Power

Tonight’s subject isPower.I do not mean the power of Caesar, I’m speaking tonight of the power of God, for here in this world of Caesar I think all nations would admit that this land of ours is by far the greatest power in the world of Caesar: economic power and military power. And here we are, against a tenth-rate nation, and find on our hands the longest war in our history. We say we have an objective and that we have the means to achieve it, but we are unwilling to use the means that we have. Well, then, modify the objective to fit the means that we are willing to use. That belongs to the world of Caesar. If we do not modify the objective to fit the means we are willing to use, then cut bait and forget it, and forget the so-called “saving face.” But I am not speaking of that kind of power. I am speaking of the power of God, which is called in Scripture, “Jesus Christ.” Paul defines Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Here we find wisdom and power exalted and personalized as God’s companion in the creation of the world. That power is your own wonderful human imagination. That’s the power of God! That is Christ. As far as I am concerned, that is Jesus Christ of the Scriptures.

Now, tonight we are talking about this power. The earliest gospel is Mark, and the first words we find on the lips of this power are: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15) Now, the wordrepentas we use it in the world is not what Scripture means when we use it here. We mean to feel remorse, regret. That hasn’t a thing to do with the wordrepent. It’s the Greekmetanoia, a radical, butradical, change of attitude, a radical change of mind.

Can I see an objective, and then everything tells me: well, I can’t realize it? Well, do I have thepowerto realize an objective? I tell you, we have; we have the power. Well, what is the deeper meaning of power but effectiveness in achieving one’s purpose in life! Well, so I have a purpose. Do I have the power? I tell everyone: Yes. You can imagine the end, can’t you? Can you imagine what it would be likeifit were true? Can you feel what it would be likeifit were true? Well, then, that is power! Now, can you be persistent in it? Can you remain faithful to that end as though it were true?

Now, I don’t care what the objective is. You have the power to achieve it if you know this power is the power of Christ. For all things are possible to him. He is personified in Scripture. Let us go back and see how they first personify him. You’ll read it in the 8th chapter of the book of Proverbs, the 22nd verse through to the end, the 36th verse, and these are the words: “God possessed me in the beginning of his way, the very first of his acts of old.” (Proverbs 8:22) One translation has it: “He created me.” That’s not a good translation. I can’t say I create my capacity to think. I can develop it, but it was with me in the beginning. I can’t say I created my capacity to imagine; it was with me. I may not imagine correctly, but it was with me. So, God possessed me in the beginning of his way, the very first of his acts of old, before He brought forth the universe, before he laid out the foundations of the earth, I was beside him like a little child. I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, delighting in his inhabited world. “Now, my sons, listen to me, he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, but he who misses me, injures himself. All who hate me love death.”

You read these words in the 8th chapter of Proverbs. Here he is personalized as a little child, God’s companion in the creation of the world. When you read it, it doesn’t make sense, but I tell you from my own personal experience, having practiced the art of repentance and having experienced the birth from above with the little child, I know exactly what the prophet meant when he was inspired to write those words. One day you will encounter this creative power in you, personified as a little child. The whole vast world has completely misunderstood it and thinks it is a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes that was found by the shepherds two thousand years ago. That’s a sign of the birth in man of the creative power of God. So God is actually bringing forth his creative power in man, and when it is brought to birth in man so that man actually becomes part of the creative power of the universe, the sign of his birth—the sign of his awareness of it—is that of a little child. So, here I was like him; I was beside him like a little child when he brought forth the universe. So, in everyone, in bringing me forth as part of the creative power of the universe, the sign of my arriving at that point is symbolized in a little child. When I find the child, I have found life. Now I have life in myself. I’m no longer an animated body; I am a life-giving spirit. If I miss it, I injure myself. “All who hate me love death.”

Now, this world is the world of death. So you tell the story to the world, and the majority would rather have the building across the street or this building—something to them that is secure—than to know of a power. Take the building away, destroy the building, but leave me the power to re-create it. Don’t take from me the creative power, but take all the things I create. The world would rather have the things created than the power to create. And so, “Those who hate me, they love death.” They are in love with the whole vast world that decays. Well, everything that is built today gradually fades. It comes into the world, it waxes, it wanes, and it vanishes. But leave me the power to bring anything into this world, and take from me—if you will—anything that I bring into the world. But don’t take from me the creative power, that I may actually create anything in this world.

Now, what does he mean by repentance? It means this: it tests the individual’s ability to enter into and partake of the nature of the opposite.

I see someone, and they are behind the eight ball financially. They have to pay rent, they have to buy clothes, feed themselves, and maybe they have obligations to society—others to feed, others to clothe. They may be a father or a mother. And I meet them, and they are not employed. Now, it tests my ability to put them into the state where they are gainfully employed. I bring them before my mind’s eye, and I represent them to myself as gainfully employed, and to the degree that I am self-persuaded of the reality of what I am seeing and hearing and doing—to that degree they become exactly what I am doing, all in my imagination. Well, if tomorrow or in the immediate present they actually conform outwardly to what I am doing inwardly, I have found the creative power.

