Your Creative Power

Tonight’s subject is “Your Creative Power.”I say that imagining has been, it is, and it always will be the prime source of everything that comes into our world; that the roots of our being are in Divine Imagining, and Divine Imagining unfolds itself creatively in us. So every so-called natural effect in this world has an imaginal cause and not a natural. A natural cause only seems; it is a delusion of our fading memory. Our memory is so very, very short we can’t connect the imaginal act to the effect that we observe and we deny parenthood. We can’t recognize our own harvest. We deny that we ever at any moment planted the thing that we are reaping in this world. But my claim is every natural effect in this world has an imaginal cause and not a natural.

Now I will tell you a simple story this night to show you how true this thing is. Cost you nothing. You can try it tonight, and may you have a memory long enough to connect it between the imaginal act and the effect when it takes place. It is very, very simple and I take it from the greatest book in the world, the Bible. The Bible is on levels; we have three definite levels. The first level is the story, simple story; and then below that is its psychological meaning; and then below that, in depth, is the same story; and it’s literally true in depth. We’ll forget the depth tonight and just take it in its psychological level. I’ll tell you a simple story that you will read in the 27th chapter of the Book of Genesis—Genesis is the seed-plot of the entire Bible. It’s a simple story, but when you read it you wonder what is it all about it seems so stupid. But I’ll tell it if you are not familiar with it. Here is a man and he’s blind, his name is Isaac. Isaac has two sons. The first son is Esau and he’s covered in hair all over; the second son is Jacob and he’s smooth skinned all over. Isaac senses the moment in time when he must depart from this world…he’s about to die. Tradition has it that the father must give a blessing to his child. Tradition also has it that you give it to the oldest in the family, the boy, the oldest. Yet strangely enough, all through scripture there’s a peculiar reversal of order where the first is second and the second is first. In a peculiar manner it all goes that way; that the first doesn’t get it although he should; it’s always the second. But in this case the first is covered in hair and his name is Esau. And the father requests venison, nicely prepared, and after he has feasted upon the venison he’ll pronounce the blessing upon his son…and then he will die.

The mother, Rebecca, overhears the father’s request. She loves Jacob and so she tells Jacob of the father’s request. She said, I will kill a kid, and I will skin the kid, and I will clothe you that you may have the feeling of your brother. You go and deceive your father and you tell him that you are Esau and receive the blessing. But he said, Suppose he discovers me, that I am not really Esau, I am Jacob? Then says she, The curse be upon me, but you do it. I will kill the kid, skin the kid, and clothe you in the skins of the kid so when he feels you he will feel your hand and it will be just like your brother Esau.

Well, the story is, he clothes himself in the skin of a kid, comes to his father and speaks to the father. The father said, Who are you? He said, I am your son Esau. He said, Come close, my son, come near that I may feel you. “Come near that I may feel you, that you really are my son Esau.” Then said the father to Esau, “Come near, my son, and kiss me.” So he comes up; the father feels him. He said, You feel like Esau. You sound like Jacob but you feel like Esau, now kiss me. He kisses him and he could smell him. He said, You have the odor of my son Esau and the feel of my son Esau. Now, the word translated kiss is “to set on fire, to burn, to touch.” You set it on fire…and you attain it. So, “kiss me,” that means to touch, because to kiss we must touch. Then, “Come close that I may feel you”—feel is to touch—and he pronounces the blessing. Now, as he pronounces the blessing, he had no sooner gone out from his father’s presence when Esau comes in with the venison well prepared and tells the father, I’ve brought you the venison. But, he said, I’ve just given the blessing to one I thought to be you. And he said, O, my brother Jacob, he is well named— for the word Jacob means “the supplanter, the one who takes the place of.” He said, He took my birthright and now he has taken my blessing. The father said, I cannot take it back. I gave him the blessing and the blessing I cannot take back. It’s his forever, I cannot take it back.

