Lectures

We have been talking about God’s law and God’s promise. God’s law is conditional. You cannot be in one state and not suffer the consequences of not being in another state, and you and I are free to imagine any state in the world, and imagining that state we can occupy it. Occupying the state, we fertilize it; having fertilized it, it has its own appointed hour for fulfillment. “Every vision has its own appointed hour; it will flower; if it seems long, wait for it - it is sure and it will not be late.” Some things will grow overnight, and some things will grow in a week, then in three weeks, and then in a month, and some things will take years. It could be a problem over which we seem to have no control. We have told you the story here, where on one occasion it took five years, but oh! the joy of reaping the fruit then. It was the relationship of a mother and son-in-law. I have told you unnumbered stories where it took intervals of time, but it doesn’t matter, if we apply the principle.984 ¶1

Now today if you read in the headlines: “England denies union with Europe,” and you may be inclined to resent De Gaulle - restrain your resentment. I was born and raised a Britisher, born under the Union Jack. All my family are still living under the Union Jack. I am very proud I was born with that background, a rugged, rugged background of Scotch, English, and Irish. My forefathers were from Cornwall, that rugged English setup. I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. They were adventurers when they ventured and re-adventured across all the seas of the world. Nothing could be more clear than my background.984 ¶2

Last Sunday in the English paper, there came a little note, held in the secret archives of the British foreign office for forty-three years. It was dated, May 1, 1920, not yet made public to anyone, but conceived by the British minds in the Foreign Office. They conceived it and wrote it. De Gaulle didn’t write it, no Frenchman wrote it - they wrote it, but they didn’t think it wise to make it public on the first day of May, 1920, which was only a matter of a year after that frightful First World War, when England’s flower of manhood was slaughtered in the trenches. The universities were empty and all the brains of England went down. Then came the Second World War and after four weeks, France collapsed, collapsed like a little paper doll. And England - and England alone - held until America came in, but she held it alone, or today there would be no France. There would only be a unified Germany under Hitler. We know that. And so today you are inclined to judge too harshly, for his attitude, the one who made it possible for today to have a France.984 ¶3

Let me quote now from this memorandum, dated May 1, 1920: “We must not insist now or in the future on the friendship of France. Nothing can alter the fundamental fact that they do not like us in France and never will...” I am quoting accurately: “And they never will, except for the advantages of the French people as they can extract them from the English.”984 ¶4

Now a Frenchman didn’t write that. Englishmen wrote that from the Foreign Office, which is like our State Department, for they determine foreign policy. That was considered judgment of the brains of England of 1920, and it took forty-three years to hatch out.984 ¶5

So having read it in the English press printed last Sunday, and requoted here in Monday morning paper, I can only give praise to the Lord God that he is completely impersonal. It doesn’t matter whether he is an Englishman, Frenchman, American, or Russian - it is only law. If that is what they believe, that is what they are reaping: the law of identical harvest. They believed it and checked it in the secret archives of the Foreign Office, and then forty-three years later out comes the opposition - when you would think (judged by human levels) that anything in this world that France would have done, would be to welcome with open arms England, who made it possible for there still to be a France today. But England planted the seed and planted it firmly and it was watered over the years.984 ¶6

And then comes one - God never forgets, he can’t forget, he watches all, he sees all; nothing is hidden from God, he sees exactly what you are doing. “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, every man in his room of pictures?” We think that no one sees us. I say: nothing is hidden from God. If it had not been printed in the English papers on Sunday, you and I would not know that some English group had planted it.984 ¶7

I am an American by adoption, but I cannot rub out my love of England. All the physical blood that flows through me comes from Scotland, England, and Ireland. A little bit of Holland Dutch got in from my mother’s side, for they were rugged individualists too, living on dykes (living on water, really). But though physically I would like to resent it, I am happy I saw it. I knew that somewhere the seed had been planted, for you can’t have something grow in this world and not have a root from which it springs.984 ¶8

So I ask you: knowing this law (for those who did it, know nothing of this law which you know, which is the law of falsification of the record) - had they known the scriptures as you know them: the story of the unjust steward, keeper of the pigs, and the pig is the symbol of Christ. I have told you my vision of the pig. I found him and then came the growing of the pig, but I hadn’t fed it as well as I should have fed him in the interval of discovery, and when I saw the same pig years later I found it . . . What did I find? I found that imagination creates reality, and in the interval of that discovery that imagination creates reality, I forgot it, so he was not well fed.984 ¶9

But I always remembered that imagining creates reality. No matter what you tell me in fact, I would actually change the fact, for truth depends not upon fact, but upon the intensity of imagining. The real record is my memory. Functioning on this level, it takes a little while to persuade ourselves when reason denies it and our senses deny it. Were we functioning on higher levels, everything would be immediately subject to our imaginative power. On this level it takes a little while, and so it takes persistence, it takes patience, it takes diligence. These are the things we pay, the price we pay for the fruits we are seeking to reap in this world.984 ¶10

Here we always bear in mind the distinction between states and the occupant of the state. You are an immortal being occupying a state. That state may be poverty, wealth, health, sickness; it may be to be known in this world or to be unknown - but they are only states. You are neither known or unknown - you are immortal; you are neither rich or poor - these do not really define you at all. You can assume that you are, and to the degree that you are persuaded you are, you bear the fruit of that state - but you are neither rich or poor. You are immortal, destined eventually to inherit the whole vast universe, for it is God’s purpose to give you himself as though there were no other in the world, just God and you - and not even God and you - just God, and you are he. That is the purpose.984 ¶11

Listen to these words: “Holy Father, Keep them in thy name which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.” The name he gave me is his name, and he is addressed as, “Holy Father.” How could he give me the name of “father” - “Holy Father” - unless at the same time he gives me the Son who makes me a father? I can’t be a father and have no son. There must be a son to bear witness of my fatherhood. So he gives me his Son, his only begotten Son, and in doing this he gives me fatherhood. The “Holy Father keep them” (those who shall be brought to that level) “in thy name,” is the name that he gives me - the same name, your name, you give to me. What is the name? The name is “father.” And he does it in the most marvelous way: he presents his only begotten son and no one tells you who he is. You know who he is, and you know he is your son, and you know that he is not only your son, but he knows you are his father.984 ¶12

At that very moment you inherit the glory that is the Father; but the glory of this heavenly inheritance - which is the whole vast universe - cannot become actual, or at least not fully realized in the individual, as long as he is in this physical garment. But when he takes it off for the last time after that experience, automatically he is one with God the Father: “That they may be one, even as we are one.” And that is every child’s destiny in the world.984 ¶13

But you pass through all kinds of trials and tribulations, and he gives us a law - a law by which we may live wisely and happily. As we are told: “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.” Not in a few little things, but in everything that he does he prospers - if he knows.984 ¶14

Were you sitting in that cabinet forty-three years ago when this decision was brought in and typed and filed, if you knew what you know today and you sat there, you would say to the gentlemen: “I know gentlemen, these are the facts based upon reason.” It is like they hate, as you hate the man who feeds you, because you are embarrassed to be fed, so after a while you are waiting to get even. You don’t want to be fed, and so when he keeps on feeding you, you feel yourself a slave. As a slave feels his power, he wants to cut the throat of the one who fed him. That’s automatic.984 ¶15

So if you were there you would have said: “Gentlemen these are the facts, but let us now modify the facts, let us falsify the record and rewrite that memorandum, and let us persuade ourselves that they love us, that we can one day become a unified body - all of us - regardless of the differences of tongues, and let us file that report.” Maybe they would not have done it, but one individual in that group would have done it in his mind’s eye.984 ¶16

But they didn’t know what you know. As we are told: “The wise men of old, the prophets and the kings would have given anything to have heard the things that you have heard and to see the things you have seen, and they did not.” And so in our State Department - or the Foreign Office of England, or in the foreign office of any power in the world - they are not hearing what you are hearing. This doesn’t make sense to them; they must be rational beings and play the game as they played it for unnumbered centuries, with all the mistakes and replaying all the silly things all over again. I tell you: don’t forget it, because God doesn’t forget it, and we create by our imaginal acts.984 ¶17

What are you tonight imagining? I don’t care what it is; one day you are going to be shocked beyond your wildest dreams when you see the other side. Like the story of “Lazarus laughs.” He returns from the dead and all the values were changed, and the rich were poor, and the poor were not poor. All the values on this side were completely reversed on that side and everything was changed when Lazarus returned, and he laughed at some things we are doing here. So I tell you: don’t forget God’s law, for “Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord, for in all that he does he prospers.”984 ¶18

Now tonight you take it, though everything in the world denies it. Reason denies it, your friends will deny it, and you dare to assume you are the man - already the man, already the woman - you would like to be, and that things are already what you would like them to be. And as you dare to assume that you are, and you walk in that assumption just as though it were true, in a way that no one knows you will be led across a series of events toward the fulfillment of that assumption, and no power in the world can stop it if you are persistent in that assumption. Believe that imagining creates reality. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will.” Just as simple as that - but how to believe that I receive it? If at this very moment I believe that I have received what today I deny, I would look at the world differently. I wouldn’t see it prior to that fulfillment. I would now mentally look at the world, and I should see it as I would see it, were it true that I have become the man I want to be. I would commune with my wife, my daughter, my friends, from that assumption, and though no physical thing in the world could force me, I still should persist in the belief it is done, and carry on that assumption, and sleep in the belief that it has taken place just as though it were true. And if I do, may I tell you: I know from experience it will come true on this level.984 ¶19

It is already true the very moment I believe it; at that moment is the creative act. But man’s memory is very short and he doesn’t remember the act, so when he reaps the harvest he denies that it is his. He didn’t plant it, and yet we have a law established in the very beginning called the law of “identical harvest.” “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” Everything will bear according to its nature; it cannot bring forth other than its nature. That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields! The seasum was seasum, the corn Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew! So is man’s fate born. So when I reap these things in the world, I may deny it and try to argue my way out of it, but it confronts me and there it is. It would not have been brought into the world were it not planted as it was planted, because there it is, there’s the fruit.984 ¶20

And so if today I am unwanted by the world, sometime in the past I must have felt very sorry for myself and felt unwanted. I feel they should really want me, because I had been so kind to them in the past. After all my kindness, this is what they do. Then I feel a reaction, then I feel unwanted. That’s what nations do, individuals do, families do - don’t you do it! Do God’s law. God’s law is no respecter of persons. He doesn’t care whether you are an American or Russian or Chinese or African. He made all and he is sunk in all and the same law operates in all.984 ¶21

We are all one and eventually we will all awake, and our name will be one and our name will be “father” - “Holy Father” - looking at our own beloved son, and his name is David, the only begotten son and there he is and you are his father. And if I am his father and you are his father, then we are one. If the whole vast world becomes the father of the only begotten son, then we are one - though we are individualized.984 ¶22

May I tell you from my own visions: you haven’t the slightest concept of what is in store for you - the beauty, the joy that is yours. You are not this. If you want any comfort or any slight vision, read the 1st and 8th chapters of Ezekiel. You get a glimpse of what is in store for you, for the being spoken of there implies it is God - the only God - is you. And for all the identity of your person, your face will be glorified beyond your wildest dreams. We will be glorified; nothing will be left impermanent. I will recognize you and you will recognize me. But - for all this identity of person, there will be a radical discontinuity of form.984 ¶23

The vision of Ezekiel saw a glimpse of it. As he describes it: “Then I beheld, and, lo, a form that had the appearance of a man; below what appeared to be his loins it was fire.” I’ve seen it - it is a fire - a glorious burning, liquid, golden light. “And above his loins it was like the appearance of brightness, like gleaming bronze.” He’s right - no stomach, no need for any of this; you now know, for you are life in yourself. You don’t need any cure from outside yourself. You are a life-giving being - a seraphim - that is your destiny. Everyone is destined to be that being, though human in face, human in hands, human in feet, but nothing else. You are a fiery being. You differ as much from what you appear to be now as the butterfly from the caterpillar, and yet out of the caterpillar comes the butterfly. Out of this will come the being you are destined to be, but not until you are made perfect and all these things we are going through. It takes all of it to hatch us out, as it were.984 ¶24

But you apply the law. I was reading today that in the day of Coolidge (which goes back into the twenties) there were eight men who met in Chicago. They had a greater wealth among the eight of them than the national income from taxation of this country. Within eight years, seven of them either died in poverty, or were in prison, or committed suicide. Seven of the eight. Their names were not mentioned, but together they controlled greater wealth than our national tax produced, and yet within eight years seven had made dishonorable exits from the world - suicide, prison, and right into the dregs of poverty.984 ¶25

Don’t you do that! Know this law and use God’s law wisely, hurting no one in the world, just assuming you are the man you want to be, just as though it were true. Your friends will argue with you, but you don’t argue back. Let them argue if they want, but you persist in the assumption that things are as they ought to be and go about your business, telling to others what you want to. In fact if you are inwardly convinced of it, you can’t restrain the impulse to share it with others.984 ¶26

As Lord Lindsley said to a group of ministers once: “You ministers are making a mistake. In your pulpits you are arguing for Christianity and no one wants to hear your arguments. You ought to be witnesses. Does this thing work? Then share it with the rest of us.” That’s what I have been trying to tell you: how it works.984 ¶27

When it comes to the promise, I share it with my visions. You can’t misuse it, for that is unconditional. The law—yes, you can produce the results, because that is conditional. You get into a state, remain in a state, and it produces a result. When it comes to God’s promise you cannot produce it; God gives it to you, it’s grace, it’s unconditional. And may I tell you: all that is said in the scriptures of Jesus Christ, one day will be said of you. It’s the model of every child born of woman - everyone will play that part. Don’t be concerned - the crucifixion is over. Don’t think you are moving towards that disastrous end - it’s over. Listen to the words: “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” So the death is over; the resurrection takes place individually, one by one. Don’t be concerned about the cruel end - that is over. Let your hope be fully placed upon that gift, then you are resurrected from the grave - for you are going to be, every one will be.984 ¶28

In the meanwhile play fully and grant to everyone the good he asks of you, without putting your hand in your pocket. Grant it by an imaginal act on your part. Try to be as faithful as you can to that imaginal act; believe in the creativity of that imaginal act, and as you do it, they will all become the embodiment of what they asked of you.984 ¶29

Bear in mind what we told you earlier. These great nations led by wise men did not hear what you are hearing, and if they heard it they didn’t have ears to hear it, because they didn’t act upon it. They were convinced they were unwanted, and then, in time - all visions having their own appointed hour - that vision flowered, and today they are reaping the fruit of a seed they themselves planted forty-three years ago. But don’t be carried away tonight when you read the headlines or listen to the radio, that the ungrateful Frenchman did so and so; they had no choice in the matter whatsoever, if you know this law. He was pushed up to play the part he is playing because England planted the seed they planted.984 ¶30

They could tonight plant another seed, and be so welcome tomorrow that they would simply embarrass the French to offer. It could be, if they only knew how to plant the seed. They could plant a seed of being welcome and wanted in that wonderful body of men, because they are wonderful. They have all given so much to the world. The French have, the Germans have, the Danes - all of them. There isn’t one in that huge combine that haven’t given so much to the world. And so they could with open arms bring them all in, and they could make a bigger world.984 ¶31

But someone has to plant the seed, and I am glad that someone printed that in the “Los Angeles Times.” It came out only the day before in the English “Times” and I quoted it accurately. It not only said that this would not be changed - it was fundamental, a fundamental fact they were unwanted, unwelcome - but they would always be. That’s a stupid concept. There is nothing “always.” The only thing that is eternal and always, is that you will get God’s gift - which is himself. Outside of that there is nothing fatalistic in God’s world. The only fatalistic thing is given to us so clearly stated in the Book of Romans when he calls us one by one: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.”984 ¶32

So we are foreknown and predestined, predestined and called, called and glorified, glorified and then justified. That is the only predestination that I can find. Yes, there are other passages, but that hasn’t a thing to do with you being rich. You aren’t predestined to be rich and you aren’t predestined to be poor, to be known or to be unknown - that is your choice. But when it comes to the other, that is God’s predestined gift. He’s going to give you himself. God is determined to give us - all of us - himself, as though there were no other in the world. Just God in you and God in me, and then just God - individualized. And not in eternity will we be absorbed into a God, losing our individuality - never. I am individualized, you are individualized, and we tend forever toward greater and greater individualization - and yet, God.984 ¶33

Now let us go in to the silence.984 ¶34

Listen carefully to this story. It is taken from the first chapter, the third verse of the book of Joshua. Here it is: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” Do you believe it? Well, I know it’s true. I have proven it. And this story is meant not for the outer you. It’s meant for the inner you. Most men aren’t even aware that there is an inner you—a real you. In the New Testament it’s put in this manner: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned.” We are told the first man, that is the outer man, is of the earth; the inner man, the second man, is the Lord from heaven.983 ¶1

Now this book from which I’ve read the quote is the book of Joshua. The word Jesus is the Greek form of the word Joshua; they are identical in meaning. They mean literally the same. And all the promises of the Bible are addressed to that inner man, that second man, that is the Lord from heaven. Not the outer man. The outer man is limited to the essence of his senses. He is limited to what they will allow, to what they dictate. But the inner man has no limitations: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, the same give I unto thee.”983 ¶2

Now let me show you how it’s done. For I was confronted with what seemed at the time to be an enormous problem, an impassable barrier between myself and my objective. I hadn’t seen my family in Barbados for the entire war years. So, the first ship out of New York City to sail for the Indies after the war was over, I sailed with my little family to Barbados. We took a boat that took us to Trinidad, and from there we flew to Barbados. On arrival my brother asked me when I intended to return to America. For this was 30 January, and after returning home after so many years I would like to remain until maybe the end of April and return around the first of May.983 ¶3

Then he said to me, “Of course, you arranged for your return while you were in America.” I said, “No, I didn’t.” He said, “Neville, how could you have left America—that is the capital of the world, everything goes on there, especially in New York City, and if any passage could be arranged, certainly it should have been done in New York City. Do you realize that there are literally thousands, tens of thousands of people, waiting all through the islands for passage to America? And little Barbados has nothing to offer. There are only two ships that fly the waters: one sails out of Boston carrying 120 passengers, and one sails out of New York carrying only 60. And I am told that all space, all available space, is already committed, right through the month of September. And here it is January. Not only the space is committed, but there are actually thousands of people on a waiting list. If you put your name down with your family of three, you are at the bottom of the list—it will take two years to get out of here.”983 ¶4

I didn’t tell him what I’m telling you now. I didn’t wish to disturb him. Because he didn’t know or was not familiar with this technique. I made no effort to book passage; I simply put my name on the bottom of the list. But I wasn’t concerned. It was January, and I am in Barbados for vacation, so I do not need to be concerned and spoil my vacation for lack of passage. I wanted to get back to New York City around the first of May. So this is what I did based upon this knowledge. At the very end of March, I saw the ship that sailed for New York leaving the bay. I had a good mental picture of what she looked like, a small one. So that day as I returned to my hotel after lunch I sat in a nice easy chair in my room, and this is what I did.983 ¶5

I knew that if the inner man could perform an act then the outer man would be compelled to duplicate it. For whenever the action of the inner self corresponds to the action that the outer self must take to appease desire, that desire must be realized. So I made as lifelike and vivid a representation as possible of what I would see and what I would do and what I would hear were I physically present on that ship.983 ¶6

Well, I knew one thing that I would have to do if I sailed. In Barbados there is no deep-water harbor, that is, not as yet. So all passengers must take a small little ship from the harbor, and move off maybe a mile or three-quarters-of-a-mile to sea; then your little ship is latched alongside of the big ship and a gangplank is lowered and you walk up the gangplank. That’s one act I would have to perform if I sailed on that boat. I could perform it as a visitor, but the emotions of someone who actually lived there differed from the emotions of someone who was only visiting.983 ¶7

