There is something in this changing, changing world that never changes, and Scripture refers to that which never changes as Truth, So, Paul said, “The Truth of Christ is here.”
Now he defines Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” He confesses that once he thought Christ to be a man. He said, “Hereafter, I regard no one from the human point of view. Even though I once regarded Christ from the human point of view, I regard him thus no longer.”
He saw Christ as a plan . . God’s plan of redemption of man. But really, it was the redemption of himself, because God became man, that man might become God. So, he saw Christ differently and there was no one to this day who was greater than Paul concerning the spread of the knowledge of the truth of Christ.
He never changed his religion. He said, “I AM of the seed of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.” He knew his Law backwards. But he reinterpreted Scripture in the light of his own experiences, and Paul was the first one to use the word Christ, for his letters preceded the Gospels by at least 25 to 30 years. The Gospels were written after the letters of Paul . . whoever Paul was.
His first name, as we know from Scripture, was Saul, and Saul was an insane king, chosen by man. And then Saul’s name was changed to Paul after he had the vision.
And so, in the light of his own experience, he reinterpreted the Scriptures, and then he wrote these thirteen Letters, and he called Christ “the power of God” . . the creative power of God . . “and the wisdom of God.” Then he said, “The truth of Christ is infinite.” So, listen to what he is talking about when he is talking about, and he only talked about, Christ after he realized the mystery.
Now, here tonight we can bring it down to the most wonderful level and show you how to apply this Principle, not forgetting the greatest thing which is the purpose of it all, which is to transform man into God. But really not so much transforming man into God, but to redeem God, Who came down and assumed the limitations and the weaknesses of man, and then He goes back to Himself as He was before, but enhanced by reason of the experience.
You did not begin in your mother’s womb. You were “in the beginning” with God. You are God! And it was God who made the decision who came down into this world called death, and assumed the weaknesses and the limitations of man. You will return to the Being that you were prior to coming down.
As the Psalmist said, “Rouse thyself. Why sleepest Thou, O Lord? Awake! Do not cast us off forever.” It is God-in-man that is sleeping and dreaming this Dream of Life. Paul realized it, and he knew that while we are dreaming the Dream of Life, we could dream it as we would like to dream. If you ever discover yourself dreaming, you can either awake from the dream or control the dream. If you know you are dreaming, you can control it.
I tell you, you are God dreaming this Dream of Life. You may not know you are; I am telling you that you are. You can put it to the test, and no power in the world can stop it because there is no other power. “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” That Power is buried in you! When you say, “I AM,” that’s God!
Now, what are you assuming that you are? You can assume anything in this world, for the Being assuming is God. Can you believe in the reality of your assumption? Can you believe that which at the moment your reason denies and your senses deny? Can you believe it? If you can believe it, no power in the world can stop it from objectifying in this world of ours, but no one.
Let me share with you some of my own discoveries. We go back, now, to the Psalmist, and the Psalmist asks the question concerning this life: he said, “Send Thy light and Thy truth to me. Let them bring me to Thy holy hill and to Thy dwelling.” (Psalm 43:3)
Now, when the story is told, it takes a man to tell it, for it takes a man to express the power of God and the wisdom of God, and this one makes the claim, “I AM the Light of the world. I AM the Truth.” So, when the Psalmist pleads to the Light and the Truth to lead him, and to lead him to the hill and the dwelling of God, one comes into the world in whom the Light unfolds and the Truth unfolds, and he declares, “I AM the Light of the world. I AM the Truth.” Yes, “I AM the Way, I AM the Truth, I AM the Light” . . the one and only true and living way. To what?
To the Source of all creation, called in Scripture “the Father.”
“No one comes to the Father but by Me, for I AM the Way and the Truth and the Life.”
But Paul discovered this was not a man. This was a pattern. So, in him, Christ became the Pattern Man. “Follow the pattern of the true words which you have heard from me. Guard the truth which has been entrusted to you by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Do not turn to the left or the right. You guard this Truth; and the Truth is the pattern of “the true words, which you have heard from me.”
