Our Real Beliefs

Tonight’s subject is “Our Real Beliefs.” I really want this series to be the most productive that we’ve ever had. By that I mean I want everyone present to really have a goal, a noble goal, and realize it, realize it before we close in May. May I tell you, you can realize it, I mean that seriously. So what do I mean by our real beliefs? Our real beliefs are what we live by. Real belief and knowing are one. When a man really believes, it’s just as though he knows, it’s tantamount to knowing. But I tell you, belief—I call it faith, I call it belief—it is not complete till it becomes experience.One must experience it and then they know it. Now you will hear the same thing tonight. Everyone present will hear exactly the same thing, but no two will hear it in the same depth. Some will hear it on the surface, others will hear it below the surface, and others will hear it down in the very depths of their being.It’s where you live. As we are told, “The word came to them as it did to us; but it did not profit them, because it was not mixed with faith in those who heard it” (Heb. 4:2). They heard it and rejected it, but they heard it. It came in and went out. It did not receive acceptance by those who heard it, and so they instantly rejected it. Tonight, I hope you will not reject what I’m going to tell you. But that’s your choice. You’re free; you can accept it or reject it.

But I tell you, if I get through tonight and you apply it…because you are the operant power. I can tell you but it doesn’t operate itself. If this very moment I ask you to think of a friend, just think of a friend, and now hear him tell you something lovely, something lovely about himself, about a mutual friend or about you, just hear it, do you believe that that actually took place? You may say, well, I imagined it, but it didn’t really take place. I will tell you, the day will come, and I hope now, that when you imagine a state, before you have external confirmation of that state, to you it is as though you heard it externally, you know it; that this internal act is equal to the external confirmation of that act. You get to that point, because the difference between God and man is measured only in terms of this imaginative power.

If I would now speak of the power that is God—as we’re told in scripture, it’s revealed constantly as power, sheer power—3rd chapter, 4th, 5th, and 6th verses of the Book of Exodus—sheer power. Moses stands in the presence of power, but it’s creative power. And the difference between God and man is measured by, simply, power. On this level, if I am on the surface of my being, only this is real, what my senses allow. But if I go deeper into my own being, moving ever toward the core of my being, who is God, then my imaginative act becomes externalized, quickly externalized, as I go deeper and deeper. On the surface it seems to take an interval of time, if I believe. If I don’t believe, it never comes into some external form at all, never. Yet I’m living in a world not understanding it, not knowing what it’s all about. So, really, the story that I want to tell you is trying to ask you, to plead with you, to buy your religion wholesale. Go to the Maker, go to the source; don’t buy it retail with some man in between. No one in between you and the source, you go right into the depths and buy your religion wholesale by going to the source which is your own wonderful human Imagination, your own I-am-ness. That’s God.

The story we told you last Tuesday of one whose name was Eddie…Eddie had the identical experience of the one recorded in the Book of Exodus, when he heard “Do not come up here.” Read the words, the words are, “Do not come here”—read it in the Book of Exodus, 4th, 5th and 6th verses of the 3rd chapter of Exodus. And the Lord said unto Moses, “Do not come here.” Then Moses hid his face, not in shame but in fear. He was afraid to look at God. So Eddie saw the symbol of God and he ran, he was scared too…the identical story. What did he hear? The revelation of God’s name: I AM. He first heard it, “I AM”…no one in sight…then it repeated itself so loudly he thought it came from above. He looked up thinking it was some machine, maybe some helicopter with a P.A. system is broadcasting the name of I AM. There was not a thing in sight. And then the third, “Don’t come up here!” Being curious he did go up there to the hill to confront a rattlesnake. Fortunately, it was not coiled to spring, it was simply a four-foot long snake all stretched out, the symbol of the creative power of God. But it scared him. It scares man, when man actually sees what really is in himself, that he is solely responsible for everything that’s taking place in his world, solely responsible! It scares him. It’s too much, until he goes deeper and deeper and hears the same word of truth but hears it in depth, and then he assumes full responsibility for all that is taking place within him.

