Lectures

Tonight’s title is: “He is Dreaming Now.” God’s name―His real presence―is within us, in the very midst of us, for His real presence is concentrated in His name. “Come, let us go and look at him,” said the brothers, and each took one of Alice’s hands and led her up to where the king was sleeping. “He is dreaming now,” said Tweedle-Dee, “and what do you think he is dreaming about?” Alice said, “Why, nobody could guess that.” Then Tweedle-Dee said, “He is dreaming about you; and if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you would be?”1103 ¶1

Now, to us, that seems a fairy story; and, yet, it is so altogether true. If the Dreamer in you left off dreaming anything that you now entertain, where do you think you would be? Is not the Dreamer and the “I” of waking a pair of identical twins? We think this is the real world, and then we speak of the “dream world.” To us, that isn’t real, and yet we are told in Scripture: “God speaks to us through the medium of dreams, and makes Himself known through vision.” And, yet, we say that is not real, and yet: “God speaks to man through the medium of dreams”; and He is the Dreamer in man, identical with the “I” of waking. When we really wake, we will not be God and man. It will just be you; and you will be God, who was the Dreamer. The whole will simply awaken within you. It will not be a twin. The wall of separation will be broken down. It will only be God; and God-and-you will be the One. “God becomes as I am, that I may be as He is.”1103 ¶2

When the promise was made that God and an Angel would lead Israel, this promise was given special force by Jehovah’s assurance that “My name is in him.” That is, Jehovah Himself would lead them. Well, who is Jehovah? In Scripture we are told His name really is “I AM.” “Go, say to them that I AM hath sent me unto you…This is my name forever, and by this name I will be known throughout all generations.” “There is no other name.”1103 ¶3

Now, here in this room―take this simple little object here. My simple apprehension of this corporeal object we call sense. It is now a “sense” object. It is “real,” for I can see it, I can touch it; if I strike it, I can hear it. So, this is called “sense” because it’s present. If absent, it’s imagination. What I want to teach everyone who will listen to me is to tell them―to convince them―that the so-called “absent” states are just as real as the present states. If man, the spectator, could only enter into these so-called “absent” states―these images in his imagination,--“approach them on the fiery chariot of his own contemplative thought” ―if he could enter into these states and give to the state the sensory vividness that he now gives to this, and give it all to his imagination; if he could give it all the tones of reality we now give to this, using our senses, it would clothe itself in what we call “objective” reality.1103 ¶4

Here in this audience tonight there is a gentleman. He started a business in Chicago in March of this year. If you knew the market in the month of March as you know it today, it was at the lowest point in years. Stocks tumbled and tumbled day after day, many dropping ten or fifteen points a day; and on paper billions and billions were lost. As far as the mind goes, they were lost. There was no market to raise money for business. He needed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to launch this business. It is a manufacturing business, manufacturing special instruments―technical. No one had any money,--no individual, no group. He went through the month of March, April; and then in May he called me from Chicago to tell me he was too close to picture. He couldn’t use his imagination because he was too close to it, and all the negative arguments the papers gave you, the brokers gave you, friends would give you,--everything printed that the financial situation gave you looked forward to a greater and greater depression. He couldn’t stop it.1103 ¶5

So, I heard what he had to say: he wanted two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I said, “All right, I will hear it for you. I will now reverse the entire conversation from you wanting two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to a conversation that tells me that you have your two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and I will persuade myself of this so-called ‘invisible,’ and therefore unreal state. When I am self-persuaded of the reality of what the world would say to be unreal, it’s done, and it will not fail! I will do it now.” So, he hung up. I did not leave the ‘phone until I was self-persuaded that he had called me and told me of the good news that he had his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to launch this new venture in these special things that he is making.1103 ¶6

Well, he is here in the room tonight, and last night he gave me a letter setting forth the highlights of this entire state. I have given you the first three: it was incorporated in the month of March. The need was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. March and April went by; and in May he didn’t panic, but everyone simply turned him down. There was no such thing as a money market. Then he called me, and I’ve told you the exact conversation between the two of us. He is here in this City now; and in this statement he said: “Out of the blue, a broker called me and told me he heard of this new venture, he had investigated it, examined it, and he would like to underwrite it for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” which he agreed to. As he agreed to have this company underwrite it for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, friends then called and asked if they could buy a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of shares when he had shares to sell; and to that, he agreed. So, his need was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and he has raised between the call in May and this day three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.1103 ¶7

And they say because of the market, because of this, or because of that, it can’t be done. “All things are possible to God,” but man worships a false god. Man hasn’t the slightest concept who God is! “God is not a God afar off”; God is not even near, for nearness implies separation. And He is in the very midst of me. He is my own true identity! My own I-AM-ness,--that’s God! He actually, literally became as I am with all of my weaknesses―with all of my limitations, that I may be as He is without limitations, without weakness. So, He is not pretending that He is me. He is not pretending that He is you. He literally emptied Himself of His infinite wisdom and power, and assumed the restrictions of man; and then finally He awakes within man, and Man is the one that awakes within Him. God and man are One. That little line of demarcation between the two when man in his dream worships a false god is all removed, and then he knows who God really is.1103 ¶8

So, He’s dreaming now―dreaming your life. One day He will awake from the dream of life, and then you will know Who-You-Are! You will know that you are that central figure in Scripture called the Lord Jesus Christ, for the name will unfold itself within you, and the ultimate revelation of that name is “God the Father”! And because He is God the Father, you will see His son in your presence calling you, “Father.” You will know you are his father, and he will know that he is your son, and there will be no uncertainty as to this relationship between you and the Son of God, whose Son is your son.1103 ¶9

Now, until it happens, test it. We are invited to test Him. “Come, test yourself and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?” Does man realize it? If he is honest with himself, he will say, “No, I don’t realize it.” But nevertheless, he is invited to test it to see if he really is in him. Why? Because “all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” Well, if that is true and someone tells me that my own wonderful human imagination is God, and that what is imagined is as real as what my senses now dictate; that I can give to that unseen state a reality that will project itself upon the screen of space and become as real as anything now on the screen of space, and share that reality with others, can I do it? Well, I did it in this case. I did morning, noon and night; and I am not different from any person born of woman. I have found the True God! As we are told: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” Joshua answered himself: “I have chosen the Lord, I and my household.” Then Israel said, “We, too, will serve the Lord.” He said, “You are witnesses against yourselves. You will serve the Lord?” You cannot bow your knee before anything in this world when you have chosen the True God. The True God is within you, and that Being within you is your own wonderful human imagination.1103 ¶10

Now, give to your imaginal acts tones of reality, and see how they project themselves in your world and become real. But if they do it and it will become a fact, well, reason tells them, “No, it would have happened anyway.”1103 ¶11

A friend of mine, my dentist, bought his home seventeen years ago. It was his first home. He got it for twenty thousand dollars in the hills of Hollywood. It was a lovely home; it was once owned by Kaiser’s son. In fact, I think he built it. It was very, very big, nicely constructed; not a large area, but―oh, what a view! A beautiful view. He did improve it somewhat; he put in a swimming pool and made a few structural changes, but he didn’t spend in excess of ten thousand dollars in the seventeen years that he lived there in making certain changes. That meant he had a home of thirty thousand dollars.1103 ¶12

Then came the present moment that he wanted to unload it; but, like all people, they read the papers and make concepts of what a thing is valued at. He paid twenty and spent ten; but he lived there, and naturally he paid taxes and these things, but he didn’t have rent to pay. So, he began to put more and more value on the house, and he finally got it to seventy-five thousand dollars. That’s what he wanted for it.1103 ¶13

Then he spoke to me about it. I said: “I haven’t the slightest concept of the value of a home. The only home that I have called ‘my home’ was really my Mother’s home. I left home when I was seventeen and a half; it was the only home I’ve ever really felt was home, for I’ve only rented since then. I have rented apartments, rented homes; but they have never been my ‘home.’ So, I have no concept of the value of these homes. You are asking seventy-five thousand for it.”1103 ¶14

Well, for one solid year he gave it up to this party, to that party, to the other party; they all showed it, but no one came up with anything near seventy-five thousand. I said to him one day at the pool, “Do you really want to sell it?” He said, “Deep down in my heart, no. It has been a lovely home.” I said, “Do you sleep in it every night? I know you do physically, but do you sleep elsewhere in your imagination, and view this home from that assumed state? Well, if you had sold it, you couldn’t sleep in it,--you would have sold it. And if you sold it, you would be sleeping elsewhere; and because you had had the experience of this house, you would view it from the place that you now occupy, and see it as something you had formerly owned that is now owned by someone else. If tonight you sleep in a state other than this state and view this house from that state, you will sell it. But you must, first of all, want to sell it. You want to let it go.”1103 ¶15

Well, the husband wanted to sell it. I said, “Where would you go?” “Well, at our age we would not get another home. We’d move into an apartment. It would be cramped for us, but nevertheless we would move into an apartment.”1103 ¶16

So, they went down to see the La Brea apartments, and they saw one they liked on the tenth floor, and it was just the answer to their prayer, but they wouldn’t move unless they sold.1103 ¶17

I said, “Well, now, sleep there tonight. You’ve seen the place. You can’t take all of this furniture, but you are going to take the best pieces; you’ll make a lovely job of it, and you will sleep in that place. There are two bedrooms and two baths, and it is adequate for the two of you. You have no offspring. You can’t take your animals there. That, I do know. So, you will have to let go of the dogs, let go of the turtle, let go of the parrot,--let go of all these things that you have around you. You will find homes for them. But you must sleep there tonight and view this home from that place.”1103 ¶18

A total stranger, within the month,--no agent came,--a total stranger--he didn’t have to pay an agent--came and saw it, liked it, and paid him in cash to get out within thirty days. Now he is in the new apartment where I saw him and dined with him just about a month ago. He unloaded the house within one month at seventy-five thousand dollars in cash; and this is supposed to be a depressed market where you can’t find people with cash because all the things have gone down. He found it!1103 ¶19

You will find it first in your imagination. That’s where you find it. And then you clothe it with the tones of reality, and you clothe it with all the sensory vividness that you can give that image.1103 ¶20

“If the spectator could enter into these images in his imagination, approaching that image on the fiery chariot of his own contemplative thought, as if he made a friend and a companion of one of these images,…then he would rise from his grave,”―Well, this is a grave,--“then he would be happy in it.”1103 ¶21

So, in one month he sold it for the seventy-five thousand and moved out. He had to give up half of the things he had, because he couldn’t use them in the smaller area.1103 ¶22

Now in seventeen years you know, if you have a home or even an apartment, what you accumulate. We accumulate and accumulate like a pack rat! Well, that’s what he did. Now he has this lovely apartment, and he’s blissfully happy, so he tells me.1103 ¶23

So, my friend here tonight, he got his three hundred and fifty thousand, and Jim unloaded his home that he only paid twenty for, for seventy-five thousand. I don’t question people’s right to ask seventy-five thousand or a hundred thousand or a million. I only ask that they do it within the frame of the Golden Rule. Would you have it done unto you? Well, then, you can do it.1103 ¶24

When I start a business―I have no desire to start a business; but if I had a desire to start a business and it needed two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I wouldn’t think that strange. I would go into a bank, if I had confidence in what I could do, and try to raise the money. Well, he couldn’t raise it. But, “out of the blue,” a broker now underwrites the whole thing for two hundred and fifty thousand. And then friends want to buy; and they have investigated the nature of the business, and they want to buy another hundred thousand dollars’ worth of stock, which he agreed to. He has this three hundred and fifty thousand pledged.1103 ¶25

So, I say the Dreamer in man is God, and He is the dreamer,--not one with the “I” of waking. The “I” that wakes is confined to the senses, and he thinks this is the real world, and he rationalizes everything in the world; when, really, everything you see in the outer world was first only an image in the imagination. There isn’t a thing that is now true as fact that was not once only imagination―not a thing in the world. Every external so-called concrete fact has a spiritual cause, and not a so-called physical cause. The physical cause only seems; it is a delusion of the fading memory.1103 ¶26

Now today, even after a month, Jim now thinks that it didn’t happen because he slept in his apartment before he physically occupied it. He thinks it would have happened anyway. Well, he thinks, now this man―out of the blue―he heard of this thing―he wanted to get away from Bel Air,--he wanted to leave that environment and come to the hills of Hollywood all by himself because the place is all alone right up on the very top of these mountains. Now he justifies it, and he thinks that this thing would have happened anyway, “in spite of what Neville said.” And it’s only a month! Well, you give him six more months and he’ll be convinced beyond a doubt that what he did in imagination and what his wife did had no bearing whatsoever upon the sale.1103 ¶27

But that is the story told throughout the Bible. “Were there not ten of you, and only one has returned to say thanks?” Well, the other nine thought it would have happened anyway. No, not a thing could cure them of their leprosy; and one spoke and it became a fact. And he kept on going. It wasn’t done because he did it,--it would have happened anyway. That’s what the nine said, but one Samaritan came back and said, “Thank you.”1103 ¶28

That’s the whole vast world in which we live. We are so sound asleep, we could never believe in these irrational things of which I speak. “Why, that doesn’t make sense!”1103 ¶29

I could tell you unnumbered stories where I know the cause. I know the beginning―the conversation that took place, and the kind of a prayer that took place, where they didn’t beg anyone in the world for anything. You don’t turn to any god on the outside and appeal to him to help you. You turn to the inside, and you appropriate what you want. It is a subjective appropriation of the objective hope. What do I want in the object world? I hope for that. Well, I must now subjectively appropriate that state. I don’t beg for it. I simply appropriate it. If God is my own wonderful human imagination, to whom can I turn? I turn to God by, in my own imagination, appropriating this state. That is what I am told to do.1103 ¶30

“When you pray, believe that you have received, and you will.” And whoever says a thing, believing that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.1103 ¶31

Well, is He not speaking to me? Is He not telling me that He dwells within me? “I dwell in you, and you dwell in me, and we are one. And the things that I have done, you will do also.” Well, what have you done? I have found the Father. Who is he? He said, “I am the Father.” I am going to find that, too, for that is what I am told. “All the things that I have done, ye shall do, and even greater than these because I go and leave the world. I am returning to my Father, from whom I came; and so you will remain here until you reach the end of the journey.” Not at the end of history, but within history, you will know the truth of the things that I say, for you will know the Father; and when you know the Father, you’ll know yourself because you are the Father !1103 ¶32

Well, if He tells me that, do I believe it? Or, is He a liar? Well, I know from my own personal experience that it is all true. The whole thing is true. The truest story ever told is the story of the life of Jesus Christ; but it’s not as the world believes it. It hasn’t a thing to do with a man in time. It has all to do with that Supernatural Being in you, Who unfolds Himself within you as you. And, then, you know Who-You-Are. And you are the Lord Jesus Christ. Every child born of woman has that Being within that child. The true identity of the child is the Lord Jesus Christ, who is God the Father.1103 ¶33

But while we are here in the world of Caesar, exercise the talent that He gave us. He gave us Himself. That talent is to exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of others, on behalf of yourself.―Don’t neglect yourself; but certainly on behalf of others. Anytime you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you have literally mediated God to that “other.” Well, God was your own wonderful human imagination. And, so, when you began to imagine lovely things about another, and you became persuaded that the thing imagined is true, you have mediated God to another.1103 ¶34

And then he will come to you if he has any heart within him and say, “Thanks.” My friend said to me, “Thanks.” All I ask of him,--not one penny; I don’t want a nickel,--I would like to know that it happened. Now, it could have happened and he could have left this City and not have told me one word. But, no; he was big enough to write it out on his own paper, for he is the president of the corporation; and the paper bears his signature. He didn’t dictate it to a secretary; he wrote it in longhand and signed it himself. So, I have his own record giving the seven stages; the incorporation in March of 1970; with no funds in April, none in May; and the telephone call to me in Los Angeles from Chicago; and then in the month of July to raise “out of the blue”―that is his expression―“out of the blue” came this broker and underwrote the thing for two hundred and fifty thousand; and then friends asked,--he didn’t persuade the friends,--they asked to let them have a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the stock when he was selling stock in the new company.1103 ¶35

So, I tell you, the Dreamer-in-you, as Lewis Carroll put it in this lovely poem, “Through the Looking Glass,”―and what a marvelous name for it! It is truly the “looking glass.” She went right through it into a world just as real as this. You go right through the image and occupy the image. You can sit right here now and assume that you are elsewhere. Your body is here, but you are only occupying this body for a moment. You are all imagination, and you must be wherever you are in imagination. And the whole thing is done by a motion in mind. The motion on the outside is under compulsion. The causative motion is within the mind. So, I move from where I am physically to where I would like to be physically; and if I really do the motion―if I really succeed, how would I know? Well, then, look at the world. Would I see it from there? I should. Well, then, view the world from that assumption. I should see the whole vast world from that position in space if I have assumed that I am there.1103 ¶36

At this very moment I assume that I am now in New York City, standing at a certain spot in the City; close my eyes to the obvious, and then think of San Francisco. Well, I should see it three thousand miles to the west of me. I should see it away beyond where I am standing if I am standing, in my imagination, in New York City.1103 ¶37

Well, what would that do to me? That motion in mind would compel a physical motion to correspond to it; and you will awake to find the whole thing is changed. The whole structure of your world has changed, your plans have changed; and it will compel that physical journey. And you will walk across a bridge of incident―some series of events that you do not consciously plan. You will be compelled to make the journey. I speak from experience.1103 ¶38

Back in 1941, when my Mother died, I had no idea Mother was that sick, for I lived in America, and she with the rest of my family lived in Barbados. And, so, they never told me how sick Mother was. She had been sick for two years, and I didn’t know it. Always these lovely letters. First of all, the War was on―not our country, but Britain was at war beginning in September of 1939. That was a British possession, and so there was no contact with little Barbados, save a slow freight taking mail. And here, I didn’t realize it, and I had no plans to go to Barbados. I had planned to go to Maine for a vacation of a month. My wife and I even sent off and made the reservations to go to this place in Maine.1103 ¶39

Then one day in the month of August I received a letter from my brother, and he said, “Mother is dying. There is no possibility of saving her; and I know it’s difficult to get passage to come here; but if you can, she wants to see all of her children around that bed of hers before she dies. If you can possibly make it, try and make it.”1103 ¶40

We sailed the very next day on the Argentina. It sailed at midnight; and without getting passports or anything, we simply rushed aboard. We bought the ticket, and we got it. We were in such a hurry, I didn’t even get my return passage. I didn’t get any papers. Finally, I had to get them from the U.S. Consul in Barbados when I came back. Meanwhile, a friend of mine had sent on my passport and the things I left here. So, I had duplicates. So, when I came back, the man at the dock said to me, “You know, you could be arrested for this. You are not supposed to have two passports and two of everything, and here you have two of everything.”1103 ¶41

Well, here, I didn’t realize what I was doing, but this is what happened. The night that I brought out my book called, “Your Faith Is Your Fortune,” it was in the month of February, and it was snowing―about twelve to fourteen inches of snow on the ground. Naturally, I brought out, and I was very proud of, the book; and I expected the usual audience of about a thousand people. We used to have about a thousand people three times a week: Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights, in a little church off Times Square. Well, this night in question they couldn’t get there; and maybe a hundred people came, which was a good crowd for that sort of weather. But the book sale was simply nil, and I was a little bit disappointed in that.1103 ¶42

So, this night in question in the month of February I slept in Barbados, just as though I were there in the flesh. Here, I went to bed in New York City with the snow on the ground and still coming, and I assumed that I am in my Mother’s home; and here I am in Barbados with the warm tropical air in Mother’s home, and the whole thing was so natural to me. I went sound asleep in Barbados in my Mother’s home. When I woke the next morning the snow was higher, just the opposite of the state into which I fell when I went to sleep.1103 ¶43

Well, I didn’t know Mother was ill. And, then, came the month of August; and here I was under compulsion―I had to go. I had “gone and prepared the place.” He said, “I will go and prepare a place for you; and when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye shall be also.”1103 ¶44

Well, this is a conversation that takes place within us. The “I” in me, the Dreamer,--it goes and prepares a place, and it leaves the “outer” man wherever he was; and when the place is completely prepared, the Dreamer returns and picks up the garment of flesh where it had left it and takes it across a bridge of incidents which it will prepare―my rational mind could never have devised the means. It prepares it and compels me to make the physical journey and it had made all in imagination.1103 ¶45

So, I can tell you that I went to bed and prepared that place; and then, not knowing of my very sick Mother, my wife and I sent off to Maine and made reservations to spend a month in the State of Maine. That had to be canceled because I had already prepared the place to go out to Barbados.1103 ¶46

Anyone can do it. In fact, you’re invited to do it, for we are told: “Come, test me and see.” We are invited to test Him. Well, how would I test you, if you and I are one, and you are the Dreamer in me? Here, I assume to be the weaker one, and this is sound asleep. Well, the true reality of my Being is that Dreamer-in-me―the One Who is dreaming the dream of life. “Everything is possible to God,” and God is in man as man’s own wonderful human imagination.1103 ¶47

“Well, let us go and look at him. Well, he is sleeping now and he’s dreaming. And what do you suppose he is dreaming about?...Well, he is dreaming about you.” Well, that is a shock to Alice. “Dreaming about me? Nobody could know that!” “If he stopped dreaming about you,” said Tweedle-Dee, “where do you suppose you would be?”1103 ¶48

If you stopped dreaming of being poor, where do you suppose poverty would be? If you stopped dreaming about anything that you now think you are,--it could be poverty, it could be limitations of the flesh, limitation socially, limitations of anything; if you stopped dreaming that, where do you think that would be? It exists only in your imagination. If you stop dreaming about it, it has not life in itself, for life is in you, and you animate it and keep it alive.1103 ¶49

So, the poor man is poor only because he is dreaming, “I am poor.” And whatever I say I am, that I become, for His name is in me. And that’s the Guardian Angel that leads me from darkness to light, from bondage to freedom; and He is Jehovah Himself! And Jehovah’s name is the concentration of His very Self. If His name is in me, He is in me. Well, what’s His name? I AM. He has no other name.1103 ¶50

Well, then, He is the Father. That is the ultimate revelation of God-in-man. When He unveils Himself as God the Father, then His Son stands before you and calls you, “Father.” And you know who you are, because His son calls you, “Father.” And you know this wonderful relationship between yourself (the Father) and the son of God who now is your son. So, this is the great mystery as revealed in Scripture.1103 ¶51

So, here in this world, even though the papers will tell you, the TV will confirm it, and all the magazines will add to it, that a depression is on, and they are letting people out, and you can’t get a job, and you must take a cut in salary in order to hold your job―well, you listen to that, and you will simply confirm everything they suggest, for you are simply applying the same law. If you believe it, you are applying it. If you do not accept it, and will not dream that dream―don’t let them give you that kind of a dream; you hold onto a new kind of dream, a better dream; this Dreamer-in-you can do everything, and it does everything.1103 ¶52

“For by Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.” Yes: “I, even I am He.” That’s what we are told in the 32nd chapter of Deuteronomy.1103 ¶53

So, the One in you―the Dreamer―kills and makes alive. Don’t think for one moment that there is a God who makes alive and another being who kills. There’s only one Creator. There is only one Being that can create anything, and that Being is in you as your own wonderful human imagination.1103 ¶54

Now, the world, being a rational state, will tell you that that’s irrational, it isn’t sound, it doesn’t make sense. I’m not telling you it makes sense, but it proves itself in performance. And if there is evidence for a thing, what you think about it, or what somebody else thinks about it, doesn’t really matter. What does it matter tonight if my friend tells his friends in Chicago what he did or what he asked of me or what I did, and then what happened? They may never believe what happened or what I did. He does. That’s all that matters. They may go blindly on saying, “No, that would have happened anyway, Jerry.”1103 ¶55

It doesn’t make any difference what you know tell me, and what he said he did; this is a rational world; and so the broker saw a profit for himself. He, first of all, heard of it, he investigated it and approved of what he found, and now he wants to underwrite it. That’s a rational thing. Then friends of his, with money to invest―they, too, investigated; then finding what they had hoped to find, they want to put their money into something that they think is good and solid. Therefore, be rational about it. He knows tonight―he may forget tomorrow; but he knows tonight what we did, and he knows tonight between May and July he raised three hundred and fifty thousand dollars on an entirely new venture.1103 ¶56

I know from my own experience with my family what they have done. They started behind the 8-ball. Today, as head of all the big corporations, they are not paying very much. No; profits are down, and therefore dividend checks are down. My brother Victor, who does exactly what I am talking about―it’s all in his imagination―started behind the 8-ball; so this year he did a forty-million-dollar business, and so I got my dividend check. It was a twenty-per-cent dividend. How many companies are paying twenty per cent? He paid me twenty per cent on my stock; and all the other ones, they are going down and down and down, but I got a big check, twenty per cent. That’s unheard of, but we are a private company; therefore, we can pay what we want. It’s not public; every share of stock is owned by the family. So, my dividend check was twenty per cent of the value of my stock, because he didn’t read the papers, and he doesn’t have a TV set, and he’s not influenced by rumors. He can dream as much as anyone can dream.1103 ¶57

There is a man who is paid a huge salary to write in the newspapers to scare people to death. He writes headlines. That’s all that he does as a job, to scare you to death every morning, if you will buy the paper. Something good―some wonderful bit of news is buried in the last page or on some other page. But some horrible thing about someone you do not know―a big headline. They go all over the world to find an accident. Not satisfied with those they can find here, they go all over the world to find them; and then huge big headlines, and scare you. So, you pick it up and read it, and you start dreaming.1103 ¶58

Well, my brother didn’t do that. When they said that things are down and you can’t get this and you can’t get that, he doesn’t agree with that; he just simply has his own dreams. So, he ended the year and he could give me twenty per cent of my money.1103 ¶59

So, I say to everyone: it is entirely up to you, because if you know Who-You-Are, you cannot turn to another, if you know who you are.1103 ¶60

“Choose this day whom you will serve.” “I have chosen to serve the Lord,” said he. His name is Joshua. Well, “Joshua” is the Hebraic form of the Anglicized name “Jesus.” It’s the same thing,--the same meaning. It means “Jehovah-Saves.” So, “Joshua” and “Jesus” are identical in meaning. So, it is Jesus who is speaking: “I chose the Lord,” and he tells you: “I am the Lord.” “He who sees me sees the Father.” “I and the Father are one.”1103 ¶61

And, so, your imaginal acts are coming into your world. May I tell you? They are not receding into the past, as people think; and you will say, “It was just my imagination.” No, they are advancing into the future, and they will confront you. Well, when they confront you as a harvest, you do not even recognize your own harvest! You will say, “I don’t know this; I never did this.” Yes, you did. The whole vast world is simply the harvest of men who cannot stop imagining. You can’t stop it. That is life itself. So, morning, noon and night you are imagining; and morning, noon and night you are harvesting. So, you can plant good seed or evil seed. It is entirely up to you. You can plant seed that frightens you to death or seed that is so altogether lovely when it comes into the world.1103 ¶62

So, I would say to my friend Jerry: “You know how it worked; don’t forget it. And may it now grow in your mind’s eye to a huge, huge business.”1103 ¶63

We started with a few little pennies borrowed―borrowed money―back in 1922. My father didn’t have one red cent. What he did have that he valued more than a red cent,--he had ten children: nine sons and a daughter; and, to him, they were the most precious possession in his world. But he had to feed them, shelter them, and clothe them; and he had no money. So, on a little borrowed bit he started, but my brother Victor was the Dreamer. He was consciously dreaming. He knew exactly what he wanted. He picked out the building on the main street. It was owned under the full name of “[...] N. Roach & Company.” My family’s name would be J.N. Goddard & Sons, which would imply the family owned it.1103 ¶64

Two years later a stranger came in,--it was for sale,--and said, “Are you going to buy the building?” And Vic said, “With what?” He said, “Well, I have money. It’s in the bank, pays me nothing.” “But,” he said, “I’ve got no collateral.” “I’m not asking for any collateral.” He said, “Do you want the building?” Vic said, “I would love it, but I have no money and I have no collateral.” He said, “I will tell my lawyer and he will bid for me, because if they know I am bidding for it, they are going to bid it up.” And, so, the lawyer bid that day. He represented many clients; so they did not know which client he represented.1103 ¶65

When the sale was over, he―on the surface―was the owner, but we were the owner. All he got from us as collateral was my brother’s signature and my father’s signature. They paid back the money that he paid for the building in ten years at six per cent, reducing the equity every year by so much; so at the end of ten years it had been paid. It was reduced year after year after year, which we did. We kept our promise.1103 ¶66

When that man died, he left my brother, in cash, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, three homes, many personal possessions. He said, “You are my best friend. You advised me how to invest and what to do; and so I leave you now a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash, tax exempt,”―no taxes to pay on it.1103 ¶67

And from that little beginning, with borrowed capital, it grew and grew and grew and expanded from one island to another island to another island; it’s all over the islands now, and not one person outside of the immediate family owns one share in the business. And it is still growing, in spite of the depression. He doesn’t listen to any arguments about depressions and recessions and what-not. He is simply growing.1103 ¶68

I tell you, it’s entirely up to us if you know Who-You-Are. You and God are One. God literally became as you are, that you may be as God is. And to do that, He emptied Himself and took upon Himself the form of a slave, and this [indicating the body] is the form of the slave, and found Himself in the form of man, and became a billion, with all the weaknesses and limitations of man; but He has no limitations when He wakes; so when He wakes in you, you will have no restrictions, no limitations. But until He wakes, believe Him and exercise the talent that He gave you. It is Himself, which is your own imagination, and simply exercise it, and see how He wakes in your world. “Nothing is impossible to God,” and God is your own wonderful human imagination.1103 ¶69

So, He is dreaming now. Oh, yes, I know He’s dreaming―dreaming it all, but dreaming horrible dreams. What horrible dreams they are dreaming: getting even with this, and getting even with that. You can stop it now , regardless of what the world tells you, and start a new record―a new dream. Leave it alone, and start dreaming something entirely different.1103 ¶70

