The Unrighteous Steward: Memory

Tonight’s subject is “The Steward.” When we speak here of God, I’m really speaking of your own wonderful human Imagination. That’s all the Bible speaks about, really, when it talks and tells us about God. “God the Creator is like pure imagining in myself. He’s at work in the very depth of my being, underlying all of my faculties, including perception, but he streams into my surface mind least disguised in the form of productive fancy” (Douglas Fawcett). As I sit here or stand here, and just think and plot and plan, that’s God in action. I can see him best as I simply dream and remember my dream.

Now tonight we come to this wonderful story which stumps all the scholars. I haven’t read one commentary on it where they can agree. They admit the very oldest manuscript carried the story—it’ not an insertion. We haven’t found any manuscript that doesn’t carry it, and as far back as we can go and find these manuscripts it carries the story of the steward. You’ll read it in the 16th chapter of the Book of Luke. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians, he asks all those who followed him to regard him as a “steward of the mysteries” (1 Cor. 4:1). But, you see, the word steward has changed its meaning. When you and I speak of a steward today, as the dictionary defines it, it’s simply a person who takes care of the estates and the properties of someone else. We go aboard a ship and the chief steward is responsible for the services or provisions. That’s his appointed ___(??).

Now, that’s not the meaning of steward as it was used in the Bible. The word steward in the Bible is “a ward of the sty; a keeper of the pig.” And the pig has always been the symbol of the savior and redeemer of the world. Well, the only savior, as we read in scripture, “I am the Lord your God, the Holy one of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior” (Is. 43:3, 11). This word is simply Yod He Vau He, which we sound as Jehovah. There is no other savior. Your own wonderful human Imagination that is the great…symbolized in the world as a pig. Now you as a steward, you have to guard it and watch it and take care of it.

Now this can be taken down into the very depths of man’s soul, as it must be. Here is the story. “There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were brought to him that he was simply wasting his goods. So he called the steward and said, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ And the steward, seeing that he’s out of a job said to himself, ‘I’m too old to dig and I am too proud to beg.’ And this is what he did, “He called all his master’s debtors and he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ and he replied, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said, ‘Sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to the second, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measure of wheat.’ He said, ‘You sit quickly and you write eighty.’ And the master, discovering what the steward had done, commended him for his prudence; and then said to his ___(??) to emulate this wisdom, this cleverness of this unrighteous steward, and invited all people to practice this art of unrighteous mammon (Luke 16:1-12). Then he said, ‘If you are not faithful with the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches?’”…asking all people to emulate. But on a certain level you would think God is encouraging stealing and dishonesty. That you may understand that God does everything, all parts, he’s trying to get you to exercise your Imagination, for that’s God. So anything that will make you exercise this power that is only God, he calls upon you to do it.

So let me share with you a true story. It’s on the lowest level, but you’ll see one using it wisely out-smarting all the so-called wise ones who surrounded him. This is my brother Victor, the year is 1939, and my brother Victor sensed the coming of war. He’s a business man, in many, many businesses; he’s also a ship chandler, where ships ___(??) in certain shipping lines. Well, it’s an international agreement, when a ship comes into port they may have anything that you have and pay for it out of pocket; it never pays taxes on the products it buys. If it’s a cigarette or if it’s a bottle of liquor or if it’s tons of merchandise, if they need it and you have the supply, you supply the ships—but it’s duty free. You make a profit on your product, but you cannot ask him to pay the duty, therefore, you too are free of paying duty.

Well, being a ship chandler and carrying stores for ships and sensing the coming of war, he went to his bankers and raised about a million, about a million and a half in excess of what he always carries in overdraft that was for the local trade. This was to put in ships stores for incoming ships. He knew in his heart that not one ship is going to come to Barbados when the war breaks, because England couldn’t build ships fast enough but what the Germans sank the ships. So they’d be an isolated island and it would have to simply survive by its own efforts, living on fish and breadfruit and sweet potatoes and whatever they could grow—but certainly not the lovely things we brought in from America, Canada and Europe. So he took advantage of that interval of time, as the calendar turned into 1939, and he raised this money. He rented all the space he could possibly find plus his own warehouses, and filled it to the gunnels with all the merchandise in the world that he knew that the people locally would want as the war progressed…and he saw it as a long war.

