5/11/65
Tonight is “The Art of Imagining.” I hope you will listen carefully and apply it. It will not fail you. Every natural effect in this world has an imaginal cause; the natural effect is only seeming, it’s an illusion. I don’t care what the effect is…the most normal natural thing in this world…and the reason why we do not recognize that it is produced by some imaginal, or you could use the word spiritual, cause is because that our memory is so fading, is so short. We can’t relate the thing that is taking place physically to anything we did in some imaginal moment. And so, if one could only believe that we’re not contending, as Paul said, against flesh and blood (meaning the natural world) we’re not contending against flesh and blood but against this darkness, the present darkness (Eph. 6:12). What does he mean by “this present darkness”? It means our ignorance of these invisible, spiritual causes. So we contend not against the flesh and blood but against spiritual darkness. Then he invites us to take the sword, the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, and then he tells us to pray at all times in the Spirit. Now, how would I take this instruction given to us in scripture and apply it in a practical manner?
Last Sunday night, a couple of friends were home for dinner. I must tell you the story that you may appreciate how this thing works. They both worked at RCA, that is, the show room that RCA had in L.A. One was in the Whirlpool Division, the other in the TV Division. The one who was in the TV Division is still there, and he’s been there for years. The one who was in the Whirlpool Division was there for two years, and he worked honestly and faithfully up to the end of last year. All through the great rush at Christmas he was on the job, his sales record was terrific, everything was perfect. Then came New Year’s Eve and he was paid off and told that that was the end of his service, after two years there. This chap came from Duke University. He’s an intelligent fellow. He worked for years downtown with Gulf Industries and then after almost thirteen years he quit. He was tired of it, took off a few months, and then got this job with RCA. He’s only forty years old…he will be forty his next birthday…and after two years at RCA, doing a wonderful job, he was fired.
Well, Sunday night at home, he asked me this question, he said, “Neville, when we create reality, as you say imagining creates reality, must we always do it consciously, deliberately, or can we do it without knowing that we’re doing it?” Well, may I tell you, you can’t stop doing it. It’s not only in the waking day, it’s through the night. There is only one creative power and that is your own wonderful human Imagination. So then he told me this story. He said, “We live together, as you know, we have a home in Eaglerock, that’s our home. We have two cars. But when I got the job I would drive to work taking Bob with me for a week, and the next week he would drive and drive me. So we had a saving of car, saving of gas, saving of everything. But it was bumper to bumper! We would take the Santa Ana Freeway and I would simply despair. We got to the job at eight o’clock in the morning and we left…we took only a half-hour for lunch…so they gave us a half-hour off in the evening so we could simply get home a bit earlier…instead of taking a whole hour. But we had to be on the job at eight.
“Well, when Bob drove and this was bumper to bumper, many a time I not only thought of it, I voiced it to him and I said, ‘Oh, I wish we were turning off here and going downtown instead of turning this way and taking the Santa Ana Freeway.’ So I said it to him. But many a day, as I rode next to him, I would, as we came to the junction, I mentally would turn off and I would turn towards downtown L.A.” Now, said he, “I was so shocked when they fired me! No one told me anything, there was no rumor, but the order came through from Chicago that this department must give up one person. They went all over the country. They had their biggest financial year in the history of RCA last year, their biggest! They paid higher dividends, made more money, they had all kinds of things that they didn’t have in previous years, but that doesn’t in any way affect these so-called experts, efficiency experts. So they are brought in and they take this billion dollar corporation and they go through the entire thing. And then they analyze the departments, and this department can give up one man, this can give up three, that can give up twelve. This all comes down from Chicago and it goes across the country, so that here on the West Coast they had no alternative, they had to execute the order that came out from headquarters.”
Well, he was the last employed in this department, therefore, the first to go. His job was perfect, his sales record was excellent…and an honest, wonderful, marvelous lad, going on forty. He was shocked beyond measure. And when he told me he was fired, he didn’t quit, he didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell him then, I waited. Now that he has the job and he brought it up to me last Sunday night, this suddenness on his part—he was fired suddenly, no warning whatsoever—was only the emergence of a hidden continuity. Now how to find that hidden continuity? Where was the cause? The cause upon the surface is physical, it came from Chicago, that this efficiency expert went over all the field, and concluded that this department could save money by giving up one man, could get along without one man, and that one without so-and-so. And on the surface it seemed that the cause was the decision made by a man in Chicago. Wasn’t so at all! When Bob got to that junction on a morning after two years, and he lost himself in a daydream, and Mort kept on driving towards RCA, but Bob enjoyed the ride and moved downtown.
