Imagination, the Real Man

We teach that the eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself, the divine body Jesus; we are his members. The Bible is addressed to the real man and the real man, the immortal man that cannot die, is the Imagination. It is this with which we treat.

I do not know if you saw or heard the eulogy that Ted Kennedy gave for his brother Robert. In that eulogy he quoted a passage from George Bernard Shaw. He may not have given credit…at a moment like that why quote any name?After all, the most original thought in the world is divine plagiarism, for all things proceed from God. No matter how original the thought seems to be, it comes out of the mind of God.So we will say, George Bernard Shaw…and Robert Kennedy made it part of his life…and this is it:“Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream of things that never were and say why not?” When we think that man who was actually by the grace of God born into the world and then claims that something is impossible to God? How dare man who found himself in this world—he doesn’t know how and why, but he finds himself here—and he dares to put a limit on the power that brought him into the world? That attitude of man where he claims something is impossible to God is the sin against the Holy Ghost. There is no other sin against the Holy Ghost but that man’s attitude towards anything in this world where something is impossible. So he gives to some state that tag “it’s impossible” and therefore he sins against the Holy Ghost.

Now tonight let me share with you…because I want you to go all out and in the most literal sense walk on water. A friend of mine a few weeks ago wrote saying that “In my vision I saw someone walking on water, and then someone said to me, ‘You will soon be doing that always.’Water means you have accepted completely the fact that life is psychological, it’s imaginal…that the whole drama is in one’s Imagination. You don’t excuse yourself or anyone, you simply rearrange the structure of your mind, and then remain faithful to this rearranged structure…that’s walking on water. If you don’t, and you accept the “facts of life,” well then, you’re stepping down on the stone. There is the stone, the water and the wine in scripture.

Now comes another letter from a lady (and both are here tonight). She said, “I had a dream that happened this past week. I found myself standing on water and I was instructing others how to water ski. But I was standing on water. It didn’t seem strange or unnatural. Then suddenly I looked at my side and here is Ray Leigh, and he is looking, listening to the instruction. Then those that I instructed had ropes tied to them and attached to boats, and the boats took off at the most terrific speed. Ray Leigh and I are standing in the water, and moving as fast as they did, but we needed no rope, no boat. We’re just simply moving under our own power and it seemed so natural. Then I entertained the thought, ‘Did I instruct them correctly or did I do the right thing to instruct them?’ Ray Leigh read my mind and answered, ‘You instructed them perfectly, just right! You did the very right thing,’ and then I felt assured, and I woke. The next night I found myself in a huge room and the people had just left. Again I wondered, ‘Did I instruct them correctly?’ And again Ray Leigh appeared and he said, ‘You instructed them perfectly, just right. You did exactly what was right!’ Then I felt so completely assured, he spoke with such authority. And then I woke.”

Well, may I tell you, every dreamer is God, and God is a protean being. You could not have conjured anyone who actually lives and walks upon that water more than Ray Leigh. For I got this week two letters from him in which he told these stories. So when one actually lives by it…you who are in the Truth who are actually moving forward towards birth or beyond birth and you conjure him, well all right, you are conjuring one who lives by it. In his letter he said, “There is a woman in my office and we all love her, a sweet, sweet lady. She gave us this long, long harangue about the absence of decent men in this world who are eligible for marriage and such an enormous number of riffraff, just jerks. So when I heard her complain, I simply revised what she said, and I heard her say that she met the most marvelous man whom she’s dating.” He kept on, painted a wonderful word picture about what he did. He said, “I did it twice that day. On my way home on the freeway I did it and I did it when I was home…that’s about six weeks ago. Two weeks ago, she came into the office and was very, very glum…into my office. It reminded me and so I did it again.” Now he said, “Yesterday, she spent twenty minutes with me painting the most marvelous word picture of this man. He must be terrific from what she is saying, how he is dating her…the most marvelous being ever; and she paints the most wonderful word picture of this one who is not a riffraff, just in her eyes a perfect, perfect gentleman who is dating her many, many times, and she is simply walking in ecstasy.” Well, that is one. He did not accept her tirade against all humanity.

