On Victor Alexander's Translation of Genesis: The Book of Creation and the Meaning of YHVH

Mr. Alexander,

Thank you for your translation of Genesis. I was excited to discover on the first page of your translation that the Aramaic title for the book is Breetah -- Creation. For me, this is a both a relief and an insight.

I am sure you know that Christians are typically taught that the Hebrew title for the book of Genesis comes from its first word, beresheeth, "in the beginning," so it is "the Book of Beginnings." The idea of beginnings leads naturally to expectations of subsequent history, and the narrative stories in Genesis do not disappoint. But I think Moses had something else in mind.

The Pentateuch, of course, started with Moses at Exodus chapter 3, the burning bush episode. No burning bush -- no Bible. There Moses encountered the living God, and I think that experience is what all the rest of his writings are about. (Meet any one man of the many thousands who have encountered God and you will find that his life is polarized to that moment -- he does not eat, sleep, or think about anything without its gravity exerting its pull on his mind. The event doesn't just affect his worldview, it becomes his worldview, and his life is spent both trying to comprehend and to express it.)

So, when I read, "In the beginning, God . . .” my mind filters it through "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh," because that, I believe, is what Moses is talking about. And that is why I am going to share these points from Aryeh Kaplan's Jewish Meditation (Kaplan, Aryeh, 1985: Jewish Meditation. New York: Schockton Books, chapter 7, Contemplation, p. 72-76, [emphases and parentheses mine]):

The meaning of the four letters of YHVH, God’s nature:

Each individual letter has special symbolic significance to be understood on the basis of ancient Kabbalistic teaching . . . that these four letters contain the mystery of charity.

Yod denotes a coin (think of the power and value of money, what it can do, a kind of force).

Heh denotes the hand that gives the coin (fifth letter of alphabet = five fingers = grace).

Vav denotes the arm reaching out to give (strength/a hook = connection, the power to effect).

Heh denotes the hand which accepts the coin.

Charity is the act whereby God gives us existence.The four letters represent the mystery of the creative link between God and man.

Yod, the coin, is existence itself (tenth letter of alphabet = the Ten Sayings = the entire act of Creation = Life given to us).

Heh is the hand by which God holds the existence he desires to give to us. Vav is his arm reaching out to give us his existence.

Heh is our hand (given to us, and this is still his nature - we are in his nature) which accepts this existence.

Yod = "coin" is the initial point of creation, the Ten Sayings that brought existence out of nothingness.

Heh = vessel holding power of creation and channel of that force to the arm.

Vav = effective connection, the desire reaching out, wanting to give the force of creation to us.

Heh = our ability to connect to and receive from the arm the creative forces of existence.

Yod, the Ten Sayings, is "seed" put into the

vessel or womb (heh) of creation so that it can be brought forth.

Vav is the power of divine providence which directs the world.

Heh is the vessel or womb which holds that power and expands to give it birth.

It is my own understanding that this increase is "Jethro" in the Bible. What the forces were behind this increase bothered (Zipporah - little chirping bird) Moses to find out.

The first three characters, Y-H-V, are masculine: the divine seed of the forces of creation, the seed in the womb, and the seed in providence. Only the last, the second heh, is feminine and can be separated from the others, as when God turns his face away from the world (which is when we are in rebellion; we make the disconnection).

We also make the reconnection of our hand to his arm, unification, by repentance. This opens us to the forces of providence, makes us aware of divine guidance and of the Divine Presence, because if it works, we have found Him. What the symbolism is about concretely is Jesus Christ.

Let me share also this from Jeff Roth (Roth, Jeff, 2009. Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life: Awakening Your Heart, Connecting with God.  Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, p. 113), who conveys from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi:

Yud = the world of the divine attribute of Being.

Hay = the world of the divine attribute of Knowing.

Vav = the world of the divine attribute of Feeling.

Hay = the world of the divine attribute of Acting.

When the two million Jews were at Mount Sinai to receive the Law, the Jewish mystics teach, and God said, "I am the Lord your God . . ." the people didn't hear words, but at “I . . .” all experienced the sense of I AM as one. That blew their minds and they fled (p. 128).

When Moses wanted to see the glory of God and was told no one can see God and live, he was hid in the cleft of the rocks and saw God's "backside." That is, Moses experienced seeing God's Goodness in the world through God's eyes – God’s perception becoming Moses’ (p. 130-133).

Okay, my turn. The concept of duality does not work. What Moses is saying in The Book of Creation is, "This is how we participate in creation. This is how we create our lives. It is by recognizing the unity of existence. Reconnect to God's strength by repenting from the rebellion -- the concept of separation and division – of independent self-lordship. Unify with the Seed of the Divine Life-force within your own 'womb,' your mind inside your skull."

Moses wanted to express "'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh," so he encapsulated the concept in Creation 1: 1, "Before the beginning, the Ineffable (yod) created e'had, "God" (heh) the Heavens (vav) and the Earth (heh)."

God (yod)

said (heh)

let us make man in our (vav)

image (heh).

Adam = yod

Rib = heh

Eve = vav

Cain and Abel = heh.

Noah (a perfect Ten), yod

Shem, heh

Kham/Canaan, vav

Japheth, heh

Japheth means expansion. Christians are this enlargement has to do with stretching out tent pegs. I think it is about childbirth -- our world stretches like a woman bearing a child. Jacob said, “I crossed this Jordan with but my staff, and now I am become two bands," because while he was with Laban he practiced yod, heh, vav, and heh.

Moses tells us how to create our lives, our worlds, according to God. "God in heaven" is the imagination (the spirit “breathed”) into our heads: 'ehyeh 'asher 'ehyeh.

Sorry for preaching.

I think that what the world needs is a movie about The Mind of Moses. Not another telling of Exodus historical narratives a la Cecil B. DeMille but the untold story of a mystic’s mindset, the molding experiences which led to his experiences of creation,  of oneness with YHWH. This would be a movie about what the Bible is about.

Central would be the development of Moses' concept of YHWH. His life, his times, his experience as an Egyptian priest, his knowledge of certain ancient Egyptian myths and contemplation of their meaning -- all the things contributing to his consideration of Jethro, which I take to be phenomena of increase rather than a person.

