11/11/1968

___(??) “We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth” (John 1:45). Now let us take a look at who this Jesus is that found one who loved the mind, the workings of the mind, for that’s what the word Philip would imply; one who really is concerned about the cause, the source of the phenomena of life. And so he found the one to whom he would now reveal himself.

Now, let us turn to the same book, the very beginning. Undoubtedly you are all familiar with the fist four verses—maybe you can quote them—but listen to it carefully for you will find in it something that if you read it superficially you miss it completely. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Now it turns into a person: “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (verse 4). If you read it carefully and don’t read it just as most people read it, you will see that always from the beginning, this beginning, there has been God; and always there has been another with him through whom God acts, by whom he expresses himself, one that is to God what man’s Imagination is to a man. There you will find that they are inseparable, for he was not only with God, he was God.

Now, you and I will say, “That’s just his Imagination,” and we will say, “It’s all in my Imagination,” and we find it difficult to identify self with one’s Imagination. But, here the word logos…well, some will say it means “meaning, a plan, a pattern.” I tell you, it is God’s wonderful Divine Imagination through whom all things are made. Look into your world and see if there is one thing in the world known to man that man considers part of his creation that wasn’t first imagined. Now you and I may not quite accept the fact that trees and what we call Nature were first imagined; but we can’t deny that in the affairs of man, everything that has to do with man—his clothing, his homes, his businesses, everything—was first imagined. And so man expresses himself through his own Imagination as God expresses himself through his own Divine Imagination. And there is no clear-cut separation between God and Imagination. So when Blake said that “Man is all Imagination and God is Man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of Man is the Imagination and that is God himself: the divine body Jesus; we are his members” (Ann. to Berkeley; Laocoon), well, this is the one called Jesus in scripture of whom Blake now speaks, and the one we have just now identified with Divine Imagination. And that does not separate itself from Imagination in man, for it is this that became man that man may become whatever it is, the creative power and wisdom of God.

So here, if there be any other Christ than he who is crucified upon us, in whom he is buried, and in whom he rose and continues to rise in the individual, then that other Christ is a false Christ. There is no other Christ than your own wonderful human Imagination. Buried in man it must resurrect in man. It is buried in man as the seed is buried in the womb of a woman and it must be born. The same thing is true of this spiritual birth that is true of the physical birth of man: He comes forward as a body. There is something buried in us, our own wonderful Imagination, that must be born. But it is spirit for God is spirit and therefore his seed is spirit. And there is a spiritual birth that everyone must experience.

Now follow me…I have experienced that birth. Man must hear it and it is better if he heard it from one who has experienced it. Others who can hear it and believe it, yes, but they can only speak from hearsay. I speak not from hearsay; I speak from experience, that which I know from experience concerning this spiritual birth. There is one and only one authentic pattern of the spiritual birth of man. I know there are numberless attempts to give others, other patterns, other ways to this spiritual birth. They will say you must change yourself morally, change yourself in this sense, change yourself in that sense. Others suggest diets, all kinds of things. There is only one authentic pattern of the spiritual birth of man.

Let us turn again to the gospel of John and now we turn to the 3rd chapter. He is speaking to what is considered, well, one who should know…he is a member of the Sanhedrin. He said to him, “Unless a man is born from above…”—the word is “anothin” which is translated “anew or again,” but it really means “from above.” “Unless one is born from above he cannot see the kingdom of heaven” (John 3:3). It’s impossible with your physical mortal eyes to see that which is not, or cannot, be seen with the human physical eye. He must be born from above. Nicodemus to whom he spoke wonders, “How can a man who is old re-enter his mother’s womb and be born again?” He took it on this level. He repeats it and then he shows in a strange marvelous way—which one who has experienced it will discover—how true it is. He makes this statement: “As the wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8).

