Lectures

If truth could ever be told so that it is understood, it will be believed. It is my hope that I can make the truth of scripture so understandable you will believe it. But whether you do or not, one day you will; for scripture will fulfill itself in you and then you will understand it perfectly.1044 ¶1

Scripture speaks of two baptisms, baptism with the water of repentance, and baptism with the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us: “I baptize with the water of repentance, but there will come one after me who is mightier than I. He will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” Now, repentance means a radical change of attitude towards life. If you change your thinking, and things in your outer world change, then you have been baptized with the water of repentance.1044 ¶2

A friend recently shared these experiences with me saying, “I am in the computer business. Every year we hold a convention, and this year our company chose to demonstrate a million-dollar computer. It was delivered on a Friday, giving us three days to be ready for the show’s opening the following Tuesday. On Sunday we discovered that some of the parts were not functioning and others were missing.1044 ¶3

“Knowing that our subcontractors were scattered all over the nation, when I arrived Monday morning everyone was in a state of panic. Controlling my thoughts, I began to apply my imagination by claiming it was Tuesday morning and the computer was working perfectly. Then I checked the missing parts list and discovered that the company who manufactured the parts was located only fourteen miles from the Center. They delivered the parts that afternoon and by Tuesday morning the computer was functioning perfectly, just as I had imagined.1044 ¶4

“One day an old computer which had been stored in our warehouse for sometime, was sold. No one had checked to make sure it was operating properly, so on the day of the delivery I imagined everything was perfect. But as I checked it out, I discovered that two vital parts were missing and could not be found.1044 ¶5

“That afternoon the salesman came in, picked up a little package not more than ten feet from the computer and said, “Here are the parts.’ And he was right! Inside this little brown package were the missing parts that seemingly were not there before.”1044 ¶6

Here is a man who has been baptized with water by psychologically applying the truth! Truth first appears as a stone. That is when everything is done literally. The head of a bull is cut off, and sacrifices are made to a God on the outside. Water comes from the stone when the literal facts take on psychological meaning. Then the water turns into the wine of spiritual truth, through experience. One must see the whole vast world as a psychological drama.1044 ¶7

You may think you have never committed adultery, but the moment you lust after anything, the stage is set by your imaginal act. Restraining the impulse is not good enough. The moment you have the impulse to steal, the act is committed. The impulse to hurt is the act of hurting. You may be afraid to carry out any act, but when the impulse appears, the act is committed. Once you understand this, you will forgive all, for there is only one son (who you are), doing your Father’s will.1044 ¶8

In the third chapter of the book of Matthew, John states, “I baptize with the water of repentance.” Repentance tests your ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite. When you see another in want, you repent by persuading yourself he is affluent. To the degree you can believe this truth you bathe in the baptismal prime waters. Only when you act and prove repentance, in performance, are you baptized in the true sense of the word.1044 ¶9

The baptism with the Holy Spirit is something entirely different. While living by the law of repentance, you will be called to unite into a single body, who is God. In the 12th chapter of 1st Corinthians we are told that, “By one spirit we are baptized into one body.”1044 ¶10

When this baptism happened to me, I had the sensation of being taken for a long, long journey. I found myself standing in front of the Risen Lord, who asked me the simple question: “What is the greatest thing in the world?” I answered as though promoted from some depth of my own being, saying, “Faith, hope and love. These three, but the greatest of these is love.” With these words, the Risen Lord embraced me and we became one being. No mortal eye can see the body of God I wear, but I feel it, for I wear it every moment of time.1044 ¶11

Now, when I tell my story some will resist me, for they are still filled with their own preconceived misconceptions of Christ. But I know that one day everyone will be embraced by this one spirit, thereby being baptized into the one body of Christ.1044 ¶12

My wife’s oldest sister is a darling. We love and respect each other, but she cannot believe what I teach. Although she believes in the Bible, and calls herself a good Christian, she could not believe me when I said she would not die. That even the little flower which blooms once blooms forever, for I am a God of the living, not the dead. Now, Alice would not believe me on this level, so I reached her on another level.1044 ¶13

In 1948, my secretary, Jack Butler, died quite suddenly. Six or seven months later, fully awake and aware of where I was and what I was doing, I visited Jack. Although he was 50 when he died here, he was a young man in his twenties, there. Standing beside me, Alice said, “You know, I still don’t believe what you teach,” and I replied, “How can you say that when you see Jack here?” “What does he have to do~ with it?” she asked and I replied, “Don’t you remember, Jack died in August of last year.” With that remark Alice’s face took on an expression of complete amazement. Knowing I was telling the truth, seeing Jack denied her belief in non-survival.1044 ¶14

Then Jack spoke saying, “Who’s dead?” and I said, “Jack, you are not dead, but you died. I gave you a good Catholic funeral and your body is buried in a Catholic cemetery.” “Oh,” he said, “You’re stupid. You say I”m not dead but I died. That can’t be.” Then I said to Alice, “Come over here,” and I placed my hand on Jack’s thigh and said, “See, my hand doesn’t go through his flesh. It’s solid. If I cut him right now he would bleed. He would hurt as you would hurt.” With this remark Jack took my hand and slapped it saying, “Get your hand off me,” just as he would do were he here.1044 ¶15

You see, there is no transforming power in death, and Jack did not know he had died. Not everyone knows of the transition. Some take years to discover it. Although Alice was with me at the time, she didn’t remember the incident. If she had, it would have taken on the form of a dream, to her. But, being fully awake, I know exactly what I am doing every moment of time. Today Alice believes in survival, although she doesn’t realize that that experience was the beginning of the subtle change in her.1044 ¶16

When you are sent, you will carry the message of the one who sent you. You will tell all who will listen that there is only one body, one spirit, one love who embraces and incorporates the individual into a single body who is the Lord Jesus Christ.1044 ¶17

In the meantime, as you test yourself, you are being baptized with the water of repentance. Always creating on this level, when you change your attitude and allow it to become fixed, your outer world will reflect your change. Then one day you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.1044 ¶18

“Among you stands one who you do not know. I, myself did not know him,” said John. “But I saw the Holy Spirit descend as a dove and remain on him. He who sent me said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”‘1044 ¶19

The word “with” used here, is the preposition “in.” You are not sprinkled with water, but are incorporated into the Spirit of Love Himself; thereby being baptized in the Holy Spirit. At that moment you are no longer another, you are the body of Christ. He who is baptized into Christ puts on Christ and wears this body as his own. As scripture unfolds in you, you feel yourself to be the being who first called and incorporated you into his body. Then God’s only begotten son calls you father, and you understand the wonderful story of baptism.1044 ¶20

And when you tell it with understanding, some will believe you, while others will disbelieve. Perhaps, because of prejudice, the engrafting will not be accepted at the moment, but it will come.1044 ¶21

Now, if I dwell in you and the Father dwells in me, is not the Father in you? And if you are in me and I am in everyone, is not the Father in everyone? Are we not the same being? Will not the same infinite son call us father?1044 ¶22

Those who believe that Jesus Christ was a man who lived 2000 years ago cannot comprehend a cosmic Christ, dwelling in all, who is God the Father. But God, the Father of all life, is housed in every individual. And one day He will unveil Himself, not as another, but as the one in whom He reveals Himself!1044 ¶23

In D. H. Lawrence’s poem ‘The New Heavens and Earth,’ he said, “I was so weary of it all and when death came, I died, to discover I am in a body as of before, only with a newness beyond the knowledge of newness, and unaccountable.” This is true, for if you do not know that the story of life is psychological, you cannot account for its newness.1044 ¶24

My friend Jack died at fifty, looking much, much older. But when I saw him six or seven months later, Jack was a young man of twenty, in a body with a newness beyond the knowledge of newness. The decomposition of Jack’s body which he wore while here, had advanced by then, yet Jack did not know he had died.1044 ¶25

The body of a two-hundred pound friend can be turned into ash in the matter of an hour; yet when you meet him, he will not understand how he was renewed, for to him his body is solid and real. It breathes and grows old just as yours does here. It has problems there, as you do here; and if he doesn’t hear the story of baptism and awaken there, he will repeat the experience all over again.1044 ¶26

While here, Jack did not know the story of life was psychological, and he doesn’t know it there. He attended my meetings only because he was interested in meeting people. He refused to assume any obligation of society. He wouldn’t get married, but loved all the ladies and they all loved him. He still loves them all, and has yet to realize that life is psychological and ever renews itself by the seed of contemplative thought.1044 ¶27

Mr. Lawrence called his experience resurrection, but the word is restoration. He spoke of being restored to life with a newness beyond the knowledge of newness. This is true, for teeth or hair that are missing here are instantly renewed, but people do not stop to reflect upon this fact. They do not stop to realize that they were ninety when they died. That they didn’t go through the womb of a woman, yet are restored to life at the age of twenty. And, because life’s problems are upon them, they go blindly on trying to figure out how to pay the rent, eat, and care for their bodies’ needs just as you do here. They are in a terrestrial world, just like this one, but not in this section of time.1044 ¶28

But when you are resurrected, you are born into the one body of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is heaven! And when you leave this body of darkness and decay, you enter an entirely different world, wearing a body endowed with creative power. You will no longer wear the limitations of the flesh or have need for food as you understand it. The normal functions of this body no longer exist, as you will wear a body of radiant light – the body you wore before that the world was!1044 ¶29

Now let us go into the silence.1044 ¶30

[transcript of vinyl record, side one (listen and read)]1042 ¶1

It may seem incredible but it is true: the world in which we live is a world of imagination. In fact, life itself is an activity of imagining. All that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow. Nothing appears or continues in being by a power of its own. Events happen because comparatively stable imaginable activities created them. And they continue in being only as long as they receive such support. Therefore the secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems, to the solution of which everyone should aspire. For supreme power, supreme wisdom, and supreme joy lie in the solution of this great mystery.1042 ¶2

When man solves the mystery of imagining he will have discovered the secret of causation, and that is: imagining creates reality. Divine imagining and human imagining are not two powers at all but one. The valid distinction which exists between them lies not in the substance with which they operate, but in the degree of intensity of the operant power itself. Acting at high tension, an imaginable act is an immediate objective fact. Keyed low, an imaginable act is realized in a time process.1042 ¶3

Human history, with its forms of governments, its revolutions, its wars, and in fact the rise and fall of nations, could be written in terms of the imaginal activities of men and women. All imaginative men and women are forever casting forth enchantments, and all passive men and women, who have no powerful imaginative lives, are continually passing under the spell of their power. If imagination is the only thing that acts or is in existing beings or men, as Blake believed, then we should never be certain that it was not some woman treading in the wine press who began that subtle change in men’s minds. Or that the passion, because of which the earth has been drenched in blood, did not begin in the imagination of some shepherd boy lighting up his eye for a moment before it ran upon its way.1042 ¶4

The future is the imaginable activity of man in its creative march. Imagining is the creative power, not only of the poet, the artist, the actor, and orator, but of the scientist, the inventor, the merchant, and the artisan. Its abuse in unrestrained, unlovely image making is obvious. But its abuse in undue repression breeds a sterility, which robs a man of actual wealth of experience. Imagining novel solutions to ever more complex problems is far more noble than to restrain or kill out desire. Life is the continuing solution of a continuously synthetic problem.1042 ¶5

Imagining creates events. Our world, created out of men’s imagining, comprises unnumbered warring beliefs. Therefore there could never be a perfectly stable or static state. Today’s events are bound to disturb yesterday’s established order. Imaginative men and women invariably unsettle a preexisting peace of mind.1042 ¶6

Hold fast to your ideal in your imagination. Nothing can take it from you but your failure to persist in imagining the ideal realized. Imagine only such states that are of value or promise well. To attempt to change circumstances before we change our imag inal activity is to struggle against the very nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first an imaginal change. Everything we do unaccompanied by an imaginal change is but futile readjustment of services. Imagining the wish fulfilled brings about a union with that state. And during that union we behave in keeping with our imaginal change. This shows us that an imaginal change will result in a change of behavior. However, our ordinary imaginal alterations, as we pass from one state to another, are not transformations. Because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction; but whenever one state grows so stable as to become our constant mood, our habitual attitude, then that habitual state defines our character and is a true transformation.1042 ¶7

Now let me call your attention to the design on the cover of this record. You will notice a man sitting on a park bench imagining himself to be in a home. This is the secret of those who lie in bed awake while they dream things true. They know how to live in their own dream house until, in fact, they do. Man, through the medium of a controlled waking dream, can predetermine his future. That imaginal activity, of living in the feeling of the wish fulfilled, leads man across a bridge of incident to the fulfillment of the dream. If we live in the dream, thinking from it and not of it, then the creative power of imagining will answer our adventurous fancy and the wish fulfilled will break in upon us and take us unawares.1042 ¶8

Man is all imagination; therefore man must be where he is in imagination, for his imagination is himself. To realize that imagination is not something tied to the senses, or enclosed within the spatial boundary of the body, is most important. Although man moves about in space by movement of his physical body he need not be so restricted. He can move by a change in what he’s aware of. However real the scene on which sight rests, man can gaze on one never before witnessed. He can always remove the mountain if it upsets his concept of what life ought to be. This ability to mentally move from things as they are to things as they ought to be is one of the most important discoveries that man can make. It reveals man as a center of imagining with powers of intervention, which enable him to alter the course of observed events, moving from success to success through a series of mental transformations of nature, of others, and himself.1042 ¶9

How does he do it? Self-abandonment. That is the secret. He has to abandon himself mentally to his wish fulfilled, in his love for that state, and in so doing live in the new state and no more in the old state. Now we can’t commit ourselves to what we do not love. So the secret of self-commission is faith plus love. Faith is believing what is incredible. We commit ourselves to the feeling of the wish fulfilled in faith that this act of self-commission will become a reality—and it will because imagining creates reality.1042 ¶10

Imagination is both conservative and transformative. It is conservative when it builds its world from images supplied by memory and the evidence of the senses. It is creatively transformative when it imagines things as they ought to be, building its world out of the generous dreams of fancy. In the procession of images, the ones that take precedence naturally are those of the senses. Nevertheless, a present sense impression is only an image; it does not differ in nature from a memory image or the image of a wish. What makes a present sense impression so objectively real is the individual’s imagination functioning in it and thinking from it. Whereas in a memory image or a wish, the individual’s imagina tion is not functioning in it or thinking from it but is functioning out of it and thinking of it. If the individual would enter into the image in his imagination, as the design on the cover of this record suggests, then would he know what it is to be creatively transformative, then would he realize his wish, and then he would be happy.1042 ¶11

