I Am Reality Called Imagination

We will be here every Monday and Friday through April, same place, same time. I think you will find tonight a very practical message. But to understand it, we must go back and see if we really believe the same thing. I make the claim that the eternal body of man is the imagination and that is God himself the one we speak of in scripture as Jesus Christ now we are told in scripture to examine ourselves to see whether we are holding to the faith test yourselves said Paul do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you unless of course you fail to meet the test now you've just had the test and you and you alone can judge whether you've failed or not for you heard the word Jesus Christ you heard the word God Now if it conveyed the sense of an existence something outside of man, you failed the test.

If when you hear the word God or the word Jesus or the word Christ, the word Lord, and the mind jumps with something outside of you, outside of man, you fail the test. now we are told by him all things were made and without him was not anything made that was made and that I tell you is your own wonderful human imagination that what is now proved in the world was once only imagined but this is the greatest of all secrets The secret of imagining. Something that you and I and everyone in the world should strive to understand. For the secret of imagining is the greatest of all problems to the solution of which everyone should aspire.

For supreme power, supreme wisdom, supreme delight lies in the solution. of this mystery. When you actually discover it, you discover God. You're finding the creative power of the universe. And when you find him, he is your own wonderful human imagination. We can only really scratch the surface of this mystery. One imagination, it seems, will do little for our wish until we have imagined the wish fulfilled. As Shakespeare said, it hath been taught us from the primal state that that which is was wished until it were. So you and I want something And we define our objective, how to realize it. If this power is within us, then we are the operant power. We do not see anyone on the outside.

It's simply within us. Well, how do I operate it? If I could put it in this simple little frame, the subjective appropriation of the objective hope is the way to success. It's imagining as if it were true. What would the feeling be like if it were true? So I start from the feeling of the wish fulfilled. I must begin by feeling that I have already arrived. I have already achieved my goal. And catch the mood that would be mine if it were true. And then wear that mood. If I wear that mood as if it were true, I'll realize it in my world. A friend of mine who was here tonight, she thought that she had failed this past November in her visit to Poughkeepsie, not Poughkeepsie, Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh. Friends of hers that she knew well, and they were a little bit down because of the seeming recession. One friend had worked for 27 years at Jones & Loughlin, one of the great big steel firms of our country. In the months of September and October, they let out 4 ,000 workers. He had to put in three more years, three years and two months to complete a 30 -year service with the firm. After 30 years, he could retire at a very good, I would say, retirement fund. But he also had six more years to go for his social security. And they let out $4 ,000. and then it was rumored in the plant that they're going to close that plant.

She reminded him of the use of imagination which she had used with him successfully in her previous visit to Pittsburgh. But he laughed it off. Those things would have happened anyway. He reminded him of thick, distinct requests on his part that he thought he could not realize. Everyone came to pass as she reminded him. And then she took a vision of mine and explained it to him. You know what I told you the last time. Neville had a vision. Well, the Bible tells us that the depth of our own being speaks to us through the medium of dreams and vision. here in this dream of mine call it a dream if you will it was just as real as this I was taken in spirit into an enormous mansion and here three generations were present but one was invisible and that was the grandfather the father was explaining to his children the secret of his own father's success.

So there was the grandfather, now departed from the world, leaving behind him an enormous fortune for the benefit of his son and then his grandchildren. And so the father said to the children, grandfather used to say, while standing on an empty lot, I remember when this was an empty lot. Then he would paint a word picture so vivid of what he intended to do with that empty lot that it ceased to be an empty lot and you saw the structure that he intended to build. But he acted as though it was already a completed act. He began with the feeling of having arrived at his ideal for that empty lot. Then I woke on my bed, and I recalled the dream, and I knew that the depth of my own being had constructed that dream to instruct me.