Now he said, “My associate…I promised him to write a certain news review of a client of his. So I gathered all the material necessary, made a little research of all the things necessary about this client, put it in a folder, and left it on my desk piled high with all the things I had to do. So the days went on and the days went on and I didn’t get to it. Then I heard him on the phone talking to the client, and then he said to me, ‘My client wants to see me next Monday at nine o’clock in the morning in his office.’ I knew now this is it. This is Friday.” So he said, “What would have taken me hours and possibly days to have written, I simply sat down quietly and in my Imagination I saw that it was five o’clock and that he had read what I’d given him, and that he said to me, ‘Just fine, it’s just fine!’ Having done that in my mind’s eye and satisfied myself with that as an end result, I then took the folder, took these things out and they seemed to pop out by impulse. I wrote four typed pages, uh, four pages in type, and everything seemed to fit. Then I put it on his desk. At five o’clock he’s going home now for the weekend, he stops at my office, my door, and he said to me ‘It is just fine!’ I said, ‘Give it back to me. I will read it again and satisfy myself that it is really just fine, and I’ll meet you in the office of your client on Monday morning at nine.’ I took it and re-read it several times. On the third re-reading I thought one little phrase I could put it more into his language than my language, and so I simply changed only one as I retyped the four pages for him.” Then he gave me others, one after the other.

But to come back to this lady who walked on water and saw Ray Leigh. Now she does not know him in the true sense of the word, but she knows him only from here and here he appears. Well, she could not have conjured anyone who lives by it more than he does. He actually walks upon that water, because when you actually believe imagining creates reality then there is no fiction.How can there be fiction when imagining creates reality? So you hear something and you don’t like what you’ve heard, well, you know somewhere back in time it was imagined or it couldn’t happen. Well now, I can revise it and stop it just where it is, change it completely; and go back and rewrite the script. You take a script and write it…you don’t like what you see therefore you rewrite it until you like exactly what you see.

Now he said, “Certain things in my life I’m not completely satisfied, not satisfied, I don’t quite understand them.” Now he said, “I had a…this past Sunday really…I am in the yard with my wife and my younger son, and we are planting summer flowers to replace the dead ones of the winter. Suddenly I look at my wife, I look at my son, and I am seeing and hearing in detail, word for word, scene for scene, what I had for a night dream back in the deep of winter. I remember what I had when I woke that morning, but I said to myself, in winter would I be planting these flowers? So I dropped it. But now here it comes into being in an actual way. So I don’t quite understand the relationship between a night dream which I did not control, and something happening six months later when these summer flowers would have to be planted.”

May I tell him and tell all, everything in this world, every event in this world, contains within itself the capacity for symbolic significance. Although it came to pass, it contains more than that; it came to pass literally. And in scripture what I tell you accept my precepts literally, for you are going to actually experience them literally. But they contain still a far deeper significance, something beyond the literal experience. So here, he planted the summer flowers. He’s planted them. He saw it in the deep, when nothing grows, and he was planting when nothing grows. He planted seeds and he’s going to harvest them in the not distant future; not only in the world of Caesar but in the world of the Spirit. All these things are coming into his world because of this.

Then he said, “I told you a story of a man who was bawled out unmercifully by his bosses. I heard the story and I revised it, and I heard him being praised by his bosses in the immediate present. They praised him beyond measure instead of firing him as they had threatened to do.” Now, he said, “The man could not get over that bawling out and so he decided to quit…but he has no money, no backlog, none whatsoever. So he gave them a notice. Then he said, ‘I will take off just simply one week, a leave of absence.’ The first week he got no job. There was no job, but I heard him with a marvelous job with an increase of salary. Yesterday, he said to me, ‘My job terminates now, but on Monday I start on a new job with twenty-five percent more than I received on the present job.’” There was not one day lost in salary and he starts on a new job at a twenty-five percent increase. So my dear, that you should conjure him…being a protean being that you are because you’re God…he is walking on water.When he hears anything he simply revises it; if it doesn’t please him, he revises it. So he is the perfect symbol that you should have conjured.

