9/12/66
___(??) I promise you in this series it’s going to be the most practical thing that you ever heard. Whether I speak on the law or the Promise, it’s all based upon experience. I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating, I am telling you what I know from experience.
Tonight is the law; Friday night the title, “Behold This Dreamer”. But if you’ve ever known the statement, ever heard the statement, “Christ in you is the hope of glory,” you may say what does it mean Christ in me is the hope of glory? Well, on Friday night I hope to show you not only this presence in you but to get you, while you are seated here, to actually experience Christ. Not by looking at the speaker, no, certainly not; in you as you are seated here to experience it in you. I’ll show who he really is, as given to us in scripture. You will feel him, and you will exercise all the faculties that are recorded in scripture concerning Christ.
But tonight our subject is on belief, our real beliefs. Our real beliefs are what we live by. Our life is the outcome of our beliefs. I do not mean half beliefs. We either believe or we do not. We’re called upon to believe the word of God. If I say to you…and I’m quite sure that almost everyone here believes in God, I hope you do…and so, if I said, “With God all things are possible” and asked for some reaction, everyone would raise the hand, “I believe that with God all things are possible.” But suppose I spoke from the same scripture, “All things are possible to him who believes”—here we have God equated with man. Now, do you believe that with God all things are possible? Yes you say. But do you believe all things are possible to him who believes?
Now, here is this little story told in scripture, the 9th of Mark (verse 22). They all who heard the story failed to bring about the results that the father sought, and these are those who are closest to the teacher, the disciples. They could not produce the results that the Father sought. So when the great Master came by, he asked him and said to him, “If thou can, pity us, help us!” and he, in the most surprised reaction said, “If thou can! All things are possible to him who believes.” Then the request was granted and the son was instantly cured.
Well, why did the father say to him, “I believe; help thou my unbelief”? Now, that is what I am trying to do this night, to help the unbelief. You say, “I believe”—but not to the degree that it will produce that effect. Well, how could I test my degree of belief? There is one supreme test you can give to any belief. If I say to you now and I mean this sincerely, “imagining creates reality,” I mean that. If that is true, it’s the Word of God. You might not find the words “imagining creates reality” in scripture, but you will find similar words implying the same thought. You will find these words in the Book of Mark, the 11th of Mark, “Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe you have received it, and you will” (verse 24). Well, isn’t that the same thing? If I believe that I’ve received what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny isn’t that imagining then must create reality? For imagining in my dictionary, and the word imaginary, is defined as “existing only in the Imagination, and, therefore, unreal.”
Now I am quoting from a dictionary called the Encyclopedia Britannica where the English language is dissected and produced in the most wonderful manner: “existing only in the Imagination, therefore, nonexistent.” That’s what they say. Well, now, if I am called upon in scripture, and this is the Word of God and “Th y word is truth,” and then I’m called upon to believe this statement, whatever—not if it’s good for you, not if you consulted others and they thought it came within the I would say the framework of their belief of what is right or wrong, it doesn’t say that at all. “Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe that you have received it, and you will.” Well, that comes right within the statement and I reduce that now to a simple thought: imagining creates reality. If that is true, then this statement is true.
Now you may go out tonight and say that imagining creates reality, and you could rehearse it so that you will say it in your dream, but do you believe it? If you believe it, this is the test how you believe. Try to realize what a severe test of belief action is. I say I believe, but I don’t act upon it. If I really believe, I couldn’t restrain the impulse to act, I couldn’t. If I believe that imagining creates reality and I’m faced with a problem, it doesn’t take me long to conceive the solution of the problem. I don’t care what it is, what the problem is. If I have a problem, I need not wait to ask anyone, I could conceive the solution. Well, does imagining create reality? Will I act upon it and simply imagine? Will I? If I don’t, then I haven’t met the test, and so my so-called belief could only be a half-belief. And so, action tests belief. When I am faced with anything in this world, do I act or do I exhaust all the little channels first before I act? The chances are that man goes through everything that is called a wise channel, everything, and when he exhausts all the channels, maybe, in sheer desperation, finding no other place to turn he might turn back to scripture, and then act. And would he act? If he acts, the promise is this, listen to it carefully, “Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe you have received it, and you will receive it.” That’s the promise. “And thy word is truth.” So will we believe?
