Facts Overflow the World

When we read the Bible, we think it's an old book, describing things that happened unnumbered years ago.

As I tell you, it's contemporary.

You read about the flood, and you think, well, certainly that happened unnumbered. If it ever did happen, it happened a number of years ago.

For this morning, as is my custom, I turned on the channel KFHC, that is the radio station. It plays through the day and night, 24 hours a day.

Only lovely classical music. So you can read to that music. Only a few interruptions. On the hour, you get a five -minute bulletin and a weather report. But between 9 and 10, there's always a lovely piano recital, as it were. The great masterpieces played by great artists. And so I can sit down with my Bible and read as I listen to the music. And the one interruption that came today was an ad from the Herald Examiner. And they were advertising this paper as the one paper in our city that gives the facts, only facts, not embellished. No clues, just plain facts, all facts. That's why we should buy that paper, because it's simply filled with facts.

For facts have overflowed the world, like the flood. Then actually is run with facts victimized by facts it is in the imagination that everything lives and not in its actuality not in the facts unless Unless imagination penetrates the fact, the deluge remains a deluge.

We are now in the deluge. This is the flood.

A man is in jail, that's a fact. And he knows he's there for X number of years, that's a fact. And he simply waits and hopes that in some strange way that he will get some early release from this confinement. He never uses his imagination, played in some violent way to get out, but to penetrate the fact.

When in March of 1943, by using my imagination to penetrate the fact that I too was in prison in the army, but I didn't want any part of it and so I simply penetrated the bug and saw myself in New York City in my own apartment with my family and in nine days I was out on a business charge in my apartment in New York City so I wrote a friend of mine who was in the army, he was my age he was a Freudian a professional type of analyst But Troy was his background, that was his cooling.

When I wrote him in detail exactly what I had done, I didn't lose matters, I told him exactly what I did.

I simply physically slept on my little bed in the palace. I imagined I was simply elsewhere, and the elsewhere was a definite spot in space, in New York City, in my apartment. And what I did I could feel the bed I could feel the things of my house, I went about feeling all the familiar objects in my apartment and I gave them all the tones of reality and all sensory vividness to the best of my ability and I touched everything and it felt real, then I went back to sleep and then I told them exactly what happened to me that morning and then nine days later I was honor business charge by the same man that had disallowed my application. He didn't answer my letter.

Because in New York City he used to come to my meeting as a friend, because he was so convinced that the Florian concept was true, but he said I come to your meeting for this reason, Evo. We knew each other well. He'd come home for dinner, I'd go to his place for dinner, but he said "I come to your meeting because you turn turn my daily bread into the substance of fairy." I sort of like that, he said. But when I listen to you, I hold the chair and I put my feet right firmly on the ground to feel the reality and the profundity of things. You want me to take me away with you?

You want to leave me right here where things are solidly legal, so I feel the place under my foot and I feel the thing next to my hand that I hold on tightly as you weave your story concerning moving off in one's imagination. So he would not penetrate the fact, though. When did he get out? When the other millions got out. So he remained with his fact for the next three years. I got out in March of '43. He came home to New York City in '46, demobilized as the other millions and millions of boys were. ¶world. He could not let go of the fact. This is the flood. No other flood. This is the flood.

We are drowned with facts, victimized by them. ¶Now, does the Bible teach the story of getting through the facts? Using my imagination, it certainly does. Let me take you into the the 27th chapter of the book of Genesis, the first book, the book of the beginning. ¶If you're not familiar with the story of Isaac and his two sons, they were twins. Let me refresh your memory if you forgot. It is said in the story that Isaac had, that is, his wife had the two sons, Rebekah, but he was the father of the two sons, Esau and Jacob. It is said that Esau was a hairy one. he came out first and then Jacob came out second and he had no hair he was completely hairless while Esau was covered in hair from head to foot but he was the first one was called Esau and one was called Jacob because he came out second and supplanted the other.

¶Now we are told that when the father Isaac was old and his eye was dim so that he could not see, in other words he was blind, he said to his son Esau, I cannot see and my days are now put; I want you to go into the fields and hunt and bring me some well- prepared, tasty venison, as I like it, savory venison. We are told that Rebecca, who loved her second son more than she did the first, overheard the conversation between Esau and his father. And then because she loved Jacob and wanted Jacob to get the blessing; for the father feels his days are numbered and he must now give his blessing to all of his sons, and the first one must get it.

