4/15/68
Mr. Herbert Hoover made this statement at a convention of the G.O.P in San Francisco. I know that he has been belittled in many ways, but may I tell you he’s one of the truly great leaders of our country. This is what he said: “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 rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of men.”
Now here is a man who really put himself through college—he had no money to begin with—and he rose to the highest office in our land. Everything that he proposed to bring about a change which he fell heir to, this horrible thing, his follower put into, well, he executed it, but he gave him no credit for it. The one that fell heir to it was crippled, as you know. The country was crippled. The representative of our country always represents what we are: We felt crippled; we couldn’t stand on our own feet. He couldn’t stand on his own feet, and so he was raised up bodily. Every time he had to stand and address anyone he had to be lifted up. But he put into effect everything that Hoover said. And his quotes that you think are his quotes are not really his quotes. “We have nothing to fear but fear.” That’s not his; that was Thoreau, long before he was even brought into this world. So let us go back to Hoover: “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 rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of men.” That’s what Hoover said.
Now let us go back to scripture…and here we go to the 8th chapter of John. I hope I can interpret it in the way as we go back to Nehemiah: “And they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation, so that the people understood what was read” (verse 8). That’s the 8th chapter of Nehemiah. I hope I can now explain to you the meaning behind what is now said in the 8th of John. And this is it, “I am from above, you are from below; you are of this world, I am not of this world. But I have said to you unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (John 8:23). Now the word “sin” means “to miss the mark.” That’s all that it means; it has no other meaning, “to miss the mark.” “Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”
So I ask you what do you want to be? What would you like to be? And you tell me, I would like to be secure, really. Alright, you’d like to be secure. Unless you believe that I am secure, you remain missing that mark. For sinning is missing the mark. Unless you believe that you yourself are secure, so you can say “I am secure,” though there’s not anything in this world to support it, there is no evidence in this world to sustain your claim, but unless you believe I am he you die in your sins. For the name of God is I AM. There is no other power. There is no other God. There’s only God. God is one and his name is I AM (Exod.3:13-15). “Unless you believe I am he you die in your sins” (Jn.8:24).
Now this is the story of scripture. Eventually you will find that you and I, in the beginning, could not believe we were God. I tell you now that you and I are one. I know that we are one, that I do know, but I tell you we are one. Well, you can’t believe it. So at the beginning God said to us, his creative power, “We are one”…couldn’t believe it. So we fell from that. We couldn’t believe it, so we missed the mark. I could not actually believe I am God, so we fell: “I tell you that you are sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men, and fall as one man, O princes” (Ps 82:6, RSV)…because I can’t believe it.
So he sets up in the beginning a pattern by which we can believe it. So here’s a pattern: He is in the beginning a father, the father of one son, and that son is David. Well, I do not know that I am the son of David, and you do not know that you are the son of David, and you do not know that you and I are one, we don’t know it. So we descend, we fall: “And no one has ever ascended into heaven but he who first descended from heaven, the Son of man” (John 3:13)…who is in heaven. Is that prophetic, this present tense? Is in heaven, is that prophetic or is it really now a fact? He descends and then he ascends. He descends to prove a prophecy: You are truly the sons of God, and you and I are one. But I can’t believe it. I have no feeling that you and I are one. I have no feeling that I am actually the being who is the father of David. So if I don’t, then I must descend into this wonderful play and go through the horrors of it all that I may discover I really am he who is God, who is the father of David. And so I descend. And then I ascend in the same manner as Moses lifts up that serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man who descended. For if he is really, if the Son of God must become the Son of man, well then, the Son of man becomes the Son of God. And God the Father and God the Son are one.
So here, in this wonderful world of ours, I tell you the rise and fall of nations, not only individuals, but nations could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of men. Do you really believe you are the Father? You may say, “I hope I could believe it.” Well, that is what took place in the beginning. They didn’t believe it. So the sons…he said, “Ye are sons of the Most High, all of you, sons of God,” but they could not believe it. They couldn’t feel oneness with God. So, you go down…all will go down that you may know you and I are one. And all of us had to go down and descend into a world prepared to reveal to us that we really are God.
