26 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “The Maker and the Maker of Things

2/7/69

___(??) the very platform right on this level of Caesar. The subject is concerning the making of things in this world. There is a Maker and we are called upon to test this Maker. That which appears as made points to an activity that does not appear. As we are told, “What we see was made out of things which do not appear” (Heb. 11:3).

Now, I am asked to test this principle. So in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians he said, “Test yourselves”…first of all, “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test” (2 Cor. 13:5). So tonight we want to test this principle, for he tells us that “By him all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made” (Jn. 1:3). And this presence that makes everything is within us. Now I must find him and put him to the test, for I’m called upon to test him. It didn’t say he makes only the good but everything—good, bad or indifferent.

So I must now really test him, this presence. I tell you I have tested him and I know who he is. He is my own wonderful human Imagination. That is Jesus Christ…there never was another Christ. There never will be another…my own wonderful human Imagination. When I say “my” I’m speaking of all of us. As Blake said, “I know of no other Christianity and of no other gospel than the liberty of both body and mind to exercise the divine art of Imagination. Imagination the eternal world into which we shall all go after these vegetable mortal bodies are no more.” And then he adds, “The apostles knew of no other gospel than this wonderful human Imagination that creates everything in this world.”

Now how does he create? John Stuart Mill defined causation in this manner: “Causation,” said he “is the assemblage of phenomena which occurring some outer phenomena commences and begins to appear in this world.” To put it in our language, I would say, causation is the assemblage of imaginal states implying the fulfillment of what we desire. If now we can set it in motion, activating it, it will produce that which the assemblage implies. Its potency is in its implication. Now, you and I are confronted every moment in time with a new problem. As H. G. Wells said, “All life throughout all the ages is nothing more than a continuing solution to a continuous synthetic problem.” You and I think if I only had x-number of dollars I could live for the rest of my earthly days comfortably. So I map the whole thing out. I think that’s going to do it…but it won’t do it. I have it all set, then comes something penetrating my wonderful setup, like inflation or the unforeseen, and it disturbs my wonderful ___(??) and makes me now conceive an imaginal solution to this continuous problem. I will not in eternity find a set state, not in this world. So I think if I had so much money I could live beautifully and then all of a sudden it doesn’t work, it doesn’t fit, because something penetrates it, inflation or this, that or the other, and all of sudden the whole thing is disturbed forcing me now to use my Imagination, my creative power, to construct some imaginal solution to this new problem.

This synthetic problem is defined in the dictionary as “the compiling of separate elements which produces a new form.” So something penetrates my form, and then it forces me with this new form to conceive a new solution to that form. Now this is how we do it. I’m confronted with any problem I don’t care what it is. I look at the problem, I don’t duck it I see it. Now, what is the solution to that problem? Suppose I were in jail, well, the solution would be to be out of jail and not ___(??), to have someone simply discharge me for reasons I need not know, but I am out of jail. I’m sleeping at home and I’m not listening to anyone knocking at the door to re-arrest me. If I were not in jail and I were free, where would I sleep? I would sleep at home. Well then, while in jail sleeping, I assume I am at home sleeping. I construct a scene implying the fulfillment of my desire.

You say, “Well, will it work?” I know it works. In San Francisco a few years ago this lady rose in the audience and she said, “My brother has been sentenced to six months hard labor in the Army. I don’t know what he did, but something he did and he is sentenced. He tells me he is innocent.” I said, “I’m not asking you whether he is innocent or not, what do you want?” She said, “I want him set free.” I said, “Were I you…would he come to your place if he were free?” “Oh yes he would. That’s exactly where he would come.” Well, she went home and she simply imagined she heard the doorbell ringing downstairs and she imagined that it was her brother. She rushed down the stairs, flung open the door, and here is her brother standing a free man. She did that until it took on all the tones of reality it seemed so natural to her. One week later while seated upstairs the doorbell rang and she rushed downstairs, threw the door open and there’s her brother. I asked no question as to how, but he was discharged. Who brought this action or who discharged him I don’t know, but he was not running away from that prison. If they simply heard the case over again and found that they had faulted, I do not know. I only know she rose the following Sunday in my audience in San Francisco and told that story. In one week he was out and just as she had imagined. Now if she didn’t know this principle, she would have remained at home and stewed and stewed for six months until he’d done the time and then he was out.

