Wonder-Working Power of Attachment

Tonight’s subject is the “Wonder-Working Power.” I hope I can tell it tonight so simply that no one leaving this room can say I didn’t quite understand it; that within the immediate present you can put it into effect and prove the truth of what I am talking about from this platform.

This wonder-working power is a showing in four different levels of vision. Blake made the statement:

Now I a fourfold vision see,

And a fourfold vision is given to me;

’Tis fourfold in my supreme delight

And threefold in soft Beulah’s night

And twofold always. May God us keep

From single vision and Newton’s sleep!

Now here is the perfect description of single vision. Maybe you are familiar with this one little poem, just one verse:

A primrose by a river’s brim,

A yellow primrose was to him

And it was nothing more…

He looks at a tree, it’s a tree—that’s all there is. He looks at a man, it’s a man; he looks at a rock, it’s a rock, and it’s nothing more. So, “A primrose by a river’s brim, a yellow primrose was to him, and it was nothing more.” That’s single vision, and the whole vast world sees it in that light.

But now, we want to bring everyone here into a double vision. We are all familiar with a fireplace. So we look at a fireplace and say something is burning ___(??). And then one day, I see it was lit by something similar to itself. A spark lit it and then it was fed and it blazed up, warming me, radiating this wonderful heat; and then it cooled, and we had the embers and then the ash. Looking at it you and I would say, well, you know, it reminds me of my life. That’s my life; my life is like a fire. It comes in, lit in some strange way, and then it’s fed and fed and fed, and it blazes up, and then becomes an ember, and then an ash. And so I have a simile. Then I say, “My life is a fire.” Now I have a metaphor. One day I leave out the little “is,” and I say, “Life and fire are synonyms.” I can’t see one without seeing the other, without imagining the other. Then I have an image; I have a symbol. And I do it with everything in the world, and I have many images. When everything in the world is to me but a symbol, then I have double vision.

Double the vision, my eye can see now that nothing appears as it appears to the world; everything is different. A man who appears to be a man, so when I talk with him, and I get his moods, and while he takes advantage of other men—he’s in business, he doesn’t pay good wages to anyone who serves him—then I see that man as I would see any blood-sucking, blood-drinking insect, just a parasite. He may be the head of society, he may be the most powerful person in the world, a dictator, but I see him using men for his own personal gain. And you see him now spiritually. And one sight only sees the garment, and his name the little tag it appears, and they bow before him. But you now with double vision and you see him and you see him as a parasite, just like a flea… a flea that lives on the body of the dog or the animal or anything in this world. He’s only a flea. You see him as a flea, although he may have billions of dollars; he may control the armies of the world, but he’s only a flea. And that’s how God sees him. When you begin your sight that way, all of a sudden, you see differently and he doesn’t offend you; you aren’t moved by him. You see him just as he really is in the eyes of God. That’s the beginning of double vision.

Now comes the third vision. The third vision, when these images interplay and they marry and beget other images; that’s the threefold vision. Now, here is what I want to talk about this night, the threefold vision. Here is a little child; the child is three. This is a true story. The grandmother is present here tonight. This story was told me before I took the platform. She’s now five and a half—but the mother knows this, as she’s been coming here over the years—so the child’s now five and a half. When she was three, the father and mother had no money. He was working on a job at a small salary, and they dreamed of owning their own home, a wonderful home, but they had no money and they were in debt. So the little child, while in bed, was told by the grandmother and the mother, “Close your eyes and see this lovely home, a huge big fireplace right up to the ceiling, glass all around, two bedrooms for you, Pammie” (her name is Pamela), and then Julie, her sister, who was then only a year old. “So you see it clearly now. Go into the bedroom. Keep your eyes closed. If you open your eye, it’s going to deny what I’m telling you. So keep your eyes closed, go into the bedroom, and go into the other bedroom—one is yours and one is Julie’s—and a huge fireplace up to the ceiling.”

