01 Jan Neville Goddard Lectures: “His Own Credentials”

Tonight’s subject is “His Own Credentials.” When anyone aspires to hold public confidence, they must begin with their own credentials, that is, they must speak from experience. Then it will be said of you what was said of the central figure of the gospels. They were astonished at his teaching and they said, He speaks as one having authority and not as the scribe.

Now this is a gradual transition from a God of tradition to a God of experience. Tonight I can tell you what I have discovered, but I can’t persuade you to accept it one hundred percent. It will come. You’ll try it, it will prove itself in the testing, but it takes time for a man to give up his belief in an external God. And so, from this platform we identify God with the human Imagination and in doing that we close the gap between God and man. And so, tonight you may allow the gap to close and then test it. If you do, you’ll get the result. But I’m not promising that tomorrow you will not depart from this God that you find tonight. You will simply…it’s too much, it sounds so great, so overwhelming you can’t believe that this thing really is true. So you try it again, and gradually, as you try it and try it, then God himself will unveil himself within you. It’s called in scripture revelation. But Paul said, “The gospel that I preach is not man’s gospel. Nor was I taught it, but it came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11). And revelation to Paul was an act of God in self-revealing.

So here, we turn back to the ancient scriptures, the Psalms. You and I will read the words and you might think they are said of someone else. For by the word of the Lord the heavens were made…this is the 33rd Psalm: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the populations of the world,” every man and woman in the world, “let them stand in awe of him” (verses 6, 8). And now he asks why, like you would ask why, why should I fear the Lord? Is he not a God of love as the psalmist told me? And here is the psalmist writing again, so why should I stand in awe of him? Why should I fear him? And he tells me why, “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth” (verse 9). Well, I certainly should respect that power. For the word translated fear means “reverence,” means “to revere, to respect.” And so, I must respect a power that is so creative. It only speaks, and it comes to be; it commands, and it stands forth.

Well, here is a simple story. This will amuse you…I got it in the morning’s mail. He isn’t here tonight…he comes on Tuesday…but he said, several months ago the wedding of his nephew was announced for the 23rd of March; that was the day of the wedding. His sister-in-law, his brother’s wife, came over to explain the family into which her son was going. She said, “You know, the mother of the bride-to-be is quite a snob. She doesn’t think they’re good enough for her, and really quite a snob in every sense of the word, that this boy should not come into their family.” But, nevertheless, it was all done and they were getting married the 23rd. When the sister-in-law left, this chap who wrote me the story said to himself, “Wouldn’t it be fun just to put her nose out of joint”—meaning the mother of the bride-to-be. So he said this is what I did, I said, “Wouldn’t it be marvelous if my sister-in-law wore a Don Loper dress.” Well, now you ladies would know what the Don Loper dress is. I had to ask my wife, so she put me wise concerning a Don Loper dress. And so, he said himself, “I’m going to see her in a Don Loper dress.” Well, “Came the day of the wedding and she wore a very pretty blue dress,” and he said, “she looked very pretty in it; but I thought to myself it certainly wasn’t wedding-ish for a member of the wedding party.” “So the next Saturday, after the wedding, she called to say hello to Mother, that is, she and my brother. She said, ‘You know, I felt myself a little bit underdressed but I said to myself, “I’ll be damned if I cannot wear a Don Loper dress to my son’s wedding.”

Now, she thought she initiated it. She thought she had originated the entire thought. Then my friend added a little after-line, “Undoubtedly it was the least expensive model, but, nevertheless, it was a Don Loper.” Then he said, “Now I see why you stress it constantly that all of us should be so very, very careful to invest our thoughts rather than spend them, because everything that you do you’re going to reap.” So he reaped it and it was fun. I wouldn’t blame anyone for having that little something in them to get even if “your child isn’t good enough.” You wouldn’t be human if in some strange little way you didn’t do something just like that. It didn’t offend her, didn’t hurt anyone, but he proved a point.

Now, who did it? My friend did it. Well, did he fulfill scripture? For it said God did it, he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood forth. Could that be the same presence spoken of? Certainly, there’s only one God, only one creative power, and he found it in himself as his own wonderful human Imagination. But I am not going to swear that he tonight will not go back through habit to the God of tradition. It takes a little while to move, to grow up, and spiritual growth is a gradual transition from the God of tradition to the God of experience. When you experience it over and over, then you too will speak with the authority that he speaks of in scripture.

