All Things Exist in the Human Imagination

All things exist in the human Imagination. “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake, Jerusalem, Plt. 71). The world of Imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation or vegetation is finite and temporal. There exists in that eternal world the permanent reality of everything we see reflected in this glass of nature, but everything. As Blake said, “The oak is cut down by the axe, and the lamb falls by the knife, but their form eternal exists forever, and they are renewed by the seed of contemplative thought.” Rub out the entire world you could reproduce it, all within. We speak of something now out of date or extinct, like a bird or an animal or a fish. Nothing is extinct permanently. For the permanent reality of everything is within man, and by the seed of contemplative thought he externalizes it, and the whole thing comes out again. That’s who we really are.

Now, let me share with you tonight some perfectly wonderful experiences. We’ll start first with one in this world of Caesar. And don’t neglect it…this is a most important aspect of reality. Even though it’s a shadow world, we’re called upon to revise here, to forgive here, and to change the conditions here. Here is a friend of mine who wrote me this letter this week, he said, “A friend of mine, who is a client of one of our customers, came into the office and he told me exactly what I heard him tell me three weeks before. He was bubbling over with joy because they praised him so for his work. He simply shared with me how they felt towards him, his supervisors, because three weeks before they had criticized him unmercifully and rather told him that he would be fired…in fact, his day was at an end. When I heard that three weeks before, I instantly revised it, and I heard what today I heard…that they praised him beyond measure for his work. And they said three weeks before he was incompetent and they would not keep him.”

Now he said, “This morning”…and he wrote in the letter… “while dressing I ran over an ad that I was working with. In this ad I used the name of a man, a very prominent man in San Francisco, and when I went over the ad I thought ‘Now, I must put the word Mister before his name in the ad.’ I made a mental note of it, I worked it through my mind, and it fit. I just let the whole thing run through the mind as I worked through the ad, and Mister before his name was ___(??) it was right. And so, I accepted that as final, and made a mental note that when that copy comes before my desk the next time, I will insert Mister before the name of this prominent San Franciscan. Then I dropped it and forgot it. Went off to my office, and that afternoon he called me from San Francisco and asked me to insert “Mister before his name…not in the ad but in a radio commercial where his name is used. Undoubtedly it will be in both, but he requested that.” And he said to himself, “I just stand in awe at the working of this law. And you ask me about the little pig that I saw, well, may I tell you, he was small and he was fat, very fat, and the way I am stuffing him today at this moment I write to you, across my mind goes an enormous pig, filling the room, for I’m stuffing him.” For those who are not familiar with this, the pig is the symbol of Christ, and Christ is defined in scripture as “the power and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). So every time you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of anyone, including yourself, you are feeding Jesus Christ. So he is feeding him and he used the words, “I am stuffing him”…because every moment of time one should be alert to put this into practice. So I thank him for his letter that I may share it with you.

Now there is one from a lady who is present, she said, “I found myself looking at a building, an enormous building, on the edge of a vast body of water. Whether it was a river or a lake or an ocean I do not know, but there I was looking at the building, and you held your classes in this building. A man said to me, ‘How do you cross the water to attend these classes?’ and I said—pointing at another student who had just left the class and she was a way in the distance, far, far away—“That’s exactly how we do it. She was walking on the water.” But he did not accept that as the answer he sought, ‘But how do you do it?’ She finally confessed that there was a certain land barrier below the water, but it was so muddy and so gray there you could hardly see it, and no one could find it. But she always used that to cross the water. Then the scene changed and he’s talking to another student, another lady, and she said, ‘I am pregnant,’ and he said in the most emotional manner, ‘By whom?’ But before she could answer, or maybe she wouldn’t answer, I awoke. So I could not discover by whom.”

