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Beyond Manifesting Miracles

Enjoy the Neville Goddard Quote:

I take a look at my world, and I am very restricted. Everything about me is something I would like to break through – transcend it, become a bigger person, a more secure person, where I’m doing a greater job in the world. All these things I would like to do but reason tells me I am not doing it, and my senses confirm my reason. Now, is there something in me that is my True Self that can do it? Yes, my imagination can do it.

In my imagination, I go and prepare the state. I actually go into the state and fill that state with my own being, and view the world from that state. I don’t think of it; I think from it. When I think from it, I’m actually preparing that state.

Neville Goddard Mastermind Recordings – Click here!
Beyond Manifesting Miracles

You will find tonight’s message a very practical one. I don’t think it will disturb anyone, but there are adjustments to be made concerning what man believes God to be, and what God really is. We are told in Scripture, in the birth of the twins, which begins the great drama as told in Scripture, “In your limbs…” and I am speaking now, not of anyone, but of you individually:

“In your limbs lie nations twain, rival races from their birth; one the mastery will gain, the younger o’er the elder reign.” (Genesis 25:23, Moffatt translation)

These are in you individually. We are told that the younger, which naturally is the second – the “second man” – is the Lord from Heaven. That’s the Second Man; He sleeps in you. You will rouse Him, and He will become the Master. He will reign. At the moment, in the majority of the world, they are totally unaware of it. So, He sleeps, and so He doesn’t reign. That one known in Scripture is called Jesus Christ; The Lord Jesus Christ is your own wonderful human imagination. That is God!

Now, the whole vast world, and all within it, is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger. That’s the whole of life: the appeasement of hunger. And there are infinite states from which the Lord may view the world to appease that hunger. The “first man” can’t do it. He can only feed upon what his senses dictate. Wherever he is, he feeds upon the facts of life as he sees the facts.

It takes the “Second Man” to disengage Himself from that restriction and enter into a state – any state in the world – and feed upon it, and then – in time – bring the “first man” to feed upon it.

We are told in the 14th chapter of John: “Let not your heart be troubled, neither be afraid. Ye believe in God, Believe in me also.” (John 14:1) Now, this is not a man talking to you from the outside. “Believe also in me.” “You believe in God, believe also in me.” In the same chapter He is going to tell you He is God! But what man would actually believe that this Presence within himself is God?

Now, He tells you: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) This is not another man speaking to you, other than yourself, “Be still, and know that ‘I Am’ is God.” Can you believe that? If you can believe that, then all things are possible to you. For, “all things are possible to God.” (Matthew 19:26) Can a man really believe that? That’s what I am told in the 46th Psalm, “Be still, and know that – I…”. Put the little word is in there now.

Now we are told, He sleeps, and then came the call, “Rouse thyself. Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Do not cast us off forever.” (Psalm 44:23) This one sleeps in man. Man has to rouse Him. He doesn’t know that his own wonderful human imagination is God!

Now, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? When I go I will come again, and I will receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:2, 3) Now, this conversation takes place in you individually, between the two.

I am speaking now to my self, “In my Father’s house” – I am the Father “…are unnumbered mansions” – states of consciousness. “Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go, I will come again, and I will receive you to myself, that where I am there ye may be also.”

I am standing here, and my senses tie me here in this room but I don’t want to be here. I want to be elsewhere. I know my bank balance. I know my obligations to life. I’m tied by what I know. The “outer man” feeds upon that, but he wants more than that. There is something in me – the “Second Man” who is born from Heaven – who is telling me there are “unnumbered mansions” into which I can go – you can’t go – I can go and prepare it for you. But, “when I go to prepare it for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye shall be also.” Now, how do I do it?

I take a look at my world, and I am very restricted. Everything about me is something I would like to break through – transcend it, become a bigger person, a more secure person, where I’m doing a greater job in the world. All these things I would like to do but reason tells me I am not doing it, and my senses confirm my reason. Now, is there something in me that is my True Self that can do it? Yes, my imagination can do it.

In my imagination, I go and prepare the state. I actually go into the state and fill that state with my own being, and view the world from that state. I don’t think of it; I think from it. When I think from it, I’m actually preparing that state.

Then I return to where I left this – “the outer man,” and once more fuse with it, and we become one, once again. Now I take him across a bridge of incidents – some series of events – that takes me towards the thing that I’ve prepared, and I take him with me and enter into the very state itself. He feeds now, literally, upon that state. This is what I call prayer. I don’t vote for it; I don’t petition, I ask no being in the world – no one, including what the world would say is God. For, when you find God by being still, and know that “I Am” is God, then to whom can you turn for anything in this world, if you really believe Scripture, “Be still and know that I am God”? (Psalm 46:10) If you are not familiar with Scripture, read it in the 46th chapter of the Psalms of David, the 10th verse “Be still, and know that I am God,” – then, to whom could you turn? It’s an inner communion with Self. But man talks to an outside god and pleads with an outside god, and begs an outside god.

This reminds me of a dinner party that William Lyons Phelps gave. If you do not know who he is – in fact, who he was, he was one of the truly great educators in our country in this twentieth century: William Lyons Phelps. He and Mrs. Phelps entertained Edna Ferber, the writer. As they sat down to dinner, Mrs. Phelps said to him, “William, will you please say grace.” He closed his eyes, bent his head, and after maybe ten or fifteen seconds he said, “Amen.” And she said to him, “Why, William, I did not hear one word that you said”; and he said to her, “I was not talking to you, my Dear…”.

People sit down to say grace as: “Bless the hands that prepared this food,” all these words meaning nothing. You go within, and you don’t petition: you appropriate. Prayer is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. I hope for so-and-so; I want it as an objective fact. Now, I must go within and appropriate it subjectively..

So, prayer is the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. That is what I call “faith in God,” which is nothing more than faith in my Self, for the Self of man – the true identity of man – is God! That is the “Jesus Christ” of Scripture..

“Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Test yourselves and see.” That is what we are told to do in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Read it in the 13th chapter, the 5th verse, of II Corinthians. “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are holding to the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Corinthians 13:5, Revised Standard Version).

Well, if He is in me, then where will I go to meet Him? How will I address Him? He is in me. He is in my very Self. I simply commune with my Self..

There are unnumbered states in the world, so I single out the state that I want to express in this world, and I don’t ask you or anyone else in the world if it is good for me. I don’t consult anyone. Does it come within the frame of the Golden Rule? What I am now asking, would I ask it for another? Would I ask another, if what I am seeking now for another is something I would ask for myself? Well, the Golden Rule is: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” If you keep that in mind, you cannot go wrong..

What’s wrong with asking for anything in this world for another that you would ask for yourself? Is there anything wrong in being secure? Nothing. Anything wrong in being clean and wholesome and decent? Anything wrong in being one who contributes to the world’s good? What’s wrong with that? Is there anything wrong in being happily married, proud of the girl who bears your name, or she proud of the man whose name she bears? What is wrong with that?.

Forget that. The whole vast world is a field to reap. You don’t pick out this woman or that woman. Pick out the state. I want to be blissfully happy, and if I were, how would I see the world? And how would the world see me? Well, shut out the world and go within and appropriate that state. And from within, you let your friends see you, as they would have to see you if what now you are assuming that you are is really true..

That is why I have titled tonight’s talk, “The Mood” – catching the mood. This whole thing is based upon that mood. The 25th chapter of the book of Genesis: and she brought forth twins, for in her limbs were these rival races – rival races from their birth, called in Scripture “Esau” and “Jacob”; and you think they were two individuals who lived thousands of years ago. No, they are right here in everyone in this world! These are the eternal states of consciousness personified in Scripture as two little boys..

Scripture is not secular history. It is salvation history. And, so, they did not live thousands of years ago; they live now in you, and you have to give birth to both of them. You have given birth to the first one. The first one is your “outer man,” the man who is now a man of the senses – a man who is covered with hair, as we are told. Esau came out first, and he was covered with hair all over. Whether you be female or male, you are covered with hair all over. That is the external you, the man of the sense world..

Then in comes the “Second Son,” and he is the smoothest skin lad, called Jacob. The name “Jacob” means to supplant. He is going to supplant his brother; he is the second, but he will come first. The Second Man is the Lord from Heaven, and the Second Son is your own wonderful human imagination. When you stir it and rouse it and make him come into being, you can do wonders in this world..

Try it right now. You sit here in this room – I stand here; I could, in the twinkling of an eye, put myself outside of this room and view it from there, and see the interior of this room, not from this lectern, but see it from the outside. That is exercising the Inner Man. Go outside mentally, not physically, and view this room from the outside. While seated here, I can put myself in my hotel room downstairs, and then view this room and think of it, but thinking from my room downstairs. I can put myself in any part of the world and think from it, and think of the world and everything else. That is the secret: thinking from what I want, instead of thinking of what I want..

When I know what I want in this world, when I am thinking of it, it is always beyond me. When I know what I want, I enter into that state and think from it. Put yourself mentally into your own home tonight now, and view this building – this club – from your home, and you see this building, not from it; you think of it, and you are viewing it from your room..

Now, the state of consciousness to which you most constantly return is the place you really dwell – that habitual state from which you view the world. Do you view it from poverty, saying, “I am poor?” Do you walk the street feeling, “How poor I am?” You are then viewing the world from the state of poverty. Am I viewing the world from the state of one who is completely unknown and unwanted? Well, that’s my home. The place to which I habitually return constitutes my dwelling place. I need not dwell there..

“In my Father’s house are unnumbered mansions. Were it not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” And when I go and prepare the place, I will return again and take you with me, that where I am – in that state prepared – you shall be also. So, I now take a state. I want to be known. I want to contribute to the world’s good. I want also to live well – and I mean well. I want to feel secure, not only financially, but secure socially, that when I enter a room I am not embarrassed, no matter who they are. They can have all the degrees in the world. They can come from all the great universities in the world and be honored by the world. But I want to stand in their presence and not feel little. I want to feel a man. I am not to bow my head in shame because of any restriction in my past. If I were born “behind the 8-ball” socially, financially, intellectually, it doesn’t matter. I want to feel important; I want to feel great. I want to feel right..

All right, what state would that be if it were true? I conceive a state that, if it were true, that would make all my wishes come true. I go into that state. Now, the first time I enter the state and view the world from it, it is wonderful, but I may never re-enter that state. Therefore, it is not my home. I want to make that state my perpetual home, so I automatically dwell in that state, and if I dwell in it so that automatically I am in that state, it becomes my dwelling place. So, “I will go and prepare a place for you.” I am not talking to you; I am talking to myself: “I will take you, Neville, born behind the 8-ball – born unknown, unwanted, poor – everything that is simply behind the 8-ball, and I am going to take you, Neville – now that you have found me, the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven, your own wonderful human imagination – now that you rouse me, I will go.”.

And I will dwell in the state and feel myself to be Neville – that “outer man” I just left on the chair or left on the bed, and I will see the world as Neville would see it if he were with me now. I view the world from that state. And, then, when it seems natural to me, I return to the physical “outer man” that I left on a chair – that I left on the bed and as I return, we fuse and become one person, not two. Then I move across a bridge of incidents that I don’t really, rationally build – it simply appears, and I move across a series of events that I do not reasonably determine – they simply happen. I will move across this bridge of events up to the state where I entered and now dwell. But when I get there, it seems so natural!.

The man that thought, because of his past limitations, he could never enter that state – now he finds himself in that state. No matter whom he meets, he meets them from that state, and it is perfectly natural to him. This is the story that Scripture teaches to you, to me, and to every one in the world. But until you find God, which is your own Self, you aren’t going to do it. “Be still, and know that ‘I Am’ Is God.” There is no other God!.

And you think that’s blasphemy? All right, the one who teaches the story was also accused of blasphemy, for he said, “I am God,” and they picked up stones to stone him. It doesn’t mean a man is making a bold statement on the outside. The “outer man” takes the facts of life – these are the “stones” – to stone him, and then he quotes Scripture, and he quotes the 82nd Psalm:.

“Is it not written in your scripture that I say, ‘Ye are gods, all of you sons of the Most High’? If, then, I say that I am the Son of God, and the Son of God and God are one and the same Being, why do you stone me when scripture teaches you, you are the sons of God?” (See John 10:34-37).

So they could not stone him then because he was only quoting their book. Well, I am only quoting tonight your book, which is my book. It’s the book to set every man in this world free if you know Who-You-Are. Your true identity is Jesus Christ! And Jesus Christ is not a being who came two thousand years ago and then departed. He said, “I am with you always, even unto the very ends of time.” (Matthew 28:20).

If He is with me always, where is He? He said, “I am with you always, to the very ends of time.” Then where is He? I surely know where He is..

The conversation now – I am quoting from the 8th chapter of the book of John. It is taking place in you. No one else is hearing it. I am only now quoting from a passage from the 8th [chapter] of John, “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world. I say you will die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am He.” (John 8:23, 24) I am only quoting from the 8th chapter of the Gospel of John..

In Scripture, above and within are the same; below and without are the same. So, when you read, “I am from above,” he’s telling you, “I am from within”, for he tells you, “the kingdom of heaven is within you.” (Luke 17:21) So, I am from above, therefore I am from within. You, the ‘outer man’ – you are from without, therefore you are from below. You are of this world. I don’t have to remain anchored to what my senses dictate and tell me that I am. I need not be here. You, looking at me from the outside, as the “outer man,” will say, “Neville is on the platform.” Knowing my complete outer world, you would know my restrictions, my limitations. You do not know my ambitions, my dreams, my wishes. I, and I alone, know my ambitions and my wishes. The “Inner Man” knows them, and He knows how to enter these states and prepare a state for the “outer man” to fulfill it. The “outer man” can’t do it. The “outer man” is completely anchored by his senses and confirmed by his reason..

Now, let me share with you a simple story. At the time that it happened, it seemed an impossible thing. Right after the war was over, I took the first trip out with my wife and little girl to the Island of Barbados in the West Indies. I made no preparation for return. I sailed from New York. I thought I would go and stay a few months in the island with my family, who were all in Barbados, making no preparation for my return..

Then it came time for my return, for I had a schedule in New York in the first week of May. I arrived in Barbados the last of December and had these four heavenly months – or almost four. When I went to the steamship company, they showed me a list which was as long as from here to there [indicating] of people waiting to get on the boat. That was only in the Island of Barbados. There were lists equally long in all the other islands: Trinidad, St. Vincent, Grenada – all the islands, and only two ships servicing all the islands: one little one taking sixty passengers, and one taking a hundred and twenty-five passengers; and hundreds and hundreds in each island waiting..

Well, they said, “Why, Mr. Goddard, you couldn’t get out of this island until the month of October at the earliest.” I said, “Is that your final verdict?” They said, “Why, that’s final. Look at the list, and this is only in Barbados.”.

