Tonight’s subject is There Is No Other God. You find this in the First Commandment in the book of Exodus, the 20th chapter. “I AM the Lord your God, who have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2), followed by the Second: “Make no image, whether on earth, the heavens, or below the sea.” (Exodus 20:4)
No image! Now, if I hear the word, “God,” do I make an image? If you hear the word, “Jesus,” do you have an image? If you have any image other than “I AM,” you are violating the Commandment.
“I AM the Lord . . “ Well, that could be translated: “I AM the I AM,” for the word translated, “The Lord,” is the same word which is: “Jod He Vau He” and: “When I come to the people of Israel, and I tell them that the God of their fathers has sent me, and they ask me, ‘what is his name? What shall I say?’ ‘Say to them, I AM has sent you. That is My name forever, and by this I shall be known throughout all generations.’” (Exodus 3:13-16) My own name: I AM. So, “make no graven image unto me,” (Exodus 20:4) and those who know thy name put their trust in thee.
Now, these are the commands of Scripture. If I really believe it, I can turn to no other. I can turn to nothing in the world, but to God; and God became me, that I may become god. So, the very core of my being is I AM. Before I say, “I AM a man,” I AM. Before I say that I AM rich, poor, known, unknown; before I qualify it, condition it, put anything upon it, that core is God. That’s I AM!
Now, “Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things that I say?” (Luke 6:46) Now, he puts no limit on this power, none whatsoever. “Whatever ye desire, when you pray, believe that you have received it, and you will” (Mark 11:24). He does not say it’s good for you or it’s bad for you. It’s entirely up to man to make the choice. Do I know what I want? Well, if I know what I want and I believe this and trust wholly in God as my own wonderful human imagination, then I should change my outer world to conform to my imaginal activity; so Israel’s delivery from Egypt, from the house of bondage, is your own wonderful human imagination delivered from the facts of nature.
You see the facts, you hear the facts, but I don’t like them. I will admit I must have had something to do with externalizing the things that I dislike; so in my ignorance I imagined all kinds of things. I thought I could get away with it. I thought no one saw me, that no one would know what I’m imagining when I’m alone, for no one is around. I am not speaking, I am not talking to anyone, not writing it down; it’s a secret . . it is my secret. It’s all my imagination, so can’t I indulge myself?
I pass someone on the street and say, “Oh, what a face!” I said it all within myself, and then I heard some news of someone else, and I was envious of what I heard. I heard it, and I became envious of what I heard. It’s my own wonderful imaginal activity. I fail to recognize my own
harvest when they appear in my world, but I cannot deny there’s a law that supports every phenomenon in the world. Therefore, be not deceived, for God is not mocked. “As a man sows, so shall he reap.” (Galatians 6:7) And I am sowing . . morning, noon and night by what I entertain in my imagination, for that is Christ Jesus.
Man is all imagination, and God is man and exists in us, and we in Him, and the eternal body of man is his imagination, and that is Jesus himself, and we are his members . . one with the body of Jesus, and that is our own wonderful human imagination. And one day, it will awaken like a flower, and we shall see what we did in our darkness, in our ignorance.
No condemnation, for we have paid the price while we acted unwisely. So, there’s no final judgment when you and I are brought before some external being to be judged for what we did. We are paying the price morning, noon and night, as we walk the earth. I read this unlovely thing, I read this lovely thing, and then suddenly I realize, Why, I did it myself! I planted it. No God on the outside gave it to me in response to a prayer; my own imaginal activity did it. No one rewarded me . . no reward! I simply set it in motion. I did it, wisely or unwisely. I did it, willingly or unwillingly; but I did it. And so everything comes into my world because I, in my moments of imaginal activity . . and I don’t stop it; I’m doing it morning, noon and night . . I set them in motion.
So, if I am really free in the sense that I have been delivered from Egypt, it means that my imagination is so controlled . . and I am one with it, that I refuse to accept the “facts” of life unless they conform to the ideals that I want to enjoy in my world.
So, I hear something of a friend of mine. He is unemployed. So, he’s unemployed . . that’s the fact. Well, am I really free? If I am really free from the tyranny of Egypt . . free from the house of bondage, having heard what I heard, I will now represent him to myself as gainfully employed. Now, the facts deny it, but I will remain faithful to my assumption as though it were true, confident that imagining creates reality, and therefore, if I persist in my assumption, it will harden into fact.
Well, having done it and proved it over and over and over, having shared what I have discovered with others, to see them doing it over and over . . then you become indifferent as to what others think. If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what another thinks . . if they tell you that you are stupid to believe that an imaginal act will harden into fact? You mean that you have nothing in this world . . but nothing! And you dare to assume that you have . . not only that you have, but you have what you want, and that others share it with you, and they know that you have it; and you’ll sleep this night on an empty stomach in the belief that you’ve been well fed? That you sleep this night as though things were as you desire them to be, when every fact of life during the day denies it? Well, that’s what we are called upon to do!
We are called upon to trust Him . . to put our trust in Him. Who is He? My own wonderful human imagination! I don’t say his imagination . . not his. “I AM” is his name. It’s first person present, not “I was;” not, “I will be,” but “I AM.”
