The Word

If I titled it, I would call it “The Word.” We’re told in the 17th chapter of the Book of Luke that “he came to a certain village and ten lepers raised their voices and said, ‘Master, have mercy on us’ and looking at them he said, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ As they went they were cleansed” (verse 12). So every word of scripture is a message to us, for the Bible is simply the word of God that would not keep silent and could be expressed in no other way…just poured through those who were qualified to receive it. So in this simple little story you and I could transform our entire world if we could only extract its message. What is the story trying to tell us? When you hear the word “leper” you think of some unclean person who is put aside from society and they cannot mingle with man because they are unclean, and it’s contagious. But you and I have been put aside and ostracized socially, financially, intellectually, ostracized in a thousand ways…and we are the lepers.

So what is this story trying to tell us? He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” Well, in the ancient world the priest was not only the one who instructed man in the word of God, he was also the physician, and only a certificate of approval from him could allow one who was ostracized to mingle freely with the crowd. So show yourself to the priests and if he approves of your cleanliness, he will give you that certificate of approval; then you can mingle freely with the crowd. And as they went they were cleansed. What a story! You and I as we are here, suppose now we were embarrassed, say, financially, how would I take this story and become cleansed of that poverty and find myself in a sense of security, how would I do it?

First of all, there is an action here: To produce the new requires a complete rearrangement of the furniture of the mind. Well, the furniture of my mind, your mind, our minds, is simply those that we know. We have friends, we have relatives, and all of these people, all really, are bits of furniture in the mind. Any rearrangement would change meaning, wouldn’t it, but any rearrangement. And so, were I tonight in an office and I desired a higher position in that office with greater responsibility and more income, I would in my mind’s eye see the same office and see myself occupying a different position in that office. And that change would automatically change me relative to everyone in that office. Everyone would have to see me differently, for I would see them differently. ___(??) I now see everyone differently in that state. And just make them, for one little moment, just make them remain stationary in my mind’s eye as I would set you up for a portrait. If I’m going to take a picture of you, I would ask you to pose in a certain way; when I get it just right, then I’ll snap it.

So in my mind’s eye I make it, I make this rearranged structure of the mind, remaining stationary long enough for me to actually take a picture of it, a mental picture. You look at it mentally and you inhale until you feel a sense of relief. A peculiar thrill goes through you. For all of the pleasures of the world, relief is the most keenly felt. I think anyone has had this…anyone here undoubtedly you’ve had this experience…you’re waiting for someone to come home and they are late, and you love them…could be a child. But they’re late. It’s an hour late, maybe it’s two hours. You get more and more tense. Then you hear the familiar footsteps or the familiar voice and that relief that comes…there is no pleasure in the world comparable to relief. Of all the pleasures of the world relief is the most keenly felt.

So you want to expand your world, you want to go beyond where you are in the world, and so you rearrange the furniture of the mind. Then, when you get it all set, you feel that thrill of accomplishment and the relief that comes with it. You do nothing thereafter. That’s impregnation, it’s a self-impregnation, it’s all that you need; and in a way that no one knows that will move through a certain series of events and come to fruition and suddenly appears in your world. But suddenness is only the emergence of this hidden continuity from that moment in time when you self-impregnated yourself up to that moment when suddenly it appears. But not until the whole thing has germinated can it break forth into leafage as it were…can’t be done.

So here in this simple little story of the leper…I am the leper, you are the leper, we’re all the lepers…and, here, “Go show yourself.” Now the entire Bible is really imaginal. I don’t take a physical journey to the priest and display myself to the priest, I do it mentally. Were it true, how would I feel? If this thing were really true, that I am actually now free of any restriction, then with whom would I share it? Well, I’d share it with my wife, share it with my daughter, share it with my family, share it with my friends, they’d all know it. Well then, let them see me, all in my own Imagination. So let me now assume that I am the man that I want to be; and then to confirm it, let me bring into my mind’s eye those who would see it were it true. So my journey is mental, it isn’t physical. So I am the leper, and I am told, “Go show yourself to the priests.” As I go, I am cleansed, as I make the act, make the effort.

