Not to Heal Lepers, but to Make Healers

I think particularly for this first period I will run over, but as I say open for you, the interchange of other people sharing some of what we've been saying around which we've been centering our thoughts, what is the uses of the human self so this is what we're after, what is the use of the human self? it's our interest, in a sense it's our only interest, of course I say all we have is ourselves only of course we get another self instead of ourselves, but it's still ourselves in a sense it's all we ever have, and all we have in life is the effect of things upon us, all we have is our own consciousness, it's there all along, we don't really see things, we only see things as we see them that's all we ever do, it's only in the fourth dimension we see it on all sides, as I say you never see every side of a chair, you only see one side, you can't see every side and the inside, that's another dimension, so we're only really seeing what becomes a consciousness to us, that's all we have that's what life is um so we're talking about the right, what are the right uses of the human self um which is what the bible's full of, it centers around god's plan for man, from his creation to his ultimate destiny so in a sense god's in the background of the bible and man's in the foreground it's it's uh what god is about uh in relation to his creation of man, this is the center now what we saw, and of course right in the middle of what we said yesterday and so on, um for a right use of our human selves, there has to be a disappearance before there's a reappearance this is what we said yesterday, for the right uses, human self has to be disappeared before there's a real appearance, because there's been an appearance on the wrong level we started life with the false appearance of humanity as if we're the people running our own lives, and if as if life is a separated person running his own life, by his own means, for his own ends, uh that's what as what we are when we're the members of the kingdom of darkness under the control of the spirit of self-centeredness, so that uh self-appreciation, self-magnification, um self-development is life now there has to be a disappearance of that before there can be a reappearance of the uh the human, the true use of the human um the disappearance uh started um when we discovered that we that we uh hadn't been the people we meant to be, uh of course that's uh why we're so thankful that the fall wasn't total in the same sense as the devil's fall was total, the devil's fall was a fall of the spirit, man's fall was a fall of the flesh, a fall of the spirit, spirit is just if your inner self, it's your ultimate choices, and the bible reveals that the ultimate choice of the spirit of self-centeredness was himself, so you mean ultimate choice, therefore he's impervious to any voice from god, because he has become his own god, and he's perverted, and so what is what is good to god is evil to the devil, what is evil to what is evil to god is good to the devil, it's a total in other words, uh all that's involved in self-loving is bad, all that's involved in self-giving is good, I mean it's self-getting, self-getting, all that's involved in self, am I quite right, all that's involved in self-giving is the devil's point of view is bad, that's god, all that's involved in self-loving is good, the devil's in reverse, because he's he's he's fixed from his center, now humans didn't go as far as that, they were they were stimulated by the flesh, the outer, uh at the fall, through the temptation, and they did respond from the center, but they responded by um almost a trick, the bible says Eve was deceived, you see women are gullible and men are slaves, so women and women get tricked, and then men have to follow the women in their tricks, so you see Adam follows, Eve follows Satan, the poor men have to follow Eve, so we're done for, we've been doing it ever since, that's right there, right there in the fall of man, it's right there in the bible, and Eve was deceived, man was willful, but he was willfully following Eve, not against god, it says that that Eve, Eve fell through deceit, Adam fell willfully, he didn't fall willfully against god, he fell willfully for Eve, that's what men have been doing ever since, so you see it was a, it was a flesh fall, rather than a spirit fall, they didn't mean to be apart from god, they hoped god wasn't looking, or he happened to be, that's all, they are, they were, the proof is, the immediate time they did, they were conscious of absence from god, they hid, that's it, they were conscious of god, the devil doesn't hide, the devil comes face to face with god and says, I'm, I'm, I'm no use for you, I'm myself, he faces, he confronts god face to face as another god, we don't do that, we hide, thank god, that's why there's remained in man the deposit of conscious of what, what he is, um, so you've got our, Paul had a wonderful outreach to the non-christian, I can't discuss that now, he had a much bigger outreach, but to non-christian than most of us missionaries think he had, and one thing he said about the non-christian is they have consciences, he says that conscience bear witness, and this, you'll find that through Romans 2, but the non-christian never heard of god at all, that conscience bear witness, their thoughts to be while accused excuse one another, but that is a discussion we can't hardly go into now, it's very interesting, one of the missionaries, the missionaries did a broadening along that line, um, but in other words there is that in all men, we know that, that's this deposit, you see, because our being is god, uh, Paul again was the man who made that remarkable, but most of us bible-believing evangelicals don't like it, but the bible says, the bible says all men are in god, not only redeemed, uh, Paul said that in his remarkable Athenian speech, uh, when he said, for god has made of one blood all nations, all men of all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth, um, uh, if haply they might seek after god and find him, though he be not far from every one of us, see, take it gradually, for in him we live and move to our being, all men, not only redeemed, all, uh, people of all nations in, have their being in god, because we have our being in god, and because our freedom hasn't gone as far as satan, satan's freedom is cut him clean off, which you can do, we discussed yesterday how you can become a devil, um, because we haven't gone so far, uh, uh, that we, we've joined satan and belong to satan, and are in the kingdom, satan's kingdom, we're slaves of satan, and we end in satan's destiny if we continue that way, at the same time, there remains in us, because we haven't that ultimate choice against god, there remains in us that, uh, that which is the voice of god to us, you ought to be so and so, you ought to be, you know what you ought to be, you ought to love, you ought to, you ought to, uh, have certain right and wrong standards, thank god, that's how he gets at us, so, uh, that, that's why, thank god, there is that, that, that the tragedy in humanity, uh, thank god for tragedy, thank god for chaos, thank god for everything which disturbs us and hurts us, sufferings aren't our trouble, sins are trouble, sufferings are our blessing, we make too much of suffering, too little sin, it's very easy for us to have a sort of sentimental, uh, uh, concern for suffering, no, it's sin that matters, for instance, now, I, I work among the lepers, now, lepers look very suffering, of course, I know, I know they are, to a point, there's something a bit different about them, they look very ghastly, you know, now, my point when I go to work among lepers isn't to heal their bodies, why? If I just heal their bodies, I merely, merely produce a better, a, a, a healthier egoist, that's all, he just loves himself a little more and use, use life for himself a little more, I go to a leper, I say, look here, you've got, I'm going to do what you can for your body, of course, I can, I've got some medicines for you, I'll do what I can for you, and so on, but that's not the point, uh, I've got something far bigger than that, you're a child of god, if you only knew it, and god's got a whole even wonderful new body waiting for you one day, but you've got a wrong spirit in you, you know the things you've done, you lepers, you know your selfishness and your hates and your murders and your lusts and so on, you've got a wrong spirit in you, I come and tell you what you really want is to have god's spirit in you, jesus in you, who makes you another kind of person, and instead of being a person who just loves yourself, you love other people, what's happened, you, you turn, uh, you, you, I go there, not to, not to, to, to heal lepers, but to make lepers healers, not to heal lepers, but to make lepers healers, so they may, they may, some of them never get their scars off, and of course, they may never, never get their, their, their, their, their, their disease, uh, corrected, but off they limp on their, to tell other people about jesus, and get other people healed, um, so as I'm saying, I'm just, uh, underlying the fact, uh, suffering isn't the world's problem, suffering is the world's blessing, sin is the world's problem, and so we have to be very careful, uh, that's why, uh, uh, social work can't take the place of, of gospel work, if they can be combined all right, social work only, only betters the ego, makes bigger, bigger, and better egoists, uh, but if, if, of course, there must be, we, we, we, we are people of compassion, so we must have, do what we can, as we do, we missionaries do, to heal the sick, and educate, and so on, that's not our main line, any more than with jesus, there's a satan which is always reluctant to heal, I couldn't help healing, because it's a compassionate jesus, he's reluctant, he's always trying to hide it, because he wanted, the real healing was, was to, to get people who become healers, so the gospel isn't to improve you, it's to make you an improver of others, you get the point? The gospel's not to make you a blessing, it's to make you a blesser, uh, it's not, it's, uh, it's not to make you a comforted one, it's to make you a comforter, because that's what God is, God's, God's the one for others, uh, one of the most remarkable, uh, basic facts concerning that is, Paul always based his gospel back on Abraham, he went way back to Abraham, he said, I'll base the gospel of the grace of God on Abraham, he's the first person who believed God, God's grace, and was counted unto him for righteousness, and the very first vision, it was said the God of glory appeared to Abraham, the very first glimpse of glory, glory means that's the best you can be, glory is the highest you can think of, now he says the God of glory, the highest kind of person you can think of, appeared to Abraham, that's what glory means, uh, what he says, that, that this God said to him, now Abraham, if I, if you come along with me, I'll bless you and I'll make you a blessing, and in you all families of the earth shall be blessed, he caught it, because deep in us, that's what we hear, being originally part of God, we only are happy when we're blessing others, you're not happy when you're blessed, you're happy when you're blessing others, because this is the instinct, this is what God is, so it's our inner instinct, and Abraham caught it, ah, he said, this is the person I'm to be related to, I'm to be a person in relation to this person, just as this person blesses the world, I'll, I'll side by side with him, be a blesser to the world, so his vision was not to be blessed, but to be a blesser, it wasn't to get a land, or to get a child, or get a family, it's to be a means by which, how far you can see it, this God, who is, who is, who is the, the, the blesser, could be everybody's God, everybody's a blesser then, you see how the, how the sermon on the mount turns round, it starts with getting us right, you become poor in spirit, you, you mourn about your needs, ah, you're, you're meek, which means you give up your self-activity, meekness is giving up your self-activity to replace it with God's activity, that's what meekness is, ah, ah, so you, you start by becoming poor in spirit, ah, and mourning about your condition, and giving up your self-activity, then you're hungry and thirst, and you're filled, the fourth, the fourth behind you, blessed are the poor in spirit, the first, blessed are the meek, the poor, the second, blessed are the, meek is the third, blessed are the hungry and thirst, are the fourth, and they shall be filled, now what turns out next one, blessed are the merciful, they shall obtain mercy, you become the giver of mercy, having become, got mercy, you begin, you're a giver of mercy and you keep getting back mercy because you give mercy, blessed are the merciful, full of mercy to others, blessed to the peace makers, not the peace getters, blessed to the peacemakers, for they shall be the children of God, blessed to the pure in heart, pure in heart, pure in heart means you see nothing but God, you're, you're, you're moving in with God who is love, and therefore you're moving in love everywhere, so you see, the beatitudes turn you from being a getter to a giver. This is the only gospel. Now all other philosophies end in yourself.

