Keep the Sabbath

You’ll find tonight a very practical night and yet profoundly spiritual. “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. God rested on the seventh day from his work which he had made” (Gen.1:31;2:2). Now we are told this seventh day is the day for man to observe. It’s part of the creative act of God. The unknown author of that verse that I just quoted connects the sabbath with a creative act of God. It’s a ___(??) and without it there is no creation. And the seventh day was the sabbath of the Lord your God and in it you shall not do any work.

Here is a creative act. If one Commandment is treated imaginally, then all Commandments must be treated in the same manner. The Old Testament is a prophecy of all that must take place in the individual, fulfilled in what we have as the New Testament. The New Testament interprets the Old, not the other way around. You can’t understand the Old without the New. When the time was fulfilled it unfolded in the individual and we have what is known as the New Testament. In the New Testament we have one of the Ten Commandments analyzed for us. “Thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say any man who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart” (Mat.5:27). He’s committed the act by looking lustfully; that is, to imagine the act and to desire it is to have performed the act, whether you did it physically or not. Well, that is one commandment. Why take all ten? This is given to us in the Sermon on the Mount.

Well, here we are called upon to keep the sabbath. In it you shall not do any work. Then what is the sabbath? First of all he creates…and God is invisible…“God calls a thing that is not seen as though it were, then he keeps the Sabbath, and the unseen becomes seen” (Rom. 4:17). That which was subjective becomes objective only by the keeping of the Sabbath. It’s part of the ___(??). So I imagine the scene just as I would like it to be, perfect, to me perfect. Wouldn’t it be wonderful were it true! Now, can I keep the sabbath? We all break it morning, noon and night. This coming Sunday millions of Christians and, well, today at sundown the orthodox Jew is keeping the sabbath. Beginning on Sunday, millions, hundreds of millions of Christians will, so-called, keep the sabbath. They’re not keeping the sabbath. Listen to the words, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings who by nature are no gods; but now that you know God, or rather that you have come to be known by God, how can you turn back? You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years! I am afraid I have labored over you in vain” (Gal.4:10).

So we think we keep the sabbath. I went to my barber yesterday and this shoeshine fellow, an awfully nice lad, he’s a deacon in his church, and so we always have a good joke together and he certainly knows a lot of jokes. I said, “Hal, how are things going?” Oh, he said, “I spent the whole day Sunday in church. I went to church and after service we went home and we had coffee and cake, oh, the most wonderful cake they had made”…and he’s telling me all these things…“and from there we went to another service. I didn’t get home for dinner until 6:30…the whole day given over to God.” He spent it in church. He thought he kept the sabbath. Well, I would not argue with Henry. He doesn’t know what I do. I’ve been going to the same barber for the longest while, for years and years, but Henry is not the first shoeshine boy that he’s had. But here is Henry and he’s a deacon in the church, and he thinks he keeps the sabbath by going to church.

But he’s not alone. My sister thinks she keeps the sabbath by going to church on Sunday, and everything must be done. For when I was a boy, certain things you couldn’t do on the sabbath. When I entered the theatre as a dancer, I loved to play Boston because we couldn’t dance on Sunday. So we would go out there on a weekend or for a week, we only worked six days; got paid for seven for that was part of the contract. You were paid for seven, but the law would not allow you to dance on Sunday, so being a dancer we got off on Sunday. All the singers and the comedians, they just hated us on Saturday night because we got paid for Sunday. The same thing was true of Philadelphia, you couldn’t dance in Philadelphia on Sunday. And you go back, now they’ve modified it. I recall in New York State where, well, they started talking about Sunday games. Well, here is baseball…you can’t play baseball in New York City on Sunday save you start after two in the afternoon, to get the people in church. Bars can’t be opened until after one. You can drink, alright, but not until after one in a pub, because then you wouldn’t go to church. So who is kidding whom? Is that the sabbath? You can’t open the bar until after…you can open it on Sunday, but not until after you get them in church. And so, that is keeping the sabbath. It hasn’t a thing to do with the sabbath. The Bible is the most practical book in the world, if you only understood what it is talking about. So, the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God. These are the words, it’s not just “the” Lord, but the Lord your God. In it you must not do any work.