So, I had to adopt a sort of mixed emotion; for it was a peculiar sort of scene: I was leaving a very wonderful and large family behind that I had not seen in six years, although I was returning to a home that I loved in New York City. I was happy to get back, or to be sailing, but I was sad at sailing—that sort of feeling that mixed together joy and woe. As the prophet said: “Joy and woe are woven fine, a garment for the soul divine.” So I knew exactly what he meant: the experience of mixing these two emotions into something that was a sweet, sweet sorrow.983 ¶8

So, with my picture in my mind of what I would have to do, I sat in a chair like I am sitting here. I first induced a dream state, and the reason for that is this: We are told in the book of Job, “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then He opens up the ears of men and sealeth their instruction.”983 ¶9

Well, I knew the one who would sealeth was within me, for God is in man, not on the outside of man. God is in you. So the one in me would have to be my own wonderful I-Am-ness. That’s the God in man, man’s consciousness. And that inner man is his son, his only lovely begotten son, which is my imagination.983 ¶10

Well, sitting in that chair I induced a drowsy state—that dreamy, drowsy state that borders upon sleep. But you induce it only to a certain step; if you carry it too far you go to sleep. And then you lose the control of the direction of your attention. That’s something you must always maintain, and it must be under your control, not the control of another. So I had to induce it but only to a certain point, and just before I slept I arrested that state.983 ¶11

You may say that consciousness is likened to an ocean or to a tide. It ebbs and it flows. The ebb tide is the very moment when my critical faculties are being exercised; I know exactly where I am seated in the studio and what I am doing. That is not the state of the flow tide, when I do not know what I am doing, which is the unconsciousness of sleep. But between these two extremes—of the flow tide of unconsciousness of sleep and the ebb tide when all the critical faculties are being exercised—there are any number of intermediary states between these two extremes. I wanted a state that borders upon sleep.983 ¶12

So because I’m thinking of a tide, I recall now that the high tide lifts a man easily off the bars of the senses, where he has so long been stranded. So I was stranded upon my senses, for they told me I couldn’t get out of the island. All that I heard my brother tell me, my father tell me—they confirmed my senses. For here I am stranded on the bar of my senses. But I knew I could lift myself off of what they knew, and what my outer man knew, what my critical faculty knew, and actually sail away to my place in New York City.983 ¶13

So all I wanted to do was to perform an act that would actually imply that I was there. With that clearly in my mind, I took myself into the easy chair and induced the drowsy state, and just before I lost control of the direction of my attention I started the action in my imagination. And this was what I worked out: I felt that if I walked up the gangplank and it seemed to me real, and then on the top of that ship holding the rail I could look back at the little town of Bridgetown and have that feeling of sadness—and yet a sweet sadness because I was happy that I was sailing.983 ¶14

So I assumed I stepped off onto the gangplank, and then step after step right up the entire gangplank, making it as natural and as real as I possibly could. I gave every step all the solidity that I could muster—all the sensory vividness that I could actually bring to play upon that action. When I got to the part of the imaginary stairway, which is the gangplank, I became aware that I had wandered from my task. For I had set myself a task to walk up the gangplank, while holding the gangplank. Then I found myself completely gone. I was not on a ship. When I became aware that I had simply floated away from my objective, I brought myself back to the very first step on that gangplank.983 ¶15

And there I went over and over again. I did it over and over and over until that action took on the tones of reality. When it seemed to me normal and naturally real, I then felt that I was actually performing it in the right way. So I kept on doing it and then I went sound asleep in the act of walking up the gangplank.983 ¶16

This was on a Thursday afternoon, I would say about 2:30 to 3. The next morning, Friday at 10:35, the Alcoa Steamship Company called me and offered me passage on the next sailing, which was the twenty-first day of April, putting me back in New York City on the first of May. And so I know from my own personal experience that this thing is true. That “every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, the same give I unto you.”983 ¶17

If you could now conceive of what you would do were you in possession of what you want to be in this world, and then having conceived it so that it’s clear to you, a vivid representation of exactly what you would see and do, well then do it. Do it over and over until it seems to you real. And while you are doing it in that dreamy, drowsy state, allow yourself to slip into the deeper sleep in the act of doing it.983 ¶18

When you wake the next day or five minutes later—in my case I woke maybe a half-an-hour later—I was inwardly rehearsed in what would take place. All the people who played their parts, the steamship agent, and all the people who did it on the ship, they were bystanders in my dream. I made my dream so real, and because of their physical presence they became related to my dream. And because they’re related to it, they were drawn into my drama and had to play their parts. I didn’t think of the captain’s name or the steward’s name or any person on the ship who might be sailing as a passenger. I didn’t concern myself with how it would happen. I knew it would have to happen. And in less than twenty-four hours I had confirmation of my passage as I sought.983 ¶19

As an outer man seeking I couldn’t find, but the inner man can find. This is based upon the simple principle that whenever the action of the inner man corresponds to the action that the outer man must take to, I would say, realize his dream or to appease his hunger, that must be done in the outer world. I know it.983 ¶20

So when I returned to New York City I told my experience to my audiences at Town Hall. A man present said to himself, he didn’t say it to me, he said to himself, “I’m going to disprove this principle. I’m going to do it tonight,” and this is what he did: He hadn’t climbed a ladder in years; there was no occasion for it. But that night, because he hadn’t climbed one in years, he thought he would do that, for there was no occasion for climbing a ladder. So he sat in his easy chair, and he took this imaginary ladder, and up he climbed the ladder. He did it over and over, climbing the ladder until he went sound asleep in the act of climbing up a ladder. Four days later, he visited a friend he hadn’t seen in years. And she asked him, as a gentleman, if he wouldn’t mind climbing a ladder and rearranging a picture beyond her reach. He didn’t realize what action took place until he was on the very top of the ladder and saw the evidence. When it dawned upon him that he had proven the principle he became so emotional he almost fell off.983 ¶21

Now don’t you try to disprove it. Don’t climb a little ladder in doubt. If you hope to disprove, you will prove it. Rather, put yourself into some big, noble state, be a wonderful man, a wonderful woman, whoever you are. Be noble. Construct a little drama which implies the fulfillment of your dream. And then do it over and over and over, and make it natural. And I promise you, “Wherever the sole of your foot shall tread, the same give I unto you outwardly.”983 ¶22

Now after a moment from my sponsor I’ll be back with an incident that is by far the most interesting case history I could tell you this day.983 ¶23

As I told you, if an action is needed you must turn to the inner man and the inner man must do it. I told the story you just heard in San Francisco. A blind girl was in my audience. And she was faced with a problem. Although blind, she was earning a wonderful, wonderful income. But there recently came the rerouting of the buses and she found herself spending two-and-a-half hours one way on three buses. For being blind, I tell you now, when I say blind, her eyes are removed; there are little plastic eyes when you look into her eyes—they had to remove them years and years ago. So, in her predicament, getting off one bus she must wait and hope that someone is passing by and, seeing her limitations, can help her across the street. So she crossed herself and after two weeks she could not make it in less than two-and-a-half hours. And in previous days when she had only one bus to take she made it in fifteen minutes.983 ¶24

So, that night this is what she did. She sat in her living room and she first of all investigated what it would cost by taxi. That was completely out of the question. She thought in terms of giving up her apartment. But all the things that she thought of rapidly, she couldn’t put into effect. She came to the conclusion that going from her place to the place she worked in a car was the only solution. She couldn’t afford a chauffeur and she couldn’t drive, for she was blind. But a car seemed to her the only solution.983 ¶25

So this is what she did. Sitting in her living room in a nice easy chair, she assumed that she was seated on the front seat of a car. She felt that the person next to her was a man. Then she felt the rhythm of the car. Then she could smell the gasoline. Then she felt the car move. She felt it stop for what she thought would be a red light. Then she felt the car move on. She finally came to the end of her imaginary journey. She turned to her companion and said, “Thank you very much, sir.” To which he replied, “The pleasure is all mine.” She got out of that car and then she imagined she heard the door click, as she slammed in her imagination the door of the car. And then she walked up the plank leading to her office. The next night she did it all over again. She did it until it seemed to her that she was actually in a car; she could actually see herself in a car and riding the streets of San Francisco, stopping in front of her office building, getting out, thanking her driver, and then making her way up the ramp.983 ¶26

The second night, right after she had done it and given it the tones of reality, her companion read her the evening paper. And there in the evening paper was the picture of a man who was interested in blind people. Having read the article, she thought she would call him. She looked his name up in the telephone directory, and found his name and called him. He said he was interested in the blind, as said in the paper, but this was no time or place to call him. If she would write him a long, detailed letter of the nature of her problem he would take it under consideration. She sat down and wrote him a letter and explained her problem—simply a problem of transportation.983 ¶27

Next day when he got the letter he simply read it and put it in his pocket. On his way home he stopped in at a place where he stops every day before returning to his home. And that happened to be a bar. He stopped in at a bar. He knew the proprietor and had his little martini, or whatever he had, and while he was there he was prompted to tell the blind girl’s story. Having told the story, a total stranger, who was a salesman for some liquor house, overhead the story. And he said, “Well, I make a good living and I do nothing for this community. Here is a girl who not only is taking herself off the backs of taxpayers, but in her letter she states that she is training nine other blind people to earn their own living. Here this girl, who should be supported by the taxpayers, earns her own living and she’s taught nine others to earn their living; and I, who earn a wonderful living, I do nothing for our community. I will drive that girl to work.” The man who received the letter said, “If you, a total stranger, will drive her to work, I, who am interested in the blind and make it my job, I will then take her home.” And that was the bargain.983 ¶28

Now that’s almost three years ago. I saw that girl just about six months ago and she told me that it has not failed one day of a five-day week. Five days a week, one gentleman picks her up and takes her to her work and one takes her from work to home. And here is the strange part. The very first morning that she drove with one of these men, she turned to him as she got out of the car, and she said, “Thank you very much, sir,” to which he replied, “The pleasure is all mine.” The identical words that she in her imagination had used to make the scene seem natural were used the very first day. Now, it was twice she did it—on the third day she was being driven to work.983 ¶29

I say to you if she can do it, and if the speaker can do it, you can do it. I have done it a number of times and I teach others to do it. It is a simple, simple technique. You must learn to believe in the inner man and the reality of what is to you at the moment an invisible realm. This invisible world is not really unreal; it’s the most real world imaginable. And the inner man related to it is a far more real being than the outer personality that you cling to and think so much of in this world. Trust. These things will never fail. Whenever the action of the inner you corresponds to the action that the outer you must take to appease your desire, that desire will be realized.983 ¶30

For this whole wonderful world of ours is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger; that’s why we built it. We made it to satisfy our longing. You have some intense longing, some wonderful hunger in this world. It may be for a job, it may be an increase of income, it may be some wonderful, harmonious relationship in a home that is now strained. No matter what it is, construct a little act, this action inside, that your dream has been realized, then take that action and inwardly do it over and over and over until it takes on the tones of reality. When to you it seems natural, then you may sleep.983 ¶31

But I do believe in that sleeping during the action. In some strange way it seems to hasten the interval between the doing and the realization of it. Of course, you don’t have to sleep. But I have found from experience that if I can fall asleep while I am performing the action—the action that implies the fulfillment of my dream—that I quickly collapse the time. In Barbados, it took me less than one day to have passage on a ship, although the ship was not sailing for another twenty-one days. Still, I knew I was going to sail on that ship. I had tangible proof; I had the passage in my possession. This girl took maybe two days. Although she was driven on the third day, she really only did it two nights: two nights sitting in her living room she assumed she was in a car; she could smell the gasoline; she took all of her attention and hallucinated it—you can hallucinate sights, smell, touch.983 ¶32

I can take my hand now, place it on this book, and assume that I am fondling something that is not here to be seen by anyone. And so lose myself in it that to me it seems natural. If I do it until it seems natural, and sleep while I’m doing it, do you not think it will become my posession? That’s how everyone should live and will eventually live in this world.983 ¶33

So instead of going out and simply getting things that are not yours or I would say stealing in order to survive, you don’t steal to survive with this technique—you die in order to live. You let go of the things that you conceptualize, just drop them, and you simply inwardly see yourself into another state. And seeing yourself right into the situation of your fulfilled desire you sleep in that state.983 ¶34

And so you know the wisdom of the word: “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instructions.” We are rehearsed at night in the part that we are playing when we open our eyes in this outer world. And all that we will do, we do under compulsion. For this inner motion is the force by which the outer event is brought to bear.983 ¶35

If you know it, then don’t just know it—do it. For if you do it, I promise you, you will get the result. But you must apply it. Application is important. Everyone in this world must learn to live by their imagination. And only as you live by imagination can you truly be said to live at all.983 ¶36

Now here in this book of mine, Awakened Imagination, you will find that case history of the blind girl. Read it and apply it. And become the man, the woman that you want to be. You can be anything in this world that you want to be; if you know these wonderful promises, accept them and then test them. You’re invited to test them. “Come prove me now and see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing so great, there is not room on earth to receive it.” You can conceive of the impossible state—impossible to the inner man. All things are possible to the inner man.983 ¶37

Now I’ll be back in just a moment with just a thought for today. Today is to be reminded that every place that the sole of your footsteps tread upon has been given unto you. Goodbye and thank you.983 ¶38

For the benefit of those who were not present last Sunday, just let me give you a quick summary of the thought expressed here. We claimed that the world was a manifestation of consciousness, that the individual’s environment, circumstances and conditions of life were only the out picturing of the particular state of consciousness in which that individual abides. Therefore, the individual sees whatever he is by virtue of the state of consciousness from which he views the world. Any attempt to change the outer world before he changes the inner structure of his mind, is to labour in vain. Everything happens by order. Those who help or hinder us, whether they know it or not, are the servants of that law, which constantly shapes outward circumstances in harmony with our inner nature.980 ¶1

We asked you last Sunday to distinguish between the individual identity and the state the occupy. The individual identity is the Son of God. It is that I speak of you or to you, or speak of myself, I mean really our imagination. That is permanent. It fuses with state and believes itself to be the state with which it is fused, but at every moment of time it is free to choose the state with which it will be identified.980 ¶2

And that brings us to today’s subject, “Changing the Feeling of I”, and I hope I will not get the same reaction that is recorded in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. For we are told that when this was given to the world they all left him, leaving just a handful behind. For when he told them there was no one to change but self, they said this is a hard, hard teaching. It’s a hard thing. Who can hear it? For he said, “No man cometh unto me save I call him.” And then it’s recorded when he repeated it three times they left him, never again to walk with him.980 ¶3

And he turned to the few who remained and asked them, “Would you also go?” And they answered and said, “To whom would we go ? You have the word of eternal life. ‘I In other words, it’s so much easier when I can blame another for my misfortune, but now that I am told that no man cometh unto me save I call him, that I am the sole architect of my fortunes and misfortunes, it’s a difficult saying, and so it’s recorded “It’s a hard saying. Who can hear it? Who can grasp it? And who will believe it?”980 ¶4

And so he said, “And now I sanctify myself that they also be sanctified through the truth, for if this is the truth, then there is no one to change, no one to make whole, no one to purify but self.” And so we start with the “I” .980 ¶5

Most of us are totally unaware of the self that we really cherish. We have never taken one good look at the self, so we don’t know this self, for the “I” has neither face, form nor figure, but it does mold itself into structure by all that it consents to, all that it believes, and few of us know really what we do believe. We have no idea of the unnumbered superstitions and prejudices that go to mold this inner, formless “I” into a form which is then projected as a man’s environment, as the conditions of life.980 ¶6

So here, read it carefully when you go home, “No man cometh unto me save I call him. You didn’t choose me; I have chosen you. No man can take away my life; I lay it down myself. There is no power to take from me anything that is part of the inner arrangement of my mind. All that you gave me I have kept and none is lost save the son of perdition or the belief in God, and because nothing can be lost but the belief in loss, I will not now assume loss of anything you have given me that is good. And so I sanctify myself that they be sanctified through the truth”.980 ¶7

And now, how do we go about changing the “I”. First of all, we must discover the “I” and we do this by an uncritical observation of self. This will reveal a self that will shock you. You will be altogether, I wouldn’t say afraid, but ashamed to admit you’ve ever known such a lowly creature. And had it been God Himself who drew near in this despicable form, you would have denied him a thousand times before a single cock would crow. You couldn’t believe that this is the self that you’ve carried around and protected and excused and justified. Then you start changing this self after, by an uncritical observation, you make the discovery of that self. For the acceptance of self is the essence of the moral problem of the world. It is the epitome of a true outlook on life, for it is the sole cause of everything you observe. Your description of the world is a confession of the self that you do not know. You describe another, you describe society, you describe anything, and your description of the thing you observe reveals to one who knows this law the being you really are. So you must first accept that self. When that self is accepted, then you can start to change.980 ¶8

It’s so much easier to take the virtues of the Gospel and apply them as the word of life, to love the enemy, to bless those who curse us, and to feed the hungry. But when man discovers the being to be fed, the being to be clothed, the being to be sheltered, the greatest enemy of all is that self, then he is ashamed, completely ashamed that that is the being, for it was easier to share with another something that I possess, to take an extra coat and give it to another, but when I know the truth it’s not that. I start with the self, having discovered, and start with change of that self.980 ¶9

Now, let me tell you a story. A few years ago in this city I was giving a series of lectures down near that lake – I can’t even recall the name of the lake but it was some Parkview Manor was the place where I spoke, and in that audience was a gentleman who sought an audience before the meeting. And we went across the street into the little park there, and he said to me that he had an insoluble problem. I said, “There is no such thing as an insoluble problem. “But”, he said, “you do not know my problem. It’s not a state of health, I assure you; it is look at the skin that I wear” . I said, “What’s wrong with it; it looks lovely to me”. He said, “Look at the pigment of my skin. I, by the accident of birth, am now discriminated against. The opportunities for progress in this world are denied me just because of the accident of birth, that I was born a coloured man. Opportunities for advancement in every field, neighborhoods that I would like to live in and raise a family I couldn’t move in, where I would like to open up a business I couldn’t move into that area.”980 ¶10

Then I told him my own personal experience, that I came to this country. Well, I didn’t have that problem but I was a foreigner in the midst of all Americans. I didn’t find it difficult. “Yet”, as he reminded me, “but that’s not my problem, Neville. Others have come here speaking with an accent, but they haven’t my skin, and I was born an American” .980 ¶11

Then I told him an experience of mine in New York City. If I were called upon to name a man that I would consider my teacher, I would name Abdullah. I studied with that gentleman for five years. He had the same colour skin, the same pigment as this gentleman. He would never allow anyone to refer to him as a coloured man. He was very proud of being a negro, didn’t want any modification of what God had made him.980 ¶12

He turned to me and he said, “Have you ever seen a picture of the Sphinx?” I said, “Yes”. He said, “It embodies the four fixed quarters of the universe. You have the lion, the eagle, the bull and man. And here is man that is the head. The crown of that creature called the Sphinx, which still defies man’s knowledge to unriddle it, was crowned with a human head. And look carefully at the head, Neville, and you will see whoever modeled that head must have been a negro. Whoever modeled it had the face of a negro and if that still defies man’s ability to unravel it, I am very proud that I am a negro.”980 ¶13

I have seen scientists, doctors, lawyers, bankers, from every walk of life seek an audience with old Abdullah, and everyone Who came thought themselves honoured to be admitted to his home and to receive an interview. If he was ever invited out, and he was, he was always the honoured guest. He said, “Neville, you must first start with self. Find self, don’t be ashamed ever of the being you are. Discover it and start the changing of that self”.980 ¶14

Well, I told this gentleman exactly what Abdullah had taught me, that there was no cause outside of the arrangement of his own mind. If he was discriminated against, it was not because of the pigment of his skin, though he showed me signs as large as all outdoors denying him access to a certain area. The sign is there only because in the minds of some men such patterns are formed and they draw unto themselves what now they would condemn; that there is no power outside the mind of man to do anything to man, and he by the arrangement of his own mind, by consenting to these restrictions in his cradle and being conditioned slowly through his youth, waking into manhood believing himself set upon would have to be set upon, but “no man cometh unto me save I call him”.980 ¶15

So then someone comes to condemn or to praise. They couldn’t come unless I call them. Not a man called Neville, but that secret being that is not called Neville. The secret being that is the sum total of all of my beliefs, all of the things that I consent to, that form a pattern ofstructure, that secret being draws unto itself things in harmony with itself.980 ¶16

