Neville Goddard (June 04, 1971)
Only that which has no right to live must die, and only that which has no right to exist must be brought to an end.
And that hasn’t a thing to do with any child born of woman, or any flower that ever bloomed. It’s something entirely different from what the world would suspect, for you and I have been given the greatest gift in the world.
“God became as we are, that we may be as He is.” [Wm. Blake, from “Jerusalem”]
In that, we were given complete freedom to misuse the gift of God! And that is His Power.
I will share with you this night an experience of mine – it happened years ago – to show you the only thing that had no right to live – the only thing that had no right to exist, and must be brought to an end.
Suddenly I found myself confronted with these two creatures: one, the most monstrous thing you could ever conceive, and the other, the most angelic being that you could think of. The one that was the monster – a hairy, monstrous being – I would almost be unfair to the monkey world to call him a gorilla or a baboon, but that is the picture, only he was far more than that. And he spoke gutturally. He looked at this angelic being, and called her “Mother.” It annoyed me, and I began to pommel him, and he gloated. He loved violence. Every blow made him stronger. He was the embodiment of every evil thought and act that I had ever entertained or expressed.
I was totally unaware of this creation of my own until that moment in time when I was strong enough to confront it, and I can’t tell anyone the emotion that permeated me when I saw what I had done. I created that that had no right to exist, and it must be brought to an end. I created that which had no right to live, and it must die. Blows could not kill it. It lived on blows; it lived on violence. As I looked at it, an emotion permeated my being that I had never felt prior to that that I remember: one of compassion – infinite compassion, that if it took me Eternity to redeem this, I would do it. I pledged myself – there was no one I could swear to; there was no witness. Something within me pledged itself to redeem this monster if it took me Eternity. It didn’t take me more than a split second!
From the moment of the decision when I decided that I would redeem it because it had no right to exist – at that moment the whole thing withered before me. It got smaller and smaller; it only took a matter of seconds really. And that thing that was a monster thing one moment before now completely withered before me, but it was all energy – misspent energy. It returned to me. I have never felt stronger than I did at that moment when all that energy that went to build and create this thing that had no right to exist returned to me, and here I am as powerful as, I’d say the Universe.
And this wonderful creature that was the personification of every noble, lovely thought that I ever entertained, either expressed or unexpressed, – she glowed like the sun. She had a right to exist. She was the personification of my use – my wise and loving use – of God’s gift to me; and; this monstrous thing was the personification of my mis-use of the same gift! That is what, one day, you will confront. That is your “dweller on the threshold.”
Everyone, at a moment in time, will actually meet him and meet her, and she will live and glow, and he – in a second – will simply wither before your eyes. There was no loss. He had no right to exist. But in our progress from the receipt of the gift of God to the full use of that gift lovingly, we make mistakes. There is no condemnation of the one who made the mistake. In fact, there is no condemnation. That is the only thing that will cease to live. It’s the only thing that has no right to live.
So, man – the most horrible creature in the world – he has a right to live. All the Stalins in the world – they have rights to live! All the Hitlers – they have rights to live, and they will live, but one day they will confront the monster of their own creation, and they too will be filled with a compassion to redeem it, not knowing it is only the personification of their own mis-used energy. It will all return to them, and they will swell with power as the result of the return of that energy.
Now we are told in Scripture: “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” [I Corinthians 12:3]. That goes for everyone that walks the face of the earth: “No one” – you can say it in words and confess with your lips, but you don’t know it until the Holy Spirit reveals it within you. Well now, Who is the Holy Spirit?
We turn to the Gospel of John. He said, “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Truth, cannot come to you. But if I go away, I will send him to you.” (John 16:7)
Now remember his words: the Sender and the sent are one. He said, “He who sees me sees Him who sent me.” (John 12:45)
“I came out from my Father, and I came into the world.” (John 16:28)
I am never alone. The Father who sent me is always with me, but you do not know my Father and you do not know me, for the Sender and the sent are one. So, if I send the Holy Spirit – well then, you are also going to see me. But now, I will now disappear physically – that’s what you are telling them. Not a man, but your concept of Jesus Christ is of a man external to yourself. The day will come that that concept that you now hold of Jesus, so that when you hear the word “Jesus” it conjures in your mind’s eye some presence external to yourself – that must come to an end. It’s an awful moment in the life of one who calls himself a Christian!
