Lectures

Tonight’s subject is eschatology. The term “eschatology” has been used only since the nineteenth century — something entirely new. But in the religious world they’re taking the word and throwing it all over the place, each thinking that they know when the end is coming, when the word really means the doctrine of the end of history. But it has nothing to do with secular history.1075 ¶1

Salvation history has already been brought to its climax and fulfillment, so it’s not a thing to do with this world, and the stars falling, and all these things that people are talking about. So when all these religious leaders get up and believe it, and say the signs are on us for the end of the world — that’s nonsense. It has nothing to do with anything about moons and stars and what not. It’s all about salvation history, and God has already brought that to climax and fulfilled it in the story of Jesus Christ. It is in the individual that the great dramatic events in the life of Jesus happened. The story of Jesus is an active parable which I can tell you, and you can tell another, in the hope that they will believe it, for the story needs to take place in the individual.1075 ¶2

Everything said of him actually happens in the individual. And when it happens, that is the abrupt end between this world — you can call it the supernatural world of God. They’re telling us — and this is funny — where men occur in the world, they wax, they wane, they die. There is total life, and they wax, they wane, and vanish, seemingly forever, until this salvation history takes place. And then they are cast in the central role; they are the star of the drama, and they will experience the story of Jesus Christ in a first-person-singular present-tense experience, and then they will know who Jesus Christ really is.1075 ¶3

So he is not coming from without. He is looking, dreaming the dream of life, and he will awaken and be that man. This is the Christ of whom I speak, and I am speaking from experience. I am not theorizing — than the speaker, when it erupted in me and completed itself in that same number of days as is stated in scripture, and it would take twelve hundred and sixty days for the four major events to take place. Earlier events take place too, yet they’re all related to scripture — in scripture. He said, even himself, “I have come to fulfill scripture.” What scripture? Concerning God’s plan of salvation.1075 ¶4

Now, you want to read this story of eschatology in the Bible — you’ll read it in the thirteenth chapter of the Book of Mark, and the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Matthew. In these chapters, they look at the buildings — these lovely buildings — and one calls his attention to the fact that these buildings were beautiful, and he said, “You see these buildings? They shall not leave one stone standing upon another; every stone shall be cast down.” “When will this be? When will it take place?” And he told them that there will be false prophets, false teachers who were coming into the world and say, “I am Christ.” Do not believe them, though they perform wonders, in the hope that they will mislead and lead astray, if possible, even the elect. “I have told you all things beforehand.”1075 ¶5

At the end of the play, I intend to pay [play?] for you, and I tell you that you saw it as something from without, and that I tried to persuade you that what you have just seen is a play that will unfold in you, and you will be cast in the starring role, whether you believe it or not. That’s entirely up to you. But I’ll show you the play, and having seen the play, then I will try to tell you what it means.1075 ¶6

This is God’s plan of redemption, God’s plan of salvation, and everyone will be redeemed, because it is only God redeeming himself. It is God who came into the world of death, and it is God who departs from this world after his purpose has been fulfilled. And the purpose of the descent into the world of death is to expand himself. His wisdom must expand. He is not omniscient — there would be no way to live if he were everything now. His power will be expanded, because he is not omnipotent. Therefore everything is an expansion, and to reach that expansion he first must contract and limit himself to the state called death. And this is the mystery of life through death: the seed falls into the earth and dies. It falls to be made alive. If it doesn’t, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much, and the bringing forth is the expansion of God, for we are the gods who fell through God.1075 ¶7

So every child born of woman is a son of God, the power of God, the wisdom of God, but completely forgetful of that fact, because he had to put on these garments of death. And then he will know that it’s about to be caught up in this world by these signs, and when the signs begin — and they are not spectators of the signs, they are the distinctive figures, they are the star in the entire play, and everything surrounds them — then they know who Jesus Christ is. “If anyone says to you, ‘Lo, here is Christ,’ do not give heed, because that is another Christ. If I say, ‘Look, there it is,’ I’m showing you another; there is no other Christ than the Christ in you.”1075 ¶8

God actually became man that men may become God. So if there is any Christ other than that universal Christ — that he was crucified and done to death within man — that Christ is a false Christ, and a false peace, taught by those who tell you of a Christ who is going to come from without, and tell you of another Christ who came two thousand years ago. The story is an active power.1075 ¶9

So when it erupted in Paul, these are his words to the Galatians, and scholars all agree that the Letter to the Galatians is the first New Testament book written, approximately fifty years A.D. They consider that letter the oldest of the New Testament writings. And in it he turns to the Galatians and says, “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Let me ask you only this: did you receive the Spirit by works of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish, having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” Well, the whole vast Christian world, and those who hear the Christian history, have ended with the flesh, for they think in terms of a fleshly Jesus Christ. And this is not a question of being at all.1075 ¶10

While I walk this earth as a being of blood and flesh, in me, in an entirely different realm, the plan of salvation erupts, which abruptly cleaves this space-time section from an eternal world of salvation. When these signs occur in you, we all know this is the end of your history in this world — no more dying, no more being restored alive, having gone through the gate of death only to wax and wane and then to be restored again and continue the journey. In reality, when these things begin to happen in you, you are at the end of history.1075 ¶11

But everyone will be redeemed. I don’t care what he has done in this world, foreign or otherwise — killed millions of innocent people and erupted the whole world, or a monster like a Stalin — he still is God, playing that part in the great investment of this world. So we all forget who we are. We look upon ourselves projected and see others, and we find them as enemies to our little ones, our little desires. But every soul served as these characters did, but they are redeemable — not one can remain unredeemed, for it would be God losing himself.1075 ¶12

God is the greatest power in the universe, and that God is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God. But man doesn’t know it while he’s in the state, and moves through event after event in the secular world. He hears the story, and the men who are now self-appointed to tell it do not know it, and they teach a Christ of the flesh. And he tells you, “I am born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” This second birth that will take place in you is born in that manner — it is born from above. And then you were actually placed in the tomb, and until one priest placed you in the tomb — no one took your life; you gave it up yourself. You were the God who made the decision, and you and I collectively agreed on this adventure for the expansion of ourselves, which is simply the human skull, an immense cave we lie down in, and there we entered — collectively — this great dream of life. We are the gods who came down, and we are the gods who will one day enact the drama of salvation within us.1075 ¶13

Now, when will it happen? “Of your children — of that scripture — no one knows, no, no one.” No need to talk about the quality is yourself, but you don’t believe us yet, because when it begins to happen you will discover you are the Father — you are God the Father. It is something entirely different. We are departing from this world again by reason of these events that unfold within us. And it only takes three and a half years from the first eruption, which is resurrection, until you find yourself — this describes it: “We shall all be changed, in a moment — not a few of us, all — in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and we shall awake from the dead.”1075 ¶14

Well, that’s totally a beautiful imagery — no one is sounding a trumpet. The word “trumpet” means, by definition, reverberation. If you think you’ve had a vibration in your body, you might not have felt this — one moment an electrical current, you might have had, and survived it, and you might have had the experience of an intense vibration that you survived. But wait until this happens. When this happens, you have never in eternity had such a reverberation — your whole being reverberates. And that this is it — this must be a massive reverberation. This is what they mean when one actually dies. Instead of dying, for the first time you begin to live, or you begin to awake. And when you awake, you awaken in your skull to discover that your skull is a tomb — a sepulchre in which you will be buried, and you entered it voluntarily. “No man takes away my life; I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down, and the power to take it up again.”1075 ¶15

This is your story. You volunteered for the experiment, and you actually, deliberately, entered Golgotha, which is your own skull. And you don’t know that you’re there. You think you’re on the outside. You wash your body, and you look into the mirror, and the other man is reflected, and you do everything for another man — if you help him make a dollar, that he may have something tomorrow — and you struggle in this world, this outer world, and yet you are dreaming it. You are in your own skull. You are the immortal God in your own skull, dreaming this dream of life.1075 ¶16

And when you decide that you have finished the dream, you play all the parts — oh, you play everything in the world. You play the decent person, all right, and the one who is not considered the decent person. You played the harlot, and you played the lovely mother superior. You’re a bishop, the wonderful pope, or the bishop, the holy man in a new place — your favorite priest, and the judge who is passing judgment on the people. You’ve played any big part in the world, and no one is going to escape playing them all — the gods. No one can hear you asking what is the last part you want to play, because no one knows the order in which you play them, but you will play all the parts, and only so many forms. And he brings it to a limit of one hundred and forty-four thousand modifications of the twelve major characters. But you’ll wake up, and if you haven’t played them, you’re going to play them, because you will not be awakened from this life until you have played them. But no one is going to keep you in this world beyond that last character. And when you reach it, suddenly you know who Jesus is, and he never was another.1075 ¶17

So if anyone ever tries to tell you, “Look, God is Jesus Christ,” don’t believe them. Well, here it is — they could perform wonders, do all kinds of things, but don’t believe anyone who points outside of you as Jesus Christ. In you is your own wonderful human imagination. So don’t go by any sign in the world. This is a marvelous thing — in our land today, looking forward to our boys landing on the moon, I think it’s true, and I am concerned, and I placed myself right next to that TV on Sunday to watch that boy descend, or the two of them. And that’s my thrill, to watch it, probably because I’m an American by adoption, and my wife and my children are Americans, but I am of the human race — that’s man.1075 ¶18

But that’s not eschatology. It has nothing to do with the coming to the end of this — you and I are redeemed from this world by a series of events, and these events are recorded as events in the life of Jesus Christ. But it is in the individual that these majestic dramatic events in the life of Jesus happened — happen in us, but individually.1075 ¶19

You are too wonderful to have it happen collectively. You are a unique being, and no one can take your place in the eternal temple. And that temple is not something that looks like this — it is a body, a person, a real man, a living man, not of humanity, believe it or not. It is a man, and that man is full of love. Behold his presence, and it’s a man, and you can’t think of anything but love in the presence of this man.1075 ¶20

And that man is the risen Lord, and we are called out of this world, one by one, to be incorporated into that body. But then we are living stuff — we are returned from the world of death, and in us we are life-giving spirits, without loss of identity. We are taught: forever there is one living body, that is one Spirit, that is one law, that is one God and power of all. It’s a mystery, and the world teaches it as secular history, and it’s not secular history. So when you hear these names, you’re highly amused, hearing someone speaking of this, and it looks like the aim, and he hopes you’ll be here when Jesus comes, when we come to know who Jesus is.1075 ¶21

And so when some lady told me the other night that I was most cruel to mention a certain person’s name — a person who is highly regarded in his own eyes — I mentioned him, saying, I thought of the words of Lincoln, and Lincoln said, “To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men.” And she thought what he has to say must be true, but she doesn’t know the first thing about the mystery of Jesus.1075 ¶22

So his friend spends fifteen or twenty million dollars a year publicizing himself and his work, so his name is well known, and there are leaders who believe in him. But he was, in his cause, a three-dollar vehicle, and why must I restrain the impulse to tell you he doesn’t know Jesus Christ? And his ministry — Jesus Christ is an active parable, I could play. We have no such research; we have found no evidence for the historicity of a man called Jesus, and yet it’s the truest story ever told. It happens in man, and our evangelists are all unknown. These days they are anonymous — Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John — there are no records as to who Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John really were.1075 ¶23

It was their own experience: when the time fully came, that which was planned before the world began, to erupt in man — and by “man” I mean generic man, male and female — it began to erupt, and then they knew the mystery of salvation, the mystery of redemption. So I’m telling you what I know from experience, and if you should forget it, read the Gospels, and everything said of Jesus you will need to experience in a first-person-singular present-tense experience, and that is eschatology — that is the end of the journey in this world.1075 ¶24

You were told in scripture: “You are in a world that is strange to you, and you will be enslaved for four hundred years,” and then they shall come out with great possessions. Now, that’s all — that’s a foreshadowing, not altogether conclusive or immediately evident, so I tell you that story, but what does it mean? These are words spoken in scripture as being uttered by the Lord to one called Abraham, the father of the volunteers. So he goes into a land that is not his own, a strange land, and he’s a stranger there, and he’s enslaved there for four hundred years. My four hundred years — you must first understand that in the Hebrew alphabet every letter has a numerical value as well as a symbolic type. Well, the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter Tav — there are twenty-two letters, and then there are five finals that repeat five of the original twenty-two, but basically there are twenty-two — Tav has the numerical value of four hundred, and the symbol of that letter is a cross.1075 ¶25

And the only cross on which the Lord was ever crucified is this: the human form — that is the cross. And this is a strange world to God, in the sense that it is a world of guess, and God is the God who is living — but there was the challenge: not to pretend that he had died, but to die actually, coming and taking the form of death, which is man, and to go through the gate over there and experience that, and still be restored, and continue, and die again, and die again, and then finish on his predetermined plan to rise from it all, enriched beyond what he was prior to that — greater power, greater creative power, greater wisdom, greater everything than he had previously.1075 ¶26

So this is the plan, and the only Christ is that Christ, not a single little being that was born of a woman who didn’t know a man. They will repeatedly say, “I must take on the weaknesses of the flesh and all the limitations of that.” If I came in here and my earthly father didn’t know my earthly mother, that was something entirely different — I can’t teach anyone what I haven’t experienced. I had to be conceived, and so I came in just as every child, and at the end of the journey I had to awaken within my own skull, and then experienced the entire story of Jesus in the first-person-singular present-tense experience. Yet doubt that? Not one momentarily — no. You are, and one day you’ll awaken, and when you return at the end of the journey, you and I knew each other before we came down — we will be brothers then again, and in spite of what we think of each other in our dream land, we are still in love with each other, full of love, as sons of the Most High.1075 ¶27

And it takes us all, as sons of God, to form God. God is the leader of the gods, and we are the gods — we are the sons of God who came together by a definite, voluntary decision to enter into it. And then completely forgotten the power that is ours, and the reason that is ours. And many of us plead — choose to die of starvation rather than steal what we thought we didn’t have — when all along, all along, taking without any consciousness of stealing, for the real part of the thief and praise the Father of everything in this world. So — what of a man who’s done everything, forgiven, completely forgiven?1075 ¶28

I saw today’s New York Times — this survey was just completed, and they brought in their conclusions. These professors at some university received grants from some great foundations, and they investigated further ex-convicts — those who are now in small business, confessing what they’ve earned, net, ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand a year. That’s their confession. And then they said, you know, they have what all great business leaders need.1075 ¶29

They didn’t go so far as to say the great business leaders have it, because not all about to please anybody, there couldn’t be presidents, there couldn’t be this — now banks are asking nine and a half percent for a big loan, ten million dollars — but that’s nothing, they also want a piece of the action. They carry their own risk, and in the piece of the action they’re going to get their nine and a half percent on their ten-million-dollar bill — all that the enormous, usual — in other words, for one who takes no risk. And there are the big giants — adults — from the real singularity, as follows.1075 ¶30

So may I tell you: forgive everything, being — when you come to the very end and you see the plan, and see the entire thing as a pleasure, you too will say, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” Or, I could not now have experienced the drama of the idiot if I hadn’t played the part of the usurer, where I demanded not only nine percent, but I got a hundred plus pieces of the action, and so I can forgive it.1075 ¶31

And so the present conclusion is: there had to be — and they are in business, in a small way, and today a small business is the most difficult thing in the world. How will you survive? But they have new help because of their ex-convict contacts, and they have that power to be independent, like all big businessmen — they want to be independent, they want to stand on their own feet, and venture, and take chances. The average person won’t take a chance, and anyone who won’t isn’t qualified to lead big business — to lead big business or a big country, you’ve got to be willing; you have to have that courage to take a chance, and go broke, and then come back, get off the wheel, and work with someone else. But these ex-convicts, and the only difference between the ex-convicts that are investigated, whose story is now reported in today’s New York Times, and the big leaders of industry, is — one was caught, and the others were not.1075 ¶32

And these are the dramatic events in the life of Jesus, and all these events take place in the individual, as the individual’s personal experience. Taking note of who Jesus is: the word “Jesus” is the same as the word “Jehovah.” You spell it, God as out — but the root is Jehovah. So this is eschatology, in the truest sense of the word, and no one who misleads you by telling you that they’re seeing the stars, the signs of the age of the world — no, it is not the end of the world.1075 ¶33

This world is going on. This is a world of educative darkness, and you are going to take a soul and improve it to make it whole. This remains, as Scripture teaches, a world of educated darkness. So when you spend effort to make it easier for people, and it begins to make people good, could there yet be an equal apportion of good and evil in this world forever? So write it in this world — the living room — and you’ll get unbalanced; so you make all these good, but then others come, causing evil to balance it, for the name of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That’s why we’re here, and we have to be, in order to be here — that we judge in our blindness, and do all these things in the world.1075 ¶34

If the world was all good, and everybody was so all together asleep, you wouldn’t be here. And then I tell you there’ll be no contrast whatsoever — a new note of the experience properly, and experiencing it, is not only a very pleasant one, than those who think themselves so good and so holy and so sweet, and you wonder what it’s all about. No — give me another — sometimes you have to watch the look in someone’s eyes. They’re more excited, or more fun in the world. You keep your mind high and dwell on noble things, and keep the noble things going, but don’t try to rub off on others.1075 ¶35

It’s all part of a school system; we are here to make this happen. It’s for the reading of it, and everyone will come to believe it — everyone is going to come out.1075 ¶36

I will become to them ugly, odd, a stranger — you take off the mask, I take off the mask, and I notice — I knew him — it doesn’t matter, I mean eternity, and we really love each other as we could never know or love on earth, because we will love — itself we were God, and God is all God. So no one on earth can ever love anyone through these masks comfortably, because a lot we have — when the mask comes off, because Mark came first — the Bible’s second book in the New Testament, but chronologically it was the first of the gospels — let us read the twenty-fourth chapter — “the beautiful, now see the buildings,” he said — “not one stone will be left standing upon another.”1075 ¶37

Beautiful imagery — “one of these buildings” — no, but on the twenty-first day of December in the year nineteen fifty-nine, came my discovery of the fatherhood of God. This vision was mine. I saw all the buildings, beautiful buildings, tall buildings, and one is going down before my eyes, are falling, are falling to the ground, leaving not one stone upon the other, and I know that’s really next — that’s going next — and I saw three, three, four buildings in my imagination, my vision, and everything started leaving not one stone. It is imagery — beautiful images — but what were the buildings, what did they signify?1075 ¶38

The beliefs by which I lived. When all of these — the beliefs by which a man lives — these temples fall to the ground, I related, in a physical Jesus, that’s what my father taught me. I loved the dear He’s-gone from this world, but the love has not decreased because of his physical absence. I think of Mother dear, I can’t conceive of a day that he enters into my mind in the same loving way that she did when she was here in the flesh — they’re alive to me. My mother taught me that story, but I didn’t realize that the story was only an active parable, and my mother didn’t — she would have deceived me, but she hadn’t experienced it. So when it happened in me, I understood that the story is not a secular story, it’s a supernatural story marking the end of man’s journey in the world. And when it happens in him, he knows who Jesus is. Therefore all these beliefs by which you live symbolize structures — powerful structures — and these are the buildings, the beliefs by which I lived. But I can no longer accept these external concepts of scripture, then the external world collapsed, leaving not one stone upon the other — everything came tumbling down, and that all took place where they needed.1075 ¶39

So the chapter begins: “they see these buildings, these beautiful buildings,” and then he responds, “not one stone will be left standing upon another.” And then they tell him, “when will these things happen, Lord?” And then he tells them about false prophets and the false teachers that will come, claiming, “I am Christ” — do not believe them. And they will come with all strange tricks and will perform certain miraculous events in the world. I assume this: anyone who turns you to the outside and points to someone on the outside as Christ, forget it — he doesn’t know Christ.1075 ¶40

So when you take a picture of him, there is not one account in scripture; the person of the individual is not described, there is no description of Jesus in scripture. Why? Listen to these words: “he does not yet appear, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him.” Does he look like — the word “picture,” the people think, or the painting you see on the wall, or the little icons — and if you’re honest with yourself, you will say, “no, that’s not me.” It is not just like you — that is not Christ.1075 ¶41

It is you that is Christ, and there is no other public life. That is the great story of scripture. So when you find him, you’re going to find yourself. And everything — the Son of God who revealed you as God the Father — he was standing for you, and you will know you can be his son, and he will know that you are his father, and when you see him, you go back into the scripture and find the true Son of God, that is the personification of all the generations of my ancestry, and all its princes — it has been a way that one being stands before you who represents all the generations, and all these ancestors. And then, as a result of that convention, he stands before you a father, and you know you’re his father — he is the result of your journey.1075 ¶42

And so when we do it for them, you’re God the Father, but no one can take it and convince you that you are — you have to experience it. So I’m counting on the signs that will come, and you will act up because you cannot possibly deny them. There they are — I mean, if I let them go forward and teach their false doctrines about the coming of Jesus, and appoint some sign in heaven saying “this is the time for it to come” — no one knows the hour, only the Father.1075 ¶43

