The Clever Rascal: The Unjust Steward

Tonight’s subject is “The Clever Rascal.” This is taken from the 16th chapter of the Book of Luke. There’s a story told there of an unjust steward. There’s a very rich man who had a steward and charges were brought against the steward that he was wasting his man’s goods. So he called the steward and told him to turn in his stewardship, for he could no longer represent him. The steward went out and got all of the debtors and asked each in turn what they owed his master. “The first one said, ‘One hundred measures of oil.’ He said, ‘Sit down and write, quickly, fifty measure of oil.’ Then he said to the second, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘One hundred measures of wheat.’ ‘You sit down and you write eighty.’” And so, he falsified the entire record of his master, making friends for himself. For he felt, I am too weak to work and too proud to beg, and so by doing this I’ll make these friends of mine, so when I’m fired from my job they will know that they are in my debt. For I gave this one fifty percent of what he really owed, and that one twenty percent of what he owed; and so at least to this extent they are indebted to me. When his master heard what he had done, the master highly commended him for his prudence. Then he said to those to whom he told the story, ‘Make for yourself friends of the unrighteous mammon. For if you are not faithful to that unrighteous mammon, who will trust you when it comes to the real riches of the world?’”

Now, a parable has a central jet of truth and the outer story is secondary to its meaning, what it really tries to convey. He is not recommending the man who stole his master’s goods or falsified the master’s records; it’s a story. What is its meaning? That’s the important thing. And what are the real riches against the so-called riches of the unrighteous mammon? Well, the Encyclopedia Britannica defines for us the word righteous as “equitable, just, right thinking,” therefore “unrighteous” would be the opposite. It would not be just, it would be unjust. It would not be right thinking, just the opposite of right thinking.

Now, what is right thinking? If today I reflect on the activities of the day and I have a hundred percent recall, I would have a perfect record of what happened today. If I had a perfect recall, that when we had dinner, for instance, I should not only know what I ate but the order in which I ate it, the chronological order. Did I take this piece before that? Did I take a sip of coffee with the meal or after the meal? Everything in the day—the mail as I received it, as I opened it, not only as I opened it, my reactions to the mail—everything should be perfectly recalled if my memory is perfect and I have a hundred percent recall. So memory is the conservative aspect of imagining. So I recall the day; that is right thinking, that’s righteous mammon. But I don’t like what happened today, and I’m invited to emulate the unjust steward and simply recall the day and simply revise every little aspect of the day that does not conform to the day as I wish I had encountered. That is being unjust, that is right thinking. I am completely changing and modifying the whole day to make it conform to my wish fulfilled. I am invited to emulate the behavior of the unjust steward; for if I do not do it in this way, if I am not faithful to this unrighteous mammon, who will trust me with that which is real in this world?

Now, what is the “real” in this world? He is telling us by that statement this whole vast world would be really unreal. But I am learning to cut my mental teeth and spiritual teeth on the unreality: Getting a home when I can’t afford it, increasing my income when seemingly I haven’t the talent, bringing in all kinds of things in my world. But this is a world that wears out; it wears out like a garment, and the whole vast world, including the stars, they are fading and dissolving just like smoke. But, there is a real world…and if I can’t be faithful in this world with unjust, unrighteous mammon who would entrust me with the real riches of the world?

Now, sixteen years ago I had an experience which I recorded in one of my books, calledAwakened Imagination. I’ve only seen it once in print and it came after my experience. That is, it was printed thousands of years ago, 2,000 years ago, but I did not know of this book. It was given to me after I came out in print and I told my story. The book is The Apocryphal New Testament as Compiled by James and in it is a story told by Joseph, the father of Jesus Christ. As told in this story, Joseph had this strange experience the night of his birth, where everything stood still. The heavens stood still, the shepherds walking walked not, and the little lambs drinking drank not, and the water flowing flowed not, everything stood still. Then all of a sudden everything moved on in its course.

