Tonight’s subject is: Test Him and See. In the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, the very last chapter, the 13th, he calls upon all of us . . for, he is addressing us. Although it was written two thousand years ago, he really addresses everyone in the world who will read the letter; and he said: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Corinthians 13:5)
Well, if every Christian in the world were brutally honest with himself, he would answer, “No, I do not realize it. I think of Christ as something on the outside.” That’s what the Christian would say . . “and you tell me He is in me.” I am called upon to test myself: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?”
Well, if Jesus Christ is in me, where is He? For I am told that “all things are possible to Him” (Mark 9:23). I am told that by Him “all things were made” (John 1:3), “and without Him was not anything made that was made.”
Well, if the Being who created and sustains the universe is in me, I want to find it. I should devote all my life to the discovery of that Being who occupies me, who created and sustains the universe, to whom all things are possible. Well, I’ll tell you who He is. He’s your own wonderful, human Imagination! Your own wonderful Imagination is the Divine Body of the Lord Jesus.
Well, now, test Him and see, because He creates everything. There isn’t a thing in this world that wasn’t first imagined. Name it! Everything in the world that is now proven as something that is factual was once only imagined. You mean, my imagination is the Lord Jesus? Yes, your imagination is the Lord Jesus; but He’s dreaming. He is dreaming this world. He is dreaming that He is you; and, as you, He is dreaming whatever you experience in this world. I don’t care what it is . . good, bad, or indifferent, He is suffering with you, for He is dreaming the dream of your life. He laid Himself down within you to dream; and as He dreams, He dreams that He is you. And whatever you think you are, that is what Jesus-in-you, who is the Lord forever, is dreaming! And when He wakes, He is you! And you are the Lord Jesus.
This is the great mystery of all!
I have many a time stretched out on a bed or reclined on a chair and begun to see what I should not see. I saw what reason would deny that I could possibly see; yet I couldn’t deny that I am seeing it. I could no more deny the evidence of this experience than I could the evidence of my senses at any other moment in time . . I couldn’t. And then my imagination . . call it imagination, call it consciousness . . it follows the thinker. I am seeing what I should not see; and then I step into the world that I am seeing, and it is real . . just like this, and I am real to myself, and the people are real, everything is real . . just like this. Then I return to the place where I knew I was when I began to see it. I return, and yet I am still seeing it. I step into it again. I return . . oh, maybe a dozen or more times, and then I decided to venture, regardless of consequences. No matter what happens, I will go, not only into what I am seeing, but I am going to stay there and really explore. And my consciousness steps into what I am seeing, and it’s a world just like this! Real, solid, and I am solid, and I walk out and I meet people, and they see me but I know exactly what I am doing. I know where that thing began! My body is on a bed. I know exactly where that bed is, it’s in Beverly Hills, on El Camino. I know the number, I know everything . . I know exactly where it is. And, yet, here I am in a world like this, and it isn’t this world, and yet it is this world.
And, then, I say to these ladies, “Ladies, this is a dream. This whole thing is a dream.” And they looked at me, as anyone present here tonight would look at me if I told you right now . . and I can, may I tell you . . that this is a dream! If I told you right now, “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a dream,” you would think, “Why did I come here tonight? This man is insane; he’s mad!” Well, that’s what they felt: that I was mad, and they got as far away from me as they possibly could down the corridor. There they walked as far as they could, looking at me suspiciously; and I am looking at these two lovely . . gracious ladies, as you are . . no desire to hurt, only to tell them this whole thing is a dream! And when they got beyond and felt safe, they almost ran down the corridor . . a beautiful, beautiful interior of a plush, plush hotel. And there I stood, shut out in a dream.
I knew exactly where I laid my body down in Beverly Hills on a street called El Camino. I knew it was a double bed, and my wife was right next to me, and here I am, standing erect in a place more lit than this, far more plush than this . . luminous, and I am shut out; and I have unfinished business in this world that you and I now know. A child not yet educated . . a child just entering high school, a wife, and I had not yet prepared to cushion the blow if I should depart now. What would they do for . . well, money in the immediate future, for I haven’t yet prepared to cushion their life beyond my departure. And here I am standing, and there is no way back to Beverly Hills, and that world is just like this.