And what is the Father? “Call no man on earth father,” because you have but one Father, and he is in heaven, and the kingdom of heaven is within you. That’s where it is: “call no man on earth father.” And he is invisible, and the kingdom of heaven is within — have you read the words yet? All these people, these false teachers, insist on your calling them Father, and therefore — but you see, I can speak — because I can speak with authority, because my authority is based upon experience. I have experienced the mystery of Christ, and so I am not theorizing, I do not speak of it secondhand. So when someone challenges — my wife would say, “well, go on and charge it” — you’re only listening to a false doctrine when you point to some Jesus as a being of flesh born — not the best; it’s an entirely different birth. It’s a supernatural birth.1075 ¶44

Your return to heaven can only be accomplished by a birth to come, as told us in scripture: “except a man be born from above, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” It’s impossible to return where — it is the government of flesh and God. Your day — no, I got it, at the very moment they call you — today you are restored to life in the garment, just like the other one, only young, not older, twenty years of age, nothing — no deep listening, no fear missing, no eyes — listening perfectly, restored. And you cannot express yourself in the sexual world — you marry virtue, just as you marry him, and you get over there too, until the time of the end. And when the time of the end comes, these eternal stories unfold within you.1075 ¶45

So there’s no speculation about this; sacred history has already reached this climax, and it’s been fulfilled. It’s not being changed — things are being changed, but not sacred history. That’s all done, and you will one day experience this sacred history, and you will know exactly who you are, and you are done.1075 ¶46

Now, I will not take back one word I’ll tell you, because I know what I’m talking about.1075 ¶47

It reads in the book — I like how he said, “no one told it to me” — never heard it, ever — “but it came through revelation of Jesus Christ.” That’s what he said — he was the very one who went up to destroy the entire concept, but it happened in him, and then he understood it was not the external worship of the law, the rituals and all the things that the churches teach. The will of you — I got nothing to do with that. When you come to connect with it, there’s no acquiring merit to getting to the kingdom — just wait for that moment. He died upon the grace that is coming to you, and the revelation of Jesus Christ, for this is the whole message, that it actually makes it wisdom to accept the burdens of this long dark night of time.1075 ¶48

So it seems a long life — yes, it is a long, dark night of ideas. I’ve been slain for about four hundred years, by four hundred equivalent years, just as long as I were, because — but I’m promised that at the end of the four hundred, in the ending of the [wedding — reckoning] of the cross, I will come up with enormous possessions, far greater than what I possessed when I first volunteered into the world. And everyone is going to come out. Doctors, when you return, as the Lord — about any questions?1075 ¶49

So I would not say that he can’t recover — I wouldn’t say that, no, I would not say that at all. I never led a modest life today, quiet, modern, love, small income, from my interests, in what I’m doing, for I’m self-employed. I take off, voluntarily, between three and four months a year, because I find that I need this — on a lease, the corporation pays it, so it’s paid — I’m completely on my own, must take off any time, and I am simply self-supporting.1075 ¶50

Well, all right, I’m in a modest, very quiet, and modest inside, and yet I have a reminiscence of an experience — beautifully furnished, everything in it was a museum piece, and yet, conscious that I was up there just for a minute to say it was functioning, a full complement of service. I can see my daughter, I can see all the gardeners that I had, I can see my secretary and his assistant, I can see the chefs — I was a bachelor — I can see it even — I will tell you, in my imagination, see all these things always taking place.1075 ¶51

So I return, in my imagination, to this — and although we believe so beautifully, and they always have — the Lord is back — not meaning God, they call me by the title, “oh, lord” — this is how people speak, people here in the world, “lord” so-and-so. Well, today I was their master, their lord — not in the sense of being God, just completely a man with a title called lord. And I recall all the wonderful things that I possessed, and it was decadent — I didn’t grow with all my wealth, I simply could indulge myself, and no matter what I wanted, I could grant it, because I had it.1075 ¶52

And that I recalled deliberately walking out of that place and not returning, and left it all behind me. If I had everything that money could buy, and I bought only the best, and my servants were beautifully trained, they’re not a disturbance — they were the highest, either secretary, everybody, in their own department, got there with my service, and I had a full complement of servants in my home, a full staff in my garden. I walked out and never returned.1075 ¶53

So I have a bigger memory in this world, and a season of having happiness, meant that I came back in this time. I came here, in a world of poverty, a father of the world, and raised in Germany. There were twelve, or two died at work, and so our family always at thirteen, because my grandmother lived with us, and he had little, and so I came into that environment. I needed that environment, and that was the last environment. In my British life, I played across before — I thought in this world to return to my office, and I’ll return, like the prodigal son, to find that I am, in defense, beyond my wildest dreams, by a recent adventure.1075 ¶54

Now, all the sons came up, by the way — the first one who came down represents the Elohim — is unaware of limitation. The second one volunteered and took a chance of remaining, grandly living in a world of death, but if he didn’t — and he survived, and could get back — he would be enhanced beyond the wildest dream. Those who did not come out do not share that though — he then used on a higher level of creativity.1075 ¶55

So I have a very vivid life, and see it so clearly in my mind’s eye — modest, but fortunate for me, my wife goes along with me, she makes no excessive demands on my purse. In fact, I don’t have any debt, so if I have anything, she knows what I don’t, because she has everything in itself. I can’t really run away — when I leave home, I said, “now, may I have too long?” “Yes.” Thank you. A week, and then that’s why — I said, “what have I done? Nothing — this is love.” Oh, this is a shock — I said, “what am I going to do for money next week?” Then rent — “you know that’s not my problem.” So — but continue the argument — he said, “well, now, I can see he doesn’t understand the facts of life.”1075 ¶56

So bring your nephew — “you’re full of courage, and do all kinds of things,” I was saying — seventeen. So he gave me an advance, spring over — Macy’s, he said — “he doesn’t understand America’s rules, so give him a challenge.” So I was getting, I think, twenty-two, at the store — and then from then on I worked for myself.1075 ¶57

So I became, under the heading of these ex-convicts, that refused to work for another — they had it all within themselves, and they wanted freedom and independence, all the qualities that the same big business leaders need — and it helps. I was against them.1075 ¶58

I ran an elevator, worked as a bus boy, putting things away, and I saw all the little tricks of the trade. I saw how they operate, because, as a bus boy, you see things. And so, unfortunately, I didn’t have really white honey on display — I should have kept the bin filled, but I didn’t have it. So the salesman who took the order came back and said, “the lady of the house, she can’t have any honey but Lizzy brand white honey, and you didn’t do your job by keeping the bin filled.” So, get one up quickly.1075 ¶59

Well, the little white container, and the restaurant funny thing was the same body, brought unmarked by the carload, and the girls rolled in the mini bike, which I was — ten cents four rolls in the red star and shone senseless, so it took off one red star and rolled into the right to decide, and she was satisfied, because you paid ten cents more for it, and that’s how big business operates. For some customers who cannot buy a decent copy, because they put up happy in themselves — the inmate knowledge of taste, their taste buds are gone.1075 ¶60

Someone once told a story: if you make a ring in England, and you took a galaxy and jammed it until a piece of cut glass, and put on it the price of a great diamond, and then put that tag on the cut glass or the diamond, the average person, not understanding, in Europe, having no gem knowledge at all, would buy it based upon the tag — the rich would attack us and say, “the price of the great diamond,” because they do not know values, they can only see tags.1075 ¶61

And business operates upon that — business: one is fifteen cents more than this one, because someone wants to pay more, who cannot afford a hundred dollars a day, they can afford a hundred a day. So they come to these places — we supply them all, so they get no better meal than the place that charges ten dollars a day. So when you go to their dinner, well, it’s a nice dinner, no question about it, but you’re paying me a hundred dollars, and we are the suppliers of all the levels.1075 ¶62

And people, knowing their weakness — in the human heart, they’re capable — I saw them, darlings, come down from L.A., and they come down with all their big dark glasses on, and they’re incognito, and there’s no one in Barbados near the mainland who did not become aware, though incognito — but there’s a source of it, before the day was out, that everyone knew who the real person was. They couldn’t stand being not known — with all their big black glasses and all these things, I remember these visitors, but “don’t tell me you don’t know who I am.”1075 ¶63

Anyway, my dear, this earth does not terminate at the point where my senses cease to respond when I am dreaming tonight. And the world calls it gone in this world, and this cremated one has turned to dust — this frequency is gone, no — the world is just like this, it’s terrestrial, solidly real, and the body that we will live in is flesh, and God will put on the new garment. That’s not wrong, either.1075 ¶64

We spent thousands of years in the journey — four hundred resulting in the symbolic freedom of the cross, but it consisted of four hundred years — thousands of years we have evolved into the flesh, and this earth appeared in sections of time. We are restored to life in bodies of flesh and blood, and they’re real, solid, and then go through the struggles, just as the people here, and there is meaning, thinking all things there, and we know — and died. It’s not just a photograph on the moon, as we see a section in time — that section in time only represents at the moment, time, but this earth is purpose, and they’re all taking place here, now.1075 ¶65

This earth — the millions will die, and the friends who seem unreal, on earth, is this earth, but a different section of time. For instance, that is still taking place. It seems crazy — we think that’s gone, but it hasn’t gone.1075 ¶66

A friend of mine wrote me a letter this week and stated something that happened to her. Having read it and reread it, I thought it would be quite a lesson for tonight. She said that having tried to change others and failed, she thought the whole thing over and thought, “Well, after all, I’ll change myself, for the other is only myself pushed out. The whole vast world is myself personified.” So she began to work on freedom, that I am free. And she and a friend of hers who is here tonight too discussed freedom. Then she said a vision developed soon after that which was very disturbing. It came unexpectedly, and here I found myself flat on the ground, stretched out like a cross, face up, and all in chains. And here is my body, my physical body, chained to the ground. It would come without warning. It was not a pleasant vision to see myself there, all chained and anchored to the ground with these iron chains. And one day when it happened, I thought I would look closer, take a closer look, to find that it was not only chains, but there were locks. The whole thing was completely anchored and locked to the ground. Then I felt myself rise out of this body while it began to sink into the ground. And I rose up and up out of the body. I realized then that the body was part of the earth. It belongs to the earth; of the dust it came, and to dust it returned. And I rose up out of it. And from that day on I have never had that vision again. I feel myself free.1073 ¶1

Now she said, I had this on the morning of the 14th of February, this one. So I returned to this world from a profound dream. I knew that it was profound, but I could not move to write it. Here I am, cataleptic. I couldn’t move to write it. I tried to struggle with myself to remember it in detail, and the end began to fade. So I asked myself to reveal to me a vision, some vision that will hold it. And then I saw a serpent emerging out of its skin, and there was its dead skin. And here was a serpent completely out of the skin that it had just shed. Then I saw two serpents, a pure white serpent and a black serpent, and they became one serpent, the white one above and the black below. But it was one serpent, a black bottom and a white top. And then someone spoke to me and said to me, “This is the fulfillment of scripture. You will find it in the eighth of—” and she said, “I thought I heard John, but it could have been Luke, or it could have been some other. I couldn’t quite grasp it, that I thought it was John or Luke.”1073 ¶2

Well, I can assure her it is John. It is not any other chapter. It is John. If you are familiar with scripture, you will find that John the 8th chapter, when you read the sayings of the Lord, they are so condensed. Everything is so condensed that the meaning seems sometimes almost impossible for one to follow, unless of course you have experienced that chapter. If you’ve experienced it, it is easy to follow it. But I have read so many strange, peculiar interpretations by the great scholars concerning that chapter. There are men without vision, brilliant men. They know their Greek backwards. They know their Aramaic. They know all the tongues into which it was translated. But they do not have the vision. They haven’t had the experience. So to them it is something that is like a closed book. So tonight we will take that chapter and show you what is in store for you. She hasn’t experienced it, but she’s on the verge of it. For she was told, “This is the fulfillment of scripture, the whole scripture.” And the fulfillment of scripture is the fulfillment of the Old Testament, for that was the Old Testament at the day that this was written.1073 ¶3

Now, it begins not on the first verse. The earliest manuscripts omit the first eleven verses. Somewhere along the way, some scribe inserted into that chapter eleven verses that you cannot find in the early manuscripts. The last verse of the seventh chapter is omitted, and the first eleven verses are omitted in the Revised Standard Version. They will quote it in a little tiny print and give you the reasons why you cannot find it in the really early manuscripts of the text. But some overly zealous scribe put it into it. If you’re not familiar with it, it is the story of the one taken in adultery — that’s omitted, that was definitely added. So it begins on this note: “I am the light of the world. He who follows me shall walk in light.” Here is one of the great “I am” sayings of this gospel. For the gospel of John is full of “I am.” I am the bread of life. I am the living bread. I am the resurrection. I am the light. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the door. I am the true vine. So these mighty “I am” sayings are all through the gospel of John. It’s the most profound book in scripture.1073 ¶4

So here it begins, “I am the light of the world.” In that statement he is telling us that he is the consciousness of humanity. For we are told in the gospel of John, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” Were he not in you as your own wonderful I AM, you would not be animated. You would not be conscious. And I know from my own experience that there is in man that life, and one day he will be in control of it, and he will actually know from experience that the whole vast world is himself pushed out. He will arrest that activity within him and everything that he observes will stand still, proving that he is the light, the consciousness of men. They have no consciousness before your own eyes; they appear as deadly, completely dead, made as though they were made of wax. You release the activity within you that you only a moment before froze, and everything becomes once more reanimated. So you know where the source of all things is — it’s all in you, your own wonderful I AM. That’s God. There is no other gods. So you can change the outer world as you change the inner world. You can freeze it and then stop it. You can freeze it, change the internal you, and then watch it and see the whole vast world execute the change in you. So he said, I am the light of the world. That’s your destiny.1073 ¶5

I know back in 1926 or ’27, in Larchmont, New York, I went to sleep hearing this wonderful orchestra playing below, but I was not allowed to join the crowd. They were all guests and members of the club, and I was only a guest of the manager. So I went to sleep on the early side hearing the orchestra below. And in — well, that year I was only 21, in ’26 I was 21 years old. I’d have loved to have gone downstairs and danced. I was then a professional dancer. I had just returned from London, having danced for four months in London. But he thought it unwise for a guest of his, the manager, to join the members and their guests. So I went to bed, and I did what I rarely do — read in bed. I took a book, and here I’m reading a book. It was the life of Buddha. And then, as I read it, I must have fallen into a deep, deep sleep, a profound trance. Because when I woke, it was about 9 in the morning, the light was still on, and the book was on my chest, proving I had not turned in that sleep — for if I had turned, the book would have fallen to the floor or on the bed. So in that interval, whether it lasted eight hours or more I do not know, but I went into a deep, profound trance, and in that trance I became the light of the world. I could easily have said, I am the light of the world. There was not a thing in the world but myself, and I was light — infinite light without any circumference. There was no boundary to this light. No sun, no stars, no moon, only infinite light, and I was it, a living, pulsing light, the light of the world.1073 ¶6

Then I woke, and here I am once more congested into this tiny little garment that I knew as Neville — a little garment that she saw in her vision, anchored to the earth in chains, iron chains and locks, and it would sink into the earth from which it was taken, while she who was in it would rise above it. For she is the seed of God, as you are. And a seed must fall into the ground and die before it is made alive. If it doesn’t fall into the ground and die, then it remains alone. But if it dies, having fallen into the ground, then it brings forth much fruit. So here she saw it perfectly. And here she is told, this is the fulfillment of scripture.1073 ¶7

Now let us take some of these profound sayings. They’re so completely condensed, unless you’ve experienced it, you wonder what on earth is the recorder who records the words talking about. So we’ll take as many as we can tonight. He discusses the father. They do not know he’s talking about the father. They said, “Who is your father?” He answered, “If you knew me, you would know my father also, but you know neither my father nor me. If you really knew me, in the full sense of that word, you would know God. For he and I are inseparable. If you knew me, you would know God.” That’s what he’s saying in this eighth chapter when he tells them, “You will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he.” Here it is stated the fundamental sin of the world is lack of faith in “I am he.” So we are told in the Psalms, the 46th Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God.” Man finds it difficult to believe that he has a God stuck in the heaven someplace on the outside. He can’t bring himself to believe that his own wonderful human imagination is God. So in spite of the words “be still and know that I am God,” unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins.1073 ¶8

Now you tell them. Now we go back to Ezekiel, the third chapter, and we’ll read it in the 17th and 18th verses. “I call you the son of man. The son of man, I have made of you a watchman for the house of Israel. And when you hear anything spoken from my mouth, you tell it to the house of Israel. You tell it to the wicked, to remove them from their wickedness that they may live. If you do not tell it, they will die in their iniquity, which is in their sin, but their blood will be upon your hand. If you tell it and they persist in their iniquity, they will die in their iniquity, but the blood will not be upon your hand.”1073 ¶9

So Paul could say, in the 20th chapter of the book of Acts — he is now addressing the Ephesians, and these are the elders — he said to them, “I am innocent of any blood that is of yours.” Innocent completely of all the blood that is yours. “For I did not shrink from declaring the counsel of God.” He told it just as his vision happened to him. As he said before the king, “O King Agrippa, I am not disobedient to the heavenly vision.” He kept the divine vision in time of trouble. Even though it meant jail, even though it meant persecution, meant beating, he kept the vision and he told it to those who would listen. So that if they would not listen and then abide by what the Lord had said through him, it was not upon his hand that would be their blood when they died in their own iniquities. So here is one who tells the story just as it happened in him. You only tell what you have experienced. I have experienced the entire story, so I tell it whether you believe it or not, knowing that if you do not believe it, then the things that happened to you — it’s not upon my hand anymore. I am faithful to the divine vision. I kept the vision in time of trouble. Though people would leave me and never return again, those who would condemn, those who will criticize — it doesn’t really matter. Once I keep the vision and tell it, so here in the story there is statement after statement, so completely condensed. If you had not experienced it, you would wonder what on earth is it all about.1073 ¶10

Now he makes the statement, “As the son of man is lifted up.” When the son of man is lifted up, you will know that I am he. He tells you earlier, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” If you were not lifted up like that fiery serpent, you would not understand that statement. It’s so completely condensed, the meaning would escape you. But having ascended like a fiery serpent after my body was split in two from top to bottom, and seeing that living, pulsing light, that golden liquid light fusing with it, and then, like a fiery serpent, moving up this staff — for we are told the serpent moved up on a rod. Well, the rod is your own spine, and into your skull you go in violence, you return into the heavenly world, all within you. For the kingdom of heaven is within. And so as the serpent was lifted up on the staff in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up. I have heard these brilliant scholars say it meant when he was lifted up on the cross of wood and crucified. It has nothing to do with that. Has not a thing to do with any wooden cross in the world. The only cross that the Christ of the universe ever bore is your body. This body is the cross he bears. There is no other cross. He is actually nailed on this cross, on your body. These are the crosses the universal Christ bears, and he will wake himself in you and rise in you. And when he rises in you, you will know that I am he. For it’s not another that rises, it’s yourself. You fuse with the light, and fusing with that living, pulsing light, you make one quick circular motion, and up you go on that staff of your spine into your skull, and it vibrates just like thunder. So when the son of man is lifted up, you will know that I am he.1073 ¶11

Bear in mind, this is completely egocentric. He is not talking to people as I am talking to you. He is speaking now to himself. This body is of the earth. So now he makes the statement, “I am from above. You are from below. I am not of this world. You are of this world.” So who is the “you”? It’s the body that you wear that is anchored by these chains that you saw and the very locks that you saw, to this earth, and to earth it will return and must return. But you, occupying these garments, you are not of this world. You are not of this earth. You are from above, but not yet aware of it, not yet awakened within that garment, not yet born from above — but you will.1073 ¶12

Now he makes the statement, and now he’s discussing freedom. Now she in her letter started off by telling me about how she wanted to be free. I will not mention the characters in her life that she felt were holding her back, how she tried to change them without any help. She didn’t see the chains that she thought she would see, and she worked on herself to be free. Then came the vision of the anchored body to the earth and herself rising above it. And then the whole vision faded from then on when she felt free. Now he’s discussing freedom: “If you abide in my word and my word abides in you, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Well, they answered, “Well, we are the children of Abraham, and we have never been in bondage to anyone.” And you say that we must be made free. They did not realize that they were enslaved any more than the whole vast world knows it is enslaved. You are enslaved to the body that you wear. No matter how much money you have in this world, what power you have in this world, you cannot order anyone in this world to perform the natural functions of your body for you. You do it yourself. No matter where you are in the world, you could be sitting on a throne, and you cannot order anyone in your world to perform the normal natural functions of your body for you. You’ve got to go to your own bathroom and perform them yourself. You have to eat your own food and assimilate it, and what you cannot assimilate, you must expel it yourself. And no slave in the world can do it for you. So are you not a slave of the cross that you wear? So here is the world in which we live. They thought they were free, and he tells them you will only be free if the Son sets you free. “If the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.” All these are taken from the eighth chapter of John.1073 ¶13

