I Am in You

Tonight’s title is “I Am in You.” First remember, we are dealing with a mystery. As Paul said to Timothy, “Great indeed, we confess, this great mystery…is our mystery” (1Tim. 3:16RSV). It is not secular history. So tonight, we’ll try…it’s important that we get it.

In the 14th chapter of the Book of John we read that Christ said to the disciples, “In that day”—well, that phrase “in that day” is an eschatological term meaning “at the end of the journey,” at the end of this age of Caesar. So, “In that day you will know”…it will not be hearsay, you will have experienced it. Then he tells them what they will have experienced—that “I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” It is in us as persons that the nature of God is revealed. It is revealed in a series of supernatural experiences in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience. When it is experienced, all arguments are hushed. There is no one to whom you can turn, no wise man to throw any light on it; it just simply has happened. So Paul said, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me…I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:16) and that, “My gospel I did not receive from a man, nor was I taught it; it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (verse 11).

Well, this question will be asked you. Undoubtedly it was asked Paul. I know my sister this past year in Barbados asked it of me. She said, “Now, Neville, don’t evade it. Just answer a simple, simple question, was your Christ once really a man?” My answer to her was undoubtedly the answer that Paul gave those who asked a similar question. I said, “Was? He is the heavenly man.” Then, quoting Paul, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49). Christ is the heavenly man. But, Daph, it is a mystery. Do not think of some little boy who was born in a strange manner 2,000 years ago. We are dealing with a cosmic principle where God actually became man that man may become God.

Now, the process has started. Resurrection has begun; it is not over. As Paul warned, “Those who teach that it is over are misleading the faithful.” He said, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

Henceforth I regard no one from the human point of view: “Even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” (2 Cor. 5:16 RSV). He never meant a physical Christ. So to answer my sister, “No, Daph, no, my Christ is the heavenly man, and I speak from experience, for I stood in the presence of the risen Lord. Had I the capacity to paint I could paint this Ancient of Days, and he is gathering us one by one into his body to become one body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one God and Father of all. You will not be less than the risen Lord, for there is only one body. I will be your body. You will not be less in Spirit than the risen Lord. There is only one Spirit and there’s only one Lord and you will be that Lord.” But Neville, what about you?—I am the same body, the same Lord, the same Spirit, the same God and Father of all. Without loss of identity we are this one, this unity of being. So here, it is true I am in you and you in me. You will know it one day, because in our inner being he unfolds himself. So it is in us as persons—for you have to be a person for the nature of God to reveal itself. He reveals himself in us in this series of supernatural experiences.

Well, Daph I don’t think was any more impressed than that chair. It takes time. But it is so important that we get it. It is so important that you just rub out all intermediaries between yourself and God. The first letter of Paul is Galatians. It is the first letter and first book in the New Testament. He gave us thirteen. Scholars are agreed that this is the first in the entire New Testament. And in this, he declared his independence from men and his dependence upon God. He repudiated all authorities, all institutions, all customs, all laws that interfered with the direct access of the individual to his God. There was no intermediary for Paul. He never knew a Christ after the flesh; he knew the risen Lord who appeared to him.

Well, in my case I was taken into his presence. I did not know that night would be such a night. But here, I am taken in spirit into the presence of the risen Lord; and strangely enough when he asked me a question the answer had to be in terms of the words of Paul. So I ask you, who is Paul? Is not Paul the first of the chosen who broke the seal and discovered the mystery that was shown to Abraham? For he persecuted everyone who he thought was a member of The Way, called a Christian. Suddenly, it broke in him; and then Paul went out to proclaim the Truth as it was revealed in him by the risen Lord. So he said, “If I have been crucified with him or united with him in a death like his, I shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Rom. 6:5). He doesn’t claim the resurrection is over. He claims the crucifixion is over, because you could not be wearing this garment of flesh were you not crucified. “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). The choice was his. We do not actually enter heaven because of any acquired merit on our parts. Fitness is the consequence, not the condition of his choice. Remember, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. Then came the drama and it’s a horrible drama. But when you think of the glory to follow the drama then it doesn’t matter what suffering we go through here…it means nothing. So Paul could say, “I consider the sufferings of the present time not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