I try it again with another one. I try it with yet another one and I keep on trying, and it works. Well, then, I tell it, and ask everyone who will listen to me and believe it to try it. See if you can’t exercise that same power in you. It’s not a different power. There’s only one Christ. There aren’t numberless little Christs running around the earth, only one Christ, and that Christ is your own wonderful human imagination.

So, if I exercise my Imagination and it proves itself in performance, and then you exercise your imagination and it proves itself in performance, it’s the same imagination—individualized as Neville, individualized as you, regardless of your name. Then you share it with another, and you tell it to others. Well, if I can tell it to the point where they are persuaded to try it, and in trying it, it proves itself in the testing, then we have found him. So when you read in Scripture, “I have found him,” (John 1:45)—found whom? “I have found the one of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Well, the word “Jesus” simply means what “Jehovah” means; it means “salvation.” It means, “to save.”

If I save someone from poverty by putting him into a state of affluence, well, then, that’s Jesus. I am exercising the same power. If someone is unwell and I represent him to myself as being the embodiment of health and he conforms to it, then that’s Jesus. He saved him. From what? From being unwell! Well, if I try it and try it and try it and it proves itself, what does it matter what others think? What does it matter what anyone thinks about what I am talking about? I only know that it proves itself. It works. Well, if it works, then try it. So this is the power of which I speak, not some peculiar little thing on the outside. You don’t buy it. It’s innate. You exercise it.

So, you are told to repent, in the beginning of the exercise of the power, and when you reach a certain degree of intensity, that power is born. It is born in you and then personified as a little child, and you actually feel yourself coming out of your own skull. And here is a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes, and it is your child. Now, you didn’t form some little child in your head. The child is a sign of your birth from above. It’s a sign of your arrival into the creative stream of God. You are now one with the creative power of God, and there’s only God, nothing but God. Man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in him. The creative power of God is man’s imagination. That is actually Jesus Christ himself. There is no other Jesus Christ. So all of a sudden you find that this is what the world is talking about. They have put him on the outside and made some little god of him, when he is housed in everyone.

Now, let me show you from my own experience what I know about this law. I can waste power in the world of Caesar. We’re doing it by the billions every year with our little war and all the nonsense we have in the world. This power you can’t waste. You can misuse it, but you can’t waste it. I can misuse it every moment of time by imagining unlovely things about people, unlovely things about myself, and I can use it hatefully—but I can’t waste it. I’ll show you why you can’t waste it.

One night, many, many years ago, I suddenly became aware of two beings. I am the one perceiving them so there are three, but I am the perceiver. Here above me stands the most beautiful woman imaginable, an angel—an angel of beauty and of everything. She was lovely! And below me was the most monstrous thing that man could ever conceive, covered with hair like an ape, but it could speak. It spoke gutturally. I looked at it, and then it looked at me and pointed to this beautiful, angelic being, and it called this woman, “Mother.” Well, I was so annoyed with this monstrous thing that I pummeled it. It gloated. It loved violence; it fed on violence. Every time I was violent, it became stronger. And this beautiful thing, glowing—but this one is calling it “mother.” And suddenly, as I was beating this thing, I realized: why, this is the embodiment of all my misspent energy, as this other one is the embodiment and personification of every noble thought I’ve ever entertained. I looked at this thing; I had no one with whom I could swear. I felt a compassion I have never known before. I looked at this monstrous thing and realized it is but the result of my own misused energy. It never should have been given birth. And I said to myself, “I’ll redeem you, if it takes me eternity.” I pledged myself to redeem it, and do you know what happened? At that very moment, before my eyes, the whole thing withered. The monstrous thing, the embodiment of power—horrible-looking thing—it all got smaller and smaller and smaller, and left no trace of ever having been present. But as it got smaller and smaller and disappeared, the energy returned to me! I felt infinite power. I felt like I would have done anything for the power to return to me. It wasn’t wasted; it was misused, but not lost. “Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain.”

So, you can’t lose the power. You can misuse the power, but you can’t lose it. But you are confronted one day with a monstrous thing like that. I knew exactly what I did. You won’t wait to redeem him. At the very moment that you pledge yourself and you mean it, “I’ll redeem you if it takes me eternity”—at that moment that monstrous thing withers. It gets smaller and smaller, and this other one glows; it becomes radiant like a star. She is the embodiment and the permanent personification—the getting ever greater—of your own wonderful thoughts. Every lovely act of yours feeds her. Every ignoble act of yours feeds him, and they walk with you. This one whispers the lovely things, encouraging you to be noble, and this other one whispers the violent things. If you are at the crossroads as to what you should do, this one wants to be fed. He can only feed on violence, and this other one can only feed on the lovely, noble thoughts of man. And man creates them! You see your own creation, and it’s all the same power of your own wonderful human imagination. From then on, you know who you are. You are a creative power, and you go out to change everything in your world to make it conform to something lovelier. And you don’t do it on the outside; you do it on the inside. You do it all in your imagination.