Well, on the first day of September, 1939, England declared war on Germany. Two years later we were not yet at war, England was at war. Two years later not one passenger ship, save American ships, came in and they certainly didn’t need anything from Barbados. They sailed from New York, they were in Barbados in five days, and they sailed out of New York harbor with everything they needed for the entire roundtrip of thirty-eight days into the Argentine and back into New York. So he didn’t sell them one pound of butter. He knew it, but he carried this enormous amount of merchandise. Two years later he went to the government. Mind you, when you borrow $1,500,000 you are carrying very, very high interest rates. It’s not just a few pennies, and the bank demands that interest when due, and you still owe principal. So he went to the government and explained the facts of life that he had waiting for ships this enormous amount of merchandise and there aren’t any ships. The government said, “What do you propose to do about it?” “Oh,” he said, “I would like the duty paid and sell it locally with the merchants. Yes, I will share it with the merchants. They can have their share of it, I’ll take my share of it, and we’ll simply let the people in the island enjoy it. There it sits unused for two years.”

The government said to him, “I will call upon him with the merchants, and discuss it with them.” The merchants went to Government House and they heard the story, and they all rejoiced. They said, “No! We have him exactly where we want him, he’s frozen, and so we’ll push him right out of ___(??). He’s our worst competitor, he’s the biggest tax payer, he can raise this money, and so now we really have him where we want him, he’s frozen.” They gave their final verdict, “No is the answer to his request.” The government then called my brother, asked him to come to Government House, and he told the story that I’ve just told to you. And my brother reminded him that the tax payers paid his salary, meaning the government. He said, “We pay your salary and your upkeep. The crown appoints you, you weren’t elected, the crown appointed you for four years, but we the Barbadian tax payers pay your salary and you know it’s a very big salary. It’s a plum for everyone who has served the crown for a long spell of time; when they’re just about to retire they give them Barbados or Trinidad or Jamaica as a little, I would say, reward, so they can save every penny for those four years, go back to England and retire and have a wonderful nest egg. But the local man pays that salary.”

So my brother reminded him who pays his salary. Well, he didn’t like that, so he said, “Nevertheless, I’ll give you my final word, Goddard. No is the answer. You bought it for ships and for ships it remains!” Then my brother said to him, “Is that your real final word?” “Yes, Goddard.” He said, “Well, I have given you your last chance.” He said, “Goddard, do you realize you’re speaking to the government?” He said, “Yes, your excellency” and departed. He went to his office, he said, “Bring me my lawyers.” He asked the lawyer to give him a legal definition of a ship, just a legal definition of a ship. “I know you think of a huge, big ocean liner, but I want a legal definition that will stand up in court. Would a rowboat be called a ship? Don’t we find lifeboats coming in here with passengers after a ship has sunk? Didn’t they make it here in a rowboat?” “Yes, that’s right.” He put the words into their mouths to define a ship. “A rowboat, a fishing boat, a motorboat, that’s a ship. If a man gets on it, if he has courage, does he really feel there’s a reasonable hope he could reach another island a hundred miles away? Yes. Alright, then that’s the definition of a ship. Thank you, gentlemen.”

Then he called in his publicity department. He said, I want a full-page ad tomorrow. I want you to define a ship for me at the very top of the page, and then itemize these things for me, all these are for sale duty free. Anyone who owns a boat, a little rowboat, a little ship, he is eligible—but you must have a boat. Well, when it broke the next morning, the government saw $600,000 flying through the window in taxes. The merchants saw all this money flying out of their pockets and they went up in arms! They tried to get him on the wire. The secretary would answer and say, “I cannot locate Mr. Goddard. He’s not available today, so busy.” Well, in forty-eight hours he didn’t have one pound of butter left to sell. Sold everything in the ___(??) for cash, no credit. He said, “You bring your money and you can get it for cash and you don’t pay duties.” They rowed out of sight, turned around the bend, came back ashore, and sold it to the people. They were all waiting for it. To this day, the merchants don’t cross him anymore.