Then I remembered what I did years before, when I had a similar experience and it was all based upon feeling; and I could touch something, and I held what I touched and made myself awake. So, as I held it, I said, “Come on! Wake up!” and I woke, holding the object that I imagined, which was in this world. And that’s how I awoke. I remembered that, so, then, I said to myself, while standing perfectly erect, “I will now imagine that my head is on a pillow. It’s in Beverly Hills, in my room on El Camino,” and I could feel the pillow. And, then when I could feel that pillow, I felt myself back . . not in a vertical state, but in a horizontal state, but I couldn’t open my eyes. I was cataleptic. The body was dead. I was alive within a body that I could not move; the thing was completely cataleptic. Then in about . . oh, maybe a half-minute, I could move the little finger, and then move the hand, then push it out and I could feel the warmth of my wife’s body. Then I knew I was back. I still couldn’t open my eyes. And, then, maybe in another half-minute, I made a tremendous effort, and the eyes came open, and here are all the familiar objects in the room: the bureau, pictures on the walls . . the normal, natural things that I had left behind, and I knew that I had entered a world, just like this, and I entered it from a state that the world would call a dream.
When I came back, I could only conclude that this world where I am now, on the bed . . touching the woman who is my wife, the mother of my daughter, and this, too, is a dream, but I can’t remember where I laid that body down when I began to dream this dream. I couldn’t remember where that body was, for that was the original body that started this dream, and the other was only a dream within a dream.
Well, then, I began to experiment, as I did prior to that. If my imagination is Jesus Christ, as taught in Scripture; and if by Him all things were made, “and without him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3), well, then, I can take the challenge that Paul gave us: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourself” . . not the other . . “Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Corinthians 13:5)
Well, if He is in me, then He is the one who stepped into that world and returned into this world, and in this world He’s dreaming this, and can He modify this dream? I began to experiment, and I began to imagine that I am what reason denies, what my senses deny, and I became it in this world! I began to teach it to others, and I told others to do it in a simple way, like a dream. You start with a dream; and you conceive a scene, which, if true, would imply the fulfillment of your dream in this world; that the potency of that thing is all in what it is implying.
Just try it. Bring before your mind’s eye a scene, friends, and have the friends congratulating you on your good fortune; and you accepted it just as though it were true, and then drop it. And, then, let it happen in this world. Let it happen.
Then I repeated it and repeated it and repeated it, and taught it; and those who believed me, who tried it, proved it. Then I found who He was. I found that really the God of the universe is in man, and man is his own wonderful, human imagination! That man’s imagination is the Eternal Body of the Lord that is called Jesus. That is Jesus. He’s crucified on this body, on your body, on Humanity.
The day will come that He will awake from this dream, but in this world He is dreaming. He is dreaming that He is you! And the day will come that He will awake from that dream, strangely enough not leaving you behind detached, but He will awake and you are He!
“Unless I die,” said He, “Thou canst not live.” (John 12:24) “But if I die, I shall arise again, and thou with me.” He will not leave you behind. He actually became humanity, that humanity might become God! That’s the story and it’s not talk; but I am telling you what I know from my own wonderful human experience. I have done it time and again, gone right into a world just like this, and nothing dies.
Tonight when someone appears to die, they will only close a section of the Eternal Book that they are dreaming. They simply close it, and you call them dead. They are not dead! They are in a world just like this, and they are solid. They are terrestrial; the world is terrestrial. How? They are unaccountably new. I cannot explain to you how it happens, any more than I can explain to you how tonight when I go to bed and sleep and dream, that I am real to myself in my dream, and I am real to those who see me. I am clothed; yet, the body is on the bed. And I sleep, and have for the last forty-odd years, in the nude. I go to bed, and find myself clothed the way I am now. Where is the clothing? Where is the body? The body is on the bed, but that dream is real; and when I awake within the dream, it’s just like this . . just like this.
So, this is as much of a dream as the dream in which I have awakened, and not one friend of mine has ever died. I see them, and they are solidly real, and unaccountably new . . not little children, but new . . no need of false teeth, no need of glasses, no need of anything. They are new. But eventually they have these things because they grow old there, too. They age there and die when they come to the end of that section of the Book of Life. Then they awaken to find they are reading another chapter, and they continue the Book of Life, and we are dreaming the Dream of Life.
In the end, we will awaken from the Dream of Life, knowing that everyone eventually will do it; but while we are in this world, we can modify the dream. If I know I’m dreaming, I can change it. So, someone comes into my world, and he’s unemployed, yet he needs money; he has a family to support. He needs money to buy all the things that a family needs; and I’m dreaming that. Well, I’ll change that dream! I will see him as gainfully employed and happy in his family, and everything is, as it ought to be. So, I changed the script. I have the power to change it, and he conforms to my change, and he works.
Now, I can’t see you now unless you penetrate my brain. Everything that I perceive, I perceive only because it as an object in space is penetrating my brain. So, at once, you exist, not only in me, by penetration, but you exist as an object occupying a place in space independent of my perception of you; but you do exist simultaneously in me, because you have penetrated my brain, you also exist as something occupying space in the surrounding world. Now, must I wait for you to change, to change in me? Or, can I change in me what I see there, and make the change take place there? Well, try it. This is the test.
