24 Jun Neville Goddard Lectures: “Personifications, Not Persons”
6/20/69
In the Book of Nehemiah we are told that “They read from the book, from the law of God with interpretation, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading” (8:8). I wish that were true of today’s preachers; but unfortunately they have mistakenly taken personifications for persons and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended.
Here in today’s paper 325 graduate students of fifteen Catholic colleges were asked to name their ten heroes in the order that they are to them heroic. No restrictions as to time…they can go back in time as far as they feel like…and Jesus came in fifth. They see him as a person. But even if he were a person, he is fifth in the order. Now, these are graduate students of fifteen Catholic colleges. The late President Kennedy came in first and his brother, Robert, came in second and Martin Luther King came in third…here came the order, ten of them. And you wonder what are they getting? After four years in college they still see the book as secular history. If you never went to college all well and good, but if you read it as literature as many of them do in college you would discover it is not secular history.
Now here, in biblical thought a name is not a mere label of identification; it is an expression of the essential nature of its bearer. A man’s name reveals his character. To know the name of God is to know God as he has revealed himself. As the Psalmist said, “Those who know thy name put their trust in thee” (Ps.9:10). But it is a progression of revelations of the name. It is first revealed as God Almighty in the name El Shaddai. Then it comes in the name of plain awareness, I AM. We are told the first was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, just as Almighty Power. Then the second revelation came to Moses and that was given as awareness, I AM. The full disclosure of his name we find in Jesus Christ, and that was the name of Father…a father-son relationship. “I have made manifest thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. They were thine and thou gavest them to me. I have made known unto them thy name and I will make it known that the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them and I in them” (Jn.17:6).
But now, who are these characters? They have names too. We speak of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus. Are they persons? No they are not persons. They are personifications of the eternal states of God’s play, and man has completely mistaken these as persons as you are a person and I am a person. These states are eternal. Learn to distinguish between man and his present state. In what state is the man now? It begins with Abraham. The call of Abraham as a state; the state of love, the state…he was a friend of God. The state of faith is really what the state is. In that state, you and I were shown the entire play in detail. Then the play comes to its climax and fulfillment in the state called Jesus Christ. It’s a state and when you reach that state then the play is over…and you are the author of the play.
But to say he is my hero and I put him fifth as a person is to completely misunderstand the story in the Bible. It’s not understood at all if you can name him among characters that are characters of history. As Blake said that it ought always to be understood when you open the Bible and you are reading anything in the Bible, “It ought always to be understood that the persons Moses and Abraham are not here meant, but the states signified by those names; the individuals being representatives or visions of those eternal states as they were revealed to mortal man in the series of divine revelations as they are written in the Bible.” Now he said, “I have seen these states in my Imagination; when seen at a distance they appear as one man, but as you approach they appear multitudes of nations” (Vis. Las Judg., Pp.76-77).
I say to you I have had that experience with Blake. Blake was born in 1757, died in 1827, eighty-seven years before my birth in this world of Caesar. And yet I know Blake. I met Blake this night and after discussion of the usual theme “the mystery of God”…what else to discuss…he said to me, “Fall backwards…a complete abandonment of self, no restraint at all. It doesn’t matter if you smash yourself into nothingness…just fall backwards.” Then as though I fell off the earth I am hurtling through space like some interstellar body. Could be a star, yet I’m hurtling through space. And when that motion ceased and I came to a stop, I looked up and here in the distance is a single man, all aglow. His heart was like a flaming ruby. But as I approached him, here that one body contained multitudinous nations and races, all the people of eternity in that one body. Just as he told me “Fall backwards” and I took him at his word and fell backwards and fell off seemingly into interstellar space. Here I am coming closer towards a being, a glowing being, one being containing all the races, all the nations, everything in the universe.