When you see the story is not secular history – that we have taken personifications for persons, we have taken the vehicle that conveyed the instruction for the instruction itself and the gross first sense for the ultimate sense intended, and when the non-historicity of Scripture is revealed to man, and man accepts that so that the physical, visible concept of Jesus vanishes – he vanishes. What an awful vacuum in your life at that moment! It will continue for a while, but now, because he now vanishes from you as an external being to whom you could turn and pray and now you can’t – now the Spirit of Jesus will rise within you. It is then that the Spirit of Truth comes; and when will he rise? He comes “like a thief in the night” (I Thessalonians 5:2). Suddenly he will rise within you as you, and then you will know who the Lord Jesus is! [See excerpts from “The Quest for the Historical Jesus” by Dr. Albert Schweitzer, added at the end of this transcript.]
When the Spirit of Truth unfolds himself within you as you, you will know the mystery of the Lord Jesus, and then you will know that the Lord Jesus is God! You will know from your own inner experience that Jesus is the Lord. And when you read these words: “And then the kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” (Revelation 11:15), you always thought that Jesus and Christ were one and the same. They are, in a sense, but here in the 11th chapter of Revelation – and we are warned over and over: “Add not one word to this book or take one word from it,” with a threat as to what will happen if we do (Revelation 22:18, 19). Yet not one book in the New Testament has been more violated than Revelation.
I have books at home concerning the Revelation of the Bible – that is, the book called “Revelation.” What stupid interpretations! Do not change it. It is all vision. Leave it just as it is, and it’s going to unfold within you.
So, in the 11th chapter of Revelation: “When the kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ” – now Christ is the Messiah. I’ll tell you who he is. The Messiah is David. That is the “Lord’s Christ,” for he said, “I am going to the Father. I am leaving the world and going to the Father.”
I came out from the Father, and I came into the world. Again I am leaving the world and going to the Father.” (John 18:28)
Then he returns to the Father, he is a father, and there must be a son to bear witness to his fatherhood, and that son is David. And David one day will stand before you and call you “Father.” Then you will know the “Lord’s Christ.” Then you will know Humanity, for Humanity completely gelled together into one single being and personified comes out as David.
So, having played all the parts, I forgive all the parts. And having played them all, I reach the end and will say, with Paul: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the Crown of Righteousness.” (II Timothy 4:7, 8)
“Let no one, now, bother me, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17) – not the little stigmata, no – the marks – the great, wonderful, supernatural events through which the individual must pass. He must be “born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God (John 1:13) – “born from above,” for, “Unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (John 3:3), no matter how good you are in the eyes of yourself – and what man doesn’t think himself good and worthy to enter? Read the 16th chapter of the book of Proverbs: “Every man’s works are perfect in his own eyes, but God sees the heart” (Proverbs 16:2). And so because of his social, intellectual, financial” background, we think he’s worthy – well certainly he would not have these things in the world; God must have loved him more than the others because of what he has in this world! And it must be, in some strange way, some demonstration of God’s affection! It hasn’t a thing to do with it.
So, here in the end, you will know the Lord, and you will not know Him as something external to yourself. You will know Him as your Self.
“God became as we are, that we may be as He is.” [Blake, from “Jerusalem”] And He serves us, whether our will is good or evil. He waits on us just as quickly and as indifferently when the will in us is evil as when it is good.
Now, what will? Your imaginal acts. Your every imaginal act is a creative act, and one day you are going to see it. Long before you actually see it personified, both in this lovely creature and this horrible monster, you will see the evidence of this truth by things that happen to you in the world. You will see things happen, and then you will remember: “I once imagined that. I once entertained that imaginal act, and lost myself in the belief that it was true.” And to the degree that I actually accepted it as true, it projected itself on the screen of space and became a fact in my world. At first, I didn’t quite relate it. I couldn’t quite believe that I had the power to do that. Then I tried it, and tried it again, and then again, and these things became realities in my world. Then I realized who this Being is of whom they speak in Scripture.
Then we are told: “By Him all things were made, and without Him was not anything made that was made” (John 1:3). So then, I found who this One is. He must be my own wonderful, human imagination! If the one spoken of is God, then my imagination must be God, and that’s the Being that I have been mis-using morning, noon and night!
And then comes the end. When I reach the very end of the journey – and here I must, now, find that I am the Father, for the end is to find the Father, the cause of it all; and finding the Father, there must be a son, and here David stands before me! And there is no uncertainty as to the relationship between the boy who stands before you and you who see him. He knows you are his father, and you know he is your son.
