Believe It In

Tonight’s subject or title is really “Believe It In.” But the paper didn’t believe that I meant that and so they rearranged it, without my permission, and called it “Believe In It.” So when they sent the proofs back, it was so late I had no time to correct it because they had gone to press. Well, they did no more than our scholars do to the Bible. We have a passage in the Bible that “woman is saved by the bearing of children (1Tim.2:15RSV). They give you a footnote that the real passage reads “woman is saved by the birth of the child.” It’s all the difference in the world. And through the Bible you’ll find when it does not make sense, our scholars give it sense…and it isn’t so at all. In the Book of Jeremiah, we’re told that man draws himself out of himself, and he begins the drawing when he reaches the hips. He actually comes out of himself, and then he uses his hands to draw the remaining portion. Well, the scholars could not believe that and so they say “Why do I see every man with his hands on his hips just like a woman in labor? (30:6)”

So I did not intend the title they gave me. The title is “Believe It In.” The late Robert Frost, oh, maybe two or three years before he died, some reporter from Life magazine interviewed him, and he said—and it startled the readers of Life—that “our Founding Fathers did not believe in the future, they believed it in; we are always believing ahead of our evidence.” He said, “What evidence had I that I could write a poem? I just believed it.” He said, “The most creative thing in us is to believe a thing in.” The Bible teaches that “all things are possible to him who believes” (Mk 9:23)—not a few, not if the wise men say that it is possible, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. If this is true, you and I should devote all of our lives, really, to the mastery of the art of believing.

How to believe when reason denies it, my senses deny it, everything denies it? Yet I am haunted with the statement of scripture, “All things are possible to him who believes.” So how do I do it? Fawcett said—using the word Imagination, but really you can take the word belief in the same way—he said“The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which the mystic aspires, for supreme power, supreme wisdom and supreme delight lie in the far off solution of this mystery.”Well, if that is true, I should devote all of my energies to the mastery of this art of believing and the art of imagining. For Imagination and believing are the stuff out of which we fashion our worlds…every one of us. There isn’t a thing in this world that comes suddenly upon us that really did not have its cause in some invisible imaginal state where we believed it. We forgot it, yes, went about our business, things are active, and suddenly it confronts us, and we don’t really recognize our own harvest. But everything comes by reason of the law, and we plant it by believing. We were told the story and we believed it. Others rejected it; we believed it.

Or we can tell ourselves a story. Let me tell you a story that I know intimately, because it’s part of my family’s world. You can’t conceive of anything poorer than to be born on a little island say like Barbados where I was born, and born with a light skin and be poor. If you were born with dark skin, you have a chance. If you were born with a white skin and you have money, tremendous chance. But to be born with white skin and poor, you’re behind the eight-ball at birth. Well, both my father and mother were born in these situations, poor and white. The highest education we had on the island would be what we could call high school, but not the standard we have today or certainly not the standard when my father went to school that we had then in this country. He went as far as he could go and he had to get a job, his first job in the city, paying five shillings a week. A shilling, call it a quarter, it was really twenty-four cents, but call it a quarter. There was no transportation and he lived ten miles in the country from the city. He had to be on the job at six in the morning and he had to walk it. It was six days a week and he walked back when the store closed at six, walked back another ten miles for his five shillings a week.

There was a huge big building judged by other standards on the main street. It was called C. F. Harrison & Company, a department store.They also had a commercial agency in the store. Some nights when he was beastly tired and to compensate he used to play the little game of believing, and to comfort himself he would believe that he owned that store. Well, he was as far from ownership as possible…well, how would I even compare it to something else…my being near the White House. That’s already been ruled out by human law, because I was born outside of continental America, so I would be as far removed, as my father, from owning this building. It occupied a whole block on the main street, a wonderful wide side street to the second street, a whole block. It was owned almost 100 years by the same family, but they lived in England; they never saw it. They hired local men and occasionally they sent a man out from England to take over management. But he played this game and it helped him, it compensated him when he was beastly tired,walking home in the belief he owned C. F. Harrison & Company.

