Binding and Loosing

Tonight’s subject is “Binding and Loosing.” It may be an odd title, but you’ll find it a very practical one. When we open the Bible, we are in the midst of mystery. But I promise you, every one of you, everyone in the world will one day experience scripture for himself; and then and only then will he know how truly wonderful it really is. It’s all true. Don’t change it. Don’t attempt to change it. It’s altogether true when you experience scripture for yourself.

This segment is taken from the gospels…that is, not the gospels, but in the Book of John we are told: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (20:23). That is true, and one day you will experience that in depth. But tonight, on this level, we’ll show you how altogether marvelous it really is here before you experience that in depth. But I mean every sin is forgiven in depth, everything. But, on this level, you and I can forgive it.

But now we must search the scriptures. We’re told this is said to the disciples. And you might think you are not a disciple. May I tell you that you are if you are willing to accept the story of Jesus Christ as told you in the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts—that Saul went out to find all the disciples of The Way. The early Christians were not called Christians; they were called people of The Way; those who believed in a certain way of salvation. And he went out determined to find anyone that he could find of The Way, whether they be male or female, and bring them bound into Jerusalem to be condemned. Now here in the scriptures, if you read the story on the surface there was no woman made a disciple. But in the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts they are—anyone, regardless of sex, who accepts this way of life is a disciple. So I say to you, if you believe this story, the story of salvation, you are a disciple, and to you it is said, if you forgive a sin, it’s forgiven; if you retain a sin, it’s retained. What a responsibility!

But in the same book, the wonderful Bible, we are told, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.” Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. You’ll read that in the 9th chapter of the Book of Hebrews (verse 22). Now, these words are true. Then what does it mean? To this very day, in the year l964, there are those who believe on a certain day called the Day of Atonement that some living being must be destroyed for the salvation of those who will adhere to the law; and they keep it literally. I’m not taking it on that level; that’s the most external of all levels, where we do everything on the outside in the hope of appeasing some god. I take it on the next level, the psychological level, where you and I tonight can prove beyond all doubt the truth of this law. And it is true, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. If you take it literally, it would be the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus, where something alive was slain, and then the blood was sprinkled on the altar and then sprinkled on those who were present. And then came the atonement, and you wonder what is this atonement? The English word “atone” originally meant “at one.” It’s an at-one. I must perform a certain act to become attuned or at-one with a state. But, how could I do it? I do it only by the shedding of blood.

Now we are told, when man really discovers it, it is the blood of Christ Jesus that must be shed. Well, how could I shed the blood of Christ Jesus? Yet I am told, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin; therefore, what is sin now? Sin is “missing the mark.” If I have a goal in life and I do not realize it, I am sinning. I don’t care what the world will tell me, it’s the one sin of scripture if I have a goal. .And I am told: “If I had not come unto them and spoken unto them, they would not have sin; but now that I have spoken unto them, they have no excuse for their sin” (John15:22). If someone did not come into my world and tell me that I am not adjusted to the environment into which I am born, I could transcend it. I am not the being that seemingly appeared in this world and that is it, I could transcend it. If I am told I could transcend my environment, and then I desire to transcend it and don’t, I am sinning. If someone didn’t come into my world and tell me I could transcend my environment, I wouldn’t know sin. But someone comes into my world and tells me I can transcend the being that I am; and at that moment he stirs me, and disturbs me, and makes me ambitious to transcend that which I am, and if I don’t realize the being that I would like to be, then he made me a sinner. So to whom did he come? He said, I did not come to the righteous, I came to the sinners. I came to make them sinners and then to redeem them. Those who are complacent, who are satisfied with what they are, I did not come to the righteous. “I came not to the righteous but to the sinners.” So he comes into the world and tells man a story.