Well, I’ve said time and again, the potency of the imaginal act is its implication, that’s the potency of the imaginal act. Well, what turning downtown would imply? Would it not imply that he is not working at RCA? He either quit the job or he was fired, but it would imply he is not working at RCA. Well, he enjoyed these imaginal journeys where he was not bumper to bumper on the Santa Ana Freeway, then came the sudden emergence of what he had planted. So Paul is right, we are contending not against flesh and blood, but against this time of darkness. We are totally unaware of what we are doing, not what he is doing. The one who wrote out that decision and sent it off to L.A. that he was the one who had to be fired, he wasn’t the cause. He had to write it. And so he is undoubtedly honored by the company for saving so many salaries. If you multiply all their outlets, and he could save one to a dozen at each of these outlets, it would run into a fortune, in spite of what they made. They made more than they ever made before. But that is not the problem. The problem is, are we contending against flesh and blood? Is he going to fight the boss and say to the boss, “Why did you fi re me?” or is he going to recognize the cause of it? Well, tonight what thrills me Bob now recognizes the cause of it. Because he came over during the evening and he said, “Must I always deliberately determine my imaginal act or could I do it unwittingly? Just without really considering the consequences could I set it in motion?” Well, he asked the question and before I could answer him he smiled. He’s not only found Christ, he knows Christ.
People think Christ is something in space, something in time 2,000 years ago. Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. Christ is the creative power and wisdom of God. There is no other creative power. Personified in scripture as a man, certainly it’s a man, for the creative power of God takes a man as its agent. To express love, give me a man. To express hate, give me a man. To express anything in this world, I need a man. So a man personifies the creative power and the wisdom of God as told us in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “Jesus Christ, the power and the wisdom of God” (1:24). So here is the personification. The world not knowing this will take him for a little icon and make some little fetish of it. And they worship something outside of themselves, and they go to church and cross themselves before a little cross of wood or stone or some little precious metal, and call it Jesus Christ.
And the whole vast world, with just a few…I mean just a few…so, we were discussing last Saturday night at another dinner party…and a friend of mine (who isn’t here tonight), he said, “Neville, why should there be so few people in this audience hearing this fantastic thing that you’re talking about?” Well, he happens to be a PhD, so I said to him, “Tell me, there are three and a half billion people in the world, how many PhD’s are there?” Well, he had to admit fewer percentage-wise than possibly I’d get in the course of a year. There are fewer people who can claim they have a PhD than I address in the course of a year. So then he came to his senses that you can’t judge by numbers. It’s not numbers. Do you really believe that you are contending not against flesh and blood but against this kind of darkness where you are completely unaware of the creative power that is yours, that you are causing all of the phenomena of your life? You fi re yourself, but it seems to come from Chicago. That was the order from Chicago and expressed through your immediate boss in your department. And you were surprised because your memory is so short; you forgot you set it in motion. You didn’t know what you were doing when you relaxed as your friend Mort took the car down the Freeway towards RCA, and you relaxed and imagined you were going towards downtown L.A., which you know so well because you worked for Gulf Industries for almost thirteen years. You knew all the restaurants, all the places, all the people. Well, he’s now working for Unico, which is almost a neighbor of Gulf Industries, with all the old friends and the restaurants and all the places that he knew so well. That’s exactly where he headed in his Imagination.
So there are two powers: one, the inner motive which is causal, and the outer which is under compulsion. So everything that happened to him had to happen. The order, the direction, the firing, and the only thing that, well, he was surprised that he was fired, an honest worker with a wonderful sales record. But what thrills me that last Sunday night he could say to me, “Do we always have to set this thing in motion deliberately or could we do it unwittingly?” Now he knows. If he only remembers what he said to me last Sunday night! If man could only remember. The awakening man always remembers and he watches carefully exactly what he is doing in his Imagination. Well, that’s the entire world. You are creating everything in your world and no one else is doing it. They are only instruments through which you are expressing this enormous power.