“Then three nights later I had this. There’s another building, a very large building, and one section of it was given over to a theater, and you were the actor who played all the parts. The final part that you played was that of a blind man, and you should be led, and there was no one to lead you because you were blind. I dropped whatever I was working on and I led you. As I passed by with you, strangely enough, you saw a child. You were blind but here is a young boy sound asleep, and you said to me, ‘I told him to meditate and here he is sleeping.’ Then I took you to the point where you were destined to go. And then, on my way back I saw pieces of paper hanging from the top of a door. These were papers placed there for decorations of the play, and I reached up to pull it down, and as I did so an enormous wind swept me away. But I felt I was borne by a strong man, in the arms of a very, very strong man. Then I woke, and I was saying, ‘I love thee, O Lord.’”

Well, it’s the most marvelous series in the two nights separated by three days. This is no criticism, my dear, but let me explain it for you. You cross the water and you explain to someone that you didn’t really walk on the water you had a solid foundation below. Now water in scripture is the psychological interpretation of the great parables of scripture. The whole book is a parable from beginning to end and it’s called in scripture a rock, it’s a stone. When one discovers the meaning behind the story you have found the water. We roll away the stone and there we find the water. If I still want a little solid reality in this world while I play with this psychological truth, I am stepping on stone below the water. I’m not willing to really take off and go all out. You are either with me or against me. I love what I hear, I am all for it, but after all I must be practical. There is rent to pay, there is, well, food to be bought, clothes to be bought, and all these things, and so I am not quite walking on the water. I don’t go all out.

Let me now give you a definition that came to me concerning what we should do. When I hear that imagining creates reality, that is my hope—my hope would be for myself or for you, but it’s my hope, I have a hope. Well here, this is what faith really is: Faith is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. You dwell upon it…the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. So when I know what I want for myself or for another, that’s a hope, that’s a wish, a desire. Now, I must subjectively appropriate that objective hope. Then if I do, I do not look to anyone to aid it. I only look for confirmation of it in the outer world…as this one who heard his friend after he had completely revised it He wasn’t looking for anyone to aid that man in a job; he was simply expecting confirmation of that subjective appropriation of his objective hope for that friend. There he remained…and three weeks later the man comes in and confirms it. Then I am walking on water.

And may I tell you, you will actually have this experience literally in your mystical world. I speak from experience. It’s the most glorious sensation, walking on water. In my case I was pulled, my motor power was a wonderful goose (symbol of the Holy Spirit) when I lassoed him with a silver chain and he took me all over this fabulous lake, actually on the water not under it. He was my power, the Holy Spirit, leading me into all things…for silver is knowledge, and leading me into all knowledge, as you’re told in the 14th chapter of the Book of John (verse 26).

Now, may I tell you, this is a glorious thing, for you saw me playing all of the parts. You saw the protean man, but the dreamer is the protean being: You are the one who is pregnant. She wouldn’t tell you the name of the one who got her pregnant, but you found it out in the very end when you woke saying, “I love thee, O Lord.” You have conceived, my dear. You’ve conceived by that very act…even though you’re not quite walking on the water. Because Mary did not now the name of the one; she was told it. It was the same one that you addressed when you woke. You saw me play all the parts, because I play all the parts, and I can’t discard one, not even the ___(??). I have to redeem everyone in my world, I can’t discard them, I can’t ignore them. I just have to change it in my mind’s eye, and then actually subjectively appropriate the objective hope that I have for them and then let it take place in my world if I firmly believe that imagining creates reality.

So your series of visions, my dear, were perfectly marvelous. You were so brutally honest with yourself when he insisted on discovering from you how you got across that water. You told him the truth, you didn’t lie to him. That was marvelous! You could easily have said, “I walk on water just as well as they walked on the water,” but you didn’t. You told him exactly how you did it. And so you revealed to yourself that you’re not completely all out in living it, as I expect everyone here to live it, to go all out, and not with some little anchor to the side in the event it doesn’t work…that little hind claw that the world speaks of. We have that saying in Barbados that “I have a hind claw.” A hind claw is a little deposit in the bank, a little income from the family…some little thing is the hind claw. So we have these beach crabs all over the island, and try to catch one. No matter how fast you run he will run right over a precipice. If you follow him, you’ll break your neck, but he wouldn’t. He goes right over at top speed and he has a hind claw. He holds on just below the top so he doesn’t fall and break his neck. So we speak in Barbados of having a hind claw. And no matter how deep the precipice…you start running from what is distressing you, you have the hind claw, and you can hang there for awhile and climb back. But the one who is chasing you, if he doesn’t stop in time he’ll break his neck because it will be quite a drop into that ocean. So don’t have the hind claw. You are either for me or against me, one or the other.

