The Night on the Banana Plantation

Well, I'm thankful that some of you have some stickability, because everybody says they can't understand what I say. You will say I speak too quickly. There's another way around, which is some people hear too slowly.

So they never quite know. So we'll just have to do our best again, that's all. I'm continuing from where we left off yesterday afternoon, where we'd seen the given fact of the eternal union, given fact, through Christ in history, through Christ crucified, Christ risen, including all humanity, because he was all humanity on the cross, and all humanity, all human beings were in him crucified, buried, risen and ascended, although we haven't touched on that.

What we were then saying is, yes, but how can a general fact become a personal experience? How does that become such a realized fact to us? Well, this fact is the fact, and we just live. We kind of forget the fact and live. This is the hidden secret of spontaneous living.

By the fact I mean the unity fact, that God and I are actually one person, actually one person. So you are not really you at all. You're only, if your name is Bill, you're Christ in Bill's form, or Christ in Anne's form, whatever it may be.

You're just a form of him. This is the foundation. As I say, you leave foundations behind.

You forget them and live in the superstructure. This is the road. You forget the road and drive on it.

It's this forgettable relationship that we're after. So it is natural, spontaneous, a unity which is a fact, not only a fact in history, but a fact in experience. And that's what we're considering.

Thank God it is a fact in experience. Thank God it's more here than in most folks we meet with. But it's always good to refresh ourselves as to how it is a fact in experience, what the basis of the experience is, and also may help us to share with others also.

We saw, therefore, the law of experience as the law of supply and demand. Or the law of faith, but putting it in more present-day language. That the whole world consists of supplies, and we're conditioned for demand.

And where there's a personal demand, and there's a supply available, it's quite easy at first, but there's a free choice in the middle. By the freedom of our choice, here's my demand, here's the supply, I take. Or I attach myself, whatever it may be.

Food, I take. Chair, I attach myself to it, whatever it may be. But the real significance of this interaction of law of supply and demand is the supply takes you, not you it.

The supply takes you, not you it. And this is experience. You take a chair, the chair takes you, it holds you up.

You take food, the food takes you over. You take air, air functions in you. So the law of supply and demand is the taker gets took.

This is when you're at home in it. As I say, in a more advanced realm, you take a trade, a trade takes you. You take whatever you've come home to in life.

It's got you, and you're naturally a doctor, naturally a musician, naturally an artist, naturally what you like. It's taking you over, it's part of you. This is the law of experience.

How a supply met with a demand in between, by our freedom, which we appropriated around, the demand appropriates us. The supply appropriates us. So we saw how, on the simple scriptural presentation of the facts and the basis, the normal way in which we come into the, begin to come into the fact, is the experience fact of this spontaneous unity.

The way we begin to come is by finally, by having our demand of a saviour. The demand created by our sins, our separation, our lost condition, our alienation from God. Whereas as a demand, a supply given us two thousand years ago, in our freedom, we receive the supply, receive Jesus Christ, receive his precious blood.

And then what I say before happens, he takes us over. And into our hearts comes a sense of peace, we really are reconciled. We really are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ.

The blood has cleansed us. But more important than that, I pointed out, was that, almost perhaps not so clearly noted by us, what really happens is we begin to love with the divine love. Because that's the first moment in which we begin to love somebody else more than ourselves, which is eternal love.

Eternal love is living other people's lives. The meaning of life is other people. Our life, the meaning of life is ourselves.

That's the fallen dimension. When we move into redemption, we can't help ourselves. It's a spontaneity.

You can't help yourself. You begin to love him who died for you. You begin to love the God, the God who sent you, more than you love yourself.

And you finally test it out, because certain areas in our young lives, our young Christian lives, come about where there's a challenge between, shall I follow my way? Shall I follow his way? Probably we wriggle a bit. God allows you about three weeks to kick, and then give in. That's all right.

God likes kicking people. God doesn't want puddings. He wants people.

So it's all right to do a kick, as long as you give in in the end. But you have to give in. You find in the end, because he's conquered.

God's conquered Nazarene. He's conquered, and you find this love. Because of the love, you go along with him.

This is the proof. The first time in your human history, you're loving somebody else more than yourself, and that's not your love. This is the whole important point we're getting at.

This is the beginning of the outflow of God who loves, the God who loves loving through you. That's the point. This is the one who's eternal love.

We begin to express his eternal love by you, and the first one we take is loving himself, loving Jesus. But if you love Jesus, you love people. So you begin to find the interest arises in you.

So-and-so can know this. Can you help so-and-so? Can you help so-and-so? Now the stream is beginning to flow. So you become the eternal love, without perhaps actually noticing in those beginning days what's happened to you.

You probably think you've begun to love him. You probably haven't recognized it's really his love beginning to function in and through you. Through your love faculty is coming his love, because this is the only eternal love.

There's only one self-giving love in the universe. That's he. And this is the beginning of he, of him who is the eternal self-giving love, expressing his self-giving self by you, which is the purpose of the union.

This one person can have his manifestation by us. Now, in nearly every case, I call that, for convenience, a first collapse. The collapse being on our own self-righteousness, on our own being good enough by ourselves.