Then another one came in the morning’s mail. This chap said that he works at the airport. And so he felt quite inspired, and he was reciting to himself the 2nd verse of the 2nd chapter of Habakkuk. He said, whenever I go over there, I go down to the very end of the runway, a place where I usually go to meditate. There’s an old gate there, and it’s almost like a friend of mine. I lean against it and dream; I lean against it and think all kinds of things. Well, two fellows had asked me to aid them in getting promoted and getting more money. Well, he said, my position in the company does not warrant making this decision. I have no power to promote them or to raise their salary, but I could do it in my Imagination. And so, in my Imagination I saw the two fellows being congratulated by the entire staff on being promoted and receiving more money.

Well, a few months later, the first one was called in to be interviewed, and strangely enough when he entered the office to be interviewed who was the interviewer but an old friend of his. And so, the old friend instantly raised his present salary on that same job, that when he accepted the promotion it would automatically carry with it a bigger salary than that promoted job would carry. By taking the present job and raising the salary for it, when he now accepts the promoted job, it would carry an automatic bigger salary. And, one month later, the other one was promoted with an increase in salary. Now he said, “Neville, all I did was simply put into practice what you teach. I imagined that my two friends had what I was powerless to give them. I have no position in the company that would allow me to promote them or in any way raise their salary. But I could do it in my Imagination and that I did with the result that here today they are working. They’re all being congratulated. I called them up to ask them if they liked the job and they are ecstatically happy on the job.”

Now that is simply identifying God with your own wonderful human Imagination, closing the gap between God and man, and trying to keep it closed. Because it’s not the easiest thing in the world, for you and I have been conditioned from the cradle to believe in some external power. We can’t bring ourselves to believe that by the word of the Lord the heavens were made and that Lord is the same presence in us when we say “I am”…when I can’t even make a nail. How could I bring myself to believe that by a word uttered in faith the heavens came into being and that being that brought them in to being is one with my own wonderful human Imagination? That’s difficult to accept over night but it gradually comes. When it becomes now a vision, an actual experience, that’s when the thrill begins. All that is said of him in scripture you will experience. Everything said of him you’re going to experience. At first to you with the experience it’s a mere presentiment, a mere strange foreboding, is it really true? But then when they become rapid and you can come through one after the other, it’s an absolute certainty. At first, a mere presentiment; because you can’t believe that you, this little you, born of a woman, who will die in this world in a few short years, and that this you, that you don’t even know the thing that has been happening to you, that how could it be you when you are taught to believe that it applies to someone 2,000 years ago?

Listen to these words of the 40th chapter of the Book of Psalms, “And I said, ‘Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of me; O my God, I delight to do thy will; thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:7,8). Here is an inspired man, because no prophecy ever came by the compulsion of a man. He didn’t sit down to compose it, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. So they didn’t understand what they were writing; they were writing under inspiration. But the time of the fulfillment of it was not yet. So here in the 40th Psalm, suddenly it dawns upon him that in the book itself it is written of me. And I thought all that I received in dictation was of another being, a being I always referred to as “the Lord” or as “my God” or by some other name. It could not for one moment be me. And then it dawns upon him: in the book it is written of me. And now he sees the whole law spoken of is in his own heart, and now he delights to do the will of the Lord. And now he tells us, “I have not restrained my lips. I have not kept it a secret in my heart. I have told it to all the congregation.” Let them hear it and let them now respond either negatively or positively. But I told it to everyone who would listen, because I have found him. And so, you find him as your own Imagination and then you tell it; and while you are still struggling with yourself to convince yourself this thing is so good, so marvelous, it’s really true…because it doesn’t come over night. When a man finds himself making only a mental adjustment, and by that change in mental attitude he changes his inner conversation, because the change commands it and compels it; and then an outer world appears to conform to that inner change within him. Well, he tries it again and it still proves itself. He tries it again. Now he tries it with others, without their knowledge, without their consent and it works again. He wonders, “What is this strange power?”

