THE SOWER
February 5, 1965
By Neville Goddard
Courtesy of FreeNeville.com
Tonight’s subject is “The Sower.” You’ve all read about it in scripture. And a sower went forth to sow. He scattered his seed on a variety of soils and some were fertile, some were barren, some were highways, some were rocks, and so on (Luke 8:10).
Tonight, let me say that every physical effect has a spiritual cause and not a physical. The physical cause only seems; it is a delusion. Everything that happens in our world comes into being because of a spiritual cause. And by spiritual let me say, not some strange thing that you’ve been taught to believe is spiritual…just sit quietly and imagine; that’s a spiritual act.
You may not know that’s causation but that is causation. And when it happens in your world, because of the shortness of memory you may relate it to some physical event that preceded it and think that was the cause of it; and it isn’t so at all. Every physical event in the world has a spiritual cause and not a physical.
But our memories are short and we do not relate the physical effect to the unseen and possibly forgotten spiritual cause. But, as we are told, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that shall he reap” (Gal. 6:7). Let me tell you, as far as your promise goes which is God has promised man to give himself to man, that is already planted. You can’t stop that. That’s completely unconditional. Every child born of woman is destined to be God. That’s already done. For if all ends run true to origins and our origin is God, the end is God. That’s already done. The promise came first and no one in the world can deprive you of the fulfillment of that because it’s unconditional. Hasn’t a thing to do with your position in this world—-what you’ve accomplished, what you are now doing, what you hope to do— it’s completely unconditional. So every child born of woman is destined to be God…completely unconditional. But while we’re here in the world of Caesar we’re given a law and the law is conditional: As we sow, so we reap. Memory is short and memory is almost a decaying thing in this world…we can’t remember. A chap called me day before yesterday and asked me to call a friend of mine who has lost a section of his memory—the whole thing is gone. He remembers me, he talks about me, and asked me to call him.
So I called him…he’s an actor, a man sixty-two years old…and every time he came home in New York City, which was once a week, he would come to cocktails, until finally he felt he couldn’t have any more and then he became a teetotaler and I had his Cokes for him and whatever sweet drinks he wanted. But he was always a glum, heavy, heavy picture—-the world was coming to an end, everything was wrong. He had a show on Broadway that ran two years, and while it was running for two years the world was coming to an end, the whole vast world.
So I called him and he remembered me, just all excited, ”Oh, Neville, so nice of you to call. I was wounded.” I said, “You were wounded? When?” He said, “I was wounded in Trinidad.” Well, he made a picture called An Affair in Trinidad with Rita Hayworth. He had nine days work and they paid him quite a lot of money for his nine days. He flew out here. I had friends of mine meet him, who would get him rooms, and then he had his nine days. He was here about three weeks and then he returned to New York City.
But here, recently, he went on another picture and I haven’t heard the details of it, but in some strange way he was beaten and they found him unconscious. When they picked him up, they put him in this place, and here, no memory between the Affair in Trinidad and now. He asked about my little girl, is she still in grammar school? Well, my little girl that he knows so well is graduated from college.
But he did it to himself. His whole vast world was one of tragedy. He came from Vienna, and every moment that I met him I couldn’t pull him out. I would try to pull him out. I would say, “Walter, what are you doing? Don’t you believe what I’m talking about? Imagining creates reality! That’s my premise, and every time you come home you talk about Hitler, you talk about this, you talk about the other. I don’t care what he has done; we have to revise everything. Imagining creates reality.”
He would say yes to that and in one second go back to the other, like a record playing it over and over. And here comes this picture in his world. I say to everyone, I don’t care how factual, how horrible the facts of life, imagining creates reality. You either believe it or you don’t. That is God in man.
The promise to man is unconditional; that’s coming up in its own good time. No one will fail to be God, but no one. Everyone will bring forth the Christ child, everyone. The story’s all laid out in scripture. The minute you bring that child forth you go all the way back, and nothing came before you. Christ came before all. The minute Christ is born in you the whole vast past is not past at all.
