Life Through Death

It starts with the crucifixion and ends with the resurrection. But today unnumbered millions attended service and they were taught the story or told the story of God dying to save man. Hundreds of millions undoubtedly attended. I know I did it year after year for unnumbered years, taught the same story, the same cry on the cross. It’s so very difficult to change the meaning of an event once certain interpretations are given to that event and become fixed in the public mind. So here, this event was so fixed in my mind I must confess it was difficult to dislodge it, and only revelation could really dislodge it. And so, I hope I can share with you my actual experience in the hope I can dislodge from you that fixed idea that has become fixed in the public mind, and put in its place that which came to me by revelation. You’ll find it in the Bible, it’s all in scripture; but, unfortunately, although we read the book over and over, we seem to fail when we try to find the one of whom the prophet spoke. We can’t find him. We’re looking for him in time, although we are told that he’s not in your time, it was not for your time. It’s for the time to come that this prophecy was made.

So let us now look at it—-and you follow me closely—-and if you can’t remember the words that I’m quoting, I’m quoting from the Book of Romans. You go home and you read the first six verses of the very first chapter. It’s Paul’s longest letter, his book, or rather, his epistle to the Romans. He starts it with this note, he said, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ”—-that’s how he starts it—“called to be an apostle.” Let us stop right there. We’ll take the entire few verses…we’ll take the first great revelation: “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ.” Nothing is said in scripture of Jesus Christ having servants. The word, really, properly translated is “slave”—-a slave of Jesus Christ. So he confesses in the beginning, Paul, a servant. You’ve been led to believe, and I was led to believe, that anyone who ministered on the Christian faith, who was a priest, who’s a teacher of the Bible, is a servant of Jesus Christ. That’s not the interpretation.

Now we turn over to another letter of his, to the Philippians, the 2nd chapter of his letter to the Philippians: “Jesus Christ, though in the form of God, emptied himself and took upon himself the form of a servant, and being born in the likeness of man. Finding himself in the form of man, became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross” (verses 5-8). Paul is confessing that he has discovered the wearer of the garment that is Paul. Listen to the first few words, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ…Jesus Christ being in the form of God…emptied himself” of an infinite splendor “and took upon himself the form of a servant, and being born in the likeness of men. And finding himself in the form of men, became obedient unto death, even death upon the cross.” So Paul is telling us that he discovered the wearer of the garment that he was calling all along Paul, the servant of Jesus Christ.

Now he goes on, Called by God himself and set apart for the gospel of God. And now he tells us what this gospel is. The gospel of his son who was born according to the flesh, born of David; on the human level descended from David; on the spiritual level according to the Spirit. Here, he was designated Son of God, but he tells us why he was designated Son of God: By his resurrection from the dead, designated Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. You are wearing the same being, or the same being is wearing this garment. When you say “I am” you named it. I am Neville. You say I am John, I am Robert, I am Grace, I am Mary, so you say I am so-and-so. And you may just as well write this letter and say, “John or Mary, servant of Jesus Christ”; for I am now the slave being worn by Jesus Christ. Now, as I move across the surface of this world, going from experience to experience, at one moment in time I am going to be designated Son of God. Why?—-by my resurrection from the dead. I wasn’t born that way through the womb of my mother. I didn’t know it, and mother didn’t know it, my father didn’t know it, my brothers didn’t know it, no one knew it until it happened in me. So walking across this world, having all the experiences of normal man, one day it happened. And so we are told, he was designated Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. You aren’t born from the womb of woman as a Son of God; that’s the descendant of David.

Now we are told this came to man, as he tells us in these first six verses, it was given to man through his prophets in the holy scripture. His promise to man came through his prophets in the holy scripture. Well, where did it come? I start reading the scripture and go back to find, if I came out of David as a man, and you came out of David as a man, where was David ever promised that something coming out of David would in some strange way be adopted as the Son of God in full power? So you go back and you read all about David, and you find that it is said to David by the prophet Nathan. And Nathan said to David from God that “The Lord God has said unto me to say unto you, that when your days are fulfilled”—when it is the end as far as this world goes—-“when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your son after you, who shall come forth from your body. I will be his father and he shall be my son” (2 Sam. 7:12). Here is man, humanity. On the human level we all came out of David. David is the personification of all the generations of man. So we all come out of the human level, on this human level, out of David. And while we walk the earth wondering, “When is this promise ever going to be fulfilled?” “For ever since the fathers fell asleep all things have continued as they were from the beginning” of the world. So, when, O Lord, when? And we all wait, expecting some peculiar thing to come out of space, and it doesn’t come that way. Suddenly one day it comes. It comes in the unique way that no one ever suspected, and to this day they still don’t expect it.