Imagination is God, and there is no other god! His name is “I Am” forever and forever and forever. That’s God! And yet, when you do meet the personification as your own Imagination, you see a man, and that man is Infinite Love. You will also meet him in another garment, and he is Infinite Power. He is Infinite Wisdom. And you will realize that the being that you really are is a protean being. He plays all the parts. When you meet him, his fundamental being is love, but he also is power, and you see him as power. And he also is wisdom, and you see him as wisdom. And you don’t have to ask any questions as to: “Who are you?” It’s so obvious that you stand in the presence of Infinite Power, or Infinite Wisdom, or Infinite Love.

And you know the truth of these statements of Scripture when it says, “God is love.” You stand in the presence of God, Infinite Love—and it’s a man!

Our scientists tell us of an impersonal force. This is not impersonal. This is very personal. God is a man.

Thou art a Man God is no more: Thy own humanity learn to adore.

—BLAKE

For everything here is God, and God being man, his every attribute is personified. So when you meet God as power, it’s man. Meet him as wisdom—it’s man. Meet him as love—it’s man.

So I tell you, this power of which I speak is right here in your own wonderful human imagination. Don’t turn to another. Don’t turn to anything on the outside. It’s all within. “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” And God is in his heaven. If I turn within, where do I turn? I turn to my own wonderful human imagination, and then I imagine what I want as real in my world and persuade myself that it’s true. To the degree that I am self-persuaded, it becomes true. It actually clothes itself in what the world calls reality, but the reality is not the visible thing they see. The reality is the unseen state, which I have imagined. You take the oak. Cut it down. It renews itself by the invisible state. The little lamb—you slay it with the knife, but the reality of that lamb, that form that is forever, is unseen by man.

So, here, in this wonderful world of ours, you have the power. You don’t need financial power. That won’t do it. You can’t buy health. You can’t buy respect. Oh, you can buy it for a little while, but they don’t really respect you. Let the money go, and they don’t respect you. You don’t need anything in the world of Caesar to buy what you want. “Come,” we are told, “buy it without price, without money.” When he says, “Buy it without price,” then, you see, it’s not Caesar’s coin that you use. You use your own wonderful human imagination.

I’ll give you this story. A friend of mine down south, he went to this barbershop. There were four barbers. He went to the boss barber first. And after about three visits the barber couldn’t take him this day, and he took the fourth one—the last chair. He rather liked the way this man cut his hair. He got to talking to him, and he realized the man loved barbering—he loved it. That is all my friend needed. “You really love it?” He said, “I just love it. I wouldn’t do anything else but cut hair. I just love it.” Now, this is what my friend did. He imagined that man the head of the shop. He didn’t consult him, he didn’t consult the boss barber; he didn’t consult anyone—just this one. He liked him. He imagined that he was the head of not this shop, but a shop. Six weeks later the barber decided to unload the shop. How he raised the money, my friend never told me, but he bought the shop and moved from the fourth man, the low man on the totem pole, to the boss barber. In the last year, this one so loved it he came here to this city about two months ago. There was some meeting here, a contest among barbers. He brought two of his barbers with him. One was committed and couldn’t come that day. He brought two. They took back—out of five prizes, they took back four. He won two—a first and a second, and two of his barbers won two seconds. He just entered another contest of the entire region (that is, the seven western states) and he won it, plus a thousand dollars. The big plaque is now on his wall, all because of my friend’s use of imagination!

This man has a terrific control of this power. He is an advertising agent. About, I would say, in the early part of this year, his boss said to him, “This is our best account, and I don’t want to lose it. But you know the industry today. It’s on the skids, and we must do something to pull it out.” Well, he sat down and said, “If imagining creates reality, my only problem will be to face these men who believe themselves so wise, and persuade them to let me go all out with my campaign from the premise that it is already an accomplished fact. I can’t advertise that this thing is possible. I’ve got to say it has been tried and proven in my ads.” He worked out the entire thing.

When these twenty men, all multi-millionaires—for this is one of the huge industries of the world, this is an international industry—when he worked the entire thing out and presented it to these twenty men on the board, they thought themselves above all this. They were ethically above all things. Their moral code would not allow it, but my friend persuaded them that this is how the law operates, that imagining creates reality. “So if you want something created, leave it to me. I will take your desire and make it something that is already a fact. You voice it.” The first quarter of this year that industry not only arrested the motion downward, but turned it around, and their profits—not their gross—their profits for the first quarter of this year were seventy-five million dollars more than the first quarter of last year—seventy-five million more. I am speaking of a net profit. Now these wise men, with their wonderful ethical codes—they allow it! They saw the money in the bank. They saw all these things, and their so-called ethical moral code went through the window because they saw another principle, which they did not know.