Well, that man went away and wrestled with himself. He couldn’t believe everything I told him, not that night, but last Sunday morning in the lobby, he came forward and we renewed the friendship. He took me next door to show me the fruit of this teaching. He said, “Neville, it took me almost three years to really overcome that fixed idea that I, by the accident of birth, would be a secondary citizen, but I overcame it. Now here is my office on Wilshire Boulevard. I picked this one not because it was the only one offered; four equally wonderful spots were offered me. I took this one because it had greater telephone facilities, but the others were equally good. Now here is my office. Now you couldn’t judge my income from this office, lovely as it is. Everything is nice about it, but, Neville, this year I will net a quarter of a million dollars”.980 ¶17

Well in America that is still a fabulous sum of money. It would be staggering in any other part of the world, but even in fabulous America a man to net a quarter of a million is really up in the very highest of brackets. And that was the man that a few years ago told me the whole vast world was against him by reason of the accident of birth. He knows now he is what he is by virtue of the state of consciousness with which he is identified, and the choice is his to go back to the restrictions of his childhood when he believed the story or to continue in the freedom that he has found.980 ¶18

So you and I can be anything in this world we desire to be if we will clearly define our aim in life and constantly occupy that aim. It must be habitual. The concept we hold of self that is noble must not be put on just for a moment and taken off when we leave this church. We feel free here; we feel that we have something in common, that’s why we are here, but are we going to wear the noble concept we now hold of self when we go through the door and enter that bus, or are we going to return to the restrictions that were ours prior to coming here?980 ¶19

The choice is ours and the hardest lesson to learn is that there is no one in this world that can be drawn into your world unless you, and you alone, call him. So do not do what they did thousands of years ago, for that is the beginning of the secession of the great truth. So we are told they turned away from it, never again to walk with it, and the few who remained didn’t like it either, but where would they go if this is the word of eternal truth? Not that it’s true for this day and age, but if this is the law of being, and in all the dimensions of my being it holds good, if this is eternally true, then let me learn the lesson now, though I wrestle with myself as he did for three years.980 ¶20

So, the changing of the feeling of “I” is a selective thing because unnumbered states are infinite states, but the “I” is not the state. The “I” believes itself to be the state when it enters and fuses with it, so he was presented with a state and without the faculty of discrimination in his youth, he fused with the state and believed these restrictions were true, and it took him three years to disentangle the “I” from these fixed ideas with which he had lived for so many years. Now you may take only a moment or you, too, may take your three years. I can’t tell you how long it’s going to take you, but I’ll tell you this much. It can be measured by the feeling of naturalness. You can wear a feeling until it’s natural. The moment the feeling becomes natural, it will begin to bear fruit within your world.980 ¶21

So I told this story at a small gathering here in the city, and not very many asked questions about it, but three people asked, “But he must have had money before. He must have known the right people. He must in some way have had some substance to start it, because how can you go out to loan a hundred million dollars and call that a real fact of being that you have that to loan and tell me you didn’t have some one who had it or you, yourself, didn’t have it”.980 ¶22

I did not ask the gentleman about the individual facts of the case. I went into the office, I saw it, I didn’t look at his books; he volunteered this information, and gave me the figure of a quarter of a million net for the year. I have not checked or in any way verified the statement; I believe it implicitly.980 ¶23

But I will not go along with those who believe that unless you have certain things to start with you can’t apply this law. You can start now from scratch and choose the being you want to be. You aren’t going to change the pigment of your skin but you will find your accent or the pigment of skin or your so-called racial background will not be a hindrance, for if a man is ever hindered it can only be the state of consciousness in which he abides that hinders him. Man is freed or constrained by reason of the state of mind in which he persists.980 ¶24

If you persist in it, well, then I will say, “persist in it”, but I warn you no one cares and that is an awful blow when a man discovers that no one, no one but himself really cares. So we find ourselves weeping with ourselves in the hope of getting others to weep with us. And what an awful shock when the day arrives we discover that no one really ever cared. They will give us some little listening ear for a moment just as they were passing by, but they really didn’t care. When we make that discovery we shake ourselves out of it and boldly appropriate the gift our Father gave us before that the world was.980 ¶25

So let me show you the gift. You’ve read your Lord’s Prayer possibly daily, but you read it as a prayer from a translation of a translation which does not reveal the sense of the evangelist. The real translation, you will find in Farrar Fenton’s work where in the original it is written in the imperative passive mood, which is like a standing order, a thing to be done absolutely and continuously. So that you can look now upon your universe as one vast inter-knit machinery where all things happen. There isn’t a thing to become; all things are taking place, so it is written in this manner, “Thy will must be being done. Thy kingdom must be being restored.” It is the only way you could express it if you would express the imperative passive mood. But from the Latin from which our translation was made there is no first aorist of the imperative passive mood. So we have it in the way we have it but it does not reveal the intent of the mysteries.980 ¶26

If you will see all things are now, you don’t become, you simply select the state that you would occupy. Occupying it you seem to become but it is already a fact, every aspect of that state in its most minute detail. It’s worked out and taking place. You by occupying the state seem to go through the action of unfolding that state, but the state is completely finished and taking place. So now you can choose the being you want to be and by choosing a being other than what you are now expressing you start the change of the feeling of “I”.980 ¶27

Now, how will I know that I have changed the feeling of “I”? By beginning first with an uncritical observation of my reactions to life and then noticing my reactions when I think I am identified with my choice. If I assume that I am the man that I want to be, let me observe my reactions. If they are as they were, I have not identified myself with my choice, for my reactions are automatic and so if I am changed I would automatically change my reactions to life. So the changing of the feeling of “I” results in a change of reaction, which change of reaction is a change of environment and behavior.980 ¶28

But let me warn you now. A little alteration of mood is not a transformation; it’s not a real change of consciousness. Because as I change my mood for the moment it can quickly and rapidly be, I would say, replaced by another mood in the reverse direction. When I say that I was changed, as that gentleman changed his mood, his basic mood, his state of consciousness, it means that having assumed that I am what the moment denied, what my reason denied, that I remain in that state long enough to make that state stable. So that all of my energies are flowing from that state. I am no longer thinking of that state. I am thinking from that state. So that wherever a state grows so stable as to definitely expel all of its rivals, then that central, habitual state of consciousness from which I think defines my character and is really a true transformation or change of consciousness.980 ¶29

Whenever I reach that state of stability, watch my world mold itself then in harmony with this inner change. And men will come into my world, people will come to aid and they will think they are initiating the urge to help. They are playing only their part. They must do what they do because I have done what I did. Having moved from one state into the other. I have altered my relationship relative to the world round about, and that changed relationship compels a change in behavior relative to my world. So they have to act differently toward me.980 ¶30

So in changing the “I”, you start with desire, which we will unfold and elaborate on tomorrow night. For it starts with desire. Desire is the spring of action, for you must want to be other than what you are. We fail because we do not fall in love enough with an idea. We aren’t, I would say, moved enough to want to be other than what we are. If I could get you to be completely in love with some state to the point where it haunted the mind, I could almost prophesy that you would in the not distant future externaliSe that state within your world. And the reason we fail we aren’t hungry enough to change. For either we do not know the law or we haven’t the urge or the hunger to really bring about the change. For the changing of the feeling of “I” results in the change of reaction, which change of reaction results in a change of world.980 ¶31

If you like your world and you are complacent about it, you haven’t started on the road of the mysteries, for the very first beatitude appeals to one who is not complacent. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. You must be poor in spirit, not complacent, not satisfied. The man who thinks that by reason of birth, the religion that he inherited at birth, is good enough for me, that he is not dissatisfied, he is not, I would say, moved. That being is complacent and therefore he is not poor in spirit; he is very rich in spirit. Theirs is not the kingdom of God. For if I could stir you, make you dissatisfied with self, then you will recognise that self and set about to change it. For the only field of activity for man is within himself and on himself. You do not work on the other. The day you change self, that day you change your world.980 ¶32

Now I see my time is going to its quick end. And so in the remaining minute I have left here, let me not urge you, because if you come to the meeting tomorrow night not really hungry, you wouldn’t benefit, but I do hope that many of you are there. Even if you are stirred to the point of trying to, I would say, disprove what I told you, I would accept that challenge for in the attempt to disprove it, I know if you were sincere in your attempt, you would prove it. So I hope many of you will come and take this feast with us.980 ¶33

We are here in the city at the Ebell for 15 nights, Monday thru Friday, as Mr. Smith told you, for three consecutive weeks. If you can’t take all, and I do hope many of you will take all, then pick out the title s that appeal to you. Tomorrow night to me is basic; it is the importance of defining an aim in this world, having a goal, for without an aim you are aimless. And you were warned in the Book, or I would say, in the Epistle of James that “the double minded man is unstable in all his ways. Let not such a man believe that he shall receive anything of the Lord; for he is like a wave that is driven and tossed by the wind.” That man never reaches his goal.980 ¶34

So you must have an aim, and tomorrow night we will show you the importance of defining desire. There are certain schools who teach you to kill out desire; we teach you to intensify desire and show you the reason for such teaching, show you what the Bible teaches about desire.980 ¶35

And now we will come to the help that many of you have asked for today. Those who were not here on Sunday, let me remind you it is a very simple technique. As I told you on Sunday, any time that you exercise your imagination, and do it lovingly on behalf of another, you are mediating God to man. So we sit quietly and we simply become imitators of our Father. And He called the world into being by being the thing he would call. And so we sit and we listen as though we heard someone congratulating us on having found what we seek. So we go to the end of the matter and we listen just as though we heard, and we look as though we saw, and we try in this manner to feel ourselves right into the situation of our answered prayer, and there we wait in the silence just for about two minutes, and so they will lower the lights to aid you.980 ¶36

And let me remind you, if you want to clear your throat, please do so. If you want to shift your position in the chair, do so. Feel as though you are alone at home, because if you don’t and you try not to disturb the neighbour, you will not be able to exercise your imagination on behalf of anyone. So now I will take the chair and just simply listen attentively, just as though you heard. I’ll make you this promise – the day you are very still in mind and really become attentive, you will hear as coming from without what really you are whispering from within yourself.980 ¶37

As you have heard, this morning’s subject is “Awakened Imagination.” It is my theme for the entire series of nineteen lectures. Everything is geared towards the awakening of the imagination. I doubt if there is any subject on which clear thinking is more rare than the imagination. The word itself is made to serve all kinds of ideas. Many of them directly opposed to one another. But here this morning I hope to convince you that this is the redeeming power in man. This is the power spoken of in the Bible as the Second Man. “the Lord from Heaven.” This is the same power personified for us as a man called Christ Jesus. In the ancient text it was called Jacob, and there are numberless names in the Bible all leading up and culminating in the grand flower called Christ Jesus. It may startle you to identify the central figure of the Gospels as human imagination, but I am quite sure before the series is over, you will be convinced that this what the ancients intended that we should know, but man has misread the Gospels as history and biography and cosmology, and so completely has gone asleep as to the power within himself.979 ¶1

Now this morning I have brought you the means by which this mighty power in us may be awakened. I call it the art of revision. I take my day and I review it in my mind’s eye. I start with the first incident in the morning. I go through the day; when I come to any scene in my unfolding day that displeased me, or if it didn’t displease me if it was not as perfect as I thought it could have been, I stop right there and I revise it. I re-write it, and after I have re-written it so that it conforms to the ideal I wished I had experienced, then I experience that in my imagination as though I had experienced it in the flesh. I do it over and over until it takes on the tone of reality, and experience convinces me that that moment that I have revised and relived will not recede into my past. It will advance into my future to confront me as I have revised it. If I do not revise it, these moments, because they never recede and they always advance, will advance to confront me perpetuating that strange, unlovely incident. But if I refuse to allow the sun to descend upon my wrath, so that at the end of a day I never accept as final the facts of the day, no matter how factual they are, I never accept them, and revising it I repeal the day and bring about corresponding changes in my outer world.979 ¶2

Now, not only will this art of revision accomplish my every objective, but as I begin to revise the day it fulfills its great purpose and its great purpose is to awaken in me the being that men call Christ Jesus, that I call my wonderful human imagination, and when it awakens it is the eye of God and it turns inward into the world of thought and there I see that what formerly I believed to exist on the outside really exists within myself. No matter what it is, I then discover that the whole of Creation is rooted in me and ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God. And from that moment on I find my real purpose in life and my real purpose is simply to do the will of Him that sent me, and the will of Him that sent me is this --that of all that he has given me I shall lose nothing but raise it up again. And what did he give me? He gave me every experience in my life. He gave me you. Every man, woman and child that I meet is a gift to me from my Father, but they fell in me because of my attitude towards society, because of my attitude towards myself. When I begin to awaken and the eye opens and I see the whole is myself made visible, I then must fulfill my real purpose, which is the will of Him that sent me, and the Will is to raise up those that I allowed in my ignorance when I slept to descend within me. Then starts the real art of revision; to be the man, regardless of your impressions of that man, regardless of the facts of the case that are all staring you in the face, it is your duty when you become awakened to lift him up within yourself and you will discover that he was never the cause of your displeasure. When you look at him and you are displeased, look within and you will find the source of the displeasure. It did not originate there.979 ¶3

Now let me give you a case history to illustrate this point. I know a few of you were at the banquet and maybe a few of you heard me last Thursday on T. V. but I doubt in this audience of say twenty-three or twenty-four hundred of us, that more than say a hundred and fifty heard it, and even if you heard it you can hear it time and time again for it is this, that if you hear it will cause you to act upon it because as I told you, and I think I did last Sunday, but if I didn’t let me tell you now; if you attended the entire nineteen and you became saturated with all that I have to tell you, so that you had all the knowledge you think it takes to achieve your objectives, and you did not apply what you received, it would avail you nothing; but a little knowledge which you carry out in action, you will find to be far more profitable than much knowledge which you neglect to carry out in action. So by repeating this case history this morning, though say a hundred or two hundred of you have heard it, it will help you to remember you must do something about it.979 ¶4

This past May in New York City, there sat a lady who had been coming for years and I made a simple observation that people must become doers of the word and not mere hearers only. For if a man only hears it and never applies what he hears, he will never really prove or disprove what he has heard; and then I told the story of a lady who had only heard me three or four times and how she transformed the life of another, and this lady hearing what one who came only three times and this miracle took place in her life, she went home determined that she would really apply what she had heard over the years, and this is what she did.979 ¶5

Two years before, after a violent quarrel, she was ordered out of her son’s home by her daughter-in-law. Her son said, “Mother, you need no proof from me that I love you: it’s obvious: I think I have proven that every day of my life, but if that is Mary’s decision, and I regret it, it must be my decision, for I love Mary and we live in the same house and it is our house: it is our little family, and I am sorry she feels this way about it, but you know these little things that culminate in an explosion as took place today. If that is her decision, it is mine.” That was two years ago. She went home and she realized that night after night for over two years she had allowed the sun to descend upon her wrath. She thought of this wonderful family that she loved and felt herself ostracized from it, expelled from the home of her son. She did nothing about revising it and yet I had been talking revision to my New York audience for the past year.979 ¶6

This is what she did now. She knew the morning’s mail brought nothing. This was a Wednesday night. There had been no correspondence in two years. She had sent her grandson at least a dozen gifts in the two years. Not one was ever acknowledged. She knew they had been received for she had insured many of them; so she sat down that night and mentally wrote herself two letters--one from her daughter-in-law, expressing a great kindness for her, saying that she had been missed in the home and asking her when she was coming to see them; then she wrote one from her grandson in which he said, “Grandmother, I love you.” Then came a little expression of thanks for the last birthday present, which was in April, and then came a feeling of sadness rather because he hadn’t seen her and begging her to come and see him soon. These two short notes she memorized and then, as she was about to sleep, she took her imaginary hands and held these letters and she read them mentally to herself until they woke in her the feeling of joy because she had heard from her family; that she was wanted once more. She read these letters over and over feeling the joy that was hers because she had received them and fell asleep in her project.979 ¶7

For seven nights this lady read these two letters. On the morning of the eighth day she received the letter. On the inside there were two letters--one from her grandson and one from her daughter-in-law. These letters were identical with the letters she had mentally written to herself seven days before. Where was the estrangement? Where was the conflict? Where was the source of the displeasure that was like a running sore over two years? When man’s eye is opened he realizes all that he beholds, though it appears without, it is within--within one’s own imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.979 ¶8

She gave me permission to tell that story. When I told it, and we came to the period of questions and answers, there was a strange reaction from that crowd. They wondered what joy life would hold for any of us if we had to write our own letters; if we had to do everything to ourselves that seemingly is done in joy; that seemingly is spontaneous coming from another; but I don’t want to write myself a love letter from my wife, or my sweetheart or my friend. I want that one to feel this way towards me and to express it unknown to me that I may receive a surprise in life.979 ¶9

Well, I am not denying that sleeping man firmly believes that is the way things happen. When a man awakes he realizes that everything he encounters is apart of himself, and what he does not now comprehend, he knows, because the eye is opened, that it is related by affinity to some as yet unrealized force in his own being; that he wrote it but he has forgotten it, that he slapped himself in the face but he has forgotten it; that within himself he started the entire unfolding drama, and he looks out upon a world, and it seems strange to him, because most of us in our sleep are totally unaware of what we are doing from within ourselves.979 ¶10

What that lady did, every man and woman in this audience today can do. It will not take you years to prove it; what I tell you now may startle you; it may seem to be bordering on insanity for the insane believe in the reality of subjective states and the sane man only believes in what the senses will allow, what they will dictate, and I’m going to tell you when you begin to awake, you assert the supremacy of imagination and you put all things in subjection to it. You never again bow before the dictates of facts and accept life on the basis of the world without. To you, Truth is not confined by facts but by the intensity of your imagination.979 ¶11

So here we find the embodiment of Truth, which I say is human imagination, standing in the world drama before the embodiment of reason personified as Pontius Pilate. And he is given the authority to question truth and they ask him, “What is the truth?” and Truth remains silent. He refuses to justify any action of his; he refuses to justify anything that was done to him, for he knows no man cometh unto me save I call him: no man takes away my life, I lay it down myself. You didn’t choose me, I have chosen you. For here is Truth seeing nothing hereafter in pure objectivity, but seeing everything subjectively related to himself and he the source of all the actions that take place within his world; so Truth remains absolutely silent and says nothing when reason questions him concerning the true definition of Truth.979 ¶12

Because when the eye opens it knows that what is an idea to sleeping man is a fact to the awakened imagination, an objective fact, not an idea. I entertain the idea of a friend and I make some wonderful concept of him in my mind’s eye and when I sleep it seems to be a wish, it seems to be the longing of my heart, but purely subjective, just an idea. And the eye within me opens, and he stands before me embodying the quality that I desired in my sleep to see him express. So what is an idea to sleeping man, the unawakened imagination, is an objective reality to awakened imagination.979 ¶13

Now, this exercise calls for, I would say, the active, voluntary use of imagination as against the passive, involuntary acceptance of appearances. We never accept as true and as final anything unless it conforms to the ideal we desire to embody within our world, and we do exactly what the grandmother did. But now we start it and we do it daily. You may get your results tomorrow; it may come the day after; it may come in a week, but I assure you they will come.979 ¶14

You do not need some strange laboratory, like our scientists, to prove or disprove this theory. Here in 1905 a young man startled the scientific world with his equation that no one could even test. It is said not six men lived who could understand his equation. It was 14 years later before Lord Rutherford could devise the means to test that equation and he found that it was true, not 100%, because he did not have the means at his hand to really give it a complete test. It was another 14 years before further tests could be made. And you know the results of that equation that Einstein gave us in 1905. For today man, not knowing the power of his own imagination, stands startled at the results of that unlocking of energy. But he was the man who said, and I put it in the first page of my new book--“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” That was Albert Einstein. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For if man accepts as final the facts that evidence bears witness to, he will never exercise this God-given means of redemption, which is his imagination.979 ¶15