The collapse had to come when we were broken at the foot of the cross and admitted our sinnerhood and our need of a savior. We ceased to build up our own righteousness, as the Bible says. This was the collapse on the guilt level, the collapse on the level that we hadn't been what we should be.

There's a deeper collapse which has to take place, which is not only that we didn't do what we should do, but we can't do what we should do. There's a collapse because of guilt. There's a collapse because of helplessness.

The collapse of the sinner is because he didn't do what he should do. The collapse of the saint, of the redeemed, is because he can't do what he should do. Guilt, helplessness.

Helplessness is profounder in its discovery than guilt. We may be glad to get rid of our guilt because it may be inconvenient. We may not be so glad to get rid of ourselves because it may not be quite so convenient.

So it may make it a little more difficult for this one. You'll find that practically all through the Bible if you examine it. You'll find the great servants of God had a second collapse after they'd come into their relationship to God.

You'll find it in the life of Moses, you'll find it in the life of Joshua, the life of David at Ziklag, you'll find it in Elisha with Elijah, in Jesus' own life had to be tested out. It hadn't taken place exactly, it had to be tested out though. The Mount of Temptation and so on all the way through.

Why has there to be this second collapse? Because it's very rare that we can see how deeply the fall has made us captives. How deep the possession of us has gone. The fall has given us the concept of life which is based on self-activity, self-centeredness.

It seems the only way we can live our lives, after we've got a life to live, we must be active. We've got a home to run, a business to run, we must be active. So it looks as if life must be we in action and maybe now we've got God to help us a bit.

But it seems common sense it must be us in action. It's a very difficult thing for us to discover that humanity doesn't become true humanity until it disappears before it reappears. You have to disappear as a human, goodbye, before you reappear as a real human.

Real humanity never becomes real humanity until it disappears before it reappears. And that's a little awkward. I don't like disappearing, it doesn't seem common sense.

Because I don't disappear here, I am in action. So it's this paradox business. But you never come through to true humanity until that has taken place in you which is equivalent to a disappearance.

Then you can reappear to be what you really are. A real good, fat, self-asserting self. God-like self-asserting selves are the right type.

The disappearance has to take place because of this normal outlook we have. Well, we've run our life for years, we've got to run it. We've got minds and wills and emotions and bodies, we must go to it.

We've got responsibilities and jobs and homes, we must run them. And now we want to run them more on God's standards, so we'll seek to run them on God's standards a bit better. And now we've got Holy Spirit's helper, splendid, he's a good helper.

Unfortunately, he doesn't like being a helper too long. He prefers you to be his helper rather than he to be your helper. So it doesn't work too well.

You won't be anybody's helper. So you see, Christianity is only on the elementary footing when our concept of God is as an assistant or a partner or a fellow. Christianity is on the total footing when God's a replacement.

The life we're talking about isn't a life where God is my assistant or God is my partner or God is my fellow or God is my helper. It's when God is my replacement. That's the point.

And it has to be a replacement on the two levels. I have to find a replacement for my sins. I have to find a replacement for myself.

My replacement for my sins is Christ's blood, Christ's righteousness. In the place of my sins, I receive him in the efficacy of his precious blood and his righteousness imputed to me. And so that's a replacement of his cleansing blood for my sins.

The second replacement is his self for myself. That's a deeper one. Not side by side.

That's why Paul said, and I quoted you before in the great statement, I have been crucified with Christ so far as being just that old independent, unredeemed, self-reliant selfish out. Nevertheless, I live. I'm here as a Christian.

Wait a minute, wait a minute. No, it isn't I. It's yet not I but Christ. One of the most important statements in the Bible, Galatians 2.20. He didn't say, nevertheless, I live and here's Christ helping me through.

Nevertheless, I live here and six inches off is Christ inside me. We're two of us together. He didn't.

He said, he's replaced me. Nevertheless, I live. No, yet not I but Christ lives in me.

Now, that is an actual fact of every one of us, the moment we're redeemed. What we're talking about now isn't the attainment of something which isn't, but the recognition of something which is. The moment a person is redeemed, he's unified eternally.

Because the only redemption there is, is this person has come to take the place in me and by me for which I was created and missed through the fall and for which I've been now recreated in Christ. Which is, as we see, that this person is the real person and I'm a means, I'm a free, spontaneous means of which he expresses himself. And we're in a unity which is a spontaneity in which I'm in action, it isn't really I towards he.

That's where that statement becomes so significant, ye are the light of the world. Now, that's a strong statement. I think Jesus made a mistake.

Jesus said that in Matthew 5. He seriously said, you have the light of the world. Why? Because I'll tell you, you're not light. You're a bunch of darkness.

That's all you are. He's light. How can you say you're light? When I say I have a thing, I imply a distinction between two entities.

If I say I have those glasses, I don't say I am those glasses, I say I have them. Two entities. Glass is one entity, I'm another one.

And we're in a relationship, here and I, we're in some relationship. Jesus might have said, you have the light. He's the light, I'm the darkness, and we're sort of in a relationship.

If he didn't say it, he'd say, you are the light. That's fusion. That's unity.