So the natural effect is only seeming; it always has an imaginal cause, it always does. So if you bear that in mind, you will never be surprised; no matter what happens to us somewhere along the line you did it. My father came home broken, a really broken man. I’m going back now, oh, I was just in my teens. Only two were out of school, and the eight remaining were still in school…that’s how long ago that was. No one knew…certainly I didn’t, mother didn’t know, he didn’t know…no one knew why it should happen to him. On reflection, I realize now what an ambitious man my father was. He started with nothing; I mean nothing, in the most literal sense of the word…behind the eight ball. But he had ten children and he assumed all responsibility. He never once shifted responsibility, not my father. He would go hungry, but his family couldn’t go hungry. Not that he did go hungry, but he would have. That’s the kind of a man that he was. We were never conscious of the fact that we were poor, so in our consciousness he never built poverty in our minds. We had nothing, but we didn’t know it. Well, if you don’t know it, then you don’t have it. So we were never made aware that we were poor, never, not for one second. In fact, my mother would say to any one of us who did something unbecoming what she thought a child of hers should do, and she would say to us, “Have you forgotten that you are a Goddard?” You never questioned your mother…guess you forgot… therefore Goddard must be something important. But it wasn’t, on reflection it wasn’t, but she made it important. So where was the cause? Was it not in the belief that to bear the name of Goddard, being the child of Joseph and Wilhelmina Goddard, was important?
Well, they’re all, judged by human standards, they’re all important. No one locally is strong enough financially to buy them out. There’s no one locally, but no one, who could buy them out, because no one has $25 million to buy them out. And they didn’t have a penny. But mother built it into our consciousnesses “Have you forgotten you are a Goddard?” I can see it now, on a Sunday morning when I should have been in church… what possessed me that morning that I didn’t go, because mother corralled us all… and here I am sitting on the outside, without shoes, and just a little shirt. My father came down and he got off the car and saw me, and the first act was one whack across the face…a son of his on a Sunday morning not in church and sitting here on the street without shoes? And an enormous blow…could have deafened me…but that was his attitude towards this building in us the feeling of being important. Isn’t that all Imagination? He had nothing, but not in his own mind’s eye…he had nothing in the world of Caesar. Today, those that he trained and left in the world, they can’t be bought out by any local ___(??) because they don’t have enough money to buy them out.
Well, that’s what I’m getting at concerning this wonderful, fantastic law of imagining. We are not contending against flesh and blood. So he is important? Alright, let him be important, not a thing’s wrong with that. He can fi re you? No he can’t. Not a thing can happen to you unless, in you, you first let it happen. So you can dream, as Bob dreamt, and may I tell you, he wanted more money and greater responsibility than he got at RCA. At RCA he got more money than he received at Gulf Industries after thirteen years at Gulf. Today, he’s getting more than he got at RCA and greater responsibility. He has an office staff of maybe twenty-five girls under him taking care of the credits for the company. Unico—you don’t know it, I didn’t know it ‘til he told me—they make or manufacture or distribute all kinds of electrical can openers, every conceivable electrical can opener. So they are running into all kinds of things where the credits were all jammed up, and he came in, and in just one month he resolved the whole picture. He’s making more money, with greater responsibility than he had at his previous company. That’s what he wanted. He was going downtown to a new place where all these things would be in order.
So I ask you to believe me. I know that you believe it. But you’ll go out and tell it to others who still believe in some little personal Jesus Christ, a little man. May I tell you, they’re not just in the little walks of life, you’ll meet them as great scientists. You’ll meet them in every walk because they specialize in their own game and they hold onto a certain little icon, too. Because they don’t know, they haven’t had the visions, they haven’t had the experience. So you will not just find this superstition among people who wash your floors, no, you will find it in every walk of life, from the Pope down, may I tell you. They haven’t had the experience, so they don’t know this mighty power that is housed in them and not on the outside. And when it begins to unfold because you are exercising it, then comes the most glorious drama as it unfolds within you. You will see in what I’ve told you so far that conflict between David and Goliath. Goliath depended upon the armament of the world to achieve his end, and David went unarmed, armed only with the word of God. That’s all he had, just the word of God, and brought down those who would oppose him with the armaments of Caesar. You try it. Try it and see how it works. I tell you it will not fail.