Well now, you read it and the word translated “spirit” is also translated “wind.” It’s the same word in Greek. But he uses it in a strange, wonderful way. When anyone is born from above there is the presence of this peculiar unearthly wind, and he cannot tell whence it comes and whither it goes. He is aware of it and he may suspect it comes from a certain direction, but he has no assurance that it does. It is an unearthly wind, a peculiar wind when he is born from above. But it is a must for man to leave this sphere, called the sphere of death, and enter into an eternal sphere of life, called “the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven.” It is also spoken of as “that age” or “the new age”; something entirely different that man cannot speculate using the images of earth and find out anything concerning that age. For he said, “Eyes have not seen, nor ears heard, what has actually been prepared for man” (1 Cor. 2:9). If my eyes can’t see it and my ears have never heard what has been prepared by God for man when he enters that age, don’t try to speculate concerning what is in store for man. For, you will use images of earth and you cannot by using the images of earth fashion anything that remotely resembles the new age. When you enter that new age, it is because you have been born from above, something entirely different. You yes…it comes out of you.

Now let me share with you what I have experienced. I did not know it. It came to me suddenly as, well, I can’t find anything to compare it to. You go to bed after a perfectly normal day, nothing strange about it, nothing wonderful, a normal day. You never suspect it. You didn’t realize that the time of delivery was upon you. You’ve been carrying this thing within you. It has been growing in a way that it grows in anyone, even a physical birth. At least they do have signs that something is alive within you and something is about to be born. But here, although you may suspect certain things you, because you never heard it from the lips of man, and although you read it in scripture, you never saw it in scripture. You read it, but you didn’t see it, as though the time was not right for you to even grasp it, so you didn’t suspect that this thing was literally true in you.

And you go to bed. There is a vibration that is unearthly that possesses your head…the whole thing is simply anchored in the head. It increases in its intensity until finally you think as I thought, well now, this is what they speak of as a massive brain hemorrhage. Because I can’t see how it can go any more and not result in a massive hemorrhage. I thought this is it! But you have no time to contemplate doing anything beyond this ___(??) because you know this is the end as far as you are concerned. But instead of being a massive hemorrhage, you find yourself waking. Suddenly you are waking and you think for the moment it is a normal, natural waking that you’ve always experienced to find that it isn’t, that you are waking in your skull. Your skull you now know…and as though you’ve always known it but you forgot it…this skull is now a tomb. It’s a sepulcher in which you are buried. You awake and you rise within your skull to find that you are all alone, and the skull is sealed. There is no outlet. No outlets of the eyes, the ears, the mouth, and you should have certain orifices through which you could go, but it’s all a sealed thing. And yet you know it is your head in which you have awakened.

Intuitively you know that if you could push the base of your skull, something would give and you could squeeze yourself out. You push and something does give, and out you come, head first. And then inch by inch just like a child being born from the womb of a woman, you the adult come through that little opening and you squeeze yourself out. Then when you are completely out, you rise and look back at that head out of which you have come…but instead of being the head it’s the whole body. It’s ghastly pale and its head is turning from side to side, like one in recovery from a great ordeal. There you see the thing out of which you’ve emerged. You had no idea that you slept in it. You thought, well now, this is your own being. It never occurred to you that the real being, that Spirit that gave you life—“for in him was life and the life was the light (or consciousness) of man”—it never occurred to you that that was the cause of your breathing and your consciousness and what you call your life. You took it for granted you were this body. You shaved it every morning, you bathed it, you clothed it, and you protected it. You fed it and you took care of it thinking it was you; not knowing all along that it was simply something in which you, the real you had been buried.

Now you are out of it. As you come out and look at it, the wind, this unearthly wind begins. You feel it in your head and yet you think for one moment that it is coming from the corner of the room and it’s rattling the entire house. Your head is rattling, the house is rattling, and you wonder “It must be coming from that corner.” So your attention is diverted from the body out of which you’ve just emerged, and you look over, wondering if it really is from that. You are not diverted for more than three or four seconds when you look back at where the body was, and in some peculiar way it has been removed. In its place are three men…one sits where the head was and the two others sit where the feet were. They are equally disturbed by this unearthly wind. One seems the most disturbed and he starts to investigate in the same direction where you thought the wind originated. He hadn’t gone more than one or two steps before he looks down and he is quite intrigued by what he sees He makes the announcement, calling you by name; in my case my name is Neville, so he said, “Why it’s Neville’s baby.” The other two men said in the most incredulous voice, “How can Neville have a baby?” Well, he doesn’t argue the point; he lifts the evidence and he lifts the little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and places the babe on the bed. I then, automatically, as though I had been rehearsed in the drama from eternity, I lift the little babe, I hold it in my arms, and I said, “How is my sweetheart?” And this little child, its face breaks into the most heavenly smile, and while it is smiling in my face, the whole scene dissolves.

