24 Jun Neville Goddard Lectures: “Forming Of Christ In Us”

6/23/69

I have always felt that what is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most directly practical. I will tell you a story tonight from scripture. It’s so little understood. I’ve never read about it in any book, but I know the inner meaning of it. And I’ll show you how altogether practical it is in this world of Caesar. In all the revelations which await us there is nothing so fundamental as Christ in us…the forming of Christ in us.

Now how is it formed and by whom is it formed and where? I say in us…where is the sphere of the forming? To come to it, we’ll go to a story. Paul takes an old story. If we take the scholars concept of time, their chronological time as we give it in the Bible, it is placed at 1856 years B.C…the story. He ties it with another story, which our scholars give in the year 400 B.C.; and then he gives the interpretation without much explanation in the 1st Century A.D. So here is a stretch of 2,000 years. Let us see who he is talking about.

He tells us the story of the twins in the womb of Rebecca. She prayed for a child and the Lord heard her prayers and answered her. Well, then there was a conflict within her. As the children began to form within her there was a struggle and she asked the Lord why should she live? And the Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples, born of you, shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other; the younger shall be served by the elder…the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen.25:22). Then came the birth of the twins and the first one out was covered with hair, his name was Esau. The second one out was smooth, he had not a hair on him, and they called him Jacob. Then, afterwards, Jacob was renamed by the Lord and Jacob became Israel.

Now Paul in telling the story tells it this way to show you a certain measure of predestination…but it’s not understood. He’s not telling us that you the outer man is predestined in the way that man believes it. Listen to his words—it’s taken from the 9th chapter of Romans: “Though they were not yet born and had done nothing that was either good or bad, but in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of his call” (9:11). He made one the one he loved and the other the one that he hated. He said, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated” (9:13). Now here is an elective love. They were not yet born and had done nothing that was either good or bad, but in order that God’s purpose, his purpose was election, and that that election should continue not because of works but because of his call. He calls and he loves one and he hates the other.

Well, who are these two sons and why did he love one and not the other? Who is this Israel? Israel is not, as the world has been taught and still is, Jews who are descended from Abraham. Israel is not the descendants of Abraham from some physical state. Israel is the inward man…the feminine part of us. There is an inward man that is the feminine part of us. I call that inner man my own wonderful human Imagination and that’s the inward man that God loves, that is Israel, “the man who will rule as God.” That’s the one that is wedded to God: “Your Maker is you husband, the Lord of hosts is his name. The Holy One of Israel is your redeemer” (Is.54:5). It is this one in you, your own wonderful human Imagination that is the Israel of scripture. No descendant of some man called Abraham, but in you is that being I call your Imagination. That’s the inward man, the feminine part of your nature. It is that that God has wedded himself to; it is that that he cleaves to and leaves everything until the two become one flesh. It is in this sphere that Christ is formed and Christ is his son, and that son is David. You actually by this union become God, your own wonderful human Imagination and the Creator of the universe. He is in love with his emanation, yet his wife ‘til the sleep of death is past. But how will he know that this union is productive? Only as his son is formed in you and that son is called “Christ in you the hope of glory” (Col.1:27).

So when Paul takes that passage from the 25th of Genesis and ties it in with the 1st chapter of Malachi, a separation of over fourteen centuries, and then he begins to treat it to show the predestined you, he’s not talking about this outer man. This is not loved by my Father, who eventually I will find myself to be. Then what is this that he dislikes? What is it that he hates? I’m in this room and I see it and I’m very happy to be here now. But there are many places that I find myself where I am not happy to be, yet my senses tell me that I am there and anchor me there. This is the outer man of the senses. I find myself behind the eight-ball, maybe financially, maybe physically, in some other way, and my senses confirm that position in my world and anchor me there. He hates that!

