This being my last Sunday for a year, I wish to leave no doubt in your mind of
what I tried to tell you in the last nineteen lectures. So I am going to ask a
question which you can silently answer yourself. Have you lived this life of
yours in such a way that you desire to live it again? Well, if you haven't,
you'd better listen very carefully to what I will say this morning, if you have
not already started, for may I tell you the next life is this life. When the eye
is opened you will see it, that man unless he awakes and changes the tracks of
this life he walks them forever. So if you have not lived this life in such a
way that you really desire to live it again, you start now to interfere with
these tracks and laying new tracks.
Let me give you just one simple little vision; these are all true visions of the
speaker. Lying on my bed, suddenly the eye opened, the inner eye opened, and I
saw a man casually dressed in working clothes walking the sidewalks of a major
city. As he came to a hole that was open to receive coal, in fact the coal had
just been delivered, he dropped something from his hand and bending down instead
of picking up the thing dropped, he picked up huge hunks of coal that were
scattered around the hole, and then my vision relaxed. When I re-concentrated
the vision it was on the early part of that scene of the man walking down the
sidewalk. He came to the manhole, he dropped, as he had in the previous state,
bending down he picked up the coal as he had done before. Everything was in
detail. As I saw it for the second time, I said "Now that scene hasn't changed
one iota." My attention again relaxed; when I re-concentrated it, it was on the
early part of the scene. Now I could prophesy for that man; I knew exactly what
he would do every moment of time right up to that manhole; that he would drop
his package and not pick it up but pick up the coal. I knew he would look into
that manhole and then change his mind either because someone below saw him pick
it up and he didn't want the consequences of his action or else he had a change
of heart, but I knew in detail what that man would do.
We are walking tracks and the tracks are forever, and by the mere curvature of
time your next life is this life. You simply replay it: so if you have not so
played it that you are proud of it, you start now and you start the change
today.
We have given you a system by which you change it. For those who haven't heard
why I say you walk tracks, you are standing forever in the presence of an
infinite and eternal energy, and from this energy all things proceed, but they
proceed according to pattern. Energy is moving in a certain pattern and you
determine the pattern that it takes, for you actually lay down these tracks
within you that energy flows over by the use of your inner conversations. This
energy, I call it now mind, follows the tracks laid down in a man's own inner
talking. So if your inner conversations are not what they should be, I ask you
today to start carrying on conversations within yourself from premises of
fulfilled ideals; the man you want to be, the woman you want to be, if you have
failed so far to embody it, now you begin to assume that you are that man, that
you are that woman, and inwardly carry on conversations with your friends, those
that respect you, or those you want to respect you, and carry on these
conversations from the premises that they see in you the man and the woman that
you want the world to see, just as though you were, and these words, inner
words, which are really the breeding ground of future action will lay down new
tracks and then the energy which is always flowing will flow over these tracks
and the conditions and the circumstances of life will change. If you do not lay
new tracks, I will prophesy for you you will find your self repeating it but you
will not know you've done it before.
If I could only take you now into the inner vision with me and show you this
room rising, everything rising in detail like a three dimensional curtain
ascending, but everything is moving up and yet it remains. It is so altogether
automatic that it ascends every moment of time the whole world is ascending, and
as it ascends the world remains the same. It's almost as though not a thing has
happened, and so you can't see it, but if the inner eye opens you see it ascend
and as it leaves off that which begins is the duplicate, the perfect duplicate
of the thing that rose and it rises in a three dimensional manner, so that when
a man goes over these tracks he is totally unaware that he has walked them
forever.
So I bring you a message to make you conscious: man must awake from the dream
where he is simply an automaton. He moves like a machine, then he begins to
awake and when he awakes then he is not that man at all that he seemingly in the
past played for eternity. He awakes into a new being, a new man.
Now, the new man is a man of new conversations, as told you in Ephesians "Put
off the former conversations, they belong to the old man that is corrupt, and
put on the new man by a transformation of mind", and the new man is identified
with completely new words. He speaks only the kind things; he is incapable of
any unlovely thought in the world; he is incapable of even listening to the
unlovely for inwardly he speaks only the kind, only the loving things of the
world. Then he finds himself awakening a man within that was asleep; he awakens
the second man which is called Christ Jesus in the Bible, which I tell you now
is your own wonderful, loving imagination. When imagination awakes it is
incapable of being exercised in any way outside of the loving way. So every time
you use your imagination lovingly, you are literally awakening this inner man
and you're mediating God to man. If I think of anyone in a loving way, I'm in
contact with that being and God flows toward him.