Now, we are told in scripture that the individual is born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet. 1:3). Well, it started off with the resurrection…I was in a tomb. Well now, then who is Jesus Christ? I found him. I found him of whom Moses and the law and the prophets wrote…for I saw no one else. I awoke within a tomb; the tomb was my skull. I awoke within it. I stood up within my skull and the whole thing is completely sealed. Well now, I come through from the skull, from the base of the skull to find the evidence of birth. For the little child is not something I formed within me. As told in scripture, it is a sign: “And this shall be a sign unto you; you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying on the floor” (Luke 2:12). They call it a manger; it means “the lowest point in the area” and so you find it lying on the floor. Here is only a sign…that was not the thing that was born. It’s the one who rose within the sepulcher, who himself pushed from within whatever it was that rolled away, and he came out. So you are born anew through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Well, therefore when you find what’s exactly happened, then all your concepts of Jesus Christ crumble and dissolve. Now you know who he is. Now you know that that being that was in the beginning with God actually became man that man may become God in the most literal sense. He is not only crucified upon man, he is buried in man. So we carry in our bodies the death of Jesus that we may have in our bodies the life of Jesus. And so, all of a sudden this thing happens and then you wake dumbfounded, you’re awed, what has happened? How can this little thing capable of all that it’s capable of, what it has done, it still has a memory, it knows what its thoughts in the past have been, what its emotions have been; and it still feels, given the same circumstances it would be capable of expressing similar thoughts, ideas and emotions. How could such a thing be the Christ of scripture? For, I can’t find any other explanation. I can only tell you what happened …here it happened to me and the whole drama unfolded within.

Now we are told, “Search the scripture, for you think in the scripture you will find eternal life and it is they that bear witness to me” (John 5:39). So you start searching the scripture and the days go into the weeks, the weeks into months, and one hundred thirty-nine days after this event you find you are fulfilling scripture. All of a sudden something similar to the first thing starts in your head and this intensity continues until finally instead of exploding your head as you think it would, something happens, and the whole thing simply like something bursting…and here you find yourself seated in a modestly furnished room, simple room. There leaning against the side of an open door is David of biblical fame, a youth, handsome beyond measure. You can’t describe the beauty of David! And you know as you look at him you are looking at your son, and he knows he is looking at his Father. There is no doubt in you mind as to this relationship. So you search the scripture…well, who found David and David called him Father?—the Lord. The 89th Psalm: “And I have found David. He has cried unto me, ‘Thou art my Father, my God, and the Rock of my salvation’” (verse 26). So then who is God? If David must call God his Father and he calls you Father…well, you can’t believe it. Is this really the entire play? Is this the plan that God in the beginning established for man? That it was his purpose in the very beginning to give himself to man, but so completely give himself that no restraint held him back? And if he was God the Father before his pledge then when he gives himself and succeeds in the giving, the man to whom he gives himself must be God the Father…if he is a father.

So he said, “No one comes unto the Father save by me. I am the way, the truth and the life; I am the true and living way to the Father; and no one comes unto the Father save by me” (John 14:6). So, here in this pattern buried in man is the pattern that will lead me to the discovery of myself as God the Father. I could only discover myself as God the Father when I find David. Again in fulfillment of scripture: “And he said unto David…and then David said, ‘I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said unto me, ‘Thou art my son, today I have begotten thee’” (Psalm 2:7). These words are addressed to David.

So we find that Christ is inseparable from God. It’s his creative power, it’s his wisdom. It is not what the world has taught the whole vast world to believe, the little boy that was born 2,000 years ago. Christ that is the power of God is like the semen of God; it is like his creative power buried in man, carrying within it the image of God; and if it’s the image of God, it must contain all that is God. If God is a father, when it breaks itself and awakens in man, it must discover itself as God the Father. And that is the second grand unfoldment of the pattern in man. It comes 139 days after the resurrection and birth that take place on the same night.

