2/27/64
Tonight’s subject is “All Are Human.” In Blake’s great Jerusalem he said, “All are men in eternity, rivers, mountains, cities, villages, all are human. And when we enter into their bosoms we walk in earth and in heaven, and when we enter into our bosoms we walk in earth and heaven; and all that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Jer.,Plt.71). That’s difficult to conceive, difficult to follow, but I think I can throw a little light on it from my own personal experience.
It seems so difficult to tell a man that the whole vast world is himself made visible, that man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth and the sea. He either contains the whole of eternity within him, and truly is the ark of God; or he simply appears out of the nowhere, and he waxes, and he wanes, and he vanishes and leaves not a trace behind him, just like a phantom. So the choice is man’s. But man thinks he is simply a little phantom. I tell you, you are the ark of God. You contain the whole of eternity within you, and what your destiny is, it’s God. You are actually destined to become as he is, and it takes this whole vast wonderful world of ours to unfold it for us. As we are told, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.” Then he said, “Do not marvel at this; for I tell you that the day is coming that all in the tomb will hear his voice and come forth” (John5:26). All in the tomb will hear his voice and come forth. Well, Blake made something similar in a little comment in his book, the first book of Europe, he said, “The dead heard the voice of the child and began to awake from sleep. All things heard the voice of the child and began to awake to life.” That this Christ child—and you always think of Christ as a little child, always as the child—and you hear the voice of the child, and all in the tomb begin to awake from sleep. Yet in a tomb they were called “the dead.” They will come forth from the tomb; they will awake in the tomb and come forth.
Now here is this new concept that came with the first one who awoke from the tomb, awoke from the dead, to find himself entombed and came forth, and then he brought an entirely different concept of what man really is. Man was under restraint in the past. So we are told, Why do you live under restraints, under regulations? Why do you live as though you were still a part of this world, and why do you submit to regulations? That we read in Colossians, Paul’s letter, the 2nd chapter of Colossians (verse 20)… because in the ancient world man had so many restraints if you read the 11th chapter of Leviticus, even as to diets. If a beast chews its cud and at the same time it has a parted hoof and the cloven foot, well, then you could eat it. But if it chewed the cud, like the camel, but did not have the parted hoof, then it was unclean. The pig did not chew the cud but it had the parted hoof. It was unclean; you must have both. And so, the hare, the rabbit, the badger, they chewed the cud. The hare does not chew its cud, but the ancients thought it did by the motion of the jaw. But it had the cloven hoof as it were, it was not a parted foot, and therefore unclean. And the unnumbered things in the ocean, if they had fins and scales, they were clean, you could eat them. But if they did not have fins and scales, you could not eat them, they were unclean. So the eel that today the French devour and love—I’ve had them and they are delicious—all the shellfish were unclean. They didn’t have scales, they didn’t have fins, so oysters, clams, our lovely lobsters, the shrimp, all that would be the unclean if you took the 11th chapter of Leviticus.
He comes and he tells us what goes into the mouth does not defile us. Not a thing that goes into the mouth defiles a man, only what comes out of the heart defiles him. And so, whether I eat or do not eat it means nothing in the eye of God. He tells us that there’s not a thing gained by not eating it and nothing by eating it, it’s all equal to the eye of God. Because man will one day discover he never really ate another…that seems crazy…he never really ate another. He never killed another. He never wounded another. There was only himself, the ark, containing all, and all were self-wounds and self-destruction, and he only ate himself.
Now let me share with you an experience of mine. One day I found myself at the top of a ladder, a very tall ladder, and I was alone as a man. At the base of this ladder was the jungle and all the animals of the jungle, the lions, tigers, everything that you would think of as a vicious animal, an angry animal, and they were really violent. You could see the river…these living growling beasts that they were. And I was afraid. I looked around and not a soul in sight, I’m all alone. Then, something in the depth of my soul told me—I didn’t hear a voice but I knew—I knew that everything that I saw, the entire animal world, only reflected my emotional disturbance. The anger there was a reflection of the fear here, and my fears were mirrored in this moving, moving beast that was at the bottom of me. Then when I knew that, I lost the fear. As I lost the fear they became domesticated, like house cats, just domesticated cats, not angry lions and tigers and panthers and all that they were.
