Awake, O Sleeper

Now tonight’s title is Awake, O Sleeper. You’ll find this in the fifth chapter of Ephesians. Awake, O Sleeper, and arise from the dead. Now what person, ratly, would grasp it? See, the Bible is addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only but immediately to the understanding or reason. If you try to grasp it through reason, well, it doesn’t make sense. How could I speak to someone and tell him that he’s not only asleep, but he’s dead? I quite sleep with death, and tell a man that I’m addressing, to awake you sleeper, and arise from the dead. I am telling him he has entered a world of eternal death, but he doesn’t know it.

I am telling him that he is dreaming his world into being, but he doesn’t know it. And maybe he doesn’t believe it, for he’s a rational being. In the Old Testament, in the 44th chapter of the book of Psalms, we read, Rouse thyself. Why sleepest thou, O Lord? Awake. So it’s addressed to the Lord. All the commands of Scripture are addressed to the Lord and fulfilled by the Lord. There is nothing but the Lord. So we start on the greatest confession of faith that man has ever received through revelation. It’s called the Hebrew’s confession of faith, the Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. It’s a compound unit, one made up of others.

for the word is Elohim, the God. Now I will tell you, I firmly believe in God. I don’t have to believe in God, for I stood in the presence of the risen Lord, who embraced me and incorporated me into his one body. And from that moment, back in 1929, I am one with the body of the risen Lord. So here is the Lord. I don’t believe in it. But I will tell you, using the word belief, I believe in God. I believe also that men are gods and that collective man is God. That we are the gods spoken of in the 82nd Psalm, which we are told is the most difficult of all the Psalms for the scholars to unravel.

If it ever had any meaning, they say, the meaning has long been lost. And this is what stumps. It’s quoted in the 10th chapter of the book of John. But we’ll go back to the Oratio, the 82nd Psalm. And God has taken his place in the divine assembly. In the midst of the gods, He holds judgment. Now he speaks. I say ye are God, sons of the Most High, all of them. Nevertheless, now here comes the future prophecy now. All this is a present fact. ye are God now, sons of the most proud now. Nevertheless ye shall die as men, and fall as one man, O ye princes. Here is the prophecy. You’ll fall as one man.

Is the the fall the result of disobedience, as we are taught? Is the fall something that is a punishment? I tell you it is not. The fall is a plan. It’s a pretext, an assumed appearance in order to conceal the real intention. The real intention is an expansion, a further existence, an ultimate birth. That’s the real intention. And the gods fell as one man. One man. He chose us in himself before the foundation of the world. And as one man fell, it fragmented itself into the unnumbered men of the world. We are the gods in disguise, not recognizing our brotherhood, not recognizing ourselves. Now we’ll go to the beginning of Genesis and take it from there.

And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man, and while he slept he took from man a rib and from that rib he made a woman, and bringing a woman before man, man said, at last, bone of my bones and flesh to my flesh: he shall be called woman, for he was taken out of man. Therefore man must leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they become one flesh. Now through the eyes of reason, you discount it. It's all a myth. It's stupid. We know biologically that's stupid. And may I tell you it is true, but not as the world sees it. To understand it, you must have the vision.

It must be revealed to you that man has no body distinct from his soul. That whole body is only a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlet of soul in this world. This body is Eve. This is my emanation, my vegetated mortal wife, my emanation yet my wife till the sleep of death is over. This is Eve, whether it be male or female, mixed or different. This is my emanation, the Jerusalem in every individual man. I am adjoined to you and you to me by our emanated portion, which is the Jerusalem in every man. And this Jerusalem is the Jerusalem below that bears, comes into slavery. Everyone comes in wrapped in this garment that is his emanated portion and is enslaved in this world of eternal death.

there is another Jerusalem, the one who emanates is the Jerusalem from above, and that is the emanate of the Lord that is hidden from view, but it is one with this. This is my ease. I become so much one with ease that if you suck me tonight and cause me pain, I scream out, I am in pain. But what is his name by which all men must knowing forever and forever? I am go to the people of Israel, tell them, I am her sent you. That's my name forever, throughout all generations. So when you strike this, I am so much a part of my wife to which I have fled, that's quite quite her and you quite me, for I say I am in vain.

