5-7-65
Now tonight, I think you’ll find it very practical. The purpose of a teacher is to encourage and to stimulate, sometimes even to belabor one to become curious to detect the principle in operation. Our principle is that imagining creates reality. We make the claim that “the eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God himself, the divine body Jesus… we are his members” (Blake, Laocoon). Buried in everyone is Christ Jesus, and Christ Jesus is God himself.
Here, we must awaken from this state, and awakening from this state is called in scripture, the resurrection. The signs of the resurrection in the life of the believer are the indispensable internal testimony, without which Jesus might have been raised but could never have been preached as risen. Everyone will have this experience, and they can preach from experience that he is risen because he is in them. When he rises in them, they become a witness and they can preach from experience that Jesus Christ is risen. If they don’t have the experience, he may have been raised, but they will never know with that authority that they can preach that he is risen.
As I stand before you tonight, I can speak with the authority of one who is witness to the risen Christ, for he has risen in me. I know beyond all doubt I am he. I know we are one. Limited, yes, in this world of the flesh, for I can’t prove it to anyone’s satisfaction. When they say, “Turn that into gold” or “Turn that into bread” or “Turn that into something else” or “Jump off the cliff—would he not give you some support and if so, you would not dash your foot against the stone?” No, I will not attempt in any way to prove anything to another. I am sent to tell you only of one presence: the risen Christ. So, “The eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God himself, the divine body, Jesus; we are his members” (Blake). So buried in all, every child born of woman, buried in us is Jesus Christ.
Now, let me tell you of a story. As I said as I opened the meeting tonight, my purpose is to stimulate, to encourage everyone to prove this, what to others who have not yet proved it is a theory, that imagining creates reality; that man’s dreamer is all Imagination, the whole vast world is a dream, and we are the dreamers of the dream. The day will come we will awaken. When we awaken from the dream, we are the dreamer who is God. This morning’s mail brought a letter from a friend of mine who came here over a period of two or three years, Tom C., a young lad, maybe in his late twenties. He’s now living in New York City, and so he’s been informing me every two or three weeks with his visions and his dreams. He knows I’m interested in his visions. What he does in the world of Caesar that interests me too, but not really. If he has a job he makes money, perfectly alright, but his visions, they do interest me, and so on the morning of the 30 day of April of this year, this is what happened to him.
He said, “About 5:30 in the morning I woke and I was completely cataleptic. I couldn’t move any part of my body, not one little part would move, it wouldn’t respond to my will. After a little while, with an enormous effort my right hand moved, but it seemed to have been such an effort I was completely exhausted and I fell back into the state of catalepsy. Then suddenly I found myself behind an enormous bar, and I seemed to be the bar owner. In front of me stood my brother Jerry and Jerry said to me, ’Someone just died!’ I stopped him and I said, stop, say that over again for me, which he did. As he said it over again, I realize that I am in a dream. I was the one who couldn’t move my body, it was a dead body…someone had just died. And suddenly I said to myself, Neville teaches us that if I know I am dreaming, all I need do is to hold some solid object, a pillow, a chair, anything that is solid that will not move when you hold it, and don’t let it go. Hold it and then compel yourself to awake while you are holding it. So I held what seemed to me like a box- like object and I held it and said to myself, Tom, wake up! As I did this, I began to awake and I was fully awake in this place.
“A lady out of nowhere came into my presence and I said to her, ’This is a dream, this whole thing is a dream,’ and she was startled. But I couldn’t more than say to her, ’I know it’s a dream and God is the Dreamer of it all; there is only God, he’s the only reality; everything else is a dream.’ As I said that, my cousin, a girl, came out of nowhere and she said to me, ’This is all stupid, this is silly.’ Then she went quickly away and quickly returned with a book, and she said to me, ’I have read this book over and over and over again. You mean to tell me it is a dream? And it doesn’t have anything in it which speaks of a dream, that this world is a dream.’ She gave me the book, so I took the book and I fingered it awhile, and here I came to page thirty-six, and on page thirty-six it said, ’The world is a dream and God is the only reality.’ So I said to her, ’Turn to page thirty- six, at the bottom of the page, and read what I have told you, that the world is a dream and God is the only reality.’ Then said he, I couldn’t see her reaction, because at that moment I awoke in that body that I left that was cataleptic. Now it was not.” That’s all, said he.