So the mother told Jacob what she had heard, and then suggested that we take one of the kids from the flock, and we kill it, and take the skins of the kid and put it upon you, so that you will have the appearance of Esau. Esau thought otherwise. He said, "Suppose my father discovered it." Jacob said, "Suppose my father discovered it." And the mother said, "Leave that to me. It will be on my shoulder if he discovered it." And sent Jacob into the field to bring a kid. Well, he took that kid and brought it, tastily prepared for his father. He came quickly into the presence of the father. And the father said to him, Come near, that I may feel you, my son, whether you are my son, Esau, or not.

So Jacob came near to Isaac, his father, who felt him. and then Isaac said to Jacob the voice is Jacob's voice but the hands are the hands of Esau and then he blessed him he gave him his blessing he had no sooner left the presence of his father when Esau comes in now with savory medicine and the father said well who was it that came for I have already eaten, who came And then he discovered it was his son Jacob who came with guile and betrayed him. But said the father, I have given him your blessing and I cannot retract it. And blessed he is. All will serve him. Everyone will serve him. Because I gave you the blessing and I cannot take it back.

Now on the surface, you will say, now what is the story trying to tell us? well in this same book in an earlier passage we are told about the ark build the ark with three decks the lower, the second and the third deck well you think it's a huge big building well you use your imagination you can't conceive of any building that could house all the animals of the world in pairs and all the so called good ones will be in seven pairs and enough food to feed them for forty days and forty nights Well, you just simply could not conceive of it. Nevertheless, that's the story. But they are three decks. The obvious thing is the practice of life. Then there's the psychological interpretation of the so -called Torah, and then the spiritual constellation of the story. So you have the lower deck, the second deck, and then the third deck.

So here is a perfect example of the second deck. this room now is a fact we're all in the room, it's a fact but suppose I don't want to be here suppose it becomes a prison to me can I get out of it if I know how to penetrate the fact if I know that I am the ark that all things exist in the human imagination and the human imagination and God are one

They are one, not two. I can in my imagination penetrate any wall. I can now without batting an eye, with a twinkle of an eye, I can stand on the street and see this thing without a man standing before it. No problem whatsoever to assume I am on the street and looking from the street to this platform. form. But you may say, well, what would that do? Well, let me do it and feel the reality, feel that solidity of the street under my foot and see this building from the street rather than looking to the street from here. If I do it and give it solidity, give it reality, I'll be compelled to go there. This is what Scripture teaches. That is my blessing.

I can penetrate a fact. And penetrating a fact, I can stand wherever I want to stand in this world. Then the promise is made, wherever the sole of your foot shall stand, that I have given to you. I'm not going to make your promise and not fulfill it. I've given to you, if you can stand upon it. So I actually stood upon my apartment. I actually stood upon that floor. I felt the bed. I felt everything and gave it reality. My friend wouldn't allow himself to sleep in one place and assume that he was sleeping elsewhere because that is a divided state of mind. He didn't want to become a split personality and so he wanted to be completely coordinated.

Well, he was coordinated, all right, for the next three years, all in one little spot in his barracks. And And for three years he couldn't get out. Because first of all, he wouldn't try it. Because I turned his dairy bread into the substance of fairy. And so he did not answer my letter. I've reminded him a few times since. Why didn't you answer the letter? Well, first of all, it didn't make sense. And I don't believe, said he, that really what you did was the sole cause of your discharge. You always question it. Then I repeat it another time and tell him again what happened this time. Well, that would have happened anyway. You do it a third time.

You do it a fourth time. Do you know if you did it a thousand times, he would still say, do it once more. It will always happen as far as they're concerned. If it didn't happen because you did something, these things would have happened anyway. So why do you analyze people then? Then let things happen. happen. We are not the creatures of circumstances, said a man who bears your name, for his first name is Israel. And Disraeli's name is simply of Israel, Benjamin Disraeli. And he said, man is not the creature of circumstances. Circumstances are the creatures of men. He knew how to create things all in his imagination. So he said, you bear the name of Israel, but But you don't apply the story of Israel.