But suppose I have imagined it and it hasn’t happened? Well then, what are you doing now, saying that I once imagined it and I am not still imagining it? In other words, if you call me by my name, you say, “Well, Neville”, I’ll respond. If I’m running away from something of which I am ashamed, I will still in some strange way show that I do respond to that name. Well now, I’ve put a name on “I AM.” I AM . . and you name it: healthy, wealthy, known . . whatever it is you desire in this world. Why forget it. Why forget what you’ve put upon the name of God? For the name of God, and the only name of God, and the everlasting name of God is “I AM.” He has no other name.
Now, the Christian world will speak of Jesus Christ, but the minute you say, “Jesus Christ,” you make an image, painted by the churches of the world after two thousand years, in violation of the Commandment: “Make no graven image of me.”
There is no personal description of Jesus in Scripture, but none! Can you write a biography of a man . . any man, and not in some way give away just what he may look like? Can anyone write the biography of Lincoln or the late President Kennedy, and not say something about his personal being? You can’t do it. Yet, here is the greatest in the world, and not one word of his personal being is mentioned in Scripture. Was he tall? Was he short? Oh, I know there are priests in the world who will tell you he was five feet one. They have found some kind of a shroud. They’ve just found the bones of Peter! And all this nonsense in the world . . this is not Scripture. Scripture is a psychological drama. It is supernatural, completely supernatural. It hasn’t a thing to do with any person who walked the face of this earth. And the living reality of the world is Christ Jesus. But Christ Jesus is your own wonderful human imagination. When you say, “I AM,” that’s He!
Now, of course, the Christian will say, “The Lord Jesus Christ is my Lord,” meaning external to himself, and he worships that; but you will say, “Adonai,” or “Jehovah.” The Adonai Elohim . . that’s my God. And something external, in spite of the Commandment, and both are totally unaware of the fact that Jehovah and Jesus are one; and Jehovah and Jesus, both being one . . and what is one? I AM. I AM . . that’s the oneness of the universe. Well, if I can get through anyone’s head, and he completely believes it and trusts in it, and is willing to die rather than turn to a false god, he cannot fail.
You will say, “Well, then, when is it going to happen, for I imagined it?” Well, here are the words of Habakkuk:
“The vision has its own appointed hour,
it ripens, it will flower;
if it be long, well, then wait,
for it is sure, and it will not be late”
. . Habakkuk 2:3 (Moffatt’s translation)
It’s like planting a seed. Well, don’t dig it up every day, just plant it in confidence that it contains within itself the powers to externalize the contents of itself, whether it be a grain of corn, a grain of wheat, or the sperm of a man. It will bring forth whatever is contained within it. And, so, all things bring forth after their kind.
So, if I dare to assume that I am the man I want to be . . and I define it . . I don’t modify it, I don’t limit it . . I dream of the kind of a person that I want to be. Now, it need not be based upon the assumption of another or upon any recommendation of another, because if I discuss it with another, he will say, “Well, you know, you should have money.” Well, it’s not my desire in life. I have to have money to live, yes, and pay Caesar’s world, but that is not my goal.
Here recently, a man down south died leaving a personal fortune of seven hundred million dollars. You have heard of the name, his name is Allison. We have his theater down south, a lovely theater . . I’ve gone into it . . something new in the Music Center. He owned the entire stock of the largest insurance . . that is, home insurance and loan company in the country . . it may be in the world with assets in excess of a half-billion dollars. He has all the stock; it’s his. He left it to his wife . . his second wife of a few years, and his son by the first wife of 18 years. Now, that man thought that if you didn’t work eighteen hours a day making money, you were no good. He didn’t contact his people; in years he never made any contact with the managers of the different branches. He remained at home; he didn’t want that personal contact. He was aloof. Just money . . money . . money . . money! Well, I tell you, he didn’t take it with him!
And, so, to give all of your life to the building of something that you can’t take with you . . and you so love it and you can’t take it . . that’s why we are told: “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all these things will be added” (Matthew 6:33). “For your Father knows you have need of all of these things” (Luke 12:30). But put your heart completely on a goal that will be taken with you. So, we are told, “Set your hope fully upon the Grace that is coming to you at the Revelation of Jesus Christ” (First Peter 1:13, Revised Standard Version).
If anyone would ask me tonight to advise him as to what he should want in this world, I would quote that passage: Set your hope fully upon the Grace that is coming to you at the Revelation . . “ the unveiling . . of Christ.” Well, who is He? Your own wonderful I AMness! Christ is God the Father. Well, if He is God the Father, He has to have a Son.
Don’t tell me you are a father and there is no son to bear witness of your fatherhood. So, is He really a father? Is He really in me? Yes, He’s in thee, and He’s a father. Well, where is it said in Scripture that Jesus Christ is a father? Did it name his son? Yes, it did, if one reads it carefully.