He knew his Old Testament. There was no other testament. He never quoted any other book. He didn’t quote the great classics proceeding the age, only the Old Testament. And here he saw it in an entirely different light. He saw the Old Testament as an adumbration, an intimation, and then, when it happened in him, he reinterpreted the Old in the light of his own experience, and then he told it.
Then came our Evangelists, who told it for our sake, and told it in the form of a man.
“For truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors.” [Tennyson]
So they took it, and they told it in the form of a man, and the world has accepted it as a man. And he is speaking of a Cosmic Christ, a cosmic principle, which is the power and the wisdom of God, the Creator of all. This is buried in us.
Now let me share with you a simple, simple technique. You might have done this. I hope you have. I know from my own experience before these major things happened in me of a mystical nature, you are going to have this experience, I know it. Have you ever closed your eyes, not forcefully, just simply closed them, and turned your attention inward into your skull, and just wait? And after you have seen all the dark convolutions of the brain, they turn into light. And haven’t they come around your head, and then moved off like smoke rings, only they are light rings? And you see this luminous, golden light go off like rings and rings of light going off.
So, we turn back to the 43rd Psalm: “Send me Thy light and Thy truth to lead me and to bring me to the Holy Hill and to Thy dwelling place.”
Well, I have found it. I’m sitting in the silence, and then this whole thing envelops me, all golden, liquid light. Thinking of a friend and what the friend would like in this world, I bring that friend before me. But his request, or her request, must conform to the Golden Rule. In other words, I will ask nothing for anyone that I would not ask for myself. If they ask me to hear that you are dead that they may inherit your wealth, I could not be the one to whom they should turn. Turn elsewhere, but don’t come to me to ask me to hurt anyone for your personal gain. But ask me anything and it’s a simple matter.
In the silence, to just see is the most obvious thing in the world, these wonderful, golden, liquid circles that surround your head, and then they go off like someone blowing smoke rings, only instead of smoke, they are made of golden, liquid light. So, “Send me your light and your truth,” for we are told: You shall know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free” , in this light, for “I AM the Light of the world.”
I will send, now, that thought on the light, and it cannot return unto me void, but “it must accomplish that which I purpose and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
And so, while you are seated in the silence, just simply think of your friend as having what he asked, or she asked of you and then just simply break it. And your word has gone forth from you. But you say, “That’s from you, a man.” Don’t you know that God became you? It went forth from you, but God became man, that man might become God. So, in the silence, who are you? Who is doing it? I AM. Well, what is His name? I AM. That’s His name forever and forever.
But who is doing it? Who said he was the light of the world? He said, “I AM the Light of the world.” What is this Light? Isn’t this, now the Truth? “Well,” you say, “maybe, and maybe not.” Well, wait and see if it isn’t true. If it proves itself in performance, then is it not true? And if others deny it because it doesn’t make sense, does it matter what they think? If there is evidence for a thing, what does it matter what the world thinks?
It’s a simple, simple technique. I hope you’ve had the thrill of seeing this wonderful golden light emanating from your head. It happens before you are born from above. So, do not condition it by thinking you must first be born from above. You do not. It is there because God is already in you. Yes, He is awaiting birth within you. Frankly, He is awaiting the discovery of Himself through the Son standing before Him and calling Him Father. For the purpose of life is to find the Father.
“How long, how vast, how severe the anguish ‘ere we find the Father were long to tell.” (Daniel 12:6)
But the Father has been built in since Eternity in these dark convolutions of the human brain. That’s where the Father is. You will never come into the presence of someone that you will call Father. You will come into the presence of someone who will call you Father. You will never find the Father outside of your Self. When you find the Father, it’s because His Son calls you Father. There is no other Father.
So, “I AM the Way and the Truth and the Life.” To what? To the Father. “No one comes unto the Father but by me.”
“Well now, show us the Father.”