This is the month, now, of April. I never thought of applying before that. My brother Victor said, “How on earth could you have left New York, the capitol of the world – the financial capitol of the world – they know everything there how to do these things. Why didn’t you arrange there when you left for return?” I said, “It never occurred to me. It doesn’t really matter.”.

I sat in my hotel room in Barbados and got comfortable, and then I assumed that I was in a little boat – a little tender, taking me off to the waiting ship in the bay. I could feel the rock of the little boat. In that boat I placed my family – a few members of my family: my brother Victor, my sister Daphne, and one or two others, and naturally my wife and my little girl. Then I felt the ship come alongside the main ship that would take us back to New York. And, then, in my imagination I assumed that my brother Victor took my little girl and stepped on the gangplank and walked up with her and I aided my wife next, and then my sister Daphne, and then I got on, and we went up. When I got to the top of the gangplank – all in my imagination, giving it all the sensory vividness, giving it all the tones of reality – I have no committed stateroom, so I could not go down to the stateroom. I simply turned at the top of the gangplank, walked three or four steps, and then put my hands on the rail, so I could smell the rawness of the sea, I could feel the salt driven by the wind. I could feel it on the rail, and then I looked towards the island with nostalgia. I was leaving a perfectly lovely island with so many members of my family, and yet it was a divided feeling. I was happy to be leaving because I had to get back to New York on my way to Milwaukee, and then, at the same time, I was split in my emotion because there was a sadness – like a sweet sadness leaving them and still happy to go. And that’s the mood that I caught. I caught that feeling. I can’t tell you if you haven’t had the experience of going any place being divided between wanting to go and yet reluctantly so, because you are leaving something precious behind you. Well, that was my mood. I caught the mood. And then I kept on looking at the island, and then I broke it and here I am, sitting in my chair in the room in the hotel in Barbados!.

The next morning the phone rang. As I answered, it was the Alcoa Steamship Company calling: “Mr. Goddard, we’ve Just received a cable from New York canceling a passage sailing on the next ship, which could put you in New York on the first day of May. Would you like it for you, your wife and your daughter? It’s a smaller stateroom, really, there are only two bunks, but your little girl is only three years old, and so she could sleep either with you or with Mrs. Goddard, but there are two bunks, and there is a private bath. Everything is perfect but you know; the ship is small. It will only carry sixty passengers.”

I said, “I’ll be right down.” So, I went down, and I thought I would find out some more details. I asked the agent, “Why the cancellation?” “Well,” she said, “I could only speculate. They didn’t tell us: they cabled us. There was a cancellation for the return trip.” I said, “All right, it’s canceled. Why didn’t you give it to any of the others waiting?” There were hundreds and hundreds waiting. “Well,” she said, “we have one lady here – an American lady who has been bothering us week after week to get her out of Barbados back to New York, so we called her first, and she said, ‘It’s not convenient for me to go now.’ So, then we called you because you have three to go, and I thought you could use the room for the three of you. And we will not notify any of the other hundreds waiting.”

So, I asked no further questions. I took it and got back in time for my place in New York and then my place in Milwaukee.

When I first tell that story, the usual reaction is: Was that a fair thing to do? Can you imagine that! Was that a fair thing to do with all the others who were waiting? I wasn’t running the Alcoa Steamship Company. I was applying the principle of God. I wouldn’t care if one million people were there; I’d jump over one million. That’s not my concern. I am simply applying the Law of God: “When you desire, believe that you have received it, and you will,” as I am told in the 11th chapter of the book of Mark, 29th verse, and whatever you do, whatever you say, if you do not doubt that it will come to pass, it will be done for you. Well, I did what I’m told in Scripture I ought to do, believe that I had received it, and act upon that belief. So, I acted upon the belief. What would I do if it were true? I would go up the gangplank.

In those days, back in 1945, we did not have a deep-water harbor; we have one now. But then you had to go out to the ship by a little tender, so I did exactly what I would have to do if I went aboard the ship. So, I got aboard the little ship, and then, as we got to the big ship, strangely enough, my brother Victor went up with my little girl in his arms – the very first one to step off. And then here came my wife, here came my sister, just in the order that I had imagined it. I wouldn’t care if that order was broken or not, but it did happen in the order that I imagined it. So, I tell you, I have found Him. Who? Found who? I have found the Lord Jesus Christ. You did? What does he look like? He looks just like me! Have you found Him? Well, don’t look at me, because when you find Him, He’s going to look just like you! That’s the Lord Jesus Christ – just like you. There is no other Lord Jesus Christ.

He actually became you, that you may become the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you see Him, He is just like you.

So, do not turn to any one in this world and say, “There he is,” for that’s a lie, or, “Here he is” – that’s a lie. So, anyone telling you that Neville is the Lord Jesus Christ – your Jesus Christ, deny it! Deny it completely. Neville is not the Lord Jesus Christ for you. But I have found the Lord Jesus Christ in me as my own wonderful human imagination. And I share with you what I have found. One day you will find Him as your own wonderful human imagination. Then will come the day that everything said of the Lord Jesus Christ in Scripture, you are going to experience in the first-person, singular, present-tense experience – everything said about him. Then you will know who the Lord Jesus Christ is. Then you will know who the Father is, who – really – God is!

Meanwhile, test him. Go to the extreme test. I tell you, you will find Him never failing. He’s your own wonderful human imagination.

Well, in this story that we started tonight, the two sons are brought now to the father. The father is Isaac, and Isaac is blind. There were two sons; the first one is Esau. He is covered with hair. That’s every child born of woman; that is the “outer man,” for hair means the most external, objective thing in the world. In man, the hair comes first, then you get the skin, then you get the fat, then you get the bones, but the hair is the most external part of man. So, he is covered with hair. The next one has no hair. He is hairless. He is Jacob, The word means supplanter.

The father has requested a meal. That is why I told you earlier the whole vast world – the whole of life is nothing more than the appeasement of hunger. So, the father is hungry, and he wants venison properly prepared as he always loves it and he gives that command to his first son, Esau. Esau was a hunter. He goes hunting for the venison, and prepares it to please his father.

Jacob overhears the request of his father. Remember, his name is supplanter but the command was given to his brother Esau, So, he slays a goat and skins it, and puts the skin upon his body to deceive his father into believing that he is Esau. He prepares the goat and brings it to his father, and he says, “Father,” and Isaac answers, “Yes, my son.” Then Isaac said, “I am blind, my son. I cannot see. Come close that I may feel you, that I may touch you.” And covered with the skin of the goat, he comes close, and Isaac stretches forth his hand and touches him. He said, “You know, your voice sounds like my son Jacob, but you feel like my son Esau,” and then he gave him the blessing. And, then, having been given the blessing, Jacob disappears.

Then his son Esau comes with the venison, and he said, “Who are you?” He said, “I am your son Esau.” “Well,” he said, “it must have been your brother who came, and I thought him to be you, and I gave him the blessing; and I cannot reverse it. I cannot take it back. I have blessed him, and the blessing remains his.”

So, you close your eyes, and you are Isaac; you cannot see. Isaac is blind. Shut your eyes, and you can’t see the room. Now, inwardly you have the two sons. The outer room is your Esau. You shut it out completely, and they both go hunting. Esau comes after; Jacob comes first, and he gives the tones of reality to his father. His father is his own wonderful “I AM.” Well, that’s God! God’s name forever is “I AM.” So, I AM is waiting to feel the tones of reality of what he wants, and he feels it to be so real, so natural.

Now, he knows this thing is subjective, so he said, “You sound like Jacob, but come closer, my son, that I may feel you”, and he feels him as I felt the rail on the ship, as I could smell the salt of the sea in the wind, as I could see mentally the island, as I could feel the ship rolling a little under my feet. All this was the tone of reality. This, now, is Esau; it seems real, and so I am giving a reality to this state – I am giving a blessing to it.

Then I open my eyes to find I am sitting on a chair in my hotel room. Well, suddenly Esau returns. Well, Esau was the place that I left. The room that I sat in was my Esau; that was the objective world. It comes back. And I say, “What have I done?” I went into a state and I clothed it with reality. I gave it all the tones of an objective world, and it seemed so real to me that I gave it the blessing to be real – to be born. Now this comes back, and without one word spoken, it is telling me, “You deceived yourself. You were deceived by my brother, the subjective state called Jacob.” And I say to myself – knowing who God really is, He can’t take back His blessing. He gave it the right to be born – the right to become objective – the right to become real, and in 24 hours it was born, – it was real.

And, then, three weeks later I sailed on that ship and completed the entire journey. I’ve repeated it over and over again, and it never fails. And those who will believe it and who will put it to the test cannot fail. They cannot fail. This is the principle of Scripture.

So, will you actually give it the tones of reality? Will you actually, first of all, believe that the God that you now worship as something without, actually exists within you as your own wonderful human imagination? If you will believe that, and not think me blasphemous for telling it and think me something accursed for having spoken it – but may I tell you, I hope for your sake you will believe it. But really, in my heart of hearts, whether you believe it or not, I am not concerned, because the day will come you will have to believe it, because you will experience it. If only I can aid you to hasten the day – that’s why I am here. But to actually say I am going to hit you over the head and make you believe it – no. I am not indifferent to your believing it; I can only appeal to you to believe it for your own good, that you may take whatever you have and transcend it by the use of this Law. Whatever you have in this world, may I tell you, no one is really satisfied! I dined well today, but tomorrow I am going to be hungry. And hunger is forever with man, and God is the ultimate satisfaction of hunger, but that hasn’t yet come upon the majority.

He tells us in the 8th chapter, the 11th verse, of Amos: “I will send a famine upon the world; it will not be a hunger for bread, or a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the word of God.” Now, that comes at the very end, for the average man is not hungry for the word of God. He is complacent. He will say, “I am a Christian!” So, what! “I am a Christian. I go to church. I contribute to the church,” and so he thinks that means all that he does as a Christian – it stops right there.

Well, the hunger is not satisfied, because when He sends that hunger upon the individual, nothing but an experience of God can satisfy that hunger. Well, until He sends that hunger, all the other hungers can be satisfied, like the hunger for security, the hunger for a better job, the hunger for a raise in authority in your present position, the hunger for – you name it. Every hunger can be satisfied if you apply this principle. But then will come that day He will send the famine upon you, for you are the earth of which He speaks. It hasn’t a thing to do with the world, the famine in the world, or whether there is famine all over the world, because they don’t know how to satisfy their hunger. There is famine, but that is not the famine of which he speaks. He says it’s not a hunger for bread; it’s not a thirst for water, but for the hearing of the Word of God!

So, I am giving you the Word of God as I personally have experienced it. So, tonight you try it. Close your eyes to the obvious. That’s Esau; send him hunting. And, then, become self-deceived. In his absence, bring in the “second son,” who is the Lord from Heaven, and clothe him in the tones of reality, and feel how real it is. Give him all sensory vividness, and when it takes on the tones of reality, open your eyes! Then Esau comes back from the hunt, and then you tell him what you’ve done, and he cries out because your son – the “second man” – has deceived you and betrayed him the second time.

Every day you can apply this principle and become self-deceived, but it works. But always keep it within the frame of the Golden Rule, so that no one will be hurt. I do not care who did not get the passage north. I do not care what prompted the woman not to take it. I do not care what prompted the passenger from New York to cancel it. I have no complaints, no words; I simply did what I was called upon to do. I wanted to get out. I found myself locked in – locked in until October at the earliest, with my commitments in Milwaukee going. I couldn’t do that. I had to get back, and get back, I did!

So, I tell you, this principle cannot fail you. But we are the operant power. And you do not get down on your knees and pray to an external god. Do exactly what the great William Lyons Phelps did, and say to the whole vast world, “I am not talking to you, my Dear,” – I am communing with my Self. And if I give thanks for what has happened, I don’t give it to you; I give it to the Being-within-me – constant praise for this miraculous power that is housed within me. And you walk in the consciousness of being constantly praiseful for this miraculous power that became you, that you may become It! And that power is the Lord Jesus Christ who is in you, and there is no other.

So, when the whole vast world is looking for Him to come from without, as the great evangelist today has said, “It is immanent. He is on us. He is coming. I am here to greet Him.” He will wait forever in vain. For when He comes, He is not coming from without. When He comes, He rises from within, and you are He! So, he’s reaching millions of people, but he’s in kindergarten. And what do you expect? He cannot give them more than milk. But in time, you have got to be weaned from milk, and take meat, and then the true meaning of the great mystery of the Christian faith.

So, the world has accepted it in a little story. All well and good, but don’t forever and forever go on seeing only the little story. Learn to extract the meaning of the story, and hope it unfolds within you.

Meanwhile, you apply what you have heard tonight, and before I leave the City at the end of next week, you should be able to tell me that what you tonight desire you have.

Now let us go into the Silence.

“If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.”” – Neville Goddard

Today’s Neville Goddard Quote of The Day might be the most misquoted and misunderstood quote on the net. People often quote the first part, “feeling of the wish fulfilled”. But they often miss the end, where Neville says, “I would live and act upon that conviction.”

Nevelle saw his message being heard and used by other people, and he LIVED AND ACTED upon his assumption that his message would be heard and lived out by others. He spoke from the stage, he shared on the radio, he took action – and lived it out – he didn’t try to just SIT AND HOPE.

REAL LIFE EXAMPLE – LET’S DO IT!

So this past week I decided to stop drinking one of the most addictive drinks on the planet. Coffee. I saw myself COFFEE FREE – felt the FEELING OF THE WISH FULFILLED – and suddenly the way to make it happen EASILY showed up as a divine LIGHTNINGBOLT INSIDE MY MIND.

Read how I quit drinking coffee – in just four minutes – after having the “FEELING OF THE WISH FULFILLED” and get that you can use this EVERYWHERE IN YOUR LIFE.

End ANY bad habit in FOUR MINUTES – Inspired by Today’s Neville Goddard Quote – Click here!

Neville Goddard Mastermind Recordings – Get these!

“If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.”” – Neville Goddard

Today’s lesson identifies EXACTLY where the most powerful point of change is – within you.

Read it – remember it – apply it.

Life is meant to be loved and lived FULL OUT.

Mr Twenty Twenty

Neville Goddard Mastermnd Recordings: Click here!

“Man is always looking for some prop on which to lean. He is always
looking for some excuse to justify failure. This revelation gives
man no excuse for failure. His concept of himself is the cause of
all the circumstances of his life. All changes must first come from
within himself; and if he does not change on the outside it is
because he has not changed within. But man does not like to feel
that he is solely responsible for the conditions of his life.” – Neville Goddard

If you don’t FEEL IT – then you won’t take action on it – and you won’t get it.

Read today’s Neville Goddard Quote and get how important it is.

Think about it, if you don’t FEEL IT strong enough that YOU act on it, neither will the rest of the UNIVERSE. Your actions and behaviors RESULT from what you really IMAGINE AND FEEL.

Read more how this works, and what TO DO HERE: GENERATE AND CREATE

Whooo yah!

