08 May Neville Goddard Lectures: “We Came Out From the Father and Return”
6/28/68
We’re closing tonight for a little while, and if you are on the mailing list, you’ll receive a notice when we reopen. We do not use your name for any purpose other than to notify you when we are in the city and where, so feel perfectly free to share with us your name and address. We do not sell it, we do not exchange it, or in any way use it for any purpose other than the purpose for which I told you…to let you know when we’re in town and where.
Now, I do hope that you will keep this alive forever. No one knows, really, what moment in time they’re called to depart this sphere, no one knows. I tell you I’ll be here based upon human concepts in September, but who knows? No one knows. We depart on time and we enter on time. And he who started a good work in us will continue it until he brings it to perfection; and that perfection is that he has completed the image of himself within us, and that image is now endowed with life within itself. It is no longer a simple animated form; it is a life-giving Spirit. And so, when the work is completed and it has performed certain functions in this world, well then, it departs, and he who started it knows when it will depart. So I can only say I’ll be back in September, based upon my own knowledge and possibly wish, but I do not know. And no one knows, may I tell you.
Now, listen carefully for this is a simple, simple—and yet it is a mystery—it’s a simple story, but it’s all a mystery. The gospel which seems to be a little story, secular story, is a mystery to be known only by revelation. “I came out from the Father and came into the world; again, I leave the world and I return to the Father.” In these four short phrases we have the pre-existence of Christ, we have the incarnation, we have his death, and we have his ascension…in these simple four phrases. Now, what does it mean? I could put this into not the first-person singular but the first-person plural, we came out. For we are told—and what I just quoted you came from the 16th of John (verse 28)—but we’re told in the 1st chapter of Ephesians, “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (verse 4). So we, all of us, were chosen in him, so I could say we came out from the Father and we came into the world; again, we are leaving the world and we are going to the Father.
Now, what does it mean? Let me use just a simple analogy. Take a plant…the plant contains within itself all the suckers…that which we can take and transplant. While it exists within the plant it partakes of the life of the plant; but when it is transplanted, well then, that which partook of the life of the plant becomes, by the transplant, the parent. It becomes the parent. It was God’s purpose to give us himself…and God is a father. The only way he could do it is to send us out from himself; and yet he who sent us never left us, he’s within us, and like the sucker, contains within itself everything that the parent plant grew…if its flowers were red, white, blue, whatever they were. When it’s transplanted, and for a moment it seems to die…for this is the secret of life, life through death…and the seed falls into the ground and dies to be made alive. So the seed comes out containing within itself all that the parent contains. When it dies and is made alive and it grows, it is itself the parent containing everything that was in the parent stock.
So we came out from God and we are planted in the world of death, a world of mortality. Then, having “died” here, we became quickened, and then we grow into the parent stock. So if he was a father before we were sent out, then when we return we are the father. All are becoming one with the Father as the Father. So everything he possessed, but everything, we possess in our fullness. When the whole thing erupts and completes itself within us we are Father, containing everything in fullness that the Father contained. If he had a son, that same son—there can’t be a different son—he must be our son. Whatever happened to him then must happen to us. So this is, “I came out from the Father and came into the world; again, I leave the world and I go to the Father.” That is the great mystery as told in scripture. People think it is secular history; it is not, it is not secular history.
So let me share with you a story (the lady is here tonight). We will not go back into the many things that preceded this one thing, because it would confuse you if I took all the little symbolisms that preceded it. Well here, she found herself in vision and here is a train, a very long train. Then came a ladder and the ladder descended into a very dark cavern, and she peered into this depth and saw this blackness. She imagined herself aboard the train. She desired to be on that train, and so you simply imagined “I am on that train” and the minute she boarded that train it took off at an incredible speed. While it was moving up and up, she wondered about her destiny, and a voice said, “It will not be long.” Then she came out into light, startling light, a world of pinnacles, all pinnacles.