“Have I been so long with you, Philip, and yet you do not know the Father? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How then can you say, show us the Father?” The day will come, you will find the Father, but you will not find a man or a being standing before you that you feel like calling “Father.” You will find a being standing before you, and instantly you will know, memory returns at that moment that he is your son David. And David calls you Father, and you awake from your long self-imposed sleep, for you deliberately became man for a purpose.
“No man takes away my life. I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to raise it up again.”
So, no one takes away my life. God deliberately became humanity, and He plays all the parts, and when He played them all, He came out. And the sum total of all the parts, gathered together into one single being projected, became David. For humanity has done, and is doing, and will continue to do the will of God. So no matter what a man has done, is doing, or will do, he is only doing the will of God!
But God is not someone other than your Self. God-in-action is your own wonderful human imagination imagining, and humanity is expressing the imaginal acts of man. That’s God.
Everything that man has imagined, is now imagining, or will imagine, will be expressed, and humanity will express it. The individual comes out, but He is playing all the parts, and He can say, “Forgive them. They know not what they do.” But each will come out, having played all the parts, and then he will be confronted with one being, a youth named David, and David will call him “Father”; and then the drama is over and he knows who he is. He is God the Father.
For the whole search of man is for the key, the Source of the phenomena of life. And there’s only one God, and that God is your own wonderful human imagination. So, you are in search of that God, You will find Him, may I tell you, because Truth in Scripture is that which is firm and unchangeable. Let no one tell you that you will find it by dieting, by going to holy places, by attending services on Sunday morning, by going to Mass, by any outside ritual. Forget it.
You are told: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8) Well, how do I think I’m “pure in heart”? By diets? By going to church? By doing all the things that people tell me to do? No.
Man is purified by the death of his delusions.
As he dies to all of his delusions, he begins to awake, and it comes suddenly upon him, one delusion: that the white man is better than other colors, or the black man is better than other colors, or the yellow man is better, or the Christian is better, or the Jew is better, or the social worker because of his progress is better. All these are delusions.
But God in you is the Father. He will lead you through unnumbered experiences and take you into an experience that you could never consciously devise and shatter your delusions.
When the black man is looked down upon, one day he will save your earthly life. A black man would forfeit himself to save you from an ultimate, inevitable destruction. Or it could be the reverse: if he looks down upon the white, the white will give his life to save the black. And in that moment, that individual is saved by the death of that delusion.
So, everything here is all right. It’s perfect! You will come out of everything in this world; and when you come out, you are God! We are told, “No one ascends into Heaven but he who descended from Heaven . . the Son of Man.” You do not know you’ve descended from Heaven, but I know that you have. You came out “before that the world was.” You descended from Heaven, or you could never in Eternity ascend into Heaven. And then you are told in Scripture how you will ascend.
He identifies Himself as the “Son of Man.” He said, “No one ascends into heaven but the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” Now he asks the question: “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And they answered, “John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the Prophets.” Then he asks this question: “But who do you say that I AM?” He identifies himself with the Son of Man. And the answer comes back: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” He equates the Son of God with himself when he says, “I AM”, and then he accepts the answer, “Thou art the Christ.”
He is the Power that was sent into the world, for “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” But he confessed that the one sent is ‘one’ with the Sender: “He who sees me sees Him who sent me.” So, the being sent is not inferior as to its Essential Being, only as to the office . . in this case as the sent, but not as to its Essential Being. “The Father and the Son are one” but when he is playing the part of the sent, he is the Son, and seemingly inferior as the sent . . the ambassador. He is one with Himself, the Sender. So, “He who sees me sees Him who sent me.” So, I am not divorced from Him; He has never left me alone.
So here, if I am ever to ascend, well then, I must be the One who descended, and that I know from my own personal experience. And just as you are told in the Old Testament in the 21st chapter of Numbers, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness”, what was the serpent? It was a fiery serpent . . a brazen, fiery serpent. That’s exactly how you are lifted up. You are split in two from top to bottom, and then you behold this fiery, golden, liquid light at the base of your spine; and, like a serpent . . a fiery serpent, coiled like spiral lightning, you ascend into heaven.
