Where Are You From?

Tonight’s subject is “Where Are You From?” This you will find in the 19th chapter of the Book of John. And the rabbi said to Pilate: “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die, for he claims he’s the Son of God” (verse 7). And their law would not allow that. For we know where this man is from, know all about him; and when Messiah appears, no one will know where he’s from, so his claim is false. So when Messiah appears, it will be mysteriously done. And yet we know exactly where this man is from. Even his own brothers do not believe in him. And he said to his brothers, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here.” And then he repeated it but qualified it: “My time has not yet fully come” (John 7:6). He knew his time. He is speaking of two entirely different times, two entirely different worlds, two different ages. So, “My time has not yet fully come, but your time is always here.” It’s not a ___(??) for it, it is always here, but my time has not yet fully come.

So, Pilate said to him, “Where are you from?” and Jesus gave no answer. And Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know I have power to set you free and power to crucify you?” And Jesus answered him, “You have no power over me unless it has been given to you from above; therefore he who delivered me to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). He does not answer Pilate’s first question, but he corrects Pilate’s misunderstanding of power. He does not answer “Where are you from?” He doesn’t tell him, because Pilate would never understand; but he corrects Pilate’s misunderstanding that is the world’s misunderstanding of power. Pilate thought he had the power to set him free or to crucify him. He was simply telling him he had no power whatsoever unless it had been given to him from above.

For one day you’ll have this experience and you will taste of the power of the new age. And you will see a scene just like this. As you taste of this power of the new age you will know it is all animated, and you are the power animating it. You will arrest within yourself an activity that you sense. At that moment of arrestment, everything stands still and it’s dead. It’s made as though it were made of clay. Not just the outer aspect but your brain that is so fluid and so alive and so pulsing, that too if you opened up the skull would be like clay. The heart that pumps and pumps, that too would be like clay. The whole thing including all the inner works would be frozen. Then you would release within yourself the activity which you had arrested and everything would once more become animated and would continue in its course, and would perform its intention. Then you would know what he means by “this time” which is forever as against “his time” and when he said to his brothers, “My time has not yet fully come, but your time is always here.”

Now, man’s view of time, man’s conventional view of time, including our great scientists, is that the future develops continuously out of the past. But that’s not the biblical view of time. The biblical view of time is what appears to be so new in our world is only the appearance of the return of phenomena already old. The whole vast world is moving on a circle and all of this is already so, so that the entire space-time history of the world is laid out, and we only become aware of increasing portions of it, successively. But it’s on a curve, and therefore what seemingly was past isn’t, really, from the biblical view, it’s your tomorrow. It hasn’t really receded into a past, it’s advancing into a future. And it is forever.

Now listen to the words from Ecclesiastes… and our scientists ___(??) can’t understand it, therefore they say the book was uninspired, not really an inspiring work. But it’s one of the cannons of history of scripture. Listen to these words: “What has been is what will be and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ‘See, this is new’? It has been already in ages past. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things to happen among those who will come after”(Ecclesiastes 1:9-11).

Well, who will accept that? The conventional view completely denies it; it couldn’t possibly be true. He is telling me that I have a memory of my youth. I can’t quite remember the moment of my physical birth. I vividly remember the moment of my spiritual birth, but I can’t remember the moment of my physical birth. But he’s telling me it has been, that I do know. And everyone here without memory of that physical birth, they can’t deny by observation of other people being born that they, too, must have been born in a similar manner. So, they say it has been. Now he tells me, “That which has been done”—which is my birth—“is that which will be done.” That I am moving toward that thing on a wheel of recurrence, that same thing in this world of Caesar, and only divine mercy can redeem me from the wheel. That, “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torment, despair, and eternal death; but Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus.” (Blake, Jerusalem, Plate 36) So here the wheel is turning.

