Imagination: My Slave

I would like to make this series as productive and as helpful as the fall series, for I feel in the fall series that we really reached a very high water mark, not only in what people have accomplished in this world of Caesar, but in their spiritual lives. Everything is geared toward a center and that center is God. And where are we in relationship to God? And so we accomplish not only the changes that we desire in this outer world, but the real change between the surface mind of ours and the deep of self which is God. And so, to accomplish that, I must ask you to do what we did last fall…to share with me your dreams and your visions and your experiences as you apply this law toward changes in this outer world. That makes it far more real, more wonderful. If you will share with me, then we will all be mutually encouraged by each others faith. If you have the faith enough to apply it when you are up against it, and then tell me what happened so I can then from the platform tell others, I will encourage those who are present, and I will encourage them to apply it and, therefore, increase their faith. So do share with me your dreams, for God is speaking to man through the medium of a dream.

When I use the word God, here let me go right out tonight and state it quite clearly. When I use the words Lord, God, Jehovah, Jesus, Christ, I AM, Imagination, to me they are synonymous and interchangeable. I do not have a God stuck off in space that differs from that which I speak of as I AM. When I speak of Imagination, I speak of God, I speak of Jehovah, I speak of Jesus, I speak of Christ. So these terms, to me, are synonymous and interchangeable. When I say that Jesus Christ is my deeper self, I could say Imagination is my deeper self…and yet my slave for purposes of his own. I personify Imagination, for I am a person, and my real being is all Imagination, therefore, Imagination to me is a person, but the deeper self. And for purposes of his own, he is my slave.

So I say, he waits upon me, he waits upon you, he waits upon all of us, swiftly, impersonally, without any effort whatsoever, when our will is evil or when it is good, makes no difference to the deep of myself. I am in a state and I’m thinking unlovely thoughts, he waits upon me just as swiftly, just as quickly, and he will conjure for me images of evil out of the nowhere.Let me change a state and feel myself in a sense of love, a sense of good, and the same presence will conjure for me instantly images of love. So he waits upon me so quickly, so swiftly, no matter what I am on the surface of his being, and radiates through me onto the screen of space all that I am imagining.

So I say that the entire outer world is solely produced through imagining. If my outer world is produced through imagining, then I cannot change the outer world without changing the imagining. How long will it take? As long it takes me to change the state that I have imagined. So I imagine that I am this, that or the other. I don’t like what I’m seeing and I hate to admit that it’s caused by what I am imagining. If it is caused by what I am imagining, it would take no longer to change than it takes me to change what I am imagining. Is it true? Well, I ask you to test it. I ask you to come with me and simply test it. See if it works. If it doesn’t work, discard it. But if there is evidence for it, does it really matter what the world thinks? If tonight you test it and it proves itself in performance, does it really matter what anyone in the world thinks about this concept? It doesn’t, not if it proves itself in performance. So I ask you to test it.

Now let me share with you…because in my absence a dozen of you wrote me these heavenly stories…and tonight I will take one man’s series, he gave me three. He’s here tonight. This is his as I have it at home in his own typewritten four pages. Listen to it carefully that you may see little points that he found that maybe you haven’t heard from the platform, or if you heard them, they didn’t register. Now, he said, “One of my many responsibilities on my present job is publishing a magazine. It’s a very high quality, in content and in workmanship; it’s brought out in four colors. Before the last issue should be prepared, I got bored and tired of the whole thing, and did nothing about content, editorial content, articles, stories, or anything about it. Two weeks from the date of publication here I am without anything.” “But,” he said, “you have had some experience with publications, with printers, and to take and start from scratch a four-color magazine to be brought out in two weeks, you know it’s practically impossible.