Jethro, as you know, means "his excellence." It is the idea of provision, expansion, increase. A man desires, has sex with a woman and, after time, "his excellence" expands the birth canal as increase comes forth. Seedtime and harvest – it is all imagic.

God = yod

so loved the world = heh

that whoever believes on him = vav

should not perish but have everlasting life - heh.

So YHWH is not a word but a picture, a pattern for the creation of life. It is what brings Jethro. We can create whatever lives we want -- AHYH! And so Moses began to write and teach the thing most important in his mind -- YHWH. The stories are simply illustrations of the YHWH pattern.

What Ecclesiastes means? That God was bored?

Oh, Qohlat,

A day without night, no end in sight -- what a weariness it must be! Ah, to sleep, perchance to dream. What would you do if you could neither sleep nor slumber, if awareness never departed?

Not just one day after another, but constant day with no nights to break it up –- never a fresh morning or "that was yesterday, tomorrow is another day" -- from eternity past through eternities future.

Well, how about a little diversion -- something to do, something to occupy your mind? Give yourself some distraction, and before the day drags on and your diversion becomes monotonous, find something else to do. Maybe lots of things. 

"Hey, wait a minute," he said to no one in particular. "What if I didn't know this? What if I forgot this and thought that I slept and dreamed? What if I imagined that day gives way to night, that I had a beginning and an end, and that there was difference and purpose in things? What if I could be born new and die before long tedium, or at least thought I could."

I heard Neville say that the world is to appease a hunger, and I wondered, what hunger? The hunger the Eternal has for diversion, for distraction and entertainment. Hunger for escape. Eternal day is constantly the same to the Infinite: no night ever takes away its sight.

The world's being, and all distractions in it, will eventually pass. The earth will be no more. The Eternal faces eternal consciousness. "I have got to get out of this place!" Death for us is a blessing.

Vanity means "doesn't mean squat; accomplishes nothing." Everything here doesn't mean anything at all -- it is all going to pass away. Day will still be on the other side of our living and dying though we live and die a thousand times a thousand. Light being and crystal cities to attain? Oh boy! More terrestrial spheres, and all the universe to make God -- until all is back at the start. Oh well, there is nothing better to do.

Well, maybe there is something better for us than we are doing now. We can toy away this life "Godding" -- doing good, loving and healing people, hearing good news about them, lifting them up. They also are God in distraction, blind as bats to the deity within them wasting in their dissipation. No loss, but maybe we can bring future goodness into their experience and help make this a happier, more pleasant distraction for all of us.

An answer to "Why does God allow suffering?"

"Is there a short answer to the question, 'Why does God allow suffering?'"

My answer: Yes. God allows suffering because he does not know that he can stop it nor how to stop it.

Which raises more questions: Why doesn't God know that he can stop suffering or how to stop suffering?

Because in order to have a certain human's conscious experience, the spirit (or consciousness) of God imagines the conscious experience at the level of that human being, and, becoming that, the spirit annexes the human's brain and dwells there as the human consciousness. 

Yes, God became you, and is now consciously aware only of being human and is NOT conscious of being God. He voluntarily laid aside his divine prerogatives -- the expression of his divine wisdom and power -- in order to wed the soul of the human. The two have become one flesh: the divine consciousness and nature of God and the carnal consciousness and nature of human are now one.

This is what Moses was talking about in the first chapters of Genesis: God formed aboriginal man from the dust of the earth and breathed his spirit of life into him or her, and the man became a living being with the spirit of God within him. That happened to each of us individually. Adam was not the ancient progenitor of the human race; he is the spirit progenitor of each of us individually.

Each of us is God's consciousness "self-ignoranced" of the awareness of being God. We dumbed ourselves down to the level of humanity. We became this level of man's consciousness so that man, whom we have now become one with, may be lifted to the level of God's consciousness when we ascend again. "Who shall ascend but he who descended?" That was us, and we're taking these dudes with us!

We "married" man to save man, but we had to become temporarily ignorant of being God to do it. We had to forget being Life in order to become enjoined with humanity in this experience of death. So it is we, God, who are allowing man to suffer, and we do this because we do not recognize that we are the one God who can stop it.

There is not another God in all the universe besides the one we are from and of. We are the Sent and are stuck with the God who we are, so if we want to stop the suffering in the world, LET'S SMARTEN UP! -- Let's receive the Holy Spirit and learn how to use the power and wisdom of God. Then we can stop the suffering. The ball is in our court -- we just haven't playing the right game!

This teaching is not common in the church because churches are made up of other self-ignoranced consciousnesses. We need to get our ultimate religion "wholesale," that is, directly from God. Learn how to read the Bible correctly and translate the proper names. The “names” are natures and states-of-being we either were, are, or are going to become. The whole Bible is about us and has to do with the psychological.

The characters in the Bible are vehicles for ideas, concepts and principles. Get a better translation of the Bible, such as Victor Alexander's translation from the Aramaic, or at least a better study Bible, such as Ethelbert Bullinger's Companion Bible. They may not hold to my doctrine, but they have been faithful to translate as well as they can what the Bible actually says. Then you yourself can discover what God means by what he says, as the spirit illumines.

I find this message in the Bible as plain as day, but few people believe it. It is so wonderful, so fantastic, they excuse it and make it to mean something else: "Christ in me is the hope of glory? Oh, that must mean something else!"

No, it doesn't.

We read the Bible, but we misread it, because our minds are keyed low. The Bible reads like history (a great mnemonic), and we believe it to be literal and historical because our minds are keyed low. Scripture's meaning is keyed high – much higher than we are used to thinking. The prophets wrote of spiritual dynamics, of consciousness and creative forces. How can we possibly understand scripture's meanings without ourselves being lifted up to its level? We can only be keyed up to God’s level by spiritual experience – he has to raise us up. Seek the living God and find him, become born to awareness from above. Then you can read, learn and "God."

'God' is a verb. God is what we are to DO. We are the Ineffable Most High's ACTION. What does he do? He creates by imagining: "Before the beginning, (the ineffable, Most High) IMAGINED the glorious spirit God of multitudinous spiritual "flamelets" (Hebrew: echad), the Heavens (I think these are minds/brains), and the Earth (physical representation)" (Genesis 1: 1, my translation).