Now I tell you this and now to illustrate. A friend of mine writes me a letter, and here is her letter. “I sell homes. I have an empty home for sale and the need for the sale of this home is great. Well, I imagine. I find it easy now, because I have proven that imagining creates reality.I’ve done it time and time again, so it becomes easier and easier for me to go to the end of an imaginal act, which implies the fulfillment of my desire, and then rest. It’s easy.Yet in this case I found myself going back, wondering which one will be the buyer. I thought of this one, that one, and when I caught myself thinking of a buyer, well then, I am not resting in the end. If I had gone to the end and it’s sold and the people are in the house and it’s a marvelous, happy relationship, well then, what am I doing thinking of a buyer? So I would catch myself in the course of a day thinking of which one would be interested, this buyer, that buyer, or the other buyer. That was a confession I was not actually dwelling in the end and resting in that state.” So said she, “Oh, that seventh day…is that a difficult thing to keep!

“Now, she said, on the 22nd of February, that’s only a matter of a week ago, a little more than a week ago, I had these three dreams in the same night. I didn’t realize their relationship until the next morning when I wrote them out. Here is my first dream. I dreamt I drove up to the house and as I got to the house a voice said to me, ‘What are you doing here? The house has been sold and it is sold because you desired it to be sold.’ I felt in the dream a little bit uneasy…the house has been sold and here I am driving up to the house, undoubtedly because of my concern. But the house has been sold, therefore, what are you doing here, and it has been sold because you desired it to be sold.

“Now the scene changes and I have another dream and I am boiling rice. I am eager to get the rice done instantly, so instead of soaking the rice until it’s prepared, I put it into a pan of water and start to boil it, and I’m demanding that the rice be boiled and be done right away. Well, it is. Before my eyes it’s done, it’s instantly done. So I taste a kernel of it. It’s hard and tasteless. It is a mess,” she said. These are her words, “It really is a mess. Then I find myself preparing lima beans. I feel that I have all the time in the world, so I take the beans and I soak them. They reach the point of being blown to the very extreme; they’re now big and full and bursting, and then I put them on and boil them in a very slow little flame. I seem to have all the time and they come out and they are luscious. When I taste them they could not be more tasty, they were beautiful. Then I saw the two dishes together—the lima beans that were perfect in taste and appearance and then the rice that was tasteless. Before I woke I entertained this thought, isn’t it strange that they both seemed to take the same length of time…this that I was so eager to get done, the rice, and the other, which I seemed to relax and have such time, and both seemed to take the same amount of time. Then I woke and I wrote out the three and I didn’t realize the relationship of the dream until I had written them out.”

So I tell you again, in the Bible, God, your God, your wonderful I-am-ness, the Father in you, speaks to you through the medium of dream. He instructs you…he tells you what you are doing. He shows you what you are doing and allows you to see and learn how to correct it. Here you have a house to sell. You’ve gone to the end and you see the people occupying it and they’re happy in it, therefore, the sale is over. You have made the sale. You find yourself in the course of a day breaking the sabbath. And what promises are made in scripture to those who keep the sabbath, fantastic promises to all, because it’s part of the creative ___(??). So you take any…all of these are possible to God. I mean the God in you. I’m not speaking of a God in space, a God in time; I’m speaking of the only God, the God that became you that you may become God. I’m speaking of that God, which is the only God. He is in you as your own wonderful human Imagination.