So I could tell you all these stories about those who are actually walking on the water, bringing it from the depths of their soul at night…how they bring it into the surface. If they don’t see it in the immediate present, they know what they did. It will come whether they recognize their harvest or not. So do not sin against the Holy Ghost and say that something is not possible to God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. Nothing is impossible to God, nothing! Can someone tell you something that you can’t imagine? They can’t. You may deny that it’s true or possible, but they can’t tell you anything in this world if they speak your language. If I speak in a tongue that is not your tongue, it’s all nonsense. As Paul said, “I’d rather speak five words with understanding than 10,000 words that cannot be understood.” So don’t bring me Latin and Greek and all the foreign tongues, tell me in a simple, simple way what you really want me to hear.So tell me simply. If you can tell it to me simply, don’t tell me I do not have the capacity to follow you if you use my language. So you tell me anything and I can follow you. There is not a thing that a man cannot follow in his Imagination, so all things are possible to Imagination. But I may not believe that they are really possible. I say they are possible, but I may say they are not possible, it’s incredible, well then, I put the stops…I’m sinning against the Holy Ghost.

I’ll give you one outstanding case here tonight. If I told any biologist, any surgeon, any doctor, anyone familiar with the human body and how it works, that Benny is the father of the blondest, blue-eyed boy that ever walked the face of this earth and his name is David; and David is God’s only begotten son (Ps. 2:7) and that Benny is his father, actually his father—this is not some foster father, he didn’t adopt him, he is actually Benny’s son; well now, take the entire world and let me ask Benny to come forward to be examined by them, that if he had a wife who was the blondest creature in this world, they could not together produce David, they couldn’t, and he, without any woman, he is the father of David. Now, isn’t that incredible! Yet I tell you that is true. It is true beyond the wildest dream of man. So I have no limitations on the power of God.

When I tell this story, they will say, “Well, tell me, who is David?” Just as you find him described in the Book of Samuel, just like that—ruddy, beautiful eyes, fair—just as he’s described in the Book of Samuel (1 Sam. 16:12). Well then, “certain races would be excluded.” I said, “You are judging from appearances.” No race is excluded, because no one here in this world is lifted up as far as the body goes. It’s something entirely different…something in us that is raised by the descent of the seed of God. Certainly it is not exalting this body, this racial body whether it be Caucasian, Negro, Oriental…it is not the body. It’s something in us that when that seed descends, planted into us, which is Christ, and that union between that descending fire-seed and that that is only an animated being, not a life-giving Spirit; but that union then lifts us into a supernatural birth, beyond the wildest dream of man. That being that is lifted up into a supernatural birth becomes the Father of David. So it hasn’t a thing to do with the pigment of the skin or any racial being or any age group or anything.

But tonight, I want to bring it down to this level of using your Imagination for everything that is lovely and loving in this world, I don’t care what it is.Your own wonderful human Imagination is God: That is the divine body that the world calls Jesus. Because you can imagine and I can imagine and we imagine, we are members of the one body, this divine body that is the Lord Jesus Christ. And so all things are possible to him; there’s not a thing impossible. So what can you imagine?—imagine anything in this world, I don’t care what it is. And experiment. Faith is an experiment which ends as an experience. But an experiment comes first. So I tell you, all things that you desire, believe that you’ve received them, and you will (Mark 11:24). That’s a challenge. I challenge you to experiment. Do you believe me? “Well, I trust you, I don’t think you would lie to me, so I would say yes, I believe you.” Then that is a measure of faith. But now it depends upon your experiment.