Well, that experience was mine sixteen years ago, when suddenly I slipped in time and went back in time, say, 200 years, and came upon a scene of a wonderful lovely gracious dining room. It was in the eastern section of this country. I could tell from their clothes, from the setting, everything was simply New England. Then, at that moment, I knew that if I could arrest within me an activity which I felt, that all that I now perceived within the focus of my vision would stand still, it would all freeze. And so, at that moment, I arrested it, and my head jelled, it became solid. At that moment, I, the perceiver, I was awake and I could change my attention, but within the focus of my vision everything froze. The diners who were dining dined not. One young lad, about twenty-two years old, bringing a spoon to his mouth froze, and he couldn’t move it one moment beyond where I froze him—father and mother on both sides, and his brother to my…his brother’s back to me, so the two boys and the father and mother. A waitress coming through the door and as she started walking she froze and she couldn’t move. A bird in flight, it froze. The little leaves falling, they froze. The grass waving with the wind, it froze. Everything froze. I examined the whole thing, it was all dead. The life was in me! And when I released that power within me, that life in me, then everything continued on its course. The boy completed his action of bringing the soup to his mouth. The waitress completed her action of walking to the table to bring the second course. The bird that was arrested in flight continued in its flight, and the leaves falling fell. Everything moved as it intended when I arrested the intention.

But across this country I am always asked, “Did the four diners and the waitress were they aware of being frozen?” But I have no way of telling, I couldn’t answer. I only know that I froze it in myself. I couldn’t tell whether these four and the waitress walking towards the table were aware that they were frozen, I didn’t know. From here to New York City and across the country—-I gave lectures inMilwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and all over San Francisco, all the way down—I’ve told this story and someone would always ask that question. And I was unable from experience to answer and to tell that I know that they were dead. I thought they were all dead. I looked at them, they were dead. The bird should have fallen if our law of gravity is true. The bird should have fallen, for the bird in flight, if arrested, would fall to the ground. But it didn’t, it was simply arrested. Space was frozen; everything was frozen so it couldn’t fall. But I could not answer their question intelligently.

Well, this past week, a lady, who is present here tonight, told me this story. It only happened to her recently. She lives in the Palisades and she hears the ocean and can see the ocean. These are her words, she said,“Neville, I had this experience, but it was from the negative side of yours. You were the operant power, you stopped it. I didn’t stop it; I was on the negative side: I was stopped. Suddenly, someone or something turned me off and I was nothing but literally nothing.” She was aware, because she could not know she was nothing unless she was aware of being nothing. “They turned me off and I was nothing. There was no sound of the ocean, but nothing, everything was dead. Then whatever turned me off turned me on again and then everything became alive.”

Now, that’s the power that I call the real riches of the world. So if you are not faithful to the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust you with the real riches of the world? You think about it. If this very moment some tyrant in the world who wants to conquer, say, this marvelous land of ours and enslave it for their own personal gain, if they had such riches and did not have the heart of love, they could turn us off; and then that’s like simply wiping off the slate, wiping off the blackboard, and then rewriting the script as they would intend. Then, when they turned us on again our intentions would be completely changed, even if that intention was to walk willingly—and think we were initiating the urge to walk—into the ocean beyond our depth. We would think this is what we want to do, like the lemmings do. Do they not by the hundreds of thousands just move towards the ocean and all become, well, they all commit suicide? They do it year after year as they seemingly reproduce so many. Then suddenly they all start moving, these little animals, and move toward the ocean and all commit suicide. Who turned them off and then turned them on with a different intention? Instead of reproducing themselves, the slate was wiped clean, and then a new script was put on it, and then the lights turned on once more.

Now listen to the words, “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). In him was life, and the life was the light of men. We go now to the epistle, this is the 1st John—that is, I just quoted from the first chapter of John—we go now to the first epistle of John, “He who has the Son has life; he who has not the Son has not life” (5:12). If you have the Son, you have eternal life in yourself. Life in yourself is the light in men, and you can turn it off and turn it on. But I doubt that anyone would ever have life in themselves until he’s embraced and fused with love, for what would he do to this fantastic world if he had life in himself not moved and guided by love? Can you conceive what man could do…to turn off, as the lady was turned off and everything stood still? There was no ocean…she can hear it from her window from her home, she can see it from her home, but it was all still. There was no ocean. The ocean was simply frozen as though, well, a lake frozen. It was just simply still, the atmosphere still. And she said in her own words, “I was nothing, but literally nothing.” She was aware of being nothing. And then someone or something, whoever turned her off, turned her on again and suddenly she became someone, became something.