But now, what is the blood of Christ that I have to shed? I’ll tell you: Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination. “Christ in you is the hope of glory” (Col.1:27). It is Christ in you that must be awakened from this death. So, if I would now shed his blood, how would I shed my own Imagination’s blood? Well, now I am in a certain state. I am aware that I am a certain man, and I desire to transcend it; I want to be other than the man that I am. I have to die to that man; therefore, blood is shed. I detach myself mentally from the man that I am now keeping alive and I become at-one with that state of consciousness, the new man, that I want to make real in this world. So we are told in Ephesians, “Be imitators of God as dear children” (5:1). And we are told in the same book, Ephesians, “He creates in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (2:15). He creates in himself one new man in place of the two and this way he makes peace. So if I am now disturbed because I’m not the man I want to be, there’s conflict, there’s war. The only way I can find peace is to create in myself the one new man. I must become the man that I want to be.

A very able, in fact, the greatest writer in the English language put it into the character called Hamlet, and tried through this story to instruct on it. We think because he’s a playwright, well, that was simply written for entertainment, that was written simply to entertain the world, don’t believe it! One of the greatest educators of all time you’ll find in Shakespeare. So, here he takes Hamlet and Hamlet is now made to tell his mother how to transcend herself. He said to her: “Assume a virtue, if you have it not. Refrain tonight; and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence: the next more easy; for use can almost change the stamp of nature” (Act 3, Sc 4). And you try it. You can take it tonight and restrain tonight. Restrain what?—-the impulse to sleep in the consciousness of being thwarted, of being the man that you don’t want to be. And, just this one night restrain the impulse to fall asleep in that state. But don’t fall asleep in a vacuum; fall asleep now by assuming a virtue that you have not.

For she didn’t have the virtue of mercy when she actually aided in the destruction and death of her husband, through a passion that she wanted to, I would say, appease. And so, she certainly was not merciful, she was not one of pity, she was not one of love, and so, he asked her to assume a virtue if she had it not. What virtue? Well, he didn’t name it for her. He allowed her to select the virtue that she would like to assume, which currently she did not possess; and told her if tonight you would refrain the impulse to fall asleep in your last night’s concept, and this night fall asleep in the assumed virtue, just once, tomorrow night you’ll find it easier, and the next night still more easy. For I tell you that even if it doesn’t happen the next day, the next day you can always change the stamp of nature. So, if you came into this world stamped with the venom that is yours, the horror that is yours, the unmerciful picture that is yours, it can still change that stamp of nature if you’ll try it tonight. So he tried to persuade her to assume it.

So I will say to you tonight, if you want to be successful, if you want to be…I don’t care what it is, but you name it. I hope it is something lovely, something marvelous. If the whole vast world tells you that you could not do it, I have been sent to tell you that you can transcend your environment. You can transcend anything in this world that you seem to have at birth, or you seem to have today. You can transcend it by assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled. I will tell you that Imagination will do nothing for us, nothing that we wish, until we have assumed the wish fulfilled. It will do nothing until we have assumed the wish fulfilled; and Imagination is Christ. And so, if I now give up my present concept of myself and dare to assume that I am the man that I want to be, have I not died to my former state? And that was the shedding of blood; that is the shedding of blood on the psychological state. I don’t go out and buy a turtle dove, or buy a bullock, or kill some little animal in this world in the hope of appeasing God. I shed the blood of Christ, and the blood of Christ is my own wonderful human Imagination; for God became man that man may become God. He actually became us!

So if I am told when I started the dream that whatever—anything in this world no matter what it is—if you forgive it, it is forgiven; if you retained it, it is retained. But am I not told I must not ask for your consent. I don’t ask for your permission to do it, and I need not tell you I am doing it. Maybe you are totally unaware that I am doing it. Therefore, if you are unaware that I am doing it, and I’m doing it without your knowledge or your permission, then is it not true that “All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow”? If I don’t need your permission to forgive you, and I need not tell you that I am actually forgiving you and I perform an inner act which results in an outer change in your world, are you not within me? If I do it. Well, is it done? May I tell you, I could tell you unnumbered stories to support that claim. It is true!