So, this day hundreds of millions were told the story incorrectly. They were told of a man, born of a woman; came into this world as the Son of God from the womb of a woman; and then he was crucified on a wooden cross for the redemption of humanity. It isn’t so at all. Everyone is the cross that God is nailed to, but everyone. Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ—and Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination, your own wonderful I-am-ness, and you’re nailed on it. But you don’t know it. So you walk the earth misled, all are misled, battling everyone in this world until one moment in time, just like a thief out of the night, it happens to you. Now go back to the story told this day. He was placed in a tomb that was hewn out of a stone in which man had never yet been laid: It’s your skull. No one was ever laid there but you. It’s an entirely new stone completely carved out all for you. And God entered that stone.

Now let us show you the difference between survival and a hundred thousand people die in our world every day. A hundred thousand every day, but none cease to be, all survive. But survival is continuity; resurrection is discontinuity. Now here is the story. Possibly you’ve had this experience. I know many who have had it, but I will now quote one. No one need know who she is or who he is or they are, because it’s a story that many have had. I have told you in the past that every dream is a parable. Its earthly story is secondary to its meaning. But every dream is a parable. And God speaks to man through the medium of dream; he communicates some profound message to the individual. So an individual finds himself clothed in the garments of those who walked this earth 2,000 years ago. Then someone comes towards him…he thinks it may be a play and so he treats it lightly. The man points a gun at him and he said, “Go ahead and shoot.” So he shoots and it goes right through his brain and he falls. At the very moment he falls he sees the thing on the floor, just like a costume, and he has survived. The ridiculousness of the whole thing that he hasn’t been killed yet here is the body with the bullet through its brain.

Now, two thousand years ago there were no guns. Right away you can rub that out, the literal story, you can take it apart. There was no gun powder known then. So he wore the costume, yes, of, say, 2,000 years ago. Purposely the depth of his soul is trying to show him something. It could not be reincarnation, because 2,000 years ago you could not have been shot by any bullet. We didn’t have bullets. We didn’t have guns. Well, what is the central jet of truth in this story? Survival is continuity. There was no change in the consciousness of the one who saw the event. He rose and he saw the body that was just blasted and, in the eyes of the world, dead. He came out of it a living being but the identical being that he was one second before. You can discount a bullet; there were no bullets 2,000 years ago. No such thing as, well, dynamite 2,000 years ago. We didn’t know it. But he finds himself in an ancient world, so it’s trying to show him regardless of unnumbered deaths in this world, there is continuity.

But tonight I am speaking of discontinuity. It’s an entirely different picture and everyone is destined towards discontinuity. And resurrection is God’s mightiest act, the one act that sets it apart from all other acts, and reveals God as a God of the living, not the dead. We all become sons of God by God’s mightiest act, the act of resurrection. So we are told, “He was designated Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.” No one comes into this world from any holy womb in this world as a physical womb, no one—all of this is descended from David. So forget the story as told this day of Mary’s son, and know the being that is really here, present in this audience tonight, wearing all these garments. And you may say…use your name, don’t say Paul, whatever your name is…and “from Paul”—you say from John, from Robert, from Neville—-“a slave of Jesus Christ,” because he, the Jesus Christ in my own I-am-ness, emptied itself. Being in the form of God, it emptied itself of this wonderful splendor, and took upon itself the form of a servant, or a slave, and being born in the likeness of man, and finding itself in the form of man, it became obedient unto death, unto death upon the cross (Phil. 2:7). And this is the cross.