Now we are being gathered back into that one being after the journey. It starts with the state called Abraham. Abraham was shown the entire thing before. As we are told in Galatians, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would save and justify the heathen, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham” (Gal.3:8). You wouldn’t have thought Abraham if you take it as a secular story, a being of history, that he, preceding by 2,000 years, could have been shown the gospel. You would say, well, the gospel hadn’t yet taken place by 2,000 years and yet he was shown the gospel, God’s plan of salvation. Well now, how does it work? “God himself entered death’s door, the human skull, with everyone who enters and lays down in the grave with the one who has entered that skull in visions of eternity, until they awake and see Jesus and the linen clothes lying there that the females had woven for them and the gate of their Father’s house” (Blake, Milton, 32, ln.40). Well, who entered? Jesus is not a man. He is the Son of redeemed man, all gathered together after the resurrection, after the experiences of redemption, gathered together into one being, and that one being is personified as Jesus.
Well, who was it that entered? You are told it was the seed of God, it was the Christ seed, God’s son, who entered, and God’s son and God are one. In Galatians, the word translated seed that entered and that man must bring forward is sperma. It means “the sperm of man”…man is now identified with God. It’s not the physical sperm, that’s only a shadow producing bodies of death. It is the spiritual sperm. It’s called Christ in scripture, defined here as the seed and called the seed in Galatians (3:16, KJV). It also means “to draw out,” that is through the idea of extending oneself. God is ever-extending himself. So he plants himself in the human skull. Now seemingly we are two, but we aren’t two any more. Through the dream and it’s God dreaming; then the barrier is removed and we become one, and we are individualized and emerge as God in the very end. When we emerge we are God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
But the thing personified has been accepted as the thing signified when it’s only a sign. Jesus is a sign like Abraham is a sign, Isaac a sign, these are signs. But who is talking or witnessing to the thing signified? So here, when you read it try to keep in mind that these are only personifications, and try to find out what they are personifying. What is the thing signified by the name when you read Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Jesus or any character in scripture. Until you get the thing signified behind the sign, you’re going to miss it as you start to read scripture.
Quite often you find a Classic telling a far greater story than the things you hear from the pulpits on Sunday morning…infinitely greater. Here is a man who is a mathematician, and you know his play. You’ve all seen it and you’ve laughed your heads off at it. I could see it every week it’s so altogether wonderful—Alice Through the Looking Glass. “Let’s go and see him. Come, go and look at him,” cried the brothers and then they each took one hand of Alice and led her up to where the king was sleeping. Tweedledee said, ‘Oh, he is dreaming now, I wonder what he is dreaming about?’ Alice said, ‘Nobody can know that.’ Then Tweedledee said to Alice, ‘Why, he’s dreaming about you and if he stopped dreaming about you, where do you think you will be?’” The dreamer in man is God, but he has to dream it in the sequence in which it unfolds, and it comes to the climax as Jesus Christ. You can’t omit any part of the dream. As our forefathers played it so will we. And the one who is playing it, who is the only actor in the dream, is God. God is playing every part in this world. So God is in the actual…right here dreaming and he has to dream it just as he wrote it in the beginning and showed the dream. It was essential to awaken himself and extend himself…for you were before that the world was. When you came down you were the son of God, an “I” of God, and he’s extending that, the same son, only enhanced by reason of the dream which he predetermined. So in man is the dreamer and that dreamer is God, the only God in the world, which is I AM. He’s dreaming everything.
So this mathematician known to us as Lewis Carroll…Dodgson was his name. Here we take a book, this lovely…we call it a child’s Classic. Child’s nothing! It tells so much. Everything was possible through the looking glass, everything. As told in scripture, “With God all things are possible”; so with the story, all things are possible…things are what I say they are. He dreams it and dreams it and brings it into its climax, into its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
When we find today our boys and girls coming out after four years of college and they could name this personification as a character of history that is bad enough. But to put that in the fifth place is unbelievable and these are Catholic colleges. I’m not saying that it would not happen in a Protestant college, it would happen there too. They might have put him in the tenth place. Many of them have no feeling towards him at all, no feeling towards the story, and they don’t believe it. But the dreamer is taking them through, as it is taking you through, as it took me through, and we go through everything in this world.