Well, I was taught to get down on my knees and say the Lord’s Prayer, and make some mental image of a being in space that would be listening and would hear. And so, at the age of seventeen I didn’t have the courage, regardless of how tired I was and how late I came home, to go to bed without first getting down on the floor on my knees and saying the Lord’s Prayer. I just recited it quickly because I wanted to get to bed. But I didn’t have the courage to break that habit. I didn’t understand it. “Our Father which art in heaven,” we all would say, but it didn’t mean anything to me. I had my own earthly father. I did believe…always believed in a God, but until I found him he was always an external God. But I couldn’t conceive that he could ever see in me anything. So all the arguments in scripture take place in us. When you read that they say to him, “Well, we know your parents, we know your brothers and sisters,” that part of it is not taking place on the outside. That’s taking place in the mind of the one who has had the experience. He knows he does better than anyone else does, as you do. “What man knoweth the Spirit of a man but the Spirit of that man? What man knows the things of a man but the Spirit of the man?”

So then, this thing happened in him, and he was born differently. Yet he knew the physical birth took place, for he saw himself clothed in flesh and blood. And then a new birth took place within him and he knew that was foretold, that was prophesied. So he goes back into the ancient scriptures and finds the parallel passage. And now the argument starts in him because he is making a claim that is fantastic. It’s opposed by what he knows to be true concerning the outer garment. And so, he is saying, I know my father, my mother, my brothers, he names his brothers, I know my sisters. And so, it is he carrying on the argument within himself. And so when we are told the father against a son, and a mother against the daughter, a mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, this is not an argument taking place on the outside. It’s the ancient against the present. He has made the discovery now. And so, it’s always the father against the son, the mother against the daughter, the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and not any relationship on the outside: It’s all in man. And so, the father represents the ancient traditional concept of life. And suddenly, I’ve found that everything in that book is about me; it’s not about something on the outside at all. And the battle is on, and it’s yours until I overcome the war within me. So I can then face the whole vast world and it makes no difference if they listen or not because it’s overcoming you. So then you will speak with an authority that you could not speak with before, because now you speak not only from a conviction, you speak from experience. You aren’t theorizing anymore. This is no theory; this is something that you know because you’ve experienced it.

And so, this is the story of speaking with your own credentials. As Paul said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, then I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:16). To whom would I turn? What person in this world that has not had the experience or heard of the experience in the way that you’ve heard it here could throw any light upon the experience when someone is dumbfounded? How could they? They will tell you as they told me, many a doctor has told me, “Why, Neville, it’s a strange hallucination.” I said, would you define it for me? Well, they just use words without any meaning, they can’t define it…just a vivid dream. Well, a man can refer to this as a dream because he’s never had a vision. A vision is truth unmodified by the conceptual mind. You’re raised above the limits of this world altogether; but it’s just as real as this, only more so, and things unfold one after the other.

So when you return, it’s not a dream. I dream nightly, but visions come at long intervals, especially the visions as recorded in the gospels, beginning with the resurrection, then the birth, then the discovery of the fatherhood of God, then the ascent into the Holy of Holies, and then the descent of the dove. They come at intervals, stated intervals, the first great four: two the first night, one on the heels of the other; and then five months later the second, the discovery of the fatherhood of God; and then four months later, comes the ascent into the Holy of Holies; and then three years later, the Holy Spirit descends in bodily form as a dove…the identical experience. So when these happen, you have no more doubts in your mind. If in the beginning you thought that this could only be a peculiar self-induced state, you have no doubt after the other, one on top of the other.

So here, believe me. Take this thought this night: Identify God with your own wonderful human Imagination. Close the gap between the two—not God and you, just say just God or just you. Go on now. And having found what this presence did (your Imagination) you go out determined to put it to the test. As you’re told, “Come test me and see…if I will not open the windows of heaven and pour out gifts so great you haven’t room on earth to receive them” (Mal. 3:10). What, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor. 13:5). So here, we are speaking of a test of faith, really.