Then a light penetrated her brain. It seemed to be pie shaped, which I would take from her language to be, I would say, triangular, and it penetrated her skull. Then came as the light penetrated the vision of a very tall, tall chair, from the back. Then she felt herself standing in the front of the chair, and seated in this chair is this great, great being. She said, “I cannot tell you the feeling that immersed me in love when I looked at this being. I cannot describe the sound of his voice, but he said one word to me and that word was “babe.” Then I felt so small and so young in this immensity of love and these pinnacles. And then I asked, “What shall I do? What shall I do?” And then, again something in me clicked and I heard a voice say and I saw what it said—it not only spoke but what it said appeared in script before me, and it said, ‘Record it.’ Then I saw you in the distance. You were far off in the distance, and I said, ‘Why that is Neville.’ This being, seated in the chair, began to describe you in the most endearing, possessing terms as he spoke of you in this loving, tender, endearing terms Then he said these words, ‘He is my resurrection.’ Then this statement was picked up by invisible voices and echoed and re-echoed and re-echoed all the way down time. And then I woke.”
Yes, she saw the Father. I am his resurrection. He buried himself in me before I came out of him…as he buried himself in you before you came out from him…and now I go back, having resurrected the Father in me. So I am the Father’s resurrection, for he unfolded within me, erupted within me. I know I am the Father, but before coming out I knew not that I was the Father. I partook of the life of the Father, but I was not individualized. There never was a time that you and I were not partaking of this tree of life, but we were not individualized. We came out into this world, not voluntarily, may I tell you. “We were made subject unto futility, not willingly, but by reason of the will of him who subjected us in hope; that we would be set free from this body of death and obtain the glorious liberty of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:20). And the Son of God is one with God, for he erupts into the Father. For the sucker contains within itself everything that the parent tree contained, but it will never know it until it is detached from the tree and transplanted. It dies and then it is made alive and becomes the parent, becomes the Father.
So here, everyone is destined to awaken as God the Father. And you will have these four mighty acts erupting within you which will spell out the being that you are. So here, in these four statements, the pre-existence is established, the pre-existence of Christ…and “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). That is the Christ of whom I speak, not some little man who walked 2,000 years ago. I speak of the mystery of Christ that is buried in every child born of woman. Here is the pre-existence of Christ. The detachment is death; he comes into the world and he dies. Now comes, after the long, long interval of death, the eruption of birth. It is the second birth, the birth from above; for the first birth from below is the birth of death…so we speak of that as death. The second as from above, which is the second born or the twice born man that is born from heaven and that is born into life. Then comes his return to the Father, which is the ascension. He comes back bearing witness to the fullness within himself of all that the parent contained, and he, himself, is now the parent, he is the Father.
So all the fathers return…everyone returns. “So in the last days,” it is said, “scoffers will come scoffing saying, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet.3:3). But they do not know a day is as a thousand years with the Lord and a thousand years as a day. He gives you a cue there concerning the six days or the six thousand years—six days in his eyes would be like 6,000 years to mortal eyes. And he promises you the time will be just on time; it would not be before or after. So I tell you, you came out from the Father. But while you are here, Christ who plays a certain office—and Christ is only the awakened man, the man who has been awakened—and he does not arbitrarily choose his office; he was born to fulfill that purpose. So he who plays the part of siring the world—that section of time to which he belongs and those called by the depth of his own being—did not arbitrarily choose that role at all. He was born to play that part.
Now, let me tell you another. This lady is here tonight, too, and so is the one of whom she speaks, and the third of whom she speaks. She said, “I found myself in this dream and Marta was with me, and here you stood before the two of us in a long black robe. We held umbrellas over us…we didn’t hold them, but they were over us…two black umbrellas, the old-fashioned with the peak. You were speaking the most profound words, the words of eternal wisdom, but you did not recognize us and you did not smile, you simply spoke the words. You showed no recognition of us and you did not smile. Then suddenly I found the two of us, Marta and myself, in a room still with the umbrellas. I said to Marta, ‘Did you understand what he said?’ and she said, ‘No.’ Suddenly, Dorothy Dix appears and she said, ‘I will explain it to you.’ Well, I was so surprised that she could explain it to us I awoke.”