Here is one facet of the great use of this power called imagination, which is God. It was too early to rise, so I went back to sleep, and I re -dreamed the dream. this time I am the grandfather I am not the father telling the story I am not an eavesdropper listening to the story as it was told in the original dream I am now the grandfather then I would say to everyone by standing on an empty lot I remember when this was an empty lot so she reminded him of this technique now she said you are afraid that you might be let out after 27 years and two months in Jones and Loughlin I will now remember when you were afraid I will remember when you thought it all came to an end that's one he said two years ago I was interviewed and I thought it was a very good interview but after two years it has never appeared in the trade paper and I wondered what have they done with it have they simply forgotten it, mislaid it or deliberately not used it he said I will read that magazine and I will be lifted up by it it's humorously written as you tell me but I will take that book right now in my hand, that magazine, and I will read it all about you.

She went into two or three others. Then she returned. Now she's here tonight. She said, in December I received the magazine. It's very well written and very, very humorous all about this man. Then she said, I heard on the radio that Jones and Lockman had decided not to close the plant but instead to spend 13 million dollars on the plant in modernizing and then beginning January the 1st to recall to recall over 4 ,000 workers that they had let out. Now he is walking on air. But like all of these fellows, he will still forget it. He will still turn to a God outside of himself. This to him would have happened anyway. They would have spent the 13 million, got back the 4 ,000, that thing that was found after two years and printed all that would have happened, and man goes blindly on worshipping a false god, because he does not know God.

The only God is your own wonderful human imagination. The only name forever and forever that is his name is I Am. So that is my name forever. So when you come to the people of Israel, and they ask you what is his name, just simply say I am. That is who I am. And by this name I shall be known throughout all generations. There is no other name. You cannot separate I am from yourself, that's your essential being. And when you say I am, you are all imagination. You cannot stick imagination on the outside and and point to it. So you do not observe it as you observe the fruit of imagining. You do not observe imagination as you do objects in space, because you are the reality that is called imagination.

This is what we teach here night after night.

Now you can test it. What would the feeling be like if it were true that I am now the man that I would like to be? What would the feeling be like? Catch the mood, for the mood determines the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes determine the mood. Man puts it just the opposite. If I had a million, he said, oh, I would feel so good. Now, feel as you would if you had it. Catch the mood, and the mood will create that objective hope. If that is your hope, what would the feeling be like if you are now the person you want to be? Catch that mood, and wear that mood as you would as to the clothes, and that mood will actually create an objective state that reflects that mood. That's what he did. He put herself into a mood at the feeling that she was reading a story of her friend, and here it came. It's a complete spread, two full pages all about this man, and then a little news bulletin on the radio, and then confirmation from him, and a telephone call from his wife confirming the news bulletin, that they're all back on their job, and here now.

Now, as he said, for years, after 27 years, I walked through that plant, and I thought I'd go crazy. I wanted to climb the wall, because of the noise. When I heard the hammers and the bellows and the furnaces and all these thousands of workmen, that constant, constant din, I wanted to climb the wall. Now, after four thousand were let out, my footsteps echo through the entire area. I would like to run and scream, running towards my office. What he does in the plant I do not know. If he goes towards his office, undoubtedly he has an executive position in that place, and is not working at the furnaces. But he said, you can't imagine when four thousand were let out, how empty the place was, and everything simply echoed.

And my footsteps seemed like some hundred things as I walked through that plant towards my office. And many a moment I wanted to simply jump up and start running. It seemed so empty. She said, all right, that's something. I will remember when. And she applied that technique. technique. When your footstep cared you and you wanted to run towards the office, now it's the clacker all over again. So I tell you, I know from my own experience that these moves, you catch a move, I could tell from the move that possessed me through the day that I would meet a certain character. And I met that character. It may be someone I I knew of some total stranger, but I could tell from the very mood that possessed me.

I'm drawing into my world an affinity with that mood. You can catch a mood and create the world that is in harmony with the mood. Anyone can do it. In fact, you're doing it morning, noon, and night anyway. So when you turn to some external God, you are turning to a false God. There is no external God. Examine yourselves, said Paul, to see whether you are holding to your faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test. You've just had the test. So if you think of something on the outside, and I use the word Jesus Christ, you have the wrong Jesus Christ.

