I'm coming to my favorite part of the Bible, Chapter 15 and 16 of the First Corinthians. I mean this in the egotistical sense and not that there's anything necessarily wonderful there. I will say openly that this is my personal favorite, but this shouldn't influence people, or it may influence people to take the same favorite passages. It is very of used in a symbolic sense.

The Jewish religion gave a revelation of four grades: The first letter is 'P,' which means the literal scriptures, about which everybody scraps. Their interpretation is quite different from the evangelical point of view. Where is the difference? The difference is that the Jewish religion, while assuming there was a revelation, was not quite sure of the of the Prophets. So it always questions whether the word was exact. My main example: did Jesus say "Ye are the salt of the Earth?" Or did he say, "Ye are angels on Earth?" Or did he say something else, "You are kings on Earth?" The words in Hebrew are very much alike, but sound different in English.

The next letter 'R,' refers to parallel meanings, such as the verbal symbols used in poetry. You know, sea for water, water for sea, and so on. The next letter, 'D,' has a symbolical meaning. In the book, There is a River, by Edgar Cayce, there is a symbolical meaning. You come to the same thing in the last chapters of the Prophet Ezekiel.

Finally, we come to the letter 'S,' which means it is your actual experience, an experience that you have gone through or are experiencing. It is the mystical side. You have all four. The mystical experience doesn't deny the symbolic or the parallel or the verbal experiences, but they fit together into something very grand. When we learn that, we learn the Universe.

Although this is the basis of Kabala, you won't find it in books called Kabala. You'll find everything else. Kabala, means that which is received, handed down. It's not something you can read in a book. Thus, you have all kinds of symbolic things given out as Kabala. And when you come down to it, you ask, "What do they mean in the world day?"

I'll tell you two of the nice quarrels I've had in this world during my lifetime. You may see the connection. I didn't meet any Japanese Zen Buddhist who could see that if Japanese went around murdering Chinese, the karma would come down on Japan. And I hardly met anybody that believed that if the Germans killed off the Jews, Germany would be destroyed. I got kicked out of the Jewish community, I didn't quite get kicked out of the Japanese Community, because we didn't have a Japanese community. These are things that happen. God always enlightens people. He enlightens you both inwardly and outwardly. But it's more fun to accept a popular prophet or none at all.

In my poem which was given to me by Christ, he says, "I am not of them, they are of Me." Everyone makes Christs of themselves. If Christ is of them, He cannot possibly be a God; can't be. We are in God; God isn't a piece of us.

"Now I make known to you, brethren, the glad tidings, which I evangelized to you, and which you received; which also you have stood."

Someone gets up and emotionalizes, and that's called liberation. We have our Billy Grahams getting up and emotionalizing a lot of old people and call that liberation. Then someone goes out in the street and somebody comes along with a bald head and a robe, and grabs a hold of you and emotionalizes. He thinks he's got liberation. Now, when you look at them, all you see is vast emotion passing off as liberation--not understanding, not knowledge.

"And through which you are being saved, if you retain a certain Word I evangelized to you; unless, indeed, you believed inconsiderately. For I delivered to you among the chief things, what also I received, that Christ died on behalf of our sins according to the Scriptures."

This is very interesting, but not theologically. St. Paul and his scriptures are supposed to be written before the others. How could he have written them unless there was some basis for them? There are only two possible bases for it: it actually happened historically, or it happened mythologically. In either case, however, it did happen. If it happened archetypically, it's as important (and maybe more important) than if it happened historically.

Of course, people go around and say "Give me a proof." "No sign shall be given unto you except the sign of the Prophet Jonah." Going around and asking for a sign, what does it mean? People who are of that kind won't be convinced by anything, except when a tragedy comes along and swacks them. They will not be convinced by argument. They will not be convinced by anything, so it doesn't mean anything.

There must have been something written, because Paul says here, "According to the writings." His word 'scriptures' doesn't mean Bible, or holy writings. "According to the writings:" there were records. The word simply means writings, not scriptures. There weren't scriptures. This was not a scripture for a long time. There were writings; written records that were there. We're finding some of these writings after a long, long time. Long after the Protestant religions, the Gospel of St. Thomas was found, and has been presented here.

A writing wasn't a scripture; it was a writing.

"And that he was buried; and that he was raised the third day according to the writings. And that he was seen by Cephas, and then by the twelve."