Well, I had the positive side of that experience, so I can say to this lady you are on the verge of moving from that side to the positive side. You have to have the negative side first. It’s only God, the operant power, operating on himself; and it’s God, her own wonderful being, operating on himself in her. So it was he who turned off what he loves more than anything else in this world, his emanation, which is this lady. She is his emanation, his love, and he will not in eternity leave her until they cleave and become one flesh, one being. So he operates upon her and shows her the power that he intends one day to share with her when they become one. That power she will then exercise…and you will turn it off or turn it on.

So then Blake said, “Eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy,” so now you put yourself into this mind, that everything is aware of being ___(??), but everything; and it is simply an act of mercy that now turns the light on, and animates it, activates it; and then through this activation brings out what he loves more than anything in the world. Brings out himself, his own emanation. Haven’t you seen these ships up in San Francisco—as you go from San Francisco and take a ride into Sacramento—and they’re all in mothballs? Hundreds and hundreds of ships deactivated, dead, completely dead. They could tomorrow if the order were given be activated and once more become alive. People would go aboard, ___(??), things would come aboard, all things begin to move, these ships, thousands of them all in mothballs. Blake saw these and he called them “the halls of Los.” He implies that everything is now. The Bible tells us that, the 3rd chapter, the 15th verse, of the Book of Ecclesiastes: “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God is seeking that which is lost, or which has gone astray.” What’s gone astray? He sent himself into the entire structure and he is extracting himself, his creative power. His creative power is called in scripture Christ Jesus. Christ is defined in scripture as the creative power and wisdom of God. It’s the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24).

Now, listen to this carefully, taken from the Book of Proverbs, the 8th chapter: “God created me at the beginning of his way, the first of his acts of old” (verse 22). Before he brought forth the heavens, before he brought forth the earth, before he established anything, “I was beside him, like a little child” (verse 30). Now, this little statement “like a little child,” the King James Version takes that same word, one single Hebrew word, and all scholars have put it into a phrase. “I was beside him, like a little child” is the Revised Standard Version. The King James Version takes that same word, a single word, and gives it this interpretation, “I was brought forth, I was brought forth by him.” Can you imagine that? Here, he doesn’t say what was brought forth, “I was brought forth by him.” The English Revised Version gives a still different interpretation of the single word. I’ll tell you what the word is, the single word that means “faith” which is called “Amen”—-Aleph, Mem Nun—is the word translated as “I was beside him, like a little child.” So you go to your Concordance and you look it up, and it says simply “faith, moving to the right hand of God.” Not “moved” to the right hand of God. What did he bring forth first of all in the world? He brought forth faith.

I encourage you to use the unrighteous mammon that is faith. As you exercise your right, your talent to rearrange and falsify the record of the day and make tomorrow conform to the falsified record of tonight—so tomorrow is not the record of today; it conforms to your falsified record— you can only do it by faith. And then, one day, he’ll be born. Who is born? Faith is born. He’s called Jesus Christ. Born of whom?—born of God. Well, did you give him birth? Yes I gave him birth. Well, then who am I? That’s what you ask yourself. So you’re told in the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse of the Book of Galatians that man must give birth to Christ, and that the promise was made unto Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say “offsprings” referring to many, but to offspring referring to one: “And to your offspring which is Christ.” So Christ is the creative power and the wisdom of God, summarized in one little thing called “Amen.” It stands beside him in the very beginning.

So, man is put into these wheels that are already completed. Everything is. “Eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of Creation which was an act of mercy” (Blake, Vis. Last Judg., P.614). So man is inserted into a wheel and there are wheels within wheels. And may I tell you, there is no moral order in this world, only an order of nature to which both man and beast are subjected. So let no one tell you there is a moral order in this world. We are subjected to futility, as told us in the 8th of Romans: “The creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by the will of him who subjected him in faith.” Why? He was subjected in hope that this creature that is so subjected will once more be extracted and be set free from this world of corruption, and become once more a child of God; the child being his creative power, where he increases his capacity to create by the experience of inserting himself in this world of futility.