And so it’s all an imaginal act. “God only acts and is in existing beings or men.” Well, who is God? God is my own wonderful human Imagination, that’s God. There is no other God. His name forever and forever is I AM. “Go and tell them I AM has sent you. If they ask the name, just say I AM has sent you. That’s my name forever…and by this name I shall be known through all generations”…no other name (Ex. 3:14). When I’m doing it, who is doing it? I am. So I bring into my mind’s eye a certain state, and I see it clearly in my mind’s eye. Then let me actually focus it to make a picture, take a portrait of it. Then by a deep inhalation I impress it upon myself, I become self-impressed. Now, God being my own Imagination, God does not will about things but in things. Not about them but in things. Having impressed his purpose upon things, God’s will is their will, and therefore it must be done. And so who is this God? God is my own wonderful human Imagination.

So let me give you a simple little story. I’ll go back now into the fifties, early fifties. My little niece came up here. She’d gone through school in Barbados, gone through what we call the girls’ high school, which is comparable to our high schools here. But we haven’t any educational system beyond that, not really. But our high school in Barbados, if you really graduate with high honors, you can make Oxford and Cambridge without further examinations…as my two nephews did…today they are doctors out of Cambridge. No further examination if you really go through, because the system is a wonderful system. And in spite of our claims to the contrary…we cannot claim the same…our system in Barbados…not by any high school standards here, I assure you. So she came up. She had a very good education, but only to what we call the girl’s high school. She wanted to be a nurse, so she thought. She applied at St. Luke’s in New York City, which is an excellent place; but the head nurse, for reasons that I need not explain, was prejudiced right away and just made her feel about that big, and told her she wasn’t properly educated to enter that system, that school. So she came home that day—-her parents came up with her, they were all in our apartment, they were living with us, hoping to get her into this lovely nursing school—-and Sally began to cry. Her mother, my only sister, she began to cry. And I said in a light, light way, I said, “Sally darling, you came here for one purpose, you came here to get married to a perfectly wonderful American doctor. That’s your purpose really, and so I will see that you’re happily married to a perfectly wonderful American who is a doctor.”

Well, my brother-in-law, he was so tense and so keyed up, he exploded. He said, “Sally, I will send you all over the world for two years, go any place you want, and then after two years of travel come back to Barbados. You need no nursing, you don’t need a job, you have all the cushions of the world.” And she does have all the comforts in the world as far as money goes…she needs no money. But that’s what Sally wanted; Sally wanted to go through nursing. So my wife said to her, “Alright, this is what I’ll do for you. We’ll go over and see my personal doctor, who is at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and he has quite a voice there.” Said my wife, “You make out a new application and instead of saying that you went through a girls’ high school—in this country they wouldn’t understand that; in England if you say I went to a public school you mean Eton, you mean these wonderful schools; here, if you say you went to public school, you don’t mean that at all. So maybe the person who will interview you will not understand if you say you went to a girl’s high school, so give it another name. Give it another name altogether. ” So we gave it another name altogether and she went to Columbia, Columbia University. They have a nursing school associated with Presbyterian Medical and Sally made it. And so, Sally went through. She met a doctor there, wonderful man, young chap only two years her senior. They courted in my apartment, they married, they have three children and the fourth is on the way. All that I did, I saw her—-when I saw the tears falling down her cheeks and her mother’s cheeks—-I simply made a mental picture of Sally being happily married to an American, a doctor, of whom she was proud. That’s all that I did…one deep inhalation and I felt the relief…that I didn’t care what happened thereafter, whether she made nursing school or not. She did, she went through the entire four years of nursing, and she came out a very fine nurse. And then right after she got married to this chap.

And this is the picture of the leper, ostracized—“You aren’t worthy of our school, ___(??)” and then you cry out for mercy. What is mercy? Mercy is only love in action, that’s all that it is, “Lord have mercy upon me”; and God is all love; therefore, act. I’m asking for action. And you are the one called upon to act, for that’s God. God became man that man may become God (Phil. 2:7). So when the appeal is made to you don’t turn to any outside God…it’s to you. Alright, so you have an Imagination, it’s your being, your whole being; then bring that individual before your mind’s eye, represent that being to yourself as you would like to see him, to see her, see them, and then feel thrilled, and believe in the reality of that imaginal act. That imaginal act on your part was God in action.

