1/22/65
A miracle is the name give by those who have no faith to the works of faith. So the important question is not did Jesus work miracles in Galilee, but is he miraculously present, miraculously potent now? The answer we give to the second question is the only important answer, really. If we cannot give to the second question a confident and adoring yes, it doesn’t really matter what we say of the first. Is he present and is he potent now? I tell you that he is, but you must find out who he is and trust him implicitly.
Well, let us turn to the 25th chapter of the Book of Genesis, for this is all revelation. We’re told in this chapter that two were struggling together within the womb of Rebecca and she wondered why, “If this is thus, why do I live?” (verse 22). So she sought the Lord to enquire of the Lord as to why should this thing be. And he said to her: “Two nations are within thy womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; one shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger. And then they came out, the first one hairy all over; they called him Esau. Then came the second, a hairless lad; and they called him Jacob” (verse 23-26). When you read the story you might think a woman had twins, two little boys that came out. Hasn’t a thing to do…all symbolism…not a thing to do with that picture of a woman conceiving and bringing forth twins, twin boys.
This is true of every child born of woman. You have an immortal twin brother. Jacob is the first name given to him, the offspring of the promised child called Isaac. For the real you descends from Isaac, the child of the promise. This outer garment is Esau; the immortal brother is my own wonderful human Imagination. You can’t see him. You only see the mortal Neville. You do not see the immortal being that is expressing itself through this mortal being. So this is Esau. Under some microscope it’s hair all over, just like Esau. Some men you don’t need a microscope, but it’s hair all over. The being that is called “the smooth skinned lad,” you never see him, for he is Jacob, the prototype of the one we speak of in the New Testament as Jesus Christ. His name is I AM; in action, it’s all Imagination.
So now, “There are two souls within my breast. One to heaven doth aspire and one to earth doth cling.” Here, the battle is on within us. I am looking at the world through my senses and I accept as fact what they dictate and what reason allows. But there is someone within me that is a miracle worker if I would only exercise him and let him speak. If I could only trust him implicitly and know that he’s as present now as he was in Galilee 2,000 years ago; that God himself became me that I may become God. This is the battle within me, the battle between the outer man of the senses and the inner man of Imagination. Then the day will come, there will not be two, there will only be one, as told us in the 2nd chapter of the Book of Ephesians (verses 14-15). He will create within himself one new man in place of the two, and put an end to the hostility. That happens in the most miraculous way. It happens with a bolt of lightning out of the nowhere splitting man in two, from the top of his head to the base of his spine; and then at the base of his spine he sees golden, liquid light. It’s molten gold, and he knows it’s himself, and he fuses with it as he looks at it. He ascends this spinal column of his right up into heaven.
Now, the word translated nations in the passage that I quoted—“two nations are in your womb”—the word nations is goyim in Hebrew. A gentile is a “goyim, a foreigner, a stranger.” But in essence it means your backbone that is split in two. If you have a good concordance, a Biblical concordance, look it up, the word goyim. In fact, the word nations…and here it is split right down, every little segment of the entire thirty-two bones, from the top to the bottom, is split; at the base, this molten gold. And then think in terms of a sculptor making a beautiful image. He works from within. When he completes what he wants, then he covers it in clay, and then he pours his molten metal within and it takes the form of the mold. When it takes the form and coagulates, then he takes off the outer part and discards it. The outer part is this [body]. The day will come, I will discard it like an Esau, discard it like an Ishmael; send it off. As we are told in the very last book of he Old Testament, “Esau I hated; Jacob I loved” (Mal. 1:2,3). And these are the words of the Lord. You wouldn’t think that the God of love would hate, but he discards the outer part. It has no place whatsoever in the eternal kingdom. So, the outer man may have a bulbous nose, a horrible form…hasn’t a thing to do with the work that is going on in the inside. That inside is all that matters, and when it’s fi nished in the eyes of God, he pours himself into it. He is the molten gold…that’s the blood of Christ…and 70 Neville you see it at the base of the spine when you are severed in two from top to bottom.