So tonight, let me share with you a few stories. Several years ago, a lady—she’s not here tonight; she’s now on a new job, and it’s taken her away for awhile—but when she heard it, that imagining creates reality, she said to herself, “Well, if that is so, I would like to go to Egypt.” She had no money. She’s never been a lady of means, always working, small sums of money, could never accumulate what it would take to make the trip. And so, the usual story, she told her dream, she didn’t keep it to herself, she told it, nothing wrong with it. If you really believe it you can tell it. As you’re told in scripture, “Go and tell no man, but show John.” Show the world. Well, if you don’t tell man before, will man believe you after the event? He may question your honesty, but if you tell him before the event then he is assured, because, actually, you have a witness to the fact you did tell it before the event. So that is also in scripture, “And now I will tell you before it takes place that when it does take place you may believe.” For that is courage in the depths of the soul, where one knows the imaginal act is a fact at the very moment of the act, though not yet seen by the outer man. But not everyone has that courage and that faith in the imaginal act. So she told it, and, naturally, her friends criticized her, “It is stupid to go to that man, you waste your money. It’s not religion, what is it? He is telling you that an assumption though false if persisted in will harden into fact? Well, that’s stupid; it doesn’t make sense.” To them a true judgment must conform to the external fact to which it relates. So if I say, “Well, isn’t it a lovely dog,” and there is no dog to bear witness to my judgment, my judgment is false. So that’s what they gathered from what she told that I am teaching…and so the whole thing is insane, it’s stupid.

Well, the years went on—it’s been seven years now—and this is what happened this past week. She got a job. She’s a nurse and so the job moves around, she goes from home to home where the need is there. So she found herself in the environment or the neighborhood of a friend she had not seen or contacted in a year. She exchanged a birthday card and a Christmas greeting, with a little note on the card, but no telephone call and no other contact. Finding herself in the neighborhood she calls her. When this friend heard her voice on the wire, she said, “Oh, Jan, you can have it! You can have it!” She said, “Alright, alright, I’ll take it. What is it?” And then this is the story. There was a party, a pre-Lenten party at the Hotel Hilton, some Mardi Gras by a Catholic society, the Joseph and Mary Society. There were door prizes. The major prize was a thirty day trip first-class, all expenses paid, stopping along the way at the Hilton hotels in the Near East, and, Egypt is part of the set up. The lady and her family had spent several months last year abroad, and had no desire this year to go abroad again. In fact, they had already arranged to go to New York City for the World’s Fair, which opens in April. So a trip abroad is out. Furthermore, this ticket, this door ticket, only accepted one person, not a group, not a family. So that was what the friend said to her she would give her. Jan said, “Alright, I’ll take it!” and then called me up to tell me the story, delayed, seemingly, seven years. She still now has the ticket if she wants it to the Near East, where Egypt is included, and she goes first-class, all expenses paid, but everything paid, because she believed. Maybe in the interval her faith wavered. Maybe she justified it by saying, “Maybe I don’t want it” or in some strange way tried to explain it away. But it still, in its own good time, came to the surface.

I ask you not to throw your dreams away and see that they are impossible to realization in this strange drab world of external facts. Every dream can come true if I can get through to you that your Imagination is God, and that your imaginal act, when you think of a friend, carrying on a conversation, that is Jesus Christ in action. “Examine yourselves to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (2 Cor. 13:5). If he is in you, then who is he? He is your own imagining. God is your Imagination; God in action is imagining; and God in action is Christ. Christ, as defined in scripture, is “the power and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).

So I tell you, everyone can realize if you really believe in Jesus Christ. One billion will say they believe in Jesus Christ, and cross themselves before a dead piece of wood or a piece of marble or clay or something other than a living God. The very being kneeling before these external icons…here is the king of Greece who just died, and they brought what they considered a holy icon for the man who has died. In the eyes of God a king is just like a servant, they do not differ. One’s love for one is not greater than his love for another. To what extent have they heard the word of God and believed? So he’s dying to bring a holy icon. It didn’t work. He just saw the little icon, and so he makes his exit like any other person in the world. I hope that everyone here will find the real Jesus Christ. The real Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagining; that’s God in action. The real God is your own wonderful lovely Imagination. When you say “I am,” that’s God.