So when we are told, “Stand in awe,” it doesn’t mean…well, the word awe, as far as I am concerned, is an emotion that comes when you contemplate the sublime. How would I contemplate God having discovered him to be my own Imagination? You can. You’re told, “Worship God…for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Well, how do I worship God? Worship means “to count worthy,” that is, worthy of observation. So you sit down quietly and you turn your attention inward and you become attentive to what is happening now. You notice a miracle taking place because you can think of someone and you see them. And that’s crazy. You can think of something else and you see it. You can listen and you hear what you want to hear. Well, who is doing it? So here, all of a sudden you realize who is doing it. Well, if this presence in you is doing it, haven’t you found him? So that’s worship. You’re counting worthy of observation this presence within you. At first you see no one. You see only the people that you think of. You see the scenes you think of. But the day will come that the presence that’s doing it all will take on human form and stand before you, and then you will know God is man. You will see God and you will know he’s infinite love. God is man. People don’t believe it. I hope you do. As Blake said, “Thou art a man, God is no more. Thy own humanity learn to adore” (Everlasting Gospel). And then you know the most beautiful little verse, only one verse, On the Virginity of the Virgin: “What ere is done to her she cannot know, and if you ask her she’ll swear it so. Whether it is good or evil, none to blame; no one to take the pride, no one the shame.”

I’ll give you a vision of mine. To see the universal man, just one man, and to see that you and I that seem so solidly real, all these garments, they are only the outer skin of that heavenly man, all these; and you are the heavenly man. You have the experience of being the skin made up of all the generations of man, constantly changing through the event called death, like the serpent shedding skin, all being shed; yet the It itself remains being re-clothed, the new generations; and yet it is both; and you are that heavenly man. A sensitivity in that man, you can’t describe it at all; because as the man you can get below the skin and see the being that you really are, that living being. But I tell you whatever is done to this virgin is spoken of as “that heavenly man.” And then I saw the sign come before me in big block letters “virgin pure,” and I looked so closely to be sure I was reading it correctly, “virgin pure.” And then comes the vision and the actual experience: I was that man, with all the sensitivity, and clothed as skin by every being that walked the face of the earth. And then you know the oneness of all, the unity of all.

So I ask you, take it seriously. Try it. Try it this night for a friend. Maybe you have no urge to change your world. But someone in your world could be changed for advantage and you try it for him, try it for her, try it for them. Because it is God in you that can speak and it comes to pass. Just as you’re told, he spoke. Fear him because he spoke, and it came to be; fear him standing ___(??), why?—because he just only commanded, and it stood forth. And so Tom only commanded, “I’ll put her nose out of joint. I will see my sister-in-law wearing a Don Loper.” And then seven months go by. He mentioned something to his sister-in-law. He doesn’t suggest it that she could act upon the suggestion. She thinks she did the entire thing and justified it, when they met the summer after the wedding, by saying, “I said to myself, well, I’ll be damned if I cannot wear a Don Loper dress for my son’s wedding” and that’s how she justified it. She felt that she was a little bit under-dressed, but that’s all right, it was a Don Loper. That’s all there was to it. That’s all that he asked.

Undoubtedly, she’s not a lady of means and maybe she never wore one before, and may never wear one again, but Tom, knowing the law, he can always keep her clothed in Don Loper dresses. Doesn’t take any couturier in the world, they could all be used. That’s what they’re there for, to sell dresses. And if you want to clothe your sister-in-law better than she has been clothed, you can do it, without her knowledge, without her consent. I’ve seen people doing all kinds of things, but after they do it they still don’t believe it worked that way and they will say, “It’s just my luck,” or “That was simply luck.” Well, you know what the word luck means? Luck is a name given by those who have no faith to the works of faith, that’s what luck is. There is no such thing. It’s all the outpouring of these imaginal acts of men.

So you act with faith and no power in the world can stop you. The man had no power to change the position of two men. He couldn’t increase their salary. But no power in the world could stop him from doing it for them and he did it with results. Now today, if he’s here tonight, I hope with his eyes and ears wide open he will close the gap even more, and keep on closing that gap to find there aren’t two of you. You can say “I am he.” In all the scripture it’s simply “I am he.” “But who are you?” “I told you, ‘I am he.’” “But you haven’t told me this day.” “Oh, yes I have.” “Well, who is your father?” “Well, my Father is he whom you call God; but I know my Father and ye know not your God.” And after that comes the argument and the argument is taking place within you. For, I’m speaking from experience. It wasn’t easy to discover this and overnight to fuse to it. It wasn’t, because the very next day you had an unpaid bill and no sums to meet it. Yet, you found that your Imagination is God, can’t go back on that discovery, and yet your anxiety now postpones the day of the harvest. You can’t quite bring yourself to actually imagine the end, because the need is now, urgently, now. And so, you postpone the closing of the gap until finally you’d rather die, be cut in pieces, than go back on the discovery of the one and only God. The one who is your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. And don’t think I’m robbing you or taking anything from you. In fact, if I took anything it would only be the idol that you’ve kept alive in the place of the living God.