If you only apply it to these things that are taught us in Scripture. Scripture is not secular history. This is contemporary. It didn't happen thousands of years ago. The flood is on. And this is the flood. The whole vast world is inundated with facts, like this prominent paper, the Evening Paper, the Examiner. And they're proud of the fact they only preach facts. They don't embellish it. No frills, only the facts. Therefore, buy the facts. Well, how can I buy the facts? And they go all over the world to find frightening facts. I'm not denying that he didn't kill her. I'm not denying that he did not receive a sentence of eczema years. But when people ask anything of me, I'm not concerned about why it happened.

What do you want? And I will simply apply my imagination lovingly on behalf of that request. I don't care what brought you to that state. I am here to simply get you out of this state. What do you want? All through the Bible, what do you want? He didn't condemn anyone. The woman taken in adultery, he didn't condemn. What do you want? Go and sin no more. He didn't call the act of adultery a sin. if she called it or they called it a sin or I call it a sin. Therefore don't repeat it if you call it a sin. But sin is simply knowing what to do and not doing it. That's sinning. So if I discover what to do to penetrate the fact, to go beyond the fact and create a condition for myself and dwell in it and think from it to the thinking of it.

For the great fallacy of the world is perpetual perpetual construction, deferred occupancy, create and create in my mind's eye all kinds of lovely things I would like to realize, but I never occupy them. I do not penetrate the state and go right into it and give it cubic reality. But I know, and you know, and it's not difficult to understand why, the sense of touch is something we believe in more profoundly than we do in, say, the sense of sight, or the sense of hearing, or the sense of smell. I stumbled upon this one day in a dream. ¶In my dream, I came upon this huge big pillow, a pile driven into the ocean, and the bridge that it formerly supported was gone now, only the piles remained.

And I knew I was dreaming, and I figured to myself, if I held that pile, and I could touch it. If it seemed to me solidly real, what I'm going to do, I'm going to hold on to that pile in the dream. I know it's a dream, but I'm going to hold that pile as solidly as I can and compel myself to awake holding the pile. Well, I did. I held the pile with all of my might. I said, now Neville, you know you're sleeping. You know that you're dreaming now. Awake. And I I awoke in the water. I'm actually holding that pile, and I'm standing up in what formerly I knew to be a dream.

It ceased to be a dream. It's real. I'm in a world just as real as this. And here I am holding this enormous pile, and it's in the East Indies, not the West Indies where I was born. It was in the East Indies, a very primitive area. And then some animal came down to the beach, a strange -looking creature. And at that moment, I was a little bit, I was panicking. And that moment of a shaking emotion, and I woke on my bed in New York City. But I discovered that secret of feeling. So he said, come close, come near, that I may feel you, my son. He heard the voice. He said, your voice is the voice of Jacob.

Come near. let me see really if you are Esau and he did it by feeling and so lying on my bed one night right here in Beverly Hills many years ago it must have been 14 or 15 years ago ¶I suddenly became aware that I am seeing what I shouldn't be I am looking into the most marvelous interior of a plush futile it seemed that way to me and so consciousness followed vision and I found myself in the room. But I knew I was on the bed, so I came back to the bed. I'm still seeing the interior of this room and I went back into that room. I came back again. I must have done it 12 or 20 times.

It was fun going into the room and the room was just like this, real. Then I came back to the bed. Now, I said I am now going to explore. Regardless of of consequences I am going to explore. And so I went into the room. It seemed like a room 30 by 20 from the bed. When I entered it with the decision to explore, the room closed upon me and became a third of itself. Say it became 10 by 7. And I found it was a dressing room for a huge big suite. Beautifully done, but it wasn't yet occupied. It was there to be occupied, but the room at the moment, that is the suite, was not occupied.

And I thought, well now I'll go through the door. I didn't go through like some doctor. I opened the door with my hand and I walked right through that door. I was totally real to myself. Then I walked down the corridor. And the corridor that I walked down was intersected by the main corridor. And all the lights were on. And two ladies were coming down that corridor, the main one. But I knew this thing began as a dream. So I knew, well, all aims run true to origin. Therefore, if the origin is the dream, this is the dream. So I said to the ladies, ladies, this is the dream. This whole vast world is a dream.

