As the world thinks when you can’t see someone and touch him, he is gone from this world. So we will say the late Winston Churchill made the statement that the mood decides the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes decide the mood. I wonder if he had that in a vision, had that from a dream. He undoubtedly to make that bold statement had it from some depths of his soul, anyway. But is it true? Does a man’s mood decide the fortunes and does he wait for something good to happen in his world in order to get that mood of satisfaction? I tell you from my own experience that the great Sir Winston is telling the truth. I could quote you, I wouldn’t say unnumbered, but so many of the great mystics of the world who came to the same conclusion. Take George Russell, better known to us as A.E., he said: “I became aware of a swift echo, a response to my own mood in circumstance that seemed hitherto immutable in its indifference. I could prophesy from the uprising of new moods within myself that I would soon meet people of a certain character; and so I met them. Even inanimate objects were under the sway of these affinities.” I know from my own experience this is true.
We are told in scripture, “Whatever you desire, when you pray believe that you have received it, and you will” (Mk 11:24). We’re also told that the whole book called the Bible is the word of God and the word of God is true. I have found this so in my own life, which after all is the only one that I can really say that I know. And I firmly believe that what is true of me is true, or must be true, of every being in this world. I can’t for one moment believe that I am set apart to experience scripture and that you would not experience the same truth of the word of God. So tonight, let me share with you what I know from my own personal experience and what many of you here have shared with me. For I’ve asked you to try it and then share with me if you will what you have discovered. Well here, we are told in scripture, “I will speak to man in a dream and make myself known unto him in a vision” (Num. 12:6). But all premises will determine outcome, for all ends run true to origins. If I think I’m a bum and that is my concept of myself, then I will unfold all the things related to that premise. If I dare to assume I am God, well then, my vision, my dream should reveal something fantastic…if I dare to assume it. If the world teaches you that you are a little worm—and that’s how the priesthoods of the world approach the congregations of the world, that you are sinful, you are this, you’re that and the other, everything but God-like—so they get you to assume that you are simply no good and that you’ve sinned. When you’ve sinned you don’t know and why you’ve sinned you don’t know, they can’t tell you that; but that you’re reaping the fruit or the results of some ancient being, who might have been an ancestor, and so you are now confined to this limited state.
If I could only get you to assume that you are God, that you are Christ, you might come up with something like this…as a friend gave it to me this week. He had every reason in the world to do what he did; he was working, as he thought, against time. He had the sensation—which is not a bad sensation, I’ve had it, and produced similar results—he had the sensation of departure from this world. As Paul said, “The time for my departure has come. I have finished the race, I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith” (2Tim.4:6). And now he just simply wants to go on from this age into that other age. Well, he had a similar mood that possessed him, but he felt a little, as we all do, unfinished business. He had a friend in this world that he thought needed some help, and he thought “I must give her the necessary help before I go.” He felt this was simply imminent, it’s this night.
And so, this is what he did. He gave her the blessing that he wanted for her by doing this. Before retiring he said, “I am Christ, I am God,” and in the consciousness identifying himself with God, all things being contained within God, he could grant anything as God, and so he granted the blessing to this friend of his which anyone identified with God could do. And he felt completely relaxed in the fact that that act in itself was fact. He didn’t have to wait for confirmation of it; he didn’t have to wait for the physical effects to appear in this world; he knew at the very moment it was done. Therefore, he could sleep peacefully…and he fell asleep.