But the one within me that he loves can in the midst of hell visualize harmony, visualize heaven. And because he is the Lord of the whole earth he is omnipotent to produce his purpose and he so loves me, his wife, that if I dare to assume that I am anything that the outer man Esau denies (he hates Esau) he will accept my vision and he will work it out for me in the world of Caesar. It will come to pass as surely as tomorrow morning will come…if I remain faithful. He, my husband—for my Maker is my husband, the Lord of hosts is his name; the Holy One of Israel is my redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called (Is.54:5)—infinite power to realize that which his bride is claiming. He gives to his bride everything, and he loves his bride…and his bride is your own wonderful human Imagination.

That’s the emanation of God. That’s his wife and he cleaves to his wife until the two become one flesh. That union he wants to be productive and so he wants a son. For, “If a son honors his father, and I am a father, where then is my honor?” said the Lord to you, as you read it in the 1st chapter of Malachi (1:6). If I then be a father, and a son honors his father, then where is my honor, where is my son? That son is being formed in the feminine part of me, and when it is completed and completely formed, then there will be an explosion and our son will come out. But by then it isn’t ours, it’s mine…because we became one flesh. We aren’t the little bride and the fabulous Lord of Lords. No, then I am that being that man worships as Lord.

You can prove it in the life of anyone who has had the experience…many of you sitting here tonight…because this “him” spoken of in scripture has several names and appears according to the sensitivity, the sympathies and the needs of the individual. He may come as the spirit of holiness, the spirit of truth, the spirit of power, or the servant of the Lord…depending upon your need when he appears. But anyone in whom the fusion took place, they are not two any longer, they are one, for “He who is united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him” (1Cor.6:17, RSV). When he is united to the Lord and he becomes one Spirit with the Lord, then there must be a child to bear witness to that union, and the child comes out. From then on you will meet that being. You may not believe him on this level because you see his weaknesses and his limitations and you are looking at the outward man that the Lord hates. You do not see the inward man that is now one with the body of the risen Lord. But you will meet him according to your need, because he is sent on his errands throughout the universe doing his work and he is a protean being. He will appear, in my case, mostly as power. Whether I proclaim the Word of God or implant the Word of God, it is with power that it is done But I am not confined to the appearance of power. I could appear to you…as one lady who is here tonight—I can’t take all of her dreams because she gave me these visions and dreams numbering well over thirty and I can’t take thirty and even condense them—but here is one. I know her nature and I know how she feels about the historical Christ, and it will take time to change it somewhat into the being of whom we speak here. But because of her need and because of her sympathies, I appeared to her in the form of what is to her the crucified Christ. There she saw me on the floor, stretched in the same form that she entertains in her mind’s eye, with the head bent on the right and down on the shoulder, leaning forward, and the stigmata very obvious. She said, “Neville, it was you in the crucified form with the stigmata very obvious, wearing only a loin cloth.” So she saw the entire picture, but her need was for that.

Now why was that her need? That she may be encouraged to believe all that I am talking about, for that is her picture of the one who said, “I am the truth.” So she may be encouraged…if she can’t follow me completely, she’s encouraged to go along with what I am saying even if some night or at some moment she can’t quite get it, she still will believe that I am speaking the truth, presented to her in the form of the one who gave his all for humanity. Being a protean being, in that dimension of myself, you can appear in whatever is the need for the one to whom you appear. But I was sent by power, fused with love…that’s the fusion. But, when sent into the world to do what I’m doing it was power who sent me. So most of the time I am seen clothed in power, whether I am speaking the Word of God in this other dimension of my being, or whether I am implanting the Word of God by fusion, by union with those that I am sent to do it for that purpose.

So here in this world, that profound story that is not understood…and scholars will not even touch it because it doesn’t make sense how altogether practical it is in this world. I look out on a world and everything tells me I can’t have it. I haven’t the background, I don’t have the means, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. Everything is denying that I could ever realize what really I desire. I want it, and this outer man is telling me I can’t have it. So my Father who is now my husband and we became one, he hates this outer one. He hates Esau that would dare deny his bride what the bride wants, for he gives her his all, and he has all. So whatever she wants he gives her. But the “he” spoken of in scripture is this Jacob who is renamed Israel, who is the inner man of every man, and I call that inner man “your own wonderful human Imagination.”

