Tonight’s subject is “My Husband.” Man’s historical life is really a dramatic story which presses towards the fulfillment of God’s purpose. God himself is active in this great struggle, guiding and directing all the affairs of men towards his own purpose; and so the subject, “My Husband”…that “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” That is the 54th chapter of Isaiah, “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is his name” (verse 5).
In this chapter, we’re told, I called, that is, the Lord called you, like a forsaken wife. Then he goes on to explain what he will do for this wife that he himself forsook. He said, “I forsook you for a brief moment.” Well now, a brief moment in the eyes of God is not a moment in our eyes on earth. “I forsook you for a brief moment. For a little moment I’ve hidden my face from you, but now I will redeem you” (Is. 54:7-8). And he will bring this one that he forsook bring it back to an everlasting union. We are told in the Book of Hosea: “And the day will come you will call me, ‘My husband,’ Ishi, and no longer, ‘My Baal’” (or my owner, my Lord) (2:16). “Then I will betroth you to me forever” (verse 20).
This so-called “day of the Lord”—where he only simply sent us out and forsook us for a day—is 6,000 years in the language of scripture. We speak of a day, which is simply a watch in the night. A thousand years, we’re told, is only a watch in the night. Well, there are three watches in the night—that would be 3,000 years—and there are three watches to the day, the visible day. So we have six watches in a day and each watch is equal to 1,000 years, altogether 6,000 years. So he forsook us for this short interval of time, which in the eye of God was simply a moment. But for us passing through the darkness of the day of God… for we are told, a day of God is not light but darkness. As we are told in the Book of Amos, “Is not the day of God darkness, and not light? Is it not gloom, where there is no light in it?” (5:20). For this is the world in which we live, and we are the forsaken; but tomorrow at the end of this moment in time—a short moment in the eye of God, but a very long, trying one in the eyes of man—“He will then gather us together, one by one, and become betrothed to us forever and forever.”
So we are told in the Book of Genesis, a man must leave all things and cleave to his wife until they become one (2:24). You and I do not believe it on a certain level that he is cleaving to us and he, himself, is suffering with us as he takes us through this day of the Lord, called the day of darkness, but he is. So when we are told by the great mystic, “God became as we are that we may be as he is” we may be inclined to think these are simply the words of the poet (Blake). But they are not just the words of the poet, they are true. God actually became man that man may become God, and in the end we are not two, we are one. He gives up, “He empties himself and takes upon himself the form of a slave and was found in the form of man” (Phil.2:6-8). But in the end, man will not call him “my Baal,” for Baal means “my owner.” If he is my owner then I am his slave. You will not call me “my Baal,” you’ll call me, “My husband.” And the husband and the wife in that day will be one, they will not be two. And so he cleaves to me and takes me through to the very end. In the very end, he has already all the signs by which he will prove to himself that he’s redeemed me, and he and I are one.
Now we are told the New Testament interprets the Old, not the other way around. No one understood this story of the Book of Isaiah, “My Maker is my husband, the Lord of hosts is his name.” What does it mean that the Lord called me like a wife forsaken, like someone that is grieved in Spirit? For a moment, a brief moment, I forsook you, but I will gather you with great compassion, and after one little moment I will bring you into my everlasting Father. Only for a moment I forsook you, really. Now, in the 16th chapter of the Book of John: “In a little while you will see me no more; but then in a little while you will see me” (verse 16). Now he likens this departure from us and his return to us to a woman in travail. In this same chapter he now takes this story that when a woman is in travail she is in sorrow because her hour has come, but when she is delivered of the child she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy that a human being is born in the world. So you are in sorrow now…but you will see me again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take from you your joy.