And that’s the story. It doesn’t make sense, but even though it doesn’t make sense, if it proves itself in performance, what does it matter what others think? If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what you think or I think about the matter? It doesn’t really matter at all, does it? Not if I can prove it in the testing. Well, here is something I prove in the testing. I can multiply it by the thousands. And you do nothing about it, really. You simply imagine “the end” and you photograph “the end.” Don’t go back to the beginning, the end. That’s “the end” when you set someone up for a picture. You go to “the end,” that’s what you want to take, and then you take it, and then you develop it. Well, in this process life develops it, and all things move toward that end. And then you are made to move across a certain bridge of incidents, a certain series of events that leads towards the fulfillment of that imaginal act that you impressed upon yourself. It’s a self-impression, that’s all that it is. So, to bring forth something new in this world means that we rearrange the furniture of the mind. We all have the same furniture. But, my position in this mind of mine is related to furniture. If I change anything, the slightest little change would result in a change of meaning in this world.

Now, we’re told in scripture, “So shall my word go forth from my mouth; and it shall not return unto me empty, but it shall accomplish my purpose, and prosper in that for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11). It shall not return unto me empty. Well, what is the word spoken of, my words here? No, these aren’t the words. The “Word” in scripture is simply “meaning.” “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). That word “logos” which we translate “word” means “meaning.” If I spoke in some foreign tongue to you and it had no meaning, it would mean nothing. If I repeated it and I didn’t understand what I am saying, it would mean nothing. It must mean something. So, “In the beginning is meaning, and meaning is with God, and meaning was God.” Well, God is your own wonderful human Imagination.

Now, let there be meaning to this rearranged structure of the mind. If I saw now in my mind’s eye something implying something, I have a word; and the potency of that word is in its implication. What does it imply? That is its power. So I see you in my mind’s eye, and you are saying to me, “I have heard good news about you” and then you congratulate me. Well, then that is implying something. I accept your congratulations. I don’t excuse it, I don’t turn away, I believe every word that you are saying about my good fortune, I accept it. So this is a word of God; I take the full imprint upon myself. I need do nothing to bring it to pass; life itself will bring it to pass. Then I move across all these little events in this world leading up to the fulfillment of that impression which I made upon myself.

So everyone is free. Everyone can do it. No one can stop you from doing it. There’s no power in this world that can stop you, the individual, from making a self-impression. When people tell you that they did it the other way, let them tell you what they will. I’m telling you of a simple way, the way of scripture. And when it happens you may even forget. Most of us forget and so when things happen in this world we don’t even recognize our own harvest. So when we get into this mood, and we are now living in a luscious manner, we get so arrogant, we think we did it in some different way. When people ask us how we did it we either are embarrassed to tell them how we really did it, or maybe we don’t believe that that imaginal act did it anyway, and so we take the means by which it came to pass and give all credit to the means. So we met Mr. Jones and Mr. Jones introduced me to Mr. Brown, and between the two of them they took me to something else, and then I think the means actually was the cause and the source of my success. It wasn’t so at all. They had to come.

How many stories of this nature…here is my father standing on a lot, thirty-five acres on the little, tiny island of Barbados. He looks out to sea…he just bought a cow from one of these three ladies, three sisters who lived together. They had a cow that went dry and they knew this cow would either die or you could use it for food, so they called up my father who dealt in such things. He had a store where he had meat, and he had, well, all the things that go in a grocery store. So he went up to this place with my brother Victor, and having seen the cow he made her an offer, which she accepted, told the man to take it down to the slaughter house. And then looking over this fabulous land, thirty-five acres, and the frontage was a lovely beach, a heavenly beach, and he said to my brother Vic, “Oh, Vic, what a wonderful place for a hotel!” Then in his mind’s eye he imagined it, the whole thing done. Then he turned to these ladies and he said, “If you ever sell, give me a chance to buy” and they promised that they would.