Well, how do you do it? What would it be like if I were the man I want to be? So, you start with wanting to be . You desire to be other than the man that you seem to be. Well, now, is it true that I could be? Well, if it were true, what would you see? And how would you see the world? And how would your friends see you? What would you say when you meet them, and what would they say if all the things that you now would like to be, you are? And where would you live if it were true? Would you still live in the limited state, or would you live in a more wonderful place, in a better state? Well, then, live there mentally . You say, “I have never been in such a place. I wouldn’t have the courage to go into that place.” Mentally sleep in it.1103 ¶71

I have told this to my friends time and again. In New York City we have a place called Tiffany’s, and we speak of “a Tiffany.” Well, that is the height for certain things. I am not speaking against Macy’s or Gimbel’s; they serve a purpose. But people will pass by Tiffany’s and go into Macy’s or Gimbel’s to buy a wedding present of, say, eight or a dozen glasses. It is sent off to the Bride-to-be in a Macy box, cost more than twelve lovely glasses from Tiffany that would be sent in a Tiffany box. I know that from experience.1103 ¶72

There are people who were born on the east side of New York who have never crossed the barrier; they are embarrassed to leave their little place and come as far as Fifth Avenue. Those born on the west side never come to Fifth Avenue. They were born, and they die, there. People live in Brooklyn. They were born in Brooklyn and they die in Brooklyn seventy or eighty years later and never see Manhattan. They are embarrassed to go out of their own little shell. If they will not go out physically, just imagine trying to go out mentally! They are embarrassed. They wouldn’t go into a Tiffany; they wouldn’t go into a smart shop. And I’ve always said you can buy better things in the better stores, and not at these inflated prices that people tell you. But, it takes some bold step in the mind to have you change your pattern of thinking, and therefore your pattern of living.1103 ¶73

Tonight, if you really would like to transcend the world in which you live, transcend it first in your imagination, and don’t ask how it’s going to happen. How will things move in your world to permit it to happen? They will move. But first, in your mind’s eye, be the person that you want to be, and walk as though you were; and in a way that no one knows, you will become that person.1103 ¶74

Well, soon or late, we become,--and we start to be and do our fixed beliefs―what we really believe that we are. Soon or late, we believe and we are and we do.1103 ¶75

Well, tonight, you want to be noble―I mean, a noble being―not one born to the purple, not one born by physical descent; I mean noble in spirit, noble in mind. As far as I am concerned, I accept no aristocracy of the flesh―only the aristocracy of the Spirit. I refuse to accept any aristocracy of the flesh. We are not race horses! They do that way. First of all, they are not bred that way―those who claim to be of the aristocratic world. They simply breed them within their own sphere. That’s not breeding them physically. And I do not accept the physical descent. I accept the spiritual descent.1103 ¶76

So, in your own mind’s eye, find Who-You-Are. Can you go higher than the Lord? You can’t go higher than the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is the true identity of every child born of woman. Let him know that he is that Being. He begins to dream nobly. If he really is the Lord Jesus Christ, he will not entertain any unlovely thought in this world. He will become incapable of entertaining any unlovely thought. So, if I tell you that you are, you may not believe it, but I know I am telling you the truth. So, when you sleep this night, sleep as if it were true, and daily walk in that assumption; and that assumption, though false at the moment, if you persist in it, it will harden into fact.1103 ¶77

In Peter’s first epistle we’ll tell that “God raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” “After you’ve suffered a little while — I was addressing you now — after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory will restore and establish and strengthen you.” The Bible is all about you. It is not about any being outside. So he raised Christ from the dead, but man is not aware of the fact that he is the Lord in Jesus Christ. And then, when I have passed by, equates my glory with himself — my glory is equal to I, God. God and glory are synonymous terms, that he raises you from the dead and gives glory — it gives you himself. That’s the purpose of the entire plan.1101 ¶1

And after you suffer a little while — do you think you suffer so long? But he tells us, “after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace who has called you to his eternal glory will restore, establish, and strengthen you.” Supposed to restore is to put back into an original state. You are the one who fell, and your whole vast world is yourself fragmented. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out.1101 ¶2

And for your faith and hope are in God, and he will raise you from the dead and give you glory — that is, he will give you himself. There is nothing but God in the world.1101 ¶3

I tried to tell you something — let’s try. I received a letter from someone who is present, and they say that they did not understand my answer. I am quite sure the gentleman who asked the question understood — he’s here tonight. I said, in the whole vast play of six thousand years is repetitive — things appear, they wax, they wane, they disappear. And without this story, which is the story of the Gospel, it would simply be the eternal hell.1101 ¶4

What would it matter if you accomplished everything in this world, and the aim was eternal death? This was buried in the play. It was a plan from the beginning — it was before that the world was.1101 ¶5

Then I told the gentleman who asked the question concerning Abraham: how do we take a plan, beginning with Abraham, bringing itself to the climax of what we call Jesus Christ? And then we take, second, I lay it straight over six thousand years, and then we pull it into a focus, which gives meaning to the entire plan, so that in twelve hundred and sixty days — Abraham, David, Jesus Christ, the story in the desert of the serpent — all come into focus on you. You experience the entire true story buried in that thing.1101 ¶6

So you are raised through a definite plan, for who is raised? For you were before that the world was. “I have accomplished the work thou gavest me to do. Our Father, return unto me the glory that was mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was.” I gave it up willingly. I volunteered to die, knowing that I could overcome death. But I — I think of myself, I’m speaking of Christ in you, for it is Christ in you that is the hope of glory, and glory is God.1101 ¶7

So we are now being brought — told us in the second chapter of Hebrews, speaking of God as bringing many sons to glory. Not all came down, as we are told in Scripture: he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. I mean the story of the two sons, the prodigal son, and the one that did not come out. He had no knowledge of his wealth, and he complained that now you’ve killed the fatted calf, and you placed the ring upon him, and put shoes on his feet, and he went — and who wasted his substance — and he said, yes, my son, your brother — he was dead, and he’s alive again, he was lost, and he’s found. “Thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” — but the son couldn’t kill even one little lamb. He had no consciousness of his infinite wealth.1101 ¶8

It takes this horror to make us aware that we are the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is God. So we come into this world of death, into this world of power. For everything — the ideals we live today that you realize — in its fullness fades, and then it vanishes, for you leave it behind and others spend it for you.1101 ¶9

We build monuments to ourselves, name cities after ourselves, name rivers, name mountains, name all things, and carve faces in mountains, thinking they’ll last forever. And all these are garments. The real being is spoken of as something other than self. The only being in this world is God.1101 ¶10

The only one that radiates is himself — is Jesus Christ. He radiates and reflects the glory of God, and bears the express image of his person. And Christ in you is the hope of glory — that Christ in you will be raised from the dead, not from a cemetery. You have never been placed in a cemetery; you were, in the beginning, placed in that Holy Sepulchre, which is your own wonderful skull — that’s where you’re buried. And one day you will be called from that grave.1101 ¶11

And we are told, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then the spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will raise you also — why? Because Christ is in me; the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in me, so shall he raise me also, because that identity — the Spirit doth dwell in me — my true identity is the Lord Jesus Christ.1101 ¶12

So the glory spoken of is not some curious thing on the outside — it is God. Infinite joy, infinite wisdom, infinite power is buried within you. For he who raised him dwells with him, and he’s raising his image, that he may reflect and radiate the invisible you. So when you’re told, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to try you, as though some strange thing happened; rejoice that you are sharing in the sufferings of Christ, that you may also rejoice when the glory of Christ is revealed.1101 ¶13

And so I say to you, from my own personal experience, that your true being is Jesus Christ. And who is Jesus Christ? The only God. And so am I, and so are you.1101 ¶14

So in the end, after a little something we think is so long, because we must say goodbye to those we love most in this world — whether it be my father, my mother, I have said goodbye to them. But I so dearly love them. I said goodbye to a niece, a nephew, through — so many of my friends — and so they departed. And those who love me must say goodbye to me too. And so this is something — a question about it.1101 ¶15

Aside from the physical things — oral, food — we also have other ways of suffering: bankruptcy yourself, the embarrassment that comes with bankruptcy, or being unemployed and still having all the obligations of life. All these things come to me, and these are the sufferings of Christ. What other Christ? Your own wonderful human imagination is Christ — that is the only God in the world. And within your own wonderful human imagination the whole vast world exists.1101 ¶16

So when Peter — it is very short, chapters, only five chapters — when he said that the prophets who prophesied of the sufferings that would come upon Christ, and they inquired as to what person or what time was indicated by this spiritual Christ within them, when they prophesied of these things, it was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, for the time had not yet come.1101 ¶17

They were simply a resource, an admiration, an entire wonderful play of horrors — yes, joy, and will, were woven — but so much. Then, when the time fully comes, and not before, it erupts — it — and the pattern unfolds in him, and we worship that pattern and call it Amen, and it’s the pattern — the pattern man — buried in every child born of woman. And when that pattern is brought into focus, it rises in the individual, and the individual experiences everything recorded in Scripture concerning Jesus Christ, and he doesn’t have to ask anyone in this world to interpret it for him.1101 ¶18

He still walks the earth, and — call him John, Mary, call him by any name — but he knows what happened to him, and he cannot deny the experience, and he knows these experiences could only happen to Jesus Christ, and he has experienced it, so he knows the reality of that statement in Colossians: it is Christ in you that is the hope of glory — for were he not in you, your life will be hopeless.1101 ¶19

But because he is buried in you, whatever is said in Scripture concerning Jesus Christ, you are going to experience, and you’re going to have the same denial bring new experiences. He comes unto his own, and his own receive him not. He will tell his own who he is, and they will reject it, because they know his physical background. And flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, so he’s speaking of a man that can inherit the kingdom of God, for it was that man that came down from the kingdom of God and did assume their weaknesses and the limitations of human faith, that he may overcome death.1101 ¶20

He didn’t retain it — he was going to die, he died — completely forgetting that he is the Son of God being raised now to God. For he brings many sons to glory, and glory and God are identical terms. So he’s bringing those that he selected in the beginning — not all came out, only what he chose did he bring out.1101 ¶21

And it was God who failed; it is God who is buried in your skull. And when he awakes, it’s you who awake. Then you will realize — were he not in you, he could not emerge from him, and no one can ascend into heaven but he who descended from heaven, this Son of man.1101 ¶22

So you’ll realize who it is when you wake, and you will know — not until that moment did you realize that you have been buried. Not for one moment did you entertain the thought that this was not a dream — this was all a dream and you didn’t know it. And the dreamer was buried in you all along, and the dreamer was God.1101 ¶23

His first name was Joseph, the dreamer. His name was changed from Joseph to Joshua, which means Jesus, and Jesus and Jehovah are identical in meaning — you’re aware — and Jesus has been called the Savior of the world. And so the dreamer, Joseph, was buried in man, and his name changed from Joseph to Joshua, which is Jesus.1101 ¶24

So when the dreamer awakes, it is God who awakens. And then God’s play is the gospel, so the gospel must unfold itself in the one in whom God awakes. So the first thing is resurrection — you awake. And then comes birth from above, for you are told, unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.1101 ¶25

Now you’re on your way back to the soul which you deliberately gave up to come down into this world of death. So it begins then with resurrection, quickly followed, in a matter of seconds, by your birth from above. And then comes the play.1101 ¶26

Now here is the promise made real: the child, a laughing thing, come to discover, a thousand years later, if you read the play, and it would be a repetitive display, over and over, with no escape. And suddenly now the son is going to appear, and you escape. The son of prayer, and you know exactly who he is, yet between that son of hearing and the child’s birth is a thousand years, if you read the story correctly, yet in your own experience it’s only a matter of months between the appearance of the son and the birth of the child — exactly one hundred and thirty-nine days.1101 ¶27

And then here is a story buried in the book concerning the ascent and the escape of Israel from Egypt, and it’s all tied into a serpent. Who would have thought, for one moment, that that is literally true, and that you experience it? And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, and then you, like a fiery serpent, are sent into heaven, and here is the being that you really are — that fiery power, infinite power, infinite wisdom, and it’s God.1101 ¶28

So if you are here tonight who wrote the letter — I hope, my friend who asked me, because that was Stan who asked it — what is the story concerning Abraham tied into this? When I thought I made it clear, but evidently I didn’t. I hope I did answer him, because he asked it. But the story begins with Abraham, and people take it as a physical story — it’s not a physical story, the drama is unfolding in man.1101 ¶29

So you come into this world and assume death. These bodies die — you seem so strong, and then they wax, but there comes that turning point, and then they wane, and then they sag, and then they’re gone. Everything dies — even the stars are melting — so everything in this universe is dying, but there’s something buried in it that cannot die. It is God.1101 ¶30

And when I read the Monday morning papers after the services on Sunday, I stand against these divines who are talking, and speaking of the story of Jesus Christ as some little secular history that took place two thousand years ago, has nothing to do with any man who walked the face of this earth two thousand years ago. It is all about eternal life, and it’s Christ in man, in humanity. But he comes one by one — the awakening in each — and together it forms the one man, and that one man is God.1101 ¶31

As Blake said, it’s so beautiful: “Thou art a man, God is no more, thine own humanity learn to adore.” If you humble yourself, you humble me, because God is man. God actually became humanity — every child, whether the child be this one or not, became every child.1101 ¶32

And he tells us it’s only a little while that we can suffer, but we, suffering, think it’s so long. How long? All those who love — how long? Are there any — there are promises that when the chief Shepherd is manifested — the chief Shepherd, for who is the chief Shepherd? Is he not God? “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” And when the chief Shepherd is manifested, then you will see his glory, for the shepherd is God, and the son glorifies the father. You will see the son, and then you will know who you are.1101 ¶33

And I can’t tell anyone the thrill that comes to you when memory is restored, and all of a sudden your memory returns, and you have been sleeping for these thousands of years, dreaming this dream of life. But then you have awakened — Shelley tells it so beautifully in that statement: “He has awakened from the dream of life. ’Tis we who lost in stormy visions keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.”1101 ¶34

But we are the ones spoken of in Scriptures when they use the word Jesus Christ. You are Jesus Christ, but you are sleeping. And I know, from my own experience, you would not be here — those who are faithful in coming here — for you are not at the end.1101 ¶35

I’m not saying you will not suffer between now and then. You are civilized, and you have friends and relatives that you love dear, and you will have the experience of saying goodbye to those without their living, and they will have the experience of saying goodbye to you. It’s all part of the plan. You may suffer with Christ for just a little while.1101 ¶36

“I am the God of all grace.” Grace means the gift of God to man, unearned, unmerited, which is the gift of himself. He raises us from sonship to fatherhood — he raises all sons to glory, but if he raises them to glory, and glory is God, he raises you to God the Father.1101 ¶37

And who, sitting here tonight — who in the world, I’m speaking of everyone in the world — would actually have thought, for one moment, without revelation, that they are the father of the Son of God? They can’t even bring themselves to believe that they are the Son of God, let alone being the father of the Son of God. Now I tell you, you are destined to have the experience of being God the Father, and his son calling you Father, and you will know it.1101 ¶38

This is not a play anymore — suddenly reality returns. This is the plan. And then, all of a sudden, reality, in the midst of it all, returns, and that was there all along, and no one saw it.1101 ¶39

So when we read, in the first Epistle, the first chapter of Peter, that the prophets who prophesied of the suffering — they inquired as to what person or what time was meant, when it was indicated concerning the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glory — and it was revealed to them, it’s not about you — about others in this world, it’s not about the prophets who recorded it, it’s all about those who will come at the fullness of time. And you are the one spoken of in Scripture.1101 ¶40

So the glory — well, what man in this world can even conceive of it? You speak of the glory of a son. There is nothing that you can use, nor image in the world, that you could use to radiate this glory, or to describe the glory.1101 ¶41

But you’re a man, you’re a man — your body I cannot describe. I can describe the face, I can describe the hands and the voice, and I can’t describe the body — it’s radiant, and it’s all power, and it’s always, and it’s all love. It’s all infinite love. “The Human Form Divine” is all love.1101 ¶42

And how can I describe love as a form and get exactly what I mean, because when you stand in the presence of God — it is infinite love, and you can’t think of anything but now — it is resonance, and you are at ease, for the meaning embraces you, and you fuse, and you become one. The very faith that you saw becomes your food — you are fed indeed. And for purposes of your own you can assume any form — anything — thank you — but different, all aware of that thing.1101 ¶43

So, in the end, there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, and you are that one.1101 ¶44

And may I tell you what is going to happen to you, brother — you like it or not, and you can’t hate it, it’s a gift — you are being restored. “He will restore and establish and strengthen you” — after you have suffered a little while — leave that in the fifth chapter of Peter, I think it’s the tenth verse: “after you suffer a little while, the God of all grace” — that’s the one — “who will give you his glory,” which is giving you himself.1101 ¶45

So no matter what the suffering of anyone in this world today, it is nothing compared to the glory that is to be revealed in us. So when Paul wrote that marvelous letter to the Romans: “yet I consider the sufferings of this present time not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” And he ends it on that fabulous note, that no power in the world can separate us from the love of God, for God is now, and you are incorporated into the body of love — no power in the world can separate you from it.1101 ¶46

So do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to try you, as though some strange thing were happening. It will come — I went through it — and you think you’re going insane, and if you voice what has happened to you, those around you will be concerned, because they will think you’re going insane. But may I tell you, you are not going insane — these things happen.1101 ¶47

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, that entire plan comes together into focus, and you are the central character, and the whole thing erupts within you — for, were it not in you, it could not erupt. If God was not now immersed and buried in you, he could not unfold himself, and he now unfolds himself in that man.1101 ¶48

And if he did, it’s an awakening in you as well — you don’t see another one awakening, it’s you, you’re awake. And you’re exactly where you are, you’re in your skull, but you also know what it is — you know it is a tomb. You’re in no doubt in your mind as to what it is, it’s a tomb. There’s no doubt as to the fact it is sealed.1101 ¶49

But you also have an innate wisdom as to how to get out, and you know you can push — something’s going to roll away — and you do, you push, something rolls away, and you come out, just like a child being born.1101 ¶50

And then the witnesses are there, as told us in Genesis — that’s where Abraham comes in — there were three who suddenly appeared; he did not see them approaching from without, there suddenly appeared a messenger bringing the news of birth. And Abraham believed, and it was counted unto him for righteousness — therefore righteousness is equated with faith.1101 ¶51

He had the faith to believe that nothing was too hard for God, so he believed, and it was counted to him for righteousness, while the whole wide world takes the word righteous and uses it — strange concepts of it — some holy concept has nothing to do with that.1101 ¶52

Can you believe the most incredible story in the world, that you are going to have a child? Now go beyond that — if there is a more incredible thing, that you’re going to be born out of your own self and approve of your birth — it’s going to be a child, out in swaddling clothes. Can you believe that?1101 ¶53

Well, that’s the story told: Abraham believed it, and there were three witnesses sent from God. And the three do come, and here they are right before you, and the child is before you conceived, and you are now spirited.1101 ¶54

And so, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in him, then he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will raise you also — why? Because Christ Jesus, that pattern man, is in you — he will raise that pattern. You are the spirit of God, and you will experience that pattern, for you are the spirit of God.1101 ¶55

For if the spirit of him who raised Christ Jesus from the dead dwelled in him — well, who raised him? The spirit of God. And the spirit of God is God, and he dwells in you. May I tell you, the word spirit and the word wind are one, in Hebrew and in Greek, and it is the wind — you have this unearthly will, a fantastic wind, and it’s the spirit of God who actually is at work himself, because you are God.1101 ¶56

But it comes at the appointed hour — everything comes on time. At that appointed hour he waits, and he is buried in you.1101 ¶57

But without the story, what on earth would anything in this world matter? What would it matter if you became president of this country, this fabulous land, in the next election? That’s your gift, that is it. What would it matter if you owned a billion, or billions, and I thought death is all over — wouldn’t that be horrible? So everything in the world — but it isn’t true. You are an immortal being.1101 ¶58

God actually became humanity, and there is a very real demand for a divine presence, and he will awake in the individual — that’s how personal it is. Not awake in humanity collectively, but individually, as we are told in the fifteenth chapter of the book of First Corinthians: we are called, each in order, one by one, as we’re told in Isaiah, “I will call you one by one.”1101 ¶59

But first I try — in the furnaces of affliction I try, for my own sake I do it, for my own sake, for my name shall not be contained, my glory I will not give to another. For the glory — his glory is himself — he cannot give himself to another, he has to make you himself, which is God the Father, for you are his son. Or, he’s going to bring all these sons to glory, which means bring the son to himself, to the level of being God the Father.1101 ¶60

So each son is being raised from the level of being the Son of God to the level of being God the Father, and he can’t do it and give it to another. And so you go through the furnaces of affliction, because you cannot give his glory — which is himself — to another.1101 ¶61

Read it carefully: “I will make my glory pass before thee, and I will cover thee” — and when I have passed by, well, the eye is going — so he gives you himself, and that self is God the Father. And then, when you have that experience, and you take off this garment — you take it off for the last time.1101 ¶62

So do not despair of the millions who have gone without having had the experience — they’re going to have it. For everyone who departs this world does not go into any cemetery — they don’t go any place, they are simply restored. When that little breath departs, they are restored, by what was performed here — that form, they are restored into that form, young, and promising, missing in a world just like this. The world is restored, and they continue until this pattern unfolds within them.1101 ¶63

If one could only catch himself in the mood of a dream and see what he’s doing, to realize what it is. But I want to encourage those who are having, at the moment, a few difficult moments because of a vision — but do not share it, don’t tell anyone, just keep it to yourself. It’s only a little while. He’s priority, or the other left — and then suddenly it happens, and then you are at peace.1101 ¶64

And you’re told to rejoice that you share in the sufferings of Christ, that you also may rejoice in the glory that is to be revealed, and it’s revealed in you.1101 ¶65

Or — you aren’t going to see him coming from without, as all the great evangelists talk about, as if they’re waiting for him to come on the mountainside — they wouldn’t recognize him, because whenever he comes he is denied. Whenever he comes into the world he’s denied, because he does not belong to this world.1101 ¶66

They know the background, the physical background, of every person — you’re all numbers now. Exactly — your father had a number, your mother had a number, and so you’re only a number in the eyes of our country — everybody has a number. And so they know your number, so you can’t come telling them that you came down from heaven — they know you came out of your mother’s womb, and that he has a number, so they have that, we call it.1101 ¶67

And so, when Christ appears in man, he has to be denied. He comes to his own, and his own receives him not, and he tells the world, “I am not of this world” — and I know very well he is of this world, because they do not seek Christ, they only see the garment that he wears.1101 ¶68

And, as Blake said — and he called the one who is so blind, he calls him Satan. He said, “O Satan, thou art but a dunce, and canst not tell the garment from the man.”1101 ¶69

Well, that’s the whole gospel — Satan, the devil, who cannot tell the garment that God wears from him who wears it — they cannot see him, and so they only see the garment that he wears, and that garment is time, it has a number. They know his physical parents, his whole ancestry, and he denies that these are his fathers — “if you saw me, you would see my father also, for I and my father are one.”1101 ¶70

So you do not know me, because you do not know my father, so you will put me out of the synagogues, excommunicate me, and then you will kill me, and think you’re doing God a service.1101 ¶71

And that is the entire world in which we live — condemning you from prayer to the ends of time, because it happened in you, for their whole concept of God is false. The whole thing is foreign.1101 ¶72

I can only reach a few, but you can reach a few, and those you reach — Paul asked the question, “Who is Apollos, and who is Paul?” And he answers it: servants, to whom you believed, as God assigned to each.1101 ¶73

So the garment that you wear, this thing called Neville — this was a sign, a certain part to play — therefore, who is Neville? A servant through whom you believe, as God assigned it to him. So who is Apollos, who is Paul? Servants through whom you believe.1101 ¶74

The way he says — all right, there will be — that he will call. No one comes unto me except my Father calls him, and not all will believe. A few, at the very end, will drop out, as told you in the sixth chapter of John, when he said very hard things to believe, what he is talking about — they called it a hard saying.1101 ¶75

And then one said, who can be listening, who can accept it, for these are hard things? And then they departed, never to walk with him again, till he turned to Peter, and he said to Peter, “Wilt thou also go away?” And Peter answered, “To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.”1101 ¶76

Oh yes, they’re difficult to accept, but if these are the realities, then to whom will we go? And the few walk with him to the end, but even those who walked with him to the end denied him, up to the very end, if it meant the loss of their physical little body. So they say, I do not know him, and three times he denied him, and then the cock crowed.1101 ¶77

But the drama is forever, and this vast best story of six thousand years comes into focus in just a matter of hours, and begins rapidly to unfold within you, and then you know who you are. But I am telling you, from experience, you are the Lord Jesus Christ — there is nothing in the world but Jesus Christ.1101 ¶78

So, in the end, when he was transfigured before them, they saw Moses and Elijah and Jesus, and when their eyes were opened, they saw Jesus only — for this, nothing but Jesus. He didn’t come to abolish the law of Moses, or the prophecy of Elijah — he came to fulfill them, and having fulfilled both the law and the prophets, there is Jesus only.1101 ¶79

So, in the end, there is only Jesus, and you will wake one day to know that you are here — for everything said of him you are going to experience. And then you’ll walk the earth, and you will tell it, to the best of your ability, to those who will accept, and those who are rejected.1101 ¶80

But the little karma that you will make — no effort to have it leave a footprint on earth, for everything vanishes but him. For the little name you wear now, that will vanish, because your real name is Jesus Christ, as your true identity. You are the Lord God Jesus Christ.1101 ¶81

Now let us go into the silence.1101 ¶82

The word translated “dog” is a euphemism for homosexuals. When he said, “the dogs surround me,” yet the dog is a symbol of faith. In Hebrew it’s Caleb. The only companion that could walk across into the promised land was Joshua — Moses could not go — and yet Caleb followed and went as well. And Caleb clearly means dog, yet the word Kadesh, by definition, means a male harlot in the service of the temple, because the priesthoods of the past, like the priesthoods of today, hiding under these morals — many of them are homosexual.1101 ¶83

Thank you. Thank you. We have but two left tonight and Monday. So I thought this one must be important to all of us to gather the pieces together and try to explain what I have tried over the years, really, ever since it happened to me.1099 ¶1

No background to a man’s thinking is complete which does not contain the story the Bible tells. But have we told the story as the Bible tells it? No, we have not. It has not been clearly stated at all. We have merged the messenger in his message and then made an idol of the messenger. And now we stick him on the wall and cross ourselves for luck. That was the very last thing that was intended when the messenger came. So he sends another messenger. And I hope that no one will stick him on the wall and cross themselves for luck. For this story is eternal. Has nothing to do with a man. That man is simply a messenger telling the eternal story.1099 ¶2

Now here none of us should boast, for as we are told, what have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, then why do you boast as if it were not a gift? We’ll read that in the first Corinthians, the 4th chapter.1099 ¶3

Now we will turn to Jeremiah, the 9th chapter. “Let not the wise man rejoice or glory in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man glory in his might. Let not the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, for I am the Lord.” You’ll read that in the 9th chapter, the 23rd and 24th verses of Jeremiah.1099 ¶4

The word Jeremiah means Jehovah will rise. If you have anything to glory about, glory in the fact that you understand and you know the Lord. And the Lord is your own wonderful I Amness. Your sense of awareness. When you say I am, that is God. That is the Lord. Don’t look out to any individual man in this world. Although he could be the messenger sent, he is not the Lord. The Lord resides in you as your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. So let him who rejoices rejoice in this, that he understands and knows me, for I am the Lord. Do you really believe that?1099 ¶5

If you believe that, then you can take the story and apply the whole thing to yourself. Take this thing off completely, this little garment, and believe that all things are possible to God. And having understood and found him as your own wonderful human imagination, then give him the depths that he possesses on the surface of your being. All right? You can’t do it. You’re not supposed to do it. But you can have faith in your own being, which is your own wonderful human imagination, and believe that an imaginal act is at that moment a fact. All right? That’s a vision.1099 ¶6

Now the vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens. It will flower. If it be long, wait, for it is sure, and it will not be late.1099 ¶7

You simply imagine the act by boldly assuming that you are already the one that you would be. If you dare to assume it, well, then you would persist in that assumption. If you call my name tonight and you call it a month from now, I would respond, because I have assumed that I am named Neville. Now there are millions of Nevilles possibly in the world, but I am still Neville. So if you call Neville, there may be in the same room others who have — well, then we can single out the one you intended. But nevertheless, I am going to respond. If someone pages me in a lobby and they only use the word Neville, and there may be others Neville, but I will simply hold my hand to the page boy or whoever he is and try to identify myself as Neville.1099 ¶8

Well, now here in this world of ours, do you really believe that your own wonderful human imagination is God? If you do, you will not turn to anyone in this world on the outside. Not one thing in the world is going to lead you. No progress of civilization. Man does not advance by any external march of things. When you go back to the awakening of the story in a man, they were digging the earth with a hoe using their hands. So the progress of man now to a plow, and man in those days — he took, if he had a donkey, if he could afford it, he rode on a donkey, or he had to walk. Today we fly. But there is no advance in the external march of things for man. For when it happened in a man, he simply tried to tell of an entirely different age. Something that was entirely different, and he called it the kingdom of heaven. And he tells us the kingdom of heaven is within you. It’s all within you. So seek not things on the outside, as you see them marching forward, getting seemingly better and better and better. Better ways of killing. Instead of killing a few, now we can kill millions. So we have progressed. We call that the progress of civilization.1099 ¶9

That is not what the messenger came to tell. He came to tell of an entirely different world. A world where you are eternal. A world where you are God when you awake from this dream of life.1099 ¶10

Now a letter came this week. In fact she is here tonight. She said, “I found you” — just the two of us alone — “and you were trying to show me, in fact, you did succeed in showing me how to get in and out of your own skull. It was so easy for you to move in and out of your skull.” And then you took my hand and placed it on the skull, and the hand, as I felt that skull, it felt and looked like the skull of a lamb. It was pliable, but it was a lamb’s skull. And in and out you went with such ease, no effort whatsoever. And then I wondered, where is Bill? Bill being my wife. And I thought to myself, she should be here. And I inquired about her. And I said to her, “Bill is fine.” And she said in her letter to me, “I knew that you meant it.” And then I turned to her and said to her, “Remember, try to remember that your only concern is the skull. Don’t be concerned about Bill, about anyone in this world. Your only concern is the skull. That is the secret of it all. That’s the kingdom of heaven within you. So try to find out how you get in and out with the greatest of ease.” Then she felt, that she — as she was about to awake — that I had at some time gone in and out of that lamb’s skull with similar ease. And then she said, “I awoke.”1099 ¶11