“Sitting there in my office I said to myself, although it means nothing to me whether the publication comes out or not, it means so much to so many people, especially my boss. And I thought to myself, you’re extremely selfish…just selfish. And then something happened in me. I became alert. I became, well, completely fired with bringing this thing out. Neville, they came through the walls, not literally, but it seemed that stories, articles, everything came through the walls. I wrote three short pieces myself with such enthusiasm, I so loved what I was doing. I brought out three. Then I edited all the articles. I edited the stories. I edited all the things. And then men who had never worked on this publication before were assigned to me to get the whole thing out. Three photographers were stopping what they were doing and turned to this, and sent off on assignments. My printers, my ___(??), my mailers, all these were brought and they worked three shifts for the two weeks. And we brought it out.”

Now, how did it start? “Before I started, this is what I did. I can’t bring out a magazine in four colors in two weeks, with no stories, no articles, no editorial content, nothing, so what did I do? I saw my boss holding the issue, I saw the dateline on it, I saw him holding the issue in his hand with an expression on his face which implied to me complete satisfaction in what he was seeing. Then I heard him tell me it was the best issue that we have ever published. In that interval when all this thing was simply wild, and my mind, naturally, would possibly falter, I went back to that one picture—my boss holding the issue. I saw the date on it, it’s the issue. I saw the expression on his face, and I heard him praise me for the work that I had done. So every time it happened, that’s what I did. I held to the end.” The end is where we begin. In my end is my beginning. We’re always imagining ahead of our efforts. I go to the end. I don’t care what I want, I go to the end, in the end, and it pulls everything to fulfill itself into this world. “Came the day and the magazine is now out, my boss praised me as he has never praised me before. He said, ‘It was the best issue that we have ever brought out.’ Just as I had seen him in my Imagination, that’s what happened in the outer world as fact. When the magazine was out now, and mailed, I went by and here I saw my boss. He was happy, but there was a certain mood that he expressed. I talked to him and he said, ‘You know, I feel that we brought it out and mailed it a few days too early.’ Two weeks to bring out a four-color magazine without having selected the articles, the stories, the editorial content, all the things, and he claims that it was mailed a few days too early.”

Now, all these stories are related. He said, “My dry cleaner’s work I like. He’s handled my needs for quite a while, and this day in question he has lost the trousers to my most expensive and my best suit.” Well, he said, “He was beside himself; my wife was enraged and she called him every day for ten days. He searched his plant completely three times. No pants. He said to me, ‘Make out a claim.’ I said, I don’t want money, I want my pants. I don’t want any money, I just want my pants. After he had made three complete searches of the plant, he said, ‘Now do me a favor and sign this form. It’s all insured, simply sign the form.’ Well, because he was adamant that I sign the form, I signed the claim. The next day on the way to and from the office, as I drove the freeway, I felt that fabric of my pants on my legs. I also felt it between my fingers…all in my Imagination.” He isn’t wearing the pants, so he could not have felt it with his physical hands. He had to have felt it with his imaginary hands and his imaginary legs. He said, “I felt it and then I dropped it. The next day he calls my wife and tells my wife that he found the pants ___(??) pinned to another pair of pants ready for delivery to another person. He had searched that plant all over three times and here he finds it, just as he’s about to send it off to another person he finds the pants. So I had my pants.”

Now here is the picture, and you listen to it carefully and apply it towards what you’ll hear this night. He said, “It was the Christmas season and I felt affluent and I felt so generous and so expansive I went and I bought dozens of presents and I sent dozens of checks. One day, a merchant with whom my wife does business calls and tells her that there are no funds. The check she issued has bounced. Well, I was simply beside myself. I knew I had hundreds of dollars more in that account than I had drawn checks against, in spite of the fact that I drew dozens of checks, I felt so expansive, and I knew I had the money there. There must be a mistake, and certainly not on my part, on the computer’s part at the bank.

