26 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “Holding to Our Faith”

5/9/69

We are told to examine ourselves to see whether we are holding to our faith. “Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2Cor.13:5). Faith is not complete until through the testing and until through the experiment it has become experience. When I’ve tested it and proven by the testing in my own experience that it works, well then, I have the faith. Now, I’m testing Christ…and Christ is in me. I must first find what he is, where he is, who he is, and if he is in me. I’m not called upon to test anything that is the tradition of man, something on the outside, just that which is within.

You might have heard tonight’s radio broadcast that the Vatican has just rubbed out forty of its saints as non-existent. Hundreds of millions of people over the years prayed to these saints. One of them was St. Christopher. When you think of the hundreds of millions who bought the little St. Christopher’s medal, and the little icon, the little figurine that they carry in front of their car, because he was the saint of the road, of the traveler. If you go into battle you wear the little thing around your neck and he would save you, because you are travelling now from home. If you took the highways, you took this little thing with you and some priest blessed it. They just discovered that he never existed. Our city of Santa Barbara was named after St. Barbara; she is now deleted as one who never existed. So, now they’ll tell you that that’s why we’re all broke…because she did not exist…a non-existing being to whom hundreds of millions over the years prayed.

If you read scripture carefully and do not go along with the herd, you will see there is no intermediary between yourself and God, none whatsoever. No need for a saint, a priest, a minister, a truth teacher, or any so-called healer. You need no intermediary between yourself and God: “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (Col.1:27). So examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to this faith. “Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Then we start to put it to the test. I have found from my own testing and experience that this creative power called Jesus Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination. That is Christ in every being in the world. It is this Christ that creates everything in the world…good, bad or indifferent (Jn.1:3).

Now tonight we will turn to the 14th chapter of the Book of John. It begins, “Let not your heart be troubled,” You’ll find this statement repeated in a different way over and over by the master of souls, which is Christ in you. The awakened Christ in you is Christ awake and he discovers that the bane of man’s existence is fear. He said, “Fear not. Be not afraid, be not troubled.” If we could abolish fear from our life, there would be no need whatsoever for any psychotherapy. None whatsoever for any tyrant; tyrants could not exist. For a tyrant to come into our world he must first scare us to death and he may do that by slaughtering hundreds of thousands, even millions. When he puts that fear into us, then he has us. If man did not care if he died now this very moment, or any friend of his died, or his family died, and he remained un-scared, there could be no tyrant in the world. Tyranny can exist only as he first scared the world. The world must be scared. That goes for all the tyranny in the world whether it was Hitler’s Germany, or Stalin’s Russia, or it could happen here as it happens on a small scale. And so, all over the world, if you would be a tyrant you must first scare people and make them afraid of you. There’s that little morning knock on the door, and they disappear never to return, and then it spreads, and you frighten people. So he said, “Be not afraid. Be not anxious. Fear not.”

So this chapter begins, “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe in me also. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also” (Jn.14:1-3). Now the place you know and the way you know. Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” And he answered, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes unto me, my Father, except by me…no one comes to my Father except by me” (14:6). Then Philip said to him, “Show us the Father, and we’ll be satisfied.” He said, “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” (14:9).

Now here, let us take it on this level first and then take it into the other level. “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” The word translated mansions means “to stay in a certain place or state or relation or expectancy, to abide in it as thine own.” We’ll take it now, there are infinite states in the world, unnumbered states, and a state is your relation to the world. You enter a state and that state could become your home, a place where you abide, or it could be simply something you pass through momentarily. But it is a state, it’s a relation. What would I feel like relative to my circle of friends were I now the man that I would like to be and I hope that they as my friends would like me to be? Well then, I assume that I am it. Then mentally I see them as I would see them if it were true. I simply see them just as I would see them if it were true. Now, can I abide in that state? For the word simply means “to stay in a certain place, a certain relation, a certain expectancy.” But I must abide in it.

When I leave here tonight, I expect to go home to the place that I left an hour ago…I expect to go back there. At the moment, this is more real than my home that is an image, a mental image; this is real, it’s solid. But I’m going to go back tonight to that home. Well, what is a man’s home?—the state to which he most constantly returns. Do I return to the state as seeing you seeing me as the man I would like to be? Or do I take it as just a passing fancy and then drop it? Do I abide in it? For that state to which I most constantly return constitutes my abiding place, my home, my dwelling place. So I will simply imagine that I am now the man that I would like to be and see my world as I would see it if it were true. I’m going into that state and preparing a place.