Now, let me take you aside for a moment. Most of you are familiar with the story. I will not go over the details of it, but you heard me tell a story two years ago of a lady who had nothing, absolutely nothing, and worked as a receptionist in a beauty parlor all her life. She’s in her sixties. And here, approaching the time when she had to retire and having nothing but the eighty-seven dollars of Social Security that would come to her, she wondered “What’s going to happen to me?” In the interval of twenty-seven years—we’re all adults—she lived with a man who was a very, very wealthy man, a single man, but he never wanted to get married. He never married. He was about fifty years her senior…and they simply saw everything in New York City, dined and wined at the finest places. She lived as very, very wealthy people could not live, and do not live. She saw everything, dined everywhere, but no money.
So she said to me two years ago, “What should I do?” and I told her, “You’ve been coming to my meetings over the years, why don’t you apply it?” And so, I said, “Take my book The Law and the Promise and you’ll find one story that fits you. If you haven’t the Imagination to construct a scene which would imply the fulfillment of your dream, then you read this story. There are about forty of them there.” And so, sitting in her tub before she went off to work in the morning, she’s going to have a tub every morning, she simply re-enacted this little scene, “Something marvelous is happening to me now, not tomorrow, not next month, not next year but now.” Then she would feel the way she would expect to feel under these circumstances. At the end of the week, that was Saturday…now every night they went off to dinner…on Saturday night he said to her, “Let us have dinner sent out.” Well, he lives in this fabulous co-op apartment on 57th and Park Avenue, so they have their own private restaurant. So they sent out for dinner and he said, “You know, I have done this for you today.” And so, to make it short, he had bought an annuity that would pay her $600 a month for the rest of her earthly days, beginning immediately…not tomorrow but now…plus her eight-seven Social Security.
Now, last year when I went back, she said, “Neville, would it be greedy if I wanted to double that?” I said, “I am not sent here to judge people, I am sent to talk about God’s law. I am not sent here to tell any story of judgment. But I stood in the presence of the risen Christ and he embraced me and I became one with the body of Christ, with his infinite love, and then he sent me only to tell the story that man has forgotten. It’s all encrusted over with barnacles, all kinds of isms, all kinds of things…this is not the story. So I came only to tell exactly what was told in scripture. If I can find words that would fi t today and just tell the same thought, alright, that’s what I’m going to do, like imagining creates reality. That’s something original. It’s not from scripture, yet it tells the same story, and maybe they will pick it up now. But the same thing is in scripture. Not a thing I bring you is new, it’s all in scripture. So I said to her, “I don’t care what you want.” She said, “I want $600 more every month.”
Well, as you know, I left here in February. I not only looked like the last run of shad, I felt it. I felt it! And when I took my wife to Barbados, I had no knowledge when I would return. When I got there my family all wept. Here was this strong strapping brother that they knew and here he is like, well, just ready for the grave. And they tried to persuade me day after day to remain in Barbados and retire. They said, “You have all the money that it takes, you don’t need any money. You can retire here, with a full complement of servants and live graciously.” And if Anthony Eden comes to Barbados… he wants Barbados above all the places of the world where he could live, and they mentioned a score of people who have all the money in the world and just picked Barbados to spend their last years. So they mentioned all these prominent people. I said, “They don’t have a mission. So if I die here, then it’s my time to die, but the day I feel better I’m going back to tell my story, right where I came from. That’s where I’m going to tell it.”