And then they were afraid of me. Who wouldn't be afraid of a man that suddenly appears on a place in your, I would say, walking, and tells you this whole vast world is a dream. People think he's nuts, he's insane. And so they thought I was insane and they got just as far as they could from me and walked right next to the wall, a duck style, one behind the other, and looking at me very suspiciously. Then I saw this object hanging from space and it reminded me of a similar object I had seen in a praying poem in North Hollywood. So I say to them, look, see this? And I held it and to my surprise, it isn't Gossamer.

This is not an after image, this is not a memory image, this is real, the thing is solid. Well, I held it by this time they were way down, they took one great look as they looked back at me and they darted into the main room and here I am standing alone, holding on to this thing. I said to myself, Neville, you know this is a dream; the origin is a dream; the end is a dream. Come on, wake up! I closed my eyes to the obvious, and I held this thing here, and I couldn't, I opened my eyes again I'm still standing there, but how am I going to get back to my room in Beverly Hills?

I didn't know. What there was no place I could go to take me back there, but I remembered, feeling is the secret. I'm holding this here now, and it's real, it's solid; I'm solid, they saw me, they heard my voice, and I walked on and every step was totally real as walking on here now. So I imagine that my head was on a pillow. When I could feel a pillow under my head while I'm standing, I suddenly felt myself in a horizontal position, and my head is on a pillow. And then all of a sudden I could feel that pillow. But I was cataleptic. I couldn't open my eyes. I couldn't move a hand, couldn't move a finger, and here I am, a living being in a dead body.

So I said to myself, well, they'll find the body tomorrow morning, and they've got to cut it out because I've been cured for a little bit. And to prove that nobody took my life, they had to cut it out to find out why he died. Always have to ask that question. And they'll give it a name. If they can't find it, they've got to give it a name anyway. So here I am, couldn't open my eyes, couldn't move my hand. In about 15, 20 seconds, it was much longer than that, my little finger, I could move it. And then I could move my hand a bit. Still couldn't open my eyes. And we were sleeping in a double bed, so I pushed my hand out, my left hand, and I could feel the warmth of my wife's body for me.

As that I knew I was back on my bed. In another 15 or 20 seconds, I could with great effort open the lids of my eyes and here came all the familiar objects on the walls, on the bureau, everything returned to consciousness. Now I stepped into a world just as real as this. I am telling you there are worlds within worlds within worlds and they're all here right now. Just like turning on a radio, and you turn it ever so slightly, and you have a new wavelength, and a new station coming in bringing something entirely different, and they're not interfering with each other. And these worlds are all here now, and they're people, just as we are peopling this world.

And they're just as real as this world. It's terrestrial. And it doesn't, you don't walk for it. I was on the bed I seemed to walk into it I was there what, ten feet away but the same area permeated the bed and the bed did not obstruct it and that world into which I stepped did not obstruct the house that I lived in in Beverly Hills it's all there, the whole vast world worlds within worlds within worlds so I tell you facts are the flood That's the deluge. There was no other kind of flood. We are actually inundated with the facts of life. And these facts, we change them every day. Today, this is the cause of so and so.

Tomorrow, that's not so. It's another call we found. And then the next day, another call. But while we haven't found the next call, we leave that to be the fact. And we worship the facts. So I tell you, all things are in the human imagination. 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 in self. There is no other God. It's all your own wonderful human imagination. And the one thing the whole vast world aches for is the awakening of the imagination. And when it comes, it comes with the birth of the promised child, which sets a man free from the horrors of this world we call the world of nature.

nature. For nature is simply that principle on which depends the stainless of form in transmitted life. And so the thing goes over and over. Haven't you observed a year that at a certain time of the year money is tight? All of a sudden it flows and then at a certain time of the year it's tight. Why? It's a habit. It's a transmitted state. you fix that fact in your mind's eye I think you got $50 ,000 today and say it's the month of December when it's always tight you're going to loan the money out and give it away before December comes by so when it comes by you're going to be tight again it's a peculiar I would say slavery this thing called nature in the sameness of poems in transmitted light now you can penetrate the fact and break it and that's what we are here to teach I come not to abolish the law and the prophets, I come not to abolish them but to fulfill them and tell you the real law, it's not washing your hands before meals, although that's a very nice clean thing to do, it's not giving certain diets, doing this, that and the other he explains that the entire law is psychological he takes one of the commandments which is a graphic one, to show you how everything must be interpreted psychologically.