Mr Twenty Twenty

Neville Goddard: “The third letter, VAU, is your ability to feel you are that which you desire to be. As you feel you are it, you become aware of being it. To walk as though you were what you want to be is to take your desire out of the imaginary world and put the VAU upon it. You have completed the drama of creation. I am aware of something. Then I become aware of actually being that of which I was aware.”

Generate and Create – Click here!

Today’s Neville Goddard Quote of the day is about ELIMINATING DESIRE. As long as we have DESIRE we are DENYING that we already have unfolding into our lives what we choose – choose to be – choose to have – choose to give to the world.

If you want to PROGRAM IN a very powerful alternative to DESIRE – go read this article.

The Power of Words – Click here!

Neville Goddard Quote of the Day: from Assuptions Harden into Fact

“For to desire is to confess that you do not now possess what you desire, and because all things are yours, you rob yourself by living in the state of desire. My saviour is my desire. As I want something I am looking into the eyes of my saviour. But if I continue wanting it, I deny my Jesus, my saviour, for as I want I confess I am not and “except ye believe that I AM He ye die in your sins.” I cannot have and still continue to desire what I have. I may enjoy it, but I cannot continue wanting it.”

I request that you help me with a tiny little special project. I am using the principles we share at the Four Minute Man project – to streamline the method and mindset of Neville Goddard into something simple, sweet and memorable. My goal is to give help it be truly viral – spreading fast – sinking in deep – at the level of the DNA.

Here is my current three sentence version – inspired by today’s Neville Goddard Quote. Let me know what you think.

“Imagine the good. Imagine greatness. Imagine as GOD.”

“Imagine the good.” That’s a general statement. The direction we must take the mind in, if we are to have and appreciate The Good Life.

“Imagine Greatness.” Here I make it personal. Recognizing and appreciating The Greatness that we each are.

“Imagine as God.” This tiny bit is about remembering – we are the Son’s of God. The Christ is our Divine Human Imagination.

What do you think? How do my tiny little viral sentences work for you – in summarizing up the methods of Neville Goddard? Making it easy to remember – to share – to live?

Mr Twenty Twenty

Today’s Neville Goddard Quote – Consciousness is the Only Reality

In this modern, down to earth language of ours, you can forget eyes and windows and hands and look at it in this manner. You are seated here now. This first letter, JOD, is your I AMness, your awareness. You are aware of being aware — that is the first letter. Out of this awareness all states of awareness come.

The second letter, HE, called an eye, is your imagination, your ability to perceive. You imagine or perceive something which seems to be other than Self. As though you were lost in reverie and contemplated mental states in a detached manner, making the thinker and his thoughts separate entities.

The third letter, VAU, is your ability to feel you are that which you desire to be. As you feel you are it, you become aware of being it. To walk as though you were what you want to be is to take your desire out of the imaginary world and put the VAU upon it. You have completed the drama of creation. I am aware of something. Then I become aware of actually being that of which I was aware.

The fourth and last letter in the name of God is another HE, another eye, meaning the visible objective world which constantly bears witness of that which I am conscious of being. You do nothing about the objective world; it always molds itself in harmony with that which you are conscious of being.

Four Minute Man – Experiments In Lifestyle Design and Streamlined Success

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1. Tell a friend about this site. Send them here. The more people working with the principles of Neville Goddard – the better.

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Thank you for living the message and spreading the word.

Tonight we have the fifth and last lesson in this course. First I shall give you a sort of summary of what has gone before. Then, since so many of you have asked me to elaborate further on Lesson 3, I shall give you a few more ideas on thinking fourth-dimensionally.

I know that when a man sees a thing clearly he can tell it, he can explain it. This past winter in Barbados a fisherman, whose vocabulary would not encompass a thousand words, told me more in five minutes about the behaviour of the dolphin than Shakespeare with his vast vocabulary could have told me, if he did not know the habits of the dolphin.

This fisherman told me how the dolphin loves to play on a piece of drift-wood, and in order to catch him, you throw the wood out and bait him as you would bait children, because he likes to pretend he is getting out of the water. As I said, this man’s vocabulary was very limited, but he knew his fish, and he knew the sea. Because he knew his dolphin he could tell me all about their habits and how to catch them.

When you say you know a thing but you cannot explain it, I say you do not know it, for when you really know it you naturally express it.

If I should ask you now to define prayer, and say to you, “How would you, through prayer, go about realizing an objective, any objective?” If you can tell me, then you know it; but if you cannot tell me, then you do not know it. When you see it clearly in the mind’s eye the greater you will inspire the words which are necessary to clothe the idea and express it beautifully, and you will express the idea far better than a man with a vast vocabulary who does not see it as clearly as you do.

If you have listened carefully throughout the past four days, you know now that the Bible has no reference at all to any persons that ever existed, or to any events that ever occurred upon earth.

The authors of the Bible were not writing history, they were writing a great drama of the mind which they dressed up in the garb of history, and then adapted it to the limited capacity of the uncritical, unthinking masses.

You know that every story in the Bible is your story, that when the writers introduce dozens of characters in the same story they are trying to present you with different attributes of the mind that you may employ. You saw it as I took perhaps a dozen or more stories and interpreted them for you.

For instance, many people wonder how Jesus, the most gracious, the most loving man in the world, if he be man, could say to his mother, what he is supposed to have said to her as recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. John. Jesus is made to say to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” John 2:4.

You and I, who are not yet identified with the ideal we serve, would not make such a statement to our mother. Yet here was the embodiment of love saying to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

You are Jesus, and your mother is your own consciousness. For consciousness is the cause of all, therefore, it is the great father-mother of all phenomena.

You and I are creatures of habit. We get into the habit of accepting as final the evidence of our senses. Wine is needed for the guests and my senses tell me that there is no wine, and I through habit am about to accept this lack as final. When I remember that my consciousness is the one and only reality, therefore if I deny the evidence of my senses and assume the consciousness of having sufficient wine, I have in a sense rebuked my mother or the consciousness which suggested lack; and by assuming the consciousness of having what I desire for my guests, wine is produced in a way we do not know.

I have just read a note here from a dear friend of mine in the audience. Last Sunday he had an appointment at a church for a wedding; the clock told him he was late, everything told him he was late.

He was standing on a street corner waiting for a street car. There was none in sight. He imagined that, instead of being on the street corner, that he was in the church. At that moment a car stopped in front of him. My friend told the driver of his predicament and the driver said to him, “I am not going that way, but I will take you there.” My friend got into the car and was at the church in time for the service. That is applying the law correctly, non-acceptance of the suggestion of lateness. Never accept the suggestion of lack.

In this case I say to myself, “What have I to do with thee?” What have I to do with the evidence of my senses? Bring me all the pots and fill them. In other words, I assume that I have wine and all that I desire. Then my dimensionally greater Self inspires in all, the thoughts and the actions which aid the embodiment of my assumption.

It is not a man saying to a mother, “Woman what have I to do with thee?” It is every man who knows this law who will say to himself, when his senses suggest lack, “what have I to do with thee. Get behind me.” I will never again listen to a voice like that, because if I do, then I am impregnated by that suggestion and I will bear the fruit of lack.

We turn to another story in the Gospel of St. Mark where Jesus is hungry.

“And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.”

“And Jesus answered and said unto it, No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever. And his disciples heard it.” Mark 11:13, 14

“And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.” Mark 11:20

What tree am I blasting? Not a tree on the outside. It is my own consciousness. “I am the vine.” John 15:1. My consciousness, my I AMness is the great tree, and habit once more suggests emptiness, it suggests barrenness, it suggests four months before I can feast. But I cannot wait four months. I give myself this powerful suggestion that never again will I even for a moment relieve that it will take four months to realize my desire. The belief in lack must from this day on be barren and never again reproduce itself in my mind.

It is not a man blasting a tree. Everything in the Bible takes place in the mind of man: the tree, the city, the people, everything. There is not a statement made in the Bible that does not represent some attribute of the human mind. They are all personifications of the mind and not things within the world.

Consciousness is the one and only reality. There is no one to whom we can turn after we discover that our own awareness is God. For God is the cause of all and there is nothing but God. You cannot say that a devil causes some things and God others. Listen to these words.

“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut.”

“I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight: I will break in pieces the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.”

“And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.” Isaiah 45: 1, 2, 3

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” Isaiah 45:7.

“I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.”

“I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts.” Isaiah 45:12, 13

“I AM the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.” Isaiah 45:5.

Read these words carefully. They are not my words, they are the inspired words of men who discovered that consciousness is the only reality. If I am hurt, I am self hurt. If there is darkness in my world, I created the darkness and the gloom and the depression. If there is light and joy, I created the light and the joy. There is no one but this I AMness that does all.

You cannot find a cause outside of your own consciousness. Your world is a grand mirror constantly telling you who you are. As you meet people, they tell you by their behaviour who you are.

Your prayers will not be less devout because you turn to your own consciousness for help. I do not think that any person in prayer feels more of the joy, the piety, and the feeling of adoration, than I do when I feel thankful, as I assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled, knowing at the same time it is to myself that I turned.

In prayer you are called upon to believe that you possess what your reason and your senses deny. When you pray believe that you have and you shall receive. The Bible states it this way:

“Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.

“And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”

“But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.” Mark 11:24, 25, 26

That is what we must do when we pray. If I hold some thing against another, be it a belief of sickness, poverty , or anything else, I must loose it and let it go, not by using words of denial but by believing him to be what he desires to be. In that way I completely forgive him. I changed my concept of him. I had ought against him and I forgave him Complete forgetfulness is forgiveness. If I do not forget then I have not forgiven.

I only forgive something when I truly forget. I can say to you until the end of time, “I forgive you.” But if every time I see you or think of you, I am reminded of what I held against you, I have not forgiven you at all. Forgiveness is complete forgetfulness. You go to a doctor and he gives you something for your sickness. He is trying to take it from you, so he gives you something in place of it.

Give yourself a new concept of self for the old concept. Give up the old concept completely.

A prayer granted implies that something is done in consequence of the prayer which otherwise would not have been done. Therefore, I myself am the spring of action, the directing mind and the one who grants the prayer.

Anyone who prays successfully turns within, and appropriates the state sought. You have no sacrifice to offer. Do not let anyone tell you that you must struggle and suffer. You need not struggle for the realization of your desire. Read what it says in the Bible.

“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me saith the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.”

“When ye come to appear before me, who hath required that at your hand, to tread my courts?”

“Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.”

“Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them” Isaiah 1:11-14

“Ye shall have a song as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goeth with a pipe to come into the mountain of the Lord, to the mighty One of Israel.” Isaiah 30:29

“Sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise from the end of the earth.” Isaiah 42: 10.

“Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth: break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.” Isaiah 44:23

“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head. They shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” Isaiah 51:11

The only acceptable gift is a joyful heart. Come with singing and praise. That is the way to come before the Lord — your own consciousness. Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled, and you have brought the only acceptable gift. All states of mind other than that of the wish fulfilled are an abomination; they are superstition and mean nothing.

When you come before me, rejoice, because rejoicing implies that something has happened which you desired. Come before me singing, giving praise, and giving thanks, for these states of mind imply acceptance of the state sought. Put yourself in the proper mood and your own consciousness will embody it.

If I could define prayer for anyone and put it just as clearly as I could, I would simply say, “It is the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” If you ask, “What do you mean by that?” I would say, “I would feel myself into the situation of the answered prayer and then I would live and act upon that conviction.” I would try to sustain it without effort, that is, I would live and act as though it were already a fact, knowing that as I walk in this fixed attitude my assumption will harden into fact.

Time does not permit me to go any further into the argument that the Bible is not history. But if you have listened attentively to my message these past four nights, I do not think you want any more proof that the Bible is not history. Apply what you have heard and you will realize your desires.

**************

“And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” John 14:29

Many persons, myself included, have observed events before they occurred; that is, before they occurred in this world of three dimensions. Since man can observe an event before it occurs in the three dimensions of space, then life on earth proceeds according to plan; and this plan must exist elsewhere in another dimension and is slowly moving through our space.

If the occurring events were not in this world when they were observed, then to be perfectly logical they must have been out of this world. And whatever is THERE to be seen before it occurs HERE must be “pre-determined” from the point of view of man awake in a three-dimensional world. Yet the ancient teachers taught us that we could alter the future, and my own experience confirms the truth of their teaching.

Therefore, my object in giving this course is to indicate possibilities inherent in man, to show that man can alter his: future; but, thus altered, it forms again a deterministic sequence starting from the point of interference — a future that will be consistent with the alteration.

The most remarkable feature of man’s future is its flexibility. The future, although prepared in advance in every detail, has several outcomes. We have at every moment of our lives the choice before us which of several futures we will have.

There are two actual outlooks on the world possessed by everyone — a natural focus and a spiritual focus. The ancient teachers called the one “the carnal mind,” and the other “the mind of Christ.” We may differentiate them as ordinary waking consciousness, governed by our senses, and a controlled imagination, governed by desire.

We recognize these two distinct centers of thought in the statement: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” I Cor. 2:14

The natural view confines reality to the moment called NOW. To the natural view, the past and future are purely imaginary. The spiritual view on the other hand sees the contents of time. The past and future are a present whole to the spiritual view. What is mental and subjective to the natural man is concrete and objective to the spiritual man.

The habit of seeing only that which our senses permit renders us totally blind to what, otherwise, we could see. To cultivate the faculty of seeing the invisible, we should often deliberately disentangle our minds from the evidence of the senses and focus our attention on an invisible state, mentally feeling it and sensing it until it has all the distinctness of reality.

Earnest, concentrated thought focused in a particular direction shuts out other sensations and causes them to disappear. We have only to concentrate on the state desired in order to see it.

The habit of withdrawing attention from the region of sensation and concentrating it on the invisible develops our spiritual outlook and enables us to penetrate beyond the world of sense and to see that which is invisible. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen.” Rom. 1:20. This vision is completely independent of the natural faculties. Open it and quicken it!

A little practice will convince us that we can, by controlling our imagination, reshape our future in harmony with our desire. Desire is the mainspring of action. We could not move a single finger unless we had a desire to move it. No matter what we do, we follow the desire which at the moment dominates our minds. When we break a habit, our desire to break it is greater than our desire to continue the habit.

The desires which impel us to action are those which hold our attention. A desire is but an awareness of something we lack and need to make our life more enjoyable. Desires always have some personal gain in view, the greater the anticipated gain, the more intense is the desire. There is no absolutely unselfish desire. Where there is nothing to gain there is no desire, and consequently no action.

The spiritual man speaks to the natural man through the language of desire. The key to progress in life and to the fulfillment of dreams lies in ready obedience to its voice. Unhesitating obedience to its voice is an immediate assumption of the wish fulfilled. To desire a state is to have it. As Pascal has said, “You would not have sought me had you not already found me.”