And now here is another one. She said, “This is not a dream. I was deeply concerned for my mother. This happened over a year ago. I was in bed and I began to visualize her. I was just initiated into this way of thinking…I call that my initiative days. I brought her before my mind’s eye and saw an expression on her face which was altogether wonderful, and I began to listen to her voice. I wanted her to tell me she has never been happier in her life. That’s all that I wanted to hear from her…she’d never known such happiness. And while I’m listening to her voice, I heard my name called three times, like a whisper. I was startled and scared. I raised myself off the pillow and I simply listened. I was so afraid I was scared out of my wits. Suddenly before me, standing in midair, you appeared dressed in a gray suit, and you were smiling, looking at me. Then you raised your hand to your head, put your hand into your head, and with your thumbs you plucked out your eyes. You held them in your hand and extended them to me as a gift. I sat there wondering whether I should accept them or not. Then you came over and with your thumbs again you pressed them into my eyes. Then you went over, and your head became an enormous head and transparent. I looked into your head, and every living thing in the universe was in your head, everything you could think of was in your head. Then you straightened up and your head returned to its normal natural size. You raised your right hand to your forehead, and quite easily you lifted off the top of your head. And then you simply…and I saw on the top of that head the greenest of green grass I’ve ever seen growing from it. And then you vanished. But when you came over to me the first time and pressed these into my eyes, you said to me, ‘Brother.’”

Now this is a lady who is a mother and she has some children, and I called her Brother advisedly. Another letter that I cannot discuss tonight came today only confirms it. The day will come you will know regardless of what sex you wear here we are brothers. Out of everyone will come this immortal being. This is my brother. So I say, “Go unto my brothers and say unto them, I am ascending unto my God and your God, to my Father and to your Father” (John 20:17). And so when I went over and put into her eyes that which I took from my own, I gave her sight. That was a year ago plus.

Recently, her vision was that she became the incurrent eyewitness. That’s what they told her. For in this vision of hers she saw a long table, and a man entered dressed in his robes and the white wing of the dove, holding a gavel in his hand, and he looked right into her face. Then she heard a voice say, “The incurrent eyewitness.” And she wondered what it meant. Well, you know what incurrent means, “giving passage to a current that flows within.” So now she is so conditioned that I can reveal all these things to her. She can actually see the truth of the statement, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow”; that all things are contained within the human Imagination, but everything. And she saw every living thing within my head. So destroy this, destroy what I hold, destroy anything in my world, but you can’t destroy that head. You can cut off this head, but you can’t destroy that head, and from that immortal being I can reproduce anything in my outer world. So I gave to her the eyes that would then within a year make her the incurrent eyewitness.

So I tell you, these things are altogether true. Starting here on this level, there are levels within levels within levels. You may find it difficult to bring back to this level (the most concrete of all) the experiences on high, but they’re not lost because you can’t quite bring them through to this level. But start here and practice revision. The Bible calls it repentance. It’s simply a radical change of attitude. No matter what it is in this world, change it if it doesn’t conform to your ideals. Just change it in your mind’s eye, and then subjectively appropriate your objective hope…what do you want in this world? That’s your hope. What is your wish, your desire? Well now, subjectively appropriate that and it, if you are faithful to it, will come to pass. No power in the world can stop it. But do not go on both sides…go all out and walk on the water.Or like Peter, he looked at his foot (his understanding)…it doesn’t make sense…and he went down. He said, “Peter, come.” Peter stepped out and started walking, and then he looked down to see how this thing could possibly be. Well, it doesn’t make sense, and so because it doesn’t make sense he sank (Mat. 14:28-31). But when he listened without doubting and kept moving in the direction of his wish fulfilled as though it were, he was walking on the water.