Now, the symbolism is perfect, in a black robe and there were the black umbrellas. Black in symbolism is “the incomprehensible,” that’s really what it means. “Divine silence, eternity” is the symbol of black. In the Songs of Solomon, the bride speaks, she says, “I am black.” Now that word translated black should really be the “blackest of black,” but we have no superlative or comparative in Hebrew. To emphasize the comparative, you repeat the word, “black, black.” To make it superlative, like we do with the word holy, “holy, holy, holy.” We have no way of saying holist in Hebrew. To make it the holiest, we’ve got to take the word and repeat it three times, “Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty.” So this word should be repeated to the nth degree. So she said, “I am black, but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the curtains of Solomon.” Read it in the 1st chapter of the Songs of Solomon (verse 5). Here you are reading something that is a mystery that is incomprehensible. So she did say the right thing, “No I don’t understand it.” Well, here comes one that you would least suspect that could interpret it, and she says, “I will explain it to you” and it was so startling to her that she woke…so that no one heard what was said and no one understood…it still remains incomprehensible. But they heard it, they heard it, for I stood before them dressed in a black robe, and they with their umbrellas of black over them, listening to words, and I did not recognize them, did not smile. It was something that that mind at the moment could not grasp.
Now, it was preceded that night by a certain conversation following this lecture here when they went off for coffee. One said to the other, “What am I going to do for the next thirty years?” knowing that they were impregnated by the Holy Spirit. And to wait thirty years for the birth, “What am I going to do?” while the other one said, “What are you talking about? Did he not tell you that you’re blessed? What on earth are you dwelling upon…what’s thirty years when we’ve been waiting through eternity, and to know that in the short interval of thirty you depart this world—whether you are here or in some other section of it—you depart this world and enter into an entirely different age?” So that night prompted the vision and she who said to the other, “What are you talking about?” she had the vision, but she did not understand it…because I was dressed in black. Black is the mystery of mysteries. “I am black, but comely.” Don’t rub out the word comely. “I am black, but comely, O daughters of Jerusalem…black, just as black as Kedar, black as the curtains of Solomon.” This is the blackest of black, therefore, it contains divine silence, it contains eternity, and this incomprehensible secret. Yet, Dorothy comes out and says, “I’ll explain it to you.” Now don’t forget she was present by invitation at the last supper, and don’t discount that.
Now, another who is here tonight, and she said, “In the dream I saw two people, one I recognized but she was so pale and so thin that I was startled when I saw her. They said to me, ‘How far is it?’ I said, as far as I’m concerned for me it is only thirty minutes away, and then I woke.” Thirty minutes away, so she has conceived of the Holy Spirit. That interval is always thirty. But it’s thirty years; it’s not minutes, it’s not miles, it’s not hours, it’s years. Again, to her, what does it matter? She said, “You know, all through my life I’ve never wanted things…that’s why I don’t have things. I never put my mind on things; my mind was always on this. When I first heard you, I knew that this was the truth that I was seeking. So I have worked and I have served. I thought then, I still do now, and I’ve trained my two children to serve and love in this world. I’ve made that my key, just to serve and love.” Well, at this moment, in spite of all of the popular people in the world and well known, with all their fortunes, she has been selected to receive the imprint. Because, we all came out with the ova waiting for that fertilization for it to erupt within us. So, all contain within themselves all that it takes to become like the Father, but not until it’s fertilized. We walk through the centuries bearing our egg, but the egg isn’t fertilized until that moment in time when by a certain order of selection one who is born for that purpose is used in that capacity. And the office of Christ, as we told you last time, is simply that men may become sons of God by grace through union with him who is the son of God by nature. So he is born for that purpose, and then he is used for that purpose so that others may become sons of God by grace through union with him who is the son of God by nature.
And it’s all supernaturally done; it’s not done on this level at all. Some remember it; most do not. That’s why I’m asking you for your visions and for your dreams, so I can tell you without any doubt in my mind when it has happened…if you tell me your visions. But tell me just as it happened. Don’t change it, don’t add to it, and don’t take from it. Don’t try to dress it up for me to make it look better. Tell me just as it happened…the most impossible dream…tell it just as it happened, and I’ll tell you my interpretation of the vision, of the dream.