So everything is. There isn’t a thing that is impossible to God because the whole thing is done. Every man in this world, no matter who he is, he could be any kind of a man he wants to be in the world because he is all that is his potential. He now can select the kind of a man that he would like to be; although at the moment when he selects the kind of man that he would like to be reason tells him that he could never be it. Forget what reason tells you and exercise faith, and become now faithful to the unrighteous mammon. Simply represent yourself to yourself as the man that you want to be, and be faithful to it.

Now let me tell you a little story. We have a pine tree in front of our house. The last two days the gusts of wind thirty, forty, fifty miles an hour…right…not more than, say, six feet from my eye, on a little branch, doves are nesting. Well, I’ve been watching them. A branch above is banging one of these two doves all through the day, from above. One from below is knocking the tree out… sometimes it goes up, seemingly five, six feet. But whoever is nesting is sitting on that nest in spite of the blows, and the other one, the mate whether it be male or female brings a worm and feeds the one on that nest. You would think the impulse of a bird when they get a worm is to swallow it. No, it has a mission. The mission is not to swallow but to bring it to the mate who is hatching out something. This is a world for hatching. As it was revealed to me so clearly, the whole vast world is for hatching out: And you do it through faith. So she with all the blows or he with all the blows on its little head, and all the bouncing all over the place—-for these gusts have been fantastic in the last forty-eight hours—-it still hugs that little nest. Regardless of all the blows and all the wind, there it is in faith that what it is keeping warm is going to come out.

Now 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). Not late for the idea. How long it takes a little dove to hatch out an egg, I don’t know. A chicken, alright, twenty-one days; a little sheep, five months; a horse, twelve months; a man, nine months. So we have different time intervals for hatching out, but “at length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell.” So you hatch out. You’re the dove. You’re hatching out something, and if it doesn’t work by tomorrow, so what, regardless of the blows of the day. So this little beast, this little dove, here it is sitting on a nest and these terrific blows on top of it. I can see it, I look outside and here is the thing coming on the little bird, and then something comes from below, then its own little branch is flying all over the place. But it doesn’t leave that little purpose: Its purpose is to hatch out.

Well, we are the dove. We are this Holy Spirit that is God. We conceive an idea that seemingly is impossible, and so we too form our little nest. Our nest is simply to assume that we are what now we want to be, and we do assume it, that mentally we are seeing the fulfilled desire. See it reflected in the faces of our friends. See it reflected in society. See it reflected the whole vast world over. And regardless of the blows of the day, regardless of the gusts that come, the rumors that come, we simply hang on to what we are hatching out. Not a power in this world is going to stop it, it will come out! One after the other we bring them to this world of ours. Then, if we are faithful with this unrighteous mammon, the day will come, we will receive the Son. He who has the Son has eternal life in himself; he who has not the Son has not eternal life.

But let us first prove ourselves faithful with the unrighteous mammon. And then will come the day we’ll be given the power to stop and start what is forever; for all this is forever, all these are the characters of God’s world. You are not anything that you are now wearing; you are the wearer, the actor. “God only acts and is in all existing beings and men.” The actor is God. The costume…alright, call it Hamlet, call it Neville, call it John, call it any other name in this world, all these are the characters that God created. They’re almost…you could call them resultant states of his first creative act; and then he buried himself in these costumes and plays the parts.

Let no one tell you there’s any moral order in this world. There’s only an order of nature to which the whole vast world of man and beast and birds and animals and everything else are subjected. They’re all subject to it. Then he has to bring forth the first inkling which God brought forth and that is faith: “I’m the first of his acts of old…before he brought forth the universe I stood before him as a little child.” And the word translated “as a little child”—I stood beside him as a little child—is Amen. The Hebrew word Amen simply means “faith.” In its essence that’s Amen. So he brings it forth first, for by faith he created the universe. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1). “By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that the things that are seen were made from things that do not appear” (verse 3)…all from the invisible reality.