Now, the Bible teaches that “every vision has its own appointed hour, it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late” (Hab.2:3). No two seeds have the same time interval to sprout. Some will take years, some will come overnight like a mushroom, but they all come in different time periods. Well, in 1942 the War is on, a 2nd World War. My father in the meanwhile…this goes back into the 19th Century, 1894, 1895, when he was playing this little game of believing. Then he got married and raised ten children. Through hard work, he was given a junior partnership in a small little grocery venture. They carried groceries, liquor, meat, and so on. 1919, for reasons that need not be explained, for they’re still unexplained, he was eased out of his partnership. They wanted it for themselves, and five men got together and eased him out. He had no choice in the matter. He was eased out with ten children, unschooled…where to turn? No equity, really, in that little junior partnership.

It all adds up. With borrowed money he started a little grocery store, that’s all that he knew, and one of my brothers with him. In 1942, a man came by…he was standing at the front of his store looking at this big building, and this friend said, “Mr. Joe, what are you doing?” “Oh,” he said, “I’m just looking over at this building. I’ve always liked it.” He said, “Would you like to own it?” “Huh!” he smiled. He said, “If any man who owns this building were ever to entertain the thought of selling it, he should have his head fixed. This is a gold mine. It’s owned by an Englishman who is ninety-two years old. He has two sons—one is a priest who doesn’t want any part of the commercial world, and the other has been a playboy all of his life. He has all the money in the world and would have not a thing to do with overseas properties. He has all that he needs in London plus this. This is his, too.” “Well,” he said, “I’m just asking” said this man to my father. He said, “Where is Vic?”…Vic is my brother. “Oh,” he said, “he’s somewhere around. I saw him here recently.” He said, “I want to see Vic.” So when Vic came by, he said, “I want to see you alone.” Took him upstairs to the office and he said, “Vic, read this letter. It came from the old man who owns the building, trusting me as an honored friend, a trusted friend, to sell it to some local family who has the island’s interests at heart, who has worked hard and proven by their efforts that they’re really good hard workers and a local family.” Vic read the letter and he could hardly believe his eyes. In the letter he said “All I want is a good value, no great profit. Value the building, take an inventory of the stock, and then that’s all that I want. But I want whoever buys it to take over the obligations of the insurance policies for my employees.” He employed about, oh, maybe seventy people and all were insured against retirement.

So here was the figure when he’d taken inventory. The building is worth…and he quoted a figure. He said, “Now let me call my father.” Daddy read the letter and then he said, “All right, let’s go straight to the bank. I’ll take it, have no money, but I’ll take it.” Went to the bank and then he said to the bankers, “I need so much, but I can’t tell you why. If you want to know why, I can’t tell you. Cable headquarters in Toronto,” and then he made a promise, “and tell them we want to borrow a certain sum of money which is in excess of our present loan, but we can’t tell them why we want it.” The bank sent back, “This is the most unusual request, but we’ve dealt with the Goddards now for twenty-odd years and so we will say yes to this request.” Then he wrote a letter, went to the head censor, the War was on, this man’s name was Johnny Walker, a descendant of the Scotch family, he was the head censor, and he said “Now Mr. Walker, I want you to read this letter and you will see in this letter that we have said nothing to in any way affect the War effort, no secrets. We are just simply accepting an offer and making an offer.” The man read it, he said, “Now I want you to seal it in my presence so these 275 girls and boys will not read it after you’ve sealed it. You read it and seal it, and let me see you mail it.” For in those days our ships were going down left and right by the subs, so we had no assurance the letter would ever reach England; for we had no other means other than water transportation. Time went by…three months later came a cable, “Accept Goddard’s offer.” By then the Bank of France wrote the money, the whole thing was done, and it broke in the papers the next day. Every merchant in the island rushed in to buy a piece of it. My father said “No, it’s just for the family, just the ten of us, nine brothers and a sister, and my father and mother, that’s all.” In fact, mother had just gone, for she left us in 1941.

