12/15/67
The most incredible story ever told man or that could ever be told man is the gospel. You and I read in the morning paper, and we’re all excited that someone transplanted a heart. Time magazine refers to it as the “ultimate operation”; take a heart from one who is dead and put it into the body of one who needs one badly. Why, I do not know, but he wants to vegetate beyond his present moment. But nevertheless it’s called the “ultimate operation.”
Now, may I tell you what the gospel really is in essence: God, the God who created the whole vast universe and sustains it, became man that man may become God. Can you conceive of any greater story in the world? Well, when man hears it, he turns his back upon it. We are told that it is told to the men of the world and they receive it in four different ways (Mat. 13:3- 23). The majority completely turn from it as the most incredible and stupid story that ever could be told. It is said, it falls upon the wayside and the birds of the air devoured it. Then there are those who eagerly take it, but they’re not prepared to really receive it; and then over night it takes a little root but then comes the sun and scorches it because it had no depth. The sun makes visible the facts of life, the things that you and I call real—and it completely denies the reality of what was heard, and they thought it must have been just an idle dream. Then it falls upon, well, the thorns and the thistles of the way…all the cares of life. They’re about paying rent, buying food, clothing, and getting on in this world. And so there must be a moment in time when we will take care of that, but not now; and so all the thorns and the thistles and the cares of the world choke it. Then there are those who have been prepared. They heard it and they struggle to keep it alive. As they struggle to keep it alive, they prepare the ground to receive it. Some bring forth the thirty-fold, sixty-fold, and an hundred-fold.
Now when you hear it, that is imparting the word. You can reject it; you can have it simply scorched by the facts of life, choked by all the cares of the world. Or you can hear it, this most incredible story that ever could be told man and so prepare yourself to receive it that then the word, having been imparted, can then be implanted…all the difference in the world. “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your soul” (Jas. 1:21). This may seem to you, well, the height of insanity. But I am not talking out of turn, I am not speculating, I am telling you what I know, what I know from my own personal experience. So, this is the difference between imparting the word, getting it rejected, choked, scorched, or accepted. Then comes that moment in time when the word can be implanted, engrafted. The word translated “engrafted” in the King James Version and “implanted” in the Revised Standard Version is a compound word. We have, first of all, the preposition “in, within” which means “to fix in place, in time or state.” And then we have a word which means “to puff up, to blow up, simply to sprout”…in other words, “to germinate.”
So we take the word and the word is God—God himself being implanted into that soil that has been prepared that is man. It’s done within. When it is implanted, well then, in its own good time it erupts, and a definite system unfolds within, a definite plan, and that one actually begins to expand from that moment on; expands and continues to expand, and expands into God who created this universe and sustains it. Not some little thing, he expands into God forever and forever, the very God who created the whole vast universe.
Now, may I tell you, it seems stupid and silly but it’s true…I operate nightly. I impart the word daily, all through the day…whether I do it as I’m doing it now I’m imparting the word. But there are moments in time when I am called upon—and you do not do it here—where I am the surgeon and I am implanting the word, engrafting the word. There are in this audience those who have had that experience where I engrafted it. It doesn’t hurt. “Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls” for the soul could remain indefinitely in this world…it’s all in our own wonderful human Imagination. And man is quite satisfied to make a billion and make two billion and make four billion, and think himself completely marvelous.
If you’ve read the current issue of The Post magazine, it really if you look at it with a wonderful humorous eye, you’ll laugh your head off. There are those who have two billion dollars, a single man, his name is H. L. Hunt, came from Canada, a poor boy, he’s now seventy-seven, and he has his two billion. Tonight, someone reading that would be so envious of this seventy seven- year-old man with his two billion dollars, and who, in the not distant future, takes off the little coat called the state of consciousness of two billion and finds himself returned to youth, twenty years old, and not in possession of two billion dollars at all…a complete unveiling of this state…and he starts all over again. So he hears the Word and it doesn’t interest him.
