God dwells in me, and all things are made by Him, I must find out who He is in me that makes everything in my world. Well, I have found Him. I have found Him as my own wonderful human imagination.924 ¶6

But if I feed Him morning, noon, and night on what my reason dictates and what my senses dictate, I never allow Him to move out of that limitation. I only perpetuate that state in my world. Am I confined to that state? I know from experience I am not. No one in the world is confined to any state. He can determine the state into which he would go. So you ask yourself, “What would I like to be?” And you name the state. Now, if it were true that you are really such a person as the state you’ve just named, how would you see the world? If I dare to assume that I am now the man that I want to be, though at the moment of my assumption, reason denies it—everything denies it—what would I see? How would I see the world? Will I dare to assume that I am it, and then view the world, allowing myself to see it as I must see it if it were true?924 ¶7

And if I dare to believe in God, knowing that God is the one acting in me, for “God only acts and is in existing beings or men”—so I just act it. I assume that I am what I would like to be, and then I view the world for confirmation. And in my mind’s eye, I see a world that I would have to see if my assumption is true. What else do I do? Nothing. That is an act. That was a creative, imaginal act. And there is an interval of time between the planting of a seed and the growing of that seed. “The vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens; it will flower. If it be long, wait; for it is sure, and it will not be late.”924 ¶8

If I actually dare to assume a state, believing in the reality of that assumption, which is God’s act… [...] I am He. God is man and exists in us and we in God. We are actually one. God is man, believe it or not. There is a reality in you that cannot die. It’s an immortal being—and it’s man. The thing on the outside—it dies, it matures, it withers, and vanishes. But that immortal you, which is man, cannot die. It simply reproduces a garment, just like this—young—through the seed of contemplated thought. It contemplates itself as what it knows itself to be, or knew itself to be, and has appeared once more in your clothes—in a garment—in a world just like this. And what is it all about then? The whole vast world is waiting for the awakening of this inner man that is God. This inner man is your own wonderful human imagination. And the whole world aches for the awakening of the imagination, which I may tell you is a spiritual event—which event crowns and redeems the experiences of man in this world of death. Everything here dies. But you will be crowned in the most blissful sense of the word when man awakens from this dream.924 ¶9

Let me share with you a letter of a little girl. She’s only eight. Her mother isn’t here tonight. She gave me the letter last Monday night, which I read when I went home. She starts the letter—and she dated it last Monday, December the 7th. She said, “Dear Neville, guess what? I had another dream about you. You took me on an airplane to France. When we got off at the airport, the people yelled, ‘Neville! Oh, Neville, has come to see the King again!’ And so as we went through the tunnel, they yelled the same thing again: ‘Neville has come to see the King!’ And I was frightened, so I held you by the hand, and I held it so tightly. And you led me up to a huge, big hall. At the end of the hall, there is the King, seated on his throne. So we went up to the King. As we got up to the King, it was you, Neville, seated on the throne. Yes, you were holding my hand,” she said. “As I looked at the King, you were on the throne, a red cape. And the back of the throne reached to the ceiling, and the whole thing was covered in great light. I looked back at you to see the resemblance between you and the King. And as I looked back to see you, you began to fade. And you faded. And as you faded, the King said to me, ‘Come. Come nearer.’ And so I went up, and I held his hand just as tight as I held yours. But of course, he was you. And then you know what? He faded too. And as he faded, I found myself safely at home. And that’s how the dream went. Love”—and then she signs her name.924 ¶10

What a heavenly vision for the child of eight, and how beautifully expressed. I have not added one word to her letter. I have memorized it. I have told you exactly how she wrote it in her own wonderful child’s hand in the script. She’s a beautiful child. She too has the incurrent eyes that her mother has—eyes that are turned inward into the world of thought, into eternity, ever expanding in the bosom of God, this human imagination.924 ¶11

So I led her up to where the King was seated on his throne, and she saw me. I led her mother up to where the King was sleeping. And then the mother saw her face—which was my face—become translucent. And then she saw her own face, for that’s what the King is wearing. He wears every face in the world. There’s only one God. There’s only one God dreaming every being in the world, and He wears the face of everyone in the world. I’ve had the experience. So I have told you, I have taken you to the king. In the beginning, you will see me. But she’s only a child of eight. You know why? “I held his hand just as tight as yours. But of course,” said she, “he was you.” Her mother saw me in the reclining state, but then the face became translucent. And then the mother saw her own face was the face of the dreamer. He is dreaming in you. And the being dreaming in you is God, the immortal man. God is man and dwells in us and we in Him. The eternal body of God is the human imagination, and that is God Himself—named in Scripture, when awake, as Jesus Christ.924 ¶12

So when we are told in Scripture, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Answer honestly to yourself. Do you really realize it? If He is in me, then who is He? I’m telling you who He is. He is your imagination. That is the immortal man that cannot die. That’s the immortal man that is crucified on this, and on this crucifixion, which is man here now. Crucifixion leads to exaltation to God. By the crucifixion, by wearing this garment of flesh and blood, man is exalted to God the Father. He actually awakens, and he is God the Father.924 ¶13

But now tonight, we are going to show you how we go about turning the hope that, if it is deferred, makes the heart sad, and how to turn it now into a desire fulfilled. And this is how I do it. I stand here, and without the aid of anyone—without the consent of anyone—I first formulate in my own mind’s eye what I would like in my world. What would I like? I ask no one if it’s good for me. I trust my own judgment. It’s what I want. Now, if I had it, how would I see the world? How would I see it? Well, that’s how I would see it. How? Well, my wife would know it first of all the people who know me. I would share with her any good fortune that befell me. I would tell her so she would know it. And through my wife, my daughter would know it, and eventually, my friends would know it. I don’t have to go too far. I can make a small circle. Take my wife, my daughter, a few friends, and then discuss the good fortune that has befallen me. And mostly I see them as I would have to see them if it were true.924 ¶14

I listen to them just as though I am hearing them. “They have mouths, but they do not speak.” My mouths are going to speak. “They have eyes, but they do not see.” My eyes are going to see. “They have hands, but they do not feel.” Mine are going to feel. “They have feet, but they do not walk.” Mine are going to walk. So I take all these things in the 115th Psalm, and then I make my God alive—not a dead idol. So I hear my wife’s voice; I hear my daughter’s voice; I hear my friend’s voice, so they do speak. And then I hear them and see them move. They are hearing me because they can respond to what I’m saying. They couldn’t respond if they hadn’t heard me, so now they’re hearing me. And everything becomes alive in my mind’s eye. That’s all in my imagination. And then when I see the entire thing, and it’s done—as far as I’m concerned, the whole thing is done—I drop it in absolute confidence that it must come to pass.924 ¶15

The vision now has its own appointed hour; and it ripens, and it will flower. If to me, in this world of Caesar, it seems long, then you wait; “for it is sure, and it will not be late.” That is the story of Scripture as you will read it in the second chapter of Habakkuk. It’s a translation that you will not find in the King James or Revised Standard Version. But Moffatt has it; James Moffatt has it in his wonderful translation of the Bible. That’s the most literal translation of the original Hebrew: “The vision will ripen—just wait.”924 ¶16

So here, what would I do were I you? Well, first of all, I’d ask myself, “What do I want to be?” Today, there are millions unemployed, but they do not know who God is. They’ll go to church and pray. They’ll light a candle. They’ll do all kinds of things. So when I am asked to examine myself in Scripture—in the 13th chapter, 2nd Corinthians: “Examine yourself to see whether you are keeping to the faith”—doesn’t mean, “Am I being faithful as a Roman Catholic? A Protestant?” With the many, many denominations, as you know, have nothing to do with any external religious organization. Are you holding to the faith? Well, the only faith in the Scripture is faith in God. Well, I have to find out who He is before I can question myself and examine myself as to my faith in God. Do I really believe that He is my imagination? Or do I still have a little doubt that maybe I’m wrong, and He’s up there some place in space, looking at me and laughing? Do I really believe that my imagination is that internal being spoken of in Scripture as God? Do you not realize at all that Jesus Christ is in you? Do you not know that God the Father is through you and in you? Well, if He is through me and in me, I must find Him. I’m telling you: I have found Him. I have found Him as my imagination, and you will not find another God. You will have another idol—all kinds of idols—but you won’t find the true God other than your own wonderful human imagination. There is no other God. He is in you—alive in you—as your own wonderful human imagination.924 ¶17

Now, examine yourself to see whether you really believe it. Or are you going to trust in something on the outside? When you hear the word “God,” the word “Lord Jesus Christ,” does the mind jump outside? To something outside of man? Or are you seeing man—the real man, which is that imaginative man—clothed in a garment of flesh and blood? That man—yes, you see, that man is limited by the five senses. No question about it. He is crucified on that body of five senses, but He need not remain that way. Long before He awakens—long before He stirs Himself and becomes completely awake within you, you can start to test yourself whether you still believe in that God.924 ¶18

Now, get yourself a marvelous goal, a wonderful goal. Don’t limit it to what you think is possible. If you limit it to what is possible, you can’t test it. Take something far, far greater than what you think is possible—a far, far better job than you’ve ever known, a far greater income than you’ve ever dreamed you could ever make, a far more noble place to live in this world than you’ve ever dreamed of. Just imagine it. What would it be like if it were true? Dare to assume that it is true. And now view the world from that assumption, and let the world confirm it by being what it would have to be if that assumption were true. See people as they would have to see you if it were true. All your present friends would still be your friends—I trust they would be—but they’d have to see you in a different light. Let them see you in a different light. You have risen in the world, and they see a friend that they formerly knew on a lower level. But you’re still a friend, and they will see you on that higher level. Don’t be embarrassed. Make no excuses for it. You are now occupying that level—that’s all there is to it.924 ¶19

Assume it, believe it, trust it, and then listen to these words: “If we know that He hears whatever we ask,”—not excluding, whatever we ask—“we know that we have obtained the request made of Him.” Read that in John’s first epistle—the fifth chapter, the 15th verse: “If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the request made of Him.” No restrictions placed upon it whatsoever.924 ¶20

Well, who is listening? Well, can I deny that I know what I am entertaining in my imagination? If a man believes in some other God, he may question whether God ever listened to him. He might think, as most people think, “He was too busy to hear my little prayer.” But can anyone deny that he himself knows what he is imagining? He may forget what he is imagining—completely forget it—and even deny the harvest when it appears in this world, for not a thing appears in my world by accident. It comes because, at one moment in my life, I planted it. As we are told, “Be not concerned; God is not mocked: as a man sows, so shall he reap.” When I see the harvest, I may deny that I ever really planted that, because of my fading memory. But everything in my world has a physical effect, has a spiritual cause. And that spiritual cause is an imaginal act. And if I don’t recognize it, I can’t relate it to when I once imagined it. It’s only because of my fading, vegetable memory. But I can’t deny the harvest if I had a good memory.924 ¶21

So may I tell you: Everything in your world, you’re harvesting, because at some moment in time, you reacted. That reaction was an imaginal act. That’s when you planted the seed; it has its own appointed hour. You watch. It’s going to come up; it’s going to flower. When it flowers, you may deny it. You may deny any part of this harvest. But it’s all your harvest. Start planting all the lovely things in the world now. You may not reap them tomorrow, but plant them today. There’s an interval of time between every planted seed and its appearance in the world bearing fruit. A little sheep takes five months; the horse takes twelve months; how long the elephant takes, I don’t know. The human body takes nine months, and little things flower quicker—sometimes overnight, sometimes a week, sometimes a month. I do not know the interval of time of all the seeds of the world. We only know certain seeds, like the sheep, the man, the goat, the horse, and so on. Well, I could not tell you what every little imaginal act has as a time interval before it appears in the world. But it all has an appointed hour.924 ¶22

Start planting now, all the lovely things in the world, in his own way, because there’s no other being to plant it. The sower is your own imagination, and that sower is God. That’s the one spoken of as Jesus Christ. Are you embarrassed to know that you are Jesus Christ, even though this day, you might have done the most unlovely thing in the world? I still tell you, “Look here. What you did today—you, the real you—is Jesus Christ.” That is God—the only God. That is the immortal you that cannot die. No matter what happens to you, it cannot die, and that’s your eternal being.924 ¶23

But it will still be asleep. If, when you depart from this little garment, you haven’t awakened, it will still be asleep. But through that seed of contemplated thought, it will clothe itself once more in a garment just like this—in a world just like this—and you will continue the journey (as you are now continuing the journey) until that moment in time when you awake. And the whole story is laid out in Scripture for you. Everything said of Jesus Christ in the Gospel, you will experience, and you will know you are Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is God the Father. It’s God the Father completely awake, and man is God asleep. Really, the real you, who is God made man, awakes. You’re Jesus Christ.924 ¶24

And how do I know it? Because in the Spirit, the very one that called him “my Lord” calls you “my Lord.” And who is he who calls Jesus Christ “my Lord”? David. And David in the Spirit called me “my Lord.” Now, David in the Spirit will call everyone in this world, when he awakes, “my Lord.” And then who is David? The Son of God. As told you in the second Psalm: “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, ‘Thou art my Son; today I have begotten thee.’” So he calls the Lord “my Father.” He called me “Father.” And I knew it as though I’ve always known it. It’s only a returning of memory.924 ¶25

I blocked out everything, as you did, to come into this world and be crucified upon this garment called “man.” And that interior you is God the Father. And one day, He will awake from His self-imposed dream, self-imposed death. “For 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.” So when that time comes, which I have predetermined, I will awake from the dream of life, and I will be victorious over death. The very last enemy that I will conquer is death. And I will come out of the world of death, and be the one I was prior to my entrance into it, but enhanced by the experience of passing through this world of death. And everyone is going to have this experience.924 ¶26

Now, tonight, you take a noble, noble objective. By noble, I mean do not deny yourself the pleasures of this world, the comforts of this world. Let no one tell you that you’re not entitled to the comforts of this world. Let no one tell you you aren’t entitled to a better way of living than you are now enjoying. Let them keep their own opinions to themselves. You simply know what you would like. Now, do not be limited by what reason tells you may be possible. Do not be limited by what your senses tell you may be possible. Go outside completely. Take what you would like. Dare to assume it. See the world as you would have to see it if that assumption were true. Feel the thrill that it is true, and leave it alone. And in a way that no one knows—there are ways and means you know not of. “My ways are past finding out.” So don’t be concerned as to how it’s going to be possible. You simply dare to assume it, and see it happen in your world. It will happen.924 ¶27

Those who are out touring because they’re so big in the world—ask them how they started. They may not even know that they had dreams and dared to sleep in their dreams as though they were true. They’ll forget how it started. And they’ll give all credit to the means employed to have brought it to pass. And they’ll give credit to Mr. Brown, Mr. Jones, Mr. So-and-so, who introduced me to So-and-so. And then they’ll say, “Now, the breaks came. It was luck.” And now they have a fortune, so they think the fortune is their security. It could go like this if they do not know who got it. Take it from them tonight. Can they reproduce it? Can they actually make it come back into their world if they do not know the creative power behind the effect that they now enjoy? So they enjoy an effect. The effect is money, nice living. But if you took it from them tonight, could they reproduce it? They can’t unless they know how it was produced. It was produced in the beginning, whether they know it or not, by their own wonderful human imagination. Whether they know it or not.924 ¶28

There is the only God in the world. If you ever hear the word “Lord” mentioned, the word “God” mentioned, the word “Jesus Christ,” and your mind turns outside to some existence—something outside of man—may I tell you, that word to you is delusive. You have a false God, a false concept of Jesus Christ. Until—when you hear the word, and it rings a bell in you: “They’re talking about me, and I am all imagination”—you haven’t found Him. When you hear it, and you know, “He’s talking about me. He’s talking about my own wonderful reality, which is all imagination,” then you have found Jesus Christ.924 ¶29

And I am telling you from my own personal experience—and I’m not speculating; I’m not theorizing. I’ve experienced everything said of Jesus Christ in the Gospel. And yet here I am, a mortal man, tonight, feeling a little bit choky with a cold—very, very mortal with all the weaknesses of human flesh, all the restrictions and limitations of this cross—and yet I can’t deny what I have experienced. There is no assurance, no promise that I would not have to bear the burden of the cross. If it catches a cold, oh, it catches a cold. I must bear it. No one ever told me that because I would have had these experiences of the Lord Jesus Christ that I would be exempt from the weaknesses and limitations of the garment that I wear. I must wear the cross too. But I’m also told in Scripture: “I do not consider the sufferings of the present time worthwhile compared with the glory that is to be received and be revealed here.”924 ¶30

And I can’t compare any suffering that I’ve ever had. I’ve had it. Like everyone else, I’ve had it. Not only physical suffering, but the emotional suffering—the loss of a friend, the loss of a certain state in the world, and the loss of physical parts of the body of the world through operation. You go to a dentist; he takes out your teeth, and he can’t give you a new set. All right. So you’ve lost something. And it’s there as long as you wear the garment. So something one night, and there’s a pain—you’ve never felt a pain like it before. Next thing you know, you’re in a hospital, and they take out your gallbladder. And you bear the scar as long as you wear the cross. So you’re not exempt from all these things where the cross is. And this is the cross.924 ¶31

And I’ve worn it; I’m wearing it now for the last time. So the day you hear that “Neville is dead,” rejoice. The cross is off forever and forever. But I will still be wearing it in you, because there’s no place for me to go but back to the Father; and there’s only one Father—only one God and Father of all. And so I will be buried in every one of you, but I will be awake. I will be awake, still wearing the garment that you wear. But I will be awake within you. So, as this garment goes, I am taking it off for the last time.924 ¶32

So whenever you hear, “He didn’t wake this morning, and they just cremated the body,” rejoice, for I have worn the garment now up to the very end, and I’ve reached the climax. And the climax is to awaken as the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only way you’ll ever know you are the Lord Jesus Christ is when the same one who called him “my Lord” calls you “my Father.” For my Lord is my Father; for the Lord is Father.924 ¶33

So tonight, take out a glorious future for yourself and for a friend—or friends. Don’t limit it to any single one. Make it as many as you want. Bring them before your mind’s eye and hear their voice tell you that they have what they want—what you want them to have in this world. Listen to their voice, and the voice speaks for you. You heard it. What did you hear? You heard what would confirm your desire for them. Now you’re eating of a tree of life—no longer hope deferred. Desire fulfilled is a tree of life. So you bring your child before your mind’s eye and see your child radiantly happy because things are as you—the mother or father—would like them to be for that child. Don’t raise a finger to make it so. Just let it be so. Don’t crow. Don’t tell them what you did. And even when it happened, don’t even say for one moment, “I did it.” Forget self altogether. Just rejoice in the effect that you see in that child’s life now.924 ¶34

Do it for your friends, and tell them, “Luck.” And when it happens, they may think, “Well, it is luck.” And I tell you, luck is only a name given by those who have no faith to the works of faith. And the only faith in which I speak is faith in God; and the only God of whom I speak is your own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. So believe in your imaginal act, and they’ll come to pass. But they’ll come to pass for everything you do—for yourself, for your child, for your friends, for everyone. And in this way, you bless all.924 ¶35

It doesn’t cost you anything. “Come eat and drink without price,” you’re told, “without money. Come and take it.” It doesn’t cost you anything to imagine lovely things about people. But believe in the reality of your imaginal act, and then that one comes to pass. It all comes to pass.924 ¶36

Now, because this is our last night, let us give a bit more time to questions. But if I haven’t made it clear, you can, by your questions, make me make it clear. But first, let us go into the silence. [Break]924 ¶37

Good. So are there any questions? No questions? It’s the last chance for a month. Well, if there aren’t any questions, [...] just a wish on my part: I do hope that you experience Scripture. I hope the birth takes place in you. You have an interval of a month. I cannot say to anyone, “You should have it tonight, tomorrow, or any other time.” No one knows. It comes suddenly; it comes unexpectedly, like a thief in the night. But it will come. Everyone is going to have it. Not one will fail. But I can’t tell anyone how close they are to that moment. No one but the Father in them knows the hour. No one knows the hour but the Father in men. And then it comes so suddenly, so unexpectedly. And then you realize you are the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you. Good night.924 ¶38

Tonight’s subject is: “He is Dreaming Now.” The Bible begins, as far as man is concerned: “And the Lord God caused a great deep sleep to fall upon man, and he slept. And then the Lord God formed woman out of man, and then he told man that he must leave everything and cleave to his wife until they become one” – one body, one spirit, just one. That is the beginning of our story. In Lewis Carroll’s book, Alice Through The Looking Glass, all these great writers take the same theme; all the great poets, they do it. And here we find this one little well, a little dialogue: “Come and look at him,” the brothers cried. And they each took one hand of Alice and led her up to where the King was sleeping. “He is dreaming now,” said Tweedle Dee. “And what do you think he is dreaming about?” Alice said: “No one can guess that.” “Why, about you!” said Tweedle Dee, triumphantly. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you would be?” Where would you be when you are the creation of the King who is dreaming, if he dared to leave off dreaming about you until he completed his purpose? For the Lord God has sworn: “As I have planned so shall it be and as I have purposed so shall it stand.” “And My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of My mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly.” What is his purpose? “He has 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.” So what is this plan; what is this purpose? His plan – He is so in love with His creation that exists only for Him and not for itself; like an author – the play and all the characters they exist only for the author. They have no existence outside of the author. But He so loves His creation, He wants the creation to exist for itself. And there is only one way that it can exist for itself, for now it only is an animated body, the whole vast creation and He desires that it cease to be the poem existing only for Himself, but to exist for itself. And there is only one day and one way that He can do it. He can do it only by dying and becoming His poem. Only as He dies and becomes you, will you live for yourself. “So unless I die,” said He, “thou canst not live. But if I die I shall arise again and thou with Me.” So God dies – actually dies, and becomes His poem; He becomes you.883 ¶1

And now you must dream the dream of death as he dreams it. The poets speak of it as “the dream of life.” I rather go with Blake and say: “ My Emanation yet my Wife till the sleep of Death is over.” Shelley calls it “the dream of life”. He hath awaken’d from the dream of life; ‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep With phantoms an unprofitable strife. But I will go with Blake. They are all great, but this is the dream of death where everything comes into being. It appears, it waxes, it wanes, and it vanishes. When the dream is over, man, individually, will awake. And when he awakes he is the dreamer that is God the creator.883 ¶2

Now, think of Alice and put yourself in the place of Alice -Alice Through The Looking Glass, the most fantastic play. And you are Alice, and he is telling you what he is going to do. Well, you weep because he is going to die that you may live. You don’t want that sacrifice, but he tells you: “Unless I die thou canst not live,” then he makes you a promise: “But if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” He makes that promise.883 ¶3

Well, how would Alice know that this gift of God to herself, the great King who is dreaming, is complete? He tells Alice that He has a son, a glorious son, a youth just like Alice. He’s not more than a teenager – twelve, thirteen, very fair, beautiful eyes, and beyond the measure of beauty. That’s his son. Then He tells Alice that you are going to have a son. And Alice tells him: “But how can this be, seeing I know not a man? I know no man.” Then he tells her: “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you and the son to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God. His name will be David,” he tells Alice, “it will be David.” And now we’ll continue the dream. And so he continues the dream with Alice, sharing with Alice all the horrors of the world. He puts her through all the furnaces, because he has to if she is going to bear his name. “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.” So he takes Alice through all the horrors of the world and then in the end, instead of thinking of Alice, He thinks from Alice. I can think of you forever and forever and you are but shadows within my mind, flat surfaces depicting that which I would like you to be. But you are not that which I would like you to be until I die and live in you and turn you into a reality. How different the cubic reality is from the “dimension,” that is, the flat surface that depicts it. So Alice is simply within the imagination of the divine Imagination: only a flat surface, moving because He observes her. He animates her by being aware of her. But He so loves her, he will not let her go. He leaves everything and cleaves to Alice until he enters Alice and dwells within her and thinks from Alice, instead of thinking of Alice.883 ¶4

And then one day He awakes within Alice and Alice discovers she is the King that was dreaming. And then He brings confirmation of his gift and His promise to her. One day there is an explosion within Alice, and Alice sees standing before her this youth that He described, which was a boy – a handsome boy with beautiful eyes, ruddy, and fair of skin, and he stands before Alice and calls Alice: “My Father.” And Alice doesn’t feel strange about it, although she’s Alice, a girl, she doesn’t feel strange that she is the parent of this wonderful son, who is the King’s son. And the King had told her in the beginning: “That’s how I will prove to you that I will die and rise in you. I will give you myself and the only way I could ever give you myself is to give you my most precious possession; and my most priceless possession is my son David.” One day, when I take you through all the trials of the world and prepare you to receive me, prepare you to receive my glory (“For I cannot give it to another.”) I have to bring you into a state where I can give you myself. And so one day He gives Alice himself, and then the son appears and calls Alice, “My Father.” And then – and only then – does Alice know that she is the King who was dreaming, and He was dreaming of Alice. And had He broken that “spell” before He completed his purpose, there would be no more Alice. It would have vanished as though it never were. But He swore in the beginning: “And the Lord God swore” that he would not break it until he had completed his purpose. So “The will of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His mind.” “In the latter days You will understand it perfectly.” “For as I have sworn, so shall it be. And as I have purposed so shall it stand.”883 ¶5

I am only quoting Scripture. If you have a good concordance, you will find every quote that I’ve made tonight is from Scripture. Those who do not have it – my last is from Isaiah, the 14th chapter: “As I have sworn so shall it be; as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” “My will shall not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly.” That is from Jeremiah the 23rd chapter. All these are simply quotations. We are told: “Search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life.” Well, search the poets, too, for they are men of vision and they have made every effort to tell in their own wonderful way. For, as Tennyson said: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So you take your vision and make every effort, based upon your talent, to put it into the form of a story that man, accepting the story, will find it moving story, into his own being, it becomes a man.883 ¶6

So here the story of the King who is dreaming and he is dreaming the most glorious play in the world, yet it’s a horrible play. Listen to the radio tonight or the TV tonight or tomorrow morning’s paper, and see the horrors all over the world. Brother against brother – the whole thing is in conflict, and yet it is serving a divine purpose. Don’t you lose the vision; don’t get lost in the play. You remain faithful to the Promise: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me. Wouldst Thou not One that would never die for Thee or ever die for One who had not died for Thee. And if God dieth not for Man and giveth not Himself Eternally for Man, Man could not Exist.”883 ¶7

So God died. And God’s death is simply to cease thinking of you and to think from you, to occupy you – just as you occupy a house and think from it, if it is your home. So within you now God dwells. He died for you. His name is “I AM.” That’s His name forever and forever. He has no other name, just “I AM.” He is your redeemer, turning you from a moving animated body into a life giving spirit.883 ¶8

One day back in ’54 I heard these words. Now, you will find it difficult to grasp it, but they have stayed with me since the vision. The vision was audio. And here a voice is speaking: “You do not move in waking any more than you move on your bed in sleep. It is all a movement of mind. The intensity is determined by the strength of the vortex you create. It is just like a whirlwind with a center of perfect stillness. You only believe that you move when you wake, as you think you move in sleep.” Where is God moving, save in Imagination? Where on earth is he moving where he is? He’s all places; there is no place where God is not. So where is He moving? It’s only a movement in mind. And the whole vast world moves because God moves within Himself. We are but animated bodies and He doesn’t want the poem to exist only for him; He wants the poem to exist for itself. So here he dwells now in man and man thinks he is moving.883 ¶9

I came here tonight in my friend’s car. I trust we’ll go back tonight, and I will think: “Well, I moved. I moved from my home to here; I moved from here to my home,” and yet the voice that never has deceived me tells me I do not move in waking any more than I move on my bed in sleep. It’s all a movement of mind. Then he tells me it’s like a whirlwind with a centre of perfect stillness, and the intensity is determined by the vortex that I create; that I only believe that I move when I wake, as I think I move when I sleep. Well, I know I do not move during the night, save just move from one side to the other in bed.883 ¶10

Wednesday morning, as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most delightful time, and here the whole thing was as clear as crystal. I met my wife in 1936. I fell in love with her the very moment I saw her. She didn’t with me, but she didn’t know that she was going to be my wife. I knew it that very moment, I just knew it. I said: “You don’t know it but you’re going to be my wife.” And I had no social, intellectual, financial, or any other background that you would turn and say: “All right, so he has this … none of those things.” But I still knew she was going to be my wife. But I tell you, I had she was going to be my wife. So Wednesday morning as I woke at 2:00 in the morning, I was having the most marvelous game with myself. My daughter was born in 1942; I met her mother in 1936; here now it is up to date: it is 1970. This is the time of the vision and here is my daughter. She is what her age is now: she almost will be twenty-eight. She knows that I am in love with this young lady who is twenty-nine. She heartily disapproves. I tell her: “That’s your mother.” She doesn’t know her mother, when her mother was twenty-nine. And I knew all these were states.883 ¶11

You ask me why we go through hell in this world. To acquire a keyboard on which we will play tomorrow. Today it seems like a chromatic scale, one note after the other leading up to a huge keyboard. Tomorrow you will take two events widely separated in time and slide them together, and they will sound differently from the individual note when you encountered it, the individual experience. Then you will be able to move your mind into a larger focus and split it, as you would your fingers on a piano and hit – not two events widely separated in time, but hit five, hit ten. And you will take this fabulous keyboard of 6,000 years, acquiring notes, and you will play the most fantastic creation in the world.883 ¶12