“And so he turned to the crowd and he said, ‘what think ye of the Christ? Whose son is he?’” (Matthew 22:42) for the New Testament begins on the statement: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.” (Matthew 1:1), so they answered, “The son of David” (Matthew 22:42). And he then asked a very simple question: “Why, then, did David in the spirit call him, Lord? If David thus called him Lord, how can he be David’s son?” (Matthew 22:43, 45)
Well, every son of the ancient world referred to his father as, “my lord.” He’s telling you David is his son. Well, now, chronologically, David lived . . if I take it chronologically, as a secular history, David lived one thousand years before the Advent. Well, how can he be his son? Because it is not secular history! “Before the world, was I AM” . . “Before Abraham, was I AM” (John 8:58). And when the world shall cease to be, I AM. Therefore, he is not something that came into this time slot at a certain point in time. He was before the whole vast world was. And he was a father before the world was. And who is that son? David.
David is the sum total of all humanity. For to the Hebrew world, history consists of all the generations of men and all of their experiences fused into a single whole, and that whole is called Eternity. And Eternity . . the Hebrew world is “Olam” (O-la. . m); it’s translated: “Eternity.”
Now, in Scripture, David stands before the king; and first he asks his lieutenant . . he said, “Abner, whose son is that youth?” (I Samuel 17:55) Listen to the sentence carefully. He’s not concerned about the lad; he’s concerned about the lad’s father. He said, “Abner, whose son is that youth? And the lieutenant answered and said, ‘as you so liveth, O King, I cannot tell’. He said, Inquire whose son the stripling is.” They inquired, no one knows. And then David stands before the king, holding the head of the giant Goliath in his hand; and said to him . . “He said, ‘Whose son are you, young man’? And he said, I am the son of the servant Jesse, the Bethlehemite.” (I Samuel 17:55-58)
Listen to it: in each case he’s inquiring about the father; so the answer comes back: “I am the son of Jesse.” Well, Jesse is any form of the verb “to be.” He’s telling the king: I am the son of Him Whose name is “I AM.” That’s who I AM, the son of the One Whose name is “I AM.” Well, who is “I AM”? “I AM” is the name of God forever and forever; so he tells you he is God, for David calls him “father.”
Now, if Christ became me, as Scripture teaches, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless of course you fail to meet the test!” (II Corinthians 13:5) Well, if He is in me, than I, too, must be a father, for He is a father; and if I AM Christ, I have to be the father of the same son. There can’t be another son . . not a David, but the David. Well, David does come . . one glorious explosion in your head, and when it all comes down and the dust is settled, here before you is this glorious boy as described in the book of Samuel. Here is David; and he’s calling you, “Father” and there’s no uncertainty as to this relationship: you the father, and David the son. There is no other way that you will ever know that you are the Lord Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah, unless His only son calls you, “Father.”
And that’s how Scripture unfolds within us, and everyone is going to have the experience.
So, have no other God, but God. Do not turn to any outside God. They do not exist; they are false gods. If there be a Christ other than He who is crucified within us, who actually rose and continues to rise in us, that Christ is a false Christ; and that Christ, all the priesthoods . . and I mean all denominations: Protestants, Catholics, and the Rabbinical world . . teach as an external god. Any teaching of an external god is a false god. There is no external god. “Make no graven image unto me.” (Exodus 20:4)
So, here . . to have no other God, we are asked by Scripture to put it into practice, for I must fulfill Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me. The only purpose for being is to fulfill Scripture, for everything in my world is going to vanish. If I owned the earth, I will leave it behind me; and eventually everything is going to vanish and leave not a trace of ever having been present. But this reality I cannot leave behind. So, I only can take with me that portion of Scripture that I have fulfilled.
So, to what extent have I fulfilled Scripture? To what extent am I living by Scripture? I must live by it. So, you find yourself free . . free of the horrors of the world when you really have only the one God . . not two gods. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deuteronomy 6:3) . . not two. That is the great confession of faith of the Hebraic mind; but do they mean it when every Friday night in Temple they say it . . and it’s a beautiful thing when it’s intoned in the Hebrew language; it’s beautiful, it moves you; but those who hear it and give the response, do they believe it? . . When they believe that something outside of Self is their security? Take from me everything, but don’t take from me my name that is God. If you don’t take from me and rob me of the feeling that I AM, then take all the little things for these are only shadows. I’ll rebuild it. I will rebuild everything as you take it from me. So, I grant you the right to take it from me, but don’t take from me the knowledge that I AM the One that men call God, . . not Neville, not any little thing that you can tag but just simply my awareness . . when I AM aware of being, and this wonderful human imagination, that is God!
Now, is there anything I can’t imagine? No. I may not believe it’s possible to do it, but don’t tell me I can’t imagine. I can take anyone in the world and tell them a little story. The story could be fantastic; incredibly they will follow me if I use language that they can understand. Let me use the language that they use, and let me come down to their level and find words that they understand, and tell the story. The most incredible story in the world . . they can follow me. They will follow me how? In their imagination! As I tell the story, they will follow me, and they will know exactly what I’m talking about; so let me tell it with understanding, for they can do it. What is impossible to a man who can understand? So, he begins to imagine the state.