So you look at anything in this world, I don’t care what it is. You may not want it. I don’t want buildings…I wouldn’t want the responsibility today of owning a building. I don’t want any of these things in the world. I don’t want a home; I like living as I live in someone else’s home and pay rent, so I can get up and go when I feel like it. I really don’t wish the responsibility of a home and I have a wife who will go along with me. She has no feeling that to have a home is going to give her security. She either finds security in what I’m talking about or she’s not going to have it. I can give her security in the world of Caesar, and who knows but tonight there could be a revolution in my little island and all that the family has could be completely wiped out over night. Where is the security? It could happen, so she can’t look upon that that I can give her tonight as security.

Man thinks he has it because he has pieces of property or he has this or the other. Your own security is in the Lord, the Lord you know now to be your husband. Whose Lord is he? He’s the Lord of the universe and he loves his emanation, your own wonderful human Imagination, and he can’t give enough to his bride. But the bride in this world is clothed with the outer one called Esau. He hates Esau and he loves his Jacob. So his Jacob, who is his Israel who will rule as God, is your Imagination. You simply in your Imagination see what you want. You can see it. When you see it clearly in your mind’s eye, trust you husband…he is the Lord of the universe. Accept it completely as fact and walk in that assumption that it’s done and let him do it.

Now, you will discover in this picture that Christ is formed not only in us, he’s formed by us, for I am one with the Lord with whom I am united. If the Lord forms his son in me, his bride, and he cleaves to me and we become one being as he is forming it, then I am forming Christ, too. Christ is formed in me and by me, for I am one with the Lord. So everyone here is forming Christ in them. He’s being formed in you and by you, and when he comes out it’s the most surprising thing in the world. That’s why I said earlier, in all the revelations that await us, nothing is so fundamental as the revelation of Christ in us. It’s such a shock when he comes out. That’s not what man expected and yet here is this glorious son. It’s the most difficult thing to describe, because you can’t describe the beauty of this son, this eternal son who now honors he father; and then you are called “the Father.”

But don’t be ashamed if you are a man to speak of this being in you that is more you than anything you can see reflected in the mirror as feminine, because it is feminine. That is the bride of the Lord. And so, the inner man is the feminine part of me and that inner man is my Imagination. It can conceive to begin with…can a man conceive? So it can conceive. So it takes in its embrace the seed of her husband. And so Israel, I would say, owes her uniqueness to this covenant marriage. This is a covenant…he’s going to marry Israel he so loves her. He marries Israel and then he wants a son from that union, and the son comes out, and it’s Christ, and Christ is David. David calls the Lord “my Father,” as told us in scripture. So when David sees you, you are his Father and you are the Lord to David.

The story told in the 25th chapter of Genesis, which doesn’t make sense when you read it…she struggled within her and talked to the Lord, and the Lord told her she has two nations within her womb and two peoples born of her shall be divided: one shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger (25:23). Well, make this younger the power that it really is, and make the outer one serve it. The outer one will say to it, “You can’t do it, it’s impossible,” but when it’s done he adjusts to it. You can’t possibly own that home, it’s beyond your means; and then you own that home and the outer one sleeps in it, and adjusts very nicely to it. Yet he would resist everything the inner one is desiring because he can’t believe it possible. He does not know that the inner man, the feminine part of my nature, is wedded to the Lord. The Lord so loves his wife that he left everything to make the two of them one…just one flesh and not two anymore.

So this is the most practical thing you can hear. You can take anything in this world, but you must really want it, really want it. Now put it to the test. Do you know what you want? Well, use your same Imagination that is forming Christ in you to conceive a scene implying the fulfillment of your dream. Just use your Imagination…what would you see if it were true? What would you hear if it were true? What would you do if it were true? Well, begin to do it in your Imagination, and when you go to bed sleep in it.