It becomes such a basic fact, and such a natural fact, such a spontaneous fact, that it just is the fact of life. And we live and that's he shining. We live and that is he shining.

This is the life. Not that we get him to shine. Our living is he shining.

This is it. So we are a form of Christ. What Paul said.

Paul said, nevertheless I live, yet not I am a Christ. He said to me, the real Paul is Christ. The real you is Christ.

Now, that's a fact. From the moment we've entered into the relationship of redemption, which comes out of our free choice. We're not born redeemed, we're born unredeemed, as we know.

That's the gospel. We're born fallen, we're born lost. But it's been settled for us 2,000 years ago in Jesus Christ.

And when there's been, there's the supply, when, as I say, when there's been the demand, and in our freedom, we've, in our demand, we've received what's been given to us, we become immediately and eternally unified. So it isn't a question now of obtaining something which we haven't got, but recognizing something we have. But life is recognition.

In the end, the key to life is the repetition of recognition. That's all there is in life. The repetition of recognition.

The reason being, as we explain a little later on, we live in a paradox of a world which doesn't appear to be his at all. We live in an outer world, where is he? I can't see him. Where is he? And so we're always in situations where we don't see him.

He doesn't appear to be there, especially when the devil's knocking around the corner. Where is he? Where is he? So we live in a life where we're constantly moved off by, and there are reasons for it, which I'll explain probably tomorrow, we're moved off the inner realization to outer appearance, which is, where is he anyhow? And so life basically is recognition and the repetition of recognition. Back and back and back.

We have to say, no, no, he is there all the time. It's all right. So we repeat recognition.

We repeat recognition. Recognition is the key. So it isn't a question of obtaining what isn't, but recognizing what is, which is this unity.

But you see, my point is, unity is meaningless unless it is spontaneous, unless you and I live in a spontaneous awareness, the same awareness as we have of ourselves. You see, there's almost the last stages of this disappearance of the self, to which we have to go, is the stages, well, am I conscious of him? And do I feel him? A little element of I in it, implying the separation between I and he, and I ought to be sure he's here, as if I and he are separate, and I ought to know he's here. But do you know yourself? You just are yourself.

You don't stop here if I say, am I really here? And I must be quite sure I'm here. You take yourself for granted. God's your other self.

God's your real self. Christ's your real self. And you don't ever ask, is he here anymore? And you ask, are you here? You take yourself for granted, you take him for granted, and you leave.

There are these repetitions of recognition, because of certain impacts of the world upon us, which are very important, but they must be discussed another time, which cause us to be in situations in which he doesn't appear to be there, then to repeat, we only repeat, oh, that's all right, he's here, it's all right, carry on. You never open your lips to ask him to be there, don't insult him. Never ask him again, that's an insult.

Now, in order for this to get into focus, I'm saying that the whole Bible seems to show it. It seems a necessity that we have a second collapse. Why? That's what I've told you.

Because without recognizing, because we're so used to being ourselves, we have a carryover into our redeemed life of still being ourselves. And it seems like common sense. We've left behind our sins, we've taken them to the cross, and they've disappeared in the cleansing blood of Christ, and he's become our saviour, and our substitute, and our righteousness, and so on.

But together with him, we've got the almost inevitable carryover of ourselves, and we'd better live a better life now. And a great deal of our platform instruction goes that way. The Bible, of course, is a nice catch-out, you know.

The Bible's there to catch you out where you are, and take you higher. So the Bible is always written in a way, it kind of tricks the book. It'll trick you out.

For instance, you read the Bible, commands, you love, you do so and so. You try it. You'll soon collapse.

You find you can't. So you say, you see, it tells you, the command of the Bible says this, you must be so and so, but it doesn't tell you straight away how you must be so and so. The how is there also for you to find out.

So it looks as if, I must be so and so, I'd better do it. You try. You're going down.

But when you say, uh-huh, this, I must be, I must love my brother, I must forgive my brother, I must be merciful. Uh-huh, how? When you find out another person does it by you, now you've got someone. And he's fulfilling his own commands by you, that's quite a different matter.

But that's the inner trick. The tricks of God upon us take us deeper each time. Um, so there has to be, I'm saying now, it has to be an ultimate.

There has to be a total collapse of us humans on the basis of our ability. We have to be collapsed in helplessness as we were collapsed. Collapsed on the basis we can't do it, as we were collapsed on the basis we didn't do it.

Now you never found redemption by a part built up of yourself and himself, you didn't. If you're redeemed, you went to the bottom. If you're redeemed, there wasn't a thing you could do about it.

You were done for. You were lost, whatever terms you may use. You were cut off from God, you were finished.

There wasn't a thing you could do. There was a thing you could do, but you never got there yet. This isn't a climb-up life, it's a God-climbing-down life.

He didn't. We didn't climb up to him, he climbed down to us and said, here I am, here I am. Oh, thanks very much, that's all.

So you know, not a person in this world has been redeemed if it's a kind of mischief. You weren't so bad after all, you had a few good works to present to him and a few bits of religion. Ah, you had a collapse.

There wasn't a thing left you could do. Only then were you conditioned to see a replacement. You can't see a replacement if you can do anything about it.