That's the acid test. All other religions, whether it's Buddhism or Hinduism or Confucianism or Islam or modern philosophies, they center around what I get and what I become. No, God's not a getter, he's a giver.

God's another kind of person whose fun, delight, fulfillment, joy is other people. The immersion of his being is being the being of other people. This is what God is.

This is what we are when we enter this union. So the true gospel is when you become the means by which other people are blessed. So you see how subtle it can be for missionaries? You see how it can turn to educators and medical people instead of being those who are giving education, which makes people give the knowledge to others as a way of healing, which gives healing to others.

You know what I mean? As a sort of halfway house. And much missionary work is very disappointing because it's a halfway house. You get the cart before the horse.

Yes, I do. That's right. Quite right, get the horse going, then pull the cart.

Social work's the cart, as long as the horse's in front. That's very good. I don't know how you turn that into automobiles for the day.

That's right. So you see, we've got this wonderful self. Thank God there are instincts in it which are never satisfied.

That's why there is that in unredeemed people who want to do good things. That's it, you see. They want to do good things because we're created to do good things, not to be negatively have something, but to do good things, to help people.

That's in the unredeemed. That's why that's there. But that doesn't make them the ultimate.

You see, as I said yesterday, there's a gulf between the heights of human love and divine love. You get that in Romans 5. I told you that before. In Romans 5, it differentiates between human love and divine love.

Human love has a self element at its basis. It can't have it. A human is distorted when he's separated from God.

A human's meant to be an expression of God. God is love. And then the human is unconditionally involved in loving others.

Unconditionally, which includes your enemies, of course. The human cut off from God is cut off by self-centeredness. So we humans apart from God can be nothing but egoists at basis.

So even our love has an egoistic basis to it. And so as Paul says, a human loves so long as it's convenient for them to love. They'll love it so far as they approve what they love of.

They'll love those they approve of. God's unconditional. It doesn't matter whether he approves or disapproves.

It doesn't matter whether he lives or dies. Jesus died. It doesn't matter that.

He exists to meet other people's needs. It doesn't matter if he's bad, good, anything else. That's unconditional love.

God exists to meet need. And the darker a person is, the more they need, of course. So in its total form, that's God.

You see, in a total form, you're a done form. Sorry for you. You're simply, for time they say, you're bread, which other people eat like those old girls who don't have fingers.

You're bread. You see, your whole existence becomes being for others. That doesn't mean you don't enjoy yourself.

You see, where the world's got things wrong is this. Where joy is primary and purpose is secondary, you're distorted. That's the form.

Where pleasure is primary and purpose is secondary, you're in the form. Where purpose is primary and pleasure is secondary, you're in God. I was an agnostic for a time, like a silly kid, about eighteen, because I began to read certain books and I had begun to see my own egocentricity.

