Tonight’s subject is “One Greater Than John.” I think you will find this a most practical approach to this teaching.
When we open the Bible we think it is just a normal book. May I tell you, it is not; it is divine history and all the characters in scripture represent states of consciousness, from Adam to Jesus, everyone. They’re not individuals as you and I are; they’re simply representatives of these states of awareness. And the very last before the page turns into an entirely new age is called John.
And so we are told in the earliest of the gospels, which is Mark: “After John was arrested, Jesus came preaching the gospel of God” (John 1:14). After John was arrested then he appears preaching the gospel of God. What is this story trying to tell us?
So here, let me share with you my experience. I didn’t know it either, but I’ll tell you how this thing works. John, we are told, is the very last of the great prophets. As we’re told, “Of those born of women, none is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom is greater than he” (Mat.11:11).
None greater than John in this world, yet the least in the kingdom is greater than he. And John came not eating or drinking. If you take that on this level, that’s nonsense, because the body could not survive. Another gospel states it, “He came neither eating bread nor drinking wine.” That tries in some way to, well, explain what he did not eat or drink.
Well, there’s no statement in the law of Moses against eating bread or drinking wine – unless you are one of the Nazarenes and it’s true as to wine, but certainly not eating bread. The last supper was the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. But he came, neither eating bread (if you want to take it certainly not eating bread).
The last supper was the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. But he came, neither eating bread (if you want to take it that way) nor drinking wine.
But the Son of man came eating and drinking, and they called him a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. But we think, this night, of one greater than John, who was the greatest in this world, yet not equal to the least in the world called the kingdom of heaven.
Now, these are only states of consciousness through which every man passes. If you are not now in the state of John, may I tell you, you’re going to be some time in the state of John; if not now in this present little environment, when the wheel turns and it returns, you will be in that state.
Everyone passes through the state of John before he comes into the state of Jesus Christ. Now, what is the state of John? We come into this world . . . now let me share with you my own personal experience.
I was born in a very limited environment, a small little island in the West Indies called Barbados. My father ran a little grocery store, but it was a general store, not only groceries but meat, fish, fowl, liquor, wine. I mean, it supplied everything for the table.
I was raised in that environment where it seemed the most normal, natural thing in this world to eat anything that was placed on the table, and so I did. I left Barbados at the age of seventeen and came to America, believing as I did everything placed before me that was edible was right.
And then, I fell into a state, the state called John. John came not eating or drinking. And then I fell into the state where I gave up all the things that I did normally as a boy, right through until I was seventeen years old. I fell into the state at the age of twenty, a little after twenty, say, twenty-one, where I would not eat any meat, any fish, fowl, not even eggs.
Naturally, in those days I didn’t drink so that was not giving up wine, but that couldn’t cross my lips. I did violence to my own appetites, because as a child, as a boy, I indulged in everything that my father placed before me. And suddenly I gave it all up and for seven years I was a strict vegetarian, teetotaler, celibate.
John represents that state in man’s ongoing when he does violence to his appetite. And yet life is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger.
God gives to every man in this world a hunger that he can, if he knows God’s law, satisfy. He can clothe himself with the fulfillment of his dream and satisfy it. But there’s a state where man passes through, and it is called John the Baptist, where he does violence to his appetite.
I met a friend of mine in New York City, his name was Abdullah. He said to me in 1933 (I met him in ‘29). . .and he did everything, he ate everything, he drank everything. He didn’t smoke only because he just didn’t enjoy it, but he did everything.
An old, old man, he was then in his late eighties when I met him. And he said to me, “So you’re going to Barbados? You want to go to Barbados?” I said yes.
Now, this is where the good news of the kingdom comes in. Then, when I met him, I did not eat flesh in any form, I did not drink alcohol in any form, and no smoking and a celibate. He said, “Well then, you are now in Barbados.”
I said, “I’m in Barbados?” This is on 72nd’ Street in New York City, where the buildings can go thirty and forty stories high. Barbados, if you find a three-story building, you’re lucky.. . the little one and two-story buildings, and no sidewalk, but no sidewalk.