Now, it casts its shadow in this world. And in the shadow world we imitate God. That’s what he did…he is dreaming, he’s dreaming me. I heard it one night so clearly: “I laid myself down within you to sleep. As I slept I dreamed a dream” and I knew exactly what he was dreaming: he’s dreaming that he’s I. When he wakes, he is I and I am he. So he’s dreaming that he’s I, but now in this shadow world, for this is a shadow world. I must learn to imitate him. Well, if he dreams me into being and is dreaming me through all the things that I have experienced in the world, then I can start to modify some of it by imitating him and start to dream. Well, what would the feeling be like if it were true? That’s a dream…it has no fact to support it, not a thing in this world to encourage me to continue in that dream, but it’s a dream, a day-dream. If he dreams me into being and then asks me to imitate him as a dear child in this world, wearing this garment of flesh and blood, I’ll imitate him by singling out a noble dream for myself, my friends, for strangers for that matter, and then dare to dream it. What would the feeling be like if it were true? Just, what would it be like? Then get into this state just as though it were true and see if it doesn’t come to pass.
I know from my own experience it does come to pass. But I want to encourage everyone who hears me to actually try it…and start tonight. What would it be like? What would the feeling be like if it were true? For we are encouraged to use feeling in the story: “Come near, my son, that I may feel you” (Gen.27:21). You have the voice of Jacob, but come near. You tell me that you’re Esau, let me feel you to see if you really have the external reality with which I associate my son Esau. Jacob has no external reality, he’s a smooth skinned lad, but Esau has the external. This world is Esau right now; my dream is Jacob. But I must clothe Jacob with external qualities and clothe it with all the things I can muster to make it feel to me externally real, objectively real. Now, “Come close, let me touch you, let me feel you.” As he came close he felt like Esau, although the voice did have the sound of Jacob, but touch superseded the sound. The father was blind so he couldn’t see.
So, “Come close and now let me touch you.” Touch has that fantastic sense of reality. I know when you’re out of the body and you are awake, completely awake as you are here, well, you can touch something and it doesn’t give, it’s solid, it’s real. You look at something, you touch it and it’s real. You meet people, you hold them and they’re real. You hear them…all right you can hear them in dream too. But here, you see them, hear them, and when you touch them your hand does not go through them. You embrace them and you embrace a solid being, just as you’d embrace someone here. You know that you’re out in that world, that it’s not this world, but it’s just as real as this world. Then you begin to shake yourself loose from what the world tells you is the only reality.
You can’t return to this world and ever again see it as you formerly saw it. No one can tell you that anyone is dead, and therefore by dead he is gone and he has ceased to be. No matter how wise they are who tell you that you can’t go along with them, because you’ve experienced other than what they are talking about. They are theorizing and you are speaking from experience. You step right into a world and you meet them. No one can tell me that I haven’t met them any more than tell me now I am not touching this lectern, that I am not in this room talking to you. This at this moment is more real than anything else now. But when I am in these worlds, they are more real than anything else…they are solid, solidly real.
So, go back now to the sense of touch, take anything and can you imagine that it could be touched? Well, you say, how could you touch money? You can touch money. Money even has an odor. And that’s one of the senses that he used. He said, “Come close, my son, that I may touch you.” When he came close and he touched him, he said, “You feel like my son Esau, and you smell like Esau…you have the odor of my son.” So he took two senses that to him were like touching, because he had to come close for him to detect the aroma, and he called it his son Esau. Then he blessed him and strangely enough he could not take it back. When he discovered that he was self-deceived, he could not reverse his blessing. You can’t reverse it unless you make a tremendous effort to change it. You set these things in motion and in their own good time they’re coming to pass, and every one will come to pass. They will confront you and you will not even recognize your own harvest. You’ll wonder when did I do it, but you had to have done it or it could not come to pass.
But in the big dream, it is God dreaming it and God is dreaming everything in the world. Well, you can’t mention one thing today that we think is new, fantastic, that is not recorded in scripture openly. You mention one vice…I’ll show it to you in scripture. Mention one vice, I’ll show you the entire thing in scripture and we think this is something new. I’m not denying that we have new lands, new this and the other, but I’m speaking now of the realities behind the appearances. They’re all recorded in scripture…everything is there.
