Christianity has to be continually redeemed from secular history, for Jesus Christ is the human imagination.
As Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed upon us by God. Now tonight we will show you one of these gifts. If you really understand who Jesus Christ is, I tell you he is your own wonderful human imagination. Death is Christ. It comes as a shock when you first hear it if you are raised in the tradition as the speaker was.
I was raised in a Christian home. And naturally, like the hundreds of millions of Christians, we were taught it as secular history. A little boy who was born of a woman who knew not a man, and that his father was God and he was the son of God and that was the story as I was taught it. But I was searching and seeking from the time I think I can remember. I believed the story as Mother taught it to him. I did believe it. And I can't tell anyone the shock that was mine. And sometimes maybe I wondered if it would not have been better to turn back, like Israel in the desert, and go back into slavery. But I couldn't, any more than they could. They had to keep moving towards the promised land.
For when you are disillusioned, having been taught the story, as we all have been taught it, to discover that he is not something in history. He is nearer than your breathing. In fact, he can't even be there. He is your very self. He is your own wonderful human imagination. He comes as quite a shock.
Well I can tell it best by telling you a story. The year was 1933. Roosevelt was elected. I had been in this country for 11 years. I never really wanted to go back to Barbados. My parents came up in that year and they pleaded with me to come to Barbados and join the family, become a member of the family. And I declined. I said no. I saw them off at the boat and strangely enough as they sailed and they were on the deck and I waved goodbye to them, a peculiar feeling came over me. And I had a desire that I never had in the 11 years, to go to Barbados. I had just said goodbye to them and said no to their request. They would have paid all expenses and dropped me back and everything would have been perfect. it.
Then from the boat I went to my old friend Abdullah. He was born, so I am told, in Ethiopia. He was a black man, raised in the Jewish faith, but really understood Christianity as few men that I ever met understood it. He understood the law, not the promise. He understood the
So I went to him and I told him the feeling that came over me, that I wanted to go to Barbados. I just waved at my parents and a peculiar feeling possessed me. And he said to me, you are in Barbados. Well that did not make sense to me. I'm standing in his place on 72nd Street, off Central Park West. That's where he lived. He lived at 30 West 72nd Street. And then I am in this place. And he is telling me that I am in Barbados. He didn't explain what he meant.
So as the days went by, I said to him, Ab, I am no nearer to Barbados than I was when I spoke to you.
And he said to me, if you are in Barbados, you cannot discuss the means of getting to Barbados. You must actually live in Barbados, in your imagination, as though you were there, just as this. And view the world from Barbados. If you sleep in Barbados and view the world from Barbados, the means will appear and you will go to Barbados, but as far as I am concerned you are already in Barbados because you desire it very intensely. All you have to do is simply to enter it and you enter it now in New York City, even though that's 2,000 miles across water, and you won't want to walk across water, but you enter Barbados and view the world from it. If you see the world from Barbados this, then you have to be embodied.
He did not explain to me then, but I learned later, that man, being all imagination, man is wherever he is in imagination. And imagination is the God in man that is the eternal body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And all things are possible to him. And by him all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made. But what is now proven was once only imagined.
These things I did not know then. He simply talked in the overall picture. But I did my best, and I slept mentally in Barbados, in my mother's home. I looked at the world and saw it, some marvelous. I saw New York City 2,000 miles to the north of us. The northwest. For we are on a certain latitude, 13 north. New York is 42 north. We are the 59th longitude. New York is the 74th. So I saw it northwest, as I could imagine it. I heard the tropical noises. We call this land tropical. It really isn't tropical in the two, really two senses of the word. When you go into the tropics, it's something entirely different. I was born in the tropics, almost on the equator. It's an entirely different odor.
Concepts go like this. You look at a sun and the sun disappears suddenly. A ball of red light becomes green. You're looking at the sun and suddenly, in a matter of a fifth second, you're seeing a green sun. You're seeing the complement of red. So we have no twilight in Barbados. The sun goes down rapidly from a red ball to a green ball and you're seeing a green ball. So the whole atmosphere differs.