One little tiny street we call Broad Street, to this day we call it Broad Street, and that’s the only place that has a sidewalk. All the other areas no sidewalks, you walk in the street or you walk in the gutter, but there is no such thing as a sidewalk.
And he said to me, “Now clothe yourself with Barbados. Put it on as you would another garment, just as you would another garment, so that you would smell the tropics and you would see what you would see were you in Barbados.”
Well, I did to the best of my ability, and I clothed myself with Barbados. And when I thought then that night—the first night that I clothed myself with Barbados—I thought of New York City, and I saw it 2,000 miles to the north of me. Then I had succeeded in clothing myself with Barbados.
I fell asleep in the assumption I am in Barbados. Well, the days went on from this I would say, late October through November, and yet I am not physically in Barbados. So I tried to open up my discussion with Abdullah, and I said, “Ab, I did all that you told me. I clothed myself with Barbados, I am sleeping in Barbados, and yet here I am in New York City.”
He would not talk to me. He turned his back upon me the very first time I brought it up; he walked towards his studio and slammed the door in my face. And if you knew Abdullah as I knew him that was no invitation to come in.
So, if I am clothing myself in Barbados and with Barbados, then I must be faithful to this clothing. That’s the good news spoken of after John is arrested, not before. John is doing violence, trying to gain the kingdom of heaven by being good.
And he said to me, “You’re so good you’re good for nothing. And you’re trying to get into the kingdom by being good. You don’t eat meat, no kind of meat, you don’t drink any alcoholic liquor, so you’re so good. And you’re celibate at the age that you are today, and so all the fires you’ve bottled up in you, trying to be good.”
So I kept on wearing my garment: I am in Barbados. On the morning of the 4th of December a letter came to my door, stuck under the door, from my brother giving reasons why he wanted me to come to Barbados, and enclosing in that letter a ticket for Barbados.
I had not gone home to Barbados in eleven years. I made no request. I didn’t write the family. My brother Victor writes me saying that you must come and no response other than yes would he accept, and enclosing a little draft to buy shirts, if I need them, or a pair of shoes, and stating in the letter to use the check to the fullest advantage.
Charge everything and when I arrived in Barbados, well, he would board the ship and pay all expenses that I had signed. If I use the bar, use the bar. He didn’t know I wasn’t drinking. But, all expenses. . . the tipping of the steward, the tipping of everyone in that ship. He would board the ship, take care of all my expenses, but I must come!
Then he gave me his reasons for it, he justified why. I went down to that ship on the morning of the 6th and got my passage and off I went.
Before I went, Abdullah said to me, “So you’re going to Barbados. May I tell you, you’re going to die but you will not surely die. . .but you will die.” He didn’t explain. Like Blake he never would tell me the interpretation of his statement “you will die.”
Well, I went off thinking, well, I’ll die, die in Barbados. I didn’t die in Barbados but I died: I died to everything that I was doing. I lived in Barbados for three months, which is the Christmas season and everyone is entertaining.
I’m returning from America after eleven years, and party after party is given for my honor. It’s Christmas, it’s New Years, they’re all drinking, all having fun, and I simply drank water. Mother prepared all kinds of meals, and I would have just a vegetable meal.
She never heard of it. We were raised supplying the entire island with meat, with fish, with fowl, with everything… with all the wine… everything was home… and I just said, no, I would take vegetables. I was there for one solid three months.
I came back to that ship going north. And the night I entered that ship, we sat maybe six or eight people at table, and we all introduced ourselves. “My name is Neville Goddard,” and so I would shake hands, and this one is so and so – you all introduce yourself aboard ship. Then the man to my right said to the waiter, “Let us see what you have for wine.”
The waiter brought the wine list, he said, “We’ll have that.” I didn’t say wine, so he ordered that wine. Then came the first course, soup. So I didn’t ask if there’s meat stock in this as I’d done for seven years; I drank the soup. Then he brought the second course, it was fish; I ate the fish. He brought the third course, it was meat; I ate the meat; all the time pouring down the wine.
Everything that I had not done in seven years I did that night, and then from then on for the ten or twelve days at sea till I got off the ship in New York City. Then I understood what he meant “you will die.” That state called John the Baptist, which does violence to itself, you must pass through it.