When you read this story you wonder what is it all about? Here’s a deceiving son, a son that deceives the father who is blind, who cannot see, into the belief that he is the one that should receive the blessing. Well, it must have a deeper meaning than that. You can’t put that in scripture and tell me that would guide me. So, contemplating this back in 1939, I began to dwell upon it and something from the depths of my soul came in response to my inquiry, what does it mean? Then it came as though someone is speaking to me: that the world that I see by reason of my senses that is Esau. But most of the time I don’t like my first son, the world I see; and the subjective state I would like to put in its place, that is Jacob.

Well, how can I put Jacob in its place? To put Jacob in its place I must clothe it with the tones of reality. Can I become blind to the obvious? Can I close my mind to reason, to the facts of life, to everything that my senses dictate? And while I’m in that state actually take my subjective state, which is now Jacob, and clothe it with the tones of reality, which will be Esau? And bring it so close, bring it so near that it takes on the tones of reality, so I can become a flame…I can make it kiss me? To kiss is not just an actual kiss but to become set afire, to touch it and make the whole thing seem real. When it seems real to me, when I open my eyes upon the obvious and the obvious returns with its gift of reality, I can say but I just gave it to another—I gave it to one that seemed to be as real as you are, and I can’t take it back.

So this came to me and I said, alright, I’ll try it. I tried it and it worked. I tried it and tried it and it worked. It always works. So in my audience in New York City…I spoke at a little old church called the Baptist Church on 48th Street, right off Time Square, and there we held forth three times a week, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday nights. So I told them what I had done, I told them the story just as I’ve told you, and told them how to do it, just as you just heard. Well, a lady in my audience thought, well, now I’ll try it. She goes to Stern’s department store on 42nd Street and 6th. This is in the day when, well, in 1939 you may not remember it, many of you may not remember it but we had a tremendous depression. Our depression that started in twenty-nine did not come to an end until the war broke in forty-one for us. It was really a depression, so you could buy things at ridiculous prices. She went into the store, went to the millinery department and looked over the hats. Took off her hat and then took a hat that she loved. She thought it was a lovely hat. She put the hat on her head, looked into the mirror and liked what she saw. Walked around the store looking at different angles with this hat on her head, and the more she saw it the more she liked it. She came back and her hat is gone. She called the sales lady over and said, I left my hat here, where is my hat? She described the hat. This sales lady said, “You know, I just sold it. All these hats are one price, so it need not be priced; they’re all the same price and I just sold it. I’ll call the section manager.” So she called the section manager and she described exactly what had happened. The section manager said, “I’m awfully sorry. Any hat in the department you take it with our compliments. We do not wish any unfavorable publicity. So the hat was sold; we have undoubtedly the money for it; and so you take any hat, and it’s the compliment of Stern’s department store.” She walked out with that hat. But she told me herself, as she walked around the place she actually walked downstairs to the first floor, walked out onto 6th Avenue, with the hat on her head. That’s what she was doing while she’s walking around—she’s walking out of the store with the hat on her head. In a matter of moments…it was so short an interval she could relate it. If it happened, maybe, a few days later she wouldn’t relate it. So she told me the story and gave permission to tell it to those who came to the meeting, and so I did.

Four weeks later, Broadway and 72nd Street, I’m walking up the street and I run into a lady whose name is Ann. Her profession is possibly the oldest profession in the world, and she lived at the Ansonia Hotel. She stopped me at Broadway and 72nd, and she said, “Neville, I heard the story that you told about the hat four weeks ago. Now, I want to ask you something. I took it quite seriously and walking up Broadway, beyond 74th Street, I saw this wonderful display of hats. Here was a hat for $17.50 and I put it on my head. I loved it. I walked up the street, but when I walked back I would not look into the window to be disillusioned. I went home to my hotel, the Ansonia, wouldn’t look into the mirror. I took off the hat and put it on the very top ledge, and went sound asleep in the belief that my lovely new hat is up there. Now, said she, ten days later a friend called and asked me if I was busy that night.” Well, you know the profession…she couldn’t tell yes or no…she didn’t know. But she said, “Alright, I’m free.” She said, “Well, come and see me, I have something for you.” So she went to see her friend and her friend brought out the hat, not a hat, the hat, and said to her, “You know, Ann, I bought this hat. What possessed me I don’t know! Well, when I got home and saw what I looked like in this hat, I wouldn’t wear it to a dog fight. But strangely enough, the minute I said that to myself, I said, you know, Ann would look lovely in this hat. So try it on and see if you like it.” She brings out the hat. Ann tried it on and loved it.

