Speaking from Experience

Tonight’s subject is “Speaking from Experience.” There’s a conversation that takes place in the Book of John between Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, and Jesus. It’s the 3rd chapter, and he said to Nicodemus, “We speak of what we know and bear witness to what we see, but you do not accept our testimony. If I tell you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” So here is one who is a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest order in the Jewish faith, and he came at night asking certain questions. Now he did not really ask…he called him “rabbi”…and Jesus admitted the fact that he was a teacher (that’s what a rabbi is); and then proceeded to instruct him concerning a great mystery and said to him, you must be born from above, “For unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of God” (verse 3). And he replied, Can a man who is old enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? And this was answered in a strange way, he said: “That which is born from the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (verse 6). But unless you be born from above, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. “The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit” (verse 8).

Then he goes on after the next interruption. This turns into a discourse, really, began as a dialogue and finally the whole thing is moving into a discourse, like an argument. Then he said, “How can this be? You, a master, a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand this? I tell you, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up; no one has ever ascended into heaven but he who descended” (verses 10-14). All this is compact in a few verses, which you will find in the first few verses of the 3rd chapter of John. He takes it literally, on a physical level. The Greek word translated “anew” or “again” or “from above” is Anothin. Scholars claim that you can give no other meaning to the word, especially when you read the context, than “from above, begotten of God, begotten from above.” That birth can be considered either from the father’s side in which case the verb is “to beget” or from the mother’s side in which case the verb is “to bear.” The word here is from the father’s side: “to beget”; it’s “begotten from above, begotten of God.”

Now I tell you from experience this is literally true. He thought you couldn’t take it on the physical level, it could not be literal; but he explained that which is begotten; that which is born of the flesh is flesh, what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Nicodemus didn’t understand it, he just didn’t understand it. Because, what man in this world could understand it unless he had the experience or he believed the one who had the experience? So here, the story is literally true. He’s speaking of an entirely different age, an age that is not this age at all; where one must have a body equal to that age to exercise a power completely unknown to any man or by any man in this world; an entirely different thing where he’s exercising a creative power that is the power of God. So he has to have a body to exercise that power, to use that power, and this body comes from his birth from above.

Now he makes the statement: “I came out from the Father and I came into the world; again, I am leaving the world and ascending to the Father” (John 16:28). In these four little phrases he admits of a pre-existence: “I came out from the Father…” Well, to come out from the Father is to die. Like a prodigal son he departed from his Father and the Father thought him dead, thought him lost, and said, “My son who was lost is found; he was dead and now he is alive again” (Luke 15:24). So he admits in that departure, “I came out from the Father,” that he died. “I have come into the world,” that’s incarnation. “Again, I am leaving the world and ascending to the Father” and this is also literally true. Man finds it difficult to understand, but in the course of the evening we will explain it from actual experience.

Well now, let us get down to this level, from experience.I have asked you to join with me and share with me your use of the law, that I in turn may encourage everyone who is here to use the law lovingly to expand their world and make it a wonderful world. Because you can be anything in this world that you really want to be if you’re willing to be vigilant, to be faithful to the assumption that you are already such a person…if you’re willing.Well, a gentleman wrote me this past week and he said, “On Sunday when we discussed, you reminded me of something that in the interval I had forgotten, that when I discussed possible stories with my producer…and he gave me all these stories…I went home boiling I was so mad. Because I knew I could conceive of many more wonderful stories than the stories that he suggested. I was so mad when I got home, I just simply raged. And I said to myself, audibly, screaming it out—-my wife didn’t hear me—-but I went upstairs and to the mountains I spoke, ‘I don’t have to write for TV, I can write for Broadway shows, write for Broadway plays, I can write books, I can write for pictures. I don’t have to write TV scripts!’ “And then I thought, well now, I’ll take his most stupid story, but the most stupid of all the ideas that he gave me, and then I’ll work on it.” So he said, “I gave him the challenge. And so, that story that I worked on was nominated for an award that year. Of all the stories that I’ve ever done, it was the one story nominated for an award as the best story of the year. It was his most stupid story but it was a challenge. So you reminded me on Sunday that a challenge is necessary in this world. So on Monday morning I felt calm and passive, and I was walking on my usual walk, and I was in a mood of “thanking Father” when suddenly I remembered what you had said the day before, on Sunday, about a challenge when I took the most stupid story and developed it into what was nominated for an award. And suddenly I heard the loudest, the most authoritative voice I have ever heard before. Never heard anything as loud as this, with such authority, and I heard it from the depths of my soul; and it is saying to me, and this is what it said, ‘Feed me with challenges! How else can I grow?’” You think it over: “Feed me with challenges! How else can I grow?”