If you are not now in it, you will be in it. It’s part of the eternal drama of God. God has prepared a way to redeem himself. It’s God and only God playing all these parts. So God has prepared the way to bring himself back individualized as you. There’s no other way.
So from Adam to Jesus Christ they are only states of awareness through which God and only God passes. And the last state of the old dispensation is John the Baptist. That is the last stage. And so, man must pass through that state.
Don’t try to invite it. It happens, and you don’t understand why it happens. In my own case, raised normally, with all the food before me, because my father made a living feeding us by selling this, fish, fowl, meat, eggs, butter, everything that was normal, all the rum in the world.
We make rum in Barbados. He drank heavily; my father was a very heavy drinker. All these things were exposed to us, so we took it and suffered it. My Father, the depths of my own being, moving me through all these furnaces, put me into a state where I was married at the age of eighteen, father at nineteen, separated at twenty.
And then I became so disillusioned with marriage, I vowed I would have not a thing to do with sex – my own disillusionment, my own, not hers, my own. That was part of the play where he put me through these furnaces and brought me out seven years later.
I know friends of mine who have been in that state of John the Baptist for fifty years, and they have died in it. But the wheel turns; they will come out, the wheel turns. Although they cease to be here as a flesh and blood being, they were in it when they died. Others came out after forty years.
Here was George Bernard Shaw. He died in it after seventy years. He was ninety years when he died. He was a strict vegetarian and a teetotaler. He was in it, but he died in it; he had not come out. He died not believing in Christ. He died an atheist. He didn’t know the good news. My friend Abdullah who taught me this story, he was in it for forty years. He hadn’t touched anything that was meat, especially pork.
He was born and raised in the Jewish faith, and for forty years he touched nothing that was meat. But certainly, he, not only forty years, but from the time of birth up until he was almost eighty years old, he hadn’t touched pork.
And then came the same thing to him that happened to me. So man passes through this state called John the Baptist, and he comes into the state called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the freedom of the world.
So, it’s said of John he came not eating or drinking. It is said of Christ, called the Son of man, he came eating and drinking; and they say of him, “Behold, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”
So you pass through it and then you know what he is talking about. He doesn’t come to destroy the law. He said not one little dot will be rubbed out of the law, all will be fulfilled, but he interprets the law as John could not interpret it.
John thought that by doing violence to his appetite he would get into the kingdom. He thought that he could scare a man into salvation. And the next state beyond John tells you you can’t do it that way. He interprets the law and shows the law as something that is mental, not physical.
And then he puts it this way: “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you anyone who looks on a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart” (Mat.S:27). He takes it from a physical state to a mental state.
If I look upon a woman lustfully and I think I can get away with it, and it seems pleasant, I may be inclined to do it. If I contemplate that act along with its consequences for myself and my family, I may restrain the impulse. But, he tells me that’s not good enough – in the contemplation of the act I did it.
So, causation is mental, it’s not physical. John didn’t know that. The state called John didn’t know that. If I restricted myself and resisted the impulse, I thought, “Well, am I not wonderful! I have just abided by the law ‘ye shall not do.”
Then comes the next state called Jesus Christ, and that state tells me that wasn’t good enough; the wheel is turning and you are going to do it tomorrow. The wheel will turn now and tomorrow when it turns all over again, you will be performing the act.
And you’ll wonder why has this happened to me to the disgrace of my family and myself? Because you thought by the restraint of the act you didn’t do it. And now he interprets the law for us and tells us the very contemplation of the act was the act. And so, when one gets to that point where they don’t even contemplate it, well, then off the wheel of recurrence we are lifted, one by one. And that is the story of the one that is greater than John.
So everyone is moving through a series of states, and it starts from Adam through, well, we can stop the Adam and start it from Abraham, for that’s where real civilization begins.
So you start from Abraham and you come all the way through into Jesus Christ. And they’re only states of consciousness where God passes through individualizing himself as you. And everyone goes through the state called John the Baptist.