Now, you have a desire, desire something. So I say an experiment comes first. Faith is an experiment which ends as an experience, just as in the case of Ray Leigh. She has no boyfriend, riffraff, numberless riffraff who try to date her. Then he, without her consent or her knowledge—he didn’t tell her what he’s going to do, he told her nothing—he just simply imagined that he was hearing her tell him the most exciting story about one who is dating her, and she’s so excited. Not just one date, but date after date after date. So he has heard what he wanted her to experience. He made the experiment and now it became an experience. He did it for her. She is only an extension of himself because he is the center of the world in which he lives. Everyone is a center, a protean being, playing all the parts in the world. So he simply took her into his mind’s eye and revised her conversation, rubbed it out completely, and started fresh…rubbed out the slate.

Now, everyone can do that, do it for a better job or for a job, for this, that or the other…I don’t care what it is in this world. Don’t try to analyze it. Don’t try to analyze yourself, saying “What the devil have I done that was wrong?” because the minute you start that, you start blaming yourself. Because who in this world can honestly look himself in the face and not find unnumbered things that are unlovely! They may not have been externalized as yet, but they were thought. So no one can tell me he is without sin. All men have sinned. Not a man in this world can tell me he has not coveted; he has not in some way stolen if it’s only mentally. You can steal a man’s good name by describing him to another in unflattering terms, and therefore you take from him his good name.So you can steal, you can do all kinds of things in the psychological manner. So no man is without guilt, but no one! So don’t analyze yourself, because you’re going to find yourself guilty and then you cannot get off base. So forget what you have done. What you’ve done will come up and you will reap it, the whole thing will come, all things are coming, the tares and the wheat together. But start planting afresh. Start with something lovely, something wonderful, not only for self but for the extended self, the seeming other, who is really not another, it’s yourself pushed out. Simply see them as you would like to see them…fall in love with them. Fall in love with them not to possess them but to see that they’re happy and, well, secure in this world.

Then the satisfaction that comes to you…as it must come to anyone who can recognize their harvest. If you don’t recognize your harvest, well then, there’s no satisfaction. But if I can do something consciously and then see my harvest, as he did with this woman in his office; as the man whose letter he wrote for him, whose review he wrote for him; whose friend he simply got a better job with an increase in salary…and when you do these things no one can tell me it isn’t an enormous satisfaction. This is the most satisfying thing in the world, because you’re proving you have a creative power. And that is walking on water.

So anyone who has had the vision of walking upon water…as a friend here tonight said, “I saw this one walking upon water and this party said to me, ‘You’ll soon be walking on water and always.’” She will not go back to any walking on the stone; she will keep on walking on the water. No matter what happens in the course of a day she’ll revise it if it’s not what she wants. You don’t revise what you love, but you revise the unlovely and completely fix it…you’re walking on water. So here is the story, he comes into the field to feed his flock and there’s a well, and it’s closed with a stone. He said, “Remove the stone”—the literal facts; for that blinds the eye—“and then draw the water,” and he waters the flock. Then he puts back the stone, because everyone comes to see the literal facts. But the one who knows it, rolls away the stone and takes out the water. So the first great miracle in scripture, he turns water into wine, but he first fills the stone jars with water, and then he draws out water, but it’s not water, it’s wine.

So the literal facts…and here are the literal facts, and here, the whole vast world when I see it, this is the fact that blinds the eye of Imagination. Now he comes to cure the blind, to actually show them how to remove the facts of nature, how to remove it. These are the facts, I heard the story of this woman, I heard the story of a man in the office, I heard this, that and the other, these are the facts and they blind the eye of Imagination. I remove the stone and I draw out water. Water can take any shape in the world. Pour water into any shape and it will take the shape. Freeze it and it will take that shape. I don’t care what shape it is. It doesn’t care…it will take any shape in this world. It will not refuse any shape. So remove the stone, draw out the water, and then put it into the shape you desire, and then the whole thing will be externalized in your world.