In a little while, this firm was absorbed by a larger firm, and all the men were given aptitude tests. His came out with this kind of a test: you are a salesman. At first, he refused to accept the thought he could sell. He was going to quit. They said, “You may quit, but you can’t work for us unless you become a salesman. That is what we see in this test. You must become a salesman.” In the immediate present, he was making a fortune, and they bought the home—glass all over, two bedrooms leading off of this enormous fireplace, up to the ceiling.

Now he’s making money. He was never given to spending money and was never considered a generous father or husband, possibly afraid of the future. When it came to Christmas, the mother wondered, “How am I going to get five dollars out of him to buy toys for my children?” So remembering what they did prior to getting this home, she said, “Pammie, do you remember what we did with the house?” Yes, she remembered the whole thing. “Now close your eyes and there’s a huge, big playpen in the backyard filled with toys. And you go into the backyard and play. Remain here physically, but now you go right into the backyard. Don’t open your eyes because it will then be single vision. Go into the backyard, and all these images are playing now.”

Just before Christmas, she called her mother, who is here this night, and said, “I think he’s gone mad. You know what he’s contemplating? He’s contemplating buying a hundred-dollar playpen for Pammie and Julie, and undoubtedly, he’ll fill it with toys.” But she said, “I was there Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day when we opened the toys. This enormous playpen—he paid a hundred dollars for it—and it was filled with toys.” But said the grandmother to her daughter, “Have you forgotten what you did with Pammie only a week or two weeks ago?” And then she remembered. How could she now criticize the extravagance of her husband, who was always so mean, when she herself had put the child into the state of seeing this wonderful playpen filled with toys? Now that is threefold vision.

You take a vision. Everything is a symbol. Take me, I’m a symbol, you’re a symbol, and everything’s a symbol. And you interplay them to form a certain pattern, which will then give birth to another image. So I bring you before my mind’s eye in a certain manner. I bring another party into the same picture. Then I add to these two a conversation between the two of them, which conversation would imply that you know I am what I want to be. I bring you, I bring another, and I eavesdrop and I listen. I hear them discuss, and they are discussing my good fortune. I listen until I actually hear what I would hear were it true. Everyone is discussing exactly what I want to hear, for if I heard it, it would imply the fulfillment of my dream. That is taking now symbols, taking images, and interplaying them. Interplaying them so that I marry them; and as they marry, they beget another image—the images that are bringing me forward in the image that I want to see myself express in this world. That’s threefold vision.

Now, fourfold vision. I trust you have it. If you haven’t had it, I can’t describe the joy of fourfold vision. If I could describe it, it is dreaming, yes, or loving or imagining, and these are only three forms of the same thing. But dreaming with such intensity that it obliterates the daylight, just as daylight ordinarily obliterates the dream. You’re sitting in a chair, and you’re loving, you’re imagining, you’re dreaming, and suddenly it is no longer something that is unseen by you. For this little child, she saw it in her mind’s eye, but not as I’m seeing you now and you see the speaker. She saw it, kept the physical eyes closed, and moved into the imagined state and made it real to her. But fourfold vision, something goes out, and suddenly you say to yourself, “I’m dreaming. No I’m not; it’s real. I’m not dreaming, here it is; it’s real, just as real as this.” The curtain goes up on it, and then what began as a dream, just a daydream, but you did it with intensity, and suddenly the curtain goes up, and you step into the world of your dream. You are awake in what formerly began as a dream.

And now, let me tell you my first experience of it. I used the threefold vision unnumbered times to produce results, and talked about it, told all my friends about it, and all these things worked. Threefold vision produces the same results that the little child produced. It never fails. But one night, here in Beverly Hills, I suddenly looked up, my eyes were closed, and I was awake. I knew exactly where I was. I was in my home in Beverly Hills on El Camino, and I knew what I should see were my eyes open. I felt my eyes closed, and yet I am seeing more vividly than I’m seeing you now. I should see the familiar objects on the wall. I should see the familiar things on my bureau, for I was lying on my right side; but instead of seeing these, suddenly I am seeing the interior of a fantastic building. Consciousness followed vision, and I stepped into the state that I am seeing. I came back to my bed; and once more, I am now in a horizontal position. Then again, I stepped into my vision, and I am now vertical. I’m stepping right into what I see. I did it maybe a dozen times, and then I decided to explore. Regardless of consequences I’m going to explore. If it’s the very end of my life in this world, I can’t stop it; I must explore.