So of all those born of women, none is greater than John, yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than John. So how great we are in this world, that doesn’t really matter; because the least in the kingdom of God has a greatness beyond the wildest dream of this world. The least has a greatness. . .you can’t conceive the greatness of the least in the kingdom.
And he’s brought there not by anything he’s done. For, may I tell you, I did nothing to do it; I fell into it. But who made me fall into it? God. And so, we can’t take any credit for having fallen into the state called John.
It seemed to me, if I reflect upon it, prior to when I fell into it, that I was disillusioned in marriage. A young man of eighteen getting married, and then being a father at nineteen, and then at twenty separated, and becoming disillusioned. And then pledging myself not to have anything to do in the sexual world and then to give up completely all the food that I loved.
I love food, love all the things that the world would offer. And then to go through it and a man would tell me on a certain day, “You’re going to die, but not really die.” And then you’re bewildered—”I’m going to die, but I’m not going to die”—what is he talking about? Well, he was talking about the state. I will die to that state.
And when after the things happened and I said to him, “What did you mean and who told you that I would die and yet not really die?” He said to me, “The Brothers.” That’s all that he would tell me: “The Brothers told me that you would die and not really die. The Brothers told me you were coming to me.” And what did he mean by the Brothers? – The Elohim, the gods who made us all in their own image.
So tonight, may I tell you, let me share with you the good news. You are told, the very first words given into the world in the mouth of Jesus Christ in the earliest gospel is in Mark, the 14th and 15th verses. The words are:
“After John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.”
The first words put into his mouth. Someone asked the other night concerning changing the picture of this world – the word is “repent” in the first statement made in that gospel.
“Repent” is “a radical change of attitude towards anything that happens to you in this world.” I don’t care what is happening, repent! Don’t let it happen as it is happening. Change it in your mind’s eye, solely, as I did standing in New York City, without one nickel in my pocket, not a nickel, and Barbados is 2,000 miles away, across water, so you can’t walk; and he tells me, “You are now in Barbados!”
I’m in Barbados and Barbados is 2,000 miles away across water. “Clothe yourself with Barbados. If you are in Barbados, how would you know you are? Look at the world.”
For motion is relative: I can only detect that I have moved relative to something that is stationary to my motion. So, New York remains where it is, and if I assume that I am in Barbados, and I think of New York, I should see it 2,000 miles to the north of me. So, I clothe myself with Barbados and think of some stopping place where if I am in Barbados that vision would tell me where I am.
So I think of Barbados and there it is 2,000 miles to the north of me. So I sleep in that state, to find that someone 2,000 miles away is moved to bring me a ticket to go to Barbados, with a little small check to buy the necessary things to get aboard the ship. So you clothe yourself in a state.
That’s the good news: “I bring you the good news of the kingdom of God,” for man is rising into a kingdom where everything is subject to his imaginative power. But before you get there you start to test it here… .and you test it.
So I’m telling you of a kingdom. What kingdom? The kingdom of God, well, what is it? It’s a place beyond the wildest dream of earth, the world of Caesar, where when you arrive there everything is subject to your imaginative power.
But I’ll tell you, start it right here. And how do you do it? You clothe yourself with this state just as though it were true, and as you clothe yourself with it, wait. As you’re told, those who really believe do not make …
If they really believe it, they don’t make it so, it is so. That’s why when I discussed it with Abdullah he never discussed it with me. When I asked him how would I go there he wouldn’t even answer me. Because what he was trying to show me was, “If you really are clothed with the feeling of being in Barbados, how could you and I sit down and discuss how you’re going to get there? How could we possibly discuss this?”
And so, he wouldn’t discuss it with me. “If you really are doing what I told you to do, you say you are in Barbados, well, then you can’t discuss how you’re going to go.” If I said to you, “You are now rich,” and today you owe rent, can you and I discuss how you are going to become rich if I tell you that you are, and ask you to clothe yourself with wealth?
If I ask you to clothe yourself with any state in this world; and then it doesn’t hatch out tomorrow because tomorrow is not the moment of hatching out, but you’re anxious; and then you say to me, “But where is it coming from, how will it come?” should I really discuss it with you?
