The Human Imagination

Tonight’s subject I will call it “The Human Imagination.” I could call it, maybe you will, by many other titles. The human Imagination is the true vine of eternity, the eternal body of God. So let us turn to the works of Paul and see what light he throws on it. You will see that there is nothing impossible to your wonderful human Imagination, but man will not accept it. He turns out to other gods, gods that do not exist. In the writings of Paul no trace can be found of an historical Christ as we today use the term. And yet that is all that Paul preached. He only preached Christ crucified, and yet there’s not the slightest trace of an historical Christ in the letters of Paul. He said, “From now on we regard no one from the human point of view; even though we once regarded Christ from the human point of view, we regard him thus no longer” (2Cor. 5:16).

Now let us see what he has to say about Christ. He said, “Since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it please God through the folly that we preach to save those who believe” (1Cor.1:21). Well, what did he preach? He preached “Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Greeks. Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor.1:23; 1:24). That’s what Christ meant to him: the power of God and the wisdom of God. As you read his letters you can come to only one conclusion…that he is speaking of your own wonderful human Imagination…that’s Christ.

He said, “The wisdom of man is foolishness in the eyes of God. The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1Cor.1:25). He looked upon the crucified Christ as God keyed low, the very lowest point. To him he was impotency of the creative power; and yet that impotency that appeared dead was to him more creative and more wise than the power of man and the wisdom of man. So when he speaks of “bearing on his body the death of Christ that he may also manifest the life of Christ in his body,” the word translated death is defined in scripture as “impotency.” It’s keyed so low it appears to be dead; and yet, in spite of the appearance of death, it is wiser than the wisdom of man and stronger, the seeming weakness, than the strength of men.

You can try it and put him to the test. He said, “Come test yourselves and see. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test”(2Cor.13:5). Well, if he’s my human Imagination and all things were made by him and without him there’s nothing made that is made, I certainly can test him if he’s my human Imagination. You see, he has the wisdom to devise the means. I don’t have to consciously devise the means. He has the power to execute the imaginal assumption. So I dare to assume that I am what reason denies, what my senses deny, knowing that the being that is assuming it is Christ Jesus, and it has this wisdom, though weak. For what is weaker than a mere assumption that a thing is so, though reason tells me that it is not so? When my senses deny it and every person around me ___(??) wise persons forbidding it if I confided what I had done? But here I am behind the eight-ball and I dare to assume that I am now what everything denies that I am, does that assumption have the power and wisdom to execute itself? I am told it has if I will accept it. But I’m also told that man will not accept it…very few will.

Samuel Brothers was writing about the cross said, “He that takes up that bitter tree and carries it cannily”—in other words, carries it quietly, don’t discuss it, just carry it quietly—“will find it such a burden as wings are to a bird or sails are to a boat.” If you dare to carry that bitter tree, you’ll find it that kind of a burden. Is that a burden? We understand the words “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Mat.11:29). Is there any burden to that, to carry that kind of a cross? Where could you go that you cannot imagine? Where could you go where you’re devoid of the capacity to imagine? Put you in a dungeon, I can’t stop you from imagining. I don’t care where I put you, I can’t take from you…if I knocked you unconscious I can’t take from you your capacity to imagine. Well, is that a burden? He said, my burden is light and my yoke, if you accept it, is easy. He offers his yoke which is his knowledge based upon experience, his knowledge of scripture for yours based upon speculation, based upon theory, based upon your misconceptions as taught you in the cradle.