Now, let me share with you a story told me last Tuesday night, a week ago tonight. The lady is present. She gave me a letter just before I started. I had no time to read it before my meeting and had no time until just before I retired that night. So about midnight I read the letter, and this is the letter. It was dated November 23, which as you know was a week ago last Saturday, the day after the great event in this world that took place on the 22. She states in the letter: This is my experience of ten days prior to November 22, that is, November 12. I go from my office, home and back, always in a certain manner, a certain road. It is my habit that when I get to a certain intersection that I turn and read the headlines at the newsstand. For quite often, in fact usually, a red light is with me, and so I have a moment to turn and read the headlines. This time when I went home it was dusk, the sun was setting, a few cars coming from the opposite direction. I am moving west into the setting sun and a few cars moving in the opposite direction had their headlights on because it was dusk. I was in the right-hand lane, but the traffic was moving; it was a green light. But habit in some strange way possessed me. Although the car was moving, I turned to read the headlines, the words to the left. And so I turned, I saw four papers on the rack—three the usual black and white, and one was a green sheet, and this enormous black type as a head mast read “Kennedy Shot.” This is November 12. I almost put my foot on the brake to turn, but I was in the intersection. But reason prevailed, I said, No, it’s the headlights, it’s the dusk, it’s the sun that is setting, and surely above all things in my office where I work the radio goes all day long, and such horrendous news would be on the radio. So that capped it. Reason prevailed, and I knew that I had not seen correctly. But I saw on this green paper “Kennedy Shot.” Well, I kept going across the intersection. How long does it take, she said in her letter, two, three minutes, three seconds, two or three seconds? And so, at the end of three seconds I crossed the intersection and kept moving. It wasn’t one block before I completely forgot the incident… completely forgot it.

And in my office, ten days later, on Friday the twenty-second, I came to the office late. Two radios were blasting, a TV is going, and nothing but this news on the air. Some are crying, many are talking, others are cursing. And I wanted some quietness to do my work. I’m at the typewriter. Three-thirty in the afternoon I’m still trying to remember a dream, a dream that is related to what I’m hearing. But I couldn’t call back the dream. I’m trying to remember the dream. I know that something I dreamt is related to what I am hearing on the radio, what’s coming across TV too, but I couldn’t bring back the dream. A co-worker leaves the office. He is gone not more than a few minutes when he returns bringing in a paper, a folded paper. He comes in my direction and he calls me by name, he comes over to my desk and he slaps it down on the table, and said to me, “Isn’t it amazing how fast these papers can move!” And he intended that I should have the paper. So I took the paper and opened it and here is a green sheet, the outer covering is green, and only two words as the masthead “Kennedy Shot!” Then suddenly, what happened to me ten days before springs into my mind, and here I am seeing the entire scene as I drove home, going west, and watched this headline on this newsstand.

I took that letter, so it meant a tremendous thing to me, and read it over and over to my wife. She and I reacted as I would expect her to react. I knew how I would react. But last weekend, a friend of mine who sponsors my meetings in San Francisco came home, and so I invited four mutual friends that knew her well to dinner. So we were… there were the seven of us at home. And I ___(??) the letter and read it, and gave each to see the letter and hold it in their own hands ___(??). There was only a moment of surprise of a strange coincidence, no more. Within a matter of seconds, just as the lady said, in three seconds she had completely forgotten the incident and tried so hard to bring it back to memory, like a dream; for the event is now turning something in the depths of her soul that she experienced this. But she couldn’t bring it back until the fact was presented when the paper was put before her in a physical manner, and then she saw it. Through the evening they discussed all kinds of things relative to the great drama, but they thought that the FBI, the Secret Service, the local police, all these people should have done what they did not do. And here, it is stated so clearly in the first chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes.