Then we go forward and we find from that day 123 days later…now we turn back to the 3rd chapter of John, he’s still speaking to Nicodemus, and he said to him, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14). What you read about in the Book of Numbers, read about in the Old Testament was only an adumbration, a foreshadowing in a not altogether conclusive or immediately evident way, a foreshadowing. Because, when it happens it is not…it is so personal it’s not what you suspected. You didn’t expect this thing is going to happen in a personal manner. You thought, well now, someone on the outside is going to take a serpent and lift it up. That was only a dramatization of what’s going to take place in man. So 123 days after the discovery of the Fatherhood of God, which is himself, through his Son David calling him Father, his whole body is split from top to bottom, from the very top to the base of his spine, by one quick blow like a lightning bolt. And he finds himself looking at the base of his spine and he sees a pool of golden, liquid light. He looks at it and he knows it is himself. How can a man look at a golden, liquid, pulsing, living light and actually know in the depths of his soul he is looking at himself? And he also knows as he looks at it, it is my redeemer and creator, my very self. I am self-redeemed, I am self-created; for the being that created me was once with God and was God and is God. Now I am looking at it and as I look at it I fuse with it. I become one with the pool of golden, liquid light, and then like a serpent ascending I ascend the entire spine into the skull where the whole drama began. The whole head reverberates. I can’t tell you the peculiar reverberation, as though the whole thing is going to fall apart from the intensity of the vibration.

So here, again scripture is fulfilled: “I have come only to fulfill scripture.” There’s no other purpose in life other than to fulfill scripture. If I owned the earth and all of Caesar’s belongings, I must depart one day and leave it behind me, I don’t take it with me. But, this is something that prepares me for an eternal world in which there is no departing from things, where the world is yours, but you yourself are the creative power. So take everything from you and you create it again, because you are now the creative power of God…to be used to express God; to be used by your very being (that is God) in any expression so desired.

Nothing is impossible to the one who actually awakens from within himself. The world of Caesar, well, it interests him for awhile, but it doesn’t hold his interest. He becomes less and less interested in the world. It just doesn’t interest him. His whole interest moves away to this something that’s happened within him, and he can hardly believe that this that was foretold unnumbered years ago, centuries ago, was so literally true. It never occurred to him that the drama of Jesus Christ was personal to the individual; that the whole thing unfolds in man…and not something that took place 2,000 yeas ago once and for all.

Now we go forward and find that 998 days later, bringing the whole total of days from the beginning to the end to 1,260 days as foretold in scripture in the Book of Daniel and Book of Revelation. This is when the whole thing has reached its climax. On this final day, the 1,260th day, again you least expect it, suddenly your skull becomes transparent. Your entire head ceases to be head and there’s nothing but translucency, infinite transparency. And then floating above you, about twenty feet, is a dove, a lovely beige dove. It seems to be floating, not using its wings, and you have the impression that it is simply floating. You automatically put your hand up and it descends, lights on your finger, and you draw it to your face and it smothers you with affection. Kisses you all over the face, your neck, your head…your whole being is smothered with the love of this dove…again fulfilling the scripture that the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form as a dove (John 1:32). And while it is still with you, still kissing you, the whole thing dissolves.

Here you see the entire story of Jesus Christ as the most personal thing that has ever happened to you, for you observed the whole thing consciously. This birth was a conscious birth. When you are born physically, yes, you will say I was born of the action of powers not my own, but you have no consciousness of it. There are some who will make the claim that they were conscious of it. Well, I will question that seriously. You are physically born and you become aware maybe when you’re three or maybe three and a half that you are a person, something that is individual and you respond to a name, but not when you were born. But your spiritual birth, from the moment of the resurrection on, you are conscious, and fully conscious of everything that’s happening to you.

So I tell you, this is a story of follow me, follow me in that which I know from experience. For, he tells Nicodemus, “If I tell you earthly things and you will not believe, how can I tell you of heavenly things and expect you to believe it?” (John 3:12). How could I paint any word picture using images that are not of this world and have you even follow me in the description of the state into which one day you must go. For, everyone is going to go because everyone can imagine, and if man can imagine, then Christ is in him. If Christ is in him, God is in him, and if God is in him, he can’t be lost, for then God would be lost. So everyone has to be redeemed, everyone has to be saved, because only the savior of the being that came to save is redeeming self. But in the redemption of self he brings with himself that in whom he was buried, so that the one in whom he buried himself took the imprint.