Now I’m going to ask you to test this: you will not take the three weeks that I am here to prove it or disprove it, but the knowledge of it cannot prove itself, only the application of that knowledge can prove it or disprove it. I know from experience you cannot disprove it.979 ¶16

Take an objective, take a job, take some conversation with your boss, take an increase in salary. You say well, the job doesn’t allow it, or maybe the Union will not allow it. I don’t care what doesn’t allow it. Yesterday morning’s mail brought me one, where, in San Francisco, this captain, a pilot, and he writes me that I saw him backstage after one of my meetings, and there he said, “But Neville, you are up against a stone wall. I am a trained pilot; I have gone all over the world, all over the seven seas; I’m a good pilot and I love the sea, not a thing in this world I want to do but go to sea; yet they restrict me to certain waters because of seniority. No matter what argument I give them the Union is adamant and they have closed the book on my request.”979 ¶17

I said, “I don’t care what they have done, you are transferring the power that rightfully belongs to God, which is your own imagination, to the shadow you cast upon the screen of space. So here, we are in this room; need it remain a room? Can’t you use your imagination to call this abridge? This is now a bridge and I am a guest on the bridge of your ship, and you are not in waters restricted by the Union; you are in waters that you desire to sail your ship. Now close your eyes and feel the rhythm of the ocean and feel with me and commune with me and tell me of your joy in first proving this principle. And secondly in being at sea where you want to be.”979 ¶18

He is now in Vancouver on a ship bringing a load of lumber down to Panama. He has a complete list that will take him through the year what this man has to do. He is going into waters legitimately that the Union said he could not go. This doesn’t dispense with unions, but it does not put anyone in our place--no one, kings, queens, presidents, generals, we take no one and enthrone him and put him beyond the power that rightfully belongs to God.979 ¶19

So I will not violate the law but things will open that I will never devise. I will sit in the silence and within myself I will revise the picture. I will hear the very man who told me “No, and that’s final” and hear him tell me yes, and a door opens. I don’t have to go and pull strings or pull any wires whatsoever. I call upon this wonderful power within myself, which man has forgotten completely because he personified it and called it another man, even though it is a glorious picture of a man but that is not the man: the real man is not in some other world. When religion speaks, if it’s a real religion, it speaks not of another world; it speaks of another man that is latent but unborn in every man that has attunement with another world of meaning, so that man sat and he tuned in with another world of meaning and brought into being a power that he allowed to go to sleep because he read the laws of man too well. He accepted as final the dictate of facts for they read him the by-laws, they read him the laws of the Union. And here today he is flying the ocean as he wants to do it.979 ¶20

The grandmother is no longer locked out from the home she loved, but she is in communion, but she was locked out by herself for two years. And he was locked out by himself for well over 18 months, and burning up day after day allowing the sun to descend upon his wrath when he had the power within himself and the key to unlock every door in the world.979 ¶21

I say to each and everyone of you I wouldn’t take from you your outer comfort, your religion, for all these things are like toys for sleeping man, but I come to awaken within you that which when it awakes it sees an entirely different world. It sees a world that no man when he sleeps could ever see, and then he starts to raise within himself every being that God gave him; and may I tell you God gave you every man that walks the face of the earth. He also gave it for this purpose that nothing is to be discarded. Everyone in the world must be redeemed and your individual life is the process by which this redemption is brought to pass.979 ¶22

So we don’t discard because the thing is unpleasant, we revise it; revising it we repeal it, and as we repeal it it projects itself on the screen of space bearing witness to the power within us, which is our wonderful human imagination. And I say human advisedly--some would have me say the word divine. The very word itself means nothing to man. He has pushed it off from himself completely and divorced himself from the thing that he now bows before and calls by other names. I say human imagination. As Blake said, “Rivers, mountains, cities, villages all are human.” When the eye opens you see them in your own bosom, in your own wonderful bosom they all exist, they are rooted there. Don’t let them fall and remain fallen; lift them up for the will of my Father is this, that of all that he has given me I should lose nothing but raise it up again, and I raise it up every time I revise my concept of another and make him conform to the ideal image I myself would like to express in this world. When I do unto him what I would love the world to do unto me, and see in me I am lifting him up.979 ¶23

And may I tell you what happens to that man when he does it? First of all, he is already turned around within himself. He no longer sees the world in pure objectivity, but the whole world subjectively related to himself, and hang it upon himself. As he lifts it up, do you know he blooms within himself. When this eye of mine was first opened I beheld man as the prophet saw him. I saw him as a tree walking: some were only like little antlers of a stag, others were majestic in their foliage, and all that were really awake were in full bloom. These are the trees in the garden of God.979 ¶24

As told us in the old ancient way of revision in the 61st chapter of the Book of Isaiah---“Go and give beauty for ashes, go and give joy for mourning, give the spirit of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may become trees of righteousness, plantings to the glory of God.” That is what every man must do, that’s revision. I see ash when the business is gone; you can’t redeem it, you can’t lift it up, conditions are bad and the thing has turned to ash. Put beauty in its place; see customers, healthy customers, healthy in finances, healthy in the attitude towards you, healthy in every sense of the word. See them loving to shop with you if you are a shopkeeper; if you are a factory worker, don’t see anything laying you off, lift it up, put beauty in the place of ash, for that would be ash if you were laid off with a family to feed. If someone is mourning, put joy in the place of mourning; if someone is heavy of spirit, put the spirit of praise in place of the spirit of heaviness, and as you do this and revise the day you turn around, and turning around you turn up, and all the energies that went down when you were sound asleep and really blind now turn up and you become a tree of righteousness, a planting to the glory of God.979 ¶25

For I have seen them walking this wonderful earth, which is really the Garden; we have shut ourselves out by our concept of self and we have turned down.979 ¶26

As told us in the Book of Daniel, we were once this glorious tree and it was felled to the very base, and what formerly sheltered the nations and fed the nations and comforted the bird and gave some comfort to the animals from the sun of the day, of the heat of the day; and suddenly some voice said from within, “Let it lie, let it remain as it is, but do not disturb the roots; I will water it with the dew of heaven and as I water it with the dew of heaven, it will once more grow again, but this time it will consciously grow, it will know what it really is and who it is. In its past it was majestic but it had no conscious knowledge of its majesty, and I felled it--that was the descent of man. And now, he will once more spring from within himself and he will be a tree walking, a glorious, wonderful tree.”979 ¶27

Now to those who are sound asleep this may seem to you too startling: this may be just as startling as Einstein’s equation was; that was startling too. But I tell you I’ve seen it and I see it--men are destined to be trees in the garden of God. They are planted on earth for a purpose and they don’t always remain men, they are transformed as they turn in and turn up.979 ¶28

This is the true meaning of the transfiguration. There is a complete metamorphosis taking place like the grub into the butterfly. You don’t remain what you appear to be when man is asleep, and there is no more glorious picture in the world than to see this living animated human being, for every branch within him is represented by an extension of himself called another, and when he lifts the other up that branch not only comes into leafage but it blossoms and the living human blossoms that blossom upon the tree of man who awakens.979 ¶29

So that’s my message for you this year; I’ll give it to you to stir into being that which sleeps in you, for the son of God sleeps in man and the only purpose of being is to awaken him. So it is not to awaken this, nice as it appears to be, but this man of sense--is only a casing: it is called the first man, but the first shall be last and the last shall be first.979 ¶30

So that which comes into being second, like Jacob coming second from his mother’s womb, he takes precedence over his brother Esau who came first. Esau was the one like this, he was made of skin and hair, and Jacob was made a smooth skinned lad, but that one that comes second suddenly becomes the lord of all the nations and that one sleeps in every man born of woman, and it is the duty of a teacher or a true religion to awaken that man, not to talk of another world, not to make promises to be fulfilled beyond the grave, but to tell him as he awakens now he is in heaven and the kingdom is come now, this day, on earth.979 ¶31

For as he awakens he revises his day and he repeals his day and projects a more beautiful picture onto the screen of space.979 ¶32

Today’s subject is “Sound Investments.” I want to share with you today what I consider one of the truly great revelations of all time. On Sunday morning, April 12th, my wife woke from what was really a deep, profound sleep and as she was waking a voice distinctly spoke to her; and the voice spoke to her; and the voice spoke with great authority and it said to her: “You must stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money; everything in life must be an investment.” So she quickly wrote it down and went straight to the dictionary to look up the two important words in the sentence, ‘spending’ and ‘investing’: the dictionary defines ‘spending’ as “to waste, to squander, to layout without return.” To ‘invest’ is to “layout for a purpose, for which a profit is expected.”977 ¶1

Then I began to analyze the sentence – “You must stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money, for everything in life must be an investment.” As I dwelt upon it, I saw where everything is NOW; that through the portals of the present all time must pass, and this psychological NOW, the state in which I find myself now, does not recede into the past. It advances into my future. So, what I do NOW is the all important thing, and thought is the coin of heaven; it is the money of heaven; and so the thought I entertain now, the thought to which I consent, as told us in Ephesians “All things when they are admitted are made manifest by the light, and all things when they are manifested are light,” and the word ‘light’ is defined as consciousness. So the state to which I now consent must be made manifest, and when it is manifest, it is only that state of consciousness made visible, coming to bear witness of the state in which I abided. So, every moment of time, I am either spending or I am investing.977 ¶2

Unfortunately most of us spend the coin of heaven, and morning, noon and night we live in negative states for which there is no return, when we could easily have spent, not spent, but invested that moment, so at the end of that day we really would have a wonderful portfolio. The religious minded person invests possibly on Sunday morning. Through the service he is lifted for a moment; if he is not overly critical he might be carried away with the hymn; he might be carried away with the solo, the organ music, the address from the pulpit, and for a moment he is investing; but the rest of the week he spends.977 ¶3

Now you know from experience if you put all your money into one great concern, it may be wonderful, it may be sound, but at the end of a year the directors may decide to reorganize and therefore decide to pass the dividend, and if you depended on a dividend check for your daily needs, though it is a good, firm, wonderful concern, when they passed the dividend, then you must either sell some stock or raise or borrow on it. While every moment of time you could have a most marvelous portfolio and if one passes a dividend check it does not matter.977 ¶4

If you devoted every moment of time to positive thinking, constructive thinking, by not accepting any rumour that does not contribute to the fulfillment of your desire, no matter what it is – it could be the most obvious fact in the world – if it does not contribute to the fulfillment of your dreams, do not accept it. If you do you are spending; if, not by denying, but by complete indifference, complete non-acceptance, you turn to what you wish you could have heard instead of what you heard, you are investing. It’s not the hearing that matters, it’s the admitting the truth of it that matters. All things when they are admitted, not all things when they are heard, but if you give consent to it, if you accept it as true; then you either spend by acceptance or you invest depending on the nature of the state accepted.977 ¶5

So, this revelation which came through my wife to me is one of the greatest that I have heard; had it been told in our Bible, it would have been told in its strange meter “And the Lord God spoke unto her this day and said to her, his servant” and they would have told what revelation would have come in that manner but it came to a normal natural wife, came in a normal natural manner to instruct not only her, but to instruct her husband, for I was the first one to whom she told it and I can’t tell you what it has done to me since I heard it on the morning of the l2th April, for it made me more aware of the moment, made me far more conscious of every moment of the day so that I am not spending; I must invest – time is too precious and because these moments do not recede. They do not pass away; they are always advancing into my future to either confront me with a waste or to show me some wonderful return; if I invest it’s for a purpose and, therefore, I hope, not only hope, I expect a reward: I expect a profit on my investment. So a moment spent now, this very day, could tomorrow pay you great dividends.977 ¶6

Now I told a story here two weeks ago of Jimmie Fuller. Well, I didn’t have all the details of the story, but after the meeting; dozens of you said to me, not only after the meeting that day, but after my meetings at the Ebell Theatre, that Jimmie Fuller to have made the fortune that he made, must have had great capital. Well, I could neither affirm nor deny your bold assertion, for you spoke as though you knew and many of you almost convinced me that he had great capital and that’s why he turned it into great returns. So on Friday night I asked him to tell me more of the details.977 ¶7

He said, “When you came here four years ago, Neville, I came to hear you. My wife asked me ‘Why do you come to hear Neville? Who told you of Neville?’ He said, I turned the radio on one night and I heard Dr. Bailes. I had never heard of the man before. At the end of his lecture, which I thoroughly enjoyed, he said Neville is coming to speak for us and it’s a MUST. Well the next night, I so liked Dr. Bailes that I turned him on the next night, and for the next two weeks he kept on promoting you, and he was so generous in his praise, I thought I’ve got to hear this man. So when I came, I enjoyed what I heard on Sunday morning, and then you announced you were speaking the following night at this place, but it was two dollars. Well, he said, between myself and the next I actually had Fifty-four dollars. I had a wife and a little boy; we couldn’t leave the little child alone; he was a babe: it meant a sitter-in, but my wife and I came to everything you gave and one night we could not pay the sitter-in; we just didn’t have it, but we took our last which was fifty-four dollars and came to your every meeting – the two of us – and one night we didn’t have it to pay that sitter-in. Three years later, Neville, I had not proven your theory. You know my problem, as I told you before.”977 ¶8

Perchance there is someone here who did not hear it – the man is a negro, and his problem was that because he was a negro, all the marks and stripes of the world were against him. I tried to convince him it was only in his own mind that these stripes were placed; his acceptance of that as restriction made it restriction, but if he could only drop it by non-acceptance, by complete indifference, to the pigment of skin he could accomplish his every dream by acceptance of it now. Well, in the last year, Jimmie Fuller by complete acceptance, investing his moment, his now, has turned the year into a net profit of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He did not have one penny when he started; he did not raise large capital; he didn’t have it. He only invested God’s coin. God gave it to him. He gave him the moment, which is time. So instead of spending his thought, which everyone has, and spending his time, which everyone has, he had no money, but he knew that thought was money; so he invested his thought in the now, knowing that it was not going to recede and vanish from sight; that was an investment: it would advance into his future. Well it did. It so advanced that he tells me now everything he touches turns to gold.977 ¶9

Now he has three children; they come here every Sunday to Sunday school: he doesn’t want his children to start with his stripes, so he wants them to feel what this Church gives. So every Sunday, Jimmie tells me many a Sunday he feels like taking off for the beach or up to the mountains with his wife, but he will not go because he wants his children to have an opportunity he didn’t have.977 ¶10

He says, “My people were very religious, but they must have worshipped a very poor God, for they were steeped in poverty. So I just wouldn’t go near the churches of my mother and my brothers and these people, because I couldn’t conceive of such a God doing that to us; yet they never missed service. For when I found in this what I found here in this Science of Mind Church, I brought my children to Sunday School. Now this is what happened to them. Here God is love, and love surrounds them and they know nothing but love, that God is love. For one day my little girl which is the youngest of the three, was quite sick, a beastly cold, and that night when the little boys said their prayers, these are the words they used ‘Thank you God, that sister is perfect tomorrow.’ They could not look at the little girl, sick as she was, and say ‘Thank you God that sister is well now,’ but they said ‘Thank you, God, that sister is perfect tomorrow.’ Neville, it was a miracle. The next day that child was perfect; there wasn’t the sign of a cold – a complete absence of all that we saw the night before, and these two little brothers simply gave thanks.”977 ¶11

“Now, he wanted a watch. I wouldn’t give him the watch. I could have bought a thousand watches for him. I want my little son to learn a law which I didn’t know until recently. So he filled his mind with the possession of a watch, and he spoke of the watch as a ‘live’ watch – one that ticks, one that is alive, not a toy watch. So then he fills his mind with the possession of the watch. On his way to school he found a ‘live’ watch. Now he knows the working of law – that the complete acceptance of the state in consciousness must result in an externalization of the state accepted. So if he accepts the watch he need not turn to his earthly father, as the medium through which the watch will come. I don’t want to think for one second he has to point to his mother or his father as the only channels through which his good will come. I want him to recognize an Infinite Father – the Father of US all – who gave to him as he gave to me everything that I will accept. I want my children to learn it as I have learned. Yes, I could shower him with gifts, but then he would look to me as the only channel through which it will come. That I must not accept. So you should see the little boys and little girls actually live by this law. God to them is love and the only reality and love surrounds them. So they never miss the Sunday School here.”977 ¶12

Then he goes on to tell me all other wonderful things that have happened by the mere acceptance of this law. He said, “The getting of my car, this convertible Cadillac – I treated it loosely, I sat quietly in my living room and drove my Cadillac, and I simply treated for this loosely,” he said, “I didn’t put real effort into it, I accepted it and then when I decided to get it I simply put in three telephone calls and that day I was driving this car, Neville. Now everything happens just like that. Today, instead of going to my office and working in the office I work behind the scenes. I sit all day and I hear the report that is good from my employees; my entire office staff must tell me good news, the only thing I will allow myself to hear. I ride my car; I’m in the office; I am at home; I’m in the office but I am only hearing good news, and seldom do I go to the office physically to do office work, so I am behind the scenes only hearing good news. So I have completely forgotten the so-called pigment of skin and, Neville, honestly I can tell you today I feel that I am blessed beyond all men because I was born a negro. I am so proud to be born a negro; I am so proud I’m one.”977 ¶13

And here is a story that will interest all of you; he said, “I had some property to dispose of, I had certain things in investments for those who had money, and so I advertised it and a man called me on the wire. He saw the ad, and asked me if I was the gentlemen, so I told him I was the one who had the property. The first thing he said to me, “I don’t want any nigger property.” Jimmie said, “I didn’t answer, as if I hadn’t even heard the word. If he wants to be prejudiced, he may be prejudiced, that’s his right. He wants to be silly about it, that’s his right. He can spend; he need not invest. So I said, “It is perfectly all right, sir, I have all kinds of property, I have all kinds of things for your investment.” A week later he called me up and said, “Would you come and see me.” He said, “I went to see him. When I got out of my car his knees almost buckled, for he didn’t know a negro was coming to see him, and a negro walked up his stairs into his living room.” He said within a matter of minutes he purchased $37,000 worth of mine that I had to offer. He said the first $25,000 that he bought he simply bought that to buy back his face, and then the remaining $12,000 he bought that because it was a very good investment. Well, since that time this gentleman has spent tens of thousands of dollars with me and constantly calls me to thank me because they are such wonderful investments. Now here is a man who is proud of his skin; he has no prejudices because that’s spending his time, he can’t afford to spend.977 ¶14

So in harmony with the revelation given to my wife, let us all now stop spending our thoughts, our time and our money. For everything in our life must be an investment. We know the truth. This platform radiates the truth. You are told that everything proceeds out of your own consciousness, but what you and you alone accept as true, that will externalize itself and mold itself in your environment. All the conditions that you will encounter will simply bear witness of the state you have accepted. Well, if you don’t like what you are encountering, then stop spending and learn the art of investment for every moment of time is an opportunity to invest, not to spend; yet on the other hand, you and I are free, we are free to waste every coin in the world. For that we have a right, we are free beings, we can spend, we need not invest, but if you know you can invest, why not choose the wiser way.977 ¶15

Now we are told in the thirtieth chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy, “The commandment I command you this day is not hidden, and it isn’t far off. It’s near unto thee; it is in thy mouth and in thy heart. Now, I set before you this day, life and good, death and evil, blessings and cursings. Choose life, choose blessing.” But the choice is ours for we are free. He sets before us this day, this very moment, a commandment. He sets everything before us; it’s not far away, it’s in our tongue right now.977 ¶16

And before me now is a blessing or a curse; I can accept the fact you don’t like me; it doesn’t matter, you may love me; but if I accept the fact that you don’t like me, don’t like the teaching, I’m spending my time. Tomorrow you’ll prove to me that I have spent my time by your behavior relative to me. On the other hand, if I accept the fact that you do like it, because you are proving it, then I would have no doubt in my mind that you could not do anything other than contribute to this teaching. So it is up to me to either bless myself or curse myself. I can choose life or I can choose death. I can choose the good, but I am free, I can choose the evil. It’s entirely up to me.977 ¶17