“Now, I had not been with this bank very long. It’s a new bank that I opened up an account with. So I went and I rushed to my statement that came in a few days before. I hadn’t yet checked it. So I went to my statement…and then my face turned red and I was humiliated. I had made the most enormous error in subtraction, and there were no funds. I had drawn oodles and oodles of checks. There was no place to turn, and my next paycheck was weeks off. I would get a good paycheck but weeks off. What to do? Where would I turn to get this sum of money to make good these checks? Well, at way beyond my bedtime I wrestled with this problem, and I thought, well now, tomorrow I’ll go to the bank, explain the facts, my job, my income; and they can simply do what they want to do, make a suggestion, because they are my bankers now. But they don’t know me. And so, as I thought of that, well, it didn’t seem that was something that I could simply feel secure in. So I thought, well, now I must have some imaginary image that I can believe in.”Now, take this to your heart—I must have an imaginal act I can believe in; not any imaginal act is going to work. It’s like taking the most wonderful things in the world…I take wood, I make a fire, I have everything in order, the paper, the kindling, the logs, everything, but it needs a flame to start it…and belief is the flame. I have the whole thing set up in my Imagination, but do I believe in it? Can I kindle it? Only belief can set it ablaze.

So, he said, “I had to have something I could believe in. I could believe that imagining, that God was doing it”…and he used the word God, didn’t use the word imagining, he used the word God. He said “I could believe that God was bringing it to pass in the best way for everyone involved. Those that I had unwittingly deceived, those that I had planned to send presents to that I now could not, and for everyone involved everything would be alright. So I went to sleep in the assumption that God was bringing out the best solution for everyone involved. Next morning when I got up and I started towards the bank, I wasn’t altogether sure, but I went back to that assumption that God is bringing out the best solution for everyone involved. So I went to the bank. As I went to the bank, I saw the cashier and the cashier turned me over to a vice president. He listened to my story and he said, ‘You should see the assistant manager’ so he took me to the assistant manager, and he condensed my story for the assistant manager. The assistant manager asked me nothing he just simply looked me over and said, ‘When do you think you can right this situation?’ So I told him the day of my paycheck. He said, ‘Alright, forget it. All things will be taken care of.’ He didn’t ask me how many checks I had drawn, I had drawn so many. He only knew what came in that were not paid. He didn’t know how many…and he’s giving me unlimited credit. So he turned and went back to his desk and said ‘Forget it. That’s the day on which you can settle it.’

“So I drove back feeling a little bit comfortable with what had happened. Two days later I received an unexpected special bonus from my boss for almost ten times the amount that I had drawn in checks. Ten times the amount! One of the reasons given me for this special bonus was the outstanding work I had done on the magazine. When I received the check, I was wearing the suit, pants and all. Here I was wearing my suit, I received the check, and the next day when I went to the bank to make the deposit I thought it only a decent thing to do to stop in and thank the assistant manager for his kindness. I recognized on his face a certain sadness. He was saddened because, as he said to me, ‘I’m sorry there was nothing I could do for you.’ It appeared that in that interval of that forty-eight hours no check came through…only the checks that came through prior to my seeing the manager. But in that interval no check came through, so he had not a thing to do. He did pay those that were prior to this visit to him. So I went out…so I must tell you, imagining does create reality.”

Now he ends his letter on this note, he said, “You know, as I write you, there is nothing that I can do for you or say to you but thanks, and it seems so inadequate.” May I tell him and tell you, there is nothing you can do for me more than to share with me such experiences. If he gave me a fortune, may I tell you, it could not compensate for the letter that he gave me. I don’t care how big the check he ever sent me, I would spend it. I spend everything that I get. The only thing I haven’t spent is what my father gave me from the family estate, and because it was the family estate I haven’t touched it. Were it not family estate, it would have been gone long ago. I have spent every nickel I have ever earned and were ever given. So had he given me anything it would be gone by now. I can’t seem to keep any money that I earn.