And so, in Barbados, this lady came down for six-week’s vacation, a Christmas present from this same man who gave her the $600, all expenses paid plus the roundtrip. Well, we had her home to dinner. She didn’t know I looked as I did. She took one look at me, she said, “My lord, he is going to die…and then what is going to happen to my extra $600?” She wasn’t concerned about my health or my ___(??). But this is what she did. She conceived a scene which would imply the fulfillment of her dream. Her dream was to have $600 more than she now had, which would make it $1200 and $87, $1,287 a month. And this is the scene she constructed, she put me on the platform, like this, in New York City, talking to an audience, just like this, and I’m telling—where she got the $600 more. Well, if I’m going to die in Barbados, then the whole scene that she constructed would fall apart. So after dinner that night she went back to her hotel and she said she went to work on re-creating this scene. “I’ve got to get him better, because how is he going to tell my story?”
Now, I didn’t tell her, because I didn’t know, when she left Barbados, I had no urge to go any place. I was enjoying life with the family, enjoying every moment of it, warming in the love that was showered upon me, and you couldn’t express in words the affection. We are, really, the clan of clans when it comes to a family. We’re more closely tied than fingers on a hand. You hurt one you hurt all. That’s the family. And so, the day I felt better, without consulting my wife…the only person I could ever really consult would be my wife, but she might have vetoed it, and that might have put a question in my mind, because I was painfully thin, a way down to a shadow. But I felt better, I turned the corner. And so I went up and booked passage for the two of us back to Los Angeles via New York, to remain in New York, say, for a couple of months to get some wardrobe, because no matter what I would put on would fall off . I dropped from l96 to 138. The only things that fitted me were shoes and handkerchiefs. Everything else fell off . So I gave everything away, including the shoes and the socks…kept the handkerchiefs. And then came to New York and got a new wardrobe.
While I was in New York I gave a series of fourteen lectures. This lady was committed and did not come to my meeting until the thirteenth or the fourteenth that I gave. On the thirteenth night, she got there about ten minutes before I took the platform, and this is her story. She said, “I can’t remain too long. At 8:30 please give me some sign it’s 8:30 that I may leave because I’ve got to meet this man at the club and I must pick him up before nine. So at 8:30 please give me a signal. But this is what happened today. My $600 that I told you about comes through the Massachusetts Mutual. Now, today, the same lawyer called me in and said —‘I don’t mean next year or next month but now, Prudential Life will pay you $600 a month for the rest of your earthly days. That would make it now $1,200 plus your eight-seven dollars beginning now.’”
So she came in just to hear the story. But before that she said to me, “Now, would you think me really greedy if I said to you I want $50,000 in cash?” Well, I said, “Lucille, my dear, I don’t give a darn if you want a million. I am still telling the same story over and over that it doesn’t really matter, it’s all shadows. There aren’t any pockets in the shroud that you’re going to wear, so if you want it here now, take it. So you want your $50,000 in cash, alright, get $50,000 in cash. What you want it for I don’t know, but I’m not going to question your right to want it.” She can’t spend $1,287 a month. She just can’t do it. I know how she lives…she lives well…he’s still alive and they dine every night, not on Lucille but on him, in these fabulous restaurants, every night. And so the trips to Barbados are not on Lucille, it’s on him. And so, $1,287 a month…but she wants…she said, “Nothing feels secure.” You can’t feel secure until you find God. If you had billions of dollars you will not feel secure in billions; you will feel secure without one nickel in this world if you find God. I don’t care what the world will tell you, when you find God you feel secure, and you don’t need the symbols of security. They are only symbols; they’re shadows that pass off to this world.
So what I’m getting at is this, she didn’t know that the structure…you see, God’s Word is literally true, but it’s conveyed to man in metaphor, in a figure of speech. And so, the words that will convey the Word, that’s a figure of speech, that’s ___(??). So when she constructed a scene in New York City and put me on the platform to tell her story, alright, I’m telling the story… that whole structure was all figurative. What did it imply? The potency of that structure was in its implication, not the structure. She could have taken any structure in the world. But what is the structure? It implies something. It must have meaning. For the Bible is, “In the beginning was the Word.” Well, the word logos means “meaning.” It must have meaning. So there was meaning with God in the very beginning. This is not an afterthought, this is not some emergency thinking. This is something that was prepared before the world was, and this meaning was with God, and this meaning was God.