All of these stories though they are strange stories, may I tell you they are all to be realized literally on higher levels of your being, on different levels. Walking on the water…everything told in scripture, you are going to experience because you are Jesus Christ. God became man that man may become God. As Blake tells us so beautifully in his There is No Natural Religion, and he said, “Man’s desires are limited by his perception. Desires and perceptions of man untaught by anything but organs of sense must be limited to objects of sense; therefore, God becomes man that man may become God.” Because none could have any desire outside of his organs of sense if that was all he knew in this world. He couldn’t conceive anything beyond that. So it would be the most horrible thing in the world to be left as an organ of sense and never to transcend it. So God becomes man bringing with him the whole vast creation, and he actually becomes man. So she could see within my skull all the things within. He actually became me, he actually became you, and the process is, simply awakening to that fact.

But if God did not become me, I would be an animated body, just an organ of sense, limited to all that my organs would reveal. I could never conceive of something beyond it. But by becoming me, he’s awakening within me, and giving me desires and perceptions beyond the wildest dream of anyone who is still limited to organs of sense. So when it is said, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within,” believe it. He saw it clearly. But remember, she is an incurrent eyewitness, and you can’t stop it, and she can’t stop it. It will come more and more and more, may I tell you. She may think she’s going to lose her mind. Those around you may think you are simply gone, but I tell her, no, you’re not gone. You’re blessed, my dear…you’re blessed to be an incurrent eyewitness at your age, tender age as is yours. She’s a young mother, and to be so blessed, so conditioned to be an incurrent eyewitness of what?—of the mysteries. Not a little thing in this world; no, of the mysteries. She’ll bring them through, the most fantastic things you’re going to remember. You only saw just a little. But the things to be seen when you are the incurrent eyewitness!

So let me say to everyone here, you try it and keep on trying it. Let no one dissuade you from using it. Be like my friend who saw a little pig, and now he’s so big he fills the house that’s how big he is, for “I’m stuffing him.”But every moment of time is the opportunity to try it, but every moment. Someone calls you on the phone and they give you the most horrible story. That’s the moment to stop it, revise it, and go on about your business. Do not raise one finger to make it so. Don’t call a friend and say, “Help him out or help her out because they really are in need.” Don’t do a thing! Just simply do it all in your Imagination, and let it happen. The whole thing will happen. So don’t ask anyone to come to the assistance of the one who has just called in distress, don’t do it. Just simply do it as my friend did it. He said he’d be fired, he was incompetent, and they bawled him out, and said such unlovely things to him. Then he revised it and the man comes in and confirms the revision.

That’s what I’m talking about…that all things are possible to man because man is all Imagination and Imagination creates reality. If you know what you want, imagine that you have it. If you know what you want to be, imagine that you are it, and make this subjective appropriation of the objective hope. That’s what you hope to be. Well now, subjectively appropriate it. “Assume a virtue if you have it not. Refrain tonight and it will lend a kind of ease to the next restraint, and the next still more easy.” So you walk in this manner. And ask no one to help. And do not go down below the water and try to find a little something, because if it doesn’t work I have so much. If it doesn’t work, I have a few bonds I can cash. If it doesn’t work, I can call on a friend who said to me, “If you ever need it, let me know.” Don’t depend on anyone, may I tell you.

I speak from experience. The day that you call on them that’s the day that, “I’m sorry, had you only asked me that last week, but now I’m committed.” A friend of mine in New York City said to another friend of mine, “I’ll tell you what to do. Go to Neville and ask Neville for $150 a month for six months. He must not ask you for one penny of it back for six months. Then you go to Joseph who is Neville’s friend, and Joseph can well afford $250 a month for six months. And if you get another friend, put me down for a hundred and fifty,” said the man. Well, that’s a marvelous idea for this friend who had lost it all and wanted enough to cushion him for six months, and that would mean about a thousand dollars a month without batting an eye…from friends, no interest, just because they wanted to help a friend. So he came to me, told me the story, “Alright, $150 a month, put me down.” He went to my friend Joseph, he said, “Put me down, $250.” Put them all down. When he went to the one who had the idea, “Oh, sorry, if you’d only come earlier, but I’m now completely tied up.” He gave him the idea but never gave him one penny.