So, here I took my daughter and I was having fun with her, and I am having the most glorious romance with her mother which she didn’t know (the romance with her mother that was twenty-nine). I was excited as I was when I was young and in love with her when she was twenty-nine. My daughter, at twenty-seven, knows nothing of that mother, and she denies it. I say: “She’s your mother,” and she doesn’t know that at all. She says: “Nope, entirely different. That came years later.” And then I took the ships, I went to sea, and did all these things that I took my wife so often across the Caribbean on ships. We have flown several times, but many a time we took the ships. And all these things – and I’m playing them all together, having the most fantastic thing, knowing that each one was a state in itself and not related to anything unless I chose to relate it. I could take all these states, and I played the most creative part, I was creating the most wonderful drama using only the experiences from the day I met my wife in 1936 up to the present moment. And I was playing the most fantastic thing, bringing in all kinds of suspicions from my daughter, and her father falling in love with this young girl. And I was enjoying every moment of it. She didn’t know it; she was only a state in my world. And my wife, through all these years that she’s been my wife, she’s only a state, individual states, one after the other. That every moment of my life I am acquiring a new note on this fabulous keyboard, on which I will play tomorrow when I completely leave this garment. And life within me I will animate the entire thing.883 ¶13

And will I then create out of that fabulous thing an Alice, that I will so fall in love with something coming out of that fabulous keyboard that I too, will do for Alice what He did for me? I will say then to that that comes out of my creative power: “Unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me, Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee? Or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And unless God dies for Man and gives himself eternally for Man, Man could not exist.” So God dies. So you and I are creating now – or rather we are gathering together through our horrible and lovely experiences, for “joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.” So we are gathering together a fabulous keyboard on which we will play tomorrow and produce that perfect one with whom we will fall in love, as told you in the very beginning of Genesis. And out of Him came Eve, and then he had to leave everything – his father, his mother, everything, and cleave to his wife until they became one. So you will create your wife out of what you will play from the keyboard that you are now acquiring. And you will bring forth your Eve, too; and you will so fall in love with that, that you do not wish her to exist only for you within that poem. You want her to exist for herself, and there is no way you can make her exist for herself unless you give yourself to her. So you die. You give up everything that you are – your creative power and your wisdom – and take the weakness and the limitations of the one that you brought forth out of your own being: “My emanation yet my wife till the sleep of death is past.”883 ¶14

Then you will understand what all these poets have been trying over and over again to tell us. Take the one of Emily Bronte. You’ve seen the picture and maybe you’ve read the book, Wuthering Heights. (The first time I saw Olivier was in that picture.) There’s a character in it called Cathy. “I have dreamed in my life,” says Cathy, “dreams that have stayed with me ever after and changed my ideas. They have gone through and through me like wine through water and altered the color of my mind.” These are the very words of Emily Bronte. She wrote it. There was no Cathy, save in her Imagination – it was all in Emily Bronte. I can say with Bronte, the same thing happened to me. So how could I ever be what I was, after the vision, when the vision is more real than you are here now? Far more real, more alive.883 ¶15

So, from vision to vision I have been compelled to change what formerly I believed. I could no longer accept the theories of men. They all sit down and write their theories. Karl Marx writes his theory. It’s a little theory. It shakes the world, yes, but it doesn’t mean it’s true. And so another one writes another theory and another theory and so you have all kinds of theories in the world. But then my visions completely turn them completely over. Hasn’t a thing to do with vision, with the reality of life. Hasn’t a thing to do with it, even though they seem to shake the entire world. So, let them shake the world. You remain faithful to the vision. If they haven’t come, they’ll come. They come at the end of time. “In the end you will understand it clearly.” In the end. In the beginning it seemed you must go here and go there and go elsewhere to acquire all kinds of knowledge. Eat it as much as you want, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; in the end you will eat from the Tree of Life. And you will know what it really is; it’s all within us.883 ¶16

God became as I am that I may be as he is. Because he fell in love with his creation, I was part of his poem that existed only for God. And he so loved me, the character in his poem, that he wanted to give me independence and freedom. I only existed with him as an animated body to move and do as he willed, and independence means that I can do as I will. To do that, he had to give me himself, because He has life in Himself. Now, he wants to give his son life in himself. To do that he had to give me himself and he is a father; and being the father he has to now give me his son, and it isn’t Neville. He has an eternal son that he shares with the characters of his poem, making all the characters himself. For he is a protean being playing all the parts. And so, having given me himself, and he is a father, he must now give me his son, and his son stands before me and calls me “father,” and then I know that I am the King who was dreaming. “So come and let us go and look at him,” said the brothers. “Oh, he is dreaming now and I wonder what he is dreaming about.” “But no one could know that.” “Why, about you,” said Tweedle Dee. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you think you would be?” But he will not leave off dreaming about you until his will has been accomplished. “For I will not turn back until I have executed and accomplished the intents of my mind.”883 ¶17

Read it carefully, in the greatest book in the world, the Bible. Let all the others speculate and carry on with all their nonsense. Today’s great theory that may even prove itself in performance will be disproved tomorrow by some modification of that theory. Even though it proves itself, it’ll be modified tomorrow. You can’t modify the vision of God. It is forever; you’ll never modify it. You don’t need a son called “David plus” or “David minus”; he is David, and there is no other son! You aren’t going to find him called by any other name. There is no other way to the awakening as God the Father, no other way. For there is only one way and no other way. So let them all speculate and let them run around trying to find another way to the Father. Someone comes to town with a huge balloon of advertising and they all rush to hear what he has to say, and they get nothing but nonsense and an empty pocketbook. And then they come back and wonder: “Why hasn’t it happened to me?” And you remain silent, for you know exactly what they’ve been doing. They have been running around from post to post and wonder “why it hasn’t happened to me.” That’s all over the Scriptures.883 ¶18

So I tell you: he is dreaming now and he’s dreaming about you. And he will not break the dream. No one can arouse him until he completes his intention. His intention is to give himself to you, as though there were no other in the world – just you and God, and eventually only you, for you will be God. There is nothing in the world but that. Then having acquired this fabulous keyboard of experiences – oh, will you play! You’ll play it beautifully and bring forth one that so captures you that you want to give your emanation her own life, to make your emanation exist within herself and not just for you, as the poem exists for the poet. And you, too, will lay your life down in her and cleave to her until you become one.883 ¶19

Now, you dwell upon it, and let no one divert you. Oh, they can give you a thousand and one arguments. It makes no difference. After you have had a vision you are led by the vision, and you remain faithful to the vision. It would make no difference at all to you, although the world convolves as it is today, carrying signs this way and signs that way. And all brother against brother, as you’ve seen in the papers – don’t think for one moment it’s all in one direction. The country’s completely divided. The vocal minority seems to be the majority. It’s not the majority. On Wall Street today, a bunch of workers, construction workers with their helmets on, and they are protesting – not any war in Vietnam – protesting their pay. They want a raise in pay because of inflation. And then groups of these war protesters came by on Wall Street, and these fellows with their helmets – these strong, strapping men – became so incensed they jumped upon these fellows and beat them unmercifully, then unfurled the American flag – eight or ten flags, and with signs saying: “Impeach the Mayor, Lindsay,” – and walked with their American flags towards city hall. So they are not all protesting in one direction. There are unnumbered ideas in the world, and men live by their ideas. Let no one think by tomorrow morning’s paper depending on the cut of the paper, how they’re going to cut the news, for they all do it. They cut it based upon what the policy of the editorial setup is at the moment. But they do not know the world’s picture.883 ¶20

But you forget all of that nonsense, and you go about on this vision. God actually became you that you may become God. You dwell upon that and let the whole thing go past you. That is the story of Scripture. It’s the story of every great imaginative writer in the world and all the truly great poets. They took the same theme from Scripture based upon their vision, and they tried to the best of their abilities to tell it, knowing as Tennyson knew, that: “Truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors.” So you can tell it, and the lowly door will accept it in a most literal form, and they will live by it; it will simply cushion all blows. And eventually that truth will erupt in its true form within them, and they will see the truth of what was intended in the story. So you are the Alice of Alice Through The Looking Glass, and you were taken to see the King, and he was sound asleep dreaming, and you thought that no one knew what he was dreaming about. But one of the angels did. He’s called Tweedle Dee – a nut. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and the Mad Hatter – they’re all nuts. Well, those in the angelic world would appear nuts to the rational mind in this world. For the rational mind is going to live longer, and the only one who gets richer by the advice given by one who’s talking about living longer, is the one who talks about it.883 ¶21

So you buy something because of highly publicised TV promotions. Someone highly publicised a little – what is called “Liquid-Plumr.” And so I had some moment in my bathroom where the sink was all stopped up, so I got the Liquid-Plumr. Poured it in, in abundance. It said it’s heavier than water, and it would go all the way down and just eat up everything that is organic and will not hurt anything that is not organic, so I poured it in. Water still remained; it didn’t go down. Called the plumber the next day. He couldn’t come that day but he would come the next day. So it was forty-eight hours. So when he came the entire sink was eaten away by the Liquid-Plumr. So I asked him: “Does this thing work?” He said: “It does for two people: the one who manufactures it, and the one who sells it.” [Laughter from the audience.] They are the only ones who profit by the Liquid-Plumr. And so you turned on the TV and you saw it and you bought it. It is still on TV and I am sinning, because to sin by silence, when I should protest, makes cowards of us all. But I haven’t protested to the station that advertises this nonsense and I haven’t protested to the one, the place where I got it or to any one who manufactures it, so I am the silent sinner. Multiply me because of my embarrassment. Here is a sink completely eaten up by Liquid-Plumr. So that is the world in which we live.883 ¶22

And so that same thing goes for selling any other product. And that product could be how to get rich. A man, a friend of mine, died two years ago. I went to his funeral. He left behind an unsold volume, but he sold many of them, How To Live Forever. (That was the title of his book.) Well, he knew that it couldn’t catch up with him, because whenever he died, no one could question him. Perfectly all right. Another one tells you how to become a millionaire overnight and so he will sell it to the gullible. So he makes his little money and he still leaves the book. And he goes from one little place to another, selling his little nonsense. That’s the world over.883 ¶23

You go back to the book of books that will not change – it’s the Bible. It’s not history, it’s not secular history. This is revelation from beginning to end. Hasn’t a thing to do with secular history. All these characters are eternal states of consciousness, and you will meet them. And when you enter into that state, they become animated because of your entrance. You are the animating power of everything in the world.883 ¶24

Now you are acquiring a keyboard. And you think of that chromatic scale, and suppose you could only play it in one direction, and would not miss one measure? It’s all you can do. And then one day you discover you don’t have to go on this way forever – you can jump. Or you can go back in time, and your fingers can split and you can hit two notes together. Sounds like the devil but you learn to still hit another one that sounds harmonious. And one day you become so proficient that you hit a note and though it’s a discord, you learn how to resolve it. You can produce it and bring it into a dissonance. And you become the most expert on this keyboard. Well now, think of life, 6,000 years of experiences building a keyboard, and each note is simply an experience in life. And you take all these experiences and you are the artist now, and what you bring out, out of that fabulous keyboard. And then you bring it out and you want it to exist for itself and not only for you. So, instead of playing on it forever and having all these things come out, these glorious things existing only for you and not for themselves, you do the same thing that God did for you. “So unless I die Thou canst not live, but if I die I shall arise again and Thou with Me.” And you give yourself to your own creation that it may exist for itself and not only for you.883 ¶25

Now let us go into the silence. Are there any questions please?883 ¶26

Tonight we’ll take the two sides of this teaching—that which is on this level and that which applies to the real purpose for being. On this level we see things happen like wars, revolutions, convulsions, and peace. No matter what happens in the world I say all things spring from other than the causes attributed to the real cause. War comes into being and we are told in the press, told on radio, told on TV, told all over the reason for the war, and that we do not really know, we cannot see the hidden cause. Yet the hidden cause is right here in the Imagination of man. So all things spring not from the ostensible causes to which they are attributed even though they seem quite adequate.875 ¶1

In the current issue of the Atlantic Monthly, which is April, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps David M. Shoup goes all out and makes this bold, bold claim. Now bear in mind his position…he was the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and he claims that there is an ambitious elite of high-ranking officers who are turning our country into a militaristic and aggressive nation. They prefer war to peace…only through war can they receive promotion and glory and all the distinctions that they want, and to them serving in a peacetime Army is a dull, frustrating prospect. They plot and plan war to test their theories and their new instruments and they dream of war and it’s only war to them. He claims that is taking place in this elite, high-ranking officer corps in our country. Now, this is General David M. Shoup who is making this claim. He said, “Our civilians cannot understand it and cannot even believe that such men trained in our land to protect us would conceive of this and rush us into war for their own ambitions, glory and prestige. Nevertheless, that is taking place in our land.” You read it in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly, the April issue. There was a little summary of it in yesterday’s L. A. Times. You might have read that.875 ¶2

Where is this hidden state? The hidden state is in the Imagination of man. You can use it infernally, as they are, or you can use it as you should, towards the kingdom of heaven. You can sit down here and bring before your mind’s eye an individual who needs help, and represent that one to yourself as though they were all that you would like them to be and persuade yourself of the reality of that imaginal act, and then drop it, and they will conform to what you have done. Or you could take them into your mind’s eye and make a mess of them and they will conform to that. So you can use this creative power which is Christ in you infernally or in the most wonderful blessing way. It’s entirely up to you.875 ¶3

Well, when you hear these words coming from a man who was Commandant—you can’t go any higher in the Marine Corps—and here he was the General of all the Marines, this able body, and he tells us that today we have an ambitious elite of high-ranking officers preferring war to peace so that they may receive glory and prestige and promotion. And they plot and plan war, only war, for to them living in a peacetime state, performing their duty in peacetime is dull and frustrating and the most horrible prospect. He claims that our involvement in Vietnam is the result of their ambitions. He goes right out and states it. You and I are burdened with this enormous tax to continue this effort and here a small group is performing it.875 ¶4

Well, the poets have said this throughout the years, for the poets seem to be so far ahead, the poets and the prophets, for both seem to be inspired by the same voice. Yeats said, “I will never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the winepress who started that subtle change in men’s minds, or that the passion for which so many countries have been put to the sword did not begin in the mind of some shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way.”875 ¶5

Who knows who is treading the winepress this night? What person in solitary confinement is not using this only power in the world, which is Imagination, infernally or in a state of blessing? I ask you to use it in a state of blessing for numberless reasons, for there is nothing in the world but yourself pushed out. And I know from my own experience that a man imagining intensely with feeling can influence myriads, and act through many men and speak through many voices. A single man unknown to the world can influence myriads and really act through unnumbered men in the world, as this little group is acting for their own little promotion and what they call glory.875 ¶6

The day will come when all the thing is over. Those who are completely be-medaled like Stalin was and Hitler had no more room left for the medals he gave himself. You will find the costumes worn by murderers the most ludicrous costumes ever worn by God. God wears it, yes; but here was a complete misunderstanding of the power of God, the power of Imagination.875 ¶7

So I ask every one here who hears me to believe it, for I am speaking from a level of having awakened from the dream of life. The entire story as told in scripture I have experienced and I know it is a true story from beginning to end. Everything said in the gospels is the pattern which one day must be repeated in everyone in the world. For every child born of woman has behind it and supporting it an ancestral self, a heavenly being…the one who said in scripture, “I will never forsake you, never in eternity.” For, the one born of woman is the emanation of that ancestral self who is the Son of God. And as we are told in scripture, he has set bounds to the peoples of the world according to the number of the sons of God. So, behind everyone that is born there is that son of God, the immortal you, that ancestral you. He will never forsake you, not in eternity.875 ¶8

So remember how precious you are in his eyes. And he is the power of powers. Don’t misuse the power; use it only in love. No matter who you meet in this world, regardless of the pigment of skin, regardless of the nation behind him, or the so-called sex, remember behind that one is a brother of yours who is immortal as you are, an ancestral being, who has really no beginning, no end. And that one is taking him through the necessary experiences to make him one with himself, and eventually all return to that one.875 ¶9

Now here, we are told in scripture, he turned to his disciples and he said, “There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the kingdom of God.” Scholars claim the prophecy failed, for they died and they did not see the kingdom of God. That is because they do not know what the kingdom of God is. Are we not told in the 17th of Luke, “The kingdom of heaven is within you”? Who would see your entry into the kingdom of heaven but you? If you told them, it is not what they expect, so they would deny it, and they claim that completely. So they claim that they did not enter; yet the promise is made and the words of God will not be broken. They cannot be broken: “There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the kingdom of God.” Well, to see the kingdom of God and to enter the kingdom of God is the same thing. You see it, you enter it, but it’s all within you.875 ¶10

Well, how do I enter it? When the curtain is split, and then looking at the base of that split curtain, which is my body, I see the blood of my ancestral being who died for me, who became as I am. And I see that blood in which there is life, I fuse with it, and then like a bolt of fire, spiral fire, I enter heaven. For, the drama began in the holy sepulchre which is my skull, and there it ends. So I go up like a fiery serpent into my skull, and when I enter, it reverberates like thunder, as we are told in the 11th of Matthew: “The violent take it by force.” Well, the word translated violent or violence simply means “life.” It means “to press oneself into, to find a place within,” but it means “life,” for there is life in that blood. For, “life is in the blood,” and that was the blood of God himself. Contemplating it, I fuse with it. Then at that moment when I became it, I had life in myself. So, “As the Father has life in himself, he has granted the son also”…at that moment I was granted the right to have life in myself and to become one with my Father who emanated me, that ancestral being that I now am. And then you weave yourself like a spiral fire into the very holy sepulchre which began the entire drama. So here, the statement is true: “There are some standing here who will not taste of death before they see the kingdom of God,” and that is true.875 ¶11

But who is going to know it?—only the one who experienced it. And it goes on and on and on forever. If you are looking for a kingdom on the outside, you will never find the kingdom, for you are told “The kingdom of God is within you” . If it is within me, how could I enter it on the outside? How could I ever enter into the kingdom of heaven other than entering it from within myself? And you do.875 ¶12

Matthew speaks of this entrance as the Son of man entering it in the 16th chapter. They speak of this in the 9th chapter of Mark and the 9th of Luke, and they speak of it as the kingdom of God. On the heels of this he then turns and picks three, Peter, John and James, and he takes them into a high mountain and his countenance is completely altered before them. Now you think that that is on the outside. No it’s not on the outside; this is also on the inside. But the evangelist took this appearance of resurrection and then went back and incorporated it into what is known. If you read the story on the outside, as Jesus’ external ministry…which is not at all as this is external…so I am telling you what has happened within me…so this is external imagery. So they bring it back and tell it as though something took place here…where I took three people on the outside…and you don’t do it that way.875 ¶13

Now, a lady wrote me that she found herself in a cave, and in that cave she saw three men etched in gold, and a woman holding an infant in her arms, and she is the observer of the entire thing. She is in a cave with one exit, but three men etched in gold and a woman holding an infant in her arms. She can’t be far from the experience as this is an adumbration, a perfect adumbration.875 ¶14

The first appearance of the three we find in Genesis when Abraham sat in the door of the tent in the heat of the day, and three men suddenly appeared before him. Then we find in Peter’s 2nd letter, the first chapter, he remembered when three men were eye-witnesses to his majesty. Then he goes back to remember when Peter, James and John were called to witness to the majesty of the one that is about to be born. Always the three! So she now finds herself in a cave. Well, the cave is the holy sepulchre; it’s your own skull where the entire drama began and where it comes to its climax and fulfillment. She sees now the three. She called them. She sees the woman with the child—that is only a sign of what is about to take place in her, her birth. But there must be these witnesses to her birth and there will be, for here comes first, she will wake within that drama and then as she wakes she will come out and the three will witness her birth, and the birth will be simply God. She, the emanation of her ancestral being, became awake; which is nothing more than the return now to her ancestral being which enhances that eternal Son of God. She is one with her ancestral being, but while in this world of Caesar we seem to be detached from it and lost.875 ¶15

So here, I say to every one of you, take this wonderful power that is yours, your own wonderful human Imagination and use it lovingly on behalf of everyone in the world. What does it matter if these officers who are dreaming tonight of war and still more war? We have enough today to kill the entire world and yet they put burdens upon our shoulders to make more…the overkill they call it…that they may get a little medal, that they may be promoted from their present state, maybe a captain to a general, and maybe a five-star general, maybe they’ll become president. So what! And then be buried in some wonderful place where others will come and see where, and then two generations from now no one will know that they ever existed. Go through the cemeteries of the world and see those who thought themselves so great and no one recalls who they were. You must be an historian or be interested in such things in this world to recall these names that in their own day thought themselves so important.875 ¶16

So, as it is said, what does it matter if you owned the world and lost your life? For the word spoken now as violence means “life” and it means “power.” You come into a power unknown by mortal man. And so all the atom bombs and the hydrogen bombs in the world will mean nothing compared to the power that you fall heir to. Can you imagine a power that can look out upon a world and still it? Of course, you will never have this power were you not guided by love. Suppose you had that power and you were not restrained by love. You could take a whole nation, still it, and face it toward the ocean, march it into the ocean and drown it. You could…but you will know power only to the extent that you have love. I tell you from experience. When I was taken into the divine society, it was love that first embraced me, then it was power that sent me, but love first embraced me. No power in this world could I ever exercise unless it was conditioned by love, for love first embraced me.875 ¶17

For, just imagine such power, such almightiness not conditioned by love. So, all the power known to man on earth is as nothing compared to that power. Just imagine you can stop any being in the world, stop him in his tracks, and turn him around completely in a different direction, and he doesn’t even know there has been a change within him. He can’t complete his intention, because you’ve changed it, having that power. As you are told in that greatest of all dramas which we will re-enact in a week: “Do you not know that I have power to crucify you and power to set you free?” and he answered, “You have no power over me were it not given you from above” …no power. Just imagine having that power from above! But he came to play a part and play it completely from beginning to end and re-enact the entire drama for man. Because everyone is going to re-enact the entire story of Jesus Christ and re-enact it within himself; and all you can do is tell it, because it takes place in heaven and heaven is within you .875 ¶18

Those who hear it either believe it or disbelieve it, and you have not a power to persuade them otherwise. They’ll either believe it or disbelieve it. But those who do not believe in it, they sit in judgment and here they are dreaming war as this man Shoup said. Read it…if you haven’t the story it’s available…it’s the current issue. And you stand there as you read the six pages and you wonder what on earth is taking place? If a layman wrote it, all well and good; but this is not a layman, this is General David M. Shoup, Commandant of the Marine Corps. They can’t do a thing now, because he has resigned his post and he is now retired; and the money that he is bringing in today from his position as the highest general in the Corps must keep on coming. They can’t take it from him, so now he is free to tell exactly what he observed…that this ambitious elite of high-ranking officers in our country preferring war to peace is leading our country into a country of aggression and a militaristic state for their personal ambitions of promotion, glory and prestige. The very thought of performing their duty in peacetime to them is the most frustrating, dull and offensive thing imaginable.875 ¶19

Now, he said, “Civilians can’t understand it, because we trust these men to protect us having paid them their salaries, paid them everything, and all that’s done to them. Who pays it but the civilian who works? For the country has no money…it comes out of the pockets of the workers, so everything they get comes out of those who work. And we think, well now, they’re going to protect us, that’s the purpose of training them…and that’s not their purpose at all. Their purpose is to shine and to use us as pawns, and to become more and more glorious in their own little mind’s eye.”875 ¶20

But I tell you, you know the truth now. Your ancestral being, called the Son of God, actually shed his blood for you. I know it from my own experience. For, when this was torn in two from top to bottom and I saw that, I knew it to be the blood of God. Well, that God was my own wonderful ancestral self…an extension of that self that I am, not another. That would be a greater creative power in the world. I know from experience that the fairest body that he ever wore was the body of love; and I wore it with him when he embraced me and will return to that and wear that forever and forever, the body of love. We will not be two. I am simply an extension of himself and then brought back. And then we are more glorious yet one, more luminous, more translucent, more creative because we have a greater creative power by reason of this extension of himself where I play the part in the world.875 ¶21

And while I am still with you, to tell you what you ought to do—to use your Imagination lovingly forever and forever on behalf of everyone in the world, and believe in the reality of your imaginal acts. If there is one here tonight for the first time, may I tell you how it works. If you desire this night to change a friend who, say, is unemployed and you would like him to be gainfully employed, represent him to yourself in your mind’s eye as one who is gainfully employed. Then listen carefully as though you heard his voice. Become completely concentrated on the voice you know to be his voice. You know his hand clasp, well, use that too. You know what he looks like, well, use that sense too. And then every sense that you can possibly bring to bear upon this imaginal scene you bring it to bear upon it, and re-enact a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your desire for him.875 ¶22

When you feel the thrill, that imaginal thrill, that intense thrill, drop it. Just drop it completely and let that seed…as told in scripture…the kingdom of heaven is like a little seed and it grows, like a mustard seed. Don’t pick it up, just leave it. It will grow and bloom and he will actually conform to what you imagined him to be. Try it! Before you judge it, just try it and you will see that it works. And when it works you will know what this creative power in you truly is. It’s called in scripture Jesus Christ. In the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” . Well now, you prove it by imagining, and you prove that you did create this change in his life. Then you have proven the existence of Christ.875 ¶23

Well, that is Christ in you, your own wonderful eternal being and he will never leave you and he will never forsake you. That’s what we are told in the 13th chapter of Hebrews, “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you” . And so, there is that in you no matter what happens to you. If someone imagines the unlovely and you are swept into that state and go through hell, there is still that in you which will not leave you and will not forsake you. If you know this principle, you can always detach yourself from that and get out of it.875 ¶24

I was pulled into it and I got out of it. Without shooting one bullet, without doing anything, I got out of it. Well, the same thing that he writes today in the April issue could have been written in the first day of time, for the first great frightful act is Cain slew Abel. He slew his own brother. So the same thing is taking place over and over.875 ¶25

Well, when man knows that he need not be pulled into that whirling, or call it by any other name, he can get out of it and detach himself from it by simply ignoring the laws of the moment as I did. They said “You can’t get out.” Alright, I can’t get out. And so I dared to assume that I was out and then I mentally acted as I would act were I out and persisted in this state for nine days. On the ninth day, the same one who denied me my freedom granted me my freedom, and I was simply sent out honorably discharged. So no matter how you are pulled into it, this Charybdis, this whirling thing that pulls all things into it, you can get out of it.875 ¶26

So if today you find yourself in any state…there are people planning a Depression, do you know that? For personal gain! There are those who will sell short for personal gain. All kinds of things for one simple little moment in time, a little glory, that they may be put into the papers as a billionaire. They gloat over the thought that they are now a billionaire…and their name is called tonight and they leave it behind to those who don’t care whether they lived or not. Their nieces and nephews and all the others will simply spend it for them, and they will simply still be working over some other great fortune. They move into another world just like this.875 ¶27

So when you are told that there are some standing here who will not taste of death, may I tell you, no man leaves this earth, no man—by man I mean generic man—‘til he awakens, because earth does not terminate at the point where my senses cease to register it.875 ¶28

You drop tonight and you are still on this earth, in a body just like yours but young, vital, wonderful, everything that you would want as a young body. But the environment in which you find yourself is not that same place with the billion behind you. You may drop in this world tonight only one billion, to find yourself best qualified to shine shoes tomorrow in order to earn a living. It may be your lot tomorrow based upon your lot today for your ancestral being in you knows best what it will take to weave you into the likeness of himself, for you must be perfect as he is perfect.875 ¶29

You will not be brought to an end until you actually can be superimposed upon his image and fit it. Then you are one, the two are one. So, if I think…not knowing there must come an end in this little journey…that I will pile it up and pile it up to find that as I pile it up and multiply it, at the very end it totals the same that it was before. And I depart to find myself in a little environment, without loss of identity, so that no one actually leaves this earth ‘til he awakens.875 ¶30

When he awakens he departs from this age which is in earth… for this earth stretches for a length of time long beyond the threescore and ten…just like this, terrestrial, with all the struggles we have here; we marry, we die, we labor, just like we do here. We go from one little section of time to a section of time to a section of time until we are in the eyes of our ancestral self as he is. And when we are we awake. So here, the statement is true: “There are some standing here who will not taste of death until they see the kingdom of heaven.” The apostles who were called did not taste of death. Not a power in the world could have snapped them out in that section of time until they actually went up that spiral roadway into the sepulchre where they began. So every one of them actually did, but scholars don’t know that so they say the prophecy failed.875 ¶31

The prophecy did not fail, because the kingdom of heaven is not on the outside that mortal eye can see it. The kingdom of heaven is within and if it is within I enter it from within. And when you are told that they pressed their way into it violently, I know that from experience. When I went up with such force I can’t tell you the pressing into this area of my head. If now the whole head represents the kingdom of heaven, that’s the area where I am pressed in…a little bit left of center…right here. I tried my very best to go beyond it. But you are told in the definition given to us in the Concordance “pressing oneself into.” And it’s life itself. It is so crowded. You press yourself right into it as the living jewel, and when you enter it is with a force unknown to man. It has to be a force of that power to get in, so we are told, “The violent take it by force.”875 ¶32

Read it in the 11th chapter of the Book of Matthew: “The kingdom of heaven is taken by violence and the violent take it by force” . The old age is behind us, which is the law and the prophets up until John the Baptist. They did violence to their own appetites hoping to get in. You don’t get in that way. You live a normal life in this world. Whatever your normal, natural outlets live a normal life. Make no violence against this body of yours, whether it be in diet or the suppressing of the normal urges of life. That will not get you in.875 ¶33