And then I went further, because I remembered what I once did by arresting in me an activity, which in turn arrested the moving panorama that moved before me. Not a thing could move when I arrested that energy in me, and I saw it stand still as though made of marble, made of clay. So I repeated it here, and I arrested in me that life promised: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And do not marvel; for you will one day hear the voice and those that are dead will come forth from their tombs.” And so, I arrested in me this activity, and everything I saw one moment before moving stood still. Then I went down the ladder, and they were made as inanimate as this thing is here. They were dead; made of some substance, it could have been clay, or it could have been marble. But there wasn’t one breath in the beasts that I saw, everything was dead. Well, where was the life? Had I eaten one of them, what life would I have eaten? Had I slain one and taken from it a nice piece of meat, and I consumed that meat, what would I have eaten? So I can only get from anything the life within it. Where was the life in it? Because I can’t eat the dead thing, no one takes the dead or that with feet of clay anyway. You can only eat that which has life in it to get substance from it. Even if it’s an apple, if it’s a peach, anything in the world, it must first be alive. It can’t be dead and decayed, and it can’t turn to stone and you consume it and get anything from it. You can’t assimilate that. You can only assimilate that which is alive. And so had I killed one of these and devoured it, what life would I have been eating? I saw that I gave it life. I could not have extracted from it anything other than I first gave it.
So the whole vast world that lives and moves in my world moves because I animate it. But I do it unknowingly. You are doing it unknowingly. You are making everything alive in your world, but you don’t know it, for you haven’t yet had the experience of stopping it to see it is something that is dead unless you animate it; that nothing is truly and really independent of your perception of it. That it moves, but you don’t know it moves because you are animating it. And one day you are told of a certain law, that you could, without the consent of another, change the attitude of that being towards life, towards himself; and in changing his attitude, you could change the circumstances of his life. So you try it. You don’t ask his consent. You simply represent him to yourself as the man, or the woman, that you would like him to be, and you’re quite sure he would like to be it. And so, you don’t confide, you don’t take him into your confidence and tell him anything, you simply try it. Then when you meet him in the not distant future, he has changed his attitude towards life, and in that change of attitude he has changed the aspects of life. He has a change of environment, change of circumstances.
And so, you don’t brag; you’re just learning a lesson. Where was the activity to begin with? You are the ark of God, and the ark contains everything, nothing is missing from the ark. So you are either the ark of God or you’re simply a phantom from the earth and the sea. By this, you know you’re the ark, because he lives, seemingly, on the outside and he moves independently of your perception of him. Were he truly independent of your perception of him, a change of attitude in you relative to him could not produce in him a change at all, it couldn’t. But it does! It produces a change; therefore, he must be truly in you. And we go back to Blake: “All that you behold though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” So when Blake uses the word “bosom” he means Imagination, which he reveals in that wonderful statement, another passage in Jerusalem, that “we are ever expanding in the bosom of God, the Human Imagination” (Ch.1,Plt.5). So he calls the bosom of God “Divine Imagination,” and we are expanding in Divine Imagination. What’s expanding?—the human Imagination. And they do not differ save in degree of intensity, but not in substance, not in character. They operate in the same way, one is keyed low and one is keyed high. Keyed high, an imaginal act is an immediate objective fact; keyed low as we are, it’s then realized in a time process. It takes time between the imaginal act and its externalization in the world. But it’s still one, operating the entire world.
So you are doing it, I am doing it; everyone contains all in himself. And all that we behold, though it appears without and seems so completely independent of us, it really isn’t. For I know that the night that I saw this thing it frightened me. I was scared by my own being, because it was simply myself made visible. That’s part of the eternal structure of the universe. But I animated it. He said, “Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy” (Vis. Last Judg.,Pp.91-92). That act of mercy was the animation of that which exists. The whole thing exists, but it’s dead, it’s frozen, and then you, God, awaken it. You begin to animate it, and as you animate it you don’t know you’re animating it and it scares you. You are afraid of your own life, because you give it life; it has no life in itself. Only the Father has life in himself, and as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. So you are that Son, but the Father and the Son are one; though the Father, at this level where we are called Son, is greater than the Son. So, “I and my Father are one, but my Father is greater than I.” But I am moving towards that expansion where I and my Father are truly one (John 10:30).