Now, many years ago I had an experience, and since then many similar experiences, where lying on my bed here on El Camino in Beverly Hills I suddenly saw the interior of what appeared to me a most wonderful, luscious hotel, or something similar, and my consciousness followed vision and I stepped into what I beheld. I returned to my body on the bed and then still seeing this interior, I stepped into it again, and repeated this action time and time again…maybe a dozen or eighteen times. Then at the very last time, I decided to explore, come what may I would explore. When I made that decision to explore, stepping into this interior the whole thing closed upon me, and I am in a world as real as this world, just as real as this world. It’s spatial, time is present, because space is a facility for experience and time is facility for changes in experience. So here I step into a world…that’s my experience…now I’m going to experience changes and I move from this room to the other room to the other room. And then I came into a huge hallway. It was all lit and really plush. I walked down to the end of the hallway and I saw two ladies coming down the hallway, and I said to them…knowing what has happened, for I knew the origin of this entire thing: I was on my bed in El Camino in Beverly Hills. I recalled the entire thing vividly, so I said to myself, “This is a dream.”
So I said to these two ladies, “Ladies, this is a dream.” They did what you would do if you met a stranger in a wonderful hotel where you never saw him before and he said to you, “This is a dream.” It would startle you so that you would think he’s insane, and, naturally, you would try to escape from whatever he intended to do. So they looked at me, and they got as near to a wall as they could—couldn’t go through it because the world was just as real as this world, just as solid—so as they got near to the wall and very close to the wall, they started walking rapidly from me. I said to them, “Look, I’ll prove to you it is a dream,” and I saw something hanging over my head. It reminded me of an object I had seen in a friend’s home here in the hills of Hollywood. I’d seen it only six or eight months before, so I said to myself, This is only a memory image of what I saw, surely this is a dream, and I thought if I held it the thing would collapse, like gossamer, it would be nothing. So I said to the ladies, “Watch, I’ll prove to you it is a dream” and I raised my left hand and I held this object. Instead of dissolving into nothing, it was as solid as this. As I held it, and they walked by rapidly, then I said to myself, “Come on Neville wake up! You know it’s a dream.” And so, I held this thing and shook myself to wake up, and I did. I woke standing in that hallway, holding this object in space, and here I am completely awake as I am now, in an entirely different world with no avenue back to the world that I remembered so vividly that I left behind me; a world where I had a body as real as the body that I then occupied, that body that I left was in Beverly Hills on a bed in El Camino.
The thoughts that ran through my mind were these. I had left a wife and a daughter unprotected. My daughter is in high school, she has the ambition to go to college, she is qualified to go through college, and I’ve left her uneducated and without adequate funds to see her through. I have left a wife unprotected, without adequate funds to go through life with my daughter. I knew I had, in this world, unfinished business, but how to get back? There was nowhere that I knew that I could walk through a door and come back here. Then I remembered a scene that happened to me years before this, and that scene was this, I found myself in a dream and I did exactly what my friend Tom, who heard me tell the story, did. I found myself wading in water and I knew this was a dream. I came close to a pillar that was sunk in the ocean. The bridge was long gone, but the pillars remained. I felt innately that if I could hold that pillar, which was stationary, and compel myself to awake, I should awaken in the dream. Well, I did it and I did, I awoke in the dream. I was as awake as I am now in a dream that wasn’t this world.
So, this time I felt, what must I do now? Feeling did it, so I will try it. What can I feel to bring me back to this world and to be in Beverly Hills in California? So I imagined a pillow under my neck. I imagined it; I opened my eyes; I’m still standing in the hallway. I closed my eyes, I kept on feeling the pillow, and suddenly I could feel behind my neck a pillow. When I felt it, I finally began to awake, and I awoke on my bed, but I was cataleptic. I couldn’t move a finger of my body. I could move no part of my body, I couldn’t open my eyes, and after much struggle in this dead body, my left hand began to move. Then I pushed it out and I could feel the warmth of my wife’s body. Then after a little while, a great struggle, I could open the lids of my eyes and the familiar objects on the wall, the familiar objects on the bureau, the bureau itself, and everything came back into a normal focus. So I stepped into a world as real as this world.
So, Tom today, 3,000 miles away, has not forgotten his lesson. He learned it well. So in this wonderful experience of his, he “knew this is a dream and Neville teaches us if I hold an object that’s stationary and do not let it go and compel myself to awake, I should awaken in a dream.” So he awakes in the dream, and he said to the lady who would not believe him, “The reason why you will not believe me is because we are awake in the dream. You don’t know it. I am conscious of the fact I awoke in this dream, but you don’t know it. You are in the same dream, but you are not aware that you are dreaming. At the moment, I know I am dreaming; you do not know it. And the only difference between the two of us is that I know I’m dreaming and you do not know you are dreaming.”