If Christ is in us . . well, then, do I wait for objects in space to change for it to change in me, or can I change it in me, for you are penetrating my brain or I couldn’t perceive you? Well, I’ll change that which penetrates my brain, and it is one with that which is in space, because if you should change it would change in me. Well, now, if I change you in me, I could change you in the other world. Then I try it, and it works. I try changing in me what others appear to be. It was not lovely, and they requested a change, they felt they couldn’t bring it about, and turned to me.
All right, so if He is in me, and all things are created by Him, “and without Him is not a thing made that is made” (John 1:3), well, then, I will change it. So, in my mind’s eye I represented him, or them, to myself as I would like to see them and as they would like to see themselves, and then I did nothing, beyond simply changing them in me, and persuading myself of the reality of the change; and then they conformed to it. Well, if they conformed to it, then I have found Him! “For all things are made by Him, and without Him is not anything made that is made.” (John 1:3)
So, “examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Corinthians 13:5) Read it in the 13th chapter of II Corinthians. And there’s no more glorious end than in that chapter, the greatest benediction that you could ever read:
“And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (II Corinthians 13:14)
That’s how he ends that letter. Have you ever heard a more glorious benediction? “…be with you all.” What? “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Well, grace means a gift unmerited, unearned, unwarranted, a complete, wonderful gift that no one could ever earn . . the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ!
Then he comes to the love of God. I can’t conceive of that, it’s infinite. He is infinite in His love, and, then, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, making us all one. That’s the benediction.
But that challenge in the 4th verse [is], when he asks you if you do not realize that God . . he calls Him “Jesus Christ [is in you]: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Corinthians 13:5) Well, you ask that of the Christians of the world, and if they were brutally honest, they would tell you, “No, I don’t realize it.” But, now, test it; and when you test it, you find Him.
And after you find Him through testing, I’ll make you a promise; you are going to have the experience of Jesus Christ. And everything said of Him in the Bible, you are going to have it in a first-person, singular, present-tense experience; and you will know that you are the Lord Jesus Christ! That God actually became us, that we may become God! That is the story.
So, when, sitting on a chair or lying on a bed . . and it’s happened to me so often . . I see a world that is so real, and I shouldn’t see that world . . because if I am seeing what I ought to see, I should see the walls, the picture that I know, the things . . the objects that I know that are in this room . . and I am not seeing these things at all. I am seeing an entirely different world, and then something moves within me, and my consciousness follows my vision, and I step into the world that I am seeing. I enter it. And then I remain in it long enough to have it close upon me, and this world is completely shut out. Yet, that world is as real as this world, and I find myself moving in that world . . I stroll. And it’s just as real as this world!
Now, last night a friend of mine, who is here tonight, having heard this story of mine a little while back . . he told me of an experience of his, and it really was a thrilling experience. I am going to ask him to take the platform and tell you what was told him when he sat at a bar on a hot summer’s day. I am going to ask him to keep it down just to the essentials, not to embellish it and not to attempt to interpret it . . just to tell you what was told him by one who had this experience.
Verne, will you take the platform?
Verne: I have been coming to Neville’s lectures four or five years in San Francisco, and I live about 55 or 57 miles down the Peninsula. It was last summer just before Neville came to San Francisco that I had been taking some material to the Post Office about 5:00 o’clock in the evening, and was returning to my home through the business district, and I saw the door of a barroom open. It was a very hot day, and I thought, “Oh, on an afternoon like this, a nice thing I could have right now in my experience would be a cold bottle of beer.” So, I parked my car and went into this bar. I noticed that it had been redecorated. I had been in this place before, but not for several months. There was new leather paneling all around the walls with metal studs. There were new stools, and the floor was all redone. It was very attractive and a very pleasant place to be. And the bar had been modified a little bit to make it rather “L” shaped. I noticed that every seat was taken, except for the far end where the small leg of the “L” would be. So I went down there to find myself a seat, and there were two stools; but the one I could not occupy because there was an ashtray there that had a cigarette in it, and there was a glass. Someone was occupying that stool, so I took the only one that I could, which was next to the wall, wondering who might be in the seat next to mine.
In a few moments a man came back from the lavatory and sat down beside me. He was about five feet seven, clean cut, shaven, coal dark hair, and rather solidly built . . a pleasant-looking person. But it’s not my custom to seek for companionship in bars, and I had no desire to conduct a conversation with him, but he wanted to talk to me. I was not rude to him, but I answered everything that he said in monosyllables, to sort of indicate that I’d rather conduct my affairs by myself, but he insisted on speaking to me, and he wanted to know if I was an engineer because I live in that part of the Peninsula where there are a lot of electronics industry. I said, “No, I am not an engineer.”