Well, the years went by, a few of them died, it was much too big for one to maintain, and so they were going to sell. The day of the sale, the one person who wanted it more than anything else in this world was in Rio de Janeiro on business, and he forgot the day of the sale. And when he cabled his lawyer to bid for the property, he was twenty-four hours late. My father bought it. Today a perfectly wonderful hotel stands on that property. Not the whole thirty-five acres…he bought the thirty-five acres and sold off most of it for private homes, so it’s surrounded with lovely homes all over the place. But a hotel stands on that property. He simply took one deep impression…and this is it. This whole vast world is brought into being in the same way.

And so, you ask anyone—-they won’t tell you, maybe they don’t know—-how God creates. But you’re told he created by the word. And the word is not that you utter it with your breath; a word simply means “meaning.” Well now, you could be dumb and you can’t express anything, but you can in your mind’s eye see clearly what you would like to see. Seeing it clearly, bringing it in focus, impress it upon yourself with a deep inhalation, and feel the reality of the thing done, and trust it implicitly! As we are told in the 37th Psalm, “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act” (verse 5). He will act, for “God only acts and is in all existing beings or men.” So you trust in him after you commit your way to the Lord…just my way. So just like dear little Sally, and Sally today is blissfully happy living in Cincinnati; and he is a perfectly wonderful doctor, successful doctor, and she is blessed with her lovely family.

So I say to everyone, you can do it. And do not for one moment limit God: All things are possible to God, but all things. But don’t put him on the outside: God became man that man may become God. There’s no place that man could ever go that he’s not aware that he is. I could, as I stand here, suffer from amnesia and not now who I am or where I am or what I am, but I can’t fail to know that I am. I know I am, but I don’t know where I am and I don’t know what I am or who I am, but how could I forget that I am. No one can forget that he is! Well, that is God. That is the grand I-am-ness that is sunk in man, and that is God.

Then he takes man through the furnaces of experience and brings him out as himself in the end. When he brings him out, the story of being brought out that story is told us in scripture. But man won’t believe it. They think in some strange way that it happened 2,000 years ago in a peculiar manner. No, it is happening all of the time. I am convinced that those who are here and who have made it a habit of being exposed to this thought are not far from having the experiences recorded in scripture of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, it’s only a pattern, that’s all that it is. It’s a portrait of God’s play. And so, everyone has the identical experience, born in the same manner that it is said he was born. Not by any miraculous woman not knowing a man, hasn’t a thing to do with that. Hasn’t a thing to do with some woman who knows no man, who has a child in a peculiar, miraculous way. It has all to do with you when you are born in an entirely different way. You find yourself awake within your own skull; that’s the first grand act. And you didn’t realize that you were dead; but you realize now that you must have been, or someone thought you were or they would not have placed you in the skull. For your skull becomes a tomb and you awaken in your skull to discover it is a tomb. Then you come out of that skull to find the symbolism as recorded in scripture is taking place right before your eyes. The child that you are told in scripture will be the sign of this fantastic event…and here is the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes (Luke 2:12). And men find it, just as men of scripture were told, Go and find it, and this is a sign for you, you shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying on the floor. And then they do.

Then comes the unfoldment of the entire thing, all within you. Not on the outside, not a thing takes place on the outside. If you read scripture carefully, not one event recorded in scripture was seen by the eye, only by the one who had the experience…if you read it carefully. But you have been told through the centuries that the wise men on the outside heard it. You’re told this, that and the other. Listen to these words carefully: He came out of the wonderful temptation, came into the temple, and they gave him a book, the Book of Isaiah. He opened the Book of Isaiah and read that passage which is the 61st chapter. He read just a few words, just a verse and a half, really: “And the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor; and to set at liberty the captives; and proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (verse 1). Then he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant. Then when he sat down, he said to those who looked at him, “Today the scripture that you have just heard has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:18).