For we are told by him all things were made. And without him was not anything made that is made. Look into the room. All this was once only imagined. The suits you wear, the dresses you wear, the hat you wear, everything here, the building, was once only conceived in the human imagination, and then executed. And if all things were made by him, well, then I must come down to find out who he is. Well, I can't go beyond my own imagination. I know exactly what I imagine. I see the results. So I go back. All things made by him, yes, good, bad, and indifferent. He waits on me just as quickly and just as indifferently when the will in me is evil as when it is good.

Is that in Scripture? You'll find it in Scripture. Read it in the book of Deuteronomy. I kill. I make alive. I wound. I heal. And none can deliver out of my hand. I. I am the Lord. Read it. Read that in the 32nd chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. There is no other God. I am the Lord your God and beside me there is no other God. I am is that God. As we are told in the 46th Psalm, be still and know that I am God. A man will not believe it, and yet he has evidence morning, noon, and night that his own wonderful creative power, which is his own wonderful human imagination, is producing the phenomenon of life.

he sees it all around him but he shuns it away it's easier for him to genuflect before some little thing made by the human hand so he put him on the wall and calls himself for luck I think that's it, that's good now I've done my duty today so he goes to church and he sings the hymns with all the others and he thinks, I've done my duty and give generosity to the church perfectly alright, if you get any pressure out of it do it But that's not serving the true God. If you want a social gathering, certainly go to church. Go to the coffee breaks following the service. And ask one percent of those who come out of service, what was the text today?

And he will look at you with some vacant look. What? What was the text? What did he say? What was the theme of his topic today? They don't know. But it's a place to go on certain days of the year, especially on Christmas, on Easter, and days of that nature. Others make it at a point to go once a week. They think they're doing God a favor. You're walking with God morning, noon, and night. You take him to bed with you because your essential being is God, and there is no other God. Worry not, within you, you couldn't even breathe. your breath is God. Every child born of woman is God incarnate. If man only knew that there could be no war in the world.

Killing man is killing God. For every child born of woman is the incarnation of God. Whether you be black, yellow, pink, white, or any other color, there is no other being in this world but God. So the The incarnation takes place every time a little child is born and it breathes and you thank it to get it to cry. That moment was the incarnation of God. How can you kill him? How can you hurt him? Just teach him and show him what power is latent within him. For the whole vast world aches for the awakening of the imagination in man. And the story as told us in scripture is a true story. but not as it's told.

The day will come you'll actually find yourself reenacting the entire drama as told us in the gospel. And you will know it in the first person's singular present tense experience. And then you'll know who he is. He comes to us as one unknown, yet one who in the most wonderful mysterious mysterious manner, let man experience who he is. And when you experience who he is, it's all about you. It's not about another. The whole vast drama is all about the individual that you see as a little child right in this wonderful world above us. But here tonight, let us keep it on this level. And on this level, tonight, when you dream of some wonderful objective in this world that does not get realized, realize who the dreamer is.

And the dreamer is God. And by dreamer, I mean your own wonderful imagination now. A daydream. That's God. That's God in action. Now, do not let your reason and your senses dictate what is possible. All things are possible to God. So sustain for a moment your reason. Sustain the senses that are dictating what you must accept, for they're demanding of you. Accept the facts of life, all right? If you could accept the facts of life and let reason dictate it, you'll never go beyond where you are. So sustain them just for a moment and try this technique. What would the feeling be like? how would I feel if it were true that I am already the man that I would like to be and if I am how would I see my friends and how would they see me it's all within us so let my wonderful human imaginations see them as they would have to see me if it were true bring them into my mind's eye and let them see me and let them talk to me and let them congratulate me on my good fortune and don't duck, accept the congratulations of your friends if they really mean it actually play the part all within yourself and then believe it 100 % as we are told in John's letter the fifth chapter of his first epistle if we believe that he hears us in all that we ask of him him, then we know that we have obtained the request made of him.

Well, if you get the right God, you have no doubts in your mind as to whether he heard you or not, for you know you heard it, and that's God. But if you're not quite sure that he heard it, because there are three billion talking to him, begging, well then you may be not quite sure that he heard you. Maybe you don't think you're good enough, but you can't deny that you hear your own mind, you hear your own inner conversation, you hear your own inner speech. Well, if you know that one is God, well then you are sure he heard you.