So here, when you open the Bible and you come upon a glorious name like Jesus, still no matter how you’ve been trained in the past as I have been trained to see it as a person, an individual who was born of a woman in some strange manner, 2,000 years ago, don’t. Jesus is simply the personification, the representative of all who have achieved The End. Everyone who has come to the climax of the play is gathered into the one body and that one body personified is the Lord Jesus Christ. But who’s coming up? It’s the seed, the Christ seed, which is the Son of God. Listen to the words in the 3rd chapter of Galatians, “And the promise was made unto Abraham, and to Abraham’s seed. It does not say seeds, referring to many; but referring to one…and to your seed, which is Christ” (3:16). He identifies the man now with God…he became one with the one who made the promise. And then you are told in scripture he was told, “You are going into a land that is not yours”—it’s a foreign land—“and you will be enslaved and you will suffer for four hundred years; after that you will come out and inherit 100-fold more” (Gen.15:13). It’s an expansion of what you were…a hundred-fold greater than what you were. That’s the purpose of the entire play, to bring us who were sons of God and still are sons of God back into the kingdom but expanded beyond what we were when we started the dream.
So we entered death’s door with the Seed and together we are in the grave in visions of eternity. These are the eternal visions and they’re all eternal states and the states are real. So if you leave a state, don’t think you’ve rubbed it out any more than the traveler passing through a certain city when he departs from the city. It would be stupid for him to think the city has ceased to be because he has departed. The city remains, but you the traveler move on. You, the traveler in time, you move from state to state to state…and the final state is Jesus Christ. When you enter that state, you are born from above. You are completely awakened in the grave and you come out of the one gate called “the gate of your Father.” You come out and look back at the linen clothes which are the body and you see that that was what the females had woven for you. Your mother wove it for you, your earthly mother, and you come out and the whole drama surrounds you, everything that is recorded of Jesus. He’s only the sign you are now actually experiencing in the most solid manner…not gossamer, a solid reality.
So the Bible is an allegory and like all allegories you and I must discover its fictitious character, and having discovered that then try to ferret out what it is trying to tell you, what its real meaning is, and learn its meaning. So the story of Jesus is an allegory from beginning to end. It’s an acted parable, but man, unfortunately, has mistaken the personifications for persons and the very instrument itself that conveyed the instruction for the instruction. What arguments you hear from the pulpits Sunday after Sunday concerning these characters who are only personifications, and they speak of them as these graduate students spoke of him as their fifth hero.
I tell you…believe me…it is true what I am telling you. I, too, thought that these were historical characters…that they lived, as we were told, a thousand years ago, 2,000 years, 5,000 years and so on, depending upon the age of the book that you are reading, but they did not. It’s a play that was conceived in the divine mind. It’s not of human composition; it has a divine origin. When you experience it, you know and you can bear witness to it. Now, he calls individuals from time to time and sends them to be witnesses. They are the ones who are called in scripture apostles. But the apostle lives now in the world. Anyone who is sent has first to be called from this world. He is called out of this world into the heavenly world and there he is commissioned and sent, picking up the same garment that he left behind on the chair or on the bed, awed beyond measure with what he has experienced. Now he can witness to the truth of the gospel.
He can not only preach it, but he is a witness to it. He tells you the difference between the thing signified and the sign. Are we not told in scripture, “And the Lord himself will give you a sign. A young woman will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel” (Mat.1:23). Well, Emmanuel means “God with us.” He is with us, with every child born of woman…and that already is the conception. The Seed is already there awaiting a certain, well, you can call it fertilization at a certain moment in time; and from then on it quickens within; and then the individual, himself, is the one who comes out. All that you see surrounding you are only signs bearing witness to your expansion. Your expansion was your birth; and you came out of the grave. Then you rose, you ascended, and the Spirit himself descends upon you and smothers you with love, because he seals his approval. He approves of everything that you are now…having gone through the dream. And who did it? God did it. And who awoke? God awoke. So when he awakes, you awake and you are he, even though you must still continue in your limited state until you finally take off the little garment of flesh and blood.
