2/21/69

We are told in the 45th of Isaiah that “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the Lord, who does all these things” (45:5,7), and John tells us, “As he is so are we in this world” (1 Jn. 4:17). Man isn’t taught that but scripture teaches it. Teachers do not teach it, they speak of another, something outside of man that is other than himself that creates the weal and the woe. Yet we are taught in scripture, “As he is so are we in this world.”

Now all the stories told of Jesus Christ are acted parables. The story itself is an acted parable, the miracles are acted parables. Tonight, let us take just a couple. In the 2nd chapter of Luke, we are told that his parents went up to Jerusalem at the Passover, and when Jesus was twelve years of age they went up as was their custom. When the feast came to an end, they returned home and thinking that he was in the caravan they did not seek him out until a day had passed. Not finding him they searched among their kinfolk and acquaintances, and did not find him. So they returned to Jerusalem and after three days they found him in the temple. They said to him, “Son, how could you have done this to us? Your father and I have been seeking you anxiously.” He said to them, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:48). And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them.

So Luke records his first words claiming that God was his Father. Here his parents stand before him and he claims that God is my Father, and they did not understand him. Well, if you are seeking the cause of creation, the cause of the phenomena of your life among your kinfolk, among your acquaintances, among anything in this world outside of the temple, you’ll never find him. For do you not know that you are God’s temple and the Spirit of God dwells in you? You will never find the cause of the phenomena of life outside of your own wonderful human Imagination that is God that is Jesus Christ. So you either find him in the temple or you’ll never find him. You’ll find him in yourself…that’s the only place you will ever find him.

Now the whole story is a parable. His whole life is a pattern. He is the pattern man that the individual, in finding himself as the cause of the phenomena of his own life, will find Jesus Christ. You’ll never find him in any other way. Now, as he is so are we in this world? Well, on the surface, believing him to be something on the outside, something that is different, something that overcame, something that is now living elsewhere, and yet we are as he is? Because the being spoken of is the Christ in you that is the hope of glory; so, as he is so are you.

Let us turn, in the same book, the 8th chapter now to see how it works. We are told, one day he entered a boat with his disciples and as they sailed he fell asleep. Then a great strong wind descended upon the lake and here in the storm the boat is filling. So they went to him and woke him saying “Master, master, we are perishing!” and he woke. As he woke, he rebuked the wind and the raging waves and they became quiet and there was a great calm. The one who caused the storm is the same one who quelled the storm. There is no other. He fell asleep. Well, when a man is in a sleep he dreams all kinds of things. Man may not believe it but here in this world Christ is asleep, and the wars and the confusion and the depressions and all the horrors of the world, all the blows, are because he’s asleep. You only bring about the weal, the happiness, the wealth, the joy of the world when he awakes. If man is not aware of his own imaginal activities, well then, he’s asleep, asleep relative to that activity. It could be that he’s dreaming noble dreams and lovely dreams, or it could be that he’s dreaming ignoble dreams, horrible dreams the woes of the world. But whatever he dreams he’s going to externalize.

Well, in this case, it was a storm. He fell asleep the minute he got into the boat. What boat? You think of some little boast where man sails in the boat? Man is the ark of God containing within himself everything in the world. All the creative power in the world is contained in man. I am the ark of God; I am not a phantom of the sea and earth. I am the boat, the ark of God. And in this ark Christ is either asleep and the storm rages, or he is awake and then there is calm and there is weal. It’s one or the other. So the story is telling us what we are in this world: that my own wonderful human Imagination is Jesus Christ and that is God. And so, as he is in me so am I…the outer projection of himself in this world. I am surrounded by woes or by weal based upon what he in my very being is dreaming. But he and I are one. For if he is my Imagination, he can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. So he can’t even be near. They will speak, “How near is God?” He can’t be near. I can’t go any place where I am not imagining. I can’t imagine anything unless I am actually ___(?). So here, where could I go that I am not imagining? There’s no place in the world I can go where I am not imagining; therefore, God is never so far off as even to be near. Can’t be, for if I say he’s near me, then we are two. And we aren’t two, we are one. God is our own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God.

Now, let me tell you a story that was given to me this past week. It was mailed I think late on the fifteenth, but I didn’t get it until Tuesday. This friend who is here tonight he said that “In my vision I noticed around my feet clusters of little tiny seeds, like magnetic seeds, and they were miniatures of the world that I am observing. The entire terrain, the buildings, everything in the world on the outside were around my feet in clusters in little magnetic seeds. If I swept them off, as I did, they instantly reformed themselves, grew back instantly, maintaining the outer world in harmony with themselves. The outer world was big and magnified, but they were little tiny magnetic seeds. If perchance there was any change in the re-growth, there was an automatic change in the outer world to conform to the little magnetic seed around my foot, here on my foot, around my ankles.”