I’ll show you how he comes in strange ways. Always bear in mind that God is a protean being. A young girl whose father comes here every Monday and Friday, a sweet child—there are five children in the family—and she has a pet rabbit, a doe. The rabbit developed something and they took it to the vet. So she sent a message by her father to ask me to pray for her pet rabbit, her doe. The vet did what he could and said that maybe for the rest of the life of the animal you’ll have to drain it, but we don’t have to destroy the animal. Well, we don’t have to drain it either…that too will stop. But she has her pet rabbit at home. So the father, loving his children, that night he thought of her, and she now has her wonderful rabbit and she doesn’t have to lose it. Next morning this is what he saw. He said, “I swear I actually saw it with my eyes open and yet I could not have seen it with my eyes open. Was it a dream, was it a waking vision, what was it? I seemed so much awake. Standing at my bed is a man, a tall man, but his head is that of a rabbit, and he said to me, “Thank you for helping my people.” And he said, “I felt this must be Midsummer Night’s Dream only this is a rabbit and not a donkey.” Thank you for helping my people. Who do you think wore the form?—God. He sends himself in everyone that he sends, and that one sent is one with the sender, and he, too, is the protean being and can assume any shape, any form. So he asked for help, and he got the help the minute I heard that he had the help. Well, this now encourages him to really believe it all the more.

Like all fathers of five children he can use some more money. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to raise five children—clothes to be bought, food to be bought, all these things, schooling, and so he can always use more. Well now, he knows that happened in his world, and the one sent clothed himself as a big rabbit—but it was man because God is man—and thanked him for helping my people. Instead of putting it out of its way because, well, why keep it, a rabbit is a rabbit. No, a little operation and she has her pet, this little doe. So this is how he speaks to everyone in the world to encourage faith, for by faith all these things are made. I must have faith and faith is simply loyalty to unseen reality. So if I imagine a state that’s unseen by anyone in the world…but I’ve imagined it, I’ve assumed that it’s true, and he is the God of truth. And who is he? He is my husband. And where is he? He’s wedded me and he so loved me, we became one. So when I imagine it, he imagined it…only we’re not two anymore, we’re one.

So everyone in this world will find that union one day and the fusion will take place. When the fusion takes place you are not you and God; God actually became you that you may become God. That is the story of scripture. But the man that he became is not this [body]. He doesn’t like this one and he uses the very forceful expression “he hated Esau,” the hairy one, the outer man; but he loved Jacob the smooth skinned lad…didn’t have a hair on his body. He is the subjective you, the feminine part of your nature, and that feminine part of your nature is your own wonderful human Imagination. So don’t be ashamed to admit there is in you the man which is feminine that is loved by God. But God will become that…absorb that being right into his being…and then he will awake as God, God the Father. For when that child calls you Father, you are a male and you are the Lord.

So Christ is being formed in us and it’s the most fantastic revelation ever. It comes as such a shock when you see him, this glorious being that “today I have begotten you…not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God” (Ps.2:7; Jn.1:12-13, KJV). I formed you in me. Well, how did I form Christ in me? First of all, I received his Word, his seed, by fusion. That embrace was the reception of the seed and then it developed by my use of my talent which is to use my Imagination. Start with any little thing in the world. It doesn’t have to be the biggest thing in the world. The smallest little thing when you use your Imagination pleases God; not to use it displeases him. So use it. How do I use it? First of all you must know what you want, either for yourself or another. When you really want it for another, believe it. You don’t have to sit down and burst a blood vessel, you simply as you walk the street imagine the friend telling you that it has worked.