Now because this is my last Sunday I will give you what I gave the class last
Friday. Do not see it just as some metaphorical picture; see it as an actual
picture. Imagine yourself at the very base of a wonderful waterfall and that
water is flowing beautifully on you and imagine it's flowing through you and now
from you and flowing towards someone you think of. I make this statement because
it's a true statement; we are now in Eden but we are asleep as told you in the
second of Genesis; man went sound asleep when he was placed to dress it and to
keep it.
To awake, do this--just imagine yourself the center through which water radiates
and everyone in this world is rooted in me and ends in me as I am rooted in and
end in God: so I am in God's garden, it's Eden, but in God's garden every man in
the world has a plot, a little garden. In that garden there are trees that grow,
you can see them; if I look at this man now and inwardly look at his plot in my
garden I will see the trees, some will be called health, some I call wealth, the
tree of dignity, the tree of nobility, the tree of being wanted--they may be
withered, they will never really die but they may be withered, they are in need
of water. Just imagine that you are watering that plant and see in your mind's
eye the leaves appear on what formerly was a barren plant. See the fruit appear
and wherever he is in the world as you water his garden, which really is your
own garden, as you water it he will embody the very qualities that the tree is
now beginning to bear and radiate. You name the tree; whatever you name it, that
it is: and you name this one if you know he is unwanted: he wants to be wanted.
You name it and let the water flow towards it. Imagine it's growing healthily in
that garden and see it put out its leaves and see it put out its fruit. Wherever
he is in the world he will begin to be wanted by people in his world. If he is
unemployed, it's a tree of employment and see it radiate its leaves and radiate
its fruit; he will be wanted and he will be gainfully employed.
I tell you this is not just an idle statement, everyone here can do it and
everyone should do it, and when ever you water the tree in anyone's garden at
the same time you are watering your own garden in the eternal one of God. For "I
am the vine and ye are the branches", every man can say the same thing. So as
you rise here, there are 2600 of you, you individually are the central vine of
God's garden and everyone in your world is a branch in that vine. So when I, as
a central vine, water a branch in my garden, at that same moment I am being
watered and my garden is being watered in your wonderful garden. I don't have to
water my own, just by taking care of the many gardens in God's Eden I take care
of my own garden that is in the vine of everyone in the world.
You try it, and you can bless everyone in the world and then eventually the eye
opens, the ear opens, the inner man awakes and you see the most glorious world
which is always here to be seen, only we in our sleep had shut it out. We shut
the whole wonderful golden world out by going to sleep and becoming an
automaton; but take me seriously for your next life is this life. You make this
life what you want to make it because if you don't you will find yourself
automatically and you won't even know it, because as a sleeping person you don't
know you are walking the same track, but if I could only take you within me and
let you see with the eye of the inner eye and watch these automatons in the
world, sleeping people; yes, the eye is open and they seem to be awake, but
they're really sound asleep for they're repeating the same thing.
Now become conscious; as you become conscious you enter the most glorious circle
of awakened humanity. I call it the conscious circle of humanity, or as my old
teacher used to call it "The Brothers". It simply means the awakened man and
when he awakes they're all glorious beings for they are all the image of the
Divine One. So try it, try it today with the art of revision. At the end of this
day, review today. If some unlovely thing in the day, don't allow it, you
rewrite it. Take that same scene and rewrite it, and having rewritten it replay
it. In your imagination you imagine the action to be unfolding and you replay
everything in the world; as you replay it as you ought to have played it the
first time you've changed it. And the moment is never receding as people think,
the moment is advancing.
Now this may seem an insane statement to tell you- -that yesterday is today's
future: it seems insane you think it's not, it's past: but by the curvature of
time you will discover but you will not know it, because you will be asleep
unless you begin to awaken, and you will come upon what is yesteryear in your
future, for the moment is never receding, it is always advancing into the future
to confront us. And so if you don't change it, you will simply find yourself
repeating over and over what luckily in God's infinite mercy that sleep shuts
out the memory of it, so you are doing it and you think you're doing it for the
first time. But I ask you to awake for the purpose of this platform is to awaken
everyone who comes here that we may all enter this brotherhood of awakened
humanity.