But if you and I loved this, accept it and believe it, then we are wise indeed if, knowing the whole is before us, we go out determined to become investors, not spenders, not wasting and squandering our substance, but laying it out for a purpose.977 ¶18

Every moment become conscious of the moment. What are you doing? I am accepting now the fact that I am a noble, dignified, wonderful being, that my father is proud of the son who is like him. So I will not hear or accept as true anything other than that which contributes to that noble concept I will hold of myself. For I will see that I am secure, and maybe a headline would startle the world but I will not accept it, for if I don’t admit to it, it can’t proceed out of me. For all things when they are admitted are made manifest, not unless they are admitted. So if I now will admit that using this moment as my moment to invest, if I am what reason denies, what my senses deny, and I proceed in that assumption, knowing that even though it doesn’t confirm itself tonight or tomorrow, I will still live in the assumption that I am what I want to be and all day tune in and listen only for the good report. I know these are investments and tomorrow these dividend checks must come. They must come. That’s the law of our being.977 ¶19

So everyone here, take it to heart, and though you don’t need money, and so I say to the hundreds of you who say to me in private, “He must have had money,” I tell you I know the story now; I didn’t know it when you boldly claimed that he had money but now I have it from the source. He only had $54.00 and the $54.00 he spent coming to my meetings, even when he couldn’t spend a dollar on a sitter-in; so I tell you he didn’t have it; he has it today.977 ¶20

But you don’t need even $54.00. All you need is time and you have it, it’s now. All you need is the thought, that’s money. So instead of spending that now, and spending the thought in the now, invest it now, for your now, this very moment as I stand here and I will get off the platform in a little while – and you will think, well now this is gone, he’ll come back next year – this is not gone. What I am doing now is not going to slip away; it’s going to move forward and embody itself as a condition, embody itself as the circumstance of my life. So that my now’s, my reactions to what I am hearing and saying and seeing, all of my reactions are in the now, and my reactions are spelling out my tomorrow.977 ¶21

So I will repeat it – through the doorway of now – because he said, “I am the door,” I am is always first person present. Not I was the door, or I will be the door; “I am the door,” “I am the resurrection,” so what I do in the present, now, is not going to recede, it is going to advance into my future for through the door of the present, of the now, all time must pass. Now don’t spend it as it passes; as it passes through the door of the now, invest it. Every moment of your life see that it is a positive, constructive, noble moment. I promise you a wonderful, healthy, radiant future if you will invest the now.977 ¶22

Now this being my last talk for a little while, I would like while I have this opportunity because the theatre, the Ebell, can’t take all of you, I hope that many of you will come this coming week and make it a really fruitful, wonderful week, but I know you can’t all get into the Ebell; so here, one lady as I came through the door said, “Neville, you made it so clear on Friday night; something I’d not seen before, for you told us this year you brought a wonderful revelation and that is the wide difference between thinking from an end and thinking of an end. For you emphasized that time and time again since you’ve been here this time, but I didn’t get it until Friday.” I said, “Well, how did you get it?” She said, “Your picture of the balcony and the stage.”977 ¶23

Well, now we have the same situation here. We have a balcony, so we have a stage. Well, if she having heard it so often didn’t get it, the chances are many of you didn’t get it. Well, now she got it by my illustration, so I will repeat the illustration that all may get it.977 ¶24

I said that when a man learns the art of thinking from the end, that man is master of his fate, for he defines his end, he formulates an aim in life, and then feels himself right into the situation of that end. So he thinks from it instead of thinking of it. The average man defines his dreams but he remains back here looking at them before he’s thinking of them. The wise man occupies the state of his dreams, so he radiates from it, he thinks from it.977 ¶25

And then to use this little illustration. I’m standing here looking out at the auditorium, and I would describe this theatre based from this angle, for I am seeing it from the stage. You, sitting in the auditorium, or sitting in the balcony, you are looking at it from that state, so you would see the screen and the speaker. So the difference between us we see the same theatre from different angles. I would define it from here; you would define it from there. If I desired to get your point of view, while standing here I would assume that I am seated where you are and therefore within my imagination look from that position. I would then have to see the stage, not the auditorium; I would see the thing behind me, this cyclorama, and I would describe the theatre from that position which I am assuming that I am.977 ¶26

Now, if that position represents, say one of security and this one of insecurity I would then assume by physically standing here assume that I am now secure. And to prove that I am, I would then look from the state of security, so I would describe the world relative to my assumption. If I am still seeing what I saw when I was insecure, I have not succeeded in occupying that desirable end; I am still only thinking of it. So the wide difference between thinking from and thinking of must be clearly seen and then see the wisdom in learning the art of thinking from a desired end.977 ¶27

So here, look out at your world, formulate your lovely aims in life and just ask yourself, “What would it be like were it true that I now embody that state? How would I feel?” And in response to that question would come a feeling, a feeling that corresponds to that end. Learn then to think from that end, though reason denies it, though everything denies it, you occupy that end. It’s now, you’re investing it and these will become real within your world.977 ¶28

Now another thought that I tried to make clear and it’s this which again Jimmie Fuller told me was one of the cues in his success. When the action of the inner man corresponds to the action the outer man must take in order to appease his desire, he will definitely realize his desire. There are two of us; there is an inner man and an outer man. The outer man is always made to say, “I of myself can do nothing; the Father within me, this inner one, He doeth the work. What I see him do, that, I, the outer do also.” So there is an inner you. If I now sat here and immobilized my body by relaxing it and then imagine what the outer would have to do in order to appease his desire, and with the outer relaxed, just let me imagine that I am actually it now, so I keep the body immobilized but I imagine that I am actually experiencing it now. I would experience in my imagination that which I would have to experience in the flesh to appease desire, and then imagine that state over and over and over, so that the actions of the inner man correspond to the actions the outer must take in order to realize desire. When that is done – I promise you it’s going to be done in the flesh; no power in the world could stop it when these two actions coincide. But let it always be from the inner you.977 ¶29

And now at the end of the silence, this is what we do. Knowing that any time that we exercise our imagination lovingly on behalf of another, we are actually and literally mediating God to man. So we can sit quietly in the darkness and simply listen as though we heard the good report that we want to hear. We look into the darkness and imagine we are seeing what we want to see. This is then investing this two minutes; we have taken the moments that go to make up two minutes and really are investing it now. So when I take the chair and the lights are lowered let us listen and let us look as though we are hearing and seeing what we want to hear and see. And we are actually fulfilling the command of that wonderful voice that spoke to my wife when it said to her, “You must stop spending your time, your thought, and your money. For everything in life must be an investment.” Let these two minutes be your greatest investment.977 ¶30

We are told in Isaiah, the 55th chapter, that “My word goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” This is the same Word spoken of in the beginning of John, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” and “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” It’s translated “among us,” but that is a mistranslation and leads man astray. If I said tonight that there is one among us who will speak to us, you look around and you think of another. But the preposition is in, not among. And so, the Word became flesh and dwells in us. John uses the plural “us.” He did not assume a man, a person, but man’s nature. It is not this or that person that was assumed but our nature; and by putting on our nature he became the type on which it is molded.976 ¶1

The whole thing is God, for the Word is God: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The word translated “word,” the word logos, means “a pattern, it’s meaning, it’s a plan.” So here is a plan…there’s a purpose behind the whole vast creation, and that is the forming of Christ in man. For it’s called in the scripture, “And his name shall be called The Word of God” and they’re speaking of Christ Jesus. So forget Christ Jesus as a man that you call a being on the outside that you worship, and think of him as this Word, this plan, this pattern man, that took upon itself our nature. Having put upon itself our nature, it now becomes that type on which our nature is being fashioned, is being formed, and when it’s completely formed, well then, it unveils itself, and we are it. So he didn’t become John or Peter or Neville or Grace, he simply took human nature and then unveiled himself, and we are he. So that is the story as I see it in scripture and as I have experienced it in my own personal life here.976 ¶2

Now, here is the story of indentured labor. Indentured labor is labor that is simply a contract binding one to work for another for a given period of time, like an apprentice. An apprentice worked for the master craftsman for a given period of time, then was free to even compete with his master. I know in the West Indies in Trinidad and British Guiana, a couple of hundred years ago we had indentured labor from India. These Indians were sent out as really slaves for fourteen years only. They were not permanent slaves; they were simply slaves for a definite period of time. Having served fourteen years they were set free and given a certain acreage and a home in which they lived and they were free to compete with the one who had them working for him, or them, for that given period of time.976 ¶3

So in scripture we read, “And the Lord God said unto Abram, ‘Your descendants will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be slaves, and they will be oppressed for four hundred years’”—that means indentured labor; there’s a definite term attached to this labor—“After that they will come out with great possessions.” After they have served their slavery and frightful oppression, but it will not go beyond that time. Well, 400 is simply the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter Tau. It has a symbol and the symbol is a cross. So we bear and wear the cross, and this body is the cross. When we take off this cross at the very end, when that Word unfolds itself within us then we are set free, we are redeemed.976 ¶4

Now, redemption in scripture meant what today people do not realize…in fact, it has almost wholly lost its primary sense. It originally meant “the regaining of an article which was put in pledge by repayment of the loan for which it was given in pledge.” So, we were sent in, not willingly we are told in the 8th of Romans: “And the creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected him in hope…that he would be set free, that he would obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God.” Now you and I can be alive and have no consciousness of why we are just simply alive, living animated bodies, but not life-giving spirits. To make us life-giving spirits we are subjected and sent into slavery for a definite period. He who sent us will redeem us, for he put us into slavery and he redeems us by his own blood. There’s no other way to redeem us. The price of the ransom is the blood of God.976 ¶5

And so, he actually becomes us, and all of us are playing the part, moving towards a definite goal, a definite end, and there is no change in that end. “My Word shall not return unto me void; it must accomplish that which I purpose”—that’s his purpose—“and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” When it returns, what is it but myself. Here are my sons equal to myself; for they are my Word made real…and the Word is God. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So if his Word is in us—“for the Word became flesh and dwelt in us”—if it dwells in us, the Word and the Word is God, when it unfolds itself in us what is it other than God, but now God with life in himself. So now we are one with God as we return. And the whole plan is revealed to us in scripture…how the Word unfolds.976 ¶6

Now here, we go to Ecclesiastes. In Hebrew thought eternity is not what the world thinks that it is. This is a closed circuit, it’s a plan. When we speak of history, history is simply “all of the generations and all of their experiences, fused into one single grand whole; and the concentrated time into which the whole is gathered and from which all the generations spring is called eternity.” Now we are told, “He has made everything perfect in its day and he’s put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that man cannot find out what he has done from the beginning to the end”…only at the end. That he put into man. Man goes through all of these generations, all of them; he doesn’t avoid any, he doesn’t escape any. At the very end, when he comes out he sees the result of his journey. The result of his journey is the discovery of himself as God, and that discovery is revealed to him by God’s only Son David calling him Father.976 ¶7

For the word Olam translated “eternity” means “the youth,” means “the lad,” means “the young man.” These are the terms used concerning David. “Whose youth is that? Enquire whose stripling he is.” Nobody knows. And, “Who are you, young man? Whose son are you?” So here we find the king is asking a question, and this king is Israel’s first king made by people. His name is Saul. He is rejected by the Lord; Jehovah rejects him. Because man judges by appearances…they think a man, because he’s tall and he’s majestic and he’s all these things and he’s prominent, he’d be the perfect king. So man picks a leader based upon outward observation. But the king is now rejected by the Lord who sees not the outward appearance, he sees only the heart. He selects a youth, and so David becomes Israel’s first king by divine choice…while Saul was the first king by human choice. So he is the second king but the first by divine selection, that’s David. He brings him out after all the generations that I go through and you go through.976 ¶8

At the very end we are confronted with a being, a youth, a lad, and he is what we brought forth as a result of our journey through it all. He is the result of that journey and no one is going to fail in the journey: “For my word cannot return unto me void; it must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” It cannot come back void. At the end of the journey the result is that you are God. And you do not know that you are Lord unless God’s Son calls you Father. So, “I have found David and he’s cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation.’” Here is my anointed one, the firstborn of every creature, we are told. We only have one firstborn and that firstborn is always David…he’s the only one. Everyone is bringing him at the end of the journey, but only at the end are you going to find him. You’re not going to find him before the end. You may want to find him tonight, and I do not blame anyone for wanting to find him tonight, but you cannot find him until the end. When the end is reached, David comes forth as the automatic result of the journey, and it takes the whole vast journey to bring him out.976 ¶9

This is like one grand Creator, The Word, actually possessed me, and so by actually putting me on, my nature, not Neville, putting human nature on, he becomes then the type on which my nature, which is human, is fashioned, where it is molded, where it is formed. When it is completed and the work is done, he unveils it. Then before me I see the result of my frightful pain and that is simply David calling me Father.976 ¶10

Benny came home on Saturday, and with all this confusion in the atmosphere about racial conflicts…and two days before, he had this experience, this vision. He said, “I found six Negroes, men with knives, and they were violent, and they were coming. Their whole bodies were all lacerated but healed, these scar tissues all over their arms.” One person arrested his attention and he said to him, “Don’t you know this whole thing is wrong? This is stupid, this violence of yours, it is evil, it is wrong.” For one moment the face was arrested as Benny held him in his mind’s eye. He said to Benny, “Even if I wanted to stop it, I couldn’t.”976 ¶11

Man is under compulsion…it’s a play. How are you going to stop a play and change it because you don’t like the lines given to you at this moment, the part to be played? Because you do not like violence, are you going to stop murdering Hamlet tonight and change the play? Hamlet is murdered every night that the play goes on, and when the curtain comes down he’s taken off the stage. You can see them lift him up and take him off the stage, and the whole thing is one of violence. Well, you can’t alter the play. Within the framework of the play we can find out what this Word means and change our way of life here by the same principle that animates this world.976 ¶12

Now, the Word did not assume itself to be this or that particular man as its habitation. It dwelt and dwells in us. So I do not assume that I am Rockefeller to feel wealthy, I do not assume a particular man but the nature of wealth is what I assume—the nature of this, the nature of that, the nature of the other—but not a man.976 ¶13

“What brings you out to see a man shaken by the wind?” That question is asked so vividly in the Book of John. Did you go out to see a man? Everyone’s looking for a man. Stop looking for a man. There is no man in this world that really you should bow before, but none. I have yet to find the man that I feel is my superior. I can find a man that I respect greatly for his great talent as an artist…that I cannot duplicate or come near what he does. I can pick all the arts…for I cannot…I’m not qualified to pass an opinion on his work, whether it be musical, whether it be in painting, whether it be in any other form of art. But because of his great accomplishment in art, it has never occurred to me because I respect his ability and his accomplishments that I feel he is my superior. I respect Einstein’s great mind in Physics, respect it beyond measure, but do you think for one moment standing in the presence of Einstein I would feel him my superior?976 ¶14

Today, I went to the dictionary to look up the word “person,” just to get it clear in my mind’s eye, because I have a certain concept, and here is the definition of the use of “person.” It didn’t say who said it, but they quote it as though someone had written it. And the word “person” is used in this form, that “in my estate, in my station in life, I could never know a person of the trade socially.” So that’s how it’s used…“could never know in my social world anyone of the trade socially,” a person that is taboo.976 ¶15

But, strangely enough I had that experience at a cocktail party one night. The lady who gave the party apologized profusely that she had invited two people who lived in the same building, who had a haberdashery store on Madison Avenue, and who were doing very, very well. But she had unearned income…in other words, wealth which she got from a huge, fabulous settlement in divorce, and because it’s completely unearned and she’s a member of all the exclusive clubs in the city of New York, she actually felt that she was above this couple who earned a living and had their lovely business on Madison Avenue, as haberdashers, and she apologized to me. Well, what am I going to say under the circumstances? So she expressed how this book, which is Webster’s, defined the word “person.” Of course, there are many definitions.976 ¶16

The first and primary definition of it is simply “an actor, a mask, persona, playing a part.” That’s all that it means. So, here is a part, a person. What part are you playing? Well, she could not associate herself with that part because of her part that she’s playing…but she didn’t know that. She actually felt that she was something detached and something apart. Well, she couldn’t help it, and to this day she can’t help it…with all of her millions she just can’t help it.976 ¶17

So I say to you, God is playing all the parts…but all the parts. He’s a protean being, and there’s only one being playing all the parts in the world. So when Benny saw this violence and he was aware enough to explain he was actually seeing himself, but in this case of the past. This is all the past to Benny, for he’s come to the end of the road. He saw these six and he’s trying to tell them, but they couldn’t stop it. He could only arrest the attention of one and that one was bewildered for a moment. Just for a moment he realized that Benny was speaking the truth, and he said to Benny, “But even if I wanted to I can’t stop it.” He is cast in the role of violence and a violent one he will be, and he’ll go through to the very end. At the very end of the road, David will come out as the Son bearing witness to that will of God who went through the entire drama to bring out sons that are like himself, having life in themselves…not just animated souls but life-giving spirits. It takes this entire horrible drama to bring it out.976 ¶18

Well, we aren’t taught that. We’re taught about all the little niceties…you do this and you do that, as though you were going to change the play. You aren’t going to change the play: “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 justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.” That is the play. And you’re wanting to take these five terms, from foreknowledge to glorification, and in any way interpret them other than a certain measure of predestination?976 ¶19

I can find myself tonight behind the eight-ball financially, and take the same technique and use it not as the world uses it (I am a certain personality other than this). No, I take the nature of wealth, the nature of health, the nature of whatever it is I want to express…but not a person who seems to express it and embody it in my world. So we forget a person called Jesus as a man outside of self, for if his name is called the Word of God and the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, well then, stop it right there and do not look on the outside for anything that is a particular being that he assumed himself to be. He never assumed a person, he never assumed he was a person; he assumed that he was the nature, man’s nature.976 ¶20

So you’re told he was not concerned with the nature of angels, but with the descendants of Abraham. Now the word translated “descendants” is the word semen—the Hebrew word which is translated in the King James Version is “seed.” It is seed…he took upon himself the seed before it took on any personality; for it is the very first original element of our nature, semen. That is the first, the very first, the original element of our natures. Well, he took upon himself that, not a personality. Before it becomes human in the form of being a personality, he takes it and now he molds our nature upon himself and he is the very image of God. He is The Word which is one with God. He is the pattern man. So in the end, it unveils itself, and here comes the perfect unveiling of God…and it’s you.976 ¶21

But may I tell you, in his infinite mercy he has hidden from us all that we have done, what we have been put through, the horrors of it all. But God wrote the play and God plays the play, and in the end everyone comes out and he is the author of the play…enhanced beyond the wildest dream of man as to power, a creative power, as to wisdom…because he tasted death. For, God is life, and he assumed this state which would allow him to actually taste the experience of death. So he tasted death.976 ¶22

Now, a lady writes…and here is this perfectly marvelous experience. It’s a very short dream. Here, “I saw myself. I came out of myself and the one that came out was an old, old woman. I was astonished at my age.” Now this is a young lady, her baby is only now just an infant, a year old, maybe less than a year, and she is an old, very old woman, and she’s astonished at her age. The old woman delivers a baby. She doesn’t do the actual delivery in a physical sense, but she delivers a baby and holds the baby in her arms. She knows she is this old woman who has just delivered the baby.976 ¶23

That’s the perfect, perfect vision of the 18th chapter of Genesis, for Sarah was an old, old woman; it long had ceased to be with her after the manner of women, and she brought forth the promised child. I can tell her she is on the verge.976 ¶24

In this 18th chapter it turns from the first-person into the third-person, and God is speaking to Abraham and telling Abraham of the Promise. Then in the same chapter as it goes on, when she laughed as though it couldn’t happen because of her age and his age, then the same one who stands before him, which he didn’t recognize to be the Lord, said, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”…speaking of him in the third-person. He didn’t recognize him. He spoke of the Lord in the third-person. Then after the whole was over, she recognized it is the Lord who stood before me and I did not know it. For, it is man, and man is not looking for the Lord in human form, but in some peculiar abstract image, and it isn’t. God is man.976 ¶25

