19 | Page Who is Jesus?

Who is Jesus?

A talk given by Eugene Halliday, transcribed by,

and with arbitrary headings by John Bailey.

The drawings and pictures aren’t originals,

and all editor’s notes are in square brackets.

Audience comment paragraphs are in blue italics

many instances of which are indistinct.


I’ve been asked to talk about a very delicate subject tonight, a question of who is Jesus. I’m going to try to make it difficult for you by talking with a peppermint in my mouth. I hope that this will sufficiently impede my usually woolly articulation so that nobody will be offended. Anybody who is offended can read into what they think they’ve heard ... their own opinion of my opinion.

Oh! All good magicians have a magical cloth to play with, don’t they? Do they?

[Indistinct comment from a lady.]

Well, ladies know they do anyway. It’s called skirt. Skirt. You know. So I’ve brought with me a skirt. A very important part of any magical performance, is one of these. It’s for hiding pigeons and things. But I haven’t got my magician’s coat on at the moment, which has very large pockets full of pigeons. I’ve left the pigeons out; out of consideration, and fear of the RSPCA. [Audience chuckles]

Now, I think I can sufficiently inarticulate my speech without this [peppermint] so I’ll put it amongst my pocket nausea. Anybody who wants a lick later can have one. [Audience laughter.]

I’m going to use this piece of sheeting that belongs to a very delicate lady’s bed. She’s just given it up under pressure. It has associations so warm that I thought it was only fit for this demonstration. It signifies a plane through the Infinite Power that constitutes the universe. Imagine this is an infinite plane. Ideally it will have been ironed all over first. This particular lady hadn’t anybody staying with her tonight, so she didn’t bother to iron it. You know, when somebody stays, you always iron the sheets. That’s to prove that you are essentially spotless and untrammelled. [2:55] infinite plane.jpg

Modalisings of Infinity

Now. One sheet. It represents a plane through infinity. The term used in Hindu philosophy — pralaya — means perfect equilibrium as far as that is attainable by a field of energy. In physics it means maximum entropy, the evening out of the energy that constitutes the universe. If we imagine this to be infinite, have no edges, just to extend outwards, and we imagine an infinity of these packed, all directions, we can say this particular piece is an abstract idea. Idea means form, abstract means drawn-away-from. So we take this one and we draw it out of the infinity of planes of reality. Having drawn it out, we are able to discuss it more easily than we would do if we left it where it was.

There is a word concrete, the word means grown together. It is often used to express the idea of total reality. But the term is wrong because concrete — grown together — implies that there was a period when it was not together, and that mysteriously it has somehow grown together. There was never ever a time or an eternity where there was no togetherness. The essential thing about this plane of reality is that it is a continuum.

Now, continuum has no parts. What has no parts cannot in any sense of the word get together with itself essentially. What is can do is modalise itself. So that if I take this plane and wave it in this manner I am modalising it. I could take a cross-section of it, look at it from the side and draw a wave, and say that wave is a further abstraction of an abstraction. I want you to imagine that this particular plane is an abstract, a taking out of an infinity of possible abstractions. And then we are going to discuss it and then reason by analogy backwards to that from which we took it. [5:43]

The Sentient Universe

The universe as we you know as a matter of demonstrable fact is a play of energy ... a play of power. It has been customary for certain conveniences to believe that this energy was somehow non-sentient, not a feeling energy. But that has presented a tremendous problem to science. If the original energy of the universe is not sentient, if it cannot feel itself, then we have no method whereby at any point we can introduce this power of self-feeling, this sentience, into it. If this piece of cloth is not itself sentient in the first place, then folding it up or scrumpling it up will not make it sentient. Sentience must be an inherent property of the original power from which everything derives. Sentient Power. Will you please engrave in your souls S.P., Sentient Power. The power is sufficient to explain the totality of scientific phenomena that can be gained through finite sense organs. [7:01]

The empirical scientist doing his experiments is manipulating fields of energy. In the 19th century and before; the time of Lucretius; and going back further still to the Greeks at the time of Democritus and Leucippus, it was thought that there were some ultimate particles, and that these ultimate particle were indivisible, whence the name atom. A-tom: privative alpha, not-cuttable. But the 20th century has cut this mysterious so-called ultimate particle and demonstrate it to be nothing but energy behaving in a certain way.

Oneness and Non-duality

Now, an infinite energy field able to feel itself, Infinite Sentient Power is what we talk about tonight. We’re talking about it and we’re going to show certain of the implications of it. Infinite Sentient Power is first of all not a thing. In the sense used in ordinary everyday life, it is not an object that you can put your hands on. It is not an object that you can see or hear or smell or taste or touch. Pure power itself as it is in itself cannot be touched and nevertheless touching exists, and seeing exists and hearing exists, so they must be something other than the essence as it is in itself to itself. They must be modalities of this essence.

In Spinoza you get the similar idea approximating to this in certain aspects when he makes the equation, substance = god: God is substance. He shows that only one substance is possible. But if you keep going underneath phenomena you come to a not-2. But in using the idea of oneness there is an error. It is not oneness, the infinite, because to signify oneness you must draw a circle. You have to have a circumscribing line to say a one.

There is another term, a Sanskrit term, Advaita ... non-dual. We’ll see how important that is in a moment. It means not two-ness. It is no good talking about the Oneness of an infinite field because we cannot draw a line around it. And yet we can’t call it two either. And yet mysteriously we have two-ness and we have pluralism. We have a multiplicity of bodies and things, but they are only modalities of this original non-dual spirit: S.P. Sentient Power.