Now, don’t fail one day in the practice of it. Every time that you use your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you are actually mediating God, which is your own marvelous Imagination, to the seeming other. You’re actually doing it. Of course, many people do it unlovingly and they’re still mediating themselves to the other. Tonight there are millions of people in the world who really believe that someone along the way placed a curse upon the Kennedys. Do you know there are millions in the entire world who believe in such power, and such powers do exist. Such powers do exist because imagining creates reality. There is no fiction. And as William Butler Yeats said, “I will never be certain it was not some woman treading in the winepress who started the subtle change in men’s minds, or that the passion because of which so many countries were given to the sword did not begin in the mind of some shepherd boy, lighting up his eyes for a moment before it ran upon its way.” Who knows? Who does this night who feels himself hurt and betrayed by a friend, who curses beyond measure and sets it in motion, and does not retract it. He does not know the art of forgiveness…and if he did, he didn’t want to forgive…and so he lets it move and the whole thing builds and builds and comes to its inevitable end.

I am not saying this, but the papers are even now breathing it. Today’s New York Times that we get every week, which is a Sunday issue, it’s the story of the family, and they start off on that note. “Could it be?” and they ask the question. All over the Latin world they certainly believe in curses as much as they do believe in prayers. In fact, they believe more in curses than they do in prayers. So I said that theme was his, let that theme become ours. It wasGeorge Bernard Shaw’s thought, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?” So I tell you the most incredible story in the world, the story of Jesus Christ, and if that is the way of salvation, I say why not! If that is the pattern that man can follow and must follow in order to escape from this world of eternal death, I say why not! It seems the most incredible thing in the world.

And so, we who find ourselves here at our mothers’ breasts, and we dare, we who were born by the grace of God, to put a limit upon the power of God when we can’t make one hair of the head.We can’t make a nail grow; we can’t do anything to this body. Yes we can cut it up, we can shoot it, destroy it; but we can’t make one little hair grow in spite of all the claims to the contrary. And we dare to put a limit upon the power of God when we know it was the grace of God that gave us birth in this physical world. Cannot that same power give us birth in a higher world?

For the promise is there in his revealed Word that you must be born from above (John 3:3). Well, if you must be, he has the power to do it. And he has given us the means by which it will be done, and it will be done in the same manner unknown by man. For we did not know we were born into a world by a power beyond ourselves, and we will be born into a spiritual world by a power beyond ourselves. We will be raised because he, his seed, descended and united with us. It was planted in us, a creative act, and that creative act, that union then awoke within us its pattern…for it contained the pattern. Then we awoke into an entirely different world.

All we can do while we remain is to tell it to those in the hope that they will believe it. And then to prove to them that it is true, tell them Caesar’s law of the walking on water: How they can by using this psychological law change their world and make it conform to their ideal. How they can change the world for others as well as themselves, and go through life not accepting any fact if it contradicts their ideal. Ignore it…turn from it. And then take the water, make a new plan, and pour the water into it, and see it complete itself in the world of Caesar. So that is our teaching here, that no one need remain behind the proverbial eight-ball if he knows this truth, and you need not put your hand out for any begging in the world. You need not ask anyone, because it’s all yours for the appropriation. You appropriate it. You simply completely appropriate this state, and the whole thing becomes yours.

I tell you, everyone will be born from above, but everyone. There’s nothing but God in this world. Not one will fail. It is not his purpose that one fail. But he has to hear the story, and having heard it he must believe it. Having believed it, at a moment in time he will be chosen and impregnated. God will send himself as a messenger, but it’s himself, and it will take place. He may or may not know that it’s taking place. But in the proper interval between that moment of union and birth, it will be a perfect, perfect time. For “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower: if it be long wait; for it is sure, it will not be late” (Hab. 2:3). It will not be late…right on time.

So I say to everyone here, you are all called for a purpose. Those who have not yet been united with this seed will be. I have no knowledge as to that moment in time. If as a messenger I am used, I do not know it, I have no knowledge. It would be horrible if I knew. Those who receive the seed, some are conscious and most are not. But when the child is born, what does it matter whether you remembered the moment of conception or you didn’t? It’s all by a plan, a perfect plan, for he has a plan within his eternal body. And they fill different orders. So there are those who fill one order, the apostle, those who fill that of the prophet, that of the teacher, that of the helper, the healer; there are different levels in the body of God. So it doesn’t really matter, because in the body we are one anyway.