So here the Word…now listen to the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). “And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us—not “among” us (verse 14). The preposition is “in” and mistranslated “among” us. You think, “Well, where is he?” and you start looking among people for the one that became flesh…“The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” Now we are told in Revelation, “And this is the name by which he is called The Word of God” (19:13). Well, the word logos which we translate “word” means “meaning.” It is a meaning, a plan, a plot. God had a plot, a plan, a purpose in the beginning. This is not some emergency thinking after he brought forth creation. It was before the world was, a plan to give himself to us 100 percent, not to take back a bit. So whatever he is when he became me, when he starts to unfold in me I must experience that.

So it is in us as persons that the nature of God reveals itself. I am a person, you are a person, but it only comes at the end. In the very last, you are going to know it, and that last will come upon you suddenly like a thief in the night. You will have no knowledge that this is the night, but this could be the night, and suddenly it erupts within you. The entire story told of the Lord, for it is the story of the Lord, you experience in the first-person. It is all your story. So you go to your brother, your sister, your father, your mother (if they are still here) and you tell them…but they know you. They expect something entirely different from this. They know how weak you are, how limited you are, you are not schooled. They’ll read the Bible, but they’ll never hear these words or see them: “How does this man have learning seeing that he has never studied?” Here, in the 7th chapter of John that question is asked, for he stunned the rabbis, he stunned the Sanhedrin. They couldn’t understand how a man who had no learning could rise and say the things that he said. That he could say, “Today, scripture is fulfilled in me.” That, “I have come for only one purpose; I have come to fulfill scripture.” The scripture fulfilled is the Old Testament…that was the only scripture. The prophets foretold the coming of God, but he comes in man. He takes upon himself our nature and unfolds his nature in ours and we are God. Well, if he was a father prior to his choice of us and he gives himself to us, then we are a father. There is no way that anyone can prove he is a father unless he has a son who calls him father. Well, that is done. All these things unfold within us.

So, when I say “I am in you,” the words are the words of Christ. Remember, this is the risen Christ speaking. He is telling you, “I am in you and you in me and we are one.” So the risen Christ is God. May I tell you, when she said, “But is he a man?” why, he is the eternal man, a heavenly man. God is man: “You are a man, God is no more. Your own humanity learn to adore” (Blake, Everlasting Gospel). So man is looking for some impersonal force that they will call God. They can worship an impersonal force, but they can’t see man. May I tell you, when you stand in his presence, you realize how you couldn’t answer any other way other than in the words of Paul. You ask yourself a thousand times as I have, who is Paul? Who is this beginner of the Christian faith?—for it was Paul who started it. We have his thirteen letters. The gospels were written ten years after the letters of Paul. Here he goes out on a limb in his first letter to the Galatians and declares his independence of every organization in the world. That was in a day where it wasn’t as free as today. I can leave the church and not be ostracized to the point where I can’t get a job; but in that day, you couldn’t get a job unless you were a member of the synagogue. Where would you go? Paul goes all out: He will accept no intermediary between himself and God. No rabbi could come between him. He had found God and God was the risen Lord that he had gone about in his blindness to persecute.

The day will come and you will meet him. He will bring you into his presence…but that is his choice. When you reach the end of the journey, he brings you into his presence, incorporates you into his body by an embrace, and you are one with the body of God forever and forever. You go on your way for a little while and you tell it as I tell it to you, tell it to those in San Francisco and New York. And to tell it to those that I know in a social world that never will come here, but I meet them socially so I tell it then. Go to Barbados and tell it to them…no audience really…they aren’t interested. When I tell you that I told it to my sister, where? At tea…well, we’ve got to talk, so we got together every day for tea, and so Daph would raise a question and then you start to answer. Or maybe in the morning when you have your early meal and Daph and myself will simply chat for a while. But I assure you that after four months on the island with her, living in the home with her, she wasn’t at all moved…not at all moved. She liked her physical Jesus that lived 2,000 years ago and she hoped I would see the light one day and come back and see that Jesus that was born differently here. She can’t understand he was born differently here, but not in the way that she thinks it.