Now you know the story of the lamb in scripture. The word first appears in Genesis, in the 22nd chapter, when he is called upon to sacrifice his son. And Isaac turned to his father and said, “Father,” and Abraham answered, “Here am I.” He said, “Father, I see the fire and I see the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham replied, “The Lord will provide himself the lamb.” Then we find the lamb symbol used all through the New Testament, when the messenger comes and John — meaning now John the Baptist — he said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world.” When he passed by and again he replied, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Then Andrew, having heard it, he followed him. And you know the story, he turned and asked, “What do you want?” And he answered, “Where do you live?” Said, “Come and see.” And he followed him. In the very last book, the very last chapter of Revelation, we speak of the lamb.1099 ¶12

Truth is literal. The words employed may be figurative. Not always, but in this case it is figurative. Yet she, in feeling the head of the lamb, the pliable head that I wore, she felt the lamb, the symbol of the risen Lord, that which was sacrificed. She saw correctly. She saw exactly what she should have seen.1099 ¶13

It’s all within one’s own wonderful skull. And the lamb is simply the symbol of he that was sacrificed. Who is sacrificed? A man? No. The universal power of God. The cosmic Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And it is buried in every child born of woman.1099 ¶14

To single it out and put it as a man and call it by any name, you’re simply making an idol, in violation of the second commandment. Make no graven image unto me. Yet there are tens and tens of millions of images of the one they call the Christ. Make no graven image unto me.1099 ¶15

Yes, I yield all blessing to the name of the one who took these great truths and gave them current coin. Current, I would say, currency. No one understood it until the messenger came. No one understood the great adumbration, the foreshadowing of his plan. Then he sends — when the time was right — he sends a messenger to experience it, that he could speak from experience. So he comes and he experiences the scripture. The scripture is the Old Testament. There was no other scripture. And he completely fulfilled the Old Testament. And then he told — who did he tell? He told those in the synagogue. So in the synagogue they passed him a book, the 61st chapter of Isaiah. He opened to that chapter and he said, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me.” He said, “This scripture has been fulfilled this day.” And then, having read just one verse and a half of the second verse, he closed the book and returned it to the attendant, and all eyes were glued upon him. But then within a matter of moments they began to stone him, because now he is bringing something entirely different to the world. They were looking for a man, and in a man they knew so well. Knew his father, his mother, his brothers, his sisters, knew his whole background. And here now he is telling them what is happening within him, and they can’t take it. So they rejected him.1099 ¶16

And then those who came to organize the story of the fulfillment of God’s plan of salvation turned around and merged the messenger in his message and made an idol of him. There is no one on the outside to whom you should bow. No one. For the God of whom I speak, the God of whom the scripture speaks, is your own wonderful I Amness. It is his name forever and forever. So whenever they ask you his name, don’t say Jesus. Don’t say God. Don’t say the Lord. His name forever is I Am. So when you go unto the people of Israel and they say, “Who sent you?” Just say, “I Am has sent me unto you.” This is his name forever, and by this name he shall be known throughout all generations.1099 ¶17

So every child born a woman is first aware that he is before he is aware of being anything in this world. Don’t take away from him that awareness of being — that is the creative power of his own being — and then anchor it on the outside and point to some being hanging on a cross on the wall. So for hundreds of years, man has gone astray from the truth. They’ve left the true God and they’ve made an idol and worship a false god.1099 ¶18

Then he sends another, and he will send another, to actually explain his plan of redemption to his sons that are scattered.1099 ¶19

Now I have brought one message which is all in scripture, but it’s not in any current book or any ancient book that I have ever read, and that is the story of David. That is the message that I have been sent to tell. Sent to tell it only because in being sent I did not know what it was. I was sent to tell until I experienced it. And having experienced it, that the son of God, which is the resultant state of a man’s journey throughout this dream of life, stands before him personified. But now I must not worship David. He is the resultant state of the individual’s journey through this horrible dream of life. But when he stands before you, there is no doubt in your mind as to who he is and the relationship between yourself and what you’re looking at. And there’s no doubt in his mind as to what he is looking at.1099 ¶20

Now, who is he? We are told in scripture, “I made him a witness to the people.” Now, let us go into the first chapter of Revelation, the fifth verse, speaking now of Jesus Christ: “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, the ruler of all kings of earth.” Now we go to the 55th chapter of Isaiah: “My steadfast, sure love for David. I have made him a witness to the people.” Now we go to the 89th Psalm, speaking now of David: “I have made him the firstborn, the ruler of all of the kings of earth.”1099 ¶21

He comes only now to fulfill scripture. And the only scripture is the Old Testament. And we are told in the 30th chapter of Proverbs, every word of God proves true. Do not add to his words, lest you be called a liar. Do not add one word or in any way modify his word, lest you be called a liar. Read it in the 30th chapter of Proverbs. Well, if it cannot be added to, and the promise is made to David — “I have made him a witness to the peoples. I have made him the firstborn of the dead. I have made him the ruler of all the kings of earth.” And now all this is now stated in the New Testament, given to the messenger. And then the messenger is ballooned up to be worshiped.1099 ¶22

No. The word Jesus, which means Jehovah in everyone — when the story really unfolds, he is the Lord Jesus. He doesn’t change his identity. He still remains Mary, Jan, Stan, whatever name you bear. But the story itself unfolds in the Lord. And the Lord is the Lord Jehovah, which means Jesus.1099 ¶23

So he is now bearing witness to the truth of God’s word, which is in the Old Testament. So he is a witness to the peoples. And then they take the witness, who is the messenger, and merge him with the message. Bury him in his own message and then personify it. Cut it out of wood and make an image out of it in defiance of the second commandment. Make no graven image unto me. So make no graven image. How are you going to see your own wonderful human imagination? You will see it in action if today you change your attitude towards life. A change is going to take place in your world. You will see the results of this change of activity in you. But the one who caused the change, you aren’t going to see him, but you will see him outfitted in the result.1099 ¶24

So no one has ever seen God. Only the Son sees him. Only the personification of that resultant state, having gone to the very end and awakened within yourself, taking all of these shadows and giving life to them and giving a true pattern, the real pattern. And then he comes before you and he stands before you and he calls you father, in fulfillment of the 89th Psalm. “I have found David, and he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.’” For he stands right before you. But don’t now personify him. Look upon him as a resultant state. But man has taken all the characters of scripture and treated them as persons. They’re not persons. They’re personifications. And he’s taken the gross — first sense that conveyed the instruction — for the instruction. That is not it. Don’t take any of these persons — they are not persons. They are simply personifications of the eternal states of God’s plan of redemption.1099 ¶25

So the reality is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. That is the Jehovah of scripture. That is the Jesus of the New Testament. And so, if you’re going to boast, if you’re going to in any way remember these things of the 9th chapter of Jeremiah: let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, for I am the Lord. If you really understood that and believed it, you could not turn to any other being in the world. And the day will come you’ll believe it, and you rather drop than turn to anything you cannot. It’s entirely within you.1099 ¶26

So I could say to my friend quite innocently and truly, let not your concern be about Bill. She’s fine. She’s going through the furnaces, as you have and must. All of us must pass through the furnaces. But as Paul said, “I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be established and to be revealed in us.” And the glory is God himself. When God unveils himself within us, and he unveiled himself only when his son, which is the resultant state, appears to reveal us as the one we’ve been seeking. So you find what you’ve been seeking when the resultant state stands before you, personified, and that is power and wisdom personified, but your own power and wisdom, that glorious being called David. David, in the true literal sense of the word, is the son of God, and you are his father.1099 ¶27

Now, I’m telling you that from my own experience. But do not think, because I’m the first one to tell it, that you’re going to merge me, the messenger, in my message, and then stick me on the wall. No, don’t do it. I am no more than you are. We are all one. Let no one brag.1099 ¶28

Today, there are many people who are bragging their scholarship, of their position in the world, of their descent. I have some friend back east. She called me from New York two days ago. Why on earth she called me? Well, here it is. She feels so for these people who can only think in terms of an extra $25. Why? She had to tell me that she just received the check from the government where she had overpaid her taxes in 1971, and they refunded 10,500. She gloated. She gloried in that. And yet I rather have the company of someone tending bar or serving the drinks than this lady’s company, because I cannot talk one thing with her. I can’t discuss anything concerning the realities of life.1099 ¶29

All she can think of, she came down from the Adamses. She is a direct descendant of our president. We had two in the presidency, and she’s a direct descendant. So here are all these old portraits on the living room — picture, or living room walls. That’s her only claim. She is a descendant of the Adams. So she named her third son Adams. And one day, innocently, I called him Adam, and she corrected me. She said, “No, Neville, not Adam. Adams.” Well, how could Adams be greater than Adam? When you go back into genealogy, if you take it in a literal sense, as given us in the book of Luke, and there comes now Seth, the son of Adam, who was the son of God. Now she corrects me: “No, don’t call my son Adam. He is not a Jew. He is Adams.” And so what can you do with a person like that? She has to call me long distance to tell me she got 10,500 back from an overpayment in 1971. Who cares? She didn’t send me a check. I didn’t notice any letter coming, bringing me a part of that 10,500. But she has to let me know. So she boasts of these things.1099 ¶30

And yet the background behind it all inherited from her husband, who was a descendant of one of the bishops of the Episcopal Church of New York State. And when he died, he could leave an estate, the bishop, the old bishop, of $11 million. Now that’s really serving the people. He was a shepherd, all right — going out to fleece the sheep. But that’s spoken of in Ezekiel. You should read the Bible. He speaks to these false shepherds who take his sheep and then they fatten themselves and their sheep go hungry. So he leaves $11 million in the days when there were no taxes, no income tax, and it simply piled and piled. So the grandson got it, and she in turn got that much from the grandson when she divorced him after 21 years, only ran into millions, because in the meanwhile it grew and grew and grew.1099 ¶31

So let him who glories glory only in this, that he understands and knows me, for I am the Lord. There is no other closing within a matter of days. I do hope you will not forget it. But it takes reiteration, reiteration over and over and over, because so many will come claiming all kinds of things.1099 ¶32

Many will come saying, “I’ve just heard of the most marvelous being. He is Jesus the Christ.” Yes, he is Christ. Come, going to hear him. They’ll come from all over the country to hear one who is claiming he is Jesus the Christ. And there is no man outside of that resultant state, which is only seen in spirit, that is the personification of the power and the wisdom of God. And his name is David. That is the Christ. But you will never know him until the last moment, when he reveals you as his father. And his father is the Lord. For as he said in the second Psalm, “And the Lord said unto me, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.”1099 ¶33

Now that had to be fulfilled, for every word of God proves true. Is that true? Well, now wait — I am telling you it is true. I am speaking from experience. It has happened to me, and I am not unique — unique only in the sense that we all are — but I do not differ from any child born a woman. Everyone is going to have that experience until the story as told in the New Testament repeats itself in us individually. Then that cosmic Christ buried in us remains in his grave. The grave being that skull, the skull of the lamb. And the day will come you will know how to get in and out of it just with such ease, no effort whatsoever to get in and out. And it will be pliable, just as she said: “I put my hand upon your skull, and it was the lamb’s skull, and it was so pliable, so easy for you to move in and out.” It’s no effort whatsoever.1099 ¶34

Can try it now. You all came through either that door or the front door. You’re familiar with the front door. Most of you come through the front door. Well, you can assume now, by closing your eyes, that you’re standing on the street and looking at this place from the exterior rather than from the interior, and see it quite clearly in your mind’s eye. You want to go someplace and you can’t afford it, put yourself there. It’s all in your imagination. And having gone there in your imagination, and then seeing the world from that point, you’re going to go there. But you say, “Well, I can’t afford it.” Who’s asking you if you can’t afford it or not? Who’s asking anything about how you got there? If you’re there, then you are there. If man is all imagination, he must be wherever he is in imagination. So you go in imagination, and having gone there and prepared it by viewing the world from it, then you return here, wherever you were physically, and then you are carried across a series of events which you do not consciously divide, and across this bridge of incident you move under compulsion to fulfill the place where you are standing in your imagination.1099 ¶35

You do that in business. You want to go beyond where you are in business? Well, go beyond in business. Fill the office that you want to fill. Sit there. You don’t fire the one who occupies it now. Let him get a better job. Let him go elsewhere to a still greener pasture. Grant him that. But don’t deny yourself what you’re doing.1099 ¶36

You are actually God, but imprisoned in this body of flesh and blood. But do not forget who the true God is. And so when you hear the word God, the word Lord, the word Jehovah, the word Jesus Christ, do not let it in any way take your mind and let it dwell on something external to yourself. The minute that happened, come back — you’re following the wrong God. If in any way it conjures the sense of an existence, something outside of you, well, then you’ve got the wrong God. But when you hear these words, they’re only reminders of your own wonderful I Amness, your own wonderful human imagination. That is God.1099 ¶37

And you can test it. Test it in the simple things of life. And then from there, put your hope completely upon the unveiling of this mystery within you.1099 ¶38

It’s not going to happen on the outside. You will wait from now to eternity for some Jesus Christ to come from the outside, as all of our evangelists are teaching. They’re waiting impatiently, hoping that they’ll be in the first rank when he reaches them and shake his hand. Well, I have news for them. They’re all going to the cemetery before that, and all will return to little dust, these little garments that they’re wearing. But they will not die. The being that is waiting will find themselves restored to life in a world just like this. And nine-tenths of them will not even know that they died, because really they haven’t died anyway. Nothing died. But they’ll find themselves in a world terrestrial just like this and still carrying on the old nonsense.1099 ¶39

But here you have been called. Called because no one comes unto me except my father calls him. And if you can take it — not everyone can take it, as you’re told in the sixth chapter of John. At the very, very end of the sixth chapter, they all began to leave him. Very few remain. And those who left say they will leave him and never walk with him again. And he turned to the few who remained. He said, “Would you go also?” And Peter became the voice of the few who remained. He said, “To whom would we go? Hast thou not the words of eternal life? And where would we go? It’s hard. What you are teaching is hard, hard to believe, hard to accept. But if true, where are we going to go?”1099 ¶40

Well, I am telling you what I am teaching you is true. I am not speculating. I’m not theorizing. When I was sent, I did not know what it was I had to tell until it began to unfold within me. That’s what I had to tell. Tell it just as it happened to me. And the outstanding thing was the discovery of David as the son of God. He is the son of God. We are the gods that came down, and collectively we form the God, the great I Am collectively. So in the end, not one will be lost. All will be redeemed, because not one can be lost and God remain God. So everyone is going to be redeemed, and everyone’s going to have this experience, to see David.1099 ¶41

So that is the one story I have come to tell you. Oh, tell you the story of how to get things. Everybody wants something that he has not now possessed but still longs for it. You can all get it. That’s not important. The progress of civilization and the external march of things will do nothing. It’s simply finding the kingdom. And yet day after day, a new invention, a new billion is made from this, that, and the other. And they think, “No, we’re really on the way. We went to the moon. We’ll go to this. We’ll go to that.” None of this in any way changes you.1099 ¶42

And as you get older and your thoughts get deeper and deeper, you realize that the progress of civilization and the external march of things did not in any way change you, because you’re turned on the outside, watching another gadget, another gadget, and all the lovely things that you and I do enjoy. But you have to turn on the inside, for the kingdom of God is within, and that’s where the whole drama takes place.1099 ¶43

So all things exist in your own wonderful human imagination, and all objective reality is solely produced by your wonderful human imagination. And one day you’re going to find the drama taking place within you. It’s not something that took place thousands of years ago. It’s something that is taking place. If you read the Lord’s Prayer as it’s really written, which cannot be translated into English from the Latin, because the Latin does not possess the words to couch the thought of the evangelist — it’s written in the imperative passive mood: thy will must be being done, thy kingdom must be being restored, thy name must be being held. It’s not something that was done or to be done. It’s something that is taking place, and we are drawn like a magnet into that which is always taking place. And then, because it’s within us, it unfolds within us, casting us in the central role. And the central role is the father. And because he is father, there must be a son. And that son is David.1099 ¶44

So don’t forget it. You who have taken a tape this night, play it back, because you may think, “I’ve heard it,” or “I’ve heard that,” like someone even — that wonderful little story of Jonathan Seagull. You say, “Oh, I’ve read it.” Don’t say, “I’ve read it.” Put it aside in your library and reread it and reread it and reread it.1099 ¶45

Friend of mine wrote me today. She isn’t here. Many of you know her. Was in the hospital recently, had two discs removed, and she took that book to the hospital with her, and all the neurosurgeons and all the other surgeons came in. They couldn’t understand why she didn’t have the pain that she should have after such an operation. And she took the third chapter of this book and reread it, almost committed it to memory, and lived it from wing to wing as Jonathan Seagull became one with the White Seagull, who was the lord of all gulls. And so he knew exactly through practice how to do what formerly he almost broke his neck trying to do.1099 ¶46

Now, one day it’ll be just as easy for you as it was to my friend, when she saw how easy it was for me to get in and out of the lamb’s skull, which is the symbol of the skull of God. For that’s where we are. We’re all contained within the one grand skull. He’s like one grand dreamer. And we but brain cells in the mind of the dreamer, dreaming strange dreams, fantastic dreams. One day we will awake to discover we have never been asleep, save in our dream. That we have never died, save in our dream. That we were never born, save in our dream. And we will awake and we will be what was the dreamer, who will now be awake.1099 ¶47

So read the 78th Psalm. “I will open my mouth in a parable and speak dark sayings from of old, sayings that our forefathers told us.” Now he tells it, that the children who hear it now will tell it to their children, and their children will tell it to their children, without stop, to all unborn generations. Then we come to the end of the 78th Psalm, and “the Lord awoke as one out of sleep,” and he called David and appointed David the shepherd of his people Israel. He tells you the whole thing was a parable, a story with a tremendous significance, profound meaning. But all these wonderful works of leading Israel out of Egypt into the land of promise, all these mighty acts, were all parables. Find the parable. But when it happens within you, you know the parable.1099 ¶48

When the serpent within you begins to rise like a fiery serpent, you know the parable of lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. That was all a foreshadowing of that reality that one day must take place within you. So all of these take place within you, and you give meaning to the shadows. But he tells you, “I will open my mouth in a parable and speak dark sayings from of old, sayings our forefathers told us.” And then you must tell the next generation, the next generation, and the next, and so on and so on. But in the end, “and then the Lord awoke as one from sleep” — that one who was heavy with wine, he drank to excess — and then he woke from that state, and then he called David from the flock and appointed him shepherd of his people of Israel. And that’s how it ends, the 78th Psalm. Now let us go into the silence.1099 ¶49

Side One LP

The purpose of this record is to show you how to use your imagination to achieve your every desire. Most men are totally unaware of the creative power of imagination and invariably bow before the dictates of “facts” and accepts life on the basis of the world without. But when you discover this creative power within yourself, you will boldly assert the supremacy of imagination and put all things in subjection to it. When a man speaks of God-in-man, he is totally unaware that this power called God-in-man is man’s imagination. THIS is the creative power in man. There is nothing under heaven that is not plastic as potter’s clay to the touch of the shaping spirit of imagination.1098 ¶1

Once a man said to me, “You know, Neville, I love to listen to you talk about imagination, but as I do so, I invariably touch the chair with my fingers and push my feet into the rug just to keep my sense of the reality and the profundity of things.” Well, undoubtedly he is still touching the chair with his fingers and pushing his feet into the rug.1098 ¶2

Well, let me tell you of another one who didn’t touch with her fingers and didn’t push that foot of hers onto the board of the streetcar. It’s the story of a young girl just turned seventeen. It was Christmas Eve, and she is sad of heart, for that year she had lost her father in an accident, and she is returning home to what seemed to be an empty house. She was untrained to do anything, so got herself a job as a waitress. This night it’s quite late, Christmas Eve, it’s raining, the car is full of laughing boys and girls home for their Christmas vacation, and she couldn’t conceal the tears. Luckily for her, as I said, it was raining, so she stuck her face into the heavens to mingle her tears with rain. And then holding the rail of the streetcar, this is what she did: she said, “This is not rain, why, this is spray from the ocean; and this is not the salt of tears that I taste, for this is the salt of the sea in the wind; and this is not San Diego, this is a ship, and I am coming into the Bay of Samoa.” And there she felt the reality of all that she had imagined.1098 ¶3

Then came the end of the journey and all are out. Ten days later this girl received a letter from a firm in Chicago saying that her aunt, several years before when she sailed for Europe, deposited with them three thousand dollars with instructions that if she did not return to America, this money should be paid to her niece. They had just received information of the aunt’s death and were now acting upon her instructions. One month later this girl sailed for Samoa. As she came into the bay it was late that night and there was salt of the sea in the wind. It wasn’t raining, but there was spray in the air. And she actually felt what she’d felt one month before, only this time she had realized her objective.1098 ¶4

Now, this whole record is technique. I want to show you today how to put your wonderful imagination right into the feeling of your wish fulfilled and let it remain there and fall asleep in that state. And I promise you, from my own experience, you will realize the state in which you sleep – if you could actually feel yourself right into the situation of your fulfilled desire and continue therein until you fall asleep. As you feel yourself right into it, remain in it until you give it all the tones of reality, until you give it all the sensory vividness of reality. As you do it, in that state, quietly fall into sleep. And in a way you will never know – you could never consciously devise the means that would be employed – you will find yourself moving across a series of events leading you towards the objective realization of this state.1098 ¶5

Now, here is a practical technique: The first thing you do, you must know exactly what you want in this world. When you know exactly what you want, make as life-like a representation as possible of what you would see, and what you would touch, and what you would do were you physically present and physically moving in such a state.1098 ¶6

For example, suppose I wanted a home, but I had no money – but I still know what I want. I, without taking anything into consideration, I would make as life-like a representation of the home that I would like, with all the things in it that I would want. And then, this night, as I would go to bed, I would in a state, a drowsy, sleepy state, the state that borders upon sleep, I would imagine that I am actually in such a house, that were I to step off the bed, I would step upon the floor of that house, were I to leave this room, I would enter the room that is adjacent to my imagined room in that house. And while I am touching the furniture and feeling it to be solidly real, and while I am moving from one room to the other in my imaginary house, I would go to sound asleep in that state. And I know that in a way I could not consciously devise, I would realize my house. I have seen it work time and time again.1098 ¶7

If I wanted promotion in my business I would ask myself, “What additional responsibilities would be mine were I to be given this great promotion? What would I do? What would I say? What would I see? How would I act?” And then in my imagination I would begin to see and touch and do and act as I would outwardly see and touch and act were I in that position.1098 ¶8

If I now desired the mate of my life, were I now in search of some wonderful girl or some wonderful man, what would I actually find myself doing that would imply that I have found my state? For instance, suppose now I was a lady, one thing I would definitely do, I would wear a wedding ring. I would take my imaginary hands and I would feel the ring that I would imagine to be there. And I would keep on feeling it and feeling it until it seemed to me to be solidly real. I would give it all the sensory vividness I am capable of giving anything. And while I am feeling my imaginary ring – which implies that I am married – I would sleep.1098 ¶9

This story is told us in The Song of Songs, or A Song of Solomon: It is said, “At night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth. I found him whom my soul loveth, and I would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house, right into the chamber of her that conceived me.”1098 ¶10

If I would take that beautiful poem and put it into modern English, into practical language, it would be this: “While sitting in my chair I would feel myself right into the situation of my fulfilled desire, and having felt myself into that state I would not let it go. I would keep that mood alive, and in that mood I would sleep.” That is taking it “right into my mother’s chamber, into the chamber of her that conceived me.”1098 ¶11

You know, people are totally unaware of this fantastic power of the imagination, but when man begins to discover this power within him, he never plays the part that he formerly played. He doesn’t turn back and become just a reflector of life; from here on in he is the affector of life. The secret of it is to center your imagination in the feeling of the wish fulfilled and remain therein. For in our capacity to live IN the feeling of the wish fulfilled lies our capacity to live the more abundant life.1098 ¶12

Most of us are afraid to imagine ourselves as important and noble individuals secure in our contribution to the world just because, at the very moment that we start our assumption, reason and our senses deny the truth of our assumption. We seem to be in the grip of an unconscious urge which makes us cling desperately to the world of familiar things and resist all that threatens to tear us away from our familiar and seemingly safe moorings.1098 ¶13

Well, I appeal to you to try it. If you try it, you will discover this great wisdom of the ancients. For they told it to us in their own strange, wonderful, symbolical form. But unfortunately you and I misinterpreted their stories and took it for history, when they intended it as instruction to simply achieve our every objective.1098 ¶14

You see, imagination puts us inwardly in touch with the world of states. These states are existent, they are present now, but they are mere possibilities while we think OF them. But they become overpoweringly real when we think FROM them and dwell IN them. You know, there is a wide difference between thinking OF what you want in this world and thinking FROM what you want.1098 ¶15

Let me tell you when I first heard of this strange and wonderful power of the imagination. It was in 1933 in New York City. An old friend of mine taught it to me. He turned to the fourteenth of John, and this is what he read: “In my father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also.” He explained to me that this central character of the Gospels was human imagination; that ‘mansion’ was not a place in some heavenly house, but simply my desire. If I would make a living representation of the state desired and then enter that state and abide in that state, I would realize it.1098 ¶16

At the time I wanted to make a trip to the island of Barbados in the West Indies, but I had no money. He explained to me that if I would that night, as I slept in New York City, assume that I was sleeping in my earthly father’s house in Barbados and go sound asleep in that state, that I would realize my trip. Well, I took him at his word and tried it. For one month, night after night as I fell asleep I assumed I was sleeping in my father’s home in Barbados. At the end of my month an invitation from my family came inviting me to spend the winter in Barbados. I sailed for Barbados the early part of December of that year. From then on I knew I had found this savior in myself.1098 ¶17

The old man told me that it would never fail. Even after it happened I could hardly believe that it would not have happened anyway. That’s how strange this whole thing is. On reflection, it happens so naturally you begin to feel or to tell yourself, “Well, it would have happened anyway,” and you quickly recover from this wonderful experience of yours. It never failed me if I would give the mood, the imagined mood, sensory vividness.1098 ¶18

I could tell you unnumbered case histories to show you how it works, but in essence it is simple: You simply know what you want. When you know what you want, you are thinking of it. That is not enough. You must now begin to think FROM it. Well, how could I think from it? I am sitting here, and I desire to be elsewhere. How could I, while sitting here physically, put myself in imagination at a point in space removed from this room and make that real to me? Quite easily. My imagination puts me in touch inwardly with that state. I imagine that I am actually where I desire to be. How can I tell that I am there? There is one way to prove that I am there, for what a man sees when he describes his world is, as he describes it, relative to himself. So what the world looks like depends entirely upon where I stand when I make my observation. So, if as I describe my world it is related to that point in space I imagine that I am occupying, then I must be there. I am not there physically, no, but I AM there in my imagination, and my imagination is my real self! And where I go in imagination and make it real, there I shall go in the flesh, also. When in that state I fall asleep, it is done. I have never seen it fail. So this is the simple technique upon how to use your imagination to realize your every objective.1098 ¶19

Here is a very healthy and productive exercise for the imagination, something that you should do daily: Daily relive the day as you wish you had lived it, revising the scenes to make them conform to your ideals. For instance, suppose today’s mail brought disappointing news. Revise the letter. Mentally rewrite it and make it conform to the news you wish you had received. Or, suppose you didn’t get the letter you wish you had received. Write yourself the letter and imagine that you received such a letter.1098 ¶20

Let me tell you a story that took place in New York not very long ago. In my audience sat this lady who had heard me, oh, numerous times, and I was telling the story of revision – that man, not knowing the power of imagination, he goes to sleep at the end of his day, tired and exhausted, accepting as final all the events of the day. And I was trying to show that man should, at that moment before he sleeps, he should rewrite the entire day and make it conform to the day he wished he had experienced.1098 ¶21

Here is the way a lady wisely used this law of revision: It appears that two years ago she was ordered out of her daughter-in-law’s home. For two years there was no correspondence. She had sent her grandson at least two dozen presents in that interval, but not one was ever acknowledged. Having heard the story of revision, this is what she did: As she retired at night, she mentally constructed two letters, one she imagined coming from her grandson, and the other from her daughter-in-law. In these letters they expressed deep affection for her and wondered why she had not called to see them. This she did for seven consecutive nights, holding in her imaginary hand the letter she imagined she had received and reading these letters over and over until it aroused within her the satisfaction of having heard. Then she slept. On the eighth day she received a letter from her daughter-in-law. On the inside there were two letters, one from her grandson and one from the daughter-in-law. They practically duplicated the imaginary letters that this grandmother had written to herself eight days before.1098 ¶22

This art of revision can be used in any department of your life. Take the matter of health. Suppose you were ill. Bring before your mind’s eye the image of a friend. Put upon that face an expression which implies that he or she sees in you that which you want the whole world to see. Just imagine he is saying to you that he has never seen you look better, and you reply, “I have never felt better.”1098 ¶23

Suppose your foot was injured. Then do this: Construct mentally a drama which implies that you are walking – that you are doing all the things that you would do if the foot was normal, and do it over and over and over until it takes on the tones of reality.1098 ¶24

Whenever you do in your imagination that which you would like to do in the outer world, that you WILL do in the outer world. The one requisite is to arouse your attention in a way, and to such intensity, that you become wholly absorbed in the revised action. You will experience an expansion and refinement of the senses by this imaginative exercise and, eventually, achieve vision in the inner world.1098 ¶25

The abundant life promised us is ours to enjoy now, but not until we have the sense of the creator as our imagination can we experience it. Persistent imagination, centered in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, is the secret of all successful operations. This alone is the means of fulfilling the intention. Every stage of man’s progress is made by the conscious, voluntary exercise of the imagination.1098 ¶26