Now we are told there were 'two gifts given to man at birth'--it doesn't mean
this little birth when I left my mother's womb but when I left the womb of my
Father that is the grand womb, the womb of creation when, before the world was,
He created me and made me perfect and set me in this world for a purpose,
educative purpose, but He gave me two gifts; He gave me His own mind and He gave
me the gift of speech, the very thing He used to create a world. So He spoke the
world into being and then gave me the gift by which he spoke the world into
being; so He gave me mind and speech. If I use the gift wisely, and do it
rightly, I will be led into the realization, into the fulfillment of my every
desire; not one is beyond my ability to realize. If I continually use it wisely
when I quit the body, as the world calls a man dead, when I leave this into
another dimension by the wise use of the same two gifts, I will be brought into
the company of the blessed, if I awake. If I don't use it wisely, I continue my
circle of sleep; if I use it wisely, I will break the circle of recurrence and
rise beyond it into eternity. If I don't, I continue on the curved line of time
and repeat it over and over until some day I awake, for I am destined to be
conformed to the image of His son.
So I have no doubt that everyone will awake but why not start the awakening
process now? And you start it by practicing the art of revision. You try it;
don't treat it idly. I ask you and I beg you to read and read over and over
again the chapter "The Pruning Shears of Revision" and take it day after day,
and never let the sun descend upon your wrath--any vexation, or any problem of
the day. Resolve it before you sleep and carry that resolved picture into sleep
and you will find the inner man awakening. But you try it with your friends and
that you are the grand waterfall.
The Bible speaks of water, the mystic knows it does not mean water, it means
truth, and so when I see anyone in my mind's eye and see him free, I am giving
him the only truth that will set him free. So if I water his plant, imagine the
water is really going to it and I see the leaves begin to appear and that man
becoming free: he becomes healthy, he becomes secure, he becomes loved, then
those trees are growing beautifully in my garden, and so as I do that, not only
will he benefit from my watering his plant but I will benefit, I will begin to
awaken.
So I ask everyone here to really try it. Now I know today the title was "The
Coin of Heaven", but this being the last day, I thought I would simply give a
sort of quick summary of what I have tried to tell you, for the purpose behind
the nineteen lectures was to stimulate you to interfere with your time track
that you may do something about it for the passage of time cannot change it. If
you wait, thinking there is going to be some change beyond the grave, I tell you
you will wait in vain. There is no transforming power beyond the grave. All
transforming power is in man now to interfere with his time track and you
interfere with it by simply changing one moment in the course of a day, not
accepting it as final no matter how factual the day. You know you did have that
experience, don't allow the day to descend upon it and say "Well, I did have
it". Go back to that moment in time. rewrite it, replay it in the revised
version, and do it over and over in your imagination until that takes on the
tones of reality. As it takes on the tones of reality you have changed your
future. Take another incident and change it and keep on changing all the little
episodes, all the little experiences and make them conform to a more idealistic
experience and relive it.
If anyone is here for the first time, you might think, well that's fooling
yourself, but you try it. Try it and see if the inner man will not awaken and
when he awakens you will see a world that is automatic. You will see a world
that's a machine and the whole vast world playing their parts that they've
played forever, and will continue to play on the curvature of time forever until
he snaps out of it and rises from the dead. As you are told, "Awake, you that
sleep and rise from the dead."
The state called sleep now, is likened unto death where the son has died, so we
are told the second son, the prodigal, that when he returned from that cycle and
he was met, the father said: "He that was lost is found, and he that was dead is
alive again". So this state of lost-ness is likened unto death and the
only purpose now is to rise; not to amass a fortune, although you are entitled
to it, not to become famous, although you are entitled to it, but simply to
awake from the state of sleep. And I know of no other way to awaken a man unless
I can show him how mechanical he is and if you will take and practice seriously
the art of revision, the eye will open and you will have the experiences the
speaker spoke of. You, too, lying on your bed will find the eye peering into a
city that may be 2000 miles away and there you will see more clearly than I see
you now and you will watch the tracks of a man, and then disinterest and all of
a sudden you decide to once more to be interested and you don't have a memory
image of the man, you see the whole thing all over again. You see the man walk
the same sidewalk, he does everything he did a moment before. Then take it back
again, that track is laid forever and he will walk it forever until he awakes.
So I ask everyone here to take me seriously. If this seems a bit too mystical
for you, I don't apologize; it's the only thing I can give you, for as I begin
to awake I've got to give you the food on which then my father feeds me. He
feeds me on new ideas; he changes my values, he changes all my meanings in the
world. I don't have the same meaning I had last year; I don't have the same
values I had last year; for the motives I had last year might have been along a
different line; but then all of a sudden things change and you can't place value
where formerly you placed it. You can't place it on wealth, you can't place it
on names, you can't place it on recognition. All your values change and then you
begin to inwardly see a new wonderful world.