Man, by assuming the feeling of his wish fulfilled, and then living and acting on this conviction, alters the future in harmony with his assumption. Assumptions awaken what they affirm. As soon as man assumes the feeling of his wish fulfilled, his fourth-dimensional Self finds ways for the attainment of this end, discovers methods for its realization.

I know of no clearer definition of the means by which we realize our desires than to EXPERIENCE IN THE IMAGINATION WHAT WE WOULD EXPERIENCE IN THE FLESH WERE WE TO ACHIEVE OUR GOAL. This imaginary experience of the end with acceptance, wills the means. The fourth-dimensional Self then constructs with its larger outlook the means necessary to realize the accepted end.

The undisciplined mind finds it difficult to assume a state which is denied by the senses. But here is a technique that makes it easy to “call things which are not seen as though they were,” that is, to encounter an event before it occurs. People have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things. But this simple formula for changing the future was discovered after years of searching and experimenting.

The first step in changing the future is DESIRE, that is, define your objective — know definitely what you want.

Secondly, construct an event which you. believe you would encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — an event which implies fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant.

Thirdly, immobilize the physical body, and induce a condition akin to sleep by imagining that you are sleepy. Lie on a bed, or relax in a chair. Then, with eyelids closed and your attention focused on the action you intend to experience in imagination, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action here and. now.

You must always participate in the imaginary action; not merely stand back and look on, but feel that you are actually performing the action so that the imaginary sensation is real to you.

It is important always to remember that the proposed action must be one which FOLLOWS the fulfillment of your desire. Also you must feel yourself into the action until it has all the vividness and distinctness of reality.

For example, suppose you desire promotion in your office. Being congratulated would be an event you would encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. Having selected this action as the one you will experience in imagination, immobilize the physical body; and induce a state akin to sleep, a drowsy state, but one in which you are still able to control the direction of your thoughts, a state in which you are attentive without effort. Then visualize a friend standing before you. Put your imaginary hand into his. Feel it to be solid and real, and carry on an imaginary conversation with him in harmony with the action.

You do not visualize yourself at a distance in point of space and at a distance in point of time being congratulated on your good fortune. Instead, you make elsewhere HERE, and the future NOW. The future event is a reality NOW in a dimensionally larger world and oddly enough, now in a dimensionally larger world is equivalent to HERE in the ordinary three-dimensional space of everyday life.

The difference between FEELING yourself in action, here and now, and visualizing yourself in action, as though you were on a motion-picture screen, is the difference between success and failure. The difference will be appreciated if you will now visualize yourself climbing a ladder. Then, with eyelids closed imagine that a ladder is right in front of you and FEEL yourself actually climbing it.

Desire, physical immobility bordering on sleep, and imaginary action in which Sell feelingly predominates HERE AND NOW, are not only important factors in altering the future, but they are also essential conditions in consciously projecting the spiritual Self.

When the physical body is immobilized and we become possessed of the idea to do something — if we imagine that we are doing it HERE AND NOW and keep the imaginary action feelingly going right up until sleep ensues — we are likely to awaken out of the physical body to find ourselves in a dimensionally larger world with a dimensionally larger focus and actually doing what we desired and imagined we were doing in the flesh.

But whether we awaken there or not, we are actually performing the action in the fourth-dimensional world, and will in the future re-enact it here in the third-dimensional world.

Experience has taught me to restrict the imaginary action, to condense the idea which is to be the object of our meditation into a single act, and to re-enact it over and over again until it has the feeling of reality. Otherwise, the attention will wander off along an associational track, and hosts of associated images will be presented to our attention, and in a few seconds they will lead us hundreds of miles away from our objective in point of space, and years away in point of time.

If we decide to climb a particular flight of stairs, because that is the likely event to follow the realization of our desire, then we must restrict the action to climbing that particular flight of stairs. Should the attention wander off, bring it back to its task of climbing that flight of stairs, and keep on doing so until the imaginary action has all the solidity and distinctness of reality. The idea must be maintained in the field of presentation without any sensible effort on our part. We must, with the minimum of effort, permeate the mind with the feeling of the wish fulfilled.

Drowsiness facilitates change because it favours attention without effort, but it must not be pushed to the state of sleep, in which we shall no longer be able to control the movements of our attention, but a moderate degree of drowsiness in which we are still able to direct our thoughts.

A most effective way to embody a desire is to assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and then, in a relaxed and sleepy state, repeat over and over again like a lullaby, any short phrase which implies fulfillment of your desire, such as, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, ” until the single sensation of thankfulness dominates the mind. Speak these words as though you addressed a higher power for having done it for you.

If, however, we seek a conscious projection in a dimensionally larger world, then we must keep the action going right up until sleep ensues. Experience in imagination with all the distinctness of reality what would be experienced in the flesh were we to achieve our goal and we shall in time meet it in the flesh as we met it in our imagination.

Feed the mind with premises — that is, assertions presumed to be true, because assumptions, though false, if persisted in until they have the feeling of reality, will harden into fact.

To an assumption, all means which promote its realization are good. It influences the behaviour of all, by inspiring in all the movements, the actions, and the words which tend towards its fulfillment.

To understand how man molds his future in harmony with his assumption — by simply experiencing in his imagination what he would experience in reality were he to realize his goal – we must know what we mean by a dimensionally larger world, for it is to a dimensionally larger world that we go to alter our future.

The observation of an event before it occurs implies that the event is predetermined from the point of view of man in the three-dimensional world. Therefore to change the conditions here in the three dimensions of space we must first change them in the four dimensions of space.

Man does not know exactly what is meant by a dimensionally larger world, and would no doubt deny the existence of a dimensionally larger Self. He is quite familiar with the three dimensions of length, width and height, and he feels that, if there were a fourth-dimension, it should be just as obvious to him as the dimensions of length, width and height.

Now a dimension is not a line. It is any way in which a thing can be measured that is entirely different from all other ways. That is, to measure a solid fourth-dimensionally, we simply measure it in any direction except that of its length, width and height. Now, is there another way of measuring an object other than those of its length, width and height?

Time measures my life without employing the three dimensions of length, width and height. There is no such thing as an instantaneous object. Its appearance and disappearance are measurable. It endures for a definite length of time. We can measure its life span without using the dimensions of length, width and height. Time is definitely a fourth way of measuring an object.

The more dimensions an object has, the more substantial and real it becomes. A straight line, which lies entirely in one dimension, acquires shape, mass and substance by the addition of dimensions. What new quality would time, the fourth dimension give, which would make it just as vastly superior to solids, as solids are to surfaces and surfaces are to lines? Time is a medium for changes in experience, for all changes take time.

The new quality is changeability. Observe that, if we bisect a solid, its cross section will be a surface; by bisecting a surface, we obtain a line, and by bisecting a line, we get a point. This means that a point is but a cross section of a line; which is, in turn, but across section of a surface; which is, in turn, but a cross section of a solid; which is, in turn, if carried to its logical conclusion, but across section of a four-dimensional object.

We cannot avoid the inference that all three-dimensional objects are but cross sections of four-dimensional bodies. Which means: when I meet you, I meet a cross section of the four-dimensional you — the four-dimensional Self that is not seen. To see the four-dimensional Self I must see every cross section or moment of your life from birth to death, and see them all as co-existing.

My focus should take in the entire array of sensory impressions which you have experienced on earth, plus those you might encounter. I should see them, not in the order in which they were experienced by you, but as a present whole. Because CHANGE is the characteristic of the fourth dimension, I should see them in a state of flux — as a living, animated whole.

Now, if we have all this clearly fixed in our minds, what does it mean to us in this three-dimensional world? It means that, if we can move along times length, we can see the future and alter it if we so desire.

This world, which we think so solidly real, is a shadow out of which and beyond which we may at any time pass. It is an abstraction from a more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — a more fundamental world abstracted from a still more fundamental and dimensionally larger world — and so on to infinity. For the absolute is unattainable by any means or analysis, no matter how many dimensions we add to the world.

Man can prove the existence of a dimensionally larger world by simply focusing his attention on an invisible state and imagining that he sees and feels it. If he remains concentrated in this state, his present environment will pass away, and he will awaken in a dimensionally larger world where the object of his contemplation will be seen as a concrete objective reality.

I feel intuitively that, were he to abstract his thoughts from this dimensionally larger world and retreat still farther within his mind, he would again bring about an externalization of time. He would discover that, every time he retreats into his inner mind and brings about an externalization of time, space becomes dimensionally larger. And he would therefore conclude that both time and space are serial, and that the drama of life is but the climbing of a multitudinous dimensional time block.

Scientists will one day explain WHY there is a Serial Universe. But in practice HOW we use this Serial Universe to change the future is more important. To change the future, we need only concern ourselves with two worlds in the infinite series; the world we know by reason of our bodily organs, and the world we perceive independently of our bodily organs.

I have stated that man has at every moment of time the choice before him which of several futures he will have. But the question arises: “How is this possible when the experiences of man, awake in the three-dimensional world, are predetermined?” as his observation of an event before it occurs implies.

This ability to change the future will be seen if we liken the experiences of life on earth to this printed page. Man experiences events on earth singly and successively in the same way that you are now experiencing the words of this page.

Imagine that every word on this page represents a single sensory impression. To get the context, to understand my meaning, you focus your vision on the first word in the upper left-hand corner and then move your focus across the page from left to right, letting it fall on the words singly and successively. By the time your eyes reach the last word on this page you have extracted my meaning.

But suppose on looking at the page, with all the printed words thereon equally present, you decided to rearrange them. You could, by rearranging them, tell an entirely different story, in fact you could tell many different stories.

A dream is nothing more than uncontrolled four-dimensional thinking, or the rearrangement of both past and future sensory impressions. Man seldom dreams of events in the order in which he experiences them when awake. He usually dreams of two or more events which are separated in time fused into a single sensory impression; or else he so completely rearranges his single waking sensory impressions that he does not recognize them when he encounters them in his waking state.

For example, I dreamed that I delivered a package to the restaurant in my apartment building. The hostess said to me, “You can’t leave that there,” whereupon, the elevator operator gave me a few letters and as I thanked him for them he, in turn, thanked me. At this point, the night elevator operator appeared and waved a greeting to me.

The following day, as I left my apartment, I picked up a few letters which had been placed at my door. On my way down I gave the day elevator operator a tip and thanked him for taking care of my mail, whereupon, he thanked me for the tip.

On my return home that day I overheard a doorman say to a delivery man, “You can’t leave that there.” As I was about to take the elevator up to my apartment, I was attracted by a familiar face in the restaurant, and as I looked in the hostess greeted me with a smile. That night I escorted my dinner guests to the elevator and as I said good-bye to them, the night operator waved good-night to me.

By simply rearranging a few of the single sensory impressions I was destined to encounter, and by fusing two or more of them into single sensory impressions, I constructed a dream which differed quite a bit from my waking experience.

When we have learned to control the movements of our attention in the four-dimensional world, we shall be able to consciously create circumstances in the three-dimensional world. We learn this control through the waking dream, where our attention can be maintained without effort, for attention minus effort is indispensable to changing the future. We can, in a controlled waking dream, consciously construct an event which we desire to experience in the three-dimensional world.

The sensory impressions we use to construct our waking dream are present realities displaced in time or the four-dimensional world. All that we do in constructing the waking dream is to select from the vast array of sensory impressions those, which, when they are properly arranged, imply that we have realized our desire.

With the dream clearly defined we relax in a chair and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. A state which, although bordering on sleep, leaves us in conscious control of the movements of our attention. Then we experience in imagination what we would experience in reality were this waking dream an objective fact.

In applying this technique to change the future it is important always to remember that the only thing which occupies the mind during the waking dream is THE WAKING DREAM, the predetermined action and sensation which implies the fulfillment of our desire. How the waking dream becomes physical fact is not our concern. Our acceptance of the waking dream as physical reality wills the means for its fulfillment.

Let me again lay the foundation of prayer, which is nothing more than a controlled waking dream:

1. Define your objective, know definitely what you want.

2. Construct an event which you believe you will encounter FOLLOWING the fulfillment of your desire — something which will have the action of Self predominant — an event which implies the fulfillment of your desire.

3. Immobilize the physical body and induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep. Then, mentally feel yourself right into the proposed action, until the single sensation of fulfillment dominates the mind; imagining all the while that you are actually performing the action HERE AND NOW so that you experience in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you now to realize your goal. Experience has convinced me that this is the easiest way to achieve our goal.

However, my own many failures would convict me were I to imply that I have completely mastered the movements of my attention. But I can, with the ancient teacher, say:

“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize.” Phil. 3:13,14

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Again I want to remind you that the responsibility to make what you have done real in this world is not on your shoulders. Do not be concerned with the HOW, you have assumed that it is done, the assumption has its own way of objectifying itself. All responsibility to make it so is removed from you.

There is a little statement in the book of Exodus which bears this out. Millions of people who have read it, or have had it mentioned to them throughout the centuries have completely misunderstood it. It is said, “Steep not a kid in its mothers milk.” (King James version, “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mothers milk.” Exodus 23:19).

Unnumbered millions of people, misunderstanding this statement, to this very day in the enlightened age of 1948, will not eat any dairy products with a meat dish. It just is not done.

They think the Bible is history, and when it says, “Steep not a kid in its mother’s milk,” milk and the products of milk, butter and cheese, they will not take at the same time they take the kid or any kind of meat. In fact they even have separate dishes with which to cook their meat.

But you are now about to apply it psychologically. You have done your meditation and you have assumed that you are what you want to be. Consciousness is God, your attention is like the very stream of life or milk itself that nurses and makes alive that which holds your attention. In other words, what holds your attention has your life.

Throughout the centuries a kid has been used as the symbol of sacrifice. You have given birth to everything in your world. But there are things that you no longer wish to keep alive, although you have mothered and fathered them. You are a jealous father that can easily consume, like Cronus, his children. It is your right to consume what formerly you expressed when you did not know better.

Now you are detached in consciousness from that former state. It was your kid, it was your child, you embodied and expressed it in your world. But now that you have assumed that you are what you want to be, do not look back on your former state and wonder HOW it will disappear from your world. For if you look back and give attention to it, you are steeping once more that kid in its mother’s milk.

Do not say to yourself, ‘I wonder if I am really detached from that state,” or “I wonder if so and so is true.” Give all your attention to the assumption that the thing is so, because all responsibility to make it so is completely removed from your shoulders. You do not have to make it so, it IS so. You appropriate what is already fact, and you walk in the assumption that it is, and in a way that you do not know, I do not know, no man knows, it becomes objectified in your world.

Do not be concerned with the how, and do not look back on your former state. “No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62

Simply assume that it is done and suspend reason, suspend all the arguments of the conscious three-dimensional mind. Your desire is outside of the reach of the three-dimensional mind.

Assume you are that which you wish to be; walk as though you were it; and as you remain faithful to your assumption — it will harden into fact.

