Evil: Turning to Other Gods

___ children, wonderful boys, and she was going to ___ ___every one that I contact to confidence, great faith in their own wonderful human Imagination. If I could raise you this night to faith and trust in your own wonderful human Imagination, my work would be done; for I would have raised you to confidence and faith in God. Imagination, your own wonderful human Imagination is one with God.

There’s a story told in the 31st chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: And the Lord said to Moses, you will sleep with your fathers; and then this people will play the harlot and turn to other gods…and then evil and trouble will fall upon them…and in that day I will hide my face from them (verses16-18). All the troubles will come, everything that I foretell that would happen it’ll all come; but I’ll hide my face from them on account of all the evil which they have done. And now he describes what he means by evil: Because they have turned to other gods. Not that they murdered, that they stole, that they did anything that you and I would call evil; turning to another God was the evil of which he spoke. For he said, “I am the Lord and there is no other. I am the Lord. I form light, and create darkness. I make weal, and create the woe. I am the Lord, who do all these things” (Is. 45:6)—full responsibility for everything created in the world, good, bad and indifferent. There is no other God, only one God. “I kill and I make alive. I wound and I heal.”

Now these words are spoken to Moses to tell the people. But he foresaw what man without the visible presence of one called Moses would do. Moses is his spokesman. Now in scripture every name has a great significance. It’s not a man; it’s a state of consciousness. The word Moses is the old perfective of the Egyptian verb “to be born.” That’s what the word means. There is a play on the word meaning “to draw out,” and that is true, too. They called him Moses because “I drew him out of the water.” Well, the word Moses—made up of three little Hebrew letters, Mem, Shin, He—Mosha—in that literal sense could be “to draw out.” If you take the word and turn it around, transliterate it, Heshem, it means “the name.” If you take the middle letter, pull it out and put it first, Shema, it means “heaven.” So heaven is within you. I draw everything out from within me by the use of the name. And so, it is to Moses that the name of God is revealed, and that name is I AM.

But now, Moses is about to die and to be gathered unto his fathers. And when the visible leader is taken, you and I who cannot see God because now the face is hidden, we turn astray to other gods. Yet Moses, who is now dead, must rise. No one knows his burial place, as you read it in the 34th chapter of Deuteronomy. And Moses died, and to this day no one in Israel knows his burial place (verses 5-6). So they can’t make a ___(??) out of the sepulcher. But I tell you, he’s buried in man. For this word is the old perfective, “that which is accurate, that which is exact, that which is perfect”; in other words, a perfect image of God. But it’s to be born—it wasn’t yet—to be born. Now, he cannot lead man into the Promised Land; that falls to Joshua to do it. And the word Joshua is the Hebraic word for the word Jesus, same thing. Jesus is the Anglicized form of the Hebrew word Joshua, which means “to save.” And so, that’s up to Jesus to fulfill the perfect image.

Now tonight, I want to show you who you really are. I tell you that all things exist in the human Imagination, that nothing that you and I discuss as an object is independent of imagining on some level or levels, but nothing. You try it. See if you can think of something and discuss it without imagining. The ultimate source of all phenomena of all sorts is one with imagining that is active in you and in me—the source of all phenomena. That which is now proved true in this world was once only imagined, but everything. Now we are told, “He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:2). Here the apostle or evangelist John makes the bold claim that all things without exception were made by him who was from the very beginning with God.

Well, I know in my own case as I observe and follow the line back to the cause, I can trace it back to my Imagination. A man sits behind his desk and there are bills long overdue. He came to my meetings, a very successful businessman in New York City. That’s headquarters, but he has factories and outlets in Paris, in Brazil, and representatives all over this country—a most successful businessman. So he sat down, and to clarify the mind, in his Imagination he wrote the letter reminding the one of the debt long overdue—didn’t post it. Then he wrote a second letter acknowledging receipt of the money and thanking the one. And these letters were never posted. And over the years, not more than three, four days will pass before that check comes in the mail. He said, “I cannot afford to lose a customer. To stay in business, you must keep customers and so I cannot dun a customer. I must keep them; and to keep them I want them to pay, be a good customer. I have them all catalogued and there are A’s, B’s, C’s, D’s, depending on their willingness or their reluctance.” He has it all catalogued; but he operates this way. Well now, what was the cause of someone suddenly releasing the funds to send it in? He can trace it back to his imaginal act. Now if that can be repeated and it proves itself in performance, does it really matter what the world thinks? If there is evidence for a thing, what does it matter what you or I or the world thinks about it? He has the evidence that his imaginal act was the cause of this willingness to pay the debt.

