5/6/69

A man’s true environment is in his Imagination, so that “All that we behold, though it appears without, it is within, in our Imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jer., Plt.71). Everything in our world contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance, so no matter what is taking place it’s a symbol telling you what is taking place within you. This whole vast world is yourself pushed out so that it is the image that is alive within our Imagination that really overwhelms us.

Now tonight let us turn to the one great book, the Bible. We are told there will be a finial battle…there will be a great and last war at the end of the world called Armageddon. The world thinks it’s going to take place on the outside, where races are put against races and nations against nations and so on. You’ve heard it…you’re old enough some of you to have heard that the First World War was that war and then came the 2nd World War. There are always wars, always conflicts, but that is not Armageddon. Armageddon is the battle of ideology…and it doesn’t mean Communism against Democracy or Socialism against Capitalism…hasn’t a thing to do with that. The battle takes place in us.

When we look into the world today and see the unrest, if you really understood what is taking place in a very large group in this world, you would rejoice…if you knew scripture. He said, “Do not think I have come to bring peace on earth. I have come not to bring peace but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, and to set a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes are those of his own household” (Mat.10:35). It certainly doesn’t mean our children pitted against us, hasn’t a thing to do with that. But here you’ll see, as it’s described in scripture, it’s the young against the old. It is simply the true understanding of the Word of God against the traditions of men. And then you hear it, after having built up all these structures by which you live, and you thought by these structures you would earn the kingdom of heaven, and so you would simply acquire merit. Then comes one who has experienced the story of God and he tells you as it actually happens and he knows that the entire story, the life of Jesus Christ, is a spiritual autobiography of everyone who is redeemed. So he tells it, knowing that everyone is going to be redeemed, and therefore everyone is going to have this as his own spiritual autobiography. Well, when you hear it, the conflict starts within you, and that’s the battle of Armageddon.

Neutrality is impossible. You can’t patch the little piece of new cloth to the old. It is either all or nothing. You can’t possibly put the new wine that you’re now receiving into the old bottles and say, well, I’ll go along with him just so far, but I will not give up my belief in an external God to whom I bend my knee and cross my body when I stand before what represents him upon the wall. So the battle is on…until finally within oneself the story unfolds and then the victory is God’s. It’s over. You should have no other God but God, and his name is I AM. “This is my name forever. By this name I shall be known throughout all generations” (Exod.3:14). Choose this day whom you shall serve…we chose this day the Lord. All right, now prove it in your behavior and prove it in your life. To whom will you turn if you’ve chosen correctly and chosen the Lord? And I tell you from experience this story of Jesus Christ is the actual spiritual autobiography of the individual who is redeemed; for the entire story unfolds within him as though there were no other, just himself.

So here, Armageddon…don’t look for it on the outside. Today we see the young—that’s only a symbol—erupting not in our country alone, erupting all over the world, in Europe, in Tokyo, and were it known, in Russia. They only allow a little bit to sneak out, but they are erupting there too. That’s a symbol. These kids think that they’re going to change the world. No, to those who understand, they aren’t changing the world. There’s a tremendous eruption of the truth in the hearts of men. It’s not just confined to this platform. There must be from this world picture of eruption simply an enormous eruption of truth against the entrenched traditions of men. Yes, even in so-called atheistic Russia…in lands where they are not considered Christian. But truth is not confined that way; it’s confined to God. And within himself he realizes he is the being spoken of in scripture.

So religion really is in the true sense of the word a devotion, a tie to the most exalted reality that one has experienced. So when one has experienced scripture, who in this world can put him back into the little bottle? They can’t do it. And here, you find all over our little world men who are supposed to speak the Word of God and encourage those who listen to them. They’re involved in the shadow world. They’re telling our government what they should do and how they should do it, not telling the individual who comes to him about God’s promise. That here is God’s promise, this fantastic promise that he’s going to give himself to you in the most literal sense of he word: he’s going to give his son to you. And because he and his son are one, then he gave himself to you. Now believe it and hope for the eruption now. Just now, this moment, the whole thing could erupt within us. And you realize it’s not of another…that the whole vast drama on the outside is taking place within us and these things are but shadows…the whole vast world is a shadow world.