And so I stepped into this place with the determination to go on. As I did so, it closed around me. The room that seemed when I was on the bed, it seemed maybe thirty by twenty, it now became ten by seven. I discovered, as I examined it, that it’s simply a dressing room. I left this room into a huge, big suite, an enormous suite of rooms, unoccupied but prepared for occupancy, but not occupied. It was just as solidly real as this room is. I was to myself just as I am now. Everything I touched was solid. My hands could not go through it; it was solid. I came out of this room into a huge hallway, which led to a huge, big public hallway. When I got there, I saw two ladies coming down the hallway. I knew how the whole thing started, and so I said to them, “Ladies, this is a dream.” Well, they were just as startled as you would be if you met me, a total stranger, say, at a hotel, the Ambassador. You never saw me before, and suddenly you saw a man coming into this place who suddenly talks to you. You don’t know him, and he tells you, “Ladies, this is a dream.” Wouldn’t you be startled? You would say, “Well, the man is insane. Let us get out of this place as fast as we can.” That’s exactly what they tried to do. They got as far away from me as they could, right next to the wall. But I insisted it’s a dream because I remembered exactly what I did. But now I’m fully awake in the dream. My eyes are wide open, and I’m awake in my dream.

As they passed by, walking rapidly, I saw this ornate thing over my head, and I remembered a little visit a few months before in a friend’s home near the hills of Hollywood, where he had a similar thing hanging from his wall. I remarked then, “How does such a thing remain up?” He said, “If you look closely, you will see an almost invisible thread supporting it from the ceiling,” which I did. It was a beautiful cluster of leaves made of very thin copper. Well, this resembled that and reminded me of that. Again, because I saw this in my now waking dream, I said, “Now I know it’s a dream because this is only a memory image of what I saw in my friend’s home in the hills of Hollywood, there six months ago, so it must be a dream. Even though they’re so real, and this is so real and I am so real, everything is so real, it is a dream.” And so as I did this, I held one of the leaves, and I said to myself, “C’mon, Neville, you know it’s a dream. Wake up! Wake!” and I came to, standing in that place more awake than I am here now.

Now, being a father, then my little girl was in high school. She had to go through high school; her desire was to go through college, and I said to myself, “Here, Vicki is unschooled, and she must be educated. If I make my exit now, I leave a wife unprepared for this problem and so I can’t leave here now. I have unfinished business in that world—for I am completely shut out in an entirely different world.” So while standing there, I closed my eyelids; and just as if I closed them here now, I wouldn’t see you, so I didn’t see the hallway. I opened my eyelids, and here is the hallway. I did it maybe a dozen times. I am completely locked out in this world. I said to myself, “They’ll find the body tomorrow morning in Beverly Hills, and because of insurance policies they’ll have to cut it up and say, well, he died of this, that or the other.” But I still didn’t want to terminate it in this way; I wanted to get back. And this is what I did.

Standing there, completely shut out in this other world, I simply imagined with the same intensity that brought me into that world, I imagined a pillow under my head. I stood there just simply feeling a pillow, that’s all. Suddenly, while standing there, I could feel a pillow. And then to my great surprise, I am not vertical; I am horizontal, but I could feel myself on a pillow. But then I was cataleptic, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t open my eyes. I went to the most enormous effort to open my eyes, and I couldn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t move a hand; I couldn’t move a finger; I’m completely cataleptic. Then, maybe thirty, forty seconds later, I could navigate the little finger. We had a double bed, and so my wife slept on the other side. After a little while, I could move from the elbow and I pushed it over and I could feel that nice warm body of my wife and I knew I’m back. A little while later, I could move the other hand. And then with a tremendous effort, I opened my physical eyelids and saw the familiar objects on the wall.