You simply come upon one scene after the other and it’s all within you. Not a thing is without you; the whole thing is within. God became man that man may become God. So the whole thing is contained within man, so that “All that we behold seemingly without, it’s within, in our Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”
But while we’re living in the world of Caesar we begin with a single, simple thought and we are the sower. “Sow a thought and reap an act. Sow an act and reap a habit. Sow a habit and reap a character. Sow a character and reap a destiny.” So you want to feel sorry for yourself and feel morbid? Alright, if that’s what you want to sow, sow it.
While you are having a Coke and having a few little hors d’oeuvres and you want to feel morbid and sorry for yourself in spite of what you’ve heard over and over, well, sow it. It will come. So you sow it and feel sorry for yourself…go into the backyard and eat worms, perfectly alright. Then all of a sudden you are eating actual worms and you wonder “Why did it happen to me?”
So in the world of Caesar we are the sower sowing thoughts. God the great sower sowed his seed in us and no one can stop it from maturing and that comes to fulfillment. The most glorious fulfillment! But in that interval of that journey…and we’re told it’s a horrible journey…read it in the 15th chapter of the Book of Genesis: “All your descendants,” said he to Abram, “will go into a strange land, a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved in that land for 400 years; at the end they will come out with great possessions” after 400 years (Gen. 15:13; Ezek. 44:28).
It doesn’t mean 400 years as you and I measure time. Four hundred is simply the numerical value of the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which is Tau, and the symbol of it is a cross. So this [body] is the cross…while I wear this garment of flesh and blood. Though I may only be seventy years in this little section, doesn’t mean that’s my end. I die here, restored to life still on the cross, finding myself still in a world just like this, and move all again. That’s my 400 years.
It may take, as Blake claims, 6,000 years in that journey for God’s seed that was planted on me to mature. That’s coming regardless. But in that interval, I could be happy, I could be comforted, I could be cushioned, I could be all these things. But whether I have money or not is not stopping the work that is being done in me by that initial seed that God planted in me which was himself. He actually fertilized me with himself, and that’s growing, growing into maturity.
And what is the fulfillment of it?—-God’s gift of himself to me. He gives me the power of his love and God is love, infinite love. That’s what he gives me. And there’s no power in the world comparable to love. Infinite love God gave me; but he gave it to me in just simply a journey, and it grows in me, and then it matures into the first thing, of the child.
But while waiting to hold that child in my hand that I may know it’s been born—-from then on expansion after expansion—while I’m waiting he gave me a law and we’re told the law comes 400 years after the promise.
So the promise, everyone has received it…and the law we’ve all received. And teachers are sent into the world to stimulate interest in the law. The law is inward, it’s not outward. It’s not going to church and giving ten percent to the church. It’s not going and burning some little incense. It’s not doing anything on the outside.
Listen to these words that show it so quickly, instantly, the inwardness of the law: “You’ve heard it said, ‘You should not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, anyone who looks at a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery with her,” any one (Mat. 5:27). It’s an inward act.
Now you take this into anything in this world. I can contemplate a state and if it seems desirable I may be inclined to do it. But if I contemplate it along with its consequences, I may restrain the impulse. I may contemplate the idea of stealing, and then I think of the consequences, suppose I’m caught. To get all that may seem good, but to get it and then be put in jail may seem not quite what I want, so I restrain the impulse. But I am told to contemplate the state even though I restrain the impulse was in itself the act. The inwardness of the law is revealed to man.
So tonight you can contemplate being a wonderful person, a successful man, a successful woman, a happy man, a happy woman, one that is secure, exactly as you want in this world, and you contemplate it. But don’t ask yourself how; that is part of this wonderful law that imagining creates reality. You contemplate the state, and you wonder what the feeling would be like were it true.
Then you feel yourself into that state as though it were true, and you view the world from that state as though it is true. Now, one second later something could break the spell and you’re back to where you were when you began to contemplate it. But you planted it! At that very moment when you felt yourself in it you planted it.
Now when it matures in your world, it may come through so many strange ways you may forget that moment in time when you planted it…and then give all people in your world credit for the thing that has happened to you, forgetting completely that causation is spiritual, that the physical effect is not causative at all. It hasn’t any physical causation, it’s all spiritual; that that mental act when you lost yourself in the state that was the time you planted the seed. And then, all of a sudden, you come upon it and you reap it.
If man could only remember that causation is spiritual and it has never been and never will be physical!