A lady called me yesterday morning to thank me for something she’d asked of me on the morning of the 29th of December when I spoke to Dr. Palmer. She asked me for a certain something, and it was, would I please release her from this problem. And so, in my Imagination I simply assumed that she had called and told me of the good fortune or the good news which she called yesterday morning. But then she shared with me a lovely piece of good news. She said, “You know, I can’t come to you at night any more, I don’t like to go out at night, but I do put into practice what I heard from you over the years. And a friend of mine called me up—she goes to Santa Barbara in the summer and goes to New Mexico in the winter. In New Mexico she lives in a trailer. She called me and told me that they told her that the trailer had changed hands, that is, the place where they’re all parked, and that she wanted to sell. So I said, ‘Alright, it’s done. You have the check in your hand and it’s all done.’ Then she called me back and told me that she had just heard from the people who were living there that there are seventeen trailers for sale, and because of the change in management, all things are going to pot, and that no one can get anything for a trailer today. I said, ‘I’m not asking you why you’re going to sell it; you want to sell it; and you sold it for the sum of money that you want.’ She went off to New Mexico and within one hour after she arrived—in spite of the seventeen trailers for sale—she sold her trailer at the price she had stated, not one penny less, not a penny more. Someone within one hour bought her trailer in that trailer camp.

And if that works once, and you can repeat it, and then repeat it, and repeat it, we have found the law of the forgiveness of sin. For sin is only missing the mark. And if no sin can be forgiven without the shedding of blood, I have found what the shedding of blood is. The shedding of blood is the Christ blood. Well, Christ is my Imagination. And I gave up that which I made alive. If I give up something I made alive, I shed its blood. I took myself out of one state and put it in another state. So I put it in one state called “the check is in your hand”; therefore, I took it from the state where you are trying to sell and put it into the state where you have sold. I take it from one state where you are not the man you want to be, and put it in the state where you are the man that you want to be. So, in making this transformation I die to one state; and in dying to this state I then fulfill the Book of Ephesians, “He creates in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.” And so, he makes peace.

In the depths of yourself you’ll see that’s done. That’s another depth. But on this level it’s done here. One day you will know how he does that in depth, and that is when he becomes you. And, not you and another, not you and God, God actually becomes you. And you will know then what it means to be one with God and what it means for the whole vast world to be God. He has one wonderful symbol by which he reveals it, and that is his Son; that, “No one knows who the Father is except the Son; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father” (Mat.11:27). And so when the Son appears and reveals you as Father, and you know he’s going to reveal everyone as Father, then you know we are all one; we aren’t really two. For, if I am the father of your son, and you know that son and I know that son, and we are both the father of the same son, then we are one. Although seemingly we are fragmented into numberless parts, if all are the Father of the one Son, then we are one God, one Father. So that day will come when you will know that.

But before it comes to you individually, you can take this marvelous revelation and try it on this level. So you are commissioned to go into the world and forgive sin. If you retain it, it’s retained; if you forgive it, it’s forgiven. And whatever you forgive is forgiven. So try it. Start this very night trying to forgive sin, by starting with yourself first. Look at yourself this very night, and ask yourself if you really are the man, the woman, that you really want to be. If you’re satisfied, perfectly alright, but I doubt that anyone is really satisfied. For when he comes into the world he comes and he brings disturbance. “If I had not come unto them and spoken unto them, they would have not had sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin” (John15:22). So when Christ comes into the world of man he disturbs them. Prior to the coming, they were quite satisfied to adjust to the environment in which they were born, and perform the external act of sacrifice, so that once a year they could perform some little sacrificial act. But then one who heard him clearly said, “I see as I pass by that you are observing days and weeks and seasons and years. I am afraid I have labored over you in vain” (Gal. 4:10).

So when one thinks that only one day of the year atonement comes, I have labored over you in vain. Atonement comes at every moment in time. Every moment is the at-one. One can attune or atone, and so create in himself one man in place of the two. And so the two are always the man that I am and the man that I want to be. If the man that I want to be is in conflict with the man that I am—and it must be if I want to be it—I’m confessing I’m not it. The minute I want to be something I’m confessing I’m not that, therefore, there’s war, there’s conflict. And so, I must now create in myself one new man in the place of the two. So when I go to bed this night I must dare to assume that I am the man that at the moment my reason denies, my senses deny. And how do I know that I’m in it? Just how would I know that I’m really in this state and I’ve brought about this one new man in myself? By looking at the world…if I don’t see the world as I would see it were I the man that I want to be, then I’m not in that state. I haven’t yet created in myself the one new man. But if tonight I assume—___(??) assume the virtue if you have it not. That virtue may be any kind of virtue. So, I assume that I’m…and I name it…and then I look at my world, my frame of reference, to reflect confirmation of the man that I want to be. I will see then on the faces of my friends’ expressions implying that they see in me the man that I want the world to see. So I will hear them speak about me. I will see them and just see that face reflecting what I am. Then I am in it.