So I tell you, when Blake said—he didn’t claim it was his always—

Now I a fourfold vision see,

And a fourfold vision is given to me;

’Tis fourfold in my supreme delight

And threefold in soft Beulah’s night

And twofold Always. May God us keep

From Single vision and Newton’s sleep!

So when you only see a man, when you look at a man, and he is no more than just a man, he’s not a loving being or a hating being or a bloodsucking insect, he’s none of these things, just a man, that’s single vision. If a fire is a fire, and it means nothing else, if a tree is a tree, nothing else, but not a thing becomes a symbol or image to you, then it’s single vision. And may I tell you: the difference between fourfold vision and single vision is the difference between normal eyesight and blindness.

One who was born blind—I don’t mean going blind, with memories of what you once observed while you had sight—I mean to be born blind, where no one in this world could convey to you what it means to look at red. If you’re born blind and you never had the experience of the color red, there’s no word, not a thing in this world that man could use to convey to you the sensation of red or blue or any other color. A form, yes. You can bring your hands and you can touch a form. And you can say this is a symbol of that term, and then this is something different and this is something different and a bed and a chair and this and a cross, and all the materials. But you haven’t seen color. There is no word known by man that could convey to you the experience of color. Well, the difference between fourfold vision and single vision is the difference between normal eyesight and blindness from birth.

So when one gets into it, I can’t tell you the thrill. It’s supreme delight. And you enter it, as I say, yes, dreaming or loving or imagining—three forms of the same thing—but with such intensity that suddenly you are awake in the state you contemplate. You’re contemplating it, and suddenly you are awake in it and it takes on all the objective qualities that this room has now. That’s fourfold vision. But for practical purposes in this world, we discuss and try to encourage you to practice threefold vision. And threefold vision, like this little child; here is a child, three years old, and “Now see the fireplace.” So she sees it. “Don’t open your eyes, Pammie, because if you open your eyes you aren’t going to see it, and right away you’re going to come right down to onefold vision. So a fireplace, do you see it? See the wall?” “Oh, yes.” “And lots of glass all around?” “Yes.” “And then over here, there’s a room, it’s your bedroom; and over there, there’s another bedroom and that is Julie’s bedroom.” You get it?

And then out of the nowhere what seems like a disaster, for his firm was being absorbed, and all the jobs are uncertain. So they’re all given an aptitude test, including the father of this child. He comes out on the top but not what he had been doing in the other job. He now must change jobs and become a salesman, which he doesn’t want to do. But the aptitude test revealed he has all the qualifications for salesmanship, which he never thought of before. Now he becomes a salesman, and he’s making a fortune. But now he becomes uneasy. He wants lovely things in this world but very penurious. However, they buy the home, the home of the child’s dream, Pammie’s dream.

Then comes Christmas. How to get out of him five dollars to buy presents for my children? He, on the other hand, comes home with a hundred-odd dollars worth of presents. And she, forgetting what she did, thought he’s gone insane. So when she called her mother and said, “He’s gone mad. He is contemplating buying a hundred-dollar playpen,” and she said to her daughter, “Have you forgotten what you did with Pammie? Didn’t you put Pammie into that lovely place where she actually played in the backyard with the playpen?” “Oh, yes. I completely forgot it!” Well, who did it? It’s not his generosity; it’s Pammie who did it. Pammie stirred him to go looking for the hundred-dollar pen. Because Pammie had played in it, it had to be there. Now she takes all these images and she interplays them and marries them, and it produces a result. And she is the result.

So I tell you, nothing is impossible to this wonder-working power. Christ is called in the Bible “the power and the wisdom of God.” You read it in the first chapter of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the twenty-fourth verse, “Christ the power and the wisdom of God.” For God is all Imagination, and his power is imagining—that’s Christ. So Paul could say having once thought of Christ as a man, he then said, “From now on I regard no one from the human point of view; even though I once regarded Christ from a human point of view, I regard him thus no longer” (2 Corinthians 5:16). He now sees who Christ is. Christ is the power and the wisdom of God; and the power and wisdom of God is imagining, as God is all Imagination. And God became man that man may become God. So Blake said, “Man is all Imagination, and God is man and exists in us and we in him. The eternal body of man is the Imagination, and that is God himself.”