I tell you, everyone, use your Imagination, for that is Jesus Christ and by him all things are made and without him there was not anything made that was made (Jn. 1:3). You name one thing that wasn’t first imagined, just name it. Tell me something in this world. You might point to the mountains or to the earth, to the stars, but is Imagination limited to this level? Can’t you conceive of levels…and levels of Imagination? Your dream proves that and your visions certainly prove that. You go into divine imagining, same as human imagining only on higher levels. This whole vast world is sustained by divine imagining, and our imagining and divine imagining aren’t two but one. We are keyed low. So we are called upon to exercise this talent of ours, this power.

Now, faith is not complete until through experiment it becomes experience. That is, on this level you can experiment with the great promises of God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. You can on this level experiment with all that he tells you: “Whatever you desire, believe that you have it and you will.” You can experiment with that. So, faith is not complete until through experiment it becomes experience, and then you are on sure ground and you can walk safely. If you know an unseen objective, something that’s seen differently, and then you constructed a certain scene, an assemblage of mental states which would imply the fulfillment of it; then you activated it…you entered into the very center of it and you imagined the whole thing is taking place, and you felt all the tones of reality concerning this, and then you close the book on it. Then it happens in a way you did not devise…it seemed to come into your world across a bridge of incidence that you did not rationalize. You didn’t construct the bridge. You simply had to walk across this bridge to the fulfillment of what you had done. After you’ve done it, repeat it, and then try it again, and it worked, well, then you are on sure ground. You know exactly what to do whenever you are confronted with any problem. You see the problem, you don’t duck, you look at it, and then you construct some imaginal scene which would imply the solution, the fulfillment. Having activated it, you simply drop it and let it come into this world. And it does! If you are so sure of that then you can tell it and share it with others.

But many of us, I speak now of the Christian faith, and it’s so fatally easy to make the acceptance of Christianity a substitute for living by it. So, I say I’m a Christian. All right, you say you’re a Christian. Tonight, in New York City alone there are one million on relief and I dare say that ninety percent of them will tell you if you ask them that they are Christians. So they accept the very word “I’m a Christian” but they do not know the beginning of Christianity. For, I am told that Christ is not on the outside: “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you?” that’s what Paul challenges us with in that 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians. If I say yes to that then I can’t look for any Christ on the outside. I can’t go seeking anything, for I’m told in the Book of John that when he appears I am like him (1 Jn. 3:2). Can I go looking for someone who really looks like me? When he appears I am like him. Well, I better start looking for him now and Paul tells us where to look for him: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” Well, if he’s in me and he makes me and he makes all things, I’ve got to find what in me makes all things. Then I discover, why, it’s my Imagination. That I imagined this…that when I was a boy I dreamt of leaving little Barbados, unschooled, with no background, and coming to America. Didn’t want to go to England, I didn’t want to go to any part of the world, I just wanted America. So when I was seventeen, I became so restless that my parents put me on the boat and put $600 in my pocket and sent me off to America, knowing, so they thought, I would come back after I spent the money. That would take me no time they thought, spend the 600 and come on back. Well, that’s forty-odd years ago…the year was 1922. Oh, I’ve gone back many a time on vacation, but certainly not to live. I’ve gone back time and again just to see the family and to have a nice vacation.

But this I felt as a boy…I wanted it, so I began to dream I would live in America. When they came home I wanted to hear every American voice. Englishmen came, Frenchmen came, all kinds of people came, because it’s a little island with ships coming and going. But it was simply the Americans that fascinated me. And so, eventually through my fascination I had to come to America. Can you become enamored over something I don’t care what it is? So you say, “Well, I would like to be” and you name it. Now, if you would become that then how would you see the world if it were true? Then in your Imagination begin to see the world as you would see it if it were true. If you do it in this manner, no power in the world can stop you from becoming it, but no power! Well, if it becomes true, haven’t you found Christ? Or the words of scripture are false: “By him all things were made and without him there was not anything made that was made.” Well, if that is true and I have found a Maker in me that produced a certain thing—I have done it numberless times; I’ve taught it to others and they have done it numberless times—haven’t we found him? Haven’t we found who Jesus Christ really is?