Now, let me show you in a simple way . . how this thing is done, because in the world of Caesar we do depend upon our senses, and we give reality to things based upon the sense . . the sense of touch, the sense of sound, the sense of sight; and we give reality to it. So, we employ these. Imagination is spiritual sensation.
Now, I don’t need the actual object before my senses or to touch it with my hand at the moment. I can imagine it, but can I touch it in my imagination? Well, see if you can’t touch it now. Think of a tennis ball. Just think of a tennis ball. Well, it’s out where? Can you bounce it and hear it? Bounce it in your imagination, and hear it. Can you hold it? Can you feel the texture? Can you smell it? All right, you’ve done that much.
But you will say, “That’s all imagination; that is unreal. It doesn’t exist.” All right.
Now, take a baseball. Do the same thing to the baseball. Does it bounce? No, it’s harder; it doesn’t really bounce in the true sense of the word. Well, does it feel like the tennis ball? No. Does it smell like it? No. Well, if you can discriminate between these two substances . . these two objects . . well, then, they must exist. You can’t discriminate between nothings. If one is nothing and the other is nothing . . well, then, you discriminate. You can only discriminate if they exist. They exist, invisible to mortal eye; but they exist.
Now, everything in this world exists in the same way. If you bring it into your mind’s eye, it exists. All it needs on your part is the acceptance of the reality. Can you believe that it’s real? If you can agree that it’s real to the degree that you are self-persuaded that it’s real, it will become real.
Now, when men like our late President and the late Churchill and the present Anthony Eden will make these bold statements . . if you tell people as they listen to you, who said it, they are inclined to accept it because the men were prominent when they lived here. And, so, here, Mr. Hoover . . he sent me an autographed copy of his address that he gave in the City of San Francisco the last time he spoke at the G.O.P. Convention and he said that nations with its many forms of government, its revolutions . . all the things concerning a nation . . “The rise and fall,” he said, “could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the minds of men.” Now that is Mr. Hoover.
If I said John Brown said it, all this is silly; but a man who sat in the White House . . and, although he only held it for four years, I do personally feel he was a very able man . . a man that was far, far greater than present history has ever given any account of . . a really great man. And he said, “The rise and fall of nations (or the rise and fall of families . . the rise and fall of an individual) could be written in terms of the rise and fall of ideas implanted in the mind of that individual or that family or that nation.” Change those ideas . . you don’t have to fight; it will go down if you put it down. It will go up if you rise up to it.
Now, Churchill said, “This is an age in which the fortunes of people are determined by their moods.” This is not an age where people think, “Well, now, give me something first and then I will feel happy about it.” No, he said the mood determines the fortunes, rather than the fortunes determining the mood. Now, that is Churchill, a very practical man; and here he is telling the entire world who will listen to him that a mood . . if you hold a mood . . well, what is a mood but an imaginal state? How would I feel if this moment I desired some intense wonderful thing and I had it? But how would I feel? Well, that’s a mood. Churchill tells us: Catch the mood, and the mood will determine the fortunes. Don’t wait for the fortunes to react to the mood, but catch the mood and make the mood become causative and produce the result in the outer world . . the fortune.
And, then, Anthony Eden made the statement that: “An assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact.” It’s denied by the evidence of the senses; reason denies it, but he tells us, “If I dare to assume a thing…” . . and he said this at the Guild Hall in London when he was Prime Minister. It was his duty to address all the heads of the different aspects of the Commonwealth on this day at the Guild Hall. And they were having difficulties then with Russia, and he was calling upon the entire Western World . . speaking to the British people but calling on the Western World to change their attitude; for, unless the attitude is changed, you cannot change Russia; and if you are always going to be suspicious of her, and treat her as though she could never be trusted . . well, then, you are going to have similar things multiply in the world. All you have to do, he said, “Assume that they are reacting as you desire them to react; and if you persist in that assumption, it will harden into fact.”
Well, I have tried it. I have tried it with some person in my world that seemed stubborn in their attitude towards . . well, another, or even self. My wife, when we were first married, she worked at the Music Hall, and the man who was her boss . . a Russian, would keep her after hours. He wouldn’t come to work until noon; she came to work at 9:00, and her hours were from 9:00 until 5:00; but he didn’t come until 12:00, and he liked to work late at night, and just as she was about to go home, he would call her into his office and say, Billie, I want you to do this, that, and the other, . . and delay her dinner by an hour and a half, two hours, or more. And she resented this attitude of this man; so I said to her, “Why, Darling, as long as you are going to act this way towards him, he has to respond in like kind. You know the law; he doesn’t. So he makes a fortune, and you don’t make a fortune, but you are an artist.” She was a designer for the costumes that appeared on the stage of the Music Hall for eleven years. So, I said, “Talk to him as though he had praised you for your work. This morning when you go to work” . . we were only five blocks from the Music Hall where we lived on 55th Street . . “as you walk down Sixth Avenue, make a mental picture of him walking with you and hear his voice” . . it’s a distinctive Russian voice . . “and have him in his own broken English tell you how thrilled he is with your designs . . so much so that he wants to use all of them, but the budget does not allow it; yet he wants to use everyone you’ve brought down. How would you feel if he wanted all of them, and not take just two or three and send you back to your office to bring another four or five; but he wants everyone that you have submitted?”