So tonight, you’re free. You can plant. You’re a sower. You have ideas, so you plant the thought, you sow the thought, and if you sow the thought tonight, then you’re going to reap an act. You can’t help it. Then you reap the act. You’re going to find you plant that, sow that, and it’s become a habit. Then you plant the habit, you repeat the habit, it becomes a character. Then your character becomes your destiny and that you can’t stop.
So, my tomorrow will be determined by the thought that I sow today. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked, whatever a man sows, that—-not something else—-that shall he also reap.” And this law comes to us at the end of the 8th chapter of the Book of Genesis. A new world begins to appear, and “seedtime and harvest shall never come to an end. All things will bring forth after their kind; it will never come to an end” (verse 22). This is seedtime and harvest.
I tell you from experience, as far as the promise goes, just think of this simple wonderful thing, in that same 8th chapter: The ark is floating on a world that is flooded; everything is dead but the contents of the ark. Well, who is that ark? “Man is either the ark of God or a phantom of the earth and the sea.” (Blake) I tell you, he is the ark of God, he contains everything. It rained for forty days, forty nights.
Forty is the numerical value of the Hebrew letter Mem, and Mem has the value symbolically of both the womb and water. For when a womb begins to bear, there is water in it, and the water must break for that content to come out. Until the water breaks, it doesn’t come out; the water subsides and then it comes out.
He who floated in it was 600 years old. Six hundred is the numerical value of the final letter of Mem. There are two Mems in Hebrew. The first is forty, the thirteenth letter; and then we get the 600, the final Mem, and that is water. So Noah was 600 years old.
And then God caused a great wind to move over the face of the water to dry it up so that it would subside. You read these words and you think, well, what is “face”? God caused a great wind, at the beginning of Genesis, “And the Spirit of the lord moved upon the face of the water” (1:2). The word “Spirit” and the word “wind” are one in Hebrew. So the wind moved upon it and drew it up; it subsided. Then you read the words: The dove went out, and then the dove returned, for the water hadn’t completely subsided; and Noah put forth his hand and received the dove and brought it into himself in the ark.
You read that and you think, well now, what a silly, stupid story. And how true that story is! When you hear the wind, the wind comes first, and then comes the birth and you hold him in your hand. Then the months move forward and you move back into time as it were.
Then comes that moment in time that the dove is floating…dove doesn’t float, but when you look at the dove it appears to be motionless and floating, just actually floating. And what do you do? You raise your hand and the dove descends gently upon your hand, and you bring the dove to your face and it smothers you in kisses. You actually put forth your hand and the dove, the Holy Spirit, descends upon it and smothers you with affection.
And the story is so true. But not until someone has actually experienced it does he understand it. But while we are waiting for the first motion of the wind—-for the wind precedes the birth of the child—-we simply practice God’s law. God’s law is based upon a simple premise, that whatever you desire, believe that you have received it and you will (Mark 11:24). That’s the story.
So every day I am a sower and I go out to plant my seed. I plant it with my imaginal acts. But memory being a very, I would say, short thing in man, he doesn’t remember between this moment and that moment what he planted. And he’s always surprised when the harvest appears and doesn’t recognize his own harvest.
One thing we’re given in scripture is the 16th chapter of Luke for everyone to help them (verse 1-8). It’s the story (it’s a parable) of an unjust steward. The unjust steward was highly commended for falsifying the record. Now, no one here would be commended if today you are a bookkeeper and you falsified the record.
We see such things in a morning’s paper day after day people who were trusted who took over and betrayed that trust. That’s not the story. Every parable in scripture has one central jet of truth. Don’t try to get all the little pieces, just one central jet. Well, the central jet is this: It’s falsifying the record mentally.
So the day tells me what I am, who I am, where I am, what I am, that’s the record. I don’t like it. Well then, let me falsify it in my mind’s eye. Let me now see the man that I would like to be, the man I want to be, where I want to be, everything in this world, and then persuade myself of the reality of this fact.
So when I’m completely persuaded of the reality of this falsified record, I’ve planted a new seed in this garden. If I remain faithful to this falsified record, I will reap it. I may not even remember having planted it, because memory comes afterwards. Memory comes when man begins to awake; the returning memory of the whole vast world is his.