He said, you have heard it said of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you, any man who looks lustfully upon a woman has already committed the act in his heart with her. But what man hasn't? What man has not violated that? So he tells you the whole thing is a psychological thing. you can't restrain the impulse because you may restrain it based upon a thousand different reasons maybe you are afraid of the consequences maybe you are afraid that someone will find out maybe you are afraid of this, that, and the other but the impulse was there and he tells you the impulse was the act well if the impulse was the act then creative acts are imaginal for it was an imaginal act so I have to observe my imaginal act for the imaginal act is a fact it's going to actually become a fact and then confront me here was a lady in San Francisco she said my brother and she said to me I think he's in it but I do not know the facts of the case but he was given six months at hard labor he was in the army and I don't think my brother should get six months hard labor in the army I said you want him out She said, certainly I do.

I said, tell you what, that you may try it so you can give all praise to yourself and not to me. You do it. But what must I do? Well, if he was out, would he come home? Oh, yes, he'd come straight to my place. All right. And if he came to your place, what would you do? Well, she said, I would throw my arms around him and kiss him. Feel him. I said, all right, do that. When you go home tonight, sit where you would normally sit. and just imagine that your brother is there and that you have thrown your arms around him and you're holding him and hugging him and kissing him. The next Sunday morning in my meeting in San Francisco, that woman could rise and tell this story.

But I went home and I imagine I heard the doorbell ring and the doorbell is downstairs. I have to run down one flight of stairs to answer that door. So I heard it ring and I ran downstairs and I flung the doors open and here stood my brother. I went back upstairs. There was no brother, but I did it so briefly it was almost like a disappointment that I didn't actually see him standing there. But it seemed so real to me. Well, a few days later he's sitting upstairs and the doorbell rings. He said, She said, I almost broke my neck to get downstairs, because I knew what was going to happen. And here she threw the door open.

Here was her brother. And she stood up in the audience and told that story to the thousand who were present that Sunday morning. And they all saw. No one, I presume, would go and verify it. I thought that her implicitly. If she lied to me, well, then it's entirely up to her. But I'm convinced the whole thing was true. I don't check you. I believe you when you tell me that it happened but the thing is to practice we are the offering power and the flood is on, no one tells you the flood is over and the flood is deeper and deeper because we are more inclined for facts, we want the facts of life you want the facts make the prison walls all the thicker but learn how to penetrate the facts As you penetrate the fact, you must go to a certain objective beyond the fact.

What do you want now? Well, then you go into the state of the wish fulfilled. What state? The state you decide. You determine what you want in this world, and you go right into that state. And then ignore the facts. Suppose the facts now still denies what you did. It doesn't matter. Let the facts remain. They'll dissolve. all. It all dissolves because you're going to remain faithful and you'll occupy the state. No longer are you going to construct it and not occupy it. You're going to occupy the state. And as you occupy the state, it's going to work. You can do that with a job. A friend of mine in New York City, he came from out west.

He was an engineer. And he said, Neville, I want more money and I want more responsibility. I want to work for a certain firm. I said, do you know where they are? He said, yes, on Madison Avenue. They do international work. They build bridges, they build dams, they build things all over the world. I would like a job that would send me away because I would get three times the salary. I said, well, I'll go to the place and see where you would sit if you got the job there. Before they send you off, you'll work in the home office first, wouldn't you? I think so. Well, go up there and just take a good look.

He walked into the place, picked out the desk, picked out the place, and then, he assumed when he got back home, he was seated at that desk. And that was his job, and he named the summer body, which was a considerable summer body. He and his wife and daughter used to come to my meetings. Within a month, He was in that job, and within two weeks he was on his way to the Near East, building bridges. Unfortunately, in a way, he did not live very long. He was a young man, but in about three years he was gone. Heart attack, and he was gone. But then he would have gone anyway, whether he was here or there.