Now it is not a thing. So any person pursuing a scientific course of investigation looking for an ultimate thing which is what the atomists were looking for, is already doomed to fail because he has a wrong concept. Science looks for ultimately control ... control over everything in the universe. He wishes not only to put men on the moon, but to put men everywhere throughout space. On every planet in every solar system, in the star system in the galaxy and beyond, wherever there is the possibility of manipulating energy, he hopes that he will be able to manipulate it. But it is not a thing. We can manipulate things but we cannot manipulate nothing. It is a no-thing. The mystics called it a no-thing. Buddhism called it a no-thing ... voidity. But the word void means potential form. The oid in void means form. The Vo means potentiality. Void means potential form. [11:23]

It is very hard to think about no-think. You know the popular pronunciation of thing is think. He doesn’t do nothink with his time. A think is simply the mental resonance of a thing. But a thing is simply the resonance compaction of a sentient field of power. Thingness is the same thing as intention ... as power in-tending and packing itself in. But that power is not a thing, but it manifests as a thing. Our bodies manifest as things but they are not really things at all, they’re intersections of multiple forces. Innumerable forces constitute our being. Those forces are not things ... they are powers. And the powers pluralise only by actualisation. There is no real plurality there in ultimate essence. There is a plurality of function. So we are each one of us a complex function, differentiated from another function sitting next to us only by this primary fact of function. Differentiation is an act. The diff, in differentiate is from facere: to make, to do. It is a verb, it is an action.

We are all actual. We are merely actualities of a power that is sentient, a power that is self-mobilising. So if we try to pursue the concept of God or the concept of Ultimate Substance, or the concept of Ultimate First Principle, we are pursuing nothing. That is why in meditation you are supposed to sit there with as far as you can attain it, an empty mind, called by the Japanese Buddhists a no-mind. If you can attain a no-mind you can attain to the full information contained in this plane of cloth ... this plane of being. One of the Greek fates1 is called Clotho, isn’t she? ... because it is a weaving of forces that constitutes our being. [13:55]

In the Beginning Was the Word

Now how does individuality arise from this? It can only arise by self-modalisation, by doing something with itself ... by verbalisation. When Goethe said, the translation should be ‘not in the beginning was the word’ but ‘in the beginning was the deed’, the act, he was playing about with the fact that the verb means the deed. You know that, when you are doing your elementary grammar. A verb is an action word, a doing word. So the verbum of the Latins translated in that fourth Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, the verbum is a deed ... which Goethe knew perfectly well.

Most people tend to think about a word as a sound of no particular value other than that which we confer upon it ... it is simply that from which we confer significance. What is it? A sound. But if you’re deaf and dumb or if you’ve learned semaphore, you don’t bother about the sounds ... you make gestures. These gestures are also words, because word means ordering power. The power that orders the content of consciousness is a word. I am using words now in order to formulate the content of my mind, and I hope that you’re ordering the content of your mind also by doing something with the words, finding out where they fit, and where they don’t fit if they don’t fit your particular verbal pattern.

The nothing, the No Thing, the No Mind, the Eternal Void, this is our starting Non-Point. [15:47]

Voidity

We start with voidity and we ask ourselves, what does it feel like to be a void, what does it feel like to be infinite?

Now I know that you all know exactly what it feels like to be infinite, what it feels like to be void ... because that is where you started. How many of you have felt voidity, loneliness? How many of you have felt deserted, alienated? Anybody not done at some time? Is there somebody here who has never felt lonely or void of ideas, or lost in a sea of possibilities. If so hold your leg up at right angles to the floor. If you can’t do that, you can’t do the other, you see. How then does that initial point arise in nothingness?

You’ve all heard scientists say creation out of nothing is rubbish. You have to have something to begin with ... clay to model before you can model. That is not true. The clay itself is a precipitate of the intention of Sentient Power. Now that’s very good magic.

There was no earth once upon a time was there? No. The earth was not there. It was not solid. It wasn’t compacted. It wasn’t a sphere of being. There was no sun once upon a time. There was no solar system, no star system. What there was, was power, and that power is invisible until it decided to do something about it. It was infinite. There was nothing other than nothing ... this Power, this Not-a-Thing.

Now this Not-a-Thing in the language of the ancient sages brooded inside itself like a hen trying to lay an egg. You know how that is don’t you, you ladies? You know when you carry a child inside you, the moment you know you’ve got the beginnings of it, what happens to your consciousness? Doesn’t it tend to focus? And doesn’t it actually hope and move energy inside itself? Nobody else is distributing the energy in a woman who is providing the nourishment for a child. It isn’t the vicar who is giving the energy, is it? No! It is something to do with the person in whom it occurred. She has provided an egg, some generous man has provided a sperm. And they have got together, but everything has been done by itself. The sperm is doing its own thing, the ovum is doing its own thing, the father did his own thing. The mother is doing her own thing. All the things in the universe are doing their own thing, and yet there are no things other than modalities of this field of Sentient Power. [18:59]

Definition of God

Now, let us define God as that which is worthy of the worship of the most intelligent being that could ever be in any universe. God is simply a short hand term for that most worshipful background power which never shows itself as it is in itself, but when it shows itself it’s showing itself under the conditions of manifestations determined by itself.

A nothing, a power, an infinite field, condenses itself. Con-dense: that means with-judgement2. Now how does it do it? This is the purpose of this magical cloth that I have here ... to show simply how it does it. But first let us be quite sure that we understand this: this Infinite Power is worshipful, it is worshippable, it is worthy of our attention.

You know, we’re very intelligent beings, we humans, we have done great deeds on the earth. We have cultivated it, we have even sent men from it to invade other worlds. And that shows that we’re very clever. But we didn’t get our cleverness from ... what? Where did we get it?

We can’t get it from anywhere other than power, can we? If we had a power of thought, a power of feeling, a power of will, and so on ... these powers are just modalising operations of the Infinite Sentient Field of Power ... which we call God. And because men worship power — like women worship love — just because they worth-shape it, so we say it is good. It’s an equation: God is good. Good is God. The Ultimate Good must be the Ultimate God. It cannot be otherwise. And yet it is not a thing in the materialistic sense of the 19th century pre-atomic fission. And yet, although it is not a thing, it can make things. [21:23]

Duality in the Mind

Imagine — you can do this by identification — imagine yourself spread out infinitely, and you have no tension in you whatever. How do you feel in a state of non-tension? Do you not feel at all, or do you feel relaxed? When you are perfectly relaxed are you not aware of your relaxation? Of course you are. You become more aware of it if you tense yourself and then let go of the tension. This is the origin of dialectic: that in order to make yourself aware of something, you must deprive yourself of that something, and then posit the something that you let go of back again, and compare the two.

Now we have said that we are not to use the word one, and when we use the word two of the Ultimate, the Non-Dual, we are not to think that it is not two things, but we are merely denying not only the oneness, but any duality that might appear in the mind. And yet we have to account for the duality in our mind.

How do we do it?