So try not to forget it when you read it. And I do hope you’re reading the Bible daily. As far as I am concerned I find no book comparable to it, no matter how well it’s written and beautiful they are. But the Bible…but you get nothing out of it if you see it as the world sees it. Yet if you see it through the eyes of the mystic who has experienced scripture, then you will know who Jesus is, you will know who Abraham is, who Isaac is. Well, take the very names. When you hold that infant, well, who is it? “He laughs.” And what is Isaac’s name? “He laughs.” Who was promised? Abraham was promised and he was promised what?—a son. And what did he call the son’s name?—“he laughs.” Yet it is only a sign. “This shall be a sign”—go and meet that little child wrapped in swaddling clothes, and he laughs. When you lift him up and you use an endearing term, he laughs. Then the whole thing vanishes.
Now, go to Moses. What does it mean? What does the man’s name mean? It simply means “to be born.” He could not yet enter the Promised Land because he wasn’t yet born. The word actually means “to be born.” It’s the old perfective of the Egyptian verb “to be born.” So Moses is to be born. The whole thing is leading up to the one being, which is yourself…for it’s all contained within you. Believe me, I saw the one man and I saw him containing the entire universe. How can a man contain all? But I saw it. It seemed one man in the distance, and as I approached the one man a multitude of nations and races and people all in the one man. Then you’ll understand the vision of Blake: “All that you behold, tho’ it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Jer., Plt.71). The whole vast thing is yourself pushed out. In the end, you come out and you are that one man. All will be gathered together in the one being spoken of in scripture as the Lord Jesus Christ. In the end there is only the climax.
I wish I could tell everyone and convince them that there’s only one true gospel of Christ and that it is this: Mankind is redeemed—not going to be, mankind is redeemed…it’s done…the whole thing is done! If you’re passing through towards the climax, it doesn’t mean you aren’t going to reach there. There’s not a thing you can do in this world to prevent your reaching there and having the experience, because the drama is over. It has been accomplished. Christ is risen, so mankind is redeemed, and no one can be lost. There isn’t a beast in this world, a man so frightful, that he is going to be lost. Are we not told in scripture, “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.” Well, if the Lord hardened it, how can you condemn Pharaoh for not letting his people go? It is all part of the play. At a certain level you can’t see it and you will curse God like Job…as his wife said, “Curse him and die.” Curse God and die…why go through this? Yet Job is the story of every child born of woman, an innocent being put through hell by the will of God as told you in the last chapter, the 42nd chapter. Then his friends and his relatives came to Job and they feasted with him, and they loved him and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord God had brought upon him. No one else brought it upon him. The dreamer brings it upon you…you dream ignoble dreams and that dreamer is God. He does everything in the world.
Now, you take hold of yourself at the very end…as you are now. You’re coming into the last stretch as it were, and then alter the play. Make it conform to your noble dreams, your lovely concepts, and dream it in the same way the Father dreamed all the way through taking you with him. In the end when he brings you to the climax, you are he, not two anymore. He leaves everyone and cleaves to you his emanation, his wife, for he’s called in scripture “your husband.” “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name” (Is.54:5). So in the end the husband and wife aren’t two; they have become “one being, one body, one Spirit, one Lord, one God and Father of all.” No room for two; there’s only one.
Now here, we’re coming to the end of our session. Not only dwell upon these lovely things concerning your ultimate end, but before we meet, if we meet again, you have the world of Caesar. You have so much to do in the world of Caesar that you need. You need homes or apartments, more money, this, that and the other. Don’t hesitate for one moment to dream it. Well, how do I dream it? I assume that I have it. My assumption is the beginning of my dream. I persist in my assumption…I am persisting in my dream. Although reason denies it and my senses deny it, my assumption though at the moment denied by my senses if I persist will harden into fact. I have watched it unnumbered times. It will harden into fact. So have a noble dream. It will not interfere with the basic dream that is taking place in you; no reason in this world why it should interfere, and it cannot interfere. Take your lovely wonderful dreams and persist in them…just walk as though they were true.