Now let me share with you that which was given to me this past week by a gentleman, who is here tonight. He’s written the most glorious story. I hope he keeps it up because they are exciting. I shared them with those who came home since I received his letters, and I will share them with you tonight. He’s a writer, he writes for TV. He started three years ago on this show that has been running for three years, and he writes every third or fourth script. He said, “When I started, my price was $2,500 a script, and in two years my agent got it up to $3,000 a script. Then, a year ago last Christmas my mother came west, came from the east to visit us, and I told her what I received for a script, $3,000 a script, and she said, ‘Well, I always assumed that you got $3,500 a script.’” She wasn’t at all impressed with $3,000. Then he tried to explain to her that as far as he knew there was no writer in the field, solo writer, who got more than he did. He was getting $3,000 a script; she was not impressed; didn’t disturb her at all. She still said that as far as she was concerned it was worth $3,500 a script.

Well, two months later the agent was called by the studio for a contract, a renewal of contract for the next year for the writer. Before, naturally, he would go to the studio, he would have to discuss it with the writer. So he explained to the writer he didn’t think that they should ask for more. They moved up from $2,500 a script to $3,000 a script, and you shouldn’t price yourself out of the business by asking for more. And so, the writer agreed. It was a nice friendly relationship between himself and the producer, so why ask for more and get out of the business? So, it was agreed. The very next day after this agreement a conference was held to discuss stories, a story conference. So the producer said to the writer, “Have you come to an agreement with the contract for the next year?” And he said, “Yes, I’m going to sign.” He said, “Have you asked for more money?” He said, “No.” He said, “You ask for more.” He said, “But you’re always complaining about the budget, it isn’t big enough, and now you’re telling me to ask for more.” He said, “You ask for more money.” Again, he said, “I don’t want to price myself out of the business.” He said, “You tell your agent to ask for more.”

So when he went back, he called his agent, and when he told the agent to ask for more money, the agent thought he had too many cocktails for lunch. So, he said, no, I will give you the source, and he told him what had been told to him that very day at the conference. So the agent, now armed with this information that the very producer had recommended an increase, he called up the business office of the studio and asked for more. They simply blew their top, they screamed; and then very generously they said, we’ll forget it, as though you didn’t even ask for it, so that the nice relationship between the producer and the writer can go on as it has for the past three years. But the agent knowing the source was adamant, and so when he came out of that office he came out with a contract for $3,500 a script. So, said the writer in his letter to me, “My mother merely assumed that I was getting $3,500 a script, and so her assumption went behind the backs of all of us, the producers, everyone, and bore fruit.” So then he said, “I called her up and I told her what I was getting for a script now. Then she started to seriously study your books.” And he said, “A problem with Bertha, who has been with us twenty-five years, a most distressing problem, which I will tell you about at some future date. But may I tell you, last Friday it was completely swept out of her life.”

“And now a confession is in order. When I first heard you I couldn’t understand you; then I began to be afraid that I was going mad because I could understand you.” Then he said, “I will explain that later.” So, I am waiting eagerly for that explanation. But we are told in the Book of John, “He has a devil, he is mad; why listen to him?” You who have your Bible, that’s the 10th chapter, the 20th verse of the Book of John. That is the chapter wherein he said, “I and my Father are one.” He’s just gotten through the previous, or the 8th chapter, by saying, “I know my Father. My Father is he whom you call God. But I know my Father and ye know not your God” (John 8:34,35). And for this they stoned him—stoned him with the literal facts of life—that’s the stone of scripture. When you throw the facts at a man where the man dares to assume what reason denies, what his senses deny, then you, who will not go along with his depth, you throw the stones or the facts of life at him to deny the reality of what he is claiming by a mere imaginal act. And so, he has just gotten through making these bold assertions that, “I and my Father are one; and my Father is he whom you call God; but I know my Father and ye know not your God.”

And so, this story…he said, “I didn’t understand you…and then I began to fear a form of madness because I could understand you.” For this teaching takes you into an entirely different world, where reason on this surface of the mind doesn’t really prevail…that you really believe in the reality of what inwardly you are doing, and then it comes to the surface. If you don’t tell it before and you tell it afterwards, they will question your honesty. If you take them into your confidence and tell it before, if you have enough faith, go about your business. If you don’t, they will plague you and throw the stones at you. Every time they meet you they will say, “Where is it? You said you were going to have a certain home, a certain job, a certain sum of money, where is it?” And so, they are always throwing the stones at you, all the facts of life.