So he offers you what he personally has experienced. I’m speaking now of Paul…he offers this entire picture…for he went out to persecute all those who believed in “The Way.” Christ said, “I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life” (John14:6). Well, what’s true about an assumption that reason denies? Is that a true judgment? If I now wrote out exactly what I want to be and wrote it out as though I had it, well, that’s not a true judgment if truth must conform to the external fact to which it relates. So I write out exactly what I want to be, but I don’t write it in that manner, I write it as though I am it. Well, if I present that and can’t present the evidence, well, then that’s a lie. And so, he said, “I am the truth.” Well, if he’s my Imagination and all things are possible to him, I can write it in that manner, knowing I contain within myself the power and the wisdom to make it so. I need not try to break a blood vessel to devise the means to make it so. I simply assume that Christ Jesus is the eternal vine, the eternal body of God, and this is my own wonderful human Imagination. If this is true, and all things are possible to him, and without him there’s not a thing made that is made, well, then I start to assume that I am now what I would like to be. So I stop wanting to be it because I am it, and wait confidently for it to externalize itself upon the screen of space.

Let us turn to a little passage in scripture. You see, the book is a mystery. Paul uses the word mystery no less than twenty times. We think it’s simply history, secular history. Hasn’t a thing to do with anything in the world we call historic. You’ll never find these characters in any part of the ___(??). Never will you find them by digging up the earth and looking for them; they’re all in the human Imagination. So let us see tonight if you are not Simon. I hope you are. Your name may be Ann, may be Mary, may be some other name, but I hope you can say that you’re Simon. Simon appears in the beginning of the story and at the end of the story. But we are told to reverse the story: The first shall be last and the last first. So if you take his last appearance…and they’re leading him to the cross, and they seized one called Simon and made him carry the cross. So, they laid on him the cross, and when they came to the place called “the skull” there they crucified him…the skull. The word Simon means “to hear.” It’s Shema, the first great word of the confession of the Jew as to his faith: “Hear, O Israel”—that is Shema, that’s Simon—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut.6:4). Can’t get away from it, can’t find two Gods, only one, and his name is I AM (Ex.3:13-15). When I say “I am,” I don’t mean two. It’s just so much the core of my being…I am.

So his name is Simon. It means “to hear intelligently, to understand,” but “to consent, to obey.” I can hear intelligently and turn my back on what I’ve heard, understanding every word you said, but I don’t agree with you so I turn my back. If I hear with understanding and consent to it and then obey…he said, “Why call me Lord, and do not do the things I say?” So you heard it now, well, will you consent to it? Well, now obey. So here is Simon carrying the cross. He tells him, my cross, this burden is light. He who will take upon himself this bitter tree and just carry it, carry it cannily, quietly, he’ll find it such a burden as wings are to a bird, as sails are to a boat, no place where I can’t quickly and easily go…if I accept it.

Now we turn to the first use of the word Simon, and we find that he comes in spirit, not in the flesh. This whole drama takes place in the supernatural being. For this being called your own wonderful human Imagination, personified as Messiah, personified as Christ Jesus, is a wholly supernatural being. So he comes in the spirit into the temple. What temple? Are we not told, “You are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you” (2Cor. 6:16). If I come into the temple, the drama is going to unfold within me. So Simon comes into the temple and here is the Christ child being presented according to the law. He takes him up in his arms, and then he said, “Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.” This is from the 52nd chapter of Isaiah (Luke 2:29). For God’s promise to Israel, to the whole vast world, was that you would see God’s salvation. He calls it a sign. He takes up the infant child; but he calls the child a sign for the whole vast world to see. He takes the child in his arms, and asks now for permission to depart; for he is the beginning of God’s redemptive power.

A complete reversal now takes place, and that power that was keyed low to human Imagination is now reversed; and from generation—creating on a divided image, male-female, it now turns up, and moves above the organization of sex where it doesn’t need a dual image to create. It is God creating in himself now. No divided image; above, completely above the organization of sex. A reversal of the great powers that were keyed low, called in scripture, “the fall.” And yet, the verb He Vau He in the great name of God, Yod He Vau He, its primary meaning is “to fall” or “the one who causes to fall”; or it means “to blow” or “the one who causes the wind to blow.” So we take it in its primary meaning, and so who fell? God and his creative power can’t be separated. So when we speak of the fall of man, it is the fall of God, his creative power, his wisdom, keyed low. And it reaches the limit of contraction called man, the limit of opacity called man.