So when you see the young pitted against the old, and we think now this is a new generation, no, rejoice, for this is part of scripture. They burn down the buildings, and you and I will pay the taxes. We resent the fact that we may be taxed all the more to rebuild the buildings. But has it happened in us, that eruption? So that the new idea has taken over and completely displaced the old…that I no longer can bow to an external God? That I can no longer believe in an external Jesus Christ…that Christ in me all along was the hope of glory? And suddenly, that Christ in me awoke and unfolded his story…not as another where I observe him but as myself, redeeming me by becoming me to the point where everything said of him I am experiencing of myself. Now, that is the new as against my old concepts that I got from my mother first, then in Sunday school, then in school, and then as I went to church and heard it from the pulpit. That was an idea that I built within me and that structure I lived by it, it governed my behavior…and suddenly it is not true.

Now the battle is between truth and error…that’s the real battle of Armageddon. It’s not between nations and nations and races and races. It may seem to be on the outside, but it is not. So he comes into the world to bring the sword of truth. Now we are told, and when he comes the armies of heaven follow him, and from his mouth issues a flaming sword, a sharp sword. Then we are told that the sword is the sword of the Spirit, which is The Word of God” (Rev.19:13-15). So what does he bring? A sword by which we chop peoples heads off? No…that’s only a symbol. Take off his head so that something new may come…but that’s only a symbol. Horrible as it is, in the outer world that only symbolizes what is taking place within us. So here, the whole head comes off. Whose head?—John the Baptist. That was the end and then rising in its place is the Lord Jesus Christ. When he is arrested and his head comes off, I no longer go along with the external world…for he now simply is clothed in the external things of camel hair, camel and leather around his waist…everything that is external to man.

Now comes the man from within, for he is the inner man, and that inner man rises within me displacing the outer man. But I do see his rising as a disturbing influence, and everything that I believed in and bowed to on the outside—worshipped him because he was known, worshipped him because he was rich, worshipped him because he was an intelligent person in the world—then I discover that the being of beings, the God of Gods, is really within myself! And now he erupts and tells me if I conquer, conquer what? If I overcome all of these beliefs—I can’t patch it up, I can’t modify it—if I overcome everything external to myself, and see only myself as the cause of the phenomena of my life, nothing in the world but myself producing everything in my world—if I really accept that 100 percent then “to him who conquers I will give the morning star” [David] (Rev.2:26,28).

Now he identifies himself as the morning star. “I am the root and the offspring”…who’s speaking? Jesus. And who is Jesus?—the Lord God Jehovah. So, I am the root and the offspring of David. I am the bright morning star. So he’s going to give me if I conquer the old and accept, completely accept it, then I receive as the gift himself, the bright morning star—which is the symbol of the new day and immortality, a complete change in my world when finally this little garment that housed the old one is taken off for the last time. Then I am clothed in the new man, the man that rose within me, and repeated in detail the entire story of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Armageddon is not taking place in the battlefields of the world. Interpret them all to be eruption. And then you see a new one coming in its place. Here is America…it’s a new nation compared to the old nations. Now it supplanted the old powers. That’s one grand eruption…the mightiest power in the world of Caesar is this land today. But in the midst of it we find people erupting and the young pitted against the old. And that’s exactly how he does it in scripture, as you read it in the 10th chapter of the Book of Matthew. He doesn’t tell you old against the new, he starts off with man against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. He starts with the young trying to dislodge the old and the battle is on. Watch it in the world.

So everything must be interpreted as a symbol as we do in our dreams. Like a lady tonight who wrote me…I got it his past week…she felt in her dream that she was one of a twin and one had died. She felt that the love for the one who died was so great and she didn’t want to hurt her mother, so she pretended she was the one who died and got the affection of her mother and the affection of all. She knew all along that the one who died was the one she had assumed.