You only see a replacement when you can do nothing more about it. So when you can do nothing more about your sins, oh, that's it, he did it all. I told you yesterday what that meant to me at 18 years of age.

Of course, all Episcopalians should be saved, should go to heaven, but they don't necessarily do so. And, oh, that's it. But until I collapse, I can see that.

Now, if there's a collapse of a sinner, there's a collapse of a saint, to use the old biblical terms. Saint, of course, doesn't mean you're a good fellow, it means you have a good God inside you. That's all.

We misuse these words, that's all. So if you're Saint Bill, it's Saint Jesus inside Mr. No Good Bill. That's what a saint is.

And so there's this second collapse. Now, that's more severe, because all we've got is ourselves. We might be glad to get rid of our sins, but get rid of ourselves, that's a bit tough.

So this is a pretty tough collapse. There is a place, I suggest, where each of us somewhere comes to a limit, where somewhere or other we can't make the life work. We're up against a wall which is insurmountable.

Something where you're beaten. I say Noah's a very healthy Christian, until he's more miserable as a Christian than he was as a non-Christian. Why? Because you're miserable as a non-Christian, but you pretend you're not.

When you're miserable as a Christian, at least you're honest and admit it to yourself anyhow. So may you all go about with long hang-dog faces, and there's some hope for you. Because, you see, it's not on the level of sincerity.

It's not on the level of devotion. You see, you can be all those things, but deep down, I'm devoted to God. I'm committed to God.

I'm this. And really, it's still self-reliant self. And so, I think Thomas mentioned it, our biggest sin is our good self.

Biggest sin is our bad self, because the bad self probably knows it's a bad self. You know old Pet Gert Behamer. She said, thank God she was an alcoholic.

She said, at least the alcoholic knows what his trouble is. You're all alcoholics, and pretend you don't know what it is. You're all alcoholics.

You're not a type of alcohol. That's all. She's about right, too.

Thank God we've got a new alcoholic now. There's the alcoholic for Jesus. Drunk with new wine.

Amen. So, somewhere it comes. That's all we need to say.

You don't put yourself into it. God's a good putter into it. He'll put you through.

Don't you try and crucify yourself. That's a bad life. Run away as hard as you can.

You won't escape. He'll catch you. He knows how to put us... Even when he puts us to death, he's a bit nice about it.

So, it's all right. It's all right. He'll put you there.

You must. You must. You can't, you see, you can't see a replacement until there's nothing more you can do about it.

I'll say it again. You couldn't see a replacement for what you hadn't done until there's nothing more you could do about it and you had to have his righteousness in your place. And you can't find a replacement for the fact that you can't do it until you find you can't do it.

And then you can find a replacement for somebody who can. Perhaps in this simple way, if I may use just a touch of personal experience there. Now, I found this out as a missionary.

Therefore, I was in earnest. I'd been glad. It cost me nothing to set out to go and give Jesus to the Africans.

Because when you've seen Jesus and his love begins to mount in you, of course you want to share him. And I could see no higher honor than to be allowed to go and share him where they'd never heard of him. So with great zest as a young man, 24, I went to Africa.

And I met him with my whole heart. And I had got Jesus. But so, I'm saying, it wasn't a question of devotion.

It wasn't a question of consecration. It wasn't a question of commitment. It wasn't a question of zealousness.

Every hour, every morning, we'd be up at, of course, we'd laugh about 6 o'clock. Every hour, every morning, we'd be up at 4 o'clock. Around the Word of God, praying in God's presence.

We lived that kind of life. So it wasn't a question of wholeheartedness for Jesus. But something was missing.

And what was missing was a more and more sense of I'm not what I ought to be. Now, this is where I got things wrong, you see. I thought I ought to be it.

I don't love as I should. There's something wrong. You can be, you can have a sentimental love for people 6,000 miles away, the dear heathen business.

But they're not so dear to you nor you to them when you're there. And you need a little more of the dear heathen business. You need an identifying love, the brotherhood, thank God he puts in us.

I hadn't got that. I hadn't got that kind of faith which really could believe that it could happen. We're so foolish.

We get deluded by outward appearances. And because appearances look so rough on the mission field, dull and dark, it's nothing to God. Of course, it looks like it.

You see, it can never happen, the change. Thank God it happens. We had a, I found a, used to pray a prayer years ago.

This is where the troubles have been in the Congo. We had several of our missions killed up where the rebels were. And years ago, I was there 45 years ago, used to pray a prayer.

He said, Lord, we're out here only for one reason. To see Jesus Christ running about inside black bodies. That's a great Christian.

He'll see Jesus Christ running about inside black bodies. He sure is. He is.

It's happened. But it doesn't look like it at first. So there was this kind of barrier.

Hadn't got the power. Hadn't got the faith. Hadn't got the love.

And disappointments. I was disappointed in my, I didn't, lots of things I didn't understand. The real disappointment was myself, of course, but I was finding my disappointment in my fellow missionaries and everything else.

So I was up against a brick wall. And I really, I was, that was the time it occurred to me, really, I'm more miserable out here than in my old, my old life at home. What should I do about it? Well, no, in all sincerity, because I was asking God.