What I’m getting at is this. The old man was right, Robert Frost: “We’re always believing ahead of our evidence.” In the meanwhile he worked, they all worked hard, and then came the evidence of what was no idle daydream, which he indulged in only to help him walk ten miles after being tired all day and walking home to his little hut in the country. That building today with its present rate of business, I don’t think anyone could come for it under, say, eight million dollars. I don’t think anyone…and it’s not for sale because business is too good. The very commercial agencies that we have are in themselves a fantastic business, aside from the actual business that is conducted there. First thing my brother did, he brought in an English architect, disemboweled the place and modernized it, and used every square inch that he could use as against the old concept…like the Emporium in San Francisco. Just disemboweled the center so as to give it air or to watch the people below, something, and all that space is wasted. We had something similar. He put in elevators, put in escalators, and covered the entire four floors, occupying every square foot of the space. And today, it is the most valuable piece of property…all based upon my father’s believing.

The art of believing…he used to practice this every day of his life. He would come home for breakfast. We call breakfast at home the first heavy meal around ten, ten-thirty. Early in the morning it’s really breaking the fast but you do that with a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and then you go off and return around ten, ten-thirty for a substantial meal which we call breakfast. So after this substantial meal he would sit in a chair, and with his eyes partly closed, he would see what he wanted to see. He would imagine what he wanted to imagine, and carry on mental conversations with imaginary people from premises of his fulfilled desire.

So he started from scratch, behind the eight-ball, but if all things are possible to the one who believes, well then, he’s proved it. He had not a thing in this world to support the claim that believing he had it that he would have it. And look at the things that happened in the interval. One became a priest…he wasn’t even born when my father began to do this. The old man who was then ninety-two, if you take off the almost fifty years, well then, he was in his forties, early forties. And if the one who is the priest was born, he was a young man; the other who became a businessman but really a playboy. They never saw their overseas properties; then came two world wars while this little thing is maturing and germinating. So his vision, his belief was in keeping with Habakkuk, “The vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. If it be long, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late.” That’s the 2nd chapter of Habakkuk (verse 3).

So here, the whole vision is for man. You are as free as the wind if you believe these principles in scripture, not based upon anything on the outside at all, all based upon you. Can you believe? And this story is told after the disciples failed to cure a certain lad and they asked, “Why did we fail?” He said, “Because of your unbelief, you faithless generation. How long must I be with you?” And then he explained and the father said, “I believe you; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24). So that’s what we’re here for, to help each other’s unbelief. You say, I have a certain goal, but so far I haven’t realized it. Well, that’s the purpose of the platform: it’s to help. What are you doing? I find the great fallacy of the whole world in this art of believing is perpetual construction and deferred occupancy. Occupancy is incubating the dream. What do I mean by occupancy? I mean thinking from instead of thinking of. I can stand here and think of for the rest of my days, think of owning that, owning this, or I can think of something I’d like to do; but until I actually occupy it, dwell in it, and look at the world from it, I haven’t incubated it, I haven’t fertilized it. I can take an egg, ___(??) egg, until that sperm enters it isn’t fertilized. How does the sperm enter the egg? It’s still a mystery to our scientists. Well, here a sperm enters the egg from the outside and yet there are no holes on the outside of that egg either before or after fertilization. How did he do it?

Well, you can do it because you are the sperm of God; you are the creative power of God. How do I do it—by Imagination. I can stand here and no power in this world can stop me from imagining that I am where I would like to be. They can’t stop me. I can stand here, you can bind me, you can do anything, but you can’t stop me from imagining that I am, say, in San Francisco. You will say what does that matter? Well, if I desire to go to San Francisco and I haven’t the time or the means, I will go to San Francisco in my Imagination, and things will reshuffle themselves to give me the time and the means. Then I’ll be compelled to move across a bridge of incidents that will lead me from here to where I am in Imagination, and I’ll go to San Francisco. I have done it time and time and time again. So when you know what you want, occupy it. Occupy any state in this world. Occupancy is fertilization, and the egg is not fertilized until you occupy it. When that sperm enters, it doesn’t break the shell. You need no door to open the door; you go in and occupy it.