“Well, what do you do?” he asked.
I said, “I happen to be a writer”; and the fact that I was a writer triggered something in him. He had been down to that portion of California where old treasures are reputed to be, and some months ago he had found some old, Spanish coins, and he had written an article about these coins which had been published in a magazine. He brought that out because he thought it would be of interest to me, which it was, and then we got to talking a little bit more, and he said, “You know, that’s the part of the United States where many of these people go that are interested in unidentified flying objects. Do you believe in those things?”
I had to say that I didn’t have any feeling one way or the other about it because I had had no experience with them, but I said, “I can tell you something of interest if you are interested in that sort of thing. I was the Personnel Officer with the United States Air Force in 1952 at a large radar station in Wisconsin, near the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and we had the radarscope working 24 hours a day, picking things out of the sky, as part of our surveillance over the Canadian border.” I said, “Our men used to pass on weather reports to commercial airliners because they would pick up advance notice of these things.” And I said, “One night they clocked some object in the earth’s atmosphere that was going at an enormous rate of speed . . nine thousand miles an hour, or something like that, and then it stopped with no curve or anything and just took off in another direction.” I said, “That is the limit of my experience with unidentified flying objects. We made a photographic impression of what appeared on the radarscope and sent it to Washington and that’s the last I heard of it.”
Our conversation came to a halt at that moment, and then he said, “You know when I was in the war, I was a Marine and I was in the Pacific Theater, and I was wounded in the leg there and was taken to a hospital in Japan. And one night while I was on this hospital bed in Japan, I had a dream. And all of a sudden,” he said, “I awoke in this dream, and I found myself in a large beautiful ballroom, and there were many couples who were dancing to some very stately music, and it must have been something like a French court or a European royal family of some kind, because,” he said, “it was very ornate, and it was very stately.” He said, “All the women were wearing hoop skirts, long hoop skirts, powdered wigs that came down to their shoulders, and the men were wearing knee breaches with silver buckles on their shoes; and I am dancing with this woman, and I am trying to tell her that I am having a dream on a hospital bed in Japan and she was part of my dream, as all of the dancers were, and she wouldn’t accept what I was saying. She said to me, ‘Oh, you’ve had too much to drink out of the punch bowl; so I think maybe we should step out of this dance and go over there and have one more glass to get you straightened out.”
So, they broke away from the other dancers and he, protestingly, went along with her, trying to tell her that he believed he was sincere in what he was telling her, and she wouldn’t accept it, and he began to get a little bit loud about it, and finally it was noticed by other dancers and some of the men broke away and came over to see what all the trouble was about. She told them, “This man is out of his mind and is insisting that this is a dream, that we are all dream figures”’ and he insisted on it. He said, “At that point they began to move in on me as though they were going to overpower me and shackle me, because I was creating such a ruckus.” And then he said, “Pfff, it was like smoke, and it all disappeared, and I was back on my bed in Japan.”
It was then that I told him Neville’s story, and I thought his eyes were going to fall out of his head because he had not heard of this experience from anyone else.
Neville: Thank you, Verne; thank you. Thank you very much. Now, here you’ve heard it from one who was told it at a bar. If I said you are all figures in my dream, you would think me completely insane, and yet I will not retract one word. You are dreaming me, and I am dreaming you; and we are dreaming this scene to be, and while we are in it, in the world of Caesar, we can modify the dream and change it and make it conform to a better dream than the script that we are reading. But the day will come, you will awaken from the dream of life, and when you awaken, you are the Lord Jesus Christ! This is the story that I am trying to get over to everyone in the world.
So, you condemn no one, for what you are seeing is all part of your dream. Now, test it and see. But you are told in this 13th chapter: Test yourself. You don’t test the other. You test yourself, and the other is a part of your dream; so you can’t appeal to him. You appeal to yourself!
If he is in your dream and he’s not doing what you’d like him to do . . he’s unemployed and he’s a burden on society, well, then, employ him. See him gainfully employed, making far more than he ever dreamed that he could ever make, and let him go. He will conform to your modified dream.
See the other, and the other one wants to be . . I don’t care what he wants. If they want to be socially prominent, if they want to be this, that or the other, what does it matter in the dream? So, he wants to be something very important. Does it take anything from you? No, you are the dreamer. The dreamer in man is God.