In the early hours of the morning this was his dream. He had this wonderful dream—for now he’s making his exit from this world—that he’s in his home, asleep on his bed, and then the most frightening earthquake takes place. He said, “I didn’t realize that an earthquake could be so violent, but the whole thing is shaking and the house begins to move, and it goes farther and farther. For a moment it is arrested, but only for a moment, and then it continues beyond that point.” Then a horrible explosion and everything is just simply exploded and blown into the air, and he with it. He ascended; then he finds himself descending once more to the bed on which he was prior to this explosion. And then he heard the voice. He said, “It’s the voice I’ve always heard, but his time it’s my own voice. I myself am speaking, I am the speaker. I am proclaiming in the loudest, most authoritative voice, calling this friend’s name and proclaiming that she is free, and then, ‘I am Christ, I am God.’ Then I awoke to find myself in a pool of golden light, and then I reached, in a semi-trance state, for sheets of paper. I was still in that state, not knowing why I’m doing this, and I reached out and got two sheets of paper. On the first one I printed these words, ‘Feeling is the one and only reality.’ On the second sheet I wrote this, ‘Don’t think, feel’…and then he said, ‘Feel the reality of.’ ___?? The first one, “Feeling is the one and only reality” and the second, “Don’t think, feel; feel the reality of.”
Then he said, “I am not overly committed with the Bible, but I thought there must be some support in scripture for this experience of mine. So opening up the Bible, he said, I don’t know the Bible, but I didn’t have to know it, it simply fell open at this page in the gospel of Matthew. And here, at the death of Jesus Christ the whole earth quaked and all the stones were split. He said, I had never seen that before. Now I know what Jesus Christ in me died to.” He died to the seeming reality of the outer world as he found the world within himself, and he knew he could control it to the degree that he was willing to simply feel the reality of everything that he desired in this world.
Now, if that shocks you, I wouldn’t for one moment lift a finger to un-shock you, if I could…if you were shocked by it. Until you identify yourself with God, you will never know who God is. Maybe your concept tonight of God is some strange thing. But even it may be bigger than your present concept of yourself; therefore lift yourself up to identify yourself with God as you conceive God to be. If you read the story of scripture and take the story of Jesus Christ that is God, identify yourself with Jesus Christ, and then see. In that concept of self you can grant anything to a friend in this world.
Let us take my friend’s revelation of this week plus scripture plus what we quoted earlier of A.E., the great Irish poet, and Sir Winston Churchill—how moods decide the fortunes and not fortunes decide the mood. You can conjure a mood at will. If you know a mood that would possess you were things as you desire them to be, you can conjure that mood and await results. We’re told in scripture—this goes back now to the Book of Genesis—here is a man who is blind, the symbol that you can’t see any effect in this world—his name is Isaac. He’s blind. He has two sons. And he’s asked one to go and bring him some venison; his name is Esau. A second son, whose name is Jacob, and Jacob, knowing his father’s request, disguises himself as Esau. He puts on hair, puts on leather, puts on everything to feel like Esau, because he knows his father can’t see and the father would have to depend upon feeling, not upon seeing.
So here is the story given to us that when Imagination is moved to the point of feeling the thing is done. Can’t see…that “I am blind, my son, come near that I may feel to see whether you are my son or not” (verse 21). A few verses on (this is the 27th chapter of the Book of Genesis) a few verses on he said, “Come near, my son, and kiss me” (verse 26). Is there anything closer, anything nearer that is more emotional than the kiss of one you love? And so, “Come close, come near, my son, and kiss me.” He wants to tell from the kiss if he can’t see the boy. So the first one comes and he feels him, and he said, ‘Your voice sounds like Jacob, but you feel and you smell like Esau.” Now the blessing was for Esau. Esau is the external world…this room is Esau. I want a world that is external, that is factual, that the world can see and enjoy it with me. That’s my Esau. I bring what I think is Esau—I’m blind, I can’t see it—and I create a mood, and bring the mood and make it so much a part of me that it seems to be real. It takes on the external state of Esau, it seems so factual, so external, so objective to me. Although I can’t see it, it seems real.
Do I believe, really, that the mood determines my fortune, or am I going to wait for the fortune to create in me the mood? Am I going to do what scripture teaches man to do— close his eyes to the obvious I am impoverished, I am unwanted, I am unknown? Well, I would like to reverse all of these states in my world, but my eye denies that they are reversed. I am still unknown, still impoverished, still unwanted, and everything in my world tells me that these facts are facts, but I don’t want them. So I close my eyes to the obvious. Then I bring my Jacob and I clothe Jacob in what is to me reality. I feel wanted. What is the mood that would possess me were I wanted? What is the mood that would possess me were I known? What is the mood that would possess me were I now affluent? What is the mood? And so, I bring it and clothe myself in the mood first, and then give it the tones of reality, all the sensory vividness that I can muster…and see if this really is true of scripture. For this is what scripture teaches.