But he’s not alone. There are others, believe it or not, in our fabulous land with another two billion—a Getty, a Hughes, all these—who have no concept of the story, the most incredible story in the world: that you are destined to become the very one who created the whole vast universe and contains within you these billionaires. And they are all paupers in your world. They can’t make one hair of the head. “He who made the eyes, shall he not see? He who made the ears, shall he not hear?” And you are destined to become that being that creates all the eyes and the ears of the universe, and grows all the hair of the universe and everything in the world. With its two billion, it can’t make one little string of hair. Oh, it can buy a wig, no question about it. With that sort of money you can buy all the wigs in the world, but you can’t make one little hair that grows. And you are destined by the story when you are engrafted to become the one who creates the whole vast world.
Now here, I have a friend of mine, he sits in the back tonight, his name is Bill. A few years ago, he was prepared for “surgery” and it was engrafted in him. No one knows when the graft actually begins to germinate. So we are told in the first chapter of Acts, “When?” He said, “It’s not for you to know the time, the season that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:6). So don’t ask when it is going to burst and erupt into flower and start the expansion. There’s another lady, she sits here tonight on my right, and only a few weeks ago she was engrafted. Now, when it’s going to erupt, no one knows. You’re told, no, not even the Son know it, only the Father by his own authority. And all are being engrafted as they are prepared. It takes preparation for the field to receive this fantastic story.
So when they say this [heart transplant] is the ultimate operation that is no operation compared to this operation. As we’re told in Ezekiel, the 11th chapter, and Jeremiah, the 24th, “I will give them a new heart and I will put a new spirit within them, that I may take from them the stony heart and give them a heart of flesh; then they will be my people, and I will be their God.” Jeremiah tells us, “I will give them a new heart that they may know that I am the Lord.” I can tell you from now ’til the ends of time that I AM, meaning I AM in you, this is the Lord. But without the new heart, you can’t get it, you can’t quite believe it, you can’t quite grasp it. So, “I will give them a new heart that they may know that I am the Lord,” and the only way you can get the new heart is when the graft takes place. Then God grows in man and man begins to expand, and expands and expands and expands within the bosom of God forever and forever…the same God that created the universe.
That is the ultimate operation. Not the transplant of some little heart from a woman who had this fatal accident into the body of a man who is well on in years, who has everything in the world wrong with him, and so he will vegetate. Then the doctor who performed the operation will be acclaimed internationally and he will have his day in this little passing world. I will not take from him that it is a wonderful operation, no question about it, but that’s not the ultimate operation. The ultimate is to receive with meekness the implanted word, and the Word is God. So, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). So take the Word…this most incredible story. At first you hear it, that’s the imparted word. When you hear it, you either reject it or you toy with it, and if the cares of the world are too many and too pressing, you drop it. But the word is always being imparted and imparted and imparted—and then you pick it up again. Finally you once more ponder it and dwell upon it, and the seed begins to break up this stone that is man.
Then comes one when it’s well prepared and he comes to implant the word. That is something that takes place not here on this level at all. It takes place in an entirely different region, a way beyond this, in the depths of your own soul. That’s where it takes place. As we are told in the 2nd of Luke, “And there was a man in Jerusalem, his name was Simeon, and he was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel; and then the Holy Spirit possessed him and he was taken in Spirit into the temple” (verse 25). Now, if I’m taken in Spirit into the temple, don’t think for one moment I’m moving into anything made with human hands—no synagogue, no cathedral, no church, nothing made with human hands. I’m taken in Spirit into the temple. Now, Paul tells us, “You are the temple of the living God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you” (2Cor. 6:16). So if I’m taken in Spirit into the temple, where am I taken but within myself!
So, he’s taken now in Spirit into the temple. The parents bring the Christ child, for he is now eight days old and they bring him in to do for him according to the law. Simeon takes the child into his arms and lifting him up in his arms he blesses God. Then he said, “Lord, now let they servant depart in peace, according to thy Word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:30). Then he said, “Behold this child is set for the fall and the rising of many in Israel; and for a sign that shall be spoken against, for he shall unveil, or reveal, the heart of all” (2:34,35). Your reaction to the story as told will reveal where you stand in the great play. Now, here is the child, it comes in, and he has been promised that he would not see death before he saw the Lord’s Christ. The Lord’s Christ which means “the birth of God in man” is symbolized in the form of a little child, which we will now celebrate in a couple of weeks. It isn’t any child—that is only the sign—this is set for a sign, as we are told. It repeats itself throughout scripture: “This shall be a sign unto you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the floor”…that’s where you find him. But that is only the sign of an event that has taken place. What is the event? That engrafted Word has erupted, and the whole thing is now unfolding in the one in whom it has erupted… expanding forever in the bosom of God, the very God that created the universe and sustains it. And when he expands and expands, he is that God. But not until the Word has first been implanted within him. It takes root and then in the fullness of time it erupts.