Now you may not with your concepts of Christ and concepts of God accept it. But I suggest if there is evidence for a thing, what you think about it or even wish about it is nothing to the point. So this little girl and her mother remembered what she did and brings about this, and you may not relate her imaginal act to the fact and you may say it would have happened anyway. That’s your right to say that. But if she repeats it, as she did, and you still insist in saying, “Well, it would have happened anyway.” Then the third time she does it, all in the interval of two years, and the parents realize exactly what they did.

Now, we come to the crux of the story of the child. As happens in the lives of all people—especially in California, why I do not know—but in California there are so many divorces. Anyone who is married for ten years is the senior citizen. It’s a more fantastic thing. If you remain united for more than five, that’s really an accomplishment. Well, in spite of their two little girls, sweet children, they grew apart. He is Catholic, and he didn’t want a divorce. He’d rather live in hell than have a divorce. But nevertheless, they got a divorce. The divorce was granted and finalized—using the grandmother’s story and her very words, using the word finalized—it was finalized two weeks ago. And she began, so she said to me, to lose faith because she called me on this case when it began to develop a couple of months ago, say, three months ago. And she said, “I don’t want them to be divorced. I’m quite sure they can reconcile the whole thing and become a loving, wonderful family as they were and must be.” So I agreed with her, certainly they could be.

Well, in spite of that agreement here came a divorce, and the papers signed, the whole thing finalized. So the grandmother said to the little girl, “You want mother back, don’t you?” and she began to cry. She said, “All right, you know what you did with the house and the fireplace and the grass and the two bedrooms?” “Yes.” “You remember what you did with the playpen and all the toys?” “Yes.” “Well, now, tonight, right now, you close your eyes, and mother is coming through the door. You hear the door open. She is coming in, in her nightgown—not in any suit, not in a dress where she’s leaving this house tonight—she is coming here in her nightgown. She’s sleeping here. So the door is opening, and it’s mother. She’s coming over, and she’s kissing you. Feel the kiss; it’s mother, and she’s in her nightgown.” She did it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and mother returned to that house on Friday. And mother is now back in the household, in spite of a divorce decree that has been finalized. Maybe in the eyes of the priest they are living in sin, but there they are, parents of the two little girls, and mother came back, just as the grandmother told her granddaughter that it would happen. And so, when she met the grandmother, she said to the grandmother, “You know, Grandma, you’re mature, you’re old, but with me Imagination works like thunder!”

For we are told in the Bible to never send a child away, for the child will lead us—in Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them” (11:6). A little child brings back the grandmother’s faith, for she called me, the teacher of this principle, and I agreed with her over the phone, yes, reconciliation is perfect. So I heard her say yes, not devising the means toward the end, simply the end. And then came what seems to be final and absolute, a signed decree of divorce. You can’t go beyond that. Who says you can’t go beyond that? Everything is possible to God. With God, nothing is impossible, if you know who he is. God is your own wonderful human Imagination, and God in action is Christ. Imagination in action is imagining.

So what are you imagining, on a threefold vision or a single vision? A single vision is right here, and these are the facts of life, and I can do not a thing about it. So I perpetuate my world based upon the single vision. Then comes that moment in time, I get a double vision, where things are not what they seem to be. They become similes. They become at first just a simile. I relate myself to the burning fire, knowing that as I began at a certain moment in time, it will come to an end, just like the fire. So I am a simile. Then I say, “Life is a fire,” a metaphor. Then I rub out the little “is,” and I say life and fire ___(??) are synonyms. And then I see it as a symbol. I can’t feel one without thinking of the other. Then I have images. I take it with everything in my world then. And so I think of people, and there are certain—well, I saw them in my mind’s eye spiritually, and they are all images. Then I begin to blend them, and I interplay the images. As I interplay them, they marry, and as they marry they beget other images.