Everyone is going to have this experience, I prophesy for you, regardless of your present sex. In the Resurrection, we are above the organization of sex. We are a Brotherhood. All of us are Brothers; and together, collectively, we form one Being, and that one Being is God the Father. And you, one day, will discover you are the Lord Jesus, and you will know who “His Christ” is, as spoken of in the 11th chapter of Revelation: “Our Lord who is now king over all the earth and His Christ.” And “His Christ” is spoken of in Scripture as the “Prince of them all”; that “I, the Lord, will be their God and King, and … David will be their Prince.” (Ezekiel 34:24 and 37:25)
Well, if he’s a king, his son is a prince, and his son is David. Read it in the 34th and 37th chapters of Ezekiel. He states it forever and forever, but man, seeing this thing as secular history, has completely missed the entire point. So, “No man can say that Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit”; and the “Holy Spirit” is the spirit of truth which comes to man after he loses the concept of an objective, visible, secular being called “Jesus.” But –
“Truth embodied in a tale Shall enter in at lowly doors.” [Tennyson]
It seems that man, on the present level, could not quite grasp this great truth, so it was told to him in the form of a story.
So Mother told me the story when I was a child, and told me of a Jesus – I can see a picture now on the wall of the living room. It was “The Slaughter of the Innocents.” How Mother got it, I do not know, but many a day I stood before that picture and cried, that someone could be that cruel to take little innocent children and slaughter them to reach one child that they wanted to destroy. So, they took all the males under two years of age and destroyed them to reach the one they wanted to destroy because he was prophesied as the King of Kings. He was going to come to displace all the powers of the world. I can see that picture now – some gruesome thing that Mother got. Where she got it, I don’t know.
But not knowing it, having heard the story, I took it as Mother took it. We took it as secular history. The Bible is not secular history. There is no secular history in the Bible. They are still looking for the bones in the Near East. They are still trying to find pieces of the wood that he is supposed to have been crucified on. They are still trying to find the pieces of cloth that he wore. And what amazes one is that there are those in the world, supposedly intelligent people, who will give a listening ear to them and bring it out to justify their own strange, peculiar misunderstanding of Scripture.
I tell you, there is no burial ground of Jesus Christ, save in the skull of man. That’s the only place where he is buried – in every little child’s skull. That’s where he is buried. The little body that he wears – that is the cross, and he will wear it as long as he wears a body of flesh and blood.
Physical death does not terminate the little body. It is renewed, as told in the 103rd Psalm. “He renews our youth as the eagle” (Psalm 103:5) – the young eagle. So, you drop it off here, and suddenly, you find yourself clothed. Though you’ve dropped off a 90-year-old body, you are clothed in a garment about 20 years of age – in a world just like this, with problems just like the problems that you thought you left behind, and 99 per cent of us who depart this world, who have not been awakened from the dream of life, do not even know they have departed. They are in a world just like this, and they do not know they are even gone. They can look into the mirror and see a youth instead of the 90-year-old, and still not recognize the fact that something must have happened. They look and see a lad of 20, and they knew they were without hair, without eyes, without teeth, without everything only a moment before, but they still do not recognize it. I meet them, so I know what I am talking about.
You call them dead? They are perfectly right in telling you that you are stupid because they know they are not dead. They are very much alive, so how can you call them dead? And if you say to them, “You died, you know. I was at your funeral” – as I have said to those – “I went to your funeral. I conducted your funeral.”
They say, “You’re stupid! What funeral?” Here he is standing before me, and he is a strong, healthy, wonderful, young lad, and I am telling him I went to his funeral, gave him a nice Catholic funeral and put him in holy ground, and had the priest do all the little things for him as his sister demanded, and I paid the expenses. She didn’t cough up one nickel, but she wanted all these things, but I loved my secretary, and I did all these things for his sister, not for Jackie. Jackie would not have wanted these things. So, I told him, “I took you up to Haverstraw, New York, and put you in a lovely little grave in a nice holy ground – a Catholic ground. The priest came and he did all these things for you.”
He looked at me and laughed, because Jack to me, although he was my secretary, we were as brothers. Jack died suddenly one day on a hot day in the month of August in New York City, and I went back east and took care of the funeral. And when I met him six months later, I turned to my sister-in-law and said, “How can you say there is no survival when you see Jack?”
She said, “What has that to do with it?”