Well, where is heaven? “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” we are told in the 17th [chapter] of Luke. So, if I would go into heaven, where would I go? I’d return within myself, into this immortal skull, and it reverberates when I reenter that state. So, I return “like the fiery serpent.”
Well, who returns? Only one Being can return, the one who descended. And if only the Son of Man descended, then, though I did not know it, I must have been all along that Son of Man! But I was dreaming, and I was the one who sought the blessing, for he said, “Rouse Thyself! Why sleepest Thou, O Lord? Awake! Why cast us off forever?” as told us in the 44th Psalm. “Rouse Thyself.” He is speaking to the Lord. Well, who is sleeping in man at the moment? The Lord descended to this limitation called Man, and while buried in man, he dreams the Dream of Life. But while He’s dreaming, may I tell you, you can be anything that you want to be, but anything, absolutely! Catch the mood. What would the feeling be like if it were true?
I told you a few, I think, maybe, months ago of a friend of mine who called me. She never had money. I gave her away because she asked me to give her away. She said, “I have no father to give me.” Whether the father was here, I do not know. And so I said, “Willingly, I’ll give you away.” So, I arranged it . . almost like a funeral. When they said, “Who giveth this woman to this man?” I stepped forward and said, “I do.” So, I gave her away. At the reception, this lady came by along with these people, and this one said, “Who are you?” I said, “I AM the bride’s ‘father’; I just gave her away.” She said, “I know you gave her away all right, but who are you?” I said, “I AM her ‘father.’” She said, “Yes, but I happen to be her sister!”
All right, so that was it. She had no money; he had no money. About eight months ago she called me and said to me, “Would you hear good news for me?” I said, “Within the Golden Rule, yes.” “Well,” she said, “it’s within the Golden Rule. I want ten million dollars.” I said, “I don’t care if you want a billion. So you want ten million dollars? All that I will do is what I would do for someone who said, ‘I can’t pay my rent; it’s due, and it is a hundred dollars.’” It’s the same thing to me. Words do not return void, if you send them out on the Light.
“Send Thy light and Thy truth to lead me.”
So, I heard it. Six months went by, and she called me up: she called me up and said her brother had received an estate of one hundred million dollars. They were all poor people, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath for my million, she promised me a million dollars. But it is all, now, the consciousness of wealth. That’s what I am getting at. They are all ready for this hundred million dollars that eventually will be settled . . maybe after they are all gone from this world. When an estate of that nature comes into this world, there are unnumbered people who will claim that they are illegitimate children of the one who died. So, I didn’t tell her that. I only knew it takes time for these enormous estates . . they are put there by a consciousness of wealth.
So, she calls me last week. She said, “You know, Neville, these two elderly ladies” . . He has a little church not far from here, and they give her their thanks . . well on in years; and they said to him and to her, “You know, we are millionaires?” Well, they couldn’t believe it, for they couldn’t afford to give even a dollar, but they said they were millionaires, and to prove that they had money, they paid off the mortgage a hundred per cent on the little church and the home, and bought a new car for her, and they were driving a Continental, having set up a trust fund for her of one thousand dollars a month for the rest of her earthly days.
She grew into the consciousness of being wealthy. And they do it as you would fish if it’s properly baited. It’s all in your consciousness! You cannot be in the consciousness of being poor and attract anything but poverty. All these are states. The man tonight who is sitting in the highest position in our country, or in Russia, or in England or in any part of the world, is the same Being who is now shining shoes for a living. They are only states of consciousness. One is in the consciousness of being wanted and important, and he thinks himself so important . . he is doing you a favor if he lets you cut his hair! And the barber is so proud that he can cut the man’s hair, and both are the same Being, for God is one. There are not two gods.
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
There are infinite states of consciousness, and we are pilgrims passing through. When you pass through and you are in the state of poverty, and I say, “Who is poor?” you would answer, “I AM.” Well, you have called the name of God! And then I meet someone who thinks he has a billion or two billion dollars, and I say, “Who is a fabulously wealthy person?” and he will say, “I AM,” with great pride; but he doesn’t differ in name, the name of God, from the poor one who can’t pay the rent. It’s only a difference in state.