Every image can be embodied, but unless man himself enters the image and thinks from it, it is incapable of birth. Therefore it is the height of folly to expect the wish to be realized by the mere passage of time. That which requires imaginative occupancy to produce its effect obviously cannot be affected without such occupancy. We cannot be in one image and not suffer the consequences of not being in another.1042 ¶12

Imagination is spiritual sensation. Enter the image of the wish fulfilled, then give it sensory vividness and tones of reality by mentally acting as you would act were it a physical fact. Now this is what I mean by spiritual sensation. Imagine that you are holding a rose in your hand. Smell it. Do you detect the odor of roses? Well, if the rose is not here why is its fragrance in the air? Through spiritual sensation—that is, through imaginal sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch—man can give to the image sensory vividness. If he does, all things will conspire to aid his harvesting. And on reflection he will see how subtle were the threads that led to his goal. He could never have devised the means which his imaginal activity used to fulfill itself.1042 ¶13

If man longs to escape from his present sense fixation, to transform his present life into a dream of what might well be, he has but to imagine that he’s already what he wants to be, and then feel the way he would expect to feel under such circumstances. Let him, like the make believe of a child, who is remaking the world after its own heart, create his world out of pure dreams of fancy. Let him mentally enter into his dream. Let him mentally do what he would actually do were it physically true. He will discover that dreams are realized not by the rich but by the imaginative. Nothing stands between man and the fulfillment of his dream but facts, and facts are the creations of imagining. If man changes his imagining he will change the facts.1042 ¶14

Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind. For him, it is merely history. For him, it seems unalterable: a dead and firmly fixed past. But for itself it is living; it is part of the living age. We cannot leave behind us the mistakes of our past, for nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still in existence. The past still exists, and it gives and still gives its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil however far back they lie. This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to have been played the first time, I call revision—and revision results in repeal. Changing our lives means changing the past. The causes of the present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past. The past and the present form the whole structure of man. It is carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and future. Live nobly, so that mind can store a past well worthy of recall. Should you fail to do so, remember, the first act of correction or cure is always: revise . If the past is re-created into the present, so will the revised past be re-created into the present. Or else the promise that “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow,” is a lie.1042 ¶15

The question may arise as to how by representing others to ourselves as better than they really were, or mentally rewriting a letter to make it conform to our wish, or by revising the scene of an accident, the interview with the employer, and so on, could change what seems to be the unalterable facts of the past—but remember my claims for imagining. Imagining creates reality. What it makes it can unmake. It is not only conservative, building a life from images supplied by memory; it is always creatively transformative, altering a theme already in being.1042 ¶16

The parable of the unjust steward gives the answer to this question. We can alter our world by means of a certain illegal practice, by means of a falsification of the facts; that is, by means of a certain intentional alteration of that which we have experienced. And all this is done in one’s own imagination. This is a form of falsehood, which is not only not condemned, but is actually approved in the gospel teaching. By means of such falsehood, a man destroys the causes of evil and acquires friends. And on the strength of this revision proves, judging by the high praise the unjust steward received from his master, that he is deserving of confidence.1042 ¶17

Because imagining creates reality we can carry revision to the extreme, and revise a scene that would be otherwise unforgivable. We learn to distinguish between man, who is all imagination, from those states into which he may enter. An unjust steward, looking at another’s distress, will represent the other to himself as he ought to be seen. Were he himself in need he would, like the man on the cover of this record, enter his dream house in his imagination and imagine what he would see, and how things would seem, and how people would act, after these things should be. Then in this state he would fall asleep feeling the way he would expect to feel under such circumstances. Would that all the Lord’s people were unjust stewards, mentally falsifying the facts of life to deliver individuals forever more. For the imaginal change goes forward until at length the altered pattern is realized on the heights of attainment. Our future is our imaginal activity in its creative march. Imagine better than the best you know.1042 ¶18

I accept literally the saying that all the world’s a stage, and I believe that God plays all the parts. The purpose of the play: to transform man, the created, into God, the creator. God loved man, his created, and became man in faith that this act of self-commission would transform man, the created, into God, the creator.1042 ¶19

The play begins with the crucifixion of God, on man as man, and ends with the resurrection of man as God. God becomes as we are that we may become as He is. God becomes man that man may become first a living being and secondly a life-giving spirit. I live, yet not I but God lives in me. And the life I know I live in the flesh I live by the faith of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. God took upon himself the form of man and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross of man, and is crucified on Golgotha, the skull of man. God himself enters death’s door—the human skull—and lays down in the grave of man to make man a living being. God’s mercy turned death into sleep, then began the prodigious and unthinkable metamorphosis of man: the transformation of man into God.1042 ¶20

No man unaided by the crucifixion of God could cross the threshold that admits to conscious life. But now we have union with God in his crucified self. He lives in us as our wonderful human imagination. Therefore, man is all imagination and God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination. That is God Himself. When he rises in us, we will be like him and he will be like us. Then all impossibilities will dissolve at the touch of exaltation, which his rising in us will impart to our nature.1042 ¶21

Here is the secret of the world: God died to give man life and to set man free. For however clearly God is aware of his creation, it does not follow that man, imaginatively created, is aware of God. To work this miracle God had to die then rise again as man. And none has ever expressed it so clearly as Blake. Blake says—or rather has Jesus say—“Unless I die, thou canst not live; but if I die I shall arise again and thou with me. Wouldest thou love one who never died for thee, or ever die for one who had not died for thee? And if God dieth not for man and giveth not himself eternally for man, man could not exist.”1042 ¶22

So God died. That is to say, God has freely given himself for man. Deliberately he has become man and has forgotten that he is God in the hope that man, thus created, will eventually rise as God. God has so completely offered his own self for man that he cries out on the cross of man, “My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?” He has completely forgotten that he is God. But after God rises in one man, that man will say to his brothers: “Why stand we here trembling around calling on God for help and not ourselves in whom God dwells?”1042 ¶23

This first man that has been raised from the dead is known as Jesus, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For man, God died. Now by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. Jesus resurrects his dead father by becoming him. In Adam, the universal man, God sleeps. In Jesus, the individualized God, God wakes. In waking, man the created has become God the Creator and can truly say, “Before the world was, I Am.”1042 ¶24

Just as God in his love for man so completely identified himself with man that he forgot that he was God, so man in his love for God must so completely surrender himself to God that he lives the life of God and no longer that of man.1042 ¶25

God’s play, which transforms man into God, is revealed to us in the Bible. It is completely consistent in imagery and symbolism. The New Testament is hid in the Old Testament, and the Old is manifested in the New. The Bible is a vision. It is not a doctrine or a ritual. The Old Testament tells us of God’s promises, the New Testament tells us not how these promises were fulfilled but how they are fulfilled. The central theme of the Bible is the direct, individual, mystical experience of the birth of the child. That child of whom the prophet spoke: “To us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.”1042 ¶26

When the child is revealed to us, we see it, we experience it, and the response to this revelation can be stated in the words of Job: “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” The story of the incarnation is not fable, allegory, or some carefully reasoned formula to enslave the minds of men, but mystical fact. It is a personal mystical experience of the birth of oneself out of one’s own skull, symbolized in that of a child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the floor.1042 ¶27

There is a distinction between hearing of this birth of a child from one’s own skull—a birth which no scientist or historian could ever possibly explain—and actually experiencing the birth, holding in your own hands and seeing with your own eyes this miraculous child: a child born from above, out of your own skull, a birth contrary to all the laws of nature.1042 ¶28

The event as it is recorded in the gospels actually takes place in man. But of that day or that hour when the time will come for the individual to be delivered, no one knows but the Father. Do not marvel that I say to you: you must be born from above. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or wither it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit.1042 ¶29

This revelation in the Gospel of John is true. Here is my experience of this birth from above. Like Paul I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the actual mystical experience of being born from above. None can speak truly of this mystical birth from above but the one who has experienced it. I had no idea that this birth from above was literally true. For who before the experience could believe that the child—the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace—was inwoven in his own skull? Who, before the experience, would understand that his Maker is his Husband and the Lord of Hosts is His Name? Who would believe that the creator went in unto his own creation, man, and knew it to be himself and that this entrance into the skull of man—this union of God and man—resulted in the birth of a son out of the skull of man; which birth gave to that man eternal life and union with his creator forever? If I now tell what I experienced that night I do so not to impose my ideas on others but that I may give hope to those who, like Nicodemus, wonder how can a man be born when he is old? How can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? How can this be? Well, this is how it happened to me.1042 ¶30

A heavenly dream in which the arts flourished was suddenly interrupted by the most intense vibration centered at the base of my skull. Then a drama as real as those I experience when I am fully awake began to unfold. I felt myself within my skull trying to force my way out through its base. Something gave way and I felt myself move head downward through the base of my skull. I squeezed myself out, inch by inch. When I was almost out I held what I took to be the foot of the bed and pulled the remaining portion of me out of my skull. There on the floor I laid for a few seconds. Then I rose and looked at my body on the bed. It was lying on its back and tossing from side to side like one in recovery from a great ordeal.1042 ¶31

As I contemplated it, hoping that it would not fall off the bed, I became aware that the vibration which started the whole drama was not only in my head but now was also coming from the corner of the room. As I looked over to the corner I wondered if that vibration could be caused by a very high wind, a wind strong enough to vibrate the window. I could not believe that the vibration which I still felt within my head was related to that which seemed to be coming from the corner of the room.1042 ¶32

Looking back to the bed, I discovered that my body was gone but in its place sat my three oldest brothers. My oldest brother sat where the head was. My second and third brothers sat where the feet were. None seemed to be aware of me, although I was aware of them and could discern their thoughts. I suddenly became aware of the reality of my own invisibility. I noticed that they, too, were disturbed by the vibration coming from the corner of the room. My third brother was the most disturbed and went over to investigate the cause of the disturbance. His attention was attracted by something on the floor and looking down he announced, “It is Neville’s baby.” My other two brothers, in most incredulous voices, asked, “How can Neville have a baby?” My brother lifted the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid him on the bed. I, then, with my invisible hands lifted the babe and asked him, “How is my sweetheart?” He looked into my eyes and smiled, and I awoke in this world—to ponder this greatest of my many mystical experiences.1042 ¶33

One other vision I will tell because it bears out the truth of my assertion that the Bible is mystical fact—that everything written about the Promised Child is in the Law of Moses, and the prophets, and the Psalms, and it must be mystically experienced in the imagination of the individual. The child’s birth is a sign and a portent signaling the resurrection of the patriarchs in the imagination of him in whom the child is born.1042 ¶34

Six months after the birth of the child a vibration similar to the one which preceded his birth started in my head. This time its intensity was centered at the top of my head. Then came a sudden explosion and I found myself in a modestly furnished room. There, leaning against the side of an open door was my son David of Biblical fame. He was a lad about twelve years old. What struck me forcibly about him was the unusual beauty of his face and figure. He was—as he is described in the first book of Samuel—ruddy, with beautiful eyes and very handsome. Not for one moment did I feel myself to be anyone other than Neville. Yet, I knew that this lad David was my son, and he knew that I was his father. As I sat there contemplating the beauty of my son, the vision faded and I awoke.1042 ¶35

What conclusion can be reached from these mystical experiences? A chamber of man’s image, in man’s imagination, is engraved with every patriarch and character in the Old Testament, and that after the birth of a child out of the skull of man, signifying that man’s rebirth from above—there will begin the resurrection of the patriarchs. Each in his turn will be revealed as the son of the man who resurrects him. When all are resurrected from the dead, that man in whom they are resurrected will know himself to be of the Elohim: the God who became man that man may become God.1042 ¶36

We are told that because of an act of disobedience man fell, thereby separating himself from God. But scripture tells us that God consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy upon them. So we see: the fall was a deliberate act, a plan for expansion, for greater existence, and an ultimate birth.1040 ¶1

Scholars consider the 82nd Psalm as one of the most difficult of all the psalms to interpret, stating that although the idea may be perennial, its meaning has vanished. Here are a couple of verses from that psalm: The Lord speaks, saying: “I say, ‘You are gods, Sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O princes.’ ” These words are addressed to every child born of woman regardless of race or nationality. I say to you right now, you are gods, Sons of the Most High, all of you! Evidently when these words were first spoken we were not men, otherwise the forecasting of our death like men would have no meaning. As a man, you know you will die; so what is being said here? First called a son of God, you were told of the grand experiment in the statement, you shall die like men. Here is the plot for expansion and an ultimate birth.1040 ¶2

But what were we prior to the fall? I cannot describe that body, but I will use scripture in the hope that you will use your imagination, although I urge you not to come to any definite conclusions. The fall, in symbolism, is associated with the serpent. As God’s wisest creature, he said to generic man (in the form of woman): “Did God say you would die?” and she answered: “Yes, if I ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Then he made this statement: “God knows you will not surely die, but your eyes will be opened and you will become like the gods, knowing good and evil.” The serpent has now become man!1040 ¶3

This serpent is described by Isaiah as the seraphim. Describing his vision, Isaiah said: “I beheld the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up. Above him were the seraphim.” In Hebrew, the word means glorious celestial being, fiery serpent, noble one, prince.1040 ¶4

Our friend, Marta, departed this world on the 19th of July. Within a week after Marta’s departure, her friend who was with her when she died had this vision. She saw Marta, the same dear girl we all loved. She was in a cage, heart-shaped but inverted so that the base was wider than the top, with a line of division between the two sections. Marta was on one side, with an enormous serpent on the other, with rings of color from its tail to its head. Questioning her, Marta said: “How much longer will it be until we will become one?” Picking up a book, the lady read aloud: “After six thousand years, man and the serpent become one. You can tell the age of the serpent by the number of rings.” Approaching Marta, preparing to count the serpent’s rings, she said: “If Neville says it is so, it is so,” and awoke.1040 ¶5

Now, God speaks to man through the language of dream and makes himself known in vision. Here is a vision. My friend has come to the end of the road. She has completely finished the drama and the two are now becoming one. Think about it. What would you get if you blended man and the serpent? A glorious, fiery being which Isaiah described as having six wings - two covering the face, two the feet and two used for propulsion. You cannot describe the heavenly being you really are; yet you are gods, sons of the Most High, O princes. One being, containing all within himself, fell into division and resurrects into unity, into a holy temple of the Lord in whom you also are built in.1040 ¶6

