Today we read: “I say, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you, nevertheless, you will die like men.” (Psalm 82:1) Does this not imply that you are not men? If you are men when addressed, then the sentence, “You will die like men,” is without meaning. You are told, “You are sons of God, … but you will die like men.”
Now we turn to Paul’s letter as he wrote it to the Philippians, “Christ Jesus who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it necessary” . . or, count it something to be grasped . . “but emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men, and being in human form, he became obedient unto death, even death on the cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him a name that is above all names, that at the name of Jesus Christ every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God.”
Now, Jesus Christ only claimed he was the Son of God! You were addressed in the beginning as, “sons of God.” Here is, now, our purpose to reason for emptying ourselves and becoming slaves. The human form is the cross; it is the slave. And we will bear this cross for an allotted span. Oh, we will cry out, because we had to completely empty ourselves of the Being that we really are, for the Being that we really are is one with God! We were in the form of God. Yet, we emptied ourselves and took upon ourselves the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men, and being in the form of man, humbled ourselves and became obedient unto death . . even death on a cross.
Now, we are the Being spoken of in Scripture. This story in the depths of your own consciousness is still extant. It is taking place, without reference to duration, to repetition, or to its position in time. It will slowly unfold itself in each person in this world. As it unfolds itself, the individual knows he is the one who descended into this world and took upon himself the form of a slave . . that is, this human form.
“No one can ascend into heaven but he who descended, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.”
This [indicating the physical body] is not your real form. You took this for a purpose, for this is the form of death. You descended into this world, that you may taste and experience death. When you read in Scripture, “Should not the Christ suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” . . now, you and I have the association with the word suffer as grief, pain. Look it up in your Biblical Concordance, and you will see that it means, “to experience a sensation or feeling.”
There are many words translated suffer. One is “to let it be so” when he comes before John, and yet he allows it to be so for tradition’s sake and he becomes baptized. “Let it be so” is called, “Suffer it to be so now.” But when it comes to the statement, “Should not the Christ suffer these things, and then enter into his glory?” that word is translated “to experience a sensation” . . to experience death.
The Immortal You could not know what death is like . . it could never know the pains of this world until it became one with it. To become one with it, it has to empty itself of its divine form, which was one with God, and take upon itself the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of man.
So, he wears it as you would wear a mask. This [indicating the physical body] is a mask. Your real form . . if I told you, I can only use words; but how on earth could I tell you the glory of your form?
When I heard the chorus sing out . . this wonderful chorus, “Neville is risen!” I can only tell you it was a spiral motion . . and this is 1946 . . and I am a luminous body. I needed no sun, no moon, no stars; I was light unto myself. And as I walked . . or, I would say –glided by, everything was made perfect because I was perfect. Everything that I passed by, though at the moment it seemed imperfect, it was instantly transformed into perfection. The blind ceased to be blind, the deaf ceased to be deaf, the lame ceased to be lame, and everyone was made perfect in that moment as I passed by. That was the form.
Eleven years ago, on the 8th of April, when I was lifted up as my body . . the cross that I wore through the centuries . . at that moment in time it was split in two from top to bottom. And here I saw . . How on earth can you describe this to any person and make sense of it? Here, my body is completely split in two, and I am looking now at a pool of golden, liquid, pulsing light, and I know it is my Self. As I know it, I . . the observer . . fuse with it. It is my Self, my own Redeemer and Creator, and yet, it is my Self, like a self-redemption, a Self-created Being. And at that moment, like a fiery serpent I ascended into Heaven.
You tell a man that he is a “fiery serpent” . . it scares him. He wants to be a man of flesh and blood. He wants exactly what he is, made a little bit better . . a little bit stronger, a little bit of everything more than he is now, but he doesn’t want a radical change of the being that he is.
Well, I tell you, the face is human, the voice is human, the hands are human, but do not ask anyone to tell you what the body is. You will not see it. I can only describe the motion that I made when I ascended; and when I entered into this state, it reverberated, as we are told in Scripture, “He takes it by storm.” The whole thing was one tremendous reverberation, as you enter. That is in store for everyone.
The descent is into generation, and the ascent is into regeneration. The descent is into death and decay, and the ascent is into everlasting life, but enhanced by reason of the experiences of the descent. You were “before that the world was,” and you were in the form of God!