So when I say I am in you, I mean it literally. I am in you, for I am one with the risen Christ. These are the words of the risen Christ; these are not the words of Neville. These are the words of the risen Christ and he never once after he embraced me separated himself from me. Yet he sent me. Well, that’s part of the mystery. How can I be one with a body and be sent? Yet the words are, “He who sees me sees him who sent me.” He has never left me. Well, how can he never leave me and yet we are one and he sent me? But we have concepts of three-dimensional space and we think now if you send me from here and I go through that door, well then, the one who sent me and remains here isn’t with me. It is an entirely different picture.

So here, this night you dwell upon it. You dwell upon the being who actually became you and go back to the point where he chose you. He chose you in him before the world was, and he has made known unto me the mystery of his way, of his plan…a plan which he set forth in Christ for the fullness of time. Well, that fullness of time comes in that day. “In that day you will know…” So there is a plan in man; the plan is Christ. Christ is God and God is a plan. In the beginning was the Word (logos) and that’s a plan, that’s meaning. There is meaning to the whole vast world and that meaning was with God and the meaning was God.

So that meaning is in you. Call it Christ—I think the name is lovely; call it a plan if it will make you feel easier. But it’s Christ and Christ is the Word of God, and it cannot in any way fail to fulfill its purpose: That purpose is to simply unfold itself in you as God. For God is the plan, he is the Word, and therefore you are the Word. So as you walk the earth you are the Word moving towards fulfillment.

Now, all the little things that are taught as the plan unfolds we should keep in mind and don’t for one moment fail to apply them. Here is a simple little one. My friend is here tonight, she said, “Eight years ago when my little boy was quite young I gave him at Christmas Sears Christmas Catalogue. It always comes prior to Christmas and he loved it. All the boys and girls in the neighborhood would play and I called it then a wish book, Sear’s Wish Book. So they would take the Wish Book and pick out all these things that they wished and each would pick it out and pick out numberless things. Well now, that was eight years ago and they kept on playing with this Sears Wish Book.

“The current issue of the catalogue that just arrived…they sent us a notice and now they call their Christmas issue Sears Wish Book. Now whoever has that account thinks that is an original idea on their part. So after eight years it’s now called Sears Wish Book.” I have it at home, not the catalogue, but I have the notice that came to her in the mail and her letter saying what she did, and the thrill that is hers that she could actually create this way. You see, there is no fiction! How can there be fiction in a world where imagining creates reality? So eight years ago, playing with her little son she told him this is a wish book…and put him aside with his big book and all the boys in the neighborhood picking out what they wanted. Then year after year came a book and she called it a wish book. Now by actual printing on the cover of it—and it’s a beautiful cover—here is Sears Wish Book, their Christmas catalogue.

So if something is delayed in your world and it hasn’t yet arrived, keep this story in mind. You say, “Well, it should happen tonight.” Oh, I’m not denying that we are eager; we want things to happen now. We are children…we can’t wait. Countries plan…if they do plan they plan for unborn generations. Parents who grow and have a large estate, they plan not for just the little ones that are now, they plan for the offspring of the offspring and they plan their future. Maybe you disagree with that, but, nevertheless, they plan and it is in the future. But you and I get anxious and we want…all right…you want to be married now. You do? Are you divorced yet? “No, but I want it now, tonight.” But she’s not divorced. Haven’t you heard that?