So in this interval we are all concerned, horribly concerned. And we find out certain techniques by which we can realize our objectives. Then comes the whole thing pounding in on us again, not only our individual lives but the lives of those we love…a telephone call, the morning’s mail, or just a contact. And you don’t want them to go through the struggle, and so you wonder why can’t things be just as they ought to be as you see them, as all things are crowding in on you. This is called the day of the Lord, the day of darkness, not the day of light. In the end, you come out and you are one with God, for there is only God. Before me there was no God, nor shall there be any God after me. In the 43rd of Isaiah, “There was no God before me, nor shall there be any God after me” (verse 10). There’s only God…God actually emanating himself, and I am, and you are, the emanation of God. We are his emanation, his bride ‘til the sleep of death is past. When the sleep of death is past, then I am the very being that brought the whole thing about. So I’m not doing it on the outside apart from the begetter. The begetter became me—God actually became me that I may become God. He became me. He shattered himself and lost himself in that ___(??), individualized it completely…not less than himself because he wedded himself to it; and on the return, I am one with him. He brought us all back together, a far greater being than it was before that fragmentation.
Now, here we are told, “You have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, you will appear also with him in glory” (Col. 3:3). My life is hid with Christ? But he tells me first “you are dead.” The King James Version says, “You’re dead”; the Revised Standard Version states, “You have died.” Paul in his letter…this is from Colossians…Paul in his letter to the Galatians makes the statement, “I have been crucified with Christ” (2:20). I have been crucified with Christ, and only Christ rises? Yes. Well, if I say to you now, who are you? You will say to me, well, “I’m Bob, I’m Bill, I’m Herman, I’m Mary, Judith,” and you name all these names and you really believe it. So tonight when you go to bed, that’s the being you take to bed—-Bob, Herman, Judith, Mary—and any name that you claim is your identity. If I tell you that is not really your identity, if I tell you that you are Jesus Christ, would you believe it? If you don’t take Jesus Christ to bed with you as though you were he, well then, you will take the limited being called Neville, John, Mary, any other being in this world. Then I tell you “I have been crucified with Christ”…and in his letter to the Colossians, “You have died and your life is hid with Christ, and when Christ appears you appear with him in glory.”
Now Peter tells us in the 1st epistle, “We are reborn through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:3). There is no other way for man to be born from above, born of God, begotten of the Spirit, not of the flesh. If I am begotten of the flesh, it is from below; if I’m begotten of God, it is from above. He tells me I’m reborn through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I am told I am crucified with him. But I always thought, until it happened to me, that he rose 2,000 years ago…something not in any way associated with me save as a concept I should adopt and believe that he came with a special mission. The story was told me by my mother first, and then my Sunday school teacher; and then as I read the book, I always thought, until it happened to me, that it happened 2,000 years ago. I never identified it in any way with me.
So when I tell you now, I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating, I’m speaking from experience. The story is true: You are born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead in you. For if you have died…now this is the letter…someone writes me a letter, I open the letter and I’m reading it, and it begins, “You have died.” Well, I’m alive, I think I am. So I read the words “You have died and your life is hid with Christ.” I died. Here I am alive, I’m reading a letter, for this is the letter. I don’t understand how could I be dead? For I walk, I eat, I dress, I do all these things and yet I am told I’ve died. And then comes this experience suddenly. You must have died, but you never knew it in what is called the day of the Lord which is all darkness. You had no knowledge of it. “Is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light?” said Amos. Is it not darkness and not light, all gloom and no light within it whatsoever? Well, I didn’t know that. I thought this was all light. I had intelligence, I could actually bargain, I could do all kinds of things and act like an intelligent being, and therefore it seems light to me. And I am told “Is not the day of the Lord all darkness?” I was totally unaware that I was dead, totally unaware that I was buried, until that moment in time when God decided to unite me with himself. He took me through the furnaces, through the long, long journey of 6,000 years. At the end of 6,000 years, he said, “Now you will call me, ‘My husband,’ and no longer will you call me, ‘my owner,’ ‘my Baal.’ I will betroth you to me forever” in fulfillment of my promise in the beginning that I will leave all and cleave to you, my emanation, my wife until we become one being, one form, one flesh. And I didn’t know this.
So if I am born from above through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and when I rose in the tomb I saw no one but myself, then I know who Jesus Christ is. So I say to you, before the experience, you are Jesus Christ. He is not pretending that he’s you; he became you. When you read it in Galatians, you think a man became one single little being, born of a woman, 2,000 years ago. I am not speaking of that being; I’m speaking of the cosmic Christ, the universal Christ that became every being. And it rose…had to rise in one first. When all the time was fulfilled, then one broke the seal. And then from that moment on the door is open and one after one: “I will gather you one by one, O my people of Israel.” (Is. 26:12) So he gathers us all, one by one, as his bride. But gathering us one by one as his bride, he cannot put me on the side. He is my husband; but there is no more he and then the one called wife…we fuse. For we are told in the beginning, he must leave all and cleave unto his emanation, his wife, until they become one. So there aren’t two in the end, only one. Then he brings before the vision of the one (to whom he is now fused) the series of events which reveal to the one who now awakes how true the word of my husband is.