But I got the false concept, which had to be removed. The false concept was, I'll be improved. There's love, there's faith, there's power, there's victory, there's this and this.

It somehow got important to me that I'll be a loving person. I'll be a believing person. I'll be an endued, powerful person, and so on.

See, as if, as if life is, we humans, becoming something. This was the big mistake. The way God met me, the simplest way God has his own original way to meet you when your condition's all right.

It might not be the way that suited you. He simply met me with that great statement, God is love. But it was the middle word that hit me, which you might not think the usual word.

It wasn't the God or the love, it was the is. I suddenly saw something. I said, oh, it doesn't say God has love, but God is love.

Now I said, if you have a thing, it isn't you, you may have a thing in your pockets. Well, you can take it out of your pockets and give it to somebody. And I could see the love as something God had, some kind of power or influence, something which God had, who put it to me, and I love.

I suddenly said, it doesn't say God has a thing called love, God is love. Then I said, if God is love, the only love in the universe is a person. If God is that love, the only love in the universe is a person.

Now I said, excuse me, because I needed love. It was as if he cut himself off from me, as if he said, oh, you've got it all wrong. Love isn't a thing.

I'm that love. It was the first sight I saw of this exclusive person. Of course, I've seen the whole thing since.

This exclusive person, the only one person in the universe. As he was saying to me, he said, I've got a thing to give you. I'm not a giver, I'm an isser.

I said, I am, that's all. But I said, how do I relate? Because I need, if I'm to be any good. Then I found some more.

So I found in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he says of Christ, now Christ is the power of God. Now it has the power. Again, I thought power was something he can impart to me.

No, power, Christ is a power. Power is a person. Everything is really one person.

Thank God, we're seeing it. He's unveiled it. Every single thing is a person.

It's a person in a certain form. This is the great unveiling. But I hadn't seen that then.

All right, so again, it isn't, it was as if he was saying, isn't the thing I give you I'm the power. Again, like an exclusive person standing in front of me. Well, I said, yes, but how do I relate? Finally, I came to a scripture which has been one of the keys to my life.

In the third chapter of Colossians, the 11th verse, where it says this, now Christ is all. That's a hot one. Not Christ has all and gives me some.

Christ is all. So there's nothing but Christ. And in all.

That's the phrase. That's where I got it. That phrase is there.

Christ is all and in all. I suddenly saw where I got it wrong. That we humans, humanity, doesn't exist to become something but to contain someone.

Christ is all and in all. I was not to become but to contain her. Now, there's my trouble.

There's our trouble. I ought to be so and so. I ought to love more.

I ought to be more powerful. I ought to have victory over my temper. I oughtn't to have these bad thoughts.

I oughtn't to have these ambitions. I oughtn't to be more loving. And all the time we beat ourselves up because we think we ought to improve.

You'll never improve. You're just a bunch of old human reactions. That's all you are.

Just a bundle of human reactions. And you won't change a single thing. You're just a bundle of appetites and a bundle of ambitions.

God happens to like that bundle, of course. There's little difference because he made it. That's all you are.

You'll never change. Now, it's a great thing when you give yourself up. And so, of course, the other reverse side is all and in all.

You contain someone. And that's the one who is it. That's the one who is it.

And that's why I got the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the But he's in such a relationship to you that by you he functions, but it's always he. Now, you're never very safe to come back as a person until you've gone out and become a tin can. Because if you haven't got that, you think you're kind of mixing yourself with him, and you ought to be so-and-so, and you ought to do so-and-so, and there's this mixture back again.

So you've got to have a second absolute collapse. The first absolute collapse is there wasn't a thing you could do about your sins. You had to take what he did for you.

The second collapse is there isn't a thing you can do about yourself. You've got to take him in place of you. And then he's the one.

Now, you begin a new transference of your awareness, of your reliance. Now, our reliance is, you see, on ourselves. Why don't I love more? Why aren't I more willing? Why can't I obey? Why don't I do so-and-so? That's this old thing caught hold of us, you see.

Now you begin to transfer yourself. When a person comes to me and says, oh, I'm not willing, I say, give it up. You never will be willing.

You're not meant to be willing. You're just a bundle of negative will in humanity. You say, God, you're the willing person.

Put your will through me. Until you put your will through me, I won't do a thing. And you kind of consciously look at God and say, get on to it.

See what I mean? The secret is always here. You're continually meeting people coming up, you know, saying, I can't love, you never will love. The only love we have by ourselves is self-love.

We say, no, we never will love, but there's a person here who says his love gets... There's a person in me who is the love. Go to it now. So you have a habit of a transference of awareness, of reliance inside you, from activity to receptivity.

This is the distortion of the fall. The fall has moved us over primarily from receptivity to activity. Instead of life starting with the fact, I'm being managed by somebody who expresses himself through me, and my action is secondary.

The primary act is the recognition, the receptivity of the one who's expressing himself. I've moved off him, and I've come down to rely on my activity. You see it all through life, because it's one law.

All nature. Vegetation doesn't arise out of activity, it arises out of receptivity. There wouldn't be one leaf on one tree if God didn't poise sunlight down and poise rain down.