In the meanwhile, don’t neglect the law of God, and the law of God is that assumptions harden into fact, that there is no such thing as fiction. If imagining creates reality, you can’t have fiction in this world. You can’t possibly have it. For what I imagine today I may forget, and when it appears in my world, I may not recognize my own harvest. Some unknown author this night is writing a story just in order to pay rent, and he simply sells it. It may not be successful, but he was lost in it. They may run a thousand off the press, he may run 5,000 and sell 800, and put the others up as remainders. It doesn’t matter, he did it, he created something and that in tomorrow will come to pass…and no one will recognize it. Tonight’s picture, that I saw in this morning’s paper, they cancelled what was considered a too gruesome picture tonight based upon the new concept of not having too many violent pictures, but they’re putting in its place A Night to Remember. Now that picture, which was made here recently, was based upon the sinking of the Titanic. And yet in 1898 that book was written and it was called Futility. An unknown author wrote the book. And here, in 1912 The White Star Line built the ship, the duplicate of the imaginary ship that was in a novel written back in 1898. The 1898 novel’s ship sailed the Atlantic filled with rich and complacent people and he sank it on the maiden voyage on an iceberg in the Atlantic. Here, fourteen years later the so-called real ship, filled with the rich and complacent, sank on an iceberg in the month of April in the Atlantic. People say that there is fiction. There is no fiction! And if this man Walter Lord who wrote the book called A Night to Remember had not done a great research, he never would have found that little book to support this claim. He doesn’t claim it…he calls it “a strange coincidence.” There is no coincidence. I’m imagining morning, noon and night, and I set my imagining in action and it comes to pass. I may not remember what I imagine and deny that I have anything to do with what I’m reaping in my world.
Here, we saw this violent thing with Kennedy. And yet you read between the lines, they all as a family felt they were destined to lose their sons this way. Now, how they entertained this thought, I do not know. If someone actually spoke it in their presence and convinced them of this, I don’t know. But somewhere along the way as a family they entertained this, this sense of martyrdom, this sense of violence, and so it comes to pass. There is no accident in this world: As a man sows, so does he reap. So I can actually feel I am this, that and the other, I’m entitled to it. I’m free as the wind to imagine anything in this world, but I’ll reap the results of it. Am I willing to pay the price and reap the results? So I can think I’m a good author and write the most horrible, frightful things…just an author putting these things out, but I will reap the results. I’ll bring it all back to my own being.
A friend, here today, wrote a letter this week too. He said, “When I was a boy of nine, I received for a present an Ouija Board, and as a child I played with it when I was alone. Naturally I asked it questions and so I wanted to know, who am I, and the board came back ‘Christ.’ Well, I was so thrilled, I believed it implicitly. But I thought as a child it meant I was Jesus reincarnated, that’s what I thought. I knew nothing of the mystery of Christ, so I took it on a literal level. When I explained myself to the ministers, the high church of the Episcopal world, they thought that was the most devilish thing in the world; and so they, naturally, educated me out of this that they called neurotic sin. And so I went around feeling that I was sinning beyond measure that I entertained this thought for so long a period of time. One night I prayed that I would have the really great sacrament. I prayed that I would have a complete absolution of this sin that separated me from God when this marvelous vision descended upon me, with the altar and everything attached to it.”
But these so-called wise people who go around with their long frocks and they call themselves very wise people because they can conduct a service in Latin and no one present understands one word they’re talking about. They should all read scripture…Paul said, “I’d rather speak five words that can be understood than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue” (1Cor.14:19). Let them go and read scripture, and they’ll stop this nonsense, coming into an English speaking world and speaking Latin. Let them go into the Latin speaking world and speak Latin, but don’t come here where very few people understand one word outside of English, and even that poorly. So, speak the tongue in which I was born that I may understand you or be silent, instead of all this nonsense of conducting all this stupidness in Latin or in Greek, some tongue other than what those that you address understand.