May I tell you, I have had the experience of the crucifixion, and it’s the most ecstatic state in the world, the most glorious sensation in the world, no pain whatsoever. For this night I was one of an unnumbered crowd walking toward some invisible Mecca, the fulfillment of God’s promise, all together an ancient world too, all dressed in Arabic costumes. A voice out of space came and the voice said, “And God walks with them.” A woman at my side questioned the voice—no one saw the face; we all heard the voice—she said, “If God walks with us, where is he?” The voice replied—we all heard the reply—“At your side.” This woman in her Arabic costume turned to her side, literally, looked into my face, right into my eyes, and then she became hysterical it struck her so funnily. And she asked, “What? Is Neville God?” and the voice replied, “Yes, in the act of waking.” Then the same voice, but this time in the depths of my soul, heard only by me, by no one else. She heard the reply to her question: “Yes.” That would have been true of anyone at her side. If Grace is at her side, Jack at her side, Bob at her side, anyone, the question would have been yes. We’re all in the act of waking.

And then, in the depths of my soul I heard this voice and it said, “God laid himself down within you to sleep, and as he slept he dreamed a dream. He dreamed…” and then I knew the completed sentence. I became so emotional that I began to waken, but in the waking process my hands became vortices, my head a vortex, my feet vortices, and my right side a vortex. I was nailed by these vortices right upon this body. I woke on my bed in New York City thrilled beyond measure, for I was one of this infinite sea of humanity moving towards, I would say, an invisible goal. I called it Mecca, then, because we were all like Orientals, moving towards what would be in that Arab world the world of Mecca. We’re all moving towards it…and that was my vision to share with the whole vast world. I was the same being then as I am now, no change in identity. Any more than the one who was shot through the head had any change in identity. So that after this event takes place you are still that same being.

Now let me share with you what I mean. This happened years ago, many years ago…and then four years ago, back in 1959, this intense vibration at the base of my skull and I began to awake. Now the voice I heard that night “Yes, he is God in the act of waking” and I began to awake. Well, morning after morning I have awakened in this world in my fifty-nine years; I am quite conscious of waking every morning and I thought this was a similar waking, for it was waking, no question about it. I began to awake. As I became fully awake and alert in a way I’ve never known before, I am in my skull. Now, today, if you were in church you heard the story: “And when they came to the place of the skull, there they crucified him.” I awoke within my skull. My skull, if I can put it, put it the size of this area of the stage. I am standing in my own skull, but there is no opening, no eyes, no ears, no nostrils, no opening; it’s completely sealed. But the vibration began at the base of my skull. I’m completely awake. I’ve never known such alertness in my life, but I am completely sealed in the sepulcher of the skull. It’s the tomb in which I who wore this body am now laid. Then I began to move and I did it without knowing consciously, I did it automatically, and I pushed at the base of the skull. Something rolled away, just rolled away, like a stone, and then I came out, head down, inch by inch by inch, of this skull of mine.

When I was almost out, I pulled the remaining portion of me out of my skull, and for a few seconds I lay on the floor. Then I got up, looked back and saw that out of which I came. It ___(??) the size of this; it was the normal size of this body now, on the bed, ghastly pale, ghastly pale. And then a wind, an unearthly wind holds my interest from the far corner of the room. As I looked over, only took me a few seconds, wondering if this thing is so strong it will blow the whole place down, an unearthly wind; as I returned to my focus on the bed the body is gone. Now, here’s the story. They went to the tomb and the body was gone, and they said, He is risen…but the words seemed to them the words of an idle tale and they did not believe it (Luke 24:11). The body was gone! I personally did not see anyone remove it but it is gone; but in its place sat now the witnesses to the event, three men. You’re told in the story as you read it in Luke that they sat at both the head and feet of where the body was—for there is no body—but where the body was they sat at the head and the feet.

I didn’t know what’s going to happen now. I could discern all of their thoughts. I’m so alert I can see thoughts; there’s nothing concealed, everything is to my mind like an open book. And then the wind disturbs them, as it disturbs me, and one got off the bed and started towards what seemed to be the cause of the disturbance, where it originated. He hadn’t gone more than two paces when he looked down and then he announced, “It’s Neville’s baby.” The other two asked, “How could Neville have a baby?”…that’s an impossible statement. He doesn’t argue the point; he places the evidence on the bed. It’s a little child, a little babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. I lifted it, looked into its eyes and asked, “How is my sweetheart?” It smiled the most heavenly smile, and while I’m looking at this heavenly smile, the whole thing dissolves.