As I’ve told you, God actually became man. Man is the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity; there is no limit to translucence, no limit to expansion. But he took upon himself the limit of contraction, which is man, called Adam, and now Adam has to feed him with challenges that he may create, that he may expand his creative power. For the purpose of the whole thing is simply to create and to develop one’s creative talent, one’s creative power. So, “Feed me with challenges! How else can I grow?”You wouldn’t think that God is growing. God grows, God grows forever and forever. God is truth and truth is a limitless expansion, forever and forever and forever. So it simply comes down to the limit of contraction, assumes the challenge that it can give, and then creates.

He said, “I came out…and the day before I had a story which my producer accepted and liked, and instantly I threw it into the ash can. I want a bigger and a better story, more alive, something more vital, and in one hour I had it. I took the challenge!” And then, in a very sweet way thanked me for reminding him of what he had told me about this stupid story that he developed to the point of receiving at least the nomination for an award. But, in the interval he had forgotten what he did with that challenge. And now he said to me in the letter that a challenge changes man’s consciousness from the passive state into the active state. It’s the most wonderful thing in the world to lift man’s consciousness to higher and higher levels, a challenge in this world. So I ask you to take what he has given to me, which I am now sharing with you, and use it, and then grow. In growing, God grows. It’s all God; God is playing all the parts. So he very generously gave me in letter form his reaction to our conversation on Sunday, which tonight then I can share with you.

Now, he knows this now from experience, for he got his story in one hour. And a truth that man knows from experience he knows more thoroughly than he knows anything else in this world, or than he can know that same truth in any other way. For instance, I tell you the story and you believe me. Alright, so you believe me, but you don’t know it as you will know it after you’ve tested it and you’ve proved it in the testing. So what you know from experience you know more thoroughly than you know anything else in this world. So today he knows that a challenge took his consciousness and turned it from the passive state into the active state; that he had the courage to take a story that was already accepted and liked by his producer and discard it, and in one hour come up with a story infinitely better than the one he had discarded. He had the courage to discard one already accepted. Well, that was already money in the bank when you’re getting that sort of money for a half-hour script; but he discarded that and took the challenge, and then rose to a higher level. So I share it with you. You take the challenge.

Now, another lady (she is here this night) and she said this past week to me, “I was talking to some friends and I said, ‘You know, I remember when…’ and as I said ‘I remember when’ it dawned upon me, these are Neville’s words, the words he used to describe a vision of his. And then I said to myself but I am not using it. Here the man shared with us his vision and I haven’t used what he gave me. He gave it to me! I’m now talking to my friends telling them ‘I remember when’ and I myself have not done it.” She said, I’ve just written a letter to my landlord to explain to the landlord that I would be unable this month to meet the rent on time. I’ll pay, I’ve always paid, and I will pay, but this month things are difficult. I cannot pay this month, that is, not on time. Then suddenly ‘I remember when’…then she began to remember when she cleaned a motel room, a hotel room, a private home fourteen dollars a day. Then she lost herself in the mood ‘I remember when’, therefore, that implies she’s not doing it now. The phone rings and a former employer who formerly employed her at ten dollars a day employed her that day at fifty dollars a day. He said, “You put in your bill as long as it will take you to organize a certain something (which she did not explain in her letter) and it’s fifty dollars a day for the work you’re going to do to set this thing in motion.” I remember when…

As I’ve told you, that vision was so clear to me, just as clear as this room here, when I slipped. I’m on my bed here in this city, and suddenly I am in this huge mansion on Fifth Avenue, one of these enormous sixty and seventy-room mansions. And there were three families present, one was grandfather, one was the next generation, and then the third generation. Grandfather was invisible, but the other two generations they were present and always discussing grandfather. And they would say…I heard them, I came in, in Spirit…and I heard them discussing grandfather, who made the fortune that they now enjoyed, the mansion and the income from this entrenched wealth they were now enjoying; but they themselves did not make it. They told the story of grandfather and grandfather said while standing on an empty lot, “I remember when this was an empty lot” and then grandfather would paint a word picture of his desire for that lot, and paint it so vividly that everyone saw it as grandfather saw it. That’s how he made his fortune: He lived from that moment on in his wish fulfilled. “I remember when.”