I got so far. I saw I loved myself. Everything was for myself.

I suddenly found God was too. Oh, I said, if God's like me, I'll stick where I am then. Because it says of God, for thy pleasure we are, we are created.

I said, God lives for his own pleasure then. Well, so do I, that's all right. And then it says of Jesus, for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame.

Oh, I said, if he enjoyed the cross for his own joy, all right, I'll just live for myself. I hadn't seen, you see, that the true basis is you find your joy in your self-giving. Your self-giving gives you joy, but your joy is secondary to your self-giving.

Now, that's all the way through life. I mean, take a little simple crude example. We don't go as far as this one, I suppose.

You could either eat to live or live to eat. Now, if you live to eat, you live for the pleasure of eating. You're too blown up, of course.

If you live and you exist for the pleasure of eating, the pleasure of eating is only aimed at a reason for which you eat. Well, you won't last too long on that level. You put the pleasure before the purpose.

Now, we say, at least we say we do, that we eat to live. We say we eat because we've got to keep going and our energy is eating. Why are we eating to live? We enjoy eating.

Now the joy is secondary to the pleasure that's secondary to the purpose. And that's where pleasure comes in. We're meant to enjoy ourselves.

We're meant to be self-enjoying people. But it's secondary to the purpose that it fits in. And you get your joys in life and they're always secondary to the purpose.

And the purpose is, whatever it means, your life is involved, your existence is God's for others. Whatever that means, whatever it involves, whether you lose everything or keep everything, it's not the point. This eats you up, the purpose, the purpose eats you up.

You're a part of God for others. In doing so, you get to reflex action, lots of pleasure. But the pleasure's taken.

That's when you're free to enjoy yourself. You're not afraid to enjoy yourself. I get people who say to me, oh, of course, I'm all off, my motives are so mixed.

I say, of course they're mixed. I say, you're partly for God and you're partly for yourself. You're meant to be because you think you're together.

I say, if somebody says to me, oh, I'm so thankful I was helped by what you said, I don't stop and say, oh no, no, no, give all the glory to God. No, I'm enjoying it too. Why not? I'm an agent.

But the primary thing is I know it's God. I don't stop and make a pious remark about it. Of course I know it's God.

But it's also me. I'm glad to be in this show. So you see, you're not afraid of your own motives.

Put your own, have a little room for your own motives. You have a motive. You want to be this.

You want it. Quite right, quite right. Secondary, secondary.

As long as that's fit, as long as at any time you drop that off so that the primary may be fulfilled where necessary. And of course there are other ways of the cross we go. That's it.

So life's a thrill. It's full of fun, yet the fun is secondary to the purpose. That's what life is.

It isn't a funless life. It's when you've got things in focus. That goes right the way through.

Somebody mentioned the whole question of sex and marriage. Well, that's it. The basis, the true basis of sex is it's a self-giving act in marriage.

It's a symbol. I belong to you and you belong to me in a marriage. Now then, the primary act of sex is the symbol of a total emotion.

I'm for you, you're for me. Secondary is the pleasure of sex. Now you see, when you get that all wrong, you just run out of the pleasure of sex.

The purpose is gone. Then you destroy yourself and destroy other people. Out of its focus.

And so with everything. So you see, self is wonderful. And as I say, thank God there is in man this basic instinct, which is God's instinct, that we're meant to be for others.

And so the world tries to do a bit of it. But we mustn't deceive ourselves. If people ask me, what's the gospel? To what extent must you have your doctrines right? Well, in the end you must.

I believe. But I say in the end. I was talking to somebody the other day.

One of you grab me and we'll have a walk this morning. Let's say, when you're a young believer, just coming, you haven't got to know all about your foundations. If you can get into the house through the door, you needn't bother too much about what's built the house.

You get in by the door and you take Jesus Christ and you rejoice. That's all right, but you can't live a whole house as a householder, a whole life, without knowing a little more than that. And so there comes a time when you need to know, why are you here? What foundations lay under you? I was discussing with them why we must have the cross, must have the resurrection, where Christ as a saviour in history fits right in.

Because some were saying to me, well, to tell you the truth, speaking of the blood of Christ and the historical Jesus doesn't reach me very much. All right, the time hasn't come, it will. There'll come a time when you'll see deeper.

There's no way out of your self-bound satanic, satanically controlled self, but somebody else did a dying for you and did a rising for you, otherwise you're done for. You'll come to that, you may not see that, but all right, don't bother. Those are the foundations.

You drive a car. Well, time comes when it's good to know how to change a tyre. You'll start that way.

You needn't know a little more than driving a car for comfort as you get on a little. Same with all of our ideas, you see what I mean? So I'm saying, when I'm asked what the essential gospel is, I say the essential gospel is the human soul has been replaced by the divine soul. That's the essential gospel.

I won't quarrel too much about how. I have my own ideas about that, and they're set around the Bible. But I'm not first of all asking how.

I'm asking is it so? That's what I want to find out. If you discuss, people discuss, who's a Christian, isn't a Christian? Who's on the right road and who's not on the right road? The ultimate is this. The wrong road is a self-controlled, self-centred life.

A life which is centred around myself. That's the wrong road. That's the satanic road that leads to satanic destiny.

The new road is a road where the real self in you is God. You'll come back home, and you're just a branch of this vine, a member of this body. And the real person is this person, who is self-giving love.

He's the real person, and you're just along with him and an expression of him. Now I'm not going to argue too much how you got there. If you got there.

If you haven't got there, I'm going to argue with you. Because you're off-beam. That's the ultimate.

So as I said, we mustn't be deceived because a person does some good works, therefore they're right. Not necessarily. You can go a long way.

We should be kind. And mind you, you're in a kind world. Now I belong to a country which has been going down the hill.

It's above the hill. You're our kids, so you'd better listen. I'm English.

But the consequence is you get a disturbed spirit in England. You don't get a kindly spirit. Not used to.

Because it's hard to be kind when you're disturbed and humiliated. Now in this country there's a very kind spirit because you're in a very happy condition. You're well off and you're prosperous and sometimes things are going well.

It's fairly easy to be so. You would allow for those things. But because a person shows kindness and does good works, it doesn't necessarily mean they've got there.

No, no. So as I say, we start with the wrong kind of self. Now there's got to be the disappearing of the self before there's the reappearing of the self.

The disappearing self, of course, is the process of what we call redemption. In union with Christ crucified and Christ risen. And I'm only going over now what I've done before, of course.

The first stage of disappearing is when at last you come honest enough to know you've not been what you should be. That's been codified for us in the law of God. As the Bible says, you can be a law unto yourself, all men are.