And then I tested it. I would like to be and I named it. I would like to be, say, elsewhere. Well, elsewhere is an image. And so I assume that I am elsewhere. Were I there, I would see people that I couldn’t see from this angle. And so were I there, I would have to see them, for they would be there; then I began to see them in my mind’s eye. Seeing them would imply that I am there. And so I began to talk with them, just as though I were there. And then I found that things rapidly change in my world to compel the journey, and I move across a series of events, some bridge of incident, that led me up to the fulfillment of that journey, and there I am. But then I remembered what I did. I took images, just simple images, and so interplayed and intermarried them that they produced another image; and the image was the fulfillment of my desire for myself, and I made the journey.

So this is the threefold. He calls it “soft Beulah’s night,” the thing nearest to heaven in Blake’s terminology. First of all, he has eternity; he calls it Eden, and he likens it to the sun. The sun is the symbol. Then he had next to that “soft Beulah’s night,” and the symbol of that was the moon, for the moon reflects the light of the sun, and this reflects the activity of heaven. Then he has the limit of it all—he had five worlds—the limit of it all he calls “Ulro,” this world, for it was opaque; the limit of contraction; and the limit of opacity, where man has single vision.

Now, everyone in this world has single vision. But we are here for a purpose; this is for a divine reason that we are here. You and I didn’t do a thing that was wrong to bring us here. We are here that we may be awakened as God. Just like a chicken dropping an egg and the egg contains the chicken; and by an effort from within, after germination, it comes out. The egg, giving birth to what it contains, is God coming out of this egg, and the egg here is the human skull. God actually comes out, and it’s God. God became man that man may become God. So here, the fall, spoken of in the Bible, is no more than the fall of the egg from the chicken. That’s the full doctrine of the fall; and then the chicken rises from the broken egg, and it’s God. And that’s the end of the doctrine of evolution. So God became man that man may become God. So I tell you, treat it seriously and become as the little child. This night, when you go to bed, put yourself into the state of the wish fulfilled. And then blend all the images that would imply the fulfillment of that state, and live in it just as though it were true. How it will happen, I do not know.

Another lovely story which I must tell you. For last Friday night, my wife came to the door and said, “Is there a gentleman in the room or a lady in the room who left a little dog in a car? Well, he is needed, or she is needed.” So the gentleman jumped right up and went out looking for the dog. He called me late that night, said he hadn’t found the dog. He said, “I love the dog. I know it’s my own negligence; I left the door open because I was so eager to get to the meeting without missing any part of it, that I did not close the window.” It was a little poodle. So he sought all over the neighborhood, and he couldn’t find the dog. He was up very late that night and called me. He said, “What must I do, Neville?” So I told him what I would do were I he, I would go to sleep just as though the dog were in the house. Feel the presence of the dog and think only in terms of the nearness of the dog; it’s right here. And so I am able to tell you tonight—not the details; I don’t have the details as yet—he has the dog.

And so it never fails. You know the meaning of the word prayer? You’re told in the 11th chapter, the 24th verse of the Book of Mark, “Whatever you desire, when you pray believe you received it and you will,” for the word prayer means by definition in the biblical concordance: “Motion toward; accession to; nearness at; at or in the vicinity of.” Now, you have a little dog and it’s lost and now you are living miles and miles away from where it jumped through the window? No. Prayer means “nearness to; motion toward; nearness at; at or in the vicinity of.” If you found him, where would he be tonight, in a kennel? No. He’d be home, wouldn’t he? Well, now that’s praying: he’s here at home, and you feel his presence at home. That’s praying. For if he actually came back, if you found him, you wouldn’t leave him behind you; he’d be at home. Therefore, you would actually bring him into your house. Now sleep as though you can touch him and feel him and smell him and feel his presence. Then go to sleep. Well, tonight I can tell you he is at home, and the owner of this little dog has learned a lesson, not to leave the window open.

So here, I invite you to join me in threefold vision. May I tell you, it will not fail you. No power in this world can stop it from working. For there’s only God; there’s nothing but God. God is reconciling the world to himself through Christ, and Christ is your own wonderful human imagining—that’s Christ. Christ is the power and the wisdom of God. You don’t need to be any wiser than you are. What would it be like were it true? And then you go to bed in the assumption that it is true and sleep in that assumption.