Now, how do I prove it? I can tell you my experience that I’ve just told you, but aside from telling you my experience, we can prove the existence of Christ within us, prove it in the most simple way. This is how I prove it. Tell me what you want…just tell me what you want…and let me assume that you have it. I simply imagine that you’re telling me that you have it, rather than you’re telling me that you want it; and then I believe in the reality of my imaginal act. I try to remain loyal to this unseen reality. I firmly believe that that was an act of Christ when I imagined. So I try to guide it along the, I would say, rails of love. If it is something that I would want for myself, I would willingly hear it. If you ask me to hear that someone is hurt, I couldn’t hear it. If you ask me to hear that you are gainfully employed or that you have a large sum of money, I could hear that for myself, so I could hear it for you. If you ask me to hear that you are happily married, well, I am so I could hear it for you. If you ask me to hear that someone is unhappy and through their unhappiness you’d be happy, I couldn’t hear that. So I will simply guide it by love. Every time that I imagine anything and I feel that it is with love, I am exercising this inner man wisely.
So will it work? Well, try it. All I can say to anyone simply try it. A friend of mine told me tonight, but I didn’t have time to hear the whole story. He’s a teacher. Another teacher in the same school took my book Awakened Imagination and took the chapter Revision, and having revised it in his own mind’s eye, how to apply it, he took a class of thirty and had them start with a story, an unlovely story, and had each pupil revise it, and practice in our schools the art of revision. Well, that is exercising Jacob—-that’s sheer power. The day will come that Jacob’s name will be changed to Israel. Then the day will come, you move forward in time “a man after my own heart.” And then you reach the state called Jesus Christ. And then, that man will be born, born from above.
Everything I have told you I’m speaking from experience. I am not speculating, I am not theorizing, this is all true. So there are two within us until the end when he breaks down the wall that separates us, that wall of confl ict, and makes within himself one new man in place of two. That one new man is Jesus Christ. So I tell you, in the end you and I are one. There is only one Jesus Christ. There aren’t billions of him; billions of drops of blood of Jesus Christ, but every drop of blood is himself. So when you see it at the base of the spine, you are it. And then come the revelations, one after the other, and the one who called him Father, calls you Father. Are you not then Jesus Christ? If his own son…and you may be shocked to hear he had a son…but he can’t be a father unless there’s a child. “Show me the Father and I will be satisfi ed.” “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” (John 14:8). So if I am father, I can’t be father and not have a child.
That’s the most shocking thing to the priests that I’ve spoken to, and the ministers that I’ve spoken to, and the rabbis. As I go across the country I meet them. If I’m on a panel on TV with them, that question is always brought up and they’re always shocked when I say that Jesus Christ is Father, and as a father you can’t be a father unless there’s a child. I can call all the priests of the world “Father” and they’re all celibates…there is no child. Where is the father? There must be a child if there is a father. So, “When you see me you see the Father.” Then who is the Son? And then he tells the story.
The story he tells, you’ve all read it and you’ve heard it from my lips time and again, the story of David. For in the 2nd Psalm it said, “Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” (Ps.2:7). That’s said of David. And who spoke the words? It is said the Lord spoke the words. And so, he said, “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?” And all the rabbis would answer, “Why, naturally, the son of David,” for it’s promised that he would come from David. Then he replied, “Why then did David in the Spirit call him Lord?” (Mat. 22:42). The word is Adonay, a word used by every child of his father. All would refer to his father as “my lord”; that’s what the word Adonay means, my lord. “If he calls him Lord, how can he be his son?” and no one asked him any more questions after that. First of all, they didn’t ask that, he brought it up. He’s trying to reveal the great mystery of being: He found that he was God the Father, because if he is God the Father he has to be the father of God’s only begotten son, who is David. So David in the Spirit comes and calls him Lord.
I prophesy for every one of you, you’re going to have that experience. When you have that experience and you meet anyone in this world, you can’t meet another. The wall has all been torn down, there’s no hostility, for everyone is the father of that only begotten Son of God. Therefore, then you know the fatherhood of God and then the brotherhood of man. We’re all one, every one of us equal, not one greater than, because we’re all the same being, all God. All of this cult of the heroic personalities vanishes. You don’t care what the man has played in this world. You played all the parts, but in his infinite mercy he has hidden from you your past.