And vegetation receives what it receives it uses. So activity is a by-product of receptivity. It must have receptivity primary, and activity as a by-product.

And having received, you get on with it. All science. We talk a great deal, we're thankful enough for science today.

Science isn't creation, it's application. Science isn't creation, it's application. It's discovery, if you like.

It's discovery, recognition of what is, having found what the atom is, having found what it is, use it. You receive first, you recognize first, then you use. This is the law of life.

So there is this fundamental vessel relationship. And a habit which has to be persisted on through life. You'll find all our troubles, all our confoundations, are because things are related back to you again.

And you feel guilty because you didn't love as you should do. You haven't the power as you should do. You haven't the fruit you should have.

You haven't the joy you should have. And you haven't the consciousness of God you should have. All is laid back, you watch.

That's the red light up. When you learn this lesson, you say, no, I never shall. It's not a question of I having a consciousness of God.

God's there, that's all. It's not a question of I having love of power. I never shall have.

God's my love, God's my power. Then I go to it on this basis. And God's the solver, the solution to my problems.

I'm God. So you've moved over in your centre from an attitude which is to produce a kind of activity in you to receptivity. And out of that receptivity you act.

Receptivity in the centre, activity as a product. That's all I can say then. But you don't really make it up.

Lots of you, of course, have been this way. It just happens one way or another. That you're brought to a second collapse when you're done for in some way, as a Christian.

And that's the most healthy thing that's happened to us. Because then you're conditioned for the replacement. Now, when we've had that, then we finally are conditioned for the awareness of the unity.

It's always there, but the awareness, the recognition of this unity, which is to sink down so much into ourselves that we can kind of forget it. It's well safe to know it before. Because if you knew it before, there'd be this interaction, a mixture of you and he.

You've gone out. You've disappeared. You're in your old tin can.

Having become a tin can forever, you're allowed to go back as a person. Now, the disappeared human comes back. But you come back with a big wink.

You know your place. You say, I can't understand God. I think he has pretty poor taste living in you, anyhow.

But he doesn't. And you laugh all the time. You laugh at the idea that God expressed himself through this.

It's great fun to think God can express himself through funny things, isn't it? God must have some fun up there. Think what he chooses down here. So, you see, you come loose.

There are other areas of this we have to discuss probably tomorrow. Where we begin to be more honest about ourselves. But I must discuss that a little later on.

But now we're conditioned for the unity. And unity is two persons. Now, you're back as a person.

The whole meaning of this is God wants persons. God wants original persons. The difference between the ethical and the spiritual is just there.

The ethical lives by general principles. We all try and be alike. Spiritual lives by a person.

He's most original, and you're most original. You go all sorts of different ways. That's the purpose of this personal relationship.

Each of us are individuals. And God expresses himself by our individuality. Thank God.

Tommy has brought that out beautifully for us. With the body and its different members and so forth. So, you come back as a person.

Now, then. Now we've come to the... We said, what is life? This, as far as us humans, this has reached the end. Life is this one person who is the life.

Joined into solitude to you, so you are that life also. And then you live, and it's really he living. Now, the foundation of that, therefore, is a fixed awareness of the unity.

That's what Tommy told us. Whatever name you use about Pentecost, or the depths of the spirit, or sanctification, or full salvation. This is... Its meaning is only this.

We've come to a fixed awareness of a unity. In which forever, somehow, we just know it isn't we, it's he. And yet it is we.

This is the paradox. It isn't we, it's he. Yet it is we.

And you can't get to that ease, you can't get to that yet it is we, until you first evolve that unity. You see, as I said earlier along, the purpose of creation, and the Garden of Eden, drama, history, and the, to some extent, the usage of the fall, has been for us to find ourselves. Because God wants humans who know their potential.

There's tremendous potential in humanity. Thank God. We're a fire.

As long as we burn out into light, instead of burning into self-consuming, as we said before. The fall is burning, turning into self-consumer cells. Salvation is a fire that burns and goes out to others as light.

Sudden light. So it's tremendous. And it was necessary for us to find at least a measure of our potential.

So we know we've got a mind that can think, and a will that can will, and passions which can express themselves by compassion. And all the different phases of humanity. But the trouble is, we've found the reverse way, so we're a bit afraid of ourselves.

We've got kind of tigers in our tanks, we never know when they'll pop their heads out. And so, quite rightly, we say, well, I'll go berserk on this, I'm kept somehow. My passions will catch me, or my hate will catch me, or my ambition will catch me.

I'm a dangerous fellow. And so we surround ourselves by laws, as best we know. Well, thank God for that, in a way.

We have our national laws, we have our human laws, that's what we have our religious laws. And we cling to them, because secretly it's the only thing we can save us from the tigers getting out. So we cling to our laws.

It's a hard thing to lose your laws. Now this is why people can't easily take this. Because this means, this unity means, in place of having a whole row of outward laws to try and keep you in place, you dare to believe you have one person in you, the law is the way everything works.

The way he works is by his love, his self-giving love. And he'll handle you, and he'll express self-giving love through you, and he'll handle your powers and your passions and your ambitions. He'll get through you, and when you get wrong, he'll put you right.