Try to touch them, give them reality. If they can give an odor, well then, try to detect the odor. I have tried it with just plain odor and taught others just to take the odor. One lady one night said, “I will test it now.” She wasn’t altogether certain it would work, but she embraced a huge, huge bunch of flowers, roses. She could detect the aroma of the rose. It’s unlike any other aroma. When she was completely saturated with the feeling and the odor of roses, she simply dropped it. Not that night but the following night…she lived in the Waldorf Towers…as she was going to her room, here, she detected this aroma of roses. She wondered where they were coming from. She stopped in front of a door thinking it’s coming from here. It was so potent the entire hallway was permeated with the odor of roses. She looked into her own room, the window was open and so the draft was great as she opened her door, and here came this enormous overpowering odor of roses. She looked into her room and on her bureau three dozen beauties.
It appeared that the Queen Mother, the present queen’s mother, was in New York City and this huge banquet, over a thousand attended for the English-speaking banquet, and she was the honored guest. So these beautiful roses were grown for her and were named after her. The next day when they were cleaning up, they asked the maitre de what to do with the roses and the maitre de said, “Well, I know that Mrs. Niemeyer loves flowers. Give her three dozen, and give so-and-so a dozen and give so-and-so a dozen.” But she was singled out because she loved flowers to be given three dozen beauties. They were simply perfect the night before, so they were just as perfect when they were brought to her room the next day. Here she was overpowered with roses. That’s putting it to the test.
So I don’t care who you are and I invite you to test it. I invite you to take the challenge. Are you not invited in the 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test” (13:5). So test him and see. You are invited to test him and see. Well now, that’s how I would test him, for he is the power of God, the wisdom of God, the love of God…all in that seed and that seed is in you. So long before he awakens as you, you can test him. Can’t you feel a rose now in your hand? There’s no rose here, but you can feel it. Feel that velvety quality of a rose and you can detect the odor if you know the odor of a rose…and who doesn’t? You can take any of these things and test it. If you say even just for the fun of it—for she did it just for the fun of it—she can well afford to buy roses. But she didn’t…she was given three dozen beauties.
So tonight, when you leave here make a pledge to yourself that you will live by it: lean against the hope that Christ is awakening in you. Because, you can’t fail anyway, so just lean against it. Then take his promise that you can assume any state and it will become a fact…for that’s his promise. It’s not stated in these words but stated even more beautifully: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will.” You can’t state it any clearer than that. These are the words of an awakened man who is God, for every man who awakes in Jesus Christ is God. He has not a thing to do but bring forth himself. If you have Strong’s Concordance, look up the word that is translated “seed” in the 3rd chapter of Galatians, and you will see that it is the male sperm from the idea of extending oneself. It’s called “the seed” and it’s called “the Christ seed” (3:16).
So for anyone who is here for the first time…and I don’t think there is one for the first time…when you know what you want, construct a scene which would imply that you have it…any scene to you that would imply that you have it. When you’ve constructed it, just simply without bursting a blood vessel assume that you are seeing it, and try to touch it, try to hear it if hearing would do, try to see it with your spiritual eye. Bring all of your senses to bear upon this scene implying the fulfillment of a dream. After you’ve done it, persist in it in the sense that you know you’ve done it, that the whole thing is behind you.
Now, it seems strange to tell you, but our present moment is not receding into the past; it’s advancing into the future to confront us. So if I do it now, it’s not receding into my past, it’s really advancing into my future and I’m walking only to confront what I’m doing now. But man thinks what I have got now has receded and that’s past, that’s gone. It hasn’t gone; it’s always moving to confront me.
Now, let us go into the Silence.
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Are there any questions, please?
Q: What is intuition?