Now, that is an act, isn’t it? It’s a creative act. Now we go back to John, the 2nd verse of the 1st chapter, “He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him and without him there was not anything made that was made.” Well now, this one spoken of in that 2nd verse of the 1st chapter of John must be the human Imagination, how can you get away from it? You cannot get away from it if that statement is true. So here is Imagination now personified. Well, I am a person, I imagine, so why should it not be personified? So God became man that man may become God. But now he hides himself from me because of the evil that I have done. But now he tells me he’s not criticizing me for any unlovely act judged by human standards. I might have done a hundred things of which I am totally, well, I’m ashamed of, I might have, and chances are I did. But he doesn’t judge me for these acts. The evil of which he speaks is my turning from him to another god; that I dare to believe in a causal power outside of the one God, and that one God revealed his name as I AM.

So if I could only persuade you to really believe in your own wonderful human Imagination. And when you imagine something—and I hope it’s a loving thing—believe in the reality of that imaginal act, and watch it come to pass, that you may find who God really is. When you find him and remain faithful to this one and only God—for he’s the only God—then he will reveal himself. There’s a way that God reveals himself in man, and you will never see another: “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know when he appears we shall be like him, and see him as he is” (1 Jn. 3:2). You’re going to see yourself—beautified, glorified to the nth degree. That’s the being you’re really going to see, because he actually became you for the purpose that you may become God. That’s the grand sacrifice that was in the beginning.

And the whole thing is told us in detail in scripture. The Old Testament is a prophetic blueprint of the life of Jesus Christ. So when you read the story of Jesus Christ, you can take the word Lord in the Old Testament and call it Jesus Christ. Take the word Jehovah, take the word God Almighty, take any name of that creative power of the Old Testament and call it Jesus Christ. Now read his story carefully as told us in our Testament and see what is in store for you…for Jesus Christ. I’m calling on God. God became and becomes man. He became man and he becomes man. Believe it.

He’s not on the outside hanging on any cross. The only cross he ever had was the cross called man, this is the cross. So he entered into human history and, may I tell you, every child born of woman will one day awaken from this wonderful dream; and when he awakens, there will be no loss of his specific individuality, none whatsoever. And when he awakens, he is the being spoken of in scripture called Jesus Christ, because everything said of him happened to the individual, but everything. He resurrects in the same manner. So they don’t know his sepulcher. I’ll tell you the sepulcher: it’s your skull. That’s where you awake; you wake right in your skull. As you’re told, he is born; he comes out of the skull, so he’s born from that grave of death. That’s the birth. But it’s symbolized in a child, which is always a symbol of a birth. Then he passes through the entire series of experiences leading up to the final one when the seal of approval is put upon him, and that’s the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.

And now all that was contained in the name of Moses has been fulfilled: Moses, the old perfective, containing the perfect image but in germinal form. And so he dies, and this is the great mystery of life through death. So he died and no one knows where they buried him because he was buried in man. That’s the seed, that’s the germ, everything, the entire plot, the entire plan. For you are told, God revealed to man, as we’re told in the 103rd Psalm, he revealed to Moses his way; but to Israel, he spoke to Israel in his acts. So we see the acts, but that which is buried within us knows the way. And who said anything about the way?—Jesus Christ, he said, “I am the way.” So in the 103rd Psalm, to Moses he revealed his way; to Israel, he spoke to them in his acts.

And all of these are the acts. If man could only trace them back to the cause and find God. Everything that happens is taking man and trying to tell man to get back, to see why it happened—because, seedtime and harvest is forever. As we’re told at the end of the 8th chapter of Genesis, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest shall not pass away,” it’s forever (verse 22). As a man plants so shall he reap. So be not deceived; God is not mocked; whatever we plant that we reap. So when I see the reaping, the harvest, can I trace it back to some imaginal act on my part? So I come back to see that it started here in some imaginal act. But if he does all things, and I know I did it, then I must find him. I can’t wait too long to find him. I must have found it. I know exactly how it started—right where I’m imagining. Then I’ve found him; and then comes the unfolding picture of the story of Jesus Christ in man.