May I take just a minute to clarify what was said last night. A lady felt from what I said last night that I am anti one nation. I do hope that I am not anti any nation, race or belief. If perchance I used a nation, it was only to illustrate a point.

What I tried to tell you was this — we become what we contemplate. For it is the nature of love, as it is the nature of hate, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. Last night I simply read a news item to show you that when we think we can destroy our image by breaking the mirror, we are only fooling ourselves.

When, through war or revolution, we destroy titles which to us represent arrogance and greed, we become in time the embodiment of that which we thought we had destroyed. So today the people who thought they destroyed the tyrants are themselves that which they thought they had destroyed.

That I may not be misunderstood, let me again lay the foundation of this principle. Consciousness is the one and only reality. We are incapable of seeing other than the contents of our own consciousness

Therefore, hate betrays us in the hour of victory and condemns us to be that which we condemn. All conquest results in an exchange of characteristics, so that conquerors become like the conquered foe. We hate others for the evil which is in ourselves. Races, nations, and religious groups have lived for centuries in intimate hostility, and it is the nature of hatred, as it is the nature of love, to change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate.

Nations act toward other nations as their own citizens act toward each other. When slavery exists in a state and that nation attacks another it is with intent to enslave. When there is a fierce economic competition between citizen and citizen, then in war with another nation the object of the war is to destroy the trade of the enemy. Wars of domination are brought about by the will of those who within a state are dominant over the fortunes of the rest.

We radiate the world that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagination and feeling. But in this third-dimensional world of ours time beats slowly. And so we do not always observe the relationship of the visible world to our inner nature.

Now that is really what I meant. I thought I had said it. That I may not be misunderstood, that is my principle. You and I can contemplate an ideal, and become it by falling in love with it.

On the other hand we can contemplate something we heartily dislike and by condemning it we will become it. But because of the slowness of time in this three-dimensional world, when we do become what we contemplated we have forgotten that formerly we set out to worship or destroy it.

Tonight’s lesson is the capstone of the Bible, so do give me your attention. The most important question asked in the Bible will be found in the 16th chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

As you know, all of the Bible stories are your stories; its characters live only in the mind of man. They have no reference at all to any person, who lived in time and space, or to any event that ever occurred upon earth.

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The drama related in Matthew takes place in this manner Jesus turns to his disciples and asks them, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” Matt. 16:13

“And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”

“He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?”

“And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.”

“And I say also unto thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” Matt. 16:14-18

Jesus turning to his disciples is man turning to his disciplined mind in self-contemplation. You ask yourself the question, “Whom do men say that I am?” In our language, “I wonder what men think of me?”

You answer, “Some say John come again, Some say Elias, others say Jeremiah, and still others a Prophet of old come again.”

It is very flattering to be told that you are, or that you resemble, the great men of the past, but enlightened reason is not enslaved by public opinion. It is only concerned with the truth so it asks itself another question, “But whom say ye that I am?” In other words, “Who am I?”

If I am bold enough to assume that I am Christ Jesus, the answer will come back, “Thou are Christ Jesus.”

When I can assume it and feel it and boldly live it, I will say to myself, “Flesh and blood could not have told me this. But my Father which is in Heaven revealed it unto me.” Then I make this concept of Self the rock on which I establish my church, my world.

“If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24

Because consciousness is the only reality I must assume that I am already that which I desire to be. If I do not believe that I am already what I want to be, then I remain as I am and die in this limitation.

Man is always looking for some prop on which to lean. He is always looking for some excuse to justify failure. This revelation gives man no excuse for failure. His concept of himself is the cause of all the circumstances of his life. All changes must first come from within himself; and if he does not change on the outside it is because he has not changed within. But man does not like to feel that he is solely responsible for the conditions of his life.

“From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”

“Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away?”

“Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” John 6:66-68

I may not like what I have just heard, that I must turn to my own consciousness as to the only reality, the only foundation on which all phenomena can be explained. It was easier living when I could blame another. It was much easier living when I could blame society for my ills, or point a finger across the sea. and blame another nation. It was easier living when I could blame the weather for the way I feel.

But to tell me that I am the cause of all that happens to me that I am forever molding my world in harmony with my inner nature, that is more than man is willing to accept. If this is true, to whom would I go? If these are the words of eternal life, I must return to them, even though they seem so difficult to digest.

When man fully understands this, he knows that public opinion does not matter, for men only tell him who he is. The behaviour of men constantly tell me who I have conceived myself to be.

If I accept this challenge and begin to live by it, I finally reach the point that is called the great prayer of the Bible. It is related in the 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” John 17:4

“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” John 17:5

“While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.” John 17:12

It is impossible for anything to be lost. In this divine economy nothing can be lost, it cannot even pass away. The little flower which has bloomed once, blooms forever. It is invisible to you here with your limited focus, but it blooms forever in the larger dimension of your being, and tomorrow you will encounter it.

All that thou gavest me I have kept in thy name, and none have I lost save the son of perdition. The son of perdition means simply the belief in loss. Son is a concept, an idea. Perdido is loss. I have only truly lost the concept of loss, for nothing can be lost.

I can descend from the sphere where the thing itself now lives, and as I descend in consciousness to a lower level within myself it passes from my world. I say, “I have lost my health. I have lost my wealth. I have lost my standing in the community. I have lost faith. I have lost a thousand things.” But the things in themselves, having once been real in my world, can never cease to be. They never become unreal with the passage of time.

I, by my descent in consciousness to a lower level, cause these things to disappear from my sight and I say, “They have gone; they are finished as far as my world goes.” All I need do is to ascend to the level where they are eternal, and they once more objectify themselves and appear as realities within my world.

The crux of the whole 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John is found in the 19th verse, “And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.”

Heretofore I thought I could change others through effort. Now I know I cannot change another unless I first change myself. To change another within my world I must first change my concept of that other; and to do it best I change my concept of self. For it was the concept I held of self that made me see others as I did.

Had I a noble, dignified concept of myself, I never could have seen the unlovely in others.

Instead of trying to change others through argument and force, let me but ascend in consciousness to a higher level and I will automatically change others by changing self. “There is no one to change but self; that self is simply your awareness, your consciousness and the world in which it lives is determined by the concept you hold of self. It is to consciousness that we must turn as to the only reality. For there is no clear conception of the origin of phenomena except that consciousness is all and all is consciousness.

You need no helper to bring you what you seek. Do not for one second believe that I am advocating escape from reality when I ask you to simply assume you are now the man or the lady that you want to be.

If you and I could feel what it would be like were we now that which we want to be, and live in this mental atmosphere as though it were real, then, in a way we do not know, our assumption would harden into fact. This is all we need do in order to ascend to the level where our assumption is already an objective, concrete reality.

I need change no man, I sanctify myself and in so doing I sanctify others. To the pure all things are pure. “There is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” Rom. 14:14. There is nothing in itself unclean, but you, by your concept of self, see things either clean or unclean.

“I and my Father are one.” John 10:30.

“If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.”

“But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.’ John 10:37, 38

He made himself one with God and thought it not strange or robbery to do the works of God. You always bear fruit in harmony with what you are. It is the most natural thing in the world for a pear tree to bear pears, an apple tree to bear apples, and for man to mold the circumstances of his life in harmony with his inner nature.

“I am the vine, ye are the branches.” John 15:5. A branch has no life save it be rooted in the vine. All I need do to change the fruit is to change the vine.

You have no life in my world save that I am conscious of you. You are rooted in me and, like fruit, you bear witness of the vine that I am. There is no reality in the world other than your consciousness. Although you may now seem to be what you do not want to be, all you need do to change it, and to prove the change by circumstances in your world, is to quietly assume that you are that which you now want to be, and in a way you do not know you will become it.

There is no other way to change this world. “I am the way.” My I AMness, my consciousness is the way by which I change my world. As I change my concept of self, I change my world. When men and women help or hinder us, they only play the part that we, by our concept of self, wrote for them, and they play it automatically. They must play the parts they are playing because we are what we are.

You will change the world only when you become the embodiment of that which you want the world to be. You have but one gift in this world that is truly yours to give and that is yourself. Unless you yourself are that which you want the world to be, you will never see it in this world. “Except ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” John 8:24

Do you know that no two in this room live in the same world. We are going home to different worlds tonight. We close our doors on entirely different worlds. We rise tomorrow and go to work, where we meet each other and meet others, but we live in different mental worlds, different physical worlds.

I can only give what I am, I have no other gift to give. If I want the world to be perfect, and who does not, I have failed only because I did not know that I could never see it perfect until I myself become perfect. If I am not perfect I cannot see perfection, but the day that I become it, I beautify my world because I see it through my own eyes. “Unto the pure all things are pure.” Titus 1:15

No two here can tell me that you have heard the same message any one night. The one thing that you must do is hear what I say through that which you are. It must be filtered through your prejudices, your superstitions, and your concept of self. Whatever you are, it must come through that, and be colored by what you are.

If you are disturbed and you would like me to be something other than what I appear to be, then you must be that which you want me to be. We must become the thing that we want others to be or we will never see them be it.

Your consciousness, my consciousness, is the only true foundation in the world. This is that which is called Peter in the Bible, not a man, this faithfulness that cannot turn to anyone, that cannot be flattered when you are told by men you are John come again. That is very flattering to be told you are John the Baptist come again, or the great Prophet Elias, or Jeremiah.

Then I deafen my ears to this very flattering little bit of news men would give me and I ask myself,
“But honestly who am I?”

If I can deny the limitations of my birth, my environment, and the belief that I am but an extension of my family tree, and feel within myself that I am Christ, and sustain this assumption until it takes a central place and forms the habitual center of my energy, I will do the works attributed to Jesus. Without thought or effort I will mold a world in harmony with that perfection which I have assumed and feel springing within me.

When I open the eyes of the blind, unstop the ears of the deaf, give joy for mourning and beauty for ashes, then and only then, have I truly established this vine deep within. That is what I would automatically do were I truly conscious of being Christ. It is said of this presence, He proved that He was Christ by His works.

Our ordinary alterations of consciousness, as we pass from one state to another, are not transformations, because each of them is so rapidly succeeded by another in the reverse direction;
but whenever our assumption grows so stable as to definitely expel its rivals, then that central habitual concept defines our character and is a true transformation.

Jesus, or enlightened reason, saw nothing unclean in the woman taken in adultery. He said to her, “Hath no man condemned thee?” John 8:10

“She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.” John 8:11

No matter what is brought before the presence of beauty, it sees only beauty. Jesus was so completely identified with the lovely that He was incapable of seeing the unlovely.

When you and I really become conscious of being Christ, we too will straighten the arms of the withered, and resurrect the dead hopes of men. We will do all the things that we could not do when we felt ourselves limited by our family tree. It is a bold step and should not be taken lightly, because to do it is to die. John, the man of three dimensions is beheaded, or loses his three-dimensional focus that Jesus, the fourth-dimensional Self may live.

Any enlargement of our concept of Self involves a somewhat painful parting with strongly rooted hereditary conceptions. The ligaments are strong that hold us in the womb of conventional limitations. All that you formerly believed, you no longer believe. You know now that there is no power outside of your own consciousness. Therefore you cannot turn to anyone outside of self.

You have no ears for the suggestion that something else has power in it. You know the only reality is God, and God is your own consciousness. There is no other God. Therefore on this rock you build the everlasting church and boldly assume you are this Divine Being, self-begotten because you dared to appropriate that which was not given to you in your cradle, a concept of Self not formed in your mother’s womb, a concept of self conceived outside of the offices of man.

The story is beautifully told us in the Bible using the two sons of Abraham: one the blessed, Isaac, born outside of the offices of man and the other, Ishmael, born in bondage.

Sarah was much too old to beget a child, so her husband Abraham went in unto the bondservant Hagar, the pilgrim, and she conceived of the old man and bore him a son called Ishmael. Ishmael’s hand was against every man and every man’s hand against him.

Every child born of woman is born into bondage, born into all that his environment represents, regardless of whether it be the throne of England, the White House, or any great place in the world. Every child born of woman is personified as this Ishmael, the child of Hagar.

But asleep in every child is the blessed Isaac, who is born outside of the offices of man, and is born through faith alone. This second child has no earthly father. He is Self-begotten.

What is the second birth? I find myself man, I cannot go back into my mother’s womb, and yet I must be born a second time. “Except a man be born again he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” John 3:3

I quietly appropriate that which no man can give me, no woman can give me. I dare to assume that I am God. This must be of faith, this must be of promise. Then I become the blessed, I become Isaac.

As I begin to do the things that only this presence could do, I know that I am born out of the limitations of Ishmael, and I have become heir to the kingdom. Ishmael could not inherit anything, although his father was Abraham, or God. Ishmael did not have both parents of the godly; his mother was Hagar the bond-woman, and so he could not partake of his father’s estate.

You are Abraham and Sarah, and contained within your own consciousness there is one waiting for recognition. In the Old Testament it is called Isaac, and in the New Testament it is called Jesus, and it is born without the aid of man.

No man can tell you that you are Christ Jesus, no man can tell you and convince you that you are God. You must toy with the idea and wonder what it would be like to be God.

No clear conception of the origin of phenomena is possible except that consciousness is all and all is consciousness. Nothing can be evolved from man that was not potentially involved in his nature. The ideal we serve and hope to attain could never be evolved from us were it not potentially involved in our nature.

Let me now retell and emphasize an experience of mine printed by me two years ago under the title, THE SEARCH. I think it will help you to understand this law of consciousness, and show you that you have no one to change but self, for you are incapable of seeing other than the contents of your own consciousness.

Once in an idle interval at sea, I meditated on “the perfect state,” and wondered what I would be were I of too pure eyes to behold iniquity, if to me all things were pure and were I without condemnation. As I became lost in this fiery brooding, I found myself lifted above the dark environment of the senses. So intense was feeling I felt myself a being of fire dwelling in a body of air. Voices, as from a heavenly chorus, with the exaltation of those who had been conquerors in a conflict with death, were singing, “He is risen -He is risen,” and intuitively I knew they meant me.

Then I seemed to be walking in the night. I soon came upon a scene that might have been the ancient Pool of Bethesda for in this place lay a great multitude of impotent folk — blind, halt, withered -waiting not for the moving of the water as of tradition, but waiting for me.

As I came near, without thought or effort on my part, they were one after the other, molded as by the Magician of the Beautiful. Eyes, hands, feet — all missing members — were drawn from some invisible reservoir and molded in harmony with that perfection which I felt springing within me. When all were made perfect the chorus exulted, “It is finished.”

I know this vision was the result of my intense meditation upon the idea of perfection, for my meditations invariably bring about union with the state contemplated. I had been so completely absorbed within the idea that for awhile I had become what I contemplated, and the high purpose with which I had for that moment identified myself drew the companionship of high things and fashioned the vision in harmony with my inner nature.

The ideal with which we are united works by association of ideas to awaken a thousand moods to create a drama in keeping with the central idea.