I've often asked people who go out evangelizing, "Have, you seen Jesus Christ?" And their general answer is "No, and neither have you." Well, in the first place, if they go and preach and haven't seen Jesus, they're doing something very delicate. But, I want to say, I've seen Him, and I've seen many times. When I'm asked to describe Him, this is impossible, but not irreligious, I hope. He manifests the way He wishes to manifest, and He manifests according to the scripture in one kind of body or another kind of body, or as Paul says, in or out of body. They're very different because psychic manifestations, and the spiritual manifestations are quite different so far as everything is concerned, except the depth of feeling. Only in the depth of feeling are they the same.

Yet, it's the same personality that lived historically; you can feel that. Remember that. He doesn't manifest ever as if He were a great king or a warrior, or a lawgiver. Moses and Mohammed were lawgivers, and Rama and Krishna warriors. None of them manifested as healers, and some other things. If someone says He manifests differently, I wouldn't argue for a minute. That's the way He wished manifest to me. If He wishes to manifest differently to others, then He manifests differently to others.

The only thing He's given to me lately is one thing: want to heal somebody, just keep your own peace of mind. We must try to have the mind of Christ to understand and then that manifests as a tremendous peacefulness. One thing I learned from the great sages (whom you might accept because they were Muslims) is that "AIlaho Akbar" means peace is power. Not, "God is great," (great in relation to what?) but "peace is power."

Maybe you can hear the strength in my voice, but recently I've had to do something quite different to teach a woman's dancing class. Let me tell you, it has been I a test. All beautiful young women, rather close to me. I'm called upon to teach them. Do you think I roar at like I do at you? I do not. It's a different type of voice like a different type of personality. There are only a few things that remain the same: the same English vocabulary, the same pronunciation or mispronunciation of words, few things like that. A totally different nature comes out then. The visions are different, the pictures are different. And, even though this is a hard thing to say, the love seems different. Imagine an old fossil like me going into the room feeling like he's the Divine Mother? How daring! And that everyone of those girls is a baby in my arms. How totally different is the whole thing!

When the class is over, it's like a play is over. You take off your clothes; you're a different person. You go back to the same roaring Borealis, as I call it. Oh, don't make fun of it. You should have been in my house this morning when I had to call a few people down there and tell them when they do something that is what they should do. They can choose something, but they must do that and not of something else, or do something else until that thing is done. It's become very hard; I'm overworked all the time. The telephone rings and the good-hearted people want to know about this person and this person and this person, and so on, instead of doing work.

I go out to the kitchen and peel onions or potatoes, else, like today, work with the string beans. It's all right. It's part of a game, but it shows you have to put on the character to fit the particular time. It's not only as Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage." It's that every hour is a stage in which you have to be in that hour what you to be in that hour, and in another hour perhaps you have to be something else. I'm not going to ask your pardon, cause I think the good Lord was practical enough not have me speak to you in a nice small voice today when you've got a large hall here. My voice should penetrate not say "Okay you can't hear, that's your fault." I'm not going to do that. If you can't hear it's my fault.

"And afterwards he was seen by more than five hundred Brethren at once."

Here's my answer to everyone of these people who proclaimed himself as Avatar: What one of your disciples has seen in this way? What one? You don't need to dispute them. If their disciples can't see as Paul saw Christ, well, you don't need more emotional claims, blah, blah, blah. I haven't seen any changes on the surface of the world due to any intervention of any Madison Avenue 'divine man.' I can be quite wrong and would like to be proven wrong. But I want to see something accomplished by a Madison Avenue 'divine man.'

When the wars were on in Buddha's time, he went to the battlefield. When Jesus was taken someone said, "If thou art such a great man, why don't you come down from the cross?" It doesn't work that way.

When Jesus was crucified, he said, "Father forgive the that they know not what they do." Who was them? Everybody. They were playing a role that had to be played. There were no villains. There are only villains in our mind. Of course, there is "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Never "Was I there when they crucified your Lord?" Oh, no, no. That hymn is the devil, the absolute devil. There's no hymn which I found worse in the whole history of man than "Were you there when they crucified my Lord?" Never "Was there when they crucified your Lord?" Or, "Who was there?" "Were you there?" That's an action and the hymn of the devil, because we're all in Jesus and he's in all of us. If we start making separations and accusing others, that immediately is Satan, the hymn of Satan. Of course, it makes you tremble, and tremble in the next world for daring. Thou shalt not use the Name of the Lord thy God in vain.