Imagine this cloth extended infinitely. It’s quite flat, maximum entropy, perfect flatness. It is a field of power. It is doing nothing, but it is sentient. It feels its doing-nothingness but it is power. It can do something. But what does do mean? It means to operate. It is a verb. It means to activate itself. Now I could activate this cloth in various ways, I’ve done one already. I have waved it. That’s one of the first things it tends to do ... to wave. The wave is quite simple, it tends to centre itself, and then as it feels the self-restraint in moving onto its centre, it tends to expand itself.

There is a medical term for this process in the heart. It’s a two way process: there is a contraction and there is an expansion. And we call this in the lungs, breathing. And in the heart we call it beating. And in the universal power this same contraction and expansion of power occurs.

Now because it is not a thing, we are not allowed, in thinking about it, to posit in it any thing — limitation — derived from our experience to things in the material world. So we cannot deny the possibility of expansion and contraction to this no-thing. Because the fact is that expansion and contraction of power does occur. Fields can stretch themselves. Fields of force can concentrate themselves. Fields of force can be concentrated as a magnetic force by throwing a bit of iron into it. There is an orientation in the power. The orientation is either towards centres or away from centres. Towards centres ... centripetal motion, away from ... centrifugal motion. But these are the two basic motions in the universe.

The tendency to centre is symbolised in alchemical symbology by the planet Saturn, because it has a ring round it. The ancients said that will do to represent bondage ... to represent centring. The symbol of the sun is a circle with a dot in it. The dot represents the sun, and the circle the orbit of an attendant planet. When you look at these symbols you are to think of them as modalities of power. The nothingness of the infinitely extended Sentient Power is the Ultimate Non-Object of research. [25:37]Saturn Sun.jpg

We know today in science that the scientists have given up looking for things and they are now looking for, what? ... functions of field forces. They are looking for energies and the law that controls energies.

Some of the formal scientists are becoming quite aware that to start experimenting with field forces is very dangerous, because you can’t insulate fields, and therefore the conditions of the experiment may actually affect your own body. There are certain experiments in ultrasonics that are very bad because they can disintegrate the body of the experimenter. There are certain experiments in electronics where your brain can be oscillated by electro-magnetic fields and you can die in the middle of your experiment, because you are unaware that the cells of your brain — being themselves atomic, which means constituted of positive and negative and neutral forces — were responding to the electromagnetic flux of the conditions of the experiment. So that you can actually kill yourself as easily today with subtle electronic manipulations, as in the early days of gunpowder many a man blew his own head off in his interesting experiments into the acquisition of power. first twist.jpg

God is our shorthand term simply for the supreme object of the worship of any intelligent being. [27:18]

Now there is a rule of Sentient Power. This rule is contained in one word, the word Spirit. S.P. means Sentient Power. Now, I.R. means a point [I] differentiated [R]. Now how do we differentiate this power? Well, we have to take our plane, this abstraction, and we either wave it and make a wave form, so that travels through space and does not constitute an entity in itself ... because it perpetually vanishes.

Idolatry

That god could be conceived as an object, but that is called idolatry. If you conceive god as an object, you have finited not him, but your concept of him, and you have attributed to him certain qualities that most certainly — although he has them — are transcended absolutely by an infinity of other qualities. If you think about God as a locatable object somewhere in outer space you say that’s very naive.

I’ve never even met a baby that thought that a god live on a cloud. They may be told so in the early days, but they don’t believe it because they say interesting things like, if he’s sitting on a cloud, when it rains does he fall, because the children of today are a bit too scientific in their thought. They don’t really believe that there’s a god in white shirt, finite, on a cloud somewhere. They are far more ready to believe that if there is anything at all worth worshiping, it is power and the being who can control power.

Hence in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, he painted Christ with a pretty well-formed body. In fact some critics have said, too well formed, because he’s a magnificent chest on him, the kind of chest you wouldn’t want to meet in the body of a mugger who is meeting you in a New York street when you are trying to look rich. Such a body you’d rather not encounter. [28:95]

The Rule of Power

Men worship power ... women love. Power can only be gained by submitting to the law of power. We cannot escape the earth with our satellites and rockets without attaining an escape velocity. There is a rule we have to learn, and we have to obey that rule in order to rule. Oboedio indo imperatur ... obey in order to rule was a very ancient law. We cannot rule anything unless we learn the rules. And then our rulership is obedience to the rule.

But we can play tricks on ourselves. We can get hold of a bit of the cloth like that, and we can screw that cloth around, like that. Now you see that little screw there, I’ll put an elastic band on it to hold it in position, because I want you to realise that this peculiar thing I have just brought into being like that ... see? Now it is a form now, an F.O.R.M. introduced into what was a moment ago an infinitely extended field.

Look. That’s the original existence. If you recognize it, it means somewhere in the depths of your sentience you recognize what you have done with yourself in order to exist. The word exist means stand out. When that plane was extended like that there was no existent thing, no existent entity ... no existence. But now there is something existent, namely a twist.

Look at the word twist for a moment: T.W.I.S. and T. The T.W. has dropped the O. It is two. Two is crucified. Twist is simply two is crucified. Now can you tell me where the two are here? There is an infinite extended field of power and there is a twist. A two is crucified. Now what are the two? Can you see two there? Can you see two?

No.

Hermes Trismegistus

Well I can. Because I can see a differentiation. Can you see it? You saw the differentiation? Well, is the twisted bit other than the cloth there twisted? No? It isn’t is it? And yet the twisted bit is standing out. But it is not two, is it? So you are being twisted if you think there are two, aren’t you? Do you know the title of the great Master Hermes? Thrice twisted3. Why do you think he has that title? [32:57]

Thrice Greatest, Thrice Twisted Hermes, because when you twist in that way you twist formally. You have made a form, haven’t you ... that wasn’t there before? That form is a sort of conation zone ... conation, drive zone. And it makes a conical form. But you also feel it, do you not? So not only do you twist in thought ... you twist in feeling.

And you have two quite opposite feelings. You have one feeling, I have gained my point by twisting, and you have another feeling, I have lost my infinity at the point of my twist. So your feeling is, I am tied up, and, I am an infinite being, behaving as if tied up.