And so, I tried to tell this in a strange way, saying thinking from what you want instead of thinking of what you want. If I think of what I want, I’m in conflict because I am not there. If I think of and I really want it, then the being thinking from and thinking of what he wants, these two are in conflict. I must resolve it. So that when I think of and it’s really something that I want to realize, I must resolve it and create in myself the one new man so it becomes a state from which I think. And then I think from it, instead of thinking of it. If you do it this way it works. But how it works no one knows. No one could devise the means employed by that state from which you think to bring it to pass. I could not, on reflection, have devised the means employed to bring about the state that I had realized in my world, I couldn’t. I would not be wise enough as a normal person to actually devise the means. But man not knowing this, he goes out trying to work out the means instead of applying God’s law. God’s law is: You cannot do it unless you do it by the shedding of blood. So you give up what you are to become what you want to be; and that’s dying. So you die to one state and you live to another state. So without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. And yet I’m invited to remit sin, to forgive it.

So I can take the words now, “atonement, forgiveness, remission,” all these things, and put them and call them, really, synonyms, they’re all one. If I forgive…what is the challenge to a man to forgive? It challenges a man’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite state of consciousness. I’ll forgive you, forgive myself. So I take myself, I’ll forgive myself for being today, and I’ll name it. Then what would be the solution of my present problem? Alright, can I assume that I am now it? It challenges my ability to enter into that state to the point where when I view the former state it’s a something away behind me. It’s something that was. I can say today, I remember when—remember when what?—when I was not that.

I remember when someone told me, “You will never in eternity earn a dollar using your voice.” That’s a fact! That was in my school, I went to school and she said to me, “You know, you’ll never…you’re the one in the class of forty…and listen to Neville, he will never be able to earn a dollar using his voice. So use him as an example and see what you should avoid.” And so, they all are really using their voices to order a meal, or to sell a shirt at Macy’s. They are using their voices, but she was wrong there too. But they’re not using their voices in the theatrical world where we all hoped one day to use it. It was a little theatrical school in New York City called the ___(??) School, and I was singled out as the horrible example of things that one should not do. Well, then I began to apply this law, to assume that I am the man that I want to be, and then let things happen. I could not have devised it. I took no more lessons I assure you. When I left there that was the end of my schooling. And so, I never once took a lesson in the use of the voice. It just happened that I had something to say and then I said it. That’s all that matters. Whether I said it correctly, I mean in the proper use of words, it made no difference to me once I said it. But I said it with feeling because I had experienced it. So I wasn’t trying to become a church in the use of words, I wasn’t trying to become some great user of words, just to be normal and to tell it as clearly and with all the feeling I possibly could muster. For I knew that I had experienced it and if I could tell it with feeling I would persuade others to try it.

And so I tell you, you don’t have to have anything more than you have now—just a dream, a dream of something other than what you are, some noble dream. Then this night believe the great Bard: “Assume a virtue if you have it not. Refrain tonight; and that shall lend a kind of easiness to the next abstinence and the next more easy; for use almost can change the stamp of nature.” And in my own case, I completely changed the scene. It changed my stamp of nature, for I certainly was not stamped with this. But I desired to tell it and then went out to tell it. The first time I started, six people came, all through sympathy. I sent out fifty penny postal cards. In those days there was such a thing as a penny card, and I sent out the large amount of fifty cents worth. Out of the fifty, my friends, all of the theatrical world, six came, and six came just because they were sympathetic, and they came almost to pay their respects. Because there were only six in the place that could have taken care of fifty. They either were embarrassed, but whether embarrassed or not, these were embarrassed out of dollar bill. Because I didn’t charge, didn’t have the courage to charge, and so you pass the basket among the six. When they saw only six they each gave a dollar. And so, that paid the rent. And I started that way and never turned back, every night dreaming my dream of telling this story.