Now, here is something, and you listen to it carefully. It’s a long letter, and he’s bringing out certain points that might have escaped you. For here what we’re trying to do is find out all the little facets of the greatest secret in the world, the secret of imagining. For as Fawcett said, “The secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which all should aspire, for supreme power, supreme wisdom, and supreme delight lie in the solution of this far off problem, this great mystery.” And he has thrown some light on it. So if I can recall, it’s a long letter, typewritten, four pages, but I will give you some of the highlights of it. He said, “When I met my producer three years ago, he was a very subdued and reserved sort of a gentleman.” “Reserved,” he said, “would be the right word to use to describe him, very reserved, so unlike the volatile enthusiast with whom I formerly worked. He was very reserved, in fact, he couldn’t express the superlative in any way. In fact, his greatest praise was the word ‘good.’ You brought in a script and he would accept the script, and his highest praise was ‘Good.’

“Well, I thought, I’m going to change this. So I lay on the bed and I heard him say to me, ‘Great, just great!’ Now, I hadn’t started the script. I had just given him a script and he had pronounced the script ‘Good.’ I am now doing this on the next script, and I heard him distinctly. I went over and over in my audio setup as it were, so I heard him inwardly pronounce the new script as ‘Great, just great!’ And while I am lying there the phone rings…I haven’t started the script…the phone is ringing and it’s the producer. He is telling me that the script that he had formerly pronounced ‘Good’ was ‘Great, just great!’ Well, then he threw me a curve, because that’s not what I expected. It was about the new script which I had not even started. So he not only threw me this curve, but someone had their lines crossed. So, right there I kept on now working a new, I would say, line for him to use, and I changed it from ‘Great, just great!’ to ‘Terrific!’ So here I am, I only heard one word, ‘It is terrific!’ Well, I submitted the script and that’s exactly the word he used when he said to me, ‘It’s terrific!’ and with the same enthusiasm that matched my imagining.

“Now I said to myself, two months later…every script I presented within two months it was either ‘Great, just great!’ or ‘Terrific!’ He didn’t go back to ‘Good’ anymore. I said, now, I’m going to experiment again. So this time I’m going to make him say ‘Absolutely sensational!’ So I heard him say ‘Absolutely sensational!’” Then he said to me, “What the hell, if you’re praising yourself, why not get the best! So I’m doing it to myself, anyway, so why be modest about it? I’m doing the whole thing because he’s only echoing it. So I said, ‘Absolutely sensational!’ So I finished the script, took the script into him, and he pronounced it ‘Good.’” He said, “I almost fell out of the chair. It was not the role that I had written for him,” and he said, “You know how authors hate ad-libbing.”

I know what that means in the theatrical world. When the author writes a play and some actor thinks he knows more than the author, and he changes the script and he ad-libs, or maybe he forgets his lines and if he is smart enough he can throw a few words in, and he ad-libs. But, no matter how smart he thinks he is he doesn’t flatter the author. The author feels he knows better than any actor what should be there at that moment. And so, he said in his letter, “You know how authors hate ad-libbing. So what could I do? The script had to be cut; so he gave me back the script to cut a certain portion of it. I took the script home, did all the cutting, and then mailed it to him. And I mailed it as a petulant child. I didn’t even revise what he had said. But the very next day he calls and he said to me on the wire, ‘It’s absolutely sensational!’”

Now, this is a point I want you to pay strict attention to. He said, “You know, my experience with the producer disturbed me, greatly disturbed me. To hear or to occasionally think about this isn’t so bad.” By that he meant you’ll hear that “All that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.” Well, to hear that and to occasionally think about it isn’t too bad, but when it seeps in and takes hold of you and goes deeper, and you realize that it’s true! That that producer, who is so important in the production of this great series, who is spending such fortunes—he has it to spend, he allows it, he knows what he’s doing, he’s been successful, been running three years—and yet he had to actually utter the words that this writer is writing for him. And when he met him he was so reserved he never used any superlative and could never bring himself to praise a thing beyond the word “Good.” And he raised him from “Good” to “Great, just great!”, “Terrific!”, “Absolutely sensational!” That’s an enormous accomplishment in anyone’s vocabulary when he began as a most reserved party. So when the individual writer now sees what he did with a man, he said, “You know, it distressed me. It distressed me for the simple reason I had to remake my world only as I remake myself; only as I could remake myself could I in any way remake the world…and what an undertaking!” But, he said, “I found a solution. I will not now think of myself x-number of years into the future. I am painting a portrait of myself. Portraits are not painted by one stroke of the brush. And so, I am taking it easy, and I start with the little things in my life, the little things, and I change them to make them conform to the portrait of the being I am painting of myself.”