But until the child is born, memory is very short. We speak of total recall…I question it seriously. We speak of this one having a wonderful recall, alright, marvelous if he has a good recall. But does he recall not a passage in a book, not some little thing that he’s read, all that is marvelous, to train the mind to recall—but does he recall the moments in time when he planted the seed?
The man who has some horrible situation in the world, does he remember—-though he’s a brilliant mind, with all the honors in the world—-does he recall when he went forth as a sower and planted that seed? That’s what I mean by recall. Everything in this world you and I planted it.
So someone comes into our world that we’ve known over the years and here comes a horrible state…or a lovely state. Do we recall when at some moment in the past we entertained just such a future for that person? Do we recall that we entertained it for that person? Of course we will justify it, we’ll say, well, when I recall that past (if I do) the situation at the time was so and so and so, and so I will justify my impression of that moment. It was that impression at that moment in time that I planted relative to that individual. “All that I behold, though it appears without, it is within, in my Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow” (Blake).
For he gave me himself and there is nothing but God, so I can’t pass the buck. I can’t say, well, he did so and so, she did so and so or they did so and so. I can’t pass the buck. It all takes place within me. So everyone this night if you really believe it…he said you’re either for or against me, there’s no lukewarmness. “Were that you were either hot or cold; but because you are neither hot nor cold but lukewarm, I spew you out” (Rev. 3:16).
So when you hear the story, that imagining creates reality, either be cold to it and reject it, or be warm to it and accept it and live by it. But to be lukewarm and say, “I’ll play it safe, I’ll accept it, but I’m not going to sell my stocks and my bonds and things of that sort, I make no radical change in my world, because in the event it doesn’t work I want so and so as a cushion.”
So you either accept it or you don’t accept. So, he who is not for me is against me…no lukewarmness at all. And man is invited to go out and simply take his record and falsify it. So it doesn’t really matter where we were born in this world. It doesn’t really matter what limitations were imposed upon birth.
For tonight, should anyone here make their exit from this world, you will be restored to life and find yourself in a world that is an automatic projection of all that is unreaped here to reap it there, while God still is playing his part within you. For “He who began a good work within you, he will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
So do not for one moment think it will not be completed; it’s being completed in us. But while it’s being completed we are inserted into the same time series best suited for the fulfillment of the unfulfilled desires that we have planted, good, bad or indifferent.
So then everyone here is actually free if he knows he is the being spoken of in scripture—-that he can be any man, any woman in this world, really, if he really believes it.
When this call came through I could hardly believe my ears, because my wife and I discussed this being so often, and to find that here it has all come upon him. His successful shows on Broadway, he’s had several pictures, several TVs, but no matter how successful he was he was always a way down in the dumps. He’d come to my lectures in New York City, come to my home, and always, you’d almost go to the door expecting a shroud. He’d come week after week, and we could never seem to pull him up. If you said it once—-and you said it a thousand times in the course of an evening —-“But, Walter, imagining creates reality.” “Yes, Neville but…” and that was the “but.” And so there is an aspect in my life I’ve got to work on. He reminds me of something in me that is that “but,” because he still is an expression of myself and so I’ve got to work on this aspect.
Over the years, he was a friend who came home. I can just contemplate the lovely aspects of my life that really came into flower (who accepted it), but I can’t deny that aspect and I can’t rub it out. I’ve got to revise it…I’ve got to really work on it.
Now where he is, I don’t even know. Maybe you’d know if I told you the name because when the voice answered it said “Gateway.” But where Gateway is I don’t know. It’s some home for this strange, peculiar thing that happens to people where the doctors simply experiment. They simply go into all kinds of investigations as to why memory should be cut and a little block within it that runs over a period of years.
A normal person…goes back to me…but passages beyond it…can’t remember my little girl in grammar school who’s graduated from college. Doesn’t remember my son at all. Doesn’t remember anything but he was wounded in An Affair in Trinidad. So that’s his picture.
So I say, don’t—-and many of us do, if not all of us do—-feel sorry for ourselves. Something happened and we feel sorry for ourselves. That’s a wasted moment. That one moment of feeling sorry for yourself has actually planted a horrible seed that tomorrow is going to grow frightful fruit in your world. Don’t spend one second of your life feeling sorry for yourself, don’t!