Well, what a perfect story confirming scripture. Here, the one who took the heart of God the Father was Jacob, and he supplanted his brother Esau in the affections of his father. He came second, and he thought that because he was not first but second that the Father would love the first one first and most. Not knowing, and the world does not know that he who is called the first born from the dead in the Book of Revelation and in the Book of Colossians…and he said the first born of every creature is the same first born; but the first born from the dead must be seen in the order of events rather than in time.

So that every one who erupts in the story of Jesus Christ, that is the first born. You aren’t second because 2,000 years you came later or 1,000 years or 3,000 years. No one comes before you, because Christ is the head…he is the first. Well, if Christ unfolds within you, you can’t be second. You supplant what was the first. So you’re told, the body comes into the world and that is first. The physical is first, the Spirit is second; but the second which is Spirit supplants the first. So the outer man is Esau, that’s first, he comes in first. The second one comes in, that’s Jacob, and he is the smooth-skinned lad…he is the Spirit man. Then we are told, “And the Lord loved Jacob but he hated Esau” (Rom.9:13). The outer man must be discarded, because flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. So it’s the inner man that is to be born and he is the first born from the dead. But see that first born in the order rather than time, so that first he must rise. That’s the one that is going to be born, the one who has awakened within. The minute he is awakened he comes out; as he comes out, he is born from above. That’s the one the Lord loves, and he’s one with the Lord because he is the Lord. “I will give you now the bright morning star,” and he is himself the bright morning star who gives it…so God gives himself. There’s no one, then, but you. You then control all. When you take off this garment, you are one with the God who is running the entire show.

Seen from above, this conflict today is not disturbing…they’re rejoicing that there’s an eruption of the truth in the hearts of men. But on this level as a tax payer, you read the morning paper and you resent the fact they’re burning down these buildings that cost money. You resent the fact that people who go there to be educated cannot be educated because of the nonsense of a little percentage…but there’s always only a small little percentage. But they don’t know what they’re doing…they’re only symbols. They’re playing their little game not knowing what they’re doing at all. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” They think they’re going to take over…they think they’re going to take over the entire country or the world. No, they’re only that little symbol, symbolizing that measure of the eruption in the hearts of men. For there’s only always at any one time a remnant who erupts. But, oh, today when you see the world picture what a lovely large remnant. On the other hand, we are three and a half billion today as against only say a few hundred million 2,000 years ago. So here it is a larger section, but the larger is only relative, because, if I take three and a half billion, or even say, a few hundred million, you can see the difference. But today that thing has gone out and they are erupting…in this small room they’re erupting, there’s eruption here. Percentage-wise it’s a very large eruption.

So here, a lady wrote, “I had this most disturbing dream. I found myself in my home cleaning out every piece of furniture that I’m going to take into my new apartment. It’s going to be two miles from here.” And so she’s singling out all the ones she’s going to take and then leaving these others for her husband…which care of the two she’s going to take. Then she finds herself in the new apartment. She knows it intimately as she places all these things. Then she awakes in the bed with her husband to find that it wasn’t as real as it appeared to be. It seemed so three-dimensional, everything was so real.

Well, that’s the most wonderful experience. No, you aren’t going to leave the man you love here. No, hasn’t a thing to do with that. Take the symbolism of it. He is your husband, but your true husband is God. When you’re told in the 2nd chapter of Genesis, “And a man shall leave everything and cleave to his wife ‘til they become one flesh,” that’s what you did. You left everything of the earth, moved into an entirely different state, which is motion. The first creative act was motion: “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the deep.” As God moved, everything erupted and the world came into visibility. So you moved from one state into another, but the state into which you moved was into your true husband who is the Lord God Almighty. That’s your true husband. But the symbol of that husband is on earth and you will love him and continue to love him, and share your world with him and he with you. But you made the move within into the real union with God, for that’s your husband, as told you in the Book of Isaiah: “You Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name” (54:5). So you move into a real relationship with the God within you, who will leave everything and cleave to you. And you did discover the great secret of moving from state to state.