Now, he’s only fulfilling scripture, and scripture spoken of is the Old Testament. We go back to the 17th chapter of 1 Samuel, and the king has made a promise that the one who brings down the enemy of Israel, “I will set his father’s house free in Israel.” Well, the one who brought down the giant was David. David brought down the giant and severed his head from his body. And when he stood before the king, the king is not inquiring about David — it’s obvious that he brought down the giant, he has the head in his hand — but “whose son are you?” He has to fulfill his promise and set his father free. The father is bound in you, and not until the son appears are you set free. When the son appears, he will call you father, and you will know he is your son, and he will know that you are his father, and that son is Christ, and Christ is David.1073 ¶14

Now I am telling you what the world will throw stones at me, who call themselves Christians or even call themselves Jews. They will think that’s blasphemous. Yet I am telling what Paul said: “I am not unfaithful or disobedient to the heavenly vision.” It happened to me, and I cannot modify it to satisfy the preconceived misconceptions of scripture and tell them of some other being. It was no other being. It was David who set me free. You’re only free when you discover that you are God. For there’s nothing in this world that is free unless it is God. God is the only one that could be free. So I tell you that you are God. His name forever and forever is I AM. That’s God. But you do not know it when you say “I am.” You say, “I am Neville.” You say, “I am Jim. I’m Bill. I’m Peter. I’m Stan. I’m Jan.” That’s not setting you free. When you know “I am God,” you are set free. And you will never know you are God unless his son stands before you and you know he is your son, and that son is David. Then you are set free — free forever.1073 ¶15

The body will return to the dust from whence it was taken, but you who are buried in that earth, you died, and then you were made alive, and then you became free, and you are free as God the Father. So in the end, the Son set man free by revealing to man that he is God. As long as he thought himself Mrs. Brown’s son or Mrs. Jones’s son, and he was back on a physical background, he is not free, because nothing physical can be freed. We are wearing a slave garment and it’s physical, it’s flesh and blood. But when I’m set free, I am freed of that garment. I’m not looking for my genealogy based upon some physical tradition. I am through with that. Whatever happened to the generations numbered centuries ago, it doesn’t really matter — those that I know I love dearly, my father, mother, and my brothers and sister. Beyond that, I do not know them. I do not care what the ancestry was. Makes no difference to me whatsoever. My only real ancestor is God, and I must awaken as God. Everyone must awaken to discover himself the author of it all, and that is God.1073 ¶16

So now he comes down and they say, “You are mad and you have a devil.” He said, “I am not mad.” Said, “You are a Samaritan and you have a demon.” Said, “I am not, I do not have a demon.” Didn’t deny he was a Samaritan. That was the lowest of the caste to be a Samaritan. So they denied he was a Jew when he claimed he was a Jew, but he did not argue the point when he was called a Samaritan, which meant the very lowest of the caste.1073 ¶17

Then he said to them, “If you follow me, you will never die.” Well, he said, “After all, Abraham our father died, and the prophets died, and you are saying that if we follow you, we will never die.” He’s telling them, “I am the resurrection and the life.” If you follow this footstep that I’ve just laid down in these concentrated statements, if you follow them and they awaken within you, you will never die. You will awaken completely. And when you awaken here and people call you dead, you will not return anymore to a little garment that is restored in a world just like this. You will enter the new age, the age of eternity.1073 ¶18

Then he said to them, “But your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day. He saw it and was glad.” They said, “You saw our father Abraham? Why, you’re not yet fifty. Did Abraham see you, or you see Abraham?” And then he answered, he answered now in this manner: “Before Abraham was, I am.” Behold, before the whole vast play was conceived, I am. I am the author of it. And they took up stones to stone him, but he hid, for that is the verdict — if anyone blasphemes the name of God, he must be stoned to death, as told us in the law of Moses. So they only fulfill scriptures.1073 ¶19

He is telling them that he is the being of whom the prophets wrote. He is the being of whom Moses in the law spoke. He is the Lord God Jehovah. That’s what he’s telling them, that there is no other God. But they see a man, not knowing that the man is only the part in which that seed is unfolding. And in this case, it completely unfolded. But they have not yet internal eyes. They do not have the inner eye with which to see eternity. He opens the eye from within that you may look into the immortal worlds, look into eternity, into the worlds of thought, and see reality. They have not yet had the eye open from within. When the eye is open from within, the man you know as your friend, with whom you dine and wine and have fun — when he has completely awakened from within, if your eye is open, though you knew him and still know him as a friend, or he still wears the garment, you will have moments of experience in that world where you will see him as he really is to be seen. And you’ll see God. You will see that burning one, for he is the burning one. He is radiant light. That’s what he is. And he is not — I wouldn’t say not anything, but he’s not what the world thinks him to be. Human face, yes. A human voice, yes. Human hand, yes. Don’t go beyond that. You’re a fiery being, yet human. The face is human. The voice is human. The hands are human. But don’t go beyond that. That’s the being that you are. The being that you are destined to be.1073 ¶20

The being that’s going to come out of this body that must go back to the dust. That’s why we use the symbol of the butterfly and the caterpillar. The butterfly has wings and takes off into an entirely different element from the caterpillar. So the caterpillar must die, that that which is buried within it, unknown to itself, must come out. And that is God himself. That’s only a symbol of what’s going to take place in everyone in this world. Not one will fail.1073 ¶21

So, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and yet you’re not yet fifty. All right, so you’re judging appearances, and before Abraham was, he saw my day and he rejoiced, and he was glad. What day? The day of eschatology, the end of the journey. We begin with Abraham. Abraham was the man of faith, and biblical faith is faith in God, and God’s only name is I AM. So he had faith in I AM, and a promise was made to him, in spite of your years, “You will be a father of a son and his name will be called Isaac.” And the word Isaac means “he laughs.” You wait, you’re going to have it at the appointed hour, and when you hold him, he’s going to laugh. A little infant just born, and suddenly breaks into the most heavenly smile. He laughs, laughs out completely. And that promise will be held true. It’ll be proven true in time, because every word of God proves true.1073 ¶22

So Abraham saw it, as you’re told in Galatians, that the scripture — and now the scripture becomes a person — the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham. So if the scripture preached, that the scripture becomes now a person — it becomes, but it is a person because it is the word of God. It is God made manifest in the written form, and it preached the story of the gospel, the good news, beforehand, to whom? To Abraham. So he saw my day and he rejoiced that he was to see my day and he was glad. He actually saw it and walked by faith only. Faith in what? Faith in God. He heard it said that he actually would have that child, and so he walked with faith in God, and that is faith in himself.1073 ¶23

So everyone here should rejoice that one in this audience should have had a vision of that nature. I am telling you, you’re all going to have it. You would not be here as consistent as you are, night after night, month after month, if you were not on the verge of these experiences. Others may say, “So what about the other millions? What does it matter?” Everyone will have it in time. This is the most precious, the most unique thing in the world, and you do not take that which is unique and throw it to the swine. They’re not swine as pigs, but they’re not ready for it. They’re really not ready for it. The day will come they will be. Then they’ll be called one by one into a circle just like this. And maybe you will be the one telling the story from experience.1073 ¶24

When you speak from experience, you speak with authority. You’re not speaking from hearsay. You’re not speaking by speculating as to what it ought to be, as so many brilliant minds do. If I could show you even in what is called the grandfather of all biblical interpretations — and here these scholars, when the son of man is lifted up, they all say it means when he was lifted up on the cross. What about the other two on the cross? They ignore that completely. This is the cross. There never was another cross. When a little child is born, at that moment of birth he is crucified. That is the Lord who became man. Why? That man may become God. And so that was the actual seed of God, that which is imperishable, but it has to fall into this ground, this cross, and die before it is made alive. And when it’s made alive, it bears much fruit.1073 ¶25

Now, you can take what you heard tonight, profound as it is in a spiritual sense, and apply it to the most practical thing in this world, right here, because you’re only dealing with one cause. If you’re going to turn to another cause, you have two gods. There is only one God here. “O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” The minute you have a second god, you have a devil. You’re going to blame something outside of yourself for the things that happen in your world. And the minute you blame another, you give him the power to create confusion in your world. And there is no other. This whole thing is egocentric. The whole vast world is God pushed out. Well, do you see a world? Well, it’s God pushed out. Pushed out from where? From wherever you are — that’s where it is, wherever you are.1073 ¶26

So I say to you tonight, if you know what you would like to be, dare to assume that you are it. Don’t wait to become it. Sleep as though you were already the one that you want to be, and in that assumption, fall to sleep. And then have faith in that — that is faith in God. Have faith in no one on the outside. They’re only things bearing witness to you.1073 ¶27

For “in him was life, and the life was the light of men.” So men are made conscious and animated in your world because of the life in you. The day will come that life in you will make itself known. You will feel it, and you will arrest it, and all those who seem so alive and independent of your perception of them will stand still. You will arrest it and they’ll all stand still, as still as things in a museum, all the sculptures in a museum, all stand still — it’s all within you. You release it and they all become reanimated, and they continue to do what they intend to do. But you can change that intention when you still them. And when you release it, they will actually continue, but not to fulfill their former intention — the new intention. And they’ll believe that they initiated the new intention. Therefore, you are solely responsible for the things that happen in your life. The whole vast world stands upon God, and God is his own wonderful human imagination. That is what I’m trying to get over.1073 ¶28

And so I thank her for sharing with me this wonderful experience of hers, and to go back in time to the point where she tried to change a very dear one in her life and felt she had failed, and then turned to self to change, and changing self came a vision which frightened her. It disturbed her. Well, here she is, flat on her back on the ground and stretched out like a cross, and then chained to the ground. And then it would come without warning, and it never once came but it disturbed her. And then one day she thought, I would take a closer look, to find it was not only chained to the ground but locks on it. She was lost in it. And then she rose out of it, and as she rose, it sank down into the earth from whence it was taken. So I’ve told you, as Blake has told you, eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. All these things are part of the eternal structure of this world of earth. It’s part of it. You bring them out.1073 ¶29

My wife one night had a vision. It’s so scary, she would not allow it to go beyond the first few paces. Here were doors, but there were not doors, there were panels. She found herself in this wonderful grove. And here the panels became animated, and out of these panels came human forms. There were only panels, and here came the dance of life. And as they came out, they were beautiful. Each figure was so altogether lovely, and each began to dance. And she — this is the dance of life. And then suddenly it changed into the most dramatic, tragic dance. She was so scared that she woke herself. She was beginning to see the mystery. The word “panel” in scripture is the same word translated “rib,” and he took a rib from Adam and out of that he made woman. Well, the word “rib” means “paddle” — it comes out and takes on human form and seems independent of your perception of it, and comes this dramatic thing, and it scared her, and she woke, but recorded what she had seen.1073 ¶30

This whole vast world came out of you. The world is yourself pushed out, because you are the God of scripture. You are the Lord God Jehovah, personified for us in the New Testament as Jesus. The word Jesus is Yeshua, the same root as Jehovah — Yeshua. It means Jehovah, which is translated “the Lord is salvation,” and he is in you. So because he is in you, find out who he is and trust him implicitly, and give all your trust to him.1073 ¶31

So what do you want? He is capable of doing anything in this world. What do you want? Name it. And then, as you name it, assume that you are it. Sleep in that assumption as though it were true. Wake in that assumption tomorrow, though it’s denied you by your senses, as though it’s true, and prepare to receive it in your world. And may I tell you, no power in the world can stop it, because there is no other power but God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination. Now let us go into the silence.1073 ¶32

In the 119th Psalm: “This is my comfort in my affliction, because thy word hath quickened me.” He said, “I will keep thy word.” “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes.” In the Book of Job, the 36th chapter: “by the bread of adversity” — to what end is he doing this? But let us say this description of the entire Bible — it’s all there, but it is not all put together; they are not altogether conclusive, or immediately evident. And the book begins in this manner: in the beginning there, and when it came, in a coffin — in Egypt. In the beginning that, in a coffin in Egypt — the story is all about God. The president of the world is God. I am living on, we are starting now as I live with you, and the whole thing is done by God to himself.1065 ¶1

I was pronounced before I came down into this world of death. Real divisions that might aid the understanding of this mystery — she’s not here tonight, grandparently — I was innocent of the spirit; as infinite spirit, there was nothing but myself. And I desired to go out into the world, although similarly there was no other place, no good yet, I desired to go out into the world, but I knew I had to have form, to be seen, to communicate. And I made for myself a box — a long, elongated box — of wood. And then, suddenly, there was absolute darkness. You can’t conceive of the blackness and the restriction, a complete restriction, as though you could not concentrate, or bring yourself to a greater point of restriction than that moment, as I found myself in the north, and that was the cause of the blackness and the restriction and the contraction. The problem could see a critical career to do, and then came that moment in time when I desired to leave it, its end, as experience, what it is to see and to think and to hear in this world of death. And then I found myself looking down, and what I sought to be — murdered? I thought a body was on it, but I couldn’t quite see it because of the crowd around the body. I’m at the sides of this, where people, looking on, bending over, and then one says, “he is dead.” And I thought, why, that’s impossible — they cannot die who has never lived. Only while I occupied it, only while I was in it, it seemed to me — but it cannot stop. The body is a box, and the box has never been alive; only as I occupied it, only as I inhabited that box, did it become seemingly alive. And the shock was so great that I awoke, with the marvelous reasons — we are very reverent now.1065 ¶2

The word translated “ark” in Hebrew also means “word,” and it means also a coffin. So, “in the beginning God,” “in a coffin,” “in Egypt,” “the first and the last, the beginning and the end” — so God actually became that for a purpose beyond the wildest dreams. As the rock in which he brought, he now resides. He reached the limit of contraction by becoming man, whether you may expect beyond the wildest dreams, as himself, prior to the contraction, a vaster constant expansion of the one being that is done, and you are that being. We are the One, we are the God that came down and assumed the limitation of man. And it is an affliction on himself, and then the voice, empty, so we’re not — “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” “Only believe that I have power to raise from the dead.” By further leaps in power, in universal humanity — but buried, humbled, vulnerable — is God. His name is I AM, forever and forever.1065 ¶3

But how will I know? That I will await. Let us trace the entire return to himself. You prepare the way for himself to return, and that way is described in Scripture. It is spelled beautifully in the Old Testament, but again it’s an adumbration — it’s a rough sketch. The New Testament explains it, but man sees it, he mistakes it, he thinks it’s secular history, and it’s not secular history. The house is divided. You take the story of Jesus Christ — it’s not something taking place here on earth. It didn’t take place there. It took place within man, in an entirely different sense.1065 ¶4

Now let us go back — all right — the story of Job is the story of every man in the world. If you are familiar with the story: he was innocent, he did nothing that really should have called the horrors that descended upon Job — ridiculous. But in the last chapter, Jehovah is made to say: “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee.” And then God not only forgave him — he did nothing wrong — that God multiplied his gifts on earth, and all of his brothers and his sisters and all of those who knew him fell came to sympathize with him and ate bread in his house, for all the evil that God had dropped upon him. These are the words of the 42nd chapter of Job. Now the word Job means “where is my father.” Where is the source of the phenomena of life — there is a source of it all. That’s the problem, that’s the search of every person in the world. You may not know it, but he’s looking for God, the source of life. That’s Job. In the end, he sees it.1065 ¶5

Who does he see? There’s only one — you don’t know the father; you’re not in eternity. I could stand here from now to the ends of time and I could not persuade you to the point of conviction until you have the experience. In the old — as scripture puts it — thou art a father, and he singles out one person, because that one is his son. If that one is inside, and that one stands before you at the end of your journey, and then memory returns, for he is only God returning in memory. For we are the God — and it’s in the beginning there was a horror, that is, and the pride of it implies a consciousness somewhere, and there’s that son standing before you, and then suddenly memory returns, and you know he is your son, and he knows you are his father, in the fulfillment of scripture. Then, and only then, do you know who you are. I could tell you from now to the end of time that you are God — you are not going to believe me, because if I am God, why can’t I do this, that, and the other? You do not know the purpose behind the affliction, the contraction that you imposed upon yourself. You did nothing that was wrong to bring about this contraction; it was deliberate, on our own — we agreed in concert to dream the dream of life and become God, come down into the world of death, and experience death, for we could not — in the world of light, and infinite power, we constructed ourselves to experience death, and so we did.1065 ¶6

Humanity, as we see it, is part of the eternal structure of the universe. It is not a thought of destruction; we actually came down into that part of the structure called man, and entered man, and man is dead. And we turned death into sleep, and dream the dream of life. Infinite mercy turns death into sleep, and then, in due course, to work and to be. And here we are, multiplying the form that is man. But you are not the form that you are wearing — do not be disturbed. You are God. Everyone in the world is the immortal God, but this experience is essential for an expansion, and there is no limit to expansion; there is a limit only to contraction. So we took the limit of contraction upon ourselves and became man.1065 ¶7

So, here is the vision first: she saw that ark, an elongated breath. Now let us take the word “temple” in scripture. First of all, the word — or the word, as you saw, this long, elongated thing — falls apart, which is a copy, as early as the Hebrew word for heaven; and where comes the word for “repent” is the word “temple” or “tabernacle” — it also means a grave. So when I read in scripture, “know ye not that ye are the temple of the living God, and the spirit of God dwelleth in you,” I could say, do you not realize you are the grave of God, and the spirit of God dwells in you — the grave. And one day he will awaken in the grave, and one day he will resurrect from that grave, and he will come. I will be sent to you, that he has impounded upon himself, for the word is “grave.” The temple of God is man, as we are told in Paul’s statement to the Corinthians, his third chapter, 16th verse of First Corinthians: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the spirit of God dwelleth in you?” And the spirit of God and the name of God are one, and his name is I AM. Shall you put “I am” aside from yourself? You can’t. Stand the thought, and observe: “I am,” therefore you cannot see that; you cannot see God, as you do all this in space, for you are the reality.1065 ¶8

Hold up — but you can know God when his son stands before you, and you know that you’re looking into the eyes, into the face of your son, and that son is David, our biblical — then you will know the word: “art thou from David?” — “He shall cry unto me, thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” Then you know these words, and the words are put into the mouth of David: “And the Lord said unto me, thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee.” So here you have seen the relationship of Father and Son, and only as this is actually experienced by the individual do you really know who he is. Until then, these are false gods — he’s represented as outside of self, and there is no one outside of self to whom you should turn. As Blake said — why, he’s saying, “We here, trembling around, calling on God for help, are not ourselves in whom God will dwell” — enough, as our own wonderful human imagination, that is — they will say there is no God, that God, of human imagination, is all delusion. But, “I know, O Lord, I know the events that arise before my weary eyes, even in this brother, in this strange, mortal form, although I behold thee not, nor can I see how I can be whole.” That reality that I am, as an object other than what I am, I can be wholehearted. From the mouth that I am the reality of being, holding on to how can I behold it, and how do I know who I am? I remain who I am only when my son — I suffered from amnesia when I came down into this world of death, as you are suffering from amnesia totally, and you have forgotten your divine being. You are God. There is nothing in the universe but God; there’s no room for anything but that.1065 ¶9

In 1926, in Larchmont, New York City, I retired early because I was a guest, as a manager — in the club, a private club. It was a Saturday night. In those days there was Prohibition, there was no alcohol, but you would always get it. People did — and this was all given over to the children, that is, the kids, say, 1920 and so on, and they had this wild diet. The manager of the club, I was his guest — he said he didn’t think it would be quite the thing for me, as his guest, to mingle among the members, but I accepted that we would speak, and so I went that day. In 1926 I was only 21 years of age, and I was a professional dancer. I would have loved to have gone on that dance floor and spent the entire evening dancing, but no — the protocol would not allow it.1065 ¶10

Now, let’s see what I read, if I ever did — I took a book, it was a book on the life of Buddha. I turned on the little night-lamp on the base, and I found, to read the book — at what hour I fell asleep, I could not tell, but I must have gone out quickly into a deep, deep trance. When I woke in the morning, and that music had been going on all through the night, until about three in the morning, so I would say, I didn’t hear anything. But when I woke in the morning, the book was on my chest — I hadn’t turned in the interval, and the light was still on, and the sun was up, and it was nine in the morning. I had fallen into a deep, deep trance, and in that trance I was infinite light. There was no universe beyond, no stars, nothing — I was in space, there was no circumference. I was the light of the world, and by will I do not need the world measured by the sun and the planets around it — I mean infinite, healthy, living, liquid life. And when I awoke, and here was this thing on my chest, and I returned to the contraction of the little body called Neville.1065 ¶11