And you, my little flamelet, entered the "heaven" of a human and now dwell here on earth, dumb-down to the level of its organic life plus whatever you have learned in this world. Yet, witness this: what you have imagined, believing, you have made your experience here. Now, remember where you came from and strive to return there.

Jesus said, "Come unto Me" (Matthew 11: 28). He is our imagination attached to our brains in our skulls – "heaven."

The Ineffable dreamed Its creative strength and glory as a "flame" composed of innumerable individual "flamelets." This is real meaning of 'Elohim': "Above the Flames"; that is, God, the strength above the flames of its glory, is manifest in the flames of his glory! Elohim is a singular word compounded with a plural ending – us! The Ineffable is One with myriad living “branches” emanating from it.

The great secret and revelation in Elohim isn't that the Ineffable, the Power above, is the flames; but that "flame" is its method of creating! "Flame" corresponds to the intensity and heat of focused, all-consuming, passionate, imagined desire, hence Adam's "rib." The Most High "so loved the world that It gave Its only Son (the entirety of Its experience in passion), that whatever 'flamelet' thence should enjoin Its experience would awaken to Its creative power and become aware of being It" (sounds like something John said somewhere). This is the process of creation!

The word LORD in Deuteronomy 6: 4 is YHWH in Hebrew, variously translated as Yahweh, Jehovah, Hashem and the LORD (Master/Father), AS THOUGH ITS SUBJECT WERE A SEPARATE BEING. The "word" YHWH, I believe, is actually a picture created from symbolic characters of the Hebrew alphabet which represents the process of the Ineffable's becoming. It is the flow of action undertaken by the Ineffable in imagining Itself into existence. The results of this flow indicates the reality and nature of the Ineffable. Moses called these indicative results "Jethro, -- His abounding excellence."

The New Testament is not a new episode of Israel's history, it is an explanation of the original, Mosaic perspective: Israel, God ruling as man, is Joshua – “Jesus.” The power and the wisdom of the Ineffable which is displayed in the flowing of YHWH is Jesus Christ -- "he hath revealed" (John 1: 18).

Why God doesn't stop suffering is because we are just asking the question instead of becoming the solution. We can imagine to be a world without suffering, and become it! It is given to us to so imagine -- for us to create the peaceable flow of the Ineffable. He said, "Ye are God . . . Arise, O God, for thou shalt inherit all nations!" (Psalm 82: 6, 8).

An Open Letter to Victor Alexander About the True Life of Jesus

Dear Mr. Alexander,

I read on Indigo of your intentions to film the true life of Christ. You are ambitious in a good way -- power to you, good luck and God bless. The Gospel stories are a great way to convey spiritual truths.

I am having a hard time with duality, though, the separation between God and creation. The more I learn, the less enamored I am with dualistic and literal-historic views. They seem patently NOT what the Bible is teaching.

I believe that Moses really wanted to put his most important insight out in front where it couldn't be missed. "Before (or as) a beginning" is a big emphasis: "Here's the key." As I read it, Genesis 1 says, "No division," or as Fr.Bede Griffiths explained: advaita – “not one, but not two.”

My mind cheats a bit. I have learned that Jewish mystics have a super-high regard for the Most High God. They talk about "Ein Sof," (there are various spellings) the Without-End, and hedge about a still higher view of "It," (I don't like the term It either, but what are ya’ going to do?) the Ineffable Source of Ein Sof.

There is no word for It, no description; just a slackened jaw, fear and awe, prostration.

I read scripture with the Ineffable in mind -- I insert It, because the mystics/prophets left the Ineffable unspoken!

"Before the beginning, (the Ineffable we cannot know) created God (the e'had spirit we can know), the Heavens and the Earth." Two Gods? No, just one, which is the Bible’s point.

(Before the beginning? Yes, I think so. Creation is the idea, a plan for there to be. Creation is an order form for what shall come to pass. Create in mind, and then wait through the Sabbath until manifestation. Creation is the seed. Harvest is assured. “When you pray, believe ye receive, and ye shall have.”)

Yes, preaching non-duality is risky business, but duality is ultimately untenable. Making sense of the Bible demands sensing the presence of the Highest from his activity. When I put him into the equation, there is nothing else -- He is all of everything and beyond.

Which brings me to the true life of Jesus. We can only speak of things as separate. For example, I might speak to you about my fingernail or hand, and we could get real involved about some noteworthy condition with them, but we would ultimately recognize that we were really speaking only about me. I believe that a first century mystic, perhaps an Alexandrian philosopher and/or one of the Therapeutae really familiar with Judaism and the Old Testament -- let's call him Mark -- spoke about spiritual conditions in light of the religious, social, political, philosophical tensions of the day. He may have had an actual historical, exemplary character in mind, a real Jesus or James, but he placed upon him all of his own understanding of what the scriptures meant.

He explained the scriptures’ truth using the vehicle of Jesus: the power and wisdom of YHWH; the Action/Son and Nature of the Ineffable in Proverbs 8; the creator and Savior/Provider and Light who had entered men to enlighten their souls -- who is ultimately the Ineffable. Nondualism.

This Christ who is in us is the hope of glory. My point is that we have to stop thinking of him as separate. We do not recognize Christ in us because we had to forget what we ARE (we are Him! Living branches of Life!) in order to exist as human consciousnesses. I believe we took on being "as dumb as mud" to experience this life and to lift men's souls (which we created) with us as we re-ascend, remembering what we are.

Well, you get the picture.  I am sorry to preach at you, and I hope my philosophy doesn't cause you problems, but if you are going to make a movie about the "real" Jesus, you might want to make it about Mark, James, and their socio-political and cultural context.

And would to God everyone read your translation. I really appreciate the work you are doing. Thank you.

Dan Steele

An Open Letter to Hopeful Regarding Keeping the Commandments

My friend from work thought, or thinks, I am leading people astray and am in danger of Matthew 5: 19. I know “the apostasy comes first,” but that is what we are in.  I’m trying to get people out of it. So here is an open letter to Hopeful,

Dear Hopeful,

Planet earth looks blue, and there is something I must do -- which is to get people to see God's nature.