So Simeon sees it. Now, may I tell you from my own experience how true this story really is. Others will see it and will deny it. Not all who witnessed it believed it, but one will believe it and the one who believes it always raises the child in his hands. He lifts the child up in his hands, and he who lifts it up is the one who will not depart this world until he has seen it. He has promised, “You will not see death until you see the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26). When he sees it, soon after he will depart into the sphere where he has now gone. He is being implanted. He’s still in this world, terrestrial world just like this, in a body same as before but young. But before he departed, he held the child in his arms…and now he’s being implanted. That I know from my own personal experience. There were three of my brothers present when it happened in me. The one who was the youngest of three lifted the child and declared whose child it was; and when he said, “It’s Neville’s baby” the others denied it by asking in the most incredulous manner, “How could Neville have a baby?” But he didn’t argue the point he simply presented the evidence, the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.
Well, a few years later he did depart this world. He was the youngest of the three who were present, but he went first, leaving behind the two who are still so busy about making money. They’re darlings, may I tell you, they are perfectly wonderful, but their concern is to make more and more and more of the same thing—the same thing is money. As one said to me this past year: “Well, I’ll face it when I come to it. I came in here not knowing why I came and so I will depart not knowing where I’m going, and if I do survive then I will know what to do then. It doesn’t concern me concerning what you talk about, doesn’t interest me.” Well, he showed it in the vision. The other one has never listened to one word I’ve ever had to say. It doesn’t interest him. But my brother the doctor he was all ears for everything concerning this, and he was the one who was youngest of the three…just as scripture describes it that you will not see death before you’ve seen the Lord’s Christ.
The Lord’s Christ is only symbolized in the form of a child. But you are the Lord’s Christ, for Christ will be born in you. God is born in you. So the little infant that we all now celebrate on Christmas day, that’s only a sign, a symbol, of what is going to take place in the man after the man has been engrafted with the word of God. When he has been actually exposed to it, and the operation does take place, it’s an implanting of the word of God by God’s heavenly hosts. It’s going on all the time. It can only be implanted in the one whose soil has been prepared to receive it. So if I am so busy that I am not interested—I want to make more money, I want to be more famous, I want to be called, well, one of the best dressed men of the year or the best dressed lady of the year—if that is my interest in life, alright, well then, that’s my interest. No criticism! Leave them alone! Let them be just as they want to be. But those who really are sincere about it… to listen to the most incredible story in the world…how could the God who created the whole vast universe become you in this tiny little planet? It’s so insignificant compared to this vast, enormous display of light. How could this be the cradle where God actually descends into man, in this little thing called earth; not only earth but you this tiny little dot on earth? And how could that be a true story…that God actually becomes man that man may become God?
So, you tell the story and what ears have you to listen? They don’t… they turn away from you. But I tell you, the story is true. “Receive with meekness the implanted word.” But, may I also tell you, when it comes to the implanting you will; when it comes to simply telling the story, imparting it, you may turn from it. So there’s a difference between imparting the word of God and implanting the word of God. When man is ready for the implant he doesn’t resist it at all. Like my friend who said to me a few weeks ago, “Is it necessary?” I assured her it was, it was necessary. She was lying prone on a hospital cot and I was the surgeon—it’s a spiritual surgeon.—and then I assured her it wouldn’t hurt. She wasn’t quite sure she was ready for it, but she said, “I’ve always believed you and believe you implicitly. Without any doubt whatsoever I believe you.” When I assured her that it would not hurt, I took, she said in her symbolism, an implement like a comb, a silver comb, and the teeth were simply like needles. It seemed a cool brushing on her body. Then when she said, “I’m ready now,” then she realized it was all done. The implanting took place.