So Ann said to me and this is her question, she said, “Neville, tell me, why didn’t God give me the money to buy the hat? Why did he give it to me in the way he gave it? Why didn’t he give me the money?” I said, Ann, I know you well enough to ask a few very pertinent, personal questions. Do you owe any rent? She said, “You’re so nosey!” I said, alright, I’m nosey. I want to ask a few questions, you owe any rent? She said, “Yes, two weeks.” I said, Alright, undoubtedly you spend $17.50 a week rent in this hotel, the Ansonia, don’t you? She said, “Exactly that much, $17.50.” So you owe $35.00. Now what price hats do you really buy? Well, I’m going back to thirty-nine…in thirty-nine you bought a $3.50, a $4.00 hat…a $17.50 hat was fantastic. We had a depression, but a real depression, and any hat beyond that was just simply…you had to be in the money to think in terms of a $17.50 hat.

So I said, now tell me, if you had looked down on the sidewalk and found a hundred dollar bill, and you owe two weeks rent, feeling as insecure as you do, would you have bought the hat? And she smiled and she said, “No, I wouldn’t. I would have paid the $35.00 rent, I would have paid two more weeks in advance, another $35.00, and I certainly wouldn’t buy any $17.50 hat, because I’ve never bought a hat in excess of $4.00 in my life.” So I said to her, but tell me, how much money must God give you before he could get you to buy a $17.50 hat? He’d have to give you a fortune to get you to break down to buy a $17.50 hat, so he knew exactly how to give it to you. In the best way possible he gave it to you. You put it on, you felt the reality of it, you walked up the street, you came by, you didn’t look into the window, you didn’t look into the glass when you went home, you took it off and put it up… and someone bought it and gave it to you, didn’t charge you one nickel for it.

Now here is Ann…Ann stumbled upon Jesus Christ and didn’t recognize him. Jesus Christ is the creative power and wisdom of God, as told us in the 1st chapter of the Book of Corinthians: “Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24). She found the creative power of God. She found out how to get a hat, a $17.50 hat that she had never worn before, and yet she didn’t recognize Jesus Christ. Knowing Ann, Ann will go to church and cross herself, sit down and genuflect, and do all these things in her church, and pray to some idol that doesn’t exist, pray to some being in time and space that doesn’t exist. And she by dint of stumbling fell upon Jesus Christ and didn’t recognize him.

This is the story: Your creative power is your own wonderful human Imagination—that’s God. God became man that man may become God. You couldn’t breathe this night were it not that God became you…and your Imagination is God, that’s God. She actually heard the story from a lady who did it in some other way; she got it at Stern’s, got the hat, exactly the hat she wanted—I told it with her permission— and Ann gets her hat. These are simple little stories, but it doesn’t matter how simple the story is. If there is evidence for a thing, does it really matter what you or I think about the matter? If this is how a thing works, does it really matter what the world thinks about it? So someone will say, that doesn’t mean what you just said. Alright, it doesn’t mean it to you. It meant it to Ann when she heard me, it meant it to the other lady when she heard me, and they got their hats. So it doesn’t mean it to you…you sit down exactly where you are and remain there for the rest of your earthly days and they’ll bury you eventually without a hat. So you go on about your business and not apply it. Don’t apply it, just keep it just as you say—this is not the story of scripture.

I tell you, I discovered there is something in the depths of man that speaks to him when he asks the question. When you read the story it doesn’t make sense, so you ask and you ask, and suddenly something comes to you. This is what it means…and you try it. You try it and it works. You try it again and it works. Well, if this is how it works, well, then tell it to the world and see if it works for them. If it works for them, then you’ve found the principle behind the simple, simple story. Because, how could you take two boys and a father, and the father is deceived by one, and he is the blessed one all over the world? Jacob is the father of the multitudes; his twelve sons become the twelve nations of the world. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel, the blessed one, the one that is the apple of his eye…and here, that which is the substitute.