Then you will understand why all poets have stressed the importance of controlled, vivid imagination. Listen to this one by the great William Blake: “In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth, And all you behold, though it appears without, It is within, in your imagination, Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” Try it, and you too will prove that your Imagination is the Creator.1098 ¶27

Side Two LP

Talking to oneself is a habit everyone indulges in. We could no more stop talking to ourselves than we could stop eating and drinking. All that we can do is control the nature and the direction of our inner conversations. Most of us are totally unaware of the fact that our inner conversations are the causes of the circumstance of our life. We are told that “as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” But do we know that man’s thinking follows the tracks laid down in his own inner conversations? To turn the tracks to which he is tied in the direction in which he wants to go, he must put off his former conversation, which is called in the Bible the Old Man, and be renewed in the spirit of his mind.1098 ¶28

Speech is the image of mind; therefore, to change his mind, he must first change his speech. By ‘speech’ is meant those mental conversations we carry on with ourselves.1098 ¶29

The world is a magic circle of infinite possible mental transformations. For there are an infinite number of possible mental conversations. When man discovers the creative power of inner talking, he will realize his function and his mission in life. Then he can act to a purpose. Without such knowledge, he acts unconsciously.1098 ¶30

Everything is a manifestation of the mental conversations which go on in us without our being aware of them. But as civilized beings, we must become aware of them and act with a purpose.1098 ¶31

A man’s mental conversations attracts his life. As long as there is no change in his inner talking, the personal history of the man remains the same. To attempt to change the world before we change our inner talking is to struggle against the very nature of things. Man can go round and round in the same circle of disappointments and misfortunes, not seeing them as caused by his own negative inner talking, but as caused by others.1098 ¶32

This may seem far-fetched, but it is a matter which lends itself to research and experiment. The formula the chemist illustrates is not more certainly provable than the formula of this science by which words are clothed in objective reality.1098 ¶33

One day a girl told me of her difficulties in working with her employer. She was convinced that he unjustly criticized and rejected her very best efforts. Upon hearing her story, I explained that if she thought him unfair, it was a sure sign that she herself was in need of a new conversation piece. There was no doubt but that she was mentally arguing with her employer, for others only echo that which we whisper to them in secret. She confessed that she argued mentally with him all day long. When she realized what she had been doing, she agreed to change her inner conversations with her employer. She imagined that he had congratulated her on her fine work, and that she in turn had thanked him for his praise and kindness. To her great delight, she soon discovered that her own attitude was the cause of all that befell her. The behavior of her employer reversed itself. It echoed, as it had always done, her mental conversations with him.1098 ¶34

I rarely see a person alone without wondering, “To what conversation piece is he tied? On what mysterious track is he walking?” We must begin to take life consciously. For the solution of all problems lies just in this: the Second Man, the Lord from heaven in all of us, is trying to become self-conscious in the body, that he may be about his father’s business. What are his labors? To imitate his father, to become master of the Word, master of his inner talking, that he may mold this world of ours into a likeness with the Kingdom of Love.1098 ¶35

The prophet said, “Be ye imitators of God as dear children.” How would I imitate God? Well, we are told that God calls things that are not seen as though they were seen, and the unseen becomes seen. This is the way the girl called forth praise and kindness from her employer. She carried on an imaginary conversation with her employer from the premise that he had praised her work, and he did.1098 ¶36

Our inner conversations represent in various ways the world we live in. Our individual worlds are selfrevelations of our own inner speech. We are told that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof. For by their words they shall be justified, and by their words they shall be condemned. We abandon ourselves to negative inner talking, yet expect to retain command of life. Our present mental conversations do not recede into the past as man believes. They advance into the future to confront us as wasted or invested words.1098 ¶37

“My Word,” said the prophet, “shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in all the things whereto I sent it.”1098 ¶38

How would I send my Word to help a friend? I would imagine that I am hearing his voice, that he is physically present, that my hand is on him. I would then congratulate him on his good fortune, tell him that I have never seen him look better. I would listen as though I heard him; I would imagine that he is telling me he has never felt better, he has never been happier. And I would know that in this loving, knowing communion with another, a communion populous with loving thoughts and feelings, that my word was sent, and it shall not return unto me void, but it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.1098 ¶39

“Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation.” It is only what is done now that counts, even though its effects may not be visible until tomorrow. We call, not out loud, but by an inner effort of intense attention; to listen attentively, as though you heard, is to create. The events and relationships of life are your Word made visible.1098 ¶40

Most of us rob others of their willingness and their ability to be kind and generous by our fixed attitudes towards them. Our attitudes unfold within us in the form of mental conversations. Inner talking from premises of fulfilled desire is the way to consciously create circumstances. Our inner conversations are perpetually out-pictured all around us in happenings. Therefore, what we desire to see and hear without we must see and hear within, for the whole manifested world goes to show us what use we have made of the Word.1098 ¶41

If you practice this art of controlled inner speaking, you too will know what a thrill it is to be able to say, “And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” You will be able to consciously use your imagination to transform and channel the immense creative energies of your inner speech from the mental, emotional level to the physical level. And I do not know what limits, if any, there are to such a process.1098 ¶42

What is your aim? Does your inner talking match it? It must, you know, if you would realize your aim. For as the prophet asked, “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” And of course the answer is, “No, they cannot.” The two who must agree are your inner conversation and the state desired. That is, what you desire to see and hear without, you must see and hear within. Every stage of man’s progress is made by the conscious exercise of his imagination matching his inner speech to his fulfilled desire.1098 ¶43

As we control our inner talking, matching it to our fulfilled desires, we can lay aside all other processes. Then we simply act by clear imagination and intention: we imagine the wish fulfilled and carry on mental conversations from that premise. The right inner speech is the speech that would be yours were you to realize your ideal. In other words, it is the speech of fulfilled desire.1098 ¶44

Now you will understand how wise the ancient was when he told us in the Hermetica, “There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon man alone and on no other mortal creature. These two are Mind and Speech, and the gift of Mind and Speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these two gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing from the Immortals. And when he quits his body, Mind and Speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss.”1098 ¶45

With the gift of Mind and Speech you create the conditions and circumstances of life. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word, said Hermes, is Son, and Mind is Father of the Word. They are not separate one from the other, for life is the union of Word and Mind. You and your inner talking, or Word, are one. If your mind is one with your inner conversations, then to be transformed in mind is to be transformed in conversation.1098 ¶46

It was a flash of the deepest insight that taught Paul to write: “Put off the former conversation, the Old Man which is corrupt, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Put on the New Man.” “Put on the New Man,” and “be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” is to change your inner conversation, for speech and mind are one – a change of speech is a change of mind.1098 ¶47

The prophet Samuel said, “The Lord spake by me, and his Word was in my tongue.” If the Lord’s Word was in the prophet’s tongue, then the Lord’s mouth that uttered the Word must be the prophet’s mind, for inner conversations originate in the mind and produce little tiny speech movements in the tongue. The prophet is telling us that the mouth of God is the mind of man, that our inner conversations are the Word of God creating life about us as we create it within ourselves.1098 ¶48

In the Bible you are told that the Word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it. “See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil, blessings and cursings. Choose life.”1098 ¶49

The conditions and circumstances of life are not created by some power external to yourself; they are the conditions which result from the exercise of your freedom of choice, your freedom to choose the ideas to which you will respond.1098 ¶50

Now is the accepted time. This is the day of salvation. Whatsoever things are of good report, think on these things. For your future will be formed by the Word of God which is your present inner talking. You create your future by your inner conversations.1098 ¶51

The worlds were framed by the Word of God, that is, your inner talking. See yonder fields? The sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn. The silence and the darkness knew! So is a man’s fate born. For ends run true to origins. If you would reap success, you must plant success.1098 ¶52

The idea in your mind which starts the whole process going is the idea which you accept as truth. This is a very important point to grasp, for truth depends upon the intensity of imagination, not upon “facts.” When the girl imagined that her employer was unfair, his behavior confirmed her imagination. When she changed her assumption of him, his behavior reflected the change, proving that an assumption, though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.1098 ¶53

The mind always behaves according to the assumption with which it starts. Therefore, to experience success, we must assume that we are successful. We must live wholly on the level of the imagination itself, and it must be consciously and deliberately undertaken. It does not matter if at the present moment external facts deny the truth of your assumption, if you persist in your assumption it will become a fact. Signs follow, they do not precede. To assume a new concept of yourself is to that extent to change your inner talking or Word of God and is, therefore, putting on the New Man.1098 ¶54

Our inner talking, though unheard by others, is more productive of future conditions than all the audible promises and threats of men. Your ideal is waiting to be incarnated, but unless you yourself offer it human parentage it is incapable of birth. You must define the person you wish to be and then assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled in faith that that assumption will find expression through you.1098 ¶55

The true test of religion is in its use, but men have made it a thing to defend. It is to you that the words are spoken, “Blessed is she that believed, for there shall be an accomplishment of those things which were spoken unto her from the Lord.” Test it. Try it. Conceive yourself to be one that you want to be and remain faithful to that conception, for life here is only a training ground for image making. Try it and see if life will not shape itself on the model of your imagination.1098 ¶56

Everything in the world bears witness of the use or misuse of man’s inner talking. Negative inner talking, particularly evil and envious inner talking, are the breeding ground of the future battlefields and penitentiaries of the world. Through habit man has developed the secret affection for these negative inner conversations. Through them he justifies failure, criticizes his neighbors, gloats over the distress of others, and in general pours out his venom on all. Such misuse of the Word perpetuates the violence of the world.1098 ¶57

The transformation of self requires that we meditate on a given phrase, a phrase which implies that our ideal is realized, and inwardly affirm it over and over and over again until we are inwardly affected by its implication, until we are possessed by it.1098 ¶58

Hold fast to your noble inner convictions or “conversations.” Nothing can take them from you but yourself. Nothing can stop them from becoming objective facts. All things are generated out of your imagination by the Word of God, which is your own inner conversation. And every imagination reaps its own Words which it has inwardly spoken.1098 ¶59

The great secret of success is a controlled inner conversation from premises of fulfilled desire. The only price you pay for success is the giving up of your former conversation which belongs to the Old Man, the unsuccessful man.1098 ¶60

The time is ripe for many of us to take conscious charge in creating heaven on earth. To consciously and voluntarily use our imagination, to inwardly hear and only say that which is in harmony with our ideal, is actively bringing heaven to earth. Every time we exercise our imagination lovingly on behalf of another, we are literally mediating God to that one.1098 ¶61

Always use your imagination masterfully, as a participant, not an onlooker. In using your imagination to transform energy from the mental, emotional level to physical level, extend your senses, look and imagine that you are seeing what you want to see, that you are hearing what you want to hear, and touching what you want to touch. Become intensely aware of doing so. Give your imaginary state all the tones and feeling of reality. Keep on doing so until you arouse within yourself the mood of accomplishment and the feeling of relief.1098 ¶62

This is the active, voluntary use of the imagination as distinguished from the passive, involuntary acceptance of appearances. It is by this active, voluntary use of the imagination that the Second Man, the Lord from heaven, is awakened in man.1098 ¶63

Men call imagination a plaything, the “dream faculty.” But actually it is the very gateway of reality. Imagination is the way to the state desired. It is the truth of the state desired, and the life of that state desired. Could you realize this fully, then would you know that what you do in your imagination is the only important thing.1098 ¶64

Within the circle of our imagination the whole drama of life is being enacted over and over again. Through the bold and active use of the imagination we can stretch out our hand and touch a friend ten thousand miles away and bring health and wealth to the parched lips of his being. It is the way to everything in the world. How else could we function beyond our fleshly limitations?1098 ¶65

But imagination demands of us a fuller living of our dreams in the present. Through the portals of the present the whole of time must pass. Imagine elsewhere as here, and then as now. Try it and see.1098 ¶66

You can always tell if you have succeeded in making the future dream a present fact by observing your inner talking. If you are inwardly saying what you would audibly say were you physically present and physically moving about in that place, then you have succeeded. And you could prophesy it from these inner conversations, and from the moods which they awaken within you, what your future will be.1098 ¶67

For one power alone makes a prophet – ‘imagination’, the divine vision. All that we meet is our Word made visible. And what we do not now comprehend is related by affinity to the unrecognized forces of our own inner conversations and the moods which they arouse within us.1098 ¶68

If we do not like what is happening to us, it is a sure sign that we are in need of a change of mental diet. For man, we are told, lives not by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And having discovered the mouth of God to be the mind of man, a mind which lives on Words or inner talking, we should feed into our minds only loving, noble thoughts. For with Words or inner talking we build our world.1098 ¶69

Let love’s lordly hand raise your hunger and thirst to all that is noble and of good report, and let your mind starve e’er you raise your hand to a cup love did not fill or a bowl love did not bless. That you may never again have to say, “What have I said? What have I done, O All Powerful Human Word?”1098 ¶70

Now we can say the same thing over and over. Ultimately, at one little moment people grasp it. they understand it. So I can tell you night after night that all things exist in the human imagination, and I can tell you that man is all imagination, and God is Man and exist in us and we in him, that the Eternal Body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself. That is the Divine body we call Jesus Christ in Scripture, and because of previous training we may question that or hesitate to well take it seriously. Tonight I hope I can show you through stories how true this is. You may never really Lose Yourself to the extent that I wish you would, but nevertheless I’ll tell you1096 ¶1

Last Saturday a friend of mine in from New York, she came in during the week and she was here on Friday, and I invited us a dinner on Saturday with a few other friends of hers out here. She called you on the day and asked if she could come early, could she come at four instead of five, when I invited them, that she had things to tell me and they would not understand it and she would feel ill at ease in the presence of others in discussing these things. Now let me go back a little while with this lady. I met her here in this city 20 odd years ago. She’s a beautiful young woman, about 30. a model. She had bought a little home for her parents and she was paying off the mortgage, and she said to me then, this is now 20 odd years ago, thank you I’ve always dreamed of going to Paris and I really don’t have the money. I have enough in the bank to go tourists and leave for just one week in a modest way, go to some small little hotel or maybe some little rooming place, and only for a week. I couldn’t afford beyond that, and even that seemed stupid now, but I think that I’m still paying off on the house. I said you’re asking the wrong person for advice because I’m not a rational person when it comes to the world. To me, I do not go along with the reasoning mind. I am talking of an entirely different principle. I am speaking of imagination, and Imagination to me is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ to me is God, and there is nothing but God and all things are possible to God. If you want me to give you a reason for going or not going, do not ask me. You want to go and you have just enough for a quick one one week in Paris maximum. Go tourist and live modestly and come back1096 ¶2

Well you didn’t tell me what you would do, but she did go. On the second day in Paris, on a blind date, she met a man 23 years her senior. He was already married five times. there was no offspring. But they fell in love. He divorced his fifth, married her, and they were blessed with a child, the image of that man. When I saw pictures of him, he was born in Russia, when I saw pictures of him it could have been pictures of his little boy through the years. Well the main is very wealthy. She came into a fortune, international business, factories fair in our country, factories in Paris, factories in Puerto Rico and factories all over. A very very wealthy man, he went wild over this offspring1096 ¶3

Larry grew. He was then two and a half years old, and one night I had a vision and I saw a little boy. He was about five years old, handsome beyond measure, and he told me that I was his father. I said well if I’m your father, then when are you going to come on Earth and be my son. So I am your father, are you coming down to earth and be my son. He said yes. I said when. He said on the 10th of November. I said you are now, this is late September. So I say to my wife the next morning, I said darling, you know you’re gonna have a baby on the 10th of November. But she said I really believe all that you teach by afro, this is ridiculous. I’m not even pregnant, this is late September. I’m gonna have a son on the 10th of Novembershe said no, that is out. It’s all right, that’s what he told me anyway1096 ¶4

that night in New York City at my lecture this lady appeared a little boy was two and a half and she was way out in hell she looked as though she could have it right then so I say to her when you expect your son he said no son I am going to have a daughterJoseph and I we want a daughter don’t want any sound we have our son I said but when you expect your child then he said oh the doctor said around early January I said should your son be born on the 10th of November may I tell you his name his name is Neville mark because that’s what he told mewell on the 10th of November she had her little boy and she called him Neville mark1096 ¶5

well the family now of four the two boys and they grew when the first one the image of his father Larry reached the age of 18 that sent him off to college in England pardon me and one morning on a Saturday morning I got a call from her and she said Larry is dead didn’t prepare me at all it was Larry is dead I said what are you talking about that I’ve just got a call from the Headmaster the college in London Larry was killed today suddenly in this automobile accident one of five but he was the only one killed the other survived he wasn’t driving the car he was in the car and we’re leaving within an hour Joseph a Neville and myself we’re leaving in the hour to go to London1096 ¶6

so they did and brought back the ashes of Larry and Scattered it in Central Park she went into shock completely sharp and for two months she wasn’t here her husband called me long distance he wrote me to what to do I do not know what to do should I put her into some Asylum should I bring in something because she is not here she refuses to be part of this world but you do not know this woman she has a determination that is like steel you can’t divert er she can take any goal in this world and realize it and she had one goal now she had to know about Larry if what I’m teaching is true that all things exist in the human imagination then Larry existed in Her Imagination and she had to see him and touch him and know him I know that he survived1096 ¶7

she said My Religion failed me my philosophies failed me I couldn’t open a book nothing could in any way encourage me or support me and I lived in this state just completely in shock to the display of my family and on this morning two months later I felt something surging Within Me surging and surging and then out of my own being Here Comes Larry he is Seated on the side of this chair in my bedroom it’s my bedroom he lived on the 33rd floor on Central Park South here is Larry and then I said Larry there well I can put myself there too and she did I sat right next to him and felt him that I brought never and he sat next to me and here the three of us I’ve never seen Larry so beautiful his face was just like velvet you’ve never seen such beauty of skin as Larry and we communicated without the use of words and he said to me mother I didn’t want to hurt you and here he’s talking to me without any use of words but he’s telling me and I’m listening then I say to Neville never gonna get Daddy was then in the living room this is the early hours of the morning about six go and get Daddy and tell Daddy to come and the minute he got up and started towards the living room to bring his father something happened in her and something broke and then the whole thing faded1096 ¶8

but he said at that moment I was completely cured I had a pain that no doctor could help no philosopher could help no religious person could help no book could help here I am in a pain a pain that no one could understand it was a physical pain my body was wrecked with it and at that moment I was completely relieved of all sense of loss and all sense of pain and I prove that all things do exist in my own wonderful human imagination and that’s where Larry was I brought him out as an objective being seemingly independent of my perception of him and he sat on the side of that chair on the arm of the chair that big chair in my bedroom and never sat on the other arm I sent Neville to call Daddy and then I went in after it’s broke1096 ¶9

I then got off the bed and I went into the living room and here was Joseph reading the paper and I told him what had just happened and do you know he will just like a shadow a shadow that talked I looked at my husband and here he’s only a shadow a talking shadow that day I had to go out and I went down the street shopping and everyone was but a shadow talking Shadows the whole vast world was but a shadow1096 ¶10

and so when we say all that you behold though it appears without it is within in your own wonderful human imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow everything here seems so real cut it in bleeds it is only a shadow and she was cured instantly when she out of her own being conjured her son and made him sit on the arm of the chair and she herself brought us own being out of it and sat in the center on that chair and then brought Neville who was sung to sleep in his own room and then said to him go and get Daddy let him come and see how beautiful Larry is she came like velvet so all the other lovelies you have a sewing so beautiful and he’s saying to her mother I never wanted to hurt you I didn’t want to hurt you and so and the whole thing faded and she’ll realize that what I told her before that all things exist in the human imagination was true1096 ¶11

we are living in a shadow world The Immortal man is your own wonderful human imagination that man can never die that’s Jesus Christ you are the Lord Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is not some intangible thing you speak of imagination it’s defined in the script in the dictionary as the picture forming faculty of the Mind is defined as that which can conjure and create an idea or an image independent of objective reality they call this the reality independent of objective reality and what it conjures they call it the unrealthat a simple apprehension of objective facts objective objects in these world they call that sense perception and therefore reality if it isn’t present that’s unreal and therefore imagination this is now considered real1096 ¶12

and I think the home that I left an hour ago the home to which I hope to return tonight within an hour that because it’s not present to my senses that’s unreal that’s imagination this that I do not know as well this is real because it’s present to my senses and I am telling you is just the reverse the whole vast World exists within the human imagination and1096 ¶13

if you are as intense as that woman I have never met anyone more intense than that woman she said to me we got notice we had to vacate our business that is the building on 57th Street between 5th Avenue and Madison a most expensive neighborhood where you pay 50 60 70 000 for an area not as big as this a year in rent certainly not as big as his room one floor he’s a couturier he has his factories in London in uh Paris factories in New York factories in Puerto Rico and here on area not as big as this it’s long and narrow and could not if I took this quill measure of this room it could not that place could not be this they and he was paying 65 70 000 a year rental in his own place for a living He Paid twelve hundred and fifty dollars a month for that 33rd floor apartment that he had that’s a lot of money plus running businesses and paying a payroll to maybe150 or 200 people every week got runs into a fortune1096 ¶14

he received notice that they’re going to terminate his lease because the IBM the international business machine bought the building to demolish it and build a huge big building for themselves headquarters in New York City you had to get out1096 ¶15

he began to give her all kinds of reasons why he couldn’t find a place he said don’t tell me what you don’t want don’t tell me what can’t be done tell me what you want you named him I don’t care how many you name you just simply name them I said I want a building on 57th Street between Fifth Avenue and 6th Avenue and they say there is no building for sale not even for rent but certainly not for sale don’t tell me what is not tell me what you want now he said we have 18 months to go on our present apartment is 1250 a month I would like to move and reduce our rent all right but who is going to pay 1250 and take over my lease don’t tell me who’s going to do it tell me what you want well that’s what I want I want to get out of that lease and find a place just as nice as told as that they were on the 33rd floor up the 30s where I can have a view and not pay that sort of money he gave her 12 things1096 ¶16

she has the capacity to go into these states and bring them out and they are objective to her everyone he hung the place number 41 West 57th Street eight story building it wasn’t for sale he didn’t she didn’t concern herself with what is or is not Brazil she got it they are there now someone came in after she released the apartment in her Mind’s Eye I’m actually moved into another one right next door to this on 57th Street someone came in and said I’ll take over your lease at the same rent 1250. and then she found the place on the 30th floor right adjacent to where they own now the eight star eight story building for 650 a month reducing it by 6001096 ¶17

everything that he requested she did it her intensity and she was determined enough to know what happened to Larry she wanted to prove to her own satisfaction that Larry survived that Larry is real it’s not just a dream that her Larry is a solid reality and she could put her hand on Larry and talk to Larry and communicate with Larry and the whole thing became a reality to him1096 ¶18

that is Louise she has proven beyond all doubt the truth of what I’m trying to tell everyone that I meet that imagining creates reality because imagining is God in action that the human imagination is Jesus Christ and there is no other Jesus Christ that is the Lord Jesus Christ of scripture so I do not say you will be as intense as she is I wish you were she can go into some material thing which doesn’t interest me at all like money and come out and make a fortune as she has made a fortune and she was as poor at the church mouse when she first heard me she had never heard such strange be curious unreasonable statements as she heard from me and her first contact with me was to ask that question what should I do should I go to Paris it isn’t rational and I told her I am not speaking of anything rational in this world I am speaking of a power that isn’t rational the rational mind is simply the interference between the being that you are and this so-called world that you think so real no the rational mind let it be what it wants to be but I am not talking about that I am speaking of something entirely different and the world calls this being of whom I speak Jesus Christ but they do not know Jesus Christ Jesus Christ is a being it’s not some peculiar as some friend of mine wrote the other day it is not an Essence imagination is not a vague essence as you said imagination is a being a majestic being a being of infinite love but a being1096 ¶19

or now you heard me tell the story of my dear friend Melo the little girl just eight or nine years old well I got another letter from her and the other letter she said I went to your lecture and do you know at the end of your lecture you say this little girl is Peter and when I die she will see the same King that she saw when I took her to friends and do you know what at the end of your lecture you took off your coat but I didn’t see you take off the coat I saw you take off your skin you took off your skin and I could see right through you and right behind you was the king that I saw in France and do you know what he was you and next to the King was a tombstone and on the tombstone was written the word Neville and then he faded and everything faded and then I woke wasn’t that incredible1096 ¶20

and she suppose the word incredible credible incredible reminds me of my little girl when she was four and someone said what does your father do and she said he’s a lecturer and I have never heard her word Electra and if someone gave us something say up for Christmas or something and you couldn’t find out what on Earth is it what is its purpose and then mother would say I wonder if it is functional she couldn’t pronounce the word functional and she would say punkenol well I have never heard the word punctual sins but I think of funkadel so if we get anything today that we can’t quite understand what it is which quite often at Christmas you get all kinds of things that you don’t know what on Earth is it what could you do with it and so you put it in the gift drawer let someone else figure it out when you give it to them a year later and here it is and I think of functional it isn’t functional1096 ¶21

well now she said incredible isn’t that precious I have all her little letters now but she saw the king and she saw the tombstone and she saw where that coat which was only a symbol of the physical garment that was taken off and here’s the Garment taking off and buried isn’t that Tombstone and on Earth it was called Never but beyond you saw the king behold your king and she said and it was you and then it faded wasn’t that incredible1096 ¶22

so I tell you you are an infinite being an immortal being you didn’t begin in your mother’s womb and you do not end in the grave you are forever and forever and forever and you are that King you will awaken one day and you will not be any less than the being spoken of in scripture as Jesus Christ there is only Jesus Christ in the world there is only God in the world and you and I will be one one body one Spirit one Lord one God and Father of all let no one tell you because he precedes you in the Awakening that he ranks ahead of you no one ranks ahead even though you precede the one in the order of Awakening for there’s only one being who is Awakening and that one being is God and God is your own wonderful human imagination1096 ¶23

if you could only be as intense as Louise towards physical things you could in the immediate future anything you want in this world I personally have no desire for such things none but she has an all well and good she has it letter have it to the extreme she came in she insisted four years ago and given me a certain picture because I just a complimenter passed an opinion about this pain that she had made a copy of what a great picture it wasn’t a great picture the original was and she asked it to me and I said no I will not take it I’m going to California I’m certain I’m going to take that frame that big and take it back to California do you know a friend of mine he’s here tonighthe went on a business trip to New York and she persuaded him to bring it and he brought it to me I helped I hung him for about two years and I couldn’t stand it any longer so I took it out and buried it in the little closet and she came and said where is the picture I said well I had it up for two years and then I got a little bit still want to change the room and so if it was where is it I thought here it is luckily I hadn’t given it away and so she said I’ll take it all right you take it and she did she took the picture and she’s going to take it right back to New York City again that’s the intensity of the woman money is an important thing with them everything she makes important1096 ¶24

but when it came to this the loss of her son and she went into shock she didn’t find comfort in religion she couldn’t find comfort in books she couldn’t find comfort in anything everything went through the window but she was determined to prove that her Larry survived and all you could hang on to is that all things exist in the human imagination and if that is true well then he’s going to come out of me and I will know he does exist that he has survived that cremation or she came back with the ashes and went to Central Park and Scattered the ashes around the tree Here Comes Larry sitting on the side of a chair and she puts herself into the chair and puts Neville on the other side of the chair and here she is carrying on but I tell you how intense the woman is when I say to her on the 10th of November if you have a son his name is Neville mark she was determined she is not going to have a son could have a daughter I said all right if it’s a boy his name is never Ma1096 ¶25

but I haven’t seen Neville in four years last time I saw him he came down and spent three weeks of us with us in Barbados and he was a handsome lad long hair down below his shoulder but unusually pretty she tells me now he’s about six feet even more stunning he’s just had his 18th birthday he does all the cooking for them now they don’t need any uh help because they have all the money in the world he does all the cooking he does all the washing all the ironing all the sewing he does everything so she got her wish she got a girl and I got my son oh he was a son he makes the dresses of course his father secretario you’re going to inherit that fabulous thing his father 77 so in the not distant future he will inherit this enormous thing but he loves sowing and he loves ironing the clothes he likes all these things he’s out going to school to study designing and make it up close and all these things and so with his long hair and that lovely lovely skin of his and undoubtedly she does have her daughter and I have in him my son so see we both got it1096 ¶26

and she said to me do you remember anything in the past concerning Neville because you saw him before I did I said I can only tell you that he came to me this handsome handsome lad about five years old and he told me that I was his father well you know Louise I have never known you physically therefore physically I am certainly not his father but throughout Infinity these cross currents who knows the relationship in all these things through eternity he called me his father at the moment I wondered well when are you going to come because I knew this was a vision and I knew he was not my son in this world1096 ¶27