So I tell you, the source of all dreams is your Imagination. The source of all phenomena is your Imagination. And the source of all phenomena is God, so God is your own wonderful human Imagination. That is God! The day will come you will understand perfectly, and the story as told in scripture concerning the resurrection of Christ you will experience. You will actually experience everything concerning the resurrection. Prior to the resurrection, it’s all a dream. After the resurrection he awakes from the dream and goes into world after world, awake. All the worlds are and all things are: “Eternity exists and all things in Eternity, independent of Creation which was an act of mercy” (Blake, Vis. Last Jud., Pp.91). So everything exists, there is nothing that is not now existing. All it needs is the individual’s occupancy of it. When he steps into it and occupies it, it becomes objective to him and it’s real. Until he steps into it and occupies it, it’s a shadow, a mere possibility. But everything is. There is nothing you can conceive of that is not already. Everything is! You could be as poor as a church mouse…that is too. You could be rich as Croesus…that is too. You could be known beyond the wildest dream of the world…that is too. Or you could be the most unknown being in the world…that is too. Everything is! And all it needs for you to prove it is to occupy it.
But how to step into these states?—that is the great secret. He [Blake] said: “If the spectator could enter into these images in his Imagination, approaching these images on the fiery chariot of his contemplative thought, if he could make a friend and a companion of one of these images, then he would know what it is to rise from the grave.” These bodies are the grave. Not everyone goes into the cataleptic state before or after the vision, but they’re all the grave. “And then he would meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy” (V.L.J.,Pp.82-84). How to take this wonderful being that we really are which is all Imagination… for “Man is all Imagination, and God is Man, and he exists in us and we in him; the eternal body of Man is the Imagination” [Berkeley, Pp.219). That is the divine body that scripture speaks of as Jesus Christ; we are his members.
Now, let me turn to a passage in Isaiah, the 43″ chapter, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior…and beside me there is no savior. Before me no God was made, nor shall there be any God after me, I know not any,” the 43″ of Isaiah (verses 10, 11). Now the word translated “One” with a capital, it’s capitalized—-the Holy One of Israel
—-the Hebrew word is “lysh.” That is the word translated in the 2n chapter of Genesis, and it’s also capitalized as Man. “She was called wo-man because she was taken out of Man,” capital M (Gen. 2:23)…in fact, the whole word is capitalized and the word is lysh. So if I would translate this correctly, “the Holy MAN.” People don’t believe that God is Man. They think God is a power, God is some peculiar omniscience, omnipotence, something that is impersonal, and certainly not a person. I tell you from experience God is Man. If I would translate this for you from the Hebrew into English, the words are, “I,” speaking of, “I am your I am, the Mighty Man of Israel, your Savior…besides me there is no savior.”
They don’t believe you that God is Man. I am telling you from my own personal experience I stood in the presence of the risen Christ. The risen Christ incorporates within himself everyone who is risen. There’s only one in the end and that one is Jesus. There is no other God. Buried in every man is the great Jesus. The word Jesus, the word Jehovah, the word Jesse is the same; it means “any form of the verb to be,” I AM. “Go tell them I AM has sent you” (Ex. 3:14). It’s this being that is buried in every being in the world. If you really would believe that “I am Jour I am.” This is God speaking now, not through this being called Neville, I’m quoting Isaiah, that here is an inspired word coming through the prophet: “I am your I am, the Mighty Man of Israel.” This is Israel, the whole vast world is Israel; there’s nothing but. There’s nothing but Jehovah; and Jehovah in the state of waking from his self-imposed restriction is Jesus.
So I go back to what I told you earlier, the signs of the resurrection in the life of the individual believer are these internal testimonies, without which Jesus might have been raised but could never have been preached as risen. So in the end of the story twelve go forward, one deviates. And so it must be completed, so they bring a twelfth in to fill his place, and they cast lots for him, because he must be a witness as we are told. You must be a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No one can go forward and teach it who has not truly been resurrected. He has to be resurrected, so the twelve must be completed. And they cast lots for two, Barabas (but they put an extra “s” into it, but it’s the same meaning) and then Matfhais. And the lot fell on Matfhais and Matthias became one of the twelve to go out (Acts 1:26). Well, he couldn’t go out until this thing happened in him. So when it happened in him, he is qualified as a witness. So we are told, you should all be witnesses, beginning in Jerusalem, and you go through all the cities to the very ends of the earth. There must be a witness. What is a witness? Unless there are two who agree, you cannot bring in a verdict. If two different witnesses agree in testimony it is conclusive. Well, who are the two? The Bible is the Word of God, that’s one witness, that’s the external witness; and then your experience becomes the internal witness. Can you match the Bible? Have you had the experiences recorded in scripture? If you can say I have actually gone through these experiences and these have taken place in me, then you are a witness. Because they parallel the external witness of scripture, and when these two agree in testimony it is conclusive.