So we descended into this world…and we’ve gone through hell, all the fires of hell. And then, one by one, we rise to discover we really are God. We are the father of his only begotten son (Ps. 2:7). And how in this world could I ever convince anyone, talking to them here on this level, that you and I are one? They will tell me, “But you go home to your place and you have a little money, and maybe I have none. Or maybe you have far more than I have, and the majority that I know have so much…and so, who are you?” And so, they’re not interested, and they go their separate ways in this world. They can’t conceive for one moment we are one…and the majority don’t want to feel that we are one. “You are white, and she is black, and that one is yellow, and we are one? I don’t want that.” And I tell you, we are one. We fell into this seeming disunity, this division, and we will now rise into unity, into the oneness that is God. Everyone in this world will do it.
But while we are here, you can prove this that the rise and fall of ideas will determine the environment in which the individual lives as he allows these ideas to either raise or fall within him. So I say to you, what do you want to be? You name it. Well, unless you believe I am he, then you will die in your sins. Sinning is you will miss the mark, you will not meet it. Unless you sleep this night in the assumption that I am the man, the woman, that I want to be, and persist in that assumption, you’re not going to hit that mark.
So I tell you tonight, the assumption should be, aside from earthly things of Caesar, you should persist in the assumption that I am God. You say that’s crazy, insane, arrogant! Let the whole vast world say that. I’m telling you from experience you’ve got to. You’ve got to actually feel that you are. I don’t mean some little stupid thing, like a Hitler, or a Stalin, or these people who build these little things and have them all crumble, no. I mean you must really believe the story. This is the Story of Stories as told in scripture. It begins in the Old Testament and it comes to its fruition in the New.
If I told you this night…so he comes into a place, and here he finds it’s night time, and he takes one stone and he puts it as a pillow, and he sleeps upon a stone. Then he has a dream and the dream is that he sees a stairway leading up to heaven. Above him is God. And on it—in the E manuscript, there are three manuscripts, but the E I like best—instead of saying “angels descending and ascending,” it is “the gods are ascending and descending.” That’s the E manuscript of the Book of Genesis…and there are three. And he sees the gods ascending and descending. And when he awakens from his dream, Jacob said, “Behold, this is the place of God; and I did not know it” (Gen.28:11, 16). Well, what do you think that stone was? Tonight when you go to bed you put your head down, don’t you? God’s name is I AM. Your skull is a stone, is it not? He rests upon a stone…that’s the stone. And he dreams of a staircase leading up to heaven, and it is God. And God said to him, “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and Isaac” and then this fantastic promise that he makes to Jacob. Jacob awoke from his sleep and he said, “Surely, the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” Then he took the stone, which is his own head, his skull, and he anointed it. He put oil upon it and made it the temple of the Lord. This is the temple of the Lord. God is in you; his name is I AM. There is no other God. That is God.
So I tell you, unless you believe I am he then you will die in your sins… in the sense that you will continue missing the mark. You must assume that you are now the man, the woman that you want to be and persist in that assumption. And may I tell from my own personal experience it will not fail you. There’s only God in this world. And people speak of another way… there is no other way. The story as told in the Old Testament is the absolute foundation of the world; the New Testament, not understood by Christians, is its fulfillment. That is the fulfillment of these stories of the Old. But, as we are told, even to this day when Moses is read a veil is over their mind; they don’t understand it. They don’t understand that the God that spoke to the prophets is in us as I AM.
And tonight when you go to bed you don’t think for one moment that God is resting on a stone, and the stone is your own skull. You put your head down and you go to sleep and you dream. Well, the dreamer in scripture is God. There’s no other God. He is dreaming this world, your world. So you put your head down, and you think, well now, I’m John Brown, and I go to bed. That is God. And his head, he is resting on a stone, the stone is your skull. One day you are going to awaken in your skull, for that is the stone that was anointed. As told us in the 28th chapter of the Book of Genesis: he anointed the stone, he put oil upon it, and he said, “This is now the house of God.” This is the house…you are the temple of the Lord.