Now listen to the words, “Unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24). This is not a man on the outside talking to you. This is something taking place in you: unless I believe that I am he I die in my sins. Oh, I know in the world of Caesar when one wears the garment of flesh even though they have completely experienced the entire drama of Christ, when they tell it, the world just simply puts their hands over their ears to shut out this blasphemy. Because they firmly believe that he is coming from without if he ever comes and that he came from without and died 2,000 years ago and that is an historical fact. They can’t believe in the true Jesus Christ, that when he comes to any individual he comes within that individual, unfolding the entire story as recorded in scripture. When the individual has the entire story recorded in him, or re-experiences in him, he knows who he is. There’s only one story and only one being plays the part and that is God. “God alone acts and is in all existing beings or men” (Blake, A Memorable Fancy). Only God plays that part and that story is told in the gospel, which is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. So if the individual has the entire story unfolding within him and finds himself cast in the central role—that he is not a spectator observing the drama, he is the central actor, and God alone acts—then he knows who he is.

Then he goes out and he tells it. But while he wears the garment of flesh they will not listen and they will say to him “You have a devil. You must have a devil because you’re blaspheming the name of God.” He said, “My Father is he whom you call God and I know my Father and you know not your God.” He knew his origin and his destiny, and no one would believe him because he wore a garment of flesh. But he knew the entire story unfolding within him and the whole thing awakened within him. Those who heard it were not expecting that kind of revelation, so they simply would shut him out as one who blasphemed the name of God. But here, within me I hear it: Unless I believe that I am he I will continue missing my mark in life, which means “sinning.” For “to sin” means “to miss the mark,” miss the goal. So I have a goal…if I don’t believe I am really the Maker, the Creator of all things, and I pray to another, I am missing the mark. So the words are, “Unless you believe that I am he, you die in your sins.”

So anyone who will not believe…you go to bed tonight…you must assume that you are already what you want to be. That assumption though at the moment is denied by you reason, denied by your senses and is false, if persisted in will harden into fact. This is how we create. I create and make something out of things that do not appear. So I assume that I am…and to prove that I am it in my mind’s eye I bring a circle of friends to congratulate me and allow them to congratulate me on my good fortune. Then I sleep having received the congratulations of those who would empathize with me were it true. So they actually believe because they now congratulate me they have witnessed my good fortune. Then I sleep in that assumption. I wake tomorrow morning, I’m in the same environment, but I’ve set things in motion and now some bridge of incidence, some series of events will appear in my world which will compel me to move across that bridge up to the fulfillment of that which I have assumed.

Well, if it happens and I repeat it, and share it with another, the other tries it and it works, then what does it matter what the world thinks? I have found him and I have found the one the world worships as someone on the outside. They make pictures of him and it doesn’t resemble the Maker. You make a picture of Jesus Christ, hang it on the wall, bow before it, and it’s so unlike the artist who painted it or who wrote it, and it’s not that at all. “When he appears, we will be like him” (1Jn.3:2). That’s what we are told in the first epistle of John: whenever he appears then I am just like him. So I know from my own experience when he appears the drama as told in scripture unfolds within me. You are the one playing the central part and only God acts. God alone acts and is in all existing beings and men, so he simply puts himself into the central part and unfolds the eternal drama in you; then you know that you are God.