As Paul said, “He has made known unto us the mystery of His will according to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time.”
It is a plan. This is not some emergency thinking. “Before that the world was,” you were. You are the gods spoken of, and because you are gods and addressed as gods, when you have this experience, you taste of death.
Now, this is contemporary. When you read Scripture, do not think for one moment you are reading of something that took place two thousand years ago. You are reading it now, and they said to him as he began to speak . . now, he has come only to fulfill Scripture. What Scripture is he fulfilling now in this 10th chapter of John? Go to the 21st chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, and read these words, “If a man has a son who is stubborn and rebellious and will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, they will bring him, and shall bring him before the elders of the city and say to the elders: ‘This is our son. He is stubborn and rebellious, and will not obey our words. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.”
Do you recognize the character in the Gospel? Read it in the “11th chapter of Matthew: “And so they called the Son of Man a drunkard and a glutton, a friend of sinners, of publicans and harlots and tax collectors. Here is one who said to his mother, What have I to do with thee? And then they confronted him in the temple and said, Why did you do this to us? Your father and I have been searching for you for three days. And he answered, I must be about my Father’s business.”
Here, “No earthly parents do I confess. I am doing my Father’s business.” They could not understand him. He was then about twelve years of age.
They couldn’t understand the complete denial of physical ancestry, for he knew now . . for memory began to return . . who he really is. He came down to experience death. He bore the cross for the allotted time. Then came that moment in time when the cross was split from top to bottom, and the Spirit trapped was set free, and the long-lost rank restored, and the fall forgiven.
And now, “Who are my parents? Who are my brothers? Who are my sisters? Those who do the will of Him who sent me” . . sent me into this world of decay and death that I may experience decay and death. I could not experience it from above. I had to come right down into it and assume and be born man. And this is the cross that I wear.
So the Body that really you gave up, I can’t begin to tell you the joy that is in store for you when you once more take it up. It’s a body of light, a body of power, a body that is all wisdom. You don’t have to raise one finger to make eyes appear in empty sockets. You don’t take them to a hospital and put little eyes from some “eye bank” into the sockets. You don’t have any little banks for livers or hands and for the missing members. As you walk by, everything is done because you are perfect. You need nothing that mortal man thinks you must need. Nothing can remain imperfect in your presence as you walk by clothed in this Garment . . the Garment you gave up. You emptied yourself, and then took upon yourself the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.
So, if I tell you, as I will, “I say, You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless you will die like men” . . if you are men when I address you, that is a stupid remark! If you are not men when you are addressed . . and you are addressed in the Divine Council, then who are you? I told you, you are sons of God. What, then, was my form? You emptied yourself of it; you gave it up.
I can only bring back a little shadow of remembrance to you by telling you from my own experience what is in store for you.
When I use the word serpent, it is distasteful to the average person in the world, and yet, we are told, “Those who surround the throne of God, the Seraphim, the fiery serpents” . . God’s wisest, wisest creation was the Seraphim. And when Isaiah said, “Send me, O Lord, and they came with a coal and put it on his lips, they spoke” . . it was the human voice. He described them as having hands, human faces, . . of course, he did put wings on them. I will tell you from my own experience, you don’t need wings. You are omnipresent in such a Body. Wherever you would be, there you are. You need no power to take you there; you are power. You are Omnipotence. You are Omniscience. You are Omnipresent, so you do not need anything to take you any place. That’s the Being that you are! But you completely emptied yourself of it for this Divine purpose, and many a time, while wearing these garments . . this cross, we cry out. It seems so heavy, and all the horrors of the world, and we do cry out asking to be relieved of it.
But you are going to carry the cross for the allotted time. And when the time is fulfilled, then it is going to be split right down from top to bottom, and at the base you are going to see . . and how on earth can I tell you? Molten gold will take any form. You have a form. You are the observer, and the minute you look at it, you . . the form . . observing the golden, molten state . . you fuse with it, and then it takes your form. And you go up into Heaven like a fiery serpent. That’s the Being that you are!