Here is this wonderful story of William Butler Yeats. He said, “I thought intently of a fellow student. I had a message for him, but I hesitated to write this message. Two days later I got a letter from a place several hundred miles away. In the letter he said to me, ‘You appeared suddenly in a very large gathering of people in a hotel where I am, and I said to you, because of the crowd, would you please leave now and return later.’ And he said to me in the letter I vanished, but I did return at midnight and gave him the message I had intended to give him, that I would not commit to writing. Now said he…Wm. Butler Yeats in his essays called The Essence of Good and Evil and this is the section called Magic. You can buy the book or rent the book, go to the library and read it…it’s under the caption Magic. He said, “I have no knowledge whatsoever of that visit. I do remember that I desired intensely to give him a message. I also know I hesitated to commit it to writing. But I have no knowledge of my visit to him and no knowledge of my appearance and my return to give him the message, but he enclosed in his letter to me the message.”
Now, is that not Imagination? What did it? He’s thinking of a friend. He intensely desires to tell him something, which he doesn’t write, but he has no knowledge that he appears seemingly to the friend in bodily form, as solidly real as though he were in the flesh. I have done it dozens of times to those who wrote me…I appeared to them. By some intensity of Imagination I appeared to them and they saw me. At the moment I didn’t have any knowledge. I have a few where I do recall deliberately doing it, with my sister and with a few others, but with the majority it was all done without any conscious knowledge of my projection in space and time. But it was still all Imagination. So you are influencing every being in this world to play the part they must play to bring to birth what you are imagining.
So let us go back and pick up a thread that you must get tonight. The imaginal power is in its implication. What am I implying when I bring before my mind’s eye a certain series or a certain, I would say, scene? What does the scene imply? I’m turning downtown, downtown L.A., well, that implies I am not working at RCA, does it not? Well, you take that same cue and the power of the imaginal act is in its implication. So tonight, when you are alone, whether you are in bed or just before you go to bed, and you bring before your mind’s eye a scene, well, now what does the scene imply? Are you going to argue with someone who owes you a dollar? Well, that implies that he hasn’t paid you. Are you going to tell him what you think of him? That only affirms it; it makes it all the more that he isn’t going to pay you. Do you bring him before your mind’s eye and thank him for having done what in the world of Caesar he has as yet not done? Everything is in the implication. What is the scene that you are conjuring? Some of us don’t even want to be paid, that we may say to the one, “I always knew you wouldn’t anyway!” I mean, that gives a certain emotional reaction, a certain thrill, and we delight in telling him that he’s a thief without using the word thief. So we can do that.
So the scene…the power of that scene is its implication; so it’s not any little goody-this or goody-that or someone else, forget it. Bow before no one in this world, but no one. As Blake brings out so beautifully, that “Thou art a man, God is no more, thy own humanity learn to adore.” So when man would bow before a man because of something he’s accomplished in this world, forget him! God became you, individually. The same God, no other God, there’s only one God…he became you. He is housed in you. When you say “I am” that’s he. When you begin to imagine, that’s his creative power, and that act of imagining is Jesus Christ, that’s Christ. Now, prove Jesus Christ. As we are told, “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, of course, you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor. 13:5). So if you call upon the name of Jesus Christ…you don’t call upon the name of Jesus Christ…you don’t pray to Jesus Christ, you simply confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Well, Jesus Christ being your own wonderful human Imagination, you confess the power and the wisdom and the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which is the power of God. Then this thing begins to unfold in you; the whole thing unfolds within you. Everything I have told you is true. It is all true. I didn’t hear it from a man. I didn’t read it in a book. I read the Bible but I didn’t see it until it happened in me. That’s how blind one becomes. Until it actually happened, you can’t quite envision it. You can’t quite see it until it happens, and then it’s so altogether different in retrospect from what it appeared to be in prospect. You thought of someone 2,000 years ago and you thought this is how it happened, and it wasn’t so at all. It all is happening in you.