You know, everyone says Satan deceived Adam and Eve*. I say no. The Hebrew says shining, glorious visage. Adam was naked and having a grand time. He was out of control, had no conscience, didn’t want to have reins put on him. “Thou shalt not eat” means he wasn’t willing to. Then he saw Christ, and submitted. It is Christ “on his belly” in us.

I want everyone to see Jesus, the effulgence of God’s glory.

The child in Proverbs 8: 30, Wisdom, is God's image of himself, his awareness of his own nature. God created everything with his nature within it, because he didn't create anything separate from himself -- he emanates. His nature goes with every glow. He is the lamb, and worthy is the lamb who was slain from before the overthrow of the world. Wisdom to us is seeing his nature in everything and living his nature.

God's nature is the Law. Thou shalt not because he is. His nature, the principle(s) we summarize as the Law, is positive. The negative commandments are just common sense IF you understand that he is all -- that there is nothing in the universe but God (and he is so much more than the universe).

We are blessed if we assume his nature as our own, for it is the core of our being:

being humble like him, mourning sin like him, gentle like him, right like him, merciful like him, clear like him, peace-making like him, and rejected (by the still-ignorant) like him. His nature is where we are blessed. Not of works of the law that anyone should boast.

If one is completed by assuming/absorbing the Law, God's nature, as his own -- if Christ, which is that nature, permeates the person's consciousness -- what then of the commandments? I am not complete in my consciousness, but I know that the nature of God is "back there" ready to be displayed if I can get out of the way -- not to "un" myself but focus on his part.

God isn't a kajillion miles away but within. The Kingdom is the Kingdom because the King is there. Moses' enlightenment at the burning bush, I believe, was advaita: God and "me,” or rather God is me -- without division. That nature, the "name" of the divine Most High God, runs through our being as richly as his, for there is no division. But we have been stupided. We ignoranced ourselves to become humans’ consciousnesses.

If I share God's nature, though it be obscured by my ignorance, what am I to do? What he does. Follow shalt nots exclusively and persecute everyone who doesn't follow them according to me? No, but burst forth life, light and love. How? The same way he does. (Hey -- were using the same nature!)

What does he does? The corporal fingers by which God created spirit, mind and dust, where are they? Jethro, his increase, is all over the place, but we don't see his sticky little fingers anywhere. How is God bringing blessings to everyone? The non-corporal Eternal works by imagination. That is why if I look with lust, I HAVE fornicated. Much higher requirements for the Christian in Life than the Jew in works – the Jew just has to not do anything physically; we can't even THINK anything -- wrong, that is.

We is "we," right? We are called to the height of Christ Jesus to live ABOVE the commandments in the nature of God, which nature the keeping the commandments cannot impute. Only conversion from unaware to aware by the Holy Spirit given by Christ can imbue us with Life. It doesn't come from somewhere else, it comes forth from within. Heaven help us . . . to imagine in the nature of God, imagining right with his faith, his love, his integrity, his nobility, etc.

Imagine not bad news, but good reports. "We call not out loud, but by an inner effort of intense attention. To listen attentively, as though you heard, is to create" (Neville Goddard, Mental Diets).

Don't get things ass-backwards. Loving God means you will keep his Law and his commandments. We keep them because he is – the truly saved cannot sin. Keeping his commandments doesn't mean you love God or keep his Law -- the most zealous commandment keepers crucified him, remember? Wearing the prettiest yarmulke don't mean squat to him. Creating the good, beautiful end by being one with him does.

*I have no Satan as a person in my theology. I don’t need one. My ignorance is adversary enough. No Adam or Eve, either. I personally am all the characters in the Bible. So are you. It is a biography of God, who is who we are. And though it reads like a secular history, that is a mnemonic device: it is all present life – yours and mine.

 Matthew 5

        1. As Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain and as he sat down, his disciples came to him.

        2. And he opened his mouth and taught them and said,*

        3. "Blessed are the humble*,

        for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

        4. "Blessed are the mourners for they shall be consoled.

        5. "Blessed are the gentle for they shall inherit the earth.

        6. "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied.

        7. "Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

        8. "Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God.

        9. "Blessed are the peace makers for they shall be called the sons of God.

        10. "Blessed are they who are rejected for their righteousness for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

        11. "Blessed are you when they criticize you and reject you and tell you every wicked saying because of me, in falsehood.

        12. "Be glad and rejoice that your reward is great in Heaven. For this is how they rejected the prophets before you.

        13. "You are the salt of the earth. However, when salt becomes flat, with what do you salt it? It does not go with anything, except it is thrown out, and is trampled by man.

        14. "You are the light of the world. A city built on a mountain cannot be hidden.

        15. "And a lamp is not lit and placed under a bucket, except on a lamp stand, giving light to all those who are in the house.

        16. "This is how your light will shine before humanity, so they can see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

        17. "Do not expect that I came to retire the law or the prophets. I did not come to retire, except to fulfill.

        18. "For amen I am telling you, that until heaven and earth pass away, not one dot or one line shall pass away from the law, until all takes place.

        19. "Whoever loosens thus one of these small commandments, and teaches according to humanity, the smaller he shall be regarded in the Kingdom of heaven. Then whoever observes and teaches these, shall be called great in the Kingdom of heaven.

        20. "For I am telling you, if your righteousness does not go beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.

        21. "You heard that it was told to the first people, 'You shall not kill, and whoever kills is condemned to trial.'

        22. "However, I am telling you, whoever is angry with his brother unfairly, will be held accountable in trial. And whoever spits at his brother, is answerable before the congregation*. And whoever says, 'Lunatic*,' is condemned to hell fire.

        23. "If you bring your sacrifices for offering like this, and there you remember that your brother holds such a grudge against you:

        24. "Leave your sacrifice on the altar there, Go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and make your offering.

        25. "Reconcile with your enemy quickly, while still on the road, lest not your enemy deliver you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the guard and you end up* in prison.

        26. "And amen I say to you, you will not leave there before you have given up your last penny.

        27. "You heard that it was said, 'Do not fornicate?'

        28. "But, I am telling you, whoever looks upon a woman lustfully, at once he has fornicated with her in his heart.

        29. "If your right eye causes you to commit an offense, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For you are better off losing one of your members and not having your entire body thrown into hell.

        30. "And if your right hand causes you to commit an offense, cut it and throw it away from you, for you are better off losing one of your members and not having your entire body thrown into hell.