Don’t justify failure; don’t justify any limitation in this world. At that very moment plant the lovely seed by assuming that the world is as it ought to be in my world and that the world sees you as you would like them to see you. Spend your time planting this wonderful seed. If it doesn’t come now and you should die this very night in the eyes of the world, you don’t really die; you’re restored to life to reap the seed you planted. It’s only one wonderful circle. You’ll reap it.
Regardless of what the world will tell you, you’ll find yourself in a world just as real as this and reap it, the fruit that you planted here, I promise you. I see it so clearly; not just in speculation, I see it. Everything told us in our scripture is true.
As we told you earlier, that simple little gesture when it appeared before me and above me, why should I raise my hand? And why should it be my left hand? I raised the left hand and the left is always descent. He was descending upon me. I raised my hand automatically; and here came this hand and this finger projected; and then the symbol of the Holy Spirit rested upon it and then smothered me in kisses, just as told us in scripture. Then comes this eternal promise: “As long as the earth remains, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.” And so you and I…if there is seedtime there must be a sower, and then there will be a harvest. It shall not cease.
So you and I can plant in this interval while we wait for the unfolding of the picture within us when we go back, and then we rise into a world completely subject to our imaginative power. But everything is put under our power, as told us in the 9th chapter of Genesis, but everything. Not one thing is left out. Everything is given into the hands of the individual after the flood subsides, after the new world appears.
It begins with the birth of the child, and then everything said in scripture goes backwards. You realize not a thing came before you, it all came after you. Nothing comes before God, and God gave himself to man.
So when God appears in the birth of the child, then everything foretold in scripture begins to unfold in man, and the whole thing unfolds in man. Then he waits for that little interval between the last which is the dove, that’s the last. So the full measure of his heavenly inheritance cannot be actualized by him, or not fully realized by him so long as he’s still in the body.
So he waits patiently for the removal of the body. And then he comes into his entire inheritance where everything is subject to his imaginative power. And he who walked the earth in a limited way, using this law to the best of his ability, suddenly comes into this fantastic power which is the power of love. Everything is done in love. But there is no power comparable to the power of love.
I saw it so clearly. So I ask you to try it and to do it now. I go back to 1925, in London, I said to this young chap, Matthew (?), “Why aren’t you interested in these thoughts?” I became so completely aroused at the age of twenty that I couldn’t conceive of anyone not being interested. His father and mother were. And he said to me, “Well, I’m too young for such things. Just let me wait…when I reach my father’s age.” The father was then in his fifties, he was twenty-one, I was twenty. I said, “But, Matt, how could you wait, this exciting concept of life of the mind, this new world?” “Oh, no, I must live first,” said he. When I came back to America—-I was four months in London—-I came to America and he went off to India, to the tea company, and died six months later.
He was too young for this interest, much too young; he has to live first. His father and mother outlived him by almost thirty years. The father was very on in years when he died, and she went even beyond the father. Here was Matt at the age of twenty-one, he was too young to show any interest in such thoughts…he has to live first. So, many people say the same thing, “Jut let me live first.” Well, I’ll tell them how to live: Use the law. Use the law. You want a home? You want a job, a better job, more money? Use the law. That’s still applying this principle.
But don’t forget the promise. Dwell upon the promise, and “Set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13). When he comes and the veil is lifted and the whole thing begins to unfold, you go all the way back and realize that in the volume of the book it was written of me (Ps. 40:7). There’s nothing but my very Being spoken of in that scripture.
It was God dictating his promise to me and giving me, after his promise which was unconditional, giving me a law by which in my exile I could cushion the inevitable shocks. For these are shocks…and I can cushion them and live well if I live by his law.
The law is not external; the law is internal: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7(KJV)). The whole thing is within myself. What am I entertaining morning, noon and night? May I tell you, that when you begin to really take hold of it, it goes into your dreams. That you live by it in what is called the uncontrolled state of a dream—you find yourself not the victim of your Imagination but the master. You’re controlling it. You are it. You don’t let it move you.