It started when, I think, I was inside my mother’s womb. I’m quite sure when I came out I gave everything away. There was one…I was a little boy, my father allowed me to go every week with the brothers to see the old pictures…you know, where they tied them on the rails and the train is coming. All of a sudden the lights would go out and all things obliterated and then another reel would be put on, ___(??), and all these things. Well, my father had a butcher shop and this tall big strapping fellow, we called him Mashmouth(?). His feet were so big he could never wear shoes. First of all, he couldn’t afford shoes anyway, so…but he had such feet, and we called him Mashmouth. My father would give me one and six, that’s thirty-six cents in the old days, to go to the picture. He always gave me an extra six cents, thruppence. I would say, “I want to buy some candy, give me thruppence.” I didn’t buy candy I gave it to Mashmouth to come in.

We had what was known as the pit, just downstairs, and then the mezzanine, and that’s upstairs, where the one and six fellas went, and the six cents went downstairs. I gave him six cents every Saturday night to laugh at the wrong time. If he didn’t laugh at the wrong time, he paid his own way. He would sit and when they were making love or when someone is dying or something awful, ____(??), if he didn’t laugh he isn’t going to get my thruppence. He never failed. But he learned not to laugh too early because they always evicted him. They knew exactly who he was and they came on down with their little light and they said, “Come on, Mashmouth, come on.” Mash very quietly got up and out he would go. And so, he learned how to see most of the picture to get my thruppence. So he would go all the way through. There’s always a moment when you shouldn’t laugh at all, laugh or cry. At some moment he had to so laugh. He had the most ungodly laugh. He got my thruppence every time. Well, I could tell you numberless similar stories where money would burn me and took it away…always in some fun, always for fun…some humorous vein in my veins right from the beginning.

But he could give me a big check. and who would refuse money, no one, but I’d spend it. But I can’t spend his experience. I can share it, I can take it from here to New York. For when I came back from San Francisco it was waiting for me. I came back two weeks ago. Now I have it to share with you tonight, and to share when I go to New York, and to tell my friends when I go to Barbados, and when I go back to San Francisco. That story is like the stories of the Bible. This is simply taking the principle that is God’s principle and proving it. For his Imagination, I tell you, is God, your Imagination is God. Let me repeat it, Jehovah, Jesus Christ, the Lord God, I AM, Imagination, are synonymous terms and interchangeable.

So then I say that imagining is like the creative power in me, that “the great creative power of the universe is like pure imagining in me, and underlies all of my faculties, including my perceptions, but it streams into my surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy.” So when he sat there and there is no magazine, no articles, no stories, not a thing, and now he feels embarrassed, he feels ashamed, he feels that “I am selfish, I’m letting down all of these people who depend upon me” and then he takes the end, that is productive fancy. I see a man who is my boss reading the issue, I see the dateline, I see the expression on his face; and then having seen that, I hear him tell me “It’s the best that we have ever done.” From that moment on an interest is aroused in him. Until that end was established and within himself, imagined and believed, there was no interest. Then they came out of the wall and everything moved toward the fulfillment of that state. So I tell you, imagining does create reality.

If you would find God, stop thinking of a little term. If you were in France, they wouldn’t use the word God they’d use some other word. In Germany, in Russia, you say God and they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. But you don’t have to know these little words. You know who he is: He’s your own wonderful human Imagination. And he’s speaking to you moment after moment through desire. He’s speaking in the depths of your soul through dream, through vision. And you can tell by the vision, by the dream, if you know how to interpret these things, what level you’re on relative to him. Everything is relative to God. It isn’t relative to anything in the outside world, for all of that’s a shadow, meaning nothing. It’s all relative to God.