I knew my little girl Vicky when she came to me at the age of four or five and she too called me Daddy and I said if you you’re my daughter if I’m your daddy then what is your name and she said Victoria and she danced away so when she was born I called her Victoria she has no middle name she didn’t give me a middle name she said my name is Victoria so I called the Victorian now she’s down to all as Vicky but she has no middle name I saw so vividly when she appeared to me when she was about my wife was at about five months pregnant and I said to her we’re gonna have a little girl and her name is Victoria well she came into the world and she looked just unlike the little girl I saw but at four she grew into that child because when she was born she looked just like Gandhi not a hair on her head that is just just like a little offspring of Gandhi at the age of four a mass of girls she was the image of the child I saw when she appeared to me in Vision say about four or five years of age on this led when he was four or five was just like it this handsome beautiful ladand today they say he says well a raving Beauty six feet tall 18 years old this long hair and he makes his dresses does all the ironing he sows he does everything1096 ¶28

and so Louise that determination it didn’t come in in a physical form as a daughter but it came me in spirit as a daughter and I came in and my vision was true it came in as a boy as I saw him and he told me his name was Neville mark and so he is named Neville mark goes by the name of Neville1096 ¶29

so I’m telling you of the power within you and that power is your own wonderful human imagination and that is the only God in the world there is no other God that is the Jesus Christ of scripture1096 ¶30

so tonight take it seriously if you really have an objective in this world and you’re waiting for something to happen on the outside to make it so forgetting do it in your own wonderful human imagination actually bring it into being in your own imagination conjure a scene which would imply the Fulfillment of that dream and lose yourself in the act as you contemplate it and completely lose yourself in that stage if you’re completely absorbed in it you would objectify it and you would see it seemingly independent of your perception of it but even if you do not have that intensity if you lose yourself in it and feel it to be true the imaginal ACT then drop it in a way you do not know it will become true it will objectify itself on the screen of space1096 ¶31

and what the world calls reality which is really only a shadow realmas she so clearly described it here was her husband reading the morning paper and he was a shadow talking she goes up the street to shop and everyone she passes is a shadow talking all talking Shadows and it lasted for 24 hours and then the whole thing returned to what the world calls a normal world but in that interval at that very moment she was cured and the pain left her the sense of loss laughter and not once since that moment has it ever returned no sense of loss no pain and she’s of the same powerful woman she was prior to that horrible accident that took him out of her life it took him and she discovered the truth that she had been applying towards things and now she knows it is true in the deepest sense of the word that all things exist in the human imagination and that all that you behold though it appears without it is within in your own wonderful human imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow1096 ¶32

and all this objective reality is solely produced through imagining I don’t care what it is this room here it first was imagined the clothes you’re wearing well that was all imagined imagining preceded the thing that you now call real in the world foreign does not know it and his memory is so short he forgets the imaginal ACT and then the Harvest which one day he will reap and when he’s confronted with the Harvest he can’t relate it to anything he ever did that could produce it and yet everything it comes into his world he did it but he doesn’t rememberhis memory is faulty1096 ¶33

one day he will awaken and when he awakens he is the king of kings he is the Lord of lords he is the Lord Jesus Christ he is Jehovah1096 ¶34

and here is this little girl Melo and her mother say to her when I told the story that she is Peter and again she went home and she told and the little child quite innocently and matter-of-factly I accepted it quite normally and then said to her mother it’s an errand I came to do an errand I came to see God that’s the purpose of our being in the world just to see God it is an error I came to do an errand I came to see God now here is a little girl nine years old now she is completely qualified now for apostleship for that’s the indispensable prerequisite that Paul lays down for being an apostle and he asked the question the ninth chapter of First Corinthians am I not free am I not an apostle have I not seen Jesus our Lord he confessed he didn’t see him after the flesh but he saw him in spirit and he insisted the one indispensable qualification for apostleship is to have seen the Risen Lord and so she has seen the Risen Lord she’s qualified for Apostle chip1096 ¶35

I will one day take that lovely child and embracer and she and I will fuse I mean you become one body one spirit one Lord one God and Father of all and then I will send her as I was sent and send it into the world only to tell the Eternal story that’s all that you’re sent to do you aren’t saying to tell anything else just the Eternal story1096 ¶36

this is a story that is taking place forever and forever it’s a command to be done absolutely and continuously without reference to duration without reference to position in time it’s a command to be done not only once but that once is continuously done thy will must be being done is the imperative passive mood that’s how it’s written and here is a play written in the imperative passive move to be done absolutely uncontinuously without reference to any position in time without reference to duration1096 ¶37

and so she too will be sent and that I do know and she will simply tell her own experiences as she awakens as the same being because you’re awaken only as the Lord Jesus Christ1096 ¶38

she saw the tomb the tomb was reigned the coat was taken off and the coach he saw was my skin and that’s where the coat is buried let him fight over the coat let them cast lots for it let them take all these things and say this is where he’s buried and she sees him not buried but the Risen King and she’s I could see right through your new skin and behind that new skin I saw the king and the King was you the same King that I saw when you took me to France and then he faded wasn’t that incredible1096 ¶39

and then she signed she hasn’t yet reached the point where she can say love to me that’s too familiar so she said yours truly Melo McCaslin that’s too intimate he keeps that love for her mother and her father and that was nearer at the moment but I assure her mother and grandmother here tonight I’m still more intimateshe is my peter she says that that I am your peter in her letter and for these little words like which she leaves out the H is like a witch yeah and this darling letter is such a precious thing but I have it and I’ll keep it someday someone will find it among my letters we got this there to be preserved1096 ¶40

but may I tell you your own wonderful human imagination is the one spoken of in scripture as Jehovah as the Lord God as Jesus Christ that is the only reality in the world and one day maybe a blow like the loss of a dear one as it did in Louise’s case may be necessary to prove beyond all doubt all things do exist in the human imagination and here he came in for a purpose and he went out for purpose so I didn’t want to hurt you mother and that sudden departure after she had plotted and planned leave him Millions leave him a fortune and everything was all planted plotted around that lead and then like this she gets a choir1096 ¶41

and she told me at 6 15 she jumped out of her skin that morning it was Saturday morning and usually the children sleep late and as he did before he went off to college in London and by habit her husband Joseph gets up early so he got up the usual time but she opened would take a little extra nap and suddenly she felt herself jumping and she jumped up I wonder what has happened and I looked at the clock it was 6 15. I wonder what has happened why did I do this and then came never never came in and he always sleeps late on Saturdays and Sundays and then came the call and she has the Headmaster when was hekilled and he said 11 15. that’s exactly 6 15 New York time there’s a difference of five hours between New York and London New York is on the 75th Meridian and London is Greenwich and every 15 degrees you have a change of an hour exactly to the minute that’s when he was killed 11 15 London time 6 15 New York time and she walked with a joke and wondered what on Earth has happened and when she heard London Calling she thought it was Larry and when she heard this voice and it was not Larry’s voice she asked automatically what has happened to Larry and then he said I’m sorry to tell you Mrs Burleigh but Larry is dead necessary and you wonder what happened when everything seemingly to live for he brought to her this intense story that everything is within her1096 ¶42

now start using it lovingly because in you anyway and do not use it unlovingly you can have anything in this world that you want but do it with the same intensity but do it lovingly for God is not only your own wonderful human imagination God is infinite love and your imagination is not some vague Essence it is a being a majestic being that can be seen and when you see you will see the King of Kings and the Lord of lords and one day you too will take off the coat and others will not see it for anyone with incurrent eyes will see it and they will see that you took off your body you took off the skin and through that transparent body which you now were is the King of Kings and the Lord of lords1096 ¶43

I think you’ll find this a very practical night. I must incorporate certain things that I might have missed through the years. I tell you this because a very dear friend of ours — he’s not here tonight. He just — had he known that I was closing on the last leg tonight, which is tonight rather than the last Friday of the month, he would have been here. But he said, “I’m greatly disturbed over something you said just about two weeks ago,” and that is about the ranks, the heavenly ranks, the heavenly ranks, and he said, “I will not give up my divine right, my power, to anyone. I will not make others little that I may seem to myself superior.” I said I might have misunderstood you, and I wish you would answer this from your platform, and I will get a tape from someone and hear your answer to my question. For I spoke of the ranks, the spiritual ranks.1092 ¶1

I will not retract one word. He failed to see the difference between the individual and the state in which that individual was for that moment. There’s a vast difference between states and the immortal you. The immortal man is God. Man is all imagination. And God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself. God is playing all the parts. God alone acts and is in existing beings or men. There is only one actor in the world. There is only one author. It is God. And that God of whom I speak is your own wonderful human imagination. That is the operant power in the world. If I speak of your God, the chances are you will think of an existent someone outside of yourself. But if I speak of your imagination, I am certain you will think only of yourself. For that is the God of whom I speak. Playing all the parts.1092 ¶2

And the lowest part is the multiple tongues. We’re not linguists, but we’re all speaking our language — two hundred million of us — and find it difficult to understand each other, because we are moving towards a prejudice, a superstition, a fixed idea. And so we may say anything, but we have to get through that barrier, even though we are talking the same language, using the same English tongue. So here, let me start with a quote from the eighth chapter of Nehemiah. “And they read from the law of God, with interpretation, and the people understood the reading.” They read it with interpretation and the people understood the reading. Paul claims in his letter — the first letter to the Corinthians, you’ll find it in the 14th chapter — “I would rather speak five words with my understanding, that I may instruct others, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue.” Five words just to instruct others. Well, that has been my hope since I started teaching back in 1938 — to make it so clear that there is no misunderstanding.1092 ¶3

Let me state it clearly now. The spiritual states of the soul are eternal. You do not change them. You pass through them like a traveler. And you start at the very lowest, the tongues, the confusion of tongues called Babel in scripture, where we do not understand each other and so we war over strange confusions. The second one is the administrator, the organizer — you organize the confused states for personal gain, that is the second. And then Paul goes up to eight. He finds the last one, the apostle. Now, the one who played the part in the very lowest is still the same one who is going to play it when he is called as an apostle. I’m sent to tell the true story. The same being. Do not identify with the state called the apostle. While he is in it, he is going to play that part, but he is not that. He is the immortal self, which is the same one seated right here in everyone who is here. So the judge and the one that he is judging are both played by the same being, and that being the world calls God. But they do not know he is the only actor in the world. Only one actor. God only acts and is in existing beings or men.1092 ¶4

You and I, learning how to create — we create states to deliver others forevermore. But what we can make we can unmake, so we do not make permanent states. We create a state and take a fragment of what he was expressing and put it into the state that we create for him. So, tell me what you want. All right, you named it clearly. It’s up to me now to create the state and put you in that state. What would it be like if he were now what I wish he were? I try to persuade myself that you are that being. To the degree that I am self-persuaded that you are, I have put you in that state. And in that state, while I am faithful to it and you are in it, you are going to externalize the contents of that state. But what I made, I can unmake. I cannot unmake the eternal states. These eternal states are all within the human imagination. They culminate in redemption, and redemption is preceded by apostleship. That’s when you are called, and the word apostle means one who is sent.1092 ¶5

So I am finding myself in a state where I’m called. The night I was called, back in 1929, I had no idea I had arrived at that state. But here I am, called into the presence of infinite love, and it’s man. Having answered his question correctly, that love was the greatest thing in the world. He embraced me and we fused and became one body, one spirit. For he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with the Lord. At that moment it was not enough to be called and to be incorporated into the body of God, but to be sent on a mission. And I did not know that mission until it unfolded itself within me, and it took thirty years. Thirty years later, suddenly it erupted within me, and the entire story of Jesus unfolded itself within me, casting me in the central role of the story. And then I knew who I am. Then I knew who the one called Jesus of the story is. He is the culminating point of God in man. So when man actually completes the journey and comes to the fullness of it all, he discovers he is the one he’s been seeking all through his journey. But he comes to that at the very end.1092 ¶6

So do not let him brag. Do not let him boast that he is an apostle. Apostle is a permanent state. He is infinitely greater than all the states. He created these, and they are permanent within man, within the human imagination. But when he arrives at that state, it’s the last of the journey. And then he awakens and he knows who he is. And these experiences give him the certainty that he is God. He reads now the word that he read when he was a child. And before he could read it, his mother read it to him. And then he went to school and he read it in school. And when he could read for himself, he picked up the book. He couldn’t quite understand it, but he read it. Now he reads it as something entirely different. He knows the book is all about himself. It’s not about any being but God. And he’s found God within himself. And he is God. But that God of whom I speak is your own wonderful human imagination.1092 ¶7

Now tonight, to show you how easy this thing is — it’s based purely upon motion. The first creative act in Scripture that is recorded: “And the Spirit of the Lord moved.” He moved. Well, the Spirit of the Lord is in man. Do you not realize that ye are the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you, as we are told? He dwells in me — where? As my own wonderful human imagination. Now I go back to see how he first created. He created by motion.1092 ¶8

I move from one state into another state. If it is a state desired, then I have a sense of relief when I get into the state desired. If tonight I was up against it financially, and then suddenly I came into a fortune, what would be the outstanding feeling that I would have? Would it not be relief? So I insist, of all the pleasures that man could ever experience in this world, relief is the most keenly felt. The child is late. You say, be home at ten o’clock. So, ten o’clock, eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock, and there is no child. You think you are in control. You love her dearly and you think you’re in control. Oh yes, I can control my mind, my imagination, it’s easy. But then comes eleven, and there is no child. And internally you conjure a thousand and one things that could happen. Then you hear the little knock on the door, or the key in the door, and she comes through the door. What is your emotion? One of relief. Just one of relief. So of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. It comes in the creative act. Relief — call it by another name if you will — but it is relief at that moment of explosion.1092 ¶9

But the same thing is true when I move into a state. What would the feeling be like if it were true? And I work myself into that state as though it is true. If I am in that state I can suppress — I have the sense of relief because I’ve done it. Now what do I do after that? Nothing. Remain in the state. It has its own appointed hour, and it ripens, and it’s going to flower. Don’t be concerned, you’re in the state. Now let it unfold itself in its own wonderful natural way, past finding out. So I move myself into a state. I don’t remain in the state that I want to leave behind me and push a button and think something is going to happen. I move. I move from one state into another state.1092 ¶10

But these states I am creating — I do not consciously move in these spiritual states. They are automatically determined by my journey in this world, so no one can sit down and conjure the spiritual state; if you think he is going to, he’s only kidding himself.1092 ¶11

These happen automatically as man, who is God, moves through these eternal spiritual states, completely marked out in the twelfth chapter of the book of 1 Corinthians. And you are not going to change them. So I say to my friend, when he hears this, I do not intend to set myself up as someone who is other than you, better than you. I have reached a state called the apostle. I was called and incorporated into the body of the living God. He is a living God. He is not the God of the dead. Nothing dies in God, everything is alive. Today millions went to the cemeteries. They aren’t there. That’s an organized big business, completely organized on the fears of people. That’s not where anyone goes. You drop now — all right, maybe they’ll put you away tomorrow, maybe in a week from now — but at that very moment you are restored to life, in a world just like this, real just like this, and the unfinished work you’re going to finish it. No one is going to fail, because God is the operant power, and God is that individual’s human imagination, and he’s moving towards self-redemption, and he goes through these states. Infinite states.1092 ¶12

But you and I, we’re intelligent enough to create a state. So someone comes to you and says, “You know, I do not know exactly what I want, but I don’t like what I have.” All right, let him tell you what he has. Well, you wouldn’t like it either, if you listen carefully. No, I wouldn’t like that either. Well, let us reason together. What would you like? Would you like this? Would you like that? And then he comes upon something he would like. Well, then, if you are a friend of his, you create a state to deliver your friend from his former state.1092 ¶13

And so you see him in that state. Well, how do you do it? Bring before your mind’s eye your friend, and have your friend with a nice big smile on his face, and have him actually thanking you for what you did for him. Now the thing has not happened yet, but you go beyond the present moment, and you are appropriating now subjectively the objective hope. You hope he will stand before you objectively with a smile on his face, and you hope you’re going to hear his words. And the words you’re going to hear is, “Oh, thank you so much. It worked just like a charm. You know, when I saw you the last time, I was up against it. Today, it’s simply rolling and rolling in my direction. Everything is perfect.” That’s what you want to hear for a friend. Well, now you hear that. So if you’re hearing that, you move him out of his former state into the state that you have now created for him. Do this and you cannot fail.1092 ¶14

So prayer is not petition. Prayer is giving thanks. You don’t get on your knees and petition any being outside of yourself. There is no intermediary between yourself and self. You need no priest. You need no so-called healer. You need nothing on the outside. It’s all within self. What would the feeling be like if it were true? With that, I catch that feeling, and then I work myself into that state. What would it be like? All right, I know what it would be like. Well, feel it, and keep on feeling it, and keep on feeling it, until all of a sudden, you’re relieved. There’s a release within you. And then it’s done. You can’t do it a second time. It’s done.1092 ¶15

So I say, I’m looking at the world from a spot. At every moment in time, I’m always viewing the world from a place. That place could be from a financial position in my world. It could be from a physical position in my world. It could be, you name it. I’m looking from a certain state, and I’m seeing confirmation of that state by what I am seeing. Now, how will I know that I have moved? Well, it’s a very simple test to know that I have moved. Unless there is a fixed frame of reference, no one will know that something moved. If I started moving from here to the end of the room, and everything started moving with me at the same time, I have no reference to prove that I have moved. Motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to a fixed object. It must be fixed relative to me, that I may know that I have moved. But all my friends know where I am, who I am, what I am. If I desire a change, my friends, my fixed reference, they should know it. So I don’t ask anything of them. I simply assume that I have changed. But if I have changed, then I have a fixed reference — the faces of my friends. Now let me conjure them in my mind’s eye, and let me look at them. Do they see me as a changed person? Or are they still seeing the one who would like to be changed? Are they congratulating me on my change? Well, then I’ve changed. I saw it reflected in their faces. I heard it in their voices. I saw a change on their faces, which change revealed to me that they noticed in me a change. That’s what I want. Now, that proved that I moved.1092 ¶16

Nobody saw me move physically. I’m still seated in the same chair. But I moved. And so the whole thing is based upon motion. It’s a psychological motion. We’re living in a world of imagination, and this whole vast out-pictured world was first imagined. There is nothing you see here that wasn’t first imagined. And yet, close as he is, you still can’t find him. Why? Why can’t I find him as something objective? Because he is the reality I call imagination. I see the fruits of my imaginal acts, but I do not see the actor as I see the outpouring of his activity, for he is the reality I call imagination — that is God. That’s the one. When you completely awaken you’re going to know that’s what man basically is hungering for: the awakening of imagination, which is the awakening of God within him. That is the only God of which the Bible speaks. There is no other God.1092 ¶17

“I will go down to the potter’s house.” And I went down to the potter’s house, as the Lord said to me. And there he was working at his wheel, and the vessel in his hand was spoiled. But he didn’t discard it. He reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do. Now that’s the 18th chapter of Jeremiah, which word Jeremiah means “Jehovah will rise.” He’ll rise, all right. He’ll rise in you as you, because he is you. There’s no one else to awaken but God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. And the word potter in Hebrew means imagination. It means to determine. That’s what the word actually means by definition in Strong’s Biblical Concordance — it means the potter, which means imagination. So I go down to imagination’s place, where he’s working at his wheel. What potter? My own imagination. “What are you doing, Neville?” “Well, I’m just spending a few minutes here, there, and...” “Well, then, it’s spoiled. You will admit what you are doing isn’t quite what you want done. Don’t discard it. Rework it.”1092 ¶18

Reworked, up against it — will he be satisfied, say, with X number of dollars? No, don’t limit it. Put no limit upon the power of belief. Can you believe that he doesn’t have that pressure on him anymore, that he’s above it, that it is something behind him? Well, put him in that state. It doesn’t cost you any more to put him in that state than to put him in a little modified state. You didn’t pay anything for it. “Come, eat and drink without price. Buy wine, buy milk without money.” It didn’t cost you a penny to do it, so why modify it? Why make it little for him? It’s not exactly what he would want for himself — it’s better than what he has. But you want something bigger than that for him. And there is no limit.1092 ¶19

When you meet people of great wealth in this world, and you’ll judge them because they have money, just talk to them for a little while. Money hasn’t altered their other states. They’re just as stupid as they were before. In fact, I’ve gone to parties where this one was a millionaire, that’s a millionaire, that’s so-and-so, and then the lady would point out another one: “See that one? Oh, she’s not just rich, she’s stinking rich” — in her language that meant multiple millions. And if you walk out of that place — I’m speaking of a club, I will not mention the name, a club in New York City, a ladies’ club — they’re all multimillionaires. Walk out on the street, but don’t leave, just walk out and stay there. And then watch them come out after their big heavy lunches and their three or four martinis or whatever it is, and watch them. And if you didn’t know these are members of that club with all the millions in the world, you would say to yourself, “Poor souls.” You would think maybe they came out, they’re cleaning up after the guests left. That’s exactly what they look like. But they feel they don’t have to put on anything because they’re above it all.1092 ¶20

My father would say, when they were coming — and they were very, very rich, and he ran his store, and when they all became very, very, later, with a fabulous wealth — he would turn to one of us and he would say, “You know, God is really merciful. Suppose she didn’t have money.” He never completed the thought. He left it for us to use our imagination. “Suppose she didn’t have money” — she’s a merciful goddess, he would say, and then you go on dwelling upon what your father did not complete; he wanted you to complete it.1092 ¶21

So I tell you, prayer will be answered. All prayers are answered if you know how to pray. And to pray is not to beg. You don’t petition. You give thanks. Well, you aren’t going to give thanks to something that isn’t, but you must actually believe in God, as you are told: he who comes to God must first believe that he exists, and that he rewards those who seek him. But you must first believe that he exists. Read that in the 11th chapter, the 6th verse of Hebrews: all who will come to God must first believe that he exists. Well, I know he exists. I hope that everyone here knows he does exist. But as Blake said, “Why stand we here trembling around, calling on God for help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?” So why turn on the outside to call upon a God when he dwells in me? For he dwells in me as my imagination. So I will commune with my own imagination until I am satisfied that it is done. And you get into the habit of feeling that it’s done — the feeling of relief. And then you go about your business and let it take its own course. It will take its course and it will come out perfectly.1092 ¶22

So you don’t beg anyone. You don’t petition anyone. And it has nothing to do with so-called holiness. That is such an abused word. “He is a holy man.” May I tell you, if anyone introduces you to a person as a very holy man, turn and run. They’ll fleece you. And I’m not fooling. They come over here from India and all — you see them on the TV. Next thing you know, they’re getting $500 for a special course on people who have more money than brains. They pay all that. Then off to India he goes with his multiple fortunes that he’s simply taken from those who aren’t given to thinking. So money doesn’t care who owns it. So they have it, and so they’ll give it out to anyone who is called a holy man. Well, I have had my experience with these so-called holy men.1092 ¶23

One little fellow, you all know him, you saw him on TV, and some reporter asked him, “Why do you advertise so much? You’re always advertising, building up your own little personality, and Jesus never did.” And in the little high-pitched voice of his, he started laughing. He said, “That’s why it took him so long.” Well, I mean, after all, you sit down in your living room and you turn your little set on to listen to that nonsense. But people do it, and they pay him for it.1092 ¶24

Now here, may I tell you, you have everything that it takes to be the man, to be the woman that you want to be. Don’t pass them up. You’re right here this very night. Know what you want to be. Be definite. When you know exactly what you want to be, don’t ask anyone if it’s possible. You simply feel that you are it. What would the feeling be like if it were true? Would my wife, my husband, my friends know it? Let them know it — not verbally. Let them know it all in your imagination. Let them see you as they would have to see you if it were true. Just let them see you. And go to sleep in that assumption. For I know from my own experience that an assumption, though denied by my senses and therefore called by the world false, if persisted in, will harden into facts. That I do know. An assumption, the same simple little assumption — if you will persist in it, it will harden into facts. That is a law.1092 ¶25

How else would you interpret this statement from the 11th chapter of the book of Mark: “Whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believe that ye receive it, and ye shall have it.” How are you going to interpret that? Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and you will. No limit is placed upon the power of belief. It doesn’t even say it has to be good for you. It leaves you entirely free to make your choice and take the risk, because when you reap that state, you’re also going to reap the consequences of that state. So take your choice, but also be willing to take the consequences of the state.1092 ¶26

And you could go through life just simply knowing the states. You see a person in the gutter today, he need not be in the gutter forever. Take him out of the gutter in your mind’s eye. Here was a friend of mine, Freedom Barry, that I sent to San Francisco to teach this law. He hasn’t had the experience of the promise, so he can’t teach the promise, but he teaches the law. Before he opened, he saw a man crossing the street while he was airing his little dog. The man came over. First of all, he passed nice complimentary thoughts about the dog, which Freedom enjoyed, and then he said, “Could you let me have a little money?” And Freedom said, “I’m sorry, but I do not have any money.” A gentleman evidently, and he went his way. And Freedom, before he made one step, he remained right there on that sidewalk and saw that man gainfully employed. He said to Freedom he hadn’t worked, he was out of work. And Freedom saw him gainfully employed and felt the thrill of his employment.1092 ¶27

A month later, Freedom is out walking the little dog, and this man crosses the street, comes over to Freedom, and he said, “I don’t suppose you remember me?” And Freedom said, “Oh yes I do, very well.” He said, “Well, I want to thank you for not giving me money one month ago when I asked you. Had you given it to me, I’d be asking you for money today. But I got so mad with myself, to be placed in that position, to ask a total stranger for money, I went home determined I am going to get a job.” He didn’t know what Freedom had done, but Freedom did that which pushed him out of that state of asking for money into a state of earning it. He went out the very next day after he met Freedom and got himself a job that paid well. He said, “I’m on the job that I got the day after I asked you for money. I’m still on it, and there is room for growth in that job, and I’m sticking with the job. So again, thank you for not giving me the money.” If Freedom had done what most people would do — would have walked away and said, “No, I don’t have any money for you,” or “I don’t have money,” without explaining why — but Freedom did something about it. He put the man in an entirely different state. And having put him in a different state, the man got a job the very next day.1092 ¶28

So I say to anyone, you can try it. Don’t pass the buck, and help everyone in this world. You create states to deliver individuals evermore — these are states that you create, and you can drop them. But the other states of which I spoke earlier, the spiritual states of the soul, are forever, and no one is going to change them.1092 ¶29

But to make myself clear: when you are in the final state, the apostle, it doesn’t mean you’re better than you yourself when you’re in that multitude of confusion, for God was playing that as he’s playing the state of the apostle. But God is above all states, and you are God, so you’re not an apostle forever — you play that, and that’s the final part of the journey, and you come out redeemed. When you hit that state and you know that you are the apostle, because you’re sent, and the apostle is one who is sent — it’s only then you know you’ve been chosen for a definite reason, and you’re sent to tell what’s going to happen to you. Well then, thirty years later, in my case, it happened to me that I could then speak with authority. I was not quoting anyone. I was not in any way speculating or theorizing. So when I tell you David is the Christ, I speak from authority, from experience, and therefore I speak with authority. When I tell you he is the only son, which is a resultant state of the journey you made through those eternal spiritual states — and when you hit the last one, you are born.1092 ¶30

Listen to these words. In the King James Version, and Moffatt’s Version, and others that I have at home, it’s correctly translated. The Revised Standard Version, the New English Version have added a word that confuses the entirety. This is now the 8th chapter, the 11th verse of Romans: “If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, he will also raise Christ.” Two entirely different ones. But if you say “also raise Jesus Christ,” you’re going to confuse the entire thing. So the King James Version leaves off the word Jesus when it comes to the second raising, which is Christ. And it happens just like that. Jesus comes first. It’s the I Am of man — that’s the Father. He is awakened first. Five months later, then comes David. A hundred and thirty-nine days after, the Father awakens within the sepulcher. Then comes an explosion — a hundred and thirty-nine days later, and then David stands before you. He is the resultant state.1092 ¶31

Now, when you read the Bible in the future, and I hope you all will, always bear in mind the characters mentioned there and depicted there are not individuals as you and I are. They are states of consciousness, from Adam to the very end. These are all states of consciousness. So the name signifies the state, if you know the meaning of the name. But do not think when you use the word Abraham you’re speaking of a man. As when I speak of Bill, Bill is a man, he’s an individual. It’s God wearing that mask called Bill. But when I speak of Abraham, that’s a state of consciousness. But when you meet these states of consciousness in vision, they are personified, and you see a man, but it is not man as you are man. All these are contained within the human imagination. So when you encounter Abraham, well, you’re going to see a man, and you know he’s Abraham. When you encounter David, you meet a youth, an eternal youth, but it’s a resultant state. You are above all states. You are God.1092 ¶32

Every being in this world is God, and God is one. “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And never get away from that. That is fundamental. The minute you have two gods, you’re going to get confusion. Two will become four, and four eight, and eight sixteen, and you’ll get confusion in the world. Only one God. And that God is named forever, and forever is I Am. That’s the being. So when you awaken within the sepulcher, you know who awoke — I. You say, “I. I Am.” There’s no one present, just yourself, and you come out without the help of anyone. And then comes the imagery of scripture that surrounds you, bearing witness to the truth of the story. But you are cast from then on in the central role. And so everything unfolds within the imagination of man, and that is God.1092 ¶33

As you leave here, go out knowing you have the power and the right to become the man, to become the woman that you want to be, without hurting any person in this world. You don’t need to hurt anyone to gain anything in this world. You go out and play your part fully, and let no one pull any rank, for all ranks are only states of consciousness. The king and the one who is amusing him, the court jester, are both played by the same being, and that being is unseen by the two masks — the mask of the king and the mask of the court jester. For behind the mask is God, and God is simply I Am. So one plays the part of the court jester and one plays the part of the king, and we honor the mask and bow before the king, and that court jester may be nearer to apostleship. Do not judge by appearances, as you are told.1092 ¶34

When they saw this giant of a man stand before him, Samuel thought, well, certainly he is the Lord’s chosen. For the Lord said to Samuel, “Go down to the house of Jesse, for I have chosen one of his sons to be king of Israel.” And when the first son came in he was a majestic creature, and Samuel said to himself, “Surely he is the Lord’s choice.” And the Lord said, “I have rejected him. The Lord sees not what man sees; man sees the outward appearance, but the Lord sees the heart.” Then he brought the second, and he brought the third, and finally he brought the last, which was David, and David was tending the flocks. Now this is all a story — you must extract the meaning from that story.1092 ¶35

So he brings the little one in. He was just a youth. And as he came in, no one thought for one moment he would be the one. And the boy came to the prophet Samuel. “Rise and anoint him. This is he.” And in the midst of his brothers Samuel anointed him with the holy oil, and then the spirit of God came upon him mightily from that day forward, never left him. Therefore he never lost the battle — the victorious one, David. So in the end he stands before you, for he played all the battles. You were the Lord of Lords with him, but you didn’t know it. And he is the Father’s only son. And then he stands before you, and he is your son. And then, and then only, do you know you are God the Father. You gain all the assurance that you need when you see David, for he is God’s son and he is your son; therefore you must be God. And that’s the story.1092 ¶36

Now, this being our last night, I suppose we go into the silence and give you ample time for questions if you have any. Good. Harry, I didn’t see this, but I could have used it an hour ago. I didn’t see it. I would have — and regretted it, too. Now, are there any questions, please?1092 ¶37