Then six months later, a man who was in the same building, speaking to an enormous crowd—all things being relative, I spoke to six, and when he invited me, oh, six months later, I had grown to twenty—and so, he had an enormous audience of about 600 people, and he thought that he would simply snuff me out by inviting me to take the platform. So I took the platform and he paid me the large amount of twenty-five dollars for that night to take his platform and talk to his 600. I learned afterwards he invited me for one purpose, that when I faced this audience I would be so nervous they would see that he’s not the one to visit anymore, and so he’d rub me out completely. But may I tell you what happened? The very next night I spoke upstairs in my little place of fifty and I got 200 of his. They were all down the hallway. And then they kept on coming night after night—I spoke twice a week then—and so they came. I had no place for them, and the management in Steinway Hall said, “You can’t continue this way. I’m getting all kinds of complaints because they’re all in the hallway. I must rent you a bigger place.” I said, alright, rent me a bigger place. He rented me a bigger and it still overflowed and overflowed and overflowed, until finally we had to move out of Steinway Hall.

So it all started by my dream. I simply went to bed assuming a virtue that I did not possess. I assumed it and assumed it and assumed it. So I tell you that Imagination will not do a thing for us until we have imagined the wish fulfilled. Just like a little child, it cannot be compelled; it must be persuaded. The child must be persuaded; you can’t compel it; it resents it. Well, Imagination is just like that. And in all the stories of Christ he’s always depicted as a little child: “And a little child shall lead them.” And just like a child, it must be persuaded, not compelled. And so this night I can’t compel myself to believe something, I must pretend it’s true, and play the game of pretending, and assume it and assume it. If I dare to assume that I am what at the moment reason denies and my senses deny, and fall asleep in that assumption just as though it were true, may I tell you from experience, it becomes true.

On reflection, when you look back and see how it worked out, you could never have devised the means employed to bring it to pass. You never could have done it. I could never have thought of the means of being invited by this man to take his audience. It came suddenly. He sent his secretary downstairs to invite me to come upstairs on a Thursday night, which was my off night—I spoke on Wednesdays and Fridays—and he sent this lady downstairs and asked me to come upstairs the following night, because he had to go to Washington. It was true, he did, he had to go to Washington and he was the honored guest at one of the great ___(??) meetings. And so, this was the great night of the banquet and he was the honored guest. And so I took his platform and, naturally, I was very happy to do it. But I didn’t realize the consequences. I had been sleeping in my dream and this is how it works. So it didn’t work out as he had plotted it. He was used by my Imagination to bring it to pass, because all of us are interwoven: “All things by a law divine in one another’s being mingle.” So that if I’m assuming that I am what I want to be, I don’t need your permission, your consent, to use you if you can be used to bring my assumption to pass. I’ll use you and a billion like you if it takes a billion to bring it to pass. Therefore, when you look in the morning’s press and you see these strange things, don’t be disturbed. It happened because someone is dreaming.

Did you read last week’s Life Magazine of MacArthur? I did. I’m very interested in the man and I read the story of Gen. MacArthur. But the very end, the very last paragraph, when he was leaving West Point, he quoted what the general who addressed this fine body of men said. He said: “Before you take off that uniform, you will be at war. It is always so, it’s part of the tradition of our country. You will be at war; therefore, prepare your nation for that war.” He quotes it just as the man said it to him. Well, if everybody that graduates from that great group of men are addressed in that manner—go out and prepare yourself first, and prepare your community, and then your state, and your country for the inevitable war—what do you expect? It’s all Imagination. Imagination creates reality. The whole vast world is God made visible; and God became man that man may become God. He is sunk in us as our own wonderful human Imagination, so what are we doing with our Imaginations?