I know from my own experience that it is true. Standing before you this night—most of you here know it from my own confession—everything recorded in scripture in the New Testament from the birth of Jesus Christ to his resurrection I have experienced. His ascension I have experienced. If the whole vast world of three-and-a-half billion rose in opposition, it would make no difference to me, for I know what I have experienced. And not feeling now for one moment that I am different from anyone in this world, I can say because I have experienced it every man in this world in whom the word of God has been engrafted must experience it. So I do not put myself apart because I have experienced it. I say everyone must in whom the word of God has been engrafted. If he has heard the word, if he has heard it and he has not accepted it, well then, it’s not engrafted. Not everything that is sown must grow in this world; but whatever has put forth growth in this world must have been sown. So not everything that you and I sow as an idea actually takes root and grows, but whatever grows must have been sown.
So I say to everyone here, catch the mood of the wish fulfilled. If you catch the mood of the wish fulfilled, you don’t have to raise a finger to make it so…it becomes so. It grows into this external world. As my friend said to me in his letter to me, which thrilled me beyond measure, “Having done it for my friend, not knowing whether this is the night that I depart from this world, I was completely indifferent as to the results. I had no feeling of waiting to see the evidence of what I had done, I felt it, and at the moment I am continuing to feel it for her. And so I know at the moment of feeling it done it was done, at that moment.”
Now, scripture tells us, “The vision has its own appointed hour; it ripens, it will flower. If it be long, then wait; for it is sure and it will not be late” (Hab.2:3). Not late relative to the seed that was sown. If I sow a mustard seed, there’s an interval of time between my sowing and its growth. If I sow the seed of a child, there’s an interval of time between that sowing and its birth, nine months. If I sow the seed of a horse, alright, there’s an interval, it’s a year. A little hen lays an egg and if it’s warmed…so the thing is fertilized, providing it has been fertilized, and then warmed, it will be animated and in twenty-one days a little chicken will come out. So every seed has its own appointed hour between that moment of sowing and the moment of its birth.
I’m not saying that everyone in this world will accept the seed sown. In this room tonight not everyone will accept the fact that your mood decides your fortunes. You may think that an insane idea and you may not accept it, but you can’t deny I told you. For if you have a machine tonight, you could go home and replay it and say to yourself, “He did plant that seed, but I refuse to accept it.” So in your case, the seed was sown, but it doesn’t mean it has to grow. But if it grows in your world and you prove the truth of what I say, then the thing that is grown proves it must have been sown. At some point in time it was sown. So it is entirely up to you either to accept or reject the things I tell you.
I tell you that your mood decides your fortunes. You can catch a mood, any mood, and wear that mood. If you wear it…knowing at the very moment that you’re wearing it…that was the moment of fertilization. That’s when it was made fertile…whatever the mood implied. What did it imply? Well, it implied good fortune…and you name the kind of fortune…that you are wanted, or that you are known, or that you are affluent, or that you are this, that and the other in the world. You need not confine it to yourself; you can do it for another. In fact we are invited to do it for others. As we are told not only your own but consider also the things of others. So you consider yourself? Yes, he doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider self, but also consider the things of others, and do for others what you would like others to do to you if you couldn’t do it for yourself. Could you turn to a friend and have a friend assume that you are the man or the woman that you would like to be? Well, then do it for another as you would like them to do it for you.