I go on throughout, so take this from me, destroy this temple, and I will in three days raise it up again. Mr. Watt, in three days, and it took us 46 years to build it, that's how the mind of man thinks, to think only in terms of an external thing made with human head, knowing not that That he spoke of the temple of his body. For know ye not that ye are the temple of the Lord. And that the spirit of God dwells in you. That's what Paul asked us in his letter to the Corinthians. That we are actually. This is the temple. He dwells in his wife. He believes to us. And they become one.

So this is the only Eve of scripture. There never was another Eve. You. Every being born in this world, male or female, that is you. And the one who emanated it, that soul that emanated it, is the man spoken of. It's capitalized in the translation in Scripture, in the second chapter of Genesis, that he came out of man, and man is capitalized, generic man. So when I fell, I fell in one body, and falling in one body, I entered my cave, and I met my savior in the grave. And some find a female garment there, and some a male, woven with care. So I found a male garment. My wife found a female garment. But she is neither female, and I am not male, we are man.

For man in the resurrection is above the organization of sex. He is not a divided being, as we are told in Galatians. In Christ is neither male nor female, neither born nor free, neither Greek nor Jew, neither black nor white. we are simply above the whole organization in this world of eternal death. So when Blake speaks to us in his greatest work, Jerusalem, he first states the theme. Having stated the theme, he tells us it's of the sleep of Ulro. Well, the sleep of Ulro refers to life in this world as we We know it right here in this world. And this world seems to be of an ultimate, endless state. There is no end to it.

It goes on and on. It also seems to us to have no purpose. For tonight, the richest man will die and leave it all behind him. And the poor man will die. He goes to the pauper's grave. but at the end, given the same length of time, both turn into dust and bones, and you will dig out one grave and find you can't tell who it is. It's all nothing. It seems to have no purpose. And yet man has to enter this world, regardless of what he seems to achieve in the world, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of the Lord. No matter how wise he seems to be, it is stupid in the eyes of God.

And the strength of man isn't equal to the weakness of God. So let them cut across the stage and see all the things that they see, and it still is nothing. So it seems to be that here there is no end to futility, and there is no purpose. And yet man has to pass through it and awaken from it into eternal life. So he starts his theme, and he lays the theme out. he's writing about this of the sleep of Alvaro and of the passage through eternal death and of the awakening to eternal life now he tells us this theme calls me night after night in sleep and every morn awakes me at sunrise then I see the savior over me spreading his beams of love and dictating the words of this mild song.

That's how he started. Now he starts the dictation. And he swears in his letter to his friend, but that the whole thing came by immediate dictation. He said, I did not write it. I can brag about it. I can praise it. Because I dare not pretend tend to be any one other than the secretary. The authors are in heaven. And it's the grandest poem that this world contains. For the spirit of truth dictated it. Morning after morning as he woke, it was dictating twelve, sometimes twenty and sometimes thirty lines at a time. And what now seems to be the labor of a long life was produced without labor or study, and quite often against my will.

But I had to take it down. And he would rise and take it down, and his wife Catherine would rise with him and sit in the silence while William recorded. And sometimes he would hold his hand as he recorded, because he was simply completely possessed by the Spirit as it rode through him. And he's writing down the greatest of all poems, Jerusalem. And this is how we start. Awake. Awake, O sleeper of the land of shadows. Wake. Expand.

I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine. That being in whom we were contained, that being who fell deliberately for a purpose, to expand, beyond its glory, because only by this contraction into the state called death could it expand.

We have that told in the story of the parable of the sea. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it brings forth mud.

Here we have, in this little story of the grain of wheat, it is set forth the mystery of life through death. If I want an extension of living, an extension of reality, an extension of existence, I must contract and die and empty myself of my glory, which I had with the Lord before that the world was, and entering into one body, one body falls. And the world tells it as a mistake. It's no mistake. It's a plan. God planned everything as it has come out and as it will be consummated.

And in the end, when the mass comes off, after you awake, you are enhanced beyond your wildest dream by reason of the passage through death and your awakening to eternal life. and when we all awake we are the ones who knew each other more intimately than anyone on earth could ever know.

How could I ever know? My wife and I think the same thought through the day. There is no day that I have voiced something he's been thinking about it. He voices something I've been thinking about it. But no matter how intimate our thoughts are in this hearing, it can't compare to the intimacy that is ours when these garments are taken off. And we're once more awakened into eternal life.

So awake, O sleeper. For you can't really awake by doing anything that you are taught to do.