So we are told of this one he not only reflects the glory of God—and the word translated “reflects” also means “radiates”—so he “radiates the glory of God and is the express image of his person”—not some impersonal being that the world talks of. Our great scientists think of an impersonal God…if there is a God they will say and if there is one, it would have to be impersonal force. And so today if they worship anything it’s an impersonal force. I tell you God is a person. So when the unknown author of the letter to the Hebrews spoke of him as a person, he said, “He actually is the express image of his person.” That is a true statement, because all are gathered together, one after the other, not one will be lost, and gathered into one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all (Eph.4:4). So in the end there will still be one in the fulfillment of the greatest of all Commandments, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4).

So, although it appears to be two just as when I speak of “my Imagination” I appear to be two. If I speak of “my Imagination,” I can’t deny the presence of a second, and yet I can’t separate myself from my Imagination. If I lose myself in daydreaming and all of a sudden you say “A penny for your thoughts” and I said, “Well, for one moment I was imagining, daydreaming, controlling it, yes, myself in New York City.” Well, if I imagine myself in New York City, I am in my Imagination in New York City thinking of the world from New York City; therefore, I can’t separate myself from that creative power that is my very being. So I can speak of “my Imagination” but I cannot any more than in this beginning of John separate myself from my Imagination; any more than God can be separated from his divine imagining. For, through his divine imagining he creates the world and sustains the world. The day he would change the imagining, the world would cease to exist, because it cannot be unless it is supported by an imaginal act. So my world will change if I cease to continue in a certain imaginal state.

But in man there is buried a pattern. It is the eternally original pattern and you can’t change it. That pattern is told us in the form of a story in scripture, and man misunderstanding it spoke of a man that was born 2,000 years ago. No, the creative power of God did not take this particular man or that particular man; he took human nature unto his sacred self so that he is buried in humanity, everyone. And you can’t separate Christ and make two of him. Therefore, Christ in you is the same that is the Christ in me or the Christ in every being in this world…the one who is a murderer tonight, in that same being where he imagines, the same Christ. So I am allowed to misuse the creative power of God, which is misusing Christ, but in the end I will learn. One day I will awaken and then all of this violence will cease to be, and I will be what I was in the beginning, but this time completely awakened. For when I really awake, I will find the one being, and the one being is infinite love, infinite wisdom, infinite power, and there is no need to fight against my shadow; for the whole vast world becomes a shadow world.

Now here, let me share with you two experiences of those who come here. One said, “I lay down purposely to have a vision.” Now, this lady by experience is really an incurrent eye witness. In other words, she has the capacity to turn inwards and see a world as real as we in this world turn outwards and see it. So she turned inward and here is a normal, natural world like this. She said to herself, “I don’t want this. I am so tired of looking at these normal, natural things in the course of a waking day, I want something entirely different.” So she said, “I thought I would just simply put an end to it, and so, instead of putting an end to it by having the thing vanish, suddenly it is frozen. The whole thing becomes statuary… everything is a cold dead statue. I’m looking at it all in my vision and then I said to myself, ‘Well, if I can arrest this, this way, well then, I can start it! And with great effort, in my Imagination I reanimated it and the whole thing once more continued on its purpose, its journey.’ Then I said to myself, ‘Well now, isn’t this marvelous! If I could stop and start the vision, what the world would call vision, well then, I can stop and start this, for this too must be a vision.’”

So in that one experience, though it was simply a normal, natural modern scene of people of today, she learned a great lesson—she learned where life really was. So here, it is Christ in her giving her a taste of the power to be exercised and enjoyed in the not distant future, Because if she could stop and start the vision…this too is a vision. Man does not realize it, because “All that I behold, although it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake). So, if in him was life and I have found him to be my own Imagination, well then, what the world calls life is only an activity of imagining. And so, if I can stop the imagining, I would arrest the things that seem to be animated and independent of my perception of them. Now if I can stop it and prove to my own satisfaction that it can be done, well then, I know who Christ is. I know what it means “In him is life and his life is the light of men,” because he animates them within himself. They appear to be independent of him and therefore living in themselves when the life that they seem to enjoy is only an activity in his own wonderful being, and he’s all Imagination. So this vision of hers is perfectly marvelous.