Now, there are three ancient manuscripts concerning the beginning of the Bible. They are known only by letters. We speak of the “J” manuscript, the “E” manuscript and the “P” manuscript. Scholars do not know who they are. They are all attributed to a mythological figure called Moses. But nevertheless, in the book of Genesis it is only “J”, “E” and “P”; and they have named it Jehovah, Elohim, and the Priestly; but the “E” manuscript begins with the 15th chapter of the book of Genesis. It doesn’t mention the first fourteen chapters; it has not a thing to say about the so-called creation and the flood. It begins with Abraham, before his name was Abraham, when his name was Abram. That’s the 15th chapter, and in this chapter he asks for a son. He said, “I have no son. Why can’t you give me a son? And the son born in my household of a slave will be my heir.” And the LORD said to him, “He will not be your heir; your own son will be your heir.” (Genesis 15:3) Then the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Abram, and Abram slept. (Genesis 15:12)
Now, not a thing is said that he ever awoke! Abram slept, and the LORD said to him, “You will be slaves for four hundred years; and when you come out, you will have an abundance beyond what you have prior to the deep sleep that falls upon you, and you will suffer. You will be a slave during this sleep.” This is the 15th chapter of Genesis (Genesis 15:13, 14).
May I tell you; you are the Abram spoken of. The “four hundred” doesn’t mean four hundred years, as we would measure time. Four hundred is the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is tav; and the symbolical value of that is a cross. The “cross” is this [indicating physical body] body. This is the cross, the tav . . the four hundred that you wear; and until you take it off finally, at the very last you are enslaved. You are enslaved by the cross that you wear. You perform all of its functions.
No matter how powerful you are . . you cannot pay anyone or command anyone to perform for you the normal, natural functions of this cross. You must assimilate and eliminate, and do everything that this body demands; and you cannot turn it over to someone else to do it for you, no matter who you are. So, this is the slave body that Abraham wears; and when he comes out of this dream, he will be enhanced a hundredfold.
Whatever the creative power you possessed prior to your descent into this garment, it will be enhanced a hundredfold; whatever the wisdom that you possessed prior to the descent, a hundredfold. So, this is God, and God alone who is playing all the parts.
Here we have a play, and you and I will not avoid the play. We read it and we play it. Now, to play a part, a good actor must, to some extent, feel the part that he is playing, and to the best of his ability identify himself with the character that he is playing. He must do that. So, God is not pretending that He is you; He had to completely forget His infinite power and take on the limitations of you, in order to play “you” as you ought to be played.
So, God is not pretending that He is man. He became man! He became man, that man may become God! That’s the only way that God could actually extend His own Being . . His wonderful Being. So, you are the God of Scripture. You are the God of the universe. You were the God that created the heavens and sustains the heavens for a divine purpose; and when the play is over, and we all awake from the dream, we knew each other, for you and I have known each other as brothers before we descended.
I knew you and loved you beyond the wildest dreams that man could ever think of . . a love so dear, so tender, that not a thing on earth could ever compare to it. That’s how we loved each other. And you and I agreed to dream in concert, and not to break the dream until it was over. And when the whole thing is over . . and may I tell you, it is over, not collectively, but it is over one by one because you are so unique, you can’t be replaced. Not one person in Eternity can take your place in the Risen Body of the Living God! Not one. It would be a catastrophe beyond redemption if you could be lost. You can’t be lost. You must return as a living stone in the living body of the Risen Lord. And by living stone, I mean a Being way beyond the wildest dream of anyone here on earth. And when we meet in that Living Body, we will remember the Being that we loved before we descended, as told us in the 82nd Psalm:
“I say, ‘you are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall as one man, O ye princes.” (Psalm 82:6, 7 RSV1)
So, we actually fell as one man, and became diversified in these garments of flesh and blood, wearing different pigments: some wearing white bodies, yellow bodies, black bodies: and behind the mask of these bodies is God . . not less than the other one. Not one because of the pigment of the skin is less or greater. It’s all God! There’s nothing but God.
I wouldn’t want to be greater than the one I loved before the fall, and I will not be. All will be one. We ventured into this world of death, and we will come out of it, and return to the world of life . . the eternal world. This is the most marvelous venture in the world, but while you wear the mask, we can’t quite see it.
Now, I am telling you this tonight, not from speculation. I am not theorizing; I am not speculating. I have experienced Scripture. Everything said in the Gospels concerning Jesus Christ, I have experienced, from the Crucifixion straight through to the descent of the Holy Spirit in bodily form as a dove! The ascension, the discovery of the Fatherhood of God . . all these I have experienced in a first-person, singular, present-tense experience.
And, yet, while I wear the garment to tell the story, I must still continue the sufferings that the garment imposes upon me. It gets old, and it gets older and it gets older, it gets weaker, and I have to bear it. I must bear this cross to the very end.
Well, as Paul said in the 8th chapter of his letter to the Romans: “I consider that the sufferings of the present time aren’t worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us at the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Romans 8:18) When Christ reveals Himself in us as us, what does it matter what we have suffered through the play. But I cannot stop the suffering as the body gets older and decays; but this time I am taking it off for the last time, not to be restored any more, but to completely leave it behind, and then to return to the One Body that is gathering one by one by one all into the Risen Lord. I’m already part of the Risen Body, but I was sent to tell this story; and tell it, I must; and tell it, I will. And if it offends someone, if it disturbs someone, it doesn’t make any difference to me; I still must tell it.