That's what the ultimate judgment is going to be. All men are, the Bible says, are a law unto themselves. And the Bible says it's possible for non-Christians to show a law written in their heart.

In other words, they're non-Christians who received into their heart without knowing God, without knowing Jesus Christ, knowing anything. But because there is a knowledge of the law, this basis in us all, they have in their heart said, as far as I know, I want to be what I should be. As far as I know what the supreme being is, I want to be what I understand I should be.

Uh-huh. There's a place for them. There's a place for them.

Because they're better off than some of us who've got the goods, or the external, haven't got it on the internal. So I'm saying that there's a sense, a more ill-defined sense, in which the law is the way everything should be, the way everything works. The way the universe works is a God of self-giving.

God of love. That's all there is. That's all there is.

The whole universe is that. So everything which isn't some expression of the God of self-giving is off-being. It's broken law.

And this consciousness disturbs us, as I say, that our selfishness is what we call our sins and so on, off-being. However, it's ill-defined and vague, and so God brought in his mercy the Israelitist nations. Thank God we should have known Jesus Christ if we hadn't had a Jewish nation, and built it up on what the law really is, to cultivate for us what the law is.

And so we get the decalogue, we take commandments and so on, the codification of the law, and the codification of redemption, the pre-vision of redemption in the blood sacrifices, and so on. Now, the first start of the disappearance of the wrong self is when, at last, what we call conviction of sin, repentance. Repentance means change of mind.

Repentance doesn't necessarily mean emotion. Doesn't necessarily mean you feel deeply. Doesn't necessarily mean you cry.

It means you're different types of people. Some will cry more, some will think more. Perhaps those who think more cry less, and those who cry more think less.

I'm not sure how that works out. But I'm saying repentance isn't a question of emotion. It's a question of whatever area inside you you like to relate it to.

It means you've changed your mind. The word in the Greek, metanoia, means change of mind. You've changed your inner concept.

Not mind in the way of just theories. Your inner concept. Naus.

The word metanoia, the word naus, noia, comes from naus. Naus means inner, more than just the mental. That inner consciousness or something.

That's all. Now, that's the first step, isn't it? All of us who are redeemed people, have we changed our minds? There came a time when we thoroughly recognized that we were wrong. And the consequence, we were on the wrong foot and away from God and all this.

We hadn't done all that before. Now then, we begin the reappearance of the self when in that condition. And when it is total enough for us to have no answer in ourselves.

No answer in some buildup of religion, or tradition, or ritual, or anything, nothing, there's no answer. That's why I call what I spoke of as the first collapse. There's nothing to do.

Then you're conditioned to find the replacement. Then you're conditioned to find, oh, this is what this gospel is. He committed it for me.

This is the meaning of the cross of Christ and the resurrection of Christ. But in his death, he took away this, he cut off representing me from this wrong spirit which has entered humanity with its consequences. That's what death is, a cut off between body and spirit.

This was Jesus Christ. That was we on this cross. He represented us.

And the cut off was when he died, there was separation between body and spirit. So it was the body of Jesus we were redeemed by. Because the body of Jesus was a body now representing us, being us, that had no spirit in it.

And the burial was the indication it was a real death. And so it says we were buried there. Now, now there's a chance for a new spirit to come in.

A new spirit can only replace an old one, of course. You can't have the two together. They don't love each other enough.

The devil and the Holy Spirit don't love each other enough to live together. They part from the inside. So, out with the other, and in the resurrection came the new spirit.

Now then, the moment you receive Jesus, this happens to you. You've taken your place as one who actually shared in that cross and resurrection. Now, it may not appeal to you so that you were back in history there.

Of course, it's a history that goes back to eternity, really, but it comes out in history like that. And you went back there, you became part of it. And the moment you did that, then this new spirit, God's spirit, joined himself to you.

And you began to be, you began to be this other kind of person whose motivation is loving others more than yourself. As I told you before, the elementary form it took, which is given us in the Bible, the simple elementary form is this, the first evidence, real evidence, that you're a born-again person, is there's a new motivation within you which you can't help yourself. You've got to love God and you've got to love Jesus, as he died for you, more than yourself, more than yourself.

That's the key. Before, in the end, your self was always on top. You did things always as long as the self could agree to them.

Now you've come to a place where you do things the self doesn't agree to necessarily, because a new love has gripped you, the love of the Christ who died for you, the love of the Father who sent him, and so on. This is the other love. You've now become the other love.

The scripture given on that, I told you, Romans 5 and 5, where it says, for the love of God, not love for God, sometimes you have to watch these new translations, they don't always get the exact details accurate. They're very lovely in many ways, but they sometimes miss the nuances and the real details. It doesn't say that love for God is shed upon you, it says God's own love, that's God's love, not yours.

God who is love is shed upon you by the Holy Spirit and you begin to love. And so the evidence that you are, as we say, a new creature in Christ, a redeemed person, there's a new motivation which causes you to love God, love Christ, and that begins with loving people, begin to sense their need and want to help them. This is a new life.

That's the evidence you are the eternal love. It's the evidence every one of us have here, we have concern and compassion, exactly. Before the concern and compassion for men, there was this new sense of love and devotion to this one.

God, Father, Son, Spirit, in whatever way he presents himself to us. Now this is the new life. Now you've begun reappearance.

You hardly know it yourself. You've begun to reappear as a true self, a true self as part of the Divine Self. The Divine Self is a self-giving love.

You're part of the Divine Self just as a branch is part of a brine, or a member of a body is part of a head. Now the completion of the disappearance, actually the completion is there, but the thing is not of use to us until it comes into us as a personal experience, into our consciousness. And very rarely at regeneration is there a total consciousness of unity.

Why? Because a total consciousness of unity means you've been taken over. Not you taken, you've been taken over. The total consciousness of unity is you're really just an incident in a vast person.

You're, what shall I say, what works in you is a fragment of a vast person. Of course the mystery of the fourth dimension is the part holds the whole, you know. That's an awkward one, that's a different one.

In our mathematics in third dimension it's impossible, the part can't contain the whole, but it does in the fourth dimension. That's the sense in which you wholly love. You see, when we think of God, it's as if God loved me as if there's nobody else in the universe.

I've got a concept of God loves me. Jesus loves me as if the whole of God loves, all there is in the universe is a whole of God loving this. And sometimes people say, and they say quite rightly, if there was only one sinner in the world who'd lost, Christ would die for that one person.

This is the sense in which we are the whole. Now that's something I'm talking language of the fourth dimension now. We're a little bit in it, we're the whole.

There's a sense in which a branch is the whole vine in the fact, in a branch form. It's just a one-sectional form of the whole vine. In a sense you could say, I'm the whole vine expressing this, or there's a little bit.