But tonight, treat this seriously. You know what you want tonight? Well then, construct a scene which if it were true it would imply the fulfillment of your desire. Just construct a scene; bring it into your mind’s eye and try to the best of your ability to see it just as clearly as you would were it true. Then try to feel the naturalness of it, try to feel that it is true. That’s the experiment. Now, to the degree that you completely believe it, well then, it will end as an experience. You’ll experience it as true. Don’t stop there, keep on doing it, and share what you did with others. Tell them, tell them the story that God gave to us to free us from this bondage of Caesar. When you know this, you don’t envy one person in this world. How could you envy anyone? How, this night, could Benny…walking the streets in the full knowledge that he was born from above, that God’s only begotten son called him Father, and in the not distant future, just a matter of a week or so, two weeks or so, he is going to find the third experience, how could he in this whole vast world envy anyone? They, blind as they may be and undoubtedly are, will look at him and pity him…and here he walks with his head high knowing who he is.

So I tell you, don’t envy anyone. It’s all yourself, pushed out. In the end, everyone will be the same being because everyone will be God the Father. And that God the Father had only one Son, and that one Son calls us Father, and he’s that blonde, blue-eyed, fair skinned David. I don’t care if you are the black beyond the blackest of black, you are his Father and therefore equal to any being in this world. Not superior, but certainly not below. There’s only one Father. So when you are the Father…as someone wrote me this letter, she said, “I heard a voice saying to me as I went to sleep, and the voice spoke like a thought being spoken from within, ‘Whenever David calls you Father, you are as the Ancient of Days.’” May I tell her (she’s not here) how true you are. I know in my own case I felt not old but something without time, timeless. It’s not an old being, decrepit, but someone that is timeless, the Ancient of Days. I knew I was the very being that embraced me, who was infinite love, when David called me Father. I knew I was that very being who was infinite love, who was really the Ancient of Days. Yet I did not lose my identity, none whatsoever…just that wonderful picture.

So tonight, you take it and take it seriously. If tomorrow you have something that confronts you that is not pleasant, don’t accept the fact. That blinds the eye of Imagination. Just simply remove the blinders. Now what would you like in the place of what seems to be true? Well then, conjure it and then revel in it as fact. Persuade yourself that it is, and that will become real within your world.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: (inaudible)

A: When did you write this letter, a couple of months ago? Well, I’m sorry but I can’t at the moment bring it to consciousness. Falling back…I recall one you wrote me…I was telling you, when you fell into the pool and that was a divided state of consciousness. But the other, falling backwards…it can mean many things. I know in my own case, when Blake told me to fall backwards I fell in utter faith when he said fall backwards ___(??). We were discussing the unity of being, and then I fell like a meteor through infinite space, and when my motion was arrested, in the distance was this perfectly glorious being, one man. One man…and as I approached his heart was like a glowing ruby. When I got nearer and nearer, he was infinite men, and yet at a distance he was one man. So I fell backwards, like taking a high dive backwards. But this went through infinite space, and then my motion was arrested after I’d gone through like a falling meteor, and I saw the one man, only one man with the glowing heart just like a ruby afire. As I came closer, he was multiple people, multiple nations in one man. So I know the truth of the statement that we are one. When I say I’m incorporated into the body of Christ without loss of identity, I know that from experience. And all will come into that one body. So in these seven ones, as given us in Ephesians, “Only one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all.” One! This is a world of diversity, but one fell into a diversified world, and all will be gathered one by one into this fabulous redeemed body. It will be far greater than anything before, more glorious.

But I couldn’t go back two months or more and bring that letter back. I’ve received hundreds since. I think I have a fairly decent memory, but it would not go back in that way.