Well, if you know scripture, the foot often is a symbol of a foot as you would use the foot, but there are passages that are fantastic. I would suggest to him above all, and to you who are here, to read the 40th chapter of Psalms. This is the second verse…how he lifts me up, meaning it becomes a symbol of the person himself. He lifts me up from the pit and out of the miry bog and places my feet upon a Rock (Ps.40:2). For the Rock of scripture is God: “Of the Rock that begot you, you are unmindful, and you have forgotten the God who gave you birth” (Deut.32:18). And the Rock was Christ. So he places my foot, which is myself, upon the only foundation worthy to be placed, which is the Rock, and that Rock is Christ, and Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination. (1Cor.10:4).

So I can say to him that vision is the most glorious thing. You are becoming more and more aware of causation and the cause is you, not on the outside, for the foot is the symbol of your own wonderful being, and now it’s placed upon the Rock. For in this 40th chapter of the Book of Psalms, “In the volume of the book it is written about me.” I thought it was about another person as everyone who gets the Bible thinks they are reading secular history that goes back in time thousands of years ago, and it’s all about the one who is reading it, but he doesn’t realize it. Now here is my friend who has come to the point by vision where he knows it’s all about himself. That everything on the outside that he saw magnified he saw in miniature, a magnetic seed around his foot. And the foot is the symbol of himself as told you in that 2nd verse of the 40th Psalm.

So the whole vast world is a man pushed out. That, “All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” It’s a shadow world that seems so big and overpowering. And causation is the being observing it, and within him are all the seeds, everything in the world. He is the ark of God and everything is contained within him. But if he is asleep, well, there could be a storm and the chances are it will be a storm. When he awakes he quiets the stormy seas. And no one quite understands that it’s the difference between being awake to one’s imaginal activities and being asleep to them. So when I’m asleep to what I’m imagining, well then, I may create frightful, frightful storms and think it is caused by something external to myself. I will try to trace causation and if I am asleep I will find something on the outside. I will say, “You know, the low pressure tonight.” If you want a good laugh listen every night to the weather. In fact, it’s become really a joke. His name is Gordon Wale, it’s Channel Four and he comes on a little before six. It’s gotten to the point now that the announcers when they announce “our great weather expert” they start laughing. You can hear the voices in the background laughing—the boom man, the sound man, the light man, the camera man…they’re all laughing. He comes on with a straight face and some times he can’t hold it, because the night before he told us about the lovely weather and then came the rain. But he has to justify it—the high pressure, the low pressure, the this pressure, and then suddenly it didn’t happen but something else happened.

Causation is always on the outside to the whole vast world and it isn’t on the outside at all. Causation is within the one observing everything in this world. He is the symbolized foot in that 2nd verse of the 40th Psalm. You also will read it in the 69th Psalm, you’ll read it in Romans, you’ll read it all through. In the end, when man actually overcomes it’s victory, he puts all things under his foot. Do you recall the words? Everything then is right under the foot. So he sees the clusters of seeds, magnetic seeds around the ankle of his foot, and he’s scraping them off and they reappear. As Blake said, “And the oak falls or is cut down by the axe, and the lamb is slain by the knife, but their forms eternal remain forever, returning by the seed of contemplative thought.” So I contemplate the thing that seems to have vanished. It can’t vanish, for the seed is in me, and then it all of a sudden reappears in the world. The whole thing reappears because the seed is within me, and as I contemplate it, it returns by the seed of contemplative thought.

So here, the storm spoken of in that 8th chapter of Luke is our world. If we enter the boat, which is this boat, and we are asleep the chances are we’re going to have a storm. When we are awakened by our disciplined mind—for that’s what the disciples are, aspects of the mind brought under control of the one who has disciples, so I have disciplined my mind—and as the mind becomes disciplined they awake the dreamer. He’s no longer dreaming, he’s awake and he quells the storm. As he quells the storm the whole thing is over, but now when he’s awake he knows who he is. So, “Why did you seek me among your kinfolk? Why did you seek me among your acquaintances?” You will find in tomorrow’s paper or the next day’s paper that they are always finding some new guru, some new teacher, some new something and let us all go and hear him, because he or she is so marvelous, so wonderful. Always something on the outside and there is nothing on the outside. You will never find Christ as another; you can only find Christ as yourself, and when you find him he is God.