But here is a creative act and these Ten Commandments must be taken imaginally. You have committed adultery? What adultery? I’m not married, I haven’t gone astray. You haven’t? Haven’t you passed any person in this world and not desired to “know” her and strip her? Well, being a man undoubtedly I did. And not to have any arguments about it, instead of saying undoubtedly I did, without any doubt I did. But I speak for humanity. I speak for every man born of woman if he has any blood in him. But I speak also for any woman born of woman, that she’s done the same thing. So we’ve all broken the law. Well, we have broken the sabbath, and we break it every moment of time. I don’t break the other commandment of adultery. At my age you don’t break it. When you are young and it’s all bursting in you, you break it morning, noon and night. But, today, at my age I break the sabbath more often, far more often, than I break the act, the commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But the commandment is to everyone, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Now, if the thought occupies the mind and it’s not really pressing, like the selling of a house, I may keep the sabbath beautifully. In this case, and he’s here tonight, he said, “When our first son, our oldest son, when he was about two years, his mother and I discussed the possibility of sending him to a prep school back East, and it was Phillips Exeter.” Well, I know Phillips Exeter. I never went there, but it is a marvelous prep school. But they wondered at the time, “I wonder how we would do it?” Speaking and thinking purely in terms of finances, “How would we do it?” However, that was approximately eleven years ago. “In the interval,” he said, “I swear I have not once thought of that. I haven’t given it a thought. The boy is going to public school here in California. He is brilliant. He is completely adjusted to life. He’s everything that we desired, a brilliant, brilliant lad in public school here. So we didn’t talk of it in the interval, but I did think then, back eleven years ago. My wife is a Lowell of Massachusetts,” he said, “you may know of the name.” Well, I certainly do know the Lowells of Massachusetts, and you’ve read Amy Lowell’s works, haven’t you? You’ve all heard of the great educators, the Lowells of Massachusetts. Well here, he thought, “My wife is a Lowell, her mother a Lowell and the child’s grandmother’s cousin was the headmaster of Exeter. He thought at the time it was Phillips Exeter. It turned out it was not Phillips Exeter but Andover Exeter that this relative was headmaster. “Well, we thought that maybe because of this contact he could get a scholarship. Now, that’s eleven years ago and not one thought passed my mind since. We didn’t discuss it. I never thought about it, I swear I didn’t. Yesterday…now I got this letter since I spoke to you last Tuesday or Monday, whenever it was. Since then I got this letter. Only yesterday we received this offer for our son from Andover, Phillips Andover, a scholarship.”

He discussed it eleven years ago and kept the sabbath. It wasn’t a pressing thing; they didn’t care. You don’t send a child to Andover at the age of two. He has to reach the age before he could go there, so in the interval it wasn’t pressing, it wasn’t their concern. So they could discuss it when he was two and keep the sabbath. And then suddenly it appears in the world, and what seemed to be such a sudden thing is only the emergence of a hidden continuity. It was implanted beautifully, without pressure, for there was no reason then to be concerned. It would take at least eleven years before he could possibly reach the ripeness to appear in one of these two great prep schools. Well, it has appeared, and now he has been offered a scholarship to Andover, to the finest prep school for boys in this country, and I would dare say in the world. So here, he kept the sabbath unwittingly.

The lady who writes me this story concerning the three, she broke it, but she caught it; and then the depth of her own being spoke to her and told her how she was breaking it and showed her how to correct it. Here were two dishes…take time, no concern. One, she must do it now. Let it be. The purchaser is coming. He has to come. And not any problems will arise after the purchase. It will be so tasty, it’ll be so perfect. But after you bring it to pass by forcing the sale, then you’re going to have multiple reasons—they can’t make the payments, they can’t do this, they can’t do that and unnumbered things will happen—it’s all the tasty hard rice. And the other, the purchaser will so love it, they’ll wonder how could God be so kind and wonderful to them, represented by the lima beans that she…and the same time interval. So you do it and you judge it as perfect.

So no matter what it is in this world that you want, you simply create it in the same way that the God in you created the whole vast universe. I’m not speaking of two gods. When I speak of the God in you, I’m speaking of the same God that created and sustains the whole vast universe. There’s only one God: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4). Only one, there aren’t two. Therefore, the very thing was brought forth out of the nowhere…he calls a thing that is not seen as though it were, and the unseen becomes seen. So the God in man does the same thing. I want to be successful, and I will name it, by toying with the idea, what would it be like? Suppose it were true? And then you create a scene implying that it is true, and you accept the reality of that imaginal state. Well now, let me keep the sabbath. Here is a creative act, but it is not completed until the sabbath is kept.

So I drop an egg. Outside of my window right now little doves are nesting. Here they are…they fly away, they come back, they kiss each other all the time that they’re together. They’re always making love. And there is something there. But there are moments when they must go off to feed, moments when something else takes them away. So they leave it in confidence the nest is there. The little egg is being warmed when they are there, and warm enough to still maintain a certain energy within. One day the shell is going to break and out will come a little dove. And so, you and I, in confidence, we simply imagine a state, I don’t care what the state is.