So I put my head on it. What am I dreaming this night when I go to bed? Let me dream that I am one who is contributing to the good of the world, awakening everyone that I touch in this world. That I could actually carry the story that was the eternal story, as told us in the Old and revealed in the New, but not understood by those who practice or call themselves Christians. They don’t understand it. Yesterday, hundreds of millions attended service. What did they understand? I turned on TV…I always get up early, I was up at five, and I went and I turned on the TV to see the Bowl. A lovely display of lilies and the lovely girls and boys and the men who sang, and all the musical department, marvelous. And then I heard this nonsense, sheer nonsense concerning the resurrection, but sheer nonsense. I tell you, you are the whole story of the Bible, as told you in the 40th chapter of Psalms: “In the book it is all about me.” Everything said in the scripture is all about you. Now when you say “I am” that’s he. It’s all about that being called God.
Now, unless you believe I am what I want to be, well then, I can’t reach it. How can I reach it when I’m the only power in the world? I must believe that I am what I would like to be or else I cannot reach it. So, “Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.” Now you say a man is telling people…listen to the words carefully: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. So I said unto you, unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”
So when he was brought before Pilate…this is all a drama…forget the physical state because it didn’t take place on earth save in the form of a play. It never took place other than, say, a play, as you’re told in the 3rd chapter of Galatians it’s a play. One must interpret the play. And so, he comes before Pilate and he does not answer Pilate’s questions. He said, “Do you not know that I have the power to set you free, and the power to crucify you?” He said, “You have no power unless it be given you from above” (John 19:10-11). I am from above…I’ve come to do my Father’s will…I’ll drink the cup to the very end. But you have no power…no one in this world has any power over you unless you by your assumptions are giving it to him. So you’ve assumed that you are less than that one? Well then, he’s going to play the part of one superior to you.
So I’ve assumed I’m this, that or the other, well then, by my assumption of what I am, everyone in my world that reflects my assumption will play higher or lower parts. I will think they’re really real in my world…and they are not. There is nothing but God and God is I AM. There is no other God! So if I dare to assume that I am a certain state, and that state is less than what I believe that others, so-called others, and there aren’t any others, well then, the others must come into my world to play it, and make me feel that I am less than they are. And there is no other.
So I tell you, you are the only being in this world. You are God, and there is nothing but God. You are every being, because you are a Protean being, you are playing all the parts.
Watch your dream at night. Well, when you dream at night, don’t you dream of numberless people? But aren’t you playing all the parts? You go to a psychiatrist and they tell you it means this, it means that, aren’t you playing all the parts? Is that not a Protean being…you the dreamer dreaming and all the parts you are playing? But you don’t think that this is the dream? This is just as much the dream, and you are playing all these parts, too.
So I tell you, Mr. Hoover was perfectly right…condemned as he was. He sent me his little pamphlet. I gave it to a man to use on NBC and he never returned it. Mr. Hoover signed it for me and asked me to send a copy of my book Awakened Imagination, which I did. He said he would put it in his library at Stanford University. So he accepted my book and he sent me his pamphlet. I, in turn, gave it to Elmer Petersen, was his name, who was on NBC in the news department and I never received it from him. But I gave it to him. It was signed by the (??), in which he thanked me for my concept of Imagination, because he had gone out on the limb. But I wrote my book before his little pamphlet came out. We never met, and my book certainly did not influence him, because he never read it. He heard of it after. He was brought together by mutual friends. I wrote this book. And he said this at the convention, where he said that human history, no matter what it is, its revolutions, its wars, and the rise and fall of nations could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of men.
But he knew from experience, because he put himself through Stanford. He didn’t have a nickel and he worked himself through Stanford, and rose to the highest office in our land. And may I tell you, in spite of the Depression, which he fell heir to, the one that took over instituted many of his ideas. But then, we were completely, I would say, incapable of standing on our own feet, so we lifted up a man who couldn’t stand on his own feet.
He had only inherited wealth, not earned wealth. May I tell you, there is no…it’s all the difference in the world when a man actually earns money as against inherited wealth. It’s all the difference in the world. Everyone wants to have a lot of money coming in out of the nowhere. But when one actually earns it, he writes a play, or he goes to work and he produces something… that sort of income…I can tell you from my own experience because I have both…and it’s all the difference in the world. To earn something by your own efforts, and then to receive it coming out of the nowhere, that is entirely different. Well, he earned it, that man earned it. And he could actually say to us that watch your ideas because the rise and fall of ideas implanted in your mind will determine the world in which you live. And that is our world.