When you are one with your eternal self so that you can be superimposed upon him and the same image, then you will find yourself split in two and the life of that being that kept you alive here as something on the outside you absorb it. Like a sponge absorbing it you become one with it, and now there’s life in you; and then you return and return with violence, and the whole thing reverberates just like thunder.875 ¶34

But on the side of Caesar, know that there are people in this world who dream violence and plot violence. You don’t try to counter them. You plot and plan things of love, things of affection, and they’ll pass by and they will not be able to draw you into their little circle. Oh, they’ll draw many because living as they do, plotting all day long through their ambitions to be glorified by men and to have some great distinction in the world. They even plot their funerals where they’ll be in some little caisson pulling into Arlington. To them that is a great accomplishment.875 ¶35

See, they have nothing in their mind’s eye beyond this little section of time. I tell you, you are an eternal being, you are immortal. Before the world was, you were. You were the Son of God long, long before the very universe came into being, and it was brought in as a theater for this great experiment. Then you radiated yourself; you are a ray of the being that you really are one with the radiating being. And he radiates it and he does not in eternity forsake you…it’s himself. He puts you through all the paces and fashions you into his own likeness. And then he receives unto himself all the experiences through which you have passed; and he is enhanced and glorified by these experiences. Oh, he is afflicted as you are afflicted, he suffers as you suffer, for then you come back and you are one. For, the being radiating is one with the ray that came out.875 ¶36

So here tonight, you take it seriously, and take a friend…maybe yourself for that matter…but take a friend who is in want and then represent him to yourself as one that you would like to see him express in this world. Persuade yourself that what you have imagined is true, believe in the reality of your imaginal act, and see him conform to it. He will…on this level he will. The day will come the thought will be believed and that’s when you return to your ancestral self…no time between the imaginal act and the fact. That I know from experience. There are levels: a level here, then a dream level, and then a level that is difficult to describe, and then a level where you are completely awake, which I call “Spirit waking,” where really the thought is the fact.875 ¶37

But you come to these barriers, and this is the lowest barrier, where that ray is completely concentrated and limited into these little garments of flesh. And here we became slaves; we are slaves to this mortal body. I must serve it morning, noon and night—feed it, clothe it, shelter it. And when I feed it I must assimilate what I give it and what I can’t assimilate I must eliminate. I must take care of these bodies. That is the slave.875 ¶38

So every child born of woman is a slave, because he is a slave by reason of the body that he wears. And there is no slave in the world comparable to the slave in the body. So, if tonight I was a slave and someone held me as a slave and fed me and clothed me and did all these things, I would be called by the world his slave; yet he is as much the slave as I am because he, too, is slave to his body. And if he had a million like me, he cannot command us to perform the functions of his body; he has to perform them all for himself. He has to eat, assimilate and eliminate, and that is the greatest of all slavery in the world. No one can do it for him, no matter what power he has in the world.875 ¶39

So everyone who comes into this world becomes a slave to the body that he wears. And you’re told in Philippians, he emptied himself of all that was his and became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross. When he came in he found himself a slave and was born in the likeness of man…that was the slave. He found himself born in the likeness of man and that was his slavery. So I can’t conceive of any slavery in the world comparable to the slavery of the body. Just imagine, you have to wash it, shave it, bathe it, and do everything for it. And then it wears out and you’ve got to go and get a little help. You go and get glasses, you go to the dentist, and you get false teeth; and then an organ wears out and you go to a surgeon who cuts out that one and puts in another, and then you go…well, all these things…you patch it up from the beginning to the end, and still you are a slave of it up to the very end. Do you know of any greater form of slavery in the world?875 ¶40

So luckily when we are in our teens and in our twenties we never think that it will ever get old, that it will ever wear out, and we brag and brag of our strength. Then all you have to do is to wait and watch him when he turns the little corner of time, and he may for a little while hide his weaknesses, but they become so obvious in time. Then he gets weaker and weaker, and the little body simply wears out, and he is still a slave ‘til the very end. Well, I can’t conceive of any grater slavery.875 ¶41

So, you try living this noble life, for I tell you, you are immortal. You cannot in eternity die, for he who radiated you will never in eternity forsake you. He couldn’t, for you and he are one. And when you return from the journey, you are one with the one who radiated you; and you were that being before he radiated you. Now let us go into the Silence.875 ¶42

Now, are there any questions, please? None? Well, if there aren’t any…and there should be on a night like this.875 ¶43

Nevertheless, remember what I have told you and that I am speaking from experience: you are immortal. You didn’t begin in the womb of your mother and you will not end in this little state called the grave. You came out from your ancestral self and he is the Son of God, and all the sons of God together form God. We are the gods who came down and we are playing our parts, and we are the gods who will return, and all will form the one God. For, the one became many and then the many will return to the one.875 ¶44

But while we are here, knowing that everyone can misuse this creative power, let them misuse it, but do not allow yourself to be pulled within that circle. And just imagine that here a man who certainly should know what he is talking about comes out in public print and makes this statement. For, if I wrote it you could say I’m prejudiced, but not a man who is the highest that one could go in the Marine Corps, who after a whole career rising to the highest, the Commandant, to make that statement, and he knows whereof he speaks, that these men plot and plan, preferring war to peace for their own ambition which is to have glory and prestige and promotion in this world of ours, using unnumbered men, slaughter them if necessary, while they get the glory. And it doesn’t phase them at all. That’s what Gen. David M. Shoup said in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly. It would be a very good thing to read, but you don’t have to…I’ve given you the highlights.875 ¶45

Every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems; it is a delusion of the perishing vegetable memory. We do not remember these moments in time when we imagined certain states. So when that imaginal state takes form so we can see it with the outer eye we do not recognize our own harvest and deny that we had anything to do with these natural effects that are taking place in our world. Because our memory is faulty, we do not remember them. “There is a moment in every day,” said Blake, “that Satan cannot find, nor can his watch fiends find it, but the industrious find this moment and it multiply. And when it once is found, it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed.” Now, by the word Satan he simply means doubt. Doubt cannot find it. I desire a certain state in this world. Reason tells me it’s difficult, my friends tell me it’s impossible, and so if I doubt that I could ever realize it— that’s the voice of Satan speaking to me. He’s always challenging God. God is my own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. So the protagonists are God and Satan…simply faith and doubt. Can I imagine that I am the one that I would like to be, and remain faithful to that assumption as though it were true? If I can, and remember that assumption and when I did it, then I can see when it happens in my world the relationship between the natural effect and its spiritual cause. The spiritual cause is that moment of assumption.867 ¶1

Now let me share with you what was given to me this past week in the form of a letter (he’s here tonight). His father was a low man on the totem pole when he first encountered him. There were four in the shop and he was the fourth man. If you’re familiar with the barber shop—maybe you ladies don’t know—the boss always has the first chair, so if it’s a slow day, he gets the man. By the time he is through if the second one comes in, he gets the second one…he doesn’t share him. If three should come in, they go to the different chairs. But four chairs…the fourth one waits for his customer. Well, this friend of mine, one day he happened to sit in his chair and he liked the way he cut his hair, and gathered from what he said he liked cutting hair. He was proud of the profession as a barber, proud of it…not making excuses as so many barbers do. He was proud to be a barber and wanted to be the very best barber and win competitions. So having heard this man express this desire, he imagined that he was tops. Well, in a little while he bought out his father and then dismissed him, and rearranged his setup, and from then on began to proceed to the top.867 ¶2

Well, three weeks ago, while sitting in his chair—which is not the boss-father is his father, for he was the low man and now he’s top man—he said to him in a very excited way that there was a contest to be held in San Francisco and he would like to enter this contest for hair styling and cutting of hair. “Well, when I discovered that he really wanted it, and no one goes to a contest unless he wants to win, I saw on the wall the trophy that would be his and I heard him tell me how he won. Well, there were four men in the shop, one committed for that weekend, and so this past weekend he took two with him…so there were three from that shop of four men. There were only nine trophies given in the state in this competition, and that one little shop won four. The boss-father won first prize and the second prize, and his two men who went with him each won a second prize. So they came back from San Francisco bearing four out of the nine.”867 ¶3

Now he said to me, “You’ve often said from the platform, ‘I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you may believe.’ Well, now I’m going to tell, Neville, before it takes place, there’s going to be a contest in Southern California and I have seen his trophy as the first one on that wall. So I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place, you will know that I’m putting this into practice.” I know he lives by it. “Then there will be another contest,” said he, “in Miami, and one must win in Miami to be eligible for that which is to be held in Brussels, which will be the international. I’m putting him there in Brussels as first among all contestants.” Well, I know that he will win, for every natural effect has a spiritual cause, and not a natural. A natural cause only seems…it’s a delusion of man’s perishing vegetable memory, he doesn’t remember. But now he will remember what he did. I have his record at home in his letter.867 ¶4

Now, he said to me in this letter, “I had a dream, I repeated the dream, and then I had a third dream all on the same night.” So the first and the second were simply the same dream repeating. “I do not bring back the details,” said he, “of the dream, but it was all about in detail, strangely enough, about my birthday. I cannot recall all the things that happened, I only know here stood a man in a white robe with a book in his hand open in the middle. It was gilt edged and he had a quill in his hand, or it could have been a scythe. He looked almost like a cartoonist’s concept of Father Time, and he was insistent that my birthday was a certain day. I was equally forceful in stating it was not, because I knew my birthday to be the 19th of September, 1927, and he was insisting over my protest pointing all the things out in the book. Then I woke, in spite of his insistence and my protest, for I knew my birthday. At least that was my physical birthday.”867 ¶5

I’ll call his attention to the 87th Psalm: “And the Lord records as he registers the peoples,” and he said, “This one was born there.” It’s all about birth. There are only seven verses in it…it’s a small short psalm. But this is the birth, not of a physical birth, this is a spiritual birth: “And this one was born there.” I can say to him, you did the perfect job that I knew you would in challenging the Lord’s angel, the recording one, for to sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of us all. No coward can be used in his stable of studs. I can say from the way you worded your letter that you have been born, but the perishing vegetable memory has not brought it back; you have been born from above. You have had other experiences that would imply an adumbration, but from this letter I would say you have been, but memory has not brought it back. I’m convinced of it, from your letter, for it’s all in the past, it’s not present and certainly it’s not future the way you worded the letter. For you know your birth date which is physical and it’s September 19th, 1927, and he denied that was the day of your birth. To deny that was the day of your birth would imply you were born in the spirit world, because he represents not the physical world but the spiritual world. So I would say of you, you have been born from above.867 ¶6

So here, take these moments…every moment in time is a special moment, a precious moment, a moment where you actually use it to plant what you want planted in this world, and remembering that moment, well then, it has to come. For every natural effect has a spiritual cause and not a natural. Well, that spiritual cause is that moment when you dare to assume that you are the man or the woman that you would like to be. Or that another man, in this case a barber, that he is the top as he desires to be. So you can do it not only for yourself, do it for another or do it for many as he did.867 ¶7

These are these in this wonderful world of ours, but our memory fails and we do not remember, so that when the whole thing rises in our world, we do not relate it to our own harvest. We can’t remember when we ever did it. But not a thing could happen in my world that comes by accident…it wouldn’t…all things come because I planted it, either wittingly or unwittingly. I either did it knowing what I’m doing, or I did it not knowing because I was lost in some emotional state. I felt intensely about a state, it might have been a lovely or unlovely state, but the seed was planted and I will reap it; and the whole thing will come into my world whether I recognize my harvest or not. So if I know this to be the law of life, it’s entirely up to me now to select and plant only what I want to reap in my world.867 ¶8

So everyone in this world is here for a purpose and the purpose is to fulfill scripture…there is no other purpose. The fulfillment of scripture brings me out of this world where I must remain until I awaken, but I can’t awaken until I fulfill scripture. Well, scripture is the plan.867 ¶9

Now, another lady wrote this one. She said, “I found myself in this glorious mansion, high, high up and with the most beautiful gardens and perfectly kept. A man and a woman left in a white car and someone said to me, ‘Give me two names’ and they were the names of two relatives of mine. But I knew that it was you who had left; I also knew that you would return. Now I have no memory whatsoever of what transpired between knowing it was you who left and that you would return, but I woke saying, ‘Now I know that I have experienced what Neville said that I would.’ Then my throat was parched as though aflame and I went and got myself a nice cold drink of water. I went back to bed and had this dream. I’m in a department store and here I am with all of these Bibles for brides, Bibles given out for weddings. In a strange way, all the brides were dressed in their bridal white gowns; and the department store supplied the grooms. They are all being married by proxy. The department store supplied all the grooms so that they may have a wedding picture taken with the groom supplied by the department store. Then I turned to one and speaking to her she said that she’s going to Paris. Then I said to her, ‘I’m getting married next month.’”867 ¶10

Well, this vision that you had, my dear, is a beautiful vision, because as we’re told in scripture in the Book of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name” . So you saw the perfect symbol of what the depth of your own being revealed to you, that you will have union with the Lord. Union with the Lord means that that which is in you like an egg is to be fertilized; and that it will erupt within you, and the whole thing said of Jesus Christ will unfold within you, and you will be he. So I can say you had the perfect vision.867 ¶11

Another lady wrote, she said, “I took my son into the back yard and here was a fish pond [...]. It wasn’t yet stocked with fish but clear water about twelve inches deep. In it was a little shaggy white dog lying in the water, but its little black nose was right above the water. I took the dog out, I dried it off and took it into the house, and it romped and played all over the place. Then I missed it and searching for it I went back into the yard and here is the dog in the pool again. This time when I walked by it wagged its tail as though ‘leave me here, I like being here.’ It was quite satisfied to be submerged in the water minus the nose above. But its tail wagged as though it was happy to be in that water.”867 ¶12

May I tell you, in the Bible we speak of the stone, the water and the wine. The stone is the literal story, the allegory, and man must discover the fictitious nature and character of the story. When he discovers the fictitious character of the story in scripture and then learns its meaning, he has found water. He has struck that rock, like a Moses, and water flowed out.867 ¶13

Now the first miracle or sign in the Book of John is the turning of water into wine . And so you’re told to fill the stone jars with water, and when they drew it out of the stone jars that water within the stone jars was wine, perfect wine, lovely wine. So first we have a story, and man takes the story and accepts the story literally, and so he goes through life with the literal or the stone. When he discovers the fictitious character of the story and then it reveals itself to him, the true meaning, he has that psychological water.867 ¶14

Now, the little dog is the symbol of faith. Your faith is now in the psychological meaning of these great truths. If you apply what you know, you will convert it into wine…if you apply it. If you will take what you now know, that imagining creates reality, and dare to imagine that you are now what you would like to be, then you are turning this water, truth, into wine.867 ¶15

As told us in the Book of Genesis: When Jacob brought the flock into the field the well was covered with a stone, and he rolled the stone away and watered his flock; and then he put the stone back again. He didn’t turn it into wine, but he did withdraw water. But the stone covered it and hid the view of the water.867 ¶16

So the story as told to man is a parable; the whole thing is a parable, the whole thing is an allegory. If you take it as factual and not as what it really is, the most wonderful parable in the world, well then, you’ll never use your Imagination to extract from that stone the water, therefore, you cannot feed the flock. But if you can actually get from any story in scripture its psychological meaning, tell it to the world.867 ¶17

When Isaac brings his son, and he’s blind, can’t see, and so two sons—one is called Esau, one is called Jacob. Jacob covers himself in the skins of a goat to give himself the feeling of hair, for the first one was Esau and Esau was hairy all over. So when Jacob deceived the father into believing that he was Esau, he gave him his blessing.867 ¶18

So you take the story…and I stand here now and reason tells me that I am not where I would like to be, that I’m not the man that I really desire to be, so I shut out what reason is suggesting. I deny everything that reason dictates. I close my eyes to the facts of life, the obvious things, and I clothe myself mentally in all that I would like to be. I imagine that people see me as they would see me if I were the man that I would like to be. I imagine that I am actually standing where I would stand if I were, and that I am actually doing all the things that I would do normally and naturally if what I am assuming were really true, that it’s a fact. Well now, when I do this I’m clothing myself in the outer garment of natural, of the facts.867 ¶19

Now when I open my eyes on the facts of life, it denies everything that I have done but I remember what I did. I caught that precious moment…for there is that moment in each day that doubt cannot find, and his helpmates cannot find it, but the industrious find this moment.867 ¶20

So become the industrious. You find this moment and you clothe yourself in all the lovely things that you want to be in this world. Having done it, then you can break the spell. Open your eyes upon the facts of the world and the facts will deny everything that you did. But you’re told in scripture that Isaac having done it, having given the blessing to that moment, he couldn’t take it back. He could not retract it. So when Esau comes into the world and tells his father, “But you’re deceived…he first of all took from me my birthright, now he’s taken from me my blessing. He’s rightly named, you named him Jacob—meaning he supplants, he is a supplanter.” But the father, Isaac, said: “Even though he’s taken through deceit and deceived me into believing that he was Esau, I’ve given him your blessing and I cannot take it back” .867 ¶21

So that moment cannot be called back, it’s on its way. And it will move towards what?—the fulfillment of itself. When it appears in this world suddenly, it’s only the emergence of that hidden continuity. So it was moving unseen by the world and suddenly it erupts in the world.867 ¶22

But having remembered what I did, I can relate now that spiritual cause, the thing I did unseen by others, to the thing seen now that the whole vast world will share with me.867 ¶23

So in your case, my dear, having seen the little dog, it’s the symbol of Caleb or the hound of faith. The one that takes…goes with him…goes with whom?—goes with Joshua across the river into the Promised Land. No one else could go. So you walk in faith in this. And the day will come you will turn it all into wine. In other words, you will find yourself fulfilling scripture and the whole thing will unfold within you.867 ¶24

Now we told you last Monday the story of Moses and that he did not cross into the Promised Land but Joshua went over. You may not be familiar with scripture, but Joshua’s original name was Hoshea, as told us in the Book of Numbers. You’ll find that in the 13th chapter, the 16th verse of Numbers: “Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua.” So when you take the prefix “Je” and put it before Hoshea, you turn Hoshea which means “savior or salvation” into “he by whom Jehovah will save.” So it becomes that creative power that actually, I would say, fertilizes what Moses represented. Moses represented the pattern man: “See that you make everything according to the pattern as it’s being shown to you on the mount.”867 ¶25

So here you’re seeing everything clearly that is the pattern. Don’t alter one little thing, make it just as it’s shown you on the mountain. But I can’t go in. That’s the egg, the perfect egg, that’s the ovum, but an egg remains just an egg until fertilized. It must be fertilized by the sperm, so that sperm must penetrate the surface of the egg. It leaves no hole either before or after penetration, and no one understands how it happens, because no one knows it’s all Imagination. I do not need to go through any door to put myself in a closed room. Seal the room and I could imagine that I’m in it and I didn’t open the door to go through. I didn’t break down the wall to get through; and when I depart I didn’t go through the open door, and I didn’t go through by breaking down the wall. I entered without leaving any hole and I departed without leaving any record of entrance and departure.867 ¶26

So a little sperm penetrates the surface of an egg and it leaves no hole either before or after penetration. But unless it penetrates, that egg remains just a perfect pattern of what ought to be or could be, but could never by itself ever unfold. It takes the sperm to penetrate it to make it unfold.867 ¶27

So Joshua, which is the Hebraic name of Jesus, the word Jesus and the word Joshua are the same thing…“he by whom Jehovah will save.” So man awakened from the dream of life. If he is a powerful man, a man like the one I spoke of earlier tonight, one who would defy the angel of the Lord, and over his protest he still is insisting that it’s not the right thing. Here he’s pointing to the Book of God and showing him that it is, but in spite of that…and so he didn’t sin by silence.867 ¶28

Because he didn’t sin by silence he’ll be used perfectly in the stable of the Lord to actually impregnate those who accepted the Word of God and have it within them as the pattern, the perfect pattern that must one day, having been impregnated, erupt within that one and unfold within him. So I congratulate him on his accomplishment.867 ¶29

For everyone who is awake if they are that spirit, they are members of the stable of the Lord, used for impregnation to inseminate the brides of God…for he is God. Everyone in this world is God.867 ¶30

But as a lady wrote, she said, “I wrote this letter. I don’t quite understand it, but I woke and I was repeating it, ‘The thing is we are bifurcated, divided beings.’” Well, who is the divided being but the Lord himself…the Lord and his emanation…a divided being. Out of Adam comes Eve, a divided being, and that emanation of the first. Well, here we are emanations. Well now, these contain the pattern of God’s plan of salvation, and it has to be, I would say, fructified, fertilized.867 ¶31

And may I tell you, it seems strange in this world to make these statements, but I know from experience they are true. I know how we play these parts after we are awakened from the dream of life. Then man is twice born, born from above, if he’s of that school, that spirit, and then we re-enter like a serpent. If you go up in a small little way like this, that’s not it. But when you go up as though you were a bolt of spiral lightning and you vibrate the entire skull and you’re still vibrating it, trying to get out and finally you subside, that’s the power that he can use. That’s the one that he uses in the fertilization of his bride.867 ¶32

But tonight you test it on this level and come down to this level and try it. There is a moment in each day…not just a moment, every moment of time is such a moment if you have a desire…that you can actually isolate that moment and then clothe yourself with the feeling of the wish fulfilled, whatever that wish is, until you can actually feel all the tones of reality, all the things that you would normally feel were it true. Now don’t forget that moment. That moment is productive and in its own good time that moment will appear in this world properly clothed as an objective fact. If it takes the whole vast world to aid its birth, it will take the whole vast world. If it takes an army of men to bring it to pass, an army of men, it doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to guide it. All you have to do is simply do it, and then let it alone, as you would put a seed into the ground, confident that it will grow.867 ¶33

Well, so you simply drop this, knowing what you did, so that you aren’t surprised when it happens in your world. So you want to be a man of wealth; all right, assume that you are a man of wealth. Not to have anything in this world other than that you desire it, because the man of wealth and that poor man are the same being. The poor state, the wealthy state, they’re only states. The man who occupies the poor state is an individual that never ceases to be that individual, but if he falls into the state of poverty, well then, we call him a poor man. But he doesn’t differ from the man who falls into the state of wealth. For the man in the state of wealth isn’t any better, he has money, lots of money if he’s a fabulously wealthy person; but that doesn’t put him in spiritual sense beyond the man who is poor. The man that is poor doesn’t know how he can get out of the state of poverty. All these are states, infinite states, and man blindly falls into states.867 ¶34

If he knows they are only states and he dislikes the state he is in, he’ll get out of that state by now planting one of these moments, these heavenly moments by assuming that “I am now secure.”867 ¶35

Security’s a relative term. It may be that someone is insecure with a $100,000 a year income. I am quite sure that if you take any of the fabulously wealthy men of our world and said, “Your income as of now will be only $100,000 a year,” they would instantly have to sell their yachts, their homes, all these things, and give up membership in certain clubs, because they couldn’t even pay their servants. If they have a full complement of servants in their many homes and you said, “$100,000 a year,” well, they would be poor. The average person, if you said, “You have $100,000,” he would be fabulously wealthy.867 ¶36

So wealth is a relative term. It hasn’t a thing to do with the spiritual growth of a being, nothing, because all of these are states. So I can put myself into a state of wealth, put myself into a state of poverty, put myself into any kind of state in this world. So if I don’t enjoy poverty, well then, don’t get into the state.867 ¶37

I, on the other hand, have no desire for fabulous wealth, because I do not wish the responsibility of fabulous wealth and thinking about it. I can’t see how anyone who is fabulously wealthy has any time whatsoever for things of a spiritual matter. He’s so concerned about his wealth, his portfolio, and watches it morning, noon and night. The first thing he does in the morning when he gets the morning paper, he turns to that section and he reads it, as some ladies turn to the social section and they read it, as though it really matters, but they do it.867 ¶38

There are some who only read the obituaries and then they get a living out of reading that and notifying all the people who are recorded as dead that he knew them. I know when my father-in-law died he got unnumbered letters from people who claimed that they knew him and he had promised them so much, and that he died before he could execute his desire. Some people even went so far as to print up all kinds of things, saying he ordered these before he died, Mr. [...], and printers would send him all kinds of personal cards saying that Mr. [...] ordered these before he died, and when we saw them the name was misspelled. So her lawyers said to just ignore it, just forget it…because people make a living reading obituary columns. You’d be surprised how many people fall for it, because in that emotional moment they are carried away with, well, if my husband did this I wouldn’t want not to make good, and so they send off the check for what he had ordered which he didn’t tell me. So they send off a nice $100 or $200 check for these stupid cards. The lawyer said to just simply forget them, because this happens every moment of time.867 ¶39

Well, you can hardly believe people live that way but they do. You can’t conceive of something in this world that someone isn’t doing it, and all these things are done in our world.867 ¶40

So I ask you to try it on this basis, that imagining creates reality…that is my premise. And don’t think for one moment you can imagine idly, because the record is here. So as a man plants, so is he going to reap. There isn’t a thing in this world that comes into your world that comes by accident. But you don’t remember the moment in time when you actually did it, and so you can’t relate it to the natural effect. But the natural effect always has a spiritual cause and not a natural; a natural cause only seems and it is a delusion. So don’t let anyone tell you that you can trace it to any physical cause. The physical cause, which is the natural cause, is not a cause, it’s only an effect. All causes are spiritual and by spiritual I mean imaginal. For, “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” . God is the only source; there is no other source.867 ¶41

In the 87th Psalm that I quoted tonight, “When this one was born there” it ends on a very lovely note, “and the singers and the dancers alike say, ‘You are our springs.’” There is no other spring, no other source, no other cause. Whether you be the dancer or the singer of the world, you are our spring, we have no other source. So the only source of all causation is found in man as man’s own wonderful human Imagination.867 ¶42

So you take it to heart and then you can never pass the buck. You can’t blame anyone in this world for anything that happens to you. There’s no one in the world that you can turn to and say, “Well now, you are the cause of it.” Don’t let anyone turn to you and say that. If they do just ignore them, because they are bringing it into their own world by what they imagine morning, noon and night. So they want this done…imagine unlovely things of another, unlovely things of a group, well then, they’re going to simply produce it…not in the group but in themselves.867 ¶43

So you go home and live by it, live it as that lady by her vision tells me she’s living it, because the little shaggy dog was in the water. Her faith is in the psychological knowledge of these stories. I only ask you not to just continue drinking water, as you’re told in the Book of Timothy, “Drink no longer water but use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your many infirmities” .867 ¶44

So it’s good to know what to do, but we’re the operant power and therefore we must do it. Not just know what to do, but we must do it. So when I do it, I stop drinking the water and I drink the wine. If I know what to do but I don’t do it, well, I have the water but I’m not turning it into wine. So let everyone here practice it and put it into a daily practice. May I tell you, it cannot fail you, it cannot!867 ¶45

Now let us go into the Silence.867 ¶46

To unravel the mystery of Christ from all the interpretations put upon it is quite a different task. We are up against all kinds of misunderstandings of the mystery. Most people believe that it is secular history, and the story has something to do with some historical occasion; and it isn’t. It is salvation history. The whole thing is taking place in you, the individual. It’s not taking place on the outside at all. But how to convince men that this is true? Well, tonight we will try. I will try to explain what I know from my own experience.857 ¶1

The story is told of Christ; and the term called “Son of Man” is a term used most to describe the Christ, the Messiah. We are told in the Book of Daniel: “And one like a son of man came to the Ancient of Days, and was presented before him, and he was given dominion and glory and kingdom.” Well, “dominion” means “complete control of all human and non-human forces” . . complete control. That’s dominion. “Glory” is God Himself, as told us in the Book of Exodus: “I make my glory pass before you,…and when I pass by.” So he equates “glory” with “I.” So here, it is God Himself. And now “Kingdom” is simply the realm where a monarchical ruler dominates all things . . the king. In the New Testament it is said of Him, which is the central figure, that he is the Son of Man. So he asks this question: “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And they answered, “Some say John the Baptist come again, others Elijah, other Jeremiah, and still others one of the prophets.” Then he turned to them and said, “But who do you say that I AM?” He equates himself with the Son of Man. Then Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.” He accepts that definition. So here we find the Son of Man, the “I” and then “Christ” all equal. They are one and the same.857 ¶2

So here tonight, we speak of This-in-You. And when the Son of Man, as we are told in the Third of John: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up” . Now we have just seen that the Son of Man is the “I” of man . . the pronoun “I.” It means “I” or it means “one.” So here we can say, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must ‘I’ be lifted up,” or “…so must one be lifted up.” I am not speaking of anything outside of you. That “I” is the One spoken of in Scripture. “You must be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto me” . This is the drama of Scripture. Today the world . . I hear it on TV, I read it in the papers; and these very prominent and very popular teachers from the pulpits and from the TV screen are speaking of the signs, and they tell you that we can see the signs of the end of the world. There aren’t any signs! You are told in Scripture that “of that day and hour no one knows but the Father.” “It is not for you to be given the time or the signs.” When the sign comes, you’ll understand it. Everything will happen in you just as described in the story of Christ; but earthquakes and convulsions of nature, cosmic catastrophes haven’t a thing to do with the end. This is a unique story all about you. It hasn’t a thing to do with the end of the world. It’s the end of your journey through the tribulation of human experience, that’s “the end.” Then comes, with shocking suddenness, the “I” awakening in you. It is not another; it is you. You are the Lord Jesus Christ. You are the Lord God Jehovah. You are the central figure of Scripture. It has not a thing to do with another.857 ¶3