So you begin to actually put into practice what he who was sent…and the one who is sent, may I tell you, the cue of it all is to encourage you to participate in the risen Christ. Not to talk about him, to tell you about the one who slumbers in you that you may participate in his resurrection in you. Then you will know to what extent he really has been sent or is he simply playing a little part. Let no one talk down to you and tell you that you’re simply ___(??). If one is sent, he will tell you who you really are, and the being you really are is God. God became you that you may become God. And the whole wonderful story as recorded in both the Old and New Testament is all about you.
I know in my own case, I was a dreamer. From the time I was a child I was a dreamer. So when I was fired…and I worked for J. C. Penney, and one day, like my friend Bob, in my little envelope of a few pennies—that’s all that they gave you really. You paid rent…in those days, luckily for me I wasn’t renting. I couldn’t have bought one…and I was a young boy, eighteen years old, nineteen when they fired me…all I could buy was my vegetable dinner and milk on what they paid me. Then you were fired, and you had not, as you have today, insurance against being fired; you can draw it for weeks or months. None of those things happened back in 1923 when I was fired. So, all of a sudden you’re out, you’re fired. But I was a dreamer…I know today, were I not the dreamer I wouldn’t have been fired. I would be today running the elevator for them; that’s what I’d be doing. I might have been captain of the elevator operators. All of a sudden they put it all into automation, so I’d be out of a job anyway. But because I dreamed…like my father dreamed, he dreamt of something more noble for his family and himself. Well, I dreamt of something noble…didn’t have a family then of my own, just the family of my father. But I dreamt of a noble state in this world, and dreaming that way and losing myself in it, I had to be fired. So they fired me. And with that, being fired, I went out determined that after a little while I wouldn’t work for anyone else.
So, I got a little job at Macy’s. I went to the boss and he sent me over to Macy’s. I got a job there, and then I quit Macy’s (they didn’t fi re me). Worked there for ten months and I quit, and from that day on to this I have never worked for another person. Oh yes, I had Broadway shows. I seemingly worked for them, but when Schubert’s employed me, or all the others employed me, it never occurred to me that they employed me. I was using my talent, so it never occurred to me that they were my boss. I lost completely the concept of boss. In fact, if there is one word that I almost hate it’s the word boss. Who has a boss? So when my daughter once spoke of her boss, I can’t tell you my reaction. She works for a man who could tonight if he’s dreaming well, he could be fired. He’s no boss! She has no boss! In fact, no one has a boss in this world. The only boss is God and you are he. He became you; you are God. God became man that man may become God. Does he have a boss? He has no boss!
So, in your own wonderful Imagination dream nobly and try to catch that which Bob did. There was motion, it was an internal motion. An internal motion really is causal; the external is under compulsion. So all the outer motions, like writing this decision to fi re him—or one of them, he was the one—and then all these things that happened to him, all that was under compulsion. And he was the compulsive being that did it. But what thrilled me last Sunday night, when he came over from his chair and sat at the base of mine and said, “Tell me, must I always to apply this principle of imagining do it deliberately, do it knowingly?…because this is what I did, Neville.” So he answered himself. I can’t tell anyone my thrill when those who hear me find the secret by their own experience. It seemed to him at the moment to be disastrous. So he was fired. But he’s under the present system of unemployment insurance. He has his home. Not completely paid off but it’s well paid off; he’s meeting all the payments on it, and his friend, the two of them own the home together. And so, he went down and got what he’s due. He pays on it. After all, every penny he draws when he goes to get it he paid for it. Why shouldn’t he get it? I see nothing wrong with going and getting it. You’ve paid in over the years on all that they’re asking of you. So he goes and gets it. And then, one morning he decides…in fact, I was with him the day the phone rang at home and they had been trying to get him at Unico: Come and see us tomorrow for some examination or some interview. So he went down…and started the next month. He’s making more money, greater responsibility, which is so important in this world, just responsibility. I can’t tell anyone what a thrill it is to bear responsibility. When people say I don’t want it, oh, they don’t know what it is. If it’s only to buy the food for your wife that she doesn’t have to do it. If it’s only that, if it’s only the clothes she wears, at least you’re going to pay for it. Just responsibility! When man tries to shirk these things he doesn’t know what he’s missing in this world. So I tell you, go out…God became you that you may become God, and God in you is your own wonderful human Imagination, so you go out and try it. And may I tell you, no matter what is asked of you, do grant it if it comes within the code of your, that is, your wonderful ethical code of decency. No matter what request…you’re not a doctor…if anyone calls you and asks any help of you that is of a physical nature, financial nature…you aren’t a banker, you don’t know a thing about these things…you can still grant it. There are three and a half billion people in the world who are agents for you. The surgeon is one agent, the dentist is an agent, the banker is an agent, they’re all agents to fulfill what you have imagined has happened. So you simply imagine this happened and you lose yourself in the joy of the fulfillment of their request.