So don’t be bewildered as you said in your letter, “I am bewildered. What does it mean?” No, you’ll find that the love will not be modified and the love grows stronger. If you pass a certain point in this world, then your affections get deeper and deeper for the one that when you first met her or met him you were fired by sex. That holds you. But when that fades, if the love is maintained as it was prior to the union, then you find that relationship deeper and deeper. You’re more concerned for your loved one than ever before. It is not sex anymore. That is something that is faded, slowly fades from your world, but a deeper one takes over. Now, the motion takes place within you from what is now a relationship in this world to a spiritual relationship. And you’ll find that you’re not far then from the eruption of the story of Jesus within you. The whole thing unfolds within you.

So, his story is the spiritual biography, auto-biography, of the one who is redeemed. All shall be redeemed and therefore it’s going to be the experience of every child born of woman. So don’t look for the conflicts on the outside…interpret them as symbols. They’re all symbols. So when today the youth is pitted against the old, see it not as the world is describing it in the papers and radio and TV. Don’t go wild about it. Rejoice that in a large section of the world the Word, which is the sword of the Spirit, has erupted and the armies are on the march. For the armies of heaven followed him, and then from his mouth issues this flaming sword. The sword is called “the sword of the Spirit,” which is the Word of God. And his name shall be called the Word of God. But he is the living Word that unfolds within man and interprets the external Word of the letter. So the whole outer world is a dead world like the letter in the Bible. It’s dead until something alive makes it so, and only when it erupts within man does that dead letter become alive. So, he interprets it.

Well, many reject him. But today when you see the conflict many must have accepted it. Many must have experienced it and are telling it the world over. Where they are I don’t know…not with this mask on me. But whoever is telling it is telling it from an experience. That’s the only thing that can inflame the mind. You can’t go on adding to the traditions of men for that’s dead letters, all dead. Then you hear on radio and see on TV and read in the paper that our clergy instead of telling the Word of God are so involved in politics. They think they can buy off the eruption with money. They’ll take all the money and ask for more. You can’t stop ransom and you can’t stop any blackmail…you can’t stop it. But instead of stopping that whole nonsense and then in their own words tell the story of Jesus Christ… but unfortunately they don’t know it. For if they sat here tonight they would think they’re listening to the devil. To them this is blasphemy in the extreme. And yet, I am telling you from experience and they are telling you from theory what their fathers taught them. You’re told in scripture that “You, for the sake of your traditions, the traditions of your fathers, you have made void the Word of God” (Mat.15:6). And you can tell that from the top down, from everyone, no matter who he is.

So here, they make all their little saints…made out of nothing and they never existed. Then something has happened to force them to confess the nonexistence of their saints from whom they have made hundreds of millions of dollars in selling their little icons, all these little indulgences, and now they can’t. They’re still selling them. There are people who refuse to accept it. They still want their little so-called protection based upon the outside. You don’t want it, that’s why you’re here, and you’re quite willing to accept that the drama is unfolded in you, and not on the outside. So when the most horrible blow hits you and it comes home to your heart, try to see the symbolism in it all. Everything in this outer world is a symbol and contains that capacity for a symbolic significance. So why did it happen and how did it happen, and what is its meaning? What is the significance of the thing that happened? Just like a dream, for a dream has some significance. “For God speaks in a dream and makes himself known in a vision” (Num.12:6). Well, if God is speaking I should listen and listen attentively to my dream and try to understand what he is telling me through the symbolism of dream.