And I think you’ll find this a very interesting series. As usual, it’s all about you — but I mean the true you, your immortal self, your true identity, not the little garment that you wear, for which you are so identified that you think it to be yourself. No, I’m not speaking of that — I’m speaking of the truth, being — it has no beginning and will have no end. That’s the Bible. So our textbook is really the Bible.1090 ¶1

Biblical language evokes rather than describes. It is all about another world, and all about the sons of God who purposely, deliberately, came down into this plane — an outburst into humanity — and the plan, the promise, before ever the world was, for their return. That’s the experience, the feasting of death, for this is the world of death. So the plan is contained within you, the true you, and you are it in the mind — you think you are the man, and you without that — the man at all — it’s only a garment, like a suit of clothes that you wear.1090 ¶2

Now tonight my subject is “I Say You Are Gods.” This is taken from the 82nd Psalm. In 1888, Thomas Cheyne, who was the editor of what the dispensers considered the most scholarly of all the higher criticisms of the Bible, called the Encyclopedia Biblica, and he wrote: no poem makes severer demands than this upon the historic imagination of the interpreter — the ideas may be perennial, but their outward forms are no longer understood. Now let me quote the passage that he could not understand, and to this day, if you take the historic imagination of man, preaching the Bible as secular history, they all will blunder over what it is. “And God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he judgeth.” And now he passes the judgment: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” But if you read it, this implies that those addressed were not men — otherwise the forecast that they would die like men would be meaningless.1090 ¶3

The New Testament tells us we are the ones addressed. To return to the tenth chapter of the Book of John, the central figure makes the claim, “I and my Father are one.” And they took up stones to stone him, and he said to them, “For which of my good works do you stone me?” And they answered, “For no good work, but for blasphemy, for you being a man make yourself God.” And then he said to this: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and scripture cannot be broken, say ye of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘Thou blasphemest,’ because I say I am the Son of God?” There is one in whom the pattern awoke, and he gained the presence that he was God — only as a person awoke within him — and he tries to tell his brothers that we are the ones addressed in that 82nd Psalm, but they would not believe it.1090 ¶4

If you’ve ever seen anyone suffering from amnesia, and I have, it’s almost impossible to describe it. You’ll feel like crying. You’re looking at the face of a friend that you know well, and he cannot remember. You bring his closest kin, his parents — maybe he has a wife, his children — and he cannot recognize him. He does not know them at all, and he is not fooling — he cannot remember them. Complete amnesia. That’s what has happened to us. We have completely forgotten who we are.1090 ¶5

And I am here to tell you that you are the Lord Jesus Christ. He is buried in you, and until the story of Christ repeats itself in you, he remains buried in you. That’s the story. Now, how do I know? I know from my own personal experience. That’s how I know — I am not theorizing, I am not speculating. When it happens in you, you can pick out a circle that will experience your unfolding. I know you to be the Lord. You will know it, he will know it, they will know it, and you do not have to pick out the day — they’ll know it, they will all know it. But everyone will know it, or this is going to happen to every being in the world. Everyone.1090 ¶6

Now we are told: though he was in the form of God, he did not think it a thing to grasp, but emptied himself and became man — took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death upon a cross. Well, the only cross on which Christ was ever crucified is the human form — this is his cross, and that I do know from experience. Every child born of woman is the cross on which Jesus Christ is crucified, in which he is dead, and from which he will rise.1090 ¶7

Understand — where he was before his descent into this world — but the language used in Scripture, it doesn’t describe it, it is an attempt to describe it. The third chapter of John: he is now discussing with one of the Sanhedrin — well, a member of the Sanhedrin, the most learned council, the wisest of Israel, the great teacher, Nicodemus. He explains to Nicodemus that a man must be born again. Now this is not reincarnation — it has nothing to do with reincarnation. You are now individualized, and you remain so forever and forever, until whatever greater individualization comes — there’s no such thing as reincarnation, though it’s held by a very large section of the world and believed in by a number of millions. That’s not what he’s teaching. You must be born again, but the word is anothen, which means “from above.” We’re all born from below, from the womb of a woman. Everyone must be born from above — from the buried man, where God is buried, is the birth of God. That’s the birth from above.1090 ¶8

Now he said, “No one ascends into heaven but he who descended.” Now he names the Son of Man — that which comes out of man, that is now buried in man; it cannot ascend unless it first descended. It descended into man. When the little child is conceived, it brings the breath of God, which is God himself, in that child — for the word “breath” and the word “spirit” are one in the Hebrew — and he breathed into them, and they became living beings. But we are destined to be not only living beings, like automatons — we are destined to be life-giving spirit, “for as the Father has life in himself, so has he given to the Son to have life in himself.” By this act of the crucifixion — crucified on this cross — I will then rise, and you will rise to exaltation, to the Father, not to see him as something other than yourself, but to be the Father. And you too will be able to say, “I and the Father are one.”1090 ¶9

Our descent into division, and our resurrection into unity; our descent into the generation of decaying death, and gain our regeneration by our resurrection from the dead. That is the statement of the 82nd Psalm in the most beautiful way. “To those in great eternity, met in the council of God as one man; for by contracting, the exalted senses behold multitude, as you and I do; for expanding, we behold one — one man, all the universal family contained in one” — and that one man we call, in Scripture, we call him Jesus the Christ, and they in him, and he and them, live in perfect harmony, in Eden, the land of light.1090 ¶10

You are indwelling in everyone in the world — or you couldn’t even perceive them — and they all dwell in you. You are being spoken of in Scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ, but until the story repeats itself in you — not as an observer observing it, but you, the actor, playing the central part — not observing it as you would observe a theater unfolding before you, but actually the actor, the actor called Jesus Christ, without loss of your identity. You still maintain your own identity and get cast in the central role of the Lord Jesus Christ, and all the imagery of Scripture unfolds within you, and only then do you really know who you are. So I tell you tonight, you are the ones addressed in that 82nd Psalm, that is still considered the most difficult of the 150 psalms, for the historic imagination of the interpreter to grasp. Yes, the ideas are perennial, they’re forever and forever.1090 ¶11

And we read the word of Paul. Paul was determined not to know any Jesus Christ after the flesh, as he himself confessed in his second letter to the Corinthians: “Henceforth I regard no one from a human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” He was determined not to conceive of this cosmic being from some little single man in this world. He bursts into humanity, and yet he is not divided — he is a total, he is one. And because he’s the whole, you’re not divided, you are one. And when you awaken, you’ll see the whole vast world as yourself pushed out; every being in your world lives within you, and all that you behold, though it appears without, is within — in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. And that human imagination is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ is your own true identity.1090 ¶12

So when they say, “We crucify you” — no, we do not crucify you for blasphemy, no, not for good works — he’s telling you, from his experience, it’s going to happen to you. And you dare to tell your vision, even to your most intimate friends, they will think you insane. If they should hear the news that you have actually experienced within yourself the entire story of Jesus as described in Scripture, they will begin to think that man is insane, and they will say, “Why listen to him? He has a devil and is mad” — read it in the Gospel of John — “why listen to him?” Any man who has gained the certainty from the experience within himself which parallels the story in Scripture, if he tells it, they think he’s insane. For man has been taught to believe in some little tiny physical flesh-and-blood man that is called Jesus, and the word Jesus means Jehovah — the same word is Jehovah, it is the Lord God, the Savior of the world. But he is buried — a man in every man, not a chosen little crowd, but every man.1090 ¶13

You want to know his name? His name is I Am. You can’t go anyplace and not know that you are. You may forget this very moment and suffer total amnesia concerning your present physical state, and not know who you are, where you are, or even what you are, but you can’t forget that you are. No man can be unaware that he is. He can be unaware of who he is and what he is and where he is, but he can’t be unaware of being. And that is the name of God, forever and forever. So my name is I Am. And because of that, you are immortal.1090 ¶14

So we are the sons who came down, not because we did anything that was wrong — it is not a fault, as taught by some prophet of the world — this was a deliberate descent into this world of death and decay, to prove our own creative power, that we could die — literally die, not pretend. If you are a god pretending that you’re a man, you would know who you are, and it could not do anything for you. You have to completely empty yourself of all that you are, your wonderful divine form, your heavenly state, and actually come down and suffer, and believe that you’re a man, to experience death, for all men die. So I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of them; nevertheless you will die, you will die like men, and fall like one of the princes — one man, God’s, containing all. He came down, and now, through this act of the crucifixion, we are now transformed, and from the crucifixion we are exalted to the Father.1090 ¶15

So when you rise, you’re not rising as the Son of God — you’re rising as God the Father. And what is the Son then? If we all think God the Father, and if he’s a father, then where is his son? Humanity is transformed, and the whole of humanity is symbolized in the single youth called David. And David is the son of the Father. You are the father of David — you do not know it yet, but you will know it. When you see him, there is no uncertainty as to this relationship between you, God the Father, and your son David. You might think the whole thing is a legend — well, it is. Man can fall in love with a legend — he fell in love with David, I mean David the son of Jesse. And Jesse means “Jehovah exists,” is the son of Jehovah, who is, or any form of the verb “to be,” which is I Am. And the day will come when you’ve completed the journey, he will stand before you and call you Father, and you will know you are his father, and you will know he is your son. There’ll be no uncertainty as to this relationship between you, God the Father, and your son David — who is the essence of humanity.1090 ¶16

If you took all the generations of men and all of their experiences, and simply condensed them into one single being, and personify that being, he will come out as David. So having gone through the gamut of all that man could ever conceive of, and having played all the parts, then you come out. Now, when you come out, you’re God the Father, and your son is David, the essence of all that you went through as man. And that is the story of the Bible. It cannot spell it out, because how can you find words to describe it?1090 ¶17

I started to tell you earlier how he tried to tell it in the third chapter of John, and when Nicodemus could not understand — these are the words that are used, it’s all beautiful imagery, but true. You’ll find, if you can, a more beautiful image for one to use to express this expression. He said, as the Son of Man — thinking first of all, he said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” And you will wonder, what on earth is he talking about? What can that do for me? Here he’s trying to explain how men are saved. But I tell you, having died, I know how it’s done. You cannot do it by taking thought — it just happens, in the fullness of time it happens, and this is how it’s done.1090 ¶18

First of all, you are told you are the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you. If I am the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in me, and the curtain of that temple must be torn in two from top to bottom, it can only be a part of my body that is torn — it can’t be a piece of cloth like that. Many think that some little curtain in the synagogue was meant — it has nothing to do with any curtain in the synagogue. If I am the temple, and the curtain’s in the temple, there must be something in me that is torn in two, from top to bottom, to reveal the holy of holies.1090 ¶19

Well, it is — without any thought whatsoever, not knowing the moment it’s going to happen, not even knowing though he wants it to happen — the day will come that you will be torn into from top to bottom, from the top of your head to the base of your spine, and it will separate. And at the base of the spine you will see golden, pulsing, liquid light — “I am the light of the world” — you’ll see it, and, as an observer, you will know you are what you are, that you’re actually beholding yourself. It has no face, it’s simply golden, golden discs of light, and as you contemplate it, you fuse on it, and as you fuse with it to become one with it, like a fiery serpent, up you go, through that same body of yours, into heaven. And heaven is not up there with the stars — heaven is within you. You go up into your skull, and it reverberates like thunder. He ascends into heaven, and you’re told the kingdom of God is within you. So if I’m to go into the kingdom of God, where can I go but into myself, right into my own skull? So “no one ascends” — but he who first descended. And then I see what I am — that is the thing that came down in the generation, at the base of my spine, but I fell into generation, and therefore decay and death; and now I behold it, and I fuse with it, and up I rise, like a fiery serpent.1090 ¶20

The imagery is perfect — how else could you describe it? So in the third chapter of John, he makes every attempt to explain what he means when he calls himself the Son of God who is the Son of Man. It comes out of man, but he redeems himself out of man. So man is not your true identity — God is your true identity. You are the Lord Jesus Christ.1090 ¶21

Tonight you may want to throw something at me if you were trained differently, and think I am blaspheming. I am not blaspheming, I’m speaking the same word — the one he used in the gospel — he said of himself, “You say I blaspheme because you, being a man, make yourself God.” He knew he was not a man, for I cannot address things and say to them, “You are the sons of God, sons of the Most High, all of them, nevertheless you will die like men” — for if I’m going to die like a man, I cannot be a man when I was addressed. I’m something other than man. But he tells you what I was — he was the Son of God. If I am the Son of God, then I must be like whatever God is, and God isn’t man — he comes down and he redeems man.1090 ¶22

But who came down? The sons of God, and always are the sons of God. And all of us together — not one must be missing — make up God the Father. And each, as he returns, will be that God the Father, the totality. He will be the one God and Father of all, and he will have the one son, and that son will be the sum total of all of the experiences of humanity, fused into a single whole and personified. And his state, as he stands before us, he is just as he’s described in the book — an eternal youth, for eternity is not an old man, eternity is personified as a youth.1090 ¶23

Eternal Youth is my son, and he wears the form — yes, I can tell you, the face is human, the voice is human, the hands are human, but do not ask me about the body. I could not describe the body, I have no image on earth to tell it. How someone could embrace you whose face is human, whose hands are human, whose voice is human, but don’t ask me the question. And yet, when he embraced me, our bodies became one. In this world, you see, one plus one equals two; in Divine mathematics, one plus one equals one — he became one. So in the end there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all — they will not be two of us, you and I are one, because if you have the same son that I have, and you become fully conscious of it, then you and I must be one. And if we are the same son, then we are the same father, yet without loss of individuality, without loss of our identity. I will know you in eternity — I’ll know you as God the Father, I know you as the one whose son is my son, and if your son is my son, then we are one.1090 ¶24

And this is the story of the Bible. Its language evokes, does not describe — or, it does not describe things of this world. And all of our evangelists are trying to prove that they know, from the Bible, the world is coming to an end, and all this nonsense — the little world is not coming to any end. The age comes to an end to the individual, when the individual has completed the journey, and he finds himself unfolding within himself the entire story of the Gospel of Jesus, and his world has come to an end.1090 ¶25

So when people call him dead, he is not restored to life in a world like this, where all people are — no, he is in a new age altogether, an entirely different age, called the Kingdom of Heaven, which is a body — it’s not a realm. Wherever he is now, clothed in that heavenly body, is heaven, for nothing can remain imperfect in his presence, because he is perfect. Nothing can remain dead — you walk through the desert and it blossoms like the rose, he walks through a petrified forest that bursts into blossom, because he is life, he is the one true living being. Nothing remains dead in his presence, because he is the Living God.1090 ¶26

And those who die without the experience are instantly restored to life in a body that is human, just like this — young, in a world terrestrial just like this — to continue the journey until the story of Jesus is reenacted within him. He has come to the end of the age, which is what the world is speaking of today, of the world coming to an end — no, the world is not coming to an end.1090 ¶27

And here you find all these things — it’s almost embarrassing. I gave a small ad in last Saturday’s paper, and I saw these fantastic claims on the same page where my little ad was — I almost blushed — “come and see this,” multimillion, oatmeal of gold, and all the nonsense and all the silliness that you read, all in the name of the Bible. And the Bible has nothing to do with this — it’s talking about you, the true you, not the little god that you shave in the morning — that is simply something that hides you, it hides the being that you really are. It’s talking of your true, essential being, that the Deity came down and emptied himself of his divine right, and took upon himself the form of a slave — now listen to the word — took upon himself the form of a slave, and was born in the likeness of men.1090 ¶28

He entered slavery with men, and being found in human form — the three of them he equates, he identifies the three as the same. But a man may be rich, living in a fabulous world — he has homes all over the world, and maybe he can sign a check tonight, and it will be honored tomorrow morning for ten million dollars without batting an eye — but he’s a slave of the body that he wears.1090 ¶29

Possessing all the money in the world, and if he has millions under his control, like any dictator of a fabulous land which has people under his control, to put them into slavery with impunity — yes, the dictator who could give the order to execute this one or that one, he cannot command one of his slaves to perform the natural functions of his body — he has to do it all for himself. He has to eat and drink, he has to assimilate what the body can assimilate, and he has to expel from that body what it cannot assimilate, and he has to do it all by himself — he’s not free. This body enslaves us all, no matter who we are in this world. We drive through with our wonderful chariots, and all the police leading us and following us, and everyone waving to the crowd, and maybe she is dying, or he is dying, to get beyond it, because no one can do for her or for him what she has to do for herself, and the time has come — isn’t that slavery?1090 ¶30

So, being found in human form, and he calls it a slave, he became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross — this is the only cross. And may I tell you, it’s not a painful cross. When I experienced the crucifixion, it was the most ecstatic, the most wonderful feeling — they were vortices that held me here, not nails as seen in pictures. How they arrived at those pictures, I do not know, because there is no description, no personal description of Jesus in the Bible. You cannot go through the sixty-six books and find one simple little personal description of Jesus, yet we have all these paintings and all these things with nails made of wood or made of iron.1090 ¶31

There is a vortex — that’s the vortex, the vortex, a vortex, and by my two feet. And when they actually enter, it’s sheer ecstasy, for you made the decision to give up your divine right and take upon yourself this garment. And the act of taking it was not a painful act at all — you deliberately did it, and took upon yourself the form of a slave. And being found in human form, you became obedient unto death — yes, the death on this cross.1090 ¶32

There is no other God. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, that they have a little piece of wood from the cross here, a little piece of wood there — if you put all the little pieces of wood together, it would build this house. And one man carried that cross. One church has a little piece of cloth — this came from his robe — another church has a piece of cloth, another church has a piece of cloth — take all that cloth together that he wore as a robe, it would clothe an army. It has nothing to do with it.1090 ¶33

As you are seated here tonight, no one is more holy than you are, because the Lord Jesus Christ is buried within you, and you do not have to bow before anyone in this world — no one is more holy than you are. He may be richer, he may be stronger, maybe wiser, he may have all these qualities and you do not possess them, but he is not any holier than you are. And in the end, when you awake, he cannot be any wiser, because when you complete the awakening, you are the wisdom and the power of God, as defined in Scripture.1090 ¶34

So don’t think anyone on earth, regardless of his accomplishment, will transcend you, or that’s the being of whom I speak, and will continue to speak throughout the series, or we will interlace it — is what many would like to hear, concerning the use of the law while we are waiting for redemption, how to use it wisely in this world, and achieve certain objectives, certain goals in this world — that can be done, no question about it.1090 ¶35

Here in this audience — I said to the gentleman, the involvement of the law that he said to me: “I go home, I sit in my garden, in my patio, and I dream, but a controlled dream.” He worked in the city, Culver City. He did not have the educational qualifications for the job that was vacant — he had to have a college education to qualify, he did not have one — went to high school, and that was the last of his education. I saw the gift that came down from the powers that be — he is now, in spite of the so-called qualifications by law he has to fulfill — didn’t fulfill it at all, did it all in his imagination, and now he is the purchasing agent of the city of Culver City, and that money is funneled through his hands every year. I asked him, and he brought me down the other day — he took me down. I said, “How much do you have to spend in the course of the year?” He said, “My budget runs about eight hundred thousand dollars a year.” It all comes through his fingers, everything must come through his hands, that the city needs, he orders.1090 ¶36

So here is a complete violation — thousands of dollars of purchases — they’ll all violate the rule, if you apply the divine principle of imagination. If you know who you are — if you don’t know who you are, you’re going to abide by all the little rules and regulations of the world.1090 ¶37

I had a friend of mine, and he always used to say — well, I would remind you of a sign, and say — no, so-and-so, he said, he didn’t say it positively. Okay, and so he went through life that way. Didn’t I say — the sign said “only those who are boarding the plane can go down,” not passengers — didn’t say it positively. He flew with me — I’m flying out of New York City, and here he came out, bringing a friend with him too. I said, “No smoking” — it said “no smoking” — didn’t say it positively — and he comes aboard smoking a cigarette, and bringing a friend aboard the plane to see me off — not once, several times, but that was his favorite remark: it didn’t say it positively.1090 ¶38

Well, in the law, as we will teach it to you through the weeks to come, for I’ll be here every Monday and Friday until the tenth of December — if you know exactly what you want, and you dare to assume that you are what you want to be, and that you have what you want, and walk faithful to that assumption — though at the moment of your assumption your senses deny it and reason denies it — if you are faithful to it, it will harden into fact, because the being that is doing it is within you. You assume this — that seemed an impossible thing for God to assume, this little thing, but nothing is impossible to God, and he gave up his divine rank and assumed the human form. While in it, he is still God — he’s forgotten that he’s done so, he can’t pretend he is and play the part — well, he has to actually believe that he is man, but he’s not man. You are the being of whom the gospel speaks, you are that central character, Jesus Christ. Now let’s go into this.1090 ¶39

Tonight’s subject is “The Secret of Praying.” He who has learned how to pray has learned the greatest secret of a full and happy life. You’re told in scripture that his followers said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray.” He gave them a prayer. But that is not teaching man how to pray. So we’re told in other passages that he told it in the form of a parable, “And he told them a parable that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” Then he told the story of persistency. “There was a judge and he neither feared God nor regarded man. In that city there was a widow and she came to him and asked him to exonerate her, that these enemies of hers were persistent. At first he did not respond, but then he said to himself, ‘Although I neither fear God nor regard man, yet I will exonerate her, because by her much coming she bothers me and she’ll wear me out’”. And so all parable is like a dream. Every dream has a single jet of truth, so when you read the story we see the necessity of persistency in prayer until you master it. When you master it, the most effective prayer in the world is “Thank you, Father,” the most effective prayer in the world, after mastery. But until mastery then there is a technique. And persistency is like an art. You must practice any art in this world. First you must find a good method and try to find the best method. When you’ve found it, then it requires daily practice, any art in this world. If you don’t practice, well, then you become rusty. So find a good method first and then practice.1088 ¶1

After you’ve practiced you’ll find it so easy that it’s automatic, all through the day. And it’s simply one of thanksgiving, “Thank you, Father!” For the most effective prayer recorded in scripture we’ll read in the 11th chapter of John, when he gave thanks to his Father: “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. For thou always hearest me”. And here, something that is dead, something that is gone from the world, but nothing is dead if you know how to pray, but nothing, I don’t care what it is. Even those who are gone beyond and you cannot touch them, you cannot see them with mortal senses, you can, if you know how to give thanks, move from this body of darkness into the world of light and encounter them. You can. I am telling you from experience. So he who has learned how to pray has learned the greatest secret of a full and happy life.1088 ¶2

Now, here tonight, we’ll take a technique of prayer and show you how it works. All the prophets orient themselves towards Jerusalem when they pray. Now, every name in scripture has a great significance. So what is Jerusalem? It first appears in the 33rd chapter of the Book of Genesis, under the name of Shalem. And here in this 33rd chapter, Jacob comes safely into the city of Shalem, which is in the land of Canaan, and he erected an altar. And then comes a Hebrew word, which simply means…the word is El-Elohe-Israel. So you find it capitalized in your Bible, and you find a footnote giving an interpretation of the word, which means “God, the God of Israel.” So he comes to that. So the first appearance of the word is in that 33rd chapter of Genesis.1088 ¶3

So every prophet orients himself towards Jerusalem. Well, the word literally means “to direct; the true direction.” So I direct truly with the hand, Yod. Then comes the name, which is translated “to be safe in mind, body or estate.” I point out safely and then I realize it. So we find in the Book of Daniel, he orients himself through the open window and looks towards Jerusalem. We find in the Mohammedan world they always point towards what they call Mecca. But here, you point towards Jerusalem. Now I’m telling you Jerusalem is within you. This whole drama takes place within man; it’s not on the outside. I don’t prostrate myself and look toward some eastern point in space. I simply adjust myself mentally inwardly.1088 ¶4

Now, how do I do it? Now, you listen carefully. It’s a simple technique, but it will take practice on your part to master it…yet it’s simple. When I have a desire…now that’s my desire, I know exactly what I want—I’m pointing directly at it—that’s my desire. I’m pointing…so, to point, the true direction. I’m thinking of it when I have desire. But now I must transform it from thinking of to thinking from. I stand here and all doors are open to me if I walk with my Imagination as my companion. My Imagination is really my companion. I speak of my Imagination until finally I know I am what I formerly called my Imagination. But in the beginning, man still speaks of my Imagination, it’s all your Imagination, it’s all so and so. So I could say…it’s like my hand, you can amputate my hand. You can’t amputate my Imagination. Amputate my arms, my legs, all kinds of parts of my body. You can’t amputate my Imagination, for you can’t step on me. That’s the eternal self. But to make it practical, I would say, that all doors are open in this world to the one who walks with Imagination as his companion. I’ll show you what I mean.1088 ¶5

I stand here and I desire to go elsewhere. Name it. I say New York City. But time will not allow it, and maybe finances would not allow it, maybe my commitments will not allow it. But I do desire to go to New York City. While standing here I dare to assume that I am, right now, in New York City. That act of assumption is a departure from this body of darkness…the very act of assumption. I assume that I am in New York City. Well, were I in New York City I would think of those I know here and love here, wouldn’t I? Well then, if I think of them, where are they? Down the street, over here in the hills, or are they 3,000 miles away from where I am standing? If I am in New York City, then anyone I think of in this area that I know would have to be relative to where I’m assuming that I am. That’s my test. Have I really succeeded in moving towards New York City?1088 ¶6

Now the word prayer means, literally, “motion towards, accession to, at or in the vicinity of.” These are the definitions you’ll find in your biblical concordance. So, motion is orienting myself towards, first of all…now, accession to, at or in the vicinity of. So, I’m in New York City. And were I in New York City, to locate myself and prove I am there, I would think of my world. This is part of my world. I know it. I have so many lovely friends here. I have friends north of here. I have friends south, friends east-south of New York City, friends in London. Well, I would see it, all the friends, and I would have to see them relative to New York City. If I am in New York City, well then, that’s how I would see everything in this world.1088 ¶7

Now, let me have full confidence in the being who made this motion. Well, who made it? Well, I did it in Imagination. May I tell you that “Man is all Imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man, that immortal body of man, is the Imagination, and that is God himself”. So I will take this toward anything, not just motion in space, motion in anything in this world that I desire for myself or for another. It doesn’t have to be confined to this person called self. I have a daughter, a son, wife, friends, it could be relative to their desires. If I heard them now tell me that they have what they want, well, how would I feel? How could I see them when I make a motion from where they desired the thing to where they now tell me that they have it? It’s a motion. All things are movement. The first creative act recorded in the scripture is motion, “And God moved upon the face of the waters.” The whole thing is a motion.1088 ¶8

As a friend of mine, who is here tonight, when he had that fantastic vision. In it I appeared in his vision and after [...]—most of you have heard it, so I won’t repeat it—and he said, “Did I learn anything?” I said, “Yes, you learned how to move. You’ve been there in the year of conflict, two, two years.” Well, two doesn’t mean two years of twelve-month periods but during the form of conflict. Two is conflict, it’s divisions, opposites. So during that state you learned how to move. And then, the whole thing was transformed in his mind’s eye and what was a barn and a conflict and a war, and a shooting war, a horrible thing, turned itself into a castle. And then he was led graciously, safely into the castle and taken to his quarters…his eternal home. He learned how to move.1088 ¶9

Well, prayer is motion towards. It’s learning how to move. So I stand here and I can move towards anything in my world. I moved toward a change on that bank balance. That’s motion. Any change is motion. I can’t see any change that does not include motion. I change this, that’s motion. I move from here to there, that’s motion. I go home tonight, that’s motion, and I change my position relative to where I was. And so, it’s all a matter of mastering this technique of moving, the first creative act in scripture. After he moved, then things began to rise out of the deep. So here, the technique of prayer is mastering this inner motion, how to move. If I could only move this night from where I am, where I am seeing certain things in my world that I would like to change, to that position that I would occupy after they are changed. Well, after they are changed, how would I see it? Now, that’s the change in motion.1088 ¶10

So a change…not only a safe change bodily, mentally, and in my estate. I completely move towards the change relative to others in my world, because everything in my world is myself pushed out. So any requests coming from without has to be listened to by me, I can’t ignore it, it’s myself, the whole vast world. When man comes down into this world from a world of light, and actually confines himself and limits himself to this body, it becomes a spark from his infinite world of light. Then he remembers that he has to exercise it while he is here. He remembers the infinite world of light, but he is here. And while he is here he sees everything hatched within himself, because in the world of light all things were contained within himself. So how could he now see and hear when he is completely shut out, and see it as other than himself, when he knows that when in that world all things were contained within himself? Now here he masters a technique, which is called in scripture prayer, which is the art of motion. It’s psychological motion. The whole thing is moving…how to move from where I am now. I see an argument, I hear an argument. Now how to move to the solution of that argument?1088 ¶11

A friend called this morning, in the wee hours of the morning, concerning a problem confronting her in New York City. I was sound asleep. I heard the phone, my wife answered. It must have been two in the morning, therefore, it must have been five o’clock there. She was greatly disturbed. She had just attended a meeting, a long, undoubtedly a long meeting through the night, and she was really disturbed and frightened concerning the outcome of this thing. Well, my wife tried in her best way to explain to her that she, of all people, should know how these things are done. But when you are completely moved, you turn to someone in whom you have faith, and then you call and ask for help. But all my wife could do at the moment, which is two in the morning, this morning, she told me would be to see her as she would be seen were she now telling me an entirely different story. So I move from one state into another state, and listen to the same lady talking to me telling me that the whole thing has been solved, that it’s been perfectly resolved.1088 ¶12

Now, this past week, a friend of ours, who is here tonight, Benny, came home last Saturday afternoon and told me this wonderful story. He said in his dream he came upon a wonderful scene, like a garden scene, and what appeared to be a love area where lovers meet. He saw me standing looking through some of the lattice, sort of a framework, and he came up to me and began to tell me of all his desires, all the things he desired. I said to him, “Don’t desire, live it!” Then he woke and wrote it down and brought it to me. Well, that’s exactly what I mean to everyone. Desiring is thinking of; living it is thinking from. Don’t desire it, live it! I go to bed tonight desiring? No, go to bed living it. Sleep as though you were now the man that you formerly desired to be, just as though it were true. Well, I tell you from my own personal experience that an assumption though false if persisted in will harden into fact.1088 ¶13