So, all things exist in the human Imagination. And as Blake so clearly stated, “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your (own wonderful human) Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” The whole vast world is man, the observer, pushed out. And you will have experience after experience to persuade you to accept this God, not that god. “If anyone should ever say to you, ‘Look, there he is!’ don’t believe him” (Mark 13:21). You never see Christ there or here. You’ll only find him within your own wonderful Imagination and you’ll find him as it, and you are it. This is the story. But man turns out and turns away from God, and as he does so God hides his face. He hides it behind the phenomena of life. You see him all the time in the harvest, but you don’t recognize him, because you can’t trace the relationship between the harvest and the sower which is one’s self. And we’re planting it morning, noon and night.

So here, if I could only this night be self-persuaded that everyone really to a measure believed it, that you could really feel confident in the imaginal act and have faith in your own wonderful human Imagination, I could prophesy for you. To the degree that you have faith and trust in your imaginal acts your whole vast future would be determined by your own deliberate acts. You could stop it and start it as you want to. You could be successful, if you want to; and I doubt that anyone wants to be a beggar, but so many not knowing this law, they dwell upon failure, not knowing an imaginal act is producing a harvest. But the man who knows it, he watches carefully every thought he entertains, because he knows it’s going to grow into his world. If he knows it, and that’s the only cause in the world, he has found Jesus Christ. For by him all things are made—not just a few things but all things are made—good, bad and indifferent.

Now the schools of the world teach us that God didn’t make anything but good. Well, my old friend Abdullah, walking down Central Park West one day, and we saw a certain sign on the Ethical Society, the building, and they had the word purity. There were three words and one was ___(??) stand for purity, ___(??) that was pure. Abdullah, in a very graphic way—I will not use the word he used—but he said, “Pure what? Pure what, Neville? What purity? Purity would be the very essence of the thing itself, wouldn’t it? Pure…well, suppose I had a lovely garden and it needed fertilization, and I order from you who should supply it, and you brought me, because you like me personally, and you brought me instead of what I ordered you brought me perfume. That’s not what I ordered.”

For, here is a perfect image that is God, it’s called Moses. But it’s to be born; it’s not born yet. It has to pass through all the stages of growth and culminate in that which is called Jesus Christ in you, not 2,000 years ago, but in you today. And so, the seed is in us. We heard the word, he told us the word. Now, he said, Write it in a book—this is all in the 31st chapter of Deuteronomy—write it, that it may be to them as a comfort, to cushion them, as a witness, when they turn from me to strange gods. They’ll go back and read the book and it may be a comfort. They’ll still blame all kinds of things, because they will think that even as it’s befalling them it came from some horrible God, and they’ll wonder what they did. And they can’t see the sign on the wall. They can’t see all these things and trace it back to what they themselves are doing.

So we’re told in the 8th of Ezekiel, “Son of man, look and see what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, every one in his own chamber. And they say, ‘No one sees us’” (verse 9). Engraved upon the interior of the mind of man all the creeping beasts, all the abominable beasts, because man sets it up, and he thinks that no one sees me. I can sit alone and think what I am thinking of you or the other, and no one sees, that’s what I think. And he sees everyone because he has girded me. He has so completely girded me I can’t even find him until man begins to awake. As we awake we find out who he is: He’s our own wonderful human Imagination.

So tonight you can start right now if you believe it. Set yourself a goal, for yourself or another, and have faith and confidence in your imaginal acts. Believe them implicitly and no power in the world can stop this from coming into harvest. And you will harvest it! Everyone can do it. Everyone is called upon to do it. But the minute I turn out to another God, I am called the harlot in scripture. The harlot is not what we in this world would call the harlot. They identify it with idolatry, not with sex at all. To turn to some idol, whether it’s a beautiful picture, whether it’s a cross, whether it’s anything in this world, to turn to it, that’s idolatry and that’s playing the harlot.