But while I am learning and experiencing this wonderful thing I must go through, then at moments I am scared to death of my own creation. Didn’t create the lion, I didn’t create the tiger. They are part of the eternal structure of the universe. I didn’t create this garment of hair called John Brown or Mary Smith; I didn’t do that but I animate them. I animate everything in my world. But Mary Brown and John Smith are eternal parts of the eternal structure of the universe, and you simply animate them. And to prove you do do it you simply see them not as they now appear to you but as you would like them to appear to you and to themselves. You don’t consult them, you don’t take them into your confidence, you ask nothing of them, you simply do it; and persuade yourself of the reality of what you imagine relative to them, and wait in confidence. You wait in confidence, and then in this interval of time—because you’re functioning on a lower frequency, you’re down here, and this is the lower degree of intensity than were you raised to the height of the Father—so down here, you must wait in faith, confident that what you have done will come to pass. And then it comes to pass. As it comes to pass, you’ve discovered life in yourself. And the day will come when you take it off…you never know it completely while you are still wearing this garment, for this garment is also part of the eternal structure of the universe. You had to assume it and move above it, but trusting from within the being that you really are.
Now, what then endures? This is part of the eternal structure of the universe. What then passes away and what endures outside of the eternal structure that God has set up to bring forth himself as you?—-love, love never ends. As for prophecy, it will pass away, as for knowledge, it will pass away; for our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect. But when that which is perfect comes, that which is imperfect will pass away. And so, when we are perfected in his own mind’s eye…when the lowly being that we started as, just trying to make something move and it moved…but we didn’t know we did it. We saw it move, and we didn’t see any contact between the thing and ourselves. We didn’t have a string, like a kite, but we know when we’re flying a kite with the wind we can do certain things and we do know we are guiding the motion, or we feel we are. But we have no sensation of contact between the beam, say, a beam of thought, and we don’t realize we’re just as contacted with it as we are with the string and the kite. We don’t know it. And so, it moves and seems to run from us and sometimes frightens us because of our attitude towards it. And it scares us to death…when it has no power in itself. All the power is in the mind of the one who is looking at it, and imagining whatever he is imagining when he looks at it. And the whole vast world is simply the animated structure of the world, animated by the percipient, and you are the percipient. So the only thing that really remains is love, because God is love. There is nothing but God and God is love.
Last night I spoke at one of these salons. That’s one of those things that you get into occasionally, and you don’t know why or how, but we all do it. And so, not a (??), so you got into it. And this nice couple, they asked me to tell them some stories concerning my mystical experiences. Alright, nothing pleases me more than to tell these experiences. And so, this chap said to me, “You mean to tell me that you actually saw God?” I said, “Yes, I saw God.” Then he smiled a little sneer, snigger. Well, said he, “What is God?” I said, “Man…God is man. You may not believe it, you may think he’s light and power and all these things, but I tell you God is man. And one day you will have the privilege of meeting God. When you see him, you’ll be absorbed by him, because to see him is to become him. And so you’ll be incorporated into the body of love, and you will know, regardless of the arguments of man, that God is all love, infinite love, and nothing but love. All things pass away, all the wisdom of this world passes away, everything passes away but love. Love never ends, never comes to an end, because God is love.”
Then his wife said to me, “Are you Isaiah?” I said, What has that to do about it…am I Isaiah? I said, no, I’m Neville. “Isaiah saw God.” Must I be Isaiah to see God? The pure in heart sees God, only the pure in heart sees God. So, if you’re pure in heart—not in your eyes, for all of us in our own eyes feel that our ways are pure, all the ways of men are pure in their own eyes, but God sees the heart—and when in his eyes the heart is pure you are called. You have no choice. Because you don’t know that moment in eternity when you were selected, and that little secret of God’s elective love remains his secret. And you are called for incorporation, that’s all. You’ll be asked a question, you’ll answer correctly; at the moment of the answer you are incorporated into the body of love, which is God. And let me repeat, God is man. That didn’t sit with them at all.
And then, this lady asked a question, “Why if Jesus Christ is God, why did he cry out on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” And then she quoted it as though it came from the Book of Luke. I said, no, it didn’t come from Luke. It came either from Matthew or Mark or both, but certainly not from Luke, and not from John. Because they do not use that 22nd Psalm, they use…that is, Luke uses the 31st Psalm, and only the 31st is quoted in this last cry on the cross. It wasn’t a cry. It was a complete surrender in faith; for the words are, ‘Father, into thy hand I commit my spirit’ not ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ That is Matthew. That’s when the great presence is presented as king. In Mark, he is presented as a servant. In Luke, he is presented as the perfect man. He would not cry, because a perfect man is made in the image of God, the pure in heart, so he doesn’t. He knows God as infinite love. So, at the very last he knows the work is finished, and so, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.”