That’s using your Imagination. You call that, well, that’s a dishonest, unrighteous steward thing. Yes, the Bible tells you he was a dishonest, unrighteous steward. But, at least one person could use his Imagination and overcome that mountainous opposition of all the merchants plus the government. He was playing to the majority, not to the biggest tax payer but to the majority, and so he simply circumvented all of them. Sold everything in the warehouse and came out with a fortune in forty-eight hours. That’s the lowest level. But he first used his Imagination.

Here tonight, we’ll take it on another level where you can come in. You aren’t selling butter, you don’t have a store, but this is how you use it. He said, “Do not think I’ve come to abolish the law and the prophets; I’ve not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mat. 5:17). Now, we pinpoint one outstanding thought that you could not possibly miss it. He said, “You’ve heard it said of old that you should not commit adultery. But I tell you anyone who looks upon a woman lustfully has already committed the act of adultery with her in his heart” (Mat. 5:27). He lifts it from that level to the psychological—it’s now an imaginal, creative act. He’s telling you whatever you do in your Imagination that’s done…that’s God in action.

So, must I emulate the unrighteous steward? Yes! Well now, who is the steward? The steward is the keeper, the bookkeeper. What in man is the perfect bookkeeper? It would be memory. Memory, though faulty, is still adequate to the recall for sameness. But if I had a perfect memory, a perfect recall, 100 percent recall, that would be the perfect bookkeeper. If at the end of a day I could recall my entire day and see the points in my day in my own Imagination that didn’t quite come out as I hoped it would, I’m going to falsify the record. I’m called upon to falsify the record. Go over that scene…now I don’t like that scene…rewrite it. So I rewrite the scene where I do come out alright. And so everything’s now going to be written in my mind’s eye, and I’ll replay it…I like that. So in one case I can’t quite do it all, so I make it fifty percent. Another case, I can’t quite do it, I’ll put eighty. You owe him a hundred, make it fifty. You owe him what, a hundred, make it eighty. So there are certain things in our life that we can’t feel, that we really didn’t overcome 100 percent, alright, to what degree can you overcome it?

A man making, say, $10,000 a year who’s never earned beyond that, and you tell him he could get $50,000, you stun him. He can’t make it over night, can’t do it right away. He could ease up a little bit on it and then jump from ten to fifteen. He can feel better wearing an income of fifteen than he could wearing an income of fifty…it doesn’t seem natural to him. If you lived always in one room and don’t know what it is to live in your own apartment or your own home, where you leave one room and go into another room, another room, and it’s still all yours. You see a man, or a woman, who’s always lived in a very quiet, frugal way in one room, and she would really like something bigger, and you paint a word picture for her, something more I wouldn’t say palatial but more spacious, something freer, would she feel easier? Maybe two rooms would seem an enormous jump, three, four…so mention a six-room apartment, they couldn’t take it in, it’s too big, too great a responsibility. So you just modify it to the point that it is natural to you.

But the steward in this picture is memory. Remember what the steward is, he is the keeper of a pig, and the pig is the symbol of the Savior of the world. But who are you working on? You are only working on yourself. For the Savior of the world…listen to the words, “I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…and besides me there is no savior.” The words translated “I am the Lord” are simply “I am your I am.” That’s really what it is, and this is the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.So if I am watching and caring for this Savior, symbolized as a pig, I watch the activities of the day. Memory is the conservative aspect of imagining; therefore, I call upon this servant, which is memory, and ask memory to recall the day for me, and memory recalls the day. I go over all the scenes and I beautify them, turn one into something a little bit better, that one into a little bit better; and to the best of my ability I simply revise the script of the day. I’m called upon to emulate that falsified record…emulate the man who falsified the record. Why? Because the book itself only teaches that imagining creates reality…that’s what the Bible teaches.

We think we’re hidden. As we’re told in the 8th of Ezekiel, Look at them, all in the darkness, and they say to themselves, no one sees us and they are making abominable things within their own being (verses 10-13). But they’re seen by themselves. They thought no one saw us, but the only one seeing is themselves, so they know exactly what they’re doing. But because they did it in the dark and in the silence, they didn’t believe that that was going to create the external fact to confirm it.

