“There is only one cause for the phenomena of life. That cause is God. Housed in you, God is a person in the most literal sense of the word. Believe me, for I know this from experience. God, the only creator, is pure imagination working in the depth of your soul.”

“Called upon to look for the cause of creation, what are you doing losing yourself in the phenomena of life? When something happens, search your thoughts and you will discover your own wonderful human imagination to be the cause of your experience.”

“Choose an image you would like to express. Feel you are that image. So appropriate it that it must come forth in your world of shadows. Do that and you are praying, for prayer is your own wonderful human imagination, drenched with feeling. I could tell you story after story after story of those who have drenched themselves with the feeling of having their desire, and getting it. Feel the wedding ring, if that is your desire. Feel the thrill of applause, or the joy of a child in your arms. Anything is possible if you can feel it; but if you are going to use reason it will never happen, because failure becomes your image. You don’t realize it but there are two of you, and it is your deeper self that tells you it can’t happen. But no real belief can ever be suppressed for long, for your inward conviction must find some external objective habitation, and it will.”

In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands; in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by circumcision of Christ – Col. 2:11.

Circumcision is the operation which removes the veil that hides the head of creation. The physical act has nothing to do with the spiritual act. The whole world could be physically circumcised and yet remain unclean and blind leaders of the blind. The spiritually circumcised have had the veil of darkness removed and know themselves to be Christ, the light of the world.

Let me now perform the spiritual operation on you, the reader. This act is performed on the eighth day after birth, not because this day has any special significance or in any way differs from other days, but it is performed on this eighth day because eight is the figure which has neither beginning nor end. Furthermore, the ancients symbolized the eighth numeral or letter as an enclosure or veil within and behind which lay buried the mystery of creation. Thus, the secret of the operation on the eighth day is in keeping with the nature of the act, which act is to reveal the eternal head of creation, that changeless something in which all things begin and end and yet which remains its eternal self when all things cease to be. This mysterious something is your awareness of being.

At this moment you are aware of being, but you are also aware of being someone. This someone is the veil that hides the being you really are. You are first conscious of being, then you are conscious of being man. After the veil of man is placed upon your faceless self, you become conscious of being a member of a certain race, nation, family, creed etc. The veil to be lifted in spiritual circumcision is the veil of man. But before this can be done, you must cut away the adhesions of race, nation, family and so on.

“In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew, bond nor free, male nor female” [“…a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all”, Colossians 3:11].

“You must leave father, mother, brother and follow me” [“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple” – Luke 14:26.

To accomplish this you stop identifying yourself with these divisions by becoming indifferent to such claims. Indifference is the knife that severs. Feeling is the tie that binds. When you can look upon man as one grand brotherhood without distinction of race or creed, then you will know that you have severed these adhesions. With these ties cut, all that now separates you from your true being is your belief that you are man.

To remove this last veil, you drop your conception of yourself as man by knowing yourself just to be. Instead of the consciousness of “I AM man”, let there be just “I AM” – faceless, formless and without figure. You are spiritually circumcised when the consciousness of man is dropped and your unconditioned awareness of being is revealed to you as the everlasting head of creation, a formless, faceless all-knowing presence. Then, unveiled and awake, you will declare and know that – I AM is God and beside me, this awareness, there is no God.

This mystery is told symbolically in the Bible story of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. It is recorded that Jesus laid aside his garments and took a towel and girded himself. Then, after washing his disciples’ feet, he wiped them with the towel wherewith he was girded. Peter protested the washing of his feet and was told that unless his feet were washed he would have no part of Jesus. Peter on hearing this replied, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head”. Jesus answered and said,

“He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit”  – John 13:1-10.

Common sense would tell the reader that a man is not clean all over just, because his feet are washed. Therefore, he should either discard this story as fantastic or else look for its hidden meaning. Every story of the Bible is a psychological drama taking place in the consciousness of man, and this one is no exception. This washing of the disciples’ feet is the mystical story of spiritual circumcision or the revealing of the secrets of the Lord. Jesus is called the Lord. You are told that the Lord’s name is I AM – Je Suis.

“I AM the Lord that is my name” – Isaiah 42:8.