Now, we are told that God speaks to man in a vision or rather he makes himself known in a vision and speaks to him in a dream. A few years ago, I think it was Christmas night, about two or three years ago, I had this vivid, vivid dream. It as more than a dream, it was like a waking dream, a waking state. But I found myself in New York City on Fifth Avenue in one of the huge, big mansions that dotted the avenue at the turn of the century. These were enormous mansions, sixty to eighty rooms to a mansion, where people occupied them, one family, but they had maybe twenty-five guest rooms. They had their stables on the west side where the servants lived above where the horses were kept. But these enormous things…I saw them when I came to this country in 1922. They had just begun to demolish them, and the big buildings were going up then. But in my vision I found myself on the inside of this fabulous mansion and there were three generations present. One was invisible; he was spoken of as grandfather. Then there were two visible, the second and third generations, and the second was telling the third that grandfather used to say while standing on an empty lot, “I remember when this was an empty lot.” He’s standing on it, and he would tell them, “I remember when it was an empty lot.” Then he would paint a word picture of his desire for that lot, and paint it so graphically they could see it as though it were fact and objective to vision.

I woke on my bed in Los Angeles and the whole thing was so vivid, I got out of bed, it was early, 3:30, and I wrote the whole thing down, the entire vision. It was too early to get up and remain up, so I went back to bed and re-dreamed the dream, only with a slight change. Now I’m in the mansion, the same mansion, and there are three generations but I am grandfather. I didn’t speak of grandfather; I was grandfather. I heard the story in my vision and I had so absorbed the power of faith, the power of belief that now in telling the story, I told them…“I would stand on an empty lot and I would say to those who were with me, ‘I remember when this was an empty lot.’” Then I painted the word picture of my desire for that lot and did it so well and so vividly that they all saw it.

Now the Bible teaches that the doubling of the dream means that God has fixed the thing and God will shortly bring it to pass. You read that in the 41st chapter of the Book of Genesis (verse 32)…the doubling of a dream, the thing should come to pass, for God has fixed it. Now, who is the God that’s spoken of? It’s your own wonderful I-am-ness, that’s God. “That’s my name forever. By this name I am known and will be known throughout all generations” (Ex.3:14). Well, who had the experience? I did. And when you woke and wrote it down and went back to bed who had the second one? I did. Therefore, the whole thing came from the depths of my own soul.

Now, have a wonderful, wonderful experience in your Imagination and make it real. Give it all the sensory vividness, all the tones of reality, and when it seems real to you and you’re thinking from it, it’s done. In a little while, do it again, double the vision, the dream. For you’re told, if it’s double then it’s fixed and God shall shortly bring it to pass. So, take the Bible at its word and double it, and see how this thing comes in this world.You bring things in by believing. You are always believing ahead of your evidence. The most creative thing in man is to believe a thing in.

May I tell you, it’s not difficult. Not only it’s not difficult, there is no strain, because if you believe a thing, there certainly is no strain to it. If you have faith, there’s no strain to it. Faith is only loyalty to unseen reality. You’re told in scripture, he calls a thing that does not exist and he calls it into existence. Read it in the 4th chapter, the 17th verse of Romans. The Catholic Bible translates that passage “He calls a thing that is not seen as though it were, and the unseen becomes seen.” Well, no one saw my father owning that place, and he didn’t share his little story with anyone else. So he was calling a thing that was not seen by another as though it were seen by the world…and then the unseen, in time, became a fact. So here, you call a thing that is not seen just as though it were and the unseen will become seen. You do it with anything in this world. You are the operant power and you have to make the choice. There’s always risk in your choice, because you may not always choose lovingly. If you don’t choose lovingly, well, you will still get it, only you will find it was an unwise choice. Time will prove it, because in the end you’ll discover there is no “other” but really no other just yourself. So if you choose something that is to another’s disadvantage, you’ll prove, time will prove it to you that you made an unwise choice. Yet you are free to do it, because the story is all things, not a few things, “All things are possible to him who believes.”