And so when this vision came to her, I can tell her that in the story he said to her, “I will be back in the spring of the year…at this time,” he said to her, “at this time next year I’ll be back in the spring and you will have a son.” Now, he’s telling her that; that’s how I would interpret this vision that she’s on it, she’s right within a matter of the immediate present of the birth of the child. There was simply the picture that is Sarah, an old, old woman coming out of herself, and she knows it’s herself and she delivered the child. She knows the woman holding the child is herself…that’s Sarah…a perfect, perfect vision of scripture, my dear.976 ¶26

Then she said, “I wasn’t asleep. I simply closed my eyes for a moment when I saw a huge ear and knew it was related to my ear. Then I saw a hammer and a spike. Didn’t see the hand, but invisible hands drove that spike right through the ear, and I knew it was my ear but it didn’t hurt.”976 ¶27

Well, that’s the 40th of the Book of Psalms. If you read the footnote, you will see in the footnote that he bored ears for man—not that he made ears, you’ve got the ears—but it must be bored that you may hear. So the voice will come uninterrupted from within you, for you saw it being bored.976 ¶28

So everyone here is waking. But all in eternity will awake, even though they are going through hell tonight in many parts of this world. It’s not just South Vietnam or North Korea, but all over the world there’s violence. We have it in our city. And they do not know what they do: “Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do.” Just as this one said to Benny, and Benny trying to plead with him, and he said, “Even if I wanted to, I can’t stop it.” So if he must burn, he’ll burn, and if he must burn down cities he’ll do it, and our politicians can’t do a thing about it.976 ¶29

But you and I in our sphere, forgetting people, forgetting individuals and looking to anyone as a leader, who is a leader? But take the nature of everything in this world that you want to express, the nature…for you are The Word. Then you take the nature. What is the nature? What would it feel like were I healthy? What would it feel like were I wealthy? What would it feel like and I catch the nature. I don’t have to feel that I am any individual who is healthy or wealthy or famous in order to personify it. For that’s not how it is done. He did not assume that he is this or that being as his own habitation…he dwells in us. Who?—God. Because he’s The Word and the Word became flesh and dwelt in us…not among us, dwelt in us.976 ¶30

So you take it to heart and you apply it. Dwell upon it. As you dwell upon it the whole begins to unfold within you.976 ¶31

But I am confident the people who are here in this group are all on the verge of waking…they’re all on the verge of waking. You couldn’t stand it…you could not come here were you not on the verge of waking. It would have not a thing for you…it would be simply talking in a foreign tongue. You would leave it, you’d depart. So, unnumbered heard him but few followed him because they could not follow him. It was not what they wanted. They wanted someone they could see on the outside to worship. They want to worship him.976 ¶32

I tell you from experience everything in scripture you are going to experience, and then you’ll know that you are he. He will simply awaken in you, and you are the being spoken of in scripture. Everything said in scripture is all about you. When that Word completely unveils itself, you stand amazed when it takes this David to reveal it. For, he is simply the result, the essence of the journey through these 400 years, and then you are redeemed.976 ¶33

How am I redeemed? Well, the one who put me into bondage has to redeem me, and the only way he can redeem me is to give me himself. For, “life is in the blood” and he has to redeem me with his life. When I am split right down the middle, there I see that sacred drop of blood—that golden, liquid living symbol—I fuse with it, I am that, and I bring it back…so I redeem his blood. He gave his blood for me; I become it, and I return as his drop of blood; into the Holy of Holies I take it. So I must be redeemed and he who redeems me gave a pledge. So it really means “to regain an article that in some wonderful way was put in pledge, and you redeem it by simply repayment of that loan for which you gave it in pledge.”976 ¶34

So he sends me into slavery not willingly, but that I become as he is. To become as he is, he has to give me himself…and his life is in his blood, and he gives me his blood. So in the world I was in generation and division, and then I’m split; I move up into regeneration and union, into the one being who fell.976 ¶35

So you dwell upon it, and you’ll see how the whole vast world, even as it is, it’s a lovely world, wonderful world…with all of its horrors it’s still marvelous. You don’t have to be frightened in this world. You are The Word now made flesh. You’re flesh, aren’t you? And something is going on in you of which you may be totally unaware; and that is, that pattern man is the type on which your nature is being molded. So, “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” When it’s completed he unveils it, and you are he.976 ¶36

In the meanwhile, take the same technique concerning this world, and how he didn’t take a certain character, a certain person, to assume it…for having done so, then he would have advanced beyond all measure but no one else. He didn’t do that. He dwelt in us, not in this or that particular man but in us. And so, take the same technique and now what would it be like if I were…you name it…now you’re taking the nature of things.976 ¶37

But don’t forget it! The minute they become wealthy they think it’s in the person and they forget the nature that produced wealth. When they become anything then they completely forget how it happened. Then you’ll find all these obituaries in the papers. And read tomorrow morning’s paper, they always pick out someone who is either very, very wealthy or very famous. He could be infamous but they pick him out. When Stalin died, one who was responsible for the murder of tens of millions of people, he had a huge obituary. When Hitler died having murdered millions, he had a huge obituary. So they always pick out people, persons…and no mention of this principle.976 ¶38

They go unsung, for they don’t care, because they awake within the whole vast dream and willingly depart leaving it all behind. They willingly leave it all behind knowing that they can’t change it; for it was a play and still remains a play and continues to be a play until he redeems everyone from the play.976 ¶39

Now let us go into the Silence.976 ¶40

So I think you all know that today is Lincoln’s birthday, and here we celebrate the day of one who is supposed to have freed the slaves of our land. On Monday we will celebrate the birthday of one who will free us all, including the slaves, from British tyranny or control. And yet today, after these many, many years, we find the entire nation rising up demanding freedom. Freedom now. Freedom now. You see all these scholars and their demonstrations. That goes not only for the minority group, but for the entire country. They want freedom, thought by worldly men, where there’s exemption from all external restraints, can be realized only by union with that pattern man who achieves full and complete freedom. Without union with that pattern man, there is no freedom. No matter how they’re screaming for it, and they’re all screaming for it, they will not find it, they will not get it until union with the pattern man. For freedom is the gift which he, by union with him, bestows upon his brothers. And there is no other way out of the maze.975 ¶1

So you and I are blessed at this moment because we are on the verge, if we have not received union with him, we are on the verge of receiving union with the risen Lord. There are those today who are only starting the game, talking the game, for the game is from innocence through experience to freedom, for innocence is simply defined as lack of the acquaintance of good and evil, that can’t discriminate. Lack of any understanding of good and evil.975 ¶2

You see it today in our midst, where a girl, white-skinned, in spite of all the so-called evolutionists, who cannot discriminate between good and evil. She could murder eight people in cold blood, cut them into pieces when they pleaded for mercy, and they couldn’t spray it. And she said, but she didn’t do wrong. Whatever she did, it was right. If she did it, it was right. No concept of good and evil. She only begins the journey now. And yet she’s in a garment — white skin, long, long straight hair, not kinky — and people think she is an evolution out of the dark skin. What nonsense. Here is a child beginning the journey. She hasn’t the slightest concept of good and evil. She has thousands of years of a journey before her, where she has to go through the furnaces and experience all the things that you have experienced. But in the end, as we are told so beautifully by Blake, whom God has afflicted for secret ends, he comforts and heals and calls them friends. So in the end, she will be redeemed. She will have union with the risen man, the pattern man. And she will experience the entire story as told us in the gospel.975 ¶3

So when today they’re all demanding freedom, demanding this, demanding that, they will never know what freedom really is until they have union with the pattern. And when that pattern is by taking a seal and impressing it upon the wax prepared to receive the impression — pressing it upon wax prepared to be sealed with its impression. And so when he embraces you, or in whatever form you have union with him, he leaves his imprint upon you just like the seal upon wax or clay. And then that imprint unfolds within you. As it unfolds within you, you are set free.975 ¶4

And you aren’t really set free until you find the Son. For “if the Son makes you free, you are free indeed.” Whose son are you, young man? Go find out whose son that you are. For I want to find his father. And so the son one day is found and stands before you, and you know without any uncertainty he is your son, and he knows you are his father. Then you are free. Free indeed. So it doesn’t really matter what happens thereafter.975 ¶5

But it starts from plain innocence, where a complete lack of any acquaintance of good and evil. Then we pass through experience. Well, experience is actually living, living through something so that we now know it firsthand rather than by hearsay. We all live through that experience.975 ¶6

Left to the morning now, our things call — if we had, fell calls, from the East, New York, Cincinnati, Jersey — and fill up to ask about that, so we can tell them nothing happened. A few things were broken, not much. No damage to the house. A couple of pieces of china, a few badges, and of course the things that fell off the walls, of all of us and bags. But there’s really no damage. But he had the experience of the shake. And we all had it. I can tell them, but that’s hearsay. As far as they’re concerned, we have the truth. They only know it from hearsay. So experience is something that one has to live through. To experience is to actually live through something so that you have a first-hand knowledge of it, rather than have someone tell you about it, so that your knowledge of it is only hearsay. You’re not a witness if it’s hearsay.975 ¶7

And freedom is simply liberating the slave. It’s really self-realization. It is a complete self-fulfillment in a spiritual sense. When I speak of self-realization, I’m not speaking of any organization that calls itself a self-realization. I’m speaking about actual self-realization. When you discover who you are — and you will never in eternity discover who you are until the Son stands before you. And then you know who you are. And then you are set free.975 ¶8

For bear in mind it was God who was crucified. It was God who was buried. It was God who rose from the dead. It was God who was born from above. It was God who found David. And it was God David called my brother. He was God whose body was split in two from top to bottom. And he was God who ascended into heaven like a fiery serpent. And it was God on whom the dove descended. There is only God in the world.975 ¶9

So when we go back into scripture and the journey begins in the third chapter of Genesis, and we read the story of the serpent, and the serpent is asking a question of Eve: “Did God tell you that you should not eat of the trees of the garden?” And she said, “No, that I should not eat of the tree in the midst of the garden, but all the other trees.” “Did he tell you that you would die? Because you will not die. But if you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will know good and evil. You will become a god, knowing good and evil, if you eat of it.” And it seemed good to her to eat of it, so she ate of it, and then had the experience of good and evil.975 ¶10

If you look at the definition of the word serpent, it is defined as to learn from experience — as to learn from experience. It is in your concordance. If it’s a good one, I am quoting from James Strong’s concordance. It’s a different word from another serpent used in scripture. This serpent is to learn from experience. There’s no other way to learn it. The other time the word serpent appears, it is the seraph, the seraphim, which means a fiery being, a being set on fire. That’s when you ascend into heaven. That’s the fiery being that comes down. The entire Old Testament is nothing more than a shadow. It is an adumbration, the foreshadowing of things to come.975 ¶11

The New Testament is an acted parable. For a parable is a story told as though it were true, leaving the one who hears it to discover its specific character and then learn its message and either accept it or reject it. So the story told of Jesus Christ — Jesus Christ is the pattern man. It’s an actual pattern.975 ¶12

And when in 1 Timothy, Paul implies, if he ever wrote that first letter to Timothy — some scholars question that he wrote it — Paul is a state of consciousness. So whoever wrote it is talking about Paul. That’s the state. And he tells you that “I am the former; it was first in me that the example was set forth.” And here he tells you, but he doesn’t spell it out, the actual pattern. But he tells us that it was in him. He was the former in which this pattern, this example — he used the word example, but the King James Version uses the word pattern. I prefer that. While the Revised Standard Version uses the word example. In him was the first, the former, where this example took place. Now, the foremost, the most example took place.975 ¶13

Now, the fact is, as I told you earlier, that God and God alone was the one who was crucified. “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth 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.” So I am alive by a certain sacrifice — that’s the thought — because God and the Son are one. And gave himself for me. So I am alive, by a certain sacrifice. That was God, because God and the Son are one, in this sense.975 ¶14

So here I am that Son, because all the sons form God. And we, the sons, came down into this world. And here I am crucified, on this garment — the only cross that God ever wore. And I am buried in the tomb of this garment. And in that tomb, as told me in the eighth chapter of Ezekiel, I have made — oh, what horrible images I have engraved upon the interior of that tomb. If you read the eighth chapter of Ezekiel, he said to the son of man, “Son of man, make a hole.” And so I made a hole. Now he said, “Go in. Go in and see what the elders of Israel are doing.” I went in, and I saw all these engravings upon the interior of this wall, and they made horrible things, and they worshiped beasts, birds, and horrible things — what everyone does in this world rather than fall in love with the pattern. But they didn’t know the pattern.975 ¶15

Now the pattern has been sent to you. The pattern has appeared. In actual living reality, will you accept the pattern? And the pattern is: give up all these things that formerly you worshipped and thought would save you, that they would do this for you, and fall in love with the pattern. For Jesus Christ is the pattern man. One day you are embraced by the pattern, which would be male. The other could be in another form of embrace, but it’s the same impression left upon the one embraced, left upon the one that was embraced in love. And so when the act is over, he is sent into the world, and then during the journey this impression unfolds within the individual who was embraced, upon whom that impression was made, that just seemed unwelcome. And then you know who Christ is, for Christ comes to us as one — some picture, I made — yet one who, after the embrace, it’s not a “he” anymore. “I am.” So the whole thing is all within the individual, and he unfolds the entire story as told us in Scripture. That’s the only freedom that man will really ever truly enjoy.975 ¶16

So you can have a Lincoln’s birthday to set slaves free, and a Washington’s birthday to set all Americans free, and yet all Americans still crying out for freedom, for liberty. And all the minority groups, blacks, Chicanos, everything else, crying out to be liberated. And you will not in eternity be liberated save through union with the pattern man, the pattern man who has achieved complete freedom. So when you’re embraced by him, you’re embraced by freedom itself. And that imprint then unfolds within you, and you are as free as the being. And you find the one being that really sets you free is the Son of God. And he stands before you and you know who he is, or you know who you are. Therefore it’s a complete self-realization. It’s a complete spiritual fulfillment. And then you know.975 ¶17

So it doesn’t matter what happens thereafter — earthquakes, volcanoes, wars, anything in the world. You have reached the end. And your only feeling then will be for those who are now talking to Germany. Instead of condemning and asking for the gas chamber, you look upon this little thing — it’s like a thing just started, only now tasted of the fruit of good and evil, and can’t quite discriminate as yet. It doesn’t know, and here it is, say, for six thousand years, a horrible thing.975 ¶18

But as Blake said, “Do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct. It must fulfill its destiny in order to achieve perfection. Follow this path and you will receive from your own genius a deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation. You’ll also receive an ever-increasing relief from that which now seems so sad and terrible.”975 ¶19

So, he starts it, and you and I are in it. And we’ll wait for her, after the unnumbered years that she has to travel, for she has to go through all if you’ve gone through. But God, in his infinite mercy, has hidden it from your memory — hidden it — and still allows you to condemn and do the things that normal men will do when they read these things in the paper. Why did it happen to me? Why did it happen to so-and-so?975 ¶20

And yet we all shared a common experience that Tuesday morning. Some had a greater blow than others. But we all shared the experience, and you can’t deny it. Well, that is something to be grateful for. You experience it, and you’re made up of what you’ve experienced. Others cannot be witnesses to these things; they could only be those who say, “Well, I heard it said.” So I heard there was, as the saying goes, our sister-in-law from the east, my niece from Cincinnati, others from different areas, and they’re all calling. I’m quite sure one from Greece will come next week — you’ll be writing in, you can’t get through by telephone. And you’ll be asking all kinds of things, because people go out and they try to scare you all the more.975 ¶21

One call from a New Yorker says he just heard on the TV and he’s been trying all day to get you, and some are sorry, they’re all sorry, cranking up, and he says this is only the first one, the big one is coming. And of course it puts her right into a tizzy, as though this little thing knows what he’s talking about. He didn’t predict this one, but he’s going to predict the next one. And then he gives his name and all the little degrees behind his name, and he teaches over at Caltech. So he is an authority. No one knows. No one knows. And whatever comes, let it come. And I tell you, let it come. You have experienced what only a very small section of our country experienced these last few years. And life is made up of experiences. So the serpent simply means to learn by experience. And we listened well, and the fruit tasted to it, and we came out into a world of experience. Because the journey is from innocence through experience to freedom. And that freedom is to awaken as God himself.975 ¶22

So we’re being plucked from a garden. As I saw it so clearly one night — this infinite field of human flowers, flowers like sunflowers. And yet I knew as I looked at them, and they were so beautiful, I knew that I enjoyed a far greater measure of freedom than all of them put together. For there they were, beautiful and seemingly perfect forever. If one smiled, all smiled. If the wind moved one, it moved all in the same direction. Whatever one did, all did. And I felt myself free to do what I wanted to do. I could walk if I wanted to. I could turn around if I wanted to. I was not moved by a chorus. And there was simply a chorus, all moving in unison. And I had been plucked before all. And I ate of the tree of knowledge, of good and evil, and came out into a world.975 ¶23

And started, and the first act was murder, and Cain killed Abel, and he did it through jealousy. And here is an act of jealousy: he envied his position in the world, envied his wealth, envied what he had, and felt no remorse in killing him. But none whatsoever, even to this moment. But he’s a citizen of the tree of knowledge. And our great anthropologist will tell us, she is so advanced beyond the black man from Africa, or the great unknowns of, say, Peru, the great Indians that are still in their dark ages, like Ponzi. He is only just a player in these garments that are forever. For all these things are forever. This is part of the structure of the universe. And he simply assumed a certain dominance. And for the first time he appears in the world. Came from the world of innocence. Came to the world of experience. And now he is faced with thousands of years of sorrow.975 ¶24

But in the end, that merciful God will step beyond and redeem her into his body by union. And there will be union. And then the infant will be left. And that infant is the way of escape. And it begins with a waking within the grave, the grave being your soul. And then coming out of that soul, and that is your birth. And then discovering God’s son as your son, and that’s your freedom. And then comes the great splitting of your own body from top to bottom. And then your ascent as a fiery serpent back into heaven from which you descended. And then comes the seal of approval in the form of the dove, which smothers you in love because it approves your entire journey. And all will be good. For here, you are at the end. I can tell you that. You are at the end. And that is at the beginning. And so all that you can really call out for is nothing but compassion, because he’s beginning what now you’re ending. You’ve gone through it, you’ve done the same thing.975 ¶25

And so what I told you earlier, from that statement of Blake as he revealed it to one called Matt Beckman — in a vision, Matt Beckman saw him and hailed him, he said, “There was that great genius,” and he waved to him and hailed him. And then he said, “Do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world.” And then he told him why: for everything is ordered and corrected; it must fulfill its destiny in order to achieve perfection. And then he asked him to please follow this path. And if you follow this path you will receive from your own genius a deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation. You will also receive an ever-increasing relief from all that now seem so sad and terrible.975 ¶26

So here we celebrate Lincoln’s birthday, but you and I are searching for, and some of us have already found, the real one who sets us free. For he didn’t set the minorities free, for they’re still begging for freedom. And Washington didn’t set us free, because we’re still asking for, well, at least financial freedom. We’re burdened with taxes. We’re burdened with this. We’re burdened with everything. And so he didn’t set us free. And not a thing in this world can set us free but union with the pattern man who has already achieved true freedom. And union with him is an impression on us, like the seal on prepared wax. And the perfect impression is there, then we wear the express image of the invisible God.975 ¶27

And it’s rare when we think into the world to tell what happened to us; in that interval, that impact begins to unfold within us. And we know who we are. We are the God who was in the beginning crucified, who was in the beginning buried in the human soul, and who rose from that grave — the human soul — and who rose from that grave and who came out, and they called him born from above, and who found God’s only begotten son that was nearest to his Father, did all his will, and his name was David, and David called him Father. And whose body was split from top to bottom, and then who, after the split, ascended like a fiery serpent, came to heaven. And then that dove descended upon him, and that he knew exactly who he was. He bore the burden for the allotted time, as you have borne it for the allotted time. And then the long lost rank is now restored. And the God you were before you descended is the God that you have returned to, only augmented by the experience, but you could not know without the experience.975 ¶28