Now go back to the 1st of Romans: “I’ve been set apart,” said he, “for the gospel of God that was promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scripture” (Rom. 1:1-2). So you go back and you search the scriptures for intimations and foreshadowings of this event. Is it in scripture?—for they’re looking for it in some peculiar strange way—-and you come upon the passage where it is in scripture. The question is asked…aside from that which is said of David, when he comes out of David, he’s going to raise out of David a son that will come forth from his body, but (he the Lord is speaking)—-“I will be his father and he shall be my son.” But now this incident…and you go back and you read it: “Can a man have a child?” He doesn’t wait for the response and he goes forward now, “Why then do I see every man”—-not a particular man but every man; this is a prophecy for all men, and by men it means humanity, male-female—-“Why do I see every man with his hands pulling himself out of himself, just like a woman in labor? Why does every face turn pale?” Then it goes on, never has such a day been seen in all Zion.

Never has such a thing been seen in Zion, because no man can understand it, no man can appreciate it, and all would deny it until it happens in the man. For he foretold this by his prophets in the holy scriptures. The prophets who received it didn’t understand it, and they asked the question, “O Lord, when, when is it going to take place?” They were told, “It is not for your time but for our time.” The time had not yet fully come for this germination to take place, to unfold itself in man. So you go back and you read it. You who want to read it go back to Jeremiah, the 30th chapter, and read the story in the first two verses, down, say, to the 6th and 7th verse. Read the entire six or seven verses where the prophet was told to go and ask, in fact, he’s asking the question, how can it happen? So it happened in man. Not in Jerusalem on the surface of this earth; it happens in this body in every body in the world.

Now comes this great event this coming Sunday and the world will be told that he is risen. They will look in the hope of his return and they don’t know how he comes to man. His return is: He’s coming to man, the resurrection is taking place. The crucifixion is over, everyone has been crucified with God, everyone. There isn’t a child born of woman who has not already been crucified with God. As we are told in the 6th chapter of Romans: “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (verse 5). See the difference in tense: We have been united with him in a crucifixion, in a death like his; now, we shall be—see the change in tense—-we shall be resurrected with him in a resurrection like his. We shall be one with him, a union with him in our resurrection with him, because we are sons of God through our resurrection.

No child born of any woman in this world by that birth no matter how holy it is—-you could call it a eugenic birth—-well, that’s not a holy birth. Every birth is holy in the eyes of God. I don’t care how the child was conceived; every child conceived is God conceived. But that is the descendant of David, the human form, the slave that God then assumed. While God walks the earth, unknown even to himself that he is God, then he is born from above by a way foretold by God through his prophets in the holy scriptures. And when it happens to man, man is dumbfounded. He’s the same man. He hasn’t changed his relationship to society. He knows he’s the same husband, the same father, the same son, the same brother, the same friend, he knows he is. But he walks with this knowledge of what has happened to him. Having studied the ancient scriptures he sees in the scripture all the foreshadowings, all the intimations of that which now he has experienced, and he’s dumbfounded.

He sees now that the prophets when they foresaw it, their vision was, like all prophets, foreshadows; and they saw as present what was future, they saw as near what was far. And then we go on the far journey and while we’re on the journey, like a thief in the night, it comes to us suddenly. And then we know now— to go back to the scripture—we are departing from this world. For this is not continuity anymore, this is discontinuity. So the question is asked, “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” The answer comes back, “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:35). You do not know the scriptures or the power of God, for he is now a son of God, all because he’s a son of the resurrection. No more a part of this world that moves upon its wheel, and therefore not a thing changes in this world; it is simply continuity.

If you’ve had the experience of continuity, to see the body drop with a bullet through its brain and see no change in self, you’ll know the difference between survival being continuity and resurrection being discontinuity. Because then you go back to the form that you emptied yourself of, when you wore for educative reasons the garment that is a slave. These are the slave garments and every male in this world, every man in this world, female in this world, these are garments that God wears. As he puts it on, he first must empty himself of his infinite being, his glorified form, to assume the form of a man, and walk the earth as a man for educative reasons in this educated darkness. This, believe it or not, is very important for in this contraction of infinity to a point where it can’t contract any more, which is this slave, it expands its luminosity, it expands its glory by such contraction. There is no limit to translucency, but there’s a limit to contraction and the limit is the garment that God assumed as a slave when he put it on by first emptying himself of the being that he really is who is God.