My mystical experiences have convinced me that there is no way to bring about the perfection we seek other than by the transformation of ourselves. As soon as we succeed in transforming ourselves, the world will melt magically before our eyes and reshape itself in harmony with that which our transformation affirms.

We fashion the world that surrounds us by the intensity of our imagination and feeling, and we illuminate or darken our lives by the concepts we hold of ourselves. Nothing is more important to us than our conception of ourselves, and especially is true of our concept of the deep, dimensionally greater One within us.

Those that help or hinder us, whether they know it or not, are the servants of that law which shapes outward circumstances in harmony with our inner nature. It is our conception of ourselves which frees or constrains us, though it may use material agencies to achieve its purpose.

Because life molds the outer world to reflect the inner arrangement of our minds, there is no way of bringing about the outer perfection we seek other than by the transformation of ourselves. No help cometh from without: the hills to which we lift our eyes are those of an inner range.

It is thus to our own consciousness that we must turn as to the only reality, the only foundation on which all phenomena can be explained. We can rely absolutely on the justice of this law to give us only that which is of the nature of ourselves.

To attempt to change the world before we change our concept of ourselves is to struggle against the nature of things. There can be no outer change until there is first an inner change.

As within, so without.

I am not advocating philosophical indifference when I suggest that we should imagine ourselves as already that which we want to be, living in a mental atmosphere of greatness, rather than using physical means and arguments to bring about the desired changes.

Everything we do, unaccompanied by a change of consciousness, is but futile readjustment of surfaces. However we toil or struggle, we can receive no more than our concepts of Self affirm. To protest against anything which happens to us is to protest against the law of our being and our ruler ship over our own destiny.

The circumstances of my life are too closely related to my conception of myself not to have been formed by my own spirit from some dimensionally larger storehouse of my being. If there is pain to me in these happenings, I should look within myself for the cause, for I am moved here and there and made to live in a world in harmony with my concept of myself.

If we would become as emotionally aroused over our ideas as we become over our dislikes, we would ascend to the plane of our ideal as easily as we now descend to the level of our hates.

Love and hate have a magical transforming power, and we grow through their exercise into the likeness of what we contemplate. By intensity of hatred we create in ourselves the character we imagine in our enemies. Qualities die for want of attention, so the unlovely states might best be rubbed out by imagining “‘beauty for ashes and joy for mourning” rather than by direct attacks on the state from which we would be free.

“Whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, think on these things,” for we become that with which we are en rapport.

There is nothing to change but our concept of self. As soon as we succeed in transforming self, our world will dissolve and reshape itself in harmony with that which our change affirms.

I, by descent in consciousness, have brought about the imperfection that I see. In the divine economy nothing is lost. We cannot lose anything save by descent in consciousness from the sphere where the thing has its natural life.

And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” John 17:5

As I ascend in consciousness the power and the glory that was mine return to me and I too will say “I have finished the work thou gavest me to do.” The work is to return from my descent in consciousness, from the level wherein I believed that I was a son of man, to the sphere where I know that I am one with my Father and my Father is God.

I know beyond all doubt that there is nothing for man to do but to change his own concept of himself to assume greatness and sustain this assumption. If we walk as though we were already the ideal we serve, we will rise to the level of our assumption, and find a world in harmony with our assumption. We will not have to lift a finger to make it so, for it is already so. It was always so.

You and I have descended in consciousness to the level where we now find ourselves and we see imperfection because we have descended! When we begin to ascend while here in this three-dimensional world, we find that we move in an entirely different environment, we have entirely different circles of friends, and an entirely different world while still living here. We know the great mystery of the statement, “I am in the world but not of it.”

Instead of changing things I would suggest to all to identify themselves with the ideal they contemplate. What would the feeling be like were you of too pure eyes to behold iniquity if to you all things were pure and you were without condemnation? Contemplate the ideal state and identify yourself with it and you will ascend to the sphere where you as Christ have your natural life.

You are still in that state where you were before the world was. The only thing that has fallen is your concept of self. You see the broken parts which really are not broken. You are seeing them through distorted eyes, as though you were in one of those peculiar amusement gallery’s where a man walks before a mirror and he is elongated, yet he is the same man. Or he looks into another mirror and he is all big and fat. These things are seen today because man is what he is.

Toy with the idea of perfection. Ask no man to help you, but let the prayer of the 17th chapter of the Gospel of St. John be your prayer. Appropriate the state that was yours before the world was.

Know the truth of the statement, “None have I lost save the son of perdition.” Nothing is lost in all my holy mountain. The only thing that you lose is the belief in loss or the son of perdition.

“And for their sake I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” John 17:19

There is no one to change but self. All you need do to make men and women holy in this world is to make yourself holy. You are incapable of seeing anything that is unlovely when you establish within your own mind’s eye the fact that you are lovely.

It is far better to know this than to know anything else in the world. It takes courage, boundless courage, because many this night, after having heard this truth will still be inclined to blame others for their predicament. Man finds it so difficult to turn to himself, to his own consciousness as to the only reality. Listen to these words:

“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” John 6:44

“I and my Father are one.” John 10:30

“A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.” John 3:27

“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.”

“No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself.” John 10:17,18.

“You did not choose me, I have chosen you.” My concept of myself molds a world in harmony with itself and draws men to tell me constantly by their behaviour who I am.

The most important thing in this world to you is your concept of self. When you dislike your environment, the circumstances of life and the behaviour of men, ask yourself, ” Who am I?” It is your answer to this question hat is the cause of your dislikes.

If you do not condemn self there will be no man in your world to condemn you. If you are living in the consciousness of your ideal you will see nothing to condemn. “To the pure all things are pure.”

Now I would like to spend a little time making as clear as I can what I personally do when I pray, what I do when I want to bring about changes in my world. You will find it interesting, and you will find that it works. No one here can tell me they cannot do it. It is so very simple all can do it. We are what we imagine we are.

This technique is not difficult to follow, but you must want to do it. You cannot approach it with the attitude of mind “Oh well I’ll try it.” You must want to do it, because the mainspring of action is desire.

Desire is the mainspring of all action. Now what do I want? I must define my objective. For example, suppose I wanted now to be elsewhere. This very moment I really desire to be elsewhere. I need not go through the door, I need not sit down. I need do nothing but stand just where I am and with my eyes closed, assume that I am actually standing where I desire to be. Then I remain in this state until it has the feeling of reality. Were I now elsewhere I could not see the world as I now see it from here. The world changes in its relationship to me as I change my position in space.

So I stand right here, close my eyes, and imagine I am seeing what I would see were I there. I remain in it long enough to feel it to be real. I cannot touch the walls of this room from here, but when you close your eyes and become still you can imagine and feel that you touch it. You can stand where you are and imagine you are putting your hand on that wall. To prove you really are, put it there and slide it up and feel the wood. You can imagine you are doing it without getting off your seat. You can do it and you will actually feel it if you become still enough and intense enough

I stand where I am and I allow the world that I want to see and to enter physically to come before me as though I were there now. In other words, I bring elsewhere here by assuming that I am there.

Is that clear? I let it come up, I do not make it come up. I simply imagine I am there and then let it happen.

If I want a physical presence, I imagine he is standing here, and I touch him All through the Bible I find these suggestions, “He placed his hands upon them. He touched them.”

If you want to comfort someone, what is the automatic feeling? To put your hand on them, you cannot resist it. You meet a friend and the hand goes out automatically, you either shake hands or put your hand on his shoulder.

Suppose you were now to meet a friend that you have not seen for a year and he is a friend of whom you are very fond. What would you do? You would embrace him, wouldn’t you? Or you would put your hand upon him.

In your imagination bring him close enough to put your hand upon him and feel him to be solidly real. Restrict the action to just that. You will be amazed at what happens. From then on things begin to move. Your dimensionally greater self will inspire, in all, the ideas and actions necessary to bring you into physical contact. It works that way.

Every day I put myself into the drowsy state; it is a very easy thing to do. But habit is a strange thing in man’s world. It is not law, but habit acts as though it were the most compelling law in the world. We are creatures of habit.

If you create an interval every day into which you put yourself into the drowsy state, say at 3 o’clock in the afternoon do you know at that moment every day you will feel drowsy. You try it for one week and see if I am not right.

You sit down for the purpose of creating a state akin to sleep, as though you were sleepy, but do not push the drowsiness too far, just far enough to relax and leave you in control of the direction of your thoughts. You try it for one week, and every day at that hour, no matter what you are doing, you will hardly be able to keep your eyes open. If you know the hour when you will be free you can create it. I would not suggest that you do it lightly, because you will feel very, very sleepy and you may not want to.

I have another way of praying. In this case I always sit down and I find the most comfortable arm chair imaginable, or I lie flat on my back and relax completely. Make yourself comfortable. You must not be in any position where the body is distressed. Always put yourself into a position where you have the greatest ease. That is the first stage.

To know what you want is the start of prayer. Secondly you construct in your mind’s eye one single little event which implies that you have realized your desire. I always let my mind roam on many things that could follow the answered prayer and I single out one that is most likely to follow the fulfillment of my desire. One simple little thing like the shaking of a hand, embracing a person, the receiving of a letter, the writing of a check, or whatever would imply the fulfillment of your desire.

After you have decided on the action which implies that your desire has been realized, then sit in your nice comfortable chair or lie flat on your back, close your eyes for the simple reason it helps to induce this state that borders on sleep.

The minute you feel this lovely drowsy state, or the feeling of gathered togetherness, wherein you feel- I could move if I wanted to, but I do not want to, I could open my eyes if I wanted to, but I do not want to. When you get that feeling you can be quite sure that you are in the perfect state to pray successfully.

In this feeling it is easy to touch anything in this world. You take the simple little restricted action which implies fulfillment of your prayer and you feel it or you enact it. Whatever it is, you enter into the action as though you were an actor in the part. You do not sit back and visualize yourself doing it. You do it.

With the body immobilized you imagine that the greater you inside the physical body is coming out of it and that you are actually performing the proposed action. If you are going to walk, you imagine that you are walking. Do not see yourself walk, FEEL that you are walking.

If you are going to climb stairs, FEEL that you are climbing the stairs. Do not visualize yourself doing it, feel yourself doing it. If you are going to shake a man’s hand, do not visualize yourself shaking his hand, imagine your friend is standing before you and shake his hand. But leave your physical hands immobilized and imagine that your greater hand, which is your imaginary hand, is actually shaking his hand.

All you need do is to imagine that you are doing it. You are stretched out in time, and what you are doing, which seems to be a controlled day dream, is an actual act in the greater dimension of your being. You are actually encountering an event fourth-dimensionally before you encounter it here in the three-dimensions of space, and you do not have to raise a finger to bring that state to pass.

My third way of praying is simply to feel thankful. If I want something, either for myself or another, I immobilize the physical body, then I produce the state akin to sleep and in that state just feel happy, feel thankful, which thankfulness implies realization of what I want. I assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and with my mind dominated by this single sensation I go to sleep. I need do nothing to make it so, because it is so. My feeling of the wish fulfilled implies it is done.

All these techniques you can use and change them to fit your temperament. But I must emphasize the necessity of inducing the drowsy state where you can become attentive without effort.

A single sensation dominates the mind, if you pray successfully.

What would I feel like, now, were I what I want to be? When I know what the feeling would be like I then close my eyes and lose myself in that single sensation and my dimensionally greater Self then builds a bridge of incident to lead me from this present moment to the fulfillment of my mood. That is all you need do. But people have a habit of slighting the importance of simple things.

We are creatures of habit and we are slowly learning to relinquish our previous concepts, but the things we formerly lived by still in some way influence our behaviour. Here is a story from the Bible that illustrates my point.

It is recorded that Jesus told his disciples to go to the crossroads and there they would find a colt, a young colt not yet ridden by a man. To bring the colt to him and if any man ask, “Why do you take this colt?” say, “The Lord has need of it.”

They went to the crossroads and found the colt and did exactly as they were told. They brought the unbridled ass to Jesus and He rode it triumphantly into Jerusalem.

The story has nothing to do with a man riding on a little colt. You are Jesus of the story. The colt is the mood you are going to assume. That is the living animal not yet ridden by you. What would the feeling be like were you to realize your desire? A new feeling, like a young Colt, is a very difficult thing to ride unless you ride him with a disciplined mind. If I do not remain faithful to the mood the young colt throws me off. Every time you become conscious that you are not faithful to this mood, you have been thrown from the colt.

Discipline your mind that you may remain faithful to a high mood and ride it triumphantly into Jerusalem, which is fulfillment, or the city of peace.

This story precedes the feast of the Passover. If we would pass from our present state into that of our ideal, we must assume that we are already that which we desire to be and remain faithful to our assumption, for we must keep a high mood if we would walk with the highest.

A fixed attitude of mind, a feeling that it is done will make it so. If I walk as though it were, but every once in a while I look to see if it really is, then I fall off my mood or colt.

If I would suspend judgment like Peter I could walk on the water. Peter starts walking on the water, and then he begins to look unto his own understanding and he begins to go down. The voice said, “Look up, Peter.” Peter looks up and he rises again and continues walking on the water.

Instead of looking down to see if this thing is really going to harden into fact, you simply know that it is already so, sustain that mood and you will ride the unbridled colt into the city of Jerusalem All of us must learn to ride the animal straight in to Jerusalem unassisted by a man. You do not need another to help you.

The strange thing is that as we keep the high mood and do not fall, others cushion the blows. They spread the palm leaves before me to cushion my journey. I do not have to be concerned. The shocks will be softened as I move into the fulfillment of my desire. My high mood awakens in others the ideas and actions which tend towards the embodiment of my mood. If you walk faithful to a high mood there will be no opposition and no competition.

The test of a teacher, or a teaching, is to be found in the faithfulness of the taught. I am leaving here on Sunday night. Do remain faithful to this instruction. If you look for causes outside the consciousness of man, then I have not convinced you of the reality of consciousness.

If you look for excuses for failure you will always find them, for you find what you seek. If you seek an excuse for failure, you will find it in the stars, in the numbers, in the tea cup, or most any place. The excuse will not be there but you will find it to justify your failure.

Successful business and professional men and women know that this law works. You will not find it in gossip groups, but you will find it in courageous hearts.

Man’s eternal journey is for one purpose: to reveal the Father. He comes to make visible his Father. And his Father is made visible in all the lovely things of this world. All the things that are lovely, that are of good report, ride these things, and have no time for the unlovely in this world, regardless of what it is.

Remain faithful to the knowledge that your consciousness, your I AMness, your awareness of being aware of the only reality. It is the rock on which all phenomena can be explained. There is no explanation outside of that. I know of no clear conception of the origin of phenomena save that consciousness is all and all is consciousness.

That which you seek is already housed within you. Were it not now within you eternity could not evolve it. No time stretch would be long enough to evolve what is not potentially involved in you.