I woke, it was about three in the morning, and I wrote the entire vision out. Then I went back to bed and re-dreamed the dream, but this time as I re-dreamed it I was grandfather. I had so completely absorbed the message that I found myself in the same mansion with the same people and I told them that I remember when I’m standing on an empty lot, “I remember when this was an empty lot.” Then I would paint the word picture of my desire for that lot and paint it so vividly, so graphically they all saw it. And then I woke. Well, the 41st chapter of the Book of Genesis (verse 32) tells us that if the vision is double, the doubling of the vision means this, said Joseph to Pharaoh, that God has fixed it and it will shortly come to pass. God has fixed it. This is fixed now if the vision is doubled. God has fixed it and it will shortly come to pass. So I shared it with you. And now, this lady has been coming faithfully over the years, but like all of us, we hear it, it’s a thrill at the moment, but we don’t carry it into action. She didn’t apply it. But the very day she applied it the phone rings and she is offered fifty dollars a day, not ten dollars a day. So it was a challenge. She took the challenge that “I remember when I only earned ten dollars a day.”

Now you can take that same thing, “I remember when my income was only”…any kind of income, a thousand dollars a week, you can make that. You think it’s crazy? Nothing is impossible to God. Feed me with challenges, how else can I grow? That’s the story of God to a friend who is here this night. Feed me with challenges, how else can I grow? And so, if your challenge is that you want…and you name it. I know in my own case, when I was opposed by my teacher in elocution it was her opposition to my voice and her statement that I could never in eternity earn a dollar using my voice; and she used me as the guinea pig, one of a class of forty, and she made me step forward, and then pointed her finger at Neville and said, “You see Neville? Listen to him. He will never be able to use his voice to earn a dollar, so just watch all that he does, listen to him, and avoid it.” I am the only one of the class of forty using a voice and thoughts behind it to earn a living, and the other thirty-nine are elsewhere. What they are doing, I don’t know, but not one of them ever entered the theater, not one. Not one entered any other part of life where the voice would be used, and she was the great teacher of elocution.But she challenged me…and that was my challenge. I would not allow myself to waste my father’s 600 dollars. He could ill-afford to give me 600 dollars to go to a dramatic school for six months and then come out and be a failure. I knew in my heart I couldn’t do that to him, and so I just would not allow it. So I say to everyone, everything in this world is possible if you will now accept the challenge. Because, who is accepting it? God is accepting it, because God is your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s God. God actually became man that man may become God.

Now, we’ll take you through the book from now to the end of the series (the 26th of this month) and show you how the book is so true, every word of it is true and literally true on deeper levels of the soul. Here is a friend tonight (he’s in the audience) and this happened last week. You’ve heard this story time and again of the crucifixion and the voice that said, “Behold, I say unto you today, you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Well, this lad (he’s just a lad) he found himself in vision in a theater, and here was this huge big screen. To the left of the screen is a cross almost his height or a little bit more than his height. Then a man suddenly appeared out of nowhere, walked to the cross, turned around and faced the audience, and then stretched his hands out, and fused with the cross. Then a voice said, “I say unto you today, you will be with me in Paradise…for a little while.” I can’t throw any light on it…but at least he’s honest and he’s telling me exactly what he heard. And when a vision breaks into words then deity is present. The very presence of deity is confirmed as the vision breaks into words, as told us in the 3rd of Exodus (verse 4). Here from the bush…and suddenly the vision breaks into words and the very moment it breaks into words, the revelation begins: “Say I AM has sent you” (verse 14). And the presence of deity is always confirmed whenever the vision breaks into words. So in this case the vision broke into words. Now what that tag-line is, which is not recorded in scripture, “for a little while,” I do not know. He wrote me this letter just a few days ago and I do not know, it has not been revealed to me why the tag-line. But it’s obvious what the first part of it is, “Behold, I say unto you today, you will be with me in Paradise.” But why “for a little while”? Yet it does tell us that because of the instant, or rather, forever expansion of God, all things are only for a season. It’s always a growth and a growth and a growth, forever and forever. So he has shared that with me and I have shared it with you.