"I am the least of the Apostles, who am not worthy be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the church God. But what I am, I am by the favor of God; and that favor of His..."

Favor is the Greek word 'karis,' which we translate Grace and which is Grace.

When that happens, you have no choice. It isn't a question of whether you're good or bad. You're called upon to play the role. St. Paul went out and did it. He went out and reached a multitude of people. So he is responsible, if any man is responsible, for civilization, whatever it is. He would say because he went all over and converted those people who certainly had the power in the world. If you say the Roman Empire, who did they have to face later? The Moslems also accepted Jesus in this sense. If it hadn't been for Paul spreading Christianity, Mohammed couldn't have come along later and spread Islam, because there wouldn't have been any Christianity in his way.

This is the way people can recognize that there is a God, not the way we think. God converts the world the way he feels. The question is, are we going to pass from these different grades upwards, from the physical to the parallel, to the symbolic, to the actual? I am hoping you will do this, because this is the way in the New Age. Christ is going to be a reality, not a thought, not an imagining, not a dream but a reality. He is a reality, and He's going to manifest--He is manifesting.

I can't even say which of you He's manifesting through. Paul says 500 or so, but I don't know if it matters. What does matter is that each one of us can reach this grade of realization. I'm very optimistic about it because it's happening more and more among my own disciples, I don't have to look at them. I know what they're doing and I know why, only from the higher point of view, not from the analytical point of view.

"Whether I, then or they, thus we preach, and thus you believed. But if it is proclaimed that Christ has been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is not a resurrection of the dead?"

The whole question is--what are the dead and what is a resurrection? Of course this is an Easter subject and it can be taken as such. If a character has been manifested in history at a certain period, and he appears to a human being at another period, and affects the human being thoroughly, then there must be a resurrection of the dead, in that sense. Not a resuscitation of bones, necessarily, because I don't know. It is my belief that the body of Jesus became assimilated through the whole earth. I can't prove it, but there are other cases. Not only in legend, but some historical cases where this actually happened. So, it's not necessary to argue over the physical side of the thing, but to get the realization.

"But if there is not a resurrection of the dead, neither has Jesus Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, void certainly is our Proclamation, and void is your Faith. For if dead persons are not raised up, neither has Christ been raised."

This is quite different from the ordinary spiritualism.

Only once in my whole life have I had any communication from the dead who are not of higher evolution. That case was the daughter of my landlady. I don't know the explanation. I've never, ever, been in a spiritualistic training and I have never, ever had any spiritualistic medium in contact with anybody on the other side. I've never found one of these spiritualistic mediums who could trace my psychic life in this life or the other one.

Yet, when it came to the higher side, it was a cinch. The holy men I met could explain my past life just as I could read the newspaper. But this never occurred trance state. It happened over and over again. Never in the lower consciousness, never in trance. It happened either in the open stage or in a higher state of consciousness, or an awakening stage, higher than this. This is, of course the great Easter theme.

Q.-What do you mean when you say that His body was assimilated by the whole earth?

A.-It spread, you know, the bones, everything just assimilated. The winds scattered them and the rains. This is possible, because when they came, there was no physical. It either was taken up into the next plane or was scattered all over in this plane. The two are probably part of the same process. I'm not trying to argue about this. I'm trying to talk about our possibilities of becoming realized of this; an intellectual communication from me on this, not an explanation, but a realization. The underlying theme is "We have the mind of Christ," not whether you accept the son or not.

Q.-Mushid, I don't understand the phrase "open state of consciousness."

A.-This is the open state, what we have now. When, into a trance, it isn't the open state. A dream isn't the open state. You get into psychedelics and it isn't open states. You close your universe. You make it very big, but you close it.

"If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are more pitiable than all men. But now Christ has been raised the dead, a first fruit of those having fallen asleep in Christ. For since through a man, there is death, through a man, also there is a resurrection of the dead."

This comes through also, I think, when he mentions, the first and last Adam. This is a passing phase. This world is not our reality, but just a passing phase. I'm not going to ask how many of you believe in reincarnation, or further how many of you have memories of former lives, but if you have, the whole thing becomes much clearer.