Would not…that is a lack of faith on your part if you say, well, I’m wearing it. If I’m wearing it, it should be just as real to you as the room is real. That’s the good news of the kingdom.
If I really want anything in this world, I clothe myself with it, just as though it were true, and then let it hatch out. All things have moments between the moment of assumption and the fulfillment of that assumption. We either believe it or we don’t believe it, and not a thing I can do to persuade you to believe it.
I can just simply throw it out, and in this audience this night there are those who will accept it and those who will reject it. . . not a thing I can do about it. I can only tell you of the kingdom of God and tell you these are the states through which we pass.
So, I hope you’ve passed through the state of John the Baptist. But it makes no difference. If you haven’t passed through, I’ll tell you, you will pass through it. And so, when the wheel turns as it will turn; for all come to the inevitable end and so everyone will make their exit from this world; and if they haven’t before they exit from this world passed through John the Baptist, they will when the wheel comes back again pass through it.
For there is no death; nothing dies in God’s world. It seems to die, but the world does not end where my senses seem to disappear from it. . . it doesn’t. So if the wheel is turning and turning, and you and I are turning on the wheel until by. . . except after John the Baptist, before we are plucked from the wheel, we begin to live by the promise called the gospel or the good news of God.
So here, this night you take it and test it. If you test it, may I tell you, you’ll prove it in performance; if you don’t test it, you will never know. And so, it is Christ in you that you must test. Christ became man, God became man, that man may become God.
So this John the Baptist spoken of in scripture is not a little man born of Elizabeth, who was a cousin of Jesus. Forget it! These are only related states – a cousin is a relative – and so these are related states that’s all. It hasn’t a thing to do with my cousin born of my sister. No, that’s not the cousin.
They were cousins separated in time: John came before and Jesus followed. Jesus is not a man. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s plan, God’s promise, God’s purpose, where he comes forward and he awakens as himself, and that self is Jesus Christ. So, the last state man passes through is John the Baptist, where he does violence to himself.
Now, he is clothed in camel’s hair and a leather girdle. The most external parts of a man is hair and skin; so he’s clothed in camel’s hair and a leather girdle.
So here, he’s… the most external thing that man could ever have on a body would be the camel’s hair and the leather girdle. And he said, “If you will accept it, he is Elijah come again.” Go back and read the story of Elijah.
He was clothed in camel’s hair and a leather girdle. It means that the mind is clothed with something external. I think if I give to the poor if I contribute to the church, if I go to church every Sunday, and I do all the external things then I am now getting into the kingdom of heaven.
So I abide by all external things and that doesn’t get me any place into the kingdom of heaven. Then I begin to do violence to my appetite. I restrain the impulse to do this, that, or the other, not knowing that life itself is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger, and God and only God gives me the different hungers.
And the final hunger he gives me is the hunger for the word of God. The very last hunger, as told us in the Book of Amos: “I will send a famine upon the world. It will not be for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God”.
And so, the last hunger to come upon man is to hear the word of God. To hear it is to experience it. I want to experience the reality of what is said in scripture. And so I will hear it, and I’m so hungry to hear it I will experience it; then comes man’s individual experience.
So man must experience scripture for himself to understand how wonderful it is. When he experiences scripture, the hunger that preceded the experience is now satisfied by the experience. And so that is what comes out when he enters into the state called Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the flower, the fulfillment of God’s purpose.
So in the end there’s nothing but Jesus Christ. So then we are told, in that day or, “On that day the Lord is one and his name one,” and that name is Jesus. All come out as he. But they must pass through the state called John the Baptist, and John is but a state. And all must pass through that state doing violence to themselves in the hope that in some way it is seen by someone above him, and by that seeing he enters into the state called salvation.
You cannot save yourself. No man can save himself. It’s the gift of grace; it’s the gift of God. You could this very moment become the most strict vegetarian in the world, teetotaler, non-smoker, celibate – go to the extreme state and make yourself so impotent that you couldn’t possibly even entertain the thought – and yet you cannot by such violence to yourself enter the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is entered by grace. But you pass through the violence to self, and then you come out. May I tell you, when you do come out, there’ll always be those who mock you. . . always those. So, when he comes into the world they call him a glutton, and they call him a drunkard and the friend of sinners.