His competitor, I saw the letter, his competitor in the advertising field wrote the boss, my friend’s boss. He said, “You know, I take my hat off to you. You use a principle that we have always used in our work”—which was a darned lie; he never did it at all. He said, “I know exactly what you did.” He’s trying to fish him out to find out what he is doing, and in this letter he makes the claim that he actually knew and had always used it, “And no one can work for our concern unless he is aware of this principle and lives by it. We aren’t concerned about his religious background. He may be a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or an atheist, but he has to live by this principle.” Well, I saw that letter. The man was fishing, just fishing to get the one who really conceived it to come forward and tell him what he did.

Well, here is the same one in the barbershop. He goes there every Saturday morning by appointment, and the boss barber waits for him right on the dot. Every Saturday he is right there for this chap. He loves him, and he took him from the low man on the totem pole and pushed him right up. He realized the man likes cutting hair. That’s what he likes; he just loves it. All right, then, be the best. If you like it, be the very best in the trade. Tell me what you want. Maybe you want to be a wife, or “give me a home.” What’s wrong with that? My mother never went to work. She just had ten children and lived at home with her full complement of servants. My sister never worked, so she lives at home with her servants. My wife worked until I could afford to keep her. The day I could afford to keep her, I said, “Now, you stop,” so she stopped. That was almost two years after we got married. Two years afterwards I could afford to keep her, so, “From now on, you don’t work,” and so she hasn’t gone back to work.

So, tell me what you want, and then let me persuade myself that what you really want, you have. To the degree that I am self-persuaded you have it, you’ll get it. If I can’t persuade myself, then I have failed, but I haven’t misspent the energy, because I tried it lovingly. So, any time you use your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you use it wisely. Even if you didn’t succeed in producing the results that you were seeking, you used it wisely. You will not, then, encounter the monster that I did, but the chances are, everyone in his unknowingness built that monster, for everyone has started to misuse the energy, and it forms itself into this horrible, horrible thing. Did you ever sit down and wonder, “Where on earth did that thought come from?” It wasn’t a lovely thought. It came from a thing that you build, that misspent energy, a monstrous being that one day will meet you on the threshold and confront you, and you have to redeem it, because Christ must be redeemed. And although he is the redeemer, he also is one to be redeemed because he is only energy. He’s power. Infinite creative power is Christ, the power of God. So the power of which I speak is your own wonderful human imagination. That’s God. So when I tell you that man is all imagination, and God is man, and exists in us and we in him—the Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, and that is God himself—the Divine Body Jesus, and we are his members. Well, everyone can imagine, therefore all are members of the one body.

So this is that one spoken of in the 8th chapter of Proverbs: I was beside him like a little child. “Find me, and you find life. Miss me, and you injure yourself. Hate me, and you love death.” So, the one who finds him is born from above, and “unless ye be born from above, you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” And the birth from above is simply symbolized in that of a little child wrapped in swaddling clothes. It’s not some little event that took place two thousand years ago once and for all. It is taking place! You start it with repentance. Repent, and believe the story of the Gospel. And “to repent” is simply to challenge you, to test you.

Can you take a man from the lowest point in the barbershop and make him the boss? Can you represent him to yourself as one who is really in charge, who loves it and you love him? Well then, try it! So, he loved him, brought him into his mind’s eye as the one who really was important in his life, and the man simply rose suddenly to the highest place in his shop, and now in the entire western area has won all the prizes. And this one, in his advertising agency, he can write his own ticket today. The boss said to him, “What do you want?” The boss gives him—well, I would say three or four times a year—a huge, big unsolicited bonus check. He wants to keep him. My friend has no desire to quit, but the boss is so eager to hold him, he gets one bonus after the other. And my friend? All right, he’ll take it. Why shouldn’t he?

So, I ask everyone here to try it. Don’t just listen to it, but try it. You are the operant power; it doesn’t operate itself. And so when I know what I should do, well, then, I do it! Go to sleep tonight. All right, how am I sleeping? In what state of consciousness am I sleeping? As someone who is unwanted? All right, then I’ll rise tomorrow to find myself unwanted. Ignore the facts of life and assume that you are wanted. Ignore the facts of life and assume that you are affluent, and see how things work in your world. It will all come your way. You are creating out of a power that is infinite, and you don’t need any contacts in the world. You don’t need to know the right people or anything else in the world. All you need to know is Christ, and Christ is your own wonderful human Imagination! What else do you need to know but Christ!

So let no one tell you: he’s out there and he looks like this. There is no personal representation in Scripture concerning Jesus Christ. Not one little thought is mentioned concerning what he looks like. Yet our churches have hundreds and hundreds of paintings, no two alike. Each tells you that is what Jesus looked like. He looks just like you. As you are told in Scripture, “It does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know this much: when he does appear, we shall know him.” Why? “We shall be like him,” just like you when he appears. (1 John 3:2) So, let no one tell you that he looks other than you, because that’s not Christ. And yet in spite of the Second Commandment, “Make no graven image unto me,” we have all these little indulgences that people buy, and they bow before it. And they call that Christ, something made with the human hand, and then they forget the maker and worship the thing made. Don’t forget the creator! The creator is your own wonderful human imagination. Whatever you create is less than you, the creator. So, you can create a fortune. All right, they take it from you—you can create another one. So, whatever you can make, you can keep on making it if they take it from you. This is the power of which I speak. I am not speaking of any earthly power.