So, catastrophes? Well, a year ago in San Francisco I read in the New York Times that every 24 hours we have approximately eighteen hundred what are called “natural” catastrophes in the world like volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, typhoons . . all kinds of horrible things; but every 24 hours there are at least eighteen hundred of these normal, natural convulsions of nature.857 ¶4

And yet, here are our religious leaders interpreting an earthquake, interpreting some convulsion of war. You are told, “There will be wars and rumors of wars” ; but that is not it. If anyone should ever come to you saying, “Look here is the Christ, or there is the Christ, believe him not.” There is no outside “Christ.” Christ is buried in you; and when he comes, he can only come by awakening in you. Even though one has actually had him completely awake within himself, don’t believe he is the Christ. He has awakened in me, the speaker, but I am not the Christ that you are looking for. The Christ that you are looking for is now buried in you. And must awaken in you as you. It is the “I” of you. The personal pronoun “I” . . that is Christ; but man doesn’t know it, and he is looking on the outside for Christ. And there is no other Christ.857 ¶5

So when anyone tells you because of an enormous following that he can interpret the signs, . . there aren’t any signs on the outside.857 ¶6

Let me show you one simple little story. In the 13th Chapter of Mark and the 24th Chapter of Matthew it is said that he turned, after having heard from his Disciples, . . they said, “Look at these buildings,” . . speaking of the temple. “Aren’t they wonderful?” meaning that they are forever. And he said, “You see these buildings? I tell you, not one stone will be left standing upon another but what it will be thrown down.” Not one stone . . all will be thrown down. Then they said, “When will it be?” Now this is called the “Little Apocalypse” in Scripture.857 ¶7

Whether these are words of the Evangelists or words of the central figure, . . they are all words of the Evangelists anyway; they are all relating their own experience. These “buildings” are not on the outside. So, when Blake said, “Cities, mountains, valleys, all are human,” he meant it, . . that in your own wonderful imagination these structures are erected. These are the beliefs by which you live, and they are powerful in your mind. The day will come, you will see it. They will seem to be, to you, external to yourself, and they are structures; they are buildings.857 ¶8

In my own case, on the 21st day of December 1960 I saw a city. They were not enormous buildings like the Empire State . . 12, 15 or 16-story buildings; but they seemed to be everlasting. At the very moment, I knew everyone was going to fall. And here came the first one. It all crumbled before my eyes. I knew the next one . . it crumbled. Everything crumbled, because prior to that day, which is the 21st day of December 1960, I had had the experience of the “birth from above” and the discovery of the Fatherhood of God and the Son of God who actually called me “Father,” revealing who the Father really is. I had the experience of that Ascent of the Son of Man. Then all of my previous beliefs by which I lived . . they all collapsed. I, too, believed . . as the whole vast world of Christendom believes . . in the historicity of Christ, in the secular history of Christ; and suddenly the whole thing was not there at all. It’s all about me! It is all about you. And when I arose from within myself, then all that I formerly believed in had to collapse. These are the structures spoken of. He is not speaking of these buildings falling. If the whole vast city tonight moved into the Pacific, it is not the end. The end comes to the individual. It doesn’t come to us collectively; it comes to us individually. And all the things that you, throughout the centuries, have erected within you by which you live and believe . . when it actually happens in you and you realize you are the central Being of Scripture . . you are the “God” spoken of, you are the Christ Jesus spoken of, then all the things on the outside that you turned to for comfort, they collapse. But they are now projected within you as “buildings.” So, he said, “See these buildings? Not one stone will be left standing upon another,” . . no one. They shall all come down, and it happens within you.857 ¶9

Now we are told, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Well, you have just heard that the Son of Man is the “I” of man . . the personal pronoun “I”; so it’s not something on the outside. You are lifted up just in the same manner that Moses in the wilderness lifted up the serpent. And that is true. You actually find yourself . . now we will take the story.857 ¶10

He was standing on the Mount of Olives, as you read it in the 13th of Mark and the 24th of Matthew . Now we go back to the 14th Chapter of Zechariah. “Zechariah” means “Jehovah remembers.” This is the last chapter of Zechariah . “And he was standing on the Mount of Olives,” . . and this expression “Mount of Olives” is only used twice in the Old Testament. Here is the Mount of Olives. It is used first in Second Samuel concerning David ; but here is the second use of it at almost the end of the Old Testament, the 14th Chapter of Zechariah. Remember, the word means “Jehovah remembers.” This is his pledge, his covenant: “Now, the Lord is standing upon the Mount of Olives, and the Mount of Olives was split from east to west, forming a very wide valley; and one half of the mount moved northward, and one half moved south.” And then came out of Jerusalem, . . for the Mount of Olives faced Jerusalem, . . came “Living water,” . . came living water.857 ¶11

Now I tell you, the “Mount” is your Self. Everything about the story is all within you. On the morning of the 8th of April 1960 suddenly I am split from east to west, . . meaning my body, . . from the top of my skull to the base of my spine; and it parted about six inches . . a vast valley between the two sections of my body. At the base, which would be the spine, is a pool of living, golden light . . “living water.” Then I looked at it, and I could say with Blake, “I knew it was my Self.” I am looking at it, and I not only knew it was my Self, I knew it was my own Creator and Redeemer; and I am my own Creator and Redeemer! I fused with it, and then like a fiery serpent I went up into my skull. That’s Heaven! “For the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” That’s where the Kingdom is. It’s all within you. And when I entered, I made every attempt . . I can’t tell you the force I used to get through my skull, but I couldn’t get through my skull, for that is Reality. It’s within. You don’t get out of it. The whole thing takes place within. The best I can use on earth to illustrate it would be a rivet. Have you ever seen someone take a hot, hot rivet and throw it to the one who catches it, and then takes it and actually puts it into the steel to make it secure? It’s a fascinating sight to see them rivet these steel structures. Well, I actually felt myself being moved right into it. If I could describe it, it’s right here . . a little left of the straight line down my forehead; just a tiny fraction left of this area. That’s where I felt myself riveted. I made every effort to penetrate and go through, but I couldn’t; I was stuck right there.857 ¶12

So, you are told in Scripture, in the 11th Chapter of Matthew : “And the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by violence, and the violent take it by force.” That’s how you take the Kingdom. The whole Kingdom is in your skull. The whole thing is being constructed in your own wonderful human skull! So here, I am talking only about you; I am not talking about any convulsion of nature. Let them have all their so-called enormous crowds, telling people how they can read the signs that we are at the end of the world. End of what world? This is a unique reconstruction of the Temple of God, and it’s reconstructed out of living stone, not dead stones. For when the temple fell, it was made of simply living, but not life-giving, stones. Now we are being turned into life-giving stones, and every stone must be fitted into that temple. And everyone will be called in order. Not one will be missing, may I tell you? Not one in eternity can fail to be called, and he goes through the same identical process.857 ¶13

You are called, and then you are raised from within the “I” of man. You are raised. You are awakened; and when you are awakened, you see no one but yourself. You are all alone. That’s the Christ, entombed in your own skull; and you, and you alone, come out by an innate wisdom as to how to do it. It’s built in within you, for Christ is not only the power of God, he is the wisdom of God. So, there is an innate wisdom how to do it. I knew exactly how to do it. And you push the base of your skull, and something moves, and you come out. When you come out, and I ask, “Who did it?” and you say “I,” that’s Christ. That is the Son of Man. That is the Son of God who can claim, “I and my Father are one.” In the world, yes, I seem to be less than my Father, for I am now doing a job. I AM in the world as one that is “sent”; but the Sender and the “sent” are one. I am only inferior to my Self . . the Sender . . when I am playing the part of the “sent,” but I’ll return to my Self . . the Sender, and I’ll be one with my Self . . the Sender. “I will leave the world and return to my Father.” And “I and my Father are one.”857 ¶14

But how to explain that to those who believe in the “Christ” on the outside? When throughout the centuries they have been taught to believe in some external savior, and there is no external savior. You, and you alone, decided to do what you did. We collectively decided to do it: to come into the world of “death” and die . . literally die, and then be victorious and overcome death. That’s Who-We-Are. And everyone, in spite of what he has done, what he is doing, or what he may do, . . he is that Christ spoken of in Scripture.857 ¶15

And so, how to tell a man that although the imagery seems strange, it is actually true? You rise just like a fiery serpent. Who would believe that? Who would believe that Mount of Olives is his own body? I stand on the Mount of Olives and I face Jerusalem; and then it’s split from top to bottom, as told in the great 13th of Mark and the 24th of Matthew : “As the lightning comes from the east and shines towards the west, so shall be the coming of the Son of Man.” It’s a bolt of lightning, and you did it. You split yourself right down the middle, and the mountain parts in two. So, the Mount of Olives is now cut in two from east to west, and one half moves northward, and one half moves southward. And then out of Jerusalem . . because you can view Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives . . come living water. And I tell you, it is living water! It’s golden, liquid, pulsing, living light. And as you look at it, you know it’s your Self. How can I . . a man . . know that I am liquid, liquid light? But I am! And I fuse with it; and as I fuse with it, like a fiery serpent, I go right up into my skull. So, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,” . . in the same manner, after the Mount is split in two from top to bottom.857 ¶16

When they are looking now, as they are, . . they go off to Jerusalem physically. They have these enormous productions where some nations give them millions to excavate all kinds of things to try to find where he was buried. Where he was buried! The only place where Christ was ever buried is in the human skull; and it’s called in Scripture “Golgotha.” In the Book of Luke they actually call it by the name “skull.” “When they had brought him to the place called The Skull, there they buried him.” Now “Golgotha” means “skull,” but it’s the Hebrew form of “skull.” We speak of “Calvary.” Well, “Calvary” is the Latin form of “skull.” And so, the whole thing is simply your own wonderful human skull. That’s where the whole drama takes place. It all takes place in the imagination of man. There is nothing but God, and God is the human imagination. And the drama of God is unfolding within us.857 ¶17

So, let no one tell you they can see signs of the end of the world. “The end of the age,” but the “end of the age” is the end of the tribulation of human experience. That’s the end. There is no other end. You and I have gone through “hell,” and when we come to the end of the tribulation of human experience, then suddenly . . with shocking suddenness . . the whole thing erupts within us. So, you are told: “Do not ask. It comes like a thief in the night.” When you least expect it, He will come. Therefore, be alert, but there shall be no signs. This generation seeks a sign, and there shall be no sign. I tell you, it will come just . . maybe tonight. I hope so.857 ¶18

I know in my own case, I went to bed as innocent as I had in any previous day. It was a lovely day. I lectured to an audience of eleven hundred or twelve hundred. I went off to brunch, because I didn’t have breakfast, with two friends . . husband and wife. We went to a simple little place and had what I would call “breakfast.” There was no liquor served, and I didn’t feel like a drink at the time. I had a normal, simple breakfast: orange juice, bacon and eggs, and coffee. Then we went riding all through San Francisco. And that night a friend of mine who worked as a checker in the Fairmont Hotel, who had to be up early came through . . he had to be on the job, I think, between 4:30 and 5:00, checking all the food coming in. So, we had a very early dinner . . as early as the restaurant would allow; and we dined at the Sir Francis Drake where I was living. We had a roast beef dinner . . a simple dinner; roast beef and a baked potato. I did have a couple of Martinis, but may I tell you? That is only a beginning with me. I can go to many, and it doesn’t faze me at all. I can take five or six; it doesn’t bother me. I had two Martinis . . simply whetting my little tongue. Then I went upstairs because he had to go early. And then at about 9:00 o’clock I called my wife, who was living in Beverly Hills, and then put him on the wire because we are all friends; and then he said goodbye a little after 9:00. After he left, then I undressed and got ready for bed. I was too early; so I read a little Blake, and then I turned to my Bible; and I must have turned in about 11:00.857 ¶19

At 4:00 in the morning, this strange, peculiar vibration began in my head . . something I had never felt before. And my interpretation of what I felt was, “This must be a massive hemorrhage.” I never had anything wrong with me physically of that nature, but I thought this must be what they call a “massive hemorrhage,” . . this must be it, because I couldn’t see how I could survive what I was feeling. My head began to vibrate, and the whole thing was simply like an enormous vibration. Instead of blowing my brains, I began to awake. But instead of waking on the bed as I thought I would, I awoke within my skull! And here I am, completely entombed within my skull, and I knew my skull to be a tomb. I was a sepulcher. I was completely entombed within it, all alone.857 ¶20

And then from the horizontal position, I arose within my skull, and my one consuming urge was to get out. And I knew exactly what I ought to do: push the base of my skull from within. Well may I tell you? . . all things being relative, when I awoke within my skull, it was a place big enough, say, about a quarter of this room here, and it was my skull! And I stood up within my skull . . a place about the area of a quarter of this room. I knew exactly where the base was. I pushed it from the inside, and something rolled away from the outside. As we are told, “And the stone rolled away.” Then I knew what to do. I put my head through the little opening, and I pushed it; and then I squeezed myself out like a little child coming through the womb of a woman, . . only instead of through the womb of a woman, this was out of my own skull! When I was almost out, I pulled the remaining portion of me out of my skull. Then I stood up and looked back at this out of which I came, and it was ghastly pale, as told us in Jeremiah: “Can a man bear a child?” The obvious answer is, No. “Why, then, do I see every man drawing himself out of himself just like a woman in labor? And why does every face turn ghastly pale?” Well, the face was just as white as snow as I came out of it.857 ¶21

And then the entire drama unfolded around me. There were witnesses to the event, but they could not see me because God was born at that moment. The sign of my “birth” was there; the child they could see. And I saw the child and could take it in my arms. But they could not see me because “God is Spirit,” and no mortal eye can see Him. So, they could not see the one that was born at that moment. It’s God-in-man that is buried. It is God-in-man, which is the “I” of man . . the personal pronoun “I.” That’s God-in-man, and that is “born.” It awakens in him and comes out. The pattern by which He does it all is told us in Scripture, and it is recorded as the story of Jesus Christ.857 ¶22

Well, Jesus Christ refers to himself constantly as the Son of Man. “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And when they answered, concerning men, he did not answer. He asked another question: “Who do you say that I AM?” So, he equates himself with the Son of Man. Then one answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” “Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this unto you, but my Father who is in heaven.” And “I and my Father are one.” So, I revealed it to you. I allowed you to know Who-I-Am. That’s what he is saying. That same drama takes place in you. So, I am telling you, everyone in this world is going to awaken, not only as the Lord Jesus Christ, but as God Himself, for the Lord Jesus Christ is God. That is the story of Scripture, but man has not understood it.857 ¶23

And today when you see Monday morning’s paper, you’ll read all this palaver, all this nonsense, concerning Scripture . . concerning the signs that are coming because some rumor of war . . this goes on forever. This is the conflict. It is after the tribulation of human experience that it happens. And through “hell.” You will have glimpses of it at the very end because then you can stand it. But, oh, the things you have suffered in this world! The things you have come through . . it is good and merciful that you cannot remember them. In the end, you can take it, but you had to pass through all. As you are told in Scripture : “I have tried you in the furnaces of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I did it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” His “glory” is Himself. He cannot give Himself to another. He has to make you Himself . . to give Himself to you . . because there’s only God. In the end, there is only God.857 ¶24

So, here, you are trained not to argue when someone brings up all the stories concerning Scripture. You are trained to answer; and you can confront them, even though you have not had the complete experience. Many of you have had many of these experiences. Not the complete? All right. You will have the complete experience. I am not alone. I am only at the moment one who has been “sent” to tell it. I have been sent to tell it.857 ¶25

So, that Seventh Chapter of Daniel when this one like the Son of Man came before the Ancient of Days, and was presented to Him, . . that happened to me in 1929. I was taken, in spirit, into the Divine Assembly; and having gone before the Recording Angel, where my name was checked off this huge ledger, as told you in the 12th Chapter of Daniel . “If your name be written in the book,” . . well, every one’s name is written in that book! And she simply looked at me . . this angelic being. Not one word was spoken between us; she just looked and made a check against the name.857 ¶26

Then I was taken into the presence of the Ancient of Days. He is the Ancient of Days . . Infinite Love . . nothing but Love. As I stood before him, I could not think of anything but Love, and he asked me, “What is the greatest thing in the world?” and I answered, “Love.” It has no other answer. How could you answer anything when you are actually looking at the Infinity of Love? And it’s man . . just man. Then he embraced me. And in that embrace, we fused; we became one being. And “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” “One body, one spirit, one lord, one God and Father of all.” Then he “sent” me . . sent me into this world.857 ¶27

But he didn’t send me as Love. The One who sent me was Himself, because God is a protean being. He assumes every shape; and the One who sent me was Infinite Power. I could not feel in him compassion at all. I could not feel in that one Love, but he sent me. And the words rang out in my ears: “Down with the bluebloods!” It doesn’t mean those who call themselves prominent socially, . . no. All that is trivia anyway. “Down with all church protocol, . . all the trappings of the outside world mean nothing. They mean nothing! All the ceremonies, all the rituals, all the things on the outside, . . down with it all. Don’t tear it down, but do not become a part of it. Just completely ignore it.”857 ¶28

Well, I can’t tell you how many opportunities I have had from those who are entrenched in the protocol of churches to join them. I didn’t have to go to any school. They said, “I will now ordain you, and then you can do all the things that we do by law. You can marry, you can bury; you can do all these things.” I said, “No; I want no part of it.”857 ¶29

These words ringing out in my ears, and I would simply disobey the order: “Down with the bluebloods” . . which means protocol, and accept the offer? One chap, he had an audience of over six thousand people. That is, they were all registered; they all contributed every month. And he offered that entire whole thing to me if I would take it. I said, “I am sorry. I cannot take it. Give it to someone else, but I cannot take it. I have orders. I have orders that I must obey, and it came from the Ancient of Days.”857 ¶30

Well, he couldn’t understand that “Ancient of Days” . . these are just words to the average preacher. They mean nothing; they are simply idle words. And yet, every word is true in Scripture. Here stands the Ancient of Days . . no father, no mother; no beginning, . . the Ancient of Days. He has no origin. You stand before Him, and He actually embraces you, and you become one now . . without father, because you are the Father. And as Father, you have no father. You are the Father. Now go and, “Down with the bluebloods,” . . down with all Churchianity, all external things in this world. So, no inducement whatsoever could get me to join any -ism.857 ¶31

Now the end of my days . . it doesn’t really matter. At least, I kept the faith; so I could say with Paul : “I have finished the race. I have fought the good fight, and I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the Crown of Righteousness,” . . which means the crown of faith. I have kept the faith. So, when the little garment is taken off now, it is for the last time.857 ¶32

So, here I am just as an example for you, because it’s going to happen to you. Whether you now are believing or not, it’s still going to happen to you, because not one can be missing in the reconstruction of the Temple. You are the Son of Man spoken of in Scripture, which is the title most often used as Christ. It simply means “I” . . the personal pronoun “I” or “One.” So, when I am lifted up, that’s the Son of Man; and as the Son of Man must be lifted up like the serpent, you can say, “When I am lifted up,” like that fiery serpent; and you will be. Just like it. It’s a fiery serpent. You enter violently into that skull of yours, and you are riveted into that area prepared for you. Everyone has a special unique spot in the Infinite Brain of God. And you are not only going to be in that unique spot, you share the whole. Cut me here. All right, that’s cut, and it hurts. The whole body hurts. Don’t tell me because the little finger is not my eye that the eye isn’t something, too. The whole body suffers when one little piece suffers. So, everyone is fitted into the Restored Temple, and yet each is the whole Temple, for God is one, and His name is one.857 ¶33

So, everyone in this Universe is going to experience Scripture. And I can’t tell you the thrill in store for you when you experience Scripture. Something changes. You see, we begin within history. That is the incarnation when God becomes man. God became as I am . . a man, weak and limited and restricted, that I may become as God is! So here, we begin within history. Then comes that moment in time when we go beyond history. And that is called “Bethlehem.” We begin. The incarnation is the birth of a child, and the “birth of God” is called “Bethlehem,” when from above God awakes, and you are God.857 ¶34

The “I” . . may I tell you? There is no one else when you awake in that skull. You are not in eternity going to see Christ coming from without. He is within . . buried within, and he rises from within. He is the “I” of you. And how would you know? Watch the imagery as it unfolds before you. All this pertains to Christ. Here is the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. What are they told? “Go, and you will find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. This shall be a sign unto you,” . . what sign? . . “that God is born.” This is a sign that the Savior was born. Well, the only Savior in the world is God. “I AM the Lord your God, your Savior; and beside Me there is no savior,” . . the 43rd . . 45th of Isaiah . If the Savior is born, the God is born. “And this shall be a sign unto you that a Savior was born this day.” Where? “In Bethlehem.” And “Bethlehem” and “Jerusalem” and “Zion” and the “City of David” are one and the same, and it’s the skull of man. That’s where He was born, and that’s where He was crucified, and that’s where He was buried. It’s right there!857 ¶35

So, I tell you, play your part fully. Whatever you are doing today, play it fully. Let no one scare you. Self-purification? Forget it! You can be as pure as all outdoors in your own mind’s eye, it means nothing. This salvation comes suddenly, out of the Nowhere, just like a thief in the night. And when it comes, you are completely possessed. And then it unfolds within you; and all you can do is share it with others. Tell them about it. Oh, they may deny it, as they will, because they know your physical background; they do not know your eternal being. So, they know your father and mother and your brothers and sisters; and they will ask the same question: “Is he not Joseph’s son?” . . the carpenter’s son, . . “and how can he tell us now he came down from Heaven?” How can he tell us these things? That man is mad. He has a spirit. I tell you, the same thing will happen to you.857 ¶36

It doesn’t mean that suddenly in the world of Caesar you are going to become a billionaire. You own the Universe. What do you want with the billion when you own . . “All thine are mine, and mine are thine.” You have no desire for the billions or for glamour or for recognition, . . none whatsoever. You are quite satisfied to go through life telling your story to those who will listen until that moment in time when you take off the “cross,” for this is the only “cross” that Christ wears . . the human form. You take it off for the last time and rejoin those who preceded you into Heaven, and rejoice with them.857 ¶37

And then you will know what “dominion” really is, where it’s the whole vast world, in time. You have the power to stop time, change motivation, and then start time. That’s what I mean by “dominion.” “To him who was given dominion,” . . you can actually stop it. In stopping time, everything stands still. Then you change the motivation of that which is now “frozen” in time. Then you release it within you . . not on the outside; and they move forward; believing they initiated the change of heart to execute your command, because you have become God.857 ¶38

Now that is what I mean by how difficult it is to take the mystery of Christ and unravel it to those whose fixed ideas will deny it. They will simply get up and walk away. “Why, he is anti-Christ,” they will say. “He is against my Christ,” because they take their “Christ” and stick him on the wall and cross themselves for luck. That’s what they do. They go to church, and they can’t cross the aisle before they face the altar and genuflect. I tell you, leave them alone.857 ¶39

And what I have told you tonight . . every word is true. I am telling you what I know from my own personal experience. Let us go into the Silence.857 ¶40

Tonight our subject is “The Dreamer.” The Bible begins, really, with the dream where all are placed into a profound sleep: “And God placed a profound sleep upon man and he slept.” Not a thing is said through scripture save the appeal to God, not to man but to God, to awaken from this sleep. “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead.” “Rouse thyself, O God, why sleepest thou?” Throughout all, the entire book, it’s an appeal to God, who imposed upon himself this dream. Now, science may speculate and bring in all kinds of theories in the world concerning a dream, but I have never read where any scientist ever succeeded in impaling a dream upon a pin. They can’t take it and really impale it and analyze it to my satisfaction. But tonight we’ll take these dreams for you and show you what we really are here in this fabulous world of ours, which really is a dream within a dream. This whole vast world of ours is but a dream, and it’s a dream within a dream.848 ¶1

This morning at 4:15 I woke and I didn’t want to get up at 4:15 so I said to myself, “I will go back to sleep.” But before I returned to that state of sleep, I communed with self and requested that I would be favored with an experience, a dream or an ecstasy. Not something that I’ve ever had before, something different, something that had great significance and was very informative. And so I fell off into the deep once more into sleep. Then I woke at 6:15, two hours later, and this is the experience that came back with me.848 ¶2

I found myself in the apartment house where we as a little family of three lived for thirteen years and eight months, 145 W. 55th Street. The same superintendent was there; his name was Eddie Fox. When I lived there with my little family we had operators—the elevator was operated by individuals—but now it was a push button affair. I started from the ground floor into…and a man started before me and Eddie Fox said, “Let Mr. Goddard”—-he called me Goddard—-he said, “Let Mr. Goddard get in first.” So I got in and then two men got in with me. Then Eddie said to me, “What floor, Mr. Goddard?” I said, “Six.” Well, I didn’t live on six, on the sixth floor, before, I occupied the penthouse. I had a duplex and we were on the 15th and 16th floors before. We had the 15th floor, which was our living quarters, and then we had this lovely upstairs, the 16th floor, sort of a playroom and then a lovely garden, and there we were for those many years, thirteen-odd years. So I got into the elevator and it ascended and I got off at the sixth floor.848 ¶3

Then I realized, “This is not where I lived, I don’t live here.” The two men got off on the same floor and I said, “You know, this is the strangest thing. This has never happened to me before. I’ve never suffered from amnesia, but right now I do not know where I live. I can’t remember where I live.” And they could not help me at all. There I stood in this little hallway, the elevator had gone beyond, and I’m trying to remember where I live. I know I don’t live here. Then I said to myself, “You know, this may be a dream, and if it is a dream, there is somewhere in this fabulous universe where I am asleep; for if it is a dream, I am dreaming this and I must be sleeping dreaming this. And if I am dreaming this, well then, the chances are that I am lying down, and I am sound asleep dreaming this now.” At that moment I tried to remember where, where could I be asleep? It wouldn’t come back, not a thing would come back. Then I felt the feeling of being horizontal and sleeping.848 ¶4

As I felt that motion I’m horizontal and sleeping, I found myself on a bed, and I deliberately would not open my eyes. I wouldn’t open my eyes. I wanted to find out exactly where I am. I couldn’t. I thought, “Where am I?” I would not allow myself to open my eyes on the familiar objects on the wall that would relate to a certain position in space. I tried to remember, but I couldn’t bring back where am I, I couldn’t. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, the little word Carol came into my mind, Carol Drive, 1025. At that moment, I didn’t hear the voice but from the depth of my soul, that being which is my own inner being, my deep being that is dreaming this, without the use of words it said to me “You asked for it.” I heard it without hearing words, “You asked for it.” Because I requested—-before I dropped into the deep, having awakened at 4:15 and decided not to get up but to go back to sleep—-I asked for an experience that would be significant, something that would be informative, something that would be great, that I could talk about and tell the whole vast world the great secret of creation. And that’s what happened to me.848 ¶5

Well, what is the story behind it all? Here is a dream within a dream. Is this but a dream? I say it is. It is a dream; this whole vast world is a dream. And when I read the story in scripture and when he is about to awaken in this world, it comes in the form of a dream: And the angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream and told him of the birth of the Savior of the world. And then at the very end of the story we are told that when Pilate sat upon his throne (his judgment seat) that his wife sent a messenger saying, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have been greatly troubled this day in a dream because of him.” So the whole thing was the dream.848 ¶6

Now, can I dream into being from the depth of my own being dream the kind of a world that I want? I can…that’s the story. He planned it all and he is not diverted from his dream. I am his emanation, his bride until the dream is at an end. He becomes one with his emanation at the very end of the dream; as told us in scripture, he leaves all and cleaves to his wife until they become one person. But I am his emanation, his wife until this wonderful sleep is over. Until it’s over, I am in this world his projection, his emanation, and here is this thing called man. Well, how can I in some way take the same technique and dream in my world of Caesar—as he has determined to dream me into his own being—and become one with it?848 ¶7

I recall back in 1948 my father heard me for the first time. I started lecturing in 1938, then the war broke; he couldn’t come to America. And in 1948 he came to America and he heard me for the first time. After that lecture that morning, we all came home to have lunch, and he said, “You know, my son, everything you said this morning I would agree with it…all but one. You told the people to close their eyes when they meditate, when they begin to assume and to visualize objectives. Don’t, don’t close the eyes completely. If you close your eye in reverie that tends to a night dream and this is a daydream. The daydream you must have the eye ajar, but not shut, just partly closed.”848 ¶8

Well, I could not deny my father’s suggestion. Not because he’s my father, but here was a man who started behind the eight ball in life, no education, no social background, no intellectual background, but nothing! I mean behind the eight ball in the true sense of the word. And when he died at the age of eighty-five he could leave a fortune to his ten children. He raised ten children and never once inherited one nickel from anyone, and could at the end of his eighty-five years leave to his ten children a considerable fortune running into multiple millions. Every day my father would sit in the Silence with his eyes partly shut, and he would look and see what he wanted to see. He would control it by not closing the eye. And he said to me, “If you close the eye, you’re drifting right into a night dream, where your attention is not controlled by you; it controls you. You go right into a night dream. If you don’t close the eye, you can see what you want to see and the whole thing comes to pass in this world, everything as you see it. So tell your people the next time not to close the eye but to simply bring it into a partial closing state, ajar; and bring before your mind’s eye while the eye’s not completely shut exactly what you want to see; carry on all the conversations that would imply the fulfillment of your desire, and do it in that way.”848 ¶9