So when you go to bed this night, just worship God. Close your eyes, just turn on the inside. You might see ___(??) glorious light, golden liquid light, moving around your head and moving off into space, like a man blowing a smoked cigar. Only this is living light, something that comes out of your head this way, it forms circles, and goes off in puffs from your forehead. You simply become entranced with it all. And then you could turn away from it to something else. But think of any friend this night, and in confidence, and hold God, which is your Imagination, hold him trustworthy. Trust him implicitly to bring it to pass; because this is your word, you spoke, and it comes to pass. You’re speaking the word when you imagine something in faith. You must imagine it in faith. As we are told, many heard it, but it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it, therefore they did not get the results. They heard the same word in the Book of Hebrews, but only those who heard it and received it with faith got the results (4:2). And the others were called “the children of the wilderness,” because they kept on moving through the wilderness. They wouldn’t stop for one moment to turn in and worship God, and prove his existence, and his nearness, and the oneness with God. The day will come to every one of us, because not one can fail.

Now, we are called upon to set our hope fully upon the grace that is coming to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Set your hope fully upon this grace, and grace is God’s gift of himself to man, directly, no intermediary, none whatsoever. There’s no intermediary between you and God. When you read the story carefully you will see that no one ordained ___(??), no bishop, no elder, no president; he has no intermediary. In fact, he repudiates all institutions, all customs, all laws that interfere with the direct access of the individual to his God. No one in this world can be between yourself and God. Call upon a friend if you feel that the thing is too pressing ___(??), call a friend if you trust him to believe that his imaginal act relative to you is true, then call him, call her…because we’re all one anyway. But don’t believe for one moment that intermediaries are essential to your access to God. It’s all God. And God became man that man may become God.

If I took this night some other form of God from you, I don’t regret it. Because only as we die to these gods can we find the true God, the living God, the real God. And I can’t tell anyone the thrill that’s in store, the actual thrill. It’s morning, noon and night thereafter. You sit no matter where you are and you dwell upon this loving kindness that has been shown you by the very being that you really are. You dwell upon it…just can’t think of anything but. And it goes on for years. This thing started with me before I found the principle. I found the law; well, the law thrilled me when I got results, marvelous. But when God began to unveil himself within me on that morning of the 20th day of July, 1959, from then on I could think of nothing but. Yes, I had to fix certain things, but it doesn’t really hold my interest very long. I go back and ponder this greatest of all things, best of things, and then try to tell it to as many as will listen that it’s going to happen to everybody. And no one differs in the eyes of this being that I saw, and was when I saw it, this universal man that is one man, living being, allowing everything to be done to him by man’s misuse of him.

For he’s all Imagination and my misuse of my Imagination hurts this very sensitive part of me. Wish I could share with you the sensitivity of that part. It responds quickly and allows everything that you do to it. “So what ere is done to her she cannot tell, and if you ask her she’ll swear it so. Whether it’s good or evil, no one to blame, no one to take the pride and no one the shame.” For in the end though what we have done be like scarlet, it’ll all be washed just as white as snow. Doesn’t really matter, in the end all things will be washed white as snow. And you will be the God that in your darkness you worshipped as another than yourself. So when you read the Bible in the future—I hope you do it daily—try to get the mood that the book is written about you: “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” He didn’t know it. And then his heart jumped for joy, he said, “I delight to do thy will.” But he couldn’t believe that this whole thing could really center in him, centered in you as an individual.

There’s another letter I got this morning, but it’s too long because there are so many dreams in it. It’s perfectly wonderful. I want to thank you, if you’re here. You tell me you come quite often. That letter came…I read it with great, great interest. I have it on file, but it’s too long to take up from the platform tonight. Again, let me appeal to all to test it and then share with me by giving me your letters that I, in turn, may tell those who come to encourage them. Your faith, my faith, together will encourage all. If I can just share one, two or three stories a night based upon actual experiences. I don’t want anyone manufacturing these stories. Please don’t manufacture a story, tell me exactly what you did, what was the objective, how you applied it, and how it worked, that I may have your letter on file that I can turn to it. I don’t imagine you’ll ever question my honesty, but I would like your letter on file so that if someone should question that I can bring the letter out. So you write and take me into your confidence and share with me this use of this greatest of all laws; for there is no other law.

