Blake's Life and Vision
The first is Blake on religion. William Blake was born in England in 1757 and died there 70 years later, 1827. Blake never went to school and yet today anyone familiar with the English language if asked to make a list of the six greatest users of the tongue could not, if he's familiar with the language he could not omit the name of Blake in any list of six. I asked that question of Aldous Huxley about five or six years ago and he said to me just what I've just said to you, that no one familiar with English literature all the way back to Chaucer, Chaucer, Spencer, Milton, Shakespeare, you might alter the list somewhat, but it's that no one could omit the name of Blake in any list of six of the greatest users of the English tongue.
And he never called the inside of a school. He called himself Hebrew, Greek, Italian. Of course, he was the master of the English tongue. He had a vision from the time he was a child. And when he died, he was still communing with the world of eternity, really. He was singing hymns and he said they're not mine. They belong to those in eternity. They're not really mine. He said of religion, I know of no other Christianity and of no other gospel other than the liberty of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination, imagination, imagination, the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint candle, and into which we shall go in our eternal or imaginative bodies when these vegetable mortal bodies are no more.
Imagination as Spiritual Sensation
There is no one who has given more to this world concerning the secret of imagine than Blake, unless of course he speaks of the Bible, for the Bible to him was pure vision from beginning to end; it was his textbook. And so he asked this very prominent man of the day, "Why is it that the Bible is more entertaining and instructive than any other book?" And then he answered the man, "Is it not because it is addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and only immediately to the understanding or reason?" For to him the book was pure revelation, God's word. He wrote what he considered the grandest poem in the world, Jerusalem. He said, "I may praise it, because I am only the second one. Its authors are in eternity." Here, in a very short period of time, Blake completed this grand poem. He said it was dictated to me, sometimes 12, sometimes 20, and 30 verses, not verses, but lines at a time. So here, a work that should have taken a lifetime of labor came without labor in so short a period of time. And he starts in the beginning, and he states the theme before he allows the dictation. And the theme is stated in the very first two lines. Of the sleep of Alba. Alba is this word. And of the path through eternal death. And of the awakening to eternal life.
They said he did seem cold night after night in sleep, and every morning awakes me at sunrise, when I see the purity of my savior hovering over me, and dictating the words of this mild song, the fruit of love; his savior hovering and dictating twelve, twenty, thirty lines at a time. And then the dictation begins with an appeal to man: "Awake, awake, O sleeper of the land of shadows. Wake, expand, I am in you, and you in me, mutual in love divine." But then said he, the perturbed man, away turns done the valley's dark. He can't believe it. And man imputes sin and righteousness to individuals and not to states. To understand Blake, you've got to draw a line of demarcation between the individual, the immortal you and the state, the present state of that individual.
States vs Individuals
He said, as the kingdom passes while the country permanent remains though men pass on but states remain permanent forever. So we must distinguish between the state and the individual occupying that state to understand Blake. He said, all that you behold, though it appears without, it is within in your imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shell. And he constantly reminds the reader, Never to condemn anyone in this world. For, said he, I do not consider the just or the wicked to be in a supreme state, but to be states of the sleep which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil. So come, Lord Jesus said he, and create states to deliver man evermore.
So you see, someone who is not feeling well, maybe he's up against it financially, Maybe things aren't going as they ought to go. That's a state. If you know the difference between the individual in that state and a former state, or a future state that you can create, you can lift him up by representing that individual to yourself as you would like to see him, and put him in that state. Do it without his knowledge. Do it without his consent. You can do it. You can create a state and pull people out of horrible states into lovely states. Leave them in the lovely state and they will simply occupy it beautifully. And today it will be the only state, the only real thing is what they're in at the moment when you pull them into it.
Fourfold Vision Explained
And he shows us how to do it. He said, I have fourfold vision C. And a fourfold vision is given to me. His forefell in my supreme delight, and freefall in soft, viewless night. His twofold alms, may God us keep, from single vision and Newton's sleep. Single vision to him was simply the ordinary physical sight, where this is what appears to be and nothing more. Double vision is where everything is but a symbol. I told you the story the morning I opened it the little girl five years old well her little sister who was three this past year taken to the beach by her grandmother in the beach or out on the sea were piles dribbling to the sand marking some bunker and she turned to the grandmother and said Grandma, look sticks paving well he struck the mother of family, the grandmother, and she recorded it and told me about it.
But this little child, not yet painted with the adult mind, saw them thick -baiting. They were not simply piles in the sand, unsightly, not to her. He rejoiced and wished at the moment he were a stick, and out in that water, bathing with the sticks, because to them, or to the little mind, she endowed the sticks with animation, with something alive, and they were bathing. That's double vision. And he speaks of it to my outward eye. It's an old, it is simply a heaven or a fissure along the way. But with my inward eye, it's an old man rain. He looked at a flower, he saw a flower with the outer eye. And with the inner eye, he thought something entirely different.