So in her letter to me she said at the very end of the letter: “When the man looked at me, having given me the paper, and I saw it, black type on green, I must have turned green myself because he said to me ‘What’s the matter?’ And I couldn’t answer him, because how could I tell him that Creation is finished? How could I tell him that this is a drama and it’s finished? That because it’s animated, blood flows instead of tomato juice as it does on the stage?” But having had the experience of arresting in me an activity which animated the scene I saw, I know that it’s no more than that on the stage. But it’s for a divine purpose, and the purpose is that God is individualizing himself. He individualizes himself through this play. And when he comes out individualized, that’s Jesus Christ, the only name that the individualized God bears. So in each, as he comes out individualized he is incorporated into the one body. For the Lord on that day, “the Lord will be one and his name one… and the Lord will reign as king over all the earth.” But on that day the Lord will be one and his name one (Zechariah 14:9).

Then she said at the end of her letter, “Could my reason—that is, my refusal to recognize as true what I actually saw—be the lines spoken of in the 30th chapter of the Book of Isaiah?” Then she quotes the ninth, tenth, and eleventh verses: “These sons, these lying sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord; who say to the seers, ‘See not’; and to the prophets, ‘Prophesy not to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions, leave off the way, leave the way, turn away from the path, let us hear no more of the Holy One of Israel.’” Yes I can answer her; they are (these lying sons) your reason. They took everything that night—the setting sun, the dusk, the absence of the news from the radio, everything, the headlights—to persuade you that you had not seen what you actually saw. And it went so deep into your being that even when the news began to blare at the office, you thought it was related to a dream. This was a waking dream, just like another dream, and you tried to bring back memory and you couldn’t recall what you actually had experienced.

But, it also struck me in a very forceful manner because in the same 30th chapter of Isaiah I took the verse I wanted for the title page of my latest book, The Law and the Promise. I took the eighth verse. She took the ninth, tenth, and eleventh verses, and I took the eighth: “Go now and write it before them on a tablet, inscribe it in a book that it may be for the time to come as a witness forever.” And so I took that verse for my title page that I would inscribe it in a book, whether one believed it or not, for I know it’s more true than anything being discussed this day concerning what happened in Dallas. For they all think it should not have happened. They don’t know this time as against that time.

So he said to his brothers, who did not believe in him: “My time has not yet fully come, but your time is always here.” These garments are part of the eternal structure of the universe. This thing here, I will one day vacate it; but it remains as part of the eternal structure of the universe, like Hamlet remaining after Lawrence Olivier makes his exit from this world. And so, he remains as part of the eternal structure of the play called Hamlet. So, tomorrow another one, unborn today, will put on the costume of a Hamlet and play Hamlet as conceived by Shakespeare, as you will put on this thing called Neville, as conceived by God, because I will have vacated it for the last time. But, it’s here to be worn, and all these are to be worn, and worn forever and forever until he completely individualizes himself. And more than the sands of the sea, we are told. He is the grand Abraham of scripture, the father of the multitudes, individualizing himself. And there’s a series of events by which he breaks this invidious bar; and then causes the individual whose shell he breaks to separate and escape from this strange wonderful wheel of recurrence. And so, at what moment in time this series of events begins to appear within you, that’s his secret.

But, everything is here. And that bullet in the brain of Kennedy is part of the eternal structure of God’s world and God conceived it. So the one who pulled it God conceived it, and that’s a part to be played and played over and over and over. And men can’t quite see the drama, because it doesn’t make sense. Because he thinks it’s here. It isn’t here. This is forever as the play. But he’s speaking of another time: My time has not yet fully come. My time belongs to a world where I am really free, where I am now in a world where everything is subject to my imaginative power, but everything. And I too will be part of that world animating this, and seeing it differently, so that the bullet and the one who pulled it and those who weep will not really disturb me from that level.