So tonight, you can start with the man you are, with the woman you are, and change yourself completely by the use of Imagination. You have no one to whom you can turn for promotion? Alright, you don’t need him. No one can give you a raise? You don’t need him. No one who can dress you properly? You don’t need him. All you have to do is use your Imagination to dress yourself properly, and you give yourself promotion, and do all the things that you really want to do. Except do it first in Imagination and then you’ll do it externally.

A chap came to me in New York City and he said, “Neville, I want to make”…and he mentioned a sum of money. He was an engineer, but he never really made big money, but always held responsible jobs. I said, “Where do you want to work?” Well, he said, “There’s a firm on Madison Avenue,” and he named the floor where they operate. I said, “Would you go there if you got the job?” He said, “Yes, until they send me overseas. They always do things all over the world, but until I receive my appointment I would go there every day.” I said, “Now in your Imagination get on that elevator and go up, feel the thing ascend, get off at the floor, go in the door, hang up your hat, and sit at your desk. That’s all. That would imply if your hat is hung up now and you’re at the desk you’re working there.” In one week he got that job, with a salary he had never dreamed of before.

Unfortunately…and yet not unfortunately because we all have our exits from this world at appointed hours, he was on the job and simply died. He was only there four years and one day, heart attack…young man, fifty-six years old. But that’s alright. He lived fully, and before he made his exit here he discovered a creative power within himself. So he and his wife and daughter always came to the meetings, and before he made his exit the three of them found God. If the blow was so great that it turned them aside to another god, I don’t know. Some people, you know, turn aside and think they should not have done that; it displeased God and then God took me, or took my husband from me. They think of a God of retribution and I have found the God of love, infinite love, no retribution whatsoever. And so, he was simply called at the appointed hour.

But I could take these and multiply them by the dozens, the hundreds, yes, I’ll go into the thousands, of these stories. And one seems more fantastic than the other. But we are told, in spite of the number of the signs that he gave them and the character of the signs, they still did not believe him. They still did not believe him. I can talk to many…this night before I came out I got a call from New York City. This lady got off the plane last night and called to ask me to help a certain very dear ___(??). Now, at a distance she wouldn’t mind if I was called. But when I meet her in the flesh, in the month of July, in Barbados, she couldn’t possibly credit me with the power to change a condition in her life that someone else that she trusts implicitly as a doctor would feel it’s going to take time, and this can’t work this way, it may never work. And so, to turn to something you can’t put your hand upon. You’re trying to touch God, but you can’t touch him. He’s just like quicksilver and he hides himself in his own creativity. He creates something and hides himself in it…just like quicksilver.

So here, this night, just go into the Silence and imagine the loveliest thing you can imagine of someone ___(??), and when you break the Silence believe in the reality of what you have done. And don’t expect a long interval of time between what you’ve done and the fruition of it, believe that it’s done, just believe it’s something now, and it will come out.

Now, let us go.

* * *

Q: Does it help in any way to have many minds with the same faith on one thing rather than one? Can the one by itself…?

A: Did you hear the question? Does it add to have many minds work on one thought or just the one mind itself? Well, in the end there’s only one. I don’t feel that you can add strength by getting a crowd about it, I really don’t. It’s simply faith in the imaginal act by the individual who is performing that act; and if I turn to others, hoping the crowd will do it, well, it’s a lack of faith on my part. This man did not take anyone into his confidence. He simply did it for his sister-in-law and would not even suggest to her it would be nice if she got it.

Q: (inaudible)

A: ___(??)…”and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who is in secret will reward you openly.” So you are asked to enter the closet alone and shut the door of the senses. Go right here, ___(??) and close out everyone in this room; therefore, you close each door of the senses on everything here, and you are in communion with your Father who is your very self.

Q: (inaudible)

A: Can the Imagination extend the appointed time of death? If I go back to the Bible, I would have to answer in the negative. “There’s a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh and a time to cry, time to plant and a time to reap” and we have all these in the Book of Ecclesiastes. Because of this fixed frame that is called a play that the author of my fate and finisher of my fate does not allow me to alter the fixed frame. But he gives me great freedom within the framework of his plot, of his plan to give me himself; for his purpose is to give me himself directly. He inserts me into this framework and really there’s no death. But I mean our exits from the stage and our entrances from the stage the Bible tells me they are fixed. That’s what it tells me.