Don't you practice that? You look at something along the way and you see it entirely differently. He said, I went to the heat in the wild, to the thorns and the fissures of the way. and they told me how they were beguiled driven out and then compelled to be chased as he called it here things were to the outward eye a thistle and a thorn and he communed with the thistle and the thorn and they spoke to him and told him that they were simply the embodiment of the suppressed longings of the normal longings of the human heart he communed with them and they spoke to her. All this was double vision. Now three -four vision, you must practice.
Practicing Threefold Vision
Practice it tonight. Everyone must also practice it. What the little girl did, that's three -four vision. She imagined herself in a living room with an all -glass wall. That's an image, the room is an image, and she is an image, the mother is an image, and all that she did, she blended and intermingled images. She married them, and then they produced The offspring was the result in the world where the home was bought by her father. He did not consult the father. She still believed her mother into a confidence, and together they played the part. And then the father had a change of job, increased income, and he bought the home. So that is threefold vision.
If I bring you into my mind's eye and represent you to myself as I would like to see, and and persuade myself of the reality of this imaginal act of mine. That's threefold vision. What does it imply? Well, it implies good fortune for you. So I'm doing something which would imply something else. That which is implied is the offspring of my image. I bring you what I expect from your face. I listen to words coming from you, where you tell me how well things are going for you. All this imagery. I intermingle and blend it and marry it and then it produces the result I am looking for the result is the offspring of this blending of images that's threefold vision fourfold vision whether you've had it or not I do not know I will share with you an experience I've had it time and again but here is one I think I've told you this before but it lends itself to this vision and so I want to share it with you.
Fourfold Vision Experience
Many years ago in Beverly Hills, four in the morning, I'm on my right side, and I know that what I am seeing, I should not see. For with my eyes open, I should see a little tiny bureau and a picture on it, and on the wall above it, just a small little picture. But I should not see what I'm seeing. I am seeing the interior interior of a very lush and plush hotel. I am seeing it as vividly and more so than I am seeing you now. And yet I know where I am. I'm on my bed, it's in Beverly Hills, on El Camino, I'm on my right side, I can feel all this, and I should not be seeing what I'm seeing, but I am seeing it, and I can't deny it.
So, consciousness follows vision, and I walk in to my image and the image is just as real as this room. I remembered where the body was. So I returned to the body. Returning to the body, I am once more in a horizontal position. Consciously forget follows vision and I am now in a vertical position. I step right into this interior. I came back and went forward, back and forth about a dozen times. Then I said to myself, I am going to venture. Regardless of the consequences, I am going to venture. With that decision made, I step into the interior, and then it closed around me. I am actually the optical of the image. And the room is just as solid as this room.
But I am cut out. There is no way back to Beverly Hills and Earth, and that body on the bed. Here I am in an entirely different world, but the world is solid. I touch the bureau and it's solid. I touch the walls and they're solid. And I thought, well, now I'm on the floor, I'm here for the purpose. So I came out of the room as it closed around me. I came into a large passageway which led down to another hallway. I walked to the end, and then as I got there, it was quite well lit, and I saw two ladies walking by. And as they started by, I spoke to them, and I said, Ladies, this is a dream, you know.
And they were afraid, as any lady would be afraid of a total stranger. Met them in a public hallway, and told them that this is a dream, I know you'll be afraid. And so they either thought they were in the presence of a mad person or something, but they were startled. But that world was so solid, they couldn't go through the wall. They wished they could, but they couldn't. It's a real world. Then I looked up, and I noticed over my head a peculiar ornament. I had seen a similar one in North Hollywood in a friend's home. At the time I asked him, how does this thing remain up? And he said to me, if you look closely, you will notice an almost, but not quite, an almost invisible thread, and it's anchored to the ceiling by that almost invisible thread.
It gives the illusion of floating. It was a copper thing, very lightly done, beautiful leaves, but a very large picture. And so I thought, now this is only a memory image of what I saw in Hollywood. So this I know is Gossamer. So I put my hand on it, and I said to the ladies, I'll show you ladies, and I really thought that when I touched it, it would disappear. As I held it, it was solidly real, just like this. I then said to myself, Now, Neville, you know exactly how this thing happened. Your body is in Beverly Hills on a bed. Your wife is in that bed. It's a double bed. That house is on El Camino, and that's in the state of California, and California is in America.
This is a dream. You know it's a dream. You know exactly how the whole thing started. You saw, while on the bed, what you should not have seen, and you ventured. You stepped into your image. and the image became real as real as it is now to you so wake up and I said to myself come on wake up and I actually felt myself waking as it were, coming to and I'm waking fully awake and I'm standing in that hallway and no possibility of return, there's no roll back I said to myself you know this is stupid you have unfinished business on earth you have a child not yet educated she's in high school and she has the ambition and the talent to go to college and so it is unfinished business.