You will find him and then there’s a series of events that unfolds within you bearing witness to your own fatherhood and you are the Father. But until it happens when his Son appears, you will never know, really know, that you are God the Father. You will believe me to a certain degree, but you cannot be convinced to that extent until he stands before you and you see him as Father. Then there is no more trinity that we speak of in this world. I have often thought should it not have been the doctrine of the unity of being, the oneness of being, rather than the doctrine of the trinity? For the trinity is difficult for man to grasp. It can be grasped, but it’s easier if you speak of the doctrine, the great dogma of revealed Christianity as a unity. I tell you that you and I are one…that I do know. But you will not know it to the point of actual conviction and knowing it until my son David appears in your world and calls you Father. When he calls you Father, as he has called me Father and I know I am his Father, well then, you will know that you and I are one. In that day, you will actually know that you and I are one and you’ll also know that everyone in the world must have the same experience, and therefore everyone is the same one. This is the great doctrine of the unity.

My old friend Ab whenever he entered the meeting always remained in the back, and when he came out he came out always intoning, “Praise be unto that unity that is our unity.” That was his opening address to all of us as he came through the door. “Praise be unto that unity that is our unity.” I wonder what percentage of the few who were present really understood what Ab was trying to tell: a unity of being, a diversity of faces all completely individualized and tending forever towards ever greater and greater individualization…and yet one. The same Father in unnumbered faces; but the same Father having only one Son, and that Son is the son of each in the world proving the unity of being.

So here in these stories every miracle is an acted parable. He enters the boat which is man, man being the ark of God. As he sets sail—and to set sail is to start the journey of life, that’s when he sets sail—he falls asleep and then arises the storm. That storm could be a financial storm, a marital storm, a marshal storm, well, you name it, and it could be that kind of storm, all in the process. For a little while you could dream of something lovely and then that is the weal, the wealth, the happiness, the joy that comes with that kind of dreaming. But if you don’t know who you really are and that the cause of the weal is your own imaginal activity, and you think it is caused by that relative who left you a fortune; or that this job that pays you well now and you get older and older and the job fades, there comes that day when you can’t fit this bill any more, or maybe you have to retire because you reach a certain age, and then all things change because you don’t know who your are. So if you don’t know the imaginal activity that is the cause of the phenomena of your life, then once more you fall into the storm and the storm rages; and will continue raging until you are awakened, ‘til the disciplined mind (called disciples) rouses you and all of a sudden you remember who you are and then become completely aware, morning, noon and night, even in the so-called dream of the night, of what you are imagining. You carry it right into the dream and you’re imagining, and you do not falter. Because if you really want to build a certain world, then you’ve got to know what you’re imagining, because that is the cause of the world that you’re building.

So, do not seek him among things, seek him only in the temple. After three days they found him. Well, three is associated with resurrection. “And the third day the earth rose up out of the deep.” Three and eight are the two numbers of resurrection in scripture. So here, after three days they found him, where?—in the temple. And then they asked him…well, he was teaching and instructing the wise men of the temple. He was asking questions and then answering questions and instructing. Now, twelve doesn’t mean he was twelve years old; he had arrived at the point of adolescence and therefore he was creative. For when a boy reaches or a girl reaches the moment of adolescence, they can reproduce their kind, they can create. So he was at the point of creativity…that’s what it’s saying in scripture. After three days when he had reached that point where he can create then they found him. He said, “Why and how did you seek me? Did you not know where to seek me that I must be in my Father’s house?” And now he identifies God as his Father and then goes on to claim “I and my Father are one” (Jn.10:30). There is no other Father and we are one. They did not understand the saying which he spoke to them.

The whole vast world does not understand it. You talk about it and your most intimate friend, your most intimate love, and you take them apart and tell them. Well, at the moment they can’t quite get it…can’t quite get it. You mean my own Imagination that I am capable of imagining all the unlovely things in the world…and that is the cause of the phenomena of my life? Can’t be! It just can’t be. I can imagine a lovely picture and execute it, a lovely poem and bring it forth, but don’t tell me it’s the cause of everything in my world. You mean when I have a toothache, when I have a pain? Yes when I have anything in this world I can only trace it back to one cause, for there’s only one cause in the world: “I am the Lord and there is no other.” Read it in the 45th chapter of Isaiah: “I am the Lord, and there is no other, I know not any, there is no God besides me. I form the light and I create the darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the Lord who does all these things” (45:5,7).