And then after this frightful journey through the wilderness—this is the wilderness—he reaches that moment in time which was all predetermined, where the individual having gone through the furnaces of affliction called experience, now the forces are turned around. It now not only returns to where it was but returns expanded. The whole thing is expanded beyond what it was. The wisdom has increased beyond what it was. There is no limit to expansion; there was only a limit set to contraction.There is no limit to translucency, only a limit set to opacity. So when that limit was reached and the journey began, in spite of that reduced power right down to the very lowest key, it was still wiser than the wisdom of man. It was still stronger than all the strength of man…though it was God at his weakest point, when he simply took upon himself the garment called man.

So here, the Christ spoken of in scripture through the eyes of Paul, the one who carried the message beyond all, he finds no human Christ, no historical Christ; only the power of God and the wisdom of God, and it’s keyed low, and it’s human Imagination. So he said, “I preach only Christ crucified.” Well, he’s crucified—this [body] is the cross that he bears, this is the Tree of Life. The wise men seek for this tree in the laboratories of the world, but he said, “There grows one in the human brain.” It’s all turned down, like the inverted tree, as told us in the Book of Daniel. It was felled and the tree fell, but the roots remained in tact. Don’t touch it, leave it as it is. It will once more be watered with the dew of heaven, and it will grow, this time beyond where it was; this time being the shelter for all and supply the food for all. This is the great tree. “So the gods of the earth and the sea they sought through nature to find this tree; but their search was all in vain, there grows one in the human brain” (Blake, Songs of Experience).

So the whole thing is here as we’re seated here. Could you say to what you’ve just heard, “I am Simon. I’ll carry the cross. I will not only hear what you said, I will consent to it; I will obey.” So when I hear all the discussions and no one comes up with a solution, there’s always a solution present: What do you want in place of what you have? Well, that’s the solution. But you say, “It can’t be obtained, can’t be had.” Doesn’t matter what they say, it’s what you want. All things are possible to God, even when he’s keyed so low that it’s only human Imagination. But human Imagination and divine Imagination are one. The difference is simply a degree of intensity. And so, when keyed low, it seems dead, it seems impotent.

But when you become a Simon knowing now…as the poet Francis Thompson said, “For birth has in itself the germ of death, but death has in itself the germ of birth.” So it begins now with the cross, leading towards the skull where they crucify him. But that death carries in itself the germ of birth. Reverse the story. He first appears holding the birth, the sign of God’s promise to man, the sign that he promised Abraham: “I will give you a son” (Gen.17:15), the prototype of this child. There is something born when someone couldn’t bear a child, when someone couldn’t sire a child; therefore, he’s not to be thought of as a child born of woman. It is to be thought of as God begetting himself, actually begetting himself. So here is this child…it’s an actual child when you encounter the story, when you have the experience; it all takes place in you. You do see the child, you do hold the child, and you pick it up. And the word Isaac means “he laughs”…the child does laugh; it breaks into the most heavenly smile when you hold it in your own hands. At that moment you are Simon. Yes, they call you Neville in the world of Caesar, but you are playing the part of Simon in the drama.

To have played the part of Simon holding the child you must have carried the cross. And so they gave it to Simon and he carried the cross to the place called The Skull; there they crucified him. Crucified whom?—the power and the wisdom of God. Now it’s personified in scripture. Well, certainly it’s personified, aren’t you a person? You’re a person, I am a person. So the power is personified, for the power needs man as an agent to express itself. And so here I stand as a man, but I know the power, the power is my own wonderful human Imagination, and that’s Christ Jesus. There never was another, there never will be another… just your own wonderful human Imagination. And so, test it and see. So if I dare to test him, I should prove him in performance. And so I will take the challenge. You do it not only for yourself, you do it for another.