When you, tomorrow morning your wife will wake and the body will be dead. She'll have to perform an autopsy because you weren't ill and they're going to bring in some kind of a verdict or whatever the verdict is, you're dead. And here you are fully alive in an entirely different world.
So standing there I shut my eyes and as would happen to anyone else I couldn't see anything with my lids closed. I opened my lids, and here I'm still in this room, this hallway. I did it several times. And then I decided to try something that once before exceeded in bringing me back. And that was the sense of touch.
That's why I know beyond all doubt that Blake was quite right when he said imagination is spiritual sensation.
So standing vertically, I assumed that my head was on a pillow. I simply assumed and imagined the sensation that I would feel were true. And I could feel a pillow. And very, very now, on feeling a pillow, I had the sensation of being now on a horizontal level, not vertical. And then I could feel the pillow. And I said to myself, well, at least I'm back.
But I'm cataleptic. I could not move my body. I couldn't move any part of it. In about, say, 20 seconds, I could, with tremendous effort, move this little finger on my left hand. A little while later, I could move it from the elbow. As I got that motion, I pushed it out, and I felt it in my wife's body. I knew then I was back, but I couldn't open my lips.
My eyes were actually seeing. Then, maybe another 15, 25 seconds, with tremendous effort, I got the eye open, and here are the familiar objects on the wall. A little picture of the bureau, the bureau, and I'm back. Then I can begin to remove it and then return to normalcy.
That's forethought vision. When you are seated in a chair and you see what you shouldn't see. Not the familiar objects, but something entirely different. When you venture now and step into your image, that's what he makes.
If the spectator could enter into these images in his imagination, approach them on the higher experience of his contemplated thought, if he could make a friend and a companion of any one of these images of wonder, then he would rise from the grave. Then he would meet the Lord in the air, and then he would be happy.
That's tapping into the image, and the image takes on all the qualities of reality, just as real as this room has. And you know beyond all doubt that nothing dies. You actually see it, that nothing passes away. That the world does not come to an end where my senses cease to register it. It continues, everything continues.
Eternity and Creation
And then he brought out even a little sigh, a tear, a smile, a hair. Yes, even the grain of dust passes not away. Nothing passes away. way. But he saw the world entirely differently from the world that appears to us.
I saw that world on several occasions. I've told it and shared it with you too. He said eternity exists and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. You know what he means?
Everything from the cradle to the grave that you have and will experience as though you saw them all in individual little moments, but they aren't animated. They could be seen if you saw them from a higher dimension. The entire unfolding picture, not animated. Now, he makes the statement, when weary man enters his cave, he meets his savior in the grave. Some find a female garment there, and some a male, woven with clay. lest the sets of garment sweet should weave a devouring binding sheath, one dies. Alas, the living and the dead, one is flame and one is flame. So when you enter your cave, he's speaking of the body, and you meet your savior in the grave, this is the grave, and you actually find there one find my mother and my wife and my daughter, they're from female governments.
I, my son, my father, we fund male garments. But I am not a male, and they are female. When we're a man, and he capitalizes man, the man is above the organization of sex. But man entering his grave finds his savior in the grave. And then he weaves around him a female or a male garment. But he is neither female nor male. He's man. And man is above the organization of sex. So here, as we enter, we are sealed. And then he said, you do not see what I see. And then he tells us what he sees in the furnaces. And then he tells us, lupin was cast into the furnaces of the church and sealed.
Well lupin to him is love, and love is Jesus Christ. Love is God. Infinite love. You meet him right in the cave when you enter, and there you find your savior in the grave. He said he was cast in to this grave and sealed, and he calls it the firmest visible fixture. But he tells us it is for a purpose, and the purpose is to bring perfection to the individual, sealed with the Savior while in the grave. And he takes it so vividly, these states through which you and I must pass, and pass as a purple. the state remains permanent but we pass on because we are moving from state to state to state so here in this poor poor vision and may you have it tonight it's the thrill of thrills, a little disturbing when you have unfinished business I assure you because I didn't want at that moment to leave behind a wife unprotected a daughter uneducated yes, I believe a little poor but I didn't feel as a husband who loves her that it was equal to what I wanted to give him.
And so I had unfitted business. And yet there was no way back. I'm in an entirely different world. I'm in a world just as real as this. And I knew reason told me that the body had to be discovered the next day. My body's unwearing, seemingly as solid. But here is a body. I knew I left the body. In Beverly Hills. And so I walked. I went back through feeling. I simply sensed the villain. And so when he made the statement, in this letter to Dr. Trussner. Is it not spiritual sensation? Is not the Bible addressed to that demand which is all imagination? Well, I thought it, because years before that, I do step into an image.