If you read it…not just that little passage…go back and read that which leads up to it. He comes out of the wilderness…you’re told he was alone in the wilderness. If he was alone in the wilderness, who would know what transpired? Could anyone in this world tell you of the temptations? Could anyone honestly record…and the evangelists are recording the temptations and then quoting the Book of Deuteronomy to support scripture. Well, who could actually tell if I came out after forty days alone? Who could tell you what I experienced unless I told you? If I tell it to you, then you could just record it. But you are not eavesdropping if I am alone. In that era it wasn’t bugged. He was all alone, therefore, if you’re going to tell what happened to him who was all alone, he either told it to you or in some strange way you, too, know the mystery. No, the one to whom it happens, he tells you. Either you believe it or you don’t believe it. So he tells you this has happened. What happened?—this day I have been anointed. If I am anointed and the Spirit of God descended upon me, therefore, who could have seen that descent but the one on whom it descended? And he either tells you that he experienced it or you don’t know he did. So “I’m anointed” said he. So the whole thing is a drama taking place within the individual, not a thing taking place on the outside.

So from beginning to end, the whole book is simply the drama of God unfolding in man. And there are many of us who will not believe it. May I tell you, it doesn’t really matter if you don’t believe it, it’s perfectly alright. Go through life and then you come to the inevitable end to find yourself restored and not dead at all but passing through the same kind of turmoil that you are here. Until one day you’ll hear the same story, and you’ll hear it over and over and over, and one day the soil of the mind will become fertile enough and prepared enough for it to take root. When it takes root then it grows, and then you have the experiences. But it takes quite a while to take that hard mind of man, like granite, and really make it amenable to the point where the seed, the word of God, can reach it and take root and grow.

So the idea of the kingdom of God must be planted on man, and planting on man suddenly it takes root in man and it grows. But many of us, as we are told in the 13th chapter of Matthew, it falls on the highway and the birds of the air eat it; and then it falls among tares and they choke it; and then it falls upon very hard rock and it takes quick root but there’s no depth, the soil hasn’t been prepared, and so the sun scorches it the next day. But then there is also an area where the land is well prepared and when the word or seed of God falls, then it is accepted, and then grows and brings forth thirty-fold, sixty-fold and a hundred-fold (verse 18). So those who are very, very brilliant in this world, bright minds, successful in the eyes of Caesar, who reject this, completely reject it, perfectly alright. Don’t raise a finger to persuade them, leave them just as they are, for that mind has to go through the furnaces.

So they will reach the inevitable…like a Stalin…he has to make his exit too. He thought he’d live forever, and Khrushchev thought that he would simply be the grand man forever. Now they make them un-persons, rub them all out, so they cease even to be as far as they are concerned, cease even to be. They all become un-persons. But they’re not really dead; they’re restored to life, and placed in a position best suited for their tomorrow, because, eventually, that soil must be prepared to receive the word of God. And the word of God begins with the promise to Abraham…that’s the word of God: “I will bring forth from you a son” (Gen. 18:10). And then comes a greater development of the idea: to David, “And join your fathers, when you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up after you a son, who will come forth from your body. I will be his father, and he shall be my son” (2 Sam. 7:12). Then comes the fulfillment of these promises in the mind of the one who heard these stories and didn’t reject it, who accepted it and waited in confidence for God to unfold himself in man.

But while we are waiting, having accepted the idea and believing it, let us change our world and make it a more beautiful world in this world of Caesar. There’s nothing wrong with having money, not a thing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with having something lovely in this world that you have now, ___(??). Don’t let anyone tell you, you aren’t entitled to it.

And don’t be completely limited by these concepts of the outside priestly world. Hasn’t a thing to do with reality. Hear God’s word…and he gives you complete freedom of choice and the arrangement of that structure. If I move from here to there, and look at this room after having moved, the room differs. The room remains the same to itself but differs relative to me if I move. So I move relative to where I am financially, socially, intellectually, and then I look at my world, contemplation of that motion, and then I see it differently, and everyone looks at me and sees me differently. If today you became the person that you would like to be, your friends would know it. Well, then move mentally and then let your friends know it mentally. Let them see you as they would have to see you were it true, and then take a wonderful deep inhalation and take that picture.