So I know, when he teaches, “I am the light of the world,” it is a true revelation. I also know what he teaches, that God is infinite love, that God is love — that is the true revelation. And in spite of all the afflictions that you and I suffer, and others who suffer and continue to suffer, there is a love behind it all.1065 ¶12

Now listen to these words: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his master is doing, but I have told you everything that I have known from my father.” Now you go to the point where these words are put into the mouth of the one who just made that statement, and he said, “Unless I die, thou canst not live, but if I die, I shall arise again and abide with thee.” The one who never dies today will ever die, for the one who never dies — and if God died not for man, and gave not himself eternally for man, man could not exist. So God died. He died — he actually gave up the being that is, emptied himself, and took upon himself the form of man, the form of that box, and angels that rock — but his name is “I am.” But he doesn’t stop there; in the end, he calls it by a name, and he says, “I am Jim, I am Neville, I am God, I am Aina, I am this” — and so we go beyond his real name, which is I AM. We put a little tag on it. I will become so identified with the little mess that we are wearing, we don’t realize who we are. And in that eating of that fruit, we are suffering from total amnesia. And one day, in the fullness of time, we will awake, as he has plotted the entire thing before he started, yet prepared the way for his sons to return.1065 ¶13

For the father is made up of the son — the word Adam is a plural word, which means God is a plural thing, but put together it is the Lord. It is — but it’s all the name; the word, everyone in the world, puts us all together, and therefore, the one God, the one — so he’s prepared the way for all of his sons to return, but this time, when they return, they are not the son — there’s a complete transformation of the son into the father, and they are new. What is the new adventure? I do not know, I’ve never run that far beyond it. When this comes to a name, and the person comes down upon it, and we all — we are no longer sons of the father, we are the father. That is the goal of sending all of your sons to make himself into the world of death, and then we come out, and we are God the father, because we are the father of the Lord, only begotten son. And humanity was unconcerned — the forms remain the eternal structure of the universe.1065 ¶14

You are not the master over — you are God, to whom God has afflicted, for secret aid he comes, and he heals, and he falls into him. “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep thy word, and this is my comfort in my affliction, that thy promise gives me life.”1065 ¶15

Well, the fundamental promise in scripture is the promise made to Abraham: “I will give you a son” — it doesn’t say it is God’s son, it implies it is his son. The name is Isaac, meaning laughter — that infant is presented to you, you break into this heavenly smile, our most unusual heavenly smile, as you hold him in your arm, that infant child. And then the next one is the son, and he is the union, and he’s David. So the fundamental problem is the promise made to Abraham, and that was the promise of the son.1065 ¶16

Now, you and I — if you knew how old you are, you would say it’s impossible; the body you wear may still be typical of a tiring or a budding child, but you are not the body that you’re wearing, you are eternal. If you knew your age — and you can’t measure your age, because you had no beginning — and if you could actually know how long you’ve been on the journey, how is it possible to be so old and to have a child? But the child is part of the play, part of the drama, as we call it in scripture. And everything inside of Jesus Christ, you are going to experience in the first person, present experience, and you will know who Jesus Christ is, because everything is going to happen to you, and you will relive the entire story, and then you’ll know who Jesus is. You need not tell it to the world, you need not — you could tell it, but the written form is an attempt to tell it, you’ll get the same response with your prime description: “he came unto his own, and his own received him not.” When he came to his own, this is where the man is married, he has a demon, and he’s mad. Anyone who will tell you what I’ve told you this evening, before a larger crowd, where they’re not geared to this way of thinking, they’re thinking it is entirely mad, to tell you the view, in this century, born in the 20th century, that you are actually the father of God’s only begotten son. And that son is not flesh and blood — but if you read the story, he came in spirit, when he called him “my Lord.” And we say to him, how can I be his son when he is inspirited thought, my Lord, not in the flesh? This is not — it does not take place in the flesh, though you walk the world in a garment of flesh — it takes place in you, but in a region completely remote from this world.1065 ¶17

But I tell you, this very moment you are not all together, sitting in the place where you seem to be, before my eyes — you are infinite. But how do we describe it, how do we tell you this? At this very moment, why you seem to be all put together and collected in thought, and listening to me express — do not fall here, it doesn’t make sense — and I tell you that you are not, you are going to be.1065 ¶18

But I do believe those who come here are not far from that moment in time when the drama completely erupts within, and there they’ll prove that everything I tell you is true, everything that I’ve told — I am not speculating, I’m telling you what I have experienced, and the story of scripture is a true story.1065 ¶19

The Hebrew-Christian faith is the fundamental thing, and all the other little isms that will lead you astray, forget them — this is the fundamental faith. The Old Testament is the seed plot, it is the tree, and we have actually experienced it — we are the fruit of that faith. I could be the tree and not bear the fruit, but I can’t actually bear the fruit and not acknowledge the tree of which I came. And in studying scripture, I find the whole thing — in the Old Testament and the New — is one pattern. Now, every verse is equal in value, not to every chapter, not every book — there is a pattern all through those thirty-nine books, and the pattern unfolds itself in the story of Jesus Christ, as it unfolds itself in the Gospels. If you want to find the word — the Book of Hebrews refers to the Hebrews, so the Old Testament, in every chapter, is probably closely — all the things that occur are related to the pattern man, which we will take up next week, when we come to that title, “The Pattern Man.”1065 ¶20

When you see someone afflicted, don’t think, as the world would say, “he has done this, he’s done that.” Look into the world, and see so many perfectly wealthy people living a wonderful life, a comfortable life, and, you know, many of them, how they got their money — and their faculties, everything is wrong. So don’t judge the one who is afflicted; bear in mind the words I quoted tonight: “and this is my comfort in my affliction, that thy promise gives me life; before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep thy word.” It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might learn — I accept it. And then he delivers the afflicted by their affliction, and openeth their ear by adversity.1065 ¶21

So when we read, “he was afflicted for me, to support yourself,” in the book, it is all about me, as you are telling it for yourself. “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” And it said, “thou hast drawn me out of the earth” — dropped by adversity, for the one speaking is David, and David is the one who is speaking through the 22nd Psalm, the great Christological psalm. And you read it — the address — but in the end, the words are, see what God has lost, when he looked at what he has done, and promised himself he would do — for his adversaries, he’s saying, into nothing, “I’m wondering, you will awaken from this.”1065 ¶22

All right, I’m not saying that it’s not a difficult time, but this is the hope: if you’re told in scripture that it is worth enduring — very, to the very end — because at the end, something comes out which was before the world — what comes out in you making you God the Father. We’re all brothers, and then he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, and then comes the play, to prove his promise to us is true — he is going to give himself to us. But God promised the man is to give himself to that; and in the end, if God is the father of David, as scripture teaches, and David says, before you, I think, “without giving me,” before he calls you father, you know he’s your son — then you know that God kept his promise; in fact, he gave himself.1065 ¶23

I can tell you tonight, David is your son. I do not care how many children you have in this world, they are not — they’re all brothers, they will be male or female, that’s your brother, and each will be the father of David — so what now is your child will be your brother, and because you are God the Father, one day you will be — one day one will be — God. So in the end there is only one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one thought unfoldable — there’s no room for another.1065 ¶24

So we were chosen in the beginning, before the foundation of the world, to play this part and to be afflicted, but in the end it was seen only as a short sleep. No matter how long it seems to be, now, while we’re in it, when we awake it is though we slept but a short while, in the dream of life. When we awake to eternity, and then leave the world, the world of death is part of the eternal structure of the universe.1065 ¶25

And where was the body? But he was looked at by the crowd, looking at it from three sides, and then came a voice, “she’s dead,” and she replied to herself around, “but that’s impossible, they cannot die who has never lived.” It only seemed to be alive because I was in it — you are making this thing alive. So let it turn to dust into the real one day, but in the end you are the immortal one. That is what I’m talking about now; it does not happen before that moment in time when you decree death again — you will be instantly restored to a body, young, not a babe, young, twenty years old, just like this, nothing missing, perfect eyes, perfect teeth, perfect everything, in a world; the rest is just like this, to continue the journey until what I have shown you takes place.1065 ¶26

The end does not come to pass until what I’ve dealt with — only in the end, when you are born from above, when you ask, hold the child in your own arm, when you see David, when you are split, or you are the temple, and that grave is split into that grave from top to bottom, and you go up into the heavenly sphere within your own tower, and God is within you. As he felt it in the 17th chapter of Luke, the kingdom of God is within.1065 ¶27

The people are looking for it somewhere in space, saying there’s some central star beyond any sun known to man, the Pleiades, some physical, outside, the inspired word brought his spirit — then like God is done, and you’re still looking, boy, in some space, on the outside — you will never know it. Be yourself, until his son stands before you and calls you father.1065 ¶28

Well, I can tell you, and I will tell you, to encourage you night after night, but I can’t swim you into that partial conviction until the experience is your own.1065 ¶29

Right — the man begins to tell anyone how wonderful the Bible is until he has experienced the scripture, and he has nothing to do with what our evangelists are talking about, to see some little tiny Jesus walking around, coming out of a place restricted ahead, and doing all this stuff. Jesus Christ is within you, and when he comes, he comes from within, and when he comes from within, he comes as you, not to you, but as — and David called him my father, so David will call you my father, then you’ll know who Jesus is.1065 ¶30

Now we speak of him as Jesus Christ — that is not a true picture, that you should hope. In the 11th chapter of Revelation, we speak of the Lord, and of Jesus Christ, not “Jesus Christ” — Jesus is the Lord. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, because Jesus is your own wonderful I AM. That’s the name of Jehovah, and Jesus and Jehovah have the same root, beyond a rough translation of the Hebrew, it’s — which is I AM. Now we speak, in the 11th chapter of Revelation, of the Lord and of his Christ. What does it say? “And the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ” — Christ is the authority, for whom did the Lord anoint? David. Read the 16th chapter of First Samuel — to rise and anoint this, he is; and then he said, “thou art my son, today have I begotten thee,” but where he is the Christ, and the Lord is he, and so David in scripture calls him my Lord.1065 ¶31

Here, rather, make your enemy your question — I know when it happened to me. I can hardly believe this — spirit, I was so stunned, I was so old. I got off that day, and I told it as vivid as I could, and as clearly as I could, and yet my mind was thrown apart, because I had never been told that — I had not yet arrived at that moment in time when I could actually see the parallel in scripture.1065 ¶32

Well, I tell you, if you are afflicted, or those you know are afflicted, don’t blame them, don’t judge — secret aid to come, and he heals, and he calls himself still. Make every effort — to children, make every effort to relieve them, you’re called upon to exercise that challenge. If you are a doctor, any aspect of that profession, doctors, drink this — I don’t care what aspect of it — they all help, they relieve pain and make the body more comfortable. All right, exercise that call and seek the comfort that they offer, seek the help they offer. But don’t condemn the one who is afflicted, let anyone tell you it serves him right, or say it’s right because it is this, that, and the other — they do not know scripture.1065 ¶33

So in the end, these words: “of foolish men, and slow of heart to understand — was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things, and then enter into his glory?” And then, beginning with Moses and the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. And then he turned, and actually opened the scriptures to their understanding, beginning with Moses and the law and the prophets, and then their hearts and their minds were opened, and he vanished from their sight. This all took place in a heavenly sphere, not here on earth. We are re-enacting it here while we walk in these garments of flesh.1065 ¶34

Man’s darkest hour — for that hour when God the Father addressed us, even though we never realized it, he addressed that, and tells us his plan. And then God died — he disappeared, he became invisible, he entered these bodies and became invisible to us, because he takes on this vesture of flesh, and now we could not see him as a father — explained to ourselves, because he is enough, and he’s not even there, for nearness he’s inside. Well, in limitation, he became me — that’s why I can’t see him, unless I see him, it is done. And when I see his son, then I know who I am. Man’s darkest night was when God became invisible, and that was God becoming man — that’s terrible — but at daybreak, man becomes God.1065 ¶35

Let us move on to Andrew. We ask the question, “Where are you staying?” So that question was asked by Andrew, and the answer was given by Jesus, and He said, “Come and see.” As we told you last Monday, these characters of Scripture are states of consciousness that you and I have personified as persons, and we have mistaken the persons — for there is a state for the person. Tonight I will play the part of Andrew and show you what Andrew means in Scripture, and who is always playing the same part. All the characters play the same part over and over again, and who is always leading others to Christ, forever and forever, that character is always leading others to Christ. So when he asked the question “Where are you staying?” and Jesus replied “Come and see,” he first found his brother Peter, and then he brought Peter to Jesus. They claimed there were five thousand to be fed and there was no food. And who found the lad with the five barley loaves and the two fish? And he brought him to Jesus. When the Greeks wanted to see Jesus, they went first to Philip, but Philip thought that was the job of Andrew, and Philip went to Andrew, and Andrew then took the Greeks to Jesus. So he is always taking others to Jesus, the true Jesus.1063 ¶1

Tonight I play the part of Andrew, bringing you to the true Jesus. If, when you hear the word Jesus, or Jesus Christ, or the word God, or the word Lord, if in any way whatsoever it conveys to you the sense of something existing outside of you, you have the wrong concept of God, of Jesus, of Jesus Christ, of the Lord. I don’t care what the world will tell you — if in any way it wants you up, when you hear the word it conveys the sense of something that is really existent outside of yourself, you have the wrong concept of Jesus Christ. So I’ll bring you now to the true Jesus Christ. Through Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made. Now we speak of God. He said, “With God all things are possible.” Now we identify God with man. All things are possible to him who believes. I now tell you that God is man and exists in us, and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the human imagination; that is God Himself. Do I not say that you’re going to accept it? I am bringing you to the true God, to the true Lord Jesus Christ.1063 ¶2

Now I ask you to examine yourself, to see whether you have this God. “Choose this day whom you will serve,” and the prophet answers — Joshua answered, “We choose the Lord,” and then the people said, “We choose the Lord.” He said, “You are now witnesses against your own selves.” Now keep on examining yourselves to see whether you’re holding to the faith you say — you choose the Lord. I’m telling you who the Lord is. The Lord is your own wonderful human imagination; that is God, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. If you really accept Him, then all things should be possible to you, because with God all things are possible, providing you really, truly serve the one Lord.1063 ¶3

If the name conveys in any way something externally called Jesus Christ, you do not have the true Jesus Christ. This is what Andrew is saying, that he brings everyone to the Lord Jesus Christ. It doesn’t mean they’re going to accept Him, for we are told most of them left, never to walk with Him again, and He turned to the few who remained, and He said, “Wouldst thou go also?” And Peter answered, “To whom would we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Who will we go to if you really have the words of eternal life? Then where would we go? It’s difficult to accept what you tell us — it’s difficult.1063 ¶4

Now this is not another being speaking; it’s all within you. I bring you to your own imagination. You can imagine anything in the world, and all things are possible to Christ, and Christ is your imagination. Do you mean that is really true? I tell you, if you really accept it as true and do not waver in your assumption — I dare to assume that I am the man that I want to be. Demand it at the moment of my assumption; reason denies it, my senses deny it — if I persist in that assumption, it will harden into fact, both tested and seen.1063 ¶5

We are told, examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to the faith. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test? If He is in you, then where is He? If through Him all things are made, would you not agree with me that there isn’t one thing made in this world that was not first imagined? The flowers you’re wearing had to be imagined before it became the thing you call now a dress, or the soup, the chair on which you’re seated, the house, the outhouse — everything was once only imagined. Now we call it a reality, but it began as an imaginal act. I’m bringing you to the only true Jesus, that is the Lord.1063 ¶6

Now you don’t have to accept it, and the Scripture tells us that the majority refused to accept it. Today there are one billion people who call themselves Christians, and when they hear the word Jesus Christ, they think of something outside of themselves, and to that being they turn, and they worship that being — some little thing on the wall, a picture, maybe some little statue. They do all kinds of things to something outside themselves, and I am telling you, if at any time you hear the word and it conveys the sense of something external to your own being, you have the wrong Jesus, you have the wrong Lord.1063 ¶7

Tonight I hope I can bring you to the true Lord, and that Lord is your own wonderful human imagination. 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. The divine body, Jesus, that is the divine Lord, buried in this cross called the human form. He is crucified on this; he will rise in this. Not coming from without — he rises within, and the whole being begins to awaken. And may I tell you, it’s a slow awakening process. When he actually awakens within you, you awaken. It’s not another; you are actually awakening from a profound sleep. You have no idea how sound a sleep it is. It is out of the grave that man truly rises, and the grave is his own wonderful skull — that’s where God is buried. So here I bring you tonight and introduce you to yourself, and that self is Jesus Christ.1063 ¶8

Now try it tonight, try it, and see if it will not prove itself in performance in the not-distant future. There is no limit attached to it. Now let me give you one most encouraging thought from John’s first letter. We know that whatever we ask — no matter what it is, whatever we ask of Him, it will be accomplished — but who is the one of whom I ask? We know that no matter what it is in this world that we ask of Him, it will be accomplished. You want it — the fifth chapter, the fifteenth verse, of John’s first letter, “We know it.” Do you really — but how do I ask?1063 ¶9

Well, I ask of Him, or He is my imagination. I bring before my mind’s eye a scene which would imply that I am the one that I want to be, or that my friend or others are as I would like them to be. I try to confine it within the framework of the golden rule — there is doing unto others what I would love them to do unto me, and not to go outside of that rule. It’s an easy thing to practice: what I like — the good that I ask of them, yes, like it for myself, or I don’t ask it for them. Bring them before your mind’s eye and dare to assume that what you are seeing in your mind’s eye is true.1063 ¶10

Now there is a definite technique to it, a simple, simple technique, if I can share with you what I do, and it works. I bring them into my mind’s eye and I work myself up into an emotional state. It’s like a peculiar rhythm — I breathe in and breathe out, and breathe in and breathe out, and suddenly I reach a certain point, and then one deep inhalation, as though I am setting it up in a time exposure before my own mind. I set it up, and all of a sudden I have a deep, deep inhalation, and every pore of my being explodes, and then I do nothing beyond that. It’s taking that scene and setting it up in a time exposure before the eternal event, and then I explode it, and then life develops it, and life develops it, and then I get the call, or I get the wire, or I get a letter confirming that which I did, and I do nothing to make it so.1063 ¶11

I simply believe implicitly in Jesus Christ, but I have found Him — I have Him as my own wonderful human imagination. I believe that all things are possible to Him — He has reasons that the mortal mind knows not of. So I do not care if I do not see clearly how it could possibly be; it makes no difference to me. I simply bring it to my mind’s eye what I want to see, see it clearly, explode it, and then let it be. Now it could be tomorrow, it could be a month, it could be even years — I am not concerned. I have done it, and that’s all that matters as far as I am concerned.1063 ¶12

Everything has its own appointed hour. “See the vision that was my vision — vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens as a little flower; if it be long, wait, it is sure, and it will not be late.” A little chicken, twenty-one days; a man, nine months; a horse, twelve months; a little lamb, five months. And there is a time interval between that impregnation and the actual embodiment of that state, and I do not know the time intervals. I only know that all I do, I do it — unless that time interval is a day, well, it’s a day; if it’s going to be a month, let it be a month. I do not know the time intervals between my vision of you — be the one that you want to be, and you’ll be coming there — which I have assumed that you are. I do not know the time interval, but there are time intervals between the impregnation and the birth of that impregnation. But I tell you, it works.1063 ¶13

As it says in the thirteenth chapter of Second Corinthians, examine yourself to see whether you are holding to the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test? Now when you test yourself and put it to performance, you will have found Him — you’ll have found Him, that which you formerly worshipped as someone from without. You find Him not only within — you find Him — you can’t even say He is within. Scripture puts it that He said “within,” but I can’t even use the word “within,” because “within” in some strange way implies separation. I can’t even say that Jesus Christ is close to me, because that would imply nearness, and nearness implies separation. It is not enough — He is my very being.1063 ¶14

But I say, I AM, that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I say I AM — I can’t say I AM and point elsewhere. That is the core of my being, and that is the name of God, forever and forever and forever. So I cannot say I AM and in any way have the feeling of nearness, for nearness implies separation, and He isn’t near me — He is my very being. He actually became as I am, that I may be as He is, and He is God Himself.1063 ¶15

So I say to everyone here, I bring you this night and introduce you to Jesus Christ. I cannot point outside of you if I introduce you to Jesus Christ. So I will find a Peter in the room, and I’ll bring Peter and introduce Peter to Jesus. I will find Thomas, our doubting Thomas, and I’ll bring him and introduce him to Jesus. I bring everyone and introduce them to Jesus. Not everyone is going to accept it. The majority will simply turn their backs upon Him and ignore Him and go their way, thinking now they must have an external something to whom they pray. Well, if you must have it, have it — I can only tell you this night I play the part of Andrew, and who is the first one who heard the words “Behold the Lamb of God” — Andrew heard, “Behold the Lamb of God,” to see — in Greek it is the same as to know — and so he saw the Lamb of God, he knew the Lamb of God, I thought. Now you know what I am talking about, but I hope you know the being that I’ve talked about, and that being is your own wonderful human imagination.1063 ¶16