May I tell you? They'll tell you, don't eat meat. You'll awaken. Don't go to that church. You'll awaken. Don't do so and so. All the don'ts. You could do nothing and never awaken. You can do everything and not awaken. But may I tell you, that seems extravagant, and it is, because all will awaken, but not by any effort on their part while they're here.

You will awaken at the moment in time that it was predetermined that you would awaken, whether you'll be shining shoes at the time or whether you'll be employing a million people.

Our government today undoubtedly has on its payroll millions of people, and the one who is given credit is our president. He is the head. And so, in a technical sense, he employs a million. And tonight, the one shining his shoe could awaken, and he falls from the seat and continue the dream. But he cannot die. That's the glorious thought.

This emanation, take it from me now, and in three days I'll raise it up again. so this body of mine cut it if you will cut off its head it's my emanation and therefore I believing myself to be it I will find myself in the immediate presence wearing the same body only it will be new no part will be missing no bridge work no fillings of my teeth no grey hair no need to wear glasses and no need to wear any aid in this world. I will be a young man, 20 years old. Just as I snap out this, and you call it dead, I'll be wearing a garment same as before in a world terrestrial just like this and continue the journey until I awake.

But I can tell you, I have awakened. And so when I take this off, whenever it's taken off, I will no longer be in this world, for this world does not terminate at the point where our senses cease to reiterate. So when a man cannot follow those who are called dead, as he called them dead, only because of his limitations he can't follow them, but the one you call dead isn't dead to himself. He emanated the body that you knew, he emanates the same body. Same body, beautiful, enhanced beyond your wildest dreams, And he continues, not even knowing that he's gone through the door. Death is no more than leaving one room for another. In this same fabulous terrestrial world that is called to the mystery, eternal death.

And from which man will one day awaken into eternal life. For having descended and entered the world of death, when he now awakens, he is expended. And that was the purpose. There is no limit to expansion. God set a limit to contraction, to opacity, but not to translucent or expansion. And so we descended, not because of anything that we ever did that was wrong. Not one thing was wrong. And so if I emanate this body, which I did, destroy it when you will, I will, if I have not awakened, I'll emanate the same body. and you cannot reach me. I may find myself tomorrow in a different section of time, not an extension of this, like 1969 or 68.

I may be in the year 3000. I may be in the year 1000. Whatever is best fitted for the work yet to be done in me in order to bring about the awakening and the expansion into an extension of existence. So here is what we are so just think of it: God made man in his own image; you're told male or female made he them. Now that's the first chapter; the second changes it somewhat and tells a different story; but it's not a contradiction if you see it through imagination. Here he fashions him out of dust and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and he becomes a living soul. But his destiny is to become a life -giving spirit, not just a living soul, an animated body.

So the purpose of the four, of the sons of God, is to transform them into an entirely different world, being life -giving spirits, animating bodies. Not being an animated body, but animating the whole vast world around him, and closing it off at will and starting it again. And that is our destiny. Now reason cannot grasp it. An airpiece scholar, when he comes to this, the first thing you can't blame any man who has never had the vision. He said, it's a myth. Certainly it's a myth. A rib out of my side, take my body apart. No rib is missing. Take yours apart unless you had one cut out for some operation of the lung. but if you have not lost the rib through operation, your ribs are just as every man's ribs.

Not one is missing. Yet you're told in Scripture, one was taken out. But the word rib, do you know what it means? The Hebrew word is zela. It means a person, literally, of a person. It also is translated, if you want to write the word quarter in Hebrew, you write zela. You speak of the fourfold man. Four faces. ¶To every man it means a side, well the side need not be this side or that side or that side or this side, it's a portion, it's trying to say a portion of the soul emanates. That's what it's trying to tell man, but if you don't see it that way and zela only means a rib. Literally a little rib.

Well, then it's translated a curve, so because it means a curve, the curve of a man's structure would be the rib. ¶Well, if you want to write rib, yes. If you want to write a pane of wood deploring on the ground, the same as zealot. It could be a piece of wood. But a piece, not the whole. A portion. And zealot is a portion of the soul that emanates. And when it emanates, then he from whom it emanates must leave everything and cleave to his emanation. And they become one place. ¶Well, you'll cleave to your emanation, so much so that you identify yourself with it. And so if I ask you, who are you? You'll give me your name, but you first say, I am, and you put a name on it.