So the whole thing has meaning. So I create the structure. Now, what does the structure imply? Its implication is the word, the truth that God is speaking. So if I am telling that she has $600 now more than she had before, it means she has $1,287. Now, Neville means nothing, the platform means nothing, all these things mean nothing, it’s the implication. That’s the potency of this structure. So forget structure. It’s marvelous because it conveys meaning. And so I have to use words to convey meaning. If I didn’t have to use words, I could just think and tell you the most marvelous things in the world. But while I’m limited to this world I’ve got to find words. And all the words are figures…even a simple little thing like “imagining creates reality.” Yet behind the three little words, what am I telling you? It’s so much I am telling you in that simple, simple little thing.
So here, we have belief this night. Our beliefs, our real beliefs, are what we live by, and our entire life is the outcome of our beliefs. If, like the father in the story, as related in the 9th of Mark, thought he believed and asked the great one to help his unbelief; then he tells him in a very simple manner “All things are possible to him who believes.” Now, throughout scripture, using the word “prayer,” “Teach us how to pray,” well, there is no reaction to that. There is no statement as to how. He did give us what is called The Lord’s Prayer. That’s something entirely different…it’s the most majestic. But to teach us how to pray…they said he was praying and when he ceased to pray in a certain place, they said to him, “Master, teach us to pray.” But no statement is made as to what he said. But if you will take a good concordance and look up the words and see what prayer means, the word prayer means “motion towards, accession to, in the vicinity of”—at or in the very place that you want to be.
Well, she wants to be in that place hearing her story. She got right into it. It’s all communion with self; it’s not on the outside. You don’t really pray here or pray in a church. It’s when you actually withdraw from the outer world. and go within, and then get nearer and nearer to the wish fulfilled. Well, I have to get nearer and nearer to the wish fulfilled…so I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and give it all sensory vividness, all the tones of reality, everything that would be real were it true. So I am hearing his voice. I hear… and now what is he saying, what does it mean, what does it imply? It implies that I have it. Well, then it awakens in her the reaction of having it. Believe that you have received it—it produces that feeling of having received it. That’s the end of the prayer: “Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe that you have received it.” Well, how to persuade myself that I have received what at the moment reason is denying and my senses deny? I use all this technique, and the technique is all figurative. Has no power whatsoever. It is what it is implying.
Now, do I believe it to the point of doing it? She did. She doesn’t want to hear one word about the Promise. The Promise annoys her. She just can’t stand it. We went to dinner one night and it was the night after I gave a lecture on the Promise. The four of us went off , my wife, myself, and the two of them. We always go to these fabulous places and I must confess it’s fun. She didn’t mean it but she always means these things, they slip out. “Oh,” she said, “I was late tonight. I had to go to this damn lecture tonight.” I wasn’t talking about how to get another million. That night I was talking on the only reality in the world, how God awakes within man and man is God. That God actually became man that man may become God. And there is an actual play recorded in scripture as to how it unfolds, and suggests the audience not to seek new ways to a goal that is already obtained. Follow the way that is already laid out in scripture. There’s only one way…and there is no other way. So why seek all these ways. They go through the ways of diet. They’re going to get good and healthy and find God…and then you read their obituary tomorrow morning. All the new ___(??), they all die just as young as I do. And so they take that and they’ll live forever…all about the proteins, the this and the that, and then one morning you open the paper, he wasn’t shot, he died, simply died. That’s all the people in the world.