It’s a plan. Let no one tell you this is not a plan: “As I have planned it, so shall it be; as I have purposed it, so shall it stand” (Is: 14:24). And, “My anger,” he said, “will not turn back until it has executed and accomplished the intents of my mind. In the latter days you will understand it perfectly” (Jer. 23:20). So you and I are put through the furnaces of affliction, playing all the parts in the world, while he forms his image within us. When it is completely formed, he pours the molten gold-—the molten gold being his own blood—and it takes the form of that image produced by the lives we have lived. No one can pour it until the image is perfect, and you form that image by the life that you have lived. Not in seventy years, from the cradle to the grave; you’ve been here a long, long time.
Now, they said to him, “One whom you love is ill.” He said to them clearly, “Lazarus is dead” and then he restored Lazarus to life (John 11:14). Who is Lazarus? May I tell you, you are. He loves you; that’s why he became you. So you will die, everyone dies, but you don’t really die; he restores you to life. You die here to find yourself restored to life automatically, just as solidly real as you are now, in a section of time that is in harmony with the work to be done on his image. It’s the only purpose for the whole vast world. Not to be known, not to be fabulously wealthy, not to be anything, just the image of God being fashioned. And when you leave here, you’re restored to life automatically and inserted into a section of time—not necessarily 1966; it could be the year 3,000, it could be the year 1,000— all based upon the work to be done on that image. But when it’s done, at that very moment that it’s done and not one moment before or one moment later, it will be simply torn apart; and then the golden molten light is poured upon you, and it takes the form, the eternal form. But he likes and loves this—it’s called Lazarus in his eye—and he keeps it forever, for the 6,000 years as he wears it. It dies and he restores it; it dies again and he restores it. He keeps restoring Lazarus until finally he himself resurrects. The restoration to life is not the same as the resurrection. Resurrection is the end of this age: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age” (Mat. 28:20). The end of the age or the close of the age is when this age comes to its end relative to the individual, and it doesn’t restore Lazarus anymore. That’s forever behind me, and God has risen from this state called death.
So you have an immortal brother and he’s known in scripture as Jesus Christ. He will not leave you until he tears down the wall of partition, of hostility between you, and you and he are one, not two. When you become one with him, then you have all the experiences that are claimed in scripture of Jesus Christ. In scripture it is claimed he is the Father. In scripture David calls him Father. In scripture he ascends like a serpent into heaven. In scripture the Holy Spirit descends in bodily form as a dove and smothers him in affection. In scripture he is born from above in a supernatural manner. All these things you will experience, and having experienced them you are the being spoken of in scripture as Jesus Christ. If you talk about it, you’ll get the same reaction as recorded in scripture. They will say, “You’re blaspheming, for you being man—we know your parents, we know your brothers, we know your sisters—and you dare to claim yourself one with God?” So, whoever has the experience, tell it, but expect the same reaction as recorded in scripture: What an arrogant, blasphemous man he is or she is, he dares to claim he is one with Christ… because they expect him to come in some strange way out in space, and they have the strangest pictures of him. You never see a picture of Jesus Christ who resembles the one who owns the picture, yet you’re told in the Book of John, the epistle of John, that when he appears we shall be like him (1 John 3:2). You’ve never once seen a picture of him that faintly resembles the one who holds the picture and adores it. It has to be just like you, but it’s you raised to the nth degree of perfection. You’ve never seen such majesty, you’ve never seen such beauty, such strength of character in your face before as when you see that face, that living, living you. You look at it and it’s your own being. It’s not another, it’s your own self. Here is the hero of billions of faces and yet we are one being wearing all these faces. Yes, you will not lose any identity, not for one moment. None of us will lose our identity, and yet we are one with Jesus Christ…only God, nothing but God. So, in the end, you’re told, “The Lord will be king over all the earth; and his name will be one and the Lord one” (Zech. 14:9). Only one Lord, and yet you and I that Lord.
So, until you actually have the experience, believe me, Jesus Christ is present in you right now. Don’t look back in the pages of history 2,000 years—right now! The same miraculous power that operated in Galilee 2,000 years ago operates now, in a very simple, simple way. What did he do? He simply believed his imaginal acts. “It’s done!” said he, and “Go! The child is alive.” And he believed. Well, the same power is in you now. If you could now think of any person in this world, any friend, and imagine him or imagine her or imagine them to be as you would like them to be, and believe in the reality of your own imaginal act. For faith is simply loyalty to unseen reality, that’s all that it is. I remain loyal to what I have imagined. I imagined it, I’m still imagining it, and I will continue to imagine this state until what I have imagined becomes objectified as fact within my world.