And if I strike that thing that you say you are, and I hurt it, well then you say, well, I am in pain. You call upon the name of God and say, God is in pain. You didn't say God is in pain, you said I am, but that's his name. You tell that God came down to earth. So again let me repeat: ¶I not only believe in God because I stood in the presence of the risen God, but I believe that all men are God and that collective man is God; so when you hurt man you hurt God, and when you hurt man you hurt yourself because you are God. ¶There is nothing but God, only God in this world.

And may I tell you, and this is not from speculation, God is love. In spite of the horrors of the world, God is love. For when you stand in his presence, you can feel anything but love. And when God embraces you and you become one with God, you have never felt such ecstasy, not in eternity. You can't describe the joy, the ecstasy that is yours when you are embraced by the risen Lord, and from then on you are incorporated into the body of God, as we are told in the 6th chapter of the book of Romans: for he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. ¶Only one body, only one Spirit, only one Lord, only one God and Father of all, and you are that.

¶So in the end, the one who commended the fall for this fabulous purpose, you will awaken and you were the one who commenced it, for he is Father. And you will awaken right here in this world of death as the Father. And the only one that can reveal reveal to you that you are the Father is God's only begotten Son, David, calling you Father. For David in the Spirit calls Christ Lord. And the word Adonai is a name used for the Father. For in Hebrew, they do not often use Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh because it's a sacred name. And so they substitute Adonai for the word Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh. And so David in the spirit calls Christ Adonai, my Lord; in other words, my Father.

For every son spoke of his father as my Lord, fulfilling scripture, for the second psalm is: 'And David said, I will tell of the decree of the Lord: he said unto me, Thou art my son; today I have begotten thee.' And this David, the David the only David of biblical fame, will stand before you and call you Father. ¶And then you know who you are. And this comes after you've been awakened from above, born from above, and then comes the Son calling you Father. And then the entire drama unfolds within you. And you'll know exactly who you are, that you are the ones spoken of in Scripture as the gods who gathered. And we agreed then to dream in concert.

So that when you and I see a building, we may see it differently. You may see it through the eyes of one who would like to own it. I may see it through the eyes of one who would admire it with no feeling of perfection. But we do see the same building, only we see it differently. So when we descended, we agreed to dream in concert. So while we walk this earth, We see the same street, therefore we know the same number, and we can go where we want to go because we are dreaming in concert. ¶Oh, we are dreaming, my dear. This whole vast world is the dream of the God who descended. But because we agreed to dream in concert, there is no confusion.

Had we agreed to dream individually and all play solo, this would be the wildest, maddest thing in the world. but we agreed to dream in concert. ¶Now, may I tell you, when I invite you to go all out and to imagine that you are now the man, the woman that you want to be, some will tell you that will lead to madness. May I tell you it will not. ¶The only thing that will lead to madness would be to doubt it. The minute doubt sets in and you would like to believe it but reason tells you it isn't true and you begin to doubt then descends what the world will call a mental division certain madness for doubt is the only devil in the world that's doubt.

If you could go all out and believe it and regardless of what the whole vast rational world will tell you, you won't go mad. The whole thing will become a part of your dream world. You'll bring it into and fit it in without any difficulty into the world. ¶So someone born poor, very poor, he began to dream that he had wealth and that he had fame. Well, at the moment, it would seem insane, his dream, but he persisted in his dream. But when the dream became true and his fame was established and his wealth established, it seemed perfectly natural. to those not knowing his dream. ¶Everyone is dreaming. But if you begin to doubt your dream, and still try to make it true, but doubting all the time, you are heading towards a little breakup.

But you will not break up if you go all out in your wonderful claim that you are what you desire to be. Because all things are possible to God. And the God spoken of is right where you are seated. That's the God of whom the Bible speaks. ¶So when the gods came down in the likeness of men, here they are, and some found a female garment there, and some a male woven with care. And so God himself enters death's door, this door of death, always with those who enter, and lays them in the grave with them, in visions of eternity until they awake and see Jesus. And the linen clothes lying there which the females had woven for.

They seemed to be woven in the womb of a woman, and they were, no question about it, but they were simply emanations of a soul. Woven in the womb of a woman between a cooperation of a male -female. male. But the soul emanating is neither male nor female, for it emanates a male garment or a female garment. And where is it? In this world of death. And take it off, emanates it again, this time without the use of the womb of a woman. Doesn't need it anymore. For we are told in the ninth chapter of Hebrews, for as it was appointed for all men to die once, and then comes the judgment. So Christ was offered once for the sins of many, and then he will appear a second time, not concerning sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Well, you've died already. Forget the death. When you go before I go, it may be said of you that you died. I will hear the news that Tonto died. You didn't die at all. You've already died. You only died once. When we fell, all in one body, that's when we died. We left our heavenly home and the glory that was ours to come down and assume the limitations of a flesh, which is called that of a slave. And so we've already died. If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. So the death is over. Only once do you die.