The act of resurrection is God’s mightiest act, for he must awaken his sons, who deliberately fell into this world of decay and death. Dwell upon your true being, for although you have forgotten it, you are a son of God. You had to forget this truth in order to assume the limitations of this cross called man. But before this assumption, our one grand hope was for expansion and ultimate birth. Having fallen into division, we will return to a unity far greater than we knew prior to the descent.1040 ¶7

Without defining exactly what you look like, suppose you are now the being spoken of as the son of God. You certainly are not a man, because you must fall into man and die like men. Knowing that no man takes your life, you lay it down yourself. You have the power to lay it down and the power to lift it up again. You agreed to take upon yourself this garment of anatomy called man, which is filled to overflowing with passion. Now, believing yourself to be human, you have emptied yourself of your power and wisdom. You cannot restrain the impulse to act, even though you were told that if you entertained one concupiscent thought you would die.1040 ¶8

Can you now see that the drama is psychological and not physical? The moment you contemplate an act, it has been committed. Whether it is pleasant and you may be inclined to do it physically, or you restrain the impulse to act upon that which you are contemplating, the act is already done! “You have heard it said of old: ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ but I say to you that any man who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act with her in his heart.” Here you see the whole drama put into a psychological frame.1040 ¶9

It is not good enough to restrain the impulse. You can’t even have it! God consigned you to disobedience by giving you a garment of passion and then telling you that if you entertained one concupiscent thought, you would die. There is not a thing you – as man – have ever done that God has seen something to be blamed in the act. And in the end, God in his infinite mercy will step beyond and arouse you. Having tasted what it is to be man in a world of death, you - a son of the Most High - will add what you have extracted from being man, to God’s glory.1040 ¶10

Before you fell into this world of men, you were infinitely greater than any man who ever walked the face of this earth. You have no ancestor comparable to the being you really are. Although you emptied yourself of your divine power and wisdom, it is still awaiting your return. And you will return expanded beyond the wildest dreams of what you were prior to the fall.1040 ¶11

One Man, containing all men, fell into division, and all men are gathered one by one and redeemed into the unity of the one Man who fell. “This structure is slowly built as a holy temple of the Lord in whom you also are built in.” Let no one tell you that you did anything wrong to cause your descent. It was because God challenged himself to literally die and overcome death. This you will know to be true when you begin to stir within yourself. Then your brain will become alive, and you will awaken in the tomb of your skull, from which you will come out.1040 ¶12

Now we are told: “He is designated son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead.” If you read scripture carefully, you will discover that the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes is not a birth, but a sign of the birth. And when it is said that Jesus was twelve years old, I ask you: twelve from what? Not from a little garment of flesh, but Jesus Christ is a wholly supernatural being. He is the son who fell when he wasn’t man to begin with. Jesus is the someone buried in you that is you! One day he will awaken and you will see others, but they will not see you, as you will be invisible to them. But you will know yourself to be sheer power and sheer wisdom.1040 ¶13

So resurrection is identified with birth, for at that moment you are designated son of God, with power by your resurrection from the dead. Man is born anew through the resurrection of the son of God, who died to give life to his little body which appears in the world. Regardless of your physical age, the moment you are called you are resurrected to experience your ultimate birth, which was the hope before the fall of the one Man who fell.1040 ¶14

Although this may seem too spiritual, I am telling you of your true background. You do not have any ancestor who is a son of God - you are! You have deliberately forgotten it for a little while, but no one here can come close to the nobility of the being you really are. You are the seraphim! A glorious flaming celestial being! The noble one! Even though our association with the serpent is one of fear, the seraphim are those who are around the throne of God.1040 ¶15

What we are dealing with here is creativity. Having eaten of the tree of good and evil, man judges, but God sees neither right nor wrong. Allowing man to do what he wills, God knows that man will be redeemed and return more glorious, more luminous, than before his descent. Let no one tell you that because of your disobedience you are separated from God, for your separation was both a tragedy and a triumph. A tragedy because you fell into death, and a triumph because you will rise into life everlasting.1040 ¶16

Now, every mystic sees the journey as one of six thousand years. Blake beheld the visions of his deadly sleep of six thousand years as dancing around his skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold - which he knew to be himself. How can I describe my vision other than to say that when my body was split from top to bottom, I did not see a form, only golden, liquid light, which I knew to be myself. Then I fused with it and rose, just like a serpent, into my skull.1040 ¶17

Now, I know from experience that when you are born from above, you are designated son of God and given the power to raise the dead. “The dead will hear the voice of the son of God and rise. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the son also to have life in himself.” The son of man has the power of judgment on earth, but the son of God has the power to call his brothers out of their graves. No hydrogen bomb can raise the dead. It can kill them, but nothing can arouse them but this power. When it is applied to one who has been asleep for six thousand years, it will cause him to awake and rise from the grave of his own body, in which he has been sleeping all these years.1040 ¶18

Now I would like to tell you a little story. As a man called Neville, I was born into a large and very poor family. We had no educational, social, or financial background, but my mother was very wise. If she saw anything she thought unbecoming in her children she would say: “Have you forgotten that you are a Goddard?” (That was our surname.) We were too young to know anything about backgrounds, but the mere fact that mother said it, made us realize that we must have forgotten we were Goddards or we would not have done what we did. By the time we discovered that we had no background, the idea was so ingrained in us that we made the name important, with the result that the Goddards in Barbados today are the outstanding business people of the island.1040 ¶19

Year after year, our family-owned corporation does a gross of over $30 million and it grows and grows; yet it all started with mother saying: “Have you forgotten you are a Goddard?” You can take any little thought like that and make the tree of money grow for you in this world. Then just imagine what you could do if you go beyond this world of Caesar.1040 ¶20

You could imagine that the Elohim - a compound unity of one made up of the redeemed - has taken his place in the divine congregation. In the midst of the gods he pronounces judgment, saying: “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you: nevertheless, you shall die like men and fall as one man, O princes, O seraphim, O glorious celestial beings! You will empty yourself of your glory, your wisdom and your power and take upon yourself a garment of death and decay. Then, after a journey of horror for six thousand years, you will be restored having expanded your wisdom and your power by reason of your descent into decay and death.”1040 ¶21

So let no one tell you that you did anything which was wrong to be expelled and separated from the Father. Yours was a deliberate act for your expansion and ultimate birth. Now let us go into the silence.1040 ¶22

Although man develops more and more power on earth, it is like kindergarten, compared to the power that is his in the New Age.1038 ¶1

Christ within you as your hope of glory is the personification of this power. Knowing himself to be all power, Jesus turned to those who followed him, and said: “Wait in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” You are clothed with that power when the Holy Spirit, symbolized as a dove, descends upon you.1038 ¶2

Clothed with the power from on high, Jesus entered the synagogue, opened the Book of Isaiah to the 61st chapter, and read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me. He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor and to release the captives.” Closing the book, he handed it to the attendant and said: “Today the scripture you have just heard has been fulfilled.” The Old Testament predicted the coming of the New Age, called the kingdom of God. By this statement, Jesus claimed to be its fulfillment, for when the dove descended he knew he was the Messiah, the embodiment of power and wisdom.1038 ¶3

When Pilate, the personification of logic and reason, asked: “Where are you from?” Jesus did not answer. But when he said: “Do you not know I have the power to release or crucify you?” Jesus replied: “You have no power over me unless it is given you from within.” In other words, if I do not give my power to you, you have none. In the above statement the word “anothen” is translated “from above,” but its true meaning is “from within.” This same word is used when Nicodemus is told: “Unless you are born from within, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”1038 ¶4

The power from within is life-giving and entirely different from the power of this world. If you desired to physically leave this room, as an animated being I would have no power to hold you here. But as a life-giving spirit, I could hold and control your actions.1038 ¶5

As a life-giving spirit, I have entered a scene from within. Those who were present could not see me; yet I was so alive with power in myself, that I knew if I arrested it, everything I perceived would stand still. I did, and instantly everyone and everything was stilled. I examined them to discover that they were dead as though made out of clay. Then I released that power in myself, and everyone once more became animated, and continued to fulfill their intentions. Possessing no power in them, I did not release the power in them but in me.1038 ¶6

Only when you wear the Human Form Divine - which is the embodiment of love - will you exercise this power. It is never exercised here, for your power is too great. You could, by arresting an army, rearrange their intention, release them, and they would execute your instructions - even if it meant their death. But wisdom goes hand in hand with that power.1038 ¶7

Paul asks: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? In the wisdom of God the world does not know God through wisdom. The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” God cannot be found through studying scripture. He must be revealed! God either reveals himself to you, or you remain ignorant as to who he is.1038 ¶8

God first revealed himself to Moses as destructive power, saying: “I AM the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name I AM I did not make myself known to them.” The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew only sheer power, but Moses knew God as I AM. Revealing himself as power, then as I AM, when God’s son calls you father, you will know who you really are. This is the wisdom of God as opposed to the wisdom of man.1038 ¶9

A friend of mine shared this vision with me. He said: “I am driving my car, when suddenly I am airborne, gliding over the treetops. Navigating the car by body-English, it rises as I lighten my body and descend with my body weight.1038 ¶10

“Suddenly I panic, and must have crashed because I lost consciousness and the next thing I knew I was in a humanoid body such as I have never seen. The outside was dead, beige dust like the coals of a fireplace, with two holes where the eyes should be.1038 ¶11

“I am not alone, there are others but they seem to be mindless water carriers. Asking a question of one, he pointed to a large boulder made of the same substance as my body. I climbed this rock and saw you, Neville, wearing a similar body. At your side was a mindless, brainless automaton.1038 ¶12

“We began to talk, and I opened my wallet to show you a card which implied I was a writer. The man at your side questioned you and you answered him very superficially, conveying to me with a look that the man was incapable of understanding anything. Then you and I were alone, and you said: ‘No one can deny you the next four reunions with God.’ I did not understand the words, but your manner implied they were very important and a joy permeated my being as I awoke.”1038 ¶13

These fleshly garments look like the garments he saw, when seen from a certain level. Paul tells us that the first man (Esau, Cain, etc.) is the man of dust, but the second man (Christ) is the man of heaven. These bodies of dust are moved by a power from within.1038 ¶14

Blake explained this so beautifully, when he said: “Those in great Eternity who contemplate on death (this world) say thus, ‘What seems to be is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences, to those to whom it seems to be, even of torment, despair and Eternal death. But Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems Man in the body of Jesus.’”1038 ¶15

Every vision has a single jet of truth in it. My friend who had the vision is now being redeemed; because no one - but no one - can prevent him from experiencing the four reunions with God, at which time Divine Mercy redeems him in the body of Jesus. The first reunion is God’s birth from within. The second is the discovery of his son, David. This is followed by the third mighty reunion, when his spiritual body is split in two and God ascends like a spiral of lightning into heaven. And finally, the fourth act appears, as the Holy Spirit embodies the form of a dove to clothe him - as you - with power from on high.1038 ¶16

From that moment on, you are aware of an entirely different world. You will no longer be an animated body, but know yourself to be a life-giving spirit, moving through heavenly states, giving life and telling the eternal story. Having joined those in great eternity, you too will contemplate on those who sleep in death and know that what seems to be is - to those to whom it seems to be. You will not raise a finger to change their experiences, as you will know they are necessary in the world of Caesar.1038 ¶17

Having entered the New Age, where there is no time or space, you will discover that you are every place at the same time if you so desire, and that you are the creator of it all.1038 ¶18

You see, when you emptied yourself of your power and wisdom to take on the form of a slave in the world of time, it was at once a tragedy and yet a triumph. Just like a sucker, which breathes and feeds on its parent, knows tremendous tragedy when detached and planted separately - but it becomes the parent because of the separation. So your separation is a tragedy and yet a victory, for you do become aware of being God the Father because of it.1038 ¶19

The fall into decay and death was purposely planned. We are all awakening and returning to the awareness of being the one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all. Having fallen into division, we are gathered into the unity of being the one Father, enhanced by our experiences in this world of death.1038 ¶20

I can describe this power in words, but its true feeling must be experienced. One evening, while sitting in MacArthur Park, I watched a man walk by, stand on a corner, and light a cigarette. Then I arrested that power in me and the match remained lit, yet did not burn beyond the place it was only a moment before. The man, standing as a statue, appeared to be totally unaware of the lighted match, while the park took on the stillness of death. Then I released the power within me and watched the man blow out the match, throw it away, and continue to walk with the others. When you are clothed with the power from on high, you feel it, and these things happen to you.1038 ¶21

Because of his disbelief, man sees this power as foolishness. So Paul told the Corinthians: “Since in the wisdom of God man did not by wisdom know God, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach, to save those who believe.” All that you are called upon to do is to listen to the eternal story of salvation, and believe by responding to it. Then go about your business by using your power to cushion the blows of life; and when it pleases God, you will be saved.1038 ¶22

Although your power here is like a little firecracker compared to your real power, when you know what you want and believe you have it, your power of belief will make it so. Construct a scene which implies the fulfillment of your desire. Give it all of the sensory vividness you are capable of giving, and rest in the knowledge that its implication is the power to bring your desire into your world.1038 ¶23

You don’t have to be a brilliant scholar to use your creative power. In fact, the more brilliant you are, the less you are likely to try it. The so-called brilliant mind believes only in that which is physical and visible, and therefore does not believe a desire can be fulfilled by a simple imaginal act.1038 ¶24

But I know the power of imagining, for I have sat quietly in my chair in my living room, constructed a scene which implied the fulfillment of my desire, gave it all of the qualities of naturalness so that it felt right - and let it be. Then, just as I would drop a seed into the ground and wait for its maturity, my seed of desire matured and fulfilled itself in my world.1038 ¶25

Imagine whatever you desire. Believe you will receive it and go about your business in the world with patience and confidence, knowing your desire will erupt and become a reality. Use the law while you remain in the city waiting to be clothed with power from on high, for it will come.1038 ¶26

Believe me, for God’s pattern of salvation has unfolded in me. The divine drama has reached its climax. Only Caesar’s history continues, and every child born of woman is fulfilling it. Moving across the screen of space for thousands of years, man experiences moments of joy and sorrow, sadness and pain, until the dramatic story of Christ unfolds from within. It takes 1260 days from God’s first mighty act to the final one. Then, if the brothers decide it is your task to remain and tell the story, you will.1038 ¶27