He's pretty clever at it. If you go wrong, he's there with you when you're wrong. He just gives you a tap on the head and says, come with me, I have some more sense, come back.

It's all right. So you're daring. The unity reduces daring, reduces freedom, because if you're once aware of it, you dare and say, I'll bet my life on it, I'll risk it, I'll go and just be myself.

I'll count on this person to keep me in tow. So you throw out the old laws, which happened at the cross. That's why Paul got a persecution, because he threw the law out.

Because the last form of self-reliance, self, is law. I'm all right, I've got this law, I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do that, and so on. We got it beautifully from our dear friend the Jewess here, who told us about the Jews and their laws, beautiful, for those of you who heard her.

So you see, but then you're tearing my last defence, you'll leave me naked. And I'll have to clean all of my clothes, with a little decency left. So I cling on.

And so religious people don't like it, because most of the religion, the final ascent of the self is religion. It's the final form of a respectable self. And so our laws we'll cling to.

And it's pretty dashing. So there it is. They come down, and so there's a collapse.

You see, you don't get that without a collapse. You don't get that until you find the laws won't work. Somewhere you've got to find, you can't answer.

Nothing always comes that way. For instance, you see, often it comes by an undeserved hurt. That's the final little catch.

That's what caught Job, an undeserved hurt. God had said he was the most righteous man on earth. That doesn't mean he was a great, fat, self-righteous fellow.

It means he trusted in the righteousness of God. Because God doesn't call a person righteous in self-righteousness, because self-righteousness is sin. He calls a person righteous when they trust in his mercies, of course.

And so Job was a person who was trusting in the mercies and the grace of God, and God was pleased with Job. And there's a whole wonderful description about the 1820s chapter of Job where he says the kind of person he was. He cared for the poor and the sick and the aging, and everybody knew him and loved him.

He was a gracious, loving, wonderful man. He wasn't the sort of queer, distant person with about 15 children and 3 million cattle all around him in the desert or something. It says he lived in a city.

He was an important man in the city. So, you see, he couldn't make it out. Why should this happen to him? Why should he lose his children, his cattle, and even his wife turned against him and told him to curse God, and even his beloved friends.

His friends were to be godly men. They mourned over a week. They turned on him and said, You're a bad man, that's the reason.

He said, I'm not a bad man. It wasn't on the question of sin. See, it was a question of undeserved hurt.

You made me get there. Why am I in this condition? Why is this disaster happening in my home and my life and to me? It's all right. I've not been living.

I slip into sin. I've not been living a sinful life. Why does God allow this, as we say? That's where God will be catching.

Because you may answer about sin. I don't live in the old life of sin. I used to live, although I do do some, but not like I used to.

But he'll catch you around the other corner. And Job couldn't answer that. I can't stop now.

It's wonderful how Job came through to see love of God and then impart the love of God. So he became a giver of the love of God, not just a getter of the love of God. But that's the end of Job.

We can't discuss that now. But you see what I mean? So it may have come somewhere like that, somewhere until something happens in which, well, it's just sudden work. And you don't probably recognize what's happening to you.

But somewhere in that dawning like this, this could do. Job had to say, God, he had to say, Job, God had to say, God, that's right, you leave me in my own business. That's all.

You take me on my terms. And Job took him on his terms. He'd revealed himself to Job as something with wonders and beauty and love.

You take me on my terms. And Job took him. They proceeded on from that.

We have to do that. And so we have to come out into this unity, as I'm saying, when it's settled into you, then you dare to simply be yourself and believe you're caught, you're governed. This life is not holding on to God.

It's being held on to. That's why it may start with a committal. It ends by that he's committed himself to us.

It isn't really enough. Although it may be the first step for us to say, do you commit yourself to him? The real point is he's committed himself to us. That's the safety.

You commit yourself to him, well, perhaps you may say you take yourself away against something. He takes hold of you. He won't let you go.

He's most unfair. I've tried for years to get out of him. I can't.

What he grabs, he keeps. He's a most unpleasant God, I tell you. You're done for.

And then you're, of course, really, you're safe. Praise to be yourself. That's right.

Love fulfills us all. I was daring, you know. I was daring.

That's why I'm not, in some senses, so much against these modern investigations. I'm not. I thank God for modern outlooks.

There's a great deal I like, for instance, that Honest to God, which all my evangelical friends sold down the drain with me with it. And books like that. Even Pike.

He's trying for something. He may be farther on than some of us satisfied Christians who try for nothing. I don't agree with him.

But he's a man trying to find an answer that meets life. Well, that may be better than just sitting on your backside in a pew and finding nothing. I'm a great lover of that tremendous penetrating theologian philosopher of Denmark, Kierkegaard.

Kierkegaard says he expects to meet a number of sincere atheists in heaven who are much better Christians than Christians who found nothing and just sat there. He may be right. Because these men investigate.

I don't say I go all the way with them. I don't. I stand.

I've told you why. I stand by the book. But there's something in the investigating spirit.

These men are trying to find out how sex works, how law works. All right, let's investigate. Maybe it's better for it in the end.

Of course, I like the story of the lady and the pornographic book. I should remember that. That helps a little bit.