So everyone, male and female, become harlots, because they can’t see and they insist on making something to worship. He said, “Make no graven image unto me,” none whatsoever (Deut. 5:8). Go into the churches of the world, we find all these, not only all over the world, but you find next door to every great church some little place that sells these indulgences. That’s big business. They will sell you a little cross and sell you a little statue of Jesus, a little statue of so and so, and we pray to all the saints of the world, everything other than self. And here, the very act of it was playing the harlot: That is idolatry.

Now, you can start tonight. And I could give you unnumbered cases. Every case history in the books that I have written is based upon fact. My publisher didn’t have space, really to take all of them. First of all, it would not be marketable; it would be too big a volume. But from one thousand we culled only forty. We could have had a thousand; they were all good. Every case history was based upon this simple, wonderful, miraculous principle of one believing in the reality of his own wonderful imaginal acts; that Christ is God in action; well, imagining is Imagination in action. And I identify Imagination with God, and Christ with imagining.

So here we have it right at our fingertips. All things are possible to him, he said, all things; for all things are possible to imagining. Is there something you can’t imagine? You may not believe it possible, but you can’t deny you can imagine it. When Sir Isaac Newton asked the question, “Can any man go forth where his Imagination has never walked before?” and the answer is no. He said, “I will go and prepare a place for you—he has to go first—and if I go, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye shall be also” (John 14:2). Imagination must go first. In my Father’s house are unnumbered mansions; were it not so I would have told you. And now I go and prepare a place for you. When I go and prepare the place, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am in Imagination there we, together, shall be in the flesh. And that I know from experience—to put myself, while thousands of miles away physically from my objective, to put myself in my objective as though I were there physically, and to look at the world and see it and survey it from that imagined state. See it just as I would see it were it true that I was there physically, and then fall asleep in that assumption, just as though it were true. I wake the next morning to find myself physically where I was the night before. But things rapidly happen. The whole thing is reshuffled and then I am moving under compulsion to go where in Imagination I slept.

Now, that I have done time and again. I learned it the first time the hard way, because I did it not expecting that I would have to make the trip. It was a cold, cold night in New York City, twelve inches of snow on the ground, and I slept in Barbados because I wanted something warm and comforting around me. I surrounded myself with my mother’s home. I could smell the things that come only from the tropics. I could hear that which comes only from the tropics. When I thought of my apartment in New York City, I saw it to the north of me 2,000 miles, in New York City. When I woke the next morning, there was not twelve inches of snow we had about twenty; so I was still where I was physically. I forgot it and made arrangements to go to Maine to spend my vacation, my wife and myself, when a cable came saying, “We never told you this before, because the War is on and we knew you couldn’t come to Barbados, but Mother is dying. And so, if you can possibly make it, the one person she would like to see before she closes her eyes happens to be you. She asks for you all the time.” And my wife and I sailed the very next day.

I was not then an American citizen and you have to sail with a permit to return or you couldn’t come back. I never thought of re-entry or anything else only of getting to Mother. We sailed in twenty-four hours and I was without a permit, without anything, and when it came for my return no one would grant me my re-entry. But I got it in the same way. There is no barrier in this world: I went up without a permit to come back, and got it just as though I were a Native American. All the doors had to be opened if you know who you are…if you know who you are. But I didn’t know it would come that way. So I tell you, you are free as the wind if you know who you are, and live by God’s word. As we’re told, you shall know the word, my word, my truth, and this truth will make you free. And they said, “But what, we? We are the seed of Abraham. We have always been free; we have never been enslaved.” They didn’t know what slavery they were in—the whole vast world who thinks itself free not knowing God is enslaved.