“I started with a simple thing. We have a cat, or we had a cat, and it simply clawed up the entire rug. All the rug was simply pieces of felt all clawed up. And so we delayed buying a new rug.” Really, said he, “We were hoping that she would die. After all, she was fifteen years old and she seemed determined to outlive Methuselah. But, because she still was very healthy and she didn’t die, we bought the new rug. Right away she started all over again to tear up the rug. For two days I said, ‘Something must be done in my Imagination. I have proved it with the producer.’ So I went to work in my Imagination and saw this cat in the backyard tearing up a mat that we had in the backyard for just such a purpose. On the third day, she was out in that backyard clawing the mat, and to the day she died she never once tore up our rug. Where is the destructive power in the world save in the Imagination of man!”

If someone heard that story and didn’t believe it, they could this night have a cat in their house and they will say, “Oh, that was just coincidence in his case. It wouldn’t work here, so I’m not even going to try it. That borders on madness, and no one wants to be mad.” In fact, to say that you were once put away is like Leprosy; they don’t want that, that you were once committed to some asylum. To go to a hospital because you had a pain and you needed an operation that’s allowed today because everyone has them. But not everyone is put away for some mental, I would say, side issue. And so, in his case, he did it. The average person would have heard it; and who would believe that in their own home they, too, could make the dog or the cat or the bird or anything else conform to an imaginal act?

Well, having done this now he sees the power within him. He’s now going to go all out. He knows he’s done it; he has tangible proof that he’s done it, and from now on he said he’s going to actually be faithful to what he’s found within himself. He’s found Christ. The day is coming he will actually stand in the presence of infinite love. But before we stand in the presence of infinite love he presents himself first as infinite might. Throughout the Bible you can’t find any basis to deny it: It is might, it’s power and authority. From beginning to end when he presents himself it’s sheer might, sheer power. Until one day, man will see that this power on this level, and on many levels below, resolves itself into infinite love; and it’s man, and it’s the being that you’re moving towards, and it’s God the Father. So here, in his own case, it scared him, or rather it depressed him…the thing that had such power was in man. And yet, it’s no other place, it’s only in man, because the power of which we speak, the greatest power in the world, really the only power, is your own wonderful human Imagination.

Now, the lady whose story I told first, Jan said that at this present job of hers this little boy came home from school, and the high winds we have been having took the aerial down and flattened it. It’s still on the ground, she said. So she tried the TV and there was no TV. She tried it and tried it, and there was no TV. The little boy came home and she said, Oh Lord, he’s going to be so disappointed because he’s back from school and he wants to see the TV. So he goes straight to the TV, he turns it on—he saw the aerial flattened—then he put his two hands on the top of the machine, and just put them there. She said to him, “You know, there’s going to be no picture.” He said, “Oh, yes there will be. That does it.” She said, “What does it?” He said, “My Imagination; I just imagined it. It’ll work.” He came back, got in front of the picture with Jan, and here comes this beautiful picture.

Now, Jan couldn’t do it, and yet she knows this principle. But she’s an adult now. We become adulterated as we grow in this world. The little child could actually believe that that power in his hand was all his Imagination: “It’ll do it.” And Jan told me over the telephone, because she’s working and can’t come here now, that the little boy only put his hand on it and swore that here would come a picture; and the picture came to Jan’s amazement but not to the boy’s. He sat there and looked at it and Jan sat there bewildered, the one who has the thing now to go to Egypt.

Now, to come back to the gentleman’s story. He said, “I saw an ad of a Swiss record changer, so I went over to my electronics dealer and I told him that I would like one. He said, ‘They aren’t in the country and it will be, possibly, a few weeks before they get here, but we have eleven orders so far, would you like to order one?’ He said, “Yes, I’d like to order one,” so he ordered one. So he said, at the end of the month he received a bill for $375 for the changer. Well, he hadn’t received the instrument, so he called up the office. They apologized and said that the girl mistook the order for a sale. And so, we have bad news for you, said the girl, it will not be here before three or four months. But they corrected their mistake. It was not a bill, it was simply an order they had misinterpreted. He then said to himself, I will now look around the house, and spent three days, instead of writing, to see where he was going to put the outlet for this machine. When he decided where he was going to put it, he called the electricians to bore a hole through the wall to put in a cable for this changer. Now he said, “I will need a stand for it, so I went out looking for a stand. Went to all the places…one salesman said, ‘What kind of a machine have you because you don’t like these stands?’ So he told the nature of the machine, and the man said, ‘If you have one it’s a miracle, because there aren’t any in the country, and they won’t be here before three or four months,’ which was only confirmation of what the agency said.