But I cannot tell her when, for the Son does not know. When he starts, he is the Son, but the Father and the Son are one. He’s destined to be the whole Father, but he starts playing the part of the Son. When it happened to Bill two years ago, three years ago, all the symbolism is perfect, may I tell you. Everything in this world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. So, I’m not a surgeon in this world, but to her a surgeon is essential for an operation, so she conjured me from the depths of her soul and I played the part in her world as the surgeon. Now, if these things are going to be done, a hospital would be in order, so she finds herself lying prone on a hospital cot, being prepared for the operation. So you see, everything contains the capacity for symbolic significance, because I am certainly not a surgeon here. I don’t know what I could cut with a straight line. I certainly wouldn’t attempt to cut anything…not in human form. But here, as you know, dreams are ego-centric, so within her she has faith in me as a teacher who imparts the word. So when it came necessary for the operation, within her she conjured me to play the part of the surgeon.
The whole thing is done by oneself. She’s willing to have this thing performed and she’s doing it. But in the depths of her own soul here is Neville, in whom she has faith, so she conjures me as the surgeon whom she will allow to perform this operation. That’s how the drama unfolds in man. Because, “The whole vast world, though it appears without, it is within, in one’s Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jer., Plt.71). So I did not come to her as a man called Neville, who’s speaking to you now, and perform the operation. I’m in every one of you and every one of you in me. So what you mean to me I would use when I want to reveal to myself a certain state. If this night I’m ready for the operation, the one in whom I have all faith concerning the word of God and his ability to actually implant that word, I will conjure out of my own being. I will conjure that being out of my own being. He’ll be the surgeon who will play the part he has to play because I am doing it. And so, the whole thing is unfolding within man.
The story of Jesus Christ is a true story contained in man. The day will come, man will awaken and he is Jesus Christ. So the word that’s implanted he implanted himself. But he first must prepare himself for the reception of that graft. He prepares himself by first hearing the word. He hears it, he believes it, and as he believes it he tries to live by it to the best of his ability. As he lives by it, applying this principle and living by it, then the story becomes ready to receive the graft. At that moment in time he will conjure our of his own being a being that he loves or she loves, one she trusts, and he will be the grand surgeon who will bring about the transplant, and bring about a new heart, a new spirit, that will be planted into that being. Then, at one moment it will germinate and burst, and the whole story of Jesus Christ will unfold within you. Then and only then will you know who you really are—that you are Jesus Christ!
It begins with an awakening within you, it’s a resurrection. Then will come the birth of the child; and the child will be discovered by three, they’ll find it. And you will hold the child in your hands. But one will hold it first; Simeon will hold it. In my world his name isn’t Simeon, it’s Lawrence…that was my brother Lawrence…the other two brothers were called Cecil and Victor. They denied it. They are my elders; they’re still here. But Lawrence didn’t deny it. Now Lawrence is departed, but not before he saw the Lord’s anointed…because, he went after the event, not before it. Then will come the revelation of the Father in you, revealing you as God the Father. The whole thing unfolds within you from beginning to end. The whole story of Jesus Christ is contained in that implanted word.
So, first we are prepared. Now as Paul tells us, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). So don’t be concerned about any suffering, who can avoid suffering? No one in this world can avoid suffering I don’t care what he is. If any man tells me that he can completely avoid all suffering, that he’s so wise he knows how to do it, well, you’ll be called to their sickbed and then they look at you and wonder. You’ll be called to their funeral, because they all die, though gods they all die. Everyone dies…but he doesn’t really die. But he dies anyway to those who watch him go beyond. So let no one brag that he is so healthy, that he’s above it all because he eats well or he lives well, he doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke. I have news for him, all that he now condemns, that he doesn’t do, he’ll do. Everything he tells me he doesn’t do, I can prophesy for him, he’s going to do it.
So, let no one feel himself so holy and feel himself so good, they’re good for nothing at that moment. But God is infinitely merciful and will put them through the paces, and then prepare them to receive the implanted word. Doesn’t put them through the paces to hurt them; God is a God of mercy. He’s not getting even with himself, because it’s God—the whole thing is God—just preparing the soil to receive himself. Because that word cannot fall upon the highway…it vanishes. It falls among the thorns and the thistles, they choke it. It falls upon a rock, doesn’t have any depth and so the sun bringing up the facts of life scorches it. It has to have soil that has been prepared…and pain prepares it! Those whom God has, well, I would say, hurt for secret ends he then comforts. In the end, comforts them. And then, what gift greater than to give himself!