Like Paul, I long to depart. I feel as though there is a thorn in my side and I pray to have it removed. But I will remain, knowing my grace is sufficient, for my power is made perfect in weakness.1038 ¶28

I recall the first night I met Abdullah. I had purposely delayed going to one of his meetings, because a man whose judgment I did not trust had insisted on my attendance. At the end of the meeting, Ab approached me and said: “Neville, you are six months late.” Startled, I questioned how he knew my name, when he said: “The brothers told me you would be here six months ago.” Then he added: “I will remain until you have received all that I must give you. Then I will depart.” He, too, may have longed to go, but he had to wait for me.1038 ¶29

If you are serious about the study of the Bible, read the eighth chapter of Proverbs. Begin with the 22nd verse, and as you go through to the end you will discover it is all about wisdom. Personified as a little child, wisdom says: “He who finds me, finds life and receives favor from the Lord. He who misses me injures himself. He who hates me loves death.” One day, finding life in yourself, you will hold wisdom in your arms and receive favor from the Lord. But if you would rather have more of the world of Caesar, you will hate the idea of the child, because you love death.1038 ¶30

The world and all of its conflict is essential to the work that is being done in you. But in the end, you will have these four wonderful reunions with God and find yourself in the kingdom of heaven. Your awakening and resurrection takes you from this world of death. The discovery of your Son, your ascent into heaven, and the descent of the Holy Spirit is your entrance into the New Age, where you wear the body of Christ, the power and the wisdom of God.1038 ¶31

Now let us go into the silence.1038 ¶32

We are here in this world for one purpose and that is to fulfill God’s Word, which is scripture. Oh, you can accomplish miracles while you are here, but God sent you – his Word – into the world, saying: “My Word shall not return unto me void. It must accomplish that which I purposed and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” You are that Word, and you are destined to fulfill scripture.1033 ¶1

This past week a lady wrote me, saying: “Recently I have been having difficulty remembering my dreams, but this one was the most difficult I have ever encountered. I knew I had to surface to tell it to you, but it seemed like an endless depth of utter darkness from which I came. Holding onto the memory image of what I had experienced, I felt as though I were a diver who had plunged too deep and would never make the surface, but I did and this is my experience. ”1033 ¶2

I stood before Jerusalem’s gates. They were enormous wooden gates with high, high walls. I was so thrilled to be there, but my thrill quickly vanished when I realised that the gates were closed. Then I found myself on a high hill, clothed in a body of light, which radiated from me in all directions. In the distance I could see the whole of earth with its curvature, and felt as though I stood in some space ship and shed my light on all. I knew that if I so desired I could rearrange everything I saw, yet I also knew that everything was ordered and as it should be. Then I began this terrific struggle to return to my earthly body, for I wanted to share what I had experienced.”1033 ¶3

In a book called Looking at Modern Painting, there is a chapter on Max Beckmann, a modern symbolic artist. In it he said: “I awoke and yet continued dreaming, for I saw William Blake, that noble emanation of English genius. Looking like some super-terrestrial patriarch, he waved friendly greetings and said to me, ‘Do not be intimidated by the horrors of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path and you will receive from your own ego, a deeper perception of the eternal beauty of creation. And you will know an ever increasing release from that which now seems so sad and terrible.’”1033 ¶4

Just like William Blake, this lady knew that everything is ordered and perfect and as it should be for man to experience.1033 ¶5

Now let me share an experience of mine. When I was in my twenties I found myself in the presence of the most beautiful woman I could ever perceive, and a horrible, hairy monster which resembled an ape or a gorilla. The monster looked at the heavenly being and speaking in a guttural voice, he called her “mother.” Well, I lost my temper, and as I pummeled it the monster began to grow. Thriving on violence, I realised that this was my emanation. He was the embodiment of every evil thought I had ever had and all of my violent acts, while the heavenly woman represented every noble, kind deed I had ever committed. Looking from one to the other I vowed to myself (since there was no one present with whom I could make a contract) that if it took me eternity I would redeem this monster. As I made this commitment, the monster began to melt before my eyes. And as it dissolved, all of my misspent and misused energy that went into the shaping of this monster as I traveled the path of time, returned to me. Feeling like infinite power, I watched the radiant creature begin to glow like the sun as I awoke.1033 ¶6

Now let us take these two experiences from scripture. We are told in the 8th chapter of the Book of Mark, that when the blind man’s eye was opened, he said: “I see men as trees, walking.” And in the 4th chapter of the Book of Daniel, the king – while lying on his bed – had a vision of the tree of life, a tree which fed the world, housed the birds of the air, and sheltered the animals. Then a man appeared, saying: “Hew the tree down, cut off its branches, strip the leaves and scatter its fruit. But leave the stump of the roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron.” The pronoun is now changed to: “Let him be watered with the dew of heaven, let him make his abode with the beasts of the field. Let his mind be changed from that of a man and let the mind of a beast be given to him. Let seven times pass over him until he learns that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he wills.”1033 ¶7

In the creation of both the wonderful being and the monstrous one, I wore the heart and the mind of the beast, as we all do while covered with this animal body of flesh. I am the tree of life that was felled to become man. This lady experienced the tree of life, as she gave life to every object she looked upon. She saw that the gates of Jerusalem were locked, and she saw correctly, for there is only one way into the city of God called Jerusalem, and that is up the water shaft.1033 ¶8

In the 5th chapter of 2 Samuel we are told that David captured the city of Zion by moving up the water shaft, which he built from the outer, inward and up at the same time. Well, the only way you can ever build from the out, in and up at the same time is to build in a spiral. The city of God is entered only up the spiral ladder of your spine into your skull.1033 ¶9

Have you ever seen pictures of man with his skin off, exposing all of his veins, arteries, and nerves? That’s the tree of life, which is rooted in the brain and inverted. Having gone down into generation, you have taken your power there to generate sex and animate forms. The day will come when your creative power is resurrected and you enter the world of regeneration, to create without a divided image. Knowing yourself to be the creator of all life, in the resurrection you are above the organisation of sex.1033 ¶10

How many times during the history of the world have men done violence to themselves trying to bring this power about? Many of the early fathers of the Christian faith castrated themselves in the hope that they could produce it, but it happens only when you are turned around. In my own case, I felt myself being split in two from top to bottom. Then I saw that golden liquid light which had gone down into generation and knew it to be myself. Fusing with that which I beheld, I went up the water shaft in a serpentine motion and entered Jerusalem, the city of love, and no one can enter any other way.1033 ¶11

So she saw it perfectly. That was a foreshadowing of the power that is in store for her. We are told in the Book of Revelation: “I beheld the city of God, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Well, “Your maker is your husband, the Lord of Host is his name.”1033 ¶12

You are the maker of this beautiful creature, creating her out of every noble act that you have ever committed. She is your emanation, yet your wife, till the sleep of death is past. And you are the maker of this monstrous thing that is unseen until that moment in time when you reach the threshold and must make the decision to redeem your misused energy or not. He is the embodiment of every unlovely, vile thing you have ever imagined. Feeding on violence, he whispers in your ear morning, noon, and night, urging you to violate everything you love. Thoughts you think are hidden, feed this monster and make him stronger and stronger.1033 ¶13

In the 8th chapter of the Book of Ezekiel we are told that they went into their chambers, saying: “No one sees me,” and they carve every abominable beast on the walls of the temple. All right, “I am the temple of the Living God.” I carve all these thoughts on the inside saying, “No one sees what I am doing,” but I am seeing and hearing it as I am doing it, and there is no other God besides me.1033 ¶14

Housed in you, God put upon himself the garment of an animal, the mind of an animal and the heart of an animal when the tree was felled. Man thinks the tree of life is going to be found on the outside, but it is not there. Blake said it so beautifully in his wonderful poem, “Songs of Experience, The Human Abstract”: “The Gods of the earth and sea, Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree, But their search was all in vain: There grows one in the Human Brain.”1033 ¶15

Fifteen or sixteen years ago, in vision, I saw these wonderful men walking like stags. Such majesty, with antlers coming out of their heads so high they disappeared into the sky. Then I saw a man who at that time was third in the government of England. [A very controversial figure, he disliked aristocracy, wealth, or anything that he considered noble. He tried to nationalise all industry, and in the trying he nearly broke England.] This man took a tree from the outside and put it on his head, stood on the highest hill, jumped, and fell flat. Getting up again, he climbed the hill, placed the tree on his head, jumped, and fell again. He was trying to wear the tree of life on the outside, trying to change the structure of the world by spending money, and not changing self.1033 ¶16

Just like someone covered with tar offering to help you clean the house, a man with unclean hands cannot make things clean! You cannot give another that which you do not have. As a nation we have just sent millions of dollars to nations, thinking we are going to change them, but change does not come that way. There is no power on the outside. The power that lifts you up so that you can remove mountains comes from within, and it doesn’t turn up until your spiritual body is split. Then and only then are you turned around, and the energy that went down into generation is turned up into regeneration.1033 ¶17

Castrating yourself or signing the vow of celibacy means nothing. You can be celibate from now to the ends of time, but you will dream of sex. You will end up with a cesspool for a mind and condemn every lovely girl and boy who go to the altar in marriage, and claim their offspring is sin. Of all the nonsense in the world! If that is true, then they – the offspring of a sinful act – are the embodiment of sin are they not? I tell you: you can’t bottle this energy. Sex is natural when your energy is turned down, but one day it will be turned up, and you will know a creative power greater than anything you could ever imagine while your imagination is divided.1033 ¶18

Believe me when I tell you: everyone must face their monster and their heavenly being, for no one is devoid of lovely thoughts. The love you felt for your mother when you were a child, or when you gave from the heart – these are the acts that go into making your lovely ideal. When a friend of mine died, Kathleen Norris wrote her husband, saying: “I have never known a more giving person. She never wrote me a letter but what she enclosed a recipe, a poem, a clipping from a paper, or a handkerchief. She never waited until Christmas to give in the hope she would receive as generous a gift (as most people do) but gave all through the year.”1033 ¶19

This lady has been feeding her heavenly being, and one day she, too, will face her monster just as you will, because you are the God who created it and what God has made he can unmake. God is not made and therefore cannot be unmade. He is the maker. He makes his new Jerusalem, his emanation yet his wife till the sleep of death is past, and he also makes his Hell through his mistaken use of energy.1033 ¶20

One day you will stop feeding it and vow to yourself that you will redeem it, even if it takes eternity. But it doesn’t take eternity; right before your eyes he gets smaller and as all of the energy that it embodied returns to you to now use wisely and lovingly.1033 ¶21

Any time you use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are building your new Jerusalem, and one day she will descend attired as a bride. You are building her out of your noble thoughts; that’s why I say: “Live so that your mind can store a past worthy of recall, for the mind whose contents vanish suffers loss, though you yourself cannot be lost, but only as through fire will you awaken.”1033 ¶22

So I want to thank this lady for sharing her perfectly marvelous experience with me that I may share it with you. She saw the perfect vision, the beautiful imagery of Jerusalem. But the city is a bride, an emanation of beauty that returns to you to become one, making you infinitely greater because of that union. Having emanated both, when your misspent energy returns to you, you wear it, not as two but as one. Then leaving all, you will cleave to your emanation of beauty to become one being; thereby you are enhanced in beauty, enhanced in love, enhanced in wisdom and power by reason of your journey.1033 ¶23

So do no violence to these bodies of yours in the hope of entering Jerusalem. As Blake said: “I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball: It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, Built in Jerusalem’s wall.” The body you wear is not the gate. It is only the shadow. You must go to the center where the king dwells, for it is there that you know you are the king. Then all the blind and lame thoughts who kept you out while you struggled to find the truth, are destroyed.1033 ¶24

Man is the tree of life. I have seen them walking. One day a friend of mine in San Francisco who is an artist was waiting for me at the Palace Hotel. As I came through the door into the three to four storied lobby, she saw my 5’11” body as a stag with antlers reaching up to the sky and drew a picture of them, even to the same suit I wore.1033 ¶25

Now, the lady whose vision I shared tonight saw them as radiations from every part of her body, but my artist friend saw them as antlers. They both saw that which is not of this world.1033 ¶26

Your ultimate goal is not to become a millionaire or to be famous, but to fulfill the Word of God. “My Word shall not return unto me void, but must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it. You are the Word who cut yourself down and left just the roots. You placed bands around you so that you would grow and reach the sky and the birds would come and nest. The tree of life is not in some little garden of God on the outside; you are that tree whose energies have gone down into generation. One day the power that you are will be regenerated, and your inverted tree will stand erect and bear the fruit of life.1033 ¶27

Now let us go into the silence.1033 ¶28

We believe that man can create anything he desires. We believe the Universe is infinite response and the one who causes it is the individual perceiver. Nothing is independent of your perception of it. We are so interwoven we are part of the machine, but as we awake we detach ourselves from this machine and make life as we wish it to be. “For man is all Imagination and God is man and exists in us and we in him.” “The eternal body of man is the Imagination: that is God himself.” You can imagine and I can imagine, and if we can be faithful to the state imagined it must appear in our world. This is not new. This was given centuries ago, for we have it in the Bible; but people do not know how to read the Bible, so they got together and organised it into an “ism.” It is not an “ism,” but it is the great plan to free man. The Bible shows this plan in detail. We will turn to a few passages and show you what those who wrote it intended we should see.1031 ¶1

“Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: He who believes will not be in haste.’” Now, we are told in the Book of Psalms that the world rejected the stone. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” “You cannot lay any other stone.” “On this stone you may build gold, silver, hay, or stubble and the day will reveal it.” I tell you that this stone is your Imagination, and it is called in the Bible: Christ Jesus, or God, or the Lord. It is your Imagination, which is one with the Divine Imagination which created, sustains, changes, and even destroys parts of the creation. This is the stone that is tested and it is a sure foundation, and he who believes in it will not be in haste. If I can but imagine and know that imagining creates reality I will not be impatient or lead a superficial life. When a man does not live in his Imagination he will become impatient of the outcome of what he desires, and finally he will become violent in his effort to get things.1031 ¶2

Here is one who asks the question: “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” Some said this and some that, but again he asked: “But who do you say that I am?” “And Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in Heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.’” The churches tell you that it means a man called Peter. It is not an individual. The whole thing takes place in the mind of you the individual. You imagine a certain state and it is called Peter.1031 ¶3