Now there are the two: Christ in me is speaking to the outside Neville, the rational being, and Christ in me, my own wonderful human Imagination, is saying, “I’m going to prepare a place for you.” You are afraid aren’t you that you can’t meet certain obligations. All things are done! But now I will go and prepare the place for you. And so I close my physical eyes upon the world and let not my heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid; all things are possible to Christ and Christ is in me. He will now prepare the state and the way, for he is the way to the fulfillment of that state. I close my eyes against the obvious, the facts of life, and then I dare to assume I am seeing and hearing what I would see and hear if it were true. But, I must tune it fine like a radio. You turn on a radio and there are four or five stations coming through, you throw the whole thing off, and you can’t stand the confusion. It must be fine tuning…fine tuning not only on the radio but on a TV.

Well, there is no set in this world comparable to you who made the set. How can that which mind creates be greater than the mind that created it? So we get amazed at the perfection of a little instrument called a radio. Take it out…no wire connects it with anything in the world, a little battery, and out of the nowhere it is coming. We stand amazed at this little thing and the mind that is amazed created it. The mind is infinitely greater than what it created. Then we came upon the visual side of it. Now we can take that out without wires to connect it. When the wire connected it, we had a peculiar feeling that some other power is coming out there. Then we take it off the ground, carry it in our hand, there’s no connection and a picture comes through and it’s perfect. We don’t want that, we turn another one, turn another…and at this moment in this little room everything that is being broadcast and telecast in the world is right here now. We haven’t tuned in…and we have an instrument infinitely greater than anything that the mind that created the instrument could ever create. The mind that created it is infinitely greater.

So, do you know a man’s voice who is a friend, one who would truly rejoice with you in your good fortune? Tune him in until you get a fine tune, and that’s the voice, the only voice you want to hear, and let him tell you his thrill because of your good fortune. Actively listen until you actually hear that voice. May I tell you, if you’re tuning in a very fine manner you will hear it. But, imagine that you are hearing it; and to prove that you are hearing it, you can discriminate between what you think you are hearing and another voice. Even though it’s not yet audible, it is in the depth of your being audible. Well, tune it in and let it become very, very fine. Listen carefully to the sentence that you put upon that voice and you are actually hearing what you would hear if it were true. Now believe in the reality of this unseen sound, unheard sound by the outer ear. Believe in this reality. If you do, you are living by this faith.

You see, it’s so easy and yet so fatally easy to make the acceptance of the Christian faith a substitute for living by it. Tonight, after the pope’s decision to cut off forty of these so-called saints, do you know the turmoil in the Catholic world? In my family half of them are Catholic. I do hope that my Protestant brothers who did not marry the Catholic girls will be big enough not to mention it. Of course, they’ll read it in tomorrow morning’s paper…but not to hurt them. For they all wear these medals. I’m quite sure that not one of my sister-in-law’s children who are Catholics could travel without Christopher around their necks…and now he never existed. Well, it takes the Christian spirit not to mention it. Don’t mention it to her…she is hurt enough. But here, it never was and she spent a goodly sum giving each their little medals and giving each one for the front of the car and to carry around in a little bag when they travel.

I recall about twenty or thirty years ago when I first came here I went to a home of this Catholic family and my wife said to me, “Now don’t be concerned. They’re ardent Catholics. They don’t care anything about you, because you are not saved. Because you’re a Protestant you’re damned. Therefore, you can enjoy yourself in the pool and have fun…and they loved my father devotedly. They were mad about him…but he too wasn’t saved because he was a Protestant. We’ll go there and enjoy a good dinner and a lovely time at the pool.” Each, as they jumped into that pool, the three boys had a St. Christopher medal. One who was three years into the priesthood when he quit and went into the Army came back without the capacity to hear. One came back without a foot. And one without an arm…he was crushed by one of our own tanks on the beaches in the Pacific. The other came back with TB. But they all had their little medals. Here they’re discussing at the pool that without this medal they would have died. It would have been far better if they did…to come back maimed like that. They thought their belief in St. Christopher…now tonight, what’s happened to that family? He never existed.