Now may I tell you, you may say, “Well, suppose now he dies tonight and he hasn’t realized it?” There is no death. You wonder, why does this one and that one and the other one have such different beginnings in the world? Because this is not beginning at all; you didn’t begin in your mother’s womb and you don’t end in the grave.This whole vast world…“I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years.” And so in that interval…when I’m given that interval of time in which to create…I have brought forth horrible things and lovely things. And so, if I make the exit, as the world calls it death, I didn’t die. As you’re told, “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the depths nor the high point, nothing can separate me from the love of God” (Rom. 8:38). But nothing in eternity could separate me from the love of God. So here I am, I’m brought in by love. “Never would you have made anything had you not loved it.” That’s what we are told in the Book of Wisdom, “Not one thing would you have made had you not loved it. And nothing can separate me from the love of God.” Here, I’m put into a world to create as my Father creates, and finally I awaken as my Father himself.

And so, I may tonight make my exit with an unfulfilled desire, which I think I’m keeping the sabbath relative to it. Doesn’t matter, I will realize it, for I am still in the same world, a world just as real as this. It’s just as solidly real as this. And I’ll realize it…all my dreams will come to me, come to pass in the world to which I go. So if I dropped now, no matter what happens, I will still realize all that I keep the sabbath relative to.

So here, the Commandments are to be understood not as things that you formerly did when you did not know God? And do not turn back, as some do. Some have been coming here for the longest while, then a blow strikes the family, and they turn back and find comfort in the most orthodox concept, and go back, and there they sing their lovely hymns on Sunday and think they’re keeping the sabbath. Yet they have proven this principle that imagining creates reality. But a blow hits the family just to shake the tree and a few little things fall, and they haven’t root enough in themselves to sustain it and they turn back.

So listen to the words—these are the words from the 4th chapter of Galatians—“Formerly, when you did not know God”—there was a time when I didn’t know God—“you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods” (verse 8). Like the stars, like teacup leaves, like monkey bones, like anything outside of God, but anything outside of God. When I turn to it for my comfort, I am turning from God. When I didn’t know him, I turned to everything in the world that offered me some comfort. But now that you have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God, how can you turn back?

So we turn back. Now he names how we turn back, “You observe days, and months, and seasons, and years!” Well, we know we observe days. We know we observe months…this is now the season of Lent, it’s a season, we observe it. Many will not eat this, would not eat that, and they have a little phase and they’ll give up something for the season. Those who hated…like my brother in law, he didn’t like pickles, he gave up pickles…gave up something. When you’re called upon to give up something that you like, well, you can give up nothing. But they all do it. Well, last year or year before last they had a year, the ecumenical year and we worshipped it. We called it a year. So we have months, seasons, days, all kinds of things that we worship. So that in itself tells you, no matter who they are, they do not know God. If he calls himself a pope, the arch-bishop, or the little one who scrubs the floor, if they do that, they do not know God…anyone who observes a day, a month, a season, or a year. It’s told so clearly in scripture in the 4th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. So if you do it, well, then you don’t know.

Now, if I do it, then even if I break it, I can still know it and then go back to it. She broke it…but God is a merciful God. If I were pure, never would I have known that there is such a thing as a merciful God. I know I will be pure as my Father in heaven is pure, for it’s a must. You’re told in Leviticus, “You must be holy, for your Father…for I your God, am holy.” You must be holy. It’s a must, you can’t escape it, because “I the Lord your God am holy.” Now, you’re told to equate it in the Sermon on the Mount, “You shall be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” I have no doubt that such perfection must come, such holiness must come, because, by this statement, I have the potentiality. I possess the potentiality of becoming as God, becoming just one with him, or he could not say “You must be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” He confesses I am not yet when he makes the statement, but he also tells me I possess the potentiality of becoming as perfect, and, therefore, as God. So when I am told in Leviticus “You must be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy”(19:2), here is a promise. I know I will do it.

So I break the sabbath. I come back, having broken it, and then he is merciful, so he tells me on the inside…and he shows me rice and he shows me lima beans. He speaks to me, “What are you doing here? The house is sold.” Now he tells me why it is sold, “Because you desired it.” The spring of action is desire. I desire. I desire success…well, that’s the spring of action. Who desired? Well, I desired. Well, what’s his name? I AM, that’s his name, I AM. So I want to be successful. It is God in me asking me to create that state. And so I create it and then I judge it perfect, “Oh, it’s perfect.” I create a beautiful home where it would be marvelous to live in that home. And so, I see it in my mind’s eye. But I have no money, I have no means of building it, but I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Wouldn’t it be wonderful were it true? Now keep the sabbath, and don’t concern yourself with money. It doesn’t matter what it takes or how it comes about, just keep the sabbath relative to it. It will come to pass. But may I tell you, it will come to pass, you’ll live in it, and then you’ll tire of it. And then you’ll drop it like a leaf, just like a leaf.