And here was a man who was talking to me, who died at the age of eighty-five, but long before he died he made his fortune. I don’t really believe my father ever did a dishonest thing in this world. I do not believe he ever did. I really believe…it’s my deep conviction about my father, why I don’t know. I think all of us, the ten of us, feel this way about him. He met my mother when she was about three years old and he was about eight. It was a romance from the time they were eight and three. Then when she was eighteen they got married. He said to my little niece, “So we give this fabulous party for you today, champagne is flowing like a river, everything. When I married your grandmother I could ill afford a half-pint of rum.” So they had a half-pint of rum to celebrate the union, this wonderful wedding.848 ¶10

But he went on with this simply partly closing the eye and controlling his attention and seeing what he wanted to see. He called it “the daydream.” The daydream does not differ from the night dream save that in the daydream you are in control, or you ought to be in control. In the night dream it takes over, unless you persuade yourself before you sleep to favor you with a dream that will be informative, and then it will do it. But if you don’t, and you sleep after all the distress of the day, all the headlines of the day, all the newspapers of the day, and all of the radio and TV bulletins of the day, that’s what you get in the course of the night. That’s confusion, that’s a nightmare. But if you do it in this way…and he showed me exactly how he went about making his fortune in this world.848 ¶11

So I say the Bible has only one source of dream in this world. All dreams, all visions stream from God. There is no other source of dream in scripture. “And if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will speak unto him in a dream, I’ll make myself known unto him in a vision.” And throughout the entire scripture it’s all God speaking. Well, who spoke to me this morning?—-the depth of my own soul. And it seemed at that very moment he was trying to entice me into a discovery of himself, for then I felt—-I didn’t hear the words—-but I felt, “You asked for it.” I distinctly asked for an experience that would be unlike what I ever had before, but it had to be instructive, informative, something that I could share with the whole vast world and that they would actually understand the great secret of creation. And the whole thing came in this peculiar manner. Here I am, I didn’t know where. I had forgotten where I laid myself down to dream. Everyone has forgotten where he laid himself down, because the being that you really are, that is in a profound sleep, is God himself. You laid yourself down to dream and you are dreaming what you are now. But this “projected you” can also dream, for the whole thing began as a dream and the end is a dream. So while we’re here, if I could only catch him and know how to dream here as the depth of my soul has dreamt me into being and is continuing his dream.848 ¶12

For I am told, “As I have planned it, so shall it be; as I have purposed it, so shall it stand.” No power in the world can stop my pre-determined dream. It’s a dream. What is the pre-determined dream?—that I shall wake my emanation. He fell in love with me. He fell in love with you, and you are unique, no one in this world can take your place. There is no power in the world that can modify you in the eyes of the one who is dreaming you. You can modify the dream out here, the world of Caesar, but no one can fill your place; you are unique. And when you find the dreamer—-he’s actually enticing you moment after moment to find him—-and the moment you find him, the being that really had dreamt you into being, you awaken, and you are he. So this whole vast world is but a dream.848 ¶13

So when the poet asks the question, “Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” And then in the same poem—-this is Edgar Allan Poe—he answers it. Instead of asking the question, he affirms it, “All that we see or feel is but a dream within a dream.” Now take the great revelation of the name of God and reverse it the same way that Poe did, “I am that I am”…that’s affirmative. Am I that, am I? And use the word “that” as the dreamer. Am I the dreamer, am I? And then come back to the affirmative, I am. You mean I brought this whole vast world into being?—Yes, I did.848 ¶14

I wish I could share it in the most intimate way with you that I experienced it this morning. No desire to get up, 4:15, only musing with self, “Give me an experience, bring it forth in the form of a dream or an ecstasy, either one.” To me ecstasy is vision…a place like this, more clear than this, where everything is solidly real, just like this. Bring it either in dream or bring it just like this. But make it informative, make it something that is so significant that I can tell it to the world and share it with them to show the secret behind it all.” Then that strange feeling that possessed me at the very end. “You asked for it.” You could almost hear the words coming through, but they weren’t words. I have heard the words time and time again, but this morning they were not words; it was simply a mood that possessed me, as though he was simply kidding me, just playing with me: “You asked for it, didn’t you?” I did, I asked for it.848 ¶15

And here I am with complete amnesia. I didn’t know where I was. Yet this vivid picture, same apartment house, the same Eddie Fox who was the super, the same building. I got off at the 6th floor—-which is significant, on the sixth day he made man—here on the 6th floor I got off. You are coming to the end, Neville: “Let us make man in our image”. I pushed that button, the 6th floor, got off on the 6th, and this is not where I belong. I don’t belong here on the 6th floor. I belong with the dreamer who dreamed man into being—not with that which is dreamed into being, but the dreamer, that’s where I belong. I couldn’t find my place on the 6th floor; there was no room there for me. Not a thing seemed right and I couldn’t remember where I laid myself down to sleep. But I did, somewhere I laid myself down to sleep, and as I dreamed a dream, I dreamed I am he.848 ¶16

Then my mind goes back to that experience that I think I’ve shared with many of you who are here tonight, some have heard it. But many years ago, I had this experience, which would be the 42nd Psalm if you understand the 42nd Psalm , where we went in great joy to the house of God. This night in question I found myself in this enormous crowd, a sea of humanity, and as I walked with them—-and they’re all in gay attire, oriental, darks, very colorful-—I heard the voice, the voice screamed out, “And God walks with them.” A woman to my right, a very attractive lady in her late thirties, in all the Arabic costumes, and she questioned the voice. She said, “If God walks with us, where is he?” and the voice answered, “At your side.” She turned to her left and looking into my face she became hysterical, it struck her so funnily that I could be the one spoken of. She questioned the voice and she said, “What, is Neville God?” and the voice answered, “Yes, in the act of waking.”848 ¶17

Then the same voice from the depths of my soul, this time audible only to me, but not to others, and the voice said, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed…” and I knew the end of the sentence. I became so excited I couldn’t wait for the end, and at that moment, I felt these vortices nail me to this body. My hands became vortices, my feet vortices, my head a vortex, and my right side a vortex, and here I am nailed to this thing…and the voice said, “Yes, in the act of waking.”848 ¶18

So here the same dreamer this morning…but he didn’t speak. Where did he lay himself down to dream that he’s you? He laid himself down within you; that’s where he laid himself down. He is within you dreaming that he’s you, and when he awakes, you are he. This whole vast world is God dreaming that he’s you. When he completely awakes, you are God, and you will see the oneness of us all; not one greater than the other, no one. You and I might have had horrible dreams. Some dream of these mountainous states and others dream of wonderful pastures, easy lives. Perfectly alright, not one is greater than the other. So the individual may have this most mountainous climb and he thinks that marvelous, perfectly alright, that’s your dream. Others will hear, “Oh, isn’t it marvelous to hear of green pastures for nice wonderful sheep,” and you dream of that. So it’s entirely up to the dreamer. Just as he dreamed this wonderful one into being, he allows this wonderful one—-as he puts him through all the great furnaces of affliction—-to dream and comfort all these things in the world.848 ¶19

So you could this night take the most glorious concept of yourself. I don’t care what it is, believe me. My father never had a nickel, not a penny, and today the estate he’s left his ten exceeds twenty-five million dollars. And he didn’t enter politics to get it, may I tell you. It didn’t come from politics, it didn’t come from anything that is subversive; it’s just from his daily dreams. He would sit in the Silence…I can see him now…in what I call in Barbados a Berbice chair, it comes from Demerara, it’s a chair with elevated, extended arms. He put his feet out and they were elevated. There he would sit after breakfast, which was served him about 10:30 in the morning. That was what we called breakfast in the West Indies. The breaking of the fast for my father was simply a cup of coffee early in the morning. But then what he called breakfast would be around 10:30 and that would be like our dinner, a good substantial meal. Then he would sit quietly with the eyes partly shut and see all the transactions of business of the day as he wanted them to be. Not as they could be if others interfered, as he wanted them to be. Day after day he did it with the eyes partly shut that it may not float into the night dream, that he may control it in the daydream.848 ¶20

For, he knew his Bible better than any ministers in the island. It’s the one book that he read, and he read it day after day after day, and he understood his Bible. Never read any other book. All the others were brilliant scholars, but they didn’t understand the Bible, any more than the brilliant ones today understand the Bible. My Time magazine came today, well, it’s almost ridiculous to read the religious page today. Here is this fantastic power in the world, and when you see what they own in Italy, all under the guise of being prophets of the Lord. Well, they are really prophets of the Lord but not p-r-o-p-h-e-t-s, they’re profits, spelled differently. They own fifteen percent of all that is put on the stock market in that land; and can threaten then that if you are going to tax us, we are the only tax exempt holders of this stock. All the others pay taxes, but we don’t pay taxes. And if you threaten us to tax us, we will sell over night and the market would crash. And they represent this great mystery. They haven’t the slightest concept of the great mystery.848 ¶21

Now let me tell you how it comes to an end. It comes to an end in the simplest way. You can’t conjure it. Not a thing you can do until you wait for the birth. It comes to an end in this manner. Suddenly, Jesus Christ awakens in you. Jesus Christ as you finds God’s only begotten Son and he calls you Father…and then you know who you are. Then Jesus Christ in you tears the temple in two, from top to bottom; and Jesus Christ in you as the Son of man ascends that spine of yours as a fiery serpent. Then the Holy Spirit in bodily form as a dove descends upon you and smothers you with affection because his work is done and you’ve come to the end of the dream. So your dream is over, and you only wait the lingering days until you take off this garment for the last time and find that you who began the whole dream you’ve awakened with an increased power.848 ¶22

For there is no limit to that expansion of God, there is no limit to the translucency of God; there is only a limit to the contraction of God, to the opacity of God. So man is that limit, man is that contraction, and God becomes man so that man may become God. So then he expands, and the end of his dream as man, which was pre-determined, comes in these simple, simple pictures, four simple little events, all in man.848 ¶23

So start this night and take my father’s advice who made the fortune. I don’t think very many people in this world can leave twenty-five million bucks to a family. It’s not a public company, it’s a private company. He could turn to the ten of us and give us this sort of money. He himself not once did he ever take one nickel from another. May I tell you, if you’re not educated…he wasn’t, by our standards, he would not have gone beyond a couple of grades in high school. A man who loved people, people loved him, strapping fellow, six foot two, six foot three, maybe, and just a generous, wonderful fellow who just loved. But day after day, seven days a week he practiced as though he were really a concert artist. He wouldn’t let days go by because it was another day; he sat every day and did it. The only criticism he had of me was I told the people to close the eye, and he said to me, “That leads only to a night dream. Don’t close the eye.” If you don’t close the eye, it’s the daydream, and the daydream must be controlled. The night dream belongs to the depth of your soul, that’s the deeper you; and it will take all the energy of the world and clothe itself to educate your mind here. But on this level, don’t close the eye. If you don’t close the eye, you have control, and then you can control the daydream…this is the daydream…while he’s bringing into being his predetermined picture. No one can stop it; no power in the world is going to stop him.848 ¶24

So you read the papers and you read all these headlines that this country is going to take over that country and what should our President do? Everyone is so [...] and they’re all so wise. Last night I came home and turned on TV and got this lovely Cinderella. So here was Cinderella, well, I was too lazy to get up and turn off the thing, and then came the great mentor, Mr. Lippmann. I was too lazy to turn him off, so I sat and looked and listened to all this wonderful…what we should do, and what China could do, and what they’ll do…this strange peculiar picture. Hasn’t a thing to do with God’s dream, and yet a brilliant mind, his choice of language, his choice of words, perfect! But my laziness allowed me to see this thing coming into being. Well, how many saw it last night, I don’t know. Here was this considered brilliant, brilliant mind analyzing exactly what we as a country should do. [...] influence [...] write the President, he may be persuaded, I don’t know. That’s not what to do. Close your eyes just a little bit and see what you want to see. Don’t hate anyone in this world. If you want to leave something behind, leave it behind, but don’t just rub it out. Leave it behind you; others can enjoy it. What I discard today someone will enjoy tomorrow.848 ¶25

I have a lovely maid…I don’t wear things out before I give them away, because I don’t want people to give me something worn out. And so if something…just a little broken seam…I will say, “Now, Doris, there’s a broken seam on this shirt, you take it.” So my wife said to me tonight, “Neville, she’ll catch on after awhile and she’ll make a little broken seam there.” I said, “No she won’t, perfectly alright.” So you just don’t wear a thing out and give it away, someone will use it. So don’t think for one moment what others will do with it.848 ¶26

What do you want in this world? Do you want to be wealthy? If you really want to be wealthy you can be, if you want to be healthy, to be known. I don’t care what you want to be in this world on this level, it’s all within the framework of God’s plan because you and he are one in the depths of your soul. I heard the words distinctly “he laid himself down within you to sleep and as he slept he dreamed a dream.” He didn’t lay himself down out there to dream me; he is in me dreaming me. So when sitting in this New York City or in my dream standing in this little corridor wondering, “Where am I dreaming? There’s someplace where I must be sound asleep dreaming this. Well, if this is a dream, where am I dreaming?” And I couldn’t bring it back, I just couldn’t remember where I fell asleep to dream this dream, but I must be dreaming someplace. And then I felt myself on the bed and then that wonderful whimsical little feeling, “You asked for it.” But, oh what a revelation! And then comes the memory of that moment in time when I walked with this enormous crowd towards this invisible heavenly state. The voice said to me, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed…” and I knew exactly what he is dreaming, that he’s me, and when I awake from this dream I am he. He and I are one. So this is the story.848 ¶27

So tonight, take your glorious dream, your wonderful dream, I don’t care what it is. Make it fit that wonderful statement in the Sermon of the Mount: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Does it fit that? Alright, then the dream is perfect. Let it fit that statement, Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, and if that fits it, well, then dream it. See it clearly in your mind’s eye and believe in the reality of this imaginal act and it will come to pass. No power in the world can stop it. And then will come this fantastic experience in your life when everything said of Jesus Christ you will experience.848 ¶28

I was coming home from a funeral about a year ago and a lady said to me (who drove the car)…first of all she said, “You know our friends in the back”—-and it’s a lovely, sweet Japanese couple—-and she said to me, “They are Catholics.” Well, I was pleasantly surprised, because automatically you think of Japanese as Buddhist…at least I did. She said, “They are Catholics.” Then said she to me, “I’m a Christian Scientist” and I said, “That’s alright.” Then she said to me, “What are you?” I said, “I’m a Christian.” She said, “I took that for granted, but I mean what kind of Christian? Are you a Catholic, are you Protestant?” I said, “No, just a Christian.” Well, that made no sense whatsoever to her, “I’m a Christian.” “Well, you must be a Protestant of some kind or you must be a Catholic of some kind. You’re not a Christian Scientist?” I said no. “Are you Unity?” No. “Religious Science?” “No, none of these isms whatsoever, I’m just a Christian.” And then I thought, well now, can she take it? Then I told her, “I’m a Christian because Christ has been resurrected in me. He’s been born in me. He’s discovered the Son of God as his Son in me. He has lifted himself up in me in serpentine form. He’s split the temple of my body in me. And then the dove descended upon me and smothered Jesus Christ in me with affection.” That was [...] and they all returned home. So whether she thinks me insane or not, I don’t really know. But that is my story. I’m a Christian because I have experienced the Christian mystery, not because of the accident of birth.848 ¶29

So I say to everyone here, you will one day—-and I say to everyone—-you will have the identical experience because there is only that story to be told in the world. There is no other story. They try to make it into all kinds of forms, yet there is no other story. The story of God’s salvation: He emanated himself; fell in love with his emanation; took himself through the dream-world which is a horrible state; and then completely limited himself to his emanation and they fused and became one; and then God awoke and he and his emanation, his bride, were one. Now let us go into the Silence.848 ¶30

I thought that this last week should be both practical and idealistic. So we will start on the practical side. He said, “Think not that I am come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come, not to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.” Now, the One speaking is now present within you. When He awakes, you will hear these words. You will find them to be your words. That One is your own wonderful human imagination. That One is God! Imagination is the basis of all that is. What is now proved to be true, as far as we are concerned, was once only imagined. Think of something in the world that is now to you real that wasn’t first imagined. So, the secret of imagining is the secret of God. And so: “The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems, to the solution of which every one should aspire, because supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lie in the far-off solution of this mystery.” I can acquaint you with it and then leave you to your choice and its risk, because everything in the world is created by this power. He said: “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” “I create the light and make the darkness; I create woe and I make weal.” “I, even I, am He, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.” That’s your own wonderful human imagination.814 ¶1

Well, there are secrets to this power, and you and I might experiment. We try to discover the secret. As we discover the secret of imagining, we are discovering the secret of God. So, God and imagination – the human imagination – are synonymous terms. They are interchangeable. So, when we read that “If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained that which we requested of Him.” If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask – no restraint. Now, you may sit down and commune with what you think to be another than yourself, but because there are billions of us in the world, and there is but one God in this fabulous universe, you might wonder if He hears you. But you have no doubt in your mind if you identify God with your own wonderful human imagination that He hears you! Can you believe that your own wonderful human imagination is God? So, when you sit down, as told us in the 4th Psalm: “Commune with your own hearts upon your beds, and be silent.” He hears you if you commune with Self, because you believe that communion with Self was communion with God.814 ¶2

Can you, now, assume that you are the one that you would like to be? Can you assume that one that you love is as you would like her – or would like him – to be? Can you really believe that you are answered? I do not expect tonight that after a certain conception the child will be born tomorrow. “The vision has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower; if it be long, then wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late.” A little child takes nine months, a lamb five months, a chicken 21 days, the elephant – so they tell me – a year or more, a horse, a year anyway. So every conception has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it seems to you long, then wait. It is sure; it will not be late relative to its own nature.814 ¶3

So, can I now commune and expect that my communion with Self is communion with God? Can I dare to assume that I am exactly what I want to be? Can I dare to assume that I am where I want to be, even though at the moment my reason denies it, my senses deny it? Will it work? Well, it costs you nothing. Try it! It doesn’t cost one penny to try it. As you are told, “Come, buy wine; buy milk, without money, without price,” – and take it. It doesn’t cost you one penny to dare to assume that you are where you would like to be, though at the moment reason denies that you are.814 ¶4

Now, I am telling you what I know from experience. When I didn’t have a nickel and desired a trip that would cost me well in excess of one thousand dollars, I dared to assume that I was where I would like to be, and I viewed the world from that assumption. Instead of thinking of it, I thought from it. Then I thought of where physically I was, and I saw that place in my imagination two thousand miles to the northwest of me. And I slept in that assumption. And then in a way that I did not consciously devise – I had no way of knowing how it would ever work, but in a way I did not know, it unfolded, and that assumption hardened into fact. On the strength of that, I tried it again and again, and when it worked, I began to teach it. I began to tell others that their imagination is the cause of the phenomena of life. This was long before I realized the Promise as we call it in Scripture. This was only the Law. So, we are told: “Blessed is the man who … delights in the Law of the Lord … In all that he does he prospers.” He didn’t say if it was good for you; he left that entirely up to you to make the decision. You could choose something that may be horrible in time. You choose it without contemplating consequences. But he tells you your imaginal act is a fact.814 ¶5

Now, as He awakens within you, He reinterprets the Law. He can’t change the Law. He interprets the Law. Instead of abiding by the external traditions of our fathers, He tells us what the Law really is when He awakes within us. “You have heard it said of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery’, but I say to you, anyone who looks lustfully upon a woman has already committed the act in his heart with her.” He tells us that the restraint of that impulse is not enough. The act was committed at the moment of the imaginal act. I may contemplate the consequences and be afraid – my reputation would be at stake if they catch me. But at that very moment of the imaginal act, that was the fact. That’s how he interprets the Law.814 ¶6

Well now, no one can stop you from imagining. No one can stop you from imagining that you are secure, but you may say I have no one in this world to whom I could turn who would leave me a penny, and I have no money. I am beyond the age where they would employ me. And you could give yourself a thousand reasons why it could not be. He is not asking for any reasons. Can you imagine? Well, who can stop you from imagining? That’s all that concerns the Awakened Man within you. Can I dare imagine that I am what I want to be? Well, I can. I’ve done it unnumbered times. I’ve done it successfully for many that I love dearly and many that I do not know. I have failed often, too, but the failure is in me, it is not in the Law.814 ¶7

Imagination plus faith is the stuff out of which we make the world. We are told all things were made in this manner. “He calls a thing that is not seen as though it were seen, and the unseen becomes seen.” And when I come to Him, I must believe that He exists, and that He rewards those who believe in Him. I must have faith in the imaginal act. If tonight I can stand here and simply quietly imagine a state and really believe that I am in communion with God when I did that and that my imaginal act is God’s act – it’s not something other than God – and go unconcerned as to the result, the results will follow me. For that imaginal act was causal at the moment that I did it. The effect when it appears – I may try to trace the effect to some physical cause and give all credit to a physical cause. I tell you: Every physical effect has an imaginal cause, and not a physical cause. A physical cause only seems; it is a delusion of our fading memory. We do not remember when we imagined it.814 ¶8

In this audience tonight – and he may not even remember when he did it – is my dentist. I went to him in great need of a lot of work, but I have had dentistry all over this country and in London and Barbados, but it all was horrible. I was always on the move. I was with the theater. Getting in town for a week, what could they do when I needed such work? They patched me up. So, I met him. He gave me a complete job because I was here – living here then. When one day a tooth gave way which was an anchor tooth, he said to me quite innocently, whether he remembers it or not, “When I saw your mouth and did this, I said to myself, ‘This tooth will last thirteen years.’” It was thirteen years. Had he only said 25, but he didn’t think I would live that long! So, thirteen years – out came that anchor tooth, and therefore a complete restructure of my entire mouth. He set it in motion. Whether he remembers or not, he said, “This is going to last thirteen years.” He didn’t tell me; he didn’t have to tell me. That was his imaginal act. I was only the victim of his creative power.814 ¶9

Now, I am telling you: Don’t take anything lightly. You are creating morning, noon and night. Your imaginal acts are God’s acts, because your imagination is God! And there is no other God. “God actually became as we are” – became man – “that man may become God.” And He has set up within Himself – in man – a series of events which He will now unfold within man, which the one in whom He unfolds will know He-Is-God.814 ¶10

He calls it “giving glory unto man.” “I will not give my glory to another,” he said. “I have tried you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake I do it, for my own sake, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” God’s glory is God, as told us in the 33rd chapter of the book of Exodus. “I will make my glory to pass before you.” And “I will cover you until I have passed by, . . .” So, “my glory” is equated with the “I” of God, for His name is I AM. He cannot give His Glory, which is Himself, to another. So, in becoming man, He puts man in the furnaces. But then read the story carefully: “He took upon Himself all of my infirmities and bore my diseases.” Who else suffers? “Every natural effect has a spiritual Cause, and not a natural, for a natural cause only seems; it is a Delusion …of the perishing vegetable memory.” I will say, “But I suffer.” Well, that’s God. “But I am feeling it; He isn’t.” That is no “he”; His name is I AM. So, I feel the pain, I feel the infirmity. I feel the diseases. That’s God! So, the fool says in his heart: “There is no God, nor Son of God That Thou, O Human Imagination,… art all A delusion; but I know Thee, O Lord, when Thou arisest upon My weary eyes, even in this dungeon, and this iron mill . . . Thou also sufferest with me, although I behold Thee not.” I do not behold imagination as I behold an object in space. I am the Reality that is named “Imagination”, but I cannot actually see it as an object in space. I see the results of my imagining, but not the Being imagining it, for God is invisible. Then the Voice replied, “Fear not! I am with you always.” Can I ever get away from imagining? If I fall asleep now and I start dreaming, what is dreaming but imagining? When I awake, He is still with me, and I am still imagining. “…I am with you always.” “…… I am with you always, Only believe in me, that I have power to raise from death Thy Brother who sleeps in Albion.”814 ¶11

This comes, now, to the Promise that He made to all of us. His Promise is to give Himself to us, as though there were no others in the world – just you, because in giving Himself to you, there is no other. The whole vast world is “yourself pushed out.” Everything in the world is “yourself pushed out,” and you manipulate it by your imaginal acts – everything in the world. Now, the first act begins with the Resurrection. It’s not outside of you, in spite of what you’ve been taught. The day will come; you will rise within yourself. And that’s the only God that was ever resurrected, Who will ever be resurrected. It’s not another; it’s you. And when you rise, there is no one on the outside. It’s all you. And you are rising in the only tomb in the world where God was ever buried, and that’s your own skull. God is buried in the human skull, and that’s where He rises. And when He rises, as foretold by His own words in Scripture, he is born. Resurrection begins the act. That same night, you come out of the tomb, which is your skull, and you are “born from above” – not from the womb of woman where the garment was born; you are “born from above” – born of God. “Born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” In other words, you are Self-begotten! God begets Himself.814 ¶12

As told us in the Epistle to the Hebrews: He is “bringing many sons to glory,” but the sons are numbered. Everyone born of woman is that “son of God,” as told us in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy: “He has set bounds to the peoples of earth according to the number of the sons of God.” But you will say, “But look, there are three billions in the world.” So, what’s that? “I will make them more numerous than the stars, more numerous than the sands of the beach”. Well, count them. You can’t count the stars. We estimate them to be trillions and trillions. These are the “sons of God” – bringing each that He chooses. He didn’t bring all together. He brought a certain number, and that certain number he calls the “second son.” The “second son” is represented by this fabulous number. The first son is still waiting to come out. He complains because the second son went berserk – went amuck and used his power unwisely. Then he came to his senses and returned to his Father, and the Father embraced him and gave him the authority of Himself. He gave him the ring, the robe, the fatted calf – everything for the one who went out and came back to the Father. For His gift is the gift of Himself to you who came out. “I chose you in me before the foundation of the world.” That’s what we are told.814 ¶13

Let the first son complain. He will complain and complain: “I served you and you gave me nothing” – not even a kid. He said, “My son, all that I have is yours.” But the most fabulous gift in the world, or possession in the world, is without meaning unless there is a knowledge of it and a readiness to use it. Going out as we did, we become aware of our possession, then we can use it. Unless we went out into the world and misused it as we have done, we could not become aware of this power that is our own creative power – our imagination.814 ¶14

I saw it so clearly one night. Here I am in this fabulous field of sunflowers – huge, lovely sunflowers. Each sunflower was a face – the human face, but they were all anchored in the earth. And I walked up and down among the sunflowers. They moved like an orchestra moves; they all moved in unison. If one smiled, they all smiled. If one didn’t smile, no one smiled. They simply followed like an orchestra. If one bent over, they all bent over. And everyone did what the whole did. They automatically did it. And I felt, though I was alone – I could walk up and down; they were anchored – they couldn’t do it. I felt that I was freer, limited as I was, than all of them put together, beautiful as they were – these sunflowers were human faces, but they had not gone out. I was once a part of that infinite garden – not aware of what I possessed, and my Father chose me in Him “before the foundation of the world,” and I went out, to go through hell in this world, that I may become aware that “All Thine are mine.” To become aware that all that is God’s belonged to me, I had to go through the furnaces of affliction.814 ¶15

And having gone through the furnaces, then He awakes within me; and He tells me how I will know He has awakened in me. He set up in the beginning the result of the experiences of humanity, and that result is a son. And the son is called David. And when I find him, I will know he is my son, and I will know the 89th Psalm: “I have found David. He has cried unto me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my Salvation.” Well, I’ve found him, and he cried these words to me, and I knew exactly who he was; and I knew then Who-I-Am. Until then I did not know I was one with God! He is God’s Son – God’s only Son. Now he’s my son! I tell you, you are going to find him, and he will be your son, and because he is my son, you and I are one. How can he be your son, and I know he’s my son, and you and I not be one father? So, we are told, “There is only one body, one spirit, one lord, one God and Father of all.” So, in the end, there will not be Greek and Jew, bond and free, male and female, but only – all one in God. And you will be that God!814 ¶16

So, this is the Promise that He made. Now when I read the Bible, I take all the related parts of the Promise and put them all together, for all these things put together will find their fulfillment in you. All His Promises find their “Yes” in Him, as you read it in 2nd Corinthians: “All the promises of God find their Yes” – their fulfillment – “in Him.” So there are 39 books, together they form one book; but the context, which means the meaning of it, you will find scattered over the 39. He pulls from this, from that, from the other, written over the centuries, and pulls it into one pattern, for Christ is the Pattern Man. That pattern is buried in man. It’s the only Christ in the world. When the pattern unfolds in man, it unfolds in man as the man in whom it unfolds. And then he knows Who-He-Is. And he has no doubt in his mind as to who he is. He is the Lord spoken of in Scripture. And that Lord is God the Father. And the whole thing unfolds within him.814 ¶17

But he does not abolish the law that he gave; he explains the law as a psychological law and not a physical law. But if I long after someone, at that very moment the act was committed. I state it boldly. I state it boldly, as my dentist stated it boldly. It was committed. So, I went blindly on enjoying everything that he did. It was perfect. And suddenly comes a little bleeding thing, which no one could stop. Out comes the tooth. He set it in motion the day he said to himself – not to me: “It will last thirteen years.” I checked it; it was thirteen years. So Blake said in his wonderful “Jerusalem”: “Oh, what have I said? What have I done, Oh, all-powerful human words?” For the word of man is the word of God! “And the word shall not return unto me void, but it must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”814 ¶18

But man forgets his word. Then it comes up and he looks for physical causes for it. Now he’ll start searching. Do you know what? Well, “Your system is run down.” You have fever? Did you have so-and-so? And you ask a thousand questions of the one: Did you have so-and-so? You said, No, no, no. No one thinks of that moment when the word went out. Well, the word goes forward, and it cannot return unto us void. It must accomplish that which we purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.814 ¶19