So in the beginning when we are learning, persistency is necessary. And so he tells the story of the man who comes at night and said, “A friend of mine came and could you give me three loaves of bread?” The man said that it is late, that the door is closed, my children are in bed with me, and I cannot come down and serve you. But, because of the man’s importunity he came down and gave him what he wanted. Well, importunity is the most, well, the most wonderful way of translating the word would be “brazen impudence.” Yes, it would be said repetition. He repeated and repeated the request and repeated the request, so [...], but I would say brazen impudence. A man comes over and over and over and he will not take no for an answer. And so that is one of the parables told us: he doesn’t take no for an answer. Then comes the widow, she will not take no for an answer. And these are the parables told to illustrate prayer. So they aren’t words.1088 ¶14

Maybe the Lord’s Prayer is given us for a purpose, something to contemplate, and maybe the more you contemplate it the more you will come to believe we really are one. It begins with “Our Father.” Well, if it’s our Father, then we are brothers. We have to be brothers and sisters if we have a common Father, regardless of race, regardless of nations, regardless of anything. If I said “Our Father” we have to have a common brotherhood, regardless of all the races and nations of the world. So that is to get over into man’s way of thinking that we are really one if we have a common Father. Eventually, we are going to be the Father and we’ll know it. But in the meanwhile, he gives us a technique in the form of a parable. And so, we are the one coming asking, asking for a change in life, asking for more income, asking for this, asking for that. Well, then it doesn’t work by tomorrow, it doesn’t work the next day, it doesn’t work the next month… but he said persist. And so, persistency will actually pay off, and prayers will be answered if man will persist. But to give up is like someone saying, “Well, I tried it and I can’t make it come out in a harmonious way.”1088 ¶15

And, so you want to play the piano? Well, go and start to play. But get a good method. And so you get a good method and you practice for a day and you can’t give a concert. Well, I mean, that’s just about praying. Learn how to pray, and so devote some time every day. When I was with my old friend Abdullah…I would have an exercise. And daily I would sit in New York City where we lived in this apartment for fourteen years, almost fourteen. In the living room you could not see the hallway towards the telephone. I’m seated in my easy chair in the living room. I would assume that I was seated at the chair at the telephone. And so assume it that I would actually, in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t see the living room and that I couldn’t see myself seated there. I could see it in my mind’s eye only. I had to think, “Well, now, he’s in the chair.” I so made myself sit here at the telephone that I could not and I wouldn’t let myself see the chair. Then I would feel myself back into the chair. Then go back to the telephone, go back to the chair, and try this feeling of changing in motion. May I tell you, it’s very, very helpful, you get loose as it were.1088 ¶16

And the day will come that you will think of something and then all of a sudden the very act of imagining will detach you from this dark garment and you will be exactly where you are imagining. So much so you will be seen by one who is there…you will actually be seen. I have had that experience, where I would imagine myself elsewhere and someone present at the time saw me. Then they were startled not to see me there physically, because they saw me as something physical. See, man is all Imagination therefore he must be wherever he is in Imagination.1088 ¶17

So if I go and prepare this place, then I come back, and then I walk across some bridge of incident, some series of events that will lead me up to that place where I placed myself. I put myself there then I bounce back here. But I’ve gone, having gone and done it, now I return here; and remain in confidence that in a way unknown to me this being that can do all things, that knows all things, will lead me, physically, across the bridge of incidence up to the point where I have placed myself in Imagination. So you can place yourself in Imagination as any person and dwell in that state as though it were true. Even though at the moment reason denies it and your senses deny it, you dwell in that state and sleep in it just as though it were true. This is the art of praying.1088 ¶18

So it’s not some palaver where you go in and you sit down and you get on your knees. And then you may think this is a little bit dusty and so you just brush it off because you don’t want to soil your dress or soil your socks or soil something else. That’s how people pray in church. They go in, the first thing they do, they bend over and mumble. You see them…let us be perfectly honest about it. They go to church, maybe because it’s considered the thing to do, they drop on their knees or bend forward, and then there they mumble a few words, and up they get, and they think they’ve done what they should do. Hasn’t a thing to do with this fabulous world of reality.1088 ¶19

A few years ago my wife had this wonderful vision. She found herself in a grove, and here in this wonderful grove of heavenly trees, in this clear passage, there was an altar at the very far end. There were people present and then two ladies entered, one from one side and one from the other. One came in from one side with a book and it was titled The Credence of Faith and the Forgiveness of Sins According to Judaism. She went up to the altar and she read it. Another one came on in, the same volume, The Credence of Faith and the Forgiveness of Sins According to Christianity. This lady went up and she read from a book, seemingly the same book but read differently. And my wife said in the vision until that moment she always thought it was infinitely more difficult to be a Jew than to be a Christian. Suddenly she realized that it was infinitely more difficult to be a Christian than to be a Jew, that the whole thing was psychological. Not a thing that you do on the outside matters at all. Everything is from within…it’s what man is doing from within. And then we find how hard it is to be a Christian.1088 ¶20

So Browning begins his wonderful poem Easter Day, “How hard it is to be a Christian.” Chesterton said, “Christianity has been tried, has not been tried and proved wanting, it has been tried and found difficult and therefore given up”…because I can’t pass the buck. If I think I’m a Christian I can’t pass the buck. I can’t blame anyone in this world, for the foundation of it is that we are one. I’m only drawing confirmation in the thing that I am doing within myself, that everyone who comes to me only bears witness of the mental activity within me. So they are only telling me what I am doing to myself and therefore to my world, for they only mirror me. And that is the most difficult thing in the world, to live that way. You mean, to accept that challenge that no matter what happens to me I did it to myself? No man comes to me save I call him? That is Christianity. “No man cometh unto me save my Father, who sent me, calls him.” But, “I and my Father are one” therefore I called him, if I and my Father are one. And I called him only to reveal to me the activity taking place in me. What am I doing? And so, I will then learn how to pray. For if I learn how to pray and master it, I can change my world, really change it, and make it conform to the ideal that I would like to experience in this world.1088 ¶21

So, as I said to Benny [...], “Do not go on desiring it, live it!” Stop thinking of it and start thinking from it. To think from the wish fulfilled is to realize it, and to continue thinking of it, well, you keep on forever and forever. You’ll never realize what you’re thinking of; you only realize what you’re thinking from. So you put yourself into the state of the wish fulfilled and think from it…that’s praying. And in a way that no one knows—the conscious reasoning mind doesn’t know—it simply unfolds in your world, and becomes a fact. So here, you can be the man you want to be. You can be the woman you want to be. You can be anything you want to be if you know how to pray. For all things are possible to him who believes. Therefore, it’s the art of believing: how to persuade myself.1088 ¶22

Well, this is a way of persuading yourself. Because, when you do it one day and a friend writes you from afar and tells you, “You know, I saw you at a certain hour in my room.” And then you allow the difference in time between…because we have differences in time. We are now three hours different from New York City and four from my little island of Barbados, and so we differ two more hours from Hawaii. So if someone sees me now in Hawaii and I look at my time, it’s almost nine, then I say they saw me at seven. So if they say in their letter, “At 7:00 tonight I saw you” and it was 9:00 here when I imagined that I was there, well then, it encourages me to know that I really am all Imagination. Well, I’ve done it. And people have confirmed it in their letters. “I saw you” and they named the time, the day, and then they write. Therefore, I know I am truly all Imagination. This is not poetry. I know that Blake told it so beautifully, because the poets are the real inspiring ones of the world. In fact, the whole Bible when it’s really understood is all poetry. It’s all written, truly that whole Old Testament is written in poetry, but we haven’t yet mastered that ancient manuscript to put it in its proper form. But it’s all poetry. It’s the inspired Word of God. They give enlarged meanings to words, different meanings altogether to normal words. And so, you find it in this light.1088 ¶23

So when I put myself on the bed and assume I am elsewhere, and that elsewhere is an hour difference in time, and then someone writes me that I saw you at a certain day, a certain hour, and it’s exactly what I told my wife when I did it. So that I didn’t have to think afterward that I did it, I went in and told her what I did. Then comes the letter confirming that this one to whom I tried to appear saw me. Well, am I not then all Imagination? So, in the act of imagining I departed from this dark cavern of the body and appeared where I imagined that I was, and viewed the world from there. And so, you are exactly what you are imagining, because that is God. God is all Imagination and you are all Imagination. Therefore, you can’t die. Man cannot go to eternal death in that which cannot die. Your immortal being is Imagination. I’ve proved it. You go all over in this wonderful, wonderful body. And one day you will know that you are the very central being spoken of in scripture, the one called Jesus Christ, the one called the Lord God Jehovah, that you are that being. You are here for a purpose.1088 ¶24

While you are here for this fantastic purpose, you still have to pay the price of Caesar. You have to live in the world of Caesar. And so, you can criticize our politicians from here to the end of time but you aren’t going to stop them raising taxes. All you have to do is make more, because they are going to tax you and tax you and tax you in spite of your protests. So all you have to do is learn the art of prayer and make more. I think of that story told of the late President Kennedy when his father who had made in his one generation something like $400 million; and he gave them all independence, tremendous independence, they all have it. He had nine children, each had a million settled on him. But he was complaining that his children were spending too much money and the late president said at this banquet, “Well, the only solution to this problem is Father has to make more.” I thought that was delightful. He made $400 million, he had nine children, so if he gave them each ten million apiece he’d still have far more than he could use. So eventually they’re going to get it anyway, so why not spend it and enjoy it. So they are all great spenders and he said, “Alright, Father has to make more. That’s the only solution to this problem because he’s conditioned us to spend and to make money.” Not to make it, but to spend it. Because all their lives they’ve had everything that money could buy. They’ve never known what it is, really, not the present generation. But I’m not against that at all. If I had a billion dollars tonight and left it to my wife and my children so what? And if tomorrow they went out and spent it and threw it away what does it really matter? I do wish that they would know and understand this wonderful art of prayer. Then after they’ve thrown it away they could rebuild it…because many of them throw it away and can’t reproduce it. But if you know how to pray, then, again my friend who is here tonight and I quote a wonderful thing she said to me one day—we were driving toward the racetrack, and, of course, we’re all thinking in terms of, naturally, winning. You have fun if you’re going to win. And she said, “My father, when we were children, said to me, ‘You know, if you had but a dollar and it were necessary to spend it, do so as if it were a dried leaf and you the owner of boundless forests.’” Spend it, if it were necessary, as though you were the owner of boundless forests, and that but a dry leaf. So, if one really knows how to pray, let me spend it, and then by praying reproduce it. This whole vast world is brought into being by man’s imagining. Learn how to imagine. This is the great secret.1088 ¶25

So as I told it to Benny, I tell it to you. If tonight you’re still desiring, stop it right now, and then occupy it, live it. What would it be like were it true? That’s living it. How would it feel? What would the feeling be like were it true that I am now that one that I would like to be? What would it be like? The minute you catch that mood you’re living it. You’re not just thinking of it, you’re thinking from it. And the great secret is thinking from, rather than thinking of. See, man is anchored here in this body. He’s always in a little state and he knows his bank balance and he knows this, he knows that, he knows the other…and all this is thinking from this state. Now, that’s a marvelous thing. But now having known this, how real things are “from,” well then, learn how to move and then think from. Because thinking from is very, very real. And so, I think from my present world. I know exactly where I live, my bank balance, my this, my that, and the other, and how real that thinking from makes it. Well now, can I move from this to another state and give to that other state the same sense of from-ness, the same sense of reality that I give to this? Yes. Try it. But if I do and it works, then I’ve found the secret. I’ve found how to always then be free, no matter what happens in my world.1088 ¶26

So tonight, you take it to heart. Take it home and live by it and daily practice it. Practice it for yourself and for yourself-pushed-out called by another name. It’s all yourself anyway. Take anyone and just practice it. It’s an art and it must be practiced daily until that day comes when you find the most effective prayer is “Thank you, Father!” I can feel this being within me as my very self, and yet address it as love, an I-Thou relationship. There’s nothing strange in that. I can speak of it as Thou, and then know, at the same time, it is I. And so I can have this Thou-I relationship, and that is, saying “Thank you, Father.” So if I wanted something now, it comes from him because all desires spring from him. Then, as it comes, I would reach that point where I could say “Thank you, Father” without effort. I’m right in the mood. You gave me the urge? Well, “Thank you, Father, thank you for it!” as though it were true. And then walk by it [...], waiting in confidence that he gave it to me through the medium of desire; and now he will clothe it in bodily form and I will encounter it in the world of flesh.1088 ¶27

Now, tonight, when you go home…and tomorrow and the next day and the next day…keep on trying it, practicing it. May I tell you, it won’t fail you. It won’t fail you. And then let everyone do what they want in this world. You read of someone that you love dearly or you respect and you hear some unkind things about them? Oh, forget it! What does it matter? What does it matter what they did or it is said that they did? It doesn’t really matter. I tell you, in the end, because they did it, you did it. Because, in the end there’s only God, and not one being could have played any part in this world that God didn’t play it, because there’s nothing but God. So if I hear this night of any unlovely thing said of one, I can say I did it. Either did it deliberately or did it unwittingly, but I did it. Because there can’t be another if I am he. So don’t get in the mood of judging and criticizing and doing all these unlovely things. [...]. Just leave them. You have desires and you want to live nobly in this world. Who doesn’t? May I tell you, it’s so much nicer to be noble. It’s so much nicer to be generous. It’s so much more wonderful just to love…infinitely lovelier in this world. Life is better. Love it. Let no one tell you that she or he, that is, they are not worthy. Forget it. It’s easier living in a loving, generous way. And so, if others want to condemn, let them do it, but it’s still yourself, that aspect of yourself you haven’t quite overcome yet. But don’t you fall into that picture. And practice it over and over and over. Because, in the end, when the curtain comes down on this whole wonderful drama, the supreme actor will rise from it all and we are he. All of us play our parts, play them beautifully, but the actor who clothed himself in these forms is God. And we are the supreme actor.1088 ¶28

Now let us go into the Silence.1088 ¶29

One came and asked him to name the greatest commandment, and he said: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your might, with all yourself. Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no greater commandment than these,” he said. Now the psalmist tells us: “those who choose any other God multiply their sorrows” — you’ll read that in the sixteenth Psalm — “those who choose any other God multiply their sorrows.”1085 ¶1

Now what is the God of whom we speak? All translations are paraphrases. Hear, O Israel — the Lord, that word translated “the Lord” is I AM. That’s the definition in Scripture. Your God is the same I AM. So Hear, O Israel, the Lord — that is the I AM, that is your I AM — is the only God; there is no other God. Now, to ask you to love your I AM — how can I love my very self? That is the very core, Almighty. I am aware before I am aware of being Neville; I am aware. But can I really believe that this sensible I is the cause of all that I’m going to experience? Because I’m going to become aware of something; becoming aware of it and accepting the state of which I am aware as fact, I then must experience it. And there is no other cause in my world.1085 ¶2

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is — what he’s quoting is the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy. He shall only come to fulfill scripture; there’s no other purpose for my being. So here I am, fulfilling scripture. Will I really choose this God, the only God? Or am I going to have something in my world that I think now is very important, or is it merely informed opinion — all that a nation holds, isn’t it important? Or am I going to go back to the only God in the world, which is my own wonderful human imagination? That’s the God that creates my world, and sustains my world, and changes the conditions of my world.1085 ¶3

Now the Bible speaks of three great earth-shaking movements. The first is the Old Testament — it’s all prophecy, it’s an active prophesying; everything is simply “shall be” — these things shall be. Then comes the New Testament, where it makes the claim that these things have taken place. It’s based on the affirmation that a series of events happened, in which God revealed himself in action for the salvation of man. But that God is man’s own wonderful human imagination — it happens in man. So the one in whom it happened told the story, and he was rejected, because they knew the earthly history of the man in whom it happened. They were looking for it to come in some other way, not through a man — a simple man whose parents we know, whose brothers we know, whose sisters we know, whose background has done nothing to warrant what he is claiming happened in him. Yet he claims it happened in him. And then, in his most unknown manner, he takes scripture and shows in scripture what was foretold, that it happened in him. Now the last great earth-shaking moment is how it happened. What’s going to happen — that’s the Old Testament, it’s all in the future. The New Testament is what happens. And then comes the third great movement of the earth’s magnitude, which is how it happened, and I am telling you how it happened.1085 ¶4

Everyone in this world is going to express it, and I’m qualified today to tell you how it happened. Here you will have a shake, so to say — there’ll be unnumbered shakes; there were three great earthquakes, but it all takes place within man. You should rejoice that it took place, that you’re living to take part in this — because the whole thing was shaking from within man. There isn’t one event in this world that is in itself causative; causation is spiritual, causation is all mental, it’s all within man. And the effect on the outside is — if you know what is actually produced by something that took place within man — here, the whole vast world on the outside only reflects that which is taking place on the inside of man. And man is the only reality. God is man; that man is God.1085 ¶5

In 1960, December the twenty-first, I had a series of visions in one night. And here I am, and here is the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Mark — but you know the story. He came out of the temple; as he came out of the temple, one disciple said to him, “Look, teacher, what great stones, what great buildings!” And Jesus said to him, receiving his great building, “Not one stone will be left standing upon another; but all will be thrown down.” And in my vision I saw this city, and I knew in advance which was going to fall, one after the other. They fell one after the other, all symbolic of the beliefs within me by which I lived. I lived in the belief of a historical Jesus; I was raised and trained that way. And then it collapsed, as indeed in the story of Paul — for Paul said, “I no longer regard anyone from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.” He saw the whole mystery unfold within himself. And these huge buildings represented the beliefs by which I lived, and I thought these would last forever. I believed in the historic Christ; I believed in this, I believed in death, I believed in the other — everything outside of myself. And suddenly the whole thing collapsed, one building after the other, and I could spot it — that’s going to go next — and before my eyes it collapsed. Not one stone was left upon another. I saw that one collapse, the other one collapse, every building came down, but everything was done, and not one stone was left upon another that I had built in this world. And here was the thirteenth chapter of Mark completed within me: I have come only to fulfill scripture — fulfilling what I thought was so simple.1085 ¶6

Now, in the same chapter, if any man tells you, “Look, there is Christ” — hear me, do not believe it. Many will come in my name and say “I am” — the word Christ is added — many will come and say “I am”; forget it, there’s nothing outside of you. If I say “I am,” and I mean something other than yourself, it’s yourself — hold to nothing other than that. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God — that is the I AM — is the only I AM. The Supreme I AM is one with the “I” that is seated here now, who is calling itself Neville, calling itself whatever it calls itself — that which is now calling itself this is one with what you already believe to be a supreme being outside of yourself. And there is no other God that is the cause of everything in your world — it is nothing but God.1085 ¶7

So here there are three great earth-shaking events in the world: one was the Old Testament, the second is the New — one tells what’s going to happen, one told us what happened, and the third is how it happened.1085 ¶8

When I was a little boy — just a little one — this weird, strange woman, no one knew her background, had come up from England and lived in a little tenement, and money came to her from the bank. Who sent it, no one really inquired, or if they did, the bank would never divulge it. It was a small amount. But she lived in a windswept area in Barbados, where a constant breeze from the sea brought the salt in, and hardly anything could be done with metal there — all the nails were wooden nails, all the shingles were nailed with wood, the hinges were all wood. If you drove a car in those days — if people really had cars in those days, even a carriage — any metal would corrode itself. The trees were big, always bent at an angle from the wind. And one day — I was maybe seven or eight — this weird creature said to me, “You know, you’re going to leave this island and make your home far off, in another country. You’ll be the first to be married” — I’m one of ten children, and it was to be the first marriage among us — “and you’re going to have two children. And then you’re going to tell a story, and the story will reach enormous crowds.” She thought I was telling her something — that I was going to sell something. “But long after you’re gone from this world” — she’s talking to a child only seven, telling him what is to come at his exit from this world — “and long after, at your entry into God, they will tell a story, and you’ll be numbered among the three who have told the story” — or indeed the same thing.1085 ¶9

I know now what it is: one tells you what’s going to happen, one told you what happened, and I’m telling you how it happens. It’s going to happen to everyone in this world — that is what I came to tell you. Well, I was the first to get married; I do have two children; and I have been telling this story since 1938, to tens and hundreds of thousands of people. A small little audience tonight — that means nothing. Some feet of film on television, I reached quite a few million; and many times on radio, who knows what number; through the books I’ve written, who knows what number — when one alone has gone over a hundred thousand in print, who knows how much now. But it’s not finished now — it’s still unborn — for I’m telling you how it happened.1085 ¶10

This earth-shaking thing has nothing to do with — all this is shadows on the outside. So if it shakes again tonight, it’s been shaking all day anyway; you must have felt it. But that has nothing to do with the real earth-shakes of the Bible. In that thirteenth chapter of Mark, it is telling us there will be earthquakes, there will be wars and rumors of wars — all these things must be — but don’t let anyone point you to someone outside of you and say that is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the true identity of every child born. Let no one tell you “there he is,” or point to anyone. He is within, and one day there will be a quake within him — a real thing, and this Tuesday morning’s is nothing compared to that. When it takes place, you wonder what on earth is happening — your head vibrates as not a thing in this world could ever vibrate you, you shake all over, and you think, “now this is it.” In my own case, I thought this is a massive earthquake and I can survive it — that’s what I thought — that was almost twelve years ago, come this July — and I thought that every little bone in my body was going to separate. Instead of that, I walked within my body, and then I realized: what I have been here, how long, I do not know; who put me here, I do not know. But here I am in a tomb, and my thought — the head was the tomb, my skull the depository — I had the innate wisdom to do what I had to do, to come out, as you will have it, the moment you shake off the dead state. It’s called in scripture “the last trumpet,” and the word trumpet means a reverberation, it is so intense that you can’t withstand the vibration, and it is the cause, and you wake within you. And then you come out, and then everything said of him you are going to express, and then you’ll know who Jesus Christ is.1085 ¶11

So anyone who tells you of another Christ, forget it. If they point to the greatest man in the world, granted — he is nothing compared to the being that you really are; that being is God. And no man in this world ever walked who could compare to the awareness of that man. So do not believe anyone who tells you “there he is” or “there she is” — forget it. It is all within you, and he’s dreaming this dream of life. So those who choose another God multiply their sorrows. So tonight, if you think that the cause of what happened is in something outside of yourself — well, then you have another God, and you’re multiplying your sorrows. There is not one thing in this world that is caused by another God; it is God in you causing everything in the world that you are experiencing and will experience, and it’s not caused by any other causation in the world. So name the greatest: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.1085 ¶12

Now, I heard some very famous archbishops say that any man who could actually put himself up as such is mentally deficient, he needs a psychiatrist, he needs this — and it goes on and on, a long talk about it. That’s what they said of the one in the tenth chapter of John: “Why listen to him? He’s mad. He has a devil, he must be a devil” — because he dares the claim that God is my father, and I and my father are one. He dares the claim that only by the father, and I am, the true and living way to the father, and no one could ever come to the father except by this one and only true and living way — there is no other way.1085 ¶13

So look upon Jesus Christ not as a person, but as a way. The early Christians were known as the people of the Way. It was a way; you are the person who travels the way. And so I meet you, and you say, “Do you know the way?” And I say to you, “Pray, and then it shall be shown you.” Well, if I know the way, I will tell you. Now, in this case, they wanted to know the way to the father. He said, “Well, I will show you the way; there is no other way but the one way — they are not two ways, only one way.”1085 ¶14

One day you will feel an earthquake — an earthquake that no one on earth has ever heard or felt before. It’s not an eight-point-five or a ten — it’s something that no one has ever experienced until he has felt it, for every little bone of your body vibrates, especially the head, and you think it’s going to explode. It begins with an earthquake, and it is known within, too — that’s the beginning of it. And then you come out of your own tomb, which is your skull, and when you come out, the story has told you it in Matthew and Luke — it surrounds you, the story of the birth of God, and you are the God that is being born, for there’s nothing but God in this world; you’re being born now to a higher level of your own being; this is only God expanding himself, and the symbolism around you is that which is told you in scripture.1085 ¶15

And then the next step on the way to the father is a glorious death. And you think, this one — this is it, you’ve had the other one, the earthquake, was it — but when this happens, your hair is completely gone, it’s an explosion, a new one — something has come upon the inside of you — and your head explodes, it literally explodes, all your sensations out. I’ll withhold describing the explosion, and then — it is quiet, and you find your son, and the son is God’s son, and his name is David, and he calls you father, and then you know who you are, then you know the word: “And David will be their prince forever.”1085 ¶16

David died — David said, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in the grave.” So he raises up his son for the purpose of God — he cannot do otherwise, for the experience of God is made up of all his sons, and we are the son, and the person is his expansion — and the purpose now is to give himself to this level of himself. He’s giving himself — how could he give me himself? Because he gives himself: his father is to extend beyond the present level; he has to make me the father, and then everyone becomes the same father. Hear, O Israel, the Lord — that is, the I AM — our I AM is one. You’re going to prove it now: he has a son, the son of David, and I’ve got to become aware of actually being the father of David. Well, if David is my prince, then I am king. In that day, the Lord will be king over all the earth, and his name will be one, and the Lord one — that’s the day.1085 ¶17

And the third one, the fourteenth chapter of Zechariah, tells it in the most glorious manner. Because when you go back to the thirteenth chapter of Mark, he comes out of the temple — this is not taking place in the temple, he comes out of the temple, he’s in the courtyard — but he turns and looks up at the buildings; he’s on the outside of the temple. “See those great stones, and the great buildings” — and, “not one stone will be left upon another.” Now it goes into the third verse of that chapter, and as he answers his followers, he’s standing on the Mount of Olives — and of course, opposite the Mount of Olives there was the temple. So we go back to Zechariah, the fourteenth chapter.1085 ¶18

Here: “I am standing on the Mount of Olives” — the Lord is standing on the Mount of Olives — and the mount was split, from east to west, and a great valley divided it. And one who knows it — and then he said, and the Lord, and all the holy ones with him — it is to follow him; the Hebrew word is “you,” not “him,” and your footnote in the Revised Standard Version will show you the pronoun is not, as used in both the King James and the Revised Standard Version, it is you — all the holy ones will follow you. And then it goes on: in that day the Lord will be king over all the earth, and then the Lord will be one, and his name one. It is I AM as one. I am fulfilling only scripture, now.1085 ¶19

On that day, when the mount is split, in this place you are standing, looking at it, and your body is split from top to bottom, from the head to the base of your spine. I’m telling you — look at the base of your spine, and you see this golden, lovely, pulsing liquid light, and you know it’s yourself. It is your own wonderful Redeemer and Creator, and it is yourself, redeeming yourself — no one else — no one has created you, it’s only God, and you fuse with it. And, like a fiery serpent rising, you move up into heaven, and again it reverberates as you rise, and the angel puts upon you such force as speaks in the Bible. And that is another stage in the way to the father.1085 ¶20

You find, in the second stage — the first is the explosion, when you have the vibration which is an earthquake; the second is the fantastic explosion; then comes the third, like a fiery serpent, you go up; and then the fourth stage — this is the final thing — is when the seal of approval is upon you in the form of a dove. And then the dove descends upon you and remains upon you and smothers you with love. And there you see the seal of approval of the work you have done — you did it. There is nothing but you; there is nothing but God in this world.1085 ¶21

So the first is what’s going to take place; the second, the earthquake, is what took place; and the third is how it takes place. And I’ve been sent to tell you how it takes place, and to ask you to put your faith completely, not on anything external, not on any external God, but on the pattern. Christ is the pattern man; Christ is the way. So, “Show me the way to the father,” and I’ll show you: one night, when you least expect it, he will come with a sudden shock, just as an earthquake will take place within you — not on the outside, as the one at two in the morning, but within you — and that will seem like a little nothing compared to what’s going to take place. For that is a shadow, the foreshadowing, of what is to be.1085 ¶22

All these things are taking place because we are on the verge of the awakening, and all are going to awaken, and when they awake, they’re awake as God. Everyone who awakens is God; there’s nothing but God, there’s no room in this world for anything but God. But it seems such a horrible thing to accept — so, sixty-two people got killed as well — all right, it’s part of an unfolding plan; they are already restored to life, in a world just like this, to continue the journey. One day the quake will not kill them and crush them; the quake will take place within them, and they will awaken. And all that took place here this past June, when fifty-two were killed, will be as nothing.1085 ¶23

You’ve gone through it, I’ve gone through it, all the horrors of the world — you and I have gone through it — joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine. Everyone has gone through it, and we’re going through it. But in the end, a canvas painting beyond the wildest dream of anything known to man.1085 ¶24

And Apollo — that no one here foresaw — we sent a man to the moon on three occasions, we’ve done it — as a feat elsewhere — that is nothing compared to the power that you will exercise tomorrow. You will have the power to stop time — actually stop time, nothing could move when you stop it — and then, when you stop it, you can change the motivation of the things that you observe, rearrange the entire thing, and change the motive, and then release time and see it come out differently. That’s the power that you will exercise tomorrow, for you are the power of God, because you are God. And you are the wisdom of God, because you are God. And Jesus Christ is defined in scripture as the power of God, and the wisdom of God. You want to read it: the first chapter of First Corinthians — “Jesus, the power of God, and the wisdom of God” — and all the promises of God find their yea, which means fulfillment, in him.1085 ¶25

But all the promises — and the promises are all in the Old Testament — are all written of the future, and he comes only to fulfill it. And in a simple, simple manner he fulfilled it, but it was not what the world was expecting, so they denied that this thing had been fulfilled. All right, so he fulfilled it, and he told them who could relate it, and who could tell it, so that they released the experience of the one in whom it happened. And now will come one who will tell you how it happened.1085 ¶26

For Jesus Christ is simply the way to the father, and when he went to the father, he prepared the way for himself to go back, and the way back is called Jesus Christ. And people think it is simply a little man on the outside of himself — no, it is a way. They were called the people of the Way. And there’s only one way back.1085 ¶27