So if I’ve imagined, then it’s done…if that is Christ in action. I tell you that is Christ in action. So we are told, “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test” (2 Corinthians 13:5). I hope you will discover we have not failed in our test. Well then, let us feel the same confidence that we will not fail in our test. You and I know nothing of the human form, we’re not doctors, yet I don’t have to be a doctor to assume that things are perfect. I couldn’t put a knife into your body and do anything but injure you, but I could assume that things are right. Then if there is a surgeon and you need surgery, alright, his hand will be guided based upon my assumption. Let him use the knife; he’s trained in the knife, let him use it. I’m not a dentist, but I could assume a perfect state, and let the perfect man trained in that aspect of life perform what he must perform. But let me assume the state. All you are called upon to do is to believe that you are what you would be and sleep just as though it were true. Fall asleep this night in the assumption that you are now the man, that you are the woman that you want to be. If you dare to do it, then some little bridge of incident will appear. And you don’t consciously devise it, it simply appears. You are compelled to walk across this little series of events moving from where you are to where you’ve assumed that you are.
Now, if this very night you dare to assume that this immortal brother is your own wonderful human Imagination and he is Jesus Christ, you know what you are doing? See, character becomes destiny. The moment you dare to assume that your own wonderful human Imagination is Jesus Christ you adopt that character. Well, your destiny is automatic then, for you know his destiny—straight to the Father, one with the Father. You aren’t going to avoid the problems of life, no, that’s what this world is about. You aren’t going to avoid anything, but you’ll pass through them because you know the end. The end is resurrection; the end is one with God. But who is one with God?—Jesus Christ. So you must assume that I am he, as you are told in the 46th Psalm, “Be still and know that I am God” (verse 10). If you are afraid to do it, embarrassed to do it, alright, I can’t force you to do it, but the day will come you’ll have to do it. You’ll be moved from place to place in this world, through the gate of death, restored to life, and through other experiences until finally you come to the state that you dare to claim “I am he.” When you claim it, that’s your character. Whatever you claim that you are that’s your character and character invariably becomes your destiny. The destiny of Jesus Christ is God.
So start tonight. Let no one tell you not to start it, start it tonight. Test it with a friend. A friend may be now unemployed and you want to see him or see her gainfully employed, just assume that they are. Don’t even tell them that you’ve done it. You want no reward; costs you nothing to do it. Just simply assume that they are, and fall asleep this night in the assumption that they are. May I tell you, you’ll get the good news. They will be employed and gainfully employed, and then you’ll have that satisfaction of knowing that you sent a word on its way and the word could not return unto you void. It had to accomplish unto which you had sent it (Isaiah 55:11). So you assumed it and it had to go that way. And then you will know who Jesus Christ really is. You won’t stick him all over the place and look at him in some other way. You will know that he walks with you. He is you. He’s your own wonderful human Imagination. That is Jesus Christ.
Because he is the essence of love, you will only exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of anyone in this world. You will never under any circumstances exercise your Imagination in any unloving manner, never! It becomes something you can’t do, that’s all there is to it. Not even in dream do you do it. A dream is supposed to be a state where you have no control. You will find yourself in your dreams not doing it in any unloving manner; you’ll do it only lovingly. So I tell you, I’m speaking only from experience. I know how this thing works.
So let me tell everyone here, do not turn to the left or the right to find him. As you walked through the doors tonight he walks with you. He is your immortal brother. He’s taking himself and his mortal part through all the furnaces until that day when it’s completed within him and he makes of two one new man and you and he are one. Then he unveils himself and you are he, not another. Well, how does he unveil himself? In the very things recorded in scripture. Everything said of him happens to you; that’s how he unveils it. He doesn’t all of a sudden pour something on you; he brings into your presence his immortal Son. You don’t see this man over here and the immortal Son there and you here; only two of you, the immortal Son and you. Then he calls you Father; then you know who you are. Until that moment in time you had no idea that you are God the Father. You thought yourself some little worm because you had an earthly beginning and you know you must have an earthly end. So the cradle to the grave is our little stretch of time. You thought that, until this moment in time when you realize you are the one spoken of in scripture as Jesus Christ. Yet no loss of identity; you don’t change your name. There’s no break with the past, and because there’s no break with the past, you hesitate to make the claim. You make no claim to another. You only know within yourself what has happened to you. You go on and tell your story to the world, tell it or print it. But in some way you tell it to another, that this word may be spread abroad and all may believe, and begin to adopt the attitude of being Jesus Christ before they have the experience, because you’re going to have it, anyway.