        31. "It is said, 'Whoever divorces his wife should give her a letter of cause.,'*

        32. "But, I am telling you, whoever divorces his wife because of an act of adultery, leads her to fornication. And whoever takes a divorced [woman as wife,] is committing fornication.*

        33. "Again you heard that it was told to the first people, 'Do not lie in your oaths,

        As your oaths before the Lord will be nullified.'*

        34. "But, I am telling you, do not take an oath in vain,* neither by heaven, for it is the throne of God;

        35. "Nor by earth, which is the rug under his feet; and neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of a great king.

        36. "Nor by your head, should you swear, for you cannot turn* one hair black or white.*

        37. "Except your words should be, 'Yes, yes' and 'No, no.'* Anything more is from the evil one.

        38. "You have heard it said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'

        39. "But, I am telling you, do not rise up against evil*, except whoever strikes you on the right side, turn to him the other.

        40. "And whoever wishes to put you on trial, and take your shirt* from you, leave him your cape too.

        41. "Whoever forces you to go a mile, go with him two.

        42. "Whoever asks you [for something,] give it to him; And whoever wishes to benefit from you, do not stop him.

        43. "You heard it said, 'Love your best friend and hate your enemy.'

        44. "But, I am telling you, like your enemy and bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you and pray for those who exploit you and leave you bare;*

        45. "So that you become the sons of your heavenly Father, he who makes his sun shine on the good and the wicked, and brings down the rain on the righteous and the abominable.

        46. "For if you like those who like you, what are you to be compensated for? Do not even the revenue collectors do this?

        47. "And if you greet your brothers only,* what good is that?* Do not the revenue collectors do this also?

        48. "Be therefore mature people, like your Father in heaven is Mature.

        __________

        *5:2.1 Lit. Ar. idiomatic expression retained: This idiomatic

expression, is in the form that signals the inception of the Lord's teachings on

earth. It implies, I believe, the redefinition of the universal Faith.

        *5:2.2 Lit. Ar. idiomatic expression: "And he [thus] commences teaching

them;"--an abrupt shift in tense from the past to the present, for emphasis, a

typical grammatical construction and style in Aramaic.

        *5:3 Lit. Ar. idiomatic figure of speech: "Poor in spirit."

        *5:22.1 Lit. Ar. id.: Or "Synagogue."

        *5:22.2 Lit. Ar. idiomatic figure of speech: "Mute," implying demonic

possession.

        *5:25 Lit. Ar. id.: "Fall in."

        *5:31 Lit. Ar. id. "Divorce document."

        *5:32 The grammatical implication is clearly: "In such cases."

        *5:33 Lit. Ar. idiomatic construction: "You will conclude, however, to

the Lord your oaths."

        *5:34 Lit. Ar. idiomatic figure of speech: "Do not swear whole."

        *5:36.1 Lit. Ar. id.: "Obligate," or affect.

        *5:36.2 Lit. Ar. idiomatic expression retained: No one can change their

age, [except for the Lord.]

        *5:37 Lit. Ar. idiomatic expression retained: meaning: Let your "yes"

mean yes and your "no" mean no.

        *5:39 Lit. Ar. id.: "The evil [one.]"

        *5:40 Lit. Ar. id.: "Go after everything you got."

        *5:44 Lit. Ar. idiomatic construction: "Fetch you by barren."

        *5:47.1 Lit. Ar. expression: "Ask for your brother's peace."

        *5:47.2 Lit. Ar. idiomatic expression: "What more do you do?"

(Matthew 5, Aramaic NewTestament, Victor Alexander)

Changing the Past to Right the Future: My take on Neville Goddard's doctrine of healing

Please see http://imagicworldview.blogspot.com/2017/06/revise-past-jairus-daughter-and-sarahs.html

I'm not quite done with this, but I am so excited about the idea I have to share what I have:

Can I lift you up?

My mom died, I think prematurely, because I didn't know how to pray. I know she and her friends prayed earnestly, but they didn't really know how to pray either. This was and is the fruit of the politics and superstitions of the organized church.

When I was saved in 1975 and Jesus Christ spoke to me audibly, I was inspired to find out what he had said to other men. Well, I sure got side-tracked by the politics and superstitions of the organized church, by my own carnality, and by my own stupidity. But Mom's death has prodded me to prevail in learning how to pray. Not just how to pray, but to do it.

Thank God for skeptics. Seriously. They are a grace from God that reminds us, if we will listen, that we are stupid and wrong. I have allowed myself to disprove whatever I have been taught, and have thought, and to wrestle through to the truth. I learned what I needed to learn from the church (and it really is worthwhile to get, and I do appreciate the education the church affords -- I only wish they knew what they are teaching) and have moved on.

I can only say that I am getting closer to the truth. Some of the "meat" of the Bible is tough. I don't mean bad tough; I mean rich, deep, nutritious ideas that take some chewing to digest. It takes time to unstupid.

Which brings me to Neville Goddard. I don't want to come across as a mindless groupie, a fan of Neville's or a follower in a cult of personality, but I do want you to consider his theology. It is Advaitic, true to the Old Testament inspiration. What is "Advaitic?" It is just that there is no division between God and man or, for that matter, anything else. Everything is one, from the Big Guy to the quantum particle, photon -- whatever.

Advaita is Sanskrit for No-Division - "not one, and not two" - and THAT is what the Bible is saying.

God is a structure from a higher architect. "God" is a verb. It is the higher architect's action. It moved. It is thinking, dreaming. God is Its dream. They are one, not two. And we are parts of that structure. One, not two. It is a perspective of ultimate reality, and if God is "wholly other" than anything else, we are on his side with the higher architect!

So, why don't we, why can't we God? We can. We don't because we are stupid with the ignorance we took upon ourselves -- Godding involves relearning what we put off to become humans. We Godded before, we just need to remember how. We are God-who-forgot-how-to-God. Hence, the Bible and learning how to pray, how to DO it.

Now, Neville is one who learned how to read the Bible. It is psychological, a biography of God-as-man and man remembering that he is God. It isn't historical as a record of sequential events, it is a collection of vignettes - about you and I - stacked upon one another -- visions of God.