So here, everyone this night…and may I tell you from experience…you try it. When you go to bed tonight—it may seem arrogant, it may seem blasphemous—no matter how wonderful you are in this world, forget it! All the honors of this world, all the possessions of this world are as nothing; that when you are really one with this being you own the world. As you’re told in the 50th chapter of the Book of Psalms, here, “If I were hungry I wouldn’t tell you, for everything is mine…the cattle on a thousand hills are mine…and were I hungry, I would slay and eat” (verses 10,12). I wouldn’t ask permission to take what is mine. In the 24th Psalm, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof” (verse 1). So it’s all yours. But it isn’t yours as John Brown, it isn’t mine as Neville Goddard, it isn’t yours as Mary Smith; it is only yours as Jesus Christ.
So if tonight you dare to assume “I am Christ”…I don’t care what the world will tell you, let them speculate. I am not speculating; I am speaking from experience. So you say “I am Christ” and don’t bat an eye…and feel what it would be like to be this Christ. For I know in my own case when that power possessed me and I rose within myself, entombed; and if, as Peter said in his 1st letter, the 1st chapter, the 3rd verse, “We are born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” and only Jesus Christ is resurrected, well, if only Jesus Christ is resurrected, I was sound asleep and dead to the reality that I am he. I didn’t know it until it happened. For if only Christ resurrects and I know I resurrected…I didn’t know he was the universal Christ. I was taught by my mother, by my teachers, it was a unique little experience that happened in a strange, fantastic way 2,000 years ago. No one told me this was a cosmic Christ rising in every being in this world but rising in such a unique way it could only rise one by one. We are so unique in the eyes of this presence that we can’t be called even in pairs…must be called one by one. And so here, he rose within me, but I thought at that moment, or prior to that moment, that he was another. Well, if I am born from above only through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and he rose in me because I rose, then I am he.
So to go to sleep in the consciousness that I am Christ is all the difference in the world to your night, to your day, to your entire life. It doesn’t matter what others think, it doesn’t really matter. You don’t go out and take an ad in the paper. You don’t go and make any kind of promotion, any scheme as to who you are. You don’t care what the world thinks, because it doesn’t really matter. All you know is that you simply take this consciousness with you into your waking day and that moment just before you retire at night. You try it.
Now let me share with you a simple, simple technique. It’s very simple for those who cannot meditate more than a matter of seconds, more than a matter of moments, and can’t dramatize anything, this works like a charm. You sit quietly, close your eyes, turn your attention only into your skull, from the outside into your skull. In a little while, with practice…it may not come the first day…but I don’t think it will take too long before suddenly your skull and all the dark convolutions of the brain will begin to grow luminous, and you will see golden liquid clouds forming all over your head. And while in this state think of anyone in this world, but anyone, and when you think of them think of them with empathy. Not sympathy, empathy. Bring them into your mind’s eye and rejoice with them because of their good fortune. Empathize, don’t sympathize. Sympathizing is the acceptance of their lack whatever it is. If they are unwell and you feel sorry for them, you only reinforce what they seem to be to you. If they are in need and you sympathize, you are simply accepting that limitation and make it all the more real in your world. Learn to actually bring to pass through empathy whatever would give you joy concerning them. Empathize! Try it. Sitting in a quiet, simple way, not bursting one blood vessel, not making any physical effort to do anything, just simply losing yourself in the joy of the other’s good fortune. Try that. But always do it in empathy. If you do it in empathy, you’re doing it in love. You cannot empathize with another and not be in love…you can’t do it. Therefore, you are doing the right thing.