If it were a man called Peter, you would not find what you find six verses later. For there he turns to the same character, Peter, and says to him: “Get behind me, Satan: You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.” That is what every man in the world does. He gets a revelation and he realises the foundation stone is Imagining. He sees a friend who needs help and he imagines he has what he wants. If he believes it, he is not in haste. He is imagining what he wants and he is not violent, and he is not concerned, and he does not give suggestions to the friend as to what to do physically to bring his desire to pass. If the foundation stone is true, there is only one power to support it. If he knows that, he will not allow himself to be turned; he will remain faithful to his assumption. But we are told in the Bible story that the one who had been commended, Peter, turned and became violent, and then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan.”1031 ¶4

You turn back to the ways of men to get things to go as you want them to go. You pull all the wires and therefore you have turned from the only foundation in the world, and that is Christ Jesus, which is human Imagination. If you believe this you will not reject the stone. “Stone” is “even” in Hebrew and it means to create, or build, or beget children. Here is a stone in “Zion” (which means a high pinnacle or a barren place). That is man, before the stone is sunk in him. He is the waste, the desert. Sunk in man as his Imagination is the only foundation stone, for there is no other foundation of the living God and he has sunk himself in me. Therefore, I am the son of the living God, for there is only one and I Am he. If I believe this, I will not be impatient. “He who believes it will not be in haste.” This is the Lord’s way.1031 ¶5

I ask you to test it. Bring before your mind’s eye what you want to see in this world. It may be business or a friend’s good fortune. It can be anything, for on this foundation you can put stubble, or wood, or hay. You are building with hay when you say of someone: “I know – he was no good.” They lived in that state concerning another and then it came to pass – and they say: “I always thought he was like that.” Some of us build strange things for another. We were imagining on the only foundation, but we have put stubble on it instead of gold or silver, and the day revealed it, and then we cannot relate what happens to anything we have done. The Hebrew meaning of the “stone” is to beget children. All the events of my life are my children. Everyone can build on this one foundation.1031 ¶6

“I am laying in Zion a stone.” What stone? God is burying himself in everyone in the world. It is a true stone, a precious cornerstone, and one who believes will not be in haste. I have seen an imaginal act take two years to come forth, but when it appeared – what a giant! I have seen it come in an hour. But do not be in haste or think there is any other foundation and – like Peter – turn to another foundation, growing violent toward those who would lead Jesus to the cross. But Christ said: “I came to move toward the cross. Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me.”1031 ¶7

If I am still in the machine, I think the good things come only by accident or chance. Let the wheel turn, for each must go through all the furnaces until he awakens and sees the whole universe as infinite response. The day will come when every person, at a certain degree of awakening, will freeze an activity within himself, and as it comes to a stop within him, that whole section is “dead.” The laws of nature are only free action, repeated until they become accepted as a law. Yet you will see leaves in mid-air not falling, and people moving in space will cease to move but will not fall, for as you stopped the action within yourself the whole thing stopped. And you will see the whole thing as Zion – the desert – and the only thing that makes it alive is the stone buried in it.1031 ¶8

But man becomes lost in the things he has made and gives to them the power. For example, through the use of his Imagination he brings money into his world; then he forgets that it was the activity of his mind that did this, and he sees in the money itself the power to get what he desires. But when he awakes he will no longer lose himself in his own creation.1031 ¶9

I say to everyone here: there is only one stone. If tonight there is someone very ill who needs your help and you imagine the best for him and then you get news that he is worse tomorrow, do not be impatient, but remain faithful to the one stone laid in Zion. What more can you do after you have imagined? Someone writes to you about a problem. Imagine for them what they desire and then do not turn aside to do anything to make it come true. You remain faithful, and it will create the conditions necessary to bring fulfillment.1031 ¶10

You can look at someone with deep concern and want a change. You do not voice it, but lock it in, and then forty-eight hours later there is initiated what you set in motion. And they wonder: “Could my problem be traced to so-and-so?” Just the very thing you had been thinking! You entertained their problem with deep concern, and then you will ask: “Did you influence me or did I influence you? When did you entertain this thought?” And they say: “Just now,” and then you say: “Forty-eight hours ago I entertained this thought, but I did not say it aloud.” That makes no difference. All things by a law divine In one another’s beings mingle. We all influence each other. We are all interpenetrated, and the more one is deeply concerned for another, the more he is penetrated by another.1031 ¶11

I say the universe is infinite response, but it also gives back more than you imagine. It is pressed down and running over. Therefore, to be negative can be frightening. The good will come back a thousandfold, but so will the negative. But if I am optimistic and do not waver, I will bring that also pressed down and running over. It is something wonderful; it will come like a gusher. The world responds more than it takes, and it gives to the individual more than he imagines – good or bad.1031 ¶12

I say to everyone that the greatest of books is the Bible, but people have organised it, and even say they have found the remains of Peter or some other Biblical character. Peter is not a man, but a state. You rise up to the crown of it all and that is Christ. States are permanent but I am not fixed; I am a living moving being. I can be praised for one state and then I see a morning headline, say, and move from that true foundation, and then the power rebukes me as Satan, for I reacted instead of acted.1031 ¶13

Would you like to be in the state called Peter, the one addressed in Matthew 16? How? Let me say, and mean it: “My Imagination is God and there is no other.” It is one with the supreme power and let me live in that state, and then I am being addressed: “You are blessed, Simon Bar-Jona.” It means the depth of my being is giving it to me. Can I do it? The day that you do it and remember you did it, at that moment you are relating that story. When Peter confessed: “Thou art the Christ,” that is the stone on which the whole thing rests, but when he got away from that and reacted, then he was called Satan, or the re-actor.1031 ¶14

God is begetting sons by means of the stone. He buries himself in every man in the world, but he is rejected. I can tell you these things here, but if I told them across the airways I would be immediately turned off. People cannot believe they are responsible for their imaginal acts. They do not want to believe it. I cannot be free of the results of what I imagine. Go out determined to prove it, and having proved it, keep the stone alive. There is no other stone. “No other can any man lay, which is Christ Jesus.” But on this build anything – but build gold, do not build hay or stubble.1031 ¶15

I want everyone here to test it. Take someone who is really distressed, and if you believe in the foundation you will leave here tonight without any concern for them, even if you receive wires stating things are worse. It might take a week or a month, but that which you have imagined, if you remain faithful to the stone, will come.1031 ¶16

I have seen a man looking at a building – which is an inanimate thing – and you would say it could not respond. How can he look at it and see his name on it when he does not have a nickel? But he did it. I know the man. And in a way he could not have devised, the building became his. Let no one tell you that something cannot respond, but when we are still part of the machine, we cannot quite see that we are the cause of everything in our world, and we hope good fortune will smile on us. Then when you set something bad in motion, as the machine turns you cannot see what caused it, but when you become awake you can control the machine. It responds to the imaginal acts of the awakened man, for the awakened man is in control.1031 ¶17

A thrill is in store for you when you can finally stop all activity and the whole thing will freeze. You will know what the so-called wise men say, but you will hear only these words: “I thank you, Father, that you have hid these things from the wise and pious and revealed them unto babes.” For you will know that it is the perceiver who is making everything alive. For you will find that nothing is independent of the mind of the perceiver. A truly awakened teacher could freeze certain sections for the edification of his students if he chose. By normal standards everything would die if you suspended activity; but it does not die, for there is nothing outside of your perception of it.1031 ¶18

Take your boss or an employee and represent them to yourself as you want them to be, and believe in the reality of the foundation stone, and then you will not make haste to bring it to pass. For Imagination is creating reality, and in a way no one knows it will be brought to pass if you remain faithful is to be brought up by his wife’s sister.1031 ¶19

This man had tried for seven years to get enough ahead to take a trip to St. Louis to see the child. He constantly tried to see himself getting a job with more money so he could make the trip. He was told that by the right use of this law he should only see himself with his child and let the way be left to God. Following this he was given a job that took him from Los Angeles to New Orleans. But that was not near St. Louis. He took the job and persisted in his dream, and in three months he was transferred to the St. Louis run and given a twenty-four hour layover there every week.1031 ¶20

The best thing that ever happened to me was when I was fired from Macy’s during the depression. I might be captain of the elevators if I had stayed there. My father lost everything he owned, and that proved to be the beginning of the great dream he brought to pass. One person believed in him and he started on that, and when he made his exit last October, he had given to his community much that no one had ever given before. The blackest day of his life turned out to be the bright day of his life.1031 ¶21

No matter what you have done, forget it. You are God and God is untarnished, for he is all imagining. Now, you start to imagine and make it something of which you can be proud. Make it big. If it is truly the stone being laid in Zion, do not turn to any argument of man. You be faithful, and whatever you put on the stone as an imaginal activity will come into your world.1031 ¶22

Of course, you may go back to the world of men, like Peter. He denied the stone three times but he did then return to it again. You may do that, but in the end you will learn, for in the depth of your being the words are being said: “Get behind me, Satan.”1031 ¶23

But I have seen people forget. I have seen them rise from nothing to great heights and then say: “It would have happened anyway.” They do not believe that their imaginal activity was the foundation on which they built that structure. There is only one stone and that is your wonderful Imagination.1031 ¶24

This works better if you do not try to aid it on the outside, for it is not flesh and blood that revealed it to you. You got it from the Christ. Now let us go into the silence.1031 ¶25

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The Word became flesh and dwells in us.” Our physical birth is God’s incarnation, for incarnation signifies the assumption by a divine being of human or animal form. When you were born your little human form was assumed by God. Christmas marks the departure from God’s incarnation and your birth as God. There are two births: one when God assumes your human form and the other when you assume the divine form as God! The first birth is from below, while the second birth – called Christmas – is from above. Every child born of woman is God incarnate, or the child could not be aware that he is. His consciousness is God’s incarnation. The world, not knowing this, celebrates the wrong event; for Christmas is when man becomes conscious of being God.1024 ¶1

Here are a few paradoxes which disturb many people. All of these are actual quotes or interpretations of a quote: “I shall no longer speak to you in figures, but tell you plainly of the Father.” “I came out from the Father and came into the world. Again I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” “I and my Father are one.” “I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” “When you see me, you have seen the Father.” “He who you call God, he is my Father, but I know my Father and you know not your God.” “Show us the Father. If you knew me you would not ask, for no one can know me in the true sense and not know God, for He and I are inseparable.” Who is the father who is one with his son, yet greater than he? Can he be the son of God, yet God the Father? And how can I ever know that I and my Father are one? Let us try to solve these strange contradictions.1024 ¶2

In the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, God says: “I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star.” God is the root, the source, the cause of all life. He is the father of David, yet his offspring! As the source God is David’s father, called Jesse or I AM. As the offspring David is called the son of God. The prophet Samuel spoke to David, saying: “God declared that when your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you who will come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son.” Here we see that the root and the offspring are one. I (the root of David) am the cause of all life. In spite of that I come out of David, recognise him and say: “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.” As God the Father, I assume the limitations of the flesh; and using one who is a man after my heart and will do all my will, I become conscious of being a rich man, a poor man, a beggar, and a thief, until David reveals me as his father. “I came to do the will of my Father yet I am the Father, for God the Father and the Son of God is one I AM.”1024 ¶3

There is only God in the world. As the father God created a perfect play. As the son God plays all the parts. As the son God is restricted in his activities. But when the drama is finished God leaves the world of Caesar – greatly expanded – and returns to himself, the Father. As the son God suffers. Ask a man who is suffering and he will answer, I am! That’s the Father, who has become incarnate by assuming human form. When the play is over for him, God will leave the world as the son, to return to the kingdom of heaven as the Father. In our mystery this event is called Christmas.1024 ¶4

Your entrance into this world is God’s incarnation. His departure occurs when his promise to himself is fulfilled in you and you experience a wonderful series of mystical events. Like Paul, I pray that those who believe my message of salvation will know it is true; that the name I gave them for God is not mere poetry, but fact – that you are the Father. I have told them what happened in me. Grant them to know it is true. I am sure my departure will quicken the pace for those who have heard, accepted, and believed my words.1024 ¶5

Now, a gentleman wrote, saying: “I fell asleep and dreamed I was reading the newspaper, looking at a full-page advertisement for Western Airlines. They were announcing their new P.D. system, which would eliminate all passenger congestion when boarding the plane. Suddenly the page became animated and I am in the picture, grinning from ear to ear as I awoke.”1024 ¶6

In his letter he wondered why the initials P.D. He thought the D could be for departure, but could not understand the P, although he used the word “plan” throughout his letter. Everything contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. This gentleman is in advertising so naturally, in the dream he is looking at an ad. In this modern world we have planes which take man from earth to the skies and bring him back again. But this is a plan of transportation. In the Book of Ephesians, we read: “He has made known unto us the mystery of his will in all wisdom and insight according to his purpose which he set forth as a plan in Christ for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”1024 ¶7

My friend called it the departure. This does not necessarily mean that he goes tonight or in the next forty years. To me as the interpreter of the dream it means that he has finished the journey. Like Paul, the time for his departure has come. He has fought the good fight. He has finished the race and kept the faith. Henceforth, there is laid up for him the crown of righteousness. This crown is not something filled with jewels, but is the victor’s crown. Only when one has finished the race can the crown be given. He has fought his own battle with himself, and he has won. His flight into the heavens is a plan which will erupt, causing him to depart this world of Caesar to personally experience Christmas. Christmas is not the incarnation of God, but the departure of Man as God; for God became Man that Man may become God.1024 ¶8

In my friend’s dream he took the images of the twentieth century, and since everything contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance, an airplane symbolises that which takes off towards the heavens. It’s destined to rise above the earth. The “P” is the plan of departure which begins with a spiritual birth, followed by the revelation of man’s true identity. There is no way of knowing who you really are until God’s Son reveals it, for “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” The Son must choose to reveal you, for only then do you know you are God the Father. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the light. No one comes to the awareness of being the Father except by God’s plan. Diet will not do it. Wearing certain clothes, hibernating in some so-called holy place, or being a priest and going up the ranks will not do it. There is only one way to the Father, and I – all imagination – am the way!1024 ¶9

My friend is a happily married man with three children, yet he is so hungry for the truth; so I say: Father, let the truth of my words be known, that he and all those who believe my words know that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.1024 ¶10

One day you will discover that God – the Father who became you – has completed his work. And because he was God when he became you, when his work is complete you will become aware that you are God. There is only one way to know this for a fact, and that is when God’s son, David, stands before you and reveals you as his father. Then the temple of the Living God – which is spirit – is split in two, and you ascend into heaven as a fiery serpent. And finally, the symbol of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove descends, and – clothing you with Himself – once more sends you back into this world, to tell your story to those who will listen.1024 ¶11