Q: (inaudible)

A: “For my own sake I do it, for my own sake, for how shall my name be profaned? My glory I will not give unto another” (Is. 48:10). Can’t give it to another! He has to make you himself, and when in his eye you are perfectly made, then he gives himself. His glory is himself.

Q: (inaudible)

A: If you read it carefully, it’s the most cruel experiment on an innocent being, and that’s man, my dear. Therefore, Job was completely innocent of any guilt whatsoever. But he didn’t know God. He started off in the beginning with everything in the world—possessions, ten children, beautiful daughters, wonderful sons, a nice wife—and then comes one blow after the other. His friends depart from him, they all begin to leave, and then the sores come, everything comes. And then in the end, he’s made to say in the very last chapter, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (Job 42:5). He wasn’t convinced of the reality of God until the very end. For he spoke only from the cloud, he spoke only from some concealed area, and then he wouldn’t even speak to Job. And Job knew that he was innocent and said that if I would have the pleasure of standing in his presence to defend my innocence, for he knew if he stood in the presence of God he would be God. Because man becomes what he beholds, and only the pure in heart can see God. Therefore, if he could stand in the presence of God, that would imply he was pure in heart, and therefore that in itself would be a fusion with God. So he asked God to please let him come into his presence and plead his case. But in the end, “I have heard of thee with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee.” And then you see him, and then there are no more doubts in the mind of man who sees.

Q: On the one hand Jesus is saying, “I am the way, I am the life, I am the resurrection”; then on the other he prays “Our Father.” I can’t…

A: The fatherhood of God is revealed through his Son, and only through his Son, only through his Son. He said, “I go to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.” He establishes this point: Don’t think for one moment he’s telling the world that I differ from you. I have found the fatherhood of God. “I and my Father are one.” “When you see me you see the Father.” And what revealed me as Father? God’s Son revealed me as Father, for I saw him, and he called me Lord, called me Father. And I knew it. There was no uncertainty in me when he called me Father. I knew he was my son. It takes the Son to reveal the Father. “No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Mat. 11:27).

So one night, an explosion and standing before you is this eternal youth; it’s David, and he calls you Father. Well, he’s already called me Father. The scripture is, call Paul father. These who claim they are awake he must have called them Father. It’s part of the unveiling of God in man. Therefore, when he calls you Father, though you answer to the name of Bill and I answer to the name of Neville—and I have a child and you are not that child’s father, her name is Vicki—but I also have a child, a Son, and one day you are going to know that you are his Father. And I won’t be envious. We are one. But you will not know that unity of being until the Son who revealed me as Father also reveals you as Father. And so if you are the father of my Son and I know I am, well, then are we not one? So, “In that day the Lord will be one and his name one.” That’s what we’re told in Zechariah.

So, all will know the same Son as their Son, and there will be no envy because we will be the Father. He’s taken us to the Father. He said, “I am the way.” To what? Really to everything, but specifically to the Father. So follow this way and you’ll be led to the Father. And when that moment in time is right for you, you have an explosion and standing in your room, in your presence, will be David, the eternal youth, Olam. “I have put eternity into the mind of man, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccles. 3:11). And that that he put into the mind of man and hid it so that man cannot find out is Olam and Olam is the eternal youth. Eternity is a youth; it’s not an old man. And so, that’s that 2nd Psalm, I have begotten you, today I have begotten you: “Thou art my Son, this day I have begotten you” (verse 7). These words are addressed to David, to Olam, the eternal youth. But when he stands before the king and the king wants to find out the father of that child; he’s not interested in the child. The child is this grand child that brought down the Philistine, Goliath. He said, “Whose son is that youth?” Nobody knows. “Well, inquire whose son is that stripling.” Nobody knows. So he turns to the son himself, he said, “Tell me, son, whose son are you?” and he answers, “I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.” Well, the word Jesse is I AM, that’s what it is; the word Jesus is I AM. And so, David did call Jesus “Father.” But in scripture Jesse is the father. But it means the same thing: it’s I AM. Because, he’s promised to set the Father free, not the Son.

The Son is concealed in everyone and the Son has to make the Father free. So if it makes you free, that father’s free. He made this father free. He makes all the fathers free, and in the end, altogether they form the one God, the one Father. Is that clear?