My interest, again, is healing. I didn't want Mom to die. Miss her terribly. So much to make up to her. I'll get to that later. I don't believe in death anymore, by the way, and that has a lot to do with the below.

I mentioned that the action of the higher architect is a structure we are part of. I guess you might call it Time. We see one point of time at a time, but it is all there -- the past, present and future. Godding has to do with making changes in it. That isn't just a possibility, it is our job! We are to redeem the time, for it is evil (Ephesians 5:16). Redeem means to buy. How are we, spiritual action, going to buy time? Spiritual elbow grease!!! We go and take it. Which, "oh yeah," brings me to Neville Goddard, who taught how go and take it, how to redeem time from its evil.

This is one of the most interesting things I have ever read:

From The Law and the Promise,

Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the facts which have been conserved and still operate below the threshold of his surface mind. For him it is merely history. For him it seems unalterable—a dead and firmly fixed past. But for itself, it is living—it is part of the living age. He cannot leave behind him the mistakes of the past, for nothing disappears. Everything that has been is still in existence. The past still exists, and it gives—and still gives—its results. Man must go back in memory, seek for and destroy the causes of evil, however far back they lie. This going into the past and replaying a scene of the past in imagination as it ought to have been played the first time, I call revision—and revision results in repeal.

Changing your life means changing the past. The causes of any present evil are the unrevised scenes of the past. The past and the present form the whole structure of man; they are carrying all of its contents with it. Any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and future.

I'm writing in blue here. For the present and the past are both but imagination. If we can remember the past in our imagination, does it not then exist?  Our present moment is but a read-out of our accumulated past. The past advances to become the future, which is breaking forth as the present.

Okay, the present is the sum, then, of the past, and the past is still existent as imagination, accessible through memory.  If so, then we can go back to the past in memory and change it.  It is only imagination anyway.  We revise it in dream until it becomes real, and remember the "new and improved" revised past.

The past that now advances into the future and breaks forth as our present is different. A new, corrected time exists, and the bad isn't there anymore. We are healed. Einstein had nothing on this.

I personally have had instantaneous, miraculous healings occur to me. I have seen others and have heard and read of hundreds of other instantaneous, miraculous healings. They happen almost as a lark, unemotional and sometimes in response to some flippant remark -- certainly not as something laboriously conjured in the imagination. They, I suggest, are Jethro, provisions given by God to flag himself, "HEY!! I AM HERE!" Attention getters.

When you stop and look at the flags, you see the structure, the weave of relationships within that ultimately link up into one, an ultimate imagination. The higher architect is the Ultimate Imaginer we cannot imagine (talk about irony!), but we are, nevertheless, It. The dream is Its emanation, expansion by action from Itself, to God (Spirit), to Heaven (Mind), and to Earth (Physicality), the ultimate limits of opacity and obtuseness. It is all one.

Well, the Jethro-flags have got our attention, we see the structure, the structure is real, and it functions for the Imaginer. We come to the point where we realize that just knowing about all of it doesn't do squat for us, even though we are branches of the Imaginer.

We have to do it ourselves. "Edumacation" is good up to a point, but now comes the faith of doing it as LIVING branches of the action. Engagement. Our mental hands have to grapple with memories and images, "hearing" things we want to have heard as though they were actually said (and we hear them!), "touching" things created in our imagination, "reading" letters and signs and reports as though they were part of the accumulated past, more real in the imagination than the physical present -- all to bring forth a son. The Son. "I have acquired a man from YHWH."

All this is practice. Familiarization. "Pop" showing off a bit and training us. We are the Carpenter's sons and daughters learning how to plane and hammer. "All of this, all of this can be yours. Just give me what I want, and nobody gets hurt." (Thanks, Bono.)

"Oh, let your strong imagination turn the great wheel backward, until Troy unburn." "All life is, throughout the ages nothing but the continuing solution of a continuous synthetic problem." —H. G. Wells

An example from The Law and the Promise:

The buried past usually lies deeper than our surface mind can plumb. But fortunately, for this lady, she remembered and proved that the "made" past can also be "unmade" through revision:

"For thirty-nine years I had suffered from a weak back. The pain would increase and decrease but would never leave completely. The condition had progressed to the point where I used medical treatment almost constantly; the doctor would put the hip right for the moment but the pain simply would not go away. One night I heard you speak of revision and wondered to myself if a condition of almost forty years could be revised. I had remembered that at the age of three or four years I had fallen backward from a very high swing and had been quite ill at that time because of a serious hip injury. From that time on I had never been completely free from pain and had paid many a dollar to alleviate the condition, to no avail.

"This year during the month of August the pain had become more intense and one night I decided to test myself and attempt to revise that 'ancient' accident which had been the cause of so much distress in pain and costly medical fees most of my adult life. Many nights passed before I could 'feel' myself back to the age of childhood play. But I succeeded. One night I actually 'felt' myself on that swing feeling the rush of wind as the swing rose higher and higher. As the swing slowed down, I jumped forward landing solidly and easily on my feet. In the imaginal action I ran to my mother and insisted that she come watch what I could do. I did it again, jumping down from the swing and landing safely on my two feet. I repeated this imaginal act over and over until I fell asleep in the doing of it.

"Within two days the pain in my back and hip began to recede and within two months

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pain no longer existed for me. A condition that had plagued me for more than thirty-nine years, that had cost a small fortune in attempted cure—was no more. . ." L.H.

It is to the pruning shears of revision that we owe our prime fruit. Man and his past are one continuous structure. This structure contains all of the past which has been conserved and still operates below the threshold of his senses to influence the present and the future of his life. The whole is carrying all of its contents with it; any alteration of content will result in an alteration in the present and the future. The first act of correction or cure is always "Revise." If the past can be recreated into the present, so can the revised past. And thus the Revised Past appears within the very heart of her present life; not Fate but a revised past brought her good fortune.

Make results and accomplishment the crucial test of true imagination and your confidence in the power of imagination to create reality will grow gradually from your experiments with revision confronted by experience. Only by this process of experiment can you realize the potential power of your awakened and controlled imagination.