“So I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be everyone of them states of the sleep into which the Soul may fall in its deadly dream of good and evil.” [Blake, from “A Vision of the Last Judgment”]
You fall into a state, any state. The state of the thief, and so he said that because he knows he must pay the consequences if caught. And so, he doesn’t feel that he did wrong. The only thing he did wrong, in his own mind’s eye, he was caught! All that he is concerned about is, “What did I do that was wrong?” Not that he took the money; that wasn’t wrong. “What did I do that was wrong that I was caught?” And you think that is not true? That’s exactly how they think, and it’s not just the one who picks up little things in a store that is called shoplifting, that’s small compared with what takes place in businesses among trusted employees. And they wonder, after years and years of being trusted, “How did I get caught? What did I do wrong?” Not stealing and breaking the employer! These are all states of consciousness.
So, you go into a state. You decide your state. But bring it within the framework of the Golden Rule:
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Whatever you would have them do unto you, well, there’s nothing wrong in giving you a hundred million dollars, is there? Well, she said, “I want ten million.” If anyone gave me ten million dollars, I wouldn’t refuse it. So, she asked within the framework of the Golden Rule.
You will say, “Well, that’s greed.”
I don’t think so. That’s stupid. It is all within the concepts of man. The one who will tell you that that’s greedy wishes that he had it. And so, they are checking their portfolios that are bursting with billions of dollars and telling the poor, poor people that they shouldn’t really want it . . it wasn’t God’s will for them, but God’s will for us . . the custodians of this wealth.
So, forget it, and come down to this simple principle that “the Truth of Christ is in me.” That’s what he said in the 2nd letter to the Corinthians, the 11th chapter, the 10th verse, of Corinthians. “The Truth of Christ is in me.”
Then he begins to analyze what he means by Christ. Christ is the power, the creative power of God and the wisdom of God, and although I once believed in a man called Christ, henceforth I believe so no more. I now see that I AM crucified with Christ. In the very beginning, this power was crucified on humanity, and it is raising itself individually, not collectively and when it raises itself individually it returns to what it was prior to its descent. It was the Son of Man. And when it returns, it is enhanced unnumbered fold by means of its experience in this state called death. It overcame death. For here it dies. Everything dies in this world. And here, it’s the victorious power that could become one that has to die and still transcend the grave.
So, everyone here . . in the interval, do not turn from left to right; do not go after any false gods. “… Why stand we here trembling around, Calling on God for Help, and not ourselves, in whom God dwells?” [Blake, from “Jerusalem”]
Why should I turn to someone else when He dwells in me? Well, find out Who He Is in me. He is my own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. Now, how can I prove that? Well, set a goal for yourself. I want this, that or the other. “All things are possible to God.”
“And you tell me my imagination is God? All right, well then, how do I prove that?
I bring before my mind’s eye a scene, which implies that I AM the man that I would like to be, and I reenact that scene in my imagination. That is subjectively appropriating the objective hope. I reenact the whole thing in my imagination, and then I reap the reality of that subjective appropriation, and do nothing about it. Capture that mood until life begins to really pulse, and then, while they are pulsing, you have sent it into the world. It impinges on everyone in the world, and they, whether they want to or not, are under compulsion to aid the purpose of that subjective hope and you will become the one that you’ve assumed that you are.
Do it with love. Always do it in love and you’re doing it the right way. I’m told by Paul, the first great convert by his own experience, because he said, “When it pleased God to reveal His Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood.” He reveals His Son in you. Where else can He reveal him when the whole drama takes place within man? All things take place within the human imagination. “And it pleased God to reveal His Son in me.” Well then, His Son is standing before me. I’ll see him, and he is not His son; he’s my son. Then I know who He is that I formerly worshipped. It’s not any he . . I AM.