So here, when we’re called upon to emulate the unjust steward, it simply means at the end of the day when the record is before me, go over the record, and simply take scene after scene after scene; and when I come upon an unlovely scene then rewrite it, make it conform to a lovely scene, something that I wish I had encountered the first time. Doesn’t really matter now that I know I can falsify it and make it come out…then the day isn’t lost. If I don’t do it, I think, “Well now, it’s past. The present…I’ll forget it and try to do better tomorrow.” But the present is not receding into the past; the present is advancing into the future to confront us, either spent or invested. I either invest this moment or I spend it. If I discover that I spent it, I can, by the use of my Imagination, call it back and not spend it but invest it…call it back.

So we can take it down to the very lowest as my brother took it. But, at least, he used his Imagination. Now he called him a prudent man, he said, “I highly commend the unjust steward for his prudence.” If you look up the word prudent in the dictionary or the word provident…because they’re both really the same…I think of Mr. Hoover when he, oh, about four years ago when he was still in this world with us, they asked him to what did he attribute his success. He was a very poor boy, worked his way through college at Stanford, and had no money. He had not only a great reputation and much to admire in this world but millions, and he said, in answer to the question, “Because of providence.” Now, you might think that something smiled upon him. No. You look it up in the dictionary: the prudent and provident man looks far and sacrifices the present for the future. Prudence: watching; saving; ___(??). Provident planning: doing and yet expending largely for the demands of the future. Here is that mind…I go back to my brother. Didn’t pay dividends for years; he simply sacrificed the present for the future. He knew what he needed—he needed cash and lots of it. So why give it out in ten parcels to ten of us who owned it? If you can pull your own weight, do it, and then let this thing be plowed in and plowed in. So he used his Imagination just as described in the dictionary—he simply looked forward; he saw it coming. Then it appears, expended largely for the demands of the future, what would be needed in the future. So, on the lowest level he still commends it.

Then you come to this level, the psychological level, where everyone has all these parts within himself, and he plays the part of the steward. So sitting at home tonight, before you retire or when you’re in bed just about to retire, call back the day and go through the scenes that you had with a group of people, or the mail that you received, or the telephone calls that you received, and if they were not to your standard of what you wanted, pick up that receiver once more and go over it as you want it to be, as though you had heard it so. Replay the entire day, for that day, now that it’s been replayed, you will fit it into this picture of the unjust steward. You falsified the record of the day, knowing that it’s not receding, it’s advancing, and your creative acts are creating “the facts of life” because imagining creates reality.

Here, when you read these stories, though the scholars can’t understand them—I’ve yet to find one that is in agreement with it—but they are honest men and because you can’t find an ancient manuscript that doesn’t contain it, they say, “He must have said it, he must have.” But they do not know the ancient meaning of the word steward and treat it in the modern manner ___(??), such as my brother. Yet he didn’t intend that when Paul said to regard him as the steward of the mysteries. The mysteries unfolded in Paul and he was a steward. He was keeping the mysteries of God and trying to pass them on untarnished, untouched, to all those who would listen to him and tell exactly what he meant by this mystery or that mystery or the other.

Now, maybe you haven’t had the experience of the great mysteries. I hope you’ll trust I have, and so you’ve heard it from one who’s had the experience. Trust me, I tell you the truth. When I stand before you tonight, I’m a witness to the truth of God’s Word. I know the resurrection is a fact. I know the birth from above is a fact. I know the fatherhood of God is a fact.I know the sacrifice, the only acceptable sacrifice, is one’s own blood and I know it is a fact. Yet I didn’t bring blood from this [body], yet I took the living blood up into the Holy of Holies. I know the story of redemption, which is always identified when we leave Egypt, that great exodus; and the serpent is always associated with that exodus…I know that to be true. I know that the power laden work of Messiah begins at the descent of the dove—I know that from experience.