My father broke all the health rules of the world. My mother broke none. She died at sixty-one, he at eighty-five. He drank like a fish, to the disgust of my mother, but she loved him dearly. There was only one man in her life and that was Joseph. She couldn’t see anyone but her Joseph. If he brought her a rose, which occasionally he would, sometimes as a joke, oh, she thought it was the most marvelous thing that he brought her a rose. She had all the roses in the world in her garden, hundreds of roses. She loved the garden and she had them, but if he bought her a rose uptown, brought her a little bunch of roses, that was the most marvelous thing! He didn’t go and get them and cut them from her garden, she brought them in. But when they both came in at the same time, gloating, alright, he has the roses to give to his sweetheart. And that was my father, a rugged, rugged individualist if there ever was one. Eighty-fi ve he closed his eyes. I’m not saying to duplicate him, because maybe your system couldn’t take it. He had a system like iron. Mother was a fragile person, and having borne twelve of us, and ten of us matured, well, naturally, it took something out of Mother. So at sixty-one Mother died. She never drank, never smoked, and lived a very quiet simple wonderful life.
But I tell you, this law that I’m giving you now I was sent to give you. I didn’t hatch it out. I was called and sent. This is not something that man can sit down and contemplate, and say this is the way that man should be. The way has already been completely revealed, yet man is always searching for new ways. He goes off to ___(??), he goes off to this place, he goes to the other place, searching for a new way to a goal that has already been attained. And the goal is the Father. Everyone is seeking for the Father, which is the source of authority, the power of the universe. He isn’t going to find it through diet. And that’s said quite vividly in scripture, that food will not in any way accomplish anything, really, the 8th chapter of 1st Corinthians. We are not in any way brought before God by diet, whether we eat or not eat, whether we drink or not drink, this will not in any way commend us to God. Whether we do this or that, these are not…believe in his Word.
Well, now believe in his Word. It’s called in scripture, repentance. And so, she practiced repentance by not accepting the evidence of the senses and changing, a radical change of mind. So she didn’t have it, she’s not going to ask him for it, she’s going to try it. So in her mind’s eye she sets up a scene implying the fulfillment of her desire, and then the desire comes to pass. So that was repentance. She didn’t go to church, she didn’t go confess to some priest, she didn’t do anything in this world that the world calls repentance. Repentance means simply a radical change of mind, that’s what the word means. Metanoia is a complete radical change, not just a little change, right down to the root. I don’t know how it’s going to work, but I’m going to change radically. I’m not looking and hoping that it comes from this, that or the other; I just have it. And he’s telling my story and so I know. So she began to apply it. And when she saw me and thought now this whole thing is going to be simply farcical, it wasn’t. She didn’t realize that the power was not in the structure she had done, it was in what the structure implied.
So that is what we have done with the Bible. We take the letter and not the spirit. The Bible is simply a vehicle that conveys a message, and we have confused the message that it conveys with the vehicle that conveys it. And so we worship the vehicle. We worship all these symbols in the world, like the preachers. We have saint this and saint that and saint the other; they don’t exist. The whole thing is in man: “Man is all Imagination and 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, Laocoon). That’s God believe it or not.
I hope on Friday I can show you exactly how you prove to your own satisfaction…I’m not going to come out of the clouds here, I’m not going to ride on a white horse and have a golden throne and tell you lovely things. No, while you are seated here, whoever comes, I will have you do a little experiment with me—but in you, not in me. And if I cannot produce in you the consciousness of this presence and prove to you how real this presence is, well, I don’t think I’ll take the platform again. I’m sure I can do it. I am sure I can make you aware of who Christ is, and with him all things are possible. So, if with him all things are possible, well, now all things are possible to him who believes. If you are the believer, I will now equate you with the one that you’re going to feel, when I bring about this demonstration as it were.