Now you are told in that fifth chapter, the fifteenth verse of 1st Epistle of John, If we know that he heareth us in all that we ask of him, then we know that we have already obtained the request made of him. Well, all right, there's an interval between that imaginal act and its fulfillment, as there is between the creative act of a man and the birth of that child. Every little thing has an interval of time between the act and its fulfillment. A horse will take twelve months. A woman takes nine months. The little sheep will take five months. A chicken will take 21 days. There are intervals of time. So the Bible teaches every vision has its own appointed hour.

It ripens. It will flower. If it be late, then wait. For it is sure and it will not be late. Different intervals of time. So it may take me a longer time. In this case with this man, two months to bring back 4,000 who were unemployed. To put his mind at rest that he doesn't have now to feel that he's going to be fired. He can put in now the extra time. Only a little while, three years and two months will complete his 30 years with Jones and Loughlin. And then what's a man of his age six more years and then social security so he'd have both if it happened now he wouldn't have it he would be cut off on social security and he would be let out without a good retirement fund so he goes back and she reminds him that it happened before he couldn't afford the roof for the house.

And he said, I will see the roof on the house. I remember when it needed a roof. And so she told him, I recall telling you, I remember when it needed it. But soon after something happened in his work, he got the money and the roof is on. The wife wanted an organ, couldn't afford the organ. All right. She said, I remember remember when you didn't have one. She has the organ. And he took one after the other. Of all these things, he's still with all the evidence in the world, he's still working on some outside God. He thinks he's doing the wrong thing. He feels that if perchance that man is simply a devil incarnate and he's taken me from my real God, which means something external to himself that he fashions out of his own mind and passions with his hand, because all these little nonsenses that we buy and stick them up as holy objects, first of all, no artist really ever designed them.

It's an offense to speak of an artist when you see these horrible monstrosities that we buy and stick around the place and call them religious objects. So, find who He is. He's a living God. He's not a dead God. You want to find? Read the 115th Psalm about the kind of gods that men worship. The whole psalm is devoted to the false god that the whole vast world worships. He has eyes but he sees not. Ears and he hears not. Feet and he walks not. Hands and he touches not. Just a dead thing made by human hands. When the living God is within man as his own wonderful human imagination. So I tell you that all that you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your own wonderful human imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.

All things exist in the human imagination. And everything you see as an objective reality was produced by imagining. Think of one thing, just think of one thing that would simply deny it. You can't think of one thing. So you go to the moon, you first had to imagine. Had to imagine everything concerning the machine that took you to the moon. Everything in the world first has to be imagined and then executed. All right, the intelligence to do it will come, but you take the blueprint first and And conceive it. And dwell in it as though it were true. And no power on earth can stop it from becoming so. Your visions will clarify itself. At night, it's a different kind of a night.

Your days are different. You see people differently. You can't walk by any man and not see him God incarnate. You can't do it. Even if he has the most horrible background. And he's simply, well, a murderer. And it's proven that he is. You still see God incarnate, but so thunderously the poor thing doesn't know. If you could only just get to him and show him that he really is God incarnate, and the one he thought he killed, he has been restored to life. Not to the senses of man, but he is restored in a world just like this, terrestrial just like this about his business he continues his work until he too awakens from this dream of life but all will awaken eventually but why not start now start now to tell man who you really is God and man are one, man is all imagination and God is man and exists enough and we in him, the eternal body of van is the imagination.

And that is God himself. Nothing but God in the universe. All God. And eventually you and I will awake. Because God is one, not two, you and I are one. Without loss of identity, that's one of the strangest mysteries in the world. Without loss of identity, we are one. I know that from my own personal experience we are one and yet I am individualized and you are individualized and we tend forever and forever towards ever greater and greater individualization and yet we are one, and I will bring that out to the best of my ability as we proceed with these theories be subtracted. You will hear it. But tonight, if you're here for the first time and you want something practical, you apply what I've told you.

