Imagination

You came into the world for a purpose, and when the purpose is fulfilled you will detach yourself from it and return to the being that you were prior to your descent into this world. “Man is all Imagination, and God is Man, and Exists in us, and we in Him. The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination, and that is God Himself.” (Blake)

Now, I am not saying it is the easiest thing in the world for you to accept this. It will come to those who have never heard it before as blasphemy. It will come as a shock, an awful shock, when man who is trained to believe in an external God to whom he bows, to whom he prays, then to discover that He is not on the outside at all. As we are told in Scripture: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you,” and God is spirit? (I Corinthians 3:16) Well, if God is spirit, and his spirit dwells in you, you can’t divide it into different kinds of spirit. God is spirit, and his spirit dwells in me. Now, if his spirit dwells in me, I try to find out what that spirit is in me that I can call by another name that is more intimate. Well, I have found it, and the spirit of God − which is God himself in me − is my Imagination. And if all things are possible to God and if I can but believe that they are possible to me, well then it’s entirely up to me to find out how to believe it.

I imagine, as do you. We cannot imagine differently. All difference lies in content. So, [my] response to the eternal question: “Who am I?” will determine the circumstances of my life. Who am I? Am I the little one that was born on a tiny little unknown island, with no social, intellectual, financial background? Must I accept the limitations of birth? Well, most people do. But have I read Scripture? Did I read the words that I am the temple of the living God, and the spirit of that God dwells in me, and all things are possible to that God? Well, I should not allow anything to interfere with my discovery of that spirit in me that is called the “Spirit of God,” for if all things are possible to him and he dwells in me, I must make every effort to locate him. Well, I have located him, and he is my Imagination. And I do not differ from any person born of woman. The Imagination in every one is God. But if they have been trained to believe [in] their little beings and my own tiny little Imagination, people will say: “Oh, that’s just his imagination.”

We are going to the moon. A man imagined it a hundred years ago, Jules Verne. He even imagined the nation that would do it. He said the Yankee know-how – their engineers will contrive the means to get there first. He wrote that 100 years ago, and no matter how others try, we will get there first. We are on the verge of it, but he had to imagine it first. [Transcriber’s note: The moon landing occurred on July 20th, 1969.] What is now true was once only imagined. We are in a room. It seems so real. Well, this was once only imagined. You are wearing dresses, you are wearing all kinds of things, but they had to be imagined first. You go to a tailor or your dressmaker and you pick out the material that you like. It’s just a plain piece of cloth. Then you tell your dressmaker − or I tell my tailor what kind of a suit I want. So I allow him, with his know-how, to take my vision of the kind of a suit that I want. Having picked out the material, he executes it. Now, what is then proven when I put it on was first only imagined? A man imagines a desire − say, for wealth. When he becomes wealthy he may forget the means by which it came about and think all the external forces that were used to bring it to pass are the causes. They had to play the part that they played because he imagined what he imagined.