Many a man this night—last year I was in Barbados for a few months, and my brother, who has made quite a fortune, was talking about these men, and he didn’t realize what he was saying. He mentioned five men, all multi-millionaires, and he got through telling me how they worked so hard and they did all this and had all this money. I said, “Vic, you admire them?” “Why, certainly! They’re powerful.” I said, “What’s powerful? You just painted five biographies for me, word pictures of five men. The last one you painted is only sixty-three years old. He has, you tell me, about twenty-five million, and they have to tell him when to eat. He doesn’t know—he doesn’t know his name, doesn’t know anything. And all of a sudden they put the food in his mouth, and they say, ‘chew,’ and he chews, and he keeps on chewing forever until they say, ‘swallow,’ and he swallows. And you call that a man? So, he has twenty-five million. So, what! And the others—they gave all their time toward making money, just making things, and everyone you have mentioned and defined for me, I wouldn’t put my worst enemy (if I had one) in his place. So, he has money, but he is totally unaware of the fact that he has one nickel. So he has twenty-five million, and that’s what you call a man? That’s not my concept of a man.

“I am telling you something entirely different, Vic. You have lots of money, and it may never happen to you. So you have millions, too. Do you want to be like that? All these fellows are demented. They gave their entire life to the making and amassing of things, and they started to worship things. Don’t you start worshiping things! You start worshiping God and only God, and God is your own wonderful human imagination, and don’t you forget it. So, this building is yours. Suppose it burns tonight? So what? You know what you did to build it. Build another one. Tomorrow you may have the whole thing burn flat. So don’t be concerned about what you have accumulated as things in the world. Find God and worship only God, and God is not on the outside. You’ll never see him on the outside. You will see himself within, because can you see ‘I Am?’ You can see, ‘I am a man.’ You see the man reflected. You can say, ‘I am a poor man,’ and see the man reflected in the eyes of those who know he is poor. And you can see every concept you hold of self—but the conceiving being you don’t see. That’s God! My concept of myself may be this, that, or the other. The concepts will be reflected in society, and men will tell me who I am conceiving myself to be—but no man knows who I really am! I, the conceiver, they don’t know, but they know what I’ve conceived myself to be. My bank balance will tell the banker what I have conceived myself to be in the financial world. All these concepts—men will see concepts, but they can’t see me, the conceiver. Well, don’t forget the conceiver—that’s God! And that being is your own wonderful ‘I-Am-ness.’ That’s God, and there never was another! There never will be another.”

So, God is bringing forth his own being, because he is buried in us. And he is bringing it up into the stream of creativity, so that the same one being—God—is infinite in potential. But God is not infinite in actual fact, because then he would be dead! He couldn’t expand. He couldn’t go beyond what he is. So, God is ever expanding. There’s no limit to expansion; there is only a limit to contraction. He took upon himself that limit when he became Neville. That was the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity. Now, he breaks the shell by my exercising within me the law of repentance. And so I exercise my imagination, and then he breaks the shell. There’s no limit now to expansion, no limit to translucence. There was only the limit, which he placed upon himself, which was the limit of death—which is opacity and contraction. So God is infinite in potential, and everyone here is going to join that wonderful stream of creativity and be one with God!

Now, when you hear it, don’t just hear it and forget it. Try it. Put it to the extreme test, and then tell another, and have the other tell someone else, and spread the good news. This is called “the Gospel,” for the word gospel simply means “good news.” It’s the good news about God: how God became man that man may become God. Well, if God’s name is “I Am”—I know I say, “I am.” It’s the core of my being. I can say, “I am sick,” but I can get over sickness. But I can’t get over being “I Am.” I can get over being rich and become extremely poor, but I can’t get over being “I Am!” So he actually became the core of my being. That’s the center. Well now, that’s my being. Well, if that is God, and that’s my being—well, he became me! God actually became me that I may become as he is. He took upon himself this limitation that I may become what he is, which is infinite, and expand forever.

So, you try it tonight. Try it with anything in this world. The unmarried, if you desire to be married—what symbol in the world would imply that you are married? A little band? In this western world a little band around this ring finger—not around any other finger—around this finger. It doesn’t have to be the biggest aspidistra in the world, just a plain little gold ring. If you wore it there, it would imply you’re married. Sleep tonight as though you wore one. Don’t put your physical thumb on it; put your imaginary thumb on it, and feel it in your imagination. You can do it! Feel a ball. Can you feel it? Then feel a piece of silk. Feel this, one after the other. Can you discriminate between all these different sensations? If you can discriminate between this and a tennis ball and a baseball and a piece of silk, then you can’t discriminate between nothings. They must exist. Though unseen by your eyes they still must exist! So, if I can discriminate between these unseen objects, these objects, though unseen, must be real. Well, now take that and put it there, but feel when you wear it, that you are proud of the one who put it there. You don’t have to see what he looks like. When it’s put there, you’ll be proud of his name, to bear it, and you’ll be proud of him. Just put it there.