If someone becomes completely self-publicized and is distorting the mystery of Christ, I must protest the distortion of this great mystery of God. They set themselves apart as though they were elected to tell a story of a moral issue, and that one is no god, and that one. That isn’t so at all! There isn’t one in Eternity that will remain unredeemed; and the part he is playing was essential to the whole, for “all things work for good for those who love the LORD.” (Romans 8:28)
We are told: “You didn’t sell me into slavery,” when the brothers confessed they had sold him into slavery. He said, “No, it was the LORD; it was the LORD’s will. You were instruments used to sell me into slavery; but He knew my innate wisdom, my innate know-how to interpret the signs of the time and so I interpreted the signs of the times to save civilization.” (Genesis 45:5, 6, 7) “So a famine was coming upon the world. Without my knowledge of the Pharaoh’s dream, then we would not have lived. So, He allowed you to sell me into slavery, that I may be in contact with Pharaoh and read his dream for him and prove it true, and then become equal with Pharaoh in the running of civilization.”
So the brothers thought that they had sold him. So, you think you have injured someone. Time will prove you didn’t at all. It was part of the unfolding drama, part of the play. This whole thing is a play. I have seen it so clearly, and I can’t tell you the thrill when you sit comfortably in a chair thinking of not a thing in particular . . not dwelling on anything, and suddenly you aren’t seeing the interior of your living room. I know the interior of my living room backwards. I have a lovely library, comfortable chairs; it’s a homey life. It’s not for show. My wife and I live in a place that I call home. So, if anyone comes to our place, we make them feel at home; it is restful. And my books are used; they are not for show. The chairs, the furniture . . everything is usable. We have not a thing for display . . lovely pieces . . some beautiful pieces, but no one comes every year, as they do in L.A. . . I suppose they do it here, too . . to take the value of your furniture, and they estimate the value, and you pay so much of it. Well, they will come into my place, and here I have a beautiful library, but they are all used books. So that’s discounted right away. We have some lovely old pieces that came from my wife’s mother’s estate. Well, that’s several generations; and it’s old to them, therefore it has no value, and I wouldn’t dare tell them, but anyone who knows the value of these things, as I have had them come in and say, “Will you take three thousand for that?” “Will you take two thousand for that?” . . but to the one who is sent over to value the things, they wouldn’t give them room in their place, because they are old pieces. But, to us, they are not only old but they are lovely, and they are functional. Everything in our house is functional.
So, I will sit in a chair, and then suddenly I am not seeing what I ought to see, and sometimes I will take the venture and step into what I see. Consciousness follows vision, and I step into the vision and explore a world just as real as this. You find people who the world would call “dead”; they aren’t dead at all! Solidly real in a world that is terrestrial, trees grow, and they wax and they wane and they die. People grow, they wax, they wane, they die; and yet they do not die. All things are restored. You’re reading a play, and you are playing the part that you are reading; and the day will come you will awaken from it all. And when you awaken, you are the one who created it.
The Old Testament is the portrait; the New is the reality. The day is coming that you will realize within yourself the reality. You will compare it to the portrait, and you will see certain things in that portrait that you could change . . and you could at any point . . certain things you would add that the portrait did not catch, certain things you would delete, for you are the reality. I’ll tell you, the story is true. It is not chronologically accurate, but it is true. Every bit of it is true. I could tell it in a more chronological, accurate way than it is told in the Gospel, telling it from my own personal experience; but it is good enough to be left just as it is, for when you, the reality, unveil yourself, you will compare it to the portrait . . and you will know it’s your portrait; and you will say of it, “It’s an excellent likeness, but it’s not the reality.”
Now, let us go into the Silence.
Good!
Now, first before we take the questions: Verne, thank you. I enjoyed every moment of it; and do me a favor, and write it for me. I like to hear these stories and then have a record of it, that I may share it with those when I go back south. So, if I have it in written form, I can share it. So, thank you.
Now are there any questions, please?
A man in the audience: Would you care to comment on the transparent race?
Neville: The transparent race? Well, I do not know of any transparent race. I know of the Body of Glory that you will wear. As far as a transparent race, these bodies are permanent; they are fixed forever as God moves through them. When you come out of these, these are the garments that decay [referring to the physical body] . . you are wearing a Body of Glory, and it’s the Body of the Risen Lord. And may I tell you, it isn’t transparent; it’s glorious! It’s glorious beyond measure. It is not transparent.