So it was that crowd that said to him that you have this neurotic sin and educated him out of this state when he should have continued in it; because it is Christ in you that is the hope of glory. He tells you, “I tell you a mystery…Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test! I hope you realize we have not failed in the test” (2 Cor. 13:5). Well, what is the test? “By him all things are made and without him there’s not a thing made that is made” (John 1:3). Well then, who is he? I have put him to the test and I came to the conclusion that he is my Imagination. He can’t be other than my Imagination, for I imagined a state, I remained faithful to the state, and it happened. Well, if it happened and he makes all things, I can trace the maker back to my 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 and that is Jesus, the divine body, we are his members” (Blake, Ann. to Berkeley; Laocoon). Because, if he makes all things and I imagine this, that or the other and then remaining faithful to my imaginal state it happened, well, I’ve found who he is. And he’s not something divorced from me: He is my own wonderful human Imagination.
So that little board moved by his own unconscious motion revealed to him who he really was. Then the so-called wise men…I know exactly what he went through, for he was the high church in the Episcopal world, and I was the low church in the Episcopal world. My mother used to tell me that the wisest men in the world are priests. She persuaded me that they were to the point of almost scaring me…to discover when I became a man and the visions began to appear within me, I knew no more stupid people. I would meet them and I thought, my lord, what a play, that through the centuries they fool the people that they are so wise, and you never met a more stupid bunch of people in the world. They go around with all this palaver and call that wisdom because they can speak one little phrase in Latin. You ask them a simple thing concerning, as I told you tonight, “I came out from the Father and I came into the world; again, I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” You say, “Tell me what does it mean?” Well, they’ll tell you exactly what they read in the book, the literal meaning of that statement that this glorious being came out from the Father. “Where,” you ask them. “Don’t ask questions, my son.” And then, “He came in what way?” “Well, he came to our holy blessed mother so-and-so.” “Is that so? In what manner did he do it?” And again, “Don’t ask questions, my son. This is the great secret of the church.” At the end of your conversation you see a nut, one who doesn’t know the answers so he has to give you all kinds of confused things to bewilder you. I had that…for my thirty years on the platform I’ve had that time and time again when I’ve been on TV and radio with them. Well, what nonsense! They stand there open mouthed and open eyed, bewildered at anything you say. For when you say “I speak from experience and you from theory, so don’t give me your theory. Tell me, have you experienced Christ? Have you found the Son of God who called you Father? Has he called you Father?” “No! That’s blasphemy!” I said, “Is that so? And you are a leader of men? You are the blind, blind leaders of the blind as foretold in scripture.”
So I tell you, your own wonderful human Imagination is Jesus Christ. There never was another and never will be another. One day he will awake in you and the whole thing will erupt within you, and all that was said of him you will experience in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience, and you are he. May I tell you, far from being ashamed, you are thrilled beyond measure! All that you have ever done as a man, and who hasn’t done the most horrible things in this world? What man living would not be ashamed of his past? Tell me of one man that ever walked the face of this earth. If he’s a man filled with passion, filled with all the things in this world of mortality, he has done a thousand and one things for which he’s ashamed. Yet when this erupts it cleans the whole slate. You had to go through the mire, go through the muck, go through all these things in order for this seed to erupt. When it erupts, you are perfect. You are one with God who is perfect, and your whole past is wiped out as though it never were.
So, no such thing as earning your way into heaven; you don’t earn it by anything you do. You can hear the story and have faith in it, just have faith in the story, believe it though it hasn’t yet appeared. And then one day, the whole thing will come to you from within. Then no man in this world can stand before you, regardless of his position in the secular world, and try to make you feel that you are unimportant. You simply ignore it, you don’t do anything but ignore it…he doesn’t know. He could be sitting on the throne…he doesn’t know. Tomorrow when he departs this world, he’ll be no different in the eyes of the God who started that work than the one who shined his shoes. He’ll find himself in a world just like this, in an environment best equipped for the work yet to be done in him. While you, unknown by the world, after the birth you instantly possess your immortal garment, and mortality is swallowed up by life. There is no interval. So when Paul prayed, he used the plural, yes, but he wasn’t speaking for himself, he was speaking for those that he addressed…in the 5th chapter of Corinthians, and he’s speaking to them, “For now we groan in this body waiting for our heavenly body” (2 Cor. 5:3). Now he is hoping that this will come before death appears, because death here on the twenty-eighth year will leave you still unclothed. He calls this being unclothed and you’ll find yourself naked. Not naked in the sense that the world calls it, but you’re not clothed with immortality. You still have two years to go.