I said, “Don’t you know he died? He died six months ago; he died last August.” This is now either late January or February of the following year and she remembered he did die, and while on her face was just a peculiar look of astonishment, Jack said to me, “Who is dead?”
I said, “You aren’t dead, Jack, but you died. And I came back from California, and I got a wonderful, lovely Catholic funeral for you.”
Well, he thought that was the most stupid thing in the world. I said, “Come over here, Jack”, so he came over quite obediently. I said, “Watch this, Al” – her name is Alice; I’ve always called her “Al.” I said, “Watch this.” So I put my hand on his thigh. I said, “You see, he’s solid. He is real. This is flesh and blood. My hand doesn’t go through it. This is not gossamer. It’s real!”
And Jack did exactly what he would have done here. He did this [indicating]: “Take your hand off me” – just exactly…
There is no transforming power in death. If you are a thief here, you are one there. If you are an idiot here, you are one there. The only thing that differs is that if you are now blind, you aren’t blind there; you are renewed, like the eagle. Your youth is renewed, so you do not go without the arm, without the teeth, without the hair, without these things. All these things are renewed by contemplating the Being that is Eternal. You actually contemplate, and in no time you are reclothed in a garment – a solid, wonderful garment just like the one you had when you were 20 here. Not a thing is missing. But that still will not get you into the Kingdom of Heaven. You must be “born from above.” For, “Unless you are born from above, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” And that birth is literal, right out of the skull of man.
One day, you will feel him. You are told, this comes with the seventh trumpet. And all of a sudden you hear it. It’s the most unearthly wind you have ever heard. As the poet said:
“All these things were foretold me:
Naught could I foresee.
But I learned how the wind would sound After these things should be.”
[Edward Thomas, from “The New House.”]
And you certainly learn after the wind comes. You feel it, and you hear it, and suddenly you are waking and waking and waking. And you are waking where? In your own skull. And you know your skull is a tomb – you know it! You know that it is a sepulcher, and the only reason you are in it, someone must have thought you dead, because here you are.
You are entombed, and it’s sealed. There is no way out. You are all alone. There is no watchman; you are all alone. Then you rise within your own skull – and you are fully grown! And then you have an intuitive wisdom as to how to get out, and no one rolls away the stone from the outside, as taught by our priesthoods of the world. You do it! From within, you push, just as a child pushes from within, and then something gives, and something rolls away – seemingly from without, but it is all because of your effort from within. And you come out, pushing yourself out of a little hole. And the first thing that comes out is your head. That comes first, then you squeeze yourself out, and then you pull the remaining portion of you, and look back at the thing out of which you came, and that is your sepulcher. That is where you were buried all along. That’s where you were dreaming the Dream of Life and thought it real. And when you come out, everything said in the story of Jesus in the Gospel concerning the birth you experience in a first-person-singular, present tense experience.
The infant, which is only a sign of your own birth – that God was born. It was God who was buried in you. It is God whose name forever and forever is “I AM.” And that is Jesus. That is the only Jesus in the world. “My name forever and forever is I AM” (Exodus 3:15). Who is speaking? The Lord God Jehovah. Now in the book of John these wonderful, bold claims of the I AM:
“I am the way.” “I am the truth.” (John 14:6) “I am the light.” (John 8:12 and 9:5)
“I am the door.” (John 10:7 and 9) “I am the true vine.” (John 15:1)
All these bold claims of the I AM. He said, “I am the only way, the only true and living way.” (Hebrews 10:20)
One day you will experience it. There is no other way to the Father, save through the Holy Spirit, who comes only after you have lost the belief in an external savior. And may I tell you from experience? It’s a horrible moment in time.
Raised as I was in a very wonderful Christian home, where Mother saw that we all had a solid foundation as to the story, because Mother believed the story to be true as she taught it; my father believed it to be true, and we all heard it from our Mother’s knee, and we believed it to be true. And when I heard it was not history – and when I heard of the non-historicity of the greatest story ever told, my world collapsed. I didn’t know where to turn. I had no god then! I was without anything to whom I could turn and hold onto, and, oh, what an emptiness comes upon a man at that moment in time! So, you are told, “Now your hearts are distressed.” Read it in the book of John (14th chapter): “Although I have told you that I must go away, you are sad of heart, but if I do not go away, then the Spirit of Truth cannot come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you, because I am going to the Father,” – and the Sender is the Father, and the sent is one with the Father. So, He sends his Spirit to you.