I can see my father now back in 1919. There were ten of us: nine boys and a girl. He was a ship chandler. He had a grocery store, a liquor store and a meat store – a regular little grocery, and he supplied ships, and the ships were bringing the boys back from the First World War, and they would tell him all kinds of stories. At dinner he would say to my mother, “We will have another war in twenty years. In twenty years there will be another war. It is Germany, but this time, it’s going to be Germany and Japan.” He didn’t mention Italy, but it will be Germany and Japan. “We will then have America as our ally. France will be our ally.” Mother would say, “Joseph, we have nine sons. In twenty years they all will be eligible to go to war.” We were all kids in 1919. I was 14 years old. In 1939, on the 1st day of September war broke – exactly twenty years. What did my father know of any prophecy concerning this? He was only repeating what he had heard from the captains and the stewards and the chief officers as he did business with them. But they were his words! And he said it with conviction, because he believed these men knew what they were talking about.814 ¶20

And our headlines – day after day they are setting the picture in motion for tomorrow’s confusion. The men are paid enormous salaries to write scare headlines. All right, so he writes a scare headline, thinking: It only sells the papers; it isn’t going to hurt anyone. But we are going to fulfill them. We fulfill all of our words because God and man are one. “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.” And God’s Word is man’s word, and it cannot return unto him void. It just can’t if he speaks it with conviction.814 ¶21

So, imagination plus faith – these are the very stuff out of which we fashion our world. So, can I tonight be alone and commune with my Self and be confident that He heard me? I know that I heard myself. Well, that Self is God! “If we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know we have obtained” –– not are going to – “we have obtained that which we request of Him.” Read it in John’s Epistle – the 1st Epistle, the 5th chapter, the 15th verse. We have obtained it! Well, it must take a little interval. It may come tonight, depending on what seed you planted. One seed will grow overnight; other seeds will take a little longer. But each has “its own appointed hour.”814 ¶22

There is not a thing wrong in your noble dreams in this world. You want to be wealthy? What is wrong with it? You want to be anything – what’s wrong with it? Everything is possible. A friend of mine called me last week. He is now appointed the head purchasing agent for the City of Culver. By law he is not qualified; he does not have the educational background. The law demands you must have a college degree. He doesn’t have anything outside of high school. They rearranged it to appoint him the head purchasing agent of Culver City. Why? He came here, he and his brother – I buried the brother a few years ago; he got this job, not dreaming for one moment he could ever transcend it. I said, “Don’t for one moment entertain that thought. The job is yours if you want it. Don’t push the other one out. He can go higher. You want to be the Purchasing Agent of the whole City of Culver? You are the Purchasing Agent. Sleep in it just as though it were true, and you hurt no one.” Last week they rearranged the law and he was appointed Purchasing Agent, to take effect in July. Now everything was rearranged. Everything will be rearranged for you.814 ¶23

A friend of mine told me here that you aren’t allowed to speak at any state university unless you have a college degree. Well, he confessed that he did not have one, but he was invited by a Professor at U.C.L.A. to take his class – I think there were three or four classes – in the use of imagination in advertising, so here he went in without the degree, and he was given all the freedom that the Professor enjoyed. He gave either three or four lectures, instead of the Professor who went off for those three or four lectures. So, they suspended the rules. They can suspend every rule. They are not supposed to do this, not supposed to do that. Ignore it! Ignore everything. My friend used to say to me, “You can’t smoke in here. Look, ‘No smoking.’” And he was a very wonderful lad. He said, “They didn’t say it positively.” And so he would go right through the gate to the airplane, and I would say, “Mort, you cannot smoke in here. You are not supposed to smoke.” “It didn’t say ‘positively.’” And here’s Mort, going right through with his cigarette. No one stopped him. I’m not saying you should do it. He didn’t do it to brag. He simply believed in himself. He wouldn’t hurt anyone. Now, you don’t have to hurt anyone.814 ¶24

I tell you, your own wonderful human imagination is immortal! That’s the Man in you that cannot die. I meet them – those who are called dead, and I tell you, they aren’t dead. Nothing dies. Everything is restored. Everything is restored. But the day will come, you will go beyond restoration, and you will resurrect. And who is resurrecting? God. And God-in-you awakens, and you are God, because God is the Father of David. That is the way you know you are God. “I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He has said unto me, Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” These are the words of David, what is going to happen to you. Then you’ll know you are God! You have no other way of knowing that you are God unless God’s only son calls you “Father,” for “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is, except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” So, “No one has seen God, but the only Son, who is in His bosom, has made Him known.” He comes out of you, and calls you “Father”! And then you know Who-You-Are.814 ¶25

And I am telling you, every one of you – because you and I “were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world” – chosen for the purpose of receiving the gift of God which is His Glory, for He gives me Himself. And in giving me Himself, if He is a father, He gives me His Son. You can’t give me yourself in part; give it to me in totality. So, if you are a father, then where is your son? Your son must be my son, and He gives me His Son. So, “He so loved us He gave His only-begotten Son.” To whom? To you. To me. To every child born of woman. So, every one of us will become fully aware that we are God. And yet, I will know you as Jim; I will know you as Jan, but I will also know that you are God. I will know you as Sol, and know you are God. I will know you as Bill, and know you are God. I will know every one of you, and the unnumbered billions that are not known to me here, in that day I’ll know them all, and still know them all as God, for there’s nothing but God!814 ¶26

When the curtain comes down on the final act, we are all God! We are then the Glory of God. So, we will finish the work. He said, “I have finished the work Thou gavest me to do. Now, glorify Thou me with Thine own Self, with the glory that I had with Thee before that the world was.” It’s returning now. Memory returns, and every man becomes God.814 ¶27

But now, do not fail to apply the Law. “Blessed is the man who … delights in the Law of the Lord … In all that he does he prospers.” You name it, and you can be it. You just name it, and if you dare to assume that you are it and view the world from that assumption instead of thinking of it, you will crystallize it. You will actually manifest it in this world.814 ¶28

That definition of imagination – I’ll go along with it to a certain point – up to a point that things present are sense perceived and called real; things absent are called imagination. But man being all imagination, man must be wherever he is in imagination. So, I need not be anchored to where my senses dictate. I can stand here and assume that I am elsewhere, and then if I assume that I am elsewhere, let me anchor myself there and view the world from it. If I view the world from it, I should see this place as I would see it if I were physically there. I can’t see it surrounding me or under me, for then I did not move in imagination. Therefore, if I move in imagination, then I must think of where I was physically and see it elsewhere. I can’t see it where I am in imagination and be moved, for all motion – well, I can tell myself that I have moved by a frame of reference. If I have moved relative to this room, let me look and see, Where am I now? I must have moved, for motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to another object. Where is the object? I assume that I am now – and I name it. If I am elsewhere, let me think of this room. Well, I can’t see it as I now see it. If I see it as I now see it, then I didn’t move. I can only move if I see it differently. Well now, if I move and now I am standing in my home, sitting in my chair in the living room, let me think of this club. I must see it away down on Catalina, and feel myself at home on Carol Street, and then think of the club, and it can’t be here. It must be way down on Catalina. Then I’ve moved. For man being all imagination, he must be wherever he is in imagination. If I practice this, it becomes easier and easier.814 ¶29

I just read a story of a very dear friend of mine who used to come to me – not to my meetings, but I would say once a month she came home for a personal appointment in New York City. She was killed last week in a car driven by her husband. And I can now see this perfectly lovely, gracious lady. She had a home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and she had her apartment in New York City. Her name is possibly one of the most prominent names in America. The name is Roosevelt. She was of the Teddy Roosevelt branch. Her name was Grace. Her husband was Archibald. Teddy was Governor of New York; he was Vice President of our Country; he was President of our Country – a very powerful, wonderful leader. He did not leave, as so many presidents leave, a fortune. He didn’t go in there to make a fortune. He went in there to lead the country. And he said, “I don’t consider public opinion. I perform what I think is best for our country. I feed them what they ought to know. I feed them what I think is best for our country.” But he didn’t go in there to make a personal fortune, and he came out without a personal fortune. So she – in spite of her name – did not have a personal fortune. She had a home in Oyster Bay, Long Island, and a lovely apartment – beautifully furnished from things that her father-in-law had given her.814 ¶30

If she did not rent her New York apartment for the summer, she could not open her home in Long Island. She could not afford it. Being a lovely home in a very wonderful, fashionable area of New York City, she always got a wonderful price paid in advance for the three or four months.814 ¶31

Then came the end of a season where they aren’t looking for any homes, and she came to see me. She said, “Neville, I am desperate. Unless I rent the place in New York City, we can’t open our home in Long Island.” I said, “All right. It’s rented, and you are living in Long Island.” “Oh but,” she said, “Neville, I can’t do that.” I said, “Tonight you sleep in your home in Long Island.” “But,” she said, “I can’t do that. How could I go and sleep there?” I said, “You don’t do it physically. Tonight you sleep physically in New York City in your apartment, but in your imagination, which is the only reality, you sleep in your home in Long Island, and then you think of your place in New York. The reason why you see it across the East River is because you are physically sleeping in Long Island. And the reason you are sleeping there is because you rented it. Put them all together, that’s why you are there.” She said to me, “If it rents, I’ll call you.” I said, “There’s no if about it. The only if is if you do it. Then you’ll call me.” I took her to the elevator. She went downstairs, went back to her place.814 ¶32

The next day at 9:00 in the morning Mrs. Roosevelt is on the phone. She said, “Neville, this is Grace Roosevelt.” I said, “How are you, Mrs. Roosevelt?” She said, “I am calling you from Long Island where I slept last night physically. When I went home, no one came at all over the period that you rent places. But as I got home, soon after I got home, an agent called and asked if I could show the apartment. A single man came in. He liked the place. Money meant nothing to him. He wanted immediate possession, ‘but I mean immediate. I mean now!’” “Well,” she said, “I can’t get out now. I have to call my husband at the office.” “I don’t care what you do. I want immediate possession. And here is my check in advance. You can call the bank to see if the check is good.” She got out that day! She called her husband to meet her, and off they went to their home in Long Island.814 ¶33

Well, she was just killed last week, at the age of 73; I think it was. He was driving; he wasn’t injured, and the friend in the car was injured, but Grace was killed instantly. But at least, she learned the Law. She didn’t come to the meetings very often because she said in her capacity, she was a pillar of the Episcopal Church in New York City – also in Long Island; it would not be advisable to be seen in my meeting place. That would be slumming. But she always came to my home with any problem.814 ¶34

Once she had with her son. He came back from Egypt where he was in the State Department, and he came with a huge, big beard, and she said, “Neville, I am embarrassed.” It was long before people wore beards; today it would be the thing to do, but he came back long before the young fellows wore beards. It was a huge, big beard. She said, “Neville, I am so embarrassed, I just don’t want to walk down Fifth Avenue with him. I would make him walk ahead or walk behind me. I don’t want to be seen with him. What must I do? Because he gets annoyed and will do nothing that his father or I suggest.” I said, “How would you feel if you kissed him and he had no beard? You would kiss your son, wouldn’t you?” “Oh, yes.” “Well then, put your hand on his face and he doesn’t have any beard, and then kiss him and feel that smooth skin that is your son’s face when he has no beard.” “All right, I will do that.” She didn’t tell me.814 ¶35

I opened the morning paper one Monday-morning. There was a big fashionable social wedding, and here was Mrs. Roosevelt and her husband, and here is her son and here is the bride coming down the steps of the Episcopal Church, and he has no beard!814 ¶36

So the next time she came to see me, I reminded her; I said, “You know, you came here the last time about the beard, and the beard is off.” She said, “Do you know why?” I said, “Yes, I know why, but you tell me why.” “Well, the girl that he married refused to go through with it unless he shaved.” She saw the physical fact. I said, “No, that wasn’t it. You promised me that you would kiss him and feel his smooth skin, and if you would feel the smooth skin, it would come off.” She said, “I did do it, but the girl demanded it.” So, she goes back to a physical causation, and it wasn’t so at all. There is no natural effect with a natural cause. Every natural effect has an imaginal cause, and the natural only seems. So she still is going to insist that the girl wanted the beard off, and that’s why he took it off.814 ¶37

Well now, she knows better. She’s now in a world just like this. At least she learned the lesson of the Law. She didn’t learn the Promise, because when I spoke to her, I did not have the Promise. I had not realized it. You know the Promise because it only happened to me twelve years ago this coming month. So, those who knew me before have not heard from me the Promise. Those who have known me since, they know the Promise.814 ¶38

So, I ask you tonight to please take it seriously. Watch your every imaginal act. And I will say to every one, “Don’t take anything lightly. Don’t voice an opinion that may be embarrassing or hurtful to yourself or to another, even though reason dictates it.” Because reason could dictate that this is the fact, for “I’ve seen so many similar cases that this is going to be so-and-so.” Your words are the words of God. “Oh, what have I said? What have I done, Oh, all-powerful human words?” Now, let’s go into the Silence.814 ¶39

Tonight’s subject is “Grace versus Law.” We’re told in the very first chapter of the Book of John, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Unnumbered volumes have been written about this grace versus law. Tonight I’m speaking not through theory; I’m speaking from experience. And so we’re called upon to pass on to other generations, succeeding generations, our testimony. As we’re told in the 1st epistle of John, 1st chapter, the first three verses: “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard and seen with our eyes… that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also unto you, so that you may have fellowship with us.” For these are the two births that take place in every individual in the world. No one brings about his own physical birth; he is born by the action of powers not his own. And no one brings about his own spiritual birth; he is born by the action of powers beyond his own. The first, we admit we are here, clothed in this garment of flesh. We find ourselves here, but we know we never had a thing to do about it; it’s simply we found ourselves here. So you will find yourself born spiritually in the same miraculous manner. You’ll be born from above, just as you are born here from below. Here, we are born from below from the womb of a woman. Then will come another act, God’s mightiest act, and you will be begotten and born from above by the action of powers not your own.800 ¶1

We turn first to the law. In the very beginning, God established the law of identical harvest: “And let the earth put forth vegetation, trees yielding seeds, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its own kind” . Here we find the harvest is nothing more than the multiplication of the identical seed. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, so shall he reap” . That’s in this world, this law. Tonight I will show you what I have found about this sowing.800 ¶2

Causation in our world is really mental. It was not always known as a mental state. It was believed in the beginning to be physical, and so laws were instituted and men abided by these laws outwardly; they observed the law. Then came the great revelation of “grace” that interpreted the law, thus bringing grace. “For,” said he, “do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them.” And then he interprets law for us and puts it on a mental plane: “You have heard it said by men of old, ‘Thou shalt not’” and he states it; “But I say unto you,” and then he puts it on an entirely different level. And not one statement conveys it more graphically than, “You’ve heard it said of old, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ But I say unto you, to look upon a woman lustfully is to have already committed the act with her in your heart.’” . Not to restrain the impulse, that’s not good enough; but not having the desire, then you haven’t committed the act. But to have the desire and because of the consequences of your act, you restrain the impulse, that is still not good enough. The act was committed with the impulse.800 ¶3

Now here, we are on an entirely different level, a mental level, and this is what I discovered about this level. I could stand here physically and see any part of this world mentally by assuming that I am there, and then viewing the world from that assumption rather than thinking of that state. Standing here, if I desire to be elsewhere, although at the moment, my reason tells me I can’t afford it, my senses tell me I haven’t the time—you’re committed, you’ll be here next Friday; you couldn’t get there and be back, so here you are—you’re stuck. But I desire to be elsewhere. So reason and my senses deny that I could be because I just shouldn’t be there. But standing here, let me now assume that I am where I would like to be, and then let me mentally view the world from that assumption as though it were true, just as though it were true. Well, I know from my own experience that if I dare to do it, everything in this world that would tie me here, there will be a reshuffling of the events of life and compel the journey on my part. And it would; that assumption of mine would build a bridge of incidents across which I would move to the fulfillment of that state, and no power in the world could stop it. I would walk across a series of events. From the very moment that I do it, things would happen to compel me to go, and I physically as a man could not resist it. Things would happen to compel the journey if I dare to assume that I am elsewhere while physically I am really here.800 ¶4

Now the same thing is true not only of a physical journey but a journey into other states like wealth, like fame, and like anything in this world. What would it be like were I—then I name the experience. Suppose now, at this very moment, I desired, say, a certain security that I do not now enjoy. But I want it; I hunger for it. What would it be like were I now in possession of security? Let me now make the same psychological motion, all in my Imagination, and then view the world from that assumption just as though it were true. If I dare to assume that it’s so, I may regret tomorrow that I did it, I may, but that’s my choice. I can acquaint you with this law and then leave you to your choice and its risk. Many a person had nothing and hungered for wealth and they got it, but, oh, what things happened to them when they got it. They wanted it. And if you want it, take it. You can always give it up. But here is the law by which man moves in this world. So I will acquaint you with the law and show you how I operate it and how it works.800 ¶5

But may I tell you, no matter how good you are in this world and no matter how wisely you operate the law, it doesn’t in any way qualify you for the second radical change in your life, which is called grace. That’s the second birth. The twice-born man has received grace, and grace is God’s gift of himself to man—that’s grace. No matter how wise you are, you’re on the wheel with the first birth, playing it as wisely as you can—and I hope you will play it wisely when you hear the law and how to operate it. But it cannot in any way qualify you for the second birth. That is grace—that’s the gift. You cannot bring that about any more than you brought about the first.800 ¶6

Now the second birth, it’s sheer fantasy. It’s called not salvation; grace is salvation. “What must I do?” they ask the question. Well, he made the statement, “What if you owned the whole vast world and lose your life?” Then said he, “It’s so much easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” . And they said to him, “Then who can be saved?” He said, “With men it is impossible; but nothing is impossible to God.” With men, yes, it’s impossible; he can’t save himself. When a man tells you he is a self-made man, he’s not speaking from any knowledge of this mystery, no self-made man. For this is a gift, the second is a complete gift. And what is the secret of God’s election? I do not know. I can’t tell you. I can only share with you what I’ve experienced and tell you how it comes.800 ¶7

It’s a process, and it happens so suddenly. It comes without any warning. No one knows the moment it’s going to come, and suddenly you’re born. You are actually born, without… you are consciously born. I have no conscious memory of being born from my mother’s womb, none whatsoever. I was born on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year in a certain little island in the West Indies. I was born; I had no knowledge of it, and then gradually consciousness possessed me. Then when I was maybe three or maybe not quite four, I began to function consciously with memory, but memory didn’t go back to my mother’s womb. But the second birth is something as though you’re actually doing it to yourself, and every moment of time is conscious and so vividly and vividly alive. The whole thing you are doing. From the very moment to the very end of the birth it is taking place in you, and out of your own wonderful being, you are coming.800 ¶8

Until that moment, you didn’t know that you were dead. You took it for granted that you were alive and that one day the body would die; and so whether you survived or not, you didn’t know, but that would be death. Those who saw you put away, whether cremated or in the earth, they would say good-bye to you, and they would speak of you as someone who’s dead… but not while you walked the earth with them. And yet here comes the moment in time when suddenly a power beyond your wildest dream is taking place in you. You aren’t doing it; you have no control; it’s being done to you. And as the power is intensified, you awake. You always thought prior to that moment that you were awake. You always thought prior to that moment that you were alive and walking about the earth. Here, for the first time in eternity, you are awakening in a tomb, and the tomb is your skull. You find yourself completely sealed and entombed in your own skull, and you’re fully awake for the first time in eternity. Then begins the birth, and you come out like one being self-born, truly begotten by yourself. Out you come, and the entire drama as described for us in the gospels you are enacting. You are being self-born. The witnesses become present, and they appear to witness this event in eternity. They can’t see you because you are invisible. But you’re more real than they are, more real than anything in the world at that moment and yet you are invisible.800 ¶9

And then you know what it means: “God is spirit, and those who worship him worship in spirit and in truth” and “As God has life in himself”—God the Father—“so now he grants the Son to have life in himself” . And so all of a sudden, you awake; and the force, this intense power that you feel coming from you, now seems to be in the corner of the room and centered all over. And all of a sudden, it comes to the end, and you return once more, enclosed in this simple little garment out of which you had just for a moment emerged with the most fantastic drama in the world. That was grace, but it comes in stages: it has three fantastic parts.800 ¶10

That first one is simply your birth from above to fulfill the 3rd of John: “You must be born from above, for unless you be born from above you cannot in any wise enter the kingdom of heaven,” which fulfills that chapter . Then comes the second, when God really gives you himself. And then suddenly a similar power possesses you and you’re carried with it; you can’t stop it, not a thing you can do about it. Suddenly, as you are carried with it, you explode; your whole being explodes, and here he presents you with his Son. Now the eighteenth verse of the first chapter, we are told, “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ,” right after we’re told how it comes: it comes through Jesus Christ, grace comes and the truth comes. Then we are told, “No man has ever seen the Father; the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” You didn’t know that you contained within you the Son of God. You had no idea you did. Suddenly there’s an explosion, and he stands before you, and he calls you Father. You don’t see yourself; he calls you Father, and you know he’s your son. And here, the father-son relationship is established forever. He calls you Father to fulfill the eighty-ninth Psalm: “I have found him… I have found David, and he cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation,’” the fulfillment of the great 89th Psalm, the Messianic psalm .800 ¶11

You look at him, and there’s no doubt in your mind who he is; there’s no doubt in his mind who you are. It takes the Son to reveal the Father, and you didn’t know for one moment you were he until the Son reveals you to yourself. And then the third in the great gift is when out of the blue, you are torn in two, from top to bottom; and then you ascend, a living being, something that is fiery and alive. You ascend right into Zion, which is your skull. And these three parts mark the great gift, called in the Bible “grace,” an unearned, unmerited gift.800 ¶12

No one in this world is good enough to earn it; therefore, all will get it. God actually expresses to man a mercy with which man is incapable with his conscience of ever judging himself as worthy of redeeming. No man in this world with conscience and memory could ever judge himself as mercifully as God does. So what man has done, I’ve certainly done it, you’ve done it, and the whole vast world has done it; and we are so sinful while we are here in this world of law, of doing it. And in spite of our limitations, in spite of our weaknesses, God’s infinite mercy brings about the second birth. And we’re all lifted up in this eternal place where we’re put into the everlasting temple that God is making out of us, making out of himself, for he gives himself to man before man can be fitted into the everlasting temple. And no one can fit your place. No one can fill my place. Not one can be displaced; not one in any way can be rubbed out. The temple would be unfinished. I know from my own experience that not one can be unsaved. I don’t care who he is; no matter what he has done in this world, everyone will be saved.800 ¶13

What must I do to be saved? Believe the gospel. Now we are told that we could delay it. That’s why I find it difficult to believe that. But still it’s scripture; the 4rh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, “And the good news preached unto us was also preached unto them; but it did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith in the hearer.” Now tonight some of you could reject it, and that may appear on the surface to delay your call and it may—I do not know. I have no assurance that you could delay it. But it would appear that rejection on the part of one because he heard it but did not accept it because it didn’t make sense to him, therefore, he rejected it. And I tell you, those who reject it—and maybe by your rejection, you delay your call—eventually you’re going to be called. Because he’ll put you through all the paces of the world until finally you have no power to reject the story when you hear it.800 ¶14

But while we’re here in this world of law, let me now quote you the 1st Psalm—it’s a marvelous benediction: “Blessed is the man… who delights in the law of the Lord… who meditates on it day and night. For, in all that he does, he prospers” . But in all that he does, not a few things but in everything. And the law is so simple if you jump to the foundation that is mental, it’s not physical. Go to church as the people who practice it outwardly thought it would in some way bring good for them, but that wasn’t it. It’s mental. Causation is mental, so the law is mental. So I’m the law. For “blessed is the man who delights in the law… meditating it day and night… for in all that he does, he prospers”—in all.800 ¶15

So you think now of the man you would like to be, and you seem so remote from such a man and can’t conceive of being that man in the immediate present. All right, you think so. I tell you, try this law: What would it be like if now my closest friend saw in me what they wouldn’t dream ever, prior to this moment, of ever seeing me? What would it be like? How would I see him? How would he see me were it true? What would the world think if they knew that I am and I name it? What would they see? Well, then sit perfectly still and let them see you. Walk now by faith not by sight. I’m going to call a thing that is not as though it were, knowing that the unseen will become seen. So I call myself just as though I were the man that I’d like to be. So you who are taking notes, that’s the fourth chapter, seventeenth verse of Paul’s letter to the Romans: “He calls a thing that is not seen as though it were seen, and the unseen becomes seen.” So I will call something that is not seen just as though it were seen and let the unseen become seen. You try it. May I tell you that it will not fail you. No power in the world can stop it from crystallizing into fact if you try it.800 ¶16

For the things that are seen, we’re told in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, were made from things that do not appear. All the things you see were made from things that do not appear [...]—you’ll find it in the 3rd verse—all the things in the world. You see a man, well, what made him what he is? Well, he once assembled a certain mental state, and knowingly or unknowingly, he fell into it. Falling into it, he remained there long enough for it to take on that initial statement of God: “All things must bring forth after their kind,” the law of identical harvest. The harvest is only the multiplication of the identical seed. So I fall into a state. I do it wittingly or unwittingly, but I fall into a state. Remaining in the state, suddenly the [...] comes out. Someone begins to appear in my world; he seems to be instrumental in making me move forward in the direction that I should go. I may, on reflection, think he, the instrument that moved me forward by certain contacts, was the cause of my being forward. No, the cause was unseen. As you are told, things seen were made from things that do not appear. He appears, so he can’t be the cause. And so I look back on my world and see all the people that seemed to be instrumental and helpful in moving me forward, but they’re seen, and causation is mental. So things that are now seen that are made were made from things that do not appear. But if that is true, then he—I’ll thank him for what he did, but I can’t claim that he was the cause of my good fortune. So he introduced me to the right people and all things added up to the things that I am assuming. But the cause of it all was my assumption and my faithfulness to that assumption.800 ¶17

So I dare to assume that I am or that you are what I would like you to be. Assuming that you are what I would like you to be and I feel that you would like to be, I am unmoved in that assumption and you become it, without your knowledge or your consent. I don’t need your consent and I don’t need your knowledge if causation is mental. So I warn you of the law and leave you to your choice and its risks because you could use it unwisely. But my hands are now washed of that. I cannot stop it. I tell you the law and leave you to your choice. I can’t be like a mother over you, saying that you should not do this.800 ¶18

For you’re told in the Book of Deuteronomy, “I place before you this day good and evil, life and death, blessings and cursing; choose life” . He suggests that you choose life, but he can’t take from you the right, having set you free, to choose anything you want. So he puts before you life and death, good and evil, blessings and cursing, and suggests you choose life; but he cannot deny you the right to choose anything. It’s all spread before you. When you imagine something unlovely of another, it will come to pass. It will boomerang too, but it will come to pass. So you are entirely free to imagine anything in this world, for imagining creates reality. A man imagines. If he imagines it and persists in that imaginal act, it will come to pass. And that’s the law.800 ¶19

For if there were no other than the wise use of law, to own the whole vast world and yet not to be redeemed from that wheel of recurrence, this would become the most horrible hell in the world. Fortunately, God started in the beginning a plan of redemption, and it’s grace where he saves us from the wheel of recurrence. What is his great secret where he picks you at one moment of time and picks another at one moment of time to put him into that eternal structure, the everlasting temple, not made with hands? I do not know. I must confess I do not know. I only know he promises to build a temple for us, anonymously, and we are the temple. We are the temple of the living God, a temple in which God will dwell. And yet we are free beyond the wildest dream of man, for we are God himself in the structure called the New Jerusalem.800 ¶20

So here, use the law wisely for yourself and for others. Every time you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are literally mediating God to a man, literally. Do it. But may I tell you, if you are the most loving being in the world, the most generous being in the world, and the kindest being in the world, you still cannot by your own effort be born from above. It’s a gift, an unearned gift. You can’t be good enough. To me that’s the most exciting thought in the world because no man could look me in the eye and tell me that he feels himself worthy of such a birth. With a memory and a conscience, he couldn’t possibly do it. I know I’m twice born. The second, every second of it, is so vividly alert in my mind’s eye. I can go through the whole thing now mentally and reenact the entire scene. And yet with the memory of my past, I would say, “Neville, you are unworthy of this.” And therefore, because I know in my heart I am unworthy of it, I can say to every being in the world, “You’re going to get it.” If I felt I was worthy of it, then I’d have to go out and try to make everyone good as I would conceive myself to be.800 ¶21

But I don’t conceive myself to be good, as the world calls good. I’ve done unnumbered things of which I would be ashamed, and I still feel I am capable under stress of doing things of which I would be ashamed. And yet I have had the grace of God, the second birth from above. And I can’t conceive of anything more encouraging in the world than to share with others your own experiences and tell them that they cannot lift themselves by their own bootstraps. This is an act of mercy, and mercy is God in expression, for God is love and mercy is love in action. The mightiest act of God is that act when you, the sound sleeper, he awakens. And you don’t know you’re asleep. I certainly did not know I was asleep. I hadn’t the slightest idea that I was dead, and to find myself walking this earth for fifty-odd years and suddenly to find myself awakening in a tomb? And then discover the great mystery of it all: that he was buried in Golgotha, and Golgotha is the skull? And that was literally true, and it was he who was buried? And then to go back and reread the scripture and to read: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” .800 ¶22