Let no one scare you; let no one frighten you . . that you’ve got to do this, that and the other. It’s already done! This whole thing is already completed. You are here as members of a Body, one Body sharing in a purposed end. So, when you go back, you are that one Body. You and I actually form the one Body that is God! So, we, the sons of God, came down, and when we rise we are God the Father.
That is the only way we could experience the wholeness . . is by shattering ourselves, becoming fragmented, and then going through the entire journey, and in the end returning, and returning into Unity. And that Unity is God the Father.
So, when we are told, “Stone him to death” . . well, the stones are only the literal facts of life. “They took up stones to stone him.” We are told at the end, “not one bone of his body was broken.” What body? The Bible. That’s his eternal body. Men have tried through the centuries to change it, and you will find these many editions and they are necessary because overly zealous scribes will add and take from, and add their own little stupid concepts on their theories, what they ought to be. And you will find them among the wisest of men still trying to change the body, but in the end, “not one bone is broken,” as you are told in Exodus, in Numbers, and in the Psalms: “Not a bone is broken.” When they came to him, not a bone was broken.
That means that you cannot change. He did not come to change, to abolish the law and the prophets; he came only to fulfill. So, he fulfills everything in the world. And you are the One spoken of. You are the Lord Jesus Christ!
Until you actually know it from experience, you dwell upon it. Just dwell upon it. Go to sleep in the consciousness of being Him, and you will know beyond all doubt, in the not-distant future, really Who-You-Are. You will know the truth of the things that I am talking about. Everyone will. That is why I am here. That is why I have been sent.
I have been called and sent in the same way that Paul said he was called and sent, in the same way the central figure said, “I have been sent, and when you see me” . . if you can really see me . . “you have seen Him who sent me.” You will know the One who sent me when you see me, because all will be alike. And yet, no loss of identity, may I tell you? It’s not an absorption, losing your identity. No, and yet, the same form, the same glorious, radiant form that is all-powerful and all-wise. So, that is the Being that you really are.
What does it matter what Oscars you got today or tomorrow, or what power in the world of Caesar you seem to exercise? It means nothing, compared to the Being that you really are. Put all your mind and all your soul upon this one hope that it will unfold in the not-distant future within you, for that’s the only purpose for it all.
And when this purpose is really revealed to you . . and I am trying my best to reveal it . . then everything falls right into place. It gives meaning to the entire picture of life. Everything has meaning then.
If, perchance, you are passing through a trying time . . I am going to ask a friend of mine . . she is here tonight. . to tell another friend, a mutual friend, this statement from Blake:
“There are states in which all visionary men are accounted mad men.” [From “The Laocoon”] Then he adds this to that thought: “Read Luke, the 2nd chapter, the 1st verse.” If you read the 2nd chapter, the 1st verse, you will wonder how on earth can he relate that to what he has just said, that “All visionary men are accounted mad men,” But if you read the whole chapter, you will see what he is really telling you, that it is on your doorstep. It is the birth of the child. The second chapter of Luke, the first verse, and that is: “The order went out from Augustus Caesar that all” . . the whole vast world . . “must be enrolled” . . enrolled, it implies, for taxes. They must now be enrolled, for the order has come.
And read the whole chapter, and you will see where this, now . . Joseph, because he was of the line of David, he took his wife Mary up to Bethlehem, the city of David, and then while she was there, her time arrived for the delivery of her son. And then the Son is born!
It is preceded by, as Blake said, a form of madness, for he said: “All visionary men are accounted . . in certain states they are accounted mad men.” And then he asks you to read that verse. Blake was not the kind of person who would spell everything out. In fact, he didn’t spell anything out. He said to his critic, the great Trussler . . The Reverend Dr. Trussler: “You say I need someone to interpret my word. You ought to know that that which can be made clear to the idiot isn’t worth my time. And the ancients understood this, and they said, What was too clear could not rouse the faculties to act.” [From “Letter No. 51 to Dr. Trussler]
If you leave it without trying to clarify it, then you will simply stimulate the man to think and rouse his faculties to act. So, he doesn’t spell it out, but you read the chapter and you will see what Blake is implying, that a form of madness precedes the birth of the child.