So where do I stand relative to him? Every dream, the most insignificant dream to the outer world, has profound significance to you to whom it is spoken and to God who speaks it to you, and the God in you is your own self. So let me repeat, Jesus Christ is my deeper self, actually my deeper self…and yet my slave. He is the one enslaved in me for purposes of his own. And he waits upon me as impartially and as swiftly when my ideas and my thoughts and my desires are evil as when they are good. He doesn’t discriminate at all. He will conjure for me, in the twinkle of an eye, ideas of good and evil by the call of my desire. All of a sudden let me wish something and instantly these ideas are conjured. Where do they come from? Well, they’ll say they came out of your wonderful Imagination. Certainly, and who did it? I tell you that is Jehovah, if the name pleases you. I tell you it’s Jesus Christ, if you prefer it. I tell you it is the Lord God. I tell you it is your own wonderful human Imagination…that is God.

When you learn to fall in love with him…because he has enslaved himself for himself, really, because you aren’t really two, you are but an extension of himself being called back, level by level by level, until finally you are one, and you aren’t two. So we’re being called back from an expulsion. It was a self-expulsion, and now called back through these infinite levels of awareness. And he reveals to us through the medium of dream the level on which we stand. Do you want to find out where it is in scripture? Take scripture and find out where I stand by a simple dream. No, it’s not going to be recorded just as you have it, but study scripture. As Paul said, “Learn from us to live by scripture.” Is it there? Does it parallel it in any way? Not the same name, not the same thing, but you’ll find it there. He’s always talking to you and calling you back to himself, through layer after layer, until finally when you reach home you and he are one.

So I tell you tonight listen to that theme, he had to have something that not only could he imagine but that he could believe. I could imagine anything, you could imagine anything. Is there something you can’t imagine? Don’t tell me. I can tell the most fantastic story in the world, if you understand the words that I use as I use them. You will listen carefully, and I’ll paint a word picture of the most fantastic thing, and you’ll hear me with understanding if I speak within the framework of your understanding. So you understand me, but you may not believe me, therefore, it means nothing. I build the most wonderful fire for you, put the kindling and everything, but it takes your belief to set it aflame.

So he said, “I must find something that I not only can imagine, I could imagine it, but can I believe it? Well, you will come to the bank…can that manager trust me? He can call my boss and say that he worked, but would he want to do that and embarrass me? Would the boss want to know this? Would I want the boss to know that I drew checks against an account that isn’t liquid? All these things would go through the assistant manager’s mind. He wants a customer, he doesn’t want to throw me out of his bank. So he had to think of all these things before he would put that call in. And so, that didn’t seem something he could believe.”

Now, he could believe in God. He could believe that God is now bringing to pass— now—“it’s all coming to pass now in the best possible way for everyone involved. Everyone that I had unwittingly robbed and those who would not get the presents that I promised myself I would send. I didn’t owe them anything, but I was going to send them a present. And all these things passed through my mind…that God could do it in the best way possible. So in my mind the next day, a little bit concerned, I came back, ‘God is doing it.’ I went to that bank in the state that God is doing it. So I don’t know what he’s going to do…the best thing possible…and the assistant manager, the lad that I saw, ‘Alright, go your way, it’s all taken care of.’ And then comes the specific reason for this very large check, ten times the amount.” He said, “Neville, I drew not a few checks, I drew many, many, many checks, and all of them would have bounced, there’s no money. And I got ten times the amount necessary to liquidate all problems concerning what I did.”

So I say go to the end. The end is where we begin. If tonight…I don’t care what it is you want. I have someone—she’s here tonight, I see her in the audience—and she will call me, well, if I would allow it, it would be not an hour, it would be a whole day on the phone, if you allow it. You’ve got to stop it right in the beginning because it could go on forever. No matter what I will say to her—and she’s here and I’m talking to her right now—what I say to her “but” and all shadows. I cannot change a shadow ’til I change the object casting the shadow. No matter what argument I give on the surface…well, I can argue…well now, he said so and so, and she said so and so, and they said so and so, and what am I going to say? I’m not saying what she said, he said, they said or whatever: What do you want? Well, I want so and so. Alright, now we’ll cast the shadow. You have now told me that it has worked. That is an object. You’re now carrying on a conversation with me and you’re telling me,“You know, Neville, the most marvelous thing happened. I have exactly what I told you that I wanted as a solution to my problem. That’s it!” Before I can hang up, “But, Neville, suppose somebody says so and so?”…we go back to the shadow world.