So Blake made the statement: “Hear the voice of the Bard! Who present, past and future sees; whose ears have heard the Holy Word that walked among the ancient trees.” He is telling you he experienced the 3rd chapter of Genesis: “And the voice was heard of the Lord God, as he walked in the garden in the cool of the day.” Then, in the 4th chapter of Daniel: “And this Holy One that walked in that garden gave the command, ‘Hew down the tree.’” We were the tree in that holy garden, but innocent trees, and we had to fall into experience to awaken into the world of Imagination, where everything is subject to our imaginative power, awakened as God. So here, “Hew down the tree, cut off its branches, strip off its leaves, scatter its fruit. But leave the stump of its roots. And then let him be watered with the dew of heaven” (verses 14, 15). Take from him now—it’s a tree and suddenly it becomes a person—“Take from him,” even though that was a tree. ___(??). “Take from him the heart of a man and give him the heart of a beast and let him dwell, and his dwelling place be among the beasts. And let seven times pass over him until he knows that the Most High rules the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he will, yes, even to the lowliest of men.”

So here, the tree is felled. And again with Blake: “The gods of the earth and sea sought thro’ nature to find this tree; but their search was all in vain; there grows one in the human brain” (The Human Abstract). So it’s turned down into generation and suddenly it becomes an animal. This is an animal, this is an animal form. Everything we call human that’s animal is related to the animal world; it has an animal heart, the animal mind. And seven times pass over. What is a “time” in the language of scripture? Blake implies approximately nine hundred years. So seven times must pass over him. Blake leaves off the little additional three hundred and speaks of a solid number of six thousand. And he said: “I behold the visions of my deadly sleep of six thousand years circling around thy skirts like a serpent of precious stones and gold. I know it is my Self, O my Divine Creator and Redeemer.” (Jerusalem, Plate 96)

So here, he saw the whole thing clearly. The Holy One he heard, the Holy One walking in the cool of the day, in this world called the Garden of Eden. And he tells us by implication that he actually heard the command “Hew down the tree,” so said he in this very opening to what he started in a series but only gave us one. He calls it The First Book of Urizen, but he deleted the word “First” afterwards because he only brought out the one. But in this, he addresses the Holy One, the Immortal and calls them “Eternals.” “Eternals! I hear thy call gladly. Dictate swift winged words and fear not to unfold your dark visions of torment.” This I am quite willing—when I see the result of passing through this horror—I am quite willing that I seek in my mind’s eye the vision which is your vision for me when you complete your dream and you individualize yourself.

So Los beheld the vision and he was faithful to the vision in time of trouble. So I ask you to be faithful to the vision in time of trouble. So when you go through it, know it has happened and happened and happened, but you have no memory. In some strange way this lady, in ten days, within one block, it so passed from memory that even when the radios began to blare and the TV, and people are weeping and cursing, and talking, she is prodding herself to remember a dream. And only when the facts of a paper were placed before her and she saw the green page and then the headline “Kennedy Shot!” the whole thing ran into her mind like some photographic plate. She remembered the intersection where she saw these four papers on a rack—three the normal black and white and one the green with this headline—and the struggle with herself as she crossed the intersection which only takes two or three seconds. Then, all of a sudden, it rushed into the mind.

Our theologians for centuries have been trying to delete from our book the Book of Ecclesiastes because it doesn’t make sense. Because the normal view of time is that the future develops continuously out of the past. I was born as a babe and so I will, as any person in this world, grow to manhood, and then having waxed, I will then wane and vanish. That’s the normal progression on this linear motion of time. And that’s not the biblical view of time at all. It’s something entirely different. And he separates the two times, he speaks of “your time” that is always and “my time” that has not yet fully come.