When it comes to John, John is God himself in the story as presented, and so, he presents Jesus as Jehovah. And so the last cry there is, “It is finished.” To fulfill scripture, just prior to that, he said, “I thirst”…to fulfill the 69th Psalm. And so he thirsted and they gave him vinegar for his thirst. So he cried out, “I thirst.” Then the very last words, knowing that it was finished, he said, “It is finished” and then gave up the spirit. So he didn’t cry it. But the lady was insistent it came from Luke, because that very day she was reading Luke and she read it in Luke. Well, not to have the other guests be disturbed, I did what normally I really should not have done. But I thought for the benefit of all…because if I did not correct it, they would have gone out thinking, well, you see, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and one lady corrected him, and so she knew. So I asked the hostess of the place if perchance she had a Bible, and she brought out a lovely big red Bible. I said, Turn to Luke and turn to the 23rd chapter, for that would be on the cross. The 24th is after the resurrection.
So she turned…I didn’t have my glasses with me, and when you’re pushing sixty, you know, you need glasses, so I didn’t have my glasses. So I said, I can’t see this fine print…and some gentleman very graciously offered me his glasses, but I couldn’t use them. He gave me the glasses, but I couldn’t see anything then. Another gentleman, judging from appearances I would say many years my senior, and his fitted me perfectly. They were just magnifying, and so I could see, and I read it for her. She was, still I’m quite convinced, unconvinced. I said, I’m reading from the 46th verse, the 23rd chapter of the Book of Luke. When you go home, take the same Book of Luke and read it and you will see he never did quote the 22nd Psalm; he was only quoting the 31st Psalm, a complete confidence in his surrender to God.
So we think we know this great book, and we really don’t know the book. The book is telling you what I’ve told you earlier: You are the ark of God. All things in eternity are contained in you; there’s nothing but God; and you and God are one. That shocks people, as it shocked those last night…not all of them but the majority was disturbed. As the meeting…as it followed when the gathering after the meeting, from conversations that I had with so many of them following that, they were greatly disturbed. Because they can’t bring themselves to believe that man is that great in the eyes of God. He’s bringing out a Son. What do you expect him to bring out, a Son and not be like his Father? Suppose I’m bringing out a son and my wife says, “Oh, we had a child this morning,” and I’m delighted, and I go into the room and she shows me a roach. She gives me a bug, a great big bug, and says, “I gave birth to this, this morning. You’re the father.” Now, wouldn’t I be proud! That’s exactly what man is doing with God. He said, “I will bring forth from you”—from man, and he calls man this wonderful David—and he said, “I will raise up after you” (after you’re dead), and so, “When you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up from your body a son, that will come forth from your body. And I will be his father and he shall be my son” (2 Sam. 7:12,14). Then all of a sudden he brings out of David (which is humanity) what he’s waiting eagerly for, his Son, the image of himself, and David gives birth to a roach? Can you imagine that? What would God do? Step on it. He’d step on it right away and call it, well, some miscreation and start all over again. Because if all that God could bring out of man, waiting eagerly for something like himself to come out of man, and it doesn’t come out the embodiment of love but it comes out like a monstrous thing, step on it. And then you have eternity at your command, therefore, make it all over again. This time do a little better.
But God has done exactly what he planned. He is bringing forth from humanity his Son. He is bringing out of David, that’s humanity, one glorious Son; it’s you. When he brings you out, you’re just like him. And, may I tell you, he’s all love, nothing but love. There is no hate in God, no retribution. The cry on the cross, the very first words, “Father, forgive them”—if you read Luke–“Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” And then the second cry on the cross, he turns to the thief, he said, “Behold, I say unto you today…” You see, in Greek and in Hebrew there is no punctuation mark, in fact, no paragraph, no chapter, just one letter after the other, so our scholars had to break it and punctuate it. So if you take the comma and put it after “I say unto you,” and that’s the break, and then, “today you will be with me in Paradise” that changes the entire sentence. And yet they all do that. But if I take that sentence and change the comma, and say, “I say unto you today,”—I’m telling you today—“you will be with me in Paradise.” I don’t say you are going to be with me today. I’m telling you I have experienced it. I have experienced the Promise, complete, fulfilled, and I know my inheritance is the kingdom of heaven. I inherit not only the kingdom, I inherit a presence, and the presence is God. Because he gave me himself through the revelation of his Son, who called me what he calls him. He calls me “Father”; he calls him “Father.” But he can’t call both; we’re one.