So I have had these stories time and time again. I have had them say to me, “Either that man or no man.” I haven’t gone down the aisle with them, but I sat in the church when they got married and they looked and smiled as they walked by because it wasn’t that man. What they really wanted, they wanted to be happily married, and they pinpointed it—it had to be that man. I said, “If he dropped dead now, do you still want to get married?” “Why do you ask that question?” I’m asking a simple question. If he drops dead now, still want to get married? “I presume so.” Well then, he can’t be the only man, because if he dropped dead and you still have the urge for companionship in marriage, he’s not the only man. So single out what you really want in life and don’t condition it on something of that nature. Just, you want to be happily married?—all right, happily married. You want a certain home?—all right a certain home. “But I can’t afford it.” I’m not asking that. I’m asking can you now play this game of wishing? It’s the wish book. Single out of God’s book any wish. He speaks to man through the medium of desire. Well, take that desire and then it’s yours. How would you feel if it were true? How would you see the world were it true? Then lose yourself in the feeling; give it all the tones of reality.

All of this goes along as you walk toward the fulfillment of our real purpose in life which is to awaken God in you. You aren’t going to become a little god, some little god running around with other little gods. No room for them. There’s only God: That fundamental confession of faith called the Shema, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4). And don’t forget it! So when they have all kinds of little gods, forget it…only one God, one body, one Father…and you are destined to awaken as that one God and Father. He awakens, strangely enough, in this simple little thing called a man. How can a little thing that is mortal bear such responsibility? How can this little thing here with all its weaknesses know in its heart it has already unfolded the purpose of God? And he has no way to show it to anyone on earth save in words. I can’t convince anyone unless they have faith. I can tell them it has happened to me. This is exactly how it happened and I have tried to tell it to the best of my ability in written form, and tried to give the parallel passages of scripture to support what happened to me; for I only come to fulfill scripture, and in my case I have reached the end. Well, I’ve told it hoping that someone would pick it up from there and maybe dramatize it. As I told you last Friday night, take it and tell it in a dramatic form. You speak of Ionesco and his wonderful dramas. Why this would put his into nothing, because you’re dealing with the greatest story ever told, and telling it as it actually happened, not as people would like it to happen…like my sister who wanted it her way. She’ll go see the wonderful picture The Greatest Story Ever Told and it is so far removed from the story. That’s not the story.

The story is a simple man walking the earth containing within himself that potential and unexpectedly it unfolds within him. He is the most startled person ever. He never thought for one moment he was worthy of it, for he was taught you had to acquire merit and he wasn’t acquiring any merit. He knew that if he actually let his mind go back for the short interval of fifty or sixty years, he would not be proud of all the things that he has done…or proud of the things he entertained doing but didn’t have the courage to do them. Yet, in that weak body God the perfect unfolded and everything said of Christ in scripture unfolded in him.

Can you take it if I tell you that the story of Christ in scripture is an acted parable? Do you know what a parable is? It is a story told as if it were true leaving the one who heard or read it to discover its fictitious character and learn its meaning. So we simply know it is an acted parable. So he takes a little child in his arms and tells them, “This is the kingdom of heaven. Except you accept the kingdom as a little child, you cannot enter it.” Then he puts the little child down. Well, you think a man did that with a child? It is an acted parable. The day will come, you will take a little child in your arms and it will be your entrance into heaven, for it is your signal of your birth from above. Who was born? It was God that was born…not from the womb of a woman but from the skull of man; for it is there that God is crucified. He entered death’s door, the human skull, and in that skull is the plan. Strangely enough, when he awakens, there is no other. It is simply “I am awake.” What is God’s name forever and forever?—“I AM.” He has no other name. So, “Go and tell them I AM has sent you” (Exod. 3:14). And so, when you awaken, who awakes?—“I am awake.” You look around for a Christ?—no. You have no urge to see anyone else; it’s you! Then, from then on the whole thing unfolds within you.