Now when it happens, they may tell you, you know what happens, it happens this way and that way and the other, and they will give you all of the means through which it happens. But you are still faithful (I hope you will be) to the cause. It’s the cause…who ran through the means. So the means…he was fired, that’s means. He was disappointed; he didn’t remember. Then he took off for a while, enjoyed himself, and then this request comes. All that is part of it, for it would not be complete until he got a job paying more with greater responsibility. That was the flower; that was the fulfillment. It’s not just being fired…going down the road, he wasn’t just going down the road to escape bumper to bumper. He was going down this place because he was going downtown to a better job that paid more, with greater responsibility. So that’s what he was doing in his Imagination as his friend Mort drove the car. If he’s trying to run away, he’d be fired from another job. But he lost himself in a more glorious end. So let everyone here take the same technique and apply it. You are not a little “ism.” Maybe you’ll say today if someone asks you, “What are you or who are you?” you’ll say, I’m a Christian or I’m a Jew or I’m a this. Really you aren’t! I wouldn’t know what to tell you that you really are because you aren’t. You are something infinitely greater than any little ism in this world, infinitely greater! And all these little isms will all pass away, all vanish into nothing, meaning nothing. But if you really have one grand book that we really, I would say, worship, let it be the Bible. Turn over any page and it fires the mind, but any page. Today I simply turned it over and here I spoke earlier from the 6th chapter of Ephesians, “We are not contending against flesh and blood, but against this time of darkness.” Yes, I am unaware of the cause of the phenomena of life, so this is darkness. Now he tells us, “Pray at all times in the Spirit.” Well, to pray is to move towards my objective, to actually accede to it, to get close, get near, ‘til finally I can touch it… that’s to pray. When he[Bob] was riding down, and finally he could touch downtown, knowing the area is what he wants, and it carries with it more money and greater responsibility, and finally he finds a job there…that’s praying. You don’t pray to Jesus, you only confess the authority, the power, the Lordship of your wonderful human Imagination, and then you exercise it. As you exercise it, you are putting into practice the story of Christ. Let no one tell you you can’t do it. You can do it and do it now. All that is told us in the promise will begin; like unfolding buds into their flowers, it all unfolds within you. And you will know by the unfolding tree that you are he. You are not another, you are Jesus Christ. Begin now to believe it, to exercise him, and see how these things begin to unfold within you.
Now let us go into the Silence.
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Q: Neville, what does “wiser than serpents” mean…and the dove?
A: My dear, I wish I could in this short interval answer that. The serpent to me is the symbol of Jesus Christ. You can’t be wiser, because he’s the power and the wisdom of God. It is always symbolized…the power and wisdom of God…like the seraphim around the throne…they were the fiery serpents. But in the early stage of the Bible, as we read it in scripture, power and power alone is God. The difference between God and man as he walks Earth was measured by power, almighty power. The dove has always been a symbol of love, the Holy Spirit, of tenderness. So you could exercise power, no question about it, without love; but the greatest power, really, is when tempered with love; the greatest, because in the end there is no other. If you are a lady, I am a man, and I know you and I are one (I’m not speculating); and you are not female and I am not a male. You and I will one day know we are above the organization of sex (Luke 20:34). We are man and God is man, I know that. I know that every being in this world is one with me; therefore, they have to respond to my action because my finger responds. If I say write this, it can’t question my right. If I want to brush my hair, my hair can’t deny my right to brush it. And so, my hand, if I want to use it to bring food to my mouth, it can’t resist because it’s tired. So the whole vast world is myself and must respond and play the part necessary to bring to pass what I am imagining. In the end all are one… all the Father. This thing is so altogether true. You asked about the dove. In the 8th chapter of Genesis, here the dove returns and he [Noah] puts out his hand and takes the dove and brings the dove within the ark to himself. That is so literally true that, well, who would believe it unless they experienced it? When the dove does appear it appears above, seemingly outside. It is outside, hovering above. You do put forth your hand, you do, and the dove does descend and uses your finger as a perch. You do bring it to yourself and the dove smothers you in kisses. While he is smothering you in kisses and the voice at the side tells you of the affection of the dove, of this Being, for you, everything disappears. Didn’t fl y back, it can’t fl y back, it remains. You are sealed with the Holy Spirit. That simple story, he put forth his hand and took the dove and brought the dove into the ark unto himself. Well, man is the ark of God. As Blake said, “Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the Earth and sea.” But he’s not any phantom of the Earth and the sea. He is the ark of God, containing within himself the whole vast universe.