I tell you that the story of scripture is true. I stand before you as a witness to it. I have experienced the story of Christ Jesus. Everything said about him in scripture has happened in the soul of my being. Everything, from his resurrection, to his birth, the discovery of the fatherhood of God, and the ascent into heaven, and the descent of the dove, which is the symbol of the Holy Spirit. Everything recorded I have experienced. That comes in the depth of the soul. But these same experiences lifted to the psychological level can be invaluable here in the world of Caesar. You and I can take it in the world of Caesar and do the most fantastic things with it. On the highest level, the level of John who wears the outer garment of skin and hair you’ve outgrown. You need not do that…no stalking of a bird to redeem yourself, no killing of a bullock or a lamb or a ram and offering it to redeem yourself. That’s on the very surface of it all.

But below it, on that psychological level, you can use it to the most marvelous state in this world. Take every person that you know and without their consent represent them to yourself as being what you would like them to be, and see them actually become it. See them become it! Like my friend who went to San Francisco, Freedom, a total stranger on the street was asking for money, and he doesn’t give him money, but in his mind’s eye he sees the man gainfully employed. He refuses the money but sees him gainfully employed, and then when he is satisfied that this imaginal act is true he goes upon his way. And then, four months later that same man is coming down the street, comes up to my friend Freedom, extends his hand, and says, “I don’t suppose you remember me?” “Oh yes I do.” And then, said the man to my friend Freedom, “I want to thank you for not giving me the money that I asked you for four months ago; for had you given me that money I would today be asking for money. Because you didn’t give it to me, I went out that very day and got myself a job. I am still on that job, and I am now gainfully employed, and it has great possibilities of growth in this world.” And he thanked him for it…a total stranger. But he knew the art of forgiveness: how to actually create in himself one new man instead of this conflict. A man begging for money? No. I’ll create in myself one new man, a man who is gainfully employed.

So I say everyone can do it. You are a disciple. Don’t think that the disciples from Peter down to Judas are the twelve disciples. Read the 9th chapter of the Book of Acts. Both women and men if they really accept this way of life they are disciples. Anyone who accepts the way of life, and this is the way of life, they’re called “the people of The Way”. We take the phrase “the people of The Way” and we now give it the name Christ. It’s a lovely name; to me it’s a beautiful name. The word Christ means Messiah. It is the way of salvation. But it is a way of salvation, not a being outside of yourself who saves. For listen to these words from the 43rd of Isaiah: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior…I know not any” (verses 3,11). There is no Savior besides the Holy One of Israel, and his name is I AM: “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel.” So the I AM within you is the great being that sunk himself in you and became you. He’s your own wonderful human Imagination.

And you try it. Try it sincerely. If tomorrow you don’t get the fruit, so what? Let me quote that lovely passage from Habakkuk: “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” (2:3). So the vision, your vision of yourself, you want to be and you name it. Alright, you drop a seed into the ground today. It could be a little acorn, it could be a corn, it could be some other kind of seed, and every seed has its own appointed hour. One will grow overnight, one will grow in a week, one will grow in a month, one will grow in a year, but it has its own appointed hour and it ripens and it will flower. If it seems to you long, wait, for it is sure and it will not be late. Not for itself. All things bring forth after their kind. That’s part of the eternal plan—the identical harvest (Gen.1:11). You can’t plant one thing and expect to grow something other than what you planted. And so, whatever you plant you plant it in your own wonderful Imagination by assuming that you are what you want to be.

So he comes into our world and disturbs it. Had he not come into my world and told me that I am not really anchored to the environment in which I was born, that I could transcend it, well then, I would have no ambition to be other than what I was at birth, and remain in that environment. For when Christ comes into the world, he comes not to bring peace but a sword. He disturbs the whole vast world when he comes; and then he shows man how in himself to bring peace, how to create in himself one new man in place of two, so making peace. But at first you can’t make peace unless first there is war. So he makes war first and then shows you how he is going to make peace. He disturbs you that you may be other than what you seem to be; and then shows you how to make peace, how to bring about one new man instead of two.

Now let us go into the Silence.

___(??) that when you begin to practice this art of forgiveness and you master it, and you will if you practice it, don’t think for one moment because you’ve mastered the art that then you could work in cooperation with God to bring a new order into being. That new order is coming whether you forgive or not. It is only given to us to cushion the blows on this level. But that new order is coming, in fact, it has come. The door is open and no one can shut it. And so the order has come. If you want to continue adjusting yourself to the environment in which you were born, it will not delay your entrance into the kingdom of heaven. It is only given to you to adjust yourself on this wheel of recurrence while you are on it, until that moment in time when God, in his own wonderful mercy, lifts you off into the kingdom of heaven.