He gave himself for me the second he became me, but I didn’t know it. I didn’t actually know that the being that I think I am, that I am he. That he is every being in the world or that being couldn’t live. That no child born of woman could cross the threshold that admits to conscious life without the death of God. That he died to make me alive. The mystery of life through death: that I became alive through his death. And then this mighty act of resurrecting himself, but he resurrects himself as you. And so all of a sudden, there’s no change of identity; you awake, but you are he. Then you know the great mystery of the epistle of John: “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him” . We shall be like him. Well, if there’s no change in your identity, therefore, who is he? No change whatsoever in your identity, therefore, who is he?—your very being. All of a sudden you awaken.800 ¶23

But may I tell you that the full glory of your inheritance—you inherit heaven—but the full glory of that inheritance is not fully realized in you or, for the moment, it’s not fully grasped by you while you are still in this body. You must then play the part of the apostle and share it with those who will listen to you until that moment in time comes when he takes off the garment. And then that which ascended is completely displayed to you and to the heavenly host. But you have played and shared with the others all that you have experienced. It’s called the apostolic testimony: “That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard and seen with our eyes… that which we have seen and heard we now proclaim unto you, that you may share with us this fellowship” .800 ¶24

And then that fabulous passage that always closes the Anglican service, which in our country is the Episcopal service. It’s taken from the last verse of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” . What a benediction! To say to a gathering like this that, May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ—that was the second birth that comes from the love of God, that through such a birth you may have and share the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and may it be with you all. And so that’s how in all Anglican services they told it in the hope that someone or maybe all would in the not distant future share in that fellowship. But it’s the last verse of that 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, and to me, it’s the most inspiring, just to read it and just try to feel it.800 ¶25

And so grace versus law is not really in conflict. For he said, “I have come not to abolish the law or the prophets but to fulfill them” . Peter in his first letter, that tenth verse of the first chapter, identifies grace with salvation. He said, “The prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours, they searched and inquired about this salvation.” So he associated grace with salvation—that when it is given, he’s saved, he’s been redeemed. But because no one can play your part, you will be redeemed. Don’t go back in memory and try to find other things you could undo toward salvation. Do that toward this world to make yourself happier and freer in this world, but not toward salvation. Because if it was not for God’s infinite mercy to hide your past from you, you couldn’t live with yourself. No man in this world could live with himself if he could now bring back into memory the past; he couldn’t because you have played all the parts. You’ve been a long, long time in coming; and at the very end, you will have played all the parts. Therefore, in the end, you too can say, “Forgive them; for they know not what they do” .800 ¶26

There’s a purpose to God’s play, a fabulous purpose. As Blake said, “Do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to achieve perfection.” But you’ve played it. I have played it. Had I not played all the horrible parts of the world, I could not have be merciful when I read about them in the papers. I could not in my heart feel that some mercy should be expressed when you see these horrible stories told in the press. Had I not played it, I couldn’t have been the impulse for mercy. But in the end, having played all, you’ll forgive all. And so every being in the world will have played all and therefore fitted himself for God’s use in the building of his temple.800 ¶27

I can’t get away from a sense of predestination when I read scripture, the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans: “We are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” . You cannot take these five terms, foreknowledge, predestination, called, justification, and glorification, and interpret them in any way to avoid the conclusion of predestination. I don’t see how you can. We were with him in the foundation of time, we’re told. He called us in the beginning before that the world was, and now he calls us according to his purpose, when this section of his fabulous—you can’t conceive of it—living structure is about to be completed. And only you can fit, but only you, that one portion of it. So he calls you.800 ¶28

And the one called he had predestined to be called. And the one called he justifies—you can’t be justified by your actions—he justifies you. And then he glorifies you. And glorification is his gift of himself to you, as told us in the 17th chapter of the gospel of John: “Father, glorify thou me with thine own self.” So he glorifies the individual with himself. So the entire five terms lead to one conclusion of a predestined, foreknown state. He foreknew the entire thing and was building toward it.800 ¶29

Now the opposite of grace is disgrace. The Bible speaks of it as “the wrath of God, the anger of God.” We know what it is to be in disgrace. Grace is the unearned gift, the greatest thing in the world, and the gift of God himself. And the opposite would be the almost absence of God. Now the 23rd chapter of the Book of Jeremiah makes this statement: “The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days you will understand it clearly” . It seems that God has forsaken us when we go through a war, when we go through some horrible disgrace, where the world has collapsed upon us. A child has gone astray, and society frowns upon us because we are the parents of that child. Or maybe my husband or my wife has done something that has disgraced the family and the community. And God has forsaken us. And so I’m passed through the fires of affliction, these horrible fiery ordeals; disgrace, the opposite of grace where God seemed to be with me and guided me. But he will not turn back until he’s accomplished the intents of his mind. In the latter days, you will understand it clearly and forgive all and be happy that he in his infinite wisdom and mercy could put me through that fiery ordeal to bring me out qualified to fit into his eternal temple.800 ¶30

So no one will be condemned in the end. No one will be unsaved. So when they ask you, “What must I do to be saved?” Go to scripture and show them that “with man it is impossible”—that’s the 10th chapter of the Book of Mark. With man, no, it isn’t possible—Mark 10:26, 27—but “with God all things are possible.” But they couldn’t understand how any man could be saved after he told them what he had told them, about the camel and the rich man. Now the rich does not mean necessarily a man who has money. As the very first beatitude tells you, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they shall receive the kingdom” . The poor in spirit is the one who is not complacent. In other words, not everyone who has money is complacent. You could be socially prominent and be very complacent—you’re above it all. Or you could be intellectually a snob. You have your PhD, you have all these degrees behind you, and you’re above it all. You know everything because conferred upon you is a degree given by man. You ask others, “Have you a degree?” No. “Not even a little one?” No. And so then all of a sudden you become the grand snob. And they are all over the world.800 ¶31

In this world of ours, there is so much of real learned ignorance. I’m not saying that all who have their degrees are. You should get it, but you cannot by these earn the kingdom no matter what you do, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God. Not a thing that man knows here through his efforts will in any way function where he is destined to be. For he’s rising into a world that will be completely subject to his imaginative power, but completely subject to it. Everything in the world will be under his control, but everything. Because God, having given himself to man and being all-wise, he’ll be all-wise; God being all-powerful, he’ll be all-powerful; God being all-loving, he’ll be all-loving. For he gives himself to man. And in that world, there’s nothing that is not under his control but nothing.800 ¶32

And so you will not be replaced by anyone, and all will be equal in the eyes of God because it’s himself. He can’t be more than what he gave you. So one cannot be greater, because he can’t get more than God gave him, for he gave him himself. It is his purpose to give you himself as though there were no other in the world, just God and you, and finally, only you because he actually gave himself to you. Now let us go into the Silence.800 ¶33

Tonight’s subject is “Binding and Loosing.” It may be an odd title, but you’ll find it a very practical one. When we open the Bible, we are in the midst of mystery. But I promise you, every one of you, everyone in the world will one day experience scripture for himself; and then and only then will he know how truly wonderful it really is. It’s all true. Don’t change it. Don’t attempt to change it. It’s altogether true when you experience scripture for yourself.777 ¶1

This segment is taken from the gospels…that is, not the gospels, but in the Book of John we are told: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” . That is true, and one day you will experience that in depth.777 ¶2

But tonight, on this level, we’ll show you how altogether marvelous it really is here before you experience that in depth. But I mean every sin is forgiven in depth, everything. But, on this level, you and I can forgive it. But now we must search the scriptures. We’re told this is said to the disciples. And you might think you are not a disciple. May I tell you that you are if you are willing to accept the story of Jesus Christ as told you in the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts—that Saul went out to find all the disciples of The Way. The early Christians were not called Christians; they were called people of The Way; those who believed in a certain way of salvation. And he went out determined to find anyone that he could find of The Way, whether they be male or female, and bring them bound into Jerusalem to be condemned. Now here in the scriptures, if you read the story on the surface there was no woman made a disciple. But in the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts they are—anyone, regardless of sex, who accepts this way of life is a disciple. So I say to you, if you believe this story, the story of salvation, you are a disciple, and to you it is said, if you forgive a sin, it’s forgiven; if you retain a sin, it’s retained. What a responsibility!777 ¶3

But in the same book, the wonderful Bible, we are told, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.” Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. You’ll read that in the 9th chapter of the Book of Hebrews . Now, these words are true. Then what does it mean?777 ¶4

To this very day, in the year l964, there are those who believe on a certain day called the Day of Atonement that some living being must be destroyed for the salvation of those who will adhere to the law; and they keep it literally. I’m not taking it on that level; that’s the most external of all levels, where we do everything on the outside in the hope of appeasing some god. I take it on the next level, the psychological level, where you and I tonight can prove beyond all doubt the truth of this law. And it is true, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. If you take it literally, it would be the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus, where something alive was slain, and then the blood was sprinkled on the altar and then sprinkled on those who were present. And then came the atonement, and you wonder what is this atonement? The English word “atone” originally meant “at one.” It’s an at-one. I must perform a certain act to become attuned or at-one with a state.777 ¶5

But how could I do it? I do it only by the shedding of blood. Now we are told, when man really discovers it, it is the blood of Christ Jesus that must be shed. Well, how could I shed the blood of Christ Jesus? Yet I am told, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin; therefore, what is sin now?777 ¶6

Sin is “missing the mark.” If I have a goal in life and I do not realize it, I am sinning. I don’t care what the world will tell me, it’s the one sin of scripture. If I have a goal. And I am told: “If I had not come unto them and spoken unto them, they would not have sin; but now that I have spoken unto them, they have no excuse for their sin” . If someone did not come into my world and tell me that I am not adjusted to the environment into which I am born, I could transcend it. I am not the being that seemingly appeared in this world and that is it, I could transcend it. If I am told I could transcend my environment, and then I desire to transcend it and don’t, I am sinning. If someone didn’t come into my world and tell me I could transcend my environment, I wouldn’t know sin. But someone comes into my world and tells me I can transcend the being that I am; and at that moment he stirs me, and disturbs me, and makes me ambitious to transcend that which I am, and if I don’t realize the being that I would like to be, then he made me a sinner.777 ¶7

So to whom did he come? He said, I did not come to the righteous, I came to the sinners. I came to make them sinners and then to redeem them. Those who are complacent, who are satisfied with what they are, I did not come to the righteous. “I came not to the righteous but to the sinners.” So he comes into the world and tells man a story.777 ¶8

But now, what is the blood of Christ that I have to shed? I’ll tell you: Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. “Christ in you is the hope of glory” . It is Christ in you that must be awakened from this death. So, if I would now shed his blood, how would I shed my own Imagination’s blood? Well, now I am in a certain state. I am aware that I am a certain man, and I desire to transcend it; I want to be other than the man that I am. I have to die to that man; therefore, blood is shed. I detach myself mentally from the man that I am now keeping alive and I become at-one with that state of consciousness, the new man, that I want to make real in this world.777 ¶9

So we are told in Ephesians, “Be imitators of God as dear children” . And we are told in the same book, Ephesians, “He creates in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” . He creates in himself one new man in place of the two and this way he makes peace.777 ¶10

So if I am now disturbed because I’m not the man I want to be, there’s conflict, there’s war. The only way I can find peace is to create in myself the one new man. I must become the man that I want to be.777 ¶11

A very able, in fact, the greatest writer in the English language put it into the character called Hamlet, and tried through this story to instruct on it. We think because he’s a playwright, well, that was simply written for entertainment, that was written simply to entertain the world, don’t believe it! One of the greatest educators of all time you’ll find in Shakespeare. So, here he takes Hamlet and Hamlet is now made to tell his mother how to transcend herself. He said to her: “Assume a virtue, if you have it not. Refrain tonight; and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence: the next more easy; for use can almost change the stamp of nature” . And you try it. You can take it tonight and restrain tonight. Restrain what?—-the impulse to sleep in the consciousness of being thwarted, of being the man that you don’t want to be. And, just this one night restrain the impulse to fall asleep in that state. But don’t fall asleep in a vacuum; fall asleep now by assuming a virtue that you have not. For she didn’t have the virtue of mercy when she actually aided in the destruction and death of her husband, through a passion that she wanted to, I would say, appease. And so, she certainly was not merciful, she was not one of pity, she was not one of love, and so, he asked her to assume a virtue if she had it not.777 ¶12

What virtue? Well, he didn’t name it for her. He allowed her to select the virtue that she would like to assume, which currently she did not possess; and told her if tonight you would refrain the impulse to fall asleep in your last night’s concept, and this night fall asleep in the assumed virtue, just once, tomorrow night you’ll find it easier, and the next night still more easy. For I tell you that even if it doesn’t happen the next day, the next day you can always change the stamp of nature. So, if you came into this world stamped with the venom that is yours, the horror that is yours, the unmerciful picture that is yours, it can still change that stamp of nature if you’ll try it tonight.777 ¶13

So he tried to persuade her to assume it.777 ¶14

So I will say to you tonight, if you want to be successful, if you want to be…I don’t care what it is, but you name it. I hope it is something lovely, something marvelous. If the whole vast world tells you that you could not do it, I have been sent to tell you that you can transcend your environment. You can transcend anything in this world that you seem to have at birth, or you seem to have today. You can transcend it by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled.777 ¶15

I will tell you that Imagination will do nothing for us, nothing that we wish, until we have assumed the wish fulfilled. It will do nothing until we have assumed the wish fulfilled; and Imagination is Christ. And so, if I now give up my present concept of myself and dare to assume that I am the man that I want to be, have I not died to my former state? And that was the shedding of blood; that is the shedding of blood on the psychological state. I don’t go out and buy a turtle dove, or buy a bullock, or kill some little animal in this world in the hope of appeasing God. I shed the blood of Christ, and the blood of Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination; for God became man that man may become God. He actually became us!777 ¶16

So if I am told when I started the dream that whatever—anything in this world no matter what it is—if you forgive it, it is forgiven; if you retained it, it is retained. But am I not told I must not ask for your consent. I don’t ask for your permission to do it, and I need not tell you I am doing it. Maybe you are totally unaware that I am doing it. Therefore, if you are unaware that I am doing it, and I’m doing it without your knowledge or your permission, then is it not true that “All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow”? If I don’t need your permission to forgive you, and I need not tell you that I am actually forgiving you and I perform an inner act which results in an outer change in your world, are you not within me? If I do it, well, is it done? May I tell you, I could tell you unnumbered stories to support that claim. It is true!777 ¶17

A lady called me yesterday morning to thank me for something she’d asked of me on the morning of the 29th of December when I spoke to Dr. Palmer. She asked me for a certain something, and it was, would I please release her from this problem. And so, in my Imagination I simply assumed that she had called and told me of the good fortune or the good news which she called yesterday morning.777 ¶18

But then she shared with me a lovely piece of good news. She said, “You know, I can’t come to you at night any more, I don’t like to go out at night, but I do put into practice what I heard from you over the years. And a friend of mine called me up—she goes to Santa Barbara in the summer and goes to New Mexico in the winter. In New Mexico she lives in a trailer. She called me and told me that they told her that the trailer had changed hands, that is, the place where they’re all parked, and that she wanted to sell. So I said, ‘Alright, it’s done. You have the check in your hand and it’s all done.’ Then she called me back and told me that she had just heard from the people who were living there that there are seventeen trailers for sale, and because of the change in management, all things are going to pot, and that no one can get anything for a trailer today. I said, ‘I’m not asking you why you’re going to sell it; you want to sell it; and you sold it for the sum of money that you want.’ She went off to New Mexico and within one hour after she arrived—in spite of the seventeen trailers for sale—she sold her trailer at the price she had stated, not one penny less, not a penny more. Someone within one hour bought her trailer in that trailer camp.777 ¶19

And if that works once, and you can repeat it, and then repeat it, and repeat it, we have found the law of the forgiveness of sin. For sin is only missing the mark. And if no sin can be forgiven without the shedding of blood, I have found what the shedding of blood is. The shedding of blood is the Christ blood. Well, Christ is my Imagination. And I gave up that which I made alive. If I give up something I made alive, I shed its blood. I took myself out of one state and put it in another state. So I put it in one state called “the check is in your hand”; therefore, I took it from the state where you are trying to sell and put it into the state where you have sold.777 ¶20

I take it from one state where you are not the man you want to be, and put it in the state where you are the man that you want to be. So, in making this transformation I die to one state; and in dying to this state I then fulfill the Book of Ephesians, “He creates in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.” And so, he makes peace.777 ¶21

In the depths of yourself you’ll see that’s done. That’s another depth. But on this level it’s done here.777 ¶22

One day you will know how he does that in depth, and that is when he becomes you. And, not you and another, not you and God, God actually becomes you. And you will know then what it means to be one with God and what it means for the whole vast world to be God. He has one wonderful symbol by which he reveals it, and that is his Son; that, “No one knows who the Father is except the Son; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father” . And so when the Son appears and reveals you as Father, and you know he’s going to reveal everyone as Father, then you know we are all one; we aren’t really two. For, if I am the father of your son, and you know that son and I know that son, and we are both the father of the same son, then we are one. Although seemingly we are fragmented into numberless parts, if all are the Father of the one Son, then we are one God, one Father.777 ¶23

So that day will come when you will know that. But before it comes to you individually, you can take this marvelous revelation and try it on this level. So you are commissioned to go into the world and forgive sin. If you retain it, it’s retained; if you forgive it, it’s forgiven. And whatever you forgive is forgiven. So try it.777 ¶24

Start this very night trying to forgive sin, by starting with yourself first. Look at yourself this very night, and ask yourself if you really are the man, the woman, that you really want to be. If you’re satisfied, perfectly alright, but I doubt that anyone is really satisfied. For when he comes into the world he comes and he brings disturbance. “If I had not come unto them and spoken unto them, they would have not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin” . So when Christ comes into the world of man he disturbs them.777 ¶25

Prior to the coming, they were quite satisfied to adjust to the environment in which they were born, and perform the external act of sacrifice, so that once a year they could perform some little sacrificial act.777 ¶26

But then one who heard him clearly said, “I see as I pass by that you are observing days and weeks and seasons and years. I am afraid I have labored over you in vain” . So when one thinks that only one day of the year atonement comes, I have labored over you in vain. Atonement comes at every moment in time. Every moment is the at-one. One can attune or atone, and so create in himself one man in place of the two. And so the two are always the man that I am and the man that I want to be. If the man that I want to be is in conflict with the man that I am—and it must be if I want to be it—I’m confessing I’m not it. The minute I want to be something I’m confessing I’m not that, therefore, there’s war, there’s conflict.777 ¶27

And so, I must now create in myself one new man in the place of the two. So when I go to bed this night I must dare to assume that I am the man that at the moment my reason denies, my senses deny. And how do I know that I’m in it? Just how would I know that I’m really in this state and I’ve brought about this one new man in myself? By looking at the world…if I don’t see the world as I would see it were I the man that I want to be, then I’m not in that state. I haven’t yet created in myself the one new man.777 ¶28

But if tonight I assume—[...] assume the virtue if you have it not. That virtue may be any kind of virtue. So, I assume that I’m…and I name it…and then I look at my world, my frame of reference, to reflect confirmation of the man that I want to be. I will see then on the faces of my friends’ expressions implying that they see in me the man that I want the world to see. So I will hear them speak about me. I will see them and just see that face reflecting what I am. Then I am in it.777 ¶29

And so, I tried to tell this in a strange way, saying thinking from what you want instead of thinking of what you want. If I think of what I want, I’m in conflict because I am not there. If I think of and I really want it, then the being thinking from and thinking of what he wants, these two are in conflict. I must resolve it. So that when I think of and it’s really something that I want to realize, I must resolve it and create in myself the one new man so it becomes a state from which I think. And then I think from it, instead of thinking of it. If you do it this way it works.777 ¶30

But how it works no one knows. No one could devise the means employed by that state from which you think to bring it to pass. I could not, on reflection, have devised the means employed to bring about the state that I had realized in my world, I couldn’t. I would not be wise enough as a normal person to actually devise the means.777 ¶31

But man not knowing this, he goes out trying to work out the means instead of applying God’s law. God’s law is: You cannot do it unless you do it by the shedding of blood. So you give up what you are to become what you want to be; and that’s dying. So you die to one state and you live to another state. So without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. And yet I’m invited to remit sin, to forgive it. So I can take the words now, “atonement, forgiveness, remission,” all these things, and put them and call them, really, synonyms, they’re all one.777 ¶32

If I forgive…what is the challenge to a man to forgive? It challenges a man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite state of consciousness. I’ll forgive you, forgive myself. So I take myself, I’ll forgive myself for being today, and I’ll name it. Then what would be the solution of my present problem? Alright, can I assume that I am now it? It challenges my ability to enter into that state to the point where when I view the former state it’s a something away behind me. It’s something that was.777 ¶33

I can say today, I remember when—remember when what?—when I was not that. I remember when someone told me, “You will never in eternity earn a dollar using your voice.” That’s a fact! That was in my school, I went to school and she said to me, “You know, you’ll never…you’re the one in the class of forty…and listen to Neville, he will never be able to earn a dollar using his voice. So use him as an example and see what you should avoid.” And so, they all are really using their voices to order a meal, or to sell a shirt at Macy’s. They are using their voices, but she was wrong there too. But they’re not using their voices in the theatrical world where we all hoped one day to use it. It was a little theatrical school in New York City called the [...] School, and I was singled out as the horrible example of things that one should not do.777 ¶34

Well, then I began to apply this law, to assume that I am the man that I want to be, and then let things happen. I could not have devised it. I took no more lessons, I assure you. When I left there that was the end of my schooling. And so, I never once took a lesson in the use of the voice. It just happened that I had something to say and then I said it. That’s all that matters. Whether I said it correctly, I mean in the proper use of words, it made no difference to me once I said it. But I said it with feeling because I had experienced it. So I wasn’t trying to become a church in the use of words, I wasn’t trying to become some great user of words, just to be normal and to tell it as clearly and with all the feeling I possibly could muster. For I knew that I had experienced it and if I could tell it with feeling I would persuade others to try it.777 ¶35

And so I tell you, you don’t have to have anything more than you have now—just a dream, a dream of something other than what you are, some noble dream. Then this night believe the great Bard: “Assume a virtue if you have it not. Refrain tonight; and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence and the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature.” And in my own case, I completely changed the scene. It changed my stamp of nature, for I certainly was not stamped with this. But I desired to tell it and then went out to tell it.777 ¶36

The first time I started, six people came, all through sympathy. I sent out fifty penny postal cards. In those days there was such a thing as a penny card, and I sent out the large amount of fifty cents worth. Out of the fifty, my friends, all of the theatrical world, six came, and six came just because they were sympathetic, and they came almost to pay their respects. Because there were only six in the place that could have taken care of fifty. They either were embarrassed, but whether embarrassed or not, these were embarrassed out of dollar bill. Because I didn’t charge, didn’t have the courage to charge, and so you pass the basket among the six. When they saw only six they each gave a dollar. And so, that paid the rent. And I started that way and never turned back, every night dreaming my dream of telling this story.777 ¶37

Then six months later, a man who was in the same building, speaking to an enormous crowd—all things being relative, I spoke to six, and when he invited me, oh, six months later, I had grown to twenty—and so, he had an enormous audience of about 600 people, and he thought that he would simply snuff me out by inviting me to take the platform. So I took the platform and he paid me the large amount of twenty-five dollars for that night to take his platform and talk to his 600. I learned afterwards he invited me for one purpose, that when I faced this audience I would be so nervous they would see that he’s not the one to visit anymore, and so he’d rub me out completely. But may I tell you what happened? The very next night I spoke upstairs in my little place of fifty and I got 200 of his. They were all down the hallway. And then they kept on coming night after night—I spoke twice a week then—and so they came. I had no place for them, and the management in Steinway Hall said, “You can’t continue this way. I’m getting all kinds of complaints because they’re all in the hallway. I must rent you a bigger place.” I said, alright, rent me a bigger place. He rented me a bigger and it still overflowed and overflowed and overflowed, until finally we had to move out of Steinway Hall.777 ¶38

So it all started by my dream. I simply went to bed assuming a virtue that I did not possess. I assumed it and assumed it and assumed it. So I tell you that Imagination will not do a thing for us until we have imagined the wish fulfilled. Just like a little child, it cannot be compelled; it must be persuaded. The child must be persuaded; you can’t compel it; it resents it. Well, Imagination is just like that. And in all the stories of Christ he’s always depicted as a little child: “And a little child shall lead them.” And just like a child, it must be persuaded, not compelled.777 ¶39

And so this night I can’t compel myself to believe something, I must pretend it’s true, and play the game of pretending, and assume it and assume it. If I dare to assume that I am what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny, and fall asleep in that assumption just as though it were true, may I tell you from experience, it becomes true. On reflection, when you look back and see how it worked out, you could never have devised the means employed to bring it to pass. You never could have done it.777 ¶40

I could never have thought of the means of being invited by this man to take his audience. It came suddenly. He sent his secretary downstairs to invite me to come upstairs on a Thursday night, which was my off night—I spoke on Wednesdays and Fridays—and he sent this lady downstairs and asked me to come upstairs the following night, because he had to go to Washington. It was true, he did, he had to go to Washington and he was the honored guest at one of the great [...] meetings. And so, this was the great night of the banquet and he was the honored guest. And so I took his platform and, naturally, I was very happy to do it. But I didn’t realize the consequences. I had been sleeping in my dream and this is how it works.777 ¶41

So it didn’t work out as he had plotted it. He was used by my Imagination to bring it to pass, because all of us are interwoven: “All things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle.” So that if I’m assuming that I am what I want to be, I don’t need your permission, your consent, to use you if you can be used to bring my assumption to pass. I’ll use you and a billion like you if it takes a billion to bring it to pass. Therefore, when you look in the morning’s press and you see these strange things, don’t be disturbed. It happened because someone is dreaming.777 ¶42

Did you read last week’s Life Magazine of MacArthur? I did. I’m very interested in the man and I read the story of Gen. MacArthur. But the very end, the very last paragraph, when he was leaving West Point, he quoted what the general who addressed this fine body of men said. He said: “Before you take off that uniform, you will be at war. It is always so, it’s part of the tradition of our country. You will be at war; therefore, prepare your nation for that war.” He quotes it just as the man said it to him. Well, if everybody that graduates from that great group of men are addressed in that manner—go out and prepare yourself first, and prepare your community, and then your state, and your country for the inevitable war—what do you expect? It’s all Imagination. Imagination creates reality. The whole vast world is God made visible; and God became man that man may become God. He is sunk in us as our own wonderful human Imagination, so what are we doing with our Imaginations?777 ¶43

I tell you that the story of scripture is true. I stand before you as a witness to it. I have experienced the story of Christ Jesus. Everything said about him in scripture has happened in the soul of my being. Everything, from his resurrection, to his birth, the discovery of the fatherhood of God, and the ascent into heaven, and the descent of the dove, which is the symbol of the Holy Spirit . Everything recorded I have experienced. That comes in the depth of the soul. But these same experiences lifted to the psychological level can be invaluable here in the world of Caesar.777 ¶44

You and I can take it in the world of Caesar and do the most fantastic things with it. On the highest level, the level of John who wears the outer garment of skin and hair you’ve outgrown. You need not do that…no stalking of a bird to redeem yourself, no killing of a bullock or a lamb or a ram and offering it to redeem yourself. That’s on the very surface of it all. But below it, on that psychological level, you can use it to the most marvelous state in this world.777 ¶45

Take every person that you know and without their consent represent them to yourself as being what you would like them to be, and see them actually become it. See them become it! Like my friend who went to San Francisco, Freedom, a total stranger on the street was asking for money, and he doesn’t give him money, but in his mind’s eye he sees the man gainfully employed. He refuses the money but sees him gainfully employed, and then when he is satisfied that this imaginal act is true he goes upon his way. And then, four months later that same man is coming down the street, comes up to my friend Freedom, extends his hand, and says, “I don’t suppose you remember me?” “Oh yes I do.” And then, said the man to my friend Freedom, “I want to thank you for not giving me the money that I asked you for four months ago; for had you given me that money I would today be asking for money. Because you didn’t give it to me, I went out that very day and got myself a job. I am still on that job, and I am now gainfully employed, and it has great possibilities of growth in this world.” And he thanked him for it…a total stranger. But he knew the art of forgiveness: how to actually create in himself one new man instead of this conflict. A man begging for money? No. I’ll create in myself one new man, a man who is gainfully employed.777 ¶46

So I say everyone can do it. You are a disciple. Don’t think that the disciples from Peter down to Judas are the twelve disciples. Read the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts. Both women and men, if they really accept this way of life, they are disciples. Anyone who accepts the way of life, and this is the way of life, they’re called “the people of The Way”. We take the phrase “the people of The Way” and we now give it the name Christ. It’s a lovely name; to me it’s a beautiful name. The word Christ means Messiah. It is the way of salvation. But it is a way of salvation, not a being outside of yourself who saves.777 ¶47

For listen to these words from the 43rd of Isaiah: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior…I know not any” . There is no Savior besides the Holy One of Israel, and his name is I AM: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel.” So the I AM within you is the great being that sunk himself in you and became you. He’s your own wonderful human Imagination. And you try it. Try it sincerely.777 ¶48