So I ask you to really believe it. It’s told you in the 8th chapter of John: “Unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins,” you’ll miss the mark (Jn.8:24). You will not reach your goal unless you believe that I am now the rich man or whatever man you want to be. You want to be happy? Well, unless you assume while you’re not happy that I am, you won’t reach it. You want to be secure? Unless you assume that I am secure, you’re not going to reach it. Because it’s…the only power in the world is God and God is I AM. So, unless you assume that I am the man that I want to be, I’m not going to reach it. There is no power in the world that can push me there; I must assume it. And then will come this marvelous thing within you.
Now give a thought that when he placed his head upon the rock and made the contact with eternity, just think of it. He placed his head upon a rock, the rock being his skull, and here came that wonderful ladder. It was circular, may I tell you from my own experience, it’s a circular ladder, like a serpent, and above him stood the Lord. Do you ever think of the ladder as Christ, the mediator between God and man? Did you ever think of it, that here, I put my head on my bed tonight, although it’s a pillow I’m really on my skull; and at that moment, if consciousness awakens, I’m in contact with the higher. Well, the contact, the mediator between the human nature and divinity is Christ. And that is the true ladder of Jacob. You think of it. I tell you it’s true.
That is Jacob’s ladder: Because no one has ever ascended into heaven but he who descended, the Son of man who is the Son of God. Well, if God’s Son becomes the Son of man, is not the Son of man destined to become the Son of God? And if God and his Son are one…can’t you see it? There’s only God playing all the parts. And so I tell you, you and I are one. I mean it seriously, in the most intimate manner we are one. But if one does not believe it, or they can’t get it, they can’t quite grasp it, well then, they will descend that spiral stairway. But when they ascend they will have evidence of the oneness of us all. Because before they descended they were told that you are sons of God. Well, God is a father if he has sons—“you are sons of God”—therefore, if they ascend to God, they must then have a son, and that son is David. So when they ascend they discover they are the father of David; and they now know what they did not know or could not believe until they descended into the fires to discover that we are one. There’s only one in this world, only God, nothing but God. So there’s only God and when you say “I am” that’s he.
Now in the world of Caesar, believe it, and go forward. Actually this night when you go to bed, put your head on the true pillow. He called it a stone. Well, it’s a stone, it’s your skull, and there you dare to assume that you are tonight the man, the woman that you would like to be, and just assume it. Tomorrow, if the world denies it, reason denies it, what does it matter? You persist in the assumption that it is so, and, may I tell you, it will become so. But don’t forget when it becomes so how you brought it to pass. Don’t forget the Lord. Do not start worshipping another. There is no other…there is no other God.
We are inclined to believe that he or she, they are in the social register, and one must know them, or this one is so and so. Forget that! No one in this world is more important than you, but no one. But no one! I have yet to meet one person in this world that I have ever felt more important, never! Yes, I would meet and love Mr. Einstein, and love him for his contribution to this world of mathematics and physics. I would love him. I once had a chance to meet him and it did not come to an end; it wasn’t consummated. I would have loved to have met him. I would have loved to have met many. But I have never once met anyone or heard of anyone I thought my superior. Arrogant? Alright, call it what you will. I have awakened from the dream of life. I am the Father of God’s only begotten Son, who is David. Well, if you tell me anyone is greater, well then, you’re going to mention someone greater than God? And I do not know anyone greater than God.
Weak as I am, limited as I am, yes, I could drop this night, and tomorrow you’ll hear the news Neville died last night, that’s perfectly alright. But I still, at the moment, cannot conceive of anyone walking this earth that I feel superior to myself. Yet, I do not feel, knowing what I do, superior to anyone in this world. I cannot feel superior to anyone, but I cannot feel inferior to anyone. So we are one. There is only one being and that being is God. And when I could not in the beginning—all of us were together— believe that we were God when he told us in the 82nd Psalm, when he told us that we were all sons of the Most High, and that we were one with God, we couldn’t believe it. And then he had to bring us to the consciousness of being God: “You are sons of God, sons of the Most High; nevertheless, you will die like men and fall as one man, O ye princes.” What a cry! And the one who knew it is waiting for us all to return to the consciousness of being the very one who told us in the beginning, and he sets up a pattern by which we return. There’s only one way of returning, and we return by this pattern man, called in scripture, Christ. We return as God.
Now let us go into the Silence.