She started doing it. Do you know? It wasn’t 24 hours that his attitude changed towards Bill, and remained changed because she changed it. So, we have that in Scripture: “We love Him, because He first loved us” (I John 4:19). Our love of God is response. Well, your love of anyone is response, unless you know what you are doing and you set it up in motion. And, so, if you want someone to respond, you have to start it first. So, she started it with him . . Leonidov and to this day . . of course, she hasn’t worked there in years . . but to this day when we go back, if we go to the Music Hall, he is all praise and joy. He could not be nicer and, yet, for eleven years he was, in her eyes, the devil!
Well, this is life. And it’s entirely up to us. What are we going to do if I have no other god? The minute she spoke of him as causation, she had another god and he had the power to do what he was doing, and he had no power because the very day she changed it to the real God, he had no power. He could only reflect the activity of her own mind. So if I think, now he can fire me . . then, I’ve given him a power he doesn’t really possess because the world is yourself “pushed out.” The whole vast world bears witness of the being that you are; for you are God, and God is a protean being. He’s playing all the parts . . good, bad and indifferent. So, it’s entirely up to us what we are doing, that we conjure in our world the different ones that bear witness to what we are doing. They reflect the activity of our mind.
So, if you have no other god, life will be so marvelous for you. You can’t begin to believe or to understand how free you are! Yes, in the world beyond this . . in the world of dream, you still catch yourself in the world of dream not responding like some automaton. You find yourself breaking it and changing it even in the dream. When you get to the point where in dream you are in control, and your attention is not . . I would say . . the victim, but it is actually the one under control of you, then your whole vast world will change.
Now, all I can ask you to do is try it. Just simply try it, and don’t say one thing is too difficult or this one is impossible.
Here is a chap. His best suit he tells me: “It was my best suit. I liked it. I sent it to the cleaners. I always liked the job the cleaner did; and when I call for my suit, the pants were missing. After two or three days of intense search all over the plant, he couldn’t find the pants. My wife began to bawl him out. I said, “Don’t do that. I really believe in this law. The man said to me when I made my third visit, ‘I want you to sign this. I’m insured and I will get a new pair of pants for you to match the suit.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want a new pair of pants; I want my pants. I just want my pants. I will not sign it’ . . no signing.” He said, “On my way down the freeway to work, I took my imaginary hands . . I didn’t take my physical hands off the wheel; I’m driving down the freeway doing 65 miles an hour, but in my imagination my hand is on the pair of pants. I can feel the texture, as you just did it with the ball. I can feel the pants. I’m actually feeling it. I did it all the way down to the office. That night on my way back, I rode wearing the pants; I could feel them on my thigh, and my hands could feel the texture of the piece of cloth. The next day, the man calls my wife to say that in delivering a suit, that the pair of pants were under the pants for that suit.” Someone had hidden two pants on the one, but it happened that his were the hidden one. And they found the pair of pants!
Now, you will say, “Well, that’s a mere coincidence.” There is no accident in this world. Don’t think that one thing happens by accident. There is no sure thing. All things have causes. Everything in the world begins with some cause. Well, now, he redeemed his pair of pants by not accepting the evidence of the senses. You can do that with everything in this world . . I don’t care what it is. But we are the operant power. It doesn’t operate itself. If I know what to do and I don’t do it, it doesn’t work itself! I have to actually operate this wonderful principle in my own wonderful human imagination. So, I can’t pass the buck.
You get to the point, as my wife . . years ago . . said to me, “You know, the one thing wrong with you, Neville . . you can’t trust anyone but yourself.”
I said, “I trust everyone, but I don’t ask anyone for help, if that’s what you mean.”
I will trust them, because . . they are myself “pushed out” . . and I do trust myself. But why must I turn to another and ask another, when God is not another? He is centered in me, as my own wonderful human imagination. And wouldn’t it be far better for me to suffer in the interval to discover God than not to suffer and never discover Him? Always passing the buck? Asking this one, that one, or the other one? No! I’ve got to stand on my own feet.
In fact, my dancing partner, when Bill and I got engaged back in 1936 . . she said to my wife: “You know, I’ll tell you one thing, how to keep him. Wear a dress that resembles the Bible. He’s always reading it.” She heartily disapproved of my interest in the Bible. To her, the theater and all the things of that sort were far more interesting; but for me to sit home and find interest six hours a day, seven days a week, in reading the same book . . the Bible . . well, I haven’t exhausted it, and I could not in eternity. It’s the Word of God. It’s ever fresh; day after day, the Book is fresh. And yet, the sixty-six books, I’ve read them over and over and over; and I read them with the Concordance . . both the Hebrew and the Greek, and it’s ever a fresh book. When people say to me, “Have you read so-and-so?” I say, “What so and. . so?” “Well, it’s the best seller.” “No, I haven’t, and please don’t give it to me. I have no time to read it.”