When you fall into identification with the twist zone, you are called an egoic centre of awareness. But you don’t really think and feel, you also will don’t you? ... to maintain your twist. You will to exist, to stand out. So there are three kinds of twist there aren’t there? A twist of idea, of form; a twist of feeling, like/dislike. I like that I posit myself, and I dislike the sense of voidity that I have when I let go of myself. But I love the sense of voidity when I let go of myself, because then I’m absolutely free. [34:44]

It’s a dialectic, isn’t it? If you assess a pair of opposites about something you are thinking dialectically. And if you don’t think dialectically you’re not thinking properly at all, because everything that you do commits you to the opposite of what you do at the moment of doing it. [35:04]

We call God the whole field, because it is Infinite Power ... the whatever that men pursue. It is also Infinite Feeling. And it is also Infinite Willing. So we say that God is a trinity ... a three-in-one.

He formulates in that act of twisting.

He drives power into it ... His will.

And He assesses the degree of His concentration of that power.

The First Twist

Now if we call God, and reserve that word for the Supreme Object of Worship, and we remember that we haven’t got two separate entities here ... the twister and the space in which the twister operates, because these are not two. They look like two, but they are not two. And they are not one because it is infinite. But if you call that God, what shall we call this? Any offers?

The devil.

The devil? We might call it the devil because it is the beginning of the principle of division. This is what devil means. We might also call it something else ... what? [36:30]

Jesus.

Jesus? Yes. That’s funny, isn’t it? The devil and Jesus might be two different names for the same fact, because you could do that in two totally different ways. You can do it on purpose in full reflexive self awareness, or you could fall into it. You could actually do it and then forget all about the surrounding power, and treat the surrounding non-twisted power as if it were empty space. You know that that is what we do when we walk about. Do you think that when we walk about we’re walking about in emptiness ... or are we walking about in a field of energy? Which is it?

A field of energy.

We’re walking about in a field of energy, and we are modalities of the very field in which we walk about. But where there is no twist, we call it space. Where there is a twist we call it thing in space. And our body is a thing in space in that very sense. Now if we call it devil as to its apparently divisive nature, we could call it another thing ... the Son, the firstborn of God, couldn’t we? Quite legitimately we can say the very first twist that was made, made by the infinite field itself, from within itself, without any external contingent stimulus ... that must be nothing but the fulfilment of the will of that Infinite Power. The uninterrupted, unimpeded field of power, willing to make a first being, unimpeded, has fulfilled its will absolutely. The fullness of the Infinite Spirit has posited itself in the first twist. And because it is not impeded in any way, it fulfils absolutely the will of that Infinite Power. [38:47]

Now if we call the Infinite Power the Father, and we call the first turn of this Father the Son, because no impedances exist — nothing else stands out to impede it — then we can say that that Son of the most worshipful that we can call in shorthand God, the Son of God fulfils absolutely the will of that God ... that Sentient Power that everyone who is intelligent worships. The Son is the embodiment of the Father. So that Christ can say when he’s asked by one of the disciples, show us the Father ... Who has seen me, has seen the Father. You see the logic of it? This power of the God that twists itself into existence without impedance — because it is the Supreme Power, nothing can resist it — it posits itself into this being and it says, I lay my life down and I can take it up again4. [39:58]

So that the Absolute will of the Father ... fat-her is put-here, pa-ter. The word father is simply a form of the word put-here. Who put this twist here? ... the put-herer, the Pitri5; the Father; the Pi-ter in Jupi-ter. Jupiter means affirm the putting here. That infinite field of power is God the Father. He is the put-herer of us. And there is a first put. And that first put is his Son ... the original Onely Begotten. The onely begotten, because in the very act of twisting that thing into being, oneness was made, because now you could draw a circle round it. Oneness had come to be. So whilst the Father is an Infinite Power, the Son is a unity, He is a being with a boundary ... He is a true object of worship.

The Father is not an object. So do we worship the Father or do we worship the Father through the Son? Do we worship the invisible infinitely extended Sentient Power, or do we tend to worship objective manifestations of power. We know perfectly well that human beings tend to worship objective manifestations of power: the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Mussolinis, the Nixons, the Churchills ... or whatever. They tend to worship objective presentations. Because those human beings are little twists, very tiny twists, they haven’t got much power and they worship power, so they can’t see invisible power, so they’re not sure that invisible power is there. Therefore they seek a manifestation of power, and a manifestation is provided. The manifestation that is provided is the Onely Begotten ... that is, the utterly unimpeded in-pressing, in-pressing of Infinite Power upon a centre in total Self-consciousness. [42:28]

Now if I say there is the existent being [the twist in the sheet] and I pull this [the sheet], existent being is now vanished, right? Where’s it gone to? Can you see the marks of the twist? Can you see them? Do you know that in twisting that little thing like that I have altered its electrical constitution, so that even with a good flat iron and a damp rag I can’t get rid of it? I can never restore the condition of that cloth to that which it had before I twisted it. It is irrevocable. We can’t call it into the condition that it was before. We have changed it.

Now this is an absolute basis for the creativity of the human race. When we do something we are representatives of that infinite field of power, and whatever we do twists. And when the twist is pulled out at our death, the evidence of the twist is still there. It can be read. And it can be re-stressed. If I pick that little bit out and twist it again, do you know the tendency of it would be to fall on the same lines ... wouldn’t it? Because, because they were distorted in the first place, they now constitute lines of least resistance.

Time and Substance

Now imagine the first, Onely Begotten unimpeded being, the one without a second, and that is possessed of all the power of infinity but mysteriously it is manifest in a body. There you see a strange paradox ... that infinity presents itself as finite, and the word eternity, being used to express infinite power not in time. The eternal is not the temporal.

Temporal is T.M. The base T.M. means an intersection of substantial power. Substantialised power intersecting itself is time. So we find that we can’t think about time without thinking about matter. The MAT in material, the M.T. and the T.M. presuppose each other ... mutability. Change is possible only if we first precipitate a substance.

Now substance is that which stands underneath. Now what stands underneath all things is Sentient Power. So substance is Sentient Power. But if we examine any phenomenon — like the twist there — that phenomenon, if we go down to the sharp tip of the twist we are looking for the foundation, for the basis, for the substantial ... we will only arrive at Sentient Power, which in the first instance threw it up.