This gentleman had a wonderful dream. He may some day devise a plan that Western Airlines will use to ease the boarding congestion, but that was not the message of the dream. He is departing this world of Caesar. Having already had these experiences, he has forgotten them. But he will remember and know that when the time comes for him to depart this little section of time, he will not be restored to life, but will enter the New Age. Being one with the body of God he will know no restrictions, only the complete freedom of being God the Father.1024 ¶12

Having entered the world, God the Father of all life incarnated himself in your flesh and blood body as the son. When God’s work is complete, He will depart this body and return to his heavenly body as the Father, redeeming you. This is the way to redemption, and there is no other way.1024 ¶13

Although the words, “I and my father are one, yet my father is greater than I” appear to be contradictory, they are true. When I – the awareness – take on the limitation of flesh, I am aware of limitation. Finding myself in the form of a slave, I become obedient until death upon the cross called Man, where I remain as God, restricted by my incarnation. Then a predetermined plan erupts and delivers me from my self-imprisonment, and I return to the being I was – but now enhanced because of my self-imposed restriction. Then I can say with Paul: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the laurel leaf – the crown of righteousness.”1024 ¶14

I am reminded of a story told of Charles William Eliot, who – when he retired as president of Harvard University – was given a gift by an old friend in Boston which he treasured greatly. His friend sent him an envelope containing a single laurel leaf. Its message was clear. He was being told he was victorious.1024 ¶15

Everyone will eventually receive that crown of righteousness, as the same crown is given to all who come to the end of the journey. Coming out from the awareness of being God the Father, you came into the world, becoming aware of being Man. You are predestined to return to the awareness of being God the Father once more. This is the story of Man. God comes into the world by assuming human form. He incarnates himself at the birth of a child in order for it to breathe. While here God goes through literal hell, because his life does not end with the grave. Making his exit from this world of death, God is restored to life to continue the journey; to die and be restored once more, over and over again, until he finds this series of supernatural events which leads God to his home – and Christmas.1024 ¶16

Christmas marks the birth of man as God, not the birth of God as man. There is all the difference in the world. Matthew and Luke tell the story of the birth, not as a little physical child, but as a sign of an individual’s birth as God, for God is born that day in the city of David. When God is born in you it will be in the city of David. At that moment you are born as God. And from then on you will grow in stature. You will grow in favor of the Father because you will know yourself to be one with him. You will continue to remain incarnate, however, until that moment when you express your last breath. Then you will discover yourself to be life itself, for you will have entered the one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.1024 ¶17

Once individuality became diffused in all, as told us in the 82nd Psalm: “I say, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O princes.’” Here is this universal diffusion of the one I AM. You say, I am. I say, I am. We say, I am. That’s the one being who fell, incarnating himself by becoming Man. I don’t care what is said about Buddha’s or Confucius’ way; I have told you the only way back to the Father. My testimony is not based upon theory, but upon my own personal experience, and I tell you a truth: there is only one way. I am the way!1024 ¶18

Another gentleman (an artist by profession) wrote, saying: “I found myself at the bottom of a deep well. Looking up I could see a beautiful blue sky with little clusters of white clouds which became doves, with their wings spread as though floating. Then I said to myself: ‘This is what Neville teaches. The dove really does float.’”1024 ¶19

I am thrilled that in this man’s dream, he recalled the teaching. In the Book of Genesis we are told that when the flood of illusion is over, the dove appears bringing back the laurel leaf – the sprig of victory. And the dove actually floats upon the crystal clear water. I have seen this great flood of illusion as crystal clear atmosphere and now know that for me, the ark, the flood, is over. Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth and sea – and he is not a phantom! Man is the ark of God, containing everything within himself.1024 ¶20

Recently a great doctor was asked about the flu which is spreading all over our country. Questioning where the bug goes when the flu subsides, he answered: “It doesn’t go anywhere. It remains in man to be activated again.” I say moods activate it. Leprosy doesn’t come from without. Cancer doesn’t either. Everything is within man.1024 ¶21

Read the paper and react. That reaction sets a feeling in motion, be it anger, frustration, or irritation. When the feeling leaves, where does it go? Back to sleep within you, for you contain the world and all that is in it. God became you and, containing all, God is absolute. The world teaches that God is all good and never evil. But if there is evil, and God is not evil, then God is not absolute. If you can experience something that God cannot then you must be greater than God, and that is not possible.1024 ¶22

When you read of an innocent boy who was murdered and you react, you activate something within you. It may be tomorrow’s tooth or stomach ache. I do not know what it will be, but God is not mocked. As you sow a reaction you reap an act, for you and God are one.1024 ¶23

God actually became as you are the moment you breathed, for breath and spirit are one and the same word in Hebrew and Greek. When you were spanked on the behind, took one deep inhalation and breathed, God became incarnate in you. Then you go through the furnaces of experience to reach the end, when you experience this series of events. No other event or events will take you back.1024 ¶24

The first event is your awakening and resurrection from the skull where God entered. Then your birth as God. Coming out of your skull, all of the symbolism of scripture as described in Matthew and Luke is before you. The three witnesses are there, as well as the child wrapped in swaddling clothes. The witnesses talk about you, but cannot see you, as you are now spirit. Then, because no one has ever seen God but his only begotten son who is in the bosom of the Father, the second event occurs, when God’s son stands before you and makes you known to yourself. Then you, too, will say: “I am the root and the offspring of David.” For, coming out of the garment you have worn throughout your journey in the world of death, you are David, God’s only begotten son!1024 ¶25

There is no other way back to the realisation of being God the Father, for He literally became you that you may become God. We are told that Jesus Christ is God’s son, yet it is he who claims: I and my Father are one. He who sent me has seen the Father. Claiming to be the son who is the Father is a paradox; yet it is resolved when you realise that the son – coming out from the Father – remains the Father, but is restricted by incarnation. God the Father takes upon himself the form of a slave, and – becoming the son – he is obedient until death, even death upon the cross of Man. This God wears, as He moves from one state to another, to another in what the world calls death, until God experiences the one definite plan to return to himself – the Father. So Christmas marks, not the incarnation of God, but the birth of man, as God. Now let us go into the silence.1024 ¶26

This platform is concerned only with Imaginism. We believe the Supreme Power that created the universe is all Imagination. We believe that man is all Imagination, and this Supreme Power we call God exists in us and we in it, that our eternal body is Imagination – that is, God himself. And I mean that literally. So we will turn now to the greatest book in the world, the Bible – which is addressed to the real man, who is all Imagination, not to the “natural” man or the one you see daily reflected in the mirror. For, like my Father, I am spirit, and I, the spiritual man, have neither face, form, nor figure. I must come to understand my own invisibility, for when I fully understand that, I am awake. But I will express myself in form forever and forever.1023 ¶1

This universe, vast as it seems, is only a part, for there are worlds within worlds. This platform is to encourage you to test it and create reality. You can create the conditions of your own world. You must realise that if one is a teacher the responsibility on his shoulders is great, for if I am a teacher my purpose is to make you see as I see, and to the degree that I can get you to see as I see I have succeeded in getting my thought across, but if my thought is false I mislead you, the responsibility is mine.1023 ¶2

“ And they said to him, ‘See these great buildings?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I see them, but not one stone of them will be left standing on another.’” “And there will be wars and rumors of wars and all the conflicts of the world, and even the sun will be darkened and the moon fail to give its light.” “These things must be, but now take a lesson from the fig tree, for when you see the leaf appear you know that summer is near, and when these things happen He is at the gate,” etc.1023 ¶3

This is all addressed to you – the real you, not to the man of sense; it is addressed to the Imagination. What structures will be cast down – these on Wilshire Boulevard? Time will erase them; economy will dictate their fall. As land grows in value these buildings will come down to make room for taller ones. It has nothing to do with the visible world, but all to do with the structure of the mind. Some structures of the mind stand for centuries, but they will finally come down – not collectively, but one by one in the mind of the individual.1023 ¶4

No matter how close we are as a family we never awaken together. It is said: “The enemies of a man are those of his own household.” Not his physical household. The conflicts within me are my real family. The whole thing begins within the individual, and the structures by which I live are the sun and moon that guide me. We all live by structures built by other men. No being goes through a university who does not build such structures in his mind in order to get his degree. He passes his examinations on a memory test based on a structure built within himself from the ideas of men who have preceded him. Not one of these from Plato down but has some truth, but not one is completely true. “Destroy these buildings and I will rebuild them; destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it.” And only that picture is true that is built from a vision, for then man does not build it out of theory.1023 ¶5

All the different teachings of the world are Babel. It means “confusion.” These are the structures in the mind that must tumble. These must come down in the mind of the individual, and then he will begin to awaken.1023 ¶6

The other day my friend, Bob Keeler, showed me a wonderful letter. A month or so ago he wrote a letter to Douglas Fawcett, whose concepts I have discussed here. He is now ninety-three years old and is a great philosopher. His name is mentioned on all suggested lists of required reading, though he is not always taken seriously. He was a former Don of Oxford. In answer to Bob’s letter, this is the gist of what he said: He told Bob he was very interested and then he said: “l have been fighting for Imaginism since 1916, and all my experiments prior to 1916 I have abandoned as valueless, but since 1916 I have been fighting for Imaginism.”1023 ¶7

Douglas Fawcett came to Imaginism by the way of completely exhausting all the other ideas (including the Germanic ideas) of truth. He eliminated them one by one by actual experiment. They did not “fill the bill,” and so one after the other he had to eliminate them and then arrived at Imaginism. He drew on Blake to support this claim.1023 ¶8

Then he came to the discussion of what Bob had written him about. Bob had sent him two of my books, Your Faith is Your Fortune and Awakened Imagination, and explained my teaching of revision and said that people had changed their whole lives, sometimes, revising an incident that had taken place in childhood. You can go back as far as you are able to remember and you change that image that has been supporting a physical state by memory.1023 ¶9

What Fawcett wrote to Bob about this was very flattering. He said: “l should consider the revisionary aspect of Imaginism as that given by the Divine Society, and I suggest that you read the last chapter of my Oberland Dialogues.” He suggests that the Divine Society is way beyond this terrain world and it consists of men who have become gods, and he feels such a wider outlook and such a revolutionary aspect of life must have come through that Divine Society.1023 ¶10

I know it, and I know there are those who form that great body of awakened individuals. They are individualised centers of imagining, and one day all will enter that state, for there is no limit to the expansion of man. From that Divine Society come the ideas that show man what he is capable of doing on this sphere.1023 ¶11

You revise an incident of the day and relive it as you wanted it, and you persuade yourself that what you wanted took place. You do it over and over until it becomes real, vividly real, and fills your mind in place of the unlovely happening. And revision results in repeal. So the thing you have been keeping alive will now change according to the revised image. You will then discover that Imagination creates Reality.1023 ¶12

But from now on we will weave in our visions so as to give offense to no one, nor will any be led to believe that this is an arrogant platform. A lady told me this story: She was reading one of my books, when a friend came by and seeing the book said: “l do not care for him or go to him. I go to Dr. X. Dr. X says the same thing, that God is man, but when Neville says it he sounds as if he meant it. But when Dr. X says it we know he does not mean it.”1023 ¶13

“ He spoke as one having authority, not as the scribes and the Pharisees.” A scribe is one who says the words of others. The one speaking with authority has realised his own invisibility, so that when he says God and man are one, he knows it. And do not tell him to “turn the stones into bread,” for he will say: “Get thee behind me!” He is teaching and telling you who you are, for he has found out who he is, and there is only one: you in me and I in you. Everything in your world you can create, for you are creating anyway – though not always wisely.1023 ¶14

Some are frightened when you boldly assert that God is man, but you cannot restrain the feeling of authority. For I know God is man. I know the symbol that out of his own brain he will bring forth the child, and a wise man will put it in his hands and he will hold it. It seems mad, but I sired it. Who is the son? God. Who is God? I held him.1023 ¶15

But you are limited to this little garment of flesh for educative reasons. How could you reach people who are climbing through infinite levels of awareness unless you could reach them as one of themselves? So – one returns. He can gain nothing from the return. Everything man has entered, he has entered, but he returns and – as his Father did – takes on the limitations of the flesh, returning through the womb of a woman. It is all imagery or the outpicturing of the individual and what he is doing in this world.1023 ¶16

If I speak with authority, I cannot help it, for I know from my own mystical experiences that man is all Imagination. When I walk through this world I bring images through my five senses. If I do not rise above it but live in it as if it were true, then I am anchored in the senses. The real you is all Imagination, but between you and the natural man stands the specter of reason. And one must “cast him into the lake,” and bring before your mind’s eye what you would see and touch and hear if what you desired were a reality, and if you walk in that image you will bring about a transformation in your world.1023 ¶17

We have these great giants, like Plato, etc., and every child builds into his mind the structures of such great minds, who give only partial truth. But as we are told in Mark 13, all these great “buildings” will go down. None will survive, only the visions – the temple not built with hands, it will survive.1023 ¶18

Everyone here can be the woman or the man he wants to be, for God has never left you. God actually entered this body when you jumped in your mother’s womb. He entered death’s door (this body) with us, and remains with us until we awaken. For the day will come when you will awake, and then you are he, and the whole thing will be unfolded.1023 ¶19

Let us go out determined to bring the buildings down by putting something in their place. As you become more and more aware, the old buildings will collapse. In the mind of every man these structures are built by the teachers of the world, but only the individual can bring to life the structure within himself. We awaken individually, not collectively. He comes, as it says, “in clouds of glory,” but inside you.1023 ¶20

All things topple at last. They used to bleed us to make us well; now they give us blood for the same reason. We change from this diet to that; each worked in its time. These are structures that are built into the minds of men. These will not fall collectively. For example, Fascism has not yet fallen. It only falls in the mind of the man who has discovered within himself how empty it is. But do not think that because they have lost the war that it is not still a structure in the mind of people.1023 ¶21

All these “buildings” will fall, but it has nothing to do with our lovely buildings on the Avenue. Economy will take care of those. But the buildings that the Bible speaks of are within you. That book is speaking of you, of us.1023 ¶22