A lady here tonight…she’s not yet twenty-eight, she will be twenty-eight, but she knows, and her memory returned in another age, another time…she said, “I recall you vividly. You haven’t changed, same face, same voice. You told me then of a Father and a Son, but I didn’t understand you. Now, here I am in this world, not yet twenty-eight, and I have had the experience; so it must have been in a previous section of time, without loss of identity, that I received the impregnation of the Holy Spirit. But it was you who taught me and you who told me of the Father and the Son. Now you’ve come to reap your harvest and I had to be born in this section of time to have the experience, and yet I’m not yet twenty-eight.” I tell you, through the night I go into sections and sections of time. It’s not just here…I have other sheep not of this flock, and I must gather them all into one fold before I appear, bringing back all that I’ve done; for I must return to the Father as the Father…and all that I have done in my journey. This is the story.
Well, you dwell upon it. But don’t neglect the use of the principle of your wonderful Imagination. Use it lovingly on behalf of anyone in this world. And when you use it lovingly on behalf of another, you’re using it for yourself because there is no other. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out, so there is no other. You can take anyone in this world, take his request, do it, and then drop it, and see it come to pass in your world because imagining creates reality. You don’t have to burst a blood vessel or know a lot, or call the right people or do the right thing in order to progress in this world. You simply imagine that you are what you want to be. If you dare to assume you are now what you want to be and remain faithful to that assumption, in a way that no one knows that assumption will harden into fact. It works just as simply as that! And while you are about your Father’s business working this principle, another work unknown to the world is taking place within you, preparing you for the fullness of time. When the fullness of time comes the impregnation comes, which only fertilizes the egg you have been bearing throughout the centuries. And then suddenly, in thirty years, it erupts and all that is said of Christ you experience in a personal, most intimate manner.
Now let us go into the Silence.
* * *
Now are there any questions, please?
Q: (inaudible)
A: No, reincarnation as taught in the world is loss of identity. They even tell you of a change of sex. In fact, there’s a book out on Krishnamerti, put out by the Theosophical Press, and they have about 200 pictures of him as he remembers through the past, where he was a man, a woman, a this, a that, he was a Caucasian, a Negro, and all change of identity. Now he confessed after the book came out, and he was big enough to refute it, that it was all put up and that he did not say that at all. But Ledbetter and Mrs. Besant, who was head of the Society at the time brought it out to promote him. But he was big enough after he matured and could say no to it. But the book is still in print and those who do not know of his denial of it will pick it up as fact. Reincarnation is taught as, well, I die now, lose all identity, and come through a woman’s womb once more as a little infant. That is not what the Bible teaches at all. This lady has no change of identity and as far as she is concerned I haven’t changed my identity. You simply move into another world. She died before the birth from above, the second birth spoken of in scripture: “You must be born anew (born again).” Not a little thing called reincarnation. There are only two births: One into death, putting on the mortal garment, which you carry with you throughout the centuries; and then the second birth, and the second birth takes thirty years from the impregnation, while you are wearing these garments. After that second birth, when you depart the world, instantly you are wearing an entirely new body belonging to a new age. It has not a thing to do with this world.