So we are told, they reached out to touch even the very fringe of his garment. To touch, and as they touched it, everyone that touched it, they were made well. Read it in the 14th chapter of the Book of Matthew (verse 36). They stretched out to touch the fringe of this teaching…if they could but touch it, everyone who succeeded in the touching…well then, touch him. Now we’re told, “Come and kiss me.” And so often the word kiss is used in scripture. And so, he came and he kissed me. I called my son to come and kiss me, because I’m blind and I can’t see him. So come and kiss me that I may be sure that you are the one I think you are. For I want you to be external, I want you to be Esau. So he brings the one and the one comes and kisses him, and the one who comes is Jacob. The word Jacob means “to supplant.” He is subjective; but he’s going to clothe himself in the objective state and supplant his brother Esau who is objective. For he is made of hair and made of skin, the most external things in this world that a man could ever claim that he possesses, his hair and his skin. His whole body, like an Esau, is covered in hair. Whether he can see it with the normal mortal eye or not, put it under the microscope and he is completely covered in hair. And so that’s the external world in which I live. So this is my Esau.
So I want to actually move into this room and live in this room, alright, assume. Though everything denies it, and everyone in this world would oppose me taking possession of it, let me assume that I’m in it, and feel as I would feel were it true. If I could only persuade myself to catch that mood that would be mine were I in possession of what I want, and catch that mood just for the moment, like my friend, I don’t have to wait for confirmation. When the evidence appears in my world that mood was causative, and it will actually externalize itself in my world.
So here, this is based upon a simple, simple doctrine of scripture. Well, when friend’s of mine who come here, who have these wonderful visions to support it…for here you can’t consciously conjure the vision of an earthquake…not in dream you can’t. You can do it here, but when you fall asleep that is an involuntary state. Dreams are involuntary; you don’t conjure them. But the premise that possesses you as you fall asleep should in some way influence the nature of the dream. For all over the world, throughout the ages, we have had that wonderful proverb: “Night brings counsel.” If you know what possessed you as you fell asleep, the dream should unfold based upon that premise. And so, when you go to sleep in the assumption “I am Christ, I am God,” if you dare, if you’re bold enough to assume it, then a dream should come to reflect that premise. For all ends run true to origins and if the origin is Christ, the end should be Christ.
And the “end” of Christ was, in this state, the birth pangs. As he released his whole being, then came the earthquake, and the whole house in which he lived shook, and turned, and then farther and farther, and finally it exploded and collapsed. He found himself with all this mess in the atmosphere, floating, and then he descended to the bed on which he was as the dreamer, to find himself pronouncing “I am Christ. I am God” Then he wakes to find himself in a pool of golden light. And in this he reaches out for a couple of pages of paper and then prints upon it “Feeling is the one and only power, creative power. Do not think, feel. Feel the reality of.” Now here is someone who is not functioning in this world; he’s doing this automatically. “Feel the reality of.”
And then you go back, and today the whole vast world in this age of ours honors the man, Winston Churchill. He…every word that he’s written they all swallow it because the great Churchill said it. Well, undoubtedly he experienced it. For when the head of the French government, after they fell, he said, “England…Germany will wring its neck like a little chicken in three weeks.” In three weeks its neck will be wrung like a little chicken. And Churchill lived to see the day where he could say, “Some chicken!” So the mighty German army armed to the teeth with little France completely crushed, all the nations crushed, and little, tiny England only twenty miles away across water. What was it…well, you know the story, so why go into it? But the man who could write these words “The mood decides the fortunes of people, rather than the fortunes decide the mood”…so with his back to the water and with nothing he could defy mighty Germany.
So you, no matter how little you are in this world—for England was very little in those days, little today too, but she was little—and you, with nothing in this world…listen to the words, “The mood decides the fortunes of the people, rather than the fortunes decide the mood.” You catch the mood that you would have were you the man or the woman that you would like to be. And catching the mood, it’s done in the moment you catch the mood. You could die this very night to this plane, it would make no difference; you’ll reach it, for really there’s no death, none whatsoever. So you will find the mood that you catch now externalized in the world into which you go. But you want it here? Alright, the chances are it will be here to convince you and prove to you the reality of scripture, which is “Whatever you desire, when you pray believe that you have received it, and you will.” If I have received it, could I suppress the mood that would accompany the receiving of it?