I became awake in the image. As Thoreau said, real living is to be in a dream awake, when one is in a dream awake. Well, this is a dream, and then you who wake in the dream, and the dream ceases to be a dream, is just like this. If what I did was a dream, this here is just as much a dream, I assure you. ¶For that image simply became just like the dream. For once before, I found myself in an image, and some object in that experience scared me. And I knew exactly how to get back to the sense of touch. And I tried a thing, and it worked. If I find myself dreaming now and I know I'm dreaming, I may prolong the dream or wait in the dream through the sense of touch and I find if I hold an object that is not movable, I wouldn't hold a cat or a dog or even a person, but I will hold a tasty thing that is seemingly inanimate, like a table or any inanimate fixed object, and when I hold it, I then say to myself, come on, wait but don't let go.
I will not let go the object, and not letting it go, I wake. I wake in the image. And the object is just as real as I would be when I awake. So what is dream to us? ¶When you're in the dream itself, it isn't a dream. We speak of a dream and you wake from the dream as subjective. As we reflect upon the experience, we say, well, that was a subjective experience. But it wasn't subjective when you were dreaming. It was very objective to you, the dreamer. It's only subjective after the phrase. Well, that's what he means by fourfold vision. He didn't always have it. He confessed that. He said, now I have fourfold vision, see, and a fourfold vision is given to me.
Using Imagination for Others
It is fourfold in my supreme delight. And it is. ¶For when you can sit quietly in a chair and leave behind you all the things of that day and step right into an entirely different world. And the world is just like it, real and people. It's a pure delight. Three -fold vision is what you and I call upon to practice, to bring about changes of stage for those we love. ¶So you meet a person and things aren't going well for life. It doesn't really matter. He's only in a state where you represent him to yourself as other than what he appears to be. Restrain yourself of the reality of that imaginal act. That's another state altogether relative to him.
He will conform to it. And you will meet him the next day or the next week, next month and you will see a change in his behavior. He will conform to this blending of images in your imagination which union creates whatever the union implies. Leading one to the conclusion that causation is simply the assemblage of mental states. Which occurring creates that which the assemblage implies. ¶So you assemble images. What do they imply? Whatever they imply, they're going to create it. So always think of it that it's going to create something lovely. For the images when blending, if they are occurring, invariably creates what they are in implying. Anyone can do it. And you're invited to try it.
¶That's what Blake taught. And from the time that he could breathe. He was teaching those that he met the difference between the individual and states. And begging man not to impute sin and righteousness to the individual, but to the state. He gets out of the state and he leaves behind all that that state radiated. ¶When he's in a state, it seems to be the only reality. When you're not in a state, it seems shadowy. A mere possibility. But not when you're in it. When you step into an image, and that image which closes around you. It's real. And we all together, just like this room here now, and you can train yourself to tap into these images and prove the being that you really are.
You're not confined to the little body of five senses at all. You are a man of all imagination. So when he said what seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most grateful to a consequence to those to whom it seems to be, even of despair and eternal death. But, said he, divine mercy steps beyond and redeems men in the body of Jesus. And so he steps right beyond and redeems us. We can go from state to state to state, but we cannot save ourselves. Salvation is initiated by God. It is not given to us for any good deeds done, I assure you. On the other hand, it's not given as due reward for merit that I have given.
It is bestowed by grace alone. And then we are told in the scripture why. In virtue of his own mercy. Not because of anything I did. Not because of anything you did. When you are felled from the world of faiths, the furnaces of affection, bear in mind you didn't earn it. Not one being in the world can earn his own salvation. But it's going to be given to him by the mercies of God. And it's called in the scripture grace. Pure grace. Unearned. No one could earn it. And Blake's point so clear. And told us all in spite of all these states, glorious states, you could be pure in your own mind's eye, you could be impure in the eyes of others, but whether you were just or wicked, it was not to him anything that you could brag about.
because there are only states. You fell into a state and found yourself in a pure state, and thought yourself so pure. The state was. And you, the occupant, activated it. You animated it. And it became real to you, and maybe you liked it, and remained in that state. But you could easily have fallen into another state, a wicked state. And when you are in a state, you partake of the nature of that state. And you animate it and make it all alive. But you're neither wicked nor pure. You're just a mortal being putting through the furnaces of affliction. And you pass through all these furnaces for a divine reason, to be made perfect as he is perfect.
And when in his hour you are perfect, he brings you out of it. Divine mercy steps beyond and redeems man in the body of Jesus. And so all will be redeemed because you can't earn it. And Blake made it so clear. If you haven't read Jerusalem, what a thrill, what a treat in store for you. There are only a hundred plates, and a plate doesn't even run a full page. And so, you can really read it in an hour. Easily. Some words may be a little bit difficult to grasp, because he does involve it by calling a certain attribute lost. What loss is? Imagination. That divine being that remains faithful to vision in the time of trouble.