You don’t have to really develop it, it just happens, it just happens in this world. Others will tell you, you must go out and struggle. Alright, let them struggle. As far as I am concerned, let them struggle from now to the ends of time. I didn’t struggle, I assure you. I didn’t struggle, didn’t raise a finger. And when I became aware of what I had…I hadn’t the slightest idea…and I didn’t struggle. I simply day after day after day heard good news for others and got into the mood of hearing good news. It seemed such a marvelous thing to do to hear good news for people. I got so much in the habit of hearing good news that I couldn’t hear other news. Then I was made aware of the fact that what was given me back in 1941, I think it was, 1942, which I ___(??) suddenly had this fantastic value. Came back last year with a consciousness of actually having what I’m quite sure ninety-nine percent of the people of the world wouldn’t even dream of having. I don’t feel any different about it…I am still telling the same story…makes no difference to me whatsoever. I could put my hand upon it, I don’t really care, I don’t need it, but it’s there. I had it, my wife will have it if I should drop this night, my daughter will have it. But I, personally, have no desire for it— and yet it’s mine—none whatsoever.

So I tell you, don’t be concerned. Everything is possible to God, and God is your own wonderful human Imagination. Lose yourself completely in hearing good news for people. It doesn’t matter what the world will tell you. They’ll call you a sap, call you a fool, call you all these things, it doesn’t really matter. Don’t argue with them at all. Just go blindly on speaking the word of God and the word of God is simply that concept in your own mind’s eye that has meaning. Does it have meaning, does it mean something? Well, that’s a word. Well, now speak it into being without using words. You speak it by simply seeing it mentally, accepting it as true, feel the thrill, that relief that comes, and then let it go. And no power in this world can stop it from coming to fruition.

Any more than that nurse, who was the head nurse of St. Luke’s, could have stopped my little niece from going through. If you compare the two today, although St. Luke’s is a wonderful school of nursing, I don’t think any doctor will tell you that it is as good as Columbia. Because Columbia University far excels…because they have as professors all the doctors there, all professors from ___(??). You get four years of that training. Judged by human standards, she didn’t have a chance of a snowball in hell to get into Columbia to come straight from little Barbados with only a high school degree. But she did. When I said to her—-I did it kiddingly—-“Sally has come here only to marry a lovely American boy who is a doctor,” I thought I’d break the spell. That’s what I did it for. Then when I got the reaction—-tears from her mother, tears from herself, and this reaction from her father—-I said right there I’ll do it…and I did. Then two years went by, one day she comes home bringing this young intern. He’s a nice chap. Then next week brought him back, the same chap. Then after five or six visits of this nature I knew this thing was serious, and so, in my own home came this wonderful proposal and consolation. They went to Barbados, got married.

So this is how this law works. Don’t try to rationalize it. You can’t reason it, it just doesn’t work that way. But I’ll tell you one thing, the very first act of correction or cure is revise. It’s called in scripture repent. But that word has strange connotations, and using it means “to feel remorseful, to feel regretful.” Hasn’t a thing to do with that. Repent is a radical change of attitude towards life. I call it revision, for revision results in repeal. I take the contents of my mind—-I’m going to live with them if I don’t repeal them—-and to repeal them I must revise them. So I revise them; I change the furniture of my mind. The average person will go home year in and year out and wouldn’t change one piece of furniture in his home. He found it so and it is so. So he might pull it aside just to dust it and put it right back again. It would never occur to him to change it. Well, that’s simply a picture of the fixity of his own mind…doesn’t change anything.

Well, you change the structure of your mind. You have all of the furniture of the world. All of your friends are part of the furniture of the mind and change them relative to you. Let them see you as they must see you were you what you would like to be, let them see you that way. And then don’t for one moment…someone asked me earlier today, “Well, do you do it every night?” If it pleases you yes, if it pleases you. But doing it every night doesn’t mean that is going to make it so. It only takes one inhalation to do it. It’s like a pregnancy, so after one has become pregnant they’ve conceived, they may or may not perform the act until birth, I don’t know, they may. But all the acts between the impression and birth aren’t aiding that growth. It’s going to grow in its own normal time, and when the time is fulfilled it will be born. As told us in scripture, “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” (Hab. 2:3). Everything has its own appointed hour. A little chicken comes out in three weeks, a little lamb in five months, a baby in nine months, a horse in twelve, so we all have different intervals of time. But additional impressions will not help you. When you do it once, if you really do it, it’s done! Then leave it alone. And then live in confidence that that self-impregnation has its own way of bringing it to pass and objectifying itself on the screen of space. And it will!