For you are immortal, and you would not know a thing concerning death unless you experienced death. How would you know it? Say it to a certain. So I could tell all the gods of the world about death — what was the noble death — they are immortal, they cannot die. But you and I came down and experienced death. We go back augmented beyond the wildest dreams of what we were prior to our descent, for we have experienced death. We aren’t speaking from hearsay. We are experiencing things, and therefore we will speak as true witnesses. I can’t be a witness unless I can speak from experience. I go back as a witness to my victory over death. So that’s what we are this day, in this wonderful world of ours.975 ¶29

So, this symbol of freedom — and everything in the world is a symbol anyway — Lincoln is but a symbol of the freedom of minorities. What a symbol of the freedom of minorities. Washington a symbol of the freedom of a nation from a foreign control. For Jesus Christ is the pattern man that is the true liberator of the world. And until one has union with him, he cannot find freedom, for he cannot find the Son. And when the Son says he is free, he will be free indeed.975 ¶30

So we are told in Hebrews, “although he was a Son, yet he learned obedience by the things he suffered.” Although he was a Son, he learned obedience by the things he suffered. You are the ones spoken of. For the entire Old Testament is simply the shadow, the copy of the eternal dream. And the New Testament is its fulfillment but told in the form of a parable. And you and I have to print the true story of that parable. And when we tell it, those who are still along the way, they’ll reject it. They can’t quite grasp it. They can’t believe it. So they’re rejected. That’s all right. Don’t give up. You tell it because you speak from experience. If you’re speaking from experience, you tell it.975 ¶31

A friend of mine called me from Cincinnati. Because he tried to get through and tried to get through, and I couldn’t — no one got through to me. As far as I’m concerned, no one was calling. He said, “I’ve been trying for two days to get through.” When he finally got through, he asked me to explain. Well, I said, as far as I’m concerned, I am perfectly all right. I woke just about one minute before six. I went to the bathroom. I was only there a minute, less than a minute. Before I could get back to my bed, the thing started. And as you know, it’s brilliant how intense it was. It came so suddenly. It was no rumble, just one solid mass of shaking, but from every direction. So I said, as far as I’m concerned, somebody held our house and shook it in all directions, like a doll — taking a little rag thing and shaking it. And so I could barely touch the bed when I heard my wife say, “Don’t walk, don’t get off the bed” — she didn’t know I was off the bed — “don’t get off the bed.” So, guess where you are, don’t come in here, you can’t walk — you know you can’t walk, it’s some north, south, east, and west, all together, some other direction. And so here you’re helpless, you can’t find the one who’s doing it, you can’t find anyone to get even with. You have to sit and take it. You’re taking something, and you can’t find that culprit who’s doing it. And then all of a sudden you start picking up the glasses, picking up the glasses, picking up the dishes, picking up the things that he did, seemingly, and it’s all prepared for. So I can speak from experience, and I can tell him over the phone, but he can only repeat what I say, and it’s only hearsay. He doesn’t know from experience. Give thanks that you now know from experience.975 ¶32

Nearly, one day, will return the entire horrible drama that you’ve gone through, playing the actor in it all — sometimes the victim, sometimes the culprit. You pay them all, and at the end you come out, and because you pay them all, you forgive all. But it is all to awaken you to the being that you really are, for the purpose of this whole journey is to awaken us, the Son, to fatherhood. That’s how the Father rises to a higher level, by taking his Son who confides him to thought of it — that’s how the Father rises to a higher level by taking his Son who comprises him, and putting him through the horrors of the world, which is himself, because he’s made up of his Son. And then, putting us through all that we go through, he, the one Father comprised of the Son, is lifted to a higher level, and we have expanded beyond the wildest freedom by the experiences in this world of horror.975 ¶33

So when they are seeking freedom, and you’ll see them tomorrow morning in the State of the Party, you’ll find another demonstration and another demonstration. And this one wants freedom and that one wants freedom. And you’re asking, what do you mean by freedom? They can’t tell you. That means freedom from external restraints. Freedom to do anything they want without any restraints. And the result of freedom? Untill. There is no such freedom until union with a pattern man who is all love, who would hurt nothing in the world. Until that union takes place, you will never enjoy the freedom that you are seeking, which is complete freedom from all external restraints. And you will find them whether you are a minority group or any other group in the world.975 ¶34

Fortunately for me, I have never called myself one among the minorities. I came here as a stranger to America, but not from the day I landed did I ever think myself other than one with America. I never called myself an American Barbadian or an American West Indian. It never occurred to me to have this hyphenation in my world. I either am an American or I’m not one. As long as I’m living here and became an American, I’m an American. But to call myself a Mexican American, or a black American, or a white American, that’s to be stupid. And so I am, while I’m here, by adoption, I’m an American equal with anyone born here, as far as the outer garment that I wear. So when all these call themselves by their name — a Japanese American, a Chinese American, a Mexican American — I can’t see why. Why don’t we drop the little hyphenation and just simply be an American?975 ¶35

And then find this wonderful story concerning the only one that can set you free, and love him beyond all things, and don’t substitute some little thing for him. The whole vast world has substituted these, a worshipful image that made all kinds of images, and it was a gift. Instead of speaking of all things, this internal word which is only a pattern.975 ¶36

Now let us go into the silence. Thank you. Good. Good.975 ¶37

You have any questions, please? Any questions? Yes, sir.975 ¶38

Any other questions, please? If there aren’t any other questions, then we’ll call it a day. Thank you, good night.975 ¶41

Paul is the greatest and most influential figure in the history of Christianity. After you hear his story you may judge just who he is. After his credentials have gained him public confidence, Paul begins. Paul wrote 13 letters, if you take the double letters as two: like 1st and 2nd Corinthians, 1st and 2nd Timothy, and 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. He first appears in scripture in the Book of Acts – and bear in mind the Book of Acts was once part of the Book of Luke. The same author who wrote the Book of Luke wrote the Book of Acts. They were once one volume, or one book in two volumes. Our early fathers divided the two and placed the Gospel of John between them. He first appears in the book that we will call the Gospel of Luke, only we now call it the Book of Acts. He was present when the first Christian martyr, Stephen, was stoned to death – and Paul consented unto Stephen’s death. Those who stoned Stephen placed their coats at the feet of Saul. (His name was then Saul. ) In the 9th chapter, he starts the great journey to Damascus, and he carries with him letters to the high priest in Damascus. He pledges himself if he finds anyone belonging to “the Way,” be he man or woman, he will bring them bound to Jerusalem. All who believed it were called “followers of the Way,” not Christians. On the way to bind those who belonged to the Way, he was blinded by the light, and then the whole thing was revealed to him, and his name was transformed from Saul to Paul. The remaining portion of the Book of Acts is devoted almost exclusively to Paul, at least the last 16 chapters, which would begin with the first verse of the 13th chapter to the 28th, where he ends his days still propounding this mystery and trying to persuade everyone of the truth of Jesus. Beginning with the law of Moses and all of the prophets, he explained to them in all the scripture the truth concerning Jesus. Some were convinced by what he said, while others disbelieved him. That’s the story.972 ¶1

If I would read Paul and take one of his letters that will really explain Paul to me, I would go to the letter of Galatians for in Galatians (which scholars claim to be the first book of the New Testament – it came before the Gospels, it came before any book, so they say) in this letter, he makes the claim: “I Paul, an apostle not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” Here is a declaration of complete religious independence from all men, and dependent on God, repudiating in this letter all authority, institutions, customs, and laws that interfered with the direct acceptance of the individual to his God. No intermediary between the individual and his God, none, called by any name.972 ¶2

Then he said: “The Gospel which I preach is not the Gospel of man, for I did not receive it from a man, neither was I taught it. It was given to me by revelation of Jesus Christ.” () “For when it pleased God to reveal his son in me, then I conferred not with flesh and blood.” ()972 ¶3

You ask the question of Paul: “Was he or Christ once really a man?” If you asked that of Paul, he would say: “Was?” “He is the heavenly man.” Well, does that answer you? You are asking the question: “Was he really ever a man?” and you’ll reply: “Not was – he is the heavenly man.” “As we have borne the image of the man of dust, so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly man.” That still doesn’t satisfy. “Was he really a man as we understand a man?” He doesn’t respond, in time. Then you read his words: “From now on we will regard no one from a human point of view, even though we formerly regarded Christ from a human point of view, we regard him thus no longer.” ()972 ¶4

Then he makes the statement in the same chapter: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting any trespasses against them, and entrusting us with the message of reconciliation.” () You will see later on what Paul is trying to tell us, if I would substitute the word “imagination” for “God,” and “imagining” for “Christ.” Imagining means the activity of imagination – that imagination was imagining, reconciling the world to himself and not counting any trespasses against them, and then entrusting to us this message of imagining.972 ¶5

Now we will go to this great Book of Galatians, 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Bear in mind imagining being that son, imagination being God the Father.972 ¶6

Now let us go to the first two verses of the 3rd chapter: “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” Listen to the words carefully: “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Do you know what “portray” means? I think we all know, but let me refresh your memory: “To depict in a drawing or painting; or in some verbal description; or as an action on a stage,” a play on the stage.972 ¶7

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Answer me only this: “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith?” “Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you ending with the flesh?” Do you get it? The whole vast world has fallen victim to believing in the flesh of Jesus. Have you, having begun with the spirit – are you falling now, actually blind, and a victim of the flesh?972 ¶8

You were shown the whole thing like a play going on a stage tonight, and someone moved across the stage and they played the perfect play of God’s only salvation, the only way that man could be saved. And he walks across the stage and he plays it, and every scene he enacts is a mystical scene to be experienced by the individual. That was all done. Now are you going to confuse it? Can’t you now have that little spirit of observance and separate the action of walking across the stage from what he is trying to portray? For he is portraying it.972 ¶9

If you go to a play and someone is shot, you know he will go home after being shot and have the most wonderful time – for their day begins at night. But you will weep, sitting in the audience, as you see him being shot, being abused. But he wasn’t shot and he wasn’t abused, save as an actor – but not the being who put on the mask, who played the part. So, let me repeat it: “Whose eye beheld Jesus Christ publicly portrayed as crucified.”972 ¶10

The world thinks he was flesh and blood. No, he wasn’t flesh and blood. This is the fulfillment of all that was told in the Old Testament, but no one understood it, except the one to whom it was revealed (you call him Paul now). “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood, and the Gospel that I preach to you is not man’s Gospel. I did not receive it from a man nor was I taught it but it was revealed by Jesus Christ.” The whole thing was revealed and I saw the mystery of it all, the mystery of salvation: that Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man.972 ¶11

The thing happened, for the play said it did. I went to the play and I saw it and I was part of the gathering, and they hoped I would have the spirit of discernment to separate the action of the actor from what he was acting, and see the spirit, not the flesh. Did I see the spirit?972 ¶12

Then after a while come the teachers, who did not participate, and they tell you he is flesh and blood. He was born of a certain woman, on a certain day, in a manner that you were born – only he didn’t have a physical father. And that isn’t true at all. This birth is something entirely different, as told us in the Book of John: “He is born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” An entirely different birth takes place, which is all explained as the play unfolds. You saw the spirit – but don’t go back, not to the flesh.972 ¶13

Now the story begins. We are called the followers of “the Way.” Is that the way of salvation? I’ll believe it. I will wait patiently until it unfolds in me, for that is the way of salvation. Then in the 14th chapter of John, we are told: “And now you know the Way.” And Thomas said: “We do not know the way. We do not know where you are going, so how do we know the way?” He said: “I am the way, and the truth and the light.” It is not a man, “follow me home.” All that you will see me do upon the stage, – that is the way – so, “I am the way.” He didn’t say I am this, that or the other – “I am the way.” You follow the whole thing – that spirit that moves before you and you will see the way of salvation.972 ¶14

They still didn’t understand him. They said a way to what? A way to everything, but primarily “the Way to the Father.” “For no one comes to the Father but by me.” So, don’t look upon me as flesh and blood – “I am the way.” Follow my story through this series of events and you’ll come to the Father. So the state unfolds on the stage and they all see the spirit, but many could not discern and discriminate between the action of the actor and what the actor was portraying.972 ¶15

We come back to Galatians: “Before whose eye Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” There you see it. The whole thing is unfolding on a stage, but man cannot lose himself to the point where he gets beyond the action of an actor. And he cries and weeps with the actor. He’s portraying something, but they can’t get what he is portraying. Read the story of Jesus and don’t think of Jesus as flesh and blood. He is God himself, unfolding it before you in the form of a man that can see a man walking across the stage.972 ¶16

So, is Paul the initial awakened being? You judge it – I don’t know. I am led to believe he is, that Paul is the most influential, the most important figure in the history of Christianity, that he was the one to whom it was revealed. He was fiery in his destruction of everything other than the outer observation of the law, and then to him it was revealed.972 ¶17

So take courage. If you are violent today in supporting something that is external that you must observe, it doesn’t matter. Paul did the same thing and suddenly he was blinded by the revelation and he saw the mystery of life. And he saw that Christ was within him. “And when it pleased God to reveal his son in me, then I conferred not with flesh and blood.” To whom would I turn and ask them to throw light upon an experience that is not understood by mortal mind? But having known the Bible as he did – he was well grounded in it – he could return to his Bible and see where it was all foretold, but he could not on that level understand it. It had to be unveiled. As it was unveiled he saw the interpretation of the ancient Scripture.972 ¶18

Then in the end of Acts, when he stands before King Agrippa, he says: “Here I stand before you chained, condemned for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers. Here I have hope in that promise and stand in chains before you because I know it is true.” And then he spent the rest of his days expounding the story concerning – what he called then – Jesus. And the whole world of Christendom thinks it is a man of flesh and blood. Jesus means, “Jehovah saves,” “Jehovah is salvation.” There is nothing in the teaching of Paul but God and man – no intermediary. So God himself is inwoven in man and unfolds himself in man in a series of events. And as he then unfolds, as he unfolded in Paul, then he knew the mystery of the scripture. When he tries to tell it, those who followed him in the past (because he condemned and allowed the death of others for believing in it, then he himself fell victim to his belief) – well, who’ll believe it?972 ¶19

As I go across this country the one question that is always asked me, whether it is a social gathering or any place: “Well, don’t you believe in a physical Jesus?” No matter where I go, I get it. I go to a small little dinner party of four or five – “I know what you say Neville, but don’t you really believe that he did live, that he walked this earth 2,000 years ago and was called Jesus, and his mother was Mary and his father was Joseph – or maybe it wasn’t Joseph?” To the unprepared mind, how can you explain what Paul said in the first three verses of the 3rd chapter of Galatians: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” For they went astray to some physical sense: “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” Now I ask you one thing: Did you receive the spirit from those works of the Lord, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun with the spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” For the whole vast world today is ending with the flesh and they can’t see the spirit which is Christ Jesus.972 ¶20

Christ Jesus is in man, us, the way, “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” And in 2 Corinthians 13, Paul says: “Do you not realise that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test.” I hope you realise we have not failed. If Jesus Christ is in me, then I should start looking to find out where he is. I have found him by a search and an experiment. When he said “God is in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding any trespasses against them and entrusting to us the spirit of reconciliation,” so then, God is Christ and Christ is in me, then who are we? And I discovered that God is my own wonderful human imagination. God in action is Christ, and imagination in action is imagining. So, imagination imagining is reconciling the world to itself. Now to those who discover it, he entrusts this great secret of reconciliation.972 ¶21

So, you take every being in the world – all right, let them go astray, it doesn’t matter. If with God all things are possible and he works and creates only through Christ, and Christ is now imagining – I could imagine you are what I want you to be, if I really believe in Christ, for “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” And though at the moment you don’t respond, and tomorrow you still do not respond, I’ll persist, for that is the attribute of patience. Read the fruit of the spirit. It is not only love and joy and peace – it is patience, it is persistence. In the end of the book of Galatians he gives you the proof of the spirit. So, I can persist, I can be patient. I will imagine they are as they ought to be, though at the moment reason denies it and my senses deny it, and everything denies it. But this is the fruit of the spirit. I’ll be patient. I will imagine things are as I would like them to be. That is God in action, and God in action is Christ. I like what I am doing there, for the spirit bears the fruit of love, joy, and peace. These are the first petals that come out. Then come the other attributes and among them you will find there is patience, there is persistence.972 ¶22

So, Paul, to me, is the first in whom the vision took place. It came to one of the smallest tribes, Benjamin, a child of Abraham. Abraham is faith. It was all shown to Abraham and he believed it, and waited patiently for the fulfillment of what was shown him. He saw the play, too. It was all portrayed to Abraham. “And Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day.” Then he went into the foreign land, as he was led by the spirit, but he still remained faithful to what he had seen in the play. The play unfolded before him and God played the part and God was Christ Jesus.972 ¶23

You say: “How could this Lord, this exalted Lord become human?” Again Paul answers, in his letter to the Philippians 2: “He emptied himself and became obedient unto death, even death upon a cross.” Again he is speaking in a mystery, for Paul is very fond of using the word “mystery” – in fact he uses it no less than eighteen times. This – the body- is the cross. To him the cross was not the grievance of God but the love of God, and that crucifixion is the most delightful state. It is not a painful state, as the churches portray it. They don’t portray the true thing at all.972 ¶24

It happened to me right in this present embodiment, where it was shown me so vividly how it was done. And the thrill that was mine the night my hands became vortexes, and my head a vortex, and my side a vortex, and the soles of my feet vortexes. I was in a pilgrimage over some invisible Mecca with some thousands of people, and a voice out of the blue announced: “And God walks with them.” “ 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.”972 ¶25

Listen to these words: “If we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” The resurrection has taken place, but it is also taking place. It took place, and that first one – whether you believe it or not – is Paul, and from that moment on it is taking place in every being in the world, as we march toward this invisible Mecca. And along the way we are pulled out of the crowd one by one, and he awakens in the individual. And that one, without losing his distinctive individuality, is God. So, Jesus Christ is God himself.972 ¶26

The play is on. God became man and played the part and showed us all before we started the journey, but we can’t quite discriminate between the action and what the actor is actually trying to portray. Go back and read the words carefully: “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.” An actor depicts the thought, but man can’t quite discriminate between the thought depicted and the actor depicting the thought, and he thinks now the thing is flesh and blood – and it isn’t.972 ¶27

You dwell upon it, and one day you will find yourself in that journey. The most colourful crowd in the world. Nothing on the screen compares to it in the color and the joy as you move towards this invisible Mecca, and you will hear a voice in the crowd, and the chances are it will always repeat itself in the same way. Someone will be at your side, and you will ask and they will ask: “But if God walks with him, where is he?” and the voice will come back: “At your side.” And they will look into your face and become hysterical, it will strike them so funny that you – a normal man, with all the weaknesses of a man – could be God. And the voice will come back and all will hear it: “Yes, in the act of waking.”972 ¶28

Then, from the depths of your soul will come the same voice, and no one but you will hear it. And you – I put it in words that the world will understand, but the words differ: “And God laid himself down within you to sleep.” It isn’t that. “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream, I dreamed” – he is going to complete it -“I dreamed I am you.” That is what you are going to hear.972 ¶29

Then, at that moment you are going to find yourself being crucified in the most unique manner in the world. You will be sucked back into the body that is on the bed. Your hands are real vortexes, your feet vortexes, your head a vortex, and the right side a vortex. It’s a whirling joy as you are nailed once more to this body. Then you will know Paul’s words: “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.” And the Son of God, in whom there is life, is your own wonderful human imagination. Imagining is life itself. What you imagine becomes animated, it takes on life, it takes on motion, vibration.972 ¶30

Read the whole book of Galatians and that wonderful 3rd chapter, and see Paul’s confession. No one taught it to him, he didn’t receive it from a man – it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ. “And when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” God will reveal his Son in you in an explosion and you will see him standing before you and you will see that Son as your Son. Then you will know the meaning of the words: “No one comes unto the Father but by me, for I am the way, I am the truth, I am the light.” Not a man called Jesus, or Neville, or Peter, or any other name. No. “I AM the way.” The Way is a series of mystical experiences. And you come to the Father in no other way save by me.972 ¶31