When suddenly you have lost all external concepts of God, then the Spirit comes, and the Spirit unfolds Himself within you as you. And then you will know how true the Christian story is. And the Christian story is only the fulfillment of Judaism. It was all foretold in the Old Testament, but they could not understand it then any more than they understand it today, because when it happened in one and that one told it – that’s not what they were looking for. They were looking for an external Savior who could come and destroy their physical enemies, and set up Israel as a mighty power. And that’s not the story at all.
When you lose all concepts of a secondary cause, then Israel has no enemy. When a man has no other being to whom he can turn – he can’t turn to another – then he is freed from the tyranny of second causes. But the first shock that comes to man when man actually discovers that it is not secular history – and yet more true than anything ever recorded in this world of Caesar, because all the history of the world is only an opinion written centuries after the event.
All of our historical events are written after the event. Even when they are written as contemporary works, they differ. We had the Second World War, and you and I only have to remember the Second World War. Read the books concerning the Second World War. If a Britisher wrote it, then Montgomery was the outstanding General. If an American wrote it, Eisenhower was. If a German wrote it, Rommel was. If a Russian wrote it, Stalin was. All these men wrote it, and yet it is the same facts. We are looking at the facts, and yet in trying to put the facts down on paper and calling it history, they are as far apart as the poles. If that happened in our generation, just imagine what happens after three, four or five hundred years.
I tell you, the Bible is not secular history; it’s salvation history. The dream is taking place in Eternity, but they must be reproduced here in us while we are generated on earth, for “No one can attain to bliss except he be generated on earth.” [The actual quote from “Jerusalem” reads: “Nor can any consummate bliss without being Generated on Earth,…” Wm. Blake, from “Jerusalem”]
So, here this is the most marvelous experience that you could ever have, to find yourself clothed in flesh and blood, because while you walk the earth in flesh and blood, which decays, this Immortal thing is going to happen within you, and then the Immortal You will rise, and you will know Who-You-Are. And you will know that you are the Lord Jesus.
Then in your world, you will tell it, and before you depart this world for the last time – for after the “birth from above,” your physical death is the end of your journey. No more restoration, just once more, you are now one with the Father.
And while it happens to you, you will tell it, and there are those in the world who will see you and know you to be the same being they know, but they know that you are God. They will know that you are Stanley, and yet know that Stanley is God. They will know that you are Jan, and know that Jan is God. There is only one God, and that God is every being who awakes! It is God expanding Himself, and it takes all together to form the one God.
So, “No one” – but that means no one – “can say Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.” And that cones after the disillusionment, and then you realize there is no secular history in Scripture. And what an emptiness comes to the individual who makes the discovery! But it’s only for a short while. Listen to the words:
“In a little while you will see me no more, and in a little while you will see me, because I go to the Father” (John 14:19). And they wondered, What is he talking about? “In a little while” you will see me no more, again in a little while you will see me, because I go to the Father.” He goes back to the Source of it all; He is one with the Father.
But now you who lost the physical vision of a Savior external to yourself will receive in his place the Spirit of Truth, for he defines himself as the Truth. So, if he sends the Spirit of Truth, he is sending Himself. Now, when the Spirit of Truth comes within you, then Jesus unfolds within you. And all that is said of him, you experience as yourself. Then you will know Who-You-Are. So, in the end there is Jesus only – nothing but Jesus. And Jesus is the Lord God Jehovah “and His Christ,” which is the sum total of all the experiences of humanity personified as a single youth, and that youth comes out as David.
So, when you read it: “Our Lord, who is now king of all and His Christ”, so the book ends – the last book of the Bible – ends on these words: “Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). Let it come! “Come, Lord Jesus.”
But a warning comes just before that: “Do not add to or take from the words of the prophecy of this book” (Revelation 22:18, 19). But in spite of the warning, they do it morning, noon and night. But I tell you, the most impossible thing recorded there, you are going to experience. I have experienced Scripture. I am only sharing with you my experiences. I am not theorizing; I am not speculating.
If I were told in the beginning of time, I must confess, I had forgotten it, for it is simply the return of memory. So, the Spirit of Truth is called the Comforter. He is called the Counselor. And then you are told, when he comes to you, “he will bring to your remembrance all that I have said unto you” (John 14:25). So, he is a Remembrancer! So, man remembers.