The only Christ that ever existed is your own wonderful human Imagination, there never was another. When in one being it awakes to discover all that was foretold in scripture is taking place in itself, then it knew who the power really was…and told the story. Some believed him and some did not believe. Then those who heard and believed it wrote the story, wrote it in the form of a story, because truth embodied in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors. Truth is far more acceptable if told in the form of a story. So they told it in the form of a story and we have the four stories in the gospels. If they told it as it really should have been told—one day we will be big enough to hear it without the story form to support it—that it’s all within man. It was foretold and recorded in the Old Testament, but not understood by those who recorded it. The prophets who actually prophesied of the coming of Messiah searched and inquired concerning this grace that was to be ours, and it was revealed to them that it was not for them to know. The time had not yet come. It was for us. When the time had been fulfilled, the horrors had been fulfilled, then it began to erupt in the individual. What was buried in us before that the world was begins at a moment in time to erupt. The whole thing erupts in us. Everything said of Jesus Christ you are going to know is said of you; that the whole vast book is all about you.

Now, before it actually happens you put it to the test. If Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, as we’re taught in scripture, “All things were made by him” (Jn.1:1), and it didn’t say only the good. You can imagine the unlovely things of this world and the unlovely thing imagined is going to be made, and that’s Christ making it…because there is no other creator. To say that Christ makes only the good and devil makes only the evil…the devil is just as phony as Christopher. He never existed save in man’s doubt. When one doubts the power of Christ in him that is the devil. “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24)…unless you actually believe that I AM is the he that you are seeking and pray only to him by exercising him. That’s the only power in the world.

So what would it be like? What would I hear? What would I see? What would I do if what I would like to experience in this world I am hearing, seeing and experiencing? Put him to the test. If this is true, what you tell me is true concerning my Imagination, well then, I should be able to prove it in the not distant future. All right, I call upon you to try it. Costs you nothing…you pay no intermediary between yourself and God. There’s no one waiting for a five dollar bill tomorrow morning that you call up tonight and ask to help you. You don’t go between anyone and God. Now test it. If you test it you’ll prove it in performance and then you’ll know who Christ is.

Now, “No one comes unto the Father except by me.” I’m going to tell you exactly how you’re going to come to the Father. It’s not spelled out in scripture, it’s implied, and one has to search. I didn’t search until it happened to me, because I was taught, as all of my brothers and my sister were, by my mother first, then Sunday school second, and then the regular grammar school, high school, third. I was taught what the world Christian world is taught and that’s not the story at all. So I’ll tell you exactly how you’ll go to the Father. One day you’re going to find a lad, as told you in the 16th chapter of the Book of 1st Samuel, a lad chosen by God to be his Son. You’re told first of all he’s ruddy with beautiful eyes and very handsome, a lad in his early teens. And the day you meet him—not only the day you meet him, the very moment you meet him—you know exactly who he is; and only then do you know who you are. The very moment you encounter him you’re looking right into the eyes of the Son of God, and you are his Father. Then and only then do you really know that you are God the Father. So, “No one comes unto the Father except by me” and “I and my Father are one.” As he tells us in the 10th chapter, the 30th verse of the Book of John, “I and my Father are one.” In the 14th of John, the 6th verse he said, “I am the one through whom you come to the Father.” Then in the next verse he makes the statement, “I have been so long with you and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How then can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?” He is one with the Father.

So union with Christ is the only way to the Father. You’re one with Christ: “He who is united to the Christ is one spirit with him” (1Cor.6:17). So you are united to the Lord and he takes you the only way you’ll ever go to find the Father: he brings out David. You’re told in the 89th Psalm, “I have found David and he has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God and the Rock of my salvation” (89:26). A simple little word like “found” you take it on its surface. I found…all right, I found something. Well, look it up and see what it means. It means “to bring forth, to actually bring forth one that has been hiding.” “He put eternity, the eternal youth, into the mind of man yet so that man cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecc.3:11). In the end you bring him forth and he’s been hiding there all along, because you’ll never know that you are God the Father until you bring him out. When you bring him forth, he stands before you and calls you Father. Who is he? The one to whom the Lord said and then he recalls and records what the Lord said to him, “I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’” Read it in the 2nd Psalm, the 7th verse. These are the words of David, he said, I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee.’

Then comes that moment at the end of the journey when you bring him out from hiding. Where was he?—in your own skull. For that’s the area that exploded and when everything settled and you are seated, where do you think you are seated? He is standing leaning against the side of an open door looking out on a pastoral scene, but he’s leaning with his left shoulder against the side of an open door. He is looking at you and you are his Father; you are to his right: “The Lord is at my right hand…I shall not fail.” You are at his right hand and the story is “The Lord is at my right hand.” You are the Lord, the Lord God Almighty.