So try it, costs you nothing to try it. So let everyone this night take a noble concept of self and then use a frame of reference to reflect that you are that person; because if you were that person, others would see it, they would know of it. So just simply take it, let the world see it, and feel the thrill that comes with it and feel the relief that comes with accomplishment. Then drop it and go about your business in this world. Everything will simply add up to bring it to pass.

So you try it. And then, may I ask a favor of you, when you get the results, as you will, share them with me so I may tell it to my friends here. Either tell me at the meeting or tell me in writing, write me a letter, but do share it with me. You see, in the story we started tonight there were ten and only one returned to say thanks, nine didn’t come back. One came back and said, “Thank you, Master” and he said, “Were there not ten? Where are the nine who did not return?” Now I can take any little child and teach the child to say “thank you,” any child can do that. But I hardly ever need teach him to feel thank you. Well now, all you do is simply feel it. I could teach you to say thanks and these empty words mean nothing…but to feel tonight grateful and thankful because a thing is real and it’s true. But I would ask more than one of the ten to return and tell me. Not for my own satisfaction, for others so I can share it with them and tell them, tell everyone, how it worked for you. That would encourage them, because it will work if you do it.

So this is a simple, simple story of the ten lepers who asked for mercy, asked him to act in a loving way relative to them, “Have mercy upon us,” and all he said is, “Go and show yourself to the priests.” Just imagine that wonderful thought, because if I really believe what I’ve told you this night I would act, wouldn’t I? If you believe what you heard this night you would act, wouldn’t you? Well, going and showing myself to the priests, isn’t that acting? Well, the priests happen to be the crowd who will now give me approval for what I asked. It could be my wife, my daughter, my son, my friends…that’s the priest. And I show them that I am the man that I wanted to be and they approve it. So as I go, I’m cleansed…cleansed of what I was because I become what I am assuming that I am. That’s the story. It’s a simple story, but every little story in scripture has a profound meaning: the meaning to set man free, for when he starts the Word it’s to set the captive free. Tell them the good news for now you’re anointed, go tell them the good news and set the captive free. Set everyone free by the good news.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Q: In John it says, “So his brother said ‘Leave here and go to Judea…no man works in secret,’” etc., etc., and he says to his brothers, “You go.” Then he goes there in secret. Would you comment on this?A: Well, that is the 7th chapter of John where they do not believe in him (verses 3-8). This is a story of every person in this world. You’re born into a family and they know your weaknesses, your limitations…and the drama of eternity is unfolding in you. And your very wife, knowing you as a wife would know you, could not for one moment believe that the story told of Jesus could happen to you. I mean, it’s something…almost an impossible thing…for one to believe that it happened to you, because she knows you, she knows your weaknesses and all your limitations. So in this story, he said to them, “My time has not yet come; but your time is always here.” Well, that, Tom, is a lecture in itself. In other words, it is so difficult to tell man who is seated here tonight or the whole vast world, three billion of us, that these are only garments and these garments are permanent parts of the eternal structure of the universe. They are only animated…their time is always here…this is always part of the world of Caesar. So when he is speaking, he’s speaking of an entirely different world. He said, “My time, my real time, has not yet fully come.” While he’s still wearing one of these garments, he’s still part of this world. But he has tasted of the power of the age to be and is waiting patiently for the taking off of this garment, which belongs to this world, that he may enter that age, an entirely different world.So in all these contacts in the world, who would believe you? He goes now secretly. In all these things it’s all done on the inside, it’s not done on the outside at all. When he passes among them…as they are about to throw him over the cliff and he passes through them…this is not passing through the door here. It’s like the experience I told you just a few weeks ago, pulling away from the body to find myself in an enclosure without doors or windows, and then leaving it and returning to the body. So that you go secretly into it and you leave secretly from it, back to that state that is part of the eternal structure of the universe.