So here, in a simple way, as told in the Book of Genesis, this is how he exercised it (27:1). Isaac is blind. But I am blind right now to the actual fact of the fulfillment of your desire. I heard it as you voiced it, but I don’t see it physically standing before me. So you voiced it and I heard it. So Isaac can hear but he can’t see…Isaac is blind. So he turns to his son, and he calls and asks him to go and fetch some nice tastily prepared venison for him. Jacob puts on the clothes, the outer clothes of his brother Esau to deceive the father into believing that he is Esau. He said, “I can’t see you, my son, come close that I may feel you.” The emphasis is now on feeling. So he comes close and he feels the hairy hands and feels the hairy shoulders and smells the odor of the coat of his son Esau. He said, “You have the odor of my son Esau and you feel like Esau, but your voice sounds like Jacob.” But based on feeling, rather than sound, he pronounces the blessing. You sound like Jacob, but you feel like Esau…so he gives him the blessing. Esau returns from the hunt to discover his brother Jacob had deceived the father and took the blessing that belonged to Esau.
Well, this is how you do it. Here I am in this room, now this is my Esau it’s so real; my senses dictate the reality of this room. But I would like to be and I name it. I won’t do it really because I know I’ll go there, because I’ve done it…and you go there. So I would say now, if I desire to be in San Francisco, I would, while standing here knowing from my senses that I’m in Los Angeles in the Ebell Club, I would close my eyes and become blind to this like Isaac, I wouldn’t see it. I’d become just as blind as Isaac. Then I would depend upon touch. I would feel…I’d go to the St. Francis Hotel…I’d feel the St. Francis Hotel. I would sit in the lobby and feel that very chair that I sit in daily when I’m there. I’d go ask for my mail. I’d go to the elevator and then call my floor. I would walk through that by touch; I would sense it and touch it. I’d open my eyes once more and I’m back here. I came back from that 500 mile journey to find that I’m here. That was only in my Imagination…I didn’t really go…all in my Imagination. Then things are going to happen rapidly and quickly and I will have to make my changes in my world to make that journey. That, again, I speak from experience.
In 1941 I brought out my first book Your Faith is Your Fortune. It came out in the month of February. There was a snow storm on in New York City. Twelve inches of snow! I went to my meeting. Instead of having the usual hundreds that I always had, about 150 came out; they couldn’t get through the snow. When I came out it was still snowing. So my first night with my book I expected to find about 500 people would want the book, but only 150 came. They came, I would say, just through sympathy, because they really had to struggle to get there. Well, that night when I went to my home I assumed I was in Barbados, and I actually slept in the belief I am in Barbados. I could hear the sounds that you hear only were you in Barbados; the odors that come only were you in Barbados, the tropical odors. I could hear the palm leaves and the coconut leaves on the shingles of the house. I slept in my mother’s home in Barbados. The next day when I woke snow was even higher—not Barbados at all, I’m still in New York City. But that day, or rather that year my wife and I made plans to go off to Maine for a vacation and sent off our reservations to go to Maine.
Then I got a cable from my family saying, “We never told you because the war was on”—that is, we in Barbados were at war, Briton was at war—-and so they said, “Why tell you to disturb you, but mother has been desperately ill, and now it’s terminal, no possibility of any change in mother, and if it’s possible for you to come, come.” They couldn’t send me a nickel because the pound was frozen. They could not transfer dollars, so they couldn’t get one dollar out to send me. So they did not know what condition I was in financially, whether I could come or not, if my business would allow it. But they sent a cable saying, “This is the terminal state of mother, and if you can come, come.” My wife and I sailed the very next night on an American ship that was leaving at midnight for Barbados. It was the old Argentina ___(??). Went home and there I slept in the very room that I had slept in back in February. I hadn’t the slightest idea of going to Barbados, but I slept in Barbados in the month of February, and physically I was there in the month of August. A bridge of incidents appeared. I had to go across that series of events that led up to my sleeping in my mother’s home in Barbados. Then three weeks later we returned, and two weeks later mother closed her eyes to this age, this world. So I tell you, don’t do it lightly, for you will have to go.