So if you see me, you see Him who sent me; if you know me, you know Him who sent me, for He and I are one. “I and my Father are one. I and my Father are one, although my Father is greater than I.” He is not greater in this act, to my eyes, to my essential being — He is greater only as to the office that I have expressed, as the one that is sent, for I have sent myself. The Father contains Himself — there’s no one else, and He is only God in the world. So in the office of the sent, I seem inferior to myself, the sender — but I am not inferior in my essential being; only as to the office of the sent. And so I wear the cross of flesh, but while I wear the cross of flesh, I must know who I really am, and I am the one who sent me, and I redeem — all things are possible — and who is He? He is my own wonderful human imagination.1063 ¶17

So I do not need to ask anyone or turn to anyone. Not that I am saying to you, turn to me — if you have confidence that you can use it alone, then good; but if you are not yet aware of it, or feel that you cannot quite master it, I invite you to turn to me. It costs you nothing. I charge not one nickel for it — to me it’s a simple technique, a simple process, and I look upon it just as this: if this hand is itching, and the back of the hand — this hand is easier for me to use to scratch it and relieve the itch than to take this one and try to reach it with my fingers. I could reach it, I could get it with this one too — it’s the same body. So I call upon myself.1063 ¶18

If you cannot reach yourself, you would want to alleviate the itch — it’s maybe for money, it’s maybe for recognition, they do it for something — well then, ask the one in whom we have confidence, if you have confidence in the speaker, ask me. I tell you, I don’t charge — I do not charge one penny, neither do I accept any money. I don’t use — simply, if you feel like it, ask me, and I will, to the best of my ability, simply appropriate within myself that things are as you decide them to be, providing it comes within the code of what I call my ethical code — that it is not at the expense of another aspect of my being.1063 ¶19

Don’t ask me to hurt anyone in this world, because I could not, I would not, ask anyone to be hurt. But if you want recognition in this world, you want money in this world, you want comfort in this world, I see nothing wrong in that, because these are things I would want for myself, so I put them within the frame of the Golden Rule and ask for them. It’s a simple, simple technique.1063 ¶20

So here — “Where are you staying?” “Come and see.” But let me go first and get my brother, and I go, I get my brother, and my brother is Peter, and I bring Peter to Jesus, and then we go and we stay all day with Him, because it was the tenth hour. Now the new translation has it “four o’clock in the afternoon” — 4:00 p.m. has nothing to do with any 4:00 p.m.; when the Evangelist wrote “ten hours,” it was the tenth hour. He made it the tenth hour — every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value and a symbolic value, and that tenth letter is yod, the beginning of the name of Jehovah — God. Yod has a numerical value of ten; the symbolic value is a hand, the hand of the Creator. So we are not going to discuss how things are created — no, here it was the tenth hour, and there they stayed within that day because it was the tenth hour.1063 ¶21

So let us discuss how things are brought into being. Well, how are they brought into being? By your own wonderful and magical act, that out of nothing means, because your imagination alone — you’re imagining that is God in action. I do not observe imagining as I do objects in space, because I myself am the imagining — I can’t observe it. I can observe the effects of my imagining, but not actually the thing itself that is imagining. So I do not observe imagining; I observe only, as its external eyes, the activity of imagining, and then I know what I’ve been doing when I see things happening in my world.1063 ¶22

So I take you to meet Jesus, and I don’t take you outside of this room. I take you back into your own self, right into your own being, and you yourself are the Lord Jesus Christ, but He sleeps within you, His sound sleep, dreaming. And I know this from my own experience — I was told it so vividly one night when I fulfilled the forty-second Psalm.1063 ¶23

Here I am, walking — this enormous procession, this enormous crowd, and I’m leading them up to the house of God, and suddenly a voice rings out, and God walks with them, and then a woman at my side — she asked the voice, who showed no face, just the voice — and he said, “If God is at our side, where is He?” The voice answered, “At your side, God walked with them.” She turned to her left, looked into my face, and she became hysterical. She said, “What? Neville — Neville is done!” And the voice answered, “Yes, in the act of waking.”1063 ¶24

And then the voice spoke within me — no one else heard it — and here was a sea of humanity, and then the voice, from the very depths of my own being, is saying, “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed the dream I dreamed, and I know also that when he wakes, I...” — and so he divorced — “and to me, yes, in the act of waking” — he is God in the act of waking, and then that moment he was not awake, but he was in the process of waking.1063 ¶25

Well, that same God is in you. They aren’t a bunch of little gods running around — there’s only one God, His name is I AM, and He’s buried in you. God Himself entered death’s door, the human tomb, and laid down at the grave of man to share with man His visions of eternity until he awakes, and when he awakes, man will see that garment out of which He emerges, and it’s this garment, this garland, these are the tombs in which He sleeps. And so God is sleeping within every being in the world and dreaming the dream of life, and all that He dreams becomes experience, and then one day He awakes, and the story as told us in the gospel of love, the four Gospels, you will experience, and you will know who you are.1063 ¶26

So I introduced you to Jesus Christ, and you don’t have to go to any church, come here, go anyplace called holy — wherever you are, you could be standing at a bar, wherever you stand, that’s where He is. He is your own wonderful human imagination, that is Jesus Christ. Now this night, test — come, test me and see if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing so great you have no room on earth to receive it. Test me.1063 ¶27

Well now, I will take — I will name it — a lady wrote me today a series of lovely things that have happened to her family, first to herself, and her dear family, and their memory returned, and she figured, you know, it’s been four years now — “I didn’t have a nickel, and my family were so kind to me, I thought the world of them, and I know they were, and at that moment when I didn’t have anything, I thought, well, now I would love to give them something.” What did I give them? Save to give it in imagination, and so in my imagination I gave them each five hundred dollars — there was a lot of money because I had nothing — and now recently things have happened, in a series of events that I didn’t anticipate, and now I’m coming into that money, and I’m touching myself — each is going to receive from me a check for five hundred dollars. It’s not a fortune, but when you have nothing and you give five hundred dollars each, to three people, that’s fifteen hundred dollars, and you have nothing, and now four years later you can do it. And let it start — you start yourself to do it.1063 ¶28

We do not know how long it takes between the planting of the seed and the harvest. Unfortunately, most of us have a faulty memory, and we cannot relate the harvest to the planting, and we deny the harvest because it can’t be ours. “I have once did a thing like this” — no, you did it all in imagination — that’s how God creates, for God is your own wonderful human imagination, and whatever you imagine is good and comes to pass. As a man imagines, so shall he reap in this world.1063 ¶29

So here plainly we’re told, he took others and brought them to Jesus. He simply brought you, as I am bringing you tonight, introduced you to Him. But if you read the sixth chapter of the book of John, you wonder what small proportion will really accept Him — they all left Him but a handful. I’m bringing tonight, I’ve invited a handful to go — you, the voice said — “To whom would we go?” — you have the words of eternal life, so to whom will we go? It’s difficult to accept it, that full responsibility, but to me my own wonderful human imagination has gone, and I can’t turn to something else and pray to it. I can’t go to church and pray to something on the wall and go to a minister and pray and ask him to pray to God for me, that all would need mediation to take place — yes, but that’s difficult, and so only a few remain.1063 ¶30

And then they said, “We believe, and we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” It starts first with believing what I’ve told you — we’ve believed, and we have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. This is the natural, inevitable series — you start first with believing it, I tell you — accept it or don’t; if you accept it, that’s how you start. It begins with faith, a faith that fancies that this is a possibility, that it may be true. But you can’t just say it’s possible that it may be true — you’ve got to apply it, you’ve got to accept it, you do it, and then something more sure than faith takes place — a knowing, based upon your own knowledge, it’s your own experience, you have experienced it now. And something far, far greater than faith comes up out of your own experience — you know what Andrew tells you is true. He brought you to Jesus, and the Jesus was not on the outside — the whole drama is unfolding on the inside, and I find that my own wonderful human imagination is the Jesus of Scripture that formerly I thought lived two thousand years ago, and now I have found is all within me.1063 ¶31

I can go to bed and commune with myself, and then I know what it means in that wonderful fourth Psalm, “Be still and commune with your own heart upon your bed” — and your communion with God, so I will commune with you, and I will appropriate what I want in this world. I appropriate it all in consciousness, then I discover faith is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of my objective hope. What did I hope for in this world? Well, my subjective appropriation of the objective hope was my prayer — that is empathy, not sympathy, that’s empathy, for if I really want it, if I’m hoping for it, I will rejoice in what I am doing — I rejoice in my appropriation. I simply appropriate the state and fall asleep in that communion with self, and that’s God. You try it before you judge it — try it, and after having tried it, you’re going to test it, and you’re going to prove it, and then you will have found the Living Christ.1063 ¶32

Today, one billion who claim they believe in God, the Christian God, and yet you mention the word “God” and they think of something on the outside. You could take fifteen million Jews — they’ve believed in God, you mention the word Jehovah, or the Lord — I don’t know whatever would conjure their minds, a sense of this Supreme — if they feel it to be something external to themselves, they worship a false god. If you take the hundreds of millions of Mohammedans, and you use the word Muhammad, and they think of a being, a prophet who lived centuries ago, something external to themselves, they have a false prophet. If the Buddhists believe that Buddha was something that lived six hundred years B.C., that was something different, they have a false prophet. Any prophet outside of the being in you, any God outside living within you, is false. If there be any Christ other than He who was crucified upon you, and who is very real, and who rose and continues to rise within humanity — He is a false Christ, and false teachers teach Him as coming from without. Any time they’re waiting for Him to come from without, He is false — simple.1063 ¶33

I’ll show you the very last words of the book of Matthew, the very last words: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” How on earth can I return when I am with you always? They expect Him to return — how can He return? The very final words, as He’s departing from a visible state into an invisible state, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” and they tell me He is going to return, when He never departed. How can He return when He is never left me? “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” — how can He return? Can’t you see it — He dwells in us, He is through us; if He’s through us, He cannot possibly return.1063 ¶34

And the word “He” — not in me — I couldn’t read — He is my breath, and survives this very moment. God comes into this world and I’m thought physically — you don’t see me, I still am not away; if I know the being that I am, I am in you. I have awakened from this dream of life; there’s no place for me to go but to be one in Him, and I’m one of those who are watching, those in great eternity who contemplate on death, this world, and those who contemplate on death say, “This what seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most grateful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torment, despair, and eternal death, but divine mercy steps beyond and redeems men.”1063 ¶35

We are the body of Jesus; there’s only one body in the world, I tell you, from my own experience — you and I are one, there’s only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in all. Accept it, and you will accept the Jesus that I introduce you to tonight, if you want to test Him first — He invites you to test it. Don’t test the speaker, no — test Jesus, and Jesus is within you when you say “I AM,” that’s He, that is the Lord Jesus Christ.1063 ¶36

So when you go to bed tonight, put Him to the extreme test. Do you know what you were loved for, for yourself and for your loved ones in this world? Assume that you have it, and that assumption, though at the moment it is denied by your senses, denied by reason, if you persist in it because you believe in Him, it will harden into fact, and no power in the world can stop it — no power in the world can stop it. But I can’t tell you the interval of time between your assumption and its hardening into fact, but I promise you from experience, it will harden. In the interval, do it in love, and I tell you, whatever you are in doubt, do the loving thing, and you’ve done the right thing. If ever in doubt, ask a very simple question: “Would I like it done to me?” If you can answer in the affirmative, then do it, and you cannot go wrong if you use that as your guide.1063 ¶37

So, “Where do you live? Where are you staying?” “Come and see.” “But let me get my brother first, and let me bring my brother and introduce him to you,” and so throughout the story he’s always bringing others to Jesus, and that’s the story of Andrew. You can’t change that state — that state is forever. You can fill in this state tonight and take a friend, something that you know concerning Jesus Christ, and tell him — you are playing the part of Andrew — if you give him the Bible and interpret Scripture to him as you know it now, then you are actually taking him, and you are now Andrew.1063 ¶38

If you want to be filled with the joy, as this lady’s letter to me today, that she could be so praiseful for the little that was done to her by her children, that these three children she felt did so much for her, that she wants to show her appreciation — she did it — then she is playing the part of Asher. Asher is one of the most neglected characters in Scripture, for it means praise, it means thanksgiving. And so few people will stop to say thanks. Were they not ten cleansed of leprosy, and only one returned to say thank You — their work in who were instantly cured, and only one came back to say thank You — Asher. And so if you actually express joy, express thanksgiving for the slightest little thing done to you, you are actually exercising that talent that is known in Scripture as Asher. It’s personified as a disciple, or as the tenth one, and so neglected within us — so few people are grateful. First of all, they reflect upon what happened, and then they give all praise to the means employed rather than the actual cause of the phenomena.1063 ¶39

For here tonight we are simply presenting Andrew. So I brought you tonight to meet Jesus. I do not point to any being outside of you, do not look for Him in any face, do not look for Him in any place in the world. My point would be to introduce you to the Lord Jesus Christ, and He is your own wonderful human imagination. Man is God and exists in us, and we in Him. The eternal body of man is the imagination, and that is God Himself.1063 ¶40

Now, before we go into the silence, let me once more try to explain this simple, simple technique. You will have to practice it and use your own rhythm. You don’t have to be in church to do it. You can be sitting here tonight, you can be at home listening to nice music, you can be simply relaxing with a drink — it doesn’t matter what you’re doing and where you are. But you want to get into a lovely, quiet, relaxed frame — no so-called holy attitude, forget that. You are holy when you’re in doubt — God is love. So you would love it for someone else — that is all that you need. How wouldn’t it be wonderful if she actually had it, if he had it, if they had it?1063 ¶41

Also, you know exactly what you want, and then you imagine you’re seeing them — you can see them in your mind’s eye and see them vividly, and then work yourself into a rhythm, they’re telling you that they have it, and you’re getting yourself worked up emotionally because they’re telling you that they have exactly what you know they would want in this world, and then you reach a certain point and you explode — something actually goes out of you, its power, and you’ll read the words, “Who touched me? For I perceive virtue has gone out of me” — at that moment she was healed. “Who touched me?” And they say, “What, with the crowd — how could you tell who touched you? It was an enormous crowd.” You know you did it yourself. You work yourself up into a certain emotional state, and then suddenly explode, and you feel everything go out, and you cannot repeat it — there’s no desire to repeat it.1063 ¶42

It was an actual psychic-sexual act, but there’s no physical act — there is no evidence of any physical act, but it’s the same thrill that you would derive from a physical act. Work yourself right up into that state and then let it go, and do not raise one finger to make it so, any more than you would after impregnation — what could you do after pregnancy is taking place? Nothing — leave it alone, and let it take place in its own good time. Now that is going into the silence.1063 ¶43

The Bible is a revelation of eternal truth. This eternal truth is called in Scripture Jesus Christ. It is written without regard for secular history. It’s all about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ defines himself as the truth. He said, “I am the truth,” and that is our subject tonight. It’s all about Jesus Christ. But I’m speaking of the power of God, or Jesus Christ, as he is described in Scripture — the creative power of God and the wisdom of God. We are told that Jesus Christ is in you. Do you not realize that Christ is in you, unless of course you fail to meet the test. So I’m speaking of a creative power buried in man, the only creative power in the world. So I completely forget secular history when you read Scripture — it’s all about a power that is in you. Now he defines himself as the truth, that “I am the truth.”1062 ¶1

But God’s truth is not so much contrasted with falsehood as it is with fickleness. “Whom will you serve?” Then we are told, he replied, “I choose to serve the Lord.” Then he asked the crowd, and they said, “We will serve the Lord.” Then he said, “You are witnesses to yourselves.”1062 ¶2

And so we are witnesses to ourselves whether we are truly serving the Lord, which is the truth. Now, who is he? I tell you, he is your own wonderful human imagination. That is the Christ Jesus of Scripture. That is God. That is the Lord.1062 ¶3

Now, I would try to explain it, and you may say, “Well, I will believe it, and to the best of my ability I will be faithful to it.” And then suddenly you turn away. You come home and you say, “I met so-and-so today, and you know what he said to me — as long as my business opens and continues, you have a job.” You’ll turn completely from your confidence and your faith in God, which is your own imagination, to a man. And all men are liars, as we are told. They’re all liars. Two months later you are fired. You came home and you were so proud that he was going to keep you forever. Who wants to be kept forever on any one job? Is there no growth, no expansion in it?1062 ¶4

And so it is — the contrast of truth in Scripture is not with falsehood, it is with fickleness. Man turns from the one true God to another — there is no other God. So I ask you tonight to believe me — the Christ of Scripture is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God, and there is nothing impossible to God if you know the true God. If you think he’s on the outside, well then you do not know the true God. Do you not realize Christ is in you, unless of course you failed to meet the test? I hope you’ll realize we have not failed in the test.1062 ¶5

Now, everything — but everything — is possible to him. Well, how do I do it, and how do I go about testing it and proving it? If I really believe it, my imagination is God, and there is no other God. That everything I will, no matter what it is — today it was first imagined. The suit I wear, the building that now houses us, everything in the world had to be first imagined and then executed, but it first had to be imagined. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.1062 ¶6

And I said, “Well, I’ll believe him. I will put all my faith in him.” Now, to what extent will I be faithful? Of truth in Scripture is the steadfastness — the faithfulness of God. As we are told, “I will make a covenant with you, my steadfast faithfulness and steadfast love to David.” That is my covenant with you. “I have made him a witness to the people.” Tonight I will tell you what it means. Yeah, I’ll tell you exactly what that covenant is with us. He is a witness to this truth of God. He called him his son. He will not violate it. He tells me now he dwells in me as my very being. He dwells in me, and he has proved to me that his covenant will not be violated. His covenant is: “I have made a covenant with you, my steadfast love for David. I’ve made him a witness to the people,” which means that he is my son, and I dwell in you. I have found him in me as my imagination, and I can’t get away from my imagination. I can’t put it over there and remain here — there’s no place where I can go and put it elsewhere. If I dream, I am the dreamer — that’s imagination. If I awake, no matter what I’m doing, I’m imagining, and I cannot separate myself from this core of my own being, which is my imagination. He became the very core of my being, and now he has made a covenant with me that I will actually prove one day that his covenant with me is kept. He is sure and steadfast love for David. I will know — and he tells me David is his son. “Thou art my son, today have I begotten thee.” And he dwells in me as my own imagination. One day, if he keeps his covenant, I must know I am the father of David, for he is the father of David.1062 ¶7

Now, can I be faithful to that being who said to me that he is faithful to his covenant with me, or will I tomorrow, or tonight, or next year, be fickle and turn from the only God to something that is not God?1062 ¶8

Now I’ll tell you a story. Take any scene in the world which would imply that you are the one that you want to be. I don’t care what you want to be — take a scene, and when you look at it, if it implies that you are the man, the woman, that you want to be, who is looking at it? God is. God is your own wonderful human imagination, and all things are possible to God. Will you now remain faithful to what you are seeing and keep that vision in time of trouble, or will you be diverted and then turn to something that is not God? If you remain faithful to God, knowing that God is your own wonderful human imagination, no power on earth can stop it from coming to pass, because there is no other power. If you turn to false gods — turn to a man who makes you all kinds of promises — you’re turning to a false god. If you remain faithful to this, and this only, God, you cannot fail in this world. That is what Scripture teaches — it is a complete revelation of an eternal truth written without regard to secular history.1062 ¶9

When you read these characters in Scripture, forget characters — they aren’t characters as you and I are persons. They are eternal states through which you and I pass. We pass through these things, coming into a climax, and the climax is called Jesus Christ, which also is a state. When you reach that state, you have found God, and everything said of him in Scripture will be said of you. Everything that is said of him, that he experienced, you will experience. David in Scripture called him “my God.” David in the spirit will call you “my God,” which means “my father,” for God is Father. He will call you “my Lord,” he will call you “my father,” and you will know that you are his father.1062 ¶10

And the account that is kept — we have to keep it on our side here as it is kept by the eternal being. The truth in Scripture does not mean what we think it means here. For instance, a true judgment on this world of Caesar means that if I say a flower is here and there is no flower to support my claim, well then it’s a false judgment. A true judgment must conform to the fact; if the fact will not support my judgment, then we call it a false judgment.1062 ¶11

That’s not what Scripture speaks about. It allows me to say that a flower is there. It allows me to say that I am seeing what my mortal eye cannot see. It allows me to see that I am actually seeing what is not there to be seen, that my mortal eye cannot see. And if I dare to persist in my assumption that it is there, and I’m still, and sleep in it as though it were true, it will become an objective fact. That’s what Scripture teaches — “when you pray, believe that you have received, and you will. Whatever you desire, believe you have it, and you will.” I must not wait for facts to believe that I am the man that I want to be. I produce the facts if I know who I am. And I am all imagination, so I’m an imagining being, and I am imagining that I am well — that I would like to be. I persist in my imagination, believing it to be true. Now, if I persist in my assumption, it will become a fact. That’s what Scripture teaches.1062 ¶12