Then she said, “I found myself”—and this is not a vision, this is a dream—“I am listening to a woman talking who is supposed to be a teacher, a teacher of the law, and she is ranting against Neville; that she does not believe in the Promise, she believes in the law but not the Promise, and Neville is insane, he is too far out.” Then said this one who had the dream, in the dream she turns to the woman teacher and said to the teacher, “Do you believe that imagining creates reality?” and the teacher replied in the most affirmative manner yes. “Well then,” she said, “that proves itself. How would you feel now if you should begin to imagine that you are God?” and with that she screamed and jumped and said, ‘You should be in the same institution with Neville.’” “You admit by word that imagining creates reality; well then, can you imagine that you are God? Will it create it?” And at that she drew the line. So she does not believe that imagining creates reality. She is quite willing to believe that I can imagine that things are better than they seem to be and produce the effect that corresponds to what I have imagined, but not to go that far. “Neville is too far out; he’s insane.” Well, may I tell you, in your dream you fulfilled scripture, the 10th of John: “Why do you listen to him? That man is mad and he has a demon.”

So you are told in scripture the one who came to tell the story of God becoming man that man may become God was called mad because it was in conflict with what men believed possible. You go beyond that and then you’re insane. Well, you wouldn’t have to go back more than 100 years, because in those days, a hundred years ago, say, 200 years ago, you could be burned alive for things that we now take for granted. Electricity…if any one told our forefathers that these things are facts, you turn a little button without lighting a candle or lighting an oil lamp and you’re going to get a far greater light than all the little candles could give you, well, they would have picked you up as a witch and you would have been tried and condemned. In certain parts of the world it would be in conflict with what the churches taught and they were allowed to burn them at the stake.

So the whole thing is simply awakening to the infinite power that you are. And you’re always mad or too far out if you’re ahead of the game…if you’ve experienced that which they don’t suspect and it’s not what they thought Christ ought to be. They expect some peculiar, wonderful being to come out of the clouds and come into the world and then save the people that they love and then treat the others horribly. That’s the kind of savior that they have. “Come and save my race, my nation, my people, my family and then the devil with the others.” They’re looking for such a savior and so they personify him. If someone comes who tells you that that savior is in everyone, and when he says “I am” that’s he, then he begins to imagine that’s God in action.

So when you are told you are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you, well, if I am the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in me when he now tears the curtain of the temple from top to bottom, is it not this very being that he has to tear? If the curtain of the temple, and I am the temple of the living God, if the curtain of the temple is torn, is it not my very being that is torn? And he identifies it with his body in the 10th chapter of the Book of Hebrews (verse 19). And so the curtain was torn from top to bottom and he just opened up the new and living way…taking not the blood of bulls and the blood of calves and the blood of lambs but his own blood into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of the living God. So the whole thing is torn, and you are torn. For if I am, as told me in 1st Corinthians 3:16, if I am the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in me, if the curtain of that temple is torn from top to bottom then it has to be me. If I ever experience that which is recorded in scripture that that curtain is torn, well then, who escapes? The Spirit of God and you can’t separate Imagination, called the Word in scripture, from God. They can’t be separated. So it was buried in me and all of a sudden I did go up in the same manner as foretold in scripture.

So here, when I say follow me, I mean it advisedly, I mean it in the most literal sense, because I am telling you what I know from experience. I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating. Let the whole vast world speculate as to what redemption means. It’s a very personal thing and it takes place in us. So when you reach the point called death, the world does not cease to exist from that moment in time when my senses cease to register it…so that they don’t really die. They depart this world and they are just as real as we are here now, clothed in bodies just like these and they’re young bodies, not babes but young, say, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. That’s what they appear to be no matter how old they are when they drop here and they continue in a world just like this. Because they find themselves in a world terrestrial in bodies that to them are flesh and blood, with all the longings, the unfulfilled desires of here to be fulfilled there; with the same desires and ambitions and the same struggles while that work of the awakening of Christ in them continues. For the purpose of life is to awaken the image that is in man, which image is the image of God. So, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26)—that image is Christ in man, for he is “The express image of the invisible God, the express image of his person. He radiates and reflects the glory of God” (Heb. 1:3). But it has to first be born. So “Unless man is born from above, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).