So, I picked up that one on Time when I chose the verse I wanted for the title page of my book: “Inscribe it in a book that It may be for the time to come.” For that’s what it is. I’m not speaking of this. The law, yes, I still say within the framework of God’s grand dream there’s another dream, my dream, your dream, and we can have unnumbered experiences. We aren’t going to change his dream for us. But we can modify and change within the framework of his dream the things that we will encounter. And if I use the law wisely, I will avoid repetition tomorrow when the wheel turns again. I won’t break the foot the next time. I won’t have the distorted arm the next time. I won’t have anything the next time if now I revise it. So I say, if there is one thing I have been brought into this world to tell you, it’s the secret of revision—that something today is unpleasant, you don’t like it, don’t let it slip by. The Bible speaks of redeeming the time. Every moment if it’s unpleasant it should be redeemed because you’re going to meet it tomorrow as the wheel turns. So don’t let the night descend and catch you with the unredeemed day. Take the day and redeem it. You may produce the results now, in the immediate present. But if you redeem it, when the wheel turns, because you haven’t yet, you’ve not hatched out… for as Blake… “For hatching ripe he breaks the shell.” But if the shell isn’t yet broken by the series of events which detaches you from this wheel of recurrence, then revise the day, so that the next time when the wheel comes around, you are not going to relive the unpleasant thing of this moment in time.

But I tell you, “Your time is always here; my time has not yet fully come.” It takes one more link to break it, for it’s all, it’s only hanging by a link. To be part of the world where having once tasted of the power of the age to come, then to return to the world where you’re part of “this” age and be animated. As he confessed, “You would have no power over me had it not been given to you from above.” Here is one who is confessing he’s only at the very brink of leaving it; but while he’s in the world of Caesar, having tasted of the world to come and the power that belongs to that world, while in the world of Caesar wearing an animal garment, then no one has the power over him unless it was given to him from above. So the one who gave it to you, he has the greater sin if now he sends me to the gallows. The God who sends me to perform an act that is condemned by society, you have the greater sin, for it is part of the great play.

And this dual time is so difficult for man to grasp, but I am only quoting from scripture. He speaks so often of time, and he separates the two times: this time which belongs here forever and that time, this world and that world. So he speaks of two ages, this age, where there is rebirth but it doesn’t mean reincarnation. For, that which has been done is that which will be done. Were you once born of your present mother? You will be. It’s happening all over again, at the moment in time when the wheel turns, and we will get the same surprise that is conceived as reincarnation, being born of another mother. But they can’t conceive of returning, being born in the same manner of the same mother. Because they can’t see these garments… and they think these are themselves. And these are garments that God wears.

And so, the whole vast world will say, “Oh, yes, I believe in reincarnation. It justifies the inequalities of life.” Nothing justifies the inequalities of life, as you are told of the blind man, the 9th chapter of the Book of John: “And they said to him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind at birth?’ He said neither this man nor his parents: but the works of God be made manifest” (verses 2 and 3). All these are the experiences through which God goes—the blind, the lame, the withered, the halt, everything. And it’s not any justification, because the God of whom I speak is not a God of retribution. In spite of the horror of the play, he’s a God of love, because in the end he individualizes himself, and you are he. If it took six thousand years of horror, the end result justifies the means conceived as a play to bring it out.

But I ask you, don’t forget the lady’s letter. Don’t do what my friends of last Saturday night did. So when they departed and I started washing dishes in the wee hours of the morning, I said to my wife, What a strange reaction! Now this lady sponsored me. She has sponsored me for the last seven years, and prior to that she came to my meetings when she was not my sponsor. She sells all of my books. And all of my other friends have known me here on the West Coast for the last fifteen years. And so, it was like reading a nice little mystery and then throwing it into the ashcan—that’s it—and then we go back to discuss the facts of life. “Why were not the FBI on the job and not these people on the job?” and they just got through reading that ten days before he was actually shot. By the human standard he was already dead.