Q: The brothers in this case then are not the brothers of whom…this is not the Elohim?A: No, all of these are my brothers. He said, “Who are my brothers? Who is my mother?”—-those who hear the word of God and do it. So he denied that he had just a few brothers. Well, four of them are mentioned in scripture and sisters, not named, but it’s plural. So at least he had a family. He said “We are”…that means we have a family. But he denies that he is related just simply to a little family, for I’m related by this garment to every being in this world. But the being in me that is formed in the likeness of God—-“Let us make man in our image”—-that something that is in me that is being formed into the image of God—-for we’re told “He is the very image of the living God”—-so that image is Jesus Christ which is God. It’s being formed in every man, and every man will one day awaken as Jesus Christ. But wearing these garments they can’t believe it, and they think you’re insane, because they were taught to believe that Jesus Christ was a man who lived 2,000 years ago and that’s all there is to it.

I noticed in today’s Time magazine that they’re giving out these new honors to new princes of the church, twenty-seven of them. Up until now to receive this honor you have to prostrate yourself and kiss the foot of the pope. Now that’s been done away with as of now. Well, if it’s done away with as of now, it was never right. You don’t have to kiss his foot any more. And he doesn’t give you the hat as formerly he gave you, the hat is sent to your home…because you never wear it. It’s only kept in your home until you are dead, and then it is on your forehead. So, before, it was given to you and up until now you had to prostrate yourself. The most slave position in the world is to be prostrated, slaves always did. And you kiss the foot…now you don’t do it. If you don’t have to do it now, when did it start that it was right? I say just take all of this and throw it from your mind…hasn’t a thing to do with reality. Christ is forming in man and he forms in a simple man, a man that no one would look back as he passes by and see him. But in that one he is forming him and he knows by his own experiences. So he passes by one that the whole vast world would fawn upon, just kiss if they could only stand in his presence.

My little nephew came to New York City many years ago, and my son took him out on the town one night, Saturday night, and they got plastered. Both were kids, but my son was older. So they went from bar to bar, they came home at, oh, maybe two in the morning, and I heard this retching in the bathroom. He was a Catholic, my nephew, so he had to get up early to go to mass, go to St. Patrick’s, and I knew he couldn’t make it. ___(??) so I wouldn’t make him. Then came about, oh, maybe ten, I was up making a little hot coffee, something of that sort, and he stirred. He said, “I have to go to mass, because if I don‘t Mother would never forgive me. I have to write her today and tell her that I went to mass.” So I got him his hot black coffee and got him all put together. Well, we lived on 55th Street and St. Pat’s is 50th and Fifth Avenue,so it isn’t too far away. So it’s a nice brisk morning, so then we went out about 10:30 to walk to St. Pat’s. He made it and to his chagrin it’s high mass and Cardinal Spellman was conducting. They spent a long, long mass, but at least the compensating part was this— when he came home he could sit down and write his mother and say that he not only went to mass at St. Pat’s but that Cardinal Spellman conducted it. That did everything away because the mother felt my son is so blessed. She didn’t know the night before… but so, he went off and he had this wonderful time.

See, I am fifty-fifty—-half of my family are Catholics and half are Protestants. They don’t fight. The Catholics think we’ve all gone to hell; and we don’t disillusion them. But they’re all in one intimate…no not hostility, really…in that intimate manner, half and half. We were all Protestants to begin with, then three of my brothers fell in love with lovely girls, Catholics. Of course, they had more children than all the others put together, and all of their children have more children. So today in just two generations we’re fifty-fifty. We’ll be outnumbered in another ___(??). But that’s our world in which we live.

So when I go home and tell these stories, my Catholic side wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t listen to it. It doesn’t make sense to them, because they aren’t taught that way. But, on the other hand, I can’t say my Protestant side reads it either. Because you see, as far as they’re concerned, I left home and they remained at home and worked hard, made a lot of money. My father happened to be a perfect man, perfect father; he didn’t discriminate when he gave his wealth away. So his prodigal son, who went thousands of miles away, got just as much as any other member of ten. So when the Will was read Neville was not only in it but up to the hilt. So they were home working it and taking care of all this money, not knowing that at the very end I also had it. So the prodigal son came back…and so the fatted calf was his. So that’s the story.

Thank you. Goodnight.