So though you go through the gate and men call you dead, you aren't dead. You simply emanate the same body, only it's young. It's new. Twenty years old, nothing missing. unaccountably new. You can't explain it. And may I tell you, the majority who go through don't even know they've gone through and take the young body for granted just as we take everything in this world for granted. A miracle goes on all day long in my body. I eat tonight's dinner, and it's been converted, unknown to my conscious reasoning mind, into blood, to tickle, to bone. And no man on earth can make one drop of blood. transplant a heart but he can't grow one transplant all kinds of organs but he can't grow one he can't make one drop of blood they've been crying forever they can't make a drop of living blood they can't make one hair of the head so they said now this man would have lived three weeks if he didn't have the transplant so we're going to give him the transplant and he lived 18 days as the first one in South Africa.

And suppose the other one does live, he will not live one hour beyond his span of time. As told us in the Sermon on the Mount, who by being anxious can add one hour to his span of life? Man goes blindly on believing that he can do these things. And all that it's doing is publicizing the surgeon and the medical world. It isn't doing a thing to this being that you really are, for you are not anything he thinks you are. Though I am dying, a poor old heart is all gone, liver gone, all things gone, I should get out and emanate something new and wear it. And they're going to put a new heart in me.

They're all hoping this night that someone will die suddenly. And then get their heart so that the doctor can have the experiment. If they didn't die suddenly, leaving a good heart, they couldn't use it. So let her be good and healthy, but die. Either kill her or do something and let her give the heart up. And they're using that and people are eating it up as though, isn't this marvelous? Isn't this fantastic? And the world goes blindly on in the world of sleep, not knowing who they are. I tell you, you are the Adam made in the image of God that is the son of God. And out of you came your Eve, and Eve is the body that you are wearing.

and you cleave to it and you cleave to it so tightly that finally you become one flesh so whenever it is hurt, you are hurt. And that is the Adam and Eve of Scripture. Therefore, it is not a myth. It does come out of you, but certainly not out of this little bone on my side called a rib. For the word zela means a portion. That's what it means. So, man has no body distinct from his soul. That whole body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlet of soul in this age. That's all that it is. You are a living soul destined to become a life -giving spirit. And as you fall, you emanate a body because you have to have a body to of function in this world.

And you can automatically do it. The minute you are called dead, you aren't dead at all. You're alive. And a body emanated out of your own being. Young. New. Not one part missing. Nothing missing. If you had an arm missing, the arm is not missing. If you had all your limbs off, as many today have all these off after the war, they're not missing. The whole thing is replaced. and when they're replaced, he takes it for granted. I know. I meet them. I can't persuade them that they've died. How can I tell a man who is alive, who is talking to me, that you died? He laughs at you. Well, I tell you that you're stung to sleep.

Wouldn't you laugh at me? If I tell you you're not only stung to sleep, but you're dead, well, now, you say, well, Neville is mad. Don't go and hear him. That man is mad. He has a demon. But I have comfort. That's what they said of the risen Christ in the 10th chapter of the book of John. Why listen to him? He's dead. He's mad. He has a demon. And he said to them, what did he say? Why do you tell me? For what good work? For no good work, but for your blasphemy, for you being a man playing the pure God. Well, he said, is it not written in your law, I say ye are gods?

if he calls you gods to whom the word of God came then why when he who the father consecrated and sent into the world claims that he is the son of God that you should say he blasphemes he doesn't make a claim greater than the other they don't know they are the son of God he's only trying to awaken man that you are the sons who came down He makes no claim that he is greater than. He says, I am going unto my Father and your Father. Go and tell my brethren, I am ascending unto my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God. He didn't make a claim that his Father differed from your Father or that his God differed from your God.

But they couldn't understand the mystery. They tried to get it right straight through the reasoning mind, and it isn't. You can't get it that way. The whole thing is spoken to the imagination, which is God. Man is all imagination. And God is man. And exists in us, and we in him. The eternal body of man is the imagination. And that is God himself.

Now let us go into the psalm.