So, watch this picture as it unfolds, for before you unfolded is the story. Before your eyes, Jesus Christ was publicly revealed in this garment. So, that is the play. If you heard my story, that is the Way. There is no other way. Not a man called Neville – what he experienced is the Way to come to the Father. And you will be brought by this series of experiences, for Christianity is based upon the affirmation that a series of events happened in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. We are told in Luke of a series of events, and you are the being spoken of and you are brought right up to fatherhood. But “no one comes to the father but by me.” “I am the way.”972 ¶32

You go back and you see the first appearance of the Way is the story of Paul (). He went through the experience of the Way, and he comes back and goes through hell, but not for one moment could he relinquish his experience. So, he closed his days explaining to everyone who would listen to him the story of the Way. And some believed him while others disbelieved him.972 ¶33

Now let us go into the silence.972 ¶34

The Bible is not a product of human beings; it is not constructed by man. It is the history of man’s discovery by God’s revelation of the changing name of God, and it increases in its value to man. In Genesis 4:26 we are told that a child was born whose name was Enosh, born to Sarah, and men began to call upon the name of the Lord. That is the first time that man began to call upon the name of the Lord.971 ¶1

The word Enosh means “mortal man,” something that is fragile, something that simply wears out and disappears. Mortal man began to ask concerning his origin: Why am I here, what is the cause of the phenomena of life?971 ¶2

The next time we see it is in the 32nd chapter of Genesis. This is the night, we are told, a man called Jacob (the supplanter) wrestled with God, and when it came to the breaking of the day God said to him: “Let me depart.” And he said: “I will not let you depart until you bless me.” And God blessed him. Then he said to God: “What is your name?” and God answered: “Why do you ask my name?” He would not tell him, so Jacob called the spot where God touched him “Peniel,” which means “the face of God,” for said he “I have seen God face to face and yet my life is preserved.” Then as the sun rose Jacob faltered because where God had touched shrank. It was the sinew upon his thigh. That is what man at that level of consciousness believed to be the creative power of the universe.971 ¶3

Today, 1963, you and I are witnesses to the most fantastic things that man has conceived. Missiles in space that can reach the sun, these IBM machines, electronic brain - but nothing that man has ever devised or brought to birth can compare to a child. Nothing in this world that man can conceive is comparable to the brain of a child. For the child conceived the instrument that now frightens us. We have a bomb, nuclear bomb, but that can’t compare to the brain that conceived it, no matter what we do with it. Read Genesis 32, where man once thought the sex act was God. The very act of producing the most sensitive thing in the world is the form of a child. (There isn’t a part of the world that someone hasn’t erected phallic images in its worship of God.)971 ¶4

Now we turn to the Book of Exodus, where the name changes because it wasn’t yet revealed. Man began to call upon the name of the Lord, but they didn’t know what to call upon; they thought it was sex. Read Exodus 3:13-15, how God reveals himself to his chosen vessel, Moses. And Moses said to the Lord: “When I come to the people of Israel and I say to them, ‘the Lord, your God, has sent me unto you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say?” And the Lord answered: “I AM who I AM.” The words are every form of the verb “to be” - “I AM that I AM” - I will be what I will be. “Say unto them, ‘I AM has sent me unto you.’” So when you come to the people of Israel, say to them the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me unto you, and this is my name forever: “I AM.” No other. And this will lead you out of the wilderness into the promised land.971 ¶5

That was the second grand revelation of the name of God. Man thought it was the creative act. Who could deny that nothing in this world that man has ever created was comparable to that of a child - nothing. And he has to trace it back to his origin of the act, and all of a sudden it came out of this fantastic organism. And then comes a revelation of another kind, that the name is “I AM.” Then comes the final revelation, which we find in the New Testament, and he brings something entirely different that man has not seen before. He reveals the name as “Father.” “Holy Father, keep them in thy name which thou hast given unto me, that they may be one as you and I are one.” He gave them the name that was his name and the name was “Father” - the final revelation of God to man concerning who he really is, his father.971 ¶6

“So in many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by a son.” If he has spoken by a son, then he is a father. And so God speaks to man in his final days through his son, and the son reveals to that man that he is the father of that son, and then - and only then, does man know who he really is.971 ¶7

But until that day comes take the second revelation of the name of God, which is “I AM” and use it and use it wisely.971 ¶8

You can use it for anything in the world. You are told if you blaspheme against his name you must be stoned to death, as told us in Leviticus 24:16: “Anyone who blasphemes against the name I AM,” and the name has already been revealed in Leviticus 3. Exodus 2 revealed the name. Now if you blaspheme against this name, stone him to death. One who was born of a Hebrew woman who knew an Egyptian man, cursed the name of God, and they listened to see what God would say to do to such a man: stone him to death.971 ¶9

Stone does not mean that you take stones and throw at him, as people will do. The stones are the literal facts of life. How could I blaspheme against the name of God? With God all things are possible, so his name is “I AM.” And I dare to say: “I am unwanted; I am poor; I am ill; I am completely ignored in this world.” Well, this is blasphemy against God. For it is not what I really want in this world, or for anyone else that I love. So here I am blaspheming against God. I am told in John 8: “Except you believe that I am he you shall die in your sins.” “Sin” is missing the mark. If I don’t believe that I am the man I want to be, I remain where I am at that moment of not daring to assume that I am the man that I want to be, and remain in that limitation, so I die, missing the mark.971 ¶10

So the being you really are - if the second revelation is true (and I can tell you it is true, that his name is “I AM”) - it doesn’t mean you worship something on the outside when you say, “I am.” And the day that you actually contact it as though the “I-thou” concept was within yourself, you feel who you really are.971 ¶11

Now here is a true story which I heard this last Saturday. I am not a member of the Turf Club, but I go occasionally when I am invited and someone takes me. So last Saturday I and my wife were taken to the Turf Club. I was introduced to this little man who sat just one row below. Strange, weird little fellow, and then they told me his story. He had come here penniless from Kentucky. How he got the money necessary to buy a small little plot of land, I do not know, that was not told me; but he bought a small little plot of land in Ventura County.971 ¶12

He wanted to have oil, so he would sleep on the land itself. He didn’t build some little shack - he slept right on the ground. With his head to the ground he would hear oil coming in, he would smell oil, and he would come home sometimes in the morning at 6 A.M. and his wife was distraught. “What has happened to you?” He was sleeping on the land bringing it in.971 ¶13

Today the man - I would say he is ten years my senior, which is 68, pushing 70 - he has no financial problems. He has given away fortunes. He is worth over six million, so he told me himself, but now he has another problem, and he has forgotten the name of God.971 ¶14

His present problem is boredom. He goes to the track five days a week, Tuesday through Saturday. If he drops ten thousand, it’s no problem, if he drops twenty thousand, that’s no problem. But he is bored and he is not physically well, and he doesn’t remember how he brought oil into being by the name of God. When he put his head on that earth and began to listen, who was listening? If you would say to him: “What are you doing?” “I am smelling oil.” That’s what he would say. You have called the name of God. “I am smelling oil. I am hearing oil,” is what he would say. He brought it all in, but he doesn’t remember the name of God. Now he is saying: “I am unwell.” He is blaspheming the name of God. You are told: “The man who blasphemes the name of God, stone him to death.” The stone is “showing the facts of life,” so he is showing the facts of life. “You aren’t feeling well, are you?” So you see all the things in the world wrong with him, and you tell him. These are the stones, but he has forgotten and those around him don’t know.971 ¶15

He once used the name of God wisely and brought wealth into this world. He could bring health into this world if he would use the name of God. “It is my name forever,” said God in Exodus 3. But I will reveal a still greater name as man begins to awaken, and the final name is “Father.” And so: “Show us the Father,” and you’ll be satisfied. “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Phillip? He who has seen me has seen the Father, how then can you say ‘show us the Father?’”971 ¶16

So here, I tell you, I am the father, and no one knows he is the father. “Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one even as we are one.” There is no way in this world that you and I will know we are one, save through this last act of God revealing himself, when he gives you his last name, which is “Father.” I am the Father, that I do know, and you will be the Father of the same and only begotten Son of God. And when you see him, as I have seen him - and you will see him, and you are his Father - then you and I are one. For I can’t be the father of your son and not be you. And that is God’s final revelation to man on this level.971 ¶17

So, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.” And the son reveals the nature of the father. No one knows the father except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Until that day comes, use the second revelation - which is forever his name - and use it wisely, as we are told in the 9th Psalm, 10th verse: “Those who know thy name trust in thee.” If you know the name. The name is the individual himself. God’s name is I AM and that is God. So tonight if you know the name, believe it, trust in his name. And you listen as though you heard what you would hear, were you the man you want to be, and trust in his name, and he will never forsake you.971 ¶18

Here the name changes as man begins to awaken as God, and the final revelation - I know of no greater chapter than the 17th of John, where he reveals himself and gives himself to man. “Holy Father glorify me with thine own self.” He doesn’t want any other glory. It’s God himself giving himself to man, for that is his purpose. And when he succeeds in his purpose the man to whom he has given himself is God and God is “Father,” the final revelation. Therefore, there must be a child. Where is the child if I am a father? And here comes the child into being and he is David, God’s only begotten son. “David, thou art my son, this day I have begotten thee.”971 ¶19

That is concealed in man until that last moment when the veil is lifted and the fatherhood is revealed to man through the nature of the son. There you see David, and David tells you who you are. You are his father, he calls you father, and calling you father, then the 89th Psalm is fulfilled: “I have found David” and his cry unto me: “Thou art my father, my God and the Rock of my salvation.” And you see him and yet there is no change in your I AM-ness. The self that becomes his father is the same self that it was before, only a far greater self. It includes fatherhood, but the same sense of I AM-ness. You haven’t changed your distinct individuality, but now it is enlarged to include fatherhood, and that father is God.971 ¶20

And you tell it to the world in the hope you can make it as clear as it is to you. Whether you accept it or reject it, it is true and the day must come, in time, when each individual will have the same experience and he will pass through it all. Until that happens use his name wisely, as revealed to us through his prophet Moses in the 3rd chapter of Exodus. Use it for wealth, health, or recognition, but don’t blaspheme against the name of God.971 ¶21

“Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” So, we are told: “They took up stones to throw at him, because he had offended them, that he had blasphemed the name of God for he claimed ‘I am God.’” That was blasphemy on their level and they took up stones to throw at him. What stones? They told him they knew his father. They knew his earthly mother, his brothers, and his sisters, and they named them. They said: I know your father and mother, Joseph and Mary, and they named the four brothers. They implied multiple sisters. And then they began to show him the facts of life, and the facts contradicted his claim. Therefore they were stoning him with the facts of life. These were the stones.971 ¶22

Then he disappeared out of their midst. He could not argue with that mind, because they knew exactly his physical background, and he is telling them: “If you will receive what I tell you, I will give you power to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This verse is something entirely different in Greek physiology. “To be born of blood” they meant that the seed of man mingled with the blood of woman, and from this union came a child. To be born of the “will of the flesh” is by sexual impulse. It wasn’t born that way. To be born of man is to have human parentage. It wasn’t born that way. It was born of God.971 ¶23

Something entirely different, where man suddenly awakes within himself and he steps out of his own skull to find out that all along he has been sleeping. Then you read these words in Revelation 1:18: “And he thought himself alive and he was dead.” Here a man was dead, and all along he believed he was alive. The whole vast world, the sleep is so profound, it is so deep, he doesn’t know he is sleeping. And the sleep is so deep he is likened spiritually to a dead man. Then one day, in God’s own wonderful time, he awakens himself in man and brings him forth, and then he awakes for the first time to realize all through the ages he has been dead but he didn’t know it. But now he is resurrected by the mercy of God.971 ¶24

He thought he was asleep while he thought he was awake, and yet he was dead. In the meanwhile, you who think yourself alive, try this principle by the use of God’s name. It will not fail you, I promise you it will not. For one thing bear in mind this: you may have wealth tonight and have it heavily insured - furniture, jewelry, furs, but you left it when you came here tonight, left it wherever you have this outside wealth. You may have stocks and bonds, they may be insured, but you left them wherever they are, maybe in vaults, your homes. Standing here just about two years ago I left this platform and looked out and saw these enormous flames and all these beautiful homes burning. They were all left behind wherever the people were, all consumed in a matter of moments.971 ¶25

But one thing you can’t leave behind, and you always take it with you after you find the name. Can you go any place where you can leave behind your “I AM”? Where can you go in this world where you will leave behind you the only power in the world, “I AM”? “Those who know thy name put their trust in thee.” Not in the bank, not in their social position, their financial, intellectual, or any other position. “Put their trust in thee,” Who are you? “I AM.” So everyone who came here tonight brought that name with them. When you leave here you are going to take it with you. Maybe you don’t know you carried it with you. You can have a treasure and not know you have it. If I had a billion dollars deposited in the bank but I didn’t know it, I could die of starvation for want of a dollar; and yet I could sign a check if I knew I had it, and would withdraw it for my earthly need. You can’t leave behind you God’s name. He’s put himself into you, your very being, your own I AM-ness - that is God.971 ¶26

And because it is God, don’t blaspheme against the name. Use it wisely, use it lovingly, and I tell you: “What are you hearing?” And you tell me: I am hearing so and so, or I am thinking so and so. Well, see to it that what you are hearing, feeling, what you are thinking, is in harmony with your highest ideal. For you will draw it out just as this man drew out his oil from this little bit of dirt, and today he is worth millions - but bored. You will be able to use it wisely through your earthly days, and maybe in this embodiment the final one will be revealed to you, but only God knows when he reveals the final one.971 ¶27

I can talk about it and tell you about it but I cannot lift the curtain for you -only the son himself can reveal you as the father. I can tell you: you are going to be the father, that I do know, but I have no power to tear that curtain and show you David. He and he alone will reveal you as the father. “No one knows who the son is except anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him.” But I will tell you: one day he is going to tear that curtain from the mind and stand before you and call you father. You will know exactly who he is; there will be no doubt in your mind whatsoever. You are looking at your only begotten son. Begotten not by any woman in this world. Begotten out of your own wonderful being - your mind, and it’s David. And he will be just as he is described in the Book of Samuel, no doubt about it. I can’t tell you the thrill that is in store for you after it happens. You are so excited you can’t think of anything but. You may bore your friends, you may bore everyone that you meet, because you can’t think of anything but this enormous event that has happened to you, this heavenly thing that has taken place.971 ¶28

You may be a single man, a man who has never known a woman in this world, but all of a sudden you are a father, and you are a father in the true sense of the word. Then you will know he was “not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God,” and he calls you father, and you know God is his father. He tells you exactly who you are. Then you have to walk the earth for the remaining years shut out, because you are still wearing the garment of flesh.971 ¶29

And although you are now heir to a present and to a promise that has already been fulfilled, you still cannot share it with others, so that it cannot become to you actual or fully realized in you until you take off the garment for the last time. And then you are one with the heavenly host. Everyone is destined - you can’t brag about it, you can’t crow about it, because you didn’t earn it. It was all God’s plan from the beginning: “He who began a good work in you” at that moment brought it to completion “at the day of Jesus Christ.” And Jesus Christ is God the Father.971 ¶30

Therefore, if Jesus Christ is God the Father, and David calls him “Lord,” who are you? Are you not then Jesus Christ? Then you realize the words: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee, unless of course you fail to meet the test.” I hope you realize that we have not failed in our effort. Eventually you will read the words: And the whole thing disappears, and there was Jesus only. Moses was present, Elijah was present, they all saw the glory of God, and when it all subsided there was Jesus only.971 ¶31

For at the name of Jesus Christ every knee will bend and every tongue will confess that he is Lord, the glory of God the Father. It is only Jesus and he has one son and he is sharing his son with you - not walking the street with you as a friend, but as your son. He gives himself to every being in the world, and there is no way he can prove that he actually gave that gift of himself to you, save as David, his only begotten son, as your son. The Bible in miniature is in John 3:10. “And God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son.” People think he gave his only begotten son and his name is Jesus Christ.971 ¶32

No! Jesus Christ by his own confession is God the Father. “You see me Phillip and yet you do not know me. He who has seen me has seen the Father. How then can you say show us the father?” So the son given could not be that being who calls himself father, and the father is Jesus Christ. Who called him father? David. So he asked the question; nobody asked him. He said: “I am the Father.” Then where is the child? So he brings up the question: “What do you think of Christ?” and they said: “The son of David.” Then why does David in the spirit call him Lord? If David calls him Lord, how can he be David’s son?971 ¶33

And no one asked any further questions. David in the spirit calls him “Adonai,” a word used by every child when it refers to its father. Every child spoke of its father as “Adonai,” translated in the English: “My Lord.” So David called him “My father.” So he tells you who he is and who David is relative to himself. So David is going to call every being in this world: “my father.” And because God is one and his name is one, and at that name every knee must bow, you are destined to know yourself to be Christ Jesus, or God the Father. But until it is revealed to you, use his name as revealed through his prophet Moses. “And when you go to them just tell them ‘I AM’ has sent me unto you.” Lead them out of the wilderness into light by my name.971 ¶34

When you can lead yourself today, no matter where you are, whether you are now bewildered, whether you are unwanted (as you think you are), or unemployed, (as you may be) - lead yourself from these states of barrenness into states of fruition, a fruitful state, in the name. Just simply assume “I AM”, and you name it, hear it, smell it, see it to the best of your ability, and to the degree that you remain loyal to what you are imagining and hearing, you will actually externalize it in your world.971 ¶35

Don’t judge it before you try it. Now if what I have said this night offends, should it be in conflict with what you believed when you came here, again I go back to Scripture: “And he offended them and then they sold him for thirty pieces of silver.” Let me go back into the Book of Leviticus. Here we are told: “If an ox gored a slave, male or female, then the owner of the ox must pay to the owner of the slave thirty pieces of silver and then the ox must be stoned.”971 ¶36

The symbol of Christ is that of an ox. If the Christian doctrine offends, well then he has gored you by whatever he has to say. And now, having gored it, the slave will be censured, that he must be sold for thirty pieces of silver. So, you always fulfill Scripture. The word will always be fulfilled. The prototype of Jesus the Christ was Joseph, and he was sold for twenty pieces of silver. Twenty means “disappointed expectancy.” Thirty is divine perfection. Reduce it to a three and three is also associated with resurrection. On the third day the earth rose up out of the deep. So here, if I should offend you by what I say, then make me sorry for my thirty pieces of silver, for Scripture is all about me. For “If the ox gores and in any way hurts a slave” . . . then the ox must be stoned with the facts of life.971 ¶37

People will always throw the bricks at you and remind you of “When they knew you,” or even as they know you - for we are all limited as we wear these garments. No man in this world can tell me while he wears the garment that he is not limited. President Kennedy is frightfully limited in his office as President. Bricks are coming all over the place - what he promised in his campaign to get the office, and what he has delivered. And the conflict between what he promised and what he has delivered so far, you could throw all the bricks in the world at him. And he is fully aware of it. You can throw it at the Pope, throw it at the Queen of England, throw it at any person in this world for the lack of getting any ambition of theirs. If I took you into my secret and told you my ambition, and you as a friend know I have not realized it, and you throw at me all the rocks in the world, and remind me of what I told you against what I have accomplished - that is true of every being in the world.971 ¶38

Nevertheless, whether you accomplish them or not, go back and apply this principle towards the fulfillment of your dreams. I can tell you: in my own case, small as it has been, it has all been when I was faithful to the use of God’s name. When I dared to assume that I am what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny it, and I remained faithful to it, then I invariably realized it. There have been unnumbered times when I have not been faithful to it. I coasted, as we all coast after a while. Then we are jacked up suddenly and we have to go back to the use of the name.971 ¶39

And so, “Those who know thy name put their trust in thee.” Not in anything outside of thee. And your name is “I AM,” and it is your name forever and forever. So put your trust in the name of God by walking out of here tonight in the belief that you are already the man, the woman you would like to be and see the world as you would see it, were it true. And to the degree you remain loyal to that assumption, to that degree you will externalize it and reap it as fruit within this world. Now let us go into the silence.971 ¶40