But I tell you from my own experience everything in scripture is true. I have had almost every experience that is recorded in the gospels concerning Jesus Christ, from the birth through to the very end…every one. I have not had the story of Lazarus, no, I haven’t had that one. But I’ve had the dove. I’ve had all the stories of scripture as recorded. They take place in the soul of man; they don’t take place on the outside at all. For it is said of him, We know where this man came from, we know his origin, and when the Christ comes no one will know where he comes from. So they rejected him because they knew his origin. But when Christ comes, so they thought, he will emerge in some strange mysterious way. And he does, but he comes in a mysterious way in man that man himself did not know.

Now listen to the words that we started off with the meeting. He tells us he’s only talking of things that he knows: I tell you what I know and bear witness to what I’ve seen, and you will not accept my testimony. He’s only testifying to what he’s actually experienced, what he’s seen, and they will not accept his testimony. “Now if I tell you of earthly things and you will not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” So he tells them earthly things—all the signs of earthly things; all the signs of health; transforming a man who’s poor into a man who is rich; a man who could not sell a material into one who sells all that he can write; a man who was unwell into a man who never felt better in his life. So he transforms all this, and they will not believe what he tells them of how he did it. He only did it in his Imagination, for he said, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you’ve received and you will”; that’s all that you do (Mark 11:24). Well, if he could convince himself of the reality of what he’s now imagining, then it should externalize itself if that principle is true. Well, it did. But he told them how he did it. They couldn’t believe that; they wanted some other kind of a trick. And he’s telling them that this is all that you do: When you know what you want, believe that you have it and you will have it. And if one can get to that point of belief, then everything would come into this world based upon the great law of Israel.

So he recited the entire story for them. In the 78th Psalm the whole history of Israel is recorded. He said, “Lend me your ears”—or let me have your ears, your understanding, your attention—-“and I will open my mouth in a parable and speak in dark sayings as of old” (verse 1). And then he tells them he will tell them all the things that the fathers said that everyone should hear, and then carry it on to the next generation and the next generation and the next generation, and all the unborn generations, all the wonders that God wrought. And the very end it comes to David, in the very end of this very long chapter the 78th, which is a chapter by Asaph and Asaph means “the gatherer.” He gathers all these things together. We have twelve psalms by Asaph, the 73rd through the 83rd. And then the 50th, and that 50th is the one where: “If I were hungry I wouldn’t tell you; for the earth is mine and all that is in it. The cattle on a thousand hills they’re mine” (verses 10,12). And were I hungry I would slay and eat, why should I tell you when it’s all mine? That’s the first psalm that he gave us, the 50th. Then he gave us the other eleven, the 73rd through the 83rd, and the name simply means “to gather together.” He gathers all the traditions, all the stories of the fathers, and he tells them to the next generation, and tells them to tell it to the next generation and keep on telling it until one day they experience it.

And so, we tell you, and then one after the other has an experience. The one this day was the cross; he’s experienced it. He knows how true that story is. But what are we told in scripture? “Oh you foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Isn’t it a drama vicariously done? “Before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by the working of the law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?” (Gal. 3:1). It takes place in Spirit, not in the flesh. No one was crucified physically. Yes, undoubtedly in this barbarous world of ours tens of thousands of men undoubtedly by some tyrant, some sadist, were crucified. But that’s not the story.The crucifixion is in Spirit, and I know from my own personal experience it is in Spirit, for I was; and it’s the most glorious sensation in the world. You can’t conceive of the thrill, the joy when the vortices nail you to this garment; when each hand, each foot, side and the head become a vortex, and these vortices, six of them, nail you to this body. And the thrill! It’s sheer ecstasy when you have it done, and you hear the words which means God’s presence is here. And then God speaks from the depths of your soul: “I laid myself down within you to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, yes, I dreamed that I’m you.” He’s dreaming that he’s you.