I know, in my own case . . it goes back quite a few years before 1959 . . I would say, four or five years, that if I shared with others what I was feeling within me at the time, it would be a form of madness. I was talking to an audience of twenty-six hundred on Sunday mornings and turning away over fifteen hundred at the Fox-Wilshire. I took that platform, and here I could feel within me, just as a woman would feel, the struggle of a child within her, but I felt it in my head . . this pulsing, pulsing, vibrant state. Sit down for a moment, and the whole thing is just like a mad, mad state, and I was talking to intelligent people . . I think they were . . who came to hear me, and I was addressing twenty-six hundred and was turning away fifteen hundred, and I took another theater that sat another seven hundred and fifty, and that overflowed; and, yet, here I am like a woman . . a pregnant woman . . almost at the end of her time. That is what Blake is talking about.
I am going to ask my friend to tell her to read that second chapter, and all the symptoms that she is going through now are glorious. They are perfectly wonderful, and I would not raise one finger to stop them or to divert them. First of all, I couldn’t. It is upon her. And, so, I tell everyone here: until this birth takes place, you can’t return, but it will take place.
As we are told: “No man can enter the New Age called the Kingdom of God unless he is born from above.” And when he is “born from above,” it will be followed in this manner: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so will the Son of Man be lifted up.” That comes later. The first act, then 139 days later comes the discovery of the Fatherhood of God, and 123 days later, making it 262, comes the ascent into Heaven like a fiery serpent. And then 998 days later, making it one thousand two hundred and sixty (1,260), comes the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. And then the whole thing is over!
And you are now still here. You have borne the fardel [burden] the allotted span, but you are going to be here to tell it, and you will tell it to the very end, and that end will come like this. But you have to tell it to encourage those who are on the verge of it, because everyone has to wear the cross for the allotted span. And then at the end, that spine is split in two from top to bottom, revealing . . and how on earth could anyone tell it more beautifully than Blake told it at the end of his “Jerusalem” . . almost at the end. And here he is, looking at it, and he says, “Oh, my Divine Redeemer and Creator!” He said:
“I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years Circling1 around thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is my Self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.”
He didn’t spell it out. I have tried tonight to spell it out for you, but you see, and you know, it doesn’t make sense. It’s a form of madness. How can you look at molten gold that is pulsing and alive, and know it is your Self? You look into a mirror, and you will say, “I know that’s my reflection . . that’s myself.” But to look at this that has no form; it is a golden, molten, liquid light, and yet, you know more surely that it is you than you know when you look into a mirror!
And as you know it, you fuse with it. You are now the mold that it takes, and you know exactly what mold you must have been, because the minute you take it, up like a fiery serpent you go into Heaven, and it reverberates like thunder.
So, that is the Being that you are. So, when you read the 82nd Psalm, which is the most difficult of all Psalms . . so claim our scholars . . how on earth can we interpret it? We can only guess at it.
“But God has taken His place in the Divine Council, in the midst of the gods He holds judgment” . . and now He speaks: “I say you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you will die like men.”
So, when one comes into the world and claims what he does, they will take up stones and tell him who his father is on earth. “They took up stones to stone him, and he said to them, For what do you stone me? For what good works? And they said to him, For no good works, but for your blasphemy, for you, being a man, make yourself God.”
Then he said to them, “Is it not written in your law that I say, You are gods?” Now, he is quoting something two thousand years before; and he is quoting it as though it is taking place now: “I say to you” . . that’s what he is telling them . . “that you are gods, for it is written in your law that you are gods. And Scripture cannot be broken. If, then, he called you gods because you heard the Word of God, do you say that he whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because he said, I AM the Son of God?”
Now, he is telling them that they are the sons of God, but they won’t believe it. They claim they are the sons of Abraham, born after the flesh. He is telling them they are sons of God, but they will not know it until they experience that which he has. So, he has suffered these things, and to suffer is to “experience the sensations; to know them from actual experience.”
So, they took up stones. They say, We know your father and your mother and your brothers and your sisters, and we know all about you; and you make these extravagant claims.
So, that is the Being that you really are. And I cannot tell anyone in the world the glory that is in store for them when they are lifted up, and they actually find themselves clothed in that Body, but more beautiful than ever, that they emptied themselves of in order to come down here.