Now this may be shocking if you are here for the first time, but, you know, I would not retract one word to make it any easier. I’m not saying it is not disturbing, but you will know in the not distant future. All of us here will depart this world, all of us. Don’t be afraid, you will, and death will be a blessing if you have any doubts now, for death will force you to modify or sometimes radically change the ideas you championed while you were here. I got a notice today that my very dear friend, who is my eastern doctor—he took care of my wife when she was pregnant, took care of me when I needed his attention, and all the family back east—and at only sixty-five he died. A member of the family wrote today that Randy died. I’ve been thinking of him all day, because in ’52 when I had a serious operation, Randy was my doctor. He wasn’t a surgeon. He came to the hospital. I always carried my Bible with me—I’m proud of it, it’s the Word of God, there’s no greater book in the world. So when he came into the room and sat down for his usual little visit every morning he said, “Neville, do you read the Bible?” I said, yes, daily, hours. Then he said to me, “What do you make of it?” I said, well, I teach it. “You teach it?” Well, being a college man and a brilliant doctor, he expected that I had some scholastic background in the Bible and that I went through some regular training in theology. I said no. But then I did not have my visions; my promise was not fulfilled; it was only the law. So, I began to explain to him the law based upon the stories of scripture, taking first of all the story of Esau and Jacob. That Esau represented my outer world, I simply closed my eyes to it; and Jacob represented my inner world that I want to clothe in outer reality. When I shut out the outer and bring in the inner, I clothe it with the skins of Esau, and believe in the reality of what I have done. Then my Jacob…well, I’m self-persuaded and self-deceived, for I deceive myself into believing that my subjective state was an objective reality.

Well, Randy didn’t like that at all. He’d have no part of it and made short the visit, quickly closed the book and turned it down, because that’s not what religion is to him. On Sunday morning he and his wife and his two daughters would go to the Presbyterian Church and spend an hour. That was something to be done. That’s like walking with a cane in the days when you had to have a cane. You were undressed if you didn’t have a cane and so you are not complete in the course of a week if on Sunday morning you didn’t cap it off with a visit to the church.

Now today, I thought of him all day, but he has been gone a few weeks. Undoubtedly Randy is modifying his beliefs. He knows the great work…not as yet…it will take time. You don’t awaken there as some wise, wise person. If you are foolish here, you are foolish there. If you are a thief here, you’re a thief there. The same innate thing is with you and you overcome them. That you could put everything in the world before a man who is not a thief, you couldn’t tempt him; therefore, there is no satisfaction, no merit, you can’t tempt him. You take a man who doesn’t drink and you put before him all the liquor in the world and he doesn’t want one…that’s no temptation. If a man is regenerated and he is no longer in the world of generation, you could undress all the people in the world and expose them completely and he remains unmoved. That’s no temptation because his energies have been turned up. They’re no longer down into generation; they have been turned up into regeneration. And so everyone passes through the same picture. He simply overcomes without effort. Because when these things happen in us, not a thing you can do about it. They just simply happen and as they happen you change. You don’t change prior, because fitness is the consequence, it’s not the condition of the kingdom of heaven. The minute it happens in you that’s the consequence; but you didn’t find yourself being chosen because you acquired merit…you didn’t acquire merit at all.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: ___(??) why is the skull important?

A: Well, you could amputate the feet, the legs, the arms, take out a lung, take out a kidney, patch up the heart, piece of the liver, and yet survive. Can’t take off the head! The body that you will wear, who knows what it is? But I’ll know your face. We are told he gives it a body as he has chosen…a glorious body. This body is a body that needs attention twenty-four hours a day. I must give it water, bathe it and clean it, wait on it. It assimilates what it can; what it can’t assimilate it must expel and I must clean the body. I wouldn’t want that body in eternity.

Q: Neville, are there masters?