I remember one time two very important citizens were having a debate on reincarnation. Both had organizations in which I was forbidden to speak. They argued and argued over this topic. When they got to yelling at each other, finally, in desperation, they both turned to me and said, "What is your opinion on this subject?" I said, "I'm quite incapable and ineligible to express my opinion, because I remember my former lives." That ended the debate. That's just what they didn't want to hear. It's exactly what 'experts' don't want to hear. "Problems" are those subjects which we permit famous people to argue about. I think I'm going to the Christian Science Monitor sometime.

A man from Australia came and had a big argument with me. He was one of the 'world saviours.' We're full of them. Every country has a world saviour, you know. We disputed on the meaning of 'good.' This man bases everything on GOOD, whatever that means. He quoted the Bible saying "God created and said it was good." And I said, "God say anything of the kind. He said the world was tob; that means it was to His satisfaction, and 'good' means to our satisfaction." The word 'good' is from the same root as I German 'gut,' Italian 'gusta,' which means it tastes good. In other words, to our satisfaction, not the universal satisfaction.

So we have a tremendous war in Viet Nam, and both sides kill off the Buddhist infants, and the good Buddhists here build temples. While this is going on, they build temples for themselves. And don't think they're better or worse than any other religion. All those rich Jews who never go to synagogue send millions of dollars to Israel to kill off other people. It's very interesting, because we not only contacted a Rabbi in Palestine, we got a letter from another top Rabbi. They don't seem to agree with the newspapers at all: they believe in God. They believe the Holy Land is for all people and that religious people of one community shouldn't fight people of another religious community. Of course, things like this are 'not-news.'

The world goes along in the hands of the people Jesus called Scribes and Pharisees. We have to send guns to the Israelis because the Russians are permitted to send guns Egypt. And we have cultural exchange with the Russians, but we don't have cultural exchange with the Egyptians. I can't make head or tail of it. I don't know what it's all about, outwardly. I think the new world is going to be different. We are going to go toward brotherhood. One girl made up a beautiful hymn out of "Every man shall have his vine and fig tree, and there shall be war no more."And I could hardly sing it; I wanted to cry. And do you know what that deuced Lord God did to me?

I had one grape vine and it gave me ten times as man grapes this year as last year. I have one fig tree and it gave me more figs than we can eat. We have to go out and pick them every day because the fig tree is almost breaking the weight. It's right now, right now! God comes to me sometimes like a man and He talks to me like my actual father! Isn't this heresy? God coming to you like your actual father and talking to you? He gives the most wonderful advice because I go off the beam all the time.

He's given a vine and a fig tree that are so tremendous. There's a group called "Organic Gardening," who sent man out here encouraging me to write about our place, the Garden of Inayat. So I wrote an article. Then they rejected it. They don't want to hear stories like that. Isn't it a beautiful world in which we live?

When you live in this world you feel God, and you see Him, well--I told you the first thing, you don't throw out the material meaning. We have our vine. We have our tree. The blessings we have gotten are actual. Only sometimes it looks like instead of take, eat and multiply, He meant that the fruit will multiply. That certainly has happened. So don't throw out even the literal meaning of things, because if I do I'm lying about what's happening in my own life. I think we may either have more fig trees next year, or else get a bigger place. I'm also leaving that to God.

Yes, here it is:

"For as by Adam all die, so by the Anointed also, will all be restored to life."

In my Christ poem I explained that the returning impure blood is Adam, and the purified blood is Christ. All the time, every heartbeat: Adam, Christ, Adam, Christ, pollution, purification, pollution, purification. The movement toward what we might call death--it isn't death, but toward the greater realization of life.

"But each one in his own rank; Christ a first-fruit; afterwards, those who are Christ's at his appearing, Then, the end, when he shall give up the Kingdom to the God and Father; when he shall have abrogated all government and authority and power."

I don't think the president could accept that, his enemies still less. These people who declare war and think they're, going to stop war by fighting and killing off all those who I declare war. You know, Mohammed said, "Say ALLAH, and leave them to their own devices." You can do that.

I can't tell you how to vote or not vote, or even whether you should register. I'm going to register with one of my friends, but I'm not going to urge it on you too much. If you do and you voted the way I did or didn't, I wouldn't even care, because there is this other authority. It is there and it is real. The thing to do is to look for it. It's going come.