A friend of mine called today to thank us for the aid in selling a home. She has this enormous house in Highland Park, but no one wanted it. It’s so big you’d have to have a raft of servants. There sits the house…it’s empty since she’s had it. She has two other homes, so she doesn’t need this one. Someone came to the door…and she has a little girl in the inside just watching. And the little girl was warned not to open the door, and to ask from the inside who was there, and to give them the information concerning her telephone number…tell him to call the owner and this is the telephone number. So she got a telephone call from the man on the outside. The little girl could not describe him, because she couldn’t see him, and she’s simply talking from the inside. He said, “I pass this house often and I’m interested, is it for sale, because you have no sign?” She’s never had a sign on the outside because it’s empty, and these fellas may throw rocks and break the windows or something if they know it’s for sale. Well, the deal was closed today. It’s only a matter of two weeks since she told me the first story that this man came, he liked it, he thought he could raise the sums of money or finance the deal, and today it has been sealed.

What did I do? I imagined that she told me…that’s all that I did. My wife imagined. We see her once a week…she comes home once a week. And all I did was to imagine that she told me that she had sold the house. This afternoon about 3:00 the phone rang and she said, “I couldn’t wait until tomorrow,” because she’s coming to see us tomorrow. She had to call today, because she’s sold the house. It’s an enormous thing…in fact she calls it Fort Smith. It would take an army to protect it it’s so big, so she didn’t want it. And she unloaded it just because someone heard. All things are possible to God, and he so loves the one with whom he is one that he abides by any request of that one.

May I tell you, try it! Try it and you will never disprove it. The more you try it the more you please your husband, for you are wedded to God, and God is the God of the universe. He’s the God of the whole earth. Therefore he is omnipotent to achieve any purpose in this world. The purpose there was to sell a house; the purpose there was the rabbit. Certainly I didn’t care whether the little rabbit died or not, but I did care for the little child. So the little child wanted her little pet, she didn’t want it to die, that was my only interest, not in the rabbit. If I’d been told by him the little rabbit had died, I would have been just as indifferent. But the rabbit lived. I heard her tell me—whether in person or through her father—that the little rabbit didn’t have to be destroyed. That was her request and I was not going to modify it. I was not going to tell her, you can get another one because there are millions of rabbits. No, she wanted that rabbit, that was her pet, her little doe. So don’t modify it if it’s within your ethical code; certainly that would come within one’s ethical code. There is a helpful thing.

So you appear to all under different names. You could appear as the spirit of holiness, the spirit of love. I know in my own case, when my Father implanted himself within me in that union he was love. But when he sent me he wore the garment of power, for that would be the part I would play most of the time…so, many of you have seen me on the outside in vision, in power. Marta, who is gone from this sphere, was the first one to reveal the power as she saw it, and the whole thing surrounding the revelation of that power. But that was done for a purpose: that Marta may know the truth of what I’m talking about…for here he’s described as power. On this level, certainly no power…just a normal man with all the human weaknesses of any outer man. All the money in the world doesn’t give you power. I’m not speaking of that kind of power. They just buried a man who left behind him 500 million dollars. So while he was here, all right, he had 500 million; didn’t take one nickel with him. He’s now possibly the richest spirit in the graveyard. Nevertheless, he had 500 million. Started off with nothing practically…that’s what I read in the paper.

So here, a story that makes no sense. I have at home maybe a dozen scholarly works on Genesis, and not one will even come near it. They don’t understand it. They will give you the right translation of the Hebrew words, but they cannot begin to give meaning, to give it any sense. So when you read the story of Paul in the 8th chapter of the Book of Acts—because he comes into the 9th chapter, that’s when he begins—he implies he was present at the stoning of Stephen, but the name does not appear until the beginning of the 9th. Well, here in the 8th the eunuch is reading the Book of Isaiah, the 53rd chapter, and Philip comes by and Philip says to him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” and he said, “How can I without a guide?” Then he asked Philip to help him, so Philip got next to him and interpreted the chapter on the suffering servant, what it really means. Because he asked Philip, “Is the prophet writing about himself or about another?” (8:30). He took it just as the world would take it; he took it on this level. He wasn’t writing about any other as I would think of a man of flesh. He was telling an eternal, immortal story of this suffering servant. That God so loved me he wouldn’t alter my Imagination. If I imagined the most horrible thing in the world, he would fulfill it, and he suffered with me, because I had to fulfill all that I imagined. So he allowed me to use it unwisely, and he fulfilled it with me. That’s the suffering servant. But in the end, he rejoiced when he realized what he had wrought, what he had done. He went through hell with his love of the one he loved most, and then when he came out, he became as he is. So that is the story that makes no sense if you do not see it beyond the page.