If tomorrow you don’t get the fruit, so what? Let me quote that lovely passage from Habakkuk: “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” . So the vision, your vision of yourself, you want to be and you name it. Alright, you drop a seed into the ground today. It could be a little acorn, it could be a corn, it could be some other kind of seed, and every seed has its own appointed hour. One will grow overnight, one will grow in a week, one will grow in a month, one will grow in a year, but it has its own appointed hour and it ripens and it will flower. If it seems to you long, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late. Not for itself. All things bring forth after their kind. That’s part of the eternal plan—the identical harvest . You can’t plant one thing and expect to grow something other than what you planted. And so, whatever you plant you plant it in your own wonderful Imagination by assuming that you are what you want to be.777 ¶49

So he comes into our world and disturbs it. Had he not come into my world and told me that I am not really anchored to the environment in which I was born, that I could transcend it, well then, I would have no ambition to be other than what I was at birth, and remain in that environment. For when Christ comes into the world, he comes not to bring peace but a sword. He disturbs the whole vast world when he comes; and then he shows man how in himself to bring peace, how to create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace. But at first you can’t make peace unless first there is war. So he makes war first and then shows you how he is going to make peace. He disturbs you that you may be other than what you seem to be; and then shows you how to make peace, how to bring about one new man instead of two.777 ¶50

Now let us go into the Silence.777 ¶51

[...] that when you begin to practice this art of forgiveness and you master it, and you will if you practice it, don’t think for one moment because you’ve mastered the art that then you could work in cooperation with God to bring a new order into being. That new order is coming whether you forgive or not. It is only given to us to cushion the blows on this level. But that new order is coming, in fact, it has come. The door is open and no one can shut it. And so the order has come. If you want to continue adjusting yourself to the environment in which you were born, it will not delay your entrance into the kingdom of heaven. It is only given to you to adjust yourself on this wheel of recurrence while you are on it, until that moment in time when God, in his own wonderful mercy, lifts you off into the kingdom of heaven. Now are there any questions, please?777 ¶52

Goodnight.777 ¶57

If I succeed tonight in convincing you to accept this as your foundation of life, I think I can safely say you will find in that a freedom you have never known before. And, it is this, it’s quite simple, when asked what is the greatest of all the Commandments, he answered “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one.”738 ¶1

Now on the surface you say, so what? Yet if you understand it, accept it and live by it, you will discover there is only one cause. Listen to it carefully, “There is one God and Father of us all, who is above all, and through all and in all.” Here we see a universally diffused individuality. So I find out that he has a name and it’s his name forever and forever. What is the name? He said, “I AM” . Everyone here knows that he is or she is, and whether you know who you are and what you are and where you are, you do know that you are; and knowing that you are you are saying “I am.” You could suffer from total amnesia, but you can’t forget that you are. Who, I need not know, where, I need not know, but I know that I am. So everyone knows that I am, and if God is one, then it is diffused universality…one individual completely diffused can’t be another. And if he is the sole cause of all that is then “all things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.”738 ¶2

So when I read the miracles of scripture, I see them as acted parables. And so, “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” “Then he arose and rebuked the wind and the sea and there was a great calm.” If there is only one cause, he who quelled the wind and the sea is he who caused it…there can’t be another. When I see the world and it seems confused to me and if I resolve it, well then, I who resolved it and that which was resolved was caused by the same being. It can’t be another; there is no other.738 ¶3

So, if there is only one God and Father of us all who is above all and through all and in all, well then, if he is in all, I know he is in me for I say “I am.” I also know he is in every being in this world. But although he is in every being and there are billions, he is in me and there is only one God, therefore I can’t say that he did it. His name is not “he is” or “she is”; his name forever is I AM. So I can’t pass the buck. No matter what it appears on the outside, I am the cause of the phenomena of life. No matter what it appears to be it can’t be another. If I will accept that fully, assume full responsibility for all the things that I observe…what I do not like know I am causing it and that I have the power to resolve it and change it, and exercise that power and see it change in my world…if I am willing to assume that responsibility, I am set free.738 ¶4

Now, if this universally diffused individuality, as scripture teaches, is in all, well then, I must have a different concept of the incarnation. They teach and talk about the incarnation as though it were some individual, some unique being, 2,000 years ago, who was the incarnate God, he and he alone. Not as I read scripture: Humanity is the incarnation.738 ¶5

And if I read scripture correctly, the central figure personified as Jesus Christ only represents this perfect archetypal figure that all must express. So when we are told that he is the first witness, the true witness, the firstborn of the dead, well, here we are the dead in the sense that we have forgotten who we are. For if God is the creator of all things and yet he is in me and his name is I AM, but I don’t see myself creating anything in the world that I am observing. I read the morning paper and she did it and he did it and all these things and I can’t relate myself to any of this that I see, it’s all on the outside—and yet there is only one cause. There’s only one God and that one God is resident in me: He’s my own wonderful human Imagination. Well, what have I to do with that? I couldn’t be aware of it, it’s the storm…here is the storm. But when he was awakened, he entered the ship and as he entered the ship he fell asleep and then the storm arose and as the storm arose they were afraid, and they disturbed him, and they said, “Lord, we perish, save us.” And then he awoke and as he awoke he said, “Why are you afraid, O men of little faith?” Then he rebuked the wind and the storm and there was a great calm. He, the sleeping one, in his dream is causing the storm. Well, where is the boat? I am the boat: This is the ark of God, and in the ark of God all things are contained. Everything went into the ark. So “man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the sea and the earth.” Well, he is not a phantom; he is the boat and he who slumbers in that boat is God the Father. If I completely accept only God can create and he is my own wonderful human Imagination, even though I don’t know the people that I am reading about, if I read and I am disturbed by what I read, I am the cause of that storm. But I am dreaming…I am dreaming it all, and I don’t realize that I am causing everything that I am dreaming…because I don’t know them. Well, when you awake in the morning after you’ve slept through the night and you recall the dream, do you always know the figures of the dream? Do you know the children that were yours in the dream or the people who scared you? You didn’t know them, never saw them before. Yet how could they be other than what you yourself caused but you don’t recognize them? Yet all these that scared you almost to death were caused by you the dreamer. Well, the same thing is true here. So I read about them in the papers, I don’t know them, but I am the cause of the storm because I slumber, because I sleep. When I awake then there will be a very marvelous, wonderful calm and the whole thing will be quiet.738 ¶6

The whole thing will come back because God fell asleep in us…this universally diffused individuality. And so, his transcendent revelation is personified in scripture as a being called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is only the personification of his plan. That plan is in himself in you, and that plan awakens in you; as it awakens, the memory returns as to who he is, for you are told he is God the Father.738 ¶7

Well now, you say that I’m not a father; you have forgotten. I’m the father of two, but they aren’t mentioned in scripture. Victoria is not mentioned and Joseph is mentioned, but his name is Joseph Neville and that is not mentioned. But if I am a father, I have to be that Father, for he is diffused in all and he is in me…the fullness, his whole being, not a little piece of him. He didn’t break up the I AM and scatter it. He is diffused, the universal individuality diffused in all. So I can’t divide I AM. So what is he? He’s a father. Well, I haven’t yet discovered him, therefore, I’m still dreaming. I haven’t yet discovered…well, if I discover, I have to be the Father of the Son that he foretold that he is. One day I must find him and when I find him I not only find the Son but I also discover the Son’s Father. “Whose son are you, young man? I am the son of Jesse.” He’s the son of Jesse and Jesse is simply “I AM.” He could easily have said, “I am the Son of the one whose name is I AM.” And so, I see the Son and I know he is mine; well, I’m saying I AM, so am I then Jesse? And he is the son of God and God’s name is I AM, therefore now I know who he is and I also now know who I am. It took him to reveal me to myself…I didn’t know it.738 ¶8

Yet I was that before I fell asleep and in the sleep I had the storm, the horrible storm of life. And I fought against seeming others, devils. I called them devils, I called them Satan. I called them by every name under the sun, and endowed my shadow world with causation, and therefore became a split and divided being when God is not divided. There is no devil, there is no Satan. There is no being outside of God. Now listen to these words: “I, even I, am he. I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal and none can deliver out of my hand.” You who are not familiar with scripture or do not have a concordance will find these words in the 32nd chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy. Now we go to the 45th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “I am the Lord and there is no other God. I make the light and I create darkness, I make the weal and I create woe, and there is no other God besides me. I know not any.” He who creates the evil creates the good, the weal and the woe, the light and the darkness. He who kills is he who makes alive, and he who wounds is he who heals, and there is no other God.738 ¶9

How can man really believe this, discovering that God to be himself, and not be set free? He may from then on struggle how to use the power that is his and how to resolve it; and that is his task. He can’t see another…there is no other. The storm is self-created and the peace and the calm are self-created. So I can’t say he did it, she did it, they did it…there is no such thing as he did it, she did it and they did it. They are only reflecting either the peace and the calm within me or the storm within me. And so when I awake and know who I am, and the whole thing returns, then there will be the calm, and then there will be the peace. Until I am completely awake I am lost in the storm.738 ¶10

So, he entered the boat and now this is the boat, this is the ark; and he remains in the ark until the flood subsides. And when the flood is subsiding, he has a special bird that brings him word that the flood is over: It is the dove. He puts out his hand and receives the dove and he takes the dove into the ark with him, for the dove remains upon him. But he does put out his hand and the dove lights upon his hand and then he takes the dove into the ark with him; beautiful imagery and true. You do stick up your hand and the dove descends through seemingly crystal water, for when you see him he seems to be floating. Well, if you are floating then you are in water. Even though you don’t see water, it’s crystal clear that’s why. You have only one sign that it is water. It’s because of the motion of the bird: He is not using his wings. He is not doing anything other than what you see a bird that does swim, like the duck or the swan. And when you see it, it is motionless, yet it moves or it can be still, but it is on water, and the dove does the same thing. You stick up your hand, the dove holds it, and you take him in. While you are being smothered with kisses, the whole thing comes to an end. So here, the drama is perfect.738 ¶11

And everyone—because everyone is the whole God, not just a little part of God, the whole God—everyone must have the experience personified as the perfect archetypal specimen, which is called in scripture Jesus Christ. We tell the story of this archetypal specimen as a unique individual and speak of the incarnation, not knowing that humanity is the incarnation. We speak of him as the incarnate God and the three and a half billion of others as not. So there they are lost in confusion.738 ¶12

So I say, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” The word translated “the Lord” is I AM—it’s Yod He Vau He. Now let me translate it for you. “Hear, O Israel”—the word Israel means “the man who will rule as God”; not like a god, rule as God because he is God. Now, “Hear, O Israel: The I AM, our I AMs, is the one I AM”…not a bunch of I AMs. The I AM, which is our I AM is the one I AM; and that one I AM is God the Father, who is yes above all, through all, and in all. If he is in all and he can’t be divided, then the whole of him is standing right here and the whole is seated right there. No one can say, “Well, she is the cause of it, he is the cause of it, they are the cause of it. There is no she or they in I AM.” If one will completely accept that, life becomes easy. I may not at the moment see the immediate effects of what I have done within my Imagination as I have resolved it. I may not see the complete outpouring to confirm what I have now done, but it has to come because there is no other God to stop it. There is no devil, no Satan to stop it; no one can stop it because there is no other Creator. “All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made”; therefore, the storm must have been made by him and the calm made by him. As he proclaimed, “I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, I form the light and create darkness. I form the evil and I make good, the weal and the woe…and there is no other.”738 ¶13

So when you hear people speak of Satan and devils and all these demons, then they don’t know the greatest Commandment in the world. Why did he not mention one of the ten? They are all based upon the negative, all but one. The only one that is not is “Love thy father and thy mother.” That’s the only positive Commandment in the ten; all the others are based upon the negative “Thou shalt not.” But here is something that is not one of the ten, yet there are ten words in it. It contains all in an entirely different presentation of the ten: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one.” Read them. There are ten words in the statement “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” Take it, the 6th chapter, the 4th verse—and you check me and just take them, one after the other—of the Book of Deuteronomy.738 ¶14

So here tonight…if you accept! Maybe you feel easier if you can blame another. It’s so much easier to find some scapegoat and blame another. That is caused by this or caused by that, or what I ate…I ate something that disagrees. Then you ask why did you eat it? What was it, what was the cause behind it? A disturbance in you, that’s why you do exactly what you did; and so this thing is out of kilter and that gland is out of kilter, why?—because of the storm in you. The gland cannot be the cause of your distress; your dream is the cause of your distress. If you take this ark and shake the timbers of it all, one who does not know the single cause of the world which is your own wonderful human Imagination, will try to find something on the outside as a secondary cause…and there is no secondary cause.738 ¶15

I received a letter this week from a lady (who is here). Now this is her own wonderful being revealing to herself a wonderful picture. It is all self-revealed. “I am in a place,” she said, “barely furnished, no rugs, no carpets, and here are my children. The boys are in clean overalls seated in high-backed chairs and the girls in starched long cotton dresses. They looked like what we think the Quakers must look like as they sit straight. They seemed to be without emotion. There they were. They are my children, and we were waiting for father. Then came news which I knew from the father that he is not returning. He’s not dead, but the work that he has done in the children is over. He has finished it and it is perfect and now he is not returning. Then the scene changes and we are in a farmhouse. We look through and here is this most marvelous harvest, bursting! You’ve never seen such a beautiful abundant harvest. The oldest one comes back and he is radiantly happy; for the first time he is now creating for himself. Then the girls and the boys who are there begin to create as they never have before. Before, they only obeyed the father, like an automaton, and they executed his will, but now that he has withdrawn himself because his work is finished they become creators in themselves.” What a beautiful experience! She saw in miniature form the world.738 ¶16

His withdrawal in scripture would say that he died: “Unless I die thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me.” And so, a little while and you will see me no more and then in a little while you will see me; but when the little while passes and you see me, you will see me as yourself. For now I withdraw, where?—within you. You are no longer automatons moved from without; you are now going to be moving from within, and all that I the Father am you will know that you are. So if he is a father, well then, you are a father. If he is a creator, then you are a creator…whatever he is.738 ¶17

Now he comes out of the desert with signs and wonders, and the most outstanding sign was that of the fiery serpent. So he comes out in this manner: The temple curtain is torn from top to bottom and all the rocks are split…that’s one of the signs when he starts departing from the desert. So everything that is said in scripture man experiences, and he knows from his own personal experience he is God the Father. He remains in his little garment of flesh and blood just long enough to tell how true and wonderful the story is and that there is only one, but only one way of salvation. There aren’t two ways; there is no other way. There are unnumbered volumes written giving you ways and ways of redemption, but there is only one way of redemption. The whole thing is laid out for us in scripture, only one way, and the individual goes that way, right straight through it. He is the way and there is no other way.738 ¶18

So first of all, when the storm…it’s the wind in this story. Read it in the 8th chapter of Matthew: “And the wind began to blow” and it is a wind, a most unearthly wind. It is then that he is about to awake, and it is told in dramatic form: “They awoke him and said, ‘Lord, we perish. Save us.’” And so the wind awakens him and he is the wind: He is the cause of the wind and he is the wind. As he awakens within the boat you awaken within yourself, for you are the ark. Then you come out and you are born from above. An entirely different world now you, God the Father, will enter. You purposely imposed upon yourself the restriction of death, knowing that you had the power and wisdom to be victorious and overcome death. So you died knowing that in spite of that you could overcome death. And you do…by a birth out of it from above. First you awake and as you awaken within the ark then you come out and you are born. All of the symbolism of your birth you find present.738 ¶19

Now comes the 89th Psalm where you must find David. Well, all of a sudden you find him…memory returns. Not something different, all of a sudden your memory is coming back because he always was your son. Not something as of now; he always was your son. And the head is there…the head of the giant. You see it. The whole symbolism is present in this wonderful discovery. And now you discover something even greater; you discover his Father, for that’s the one you’re going to set free as told us in the Book of Samuel. He’s asking “Whose son are you, young man?”—because he promised the Father of this young man to set him free. Anyone who could bring down the giant who opposes Israel, he would set the Father, not the one who brought him down, he would set the Father free. So he is going to set himself free now. He has discovered the Father of the Son. The Son is God’s Son, and he tells him who his Father is. His Father is God because his Father’s name is I AM…his Father’s name is Jesse. So now he can’t do a thing other than keep his promise and sets the Father free.738 ¶20

So the Father is set free in the discovery of the Father of God’s Son; and he knows he is the Father of that Son, and that Son is God’s Son…so he knows who he is. Although he answers to an earthly name when they call him, and he will sign a letter and a check with an earthly name, he knows who he is. And he doesn’t have to explain it to anyone in the world. He can only tell everybody (but he is addressing himself): I am in you and you in me and we are one. So everyone will have the identical experience and in the end he returns and there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord, and that one God and Father of all. And returning from the victorious march through death, he is now the same God the Father, but expanded beyond the wildest dreams by this wonderful venture, this excursion of the mind into a world of death…which seemed fatal, which seemed final.738 ¶21

Now, if I could get you this night to really accept it 100 percent, I’m not promising you that you might not have a headache tomorrow, that you will not have poisoning tomorrow, that the boss may not fire you. I’m not making any promise whatsoever. But I’ll tell you if you accept it, you will know he had no choice in the matter: You caused the storm. And maybe your dream transcends your present little position in that business and only as you are fired can you be transcending. I tell you when I was first fired…I was never fired before, and one day I was fired at J. C. Penney, making the big sum of twenty-two dollars a week and paying five dollars for my room rent. And then I had to live. And one day, after a year and a half of working for them—running an elevator when they wanted it, putting hats in bins when they wanted it, doing all that a busboy would do—and when they fired me, I wondered why? I went to the boss and he said, “Well, we have a different system here than where you came from.” I know where I came from nobody is fired unless they steal or they are not on the job, but if they do a decent work on what they were employed to do then they aren’t fired, they are kept on indefinitely. He said, “Well, that’s not our system. When things go this way economically, we let off all the people we can, and when we start rising again we take them on again.” I said, “What must I use for money in the meanwhile?” He said, “That’s your problem.” So he had pity on me and gave me a letter to R. H. Macy saying this boy is a greenhorn, he came from Barbados, and he doesn’t know the system, so if you have a little job for him, give him a job. So they gave me a job but they cut down from my twenty-two dollars a week to eighteen dollars from Macy. So I determined right there and then that I wouldn’t work for anyone in this world again. First chance I got I was going to quit…no one is going to fire me. I just simply quit after working there for a little less than a year. One day I quit and I told them I am quitting as of next week. “Well, why?” Well, I guess I’m quitting. And I started on my own, never worked for another man since…this I did not do. The first one was enough when I got fired! What a feeling that someone could fire me, and I did nothing that I considered wrong and yet I could be fired because the economic trend was downward at the moment.738 ¶22

So I say to all, you are the cause of all the phenomena of your life. I don’t care what it is, good, bad or indifferent. Even what you don’t understand and it seems remote and foreign to you and strange, you are the cause of it if you are aware of it. Even to the newspaper…if you are aware of it and to you it is distasteful you are still the dreamer of that distasteful storm. The day will come and you will awake, and when you wake that whole thing will be calm. There is no other…that possibly is the most difficult thing for one to accept, for it’s so much easier to give advice and tell the other fellow where he’s wrong when he is only reflecting. Whatever is wrong in him, he is only reflecting that which is in you. It isn’t there at all. The whole vast world bears witness of what I am doing…good, bad or indifferent. So if I don’t like this or don’t like that, well then, don’t look there for it, that’s the reflector. Look at the one who is causing the image and the whole thing that is caused is caused in me; for there is only one God.738 ¶23

So there is only one God and Father of us all, who is not only above all and through all but in all. Let it stick right there: He is in all. So this universally diffused individuality is in all in his fullness. Not a little piece here and a little piece there, but the whole. He dwells in the individual bodily, the whole. And so, if he sleeps, all right, he sleeps until the storm is over. When the storm has done its work then he wakes. He rebukes the storm that he himself created, and then there is a great peace and a great calm. If one will accept that as their philosophy of life and not turn to the left or to the right, that I am solely responsible for the phenomena of my life, but solely, you will find it so much easier, so much easier.738 ¶24

But if at moments it’s too much to bear and I want to find a secondary cause, at the very moment that you want a secondary cause you are going to build a devil. Devils and Satans and all these things come out of man’s unwillingness to assume what scripture teaches. The minute you find another God, you build a golden image. Whether you call it a priest through whom you must go for forgiveness and you call him Father and call him another; and you are told to call no man on earth father. If I call him father, I see in him an authority other than myself, and bigger. So no matter what name I will give it, how I justify it, it is still false. Those who teach it and encourage it are false teachers. I don’t care if you call them by any name. People get offended when from a public platform you become personal and speak using even these titles and say that they are false, and that they do not know the mystery of Christ. They say, “Why should you say that?”738 ¶25

One chap, here oh, maybe five weeks ago…he comes maybe twice or three times a year…well, he is of the old school of Europe. His father, his parents and all the background were ardent Catholics of the military school, and that is his training. He has never once been here but what at the end of the meeting he would always come forward, always had some little unlovely thing to say, with a smile on his face. Perfectly all right…it is myself reflected. The last time he was here he came forward and, again, the usual smile and greeting, but to him what I said that night, which was not as forceful as what I am saying tonight, it hurt, it went the wrong way, and he could not accept causation as solely himself. So he said to me, “How is the great deceiver tonight?” Perfectly all right, you can say anything you want. If I know who I am, you can call me anything in the world. It doesn’t make any difference to me at all.738 ¶26

As my wife said to me last Friday night…three ladies came in and when they heard that there was a charge, one said how much, and my wife said three dollars. One became the spokesman for the three and she said, “Three dollars! Well, I wouldn’t pay anything for such kinds of lectures because they are all tripe anyway.” So she came out to have a feast on tripe, but there was a price to the tripe and she didn’t want to pay for it. So why come and spend one hour of your own precious time knowing it’s going to be tripe anyway? She said, “I wouldn’t pay for such kinds of meetings because it’s all tripe.” Well, go and spend your three dollars or your ten dollars elsewhere. I personally am very fond of tripe, only my wife doesn’t cook it. I was raised on all the internal organs of the animal. Every week we had everything that you can name that came from within the animal; we had it from the brains down, because first of all it was cheap and there were ten children, father, mother and my grandmother plus the servants, and we all had to eat. Although things were very, very inexpensive in those days, when you have fifteen, sixteen to feed you go to the still more inexpensive cuts, and that meant brains, sweetbreads, kidneys, livers, hearts and tripe. So we had it. Every week there wasn’t a day it wasn’t some internal organ of the body, the vital organs that we ate. So I am very familiar with the word tripe…and to her this was tripe, so she went elsewhere. Chances are she went to a nice eating place and spent her three dollars. Then the little body assimilated what it could and expelled what it couldn’t, and so that was her little meal of three bucks.738 ¶27

So I say to you, you take this tonight and if you multiply what you paid when you came in by any figure in the world, it couldn’t pay for it…if you believe it. If you accept it and decide to live by it, you have bought yourself freedom, real freedom. And so what is the price of freedom? You tell me what it is worth. If you can stop short of the ultimate, well then, you don’t really want freedom. So you can’t put any price on freedom. What have you this night that you would not give in its entirety if you were enslaved, and by the giving of it you would be set free, well now, your all? Well, I say if you tonight really believe that there’s only one God and that one God is in you in his entirety and his name is I AM; and although you may not know who you are, you’ve forgotten it, or even where you are, you’ve forgotten it, and that your relationship, yes, you even had a son and you don’t even know his name, you’ve forgotten it…and one day the storm will be over and they will awaken you. In fact, they will awaken you first in the storm, because the storm awakens you and you awake. The storm is the wind and that wind, you can’t stand it, it’s so terrific, so completely different, and then you awaken. As you awaken you come out, you are born from above. Soon thereafter memory returns and here stands before you the one who was always your Son, and now you know you are his Father, and you know that his Father is God. So you need not ask him, “Whose son are you, young man?” The answer has returned now. In scripture you ask the question and he tells you, but Saul didn’t understand because Saul was mad…he was still in the dream world. And he asked him, “Whose son are you, young man?” and he said, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.” But Saul was mad and did not know. Now when he comes to you, you know. You don’t have to ask him “Who is your father?” because you know you are the Father of the one you are looking at, and he knows you are the Father. And so, the whole thing unfolds within you, and then you tell the eternal story. It’s all there but a sealed book until that moment in time when it breaks forth within you and the whole thing unfolds…and you simply tell it.738 ¶28

So, let the world still remain in the storm if they want to; but know that you are causing the storm and you are causing the peace. If the thing is the most difficult to grasp, dwell upon it anyway. It is not the other…the minute you see another as causation you’re building a devil and you are going to build him into the most monstrous thing in the world. Then the day will come and you’ve got to take all these devils away.738 ¶29

There are volumes after volumes written on demonology, do you know that? Go to the library and you see unnumbered volumes written by seemingly intelligent people. The churches speak of and teach demonology; they speak of devils, they speak of all these discarnate beings who are obsessing others. I get calls on the phone and when I tell them over the phone there is no devil, well then, “I’ll go elsewhere, because you don’t know.” So they are going to find someone who believes in devils and who for a little price will cure them, and so they’ll take their devils from them. I tell you, there aren’t any devils outside of what you create within yourself. All the monsters of the world are created by the one who beholds the monster. Everything in the world is yourself pushed out, but everything. And there is no “other”…there is only God. There is but one God and Father of all, who is in all. Because he only is one; there is only one body, one Spirit, one Lord.738 ¶30

What I tell you now was told you and every creature under heaven before that the world was. I am not quoting accurately but I will give you the passage, the 1st chapter, the 23rd verse of Colossians: “The gospel that you have just heard was preached to every creature under heaven.” Can you imagine that? Then came the forgetfulness for a purpose. But it was preached to every creature under heaven, the gospel that you have just heard, this good news of salvation. Then we are told in the 4th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, “Always bearing in my body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in my body.” Can you imagine that you are Christopher “the Christ bearer”? That’s what it means. If I am Christopher, then I am the Christ bearer and I am the ark in which he sleeps. He is sound asleep. And all the animals are there…every conceivable living thing under heaven is in the ark. But the Lord is asleep. Just imagine what confusion when he who is master of it all, the Lord of it all sleeps. But one day, the flood will subside, he will awake and open the window, and the Holy Spirit in bodily form as a dove will come and say the flood is over…the great flood where man was drowned in illusions and he fought against all the phantoms that were only self-created.738 ¶31

So tonight, you take it to heart. Make it your philosophy of life; make it the foundation stone of your life. Start tomorrow as a new person in your office or wherever you go and the boss is not a boss. You are the only boss. He is reflecting all the things you are doing within yourself. Whatever he does is because you allow it. If you think that he likes or dislikes you, his behavior has to reflect it. If you feel that you want a promotion in that office, if you like it, well then, give it to yourself. When you do receive it in the not distant future—and it may come through him—he thinks he initiates it and you don’t disillusion him. You just let the shadows play their parts and you don’t argue with them. You simply let it all be perfectly normal and you get your promotion.738 ¶32

When my mother wanted to go to America, she always allowed my father to initiate it. She would have everything ready, her dresses all made, because at home we didn’t have readymade dresses, so she had the seamstress in and she’s having all the things done. But he was at work and these were done during the day. My father isn’t that curious about what ladies are doing, therefore he didn’t know. If a seamstress was there, it would be an order because of all the children, so something is being made for the children. Mother was having her dresses made and all the things made for America, and then she would sleep in America and she was there. Then he would come home one day and say, “You now, Wilsey, I’ve been watching you and I think you need a vacation. You know what I’ve done? I’ve booked you to sail on SS so-and-so and you’re sailing in two or three weeks”…exactly how she planned it. But she thanked him profusely, “Oh, Joseph, you’re so kind and so generous! You really shouldn’t do this. It’s so expensive.” She did the whole thing anyway. So he would take her aboard, we all saw mother off, and mother went only to fulfill what she had already done in her Imagination. And my father was never disillusioned by my mother; he always believed that he initiated it. She said, “After all, that’s your father’s approach to life. He is the man of the house, he has to initiate everything. I don’t even know what we are going to have for breakfast.” Our breakfast is what we call a big lunch here. “But your father the first thing that he does when he goes to the store, he sends home all the meat that he wants for the breakfast and for dinner. So he will call the porter over and say ‘Take this, that and the other and go right away.’ When mother would receive it, she would know whether she was going to have hearts, kidneys, livers or what. And so that was my father. He did all these things and she allowed it, when inwardly she was doing it anyway. But he played his part beautifully and she played her quiet, simple, marvelous part beautifully, and that was it.738 ¶33

So, in your office let the boss give you the raise…just let him give it. Thank him before he does it physically…that is, if you like the office and if you don’t put yourself elsewhere. Maybe tomorrow you will be shocked and you will be fired and you will be terribly upset, but know that it could not happen because of a second cause. It happened because your ambition has to put you out of that place in order to fulfill your ambition. If I was never fired from J. C. Penney, I might be today the starter of the elevators, who knows? If I was still there at my age, well, they might have retired me or something else, but if I kept on the job what else could they do? And so, they fired me because I was dreaming. I was dreaming noble dreams and bigger dreams to transcend the limitation of that little job and the way I lived in a single little room. Well, I was having dreams…and oh, what storms interceded. But all the storms added up, all the storms that I was dreaming in my slumber. I was dreaming all kinds of things and getting into all kinds of confusion, and, therefore, it was myself pushed out anyway. But even the storm did its work and when the storm had done its work, then I awoke; and then the calm, the great calm became a reality.738 ¶34

Now let us go into the Silence.738 ¶35

Now are there any questions, please?738 ¶36