And so, I know I inherit a presence. I know when the time comes to take it off, automatically he has already changed my lowly body to be of one form with his glorious body, and the body that I will wear tomorrow is one with that of the exalted Christ. That I know. And so, when this happens, I will say to anyone, if a thief, alright, even though you are a thief, you’re a cutthroat, you’re a murderer, but I tell you, “You will be with me in Paradise.” So his second cry on the cross, “Behold, I say unto you today,”—you put the comma there—“you will be with me in Paradise.” I’m not committing myself that now, this very day, you’re going to be with me; because, if you read the story carefully, he said, “Touch me not yet; I have not yet ascended unto my Father” (John 20:17), and that was forty days later. So either one is misunderstood or the whole thing is a lie, it’s a contradiction. But if you take the comma—and the scholar had the right to place it where he felt the meaning would be—and so he thought after “you” if you placed the comma that would give the sense intended by the writer. It didn’t give the sense. “Behold, I say unto you today,”—I’m talking today—“you will be with me in Paradise.” So that’s the story.
And then the third cry is a complete surrender in absolute confidence into the hands of his Father. “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” in confidence that this was intended, that we become one; for the spirit, everyone’s spirit becomes one, and he’s one with the Father. So when he goes to the Father, he is the Father. But, while he’s here, clothed as we are clothed in flesh and blood, then, seemingly, he is not, and restricted to the limit of this region, this level of awareness.
So I say, all of you the whole vast world pushed out—everything is man made visible. Man has never killed another, he has never eaten another, he has never wounded another, because he only could hurt himself. I wouldn’t say I wound a piece of clay. If I went in and I took a knife, I could disfigure a lovely painting, but I wouldn’t say I wounded it. I could be some awful character and then take a knife and cut the lovely canvas, but I wouldn’t really say I hurt it. But, if I gave it life and the thing became animated, it became alive, and then I put the knife to it, I would say I hurt it. But the thing that would make it alive would be myself, the perceiver; therefore, I’m really putting the knife into myself, but not yet that sensitive to feeling.
But the day will come, may I tell you, when what I just told you is true. I saw the entire world right before me and it was all dead when I arrested in me an activity that made it alive. I suddenly looked at it and it was simply dead. But before that, I was afraid, I was scared to death. I looked at it and it was all living, moving beasts, and I’m alone, no one to protect me, no one to comfort me, I’m completely alone. And then, something in the depths of the soul, I knew it, that if perchance I could only lose my fear of them, they would not be angry. When I lost my fear of them…these lovely kittens, that’s what they were. Huge monstrous things…but kittens, domesticated. And then I went further and I arrested in me the activity that made them alive. Then I came down the ladder, walked right down to them and they were frozen, dead; not asleep, they were dead. They were only made of clay. Their life was in me, but I didn’t know it until that moment before I started down. Because, at the very first moment of seeing them, because I saw them through my conceptual mind and my conceptual mind tells me that tiger is a very dangerous animal, and so is the lion, and so is the panther; and so, my conceptual mind modified that divine vision that I could have had were I not wearing the conceptual mind. So when I took it off as it were by remembering the being that I am, the whole thing changed and they were all dead.
So, had I eaten any part of them, or any part of the fish, I’m only eating myself. Because I’m only extracting, really, from that body, which is dead anyway, and it was only made alive by the life of me, so what am I taking back when I eat it? I’m only eating my own being as it were. So you’re told in that wonderful second chapter of Colossians speaking of diets, it doesn’t matter what you eat. Only do not use it as a stumbling block to others who are not yet awake. So don’t brag about it. If they want to be vegetarians, let them be vegetarians. Don’t brag about being able to eat all the things in the world without distress, don’t brag about it. But do not submit any more to regulations. You’re told, do not submit to regulations—all the regulations of the churches, all the regulations of the outside things of this world—don’t. Why do you once more think of yourself, he said, as a part of this world? You’re not a part of this world. You’re wearing a part of the world’s garment, and you’re wearing it, but you’re not the garment that you wear. You will have something that is coming out that is one with God; and your body is God’s body, and the body is all love.