But I’m speaking to you directly. You can go on testing shadows and trying to change others. You will try it forever and forever and you will never change that which is casting the shadow.But, certainly, you can move out of the object, which is a state of consciousness that is casting the shadow into another desired by you; remain in that and cast the shadow. The shadow will not take long. You are the light of the world. He said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). You think another one is speaking? God is speaking. When I say God, I mean your Imagination. Your Imagination is the light of the world. It takes the light to illumine the state, the object; and then the world outside is only a reflector, it’s an echo, bearing witness of the state into which I have moved.So I move into a state, I remain in that state, and cast my shadow upon the screen of space. So you can argue from now until the end of time and tell me “But this…but suppose he does so and so” and you are giving all the power that rightly belongs to you to the shadow world where it does not belong. So it’s entirely up to you.

If you test it this night, it will prove itself in the testing. And I ask you again, share with me your experiences that I in turn may share from this platform with those who come here, so we all may benefit from them. As Paul said in his first letter…well, he only wrote one to the Romans that we know of…so in his very first chapter of his letter to the Romans, he asked those who heard it, those who received the letter, to share with him that all of us may be encouraged by each others’ faith. If a man has faith enough to try it though tomorrow morning is the deadline based upon Caesar’s world, so he’s going to try it tonight, he gets into an entirely different state. And the one who tomorrow morning is waiting for me in his office, and therefore if I don’t, because either this or else, he doesn’t feel well and he can’t come to the office, so there’s a postponement. Or maybe he’s called out of town. Or maybe he’s forgotten the appointment and when I come there at nine by appointment, he’s forgotten it. I can tell you a thousand and one things that could happen, but everything must happen based upon what you are doing.You are the causative power. But bear in mind, because we are the causative power it doesn’t work itself. It works and operates only because I am the operant power. Am I willing to operate it?

So I want every night to be able to tell you as exciting stories. Friday night I have a story. It’s a fantastic story! I can’t find a word to describe it more wonderfully than that. A friend of mine came home for dinner not more than a week ago, and he gave me a letter one night that I entertained, and his wife very kindly having told his story, that night mailed me, by my request, a letter that she had told the night before. And so, I have the two, to be told separately because they differ on the levels of awareness. But all of these are such revealing things as to where we stand relative to God. So his I will tell on Friday. And when I didn’t get my proof from the Times, I wondered if they thought I was insane, because I put the caption for my second lecture “Remembrance of Things Future.” Now you have read the book “Remembrance of Things Past.” It’s today a classic and you go into any library, you’ll find these two volumes. And here “Remembrance of Things Past” has become a classic. I don’t mean “Remembrance of Things Past”; I mean “Remembrance of Things Future,” just what I sent in. But I didn’t get a proof and I wondered is he really going to believe what I was talking about? But, luckily, when I saw the paper, he did, he printed it “Remembrance of Things Future.”

My friend’s letter to me fits it beautifully, if you want to have a picture of scripture compared…to parallel with it, then read Ecclesiastes before you come. For this is Ecclesiastes one hundred percent as few in this world will accept it. But I am now speaking from his experience, which I will on Friday share with you, “Remembrance of Things Future,” to show you who you really are. I tell you that you’re God. I’m not here to flatter you. You and I are one. God is one, and here fragmented on the surface of his being, and then called back to the core. And the end, all called back, and we are one. But we come back one by one by one.