So I don’t like where I am. So no matter where I’m going in this world that sets me free. I could be born behind the eight-ball; it doesn’t really matter if I know the story. So I’m born in a certain environment, in a very limited environment, but if I know that environment is my Esau and I myself am the answer, I can see in my mind’s eye my second son that isn’t clothed in reality. He doesn’t have the sensory vividness of reality, but I can do it for him. So I bring him into my mind’s eye and I clothe him with all the tones of reality; I give him all the sensory vividness of reality. And then to me I catch fire—it seems so real what I’m doing. So I open my eyes upon a world that I’d shut out, it returns and demands recognition, but I can say to it, I’ve just given someone else your position. You have to vanish now because I’ve just given your brother what was to you a dream, a subjective state. I clothed it with reality. It’s going to come into this world and displace you, because there’s no room for both of you in the same place. So the poverty that was mine has to go if I clothe myself with the feeling of wealth or the feeling of security, call it what you will.

So you decide what is your Jacob, your second son, the unseen, the smooth-skinned lad that cannot be seen, and then you clothe it in your mind’s eye, give it reality. Then you open your physical eyes upon the world about you and it springs into your life and demands recognition because it is so real and what you did is so unreal. But you say, I’ve given it a blessing, I’ve blessed it. I gave it the right of birth.I demanded by my blessing its right to be born and to be clothed…all the tones of Esau…and Esau has to vanish. Well, if it works in the testing, why not try it? So I said from that day on this is the true story of this wonderful story as told in the 27th chapter of the Book of Genesis. I ask you to try it. I’m speaking this night to you, as I will every night from this platform, from experience. I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating, I’m telling you what I have experienced. What I have experienced and you have experienced we know more thoroughly than we know anything else in the world. What could I know better than what I am experiencing?

So here, I’m speaking of the creative power, your creative power; and your creative power is your own wonderful human Imagination. Imagining creates reality. You can take it from any level of the world and you cannot disprove it. It actually creates reality. So I can stand here now and think of the man that I would like to be, or the man that I would like you to be, and then conceive it in my mind’s eye; and to the degree that I am self-persuaded that it’s real, by clothing it with reality it becomes real.Now this relieves us completely of the so-called good and evil of the world. As we are told in the 14th chapter of Romans, he said, “I know and I am persuaded by the Lord Christ Jesus”—and let me stop you right here— Christ Jesus is simply the creative power of the world. It’s personified, yes, as all these attributes of God are personified; but Christ Jesus is the personification of the creative power and the wisdom of God. He said, “I am persuaded by the Lord Jesus Christ that there is nothing that is unclean in itself; but to the man to whom it is unclean it is unclean” (verse 14). Well, you stop right there. Is this an unclean thing to do? Alright, if you think it is, then it’s unclean. But in the same chapter, the 14th chapter, he said that every man be fully convinced in his own mind. When he’s fully convinced in his own mind, he doesn’t ask about good and evil; for what is right for one may be evil for another. Do you want it? Do you want success? You don’t have to condition it and say, well, I’ll do it at the expense of another…no expense of another. You want to be successful, well, what would it be like were it true? And you dare to assume that you are successful. To the degree that you are self-persuaded that you are you will become it.

Only, when you become it, because memory is so short, you will not relate the success to the imaginal act. The success is a natural event in the world and you can’t quite see where that natural event had an imaginal cause. So I say, every natural event has an imaginal cause and not a natural. The natural only seems; it is a delusion of this fading vegetable memory, for we can’t quite remember what we have done. But the man who can remember what he’s doing all day long in his Imagination he knows his future. His future is but the outpouring of what he’s imagining morning, noon and night. So your creative power is in you at birth: it’s your own wonderful human Imagination.