Seeking the Living God

We see that we have no logical ground for disbelieving in a Son of God the Father. Logos is the word in the Greek for that Son of God. In the beginning was the word, the Latin has verbum, the Greek has Logos. This Logos is this Onely Begotten, this wholly established intention of the Infinite Power to express itself, to make itself objective for the sake of human beings who need an object to begin with of worship, because they cannot see that the space in which they walk about is the God they are seeking.

Every time you take a single footstep towards a place of worship, you are walking away from a place of worship. That’s strange, isn’t it? If you go to church, you are moving away from, as well as towards, church ... because church is where you are. The ecclesia. The elect. Every single point of space which has screwed itself into existentiality is a temple of the living God ... that is this Sentient Power. Life is only power that feels itself. This God is a living God, the God of Abraham is a God of the living ... not of the dead. It is a living power, and only living power can worship living power. [47:13]

That living power is the God that people seek. They may go like some young friends of mine went to India to find it, and then they got fed up with India. Some went to Persia to find it, some went to Egypt to find it. Some went to America to find it. All the time they were taking it with them and didn’t know. The Chinese have a little joke set of pictures, ten pictures called, seeking the bull that never got lost. That bull is your will. The word bull and ball and volition are the same word. What you seek is always your own will and how to get hold of it and how to control it.

In other words people, in seeking power, are seeking something they definitely don’t want ... self-control. Because you know when you get self-control, there’s nothing you can do with it really, that’s horrible or indecent or show-offy ... is there?

If you’ve got total self control what should you do with it? To whom could you exhibit it? Sheep? They will baaa you out of existence, as if you were frightening. So the more near to the centre of self-control you get, the nearer you get to the Infinite Power which is inherent in every point of a continuum. The nearer you get to that same magnificent Mon-genes, that Onely Generated state of Jesus Christ, the nearer you get to that, the less you can do with it. You can’t dupe anybody, you can’t trick them ... what a waste of time. Oh my!

The Trinity

Mercury, Hermes, Thoth, Tehuti, Messiah — all different names for the same fellow — he who has the same nature as the Onely Begotten Son of god. Isn’t that strange? We are all sons of god but we are not first sons of god. There is one Son that is the first Son ... the one that was created before there was an impedance to the will of God. The one that was created before there was any impedance, fully absolutely embodied the power of that Infinite Sentience in himself. And there was not another. It was self precipitated. The God who is the Father, precipitated the god who is the Son, and then operated in the God who is called the Holy Ghost ... the Spirit in act. [49:53]

Judaism: God the Father.

Christianity: God the Son.

Islam: God the Holy Ghost.

It’s an evolution. And these three gods are exactly equal ... because they are not impeded. They are in no way severed from each other. Three major religions in the world. They’re all saying three stages of a not-two original Sentient Power.

Who is Jesus? Jesus is that original, Onely Begotten power of the Infinite Father Power. And he’s not other than that power ... self-manifested. So there is no division whatever between Jesus the Son and God the Father, because Jesus the Son is only the unimpeded self-precipitation of God the Father. Jesus is God, objectified and manifest, and therefore absolutely powerful, absolutely capable of precipitating himself at any point. He could put himself on the carpet there ... NOW, if he so willed. If he doesn’t, it’s out of consideration. He doesn’t want to interrupt our consideration of his position. But I can’t guarantee that, so I apologise ... stay out of it a moment, if you don’t mind [said as an aside to Jesus]. We are in the position of brothers of the original Onely-Begotten. He is the first born of many sons ... but unimpeded power.

But do we come into a world unimpeded? No, we don’t. We come into a world of impedances, don’t we? We have a pelvic door to get through with our poor skull. And our skull is squeezed like that to get out into this world. Our first entry is through a difficult gate through which even a rich man can’t get without permission.

Think of the implications. We are born within a world of impedances, but the original precipitate of God the Father, of the Sentient Power, was born where there were no impedances, because there was yet ... no world. Just Power: Infinite Sentient Power.

Then the Infinite Power made a world, by simply turning upon itself. The world, W.O.R.L.D., and W.H.I.R.L.E.D., whirled, is exactly the same. He whirls power and that makes the world. And as to the power that he so whirls, as to that power, that world is the Son of God. We are in and of the Body of Christ. Can you understand that theologically? Is there a theologian in the house? Is there a vicar in the house? Is there one down there? [53:16]

Yes.

Have I said something acceptable to a theologer there?

Yes.

Yes. You see, when they go to theological school this is what they learn. It really is true: that we are little twists in a big twist. We are little precipitates in a big precipitate. We are cells, literally, cells, little locked-in cavities, we are cells in the body of Christ. That is the Cosmic original Onely Generated Son of the Infinite Sentient Power called God.

Now how do you feel if you feel that you are a cell of Christ? Don’t worry if you are Jewish, he was Jewish too. Don’t worry if you are half Jewish, don’t even half worry.

What if you are not Jewish?

What? What if you are not Jewish? There aren’t any non-Jews, I’m sorry. They got around a lot in the early days. Those of you who know the history of the British Israelites know perfectly well that every Englishman, Welshman, Scotsman, Irishman ... they are all Jews disguised. Did you know there was a world plot of Jews to dominate the world? Hmm? There really is. Do you know what they are? All human beings are Jews disguised ... some as Jews and some a Christians, and some as Muslims. Isn’t it a good idea? How do you feel if you know you’re a disguised Jew and you’re not supposed to be one? Or how do you feel if like, say, Hanukah who is Jewish ... she doesn’t want to give up being Jewish? You know why? Any idea? Can I get her to tell? Hanukah, why don’t you like to be Christian?

?

Quite right. You see? I didn’t rehearse that one with her.

Did I?

No.

No. What a pity, we could have had a nice rehearsal. But we didn’t. As a matter of fact Christians are largely disgusted with being Christians. Did you know that? So they walked out of the church, largely. Did you know that Muslims are disgusted with being Muslim? Did you know that there are millions of Jews who don’t like being Jewish? Did you know that? Did you know that there millions of human beings that hate being human? [general chuckles]

Yes. Not only the fellows that play the role of Tarzan in films, but all of us underneath are going, Oo Oo Oo. You want to get rid of this so-called humanity, because it’s the biggest twist of all, isn’t it? But actually we cannot get rid of that twist until its purpose is fulfilled, and the purpose of that twist is education of the individual into divinity. You are all being taught, whether you like it or not, that you gods ... that is, creative centres of operation.