A: No! No masters, elder brothers and all this nonsense. All through the world you have these isms glorifying the little individual who started it. No, you can’t meet anyone in this world, not anyone, who potentially is greater than you are. You can’t, because you are God. You can’t meet anyone that he loved more than he loves you because he chose you. That’s what I said tonight of Paul. He rubbed out completely anything between himself and God. It has been my misfortune…and yet in a way I learned from it…but I have had the dubious pleasure of meeting “masters” and “holy people.” Had I known then I’d have turned right around and started running. Don’t believe in them. Yet there are people who insist on believing in them and are willing to pay for it. If I would tell them I’m a master, yes—I have no credentials to prove it but I’m a master—then you could charge $1,000…he’s a master! My friend Abdullah once said to me that this elderly lady…he was an old, old gentleman and he was in Atlantic City…and someone told her that he could do something to a man in her neighborhood and destroy him. So she came and offered Ab $300. Ab said, “My dear, whoever advised you this way is silly. God is love, just love. First of all, if I had that power I wouldn’t use it, not in that direction, and secondly, it isn’t.” Well, he went all the way down in her estimation. She went right next door to a phony of phonies…but this one next door knew Ab, he was a neighbor, and she gave the $300 and he took it. She had to get rid of that $300 to have her neighbor destroyed and Ab was not the one to go to. So, she had to find someone who would take the $300, and she did. Why, there are phonies all over the world and you can’t stop them. They thrive like the weeds. Read any Saturday morning’s paper advertising their little isms. They come down from heaven on a white horse and they come down on all kinds of things, blowing trumpets. When you read it, and see my little ad which comes out once a month on that same page, I’m embarrassed. I’m embarrassed to see that my little ad is on the same page with this monstrous thing. But you can’t help it; you can’t choose where you’re going to put it. They put it on that page, so you’re stuck. There aren’t any masters. You will find yourself one day the recipient of his bounty and the whole thing unfolds in you…and there was no master.

Q: Why do they call Jesus Christ “master”?

A: First of all, the story is an acted parable. Don’t take it as history. They called him master, called him rabbi, called him Lord…in telling a story you put some name on it. It is a title of respect. But certainly not master in the sense the gentleman meant it. I know the book Masters of the Far East…I think he’s written five…he’s gone now. He never left America, Spaulding never left this country, but he tells a beautiful story of how when I was in India and these masters and how the birds came and nested in his hair. His body was there, incapacitated for six months, just vegetating, when he, the spirit, returned to the body it was all cataleptic, and the birds had nested in the hair, and he simply moved back into the body and woke the body up. Spaulding was about that big, with a huge, big growth on his nose. I can see him now at my meetings at the Ebell. One day he simply stepped off the car and dropped…that was his exit. Maybe he has gone to India now… never saw India…but all these are the masters of the Far East. He wrote one just to boil the pot, as so many writers do. It caught on, so he wrote a second and a third. If he were still alive, he’d have a sixth now…he has five. I hope he is successful, because my publisher is his publisher. I don’t want my publisher to lose anything on the new printing. He has just taken over these publications. It’s amusing to pick them up and read them as you would a novel, but they are not given as a novel. They are given as fact.

Q: It must have come out of his Imagination, then isn’t it real?

A: In that sense yes. Where else could it come from? But he wrote it as fact, as actual historical fact. Would you like to buy a book where this is now stated to be true, the experiences of the author, and then to learn after he is gone from this world that he never left America? Do you know one thing in this world that really hurts people more than anything else is to be taken over, to be beguiled. I go back east and my family who are 100 percent GOP, always have been, and when it came to Goldwater, they went out and campaigned for Johnson against Goldwater. They gave their time and their money. All I have to do now when I go to the home to dinner if I want to start an argument is just “I didn’t vote for him” meaning Johnson. “I didn’t vote for him” and that starts the argument, because they know exactly what they did. They were beguiled, and they’re all college graduates. They thought they were way beyond that…they can judge people! And they’re pulling the same line today…not my family…but the same line: “This man gets in and he’ll escalate.” That’s what they said of Goldwater. They have this little line back east, you may have heard it out here, they say, “If I voted for him then we would have escalation.” I voted for him and we have…but he hadn’t the power to escalate. It was the other one that they voted for who escalated. Pulled the same line! But no one wants to be beguiled. Someone comes and through flattery gets from you something, and then you realize after they’ve gone through the door you’ll never see it again. If you give it to him, it’s perfectly all right…but not to be beguiled. So buy a book where it states in the front this is history, factual, to learn afterwards it isn’t. So maybe now where he is he’s in India with birds in his head. All this nonsense! “Set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the unveiling of Christ in you.”

Good night.