I got another lovely letter, about twenty or twenty-five dreams. Well, I couldn’t, naturally, even summarize them because they’re different. But I can tell her (and she’s here tonight) they are perfectly marvelous. They’re all foreshadowings or adumbrations of the story that will erupt within you when you discover you yourself are Jesus Christ, that he’s not another. In your dreams he still seems to be another. He came as though he were another, well, that’s an adumbration. Like the story in 2nd Kings concerning Elijah. Elisha said to him, “Give me a double portion of your spirit” and he said, “When I leave you and depart from you if you see me you shall get what you ask for; if you don’t, you shall not have it” (2:9-14). And then fire separated them, and then Elijah went up in a whirlwind…well, that’s an adumbration. You do go up in a whirlwind. The word fire…it’s a fiery serpent…you go up as the fiery serpent. Well, that’s not spelled out, because it’s an adumbration. The Word had to erupt within one first in order to understand the story of Elijah going up in a whirlwind. So it is said a fire separated them. Well, may I tell you it is a fire.

Then you find in the 14th chapter of Zechariah, he stands—who?—the Lord is standing on the Mount of Olives and suddenly there is a complete splitting of the Mount from east to west; and then one half moves northward and one-half moves south (14:4). Now, that’s exactly what happens…but it is not any mountain outside of you. The whole drama is in you and you are the Mount of Olives, and the Lord is standing on the Mount within you. At one moment in time it is split from east to west, and one does move north and one does move south, and your whole body stands before you as something split in two. Then you go up like the whirlwind, but the whirlwind is a fiery serpent. I don’t see a whirlwind, it spins like a spiral. But he said fire separated us, and it is a fiery state because a bolt of lightning does cut you in two from your head to the base of your spine, and you move this way, completely parted. But who would understand it until one man experienced it? And then he dramatized it, the evangelist dramatized it, still leaving it as a closed book for those who have not fully experienced it. But to be understood by those who will be drawn by the one who has experienced it in the hope that in the not distant future they will individually experience the entire story of Jesus Christ.

So when you see unrest today, instead of ducking, rejoice that the young is now pitted against the old. Not that your child comes home and insults you. I am a father and I have two children. One is no longer the child…neither for that matter…both are adults, yet being the father they’re always children to you. Although one is forty-five and one is twenty-six, they always will be to me children as far as I am concerned. But they’ve never gone against me. Oh, they go their own way; they are individuals as they should be and they have their own opinions. They don’t completely go along with me at all. So it’s not a conflict in my little physical household. The conflict is in my household which is all within my Imagination. So I leave them alone. The conflict is in me. Well, if I’ve overcome it, as the drama has proven, I may find myself one morning listening to the radio, seeing the TV, or reading the paper and you can so quietly and quickly get involved and forget and come down and see this nonsense in the world and become involved. Get back up to the Mount and see it all as symbolism. The whole thing is a symbol telling you what has happened and it’s happening in the world.

Now, the eruption will not go on forever, because it only lasts for a certain length of time and the door is closed once more. The door does not remain open into heaven; it only opens at intervals of time. Blake gave it 200 years. How long it remained ajar he didn’t say, but he said, “Every 200 years there’s a gate into heaven.” Well, you can see the symbol now is telling you that the door is ajar. How long it remains ajar I do not know. But you can see why the conflict rages…it is still ajar.

Now this will not make sense. You couldn’t print this in tomorrow’s paper, because they might have me investigated as a mental case. Yet I am telling you this is true. As you’re told in scripture, “Why do you listen to him? The man is mad and he has a devil” (Jn.10:20). He said, “I am not mad and I do not have a devil, what I tell you is true. For I speak not of my own accord, I speak as the Father speaks to me” (Acts26:25). He’s only telling you what he experienced. So he’s not listening to a word and then telling you the word; he has experienced it. He actually experiences the entire drama, so he tells you what he has experienced. Why listen to him? The man is mad. We know his background, a very limited background. How does this man have learning seeing that he’s never studied? How does he have learning? He said, “My words are not my words but the words of him who sent me…and he who sent me is God. But he is my Father and I know my Father and ye know not your God.” Well, the man is mad…he that we know and know his background and he dares to claim he is the Son of God! Then he tops it, he said, “Not only the Son of God…I and my Father are one. So when you see me you see him who sent me.” Well, who sent you? “My Father…and my Father is he whom you call God.” He experienced it. Then having known the entire Old Testament—for that was the only thing he studied—he went back and showed them page after page where what he is telling is the interpretation, the spiritual interpretation of the dead letter. And so, he unfolded the whole thing within himself.