"How much do you owe my master?" He said, "A hundred measures of oil." And he said to him, "Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty!" This parable of the unjust steward urges us to mentally falsify the facts of life, to alter a theme already in being. By means of such imaginative falsehoods a man "acquires friends." As each day falls, mentally revise the facts of life and make them conform to events well worthy of recall; tomorrow will take up the altered pattern and go forward until at length it is realized on the heights of attainment.

The reader will find it worthwhile to follow these clues—imaginal construction of scenes implying the wish fulfilled, and imaginative participation in these scenes until tones of reality are reached. We are dealing with the secret of imagining, in which man is seen awakening into a world completely subject to his imaginative power.

Man can understand recurrence of events well enough (the building of a world from images supplied by memory)—things remaining as they are. This gives him a sense of security in the stability of things. However, the presence within him of a power which awakens and becomes what it wills, radically changing its form, its environment and the circumstances of life, inspires in him a feeling of insecurity, a dreadful fear of the future. Now, "it is high time to awake out of sleep" and put an end to all the unlovely creations of sleeping Man. Revise each day. "Let your strong imagination turn the great wheel backward until Troy unburn."

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WOW!!  She persevered -- "Many nights passed before I could 'feel' myself back to the age of childhood play. But I succeeded. One night I actually 'felt' myself on that swing feeling the rush of wind as the swing rose higher and higher. As the swing slowed down, I jumped forward landing solidly and easily on my feet. In the imaginal action I ran to my mother and insisted that she come watch what I could do. I did it again, jumping down from the swing and landing safely on my two feet. I repeated this imaginal act over and over until I fell asleep in the doing of it." It took many nights of trying, but she finally got it.

WOW WOW!!!

From Neville's lecture, Awakened Imagination, 1954:

This past May in New York City, there sat a lady who had been coming for years and I made a simple observation that people must become doers of the word and not mere hearers only. For if a man only hears it and never applies what he hears, he will never really prove or disprove what he has heard; and then I told the story of a lady who had only heard me three or four times and how she transformed the life of another, and this lady, hearing what one who came only three times and this miracle took place in her life, she went home determined that she would really apply what she had heard over the years, and this is what she did:

Two years before, after a violent quarrel, she was ordered out of her son's home by her daughter-in-law. Her son said "Mother, you need no proof from me that I love you: it's obvious: I think I have proven that every  day of my life, but if that is Mary's decision, and I regret it, it must be my decision, for I love Mary and we live in the same house and it is our house: it is our little family, and I am sorry she feels this way about it, but you know these little things that culminate in an explosion as took place today. If that is her decision, it is mine".

That was two years ago. She went home and she realized that night after night for over two years she had allowed the sun to descend upon her wrath. She thought of this wonderful family that she loved and felt herself ostracized from it, expelled from the home of her son. She did nothing about revising it and yet I had been talking revision to my New York audience for the past year. This is what she did now. She knew the morning's mail brought nothing. This was a Wednesday night.

There had been no correspondence in two years. She had sent her grandson at least a dozen gifts in the two years. Not one was ever acknowledged. She knew they had been received for she had insured many of them; so she sat down that night and mentally wrote herself two letters -- one from her daughter-in-law, expressing a great kindness for her, saying that she had been missed in the home and asking her when she was coming to see them; then she wrote one from her grandson in which he said "Grandmother, I love you". Then came a little expression of thanks for the last birthday present, which was In April, and then came a feeling of sadness rather because he hadn't seen her and begging her to come and see him soon.

These two short notes she memorized and then, as she was about to sleep, she took her imaginary hands and held these letters and she read them mentally to herself until they woke in her the feeling of joy because she had heard from her family; that she was wanted once more. She read these letters over and over feeling the joy that was hers because she had received them and fell asleep in her project. For seven nights this lady read these two letters. On the morning of the eighth day she received the letter -- on the inside there were two letters, one from her grandson and one from her daughter-in-law. These letters were identical with the letters she had mentally written to herself seven days before.

Where was the estrangement? Where was the conflict? Where was the source of the displeasure that was like a running sore over two years? When man's eye is opened he realizes all that he beholds, though it appears without, it is within--within one's own imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.

Unpoor by Imagining

Hello.

The text below was designed to print onto both sides of an 8-1/2 by 11” sheet of paper using Microsoft Word, 10 point Veranda font and .2” margins on top and sides, zero at the bottom. I wrote it to have something that would help the homeless beggars at the local freeway off-ramp more than just another dollar. Maybe you would like to copy and paste it into Word (or whatever) and print it as a tract for the homeless, too. I know it won’t work miracles, but it might direct them to someone who will . . . 

Change your life to be more successful. Here is practical, practicable advice derived from Neville Goddard:

Change your perception of reality. This is a spirit-based world. The physical world is being compelled to conform to spiritual impetus, so living according to a physical worldview runs against the very nature of the world. This world is the existence of an ineffable Strength, something beyond "spirit" that is becoming. We exist because that Power thinks we do. It is dreaming the whole universe into concrete existence. I call It the Becoming God.

This God is intelligent and powerful far beyond anything we can imagine. The world, mind and spirit are emanations of It. There is no division between things emanated and their source, so every "part" is the whole. We individual, spiritual consciousnesses are living branches of the Becoming God.

Unfortunately, we were born into this world totally ignorant of what we are. We have total amnesia, because to experience this emanation of ignorance and death, we had to completely forget that we are Life! Why did we do that? Because we loved humans and undertook to redeem them from this "death," to lift them up. To raise them, we became them by imagining that we were them. We "died" of our own Life-awareness and imagined their level of consciousness. We annexed their brains and became crucified on these "stakes" of flesh, becoming one with humans so that they might rise with us when we re-ascend through the regeneration of our Life-awareness. This resurrection is the Gospel, the Blessed Hope of the Bible.

The death of our Life-awareness, though, has caused us to miss the mark of being like the Power. Unaware, we think we are the humans we animate and undertake to direct our "own" lives, substituting our ignorant human self-direction for the purpose of the Ineffable. We do as we see fit – in error. This independence is rebellion against the Becoming God. We must repent of this; that is, end our self-lordship and submit wholly to the lordship of the Most High. We can not arbitrarily wake up, but trust the Becoming God to guide us back to full awareness of our being Him.