Let me share with you a simple little story. Back in New York City I told this story to a friend of mine who was a very great artist. Not a fine artist in the sense that his pictures are in the great galleries, no, he’s a commercial artist. He did many of the covers for the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, and illustrated many of their stories. A very successful artist, but you wouldn’t call great in the sense of a fine art artist. Well, he fell in love with this young girl, many, many years his junior. My wife disapproved of this relationship. She liked him; we liked him. But when you like someone, it doesn’t really matter about the difference in age. I hoped that he would get the girl whether she’s six years old…as far as I’m concerned. I’m not a judge of human nature. But he was a man, oh, twenty years my senior and he fell in love with this lovely, lovely girl. And she wouldn’t see him. He gave her all kinds of gifts, and then came the moment in time when she decided I can’t take any more presents from him…this is leading him on and it leads nowhere.

Well, my wife is a very fixed person when it comes to such ideas and so she was against her husband in this one picture. She was working to separate this picture and leave them as friends, and I didn’t care whether he got her as a wife or not. So they didn’t see each other for about three weeks. Every time he called she wouldn’t answer. And so, at home one day, sitting in the Silence, I woke at twenty-five minutes after three with an intense desire to call Ritchie (that’s her name). So I called her, and asked her to meet me at lunch the following day. “Could you have lunch with me the next day at the Club?” She said, “You know, strangely enough, had you called two minutes ago I would have said no, because I had a date that was only cancelled two minutes ago. So I would love to have lunch with you.” Having received from Ritchie this confirmation of the luncheon date, I then called Tommy. His name is Tom ___(??), so I called him Tommy. As he answered, this wonderful voice of Tommy, and then when he heard my voice it all went down to the bowels of the earth. What disappointment! But he said, Yes, I would have lunch tomorrow at the Club, meet you at one. At five o’clock he called back to apologize for his behavior. He said, “Neville, forgive me for acting the way I did, because what I did was this, I sat on the couch around three o’clock and I imagined that the phone was ringing. I heard the phone, I saw the clock and it was three thirty, and it was Ritchie’s voice on the wire inviting me to lunch. When I heard your voice instead of Ritchie’s, oh, what a sour note! The phone rang at three thirty, I answered, just as I saw the clock, three-thirty and the phone is ringing—these two things came to pass—the third one must. So I answered…and your voice.”

Well, it was Ritchie’s voice in a way…I invited him to lunch. So here, I taught him how to work this principle. He gave the luncheon party and I paid the check. He fell asleep in the assumption that he was having lunch with Ritchie. I felt the impulse to call her and invite her to lunch, then to call him and invite him to lunch. We got together the next day, the four, had a heavenly day, but I did the party. And yet who originated the party? It was Tommy. Tommy went to sleep in the assumption that this thing had happened and controlled it through the entire half-hour, and fell into a little doze. When he was awakened by the ringing of the phone, it was on the dot of three-thirty as he had set it. It was the phone ringing just as he said it, but it wasn’t the voice of Ritchie. But it was the date, a luncheon date, that’s what he wanted. It was through Neville that he got the lunch. But he met her the next day. Of course they didn’t get married. She married a much younger fellow…it’s a blessing…and they have two heavenly children, and they’re now in Thailand in the State Department. They are really a perfectly marvelous, wonderful family. So Bill won out, she worked for her; and I worked for Tom, and Tom lost the prize, which really is also a blessing for Tom’s sake. What would he do with this lovely Ritchie at his age of eighty-five? And so, again these strange things happen in our world.

But to come back to what we’re trying to tell you this night, you have a power within you, a creative power that can accomplish anything in this world. You aren’t going to interfere with God’s ultimate plan for you; that’s already established. His plan is to give you himself, so that when you really awaken in the end you are God. There is nothing but God in this world. He’s playing all the parts in the world, every part. And when man fully awakes, he is God who created it all and played it all. Then he brings the curtain down upon the dream, and he is the only creator in the world.

So tonight, you take this seriously and use the story of feeling. It’s a very important element, the sense of touch. Just as he touched…and the voice said, “Come close, my son.” The word son is simply an idea; come close, this idea, that I may touch you.Now if you are here for the first time let me show you what I mean by touching. Imagination is spiritual sensation. I take my imaginary hand and I put it on an imaginary ball, a baseball, and then I put it on a tennis ball, then I put it on a billiard ball, then I put it on a piece of silk, a piece of mohair, I put it on a bat, all kinds of objects that aren’t visible to my eye. No one present could sense them, yet I can distinguish between the different feels. I do not in any way feel the baseball and in any way confuse it with a tennis ball; they are distinct. I do it with everything. Well, if I can discriminate between these different feelings, they must exist. If they have no existence, I couldn’t discriminate.