I'm only saying that to help us to get grasp in the unity. We function as if we're God. We don't have to function as if we're part of God.

We function as if this is Christ functioning, but he's also functioning in you. You've got to forget about that. He's my Christ, not yours.

Go away. This is the fourth dimension experience, yes? God so loved that he gave, and when we get dry enough, he will give. That's right, exactly, exactly.

That's right, thank you. But as I say, very rarely, very rarely at the experience of regeneration has the unity sunk home, because the unity means it's he. You fit back just as an agent.

And all those words in the Bible, we're slaves of a master, we're agents, we're farmers, and the God's the one who produces the goods from the soil and so on. We're vessels that contain. All those kind of illustrations are fitting there.

Into this period we have to go through, I don't think it's ever short. I never bother about people, some people, I had one say to me yesterday, some people seem to get through so easily, some people seem to get through not so easily, it's not true. No.

If it starts easily, it'll go on hard after. If you had it hard first, you wouldn't go in easy. I don't think you'll find that a single person gets in any other way except the one way.

It's not an easy way. In some senses, it's a kind of paradox. Some ways it is, some ways it isn't.

I doubt whether anybody really soaks into the consciousness the it-isn't-I without some considerable soaking, with some queer acids running about in what soaks us, burn us up a bit. I think so. Because it's so deeply ingrained in us.

It seems there's common sense, see there's a deep paradox here, it seems there's common sense, I'm a person in action, I've got to go on being a person in action, I've got a home to run, a business to run, and this and this and this, oh for goodness sake I must keep my mind on stretching, my emotions on stretching, my will and my body, of course I must. So it seems the confusion says you've got to get out of the way. But the fact is you've got to disappear before you reappear.

You've got to go through a disappearing act before you reappear. Something's got to happen to you by which you seem to cease to be a person. Now that's ridiculous in a way, because of course you can't cease to be a person, you've got to go through something which is equivalent within you to that.

Why? Because if you don't, you remain in this foggy mixture, which is our main trouble, between the human self and the divine self, with the concept that the divine self is there to improve the human self, and then you're in for trouble all the time. Because the human self is not there to be improved, it's there to express another person. Not one single thing about you is wrong, every single thing God made perfectly beautiful, everything physical, everything mental, everything psychological, everything is absolutely perfect for you.

Everything is to be made of which this person, his will through your will, his emotions through your emotions, his words through your words, and his mind, thoughts through your mind, and so on. He doesn't give you a better mind or better emotions, but no, no, no he doesn't. You just remain a bundle of human reactions, that's all you ever are.

Those reactions are necessary, it's through those human reactions God will manifest himself, but that's all you are. Now you see, so much of our teaching takes us wrong, so much of our pulpit stuff takes us wrong, and also because we're conditioned to take it wrong. Now you see, you read statements all around the Bible, commands us to love our brother, commands us to love Jesus, God, commands us so and so, and it says if you don't keep the commandments you're off.

Now of course that's a trick, it's to catch you out. If you are still in the condition where you think, well I'd better get on keeping them, all right, try to keep them, bump, bump, bump, you'll go. And through that you say, the answer isn't there, if you read those, for instance, John's the deepest, John's the one who says that again and again.

And in 1 John 2, for instance, he says that, he says the reason, the evidence that we're gods are we keep his commandments, well get on keeping them, go on, go ahead, God bless you. I'm know that we know him if we keep his commandments. He that saith I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar.

That's wrong. John's always black and white, he's most difficult. And the truth is not in him.

And whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is a love of God perfected. Not his love for God, in him as an operating love which isn't his perfected. There it says, he that saith he abided in him ought himself ought to reward me.

You're caught out. When you see deep enough, the keeping isn't you keeping it, it's, yes, this is said, God gives the Bible's absolutes. And that's why there's a law.

Because we're such twisters, unless there's something you say you've got to be, you get out of it. So a command in the Bible means this is an absolute, it's got to be, there's no other way. It doesn't tell you how it's to be, it's not a matter.

So as the commands of the Bible are, it's got to be, don't fool yourself, that's the decalogue, you must not steal, you must not do so and so, it's black and white, that's one of the dangers we have today, isn't it? Situation, ethics, all this stuff. So the force of the word command, it's a command it's got to be. It doesn't say how to be.

Now, if you were in the beginning stages, all right, come on boys, let's do it. And lots of exhortation to the Pope, it tells you to also wrongly. Come on, you ought to love God, you ought to love your neighbor, you ought to be more on fire, you ought to have power, you ought to have peace, you ought to have joy, you ought to have these things, and you're all stewed up inside.

Because you see, you're looking for the possibility that you will do these things. But when you get a little deeper and say, no, no, it's not always you keeping those, it's the keepers inside you. It's God, the God who is love, who's expressing that love through you.

It's the vine that you abide in Him, the vine life through the branches, expressing, producing the fruits that Jim said. Now you've gotten the focus. So you see how clever the Bible is? It catches us on the level we'll take.

And that's very good, and you come bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, until you take something better, until you're sore enough to take it. That's the blessing of the Bible. So it catches you out, all the way along.

And to you find even the essence is there. And so there's this period, and I don't think I would, I believe, basic in some way is radical, somewhere, somewhere, somehow, not by searching it out, by revelation somehow. God can fit these things into us, somehow it can settle into us, right to the bottom.

But it's not you. The point is, we all say it isn't we. We all say we can't do it, but we all think we ought to.

That's our problem. It isn't the I can't and don't, it's the ought tos on top of it. That's our problem.

We've got this wrong idea of the self. Not only we can't do it, we say we can't. We don't really mean it, we say we can't.

And we don't do it, but we deep down say we ought to, our machine says I ought to. Now you ought not. You can, don't, never will.

This is the subtlety of a great chapter. Any of you who dig further, if you really want to get sort of, it didn't do easy in some ways. It's the structure of these things in Bible terms.

Romans is a great book, of course. It isn't easy. I only came through by, I had two weeks, what you didn't have, of traveling in a canoe up a tributary of the Congo.

I hadn't got too much to do except stop occasionally in villages and talk to them, being paddled along. I dug up Romans then, and I got some of my depths there out of trying to find out what Romans meant. I don't usually use commentary as much.

I prefer to get straight. But in this case I did. It was American, so of course it was good.

And he helped me a bit. Stifler. Never heard it before or since.

He wasn't stiff, he was good. But he helped me because Romans isn't easy to see, but you'll find this, what I'm talking about essentially is Romans. Now Romans has that most subtle chapter.

Romans 6, Romans 3 is when you're uttering your guilt of your sins. That's the first operation of this law of God, which is of course you say, I didn't do what I should do. You're up against it, you're guilty.