But time, with a larger focus you see a larger focus; you take a larger section of time. And she, in some wonderful way, the green light is with her, she hadn’t time to really focus, so she is moving forward with the green light, an intersection, she is almost on it. But habit possessed her, she turned to see, she’s in the right hand lane, and here, on a green paper, the headline “Kennedy Shot!” But then it fades. But are we not told in that ninth verse of the first chapter of Ecclesiastes: “There is no remembrance of former things, no remembrance of later things to happen among those who come after.” And so, she is trying when it does happen, that we on this level will appreciate it. She is trying to remember what she called a forgotten dream. She thinks it’s a dream and she’s remembering when I dreamed it, I dreamt it. And she can’t bring back to memory, can’t recall it, until the paper is brought in and the boy’s voice said, “Isn’t it amazing how fast these papers can move!” Even then she didn’t. She opened up and saw the same headline on a green page. Then the whole thing rushed into the brain like photographic plates being pushed through the brain. And knowing her Bible, being a student of the Bible, she searched the Bible for something that caused her to lie to herself; and she found the three verses of the 30th chapter of the Book of Isaiah: “Lying sons, sons who will not hear the instruction of the Lord.” They will not listen to him and they say to seers, those who see like a Blake: Tell us not; do not look; don’t tell us anymore. Tell us ___(??). Give us illusion; tell us smooth things, pleasing things. Don’t tell us things of old. Tell us smooth and pleasing things (verse 10).

And so, that’s the world.

But I am not sent to tell you the smooth things or the pleasing things. But I can tell you through the one thing I have brought to tell you which is revision, it isn’t hopeless. You can if the day is unpleasant revise it. And if tomorrow the results are not before you and the next week or the next month they are not before you, I know you will change by the revision the events when you must once again encounter that moment in time. And so, you will change the pattern, for the wheel is turning and you can’t stop it. For I saw it, and one moment in time I was part of it. I stopped it within me: and they all stopped. Not one could move, not even the bird in flight. The bird couldn’t fall; there was no gravity. Gravity was in me.

And I thought, as I was taught in my little school, that Sir Isaac Newton discovered it. I almost thought he made it, because the whole thing was Sir Isaac Newton. I heard, and so no one was greater in my mind’s eye than Sir Isaac Newton. As a child, I really believed that he determined how things should fall and how they should go up. And then one day I came into a taste of the power into which tomorrow I would inherit: For I will inherit the kingdom of God, with all the power that goes with it. But I tasted of that power before the last link was broken. And so, the bird couldn’t fly and it didn’t fall, and the grass that was moving in the wind couldn’t move, and the leaves falling couldn’t fall, and the people walking couldn’t walk, and the diners dining couldn’t dine, and everything was frozen. I looked at them. I was moving; I was not frozen. I froze in me an activity which froze them. I went over and looked at them and they were dead things, part of the eternal structure of the universe. Forever these are garments to be worn by God. And then I released it and they all moved. And the birds continued in flight, the leaves continued to fall, and the grass began to wave, and the diners dined, and the waitress walked, and everything continued to fulfill its purpose. Then I knew of a different time, of a different age, of a different use of power, and that here we are only an animated world.

So to repeat: “You have no power over me, unless it has been given to you from above.” The word is Anothin, the same word used in the 3rd chapter of John when he said: “Except you be born from above (anothin) you cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” You are still part of the wheel of recurrence, still part of this time which is forever. But God in his infinite mercy having put seven times over you will move beyond and redeems you in the body of Jesus. Because there is only one body, he redeems you in the body of Jesus, there’s only Jesus. Jesus, believe it or not, is God. People won’t believe it. They smile at you and they laugh. But Jesus Christ is the only God . . . but so are you when you enter his body and become incorporated into it. Because there’s only one name, only one Lord, and that one name is Jesus Christ. And all will be redeemed in the body of Jesus, and all will have the same power, the same being. Everyone will be Jesus.

Now, it doesn’t make sense. But what I told you earlier doesn’t make sense. The lady is here, and I must tell her one of my friends who read the letter knows her quite well, and she said, “You know, having seen the name of the one who signed it, I believe every word of it. Were it not that she wrote it, I would question it.” So the questioning mind already was there, but she read the one who ___(??) it sent and trusting her implicitly, she said, “I believe every word in this letter.” But still, they only allowed three or four seconds, right away she’s discussing the possibilities of changing God’s play and changing it radically so that he would still be here as our President. And they can’t see these wheels within wheels within wheels that Ezekiel spoke of.