Our live-wire connection with the Becoming God is YHWH ("Jehovah"), which is the Ineffable's power and wisdom flowing into manifestation. I believe the Hebrew symbols yod-hey-vav-hey refer to the pattern of his flow. It is reliable provision and strength for our every need, including forgiveness for our error and rebellion. YHWH is personified in the Bible as Joshua and Jesus Christ, who take us into the Promised Land. He explains the meaning of the Old Testament scriptures we have misread as history.

YHWH is that Glorious Image which convicts us of sin: “Whoever sees me, sees the one who sent me. I am the Light that came to the people, so that whoever believes in me does not remain stuck in darkness" (John 12: 45-46, Victor Alexander's translation from ancient Aramaic, utilizing notes, emphasis mine). The consciousness we are is the Becoming God, the Light of the Ineffable that became us (the Sender became the Sent!). This is eminently practical, for if we see that the Glory of the Becoming God is the core of our being – the "King" in his Kingdom of OUR imagination – we gain conscience and go forth in humble, deliberate, loving imagining. We start to re-ascend – regeneration has begun! (And if you haven't accepted Jesus as lord yet, be sure he accepts you! Repentance is serious stuff – God is not mocked!)

The key to success on earth is having conscience and choosing right. Love is right, so let everything you do be done in love. Imagine loving thoughts in vivid 3-D. Be dedicated to the lordship of the Ineffable, be right in relationship with others, with right actions and right thoughts.

Whatever we desire, we can become. We become what we believe. Praying, which is imagining, creates a spiritual reality to which the physical world must be conformed. We create the model for "the world to come" by imagining in vivid, feeling, confident 3-D. What would be good? What would be gracious and pleasant, noble and profitable for you and for others? Imagine the world as it ought to be, and write it down. Believe it is created, and that you have it.

Imagine to 3-D concreteness. Make the world you desire real in your imagination (if you desire it, it is real, spiritually). Greet your friends there, hear good reports from them, touch the good things you desire as though they were already physically present. Feel satisfaction and relief, warmth and joy. Thank God with real gratitude.

Our thoughts and emotions are spiritual seed that is planted toward a future harvest. T. L. Osborn said, "Seed is prophetic; if you plant wheat, you can bet that what comes up is going to be wheat." What seed you plant is critical! It shall become your manifest reality. When and how? That is up to the Becoming God, and it may take some time for the seed you plant to come up, but it is coming "like a freight train!"

What we believe and give credence to is seed. If you say, "I do not want this," what are you seeing and giving credence to? That which you do not want. So, what seed have you planted? That which you do not want! Imagine what you want as though you have it. Faith is positive. Negatives don't work! And if you say, "I want this," what are you seeing and giving credence to? Your wanting. What seed have you planted? Wanting! This, oddly, is positive. Imagine what you want as though you have it. Imagine the end you desire. Believe and give credence to that end's existence as present.

Thankfully, we can revise bad seed by imagining better ends. Before you sleep each night, review the day's events. Revise them, imagining each event as you would have had it. If you were rejected, imagine being accepted. If something didn't arrive, imagine it did arrive. Neville said, “Imagine vividly, over and over again, raising your imagination to the level of vision, until it takes on all the tones of reality.” Go for feelings, both tactile and emotional, repeating each event until you feel that you have established spiritual reality. Then, fall asleep in your spiritual world!

There is difference between wishful thinking and imagining. Wishful thinking is like watching a movie. You see yourself as being distant and disconnected to you. Nothing in a daydream has effect on you – you watch yourself and others as an idle fantasy. Imagining is more intense and immediate. You do, you are there, things have effect. There is a sense of reality. Wishful thinking won’t get you beans. Imagining, though, will get you the world.

For example, during the Great Depression, penniless Neville wanted to sail to his home in Barbados. His mentor, Abdullah, told him, "You are in Barbados." That is, what Neville desired, he should believe he had. Physically, Neville was in New York; mentally, he saw palm trees, smelled island fragrances, and slept in his bed in his father's home on Barbados. A check eventually came for passage, but only steerage was available on the ship. Abdullah said, "You are in Barbados, and you went there first class!" A last minute cancellation bumped him up to a first-class cabin.

Drafted during World War II, Neville was qualified by his age for a discharge, but his request was denied. He slept in an Army barracks, but mentally he slept at home with his wife and daughter in New York – he vividly saw his home and felt its comforts. The Army changed its mind and gave him the honorable discharge.

Neville knew a man who had been a very poor boy in Russia. One of his jobs had been to exchange currency at the bank. He imagined how it would be if the teller made a mistake and gave him a roll of silver coins instead of an identical roll of copper. He imagined having food and clothing. The next day, the teller made that mistake. From that experience, the boy learned how to create by imagining. God orchestrates the fruition of what we imagine. The boy became a successful business man. When merchants didn't pay their bills, he imagined having the payments and wrote thank-you notes to the merchants (not sent, of course). Then the payments came!

A man who had always hiked the Alps and played polo with his friends lost the use of his legs. He vividly imagined hiking and playing polo with his friends, which he would certainly do if he had use of his legs again, and before long, he was hiking and playing polo again.

A young woman had lost her father. She had no other immediate family, and in her sadness, while riding a trolley home from work, she imagined she was traveling by ship to an exotic port and starting a new life. An unexpected inheritance from a distant relative allowed her to sail to the destination she had dreamed of – and taught her the power of imagining.

Neville had a vision of a rich family. The family patriarch had imagined the hotel he wanted to build as though it already existed. On his empty lot, he would say he "remembered" when it was an empty lot, “. . . and now here is this grand hotel, with this ornate lobby, ballrooms and balconies . . ." Everyone he described his vision to could "see" his hotel and “remember” the empty lot. Then the ways and means to build it came about.

A student of Neville’s visited a man who had lost his job. The mill he worked at closed before he had qualified for retirement. She "remembered when" he was afraid he had lost his job and retirement (implying that he had not lost them after all). The mill decided to remodel and reopen, and recalled him to work.

Do you get it? Pray, imagining you have what you want. "We call not out loud, but by an inner effort of intense attention. To listen attentively, as though you heard, is to create" (Neville Goddard, Mental Diets).

Coincidences? Not if the Bible is true and we are God. "Arise, O God (you!), and let your enemies be scattered." Imagine life as you want it to be, as though the end you desire now is – and it will become.