Now, others may not believe, but you don’t have to appeal to anyone in this world. God sees the heart. Man sees the outward appearance of a man, but God sees the heart. You can’t lie; you can’t fool the inner man. When you lie you know you’ve lied. When you make a claim you know it, and that’s God who knows that you lie, so you can’t lie. And yet there are unnumbered people who will lie for temporary gain, because they don’t believe the story of Jesus Christ. They don’t believe for one moment this thing ever happened…and that is the only thing that is real in this world. For everything else will vanish, it will all pass away, but this will never pass away. It remains the permanent record, and everyone, one after one after one, will experience this within himself. As he experiences it, he then parallels the external witness of scripture and he removes himself from the world of the dreamer into the entire awakened state.
While we are here still dreaming, let us be like Tom who realized that that world in which he found himself, in which he moved, it was real. It was no more or less real than the world he left behind. So if he knows now when he returns to this world that his dreams are just simply dreams, and they are no more solidly real than his cousin in that world, and the lady in that world, and the bar, and he was a bartender, and all these things, he could now begin to dream his noble dreams…dream exactly what he wants in this world.
Now tonight just before I took the platform, a lady came to me. I know her well, know the family well. And in this world of Caesar because a man today in this section of time hits the age of fifty-five, if he’s unemployed no one wants him. Who wants him? No special talent, he’s not a doctor, not a dentist, he’s not a this, he’s not a that, no special talent, an honest, wonderful man without special talents. So, she told me a story tonight—I know what others told me too—they took a project, they were determined to make this thing come true. If one individual dreamt it, for they all dream in concert, what does it matter? If we love each other, we can dream in concert. So she feels that when I said a couple of weeks ago that one should go to bed identified with Christ Jesus, instead of saying, I am John Brown who can’t pay my rent, I should go to bed as Jesus Christ who owns the world. For Jesus Christ having risen from the dead owns the world, so everyone in whom he rises can make the claim he owns the world. “Were I hungry I would not tell you;” said he, “for the world is mine and all within it. The cattle on a thousand hills are mine” (Ps. 50:10). So why should I tell anyone of any limitation when there is no limitation when all belongs to me!
So she went to bed in the assumption, I am Christ. Now this has been going on for a long while, this husband of hers who every door was shut against, every door. You’re fifty-five and what can you do? I know that another very dear friend of hers and my wife agreed in secret—- and to this day I didn’t know they had agreed—but I know she and my wife agreed to simply make this a project, to bring him into a wonderful state of affluence, of real, real affluence. Well, he started yesterday on the payroll. He will not start officially until Mondyday, but he’s on the payroll; and there is no limit to what he can do with what he has, well, already done in this world. He’s done it; he’s equipped to do it, he’s qualified to do it. And out of the nowhere this thing happened. He didn’t advertise, no one sought the job for him, suddenly the call came through. He saw this man and there was sort of an emergency in the atmosphere, a certain expectancy, and the whole thing rushed into this, and today he’son this job with unlimited possibilities. At least he’s working and he’s on the payroll as of yesterday, beginning this coming Monday, to prove his talents in this field. And he can do it.
Now, whether his wife…who said to me, “When you said identify yourself with Christ Jesus, and assume I am Christ, and sleep in that assumption, and all things being possible to God, and Christ is God, well then, feel that the whole thing is done, whatever you want, and sleep in that assumption.” My wife and her friend, who are both friends of this lady, did it in their way. But what does it matter who did it? If I go to a concert and there are a hundred pieces and they’re all playing in concert, don’t let one get out of beat, don’t let one get off the tone, let them all play in concert. Well, if I had two, three or a hundred, if they all agree that he is working and gainfully employed, and the whole household is excited about it, they are playing in concert. So I will not say tonight to anyone because I don’t know if it is her assumption that she was Jesus Christ and therefore he, her husband, is now working and gainfully employed, or if it is her friend and her other friend, who is my wife, did it in their way. I would say they all did it.