So you read it and he confesses it is Paul who had the experiences. For Jesus Christ is the I-am-ness of every child born of woman. It is Paul who is telling you the story. It is Paul who is confessing the great secret of Christianity. And so tonight at sundown the Jewish world is telling the story of their freedom, their freedom from slavery. The freedom from slavery is always associated with the serpent rising on a pole. Tonight, they may not tell it that way, but they ask four questions, there are four glasses of wine, and there are four of everything on the table. They don’t really answer these questions correctly at all. The four is a symbol, just a symbol. The four is a door, the Daleth, and the Daleth is I AM. Well, Daleth is the door; he said, I am the door; don’t come in or try in any way to come in (in any other way) save through the door. “I am the door” (John 10:9). And the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is Daleth. It’s the symbol of the door and he tells you “I am the door.” No one tells you that at Seder tonight. No one tells you why the fourth was the fourth son who was Judah, praise. No one tells us.

Tonight…a story came to me this past week. It’s one of the most delightful stories. The man is here tonight and if anyone can end his letter to me as he did…he said, “Forty years ago in the state of Washington, I was then seventeen years old and while saddling a horse on our farm, we had a wheat farm, the horse just simply stepped on my big toe, and my big toe was injured seriously. I not only lost the toenail but it ruined or injured the root of that toenail and from then until this past few months I had an odd nail. It wouldn’t grow in as a real nail, only a piece of it would come in. It was always sore and a very bothersome thing in my foot, this part of a nail. For forty years from the time I was seventeen until today.” He confesses he’s fifty-seven. He said, “I read your book The Law and The Promise. I saw where a lady who was injured at a very tender age went back in time and replayed it where she was not injured. So I went back and saw my toenail as it was before it was injured. I did it every night for only three nights, and then in a couple of days after I stopped it I noticed a little yellowy goo around the nail, and then the nail came out, and a complete new nail came out, and for the first time in forty years I had a perfect big toenail.”

Now, he ends his letter this way, “But, Neville, what amazed me is this, for so little I was given so much!” If you could only catch that mood…that’s Thaddeus, the tenth disciple. He’s only mentioned in the disciples; not a thing is said about him. So few people are so faithful. He could close his letter to me by saying, “But, Neville, what amazes me, for so little I was given so much.” He only did it and it cost him nothing to do it. Three nights he saw what he saw when he was seventeen years old, forty years ago. He saw it and accepted that as the norm for that toe. A few days later something happened. A little goo, he said, a little gooey matter appeared around the nail, it came out, a new nail came, and it’s a perfect nail. Now he has a perfect nail and he hasn’t had one in forty years. But I love his ending of his letter: “So much for so little.” Well, what is the divine measure in the Bible—pressed down, shaken together and running over. That’s how God gives to man for his “little.” So you and I, only a little, and then he brings it back multiplied a thousand-fold.

So I tell you, this great mystery is the mystery of life through death. God died that you and I would become alive forever in his presence. Now listen to these words from Hosea, it’s a promise made by the prophet, dictated to the prophet by God: “And after two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us, to be alive in his presence” (Hosea 6:2). After two days he revives us; on the third day he raises us to be alive in his presence. Well, the third day from today is Sunday. In the mystical language it is the eighth day, for the Sabbath is the seventh day; the Sabbath is tomorrow in the Hebraic world. So, Sunday is the first of a new day, a new week, and it’s called the eighth, the sign of resurrection. But three is also resurrection, because on the third day the earth rose up out of the deep. So on the eighth day he brings up his son and he redeems his son. And everyone will be redeemed and all of us will be wearing that body that God himself wears, which he emptied to become us. It was God and God alone, God himself, who emptied himself of his infinite hu-form, his divine form, and took upon himself the slave of John Brown, Neville Goddard, and all these in the world.