If you turn it back, it's the sun. It really is the soul of the animating principle. of everything in this world. And so when you see through his eyes, you have to experience, I have met Blake. We have separated in time, but we are two figures closely woven in this tapestry of life. I met him just about a year ago, and he showed me exactly how to fall in order to see what he described so beautifully in Jerusalem. ¶I stood perfectly still. He said, let yourself go. Backwards. And so I threw myself backwards like a fat dog. And I came whirling through interstellar space as though I were a medium. And when the motion was arrested and I fulfilled, here I am looking at the most wonderful being.
And he seemed, as I looked at him, one being. As I came closer, multitudes of nations are in that being. All races, all nations. As I look closer, their heart is like glowing ruby. But it too is made up of numberless races and nations. ¶I looked still closer, and the whole body, containing all races, I'm looking at myself. Here the face is my face, and yet in that one being, all the races, all the nations are contained. I'm looking right into my own face, and my heart is glowing like ruby, but it contains all men, all women. All these bodies are in it. And it was Blake who showed me how to fall backwards in order to see the vision.
And so I felt I'd tumbled backwards just like some medium whirling itself through space and when I rested, that's what I saw so although we are plotted in time he died in 1827 and I was born in 1905 so our prayers never met on earth, but in the spirit they certainly meet and so his visions are my visions when he said eternity exists and all things in eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. ¶I'll tell you exactly what he means. One day I stepped in, in spirit, into a room. I'm here, dining, family of four. Two boys in their twenties, early twenties, and father -in -law. And coming through the door is a lady bearing food to the table.
Through the huge big glass window, I could see birds in flight. I could I could see the ripple of the grass as the wind blew it. I could see leaves falling. Other diners didn't attract me, but they were diners, but they didn't attract me. The waitress attracted me, and the people of Porn, that attracted me, and the other things that I've just mentioned. And at that moment, while I'm looking at the four of them, something in the depth of my soul knew that if I could arrest in me an activity that I felt, everything would freeze. ¶I no sooner knew it than I tried it, and I felt something gel in my head. At that moment that it gelled and froze in me everything there froze.
And the waitress walking walked not, and the diner dining dined not. I can see the face now of the young lad, yet a spoon in his hand he was drinking soup, and he came this far with his mouth expecting it, and he couldn't move it. And the waitress could not walk and the bird in flight was arrested and it couldn't fall and the leaves falling couldn't fall and suddenly I'm looking at a world that is dead everything is dead and where was the life of it? In me now a bird in flight if arrested should fall to the ground if the law that we speak of of gravity is in operation but the bird didn't fall and the leaves, alright, and that's some other the pressure equal to it.
Kept it alive or kept it afloat, but not the bird. The waitress, yes, if she is arrested, she doesn't have to fall, but she was frozen as though she were made of clay. They could have been made of clay. And then I released the activity that I had arrested. As I did so, each continued in their course. And the waitress walked, and he completed the action of breaking his suit. And the bird, which was perfectly still, continued the action of flight. And the leaves continued to fall. and once more all became animated. But that's what he meant. Eternity exists. And all things in eternity independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. And so we are inserted into this dead body, this eternal dead body.
And then we animate it. And eventually we will come out of it with light in our cell. Or we are told, as the Father has light in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have light in himself. And the purpose of it all is to simply awaken sons who have life in themselves, and not simply animated parts of the structure of the universe. One day a lady asked me concerning animals. Well, I didn't know the answer. She said, Neville, what is the future evolution of the animal world? I am very fond of animals, and I hate to see them destroyed. So what is the future evolution of the animal? Well, I didn't know the answer.
The Animal World Within
I could have given her some theory, but I could not speak then from experience. Two nights later, I find myself on a comical ladder. And looking down, here is the jungle. Wild beasts, I mean really wild. Tiger, lion, panther, everything that is really what you would call the wild beasts of the jungle. And they are in an angry mood. The whole thing is moving. Strong shoving beast. I am alone at the top of a ladder at the moment I'm a little bit apprehensive and a little concerned for my own safety and as I was concerned and apprehensive I became all the more angry and in the depths of my soul again I knew as though something whispered but no one whispered I knew that they were only externalized emotions in myself that they're simply poor witnesses of my own emotions When I lost all fear, they became darker, like house cats.
Then I went further. As I will now repeat it, I will arrest within me the activity that makes them alive. And once more, I arrested them. And in my hidden jail, I went down that entire ladder, they were made of clay. But as they're clay, they were solid. Just as I walk into a museum, I saw these things carved beautifully by some great sculptor. that's what they were all day and then I went back up the ladder and released this activity and once more they came into animation and they moved like living beasts of the jungle so I know to experience today the whole bad world as Blake said, all that you behold though it appears without, it is within, in your imagination of which this world of mortality is but a shadow and I know it, I've experienced it So I tell you, if you haven't experienced it, you're going to.