You who are here tonight, you’ve heard me tell it time and time again, but until I draw my last breath I will still have to repeat it over and over and over again. For what in this world could interest me more than to tell you that I am a steward of the mysteries of God, that they are all true, every one is true. If you offered me this night…as a friend said to me before I took the meeting, took the platform, he said, “Neville, I am so hungry for an experience of God. If you took Getty’s wealth added to Rockefeller’s and added to the Ford’s, add them all together, and offered me it as against an experience of God, I would say, ‘Keep your wealth and give me the experience of God.’” Well, he can’t be very far away from such an experience. As we’re told in the Book of Amos, “I will send a hunger upon the land; it will not be of bread, nor a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God” (8:11)—in other words, for experiencing God. It’s a hunger that not a thing in this world can satisfy but an experience of God.

And so, let all the others have their hungers satisfied—for we are not made for frustration; we’re all made for satisfaction.My brother gets great satisfaction in bursting year after year, exceeding himself. With every year he grows, always expanding, always expanding. Alright, so he has a hunger on this level. The day will come he will have a hunger on your level, just as my friend tonight, that hunger. One day my brother Victor will have that hunger; he doesn’t have that hunger. He gives generously to churches…loves to go in and sit down in the nice cozy church. By cozy, I don’t mean the little churches, but if you go at a certain time of day when no one is around but yourself, or if you go at vespers and the organ is playing but no one is there but it is vespers, you come out and here is this lovely, lovely darkness. Or you go in at a certain time in the summer and that wonderful sunburst as you look west and the sun comes through those lovely colored windows…just to sit alone…well, he loves that.

But to have an experience of God as I described it in my little pamphlet or in the last chapter of The Promise, that doesn’t interest him, just doesn’t interest him. He has his own concept of what happens after he makes his exit from this world. But in the meanwhile he is playing the part of the unjust steward, which is only the use of your Imagination to overcome all barriers in this world. There is no barrier that is permanent if you become the unjust steward—you out figure every thing in the world. And so he’s frozen…all the merchants want him to be frozen…get him out of business; and he turns to the government, “Is that your last word?” “Yes, Goddard.” “Then I’ve given you your last chance.” And the government was appalled at the audacity of this merchant. But he wasn’t the next day—the next day they looked all over Barbados for him, couldn’t find him; the next day, all over, couldn’t find him. By the third day it was too late, all the merchandise was sold. And the merchants got nothing and the treasury got nothing, and they could have had $600,000 in taxes from that merchandise.

Who benefitted? First of all, my brother, but indirectly we did, because we’re all partners. Secondly, the people who live in the island—they didn’t have to pay those taxes. So they ate all the butter they wanted and all the things we had in cold storage, emptied everything, and they got it nice and fresh, and didn’t have to pay the high prices, paid a good…so everyone made a profit. The fishermen didn’t have to go fishing for the longest while they made so much money. Took their little boats out to sea, turn around and come back, and sell the merchandise.

So this is in scripture. You can’t conceive of one thing that man is capable of doing that is not openly discussed in the scripture. So what is he telling these stories for, to make me a thief? No, to get me to use my Imagination—for if I don’t use my Imagination I stagnate. If today’s life is just what it appeared to be and the facts are the facts and they can’t be altered, I’m lost! But if in spite of facts I can modify the facts, change the facts, rub them out completely and put something in its place that’s more enticing, and it comes to pass, well, then haven’t I found God? Is there any other Creator in the world but one? There’s only one…and he’s the Creator. So we started this meeting, “God, the Creator, is like pure imagining in ourselves. He works in the very depths of our soul, underlying all of our faculties, including perception, but he streams into our surface life least disguised in the form of productive fancy.” So you sit down and you dream, and believe in your dream, believe in the reality of the unseen state. Feel it, clothe yourself with it, make it real, and see how it works. If it works, and it will, haven’t you found him? Haven’t you found your savior? Was he something other than yourself? That’s why Blake said, “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of 6,000 years dazzling around thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold.” And then he exclaims as he looks at the base and sees this molten gold, “I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer” (Jerusalem, Plt.96). He identifies himself with his Creator and Redeemer, it wasn’t another. Man is in search of another, and everyone leads him astray to the other.