So Armageddon…don’t let anyone tell you when you see nation against nation and race against race that that is Armageddon. Armageddon is the battle of ideology where they are pitted against each other in you. And I can’t tell anyone what a shock it was to me to discover that the Christ to whom I prayed and to whom I turned in my prayers really was within me as scripture teaches. But I didn’t take it literally. When I was told, “Christ in you is the hope of glory” these were words because I was taught and trained to turn on the outside for that Christ…not Christ in me. I could find no comfort in that Christ. I was seventeen when I left Barbados, seventeen and a half, and when I first began to pray by my mother putting my knees on the floor to pray, I did not have the courage to go to bed no matter how tired I was until I got down on my knees and prayed every night. That habit would not break for quite a while after I came to this country. Can you imagine the shock that comes to one who was trained to get on his knees and pray to an external God to find that he was not external at all! Then comes that awesome moment when it unfolds within you and you are he! You can hardly believe it. For memory hasn’t faded…you know your past, you know how unlovely much of it has been. You know the thoughts, the emotions that were yours, the words that you’ve uttered. And all that could still be a house in which the perfect one, the unblemished one, the one that was never tarnished has unfolded, and you are he…still with the memory of the outer garment that you wore which clothed him while he was here.

Well, I can’t tell anyone the shock that comes when all these things by which you lived tumble to earth. You can no longer turn to anyone on the outside. You can’t turn to anything and blame it or praise it for what is taking place in your world, not a thing. If it’s unlovely you are the cause; if it’s lovely you are the cause. Everything is unfolding within you. You are detached from the university, or you didn’t go to one, and what is taking place, you are the cause? Yes. The word of truth erupted within you, and when it comes it sets one against the other. ‘Well, they never heard you, Neville.” I don’t say they ever heard me, but the Word is not confined. And so when it comes into the world and he is here and he’s erupted, he brings the new wine, and the old bottles cannot contain it. It will split and you cannot put the new patch upon the old garment. You see the whole erupting world around you and we wonder what on earth is taking place? Have we lost control of our children, they’re not disciplined?

Well, you can say all kinds of things and justify it and make it come out just as you would like it…and I’m not going to deny that’s your right. I find myself on occasion sucked into the same stream and passing an opinion not based upon the truth that has erupted in me…so I can’t judge another. Who am I to say growing a beard is wrong or long hair is wrong or that anything else is wrong? I don’t know. I can only say that when I see these things rejoice, for he has come. And when he comes he invariably sets the young against the old. And it’s not a child against his physical parent, but it is the new idea that he brings that is going to disturb the traditions of men. You’ve been living by the traditions of men and so all of a sudden they are disturbed, and the disturbance is in you, but reflected in the disturbance of the world.

They don’t know what they’re doing. Not one of them knows this night why I’m doing what I’m doing. If you put him right down and asked him, he doesn’t know. He is being led like sheep to the slaughter. Many of them, as some have analyzed it, may easily be set up, as someone firmly believes, as cannon fodder. And yet it caused rejoicing in the hearts of those who observe it from above, for it is only causing eruption of God’s immortal plan…for Jesus Christ is the pattern and this immortal pattern of salvation is in man. When they see it erupt, nothing in this world, this shadow world, interests them. They are rejoicing at the eruption in man, which eruption causes the eruption in the outer world to set the young against the old…for this is the new that comes into the world.