And may I tell you, when I came back after seven years of this rigid discipline, and those who saw me in this meeting one night, when I got up and suddenly confessed what I am now doing, that a few ladies in the audience cried. Because they thought they had in me some personal savior, and I became to them an image that cracked and broke; and they saw in me now an utter failure, one who normally drank and normally ate meat.
To them, I was a complete disillusioned being. And it happens to every being in this world. You’ll pass through it. I am sharing with you my own experience. And no man can speak with any greater authority than when he speaks from experience; for a truth that man knows from experience, he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or than he can know that same truth in any other way.
So if I tell you of this experience, you may believe me or you may disbelieve me. Even those who believe me will not know it to the extent they will know it after they themselves have had the experience. And so you pass through. But don’t encourage it, don’t this night say, “I will simply go on a vegetable diet, I will give up liquor, I’ll give up smoking, I’ll give up sex in the hope that I’m going to pass through this state.” It doesn’t come that way.
It comes in a strange way. . . it came to me in the strangest way. I ordered the most wonderful roast beef, may I tell you—I was in Syracuse, New York—and I love my meat, and I ordered the most wonderful roast beef. And as I put my knife into it, I actually felt I was cutting the animal alive. I took the plate and pushed it away. I could not take one piece from that plate. . . and for seven years I couldn’t. So it happened that way.
I couldn’t touch a piece of meat, a piece of fowl, an egg or fish for seven years. But it happened…I was… for seven years. And I ordered from the menu roast beef, as I always loved it, and as it was delivered I just thought it would be marvelous, and as I put my knife right into it, I was cutting into the animal and pushed the whole thing away. For seven years it was that way.
And coming back to the States I did everything I had not done in seven years. That’s how you pass through the state called John the Baptist and come into the state called Jesus Christ. But before you are lifted off the wheel, you must prove that this is good news.
And good news is that everything in this world that you want you can have if you clothe yourself with it. It doesn’t mean you’re lifted off the wheel, but clothe yourself with it. You want to be rich? How would you feel were you rich? You want to be healthy? How would you feel were you healthy? You want to be free of all embarrassment? How would you feel this night if you were not embarrassed, that not a thing in this world could embarrass you?
How would you feel were it so? And you clothe yourself with these states, one after the other, and be faithful to the clothing that you wear, and let it unfold in your world. It will! It will completely unfold in your world and you will see it.
Then as you practice with it and actually believe in the good news of the kingdom of God, suddenly, when you least expect it, one after the other, a series of events that God predetermined to awaken himself will awaken within you. Because, God has prepared a way for himself to return individualized as you, completely prepared, and no one can stop the way.
He’s prepared that way, and so, at the very end, all of a sudden the series begins to unfold, and you are it unfolding; and you are he — the one who became you and took himself through the furnaces, all through John into Jesus Christ—and you awake as he.
There’s not a thing I can tell you to persuade you to accept it. And I wouldn’t raise a finger to make it so, because I am not convinced by speculation: I am convinced by knowing having experienced it. And so, if all the great teachers of the churches of the world stood before me in opposition, it would make no difference to me whatsoever. They, too, will pass through these states because they aren’t elected to these states by men.
So the heads of all the great churches of the world, if they stood before me now, I could say to them, if you have not experienced it, you will. And your greatness in this world is as naught, it is nothing, for the least in the kingdom is greater than you; for the least in the kingdom has a greatness that you cannot measure by anything on earth.
And if you have not experienced this, no matter how great you are with all the medals pinned upon you by men who vanish in this world, it is as nothing.
But the day will come you’ll go through John the Baptist. He’s not a man who lived 2,000 years ago. He represents a state of consciousness that’s eternal, through which every soul must pass, and passing through they do violence to their appetites.
They come out of it and enter the state called Jesus Christ, and they believe the story of the good news of God, and actually prove it in performance. They prove it and prove it until that moment in time when they’re lifted off the wheel of recurrence, and they enter the kingdom of God.