First, have an objective. You must have an objective. You can't say, well, I don't know what I want. Well, all right. Come Come back the next time. Ask yourself, what would I like of life? Don't be ashamed to name it, what would I like of life? Well then, try to get some objective. Now, prayer, as far as I'm concerned, is nothing more than the subjective appropriation of the objective hope. That is the way to success. I appropriate it subjectively. How do I appropriate a state subjectively? Well, suppose now this very moment I wanted a ball, an ordinary baseball, but there isn't a baseball in the room. Alright, but I want one. I would actually assume that I am holding a baseball in my hand until I can feel it.

You think you can't feel it. Well, now try it. Try to feel what it would be like if you held a baseball ball. Now, to prove that you have held it, see what it feels like, the difference now: a tennis ball. See any difference? Or like a golf ball. See any difference? A piece of silk. You feel any difference? If you can distinguish between these many objects, though they are subjective, then they must exist somewhere. If you can actually separate them in your mind's eye and distinguish between these options. I can begin to feel, begin to sense, begin to smell a rose. Well, a rose doesn't smell or doesn't actually have the odor of another flower.

I can detect the rose. Now, a lily, an Easter lily. I can detect that. Well, what does it do? Well, I'm going to get them. Someone will think of Neville and send him a flower, and it's going to be the flower that I'm going to actually feel and touch and smell. It works that way. Money has an odor it's unlike any odor in the world. It's more fragrant to the miser than the most marvelous perfume in the world. He can tell it. He will put a money bag to his face. It's like putting roses to mine. He loves it. He can smell money. He can feel it. Money has a distinct feel about it. Put a $20 bill in your hand and ask you to feel it, and then put another piece of paper in your hand, and you can tell the difference.

There's a difference. It has an odor to it. All this is part of the inner man that all things are possible to him. Try it. Before you condemn it, try it. And if you have the evidence to support my claim, well then it doesn't matter what the world will tell you. If he laughed at you, so what? So they laughed at everyone who had an idea that seemed a little bit off -center. Always laughed at him. They laughed at the idea of going to the moon. Well now it's an accomplished fact. There are still those who won't believe it happened, you know. Because they don't want to believe it ever happened. There are those who say you couldn't go down and actually live underwater, and we have a submarine.

There are still those who won't believe it. You can present it with all the facts in the world and they won't believe it. So I tell you: you try it first, and if it proves itself in performance, it doesn't really matter what the whole vast world thinks.

Go about your Father's business, which is yourself, and then live a full and wonderful life in this world of Caesar. And the day will come you will actually depart this world. I mean this age. Because those who are departing it now, unless they are awakened, they still find themselves in a world just like this. But those who have awakened, who have experienced the second birth, the birth from above, find themselves in an entirely different age, where they are all imagination. And they are perfect. ¶And wherever they go, everything is perfect. They don't have to raise a finger to make anything perfect. Because they're perfect. All things must conform to them for their purpose. That's heaven.

So heaven is not an area. It's not a realm. It's a body. And when that body is awakened within you, which is the wonderful human imagination, completely awake, then wherever you go, closed in that body that is completely awake, way, everything is perfect. If you found yourself in a forest of dead trees that all burst into foliage, in the desert they would all bloom like the rose. Because you are there. No blind man, deaf man, no handicapped man could stand in your presence. You'd be instantly transformed into a perfect man because you are perfect. That's heaven. It's harmony. So it's not a place where you're going to go pearly streets and all that nonsense. No.

It's just simply you in a world that is perfect because you are perfect. And the day will come you will awaken that body for it's in you now. That body is in you but it's sound asleep. And one day you will experience the resurrection. And you'll know the mystery of the resurrection when you rise and you rise within yourself for the grave in which Christ is buried because the Lord is buried is your own skull that's where he's buried and in that tomb where he is buried one day he will awake and he will come out of that tomb and it's you who comes out of the tomb and you'll know who you are: He is buried in every child in the world.