Now, here is the secret in this little story of believing: You always start at the end. The end is where I begin. In my end is my beginning. You go to the very end, the thing accomplished, you start there. And then you bounce back here…and then you move across this series of events that lead you to that end that you had already predetermined. Here is something that…of course I don’t like to use science to support anything in scripture, because scripture is so far beyond anything in science. It doesn’t appeal to the rational mind as science does. It belongs to a depth so deep that reason can’t reach it, that’s why it still remains undisturbed by all the arguments, all the intellectual criticisms that you can throw at it. It still remains undisturbed, but sometimes some fantastic thing comes out which, well, it’s so funny the scientists have said it. In fact, right now, or it just happened in—is it Norway where they give these prizes out?—well, this wonderful prize to Mr. Feynman, Professor Feynman, he’s now at Cal Tech. But they’re giving it to him today for something that he stumbled upon in 1949 (because I have his scientific paper at home, the Nov. 15th or Oct. 15th issue of The Science News Letter). And he said what they’re giving him today is for something he discovered a way back in 1949. He said, “It’s no earthly good from a practical point of view, but you can’t discount it, you can’t rub it out, there it is.” This is what he said concerning a little particle discovered in atomic disintegration, something known to scientists as the positron. Now he said, “The positron is a wrong-way electron. It starts from where it hasn’t been and it speeds to where it was an instant ago. Arriving there, it is bounced so hard its time sense is reversed and then it speeds back to where it hasn’t been.” He’s getting a prize for that…this is Professor Richard Feynman of Cal Tech.

Now the physics of the mind cannot differ really in any respect from the physics of the rest of nature, for God is one, there’s a unity here. Alright, how could I relate that to this statement now from the 14th of John: “In my Father’s house are many mansions; were it not so would I have told you? And now I go and prepare a place for you. When I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye shall be also” (verse 2). Now look upon it as a conversation taking place within one man. The outer man can’t do it, he’s helpless…he has no money, no position, he has nothing…but he has a desire. He has to turn that desire over to the depths of his own soul who is God, his own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God, so all things are possible to God.

The outer man can’t do it, so he puts him on a chair, puts him on a bed, leaves him just where he is, he’s helpless. Now in Imagination I go and prepare the place for him, wherever I would like to take him. But he has voiced the request, his desire, so I go into a state named by him. I occupy the state, it seems so real, and then I break it and speed quickly back to where I left the garment one second before. Now, to the outer mortal eye no one saw me go any place and no one saw me speed back, but I know what I did. I went into an unseen state based upon the mortal eye, and when I broke the spell I sped back to where I was physically. And I’m bounced so hard by the realities of things round about me that my time sense is reversed; and now I move across this series of events, this bridge of incidents that takes me from where I am physically to where I really am in Imagination.

So I move forward across this ladder of events and so he said, “It speeds from where it was not and comes back to where it was an instant ago; arriving there, it is bounced so hard the time sense is reversed, and now it goes back to where it hasn’t been.” All right, I can see that. I’m going back to where I haven’t been physically, not as yet, but I was there spiritually. So I go in spirit to prepare it and start back to where I was physically; we coincide once more; then I go forward to where I am in spirit and take with me this garment that I had left behind.

Now, said he, having seen this peculiar behavior of the little particle, man’s entire concept of the world has changed. He can no longer believe that the future slowly unfolds out of the past. Now he has to see the entire space-time history of the world laid out and we only become aware of increasing portions of it successively. The whole thing is finished and I simply become aware of portions of it. He said, the direction that it takes is irrelevant.

For that he’s getting $50,000. If I told you that story without prefacing my remarks by telling you a very honored man is this night receiving a great honor for that discovery and led you to believe that I said it, if you’re here for the first time, I prophesy you’re here for the last time. But it’s Professor Feynman and all scientists today are way up in the minds of men. Because he said it and he’s being honored for it, oh, isn’t that marvelous…tell us something else equally crazy and try to relate it to the Bible.

Well, everything is equally crazy if you come into the Bible. For the story of the Bible is the most incredible story in the world, and yet it’s true. It cannot be proven to the rational mind on this level. You can’t for one moment prove it. You have to wait for it; and then the whole drama of Jesus Christ unfolds in man, but the whole drama. Everything said of him you are going to experience: that the great sacred history of Israel came to its climax and fulfillment in the story of Jesus Christ. Not only came, it came and comes, because it’s taking place in everyone in the world. The day will come and you will have the experience of being the one you always thought was unique and different that lived 2,000 years ago, that you are he and the whole story is your story.