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: Could you relate what you said tonight about forgiveness to your chapter called The Pruning Shears of Revision?

A: Yes, definitely. Revision is forgiveness. I tried to freshen it as it were, because the word today…after 2,000 years the ship has grown barnacles. And all these words, like atonement, like forgiveness, certain groups have claimed the right and the only right to forgive; that an individual can’t forgive; only if you wear the frock you can forgive, and he has assumed the right and the only right to forgive. It isn’t that in scripture at all; everyone in this world can practice the art. A little child five years old, whose grandmother comes here (she’s here tonight) who actually brought about reconciliation between divorced parents by playing a little game that the grandmother had devised. So when you go to bed tonight…(tape omission).

Q: Is it necessary to do the revision, as Jesus said, prior to praying? If you have hurt your brother, go back and forgive him? Is the revision necessary for more effective work?

A: It’s effective any moment in twenty-four hours. If I injured you, then we are in conflict in me, not in you. I must resolve it if I so desire. I should desire it because I am going to prove to myself, as I have already proven, that you are really not another. You do not know as yet that you are the being talking to you. You do not know it as yet and yet you are. Without loss of identity you will be the same wonderful being you are but more so and yet one with the Speaker. And the one being that’s going to prove it to you is that you are really the father of my Son, my Son David. You are his father and your mother is his father, and your grandmother. Every being in this world that is seemingly of another sex they are the father of my Son. So the fatherhood of God is real.

So if in the process you do not realize this and someone offends us, and I don’t know he’s my very being only reflecting something I have done of which I have forgotten, that he only bears witness of my own disturbance—I think he is the cause. He isn’t the cause; it’s in me. Somewhere along the line.when I read this thing on Gen. MacArthur…I’ve always admired the general, I still admire him…so I, tonight, regret that he wrote it, really, because to me he’s greater than what he’s written in the first installment. In my mind’s eye, I think he’s a perfectly marvelous person. But when as a young man he was being sent off into the world, well trained, at the head of his class, a way ahead of any of them, and he is told: “Before you take that uniform off you will be at war, and this is inevitable” says the gentleman who addresses the class. It has always happened and it always will, he said, therefore prepare your country for it. Well, what can you expect when every class that’s coming out this day, out of Russia, out of China, out of England, out of…they all have classes coming out trained to protect their land. If that is the charge given—undoubtedly it’s a similar charge given to all of them—are we concerned, or should we be disturbed when we see these explosions all over the world? It’s inevitable, said he.

Well, I say to you, Christ came into the world. He’s sunk in you as your wonderful human Imagination, and he disturbs you by telling you you can be what you want to be. That’s war. But he puts you into an environment that is limited and starts you in life as a slave. For we’re all slaves: you come in and you have no money, no social background, no intellectual background, but nothing, and there you start. And he tells you that you can dream, and by daring to assume that you are the man you would like to be, you can become it. It’s going to cause conflict in this world—“I didn’t come to bring peace but a sword.” Because, the minute you begin to dream, things are going to happen, and people are going to be disturbed. But their disturbance brings to birth the fulfillment of your dream. The whole thing is disturbed—you can’t stop it—all of a sudden it comes to birth, and you are the man, and you dream from then on. And dreams are always disturbing the world.

One day, a friend of mine, flying up from San Diego to Los Angeles, he came home for dinner that night—he’s a Navy man, not any more, but he was in the Navy during the last war. He said, “I had the strangest experience today. I didn’t realize it but I was down on the water’s edge, but flying above the water, I saw this little tiny small little ship moving off, and it was leaving a wake behind it. And do you know, Neville, that wake kept on going long after my eye could see it; and I know a bit of the structure of this world of ours, that thing unless interfered with is going to reach the Orient, that wake. That he disturbed the water and that thing is moving, and it will go on forever and forever. Until some shoreline stops it, it’s going to go right on.” Well, you know, mind disturbs something and it influences everyone that it hits.

Goodnight.