He said, “Alright, I can’t find the stand, I will design one.” So he designed the stand and had it made. When the stand came and he placed it where he intended putting the machine, he said to himself, “I will now see the machine on it,” which he did. He said, “Now that I have the machine it’s only fair to pay the bill,” so he sat down and wrote the check out and sent the check off to the electronic firm for his $370-odd in full for his machine. Two days after this they called him to say, “We have your record changer.” He wondered why? There were twelve of them on the list. The man only received four in his shipment of an order of twelve. This friend, who wrote me the letter, said, “Well, it could be that I sent my check in advance, because I paid for what to me was before me in my Imagination, it could be that. On the other hand, I’m not asking questions, why he gave me the first one in and why he jumped me from twelve to number one. However, I have the machine. And now my next problem is this, it’s a very delicate, complicated, sly, tricky thing, and so I am now trying to imagine myself smart enough to operate it.” So that is a story of using your imaginations.

I say faith…as we’re told, “We understand that by faith the world was framed by the word of God.” Well, you know who God is now: Your own wonderful I-am-ness, that’s God. He’s framing his world, but it takes faith. To hear it without faith it won’t work; to hear it mixed with faith it will work. If you sit down, as he did—he said, “I lay on the bed”—you can sit right here and carry on this inner mental conversation from premises of fulfilled desire—for thinking follows the track laid down in one’s own inner conversations. You control the nature of the conversation and see to it that it’s not an argument; it’s simply from wishes fulfilled, regardless of the nature of that wish. You carry it on in the inside. Some are better at the video; they can see better than they can hear. But I find hearing so very, very easy, and I’m not a musician, so you don’t have to be musically inclined to really hear. I appreciate music but I don’t play. I don’t understand music, in the true sense of the word, I simply appreciate it. Yet, I can hear it vividly. A man’s voice…let him speak for one second, let me get the tone, then put upon that tone any word I want to hear and I hear it as though he were here.

Now, how long it takes for what I have heard him say to come to pass, I don’t know. As we tell you in that story in the Book of Habakkuk: “The vision has its own appointed hour. It ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” (2:3). So, one seed grows over night, another seed takes a month, another seed takes a year. As in birth a child comes into this world nine months, but a chicken comes out in twenty-one days. So everything has a different interval of time between conception and birth in this world. So what determines the nature of that interval I don’t know, but have faith that it is sure and it will not for its own sake be late. Not for its own nature will it be late. So the child comes out in nine months, it isn’t late for a child, and if a chicken comes out in twenty-one days, it’s not late or early for a chicken. That’s the interval of time between that moment where it was fertilized and properly nested and then the moment of breaking the shell and hatching.

So here in our case, apply it and you will in the next few months—I’m only here for three months, not yet three months—and you’ll be able to tell me the most fantastic stories in the world. Because you couldn’t start with anything more behind the eight ball, to be a conservative gentleman, who would never beyond the wildest dream go outside and exclaim something is really “Absolutely sensational!” It’s so against his nature. A thing is good…that’s good enough. You’re being well paid for it. You got 2,500; then you got 3,000 for a script; and every three weeks you’re bringing one in because it’s a half-hour show, it runs weekly; so, every three weeks you’re getting a check for 3,000, and now you’re getting one for 3,500. And yet the man, I’m quite sure, like all writers he’s not contracted to write only, and only for that. If he has time outside of writing these scripts, there are other outlets for his talents as a writer. He’s not confined to that. And therefore the man who is not given to exploding, he made him explode, and raised him gradually to “Great, just great!” to “Terrific!” and then the final explosion. And he said in his letter, “It’s the warmest and the friendliest of relationships between us.”