For we come on time and we go on time. But at least before he departed this world, he found a principle, which he will carry with him into the next world, for there is no death. He is restored to life in a world just like this, clothed in a body just like this, only young. Young as he was then, he'll be younger. But he has at least the memory of what he did to get what he wanted, and it worked. And so now he goes with the principle in his mind's eye. So when you tell me that your dreams and that you in your dreams are applying this principle that the lady tonight, she is here, told me her dream, I asked her to write it out for me.

But right in the dream she is actually discussing with others this principle of imagining and how you imagine a certain state and you produce them in this world. And that is nothing in this world dies, all things are restored to life. And she's carrying on this conversation in her dream. Well, to me, that's most flattering and very thrilling. When you can carry it beyond into what the world will tell you is a state where you're not in control of vision, that you are simply the slave of vision rather than its master. You don't direct it, you simply follow it. ¶Well, she didn't follow it, she directed vision. And when you get to the point that you can direct in what they call a state called dream, where you are not supposed to be in control.

You're simply the victim of your vision. But she's not the victim of her vision. She actually controls the vision. And so the day will come. It's inevitable. ¶We all take off the garment. But I tell you that you're going to find yourself completely restored instantly. Not waiting for anything. Instantly restored. In a terrestrial world with problems that you have failed but sure know how to solve them. You will solve the problems because you know the principle. So the flood is on. ¶The whole Bible from beginning to end is contemporary. Jesus is not something that died. He is something that lives within man. He is dwelling in man. God himself came and come into human history in the person of Jesus.

in you, in me, in every one in the world. ¶The day will come you'll know it, and you are the Lord Jesus. But, asleep to what you are, the day will come you'll be completely awake to the fact that you are the Father, and then you'll know. ¶I've been asked why do you confess it all the time? It's important, it is so important, that the Father is the most important part of Scripture. ¶The most important part of Scripture. I can have all the power in the world and yet not know I'm God. I can have a sense of awareness where there is not a thing in the world but myself and yet not feel that I am God.

But when the Father comes, and I know that I am the father of that one and only son of his, then I know I'm God. ¶There's no other way to know it. If I had power, if I could just call the universe, I still wouldn't know I'm God. And if I was completely aware, as I was in 1926, when I was reading a book, it fell upon on my chest. It must have been not more than ten o 'clock. I woke next morning. It's nine. And I had not turned from left to right in the entire egypto. Because the book was still on my chest and the light was still on on my bed. And usually in the course of the night a man turns awkward from side to side.

How often I do not know, but we all do. No one goes to bed on his back and remains there for nine unbroken or in this case almost almost eleven unbroken hours. So I went right down into a deep, deep sleep in a trance. And in that state I became infinite light. ¶There was nothing but light. And I was it. There was no circumference. I was the center of it all, no light outside of this light that I am. No sun, no moon, no stars, but nothing outside of the being that I am. I I was infinite pulsing light, but still I did not bring back the feeling of being God. Yet, he bated me.

But when you see his son, and that son calls you father, and you know, well then there is no doubt in your mind as to who you are. ¶That's why it's the most important part of scripture. And yet it's the one thing that people will question me on. Why do you emphasize it? why do you repeat it over and over because the one thing in the world that you will one day experience which will convince you that you are God nothing in the world will convince you outside of that but ¶meanwhile we can penetrate the fact the man imprisoned need not be behind bars we are imprisoned by the things that we do alright we can break them break anything in this world a man can be imprisoned by gluttony, he can break it if he knows what he wants, maybe he doesn't really want to give it up if he wants to give it up let him create within his mind's eye a scene, a simple scene that if he had given it up a friend or some relative would know and he doesn't brag about it, they simply know and it's a normal discussion He has no longing for it anymore.

He has no desire for it. Didn't take any drugs for it. Didn't do anything to beat it. It just simply wasn't there. That certain taste that we have in this world, all of a sudden, you've had it, you've saturated yourself with it, and you don't want it anymore. All things are acquired. Today I like, for instance, a thing called an oyster. Love them. especially those lovely eastern oysters but the first time I had an oyster I thought I'd die I was a small boy I must have been about nine or ten and I went down to it was then called the Virgin Island owned by Denmark they're now our island St. Thomas and John and St.