So, the story is the truest story ever told. But men, for the traditions of their fathers, have voided the Word of God and built this stupid edifice called saints. This one becomes a saint…and about 100 are up for sainthood…every little neighborhood pushes someone into this place for a saint. What man on earth can make a saint? The only saints are the redeemed and no one could ever put them up. What saints? The redeemed of humanity are the saints who form the body of the risen Lord; but everyone is destined for that redemption, not one will be lost. So why pick this one out and that one out and call them saints and then add to it beings that never existed? Can you see the blushes on tomorrow’s faces when you meet your friends? And they’ll read the morning paper. It will undoubtedly be in the morning paper. You go into an office where you know this one has been praying for years to St. Christopher and Santa Barbara. Of course, they also added to it St. Nicholas…poor old Santa Claus…he is gone now. St. Nicholas is off the list, never existed. Now you can’t tell that to little children. They’ve built the whole thing up anyway. What the other thirty are, there are thirty nonexistent and ten that didn’t quite come up to the…or fifteen…didn’t quite come up to the specifications. And mortal men without vision are appointing themselves to judge saints when it hasn’t a thing to do with anything on earth. You could be a drunkard in the road, you could smoke and it comes through your ears, you could be a chaser of all the men and women in the world, male or female, and yet believe in him. It hasn’t a thing to do with the ethical code of man, not a thing to do with it. It’s entirely up to the being having gone through the entire gamut. And when you have played all the parts and only the God in you who is Jesus Christ knows that you’ve played it all, and when you’ve run the race, you’ve finished the race, you’ve fought the good fight and you’ve kept the faith, then the crown of righteousness is laid up for you, and then you’ll awaken from the dream of life (2Tim.4:7). Having awakened from the dream of life, you are the saint, the redeemed.

But your friends know you as the bounder…and they don’t believe that such a thing could be a saint. They have the strangest concept of what this creative power is. When Browning said in his Reverie, “From the first, power was I knew. Try but for a closer view, love was as plain to see.” Power was from the very beginning and that I knew, and yet from the very beginning prior to power was love, and it’s just as plain to see if you would strive for a closer view. Well, in my own case, striving for it could not have revealed it to me. It had to be revealed to me by the one in me who unveiled himself as love. God in me unveiled himself as love…the Ancient of Days. And yet he wore another garment who commanded me and that garment was power, Almighty God. He wore both; he wore power and he wore love.

We will exercise power in the world to come because we are love. To give us power here before we are incorporated into the body of love would wreck havoc in the world. But there is love, God is love, infinite love, and God is power, almighty power; and that God of whom I speak is sitting right here in everyone that is here. You are the God Almighty and you are the God of love…but the God of love in you has not completed the journey. All parts must be played, and when he completes the journey he unveils himself to you his emanation; and then he embraces you into his own being, and you cease to be another, and you are one with the living God. Then you tell your story in the world to all who will listen. Some will believe it and some will disbelieve it, but you keep on telling it anyway until that moment in time when he takes off the garment for the last time and you are one with the risen Lord. The risen Lord is made up of all the redeemed of humanity, and in the end when all are redeemed this being that was before the world was is more powerful, more wise and more glorious. It’s a constant expansion of power, wisdom and glory. This was the being by which he could expand the power and the glory and the wisdom.

So tonight, learn how to tune it in a fine, fine manner…you’ll know. Some of you are musicians and you deal in music, and you know how it grates you—others who are not so finely tuned it would not disturb them—but even they know how disturbing it is to go to a concert and have someone sit in front of us or behind us or next to us and they’re singing a little ahead to prove to you they know what’s coming next. Or they’re doing this, tapping, with a stick or something, beating out something for you. Insensitive! I may not be tuned that fine to what others in this audience tonight are, but I do appreciate music. So leave me alone with my being to hear what’s coming. Well now, I can tell a voice and tune in on that voice until I hear it. If I hear that voice then I can put upon that voice the sentence I want that voice to utter. Now, can I believe in that? Can I actually test it by believing in it? Can I actually believe in what I’m hearing? For, faith is simply belief in the unseen reality, something that is not shared with anyone other than yourself, you heard it, so you believe in that unseen reality, and look upon it as something that is real. If you can, it will come to pass.