In the meanwhile, you take what you know of this law, for the whole is true and use it towards your own personal good fortune in the world of Caesar. Just use it. It’s simple: go to the end and assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled…just go to the end. Don’t ask anyone to help you and ask no one if it’s right. Do you like it? Well then, go to the end; assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. For that being who is about to erupt himself in you is the being who will control that end if you will remain faithful to it. If you find yourself moving from it, go back to it and once more assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and that assumption will harden into fact.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: (inaudible)

A: The Father in you. The only time he knows he is the Father is when his Son, which was before that the world was, stands before you and calls you “Father.” Then you know that you are the Father and the Father knows that he is you. And the Son knows that you are his Father, and that Son is David. The Father is the Lord Jesus Christ. That truly is the Father who became man in the most literal sense: he died…for only through death can this awaken. It’s the mystery of life through death. “The mystery of the grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies in order to be made alive, for unless it dies it remains alone; but if it dies it brings forth much” (Jn.12:24). So the Father actually becomes man. He empties himself of all and “He who was rich, yet for our sake became poor, so that by his poverty we may become rich” (2Cor.8:9). Rich in power, rich in wisdom…that’s the only wealth of the world. For with that wisdom you can create anything in the world. Take all my creations away from me, but leave me the capacity to create. Give me the power and the wisdom to create. Take everything from me and it would mean nothing.

So the Father in man is sound asleep. As told us in scripture, “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake!” (Ps.44:23). So the search of every child born of woman is for the Father, and when he finds the Father he finds himself. He’s really looking for himself.

Q: (inaudible)

A: When he finds it, he finds it in you. And the story of Jesus is a pattern by which he unfolds. He first rises in you, not as another; when he awoke in me, I awoke. It wasn’t another and I was alone in my skull. Not a thing in that skull but myself, and I knew the skull was sealed like a tomb. I also knew that it was a tomb…this innate wisdom that you have. You are not only aware that you are in your skull but you’re also aware of the fact your skull is a tomb. That’s Golgotha and that’s where you were placed. You don’t remember when you were placed there, you don’t remember when you entered there or if you were taken there. That knowledge is not yet yours, whether you did it deliberately as told us in scripture that “No one takes away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down, and the power to lift it up again” (Jn.10:18).

Now I have no memory of walking into that tomb myself, so I have no knowledge of entry. I only knew that I awoke in it and therefore I was either placed there or I walked in there deliberately and the whole thing was sealed. I knew myself to be sealed in my own skull and I knew my skull was a tomb. My one consuming desire was to get out. Then this area at the base of my skull rolled away. I pushed it from within and something rolled away like a stone and then it left a small opening. I put my head through and squeezed and squeezed and came out inch by inch like a child coming out of a womb. Only instead of being the womb of woman this is the skull of man: birth from above rather than birth from below.

Then the symbolism as told us in the Book of Luke appeared before me. This storm wind…that’s all that I can describe it…it’s a wind that was unearthly like a storm, a hurricane. Here, I look over to see the cause of the disturbance and when I look back (didn’t take more than a few seconds) when I looked back my body out of which I had emerged is gone, but in its place sat my three older brothers. The oldest is at the head, the second at my right foot and the third at my left foot…as though the body was on its back. And it was, but the body had been moved, leaving now three witnesses. Then one is disturbed, my third brother Lawrence who was a doctor in this world, and he goes over to investigate the cause of the wind. He makes just a step or two and something on the floor attracts his attention. It is a little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. He lifts the babe and announces to the other two, “It is Neville’s baby!” They in turn said, “How can Neville have a baby?” He doesn’t argue the point, he presents the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, puts it on the bed where the body formerly was. Then I bent over…invisible to all for they don’t see me, and I lift that visible child that they could see into my arms and I said, “How is my sweetheart?” The little child broke into the heavenly smile and the whole vision came to an end (Luke 2:12). Here is scripture unfolding now within me. And then every scene as told in scripture concerning Jesus Christ unfolded within me from then on.

So where is he? Is it not true, as told us in Colossians, it is “Christ in you that is the hope of glory”? (1:27). And what is the glory? He glorifies the Father and he actually is the Father. He said, “Return unto me now the glory that was mine, the glory that I had with thee before that the world was” (Jn. 17:5). I’m going back to pick up where I left off. But in that horrible experience coming through the world of death…for this is the world of death where everything dies, everything dies no matter what it is. We’re told today the sun is slowly dying and all the suns are dying. If it takes unnumbered trillions of light years they all will eventually die. So this world is a world of death. So you come into the world of death and conquer it, you overcome death. You die, you don’t pretend you’re dying, you die, and yet there’s something in you that cannot die, and it rises, and that is Christ in you who is the hope of glory.