You simply let it into being by assuming that it is already visible in your world, and remaining faithful to your assumption. it will harden into fact. Your Father has unnumbered ways of revealing your assumption. Fix this in your mind and always remember, “An assumption, though false, if sustained will harden into fact.”

You and your Father are one and your Father is everything that was, is and will be. Therefore that which you seek you already are, it can never be so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation.

The great Pascal said, “You never would have sought me had you not already found me. “What you now desire you already have and you seek it only because you have already found it. You found it in the form of desire. It is just as real in the form of desire as it is going to be to your bodily organs.

You are already that which you seek and you have no one to change but Self in order to express it.

This Bible of ours has nothing to do with history. Some of you may yet be inclined tonight to believe that, although we can give it a psychological interpretation, it still could be left in its present form and be interpreted literally. You cannot do it. The Bible has no reference at all to people or to events as you have been taught to believe. The sooner you begin to rub out that picture the better.

We are going to take a few stories tonight, and again I am going to remind you that you must re-enact all of these stories within your own mind.

Bear in mind that although they seem to be stories of people fully awake, the drama is really between you, the sleeping one, the deeper you, and the conscious waking you. They are personified as people, but when you come to the point of application you must remember the importance of the drowsy state.

All creation, as we told you last night, takes place in the state of sleep, or that state which is akin to sleep — the, sleepy drowsy state.

We told you last night the first man is not yet awakened. You are Adam, the first man, still in the profound sleep. The creative you is the fourth-dimensional you whose home is simply the state you enter when men call you asleep.

**************

Our first story for tonight is found in the Gospel of John. As you hear it unfold before you, I want you to compare it in your mind’s eye to the story you heard last night from the book of Genesis. The first book of the Bible, the bock of Genesis, historians claim is the record of events which occurred on earth some 3,000 years before the events recorded in the book of John. I ask you to be rational about it and see if you do not think the same writer could have written both stories. You be the judge as to whether the same inspired man could not have told the same story and told it differently.

This is a very familiar story, the story of the trial of Jesus. In this Gospel of John it is recorded that Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, and the crowd clamored for his life, they wanted Jesus. Pilate turned to them and said:

“But ye have a custom, that I should release unto you one at the Passover; will ye therefore that I release unto you the King of the Jews? Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber.” John 18:39, 40

You are told that Pilate had no choice in the matter, he was only a judge interpreting law, and this was the law. The people had to be given that which they requested. Pilate could not release Jesus against the wishes of the crowd, and so he released Barabbas and gave unto them Jesus to be crucified.

Now bear in mind that your consciousness is God. There is no other God. And you are told that God has a son whose name is Jesus. If you will take the trouble to look up the word Barabbas in your concordance, you will see that it is a contraction of two Hebraic words: BAR, which means a daughter or son- or child, and ABBA, which means father. Barabbas is the son of the great father. And Jesus in the story is called the Saviour, the Son of the Father.

We have two sons in this story. And we have two sons in the story of Esau and Jacob. Bear in mind that Isaac was blind, and justice to be true must be blind folded. Although in this case Pilate is not physically blind, the part given to Pilate implies that he is blind because he is a judge. On all the great law buildings of the world we see the lady or the man who represents justice as being blindfolded.

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment. ” John 7:24.

Here we find Pilate is playing the same part as Isaac. There are two sons. All the characters as they appear in this story can apply to your own life. You have a son that is robbing you this very moment of that which you could be.

If you came to this meeting tonight conscious of wanting something, desiring something, you walked in the company of Barabbas.

For to desire is to confess that you do not now possess what you desire, and because all things are yours, you rob yourself by living in the state of desire. My saviour is my desire. As I want something I am looking into the eyes of my saviour. But if I continue wanting it, I deny my Jesus, my saviour, for as I want I confess I am not and “except ye believe that I AM He ye die in your sins.” I cannot have and still continue to desire what I have. I may enjoy it, but I cannot continue wanting it.

Here is the story. This is the feast of the Passover. Something is going to change right now, something is going to passover. Man is incapable of passing over from one state of consciousness into another unless he releases from consciousness that which he now entertains, for it anchors him where he is.

You and I may go to physical feasts year after year as the sun enters the great sign of Aries, but it means nothing to the true mystical Passover. To keep the feast of the Passover, the psychological feast, I pass from one state of consciousness into another. I do it by releasing Barabbas, the thief and robber that robs me of that state which I could embody within my world.

The state I seek to embody is personified in the story as Jesus the Saviour . If I become what I want to be then I am saved from what I was. If I do not become it, I continue to keep locked within me a thief who robs me of being that which I could be.

These stories have no reference to any persons who lived nor to any event that ever occurred upon earth. These characters are everlasting characters in the mind of every man in the world. You and I perpetually keep alive either Barabbas or Jesus. You know at every moment of time who you are entertaining.

Do not condemn a crowd for clamoring that they should release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. It is not a crowd of people called Jews. They had nothing to do with it.

If we are wise, we too should clamor for the release of that state of mind that limits us from being what we want to be, that restricts us, that does not permit us to become the ideal that we seek and strive to attain in this world.

I am not saying that you are not tonight embodying Jesus. I only remind you, that if at this very moment you have an unfulfilled ambition, then you are entertaining that which denies the fulfillment of the ambition, and that which denies it is Barabbas.

To explain the mystical, psychological transformation known as the Passover, or the crossing over, you must now become identified with the ideal that you would serve, and you must remain faithful to the ideal. If you remain faithful to it, you not only crucify it by your faithfulness, but you resurrect it unaided by a man.

As the story goes, no man could rise early enough to roll away the stone. Unaided by a man the stone was removed, and what seemingly was dead and buried was resurrected unassisted by a man.

You walk in the consciousness of being that which you want to be, no one sees it as yet, but you do not need a man to roll away the problems and the obstacles of life in order to express that which you are conscious of being. That state has its own unique way of becoming embodied in this world, of becoming flesh that the whole world may touch it.

Now you can see the relationship between the story of Jesus and the story of Isaac and his two sons, where one transplanted the other, where one was called the Supplanter of the other. Why do you think those who compiled the sixty odd books of our Bible made Jacob the forefather of Jesus?

They took Jacob, who was called the Supplanter, and made him father of twelve, then they took Judah or praise, the fifth son and made him the forefather of Joseph, who is supposed to have fathered in some strange way this one called Jesus. Jesus must supplant Barabbas as Jacob must supplant and take the place of Esau.

Tonight you can sit right here and conduct the trial of your two sons, one of whom you want released. You can become the crowd who clamors for the release of the thief, and the judge who willingly releases Barabbas, and sentences Jesus to fill his place. He was crucified on Golgotha, the place of the skull, the seat of the imagination.

To experience the Passover or passage from the old to the new concept of self, you must release Barabbas, your present concept of self, which robs you of being that which you could be, and you must assume the new concept which you desire to express.

The best way to do this is to concentrate your attention upon the idea of identifying yourself with your ideal. Assume you are already that which you seek and your assumption, though false, if sustained, will harden into fact.

You will know when you have succeeded in releasing Barabbas, your old concept of self, and when you have successfully crucified Jesus, or fixed the new concept of self, by simply looking MENTALLY at the people you know. If you see them as you formerly saw them, you have not changed your concept of self, for all changes of concepts of self result in a changed relationship to your world.

We always seem to others an embodiment of the ideal we inspire. Therefore, in meditation, we must imagine that others see us as they would see us were we what we desire to be.

You can release Barabbas and crucify and resurrect Jesus if you will first define your ideal. Then relax in a comfortable arm chair, induce a state of consciousness akin to sleep and experience in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already that which you desire to be.

By this simple method of experiencing in imagination what you would experience in the flesh were you the embodiment of the ideal you serve, you release Barabbas who robbed you of your greatness, and you crucify and resurrect your saviour, or the ideal you desired to express.

Now let us turn to the story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Bear in mind that a garden is a properly prepared plot of ground, it is not a wasteland. You are preparing this ground called Gethsemane by coming here and studying and doing something about your mind. Spend some time daily in preparing your mind by reading good literature, listening to good music and entering into conversations that ennoble.

We are told in the Epistles, “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Phil. 4:8

Continuing with our story, as told in the 18th chapter of John, Jesus is in the garden and suddenly a crowd begins to seek him. He is standing there in the dark and he says, “Whom seek ye?”

The spokesman called Judas answers and says, “We seek Jesus of Nazareth.”

A voice answers, “I am He.”

At this instant they all fall to the ground, thousands of them tumbled. That in itself should stop you right there and let you know it could not be a physical drama, because no one could be so bold in his claim that he is the one sought, that he could cause thousands who seek him to fall to the ground.

But the story tells us they all fell to the ground. Then when they regained their composure they asked the same question.

“Jesus answered, I have told you that I am He: if therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.” John 18:8.

“Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.” John 13:27

Judas, who has to do it quickly, goes out and commits suicide.

Now to the drama. You are in your garden of Gethsemane or prepared mind if you can, while you are in a state akin to sleep, control your attention and not let it wander away from its purpose. If you can do that you are definitely in the garden.

Very few people can sit quietly and not enter a reverie or a state of uncontrolled thinking. When you can restrict the mental action and remain faithful to your watch, not permitting your attention to wander all over the place, but hold it without effort within a limited field of presentation to the state you are contemplating, then you are definitely this disciplined presence in the garden of Gethsemane.

The suicide of Judas is nothing more than changing your concept of yourself. When you know what you want to be you have found your Jesus or saviour. When you assume that you are what you want to be you have died to your former concept of self (Judas committed suicide) and are now living as Jesus. You can become at will detached from the world round about you, and attached to that which you want to embody within your world.

Now that you have found me, now that you have found that which would save you from what you are, let go of that which you are and all that it represents in the world. Become completely detached from it. In other words, go out and commit suicide.

You completely die to what you formerly expressed in this world, and you now completely live to that which no one saw as true of you before. You are as though you had died by your own hand, as though you had committed suicide. You took your own life by becoming detached in consciousness from what you formerly kept alive, and you begin to live to that which you have discovered in your garden. You have found your saviour.

It is not men falling, not a man betraying another, but you detaching your attention, and refocusing your attention in an entirely new direction. From this moment on you walk as though you were that which you formerly wanted to be. Remaining faithful to your new concept of yourself you die or commit suicide. No one took your life, you laid it down yourself.

You must be able to see the relation of this to the death of Moses, where he so completely died that no one could find where he was buried. You must see the relationship of the death of Judas. He is not a man who betrayed a man called Jesus.

The word Judas is praise; it is Judah, to praise, to give thanks, to explode with joy. You do not explode with joy unless you are identified with the ideal you seek and want to embody in this world. When you become identified with the state you contemplate you cannot suppress your joy. It rises like the fragrant odor described as Jericho in the Old Testament.

I am trying to show you that the ancients told the same story in all the stories of the Bible. All that they are trying to tell us is how to become that which we want to be. And they imply in every story that we do not need the assistance of another. You do not need another to become now what you really want to be.

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Now we turn to a strange story in the Old Testament; one that very few priests and rabbis will be bold enough to mention from their pulpits. Here is one who is going to receive the promise as you now receive it. His name is Jesus, only the ancients called him Joshua, Jehoshua Ben Nun, or saviour, son of the fish, the Saviour of the great deep. Nun means fish, and fish is the element of the deep, the profound ocean. Jehoshua means Jehovah saves, and Ben means the offspring or son of. So he was called the one who brought the fish age.

This story is in the 6th book of the Bible, the book of Joshua. A promise is made to Joshua as it is made to Jesus in the Anglicized form in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “All things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.” John 17:7. “And all mine are thine, and thine are mine.” John 17:10.

In the Old Testament in the book of Joshua it is said in these words: “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.” Joshua 1:3

It does not matter where it is; analyze the promise and see if you can accept it literally. It is not physically true but it is psychologically true. Wherever you can stand in this world mentally that you can realize.

Joshua is haunted by this promise that wherever he can place his foot (the foot is understanding), wherever the sole of his foot shall tread, that will be given unto him. He wants the most desirable state in the world, the fragrant city, the delightful state called Jericho.

He finds himself barred by the impassable walls of Jericho. He is on the outside, as you are now on the outside. You are functioning three-dimensionally and you cannot seem to reach the fourth-dimensional world where your present desire is already a concrete objective reality. You cannot seem to reach it because your senses bar you from it. Reason tells you it is impossible, all things round about you tell you it is not true.

Now you employ the services of a harlot and a spy, and her name is Rahab. The word Rahab simply means the spirit of the father. RACE means the breath or spirit, and AB the father. Hence we find that this harlot is the spirit of the father and the father is man’s awareness of being aware, man’s I AMness, man’s consciousness.

Your capacity to feel is the great spirit of the father, and that capacity is Rahab in this story. She has two professions that of a spy and that of a harlot.

The profession of a spy is this: to travel secretly, to travel so quietly that you may not be detected. There is not a single physical spy in this world who can travel so quietly that he will be altogether unseen by others. He may be very wise in concealing his ways, and he may never be truly apprehended, but at every moment of time he runs the risk of being detected.

When you are sitting quietly with your thoughts, there is no man in the world so wise that he can look at you and tell you where you are mentally dwelling.

I can stand here and place myself in London. Knowing London quite well, I can close my eyes and assume that I am actually standing in London. If I remain within this state long enough, I will be able to surround myself with the environment of London as though it were a solid concrete objective fact.

Physically I am still here, but mentally I am thousands of miles away and I have made elsewhere here. I do not go there as a spy, I mentally make elsewhere here, and then now. You cannot see me dwelling there, so you think I have just gone to sleep and that I an still here in this world, this three-dimensional world that is now San Francisco. As far as I am physically concerned, I am here but no one can tell me where I am when I enter the moment of meditation.

Rahab’s next profession was that of a harlot, which is to grant unto men what they ask of her without asking man’s right to ask. If she be an absolute harlot, as her name implies, then she possesses all and can grant all that man asks of her. She is there to serve, and not to question man’s right to seek what he seeks of her.

You have within you the capacity to appropriate a state without knowing the means that will be employed to realize that end and you assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled without having any of the talents that men claim you must possess in order to do so. When you appropriate it in consciousness you have employed the spy, and because you can embody that state within yourself by actually giving it to yourself, you are the harlot, for the harlot satisfies the man who seeks her.

You can satisfy self by appropriating the feeling that you are what you want to be. And this assumption though false, that is, although reason and the senses deny it, if persisted in will harden into fact. By actually embodying that which you have assumed you are, you have the capacity to become completely satisfied. Unless it becomes a tangible, concrete reality you will not be satisfied; you will be frustrated.

You are told in this story that when Rahab went into the city to conquer it, the command given to her was to enter the heart of the city, the heart of the matter, the very center of it, and there remain until I come. Do not go from house to house, do not leave the upper room of the house into which you enter. If you leave the house and there be blood upon your head, it is upon your head. But if you do not leave the house and there be blood, it shall be upon my head.