A rumor this past two weeks shook out on paper at least twenty-five to thirty billion dollars in profit, on paper. The market went this way on a rumor. Mr. Martin spoke and the market went this way. Someone else interpreted what he said and it went this way. So, values, on paper—they’re still manufacturing just as much as before, and you and I consume just as much food, and undoubtedly doing the things we did normally—but those who look at the little figures, looking at it, and subtracting one from the other, they’ve found a depreciation of values to the tune of fifty billion. Know what fifty billion dollars is?—all by a little rumor. Well, a little rumor tonight if you don’t know who God is could start all kinds of things in your world…if you don’t know who he is. But if you know who he is, and I tell you who he is, he’s your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. God became man that man may become God. And if all things are possible to God, they should be possible and provable to you if you believe it. So now we’re invited to test him and see. As we are told, come test yourself and see—not test the other. These are the words in the 13th chapter of 2nd Corinthians: “Come test yourself and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in thee?—unless of course you fail to meet the test!” (verse 5). “Do you not know that you are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16).

We are told that it’s true. Now you’re invited to test it. If he dwells in me and all things are possible to him, I’m asked to really test him. Well, how would I test him? Just as I told you earlier, if you want to travel and you can’t afford the time and you haven’t the money, all these things are against you, try it. Sleep physically where you slept last night, but sleep mentally in your Imagination where you want to go, and see what happens. Strange things will happen and you will wake under compulsion and the whole vast world will reshuffle itself to compel you to move across a series of events, leading from where you are physically to where you are in Imagination. And you’ll do it! It will happen so naturally. You know what you will actually say if you don’t really believe this is cause? You will say, “Well, it would have happened anyway”—that’s how naturally it happens—it would have happened anyway.

But, may I tell you, nothing just happens. There’s a cause behind everything in this world. You see the oak? Well, the acorn must have been there sometime, unless you transplanted the oak. But the oak itself is proof that sometime an acorn took root and grew. There isn’t a thing in this world…alright, you see someone in this world, you can trace it back to infancy where it must have been born; and that you can trace it back to a creative act, which is unseen by the rest of the world. So you go all the way back to that creative act and the creative act is that moment when you really believe in your imaginal act. That was the creative act and at that moment the whole thing began to develop. But you’re so busy, and I’m so busy, you forget all this sowing in our world, so that when it does appear we don’t recognize our own harvest.

But, tonight, do believe me. God that you believe in…you say you believe in God?—the 14th of John—“You believe in God, believe also in me” (verse 1). He’s speaking: You believe in God, that’s good, believe in God—I’ll tell you who he is—believe in me. Now show me the Father. Well, you see me, I am the Father, he said. When you see me you see the Father; how can you say, “Show me the Father”? “I and my Father are one.” So believe in God, believe in God the Father, but believe in me. So this whole drama is taking place in you, individually, and the whole thing unfolds within you: You are he.

And I can’t tell anyone the thrill, that something that happens when the whole story of Jesus Christ unfolds in you. When it begins to unfold, you can’t believe. And you realize this thing can’t be based upon a moral vision, it can’t be based upon what I’ve been taught, because you have no feeling of a radical break with the past. Your loves remain the same—you may see them differently. But your dislikes…maybe you become indifferent to them…but I can’t honestly say that there aren’t certain things in this world that I don’t still dislike. And yet it happened to me, so it can’t be based upon what I was taught to believe. I had to believe in order for it to happen. So I know today beyond all doubt I didn’t earn it. No merit, you can throw merit through the window. You can’t acquire merit. It isn’t merit; it’s a gift. It’s all grace—“and truth and grace came through Jesus Christ.” And so, the whole thing is a gift.

Now what is grace? Grace is God’s gift of himself to man. It’s a gift; it can’t be earned. And the world is still trying to earn it by doing this, by doing that, by doing the other, and you can’t earn it. But what determines that moment in time when you are elected to receive the unfolding picture, I do not know; it ever remains his secret. Why should this one tonight be called and not the other when judged by human standards the other seems kinder, more loving, more, I would say worthy? But we can’t judge—we do not know the heart of man. And God, and God alone, knows the heart. When it’s ready, it unfolds within him because God was there all along. He had put him through the furnaces and he knew exactly to what degree he had brought him…brought himself.