God so loved you and me that he became us individually and stamps that print on us that makes each of us unique. We are all individualised but we are visible on certain levels of our being. The real you is an infinite God. On this level you have turned around, but the ascent is by the effort you will make through faith. Yet ninety per cent of what you receive will not be through your effort, but through grace. You have no conception how much is given to man. Your effort is always multiplied a thousandfold. You make your effort and you will be amazed at the gift that comes to you. Ninety per cent is by grace and only a maximum ten per cent is by the effort of the individual. God is not here to punish us, or to “get even.” It is the awakening of God in man.1023 ¶23

Here is one great philosopher, Fawcett, who came to it completely by elimination. He wrote: “I am so happy to find several allies in your great America.” Everyone individually will awaken to the reality he is seeking, and that is his own wonderful Imagination, and that is God.1023 ¶24

That is the one called “the Potter.” “I went down to the Potter’s house and the Potter was working at his wheel.” I went right into my own being. I was working at the wheel. I was cogitating on what I had during the day. “And the vessel in his hand was spoiled, but he reworked it into another vessel, such as seemed good unto him.”1023 ¶25

Well, today did I take something that was spoiled and rework it? Did I take some distressing word and rewrite it? I could not stop the image forming when I read the letter today, so I hold in my hand that which is spoiled. But I can rework it and fashion it into another vessel. I can read the letter I wish I had received. Everyone has to do that, so if I did not do it he is not speaking of me, for I am not being the potter as I should. He is speaking of the one who, as in Jeremiah 18, is trying to awaken.1023 ¶26

Imagination is the potter. The word means “maker;” it also means “God.” So, I went to God’s house and I found him within myself. I sat alone thinking, which means being at my wheel, and what I held in my mental hand seems to be spoiled, so I rework it into a more wonderful vessel. If I can do it, I have proved I am beginning to awaken.1023 ¶27

But do not try to create any new religion. Religion means devotion to the most exalted experience you have had. Do not try to rewrite it. Do not add to the tower of Babel. Visions will come bearing witness to your progress. As they come you know where you stand. You go from Genesis to Revelation. You come to the point where there is no sun and no moon. You do not need them; you become your own light.1023 ¶28

As in my story told in my book, The Search, I walked in a beautiful twilight. It is a vision and it happens to the individual, and you will know that “He is risen,” and it means you. They will call you by your name. It is the most perfect thing in the world. It is your name and it is your name forever. Let no one tell you it is not true. The vision is more true than all the structures that are being built in the minds of men by conjecture. Then, when you reach the final vision, you will enter that state of perfection that was yours before the world was.1023 ¶29

None will be lost. If one is lost someone will come and I do not care what a man has done. None will be lost, for then God would be lost. If one is lost someone will come out and volunteer to go and find him. If he or she has to marry the other to redeem him or her, someone from that Divine Society will volunteer to come. Not one will be lost, for we are all one and we are all awakening.1023 ¶30

These are perfect visions from Genesis to Revelation, with a few commentaries. Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes – these are commentaries and not perfect visions. But the five books of the Torah, Joshua, Judges, Kings, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah – these are perfect visions and they are true, and you will pass through them and know the whole story is true, and you will see it reflected in your world of shadows.1023 ¶31

You walk this world and you do not think you are in a fire, but this world is the fire, and when you come out you are like a burnt offering in the hand of God. This world is the flame of experience. We are looking at different views, and I am here to encourage you to live nobly and be faithful to your dream that it may crystallise. These things are only to prove that you can create. Do not become lost in the thing you create. Go back and create some more.1023 ¶32

My whole purpose is to tell you how wonderful you are, and if after the first night of this series you thought I was a dangerous man because I meant what I said, that God and man are one – well, it is what I have been sent to tell you. And may I also tell you that everyone who is sent is called a devil, and God loves every one of them. Now let us go into the silence.1023 ¶33

Note: John Cochrane’s interpretation of the birth of the child: “ I am I, John, God, Supreme Imagining. I am not the shadow world I am clothed in. I am the observer of the shadow I am projecting on the screen of space in my endless journey from each state to a higher more ideal one. I am invisible, but the babe is visible. I am Imagination and the babe is the state produced. When we understand our own invisibility we can give birth to the babe, a visible state, and it will smile up at us; that is, it will express exactly our ideal of the state desired.”1023 ¶34

The whole vast world is no more than man’s imagining pushed out. I must qualify that by saying that the world outside of man is dead, but Man is a living soul, and it responds to man, yet man is sound asleep and does not know it. The Lord God placed man in a profound sleep, and as he sleeps the world responds as in a dream, for Man does not know he is asleep, and then he moves from a state of sleep where he is only a living soul to an awakened state where he is a life-giving Spirit. And now he can himself create, for everything is responding to an activity in man which is Imagination. “The eternal body of man is all imagination; that is God himself.”1022 ¶1

Three wonderful case histories were given to me last Tuesday and I can best describe what I mean by telling you of one of them. Here is this lady driving east on Sunset and she comes to a stop at Laurel Canyon. A bus is to her right, and then she sees this little elderly lady in grey who is running diagonally across the street through traffic, trying to catch that bus. The bus driver sees her but he pulls out leaving her on the street. The lady, who gave me this story, told me that she felt compassion for this elderly lady, but she was not in a lane where she could give her a lift; she had to pull out with her line when the light changed. She said to herself, ‘I will give that lady a lift just the same.’ So in Imagination, she opens her car door and lets her in. Then still in her Imagination, she hears the lady tell her that she is meeting some friends a few blocks away and if she had to wait for another bus she is afraid they would not wait for her. The lady in the car carried on this imaginary conversation and it took maybe a half a minute until she felt satisfied about it.1022 ¶2

Four blocks ahead, as she again stopped for a light, someone tapped on the car window, and here stands a breathless little elderly with gray hair dressed in gray. My friend lowered the window and the little lady said, ‘I have missed my bus. Can you give me a lift? Friends are waiting for me and when they see I do not get off the bus they may go on and leave me.’ My friend let her get into the car and then six blocks further the little lady said, ‘There are my friends!’ and thanks the driver and gets out.1022 ¶3

Now here is a lady whom I say is awake. And may I tell you that in Heaven there was joy because one called a sinner (we are all sinners, for we are all missing the mark, and the mark is to awaken) has discovered that the whole world is responsive to what we are thinking. She could not actually give the first little lady a lift so she did it in Imagination, and then she sees this other elderly lady and gives her a lift.1022 ¶4

Here she is enacting her imaginary drama, and four blocks later when the dream is completed this little ole lady taps at her car window. In her imagination she gave a lift to a little grey haired lady dressed in gray. Does it matter if it was the lady behind at the last bus stop or this lady dressed in gray? Everyone is responding to what we are doing in our Imagination.1022 ¶5

There is no outside world that is really alive. It depends, for its aliveness, on the activity of man who is a living soul. Man named the animals, the birds, the trees, everything. God became man as a living soul, but He had to forget He was God to become man, and now man has to become a life-giving spirit, where he knows that everything is an imaginal activity.1022 ¶6

Here, at that corner where the first part of this little drama took place, half of those who witnessed it would bawl out the bus driver for not waiting for the old lady, and the other half would say she was a fool for running into the street. This lady in the car could have reacted like that, for the dreamer does not know that he is dreaming. It is only when we awake. They know they are causing the dream, or even had a dream. The lady in the car saw only someone who had failed to realize an objective, so she enacted a scene for her, implying she had realized it. And four blocks later she meets a little old lady who says to her the exact words she had heard in her Imagination. Her Imaginary dream unfolds in detail.1022 ¶7

An awakened dream is crystallized in the world. ‘Real are the dreams of gods, as they slowly pass their pleasure in a long immortal dream.’ When man completely awakens he dreams his pleasure and everything responds while he dreams it.1022 ¶8

We think everything in the world is completely independent from our perception of it, but the whole thing is dead. I see it, and come upon it, but the whole thing is dead. Frozen. Then I start an activity within me and then the world that was dead becomes alive, but not knowing I am doing it, I am sound asleep and then the whole thing takes over and it becomes a nightmare.1022 ¶9

But I must keep control and know it is dependant on me. The world is infinite response and the thing that makes it alive is the living soul called generic man (male-female). And then God wove Himself into the brain of this generic man, and then He sleeps. As man begins to awaken he controls and takes over, and is no longer a victim of his vision, so he has control of his attention. Everyone is free to create his world as he wants it if he knows that the whole thing is responding to him.1022 ¶10

In Luke 13 we are told the story of five Galileans who have been murdered by Pilate. ‘And he mixed their blood with their offering, etc.’ And the central figure of the gospels which is your awakened Imagination says to his followers, ‘Do you think these five were worse sinners than the others? I tell you, “No.” But unless you repent you will all likewise perish in the same manner.’1022 ¶11

Here on one level we think it served them right, just as those who saw the scene on the Sunset Blvd. would say ‘It served her right ’ cutting across the street like that!’ In this story in Luke we are told that a man sinned in the past and was murdered by Pilate. It has nothing to do with it.1022 ¶12

Then Jesus asked them, ‘Do you think that the eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse offenders than the others who dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.’1022 ¶13

On this level of the dream people think of getting even. It is a dream of confusion and people are reactivating, but man has to awaken and become an actor. On this present level man is always reflecting life, not knowing he is the cause of all he observes. But when he awakens from the dream and then becomes an actor.1022 ¶14

What percentage would have done what this lady in the car did? They would have reacted, or feasted on the fruit of the tree of good and evil. They would have had a violent reaction, and then they would have had a violent resistance from this dead universe. But this lady makes her dream and the whole thing comes to pass exactly as she pictured it, even to the number of blocks. You might almost think she had manufactured that little old lady in gray, but I tell you everything comes in response to our own wonderful imaginal activity.1022 ¶15

You can be anything in this world but you cannot know it or expect it to come unless you Act. If you react based on the past, you continue in the same pattern. To be the man you desire to be you must create the scene, as this lady did, and the whole world will be convulsed if that is necessary to bring it to pass.1022 ¶16

There is no other power but God, but God had to ‘forget’ he was God in this state of sleep, and then He awakens and consciously determines the conditions he wants in the world.1022 ¶17

So again I say to this lady, the angels rejoiced over your awakening, and ‘ I say this without pride ’ they also rejoiced because I kept my promise that I would come and awaken this sleeper in the world of men. For I, also, had to forget everything to become man. For when one goes and then returns he has to forget everything to become man. For when one goes, and then returns he has to forget everything, but he promises he will carry out his pledge and help man awaken. Then the living soul becomes a life-giving spirit, and then creates.1022 ¶18

Take it seriously. Do not go through this with your dream un-acted. It took this lady 30 seconds to enact her drama and another 60 seconds to realize it. You tell yourselves -it must take time- What time?1022 ¶19

Read Corinthians 1:18, I could go before men with all the words of wisdom, but know only one thing, the cross. To the wise it is foolishness, etc. What is the cross? Think of it in this light. You began, seemingly in your mother’s womb and end in the grave. You do not, but you have that picture.1022 ¶20

Look on the horizontal line of the cross as time. Intersecting this vertical line and call that infinite states, like Jacobs ladder. At any section of time I can move up or down. Time is flowing and the state with which I am identified still unfolds. So, while seated in my car I can move up and enact a drama. I acted and remained within that state. It unfolded. It took 60 seconds. There are infinite states intersecting the line of time. We become one with a certain state and it demonstrates itself in actual phenomena.1022 ¶21

Everyone here, it need not take you more than 30 seconds to bring about a change of state. What would it be like? And you name your desire. Remain in that state, and that state, by the passage of time, will unfold in your world. You do nothing about it once you have entered the state’for the outer must move by compulsion of the inner power. This little lady in gray had to come to my friend’s car. Every detail of that imaginary act took place.1022 ¶22

Why not? The universe is infinite response. When you know that there is no one in the whole world could ever faze you, because he is a shadow. I have seen the whole world dead, completely frozen, and then I allowed something within me to start and everything became animated. Then you ask yourself a million questions. Who am I? What is it all about? Why? Everything here is responding to the imaginal activity within man.1022 ¶23

When someone who is sick becomes well: when someone who is blind then sees, is that more of a miracle than what this lady told? She is awake. If you make a fortune it means nothing. All the honors of men in a state of sleep are as nothing. You must ‘repent’. It has nothing to do with the so-called judgment of God. It is only a dream and man is reacting to the dream and he does not know that he is the dreamer and causing all the dream.1022 ¶24

The literal meaning of the Greek word translated as repent means ‘a change of mind.’ It has nothing to do with the moral picture. The churches introduced that, but it has nothing to do with it. I don’t care what a man has done, if he changes his mind in this meaning of the word ‘repent’ things will change, for he is then on the line of vertical line of states. He stands at a point on the states. There are infinite states and we must learn to distinguish between the state and the individual occupying the state.1022 ¶25

But I can now change and move into another state. I can in Time, do it in a split second and rise on the vertical line of the states. So, ‘I come, only to teach the cross.’, said Paul. I will rise within myself and ignore the former state, and within myself I will assume that things are as I want them to be. If I remain faithful, the passage of Time will unfold it. So, Blake said, ‘Eternity is in love with the productions of Time.’1022 ¶26

I tell you, do not let anyone ever convince you that because of your past accomplishments or your present state in the world that you cannot change your position by rising within yourself, and then see the whole world respond. And I mean NOW! So, I tell you this lady is awake; the Child is awake in her, the purpose of life is to awake.1022 ¶27

If the whole vast world or sleeping humanity thought her important, would she feel flattered? If in a dream everyone praised you and then you awoke and found it was all a dream, would you be flattered? One dreamer puts a medal on another dreamer, and they do not know it. It is only the awakening that is important. Awakening and doing the will of God.1022 ¶28

God’s will is in you active as your own Imagination, and His will is to realize the imaginal state. To realize something novel as this lady did or to maintain something to maintain in being, or to let things go that you feel are unlovely. I will do it all and only act, and stop re-acting.1022 ¶29

Then the whole book, The Bible, becomes alive. Leave all the ‘wise men to mock it or tolerate’. Let them reach the moon or the stars, they are all dead. Nothing lives outside of man. Man is the living soul, turning slowly into a life-giving Spirit. But you cannot tell it except in a parable or metaphor to excite the mind of man to get him to go out and prove it.1022 ¶30

Leave the good and evil and eat of the Tree of Life. Nothing in the world is untrue if you want it to be true. You are the truth of everything that you perceive. ‘I am the truth, and the way, the life revealed.’1022 ¶31