So I could blame my wife, my husband, for my misfortunes. I could blame a friend for betraying my trust and it seems to be that they were the cause of my misfortunes…and they are not. My dream prompted me to act towards the friend that betrayed me as I did act, or to act towards my husband or my wife as I did act. And it isn’t there at all…the causation cannot be on the outside; it has to be on the inside. When man begins to awake, he discovers there is no other God, none in the world; his own wonderful human Imagination that’s the only God in the world. And just as my friend saw the little tiny—and he uses the word “tiny” advisedly—tiny magnetic seeds, that’s the seed—but when it appears in the world it seems so magnified and the whole outer world seems so big compared to these little tiny causations. The whole thing is in man and it’s so tiny that he ignored it, he scraped it off. It reforms itself instantly to maintain the outer world. If it didn’t reform itself, the outer world would vanish and leave not a little trace behind. But they all reform themselves because they’re all in man.

Now, he can rearrange the seed into a different pattern. As you rearrange it, the outer world instantly conforms to the rearrangement. Now you can rearrange it only by a change of attitude. I change my attitude toward the world, and as I change it and fix it, I have scraped off and rearranged the little tiny magnetic seed; and the world will conform to this rearrangement. That is the world in which we live. Now it puts us on our own feet…we can’t stand on the foot of another. We’re now on our own feet when we hear this, so we can’t praise or blame the other. We can play the normal part of thanking another for the part they played in our drama, certainly, and being gracious and being civil in the world and so we give thanks for something received. But everything in the world that is coming into my world, good, bad or indifferent, I am drawing it by my attitude towards life. These are all animated and rearranged within me; so, as he is so are we in this world.

Well, you tell that to a good Christian and he will simply go through the ceiling, and yet you will read it in the 1st epistle, the 4th chapter of John: “As he is so are we in this world” (4:17). It just follows on the heel of the definition of God as love. He makes the statement, “God is love” and then he goes right into this statement, “As he is so are we in this world.” So what a marvelous statement, because he is love, he isn’t going to change the imaginal act. I imagine the most horrible thing in the world and love allows me to externalize it in the world. If he corrects me and rearranges it, well then, there are two of us, there isn’t one, it’s just two now. He is not going to rearrange it. He is within me playing the part and he will suffer this strange dream of mine that the world is taking advantage of me.

Well, within me he is dreaming. And when I awake, and may I tell you, I use the word advisedly, because when you awake, you awake within your own skull. You actually find yourself waking and you wake in your own skull…that’s the resurrection and that’s when the real drama begins. Then you come out of that skull of yours and all the imagery of scripture surrounds you, the child, the witnesses, everything—but you are unseen. For, they went to the tomb and this [skull] is the tomb, and they saw the witnesses there, but him they did not see. They do not see you. They speak of you and speak of the child, which they do see, and they speak of the child as your child, but him they did not see. Because you are Spirit you are invisible to mortal eye. Then comes the complete unfoldment of the great drama, all within you, but seen as it takes place, to be external; for everything is unfolding in the most beautiful manner externally, yet it’s all taking place within you. For man contains eternity within himself; everything in eternity is now contained in man.

So the storm if it’s raging now, remember it’s only because you’re not aware of your imaginal activity. If your disciplined mind will bring you to the point where it can rouse you from that deep sleep where you’re unaware of what you are imagining, to make you aware of what you want to imagine in spite of what you have and still are imagining, well then, the world will change to conform to the change within you. And then the storm will subside and there will be a wonderful calm. But you cannot find him and don’t seek for him in any place outside of the temple. Remember, it’s in that 1st Corinthians, the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” The average person in the world if they are brutally honest with themselves, if asked that question they would say no, I do not know; for I thought if I went to the synagogue or I went to the cathedral or I went to some other church that would be God’s temple. He does not dwell in houses made with hands. That’s what you’re told in scripture, “You are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Well, where is he then? Say “I am”…that’s he.

Now begin to imagine…that’s God in action…begin to imagine. But can you believe in the reality of what you have imagined? If you can believe in the reality of that, you will take those little clusters around the ankle and fix them. These little magnetic seeds will be fixed and the outer world will find itself conforming to this fixation around the foot, which is only the symbol of yourself…that you are this whole vast world pushed out. The world you see as something external to yourself is yourself pushed out. And the day will come we will all awake from this marvelous fantastic dream and return to our estate, but enhanced by the experience of falling asleep and having experienced the mystery of death. For, we are immortal beings, and we would have to forget completely our immortality in order to experience death. So we experience death by giving up the glory of our Father and clothing ourselves in mortal flesh, which experience is death.