So tonight, when you retire (and I would not mislead you, I assure you), when you retire change your identity. Though you have not yet had the experience of the resurrection and the birth from above, speaking from experience, I tell you, you are going to be resurrected in that wonderful skull of yours, called Golgotha. You alone will be born. And if, as told in scripture, we are born from above through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you and you alone are resurrected when you are resurrected, and only Jesus Christ is resurrected, then you must be he. So before you have the experience, believe it, and therefore begin to identify yourself with him. Don’t wait for the experience but identify yourself with him now and share the power that is Christ before you have the experience of the resurrection and the birth from above.
The day will come you will actually be able to have this experience of saying “my husband” rather than “my owner, my Baal.” “Then I will betroth,” as he said, “you to me forever.” No longer will there be any division; the forsakenness is over. But I did it for a purpose, said he…preparing us to prove to us there is no other power. So in the wilderness we went, not an aimless wandering but a purpose—___(??) towards this union where we were forsaken. Now you can see the words “I forsook you.” I didn’t do a thing that was wrong that caused me to be banished into this wilderness. As told us in the 8th chapter of the Book of Romans that “the creature was made subject unto futility, not willingly but by reason of the will of him who subjected the creature in hope…” (verse 20). So, I didn’t do it, you didn’t do it, we didn’t do it; we were banished, and the words are “I forsook you for a brief moment.” A brief moment through the eyes of man is 6,000 years. That isn’t to us a brief moment, but in the eyes of God it is a brief moment. Only six watches…each watch being a thousand years. So in the 90th Psalm, “A thousand years in thy sight is as a watch in the night” (verse 4) and there are three watches in the night and three watches of the day. So put them together, there are six-thousand-year watches. Together they form the day of the Lord. And is not the day of the Lord darkness and not light, and gloom and no brightness…no light within? Yes. This is the world in which we live.
Tonight, a man with one billion dollars…and there are men living in this world with a billion dollars who are about to make their exit from the world. They will leave it to those who don’t care for one moment that they ever lived, may I tell you, especially when you get beyond the second generation. Go beyond the third, who cares what grandfather or grandmother ever looked like? Today they are waiting eagerly for mothers and fathers to die. You mean they are going to prolong their lives another year? I must wait another year before I get their fortune? That has been the history of the world, and so, all of this is darkness, complete darkness. You can’t do a thing about it. We were subjected unto this futility and being prepared to prove one thing, that there is no Baal, no other God, one God. “Before me no God existed, nor shall there be any God after me,” sayeth the Lord of hosts. You read it carefully, the 43rd of Isaiah (verse 10).
Only one God, and that God became us in the most literal sense that we may become God. But we didn’t initiate it and we don’t consummate it. God initiated it, emanated himself and fragmented himself; we are the fragmented beings. But, he buried himself in the entire world that he emanated and then redeems it all, one by one, and brings it all back, all to himself, this time augmented beyond the wildest dream. This fragmented world became the limit of contraction, the limit of opacity; and when he brings it back, there’s no limit to translucence, that expansion that is God. And you and I being one with God, not two, we enjoy that translucence.
I had just a glimpse of it in 1926 in Larchmont, New York. I was the guest of a manager of the club, but with the line of demarcation between the manager and his guests and the members of the club. And this was a Saturday night and all the young boys and girls came to dance. ’26 was Prohibition, as you know, well, all these lovely young boys and girls and they brought their own homemade hooch, and it was quite a party. ___(??) and management thought it unwise that I, a guest of management, should attend the dance along with those who were members and their guests. So I retired early, got in my bed, I was reading the book of the life of Buddha, and I turned the light on. A thing I rarely do is to read in bed. This night I did, and as I was reading the book I fell into a trance. It was quite early in the evening and the noise was going, all this music from below, but suddenly I heard nothing. I was in one deep trance, and when I awoke from that trance the next morning, it must have been nine or ten, the sun was out, party was over, the book was on my chest, proving I had not turned in the interval; for had I turned one moment the book would not be on my chest. The light was still burning and the book was on my chest, open, and ___(??).