Q: (inaudible)

A: You will, my dear. Because I am not physically present does not mean you will not, the protean being that you are, conjure me. After all, I am still within you. If I depart now, where would I go? See, the “within” is the really expanding state; the “without” is the contraction. Well, you’re young enough to have the experience. You’ve already had the conception, and so at your age you’ll have it, but you may have someone say, ‘But she’s too old to have it.” See, that is part of scripture. It does not refer to man, it refers to woman, and so in every case…Sarah is “she’s too old.” They didn’t say that Abraham was too old; Abraham was a hundred, she was ninety. But it is said in scripture, “Sarah is too old, it has ceased to be with her after the manner of woman” (Gen. 18:11). Not a thing was said of Abraham, because his conception differed from her conception. Man’s conception is the embrace of the risen Lord; woman’s conception, he sends his messenger. It is a conception but raised to the nth degree beyond anything emotionally that is known here, but something similar. Man’s conception is the risen Lord embraces you; woman’s conception gives the same results. And scripture shows it so beautifully…it was said of her she’s too old. It was not said of one who was ten years older who was man.

Mine happened in ’29. I was a boy of twenty-four, and it was simply a union by an embrace, but an ecstasy beyond the wildest dream of man. It was conscious…I can see it now. I can see him now. I can see the one who sent me…it’s vivid. I can see the one who recorded my name in the book. The whole thing is so vivid in my mind’s eye and that’s back in 1929. But in women it is said, “You’re too old or she is too old” because that was said of the promise to Sarah…and she laughed. Now not a thing was said of Abraham laughing; she laughed; so she calls the offspring “he laughs,” named Isaac. Isaac means “he laughs.” So the mystery is perfect. Don’t try to change the Bible. That book is true.

I read all this nonsense in the morning papers about the priests and what they say. If they only realized that when this thing started in the synagogues of the ancient world there were only lay people who were the teachers, no priests. Now we have only priests who call themselves the intermediary between you and God; and this all happened with the lay people. They came out of the synagogue having told their experiences, because the rabbis would not accept it as their interpretation of what the ancient scriptures meant. This whole thing is simply the Old Testament unfolding among the lay people. Now today we have priests and we have this and we have that, going all the way up to all this nonsense. Not a thing of that is in the early group who started the movement. They told what happened to them, and they pointed out, being good scholars of the Old Testament, the passages of the Old where this is what it meant. What else could it mean? “It happened to me, therefore, it’s not secular it’s supernatural”…that’s what they said. They were banished because they wanted to make it a secular thing. And today we still make it secular.

So I can’t tell anyone by appearances who is singled out at any moment in time for the planting of that seed. I do know that men are planted differently. They are brought into the presence of the risen Lord and embraced, and that embrace is a complete fusion, oneness. Then after that interval of time it appears. But with women it happens similar to the act in the shadow world, only raised to an intense degree to those who are conscious. To those who are not conscious it still is as effective.

Good night.

*George Bernard Shaw’s quote, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?

EVE. How can I conquer it?

THE SERPENT. By another thing, called birth.

EVE. What? [Trying to pronounce it] B-birth?

THE SERPENT. Yes, birth.

EVE. What is birth?

THE SERPENT. The serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That is birth.

EVE. I have seen that. It is wonderful.

THE SERPENT. If I can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say ‘Why?’ Always ‘Why?’ You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’ I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born.

EVE. Born is a beautiful word.

THE SERPENT. Why not be born again and again as I am, new and beautiful every time?

EVE. I! It does not happen: that is why.

THE SERPENT. That is how; but it is not why. Why not?

EVE. But I should not like it. It would be nice to be new again; but my old skin would lie on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would see it shrivel up and—

THE SERPENT. No. He need not. There is a second birth.

EVE. A second birth?

THE SERPENT. Listen. I will tell you a great secret. I am very subtle; and I have thought and thought and thought. And I am very wilful, and must have what I want; and I have willed and willed and willed. And I have eaten strange things: stones and apples that you are afraid to eat.

EVE. You dared!

THE SERPENT. I dared everything. And at last I found a way of gathering together a part of the life in my body—

EVE. What is the life?

THE SERPENT. That which makes the difference between the dead fawn and the live one.

EVE. What a beautiful word! And what a wonderful thing! Life is the loveliest of all the new words.

THE SERPENT. Yes: it was by meditating on Life that I gained the power to do miracles.