A friend of mine, speaking of a leaf…this wonderful statement that her father told her when she was a child and she in turn told me that I may tell my daughter. “If you had but a dollar and it was necessary to spend it, do it as though it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests.” Live that way, just as though it were true. Spend it as though it were a dry leaf and you the owner of unbounded forests. And you’ll find that the supply will come like the forest dropping its leaf for you to spend, if it’s necessary. So holding on to it is lack of confidence in the abundance of God and his ability to constantly produce. God is a creator. He didn’t make the world and then go sound asleep and rest. Every time I imagine, God is acting. If I’m afraid, it’s God’s action, for God is my imaginal activity. So my Imagination is God. So every time I imagine, God is in action. So where is he resting? He who watches over Israel, you are told, neither slumbers nor sleeps. Yet, there must be that moment of rest relative to that that I have judged perfect.

And so, God created it and behold, it was good, and very good. Then God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Now that seventh day could come at this moment—when someone asks something of me and I wonder what would it be like if you could tell me, instead of asking it of me, to tell me that you have it. What would it be like? And then completely forget it, completely forget it. And so when you tell me tomorrow or next month or next year or whenever you tell me you for that matter, and I completely forget that I kept the sabbath. But nothing comes unto me save I call it, so whenever I need it, whether I need it now or in unnumbered years to come, I can only meet what I have kept the sabbath relative to. For the sabbath is part of the creative act of God. So when it happens I may not relate it to anything I have done, but it could not possibly come unless I’ve kept the sabbath relative to it.

So when wars come…what ages ago I imagined it? My secretary, who is now gone for quite a few years, in fact, he died in ’46, Jack Butler. He was born in the Northwest in Seattle. He used to have nightmares based upon William Randolph Hearst’s Yellow Terror. He’d read it, believed it, and he would see the Japanese swimming across the Bay. He’d actually see them in his…and wake in hysterics, wake in this nightmare. Well, we have had a war with Japan, they did attack first. But in his mind’s eye, he was so confident that Wm. Randolph Hearst was telling the truth. He was selling papers. If he could just take a man like Jack Butler and put a headline out, and stories out, and make him buy toothpaste and therefore get the toothpaste manufacturers to use his medium. Scare people first and then sell them another scare item…and that’s the entire press.

And so, you keep the sabbath, we keep the sabbath, relative to something. I would suggest to you that you keep the sabbath relative to God’s Promise. His Promise is that you will be born again, because you must be born again. In the 3rd chapter of John, “Unless you be born again, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (verse 3). It’s the new age. You’ll continue…you won’t die, even though men call you dead, you will not die. So keep the sabbath relative to God’s eternal Promise that you must be born again. How? Well, God is keeping that Promise in the depth of my soul. But you accept it, even though you are in prison, even though you do this, that or the other, and it seems a horrible thing judged by human standards, still keep the sabbath relative to the Promise. You must be born again; therefore, I will be born again, and go blindly on in the assumption that I’ll be born again.

Now, there are millions in the world who think that they’re born again, because they’ve had a little change, seemingly, a change of some little outward action. I saw in today’s Sunday Times, the New York Sunday Times—it comes every week, well, it was one day late, it came today—and this man, a member of the Baptist church, some part of Virginia, I think it was called Bristol, Virginia, he was just arrested for breaking into the church and given seven years for breaking into the church. The elders of the church said he was only baptized that very day. He was baptized in the church. The very day after the baptism he saw a great opportunity for self-gain and broke into the church. And people think baptism means something. It hasn’t a thing to do with reality! There’s only one baptism: the baptism of the Holy Spirit, when you stand in the presence of the risen Christ, and he embraces you, and you are incorporated into his body, and you are one with the body of Christ. No one with mortal eyes sees you ___(??). They see the same garment they saw before. But you sleep in that body, you wake in that body, and you walk in that body. Though you are ill, though you are this, that for the other, the body that you really are is the body of the risen Christ, and no mortal eye sees it. But you feel it and see it and know the being that you are. That’s baptism, baptism of the Holy Spirit. Then you go through the entire series of events of the risen Christ: the birth, the resurrection, the discovery of the fatherhood, and everything concerning Jesus Christ. Now keep the sabbath relative to it, and you will find that it will come just as suddenly upon you as this author, this scholarship, came upon this father and mother for their son, who is now eligible to enter Andover.