Do I really believe in that God, or am I fickle, and am I turning from that God, the only God, to something that is not a god? That is the question asked in Scripture.1062 ¶13

So in the Book of Joshua: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” And Joshua replied, “We choose the Lord.” And the Lord really means “I.” I is the only God in the world — that is my name forever, forever and forever. I will choose to serve the Lord, and the Lord is “I am.” Then he turns to the people: “You make your choice,” and as we choose the Lord, “you are witnesses to your choice.” “We are witnesses,” said the people. But they soon forgot, and turned to some false god.1062 ¶14

Now you can, morning or night, protect yourself as to whether you’re really believing in the only true God, or placing your faith in a false one. So I’m not saying that man should not be trusted, but don’t put your hope in any man in this world. Oh, they’ll tell you all kinds of things. I have friends of mine who will say to me, “I just came back, and you know what the boss said to me — the job is yours forever.” I’m speaking of experience — two months later he was fired. He didn’t do one thing that was wrong; it was a change in policy, and his department was simply closed, and he had put all confidence, all faith, in that man.1062 ¶15

Another one, something similar — forty-odd years ago, when I was fired from J. C. Penney, running up and down the elevator, folding hats, doing all kinds of silly, stupid things — they gave me the large sum of money of twenty-two dollars a week; of course that was years ago. I asked the man, “Why do you fire me? What have I done?” He said, “You haven’t done anything that’s wrong, but there’s a little change in the economy at the moment, and so we’ve got to let out people, and you have to figure that out. You’ve been here a year, and you’ve been very good, but we simply have to economize now, and that job at the moment we have to dispense with.” I said, “Where I come from, we don’t do that — a man doesn’t steal, and he doesn’t violate the code of decency. They go through these ups and downs and keep him.” So, “We don’t do that here,” he says. “There’s something else — cut quickly, cut bait quickly. Now, this man is a greenhorn” — I was only eighteen years old — “so just take this little letter over to my friend at Macy’s.” And they gave me a little letter, and, amazing, they reduced me from twenty-two to eighteen a week, doing the same stupid things, this time in the grocery department, filling bins of all kinds.1062 ¶16

So I worked there about ten months. I figured no one’s going to fire me ever again — I’m gonna quit. And so I quit. I went to the boss and said, “I’m quitting as of now.” “But what’s wrong? Not a thing is wrong, but I’m going to work for myself from now on, not working for anyone.”1062 ¶17

Well, I do work for others, but I never considered it working for others — I was on my own. I started dancing. I couldn’t dance. There was no dancing lesson in my life; I said I contained it, and then you could do anything in this world that you want. I didn’t take any lessons, so they picked me. “All right, he’s arrogant enough to do it — let him do it.” And so I did it. I danced for eleven years, six Broadway shows, all through the country in vaudeville, nightclubs — by sheer audacity, by feeling, “I can do it.”1062 ¶18

I’m telling you, you can do anything in this world that you want to do, but you’ve got to find Christ. He is the only Creator in the world. And when people talk about Christ on the outside, forget it — there is no Christ on the outside. Christ in you is the hope of glory, and Christ in you is your own wonderful human imagination — that is Christ, and there is no other Christ.1062 ¶19

He is buried within you. One day he will rise, not as another — he will rise within you, and you are he. No loss of identity and no change of identity, same being, only all the things said of him begin to happen in you. It is said of him that David called him “my father.” He calls you “my father,” and you know he is your son, and you know you are his father. As the Son of Man was lifted up like a serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and you are lifted up in the same manner. And I tell you, you say that the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom, and then he said that temple was my body. Well, your body is split from top to bottom, and it happens just like a fiery service — the same thing. You pride — you are buried in a grave, and you come out of the grave. It happens to you. You are witnesses to your birth — it happens to you. A dove descended upon him — it’s called the Holy Spirit — and it remained on him. It happens to you. The whole thing actually happens in you, on you, and then you know who you are.1062 ¶20

I am telling you that you are suffering tonight — the whole vast world is suffering from amnesia, total amnesia, because they think that they are John Brown, they think that they are Mary Smith, and they are Jesus Christ. Now, if you are Jesus Christ and you don’t know it, and he does all things in the world, then you remain John Brown and worship some Jesus Christ that does not exist. If man tonight is suffering from total amnesia, and as John Smith he has a thought, but he believes he is God’s brother, and John Brown doesn’t have a penny, and you come before him and you try to convince him he is John Smith, he can’t believe it. You bring his wife, you bring his children, you bring his family, bring all the people to remind him that he is John Smith, but he can’t believe it. Hit him over the head, give him shocks, do all kinds of things to him, but he can’t believe it — he’s done, he knows he’s a genre — a man who doesn’t have a nickel, and John Smith has a fortune. You ask him to sign his name John Smith — he will not do it. That’s against his ethical code — he is John Brown.1062 ¶21

You are Jesus Christ. Believe in yourself, Mary Smith, and whatever it is you believe yourself to be — I can’t persuade you that you are Jesus Christ — you are suffering from complete and total amnesia. One day you will awake, you will awake within the grave of your own skull, and remember who you are. It’s only a matter of good memory. May I tell you, you want me to earn it, but I’ve returned to the being that I really am — I don’t earn it, it’s grace. And truth comes through Jesus Christ, and grace is a gift, unmerited, unearned.1062 ¶22

And so memory returns. So he said, “Now hold fast the pattern of the true word which you have heard from me, God the truth, that has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within.” Well, who is the Holy Spirit? We are told he is our remembrance. We are told the Holy Spirit, when he comes unto you, he will bring to your remembrance all that you have heard from me. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth, and what I have told you is true, and he will bring to your remembrance all that I have chosen. But who is he? He is your own remembrance that you have forgotten — you’ve completely forgotten your own identity. He will come when he comes — you haven’t earned it, it’s simply that a man is suffering from amnesia, and he awakens to what he was before he lost his memory.1062 ¶23

We lost our memory, delivered purposely, to come into this world. One day memory will return, and when that memory returns, we are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other Lord Jesus Christ.1062 ¶24

But in the interval I am asking of testing, if you really are — and all things are made by him, and all things are here, that I should be able to appropriate anything in this world that I desire. But if it is true, how would I test it? The first belief — in your own wonderful human imagination — at the moment when I tell you that that is Jesus, you don’t believe it, but I’m telling you it is, and all things are here. Now, if he really has all things — I can’t remember that I am the Lord Jesus Christ, but if I really am, can I, though I still think I have never guessed it, can I really now put it to the test? Suppose I’ve never got it — I’ve been just, for a moment, to believe I am what I never dared to believe. But I’ll try to believe that I am, and then I become it.1062 ¶25

Well, I become it, and then I try again, and I become it. That I try again — I’m not fighting for pretense, and all of a sudden it does produce itself in action — it produces itself in performance. Although I still don’t know that I really am Jesus Christ, because I haven’t had that memory yet, I am proving that the power of which he spoke is true, or I am proving it in performance, right?1062 ¶26

I am telling you memory will return, and you’re going to find out who you are. And when you find out who you are, I am telling you who you are — you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is no other. Actually, you’ll be king. But you are suffering from an amnesia for a divine better, and one day you will awaken and you will know exactly who you are, and you are the Lord Jesus Christ.1062 ¶27

That’s what the Bible is all about — it’s a revelation of an eternal truth, written without regard or respect to history. So forget the story as history. Here — this is 1971. The story told of David is written 1000 BC. Who would believe that a man living today, born in the year 1905, is totally aware, as memory returns, that he who was supposed to be born 1000 BC — that’s three thousand years ago — stands before me as a youth, and I am his father, and he knows I am his father. Then where is God, where is the story, if you take it in a chronological sense, if you take it as secular history — where is it? You rub it out completely.1062 ¶28

And I am telling you what I know from my own experience. And if men should come into my world, coming in the twinkling of an eye from afar, and all of a sudden they are witnessing an experience — now is the return of my memory. Well, all of a sudden I wake in a tomb — how long have I been there, and who put me there? I awakened, and I know exactly what I must do in order to come out of it. And there are witnesses to my birth, or return of my memory. Well, that’s what it is for. I walk with a family — that’s resurrection.1062 ¶29

Who will read a story in the fifth chapter of Second Samuel — well, David took the stronghold of Zion and renamed it the City of David; we call it Jerusalem, the house where God loves most of all the dwelling places of Jacob. He loves Zion, and that’s where God dwells. And he took it by going up the water shaft, and he took it in one assault, and he built that area, by which he ascended from the outside in and up at the same time — therefore you can only build it in a spiral — and he took it in one certain assault.1062 ¶30

Who would have thought for one moment that you would experience that in the only way you would ever explain it? That suddenly your body is split from top to bottom, and you look at the base of your spine — at the base is a golden, liquid, pulsing light. As you contemplate it, you know it is yourself, and you fuse with it, and at the moment of fusion, one sudden assault in a spiral, fiery manner, you were seen into Zion, and there you are, as told in Scripture, “they take it by violence, the violent take it by force.” And the whole thing reverberates — does it reverberate! Your skull reverberates, you think the whole thing is coming apart, but it doesn’t — you take it by violence. That’s how David took it, and that’s how the Son of Man ascends into heaven, and everything recorded in Scripture is literally true. The words are figurative, but the truth is different, and you do it in the same manner — everyone does it in that manner.1062 ¶31

I’m sharing with you my experience. I am telling you I am not something apart, believe me, as human as anyone here. All the weaknesses of the flesh I have had them, have many of them still, for that matter, and yet in spite of all these things, he who is spoken of in Scripture has unfolded within me. So I tell you, you are only suffering from amnesia. I can tell you now who you are.1062 ¶32

But like a person, if you’ve ever seen one — it’s a very unpleasant thing, I tell you — to meet someone you know well and love well, and they do not know you. Meet someone who may have known you at a certain point in time, and they do not know you at all — that section of time is completely gone. And then they go for maybe ten years, and there is no knowledge whatsoever in that intervening period, and all that the doctors can do to bring them back, they can’t bring them back to have any knowledge of what happened in those ten years. Our hospitals, few of them — it is not a pleasant thing — to stand before someone that you love dearly, and you always believe they love you, and they do not recognize you, they do not know you, and you can say anything in this world that you want, they cannot relate it to anything.1062 ¶33

People say it’s amnesia, or partial amnesia — you and I are suffering from total amnesia until Christ returns within and awakens, because you’re only Christ — there is nothing but Christ in the world, there is nothing but God. He became as we are, that we may be as he is.1062 ¶34

And so I’m not denying that you are playing a certain part, and believe me, in a sense, you can’t quite bring back the memory that you are Jesus Christ. You can exercise the power that is Jesus Christ, and I tell you, he is your wonderful human imagination, and you can take your imagination now — see what you would like to see, believe in the reality of what you would like to receive, persist in that assumption, and it will harden into fact. Now, if all things were made by him, and then you know what you need to make it, try it again, and then try it again. And if it works, as it will work, then at least you do know that in some strange way — I cannot bring back the identity of being the Lord Jesus Christ, I can prove a power easily of which I was formerly unaware.1062 ¶35

And one day, suddenly, it will happen to you, and you will awaken, and when you awaken you are the Lord Jesus Christ, and you and I will be one, equal — no one telling you, “Ah, because he came before you in the awakening process, he preceded you in rank” — no, you can’t precede in rank because there is only one Lord Jesus Christ. So should you tonight awaken — and I awoke almost twelve years ago this coming July — I will not precede you in rank. No one will precede another — we’re all one.1062 ¶36

And when you know it, you don’t want it to feed another impulse, “For the Lord is one, and his name is one,” and the day will come when he will be king over all the earth, and in that day the Lord will be one, and his name one, and all this will form one body, one spirit, one Lord, one God, unfolded within us all.1062 ¶37

The truth of Scripture is not a conflict between what we call truth and error, or truth and falsehood, so much as it is between the true God and our selfless love for him, and our fickleness. So we pick our fickleness as we move away from the true God and worship the false god.1062 ¶38

For tonight, believe me, and see if we cannot, in the immediate present — I do not mean next year, I do not even mean next month — it’s only a little way away — but now try. “He said, who will believe our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Now you think there’s pure poetry, beautiful imagery, may I assure you that is true, just as the prophet Isaiah wrote it: “Who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” The arm is called in Scripture the power of God, and the power of God is called Christ.1062 ¶39

And I tell you it is an actual story. He is jealous, for it happened to me. Here I am in a room, not as big as this, but square like this, and I’m sitting on the floor talking to my pupils of the world — call them disciples — explaining the word of God. And suddenly one of these listening, seated on the floor, rises quickly and departs the room. And I knew instantly what he was going to do — he is going to tell the authorities what I am teaching. I am teaching of a king — it is not Peter — I am teaching of a power unknown to mortal man. I am teaching them that in them is the king that transcends all the species of the world, all the powers known to man. And he rises quickly and leaves the room. I knew instantly the authorities would know it, what would happen. And suddenly the door opens, and this one, dressed in the most glorious robe of the finest raiment, tall, handsome man, entered. Here he comes down, and he turns at right angles, turns at right angles, turns at right angles, and comes and faces me. Now we’re all standing. Then he takes off his attendant’s mallet and a wooden peg, and he hammers it into my shoulder — didn’t hurt, but he hammers this peg into my shoulder. Then he takes a sharp instrument, and with one circular motion he removes my sleeve, and my arm is bare from my shoulder to the ends of my fingers, completely bare, the right arm.1062 ¶40

And then he extends his arms in a cross, embraces me, and kisses me on the neck — I kissed him on the neck. And then the scene is fading, and fading, and fading, and I see far below a baby-blue color as he started away.1062 ¶41

And here is Scripture: “Will you come out and betray the Son of God with a kiss?” Would you reveal him? Because the Son of God is the arm of God, for the Son of God is the power and the wisdom of God. Were you now to unveil him and betray his identity? He had to.1062 ¶42

Everything said in Scripture is true, and when you awake, these things happen — they all happen.1062 ¶43

So, if only they are certain — this arm is not as strong as the average tall man’s arm in this world, it is a normal arm. It’s only a symbol of the being that awoke within you — you are the arm of God, all the power of God, the wisdom of God, and he will now use it.1062 ¶44

In the play, just a pretty little — or, “he is nailed upon you the pain,” as you are told in Isaiah, “and for a season you will be in control, only for a season, to carry the burden — the burden of Israel — and then you’ll bear the pain and take it off, and another one will carry it, and another will tell you, but in that interval you will carry it.”1062 ¶45

And you are the power of God and the wisdom of God, and he comes in and he unveils me — unveils not the body, unveils the arm, for it is the arm that symbolizes the power of God, the creative power of God. And that happened in 1966, the tenth day of October, 1966. So I can’t forget them — these days are indelibly impressed upon me.1062 ¶46

Everything said of him I have experienced — I have been awakened within myself. And everything said of him you must experience, as your weakness within — so do not let anyone tell you of any Jesus Christ outside of you, you are not going to find him. He sleeps within you, and he dreams the life that you are now expressing — he is dreaming that you are — and one day he will awaken, and then memory will return, and you will not be gone. You will be, and you will know it was Jesus Christ.1062 ¶47

And then, go to bed at night, and you’ll put down John Brown as the world sees John Brown on the bed, but you fall asleep as Jesus Christ, and your nights are not the nights that they were prior to that moment. You are instructing, and you are teaching, and you aren’t frightened of anything, and fighting in any room — no more nightmares, just teaching. That anything happens, you’ll know exactly who you are, and you shouldn’t be alarmed if it doesn’t hurt — you’re ready, just let things move. Memory has returned, and the being who was all in the beginning has now returned.1062 ¶48

In the morning you’ll pick up the living garment called John Brown, and you’ll go through life as John Brown, not trying to disturb anyone in the world. Someone just calls “John,” you answer, “Mr. Brown,” you answer — but you know exactly who you are, and you’re playing a dual part until the end, when you take off for the last time John Brown, and you are to be you yourself, to be after you awoke from the dream of life, and that being is Jesus Christ. Now let us go into the silence.1062 ¶49

The great mystic, William Blake, wrote almost two hundred years ago, “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be.” Now, at first, this mystical gem seems a bit involved, or at best to be a play on words; but it is nothing of the kind. Listen to it carefully. “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be.” That is certainly clear enough. It is a simple truth about the law of assumption, and a warning of the consequences of its misuse.1055 ¶1

The author of the Epistle to the Romans declared in the fourteenth chapter, “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclearn.” We see by this that it is not superior insight but purblindness that reads into the greatness of men some littleness with which it chances to be familiar, for what seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be.1055 ¶2

Experiments recently conducted at two of our leading universities revealed this great truth about the law of assumption. They stated in their releases to the newspapers that after two thousand experiments they came to the conclusion that ‘What you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look. What you believe to be the real physical world is actually only an assumptive world.’1055 ¶3

In other words, you would not define your husband in the same way that you mother would. Yet, you are both defining the same person. Your particular relationship to a thing influences your feelings with respect to that thing and makes you see in it an element which is not there. If your feeling in the matter is a self-element, it can be cast out. If it is a permanent distinction in the state considered, it cannot be cast out. The thing to do is to try. If you can change your opinion of another, then what you now believe of him cannot be absolutely true, but relatively true.1055 ¶4

Men believe in the reality of the external world because they do not know how to focus and condense their powers to penetrate its thin crust. Strangely enough, it is not difficult to penetrate this view of the senses. To remove the veil of the senses, we do not employ great effort; the objective world vanishes as we turn our attention from it. We have only to concentrate on the state desired to mentally see it; but to give reality to it so that it will become an objective fact, we must focus our attention upon the desired state until it has all the sensory vividness and feeling of reality. When, through concentrated attention, our desire appears to possess the distinctness and feeling of reality, when the form of thought is as vivid as the form of nature, we have given it the right to become a visible fact in our lives.1055 ¶5

Each man must find the means best suited to his nature to control his attention and concentrate it on the desired state. I find for myself the best state to be one of meditation, a relaxed state akin to sleep, but a state in which I am still consciously in control of my imagination and capable of fixing my attention on a mental object.1055 ¶6

If it is difficult to control the direction of your attention while in this state akin to sleep, you may find gazing fixedly into an object very helpful. Do not look at its surface, but rather into and beyond any plain object such as a wall, a carpet or any object which possesses depth. Arrange it to return as little reflection as possible. Imagine, then, that in this depth you are seeing and hearing what you want to see and hear until your attention is exclusively occupied by the imagined state.1055 ¶7

At the end of your meditation, when you awake from your controlled waking dream, you feel as though you had returned from a great distance. The visible world which you had shut out returns to consciousness and, by its very presence, informs you that you have been self-deceived into believing that the object of your contemplation was real; but if you remain faithful to your vision, this sustained mental attitude will give reality to your visions and they will become visible concrete facts in your world.1055 ¶8

Define your highest ideal and concentrate your attention upon this ideal until you identify yourself with it. Assume the feeling of being it – the feeling that would be yours were you now embodying it in your world. This assumption, though now denied by your senses, “if persisted in” – will become a fact in your world.1055 ¶9

You will know when you have succeeded in fixing the desired state in consciousness simply by looking mentally at the people you know. This is a wonderful check on yourself as your mental conversations are more revealing than your physical conversations are. If, in your mental conversations with others, you talk with them as you formerly did, then you have not changed your concept of self, for all changes of concepts of self result in a changed relationship to the world.1055 ¶10

Remember what was said earlier, “What you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look.” Therefore, the assumption of the wish fulfilled should make you see the world mentally as you would physically were your assumption a physical fact.1055 ¶11

The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in the ready obedience to the voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.” Man, by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then living and acting on this conviction, changes his future in harmony with his assumption.1055 ¶12

To “change his future” is the inalienable right of freedom loving individuals. There would be no progress in the world were it not for the divine discontent in man which urges him on to higher and higher levels of consciousness.1055 ¶13

I have chosen this subject so close to the hearts of us all – “Changing Your Future” -- for my message next Sunday morning. I am to have the great joy of speaking for Dr. Bailes while he is vacationing. The service will be held at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega Boulevard. Since the right to change our future is our birthright as sons of God, let us accept its challenge and learn just how to do it.1055 ¶14

Again today, speaking of changing your future, I wish to stress the importance of a real transformation of self – not merely a slight alteration of circumstances which, in a matter of moments, will permit us to slip back into the old dissatisfied man.1055 ¶15