Now, I ask you to take this challenge. You need not completely accept it. Because I know that I’ve had experiences where people have said to me, “You know, I so enjoy hating someone, I don’t want to change it.” It’s a certain joy they get out of hating something; and they don’t realize that they are only hating themselves. But until they awake they will continue to have that little vicarious pleasure. I know that from experience. In the 2nd World War in New York City, this man—he was an only child, had modest means, his parents had modest means, and for reasons not explained to me he despised Roosevelt, just hated him. Every morning when he shaved he would talk to himself in the mirror, but imagine that it was Roosevelt and tell him everything under the sun that he disliked about him. I told him, you come here to my meetings and you hear all that I’m talking about and you still do it? He said, “Yes Neville. I go to a show on Broadway and pay ten dollars. No show on Broadway can give me the joy that that ten minutes before the mirror in the morning gives me for nothing. I just have the most marvelous show telling him what I think of him.”

Well, it paid off in the end to him…not to Roosevelt. So it all came back to him, that same venom that he simply spilled out on this imaginary face, all returned to him. They lost their home in Brooklyn…went down to Florida and the whole thing simply dissolved. That was the storm. And I’m trying to tell him to awake. You are sleeping when you dream that he is the cause of anything in this world. Well, he came from a Germanic background, his parents were German. Well, why should he take it out on Roosevelt because we went to war with Germany? That whole thing was a mad dream anyway. The war was a mad dream…but he simply took it out…he couldn’t get over the fact that we were at war with Germany. And if I told him that Germany declared war on us and that we had no alternative if we are at war today because they declared war on us…couldn’t see that. I said, “Forget it, the war is a bad dream anyway and you’re only confusing it and making the storm a raging horrible storm.” He said, “No, I get pleasure seven days a week.”

So it’s entirely up to us. If I want to hate someone and augment it with my intensified hate, all right, do it. But I tell you the only God that you will ever know you will find him in your own wonderful human Imagination, and your Imagination is God. You’ll find him no place but in the temple, and you are the temple of the living God. Don’t seek him out there. For “parents” only mean tradition, so tradition teaches us to look outside. And so, he said to the parents, “How is it that you sought me? Do you not know I must be in my Father’s house?” and they did not understand. Tradition will not understand. If I say to all the priesthoods of the world today—and I have said it to rabbis, to Catholic priests, to ministers of the different denominations of the Protestant world—that I encountered David of biblical fame and they start laughing. When I go to the part that he called me Father and when I take the 89th Psalm and show them where the Lord said, “I have found David and he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation’ (verse 26), they stand a little bit silent, but they can’t relate to it. They have not made the Bible their biography: the Bible is something that is talking about something other than themselves and it is not their biography. Until you make it your biography, you will never understand the Bible. The whole book from beginning to end is all about you individually.

So, you are the one who will find David and it is you he will call Father. It is you that he will call “My God and the Rock of my salvation,” I mean literally. He will stand before you as just coming into adolescence, he’s about twelve or thirteen. He’s just arrived at the point where you will find him in the temple, for “He was twelve years old when they went to Jerusalem as was their custom.” Then, on their return at the end of the feast they thought he was among them in the caravan. Not seeing him at the end of the day they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances, and not finding him, they returned to Jerusalem. There after three days they found him. Where?—in the temple. “After three days” is resurrection and he’s now resurrected. For, he would not be left in the pit. He cries out in the Psalm, “You would not leave me in the pit, in the miry bog” (Ps. 40:2). And so you will awaken me and then find me. So he finds him after three days in the temple.

So I tell everyone who will ever listen to me, you are immortal beings and the story is all about you. If you want your real biography, don’t get some ghost writer to write it for you, you get the Bible. That is your real auto-biography. You inspired the writers of the Old; you came in and you fulfilled it in the New. But the same one who fulfilled it is fulfilling it, for there’s only one Christ. Christ is the universally diffused individuality. No child could be born of woman who is not Christ, for Christ is the being in that child, meditating him into being, bringing him into the world.

So tonight you take seriously what I’ve told you. Also take the story of my friend…it’s all within him, for the foot is the symbol of the person himself. Although it seems to be in miniature magnetic seeds in clusters and the world bearing witness of the arrangement on his foot, the foot is the symbol of himself; and any rearrangement of self produces a corresponding rearrangement in the outer world

Now let us go into the Silence.

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Now are there any questions, well, if there aren’t any questions, we will be here every Monday and Friday until we close in June. Until Monday… Good night.

Main image: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt, 1632