Now, many used to come here when I had the theater filled to overflowing, but it was a social gathering. Night after night when I would come out from twenty-one lectures, we’d go back to the hotel, and it was simply a raft, all having fun.Not one word I said was ever heard. As long as you’d keep it going on a social pattern, wonderful, but when I called a stop to that, we’d meet at odd intervals, still friends, but they never understood one word. There’s a couple who I call friends, they’re really dear friends of mine, they never come…but twenty years ago when we met he represented a very small, little pharmaceutical manufacturer back East. He graduated from Princeton, came back, married, bought a little home where there were only two homes on the street. Naturally, with inflation all things have grown, the house is now worth many, many times what he paid for it, but it’s still a little home, a little tiny home. The lot’s small, but the value because of inflation has gone up.

She said to me one day, about fifteen years ago, “Oh, I do wish that he could just get more…be more important. Here is this man from ___(??), Princeton, and all these things, and look what he’s making.” I said, “You want him to really make more?” “Yes.” “Alright!” Turning to the only power that I know of, my own wonderful human Imagination, I carried on with her a conversation from the premise that he was making more. I didn’t outline the means that would be employed for him to make more, I just simply imagined that he was making more, and that it came from her. Finally, his little firm was absorbed by a larger firm, and so a reorganization. He was kept, he knew the doctors, knew the druggists, knew the territory. But then they enlarged his territory. They gave him the whole state and they gave him all up to Washington, and all these states, Utah, Nevada, into, well, Arizona, which meant he had to be away seeing his sales force. He then began to take on a sales force, and he employed, oh, six or seven. He was always letting one go and getting another. Then she began to complain: “He’s making more, he’s important, he’s actually employing now six, seven people. He can fire them and hire them as he feels.” “But didn’t you ask for it?” “But he’s not at home.” So we got together. She still wanted the feeling of power that such a job gave him; so then another firm, bigger than the two together, absorbed the two. They kept him on, raised him in salary, and then gave him a commission on the sales efforts of his four to twelve now. And then the fire began. I said he has a small home…he has spent in that home to satisfy her, without avail, the value of the house many times over. In the fifteen years since, he’s completely re-carpeted it, completely refurnished it. I’ve seen them bringing the furniture in. She has the money, she picked it out—he didn’t send it home—picked it out and one week later a new set. Carpets, take it back after a week; wallpaper, tear it off and put on some more. For what he has spent on it he’ll never get out of it…all to pacify her. She can’t be pacified.

She doesn’t know one word of the story of Christ Jesus, yet she calls herself a Christian. Well, multiply her by all the Christians of the world, because there are so few who understand the mystery of Christ. You might say that 500 million do not know the mystery of Christ. They stick him on the wall, made out of plastic or something, monstrous artists… ___(??) all the artists that made them. All these little indulgences, and there they are, and they call that a Lord, making and violating the second Commandment:“Make no graven image after me”…none. How can I make a graven image and fall down and worship the works of my own hands? I’m creating out of my own wonderful Imagination. That’s Christ, that’s the power and the wisdom of God. To personify it I must see myself. And the day will come you will see yourself in the depths of your soul; and you’ve never seen such beauty you’ve never seen such character, such majesty as yourself in depth. And there he is, meditating you, this surface thing that is flesh and blood.

When you accept this, really accept it, to the point where you consent to it, and you obey it, then you can’t turn to the left or to the right. In the midst of hell you will still call upon this power. No matter where you are call upon the power. I am not saying the body will not decay. As Paul said it so clearly, he said, “Our hearts are not cast down. Though our outer nature is wasting away, but our inner nature is renewed every day. And this temporary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison” (2Cor. 4:16). So to his very end the body was fading, before his eyes the body was wearing out, wasting away; but he still taught it from morning to night. And when they ___(??), but look at yourself, “Physician, heal thyself,” he still taught that the only Christ was your own wonderful human Imagination.