So, nothing happens by chance in this world. There is a law behind everything in the world; there’s nothing by chance. And so, if you are this, that or the other, it all started somewhere and someone kept the sabbath relative to that act. Because the most fertilized egg in the world, if I looked at it and I broke it and didn’t let it rest until its normal interval of time, it couldn’t break the shell and come out. So give me the most perfect idea, clearly fertilized, now break it by not resting, and so it’s an addled egg. So I say to everyone, dream nobly, glorious noble dreams, and then rest relative to the state that you can judge perfect. Listen to the words, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen.1:31). “And God rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done” (Gen.2:2).

Now, the word sabbath, which is the seventh day, which is divine perfection, is seven in scripture, divine perfection. The sabbath means “to cease, to desist from, to be at an end”… always the end, to be at an end. I always start at the end. I see the whole vast thing just as though it were true, and then I rest in the end, and the end determines the means by which the end will be fulfilled. But I must rest in the end and keep the sabbath. The 1st Psalm begins with a blessing, a beatitude pronounced upon the one who keeps the law of God. This is part of the law, “Blessed is he who delights in the law of the Lord…for in all that he does, he prospers” (Ps.1:1-3). It begins with this wonderful beatitude pronounced upon man who could keep the sabbath. It’s part of the creative act. That you can do no more, you’ve done it. And the whole thing is one of complete relief. Of all the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. So, you perform a creative act and you reach the point of climax and then there is relief. And there’s no pleasure comparable to that moment of climax, of relief. You can’t continue with the act, it’s done. Well now, can you keep the sabbath after you have reached climax? You’ve seen it clearly in your mind’s eye; you’ve constructed a scene which would imply the fulfillment of a dream; and you bring yourself to the point of complete climax in your love of what has happened; well then, you drop it. You fertilized it and that whole thing is done. You go about your Father’s business, creating other things. Not waiting anxiously, like the rice dish, but going about like the lima bean dish with all the time in the world to wait for it. It comes out and does a far more marvelous job than the anxious moment of the rice dish.

What a wonderful letter. I can’t thank her enough. If you take it to heart what a lesson you have tonight in her letter and the story of the sabbath. I’ll take it to New York and tell that to those who will come. I’ll tell it wherever I go to show them the true meaning of the sabbath. For God spoke in her and to her, and revealed through her the true meaning of the sabbath. That’s why I ask you to share with me all of your dreams and your visions, because we are encouraged by each other’s communion with God. It’s not some person on the outside speaking, it’s from the depths of her soul, telling her what she had done and what she ought to do. It’s instruction. It’s a merciful God…doesn’t hurt you, doesn’t kill you, just shows you what you’re doing. And the other one, remembered, and tells me in his letter, “I swear in the interval I never once brought it up to my wife. The boy was doing well in school, now gone through the local public school, and unusually bright, and here comes the scholarship, an offer to enter Phillips Andover, an excellent prep school.”

So I ask you to do it, because tonight, tomorrow night, who knows? We make our exits based upon the call and one could go tonight. Here is Henry Luce…I read the obituary in Murray, in the news, of all the things, in the Sports column of the Times, Jim Murray…and speaking of marvelous writers. Well, I didn’t realize that Jim Murray wrote for him. For fourteen years he worked with Henry Luce. He said, “Henry Luce taught me journalism.” He said, “A month ago I met him. I’m going to Houston to see these two primates bash each other’s brains out and Luce was going elsewhere.” He said, “Luce never concerned himself with anyone who was cut apart…he said that wasn’t news. If I came in and said I just saw a woman cut in two, that wasn’t news to Luce at all. If a war went on and millions were killed, that isn’t news, that’s part of the structure of the world. But to find an ancient vase that someone created, ___(??), or to find a ancient picture that was restored, the artist that could restore the ancient masterpiece, that excited his mind.

Now he said, “Here is a man who took a borrowed 85,000 dollars and turned it in to 400 million. His magazine today, Time magazine, five million a week; here is Life, eight and a half million a week; he has Sports Illustrated; he has Fortune; and he started with started with borrowing $85,000. He came here at the age of fourteen from China. He was born in China of Presbyterian ministers who were, well, they were missionaries. Never left China until he was fourteen, came here, and then went through Yale—was judged the most brilliant boy in his class. And his partner who started with him, he was judged the most likely to succeed. He died in ’29. And then Luce went on. And here was this thing. Well then, he went to the bathroom, had a massive heart attack, and made his exit from this world, leaving this fantastic thing behind him for others to carry on.