Now, Friday night, a lady—I do not see her here tonight, but maybe she’s here—but she gave me a letter Friday night. Pardon me, I now see her. But on Friday night, she gave me this perfectly wonderful letter, a true story I told because she gave me permission to tell it. I told it last Sunday morning without using her name, without using the firm’s name. So I didn’t tell the firm’s name or her name, but she’s here tonight. Three weeks ago, she and I were in the back room here where I speak. She wanted to see me before my meeting to discuss her problem. Her problem was the filling of a position in a fabulous company with resources in excess of a half billion dollars. No lady had ever filled that position before. It was never considered that any woman could fill that position. There were many men, eligible, with ability to fill that job, but she wanted it. I simply said to her, “Were I you, I would just simply occupy it, just as though it were true.” So she occupied that job, and three weeks later, she was appointed to that job. Now she is loan counselor in a corporation whose resources exceed a half billion dollars—the first woman ever appointed to such an office. She is here tonight. I’m not going to ask her to identify herself. But someday, maybe, in this wonderful world of ours, you will be in need of her services. So she will tell you what I told her, and yet she can be of service to those who need her services.

So here, join with me in putting into practice this threefold vision. It won’t fail you. But may I tell you, you are the operant power. Knowing it is one thing and doing it is another. You either do it, or you don’t do it. If you do it, it will not fail. If you say you know it and that you are a good person therefore, God, because you are good, is going to take care of you; I have news for you! So let us go into the Silence and put into practice this perfectly wonderful principle.

Q: (inaudible)

A: My dear, the difference between the fourfold vision and single vision is the simple difference between normal eyesight and blindness from birth. Normal eyesight, if it’s a good 20/20 vision, sees objects just as they are. Colors are seen with the normal eyesight, except people who are color blind. I mean a normal eyesight, not a color-blind person, one who sees objects just as they are presented. Now, a child born blind, who has no organ of sight, could get by in this world because they do, but you could never convey to them the experience of color. They could feel objects.

Right now, we’re having a few chairs re-caned. We got them at Sloans in New York City, and so we took them over here to Sloans; that would be ___(??) Sloans, and they said, no, we can’t do the job. We’ll take the job because you bought them from us in New York City, but we give them out to the blind. And the blind we’re speaking of here are the best workers on this job, like re-caning the chair. Well, they haven’t yet been sent back, but they tell us that there’s no one better than the blind, for they can feel. And so undoubtedly, someone brings the regular cane to them, just what to do with it. But they can feel, and they’re experts at putting it back in order, so that they have it that no one comes near the blind in re-caning chairs. So they have our two chairs for re-caning.

Q: (inaudible)

A: My dear, I’m just saying any person who dreams sees color, but you couldn’t convey to them what you mean by color. A blind man who goes blind after he saw color, it would be easy for him to see color. But if you are born in this world wrapped in this little garment of skin without the organs of sight from birth, I’m not denying that you would still, in the depth of your soul, see color, but you would not relate it to anything the man is talking about concerning color. So the difference between fourfold vision and single vision is just as vast as the difference between normal sight where all things are seen and observed and one incapable of observing anything. So when one awakes in a dream and the dream is so real, until one has that experience it’s difficult to convey the thrill that is one’s. So he said, “Fourfold vision is my supreme delight.” You contemplate an image and suddenly you are in the image and the image takes on objective qualities and everything in it becomes as solidly real as this, as you are, everything. You are in an entirely different world. The day will come that you, and I will be in a world completely subject to our imaginative power. A world only of images that we will enter at will, and it will be all objectively real to us.

Q: Would you please explain a little bit more about the fourfold vision. You’re explaining your being in this building and trying to get out and back because you had your little girl to put through school. Well, would that be considered what we call death that you were in the state of?