So, you simply single out the man, the woman that you want to be and assume that you are it, regardless of what the world will tell you. Then live faithful to this unrighteous mammon; because reason tells you that you are not and memory tells you that you’ve never experienced this, so you are falsifying the record. But we are encouraged to falsify the record. You read it carefully, the 16th chapter of the Book of Luke. And so, the rich man called his steward and highly commended him for what he had done by falsifying the record to make friends for himself of the unrighteous mammon. Well, the word steward originally meant “a ward of the sty,” in other words, a keeper of the pig. The pig has always been the symbol of the redeemer and the savior of the world, so the keeper of the savior of the world. Well, who is the savior of the world? We’re told in Isaiah, the 43rd chapter, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior…and besides me there is no savior” (verses 3,11). So, if I am the keeper, if I am the steward of the sty, the steward of the mystery of God the savior of the world, and he tells me “I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,” then I am the keeper of the savior; and he is my own I AM. If all things are possible to God, now start on this level and then serve faithfully the unrighteous mammon. Just try it. Righteousness is right thinking; unrighteous is seemingly wrong thinking—I am not faithful to the record. But I will not be faithful to the record, I’ll change it. If I am faithful to the record, I am simply not competent forever and forever and forever. The purpose is to make me a creator like my Father, he creates. I can’t create if I can only observe automatically that which passes before me.

So, nothing passes away. The past hasn’t really passed. I slipped into it and having slipped into it 200 years ago, it is still taking place. The diners who dined 200 years ago are still at that very moment in time dining. This moment is taking place and will forever take place. It cannot pass away. This little building will go, you and I will make our exit from this world, but this moment in time is clothed as it is now clothed and cannot pass away. The building will go, certainly, bigger buildings will come here, and you and I will make our exit from the scene. But the scene is caught in time and that section of time is forever, and you can’t take it away. Tomorrow in which we think we go it is taking place. It’s not going to be created; it is all done. Read it carefully in the 3rd chapter, the 15th verse of Ecclesiastes: “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been. And there is nothing new under the sun.” It is all here, and you and I only become aware of increasing portions of that which already is.

So, becoming aware of it ___(??) is simply, change it. I know it is taking place, andwe are automatons until we practice this wonderful art of falsifying the record. I call it revision. The Bible doesn’t use the word revision, but I try to make it more understandable to our section as it were. They speak of it as repentance.Repentance is a radical change of attitude towards life, but a radical change. Well, if today I reflect on the day and my recall is fairly good, if I recall the day and a portion of the day is not a very pleasant thing, well then, at the moment of recall change it. I’m saying to someone, “What do you owe my lord?” My lord is my own consciousness. “Well, I owe him so much.” “Well, then sit down quickly and modify it. You don’t owe him that much at all. Make it fifty percent.” “And how much do you owe, one hundred percent? Well, make it eighty percent.”

There are certain things in my life that I can’t possibly change more than fifty. You meet a man with one foot missing, and you know in eternity he hasn’t a foot that is missing, but at the moment you can’t quite bring yourself to believe the foot is going to grow, so you can’t forgive him one hundred percent. But you can modify it and say, in spite of the handicap of a foot gone or an eye gone, he still can be successful and happy and in love and being loved in this world. So the absence of a foot doesn’t make any difference. So you can modify it to a certain degree. There is not a thing in this world you can’t bring down to some degree. So in one case he gave it fifty percent; another case he only gave it twenty percent. But you can take everything in this world and to some degree improve it by lopping off some little portion of it, if only five percent. And so, at the end of a day, take your day, bring it into your mind’s eye, try to get as perfect a recall as possible, and then play the part of the unjust steward. Then, forgive it, completely forgive it: that’s not so and so, so and so happened. And may I tell you, it works like a charm, just like a charm.