When you will say? Every imaginal act is like an egg, and no two eggs unless they are from the same species have the same interval of time for hatching. So the little bird comes out in three weeks and the little sheep comes out in five months, the horse in twelve, and a human baby comes out in nine months. So we are told, “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure, it will not be late” (Hab.2:3). Not late for itself. Don’t expect that little lamb, because it’s being brought to birth in the same creative manner as a little chicken, will come out in three weeks. It’s going to take its five months and the little human baby’s going to take nine months. If you know the moment…well, 280 days…can you tell when it began? It’s going to be 280 days unless there is some premature birth that happens. But you don’t want a premature birth…you want it to come on time. So an imaginal act is a creative act and that’s when the seed or the state was fertilized. Now it’s going to take its interval of time.

Now today, you assume that you are the man, the woman that you would like to be and actually assume that you are it. Let people in your mind’s eye reflect the truth of your assumption. Now, be faithful to it. Persist in it, as we are told, persistency is the way to bring it to pass. But you don’t persist through effort and through fear, because you lose all fear if you know it’s going to happen. If the pressure is on you, and the pressures come from all sides, it doesn’t matter if you know what you did is a fact. You wait for the birth of it. It will come!

Now a friend of mine wrote me a letter which she gave me last Monday. In it, I won’t go into all the details, she found herself walking down the street holding a fish and the fish was still, like a dead fish; but she could see its pulse, therefore, it still had life. She found a little cup in which she placed water and put it in the water. Then, as happens in a dream, it jumped out and it was lost again…but she found it. This time she put it in a bigger area where you would keep fish. And then two catfish attacked it from each side, bit it, wounded it, and it fell to the bottom. It seemed to be in its last stages of, well, gasping for its life. She reached down into the very bottom of that area and pulled it up. Then she had to make a long journey, so she got a glass bowl and she didn’t realize there were holes in it. A man couldn’t wait, he was in a hurry, so she put it on the side. When she got to the point of getting off, she went around to collect the fish, and this time it’s a little minnow. Well, what to do? She took this little fish and then all of a sudden she began to feel responsible for the fish…she felt the whole thing depended upon her for its existence. And then she began to awake and a voice said to her—and it’s her own voice though it was a male voice, and she’s very much a girl—she heard a male voice saying to her “O my God.” Then she woke.

Now, her analysis is a true analysis what she said in her letter to me. But for the benefit of you, everything contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance, but everything. A fish has always been one of the symbols of the savior of the world. The savior of the world is your own wonderful human Imagination. The very one that throws you into the ditch will take you out of the ditch because you had to imagine yourself into it to go into it, and you imagine yourself out of it to get out. So the savior of the world is your own wonderful human Imagination. By finding this little fish that was almost dead and then she resuscitated it, and then it was attacked by the catfish and then it almost died again, she by her own confession knows that human Imagination, which is her Creator, the savior of the world, that she has neglected it.

Living in a rational world you turn to reason first and get lost in the maze of reasoning: How will it ever work? I don’t know this one or that one, I’m of this age, I’m of that age, and all these things take us out of feeding Jesus Christ…Christ being your own human Imagination, and all things are possible to Christ. If we would ignore the facts of life and simply walk in the imaginal act which is the wish fulfilled then we are feeding Christ. So this was only to warn her…a warning by her own being, who is Christ within her, that she had been neglecting him. Here you know what to do and here you haven’t done it.

So she knows the fish symbolizes the savior within her and she has neglected to exercise this power by giving all attention to reason and rationalizing everything in the outer world, when she should ignore everything and walk in the assumption of the wish fulfilled. Though at the moment her reason denies it and her senses deny it, that assumption if persisted in will harden into fact. So at least she recognized that she has neglected to feed this power within her. It can’t die even though it was stiff and the stiff fish is the dead fish. It still had a pulse even though it got smaller to the point of a minnow; nevertheless, it came back. Then it was attacked from both sides…reason again attacking it…telling her that she’s stupid to put faith in such a thing; because, it’s so easy to accept the Christian faith and use it only as a substitute for living by it. So, one must live by it.