So, when you actually confront David, it’s not something that is taking place for the first time. You were always his father, so you must have suffered from total amnesia, because it’s like the return of memory.
Can you imagine someone in this world who looks right into his wife’s face, who bore his children, and actually he cannot recognize her? Now, this is not a theory; these are facts. There are people who have a little partial amnesia, but there are cases of total amnesia where he just does not know his father, mother, children, wife, friends; he knows no one. And you can hit him over the head and give him all the shocks in the world, and you can’t bring back the memory. Well, “the Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” And what I have said to you is: You are the Lord Jesus! You are the father of Humanity. Humanity collectively, personified as a single being, comes out as David. That’s who you are.
Now, when your concept of a god external to yourself vanishes, and you have just a little interval of time not knowing where to go, like a ship without a rudder, but the Spirit will come in that interval. In that interval he will send the Spirit of Truth. Then the Spirit will stir within you, and then you will realize what I have told you, because you are going to experience it in the first- person-singular, in a present tense experience. Experience what? The story of the Gospel! And you will know who Jesus is. But everyone will! So, let me repeat what I said in the beginning:
Only that which has no right to live must die; only that which has no right to exist must be brought to an end.
And it hasn’t a thing to do with any child, no matter how vile he is in this world. That was done in Love! Everything in the world that you see round about you – these are done in Love. Never would you have made anything if you had not loved it.
But you are creating something that has no right to exist, and one day you will confront it, and it’s only the personification of your misspent energies – energies that you were wanton about and threw it away as though you had it forever. And you do. He gave it to you. Yes, even to mis- spend, and so you mis-spend the energy, but you will confront it. But let me comfort you. It won’t take more than a second to redeem it – not Eternity. But you cannot monkey around with it. But, may I tell you, you won’t. You’ll make a pledge, not because there is someone listening – no one is listening; it’s all within yourself, and then you will know the words when the Lord swore to Abraham:
There was no one to whom he could swear, so he could not swear by another. So, he swore by himself. You will swear by yourself. No one is your peer. And you will take an oath that “I will redeem him if it takes me Eternity.” And Eternity will collapse into a second, and the whole monstrous being will wither before your eyes. And the energy that made him alive returns to you. There is no loss of energy. And then she – your glorious creation – will glow like the sun. Then the whole thing will vanish.
So, here tonight, I hope that I have taken – in the years that I have been talking to you – your historical Jesus from you. If I haven’t, well then he hasn’t gone away. I hope I have. If perchance I have succeeded in taking the historicity of Scripture from you and caused you a moment of blackness – a moment of despair, I rejoice. Because in that absence when he goes, it’s only for a little while, then he comes again, but now he comes as the Holy Spirit. And “no one” will know
– and “can know” – and can say – “that Jesus is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.” For, if he goes away, he will send the Holy Spirit. If he does not go away, the Holy Spirit cannot come to you.
So, as long as man holds onto his little external Jesus as a thing to whom he can turn – make a little cross, put him on the cross, stick him on the wall, and cross themselves for luck – that’s what they do, as long as you do that, you still hold something on the outside.
So, if I can say “God,” “Lord,” “Jesus,” or any of these lovely names and in any way arouse within you the sense of something that exists external to yourself, then I have not succeeded in going away. But if I can mention these words and you do not jump on the outside, and you cannot turn to another then he has gone away, but only for a little while. Read it carefully. You will find the words that I have quoted tonight in the 16th chapter of John. You will find them also in the 14th chapter and the 15th chapter:
“Unless I go away, the Comforter” – he is called in one translation, and the Counselor in another, but he equates it with the Spirit of Truth, “I will send you the Counselor who is the Spirit of Truth.”
And when he identifies himself with Truth, he is sending his spirit, and the letter kills, the spirit makes alive” (II Corinthians 3:6). So he will send that which will make Jesus alive within you – alive in the sense that you become Jesus, but you do not change your identity. You are still the same being that you are, and those who have the privilege of seeing you while you are still walking this earth as God and yet as the being they know – and they can’t deny the experience because they have seen it. It’s something that is completely different from anything in this world. They see you and they know you are God! It’s something out of this world. As he said, “I am not of this world. I am from above. You are from below. You are of this world; I am not of this world.” (John 8:23)
So, when you see Him, He is not of this world, so you will see him as God, and still know him as your friend and your Brother. For, in the end, we are all Brothers and all friends, and all the same God and Father of One Being, who is David.
Now, let’s go into the Silence.