That’s the story. “For no one knows who the son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the son.” So, no one ever sees God! But “the son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath made him known.” So the son appears and calls you “Father.” Then, and only then, do you know you are the Father.
You do not know the Scripture. “Call no man on earth ‘father,’ for you have but one father, who is in heaven.” And where is heaven? Heaven is within. So, when you find that Father, you don’t find Him as another standing before you as someone that you call “Father.” When you find the Father, it’s the Son who reveals the Father, and the Son stands before you, calling you “Father.” And you are God the Father! And long before you have this experience, send your word on its way to bring lovely things into the world for everyone you can think of, because everyone . . even though they are unlovely, judged by human appearances, they are the Brothers. We are the Brothers that came down. We are the gods. We are the Elohim.
Elohim is plural, gods: one made up of others. So, we are the gods that came down and assumed these limitations. And as the gods, we are brothers, everlasting brothers, expanding forever and forever by reason of this experience. So, do not be led astray. If someone wants you to go and see some holy man, run for your life! Go to some holy place? Go and take all these courses and diets? Food cannot commend you to God. You are no worse off if you do not eat, and no better off if you do.
So, when this one comes into the world, having had the experience, they call him a drunkard, they call him a glutton, a leper, and a friend of publicans and sinners, because He’s in all of them. He sees nothing to condemn in the world. He sees them only in states. The whole vast drama is the falling into states. And he came to redeem them out of their states of suffering, until that moment in time when they find the Father. And when they find the Father, who had been the Father but themselves! And they go out thinking, “I will never again see my father’s face”; and that Father built is built in Eternity within themselves. And we go here, there and elsewhere, looking for Him, and He is exactly where He was standing before you started the search. But we go in search of Him. And one day He appears, not as another, He comes in the form of a son, and the son reveals you as God the Father! And that son is David.
Let the whole vast world rise in opposition. They can never, in Eternity, disprove it. David, as told us in the 2nd Psalm, is the Son of God. “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee.” And to confirm it in the 4th chapter of the book of Acts, read the story . . how by the voice of the Father “and thy servant,” and the word translated servant is better translated, son. The footnote in the Revised Standard Version gives the alternate translation and it’s preferred as the word, son. So, “Thy son David has said” and then he quotes the 2nd Psalm, telling who is the author, the writer of that Psalm.
But revealed Truth cannot be logically proven. It’s not truth based upon what the world would call truth. That is this level, but the Truth spoken of in Scripture is revealed Truth and that cannot be logically proven. You accept it on faith, or you reject it. But may I tell you, even though you reject it . . it may take Eternity, but you will not be lost. One day you will accept it on faith alone, and then it will happen in you and your memory returns and you return to the Being that you really are. And the Being that you are is the Elohim, the brotherhood of the gods, for we fell as one man, and we became fragmented in this world of unnumbered beings, but none will be lost “in all my holy mountain” . . not one.
I cannot conceive of one of my brothers that I have known in Eternity being lost. If you play the part of a Hitler, play the part of a Stalin, or any monster in the world, you have fallen into a state, and I must redeem you from that state. So, redeem a man from the state of loneliness, if he is lonely, he wants a companion. What’s more marvelous than that in the world? He wants a companion, or she wants a companion. We should all have. If he wants to pay rent, what’s wrong with that?
He gave himself, in the beginning, a pattern. So, He gave me a pattern, a pattern against the wall, because I see something and then I move to the right, and I see the price and the restraint involved in that state. So, I want to exercise all the talent the Father gave me. And “I and my Father are one,” as we are told in the 10th chapter of the book of John. Read it in the 10th chapter, the 30th verse, “I and my Father are one.”
In the 14th chapter of John, he does say, “but my Father is greater than I.” As I said earlier, that does not mean that the Lord is inferior as to His essential Being, only as to His present office as the sent. So, when I send my Self into the world, it seems to be inferior to my Self, the Sender, but we are one, for there’s nothing but God in the world.
“Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord, is one.”
Let us go into the Silence.