Here’s a simple little thing. My brothers are great humorists. I think they are. So they were late in sending me my check. I’m 5,000 miles away…so they say, “Oh well, Neville doesn’t care, forget it.” So after all it is my money. I have a portion of the stock. They should have held a board meeting five months ago, for the fiscal year closed the end of September of last year. So certainly after the closing of the businesses the end of September they should have decided what kind of dividends they’re going to pay. Well, they didn’t. They have all the money they need and they take it for granted I have all the money that I need, so “Forget him, he’s 5,000 miles away and he can’t complain. And if he does, so what does it matter, we are too remote to even respond to his complaint.” Then finally my brother Victor became aware, “Well, after all, we shouldn’t do this to Neville, so we will simply send him a check.” So he sent me a very lovely big check last Saturday, but he had to get his little humorous note into it. He dictates this letter to his secretary, mind you, of all the people in the world, and then here comes this letter with the check enclosed, and he said, “Because of your dire need I’m sending this check off to you,” this draft.

So a friend of mine only a week before (how God works)…only a week before a friend of mine who works for RCA, and he always puts into the mail, almost daily, some little thing that the salesmen bring him. It’s a choice little morsel. He mimeographs it or has it photographed, and then he makes multiple numbers of it and sends to his friends. Well, this one that he sent to me was a man standing at a bar with a huge big mug of ale, a bulbous nose, and no pants, and here he is, a picture of him with a big smile on his face, holding this huge thing in his hand, and no pants on him, and the caption of it is, “Good heavens! I’ve forgotten my wallet.” So I took this and I wrote my brother on this little note, a thank-you note, and told him he must be psychic. He must be psychic because I didn’t get my wallet, and now he’s filled it for me. See, all these little things…I never would have thought of such a thing, but my friend sent it only a week ago. Usually, you read it, you laugh and you tear it up and throw it away, but for some reason or other I kept it. I kept it as a little piece of paper on which I could answer my brother and thank him for filling my wallet for me. So you see, let us falsify the record.

This whole vast world is for one purpose: for hatching out. It’s for…really, this is educative darkness, andthe purpose of life here in this world is simply to exercise our talent which is God, our own wonderful human Imagination, and simply learn the art of image making. The art of image making…you simply, well, what do I want in this world, not only for myself but for my friends? Well, they may not even want it, but you think it’s lovely, want it for them. If it’s a loving gift no one returns it. If the gift is unlovely, they should return it, and you who offered the gift will be stuck with it. But if it’s a loving gift and should they stupidly return it, you would not be unwilling to accept it, you the giver. Therefore, give only the loving things in this world.

And be just like the little dove that is now being pummeled from above and below and all over the place. But she and he are faithful. They’re being fed. Are we not told: Are you not more worthy and you are worth more than five sparrows…and not a sparrow falls but your Father knows it? Are you not of more value than the sparrows? Well, the little dove is being fed, whether it be the male or the female, they don’t get off the nest. Whoever is there the other one brings food and gives it, and they remain faithful to their purpose which is to warm and to hatch out that little egg. And of all the birds I know of the dove is the most careless in the making of a nest. They don’t make good nests. They almost drop the egg on a piece of leaf. They expect in some strange way…other birds will build a nest and do it beautifully, but not a dove. That’s why they use the symbol of a dove to descend upon man the one that he loves, the one who has his favor, and to smother him with kisses because he brought forth Jesus Christ. He brought forth the symbol of his faith, for Jesus Christ is faith— that is the word “Amen”—who stood beside him in the very beginning, because he couldn’t make a world without faith. “We understand that by faith the world was created by the word of God” so he had first to bring forth faith. And so, everyone must bring forth the child, the Christ child, and the Christ child is your faith. Therefore, when you are born from above, it is symbolized in the little infant wrapped in swaddling clothes which is Jesus Christ. You bring him forth, symbolizing your faith.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Q: How do you get that faith?