So he said in this story, “Come closer, my son, that I may feel you. You sound like Jacob, but you feel like Esau and you smell like Esau, so come closer.” And it was so real to him that he pronounced the blessing. What blessing?—-the fact. He gave it the reality; he gave it the right to be born in this world. That’s the blessing. So you can sit here physically, shut your eyes to the fact, and then assume that you are elsewhere and feel the reality of that elsewhere-ness, and give it the right to be born. You can do it with anything in this world.
Now, this is exercising the Jacob within you who is the prototype of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. You will not actually know he is Jesus Christ until the day David comes into your world, for that marks it. From then on you know who he is; until then you don’t really know. You will have heard it from me and you have read about it in the few little things I have written, but you will not actually know that it is Jesus Christ until David appears and calls you Father. For he calls Jesus Christ, Father, and he can’t have two fathers, he can only have one. So he calls Jesus Christ, Father, Adonay.
So begin to exercise it lovingly, and do it on behalf of everyone in this world. It costs you nothing to sit quietly for one moment and exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another. Take anyone in this world and just simply do it, and feel the thrill of accomplishment when you hear via the grapevine that it worked to know that wonderful power resides in you!
Now let us go into the Silence and play the part of Isaac, Jacob and Esau. Let Esau go hunting and you bring your Jacob clothed in the skins of reality, and make it real by touching it. Now let us go. * * *
___(??) your results so that I may in turn tell others. It encourages people. You can just tell me tomorrow or next week of the results that you got, and I can from the platform just tell your story. It does help people…it encourages them. Now, are there any questions?
Q: Neville, do you consider consciousness, awareness of being and Imagination are all the same thing? A: Yes I do. To be aware of being is to be conscious, and to be aware of being is to imagine. I may not be active. I call imagining the activity, but Imagination is to be aware of being. I call them the same. I coined the word “imaginal” ___(??), because I don’t see why you can’t make an adjective of the word. So I like it very much, “an imaginal activity” which would be Imagination in action. Q: In these little scenes…I remember reading in The Law and the Promise about the woman who lost her furniture, and she sat in her hotel room, and I understood it to mean she repeated this little scene in her mind until fi nally she was sitting in her own apartment surrounded by her own furniture, just by sheer repetition.
A: I know this lady very well. This lady came back from Paris after about almost a year. Maintained…or thought she maintained…she paid the rent for this apartment…with her own furniture. When she came back, it was empty…not a stick in the apartment. She investigated, and the maid had simply disappeared with all the furniture. The super knew nothing about it. The super thought she had the authority to do what she did by moving all the furniture out. So she went to a hotel, and it was in her hotel that I met her and explained to her what I would do. Seated in the hotel room I would assume that I was in my own apartment with all my own furniture. But what she did, she sat in her own hotel room and assumed that she was surrounded by her own furniture and seated in her own chair, looking at the pictures of her children on the piano, and all the things that she would see were it true. And it happened in no time fl at. I know that lady very, very well, so he doesn’t fail! She felt the furniture that the private detectives couldn’t find, the police department of New York City couldn’t find, no one could find. They went from borough to borough— there are five boroughs—and they went all over the boroughs investigating all of the great places where you’d store furniture, and no one had any inkling…no one. Yet, she did it in this simple manner when the police department and private agencies could not find that furniture. This lady, maybe about ten years prior to this time that I am talking about, had a little nervous breakdown, and she was confined. It was a violent state. In other words, they called her case a violent case. So when she went to the bank on Madison Avenue when she came out of the bank she turned left. As she came out of the bank, the bank had little bars in a door, and it reminded her of that state, and sort of disturbed her mind for one moment. Because, as she came through the door she was thinking of this bar that she had seen, which reminded her of her own confinement, and she turned south instead of turning north as she should have done to go home to her hotel room. As she got to the corner she discovered her mistake. At that very moment she saw this pair of very familiar ankles, and she knew that’s my maid…or the one who was my maid, and looking up slowly to her face there is the maid. The light luckily was against the maid’s crossing the street and she grabbed the maid. You know the story. They got into a cab, went off to the place where she had stored the furniture. She had stolen it and thought she would keep it there for a nice safe time, and then take it out either to sell it or use it.