Do you know why I know that? My wife did it. She did it! Actually, she did it. One day she was in the presence of a so-called sensitive, and this one said to her, “Why did you take off your wedding ring?” She said, “I am not married.” “Oh,” she said, “don’t fool me. You took off your wedding ring.” She said, “But I’m not married.” She said, “I’ll even tell you his name,” and she started off with Neb—Neba—Neva—she didn’t quite get it but she was coming very, very close to it. She was actually sensing what my wife in consciousness was feeling. When I first met her, I wanted her. The very first day I knew her I wanted to marry her, but I was entangled. Was I entangled! But, by this law, I disentangled myself. Without hurting anyone, I disengaged myself from all these complexities so that I could actually legitimately say, “Will you marry me?” But in the meanwhile she was wearing the ring. I hadn’t yet put it there, but she allowed me to put it there and slept as though I had put it there. So I tell you unmarried ladies, if you desire to be married—maybe you don’t—if you do, that’s the way to do it. And he’ll come out of the nowhere. You don’t have to go and buy anyone or try to meet the right people. Usually when you try to meet the right one, he’s always the wrong one. So don’t go searching. Those who go searching for love only make manifest their own love-less-ness, and the love-less never find love. Only the loving find love, and they never have to seek for it. You draw them; they come to you.

So here, this is the power of which I speak: the power of the universe. The power that created and sustains the universe is resident in you as your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s God! Don’t forget it. I know it’s difficult, when man has been trained to believe in an external God. And he goes to church and gets on his knees and he prays to an external God. And he goes home at night—maybe he does say his prayers, and he gets down on his knees and prays to an external God. All right, maybe that’s a nice thing for someone to do, but I tell you: he isn’t out there at all. You won’t be criticized for it, but he is within you—very personal, may I tell you. He is very, very personal, and within you. When you are told in Scripture, “Of the Rock that begot us, we are unmindful” (Deuteronomy 32:18), and that seems to be all a figure of speech, but how true that thing is!

One night sitting in the silence, rather, it was an afternoon, I was thinking of nothing in particular, and suddenly before my eyes came this force. It was an enormous force. As I looked at it, it fragmented itself, broke into numberless little pieces, and then it reassembled itself. As it reassembled itself it was not into a force, but into a man seated in the lotus posture. I’m looking at this man, all seated now, perfect man. As I looked at him, I’m looking at myself. Here I am, the perceiver, observing myself seated in the lotus posture, in this deep, deep meditation, and as I become aware that I am looking at myself, it began to glow, and it glowed and glowed and glowed. When it reached the intensity of luminosity it exploded, and then I returned to this level. Where did I see him? Within me! That being is meditating this. This is but a projection of itself in the world. And when he wakes within me, completely wakes, I am he. God actually became me that I may become God! And he’s put me through all the paces, allowing me to make all the mistakes, to make a monster like the thing that I talked about earlier. I made that, and I made the lovely one, and he allows it in his meditation. He is the dreamer in me, and he is dreaming this, and dreaming everything that I dream in this world. And when he awakes, this will cease to be, and I am he and he is God!

So, I tell you, go out and try it. Begin tonight. I’ll make you this promise; if you try it faithfully, you will not fail.

Now, let us go into the Silence. Good. Now, are there any questions, please? Make it a full evening.

Q. [Inaudible]

A. “I have taken two nations unto my bosom.” Scripture tells us—in fact, our present law in the world of Caesar is based upon it—the testimony of one is not acceptable in court. There must be two witnesses. We have an external witness in the form of Scripture, the written word. Man is the Living Word, and he has to duplicate it. All the stories of Scripture, he must experience. So, when he actually experiences Scripture, there are two witnesses, his inner testimony of the Father and the outer testimony of the written word. So, we speak of the two in the 11th chapter of Revelation, “my two witnesses.” If two different persons agree in testimony, it’s conclusive. If one comes and swears, even though it’s true, it’s not acceptable in court. He may be telling the truth, but there must be a second to confirm it. Now, God’s witness is the Bible, that’s the witness. Is it literally true? I tell you from experience, it’s literally true, but it’s not secular history. It’s supernatural history. So, when you experience it, you will experience this in a remote region of the soul. It will duplicate the written history, which is supernatural history, salvation history.

Q. [Inaudible]

A. Why certainly, my dear, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here were you not hungry to experience God. The world isn’t hungry enough for it. We are told, “I will send a famine upon the world. It will not be a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the Word of God.” And when you have that kind of a hunger, only an experience of God can satisfy the hunger. All the money in the world couldn’t satisfy it. When that thirst is upon you, not a thing in the world can actually quench that thirst, but an experience of God. And his whole story is told in the Bible, and man experiences Scripture. Scripture must be fulfilled in me, so you have two witnesses: the living witness, which you have experienced, and the external witness of the written word.