So I tell you, it is not reincarnation as the world teaches to justify the inequalities of life. You can’t justify them. For man didn’t sin and he’s born blind? He didn’t gouge his eyes out, he was born blind, and his parents didn’t sin? And this only so that the works of God be made manifest? What a horrible God! And that’s the Word of God speaking. He didn’t sin and his parents didn’t sin, it’s only that the works of God be made manifest.

Therefore, revision, which in scripture is called… but the word is tarnished. It was taught… the very first word used in the earliest gospel, which is the Book of Mark, that first word spoken by the embodiment of God is “repentance.” “The time is fulfilled,” he speaks of time, “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand: repent, and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). Well, “repentance” really is the ancient word for the word I use today, “revision.” For repentance is “a radical change of attitude, a radical change of attitude toward life.” And if in the revolutions of this world there is really a revolution, it’s not what took place in Cuba or in Russia or this country or in any part of the world. The real revolution is when man discovers that by a radical change of his own mental attitude toward life he can change the outer aspects of life. When man makes that discovery there is a real revolution in the world. A man discovers that by his own change of mental attitude he changes the outer aspects of his life. For I can’t conceive of any greater revolution in the world, and that’s repentance. But the churches have put barnacles on it and they teach it’s to be remorseful, to be regretful. And to this very day you turn on the radio or turn on the TV, they’re still talking of the event that should not have happened. They all sit in judgment of God. And here is the whole grand wonderful play unfolding.

When one really sees it in the end and when one completely awakes, he, too, will be able to say to all the characters that played the part, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). No matter what they do, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” How could you tonight if you really believed the vision that was written to me ten days ago, how could you today condemn anyone who had a part? Whether his part was to play a lax part in not properly arranging protection, or the one who has gone berserk and bought his gun, and then hate as he did, if he did it; and then the one who came and did all these things to hush the very voice that might be able to throw light on it. All these things in the wonderful drama! And then this fantastic pageantry that we had in our country, where the whole vast world with the aid of this Telstar now saw it, all at the same time, Russia saw it, all of Europe. If there are TV sets in China, they could see it too, because by this new beam the whole vast world could see it. And what drama! A tremendous pageant that she actually saw ten days before this level could receive it.

So, where are you from? Well, “I came out from the Father,” said he, “and I have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and I am going to the Father” (John 16:28). In four short phrases he states his prenatal existence, his incarnation, his breaking of the wheel—he’s going to die, leaving this wheel—and return to the Father. But he said to the others: “Where I go you cannot now come, but you will.” Where I now go you cannot now come, not now. He tells you he is breaking the wheel, and therefore he departs for the last time. But he did incarnate; he took human form. He tells us by the words, the little phrase, “I came from the Father.” That is a confession of a prenatal existence. “I came into the world ___(??); I’m leaving the world; I’m going to the Father.” But, “When you see me you see him who sent me.” And who sent you? The Father. “When you see me you see him who sent me.”

Well, how could that be? But if God individualizes himself and God is Father, when he is individualized that individualized presence must all be Father. That’s why he’s ___(??) these are the ways to the Father. You will never know that you are Father unless God’s only begotten Son appears and calls you Father. Without uncertainty in your soul, David calls you Father. No uncertainty when you look into his eyes and he into your eyes and he calls you Father. And so, God is Father. When he begets you as himself, you can’t be less than God; and therefore you’ll be father of the same child, not another child.

And so, this is the way by which this invidious bar is broken… this envious bar. For someone who has wealth, they may envy someone who has more. The one who is poor envies the one who has some. The one who is known is not envious of the unknown but they’re envious of the known. And all this enmity, this strange peculiar enmity in the world that is part of God’s play, these unequal discriminations in the world. And the world thinks it’s going to change it in some strange way. You will change it only in one way: if you know the art of revision. But you will change it only to the extent when you reach that point in time, which is forever, you do not encounter what to you was unpleasant when you encounter that moment in time in the completed circle.