And then you find through the blood of Jesus Christ that that's all disappeared and in God's sight there's no guilt left. It all went on Jesus Christ, the resurrection was a proof that God accepted him. So in God's sight you're as if you've never sinned.

It's not there. So it's gone forever. Gone from him, gone from you.

Now that's guilt. That's back in earlier chapters. Now you come on through certain discussions.

Romans 6 says, well you go farther than that. You're a new kind of person now. You've shared a cross which has cut you off.

You haven't disappeared as a person. Shared a cross doesn't mean you disappeared as a human. It means that inside you, you've been through what Jesus Christ did, which was separation between yourself and this wrong spirit, the cut-off.

And then it says, now you've shared this resurrection, which means you're the same person, exactly the same person. But inside you there's been this change from that wrong spirit has come to the right spirit. That's this unity.

Now that's very wonderful. That's Romans 6. Then suddenly it keeps saying, now therefore you're not under the law. It keeps saying that.

It pops it in. Therefore you can have victory because you're not under the law. What's that mean? Not under the law.

But then you've got a whole chapter. In Romans 7, it's a chapter, which says, in Romans 6 it says you were dead to sin, which means you were dead. You've been cut off.

Dead means cut off. You're in a new life. Dead doesn't mean you disappear.

You've just cut off one dimension. Here's another. We're cut off from the kingdom of hell.

We're put in the kingdom of heaven. That's what death and resurrection is. The kingdom of heaven is down here, not up there.

This is the kingdom of heaven. It's in this. But it says you've died to sin, that old control by that old spirit of sin.

You've also died to law. Romans 7 says you've died to law. What's that mean? Died to law.

You're cut off from the control of law. Why? Because the ultimate of law for the redeemed person now is just this point. Well, I ought to be better anyhow.

I ought to. Romans 8, first of all, law says you didn't, did you? No, I didn't. Now, it's John's first one.

You didn't. You're guilty. All right, you're guilty.

You're under condemnation. You're under judgment. Thank God for Jesus Christ.

That's when you first step in. That's the first phase of the operation of the law policy in our unredeemed condition. Now you're in a redeemed condition.

Now law still operates on this level. Now it doesn't say you didn't. It says you ought.

Or I should say, originally it says you should, but didn't. The first one says, in the unredeemed condition, you should do so, but didn't. And you admit that you're guilty.

Now it says you should and can't. Now Romans 7, Romans 7 is you want to. You're a new person.

So you're delighted in the law of God of the inner man. Your inner man is your inner spirit. Where you and Jesus Christ are joined together.

You and God are joined together. You're delighted in the law now. You're delighted in God.

You're a God's person. You're a God's person, you see. Now because you've still got this wrong idea of yourself, and you have all these taboos around you, you see, we ought to be this, we ought to love, we ought to be good, we ought to have victory, we ought to have power, we ought to have peace, we ought to have this and this and this and this around us, you see.

They're coming like a great wave of oughts on us. You ought, you ought, you ought. Because you've got this thing where you say, all right now, yes, I'm for that.

Now the illustration given to us in Romans 7, it's very interesting. Romans 7, I won't go too deeply into it now, I haven't got my Bibles, can't study it here, but there's a sudden section where Paul gives a little personal witness, like we like to give personal witnesses. He says, I'll tell you what I mean.

He says, I was a new man in Christ. Now before I was a new man, he was a great legalist, you know, Paul, of course was a great Pharisee. Oh, I kept all the laws and so on.

I was up on top and so on. Of course, his supremacy was self-righteousness, of course, self-love, pride, his supremacy, like the elder brother in the father's house and so on. Well, now he came off that, at salvation, down he came.

He found he was lost and found Jesus Christ and so on. Now he says, I'm now a new person. But if he says, here's the law of God, I delight in the law of God, he says, I suddenly discovered the Tenth Commandment.

Now I never saw the Tenth Commandment before, he said. I saw the first line because there were more acts. I mustn't steal, I mustn't lie, I mustn't build a dungery, I mustn't murder.

They're acts. I can go on that level, I mustn't worship idols and whatnot. I can see that.

Suddenly come to the reference to the Tenth Commandment. Tenth Commandment, shouldn't covet? Covet's in it, sir. Oh, said Paul, I'm all for that.

I'm for that. That's great. I'm for God.

I won't covet anything. The next thing I thought was so full of covet, covet is for everything. You see, God was teaching him that the self can only be self-loving.

Cut yourself off as if you could do something. All you can be is yourself. You're self-reliant.

And the sixth thing about self-reliance is it wants its own way. And so you're in conflict. Deep inside you don't want to go that way, you want God's way.

But you've said, I want to go. I want to be self-loving. And by saying I want, I will, as if I can do it.

You really haven't, you've appeared to cut yourself off from God. Of course, it's only appearance, you haven't really cut yourself off. You've cut yourself off from God, immediately self wants the other way around.

And you're in conflict. I do want this, I do want that, I do covet this, I do covet that. And you're torn up.

So when people say, life's a conflict, you know that in Romans 7, life isn't a conflict. You visit the conflict area every now and then. We don't live there.

It's different. Life isn't a conflict. Life's a conflict, while my answer to life is, well, I'd better do it, I must somehow love more, I must be more like that fellow, and I must have more power, and I must have more this, and I fail here.

Well, then you are in a conflict, because you don't want to be like that, and you keep at it again and again. Somebody spoke to me about only one thing, alcohol, yesterday. Not impatient a day or two ago.

What about addiction? I said, you'll never get free from addiction by looking at it. You are a person who are addicted, and it means somehow you want to be freed somehow. And you look at yourself to become a free person.

You don't answer that way. You don't answer that way. The only answer to anything in life is, I'm jumping a little now on this, but the only answer is when you say, oh yes, I shall always be an addict.

I'm done for, that's all I am. We're all addicted, it depends on what. We're all alcoholics, it depends on what kind of alcohol, it's all, whether it's pride or whatever you like, the quality of alcohol, isn't it, that's all.

The answer isn't to say, oh, that's all I am, but thank God, Lord, at this moment I'm not in alcohol now, all right, thank God for that. As for the next moment, that's your business. I'm not going to think about the next moment.

That's your business. Now, you come off yourself as if you could change yourself. Of course I can't change.

Left to myself, I'll always be an addict. All I've got to live is in this moment. At this moment I'm not now drinking, thank God.

All right, praise the Lord. And as for the next moment, it doesn't do with me. Five minutes, that isn't my business, that's God's business.

I've sold my attention on to a God who's controlling and containing me. Now, if in the course of time you go and do it again, do the same thing again. Say, no, Lord, I'm caught up again.