And may I tell you, when we gave him the money we gave it in love. And, it went beyond the six months, but when he paid it back he paid it back in full. He got back on his feet and every penny came back. We didn’t ___(??) them to receive the money, we gave it. If it never came back, not one of us would ever have mentioned it to him at all, not one. But we got it. At the end of six months he was on the way towards recovery, financial recovery. Then two months later he sat down and wrote checks for all this money and paid us all back. In fact, he sent me the six percent, and I sat down and wrote him a check for that six percent, and said, “You are a friend and I didn’t loan you money as a banker, I gave you x-number of dollars. And please now I’ve deducted your six percent, and please accept it as I meant it, and ___(??).” I told my other friends and they did the same thing…all gave the six percent back. But the one who gave him the idea when it came for him to put it up, oh no, he didn’t have it.

So don’t depend on anyone in this world, just simply yourself, your own wonderful human Imagination, for that is Jesus Christ. Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. “Christ in you is the hope of glory,” and there is no other Christ (Col. 1:27). “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God,” as defined for us in the 1st letter of Paul to the Corinthians (1 Cor.1:24). So if Christ is in you, and being formed in you…as Paul said, “I am laboring with you until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). If Christ is formed in you, well then, I can call upon that wonderful word of Isaiah when he is formed in me. For the day that Christ is formed in me, that forming in me changes B.C. into A.D., and every year thereafter is the year of my Lord. When he’s formed in me, he has to be born; the child is formed has to be born. So I can then call on these words from Isaiah, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called ‘Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ And of his reign there shall be no end” (Is. 9:6). That statement of Isaiah becomes our statement when Christ is formed in us. And so until he’s formed in us we are all in B.C. Although we say this is the year 1968 A.D. it is not 1968 A.D. to anyone who has not born Christ 1,968 years ago. So everyone who has born Christ and Christ is formed in them, the B.C. turns into A.D., and from then on that is his birthday. And “before Christ” is the whole vast world in whom he is not yet born.

So here, let that be your hope. I am convinced that all of you have been impregnated. I’m convinced of it. I get them, one after the other. Although this lady said, “I am pregnant,” she didn’t say when she was impregnated, she is impregnated. Many of you are born, and have gone through it, and you haven’t remembered; I know from your visions. Some are finding it difficult to bring it down from great heights. You bring it down, and then you lose it at a certain point…for you have no idea how concentrated and opaque this world is. This is the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity. Many have been born but they haven’t brought it down. Because your visions tell me that certain things that you see now, and you lose it on a certain level, you go back and catch it again, and it’s so vivid you know you’ll remember it. You come down and you can’t remember it…lost it again.

So all are awaking, but not all are given that capacity to be the incurrent eyewitness. She can bring it right through. She ___(??), because this she would not have seen when she saw me appear standing in the air…so much so that she rolled off the bed, scared out of her wits. Then she listened because she heard the name called three times. And may I tell you, read the 3rd chapter of Exodus—his name was called twice (verses 13-15). Read the 6th chapter of Isaiah, and when the vision breaks out into speech, the presence of Deity is confirmed. For here, God is man, and God contains all of us as told us in the 17th chapter of Acts: “In him we live and move and have our being” (verse 28). All things are contained within him; for you saw contained within my skull the whole of Creation. God became me, God became you, but you are the incurrent eyewitness even though you were not interested.

So I’m not saying that you’re going to have a restful time between now and your departure from this world, but you’ll certainly have an exciting time. I personally do not know of anything more thrilling than the visions, but none. When the visions begin to appear, I can’t conceive of anything on earth that is more thrilling. They will come, and they’ll come faster and faster and faster, my dear. You can’t stop them. For some reason, known only to the depths of your own being who is God the Father, he prepared you for this part. The whole thing will unfold within you.