If I have physically nothing in my pocket, then in Imagination I have MUCH. But that is a lie based on fact, but truth is based on the intensity of my imagination and then I will create it in my world. Should I accept facts and use them as to what I should imagine? No.1022 ¶32

It is told us in the story of the fig tree. It did not bear for three years. One said, ‘Cut it down, and throw it away.’ But the keeper of the vineyard pleaded, ‘NO!’ Who is the tree? I am the tree; you are the tree. We bear or we do not. But the Keeper said he would dig around the tree and feed it ‘ or manure it, as we would say today ’ and see if it will not bear. Well I do that here every week and try to get the tree ‘ you ’ me to bear.1022 ¶33

You should bear whatever you desire. If you want to be happily married, you should be. The world is only response. If you want money, get it. Everything is a dream anyway. When you awake and know what you are creating and that you are creating it that is a different thing.1022 ¶34

The greatest book is the Bible, but it has been taken from a moral basis and it is all weeping and tears. It seems almost ruthless as given to us in the Gospel, if taken literally. The New Testament interprets the Old Testament, and it has nothing to do with morals. You change your mind and stay in that changed state until it unfolds.1022 ¶35

Man thinks he has to work himself out of something, but it is God asleep in you as a living soul, and then we are reborn as a life-giving spirit. We do it here in this little classroom called Earth or beyond the grave, for you cannot die. You can be just as asleep beyond the grave. I meet them constantly, and they are just like this. Same loves and same hates. No change. They will go through it until they finally awake, until they cease to re-act and begin to act.1022 ¶36

Do not take this story lightly which I have told you tonight. Take it to heart. Tonight when you are driving home enact a scene. No matter what it is. Forget good and evil. Enact a scene that implies you have what you desire, and to the degree that you are faithful to that state, it will unfold in your world and no power can stop it, for there is no other power.1022 ¶37

Nothing is independent of your perception of it, and this goes for that great philosopher among us who is still claiming that everything is independent of the perceiver, but that the perceiver has certain powers. It is not so. Nothing is independent of the perceiver. Everything is ‘burned up’ when I cease to behold it. It may exist for another, but not for me.1022 ¶38

Let us make our dream a noble one, for the world is infinite response to you, the being you want to be. Now let us go into the silence.1022 ¶39

You know the story of Good Friday. A man is in a garden. It’s night time. And one called Judas comes in search of him, seemingly to betray him. He comes into the garden, and it’s dark, so he asks the simple question, “Where is Jesus?” Then the voice in the dark answered, “I AM HE.” We are told in the story they all fell to the ground. When they regained their composure they asked the same question, “Where is Jesus?” Again the voice answered, “I have told you that I AM HE.” This time Judas kisses him and the voice said to him, “Now that you have found me, let all else go, but do not let Me go, and what you have to do, do quickly.”1021 ¶1

Then Judas goes out and commits suicide. Now when you read the story you might think that that drama took place in a garden. No. That drama must TAKE place in the mind of man. For this is all about re-birth. It takes a man, a normal man, a man of sense, but hidden in that man and bound hand and foot is the second man that rebirth loosens and lifts up, and that second man is God. So the mystery is all self, and he uses the word “mystery” no less than 18 times. He asked those in the Corinthians to esteem him as a steward of mystery. Then he said, “Great is the mystery, God was manifest in the flesh.” Then he spoke of the greatest of all mysteries, the one hidden from the foundation of the world, “Christ in you is the hope of glory.” Christ IN man. Not Christ in the pages of history, but God IN man must be awakened, and this is the technique by which he is awakened.1021 ¶2

Now come closely with me and let me take you into the garden of your own mind. Right now just imagine you are in a sick room of some wonderful hospital, a ward. You see the case history. You heard the verdict of the doctor, and the man, seemingly, is dying. What would save that man from such a verdict? What would save him? A state of health by which he would rise from that bed and become a normal, healthy person in this world; that would save him. Now, look into your mind’s eye and define carefully the solution of a particular problem. When you define the solution to the problem, do you know what you are actually seeing? You are seeing Jesus, for Jesus means “to save.” So the state that would save that man from what he is, is the state of health. That is his savior.1021 ¶3

The story is, “Now that you have found ME, let all else go, but do not let ME go.” In other words, let go of everything you have ever believed, but do not let go of this concept -- that the man is well in spite of the evidence of your senses to the contrary. No matter what reason dictates, you hold onto Jesus, Jesus being that the man is healthy. You hold onto it, and you touch it by becoming intensely aware of it; that’s the only way to touch a thing.1021 ¶4

Let me tell you of something that happened only last Friday. I have a friend in this City who I met recently and he gave me a very sad story. He was up against it. He had borrowed money, and he can’t pay it back. Things are just going from bad to worse. While shaving you don’t have to go into some church to find Him while shaving. I thought of him and I instantly, while in the act of shaving, imagined I was speaking to my wife, and I said to her, “Isn’t it wonderful, the good news concerning George?” Then I allowed her, in my imagination, to say, “Yes, isn’t it wonderful?” Three hours later, he called me to tell me its so good he doesn’t know what, really, to take. He said that in the immediate present two, wonderful jobs are offered to him. Jobs he can do and do well. Both are great and he doesn’t know which one to take. Now he has another problem.1021 ¶5

I will now assume that he has taken the right one, the best one, and I know that in the immediate future, George will again call me and tell me that, on reflection, he could not have chosen more wisely.1021 ¶6

So, you look into your own mind’s eye and know exactly what you want in this world. When you know what you want in place of what you are, then you are seeing your savior, your Jesus. The story is, don’t let Him go, but let all else go. Disengage yourself from the whole vast belief that you formerly entertained, and hold on in your imagination to the concept that you ARE the man that you want to be. That will lead you toward Calvary. Calvary means fixing in your own mind’s eye that state, and that will lead towards Easter or this wonderful day that we speak of as the Resurrection. For you will resurrect and make alive the state that began only as a concept. If you remain faithful to the concept you will be led right into the fulfillment of that state. It is called, in the Bible, re-birth.1021 ¶7

Now here is the story. He said, “Except you be born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” The wise man said, “How is it possible a man my age may once again enter my mother’s womb and be born again?” He said, “You, a master of Israel and you do not know? Except you be born of water and the spirit, ye can in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.” Then he gives this clue, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up.” As Moses lifted up the serpent, do you think a man lifted up a brazen serpent as told in the story and that everyone who looked on it was instantly healed and those who would not look were not cured?1021 ¶8

It’s not any serpent. A serpent is a symbol of the power of endless self-reproduction. For the serpent sheds its skin, and yet does not die. Man must be like the serpent, who grows and outgrows. So I must now learn the art of dying that I may live, rather than, I would say, killing that I may survive. I die, by laying down all that I now believe, and I lift myself up to the belief that I am what I want to be. Thats how I do it.1021 ¶9

Now this is how a man is born of water and of the spirit. If I told you now that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact, that is a truth, that is water. But water is not enough. You must catch the spirit of it and apply that truth. Well, if I know that if I assume that I am the man I want to be and persist in that assumption, I would gradually become that. If I have that knowledge, that’s marvelous. But not to DO it is to try to bring this being to birth by water only. We are told this is the one who came by water and the blood. Not by water only, but by water and the blood. In other words, I have the knowledge, but I cannot bring to birth my ideal by bare knowledge. I must put it into action, I must DO it. Then when I DO it, I take my savior and I crystallize him by the doing. This is the story of our wonderful Easter.1021 ¶10

Today, our churches are bursting with new finery, but not bursting with new men, and we are told in the story, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put on the New Man.” Well, how will I put on a New Man? Its like saying to the boy, put on manhood, or saying to the tree, put on foliage. It comes from within, out and man puts it on from the outside. You can’t put it on from the outside, for He is within you. For great is the mystery. The one hidden from the foundation of the earth, Christ in YOU is the hope of glory. Not some Christ external to yourself, but the one in you, that is your hope; that is your only glory. So, the great mystery is that at Bethlehem God became as we are that at Calvary we may become as He is.1021 ¶11

And Calvary is the opportunity that comes very day in the life of a man. When you walk the earth and you see anyone in need, ask yourself what would be the solution to that individual’s problem, just what would it be? You can grant it. If you know who you REALLY are, you can grant it, just as I granted it to George. I didn’t raise one finger to get George a job. I didn’t send him on a job; I didn’t give him anything. I simply turned in my own mind’s eye to my wife, who was not physically present, and simply stated, “Isn’t it wonderful, the news concerning George,” and I allowed her to say, in my imagination, “Yes, isn’t it wonderful,” and then I continued with my project of a simple shaving. That is simply lifting up the serpent in the wilderness. For I raised myself from the knowledge that George was unemployed and struggling to the knowledge that he is employed. I did nothing more. I shed the skin, like a serpent. I dropped off all that I formerly believed concerning George, and began to LIVE on a higher level concerning George, and I so lived it and so made it real that in three hours, he called and gave me this exciting news. You can do the same thing with anything in this world.1021 ¶12

When you do it daily, you die daily as the prophet said, “I die daily.” Man waits for some little event called death, and he thinks that is dying. That isn’t really dying for the simple reason that that kind of death does not bring about a transformation. For there is no transformation in a physical death, but there is transformation in mentally dying and dying daily. So, if you have learned the art of dying, you have learned the art of living. For man is immortal and he must die endlessly. For life was a creative idea, and it will find itself only in changing form. If I do not change and grow and outgrow, and grow and outgrow, then I know nothing of the mystery of Easter, for Easter is really the greatest of all mysteries. It’s when man awakens within himself from his birth at Bethlehem and he awakens as God. Thats the story of Easter.1021 ¶13

So, let us not perpetuate this thing by our finery, which is lovely. There is not a thing wrong with getting new clothes and new hats and all the lovely things in the world, but today it has become almost a parade of what is new rather than the new man. So, when I put on the new man, I put him on by daily exercising him in this way. By becoming intensely aware. You could at this very moment, extend your feelings and trust your touch and participate in all the flights of your imagination, and do not be afraid of your sensitivities. When I become intensely aware that I am hearing what I want to hear and am actually touching what I want to touch, virtue goes out of me, and the thing touched takes on the blessing which was determined by the mood that possessed me as I imagined that I touched it. If I now touch anything, it must become crystallized in my world, bearing witness to the mood that possessed me at the moment that I touched it.1021 ¶14

So, unless we be born of this knowledge and the application of this knowledge, we cannot enter this eternal state called the Kingdom of Heaven. So, now you have a little of the knowledge, go out and apply it.1021 ¶15

When you apply it, this is what happens, and this is a mystical fact. It was said of this one called Judah, “Who is this one who comes with his garments dyed in the sap of wine? Who takes his vestage and bathes it in the blood of grapes and takes his colt and ties it to a choice vine, and his eye red with wine, and his teeth white with milk?” You are told in the very last act, “They placed a wine-colored robe upon Jesus.” You are told that Judah took his robe and bathed it in the blood of grapes.1021 ¶16

Now when I took what I did for George, I was actually weaving my wine-colored robe. I must weave that robe if I would awaken. It’s called, in the Bible, the wedding garment. It is called the wine-colored robe. It is called the amethyst in the New Testament, the amethyst in the Old Testament. It’s not an amethyst. It’s not a robe I weave on the outside, but when I live a life according to these truths, I am actually weaving a wine-colored aura around my being which then enables me to function consciously on higher levels of my own being. Without such a robe, I cannot function beyond my present physical state. But when I live this life according to these truths, you can’t see it with the physical eye, but I weave my robe and those who have the eye opened will see me as one of their own, and I’m not going to carry some little insignia to tell them who I am. I radiate who I am when they see my garment.1021 ¶17

So, when we are told, “Judah comes and he takes his wonderful robe and he bathes it in the blood of grapes”. It’s not a man who takes off a robe, for the garment in the Bible is what a man wears mentally. So, if I take my mind and I apply it, actually all day long but not confining it to one simple little thing as I did for George, but in the course of a day I have unnumbered opportunities to weave this wonderful robe by simply hearing good news for others. If I hear only good for others and trust what I hear as though I heard it, I am actually taking my robe and bathing it in the blood of grapes.1021 ¶18

You wonder why he called himself the vine? He said, “I AM the vine and ye are the branches. Unless the branch be rooted in the vine, it has no life.” Well every man in the world is a branch, rooted in me, the vine, and he ends in me as I am rooted in and end in God. Now that can be said of every man in the world. While you look at me and can hear me, you too can say it. Although I have just made the claim, “you are rooted in me,” you can claim that I am rooted in you and I end in you as you are rooted in and end in God.1021 ¶19

If you know it, then it is your duty to lift up every man in this world. Not one must be discarded. Everyone must be redeemed and your life is the process by which this redemption is brought to pass. Discard no man. Every man can be changed. And you have the power to change him by taking the man and seeing him as he seemingly is and then asking what he would like to be instead of what he seems to be. When you know what he would like to be, then you imagine that he is that being already. Turn to a loved one and commune with the loved one concerning this man, just as though it were a fact. When you do it, trust it, touch it and believe it, and I will tell you that man will become the embodiment of what you have imagined him to be.1021 ¶20

This is Easter, and Easter comes not once a year; Easter is a daily opportunity to simply die that you may live. For here it is said, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Any man. Well, how would I take up my cross and follow after this idea? First, I am told I must deny myself. Usually man thinks that means giving up something he loves, giving up the pleasures of the table, or giving up something of which he is especially fond. It hasn’t a thing to do with giving up external things.1021 ¶21

It is: a man must deny himself, and a man’s true self is made up of the sum total of all that he believes, all that he accepts as true, all that he consents to. So, if I consent to a man dying, then I must deny that concept, that self, and put in its place the embodiment of a healthy being. When I do that, I can follow after this idea. You can take this principle and apply it to everything in this world.1021 ¶22

If it’s not some tangible thing on earth you want, take some noble concept of a man, take a man that you would love to see in this world. Dream of that man actually walking this earth and identify yourself with that man. Associate yourself in your own imagination with that as if you were he. When you actually feel that I am he, and continue in that state, then things begin to unfold to bear witness to the truth of your assumption. You try it.1021 ¶23

So, remember, Easter is the art of dying that you may live, and this reminds me of that wonderful poem of the death of Abdula and what he said at the end of it all. He appeared among all the mortals and they were weeping and kissing his worn-out body and he turned to them and said, “I am not the thing you kiss, cease your tears and let it lie. It was mine, it is not I.” Good-bye.1021 ¶24