But, here we are told concerning John, the law, and the prophets until John. It starts the great law and all through the great prophets until John (Mat. 11:13).. .there comes a stop… from then the good news of the kingdom is preached. And everyone enters the kingdom violently.
I read here in the most recent scholarly works this passage, which is the 16th chapter, the 16th verse of the Book of Luke, and these great scholars, and there were hundreds of them in discussion, and they confessed it doesn’t make sense. It only adds confusion to confusion, based upon an earlier passage that they can’t understand what he means that all of a sudden everyone enters the kingdom violently, and this thing happens after John.
Well, may I tell you, it’s true; it happened to me, and I can’t tell you how violent you are when you enter—not angry but sheer, sheer energy. You use a power that you have never heard of on earth. We speak of a power, of blowing up a whole city with one bomb, blowing up a country with a bomb. It doesn’t compare to the power that you exert in that moment of entrance into the kingdom of God.
When you are whipped up in the form of a spiral into your own skull, it is as though it takes that energy to ram you into the eternal structure that God has predetermined; as though the whole vast skull is being filled, and you fill one niche forever and forever.
But you move into it with such power the whole thing radiates, the whole thing shakes like an earthquake; as though the whole vast world is an earthquake. And then suddenly when you are completely in it and then riveted in, then it subsides, and it’s all quiet, and you return here to the world of Caesar.
So the world is stating in that 16th verse of the 16th chapter of Luke: “Everyone enters it violently.” May I tell you, it must, because it takes an enormous power to drive you into that part prepared for you. It’s been waiting for you since the beginning of time, and you move into that one part prepared for you, and you move in so forcibly the whole structure vibrates. Then it subsides and you’re back.
So, you go home this night and clothe yourself in the joy of being the man, the woman that you want to be. I tell you it will not fail you! Now let us go into the Silence.
Q: “Do you think we could have gone through the state of John in a life before this?”
A: Yes, my dear, certainly. The lady’s question is “Do you think we could have gone through the state of John in a life before this?” Why certainly, I wouldn’t doubt that for one moment, and come out of it knowing that these things are not necessary for the kingdom of God. . .with all the temptations of the world.
For we have all kinds of cults in this world who are playing as a cult. They don’t know it’s the state called John the Baptist, inviting everyone into it. They give up wearing fur, they give up eating meat, give up drinking, give up smoking, give up sex, and they’re all inviting us into that cult, and they call themselves houses of religion.
But, people are persuaded to enter that, and then they give up all these things and do violence to their appetites. You might have passed through that. I’m not saying that you did or did not. So I’m saying to you, to answer your question, certainly, many of us could have gone through that state and in this world tonight you could be called into the kingdom of heaven.
Because you’re told, when the question was asked, “Tell me, Lord, is it now that you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” And he corrected their question and then answered, “It’s not for you to know the time or the season which is fixed by God by his own authority.
But you’ll receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:6). Therefore, wait for the promise, just wait for it. You could have gone through it, and this very night…it is my constant hope that everyone who hears me is this very night lifted up into the experience, because, I can’t tell anyone the thrill of being aware of the fact that you are a part of the kingdom of God. And there should be no delay beyond that moment in time when God calls you. And I’m (??) quite sure there is no delay.
Q: (inaudible)
A: Well, my dear, when this thing happens from above and you are awakened from this deep, deep sleep…
Q: (inaudible)
A: Oh, I didn’t even know I was asleep. I didn’t know when I was awakened in my skull to find myself completely enclosed within my skull and my skull is a sepulcher. And it’s not a little tiny place like this here, for I only wear a seven-size hat, and I couldn’t get into a seven-size hat. So it’s not this, but it is my skull. And so here, I awake.
I find myself waking but unlike the usual waking which comes every morning when I awake. This is something different—I’m waking, and I awake in my skull. My skull is a tomb, it’s a sepulcher. And here I am completely awake now for the first time in thousands of years, but I am entombed. That’s the resurrection.
The resurrection begins the whole drama. And then out I come, being born like a child. The birth is symbolized in that of a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. So, this series of events differs completely from all other mystical experiences.