Are we not told, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving make all your requests known to God”? (Phil.4:6) The word prayer means “motion towards,” it means “accession to,” it means “nearness at,” “at or in the vicinity of.” Well, what is a kiss? Is that near? What is the invitation, “Come close, my son, that I may feel you…whether you are really my son or not”? Isn’t that an invitation to come near? So would I not go closer and closer and nearer to the wish fulfilled? As I come closer and closer to the wish fulfilled, am I not using my Imagination? So as I actually use my Imagination so it reaches the point of feeling of the wish fulfilled, then the thing is done.
So what else do I use but my Imagination? Well, if that produces it, have I not found who Jesus Christ is? Are we not told, “By him all things were made, and without him there was nothing made that was made” (John1:3)? Are we not told in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians that “Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor.1:24)? Well, have I not discovered the power? Have I not discovered the wisdom behind the phenomena that I’ve brought into my world? Having discovered the power and the wisdom behind the phenomena, have I not discovered who Jesus Christ is? That this power of God and the wisdom of God is personified? And I’m quite willing to accept it as a personification, Jesus Christ, for I must not deny it came from within me, for I know I exercised it.
So I must now discover what is meant in scripture, “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” as told us in the 2nd Corinthians, the last chapter, the 13th. “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless of course you fail to meet the test” (verse 5). Well, don’t fail to meet the test. Try it and see if you can’t find out who he is. And when you find him you’re going to find him to be yourself, your own wonderful creative power, your Imagination. You will discover that human Imagination is the divine body of the Savior of the world, the true vine of eternity, that’s who he is. And when you find him, may I tell you, the freedom that comes in the discovery! Let them all pass by, no matter what they say, what they do, what they write about you, what opinion they have of you, it makes no difference whatsoever. You have found him!
Having found him you live in this knowledge. And then, suddenly, he unfolds within you. He resurrects within you. Not another resurrecting, you resurrect. Then you read in these wonderful scholarly books that the ancients believed that the site of the crucifixion and the entombment and the resurrection were the same. They’ve been searching over the centuries to find this site. They’ve separated them so far: they have this one as the Church of the Ascension, that one as the Church of the Birth, that one the Church of the Resurrection. And may I tell you, they are all one, and that one is your own wonderful skull. That’s where Christ was crucified and is crucified in those in whom he is not yet resurrected. That is where he is entombed in those in whom he is not yet resurrected. And that is where he resurrects. That is where he comes out. And then the entire drama from then on begins to unfold, and you go back into the ancient scriptures and you read the record of God’s predetermined plan of salvation. The whole thing was written and predetermined. Then he became us that we may become as he is.
Until it happens in us, take the law of God and work it beautifully and lovingly for everyone in this world. Know that the mood that possesses you as you walk the earth that’s determinative, that’s causative. So be careful of the mood that possesses you. We turn on the…someone said to me today (he came down from San Francisco) he said, “My aunt came on from Maine; she spent five months with me. I would come home after a full day at the office to find that she’s listening to Brinkley and Huntley”—whoever they are— “and so, night after night I would come home to find they had culled all the papers, all the magazines, all the news bulletins to find the most disastrous things in the world. Then they spent a whole half-hour blabbing about everything that was frightful, for which they get a hundred thousand dollars a year apiece to poison the atmosphere with everything that is unlovely. So I said to her—and I’ve never been able to speak to this lady before—I said, ‘From now on when I come home at six, there will be no Huntley-Brinkley on that TV.’ She said, ‘You have an allergy.’ I said, ‘Yes, I have an allergy to all that is negative, to all negativity, and that is it. So this is my home, you are my guest, and as long as you are here you’ll abide by this: between six and seven there will be no TV of that nature. I’ve had enough in the course of a day seeing people.” For he does the kind of work that I do, only he does it personally, and I do it here on Tuesday and Friday night. But he said, “From early morning to six o’clock people tell me their problems. I come home to hear this man who has culled the entire world, he’s looked over the entire earth, and if he can’t find one that’s negative, he’ll make one…and catch the mind just like yours. And so you wonder why you ache, and why you do this, why you do the other. It’s because of that. You’re instilled and infected, every day a new infection, a new little injection given you. I’ll have it no more.” And so, that’s what he said to his aunt.