So here, the entire outer world is solely produced by Imagining. “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” If it is a shadow, then let me find that which is causing the shadow…and the cause of the shadow is your imaginal activities. What are we imagining that is the cause of the shadows which we think so objectively real and so completely independent of our perception of them? All these things seem so completely independent of our perception of them and they’re all cast by our own imaginal activities.So you get into a state of wealth, alright, the state of wealth—you don’t have to find out how it’s going to happen—a state of health, a state of being known, a state of being wanted, a state of being contributing to the world, any state…these are all states. And while you remain in the state, they can do their best to rub out what you’re casting. Let them rub out shadows by blocking this, but they can’t rub out the cause of it all, and it always reproduces itself. The whole vast world is reproducing itself based upon the state that you occupy. So they can’t rub anything out that you are doing by rubbing out things that you do. Cut off the head of a chicken and you are in a state, and you could use all the chickens in the world, because no matter what they do in the outer world it’s what you are doing within yourself.

So “Man is all Imagination and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself; the divine body, Jesus. And we, on the surface, are his members” (Blake, Laocoon, Annot. to Berkeley). All are the members of this one divine body…and only this one body. All are gathered into a unity in the one body which is God. Now you can call it God, call it Jehovah, if that satisfies you, call it Jesus Christ. I like that name, I’ll tell you, Jesus Christ. You say I am the Lord who sent you. You say Imagination, and you’re here in a group like this that you may understand and get behind names and surfaces; but in the outer world I wouldn’t use it, because they wouldn’t understand. And so you would use the word Jehovah, instantly the mind goes there. Use the word Jesus, jumps out there. Not only in space, it jumps out there in time, away out there, well, unnumbered centuries ago. It jumps if you use the word Jehovah or Jesus. If you use the word I AM, it can’t jump. There’s no place you can go; you can’t go outside of the present moment. And if you actually show people what you mean by it, that I AM is a creative power, and it creates by imagining, well then, it must be here. You just can’t get outside of the present moment in time when you use these terms, but you can only use them in a group like this when they come as you come for instruction.

So I tell you I am completely awake and know I have been sent to tell you what I’m telling you. For I’m not talking to another, really, I’m only talking to myself, all wonderful aspects of myself, all being withdrawn now, all coming back through infinite levels of awareness to the one being that I am.

Now let us go into the Silence for a moment.

…..

What is most practical in this world is in reality most profoundly spiritual. You can tie them together, if one knows it. And you can reverse it, for what is most profoundly spiritual is in reality most practical. So, he is a practical person and yet the world would call him a dreamer, sitting there doing nothing, a four-color magazine. If you have had any business at all with publishing, you know what to bring it out in two colors. Two-colors is simply black on white, that’s two colors. Black is called a color in printing. And so, that simple thing black on white is a problem. But to put a magazine out in four colors and two weeks before the deadline and no editorial content, no articles, no stories, nothing ready. And then everything is thrown in his face, and they’re working three shifts, the photographers taken off their present jobs, new assignments, everything at his fingertips…and it’s out and mailed a few days too early. Well then, just imagine that terrific intensity on his part. So he gets a bonus check for ten times the amount that he had drawn the checks against.

So, again, let me thank you for telling me the story, and what I say to you I say to all of you, I don’t expect one penny from you, not a nickel. No money, that’s not any compensation to me. You come here you pay at the door. But monies…I do not wish any money from you. I’ve never solicited money. I’m not doing it now. And I will not, may I tell you, no money. But I do ask you to share with me your experiences. That to me is beyond the wildest dream. When I get a letter in the morning of that nature, like the two letters that I told you from my friends, one brought it to dinner and one mailed it afterwards. One came…and I spoke to her yesterday on the telephone…and she is in the immediate present to be treated from the platform. It’s fantastic. She didn’t begin to believe how deep it was…and still she doesn’t…I didn’t tell her all in that letter. So give me…I tell you I can read them. I know from experience where you are on the levels.

Yes, ma’am?

Q: I would like to ask one question. I have, from time to time, worked among psychologically disturbed people. To them their world is very real. How can I correlate their realness to them with the real world that I create for myself and not be one of them?