Last year in San Francisco just before the first meeting (I gave ten lectures) and this lady came to me and she said, “You know, Dr. ___(??) died suddenly. He was sitting quietly and all of a sudden he dropped over and he was gone. I always thought that you and Dr. ___(??) were the greatest in the world teaching.” I said nothing. I didn’t know Dr. ___(??). I saw him in book stores when I went into bookstores in New York City. I met him just casually, but I never once heard him speak. She sat in the audience and I started on the concept that man is God and God is man. “Man is all Imagination, and God is man, he exists in us and we in him; that the eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself” (Blake, Annot. to Berkeley; Laocoon). Then I told the story of a lady who is now departed this world, how she had this experience where she was in this enormous room with these huge pillars, alone, one chair in which she sat. Then she noticed a carriage, not drawn by a horse, self-propelled, and it came up. Then the door opened and I stepped out with a briefcase, wearing a cape. I came through this door into this enormous area and I began to proclaim the power of God, sheer power. And she said to herself, “Why that’s Neville and yet it is God. It’s Neville and it’s God…Neville and it’s God.” And then when I got through, without recognizing her I turned and then as though by appointment the carriage came back into sight and I stepped in and it vanished.

Well, it so impressed her that she wrote me the letter and told me. I simply told her that everyone is destined to discover that he is God, everyone in the world. There’s nothing but God. God conceived it. There was no one to play it and he played the whole thing himself like conceiving a glorious poem that exists only for the one who conceived it, the poet…it doesn’t exist for itself. But he so loved it he wants all the characters to exist for themselves and finding no one to play it he buries himself…he dies to all that he really is and takes on the limitations of the characters. Then he goes through all the tribulations and then slowly awakens in all the characters. Now he’s individualized but he is God. He is still Neville, the character in the play, but he is now God. He is still John, he is still Jim, he is still everyone, but he is God in the very end. This is the story.

Well, she wouldn’t come back after the meeting to greet me and never came back the other nine. She was so shocked, yet a few minutes before she is telling me I am the greatest in teaching the Truth. She hoped I would conform to her little concept of what Jesus is and what God is, and I didn’t. I came right out and boldly proclaimed that we were all God, but all are not yet aware of it, and that we become aware of it when the story as told in the gospels concerning Jesus Christ, who is buried in everyone, suddenly awakens in the individual. When he awakens, the story unfolds in that individual and that individual then knows that he is Jesus Christ. For if Christ is in me, where is he? “Do you not realize,” said Paul, “that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test” (2 Cor. 13:5).

So I take a test and prove him on this level. I want to go some place and I can’t afford the money, I can’t afford the time, and conditions around me deny that I can do it. So I put myself there any way, just as though I had made the trip, and I sleep in the assumption that I am where I would be if I made the trip. Then everything changes and compels the trip, the money comes, the time is allowed, everything comes and I make the trip. Then where is Jesus Christ? Was he not my Imagination? Well, that’s what scripture teaches. But man has taken this wonderful story, personified it into one little being, and then has made of him a little icon so that all men bow before a little man-made god when the true God is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s God.

Now, if all things are made by him, and you can this night imagine something that is not now a fact, and persist in that imaginal act, and tomorrow it becomes fact, haven’t you found him? Well now, having found him don’t give him up. As you are told in the end of the drama, “Now that you have found me, let these men go, but don’t let me go.” At the very end of the drama they’re looking for him and no one knows him. One knows him and he betrays him. Well, to betray someone you must first know that one’s secret. I can’t betray you if I don’t know your secret. So the one who knows the secret betrays him and that one is himself. It’s self-revealed; he reveals himself. Unless God reveals himself, how would you know him? So he turns to all the others who did not know him and said, “Now that you have found me don’t let me go, but let all these go.” Let everything on the outside go, but don’t let me go. The drama is within oneself. If I find him in myself, then don’t, no matter what argument the wise men of the world give me don’t listen if it is in conflict with what I have found. I have found Christ and Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination.

I may tomorrow forget it and be penetrated by the rumors of the world. Then suddenly the body collapses and I suffer the penetration because I am penetrated by something that disturbs the mold. I must then instantly re-establish my harmony by imagining what I would feel like if things were as I desired them to be to get back into that state. I can’t stop the penetration. I’m living in this wonderful, fabulous world. As we brought out in the last lecture that to perceive you, you must first penetrate my brain; therefore, at once you are within me and at the same time without and independent of my perception. But you are within me. That’s enough for me. If you are within me, I don’t have to go searching for you. Everything penetrates me, like cities and mountains and rivers, everything, or I would not be aware of them. It must penetrate my brain for me to become aware of them. So at the moment of penetration it’s within you even though it still maintains a certain independence of my perception of it and it is without.