Knowing that this outer garment more…it begins in time, ends in time…and though they may live to 120 they make their exit too. If they live that long, the chances are they’ll have not one around them who truly call themselves lucky. They may be senile, dependent upon everything other than themselves, doing nothing for self. Paul didn’t care, for he knew there is a time for everything in this world, a time to be born and a time to die. He wasn’t going to hasten it. He knew that no one could delay it, but it would waste away…and he would continue to preach forever Christ crucified. As if infinite power was reduced to the little tiny human Imagination, and yet it was wiser and yet it was more powerful than the wisdom of man and the power of man.

Yesterday, we were confronted with a picture. The mightiest land in the world, America, our production exceeds the production of the world put all together. If you take real production, we have the mightiest machine ___(??), 190-odd million of us, higher standard of education; and here a little country of seventeen million, they have no productive power, no know-how as we understand the word, and we are tied down? This mighty machine and it’s tied down? And nothing will get us out of debt? Did you hear our Secretary of State ___(??). He said not a thing that you hadn’t read a year ago in the paper, not a thing. I rushed through my shower to hear it. I should have remained under the shower. There wasn’t one word he said I hadn’t read it in the papers that go back for months, and magazines, and commentaries, all double talk.

They say they really want the solution. Well, the solution that you really want, peace, as we understand it. So the government decides for itself. And let’s not have some outside force impose its will. Then let them really believe, because all are going to suffer, and with few exceptions they are Christians. This is the land where most everyone in it calls himself a Christian, you find ___(??) a Jew, but a 190-odd million Americans. We have others that call a different…we have a few Buddhists, a few of the Hindu faith, but even if you take the atheists away and the agnostics away, we would still have well in excess of 100-odd million who call themselves Christians.

Not one of them seems to know the power of Christ and the wisdom of Christ. Tomorrow they’ll go to church and pray to an unknown God, and go through all the outer palaver, all rituals. If there was one thing that Paul was dead set against, all institutions, all authorities, all customs, all laws that interfered with the direct access of the individual to his God. Anything in this world that in any way turned him aside from a direct access to his God Paul was against it. And so that God is in man, man’s own wonderful human Imagination. It is the power, the creative power of God, the wisdom of God, and you can’t separate a man’s creative power from his Imagination which is imagining from Imagination itself. Imagining is Imagination in action, but you can’t separate them. So Christ is God in action. So you say he’s imagining and God is all Imagination. So “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” (Blake, Berkeley; Laocoon). Man turns to the outside in the hope that some little thing is going to intercede and help him. He’ll look in vain; he has a false god.

So this is what he meant by “I preach Christ and Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews” (1Cor.1:23). He didn’t mean people who accept the Jewish faith, for that’s the foundation of Christianity. He means those who look for signs and who believe in external worship, whether it be a dietary law, whether it be some other kind of outside worship. “And it is foolishness to the Greek.” The Greek was called “the scholar of the world” and if you couldn’t bring it out of the laboratory and prove it and show them the evidence, well, then it isn’t. But not to Paul; for he found him not as a man, he found him in himself, and was quite willing to teach it, even though before the eyes of those he taught he faded. And he said, “My heart is not cast down. Though my outer nature is passing away, is fading, my inner is being renewed every day. And this temporary affliction is preparing for me this weight of glory.”

It’s an eternal weight of glory beyond comparison. There’s not a thing in the visible world that you can use to compare to the glory that is man’s when he begins to rise within himself.When that something turned around in man, the creative power, and it starts up, there’s not a thing in the world that is as luminous, not a thing in the world that is as powerful, not a thing in the world that is as beautiful. So he couldn’t find anything in the outer world to compare to this weight of glory that was simply rising from within. And he knew at the very end he would do what everyone has to do, take it off. And in his case there was no return.

He knew those who did not accept it, and dared not to the point of holding that child, would be restored at what we call death only to die again. But everyone at death is restored to life only to die again. And only those who hold the child that is the promise of God to man…where the whole thing has been completed…for birth has in itself the germ of death, but death has in itself the germ of birth. So when I carry the cross___(??) self, I am carrying it right into death; but the germ of birth is in death, and so I will now hold the child in my hand and say, “Let me depart, according to your word” (Luke 2:29). And your word was that the whole vast world of flesh would see your salvation, and here is your salvation. So everyone who holds him departs, never to return…he can die no more.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now are there any questions, please?