So we can talk about it and you hear every Sunday morning how ministers will tell you and followers will tell you, they are born. You ask them, “How were you born?” “Well, I’ve changed my attitude toward so and so.” And so they really believe because they give more to the church in dollars and cents that they are now born from above. They haven’t the slightest concept of the mystery. It would scare them to death if they heard what you are hearing tonight. In fact, they’d get right up and leave, because this to them would be like madness, sheer madness. Yet I am telling you what I know from experience…I’m not speculating, I’m not theorizing. I’m not trying to work out some workable philosophy of life; this is what I’ve experienced. I go back and read scripture to find it is confirmed there, but not as man suspects or thought that it should be. It’s something entirely different.

Now here is another one. The lady finds herself in a long…it seemed like an endless line, a single file, ahead and behind her. They are moving toward a man who is behind a desk. When she got there, she stuck out her left hand, the back of it, and he stamped with indelible ink the stamp on her hand. She knew intuitively that that was her entrance into heaven. Then she had in another dream, she is now on a highway and the highway is protected by chain links. Then there are two secondary roads that are parallel with the highway. Then there are ways leading off, even detours, even dead-end areas, and she knows that these other ways are ways that she formerly walked. But now she is on the highway that leads toward the goal that all are headed toward, which is the kingdom of heaven. So these are foreshadowings, these are healthy things to have to encourage her to persist. She is now on the Way, the real Way, and there is only one Way. There is only one authentic Way in the world. And unless he brings you to the Father, you’ll never find the Father. And then he brings you and unveils you as the Father through the Son calling you Father.

So here, these are perfectly wonderful visions and dreams to have, for we are told in scripture God speaks to man through the medium of a dream and makes himself known in vision (Num. 12:6). Well, if God speaks to me in a dream and makes himself known in a vision, no voice should interest me more than that which comes to me through dream and vision. For most of the voices that speak to man in this world are simply voices of theory, all theory. They have an opinion of so-and-so, an opinion of this one, of someone else. Tonight read the press not only in our country but read the press of the world. There is a station called Channel 28 that gives you every Sunday afternoon an hour of what the world press is saying. Well, it’s all the nonsense in the world. What does it matter what they say about our election? They’re telling us that we should change it, we, the mighty land, this grand land, we should change it to conform to some little one whose hand is out for another handout. They’re going to tell us what is right when they themselves can’t stand on their own feet. That’s perfect.

Years ago in New York City I met this man who was a salesman for a liquor firm. At the time, I was in the presence of a man who was representing a big liquor firm and a very successful one…and he is telling me what his firm was doing wrong. And this one was unemployed and had been unemployed for months, but he knew all the answers, he knew everything…and no one employed him and he’s telling a successful salesman what was wrong. Not a thing was wrong with the successful salesman or his firm; they were moving on to bigger and bigger. And I said to myself, “What possesses him to be so blind to his present condition in this world? Here’s a man who can’t pay rent, he can’t eat. He’s begging everyone that he meets, but he has the answer to all the problems of the world.” Well, he is not alone. Multiply him by hundreds of millions in the world—they know everything but they can’t stand on their own feet.

So, I am not speculating. I am telling you what I know from my own personal experience and this is the way that Christ in man is born. So when Paul said, “My little children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ be formed in you,” this is what he meant (Gal. 4:19). It has to be formed and when it is formed, like a child in the womb of a woman, it comes forth. So when this is formed in man, the man awakes to find he has been sound asleep throughout the centuries in his own head…didn’t know it. Because the world thinks that when you’re dead and you see the whole thing cremated, the head included, and it’s all a little dust…you can put the whole thing in the palm of your hand, well, if all that is dust, how could he still have a head that could survive that experience? Well, it survives all these experiences, because man, the real man is all Imagination. He can imagine a body just as easily there as he imagined one here. He starts—but not from the womb of a woman—he just starts with the same identity, no loss of identity. You recognize him for what he is and what he was, only he’ll be young, moving along fulfilling the job that was started in him, which is the forming of Christ in him. When it is formed, it is born and this is the only way in which it is born. There is no other way.