In your meditation, allow others to see you as they would see you were this new concept of self a concrete fact. You always seem to others the embodiment of the ideal you inspire. Therefore, in meditation, when you contemplate others, you must be seen by them mentally as you would be seen by them physically were your conception of yourself an objective fact. That is, in meditation, you imagine that they see you expressing this nobler man you desire to be.1055 ¶16

If you assume that you are what you want to be, your desire is fulfilled and, in fulfillment, all longing “to be” is neutralized. This, also, is an excellent check on yourself as to whether or not you have actually succeeded in changing self. You cannot continue desiring what has been realized. Rather, you are in a mood to give thanks for a gift received.1055 ¶17

Your desire is not something you labor to fulfill; it is recognizing something you already possess. It is assuming the feeling of being that which you desire to be. Believing and being are one. The conceiver and his conception are one. Therefore, that which you conceive yourself to be can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation.1055 ¶18

“If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen. If you assume that you are that finer, nobler one you wish to be, you will see others as they are related to your high assumption.1055 ¶19

All enlightened men wish for the good of others. If it is the good of another you seek, you must use the same controlled contemplation. In meditation, you must represent the other to yourself as already being or having the greatness you desire for him.1055 ¶20

As for yourself, your desire for another must be an intense one. It is through desire that you rise above your present sphere and the road from longing to fulfillment is shortened as you experience in imagination all that you would experience in the flesh were you or your friend the embodiment of the desire you have for yourself or him.1055 ¶21

Experience has taught me that this is the perfect way to achieve my great goals for others as well as for myself. However, my own failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the control of my attention. I can, however, with the ancient teacher say: “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before – I press towards the mark for the prize.”1055 ¶22

Many people tell me they cannot meditate. This seems to me a bit like saying they cannot play the piano after one attempt. Meditation, as in every art or expression, requires constant practice for perfect results. A truly great pianist, for instance, would feel he could not play his best if he missed one day of practice. If he missed a week or a month of practice he would know that even his most uninitiated audience would recognize his defects. So it is with meditation. If we practice daily with joy in this daily habit, we perfect it as an art.1053 ¶1

I find that those who complain of the difficulty in meditation do not make it a daily practice, but rather, wait until something pressing appears in their world and then, through an act of will, try to fix their attention on the desired state. But they do not know that meditation is the education of the will, for when will and imagination are in conflict, imagination invariably wins.1053 ¶2

The dictionaries define meditation as fixing one’s attention upon; as planning in the mind; as devising and looking forward; engaging in continuous and contemplative thought. A lot of nonsense has been written about meditation. Most books on the subject get the reader nowhere, for they do not explain the process of meditation. All that meditation amounts to is a controlled imagination and a well sustained attention.1053 ¶3

Simply hold the attention on a certain idea until it fills the mind and crowds all other ideas out of consciousness. The power of attention shows itself the sure guarantee of an inner force. We must concentrate on the idea to be realized, without permitting any distraction. This is the great secret of action. Should the attention wander, bring it back to the idea you wish to realize and do so again and again, until the attention becomes immobilized and undergoes an effortless fixation upon the idea presented to it. The idea must hold the attention, must fascinate it, so to speak.1053 ¶4

All meditation ends at last with the thinker, and he finds he is what he, himself, has conceived. The undisciplined man’s attention is the servant of his vision rather than its master. It is captured by the pressing rather than the important.1053 ¶5

In the act of meditation, as in the act of adoration, silence is our highest praise. Let us keep our silent sanctuaries, for in them the eternal perspectives are preserved.1053 ¶6

Day by day, week by week, year by year, at times where none through love or lesser intentions were allowed to interfere, I set myself to attain mastery over my attention and imagination. I sought out ways to make more securely my own, those magical lights that dawned and faded within me. I wished to evoke them at will and to be the master of my vision. I would strive to hold my attention on the activities of the day in unwavering concentration so that, not for one moment, would the concentration slacken. This is an exercise . . . a training for higher adventures of the soul.1053 ¶7

It is no light labor. The ploughman’s labor, working in the fields, is easier by far. Empires do not send legions, so swiftly to obstruct revolt, as all that is alive in us hurries along the nerve highways of the body to frustrate our meditative mood. The beautiful face of one we love glows before us to enchant us from our task. Old enmities and fears beleaguer us. If we are tempted down these vistas, we find, after an hour of musing, that we have been lured away. We have deserted our task and forgotten that fixity of attention we set out to achieve.1053 ¶8

What man is there who has complete control of his imagination and attention? A controlled imagination and steadied attention, firmly and repeatedly focused on the idea to be realized, is the beginning of all magical operations.1053 ¶9

If he persists through weeks and months, sooner or later, through meditation, he creates in himself a center of power. He will enter a path all may travel but on which few do journey. It is a path within himself where the feet first falter in shadow and darkness, but which later is made brilliant by an inner light.1053 ¶10

There is no need for special gifts or genius. It is not bestowed on any individual but won by persistence and practice of meditation. If he persists, the dark caverns of his brain will grow luminous and he will set out day after day for the hour of meditation as if to keep an appointment with a lover. When it comes, he rises within himself as a diver, too long under water, rises to breathe the air and see the light. In this meditative mood he experiences in imagination what he would experience in reality had he realized his goal, that he may in time become transformed into the image of his imagined state.1053 ¶11

The only test of religion, worth making, is whether it is trueborn; whether it springs from the deepest consciousness of the individual; whether it is the fruit of experience; or whether it is anything else whatever.1053 ¶12

This is my reason for speaking to you on my last Sunday in Los Angeles about The True Religious Attitude. What is your religious attitude? What is my religious attitude? I shall speak on this subject next Sunday morning at 10:30 as Dr. Bailes’ guest. The service will be held at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega.1053 ¶13

I shall endeavor to show you that the methods of mental and spiritual knowledge are entirely different. For we know a thing mentally by looking at it from the outside, by comparing it with other things, by analyzing and defining it; whereas we can know a thing spiritually only by becoming it. We must be the thing itself and not merely talk about it or look at it. We must be in love if we are to know what love is. We must be God-like if we are to know what God is.1053 ¶14

Meditation, like sleep, is an entrance into the subconscious. “When you pray, enter into your closet, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father which is in secret and your Father which is in secret shall reward you openly.”1053 ¶15

Meditation is an illusion of sleep which diminishes the impression of the outer world and renders the mind more receptive to suggestion from within. The mind in meditation is in a state of relaxation akin to the feeling attained just before dropping off to sleep. This state is beautifully described by the poet, Keats, in his “Ode To A Nightingale.” It is said that as the poet sat in the garden and listened to the nightingale, he fell into a state which he described as “A drowsy numbness pains my senses as though of hemlock I had drunk.” Then after singing his ode to the nightingale, Keats asked himself this question, “Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is the music; do I wake or sleep?” Those are the words of one who has seen something with such vividness or reality that he wonders whether the evidence of his physical eyes can now be believed.1053 ¶16

Any kind of meditation in which we withdraw into ourselves, without making too much effort to think, is an outcropping of the subconscious. Think of the subconscious as a tide which ebbs and flows. In sleep, it is a flood tide, while at moments of full wakefulness, the tide is at its lowest ebb. Between these two extremes are any number of intermediary levels. When we are drowsy, dreamy, lulled in gentle reverie, the tide is high. The more wakeful and alert we become, the lower the tide sinks. The highest tide compatible with the conscious direction of our thoughts occurs just before we fall asleep and just after we wake.1053 ¶17

An easy way to create this passive state is to relax in a comfortable chair or on a bed. Close your eyes and imagine that you are sleepy, so sleepy, so very sleepy. Act precisely as though you were going to take a siesta. In so doing, you allow the subconscious tide to rise to sufficient height to make your particular assumption effective. When you first attempt this, you may find that all sorts of counter thoughts try to distract you, but if you persist, you will achieve a passive state.1053 ¶18

When this passive state is reached, think only on “things of good report” . . imagine that you are now expressing your highest ideal, not how you will express it, but simply feel here and now, that you are the noble one you desire to be. You are it now. Call your high ideal into being by imagining and feeling you are it now.1053 ¶19

I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled, to assume the mask of some other, more perfect life. If we cannot imagine ourselves different from what we are and try to assume that second more desirable self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves, though we may accept discipline from others.1053 ¶20

Meditation is an activity of the soul; it is an active virtue; and an active virtue, as distinguished from passive acceptance of a code, is theatrical. It is dramatic; it is the wearing of a mask.1053 ¶21

As your goal is accepted, you become totally indifferent to possible failure, for acceptance of the end wills the means to the end. When you emerge from the moment of meditation it is as though you were shown the happy end of a play in which you are the principal actor. Having witnessed the end in your meditation, regardless of any anticlimactic state you encounter, you remain calm and secure in the knowledge that the end has been perfectly defined.1053 ¶22

Creation is finished and what we call creativeness is really only a deeper receptiveness or keener susceptibility on our part, and this receptiveness is “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.” Through meditation, we awaken within ourselves a center of light, which will be to us a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.1053 ¶23

Tonight, just for a very short while, we’ll reopen on the 10th of January, same place, same time. Tonight, because we are closing, I thought I would give you a summary of what I try to tell you week after week, of God’s law and His promise. So we’ll start with the law. It’s the eternal principle: all things must bring forth after their kind. This is stated in the very first chapter of the book of Genesis, the law of the identity of kind. As long as the earth endures, there will be seedtime and harvest time. And here is the analogy of trees, the analogy of all things in the world that you and I can see. But the New Testament teaches us that we change not only the seed, we change ideas. “And be not deceived, God is not mocked. As a man sows, so shall he reap.” For you and I are in this world of educated darkness, learning to create. For we are God, but we do not know it yet. But God became as we are, that we may be as He is. For here we are learning to exercise our talents wisely, that the most great will still appear in our world to show us what he has done. No condemnation is simply a prayer to show the individual what he has done with his talent, whether he used it wisely or unrightly.1052 ¶1

Here you take the Lord. In your own wonderful human imagination all things exist. Everything you can conceive of is all within your own wonderful human imagination. And 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. Your whole vast world — you are within me, I am within you — the whole vast world is within your own wonderful human imagination. Now what do you do with it? How do you construct it? How do you simply rearrange the structure within you? For that will determine what you will encounter in this world. But it is an art. And like all art, you simply have to make every effort to discover how to practice it wisely. For this great secret of imagining is the greatest of all secrets that man could ever put his finger upon.1052 ¶2

Now here, let us take a few simple approaches to it. Suppose I wanted a better job, and I didn’t have — as the world would tell me, it only reflects my own doubts — that I am not qualified. For they can’t tell me anything other than what I am telling myself. So if I am in doubt, they will tell me that I am not qualified. I can’t get it. Or times are not right for it. Or things are difficult. Let me ignore, for the moment, what my reflection conveys. And then let me ask myself, what do I want? Because this is only telling me what I have done in the past. What do I want now? When I know exactly what I want, let me dare to assume that I am now the man that I want to be. And walk in the assumption that I am that man. If I dare to persist in that assumption, then the outer world will rearrange itself and reflect that within me that I have fixed, and it will become in the eyes of the world a fact, what we call the fact. The reality really is in my imagination and not in its actuality. The whole vast world seems so real, and we think that’s where the reality is, in its actuality. It’s not there. It’s in the imaginal act. And then we project it upon the screen of space.1052 ¶3

Now, there are numerous facets to this wonderful principle. Here I am looking now at this room, and you’re all real within this room. And yet my home is far more real to me than this room. I come here twice a week for one hour, and I live in my home almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so it’s far more real to me than this room. This is used by many people, and my home is used only by my little family, my wife and myself. Yet at this moment, it simply is a flat picture, and this is a cubic reality. Why is this the cubic reality that I know so little about, and that — that I know so much about — is only a flat surface? Because I am in this room now. If I am in the room, I give reality to the room, that when I leave it one hour from now, it also is a flat surface. I go home, and enter my home, and it is a cubic reality.1052 ¶4

Now here is the secret. 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. Being all imagination, I must be wherever I am in imagination. I am not anchored to this little body that I am wearing. I am wearing this body as I wear the suit of clothes. The day will come, the suit of clothes I will wear it out and discard it. I will wear out this little body and discard it. But my immortal self is my own wonderful human imagination. And I am not confined to the garment that I am wearing, that it may be seen in the world. I can sit down in a chair and assume that I am elsewhere. And if I dare to assume that I am elsewhere, I make it real and give it all the tones of reality, I am where I am assuming that I am. How would I know that I am there? Well, think of the world, that’s all I do. If I dare to assume that now this very moment I am in New York City, how do I know that I am there? You say that I am all imagination and I must be wherever I am in imagination. Well, how do I know that I am really there? Well, let me think of the world. Do I see Los Angeles around me? Am I standing on it? Well, then I am not in New York City. If I don’t see Los Angeles 3,000 miles to the west of me, I am not in New York City. For were I in New York City, I would have to see Los Angeles — one, or not one, three thousand miles to the west of me. For motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to objects. Well, now, if I feel that I’ve actually moved, well, then let me actually see it in my imagination relative to the former state.1052 ¶5

I do the same thing concerning going up in the social world, or the financial world, or the intellectual world. Today my friends know me for a certain person, as a certain person. Suppose I desire to transcend that person. Would they know me the day I transcend it, or in the not distant future after I transcend it? They would if they’re my friends — we’re in contact. I would be the same friend, but they would see me differently. Now let them see me differently. I dare to assume that I am now the man that I want to be, whether it be a financial gain or a social gain or any other kind of gain. My friends would know it. Well then, let them see me. All in my imagination — I rearrange the structure of the mind, and I fix it, as I fix it by sleeping in that assumption as though it were true. Well then, in time, if this principle is true, that all things must bring forth after their kind, I’m planting a new seed. That is the seed spoken of in scripture. I must not deceive myself because God in me, which is my own imagination, is not mocked. If I dare to assume that I am the man, that at the moment of the assumption reason is denying and my sense is denied, but I dare to assume and persist in that assumption, well then, if this principle is true, that all things come forth after their kind, then I shall produce the fruit of that seed.1052 ¶6

I have done it a number of times, so I tell you, I am speaking to you from experience. I do it not only for myself. I do it for my friends. I call you friends. There is no charge to it. Not one penny. Simply a friend would say to me, hear good news for me. Well, it takes a little time, practically no time, to hear good news for a friend. I take his request and then, to the best of my ability, I lift it to the state of vision so that I can actually feel him or hear him tell me that things are as he desired them to be when he spoke to me. This is the story of Job, that when he turned from his own little self and turned to his friends, his own captivity was lifted when he prayed for his friends. Well, I call you friends. You come here and you listen to the things that I have experienced concerning God’s law and God’s promise. To whom should you turn if you can’t make it work for yourself? But the one who is telling you. I never tire of hearing good news for people. So I can actually hear that you are what you want to be or that things are as you desire them to be. It costs nothing. Cost you not a nickel. And as far as time goes, that’s what my time is for.1052 ¶7

As the revelation came, you must stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money. Everything in life must be an investment. So I must invest my time. To sit down and hear that you’re telling me good things about yourself, that is a wise investment of my time. Now, how am I doing it? I’m doing it with my thought. That’s a wise investment of my thought. It is now symbolized in the earthly gain called money. There’s no money transacted between us, interchanged between us, but the money is the symbol of gain or security in this world. So I’ll take the thought. You voiced it. You said, let me hear, or you hear for me, that I am this, that, or the other. Then I simply sit quietly. It doesn’t take me long. It shouldn’t take anyone more than a matter of seconds to actually bring before your mind’s eye the individual who has asked something of you. And you simply work yourself to a certain state of intensity. And it doesn’t take time. I mean, well, it’s a time, I mean long time. I would say the maximum time would be, say, ten, not more than ten seconds, to bring someone before your mind’s eye and hear his voice clearly and feel the thrill that what he wanted, he has. And then you drop it. You don’t do it again. That is an actual creative act. At that moment, you planted a seed. Where? In your own wonderful imagination. You rearrange the structure of your mind and you planted that seed. Now, do you believe in God? Well, then if you believe in God, you believe in your own wonderful human imagination. You believe all things are possible to God, well then believe that all things are possible to your own wonderful human imagination. That imaginal act will now externalize itself in the world and she or he or they will bear witness to the truth of what you have done. That is God’s law.1052 ¶8

Now the vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens and it will flower. If it seems long to the one who asked it of you, don’t be concerned. Don’t let him disturb you. You simply wait. For it is sure and it will not be late. My old friend taught me that lesson vividly back in 1933. There was a deep depression in this land. Many of you are too young to remember it, but I am almost now 67. I went through the deep depression back in New York City. I was a dancer. And who would pay a dancer when they couldn’t eat? All the theaters were closed. I don’t think more than three theaters out of 50 were open in Times Square. So who wanted the dancer? I would have danced for anything for a meal. And no one wanted to pay a dancer. So what would I do? I wanted to go to my little island called Barbados. And I had no money, but I better say no money, I mean no money. Not just a little bit, but none. I said to my friend Abdullah, I would love to go to Barbados. He said to me, you are in Barbados. I said, I am in Barbados? He said, yes, you are now in Barbados. I didn’t quite understand what he was telling me. I learned it afterwards. He was telling me that if I want something, I must tell at that moment that I want it, assume that I have it. I want to go to Barbados, I am in Barbados. So: go to Barbados, I am in Barbados. So this night when I sleep, I sleep in Barbados. How? In my imagination. And how do I know I’m there? Think of New York City where physically I’m sleeping, and see it to my north, 2,000 miles northwest of where I am in Barbados.1052 ¶9

Well, the months went by and I didn’t see any evidence. So I said to him, you know, Ab, if I don’t make the next boat out, or no planes will fly — no commercial planes are flying in those days — I can’t go to Barbados. He said to me, who said you are going to Barbados? You are in Barbados. You can’t discuss how you are going to Barbados when you are already in Barbados. Then he walked straight to his room and slammed the door in my face, which was not an invitation to follow him. If you knew him, that’s how he taught me.1052 ¶10

I am asleep as though I am in Barbados. And when I went to bed, though in New York City, I had assumed that I am actually in Barbados, and see New York City not under me, but to the north of me, 2,000 miles. And I woke within 48 hours after that moment with my Ab, and under my door was a letter from my brother Victor. And in that letter he enclosed a small little draft, $50. He said, I have told the steamship company, the Furness Withy Company, to issue you a ticket and charge it to me. Now $50 is simply if you want some little thing, like a suit of clothes. In those days you could buy a suit for $12, a fairly decent suit. You could buy a pair of shoes for $3.50 or $4. But he said the $50 is just anything you may need to get aboard the ship. But sign the chits and I’ll meet the ship and pay all expenses, and I will pay all the tips. So it’s not for tips aboard the ship.1052 ¶11

I went down to the place and I told them what my letter said. I read my letter to them. They said, Mr. Goddard, we only have steerage from now on. But when we get to St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, you may have first class because someone just embarks in St. Thomas. I accepted it. I went back to my friend Abdullah and I told him, Ab, it worked. I’m going on the 6th of December, but I have to go steerage until we hit St. Thomas, and then we go first class to Barbados. You know what he said to me? He said, who is talking of going to Barbados? You have gone to Barbados, and you went first class. Well, what are you going to do with a man like that? On the sixth, expecting I would go steerage to the Virgin Islands, the man said to me, Mr. Goddard, we have a nice surprise for you. We had a cancellation, and so now you’re going first class. He wasn’t surprised. I wouldn’t even call him to tell him, because he was not given that way. He was trying to teach me a lesson: you believe in God, believe in me also.1052 ¶12

Well, the one speaking is God — is the God in you, your own wonderful human imagination. If you say I believe in God, everyone here believes in God, but do you believe in your own wonderful human imagination as God? If the word God conveys the sense of an existing something outside of you, you have the wrong God. Because you are the temple of the living God. And the Spirit of God dwells in you. Test yourselves and see. Do you not believe that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless of course you fail to meet the test. Well, if he is in me, find out who he is and where he is. Well, I have found him to be my own wonderful human imagination. That’s the God in me. It’s the God in you. And may I tell you, he cannot fail. He will not fail.1052 ¶13

But here on this level, we are the operant power when it comes to the law. When it comes to the promise, that is coming regardless of the life we live in this world. Whether I be rich or poor, be the judge or the one being judged, the murderer or the victim, regardless of what part I play in this world, the promise is not conditioned. It is unconditioned. God promised to redeem himself when he became man. So my fitness for the kingdom of God is not the condition — when I’m making myself good, it is the consequence, not the condition, of his choice when he called me into the kingdom. So that no one frighten you that you’re doing things that’s going to stop you from entering the kingdom. It is not conditioned by anything you do in this world.1052 ¶14