So I ask you to do the same thing. I don’t care what it is in this world: know what you want, conceive a scene implying the fulfillment of that dream, and then inwardly carry on these mental conversations from the premise of the fulfilled desire. If you can see at the same time that you hear, like a TV set, alright, put them together, it’s better. But if you can’t really visualize, and not many can visualize, you will find the audio very, very simple. But when you begin to visualize, may I tell you, it’s the most thrilling thing in the world, to be able to actually see. Just like this…to be in a dream awake. It’s like being in a dream, only awake. And so when you break it and return to this level where it hasn’t taken place, you have no fears, you have no doubts. The whole world is a mask. You know you saw it. You’re still seeing it in your mind’s eye now; but you actually saw it, and you heard it, and so it must come to pass. You saw it and you heard it.

And so, if you meet someone who is passing through sheer hell, and they ask of you anything, they’re in your world, single them out, and hear them tell you that they have what they sought, just as though they have it. And then let it go. Don’t raise a finger to make it so. Don’t get on the phone and call a friend to ask the friend to intercede, to help you out. Don’t do a thing! Just simply believe in the reality of your imaginal act; because if you go to the end, then you can’t concern yourself with the means to that end. That would deny the end, by any means that you would even entertain to aid the birth of it, because you went beyond pregnancy right into birth. And so, you saw it and you heard it; now leave it alone and let it work. May I tell you, it will work. Then you will find God. And when you come to the final grand, I would say, the last stretch, the final stretch, when you’re going home now, really going home, leaving behind you this world, this age altogether; then will come one after the other the most fantastic mystical experiences where everything said of Jesus Christ you will experience. And you will know beyond all doubt who Jesus Christ really is: That he truly is supernaturally born, born out of the skull of a man; how he discovers the fatherhood of God; and how he ascends into heaven. Everything said of him happens to you. And then you know how true the story is, how altogether fantastically wonderful scripture is when one experiences it.

And so, I ask you to join with me in testing this greatest of all mysteries. Put it to the test. Start with something simple. The average person who would have a destructive animal like a cat wouldn’t consider that a simple problem, and yet in forty-eight hours it was resolved. But one point he made, when the man told you, he used the words, “He expressed himself when he said to me ‘Terrific!’—he expressed it with the enthusiasm that matched my imagining.” The world is only response, infinite response, it’s an echo, and the whole vast world only echoes. So, what echo in this case? When he said “Terrific!” you can see what the writer’s imaginal act was. He actually caught a mood that was really forceful, so when the word “Terrific!” came through, it wasn’t simply “Oh, I think it’s terrific,” he exploded with “Terrific!” to equal the imaginal state of the man who made him say “Terrific!”

So, catch it and feel it, and use your Imagination as a great actor would. He has to put himself into the part and play it. And to the degree that he feels it he gets beyond the footlights. If he doesn’t identify himself with the character that he’s trying to depict, he never gets over. He has to become the character. And so this one became the character of hearing the actor whose lines he wrote, and the actor was given a line to say, you say “Terrific!” “And now listen carefully, because you’ve got to say it as I am directing it: I don’t want any little ‘terrific,’ I want you to really give it. And so I will now give you the mood that I want you to adopt.” And so he gives the mood, and the word comes through exactly to match his imaginal act.

His use of words fascinates me, because not everyone understands the baseball language when he said, “He threw me a curve…something entirely different. It wasn’t what I expected. That was the script that he already read and pronounced ‘Good.’ I don’t want that, I want him to pronounce this new statement and say that it is really great, ‘Great, just great!’ of the new script. I haven’t even started the new script, and you used my words but you sort of predated it. You went back in time and called it the other script.” And then the man comes back and actually calls it, but after he changed the word from that to “Terrific!” That’s really discovering how you use your Imagination. But if you don’t, and you think it’s just on this level, you will never get off. I want everyone here to really believe it and try it.

If I take from you this night—if you’re here for the first time—and I’ve taken or shaken your belief in a personal God outside of yourself, a personal savior outside of yourself, I don’t apologize, because I know it is true what I’ve told you. I’m not theorizing; I am speaking from experience. So when I take this platform and tell you that I know the reality that is God, I wouldn’t care what the whole world would say about it. When they say, “You don’t mean that God truly stood before you, or you stood before him, and you looked into the face of man? I said, Yes, I did…and it is man. I AM is Spirit, but it needs man, its perfect form, to really express anything in this world. It assumes the form of man. So when you see I AM in form, the form is man. Just like the little girl who told her grandmother, “You know what? I went up last night in my dream right up to the sun. And you know what? He had a face. And you know what? He had hands and he had feet. And you know what? The ocean, the big ocean…(tape ends.)