You find yourself reasoning in dream just as you would reason here, if you really begin to live by it. So the dream of the night ceases to be the dream of the night. In fact, night after night you look forward to sleep—not to comfort the body because you’re tired—you welcome it, you look forward to it for the experience. You find yourself in that world behaving as you would here if you really take hold of the law of God. I promise you from my own personal experience that’s how you do it.
But you will find the promise unfolding in you automatically, and the whole thing will begin with the most fantastic wind. Some will labor longer, as women labor here; some go into labor for hours. In fact, I have a sister-in-law that she was in labor, I think, for two days. I have another sister-in-law, she yawns, and it comes out. She’s borne three daughters and before she could say boo the child was born. The other has two children and she labored and labored.
So I’ll tell you, the labor begins when you feel in your head the wind. Just like that it’s the most terrific wind. And that labor may last hours.
In my own case, I was like the sister-in-law who simply yawned and out it came. But it will start in your head, like the most fantastic vibration, but you will interpret it as a wind, like a hurricane; and out will come the symbol of your birth. Then will start all the entire Bible unfolding, series after series after series. And you’ll go back in time to find that not a thing came before you; it all comes afterNow the birth of Christ Jesus. let us go into the Silence. * * *
(inaudible)
The wind comes in the beginning of the drama. It’s a fantastic thing. You interpret it first of all as a most fantastic vibration and you think that you’re going to explode. That is, you feel your brain is going to explode, because it all centers here. But it is a wind. No, as far as I’m concerned the wind comes only once because it’s all centered here. Well, my dear, it’s…the wind and Spirit are one in scripture.
(inaudible)
No, the wind comes…it precedes one’s resurrection, it precedes the birth of the child. A similar vibration comes with David, but it’s different. In David, it’s an explosion, it’s a peculiar expansion. I can only say you explode with David where it seems that your whole head explodes. Because then you begin to really expand…for the whole being is now expanding into eternity.
(inaudible)
No, don’t…the wind, as far as I’m concerned—I can only give you my own personal experience, and all I seek to do here is to share with everyone what I have experienced—-and it begins with the wind. I call that a double act: You awaken and then the child. Then the second state is a single act and it’s an actual explosion. I felt my head exploding, my whole head exploded, and here stood before me David. He was always there waiting for my expansion. I could never see him that he may reveal to me God the Father unless I had expanded to the point where he would appear; because he is within all of us. We have reached the limit of contraction, so we have now to expand. At the degree of expansion, David, who was always there waiting to reveal me as God the Father, couldn’t reveal me until I had expanded. And the second one is an actual expansion.
(inaudible)
My dear, if it’s a uniform time, it’s five months between the child and David…if it’s uniform. But I’m not going to say, I will not go out on a limb and say that it has to follow the pattern. I’m only giving my pattern. But if I say it has to follow this way, I’m becoming dogmatic and saying that I am the criteria…you either follow me or else. I can’t do that. I can only share with you…just a the evangelist said in the Book of Luke, “Many have undertaken to write a narrative of the things that have happened among us, and it seemed good to me also to write to you, dear Theophilus” (Luke 1:1). But he didn’t say he had the only way of telling it. He just simply…he told it, but others told it. He confessed that others told it. I am one of those “others”…I am telling it. But I tell you, just as I told it in The Law and the Promise and my little pamphlet He Breaks the Shell, that’s how it happened to me. But I would not in eternity say because it happened in this way…I have a niece who has had three children and they were all Caesarean. So I can’t say because the two children that I sired were born in a normal way that every child must be born that way. Because she had three beautiful children and they were all taken in Caesarean section. Well, I heard Billy Graham…I already knew about that wind… Good! I’m glad to hear it. I never heard this wind before.
(inaudible)
Well, I’ll tell you, the wind it’s a peculiar wind. Although you associate it with a hurricane, some cyclone, nevertheless it’s all in you. You feel it in your head. Well, you feel that, but you feel it in your head. Your head is the center of it all. You hear it coming seemingly from without, but you can’t deny that you’re still feeling it here [pointing to head]. It begins in your head and it doesn’t leave that area. Then you wake, you come from a profound sleep, the sleep of death. In the 5th chapter of John, after the statement is made, “As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself” (verse 26). Then comes this fantastic statement, “And the hour is coming when all in the grave will hear his voice and awake” (verse 28). Well, this is the grave and the voice is the wind. You don’t hear a voice calling you by name, saying Mary, John, Neville; the voice is the wind and that wind is the voice calling you, and you begin to awake. When you awake you bring forth the child; that’s what you’ve been bearing anyway. You bring forth the Christ child. If you bring forth the Christ child, then you are the mother of the Christ. If you are the mother of the Christ, then you are the bride of the Lord.