Now to come back to our friend: “Feed me with challenges.” I’m dreaming that I’m you; I’m your very being, your own wonderful I-am-ness is God. Now, God can do anything, all things are possible to God, so feed me with challenges, how else can I grow? And so be bold enough to take something that you have written, that you have presented, that was accepted and liked, and you know that’s money in the bank, and throw it in the ashcan, not good enough. And then take a challenge, something more vital, something more wonderful, something more thrilling and write it, and in one hour get it. Get something far better than what you’re quite willing, just for money’s sake to accept, because there’s money for you.

So you take it this night and take a large sum. If anyone had told me when I worked at Macy’s for, what, eighteen dollars a week and did everything in the place for eighteen bucks, if anyone told me then that I would in the not too far future be making five hundred dollars a week, why, I would have laughed at them. But I did. One day I quit Macy’s. I don’t mean fired. I was fired from Penney, J. C. Penney. So I worked for J. C. Penney and they gave me twenty-two dollars a week, and one day they fired me. I asked them why, what have I done that’s wrong? They said, “Nothing wrong, but we have an economy in this country that when things are slow we let people off. You’ve been working here for a year and a half, and so we just simply have to economize, and so you have to go.” I said, “Where I come from you fire a person because he’s done something that is wrong…that if I’ve stolen or if I’ve done something that is wrong causing the company loss, fire me, but don’t fire me because of certain strange trends in this world.” “But that’s how we operate,” they said to me.

Well, they thought, well, this man, he’s a boy and he’s stupid and he’s foolish, we’ll give him a letter, and send him over to Macy’s. So they did. He wrote me a little letter and sent me to his friend who was the employment agency at Macy’s, so I moved to Macy’s and gave my little letter. They said, “We can’t start you at any twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a week, we’ll start you at eighteen.” So alright, I have to pay rent, so they started me at eighteen. So I worked there for a year, and one day I said to myself, “You’re getting nowhere fast, still making eighteen dollars a week, and doing everything that they ask you to do because you don’t want to be fired.” So I had the courage to quit without a nickel in my pocket, and six months later I was making five hundred dollars a week as a dancer. Went off to England; five hundred bucks a week. I never danced in my life before, save ballroom dancing. I told my dancing partner when she said “Can you dance?” “Certainly I can dance!” She said, “Alright, let me see.” Well, I said, “I danced with someone else, I’ll dance with you.” And so, that’s how it started. So off to England; we got a hundred pounds. In those days, a pound was worth four dollars and eighty-four cents, not today’s two, eighty; and I got a hundred pounds a week dancing in London for three months…from Macy’s eighteen dollars a week. So I say, you take a challenge, you simply throw yourself out completely and walk on the water, and either go down and drown, or simply live better.

So here, I am speaking from experience—I am not theorizing—when I tell you I’ve done it. I have taken God’s word just as he told me, and then stepped right out and did it. When no power in this world could have taken me out of our Armed Forces, God took me out, with an honorable discharge. No power in the world could have taken me out, but God took me out. I simply assumed that I was out and slept night after night in the assumption that I am home as an honorably discharged civilian. In nine days, the very man who refused it called me in and then discharged me. Then I was on my train back to New York City. So again, I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing when I tell you that God can do anything in this world if you’ll trust him. Hold him responsible, hold him trustworthy. And so in your wonderful field this night, dream the most noble dream in the world for yourself and for others. Take a challenge, a real challenge, and then fall asleep in the assumption that you are already such a person, and then let it work. It’ll work, work like a charm. Not one person in this world need you call or write to ask to help in any way. If a thousand are necessary, a thousand will respond; and you don’t have to seek the thousand, they’ll come. Whatever it takes will come.

So here, in this speaking from experience, he said his brothers did not believe him because they knew him. He said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here” (John 7:6). Now there’s a profound statement and who will believe it: “If I tell you earthly things and you won’t believe it, how would you believe it if I told you heavenly things?” Your time is always here, he said, but my time is not yet come. You know what it means? This whole vast world of ours is forever, just as it is now at this moment in time. What took place last year, in the month of November, on the day of the 22nd of November, is always taking place, forever and forever in time. It is always taking place…everything in the world is taking place on this level. So your time is always here, but my time is not yet come. He’s telling you of an entirely different world, with a different use of power, different creativity, where man is lifted off this world of recurrence and he enters that world that is creative, one with God. But who understands it? If you did not slip in time and see that it hasn’t passed away, that the present is not receding into the past, this present is advancing into the future…the future has already passed? It’s a wheel. You’re only coming upon phenomena that’s already old, and therefore “your time” is always here but “my time” has not yet come. Then he repeats it and he uses it a little bit differently, and he said, “Not yet fully come.” He knows he is moving into an entirely different world because he’s had the experiences foretold in scripture. And so, all these were foretold: the birth; the awakening; the descent; the discovery of the Fatherhood; the ascent; the dove—all of these are the signs of one’s departure from this time.