So Paul says, “Set your heart fully, your hope, upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1Pet.1:3). All your hope let it be on that grace that is coming to you. Well, what is grace? Grace is God’s gift of himself to man, that’s what grace is. Grace is the final expression of God’s love in action which man would experience when he unveils Christ Imagining Creates Reality 625 in him as himself. Not some Christ on the outside; no “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). So he unveils him in you. But he can’t unveil that which is not in you; he can’t emerge unless he’s now submerged in me. How can he simply erupt in me unless he’s present in me? Well, to be present in me he has to be implanted, and so everyone receives the implant, the graft. And those who have awakened are the surgeons in the depths of the soul of all…and they conjure us.
Here is a lady, she is not present tonight, she said, “I had this wonderful dream, here I am and my youngest daughter said to me”—now this lady is a grandmother, one of the youngest grandmothers you’ve ever seen but a grandmother—“and my youngest daughter came to me and said there was a very ugly looking man, ugly face, in the house out in the back.” Well, she went out and as she entered the house it turned into a barn. What her youngest daughter thought to be an ugly face, it was her lover, in rags. In all of her dreams she always encountered this same person, and here he is. He seemed hungry and seemed to be either in rags or in old clothes. So she gave him something to eat, and then she took him by the hand and they walked out hand in hand, and she fell in love all over again with this person. In her dreams he follows as the one that she always loves. She passed a spot… she said, “Here was a spot… five feet from here is where the house was that I once lived in.” Then she walked… “Here is the house that I lived in…and here was a house that I lived in.” She walked by these many, many states of consciousness, signified by houses or places where houses ought to be. These were all states through which she passed.
At the very end she heard the cry of a child. The child is crying because her brother had eaten some poison and he would die. The boy who had eaten the poison was about four or five. Then she went to a neighbor and told the neighbor, a woman, what had happened to this boy, and she began to scramble eggs for the boy. She said, “No, he doesn’t want eggs, give him milk. That will free him of the poison.” Then she realized that the one who was four or five years old when he took the poison is suddenly now only an infant, a little tiny infant. But she also realized that she herself, in this motion, she was just out of her teens. Well, just out of your teens is twenty—nineteen, and you hit twenty—she was just out of her teens when she became conscious of the fact that the little child, who had gone back in time to an infant, (??) she herself as she moved past these so-called homes where she lived. Well, this [body] is a home; this is a house where I live. But a man’s true house is that state to which he most constantly returns. If I return constantly to the feeling of being unwanted, that’s my house. If I return to the feeling of being insecure, that’s my house. So that state of consciousness to which man most constantly returns constitutes her permanent dwelling place. Well, we can get out of it. So she saw the different states that she had dwelt in.
These were all states of consciousness and, naturally, you call them homes. So you go to a house and you dwell in that house. But a state of consciousness is man’s true house. If I go tonight to New York City and live in a fabulous hotel, I still carry my state of consciousness with me, and I am still aware of my limitations, my potentials, all these things. That’s my house. Whether I tonight live in the Plaza Hotel and got the biggest suite they have to offer, I am still the being that I am aware of being. That being that I am aware of being is the house where I live.
So she pointed out to her lover…well, this man who was her lover, who seemed in rags, is the Father within herself. Man is seeking the Eternal Father, and when he finds the Father he finds himself. So you are in love with that being who brought you into being as it were. So she is now pointing out to herself these states through which she passed. And then, she only confirms what I’ve been teaching here, that when one departs this world or a state, he finds himself restored to life, a body same as before only new, unaccountably new, and it’s new and young. You depart here when you’re ninety minus eyes, minus teeth, minus hair, minus everything to find yourself instantly restored to life. And you’re in a body just the same as before, only it’s new, not minus anything. If you had no teeth whatsoever, you have all the teeth in the world growing out of your gums. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s true for I see it. There is no loss, everything restored. If you’re bald, you’re not bald. If you’re without teeth, you’re not without teeth. If you’re without eyes or you couldn’t hear, none of these things are missing. You are new and completely restored, but still in a terrestrial world just like this. And this goes on and on and on until the graft takes place. When the graft takes place and erupts within you, then Christ is born within you. That’s not a terrestrial world, that’s a celestial world. And you move from the terrestrial into the celestial world, an entirely different being expanding then forever in the bosom of God.