I learned that when I was a little child with my father. He would say to me, “Neville, if you do so and so, I’ll give you a huge, big, wonderful, golden nothing.” I rushed to do it; so I did it, came back for my golden nothing. He said, “You can have it…a golden nothing.” Well, I heard only the word golden; I didn’t hear “nothing.” But he taught me a lesson. I’ll give you a big, wonderful, golden nothing if you do so and so. Well, I rushed to do the so and so to get it and he gave it to me, a golden nothing. It could be a blue nothing, a silver nothing—it was nothing. Well, if these are nothings, I can’t discriminate. So if I can discriminate between a baseball, a tennis ball, a bat, and all these objects though invisible to my senses, they’re real, they are here. And if I can only do what Blake said, all that a man must do is simply intensify his actual feeling to the point of vision then it’s done. And you can do it…to intensify this state in which you are right up to the point of vision, the thing becomes real now. But you don’t have to take it to that intensity to make it work. You do it to a certain point, believe in the reality of what you’ve done, and it’s done. And in its own good way it comes into birth, it is born in this world, and it becomes a reality in your life.

So here, you take the story of “feeling” this night. Come close, my son, that I may feel you. Come and kiss me. So he came forward and he felt him, and he kissed him, and it set him aflame because it seemed so real. As it became real it was done. He gave the right of birth to that unseen invisible state, and the invisible state became a fact. So do it with something just as simple as a hat, or do it with something big. A man looks and sees his name on a building, and it isn’t there at all. And the man who is looking doesn’t have a nickel, but he looks and he sees his name which if true would imply that he owns the building. He keeps on doing it…if he enjoys doing it. At the end of two years the building is for sale, on the main street, the best corner. The day of the sale a total strange comes in and asks him if he’s going to buy it. He said, “With what? I’ve nothing.” “Well, I have money. I’ll buy it for you through my lawyer. If I start bidding they’ll bid me up. I’ll buy it through my lawyers. Well, now if I pay for it, you pay me and give me six percent on my investment and reduce the principal every year for ten years; at the end of ten years you pay off the principal.” “All right”…to that the man agreed; that day he owned the building. At the end of ten years he had paid off the principal plus the six percent on the money still in the business. And when that man died he left the man for whom he bought it, he gave him $150,000 cash, several homes, many things that he left, and said it was the best investment he ever made, and, therefore. he was his best friend. $150,000 tax-free in cash plus many homes…and here, a man simply looks upon a building; he sees his name implying possession; and believes.

Is that an accident? Well, if I can pull all these things out, one after the other by the thousands, are you still going to say, “Give me one more”? That’s what the world will say. Well, the Bible has committed us to just a few. There are really only so many—seven all told in the Book of John—so-called fantastic stories. There aren’t more than seven, and for 2,000 years the same stories are told over and over and over. Yet if I tell from the platform fifty stories, they will say, can you make it fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, and they want more and more of the same thing. The principle is illustrated in one—how the lady got the hat is the story. How this man got the building is the story. How my friend brought about the luncheon party, that’s the story. And it’s all in one’s Imagination; that imagining creates reality. If I know that, I will simply not ask your consent. I will simply imagine that I am the man that I want to be. Create the scene which if true would imply that I am such a man; feel its reality, clothe it with the tones of reality; and when it seems to be natural so I catch fire, it’s done! And then let it go.

So tonight I ask you to test it. As you’re told in scripture, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test” (2 Cor. 13:5). When you read the same scripture, and you know he is your own creative power, this creative power of God is in me; and in the world is personified as a man I must worship, and in my stupidity I did it. I worshipped something on the outside when it wasn’t there at all—it’s all within me.