It has something about it that you don’t like. What is it called? Responsibility! Who wants responsibility? No-one. But you got it because you actually are power, you are sentient. You can be located and hit. Habeus corpus is a fact. [56:50]

Now Jesus is not an abstraction. The name means: affirmation saves6. There is none more excellent name than this, Emanuel, god with us. Yes? Jesus: Affirmation saves. Christ: cross in a circle. The Christos is the same as the German Christ, a circle with a creutz in it. See? We are all circles with crosses. We are all pinned and formulated in certain unique ways. Our unique way of being formulated is our personal cross. Take up your cross daily and follow the cosmic cross. [57:44]

It would be a very great mistake to think that Jesus is simply a Jewish revolutionary who was crucified because he wasn’t good enough to stop them crucifying him. He was crucified because he chose to be so. And he chose to be so because he wanted to shock the human race into a consciousness of responsibility.

At the time he came, a very appropriate time, do you know the whole civilised world was bored stiff with themselves? You know they couldn’t tolerate themselves any more. They had everything lined up. The great governments of the world had a calendar, you know. And they knew the stars had an apparent motion from which they could calculate the seasons, the agricultural cycle, and maintain society, and they believed that they knew everything worthwhile. Consequence ... boredom.

The ancient world at the time of Christ was totally bored ... there was nothing new. No new thing under the sun7, says the preacher. What have we got? ... vanity and vexation. They were all crying for a new emergent, something that was not repetitive. The great agricultural cycles were based on the solar year and on the sub-lunar cycles for time to sow and time to reap. And they knew it so well, they could guarantee more or less their survival.

Freedom for What?

But you know, Nietzsche would say, Survival ... for what. Freedom ... for what? Not from ... what? Freedom-from dearth, freedom-from starvation, freedom-from the winds, the elements, the war zones. Freedom-from had been attained. But freedom-for had not been thought of. And the freedom-from-what had been established.

People could say, oh there’s a famine. Oh, well don’t bother, go to Egypt, they’ve got corn there. There were some agricultural centres that were so well organised, they could feed their people. And they were bored. Every monarch was bored. When a knock came at the door of the palace, [??? Indistinct word here] my lord the enemy are at the gate, he looked around his thousands of concubines and said, oh, let them in! That’s historic fact. You know. Let them in, means, I’ve had enough of this endless round of nuisance. There is no new thing under the sun. That was freedom from starvation, probability. Freedom from harm by the elements, but not freedom for something. For what?

And then, right in the moment of the greatest boredom of nations, a precipitation occurred. A boy was born and he is peculiar. He is peculiar in that the intent of his Father, the Sentient Power of the Universe, embodies his intention fully in that body. The body was provided by the parents, and didn’t particularly like the imposition ... hence Gethsemane. He had to argue with himself. Hence the temptation. He goes in the desert and is tempted. He has to overcome the body. But luckily he’s free from something, he’s free from the funny ideas of his father .... terrestrial. He hasn’t got one. And when you take a woman you are taking the analogue of a substance, utterly formless, a Sentient Power. A woman is like a Sentient Power and she has a marvellous power which women know about and men don’t know about. And that is, no matter what they do, women remain virgins. Did you know that? Am I right ladies? Tell me the truth ... Sheila? Aren’t you still as virgin as you ever were? [1:02:07]

???

Codding, huh?

No I’m not.

Is Herbie in the house, oh there he is there. Are you or are you not, in the centre of your being, untouched by the physical children you have borne? Hm? Virgin means Vir, man; and Gin, woman. Are you or are you not bisexual?

Yes.

You know that bit don’t you? Therefore you’re a virgin aren’t you? And the formal limitations imposed upon you by your life and your marriage and your child-bearings ... have they touched you, essentially? No! You see? Women know this: they’re as virgin today as they were when they were born, when they were conceived. They really are. But men are not. Do you know what men do? The most terrible thing! They collect ideas. And unlike women, they believe them. Do women believe ideas?

Several noes from the audience.

No. A chorus of no, you see.

All ladies together. Are you ready? Do women believe ideas?

Unified chorus of noes.

Do men believe ideas?

Several scattered yeses from the males in the audience.

Poor men. I say poor men because the history of science is the history of exploded hypotheses. All the ideas that men have believed in every century have been proved by a later century to be rubbish. But you can qualify rubbish in your day, you know. Have you ever thought what O levels were like in Drake’s day? Dreadful to think, isn’t it? What were they like in the days of Cro-Magnon man going about? You didn’t need to do much at all to get your qualification there. Perhaps shoot a bison, bang your wife on the head with a club, and you were qualified. You didn’t even need to go to the Wizard of Oz for a diploma. You got a piece of copper ore and bashed it and made a medal and put it on your own chest. Like Amin [Idi Amin, president of Uganda], do you know that Amin awarded himself the Victoria Cross? [1:04:18]

[Laughter]

What about that other gentleman who crowned himself emperor recently, as a kind of Napoleonic figure? That’s how they do it in the old days. Who was it who invented university qualification? Do you know who? A fellow selling diplomas. Do you know that? Do you know when a student goes to university somebody has to pay. In the old days when very wealthy men sent their sons to university, do you know why they did it? To curb their appetite for power, so that they didn’t displace daddy too quickly. Did you know that? Did you know the whole object of education is to paralyse you, cripple you so that you can’t take the place of your fathers too soon? They’d like you to be so old by the time they’re ready to die that you’re so weak that you’re happy if they touch you on the head and bless you.

Did you know the word bless, blesse to harm [from blow, and to bleed], yes, means be less ... I be-less you. Hm? How do you like being blessed. Lovely, isn’t it? Popular song, Bless you for being an angel [Mr. Inkspots, Bill Kenny]. That means you will tie my shoes, you will wash my neck if I can’t reach it. You are blessed indeed.

When this twist occurs here, considering there wasn’t anything at all other than Sentient Power ... you notice I discarded that rubber band on there. There’s another one here. That discarded band is a concept, this one broke, see?

Indistinct comment from the audience.