This universal being. And yet one. Millions of us and yet only one Lord. And that one Lord in his fullness is buried in you. Individually. And when you awaken, you are he. So tonight take a goal. ¶Make it a lovely goal. Either for yourself or for another. other. Anytime that you exercise your imagination lovingly on behalf of another, you're mediating God to that other. So, bring a friend before your mind's eye. Represent him to yourself as the man or the woman that you would like them to be. And don't tell them. Ask for no praise. Just assume that they're talking to you and telling you the most marvelous news about themselves. and you congratulate them on that good news and go your own way.

Believe in the reality of that imaginal act. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen the day after, or a week later, or a month later. It has its own appointed hour, and it is ripening, and it's going to flower. So don't be concerned; leave it alone, and it will come to pass. So this is what I mean by feeling is the secret. ¶I catch the mood, the feeling that would be mine if I were what I want to be. I don't have to touch something. I can if I want to. But it's the mood I'm speaking of. What would the feeling be like if he were well? If she were this? And then you catch it just as though it is true.

You always go to the end and the end is where you begin. We're always imagining ahead of our evidence. So go to the end. And feel the end. And then dwell in that end even though reason denies it and your senses deny it. You turn your back upon the doubted. That is your senses and what reason dictates. That's the hell or the devil or Satan in the world. That's the doubter. So you turn your back upon it, and then you walk as though things were as you want them to be and living in that assumption, it slowly hardens into fact. Even though at the moment of the assumption it was denied by reason, an assumption though false, if persisted in will harden into fact.

So you learn to assume and learn to persist in the assumption, and it will come to pass. Now let us go into the silence, after which we'll have questions. Thank you. Good. Well, I hope you call it good mood. It'll work. Are there any questions, please? Any questions? Yes, sir. Well, to answer your question I must go back and explain it to those who are here for the first time. No, no, no, I make the statement based upon my own experience that nothing dies. That's not only true of men, is true of the flowers, of the animal world, of the trees, of everything. Nothing dies. I am the God of the living, not of the dead.

So nothing dies. The little flower that blooms once, blooms forever. It's renewed by the seed of contemplative thought. Well, I had a wonderful friend and secretary. He died suddenly at the age of 50 when I was out here. I then lived in New York City. He was born in Haverstraw, New York, which is upstate New York. He lived in Manhattan and took care of my books and took care of all of my business affairs. When I got a cable saying that he was dead, they found his body on the floor the next morning when they went in to clean, and I must come back and take care of the funeral affairs. So I went back.

I have two sister- in- laws, my wife is one of three girls; the other two are pillars of the Episcopal Church; the older of the two lives in Summit, New Jersey, and she's always said to me, “You know, I like you personally as a brother- in- law, because you're kind to my sister and to your child, and for that I like you, but I don't believe one word you talk about; that's not my God.” I said, “Alright, I don't believe in immortality; don't believe in survival.” I said, “You call yourself a Christian; what has that to do with it?” I said, “Don't you realize that the Christian foundation is the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and life everlasting?

You rub out one of these and it's going to collapse.” No, she didn't say a word. “You still don't believe what you teach.” “Certainly, all right.” Well, he died in August. I went back and took care of the funeral. In the next year, I presume around January or February, I found myself consciously in that world where Jack is. I do it time and time again. This does not restrain me. I can put it on a bed, and find myself in another world. It isn't out there. It's right here. They're penetrating each other and yet not interfering with each other. And here is Jack. And here is my sister- in- law, Al. I call her Al.

Her name is Alice. And I said, she said to me, “I still don't believe what you teach, you know.” I said, “How can you say that when you see Jack?” She said, “What has Jack to do with it?” I said, “Don't you know that Jack died?” Jack then spoke to me, “Who's dead?” I said, “You aren't dead, Jack, but you died.” I went to your funeral. I paid for it. I got you a good Catholic funeral Jack, because your sister insisted that you must be given a nice Catholic funeral. I didn't cremate you, I put you in holy ground Jack. I got a priest and the priest did all the little things he has to do, so you're very well well planted.

He just looked at me as though I'd been