Now, if I will treat this inter-penetration seriously, oh what possibilities! I don’t need to go any place other than where I stand now to adjust myself to be elsewhere. For if I am all Imagination I must be wherever I am in Imagination. So someone penetrates me and I want to contact him, all right, I simply in my mind’s eye adjust myself to this communion that they’re here, not there. I make there here and then now, and then adjust myself within myself to everything that has ever penetrated me. For if God is within me, is there any place where God is not? There’s no place where he’s not. Then where would I go to be where I want to be? And so, if everything penetrates me, well then, I will simply single out that which has penetrated me and adjust myself to it.

Like tonight, if I want to be elsewhere in this world, I will adjust myself to that and put myself there through the feeling that I am that. How would I know I’m there? I view the world from there and I will see it as I would have to see it if I were there. How do I know I have moved? Motion can be detected only by a change of position relative to another object. So I’m standing here and as far as the world goes I haven’t moved, but in my mind’s eye I have moved because I now observe the world differently, and I see it as I would see it were I there…yet physically I’m still here. Everything is here because everything has penetrated me. So I simply by a mental adjustment, I adjust myself to being the man that I want to be.

Well, how will I know that I’ve made that motion? Have my friends look at me, and if they see me as they formerly saw me, I didn’t move. Try it again. If they now see me and I see it on their faces the expression which implies they see in me the man that I’m assuming that I am, I’ve moved. I have moved from whatever I was to where I’m now assuming that I am. So let them look at me ‘til I see on their faces that which would imply to me that they see in me that which I’m assuming that I am. Now, there’s no other way to tell that you’ve moved, for motion cannot be detected save by a change of position relative to another object. The motion of a single object is stupid. They couldn’t tell unless there is a frame of reference against which it moved. Well, I have a frame of reference. I have my friends in this world and they will know if anything happens to me. If tonight I drop dead, there will be a little motion, and one friend will call another friend, another friend, and finally dozens will know Neville died. So they will know. If on the other hand something good happens to me, they’ll know it in the same way, that little chain reaction. One will call another and say, “You know what happened to Neville? He did so and so or so and so happened.” They’ll all know it. Now, let me bring into my mind’s eye a small circle of those who know me. I’m assuming now that I am what I want to be and then I assume that they’re looking at me, and they’re congratulating me, and they’re empathizing with me. Well then, at that moment having felt the reality of all that I’m doing I drop it.

Now, if it comes to pass just as I have imagined it, haven’t I found Jesus Christ? If he does all things and not a thing in this world ever was made that he didn’t make and I made that, well, haven’t I found him? Who is he then? Is he not my Imagination? So I tell you that my Imagination, your Imagination, is Jesus Christ. God became man that man may become God. And God is all Imagination, and becoming man, he’s man’s Imagination. So “Man is all Imagination and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination that is God himself.” God alone acts; he’s the only actor in the entire world. So I can act the part of a fool, the perfect fool. I can act the part of a very poor man and play it beautifully. I can act the part of a rich man and play it. It all depends on what I want to be in this world. Not everyone wants to be rich…you may think they do, but no they don’t really. They want enough to live on and to live well, but not everyone is really moved to be rich. If they are moved to be rich and they don’t know this principle, they remain poor, because they’re looking to a God on the outside and trying to coerce him into doing something for them by acquiring merit. You can acquire all the merit in the world, you can be so good that the whole vast world will think you’re the best person in the world, and yet remain the being that you don’t want to be. You’ve got to know who you really are. And no man really knows himself who does not know the revealer, and the revealer unveils himself within you as your very being.

In my experiences, I never saw another one do it. I was not a spectator of another; I was the actor playing the part, the very part that is written up in the gospels as played by Jesus Christ. So you tell the story while you wear this little garment that decays…and they are simply shocked beyond measure. You seem to be so blasphemous when you make these bold, bold claims, and yet you can’t deny what happened to you. I could no more deny this than I could the simplest evidence of my senses. I know what I ate tonight and yet it is not as vivid in my Imagination as the experiences of playing the story in the gospels. If I now relive tonight’s dinner, why, it fades in color, in everything, compared to these dramatic events that took place in me many years ago. These are as though they’re taking place now they are so vivid and so real.