Precisely. There’s a genius in the audience tonight. That one’s a good idea. [1:06:27]

Now this one self-assured me it will not break. He had a lot of rotten elastic bands which he had for years in case they become useful. But one particular one he assured me would not break, and of course, being a trusting fellow, I brought another one with me. It’s a very thin one, you see. It’s a very thin one, this one. I’m going to put on like that, and I’m going to say, if you dare break I’ll kick you. I’m going to twist it three times in honour, in honour of Hermes. Thrice greatest, thrice twisted.

Now tell me, I mean I’m holding this piece of cloth, it’s only an analogue. The Infinite Sentient Power ... who twisted it?

Itself.

Itself. Was there anything else?

No.

No, no, there was not. What does that prove? Supposing I say to Gerhardt, Gerhardt give me your assistance. Gerhardt will you give me your assistance?

Yes.

Come up here for me. He’s very good at demonstrating. Will you take that and put me another twist somewhere on that cloth. Anywhere, it doesn’t matter where. But don’t pull this one out, don’t be cruel. Don’t make it non-existent. Don’t get vicious and break it, will you dear? That’s good enough. And another one with this one ... somewhere. Thank you very much. Don’t go away, dear. I want Gerhardt to stay with me. Do you know why? I don’t want you think that I am doing this because I can do it and you can’t, you see? Did you do those other two? [1:08:40]

Aha.

Do you know you’ve got the same power as I have. He too is a twister. Right, will you hold that for me? Now this is sure. It’s not a clever trick that I can do only. Anybody can do this trick. There is a ...

Yes hold it like that dear, with those things pointing out. Yes? Right? I want you to observe a very peculiar thing. Before these twists were there, there was no knocking ... was there? Did the Infinite knock on itself before it was twisted? contingent stimuli 2.jpg

No.

No. Right? Now will you hold that for me? I’m going to get hold of one of these, yes, and I’m going to hit it on the other like that. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Could I do that if they weren’t twisted?

No.

No, I couldn’t, could I? Now this is what we call con-tingent, that is, with-touch relationship. Now the field itself is Sentient Power ... that is, God. The first Onely Generated is God the Son, Christ, Jesus, a real being not an abstraction, as real as that twist is real. And later twists are other beings ... like Archangels, angels, human beings, and so on. We could fill it up with little twists, couldn’t we? But the moment there is a twist in existence in this way, it is possible to tap one twist on another, and that twist continues it.

The Fall

It also does something else of very great importance. This twist is external to that twist. This twist is external to that twist .... is it not? Supposing we are identified with the whole field ... we are in no trouble. But suppose we identify ourselves only to the base where the elastic band is that holds it together.

identification with finitude.JPG


Supposing this one [A] says I am myself Jesus Christ and I know that I am nothing but a twist, and this one [B] says I am myself but I’m not sure about the space around me at all, because I count myself only up to the level of my elastic band and I call that my base. This one [B] has fall into identification has it not ... with its finitude? So that when it gets tapped, or when it taps and feels a reaction of another skull against its own ... you’ve probably done at sometime in your life when you have been so enamoured of some charming, opposite sex acquaintance. You both come up with a wonderful remark at the same moment and your skull’s slammed into her skull. You know what that means? You’ve all encountered it haven’t you? And you both apologise, and you raise further bumps. You’re a bump making a bump, aren’t you?

These, by collision can make further bumps on each other, but the bumps that are so made are external in origin. And when you identify them as you, when you identify yourself with them, you are fallen into externality, into objectivity, into alienation from your real absolute self. There is no other fall than the fall into identification with finitude, into externality, into objectivity, into contingency ... that is the Fall [1:12:24].

What happens at death? This: one binding principle has fallen on the floor. There are your experiences, back in the field, eternally different from what they were before you did it. In the memory of the field, in the memory of god, there they are. Then you put your twist back again and that’s called reincarnation. Or you could stay there and contemplate yourself in your misdeeds. But at some point in your life you will find that the field which intended upon you to make you, will extend, and you will cease to be. You’ll be back where you were in the field.

This is Jesus

If you have got the message of this process of identification with the twist and of non-identification with the twist, if you’ve understood the principle of the Onley Generated Cosmic Son, you do not have to identify with your finitude, with your deficiencies, with your particularised talents as finite. You can view them as manifestations of an Infinite Sentient Power.

Then you will understand what Jesus is. Jesus is a being, a real being, not an abstraction, not an historical fabrication. He’s a being that was evolved as to the physical body, and entered into by the will of the Absolute, the Father Power, and after a battle of temptations in Gethsemane, a deliberate act of self-crucifixion, a giving up of this thing back into that field, in full awareness this is a giving himself back, and that the marks of his being would still be there and he could re-assemble himself again. I lay my life down and I take it up again8.

Now that is who Jesus Christ is. Now we are aware that there are inertias about that. There are so-called Christians who don’t believe that Jesus resurrected. There are Christians who don’t believe he was ever crucified properly ... some of them say they took him down too quickly from the cross, he wasn’t dead. He escaped from the tomb. Joseph of Aramathea helped him to. There are Christians who say he’s just a very nice man like the fellow round the corner. But that is not true. He is the Onely Generated, only, utterly unimpeded being in the universe, through whom other beings can learn to break identification with finitude.

And He was Jewish, and the first of the head of Christians. And Mohammed himself allows that Jesus was a special birth. Islam is not opposed in any way to Christianity, neither is fundamental radical Hebrew thought. So we have to face the fact that the divisions between religions have not been produced by the messages of truth behind religions, but those divisions have been created by political and economic factors of great interest to the men who make them, but of no significance whatever in the ultimate analysis of reality. [1:15:57]

Now, funny thing you see. When we hear this kind of thing, we can actually will to believe it ... or disbelieve it. Now the peculiar thing is if we don’t believe it we cannot do with ourselves what we could do if we did believe it. It is an act of belief to believe that there is a Onely Generated, a Mono-genes Son of that Absolute Power, and that he is operative and that we are his cells in his body, and that he has the power to take over and operate through the cells in our body and give us ideas, inspire us ... or withdraw from us and leave us to our own egotistic devices.

If we don’t believe there is such a being we cannot pray to such a being.

If we don’t believe there is such a being we cannot cooperate with such a being.