So I’m asking everyone here this night that when you go home you test it in a simple, simple way. If you have x-number of dollars in the bank—providing of course you want x-number of dollars in the bank—wouldn’t you see it in your mind’s eye? Wouldn’t you see the world differently with no anxiety about bills, none whatsoever? Because if they came you would pile them that high if you had money in the bank. In fact, the slowest payer in the world is the millionaire. He makes people carry his account for a year.The little fellow rushes to pay the minute the bill comes in to keep his credit going, but the millionaire stacks them up and once a year he pays off. He knows he can, so he isn’t worried about it, he isn’t concerned. Now, if you had such security you would think differently, you would feel differently, you would see the world differently. Begin to think differently and see it differently, and then whatever it takes will come into your world.

Again, I am speaking from experience. Because, I have never faced an audience across this country at any time where someone could rise in that audience and say to me, “You don’t know what it is not to have a dollar”—because I do. I know what it is to be dispossessed for not paying the rent. Not because I didn’t want to pay it, couldn’t pay it. I know what it is to go without meals because I couldn’t buy it. So I know these things from experience…didn’t read it in books. So when people tell me, “But you haven’t had the experience,” they don’t know. I have had the experiences! At my age, very few people can remember in detail the Depression. Oh, they might have been in a home where the father and mother had the brunt, but not the child. So when I face audiences today most of them are my junior, so they don’t really know that Depression, that real Depression. I went through it, so I know what it is to say, “Well, move along, because we’ve carried you long enough, can’t carry you any longer.” You can’t blame them. Pack your little grip and off you go. Where are you going to sleep? So you go into a friend’s home and sleep on the floor until he gets tired, then you go elsewhere. These are experiences back when I didn’t know who God was.

But when you find him and all things are possible to him, what are you doing on the floor? Get up! What are you doing there? Get out of it if you know who you are; and you only know who you are when you find out who God is. The minute that you find him, well then, thrust in the sickle and reap. He said, “All that is mine, thine, thine are mine.” And if it’s all mine for the taking, what am I doing not taking discriminately? You discriminate and you take the good. You select what you want in this world and you apply this principle towards getting it. You hurt no one. No one is hurt because you know in the end there is no other, it’s all yourself. The whole vast world is yourself pushed out, so you don’t pray to anyone; you appropriate, that’s what you do. If I and my Father are one, to whom would I turn and beg? Would I not appropriate? So I appropriate, not ___(??) what I need.

So, I say to everyone, try it. Try it and then do me a favor—we only have a few left, closing on the 29th, which is a week from Tuesday, so it gives us three lectures—but do share with me your experiences. I do not ask you to share with me what you get from your use of the law. If you make a million, keep it. I’m not asking you to give me one nickel of it. You may give it to charity, give it to anyone, but in my almost thirty years on the platform teaching this principle, I have never once appealed to anyone out there for a nickel. That’s been my record. No one in that audience can ever claim, “I gave him so and so because he asked me for it.” And I’ve had the experience when things were tied to a “seeming” gift and I gave it back. So, I’m asking you to try it. And when I ask you to share with me, I mean tell me how it works that I in turn may tell your story across the country and encourage those to increase their faith. So you’re told in Galatians, let him who teaches…or else let the one who is taught share all good things with the one who teaches us. And so, I ask you to share with me the good in this sense, write me a letter and tell me how it worked. Give me as many details as possible that I when I take the platform and say now a lady had this problem, or a gentleman had this problem, and this is what they did and this is how it worked. Someone in my audience may have a similar problem, so if I can tell a problem that is similar to your problem and you can see how they did it, well then, sharing this way increases and encourages our faith.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Q: (inaudible)A: ___(??) both, really. You see I am not qualified to say how long it takes for the promise to be fulfilled, I don’t know. Blake in his wonderful Jerusalem makes the claim several times 6,000 years, but who on earth knows how close to 6,000 years anyone is? He may this night be 5,999 and the next few hours bring it this night. We do not know if his figure is true. He may be putting it based upon the scriptures of six days and a day is equal to a thousand years. That’s told us in Peter. And so, the six days of creation to bring about the perfect image—“Let us make man in our image”—that was declared on the sixth day. And so, the six days—Peter tells us a day is as a thousand years, a thousand years is as a day. So I couldn’t really tell you about the promise.But here, as far as we’re concerned, he said, “I send you to reap that for which you did not labor.” But that is obvious the world over. I step into the store and buy the Bible—I certainly didn’t labor to put it out—and here is a work of labor over the centuries, and I reap it, I harvest it, and I certainly didn’t labor to bring it out. I buy a novel, I buy anything; I go to the theater and sit down and see the most glorious show. Well, here it took money, and talent, and energy, and an author to write it, and director to direct it, and I’m reaping it, I’m in the harvest. “I send you to reap that for which you did not labor.” So we’re right in a harvest, all of us. So when I come out having put down my six or eight dollars or whatever for a ticket, what’s that to the labor behind that effort? The author might have spent a whole year writing it, or longer. And those who put the money up are anxious, concerned because it could close the first night, or they could reap Caesar’s dollar. So, you say four months? Thrust in the sickle and reap now. You can reap, like you’re reaping all day. You and I go to the supermarket…and look at this harvest…we certainly didn’t labor to bring it in. Everything is there and so we simply reap that for which we did not labor.