If you haven’t seen the current Time magazine—and I’m not selling magazines, may I tell you, mine came today—turn to the religious page and read the nonsense. Want a good laugh? Turn and read it, read the ecumenical set-up on indulgences: kiss the king’s ring, rather, the pope’s ring, you get 300 for that; a bishop’s, only 50. If you go up the steps of St. Peter’s on your bare knees, one by one, say a prayer on each one, oh, you’re going to get enormous ones for that. Of course, you have to pay money for them too. But all of this is your credit; you’re acquiring merit by all these things. But don’t stop there, go on and read Worship by the Episcopal minister whose name is Boyd, Malcolm Boyd. Well, I could hardly believe I’m reading…I looked up at the calendar, is it 1965? But I’ve always thought that the year one and the last of eternity are one; they intertwine, they all mix together. You couldn’t believe if it’s a linear thing…maybe you’re stuck. But if it’s all cyclic, and therefore you can’t tell which is the beginning and which is the end, you can understand this, that morons and the wisest of the wise live at the same place in the same apartment house. So really, what this bishop…a whole bunch of prayers and I wouldn’t even attempt it from the platform…just read it in the current issue of Time magazine.

I tell you, that’s not religion. It hasn’t a thing to do with the Bible. These stories are purposely ___(??) to get you to stop condemning people in this world—that’s the fruit of good and evil. Stop eating it. It doesn’t matter in the eyes of the merchants who didn’t make a penny—my brother was Satan, he was the devil. If they got him against the wall and froze him, and he couldn’t pay the interest, and the merchandise simply sold at auction to pay off the banks, well, then he was simply getting his just dues, and God being an honest God gave it to him. But in their eyes God can’t be honest—look at the money he made, all in forty-eight hours, and he knew exactly what he was doing when he brought it in. He knew he wasn’t going to sell that to ships. He wouldn’t sell it in peace time. He couldn’t unload that merchandise to ships, why, in years and years and years. Knew exactly what he was doing. So he paid off the bank in full and made a handsome profit for the Goddards. All the fishermen made money and the only ones who didn’t make money were his opponents, the merchants. The government didn’t get $600,000. ___(??) to give over $100,000 a year to the government. Because, he gets 25,000 a year tax free, his mansion fully staffed, his police is always not one but round-the-clock guardian, all expenses. He is costing the taxpayer a hundred thousand a year. “But the crown gave it to him.” Gave what…out of our pockets? So the crown appointed him, and gave him for the service he rendered the crown over the years, but gave it to him at the expense of the Barbadians. My brother and family are one of the largest payers of taxes. It was coming out of our pockets, so he refused to put $600,000 more into the treasury, and gave it to the fishermen instead, and all the people who live in the island. So they came in and bought the finest merchandise minus the taxes.

So I tell you this story ___(??) believed it. The chap who criticized my telling the story of the Russian at the age of eight, and criticized another, he hasn’t been back since, hasn’t been back since. I’m fortunate that we do not give that mind the Bible to edit…he’d take away everything. He would emasculate it, and at the end of this emasculation we would have nothing. He would see only…set himself, first of all, as the criterion of what is good. If it doesn’t come up to his standard then delete it—God would not have said that. I tell you, leave the Bible just as it is. But from time to time a word does change its meaning, and if we can find the ancient meaning—what the author at the moment meant when he used that word—if we can dig it up and get the word. I tell you, the word “steward” meant when it was used in the Bible “the ward of the sty; the keeper of the pig.” The pig has always been, in all languages and in all ages, the symbol of the Savior and Redeemer of the world. The Savior and Redeemer and Creator are one and that’s you. Your own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God.

It redeems itself. It limited itself to this state for a purpose, for a creative purpose; and then having assumed the limit of contraction, it then expands, and there is no limit to its translucency, to its expansion. But it purposely assumed this limitation, and therefore, if it assumed it, it is going to break it and start the expansion. When you come to that wonderful end, as you begin to move up you see it. And you’ll cry with Blake, “I know it is myself, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer” and it’s yourself. You fuse with it, and that’s your sacrifice, your own blood, as you move up in the form of a serpent right into Zion, into the Holy of Holies.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: Neville, what is the difference between…I know the difference…but I don’t know how to describe it…human Imagination and Divine Imagination? Are they one and the same thing only on a higher level?