Now I asked before I closed to share with me your experiences. Not only of things here in the world of Caesar—how you get a home, a better job, more money and all these things, they are important—but I also asked you to share with me your dreams, your visions. For if they are in any way foretold in scripture, they are important. Well, next Tuesday I shall take four from the same lady who said they happened to her between closing December the 17th and my reopening January the 4th. They are perfectly beautiful, and I can tell her now, they’re all in scripture. They’re all in scripture—maybe she doesn’t have a concordance—everything she told me. I found this letter and read it over…everything is there in scripture. Not everything recorded in scripture completes the vision. As you’re told in the end of John, there are many other things that he did that are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe (21:25). The important eschatological story is written, that great finishing drama when it’s come to its climax, its end; but so many of the visions are not written. These four of hers are all in scripture.

So we’ll take them and weave them into the story which we’ll give to you on Tuesday. This is prompted not only by her four stories but by an article that my friend (who is here tonight) sent me last Tuesday. It’s in the current issue of Harper’s Bazaar and is about dreams. This practicing psychiatrist has been one for twenty years, but he wouldn’t give the Bible credit for anything. He quotes J. W. Dunne, Freud, Jung, Adler, and all the so-called authorities on dream, and only vaguely mentions in the very end this trinity in man, which he calls the self, the rational mind or ego, and then what he speaks of as the Holy Spirit as a reflection of the great trinity. That’s all that he would mention of scripture; and the Bible, from beginning to end, mentions the importance of dreams.

It also tells us we are past masters at misinterpreting dreams. If it’s a simple, simple little dream, all well and good, but when it comes in symbolism you need a professional interpreter…and I don’t mean Freud. He’d put it right down into the loins. No matter what the vision is he takes it right into the loins…and that’s not the story. So on Tuesday we will take that. And strangely enough, someone gave me for Christmas the Sunday issue of the New York Times that will come through the year, and in the book section, the first book reviewed is on dreams, something new. He, too, mentions these same “authorities” but not scripture. So on Tuesday, it will be that to show you what scripture teaches concerning this activity in the depths of the soul of man; and the four that she gave me last, well, I got it in the mail this week, are perfectly marvelous. I will tell her to read the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of Ecclesiastes tonight, and, I think, the 31st of Jeremiah, the 5th verse.

Well, let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: (inaudible)

A: The churches teach the three persons of the Trinity. They speak of God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. You’ll never understand it if you connect them with “and.” You must connect the three persons of the Trinity with “or’s.” “When you see me you see the Father.” If you’ve had the experience of being a father, you may think you’re a better man, but you’ve seen the Father. The Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, and the three are one, not three persons. Dwell upon it. Connect the Trinity, the three persons of the Trinity with “or’s” not “ands” and it will come to you.

Q: When your father sat in the armchair and used his Imagination, was that a deliberate act or was it just unconsciously thought?

A: Deliberate! His morning meditations were deliberate with my father. This that I spoke of earlier was the one of a big building. That was an escape, but it worked. He did it because it would compensate—to get five shillings, one dollar and twenty-five cents for a six-day week and a twelve-hour day, and you walked ten miles in and ten miles back.

That’s how he started life and raised a family of ten.

Q: What was the significance of your dream of where you were standing on an empty lot?

A: Well, the significance of that is I stood on an empty lot and yet I would say “I remember when”…that would imply it’s not empty any more, that whatever I wanted for it had already come to pass. You can say of someone, I remember when she was a spinster. Well, you’re implying right away she’s not one now. You can say, I remember when he was poor, when he was unwanted, when all shunned him. If you remember when that was so, it’s not so now.

Q: (inaudible)

A: Oh, my dear, I do it daily, not only for myself but for others. If someone writes me that they would like a raise in their position, either in money or in position, well then, I can’t deny that their very request tells me where they are financially and where they are in the position. If I could say now “I remember when they held only that position, or I remember when he had only so much.” Don’t take this lightly because it works!