The time that I called you and I put my eyes into your eyes…and she said they were like two eggs, eggs of white alabaster…and then I called you “Brother”…I frightened you. Your letter today revealed he who came out of you—and it was not a girl, but a being of golden light, a man, who moved out of you, and then turned and looked—he is your very being. That’s the one I address, my dear. He is my Brother and is in every being. Benny is my Brother…I do not see that skin…housed within him is my Brother. Housed within Christine, here is a lady, is my Brother. Every being is my Brother, and we are one, and together we form the Father—only one being, one God, one Father of all, who is through all, in all and above all. It takes all to form the Father.

But tonight you dwell upon that one simple thing that came to you this day, which I told you earlier, but let me repeat it. I have been trying to show you how this works through faith. Faith is the great mystery of Creation. Well now, look upon faith in this light as it came to me today: Faith is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. You have a hope, everyone has a hope for self or another…a mother for a child or her husband if it’s not for herself, but some member of the family or a friend…it’s a hope. “I wish she were…” and she names it. Well now, the subjective appropriation of that objective hope is faith. Now you dwell upon it, and you’ll find it will work in practice.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: I had a vision that I was in a car accident and I asked the question, “Why is there so much suffering? The answer was, “In life you have to be the whipping boy.”

A: Very good, my dear, very good. This is essential…each has to grow himself. He must be willing to suffer, because God in becoming man had to completely restrict himself to man. He said, “I consider the sufferings of the present age not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18). And so we complain and complain about the suffering. A friend of mine who was here two weeks ago, and she seemed so radiant, so altogether wonderful, getting all things together, because she has for the last thirty-odd years been having these salons every Tuesday night ___(??). And she’s perfectly lovely. Well, he called this past week to say that on Thursday they played six games of badminton, and she won four of the six, and they romped on the beach with their dogs, had a lovely time. Went to bed on Thursday night and woke up in the morning and she came out and said, “You know, I can’t breathe,” just couldn’t’ breathe. He called the Fire Department, and before they could get there she was gone. These little things happen in this world of ours. And then, of course, he was very human about it, he said, “You know, we had the most glorious wake for her…had a wake, champagne, with everything else, just as she would have loved it…150 friends, and they had all these ___(??) where they gave eulogies for her, and it was perfectly wonderful.” So he was quite honest about her departure on Friday morning about 1:30. And she was here just about three weeks ago, looking for a friend of mine who wasn’t here, because she wanted to speak at the salon. So she is a name on TV and she wanted just someone ___(??). But here, out of the nowhere…and so she departed.

So let no one think that because of playing badminton or doing all the handball, running and jumping they’re going to prolong for one second the appointed hour. They’re not going to. We came in on time, we’re going to depart on time; everyone is going to. She was healthy alright, she was perfectly healthy, beating him four out of six, and they romped with their dogs on the beach, and they had fun. But that’s not going to prolong that interval of time. “There’s a time to be born and a time to die, a time to laugh, and a time to cry; time to plant, time to reap.” And this is the play…as my friend saw me playing all the parts. Yes, I played the blind man, who else to play it? But I redeemed them all. I saw them all ___(??). One night when I came by in 1946 the blind, the lame, the halt, the withered, the maimed, all, and every one was made perfect as I glided by. All the parts I redeemed, and I played them all.

Everyone will do ___(??), may I tell you. That’s the great play. As you’re told, “Go into the highways and the hedges, and bring the halt and the lame and the blind, bring them all” (Luke 14:21). Everyone else turned down the invitation. He sent out invitations, they all turned it down, and they ___(??) and would not come. He said, “Go quickly into the highways and hedges, and tell them all to come. And then the blind, the lame, the halt, all these.” And then he fed them. Fed them with what? With their hope…everyone wanted to be perfect. And so, when he walked by, everyone was made perfect as he walked by. And at the very end of the journey this heavenly chorus sings out, “It is finished!” the last words on the cross. But he comes down once more into the little body with the memory of what has happened, and remains in that little garment for years to tell the story in the hope that they will believe him. Because he can’t take them with him into that world and show them so they can bring it back. Oh, I take many persons into that world, but they can’t bring it through, can’t remember. They forget…get to a certain level and black out, amnesia. So on higher levels, yes, you show them all. As they descend once more it is complete amnesia. So yours is marvelous, my dear!

Good night.