We are the ones moving out of this sphere into that sphere. But you can’t get out of this sphere until the graft takes place and then germinates and then erupts. The eruption is: resurrection; birth from above; the discovery of the Son of God who calls you Father. Then the splitting of the temple of your own body from top to bottom, which reveals this glorious golden light, which is she blood of God that was shed for you and you are it. For he chose you in him before the foundation of the world and that blood you are, and you move up into heaven in that serpentine motion as described in the 3rd chapter of John (verse 14). And then comes the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove on you and smothers you with love. Then you know that the drama on this terrestrial level is over, and when you take off the garment it’s for the last time in the terrestrial sphere. You do not find yourself restored to life after death. You are not restored to life, for now you are a son of the resurrection and therefore not of the terrestrial world.
So I tell you, believe it. Believe it and set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation or the unveiling of Jesus Christ. Now, we’re told that “the prophets who prophesied of the grace that was to be yours, they searched and they enquired about this salvation, and it was revealed to them that it was not about themselves but about you” (1Pet.1:10). They were doing a work the import of which they were totally unaware. They were simply instruments through which the whole story was pouring out into the world for our age, for our time. And now that we are in this age where it is taking place, I say to you, yes, you have to pay rent and you’ve got to buy food and you must buy clothes, all these things. You have obligations to life, you have wives and husbands and children, family, all these things must be done, and you must meet all these obligations. But give some time to the word of God. And when the word is imparted, don’t just let it drop, dwell upon it. In the course of a day dwell upon it. May I tell you, even in the world of Caesar it pays off a thousand-fold, as we are told in the Book of Job, “When he prayed for his friends, his own captivity was lifted” (42:10). If you completely concentrate it on yourself and I forget the other until I first of all take care of myself, well then, you do not know this mystery. When you forget self in your interest of another and you can empathize with the other and rejoice in the other’s good fortune though it has not yet happened, but you rejoice as though it were true, you’re setting yourself free. For the other really is within you. And so, when he prayed for his friends his own captivity was lifted.
May I tell you, I started this work back in 1938 on the second day of February. I had nothing. It was with a borrowed five dollar bill to pay the rent…the rent was three dollars and six people came. I didn’t charge. Either through sympathy or embarrassment they each gave a dollar. Then it grew slowly, week after week, month after month. But in that same interval I didn’t care whether I had anything for dinner or not, made no difference. I knew I was telling the truth as I had experienced it in my visions. So I kept on talking and talking, never stopped, three times a week in New York City…and not charging. In the interval, while I am only hearing good news for others, I would see them. I didn’t charge for interviews; they came home, took all my time. But I lost myself in hearing good news about them; all day long I was empathizing, not sympathizing. I didn’t sympathize with any lack. I turned my back upon the lack and assumed that they were telling me what I wished they could tell me. So I began to empathize with all the lovely things concerning what they did.
In that interval, my father who was growing in this world of finances, and he started behind the eight-ball having nothing, but he struck it in a big way. When he made his will, he did not take me, the only one outside of the island, and give me less because I was away by thousands of miles. I did not contribute to his fortune. All my brothers did, even my brother-in-law. I have one brother-in-law because I have only one sister—and they all contributed. But when he wrote his will, he gave all equal parts, including the speaker. So while I was empathizing and not charging, but empathizing, here, unknown to me, my fortune was being built across the water in the world of Caesar. When he departed this world and the will was made known, here I had as much as any of those who had worked all through the day. As told you in scripture, one came at the eleventh hour and got as much as those who worked all through the day. And when one complained, he said, “Is it not mine to do with as I will? Did I not promise you two pennies for your labor? Did you get it?” “Yes, but you gave him who came at the eleventh hour two pennies also.” “Is it not mine to do with as I will?” (Mat. 20:9). So my earthly father gave me exactly what he gave the others and there were ten of us…nine brothers and a sister…didn’t give me one penny less than he gave them. So, while not thinking of money and trying to get by with whatever I had, and starting from scratch, so I tell you I know from experience this thing works, it doesn’t fail. Yes, even in the world of Caesar.