But if that was his life, as Murray said it was, he has gone forward into a world—he hasn’t been born from above; he can’t enter the kingdom of heaven—so he will be in a world just like this. But what noble dreams he has planted, if that really is true of the man, that a vase, an ancient vase, proving that someone was creative unnumbered ages ago, if that was his mind, that he was fired by it, and if someone could restore a great masterpiece and bring it back to its almost original state, and these things fired that mind, well then, what would he be doing now?—creating in this manner. That’s the man, learning to create. We’re all here only to be like our Father and our Father is a creator. That’s all he is, he’s a creator. He creates out of nothing: Calls a thing that is not as though it were, and that which was unseen becomes seen, as he keeps the sabbath.

So learn this night to keep the sabbath relative to your children, even though they’re going through hell, or think they are, and going through this and making a mess of themselves, alright, so learn to keep the sabbath. Because we are the children of the Most High God…and haven’t we gone through a mess? But he in the depth of our soul is keeping the sabbath relative to that which he promised: You must be born again…for we aren’t earning it by our creativity. He is keeping that sabbath relative to us, and no power in the world could separate us from the love of God. Read it in the last three verses of the 8th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Neither death, nor life—and he mentions all the powers that man could ever think of—can separate us from the love of God (Rom.8:38).

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

___(??) the solid foundation which is the highway of God ___(??). I’ll share it with you on Monday as it was shared with me only yesterday morning. From now on it will be Monday, Friday, with the exception of the 17th of March, when we have no lecture hall. So every Monday and Friday, with that one night out we’ll be here ’til the end of April, and then we close until some time in September.

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: Some of the things I create don’t turn out as good as I hoped that they would, is this depending on the state when I create it ___(??)?

A: No, my dear, you create exactly…what comes to pass is exactly what you took. If I take a picture and I print it, when it comes out it will not be what I hoped but what I took. In other words, that’s exactly what I took. I set it up—I was hoping for something better than that—but I didn’t set up the structure better than that which I took. So when it comes to pass and it seems to be not what I would like it to be, it was only what I took, anyway. I could have made it better before I took it. I could have spent a little bit more time and made it perfect, just as I would like it to be; but I was anxious to get some kind of a picture, and in my anxiety I took the unfinished ___(??). But it couldn’t possibly be other than what I took, it couldn’t.

Q: Then it’s related to the ___(??)?

A: Certainly.

Q:Something I can’t quite understand. I read all your books about…create an imaginal act, night after night…and you do this repeatedly until it manifests itself. Now, other times you say imagine an act maybe once and then you said to forget about it and it manifests itself.

A: Well, my dear, I have said this time and time again…maybe I haven’t done it recently…but years ago in New York City I would devote five days a week between the hours of one and five to personal interviews. I haven’t done it since I left New York, and I will not resume it, it’s very tiring. And so, no more personal contacts, no more personal inter- views for me, just my social world. But I did it for years. But I would find that I would take someone and then lose myself completely in the fulfillment of their request. Then another would come. I gave the other my undivided attention, completely undivided attention; and the next, my undivided attention; and the next…until the very end. And the success was fantastic, because I completely dropped everyone when they went through that door and took the elevator down. They dropped from my mind as much as they dropped down the elevator, and they all got results because I wasn’t concerned. Either I believe it or I don’t believe it. But I believed it. If I believed it, then what am I concerned about?

And so, if anyone ever called me and said, you know so and so…I put the receiver down, put it right down, slammed it in their face. I would not discuss it with them over the phone. Did we not agree on it? Then what are you doing? I put it down. And that may be the one that just simply stopped for one moment my keeping the sabbath relative to them. But the results came, one after the other because I wasn’t concerned after I did it. If imagining creates reality, what am I doing breaking the sabbath?

So in your own case, instead of taking one and making it a huge problem, take five, take six, and take one after the other where you can drop the others. Have you ever seen a hen bringing out her chickens…or you put a bunch of eggs…maybe she has a bunch…and maybe ten will come out and two are addled, so what? That’s ten. So take more than one and take a bunch of lovely things in this world. You wouldn’t even know that one didn’t come out.