He wore it, and after two days…two days does not mean two twenty-four-hour periods. All that happened to you happened in the tomb. Everything happened in the tomb and in the tomb you were buried. Then infinite mercy, divine mercy turned death into sleep, and so you slept. So everything that happened and is happening now is a dream. Everything in the world is a dream while you are entombed in God’s holy sepulcher, which is the skull of man. If you don’t think it is a dream, ask the man who wrote me the letter. He only imagined that. He saw in his Imagination what he knew he experienced when he was seventeen years old. Before the great mare, and he called her Pansy, he said, “I was standing on a plank and she dropped her big foot onto my big toe, and the plank was so rigid that it was simply the whole weight of that foot came on my toe.” And so, he only imagined and that’s a dream, isn’t it? That’s a waking dream. And so today he has the tangible results of this dream. Now he has a nail, a perfect nail, having not had one in forty years.

And so, I say it is a dream. And the whole thing that happens to man on his pilgrimage of 6,000 years takes place in the second day. That second day is when man is entombed, which tomorrow the Christian world will now relive as Saturday, which is to their calendar the day before the resurrection. So, on that day before the resurrection—and they tell it as a twenty-four-hour period; no, it is the six-thousand-year period—he is crucified and entombed at sundown. And sundown tomorrow night ends the 6,000-year dream of man. They will come early in the morning and they can’t find the body, because they’re looking for it where it isn’t. For the body is in man. And when he awakens, it will be taken away and he, himself, who wore it will not even know how it was taken. Because it was so well worn and beautifully worn by him, it is in the eyes of God divine; for it played the perfect part while he wore it. It was taken away and he was invisible to those who came to bear witness to the story.

So who then was the little child that was found? Is it not Isaac? So in the ___(??) tradition it is stated that Isaac is not to be thought of as begotten of generation but simply the forming of the unbegotten. God is forming himself; he, the unbegotten, forming himself in us, in this sepulcher, the skull of man. And when his job is complete and to his satisfaction it is perfect, it is his image, well, then he awakens that image which is himself and it’s you. “Let us make man in our image” and when the image is perfect and alive, just like him, that it can wear his glorious form, he awakens it in that sepulcher. He awakens to find himself completely entombed, and did not know for one moment in his entire pilgrimage that he was ever entombed or ever asleep. And then he awakens and he comes out, and here comes the fulfillment of the promise—I will give you one, you call him Isaac (which means “he laughs”), you hold him in your hand and he laughs—-and the whole thing is completed.

So the prophecy of scripture is brought to its fulfillment in this series of experiences. So I tell you it is from death to life, rather than from life to death, as we experience it on this level of our being. And so, in these three great experiences the whole mystery of Christianity is contained. So remember, 100,000 this day made their exit normally. I hope that they all know—-of course they now experience it—-there is no death. Survival is automatic. But survival is continuity. I am speaking this night of God’s mightiest act, which brings about a discontinuity and breaks this invidious bond, and brings us out as his sons. So listen to the words, he was not designated Son of God by his birth from the womb of woman, in spite of what the churches taught you (Romans 1:4).. Read it carefully. The earliest Christology accepted that. It was only in the later centuries that the churches organizing around the mystery that they did not understand then claimed it to be something that happened when the little child was born. No, it happened when he was born from above, and the birth from above comes on the heels of his resurrection. For resurrection comes first in a tomb; and he comes out of a tomb, so he’s born from the grave, his resurrection from the dead. He’s resurrected in the tomb and he comes out of the tomb. No one speaks of a woman’s womb as a dead spot. But anyone who awakens in his skull to find himself entombed would know it’s a place where only the dead are placed, so he comes from the dead. It’s the mystery of life through death: The mystery of the little grain of corn…unless it falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it brings forth much.

So God buried himself in us, and then we dream, and in our dream we have the illusion of motion and travel all over this vast, wonderful earth of ours. One day we awake to discover we have never really left this place. So when I was told, many years ago, you do not move in waking any more than you move on your bed in sleep—it’s all a movement in mind. You only believe you moved in waking as you believe you move in sleep. Well, then I woke, and how could I understand when that very day I had dates that would take me out of my apartment in New York City? I was on the road traveling around, and yet here is the voice telling me, “You do not move in waking any more than you move on your bed in sleep.” That I do not move on my bed in sleep that’s obvious. I get up in the morning, I’m still in the bed after an experience of vast travels, but now he compares that to this—that I think I move. And so, when I awoke in my skull to find myself in a tomb, I realized that the voice was telling the truth. Even though tonight I’m going to drive home and tomorrow travel around, I still must know the whole thing here is taking place in a dream. And so the great Shelley was right: “He has awakened from the dream of life. ’Tis we who lost in stormy visions keep with phantoms an unprofitable strife.”