But when it comes to this fantastic story of Jesus Christ, I tell you from my own experience, and I’m not theorizing, it is the truest story and the greatest story ever told. It is God becoming man that man may become God. So you dwell upon it. And one night if you have not already been engrafted…for that is really a divine impregnation, that’s what it is. He is taking the seed, which is the Word of God, and engrafting it into you. And when my friend felt herself lying prone and being prepared for an operation, I told her it was necessary, it was essential. So she conjures me…having faith in me and believing that I tell the truth, I could not speak anything but the truth. On the other hand, there may be someone in this world tonight who thinks I am the devil, and do you know, if they conjure me this night I would be the world’s worst devil. So no one can play the part of the devil but God; no one can play the part of the benefi cent, merciful being but God. God plays all the parts and there is nothing but God. So, in the depths of everyone is everyone…and as you begin to expand and to awake, you bring them all out. In the end all will be God. May I tell you, God is infinite love. It was love that did it, love that conceived it, love that is playing it.
Now let us go into the Silence.
* * *
Q: If you die in this world as a small child, will you be a small child again?
A: A little child returns as a little child, my dear. This is a peculiar miracle…I can’t explain it, I do not know. I do not understand how it happens but it happens. I find people who died who looked eighty when they die, or a hundred when they die, I meet them and they look twenty. Many of them are not aware of the transition. They take it for granted, just as people in dream take it for granted until they become aware that they are dreaming, and then they wake up. Many who pass, they have no knowledge that they’ve died. Even though they see themselves young and beautiful, altogether lovely, they take it for granted. They never for one moment arrest themselves to ask why…any more than you do here. I find that people, they die, they seem so old, they look old, and then you meet them and they’re twenty, and not one faculty is missing, nothing missing. You meet them in different sections of time…not all are going to the same section of time. They go in that section of time best suited for the work yet to be done on them, for the whole thing is a closed circuit. You may drop now and find yourself in the year 3,000, not the year ’67 or ’68, or even 2,000…find yourself in the year 3,000 or 1,000. Which side you move is irrelevant. That seems impossible but it’s true.
Q: Did you say the terrestrial world would be the last world?
A: No, the terrestrial world is this. See, the world does not cease to exist at the point where our senses cease to register it. We think because I can’t touch him or hear him or see him, well then, he has ceased to exist. It’s like passing through a city. When I pass through the city, I think it ceases to exist because I’ve gone beyond it. No, the city remains for others to occupy it or to pass through it. And all of these are states, infinite states of consciousness through which man passes. And a state does not cease to exist because the man who occupied it has departed from it. So the whole vast world is real, solidly real. I go into these worlds and they are real, they’re solid. You are not made of gossamer and you grow old there too and die there, to find yourself restored and continuing the journey, maturing and dying and continuing the journey.
Not being born again through the womb of a woman, no. I do not get that at all. I can’t go along with that, because it’s not my experience. I just find them simply restored. My mother, the day she died, the very hour she died, appeared to me and she’s this beautiful woman twenty years old, unusually pretty, blonde, blue-eyed, brushing her hair… just altogether lovely. She couldn’t be sweeter and lovelier. Mother died…she was only sixty-one but she looked ninety…she was so, well, painfully thin and in such pain for two years before she died. But the very moment that she died I saw her, and I sat down and wrote her… and that was the hour that she was gone. No such thing as going to any little cemetery…that’s all big business. Cemetery, nothing! Someone conceived that idea to make money and playing upon the minds of people. So, who goes to any cemetery…outside of the stockholders! I’m told that if anyone had the foresight and you bought a nice block of stock in Forest Lawn, you could sit back and just clip coupons today.
A friend of mine used to say to me the first time he took me over—he departed by the way about the 11th of November he made his departure—when he first came out here he wanted to show me the place. Why he would take me to Forest Lawn to show me things? But he took me to Forest Lawn. He was a very humorous, wonderful fellow and he pointed out all the places and all the little actors who were buried here, and the wise men and the so-and-so there. Then he said quite casually, “Course the lots on the top of the hill are more expensive because the view is more beautiful when you come out at night, much more expensive up there.” Well, that impressed me. That is big business. I’m not saying that if you want to do it, don’t do it, no, do what you want to do. If you want a $10,000 funeral, have it.