Now let us go into the Silence.

Q: (inaudible]

A: ___(??) someone two months ago tried to get in touch with the President to persuade him not to go. But, first of all, no one could have persuaded the President not to go. He would not have listened for one second. Today, he is now woven closely in the tapestry of martyrs because he died in office a violent death. Already they are building up the idea of a Lincoln concept. And so, given the choice of living another few years with a painful back or going this way without pain, for he didn’t know it; and then to go down in history believing undoubtedly as he does in the linear concept of time, he would have chosen exactly what happened to him. But, may I tell you, that was only the part. God played the part. God through this is individualizing himself. But don’t get off now to a man called John Fitzgerald Kennedy or one who called himself Oswald. It is the all-together pre___(??) of the whole vast fragmented state that produces the individualized God. This is the re-worn, as it has been worn by many people, many actors, but the actors all are God. It’s a great mystery. And when I leave the stage, the costume worn by me, called Neville, is not going to leave the stage. It’s just dusted off and hung up for the next occupant, and the occupant will always be God.

You could not have changed his values. First of all, he prided himself in being a very intelligent gentleman, and he was very learned, and he would have looked upon Dixon’s suggestion as superstitious. That would have annoyed him to think that anyone could have persuaded him to cancel a political visit, thinking in terms of next year, by some superstitious concept. He would have thought the Republicans have pulled that on me. He would have found it in the one who wrote the letter, a nice Republican, because if she succeeds in persuading me not to go, well, then I have missed an opportunity to challenge the state of Texas. He would have justified it, just as the lady justified it with the oncoming lights and the setting sun and the absence of the news on the radio. Reason steps in and reason is the lying son who refused to hear the instruction of the Lord, who said to the seer—for she was a seer, she saw it—who said to the seers “see not,” and to the prophets “prophesy not to us what is right, speak to us smooth things.” Speak to us and tell us of the prophecies of illusion.

So ___(??), he doesn’t want to hear the unlovely things. Everyone in high office surrounds himself invariably with yes-men. So they will find no seers among those who surround many a prominent person. If you said anything that displeased Hitler, you had your head removed. If you told the truth, that they were going to lose the war, and that millions would have suffered as a result of his attempt to conquer the world, and that he himself would have the ignoble end, he’d have you removed to death, because he didn’t want anyone to speak to him of anything other than smooth things. It is said of Stalin.

But they fulfill scripture. Scripture is the eternal drama and man is trying to rewrite it. He’s always trying to rewrite it. They’ll say, “He doesn’t really mean this” and you ask, “Who didn’t mean it?” “Well, the one who wrote it.” “Don’t you believe God wrote it? Don’t you believe that God dictated it to the prophets, men organized by divine providence for that communion?” They will seriously confess, “Well, maybe.” “Well then, if God dictated it, you’re going to change his Word? Aren’t you warned not to tamper with the Word of God?” But they’re always tampering with it. I read from a new Bible today, and they tried their best to give meaning to that which I quoted tonight, and it’s so far removed. It’s the Modern English Bible, only the New Testament is out so far. And what they did to the wonderful 19th of John in trying to give meaning, because he can’t possibly mean what the Word says he said. But he said exactly that.

To the first question he does not answer: Where are you from? And Jesus gave no answer; he would not speak to him. “Do you not know I have the power to set you free and the power to crucify you?” “You would have no power over me had it not been given to you from above.” Well, that is stupid to Pilate who represents Caesar. Caesar is the power of the world in today’s business and he represents Caesar. And, You dare to say to me, you whose background, whose origin is well known to the world ___(??)? He had a large family, four brothers are named and sisters; and he comes from a simple little family. And you dare to say to me, Caesar’s right arm, that I have no power over you except that it be given me from above? Is there something above Caesar? And he’s saying “from above” meaning “Anothin”—from God. Therefore, he, meaning God, therefore God determined who delivered me into your hands. He has the greater sin, if it’s sin.

Good night.