So I tell you this garden of which I speak is a true garden, this you call the
world. Don't believe for one moment you are in exile; this wonderful visible
objective world of ours is not a place of exile, it's the living garment of my
father. It really is his living garment but it needs interpreters. Individual
men come as they begin to awaken and they will interpret for you this strange
discordant harmony, for to you if I tell you, everything in your world is
related by affinity to your own mental activity, you can't see it and so you
can't quite see this discord as related to you if you didn't think that way that
you know of, you weren't conscious of it. If you were conscious of the activity
within you, you would see everything related to yourself, your own being. What
you do not now see you will still know it is still related, so interpreters come
because the interpreter as he begins to awaken, he knows this wonderful world
has a voice for him that speaks of things behind the veil, behind the veil of
your own mind, for behind your face right now there's an activity, an activity
of your own imagination, and that activity, could you see it you would see it
projected as the conditions and circumstances of your life. Not one thing is out
of order, change the activity and you change the world in which you live, and
you change that activity by the changing of your inner speech, for speech
mirrors your mind and your mind mirrors God. If you don't change the speech you
haven't changed the activity, and if you don't change the activity you can't
change the conditions of life, for they only come bearing witness of this inner
action of your mind.
So you want to change--I hope you do; but if you can now reflect upon your life,
be it ten years, or be it sixty years, and you can't say within yourself "I
would want to live this again if I had the freedom of choice", then you better
start right now changing it, because I make you a prophesy, I make you a
promise, your next life is this life. So if you cannot now in reflection say "I
desire to live it again", then start today to lay down new tracks because if you
don't you're going to live it again, and living it again you won't even know you
are living it again. It is so altogether automatic, it's so effortless as you
walk the tracks, for you stand in the presence of energy and you can't stop
walking; you've laid them and you will walk them, and the curvature of time will
bring you back and back and back forever and forever until you break it and you
begin to awaken and when you awaken you enter a circle of awakened humanity. And
I'll tell you you know them more intimately than anyone you now know in the
state of sleep. There is not a person on earth that you know as intimately as
those who have awakened when you awake.
When you go into their presence and you mingle with them you become one. You
do not lose your identity: in fact you tend ever toward greater and greater
individualization. You never become absorbed and lose your identity, but as you
awaken you awaken to the being that you always were but you had forgotten it and
went sound asleep. There is a beauty in the inner man that the outer has never
touched, never scarred, and so as you awaken and they will be there to meet you
because they are awaiting eagerly for the breaking of the circle of recurrence.
So you try it.
We have told you many things this year, many things that seemed too mystical,
but I warned you, when I took it four Sundays ago, this year I would give you
the end of a golden string and I called upon you to roll it into a ball, and if
you did it would lead you in at heaven's gate built in Jerusalem's wall.
Well, I felt I have given you that string but I cannot roll it into a ball for
you. I promise you I will water your garden but it won't awaken you, it will
awaken you only to lovelier things in a way, but it will not really break the
circle for you, so I offer you now this day again the end of the golden string
but I call upon you to wind it and roll it into a ball by the daily application
of the principle of revision, by daily watching your inner actions and see if
they correspond to the actions you desire to perform in the outer world.
Watch your conversations carefully; are they from premises of fulfilled ideas?
If they're not, go back and make them and make them actually correspond to the
ideal you want to embody in this world. Start, that is winding it into a ball
and it will lead you in at heaven's gate built in Jerusalem's wall. I have no
doubt in my mind for I know from experience that's how I opened up that wall; I
opened it up by application. So I warned you every time I have taken the
platform that the knowledge you have now is of no avail unless it's applied. A
little knowledge if carried out in action is more profitable than much knowledge
which you neglect to carry out in action. If you had all the knowledge in the
world and you didn't put it into practice, you wouldn't awaken.
Now here this morning everyone has heard it; you take it today and start this
day revising, and watch the circle begin to snap, watch the eye begin to open,
and I tell you there isn't a gift on earth, there isn't a possession in the
world that you would want more than the opening of the eye when the eye opens.
That's why I say your values change, the meaning of life changes, for you
wouldn't sell the eye that opens for all the wealth of the world; you wouldn't
exchange it for any recognition in the world now conferred upon the so-called
great. You see the so called great all equally sound asleep playing their parts
walking curved lines, and then you snap it and move into a wonderful world of
awakened humanity and there you see these glorified beings, but really glorified
beings, who preceded you into the conscious circle of humanity.
And now my time is up.