Well, I put myself into this and felt that my mother and father were in their room and that my brothers, those who were not yet got married, were in the house of a huge, big, old home of ours. And there I slept. This was now late October.
When it came to the end of November, I said to Ed, I said, Ed, I am no nearer Barbados. He said, you are in Barbados. Then he turned his back on he walked over to his bedroom and slammed the door, which was not an invitation to solitude, if you understood as. He was teaching me a lesson, the lesson of faith. If I am actually sleeping in Barbados, no power in the world could interfere with my journey to Barbados.
This is now late November. The last trip out of New York City, sailing for Barbados, was the 6th of December. I wanted to get there by Christmas. And so I could not raise the question anymore.
But on the morning of the 4th or the 3rd of December, I got a letter from my brother Victor.
I did, did not ask him or any member of my family to bring me to Barbados. He wrote a letter and he justified the content in this manner. He said, we are, you know, a large family. Nine brothers and a sister. We have never been united around our Christmas table at Christmas since we were a family. For there was an interval between my sister, Gatsby, and the last two boys of eight years. By that time, my oldest brother had left for Demerara in British Guiana. And by then, when he came back, my brother Lawrence went off to McGill to study medicine. And we were always moving around. But this time, every one was present but George Curie. And he said, I'm imposing a small little draft, $50. But in 1933, when there were 17 .5 million unemployed, and we didn't have 204 million citizens, he only had 120 -odd million. It was an enormous thing. If you're not old enough to know it, may I tell you it was really a horror.
For I was numbered among the unemployed. And so he knew that I could come if the terms were there, that I had my passage paid. So he enclosed a $50 draft to buy a suit. Well, you could buy a suit in those days for $12, $10. You could buy her shoes, McCann shoes, for $3, and so I went down to the steam ship company because in the letter he said, I've notified the company to issue a ticket and then the little $50 you buy what you need for the trip and then sign the chip and when the ship comes in I'll meet the ship and pay all the things that you have incurred, all the debts. So I went down to the ship, they say to me, I'm sorry Mr. Goddard but we do not have a first class passage for you. We can accommodate you third class. You have the first class accommodation for meals and you can have all the other areas of the first class. But for sleeping you have to go to the third class. I said, sir, if you're alright with me, I'll take it.
I went back to Abdullah and I told him. You know what he did? When I said, I am I'm going third class to Barbados, but I have the accommodation with the first for the daylight hours. He said, who told you you're going third class? You are already in Barbados. And you went first class. Again, he closed the door on me.
I went down to the ship the morning it sailed on the 6th of December. And the ticket agent said to me, Mr. Goddard, I have good news for you. We have a cancellation. And now you can go first pass, but you'll share it with two others, the three in the cabin. It's perfectly all right with me. And so I went down first pass. Abdullah said to me, you know, Neville, when you return from Barbados, you will have died. Never explain a statement of that nature. You will have died. I'm coming back from Barbados, but I will have died. He spoke in these cryptic manners. Well, I did, I went down to Barbados. I was a strict vegetarian. I had not eaten one piece of meat or fish or fowl in seven years, no smoking, no alcohol, no sex, disillusioned in my first marriage, and the whole thing was simply I became a celibate. I came back from Barbados and in Barbados I was the same being that I was when I arrived, to the annoyance of my family.
For they made all their money in groceries selling meat, pigs, alcohol, everything. And I am enjoying a trip based upon their efforts and here I am not taking what they offer.
On my way north I did everything I had not done in seven years. He was right, I died, that state of consciousness died. That's what died. Never is the immortal being, that is the inner man, is immortal. I was locked in a state. The state I departed from, so as far as I am concerned, I died to that state.
You see, life is nothing more than a hunger. This whole vast world is a hunger. And there are a number of states of consciousness.