So tonight, put it in this simple, simple way. As you are seated here, the outer man who looks into the mirror and sees a man, that’s Esau. The man who is looking into the mirror and doesn’t like what he sees, but now in his mind’s eye sees what he would like to see…in that same mirror the outer man is still there, but in his mind’s eye he is seeing the man he would like to see, that is Jacob. His name is “supplanter,” so he supplants in his mind’s eye what he is seeing with the outer eye. That is Jacob and he loved Jacob. Now he will grow Jacob into the likeness of what he sees.

Now, I’ve told you that when man dies he finds himself in a world just like this, terrestrial and solid and real. This same lady who saw me in the crucified form said, “I was lying in bed, I was awake, and I closed my eyes and I saw my mother. She was younger by many years. I blinked my eyes to see if it really is true, and there is mother again, this time younger still. I blinked several times and each time she was younger. And then she said to me, ‘This is my husband.’” Now she knows the truth of what I have been telling you, that in the world into which all people go, they marry there too, and they grow there too, and they die there too. They are afraid of death there as they are afraid of death here until the union is complete and they are one with God. And then they resurrect and they die no more, and marry no more, for the union is complete. There’s no need of any other weddings. They are married to the Lord and they’re one with God…the two became one flesh. So now, forever there’s no need of any more marriages.

But while it has not been completed—we haven’t brought forth the Son of God to bear witness to the union of the inner you, the feminine you, with God—you go into another world, you marry, and you struggle just as you struggle here. So she saw her mother and then she blinked her eyes to see is it really true, and suddenly the mother became younger. She blinked her eyes again and her mother became younger and in ten-year jumps going backwards in time. Not just a little bit; these were ten-year jumps in time backwards. Then the mother said, “This is my husband.” Now she did not tell me in her letter whether she saw the husband…anymore than my other friend who is here when he saw his mother. He did not ask her if she was married again, but he felt she was married again and not to the man he knew here as his father. But he felt that his mother was married again, and she was a young woman. She told him, “When I came here I found myself twenty years of age” and she died in her seventies and looked older because she had worked hard in her life. Then he met her ten years after her death and she was a woman of about thirty, radiantly beautiful, more so than he had ever known her before, even though he has pictures of her when she was a young girl and a young woman. He has no picture comparable to what he saw in the flesh and he felt mother is married again, and it’s not to my father. So he knows the truth of what I’m saying here.

In this lady’s case, with her mother going back in time and then seeing me in the crucified form, and he who was crucified declares “I am the truth,” she will know now what I’m talking about from this platform is true. I am not discussing politics, for that I would go astray. When I take the Bible which is the Word of God and let my intuition play upon it, it comes to the surface…why it was written in the form in which it was written. It will last forever in this form and it would not in any other form. So it is written in this way to make you dig, because if it’s made simple, you’ll forget it. Man has to dig and dig, to ask why, and then it comes in revelations one after the other.

You will know one day why I’m telling you tonight concerning the forming of Christ in you. Of all the revelations—and they’re all stunning, one after the other—but this is the most fundamental. There is no other way that man would ever know that he is God. You can be split from top to bottom; you can come out of the grave of your own skull; you can find the little child that symbolizes your birth from above; but not a thing in this world could ever happen to you to bring you to the consciousness of being God outside of seeing the Christ that was formed in you who stands before you and calls you Father. Then go back to the very book that is all about you and see where in the 2nd Psalm he said, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee” (2:7), and you realize who you are. No one in the world could ever tell you that you are God save the son and only that Son can tell you, the Son who is the Son of God…and God’s Son is called Christ. Christ in you is being formed and when he’s formed it’s because union has been completed: you and God the Father are one and you are the Father. Then he stands before you and you know who you are, for, “No one has ever seen God; but the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known” (Jn.1:18). He comes out and then you have found him. He has been formed in you and by you, because by now you are God…and he was “born not of blood, not or the will of the flesh, not of the will of man, but of God.” And then you know who you are and who the Son is.