So let us all know that imagining does create reality, that imagining is God. Can you conceive of anything in this world that wasn’t first imagined? Try and think of it. You might think, well, a tree, because you don’t know the depths of imagining. But the suit you wear was it not first imagined? The chair on which you are seated, the home that you will return to tonight, everything in your world, the business that you’re now performing in this world, was it not first imagined? I don’t care what the nature of the business is, the instrument for playing the piano, everything was once only imagined. So I tell you, to repeat myself, that “The eternal body of Man is the Imagination…and that is God himself, the divine body, Jesus Christ.” We are his members, for I imagine, you imagine, we all imagine.
And when Jesus Christ buried in us comes to the end of the dream of this world, he begins to awake. The signs of awakening are recorded in scripture beginning with the resurrection. So if I take, say, the gospels, the gospels were written to set forth a post-resurrection faith of the apostles. They were not written as documentaries, not for one moment as the world will believe it, to set up and record how Jesus himself saw the event beforehand. Forget it completely! They are written because men heard the story based upon the ancient claim of the Old Testament and here comes one who is a student of the Old Testament and in him the whole thing begins to unfold. He goes back into the Old Testament, which was the only testament, and he discovers parallels; he discovers everything back in the Old Testament that is happening in him that is now alive. He sees the entire promise of God differently. It isn’t as the world believed it to be. He sees the whole thing taking place in man and not on the outside of man by some strange being coming out of space. Then he tells those who will listen, and there were those who believed it implicitly, and in this small circle it began to happen. It happened in them.
One turned away, and his space was filled, because it had to have another one in whom it would happen. The word Matthew means “gift of God.” So the grace of God will take place in him, and so all of a sudden it happened in him. They go out to tell only one story: the story of the risen Christ. They could not speak of the risen Christ unless Christ had been raised in them. Christ might have been raised in one who told the story, but they could not go out and preach it as the risen Christ were he not raised in them. So here, everyone here is Jesus Christ. There is only Jesus Christ in the world. But in everyone Jesus Christ must rise, and he will rise. Not one can fail, because everyone lives by reason of the fact that Christ lives in him. Christ lives in me; he lives in you; in everyone in this world. Were he not in us we couldn’t even breathe…he’s our breath, he’s our life. So he rises and awakes in us, and then we leave this sphere of the dream and enter the entire new world, the awakened state.
So here, you try it tonight, try it in a simple way. Imagining creates reality. You have an objective in this world. Do you know what you want? If you know exactly what you want, what would it be like were it true? A simple question is asked in the Book of John, “Where are you staying?” and he said, “Come and see”(1:38). Well, the soul’s place of residence, like the citizen, is determined by the soul’s return. That state to which I most constantly return constitutes my home. If in the course of a day after I’m busy at my desk I dwell upon my problems, and then I turn away because someone asks a question and after I’ve answered the question I turn back to my problems, and in the course of a day that’s where I go back constantly, that’s where I dwell. And that’s what I’m going to multiply and perpetuate in my world. So the soul’s place of residence, like a citizen’s, is always determined by the soul’s return.
The day will come you and I will remember where we laid our immortal body down to dream. And remembering it—as I did, a partial state in Beverly Hills and returned to it—I’ll remember where I laid the immortal body down, which is Jesus Christ, and return. When I return to it, I will completely awaken from the dream of life. But everyone has these other areas where they sleep, where they dwell morning, noon and night. So you and I can in the course of a day know where we are dwelling by observing where we return most frequently. Am I dwelling in what I owe? Am I dwelling in what people think of me? Am I dwelling in what anyone (??)? If I dwell upon that and can argue the point and try to convince them, that’s where I’m dwelling. I’m in a state of want.
There isn’t a day that I don’t get letters (??). Someone calls here on the phone and says some organization, one of the biggest international organizations of this so-called “new thought.” Man, I tell you, this isn’t “new thought” at all; it’s old as the faith of Abraham. I have nothing new to teach you, it’s all scripture. So she called yesterday, she called today again to repeat that this organization, international, very powerful, tells her she must not come to my meetings. (??) she calls for help. The organization so far has been unable to grant anything he’s asked of it. But she’s award of their power, so she doesn’t come here physically, but she calls on the telephone. She thinks by calling they won’t know, which undoubtedly they wouldn’t because they aren’t really spiritual. If she came here physically, they could have someone watched, then they would know. But they would never know if she called me on the telephone or wrote me a letter. So they are wearing the mask of being very spiritual and very important, and they are the blind leaders of the blind. I will not tell you the name, but they are international in this world.