A lady in the audience: Will you explain what is meant in the Bible about the second death?
Neville: The second death only appears, really, in the book of Revelation and the only death is this: If I do not now, in this world, have the experience of the Risen Lord, I will continue and be restored . . it’s not death, really. I am restored to life to continue until it happens. But people don’t quite understand that when one departs this world, that the world does not terminate at the point where my senses cease to register it: that he continues, restored . . unbelievably new; and that, to us . . well, he dies. Well, if he dies to us, therefore he’ll die again. That dying again is simply going from one stage to another stage to another stage; he doesn’t really die, as told us in the 20th chapter of the book of Luke. In other words, it is called death, but if you understand it, it isn’t really death. Because, if I drop now, at this very moment, you would say, “Neville died,” and you would name it this day in 1969 and this month; but, not this one . . prior to my “birth from above” I would have been restored to life, and I would find myself 20 years old, not necessarily in the year 1969; I could find myself in the year Four Thousand, or the year One Thousand, whatever is best for the work yet to be done in me.
And, so, to the others, I would be one who would die again. But I don’t die; I simply pass through a door. It’s so thin . . the little garment . . the little thing that separates this world from that world, which is not anything more than an extension of this world, is so thin. I often wonder why people don’t see it. It is simply almost . . well, the gentleman used the word “transparent.” It is just like that. It is so thin that separates this world from that world and they don’t die at all! But the miracle is: how do they, dying here old and withered and minus senses . . eyes are gone, teeth gone, hair gone, and suddenly they stand before you and they are restored, unaccountably new. And they are 20, and in a section of time . . it could be 1969 . . it could be; the chances are, it will not be. It will be in a section of time, which is already fixed, best suited for the work yet to be done in them, as told us in the letter to the Philippians: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6, RSV) That is, when it’s formed in you and you unveil yourself as God. But, I can’t see a second death. You die to those who see you go, but you never really die to yourself. You don’t die to yourself; you only die to those who can’t follow you. But nothing in this world ever dies to itself! It is unaccountably restored and it’s new. You die here when you lose almost all your faculties. If you lived long enough, you would lose all the faculties, and yet they are all restored.
A lady in the audience: Where is eternal damnation?
Neville: Oh, forget damnation! God is infinitely merciful. There is no such thing as damnation. Our priests are not only dissatisfied with this world, which is hell enough, but they make another one. Oh, Lord! Last Sunday morning with this excitement of our boys coming on the moon . . I turned the TV on early when I got up . . I got up about 5:30, and my wife arose at the same time. She said, “Darling, turn it on as early as we can and softly so it will not disturb the neighbors;” so I turned on the TV, and things were coming on. And here’s this man . . I don’t know who he is, and I don’t want to know; and he’s talking of two kinds of hell: an upper hell and a lower hell. Well, Lord! There’s no one better equipped to enter them than he is! And here he is spieling off this nonsense to the world about an upper hell and a lower hell; and people think because someone is on TV that they are suddenly endowed with intelligence; that when someone spends twenty million dollars to publicize himself, suddenly he is a wise person. What nonsense! My father had a saying: “Money doesn’t care who owns it.” If you have twenty million dollars, and you want yourself publicized, spend your twenty million dollars, and think yourself wise because you spent it.
No, my dear; God is infinitely merciful. God is love . . I know; I am not speculating. I stood in the presence of Infinite Love . . and it’s man, and it’s God. And He communed with me as man to man, and embraced me when I answered the question that he asked, and I became one with the Risen Lord. So, now I am one, though I seem not to be to mortal eyes . . I am one with the Spirit of the Risen Lord, wearing His glorified body of Love; but no mortal eye can see it. You can’t see it with these eyes. It would blind the eyes to see it! Yet, I know I wear the body of the Risen Lord.
“I have one body, one spirit, one lord, one God and Father of all.” (Ephesians 4:4. . 6) Well, anyone who is united with the Lord becomes one spirit with Him. Any other questions, please?
A lady in the audience: (Question inaudible on the tape.)
Neville: My dear, it’s instantaneous. You do not wait. If you drop now this very moment, we all rush to hold the body that we love and call for help, and do what Caesar demands that we do.
But you, instantly . . you’ll be saying to us, if we could hear you, “Leave it. It was mine; it is not I.”
The same lady: I was thinking of someone very seriously ill.