So in that interval of maybe eleven hours, I fell into this deep, deep state of infinite pulsing light. There was no circumference, there was no world, there was nothing; I was the only reality. There was nothing but infinite pulsing light, a beauty and an ecstasy you cannot describe in words. So I tasted of the union of this that is spoken of in scripture. Call me now…the day is over, and call me “my husband” and call me no more “my owner.” And in that night I simply became one with infinite light and there was nothing but a joy and an ecstasy. I know there is in store, in spite of the union, the oneness, and all will experience it. There will still be a union interpersonally, I know that. That was not fully revealed to me, but that I do know. But I’ve experienced the union, that oneness of infinite pulsing ecstasy ___(??).
So here, I am not theorizing. So I’m asking you this night when you go to bed, identify yourself—not you and Christ—say “I am Christ.” If the word offends you, say “I am God.” If you can’t do it, come as near to it as you can. But don’t take your present identity forever with you into that deep, for you will limit yourself by that association. For you’re called upon in this to simply bring about a change. He likens us to a woman in labor, and when we are in labor we are in sorrow because the moment for our delivery has come, the moment is upon us. But after the child is delivered…but only after the child is delivered do we rejoice because a human being has been born into the world. Now, there’s a difference in the words in the 16th of John (verse 21). The first one is translated correctly “child”: After the child is born, that’s right. Now, the King James Version will say, after that, and use the same word “child” again. It’s not, it’s an entirely different Greek word meaning “a human being,” which the Revised Standard Version gives us as a footnote. They use the word “child” not to offend the mind, but they give you a footnote saying the Greek word is “a human being.” You are that human being. First, you are in labor. Now a human being is born and now you rejoice because of that, and there is no more sorrow.
Then he reappears in your world. He disappears for a while then he reappears. So God disappeared from our world. We thought he was in the stars, we thought he was in the sun, we thought he was in something else. He disappeared because he hid his face from us for a short season. We didn’t know he so became us that that was his hiding. He is so close, so much our very being that he is to us a hidden God. But he was never so far off as even to be near, for nearness implies separation. That’s what he was. He so became us that he was to us like a hidden God, and we thought he might be even near and we approached him as though he were near. He isn’t “near.” He can’t even be near, for that does imply separation, and he isn’t separated. He actually became what I am, what you are…and he isn’t pretending. That’s why he seems to be a hidden God. But if only God resurrects and when you resurrect it’s only you, then now you know who he is and, therefore, who you are.
Because, if I am born from above only through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and I was resurrected—I didn’t see any Jesus Christ on the outside—I was the only one resurrected in that sepulcher of my skull. And then I came out as one being born to find the symbol of my birth, wrapped in a swaddling cloth, called a little child. And I took him in my arms just as you’re told in scripture: And he held the child in his arms and said, you must receive the kingdom as a little child, and he held him in his arms, and it broke into the smile…called Isaac. Well, if this thing happens in this way, well, I can tell you from experience, before it happens to you, start this very night to identify yourself with Jesus Christ. No matter what you did today that would be unbecoming to such a character, it doesn’t matter…all things are forgiven. Everything is forgiven—I don’t care what you have done—in the end everything is forgiven.
So tonight, identify yourself with him and feel I am Jesus Christ. And may I suggest, if you do your dreams will change, your visions will change, because only Christ would have such visions. So to identify yourself with Christ, as Christ you will automatically change the nature of the vision. God is speaking to himself from the depth of himself through vision, so you’ll see a far different future for yourself. But if you go to bed this night as John Brown, who is in pain or who is in want or who is distressed in a thousand little ways, that’s what you’ll bring back tomorrow morning.
To go back to that simple little technique…and I can’t tell you even if you don’t think of anyone, but how you can stop that impulse of thinking of someone with sympathy, I don’t know. But, just to sit in the Silence…and have the dark convolutions of the brain burst into light, and they do, this pulsing, golden liquid light. And while you observe it it’s a thrill just to observe, and then in that think of someone and empathize. Feel the joy that is their joy because things are as they ought to be for them, and bathe them in it as it were. This is a very easy thing and very…not only easy, it’s not tiring at all. There is no effort to this technique, none whatsoever.