Q: (inaudible)

A:This world that you see as so real…you’re seated there, I am standing here…I have gone into worlds just as real as this without moving more than two inches…it’s all here. There are worlds within worlds within worlds and all equally solidly real, peopled as this world is peopled. You’re told that in the 20th chapter of the Book of Luke when those who were called not agnostics, they were really the atheists of the day called Sadducees. The Pharisees believed the law, believed the resurrection, but not as taught by those who came saying “this is how it happened.”

So the Sadducee asked a very simple question to trip him, for if you are a student of the Bible, you must know the law of Moses. So he said, “Teacher, Moses in the law said that if a man marries and dies leaving no offspring and he has brothers, the brothers should take the wife and marry her to raise up seed for his brother. Well, there were seven brothers. The first married and died leaving no offspring; and the second married her and he died leaving no offspring; and finally the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh all married her, and finally she died, and there was no offspring. In the resurrection, whose wife is the woman? For she had seven husbands” (Luke 20: 27-33). They said this to trip him. And this is his answer: “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage.” One translation of that Greek passage for ___(??) to read it, but it means that we beget on a divided image. “But those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age”—now he divides the ages, this age and that age—“and those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age neither marry nor are they given in marriage, for they cannot die any more; they are sons of the resurrection, sons of God” (verse 34). His creative power personified as a son has entered a new age by being resurrected from this age; and this age in scripture is called “the age of death,” where the power is keyed so low it is as though it died. When it’s turned around and man is raised from this level, then he cannot return. He continues into the new age, therefore, he cannot die any more. If I said he cannot die any more, I imply those who are not as he is they must die. So at death, as we call death, a man is restored to life, only to die again.

And so, the journey is on. But because God is playing all the parts, no one is going to fail. In the end, everyone must be resurrected or a portion of his infinite creative power is missing, and that can’t be. So he implies that your marriage here may be blissful, may be happy, it doesn’t mean that you’d be mated there to the same one. It doesn’t mean that you’ll play the part that you’re playing now. He implies there will be no loss of identity, no change of individuality; the actor remains the same but the part differs. And you learn to accept the cross, and live by it, consent to it, that you may know how to resolve every problem in the world, even though keyed low; that you trust the power of God and the wisdom of God, and not necessarily the wisdom of man.

So where you start in life…if you know Christ crucified…it doesn’t really matter. You don’t have to be on the right side of the street, born to the right family as they consider it. That does not mean that you’re nearer the new age. So he implies, in fact he states, spells it out: “Those who are accounted worthy to be of the resurrection”…well, the whole drama begins, really with the resurrection, the new age. The drama, the overall drama begins with the crucifixion, that’s over. Crucifixion is over for all of us. Everyone has been crucified with God, for everyone is alive, and that Imagination of man is keyed low…that’s the crucifixion. So the crucifixion is over for every child born of woman. Will he now, while crucified, hear the story and consent to it and live by it? Then it leads him towards that birth, the birth of the child, where he holds it in his own arms, and asks that God keep his promise: “Let me depart in peace, according to your word.” Everyone will hold him.

Any questions?

Q: (inaudible)

A:What about those who believe in karma? Well, karma is about cause and effect. The Bible does not say it isn’t a world of cause and effect. So let man not be deceived, for as you sow so shall you reap. If I plant corn, I’ll reap corn. “See yonder fields, the sesamum was sesamum, the corn was corn; the silence and the darkness knew and so was man’s fate born.” We always reveal what we are sowing…all imaginal acts. But he also teaches that when a person comes into this world maimed—he uses the story of the blind man—not because of some previous experience on earth that he takes the sight of another, blinded the other, therefore he has to now repent, no. He said: “That the works of God be made manifest.” You will play all the parts in the world or you have played them.