For that's the purpose of being here. And you will find the whole thing is within you. It's not out there at all. And me, if you would like me to be improved beyond what I seem to be in your eyes now, and in your own mind, I, make me all the greater, if that's what you want for me. If you want me to come back next year bringing something far deeper than this here, see me in that light. So, do it with my consent, do it without my consent, if that's your desire for me. If my desire for you, knowing that you will be limited, is to see you free of this limitation, without your knowledge, without your consent, I should, knowing the difference between you and states, I should create the state I want to see you express in this world, and put you in that state.
So where I now can see you, as you would like to see yourself, and I remain faithful to to that vision of you. I'll come back next year to encounter you in that state, or you'll write me, or others will write me to tell me of a transformed being that you seem to be. It works that way. Always bear in mind the distinction between you, the immortal you, and the state you occupy. Because you know you could easily fall into the state through an argument, through a headline in the paper. You can fall into it in some other way. And think you are it and you are it at all you are the immortal being that one day will be fetched from the furnaces of affliction and being brought out you are one with your father who is God and you are he so Blake to me is a spiritual giant one of the truly awakened gods and when you meet him he looks like some super- terrestrial being when you see him, a giant of a man and yet he wasn't any giant there, but he was radiant.
The man is radiant. Just completely awake among the gods. So when you're told in the 82nd Psalm, and God has taken his place in the divine council, in the midst of the gods, he holds judgment. Blake is in the midst of the gods. When I travel now, I'm leaving here Sunday, I take back my three books. One I brought just to show my framed freedom, the other two are my Kung Fu companions, and one is Blake, and the other is the Bible. I'll be flying to New York on the 15th of September. I'll be carrying two books. One will be Blake, from Freakworks, and one will be my Bible. That's all I will be carrying.
It's my Kung Fu companion. First of all, the joy of reading Blake, with his use of English. That fantastic use of English, all weaving in the imagination. And so no one outside the Bible has given to the world as much as Blake when it comes to the secret of imagining, how to do it. And so these four visions of his, the fourfold, the threefold, the twofold, and the single. Well, the single is simply any normal physical sight, where its thing is what it appears to be and nothing more. That single vision. And he prayed to be saved from single vision because everything has a meaning in God's world. I used to sit in the park years ago with my old friend Abdullah.
And if two people walked by, it had meaning. If it was male and female, it was different. If two men, it was different. Birds in flight. And he gave meaning to all the moving animated states of God's world. In entirely different language. God is speaking every moment of time, he said, to every one of us, but we can't see it. We do not understand the language of God. It's all spoken in symbolism, and the birds in flight reveal something to Ab. I will say, Ab get up, and he wasn't a superstitious. He got up at a certain moment, when something passed by. He could interpret the language of God. Others couldn't. And there was reason for his getting up, as time proved.
He simply moved from what, But soon thereafter was an accident. But he moved. Everything is meaning in this world. For everything. The very beginning of the book of John. In the beginning was the word. Well, the Greek word logos, that is translated word, has the meaning, meaning. So you could say in the beginning was meaning. And meaning was with God. And meaning was God. There is a meaning. There is a purpose. A plane behind everything in this world. And eventually you and I will understand it. But I assure you, the whole vast world, if you could erect your power now, would stand still. Absolutely still. The only work outside of lakes, and one little passage in my book where I try to record the experience, but I've never seen it, was in the Apoc.
New Testament of the Gospel of James. and here in the book of James the words are put into the mouth of Joseph the night of the birth of Christ where he goes in search of a Hebrew midwife because he wants it for his wife and as he stopped the heavens stood still and the shepherds tending their cloth their footstool and the little land of region stood still and the men eating stood still and everything was frozen as though dead and then suddenly all moved on in their course. So it's the only recorded thing that I've ever heard of and that's in the book of James but the apocryphal book of James. And you can get it here, the Apocryphal New Testament, and look up as it's called the infant gospel and look at the one under the gospel of James.
And this was experienced, given as an experience of jealousy. Where the night that we were born, as Christ, then the heavens could tell. For that's the power that he tasted of the age to come. For that's the power you will wield in the age to come. And you taste it now, just glimpses of it, because you're rising into a world completely subject to your imaginative power. So if you haven't read Blake, may I baked to get a copy and read them. You may not understand in the very first moment, but we read them. I keep on rereading them. First of all, for your well, if you like English, just for the joy of reading good English, be Blake.