Are there any other questions? Come on, make it a nice full evening. We still have ten minutes.

Q. [Inaudible]

A. No, my dear, you were sowing when you imagined. Imaginal acts are sowing, but we do not recognize our own harvests when we see the imaginal act projected on the screen of space. We say, I could never have imagined a thing like that, but we must have or we could not encounter it. So, the act of imagining is sowing, and in its own good time, it crops out from that unseen journey and appears on the screen of space, and you see it—but you don’t always recognize your harvest. But I’ll tell you one thing, do not concern yourself with the means. Always go to the end. Dwell in the end, and you will hurt no one. But if you try to devise the means, you are, well, messing the whole thing up. I have had people say to me, “You know, I want that man, and no other man.” I said, “No, you don’t; you want to be happily married. You don’t want that man or no man.” “Oh, yes, that man or no man.” Then, of course, this always shocks them. I say, “If he dropped dead right now, would you want to be married?” “Well, he isn’t going to drop…” “I didn’t ask you that. If he dropped dead right now, or if he is right this very moment accused of being the world’s greatest thief or murderer, do you still want him?” “Well, now, why ask those questions, Neville? I want that man.” But, you see, it isn’t that man. They want to be happily married. I have gone to so many weddings where it was either that man or none, and it wasn’t “that man”! And they are embarrassed when they see me standing in the aisle, because it had to be “that man or no man,” and here it isn’t that man at all. And they walk down—they are happy with their new mate, but a little sheepish as they pass by because they know I know he was not the man.

You want to be happily married. All right, go to the end. You are happily married. Then let him come, clothed in all that it takes to be happy in your world. He doesn’t have to be some matinee idol. What’s their so-called world? They divorce one after the other anyway, so what does that do to the girl? Or she to him? So that’s not what you really want. You want something that is a man. He comes home; the house is full. When he comes home and you aren’t there, the house is empty. I know that’s what I would like, and I have that. If I come home and Bill1is not home, even if I have friends at home, I may have a party going on, a cocktail party, ten people, twelve, “Where’s Bill?” “Well, she isn’t here.” You know, the whole thing is empty until she comes. And if she goes out and says, “I’ll be back at five,” and she isn’t there at five, but she comes back at six—well, between five and six I am not myself. Where is she? Everyone should have that sort of relationship. The house is empty when the mate isn’t there, male or female. If I could come home and it didn’t matter whether she was there or not, what on earth am I doing being married? If she isn’t there and it makes no difference to me whether she is or not, well, then, that’s not marriage. The house must be empty when she isn’t there, or you aren’t there. If I knew, in her heart, that I could go and come when I wanted and she wasn’t concerned—oh, that’s not my wife! I know I’ve got to depart someday and leave her behind me, or she goes and leaves me behind. That, I know, is inevitable. But while we are together, I want it to be so that the house is empty if the other one isn’t there. And I’m selfish enough to want her to feel the same way.

Any other questions, please?

Q. [Inaudible]

A. Just as concrete. Man creates unwittingly just as well as he does wittingly, but in this world of ours we should learn to create consciously. But I can’t deny that the so-called unconscious creation is just as effective. We walk the earth, we see a headline, we don’t know the people involved, and we react. That reaction, felt intensely, was a creative act on our part. And we don’t know the people at all. So if you do it wittingly or unwittingly, it is still creative. Therefore, become aware of what you are doing. Or I can say to everyone, become more and more aware, so that at all times you are selective. You and I would not go into a store and say, “Give me a tie.” We select it. I say, “Don’t just bring me three ties. Let me see some ties”—fifty ties, a hundred ties, and I pick out one. I may pick out two. I don’t go in and say, “Give me a suit.” “Let me see some suit lengths.” And from maybe a dozen or more, I select one—texture, color, what I think I need in my wardrobe to augment the wardrobe. So, I pick it out and he makes it for me. I don’t let him tell me what I should want.

Q. [Inaudible]

A. No, just as effective. All day long people are reaping the most horrible things in the world, and it all is what they have planted unwittingly.They sit down in New York City, they read this little paper, theNews, from beginning to end. It’s the biggest paper in our country. It has a daily circulation of over two and a half million. I think the Sunday circulation is about five million. It’s a little tabloid, and not one word in it is anything but negative. Who murdered whom, who is raping whom, who is living with whose wife, and all this sort of thing, and they love it. And of course their little lives are drab anyway, so it’s sort of vicarious, and they fatten themselves with all this nonsense as they go to their job. For one solid hour they are reading it. Well, when things happen in their world, continue to happen, in an abnormal manner, they don’t realize that they are doing it. But the whole thing is done by them. They are fattening on it. No discrimination at all. It’s like going into a restaurant and asking, “What does the chef want to get rid of today?” It’s the same thing. And he says, “We have too much of the stew. We had it for four days and can’t sell it, and that’s what we want to unload.” Call it by a different name today and unload it. Well, I don’t go for that. Give me the menu.