But here, in this wonderful world of belief…the whole vast world is nothing more than belief. What evidence had I, unschooled as I was, that I could write a book that really would sell, and sell 70,000 copies un-promoted, no sales effort whatsoever behind the book? I go from New York to California once a year, live here, so I only live, really, in three major cities. Here I live…I go to San Francisco for a series of ten or thirteen lectures; New York for, say, fourteen, fifteen lectures; and then here I live. And I do not promote the book. It hasn’t been advertised in papers, not in magazines, not on radio, TV, and the book has sold over 70,000 copies. But I took it in to Scribner’s in New York City when I first brought it out. They said to me, “This book will not sell 500 copies in the life of the book.” Well, I was such a greenhorn I asked them, “What do you mean by the life of the book?” He said, “As long as you the author lives; for, as long as the author lives he will talk with friends and through sympathy they’ll buy a book from him.” I said, “Is that what you mean by the life of the book?” He said, “Yes. We speak of the life of a book based upon the life of the author. When authors die, unless it’s a classic, the books die. We have a storehouse filled with books where some author was a good salesman and sold us his manuscript against our will, and so, they are unsold by the thousands. So, you aren’t going to be one of those salesmen.” I said, “No, I know that I have a book that is unique; I do not know of one like it in the field. You tell me one book like this, Your FaiThis Your Fortune, and I would like very much to ___(??) it. I haven’t ___(??) it…there’s not anything here that’s plagiarized. This whole book came out of me spontaneously. And so I tell you this will sell.” Well, it has sold over 70,000 copies and no sales effort.
When I told that to the late Aldous Huxley, he said, “Did you go back to tell the man? Did you write a letter to the chairman of the board or the president?” I said, “No, I’m not given that way.” He said, “Well, if I had stock in that company, I would want to know who is passing opinions on such manuscripts, because he’s costing me money. Because they have a sales force. If you’ve done this to a book without the help of any sales effort and they have this enormous sales effort, what would that book have done? And I, with an interest in the stock, I would want to know.”
But all I can tell you is, I believe it. We are always believing ahead of our efforts, always. I want something and I believe it. Without any evidence to support that belief I believe it, and walk this earth as though it were true. In a way that I do not know, not consciously, and no one knows, it becomes true. In time, that belief projects itself on the screen of space, and it is to those who cannot see otherwise it’s now to them a reality. It’s no more imaginary now; it’s now a fact. When I first told them, if I did, that was all imaginary, existing only in your Imagination and, therefore, unreal. Now it becomes a fact and they trace it back through the physical being by which it became a fact. And they stop right there. They can’t go back to the supernatural origin of the thing. All things go back to supernatural origins, because all things go back to God. Everything goes back to God; there’s nothing but God.
So if I can’t take you back beyond these physical things here, I will never find the origin of anything in this world. So will I go back far enough to find when I began to believe? Did someone once tell me, “You know, you remind me of someone…you know what he died of?” Now listen to it carefully. All of a sudden I am picking it up, he died of this, he reminds me of you, and then every little symptom that I read in the paper thereafter, I’m picking up the whole thing he died of, and I don’t like it. So I go back to somewhere I formed a belief, some stupid belief that I believed in. And all of us…my friend, who’s here tonight, he told me this story the other day, that this man said, “I have no superstition. I am so happy I have none whatsoever! Th ank God (knocking on wood)!” He was so proud he had none, but he had to knock. Well, that’s the whole vast world…we all have them. My wife told me that she was almost, well, a young lady before she could break the habit that her nurse gave her when she was a child that you dare not put on the left shoe first. The right shoe must go on first or it’s bad luck. So she dressed every morning, put on the right one first. Then when she began to ___(??), “Oh, I don’t believe in it, but I’ll take no chance,” she puts on the shoe, and for the longest while she would take no chance. Finally, it came that she could really put on the left one first. But that was a habit that was given to her by her nurse when she was just a child and remained with her over the years. We all have these little superstitions.