So I say to everyone, the one who makes everything in your world is your own wonderful human Imagination. It may seem a cruel thing to say to one who is now experiencing something that he does not want that he made it, but I have to be honest with myself. I have suffered, I have gone through all kinds of physical pains, but I could not deny…even though I could point to something and say, “Well, I caught the flu.” So I caught the flu. Caught it where?—all within me. Read the paper that forty to fifty percent of the country, well that would run in to tens of millions of people, so I got it just like fifty million or maybe eighty million, I don’t know, and went through all the pains and all the fevers and all the heat, and dropped off twelve pounds (which I haven’t regained). But I learned a lesson: I can’t deny that I am subject to everything that man is subject to, even though I have experienced the drama of Christ Jesus. The entire story unfolded within me, placing myself in the central character. Yet, in spite of that I have to go through everything, because I cannot point to any other cause other than my own Imagination, I can’t. The cause cannot come from without I don’t care what it is. If I’m in pain tonight, the cause has to be traced back to me. As we’re told in Galatians (6:7), “Be not deceived; God is not mocked”—and God is my own Imagination, so he isn’t mocked—“as a man sows so shall he reap.” “You see yonder hills, the sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn, the silence and the darkness knew, and so is a man’s fate born” (Light of Asia). So I can’t pass the buck. Anyone who comes to me, they tell me a story, I’ve got to go right back to the imaginal act in that being and try in some way to resolve it.

So I tell you here, to go back to quote once more John Stuart Mill, “Causation is the assemblage…” and now I’ll quote it in our words, “the assemblage of mental states, which occurring produces that which the assemblage implies.” So you create some assemblage of mental states implying you are what you want to be. Now you enter that state and you believe it…you become one with it. Perform all these inner acts just as though they were outer acts, and then watch it come to pass in this world. The whole thing will come to pass. And don’t think you’ll ever find a stopping place in this world. If you live to be a thousand, you’ll never find that you have built one little mold that will endure unmoved, undisturbed forever, because you’re being penetrated morning, noon and night by everything in this world. So I think I now need to be perfectly harmonious for the rest of my days and tomorrow it is disturbed, forcing me to use my talent to construct an imaginal solution. Then having constructed an imaginal solution ___(??) it and then it’s resolved. But do not expect you’re going to find any permanent state between now and the end when you depart this world.

May I tell you, you aren’t departing it. You depart it relative to those who cannot follow you, but you haven’t departed it. You’ve entered another section of the same world and will continue to do so until that story as told in the gospel repeats itself in you. Because of his indwelling in you, it will be repeated, for that is the story of God being born in man and coming awake in man. Were he not in man, it could not be repeated; but he is in man as man’s own wonderful human imagination. So when you depart this world before you experience this story, don’t think that you are dead…dead only relative to those who can’t follow you. To yourself you are very much alive and once more made young—not a baby but young, about twenty—in a world best suited for the work yet to be done within you, until this thing erupts and unfolds within you. After that, the next time you depart a section of time you leave this age altogether and enter an entirely new age, that age spoken of in scripture as “the kingdom of God.” Don’t try to visualize what it is because images of earth will not enter to help you at all. It’s something entirely different, a new life, a new being, a new body.