The story states that Jesus was naked save for a towel which covered his loins or secrets. Jesus or Lord symbolizes your awareness of being whose secrets are hidden by the towel (consciousness of man). The foot symbolizes the understanding which must be washed of all human beliefs or conceptions of itself by the Lord. As the towel is removed to dry the feet, the secrets of the Lord are revealed. In short, the removing of the belief that you are man reveals your awareness as the head of creation. Man is the foreskin hiding the head of creation. I AM the Lord hidden by the veil of man.

“So, you look into your own minds eye and know exactly what you want in this world. When you know what you want in place of what you are, then you are seeing your savior, your Jesus. The story is, don’t let Him go, but let all else go. Disengage yourself from the whole vast belief that you formerly entertained, and hold on in your imagination to the concept that you ARE the man that you want to be… For you will resurrect and make alive the state that began only as a concept. If you remain faithful to the concept you will be led right into the fulfillment of that state. It is called, in the Bible, re-birth.”

“Now this is how a man is born of water and of the spirit. If I told you now that an assumption, though false, if persisted in, will harden into fact, that is a truth, that is water. But water is not enough. You must catch the spirit of it and apply that truth. Well, if I know that if I assume that I am the man I want to be and persist in that assumption, I would gradually become that. If I have that knowledge, that is marvelous. But not to DO it is to try to bring this being to birth by water only. We are told this is the one who came by water and the blood. Not by water only, but by water and the blood. In other words, I have the knowledge, but I cannot bring to birth my ideal by bare knowledge. I must put it into action, I must DO it. Then when I DO it, I take my savior and I crystallize him by the doing. This is the story of our wonderful Easter.”

“You can do the same thing with anything in this world. When you do it daily, you die daily as the prophet said, “I die daily.” Man waits for some little event called death, and he thinks that is dying. That isn’t really dying for the simple reason that that kind of death does not bring about a transformation. For there is no transformation in a physical death, but there is transformation in mentally dying and dying daily. So, if you have learned the art of dying, you have learned the art of living. For man is immortal and he must die endlessly. For life was a creative idea, and it will find itself only in changing form. If I do not change and grow and outgrow, and grow and outgrow, then I know nothing of the mystery of Easter, for Easter is really the greatest of all mysteries. It is when man awakens within himself from his birth at Bethlehem and he awakens as God. That is the story of Easter.”

”If it is not some tangible thing on earth you want, take some noble concept of a man, take a man that you would love to see in this world. Dream of that man actually walking this earth and identify yourself with that man. Associate yourself in your own imagination with that as if you were he. When you actually feel that I am he, and continue in that state, then things begin to unfold to bear witness to the truth of your assumption. You try it.”

“They took up stones to throw at him (Jesus), because he had offended them, that he had blasphemed the name of God for he claimed ‘I am God.’ That was blasphemy on their level and they took up stones to throw at him. What stones? They told him they knew his father. They knew his earthly mother, his brothers, and his sisters, and they named them. They said: I know your father and mother, Joseph and Mary, and they named the four brothers. They implied multiple sisters. And then they began to show him the facts of life, and the facts contradicted his claim. ”

“Most people pray to God to change something in their lives or to give them something they do not have. If their prayers were not answered, they think that God had a reason for withholding that particular thing. They think that perhaps God didn’t grant their request because He didn’t want them to attain their desire for some reason known only to God. Man sometimes thinks that God doesn’t answer prayers because man is undeserving of that which he seeks.”

“Man must learn to believe in that which he does not, at the moment, see in order to grant himself that which he desires to have. Man’s payers are always answered, for he always receives that which he believes. The law that governs prayer is impersonal. Belief is the condition necessary to realize the desire. No amount of pleas or ritual will bring about the fulfillment of your desires other than the belief that you are or have that which you want.”

The cures attributed to the influence of certain medicines, relics and places are the effects of imagination and faith. The curative power is not in the spirit that is in them, it is in the spirit in which they are accepted. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.”

Creation is finished! It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. The parable of the prodigal son is your answer. In spite of man’s waste, when he comes to his senses and remembers who he is, he feeds on the fatted calf of abundance and wears the robe and ring of authority. There is nothing to earn.