It all goes back to what do you believe? We’re told, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you’ll be saved. But nobody knows…they repeat that in words. Anyone can repeat that in words, I can take the Christian creed and repeat it over and over and over. What does it matter? What does it do to me? It doesn’t change my life at all. So, what have I believed? You say, I believe in Christ and to believe in him I’m saved. Saved from what? Man doesn’t know Christ—he doesn’t know this infinite being that is housed within him. He doesn’t know the God that is completely furled within him. When he begins to believe, that God will unwind himself at the ___(??), and then I am he. But, without belief it doesn’t work. We are told, “They heard the good message as we did; but it did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith in the hearers.” Read it in the Book of Hebrews (4:2). They heard the same message of good news but it did not benefit them. Why?—it was not received with faith in those who heard it. And so, I can tell you…and some will say, well, I think he’s silly, I think he’s stupid, and go out and completely turn their backs against the story.
I tell you, whether you believe it or not, I stood in the presence of the risen Christ. The risen Christ asked me a very simple question and when I answered it correctly he embraced me. We fused, we became one, and in that oneness he sent me. I am still one; you’re never separated from the one with whom you are fused. As you’re told, “He who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1Cor.6:17). So, “He who sees me sees him who sent me.” But you don’t see him under this mask. You cannot see the being that I really am through mortal eyes, no man can. To see the being that I really am you have to have the spiritual eye open. And I wear, whether you know it or not, the human from divine, which is the body of God. It’s the body of the risen Christ, but no mortal eye can see it. They see this; this is the mask that covers the body that I really wear, and I would have no time between the departure from this when I take it off fi nally and occupancy of that which I really occupy. And so, when I was embraced and made one with him, there is no divorce after that. He who God has joined together, let no man put asunder (Mt.19:6). It has nothing to do with my physical relationship with a woman on earth. Not a thing! That’s a complete misunderstanding of the scripture. Who God has joined together…God embraced me, and he and I became one. Now, God has joined together…let no man put asunder. Man cannot put asunder, yet they will try to excommunicate me were I a member of a church. How can they excommunicate me and take me away from the body of God when God has joined me to him? I am one with the body of God. So when you meet the risen Christ, there you see infinite love in the human form divine, and he who is embraced and becomes one with him is it. And then he’s sent into this world to tell the story.
Until he is called, he is not sent. To be called is to be sent. When you are called and sent, you know it. Not speculating you know your mission. Even though you haven’t the intelligence of the world and you are unlettered in the language of the world, he tells you what to say. You go before the learned men of the world and people you call your own and tell them what mortal mind cannot tell them. You’ll tell them what they’ll never experience by reading books or by speculating, and you tell them exactly what has happened to you. They will look upon you as one, “Isn’t he the most wonderful dreamer. Isn’t his Imagination vivid.” Isn’t so at all…you simply are telling exactly what happened to you. But they can’t see the being that you are, because on this level when I depart this world, that is, when the world sees this level, they’re the same level. They’re still clothed in mortal garments that suffer and die… until that one moment in time when, after all the furnaces, they’re called into the presence of the living God and embraced, and fused, and then sent to tell the gospel of God. And we come one by one into that state. But, here, we walk the earth unknown, completely unknown, disregarded. You’re told in scripture, he reverses the entire thing. The one that he calls and holds the highest rank he ___(??). For he sends him, sends him into the world… no honors, no background, no intellectual, social, financial background whatsoever. He sent him, but he said, I go with him, for he who sees me sees him who sent me. But you can’t see him because the eye isn’t open to see him. So I tell you, believe what I’ve told you this night. It’s true you can be exactly what you want to be if you’re willing to construct a scene that would imply the fulfillment of your dream. And the power is not in the structure, that’s all figurative, that’s mental; but the power is in its implication. What does it imply? Remain faithful to its implication and it will come to pass in what the world calls reality.
Now let us go into the Silence.
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Are there any questions?