Croix and my mother said to me now Neville you know you're going to a strange place and there's big dams there you don't understand the language but you'll get by but you're going to a boarding house and there may be 20 or 25 boarding you all sit at one big table together now you're a boy and you do not know their habits so watch what the lady does and whatever she does, you do it and I sat them at the table and then here was this plate of oysters I'd never seen an oyster in my life before and then all the little things before it I saw this lady take a little paw from the side, so I picked up my paw.

And then she took a little horseradish, she took something else, then she took a little Tabasco, did all these things to it, then she stuck it into this oyster and dipped it into all that she had done, closed her eyes and she ate it as though you had honey in your mouth. I expected the same thing, so I did the same thing. And when I got that thing in my mouth, Lord, it wouldn't go down, I couldn't bring it up. I'm not supposed to bring it up, Mother told me that. And so, it is stuff. But the funny part about it, I not only had that one, I looked around to find there were five others, and they had to go down.

Well, that was my introduction to oysters. But now today, I love them. I acquired the taste of oysters. The first time I had a drink, well, I can't tell anyone that it was something like honey to me, but I acquired the taste, and today I thoroughly enjoy a drink. I try not to go beyond a certain point because I want to keep my faculty alive, but I enjoy a drink. I have tried and tried and tried to acquire a taste for smoking, and I can't, therefore I gave that up when I tried it for about six months. I couldn't do it. I was then only 21 or 22 and I couldn't seem to enjoy a cigarette or a cigar or anything.

It made me sick. So I gave it up. Never acquired it. But all the other things you don't acquire if you don't come into the world with these tastes, you acquire these tastes. You can acquire the taste of living in comfort. You can acquire the taste of living as a gentleman, as a lady. Acquire the taste. You want to actually live like a lady, live like a gentleman, with no pressure to pay the rent, no pressure to do these things. All right. Assume that you are that lady, you are that gentleman. Penetrate the facts. The facts tell you that you're not. You don't have it. Penetrate the facts and live in the state as though you had it.

And may I tell you from experience, you'll have it. You will actually have it. Don't ask me how. The ways and means are contained within the state that you enter. So you enter a state and it contains all that is necessary to externalize that state. So pick out your state, a lovely state, and go right into that state and dwell in it. I call that occupying the state and thinking from it instead of thinking of it. Just as you now think from your present state with all the facts around you to anchor you into it, get into another state, all in your imagination, and the facts full of prayer to anchor you into that state, and the day you tire of it you can get out of it and go into another state.

You know, when you move into a new home or move into a new city, you have to actually adjust yourself to it. Well, you are the program passing through a numbered state. The states remain, but you, the pilgrim, pass through them, like a traveler passing through a city. The city remains, but you, the traveler, pass through it. So you go right into another city. You don't rub out the state. Poverty remains a state where a man who was once poor moves out of it. So he moves out of poverty into the state of affluent. But he doesn't destroy the state of poverty. Anyone can fall into it. So Blake said, I do not consider the just or the unjust to be in a supreme state, but only to be in these states of sleep, which the soul may fall into in its deadly dreams of good and evil.

So it toys with the state, and it finds itself enamored with the state, and it falls into it. He's not supreme because he's wealthy, and the other one is not ignored because he's poor. It is the state. Don't condemn the occupant of the state. The state is the thing, but the occupant is God. For the occupant in a state called poverty, he's saying, I am, before there's a poor. He doesn't say, I am poor, meaning he's different, as far as I am goes, from the one who says, I am rich. The same I am-ness that occupies the state of poverty is occupying the state of wealth. And so you can go into any state, and being in the state is God.

And you wear these states as you wear clothes. But you must be consistent and actually believe it. First of all, as you're told in that sixth chapter of John, we believe and have come to know that thou art the Holy One of God. First, faith that ventures on a possibility. And then, something more sure than faith. Something steadier than faith. Personal experience. You venture. That's faith. I will actually believe you now.