Tell that story and it disturbs the mind of those who have heard the story as a secular story. For this is the spiritual auto-biography of man while the story as it is told is the secular biography…and it isn’t so at all. It hasn’t a thing to do with the secular world, it’s all to do with the spiritual world.

Q: To what extent are individuals responsible for the crime, etc., that’s going on in the world?

A: If one truly knew. Did you hear the question, “To what extent are we as individuals responsible for the eruptions in the world?” If man truly knew the hidden cause of the eruptions, he would set everyone who is erupting free. If man truly knew the hidden cause of the violence in the world, he would set not only the victim ___(??) free but he’d set the one who seemingly is the cause free.

There are such things even in our law as proximate causes. I’ll give you a very vivid story. My daughter on her first trip out, she was only sixteen. She had to wait until she was sixteen to drive a car, and we bought her a second-hand car, a nice little Buick. She took off and she went down Doheny Road coming into Sunset and it’s a very sharp curve. It was recently paved, beautifully paved…it was as black as you could make a road and beautifully marked with a double line because it was a curve like an S. She’s going down slowly when a mad person comes blindly up in this curved road, across the double line, and seems to be coming straight towards her. This is her first trip out, solo trip, and she made a sharp turn to void the impact and ran right into a tree, a palm tree. Smashed the car, smashed her nose, and she came home with the car turned inside out. The tire was torn when she got home because one piece as she turned it over cut into the car. There was not a thing you could do with the car but give it away.

I said to her, “Darling, you aren’t hurt too badly are you?” No, she was crying over her car. Here her nose was smashed, blood coming down. Well, at that moment if I could have put my hands on that nut I’d have killed him. I’m looking at my sweetheart, my daughter, and here is this nut the cause of her misfortune. Forget the car. So we paid $550 for it, it was a second-hand car…get another car. But this is her first trip out by herself and naturally she is careful and this fellow comes whirling around at fifty miles per hour, comes across the double line, and he wouldn’t even stop. He heard the impact. Kept on going…didn’t want to be near the accident. Well, that’s a proximate cause. If you came upon the scene, she was the cause of that tree being injured and the car being injured. And the one who seemingly is the innocent one who is the cause of it went on innocently. So that is what is called in law the proximate cause. You drive down the highway and you think this fella is going to hit you, and so you to avoid the blow turn sharply and hit the other fella. Well, you’re responsible because you struck him and he didn’t strike you. Yet you interpreted his actions as an impending accident, and you are now the seeming cause of the accident when the true cause was what he, the innocent bystander, really did.

So hidden in the minds of men…for we’re all creating in this world in our Imaginations: Imagination creates reality. Who knows who is treading in the winepress tonight that is the cause of the disturbances in the world? We have an arms industry, with all of the billions that we pour into it. We can’t consume it ourselves, so we have to go out and force countries that can ill-afford to buy it to buy it. So we go all through South America or the Near East, all through the world, selling our battleships and discarded planes and discarded guns that we may keep the industry pouring. Well, these fellas who are selling it, they want to be successful so they can build a bigger home and get not three cars but four cars in the garage, and then live in the finest clubs, and be important people in their little community…selling arms! Then suddenly you read in the paper Peru has done so-and-so, this one does so-and-so. They have no way of making a gun for themselves and so we go out to sell them so that we may keep the wheels turning. So who is the unseen culprit? Well, that’s the world over.

For instance, as a friend said to me one day, it was Emmet Fox, he said, “You know, a man came to see me and he wanted his business improved. I said, ‘All right, I’ll pray for you, my good man. I’ll pray the only way I know how to pray, and I’ll pray that your business is simply booming. I’m a little bit curious tell me, what is your business?’” He said, ‘I’m a mortician.’”

Good night.