You can take words and do with words what Blake did and left to the world. So 200 years ago He made his Panties And then Left to us Although he himself was completely unknown And you mention anyone In the day when he walked the earth And they're completely unknown today But Blake has become known And he grows bigger and bigger Every year in the eyes of those Who understand the literature And those who are considered great in his day Are completely today unknown known. Because the king of England in those days was simply Mad George. And we only know him today because he lost. For which we are very thankful that he lost it. But he lost his greatest colony, which was America.
And we are very grateful he did. But he was as mad as a hatter. And he's only known for his madness. While Blake was not mad, but because of his visions, they called him mad. And said, that the man is mad, because he spoke of things that mortal eyes could not see. Yet the same who call him man would read the Bible. Well, can you conceive of the description of God on a throne as described in the sixth chapter of Isaiah? And he beheld the Lord, the Most High, sitting on his throne. And he paints a picture. Can you conceive of any cameraman photographing it? You've got to take the words of Isaiah, Isaiah, because you couldn't possibly take some inanimate thing and have him dissect God and his throne, and you couldn't take any cameraman who could photograph the vision of Isaiah.
What was he made? We have it in the book, and we read it all the time. All the visions recorded in the Bible could not be photographed. And so because Blake could not photograph his own, say he could draw them, or he had the talent to draw them, but they called him man. when he drew the flea. And he drew the flea like a man, a monstrous man, with a neck that wasn't a neck, the head was simply stuck on shoulders. But he was trying to put over a marvelous lesson. To him a flea is a blood -sucking insect. For any man who takes the life -blood of another, who works it for less than a man really should be paid.
He's taking his blood. He doesn't get on a man and actually suck blood. But there was a day, there's still a day, when a man isn't paid what he's worth, and yet the man is using him. That man goes home to a wife and children that need food, need to be educated, and he's not being properly paid. Isn't he the employer of blood -sucking insects? Well, that's the flea. And what Blake that everything is man. So the little flea is only a projection of a dust -sucking man. So everyone in the world could look at that picture, it's a monstrous picture. And he drove everything into it, and he said he saw the ghost of the flea.
And the ghost of the flea was man. For there's nothing but man. I saw it. The animal world is simply man's emotions being physical. When man arrests in him the life that makes him alive, they They all stand and are dead. The whole vast world one day will be seen by you as still, and then you know the words of Blake, eternity exists, and all things in eternity, independent of creation, which was an act of mercy. And so we are being molded and shaped on this fabulous world of stakes by the uncreated God. Here the uncreated shapes themselves upon the mold that is permanent. Now let us go into the silence. Good. Now all any questions please.
Consciousness as Reality
Yes, my dear. I'm convinced of it. That consciousness is the one and only reality, really. But the world is fixed. It really is fixed in a dead state. But the living state is your own consciousness, and you can feel it. Not just to be aware of things, you can actually feel it and stop it and start it. The day will come you'll stop and start everything in this world. What the next scene is going to be, I do not know. I really do not know. I've had glimpses of it, and I've tasted of the power of the age to be. ¶And it's just as well that man in this world cannot exercise that power. What do you mean by the power of the age to be?
¶Well, I saw people dining, and they seemed to be completely independent of my perception of them. They seemed to have freedom of choice in either drinking the soup or not drinking it. The waitress coming through the door, when I first came into the room, well, reason told me everything I saw was actually independent of my perception of it. But then I knew differently one second later. I knew that they had no life in themselves, that the life was in me. So I arrested that life in me, and they were dead. And this action would have been there forever if I had not released that light in me. I came upon a scene that was animated and seemingly independent of my perception of it.
But it wasn't. Because I discovered one second later that I could arrest an activity in me and it would freeze. And it did. And the bird, as I said, the bird in flight, should a bird in flight, if arrested, the motion arrested, should it not fall? if the law of gravity is true. But it didn't. I could have held it there indefinitely. Because the motion was beating in me. ¶Now one night the voice said to me, at the time I could not understand it, but the voice has never lied to me. So in the depth of my soul, a voice is speaking. You do not move. You wake any more than you move on your own in sleep.
It is all a movement in mind. What? The movement in mind. I knew that I came to bed that night from the living room. I knew the next morning I would get out of that bed. I would go to the living room. I would leave the house that day and go elsewhere. And I've done that for all these years. And the voice is telling me, you do not move in waking. Any more than you move when you're bedding sleep. ¶It's all a movement of mind. You only think you move when you wake as you think you move in sleep. ¶Well, then to encounter in the depths of my soul a meditating nebun, and to discover that he is meditating me, and he is the reality that is causing the seeming motion, but he isn't moving.
So was the voice speaking to that depth of my soul that is there in meditation? ¶As Jung said, when he saw himself, he was afraid and he woke frightened. Because he said to himself, so he is the one who is meditating me. He has a dream and I am it. And then Jung said, I knew when he awakened, I would no longer be. So a still meditating Jung caused 89 years of seeming motion all over this world. But the being he encountered when he was then 69 years old was there before he came from his mother's womb, meditating in. He was dreaming of an experience in three dimensions which he needed for increased awareness to further his own self -realization.