So, they are always forcing books upon me, but I don’t have time to read them, because I never exhaust the one Book, and that is the Bible.
Now, it may seem insane to take one book over the two thousand years and still make it modern, but the Bible is contemporary. It’s not an ancient work; it’s forever! It’s contemporary. These characters are eternal states dwelling in the imagination of man, and the day will come when you will meet them, and you will know they are states; but when you enter the states, they become animated. You animate the state of Abraham, and here is Abraham; but it’s a state, but suddenly it takes on to you flesh and blood. It becomes an animated being, and it is Abraham. You don’t have to ask any questions as to who are you? . . You know when you enter the state of Abraham, which is the state of faith.
All these are states . . eternal states; which is God’s drama and man passes through states, as he passes through cities. If I pass through a city, the city doesn’t cease to exist because I passed through it. It remains for anyone to pass through. Well, the same thing is true of states. I pass through the state of poverty. When I pass through poverty and rub it off and assume, while I’m poor, that I AM rich; then when I become rich, poverty hasn’t ceased to be, any more than the state or the city ceased to be. It remains a state for anyone to enter it.
When you know this, you can forgive every being in the world. He fell into a state, and people say, “He’s poor.” He isn’t poor; he’s in a state of poverty. He can get out of that state. While he’s in it, assume that he is free. Assume that he is now wealthy, or whatever he feels would be security; and while he is in that new state, the other one ceases to be to him; but it remains a permanent state for anyone, knowingly or unknowingly, to fall into it.
Therefore, when you know this, you can say with Blake: “I do not consider either the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be everyone a state of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil.” It falls right into a state and remains in it, and then the state externalizes in his world.
When you know this, you are as free as the wind, and you will not go to sleep at night in any state other than the state of your desire. You just would not. And, yet, people will say, “Just give me five more minutes, because I so love the feeling of being unwanted.” Haven’t you known people that way?
I knew a man in New York City during the Second World War. He hated Roosevelt . . hated him! And the man said to me quite innocently . . he came to my meetings; he said, “When I shave in the morning, I tell him what I think of him. I spend every minute that I’m shaving my face telling him what I think of him, and it isn’t pleasant.”
I said, “Why do you do this?”
“Well,” he said, “you know, if you go to a Broadway show tonight and spend ten dollars for a seat, you couldn’t get the kick in the two and a half hours for ten dollars that I get for nothing in ten minutes in the morning. I get all my emotions aroused, and they are flaming because I so hate the so-and-so.” He says, “Who do you think you are? A king? You put your son, who is not a soldier, and make him a general.” And he’s telling all these things.
Well, Roosevelt wasn’t hurt; he was hurt. He offered Roosevelt gifts that he did not accept. If I give you a gift and it’s not accepted, who is stuck with it? I, the giver! I offered it and you didn’t take it; so I’m stuck with it. So, he offered these things to Roosevelt, and Roosevelt didn’t take them; so he was stuck with them, and his world simply went this way. He was an only child. What possessed him to dislike a man he’d never met . . but people do that. And people will not get out of the mood; knowing the mood is causative, they still stay in it, and “eat worms,” as it were . . just revel in it for a while, not knowing that it’s going to come to pass. And when they least expect it, the harvest will appear. They will not recognize their harvest, and they will deny they ever planted it or had anything to do with the planting of it, but it had to come just as they did it, and that’s the law.
So, here, take this seriously. Find out who God really is. I tell you from my own experience, He is your own wonderful human imagination. And that wonderful human imagination is the Eternal Vine . . the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are His members (paraphrase of Ephesians 5:30). And the Lord Jesus Christ is one with the Lord Jehovah. They are one, and the name of both is “I AM.” That’s God! Well, can you say, “I AM”?
A little child when it’s born, before it can see anything or know anything, it must first know that it is. Its little hand comes up, and it doesn’t even know that its hand is its own, and it looks at it for a second and then it falls, and it wonders, “What has happened? Where did that something go?” It doesn’t know it’s its own hand . . eventually, if it stays long enough for it to look at it; but before it can identify a hand, it must first be; and it is saying, without using words, “I AM.” Everyone is saying, “I AM,” for that is the breath of man, because that’s God-in-man. Without God-in-man, there is no man. And God’s name is Himself; and therefore, everyone, even the moron, is saying, “I AM.”
One who suffers from total amnesia is aware of being, even though he doesn’t know who he is and what he is and where he is. He still knows that he is. Well, that’s God.
Now, we start on that premise and build the structure that we want in this world of ours.
Now, let us go into the Silence.
Good.
Now, are there any questions, please?
(A lady asks a question which is inaudible on the tape.)