A friend of mine taught me this lesson once. We went into a restaurant and the waiter was very, very careless and he spilled a little of the soup, and my friend called him over and said, “Tell me, is this charity?” Well, the waiter was flabbergasted. He said, “I am asking a very simple question. Is this charity?” And he said, “What do you mean, Sir?” “Do I pay for it?” He said, “Why, certainly, Sir.” He said, “Well, take it back, and bring me a nice clean plate and unspilled soup.” The man took it back and brought him a nice clean plate and unspilled soup. If it’s charity, leave it there; I can’t complain. But if I’m paying for it, you take it back. Well, that is a lesson we should all learn. Too many careless things go on and no one jacks them up.

Q. [Inaudible]

A. Willingly. First of all, I don’t divorce myself from God. I do not divorce myself from God. He only has one name, and I have that name: I can’t point elsewhere to say his will. The minute I say, “his will,” I am divorced from God. So, I ask myself, “What do you want, Neville?” Now, because the whole vast world is yourself pushed out, you aren’t going to injure anyone, but you can’t deny that you still desire. You want something. So, you want it. Well, you assume that you have it and then let things happen. If it takes a thousand or ten thousand to aid the birth of that assumption, then they will be used, and they will be used either knowingly or unknowingly.But if I have to wait to say, “Is it God’s will?” I’ll wait forever—I’ll wait forever. Is it God’s will that I should pay rent? Or be dispossessed? Well, then, if I am going to wait and say, “Well, let Him tell me first,” because some friend will say, “You know, you need that experience, you need humility; you need all these things to be fired out…” I’ve had it! I don’t need to learn the same lesson twice!Oh, I’ve had that, when I thought [it was] God’s will and allowed him to do it, and I sat and did nothing. Then came the end of the month, and you can’t pay rent. The landlady says, “You know, I can’t carry you any longer. Out you go.” I’ve had that experience, by waiting for God to tell me what to do and he never told me. I had to do it. And so, when I got married, I knew I had an obligation to life—I had another one. Then came a child, and I had another one. It’s my obligation, to have some external being tell me how? No, I know what I have to do. Put her through school? All right. Can you make college? Do you want to? All right, then it is my obligation to put her through college, and I did. But if I waited for some external being to talk to me and say, “Well, maybe she shouldn’t go. It will be easier on you,” I’m passing the buck. The whole vast world passes the buck. No, my dear, make your decision. Even if you are wrong, make a decision. All right, you learn by it. But to be undecided so that you will not make a mistake—well, do you know that story? It’s in Revelation, “Would that you were hot or cold but because you are neither hot nor cold, and that you are lukewarm, I spew you out.” You can’t make coffee or tea with lukewarm water. Let it be hot or cold. Let man be intense. You know, the people who oppose me and say, “Neville, I think you’re a nut. I think you are as insane as they come”—well, I’ve been told that time and again. Those who really oppose me become my best students. But those who come and say, “Oh, I think you are wonderful,” the first time they hear it, “Oh, I think you’re wonderful,” never come back. Well, those who say, “I think that man is insane”—I’ve had them. On 49th Street in New York City I came upon two ladies. One lady was showing her out-of-town friend all of New York City, and a big picture of mine was in a window with my books, and one said, “Do you know who he is?” and she said, “No.” “Well, he is the mad mystic of 48th Street. Oh, you’ve got to go and hear him. You’ve got to go and hear him. He’s as mad as a hatter. We all go to hear him because he’s so mad. It’s fun.” She said, “It’s fun to go and sit down; it costs you nothing.” In those days it was all a voluntary effort on their part, and so a thousand people would come three times a week to hear themad mystic of 48th Street.But those who heard and thought, “Now, he really is insane,” and would challenge me from the audience, they became good students. Those like the two on the street who said, “Oh, he’s a mad mystic. Go and have fun,” they never became students. They loved their little icons, and they prayed to the little icons. He never answered them, but nevertheless they prayed anyway in hope.

Q. [Inaudible]

A.My dear, I believe in being as specific as one can be. I just knew what I wanted so often on certain things, and wanted it in detail, and got it. If man cannot be that specific, all well and good. Take an end, an overall end. But if you really are specific, God is very definite. Outline is perfect in God’s world. Look at the thumbprint. Not only a man’s thumbprint differs from all thumbprints but his odor—or the bloodhound couldn’t find you. Just imagine three-and-a-half billion of us, and no two have the identical odor. No two have the same sound to their voice—similar but not identical. See it on the tape as you speak, and that vibration will record it. You cannot reproduce it. Similar? Yes. No two—you are so unique. You are the only one; therefore you cannot be replaced. There is no one in all eternity that can replace you. That is why you have to be saved, or the Living Temple cannot be completed. You are a stone in this living temple. God was very specific when he made you the unique being that you are. I will not be “lost in the crowd” for the simple reason that God did not lose me in the crowd. I am individualized, and I tend forever and ever towards greater individualization.

Q. [Inaudible]

A. To be meek is to be self-disciplined or well trained. “The meek shall inherit the earth” because they have learned to use their imagination.