But he, the meditating being, was not moving. And if he was the cause of Jung's experience of 69 years and beyond for another 20 years, where he died at 89, for then the voice is telling me the truth. For the voice wasn't speaking to this little thing here. This is the garment that I am wearing. So the voice was addressing itself to the depth of my soul. You do not move in waking any more than you move when you are dead in sleep. It's all a movement in mind. You only think you move. When you wake as you think you move, you dream. Well, I recorded the words, but I couldn't understand the words. Yet the voice is never alive to me.
So these revelations can come beyond one's capacity to fully understand them. But you will grow into the understanding because he will give you another experience and another experience and finally it unravels itself. And you will see how true the voice was when you recall it. As scripture all these things will be called in the 39 books of the Old Testament. But they were not understood. Any more than they are understood today. It took the New Testament to manifest. The great secret hidden in the old. And to this day there are people who will not believe that it happened. But it's all stated, but the very ones who recorded it couldn't understand it. They themselves confessed.
That the prophets thought and inquired. and asked what question of time was indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when predicting the circumference of Christ and the consequent glory. And they were told then it was not for their time, but for ours. But they were asking and inquiring, but no voice answered their inquiry. They couldn't understand, but they recorded faithfully what the voice had dictated for our age, for our time. Any other questions, please? Yes, Bill. Did I move? In the depth of my soul, that being is still unmoved. But the illusion of motion, I am experiencing in three dimensions. With the garment that I am wearing, a male garment, I have the illusion.
Now when you wake tomorrow morning from your bed, if you have a dream tonight, You will dream, you may not remember it, but if tomorrow morning you wake remembering the dream, and the dream is very active, you'll have to confess to yourself, if this thing is the real you, you really didn't move, did you? But while the dream lasted, it seemed so real, and you were certainly moving, weren't you, in the dream. But if reason enters, and reflection, you'll say, well that's silly, I could not have moved because I went to bed here last night, and here I am in the same bed, the same room. So did I move? And you're going to tell yourself, no, you didn't really.
You just simply had a movement in mind. Or the mind did it, you'll say. The mind did it, but you were close to yourself. You could be hurt in a dream, and have the sensation of pain, and witness an accident. It could even be fatal in the dream. But when you wake, it's always just the dream. that all the movements that I experienced must have been in mind. Well, when we wake from this dream, it's going to be the same thing. For he's going to wake one day, and this, on reflection, will be as much a dream as tomorrow morning's reflection on the night's dream. So the point is, is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?
Edgar Allan Poe, and he came to the conclusion, Yes, it's all that we see or see, but a dream within a dream. And the day will come that dreamer who meditated you into seeming reality will awake from the experience which he imposed upon himself. And you will be he, but then awake. And reflecting on the experience that lasted seemingly thousands of years by our little time will be to him just the experience of the dream that he imposed for a deftly purpose, to simply further his own self -realization. And therefore you will know that you have moved. You will awaken from the self -imposed stillness and dreamed of motion and all the experiences that you and I encounter in the world of flesh and blood.
And you will awaken. And then it will be to you like the dream of tonight will be to you tomorrow morning. But the voice is never likely. When I hear it, it speaks with an authority from the very depths of the soul. And you hear it. And you simply listen. And you'll recall what was told, whether you understand it or not. Then comes experiences where you can't deny the experience. The experience of seeing people staying still when eyes are arrested and activity in me is an experience that I cannot deny. And the experience is not less vivid than the experience of today. I had a very pleasant day. I took a friend of mine to lunch today, and a friend of mine took me to dinner tonight.
And there were pleasant, wonderful meetings. Well, they're not any more real. Now they're memory images. The dinner is a memory image, and the lunch is a memory image. But they're real when I experience them. But they're not more vividly real in my mind's eye now than this experience of encountering Dinah standing still when I arrested an activity in me. That too is a memory image. But when I did it, it was as real as today's science was real. So in the end, that voice is going to prove itself true. for I encountered myself seated in the lotus posture I looked at him, here is Neville in a radiantly beautiful manner with a character that this little Neville does not possess there was majesty, there was strength of character there was nobility in that face, everything that could be desired by anyone and yet it was Neville and he was completely undisturbed by my staring at him I encountered the being that is meditating me and it is still and it was seated in a lotus posture completely unmoved by my interest and my surprise and when he really moves from that seat I will no longer be what I have been well Well, we're here on Sunday morning, and that will be our last for a year, but let me repeat, it's not the last of the message, for Freedom Barry is in our midst, and I think you all know it.
Okay, let me ask you to please take one of his cards and read it. It gives you all the information that you will need concerning the class. Okay, thank you.