All the others that would claim to it are adumbrations, foreshadowings, and are healthy, but all of a sudden they will have the experience and it will be perfect. They’ll find the witnesses to his birth. There will be the three witnesses, for if only one, his testimony is not accepted. There must be two or more witnesses and if two or more agree in testimony, well then, it is conclusive. So there must be witnesses to the birth, even though they don’t agree as it were that one could be born. He sees the evidence and presents it. Now the one that is born is spirit, therefore, they did not see me. I’m standing in the room seeing them. I could read their thoughts; in fact, their thoughts were objective. I didn’t have to read them or pick them. As they thought, it was objective to me and yet I was unseen by them, because what was born was spirit, and that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Well, that moment, I was born of the spirit and therefore invisible to any mortal eye. Although they were judged by human standards in spirit, they were not, they were still mortal beings. They came to witness this event, but the thing that was born was outside of their range all together for he was spirit.

For when one leaves this world, they’re not spirits they’re solidly built, as we are solid. So that if I should hear tonight that some member of my family has departed this world, they’re solid. Unseen by the eye here, as though you drew a veil, but that veil is very thin, it’s really very, very thin. But they are not made of gossamer; they’re solidly real and they’re made of flesh and blood…something that you can’t explain to others. But here you find people high in a church, like the current story now of a book by Bishop Pike. He is a man who rose to the highest office in the Episcopal world and just as confused today as when he was ordained. Hasn’t the slightest concept of the great mystery of Christ, none whatsoever, for his words are his judge. Here he is going to all the mediums in the world. And the one that he first picked up and believed him implicitly and still believes him…I met that man back in 1926 in New York City. One night he invited me to his home on Riverside Drive and I attended. Then he invited me the following week. He would have a circle of about thirty people sitting in the dark with one little flickering light, and he would have these lights all over the place. Well, I was in the theater and I was young, twenty-one years old back in 1926, and he liked the glamour of the theater and all the things about it. So he would always ask me to remain on and we had coffee and cakes and sandwiches and so on.

Well, this night in question being very curious when I saw all these lights jumping around…and he is telling me in the so-called trance that this one came through him to speak and that he’s now controlled by Fletcher. He called this man Fletcher and Fletcher was the guide, and he would single out different ones and talk to them as though Fletcher was speaking. Well, I had a very curious bug, I still have, and when I saw something there that was luminous, I put my finger on it and it sparked, that sparked and that sparked. I realized that the man had put phosphorous on that rug of his to deceive those who came. Well, when you’re lost in this atmosphere you are willing to believe anything. When I called him on it, he said, “Well, sometimes I’m tired and this amuses them and they’ll feel the atmosphere of spirits present.”

I didn’t go back, I just didn’t go back. I liked him personally, but I saw the phoniness connected with all of this stuff. Yet this is the one who is asking me to believe him now. Well, I don’t believe him now. I met him in New York about three or four years ago, and he knows what I’m doing and he’s read my books. He likes what I said in the books, but he asks me now to really believe that he’s a convert completely and now it’s on the level. Well, I am so constituted that I can’t go for it. First of all, I don’t go for such things in the first place. You will contact them if you are so destined to, yes you’ll contact those, but they’re on their own. They’re living a full and wonderful life doing what they have to do for the image to be formed within them.

So don’t try, don’t go to mediums, just leave them alone. You’ll meet them…unless, of course, while here, Christ is born within you. If he’s born within you, you do not enter that sphere at all. You enter the entirely different sphere known as the kingdom of God. So death to you when it comes after the birth of Christ within you will vary from all previous departures from this world. And you departed many a time, and I don’t mean re-incarnation, for there’s been no loss of identity.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now, don’t fail to contemplate the first four verses of John and see the presence of two that are one, and bear in mind the relationship between you and your Imagination, the identical relationship between God and divine imagining. So God in man is I AM; that’s his eternal name. When man imagines, that is Christ and there is no other Christ. That is the Christ that is crucified on me and was buried in me and who rose in me. Then I went through the entire series of events as described in scripture that this one must experience.

Now, are there any questions, please?

Q: I didn’t understand about the dove..

A: The dove is a symbol. It’s a symbol of the Holy Spirit. As you’re told, the dove descends upon him, that is, the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form as a dove (John 1:32). So the dove simply symbolizes the descent of the Holy Spirit and that is complete approval, for the words are “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” He has completed the image and now here is complete satisfaction with the image, for it followed the pattern perfectly.

Good night.