A: Did you hear the question? To go back to my experience of entering into an image and the image closing around me and becoming a ___(??) of this whole fabulous world. Had I not succeeded in returning, the world would tell them the garment that I now wear, identifying me with the garment that I wear, they would have said, “Neville has died.” I would not have died, but the garment would have been left behind, and they would have buried it, after examining it for reasons why I should have died. It died but I didn’t, for I am the occupant of the garment, as you are the occupant of that garment. You never die, not in eternity, but you wear out garments. And this garment would have been, by my adventurous nature, have been declared dead. But I do not die. But I had unfinished business here. I had a wife that I could not in my own mind’s eye ensure by Caesar’s law. I had not seen that my little girl was properly educated, and she had the talent and the desire for higher education. So I had not completed that or left behind me the means for its completion.

So my desire then allowed me to experiment, and I did it with touching. I discovered the sense of touch is so important. And so by feeling the sensation of a pillow, I came back. For there’s no man that moves that would have led me back here. There was no road from that world to this world. And touch brought me back. So I emphasize the sense of feeling, the sense of touch. If I could tell any person who was desirous of being happily married, and it’s a lady I’m addressing, would you wear a ring? Yes? Well, then, feel the ring. Don’t feel a huge, big nugget there. That doesn’t mean that you’re married. That precedes marriage, and it’s no proof that you are married. But a simple gold wedding band there would imply to the rest of the world that you’re married. And then put the mood with that you’re happily married, that you’re proud of the one whose name you bear. Although you do not know the name, just feel how proud you are of it and thrilled and clean and wholesome in this relationship. And touch it; go to bed feeling the ring, the one thing that would imply the fulfillment of the state known. So touch to me is so very important because I’ve proved it.

Q: Neville, you equated the activity of dreaming and loving and imagining, could you elaborate on that just a little?

A: Well, first of all, one cannot dream… in tonight’s dream, I take the object of today into the day and rearrange the living pattern based upon my fears and my hopes. So my hope and my fear of this day will produce my dream of tonight. But I use the images familiar to me, and there I weave them into this living, living structure. Well, note the very word imagining implies using energy; and so to be loving, there must be an object. You can’t just love unless there’s an object of one’s love. And so that’s an image. And so I use the word dreaming; dreaming is simply imagining. Imagining is dreaming, and then dreaming is simply imagining. So I use the three terms, and I say they are only three forms of the same thing.

But now when I sit down to imagine a state by becoming ___(??) but really absorbed in what I am imagining, I tend to step into the state imagined. If I should succeed in making my consciousness follow my vision and step into it, it closes upon me. Then the whole world is just as real as this, as solidly real as this. And I’m speaking from experience, I am not theorizing.

Q: (inaudible)

A: ___(??) fourfold vision, then threefold vision, like the little child. Roosevelt went into office when we were in the deep of Depression and he couldn’t stand on his own feet. We couldn’t stand on our feet, and we wanted support from our government, so we voted into office one who couldn’t stand on his own feet and had to be lifted up. Every time he stood, he had to be supported by someone other than himself. So he gave us the WPA, the CCC, and the ___, and all these supports outside. But this is a symbol. I am not now criticizing anyone that you and I vote into office. That’s the highest office in the world, in the world of Caesar. I can’t conceive of any political office higher than our office as president in this country. There’s nothing compared to that when it comes to a political office. But don’t let me because of the greatness of the position become blind to the symbol, the symbols in this world. Every man is a symbol. Every great man’s life is an allegory. Every great man’s life is an allegory.

And so when we brought him into office and repeated it for four times, we were in need of external support; we didn’t stand on our own feet. We had a deep Depression. Until the war broke in 1941, we still had a fabulous unemployment. Not a thing was done to relieve that, in spite of all the years and all the millions that they used, the entire alphabet, trying to get things moving. Now comes this present chap and, undoubtedly, he’s been doing—personally you would love him, no question about it; he’s a brilliant, brilliant fella, a lovable fella, a wealthy fella—but what got me, knowing the symbols of the world, the minute he gets to office, he gets into a rocking chair.

Well, no more of that. Good night.