But here, be careful what you’re planting, your imaginal acts. And if the whole vast world believes in karma, meaning reincarnation, the Bible doesn’t teach that. It doesn’t teach any loss of identity. I couldn’t meet those that have gone beyond, as I do, and have loss of identity. My mother died at sixty-two, sixty-three, a painful death. She looked, oh, many, many years older than that. Yet the moment she died, 2,000 miles away from where I was, she appeared this beautiful, glamorous woman about twenty, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, just brushing her lovely long blonde hair. She was very blonde, China-blue eyes. Wouldn’t talk to me, but there she stood, and just simply brushed her hair and smiled. So here she dropped off at least sixty years from her appearance. She preceded my father in death by twenty years. And so, what part she plays now I don’t know, but she’s playing the part best suited to awaken. For the purpose is to awaken and turn around. And we did nothing to cause the fall. The fall was self-imposed by God for a creative purpose: Only by restricting himself could he expand himself. So no one is to blame.

Any other questions, please? Test Christ, your own Imagination, test it. Put it to the test. You should prove it in the testing. If he’s your Imagination, you should prove it. Don’t just have someone else do it for you. This friend of mine who is still a friend, a dear friend, she hasn’t one thought concerning Christ, yet she has her prayer answered. She herself knows she did nothing, but she didn’t like the way it was answered. So she doesn’t see him, save on a weekend. Maybe that was his prayer too. He comes home on Friday night, goes off on Sunday, and, personally, I think that he’s never been happier. For not a thing that money could buy can make her happy. And so, we get together now at very long intervals…never discuss this. We discuss personalities that a long gone from this world, long, long gone. She had some relative in the theater before the turn of the century, had a name, the old days of Vaudeville, and she’s still living in that ancient dream. Why spoil the evening? Go along with it, and just pick it up and talk about ___(??). The same…put the record on, over and over and over. But to bring this up, it’s like talking Greek…doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

Q: Now, just want to get one thing clear. If we, as you were talking about, are born into a situation that we are born into because we play our part…okay, so if we do that then you said that we just watch the part that we’re playing with our human Imagination because as we sow we reap. But yet, if we are going to play all the parts, then we still are in command of our lives here now? I mean, like you said, there’s no unconditioned future for us right now in this level?

A:All right, if I understand your question. Finding yourself here clothed in a garment that is mortal and weak, and needs to be fed and clothed and watered every day, and so here we have something that’s a burden, carrying it with you, but could you honestly admit that you had anything to do with it? Would you not admit that you were born physically by the actions of powers not your own? You found yourself clothed in a garment of flesh and blood and you make the most of it. Along the way you hear of a power that you possess, it is your own being, and you either believe it or you do not believe it. If you believe it, you consent to it, obey it, live by it. Well, just as you were born physically by the actions of a power not your own, let me assure you you will be born spiritually by the actions of a power beyond yours.

When that time comes and you are awakened—for that’s what the verb means “to be awakened”—for although he appears dead, he isn’t dead. The crucifixion is not death as we understand death. It is keyed so low it’s impotent, and it seems that the entire creative power of God is now dead. Yet, at its weakest point it’s stronger than the strength of man; at its most foolish point it is wiser than the wisdom of man. So we accept it, and one day we will be awakened. And that same little tiny power, called in scripture Jacob—“Jacob, he is so little, how could Jacob stand?” And the Lord regretted that he had done this and said, “It shall not be” and then the prophet repeats it, “Oh, but Jacob is so little, he’s so small. How can Jacob stand?” (Amos 7:2,5). Well, he does! The word Jacob in the true sense of the word means “to augment, to expand, to increase.” So here is Jacob increasing the twelve tribes, all coming out of him, an expansion has taken place. Yet he is so little. And so here, you reach that little point and then you awaken. You’re turned around and expansion begins. And there’s no limit to expansion back beyond where you were as the creative power of God…and personified, yes a person.

Until Tuesday.