If you are the bride of the Lord and his promise is true, he cleaves to you, and will not leave you until you become one person. When you become one person then the explosion takes place and here comes David; for David is his only begotten Son. You look at David and he is your Son. That comes after the explosion. Then comes the moving up in the serpentine form as the Son of man must be lifted up: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up” (John 3:14). Then comes the final statement, because a new world has appeared; for the old world has been drowned, it’s been wiped out.
Strangely enough, in my vision, when the woman at my left said to me, “He loves you,” meaning the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, well, it was so obvious that he did. And then she said, “They avoid man because man gives off the most offensive odor, like a carnivorous bowel, but he so loves you that he penetrated the ring of offense to demonstrate his love for you.” Well, can you imagine a world like this world drowned? You go here to Santa Monica at certain seasons of the year when the fish are dead and you can’t stand it.
That’s just a little bit. But take the world drowned, all living things dead, well, can you imagine the odor! And she said to me that we give off such an offensive odor that they avoid us, but he so loves you he penetrated that ring of offense to demonstrate his love for you.
So, here comes the Holy Spirit upon me in spite of the horrible odor that would actually be the result of a flood, of the old world being dead. So you reach the new world and the old world has died. And that old world was a living world of flesh and blood, and everything in it died. For something new has come into your being and it’s risen; and you are now Lord of this new world, where everything is subject to your imaginative power. But you cannot exercise that power until that moment in time when you take off this garment for the last time. So it begins with the wind, no question about it. other questions, please? (inaudible) Alright, a very good question. The new translation of that is “Who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life?” (Luke 12:25 RSV).
In other words, your entrance and your exit is predetermined. That’s what the Bible teaches; that you make your entrance on time and your exit on time, though the exit seems to be suicide, though the exit seems to be the result of an accident. “But no one takes away my life, I lay it down myself. I have the power to lay it down and the power to take it up again” (John 10:18). So no one takes it from me at any moment in time. So who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life?
Therefore, it’s there to tell every man don’t be anxious concerning your exit; that is already determined by the play. I had the good fortune today to read a letter that came from a friend, a doctor. He made his exit at the age of fifty-three and I saw him six weeks ago in La Jolla…a very, very successful dentist. He had what is called “the cream of the crop” as his clients. And years ago he planned and plotted retirement and bought a very interesting kind of insurance where he wouldn’t have to work, but it would only go so long. It paid him a fantastic return, but then it would suddenly stop. It was going to stop this year.
But just as it came into full force he came down with this peculiar disease no one could diagnose and went down to eighty-odd pounds from one hundred seventy. So when I saw him I explained the facts of life as I understand them from my visions and my mystical experiences, and told him that you don’t really die. You planted the seed and now you’ve been living without working for the last six years, no work, with your wonderful clientele and the income that you made.
But you didn’t want to work, so now you have all this money coming in, but it stops, stops this year. Then I told him exactly what I know would happen to him, that you’ll make your exit, you’ll be restored to life, inserted into a time sequence best suited for the work that is being done. But you’ve reaped the truth of what you’ve been planting. He listened carefully, he agreed with me; and his wife wrote a letter which I heard today as a friend called me up and read it for me in which she said, “After I (Neville) left the house he talked of nothing but until he died. He felt so comforted and so relieved and completely unafraid of the inevitable exit from this world.” So to answer your question, the modern translation is not cubit, meaning height, but time, it’s an hour. “Who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life?”
So forget that adding to and expending energies to make it so; but in the interval to be happy, to have money, or to have this, that or the other if you really want it. But the work of the promise is going on anyway. The promise is that he who became you will reveal himself as you. That’s a pregnancy. You already have been impregnated by God, and that’s being done whether you know it or not. The Bible only reveals the stages of the unfolding promise. Until the next time… Thank you.