And so it’s not through diet, it’s not through being good, it is not from being rich or being socially prominent — all the nonsense of the world. I have a friend of mine back east, and she comes out of the so-called family of the Adamses, who was our president — his kind of president. And so her son is named Adam. But the word Adam, to me, is foreign. Well, his name isn’t Adam, his name is Adams — his forefather is a president of our country, and so he’s named after his forefather. All right, I thanked her — her name’s Ruth, by the way — so I thanked her for it. But of course, again I called him Adam; again she corrected me: “His name is not Adam, Neville — the name is Adams.” And she’s so proud of that ancestry.1085 ¶28

And I am telling you: you are the father of God’s son, and his name is David. Can you conceive of any greater ancestry? Is there anyone walking the face of this earth with any greater ancestry than you, when I tell you who you are? You are the father of God’s only begotten son, and his only begotten son is David. And when you see him, after that second stage in the journey back, and you know who you are — is there anyone on the face of this earth greater than the being that you discover yourself to be, when you discover the pure God? So, she wants to be an Adams — I’m telling you, you surpass all the greatness and all the things of earth, for you are God. And one day, the second stage back to the source will reveal the truth of what I’m talking about — you’re going to find, if you really are God, because you’re going to find you’re done, and your son is the Son of God, and there is only one God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one Lord, not two. So when you see the son — the only one — and you know he is your son, you know who you are, and you know — there is nothing but God in this world.1085 ¶29

So this is the story I’ve been sent to tell you. And should I stop now, the thirty seconds makes no difference, I’ll tell you: you’ve recorded it, and it is here, and someone will have the capacity and the ability to write it, as they wrote the story two thousand years ago and told it all. Well, forget the word Neville — just know it is to tell the story, and to tell you how to go back to the source, for you are the source, you are the cause of the phenomena of life. For man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us; and within him, the eternal body of man is the imagination — and that is God himself, that’s your immortal being. There is nothing but God.1085 ¶30

So when you read it through — when you read it tonight — bear in mind what you heard this night: those who choose another God multiply their sorrows. I don’t care what name you give it — you call it Jesus Christ, if it’s something other than you, you’re multiplying your sorrows. Call it God, and don’t mean yourself — you’re multiplying your sorrows. Call it Jehovah, and it’s not yourself — you’re multiplying your sorrows. Call it by any name, no matter how sacred the name is to you — if it means something other than yours, and you hear the word God, the word Jehovah, the word Jesus, the word Jesus Christ, and it conveys the sense of something existing outside of man, you’re multiplying your sorrows. It has to convey your own wonderful imagination — that’s God, the holy God.1085 ¶31

And all these little shakes — and friends of mine in the audience tonight, they have these shakes prior to it, and in the wake of it, and they’re all perfectly wonderful, their faces are perfectly radiant — I can’t thank them enough for sharing it with me. But here, if you read it tonight — that’s the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Mark; the related chapters are the twenty-fourth of Matthew and the twenty-first of Luke, but I like the one as Mark presented it — he does it in a very primitive manner, but it’s all beautiful; so in Mark it’s simple and very, very clearly stated.1085 ¶32

As to Jesus Christ — is there anyone who says, “Look, there he is,” or “here he is” — believe it not. But many will come saying, “I am he,” do not believe it. Let no one make the claim, and you believe it; let it be revealed if he really has had the experience, so that those within his world will see it. He doesn’t have to ask anyone to see it, he doesn’t care — he knows it has to be seen by those within his world who are related to the picture. He knows Peter must come — and in my case, be the same — she’s a beautiful, beautiful Peter too, and she saw it. Everyone will see it, so I don’t have to ask anyone to see it or try to persuade you.1085 ¶33

So don’t believe that it is Neville — I am not speaking of Neville, I am speaking of the source. I’m speaking of a series of events man must experience to take him back to the source, and that series of events that takes him back to the source is called the way. So when you read, in the fourteenth of John, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes unto the father except by me” — he is telling you of the only way back to the father, which is the soul, the cause of the phenomenal life. So forget the man, and simply see the way — it is called the way, the true and living way, and there is no other way.1085 ¶34

But the most difficult thing in the world for man is to completely give up his thousand and one fixed beliefs, when he has been trained — as he has been trained — to believe in creatures outside of himself. And so he believes in a historical Jesus, in a historical Moses, in a historical Jacob, and all these things — when the Old Testament is simply an active prophecy, and the New an active fulfillment. And what I’m telling you is act two. But I’m telling you what I know from experience. And I’ve been sent to tell you the way, to tell you how you go back to discover the only one who is God the Father. And there is no other way.1085 ¶35

So tonight, you can put it to the test — the power of which I speak. You’re going to assume that you are now the one that you would like to be, and remain faithful to your assumption; and to the degree that you are faithful to that assumption, you will become it, because you really are the creator of all the things in your world, and you create by simply assuming a certain state, entering into that state, living in the state, feeling it to be natural, and then you project it on the screen of space. No matter what you project, it is nothing to the thing you really are, who is doing the projecting.1085 ¶36

But in the world of Caesar, one would like more money, more this, more the other — you can do it. One day, you’ll get tired of all the things you’re projecting, and then you will remember that statement in the Book of Amos: “In that day, I will send a famine upon the land — not a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for water, but a hunger for hearing the word of God.” You get so tired of things, yet unappreciated, and you want to hear the word of God. But you are God — you want to hear what you foretold in the beginning, and what you meant by it, and what someone claims fulfills itself in the things that happen. And you become so hungry, not a thing on the outside will satisfy you, only this: the word of God. And you let everything drop, and put all of your interest simply in the word of God.1085 ¶37

For you really are not only God, but you are his word, because the Word and God are one: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” So he sent it, and his word cannot return void; it must accomplish that for which it was purposed, and prosper in the thing for which he sent it — well, he sent himself, he had no one else to send.1085 ¶38

Can you conceive of a moment when a father — you are all now his sons, billions of us — but because he is omnipresent, he’s present to all; because he’s omniscient, and he’s omnipotent — and he tells us a story: that he is going to become invisible. “There, a good look at me now — I’ll become invisible,” he tells us, for one purpose: “In becoming invisible, I have become you, and you will become as I am.” The drama is over — you will be as I am. And my father tells me that, and he showed me the result — tells me it’s the one dearest and nearest to his heart. And then my father becomes invisible, and I think, as I start the journey, I nevermore will see my father — not knowing it is built in, from eternity, within me. But he is faithful, and, sure enough, he keeps his promise to me. And one day — I don’t see him, I see his son, and it is my son, and I know he kept his promise.1085 ¶39

The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God himself. That is the divine body that we speak of as Jesus Christ, your own wonderful human imagination. Now Blake tells us that man has no body distinct from his soul. That called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlet in this age, the chief inlet of the soul in this age. Now, when he uses the word soul, he is speaking of your own wonderful human imagination. When he speaks of your imagination, he is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when he speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ, he is speaking of the Lord Jehovah. So, you, as you are seated here, Jesus is here.1076 ¶1

Now, how is this brought about? I have no body that is distinct from my soul. I drop dead right now, take the body up, and in a few days it’s turned to ash, and you scatter it. So here I have no body distinct from my soul, from my reality. Then what is this? How did it come about? The independent soul, in its descent into this age, this world of death, penetrates and annexes the brain of a physical body, which is part of the eternal structure of the universe. And in penetrating and annexing the brain of a physical body, it embodies itself, entombs itself in that body. That is how Jesus is buried. That’s how he is crucified. He is crucified on the body. He is entombed in the body. And there he dreams the dream of life.1076 ¶2

Now, this alliance, as you and I descended into these tombs, this alliance with the brain of a physical body, where we are now entombed, is not less wonderful than that alliance which you and I will realize and experience when we ascend and penetrate and annex the brain of the heavenly man. As we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven. We are the reality. We are the gods. We are the very body that we penetrated and annexed its brain. And there we are, dreaming this dream of life. If I know I am dreaming it, I can control the dream. If I know I am dreaming it. But a man dreaming doesn’t know that he’s dreaming. The minute he knows he’s dreaming, he wakes. You can prolong a dream if you know how to control it. But usually when a man discovers he’s dreaming, he wakes and he returns fair. And he will say to himself, oh, it was only a dream. The day will come you will know this is a dream, and you will awake. But that waking will be something entirely different from the kind of awaking when you wake on a morning and find yourself on the bed where you fell asleep the night before. That other waking will be something entirely different, when you actually awake within yourself to discover that you really are the Lord Jesus Christ.1076 ¶3

I am telling you what I know from experience. Everyone in this world is going to have that experience. For your true being is God, not something on the outside. The God in you, now entombed in the body that you, in your descent, penetrated and annexed its brain. And do not let anyone tell you that the descent, as you descend it — what an adventure! — and annexed the brain of the body you now wear, that that is less wonderful than what you are going to experience when you ascend and you penetrate and annex the brain of the heavenly man. That ascent is as real as anything you’ve ever dreamed in this world. It comes the moment that you are torn in two. In scripture: “And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” And then he took with him not the blood of an animal, the blood of a goat, a lamb, a sheep — he took his own blood, threw the curtain into the holy of holies. And he tells you how it happens: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” And when you are split in two, from top to bottom, and that curtain which is your own flesh parts, and you see the two halves of your body, and you are the observer. And when you look at it and you see the base, a golden living liquid light, and you know it is yourself. That’s the blood that you had shed to come down here. And you fuse with it, and then, like some fiery serpent, up you go into the brain. You penetrate it, and here you annex it. And you become one with that heavenly man, and you wear it as your own body. You are then the risen Lord. And everyone is going to enter into that one body, by one spirit. And he will be the one God and Father of all, and everyone will be that one God and Father of all.1076 ¶4

You and I, who came down as brothers, in this fantastic venture. I tell you what I know. I am not speculating. The day will come — if tonight you think you’re completely insane, it will make no difference to me whatsoever, because I know you’re going to have the experience, and you’re going to know how true it is, everyone in this world — but while we have penetrated and annexed the brain of the body we now wear, we are now confronted with all the vicissitudes entailed by that annexation. It contains within itself certain restrictions, certain horrors, but we penetrated it, we appropriated it, we annexed it.1076 ¶5

When America annexed California, it had to accept the happenings in California as incidents within itself. Just a few weeks ago, you thought maybe America regretted it and tried to shake it off into the Pacific. It tried to burn it last year, then tried to flood it out, and then tried now to wind it out, and then to shake it out. But it is still part of that body. They annexed it, and they must now actually accept all the happenings in it as incidents within itself.1076 ¶6

And so, as long as I wear this body with all the weaknesses of my so-called forefathers, anything built into it based upon what the physical so-called descent entails, I have to endure. Everything, because I benefited it, annexed it, and I wear it, and now it becomes a temporary part of my soul. And I am soul. I am all imagination. I am the being spoken of in scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ. I am the being spoken of in scripture as Jehovah, and so are you. Every child born of woman is the same being, not one is greater than the other. We are the sons of God who came down into this world, and we ventured, and we penetrated and annexed the brains of the bodies we now wear, animating them, for they’re all dead. May I tell you, they were dead? It seemed as though they were not, but they were dead. If you saw them as I see them, they’re all still, like statues.1076 ¶7

Now let me share with you a letter that came to me yesterday. The lady and her husband are here tonight. They’re here all the time. She said, “You close on the 11th of December. Well, this happened on the 7th, the lecture before the last. It was a Monday night. And you were simply using the 14th chapter of the book of John. And suddenly, at almost the very end of your lecture, I found myself standing in a huge temple, standing at the entrance. I was about to leave, and I thought I would simply take one more look at the interior of this temple, because I was about to depart. As I looked in, every wall had two columns, and then a door leading through the columns. They were all equally spaced. And in front of the doorway, which led out, there was a statue. And I knew,” she said, “that I could put that statue on as I would a garment. But I knew if I did, I would have to experience all that was contained within that statue. But I also knew I had already done it. All these I had played. They were all individual statues at the doorway between the two columns. And there were simply many doorways within the interior of this huge, huge temple. And then I felt what enormous satisfaction, that I have done it, I have completed the work that I came to do.”1076 ¶8

“And then I came back to the lecture, and the lecture was almost over. That night when we went home, my husband and I put on the tape. And I knew when I had dropped from hearing you audibly here and found myself standing at the entrance, departing from this enormous huge temple (for I make notes as you speak), and the last note I made was this: ‘He is not the garment that he wore.’ That’s the last thing I wrote down. ‘All is spirit.’ And then I came back. You spoke beyond that, but I had no notes beyond that. That was my last note. So when you said, “He is not the garment that he wore,” it was then that I found myself standing in the entrance to this huge, huge temple. And these statues, and everyone, were something I could have worn as easily as I now wear a dress. And then I realized, I have worn them. I have played all this. I don’t have to replay them. I have played them. I have experienced everything that I can give to anyone, leaving them there for anyone else to experience. I can’t thank you enough for that.”1076 ¶9

What a wonderful vision. And may I tell you how true it is: when you see these things in eternity, the whole thing is done. It’s a play, but you and I are the actors. God only acts and is, in existing beings, or men. Well, the actor in you is your own wonderful human imagination. That’s the actor. That’s God. And God only acts. Now, he actually puts on these garments. He puts them on by penetrating and annexing the brain of the garment he’s going to wear. But within that garment there are limitations and horrors and all kinds of things. And then I am confronted with all the vicissitudes entailed by that annexation. And so I’ve got to go through it.1076 ¶10

So my mother died at 61, my father died at 85 — he drank heavily and she didn’t drink — and all these things, and all of a sudden the scientists tell you that this is your background physically? All right, let them tell me all they can. I am actually entombed in this, wearing the restrictions of this garment, but having discovered who I am, I can modify it. I have seen a dozen Hamlets, and no two are played alike. They all stick to the script, and they depart on time. They take their cue and they enter on time. But they interpret it differently. And so I can take a part, knowing who I am, that I am the actor, that I am not the thing that I am playing. I am the actor playing a part. Well, if I know I am, then I can modify the drama. I can interpret it differently without changing the words of the author.1076 ¶11

I was coming on cue, as I did, and I will depart on cue. And no one could extend my days one iota. As we are told in scripture, “who by taking thought could add one hour to his span of life?” Not one hour. It used to be interpreted, not in a temporal sense, but in a spatial sense — “who by taking thought could add one cubit, which means 30 inches, to his stature.” It isn’t that any longer. We have discovered that was not the true interpretation of it. It is, “who by taking thought, or who by being anxious, could add one hour to his span of life?” You come on time, you depart on time. But in that interval, you can make it a rich and wonderful life.1076 ¶12

So I say to every one of you, you are the Lord Jesus Christ. You are God. If you don’t want to believe it, it’s perfectly all right. If, when I use the word Jesus, the mind thinks of something external to yourself, I tell you, you’ve got the wrong one. If I say God and Jehovah, and the mind jumps out and you see an existing presence, something that is external to yourself, you’ve got the wrong God. When I use the word, and suddenly I am calling you to your own attention, as to who you are, and you think of just your own being, your imagination, you’ve got the right one. Then I’m jolting you.1076 ¶13

Then what are you now doing? Because God creates by imagining. God imagining is creating. And so what are you creating? At that moment I’m calling you to attention. Then what are you now creating? You’re doing it by what you’re imagining. Because you are the only reality in the world. You are God. So I ask you to imagine the loveliest things in the world. I don’t care what it is, how confining the present state. It doesn’t really matter, you are God, and all things are possible to God. So you begin to imagine the loveliest things in the world. Begin with self, then you widen the circle, you take in your family, you take in your friends, you go beyond that to take in a larger circle, only imagining the best. Because you’re bringing into pass, into this world, all that you’re imagining.1076 ¶14

So here, the eternal body of man is man’s own wonderful human imagination. One day, as you came down and penetrated and annexed the body you wear — one day, and I’m telling you what I know from experience — you will ascend like fire. It’s a fiery serpent. I’ve told you the third chapter of the Gospel of John. You will go up just like a fiery serpent. And when you enter heaven, you will take it and it will reverberate just like thunder. Those who enter, enter it violently. You penetrate it and annex the brain of the heavenly man, and that heavenly man you become, as you penetrate it and annex the brain of the earthly man, the man of dust. So just as we bear the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven. Everyone’s going to do it. But start to think about it now. Start to develop on it.1076 ¶15

Physical death is not breaking the tomb. You are entombed in these bodies. Physical death is not departing from the tomb. You will find yourself clothed in a body just like this, old and young, in a world just like this, terrestrial. And when you break the tomb, you break it alone. There is no one to assist. You don’t need assistance. You find yourself awake, completely awake, in the tomb of your own skull. And then you push your own stone away. No one pushes it away for you. You know exactly what to do, and you push it away at the base of your skull. You need no midwife to deliver you. You deliver yourself. You push your head out of that hole, and there you push, like a child coming out of the womb of a woman, and your own hands you use to pull yourself out of that skull. You don’t need any midwife. And when you come out, the witnesses are there. They can’t see you, because you are spirit. But they see the evidence of your birth. They see the infant bearing witness to the fact that something is born. You shall find a child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying on the floor. The child is there, and they’ll find him, but you they cannot see, because you’re God, and God is spirit.1076 ¶16

You are born, you came down, entombed yourself deliberately. As we are told, “no one takes away my life, I lay down myself. I have the power to lay down and the power to lift it up again.” And so it’s you of whom the prophet wrote. It is you, the one spoken of in scripture, called Jesus Christ. And it is you saying, “no one takes away my life, I lay down myself. I have the power to lay down,” which you did when you became what you are, when you attached yourself to this body, penetrating it, annexing the brain, you entombed yourself in it. No one put you there. You did it yourself. And when the time has fully come for the breaking of the shell of that skull of yours, you will break it. And you will come out unassisted, and you’ll come out and no midwife is necessary. You draw yourself out, born all by yourself, but your spirit now. And no one sees you, but they see the evidence of your birth.1076 ¶17

And so everything said of Jesus Christ in scripture is said of you, because you are the one spoken of. They are writing all about you. So the eternal body of man is his own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. That is the Jesus Christ of scripture. So when you read it, keep these words in mind as you come to the word. Let it sort of awaken you, jolt you, as to who you really are.1076 ¶18

Now, while you are here and still dreaming the dream of life, and you have not yet broken the tomb and pushed away the stone, and you have not yet been born from above, you can change the dream you’re dreaming now. Oh yes, you will have the things that your body must encounter. All the weaknesses, you are going to have them. All the strengths, will have them. But you can change the dream and modify the dream. If you are dreaming now recession, dreaming depression, dreaming this, that, and the other, you can stop that dream. What would it be like if you asked yourself a simple question: what would it be like if I were now the man that I would like to be? Dare to assume that you are that man. And to the degree that you are self-persuaded that you are, though reason denies it, and your senses deny it, if you are self-persuaded, it will happen in your world, because — it’s a dream, it doesn’t seem like it’s a dream, I tell you it is a dream — the whole vast world is a dream and you are the dreamer of the dream.1076 ¶19

Now, if you let the morning paper suggest the kind of dream that you should dream — and they seem to cover the entire world to get some story that is frightening. They’re not satisfied to print what is happening here. It is scaring you out. They’ve got to go all over the world to find something that is more frightening to put it as a headline. And so they feed you that with your coffee in the morning. And so man is given the kind of thing they want. It’s a dream. It’s a scare philosophy. They sell things based upon fear. Well, this — don’t accept it. Know what you want in this world, and only that, and feed yourself that. What would it be like — my friends, my family, I — well, you name it — if we were now what we would like to be? And then persuade yourself.1076 ¶20

That is, how do I persuade myself when reason denies that I am, when my senses deny that I am? Well, if I know that I am all imagination, can’t I imagine it? Can you conceive of any hypothesis in this world that our great scientists have ever conceived? It wasn’t sheer fancy? Every hypothesis of science began with fancy. Suppose it were true. It seems as though it ought to be true, they would say, but they have no evidence that it is true. It began with fancy. Suppose it were true. It seems as though it ought to be true, they would say. But they have no evidence that it is true. It began with fancy. Then they experiment. I wonder if it’s true.1076 ¶21

Well, now you try the same thing. I wonder if it is true, if I assume that I am what I would like to be and sustain that assumption, if it would harden into fact. Well, try it. You’re told in scripture that it will. You’re told that whatever you believe, believe that you have received it. Whatever you desire, believe you’ve received it, and you will. He didn’t say providing it’s good, providing it’s this, that, and the other, that the priesthoods of the world tell you you should. You ask no one permission. Can you believe? Well then, fire. Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will. That’s telling you that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact. That’s what it’s telling you. Well, now I’ll go to bed in the assumption that I am, that those I love are what I would like to be and like them to be. And then see if my persistency will prove it to be a fact. Well, if it proves it, well then what does it matter what others think? If I have evidence for a thing, does it matter what the world tells me? I will tell it to others in the hope that they’ll believe it and become free, but if they don’t believe it, at least I’ve done my duty, I’ve told them so.1076 ¶22

May I tell you, you are infinitely greater, entombed as you are, than you could ever know yourself to be. And so only when you break the tomb and come out do you really realize who you are. And when you read the book of books, the Bible, and you see that all that has happened to you, it was all there, but it was said of another, and you are taught to believe that he was another. He is the pattern man. Jesus Christ is the pattern man. So when you actually experience all that is said of him, you’ll realize who you are. He is the pattern, and you are following a pattern, and it’s a perfect pattern. Everything said of him, you’re going to experience of yourself.1076 ¶23

If you want to tell it to someone, tell it. If they don’t believe it, it doesn’t really matter. They can’t undo it by their disbelief. They can only simply delay their own awakening. Well, I tell you what I know, what I have experienced: that your eternal body is your imagination. It’s immortal. It cannot die. Cut your head off now, they cannot reach the immortal you. And the body that is burned and cast away, let them burn it, you reproduce it, until you actually awake in the tomb. For the body is a tomb. You are entombed by your annexation of its brain. And you will not get out of it. You will reproduce it over and over, no matter how often they cut off the head, until you yourself awaken in it. And you’ll awaken in it, and unassisted by anyone, you’ll come out of it. You’ll come out of the tomb.1076 ¶24

As recorded in scripture, “and they came and they saw, and the tomb was empty. And they went and they told the story, and they said, he is risen. But the words seemed the words of an idle tale, and they did not believe it.” That’s perpetually so. They did not believe it. And so to this day it is still told in an erroneous way. The churches are not telling the story of the gospel. They’re telling a secular history. And it isn’t. It’s salvation history. The whole thing is contained within you, the immortal you. And you saw it all before you settled. All was foretold you. And then you drank, as we all do, that juice of forgetfulness. And we forget who we are as we come down, that juice of forgetfulness, and we forget who we are, as we come down and entomb ourselves and take all the weaknesses and the restrictions and the limitations of the body that we have annexed. And we have to suffer with it. As we are told in scripture, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to understand, was it not necessary for Christ to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”1076 ¶25

He comes down into — speaking of you now — you come down into the restriction called man. You take upon yourself the limitation of contraction, of opacity. And when you reach that limit, then all of a sudden, you dream the dream of life. In the fullness of time, you break the shell, like a chick coming out of the shell. And then you come out, and then you ascend. And the very one that came down is the one that goes up. Only he who descended can ascend. So you will ascend, and you’ll do the same thing. But now you will penetrate and annex the brain of the heavenly man. This was only a temporary annexation. So that the body here becomes a temporary possession of the soul, but only temporary. And then you go up and you annex the brain of the heavenly man, and that’s permanent. And you are the living God. And everyone’s going to go up and become that same living God. And then there’ll be only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. And you and I will be one, without loss of identity. No loss of identity.1076 ¶26

Now here was another one that came this week. Both came yesterday. She said, I woke and the words were so clear. Here a voice is dictating to me. And the voice said, a prophet sees, an apostle is sent, an apostle experiences. An apostle sees, prophesies, and experiences. Then the voice says, the key is the words will and sent. And then came the boy quoting: “I came, he who sent me. I and he are one.” How altogether wonderful: the prophet sees, the apostle experiences, the apostle is sent — the very word means to be sent, but the sender and the sent are one. He and I are one. So when he sent into the world, and he knows he sent, he stood in the presence of his own being, but it seemed objective to himself. It was all love. Love embraced him, and love sends him. But although in the world he is so restricted, while he tells the story and makes the confession, “I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I,” he is only telling us that the office of the sent is less than the office of the sender. Yet he is the sender. Therefore, as his essential being, he is not less than. Only the office of the sent is less. So in the world, he is still restricted. This is the world of death, where everything dies here.1076 ¶27

So she heard the words clearly, as you are told in scripture. All the prophets were hearing. Isaiah, he heard the word of God. Elijah heard the word of God. Every prophet is hearing the word of God. There she was, and she’s hearing it. She got up and she wrote it down. Then she closed her letter by saying, “Hallelujah.” She heard it so clearly. And then she said, every word was so distinct. And she got up, as though some quake had awakened her, and wrote the entire thing down. The prophet sees. The apostle experiences.1076 ¶28

Now bear in mind what an apostle is. Do you know, in Hebrews, the letter of the Hebrews, Jesus Christ is called the apostle? No mention of anyone else. So the apostle is Jesus Christ. He is sent. He says, “I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I.” In my present office as the sent, I seem to be less than my self, the sender, but I am returning to my self, the sender, when I am through with the experiences of the one that is sent. And so I will tell you what happened to me as the one that is sent. I came to fulfill what I prophesied. I inspired the prophets to say what I would do when I, the word made flesh, would appear. And so I have come to fulfill and to experience my own prophecy. Having experienced it, I now return to myself, the Father. And I tell you, I am going to my Father and to your Father, and to my God and your God.1076 ¶29

And to whom is he speaking? He said, “go to my brothers and say to my brothers, I am ascending to my God and your God, to my Father and your Father,” for I am returning back to the Father as the self, because “he who sees me sees the Father.” And he calls us brothers. So all are moving back to the one source. There is only one source, and it is God the Father.1076 ¶30

So here you chose what you are wearing. And today we have all this nonsense in the world, trying to stop the children of the world, because we don’t have enough food and we’re burning food. We have more food than the world could ever use. We have enough means to make all the things in the world to satisfy numberless more than we have in the world. And we have all the nonsense about no more children. And the pressure of the sons of God coming down to penetrate and annex a physical body, that it may entomb itself and then return to its source, having the experience of the entombment — we are trying to stop it. Now, may I tell you, you just don’t stop it. It just happens. Oh, you can have all the abortions in the world, but when the time comes for the explosion of population, you aren’t going to stop it. You’ll become one of those foolish virgins, as the story is said: “I thought you said you were a virgin.” “I said, yes, but I’m one of the foolish ones.” And so there’ll be foolish virgins all over the world bringing forth babies, because sons of God are coming down, and you want to stop them annexing the brains of these little physical garments.1076 ¶31

So tonight you take me seriously, because I know what I’ve told you, you are going to experience. I’m prophesying for you. You will not avoid it, because you are the Lord Jesus Christ. But you are now in tune, the crucifixion is over, for your concern. But the resurrection has not taken place. That is taking place, and may take place in the not distant future, for everyone who is hearing me. But it’s going to take place regardless. No one can fail, but no one, for we are the immortals. And you cannot cease being the immortal, no matter what is done to you in this world. And the day will come, you’ll break the tomb, roll away the stone, and come out unassisted. And then all that is said of him, you’re going to experience. And then you’ll know who you are. So he comes to us as one unknown, yet one who in the most wonderful, mysterious manner lets us experience who he is. And when we experience who he is, we experience it in the first person singular. And then we know who we are. For there is only the Lord Jesus Christ.1076 ¶32

Now let us go into the silence. Questions, please.1076 ¶33

Yes, ma’am. What is the way of raising the captives to the grateful creatures to keep themselves as they are in the fire? The question is, is there any way of shortening the interval to break that tomb? My dear, I do not know of any. I do not know of any. I would say, believe, as we are told in scripture, “believe in me.” You see, “what must I do to be doing the work of God?” “Believe in him whom he has sent” — so that one stops believing in their prefabricated misconception of him. It’s a difficult thing to give up, I know. But one has to give up that strange concept that they hold of Jesus Christ, and bring him as he really is within one, because he’s buried in man. He is actually entombed in every child born of woman. So he has to believe then in himself. If he turns out to see something on the outside where he worships, then he is not really doing the work of God. “What must we do to be doing the work of God?” And the answer is, “believe in him whom he has sent.” Now he tells you, “I am with you always, even to the ends of time.” If he is with you always, even to the ends of time, why go on the outside? If he is with you always. And then Paul asks the question, “do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” If he’s in me, I should make every effort to find out where he is and who he is. And I am telling you, you will come to the conclusion when you find him that he is your own wonderful human imagination.1076 ¶34

I have a question. No. I’ve heard that when we breathe in this way, when we breathe through this way, that all the other experiences that we do experience in this body — Yes, my dear, by certainty. When you wake in the morning after the most horrible dream, where you violated your moral code, your ethical code, you don’t condemn yourself. You try to analyze the significance of the dream. It has some meaning. What is it trying to tell me? But you certainly aren’t going to condemn yourself, because you will say, well, that was a dream. May I tell you, when you awake one day, you’re going to say, this whole thing is a dream? It’s a dream. The whole thing is a dream. And you will not condemn yourself when you wake in the morning after the most horrible dream. If you are unfaithful as a wife, and actually did everything that you were not in a rational state do, you will say to yourself, that was only a dream, I didn’t do it. Well, the day will come, no matter what you have done in this world, when you wake, you didn’t do it. It was all a dream. Did you read that little thought expressed last Wednesday in the LA Times concerning Keats? This is the 150th anniversary of his death. He died in Italy 150 years ago. And they quoted what Shelley said about him, his farewell words to Keats, when Shelley heard of his death. And Shelley wrote: “He lives, he wakes, his death is dead, not he.” And so, when you wake, it is death. You came down into the world of death. Entombed yourself, your skull is an actual tomb. But there, you being alive, you dream. You’re entombed, and you are dreaming in the state of death and projecting it on the screen of space, and it all seems so objectively real and so completely independent of you. It’s like an author and a play. He conceives a play, and suddenly he’s beginning to lose control of his characters. They’re becoming independent of him. And that’s what’s happened here.1076 ¶35