So we are told love never ends. Knowledge passes away, prophecy it passes away, for both are imperfect. But when perfection comes, when that which is perfect comes, that which is imperfect will pass away. And so, all that man knows today about gravity, all that he knows about the so-called structure of the atom, all that he knows about everything in this world will be as nothing; it’ll pass away, because it isn’t true. It is partially true and we get results with a partial truth. But when perfection comes all these partial truths will vanish, and they will not be so at all. And I saw that so clearly when I saw a bird in flight. If I arrested the motion of a man, which I did, and the lady walking through to serve food, and then she couldn’t move one second beyond one nth part beyond. And I saw that so clearly when I saw a bird in flight. If I arrested the motion of a man, which I did, and the lady walking through to serve food, and then she couldn’t move one second beyond one nth where I arrested her. And a man eating couldn’t complete the action. He was drinking soup, so he took the soup up this way, and as I stopped him, he stopped, frozen, he was dead. And the waitress walking, she was dead. And the bird flying, it stopped in space but it didn’t fall. And the leaves falling didn’t fall any further when I arrested them. And everything was just as it was at that moment of perception. The leaves falling fell not, and the bird flying flew not, and the waitress walking walked not; everything that was in motion when I stopped it remained stationary. Then I went forward and examined it, and everything was made as though it were made of clay.
Then when I released that activity in me, what happened? They all continued to complete their intentions. The bird continued in its flight towards where he intended to go. The waitress came forward towards the table of four to serve as she intended when she came through that little door. The man drinking his soup, the hand that was stopped here completed the action and the soup went into his mouth. Everything continued as it was intended. But I stopped the intention, not there, in me. At that moment in time it had to be just where it was and I stopped it, and then allowed it to continue by an action in me. Well, if gravity is true, I mean absolutely true, not partially true, not relatively true, that bird should have fallen to the ground when I stopped it. For a bird in flight if arrested would fall. But, the bird in flight arrested, not supported by anything and still remained suspended in space, where is gravity? Where is the gravity of the leaf? Why did the leaf not come on down to the ground where it should have if gravity is truly an absolute universal law?
So I say, the time will come when all that man now knows…and you read it carefully in the 13th chapter of the Book of Corinthians, 1st Corinthians, 13th chapter. It’s a hymn in praise of love. It simply states that love and love only is the everlasting of the world. Everything passes away. If I give my body to be burned and have not love, it is as nothing. If I have all wisdom and have not love, it is as nothing. No matter what I do in this world if I haven’t love, I did nothing. Because, everything is going to pass away that man knows here; but it’s love that he has here that will not pass away. Your love for your wife, your love for your husband, your love for a child, your love for a friend, your love for an animal, every expression of love is forever. So these loves never pass away…but what you now know is going to pass away.
You look into the mirror and you see your face, and you even catch it on a photograph, and you think, “I’ve got him now.” Then look at yourself again next year, where is he? It all passed away, and you can’t bring it back. You can go to the surgeon, have him cut you here, pull up a little place, but it doesn’t look like what it did last year. And they go every year. I just saw where some very famous person in the East, she’s an international lady—but like all of us we push the inevitable grave, and so, she’s not far from it—but she’s just gone to a surgeon for the nth time in London to once more have another little lift. A few more seconds, she can’t smile. There’s no more to lift. You look at it like this…you can’t take any more.
I have played in the theatre with one of those. She had millions, and she was always taking a little lift, not only here but also here. Also making everything as she was when she was eighteen. It didn’t work. Finally, the face couldn’t move. It was simply completely filled. So, you see, all things will pass away, but love will not pass away. So, whatever you do in love know you are doing something that is permanent, something that’s forever. So fall in love with anything, with a bird, a bird at home. If you have a cat at home, if you have a dog at home, if you can’t find humanity to love, love something, because love is the only living permanent thing in the world because God is love. And everything else passes away.
Infinite power…you can call God’s power almightiness, but that’s not God, that’s an attribute of God. When you see it, you see man, because all the attributes of God are men. When you stand in the presence, almightiness, it’s man, no question about it, but it’s not God. God is love. When you stand in the presence of God, infinite love, you don’t have to ask anything, who are you? You ask no question. You stand in the presence of the Ancient of Days and he’s all love. Yet you look here and here is infinite might and it’s man; it’s an attribute of God. Wisdom, an attribute of God… all this is an attribute of God. But love is forever, the only permanent reality in the world. So every time you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you know what you’re doing? You’re actually using the only reality in the world, the only reality.