In this morning’s paper they’re speaking of this wonderful church, the universal church, the only church, the only faith—the Bible doesn’t teach that. The Bible teaches that you are the temple of the living God, that’s what it teaches. Read it in the 3rd chapter, the 16th verse of 1st Corinthians: “You are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Well, if the Spirit of God dwells in me and I am the temple of the living God, what cathedral in this world should I bow before? I’ve seen them bow before cathedrals in New York City. I’ve seen them prostrate themselves, with their families, before St. Patrick’s. I’ve seen them get down and genuflect right on the street before this solid mass of stone that man has made. And yet passing by, in flesh and blood, is the temple that God created and the temple in which God dwells. So I tell you, no outside church. You are the temple of the living God and the Spirit of God dwells in you! The creative power of God is one with God and he’s your own wonderful human Imagination.

So you take this wonderful principle and apply it tonight to some goal in this world. Some friend may be unemployed and you want him gainfully employed, well, then you try it. Represent him to yourself as you would see him were he now the man that you want him to be, and then catch fire! Bring him close, take his hand and congratulate him on his good fortune, and believe in the reality of the unseen invisible act—that’s Jacob. The minute you touched his hand and you felt the solidity of that hand, and you carried on a little conversation with him, and you felt the naturalness of the conversation, you’re putting clothes upon your unseen son, and clothing him with the reality of an Esau. And giving him that naturalness of Esau, then he becomes real. At that moment it is done! Forget it!

If your memory doesn’t fail you, you will see it come to pass and recognize the relationship between what is born and what you did. You will know the cause of the thing born was imaginal and not natural; so the natural event had an imaginal cause and not a natural cause. The natural cause only seems. It was not really true; it was simply a delusion of a fading memory. Now you try it when you go home, try it, and I promise you it will prove itself in the testing.

Now let us go into the Silence.

* * *

Now are there any questions?

Q: Neville, you talk about feeling, has odor or smell anything to do with this?

A: Every sense—scent, sight, sound, taste and touch.

Q: I’m not talking about odors or smells that you and I would call perfumes or flowers or anything you could put your finger on…something I couldn’t explain.

A: Well, to me odor is one of the most potent senses imploring me into any state. I walked up certain areas of New York City. I’ve walked through Harlem and smelled the odors coming out of the kitchen, coming out of a home, that reminded me of the odors of my childhood in Barbados; and instantly I am in Barbados. The smell of okra coming out, the cooking in coconut oil, the plantains, something that is entirely different. All the fruit and all the things of Barbados…would be like what the West Indians who come up, we all have our own little groups, and we use the same things we used when we left home. I’ve gone through Harlem, and as I walked by suddenly an odor is coming from a kitchen, coming from somewhere, and instantly I’m transported. Odor is a powerful thing! He said, Come taste the Lord and see that he’s good—experience this state; to experience it is to taste it.

So the Ancients spoke of only four senses: sight, sound, scent, taste and touch were one. But sight, sound and scent were three distinct, and then taste and touch were joined together because both depended upon contact. So they only spoke of the four, and they likened these four to the four rivers that came out of Eden. The four rivers of Eden were the four senses; they weren’t five because they joined taste and touch together depending on touch. The sense of odor it’s a powerful thing; all senses are powerful.

Q: In your actual experiments of how to use this, have you found that relaxation, total relaxation…

A: Did you hear the question? Before you try it, have I found that total relaxation before you do it is helpful? Personally I haven’t. If others have tried it and total relaxation works, whatever works do it. But walking the street, riding a subway, in the noise and all the jumble of the world, you can do it. You don’t need any preparation for it if you believe in the reality of your own wonderful imaginal act. If you really believe the only name of God is I AM—“Go tell them I AM has sent you”—if that really is the name forever of God, you can’t get away from it! There’s no place where you can go where you’re not aware that you are. Being aware that you are, you are saying “I am.” He doesn’t need any more than the belief in his own creative power.

Q: Neville, since you’re talking about the law tonight—the time sequence is so often a stumbling block. Would you say just a word about the intensity and the time element involved?