So here, the Promise is fulfilled when man can say “my husband” (meaning God), for God promised him from the beginning he would leave all and cleave to his wife until they became one being. So they become one being, so there aren’t two. Two can’t resurrect, only one can resurrect. Two are not through the skull, only one comes out. When the witnesses come to bear witness to that which has happened, they only mention one name and you are that name. You’re the being. So the whole thing unfolds within you, the whole drama of life. People are looking for it in some other way; it doesn’t work that way. It’s not secular history. As we said earlier, the whole drama of life, the whole of life’s dramatic struggle is moving towards the fulfillment of God’s purpose. His purpose is to so fuse you to himself that there aren’t you and God, just God, and you are God. So it’s his purpose to give himself to us as though there were no other, and when it’s accomplished, then I am he.
So I tell you tonight, I have experienced it. We told you last Tuesday night he gave you two children. As you’re told in the 8th chapter of the book of Isaiah, “And behold my children whom the Lord has given me,” then he named the two children (verse 18). They are not really what scholars believed them to be at all. They’re jawbreakers if you want to sound the names. And they claim it means the first child, the eldest child; means “the return or the remnant returns.” But you’ll find a footnote in the Revised Standard Version that the word really means “a remnant will repent.” A remnant will repent. Well, we can tell the whole vast world today this story, only a very small section would really believe it to the point of practicing the art of repentance. Repentance being a return, yes, fine, it’s a return, a remnant will return. For I start from a certain project and then I decide to change my mind…not doing that. I’ll change my mind and return. So, a remnant will return or a remnant will repent.
So I tell you, by a change of attitude, instead of saying I’m John Brown going to bed, I’m Christ going to bed…that’s a return, that’s a remnant. How many of those who hear me will do it? There’s just a few of us. But suppose I said the same thing tonight over radio or over TV to the whole vast world, what percentage would think I was sane? An nth part of one percent would listen to the point of applying it, so only one nth part would become the remnant that would return, or repent, or turn back, and actually identify themselves with being Christ. So that’s the first child, the Christ child, the little child that comes through one’s effort to, say, practice the art of repentance. For the first words put into the mouth of Christ, in the earliest gospel which is Mark, is “The time is fulfilled; repent and believe the gospel” (1:15). So the first words in his mouth “repent and believe the gospel.” And the second child is the one who conquers the enemies of Israel and the one who conquers the enemies of Israel is David. David conquered the enemy of Israel, and took the stronghold of Zion, and renamed Zion the city of David (2 Sam. 5:7). We are born in the city of David, and we’re told that the Lord’s home is Mt. Zion.
So, the second one that comes—he gave me two children—and the second one is the proof of the overcoming of all these false beliefs of the world. So no longer can I say “my Baal,” I can only say “my husband.” So I can’t turn to teacup leaves and ask anyone to read my future for me, or astrology, or numerology, or any other, or monkey bones. They have all kinds of things in the world. Sitting in the bus coming home the other day in Beverly Hills, an old gentleman got on, a strange, weird looking creature, and a beautiful little girl was seated in the bus with her mother. She must have been about two years old, pretty little beauty, and she was moving back and forth on the bus, and the mother was trying to make her quiet. Her mother was so young that she was irritable with the child. With a parent my age ___(??) holding her. But this was a young mother, and so she didn’t care that the child was pretty or not. So the old gentleman said, “I am a prophet, I can foresee the future. Want me to tell the future of this child?” Of course, the whole bus, they were alive, the future! But the little child was so pretty, it was a beautiful little child, and all of them heard him. He said, “I will tell you the future of this child. She will not die a spinster.”
Well, it was so obvious! She would not die a spinster, not this little child. Of course, they all looked for something else. They thought she would become a queen or a duchess or a fabulously wealthy person. No, she was a sweet little child and being a humorous old gentleman, he said, “She will not die a spinster.” But they were not going to live with that, they wanted prophecy, as these people go to these gypsy tearooms all over the world. We have them in New York City. You’d be amazed how many people go and come out believing too. Oh, really believing!, and if they are really believing now it will come to pass, and they will think the power was in the leaves that the little old lady poured out for them. Hasn’t a thing to do with that. In the end you will not say “my Baal”; in the end of the Lord’s day when the darkness has come to an end and light breaks upon you, you will say “my husband.” Then the two will become one and you will have no other God to whom you will turn. You can’t turn to any other God, and he is so fused with you you can’t turn to anyone in this world. (Tape ends.)