So they will frighten people away from here. But who cares? It doesn’t really matter. My income does not depend upon your attendance, not for one moment does it. I welcome you because I can feed you that which Christ sent me to give you. But don’t think for one moment my livelihood depends upon your physical attendance, because it doesn’t. But I’ve been sent: I stood in the presence of the risen Christ and Christ is the One man, only one man, in this world. We are gathered one by one and incorporated into the one man who is God, and that God is Jesus Christ.
So I say to everyone here, take it and use it. Use it in the world of Caesar, knowing it is a dream. Because it is a dream, stop the bad dream, why have a nightmare? The whole vast world has a nightmare. Well, you can stop the dreaming of a nightmare and turn it around, if you know you’re dreaming, and dream what you want to dream until that moment in time that Christ in you has reached the fullness of time and begins to awake. When he awakes, he goes through a series of events, prearranged, all recorded in scripture. Then you will awake in the tomb of your skull, and you will come out of the tomb of your skull born from above, with all the signs of the birth of Christ—the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and the witnesses to testify to the presence of the child. Then you will find that which is the only symbol in the world that will reveal to you that you are God the Father, because you will see his only begotten Son who calls you Father. Then you will go through sign after sign, all within you. And if the whole vast world rose in opposition, it would make no difference to you whatsoever. You will know. Let them have all the medals they want, all the honors they want in this world, it’s still dreaming. And lovely dreams…let them have their wonderful dreams. But you will know, after the signs, that when this veil of pleasure is taken off, it’s taken off for the last time…after the signs.
But you will not condemn anyone. You’ll be one with the body of Christ Jesus. Still dieting, controlling, loving, and warning everyone into the waking state. No condemnation, there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. He doesn’t condemn anyone. He leaves them alone in their nightmares, and warns them, warns them through his messengers that he sends. He sends messengers into the world. And everyone who stands in his presence is sent and everyone who is sent is an apostle. It’s the one prerequisite: For apostleship is to have seen the risen Christ. As Paul said, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” (1 Cor. 9:1). So having seen him he is sent. You can’t be called and not be sent. And then you are sent and you will tell it to the best of your ability. After having spent that one moment in time, maybe thirty years, fifty years, sixty years, then the veil is taken off and you are forever incorporated into the body of Christ, that glorious body, still guiding all. And one will be called, one after the other, standing in your presence now, because you’re one with Christ, not another. There is only Christ.
Now let us go into the Silence.
I’ve asked you in the past for case histories. I’m going to repeat the request, and the more current the better, for they make the principle become alive. Like tonight’s two…one told me just a matter of minutes before I took the platform and the one in this morning’s mail. They’re current, things that happened in the immediate present, and so they illustrate the principle. So, you who’ve actually proved to yourself that imagining does create reality, please share with us your experiences that I may, from the platform, share it with all.
Now, are there any questions, please?
Q: (inaudible)
A: Well, first of all, the desert through which we walk is right here. In the year 1965, we are now the pilgrims moving across this horrible experience. It is horrible, no question about it. It’s the story of Job all over, that “We were made subject unto futility, not willingly, but by the will of him who subjected us” (Rom. 8:20). God subjected himself to this level and became man that man may become God. He’s become just as I am and took upon himself the restrictions and the limitations of this. So we are now upon the desert. Now, to be through the day a pillar of cloud and at night a pillar of fire…this is literally true. I have gone down the street—-this has been about thirty years ago—suddenly it happened, walking down the street, and instead of seeing individuals, I’m seeing only pillars of clouds. Everyone was surrounded by an enormous cloud. In fact, so big it would go through even the sides of a building. Walking down my street, 55 Street, and I met someone on the street, and that which surrounded them was so vast it went through the wall on this side and the walls on that side. And seeing people at night, it became fiery. So a cloud does envelop us by day and pillar of fire by night (Ex. 13:21). It’s an actual fact.
I can go back, well, thirty-odd years and it has never left me. I don’t try to see it anymore, but I could easily see it if I wanted to. And when that cloud is lifted, all (??) and they know it. Strike the tabernacle where it is and follow the cloud and wherever it descends. Well, if I think elsewhere, I am where I am imagining; for I’m all Imagination, therefore, I must be where I am in Imagination. So if I imagine this very moment that I am in San Francisco, anyone who is sensitive could see me where I am imagining that I am, so the cloud is gone. So I go in that state.
We’re here until the end of June and then we’ll be back late October or early November…but here, every Tuesday, every Friday until the end of June.
Good night.