A: One and the same. The difference is the degree of intensity. The difference is simply the degree of intensity. If I put a little water on the flame and it’s a little, single flame, it would evaporate and never boil, but let me intensify the flame and then I have boiling water. So intensity…an imaginal act on high intensity is immediate, instantaneous. On this level, there’s an interval of time between the imaginal act and its fulfillment and the fruit. But you and God are one. I mean it literally when I say God became man—by man I mean generic man—that man may become God; it’s one.To do it, he had to completely forget he was God. He emptied himself and took upon himself the form of man, and was made in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:7). To do this you forget who you are. The story of my friend…the first night, every time that he got to the ___(??) above he remembered. Only on three occasions below did he remember. But he always came down and forgot; identified with this figure, and he knew there was something he had to remember. As he stepped, he stepped through an invisible curtain, and then no memory whatsoever of his position from above. As he walked, he was haunted by the thought there is something I must remember, what is it? Then all of a sudden he remembered the exalted position. He turned around, returned to this state, and all the people of the world are frozen as they were when he saw them first from above. But he desired the experience of this level, came down; but he knew the motion of the whole vast world depended upon his motion—as he moved, they were animated. It’s a true story! That’s a wonderful vision.

Today a gentleman came to my door and brought eleven wonderful case histories from his wife—the one I spoke to last Friday night, and asked him to please give them to me because “I know you have them” (because he told me about them). Well, today he came up and brought eleven, so they will tell beautifully and illustrate beautifully Friday’s talk which is “It is Within”—appears on the outside; it is within—when you listen to these stories, eleven of them. I may not have time to give eleven, but she gave me eleven, all in the recent past.

Q: Is consciousness considered part of Imagination or…?

A: Yes, my dear. I use the word consciousness in one book; I use Imagination in the other. I prefer Imagination, but, consciousness, you can’t avoid it. I try to avoid the use of the word unconscious, which to me means the absence of consciousness.Although it is not used in that manner, I, still to me, I can’t see how it doesn’t mean the absence of all psychical activity. And there is no such thing as a point where there is an absence. And they appear to be unconscious here, but I’m very conscious and alive wherever I am. The body, the garment that I wear, may be in a faint, but I am not. Wherever I am I am very much alive, therefore, I’m conscious; though to one viewing the garment I may appear be unconscious to them. But they pinpoint me and limit me to where they see the garment…I’m not there!Q: You made the statement that the only one sealed is yourself. Now in Revelation it tells ___(??). Is this an explanation of that?

A: There are twelve in each one. Multiply twelve by twelve, you get 144,000. 144,000 should be saved, so twelve times twelve. They are all within me. When I say I am sealed—I contain the whole within me; there’s nothing on the outside. You appear on the outside, but you’re not really. The whole vast world is contained within the seeming one, and the little individual, that seeming little thing, is the whole, it’s everything. My brother Victor when he did this little drama within himself, he was only in contact with self; and he overcame self. They seemed to walk in the outside as merchants, bearing other names, going home at night to different families, having different bank accounts, responding to different calls. But he did it all within him…he doesn’t know it as yet. He plays his part on that level, but he’s exercising Imagination. Someone once asked Napoleon, If you had a very, very honest officer, extremely honest, wouldn’t lie to you if you put his head on a block he would tell you the truth; and you had a very clever, vivid Imagination, that is, if one had this vivid Imagination but he wasn’t altogether honest and you had to dispose of one of these two, which one would you get rid of? Napoleon didn’t bat an eye, he said, “I’d shoot the honest one, shoot him right away. He’s no good to me. Executes an order, but can he under difficulties get out of it?” And so, it’s simply using your Imagination. This is not to encourage stealing. You don’t want to steal. From whom would you steal when there is nobody else? This is oneself fragmented and you play it against your fragmented self. In the end, you don’t go out and do it. ___(??) you do it and at night you do it. Sit and go over the day, and play it as it ought to have been played the first time. It works!