You didn’t begin in any swamp! You didn’t begin in any little thing called a tadpole. These are garments [indicating the physical body] that you annexed; you penetrated these bodies and annexed the brains of them. But you are the sons of God who did it. And to do it, you can’t pretend you are doing it; you had to completely empty yourself of your glory to take this form of the cross. And you can’t pretend, but you will play it the allotted time. After you have played it to the fullness of time, then you will hear the call.
Now, you here . . a lady called me this week. She said, “I went home last Monday night, and I was thrilled with what you said, but I am disturbed.”
I was talking of the betrayer, and here it is Judas, and I was speaking highly of Judas. Well, no one can betray a man without knowing the man’s secrets, for “no man knows the secret of God but the Spirit of God.” So, if he betrays God, he has to know God! He couldn’t betray what he doesn’t know.
Then she quotes Mark. Now, again, we find scribes adding to. The same quote that you find in Luke does not quote what Mark does. Mark is basic, granted, but our scribes, in transcribing, they have to build their own little philosophy of life. Luke only claims the story of the betrayal, but the word translated woe . . if you look it up in your Concordance, it means: “who, which, what, that.” In other words, “Who is that?” The same that they are asking about Judas. “What will happen to that man? What is that to thee? Follow thou me.” He knew the secret, and till the very end, they did not know the secret. They thought they knew it, but they did not know the secret.
When you read the stories of Scripture . . and we are told that Joseph was the father, but he disappears when the boy reaches the age of twelve and denies the parents. Well, who is Joseph? Read the genealogy in Matthew. It begins: “This is the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David.” Now read the genealogy. Joseph is the father of Jesus, but in the genealogy, his father, that is, Joseph’s father is Jacob; yet in the dream . . when the angel appears to Joseph in a dream, he said, “Joseph, son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which was conceived by her is of the Holy Spirit.” But he addresses him as “Joseph, son of David”; and the book begins: “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, son of David.”
But Joseph, in Scripture, is the Dreamer. He is the beginning of the forgiveness of sin. For he said to his brothers in the end of the great plot, which is Genesis . . at the very end, the 50th chapter: “You make evil against me, but God meant it for good,” and he forgave them. That’s the beginning of the forgiveness of sin. And he was called the Dreamer. When the Dreamer awakes, he is the Lord Jesus Christ. So, he becomes his own father!
And what was Joseph called in Numbers? Moses changed his name from Joseph . . it’s called “Hosea,” but “Josea” means “Joseph”; he changed his name from Hosea to Joshua, and “Joshua” means “Jesus”; and Jesus is the Lord God Jehovah. Can’t you see the mystery unfolding?
So, here, “Do not be afraid, Joseph, son of David, to take unto you Mary, your wife.” So, he addresses him as the son of David, but the book begins: “Jesus Christ, the son of David.” But Joseph is the Dreamer, and this comes to him in a dream. He is the dreamer. So, he begins the dream in the 37th chapter of Genesis, and he begins the dream that all the things will come and bow to him, the sun and the moon, and the stars, and then he told his father. And the father said, “What! Your mother and I will bow before you?” And the brothers could not believe for one moment that eleven stars . . meaning the eleven of them . . would bow before him; and they plotted to sell him into slavery.” So, they sold him into slavery, as you were “sold into slavery.” You emptied yourself and became a slave. And the Dreamer-in-you is Joseph.
But you are told: “I will raise up out of your body” . . To whom is he speaking? He is speaking to David . . “When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body.” When he comes forth from your body and your name is David, then he is your son. “I, the lord, will be his father, and he shall be my son.”
So, Joseph is the dreamer in man, but when he wakes, he is the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see the mystery?
So, who is that? Not woe. You and I have certain associations with words. We have the word suffer, we think of grief, we think of pain, and all it means is simply “to experience a sensation.”
“For joy and woe are woven fine,
A garment for the soul divine.”
. . Blake, from “Auguries of Innocence”
Not all joy, not all woe; they are “woven fine” in this world when we eat of the Tree of Good and Evil. And when we come to the end, and then the Spirit that was trapped willingly is set free by the splitting of the body from top to bottom and it ascends like the fiery serpent, it is set free, and the long-lost rank, which is the Son of God, is restored . . but now ennobled. He is the Father. He awakes as his father, having gone through the horrors, “bearing this fardel for the allotted time.”
Let’s enter the Silence.