Q: (inaudible)
A: No, it’s the Greek metanoia. Metanoia, it’s Greek. You and I aren’t Greek scholars, but the word is metanoia, which is translated in our scripture as repentance. So if you look up the word repentance in the concordance, that is, the biblical concordance, it will give you the Greek word metanoia and then give you the definition; and it simply means a radical change of mind, that’s all that it means. It doesn’t mean remorse, it doesn’t mean regret; it means to change your mind radically. And it’s something that no one can do on the outside by going to a so-called intermediary between yourself and God, who is yourself. You need no intermediary between you and the source of your own being. So, they can’t give you so-called… they can’t exonerate you. Exonerate what? You go within yourself and then radically change, believing the Word of God, every statement of his. It may take fifteen words to tell a truth, but the truth is called the word, singular; so fifteen words may be used to express it or it may take fifty words to say the word. But the word is what I’m getting at. So the statement is “imagining creates reality”…that is the word of God. If you believe it, something bothers you…assume it now, this very moment, and that’s a radical change of attitude. That is metanoia. That’s repentance. Now if you believe it, you’ll persist in it.
Q: (inaudible)
A: For instance, if I believe a thing, I’d act, wouldn’t I? For instance, what if someone came to the door and screamed, “Fire!” Now you believe fire is a dangerous thing, don’t you? I do. Well, I hope that no one would stampede and stop the others from getting out, but I hope all would take the hint and start moving toward an exit. I know I would. I believe that if someone screams “Fire!” they mean that the place is on fire and we should all make an effort to get out. I hope we would be kind and considerate and not tear the other one down, but, at least, you begin to smell the smoke and you see the flames, just start moving towards the exit. You believe fi re is destructive in certain ways and most constructive in others. Well, if I believe it, I would act, wouldn’t I? And if I don’t believe, I don’t act. So I will say, if you believe what I’m talking about you would act. So you’re confronted with a problem, do you believe that all things are possible to him who believes? Well now, learn the art of believing. What must I do to believe? And then act, because if the belief isn’t strong enough to affect action, well, then it can only be a half-belief. That’s not good enough.
Now do me a favor, even if you have a card take another one. You may displace it with duplicate cards and I printed an abundance of them, knowing that the whole thing was a scrambled series. Like next week, it’s Tuesday, but this week we do have Friday. But next week it’s going to be Tuesday and Friday. Now what the third week is I haven’t slightest idea, because I have to read it every day myself to see what I’m going to talk about. It’s a complete scrambled program. And so, I know over the years we came to the Ebell on a Thursday, two nights a week and we never had one missing. We came over to Dr. Smith’s place and they were the same two nights a week, but ___(??) …lovely club. The ladies were very gracious, very kind, allowing me to have it for the time that I wanted it. So I have twenty-three scheduled between tonight, and I’ll close for a few months some time in December…I think it’s the 16th of December, but I do not know. I mean, it’s one of those things, I know that I will be here, as the schedule states, between now and closing the 16th of December. And this coming Friday it is “Behold This Dreamer.” This is the night I will show you, those who come, and I’m quite sure I can succeed in getting you to feel the presence of Christ in you. Not some impersonal, intangible something on the outside…I’ll show you and you’ll experiment with me, you’ll feel Christ in you. Now trust him. That’s the only Christ of scripture. But he hasn’t yet resurrected in you. He will. But before he resurrects, I’ll show you how to catch him, and then you will touch him.
And the day will come he’ll resurrect exactly as described in scripture. The resurrection; then his birth from above; followed by his discovery that he is God the Father. And then comes the grand tearing of the curtain of the temple, and he ascends, using his own blood—not the blood of another, no ox, no cow, his own blood—and ascends like a spiral of lightning, just a bolt of spiral lightning, you could call it that, right into his skull. Then comes the final confirmation of the act when the dove descends upon him. And then you will find the entire story. But you can just feel it before this thing happens.
Well, my time is up. And so, on Friday we’ll be here. Do take a card on the way out, even if you have one, and give it to a friend.