Q: Would it give it more power for two people to work on the same problem?
A: Did you hear the question? Would it give more power if two people worked on it? I don’t think so, sir, just faith in one, that’s all, really. I can’t see…because this is a unity I’m speaking of and the whole is contained in the one person. If he has faith, if one person really believes it, he doesn’t need the help of any second in the world…if he really believes it. Many times it works, you never hear of it, and those who got the benefit never come back to say thanks. The Bible teaches that too, only one out of ten will come back. He said, “Were there not ten of you?” Nine did not turn back, only one came back and the one was a Samaritan. But the other nine did not turn back. So don’t be disappointed if you do not get confirmation. I got a call yesterday from some lady. She hadn’t called me, but it worked. She met this crisis— this was a physical condition— the whole thing disappeared. She came over this crisis. Didn’t call on that day, but in the long, long telephone conversation she mentioned it. Asked me for something else now, something about a love affair. But the physical condition, she overcame that beautifully; and said she knew as a nurse that only through prayer could it have been done. But she didn’t mention that, save, a long way into the conversation, just like a little after thought there it was. So they don’t come back to say thinks at all.
Q: Is it better to come back and say thanks?
A: I think for the soul of the one—not for the one who did it but for the very one who received the benefit—just to give thanks. Praise is the tenth disciple. He’s only mentioned in the twelve because so little is done to exercise it. His name is Thaddaeus. So the tenth disciple is praise, and so little praise is given in this world that he’s only recorded as one of the apostles; but outside of one of the twelve he’s not exercised, so you can’t talk about it. The others are mentioned more than once, but Thaddaeus is only mentioned in the twelve as the tenth, and he is praise. But who praises?
Q: Neville, isn’t it true that as long as one goes to you and asks you to exercise your Imagination then that Imagination lies dormant within them? I mean for their own ___(??).
A: No question about it. But people are not aware of this power. They are carrying around the greatest power in the world as their immortal twin brother, it’s Jesus Christ. Christ became man that man may become God. And yet they don’t know, so they turn to the left or they turn to the right. But these twelve disciples should be exercised in man. They’re all present; they’re not outside of man, they are all within man.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Both words and pictures…anything that makes it natural, anything. You can take, for instance, this story I told in one of my books. This very dear friend of mine—I haven’t seen her in years now, she’s an artist—and when her father was killed she was left unschooled, untrained to do anything, and found herself in San Diego. She was in San Francisco when her father was killed, and she and her mother and brother moved towards the south. She got a job as a waitress, that’s all that she could do. It was Christmas Eve and her father had been gone; and she was very close to the father. And this is the night now where all families should be united and there is no father…the first Christmas she’d ever had without her father. On this rainy, cold night on Christmas Eve in San Diego coming home on the streetcar, an open streetcar, to conceal her tears she stuck her face in the rain as the rain was coming down to mingle the rain with her tears so no one would know she was crying. And there she closed her eyes to the obvious and assumed that she was holding the rail of a ship and she was coming into this South Pacifi c island. She could actually see, as she described it in her own way, the bone in the lady’s mouth. A ship is always called a lady or a tramp, but this was a lady, and a bone would be the waves breaking against the bow of the ship. So, she saw this in her mind’s eye that she was holding the rail.
In just a little while she was notified by this legal firm in Chicago that they had just received notice of the death of an aunt of hers in Switzerland. Before she left for Switzerland, she went to this legal fi rm and left a will. As she did not return to this country, $3,000 should be paid to her niece, Dora B. So Dora got her $3,000 in cash, and within a matter of days she was on that ship and off to this South Pacifi c island. She came in at night, the stars were brilliant. She described the whole thing to me in her letter how it happened. As she came in, here she could see this wave against the bow of the ship and the salt of the sea driven by the wind on her face…everything as she had imagined it while she was on a streetcar in San Diego.
So she gave it reality. You must give reality to the imaginal act and then let it work. What could you do after pregnancy? Nothing! Just let it work. Any attempt to interfere with it will produce, well, in this case, mental miscarriage. You do nothing but let the child be born, and at the appointed hour it’s going to come into the world. Everything has its own appointed hour; it ripens and it fl owers. If it seems to us slow, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late (Hab. 2:3).
Goodnight.