Q: Neville, the woman at the well, Jacob’s well, who doesn’t have a husband, is this indicative of the symbology of not knowing that her Maker is her husband? Is that the story being told there?
A: Yes, Tom, we are the woman. As we are told in Hosea, “In that day you will call me not Baal, you will call me ‘my husband’” (2:16). And in Isaiah, the 5th of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name” (54:5). So here, we do not know we have gone astray. In the Bible, idolatry is really harlotry; it’s adultery. Adultery hasn’t a thing to do with sex. All the so-called sex thing is churchianity; it isn’t scripture. And so, when a person goes away from the only God which is I AM, he may go to church every day and all through the day, and give his substance to the church, and give fortunes to charity, but if he has some other God than I AM, he is really living in adultery. You tell that to the “good” people of the world and they’ll just faint from the shock of it, because they have every God in this world but that God. And so, adultery is simply idolatry and idolatry is to have another God. So she doesn’t know; that is, we don’t know who our husband is. Because he has to beget this child. When I know my husband and I’m faithful to my only husband, I’ll bring forth his only child, can’t be another.
When I have faith in things other than my own wonderful human Imagination and I think someone else is important, I will say to my friend, Know who I saw today? He was having lunch. He doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall, but I mention his name because I think he is important or he could help me. Who can help me? What person in this world can I turn to and say he is going to help me? He will play a part and may seem to be the instrument through which the thing came that I have imagined, but he is not any cause of my fortune, whether it be good or poor. He’s not the cause. I must find the only cause, and the only cause is my Imagination. All the others play their parts…certainly they’ll play their parts. But how many times have you heard people say, “Who do you think I saw today?” and they’re all ears, “Whom did you see?” Then they tell you some highly publicized person who the press agent has paid a fortune to keep alive in the press. They go this way, and all they do, they come into the world. As we are told, “We’re made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected us in hope” (Rom. 8:20). So they come into the world and the publicity gets behind them and they wax, they wane, they vanish.
I read in yesterday morning’s paper all the big names of just two years ago; not one can you sell today on TV. They don’t know it yet. Of course they know it, but they can’t tell the world that they know it. You’ll find them having residuals, but you can’t sell them. Why? Not because they still aren’t known to my generation, but the next generation, they don’t know or care. They just don’t know, so they turn them off, turn on something else. They’re only going to sell what can get the viewer’s eye. They mention all these…I do not mention names ___(??), but there it was in that family section of the L.A. Times. They mention all the names and you can’t give them away. Nobody wants them, yet they were stars, in their own eyes, but today? That’s part of one’s imagining. You begin to dream nobly and let everyone play its part to fulfill your dream. And keep on dreaming.
But may I tell you, don’t forget the promise. Don’t forget the promise! A lady wrote me and I took the letter home and read it a week ago tonight. She said, “You are closing at the end of June, would you please, from now on, tell us about the law on Tuesday nights. I can’t make it on Fridays, so would you please tell us about the law.” Well, I mentioned that to a friend last Saturday night at a dinner party and one of the guests present said, “Well, after all, if the promise is unconditional, it will happen anyway. Well, then why not tell us all about the conditioned state?” and he’s right about the law. Tonight I abided by the request; I have spoken only about the law. But I am not pledged to speak only about the law between now and closing.
Goodnight.