A: What is intuition? Well, I can’t give you the dictionary’s definition of the word, they may differ; but I feel that man brings into this world innate knowledge. He gets nothing from this world. As Blake said, “The world is too poor to give him anything…he brings it with him.” And so then he knows intuitively in the sense he knows it; he has an innate knowledge of something. That to me is intuition.
Now, you may have a vision and that’s not intuition, because that to you is so graphic that no power in the world could dislodge it. When I saw the race three days before it took place, there’s no argument that anyone could give me to tell me I didn’t see it, and I saw it just as it came out. Had I any amount of money I would have placed it right on the nose of the one that really came first, Arts and Letters. I saw the end and I saw Majestic Prince second, the next post position, and I saw Dike third. I saw it. How could anyone tell me I didn’t see it? I saw it, saw the colors, and told my wife the next morning, and told my daughter on Saturday morning. She was going over to a friend’s who wanted the Prince to win. Well, I wanted him to win, too. But I didn’t know the jockey, the owner, didn’t know the trainer, I knew of them. But I had no personal interest, only a sentimental interest. So there was no reason for me to start doing anything. I wanted the Prince to have the Triple Crown. But I saw the race in the wee hours of Thursday morning, about four. I was closer to that race than I’ve ever been to any race in my life when I’m viewing it through these eyes, or even if I’m on the finish line. I couldn’t see it as closely if I had them up with glasses, for with the spiritual eye you see all the colors in detail. You see everything. I saw the horse come in on the rail and not a thing could catch him, pulling out, pulling away. I could hardly believe I saw it. And I awoke, may I tell you, I woke disappointed. I was disappointed because I wanted to see other than that. But I saw it and I had to go with my vision, for God makes himself known unto me in vision. And that was the end. It’s just as well that man does not know all that God has planned. He’s mad enough as it is. What would he do if he saw these fixed ends?
Any other questions?
Q: What can you say about these beings who wrote the Bible as related to time and space?
A: They are men conditioned by divine providence for the part that they played. They were completely unknown. Their names bear a certain significance. Tonight I started quoting Nehemiah, which means “Jehovah has comforted.” There is a great comfort if I can read something with understanding, and so in the 8th chapter, 8th verse, I quoted tonight that they read from the book the law of God with interpretation, and they understood that which was read, for the men gave the sense to it. Well now, that’s a great comfort to a man if he knows as he reads what is behind what he is hearing or seeing. The average person reading the book doesn’t see it, because Jesus has become to the entire Christian world and those who oppose the Christian faith, a man. They don’t see the mystery behind the word “Jesus.” It is the one name because that is the climax, the fulfillment of everything that belongs to the play, and all are gathered together into the one being. The word “Jesus” means “Jehovah”…same thing…it means “savior.” So everyone who has reached that state, although all are redeemed they have to pass through the drama as it were and arrive at the point of redemption. But he is redeemed because the one man contained all, and all are redeemed. I’m not distressed when I hear of this one or that one—a lovely person goes to jail, all right, so he goes to jail. I’m not distressed. I can only say, what’s wrong with that one going to jail when others went to jail? So the papers make much of it if the man who is in jail has prominent parents…then he gets free space, an advertisement. He doesn’t differ from the other inmates.
Q: In the span of a man’s lifetime, how much is predestined and how much isn’t?
A: The fixed things concerning the drama are all predestined. In the world of Caesar, you and I have a talent and we can exercise it. Your wonderful experience that you wrote me last week, I think it’s perfectly marvelous. When you realized after you tried to drown this one in a cage that you yourself were in the cage. Nothing wrong with that…simply a state…trying to let go or dispose of a state. You hadn’t completely let go of it, because it was still alive. But you recognized yourself in it. I think your other one concerning the child is perfectly marvelous…a wonderful adumbration of the event. You wanted that child with all your heart and you knew it was yours. The number seven is significant, for the seven means “a spiritual experience”…seven is always spiritual. So I liked your letter immensely.
Until Monday…thank you.
Photo: Bob Coglianese/NYRA/Thoroughbred Times Collection via the Keeneland Library