And we think, “Aren’t these wonderful fellows!” You ask why? “Well, they make a hundred thousand a year.” Then you ask, “Well then, you know there was a man called Al Capone and he made a hundred and twenty-five million in one year, are you going to put him in a shrine too?” He made a $125 million tax free in the year 1926. That is a record that we have in our country. A hundred and twenty-five million dollars that man made…and it was all tax free, for he made it in booze and that was not supposed to be legitimate. You can’t pay what isn’t accepted in our country. So they got him, eventually, on a small little thing. Not 125 million, they got him on something like a $10,000 thing that he didn’t declare. Then, of course, he went to his just rewards at the end…as we all do.
So, let no one by some enormous sum scare you or in any way encourage you to deviate from the word of God. God’s word is: When you know what you want, believe that you have it. Just believe that you have it so that you can arouse within yourself by that belief the necessary emotion. If you can arouse that emotion, well then, it’s done. As ___(??) said, “An idea that is only an idea produces nothing and does nothing. It must be felt. When it is felt, it invariably produces some motor state.” So what would it be like if someone so loved me that they would say to me, “Goodnight, dear” and would they not kiss me? Well then, wait for that motor action. Wait in the feeling that you are wanted…wait for it and feel the touch, feel the contact. So if you actually feel it, would you not go to the very extreme and prove it? Isaac, “Come close, my son,” he said, “and kiss me.” Read it in the 27th chapter of the Book of Genesis, “Come close and kiss me”—it’s the 27th chapter, the 26th verse—for I want to actually know you are the one that I hope you are, but I’m blind and I cannot see. So we are all blind to our fulfilled desires. We know what we want, and we see it mentally, but we are blind to the externalization of it. So bring the feeling that would be ours had we seen it objectively and then lose ourselves in that state, and see how it works.
May I tell you, it will work, and after it works, does it really matter what others think? If I have evidence for a thing, what does it matter what someone else thinks about it? There isn’t a thing in this world that you and I enjoy that was not condemned when someone thought of it. The very light we have here now…and the very one who gave us the original light, which was direct current, our great Edison criticized the one who gave us this, which is indirect. He said to him, after he had proved the power of direct current, he said, “Indirect current is impossible!” The great Edison said that. But the one who saw it, and he went out on a limb, he said, “I don’t have to speculate. I see it so clearly I can even start and stop the machine that produces it.” That’s what he said: “I can start and stop it. And I turn out all of the little kinks before I go into the factory. I work out all of the little kinks, so when I go into the factory all we have to do is take my blueprint and produce it. And that is indirect current.” And he did it. That was the great Tesla, Nikola Tesla the great Yugoslav. He came to this country and he worked with Edison, and Edison couldn’t believe you could ever have an indirect current, could only be direct. And so, we know today that all of our country is lit with the indirect. Yes, we still use direct, but we still use our indirect…and everyone said the other couldn’t do it.
So you go back to this simple thing: When you know what you want, believe that you have received it, and you will. Well, if I receive anything in this world, how could I suppress the feeling that would accompany it? I couldn’t. So you’re told, “Do not be anxious for anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving—bear in mind “with thanksgiving”—make all of your requests known to God” (Phil.4:6). Thanksgiving means if I say “thank you,” haven’t I received it? Do I say “thank you” in hope or do I not say “thank you” because the act is done? So always do it with thanksgiving. And so, if I do it with thanksgiving, I’ve completely accepted the reality of the mood that possesses me as the cause of what is to follow in this world. So if I do it in this way, what power in this world could stop me from bringing it to pass in my world? Nothing!
So I want to thank my friend tonight for that wonderful experience of his that he shared with me, which allowed me to share it with you. “Don’t think, feel. Feel the reality of, for feeling is the only creative power.” That’s what he brought back from the depth of his soul.
Now let us go into the Silence.