The only condition is on the law. I can say that if I go in a certain direction, I will not come to certain things. If I dare to assume that I am what I want to be, and I am faithful to that assumption, it will come to pass. If I am not faithful to it, it will not come to pass. If I don’t assume that I am it, it will not come to pass. So I am the operant power when it comes to the law. But when it comes to the promise, that is coming regardless of what you do, where you are, or anything in this world. Everyone will be redeemed. But everyone.1052 ¶15

But here, when it comes to the law, spend all your time while you are here, because the other is working, is coming. So while you are here, take the law and try to understand it, and try to apply it wisely. Why not live well? Why not live graciously? Why not be a kind person, a generous person in the world? Why not be a gentleman? Why not be a lady? These are tremendous accomplishments for man and for woman in this world. So I say to everyone, while you are here, find out what the law is all about.1052 ¶16

Because you can’t deceive yourself, because the law will not allow you to. As you reap the things in this world, you may deny that you planted them. But it couldn’t happen by accident. So be not deceived, God is not mocked. For as a man sows, so shall he reap, and is reaping everything morning, noon, and night. I may not remember my sowing and deny the harvest that is mine, but it’s there and I’ve got to accept it. Let me now try to remember when did I plant this. Maybe I can’t bring it back. We have very short and faulty memories, and I can’t quite remember when I planted that seed. Why, the morning’s paper, as you read these horrible stories, would tell you when you planted it. You do not know the characters spoken of in the paper, yet you react. And that reaction was in itself the planting of the seed. You pass judgment on those that you read about. You read the gossip of the paper, and you’re passing judgment. And all of your imaginal reactions are planting seeds. Instead of spending your wonderful time and investing it, by say reading the Bible or reading a poem, read something that is altogether lovely. We spend our time on the paper, or the radio bulletin, or the TV, and all day long we are simply putting into our mind ideas that must come to harvest, and when they come, we deny that we planted them.1052 ¶17

But here, on this principle of the law, you can be what you want to be in this world. I don’t care what the world will tell you. You can start from scratch. And if you dare to assume that you are wanted in this world, you will be wanted. I am not a member of any club in the land. And yet, here I am an American citizen today by adoption. And yet, wonderful men and women in this land have never been allowed to enter certain clubs. I’m speaking of clubs I know well back in New York City. And yet I, a stranger, have gone as an honored guest to almost every one of them. Because I never barred myself. It never occurred to me that I didn’t have all the qualifications to enter as a guest. I have no desire to become a member. None. Yet I have gone to all of these clubs as a guest of those who were members. They came to my meeting and asked me for dinner, and they took me to the club. Or asked me for some other purpose to go to the club. So not a thing in me allowed me to be barred, because I didn’t bar myself. You can go any place in this world if you don’t put these barriers on yourself. It’s entirely up to you.1052 ¶18

God in you is your own wonderful being called your human imagination. In the four weeks that I’m gone, practice it morning, noon and night. And long before the four weeks, you should show the fruit. I’m serious about it. You should bear the fruit of planting now. Not everything takes a month. Not everything takes a year to grow. Some things come up overnight. And you can plant it now, this very moment, by daring to believe that you are what, at the moment, reason denies and your senses deny. And actually feel it. Give it the tones of reality. And then drop it. You don’t pick it up tomorrow morning to see if it’s growing. You accept it. And in its own good time, it comes to fruition in your world. That is the law.1052 ¶19

Now comes the promise. “In many and varied ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken by his Son.” That’s the final and the perfect revelation of God to man. The man in whom he reveals his Son is called in scripture Jesus. So everyone in whom God reveals his Son is Jesus. And in the end there is Jesus only. For when the Son is revealed in man, that man is God. For the Son of God calling that man Father. There is no other way that you ever know that you are God the Father, save through his Son calling you Father. And when it happens, it will be so normal and so natural that it is as though memory has returned. He doesn’t give you his Son as a companion, as a friend. He gives you his Son as your son. So if his son calls me father, then I am the father that that son knows to be God. That is the story of the promise. It’s coming to everyone in the world. No one will fail. That son is David — David of biblical fame. And when he comes into your world, he calls you father, and you know it instantly as he calls you father. And that relationship is forever and forever.1052 ¶20

Now we are facing in two weeks’ time what is called Christmas. But people do not read the Bible carefully. Here is a little statement in the book of Luke which, undoubtedly, if they follow the usual pattern year after year, the Los Angeles Times will tell the story on their editorial page. They always print it, the entire story as told in Luke. Now here are these words. There was one called Simeon. And he had received a vision, a revelation from the Holy Spirit, that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Christ. The Lord’s Christ — Lord, apostrophe: L-O-R-D, apostrophe S — the Lord’s Christ. Then what did he say? He found a child. And he came in spirit, and he found in spirit an infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes. And he took the little child up in his arms, and he said, Now Lord, let thy servant depart in peace according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen the salvation of Israel. Now he makes a prophecy. It is for the fall and the rising of many in Israel. Some will reject it, and others will accept it. And here is the sign that on this day God was born. It’s the birth of God in man. And the sign that God is born in man is simply a little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. And it is the Lord’s Christ.1052 ¶21

Well, Jesus is called the Lord in the Bible. No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, if Jesus is the Lord, and we speak of the Lord’s Christ, it can’t be one and the same person. So the Christ is the offspring, the resultant state of this birth of God in man. For God is a father. And what is the sign that I am born as God? A babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. And then six months later he stands before me, not as an infant, but he stands before me as the eternal youth called David. The sum total of all the experiences of humanity, actually drawn into a single whole and personified, and there it is, David.1052 ¶22

This is the perpetual story that everyone one day will experience. I am telling you what I have experienced. I did not rationalize it. I’m not speculating. I’m not trying to set up some school of thought. I’m telling you what everyone is going to experience in this world. The day is coming, and I hope it, before I return — I’m coming back on the 10th of January, I hope — before I return. But many of you will be able to tell me I’ve experienced it. Because I know you’re going to experience it. You’ll actually experience what it is to be the Lord, and the Lord is Jesus. So we are told in scripture there is Jesus only, that I’ve come not to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. And then when their eyes were opened, the one who personified the law, Moses, disappeared. The one who personified the prophets, Elijah, he disappeared. And there was Jesus only. When the eye is opened and the transfigured being stands before you, he is Jesus only, and Jesus is the Lord God Jehovah. And he has a son. The son is humanity. But humanity gathered together into one single being is David. And David is his eternal son. And that’s what you are going to experience.1052 ¶23

That’s going to come regardless of whether you’re rich or poor. But in the world of Caesar, I find it easier to be able to meet the obligations imposed upon me by Caesar. There is a tax to be paid for Caesar. I must have the money that Caesar demands. I must meet my obligations to life here in the world of Caesar. Rent must be paid. Clothes must be bought. Food must be bought. Transportation. All these things I must find Caesar’s coin to pay for it. So I use the law for that purpose. I have no desire to be a millionaire, but I do desire the comforts that a nice steady flow of income allows, without the anxiety that must come to everyone when he can’t meet his obligations to life. So I use the law for that purpose, and the law for my friends who are in conditions that call for, I would say, the wise use of the law. And I call it praying.1052 ¶24

When I take you before my mind’s eye and see you as I would like to see you, the man that you would like to see yourself, if I assume that you are and I get the thrill that you are, I call that praying. I do not turn to any being on the outside and ask anything of any being on the outside. I do not get down on my knees and pray to any outside God. I do not repeat any of the words concerning a prayer. The people fashion some little prayer in words. None of that. I sit in a comfortable chair or recline on the bed and think of you. And I think of you. I simply think of you as I would like to see you. I work myself in a matter of seconds to a pitch where something goes out of me. It’s an actual feeling, like some energy goes out. It’s an actual creative act. And then I drop it at that moment. You don’t repeat the creative act after you reach the point of explosion. You’ve actually brought the point to explosion, and you drop it. And let that seed now grow in its own wonderful manner and externalize itself in the world. I call that the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. You tell me what you would like to be, that’s your hope. For now you’re my appropriation, subjectively, of your objective hope. It’s all that I do.1052 ¶25

I have in the audience tonight a lady whose story I told you about a month ago, or two months ago. She was here when I opened the first night, and I see her here tonight. She wrote me and thanked me for the exercise of my imagination on her behalf. And I told you her request at the time, before I left for San Francisco. That’s way back in June. Well, here she is tonight. I’m not going to point her out to anyone, so that no one will surround her and try to ask questions of her. But she is here. And she was the one who wrote to me in the letter, saying, would you please exercise your imagination lovingly on my behalf, and then told me her problem. As I read the letter, I was sitting in my big easy chair. I put the letter down, brought it before my mind’s eye, and did not for one moment hesitate until — it only took me about ten seconds, ten seconds — to actually hear her tell me that it had all happened. It was fresh in my mind’s eye, the request. And then I dropped it. I never thought one second after that concerning it. It was done. I got confirmation here after my opening day, which was back in October. October the 4th I opened. And a week or two weeks later she wrote me a letter. And she thanked me for exercising my imagination lovingly on her behalf. She did not itemize anything in the letter. She implied in that letter that things were as she desired them to be.1052 ¶26

I tell you, believe in God, as you are told in the 14th chapter of John: you believe in God, believe also in me. For I and my Father are one, and he who sees me sees the Father. He sent me into the world, and the sender and the sent are one. But in the world I seem to be inferior to myself, the sender, so I could also say, I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I. I am not inferior to my essential being, who is Father, but in the office of the sent, I am handicapped. And so I’m in the world of Caesar. But I know who I am. And I’m trying to tell you and everyone who will listen to me who you are.1052 ¶27

So believe in your own wonderful human imagination. And you can start tonight from where you are. And you will go as far as you want to go. Just as far. And you have no handicaps other than the handicaps you put upon yourself. If you believe that, because you have no background, socially, financially, intellectually, well then, that’s what you believe. And you place these things upon yourself. If you do not accept them as final, well then, they’re only barriers as long as you accept them. You don’t accept them, and you go about your business applying this eternal principle, that all things must bring forth after their kind. And you have the choice of the seed that you will plant. You can plant a good seed or a bad seed. It’s entirely up to you. But I would suggest you stop spending your thoughts, your time and your money, and start investing your thoughts, your time and your money. When you spend, you lay out without hope of return. When you invest, you expect a return on equity. And so you have the choice of seed. It’s entirely up to you. I will select to be this man, or that man, or the other man. And you envy no one. How could you envy anyone when you know who you are? How could you possibly envy any person in this world? He has a billion, let him have a billion. He wants two, let him have two.1052 ¶28

Only this past month, a man whose income is supposed to be in excess of five billion dollars — not million, billion — he was a young man, only 47 years of age, and yet he blew his brains out. 47. And for reasons not disclosed in the paper, he was from Sweden. And here was this huge banker, many, many generations back, and they built up this enormous fortune. He was the head of the family, with a private fortune in excess of five billion dollars. And then one day simply blew his brains out. So money did not in any way influence his decision to call it a day. So it’s not money.1052 ¶29

But if you want money, make it money. Don’t fall in love with money, but you need it in the world of Caesar. Then assume that it’s coming in a normal, natural way, without knowing from whom or where. You go to the end, and dwell in the end just as though it were true. And may I tell you, it will be true. But set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ within you. But Jesus Christ is the Lord and his Christ. Just Jesus Christ is the Lord and his Christ, that’s Jesus Christ, not one name as it were, but the Lord’s Christ would be David.1052 ¶30

And so let me close it with a little poem that Browning wrote concerning David, based upon — or he was inspired by — the 16th and 17th chapters of 1st Samuel. And here he has the insane king called Saul, and standing before Saul is the youth David. And David said to the king: “O Saul, a face like my face shall receive thee, and a man like to me thou shalt love and be loved by forever. A hand like this hand shall throw open the gates of new life to thee. See the Christ stand.” That’s David.1052 ¶31

And then, but who is he addressing? Humanity, who has forgotten who he is. That’s a form of insanity. It’s amnesia. We have forgotten that we are God. So we are so. And in that state we are called insane, demented. And the Christ stands before us, and he is David. “And a face like my face, said he, shall receive you. And a man like unto me, thou shalt love and be loved by forever. And a hand like this hand shall throw open the gates of new life to thee. See the Christ stand.” See the Christ stand.1052 ¶32

But may I tell you, when you see, and you will see, the Ancient of Days, you will be incorporated into his body. He will embrace you, and you will become one body, one spirit with the Ancient of Days. And I am not an artist to paint the picture, but when you see David, David is the image of the Ancient of Days, but he is eternal youth. And the Ancient of Days you cannot put age upon him. You cannot say he is this age or that age or any age. He is without age, and yet he is the Ancient of Days. That’s who David sees. That’s his father. He is the image of his father, only he is the eternal youth. And you, incorporated into the Ancient of Days, you are God the Father. And that’s why David recognizes you as his father. So he finds David, and David said unto him, “thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” And he said to David, “thou art my son.”1052 ¶33

So here it is, perfect. You are — regardless of the pigment of your skin now, regardless of who you are now — you are destined to be awake one day as the Ancient of Days. And you will know it, and you’ll only know it if David appears. You will not know it in any other way. If you had all the power of the world to shatter the heavens, you still would not know your God. But how wise you became, you wouldn’t know your God. Not a thing in this world could convince you that you are God, but his son calling you father. Nothing in the world could ever convince you that you’re God, save his son. So no one knows who the son is except the father, and no one knows who the father is except the son, and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. So no one knows the father save the son, who is in the bosom of the father — he has made him known.1052 ¶34

Have you ever had a prayer answered? What wouldn’t men give just to feel certain that when they pray, something definite would happen. For this reason, I would like to take a little time to see why it is that some prayers are answered and some apparently fall on dry ground.1050 ¶1

“When ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall receive.” Believe that ye receive – is the condition imposed upon man. Unless we believe that we receive, our prayer will not be answered. A prayer – granted – implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, the one who prays is the spring of action – the directing mind – and the one who grants the prayer. Such responsibility man refuses to assume, for responsibility it seems, is mankind’s invisible nightmare.1050 ¶2

The whole natural world is built on law. Yet, between prayer and its answer we see no such relation. We feel that God may answer or ignore our prayer, that our prayer may hit the mark or may miss it. The mind is still unwilling to admit that God subjects Himself to His own laws. How many people believe that there is, between prayer and its answer, a relation of cause and effect?1050 ¶3

Let us take a look at the means employed to heal the ten lepers as related in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke. The thing that strikes us in this story is the method that was used to raise their faith to the needful intensity. We are told that the ten lepers appealed to Jesus to “have mercy” on them – that is – to heal them. Jesus ordered them to go and show themselves to the priests, and “as they went, they were cleansed.” The Mosaic Law demanded that when a leper recovered from his disease he must show himself to the priest to obtain a certificate of restored health. Jesus imposed a test upon the lepers’ faith and supplied a means by which their faith could be raised to its full potency. If the lepers refused to go – they had no faith – and, therefore, could not be healed. But, if they obeyed Him, the full realization of what their journey implied would break upon their minds as they went and this dynamic thought would heal them. So, we read, “As they went, they were cleansed.”1050 ¶4

You, no doubt, often have heard the words of that inspiring old hymn – “Oh, what peace we often forfeit; oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” I, myself, came to this conviction through experience, being led to brood upon the nature of prayer. I believe in the practice and philosophy of what men call prayer, but not everything that receives that name is really prayer.1050 ¶5

Prayer is the elevation of the mind to that which we seek. The very first word of correction is always “arise.” Always lift the mind to that which we seek. This is easily done by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. How would you feel if your prayer were answered? Well, assume that feeling until you experience in imagination what you would experience in reality if your prayer were answered.1050 ¶6

Prayer means getting into action mentally. It means holding the attention upon the idea of the wish fulfilled until it fills the mind and crowds all other ideas out of the consciousness.1050 ¶7

This statement that prayer means getting into action mentally and holding the attention upon the idea of the wish fulfilled until it fills the mind and crowds all other ideas out of the consciousness, does not mean that prayer is a mental effort – an act of will. On the contrary, prayer is to be contrasted with an act of will. Prayer is a surrender. It means abandoning oneself to the feeling of the wish fulfilled. If prayer brings no response – there is something wrong with the prayer and the fault lies generally in too much effort. Serious confusion arises insofar as men identify the state of prayer with an act of will, instead of contrasting it with an act of will.1050 ¶8

The sovereign rule is to make no effort, and if this is observed, you will intuitively fall into the right attitude. Creativeness is not an act of will, but a deeper receptiveness – a keener susceptibility. The acceptance of the end – the acceptance of the answered prayer – finds the means for its realization. Feel yourself into the state of the answered prayer until the state fills the mind and crowds all other states out of your consciousness.1050 ¶9

What we must work for is not the development of the will, but the education of the imagination and the steadying of attention. Prayer succeeds by avoiding conflict. Prayer is, above all things, easy. Its greatest enemy is effort. The mighty surrenders itself fully only to that which is most gentle. The wealth of Heaven may not be seized by a strong will, but surrenders itself, a free gift, to the God-spent moment. Along the lines of least resistance travel spiritual as well as physical forces.1050 ¶10

We must act on the assumption that we already possess that which we desire, for all that we desire is already present within us. It only waits to be claimed. That it must be claimed is a necessary condition by which we realize our desires. Our prayers are answered if we assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and continue in that assumption.1050 ¶11

One of the loveliest examples of an answered prayer I witnessed in my own living room. A very charming lady from out of town came to see me concerning prayer. As she had no one with whom to leave her eight-year old son, she brought him with her the time of our interview. Seemingly, he was engrossed in playing with a toy truck, but at the end of the interview with his mother he said, “Mr. Neville, I know how to pray now. I know what I want – a collie puppy – and I can imagine I am hugging him every night on my bed.”1050 ¶12

His mother explained to him and to me the impossibilities of his prayer, the cost of the puppy, their confined home, even his inability to care for the dog properly. The boy looked into his mother’s eyes and simply said, “But, Mother, I know how to pray now.” And he did.1050 ¶13

Two months later during a “Kindness to Animals Week” in his city, all the school children were required to write an essay on how they would love and care for a pet. You have guessed the answer. His essay, out of the five thousand submitted, won the prize, and that prize, presented by the mayor of the city to the lad – was a collie puppy. The boy truly assumed the feeling of his wish fulfilled, hugging and loving his puppy every night.1050 ¶14

Prayer is an act of Imaginative Love which is to be the subject of my message next Sunday morning at 10:30 at the Fox Wilshire Theater on Wilshire Boulevard near La Cienega. It is my desire, next Sunday, that I may explain to you, how you, like the young boy; can yield yourselves to the lovely images of your desires and persist in your prayer even though you, like the lad, are told that your desires are impossible.1050 ¶15

The necessity of persistence in prayer is shown us in the Bible. “Which of you,” asked Jesus, “shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him: Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set before him; and he from within shall answer and say, ‘Trouble me not; the door is now shut and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee.’ I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will arise and give as many as he needeth.”1050 ¶16

The word translated as “importunity” means, literally, shameless impudence. We must persist until we succeed in imagining ourselves into the situation of the answered prayer. The secret of success is found in the word “perseverance.”1050 ¶17

The soul, imagining itself into the act, takes on the results of the act. Not imagining itself into the act, it is ever free from the result. Experience in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already what you want to be, and you will take on the result of that act. Do not experience in imagination what you want to experience in reality and you will ever be free of the result. “When ye pray, believe that ye receive, and ye shall receive.” One must persist until he reaches his friend on a higher level of consciousness. He must persist until his feeling of the wish fulfilled has all the sensory vividness of reality.1050 ¶18

Prayer is a controlled waking dream. If we are to pray successfully, we must steady our attention to observe the world as it would be seen by us were our prayer answered. Steadying attention makes no call upon any special faculty, but it does demand control of imagination. We must extend our senses – observe our changed relationship to our world and trust this observation. The new world is not there to grasp, but to sense, to touch. The best way to observe it is to be intensely aware of it.1050 ¶19

In other words, we can, by listening as though we heard and by looking as though we saw, actually hear voices and see scenes from within ourselves that are otherwise not audible or visible. With our attention focused on the state desired, the outer world crumbles and then the world – like music – by a new setting, turns all its discords into harmonies.1050 ¶20

Life is not a struggle but a surrender. Our prayers are answered by the powers we invoke, not by those we exert. So long as the eyes take notice, the soul is blind -- for the world that moves us is the one we imagine, not the world round about us.1050 ¶21

We must yield our whole being to the feeling of being the noble one we want to be. If anything is kept back, the prayer is vain. We often are deprived of our high goal by our effort to possess it. We are called upon to act on the assumption that we already are the man we would be. If we do this without effort – experiencing in imagination what we would experience in the flesh had we realized our goal, we shall find that we do, indeed, possess it.1050 ¶22

The healing touch is in our attitude. We need change nothing but our attitude towards it. Assume a virtue if you have it not, assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled. “Pray for my soul; more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.”1050 ¶23