I'm not going to come under guilt and conviction and say, no, I'm going on. No, I'm not going to do that. I've sinned, thank you, Lord, for the blood of Jesus.

I've been caught up, thank you, Lord, for the blood of Jesus. Up I come. All right, let's look at the future now, that's your show again.

See, that's keeping free from self. Say, in fact, impatience will get in the other way. You don't get through because if you do, you'll be looking and say, why aren't I different? Why don't I come free of impatience? Why don't I stop hating people? And as if you'll be the improved person, you'll never be the improved person.

You're only a bundle of hates, nothing else, that's all you are. And you transfer your attention, you see, from yourself to the real self in you, which is Christ in you, and you don't look an inch beyond the present. You live in the present.

That's the word walk. That's why the Bible's full of that lovely word walk. In every letter you'll find in the New Testament, after they've given you your foundations in Christ, they say, now walk.

When Paul, in Ephesians, talks about now you are joined with Jesus Christ in death and resurrection and ascension, we haven't discussed that, and seeking with him and so on. Now it says, I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, walk worthy. Jim quoted yesterday, if we live in the spirit, walk in the spirit.

As, therefore, we receive Christ Jesus as Lord, so walking, in the 6 Colossians, every single letter you go to, you'll find it moves over from a discussion of what our relationship has become in Christ and through Christ. Now then, what you do is you carry it out by walking. What's walking? One step at a time.

You can't walk two steps at a time. One step at a time. And this is the beautiful way of life.

Life is only in the present tense. It's only now. And don't look ahead.

I learned a great deal from my brother Africans. I lived 10 years among the Africans. I loved them.

I took some time to love them, and they took longer to love me, but we got there in the end. And so, I went back a few years ago. My, what a love there was there.

But the Africans are very pragmatic. The Indians are philosophical. God needs them both.

The Africans are pragmatic, down to earth. And I tell you, they can teach us a few lessons, I can tell you that. And one of the lessons they taught me was this.

They said, Brother, this is how you live the Christian life. Leave the past under the blood. Don't take guilt and condemnation about the past.

Leave the past under the blood. Leave the future with God and get walking. Leave the past under the blood.

Leave the future with God and get walking. Get walking. In other words, just now.

Just now. Just now. Well, if you're not losing your temper now, thank God.

Rejoice in the Lord. And don't say, shall I lose it again? Say, it's up to God. God's my keeper.

I'm not keeping it forever, I believe. I leave it to him. And if you do lose it tomorrow, you say, sorry Lord, lose it again.

I'll get up again, get cleansed. Up to you now. You'll find you won't get caught too often.

If you get on that level. So that's great fun, I assure you. Yeah? Yes.

No law. That's it. That's right.

If it's in there, that's it. So you see, when you see this, you're lost to law. Because law is to you.

Law is God's clever trick on us. Because we're full of self. I'm going back to our old life, our redeemed life.

Full of ourselves. Right in our own life. All right, God said, if you want your own life, write it properly.

Here's the law. Well, of course, that catches us out. Because we know we ought to keep it and can't keep it.

And that's how we get saved. But finally we haven't kept it. So yes, the law is a catch-out to bring us to Christ.

Now, in the redeemed life, where we haven't yet learned the subtlety of this self-business, the law still remains as it were. Now, if you get rid of it, you're dead to it. The law says you ought to teach it.

But you can't, of course. Not that you can. And so, in that great chapter, if you ever study it, it's difficult to study a chapter, but it's a basic chapter to the understanding of the ways of God, Romans 7, right in the middle.

You get that operative word, where it says this, for to will is present with me, but hard to perform that which is good I find no power. To will is present with me. Oh, I want to do the right thing.

I get stirred up to do it. Hard to perform that which is good I find not. It's not there.

It's not there. No, it will be there. So you see, you see the subtlety of having to give up the idea you ever will become something.

That's our subtlety. Most of us, as I say, will use at least the cliché to say, I can't do it. We don't press really me, who we hate.

We can't do it. But we say we ought to do it now. Keep off that word.

Don't take it, but it's put on you by others. Don't take it. So no, I can't.

I ought to do nothing except be a common funny human. That's all. It's God in me.

Now you try. Now, yes. No, we can't do these things that we do.

Yes. Oh, give up trying. Don't try and be good.

That's the worst form of sin. No, you can't because you're caught. See, God's a perfect catcher-out.

You see, if you come to God, you're caught, he won't let you. You see, you can't hold him. You try now.

I'll challenge you to come back next year and tell me you can follow the devil. You can't. We poor things, we're slaves.

I spent 41 years trying to escape and can't. I don't know how many years you spent. You're caught.

So it's a kind of joke. You can't go back to that old life. That's why you're safe.

You can't. You can slip. You can slip, but you can't go back.

So, you see, the relationship then really is, if you follow through the Bible on this, Romans 8, as someone mentioned to me at Tommy Gibson's wonderful talks last year here, means we've come out now, no condemnation. Now, the law of the spirit of life, law is principle. The principle by which the spirit of life operates in me.

The spirit of life, the principle is, he's taking me over. That's the principle. And set me free from the law of sin and death.

Why? Because the law was there to say, you ought, but I can't. I'm caught all the time, I struggle to do it, I can't do it, and I'm confused and baffled and so on. But when I say, I give up, I never shall do it.

I never shall be free of a single thing. Lift me up, I shall go on doing everything forever. Can't do a thing.

But you are in me now then. I'm free. I'm not under that law because that law is to say, I ought.

And I say, I can't, because I've finished with the law then. Died to the law. Now I'm under a new principle, I don't like that word, a new person, a new relationship.

This person is functioning in me. So I live now in Romans 8. In Romans 8 you'll find it's just operating quite naturally with this new mind. You have this new mind in you and the witness of spirit and the child of God and guidance and so on, that follows on to this victory chapter.

But we visit Romans 7. You don't live in Romans 7. You live in Romans 8, visit Romans 7. You live in Romans 8, we get stirred up by something we think we ought to do. Maybe again, because we hear something in the Bible, or hear some address, or stirred up by what other people are doing, or get under some failure or sin or something. And we ought to.

Now we're getting back. We ought to. Then you're in bondage.

But you're back in Romans 7, visiting Romans 7, you ought to and you can't. So you say, we do pay visits to Romans 7, we're going to come back again when we've gone to Romans 8. So you live in Romans 6 and 8 and visit Romans 7. And Romans 7 is a very, very wonderful, it's put in there because this is the key to this new type of life. Now then, when you're there, now you can apprehend, comprehend the unity.