So when Paul made the statement that “The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight and I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness,” he knew from the experiences in himself (2 Tim. 4:7). For he said in his confession in the Book of Galatians, “When it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood” (Gal. 1:16). It pleased God! What a statement! What pleases God? If you read the Bible carefully, only one thing in this world displeases him—-you read this in the 11th chapter of the Book of Hebrews—-without faith it is impossible to please him (verse 6). So you can’t please God by any act of yours if it is not an act of faith. So, challenge me, bring me challenges, how else can I grow? Have confidence in me, in my ability to create, and bring me a challenge, something big, something terrific! How else can I create? So without faith it is impossible to please God. So when he said, “And when it pleased God to reveal his Son in me, I conferred not with flesh and blood,” he confesses that the Son was unveiled in him and he saw the mystery. Then he asked all those who listened to him to look upon him as a steward of the mysteries of God, for they all awoke within him.

So tonight, please God. How would you please God? Take the most fantastic dream that is not yet realized, that seems impossible, and then hold God trustworthy. Assume that you’ve realized it and hold him trustworthy. Challenge God to use his creative talent to create that dream in your world so that you have experienced it. That’s how you please God. So, when it pleased God…and so through faith one day he will take the veil and tear it apart; and then unveil within you the series of mystical experiences which series will reveal to you who you really are. For when it’s unveiled he’s only unveiling himself. He’s reached the end of his creative power, what he intended when he contracted himself and became you. So he uses you, puts you through all the furnaces in the world, because you and he are one, you are his contraction. So when this comes to the end you awake as God. Everyone eventually will awake as God.

So here, let us take what others have given us and in their generosity use it. My friend was wise enough and generous enough and modest enough with herself to say while she was telling the story it dawned upon her that she had never really tried it, “I remember when”; and yet the very moment she tried it, the phone calls, and she’s getting fifty dollars rather than ten. And so don’t just hear it, put it to the test. This chap who wrote, and got all that he wanted, a nice acceptance and a feeling that the man liked it, and then threw it in the ashcan, “that wasn’t good enough.” And then he took a challenge and in an hour the whole thing inflamed his mind and so he was raised from the passive state into the active state, and the whole thing came through in one hour.

I know in my own case, I brought back a manuscript that thick from Barbados, 1946, and while at sea this vision happened. Here I was lifted up and I saw this fantastic sea of humanity, and when I walked by they were all transformed from their unlovely states into the most perfect, most beautiful states imaginable. I took my manuscript and tore it up and threw it away. Didn’t even bring it back with me, and I labored on it for months. I spent five months in Barbados. And so, I labored on this manuscript and I brought it back, thinking I’d have a nice manuscript for my publisher. After this experience I took that manuscript and threw it overboard, didn’t redeem one page of it. And then, in one hour—of course, it isn’t a long thing, it’s a little tiny pamphlet—but in one hour the whole thing poured through me. I sat down and wrote the whole thing in an hour and then sent it off and it was published. It just came that fast. I couldn’t possibly have gone to press with what I’d brought back after five months of labor. This whole thing just came like fire, and that had to be it. Just a little tiny thing calledThe Search, but it poured out. And if you ask my wife what she thinks of all my books, the first one she would pick isThe Searchbecause it came that way.