There isn’t one nth part of one percent tonight who would accept it, but I will not change it one iota, because I know the day will come when they will experience it. So they will deny it today, as they have done through the centuries, but the day will come they will experience it. And when they do, their marriage states are over, because they have now one husband and he is themselves. That covenant of marriage is one’s redeeming power…for, he is your redeemer, who?—your husband. Who is your husband?—the God of the whole earth. Then where is he? “I’ve been so long with you” said he “and yet you still ask me to show you the Father? When you see me, you’ve seen the Father” (Jn.14:9). Therefore, he never looks at the man of flesh and blood, for that is not the Father. The man of flesh and blood was hated by God the Father. The one of the Spirit was loved…and you do not see the Spirit, for the Spirit is your own wonderful human Imagination. It will take any form. But you’ll meet him, and this outer form is a faint resemblance, but it is the outer form. They are twins, and the outer is a faint shadow that is not perfect, but it resembles the perfect inner one…the one that God loves.

So bear in mind the sphere in which the Christ is formed is the inward man, who is the feminine part of your nature; for it takes woman to conceive…and Imagination conceives. That is the great power and that is the bride of the Lord. So let every man be big enough and bold enough to claim that within himself there is that eternal woman that God loves. That woman is his bride and he left everything for her, and brought her into himself, and made the two one flesh. And to prove that they really are mated and they are one in love, their child must come forward bearing witness to that union. The child comes forward and it was the Christ that was formed in them. That Christ comes at the end of the journey when now he takes it off for the last time and discards the Esau forever, returning now to the heavenly sphere as God the Father.

So you who may not be here on Friday treat it seriously. Put it to the test and see if it does not prove itself in the testing. It will. For in the very attempt to test it you are pleasing God…as you are told, without faith it is impossible to please him, and faith is simply loyalty to the unseen reality. So, no one sees it, but you remain loyal to it. That’s subjective appropriation of the objective hope…that’s faith. You subjectively appropriate it. No one sees what you are doing. You could be sitting in a bar and being far more noble in mind with what you are thinking and what you are doing in your Imagination than the one who is conducting the service in the cathedral. He may be seeing if certain wealthy people are not present today. He may be looking all over the congregation to see if the wealthy ones came today because he prepared a subject that would please them. He didn’t want to give it to the poor and waste it on them.

So you could be at a bar enjoying the company of a friend and in your mind’s eye having the most glorious time in the most heavenly manner, and you are pleasing God by the exercise of your Imagination. And do it lovingly. Take any man’s request and you don’t have to do anything about it other than assume that it is done; and your Father by reason of the fact that he’s the God of the whole earth has the power to make it so. He’ll take everyone in the world and use them if it’s needed to bring what you have assumed to pass.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now tonight when you go to bed, remember what I told you. Dwell upon just imagining, and know that this is the bride of God. You will not waver then and play the part of the harlot and believe in people outside of self and trust them more than you trust your husband. It’s not very flattering to see a woman put more interest in another man than she does in her husband. He isn’t flattered I assure you. She either has faith in him or she doesn’t, and when she turns from him to the belief in any power outside of the Lord, she has gone a-whoring. That’s what the Bible teaches. When she played the part of the harlot, she simply wandered in consciousness from the feeling of being the bride of the Lord to the belief in some power external to herself. What a comforting feeling it is just to play that part as you snuggle into that pillow, that here is the bride of the Lord, and the Lord is with you, for we are one. He became you that you may become the Lord.