Rahab goes into the house, rises to the upper floor, and there she remains while the walls crumble. That is, we must keep a high mood if we would walk with the highest. In a very veiled manner, the story tells you that when the walls crumbled and Joshua entered, the only one who was saved in the city was the spy and the harlot whose name was Rahab.

This story tells what you can do in this world. You will never lose the capacity to place yourself elsewhere and make it here. You will never lose the ability to give unto yourself what you are bold enough to appropriate as true of self. It has nothing to do with the woman who played that part.

The explanation of the crumbling of the walls is simple. You are told that he blew upon the trumpet seven times and at the seventh blast the walls crumbled and he entered victoriously into the state that he sought.

Seven is a stillness, a rest, the Sabbath. It is the state when man is completely unmoved in his conviction that the thing is. When I can assume the feeling of my wish fulfilled and go to sleep, unconcerned, undisturbed, I am at rest mentally, and am keeping the Sabbath or am blowing the trumpet seven times. And when I reach that point the walls crumble. Circumstances alter then remold themselves in harmony with my assumption. As they crumble I resurrect that which I have appropriated within. The walls, the obstacles, the problems, crumble of their own weight if I can reach the point of stillness within me.

The man Who can fix within his own mind’s eye an idea, even though the world would deny it, if he remains faithful to that idea he will see it manifested. There is all the difference in the world between holding the idea, and being held by the idea. Become so dominated by an idea that it haunts the mind as though you were it. Then, regardless of what others may say, you are walking in the direction of your fixed attitude of mind. You are walking in the direction of the idea that dominates the mind.

As we told you last night, you have but one gift that is truly yours to give, and that is yourself. There is no other gift; you must press it out of yourself by an appropriation. It is there within you now for creation is finished. There is nothing to be that is not now. There is nothing to be created for all things are already yours, they are all finished.

Although man may not be able to stand physically upon a state, he can always stand mentally upon any desired state. By standing mentally I mean that you can now, this very moment, close your eyes and visualize a place other than your present one, and assume that you are actually there. You can FEEL this to be so real that upon opening your eyes you are amazed to find that you are not physically there.

This mental journey into the desired state, with its subsequent feeling of reality, is all that is necessary to bring about its fulfillment. Your dimensionally greater Self has ways that the lesser, or three-dimensional you, know not of. Furthermore, to the greater you, all means are good which promote the fulfillment of your assumption.

Remain in the mental state defined as your objective until it has the feeling of reality , and all the forces of heaven and earth will rush to aid its embodiment. Your greater Self will influence the actions and words of all who can be used to aid the production of your fixed mental attitude.

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Now we turn to the book of Numbers and here we find a strange story. I trust that some of you have had this experience as described in the bock of Numbers. They speak of the building of a tabernacle at the command of God; that God commanded Israel to build him a place of worship.

He gave them all the specifications of the tabernacle. It had to be an elongated, movable place of worship, and it had to be covered with skin. Need you be told anything more? Isn’t that man?

“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you ? ” I Cor. 3:16

There is no other temple. Not a temple made with hands, but a temple eternal in the heavens. This temple is elongated, and it is covered with skin, and it moves across the desert.

“And on the day that the tabernacle was reared up the cloud covered the tabernacle, namely, the tent of the testimony: and at even there was upon the tabernacle as it were the appearance of fire, until the morning. So it was always: the cloud covered it by day, and the appearance of fire by night.” Num.9:15,16

The command given to Israel was to tarry until the cloud ascended by day and the fire by night. “Whether it were two days, or a month, or a year, that the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, remaining thereon, the children of Israel abode in their tents, and journeyed not: but when it was taken up, they journeyed.” Num.. 9:22

You know that you are the tabernacle, but you may wonder, what is the cloud. In meditation many of you must have seen it. In meditation, this cloud, like the sub-soil waters of an artesian well, springs spontaneously to your head and forms itself into pulsating, golden rings. Then, like a gentle river they flow from your head in a stream of living rings of gold.

In a meditative mood bordering on sleep the cloud ascends. It is in this drowsy state that you should assume that you are that which you desire to be, and that you have that which you seek, for the cloud will assume the form of your assumption and fashion a world in harmony with itself. The cloud is simply the garment of your consciousness, and where your consciousness is placed, there you will be in the flesh also.

This golden cloud comes in meditation. There is a certain point when you are approaching sleep that it is very, very thick, very liquid, and very much alive and pulsing. It begins to ascend as you reach the drowsy, meditative state, bordering on sleep. You do not strike the tabernacle; neither do you move it until the cloud begins to ascend.

The cloud always ascends when man approaches the drowsiness of sleep. For when a man goes to sleep, whether he knows it or not, he slips from a three-dimensional world into a fourth-dimensional world and that which is ascending is the consciousness of that man in a greater focus; it is a fourth-dimensional focus.

What you now see ascending is your greater self. When that begins to ascend you enter into the actual state of feeling you are what you want to be. That is the time you lull yourself into the mood of being what you want to be, by either experiencing in imagination what you would experience in reality were you already that which you want to be, or by repeating over and over again the phrase that implies you have already done what you want to do. A phrase such as, “Isn’t it wonderful, isn’t it wonderful,” as though some wonderful thing had happened to you.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed. Then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction. ” Job 33: 15, 16

Use wisely the interval preceding sleep. Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled and go to sleep in this mood. At night, in a dimensionally larger world, when deep sleep falleth upon men, they see and play the parts that they will later on play on earth. And the drama is always in harmony with that which their dimensionally greater selves read and play through them. Our illusion of free will is but ignorance of the causes which make us act.

The sensation which dominates the mind of man as he falls asleep, though false, will harden into fact. Assuming the feeling of the wish fulfilled as we fall asleep, is the command to this embodying process saying to our mood, “Be thou actual.” In this way we become through a natural process what we desire to be.

I can tell you dozens of personal experiences where it seemed impossible to go elsewhere, but by placing myself elsewhere mentally as I was about to go to sleep, circumstances changed quickly which compelled me to make the journey. I have done it across water by placing myself at night on my bed as though I slept where I wanted to be. As the days unfolded things began to mold themselves in harmony with that assumption and all things that must happen to compel my journey did happen. And I, in spite of myself, must make ready to go toward that place which I assumed I was in when I approached the deep of sleep.

As my cloud ascends I assume that I am now the man I want to be, or that I am already in the place where I want to visit. I sleep in that place now. Then life strikes the tabernacle, strikes my environment and reassembles my environment across seas or over land and reassembles it in the likeness of my assumption. It has nothing to do with men walking across a physical desert. The whole vast world round about you is a desert.

From the cradle to the grave you and I walk as though we walk the desert. But we have a living tabernacle wherein God dwells, and it is covered with a cloud which can and does ascend when we go to sleep or are in a state akin to sleep. Not necessarily in two days, it can ascend in two minutes. Why did they give you two days? If I now become the man I want to be, I may become dissatisfied tomorrow. I should at least give it a day before I decide to move on.

The Bible says in two days, a month, or a year: whenever you decide to move on with this tabernacle let the cloud ascend. As it ascends you start moving where the cloud is. The cloud is simply the garment of your consciousness, your assumption. Where the consciousness is placed you do not have to take the physical body; it gravitates there in spite of you. Things happen to compel you to move in the direction where you are consciously dwelling.

“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” John 14:2, 3

The many mansions are the unnumbered states within your mind, for you are the house of God. In my Father’s house are unnumbered concepts of self. You could not in eternity exhaust what you are capable of being.

If I sit quietly here and assume that I am elsewhere, I have gone and prepared a place. But if I open my eyes, the bilocation which I created vanishes and I am back here in the physical form that I left behind me as I went to prepare a place. But I prepared the place nevertheless and will in time dwell there physically.

You do not have to concern yourself with the ways and the means that will be employed to move you across space into that place where you have gone and mentally prepared it. Simply sit quietly, no matter where you are, and mentally actualize it.

But I give you warning, do not treat it lightly, for I am conscious of what it will do to people who treat it lightly. I treated it lightly once because I just wanted to get away, based only upon the temperature of the day. It was in the deep of winter in New York, and I so desired to be in the warm climate of the Indies, that I slept that night as though I slept under palm trees. Next morning when I awoke it was still very much winter.

I had no intentions of going to the Indies that year, but distressing news came which compelled me to make the journey. It was in the midst of war when ships were being sunk right and left, but I sailed out of New York on a ship 48 hours after I received this news. It was the only way I could get to Barbados, and I arrived just in time to see my mother and say a three-dimensional “Good-bye” to her .

In spite of the fact that I had no intentions of going, the deeper Self watched where the great cloud descended. I placed it in Barbados and this tabernacle (my body) had to go and make the journey to fulfill the command, “Wherever the sole of your foot shall tread that have I given unto you.” Wherever the cloud descends in the desert, there you reassemble that tabernacle.

I sailed from New York at midnight on a ship without taking thought of submarines or anything else. I had to go. Things happened in a way that I could not have devised.

I warn you, do not treat it lightly. Do not say, “I will experiment and put myself in Labrador, just to see if it will work.” You will go to your Labrador and then you will wonder why you ever came to this class. It will work if you dare assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled as you go to sleep.

Control your moods as you go to sleep. I cannot find any better way to describe this technique than to call it a “controlled waking dream.” In a dream you lose control, but try preceding your sleep with a complete controlled waking dream, entering into it as you do in dream, for in a dream you are always very dominant, you always play the part. You are always an actor in a dream, and never the audience. When you have a controlled waking dream you are an actor and you enter into the act of the
controlled dream. But do not do it lightly, for you must then reenact it physically in a three-dimensional world.

Now before we go into our moment of silence there is something I must make very clear, and that is this effort we discussed last night. If there is one reason in this whole vast world why people fail it is because they are unaware of a law known to psychologists today as the law of reverse effort.

When you assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled it is with a minimum of effort. You must control the direction of the movements of your attention. But you must do it with the least effort. If there is effort in the control, and you are compelling it in a certain way you are not going to get the results. You will get the opposite results, what ever they might be.

That is why we insist on establishing the basis of the Bible as Adam slept. That is the first creative act, and there is no record where he was ever awakened from this profound sleep. While he sleeps creation stops.

You change your future best when you are in control of your thoughts while in a state akin to sleep, for then effort is reduced to its minimum. Your attention seems to completely relax, and then you must practice holding your attention within that feeling, without using force, and without using effort.

Do not think for a moment that it is will power that does it. When you release Barabbas and become identified with Jesus, you do not will yourself to be it, you imagine that you are it. That is all you do.

Now as we come to the vital part of the evening, the interval devoted to prayer, let me again clarify the technique. Know what you want. Then construct a single event, an event which implies fulfillment of your wish. Restrict the event to a single act.

For instance, if I single out as an event, shaking a man’s hand, then that is the only thing I do. I do not shake it, then light a cigarette and do a thousand other things. I simply imagine that I am actually shaking hands and keep the act going over and over and over again until the imaginary act has all the feeling of reality.

The event must always imply fulfillment of the wish. Always construct an event which you believe you would naturally encounter following the fulfillment of your desire. You are the judge of what event you really want to realize.

There is another technique I gave you last night. If you cannot concentrate on an act, if you cannot snuggle into your chair and believe the chair is elsewhere, just as though elsewhere were here, then do this: Reduce the idea, condense it to a single, simple phrase like, “Isn’t it wonderful.” or, “Thank you.” or, “It’s done.” or, “It’s finished.”

There should not be more than three words. Something that implies the desire is already realized. “Isn’t it wonderful”, or “Thank you,” certainly imply that. These are not all the phrases you could use. Make up out of your own vocabulary the phrase which best suits you. But make it very, very short and always use a phrase that implies fulfillment of the idea.

When you have your phrase in mind, lift the cloud. Let the cloud ascend by simply inducing the state that borders on sleep. Simply begin to imagine and feel you are sleepy, and in this state assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled. Then repeat the phrase over and over like a lullaby. Whatever the phrase is, let it imply that the assumption is true, that it is concrete, that it is already a fact and you know it.

Just relax and enter into the feeling of actually being what you want to be. As you do it you are entering Jericho with your spy who has the power to give it. You are releasing Barabbas and sentencing Jesus to be crucified and resurrected. All these stories you are re-enacting if now you begin to let go and enter into the feeling of actually being what you want to be. Now we can go…..

SILENCE PERIOD ……..

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If your hands are dry , and if your mouth is dry at the end of this meditation, that is positive proof that you did succeed in lifting the cloud. What you were doing when the cloud was lifted is entirely your business. But you did lift the cloud if your hands are dry.

I will give you another phenomena which is very strange and one I cannot analyze. It happens if you really go into the deep. You will find on waking that you have the most active pair of kidneys in the world. I have discussed it with doctors and they cannot explain it.

Another thing you may observe in meditation is a lovely liquid blue light. The nearest thing on earth to which I can compare it is burning alcohol. You know when you put alcohol on the plum pudding at Christmas time and set it a flame, the lovely liquid blue flame that envelopes the pudding until you blow it out. That flame is the nearest thing to the blue light which comes on the forehead of a man in meditation.

Do not be distressed. You will know it when you see it. It is like two shades of blue, a darker and a lighter blue in constant motion, just like burning alcohol, which is unlike the constant flame of a gas jet. This flame is alive, just as spirit would be alive.

Another thing that may come to you as it did to me. You will see spots before your eyes. They are not liver spots as some people will tell you who know nothing about it. These are little things that float in space like a mesh, little circles all tied together. They start with a single cell and come in groups in different geometrical patterns, like worms, like trailers, and they float all over your face. When you close your eyes you still see them, proving that they are not from without, they are from within.

When you begin to expand in consciousness all these things come. They may be your blood stream objectified by some strange trick of man that man does not quite understand. I am not denying that it is your blood stream made visible, but do not be distressed by thinking it is liver spots or some other silly thing that people will tell you.

If these various phenomena come to you, do not think you are doing something wrong. It is the normal, natural expansion that comes to all men who take themselves in tow and try to develop the garden of Gethsemane.

The minute you begin to discipline your mind by observing your thoughts and watching your thoughts throughout the day, you become the policeman of your thoughts. Refuse to enter into conversations that are unlovely, refuse to listen attentively to anything that tears down.

Begin to build within your own mind’s eye the vision of the perfect virgin rather than the vision of the foolish virgin. Listen only to the things that bring joy when you hear them. Do not give a willing ear to that which is unlovely, which when you heard it you wish you had not. That is listening and seeing things Without oil in your lamp, or joy in your mind.

There are two kinds of virgins in the Bible: five foolish and five wise virgins. The minute you become the wise virgin, or try to make an attempt to do it, you will find all these things happen. You will see these things, and they interest you so that you have not time to develop the foolish sight, as many people do. I hope that no one here does. Because no one should be identified with this great work who can still find great joy in a discussion of another that is unlovely.

Read this Neville Goddard lesson on transcending desire – Click here!