The same thing is true ofYour Faith is Your Fortune. I took care of a doctor; he was a dope fiend, a brilliant surgeon and told me that when he was under the dope he did his best surgery. For seven years he had this most fantastic private hospital with about a dozen doctors under him. Then he took the needle and became a victim of his own practice. And I took him. Because he was a very prominent doctor they allowed me to do what I could with him. So with the consent of New York City’s head of the dope ring, that is, the Police Department, they allowed me to take him to a hotel. So I did, and took him there for two weeks. He was stark raving mad. If you left him for one second, he’s in the nude, down the hallway, on the street…and we’re on the twentieth floor. So this day, watching him, I was completely ___(??) just watching him, because he was on the bed. I didn’t know what he would do the next second. Here I am with my yellow papers and pencils and I wrote Your Faith is Your Fortune. It came out in a matter, I would say, forty-eight hours, the whole thing, talking on the inside. The voice is talking and dictating, and everything is being dictated, and came out that way. So Your Faith is Your Fortune is simply from the depth, I only put it down. I wasn’t concocting it, it simply poured out, the whole thing poured out. When I took the manuscript and turned it in to my chap to correct it, there was practically nothing, not a thing he had to do with it…simply poured out…all because I took the challenge to take care of a friend who was a dope fiend. And Scotty was a wonderful man, grand fella, but he simply became the victim of his own practice. So I watched him, and while I’m watching him and getting more and more sleepy—-because day in and day out you just can’t get any sleep—-and so, suddenly this thing began to pour out of me. And I could hear the words in the depths of my soul, dictating, something on the inside talking. I simply wrote down what they were telling me. And Your Faith is Your Fortune came that way and The Search came, after five months of labor on a large manuscript, which I discarded.

So my friend is sharing this with us this night: “Feed me challenges! How else can I grow?” So tonight you take a challenge as we go into the Silence. Take the most wonderful challenge, and then hold God trustworthy. Now let us go.

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: When the Bible says, “In my father’s house there are many mansions,” um, I’m trying to understand when you say everything is here and we move into those states. For instance, you have moved into a state as a lecturer, haven’t you?

A: Yes.

Q: And a Kennedy has moved into a state when he was shot. All these states are here, like the many mansions, is that right?

A: Yes.

Q: So if we move into poverty, we have moved into that state, or we move into richness or illness we’ve moved into that state?

A: Granted.

Q: And they’re all right here?

A:The thing is to become selective. You don’t go into a restaurant and say, “Bring me a dinner,” you say, “Bring me a menu” and then you order. You’re going to pay for it and you want proper service. If he throws it at you, you’re going to complain because you’re paying for it. You go into a place and you order a dress. You don’t say, “Bring me a dress,” you become selective, and you go through dozens and dozens of dresses. Then you pick out the one you think that you need to fill your wardrobe. And so, you may need a brown. They have the most beautiful blues in the world, but you don’t need at this moment a blue dress, you want a brown to complete the wardrobe. So you look through stacks and stacks of dresses and you find what you want. Yet they’re all there. Everything is here, and man must become selective and discriminating in every thing that he does in this world. The more discriminating he is, well, the better. You simply select it and you move into it. They’re only states, infinite states; but you move from one state— leave the state alone for someone else to enter if they want to enter it—and then move into another state.

Now, we think we’re going to change poverty in this land. You can’t change states, can’t do it. If you took all the money in the world, divided it up equally, in twenty-four hours Rockefeller would still be rich and the other fellow would still be poor, go right down again. There used to be a lecturer and he had a system, he had a huge big glass bowl and he’d fill it with all kinds of nuts. He had walnuts and other kinds of nuts, all kinds of nuts. And then he would take the bowl and he would say, “Life is like this: it’s a constant rhythm, you can’t stop it.” And he would take the biggest nut, the big walnut, and put it at the very bottom. He would show it to you in his hand and take it and put it right at the very bottom. But he said, “You can’t stop life” and he started shaking this bowl and in no time up came the walnut, the big walnut, to the very top again. And all the little fellas…of course, he had a wonderful line, he would say, “I hear someone squeaking down below” and he would say, “The little one down below is saying, ‘You started me there in life. If you’d only start me at the top I would be alright. Well, so you started me at the bottom; start me at the top.’” So he goes all the way down to the bottom of the bowl, brings a little nut up, puts it obviously before all eyes at the very top. But you can’t stop life; life is a rhythm, it’s a shaking, and the little fella will go all the way down to the bottom. So why pick out the little one? Pick out something noble in this world, something grand in this world, and remain faithful to it.

Goodnight.