Neville: My Dear, I don’t care how seriously ill they were, in what pain they were; it’s an instantaneous dropping of all that that body represented. There is no pain; there is no absence of anything; they are restored and they are young and they are beautiful . . altogether wonderful. That’s God! God is Love! He isn’t putting Himself through to hurt Himself. It is essential. If I were to extract gold from ore, I must put it through the furnace. These are the furnaces. I am bringing myself out by the furnaces, and I think sometimes that the world despairs it will ever see its Father again. And no one knows how long . . how frightful the furnace is ‘ere he finds his Father’; but he will find his Father. When he finds his Father, he is the Father! It’s the Father putting Himself through . . not to hurt anyone. So, when people tell me all this nonsense about, “Look, what she is doing and what he is doing,” they should go and read the Scripture more thoroughly.
Let me read you one little passage from the book of Romans: “God has consigned all men to disobedience, that He may have mercy upon all.” (Romans 11:32) Read it in the book of Romans: “God has consigned all men to disobedience, that He may have mercy upon all.” You would never know mercy unless you were unmerciful; and then it can be showered upon you when you are unworthy of it; then you know what mercy is. And so he actually consigned . . if I told you right now, I am going to give you the whole vast universe, provided in the next 24 hours you do not think of a monkey, I could keep my gift; you’re not going to get it! So the whole command must be in the negative: “Thou shalt not.” You have to break it; you have to break everything that is placed in the negative. “Thou shalt not . . .” So, man, because he’s afraid of the consequence of his act, he doesn’t actually commit adultery; and there isn’t a man who was ever a man who did not commit it in the true sense of the word. As we are told in the Sermon on the Mount:
“You have heard of old, Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say to you that any man who longs after a woman has already committed the act in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27, 28)
So, it’s a psychological act, not a physical act. I may restrain the impulse because I’m afraid of the consequences. I don’t want to destroy my social position or my financial position or my family life; yet I may entertain the thought. Well, I am told, my cowardice did not save me from the act. Others went out without contemplating the consequences, and they were caught in the act.
Really, when you come right down to it, as someone brought up the other day, at Rutgers University, these six professors made a survey of, I think, twenty or thirty ex-convicts who went out into business for themselves, and they are doing very well in their own little way. They are making from ten thousand to thirty thousand a year each in these small businesses, which is a very good living today, with all these big mergers to compete with the big conglomerates; but they are ex-cons. And what do you think the six professors’ conclusion is? They have the kind of mind that big business executives need to succeed in business; therefore they are telling you, without saying it, that the big businessmen are the same convicts . . only they weren’t caught. That is what they are telling you! The same mentality, but they were not caught. They have exactly what it takes for a big business executive: the president of the organization or the chairman of the board; but they were powerful enough to hush that and keep on going. But the same kind of mind . . a sense of independence, a sense of venture, a sense of taking a chance when other fellows wouldn’t take a chance but are playing it safe. It’s not always the man who plays it safe; he takes a chance. Well, in their case, they were caught. With the big fellows, they were not. And that came out this past week in the New York Times; and these were professors from Rutgers University back east who spent one year with Government money making this survey. And these men are quite happy now to make their ten thousand, fifteen thousand or thirty thousand a year; and when they can do that today, with the competition . . you open a small grocery store, and you’re in competition with a big conglomerate that can buy trainloads of eggs, not just a few dozen eggs that you can sell in a course of a day. They can buy in such quantities, they own farms that supply the eggs; they own the farms that supply the meat. How can you compete? And, yet, they are running these small businesses; so they compete in a small business today against these enormous conglomerates. It takes quite a mind, and these are twenty-five or thirty ex-convicts.
So, “He has consigned all men to disobedience, that He may have mercy upon all.” (Romans 11:32, RSV)
Oh, by the way, I’ve been forgetting it night after night. I use your name and address only to let you know when I’m in the City. I don’t offer you anything for sale, I don’t try to sell you anything; I do not appeal for any money. When I come to the City, I let you know if you are on my mailing list. There’s only one friend of mine in this area to whom I have given my list, and I recommend him one thousand per cent; and if you are on my list, you will be on his list, because he teaches what I teach. And his name is Freedom Barry. So, you will hear from him, but he’s not going to sell you anything. He’s not going to sell you anything, appeal for any money; he will simply tell you where he is and how many days he’ll be here. But I do not use your name and address for any other purpose; so you can feel free to give it to me if you would like to have me send you a notice the next time I come to the City.
A question from a lady in the audience: Where can your books be bought?
Neville: My dear, my books ought to be bought in every bookstore, because it’s a nice publishing house. If you don’t find it at the time you ask for it, ask them to order it from my publisher, and his name is DeVorss. He is in Los Angeles. It should be in all the bookstores because he has a good sales force. So if they don’t have it in stock . . and they can’t carry every book in stock, but if you go into any bookstore, like Books, Incorporated or the Metaphysical Library, or any of these bookstores, if they don’t have it, you can tell them that it is available, and they can call the publisher, and the publisher’s name is DeVorss, and he is down in the Los Angeles area.
Until the next time, Thank You.