Now, you learn what that gentleman who told me this story tonight has already learned. You can imagine something that was injurious forty years ago, go back and see it as it ought to have been seen through the forty years. Don’t do much! He said, “I did so little and received so much.” Treat it just as lightly as that, and see how you can dream all these lovely things into being. For it is a being.

Now let us go into the Silence and dream nobly.

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___(?? Jack has all of my books and books that I recommend.

Q: ___(??) these cycles ___(??) and I read the Mary Magdalene all through the rest of the story. I didn’t quite recognize it at first…

A: May I tell you, after you’ve had the experience you will still, through habit, think as you thought before the experience. You find it so difficult to believe that you really are the being that the experience convinces you that you are. You are still human, with all of the weaknesses, all the limitations, and you can’t bring yourself to believe that such a marvelous thing that has happened to you really means what it does mean. You find yourself hesitating to make a claim, almost being very self-conscious in your discussion of it, because you still want the affection of others. And there aren’t any others; these are all garments that you wear. There’s only one Jesus Christ, and so when he awakes in you, individualized as you, it’s the same Jesus Christ that awakened in me. And so, he’s wearing that garment and that garment, and that garment and the other garment. But there’s only one God. You find it difficult even to discuss it, especially in a social gathering, so you don’t recognize the being that you really are. You toy with the idea, you go to, you ponder it, you dwell upon it. It seems too good—that’s what the gentleman said, “So much for so little.” What have I done to earn it?—-you see that you’ve done nothing. And so I mean it seriously when I tell you that I cannot, when I reflect upon it, for one second can I assume that I did anything to earn it. It was grace, grace and still more grace.

Q: What is your interpretation of the saints? The Bible speaks of saints.

A: Saints? Well, you’re told, all eventually are destined to be the saints. But it’s not the saint that man makes. Today our religious bodies name someone as a saint based upon their investigation of what happened in the interval. But no man can make a saint. You’re automatically, by your birth from above as a son of God through resurrection, you’re whatever in the divine mind a saint means. Whatever it means you are, for you’re the Son of God in full power. That’s what the words are in this translation: “And he was designated Son of God in full power by the Holy Spirit by his resurrection from the dead.” So there’s nothing beyond the full power. You rise into a world which you find completely subject to your creative power, and that creative power is your imagining. So none will be better than the other; in fact, if you really love, you wouldn’t want it. I would feel embarrassed to think that he loved me more than he loved my mother, I really would. I would think that if I met her and I was more in her eyes more glorious than he had clothed her, I would be embarrassed, knowing what she has meant to me. And so, you aren’t going to be more than another, but nothing less than another. And none can lose their identity in the body of God. All perfect in the body of God, wearing the body of God.

Any other questions, please?

Q: Neville, the significance of the crucifixion and the resurrection…what significance does the youth of Christ have? For example, as a twelve year old he spoke in the temple.

A: The youth of Christ? What significance does the youth of Christ have if it’s resurrection right after crucifixion? From crucifixion to resurrection, what significance has the youth? Well, the youth is simply when man has the resurrection, he is like a babe he is so bewildered. He talks of nothing but, just like a child, and simply ponders it and it grows in him. So the understanding of what has happened to him grows in him. So we’re told, the ___(??) for the Lord was upon him and he grew in wisdom and in the fear of the Lord. It has happened but it is so overpowering that it will take him eternity to fully digest what has happened to him. That he was taken off the wheel of recurrence and lifted by a divine, merciful act into the kingdom of heaven where he inherits not only the kingdom but he inherits the presence that is God. So, how can you take it in all in one grasp? You can’t do it. It comes to me later, but later. Someone would write me a letter and the letter throws light on something that I’m reading in scripture.

Well, the time is up. And then after tonight we go back into a norm of the law. So we’ll start next week. I’m quite sure the subject, whatever it is, will be on the law. Please send me your letters and tell me how you use it and how wisely you used it. I hope you have fantastic results in your world. So, ’til next Tuesday. Thank you.