A: Did you hear the question? Well, as far as time intervals go, I do believe that there is a time interval for every creative act. Intensity, at times I believe does in some strange way does shorten it. I think it does, but I’m not quite sure…I’m really not quite sure. If the intense imaginal act reduces it, I don’t know. I wish I could say honestly that I know from experience, because sometimes a very simple imaginal act, where you treat it lightly, works like this [snap of fingers]. What you do in a very simple little way, the phone rings to confirm it, and there was no intensity to it. Then, other times, you do it with intense states, well, it takes its own normal time and that didn’t seem to reduce it. I don’t know. I wish I could say honestly that I know the answer to your question from experience. But I can tell you I’ve done things in a simple little way, throw it off as though it’s nothing, and the phone is ringing to confirm it. So I really don’t know, I wish I knew.

Q: Would you say a word about the mental condition that one should assume or use when one goes into the Silence…is it meditation?

A: Personally, I go into the Silence not always for something, just because I like to go into the Silence. And so, my Silence differs from most in the sense I don’t really have a technique. I close my eyes and turn my attention on the inside, as though I’m looking into my brain, and I only contemplate my brain. In a little while, doesn’t take too long, oh, maybe a few seconds, and it begins to glow. The whole head becomes golden liquid light, and I love to look at it. The whole head becomes a pulsing golden liquid light like a halo. And then after a while it comes around this way and goes off like smoke rings… but all lovely golden pulses are growing into distance, lovely big smoke rings, as though I smoked a cigar and blew one into space. After a while they seem to join each other and form a funnel…and I just like doing it. Means nothing, really, I just like doing it.

Sometimes in the midst of the doing it something happens which I didn’t anticipate. Like the story…once turning my attention on the inside, thinking of nothing in particular, and my head becomes a golden, golden light…pulsing golden liquid light and suddenly before my eyes came a quartz about this big, solid quartz. As I looked at it it became fragmented, just broken into numberless pieces; and then quickly the whole thing was brought together by some invisible hand, and molded into a perfect figure of a Buddha seated in the lotus posture. I looked at it, and to my amazement I’m looking at myself. Here I am seated in the lotus posture. I became so intrigued looking at myself seated in this manner. As I looked at it, it began to glow; it got more and more bright. It reached almost the intensity of the sun itself. And I’m so intrigued looking at myself. The face was mine, only my face raised to the nth degree of perfection; not the face I see when I shave in the morning. This was the face of majesty, a face of dignity, a face of courage, a face of strength of character, a face that I had never seen when I shave in the morning, but it was my face. Here was myself raised to the nth degree of perfection, seated in this lotus posture. As I contemplate it, the whole thing exploded.

Well, that came when I didn’t contemplate anything. I just simply turned my attention in, the whole thing began to glow, and suddenly came a quartz, the quartz broke into pieces; they were gathered together into a form that was seated in the lotus posture. And then years later—this happened to me way back in 1934—years later I read the last book, after the death of the man, and Carl Jung’s friends gathered together his papers and he had the similar experience. Well, he never read my book, because I told that experience back in 1946. He had the experience in 1944; I had it in ‘34. I’m quite sure that Carl Jung never heard of Neville, because I’m not known in his class. So he never heard of me, so he could not have plagiarized it; but it happened to him. He saw himself seated in the lotus posture; only in his case he was afraid. In my case, it simply thrilled me. I sat there simply intrigued, looking at myself being so altogether perfect. I couldn’t conceive of such perfection. And my face was the face of the being seated in the lotus posture. He [Jung] had the same being in the lotus posture and it was his face. Said he as he saw it “Aha, so you are contemplating me, and when you awake I will no longer be.” And he was right. When that deep in man awakens, the outer, the shadow world will vanish, and you will be the very being that is contemplating and dreaming the whole vast world.

By the way, we’re here every Tuesday and Friday right through the year, closing, I think, the 17th of December…that’s the day. But you’ll hear all about it. If you are not on the mailing list and you would like to be, may we have your name and address? We do not use your name for any purpose other than to let you know when we are in the city and where we are. We don’t solicit, don’t try to sell you anything, don’t give the list to anyone else, so you’ll not be bothered. It’s only to let you know when I’m in the city and where I’ll be lecturing. We have only this means of reaching you plus the paper, and so we just carry a simple little ad once a month or so for those who are still under the habit of going to the Ebell…(tape ends).