Now here, treat it seriously tonight, because it’s right down on this level, and you can prove it. Before we meet again you can prove it if you really believe it. We live by our beliefs…giving it lip service is not enough. Just as the whole vast world of Christians give lip service to Christianity and make that a substitute for living by it. It is not…it must become something alive within us. Do I really believe in Christ? Yes I do. Well, do I know who he is? Yes I do. Who is he?—my own wonderful human Imagination. Does he make everything in your world? Yes. Well then, test him and see. I will. Now, instead of saying I will and forget it, will I keep that always in mind so that when confronted with any problem I will simply construct an imaginal solution which would be the true solution of that problem, and then enter into that image and abide in it as though it were true? Well, I will…I’ll try to, try to always remember who the Maker is, for he makes things out of things that do not appear and he himself does not appear. He’s like quicksilver. You can catch him best in a daydream. As Fawcett said, “Divine Imagining, which is God, is like pure imagining in ourselves. He lives in the very depths of our souls, underlying all of our faculties, including perception, but he streams into our surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy.” So in that form of creative fancy and suddenly I’m daydreaming I could catch him…that is God. For he who is dreaming that’s God. God is the dreamer. All dreams proceed from God, whether it be a day dream or a night dream and everything in this world was preceded by a dream, or call it an imaginal act. So you take it seriously and test it, you are invited to test it. You who have a Bible (I hope you all have Bibles) it’s the 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, and you’ll find what I told you in the 5th verse. It’s a very short chapter, you can’t miss it: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” And it’s stated all through his letters that “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (Col.1.27)…not Christ in history. Well now, if he makes all things, then put him this night to the test.

Now, let us go into the Silence.

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Q: What version of the Bible do you use?

A: I use both the King James and the Revised Standard Version. I have them both at home in what is known as The Interpreter’s Bible and they are paralleled, the King James on one side, the Revised Standard Version on the other, so I can compare them. Then comes the Exegesis; then come the commentaries—there are twelve very large volumes; and four large volumes of the dictionaries. These sixteen are my daily, I would say, fare, my joy. I get up in the morning around 4:30 with a cup of tea. I start reading the Bible until the paper comes. Some passages in the King James I prefer to that in the Revised Standard, but I will compare them and I’ll take my choice. Then read the Exegesis to give me the original meaning of the words when it was written, so that the scholar does not try to force you to accept certain things. He will tell you what it was written in that day, because words change their meaning.

Q: How do you really distinguish between wishful thinking and visualizing what you want to obtain?

A: Well, all these begin with a wish. I mean, you wish and so that’s a wishful thought. But instead of leaving it that way, you enter into the feeling of the wish fulfilled. What would the feeling be like if it were true? Now it goes beyond just a wish…leaving it as a wish. As Shakespeare brings out so beautifully, “We have been taught from the primal state that that which is was wished until it were.” So it begins with a wish. There isn’t a man in this world who is doing anything—be it something that he is proud of or not—but he finds he goes back…it was a wish. I wished to come to this country and in those days in 1922, as I presumed they had certain restrictions more so than today…but I came. I had no training to get any job. No matter where I’d go they would say “You aren’t trained.” Well, I knew I wasn’t trained. I tried to get a job climbing the poles of electricity for the telephone company and they said that you aren’t trained, you’re not educated. I said, “What?—to climb a pole? Show me what to do and I’ll do it.” I tried to get a job as a lumberjack in Canada. I went up, they said, “You aren’t trained.” “Trained for what? I’m strong!” I was at the age of seventeen, eighteen, a very strong boy…unusually strong for my age and for my size. But strength didn’t mean a thing for them or to any of them.

But I do know the whole thing is within us. In spite of my limitations, my social background, financial background, educational background, I kept on dreaming of transcending the limitations that were placed upon me but that I did not overcome when given the opportunity. In school…I went to school but when I heard the ball against the bat in cricket or a foot against the soccer ball that was something far more interesting to me than reading the book. And so, all these things so fascinated me that I wasn’t interested in school. I dare say I came out as I came in, untouched. Then I realized when I came here that something else had to happen, and I wasn’t aroused until I went to England. In 1925 I met an old Scotchman who was interested in certain mystical subjects and he read the Bhagavad-Gita and The Light of Asia and these lovely things to me, and then he gave them to me. Well, he inflamed…he touched a little wick within me so when I came back to America four months later, I was so moved by all that I had heard and read in the interval that I went wild. Every penny that I had that I could afford outside of my rent I bought books on related subjects. When I traveled I carried enormous amounts of books. While others were playing cards in the dressing rooms, I was reading my books. So I was not really aroused until I was twenty years old in 1925…completely untouched…a virgin until then.

Good night.