Because you see, unity to you now is, I know it isn't, you have a big laugh. I say this life isn't healthy unless you've got a constant laugh inside you. You're always laughing at the jokes that God can live in a thing like you.

That's all. To me it's a permanent joke. Life's a permanent joke to me.

It is to you. Because you're free, you laugh at yourself because you're just a bundle of humanity. That's all.

And the laugh also is that God can live in a thing like this. As I always say, he has pretty poor taste, I can say that all right. And there we are.

Now that's unity. Now it is possible, as I said yesterday, possible that to settle into the awareness of unity does need another act of faith. And faith is a conscious choice, you know that.

Faith is the biblical term for choosing something, for relating supply to demand. Here's the supply, we have a demand, in between you say, I take my supply. And I told you, the operation of that law of choice is what you take, takes you.

You take a thing, it takes you. You take a chair, a chair takes you. You take a profession, a profession takes you.

You take a wife, she surely takes you. It works out that way. It works out those ways.

So now, so there is, I think the evidence of the Bible is that for most of us there is this second act. That's what people talk about sometimes as the baptism of the spirit, sometimes as full salvation, sometimes as entire sanctification, sometimes the second rest, sometimes the second blessing, all these different names conveying the fact that there is this second act. Why? Because, as I say, for very few of us, because of this confusion between the human self and the divine self, have we settled into a consciousness that it is a fixed unity, and in unity the little person is he.

See, you only live by inner awareness. You only can live that way. Everything in life, you are at ease because you are aware.

Now for instance, you take your relationship, the best illustration of unity is our relationship to our bodies. Now you are not your body, you are deep in your body. You are in a unity with your body, so you have an inner awareness of it.

You don't have to try and make it work, on several occasions. You don't have to try and make your eye work, or your ear work, or your tongue work, certainly you don't make that work. Try to make that work, it works all too easily.

You see, you've got a lovely spontaneity. Part of you, you're conscious that you have the eye, the ear, and all the rest of it, and you go on using them. This is a beautiful unity.

Therefore, out of unity comes a liberation, spontaneity, and it has an inner consciousness behind it. That's why when you have a sick eye or a sick ear, you either go to prayer or the doctor or both, because you want to get a spontaneity restored. Now, I should say to you that I think most of us haven't an inner awareness, a central awareness of unity, in the same way as we have of our primary acceptance or justification.

Usually we haven't. The two technical terms we use, I suppose, are justification and unification. That's to say, all of us who are redeemed, probably all of us, it isn't necessary so, but probably all of us, there's an awareness we are accepted.

It isn't absolutely necessary, because it depends on your faith, not the awareness I speak about at the moment is what he conveys to you. But most of us, when we are redeemed, we are aware, we're accepted, and so we're happy and at ease because we're accepted and forgiven and a child of God and a member of the family and so on. Now, to have the awareness of the unity, for most of us, is a further stage, because, you see, it doesn't mean, it means the sense of separation between you and God as God, and you are just part of the eternal, part of the one, whatever phrase you like to use, the branch of the vine.

As I said before, you move from being branch-minded to being vine-minded. Instead of being sparse about yourself, you've now come to see, oh, yes, I'm, the main point, despite myself and all the rest of it, the main point is this person is the one functioning by me, and so on. And so, for most of us, there has been that act, crisis, if you like, where we've specifically entered in and said, this is the time to turn to the fact about me.

Now, it isn't a new fact, it isn't a new fact. It was there from the moment you were redeemed, but it hasn't, as I said before, a general fact doesn't become personal experience when you take it. Food only becomes food to you when you take it.

And so a general fact doesn't become that until you've taken it. Now, you haven't been properly aware enough of your need, you see, in the earlier days, and it may be so some of us here don't bother about what I'm talking about. Maybe it doesn't mean anything to you, all right.

You haven't reached the condition in which you need to be aware of this. But when you become aware of it, then you see there's the affirmation of this fact. What you take, takes you.

Now that's not your business. What I have to learn, what you have to learn, is a life of time and eternity which is based on my choices, and my choices in turn are based on what is to me the most reliable thing I can choose. That's all you can get.

There's no proof of God except the inner proof, no external proofs of God. And all you get in the end is I'm a free being. Now, in my freedom, through various situations and conditions I've come to see to me this is the most wonderful thing in time and eternity.

There's a God like that, a God who manifests himself like that in Jesus Christ, a Savior who does this for me, promises to make me like that, I'll attach my choice to them. That's all I've got. That's all I've got.

And you can prove nothing else beyond in yourself, in whatever inner witness you have. But you don't live by your inner witness. You live by the totality of your choice related to what you've chosen.

That's all. That's all you have. So you don't depend ultimately on the consciousness being, the awareness being imparted to you.

Actually it does, I think it indicates somewhere or other, but you don't tussle around that. It isn't a question, am I aware? I think I told you that before. That's one of the last forms of self which has to go.

See, this self-centered, self-seeking self wants to know itself, wants to be able to have what it wants, as it were, you see what I mean? And so I may say, I want to be sure I've got him. I want to be sure I know him. It's still a form of I. Now God wants people who, they've settled in to this as a basis of life, no matter what I feel or don't feel, this is the fact.

I just live a normal natural life and the basis of my life is this, that God has joined himself to me. So he gets us to a place where we do without consciousness, without awareness. Now that doesn't usually remain, because the principle of, as I say, in all of life is what you choose, chooses you.

You take a profession, you learn the profession, I've said this several times over, you learn the profession. For instance, I learned a language in Africa. Well, I can't tell the day when I was very surprised, I spent these months sweating at it, it seemed to go in here and come out there, and I suddenly found I was talking in it.

It had got me. See, the awareness has become part of it. I couldn't tell you where, I just found, oh, I've been able to think in it and talk in it, it's become part of me.

I went back 20 years after and thought I'd talk the first day like that, become part of me. Now that's what I mean by something taking you over. But that's not my business, that's the language business, that's not my business.

My business is to take it and make it my own. The way it makes itself known to me, that's its business. So it isn't your business that you should have this awareness, that's the witness of the spirit.

And he does give it his own way. Maybe the very reason he conjures you is because you fuss about it. But if he sees the fuss, you find the witness, maybe.

He may come a thousand ways, he's come with many these days for the gift of tongues. As long as you don't mistake the gift of tongues for the fact of the spirit, you can have the spirit, as James has very clearly put, as many different ways. He comes by that way himself, he did at Pentecost, others by inner witness, about different ways, it doesn't matter how he comes.

But many of you know this, that you have come to an inner subtle consciousness, part of you now, this is an amazing fact, it's become part of you. This is entering into the unity. Well, what you've got to do is to be sure that you have followed the unity, that's all you've got to do.