So you will not lose your identity…in fact, the purpose of life is to individualize. Man is individualized and he tends forever towards ever greater and greater individualization. He becomes the Father and that is an individualized state. But to submerge now, and then lose my identity completely and then come back to the womb of a woman…to find myself not knowing what, where and why? No, that is not what scripture teaches. That’s what man made laws and concepts. Man sits down to work out what he thinks is a nice workable lovely philosophy of life, then he puts a stamp on it and says it was all inspired. So as he approves himself, he is now a self-appointed nut and he forms an organization, and they gather around him, and they are equally silly about it. So they appoint him as the high priest and they give him all kinds of names. We do that in all of our little earthly organizations and how we love it! Dress it up in all more and more stupid little things like feathers on the hats and all these things. We have yearly parades doing it and they love it.
Well, this is not scripture. Scripture is a mystery Not something to be concealed, for the mysteries are not matters to be kept secret, but they are truths that, I would say, are difficult to explain. They are mysterious in character. So when one has had the experience, he can tell it; until the experience you can’t unravel it. But when one sits down to work out what they call a nice, sensible way of living and they call it the ethical society, this is the way to live, it’s all based upon elevating oneself through effort and therefore acquire merit. So we find in India there are millions of people who walk the streets with their little prayer wheels. They are acquiring merit, begging for food all day long, begging others for food, but they are acquiring merit by keeping this wheel spinning. If they spin it so often in the course of a day, that is all to their credit and they expect someone to give them some marvelous reward for their spinning of the wheel. If they spin it so often they’ll get off the wheel of Karma. Speaking of India by the way, the word Krishna, which is the great Indian god, means “black, blue black.” Again, it’s a mystery, for black is the symbol of the inscrutable. But they take Krishna as a man, as something personal; they don’t use it as the inscrutable mystery of God. So they are acquiring merit. If I go to Mass every morning, oh, that’s marvelous. I am sick, get off a sickbed and go, that makes it twice as good. And so I get all these things piled upon on me…and finally, I find that it didn’t work at all, and then I go berserk and throw the whole thing over and become at least an agnostic and maybe an atheist because it didn’t work. I was looking for some reward from my tremendous efforts. And that happens in all orthodox religions.
I tell you, God became man that man may become God. So take it right there. If he became me, well, where is he?—right in you. How near? Can’t be near, for nearness implies two, and he became you. Well, if he became me then he isn’t near. Then who is he?—say “I am,” that’s his name forever and forever and forever (Exod. 3:15). There never was another God; there never will be another God. So God became man that man may become God. Well then, if he became me, tell me, where is he? Don’t look any place, don’t go to any priest, don’t ask any teacher, don’t ask Neville, just say, “Well, where is he and what is his name?”—I AM. Can you say I AM: Yes “I am.” But I say, “I am John.” No, he didn’t say John, he said I AM…start right there. You say, well, “I am poor.” All right, God does everything. So you say, “I am poor,” all right, you’ll be poor, because he creates everything. You say “I am rich,” he’ll create wealth. You say, “I am healthy,” he’ll create health because he creates everything. So what are you going to put upon this great, great name of God? For he became you and you wear his name and his name is I AM. Don’t forget it! So if he is I AM, then is he limited? Are you going to limit him? Well then, limit him if you want that, if it is better for you to get down on your knees and pray to an idol on the outside, when within you is the very God you are making pray to an idol. Well, who is praying to that idol?—I am. You’ve taken God and you threw him on his knees to pray to a little man-made wooden thing.
Most of these things you see on all the churches of the world are horribly made, may I tell you. All these little condolences, God; no artist could ever look at it and not blush. You go in and you buy a little figurine of Jesus. My Lord! If that’s what he looks like, forgive me, turn him away. All these little things they stick them on the wall and stick them all over the place and call that God. And you are told in the Second Commandment, “Make no graven image unto me.” But no, that’s not good business. So we make all these little things and we always employ the worst artist because the work is cheap. Then you get all these things and you sell them, and they’re all condolences.
But now don’t forget the law. Go out knowing who you are! God became you for one purpose: That you may become God. But in order to become God you have to be detached from God, and yet because the whole contains everything, any part detached contains the whole within it. So the sucker contains the whole plant when the sucker is transplanted, and when it grows into a tree it is one with what it formerly was and it, itself, is the parent.
Good night.