A: Alright, my dear. First of all, I cannot meet another. He said, “No man comes unto me except I call him.” And he can only call his own, can’t call another. So here is a disturbance in my world reflected now in what is something detached from me, something completely detached and independent of my perception, asking for help. Well, I’m going to change my world. I’m going to change that shadow, I’m going to. But it really is reflecting some disturbance in me. But I’m going to change it.

Now, no matter what the outside world thinks, and may I tell you, there are more fashions and more radical fashions in the medical world than there are in the fashion world of clothes. So I will not go along because some doctor tells me or some dietician tells me that this is the thing to do. And so I only have to wait for a matter of months to read their periodicals to find that it was false. Today, someone is challenging Einstein’s theories. His name is Professor Dickey at Princeton University. Now he claims his latest photograph shows that the sun is flat at the ends, therefore, all of the concepts of Mr. Einstein are now disproved or disprovable and he hopes to live long enough to prove it. Not to get even…he admired Einstein. All these men admire each other, but they’re honest men, and if you can bring up something to disprove any theory in science bring it out. They’re quite willing and big enough to accept it and rearrange their theories. Therefore, they were theories in the beginning; they were not visions, they were not revelations.

So, the most highly bound concept today concerning the imbalanced people or the unbalanced ones is simply changeable. It’s changeable because it’s only a theory. I tell you the whole thing is within the eye of the beholder. Now, they come to you for help? Don’t instantly try to find out what in me is calling it and causing it, but you can now rearrange the whole thing.Suppose now this individual or that individual saw the world differently, saw it what we would call in a natural way, a natural way, and we would call a natural way, what would it be like? Suppose I could share that experience with a friend…said, “You know, the child is now seeing things normally.” Suppose now that’s what I desire for that aspect of myself. Well then, could you believe it’s possible for such a child, regardless of his case history, to conform to that image? If you can persuade yourself that it’s possible and believe it, she or he will conform. And you don’t have to treat the shadow on the outside…we treat it from the inside that is throwing it.

Now if it doesn’t make sense, I’m only speaking on scripture. No blame to the child…scripture never blames anyone. The child was born blind, “Master, who sinned, the boy, the man, or his parent, that he was born blind?” He said, “Neither the man nor his parents but that the will of God be made manifest.” We can’t understand that at all. They’re always ___(??) some little silly thing that, well, he did wrong or she did wrong, and gouged out someone’s eyes in some previous life, so he must have his eyes gouged out. They can’t understand that God is love, infinite love, and he can’t hurt another for there is no other, there’s only himself.

So in this case, my dear, I say try it. Take the most extreme case. But it all will depend not only on the imaginal act but on one’s ability to believe in the reality of the imaginal act. Now the potency of the imaginal act is its implication, not the imaginal act. Its potency is its implication. What does it imply? If you saw the child doing normal things and you could tell by what you saw, what would this ___(??) mean, the normalcy of the child and you tell him of that normalcy? It would imply the child is normal. Can you believe it?

I’ve seen it work in New York City with what a child…she had to be expelled so said the principal, psychiatrists, and all down to the very lowest who dealt with this child for the benefit of the school. And this lady sat at my meeting and said, “I’m going to try it. Difficult to believe…this thing that I have is a monster. It’s a monster, but I’m going to try it anyway.” That child graduated; she was not expelled. She graduated! I know that teacher. She wrote me her letter and that story I have told, with her consent. And she sat there and turned aside all that she had known concerning psychiatry. You know, if you take people in this world, just as many doctors, psychiatrists, vegetarians, dieticians and those who drink excessively and those who eat excessively, if you take them by the numbers have the same length of time that they live, same length. People think…here’s a thought, it seems such a silly thing, but I must tell you, “Few men take care to live well, many to live long. Yet it is within the power of a man to be well, but it’s not within the power of any man to live long.”

Goodnight.