I had that experience in the form of another symbol of Jesus Christ which is a pig. The pig is the symbol of him. I found myself this night in a huge display of flowers and trees and everything that grows. Then as it was closing and I was alone I realized I must get out now because it’s just about to close. This was one of those lovely displays for a day. As I was about to leave, I looked down and here was this little runt of a pig, small little fella. So I picked him up and I put him on a card table, not much taller than this. I took branches from the trees, flowers, all the things to cushion him. I couldn’t find any food, but I figured if he got hungry in the course of the night he could eat the leaves, eat something because this was edible, and tomorrow morning, when this place was open to display the merchandise again, whoever came first to find the pig would feed him.

As happens in a dream, suddenly the scene shifted and from the interior of this huge big display of all the things that grow I’m in a huge big supermarket. My family owns the supermarket. Here at my side is a pig. He’s grown in stature but he’s thin, not at all well fed, tall and thin. I realize that he’s my pig. I turn to my little daughter—she was then a little girl in my dream—and I said, “Vicki, go and get me some crackers to feed my pig.” She said, “Daddy, I don‘t have any money.” I said, “But you don’t need money here…we own it all…all of this belongs to us. Go and take all the crackers you want for my pig. You can bring them to me.” She went over to a huge big pile of crackers that were simply laid in the form of a pyramid, and she took it from the base instead of the top and dislodged the whole pyramid. Down it came, the whole thing fell.

So, she brought me a cracker, that is, a box or two. I started breaking them up. My brother Victor came by and said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m getting some food for my pig.” Well, he took from a paper bag what looked like a white creamy gravy, and took his hands this way and said, “This will give substance to it,” putting three huge handfuls of this white gravy into what I was breaking up as food. With this, a little candle where she had taken the entire pyramid began to go up in flames. Under this pyramid was a little candle. Then I said to Vicky, “Don’t touch it. Now the candle is lit and it must never go out again.” Then came the words from scripture: “And his candle was lit upon my forehead and by his light I walk through darkness.” “And the candle of the Lord is the spirit of man, or the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord” (Prov.20:27).

So here, the candle was lit now. I recognized that I had neglected what I had discovered, for prior to this vision I had discovered that my Imagination is God. He was the only God who ever existed. And yet, in spite of my discovery I didn’t feed it. I kept applying the rational approach to life where everything had to be rational…things planned on a reasonable basis. Here I found a power that didn’t need reason, that it could do anything without reason, and I neglected to feed it…I neglected to exercise it. So the symbol of that power was the pig and though he had grown in the interval he was still thin and he wasn’t well fed. I determined when I saw that light, from then on I would not let that light go out or get dim…I will feed this pig. The pig only symbolizes the being in me that is Jesus Christ.

For Paul said, “I want you to refer to me hereafter as a steward of the mysteries” (1Cor.4:1). Do you know what the word steward means in scripture?—“the keeper of the sty, the keeper of the pigs,” that’s what it means. So when we are told to follow the work of the dishonest steward who falsified the record, the word steward means “the keeper of the pigs.” So I’m supposed to keep the pig. To be a steward of the mysteries I must feed this pig so that I know what I’m talking about. So I must exercise this power morning, noon and night and not neglect it. If you give a man who knows this power a million dollars and it is well invested and he doesn’t have to work, he’s going to neglect the feeding of the pig because he has it all. He will say, “Now I have all the money that I need so why exercise any power? I’ll sit and clip my coupons.” He will completely neglect the pig and he will go right down and become a very thin pig. Then one day he will see that his neglect presented itself to him for him to see what he had done to the power within him—he hadn’t exercised it.

Well, you who are musicians or you are in a business where you must apply a certain talent, the day you stop practicing it is the day lost. You stop it for a week and you know whether you be a singer or a violinist or a pianist you aren’t qualified to give a concert. Not until you keep this thing tuned up day after day after day are you really prepared and qualified for a concert. So this is something that is daily practiced. But if you had a fortune, you would neglect it and you would not be qualified to teach it or tell anyone anything about it. Because what would they think if Rockefeller told them tonight to imagine it when he inherited a billion dollars? You’d say…I won’t tell you what you’d say. What would you say to anyone who has inherited—and didn’t earn it—a billion dollars? What does he know about Imagination? What does he know? But those who haven’t an enormous inheritance and have to apply the Imagination towards the production of fruit upon his tree he knows. That one is becoming more and more qualified for the last, which is the discovery of Christ within him who is God the Father, who comes only through the Son, David, who stands before him and he knows exactly who he’s looking at.

Now let us go into the Silence.

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Now are there any questions, please?

No questions? Then thank you.