If we don’t believe there is such a being we do not ask for assistance from such a being and therefore we ourselves alienate ourselves from that being.

But if we do believe that there is — there, really and truly believe it, with all the feeling we can muster — then we can come into the benefit of that belief.

The Need for Organised Religion

When the archbishop of Canterbury went to see the pope, they greeted each other they kissed each other, and they talk at their ecumenical get together, very quietly the archbishop said, and the pope agreed, You keep your sheep, I’ll keep mine. That’s quite right, quite correct. Because at this stage of evolution human beings don’t quite know what to believe. They need a focus of attention, an objective presence to which they can refer. The need for that objective presence is the justification of the continuance of the authorities of all organised religions, because people need objectivity ... but that is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is stated very, very clearly in the Bible, in that religious handbook for the Jews and the Christians and the Moslems.

In those days no man shall teach another of God for all shall know him9. [1:18:14]

Your Body is the Temple

The temple of god is with man. Your body is the temple of god. If you believe that, you can function in a way quite differently from if you don’t believe it. If you don’t believe it you can be depressed, you can be deprived, you can be alienated, you can be lost ... you can believe yourself not loved.

But if you do believe it you can’t be any of those things. If you do believe it, do you know that you can only be efficient? If you do believe it, a door opens to creativity. Not freedom from starvation, freedom from houselessness ... that’s not the goal. Freedom for creativity. Freedom for production, a precipitation into the infinite world of infinite possibilities, each one unique ... and through a unique centre an individual human being. If we accept that, we can do this: pull that apart for me would you Gerhardt.

This one?

Yes. The parts of the one fellow. Now how about this one? Does he depart in the same sense? The other one was identified with itself. This is identified with itself. These two thought they’d died. Yes? How about this one? Can that one die? No. That one is the same yesterday and today, forever.

Pull it out Gerhardt. Is it not where it was before we pulled it out? Hasn’t it got exactly the form of its experience inside it? And is not that experience unique, and not the experience of the others? It is a peculiar experience of a man who, after a terrific battle in his temptation, in his Gethsemane, managed to put himself on the cross. And then when he’s there, states, into thy hands I commend my spirit10 and pull out the cloth and vanish, and then reappear again. He has his memory of his process ... his whole process.

Most of us tend to believe in death, don’t we? Don’t we believe that our wicked grandmother has died and got out of our way?

No.

What? No? You don’t Judith? [chuckles] Most people do. Not true. There is no death. There is only a pulling out of the cloth, and then later a reassembly. But the form of it is all hidden in the cloth is it not?

Nothing is lost, Mr. Christian ... quote from Mutiny on the Bounty. Yes?

If you work hard, you have to work very hard because you have inertias of erroneous ideas bequeathed to you by your ancestors and your educators ... by compulsory education most of all. You are required to believe things that will impoverish you, that will weaken you. They leave room, there are only a few bricks at the top of the pyramid. If you can be intimidated you will stay at the bottom ... is their theory. But supposing you don’t climb up at all. Not because you are intimidated, but because you know that if you make one of these things here. Look. Make me another one, Gerhardt. A nice big one, screw it tightly. first twist.jpg

Now there’s a very important man standing out. Will you hold that like that for me Gerhardt, standing out here about pelvis level, please. There’s an outstanding young man, right? [1:22:34]

Now, darshana. Viewpoint. Yes? Viewpoint. Do you mind turning it round Gerhardt? There’s an astronomer’s black hole. Is it something different? One is a lady, the other is a gentleman. Is there any difference? One pushes, the other pulls. Is there any virtue of one of a pair of opposites over the other? No. Hence the Crux Ansata. It says as you get one of those that sticks out ... hide it. Do you know that the shaman, the magician in ancient cultures, was a man dressed as a woman? Because he wished to encourage his feeling awareness more than his slavery to thinking. Yes? black hole.jpg

And think about that polarity, and remember the hermaphroditic way that Christ has been painted. You don’t get a slightly effeminate man, he’s got muscles. He represents the balanced, hermaphroditic being who is both pure thought male without slavish identification with it, and pure sentience awareness, femaleness without fantasy. That is the Christ that is. Because he really is, you know? Did you not feel the power now, we are his Self? He can precipitate him in any single man and give him a brilliant idea, or he could remove that idea if the man became egotistic and misused it. And he can present himself in a body entirely proper to him, the original Onely Generated body, a body of glory ... which means a body so unimpeded that you can’t help feeling its vibrations. crux ansata.jpg

And remember, if you can believe it, your life power to create improves. And it improves rapidly, the more rapidly you believe it. There will be a battle to move it because of inertia of bad training, sectarianism, and deliberate misrepresentation by the leaders of sects. But if you believe it, you will get the benefit ... in thought, in feeling, in will. Your whole being will get a benefit. And you don’t need to go anywhere particularly to believe it. You can believe it where you are, inside your skin. That’s called praying in secret. If you pray in secret inside your skin, you will be rewarded openly. But if you don’t believe in that freedom for creative activity — freedom for not freedom from — if you don’t believe that freedom you’re seeking is only for creative activity, you will miss the whole point of your existence.

There is the hidden hermaphrodite. Pull with me, Gerhardt. Let’s cause this Messiah to vanish. What’s happened to it? Where is he? Fallen down? He is there, hidden. In every man’s consciousness, underneath, working, he is there. If you can believe it you also will be there, present with yourselves. But if you don’t believe it, do you know what you will do? You will look elsewhere and you will not find, because you can never find external to your own being the salvation you look for. You can never find external to your own being the power you pursue. You can never find external to your own being the insight which, if you got it, would illuminate you completely. Now there is a problem for you, and a challenge to your will to believe.


Only the will to believe differentiates you from another fellow.


You can go and meditate on that.































1 Clotho (spinner), Lachesis (allotter) and Atropos (unturnable).


2 Con-dense: con=with; and dense has the root D.N. which is the same root as Dan or Don, a judge.


3 Hermes Trimegistus, Thrice Greatest.


4 John 10:17. Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.


5 Pitriyana is the way of the ancestors, the ‘way of the father’.


6 Ya sus = affirmation saves.


7 Ecclesiastes 1:9. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.


8 John 10:17-18 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.

Joh 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.



9 Hebrews 5:11-14 Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.


10 Luke 23:46 And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.