I certainly know in the Promise I don’t recall having labored for it. I went through the furnaces, we all go through the furnaces, but in his infinite mercy he hides the pain from us, that painful past. And so, when you reap the birth and reap the resurrection and reap David and reap one after the other, look what a harvest! And you have no memory of ever having toiled….at least I haven’t.

Any other questions, please?

Q: (inaudible)A: ___(??) the law of God. He said, I delight in the law of God, and the man who delights in the law of God in all that he does he prospers; well, therefore, I’m getting understanding in the use of the law. So the secret of imagining is really quite a secret and there are so many facets to it, so how to apply it now towards this goal or that goal? And so, I’m getting more and more understanding as I exercise the talent. He gave out talents, and one multiplied it, and he highly commended him. Another one doubled his; he was highly commended. And one was afraid to test it so he buried it; and he was condemned (Matthew 25:14). So tonight, someone goes out and they say, “If I try it and it doesn’t work, I’m worse off than before, therefore, I’ll bury it and not try it, just talk about it.”

So they’ll go and just talk about it and then be, well, the mouthpiece at a party, but never touched it, never really tried it. But someone believed it, took the five talents and made ten; one of the two, he made four. And the one with the single talent, he wouldn’t try it; he buried it and he was cast out. So we have a talent: the talent is you can use your Imagination constructively to achieve ends by dwelling in the end as though the end were present. And that’s getting understanding.Any other questions, please?

Q: Probably a silly question, but in Mark when Jesus pulls out the unclean spirit in legions, why then do the unclean spirits enter a herd of swine and the swine go into the sea and are choked?A: The swine, the pig, is a symbol of Jesus Christ, always has been the redeemer and savior of the world. The only one who ever makes a sacrifice is God. The 53rd chapter of Isaiah: all the sins of the world, all the stripes of the world are placed upon him. So who could actually take upon himself man’s unlovely thoughts, his horrible thoughts but God? Takes them and then externalizes them that man may see the cause of the strange evil in his world. He doesn’t recognize that he is the cause, so he keeps on putting more and more on God. For God is playing all the parts, there’s nothing but God. He became me—he isn’t pretending that he’s me—I say, “I am.” Before I can say anything I must first be aware that I am, and that’s his name.

Get up in the morning, I may say, “Where am I?” Don’t know where I am—I may even have amnesia and not know who I am. I may look into my wife’s face and don’t know who she is, I may. That has happened, in fact, it happens all the time. But I can’t forget that I am. I may forget who, where, what, anything, but I can never forget that I am. That’s how basic it is. So he became me to the core of me, and then let me go free making all the mistakes in the world until finally I begin to remember. Because, he said in a chapter, “Write it in a book to comfort them when the evil falls upon them.” Then you go back to that book and you study, and suddenly the whole thing is dawning on you who you really are.Then you begin to trace the effect to the cause, and then you begin to wake, and then all the great signs. When the whole of Moses, the law, has come to fruition and unfolds in you, then you find Jesus Christ. Not as another, no loss of your identity, same individuality, with no break, no radical break with the past. And here, all along you thought he was another.

Goodnight.

Central Park West, from 63rd to 64th Streets.The present school, on the northwest corner of Central Park West and 63rd Street, opened in 1904 in a brick and limestone building designed by Carrère & Hastings, with Robert D. Kohn as associate architect.