A friend of mine called me last night. He had gone to see…the night before he had gone off to Pasadena to hear ___(??), the great pianist, and he loved it. He said he came home, they were discussing the concert, he put the dogs to bed, his father to bed, and he and his friend were discussing and pouring a little drink. Then one went to bed. He thought it too early so he sat in his place, he lives in Eagle Rock, and looked out on the lights of far off Colorado Boulevard, and said to himself, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I had just a little bit more money coming in to do that much more.” He loves the concerts and he gets the best seats. Just a little bit more, said he. They both are bachelors. So he said, “I sat there just drinking it in, the feeling of, well, almost giving thanks for it as something accomplished.” He said, “I went to work the next morning and here my boss said to me just like ___(??), “Bob, I have news for you, as of now you get twenty-five a month more.” It’s not an enormous jump, but twenty-five a month more.

That same Bob worked for RCA with his friend, who also worked in another division of RCA, so they pooled their cars, and one would drive one car one week, the other would drive the other car the next week. But, it was bumper to bumper where they had to go to this RCA display area. One had the Whirlpool division; the other had the color TV sets. So the one who had the Whirlpool division, he got so tired of this bumper-to- bumper ride every morning that when he wasn’t driving he would close his eyes and imagine that he was going downtown where he had worked for almost thirteen years, knew all the fellas, all the restaurants, knew the area, and he would lose himself in this controlled daydream while his friend drove the car. Right before Christmas when the sales were open now, one person is fired in the entire building. Who is it?—my friend Bob. All right, he dreamed himself out of a job. He was so shocked. All the papers said they made more money than ever before…RCA…they made millions and millions and millions. Chicago goes through a list, or they put it through a machine—this department has one man too many. Regardless of his name, regardless of his sales effort, because of what he’s done, the computer said one man must go. So the one man had to go and he was the one man. So when he told me this story I said, “Bob, have you forgotten how you would sit next to Mort and when Mort drove for the week you would dream you were going downtown?” Well, where do you think he’s working, downtown within two blocks of where he worked for almost thirteen years. That’s where you ___(??) there. He fired himself. At first it was a shock…how can they fire me?

So my father, on reflection, so he was fired out of this tiny, little junior partnership. If he hadn’t been fired in 1919 and though put together it seemed like such a horrible thing to have done to that man with a large family, no money; but on reflection it was the blessing of blessings that day, for these had no vision. When two of my brothers went to one of these partners, who looked upon us as nephews, in fact, my oldest brother was named after one of them. His name was Walter Cecil and my oldest brother is called Cecil. So he and my brother Lawrence went down to ask what happened, “What did Daddy do?” You know what satisfaction he gave my two brothers? He said to my brother, “You Goddards try to hang your hat too high.” So they kept on putting theirs in the gutter and that’s where they all died. So when my father died at the age of eighty-five, he hung his so high he could leave a family of ten financially independent, when all the others went across the veil holding their hats so low they were in the gutter. Don’t hang it low, hang it high!

Q: Neville, in the 5th chapter of 2nd Kings, Elisha’s messenger sends Naaman to wash seven times in the Jordan to be as clean as a little child. Would you explain that passage?

A: Well, seven is the Christ number on this level; eight is the true Christ number in the new age. So numbers are tremendously significant in scripture. Every letter in the Hebrew alphabet has not only a numerical value, also a symbolical value. Seven, which is Zayin, is the sword; but that seven is the number of Christ, the 7th eye of God. The Bible speaks of the seven…Blake names the seven and gives the 7th eye that of Jesus. There was an eighth; the eighth was called but he would not come. He couldn’t come; you can’t call him into this dimension at all. You accept the story on faith. You can’t call the eighth; he belongs to an entirely new age, the world of resurrection. So this cleaning was just at the end of this journey.

Q: The Jordan…am I in error that you had interpreted previously the Jordan as being a challenge or a problem?

A: It is a challenge. You go down to the Jordan, it’s the lowest, you go down to the very lowest. You’ve got to look beyond the Jordan, beyond where your senses take you. You must lift them and look beyond the Jordan as told us in Joshua.

Now the time is up. We’re here every Tuesday and every Friday. I can’t tell you when we’re going to close, but until…(tape ran out).