Neville: No, David is the second event. The birth comes first. In fact, strangely enough, in the Resurrection . . man in the Resurrection is above the organization of sex. He’s not a male. I’m not speaking of a male; I’m speaking of Man. You are Man, but on this level, you are a female. I am Man, but on this level I am male. Now, don’t confuse male with man, for God is Man. And so, when you see David, even though you be woman, you will know that you are the father of David. Strangely enough, it will not strike you funnily or in some strange way; it will be the most natural thing in the world, because you are God, and God is Man. This division is only on this level, but man in the Resurrection is above the organization of sex; and, so, the second great event is the coming of David; the third is the splitting of the Temple of your body from top to bottom and the ascent, like a serpent, into heaven; and the fourth is the descent of the dove. And the dove smothers you with affection. That is the symbol of the Holy Spirit accepting you completely . . the seal of approval of the work that he’s done. So, these are the four major ones. After that, you fulfill Scripture in many ways; but these are the four major ones . . the Four Mighty Acts of God, unveiling Himself in you as you.
So, don’t think for one moment because you’re a lady that it will stun you when David stands before you and you know that you are his father. It will not, my dear . . any more than it stuns a woman of seventy-seven to find a little infant and know, “That is mine.”
Now, many of you have conceived of the Holy Spirit, but you’ve forgotten it. I’ll give you a case.
This lady in L.A. . . a sweet, lovely lady, I would say my age . . being a lady, we’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say she’s five years younger. So, she’s my age; therefore beyond the age of bearing. I asked them all in L.A. to please share with me their visions, that I may interpret and see where they are in the unfolding picture, for I’m only interested in the unfolding picture of Scripture.
“Well,” she said, “I was coming down on a ship along the California coast, and I turned to a passenger on deck, and I said, ‘Let me know when we pass or arrive at Point Conception’; and this passenger said to her, ‘Why, we passed that thirty miles back. Don’t you remember’” And she said, “I felt so sheepish and so foolish that I did not remember,” and I said to her, “Oh, yes, I forgot! Point Conception thirty miles back.”
I said to her, “You have had the Conception. You’ve conceived of the Holy Spirit. You only now have to await the birth; and if you’ve forgotten the conception, the chances are you’ve forgotten the birth.”
So she said, after I spoke to her, three weeks later this is what she had: She said, “I found myself in a house . . dark, pitch dark . . no light. I was finding it difficult to open a door leading to the outside. There was something wrong with the handle, or something, but I finally got it open, and I was blinded by the brilliancy of the outside . . it was so brilliant with light . . this enormous brilliant light. On the steps in front of me was a little babe wrapped in cloth in a basket, and two women dressed in the robes of the ancient world,” . . like the Biblical women as you see in pictures, and a third one standing a little bit removed . . maybe ten feet away; and she said, “I knew when I saw that baby that it was mine!” One woman said, “It is her baby,” pointing to this lady; the other one said, “How could it be her baby? She was in the house. Someone must have left it there. I will take it.” But the one said, “Oh, no, you don’t, and then lifted the infant and put it in her arms. She said, “I knew it was my baby. I knew it was my son . . not just a baby, but my son,” and the little boy looked into her face and a heavenly smile broke upon it . . the story of Isaac.
Well, she’s a woman beyond the age of bearing. I could tell many of the ladies in the audience they’ve all had the birth; and right after the birth comes David; after David, the Temple’s being split; and then the Dove. It takes three and a half years from the birth to the end of the drama. Well, we’ve been traveling for thousands of years. We didn’t start in our mother’s womb. We’ve been coming through this “furnace of affliction” for thousands of years, and the end is perfect. But the end comes so quickly! Up to the very end, you’re totally unaware of what is going to happen, and then suddenly in three and a half years the drama is over.
But you will not be surprised, my dear, when you see David and David calls you “father.” You see, in the most critical book on the Bible . . it is the Encyclopedia Biblica . . they claim that the original manuscripts that they have used to translate . . the volume is this thick . . an enormous volume. You can get it today in four volumes. I have it, unfortunately, in the one big thick one, and it falls apart it’s so big and heavy. But when it takes David, David has no mother in the ancient manuscripts; but in our Bible, the scribes along the way . . in the book of Ruth . . gave a mother to make it secular, and it isn’t secular history at all.
Listen to the words: “And I will tell of the decree of the Lord. He said unto me, Thou art my son. Today I have begotten thee.” (Psalm 2:7)
There is no mother mentioned. That’s the Second Psalm, and these are the words addressed to David. And I have found David, and he has cried unto me, “Thou art my father, my God, and the Rock of my Salvation.” (Psalm 89:26)
Who is speaking? The Lord is speaking.
But there are people in this world . . I have a lady in New York City, and she said, “I just cannot for one moment pray to a male god. My god has to be a woman.” She was bitter in marriage. She hated her husband; undoubtedly, he hated her, too. She’s an interior decorator. She and her two sisters all work as interior decorators, and they all have this strange feeling about men. They hate men. Therefore, because they hate men, they can’t conceive that God is man and her god has to be a woman . . she’s going to pray to a woman.
I said, “Go ahead and pray to a woman if you want to. I don’t pray to any man or woman. I appropriate.”
I’m told the world is mine, and all within it; and “were I hungry, I would not tell you.” (Psalm 50:12) I would slay and eat, “for the cattle on a thousand hills are mine.” (Psalm 50:10) so, why should I ask you for permission to take what is mine? So, she’s asking someone else . . a woman god; but you will not ask a woman god . . you are God, and you are not male or female; you’re Man.