A: Sir, how do you get that faith? That’s a marvelous question! He said, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24). Believe in the reality of your imaginal act. It’s an imaginal act that is the egg that you really drop.Warm it and keep it aglow to the best of your ability. So I call faith loyalty to unseen reality. To me it’s a good definition of faith, because when a man says he is loyal, he says I’ll take this woman to be my wife, well, the pledge is through thick or thin. You just have to protect her. Well, you must be loyal to the best of your ability to that pledge, and she makes a similar pledge. So loyalty is a marvelous word, loyal to our country, that no one should be able to take any one of us as Americans and drive us to betray our country. So you’re loyal, I mean, you’re beyond it. No one could even approach you if you’re loyal to the country. You don’t have to fight for it to defend it with words and these things; you’re loyal to your country, your feeling about it. Well, you’re loyal to an idea. You assume that you are or that a friend is what you would like to be, or what you would like him to be, and then you remain loyal to the unseen reality until the unseen becomes seen. It will…if you are as loyal to it as that little tender bird this night is loyal to her duty, which is to bring what she is sitting on out into an animated world. So practice, practice and still more practice.

Any other questions, please?

Q: In reference to the pig being the symbol of the savior, how does this then relate to the prodigal when he was eating with the pigs?

A: Did you hear that question? The pig is the symbol—-you can find it in any great book of symbolism—-has always been the savior, the redeemer of the world, the symbol of it. The prodigal went prodigal, spent all of his money, and he was feeding the pig, that was his last job, and eating the food that belonged to the pig. He was really a steward in the extreme sense of the word. To share with you, Tom, for you haven’t been here since I had this experience…and a few years ago I had this vision. I found myself one night fully awake in an enormous display of flowers and plant life. It was closing time, dusk, and I was alone, and I knew that everyone had gone from the place, and it would not be open for a little while and so I must be going too. Just as I started toward the exit I saw a little pig, a little runt, a small little fella but perfectly healthy, but very, very small. I said to myself, I can’t leave him here unfed, unwatered, I must do something about it. So there was a table, maybe the height of this, and I took branches and I took flowers and I took all the green things that I could find. I made a little bed for him. Then I said, “If he gets hungry enough he will eat of the flowers. They may not be the best kind of food to feed him, but he will still survive until someone comes in and finds him.” And so then, as I did the best I could with what I had, as flowers and leaves and so on, then the thing changed suddenly, like turning over a leaf, and I found myself in an enormous supermarket, every conceivable kind of food displayed.

In the supermarket, my brother Victor, who runs all of our businesses, he was there, my daughter Vicki, she was there. Suddenly as I looked down here is the pig. But the pig had grown about four or five times its size since I last saw it. But it was rangy, it was thin, and obviously not well fed. It should have been better fed in the interval between the discovery of the pig and the present moment of the pig. So I went right away and I got a bag of meal, and I started to mix it with water. My brother Victor came by and he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m mixing some food for my pig.” So he had a bag and from the bag he took three or four handfuls of a very thick white gravy and he gave substance to the meal. I thanked him for adding substance to it, but I knew it would take me quite a while to mix it so that the pig could eat it. So I said to my daughter Vicki, I said, “Go over there and bring me a little package of crackers.” She said, “Daddy, what will I use for money?” I said, “You don’t need any money, all of this belongs to us. Everything here is ours, so ask no one any favor, just go and take it.” Well, there was a huge pyramid of crackers, and she instead of taking one from the top took one from the bottom and dislodged…the whole thing fell as she took it. It exposed a little light, a little single four or five inch candle that was lit. I said to her, “Don’t touch it, and don’t build the pyramid any more. That’s my light. It must never in eternity be put out. The candle now shines upon my head and by my light I walk through darkness; for the light of man, the Spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. And that’s my candle, so don’t build it and conceal it anymore.” And with that it all dissolved.

So between finding the symbol of the savior of the world which was a pig and then the interval afterwards, he had grown. But he should have been fed by me better than I had fed him. I did not take every opportunity that was presented to me in the course of that interval to feed him. Well, when do you feed him? Every time you exercise your Imagination lovingly on behalf of another you’ve done it unto me. And so, where’s the glass of water? When you did not imagine something lovely about another; I was thirsty and you didn’t give me a glass of water. When you did not imagine something lovely—I was in need of shelter and you didn’t take me in, I was in need of raiment and you didn’t take me in. So every time an individual exercises his Imagination lovingly on behalf of anyone in this world he is feeding the pig.

Goodnight.