If you didn't hear, if you didn't get that one, ask Tommy. I'm going to curse you. But so that, you see, as you say, love fulfills the law.

And love's a person. And that person is the real I, the real you. And this person is expressing his love personality by us.

This is the key. But the bottom of it is, of course, that we've come into a fixed awareness of the unity. Now, if I say one last thing, I suppose, or I've had this evening, this afternoon, of this fixed awareness.

Thank God, many of you just simply know. If you don't, back where we are again, how does a general fact become a personal experience? We're told this. There's supply and demand.

But there's a little addition here which might help some. You might liken it to, it's a hardly fair expression, say, elementary faith and advanced faith. That isn't quite a fair statement to make.

By elementary faith, I mean this, you see, when you immediately get in response to your faith. Now, you do that in a chair. The moment you sit in a chair, you're conscious the chair holds you.

There's no gap between sitting and the consciousness that you're taking hold of. In a certain sense, a little time longer, you eat food. At least an hour afterwards, you begin to find what's happening inside.

There's perhaps an hour's gap there. So in certain elements of faith, you see, the gap may widen between the free attachment of yourself to a supply or receiving of a supply and its attachment to you. And your consciousness, obviously, attaches to you like a chair holds you.

Food does something inside you. You go on farther, it takes longer. Now, all of us who've learned a profession or anything in which we've become at home, it's probably taken us some time to become at home.

I'm not a musician, I imagine. If you don't know music, you don't learn music today. Your faith is, there's a supply, you put yourself in, you begin to practice.

What happens? In all trades, art, profession, I had to do the languages and learn languages. Africa, same thing. I apply myself to a language.

It goes in here and goes out there, and there you are. For goodness sake, you'll never understand the jolly stuff. I well remember the time.

Fortunately for me, it's an easy language. I never should have learned it. That goes without saying.

But it's been about six months. I suddenly found I was talking it, and it got me. That's faith.

But that took six months. Some of us who've learned a profession may have taken six years until you've become perfectly at home. You're spontaneous in your profession.

You're spontaneous in running a home. Your children, whatever it is, may not be quite so spontaneous in that level, but there it is, what I mean. Now, if I may talk of this question of unity.

In my own case, I saw this in my own terms. I was a little younger then, so not exactly the terms I'd use here, but it comes to the same, that this practice, Christ living in me, I hadn't seen that clearly. This was at this crisis when I was finding out I was only a vessel.

And I took that by faith one night. My wife and I were out visiting one Congo convert, dear, warm-hearted. Most converts, Congos, are very warm-hearted.

The only one in the little village we went out to. I remember because he threw his arms around me when I got there. I came out like a zebra if he got oily arms.

All the professionals I think did. A zebra. But a lovely fellow.

Bunbani was his name. All he had to give us was his cookhouse to sleep in. So he put our two camp beds in the cookhouse, put a few banana leaves around the way we do.

It was a lovely night, and we were burdened, both my wife and I. We were very, very young. And we got hold of this. Somehow this should be real to us.

We didn't know much about it, as I'll put it to you perhaps. So we sat out here a little. You've got to be careful where you're sitting in Africa.

But you sat out on a banana plantation. I can see it now with the full moon up there, one of the beautiful African nights. It was about 4 a.m., battling with it that Christ was in us.

Of course, we would understand faith. We would have had faith in one second and gone to sleep. We would have wasted about four hours' sleep.

Foolish people. We didn't know any better in those days, so we struggled. But we got the place till this has happened.

Now, all we did is we'd affirmed this is so, that Christ is our life, that Christ lives in us. It was two years before it happened to me. Now, be careful.

It always was there. But the awareness didn't settle in about two years afterwards. Suddenly, in quite another mission crisis in which I was involved, as I was struggling with the crisis, suddenly it dawned on me, Christ is in you.

Christ is your life. I'd become aware. Just by an inner kind of influx of recognition.

He always was, of course. But now I knew. That's what I mean.

So I'm saying, supposing, and I'm finishing now, supposing that some of you say, well, yes. I'll be honest. I can't say that I live in a kind of basic background awareness of a unity.

All right. There's prior demand. Taking it that you've related those two, that you do recognize this is the whole gospel, that this one person has made us humans, the human spirit, like his own spirit, to join himself through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, we discussed yesterday, to us, and has done it, if you already received it.

And it is a fact. And you take it on the basis of what you hear of the word of God. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit from the strongest.

1 Corinthians 6.17. He, you, as you join to the Lord is one spirit. Your spirit, your person. God's spirit, his person.

One. Now, suppose you take that as a supply. You take it.

All right. That's all you've got to do. As I say, you've got to keep saying, it's a fact.

Don't ask. No. It's a fact.

Thank. It's a fact. That's all.

You can't tell when the thing settles into you. Any more than you can tell when music becomes natural to you or language becomes natural to you. You can't tell quite the moment when it becomes spontaneous to you.

Leave it alone. Just begin to practice. And some of you, of course, I'm talking what you well know already.

There is a spontaneity. Now, from there, we begin to live as humans. Now, tomorrow, my last session, I want to talk as much as I can pack in of how we do live as spontaneous humans.

We've got there now. Thank you.