I got such beautiful reports this past week from two boys that I sent out. My godson went to the great Cathedral in Geneva, which was once presided over by the great John Calvin. He was received with such love and veneration it's hard to believe. My disciple and sometimes publisher, Phillip Davenport, who published some of my things locally in the ORACLE, went to Jerusalem and was met with open arms and loved by a Rabbi there. The rabbis here, well, that's a little different thing. Isn't that beautiful? This week! This week! This same week in which God showed me the vine and fig tree in absolute bloom! You can see why I can hardly read the papers or watch television. Too much going on in the private life, beautiful things, magnificent things, and very real. Not 'realistic,' but real.

"For he must reign till he has placed all enemies at his feet. Even death, the last enemy, will be rendered, powerless."

When you reach that stage and you leave this world, do not lose consciousness. You just go right on without any break in consciousness. I realized that three years after my first spiritual teacher died, and I went in seclusion, Feb.5,1930. I sat on my bed in meditation and my teacher Hazrat Inayat Khan, appeared and sat next to me in mediation. That's the only time after his death I ever saw him with the physical eye. He opened up this crown--consciousness, pressured it, physically pressured it. Then for years I was under him till the time came that I graduated from that school. Part of the graduation was receiving the message go and bring peace in Palestine.

No matter how many important people stood in my way then, I think the time has come today when we're going do things. If we don't bring peace in Palestine, you know what we're going to do? We're going to make the whole world a Holy Land. We're going to make the whole world Palestine. You people are going forth and doing things. You're going to make first America, and then the whole world, Holy Lands. Then we don't care what politician grabs Jerusalem. I think this is coming, and I never thought of it until this minute, because I don't think.

When you have the mind of Christ, you have to be listening all the time, feeling all the time, and not trying to produce your own particular ideas. If your ideas are wrong, throw them out immediately.

"For he has subjected all things under his feet. But when he says that all things are subjected it is manifest that He is excepted, who has subjected all things to him."

Those are the laws that Christ laid down. He did not himself subject to any kind of laws. What a terrible time superman has because he has to obey all kinds of laws laid down by people who aren't supermen. Most of the holy men I have met don't behave anything like you read holy men should behave. At the present time I am living a way of life which 30 years ago I would have thought absolutely impossible. Do you know, I wouldn't touch a man or a woman, and I wouldn't let them touch me? Very seldom did I show any sign of affection physically to girls and never to men. I now live in a life where I'm everybody's grandfather, and it's very different. My behavior is totally different. And I may be taken away from that tomorrow. So?

You behave as God wants you to behave. I do not see any more saints and sinners. I only see God in different, grades of sleep or awakening. And I see those who are caught in self-pity. For those who haven't heard me speak, I've told again and again, if anybody comes to me with a tale of woe, what I'd like to do is to have them come to this place, and make them listen to everyone who has ever been brought here. They'd quit saying their tales of woe. I don't know how true this is of those in this room. I know a lot happened to the first girls that came here. From that point of view it wasn't a pretty picture till God showed me that all pictures are pretty.

From the standpoint of pure beauty, I don't know whether a rose branch or a rose seed is beautiful. And yet, you stick them in the ground and a beautiful rose comes from it. I don't know whether appleseeds are beautiful, but apple blossoms and fragrances are. I know I throw a lot of things in the ground called seeds, and flowers come up. I don't know whether the seeds are beautiful or not. So it is with everyone of you. If I start to look at you and you are seeds, so what?

I went to Kew Gardens in London one time and they began apologizing, saying that I had come in the wrong season. I said, "My dear man, I can tell from the way they look now the way they are going to look. I don't have to be there then." And when I was there this year, God delayed the Spring there. He didn't delay it here. I had a long Spring.

"Otherwise, what will those do who are being immersed on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are they immersed (i. e., baptized) on their behalf? And why are we in danger every hour? I solemnly declare, by the boasting concerning you, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, that I am dying daily."

I don't know whether I should go beyond this point. When you can die daily you know Zen Buddhism, or rather Zen, which is beyond Buddhism. You know Buddhism. You know Buddha's Buddhism, you don't know theological Buddhism. "Give us this day." I think this wonderful thing of St. Paul has got to be taken very seriously. When we do it, we'll be coming to a great self-realization.

Some of my disciples know I roar at them when they doing a certain thing and they ask me about something else. This is it.

Even Gurdjieff used to say that if you're going to peel potatoes, do it with the mind of one peeling potatoes.

"I die daily." Paul went through death and resurrection constantly.... And don't accept blindly. Try to accept with open eyes and with open heart.