That powerful statement of Blake: “Thou art a man. God is no more. Thy own humanity learn to adore.”
Are there any other questions, please? (Question inaudible on tape): Well, my dear, look at this fabulous world and see the activity. It’s kept alive by this causal action in the mind of man. All this action that you see is not on the “outside.”
“All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” . . William Blake
(Further question by same woman, inaudible on tape): Inner talkings externalize themselves. They do! The outside world bears witness of the inside world; and we do it morning, noon and night, and we can’t seem to arrest it. We are causal beings. And morning, noon and night, get on the right one, because if you don’t you are going to start the confusion and add to the confusion. People think, “I’m alone. No one sees it.” Then read the 8th chapter of Ezekiel. They go into the little place, and they think, “No one sees us”; and all these monstrous things are creeping within their minds, but the Lord sees, for the Lord is within, and He sees what man is doing there . . all the abominations within the chambers of their own minds (Ezekiel 8:6).
If man thought for one moment that what he is entertaining as thought was visible to a being, he would hesitate; but he doesn’t think that it’s visible to any being, including God. He thinks God is too busy running the universe, so because he’s put God “out there,” some place . . I don’t know where he’s put Him, but somewhere “out there,” and He’s so busy holding all these planets and galaxies in their place, He has no time for this one little worm called John Brown. Yet He is in the very heart of John Brown, or John Brown couldn’t breathe . . John Brown couldn’t live! And it is the same God that created and sustains the universe . . the same God. There is only one God. There are not two gods. There’s no room for two gods. And get it right into your mind so that you will not turn to another god.
Every once in a while some phony drops upon the stage and tries to mislead you into some meditative act, but give him some money first. They want ten per cent of your salary to teach you how to meditate; and then the first thing they do, they enslave your mind. Then they put you on a special diet. That’s the way of God . . or wearing certain kinds of clothes, or doing something else . . all external things. And that’s not God. Leave them alone any time that they approach you with something to be done on the outside in order to reach God . . leave them alone.
“Who will now commend us to God? You are no worse off if you do not eat, and no better off if you do.” (I Corinthians 8:8) That’s what we are told in Scripture. He says, “I know, and I am persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ that there is nothing unclean in itself; but anyone who sees anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” (Romans 14:14)
So, let them not eat this, and not eat that because it’s unclean. Well, then, it’s unclean to them. But don’t let them influence you. God gave you a palate to exercise it. Well, I couldn’t exercise my palate on the kind of things that holy people eat. And may I tell you? If anyone is introduced to you as a holy man, turn around and run in the opposite direction. No matter what he looks like and how he’s publicized, there aren’t any “holy men!” If anyone says, “There is Christ,” or, “Here is Christ,” believe him not. For when He appears, you are just like Him. Well, do you look like that person? No. This one? No.
I was on TV one night, a two-hour panel. We had a Baptist minister and the head of the Seventh Day Adventists in Los Angeles, with headquarters in Glendale, who teaches philosophy at U.C.L.A., and an archaeologist. We all started off, and the two ministers said, “If we accept what you are teaching, you have robbed us of two thousand years of Christianity.”
I said, “I have? Well, you’d better accept it, because if you’ve been holding onto something in conflict with this, it’s all wrong . . all speculation. I’m not speculating, I tell you the truth. It’s all revelation.”
Then the archaeologist takes out a shroud . . some long piece of a cloth, and he tries to convince the people on TV because he puts it before the camera. He said, “This is the impression of the body of Jesus.”
I said, “That’s the impression of the body of Jesus?”
He said, “Yes; it was found, I think, in 500 A.D.”
I said, “You believe that? You, an archaeologist!”
And, of course, the Seventh Day Adventist believed it; and the Baptist didn’t commit himself, but he was on the verge of committing himself.
I said, “Now, you are all students of the Bible, aren’t you? You are both ministers.” “Oh, yes, students of the Bible.”
I said, “It does not yet appear that we shall be; but we know this much: When he does appear, we shall know him.” Why? “We shall be like him.” (I John 3:2)
“Now, do you look like that? Why, that is so far removed from anyone around this table that you couldn’t compare it. It doesn’t even look human to me. But you look like that? Well, when he appears, you will look like him. Well, now, do you think you are going to grow into the likeness of that?”
Well, they didn’t know what to say . . all tongues going this way, and the cameraman moved; and the Moderator picked it up and started in a different direction.
When I start with Scripture, they all become confused, but I am only quoting Scripture. And when I say, David is the son of Jesus Christ . . “Where is that? Christ wasn’t married!”
I said, “Must a man be married to have a child?”
There are millions born in this world without marriage. Well, we won’t go into that angle of it.
He tells you that David in the spirit called him, “my lord”’ and my lord is my father. A son refers to his father as “my lord.” He’s telling you, if he is a father, he has to have a son and he’s pinpointed the son for you, but you think Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He tells you he is God.
He said, “Philip, I have been so long with you, and yet you do not know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father. How, then, can you say, Show us the Father?” (John 8:9)
Good night.