Gradually you awaken, and one day you’ll hear the voice of the child. You will hear him, and you will awaken him from a profound sleep. Where will you awaken him? He’ll come forth from the tomb. And where is the tomb?–your own skull. One day you will hear the voice of the child in the depths of your soul, and then you who were dead will awaken from sleep. You will feel yourself waking from sleep, may I tell you. You had no idea you were dead, because you feel yourself waking and you can only wake if you were asleep. And when you are fully awake, you know now you must have been dead because you are in a tomb. It’s the only way you know that you’re dead, because where you are you are alone in a sealed tomb, a sepulcher. So are we not told in Luke—and they called the word by its real name, they call it “skull”—“And when they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified him” (Luke 23:33). When they came to the place called The Skull, there they crucified him. And just the very next verse, he said, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” And then a few verses later on, “I say to you today, you will be with me in Paradise.” A few verses later and he commits himself into the hands of the Father, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Then he gives up the breath, gives up the Spirit into the hands of God, for the journey is over.
And that will be played by every child born of woman; everyone is going to play that part. You can’t avoid it, because that’s your destiny. God has predetermined your end, regardless of what you do in between. I hope you play a lovely part, a beautiful part, but whether you do or not the end is predetermined; and the end is that God gives himself to you, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you. And so, the end is assured for all of us—even if you have murdered—but you’ve never murdered love. And so, the millions that Hitler murdered he really murdered himself, but he doesn’t know it, hasn’t the slightest idea. Stalin murdered millions; he murdered himself.
I know that you and I who have friends or relatives who were part of that awful story, we do not conceal that. We did not know that a friend was murdered. That friend was really never touched, for in him he too had life in himself. He animated his world. He was afraid of the rumors. He was afraid, as I was afraid of the animals. And before he was brought into that picture of the slaughterhouse, he didn’t quite discover that his own emotions caused the disturbance that he saw. And so he couldn’t quite arrest it, because he didn’t know that he was animating the world and giving it reality, giving it life, by his own fears. And, as Job said, “My fears have come upon me.” So, while he was afraid, he became all the more animated on the inside and all the more things became more stormy. Then it was too late, because he did not realize any relationship between himself and the thing that he perceived.
And so, when you one day have this experience, and may you have it tonight, you will see this wonderful world stand still. You’ll know it stands still because in you, you made it stand still. You arrested an activity that you felt, and you didn’t feel it out there, you felt it here, right in your own head. As you arrested it, everything froze, and you looked at it, and then you had no fear. Then you released it in you and they all became once more animated. You could keep them on the level of domesticated cats, or you could once more go back to your former state where you forgot, and once more they become violent as you become more fearful.
So I say, all men, all the whole vast world is man made visible; there is nothing but man because God and man are one. “Man is all Imagination. God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination and that is God himself ” (Blake, Berkeley., p.775; Laocoon, p.776). And when you go home this night, you try it, without the consent of another. Do it lovingly, though. Just bring someone into your mind’s eye, represent him to yourself as you would like him to be, regardless of what he’s done—I don’t care what he has done or what he’s doing—just simply be faithful to your vision of him. And to the degree that you are self-persuaded of the reality of what you’ve done, to that degree he will conform to it. But, bear this in mind and be comforted by it, were you functioning at higher intensities it would happen immediately. But we are not—we are wearing garments of flesh and blood, and we are insulated. Because we are, it’s going to take an interval of time between your imaginal act and the fulfillment of that act.
Now let us go into the Silence.
* * *
Q: (inaudible)
A: (??) is the number of man. If you would tone 666, you would get 9. 6 + 6 + 6 would be 18; 1 + 8 is 9; and 9 is the number of man. Aleph, Daleth, Mem, and it comes to 1440 when you count. You take 1440 and you get 9. Aleph is 1, Daleth is 4, Mem is 40, and that spells Adam. And so, 144, whether it be 1440 or 144,000, you can add as many zeros as you want, and get that wonderful mystical number of 144,000 who will be saved and on their foreheads will be the name of both the Father and the Son. But the Father’s name is I AM, and the Son in creativity is called Jesus, so on the forehead is “I AM Jesus.” And that’s you!
Goodnight.