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: (inaudible) A: Well, of course, I do not divide them male, female from the outside. The inner man …I speak now of the generic Man…is the Imagination of all, male and female; that is the inner of either. The outer is a male or a female, but the inner of everyone is female, the bride of the Lord. Now this one who spoke, he might have had a vast audience of females and he’s going to play the game and appeal to all the ladies. But I could not go along and say that a woman necessarily because she is a woman is more potent in imagining than a man.

I wouldn’t cut it that way, because I wouldn’t offend any man in the world…because he has a female within him and that’s the female of which I speak. I’m not speaking of the outer female; I’m speaking of the female in Man and by Man I mean generic Man. So that Man that is generic Man is God. So here we have a division, the female from the male; not man from woman. The Woman comes out of Man and the Man is capitalized in scripture if you read that 2nd chapter of Genesis (2:23). So she comes out of Man. That Man is God; it’s Man’s emanation, generic Man which is God. And the female which is one’s Imagination is the emanation of Man who is God, and yet she is his bride until the sleep of death is past. So both male and female who separated came out of Man, as you are told, and she came out of Man and he called her “womb-man,” Woman.

But here, on a whole I know, well, they say that most of the wealth of this world is left in the hands of women anyway. They outlive men, so they have the wealth…which is perfectly all right. I have a daughter and I hope that she loves the man she marries, and I hope that he will be successful and be able to do for her in this world what your heavenly Father, who became your husband, is doing for you in the heavenly world. So I have no qualms about leaving everything to my wife; I do not know anyone that I could better leave it to. So I don’t think anyone, if he has a wife and he loves her, that he has any outside interest to leave it to someone else. She got older with him, and as they grew older she became less and less competent to earn a living, so to whom would he leave it when she needs it more now than when they first got married? So I am all for giving it to the women anyway…let them have it. But don’t you give up the power for making it!

I can’t deny that in my own case my father had that outgoing personality and he never could see failure in anything. My mother applied this law simply and quietly and got everything she wanted. She “allowed” him to give her…that’s how she acted. When she wanted to take a trip to America, she assumed she was in America; then he would come home and say, “You know, Wilsey, I’ve been looking at you and you look tired and you know what I’ve done? I’ve booked you a passage for next week and you’re going to America for three months.” She would protest, “Oh no Joseph, no…you can’t afford it, no.” She knew exactly what she wanted, she wanted those three months. She only wished that he had given her maybe an extra week’s notice so she could get some more clothes. But she could also tell him, “Joseph, you gave me no notice and so when I go north I’m going to have to buy some clothes”…so more money.

But she did everything that way. She did it with us as children. She would comb our hair, individually, kiss us on the cheek, and then as she sent us off she would always remind us, “You’re going to make mother very, very proud, you know that don’t you?” Well, you had to say yes. Then she would tell us all individually, “You are my favorite.” We didn’t know until we were all grown men and married that she told everyone the same thing. But you kept mother’s secret and you felt that, well now, I’m her favorite and I must make her proud. I can’t do anything that would dishonor mother or in any way reflect upon her loveliness, for she was, in our eyes, the most beautiful person and the most desirable person. So mother instilled that thought in us that we would make her proud.

But we didn’t know it, because we couldn’t tell the other one, they’d beat us. If I told my brothers, “I’m mother’s favorite,” they’d all jump on me, because we were raised to understand that we had no favorites. If I said to someone that he’s wearing my pants or wearing my shoes, my father would remind me, “Whose pants? They’re all mine, I bought them.” So at Christmas time he gave us a cricket set or a football, something that we could share in common. If anyone complained that Neville’s shoes are my shoes, he would remind them, “They aren’t your shoes or Neville’s shoes, they are my shoes and I’m letting you use them.” So we had a little thing in our household, “The first one up and the first one dressed is the best dressed.” That’s a fact. The first one dressed was always the best dressed, and I’m not fooling, it’s true.

Until Friday. Thank you.