My friend, John Van Bruton, we were dining together just about three weeks before he died. And then his friends who inherited his estate had to take care of the body, so they went over to the place to pick out the coffin. Well, I could hardly believe my ears when my friend told me the story. I said, “You’re lying!” He said, “No, I’m not lying…this is exactly what I heard.” He turns to his friend Dick, “Ask Dick if this did not take place.” This is his friend, Carter Lodge, who was his right hand through all the years that he was in this country. “Well, as you know he left a fortune, and so they knew he had this fortune so they wanted to get as much as they could out of the estate to bury him. They showed these coffins and they said, ‘See this, it’s all springs to cushion the body.’ Well, Carter said he could almost feel John behind him stamping as if ‘You dare do that, I’ll haunt you!’ Then I thought that was the limit of one’s credibility. That was not it. They had a mirror on the top of the coffin so when it was closed he could see himself. Believe it or not!” I said, “Now you’re lying.” He said, “No I’m not lying…this is exactly what I heard.” They tried to get something like $15,000 out of Carter, and Carter came out with, I think, a pine box. Then he and Dick took all the money that John left, got it very well invested, and now they’re thoroughly enjoying life, traveling all over the world, exactly what John would want them to do.
But of all the nonsense in the world, a mirror! Well, they’ll soon have other things in them, like a pipe, well stuff ed for him to smoke. Well, you catch some lovely lady who has just lost her husband and that was the pillar; or reverse it, a man who has lost his wife, who he depends on for everything that happens in his world, and he’s a soft touch. These ghouls come in, they don’t wait, not twenty-four hours because twenty four hours then you can think…but right away they get you. First thing they ask you, “Are you insured? Well, how much? You tell me first how much you’re insured for before I name the price of the coffin, of the funeral.” All you need to say, “No, I’m not insured. “I’m awfully sorry” and then they fall this way. I don’t want to be ghoulish about it, but I mean this is stupid. We’re living in a fabulous world and you don’t die. You’re restored to life instantly, and you’re renewed, you’re new. You don’t pick it up at ninety years and go on ninety, you’re back to twenty. Why, I do not know, but that’s the age.
When my friend told me in her letter yesterday, that here she takes this little child, he was fi ve years old, and as she’s suddenly pointing out to her lover, who she always sees in her dream, that this place I lived, this place I lived, this place I lived. Then suddenly the five-year-old boy is an infant. Then she realizes that she, herself, is just out of her teens, bringing confirmation from the depths of her soul of what I’ve been telling you. And then she wakes. If man could only be told that, he wouldn’t be afraid of dying, wouldn’t be afraid of departing, because you don’t die anyway. As you’re told in the very beginning of the story in Genesis, “Did God tell you that you would die?” asked the serpent and she replied, “Yes. The day I eat of this tree I will die.” The serpent said, “God knows you will not surely die, but you will become like the gods, knowing good and evil” (3:3-5). Now read, “And God said, ‘What will we do with man, for he has become like us, knowing good and evil’” (verse 22).
So we entered this world having partaken of the knowledge of good and evil. We enter a world where we still live in the world of good and evil. Which, may I tell you, is a blessing, for we could be forever an innocent babe knowing neither good nor evil and be automatons. So we come into a world to know good and evil and become as the gods, for that’s what they know. Then after much suffering, but much suffering, the soil is prepared and the word is engrafted. After that that’s all that matters. After the word is engrafted, what do you do? This kind of pregnancy is never brought about in the form of miscarriage, never! This is a divine pregnancy; there is no miscarriage in that. When that is engrafted it will grow, and in God’s own good time, it erupts. No one knows that moment…it comes like a thief in the night. You don’t even know you’re carrying the child…haven’t the slightest idea that you’re pregnant. All of a sudden, an explosion and the whole drama unfolds before you and you are the central figure, the star in the drama.
Now remember the date…we re-open on the 8th of January, same place, same time. It will be, well, for the first two months anyway no change in the nights—it will be Monday and Friday. But the ladies who own and run this place, there are just a few nights that they can’t give us. But I’ll let you know in time. Thank you…and may be erupt in you before we meet again.
Goodnight.
